Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (24 page)

Corey: What are you like backstage before a show?

DAG: Just checking my e-mail and sending text messages. It just depends. It’s good energy. If you don’t have any nervousness … you want a little nervousness. Sometimes I’m more nervous than other times, but usually that’s when I haven’t been onstage in a while or I’m out of my element. Right after Katrina, we did this huge benefit at the Forum, with every black comedian on the planet, that Steve Harvey organized in Los Angeles, like 5,000 people. That was really nerve wracking, because everyone was on the bill; you didn’t know when you were going. And you were all heavy weights. In a situation when people come to see you, that’s pretty cool.

Corey: Do you have any diva-like qualities?

DAG: Yes, I demand Diet Coke or Pepsi. Preferably Pepsi. That’s about it. Just a quiet spot. I hate being interviewed or photographed right before going on, because I just want to concentrate on what I’m going to do.

Corey: How did you go from Yale to hooking up with guys like Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans?

DAG: I had come out and started working a little bit. I actually met Keenan while I was still at Yale. I came down on a break and did an open-mic at the Improv after my second year. It was just something I wanted to do because I was really near New York at the time. I went on at 2:30 in the morning; mostly it was every bad, first open-micer. I met him there. He was a regular there. He said, do this, do that, wait your turn. That’s the first time I actually met him. Robert Townsend, he and I were in ‘Soldier’s Story,’ and he told me all about Keenan and Damon Wayans and how they were gonna form this independent film company and how they were gonna do this film, which ended up being ‘Hollywood Shuffle.’

He and I became friends after that, and he introduced me to Keenan and Damon. So from there, we became friends and I started actually doing stand-up. They were hanging out in comedy clubs. I never thought I would go on the road, because I thought people told dick jokes to get on TV, and you didn’t have to perform on the road. Damon told me how much he made in one weekend, and in 10 days I was on the road. Once ‘In Living Color’ came on, within six months, 10-12 colleges called. I didn’t really have an act. I had about 10-15 minutes, but I wrote this act and I broke myself in the hard way. It took me a couple years to mold a set I really liked. That’s the way I did it. It’s always something I’ve come back to. I always love it and now it’s like icing on the cake for the career.

Corey: When you look back at ‘In Living Color,’ do you see it as a breeding ground for the talent that was there? Or was it a place to showcase?

DAG: It was both, like ‘Saturday Night Live,’ a lot of those people came from Second City, a training ground, a breeding ground. A lot of people, Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson, Damon, we had all done other things. It wasn’t as if we just fell off trucks. It was a breeding ground in the sense that it gave us freedom. It gave Jim Carrey and myself, all of us, freedom to really develop and show us in a different light. As a matter of fact, that’s what Keenan told me when he tried to talk me into being on the show. ‘I know how funny you are, but people don’t know. This show, you can really do what you want to do.’ Which is what everybody says, and everybody wants to hear, but rarely do you get a chance to do it. I don’t know if we could do again what we did on ‘In Living Color.’ We hit them with so much stuff, censors couldn’t catch everything. They would catch half of it and say forget it, let it go.

Corey: How did it work with creating your own characters?

DAG: Keenan constantly told us to write, which was a drag for me, because I didn’t really write. I didn’t come there from an improv background. I didn’t have 800 characters. Sometimes it took Damon sitting in my dressing room saying, ‘What is a character you always wanted to do.’ So, I came up with Calvin Tubbs. ‘We’ll write it now.’ Other times we would read sketches and if the crazy crack head sketch didn’t work with you, they would pass it down the line. Or I was supposed to do the Hedleys, which was a Jamaican family, and I couldn’t really do a Jamaican accent. It sounded like a leprechaun. Damon did it because he did a better accent. It really was like a repertory feeling.

Corey: When do you think you were at your best on the show?

DAG: That’s subjective. I know when it was most fun, like when we did those really big sketches with everybody in the cast. I loved it when Keenan would do stuff with us, because he rarely did, but it was the most fun. I wrote this thing, the Prison Cable Network, which was basically a prison cable channel. Everyone was in it, Jim, Damon, Keenan, every single person was in it. Some sketches weren’t the most popular, but I felt really dialed into the comedy. Like Jamie Foxx and I would do these two old barbers that always fucked up your hair. I loved it. Whenever we did those characters, I could play all day, because that was part of my childhood, going to these old, black barbers who always fucked up your hair. They had a chart of the latest hairstyles. They never knew the names; they were always by number. It was something we all went through.

Corey: How do you think Antoine and Blaine would go over today?

DAG: I don’t really know. I don’t really care. It was done and it was funny. The success of ‘In Living Color’ was we did things that made each other laugh. We never had to deal with the political ramifications, because Keenan and Tamara Rawitt had a system set up that none of that stuff came to us. They were the buffers. If there were some political ramifications, the censors would go to Keenan and Tamara, so we were free to create. People never came down on us and said, ‘You can’t do this. This is obscene.’ Later it became like that. We just did it because we thought it was funny.

Corey: I really enjoyed your ‘Saturday Night Live’ hosting gigs. I guess ‘In Living Color’ helped prepare you for that kind of format.

