Maybe You Never Cry Again

by Bernie Mac

  Care? Don’t tell me what to do with my money. I’m not telling you what to do with yours.

  But it didn’t stop. It got worse. Every time I turned around, something or someone was coming at me, giving me advice on who to help and how much was needed and all the wonderful things I could do for my community.

  “This shit wearing me down, Rhonda,” I told my wife one day. “What do they want from me? I’m supposed to buy uniforms for these kids? Build a library? These people making me crazy.”

  “I can see that, honey. It ain’t like you to let them get to you.”

  She was right. I was never one to pay much mind to other people. I have a handful of close friends, and those are the people I listen to. Them and my best friend of all: Rhonda. Plus my mama had taught me to listen to my own self.

  So I got strong: Make all the noise you want, motherfucker. I ain’t listenin’.

  I got refocused. Husband, father, comedian. I played hard and I worked hard. I kept racking up those frequent flyer miles. And the phone never stopped ringin’.

  “Who was that, honey?” Rhonda asked me.

  “Some little club in Des Moines,” I told her, sighing a big sigh. “I don’t know if I can accommodate them. All this scheduling and rescheduling! I need help!”

  “’Bout time you admitted it!” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I’m serious. I’m going to call Geri.” That would be Geri Bleavings, who worked over at the Cotton Club. We went back a number of years.

  “Geri,” I said, “it’s Bernie Mac. I need someone to help me run my business. I’m looking for someone with style, personality, high ethics, and lots of smarts—and since I can’t find no one like that, I called you.”

  Geri laughed and said, “When do I start?”

  The Mac Man was getting streamlined.

  Mac Man likes order. He likes his schedule. The Mac Man is in total control.

  One day, in the middle of all this, what do you know? I got a call from Hollywood. This fellow Ted Demme was about to direct a little movie called Who’s the Man? Ed Lover and Doctor Dre were in it, playing a couple of inept barbers, and the casting people thought I’d make a fine barber myself.

  I flew out to Los Angeles and met Ted Demme, and we liked each other right off. He told me I was hired, and they sent me home with a script. My barber was called G-George. I read the script and thought about G-George until it was time to go back and face the cameras. I showed up that first day and Ted Demme asked me how I was going to play the character. I said I wasn’t sure; that we’d both see it when the cameras rolled. Ted laughed and said that that was good enough for him, and I was so naïve—so new to the business—that I had no idea what a great gift he was giving me.

  When the cameras rolled, Ted Demme wasn’t the only one laughing. Seemed like I’d nailed G-George good. And I thought: This making-movies shit, it ain’t a bad gig.

  Next in line was House Party 3, followed by Above the Rim, with Tupac Shakur. They were small roles, but they meant a lot to me. Every moment in front of the cameras was a chance to learn something new. And that’s what I was doing: I was keeping my eyes and ears open and learning.

  In 1995 HBO flew me back to Los Angeles. All that talk we’d done was finally paying off. They were giving me my own comedy show, a variety show. I called it Midnight Mac, and I had high hopes for it.

  We set it on a Chicago stage that was designed to look like a nightclub. I hired Reginald T. McCants and the Mac Men for the music, and rounded up the Mac-A-Roni Dancers. It was a half-hour show, late-night, made up of comedy sketches and musical numbers, with me as the emcee, of course.

  I had this one routine where I’d bring a couple from the audience up onstage and test them to see how well they knew each other. It was called “Do You Know Me,” and it always brought down the house. It showed that married people only think they know each other; they don’t know each other for shit.

  I had fun with Big Tony, too, my midget bouncer. He wasn’t much more than three feet tall. One night I’m up there telling the audience that I’ve been studying ventriloquism, and then these two guys bring a big trunk up onstage. I keep chatting up the audience, talking about the art of ventriloquism, how much hard work it takes and such, and finally I pop that trunk open and reach inside and set that dummy on my lap. Only it ain’t no dummy; it’s Big Tony. And we get started, with me doing the talking for both of us—my lips flapping so hard I’m vying for the Worst Ventriloquist Ever award. But then Big Tony can’t contain himself. He’s angry. “You said I wouldn’t be locked up in that trunk for more than a few minutes!” he shouts at me. And before you know it, I’m up there arguing with my own dummy…All part of the routine, of course.

