by Bernie Mac
One night at the Comedy Store this black guy, Robin Harris, got up onstage. He was thirty-seven—older than me—and he was good. I went to see him after his show, to congratulate him.
“Bernie Mac,” he said, coming on strong. “Yeah, I heard of you—you black motherfucker. Whatcha doin’ in L.A.? When’d you get out?”
He was playing with me, and I played right back. “You good,” I said. “Damn good Yaphet Kotto look-alike.”
He laughed. “You quick, boy,” he said. “I like that. Man hits you, you hit back.” He shook my hand and told me I should come down to South Central, to the Comedy Act Theatre, and check things out for myself. “You and I,” he said, “we’re going to be working together before long.”
So I went down the next night. Lot of names there. Eddie Murphy. Damon Wayans. Arsenio Hall. Robert Townsend. They were all hanging out in their little groups and cliques, and everyone just ignored me. So I sat back and watched the show. Thing about me is, I can get through a door if it’s a question of going onstage, but when it comes to meeting people—I’m not pushy. I’m happy in my little corner. And that’s where I stayed: in my corner. I never got onstage; I never tried.
End of the week, I went home, none the wiser. And the following day I got a call from Chuck Gueno, manager of the Regal Theatre. He told me Robin Harris was coming to Chicago, and that he’d called ahead to ask if I wanted to open for him.
“You’re damn right I do,” I said. I was kind of shocked, to be honest. Most people, they tell you they gonna do something—doesn’t happen. Robin Harris had follow-through, and I respect that in a man.
On the big night, though, there was some confusion. This other comic was under the impression that he was opening for Robin, and I could see the guy was upset. So I told him that if it meant that much to him, to go ahead; I’d sit this one out. And the man went on and did a good job, and then Robin went on and killed. And Robin came looking for me after the show, because he’d heard how I’d stepped aside, and asked would I meet him later for drinks at the Four Seasons.
So I went. He was there with his mother and a few friends. Good people. And Robin said he was going on the road at the end of the year, and would I like to come out to Milwaukee and open for him. I said it sounded real good to me; that we should talk about it. He said there was nothing to talk about—we had a deal—and he invited me to dinner to celebrate. But it was two in the morning and I didn’t want to impose—he was with family—so I thanked him and said good-bye to everyone and went home.
I woke Rhonda when I got home. I didn’t care how late it was.
“What?” she said. Her eyes were thick with sleep.
“I’m going to open for Robin Harris in Milwaukee,” I said. I was like a big, excited kid.
“That’s nice, Bernard. Can I go to sleep now?”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “That man is really gifted. He’s about to break out.”
Rhonda wasn’t even listening. She closed her eyes and drifted off. It took me a good long while to fall asleep. My mind was racing. I watched the sun come up.
Next day, three in the afternoon, I woke up and dragged my tired ass into the kitchen.
“Hey, Rhonda,” I said, yawning like a lion. “Anything to eat in this house?”
I looked in the fridge. Found some eggs. Set them on the counter. Then I noticed the look on Rhonda’s face.
“What’s wrong, baby?” I said. “Somebody die?”
“Bernard,” she said. “I have some bad news.”
“Well, what, woman?”
“Robin Harris died in his sleep last night.”
I couldn’t believe it. It had been on the news. Robin Harris had had a heart attack in his sleep. I hardly even knew the man, but I felt the loss deeply. He was a gifted man, and a good man. Not too many of those around.
“You okay, Bernard?” Rhonda asked me.
“No,” I said. “No, I am not okay.”
I got dressed and went for a walk and found myself in a strange bar. I sat down and ordered a beer. I had a sip. It felt good going down, ice-cold. Then I noticed a guy across the way looking at me funny. I looked back at him hard. I was angry and I was frustrated and I thought I could use a good fight. But the sumbitch looked away. I was going to have to find another outlet for my rage.
