I borrowed heavily for this chapter from a piece I published on the blog right here, but it's still a decent insight into how I came to do what I do. By which I mean be funny. Not masturbation. Which I also have done, though not nearly as much these days, because I have a girlfriend. And now I'm very uncomfortably going to try and steer the conversation back to this week's chapter. And away from masturbation.
Chapter Twenty-Four
On the Origins of Making
Shit Up
I am invariably asked about my
early influences. Who was my inspiration? Who did I want to be when I was a
kid? Well, first I thought I wanted to be Mel Blanc, until I saw a picture of
Mel (pre-Internet, remember?), and I found him to be very old. I didn’t want to
be old. Still, he had great character range and perfect timing. So yeah, he was
an early influence.
Mighty Mel.
So was the late, great Jonathan Winters, from whom I
developed the love of making shit up as I went. You always got the feeling,
watching Uncle Jonathan, that he was just as curious as you to see where the
sketch was going and that he – like you – had no idea where that was. But he
always got there.
Uncle Jonathan.
I discovered Monty Python’s Flying
Circus around the same time I discovered masturbation – which is to say
that age 12 was a very good year for me. That was the first time I ever saw a
group of people working together for the express purpose of being funny. I
didn’t know what “creative collaboration” was back then; I only knew that it
took all of those guys to make the show so good. Circus was also my first exposure to a culturally different kind of funny, and I can tie
that experience directly to my love of history. As a twelve year-old American
boy, I could watch sketches like Dead
Parrot and Upper Class Twit of the
Year and Cheese Shop, and
understand that they were funny. But I wanted to know why English people thought they were funny. Python taught me that a real understanding of your audience can
make what you’re doing even funnier. This was a huge influence for me as I
began doing Wishbone, and learning
that it wasn’t just little kids watching our show, but college students,
parents, etc. I began to develop an irreverence in the character of the dog
that played well to older viewers. I began to understand my audience, and I owe
that nugget of wisdom to the Pythons.
Funny fucking Brits. And one weird American.
But the biggest influence of all – the guy who
taught me that making shit up was not only funny, but could be done for a living - was Robin Williams.
And I even got to meet him,
once.
There was some
video industry award ceremony in Los Angeles, and Wishbone
had been asked to
be a presenter. So the dog, the dog's trainer, our
producers and I
got on a plane and went to California. I don't remember most of that
evening. I
remember getting to see Kenny Loggins doing his sound check. I
remember Howie
Mandel was the emcee, and he was an egotistical prick. The only
other thing I remember from that evening was
being backstage, just hanging
around until we were told what to do, when the
hairiest man I'd ever seen walked
right up to Jackie Kaptan (Wishbone's trainer),
and asked, very politely, "Is it okay if
I pet him?"
And he knelt down to pet the dog. Three feet in front of me. The man
whose
comedic hurricane blew into my sails at an
early age, and charted the only course I
was ever going to take.
In 1979, everybody knew who Robin Williams was.
Literally. Everybody. 60 million people a week tuned in to watch Mork &
Mindy. And when the show aired on Thursday night, I memorized every good
line and repeated them all day Friday at O.A. Reaves Intermediate, in my sixth
grade homeroom class. But what most of the god-fearing, conservative citizens
of Conroe, Texas did NOT know about Mr. Williams was his cutting-edge,
stream-of-consciousness, and very adult-themed stand-up material.
My best friend, Steve
Woodson, managed to get his hands on that album. Probably because his parents
were way cooler than mine. We played the shit
out of that record. When Williams opened his show impersonating a Russian doing
a New York echo (“Helloooooo.........Shut the fuck up!”), that's when I
knew. I had already cemented my reputation as the class clown. Robin showed me
that I could take it further. He revealed to me that I could - if I chose -
actually make my tiny part of the world just a little brighter; that I could
make comedy stop being for me, and make it for all of them.
Flash forward to 1997. A stupid video
industry award show. Backstage. And he's on one knee, three feet in front of
me, petting a dog. My long-distance mentor. My hero. And an opportunity I knew
I would never, ever, have again:
Me: Mr. Williams?
RW (standing and shaking my hand): Hello.
Me: Thank you. For everything. You're the reason I
decided to make my living being funny.
RW: Wow. You're welcome. What an incredible thing to
say.
That was it. His handlers whisked him
off to wherever he was supposed to be. I looked around at my friends, the people
I had spent so much time with working on our own show. We were all blinking
rapidly, like we'd just looked directly into the sun for a second. How many
kids get to meet their hero?
When I heard of his death by
suicide in 2014, I was a hot fucking mess for days. Naturally, I thought about
my father, and how it could be that now two of my male role models had checked
out of this existence in the same manner. In the end, I’m grateful to have had
the opportunity to look my comedy hero in his eye, and say, simply, thank you.
Not “Oh my God, you’re so awesome!,” or
“Where do you come up with this shit?”
Just Thank You.
Next Week, Chapter Twenty-Five: Gratitudinal Propers
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