[calm music playing]
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[Bob Odenkirk] Hey! Hi, hello, Mike, it's Bob Odenkirk.
Uh, I got the request, uh,
to participate in a documentary that you're making.
Um, I-- Here's what, uh, I--
My feelings. Um, I will watch the documentary
as a fan of Chicago comedy,
and I look forward to it.
Uh, however, I-- I don't really want to be
in another documentary...
now.
At some point, I'll do more.
But I've kind of done a lot of 'em,
and, uh, I feel like, uh, I'm a bit of a blowhard
when it comes to comedy and commentary.
So, um, I'm excusing myself
from, uh, documentaries for a while,
maybe a couple years here.
So thank you for the request, uh,
and kick-- kick ass, do a great job,
and I will be watching your documentary
and, uh, and cheering for it.
So do a great job, and thanks for asking. Bye.
♪
You ready?
Who am I talking to? You ready, Tony?
I-- I know that. I don't-- I don't know
who I was talking to when I said, "You ready?"
Talking to myself like an asshole.
I fall asleep watching the Masters,
but I forgot about this.
Should I set this here or what?
[interviewer 1] Yeah, it's cool.
-Yeah, just don't face it off-- -Or should I set it off-camera?
[interviewer 1] No, you can set it there, but just, uh,
as long as that we can't read the label.
[interviewer 2] And just make sure you look at the lens.
You sure you can't read it?
[interviewer 2] You can't see anything. Yeah.
Duh.
Y'all didn't bring a tripod?
[interviewer 2] Yeah, you lookin' at it.
Do you want me to say who I am?
-[interviewer] You know who. -Just in case!
-[interviewer 2] A mark. -[interviewer 3] Yeah, right.
-[interviewer 2] B mark. -[interviewer 3] All right, so,
you know, no matter where I am, you could look at the camera--
-Look at camera? -[interviewer 3] Yeah.
-No, don't look at the camera. -[interviewer 3] Yeah.
-We've been shooting-- -Look-- look at you. Right?
You look at the person interviewing, not the camera.
-[interviewer 2] Typically. -What, what, what?
[interviewer 3] But we've been shooting
at the camera the whole time.
[interviewer 2] They've been talking to the camera?
-[interviewer 3] Yeah. -[interviewer 2] Oh.
That's insane.
[interviewer 3] Well, we started with that.
Makes me have great confidence in
-how this project will turn out. -[laughter]
The documentary's starting right now.
Exactly.
That's right! You better buckle up, studpuppet!
Oh! Hello, I'm Judy Tenuta.
My name is Milton "Lil Rel" Howery.
Deon Cole.
I just go, "My name is Godfrey"?
-[interviewer] Yeah. -Oh.
My name is Godfrey.
Megan Elizabeth Gailey.
I am Marsha Warfield. Hello. Who are you?
Name's Chris Redd.
And I started doing comedy in Chicago.
My plan was to move to New York.
I-- I wasn't gonna move to Chicago.
But, uh, I didn't think I could afford
to live in New York. You know, it scared me.
And I had one aunt who had some property
really close to New York, and I was excited.
I asked her if I could stay there and pay rent.
I knew she was gonna say yes.
She was like, "No." [chuckles]
And so I moved to Chicago.
♪
[John Riggi] To me, going to Chicago was like going to...
Oz.
It was more than I could imagine.
I didn't know what to expect.
I really thought it was the big-time.
And it was! For me, it was.
There's a reason why there's so many great comedians
that come out of Chicago.
[John Caponera] We're in the middle, and I think we have
more of a barometer of the country being in Chicago.
That Midwestern honesty,
you know, plain-spokenness.
We got a little bit of country in us,
we got a little bit city life.
[Kara Buller] A lot of us come from farm stock.
You know, from Iowa, from, you know, the plains.
And then we go to the city to try to get an education,
you know, kind of better ourselves.
So, yeah, there's definitely--
even myself, yes, a bit of insecurity.
-[interviewer] Yeah. -Yeah. And pride.
[laughs] Like, there's also, like, that incredible--
"We got a work ethic. We have integrity!"
We have two seasons, "swass" and "fritties."
Sweaty ass and freezing titties.
I wish we had a Weather Channel that was like,
"On the swass scale today, we are at 400% humidity.
So your titties will be completely stuck to your body
the whole bus ride."
Everybody has a different voice, man.
Everybody's very distinguishable.
We don't have a certain
standard way of telling jokes, or writin', or whatever,
and I think that's what makes us unique and different.
We're authentic. Uh, we're great joke writers,
but at the same time, we're also great storytellers.
Just lots of great comics and writers
and performers have, uh, have come from here.
Richard Pryor was from Peoria.
Sam Kinison was from Peoria.
And Arsenio Hall got his start
at the Comedy Cottage in Rosemont.
The amount of guys that are now showrunners
or television writers,
uh, television hosts, acting, producing.
It's a lot of Chicago influence
on the national scene. You know, Second City.
Not stand-up, but as far as improv goes,
you know, Colbert and all those people.
When I started comedy, everybody assumed I was doing Second City.
"Oh, you're a comic? You must be doing Second City."
No, no, I'm doing-- I'm a stand-up.
When I moved here, it was very distinct.
There was improv and there was stand-up,
and we didn't talk to each other.
I told myself that stand-up was, like,
a traveling salesman of jokes, and improv was where it was at.
I wanted to be a film star and a television star,
and I never thought of stand-up comedy propelling me to that.
I thought "I need Second City for that."
Second City gets all the credit!
You can go to Europe and people have heard of Second City.
[speaking Spanish]
[audience laughter]
[Ella Galt] Improv exists all over the world, and I think that
historically what was going on at Second City as kind of, like,
the Big Bang of improv, or at least one of them.
Chicago!
[Ella Galt] The ripples of which are kind of, like,
still echoing around the world, and, you know,
it's in our books, it's a really strong
and important part of the history.
And I suppose what's happening now is,
like, the aftereffects of that.
And Zanies gets a, "Oh, yeah. Oh, you're at Zanies?"
And it deserves more than that.
I didn't get into the Second City classes.
-I-- I failed the audition! -Yeah.
-The conservatory. So did I. -For class.
-So did I. I was not accepted... -Into the class!
[TJ] ...into the Second City conservatory.
[Pete] To learn how to be better.
Years later, I would be hired to Second City Tour Co.,
so I could work there, but I could not learn there.
[Pete cackles]
Even though some of the best improv classes
come out of Chicago, Second City,
some the best improv people...
Well, I have a little bit of a weight problem!
...I thought that improv was corny.
For a while we worked in, like, the-- the improv sphere.
[Dwayne] The Mary Wong were brilliant.
I loved them. They were different.
They were, you know, they were
a Black sketch comedy team, not improv.
And they would tell you that.
"We don't do improv, we do sketches."
We would occasionally go into what seemed like
an improv sort of format. Like, "Hey! Give us an occupation,
and give us the first line of a speech!"
And then we would go, "We're not doing anything with that."
And we wrote stuff. [chuckles]
And the improv people were on the side being pissed off,
and the audience would find it hilarious,
'cause we just deliberately would
tear that kind of stuff apart.
Yes, you guessed it! This man is an asshole!
-Oh, yeah! -[audience laughter]
♪
Chicago's a really, really strong sports city.
We're very loyal, we're very blue-collar,
and we're very racially polarizing.
Chicago is the most segregated city on planet Earth.
Period.
I was sort of taken aback at the--
at the level of polarization.
It's not just segregated race-wise.
It's segregated economically.
Gangs, culture.
Everyone has their section.
♪
Which also taught me to stay in my lane.
Anything in Chicago is also segregated.
Yeah, a lot of extremes.
Well, we got that very controversial deep dish pizza.
I think that diversity in pizza should be celebrated, okay?
We have thick pizza, skinny bitch pizza.
We have upside-down pizza.
Comedy was no different.
[waves crashing]
I was with, uh, with my girl,
and we were in, uh, at the beach,
somewhere between Fullerton and Irving Park.
We were just sitting in the car, chillin',
and all of a sudden this, uh,
this white cop pulls up to us, like...
"What's the matter,
they ain't got no beaches on the South Side?"
♪
I know there's racism, I know there's, you know, um,
white, uh, privilege and white supremacy.
So to me, that's just a mirror of the dynamics of comedy.
All those ethnic, uh,
differences come into contact with each other.
It has to shape people's points of view
and their comedic sensibilities.
I lived my whole life here in Chicago.
I think there's just as many racists here.
Just don't see 'em marchin'.
They're afraid their sheets are gonna blow off.
-[audience laughter] -[blows into microphone]
"Well, look, it's the mayor!"
[audience laughing, cheering]
I went on stage the very first time here in Chicago
in September 1969.
Tim Reid and I were America's first
Black and white comedy team.
History shows we were last.
-We brothers. -We brothers.
-This is the ghetto. -The ghetto?
-Yeah. -Where we at?
Uh, South Side of Chicago.
-The South Side? -Corner of 47 and Drexel.
Come on, bus!
[audience laughter]
Come on with that bus!
[audience applause]
When I set it out,
there were no comedy clubs in Chicago.
In fact, there was only one comedy club in the nation.
It was the Improvisation in New York.
And it had a singer, and then a comic,
and then a singer, and then a comic.
We're standing in front of what was the site
of Budd Friedman's improv.
If Tom Dreesen says that this is the first
stand-up comedy club in America?
I-- I think we gotta believe him.
So we had no place to be bad.
We had no place to-- to work on our material night after night.
So we would have to find jobs. We would go to charities.
We'd go to Provident Hospital
and they were having a charity, we'd say,
"We'll get up and we'll do a few minutes
of stand-up comedy for you."