  They killed my show. One brief season and they let it die. They didn’t give us a chance to find our way. I know it wasn’t there yet, but we were moving in the right direction. Sure, it could’ve been funnier. Maybe I spent too much time clowning with the audience and acting like a game-show host. And maybe there wasn’t enough of me and my routines. But hell, not everything’s a hit out of the gate.

  That really hurt, getting canceled. I ain’t lying. That was my baby. That show went back to who I’d been in the beginning: that kid on the front porch, entertaining the neighbors; doing standup in church; the guy on the El train; the comic on the street corner, his hat laid out for handouts.

  It got a Cable Ace Award, but it didn’t fly. Politics killed us. They didn’t have time to watch me polish my act. It was over. They let me go down in flames.

  I was hurting and I was angry. I ain’t lyin’. And I was looking for someone to blame. But then I remembered something my mama had told me over and over again: “If you mess something up, Bernie, remember who got you there. Don’t be pointing fingers, even if finger-pointing is called for. Only one you got to blame is your own self.”

  She was right. I’d given Hollywood the power to take my show from me, and they’d exercised their power.

  If nothing else, I was a little wiser. Hurtin’, but wiser.

  More movies followed. In 1995 I got a small part in The Walking Dead. It was set in Vietnam, in 1972. Some marines were sent in to rescue a number of POW officers. I got a chance to show off my serious side.

  Next in line, Friday. I played a preacher who doesn’t know much about the Good Book. It was a fun group. Ice Cube, Chris Tucker, Nia Long, Tiny Lister Jr. If you haven’t seen the movie, rent it.

  When the movies finally come out, you start getting seen, and your fans always ask you the same questions. Want to know what Ice Cube’s like. Is he funny? Mean? Nia Long—is she married, or is she looking for a handsome older brother?

  “I don’t know nothing about Ice Cube,” I’d say. “I didn’t hang with Ice Cube. I’d go out, hit my mark, and go home when I was told to go home.”

  That was the truth. I was an actor, doing my job. If I’d been younger, maybe it would have been different. But I was forty years old, not a kid anymore. I wasn’t thinking about women and drinking and partying. I was focused on my career. I had a wife and daughter at home. I had a life back in Chicago. My real friends were in Chicago.

  It made me see how people who get success too fast and too early in life can get messed up real good. They don’t have the smarts to handle it. So listen up: Don’t be in such a got-damn hurry, brother. Slow and steady wins the race.

  Life, man—it can throw some curves at you. I’m back in Chicago and the phone rings early one evening—rings loud—and Rhonda’s sixteen-year-old niece, Toya, is on the line. Seems she and her mother aren’t getting along so good, and she’s wondering if maybe she can come stay with us for a while, she and her two-year-old both.

  So suddenly I’m a father all over again. And worse: I’m a got-damn grandfather.

  I thought these two were a handful, but they were nothing like what was going on with some friends of ours. They had a sister who had a serious drug problem, and they ended up with her three kids.

  I wen
t over one day and I was shocked. The kids were talking back, cranking and moaning, and sassing everyone. The little one—he was messed up bad. You could see his mama’d been taking drugs when he was in the womb. Two years old, he was, and he’d be snarling at you like a junkyard dog. “Puck you!” he’d say. “Puck you, motherpucker.”

  I couldn’t believe it! Little tyke, knee-high to a grasshopper, with that angry-ass look on his face and those sharp little cat teeth. I asked him where he learned to talk like that, and he turned to face me and put up his little fists. “Come on, motherpucker! Come on!”

  It was sad. That kid was a mess. That kid was a walking TV commercial: STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM DRUGS.

  I was about to leave—the place was worse than a zoo—but something just came over me. I raised my voice to those three kids and got all bug-eyed and loud and crazy and put some order into that house.

