by Apatow, Judd
Judd: Are you happy doing the clubs or would you like to play the larger audiences?
Jay: I like doing the clubs. Two hundred to four hundred seats is about the maximum for ideal comedy, where you play with the crowd and all. I mean, obviously the big rooms are nice because there’s more money. But performance-wise, the smaller rooms are more fun to do. I mean, it’s like anything else. I like this. I’m happy where I am now, and—you know, the whole idea is if you keep coming up with new ideas and new material, everything else just falls into place.
Judd: Who are the people that you’ve opened up for?
Jay: Oh, everybody. Everybody from Stan Getz, Mose Allison, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Chick Corea, all the way to like John Denver, Tom Jones, Perry Como, Kris Kristofferson. All kinds of people.
Judd: I thought I saw you once on Laverne & Shirley.
Jay: Oh!
Judd: What is the point of doing that show at this stage in your career?
Jay: Well, the point of doing that show is the same point of doing this show. Somebody asks you to do it, and you go, Well, why not? I like Penny and Cindy and all those people, they’re good friends. People ask you to do the show, and it’s nice. I mean, okay, the show is not exactly King Lear, but that’s all right.
Judd: But it’s the kind of thing you make fun of in your act.
Jay: It is. Sure it is. But I’m not above doing something I make fun of in my act. I also eat at McDonald’s and all those other things I make fun of. That’s all a part of the business, you know. I do Hollywood Squares. I do whatever people ask me to do. Unless it’s something which is just totally, oh, I don’t know, I mean, sexist or racist or something of that nature. But when you do those kinds of shows it just helps, you know. When I’m on TV, I’m either on The Tonight Show or the Letterman show, which is on after eleven-thirty at night in most parts of the country. Consequently, there’s a whole generation of people that never see you or know who you are. So when you do a show like Laverne & Shirley, it gives my relatives a chance to see me on television.
Judd: Would you want more people knowing you? Is that something you want?
Jay: That’s something every performer tries to get. It’s like anything else: You do your work and the more people you can please with it, the better it makes you feel.
Judd: What prompted you to go into this?
Jay: Oh, I don’t know, it seemed like a fun way to make money at the time. I was in college, and I used to do ah—all those college shows, you know, like in Boston there are two hundred or three hundred colleges. So consequently every Saturday the cafeteria would become the Two Toke Café or something like this. And there would be nineteen-year-old folksingers with guitars ODing on the stage, and I used to emcee some of this stuff. And I would ah—you know, I would say, “That was so-and-so.” Boo, get off the stage, man you stink, get outta here. The audience was terrible, I was terrible, the acts were terrible. But it was fun being onstage and screwing around and—I started going around other coffeehouses and things like that and getting onstage. I was making five bucks, six bucks a night, which is what friends of mine who were waiters and waitresses were making at the time.
Judd: When you were in college?
Jay: Yeah. Colleges. I used to work strip joints. All kinds of places like that.
Judd: Strip joints? How did that work out?
Jay: Oh, your eyes light up, huh? Well, there were no comedy clubs.
Judd: What year is this?
Jay: Seventy-three, ’74. Most of the comedy clubs didn’t come along until about ’77, so the only place you could work was strip joints. You know, I had read Lenny Bruce and Milton Berle and all those people, and they all seem to have gotten their start in strip joints. So I used to go in and do strip joints. They were terrible. I was like nineteen, with long hair. It was terrible. But I thought it was fun.
Judd: What kind of reactions did you get?
Jay: Terrible. “Get off the stage, you stink.” I had a guy jump me with a Heinz ketchup bottle once. Split my head open. I got eight stitches on that one.
Judd: Why’d he do that?
Jay: (Laughs) Why? Why did he do that? I don’t know. Why do people beat up grandmothers and rob their purses? You want a rational explanation for why a guy came onstage and hit me on the head, and knocked me out? I don’t know. If I knew why, I wouldn’t have done it.
Judd: What did you study in college?