We went to jazz clubs on the South Side of Chicago,
and when the jazz group took a break,
we'd ask if we could get up and go on stage
and do some material for their audiences.
Places that we played initially were not comedy clubs.
Like the High Chaparral was a tavern
with, you know, alcohol and no comedy,
and we kind of just went in and said,
"Hey, can we do comedy in here?" [chuckles]
And they were like "What the hell are you talkin' about?"
'Cause if it wasn't like, uh, a wet t-shirt thing or whatever,
they were like, "I don't understand
what you want, man." [laughs]
I would go into these blues clubs
where Muddy Waters was performing, and I'd go,
"Well, you know, it's midnight.
If Muddy's done, can I go up on stage?"
And I remem-- The emcee was Bob Zmuda.
It was close to midnight, Bob Zmuda goes,
"Okay, I'm gonna bring you on," and I was, like,
really frightened, but everybody was laughing!
After I got offstage, I said, "I can't believe it,
I didn't expect this kind of response in a blues club!"
He goes, "Judy, they're all on heroin."
♪
Let's see. I started in, uh, Chicago in 1974.
I was 20 years old,
and I had read about an open mic night,
which was in a-- an entirely new concept at the time.
And there was a feature in the Sunday Sun-Times.
[Judy] Tom Dreesen is hosting
an open mic night at the Pickle Barrel.
[Marsha] Which was a deli.
I was recently divorced,
I was, uh, working, I think, at the phone company,
and I wanted to try my hand at stand-up.
So I told my friend I was goin', and I never went.
And one night she came and picked me up and said,
"Get in the car, you're going down there."
She went and introduced me to, uh, Tom Dreesen,
told him to put my name down.
I think we got there at five in the afternoon.
Each act would do maybe eight minutes,
and I'd bring on another act, and another eight minutes,
and then I had one spot called the "Virgin Spot."
I would tell the audience, I'd say,
"Do you like Flip Wilson? Do you like Jack Benny?"
Whoever is your favorite comedian, they had to
go on stage somewhere for their very first time.
He said "Okay, you're a virgin,
and I'll put you on, later on, after the regular guys."
So about two o'clock in the morning, I went on
to, uh, an audience of six comedians,
one bum, and three guys puttin' tables on their chairs.
Some of those nights, those virgin spots,
the poor kids did so bad they never came back again.
My opening line was, uh,
"Good evening, my name is Marsha Warfield,
and I'm a virgin." [chuckles]
That's the way it started.
I think the first place I ever went on stage was Who's On 1st?
It was a warm environment, but not a warm club.
It was a lodge of some sort,
some-- One of those groups of racist people
that meet up together regularly.
My first time on stage, it was like I--
I, like, uh-- like a little standing ovation,
the very first time I was on the stage.
Couldn't sleep that night.
I did it, oh, four, five times, and then I stopped doin' it,
'cause the last time I had bombed.
And I didn't go for, like, a year and a half.
And-- 'Cause I was just psychologically fragile.
I'm not much better now.
I never drink, and, uh,
it was about ten below zero.
And I got so nervous, I was drinkin'.
I went outside and I was runnin' around
in, like, ten below zero weather.
Like, to-- to be, you know, focused.
And I was with a buddy of mine,
and I didn't wanna bomb in front of my friend,
so I didn't go on that night.
I was so nervous, and I was literally--
Because I'm like,
"I'm about to go on stage and fucking try comedy!"
Like, you know how you shit yourself
and it's sort of metaphoric? No.
I was physically shitting myself.
Like, "Yo, I can't stop shitting."
I was so-- I was so-- I was so scared.
And I came back the next night,
and then I went on, you know, by myself,
and I did great.
And it was like a drug. It was like heroin.
This was, uh,
something better than sex, money.
Just that wall of laughter
from something I created.
I gotta do this again.
I don't know if I did well, don't know if I bombed.
It just felt good to just say whatever I thought was funny
in front of people I didn't know.
The thing I most remember was
how weird it felt, uh,
to have the lights facing you.
-My dad is, uh, Mr. T. -[man] Yeah?
Yeah. See, most people think I'm lying when I say that,
but I'm like, "Why would I pick him?"
Like, ugh!
All the people to lie about, like,
I'm mad that my mom picked him, you know?
And, like, I was born before The A-Teamcame out,
so she did it for love, not even money.
-Like... -[audience laughter]
I had mistakenly texted my father... [clears throat]
...and I knew how to make that into a joke,
and that was the only joke I had,
so I thought I could draw that joke out
for three minutes, and I did okay.
They made me go first, because I came late.
[Paul Gilmartin] I remember coming home from doing it,
and, um, my parents were watching The Tonight Show,
and I just remember just feeling really excited,
really excited, because it-- it hadn't gone terribly,
and that gave me-- that gave me hope.
The only reason I didn't start comedy as early as I wanted to,
because you wanna please your family, your parents.
'Cause, you know, if nobody in your family ever decided
to be a comedian, that's, like, the dumbest thing.
If you're a Black guy in Chicago living on the South Side,
you might as well say you were gonna be an alien.
"Meaning what? Doing what?" Stand-up!
"No, you goin' to college." So I went to Harold Washington,
even though I didn't really wanna go,
I just went just to please them for a year, and...
and but then comedy just kept calling me.
I walked by the Lion's Den,
'cause that's where the Irving Park Brown Line was,
and it said "Monday Comedy," and I'd walk by it every day
on my way to Bennigan's on 150 South Michigan,
-which is now CBS. -[TJ] Where he worked.
And, uh, and eventually I got up the gall to go in.
[Lil Rel] This little hole in the wall bar,
that at the time it looked like the biggest place in the world,
goin' up, and then,
I remember recently, maybe a couple of years ago,
goin' back to the spot, and it was tiny.
Like, I-- I thought this was like a theater to me one time!
I tried to come there when I was 19 or 20,
and the guy wouldn't let me in.
And, uh,
one time I had a buddy
that sorta-- sorta looked like me.
We had similar features. Dark-skinned dudes, little eyes.
And I tried to use his ID to get in.
It would have worked on most people at the door.
But this dude, he just looked at the ID,
and he was like, "You're not 6'1"."
[laughs] Like, who fuckin' looks at the height?
♪
The first mic that I did
was Ink Up, Stand Up,
which was a tattoo parlor/bar.
[Megan] I love open mics,
and that probably makes me mentally ill,
but I really love them, I love being at them.
I mean, I think it's sort of
a good training ground to prove yourself.
And you'll hear people be like, "Well,
I don't wanna go and, like, sit for five hours,"
and then it's like, "Well, if you don't wanna do that,
then you don't wanna do stand-up." Like, this is
what the process is, and if you don't wanna be a part of it,
then, like, it's not gonna get easier.
Like, this is a tough thing,
and I like that it weeds people out.
♪ Do I smoke? Do I drink? How 'bout kids? Whatcha think? ♪
♪ Are you gay? Are you straight? ♪
♪ It's like a bad first date
♪ Favorite band, like The Who, favorite nuts, like cashew ♪
♪ Like to meet Genghis Khan, and my hero's my mom ♪
♪ So this is my first date with the world ♪
-I don't use dildos... -[audience laughs]
...'cause I'm an artist, so.
I use found objects.
[audience laughter]
So Lincoln Lodge had an open mic,
but on that list, you had Pete Holmes,
TJ Miller, Kumail Nanjiani.
Hannibal Buress!
Rel Howery.
I was up in the West Side of Chicago.
I grew up, you know, pretty much in the hood,
to be honest with you, you know, so,
I feel good now because I'm meetin' different people,
people who know how to speak to me right, you know.
That's one thing I love about real women, right?
Not no ghetto women. Real women.
Like, when you try to holla at a woman
and she don't wanna talk to you,
she turns you down nicely. A real woman.
"Baby, baby, how you doin'?"
"I'm sorry, I'm goin' out with my girls.
We're having martinis, we're fine, thank you. Bye!"
[audience laughs]
♪
The mic that I started at, it was called Seven Ten.
It was a bowling alley and bar at the same time.
I never bowled there.
I just sat in the back nervously for weeks
'til I actually built up the courage to tell my jokes.
I remember my first set.
I read, like, it verbatim, and it was awful.
So you're performing for these people
that don't necessarily wanna see you,
might be drunk, and also didn't probably even know
there was gonna be a comedy show.
Theoretically, the idea's not that bad.
Like, you get drunk with your friends, go bowling.
That's a great idea! But it just never seemed to work.
Everybody in Chicago's, like, pretty drunk.
Even my, like, normal people friends there who are,
like, doctors are still huge alcoholics.
[audience laughter]
Scotch. It does a body good.
[audience laughter]
♪
So when I went back into comedy, I started really developin'
my act at this place called the Comedy Cottage in Rosemont.
The Comedy Cottage was a hot room.
It was a room that I did very well in.
The crowds were great, and they were waitin'
all around the-- the building.
It was like being a rock star.
I thought I'd start off my show tonight
with a singalong!
-What do you say? Yeah, Tim? -[audience cheering]
Sounds like fun.
Here's a song everybody knows.
Let's all join in, okay?
-[audience member] Okay! -Okay.
I like this enthusiasm. Here we go.
[humming]
Yeah, good voice. [humming]
♪ A million bottles of beer on the wall ♪
♪ A million bottles of beer
I went up and I did my little 15 minutes of--
of funny songs and stuff like that.
And then Arsenio came out, he said "All right!
Are you ready for your first comedians?"
It's just like, "Aww.
They-- they still don't get that I'm a comedian."
♪ Take one down, pass it around ♪
♪ 999,999 bottles
♪ Of beer on the wall
I think we did three shows on Saturdays,
and the club was packed to the point
that people were violating all kinds of fire rules.
They were sitting in the aisles.
Now, I wanna explain something to you here.
