The Todd Glass Situation (11 page)

The best thing about the Joneses' house, however, was the Joneses. They couldn't have been any kinder to me. Randy and his wife, Sue, had set up a bedroom for me downstairs, including a brand-new desk.

“I thought you'd need a desk to write your jokes and work on your act,” Randy said.

I don't typically (and by “typically,” I mean “ever”) work on my act at a desk, but I was really moved by their generosity toward a kid who they barely knew.

Steve Young was also a huge help. Besides letting me crash at his place while I waited for my car, he forgave a couple of thousand dollars he'd earned as commission for shows he'd booked for me in Philadelphia. Steve also arranged for me to have an audition for Mitzi Shore, the owner of the legendary Comedy Store.

In 1989, the Comedy Store was the place to be. It was an all-black building sitting on the most exciting part of the Sunset Strip. The outside walls were covered with the names of comedians who performed there, names like Robin Williams, David Letterman, Sam Kinison, and Richard Pryor. The list included Tom Wilson, who remembered me from Comedy Works and offered to put in a good word with Mitzi.

But my confidence started to slip as soon as I entered the
building. Walking up and down the stairs connecting the three packed showrooms felt surreal. This was organized chaos that smelled of rock and roll and comedy history.

I was still struggling to take it all in when Steve nudged me: I was up next, part of a showcase of comedians eager to impress Mitzi. If you succeeded, you got “spots.” It might only be one spot a week, it might be six—obviously I was hoping for something like six. If you failed? Thanks for coming. Maybe you can try again in a year or so. All of the names I'd seen on the wall had, at one point or another, stood where I stood now, putting their hopes and dreams in Mitzi's hands.

Mitzi sat in the back of the room . . . At least I think she did. I never saw her that night. Come to think of it, in my thirty-year comedy career I don't think I've ever seen Mitzi Shore. Maybe she doesn't exist. The next morning Steve called to tell me that Mitzi had passed on my act.

I was devastated. I thought of ways I could get on Mitzi's good side. Maybe I could slash one of her tires and then “accidentally” walk by and help her fix it. “So what do you do?” I'd say, catching her in a moment of total appreciation for me. “You own a comedy club? No way! Guess what? I'm a comedian!”

Nowadays, there are all kinds of ways to become a comedian. You can shoot your own videos and put them on the web. Do your own podcast and promote it with social media. There are any number of niche networks of clubs and venues to help you get started.

But back then, if you didn't succeed at the Comedy Store, well,
fuck.

The
original Improvisation started in New York in 1963. Budd Friedman, an aspiring Broadway producer looking for a way to make some part-time cash, opened a coffeehouse where performers could feel comfortable hanging out after their shows, eating, drinking, and singing with their friends. About a year in, he got a liquor license, a development that, according to Budd, encouraged the comedians to start dropping by. Before long the Improvisation was hosting live comedy on a nightly basis, putting on greats like George Burns, Milton Berle, and George Carlin alongside young comics looking to break in—Jerry Seinfeld, Lily Tomlin, Andy Kaufman, and Jay Leno, to name a few.

As stand-up comedy became more popular in the 1970s,
Budd left a guy named Chris Albrecht to run the New York club and opened a second in Los Angeles.

Budd was (and is) a very creative person. He's always impeccably groomed, wearing expensively tailored suits with tennis shoes and an honest-to-God monocle. He can also be brutally honest in the way that he talks, getting right to the point with the kinds of thoughts that most people would keep to themselves. One story had him standing in the hallway when a comedian wearing a wife-beater tank top walked by. “Hey, Budd! I'm on next,” he said. “You should watch my set!”

Budd took one look at the guy and his T-shirt, lowered his monocle, and snapped back: “Muscles aren't funny.”

The L.A. Improv had always played second banana to the Comedy Store, but it was growing in popularity thanks to a cable TV show,
An Evening at the Improv,
where comics did their acts in front of the iconic brick wall. I recognized the building from TV as soon as we pulled up to the front. Steve sensed my excitement and reminded me not to get my hopes up. He knew I was still upset about the Comedy Store and didn't want to set me up for another disappointment.