Jay: I don’t know. My mom has the degree in the living room. Ah, speech therapy. I went to college and I said, “What requires the least amount of studying?” Speech courses had—at the end of the year you had to give a talk. I figured, well, I can do that. So I get up and give my talk and get a C and then get out of there.
Judd: So you’re doing comedy at that point, at the end of college. You knew that was what you were going into?
Jay: Well, I was also a Mercedes-Benz mechanic at the time. I didn’t have any expenses. I didn’t have any lifestyle to maintain. I liked doing it. I would drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to work for free for four or five minutes. I didn’t know if I would ever really make a living at it. It was just a fun way to screw around. I’d make thirty bucks a week or forty bucks a week at best. But that was enough to live on. I had a junky car, and it was fun, you know. But that’s the whole key. You gotta keep moving. You gotta work every kind of job there is. I used to do old people’s birthday parties for the state. Which is real depressing. I had a friend who worked in social services in Massachusetts, and I’d get like eight bucks to drive out to Duxbury, to an old folks’ home. And it would be like, (quietly) “Bessy, we have a comedian here, you know.” Oh, it was real. I mean they were nice old people. And they would kind of look at ya. It was sad. Real bizarre.
Judd: You sound like you’ve played, like, any kind of place where people congregate anywhere.
Jay: What do you mean, I still do.
Judd: What are the other strange places?
Jay: Everything. Indian reservations, any kind of job I could get. You know, that’s it. You learn from the bad jobs. You don’t learn anything from the good jobs. When you go into a club and everybody’s happy to see you and you do your jokes, and the jokes that normally don’t work, work, you say, well, this is terrible. Give me a place that’s awful. Like I was in New Mexico a while ago at an Indian reservation, just a very strange setup. Nice people, but—and they laughed. So I said, Okay, this stuff is gonna work on the Letterman show.
Judd: And how did you progress to better places?
Jay: Well, what happens is you get better money after a while. The places don’t get any better. You know, it just depends how much respect you get.
Judd: How did your comedy change over the years?
Jay: How? Well, I don’t know. I mean, you just get better the more you do. The real trick is to listen to it and throw out everything that’s not funny. You’ve interviewed a lot of comedians, you’ve seen a lot of comedians. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of new people, too. And I’m always amazed when I go to clubs and I see new comedians, and night after night they do the same jokes that don’t work. If a joke doesn’t work, you just get rid of it and do something else. Better you do eight minutes of really funny stuff than sixteen minutes of hit-and-miss, you know. That really seems to be the whole key to it. You bring a tape recorder, you tape it, you say, Gee, every night, this kind of gets a laugh, but not really. Well, get rid of it. It’s not etched in gold, you know.
Judd: And when did you start doing talk shows like Mike Douglas or Dinah Shore?
Jay: First show I ever did was Merv Griffin. Then about a year and a half went by where I didn’t do anything. Then I did The Tonight Show, and that’s where everything really started moving. The Tonight Show kind of officially puts you in show business, you know.
Judd: Is acting something you want to do?
Jay: I like doing this better. I mean, doing films is fun. I’m not as—when I do a scene in a film I have to stop and say to somebody, “Is tha
t any good? How was that?” Whereas in comedy, I hear the laugh, great, I know it worked, thank you, goodbye, I’m outta there.
Judd: Right now you’re doing Letterman every month. Is he someone you knew before?
Jay: Yeah, I knew David years ago in L.A. We both used to write for Jimmie Walker.
Judd: You wrote for Jimmie Walker?
Jay: Yeah, yeah. We both used to write comedy. Jimmie was great. Any struggling comic, Jimmie would pay them a hundred bucks a week, and we’d meet once a week at his house, and throw jokes around and ideas, and—it worked out pretty good. He was real good to a lot of people that way.
Judd: What about comedy albums? Have you ever wanted to do that?
Jay: I don’t buy comedy albums myself, and I’m a comedian. So no, I don’t have any interest in them. I mean, if I was gonna take every joke I’ve ever done and never do it again, then I might put it on an album and sell it. I know, as a kid, I would get annoyed if I buy a comedy album and then go to a nightclub and see the guy and for an hour, I hear exactly what was on the album. I’d rather do it this way, kind of door-to-door comedy, and do my act.