DAG: Yeah and no. Damon and I had done Blaine and Antoine on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and he was pissed because he wanted to do more stuff from ‘In Living Color.’ I don’t think ‘SNL’ wanted him to do it. When I hosted, I just wanted to do new things. And I didn’t really go in there with an agenda. You go in there a week before and you watch them do their stuff and Tim Meadows goes, ‘Everyone is really excited because they know you’re going to have a ton of ideas.’ I said, ‘I thought you were gonna have ideas for me?’ ‘Oh, you’re so funny. See you tomorrow!’ I went back to the hotel panic stricken. I just wrote down five ideas off the top of my head and everything was fine.

Corey: Was there stuff of yours that made the air?

DAG: Yeah, a lot of it, like the Bryant Gumbel thing. Maya Angelou, I think we did that both times I hosted. After ‘In Living Color’ was over, they asked me to join the cast. I didn’t want to do it for a variety of reasons. I had just come off ‘In Living Color’ and I wanted to do something else. But they were very nice to me for a long time.

Corey: Did you hear from Maya Angelou?

DAG: No, I was expecting a poem, but I never got one.

Corey: What is Don ‘No Soul’ Simmons up to these days?

DAG: He’s retired. I will tell you a funny story. When I auditioned for ‘Amazon Women on the Moon,’ OJ Simpson was auditioning. He was in the waiting room. So, I beat out OJ Simpson. (laughs) I remember meeting him, ‘Hey, the Juice, what’s up?’ And that was Arsenio Hall’s first film, and John Landis became a good friend. Everything in ‘Amazon Women on the Moon’ was shot in one day. John Landis was up for murder for ‘Twilight Zone.’ I went to see him and he was waiting to hear if he was going to be found for murder and going to jail. I was like, ‘Good luck with the murder charge.’ But he beat the rap, so he’s fine.

It’s never a good sign for a reporter when the person he’s interviewing says, “I really don’t like doing interviews.”

And when that statement is followed by a string of curses because of a scheduling misunderstanding, you might as well give up.

Luckily, Monty Python’s Eric Idle did relax enough to answer a few questions for me.

Idle has been a helluva lot busier than his moniker suggests.

“
The Pythons,” a massive coffee table autobiography, was authored by Idle and the other members of Python, including John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam with older interviews from Graham Chapman, the only non-living member of the troupe (if you don’t count the parrot).

Idle also released a CD of songs and skits called “The Rutland Isles,” which includes a song about gay animals and one called “Penis Fish.” He has also traveled the country with his “Greedy Bastard” show.

Corey Stulce: What is your live show all about?

Eric Idle: It’s a chance for me to talk to the audience. Early on it’s more stand-up, and later on it’s more autobiographical. I talk about things and people I knew and George Harrison. I perform a song he and I wrote. It’s more intimate in Act 2. We hit on some old songs and funny material and some old Python stuff.

Corey: The Pythons have had a rabid following over the years …

Eric: A rabbit following?

Corey: A rabid …

Eric: (Interrupts) That’s right, it was a killer rabbit following.

Corey: This is an opportunity for you to get …

Eric: Get my revenge, you know. I can be rabid back to them. We had a rabbi following, I think, ‘The Life of Brian.’

Corey: What do you think about the fans who quote entire scenes and …

Eric: As long as they pay, they’re fabulous. You know, the minute they try and do it for nothing, I think they should be sued and destroyed.

Corey: The big autobiography just came out.

Eric: Yes, the big book-y, the heaviest book in the world. It’s trying to compete pound for pound with The Beatles’ book. And eventually the Rolling Stones are gonna do one, so it’s going to be the heaviest book award. It’s very good for weightlifting.

Corey: How did this project get started?

Eric: I think the greedy bastards who run the book company had an idea and they sold it to us at a weak moment. We all kind of consented individually.

Corey: Do you feel there were portions of the story that needed to be out there?

Eric: Need? I think not. Greed? I think so. Maybe it’s interesting, I don’t know. I never read The Beatles’ one, but sort of thumbed through it, you know. I think it’s too many words. It’s not really a form that invites the reader. Michael Palin said ‘It’s un-put-down-able and un-pick-up-able.’ That’s about right.

Corey: What exactly is the fascination with gay animals?

Eric: I think it’s an interesting thing, the behaviorism. We’re all animals. We tend to try and separate ourselves from that. I think it’s a comical idea that there’s gay behavior among the animals, too. I think that’s perfectly legitimate.

Corey: Are you happy to be known as the songsmith of the group?

Eric: Yeah, I’m happy to be known as anything, really. I’d like to be known as the witty, the wise, the most handsome, the most elegant—but the songsmith will do. Actually, it’s not entirely true, Mike and Terry wrote some great ones, especially for ‘The Meaning of Life.’ They wrote ‘Every Sperm is Sacred’—a fabulous song.

Corey: Are you performing just your songs on the tour?

Eric: I’m performing mine. I don’t do theirs; they don’t do mine. I do things that interest me and I want to do—that works for an evening of entertainment. The thing is, you have an idea of what you might like and then you try it on audiences. We’ve been shaping it and we’ve been up into Canada and we’ve pulled it tight and we have a nice show now, and we’re bringing it back into the States.