Call Me Russell

by Russell Peters

  From that first encounter with George when I was a young aspiring comic, I took his advice. I picked up every gig that I could—anytime, any place. There were gigs at reggae parties, where they’d just stop the music and put me on in the middle of the dance floor. These kinds of gigs continued well into the mid-’90s. Different promoters ran different events at clubs around Toronto. One of them, Carlos, used to run Studio 69 at Bathurst and King streets on Saturday nights. He’d pay me a hundred and fifty bucks and it would be the same thing: the music would stop, I’d stand in the middle of the dance floor and do fifteen minutes. It was a lot of fun.

  By 1992 I had managed to pick up enough gigs to save three thousand dollars. I was still living at home and would continue to do so for another nine years. Dad made me pay rent of maybe two hundred dollars a month, since I was now “working.” I decided that I wanted to buy my own car and set my sights on a new Saturn SL, the base model—as base as you can get with a car. It had no cassette deck, no power windows, no air conditioning, a manual transmission, and it had only one mirror on the driver’s side. That car cost nine thousand dollars. I paid three and my dad kicked in the other six, which he made me pay back at two hundred dollars a month. He also kicked in a little extra so that I could get the other side mirror. Now the car looked like an SLI instead of an SL, because it had two mirrors. I loved that car and drove the shit out of it. When I got rid of it in 1995, it had 240,000 kilometres on it—all of them gig miles.

  By 1993, I was starting to feel a little cocky about my talents as a comic. I’d just come off a string of good shows. A good friend of mine, Jonathan Ramos, had set up his own promotion company, REMG Entertainment, and asked me if I’d like to open for the hip-hop group the Pharcyde, who were hot at the time with the single “Passin’ Me By.” The gig was at the Opera House in Toronto. I was really excited about the show because I’d grown up as a hip-hop head and I was finally getting to go on stage with rappers. I walked out on stage, and instead of hearing applause or even any sort of reaction from the crowd, all I got was silence.

  When I started into my set, I was already off. My timing had been thrown by the lack of warmth in the room and it just went downhill from there. The crowd gave me some negative energy the second I took the stage. I expected them to like me automatically when I stepped out, and so I’d forgotten the important rule that as a comic, it’s your job to make them like you, no matter what. I had about a minute in which to fight back and command their respect, but I didn’t.

  At the Opera House, bombing.

  The next thing I knew, the crowd had gotten away from me—they were hip-hop kids and backpackers, black, white and Asian. It literally felt like I was dying on stage, that they’d have to peel me off the floorboards and put me directly into a coffin. When they started booing, it was all over, before I’d even had time to figure out what hit me.

  I remember walking backstage and I wanted to cry. My mouth went dry and I thought, This is it. My career’s over. Looking back on this moment, I’ve learned from my mistakes. Today, I know that the audience’s reaction was fair and that I should have fought harder to earn their respect. I see lots of up-and-comers in the business who haven’t learned that yet. Every fighter gets knocked down at some point—Joe Louis, Lennox Lewis. It teaches you to train more, to keep throwing punches and to always have your guard up.

  Believe me, when you get booed off stage, it’s not an experience you want repeated. When a boxer gets punched in the chin, that first chin check determines how it’s going to be from there on. Will he lose it and get knocked out, or is he going to stand back up and fight? That show was my chin-check moment, and every comic needs one in their career to test what he or she’s made of. It took me years to get over that show, but I was determined to never let it happen again, especially in front of a largely black audience. I was going to win over those audiences in the future.

  By 1995, things started to change for me. After four years of steady gigging, my set had grown to thirty minutes. Of that thirty, I had polished a solid fifteen minutes. Everyone said that I had polished it so well that for fifteen minutes I could smoke anybody. In ’95 I was also moved up from amateur to middle and sometimes co-headliner, depending on the gig and who else was on the show. I was now on the circuit. What’s “the circuit”? you ask. Well, the circuit is any bar in any small town in Canada—O’Toole’s, Bailey’s Balloon Brigade, a Holiday Inn banquet hall—wherever Yuk Yuk’s could undersell a gig, they would do it. They would sell a three-man comedy show for around five hundred bucks (or at least that’s what the comics would see on paper). Of the five hundred bucks, I would maybe get a hundred, sometimes fifty, sometimes thirty-five. The rest would be split among the other comics. The headliners in those days were guys like Larry Horowitz, Lawrence Morgenstern, Mike Bullard and Jeremy Hotz. They would make the most—anywhere from two hundred to two hundred and fifty bucks at these road gigs.