Judd: How would you describe your comedy if you had to? It’s a little sarcastic and observational—
Jay: (Laughs) That about sums it up. Sarcastic and observational. I don’t know. I try not to—you know, I don’t even say I’m a comedian onstage. I just do it and let people form their own opinion about what it is. To sit and pontificate about the wonder of it all is a bit narcissistic. You just do it. As you move along with the business, you get a little bit more experienced. Like now I can go into Letterman, think of a joke that day, and do it on the show and there’s a ninety-nine percent chance it’ll work. Whereas the old days, you kind of had to go over the routine more and more. Working with an audience is like being an animal trainer. If you go in the ring and you’re a little bit nervous and your hand’s shaking, the animals sense it and they rip you apart. Same thing with audiences. If you get up there and go, “Well, hi, everybody…ah, how you doing…ah, ah, ah…,” people go, “Get off the stage!” They’re not gonna laugh. But if you use a little bit of authority and kind of take charge…
Judd: Is most of your humor worked out on the stage? Some people work it out on paper, and they think about it—
Jay: Oh no, I don’t have anything on paper. I’ve never written anything down. I suppose I should. Everybody says, Oh, you should make notes. I seem to remember the funnier stuff and forget the stuff that isn’t that funny. Once in a while I forget a funny one, but no, I don’t write anything down.
Judd: Why do you think in the last couple of years, tons and tons of clubs have been opening up all over the place?
Jay: It’s like anything else. Tons and tons of clubs are closing all over the place and a few good ones will remain. I mean, I think it’s great. It gives everybody a chance to work. There’s good and there’s bad sides to it. The good side is everybody gets a chance to work. The bad side is people that probably would not be in the business are still around.
Judd: Right now, you know, it’s like—there’s hundreds of people getting into it—
Jay: There’s thousands. When I used to audition at the Improv—you know, the Improv in New York would have audition nights, same as Catch a Rising Star. And we would go there and there would only be four people auditioning. Suddenly there are thousands. You go to the Improv on the audition nights and they’re lined up around the block.
Judd: So how do you keep it from getting boring?
Jay: It’s a job. You have to do your work, you know. It’s not a hard way to make a living, it’s a fun way. You make a lot of money for having a good time. And if you can’t get up for it, well then get out of the business. You know people say, Well, gee, what happens when you’re just not in the mood? Well, I mean, the worst I ever had was a bad hour. You know, most people have a bad day. If I can’t fake it for an hour…
Judd: But don’t you ever get bored of it?
Jay: I get a kick out of doing it. I change it a little bit on a nightly basis, try out new jokes and whatnot. The whole idea is to keep coming with new things and new ideas. No, it doesn’t get boring for me. I really like it.
Judd: A lot of your act is about television. Television commercials. What do you think about television? Do you think it’s really bad, because it seems like you really just—I mean you must watch it—
Jay: No I don’t. I mean, again: The whole trick to being a successful comedian is to make fun of the things you like. Occasionally when I really go after something I don’t like—it can come off vicious. People sense a hostility. I’m an average person, I watch a lot of TV. Admittedly, there’s a lot of stupid things on TV, but I have to watch it to make fun of it. And the fact that I’m talking about a show like Manimal or some incredibly stupid program like this—everybody laughs. They must have seen the show, too. So you find a common bond with people. The whole thing to do in comedy is finding a common bond with people in the audience. Everybody has a TV, so you talk about TV. If everybody had elephants, you’d talk about elephants. If you go right to television, old, young, right away everybody understands where you’re coming from.
Judd: Once, on Letterman, you just took out a TV Guide.
Jay: Yeah, that was the last time. I started reading about shows that were on.
