The Improv

by Budd Friedman

  BILLY CRYSTAL:

  In New York, I knew Larry a little bit from Catch A Rising Star, but not all that well. It wasn’t until after we had moved to LA and I was doing Soap and he was doing Fridays, which both ran on ABC, that we became good friends.

  It was sometime during this same period that we used to do this little improv routine together at the Hollywood Improv. The premise was that I played a radio therapist named Dr. Sydney Greene where we would take mock call-in questions from the audience as if it were a real show. We had a second microphone planted in the middle of the show room off to the side and I would say, “You’re on the air with Dr. Sydney Greene.”

  At first, I would just pick somebody at random, but then later I started using a regular partner who eventually became Larry, whose part would be to keep calling and calling me incessantly throughout the entire bit. It was great fun and it became so popular that some of the other comics who happened to be at the club when we were doing it started joining in, too.

  So one night, Larry and I were sitting at the bar waiting to go on when this woman came up to him and said hello. All of a sudden, Larry got this panicked look on his face. Then he turned to me and said, “Oh God, that’s my cousin, Billy. I can’t go on. She’s my cousin and I can’t stand her.”

  Well, right about then, Budd came up to him and said, “Larry, you’re on.” So Larry went on, but as soon as he picked up the mic, the first thing out of his mouth was, “I can’t do this, Budd. Take me off.” I swear, he was onstage for maybe thirty seconds and it was hilarious. He just didn’t like this relative.

  JUDY ORBACH:

  You never quite knew what Larry was thinking or what his mood was going to be like on any given day, because he was always so into his own head. Now I’m no psychologist, but I do consider myself to be something of an expert on comedians. And you know something? I could say that about every single one of those comics who came through the Improv. None of them were all that gregarious. They all had this sort of quality where you’d see them onstage and you’d think it was their personality—when, in fact, they were struggling with life, or they were struggling with women, or whatever. However, they were usually nothing like they appeared to be onstage.

  But then there were also those rare exceptions. For instance, I think Larry’s good friend Richard Lewis is one of them because he’s neurotic onstage as well as off. And to a certain extent, maybe Larry is, too. All I know is that he always had a lot of anger in him, although I don’t know exactly why. Perhaps it was just his background and whatever was going on in his life at that particular moment.

  Maybe he couldn’t get laid. Richard always had a girl because he was gorgeous, whereas Larry was more out-there looking with his glasses and the frizzy hair. But he was also so fucking funny. I remember the first night he got up and looked at the audience. His first line was, “I know. I look like Howdy Doody.” This would always get a crack-up whenever he said that.

  PAUL PROVENZA:

  Larry’s neurosis about his hair and his resemblance to Howdy Doody were probably two of his most signature bits. He’d do this whole thing about going to the plastic surgeon and saying, “I want to look like Howdy Doody.”

  KEVIN NEALON:

  Whenever there was a heckler in the audience in LA, he’d invariably get into an argument. From the stage, Larry couldn’t tell if they were big or not—and a lot of times he couldn’t even see them—but he’d say, “Come on, let’s go. You, me, outside, right now . . . come on!”

  GILBERT GOTTFRIED:

  He was one of those people that there was no way to have predicted the success he’s had. Back then, he looked like he could have just as easily wound up homeless, which he nearly was once.

  Every time I saw him perform, he always seemed to hate it—and he hated the audience just as much—to the point where fights would often break out. Of course, this was the most fun part of watching. I think my hands-down favorite was the time this massive guy who must have weighed over three hundred pounds stood up. For a while, it even looked like they were going to go outside until Chris Albrecht or whoever was managing the club that night finally jumped in.

  LARRY DAVID:

  I never had any physical altercations with anybody, although I did have some fights and they were really more arguments. The way it usually went down was that if they gave me a hard time, I’d say something to them and then they’d say something back. I was never stupid about it, though. I always made sure I had the bouncers behind me anytime I ever said anything.

  For his part, if Larry’s antagonism often incited our audience’s wrath—and as much as he enjoyed provoking it—he was also almost universally respected among his peers at the Improv.

  LESLIE MOONVES:

  I always loved Larry’s humor, though he wasn’t the greatest performer, so it didn’t surprise me that he became a writer instead.

  HOWARD KLEIN:

  I’m not exaggerating when I say that Larry David was my hero at the Improv. Sometimes he would kill and some nights he would be completely silent, but he was always very pure. And you always knew how talented he was. This was the era when all those guys like Jerry Seinfeld and Paul Reiser were starting, and it was very hard to predict who was going to be a household name—especially since in stand-up you can get famous for your performing and not how great a writer you are. But Larry always knew what he wanted to do.

  RICK OVERTON:

  The thing about Larry was that he really knew his own style and he always had a great angle on what he was. I, on the other hand, didn’t. I had no idea who I was in relationship to my style at the time. Back when Larry and I first knew one another at the New York Improv, and before I went out on my own, I’d been part of a two-man comedy team there called Overton & Sullivan. While I was doing it, there was the safety net of the team, so I could just be this or that until I figured it out. It wasn’t until after we broke up that I got forced into figuring out who the hell I was in between jokes.