I got to Dock’s Monday, still angry, still in a fog. Phone rang as I was walking through the door. It was for me, a guy from the Cotton Club. I thought he was calling about Robin Harris, but he wasn’t. He was calling to say I’d been entered in the 1990 Miller Lite Comedy Search. It didn’t make me feel any better about Robin Harris, but it got me out of my funk.
It also showed me that life goes on, with you and without you.
The way the Miller Lite thing worked, see, is that they narrowed it down to a hundred comedians from the Chicago area. Then they took a bunch of small groups and had us perform at about every club in town. We were performing in front of live audiences, of course, along with panels of judges, and the judges had to settle on the top ten.
And, yeah—I made the cut. I guess I was starting the decade right.
The final showdown took place at the Regal Theatre, in front of thirty-seven hundred people. Damon Wayans was hosting.
Well, my turn came, and I went out there and dedicated my bit to Robin Harris. Not because we were so close—hell, we’d only met a couple of times—but because there was something special about Robin, some kind of light inside him. It’s something you feel around certain people, not something you can explain, and with Robin I felt it strong. If he had lived, I would’ve wanted to get close to that man. He was a lot like Big Nigger and A.V. and Morris; he had the heart of a lion.
I only had a few minutes to do my thing, so I plunged right in. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I have to tell you something. I’ve been preparing for this contest for some time, and the other day I went home to tell my wife that I’d made the cut—that I was in the finals. Well, as I came through the door, I saw a trail of clothes leading to my bedroom. A bra here, another bra there, two pairs of panties, some jeans over by the chair.
“I was getting closer and closer to the bedroom. I was so close I could hear some heavy moanin’ and groanin’. I tell you, my heart was pounding like crazy.
“Ever so quietly, I opened the door. And there was my wife, in bed with a beautiful young woman. I looked at her with disgust. ‘You nasty, no-good, double-crossing, unfaithful—move over!’”
I was on, brother. I brought down the house. At the end of the evening, Damon Wayans went out onstage and—you guessed it—called my name.
I got a check for three thousand dollars, the biggest payday of my life, and I shook so many hands that evening that my arm went numb.
Rhonda and I floated home in the wee hours, and when I got out of bed the next morning, I ran all the way to the bank. I put the whole three thousand dollars in my daughter’s name.
I walked home from the bank, still floating, wondering, What’s gonna happen now?
““I’M GONNA PAY YOU BACK, BERNIE—I SWEAR TO GOD! I’LL PAY YOU BACK IF I HAVE TO SELL MY ARM TO DO IT!””
15
SUCCESS HAS MANY PARENTS
Funny thing about people. They’re not too comfortable with success.
For about ten seconds, I owned Chicago. It was in the newspapers. On the radio. On black TV. The same motherfuckers who wouldn’t give me the time of day a week earlier were calling to congratulate me and ask me to perform at their clubs. They’d come by with a bottle of champagne and one of those big, lopsided grins. “Bernie! My nigger! Always knew you were going to make it big! Number One Fan here from the start!”
Like they say, Success has many parents. Failure is an orphan.
And family—don’t even get me started. Suddenly you got family you never knew existed. And they got problems. Serious problems. But they never come at you straight, see. They look all broken-faced and sigh their big sighs and you gotta ask them what’s wro
ng; you got to pull it the fuck out of them.
“What is it, George?”
“Bernie, it don’t make no sense, brother. I’m going to be living in a trailer soon.”
Then there’s the other kind: Once they get started, they don’t stop. “They laid me off, man. I was sick a few times, and the sons of bitches laid my sorry ass off. I don’t know what all I’m gonna do, Bern. Your niece—you remember your niece? Chiquita? She gotta have an operation. I ain’t told nobody yet because she don’t want me to tell, but it’s gonna run eight thousand dollars. I know you want her to be well, Bernard. We family, right? At the end of the day, only thing we got is each other, brother. I’m gonna pay you back. I swear to God! I’ll pay you back if I have to sell my arm to do it! Give you my left nut if you want it. Hell, both if you really need ’em. That’s how much I love you, Bern. That’s how much you mean to me.”
