Satiristas Read online

  If patriotism means “Don’t question authority,” we’d still be English: “Oh dear yes, things are going quite well, I think, really. Tea?”

  Plus a lot of the troops are way beyond their tours of duty. They’re stretched way beyond normal capabilities—and people are still actually floating the idea of going into Iran?? The Army and Marines already lowered their standards to take in people with criminal records. If we need even more troops, they’ll have to lower their standards to where they’ll have the “Very Special Forces”: “Da Ahmy said dey have pudding evvy day! I in da Ahmy cause I love pudding in da Ahmy!”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you ever get flak for any material?

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: Occasionally you’ll get the born-again Christian who’ll come at you hard. The Christian Reich—sorry, “Right.” And you think, “When the Rapture comes and all you guys leave…the place will be so much quieter.”

  That idea that in the Rapture they’ll go to the front of the line and get to heaven? Muslims have the same thing about them going to the front of the line, orthodox Jews have their own thing about that, and, you know…Hmmm.

  The orthodox Jews—hard-core Lubavitch—they’ll be occupying the West Bank, yet they won’t be in the military, but they’ll tell other Jews, “You’re not real Jews!” “Oh. Well, okay, let me put down my Uzi and we’ll talk theology.”

  It’s all that, “a Mormon’s not really a Christian,” and a Shiite’s not really a Muslim, and a Sunni’s not really a Muslim to Shiites…It’s all these different people saying, “I’m the chosen one, you’re not. You’re next in line. We’re in front. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.”

  Even Scientologists—and they’re the most litigious of all. If you make fun of them, they’ll contact you and your lawyers immediately. I made a joke about “Profitology” with N. Ron Hubbard—which was really an Enron joke–but right away I was contacted by a celebrity who shall remain nameless saying, “You know, if you wouldn’t do that, that would really be great.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: How’d you respond to that?

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: Well, he called as a friend, so I tried to deal with it. I said, “It’s not really a joke about Scientology, it’s about Enron.” And he said, “No, but, really…We’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t.” I said, “I’ll try and be respectful of that.”

  And then I did a bit about the “Church of Gynecology.” Just to go through those curtains would be wonderful. A lot of people would join.

  But they were the only people that ever contacted me about anything like that. I never heard from the Catholic church when I talked about the “Divine Witness Protection Program” for pedophilic priests. But Scientology? They were right on me.

  Anti-abortion people are pretty touchy, too. I’d said that if you actually brought them their very own crack baby, they might not be so into their own idea. Just show up at their homes, “You’re anti-abortion, would you mind raising just this one child? The one screaming nonstop from the moment it was born? That would be really helpful.” And I got hideous, horrifying letters wishing plagues upon me, attacking my family…So there’s the love and compassion there, right?

  But you take it in stride. It comes with the territory of saying what you believe and speaking your mind. I did some event and made fun of Sylvester Stallone, and Billy Crystal’s going, “Stallone is here!” But if you can’t do it right in front of them, then you have to ask yourself, “Just how brave am I?” Like when Joan Rivers actually wondered aloud why Elizabeth Taylor was angry at her. “Because you said she has more chins than a Chinese phone book. What do you fuckin’ think!?”

  If you can’t take responsibility for it then you just have to admit you’re chicken shit.

  PAUL PROVENZA: I think we sometimes get conflicts with political material because we ask people to stop thinking just in terms of white hat/black hat or good vs. evil, and people don’t want to deal with that—intellectually or emotionally.

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: The point is you have to make them deal with it, or eventually they’ll be dealing with it in far worse ways.

  The Russian government used to say the Russian people are this big, powerful bear, but if you have them worried about balancing on a ball, they won’t get off it and kill you. “Balancing on a ball” means FEAR! You make people too afraid of losing their balance to worry about anything else.