  But Larry instantly was Larry. He used to do this routine about singles bars where he’d go, “My name is Al Banion and I need a companion.” Then he did this bit about putting butter on a Samoan’s face and eating it because he said they looked like pancakes.

  PAUL PROVENZA:

  It was this elaborate, hysterical, surreal piece where he’d say, “You put butter on their heads and it melts.” Then he’d say, “All over Samoa, there are statues of their hero Aunt Jemima.”

  There was another one I loved about his mother buying fruit. He’d go, “My mother walks around the house muttering, ‘I buy fruit and nobody eats it.’ I think she’s insane. That’s all she’s been doing for years—walking around the house muttering, ‘I buy fruit and nobody eats it.’”

  Say what you will about Larry, but he was always one of those guys who, whenever he’d come in, all of the comics would pile in back to see what he was going to do. He just had that effect on people. And despite all of his enormous accomplishments and success, the one thing I’m not sure a lot of people realize is what an outstanding stand-up comic he was.

  MICHAEL RICHARDS:

  The night Larry auditioned for Fridays in the late seventies, I had already been cast. The producers had seen me, Bruce Mahler—who later became known for his roles as Sergeant Fackler in the Police Academy films and as Rabbi Kirschbaum on Seinfeld—and a comedic actor named Mark Blankfield at the Improv. Anyway, for some reason, the producers had invited us to go see Larry’s audition at The Comedy Store. At the time, I didn’t even know who he was, but I remember thinking how funny looking he was from the moment he got up onstage. Then he started working, and I swear, within a minute or maybe a minute and a half, he just said, “Fuck you, people.” And then he walked offstage. At first, I thought it was just part of his act, and I thought it was great, but when he didn’t ever come back I just thought, “Jesus, this is the real thing.”

  GLENN HIRSCH, comedian and former New York Improv emcee:

  For a period of abo
ut five years in the 1970s, Larry and I were at the New York Improv practically every night. I like Larry very much, but he’s also an extremely shy guy. I think that the way his insecurity manifested itself onstage was that he could have an entire audience eating out of the palm of his hand, but then if one person didn’t like him, he would belittle them to the point where it would eventually turn the entire audience off. In retrospect, though, I guess he knew what he was doing.

  BOB SAGET:

  I remember standing next to Larry once at the LA Improv right before he was about to go on. The comic before him was this prop act who was up there strumming a guitar. Right as he was doing it, Larry turned to me and said, “These people don’t want jokes. They want guitar acts.” And yet here I was, standing there also brandishing a guitar. But far as I know, Larry always liked me.

  JUDD APPATOW:

  One night in LA, I remember seeing Larry do this bit about how it was difficult to get the head of a South American country to wear a condom. I don’t recall what the setup was, but it was hysterical. Very early on, the sense I got about Larry was that he had real integrity as both a performer and a writer. In other words, he wasn’t trying to figure out what everybody else was doing so he could emulate it.

  AL FRANKEN:

  Larry is a really good friend of Alan Zweibel’s who is a good friend of mine, so the three of us used to hang out when Alan and I were writing for Saturday Night Live and Larry was doing what he did. The first time I met him in Los Angeles was with Alan in the summer of 1977.

  We were on hiatus from Saturday Night Live, and my comedy partner Tom Davis and I had rented a house out there because we were doing a show called Kentucky Fried Theatre. One afternoon Larry came by the house, and the entire time he was there I remember thinking to myself, “Okay, this guy’s funny, but he’s completely uncompromising and I wish him luck.” Not that compromising was the key to anything mind you. It’s just that Larry had this very, very specific point of view that hadn’t clicked yet.

  In due time, of course, it would click, in no small part thanks to his collaboration on a sitcom about nothing with another prodigious funnyman who began rising through the stand-up ranks not long after Larry did. From the beginning, Jerry Seinfeld was another comic we all knew was special.

  JERRY SEINFELD:

  Larry and I always loved to kibitz when we were at the clubs together and we would have these hilarious conversations at the bar. So when I got the NBC opportunity to do Seinfeld, I was immediately reminded of our camaraderie, thinking this is also how you wrote scripts.

  The way the premise of Seinfeld unfolded was that I told Larry about it one night at Catch and then we met again a few nights later at the Improv. After that, we went over to the Westway Diner, which was right around the corner and still exists. After two cups of coffee, we essentially had the idea of what the show was going to be.

  In the end, while the Improv can’t entirely claim credit for Seinfeld ’s gestation or Jerry’s friendship with Larry—and a lion’s share acknowledgment belongs to my friend Rick Newman who founded Catch A Rising Star—I’m proud to say that we had a hand in it. And when it comes to summing up what having Larry was really like at the Improv, you had to see for yourself to believe it, although these stories will hopefully give you some idea.

