Satiristas Page 22

  It’s pretty hard to change dogmatic ideologues. I’m not necessarily ever gonna agree with people who are anti-choice or who believe this war is right. That’s also why I like telling personal stories. I’m not afraid to tell my abortion story, because people can’t argue with my experience; no one can say, “You didn’t have that experience.”

  RICK SHAPIRO

  WITH A TROUBLED (to say the least) past fueling improvisational, highly personal comedy, Rick Shapiro was a legend in the underground comedy scene. Louis CK introduced him to wider audiences on his HBO sitcom, Lucky Louie, and stand-out appearances on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn gave a platform for his uniquely enigmatic worldview, but live stand-up is where Rick’s work truly shines. He is perhaps the most jazz-like comedian working today. Rick’s art is best appreciated over time and successive performances rather than any one show or individual jokes. His wildly caroming comedy takes you on unpredictable, hilarious journeys into his personal hell and back again to ours, with surprising poetic sensitivity and appreciable prosaic anger.

  RICK SHAPIRO: Something happened when I was a hustler: this big, rich, powerful guy would put on straight porno to get me hard and then he’d blow me. One time he dropped to his knees, and behind where he’d been standing I saw a picture of his son in military school, and one of his wife posing with a nun.

  PAUL PROVENZA: That moment’s got pretty much everything represented in it.

  RICK SHAPIRO: Exactly. I saw what, to me, was all just “The Big Lie.” The guy’d say things like, “You’re such an energetic kid, you gotta get your life together.”

  I’d say, “Yeah, you’re the guy I should listen to about straightening out my life.”

  I started doing stuff that was more “political” when I watched the presidential primary debates and it all looked like satire to me. They didn’t look like leaders at all; they don’t even look human. John Edwards blinked impulsively all the time; Martin Luther King, with a real fight and real truth on his side didn’t fucking blink. To me, those people are all completely satirical. Somebody made them up to mock the citizens, but the citizens don’t fucking know it.

  At some gig a few years ago, Ralph Nader was on the green-room TV and some girl goes, “Ewww! Change the channel!” Because Nader looks like a real human being looks: cheap suit, wrinkled sleeves, he sweats, doesn’t fix his hair or fake smile, and tries to say important details no one else does. She goes, “Put on Six Feet Under.”

  I said, “Ah, that show sucks.”

  She goes, “Don’t insult my friends!”

  She’s an actress, so she might know actors on the show, so I said, “I’m sorry. I said the show sucks, not the actors.”

  And she goes, “No, the actors aren’t my friends, the characters are.” So she’s a total satire now; a completely satirical being. Somebody drew her and put her in a cartoon.

  Man! The only time I feel really alive is when I’m saying things like this. That, and when I’m with my girl and she’s hard for it until I put on my motorcycle pajamas and become the satire that I am: a guy who wants a motorcycle more than anything but spends too much money, so I have to settle for motorcycle pajamas. With little Harleys on ’em. Double nickels. Put those flannel babies on, it’s like you’re torqued up to 350, man.

  Anyway, I didn’t even know I was doing satire when I started. I’d just got off drugs and I’d go to these AA meetings and my sponsor would tap about fifty people on the shoulder and say, “Hey everybody, watch Rick do comedy. Rick, imitate their shares.”

  I’d imitate everybody’s “share” and characters—real inside, really personal shit—and they’d be cracking up: “My name’s Ray and I’m an alcoholic…and a closet homosexual.” Or, “My name’s Ellen. I’m really more of a spritzer-holic.”

  I think I was getting at some truth, even though to me it was just funny. The whole fuckin’ world is already satire to me, I’m just pointing it out most of the time.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Whenever I read the papers, watch financial news, or just walk through a mall, to me everything seems like self-parody.

  RICK SHAPIRO: I have to say, though, I love malls, because I grew up in New Jersey. My mom’s a mall.

  I think you can have more fun when you’re on the outside knowing that we’re all self-parodies; knowing that basically we all live in I, Robot.