I also recognized Budd from the TV show, but that didn't prepare me for meeting him in person. “Todd, how
are
you? It's so good to meet you.” If you're old enough to remember
Gilligan's Island
, think Thurston Howell, and you'll get a sense of Budd's drawl.

I was even more nervous than I'd been for Mitzi—I felt like this was basically my last chance to make it in L.A. The set went well, but I thought the set at the Comedy Store had gone well and that didn't work out. When I was done onstage I made a beeline for the door and slipped outside for a cigarette. Every
couple of minutes I'd nervously poke my head back in. I saw Richard Belzer, Bill Maher, and Richard Lewis hanging out at the bar. These were some of my heroes. I wanted to be a part of their world.

Soon the show was over and everyone piled outside. Budd strolled past me. “Good show tonight,” he said. “Call me Monday and I'll give you spots.”

He said it in a way that was so quick and matter-of-fact that I wasn't really sure if he'd meant it. The valet arrived with his car and Budd got in. Just before he pulled away, he rolled down his window and said, “Remember to tell me that you're from Philadelphia. That will remind me who you are.”

Look, life is full of moments when things don't turn out the way you want them to. But when they do . . .

I called Budd on Monday. “It's Todd Glass,” I said, “from Philadelphia?” I got spots at the Improv that week. I got them again the next week, and the week after that.

A
few months after I moved to L.A., Katy and my mom came to visit. My mom wasn't ready to give up on the idea of Katy and me as a couple, which even now I totally understand. We looked like we should have been inseparable. What could possibly stand in the way of us being together?

Katy seemed inclined to believe it was, as my mom said, shyness, and took a more aggressive approach.
I'm sorry
, I was dying to tell her.
I'm not shy, I'm gay!
Instead, I lay through a lot of awkward back massages.

Shortly after they left, I had a new issue to contend with: The Joneses were moving to Connecticut and I had to find a new place to live.

The whole reason I knew Caroline Jones was through
Martha Helfrich, who had been a waitress at Smokey Joe's. Her parents lived in Fountain Valley, about a half hour southwest of Anaheim Hills. Lucky for me, they were getting divorced—ironically because her dad, who was in his midfifties and had fathered eight children, had decided to come out of the closet.

Which is how I wound up living with Mim, Martha's mother, in Fountain Valley. I liked living with Mim—she didn't mind when I had friends over to hang out by her pool, and since she spent a lot of time at another house they had in Maine, I often had the place to myself.

Most of the time, however, I was traveling. Stand-up comedy was exploding all over the country, and if you were willing to put in the miles, there were more places to work than ever before. I still did dates at the L.A. Improv, but mostly I moved among the eleven “road” Improvs that had opened as part of a national expansion.

The club I was most excited about playing was the Las Vegas Improv, then located at the Riviera Hotel & Casino. As a twenty-four-year-old, the only things I knew about Vegas were that you got to see your name on a big sign and to make sure there was plenty of water in your car for the drive through the desert. I pictured a beaten path through the sand and cactuses. I was genuinely shocked when I discovered Vegas and L.A. were connected by a highway. And a little more so when I saw the sign at the Riviera—the free buffet took up a lot more real estate than my name.

But everything else about the club was amazing. I was doing twenty-one shows a week and couldn't have been happier. The maître d' was a guy named Steve Schirripa. Talk about larger than life—Steve personified Vegas to me: a New York guy
with a huge personality and sharp suit who knew everyone in town and ran the room like a mafia don. (Years later, Steve got a small part in the Martin Scorsese movie
Casino,
which eventually led to a major role on
The Sopranos
as Tony's brother-in-law Bobby Baccalieri.)

Steve has inspired a lot of legends that may or may not be true. Like the time an older couple from the Midwest gave him a hard time about their seats and he told them to go fuck themselves. Shocked, the husband threatened to file a complaint and demanded Steve's name.

