by Brad Garrett
Robin had recently exploded onto the scene from his starring role in Mork & Mindy, and the place became unglued as he took to the stage in his baggy pants and trademark rainbow suspenders. A wave of simultaneous nausea and elation came over me. I never missed his television show; he was a huge inspiration for me and just about every other budding comic at that time.
The audience was on their feet before he said a word, and suddenly, I couldn’t feel my legs, knowing I was the sacrificial Jew who would soon be forced to follow the pope. That’s one of the pitfalls of working open-mic nights as a beginner; when a more established comic pops in, he gets to go on next, regardless of the lineup. When it’s Robin Williams, you might as well go home and announce your retirement. He was one of the most incredible stand-ups I have ever witnessed. His unprecedented way of riffing through a crowd with lightning-quick speed, spontaneity, and improvisation absolutely blew me away. I was in awe of how courageous and incredibly gifted he was to work that way without a net. He was equally astounding and unpredictable every time he graced a stage. There was no one like Robin at that time, nor is there anyone like him today.
Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Jay Leno, Rodney Dangerfield, Steve Martin, Robert Klein, David Letterman, Richard Lewis, and Robin Williams were the monsters when I was starting out, and they set the bar so damn high that their level of excellence still holds strong. I’m honored to say that over the past thirty years, I have had the pleasure to meet or work with several of these idols, including Robin, who truly was one of the kindest and most humble guys in the business. I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with him on The Crazy Ones and to have witnessed firsthand his brilliance and humanity.
Life has a way of throwing us those open-mic moments. They can be brutal to live through, but they are also some of the most important events in shaping our backbones, our courage, and our determination to succeed. After following Robin that night, I could have decided comedy wasn’t for me, out of fear, insecurity, or plain common sense. But our passions choose us more often than we choose them, especially in the arts. We don’t have a choice but to persevere.
Yes, this book is about letting some shit go in order to achieve happiness, but if you’re bitten by something—a passion, a drive, an insatiable desire to stay awake during your colonoscopy—go for it, my friends. Reconnect with the aspirations you’ve squashed under twenty extra pounds of Cheez Whiz and shame, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Your time may be yet to come. Remember, it ain’t over until your children are fighting over who gets your presidential plate collection.
My first manager, Judy Thomas, 1984. (Courtesy of author’s collection)
4
The Search for My Fifteen Minutes
I’m thirty-three years into this business, and I still feel my career can end at any minute. I’m not sure if that’s just the mind of the fearful performer, or a midlife paranoia that leads me to believe that perhaps the bloom is off the rose and the Jamie Farr Dinner Theatre awaits my arrival. But if midlife is a time to reflect on one’s career, I can say I am grateful to do what I love, particularly because at this point, it would be hard to transition into any other field. I often thought that if I hadn’t gone into entertainment, I would have loved to be a child psychologist. Based on what you’ve read so far, I’m sure you’ll agree that my roasting an eight-year-old and talking about scrotum rejuvenation for two hundred and fifty dollars an hour wouldn’t go over very well.
I dropped out of UCLA after attending for only six weeks (don’t act like you’re surprised). My reasoning was: I couldn’t figure out how taking Greek mythology was going to make me a better stand-up. Plus, my nightclub hours and college curriculum didn’t mix. Honestly, I don’t think I was college material. Everything moved too fast. Plus, I had just booked a national 7-Up commercial, and I was figuring (foolishly) that this was the beginning of my acting career and the spot would give me enough bank to cruise while I continued to work on my act. In other words, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, especially since I had tried so desperately to get into UCLA. I wish I had stayed.