  I also recorded my first comedy special that year for CBC. They did a series of half-hour specials called Comics. It consisted of stand-up, sketches and B-roll (extra footage). Because of the way the show was structured, I could do my solid fifteen minutes and fill the rest of the show with sketches and other filmed bits. This was a fun special to shoot. I used my mother in some of the sketches, as well as friends of mine. In one of the filmed sketch bits, I’m standing in a bus shelter with a couple of my Indian buddies and a white guy steps in. All of a sudden, we start holding our noses and I mutter, “Jeez … smells like Kraft Dinner …” People loved that bit. The other bit consisted of me going into a store (I think we used Adventure Electronics on Yonge Street) and this guy comes up to me to help me. We used this comic Brad Lyons, who was all tall and gangly. He steps away and another white guy comes up to me. This guy’s a short, stocky guy. I call him by the same name as the first guy, and he goes, “Oh, I’m not Bill, I’m Fred.” And I say, “Jeez, all these people look alike to me.”

  I was quite proud of those sketches. That was the first time I’d gotten on TV nationally, and two things happened—CBC got a ton of fan mail for me and they got a wave of people threatening to boycott the CBC, calling me racist and unfunny. One of the very vocal critics was this guy who ran an “Indian” newspaper in Vancouver. My intentions were never to offend anybody. I got hold of the guy’s phone number and called him because I wanted to know what problems he had with my act. I remember I called him from the speakerphone in my dad’s home office. He was just yelling at me, because he was really offended by this joke about Indian names, specifically Sukdip, which is pronounced “Sukdeep.” Part of the bit goes like this: a guy, speaking in an angry black guy’s voice, says, “Yo! I’m lookin’ for Sukdeep!” and the Indian guy (with a thick accent) goes, “Well, okay, but only if I have to …” Not exactly gold here, folks.

  Anyhow, this guy actually knew somebody named Sukdip and was really offended on his behalf. He was also really lippy, threatening to go to his member of Parliament and complain and start a full-on boycott of the CBC. He was yelling at me on the phone, and my brother overheard. Brother came in and started in on him. Brother, despite his best efforts, can’t manage his temper when it comes to me or anyone in our family. He goes from being this quiet, funny guy to an absolute pit bull. The guy on the phone got more heated. A year later, I heard he was shot dead on his doorstep. I guess I wasn’t the first person he mouthed off to.

  Andrew Clark of Eye Weekly, the free Toronto weekly newspaper, in his review of the year in comedy, said that Comics, the little show that could, trudged on and moved forward with some real highs (Mark Farrell) and some real lows (Russell Peters). I never forgot that because I was like, What a dick! I don’t know what Mark Farrell and Andrew Clark are doing now. I got paid $3,500 or $5,000 or something, and I would keep getting residual cheques all the time. I remember calling the CBC every time the show would air: “Is there a cheque there for me?” And then I would run and get it. It got to the point where I knew the name of the guy in accounting:
Roland, who was this older black guy. I’d just call him directly and he’d take care of me.

  I continued to gig locally and, because of my special, I had a bit more credibility. I was also starting to establish myself within the black community in Toronto and across Canada. I had been playing Kenny Robinson’s Nubian Disciples of Pryor, an all-black comedy night at Yuk Yuk’s. The show was held on the first Sunday of every month and was always sold out. Although billed as an “all-black” show, I was on it as part of the original lineup, along with Trinidadian and other nonblack comics. This was a show where the audience had adopted a hard-line attitude about what they found funny, and if they didn’t like you, they’d let you know. I saw dozens of guys booed off that stage. Funny guys like Mistah Mo would kill one week and then get booed off the next. I remember him leaving the stage, yelling, “You can’t boo me! Last time you loved me! You can’t boo me this time!” The crowd was merciless. Somehow, I managed to hold my own with them and they took me in as one of their own.

  And that’s where my first wave of support came from: the black Caribbean community in Canada. I’ve never forgotten that.