We have a group of comedians here
who work for almost nothing.
And the comedians were getting-- The top act was getting $10.
The reason he paid us such a little, small amount of money,
his exact quote was, "The less money I pay you, the-- the less
pressure's on you, and then the better you're gonna do!
So if I don't pay you a lot of money, you're not gonna have
a lot of pressure, and you're gonna do a great show!"
Not only was he barely paying you anything,
he wouldn't even pay you after the show.
You had to go out the following Tuesday to get your money.
Not cash. You have to dri-- have to drive to his house,
and he would hand you the check and go,
"Listen, uh, don't cash that 'til tomorrow."
You're not even really paying me enough to have
car fare to get there.
I think that was his plan, you know?
Just keep you broke enough that you can't actually
can't even get out there to get the money.
Fact, Jay probably owes me about 40 or 50 bucks.
Part of being a comedian is not making a living.
Part of being a comedian is bombing on a regular basis.
And if you're not comfortable with those two things,
don't become a comedian.
The worst thing in the world would be a comedian
to open up for someone
who just died that the audience doesn't know it yet.
[chuckles] Well, let's say I open up for Ricky Nelson,
you know, that night.
Or Elvis. He's still in the bathroom, stretched.
Many a time, I was broke at home,
had no money for food,
and had just sucked it at a club.
So it wasn't even, like, "Well, at least I had a good set."
Stunk. No money. Yeah.
Can you have tribulations by themselves?
Or do they always have to be with trials?
[audience laughter]
Nobody been like, "Man, I just been having tribulations."
-[audience laughter] -"What about your trials?
I think you're supposed to have trials with your trib--"
"Nah, man, just tribulations, man.
Life is rough, I've been tribulatin' a lot."
[audience laughter]
♪
My first paid gig, I got $20.
It was really exciting. [chuckles]
I meant to frame the $20,
but I was really broke, so I had to buy something.
So I framed one dollar from that $20. [chuckles]
Yeah, I worked at a gas station,
so I'd just read all the newspapers,
and, like, in the Daily Herald, there was
"Open Casting Call for Comedians for HBO Aspen Comedy Festival."
I was like, "Well, this is the time to try it."
And I went to, uh, Zanies for a three-minute spot
at, I think, ten in the morning on a weekday.
I was arrested for possession.
-Not drugs, but demonic. -[audience laughter]
Yeah, apparently you can't run around a park naked
drenched in goat's blood
like you used to be able to in this town.
[audience laughter]
I'd drove in from the suburbs, and I didn't think
that they were that attentive to the parking laws,
so I wound up racking up...
I think I got five parking tickets that day.
'Cause Chicago, you just keep puttin' em
on the car if you want to.
Zanies was started by three partners in 1978,
one of whom was a cousin of Rick Uchwat,
and Rick owns this building, or he did prior to his passing.
So they had a great idea,
but they didn't know how to execute it.
So the club was going out of business.
So Rick took over in 1980, and then that was really
the beginning of the history of Zanies.
[Larry Reeb] When we first started,
we were makin' maybe ten bucks a night
doin' a card each in the womb.
And then he made me house emcee here in '82,
when he started payin' me, like, maybe,
I don't know, 250 a week.
So that was like, I-- I was like a millionaire.
I hit the jackpot.
Rick was like a second father to me.
We'd go to dinner whenever I came to town
throughout his life.
He gave me money to make my first movie.
[laughing] I'm on stage,
and all of a sudden, a gun goes off!
Rick Uchwat shot a rat while I was on stage!
[laughing] I just thought, "Was that line that offensive?"
Working Zanies was, like, a huge goal of mine,
so they would do that-- a Monday showcase where you would go
and then you would hear this sort of, like,
now world-famous Bert Haas spiel.
[Lil Rel] We couldn't talk about sex, we couldn't curse,
we couldn't do this, we couldn't do that.
And it was tough watching the white comedians go on stage
and just say whatever-- whatever the fuck they want.
You know, we couldn't do that.
The last of my showcase there, I heard those rules,
went on stage, but didn't follow none of those fuckin' rules,
said what I wanted to say, ripped it, put my coat on,
and got the fuck up out of there.
And never looked back.
♪
As a Black comedian going into rooms that, uh,
have a style of performance and material
that people have grown accustomed to,
let's call it that.
Uh, you know, maybe you can learn how to do that, you know?
And-- and maybe you look at comedians,
and that's just, you know,
television and the guys that you're emulating,
you know, are-- are great with that style, and-- and you go,
"Okay, I kind of get it. This is how it works."
I get to wear anything I want to,
and men just gotta deal with it. Well, men can't do that.
We don't have that right, wear anything we want to,
people just gotta deal with it, you know?
Like, sir right here. You, white guy.
You can't come walkin' in a Black neighborhood
with a Klan outfit on, people just gonna deal with it.
[audience laughter]
"Bob, look over there, a Klansman!"
"You don't see those around here much anymore."
[audience laughter]
"Hey, pal, I think you're lookin' for Pekin!"
[laughter]
So I can do somethin', did you ever notice, uh,
the black box on the plane jokes?
And then maybe you could pepper in some of your own
personal experience jokes, dependin' on the room.
And you know, maybe Bert Haas
is sittin' at the back of the room, goin',
"Yeah, that stuff about beatin' your kid in the aisle
at the grocery store 'cause they're too loud,
that's not really kinda like the thing that we do here."
And it's like, "Okay, it's nothin',
where the fuck are you gonna do it?"
You know? So as a-- as a Black comedian, you know,
there were just fewer opportunities
to find an audience that embraced a style of comedy
that was certainly viable, uh,
like, where you do it.
Uh, you know, enter Bernie Mac.
They say, "Hey, you need to go see Bernie Mac!"
Bernie Mac? Who is this Bernie Mac?
So I go, and I see this dude with--
very dark-skinned dude with round glasses and a towel,
going "I'm tired of this motherfuckin' shit!
Y'all never gonna move, huh?
I'm sick of this shit! I'm tired! I'm weary!
Motherfuckin' shit, it was his, hmm!
Your mother, summa my bitch!"
I'm like, yo!
Fuckin' yo! This dude-- Bernie was,
and I'm not even fuckin' lyin',
he was crushing.
You understand? Murder.
You know when you do Black rooms,
and you make Black people laugh, you get this...
[imitates screaming laughter]
That shit? It was like church shit.
♪
Wow!
Bernie Mac, to me, was the guy
that really pushed the idea of,
you know, the whole South Side room concept.
Because when I met Bernie, he was trying to get time
at the Comedy Cottage out in Rosemont, Illinois,
out by the airport.
And Bernie's style was not...
You know, he wasn't brick wall, suit and tie guy.
That's not what he did.
At the time, a lot of, you know, "mainstream..."
Which is really code for "white."
...comedians, they called him a hack.
Because Bernie was a performer.
Uh, but he did not have a problem
with doin' a joke book joke.
[Shay Shay] See, it's a lot of comics,
they're the great writers.
There's a lot of comics, they're the great deliverers.
But Bernie was just funny bein' him.
I could watch Bernie just eatin' an egg sandwich
and I probably would laugh.
I-- I don't know what the distinction is
between a comic as a guy who says things funnier
than a comedian who says funny things.
I still don't.
All I know is that he was a guy that said things funny
and said funny things.
[Shay Shay] Then that's when you really got goin',
when it's just, it ain't even about your material,
it's just you.
And that's what Bernie was. He was just a funny guy.
But that did not get a lot of respect
from brick wall, we're-trying- to-get-on-Johnny-Carson club.
It's ridiculous that-- that he wasn't a part of that.
That it was so segregated, but it was Chicago.
As far as the divide between North and South Side--
Don't be fluffy and say North Side versus South Side.
Say Black or white audiences. [laughs]
I don't wanna get into, like, racial stereotypes,
you know what I mean? But...
like, you could pull out your ukulele on the North Side,
or do avant-garde poetry, you know?
But I don't think you'd-- you'd wanna do that on the South Side.
There's no workin' out shit
with a-- with a Black crowd.
You gotta-- Your new material has to be killer.
You gotta bring a certain confidence to the stage.
If you're scared, people, like, they kinda feed on that.
When white people don't like you, it's scary.
They ain't tryin' to hear no Woody Allen-type shit.
You know, if you, like, a meek motherfucker about to talk about
how horrible your life is because you're short,
Black people are pretty much, "Fuck you,
all of our lives suck, motherfucker.
Make me laugh at something."
If they're not entertained on the South Side,
they will let you know.
By answering their phone in the middle of your set,
or just tellin' you, "We don't like that!"
You know, and then you gotta be able to handle that shit.
When I come to the comedy show, it be like that.
You might be at funerals... [laughing]
[audience laugher]
I would hear stories, man, and it'd be enough for me.
Like, "Oh, no, I don't think I can-- No, no."
You know, "Yeah, man, this cat was on stage,
and brother just jumped up and then clocked him.
"Oh, no, no. I don't-- I don't know."
I'm not a fighter.
I'm not a lover either, but you know,
I'm definitely not a fighter.
And when they do like you, it can be overwhelming,
'cause they can start repeating what you're saying
and they like you a lot,
and you're like, "Oh, no, what do I do?"
The North Side's a lot more forgiving.
White audiences give you at least a courtesy laugh.
Like, "Oh, she's trying."
It's much easier to really go in on white people.
You can just say, like, "Y'all are the worst!
You're the white devils!"
And they're like, "Oh, my God, we so are.
We should get a selfie with her later."
Although I've been in some rooms where,
hey, they'll start talkin' too, you know.
Can't stop drunk white people from doin'
what they wanna do either, so.
You guys, whoever's talking,
go ahead and do it louder, if you could.
-[audience laughter] -I-- if you could be
as distracting as possible,
that's the best way to handle a live performance.
