Sick In The Head: Conversations About Life And Comedy Part 1

Sick in the head.

conversations about life and comedy.

Judd Apatow.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint the material specified below: CONDe NAST: Transcript from interview with David Denby, Judd Apatow, and Seth Rogan at The New Yorker Festival in 2009, 2009 The New Yorker/Conde Nast; Albert Brooks interview by Jim Windolf, Vanity Fair, January 2013, 2013 Conde Nast; Freaks and Geeks Oral History by Robert Lloyd, Vanity Fair, January 2013, 2013 Conde Nast. Reprinted by permission.

EMPIRE MAGAZINE: "Mann and Husband" by Olly Richards, from the March 2013 issue of Empire Magazine. Reprinted by permission.

ESQUIRE MAGAZINE: "Apatow and Shandling" by Mike Sager, from the October 2014 issue of Esquire Magazine. Reprinted by permission.

HUCK MAGAZINE: "Judd Apatow vs. Miranda July," from the May 2013 issue of Huck Magazine. Reprinted by permission.

WTF WITH MARC MARON: Judd Apatow on WTF with Marc Maron podcast. Reprinted by permission.

MEADOWLANE ENTERPRISES: Judd Apatow interview with Steve Allen. Used by permission of Meadowlane Enterprises, Inc.

SONY PICTURES HOME ENTERTAINMENT: Transcript of The Cable Guy Blu-ray commentary with Ben Stiller and Jim Carrey. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

INTRODUCTION: WHY COMEDY?.

How did I start interviewing comedians? That's a good question. I was always a fan of comedy and...okay, I have been completely obsessed with comedy for about as long as I can remember. I blame my dad. My dad was not a comedian, but he may have secretly longed to be one. When I was a kid, he would play us Bill Cosby records and even took me to see him perform at Hofstra University for my birthday when I was in fifth grade. (Note: In this introduction, I was going to talk at length about Bill Cosby, but I can't, in good conscience, because he has more s.e.xual accusers than I have had partners.) From there I discovered d.i.c.kie Goodman, George Carlin, and Lenny Bruce, and then, when Steve Martin hit, I completely lost my mind. I bought every alb.u.m he put out-and couldn't stop doing an impression of him for the next five years. The biggest fight I ever got into with my parents was when we were at an Italian restaurant for dinner and I was trying to rush them out so we could get home in time to see Steve Martin on The Carol Burnett Show. They refused to hurry through their chicken parmesan and, as a result, I never got to see it. I remain furious.

The mid- to late seventies was a golden age in comedy. You had Richard Pryor, Sat.u.r.day Night Live, Monty Python, SCTV-all in their prime. The club scene was beginning to explode, too. In my room at night, I would circle the names of all the comedians in the TV Guide who were going to perform on talk shows that week so I wouldn't miss any. When I was in fifth grade, I produced a thirty-page report on the life and career of the Marx Brothers and paid my friend Brande Eigen thirty dollars to write it out for me, longhand, because he had better handwriting than I did. This, by the way, was not for school. I wrote it for my own personal use.

A comedy freak was born.

I'm not sure why I was so drawn to comedy. Part of it, I think, was frustration. Looking back, I was an angry kid who didn't feel like the world made sense. My parents were not particularly spiritual people in those days, so they couldn't help much in the existential angst department. The closest they came to religion was saying over and over again throughout my childhood, "n.o.body said life was fair." It was the opposite of The Secret. It was The Anti-Secret. This left a bit of a void in my life, and I looked to comedy-and the insights of comedians-to fill it.

Plus, I was the youngest boy in my grade, so I was small. This size deficit led to me always being picked last in gym cla.s.s-every day for thirteen years. When you're always picked last, you always get the worst position, like right field in baseball. Then, since you are always in the worst position, the ball never comes your way, so you never get a chance to show anyone that you are, in fact, good at this sport. But the truth is, you are not good at this sport because you are never involved in a play, because you are always in the worst position. When it is time to step up to bat, you feel so much pressure to do something incredible, like hit a home run, that you usually whiff. If you somehow manage to get a hit, your accomplishment is ignored by your peers, who chalk it up to luck. (No child in history has ever gone from last one picked to first one picked. That is a universal law that will never be broken.) Then the kid who is picked last never gets a girl to like him, because he has been labeled a loser.