  TWENTY-NINE

  A Tsunami Named Robin

  LESLIE MOONVES:

  When I was the bartender at the Hollywood Improv in the late seventies, I usually worked weekends and Monday evenings. Budd was always fantastic to me, and I don’t remember ever having a bad night the entire time I was there. But then, there was this one night in 1976 when a young comedian from San Francisco went on and did an entire hour that I’ll especially never forget.

  That comedian was Robin Williams, whose explosive arrival at Hollywood Improv in the spring of 1976 was the perfect storm. From the moment he walked in, it was obvious to me and everybody else that he was going to become a big star—perhaps even one of the biggest we’d ever seen, which, of course, turned out to be true beyond anything we could have ever imagined.

  At the time, he had recently come back to the West Coast and relocated to LA after beginning his stand-up comedy career in San Francisco. The year before that, he had dropped out of the acting program at New York’s famed Juilliard conservatory where he was considering returning to complete his degree. When Robin first told me this, I encouraged him because I thought that meant he could also perform on West 44th Street, which I still owned but was rapidly losing many of our best comics to our new club in LA.

  Thus, I reasoned he could be our secret weapon. While Robin decided not to return to Juilliard, fortunately for us he soon chose to perform at both clubs. Again, it was the perfect storm of having our cake and getting to eat it, too—with sumptuous portions that were spectacularly satisfying for all of us.

  JAY LENO:

  The night he auditioned for Budd, he did this Russian accent that was so authentic I actually thought he was from Saint Petersburg. But then when I went up to introduce myself, he said hello to me in his normal voice.

  HOWARD KLEIN:

  Robin was one of those guys who got discovered in LA, got a television show, and became a household name right away. He was the first comedian who was like a big rock ‘n’ roll star. It was like having Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger onstage every time he came in.

  LARRY MILLER, actor, writer, comedian, voice-over artist, and podcaster:

  I’m not sure if I’d use the term “rock star,” but Robin was definitely a megastar. When I met him, I remember being struck by the fact that I’d never seen anybody quite like him. He was already on Mork and Mindy, and the emcee would say, “We think you’re going to like him. Welcome Robin Williams.” And the audience just went nuts.

  In New York, I shared a cab with him a few times from the Improv to Catch A Rising Star and the Comic Strip on the Upper East Side. One night in particular I remember doing this and thinking it was like sitting next to a beautiful woman and not having anything to say. It was a nice night, too—winter, but not too cold, nice to watch the city go by riding in a cab. But I really wasn’t comfortable enough to foist myself on somebody of Robin’s stature, so I thought of one or two things to say. We were both happy to leave it at that.

  JERRY SEINFELD:

  The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Robin was that he was the most generous comic I ever worked with on a stage. When I say generous, I mean he’d give everything up to you to the extent of knowing where you were coming from and knowing that there was a balance between two people on the stage.

  JIMMY FALLON:

  His love for comedians and his love for comedy were so contagious that it was almost like a fire you couldn’t put out. He was one of those guys you could say, “Here’s all the money in the world. You’ll never have to do stand-up again.” It wouldn’t have fazed Robin. His attitude would be, “I don’t care. It’s part of me.”

  HOWIE MANDEL:

  I’d never seen anything like him, and there was no other word to describe Robin but a phenomenon who could take an audience to a new level regardless of who else was there.

  RITCH SHYDNER:

  Robin was like a white shark when it came to laughs. Nobody wanted them more than he did. Once I saw him improvising with Billy Crystal at the Improv, and with every joke they did, Robin moved closer and closer to the edge of the stage. Finally, he went into the audience while Billy kind of threw his hands up in the air as if to say, “What are you going to do?”

  JUDY ORBACH:

  In New York, Robin used to come in and meow at me like a big cat. He’d met me a hundred times, but he could never remember my name so he’d just meow at me. He also had the hairiest body I’ve ever seen, which he loved to taunt me with. If I was sitting at the bar eating dinner or whatever, he would just sit there and stare at me to see if I would break. Finally, I would get so exasperated I’d say, “Get your fucking arms away from my soup with that hair.”


  MAX ALEXANDER:

  Robin had hair on every part of his body and he could sweat like it was nobody’s business. When he came offstage, he’d be dripping wet like he’d just come in out of the rain.

  RICK OVERTON:

  The first time Robin came to the Improv in New York, Elayne Boosler brought him in and we became great friends after that. One of the things that bonded us together was that we both had a mutual love for Jonathan Winters and so everything we did together was sort of honoring the spirit of play that Jonathan had.

  Before that, I’d heard he’d come in for some shows that I wasn’t there for, but we really clicked after 1977 or ’78 and the stars just sort of aligned for us after that. It was like focused ball lightning where you could see the fierceness and preciousness of any timed talk—like you were being bombarded from every angle with a zero boundary line.

  MIKE CARANO, longtime Hollywood Improv photographer:

  I probably met Robin about eight times total and he always remembered my name. The first time this happened was backstage at The Dennis Miller Show when he came up to me and said, “Hi, Mike.”