Call Me Russell

by Russell Peters

  Ahem, back to New York … After playing the Apollo in 2005, I locked in a role in the movie Quarter Life Crisis. I played a shady TV producer masquerading as a limo driver who’s secretly filming the lead character’s love life as it unfolds in the back seat of my limo. The movie starred Maulik Pancholy, who’s now a regular on one of my favourite shows, 30 Rock, and Lisa Ray, who grew up in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke, which also happens to be where my cousins grew up. To be honest, I never even read the entire script. It was really just a great opportunity to spend time in New York and work on a movie. The movie itself was an indie film and didn’t have a big budget. We shot all over Manhattan, including a scene where I’m driving a bicycle rickshaw through Times Square at night with the two leads in the back.

  It was actually kind of cool. I spent about a month on the movie and really got to know Manhattan.

  In November 2006 I played my first big New York shows, two back-to-back sold-out gigs at the Beacon Theatre—the same theatre where Martin Scorsese shot the Rolling Stones’ Shine a Light. Outsourced had just come out in September, and this was my first large solo theatre show in New York. Almost six thousand people showed up, a really good mix of people in the audience—Indian, black, Latino, white, Chinese, Asian and Arab. Having a good mix of people at my shows is very important to me. It really allows me to dig into my material and do my best to please everyone.

  The shows were fantastic and I had a really good time. It was the first show where I used a DJ on stage with me. The DJ that night was one of my best friends, New York City’s DJ Spinbad. His job was to spin during the walk-in (when the audience is coming into the theatre and getting seated) and to play me on after my introduction.

  Spin is a very sweet guy whom I had met a couple of years earlier. He was a regular DJ on Power 105.1 in New York. Back in the ’90s, I used to pick up his mixtapes in Toronto. We chatted on the phone a few times back then, and within a very short period of time we became very, very good friends. He is one of the finest turntablists in the world. I’ve been with him at a club, and in the middle of having a conversation and a drink, he’s just scratching, cutting and mixing away without any effort whatsoever. He makes it look effortless and does things that I can only dream of doing.

  When I ask someone to open for me, it’s important that they’re good and that they get the audience warmed up.

  Craig Robinson, who plays the warehouse foreman in The Office, was one of my openers that night. The audience loved him. Craig is one of the nicest guys I know—very mellow and chill. He does his act with his electric piano, and one of the great things about him opening is that he gets a lot of the “sillies” out of the audience. He forces them to focus and settle in for when I take the stage. That’s not to say that Craig’s not a headliner unto himself—not at all. I’ve had Craig on several of my shows and he’s never let me down. He’s become a really good actor and is now a regular in all of the Judd Apatow movies. The one thing you’ll notice in all of his acting work is not just how funny he is, but also how vulnerable his characters are. He brings another layer to his performances, which isn’t easy in comedy. I also had Keith Robinson open for me that night. It had been ten years since I’d spent that week sleeping on his couch, and it was great to have him there for my first big New York show.

  When I ask someone to open for me, it’s important that they’re good and that they get the audience warmed up. I’ve had guys ask me if they should go a little light with the audience—in other words, not necessarily bring their A game. No way. I want guys who are better than me and who will kill when they go on stage. I want them to make the audience forget about me. I’m a competitive guy; most comics are. I want someone who’s going to force me to step up my game. I want to them to make me better, and they can’t do that if they’re just rolling over or weak. I know some headliners will actually ask guys to go easy when they get out there, but I go the other way and encourage the opener to really go for it.

  It was at the Beacon show that I first met one of my heroes, Melle (pronounced Mel-lee) Mel of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. A friend of mine had met him earlier that year and invited him down to the show. I was so blown away by having him there that I can’t even describe it. He was all smiles and charm and honestly seemed to be enjoying my adulation, which I just couldn’t hide. He hung out with me during the autograph session after the show, and I was a bit disappointed but not surprised by how many of the younger fans had no idea who he was. I forget that not everyone has the same reverence for the history of hip-hop as I do.

  Me and my hero, Melle Mel.

  After the show, all my New York crew, which we call “The Vipers,” went to the club Pacha NYC on West Forty-sixth Street. The name comes from an episode of The Sopranos in which Tony and Christopher rip off two bikers from a gang called the Vipers. The members of the Vipers are DJs, cops, radio guys and video directors. I love these guys. There’s no ego, no attitude and definitely no drama, plus we’re totally uncool when you get right down to it. These guys provide me with a bit of a safety zone when we’re together. I can do silly things with them—I can drink, do middle-aged breakdancing moves, even sing old R&B and hip-hop songs.

  We had a great time that night, and when the DJ at Pacha NYC found out that Mel was in the house, he played “White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It).” Mel’s girlfriend really went buck wild when they played it. She did a headstand on the dance floor and her wig flew off. As the wig went flying, some random Korean dude grabbed it and put it on and started dancing with it on his head. We were howling, and so was Mel.

  In late 2007, I decided that we’d record my next DVD in New York at Madison Square Garden. This time, my brother and I decided that we’d go it alone and finance the entire production ourselves. Unlike our Outsourced experience, I was finally the one deciding when and where I’d record my special. I decided that Jigar Talati would direct the special. Jig was primarily a documentary filmmaker and had never shot a live performance with six cameras before. That didn’t matter to me—he knew the material and he knew me, and he did a great job.