The 7-Up commercial that I was cast in needed six ethnically diverse actors to play a pickup basketball game in a schoolyard. After I passed the acting portion of the audition, they wanted to see how well we played basketball together. I was doomed. A half-court was set up behind the casting office, and I thought for sure I was screwed, until I devised a plan. I would be especially loud and energetic on the court, but as I ran around like a doofus, I would make sure I was never open, so I wouldn’t have to prove that I could make a shot. This worked for about ten minutes until the director caught on and threw me the ball. I of course flinched and dropped it. The crew became so quiet “you could hear a mouse pissing on cotton in Georgia,” as my comedian friend and early mentor Paul Mooney used to say. Why they hired me anyway is still a mystery, but let’s just say you didn’t see my Jew ass making any jump shots in the spot that aired. I was sitting on the bench, drinking a 7-Up, and cheering on my teammates. I guess I was just born to ride the pine.
After commissions and taxes, I blew through the remaining cash from the commercial in fourteen months, which led to my job as a waiter at the Pizza Cookery. For me, the best part about serving (which I did for four years) was that every table represented a new captive audience on whom I could try my material and impressions, the poor bastards.
It was around this time that my mom and Lionel came to me with some very exciting news. Lionel had just done the music for Jack Carter’s son’s bar mitzvah. Jack was a well-known, sharp, rapid-fire comic in his day, best known for working the Borscht Belt in the Catskills, along with opening for acts in Vegas and numerous television spots. His manager at the time was a large, boisterous, fearless woman named Judy “Trust Me” Thomas. Think Kathy Bates on steroids and ten times more butch. Her husband was the renowned British chef Derrick Thomas, who had his own restaurant at The Beverly Comstock Hotel in Beverly Hills. His patrons ranged from Paul McCartney to Johnny Carson.
My mom, who possessed a broad, grandiose persona as well, clicked immediately with Judy at the bar mitzvah and, upon hearing that she was an entertainment manager, hounded her for most of the evening until Judy agreed to meet her son “the amazing comedian.” Two weeks later, I would meet the first person outside of my family to believe in me as a stand-up. With that belief would come a wonderful yet tumultuous ride, for Judy was a raging alcoholic who also housed a heart of gold.
Judy had a small, eclectic corral of ever changing clients, including an incredibly talented fifteen-year-old girl named Laura Dern who went on to become an Academy Award nominee. Marcia Wallace from The Bob Newhart Show, a promising kid named Perry Lang, a genius comedy/magic duo known as the Great Tomsoni & Co. (led by one of the world’s greatest magicians, Johnny Thompson), Mary Martin (Peter Pan), Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell on Gilligan’s Island), Russell Johnson (the Professor on Gilligan’s Island), and several others would also come in and out of Judy Thomas Management. She had a small but potent reputation in the industry. She was bright, irreverent, and passionate, and when she believed in someone, you had better believe in that person as well.
Unfortunately, Judy was drunk every day by two P.M., but her incredible sense of humor and bravado kept most at bay as she carried out her business primarily from atop her enormous antique bed. She would lay sprawled out in sweats with a highball of bourbon in one hand and the phone in the other, donning her signature giant red-framed glasses. She had a true “old Hollywood” brilliance about her, though it was easily fogged by the daily bottle.
The day I met Judy, she had me do my act in its entirety in her living room. I was taken aback because stand-up comedy doesn’t usually go over well in groups of one, but she “didn’t give a shit.” The more Judy drank, the more her sleepy eye went north. By the end of my mediocre fifteen-minute set, she appeared to have lapsed into a coma (I would later learn that this was around the time she would take her midday nap)
. Don’t get me wrong, she did chuckle, sometimes politely, but I was ready to hear “Come back in ten years, when you know what you’re doing.” Instead, she poured another tipper, looked at me with those wonky eyes, and said, “You’re cute, kid. Seven-foot Jew, don’t play ball, that’s funny shit. Keep the impressions. I know someone at the Bla-Bla Café on Ventura, but you’re not quite ready yet, so I want you to play the living room until it’s honed.”