  “You kids better show some got-damn respect around here if you don’t want to end up in three different orphanages! I ain’t lyin’. Uncle Bernie don’t stand for this shit!”

  It worked, brother. You don’t scare Bernie Mac off a stage. (Well, maybe once.) I can handle three snot-nosed little bastards any old time. I wasn’t about to see them ruin the lives of my goodhearted friends.

  And my friends—they was so grateful. Woman was crying. “Mac Man,” she said, wiping the tears, “I wish you could stay. This is the first moment of peace we’ve had in weeks.” But I couldn’t stay. So I told her: “You get your ass over to Sears, the sports department. They have some baseball bats over there that are just the thing to put a kid’s mind right.”

  Man, them tears turned to laughter. She was laughing so hard I could hear that laughter ringing in my ears all the way home. Got my brain churning. I sat my ass down and began to write. I took that experience, and my own experiences with Je’Niece and Toya and Toya’s little girl, and it opened up a whole new world of comedy for me.

  Next time I was up onstage, I started tellin’ about these noisy, fucked-up kids, and I had people rolling in the aisles. Why? Because most of them had noisy, fucked-up kids of their own. That’s why. That’s what kids is: noisy and fucked up.

  And it taught me all over again about honest comedy. The most personal is the most universal. People are more alike than they know. Maybe not everybody got fucked-up kids, but everybody for damn sure got fucked-up families!

  In 1996 I landed a recurring role on Moesha, as Brandy’s uncle Bernie. More camera time, more learnin’. Another chance to improve myself. It was the first TV show that focused on the life of a black teen, and every minute on that show was a pleasure.

  Then Spike Lee called and put me in Get on the Bus. The story followed several black men on a cross-country bus trip to the Million Man March. The characters included a laid-off aircraft worker, a former gangbanger, a Hollywood actor, a cop who is of mixed racial background, a white bus driver, and me, a businessman. On the trip out we mixed it up, talking about manhood, religion, politics, race, and the march itself.

  It was a serious movie, and it needed some comic relief, and I was going to be the comic relief. At the end of the day, though, the seriousness and the comic relief didn’t jibe, and I ended up on the cutting-room floor. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It happened. I met Spike and Charles Dutton and Ossie Davis and Andre Braugher and worked on my chops as an actor. And that’s what it’s about, brother: The Work.

  Back and forth. More planes. More frequent flyer miles than I can use up in a lifetime.

  I did a little movie in Chicago, Reasons, about a drug dealer. But it never got released.

  Next, Don’t Be a Menace… with Shawn Wayans and his brother Marlon. I played a black racist police officer, and I still remember my favorite line: “I hate Whoopi Goldberg’s lips, I hate the back of Forest Whitaker’s neck, and most of all I hate that black ass Wesley Snipes.”

  I shot three movies in ’97, Booty Call, B.A.P.S., and How to Be a Player, and they all had one thing in common: They were small roles that were played real big in the trailers. And that’s when it occurred to me. These producers were smart. I had a fan base that stretched from New York to Los Angeles, and they wanted to fill seats with my fans. Okay. Fine. You want to pimp me, go ahead and pimp me. I’m here to work, brother.

  And that’s what I did. You take what you get and you do the best you can with it. You work it. Work, work, work. I’m a man, not a kid. I’m not here for the girls or the fast cars or to pose for pictures. I’m here to make myself a better actor and a better man. So, yeah, brother, like the song says, I wanna spread the news, that if it feel this good gettin’ used, oh, you just keep on using me, until you use me up.

  Then I got a nice, serious role, on Don King: Only in America, and it put things into perspective for me. I didn’t have to take everything that was offered. There was some good stuff out there. What I had to do was convince people I was right for it.

  The next time I got a call for a movie I didn’t want to do, I found the strength to say no. And there was hell to pay. “No? You sayin’ no to me, motherfucker? Who gave you your start? Where would you be without me? I’m asking you to do this one little thing for me, and you think you’re too fucking good for my movie?”

  No, brother. Not too good. Everything comes to an end, and I’m ready to move on. I’m like a shark, see. I’m not interested in messin’ with you. I just want to keep moving; moving is how I survive.

