by Bernie Mac
“Man, that two-year-old—she a sumnabitch. That heifer been here before. Two-year-olds don’t use words like ‘inconsequential.’ She’s an apostle for the devil, I tell ya! One day I was combing her hair looking for some numbers.
“And the four-year-old—my sister must have been getting real high when she was conceived, because she don’t say nothing; she just look at you. I told her the other day, ‘Heffa, if a fire break out, you better learn how to whistle or something. Or you gon’ be a burnt-up bitch.’ I ain’t got time to be going into no fire looking for somebody like this. She just stare at you.
“And the six-year-old cry like a sumbitch. But the two-year-old has control over the six-year-old’s mind. I ain’t lying. Whatever the two-year-old tells the six-year-old to do, he do it…
“Kids! The world is messed up. I’m just saying what you’re afraid to say! Kids make me sick, motherfucker. I can’t stand those sumbitches. I’m not talking about kids from the sixties, seventies, and early eighties; I’m talking about these nineties got-damned kids. Ooh, these sumbitches. I can’t stand them. Ever since they changed the rules to stop you from hitting these fuckers, I lost interest in them. These some bad sumbitches with they small asses. They ain’t got no respect for nobody.”
Sound familiar? It should, for a couple of reasons. One, you know the story: I done told you about Toya and her kid, and about my friends who inherited those three little devils. And two, you’re hearing the foundations of The Bernie Mac Show. This right here, this was the beginning of that show.
The laughter. I tell you—nothing quite as sweet.
I see some people down in the front row, one woman looking shocked, mouth wide open. And I say, “What you looking at me like that for, girl? You know it’s the truth! Bernie Mac just say what you want to say but can’t.”
And this really gets them. Because that’s the way it is, brother.
“When a kid gets one years old, I believe you got the right to hit ’em in the throat or stomach.”
That really brings them down. Audience is roaring now. Guy in the front row just fell out of his seat.
People come by after the show for autographs. “That shit for real, brother?”
Come on, people! It’s humor. I’m just trying to show you that you’re not alone. World is fucked up, difficult; we all got problems. But hit a kid in the throat? I don’t think so, friend. You don’t beat a child. That don’t teach nothin’ but anger and hate.
Of course—and I know you’re going to crucify me for saying this—I’m not totally against a little light smackin’ now and then. If you’ve tried everything—if the little sumbitch is being so defiant and so disrespectful and so out of control that he might be harming himself or those around him—well, it’s time to bring out the belt. Yeah, I said it: You can take your Political Correctness crap and shove it. It makes me sick. As a parent, I will smack my kid if I want to. I’m not going to smack him to hurt him, but I’m going to smack him because he needs to shift direction—and he needs to do it now, motherfucker. You ain’t hurting your kid if you smack him right. You giving him guidance. You saving his got-damn life. And nobody going to tell me there’s anything wrong with that.
But is that me up onstage? Threatenin’ to clip a one-year-old in the throat? People, please. I got an evil twin inside me, just like you, but I got mine under control.
I was the least known of the three original kings, and I also happened to be the one with the least family-friendly material. You know me: I’ve been called the reigning champ of motherfucka. You done heard it already: “When I see that motherfucka, he better have my motherfucking money, or I’ma bust him upside his motherfucking head, motherfucka.”
And sure. We’re all different; we all have our own style; each one of us sees the world in his own uniquely comedic way. That’s what makes the world go round, brother. But we also knew one thing above all others: We knew going in that the show had to be about the three of us. We all had to do well. The show worked only if we all succeeded.
And it succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. Sold out, motherfucker! Sold out all over again! Sold out three got-damn nights in a row!
Of course, if you were white, you wouldn’t know it. The white media ignored us. You’d have thought there was a blackout on the Kings.
In 1998 thirty-four thousand people saw us at the MCI Center in Washington, D.C. But the Washington Post didn’t review the show.
In New York City we sold out Radio City Music Hall two nights in a row. But you didn’t hear a peep about it in the white press.