Therefore, what else is there to do except decide that everyone else is the loser and you are the cool one?

That is how the c.o.c.ky nerd comes to be.

So I had a lot of time to sit there, in right field, thinking about other things, like how unfair this whole setup was. If I wasn't handsome, how would I ever find a girl who would love me? Could someone who sucked at sports be popular? Was there a reason why n.o.body else was interested in the things I found interesting? Why did all the teachers think I was a pain in the a.s.s and not someone special?

At that age, the comedians I liked most were the ones who called out the bulls.h.i.t and gave voice to my anger-the Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Jay Leno. I loved anyone who stood up onstage and said that the people in power were idiots, and not to be trusted. I was also drawn to people who deconstructed the smaller aspects of this bizarre and ridiculous life. I idolized the new generation of observational comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Reiser, and Robert Klein. I related to them and imitated them, and even began to write really bad jokes of my own in a notebook I hid in a small metal locker in my room. "On Gilligan's Island they went on a three-hour cruise," I wrote, "so why did they bring so much luggage?"

- During junior high, my parents got divorced and things got a little messy. It was the early eighties, and after my dad read the self-help book Your Erroneous Zones, by Wayne Dyer, I think he suddenly realized how unhappy he was-and that was that. He and my mom never figured out how to make it work. They were both warm, caring people, but neither handled the divorce well. For reasons I never quite understood, they fought in and out of court for years-until everyone was broke. I was lost and scared. At one point, I started shoplifting with the secret hope I would get caught so that I could finally have an excuse to yell at them: "This would never have happened if it wasn't for this divorce!" (Sadly, I only got caught once, and when Macy's couldn't reach my parents by phone, the store let me go.) It's hard to be a teenager witnessing your parents at their worst. This was way before the days of "conscious uncoupling." This was war. I remember thinking to myself at one point, Well, I guess my parents' advice can't be any good-just look at how they are handling this situation. I need to figure out how to support myself financially and emotionally.

Oddly, that pain and fear became the fuel in my tank. It inspired me to work hard and has led to every success and good thing in my life. It worked so well that today, a parent now myself, I am trying to figure out how to f.u.c.k up my daughters just enough that they, too, develop outsize dreams and the desire to get the h.e.l.l out of the house.

When I was a kid, my parents owned a restaurant called Raisins. After the divorce, my mom, Tami Shad, moved out and got a job. A former bartender named Rick Messina (who went on to manage Tim Allen and many others) hired her as a hostess at a comedy club he ran in Southampton, New York, the East End Comedy Club. I was fourteen years old at the time and this was one of the great summers of my life. I was finally able to see comedians in person. My mom would get me a seat in the back of the house and I watched every comedian-people like J. J. Wall, Paul Provenza, Charles Fleischer, and Jay Leno.

My next move was to accept a job as a dishwasher at the East Side Comedy Club, located in Huntington, New York, near my hometown of Syosset. East Side was one of the first comedy clubs that existed outside New York City and Los Angeles, and I remember the day it opened. One day there was an old fish restaurant in the middle of a large parking lot, and the next day there was this place that had nothing but comedy, and lines out the door. Long Island legends like Bob Nelson, Rob Bartlett, Jim Myers, and Jackie Martling were regulars. I remember watching a young Rosie O'Donnell do her first weekend spot at the club, and how excited everyone was for her. Occasionally a twenty-one-year-old named Eddie Murphy would come in and work on new material. When he did, the staff would start a pool and take bets on how long his set would go; they were annoyed at-and probably a little jealous of-his marathon sets, which would b.u.mp all of the other comics for the night. Watching him one night, I remember some guy in the crowd started heckling him. "I don't care what you say," Eddie responded, "because I'm twenty-one, I'm black, and I have a bigger d.i.c.k than you." In retrospect, it was not that great a line, but back then I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard. I didn't have a big d.i.c.k (more medium-sized), but now I definitely wanted to be up there yelling at people and being funny.