Judd: And you just opened it, ’cause it looked like you were just—
Jay: Well, I had looked through the TV Guide earlier that day. That was an example of what I was talking about a minute ago. The real trick to doing the comedy, the real trick to knowing if you’re growing or not is—like, when I look at my first Tonight Show, there were a lot of jokes in it. I mean, joke jokes. Then one day I was sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of comedian friends, after a show, and everybody’s talking. And I was telling some stupid story about something that happened on the road. It’s one of those stories that didn’t have a beginning or an end. It just had a lot of—a lot of middle stuff. And everybody’s laughing. And I see, Gee, they’re laughing harder with this than anything else I do in my act. So the next night onstage I just got up and started talking, telling that story. You know, I said to the audience, “This doesn’t have a beginning or an end. I went into this store…” And everybody was laughing the same way. And I realized, Ooh, here is a major breakthrough for me. Because here’s a chance to just talk and be funny as opposed to sitting down trying to think up a routine and how to structure it. And that’s how you grow.
Judd: How do you handle hecklers?
Jay: The trick to working with hecklers is to give them enough rope so they hang themselves. I like a good heckler. Somebody who’s intelligent, who I speak to and they speak back, and I say something to them, and they say something to me. Everybody gets yeah yeah—those kind of hecklers. And those are awful, but the real trick is working in inverse proportion to the heckler. For example, if I have a guy that says, “Hey, what are you doing?” You know, some real dumb-sounding guy. Then I go, “Well, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, obviously an English professor here tonight.” Boom, boom, boom, boom. You just work the opposite. You try to throw them off guard. And most hecklers will back down. The second time you say, “What’s that, sir?” (Timidly) “Oh, ah, I just want to say you’re a jerk.” I like to have fun with them. I’m never hostile with anybody, unless it’s somebody who is just totally abusive. Then you can go for the throat.
Judd: What would be your strangest experiences in comedy?
Jay: My strangest experiences? Oh, I don’t know. God, I mean there’s thousands of them. I used to work the Playboy Club in New York and they would give a report card after each show. You know, like have a guy like Vinny from the Bronx: “Hey, you get a D tonight. I didn’t think you were that funny.” And they would tell you how they would mail these to Mr. Hefner to look at, you know, that kind of thing. So I’m working there one time and they—you know, they get tour groups in there—and they’ve got three hundred Portuguese and two interpreter
s. Nobody tells me they’re Portuguese. You know, I don’t know. So I go out there and I start my act, and I hear these two guys going, “Heh, heh, heh.” I hear two guys laughing and the rest of the audience is just staring at me. I said, “How you folks doing?” And they would smile and nod. But they didn’t speak English or anything. So I’m out there, like, this is unbelievable at this point. Finally one of the interpreters yells out that they’re Portuguese. So I come offstage and Vinny the room director says, “You get an F.” I said, “What’re you talking about?” He says, “You get an F, pal. Nobody laughed tonight except them two guys.” And I said, “Come on, they didn’t speak English.” He goes, “Well, you shoulda done Portuguese material.” I said, “Yeah, you’re right, it’s my fault.” And I have to sign this thing that says F on it. It was the stupidest experience of my life.
Judd: So, where do you want to go with this? You’re working a lot now. Is there something else that you want to be doing?
Jay: No, I like doing this. I enjoy it. I have a good time with it. If something else comes along and someone offers something else, I’ll try that for a while. But there’s nothing I enjoy doing more than this. I find it as challenging as anything else you can do. And I really haven’t reached a peak where I’m famous enough to go, Well, everybody’s seen the act, let’s try something else. When that happens, maybe I’ll try something else.
This interview took place in the office at Rascals Comedy Club in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1984.
JEFF GARLIN
(2013)
In the late eighties, when I was on the road as a struggling stand-up comedian, I had the pleasure of opening a few times for a young guy named Jeff Garlin. His act was loose and weird and improvisational in a way I could never hope to replicate. He looked so happy up there. He seemed to enjoy getting huge laughs as much as he enjoyed creating awkward moments. And when you’re on the road with somebody, going from club to club and town to town, you get to know that person pretty well. And nobody’s more fun to be on the road with than Jeff. We would be driving down some small-town street and there would be a fast-food restaurant on every single corner, and Jeff would say, “I wonder if there’s a fast-food restaurant around here?” We would drive some more, and there would be seven banks in a row, and Jeff would say, “Do you think they have a bank in this town?”