If I saw a white face in the audience, bright as a cotton shirt, I’d think to myself, That’s a brave motherfucker!
We went across the country and back again. We sold out 15,000-seat arenas from Oakland to Atlanta and everywhere in between. We sold out Chicago’s United Center, New York’s Madison Square Garden, then went back to D.C.’s MCI Center and sold out two more shows.
As one reporter put it, we were the Biggest Show Business Phenomenon Most White People Didn’t Even Know About. And that’s the truth. If you were white, you didn’t hear about us until long after we’d packed up and gone home; in fact, if Spike Lee hadn’t put the show on film, you likely would’ve never heard of us at all.
We shot the whole film in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the space of two days: February 26 and 27, 2000. It was a tiny, all-digital production, with a budget of only three million dollars. Spike’s cameras were everywhere, onstage and off. He showed us clowning before the show, playing poker, and horsing around on a basketball court behind the auditorium.
Of course, there was a lot of showbiz in those sequences. By the time Spike Lee got to North Carolina, politics had reared its ugly head. Steve Harvey started feeling The Kings was his show. Don’t ask me why. So mostly we didn’t hang together backstage, like you saw in the film. Not me, anyway; as you know, I prefer to be on my own.
And that time on the basketball court, when I said that stuff about getting a TV show, what you missed is the question: “Bernie,” Spike asked me, right there from behind the camera, “America’s waiting on you. How come you got no TV show? Your buddies here have shows of their own. What about you?” So I played along. I looked right at the camera and said, “Do I have a television show?” I got to acting all hot and aggressive. “No. You know why? Because you’re scared of me, that’s why. Scared I’m going to say something.” Then I got all weepy and whiny: “White folks, I don’t mean it. I’m just playin’. If you give me a chance, I’ll take the WB. I’ll take UPN. I’ll take USA. Give me a chance to show you…America, GIVE ME A SITCOM!”
I wasn’t honestly even thinking about a TV show. And neither was America, I imagine. For sure nobody thought I was the next Bill Cosby. And I can’t say I blame them. I think The Original Kings of Comedy probably scared the hell out of a lot of white people.
The Kings was pure black. Conception, marketing, performance—whole thing was geared to blacks. It was more of that Def Jam thing again: by blacks, for blacks.
When the film came out, white America didn’t know what to make of it. They kept talking about us “black comics.” I guess that makes Billy Crystal a “white comic,” though I never thought about him in those terms. I never thought comedy was about color. And I believe Dick Gregory said it best: “I’ve got to be a colored funny man, not a funny colored man.”
That’s what I wanted to be: a colored funny man. And it was Spike Lee’s question that got me thinking: Why didn’t I have a got-damn sitcom? I was funny. I was beyond funny. I called Steven Greener, back in Hollywood, and told him I wanted to do mainstream television. Greener said he’d get to work on it.
A few weeks later, I ran into Damon Wayans and told him I was looking for a TV show of my very own. “I ain’t scared of them,” I said, meaning white America.
And he said, “Hell, Bernie—maybe you ain’t scared of them, but they scared of you.”
That’d be funny if it wasn’t so unfunny.
/> This country—there’s always a lot of angry talk behind closed doors. Nigger can’t get a break. We worse off than ever. This country going to shit. But I don’t buy into that shit. I try to see people as individuals. When you see people in terms of race or religion, that’s when the trouble starts.
I don’t understand why people work so hard at pointing out our differences; we should be celebrating the things we have in common. More blood has been spilled over religious differences than over anything else in history. If you don’t believe me, brother, take a good look around you, take a look at what’s going on in the world right here, right now.
And this ain’t no apologist talking. I know who did what to whom. I know all about slaves. I come from a long line of slaves myself. Slavery is in my bones.
But am I a slave now?
Give it up, brother.
Every ethnic group has been oppressed. Can’t keep using that. Can’t keep bringing up the past. We were all slaves. Asians were slaves. Mexicans, Indians. Israelites were slaves. Filipinos—they sold those people for rice, man. And the Egyptians, they had those muh’fuckas on posts, whipping ’em and shit, throwing salt on their backs. “That sting, motherfucker. Want me to row this got-damned boat, better cut that shit out!”
