Satiristas Read online

  That’s the one thing that everyone in comedy does agree on.

  Paul Provenza

  BILLY CONNOLLY

  FROM A DARK, abusive childhood in a Glaswegian tenement was born the unlikeliest of comic heroes. Billy Connolly’s path from welder to folksinger to Britain’s most popular stand-up is at once revelatory, inspiring, and hilarious. While his oft-indecipherable brogue held him back from worldwide stardom, icons such as John Cleese and Elton John were pulling him into the spotlight. His storytelling punch-line-shy style blazed trails for countless U.K. successors, and his maniacal laugh surrounds important truths—not the least of which is humor’s ability to triumph over anything.

  BILLY CONNOLLY: I don’t know much about comedy, I just like to be there when it’s happening. I don’t analyze it, but I know when it’s in the fucking room. I know when it’s in me.

  Nobody even knows what laughter is. Nobody knows why your body expels air, makes that noise; the actual physical act isn’t understood. They understand yawning to a degree, research has been done on sneezing, crying we understand a bit instinctively—but laughing? Your head pitches backward, your legs slide down, you’re lying on the ground unable to get up from laughing, and we don’t even know why our bodies do it. It’s just…a physical expression of happiness, of joy.

  Good hearty laughter is the next best thing to orgasm, isn’t it? It’s just the most extraordinary thing you can do for your fellow human being. What a gift to give a total stranger!

  I think the biggest duty and asset of comedy is to instill optimism in people. And when used sensibly, comedy carries immense power. It can prove that the little man can destroy the big man. You can belittle Hitler with comedy. People in jodhpurs and jackboots storming into rooms, frightening the shit out of you…Give me a microphone. You can expose with a fucking searchlight the banality of dictatorship—just fucking nail it. One good line heard by enough people can destroy bastards’ lives forever.

  It can be very harmful, too, and destroy somebody you quite like. A good, liberal politician in Britain—a nice, honest man named David Steel—was very young, running against a much older politician. Spitting Image was a political satire show on telly then that portrayed politicians with big, exaggerated puppets, and Steel’s puppet was this wee little boy. It was such well-done comedy that people could only think of him as a child and never took him seriously again. It destroyed his political career.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Are you interested in making that kind of impact, or teaching anyone anything?

  BILLY CONNOLLY: I don’t want to teach anybody anything. I don’t see comedians to be taught stuff, I go to laugh.

  PAUL PROVENZA: But haven’t you ever learned anything watching a comedian?

  BILLY CONNOLLY: Oh, all the time—but that was never their intention. The comedians I know—even politically driven ones—don’t want to change anybody; it’s art for art’s sake. You do it for you, not for them. It’s a bonus if they like it, just as with painting and sculpture.

  If you’re doing it really well, you should be doing it for you; you should have your own standards you go by. You’re not a service industry; you’re not a waiter, to be sent back and come out with something different. You give your best, do what you can for them to enjoy what your best is, then you go home.

  But when people are really good at something—whether it’s a great comedian, guitarist, sitar player, someone doing sonatas on the piano—they bring this atmosphere with them that makes you think great. You find yourself wandering off in your brain. Sensually, it wakens you up. You’re half asleep most of the time just waiting to be fed little bits of information, but this is different. This is manna— total nutrition.

  There are painters who do it, musicians who do it…I don’t know what it is. Just people who are good at what they do.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Is it talent or intellect? Their love of what they do? Dedication to skill and craft?

  BILLY CONNOLLY: All of those things. It’s their desire to be good at it. And it’s vocational; it’s not come to on the spur of the moment. Every comedian I like does comedy because they couldn’t do anything else; they were driven. They didn’t particularly know why, didn’t particularly want to do it, but were driven and couldn’t not do it. Like a “calling.”

  And I don’t think you’re born with it. I think a set of circumstances come together—some darker than others. Having to overcome unhappiness gives you a desire to manifest happiness just to get above your own darkness—even if it means involving people you don’t know.

  That was my case, I think. I had a kind of darkness in my childhood—I won’t go into it—but from being messed around sexually and physically, a broken family, unhappy household, all that crap. You have to get above it somehow. You have to get above yourself, so you start trying to make your friends, “the guys,” laugh.

  The only trouble is, it makes you attractive to guys!

  PAUL PROVENZA: But all those polls in Cosmo and such say women think a sense of humor is the sexiest thing in a man.

  BILLY CONNOLLY: Comedy’s the least sexy thing in show business! Playing bass badly gets you more women than doing comedy well does. It’s just one of those rotten things.

  I’ve made bad choices as far as things that would get me laid. Playing banjo? Never in your life will you hear, “She’s fucking the banjo player.”

  It just isn’t in the lexicon. People who play banjo just love banjo; no one chooses it to get laid, believe me. They just love the noise of a banjo; couldn’t resist it. Same thing with comedy—we’re just driven in that direction.

  People play guitar to get laid. They play piano because they’re the youngest in the family and somebody had to play this piece of furniture; people play violin ’cause their mother made them, that social-climbing bitch; they play bass usually because they’re the most boring guy in the band and, “You’ll fucking play bass or you’re out of the band, ’cause anybody can play bass.”