  My New York crew, “The Vipers,” and me.

  The Saturday night show sold out fairly quickly, so we added another one on Friday. The plan was to record both nights, which is normal when you’re recording a special—you catch different things on each show and sometimes some bits work better on one show versus the other. You can also do more coverage of the audience and different cutaways between them and yourself. At the end of it all, you edit back and forth between the best of both shows so that it looks like one continuous performance.

  However, on Friday afternoon I got a call from my friend and DJ Starting-from-Scratch, who, along with Spinbad, was my other DJ on the show that weekend. I’ve known him for almost twenty years. He lived in Brampton, just a few kilometres from where I grew up. The depth of his musical knowledge is astounding and his ability to go from playing Fleetwood Mac to Biggie to Frankie Knuckles all in one set is an amazing thing to hear. When he lived at his mom’s house near Kennedy Road, he had taken over the entire basement with his thousand records. They lined all four walls, from floor to ceiling, and he had organized them alphabetically and by genre—much the same way that music is now organized on Serato. Anyway, when he called, he was freaking out about my brother and how he had heard from one of my security guys that my brother had said something about his mom. Scratch told me that he wasn’t going to be on the show and wouldn’t go anywhere where my brother was. My security had spoken out of turn and had misquoted my brother. The drama was the last thing I needed that day. I got on the phone with him and asked him what happened. He knew right away that he’d said the wrong thing. And now, on the first day of recording my special in the most important city in the world, I had lost one of my DJs—who wasn’t just a DJ, but a good friend—and it was caused by some unnecessary tongues flapping.

  This wasn’t the first time we’d had an issue with this particular security guy saying the w
rong thing to someone and creating problems for the entire crew, so I flipped out on him and fired him—for the second time in two years. I made it clear that he was not to be in the theatre at any point over the next two days. There was no excuse for this. All of these guys, my security guards Ray Ray and Shake, my DJs Spin, Scratch and Pick, my brother—they all knew how high the stakes were for me that weekend. There’s no room for fucking around when you play New York. My brother would have to make amends with Scratch immediately, and he did. I couldn’t have been more disappointed in my crew for letting me down like that.

  A.G. White, my old friend from New York, was my opener that night. A.G. is one of those guys you meet when you’re on the road and you can’t help but like him. He’s a classic New Yorker who grew up in Brooklyn and was a fellow hip-hop head and always comes with respect and old-school manners that only New Yorkers have.

  Although he was nervous as hell, A.G. did a great job with the audience, with lots of local shout-outs and references. But when I took the stage, it felt off. It was February, and it had been pouring rain all day. The audience was tired, as big-city audiences often are on a Friday night after a long work week, and the rainy day didn’t help. The energy in the room that night was … lacking.

  I had decided to wear a white blazer and jeans for the show. My brother and Jig warned me that a white blazer was going to mess up the lighting and the shot, but because of all the drama earlier, there was no way they were going to get into a big thing with me about it. They had no choice but to let it ride.

  Even though I’d honed this act across Canada and around the world in 2007 and had chosen these two nights to record it, I was nowhere near as tight as I should have been on that first show. I was nervous and the day’s drama had really pissed me off, and I’m not so good at hiding my emotions. My concentration was thrown and my bits were going too long. I was meandering through some of them. I knew that that night’s set was unusable. All my guys could see that I was off too. I knew I’d have to knock it out of the park the next night. There was no room for error. I’d also need to ditch that white jacket. When you watch Red, White and Brown, you can see the better parts of the Friday show in the bonus features—“The White Jacket Bootleg.”

  By the end of that night, I was exhausted and just crashed at the hotel. The next day, I went shopping. I bought a black shirt from D&G as well as jeans and sneakers from Gucci. When I got to Madison Square Garden on Saturday night, the whole vibe was different. I was more relaxed, and so was everyone else. It was all very positive backstage. Jigar and my brother had tweaked all the lighting and technical issues that afternoon, and they were feeling good too. From the moment Melle Mel introduced me from offstage, I was on. My back was up against the wall, and I came out swinging. The audience was on fire, right there with me.

  One of the first things I really did notice was “the kid” who was there in the audience with his dad. If you watch the DVD, you’ll see the one I mean. I make a joke about how the kid’s really going to learn “some new shit” that night. Since that show, I’ve actually met “the kid,” Nicholas, and his dad, Dean, at one of my shows in Jersey. And just so people know, Nicholas came away from that Madison Square Garden show unscarred. There were some bits that still worked better on the Friday show, so we put those into the bonus features on the DVD. Looking back, I’ve noticed that I swore a lot in the Saturday night show. I don’t know why I did, and really wish I hadn’t.

  Me with “the kid,” Nicholas, and his father, Dean.

  In the end, we licensed broadcast rights to Red, White and Brown to Showtime, with a second licence to Comedy Central. We sold over 100,000 copies of the DVD across Canada. Producing Red, White and Brown myself turned out to be a great business and creative decision.