“Steve.”

“What's your last name?”

“You tell my boss a guy named Steve told you to go fuck yourself. He'll know who you're talking about.”

Or the time a comedian went five minutes longer than he was supposed to. The most important thing to remember when you're working Vegas is to never go over your allotted time—the casinos want their customers gambling as much as possible, and every minute those customers are watching your show is a minute away from the tables. Steve Schirripa sat the comedian down in the back office and pulled out a calculator. “Let's see . . . ,” he said. “There were three hundred people at your show. Five minutes of gambling, the casino can expect to make about thirty-five thousand dollars. How much money did your act bring in tonight? I think you owe me about twenty-five thousand dollars. Tell you what . . . I'll let you off the hook this time if you give me the shoes you're wearing. But next time, I tell you to do fifteen minutes, you do fifteen minutes. That's not fifteen minutes and one second, or fourteen minutes and ninety-nine seconds, you with me?”

No, that's not a typo. If Steve said there were ninety-nine seconds in a minute, you were inclined to believe him. I don't know if the stories are true or not, but I'm inclined to believe them based on my own experiences with Steve. One night I was onstage and, no matter what I seemed to do, the audience just wasn't laughing. I decided to do something I'd seen a few other comics do in the past—since the crowd wasn't responding, I turned around to deliver the rest of my act to the brick wall behind me. Until out of nowhere, like the voice of God, Steve Schirripa boomed over the PA: “Todd . . . Turn around and do your fucking act.”

He wasn't yelling. He didn't have to. I turned around and did my fucking act. I might have felt a little put out in the moment, but in hindsight, I really respected Steve for that. I like things to be done the right way. And here was a guy in the back of the room who thought, even if this wasn't the best crowd in the world, there was still a right way to do the show. Afterwards, I expected to get a lecture from him, but he never mentioned it again. There was no memo to Budd Friedman. All Steve wanted was for me to turn around and do my fucking act, and once I did, the problem was solved.

Another night—a busy Saturday—I asked Steve if I could get five of my friends in for free. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “On a Saturday? No way. Can't do it.” So I was surprised when, after the show, one of my friends thanked me for hooking them up.

“Steve,” I said, “did you let my friends in for free?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“How did you even know who my friends were?”

“Todd, I saw five preppy people standing in line. Who the fuck else are they friends with?”

When Vegas came to a close, I moved on to the next Improv. Most of the time I was working as the middle, between the opening act and the headliner, making about $850 a week plus lodging. Once in a while, “lodging” meant a nice hotel nearby. More often than that it was a “comedy condo,” which was really another way of saying “shitty apartment.” Sometimes I'd get the shitty apartment all to myself. Sometimes I'd have to share it with the headliner. The worst was when they crammed all three acts into one place.

But even the worst was pretty good. I remember one Thanksgiving, I found myself sharing a condo in Dallas with then relatively unknown comedians Steve Harvey and John Henton. The two of them took over the shitty apartment's shitty kitchen and cooked a feast, a combination of traditional Thanksgiving dishes and soul food. What impressed me most was the presentation: Here were a couple of guys who I didn't think would care about it at all, but when dinner was served, Steve Harvey said, “Hold up, everybody, we're going to set the table and eat like human beings.” We set the table with whatever mismatched utensils we could find and had an amazing dinner.

These days, comedians can't wait to get off the road so they can get back home to focus on their careers. Back then, unless you landed a sitcom, there wasn't anything else to do with your career. I was working—what more could I want? I'd go in on a Wednesday and do shows through Sunday. Sometimes, at the end of my last show, they'd tell me that the act they'd scheduled for the following week had fallen through. “I'll stay!” I'd always yell. If I could have stayed a month at a club, I would have. It was fun.

•  •  •

I
n almost every city I'd hear about a gay bar or neighborhood. I never had the courage to check out either one, but I often wondered what it would be like to live a life where I didn't have to hide, where I'd at least have the option to meet someone without worrying that the whole world was going to find out about me.