Yeah, there’s racists out there. There’s every kind of racist for every kind of group. But it ain’t just a color thing. It’s humanity. People are harsh. They thick-headed, hardwired. No amount of tinkering is going to change the way some people think. Don’t tell me. I know. I’ve been beat the hell down as much as the next guy, and the biggest beating I’ve taken has been at the hands of my very own people.
Go ahead. Take me to task for saying that. But it’s the truth, brother. And that’s what I’m giving you: nothin’ but the truth.
“AND LIKE MY GRANDMA SAID: IF YOU HAVE A HANDFUL OF GOOD, LOVING PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE, YOU’RE A LUCKY MAN. WELL, I’M HERE TO TELL YOU:
BERNIE MAC IS A LUCKY MAN.”
20
MI CASA ES MI CASA
After the Kings tour, I went home to Chicago and picked up where I left off. The tour had put us on the map, but there was no rest for the wicked. I had to keep moving.
One night, not long back, I went to do a show at the Cotton Club and saw my grinning face on the marquee. AS SEEN IN THE KINGS OF COMEDY, the sign said. They even had an excerpt from Variety, the show business newspaper: “The concert’s true showstopper is Bernie Mac…. Appearing on screen last, he extends his motor-mouthed, bug-eyed movie persona into a dizzying string of impeccably timed comic arpeggios worthy of regal pronouncement.”
Well, thank you. I’m not going to argue with that.
I went in and walked out onstage, and the fans gave me a standing ovation. I love my fans. I love my fans in Chicago, New York, and L.A. I love my fans in Toledo, Savannah, Louisville, Detroit, and Anaheim. And I especially love my fans in all the little places in between, the ones that aren’t even on the map. My fans made me, and they’re making me still.
And for that, I thank every last one of you from the bottom of my heart.
At around this time, thanks to my team, there was serious talk about putting me on TV, but nobody could get a handle on how to do it. My comedy was too raw, they said. I was too strong. I scared people. I had too much power.
I told them I could be family-friendly, too, but I wasn’t about to let them castrate me.
I went back to L.A., racking up more frequent flier miles, and met with Jeffrey S. Dyson, Christopher A. Hall, and Takashi Buford, three guys who’d been kicking around Hollywood for a good long while. They had an idea for a show called Deadbeat Dad Detective, about a private eye who tracks down fathers when they stop making their child support payments. It was supposed to be Fletch meets Ace Ventura.
We talked and shook hands and went off to think about it. Lot of thinking goes on in Hollywood. Endless thinking. Though of course it doesn’t show.
Lot of meetings, too. Endless meetings. Lot of smiling back and forth and big promises and people all the time telling you how much they love you, but nothing happens. Still, that’s the way they do business in Hollywood: If you don’t hear from us, it’s not happening.
I met with Takashi Buford again. He had a movie at Fox called Seven Spells. It was a casino heist, with an all-black cast. It was supposed to be Ocean’s Eleven meets Superfly. Everything in Hollywood is Something Meets Something Else. Jaws meets The Exorcist. Hey, that’s not bad. Maybe I can sell that one.
Again, nothing much happened—just more supporting roles. I was ready for bigger things, but I didn’t crank or moan. And it’s not like I wasn’t working: I’d been touring forty-five weeks a year for going on thirteen years now. And the movie roles—small as they were—they kept on coming.
In ’98 I played a creep called Dollar Bill in The Players Club. I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to do those kinds of roles anymore, but I’d made a commitment to the project two years earlier. It took that long to get off the ground, and now they were back, with Ice Cube himself reminding me of my commitment. So I put on my bowler hat and my electric blue coat and did my bit the way Ice Cube asked me to do it.