"What do you wanna do?"
"Let's go see a live comedy and talk loudly!"
"Well, that's what I'd like to do!"
[audience laughter]
"Won't that be distracting?"
"Yes, it will, but fuck those guys!"
[audience laughter]
"We're assholes, let's prove it in public! Come on!"
You have Black comedians who are really nervous
to do well in a white room,
and then you have white people
who are terrified to go to Black rooms.
And then you have, uh, brown people
who are living in liminal spaces.
I always thought that a Black comic who was funny
could probably easily work an all-white room.
They could figure out how to tailor their jokes.
Um, it's not necessarily the truth vice-versa.
And that's just how racism is.
A white comic couldn't necessarily go to
an all-Black room and-- and destroy the room.
Just in terms of-- of race,
it wasn't so much about...
can you-- Are you welcome in this room,
or are you welcome in that room?
The-- the problem a lot of times was basically,
does-- does your style fit?
So I-- I used to do a bit about
Leave it to Beaver selling crack.
Now, here, I'ma give you an example of what I'm sayin'.
Now, the bit was funny 'cause I'd do all the impressions
of the Beaver and Wally and all that.
I'm dead on with that.
But Black people don't watch Leave it to Beaver.
So they get the crack part, but they-- they don't understand
the characters, so the magic is lost.
Eventually, you're gonna learn how to work it,
which it dawned on me that if I'm funny,
then eventually if I do these, you know,
predominantly Black rooms, I'm event--
you know, it's goin'-- I'm gonna figure out--
figure it out, you know?
I just-- I just didn't wanna figure it out
at my teeth's expense.
♪
I thought, "Memorial Day, I'm gonna go
and do the open mic at the Lions' Den."
[Pete] Yup.
[TJ] And so I was working on the--
I had written so much material. Some of it's like,
"What if advertisements could cuss?"
Right? What if they could curse, huh?
"Snickers. Now that's fuckin' satisfying!"
Ohh! The three-point line, brick.
So I had gotten all this material together.
Memorial Day came, and so I called and said,
"Hey, you know, I-- I would love to know,
like, when is the sign-up?"
And the guy there said,
"Oh, we're not having the open mic tonight."
-[Pete] No? -[TJ] So I thought,
"What the fuck am I supposed to do?"
You know, I-- I told myself this was the day
I was gonna do my first set.
So I quickly looked up all the other open mics
in the Chicago Reader, and I found one.
It was called the Cotton Club.
All you do is get on the Red Line
and go all the way south.
So I get off the Red Line, and I start walking.
And I'm like, "Wow, this is--
a lot of dilapidated buildings here."
And then I find myself coming upon the Cotton Club,
which had a red carpet that went out front.
It looked amazing. I walk in, and there's no one there.
It's Memorial Day.
So I was like, this will be a funny story.
My first open mic, I bomb in front of the bartender
and three other people, you know?
'Cause I was the only white person in the room.
All right, going to the bathroom,
where I start running my set over and over,
as we are want to do in the beginning.
Finally go, "Okay, I'm ready."
And I walk outside, and the place was fucking packed.
It was full to the-- There must have been 400 people there.
-Shut up. -I am still the only
-white person in the room. -Oh, shit.
Now, the Cotton Club was a room full of gangsters
and dope dealers, I'ma be honest with you.
You had pimps, you had drug dealers.
It was like New Jack City.
It comes my time to get up on stage.
And, uh, Big Sugar,
-was who was the-- -Suge?
-Not Big Suge. -Suge Knight's niece.
Yes, Suge Knight's niece, Big Sugare.
-It's Big Suga. -Uh-huh.
And, uh, so he was so nice, 'cause I went up to him,
and I said, "Look, I've never done stand-up before,
and do you think I should not go up?"
Basically implying, like, "Hey, I'm a young white guy
who's never done stand-up. Please. Is this a good idea?"
And he's like, "Yeah. Trust me, I'll-- I'll make sure you,
you know, you feel welcome."
He gets on stage, and he goes,
"I wanna hear a big, big round of applause.
Come on, give him some love.
This is his first time on stage ever.
Please, ladies and gentlemen, TJ Miller.
Come on! Come on! Come on!" Really got 'em going.
It was amazing, and I got on stage,
and it felt like this crazy thing,
the lights, everything.
And I grabbed the mic...
You had to really, really be able to make them laugh
to get any kind of traction at that room.
"Hey, uh, thank you guys all for comin' out to see me tonight.
I, uh--" Huge, explosive laughter.
Because no one had come to see me tonight.
But you didn't mean it as a joke.
-Not at all. -Ah.
But a huge laugh. In my mind, I'm like,
"I'm a natural stand-up. I mean, this is it.
It's that easy! Let's do it!"
And so, my entire upbringings,
like, the beginnings of my stand-up career,
were all on the South Side.
♪
[Erica Nicole Clark] I grew up in Lake Forest.
I grew up making white people laugh with the shit
that my nigger parents were saying to me.
And I'm not saying Black. I'm saying they straight niggas
from fuckin' 63rd and County Met.
Like, in my head, I always thought that, like,
you can make white people laugh
by just being yourself, for being Black.
I think Black people... I-- I can't explain it.
It's just, like, my friends thought I was funny
'cause I would repeat the stuff that my mom said to them.
You know? And, um...
but it's like, can I repeat the stuff my mom said
to my Black friends and still get that same reaction
and still think they funny?
Um, not all the time, not 100%.
I think there's different struggles in,
uh, on both sides, but funny is funny, and I--
I've seen people who were funny
go to both sides and do their job.
There are people who like to say, "Funny is funny."
That's bullshit. [chuckles]
Funny is not funny.
Funny is funny depending who's listening.
Right? You can't say "Music is music." Right?
If I'm a fuckin' classical music lover and I walk into
a rock and roll club, I'd go, "What is this bullshit?"
It's not what I was expecting to hear. It's not what I like.
And I don't see why comedians
get pressured into this space of, uh,
we are supposed to be able to appeal to everyone.
We do not.
That's just not the fuckin' truth.
One night-- and this is before anybody was anybody,
so, you know, I mean, this is all in retrospect now, but--
Bernie Mac came out to the Comedy Cottage.
And to his credit,
'cause he's tryin' to do and play other places.
And...
he didn't do well.
I mean, they didn't really laugh, you know?
But again, it's just people's diff--
Just different sensibilities,
and that's not an indictment on your talent.
It's just different sensibilities.
You know, there were a few local guys who could play both rooms
and not feel like you were being disingenuous
when you were in one or the other.
You have no idea why they call you Spike.
[audience member] No idea.
It has never entered your mind to ask them
-why they call you that? -[audience laughs]
Like, if someone called me Spike, I go,
"Why'd you call me that?"
I just wouldn't let it go. So if I called you a motherfucker,
-you'd say, "Well, yes." -[audience laughs]
The first person I saw was Orlando Reyes.
I was 16 years old,
and his act was pretty, you know, risqué.
Came from the all-girls Catholic boarding school
and met Orlando, and it was a whole new experience for me.
I hadn't heard a lot of the words before,
and he was always very helpful
in describing what he had meant to say.
"You ever look at, uh, your girl while she's suckin' your dick?
Her eyes be lookin' at you
like a crocodile lookin' over a swamp."
"Why don't Polish people use paper plates?
'Cause it fucks up the dishwasher."
He used to love to introduce me as "Jeff Jizz."
"Jeff Jizz, everybody! Jeff Jizz."
He had this, uh, interesting way of dressing.
Orlando looked like a pimp.
Velvet jackets and have the cigarette on stage,
and he'd be like, "Has anybody got a cigarette?
I left mine in the machine."
In terms of the history of Chicago comedy,
the era that we're talking about,
you're not legit unless you did the Stay Out with Orlando.
That made-- that makes you, like, the real deal,
to do the Stay Out All Night Disco with Orlando.
Oh, God, yes!
He was dirty at Zanies.
You put him at four o'clock in the morning
at a disco near the airport?
Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
"By applause, who likes to butt fuck?"
[laughing]
Yes.
[laughing]
[exhales]
He actually said that!
You were out at Sunday night drinking at 4:00 a.m.,
you're an alcoholic.
So it's bunch of alcoholics at a place that looks like--
looks like you walked off the set of Saturday Night Fever.
It was kind of a strip joint, uh,
and really, really a bucket of blood.
I mean, the-- the men's rooms,
um, were plastered-- Every available surface
was a lacquered female body part.
Um, you know, pictures, cut-outs.
Some guy had cut out Playboy magazines
and cut out Penthouse
and just put vaginas and breasts everywhere,
and, uh, and you peed into a urinal that was,
you know, also lacquered with female body parts.
I-- I-- I don't know what was going on.
But you could get killed there pretty easily.
That was a gig that I did for the money.
Fifty bucks.
That was a big-- That's big money back then.
Orlando, I believe, was shot on stage.
Now, I'm not sure they were shooting at him.
People in the audience had some sort of a disagreement.
I guess it would be an armed disagreement,
and, um, he took a bullet somehow.
He was not killed, he was-- I--
I don't think he was injured badly.
But Orlando was an amazing guy, and he would do jokes.
He would do...
terribly racist jokes that I can't say.
He was as funny off stage as he was on stage.
One time he came over to my house
and played Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
You know, they never saw a Black Santa Claus,
Orlando was Black.
And, uh, you know, they-- they were just amazed.
They were amazed.
Orlando booked me at a women's prison,
and Orlando goes up, and he does this--
Orlando, and they love him 'cause he's filthy,
and he's great, and he's got this presence,
and he introduces me, this 16-year-old little kid
who goes up in front of these really hard women,
and I-- The first few jokes, they were not going for me.