By my fifteenth birthday, my obsession was full-blown. I needed to become one of them. The question was, how to do that? And the answer seemed clear: Meet them. Talk to them. Get to know them. Learn their secrets.

But who was going to sit down with some junior high school kid and talk about comedy?

- In the tenth grade, I started to work at my high school's radio station, WKWZ 88.5 FM, in Syosset! Headquarters was a nerd's paradise located in the bas.e.m.e.nt of our high school. The station was supervised by Syosset High's film teacher, Jack DeMasi, a fiery, hilarious Italian guy who went to film school with Martin Scorsese. We all loved him because he talked to us and treated us, a sea of weirdos, like we were adults.

At WKWZ, the sports geeks produced sports shows, the news geeks produced news shows, and there was even room for jazz and cla.s.sical. My friend Josh Rosenthal was a DJ at the station, and he loved music as much as I loved comedy. Occasionally he would take the train to the city and interview new bands like R.E.M. and Siouxsie and the Banshees. This blew my mind. Wait, so we could actually interview people we admired? They would talk to you if you asked nicely? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I could do this with comedians. I asked Jack if I could start a show of my own, and he said yes.

In your life you come across people who encourage your voice and originality. For me, that person is Jack DeMasi. In fact, in an episode of Freaks and Geeks Paul Feig wrote many years later, there is a cool teacher who runs the AV squad, played by Steve Higgins (the announcer on The Tonight Show and the producer of SNL), who gives an inspiring speech about why the jocks won't get anywhere in life. "They are peaking now," he said, "but the geeks will rule the future." In my mind that was Jack, and this moment changed my life.

How did I get people to talk to me? Well, I would call their agents or PR people and say I was Judd Apatow from WKWZ radio on Long Island and I was interested in interviewing their client. I would neglect to mention that I was fifteen years old. Since most of those representatives were based in Los Angeles, they didn't realize that the signal to our station barely made it out of the parking lot. Then I would show up for the interview and they would realize they had been had. But they never turned me away, and every single one was gracious and generous with their time. (Except for one, who asked to see my d.i.c.k. I won't mention his name but I said no. I didn't even realize this was probably just stage one of his plan. He told me he'd made "a bet with another comic" that he could get me to show it to him. I now realize the bet was probably a little more complicated than that.) Over the next two years, I interviewed more than forty of my comedic heroes-club comics, TV stars, writers, directors, and a few movie stars. It was a magical time. I remember walking into Jerry Seinfeld's unfurnished apartment in West Hollywood, in 1983, and asking him directly, "How do you write a joke?" And meeting with Paul Reiser at the Improv and asking him what it was like shooting Diner. I took a three-hour train ride to Poughkeepsie, New York, to meet Weird Al Yankovic, and hung out with John Candy on the set of The New Show, Lorne Michaels's short-lived follow-up to SNL. Harold Ramis met me in his office as he prepared to shoot National Lampoon's Vacation, and I sat down with Jay Leno in the tiny office in the back of Rascals Comedy Club in West Orange, New Jersey. By the end of those two years I had interviewed Henny Youngman, Howard Stern, Steve Allen, Michael O'Donoghue, Father Guido Sarducci (Don Novello), Harry Anderson, Willie Tyler (not Lester), Al Franken, Sandra Bernhard, the Unknown Comic (Murray Langston), and so many others. Some went above and beyond the call of duty. The legendary comedy writer Alan Zweibel took out his phone book and hooked me up with a bunch of his famous friends. "Hey, here's Rodney Dangerfield's number. You should call him! Tell him I sent you!"

This was my college education. I grilled these people until they kicked me and my enormous green AV squad tape recorder out of their homes. I asked them how to get stage time, how long it takes to find yourself as an artist, and what childhood trauma led them to want to be in comedy. I asked them about their dreams for the future and made them my dreams, too. Did I mention I never even aired most of the interviews? I put a few out there, but even then I knew this information was mainly for me-and that the broadcast part was a bit of a ruse.