  I think more people realize this now, but the only way to break through is to consistently stay on people, man. The big lie only breaks down when you hit ’em with the big truth. And you don’t give up. You don’t go, “Oh, well…Whatever.” That’s what the powers that be want—they hope you’ll just go, “Oh, well.”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Are you more politicized now than you used to be?

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: I’m finding myself all of a sudden waking up. After rehab, life changed. I realized I don’t want to medicate myself in any form. I want to be awake and aware. There’s a lot to be thankful for, and there’s a lot to fight for. This country is such a mess, there’s a lot to stand up about and go, “Hey!” And the fact is that we comics, we can do that. In other countries we’d be jailed or dead. A famous Iraqi comic, a big TV star over there, named Walid Hassan was killed a couple of years ago in Baghdad. That’s a bad place to be a comic.

  True story: In Germany, I was on this very dry German talk show with a woman hosting it, and at one point she said, “Vy do you zink zere’s not so much comedy in Germany? Ve have some, but not a lot.”

  And I said, “Did you ever think it’s because you tried to kill all the funny people?”

  And here’s the frightening part: She took a moment and then went, “No.”

  I thought, “Oh, fuck. There it is. That’s it right there.”

  You know, if you go back in history to the fool—who was usually a dwarf or a deformed person, by the way—the fool’s purpose was to point out to the king himself all the king’s foibles and weaknesses, and as best he could, make the king go “Ha, ha” about them. His job was to remind the king, “You are not a god.”

  In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco talks about the comedies and Plato’s theories. Comedy’s job was to point out that even the pope farts. To give us a common humanity, to say, “These are our weaknesses; they come along with our strengths.” When someone denies the weaknesses and lives in only righteous ness, you have to say, “You’ve lost track of who we are. You’ve lost track of humanity.”

  There was a tradition at Jewish weddings of the “badchen,” kind of like a wedding tummler who’d make fun of the bride and groom, kind of “roast” them before the wedding, almost as if to say, “This is how you’re gonna survive together, because if you take yourselves or each other too seriously, you’re gonna kill each other. This is the way—with humor—that you might make it a little longer.”

  That’s our purpose as comedians.

  Remember that Mormon Year for Zion group on that Texas compound, where they had multiple wives and children being raised communally and all that? They went in and rescued—well some people say “took away from their parents”—these kids who’d been raised in that severe religious environment, where one of the caveats was “No laughter.” That horrified me! Children were not allowed to laugh—at anything! A life without laughter? How brutal would that be? Even in the most brutal situation there’s some humor—and it’s a kind of survival mechanism, when you come down to it.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you think comedy can make any difference politically?

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: I actually thought so for a while. Before Bush’s reelection, I really thought, “Hell, we can do this! Look at this idiot.” For comics, he was a gift. Just the sheer visual of him, looking possessed, like some low-rent antichrist: Two sixes and a five.

  Margaret Cho had one of the best lines: “Bush is no Hitler—but if he applied himself…”

  Patton Oswalt talked about Bush believing his legacy will be great and history will prove him right—like suddenly he thinks he’s the Velvet Underground: “
Yeah, everyone tortures their citizens and pees on the Constitution, but I did it when it wasn’t cool.”

  I mean, we had brilliant people making hard-core fun for all those years…and what did it do in the end? He got elected again! It’s the ultimate bad punch line! I was like, “We have to find whatever medication this country is on, whatever they’re hypnotizing us with…‘Wake up, Dorothy! Wake up before you start speaking Chinese, Dorothy!’”

  If you tried to write those eight years and pitch it as a movie…“OK, there’s a complete idiot running the country, right? And people don’t even notice! They just laugh, see?”

  “Are you for real with this?”

  “Listen, listen…So we’re going into this war, right? Everyone in the world says, ‘No, don’t do it!’ but he says, ‘We’re doin’ it anyway!’”

  “All right, cut it out. This is crazy.”

  “And then—”

  “Wait, don’t tell me. He gets elected again?”

  “Yes! He gets elected again!”