  So, yes—it was time for a change. I’m a Chicago boy, and I had a Chicago team, but the game was being played largely in Los Angeles. So I made the rounds of the agencies and took a gamble on Steven Greener, a manager at 3 Arts Entertainment. I’d met him on Above the Rim—he’d been one of the producers—and I liked what he had to say. He knew the business inside out, he understood the politics, he knew it was his job to shield me from the politics and let me do my work, and he knew what my career needed: stronger roles, a chance to grow.

  I signed on.

  Greener then put me in touch with David Schiff, at the United Talent Agency, and Schiff introduced me to the three principal players on his team: Ruthanne Secunda, Josh Pollack, and Marty Bowen.

  We were off to the races.

  Only the races would have to wait.

  Because a few days after the team was in place, I got a phone call from Walter Latham.

  “‘GIVE ME A CHANCE TO SHOW YOU…. AMERICA, GIVE ME A SITCOM!’”

  19

  THE BIGGEST SHOW BUSINESS PHENOMENON MOST WHITE PEOPLE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW ABOUT

  Let me tell you about this cat Walter Latham. I met him in 1998, when he was twenty-eight years old. He was six-six, a former basketball star at East Carolina University, but his real love was comedy.

  One day, back in 1992, he borrowed $4,000 from his mother and staged his very first comedy show. He was only twenty-two years old, but he knew there was a black audience out there that wanted more than hip-hop and Saturday-night TV. And he was dead right.

  Before long, this smart kid was booking comedy shows all over South Carolina. Then he decided to go national.

  The Kings of Comedy was Walt’s idea all the way. He wanted to do a show that was bigger than any show he’d ever done before. He wanted it to be urban, black, and bare-bones: good comedy on the cheap.

  The KOC tour went on to become the most successful comedy act in America, and the seventh most successful concert tour ever. It grossed nineteen million dollars in 1998, the first year out, pulling down an average of $450,000 per concert. By the end of its two-year run, that number had doubled, to thirty-seven million dollars.

  And it was practically pure profit. Overhead didn’t come any lower.

  That first year, there was just the three of us: Steve Harvey, who had his own show on the WB (The Steve Harvey Show), Cedric Kyles, a.k.a. Cedric the Entertainer, and me, Bernie Mac. Guy Torry was the emcee, and D. L. Hughley didn’t join up till 1999.

  The first time I went out in front of an audience that size was truly some
thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’d done routines in front of large audiences—all of us had cut our teeth on standup—but we’re talking stadiums here, brother. We’re talking fifteen thousand people.

  About forty-five minutes before I was due onstage, I went off with Rhonda and we held hands and bowed our heads in prayer. I always pray before a show. After that, I need about thirty minutes to get in character, so I keep to myself and let that character come forth.

  Then it was time.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, Bernie Mac!”

  The curtain parted and I stepped out onstage, and man, it was unreal. The crowd, the noise, the giant monitors. This was it, man. I’d been preparing for this moment my whole life, and I was so overwhelmed that for a moment there, my legs turned to jelly. But the moment passed, and I found myself center stage, mike in hand, with the fans winding down, getting quiet, looking at me, waiting to be entertained.

  Show us what you got, motherfucker. Make us laugh.

  Like I told you, black audiences are tough. But you get that first laugh—that big roar, filling an entire stadium—and it’s like a shot of pure adrenaline.

  So I’m off and runnin’:

  “I got three new kids. At forty years of age, the fuck I need three new children for? Two, four, and six. These my sister’s kids. State was going to take them away, and I intervened. Yeah, my sister on drugs. I said it and I ain’t ashamed. Some of your family fucked up, too…

  “I’m sitting in court, I should have sat there like my brother did. My brother ain’t say a damned word. He just turned his got-damned head. When they said they was going to give the kids over to the state, he turned his head. But I had to get my self-righteous ass up: ‘Naw. This ain’t right. We’re family. We got to stick together.’ If I’d known what these bastards was like, boy, they’d be in orphanages right now.