And that was the beginning of a twelve-year relationship that started with a year of me literally working my shit out in her living room. Anyone and everyone who would pop by would be asked to sit down for fifteen minutes of free comedy, from delivery people to the exterminator; Judy’s husband, Derrick, who didn’t laugh once in the first eight months; fellow agents or managers who would pop by to get paid on a loan or dope the racing form with her; her friend Sally Struthers, who let me hold her Emmy; or her friend Paul Mooney (he referred to Judy as the white Aunt Jemima). I also had to perform in front of the dog groomer; Judy’s ninety-year-old mother, who was “communicating with aliens”; and, of course, Jack Carter. To Jack, I owe a great debt of gratitude: after seeing me work my stuff in front of Judy’s gardener, he put his own reputation on the line and asked his buddy Norm Crosby to put me on his new show, Norm Crosby’s Comedy Shop. That was where I made my national television debut in December 1981 at age twenty-one. The humbling part of it all was that I would watch my first television appearance from section thirteen at TGI Friday’s in Woodland Hills, where I worked as a waiter. My national debut was sophomoric and ridiculously tame compared to what I do today. My watering days would last a bit longer.
Serving at TGI Friday’s was a dream job for any budding comic. The Hollywood stereotype holds true, and with good reason; we all started as waiters, because there was always someone to sub in should an audition or gig come up. This was the pre-AIDS era, and the bar scene was crazy—Friday’s took the term “meat market” to a new level. They were also known for introducing the Long Island Iced Tea and Loaded Potato Skins (smothered with cheese and bacon) to the world. You can imagine how stellar my diet was.
One night when I was working at Friday’s, I waited on a gentleman who was dining alone. He ordered a nine-layer dip, which wouldn’t be worth mentioning except that his serving had a piece of glass in it. He showed it to me, and after apologizing like Rodney Dangerfield, I brought over the manager, who comped his meal. As it turned out, the diner was one of the assistant managers at the Ice House, a comedy club in Pasadena where the greats like George Carlin, Steve Martin, and the Smothers Brothers used to work out their sets before hitting the talk show circuit. Naturally, I was dying for a spot. I was expecting that the glass incident would blacklist me for a while, but he booked me for an audition right then and there. This just proves what I’ve always said: you buy a Jew a meal, and magic happens.
I passed my audition and became a regular MC at the club, where I ended up working with their main booker, Elaine Tallas-Cardone. Believe it or not, that wonderful gal is now the comedy booker at my own comedy club in Vegas, thirty-two years later. The Ice House has retained its reputation as one of the greatest rooms in the country because of Bob Fisher, the owner, who is still a close friend of mine.
* * *
In 1983 Judy got a call from the manager of the Horn, one of L.A.’s oldest nightclubs, where I had just started performing. He inquired about my interest in auditioning for a new show called Star Search, to be hosted by Ed McMahon. Judy jumped on the opportunity, and a few days later, I found myself onstage at the Horn, during the day, auditioning in front of one guy. Just like in Judy’s living room. He was the casting director for Star Search, and he looked like he was eighteen. His name was Steve Stark, and I credit that kind young man with giving me my break. This was the opportunity that would get my career rolling.
The following February I won the grand prize on Star Search and pocketed a hundred thousand dollars. When Ed McMahon announced my name as the grand champion in the comedy category, I saw Judy stand up in the audience in her drunken excitement, lift her sweater, and flash everyone in the Aquarius Theatre. She used to love showing off her giant boobs to the world. She was a very large woman, so I imagine she did this purely for shock value, but it was not the way I had wanted that night to end. The same can be said for my parents, who were seated in her row. This was not the first or last time Judy would embarrass me, but my loyalty and love for her, combined with a lack of belief in myself, made me stick it out for several more years. Still, it seemed that every time we made some headway, her drunken reputation or outbursts would bite us in the ass.
On one such occasion, Judy called the manager of the Improv comedy club on Melrose a cocksucker to his face on a packed Saturday night because my slot was bumped two times in a row (a common occurrence if you were a newbie). In hindsight, this was hysterical, but in reality, I wouldn’t perform at the Improv for fifteen years after that night. Luckily, I already had my “home club,” the Ice House. It was there that I would continue to work up the ranks and polish my chops.