  NEW YORK CITY first called out to me when I was twenty-one years old, and I decided to get on a bus from Toronto to see what it was like for myself. I had no money, and no real plan. But in my mind, I was thinking that I’d just show up at HBO’s offices and they’d give me a gig …

  New York City was the backdrop to the hip-hop lifestyle that I would come to define myself by: the beats, the clothing, breakdancing and graffiti. It was a mythic place that captured my imagination at a very formative time in my life. New York is the home of hip-hop. It’s also the home of stand-up comedy—where the early comedians of the twentieth century were actually masters of ceremonies in the vaudeville theatres, telling jokes between variety acts.

  When I finally got to Manhattan after about ten or eleven hours on the bus, my luggage had disappeared. Apparently, a woman got off the bus in Buffalo with my bag and realized it only once she got home. The bus company gave me a cheque for a hundred bucks to help me get a few things that I was going to need—a toothbrush, shampoo … underwear. My suitcase showed up a day later, after the woman who accidentally took it found my brother’s contact details on the luggage tag and called him. I couldn’t afford a hotel, especially in Manhattan, and stayed for a week at my uncle’s place on Long Island. Mostly I went record shopping, where I grabbed records by Brand Nubian and Chubb Rock. I could have bought them at home, but buying them in New York made them seem that much more “authentic.”

  I never did make it to HBO’s offices, but I did do a couple of open mikes at the New York City Comedy Club and Stand-Up New York. The shows were unmemorable and there was barely anyone in the crowd. At the end of the week, I took the bus back home. I didn’t feel good or bad about the trip, but I was glad I went and saw what it was like to perform there. I also got something of a feel for the city that had spawned so much of what I loved.

  Five years later, I returned to New York. I’d moved up from amateur nights and had about an hour’s worth of material. I remember that I’d just finished a weekend of co-headlining with comedian Rob Ross at Yuk Yuk’s in Mississauga. Even though we were co-headlining, he didn’t want to follow me, so I closed every night. After the Sunday night show, I got into my Isuzu Rodeo and drove to NYC. I was going to be staying with comedian Keith Robinson, who I’d met a year earlier when he was acting in the movie Rebound: The Legend of Earl “The Goat” Manigault, which was filmed in Toronto. That summer, we also hung out at the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal. Keith’s a great guy and was very generous with me. “Why don’t you come to New York?” he asked me. “Come stay with me in Woodbridge, New Jersey. Sleep on my couch, nigga … if you don’t mind?” I was like, “Hell yeah!”

  “Some guy named Dave Chappelle asked for your number.”

  I drove by myself, and for some reason I remember seeing a ton of dead deer on the highway on the way there. By the time I got to New Jersey, it was rush hour and I was starting to fall asleep at the wheel, but I made it to Keith’s apartment and stayed on his couch for the rest of the week.

  I brought a VHS copy of my CBC Comics episode with me to New York. I was really proud of that show and played it for Keith and his roommates, comics Romont Harris and Rocky. They watched it and declared, “That was shit!” They weren’t just breaking balls the way comics do; they meant it. They were being honest with me, with my best interests at heart. “Nigga, anybody could do those jokes. You gotta do shit that only you can do.” Keith’s words stuck with me. Essentially, he was telling me what no one else had up until that point: speak in your own voice, so that it’s your voice only and unique to you. He didn’t want me doing generic material that could come out of any comic’s mouth. That’s when I changed up my style.

  That week, Keith got me stage time at the Comic Strip, the Comedy Cellar, the Boston Comedy Club and Stand-Up New York. At Stand-Up New York, we ran into Dave Chappelle. I’d met Dave for the first time that summer at Just for Laughs. I was already a big fan—I’d even told him so when we first met. Dave was really nice to me from the get-go, and that was cool. In 1997, he was in Toronto filming Half Baked and we hung out. In fact, he went to Yuk Yuk’s looking for me. I got to the club late that night, and someone mentioned that “some guy named Dave Chappelle asked for your number, so we gave it to him.” I was like, “What? You’re sure?” I eagerly awaited Dave’s call. One night I took him for a drive to Brampton. We drove on this hilly road, Forks of the Credit Road (known locally as “Rollercoaster Road”). He loved it. He joked that I was taking him to the country to kill him. As part of his Brampton experience, we stopped off for a coffee at the Tim Hortons at Highway 10 and Bovaird Drive. We hung out quite a bit that summer.