  “Ah, fuck you. That’s a ridiculous story. NNo one will buy that.”

  So we made serious, no-holds-barred fun of this guy for four years, only to have four more of ’em!

  And the most incredible political comedy performance—or of any kind of comedy for that matter—was Stephen Colbert at the White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner a few years back. That was brilliant! By the time he said, “A lot of people say this administration is sinking like the Titanic; I say, no, it soars like the Hindenburg,” you realized that they finally realize he’s fucking with them—and right inside in the lion’s den! You could see Bush get visibly upset that this guy was allowed into his domain, into the inner sanctum, to make fun of the pope. And he’s laying it down hard. That, to me, was like, “Wow!”

  The only reason I can think that they hired him was that they thought he really was a Republican, but a funny one. They must have thought, “He’s really with us,” ’cause they didn’t get the joke, I guess. Someone must have just taken him at face value…which is really stupid.

  PAUL PROVENZA: It’s not hard for me to believe they actually thought he was one of them because, really, I don’t know if there’s all that much difference between Colbert’s character and say, Ann Coulter.

  ROBIN WILLIAMS: The difference is that he’s funny, and she’s just vicious. I think they’re actually using her pap smears as antivenom now.

  But you’re right, in a sense. Maybe it’s perception. Maybe a lot of Republicans think Coulter’s funny as shit. She’s doing something well, because she gets $50,000 a speaking engagement and kicks ass. She plays to hard-core Republican crowds, who love her. But then other people want to kill her, you know, so…

  Maybe that’s the difference: Colbert can play to pretty much anyone because it’s really good satire. He’s kind of a political Andy Kaufman—or is he?—what is he? He’s so fucking original!

  But I don’t know what changes this culture or what it takes to get people motivated. But we have to keep on talking, saying all the shit they don’t want anyone to hear. Because we can.

  We’re like the Resistance, just listening to the BBC, waiting for the code word. “The fight shall continue.”

  Performing again and hanging out in clubs with Bobcat Goldthwait, watching comedians like Patton Oswalt, Dana Gould…It gives me such hope. And Rick Overton—so funny, so smart, and going so deep. A lot of people are keeping the spirit of Pryor and Carlin alive—it’s out there, man.

  It takes balls. Bravery. And a lot of the brave people get waled on, as we know. The other side will go after you, and try to disembowel you. But as a comic, you have to keep talking about everything, keep doing what you do, wherever you can. Talk about it in every way you know possible.

  And then occasionally throw in a good dick joke.

  LEWIS BLACK

  LEWIS BLACK IS a man for his time: a walking, talking embodiment of frustration, rage, and finger-pointing disbelief. On The Daily Show, his apoplectic rants reached millions, giving solace to those sharing his befuddlement. His solo career takes him even further in defining and expanding his voice, attracting a widening audience dying for him to vent its collective spleen. With his unmitigated bluster, Black explains why people respond so viscerally to his point of view, how he learned he could do what he does, and why wealth keeps him hating the wealthy.

  LEWIS BLACK: If I was as good at writing dick jokes as writing what I do, don’t think for a second I wouldn’t be doing that. Outrage and political humor is just what I think I’m best at, but I’m not Gandhi. You get lost if you think like that.

  If I have any place where I want to make a difference—and I’ve rarely admitted it—it’s with college kids. As you get older you just get stupid, but kids still have possibilities. The thing I punch them on is, “You’re at college for four years. It’s the greatest time in your life; the time when you get to experiment. So to say you’re a Republican or a Democrat…what’s the matter with you? Can’t you go beyond that? Especially if you say you’re a Republican. There’s no such thing as a conservative kid. To be honest, it means maybe something’s wrong with you because as you grow older you grow more conservative, and where do you have left to go? What are you gonna become, a Nazi?”

  PAUL PROVENZA: Do you think comedy can teach or enlighten, even if just younger people?

