I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (2 page)

Maybe I am the only one who notices.

I think it was Jack Benny who once said, “A comic says funny things, but a comedian says things funny.” I guess I’d fall into that latter grouping.

Many comedians would probably agree that you start off doing someone else while your own voice evolves. You start out as an imitator because hiding behind success is easier than finding it. Richard Pryor started out doing Bill Cosby and then came into his own. For me, the models were Mike and Elaine, Bob and Ray, and, of course, Benny.

When I first performed, I didn’t study all the working comedians and say, “There is nobody stammering out there. … What a great opportunity.” In interviews throughout my career, I’ve often been asked if my stammer was natural. My stock response: “Have you been listening to my answers?”

Truly, that’s … the … way I talk.

When I was doing
The Bob Newhart Show
, one of the producers pulled me aside and said that the shows were running a little long. He wondered if I could cut down the time of my speeches by reducing my stammering. “No,” I told him. “That stammer bought me a house in Beverly Hills.”

Stammering is different than stuttering. Stutterers have trouble with the letters, while stammerers trip over entire parts of a sentence. We stammerers generally think of ourselves as very bright. My own private theory is that stammerers have so many ideas swirling around their brains at once that they can’t get them all out, though I haven’t found any scientific evidence to back that up.

There are exceptions to the imitation rule. I remember watching a show on TV from the Improv in New York one night in the eighties. One young comedian after another came onstage. I’d say to myself, “Okay, he’s doing Seinfeld. He’s doing Benny.” Then Norm MacDonald appeared. He wasn’t doing anyone. He was doing himself, which made him stand out.

Norm later wrote a sketch for me when I hosted
Saturday Night Live.
I played a supervisor at the post office who had to discipline a disgruntled worker regarding his appearance. Gingerly I instructed Norm’s beatnik character: “There is a uniform that you have to wear. Again, let me assure you that this is coming from the guys upstairs and I’m just relaying it to you. It’s strictly procedure. I personally have nothing against combat fatigues, but it’s just that the guys upstairs …”

Long before I started performing my own routines onstage, I loved watching comedians on television. I’d hear a joke and then ask myself why it got a laugh. What made it work? Why did he choose that particular word? In the fifties, I watched George Gobel. He wasn’t doing “Take My Wife, Please.” He would just tell these neat little stories, like about how his wife, spooky ole Alice, came up to him the other day. It was a softer, less aggressive brand of comedy. Later I saw Bob and Ray performing similar routines. I thought to myself, you can be successful without having to be as broad as some of the comedians were in the early years.

That was the first inkling I had that maybe I could make it as a comedic storyteller.

But it wasn’t all positive reinforcement. Early in my career, I saw Jonathan Winters perform in a comedy club in Chicago. He was hilarious. Each joke was funnier than the one before it. I was totally discouraged. I thought to myself, why bother? There’s no way you can be as funny as Jonathan Winters.

I gathered my wits and decided that being No. 2 wouldn’t be so bad.

The greatest comedian I’ve ever seen is Jack Benny. He wasn’t afraid of the silences. Once Benny was following the Will Maston Trio with Sammy Davis Jr. They absolutely killed. The audience was still applauding for them when Benny walked onstage. He complimented them and then started his routine.

“In the afternoon, I like to have some tea. I go in the coffee shop, around four o’clock or four-fifteen.” Pause. “More like four-thirty.” (Terrifically unnecessary infor mation, by the way.) Pause. “So I went into the coffee shop. … I did a movie with an English actor whose name I couldn’t remember … he was in the coffee shop, but I couldn’t remember his name …”

Here Benny stopped for what seemed like an eternity. “I’m sorry,” he said, breaking the silence. “I promised Sammy Davis Jr. that he could do another number. Let’s hear another number from him.”

Everyone dutifully applauded, and Sammy reappeared onstage. He performed “Birth of the Blues,” and destroyed the audience again. Benny returned to the stage, himself applauding, and watched Sammy and the band walk off. When the applause finally died down, Benny said, “Nevil. That was his name … Nevil.”

