Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians

by Corey Andrew

  Corey: If the show had continued, what would Jerri Blank do after high school?

  Amy: We never figured she’d graduate. She was always going to fail. Something would prevent her from moving ahead.

  Corey: That’s pretty sad.

  Amy: (laughs) I know. Oh well.

  Corey: I just saw you on Letterman. You were awesome, as usual. Do you prepare material for it?

  Amy: The last time I did it, they called me last minute. They called the night before at 11 p.m. They had a cancellation and asked if I would do the show. I love last-minute stuff. David Letterman works really, really hard for his show and I always try to be prepared for his show. And I know he respects that. One thing I like about him is, you’ll do a pre-interview, but he doesn’t always stick to that when you go out there.

  You don’t know what he’s gonna ask you really. He’s got some stuff in front of him but he may ask and he may not, but you’re forced to listen, which is really good. Sometimes, you get so nervous you’re answering questions that he hasn’t even asked yet. You know he’s not going to let you fail. He’s right there. He’s not out there for himself. He’s not out there to be the funny one. He’s a very giving person, which is really nice.

  Whenever there’s a break, he’ll ask me how my family is, because he’ll talk to David now and then. He’ll ask how my family is and what I’m up to. I don’t know him out of that chair and I don’t want to know him outside of that chair. It’s kind of nice to have an audience in front of us every time.

  The next time we chatted, Amy had written a new book, “I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence,” full of recipes and party-planning tips right out of the gin-and-bong-water-soaked ’60s. But don’t let the book’s kitschy appearance fool you, Sedaris takes her baking and hosting duties extremely seriously.

  Corey: What is the etiquette if hosting a gathering or party and one or more of the guests is allergic to pets like dogs, cats or rabbits?

  Amy: I always warn them ahead of time, and I have prescription allergy medicine on hand. But if they swell up, I take a snap shot and save it for a Christmas card and send it to them saying, ‘Have a swell Christmas.’

  Corey: Where do you find your dishes and serving platters and what not?

  Amy: I throw nothing away. Some were my mom’s gifts. I comb flea markets and thrift stores. I love Mood Indigo in New York, but they are expensive. I'll go there if I can't find it anywhere else. Mr. Pinks is good, too.

  Corey: What’s been the most successful meal you have ever prepared?

  Amy: Leg of lamb I think. I like making beef tenderloin, and I made a ham once that was really good only because I had to humiliate it to cook it.

  Corey: There are a lot of beautiful and fun photos in the book. How do you get into a mode for a long day of photographs?

  Amy: A lot were thought of way a head of time, some on the spot. Some the team and I scurried to create with what I had in my apartment. I wanted each picture to tell its own story so the person who can’t read could write their own book in their head. I had to think quick on my feet to remember where in the hell that something I needed for the picture was in my apartment.

  Corey: What do you think of the Food Network?

  Amy: I don't watch it at all—never—I just want to do it. I like to remember the shows that were on when I was a lot younger.

  Corey: What is the largest number of cupcakes you have made at one time? Do you sample as you bake?

  Amy: I only sample if I'm high and it’s late at night. The most I’ve made was something like 450.

  Corey: You appear to have a lot of outfits. How do you deal with storage living in New York?

  Amy: I force it, force it, force it.

  Corey: I don’t like onions. Is there an ingredient you typically avoid in recipes because you don’t like it? Any tips to get me to not hate onions?

  Amy: If you don't like onions, then you don’t like onions. I don't like hard-boiled eggs in anything.

  Corey: To me, the book has an old-school vibe. What did your kitchen look like growing up? Did you have a favorite cup or glass to drink from back then?

  Amy: I liked the glasses that would come with the box of detergent. I loved anything with Goofy Grape on it. I loved his buck teeth.

  Corey: OK, you find out you have an hour to throw together a last-minute birthday party for a friend. What do you do? What do you wear?

  Amy: I would run to the butcher, buy some steaks; run to the store and buy potatoes and I would grab a bag of spinach. I can make that in half an hour. I might pick up a cake. I would grab the prettiest apron I have, wear it over my blue slip and wear my red high-heel shoes. Then I would call my dealer. If they don’t eat meat or smoke weed then I would say, ‘Oh wow, we should get together sometime to celebrate your birthday.’

  Corey: What is your favorite party theme?

  Amy: Let’s play slave. You have to do everything I ask you to do.

  Corey: Who is the best guest you have ever hosted?

  Amy: Impossible to answer.

  Corey: What would you serve for dinner for a Jerri Blank-Just-Released-from-the-Pokey party?

  Amy: Chips.

  Corey: What was the most challenging thing about writing a book?

  Amy: Staying focused and committing to a long-term project. And when it came to three days before turning it in, stop thinking of new ideas.

  David Alan Grier

  Being a huge fan of sketch comedy, I was glued to Fox’s “In Living Color,” and in particular, was jazzed by its stalwart Everyman, David Alan Grier, who like “SNL’s” Phil Hartman, could transform into a multitude of characters or play even the tiniest role and be a riot.