After they’re done hitting you up, and they see that you ain’t rich—see that you’re still frying fish at Dock’s—they change their tune.
We put you up there, motherfucker, and we’re going to bring your ass down.
What is that about? Why you want to wish ill on a man that never did you any harm? I don’t get it. How does my small success have any bearing on you or anyone else? I don’t look at Chris Rock and think, Well, I guess there’s only room for six funny niggers in this cold world of ours. I’m shit out of luck.
And at work, that was the worst. It wasn’t just the people coming in, doing double takes: “Hey! You that funny guy! I saw you at Dingbats last weekend!” It was the guys I worked with. We were back to that same old bullshit, only twice as strong. “You a comedian! You famous! This here’s Bernie Mac, winner of the Miller Lite Comedy Search. Look at the way the brother fries that fish. Them fish go in the fryer laughing.”
Got home one day and told Rhonda I’d had enough. One of my cousins worked for Wonder Bread. I called over and asked if he knew whether they had anything. He said they were looking for drivers.
I went down the next day and filled out an application. I brought some references and my entire work history and told them how I’d already driven a truck for UPS. They hired me on the spot. They gave me the worst route they had—the meanest, roughest neighborhoods—but I didn’t care. I loved it. I loved sitting there in my Wonder Bread truck, driving along, alone with my thoughts. I passed an electronics store and went in and bought myself a little tape recorder. If I saw something of interest, I’d pick up my tape recorder and make a little note to myself: mean dogs; large women with tight pants; pimps and big hats; couple on the street arguing about who’s paying what bills when…Everything was fodder. The good stuff would find its way into my comedy routines.
I’m up at Just for Laughs one night, talking about those got-damn bills: “Creditor calls, says, ‘Can I speak to Bernie Mac?’ ‘Uh, Bernie ain’t here right now.’ ‘When he comin’ back?’ ‘He ain’t: Motherfucker died this mornin’.”
Black people can relate. All black people running from their bills.
Another time, at Dingbats, Rhonda was in the audience—and she was getting embarrassed:
“People say you get older, you get better. Well, I ain’t gonna lie to you, I’m old. I can’t fuck like I used to. I’m not in shape. Sex is nothing but hard got-damn work—physical labor. Pumping away like that? What the fuck you trying to prove, motherfucker? My chest hurt, my back hurt, my lips are turning white, I can’t breathe, and she’s going, ‘Oh yeah, baby. Right there—ooh!’ What the fuck is ‘right there’? Bust a nut so we can go to sleep already.”
People laughing like crazy. They know it’s true.
“Nowadays, when my wife wants it, I think of some excuse. ‘I gotta wash the car, baby.’ And she turns to look at me and says, ‘Bernard, you don’t have a car.’”
That’s the thing, see: I’m digging into my own life, and I’m spinning it every which way, and then I’m reaching out with it. I’m being true to myself and the small insights I’ve had. And that’s what connects me to my audience: honesty.
You dig deep, brother, you’ll find we have a lot in common. People are more alike than they know.
We were on our way home from the Cotton Club late one night, Rhonda and I, and she said, “Why you telling that stuff? People are going to think it’s true.”
“I’m just playing, baby. They know it ain’t true.”
“Some of it is!”
“Well, I’m not telling which part,” I said, “and I hope you’re not, neither.”
The thing you have to understand is that onstage, I’m in character. I’m still Bernie Mac, sure, and I’m tapping into my own life, but I’m running with it. And running is the right word. When I’m hot, I feel like I’m channeling a force inside me. It’s as if I’m possessed. Scares Rhonda sometimes—the way my voice wavers; the way my eyes roll up into my head. I don’t know where that force comes from, but it sure taps into some deep shit. It pushes me to tell it like it is, and that’s what gives comedy its power: the truth, and the fact that people recognize it as the truth.