Trust me, you don’t do that unless you know it will play.

The interesting thing I discovered about my material was that once I convince the audience to accept the premise, then everything that follows is logical. My routine “Defusing the Bomb,” for instance, is about a small-town patrolman named Willard Hackmeister who finds a live mortar shell on the beach and calls headquarters to ask how to proceed. If you accept the fact that he’s in a small town that doesn’t have the equipment necessary to defuse a bomb, everything that follows is logical.

Take my two favorite lines:

“Willard,” his captain says over the phone, “if this thing goes off, it’s me they are going to want to talk to.”

Later, the captain adds: “Willard, if we can save one human life … that’s the way you feel about it, too.”

For some routines like “King Kong,” the jump is a tad bigger. If you accept the premise that King Kong really existed and was this huge ape who came to New York, that it could have been the first night on the job for this new security guard at the Empire State Building, and that a large ape climbing the building wouldn’t have been covered in the guard’s week-long orientation and training program or mentioned in any of the manuals and therefore would cause the guard to reluctantly call his supervisor, then everything else that follows is logical.

“King Kong” is a routine that came to me full-born. It happened when I was living in New York doing the television show
The Entertainers
with Carol Burnett. My wife, Ginnie, and I were having dinner with Carol and her husband, Joe Hamilton, at the Top of the Sixes restaurant, which had a panoramic view of Manhattan. I was talking about jobs that I held before I became a stand-up. From my seat I could see the Empire State Building out the window all lit up. I made a connection between these two seemingly opposite thoughts, and
boom!
The whole routine just came full-blown. Like this:

Hello, Mr. Nelson. This is Sam Hennessy, the new guard. Sir, I hate to bother you at home like this on my first night, but, uh, something’s come up and it’s not covered in the guard’s manual. … Yeah, I looked in the index, yes, sir. I looked under unauthorized personnel and people without passes and apes and apes’ toes. … Apes and apes’ toes, yes, sir. There’s an ape’s toe sticking through the window, sir. … See, this isn’t your standard ape, sir. He’s between eighteen and nineteen stories high, depending on whether there is a thirteenth floor or not. … Sir, I’m sure there’s a rule against apes shaking the building. … There is, yes, sir. So I yelled at his feet. I said, “Shoo, ape,” and “I’m sorry but you are going to have to leave.” … I know how you like the new men to think on their feet, so I went to the broom closet and I got out a broom without signing out a requisition on it. … I will tomorrow, yes sir. … And I started hitting him on the toes with it. It didn’t bother him much. … See, there are these planes and they are flying around him … and they are shooting at him and they only seem to be bothering him a little bit, so I figured I wasn’t doing too much good with a broom. Did I try swatting him in the face with it? Well, I was going to take the elevator up to his head, but my jurisdiction only extends to his navel. You don’t care what I do … just get the ape off the building. This may complicate things a little—he’s carrying a woman in his hand, sir. … No, I don’t think she works in the building, no, sir. … As he passed by my floor … she has a kind of negligee on, so I doubt very much she’s one of the cleaning women. Well, sir, the first thing I did was I filled out a report on it. Well, I don’t want to give the building a bad name either, sir, but I doubt very much if we can cover it up, sir. The planes are shooting at him, and people are going to come to work in the morning and some of them are going to notice the ape in the street and the broken window, and they will start putting two and two together. I think we’re safe on that score, sir. I doubt very much if he signed the book downstairs. You don’t care what I do … just get the ape off the building. Well, I came up with one idea. I thought maybe I could smear the Chrysler Building with bananas …

One problem with being a stand-up is that other people feel incumbent to show you that they have a sense of humor. It’s like telling a plumber who is working on your house that you once fixed the kitchen sink. The subtext is that you know what it’s like.

Not long ago, my dentist, who is a woman, told me a story about her girlfriend, who is a comedienne. Her girlfriend is single so the dentist fixed her up with a lawyer. She gave the lawyer the comedienne’s phone number. He called and they talked for a while. Days later, the dentist asked her friend if the two had gone out yet.