  People play drums because…Well, drummers…they’re not well. They don’t get laid much either, actually, ’cause nobody even knows they’re in the band hiding behind all that shit.

  But comedy? You only get laid when you’re successful—and then you get laid for being successful, not for being in comedy. It’s kinda weird.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Your show is always different. I’ve seen you be completely silly; I’ve seen you do political material, or talk about religion, social issues—

  BILLY CONNOLLY: You have to take what I’ve got on the night; whatever comes in. And it’s made of anger, adrenaline, and coffee. I have one coffee a day, about fifteen minutes before I go onstage. I have a coffee, go “Whoo-hooo!” and get up there.

  The guitarist Paco Peña once said to me, “Don’t you drink before you go on?”

  I said, “No. Never, ever.”

  He said, “Well, you behave like a drunk man.” Because it’s about anger and shouting and bawling with me.

  Peña always has one whiskey before going on, to take the edge off for playing—but I want that edge. I want to be jumpy, not smooth and ready. Smooth and ready is Vegas lounge: “Hello, ladies and gentlemen…Hey! Some kinda town!”

  Fuck that; I want to see a guy who’s thinking, whose eyes are thinking—so that’s the level I go for in myself.

  PAUL PROVENZA: When you do choose to do social commentary, isn’t it to make some kind of statement?

  BILLY CONNOLLY: No, most of it’s a question, I find. I told my kids early in their lives, “Watch out for people who know the answer and avoid them. Try to keep the company of people who generally are trying to understand the question.”

  That’s what I’ve done my whole life: tried to make sense of what’s the question. If there’s an answer, what’s the question? I’m interested in the question.

  I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that there are questions whose job is just to be a question, not to have an answer. People think questions should have answers, but some questions are complete o
n their own. Like when your mother says to you, “Where have you been till this time of night?”

  The last thing on earth she wants you to do is tell her. It doesn’t require an answer; the question’s a statement. I kinda like just a question.

  Most of the time I’m talking about things that baffle or intrigue me. Sometimes I’ll tell the audience, “If you’ve never seen me before, I should tell you that you may feel a wee bit uncomfortable sometimes. Because sometimes I’ll tell you stuff I find interesting and it’s not particularly funny, so you won’t know what to do ’cause there’s no punch line. But I’ll tell them to you anyway and you won’t know what to do when I’m finished, but neither will I, so we’ll stand just looking at each other for a while. But I’m sure we’ll find a way out of it.”

  Because sometimes I do just tell them something where maybe the punch line’s at the beginning—but you have to finish the story anyway to make any sense of what you just said even though there’s no punch line at the end. Guys like me, you—modern guys—we’re into a more rambling, non-punch-line-y style. The punch is all over the place. There are highlights and lowlights, but we’ve kind of got out of the way of punch lines and gimmicks and catch phrases. And it’s a very happy place to be, because people don’t know quite what to expect of you—and you don’t know what to expect either.

  A lot of comedians are more like salesmen: “Lemme sell you this bit here.” That’s where all the little bits of gimmickry come in—nods and winks and nudges and punch lines that sound exactly like punch lines.

  Treating it as art, you do it for you. You’re not thinking about the effect it’s having on everybody, you’re saying it because you believe it to be funny, you’re thinking fast, speaking fast, and it kind of overtakes you. You’re not sure what it is, but you’re glad it’s there beside you on this evening. I know you’ve had nights where you’re just flying along and you think, “Oh, God…Don’t end! Wheeee!” That’s what I aim for.

  People think, “Well, don’t you listen to your audience?” What a stupid question! Of course we listen to them. I don’t know what they’re saying—I get it in some kind of code I don’t really understand—but when I’m not getting it I’m deeply unhappy. When I can’t hear them it’s not fun, and when I can hear them again, I’m flying again. I hear them the way football players hear their audience: just a big noise, like a wave. And I’m a surfer.

  I have to step onto this wave of noise they’re making and it carries me—Whooossshhh! I step on at a certain point in the laughter, then more blah blah blah and I’m in charge again.

  Watch Conan O’Brien; you see he has no idea what that is. I’ve said this to him personally, so I can say it publicly, too. He speaks at the wrong time and misses the wave. He’ll be the first to tell you that he came to his show as a writer, not as a performer, so he doesn’t have faith in performance and tries to create something rather than feel it.

  I’ve told Conan, “You’re not riding the wave.

  You leave it too late to speak, until they’re absolutely silent. When they go, ‘Haaaaah!,’ step onto it, become part of it, then you’ll conduct it.”

  Letterman’s a genius at it and probably doesn’t even know how he does it or how to explain it; he just does it and always has. Leno and Ferguson too, ’cause they’ve done lots of live stand-up. They know that noise and how to surf it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I believe that you can learn anything you want to know about someone from what they do or don’t do in their act.

  BILLY CONNOLLY: Without question. Pete Townsend once said in an interview, “If you don’t want anyone to know anything about you, don’t write anything.” Because your personality will come through; you’ll always show exactly who you are.