Four weeks after winning Star Search, I would make my debut on The Tonight Show, thanks to Ed McMahon, at the ripe old age of twenty-three. To say being on that show for the first time as a young comic is surreal is a crude understatement. I remember standing offstage on the other side of the curtain I had grown up staring at, thinking, What the fuck am I doing here?
I heard Johnny start my intro right after the band trailed off from a commercial, and I thought I was going to lose it. But that’s when you see what you’re made of. As scared as I was, I knew I belonged. My set was decent; he gave me the coveted okay sign, and I walked off and couldn’t remember a thing. I wasn’t invited to the couch my first time on, but I knew I was strong enough to come back, and I did four months later.
Soon after my thirtieth birthday, I sat down with Judy and had a heart-to-heart talk. The topic was the same as it had been for years: her alcoholism. She had only two working clients left, and I loved her like a mother, but in my heart, I knew if I stayed much longer, I was going to go down with the ship. Things were finally rolling for me, and the dysfunctional cycle with Judy had to end. But I needed to try one more time to give her the opportunity to get well. I gave her an ultimatum: “Get help for the booze, I’ll pay for the rehab. If you agree to this, I’ll wait it out with you. If not, I have to leave.” Judy was in total denial and acted like she had no idea what I was talking about. The following day I reiterated our conversation, of which she had no recollection. The day after that, I officially moved on.
I will always be indebted to Judy for her passion, instinct, and the love we had for each other. But my tendency to hang on too long to unhealthy relationships, business and personal, would become an obstacle for me throughout my adult life. As I have learned, there is sometimes a fine line between loyalty and self-sacrifice.
Judy would pass away eighteen months later from a massive heart attack, most likely attributed to her weight and acute alcohol poisoning. I received the news from our shared business manager as I waited at a Western Union at the Barbary Coast Hotel in Vegas to receive some cash for my gambling habit. Ironically, my own issues with booze were just around the corner.
* * *
The first review I ever received was when the winners of Star Search ’84 performed for one night at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It goes without saying that none of us deserved to be on that stage at that point in our careers, but that didn’t stop me from running down from my hotel room the following morning to the newspaper box. I remember standing on Fifty-sixth Street and Seventh Avenue, pulling USA Today from the rack, and reading the review. They referred to me as “instantly forgettable.” I had to read the one-line review three times until it sank in. I even tried reading it with one eye closed, thinking it might be a little less painful. No such luck. Bottom line, I knew deep down they were right. After all, this was New York, undoubtedly the greatest city in the world, especially when it came t
o entertainment. They knew their shit.
Two things that have helped me greatly in my career are humility and self-awareness. The ability to know one’s strengths and weaknesses and to successfully maneuver between the two is key in any occupation. But here’s the catch: it takes a big-ass ego to hop onstage and much less of one to know when to get the fuck off. Part of the art is balancing the two. “Always leave ’em wanting more,” as the old showbiz adage goes. It’s no different in everyday life, though I wouldn’t suggest using it as your strategy in the bedroom.
(Courtesy of author’s collection)
5
Early Road
I have to say that one of the best lessons I learned about fending for myself was when I went on the road for the first time, opening for the legendary, brash racial comic Paul Mooney. Paul was known for pushing the limits of race and shoving it back in the faces of white folks, and that was something wonderful to behold. He brought fearlessness to a whole new level, especially one week in 1982 at the Comedy Corner in Dallas, Texas.
After the show on closing night, the manager refused to hand over the exact amount that Mooney was contractually owed for the gig. The manager made it seem like the club hadn’t made enough money that week, which, of course, was bullshit. Paul asked the manager to get the owner on the phone, and the guy refused. One thing led to another, and Paul and the manager found themselves outside the club where things began to escalate intensely. Mooney turned to me and said, “Remember this shit, Monster”—his pet name for me—“though you probably won’t have to go through it, ’cause you’re fucking white.” I knew he was right and I hated that he was. Then he got right into the manager’s face and said, “You either tell your scumbag boss to get over here with my money, in cash, or me and the Monster will burn this motherfucker to the ground!” We? What fucking “we”?