And then about the third joke or so,
they finally gave it up, and they-- And I had a good show,
and I remember standing there with my dad
as they were filing out to go back to their cells,
and my dad was laughing 'cause they were all like,
"Why don't you come back to my cell with me,
I'll show you a good time!"
Lust knows no color, okay?
-[audience laughter] -She can be purple.
When a man sees a woman, we thinkin' one thought.
-We're like, "Damn!" -[audience laughs]
-I'll hit that. -[audience laughs]
"Never had purple before."
Black, white, blue, I don't care who.
Had a comedy club, there was nothing better
than All Jokes Aside when it was at its height.
[Mary] It was gonna be different from the white clubs,
only because, one, they're Black comics
and the content would be different,
and we're selling to a predominantly Black audience.
All Jokes Aside was a big deal.
Was the premier Black comedy club in the United States.
All the big Black comedians came there.
Like Jamie Foxx, Mark Curry, DL Hughley.
Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock.
Cedric the Entertainer, and, you know, and Steve Harvey,
and of course Bernie was a mainstay there.
I just thought that that was our Black comedy club.
I didn't know we weren't the only Black comedy club.
It was run so professionally, and-- and it was, uh--
it was during the boom, uh, for Black comedy.
Uh, Raymond Lambert and Mary Lindsey
came from the business world, and they ran that club
more so like a business than a club.
The whole staff wore uniforms,
and they had to treat us with a certain level of respect.
That's why all of us, we had to treat the club
with a lot more respect. We had to dress a certain way.
And I-- I did the same thing with the audience.
You can't match a hoodie with a jacket.
This is an old-school thing my parents used to do.
You-- you usually don't get in fights when you're dressed up.
Like, you-- you-- There's a certain behavior
that you have when you look nice.
You're like, "I really don't wanna get into an argument
when I'm dressed up like that."
There's a tight ship that was ran.
We were there for eight years and never had one incident,
which is unheard of for a club or a bar
with a liquor license, never to have any incidents,
but we were very diligent about that.
I didn't realize at the time, I probably was--
I was doin' myself a disservice by not playin' more Black rooms,
because that was a whole segment of-- of audience
that I was missing.
I want everybody to laugh at this,
because I always thought that more people that laughed,
the more people than I can perform in front of, and...
if they get my audience bigger,
the more money I could probably make.
As some people say, the South Side makes you funny,
the North Side makes you money.
And-- and don't get me wrong, I wasn't even thinkin'
about money in the end. I'm just thinkin' about audience
at the time. I just wanted my audience to be diverse.
[Godfrey] I started doin' comedy at the Fallout, and then
from there, I said, okay, I wanna go to the South Side
and perform. I wanna do Black rooms too, you know.
I wanted to go both ways.
My ideal crowd was a mixed crowd.
Black folks and white folks,
and older folks and younger folks.
You know, I liked that, because then people's--
people's, uh, sensibilities sort of interact with each other.
So if somebody's not gettin' a joke,
then somebody else might get the joke,
and-- and it, and-- and it just creates laughter,
almost everybody.
The only way you gon' learn as a comedian
to make everybody in the country laugh,
you have to travel the road.
♪
Because what's funny in Chicago
might not be funny in New York,
might not be funny in Miami,
might not be funny in California.
I had never really done well
at the-- the Melrose improv.
And, finally, you know, it was like
my fourth or fifth set. I had a really good set,
and Budd Friedman was in the audience.
And I remember somebody else was emceeing,
but Budd came up to take me off stage,
and he said to the audience, "Very funny man,
Mr. Paul Gilmartin. Look for him.
He will be on Evening at the Improv."
And I was like, "Yeah, I'm-- I'm fuckin' in now,
I'm in with the Improv!
And, uh, I'm gonna start hangin' around here now!
'Cause I won't feel like an outsider."
And so the next night, I come in to the Improv,
and I'm standing in the hallways.
People are kind of filing in and filing out.
And he comes up to me and he goes,
"Sir? Do you have a ticket?"
That is show business.
All these comedy clubs started tryin' to save money.
They were spending so much money on hotel rooms for comedians,
what they start doing is buying condos.
So you would go check in there and find leftover stuff from
the whole month of comedians leaving condoms
and coke all on the countertop.
I think my worst comedy condo experience is Painesville, Ohio.
And I'm guessing I'm not the first person to tell you that.
Uh, you stayed at somebody's house behind the comedy club,
and the shower-- You were not allowed to use the shower!
Do not use the shower! You can use the bathtub.
And the bathtub was, like,
in the middle of the kitchen or something,
so you had to go-- you had to walk downstairs awkwardly,
and then get in this old-fashioned tub
with feet on it
and splash around to get clean to go do comedy,
and, uh, you know, I don't-- you know, I'm not four.
Why am I takin' a bath?
The door was off the hinge.
Blood was on the sofa.
That's when I said,
"I can't stay here. I can't stay here."
Tony, you wrote the funniest thing on that wall!
"Great club, great staff, and a place to sleep."
The one that was horrible,
but I didn't consider it horrible at the time,
was Comedy Café, Milwaukee,
because I was living with my parents at the time
when I first started working there, so it was just--
in my mind, I'm like, "This is mine. I got my place.
I'm doin' comedy, I'm makin' $200 this weekend,
and I got this place.
One that I can fuck in."
And I-- and I never fucked there.
But it could have happened!
Jeff Garlin and I were doing a one-nighter
in Lafayette, Indiana,
and it was in a restaurant,
and it was just one of those gigs when you walked in,
you're-- you could just feel your stomach sink.
You just-- Everything was set up wrong.
It-- The lighting was terrible,
the sound system was bad, people were eating.
All the-- all the distractions, that, you know,
that-- that can really hurt a comedy-- comedy show.
And, um, and so, they gave you dinner
before the show, and-- and we're sitting there eating,
and we can see there's only, like, 12 people,
and they're drunk, and they don't look very bright.
And so, um,
I can't remember who said it,
but I think I dared Jeff.
He was-- he was, uh, eating a piece of cake,
and I dared him to go up, uh, with cake on his face.
And we both kind of laughed about it.
And so I went up and I struggled, you know,
ate it for-- I was probably supposed to do a half hour,
probably did about 15 minutes,
and came off stage, and I think--
I think Jeff thought, "Oh,
you know, Paul just doesn't know how to handle them, you know."
So he goes up there, and he's-- he's trying everything.
And you can see, it's-- He's getting frustrated,
and it's just not working.
I had been eating it. I died.
And at a certain point,
he just-- he knew it wasn't gonna get any better.
And I remember the look in his face, and he just stopped.
I took the cake, and I wiped it all over my face,
and my face has cake all over it,
and I said to the audience, like, oh, "Hi, I'm Cakey!"
He finished his act.
And so when you would go and bomb on the road
and come back and be like, "It was so hard,"
people would be like, "Don't worry about that, I mean,
-show at the Lion's Den." -At least you knew you could
come to the Lion's Den and tell them
that you ate your dick in South Bend, Indiana.
I'm well aware that it's like a white boys' club,
and I'm probably a member of it
because I have this famous father.
For some reason, it carries weight with certain--
I don't know, they think he's gonna come to the show?
Or I'ma pass out gold chains
while I'm on the stage or some shit?
I don't know what the fuck they think,
but they always give me, like, more leeway,
I think, because of that than, um, other women.
That has to be it.
'Cause I don't think I'm any better than anybody else, but...
Diane Alaimo brought me along to Wiley's in Dayton, Ohio.
We road-tripped, and I learned a lot from her.
She's one of my favorites, and I miss her a lot.
We lost her in, uh, 2001.
Diane went out of her way to make sure
I got work at clubs that might not otherwise hire women.
She brought me along as a feature act,
and at the time-- and even now, a lot of clubs
won't book two women on the same show,
and that wasn't a rule that she thought needed to be enforced.
I came up with mostly men, so sometimes people,
if they're giving me a compliment,
they'll say, "You do stand-up like a man."
And to me, sometimes I take offense to that
'cause it's like, I do stand-up like me and I'm a woman,
so I'm not doing it like a man.
You're just saying it because you think it's funny,
then it is like a man.
There's a lot of funny women.
I could, just off the top of my head,
Sally Edwards, you got Emily Galati.
You got Carla Filisha, you've got Sonya White.
I mean, I could just go on and on and on.
There's a million funny women.
♪
When I die, I wanna become a cadaver,
so college boys will touch me again.
-[audience laughs, cheers] -Consensually this time.
Once the woman gets on stage, they're as successful as men.
I think what makes it so difficult for women
is what goes on off-stage.
Things that men take for granted.
Driving to a strange nightclub,
parking in a dark parking lot.
These can be life-threatening situations.
Well, that's a lot of collateral damage
you have to overcome in order to pursue the career.
I've had complete, like, inappropriate shit said to me,
and, like-- Or, you know, texted to me or things like that.
These guys are all pathetic and thirsty,
and will really try to sneak in
in ways like, "Hey, why don't I give you a ride home?"
Or, "Hey, um, these other guys are creepy,
but I'm one of the good ones." Huge red flag.
The guys were very hard on girls.
Women are nice, and we make eye contact,
and guys get confused by this. They're like, "Oh, my God,
she's actually looking at me while I speak?
And she laughed at one of my jokes!
She wants to fuck me."
No. No. 100% no.
Okay, 99.9999999% of the time, no.
I slept around. You don't wanna do that.
I think I got a reputation.
I mean, honestly, one of the best things
that you can do is just, like, don't fuck each other.
You know? Do not fuck where you work.
Or poop.
I think it's probably changed, and, like, who-- who cares
that somebody's a slut now or having a meltdown or whatever.
But, you know, it was like--
I had a reputation, you know?
And it's like, it's not fair.
There's a double standard, you know?
A guy's having a meltdown, they care about him.