One thing I took from these interviews was that these people were part of a tribe-the tribe of comedians. My whole life I'd wanted friends who had similar interests and a similar worldview, people I could talk with about Monty Python and SCTV. People who could recite every line on the Let's Get Small alb.u.m and who knew who George Carlin's original comedy team partner was (Jack Burns). It was lonely having this interest that no one shared. Even my best friends thought I was a little weird. In fact, just last year, my high school friend Ron Garner said to me, "I finally get what you were doing in your room watching TV all those years."

- These interviews would inform the rest of my life. They contained the advice that would help me attain my dreams. Jerry Seinfeld talked about treating comedy like a job and writing every day. (I have never done that, but I certainly have written more than I would have since speaking to him.) More than one told me that it takes seven years to find yourself and become a great comedian. (Mystical-sounding, but kind of true.) From that piece of advice I learned patience. In my mind I thought, If I start working hard now, in seven years I will be Eddie Murphy. Well, that hasn't happened-yet. Harold Ramis talked about how when he started, he wrote jokes for comics like Rodney Dangerfield to pay his rent, so when I was green and behind on my rent, I wrote jokes for people like Tom Arnold, Roseanne, Garry Shandling, and Jim Carrey, and when they got TV specials or movies sometimes they would ask me to help. Harold's advice set me on the path.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1985 to study screenwriting at the University of Southern California, a whole new world opened up to me. The comedy scene was booming back then. Suddenly I was able to go to clubs and make friends with fellow aspiring comedians. Many of those people, like Adam Sandler, Wayne Federman, Andy Kindler, David Spade, Jim Carrey, Doug Benson, and Todd Gla.s.s, are still my friends today. I felt like the bee girl in the Blind Melon video, running onto the field and looking around and...finding all the other bees I didn't know existed. I was so happy to no longer be alone. Later, when I pursued stand-up comedy for real, I would sit and talk all night with the future comedy legends who were performing at clubs like the Improv or the Laugh Factory, asking them questions while eating fettuccini Alfredo and hoping Budd Friedman would notice us and give us more stage time.

Even after my career took off, the interviews never stopped. Sometimes I would get interviewed while promoting a project, and other times I would be on panels, or doing commentary recordings for a movie, interviewing my funny friends just like the old days. I would always save the articles or ask for DVDs or audiotapes, knowing that one day I would need them for something (my wife calls it h.o.a.rding).

One day I was talking to the writer Dave Eggers about fund-raising ideas for his tutoring and literacy nonprofit, 826, and I mentioned that I had this huge cache of interviews I had done in high school, along with some I'd done later in life-and maybe that would make for an interesting book? I had always loved Cameron Crowe's book of interviews with Billy Wilder and those old Rolling Stone books filled with Q&As with my favorite rock stars. I thought maybe this could be like that but with all of my heroes and friends talking about why they became interested in comedy, and how they are doing as human beings on earth. It might be funny, too! Maybe this book could inspire some kid who is sitting in his room looking at weird Funny or Die videos, the way I used to sit in front of the TV and tape SNL with an audio recorder before the Betamax was invented. Maybe this book would make that kid feel a little less weird and alone.

Dave connected me with my editor, Andy Ward, who encouraged me to do some new interviews and bring the book up to date. I wasn't sure how many I had the energy to do, since I was in the middle of production on a movie and I was a little worried this project would turn into a giant pain in the a.s.s. When I sold the book, I promised to give my proceeds to Eggers's 826 nonprofit. (Unfortunately it sold for more money than I thought it would and it was too late to change the deal to "5 percent of the money goes to 826 and 95 percent goes to the Apatow Vacation Trust.") The first new one I did was Spike Jonze, two hours in my office on a hot Wednesday in Los Angeles-and, afterward, I found myself as inspired as I was when I first started doing this, thirty-one years ago. Spike talked about how artists who come from skateboarding are so inventive because it's a sport that is all about coming up with a new trick. That is why when he made music videos he was always trying to do them in a way they had never been done before. Incredible! Now I want to do that!