Next in line, Life, with Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence, starring as a pair of convicts in a penitentiary, and my old friend Ted Demme at the helm. Ted called and told me he had a part for me, a small part, a prisoner called Jangle Leg, and he was hemming and hawing about the character. Finally he said that I had a “relationship” with one of the guys, and I almost dropped the phone.
“Are you telling me I’m gay? Is that why you’re hemming and hawing, because Jangle Leg’s a faggot?”
He sent me the script and I read it. I noticed I had very few lines, but there was something about the character that intrigued me. He reminded me a little of Harpo Marx—not the gay part, but the silent part. Seemed to me that every actor who plays a homosexual always plays him over the top, and I asked myself how Harpo might have done Jangle Leg. It felt like a real challenge, so I picked up the phone and called Ted.
“Teddy Bear,” I said, “I’m in.”
He was real happy. He thanked me over and over again and said he was looking forward to seeing me, then he asked me how I was going to play the character. “I don’t know,” I said. “Let me think on it.”
First day of shooting, I’m on the set, and here we go. Martin Lawrence is new to the prison, and my character sees Martin and—whoo!—he thinks the boy is hot. He’s going to show Martin around the prison. Teddy asked me again how I was going to play him, and again I told him I was still thinking. Then he said something to me that was about one of the nicest things any director had ever said to me, white or black. He said, “Bernie, I’m not worried. I trust you.” And the reason it touched me is because it came from his heart. And it touches me to this day. Swear to God, just the memory is powerful enough to bring tears to my eyes. Because this was about respect. This was about a fellow human being who had enough faith in me to let me do my thing, my way. And that is a rare thing, that kind of respect—in Hollywood or anywhere else.
When the cameras finally rolled, I shuffled over to Martin’s side and bowed my head low and mumbled away, and everyone was roaring before Ted even yelled “Cut!” Teddy was laughing, too. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t catch his breath.
Ted Demme was a fine human being. If there was anyone in this town that I was on my way to making a connection with, it was Teddy. He came at me straight and clean, and there’s precious little of that in this world. I miss Teddy. He collapsed on a basketball court early last year and died before he reached the hospital. He was thirty-eight years old.
Next up was Ocean’s Eleven, directed by Steven Soderbergh, and what a stellar cast that was! George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Andy Garcia, Julia Roberts, Casey Affleck, Scott Caan, Don Cheadle, Carl Reiner, and that wild man Elliott Gould. It was a trip to be working with people of that caliber, and to be treated as an equal.
People always ask me abo
ut the stars I’ve worked with—“That Julia, man, she must be superhot?”—and I always tell them the same thing: I work with these people. And most of the time it’s a pleasure to work with them. They are solid, professional people, doing their job, just like I’m doing mine. But I’m not going to pretend I know them. I do my work and go home. They do their work and go home. Maybe we’ll have a meal together; maybe we’ll smoke cigars and watch the sun set from the deck of our hotel. But we ain’t friends. We are acquaintances. I don’t know George Clooney. I don’t know Eddie or Martin Lawrence, neither. They have their lives, I have mine.
Maybe if I’d been in my twenties when all of this was happening, I’d be like a lot of young actors. Partying, jumping in and out of each other’s beds, getting crazy. But success came to me later in life, when I was already an adult, when I already knew myself and liked myself, when I’d already staked out my world. The people who are in my life now are the people I want in my life. It’s not like I don’t have room for new friendships, but friendships are hard work. And like my grandma said: If you have a handful of good, loving people in your life, you’re a lucky man. Well, I’m here to tell you: Bernie Mac is a lucky man.
One day, not long back in Chicago, I got a call from my manager. He said he wanted me to meet with Larry Wilmore, a longtime Hollywood writer, and he assured me that it wouldn’t be a waste of time.
So I went out to Los Angeles and sat down with Mr. Wilmore. He told me he had actually started in standup comedy but soon found he was more at home in front of his computer. He’d worked on The PJs, an animated series about an urban housing project. It ran for two seasons on Fox and one season on the WB. Before that, he’d written for In Living Color, Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The Jamie Foxx Show—more shows than he could remember.