A guy's a slut, they care about him.
A woman's having a meltdown, she's a slut, she's banished.
I went around the house singing to my husband.
♪ All of me
♪ Why not take all of me?
He asked if he could make two trips.
[audience laughs]
I did the Treehouse with Steve Seagren,
and I kept on telling him to picture Dee Staley
running around naked around the car.
And he kept on laughing, and she would-- kept on saying,
"What's so funny?" And I-- You know. But remember,
I'm in my twenties, so, I would do rude, stupid shit.
There was an element of high school to it, I think.
We were young. We were, like, 20, you know, 24, whatever.
[Erica Nicole Clark] All right. So this is the un-PC thing.
There are some very perverted-ass fuckin' men
in the business, and there's not a lot of women,
so there's perverted men and they're taking advantage of it.
And I hate that women always have to go for the victim card.
Like, if Louis CK pulled his dick out in front of me...
I would be on tour with Louis CK right now. [laughs]
I don't know. Like, I feel like a lot of women
don't see the advantage to a powerful man
doing something fucked up in front of you.
And I'm not saying that-- that crosses the border,
that every time, oh, a woman gets raped, she should--
You know, whatever. I-- I'm not that crazy.
I'm just saying in that particular instance,
I'm gonna be opening at Carnegie Hall for Louis CK.
It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all.
There were some guys that were so loving to me.
They were like, "Kara, get a therapist,
make sure it's a-- it's an unattractive woman.
You don't try to sleep with her. Get a good therapist."
You know, and other guys just, like, told me I was crazy.
[Sonal] I mean, I don't know who's gonna see this.
All the comedy clubs are great, everyone's super nice,
I love everyone running all of the clubs.
Great dudes, all of you. All the men, super nice.
You look right into my eyes when you talk to me, I love that.
Probably if I had any discrimination,
it was probably because I was Black before I was a woman.
Um, which is, like, two strikes against you.
[Chris] I think it's harder to-- for women and minorities
in life, so, it's-- it's gonna harder than any,
anything you ever get into.
So I think, uh, using that and-- and powering through
those obstacles is-- is what makes you a better comic.
♪
I have three TV shows, a movie.
I have specials.
And to this day,
Zanies would not book me.
To this day.
There's a certain type of Black person
I think Zanies is looking for.
It's not me. [laughs] 'Cause I've never performed at Zanies.
A lot of places want a Black face
but they don't want a Black voice.
Early on, I was kind of upset by it.
I used to think it was a problem.
Um, then I-- I kind of cracked the thing,
because what happened?
I cracked the circuit, 'cause I just kept comin'.
And then they would hear, economically, you know,
you can draw people out, that's really the key.
And a lot of times when I thought I was ready
to do Zanies, I wouldn't have booked me either,
looking back at myself, that guy.
[Bert Haas] Every club has its own identity.
All Jokes Aside's identity was urban comedy.
Which is really code for "Black."
What happens is, a good club books talent.
It's almost like a-- a riddle.
Well, do you book the talent
because that's the type of audience you get,
or do you get that type of audience
because that's the type of comic you book?
I don't know what the answer to that is,
but part of what makes the club special is its identity,
and the identity is established by who gets booked.
Because otherwise, you're just a venue.
And you can be anything! Anybody can become a venue,
but to have a name as a comedy club
is what makes you special.
And so at the same time that All Jokes Aside
was booking certain types of comedians--
uh, Bernie Mac and, uh, Cedric the Entertainer,
et cetera-- uh, Zanies had a different group of comedians.
I was on a blind date. Friend of mine set me up,
told me this girl had a Coke bottle figure.
She had a Coke bottle figure,
it was one of those two liter bottles.
[audience laughs]
Big black bottom, twist-off head.
We was gonna fuckin' beat Larry Reid at Zanies
because he had sensibility and a style of comedy
and a particular reach,
but you just gotta fuck with that guy in that room.
Zanies was one of the first clubs that let me headline.
This is the first place I really started working as an emcee.
Did two weeks, back-to-back.
It was poorly negotiated, looking back.
[laughs]
Definitely got lowballed on that one.
We used to do comedy right here at this joint
right off of Sheffield.
Uh, back then it was called Heckler's Heaven.
And basically it was an open mic show for comics
to kind of build their chop,
but you could also make a little money.
Like the one I think got, like, like, uh,
$50 if you won the show.
So one night, I went on stage,
and after the show, this guy approaches me.
"I'm with the David Letterman Show,
and I'd love to get you on David Letterman as soon as possible."
So he's like, "Well, can you meet me out back
and can talk about it, I mean, exchange numbers or something?"
I'm like, "Okay, cool."
So he went out back, and then I went and got my buddy.
His name was James Hannah, he was a-- a producer
for the Steve Harvey Show.
Stand-up comedian. Look him up, James Hannah.
He was my man. He passed away.
But anyway, I said "Hey, James, man,
you-- you ain't gonna believe this.
There's this guy who said he's from the David Letterman Show,
but really, I think he's hittin' on me."
James was like, "Well, he might be with David Letterman."
I was like, "Nah, I don't know." I didn't think so.
It could be, but I-- I just thought he had ulterior motive,
and I'll just leave it at that.
So James came with me, we went out the back door,
and when we got out there,
it was like this dude just disappeared in a puff of smoke.
So anyway, I'm watchin' the news,
and I see this guy in a jumpsuit,
an orange prison jumpsuit.
Lo and behold, it was Jeffrey Dahmer!
Fortunately for me, I didn't believe that he was
with David Letterman, and I wasn't attracted to him.
Otherwise I'd-- Would have ended up being a pot of soup.
[Lance Crouther] So I had got booked at the Comedy Cottage,
which is, like, 20 miles away from where I lived.
And so I didn't have a car that day,
so I took this train.
Got off about two stops before O'Hare,
and then from there I had to walk
through this very white neighborhood. [laughs]
And I'm drivin' down River Road,
because the Comedy Cottage was on River Road.
I'm driving under this viaduct, and I see this cat walkin'.
And as I was walkin' under the underpass,
uh, I heard somebody yell out the N-word.
And I turned, and I saw, like,
there was a pickup truck, and rage flushed through my body.
The idiot got stopped at a red light,
and I looked on the ground, and there was like,
I guess a chunk of stone,
you know, like, magically there.
And I grabbed it,
and I started walkin' toward the driver's side of the car.
And I look,
and I say "Hey, that's that--
that's that brother from Mary Wong."
As I approached, and my arm was...
[stammering]
...throw this big chunk of stone
through the windshield, through the window.
I heard, "Lenny!"
Said, "Who? What?"
I turned around, and it was Dwayne,
and he was grinning from ear to ear.
And about at that point, the pickup truck drove off.
And I'm standing there with a big chunk of stone in my hand.
He's like, "Man, what are you doin'?"
I said, "Aw, man, I was just about to
hit a white boy in the head with a brick, man."
[Kara Buller] My dad's a very proud Midwesterner,
and he called me the other day. He was very upset. He said,
you know, "In the paper, they were calling somebody a--
They said he was wearing a very Midwestern suit!"
And he's like, "Kara, what-- what does this mean,
a Midwestern suit?"
I said, "Uh, well, Dad, a-- a Midwestern suit,
I believe, is a suit with a secret pocket
stitched into it in which you place
your unspoken racial prejudices.
That's-- that's-- that's what it is, yeah.
Uh, I've got my own." You know? [laughs]
A lot of my comedy focused on race
and racism, and, you know, and-- and those,
and-- and encounters with, uh, various ethnic groups.
Primarily white folks.
I used to let white folks have it, man,
just right out the gate.
Just, you know, "Let me tell you something.
Your pathological greed and compulsive need for control
has been the single most source of pain and misery
for people of color throughout this world for generations!"
But I try not to say things like that anymore.
[audience laughs]
'Cause I have found once you have said
something like that to a white person,
you almost never get a second date.
-You know what I mean? -[audience laughs]
'Cause I was really influenced by Richard Pryor
and all those things, so I-- I really like stuff about race,
and just, you know, um...
I don't know what the truth is, but, you know,
things that were just more--
I don't know, confrontational.
[Lance Crouther] Somebody I heard earlier mention Chica--
you know, who's your favorite comedian,
and you mention somebody nobody's ever heard of.
And that was me with Dwayne, 'cause I would say, you know,
someone-- "Who was the funniest person you know outside?"
"Oh, Dwayne Kennedy." [laughs]
And people go, "Who the hell is that?"
I don't know who Dwayne Kennedy is.
Yeah, no.
Dwayne Kennedy?
No. Not off the top of my head.
Who is he?
Dwayne Kennedy's, like, the Picasso of stand-up comedy.
But the Modigliani of personal finances.
I remember Dwayne having notebooks,
hundreds of notebooks.
I would look at these notebooks, and I would just
start laughing hysterically out loud.
Like, tears rolling down my eyes.
In fact, I took one of these notebooks to a Bulls game.
An early one with Jordan.
And I remember Jordan dunking,
and I wasn't even paying attention to the game
'cause I was screaming laughing. So I go to Dwayne,
I said "Dwayne, man, you gotta do this!"
"Ah, man, I didn't-- I didn't-- That's not funny."
I go, "You-- you gotta be kiddin, man!"
He's like, "I-- It-- it's just not workin' for me."
So his-- What he considered his worst material
would have been--
made four other people's careers.
But Dwayne's a nut.
I'm thinkin' I gotta get back into stand-up, man.
You know. I don't know when the Rona's gonna die out,
but I'm gonna get-- I'm gonna get boosted, re-boosted Monday.
Maybe I'll crawl back up on the stage Tuesday.
[chuckles] And then Wednesday,
Wednesday morning, regret that decision.