I followed that up by inviting one of my first bosses, Roseanne Barr, to talk about her journey with me. We sat for hours digging through the past, amazed and baffled by this bizarre and fantastic journey we are still on. And before I knew it, I was hooked all over again. Next came three hours at Louis C.K.'s house, talking while he made me dinner like I was one of his kids. I couldn't stop. I kept saying I was done, and then I would think, Wait! I didn't get to do Stephen Colbert yet. And how have I not talked to Steve Martin? Let me get Lena Dunham! Due to s.p.a.ce and mental limitations, I had to stop, but I still have a long list of people I want to talk to. Sacha Baron Cohen, you are next! Will Ferrell-don't think you are not going to be in volume two!

I would like to thank all of the people who so generously agreed to speak with me. When I was a kid, I noticed that all of the comics I was speaking to shared a common humanity. Some were solid as a rock, some seemed on the edge of sanity, but all were filled with love and kindness. As an adult, I have tried to pay it forward by giving my time to young comics and mentoring the funny people I believe in. It has been the most rewarding part of my career. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed meeting all of these remarkable people.

When can I start the next one?.

THE BEGINNING: JERRY SEINFELD.

(1983).

I became an official Jerry Seinfeld fan the first time he appeared on television on The Merv Griffin Show in 1980. This was before Seinfeld, of course. This was back when he was just some guy from Long Island, like me, who talked like me, and cared about the same kinds of things I cared about-and he was the best observational comedian I'd ever seen.

In 1983, I convinced someone in his manager's office to set up an interview, and not long after, I showed up at his completely unfurnished apartment in West Hollywood. Thirty years later, I can still see that slightly crestfallen look in his eyes when he opened the door and realized that I was not, in fact, a real journalist from a real radio station with a real audience. That I was just a fifteen-year-old kid with a tape recorder.

This was one of the most personally influential interviews I did, mainly because he said so many useful things that helped me later in life-it was like a blueprint for how one should go about pursuing a career in comedy, and how to write jokes. For the first time, it dawned on me that comedy is work, and precision and care.

Jerry Seinfeld: Is it water-driven, this camera?

Judd Apatow: I'd like to talk about your type of comedy that you do. How would you describe it? Some people just tell the joke, like an observation, and that's it. But you add a whole new dimension to it.

Jerry: Well, it's one thing to see something. And I think the next step is to do something with it. You know, I'm doing this routine now about this guy that was on That's Incredible last year, caught a bullet between his teeth. It's like, you see a thing like that and you go, What the h.e.l.l is that? The guy caught a bullet between his teeth. I don't know what's funny about that-but I think to myself, There is something funny about that. And that's what I like to do. I think, What job did he have before he got into doing that? What made him go, you know, "I'd rather be catching bullets between my teeth"? I have a whole routine about it. To me, that's funny.

Judd: So how do you develop that?

Jerry: Trial and error. You know, just try out one joke. I had this other thing about how I don't remember this guy's name. I saw the guy do it, right? Caught the bullet. I don't even know his name. Now, if he knew that I didn't know his name after seeing that, wouldn't he feel like, What the h.e.l.l do I have to do? You know what I mean? Isn't that impressive enough for people to remember me? I mean, what do I have to do, catch a cannonball in the eye? So it's like I just keep thinking on it until I- Judd: You're there.

Jerry: You know, hit something.

Judd: So you work it out at the Improv?

Jerry: Anywhere. Wherever I'm working, I'm trying new material.