  PAUL PROVENZA: So what does your work say about you?

  BILLY CONNOLLY: That I’m alone. I’m fucking alone. Everything I do is about making all these other people laugh, but if you listen to my stuff, you’ll find there’s this wee—not lonely guy, but alone guy.

  Most comedians, I think, are. You’d think we’re gregarious, but actually we’re kind of loners. That comes from a lifetime of one-nighters. You’re alone all the time.

  There’s nothing that’s not “alone.” People sometimes think “lonely,” but they’ve got it wrong. I’m not lonely up there, but I am alone—and there’s a certain power that comes with being alone up there.

  You’re born to be a loner when you’re a comedian. That’s what kind of molds you, and that’s what makes you an original thinker.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Being alone allows you to find a unique, individual perspective?

  BILLY CONNOLLY: Aye. Eventually you’re just telling people your life—exaggerated, but you basically single out your solitary self and put a light on it.

  Barry Humphries—he’s Dame Edna—said the loveliest thing about this: “Sometimes I’m surrounded by people, doing press conferences, dealing with people in the business…and then I walk onto the stage in front of three thousand people and think, ‘Ahhh…Alone at last.’”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Oh…That is breathtaking.

  BILLY CONNOLLY: Doesn’t that just hit home?

  PAUL PROVENZA: Speaking of original thinking, when I discovered George Carlin in the seventies, he was for me what the Sex Pistols were for other people my age. His art inspired me to reject assumptions, question authority, and to feel that having a different view of things is not necessarily “wrong.” He gave me “permission” to think differently.

  BILLY CONNOLLY: Richard Pryor did that as well. It’s making you into something, letting you be who you’re gonna be.

  The biggest favor we do for people is to release them. Society, culture, puts them in jail—and we let them out. The rule-makers, whoever they are, decided a box you’re going to live in. We need to be reminded that you can step out of the box—and you can go right back in again if you want, too.

  See, when you laugh about something, something in it must be true. It got to you somehow; it hit something in you somewhere. That’s the way change comes. You reaffirm in people’s minds what they felt in the first place. Maybe you wake it up, but they have to feel it themselves to begin with. You can re-interest them in something; get people who are open to it to think differently as a result of your having been there. People who’ve never thought about something until you say it may continue thinking about it, and thereby change in some way.

  But that’s change starting from nowhere; I don’t think you can change people who already think a certain way. I don’t think change comes that way. I don’t think the intellect even works that way. Even most people who read philosophy aren’t trying to get new ideas, they’re trying to reaffirm what they already think themselves. Most people go through life trying to find proof for what they already think.

  But thinking too much about all that gets you into all sorts of trouble in comedy. Sometimes you should just go with the belly and the gut, with what you feel. Sometimes it’s cruel, but not always. Sometimes you’re so wrong that’s funny. Sometimes your naiveté is funny; sometimes your accuracy is what’s funny…But ours is not to reason why, I think. Ours is to just fucking get on with it.

  And here’s the toughest thing—and also the loveliest thing—about comedy: a comedian can’t nearly win. You can’t nearly get them. Even boxers can win if they nearly get somebody.

  But not comedians.

  ROBIN WILLIAMS

  ROBIN WILLIAMS LONG ago made the transition from manic, unpredictable stand-up to A-list actor—Oscar-winning and family-friendly. But he never abandoned the stand-up stage, and never strayed far from his stand-up roots. Unlike so many who move on to expansive careers in film or television, Robin still identifies as a stand-up comedian first and foremost. It’s his default setting, and he’s the perfect illustration of how you can take the comic out of stand-up, but you can’t take the stand-up out of a comic. After entertaining our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, he returned with a wider worldview and more finely honed
sense of what humor can do and why it’s more important now than ever.

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: You just can’t get better audiences than our troops overseas. They’re glad as hell to see you, because, well…you know. They’re like, “We have to, but you?”

  They appreciate that you come there, but also that while you’re there, you’ll try to learn some of the discrepancies in what we’re told—that everything is going well. The troops want the real truth to be told.

  PAUL PROVENZA: How does political material work with the troops in the midst of it all?

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: Back when the Hummers still hadn’t been sufficiently armored yet, I said they should strap Dick Cheney to the front of a Humvee like that character “Lord Humungus” in Road Warrior. Strap him right to the front: “Now they’re sufficiently armored!”

  The troops were pretty into that kind of thing. When Rumsfeld commented publicly on the troops not having the equipment and armor they really needed, he said, “You fight a war with what you’ve got.”

  I said, “Yeah, but…eleventh-century Norman armor?”

  They loved that stuff. Ripping on Bush with them was an easy shot, too—because they fucking knew how insane Bush was.

  PAUL PROVENZA: In the comedy clubs, if you criticized the war or said maybe it was a bad idea—even now people still go, “No! We gotta support the troops!” But when there’s military in the crowd, they always take my side of the argument.

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: Big time. Especially if they’ve been over there. The troops realize more than anyone the insanity of what the fuck they’ve been put into. You talk to those guys, they’ll tell you that questioning the government is not being unpatriotic, it’s the ultimate patriotism!