So Dwayne made a video tape--
You know, you shoot-- you work a club
and you get, like, a little video tape of your--
your act, about five minutes long.
Dwayne took that video, he sent it to this guy in LA,
who showed the video to NBC.
They signed Dwayne.
So that year, he was on Seinfeldvideo 227,
and he did the other one where he was Halle Berry's boyfriend.
Nobody knew who Halle Berry was.
He was bigger than Halle Berry.
Oh, boy. Depressing.
Do you know how people are really good at something,
so if you're just a little not good at something,
you work harder, and it actually probably helps you with success?
Like, if you're perfect at something
where it just almost is-- it's like eating breakfast?
So you don't really think of it as a gift or a skill.
You just think of, I'm eating breakfast.
So Dwayne is that good, where he just--
he's eating breakfast.
[Dwayne] I was eating it pretty regularly up until last week.
I'm gettin' back on it.
I'll get some running shoes.
You know, plaid. [laughs]
It's not like the end of Trainspotting.
[laughs]
Get running shoes, join a gym.
Hit a treadmill. Lift some weights.
If he was a little less good-- [laughs]
he probably would have been successful,
'cause he would have had more motivation to achieve something.
Lance and Ali wrote on The Chris Rock Show.
Lance goes on to become Pootie Tang.
And so I end up in a movie.
[laughs]
And it was crazy, it was this weird movie
that everybody thought was gonna be
like a Black Austin Powers,
and I was workin' on On The Record with Bob Costas.
So I said, "Bob, what if you introduce me
and say 'This is Pootie Tang, blah, blah, blah'?"
And he goes, "I'd love to do it!"
The movie comes out.
The New York Timesgives it a really good review.
Everybody else, "It's the worst movie ever."
Who do they single out? Bob Costas.
Bob Costas is in every review.
"How dare you be in this trash!"
I get a call from Bob Costas.
"I try to do favors for friends."
I go "Friends? I never heard Bob say that I'm Bob's friend!
Never heard that one before. Okay!"
But sometimes you get burnt in the ass, okay?
I'm not Bob's friend anymore!
In the same sentence, it happened. [chuckles]
"Gee, I wish I had never done that!"
He actually said that to me.
I go, "Wow, I couldn't feel worse."
[laughs]
But over time, I would get a call from Bob
or run into him, and he would go...
"That movie, I hate it."
And then next time I'd see him, "That movie is all right."
Next time I'd see him,
"Me and my son went to see that movie again. Wasn't bad."
And next I'd see him, "I love the movie!"
And so based on Bob, I would go,
"Oh, that's where the movie is, and the culture."
Because it's become this cult thing,
that it went from horrible, horrible, horrible
to "Oh, that's really a kooky, crazy thing,"
and that performance is Mary Wong in its essence.
Whatever you expect, let's try to flip the expectation. What
can we do to help him?
We could send them to a drug rehabilitation center.
This would all cost the taxpayers 23.50 a day.
Eventually, he'd be through it and he'd leave the center,
but knowing him, he'd probably start drinking again,
-[indistinct] -And before you know it,
he'd end up right back here again,
a drunken asshole, once again costing us 23.50 a day.
-So... -[audience laughs]
There was a club in Oak Lawn, Illinois,
which is right next to Chicago.
So basically, just Chicago club
called, the, uh, the Barrel of Laughs.
And this was a club that, uh,
a cat named Bill Brady used to run.
We had an entranceway that looked like a barrel,
so we came through the barrel.
Our tables were made out of barrels.
So it was natural to call it the Barrel of Laughs.
[Dwayne] And now that was a place
where you might encounter some things.
I was a customer at a place called Senese's Winery,
and it was a, uh, restaurant.
When I got into comedy back in 1976,
I proposed the idea to Tom and Terry Senese
about taking over a Tuesday night,
which they had nothing there on Tuesday nights,
to do a comedy show.
We used to go to Senese's as a family for dinner!
Mother's Day, Father's Day.
And I would see the signs as a kid,
so when I started doing open mics, believe it or not,
it was one of my dreams to work at the Barrel of Laughs.
Um, did I know that it was a closed-minded, racist club?
Probably not.
I remember one time I was on stage,
and I was, you know, whatever I was doing...
and a woman...
kept just yellin' out, "Are you Black?"
And, um...
uh, you know, I don't know why, uh, she needed ver--
to have it verified to her.
I don't know what was goin' on, I don't know if she was, like--
the-- that she was the scout for the group.
Somebody in the audience said
something like "rat-faced Jew..."
[laughs] ...to me from the audience,
and I-- I was, uh, pretty taken aback.
I don't remember what I said, but I was--
The funny thing was, I was having a good set.
I grew up in that neighborhood! And it was just the way
that everybody thought, except for my family, 'cause,
you know, we're smarter, sharper.
I used to call that place the "Barrel of Bigots."
And then Bill found out I was callin' it that,
and he didn't think it was as funny as I thought it was.
Now, comedy is-- is, uh, um, very subjective,
because what one person thinks is funny,
another person doesn't think is funny.
I like Bill, and to his credit, he gave me stage time.
But he would-- he would never really put anybody in check.
You know, he would never say, you know,
"Hey, listen, you, uh, gotta, you know, tone down on the--
on the interrogation 'til the brother's show is over.
You know, once the show is over,
you could ask him is he Black all you want, you know?
I was wonderin' that myself."
Sometimes I'm questioned about whether or not
it is our responsibility as a booker or a club owner,
uh, as a host-- I hold all three hats--
uh, to educate our audience to diversity.
Uh, I think, uh, it is not really our job.
That should be done at home,
or in their church, uh, or their schooling.
My job is to put on a-- a good, clean, funny show.
[Jimmy Pardo] He also had some weird rule that you couldn't
say the F-word. You couldn't-- you couldn't say "fuck."
I don't know why I'm being clean now. You couldn't say "fuck."
I kinda had the rule that if it wasn't good enough for my mom
to hear, it wasn't good enough for anybody's mom to hear.
But yet he could put panties on his head.
He could dance around. He said "leprecoon" once.
That's acceptable.
To be diplomatic, I guess, he grew as a person.
I don't think he's done that "leprecoon" bit in weeks.
-[interviewer laughs] -And I like Bill!
I love Bill, I think he's a good man.
He would turn a stool upside-down and say,
"Seating for four on the North Side, because--
You know, 'cause they're queers up there, Jim! They're queers!
But don't say fuck! For the love of God, don't say fuck!"
When he wasn't there? Aw, man, the fucks would fly.
I hear they're trying to quit swearing.
[audience laughs]
I think it's-- I think it's easier to quit heroin.
I feel like eight hours without swearin',
they all come out at once, and obviously at the worst time.
I'd be talking to my mom on the phone, and it's like,
"Steve, what'd you do for your birthday?"
-"Well, I got fucked up!" -[audience laughs]
"Oh, fuck! Oh! Shit!
Um, goddamn, well, fuck me a bitch!
-[audience laughter] -Happy Motherfucker's Day!"
[audience laughs]
So what I would do to replace the word "fuck"
was I would say "goddamn,"
and I didn't realize that was worse, uh, in his mind,
and I got a phone call after my first-- uh, first night there,
saying, "We got-- we got a lot of phone calls today.
A lot of calls today.
Uh, they're not happy with you saying 'goddamn.'"
It's like, really? What'd you get, no phone calls?
How many-- Zero. I'm gonna guess zero phone calls.
Uh, but, you know, Bill didn't wanna take the, uh,
didn't wanna take it upon himself, so, you know,
a lot of people were calling in complaining about this guy--
They should have been complaining that I wasn't funny.
That would have been a better complaint!
He basically-- They even started having, like,
a smattering of Black people or non-whites in the audience,
so things changed.
And then it closed. Maybe that's why it closed.
That-- It's one too many non-whites.
♪
At one time, Chicago had 17 full-time stand-up comedy clubs.
The jumping the shark moment of comedy clubs was,
I worked at the Funny Firm one week, and there was 13 shows.
There was too much supply for the demand.
So Len Austrevich did something which I think
was impressive and insane. [laughs]
Uh, there was a process called "papering the room."
I kind of took the idea of, um,
"drop your business card and you could win a dinner for two,"
and kind of took it to the next level.
You give away free tickets,
and then you make all this money on the drinks.
Now we're able to at least pay our payroll,
and we're-- can pay the rent.
And it worked great for a while.
Well, now the Improv has nobody in their audience
because everybody's going to the Funny Firm 'cause it's free.
Well, then what's the Improv do?
They start giving away a bunch of free tickets too!
I remember all this radio shows I would do,
and I'd be giving away tickets.
Like, it's probably easier to get 'em for free than to pay.
[laughs]
In this reporter's opinion...
I think that the Funny Firm starting to paper
was the demise of the Chicago comedy scene.
♪
[Mike Siegel] I started comedy, my first open mic in
May of 1990. And at that time, it was the tail end
of the comedy boom, and there was-- I think I counted,
between the Chicago and the suburbs,
about 14 full-time comedy clubs.
Within six months to a year, half of those places closed.
And within about two more years, half of those places closed.
[Jimmy Pardo] Do I wanna point directly
at the Funny Firm for that?
Yes.
Is it because that I didn't-- I didn't work there very often?
Probably.
♪
[Dwayne] This is the old Barrel of Laughs,
and now it has become a Family Dollar.
Oh, boy.
♪
And then like in the '90s, when it hit the skids,
then the money was cut back and they go,
"We don't pay air no more," and, you know,
I had four kids and I was already both feet in...
and I didn't wanna go back to drivin' a truck.
For me, it was really funny because as I, uh,
as I progressed and-- and-- and became more successful
in the business, um,
the-- the-- the money was goin' down.
So I didn't really notice that I was going up
or that the money was goin' down,
'cause for me, it just stayed exactly the same
for 20 years.