Judd: So what do you think of the other kind of comedy, just observation, or- Jerry: Depends on who's doing it. Anything can be done either in a cla.s.sy, interesting way or in a junky, easy way. It's not the form itself, it's the way someone approaches it. I mean, David Letterman has a hemorrhoid routine, Preparation H routine. It's cla.s.sy and brilliant. No cheap jokes in it. It's something about how hemorrhoid experts agree and, like, who are these people? And you thought you hated your job, you know. It's clever. Know what I mean? Normally I hear someone bring Preparation H up, I just turn off. I think, This is not gonna be a clever piece of comedy. So it doesn't matter, you could be doing prop comedy. Rich Hall, who is brilliant, clever, interesting, doesn't rely on the props. Some comedians will hold up something funny and it gets a laugh. Rich uses the prop, you know. And so-there's no one type of comedy. It's who's doing it, and how they're handling it.

Judd: What do you think of this whole crop of comedians that just came out in the last five years?

Jerry: You mean like me?

Judd: Yeah.

Jerry: I think we're pretty good. Ah, well, it's interesting. I guess we don't seem too daring as a group, if you compared us to say, the sixties or the fifties.

Judd: But that ground had been broken already.

Jerry: Yeah, there's not too many people that are scary in terms of the type of things they talk about. n.o.body seems to be treading on thin ice. That doesn't seem to interest people anymore. I mean, comedy hasn't changed really in thousands of years. It's the same. If it's funny, you're funny, and people like you.

Judd: Do you think that people have gotten into comedy who shouldn't have? Since there's so many jobs now with so many new clubs opening up.

Jerry: It's an interesting question. I've been thinking about that actually, and I think that there will always be only a very few great comedians because comedy itself is so difficult. No matter how many people do it, it's just a rare combination of skills and talents that go into making a great comedian. If everyone in the country decided to become a comedian, there would still only be six terrific ones like there are now.

Judd: Do you think that there's certain topics that shouldn't be spoken about, or certain things that shouldn't be done onstage? For instance, there's gonna be a guy on tonight, who I've seen, who does something about Linda Lovelace with a gla.s.s of milk. And it's-it's rather crude. I won't go farther.

Jerry: Right. Well, it depends on how you're asking me. Do you think I should do something? For me, I wouldn't do it. I think it's wrong.

Judd: What about the egg white? Do you think- Jerry: I think anyone should do whatever they like. I don't think there should be any rules.

Judd: As long as it gets laughs?

Jerry: If it doesn't get laughs, you're not gonna get work, and you're not gonna be a comedian. So the audience ultimately decides. It's a very democratic system.

Judd: Are there certain topics that you stay away from in your act?

Jerry: A lot. A lot of topics I stay away from. Mainly the ones that have been covered or the ones that are easy. And I want-s.e.x is easy, basically.

Judd: Gilligan's Island.

Jerry: Gilligan's Island. TV shows. Commercials. I won't go near it, because I'm trying to find new, fresh, original, interesting things. I want my comedy to be the things n.o.body else talks about. Not necessarily things people don't want to talk about, but just things that everybody else missed. That's what I like.

Judd: What is the difference between an audience at the Improv or a local club, and Atlantic City or Las Vegas?

Jerry: What they came to see. Basically, the audience at the Improv is interested in comedy, and if it's an easy joke or an obvious joke, it's less appealing to them than a really clever, original observation. The reverse applies in Atlantic City. They don't want to hear a comedian. They want to hear the main act. If you are a comedian, do something that we don't have to pay too much attention to. You see, at the Improv they're watching: We'll listen to you go with it. You know. We'll listen. Try that. Let me see how far you can go with that idea and if you can make it work. And at Atlantic City it's enough if you can just get them to listen to you. I do the same act, but it's a different type of performance. It's much more instructive because they don't know where the laughs are in my act because it's not "Two men walk into a bar-b.u.m b.u.m b.u.m, punch line." And if the audience doesn't know where the punch line is, you can't get laughs. So I have to really slow it down and explicate exactly what I'm doing because to them, I'm like Andy Kaufman. They're not used to my kind of comedy. They're used to an older style. Traditional jokes. Polish jokes. They don't understand. Why is he talking about socks?

Judd: Do you have to change your act in different parts of the country?