  Here’s a point about comedy being real: a comic I know who always does generic shit like, “Hey, I’m a Jew, so cliché, cliché, cliché…” was fucking with me at a gig, denigrating me in that harmless fun, comic’s way. So I stood near the stage as he went on and said, “At least my brother ain’t dead.” He was completely thrown.

  PAUL PROVENZA: His brother was dead? And you pushed that button just as he went on?

  RICK SHAPIRO: Yeah, I know, I know…I’m an asshole.

  He looked at me in shock, like a scared little kid—but turns to the audience and goes, “Christmases are weird…” Then this long pause…“Because my brother’s dead.”

  It was hilarious. The crowd never expected that fuckin’ opening line. And that was the first time he ever took any risk on stage. Fresh off his head, ’cause he had to deal with it just to be able to do his set. If you’re gonna be a real comic, you gotta go for it, and he had no choice then.

  He sent me a long e-mail, and I realized he really loved and missed his brother and it was so painful for him. I’ve never been close with any of my family, so it took a while for me to get it was really cruel of me. But he also said he started coming up with a whole show about his brother’s death because I forced him to finally confront it all on stage. He had to be authentic up there. Comedy’s absurd, man, isn’t it?

  People in crowds will break through their own shit when they get raw honesty from you, too. People in the business always used to say, “Get them to like you first,” but I never did that. I’d yell, lash out about things, or just blurt shit out without thinking. When I quit drugs I’d sleep all day, so I’d say things like, “I sleep all day…because I really hate brushing my teeth.”

  Cute, silly joke, right? But then I’d blurt out, “Because every time you brush your teeth, you get that thought everybody gets, ‘Oh, I’m the one who’s supposed to kill the president!’ And then your mirror winks at you, your toothbrush starts to dance, and a cockroach on the wall’s whackin’ off going, ‘Do what you want buddy! You’re in charge!’”

  People figured out quick that I’m not your typical middle-aged white guy.

  I don’t know if I’m making much sense at all…because it’s kind of a wide tarmac to throw over the Grapes of Wrath truck.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I think you mean “tarpaulin.” “Tarmac” would be throwing an airport runway over it.

  RICK SHAPIRO: See? I just talk, I don’t really know what I’m saying most of the time. I have trouble putting my thoughts together. But why do they have to be put together so concisely all the time? Who made that rule?

  PAUL PROVENZA: And so you play with form as well as content: you say what you want however it happens to come out—regardless of rules of grammar. We have to get inside your head to figure out what you’re trying to say.

  RICK SHAPIRO: I guess so…I never really went to college; I tried three of ’em, then just fucked up. But the first thing anyone should learn about any writing class is that your professor’s wrong and every thought is yours to write. They’ll say you can’t go against what the “authority” says. Who is the goddamn authority? That’s the real question: who the fuck is “the authority”?

  PAUL PROVENZA: Isn’t railing against authority and convention the substance of all your comedy?

  RICK SHAPIRO: When Louis CK wrote on Conan O’Brien, he got me a gig there playing an “Angry Poet.” That’s when I first saw what fuckheads TV executives are: “We’d like you to hold up a Barney doll for the next poem.”

  I was right off drugs then and had nothing left to lose at that point, so I was, “Fuck you; I’m not holding up any Barney doll. My shit stands
on its own, period.”

  And they’d go, “You’re right. Sorry we mentioned it.”

  So Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Douchebag admitted they don’t know any more than anyone else. The only thing that makes them more successful is that they can carry more fucking Gap bags over their shoulders.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I know you seek more than laughs onstage. Your performance almost feels like a yearning.

  RICK SHAPIRO: It’s weird, because on one hand I’m just doing jokes, but I really think people could be…freer. I see struggle in their eyes. Why should they only hear jokes that don’t rattle them? Why shouldn’t they laugh hard at stuff they’ve been told is wrong? They get it, they laugh, they forget after a while that it’s “wrong” to laugh at. I feel they get me in spite of it all.

  I didn’t plan any of this, I just wanted to do comedy and make somebody laugh. Sometimes it’s just that: “Don’t worry, another guy will be on after me who’ll make you feel comfortable, but I want to take you on a roller-coaster ride. That’s fun, too.”