Bob Odenkirk and I sat outside Zanies,
sat outside Second City many times,
talking about how the comedy scene
in this city was ignoring us.
At least on the larger level, I mean.
What we were gonna do. Just failing.
You know, feel like we were failures.
I think there are a lot of successful comedians in Chicago.
It's more working class.
There's, uh, hundreds of comedians
that actually make a living.
[Rocky LaPorte] You tough it out, you know?
And you just-- you gotta work more.
As time went on, I became more confident in what I was doing.
I did start to do-- Like, Bernie Mac used to have a room
that we do when he was in town.
Uh, this place Milt Trenier's that he would do
on every Tuesday if he was in town.
And I did his room, and it was fantastic.
But-- See, but here's the thing...
Bernie trained his audiences, you know?
He-- When you came in, he would tell you,
"Look, you know, you-- you take your hats off,
you-- there's no cell phones, there's-- you know,
there's no heckling."
You know, you respect the artist.
So that was cool. So he groomed the audience,
and so anybody who was-- who was inclined to do those things,
they didn't-- they didn't show up at his room.
Bernie was different from, um...
other Black, uh, comics.
Like, his shows started at eight,
and I opened up.
I was on the stage at 8:01.
The audience wasn't there until 8:15, 8:20,
so they're slowly straggling in.
Uh, they're, "Who was this-- who was this brother?"
And, uh, and they hated me in the beginning.
They hated me with a passion.
And I knew I was gonna get booed,
'cause I was a clean Christian comic.
It was funny to me that they hated me so much.
And they would, uh, they would cuss me out,
and their veins would be showing.
And but because I have been doing comedy for so long,
they didn't scare me. I'd just pause, and I--
I would say, "Hey, if you're quiet, I could finish,
and then Bernie could come out."
-And silence. -[crickets chirping]
And he told me, he said, "Tony...
understand, if you were dirty,
I would have to be dirtier.
So it's cool that you're clean.
His first line was
"Church is over, motherfuckers!"
That-- that would be his first line.
'Cause I've been clean for 30 minutes,
and then he would come out,
and people'd be rolling, "Yeah! Church is over, motherfuckers!"
[audience applauding]
It's still really, really...
I've had the fortunate experience of touring with him
for the Kings of Comedy Tour, so we did 30 dates together,
and a lot of times I would ride with him,
you know, same place, same hotel, same limo,
so you got a lot of exposure.
But he told me earlier in my career, he said--
Two things. He said, "That first hour of material's gonna come,
that second hour's gonna be difficult.
And pay your taxes, pimp!"
And he was right about both.
The first hour came, and I fought to get
to the second hour, and I still owe taxes.
He was very influential.
He just kind of was, you know, like, hand-in-hand
with what eventually would become
the Def Comedy Jam movement.
That whole thing.
He spoke to a certain audience,
but the thing I appreciated most about it,
and it was brilliant.
He never changed.
He just never gave up.
I never seen someb-- someone work as hard
and stay focused, and then he used to all be--
always would, Bernie would talk about
was being disciplined, stayin' focused.
Uh, there's room at the Cross.
He was, "There's room at the Cross?
You gotta sell what you want.
If you stay focused, ain't nothing wrong with it.
You know you're gonna make it sometime."
He was who he was gonna be, and that was his act,
and you either liked it or you didn't,
which I think is why it took him probably as long
as it took him, quote unquote, to "hit it huge."
When he died, it was, um...
he was a friend. [crying]
That's all.
There were 7,000 people.
[sniffs]
Yeah.
Such is-- such is life.
Yeah. He was a good friend.
I led with the comics that influenced me.
You know what I'm saying? Like, Deon Cole influenced me to know
that I guess we all can.
'Cause if-- You know when you meet somebody that close to you,
like, you've seen their rise a little bit,
you know what I mean? You like, "Oh, this shit can happen!"
You can break into the mainstream and be yourself,
and be funny, and get these jobs, and write on stuff.
So it's like, I hope I'm the same thing
for a bunch of other people.
You know what I'm sayin'? And Hannibal is that, TJ's that.
I was doing acting classes on the weekends during the day,
working an 8:00 to 6:00 p.m. job,
performing every single night,
and doing sketch also, and improv, and video,
and stand-up, and those acting classes,
ideally would lead to some sort of commercial work.
Which they eventually did, but I found out very quickly
if you work harder than anybody else,
no matter what your talent is, look at me.
You know, a modicum of talent, mediocre talent.
-Please. -Work ethic that far exceeds
-any of my peers-- -Well.
And Yogi Bear 3D.
A few years ago, I remember I walked down to the Sony lot,
and there's a giant billboard of The Goldbergs,
right next to a giant billboard of Better Call Saul.
I took a picture of it and sent it to him.
Um, I said "Look at us now." [laughs]
The Chi makes--
Man, it makes some strong people, man.
Chicago's known for its gangster city.
Well, the comics is gangsters too, motherfucker!
I go out to lunch a lot.
I work out.
I got clean. You know, I cleaned up my act.
I go on a lot of meetings.
People really like me. [chuckles]
Do they give me anything? No.
But they're like, "She's so fun."
I drink a lot, I smoke a lot of weed.
I write jokes.
Um, I give a lot of hugs.
Even to people that are like,
"I didn't think she was gonna hug me."
So, I'm nice, I like bop around, you know.
Chicago is a great place to get good.
Chicago's not the place where you're gonna get famous.
A lot of people will think you have to move there eventually,
uh, New York or LA,
um, but I think there is something to be said
for making a success out of your career in Chicago,
where you live, where other people
can have access to it.
What would be cool is if that
those people who develop in Chicago,
there was enough going on as far as, uh, national media that
they didn't have to necessarily leave Chicago, you know?
That you could-- If there was a nightly talk show
in Chicago or something where comedians could get exposure,
you know, just like they go to New York
to do Jimmy Fallon or you go to LA
to tape a Netflix special.
If there was some shows like that happening in Chicago,
then that would make it, you know, full circle.
So you could develop in Chicago, you could get good in Chicago,
and you could stay in Chicago to get some national exposure.
I think--
I don't know, I think there is a comedy boom right now.
Seems like a lot of people wanna come see shows,
and they-- and-- and-- and the scene is-- is thrivin'.
I don't think the industry has any idea how red-hot
stand-up is in Chicago, I think the rest of the country
is gonna figure this out.
I am just waiting for everyone to be brown.
I don't know how many generations it's gonna take,
I don't know how many Black and white people
need to make sweet, sweet love to each other.
[Dwayne] You find now there are Black folks
who are more open as an audience,
more open to things then they may have been
years and years ago, as far as accepting
a certain type of style,
or certain type of comedian, or a certain presentation.
I think Black folks might be more open to that now,
as they-- than maybe they would have been
ten or 15 or 20 years ago.
No, like, we all want to like each other.
It's easier to like other people.
It's tiring to dislike, it's tiring to be-- to be angry,
so you could show them opportunities
to laugh at each other.
So, that might be something.
I don't wanna speak for all Black people.
I can hardly speak for myself.
Period, the end.
-I'm done. -[interviewer] Yeah, yeah.
I've had it with you and your interview.
-[interviewer] Yeah. -Oh, my God, I'm not done yet!
He's trying to make me leave!
You get the point.
Got some funny people in Chicago.
Had no ending to that.
Cut!
♪
♪ When I see you, I think anything, oh ♪
♪ To be with you, I'd do anything ♪
♪ To get you back in here with me, no way ♪
♪ It's meant to be and I'm feeling lucky ♪
♪ I'd do anything, oh, I'm taking chances ♪
♪ I hope for everything to get in here ♪
♪ Get by my side, the way it is that we know ♪
♪ Need to hike up, it's so hard ♪
♪ When I'm not thinkin' so well, oh well, it's hard ♪
♪ When I'm not thinkin' so well ♪
♪ I'm not thinkin' so well
♪ Oh well, oh well, oh well, oh well ♪
♪ I'm seeing faces I could never place ♪
♪ And I missed the races, but I take second place for you ♪
♪ Oh well, it has to be to you
♪ Oh well, oh well, it's so plain to see that ♪
♪ I had it so hard, 'cause I'm not thinkin' so well ♪
♪ Oh well, it's hard when I'm not thinkin' so well ♪
♪ I'm not thinkin' so well
♪ Oh well, oh well, oh well, oh well ♪
♪ It wouldn't be the same to me ♪
♪ It couldn't be the same to me ♪
♪ It shouldn't be the same to me ♪
♪ To you and me
♪
♪ And when I see you, I see everything ♪
♪ Oh, and to hear you I hear everything ♪
♪ Oh, and to touch you, I touch everything ♪
♪ And if I smell you, I smell everything ♪
♪ Oh, and to taste you, I taste everything ♪
♪ Oh, and to know you, I know everything, oh ♪
♪ And to hold you, I hold everything ♪
♪ And if I scold you, I scold everything ♪
♪ God, it's so hard when I'm not thinkin' so well ♪
♪ Oh well, it's hard when I'm not thinkin' so well ♪
♪ Oh well, oh well, oh well, oh well ♪
♪ Oh well, oh well, oh well, oh well, oh well ♪
You know, you used to have to hire a rock and roll band,
-and those guys, it was-- -[knocking at door]
You know, those guys were ruining the place.
Comics were easier to deal with.
Hold on, I have to enter the vids.
-It's Steve Rudnick! -[Alan] Oh.
-No. -No, it's not, no.
-[Alan] It's not Rudnick? -No, it's Alan Alter.
-Yeah, it's Alan Alter. -It's only Alan Alter.
[Alan] I didn't wanna pull up the door to be--
[interviewer] Oh, don't worry about it. I mean,
we're editing, so we're good.