Still Foolin' 'Em (19 page)

The story was strong, but I was worried about the actual performance. How do you do stand-up for the Russians? I decided I needed to speak Russian for the first few minutes, and remember, this was before Rosetta Stone. I wrote about ten minutes of welcoming jokes; then David Bromberg, a Russian American comedian who was our technical adviser, translated them into Russian, and I learned them phonetically. For the Pyshkina Theater, a lovely old building with a long history, we created a backdrop of a poster of a Russian worker, and then before I knew it, we were ready, rehearsed, and, weirdly enough, very confident. We made a visit to the American embassy, and upon meeting the ambassador we were advised to talk in a whisper and were moved to a corner of the room so the conversation wouldn’t be bugged. The only request he made was for me to work clean and not embarrass anyone. Next we shot some handheld reality video on the streets of Moscow from my point of view. Standing at the entrance to Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square, we witnessed the changing of the guards. High-stepping soldiers with guns on their shoulders marched by us, their kicks almost reaching the level of their chests. I softly started singing “One” from
A Chorus Line
in time with their steps: “One singular sensation, every little step he takes.” I had to sing softly because our KGB man was standing near me; from the look on his face, I figured he had not seen the musical. I played other characters as well, including my NYU professor Martin Scorsese, who commented, “I told Billy to gain forty pounds and call the show
Raging Bolshevik
.”

The Russians were always looking for a “taste”—in other words, a bribe. If we needed something that had been promised but not delivered, the KGB man would tell us that giving him $500 and a dual-track ghetto blaster might help. We provided exactly that a few times, most notably when we’d been promised that the lights of the Kremlin would be on in the background of a late-night scene. Of course they weren’t. We came up with the loot and even threw in a second ghetto blaster, and lo and behold, the lights were on for two weeks, even after we left.

Sometimes it seemed that the only thing the Soviets had in common with us was that over there, the conservatives also thought all actors were socialists. The country, for all its great literature and music and scientific accomplishments, was unsophisticated. The windows of the big department stores were crudely decorated. Stylish clothes were rare. News coverage was scarce. It was 1989, but it felt like 1956. Chernobyl had shaken the nation a few years prior to our visit. Good food was now hard to find; at the few nice restaurants, a meat dish was more than likely horse. Several times we had to admonish the crew members for stuffing cheese and other goods from our catering truck (it had come all the way from England, of all places) into their coats at the end of the day. As scary as we found the Soviet image, they were a vulnerable people who seemed to want what America had. I sensed that the citizens were starting to realize that they had been handed a bill of goods and unrest was growing.

One night Janice, Michael Fuchs, and I went to dinner at the home of one of my new cousins. It was very emotional. They looked like all the relatives I’d known as a child. Their facial structure, even their personalities felt so familiar. As they showed us their family albums, I again thought about the twist of fate that had allowed me to live and thrive in America while this part of our family remained behind the Iron Curtain. We laughed at familiar family stories, and I invited everyone to the performance at the Pyshkina Theater. I started as a comedian by performing in front of my relatives. Now, halfway around the world, I would not only be performing in the country they’d come from—but once again in front of my family.

We were to do two shows, which would be cut together into one for the HBO special, but the size of the audiences was a mystery to us. We hadn’t done much advertising, just a simple poster with a black-and-white photograph Janice had taken of me. It read, “An Evening with American Comic Billy Crystal.” Which was better than the original poster: “An Evening with Another Little Jew.”

As the beautiful sounds of Shaiman rehearsing his Tchaikovsky filtered into my upstairs dressing room, I looked out the window and was surprised to see a long line of people, young and old, waiting to get into the theater. I’m not sure how much they knew of me, yet they seemed excited that someone from America had come to perform for them. I had no idea what to expect. Would they laugh? Were they allowed to laugh? Would they be angry that an American was making fun of them? Getting off to a good start was the key, so I kept rehearsing my jokes in Russian.

The moment before I go onstage is always one of intense, quiet energy. I gather my thoughts, then let them go. I think of everything and nothing. Most comedians will probably describe the moment before they go on in the same way: Your brain opens up to a new part of you. It hears everything, it remembers everything; you feel powerful and intuitive. I always remain in good physical condition so my body feels strong, my legs always underneath me. I enter into a sort of hyperreality. I need to listen to every sound the audience makes, to feel what they are giving back, and then in milliseconds decide what and how to say the next line. That’s a comedian’s toughest challenge: saying one thing while thinking a few beats ahead and making decisions about what to say next without looking like you’re going through mental machinations. In Moscow, these tasks would be coupled with an audience that might not have any idea of what I was about to do. If they were used to a comedian sitting onstage reading his edited script, what would they think of me? I simply kept looking at my notes, trying to remember key words. This wasn’t my honed act. Where could I have tried it out? The Russian Tea Room? This was all new material I had never performed before. Oh, and most of the people in the crowd only spoke Russian. Still, for some reason—perhaps the danger of it all—I felt relaxed and confident as I got dressed.

First moment on stage with Gorbo.