  When I first came through New York for my show at the Beacon, and then when I came back for the Madison Square Garden show, my agents pitched me to be a guest on The Late Show with David Letterman. The producers told them that my material was “too broad” and that they weren’t interested in having me on. I’ve never been sure what “too broad” means. When I’m performing, I’m playing for everyone, not just the comics at the back of the room. I’m there for the audience. That’s my job—to make the audience laugh. I didn’t take it personally, but I did think it was funny that they found me “too broad.”

  You don’t play New York to make money. You play New York because it’s New York.

  There’s a saying in the industry that you don’t play New York to make money. You play New York because it’s New York. On January 29 and 30, 2010, I returned to the city. I could have gone back to Madison Square Garden, but this time I chose to do the shows at Radio City Music Hall. New York has so many historic clubs and theatres to choose from, and I just felt that Radio City sounded pretty cool!

  The energy and excitement surrounding a New York show is unlike that of any other city, other than perhaps my shows in Toronto. The more prestigious the venue, the more the tickets cost. Radio City Music Hall is no exception. The room itself is cavernous and absolutely beautiful. The backstage space actually has a camel-holding area for the camels and other livestock that appear in their annual Christmas spectacular. There are three floors of dressing rooms to accommodate the eighty Rockettes that the building is famous for.

  January, 2010.

  I usually start off every year by playing club dates before I start playing larger venues. I think of it as training camp. Since I hate cold weather, I like to start the year with gigs in Florida. But in January 2010, Florida had one of its coldest winters in history—boy, did my plan backfire. Over the course of playing the improv clubs in Miami, West Palm Beach and Tampa, I picked up a cold. My flight from Tampa was delayed for over ten hours and I was anxious to get the hell out of there and into New York. I bit the bullet and hired a private jet, which is something that I’ve done before, but not something that I do lightly. It still feels like I’m being extravagant.

  I was coming off that cold when I got to New York. My mom and her neighbour Sunita flew in to see me. On Wednesday night, we went out for dinner with the Vipers and around eleven-thirty, while we were driving Mom and her friend around Manhattan to show them the city, Mom said, “Let’s go to Atlantic City!” I can’t say no to my mom, and she can’t say no to a casino, even one that’s 150 miles away. So, even though I’d been awake since six-thirty in the morning, and I was sick and I had two big shows coming up in less than forty-eight hours and we were already in one of the greatest cities in the world AND I should know better, I said, “Okay, Mom.”

  Two hours later, we arrived at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City. Mom lost a few hundred bucks and then we returned to Manhattan. I got to bed at around 6:30 A.M. and crashed out.

  Mama and me in Atlantic City.

  Like the Madison Square Garden shows, my Friday-night show at Radio City Music Hall wasn’t as strong as I would have liked. Michael Bublé was in town doing Saturday Night Live, and he came to the show. I was really happy to see him. We met when I was hosting the Juno Awards in 2008 and we hit it off. Like me, he comes from a very modest working-class background. Before the show, he came backstage and had a nice casual dinner in the general dining area where all of the crew guys eat. No fanfare, no fuss, just a couple of working-class Canadian guys having dinner in New York City.

  In addition to having Bublé at the Friday show, the mayor of Brampton, Susan Fennell, was there too. We also had a veritable who’s who of my hip-hop heroes at those shows: DJ Premier, Masta Ace, Freddie Foxxx (a.k.a. Bumpy Knuckles), Skoob (Das EFX), Vinnie (from Naughty by Nature), Pharoahe Monch, DJ Riz, Grandmaster Kaz, Greg Nice, Marco Polo, Torae and Craig G, as well as Ali Leroy and Terry Crews from Everybody Hates Chris and Opie from The Opie and Anthony Show. We even had Mark Teixeira from the New York Yankees there. Having a Yankee at your show in New York is like having royalty. Mark was a really nice, down-to-earth guy, and he came with his wife and family. Mark’s also the cousin of my L.A. manager, Pau
l Canterna. When I introduced Mark to Melle Mel, Mel was impressed. He went from being Melle Mel of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to a regular New Yorker in awe of meeting a real live New York Yankee.

  New York has never let me down, and having any kind of success there is different from having success anywhere else in the world.

  My opener at these shows was a very funny comic named Owen Smith. Owen had opened for me a few times on some of my club dates and had been giving me some acting and auditioning advice. His advice in these two areas was invaluable and led to a career-changing opportunity, which I’ll tell you about later. His entire family of about twenty or so people, including his mom, were at the shows, and he was dressed sharp. He went out there and totally killed on both nights.

  Once again, Saturday night’s show was much better than Friday’s. I was giddy and downright silly when I got on stage that night. I was making myself laugh. I couldn’t have asked for a better mix of people in the front rows. It was a multicultural Noah’s Ark—Filipinos, Latinos, Indians, Italians, Arabs … you name it. I was happy with the show and as far as I could tell, so was the audience.

  New York has never let me down, and having any kind of success there is different from having success anywhere else in the world. It really does make you feel like if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere. No matter what happens to my career in the future, I’ll always be able to look back and know that for a few hours over the course of a few nights, I was king of the hill and the top of the heap.