  LEWIS BLACK: Absolutely. I do this dopey joke that kind of demonstrates that fact: I read this article where this woman almost bites off her husband’s penis while he’s cooking pancakes. She’s blowing him, I presume; he accidentally spills burning oil down her back, she bites down on his penis, and he brings the frying pan down hard on her head. This story should be in a physics textbook and given to ten-year-olds. I know we have a real fear of sex in this country, but I guarantee you, read that story to a ten-year-old child and he’ll never forget that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.

  So there ya’ go, Provenz. Comedy can teach.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Clearly you underestimate your gift for dick jokes. But by not just doing dick jokes, you’ve become prominent in political stand-up and satire. Does that freak you out a little?

  LEWIS BLACK: That’s called, “If you stick around long enough and yell loud enough…”

  I always feel like a lot of it has to do with the fact that I yell and scream. The kind of hook with what I do that allows people to hear it or deal with it is the fact that I’ve created a guy who’s nuts onstage. I’m the most insane person in the room, so I can basically spout any kind of nonsense.

  I’m also conscious of the fact that I get just as upset about things like the weather. There’s the same level of insanity there for me, no matter how appropriate or inappropriate it may be: “That cocksucker Al Roker’s fucking making five million a year? He’s reading a scroll! You gotta be fucking kidding me!” The weather can make me just as nuts as the Christian Right and their hoo-ha about gay marriage does.

  I think that helps people realize that for me it’s not Democrat or Republican or red or blue state—it’s everything.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Your character also enables you to experience genuine emotion rather than just tell us about it, so the audience can connect with you emotionally, not just intellectually.

  LEWIS BLACK: Yeah, it does. It’s also partly that there’s an anger that they have, too. They take abuse on a daily level that’s just grown—especially the middle class. If the federal government has cheeks and an anus, it’s sitting on their faces and shitting in their mouths, so they relate to a guy yelling like a lunatic about things.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Did you find your voice straightaway when you started doing comedy?

  LEWIS BLACK: I had it in terms of the writing. The writing was strong, but the performance was hideous at best. Nightmarish. Sad. But I felt I had a sense of the writing. I wrote plays, which is how I started, in part. I wrote plays because other people would have to perform them, and got into comedy basically because I couldn’t get an
ybody else to do my stuff so I had to stand up and do it myself.

  It was later that I started to get serious about it. I was initially doing that “What, are you kidding me?” point of view, but I also did a lot about my sex life. That was my strong suit; I had a very funny sex life, and all these great stories—and to me that was key. That’s the key to comedy in a lot of ways. I think it’s where the initial impetus of comedy comes from, and I think the best comics are ones who, in the end, tell a story. On whatever level, you’re basically telling a story, whatever it is. “This is what I saw today; this is what I heard today.” It’s what we’d do in college or high school when everyone sits down and talks. Nobody starts out, “My aunt cut off her foot.” You generally start, “You won’t believe this…” and then bring them on a journey that ends with “…and then I got a hand job.”

  Generally that’s the way we relate, and for me that’s the impetus that kind of drove me onto the stage.

  PAUL PROVENZA: Does it destroy your “common man” cred, being rich and successful and now one of the “have a lots” instead of the “have nots”?

  LEWIS BLACK: As a matter of fact, it’s reinforced everything I’ve ever thought about rich assholes. I’ve learned firsthand that everything I believed about people with money and the way they’re all protecting it is true. I really don’t think I’ve lost that perspective at all.

  Because I’ve been very fortunate, I now have a corporation and I see the way business managers and accountants do things. I look at my own business guys like, “What kind of scam are you running? At the end of the year, my company’s broke on paper so it doesn’t pay any taxes? What the fuck is that? How can that be right?”

  I want to put my taxes in, and it’s like I’m some kind of nut job to them. I go, “I’ve waited my whole life to pay taxes! I don’t care if they’re not using it as well as they should be; they’ll use it better at some point. I’ve waited my whole life to have money so I can give money!”