David Bromberg warmed up the crowd. “How many of you have relatives in prison?” he joked. He explained who I was, and what a big moment this was for Soviet-American relations and American television. He then introduced me, and I walked onstage to a strong round of applause. I went over to the wings, where it looked like I was shaking someone’s hand. I was—it was a life-size cutout of Gorbachev with a movable arm. When the audience saw this, I could feel their astonishment. The American had already done something a Soviet comic could not do: make fun of the boss. A few people looked around, probably thinking that soldiers were coming to take them away for laughing. In fact, there were some soldiers in the audience, and they were laughing as well. I then launched into my jokes in Russian, my accent strong: “I am the first American comedian to come to Moscow, with the exception of Ronald Reagan.” I told them how similar we actually are: “You have the Russian circus, we have Congress, you have Baryshnikov … we have Baryshnikov.…” Again the audience was delighted. They loved the Chaplin piece; I got them to do “the Wave” with me, hundreds of Soviets standing and throwing their arms in the air as the wave moved around the theater, something never before seen in Russia; and both shows went as well as any performance I had done in America. I had hoped I would be able to do twenty-five minutes or so, and in both performances I did an hour, ending with the man-on-line monologue, which brought the Soviets to their feet, cheering and throwing flowers to me on stage.

As I bowed and waved good night I saw my new family applauding their cousin. It was just like being in the living room in Long Beach.

The next night we finished our shooting at a lonely train station outside Moscow. Jenny and I did our scene together, and it was truly magical. Acting with my daughter, already a fine actress, portraying her great-grandmother on her way to a new life was the perfect ending to this whole experience.

*   *   *

After hosting the Grammys for three years, I was asked to be a presenter at the Academy Awards. The show that year was a disaster. The now infamous moment of Rob Lowe singing “Proud Mary” with Snow White opened the show, and the rest was chaotic. Still, when I walked out there that night to introduce Gregory Hines and Sammy Davis Jr., I felt that I was in the right place. I was now part of the movie community. A few months later, Gil Cates asked me to host the Oscars the next year. He was producing the show for the first time. The Oscars had become a laughingstock, and together our goal was to make the show something special again.

By then
When Harry Met Sally …
was a big hit, and Nora had been nominated for Best Screenplay. The movie had also been nominated for the Golden Globe as Best Comedy, and Meg and I were nominated for Best Actor and Actress in a Comedy or Musical. At the Globes I was sitting near Steve Martin, who was nominated for
Parenthood.
When our category came up and we both lost to Morgan Freeman for
Driving Miss Daisy,
I ran over to Steve and said, “Let’s go up there and ask who finished second.” As Steve and I approached the stage and asked the question, the look on Cybil Shepherd’s face was priceless. (Yes, we did it, and you can Google this one, too!) Steve is one of the truly great original funny people. I’m sorry that moment at the Globes is the only chance we’ve had to work together.

As the Oscars approached, I had this strong feeling of
Wow, I’m really going to do this
.
I am hosting the same show Bob Hope and Johnny Carson did.
When I was growing up in the fifties and early sixties, the Oscars was always a special event. We gathered around our black-and-white television set to watch the glamorous Hollywood stars sitting together having a wonderful time. The show had such class and dignity. Back then, the only awards shows were the Emmys and the Oscars, and watching them, I felt as if I’d been granted a special one-night pass to sit in the palace with the legends. Bob Hope was usually the master of ceremonies and appeared almost regal in his formal tails. He was funny and charming, and although I didn’t get most of his jokes, it didn’t matter because the camera cut to Gregory Peck laughing, or to Jimmy Stewart or Jack Lemmon or Anthony Quinn sitting with some gorgeous movie star on his arm. Even though our DuMont TV set was black-and-white, I could see every color. Now I felt that I had been handed the baton in a relay race and it was my turn to run. Following in the footsteps of Hope and Carson was a huge responsibility, and I wanted to be great.

Robert Wuhl was again writing with me, and we set out to give the show the same kind of unpredictable feel we’d given the Grammys. Jack Nicholson would be in the audience and had just made a fortune as the Joker in
Batman
. We decided to write jokes about that, like “Jack is so rich, Morgan Freeman drove him here tonight” and “Jack is so rich, Jon Peters”—the former hair stylist and now studio head—“still cuts his hair.” I also had the idea to create a musical medley that would parody the usually lame musical numbers at the Oscars, especially the “Proud Mary” moment from the prior year. Marc Shaiman and Bruce Vilanch came on board, and we wrote the first of what would become a favorite feature of my hosting appearances: the medley. I would sing special lyrics for each of the five nominated films. It wasn’t easy to write a funny lyric for a serious movie. Oliver Stone’s
JFK
was the most daunting. How to pick a song and rewrite it with funny special lyrics about the murder of our president? We wanted to parody “Tradition” from
Fiddler on the Roof
—“A gunman on the knoll. Sounds crazy, no? Suspicion!”—but we couldn’t get permission from the composers. Instead, to the tune of “Three Coins in the Fountain,” I sang, “Three shots in the plaza, who done it, Mr. Stone?”

Walking out there that first time as the host of the Oscars was one of the best moments of my life. With each challenging experience in my career, I felt I had grown more muscle. I’d come a long way from the nervous, dry-mouthed kid at his first
Tonight Show.
I wasn’t overwhelmed; I could feel that the audience wanted me there, and I wanted them to know I loved being there. I also walked out there not just as a comedian but as one of the stars in a movie that people loved. I felt proud and, more importantly, I felt ready; in fact, I wasn’t even nervous. I was excited. The monologue was strong and loose, and the medley really scored.

I had a long break during the show and was in my dressing room freshening up my makeup and looking at my notes when somebody knocked on the door. I opened it, and there stood Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty. “Thanks for talking about my money,” Jack said.

“You’re doing great, and we wanted to tell you,” Warren said. This was the first time I had met these two icons, and this gesture of theirs blew me away. Since then I have spent a lot of time with Warren, who is one of the smartest and most charming people I have ever met, and Jack and I have gone on to be friends. It’s like being pals with Babe Ruth.

*   *   *