  Me and Dave Chappelle, in 1996.

  While we were at the Comic Strip, Chris Rock rolled up to the club in a limo. He was still on Saturday Night Live at the time. He’d also been in CB4, Boomerang and, of course, New Jack City. I knew who he was and could see who he was going to be. Funny thing was, I didn’t bother to watch his set that night. I had seen his stand-up special, Born Suspect, and thought it was just okay, plus I’d gotten bumped because he’d shown up, so I guess I was a little pissed. I ended up hanging out at the bar at the back of the club with Keith and the guys, talking shit and making fun of each other. Since that night, however, I’ve become a huge fan of Chris’s work and have met him a few times. He always calls me by my full name, as in “Russell Peters!” Having someone of his stature recognize you and call you out by your full name is a form of acknowledgment that lets you know he recognizes your accomplishments.

  Chris Rock (with his old teeth) and me, in 1996.

  On my last Saturday in New York, I did sets at the Boston Comedy Club and Stand-Up New York. Both shows had gone really well and I was feeling pretty good about myself. I knew that there was a gig at the Bronx BBQ—literally a barbeque restaurant—that paid $75, which was a lot of money for a spot in New York at that time. I started bugging Keith to take me out to the gig. He looked at me and said, “Nigga, you’re going to get kicked in your fuckin’ throat at that club.”

  “Come on, it’s the only spot paying any money tonight!” I said. Keith took me to the show. It was an all-black room and was hosted by a comic named Capone. The first guy up was Jimmy Martinez. The audience started booing him. “Y’all niggas think this shit is easy?!” he screamed at the crowd. “I’ll fight anyone of you muthafuckas!”

  The second guy went up, Wild Will. Capone’s introduction went like this, “Hey y’all, do you wanna see Wild Will?” The audience clapped and cheered for him. Will was kind of a weird guy—kind of crazy, really. When the crowd went nuts, I was thinking, Wow, they must really love him. He got up there and started doing this strange thing, the booing started and Will slunk off stage. Hmmmm …

  So I was the third guy. I got up on stage and as soon as I started, so did the booing. I was done, booed ri
ght off stage. When I stepped off, there was Keith. “Just like I said. They kicked you in your throat!!!”

  In 2004, I did a tour called The Gurus of Comedy. We did a few different cities across the U.S. But I have to admit that this time was a bit of a blur to me. Dad had just died and I was still pretty dazed. I ended up doing a solo show at the New York Improv for this wig-wearing douchebag Indian promoter in New York. This fucking guy told me he was taping my show for archiving purposes … and I believed him. Next thing you know, he’d uploaded the whole thing on the Web to build up his name. It really burned my ass. By dumping that show on the Web, he killed a good chunk of the new material that I was still working out. I just stopped doing a lot of those bits because of that.

  It’s impossible for some people to understand what it’s like to have material that you didn’t authorize distributed without your permission. Let’s say I’m having an off night or I’m still working on new material and it gets uploaded on the Web. There’s a couple of things can happen:

  1) People see it and say it’s shit, which kills my business.

  2) People see it and expect to see new material from me when they see me live shortly thereafter.

  Comedy is all about the element of surprise. If you’ve already seen it on the Internet, where’s the surprise when you see it live?

  A lot of times I’ve had people tell me that by putting my copyrighted material on the Web, they’re helping promote me. Well, um, thanks, but I’m not looking for promotion. I appreciate that my real fans are passionate about me and want to share me with their friends, but that’s not the way to do it.

  The Web’s been good to me, and I don’t deny that. I wouldn’t be where I am without that exposure—absolutely not. I’d still be playing clubs in Northern Ontario. But now I spend my own money to produce my specials and my own DVDs. If my stuff gets out there for free, I’ll just have to stop coming out with new product because I won’t be able to afford to do it any longer. Sorry for the rant here, but I know that there’s a lot of kids out there who don’t get that it costs a lot of money to make my stand-up specials and that it takes at least one year to come up with a new set and at least two years before it’s ready for broadcast.