“No,” the comedienne said. “He’s an amateur.”

Usually when people tell me jokes, they tell the dirtiest jokes imaginable. They’ll preface the joke by telling me that I will have to clean this up a little bit if I want to use it in my act. Especially me, Mr. PG.

“I’ve got a great joke, but in the punch line there is a bad word,” the guy will say to me. “Can I tell you the joke even though the punch line is a little off-center?”

“Sure, let’s hear it,” I’ll say.

And it turns out the very first line is R-rated.

Personally, I’ve never done an outrageously raunchy joke onstage. I just don’t feel comfortable with shock for shock’s sake. I’ve found there is a level that you set for yourself and one that the audience sets for you. You can approach that level, but you can’t penetrate it because then your routine becomes unacceptable. The trick is to come as close to that line as you can. That’s where the tension is.

For example, I’ll say something slightly subversive like, “Doctors say that Viagra doesn’t cause blindness.” I’ll pause, and then I’ll walk into the microphone, which results in a few relieved chuckles.

Viagra may be the word that causes people to become a little uptight because they aren’t sure what’s coming next. I was at dinner with Tim Conway and the subject came up. Tim said, “They say if you have an erection that lasts more than four hours, call your doctor. Hey, if I have an erection that lasts for more than four hours, I’m calling everybody I know.”

Truthfully, there’s no subject I’ve ruled out completely. If I have a really killer joke, everything is subject to negotiation. My wife always says, “If they found out what your sense of humor is really like, no one would show up. You have this dark side.”

It’s somewhat true. In real life, I tend to find humor in the macabre. I love portraying the totally insensitive person. There are people out there who are totally insensitive to human feelings. These jokes are my private stock. They’re just for me and my family and friends to enjoy, like a family winery that saves a rare vintage for its own holiday table.

Most of the jokes are in good fun. One time I was out to dinner with my four children, and my youngest daughter, Courtney, complained when I ordered veal. She listed all the cruel and inhumane ways in which calves were treated before being slaughtered.

At our next family dinner, I secretly submitted my own personal list of specials to the maître d’. With his French accent, he began: “Tonight, we have a lovely baby harp seal in a nice white wine sauce. My favorite is the tender rare condor sautéed with lemon and capers …” After he worked his way down a virtual list of endangered species, Courtney was truly mortified—until she saw a big grin form on my face.

Nearly all comedians enjoy a camaraderie with their brethren. I liken it to the friend of mine who once dated Elizabeth Taylor. My friend was the most unlikely guy to date Liz Taylor, but they somehow ended up getting engaged. When they broke up before marrying, he was despondent. I said to him, “Look at it this way: You are like an astronaut. There are only about twenty other guys you can talk to who know what you are talking about.”

This made him feel much better.

Comedians can only discuss certain things with other comedians, because if you have never done stand-up, you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know the feel of an audience. I’ll be talking to my friend Don Rickles and I’ll say, “I had this audience and they were just dead. You know what I mean?” And he’ll say, “Yeah, I had one like that in Cleveland in ninety-one.”

Nobody else would know what that feeling is like, and that forms a bond that extends beyond who knows whom. In 1960, I was playing a club called Freddie’s in Minneapolis. Freddie’s was only the sixth club I played as a professional stand-up, so I remember it well. It was a long, thin room that held 400 and had a bar behind the stage. The people who could see my face were paying more than those watching the back of my head. The bartenders were real pros. They knew each comic’s routine and timed the ringing up of their sales to the punch line so laughter would drown out the cash register.

Late one morning during my run at Freddie’s, I was in my hotel room and I got a call from Dick Martin, whom I had never met. He was also in Minneapolis; Rowan and Martin were appearing in the Flame Room at the Radisson. He told me that he was playing golf that afternoon at Interlochen, a first-rate course where it’s hard to get a tee time, and he invited me to join his foursome. I accepted.