Jerry: Some people do; I don't. There's a central core of what I do that pretty much works everywhere, and the only variable is the way I perform it. I do the same jokes, but I do them differently. Little lines that some people come to hear. They love the little stray thoughts that you throw in. That makes the pieces interesting for people that know comedy and are beyond the very basic level of it. But in places where they don't want to hear you, you can only do the stuff that-the tips of the icebergs.

Judd: How do you handle improvisation and talking to the audience in your act?

Jerry: See, that's something I'm really getting into a lot now, having a lot of fun with it. When I do my act in comedy clubs, where I get to do like an hour, I'll take questions at a certain point and just, you know, ad lib. It depends on how much I can get the audience to accept me. If I can get them to accept me, a lot of times I'll take off on routines that I do normally and change them and take them a different way. Whenever I'm doing new material, I'm always ad libbing.

Judd: What is the strangest experience you've had doing comedy in a club?

Jerry: Strange? Um. I mean, I've played places where people didn't know I was on. I did a disco one time in Queens on New Year's Eve. And they're screaming, yelling, and screaming and yelling and they sent me out on the dance floor to do my act, and I stood there but the screaming and yelling never diminished by even a couple decibels and I just stood there for thirty minutes, and walked off and I don't think anybody even knew I was onstage.

Judd: Anything else like- Jerry: Bombing is a riot. The looks on people's faces is just priceless. They look up to me going, "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about. I came for a show, and you're the show and I don't understand you. You seem normal but you don't make any sense."

Judd: You did a show the other day that didn't go that good. That still happens to you?

Jerry: Oh, yeah, all the time. Every show varies and there are very, very few shows that go just right. Because every audience is completely different-a completely different group of people with a completely different personality. And you have to shape your act to their personality. Every set is an accomplishment.

Judd: Do you ever worry about, you know, say ten years in the future-a lot of comedians get bored after a while, they just cut stand-up out completely.

Jerry: Yeah, I know. I don't think I'll be one of those comedians. I have a lot of respect for it as a craft. I don't see it as just a stepping-stone. I mean, it's a hard life in some ways. But I have a fascination for it.

Judd: A lot of people do it and they just-they hate it.

Jerry: Well, they use it as a vehicle, which is fine. You know, you can get seen real easy. But it's a tough thing to do. It's a tough thing to put yourself through when it's not gonna be a career for you. It's a difficult thing to play at. It's kind of like catching bullets between your teeth: If you're gonna do it right, it would be something to learn it and then not make a career out of it.

Judd: When you're onstage and everything is going great, is that like the ultimate idea?

Jerry: I think so. Yeah, for me it is. Because that's what I like. I like jokes and laughing more than anything. Everybody has an appet.i.te for a different thing. And comedy is something that I have an endless appet.i.te for.

Judd: When did this all start, being funny?

Jerry: I wasn't a cla.s.s clown per se. I mean, I wrote some funny things for the newspaper and I was always trying to be funny around my friends. And watching comedy was the thing I enjoyed more than anything else. I knew every comedian, I knew all their routines. That's how I got into it. I wanted to be around it, you know. I never thought I'd be any good at it. But that turned out to be an advantage because it made me work harder than most other people.

Judd: When did you first do it?

Jerry: I did Catch a Rising Star one night. I guess this would actually qualify as my strangest experience. This is definitely it. My first time onstage, I write the whole act out, you know, and I put it there on my bed and rehea.r.s.e it, over and over again. I'm standing there with a bar of soap, like it's a microphone. And I got the scene memorized, cold. I get up on there, and it's gone. I can't remember a word. I was-I stood there for about thirty seconds with-saying absolutely nothing, just standing there, freaking out. I just couldn't believe it, all these people were looking at me. And then, I was able to just remember the subjects I wanted to talk about. This is absolutely true, I'm not embellishing this at all, I stood there and I went, "The beach...ah, driving...your parents...," and people started laughing because they thought this was my act. I couldn't even really hear them laughing; I was like absolutely panicked. I think I lasted about three minutes and I just got off. That was my first show.

Judd: How do you get steady work?