  I was tickled by the inappropriateness of his bind bluesman, Calhoun Tubbs. “Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Here it goes.” And who could forget David play half of the gay movie talk show duo, Blaine and Antoine? (I guess I could have been offended, but no group was safe on “In Living Color.”)

  But, I will never forget David’s portrayal of the tragic figure, Don “No Soul” Simmons, in the sketch movie, “Amazon Women on the Moon.” I had to ask David about playing a black man born without soul when I caught up with him during a stand-up comedy tour a few years ago.

  Corey: Where do you derive your material from these days?

  David Alan Grier: It’s actually the same, but I guess it’s become more personal. If I feel like I have an individual take on politics or the war or all these catastrophes together, then I talk about that. But I think the core of my act is about me, my life. I think all comics talk about the same thing; it’s just their voice that makes it different. Guys that blow me away have that ability to take the same thing that I’ve seen or talked about 8 billion times, but they look at it from a different angle or point of view. That’s what’s most exciting. ‘Oh man, I’ve never thought of it like that.’

  Corey: As the country’s gotten more conservative, has that translated to comedy audiences as well?

  DAG: Not if they’re coming to see me, they’re not. I really don’t care. You have to be true to yourself, your voice. Not that I’m profane, but, no. The first gig I ever did was for this college and I remember I said ‘pussy’ on stage and all these women booed. I had to stop and go, ‘What did I say? Pussy.’ At that point in ’92, to these young women that was a bad word. I don’t know, perhaps snatch, cooter, twat was fine, but pussy wasn’t.

  Corey: Pussy wasn’t workin’.

  DAG: Exactly! Then, a few years later, pussy, feminists reclaimed the word. Then it became powerful and cool. What I like about performing live is there’s no filter. I don’t have five joke writers who write for me. I write my own material. You connect immediately with your audience, and that’s something that’s unique from any other form. When you talk about movies or television, it’s filtered, and it takes forever—nine to 12 months—before a movie comes out. You just don’t have that immediacy of people sitting there and laughing or not laughing; you’re j
ust communing with your audience.

  Corey: What do you think of the comedy scene today as opposed to when you first started? There were a lot more comedy clubs then.

  DAG: That was even at the end of—or at least what people told me—the huge heyday in the ’80s. Club owners would tell me they would never have to pay headliners, because it didn’t matter who they had on their stage, people would come. At least for a time. When they had Evening at the Improv. Tonight at Ho-Hos. Whatever. A lot of guys got starts with 10 minutes. You do 10 minutes; you do six months of comedy, and you’re as headliner, because they saw you in some road show. For the last few years, there have been about the same 12 or 15 guys who headline and it’s been harder for people to break through and really headline. You’ve got to get on the radio. You have to get a relationship with those shows. I wish on the club level, they took more care to nurture newer talent. I think it’s for their own survival that they try to breed this next generation.

  Corey: What are you like backstage before a show?

  DAG: Just checking my e-mail and sending text messages. It just depends. It’s good energy. If you don’t have any nervousness … you want a little nervousness. Sometimes I’m more nervous than other times, but usually that’s when I haven’t been onstage in a while or I’m out of my element. Right after Katrina, we did this huge benefit at the Forum, with every black comedian on the planet, that Steve Harvey organized in Los Angeles, like 5,000 people. That was really nerve wracking, because everyone was on the bill; you didn’t know when you were going. And you were all heavy weights. In a situation when people come to see you, that’s pretty cool.

  Corey: Do you have any diva-like qualities?

  DAG: Yes, I demand Diet Coke or Pepsi. Preferably Pepsi. That’s about it. Just a quiet spot. I hate being interviewed or photographed right before going on, because I just want to concentrate on what I’m going to do.

  Corey: How did you go from Yale to hooking up with guys like Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans?

  DAG: I had come out and started working a little bit. I actually met Keenan while I was still at Yale. I came down on a break and did an open-mic at the Improv after my second year. It was just something I wanted to do because I was really near New York at the time. I went on at 2:30 in the morning; mostly it was every bad, first open-micer. I met him there. He was a regular there. He said, do this, do that, wait your turn. That’s the first time I actually met him. Robert Townsend, he and I were in ‘Soldier’s Story,’ and he told me all about Keenan and Damon Wayans and how they were gonna form this independent film company and how they were gonna do this film, which ended up being ‘Hollywood Shuffle.’

  He and I became friends after that, and he introduced me to Keenan and Damon. So from there, we became friends and I started actually doing stand-up. They were hanging out in comedy clubs. I never thought I would go on the road, because I thought people told dick jokes to get on TV, and you didn’t have to perform on the road. Damon told me how much he made in one weekend, and in 10 days I was on the road. Once ‘In Living Color’ came on, within six months, 10-12 colleges called. I didn’t really have an act. I had about 10-15 minutes, but I wrote this act and I broke myself in the hard way. It took me a couple years to mold a set I really liked. That’s the way I did it. It’s always something I’ve come back to. I always love it and now it’s like icing on the cake for the career.