  I feel like we just have to work to keep our brains alive. That’s all we have in the long run. It’s not an easy thing to do, but at the same time it’s a really easy thing to do: know what gets you mad. People will talk you out of it, or go, “I just don’t want to think about it anymore.”

  Well…I do.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Is stand-up therapeutic for you to help manage anger and handle your “outsider-ness”?

  RICK SHAPIRO: I never felt like it was therapy. People go, “Acting class is therapy; comedy’s therapy.” I’d think, “If it was therapy, then why ain’t I happy?”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Well, it feels like if you don’t do stand-up, you could go on a shooting spree instead.

  RICK SHAPIRO: Yeah, there was a time that coulda happened. Or I’d be in the corner of a room trying to die with heroin.

  PAUL PROVENZA: It feels like you confront a lot of your own demons when you perform, but they’re just barely under control, like Sig-fried and Roy’s tigers.

  RICK SHAPIRO: But I also do simple, silly things everyone can relate to easily, too. Like I do that guy who gets all crazy asking for his pen back: “Can I have my pen back? Gimme my pen back…”

  “Shut up about the fuckin’ pen! Your pen needs to live without you. It needs to live somewhere else now, with real men. Have you heard about Darfur? Who gives a fuck about your fifty-cent pen? Why are you wasting energy chasing me down three flights of stairs? Adopt a dog, throw him a ball. Feed that baby you saw on TV in some desert somewhere. Stop with the fucking pen.”

  Maybe that guy drives me nuts because I was never taught to respect anything I’ve ever owned. Maybe they’re into self-care, and I just can’t relate.

  Is that confrontational? I don’t think so. Is it? I guess it is. Is it?

  PAUL PROVENZA: I see all your comedy essentially as: “I’ve figured out the hard way what’s important in life, and you want me to care about stupid shit? Why am I the bad guy for not caring about stupid shit?”

  RICK SHAPIRO: That’s kinda it, isn’t it? I even used to yell that on stage: “I’m the bad guy! I’m the nut! I’m the pile of shit!” I guess I spent so much time on the other side just watching.

  I used to go to an acting class when I was drinking. I was really shy; I acted with my back to the class and never turned around. One guy from class would hang out and listen to me tell my crazy stories till three in the morning. He called once and said, “I really liked hanging out with you tonight.”

  I hung up on him. I was really fucked up. If you’re gonna hustle, you’re pretty much fucked up, right? But I called him back and said, “Thanks, but…What does that mean?”

  He said, “It means I want to be your friend.”

  I didn’t know how to have a friend. I’d never really talked to anyone before, but we had great talks, became good friends—and he went to AA and helped me with that. He also said, “I think you’re a comedian and you don’t even know it.”

  In AA, they say, “Go where it’s warm.”

  I’m such a moron I took it literally: “It’s warm inside this comedy club; I’ll go in.” That’s how I stumbled into comedy!

  I’d get embarrassed because my stuff was so different and weird compared to everyone else, and I’d just run. One night this girl calls me, “I’m a comedian, too. You were like a breath of fresh air.”

  The next night, I’m screwing her from behind thinking, “This is where I want to be: telling jokes and screwing around. I could do this.”

  But I’m such a child; nobody taught me how to not be afraid or how to deal with fear. I still get scared walking into a club sometimes. But I just gotta go up with what I know, right?

  PAUL PROVENZA: Where did your particular fear come from?

  RICK SHAPIRO: My father was really broke and ashamed of his background, so I guess he felt powerless, and we were his toy soldiers. You couldn’t have any independence; he’d freak out when I had any idea of my own.

  I used to write poems and stick them under everybody’s door. He’d rip them up, shake me and yell, “What’s wrong with you?” in my face.

  “WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU??”

  And he had this thing of never apologizing. My mother would say, “Your father’s sorry for smacking you.”

  He’d give me a look during dinner that meant he would hit me, and I’d jump up on my desk, open my window, and run away. He’d line us up Sunday nights and hit us over the nose with a rolled-up newspaper, like a dog. He did weird shit to my brother with enemas and…whatever.