I might say something you’ve been thinking all your life, and suddenly you get it. Amen to that, brother! That’s where the connection is.
And the best part is, I can say anything I want. About wives, girlfriends, brothers, and cousins once removed.
“I’m gonna pay you back, Bernie—I swear to God! I’ll pay you back if I have to sell my arm to do it!”
People get it. They’ve been there. I tell jokes, too—because that’s part of it, and everyone likes a good joke. But I’m more than a joke teller now. And it feels great.
Suddenly I’m getting calls from Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Mississippi. And I ain’t gonna turn anyone down. Monday through Friday, I’m the Wonder Bread man. But weekends are my own.
Then Hollywood calls. The Wayans brothers have a show on Fox, In Living Color. Why don’t I stop in for a meeting?
I take the red-eye to Los Angeles, on my own dime. I already know Damon—he was the Miller Lite emcee—and now I get to meet his brothers. Lots of energy in the room. Everybody’s up. Good things are gonna happen.
After that meeting, I’m off to meet everyone else in town. Plenty of meetings; endless meetings. And I’m thinking it’s a miracle anyone gets anything done in L.A., what with all the got-damn meetings back-to-back.
Studio executive is sitting there, wearing a Christian Science smile, telling you he’s a big fan of your work—and you know the man hasn’t got a clue; maybe never even heard of you till he saw you on his list that morning. But it don’t matter. You smile right back, and you try to look mighty Christian yourself.
Now they’re walking you to the door, telling you how much they love you, how you’re a got-damn genius, how their people are going to be in touch with your people.
But nothing ever comes of it. You never hear from them again. You have to get bigger to get them interested. Much bigger. And I’m not big.
I’m so not big I have to rush back to Chicago and get out of bed at three in the morning so I can be in my Wonder Bread truck by four-thirty.
One morning, WHAM! Tore the roof right off that truck. I was tired. I admit it. I had taken a shortcut and misjudged the underpass and suddenly I’m sitting in a convertible, loaves of bread up to my knees.
I went back to the office and ’fessed up. I swore it wouldn’t happen again. They weren’t happy with me, but I’d never so much as missed a day or a delivery, and we’re talking fourteen-hour days on the meanest streets in town.
“It better not happen again, Bernard.”
“No, sir. It won’t. I’m really sorry, sir.”
I took the El home. And all the way home I was asking myself, When are you going to make up your mind, McCullough? When are you going to make the leap? Are you or are you not a comedian?
The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I was at All Jokes Aside, a club on Wabash Avenue, and I got three standing ovations.
“White people. Bungee jumping? What i
s that shit? Why you want to jump off a cliff and almost hit the ground? You’re one got-damn inch from busting your head wide open and all you got to say for yourself is, ‘Whooo! Awesome, dude!’
“White people. I hear they have hurricane parties in Miami. ‘We might get swept out to sea! We might die! Yippeee!’
“Not me, brother. I like simple things. I like swimming in shallow water. I like to swim where I can stand up when I get tired.
“Even skiing is too dangerous for me. The only black people that ski are the ones who went to Harvard. The rest of us ain’t educated enough to like cold and pain.”
I was on fire, brother. I was looking down at those laughing faces, and I could see it. They were telling me I was a comedian. Seems like everyone knew it, everyone but me.
I couldn’t get to sleep that night. And just as I began to close my eyes, that got-damn alarm clock went off.
By four-thirty I was behind the wheel of my Wonder Bread truck. And in no mood. It was a big run—the Thanksgiving run, November 1991—biggest run of the year. I had thirty-two hundred dollars’ worth of bread in that truck. And it was freezin’ out: Radio said the wind-chill factor was making it forty below. You know what that’s like? That’s like a big dog taking a bite out of your ass every time you step outside.
Tired as I was, I got through it. I hopped in and out of the truck, braving the elements, delivering my loaves, and all the time I couldn’t stop thinking of the night before. That laughter. Those faces. The way the crowd got to its feet and stomped and roared.