  Corey: When you look back at ‘In Living Color,’ do you see it as a breeding ground for the talent that was there? Or was it a place to showcase?

  DAG: It was both, like ‘Saturday Night Live,’ a lot of those people came from Second City, a training ground, a breeding ground. A lot of people, Jim Carrey, Tommy Davidson, Damon, we had all done other things. It wasn’t as if we just fell off trucks. It was a breeding ground in the sense that it gave us freedom. It gave Jim Carrey and myself, all of us, freedom to really develop and show us in a different light. As a matter of fact, that’s what Keenan told me when he tried to talk me into being on the show. ‘I know how funny you are, but people don’t know. This show, you can really do what you want to do.’ Which is what everybody says, and everybody wants to hear, but rarely do you get a chance to do it. I don’t know if we could do again what we did on ‘In Living Color.’ We hit them with so much stuff, censors couldn’t catch everything. They would catch half of it and say forget it, let it go.

  Corey: How did it work with creating your own characters?

  DAG: Keenan constantly told us to write, which was a drag for me, because I didn’t really write. I didn’t come there from an improv background. I didn’t have 800 characters. Sometimes it took Damon sitting in my dressing room saying, ‘What is a character you always wanted to do.’ So, I came up with Calvin Tubbs. ‘We’ll write it now.’ Other times we would read sketches and if the crazy crack head sketch didn’t work with you, they would pass it down the line. Or I was supposed to do the Hedleys, which was a Jamaican family, and I couldn’t really do a Jamaican accent. It sounded like a leprechaun. Damon did it because he did a better accent. It really was like a repertory feeling.

  Corey: When do you think you were at your best on the show?

  DAG: That’s subjective. I know when it was most fun, like when we did those really big sketches with everybody in the cast. I loved it when Keenan would do stuff with us, because he rarely did, but it was the most fun. I wrote this thing, the Prison Cable Network, which was basically a prison cable channel. Everyone was in it, Jim, Damon, Keenan, every single person was in it. Some sketches weren’t the most popular, but I felt really dialed into the comedy. Like Jamie Foxx and I would do these two old barbers that always fucked up your hair. I loved it. Whenever we did those characters, I could play all day, because that was part of my childhood, going to these old, black barbers who always fucked up your hair. They had a chart of the latest hairstyles. They never knew the names; they were always by number. It was something we all went through.

  Corey: How do you think Antoine and Blaine would go over today?

  DAG: I don’t really know. I don’t really care. It was done and it was funny. The success of ‘In Living Color’ was we did things that made each other laugh. We never had to deal with the political ramifications, because Keenan and Tamara Rawitt had a system set up that none of that stuff came to us. They were the buffers. If there were some political ramifications, the censors would go to Keenan and Tamara, so we were free to create. People never came down on us and said, ‘You can’t do this. This is obscene.’ Later it became like that. We just did it because we thought it was funny.

  Corey: I really enjoyed your ‘Saturday Night Live’ hosting gigs. I guess ‘In Living Color’ helped prepare you for that kind of format.

  DAG: Yeah and no. Damon and I had done Blaine and Antoine on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and he was pissed because he wanted to do more stuff from ‘In Living Color.’ I don’t think ‘SNL’ wanted him to do it. When I hosted, I just wanted to do new things. And I didn’t really go in there with an agenda. You go in there a week before and you watch them do their stuff and Tim Meadows goes, ‘Everyone is really excited because they know you’re going to have a ton of ideas.’ I said, ‘I thought you were gonna have ideas for me?’ ‘Oh, you’re so funny. See you tomorrow!’ I went back to the hotel panic stricken. I just wrote down five ideas off the top of my head and everything was fine.

  Corey: Was there stuff of yours that made the air?

  DAG: Yeah, a lot of it, like the Bryant Gumbel thing. Maya Angelou, I think we did that both times I hosted. After ‘In Living Color’ was over, they asked me to join the cast. I didn’t want to do it for a variety of reasons. I had just come off ‘In Living Color’ and I wanted to do something else. But they were very nice to me for a long time.

  Corey: Did you hear from Maya Angelou?

  DAG: No, I was expecting a poem, but I never got one.

  Corey: What is Don ‘No Soul’ Simmons up to these days?

  DAG: He’s retired. I will t
ell you a funny story. When I auditioned for ‘Amazon Women on the Moon,’ OJ Simpson was auditioning. He was in the waiting room. So, I beat out OJ Simpson. (laughs) I remember meeting him, ‘Hey, the Juice, what’s up?’ And that was Arsenio Hall’s first film, and John Landis became a good friend. Everything in ‘Amazon Women on the Moon’ was shot in one day. John Landis was up for murder for ‘Twilight Zone.’ I went to see him and he was waiting to hear if he was going to be found for murder and going to jail. I was like, ‘Good luck with the murder charge.’ But he beat the rap, so he’s fine.