  We didn’t know we were allowed to, if we ever needed to go to the bathroom. I’d be so scared all the time, I was afraid to raise my hand in school, so I’d piss my pants. I’d have a puddle under my desk every day. That was normal for me.

  I think this year, at forty-something, I finally learned instead of waiting until after being onstage, you can go right fucking now. Because I’m up for the new Desperate Housewives or whatever, I feel like I can finally just take a piss when I need to.

  SANDRA BERNHARD

  IN THE 1980s, Sandra Bernhard slipped the comedy world a roofie and had her way with it. As her stand-up took unique and innovative form, she took on a persona as daringly outrageous as it is vulnerably intimate. Amid the traditionally desexualized world of stand-up, Sandra joyously celebrated her sexuality and challenged our assumptions about our own. After three decades of torching formerly unexamined identities of gender, sexuality, and even race, Bernhard explains how she did what she did, why she did it, and how through comedy she became who she dreamed she could be.

  SANDRA BERNHARD: The most interesting comics have been born with this weird way of looking at the world and have been victims of estrangement and alienation from things we should look up to.

  When I was ten, my family moved to Arizona, and it wasn’t a very comfortable place for me, so it forced me to really look inward to find a world I escaped into. I had to rely on my imagination and projections of my future. A lot of the stuff I address comes from that.

  My whole high school experience was just waiting to get out of high school. With my few friends, we’d talk about how we were going to travel to Europe and be these interesting, creative people. In reality, I was skinny and awkward, but I already had a certain kind of self-confidence that came out of all that uncertainty about myself. I knew exactly what I wanted to accomplish: to break out and be the sophisticated, sexy, exciting person I wanted to be.

  When I started performing at eighteen, that was where I was coming from.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So when you went onstage, you went on as the person you wanted to be, and then actually became that person?

  SANDRA BERNHARD: Precisely. I created my own world, my own reality, and my own happiness for myself. I didn’t look for someone else to go, “You’re beautiful! You’re fabulous! We accept you!” I was always on the outside, so I took that and turned it around and found some sort of happiness and understanding of myself, and with others who hav
e a similar way of being in the world.

  When I’m onstage, I become the persona of the all-knowing, sophisticated, totally-comfortable-in-her-own-skin, I’ll-handle-every-situation woman I always wanted to be. Once I walk offstage, I’m back to who I am right now talking with you, but I’d never walk onstage and do what I’m doing now. When I walk onstage, I take on the “Sandra Bernhard” persona.

  PAUL PROVENZA: It’s an interesting paradox: you’ve created a character that you’re able to hide behind, but the character you hide behind is one who’s open and vulnerable.

  SANDRA BERNHARD: Exactly. I’ve got to step into that character. You’ve got to be in that hyper-state or you can’t do what you’re doing onstage. It’s too much; you’ll implode and fall apart at the seams.

  PAUL PROVENZA: You’ve always had a very different approach to stand-up. How much of that was just who you are, and how much was a conscious effort to do something different with the form?

  SANDRA BERNHARD: When I started, we had Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers, and all these women doing self-deprecating things: husband jokes, kid jokes, ugly jokes. I was just, “This is a bummer. This has got to change.” I was postfeminist; I had a strong, natural belief that a woman can be and do whatever she wanted to no matter what she looked like or where she came from. I said, “I’m not going to put myself down.”

  It was a battle between how I looked at it and what the audience was used to seeing: women who act like men, or like a man’s idea of women. It seemed like women took on all the trappings of what male comics were doing, so I was going to come in being a woman, doing what I wanted to do as a woman.

  PAUL PROVENZA: What kind of obstacles did you run into?

  SANDRA BERNHARD: In L.A., I was dealing with the sexism of a woman who owned The Comedy Store and the sexism of a man who owned The Improv. They both looked at me, like, “What the hell’s she doing? Singing, talking about these things, being confident? This isn’t what we’re used to.” Of course, they’d seen all that from male comics for ages, they just weren’t used to it from a female. I had to break through all that just to get stage time.