Still Foolin’ ’Em

by Billy Crystal

  * * *

  I threw myself into my stand-up. Everything was new; anything was possible. I had an amazing wife, a beautiful little girl, and finally now a real goal. Balancing my beginning career as a comedian and tending to the constant care of Jenny until Janice came home from work, around five P.M., was exhausting. We did that for two years and change. It was the most important part of my life, and it forever bonded me with this incredible pooping tax deduction. I was the only man in the play group; I was the only father at the playground. I was the only father with a baby in the shopping cart at the supermarket.

  The Mr. Mom job became even more difficult after I broke away from the group. Creating an act from scratch is very hard, and I faced particular challenges. I wasn’t a strong one-liner joke writer; my pieces were more like conceptual ideas that I developed, for the most part, by improvising while onstage. They needed fleshing out and honing in front of an audience, not a child in a high chair. We lived an hour outside Manhattan and its comedy clubs. I would leave around nine at night in the hopes of getting on at Rick Newman’s Catch a Rising Star by one A.M or so; then I’d drive back to Long Beach. I’d arrive home around three and be up with Jenny around six-thirty A.M. I’d try to keep her entertained all day while also dealing with the household chores, and then Janice would come home and I’d hand Jenny off and get ready for my set that night. Sometimes, I would write; other times, a quick nap was the best preparation, though that was difficult.

  * * *

  In the middle of this hectic time, my brother Rip was about to move to California. He was at a crossroads in his life and career. He had been acting and singing in touring musicals and had decided that L.A. was where he needed to be. I hated to see him go. He was the more adventurous of the two of us, and a few nights before he was to leave, he asked me if I’d like to do organic mescaline with him. This doesn’t mean he bought it at Whole Foods. This was the real deal, so to speak. He had done this hallucinogen a few times and enjoyed it, and he thought we could have a good time together. At the time I was just an occasional pot smoker, but I thought, Hey, it’s my big brother, I love him and I don’t know when I’ll see him again. Plus, If he says it’s cool, it’s cool. We “dropped” just before sunset on a beautiful night in Long Beach. Nothing happened for a half hour or so, and then we just started giggling a lot for no reason. Long, laughing jags where nobody said anything. Rip suggested we play Frisbee on the mall in front of the house. “We won’t be able to see it,” I said, since it was getting dark out.

  “Oh yes you will,” Rip countered with a sly wink.

  The DayGlo Frisbee looked like a flying saucer as it sailed through the night sky. We shrieked “WOW!” and “OOOOOH!” like inmates at an asylum when there’s pudding for dessert. We then retreated to my tiny apartment upstairs in the house we grew up in. My hair was enormous back then (picture Gene Shalit’s on steroids), and for some reason I just started brushing it and combing it into different shapes, each “do” looking more absurd than the one before. I can’t describe our laughter other than to say if Bigfoot laughs, it probably sounds like we did. Sometimes we got intensely quiet while I pushed the comb through my thick curls as if I was performing a delicate surgery. The finished product would elicit a whispered “Amazing” out of my stoned brother. Then I took my wool sweater and turned off the lights and started to shake it. Sparks flew out of it. “DID YOU SEE THAT?” Rip screamed. “IT’S LIKE FIREWORKS. THIS IS IMPORTANT! WE CAN MAKE A FORTUNE!”

  “Rip,” I reasoned, “it’s static electricity.”

  “THAT’S THE PERFECT NAME FOR IT!” he screamed. After a few more minutes of celebrating this scientific breakthrough, we ate everything in the refrigerator, including Jenny’s baby food. Then, with a look in his eyes not seen since Reefer Madness, Rip slowly whispered, “Let’s go look at the baby.” The baby, of course, was six-month-old Jenny sleeping soundly in our bedroom. The door to the room was maybe eight feet or so from us, but somehow it took us twenty minutes to get there. We tiptoed carefully because we were afraid we could fall off the edge of the floor. When the giggling idiots got to the bedroom, Janice opened the door and, clearly pissed off, closed it behind her. She looked different to me.

  Actually, I thought she was one of the rottweilers from The Omen talking to us in a demonic Darth Vader–like voice.

  “Get away from the child! Do not go in there. Look at you two idiots. Billy, what did you do to your hair? Get away! Get away!” She went back into the bedroom and Rip and I tried to calm down, but now we were bummed. We were at that point when you want to come down but you can’t. We sat quietly for a while, and the next day we were still sitting there. Rip took this picture.

  Never again.

  Never again. That was the last time I took a drug my doctor didn’t prescribe.

  A few months later we moved into a bargain apartment on the first floor of a high-rise building. It was right over the entrance to the garage, meaning that every time a car drove in, the automatic door would open and shake the entire apartment. It was like living on a fault line. Nobody would rent it—nobody, of course, but us. After months of being rattled awake every night, I devised a plan: when I left for the city, I would stand on the roof of my VW Bug and unplug the electric eye of the door so it remained open, letting Jenny and Janice sleep soundly. Right here is the first time I have confessed to this, and if the super is still alive, hey, you got me.

  I put an act together and improved quickly. It’s so much easier to work when you’re happy and when you have someone like Buddy to believe in you. Ideas were flowing, audiences were liking my stuff, and I was making great new friends like Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, Richard Belzer—all of us young comics on our way up. My early act was composed of “pieces.” I did a routine about Nixon that was a parody of The Exorcist, the priest finally getting the devil child to release the infamous tapes. I did Tom Carvel, the ice cream king, drooling in the vanilla; a piece about a perverted Mister Rogers who would take off not only his sweater but everything else; and the highlight, an “interview” where I imitated Howard Cosell and Muhammad Ali.

  Ali was my hero now. I’d always been a big boxing fan, from the time at Kutsher’s Hotel in the Catskills, when we’d watched Floyd Patterson, then the heavyweight champion, train for a fight. Patterson was a gentle man for a fighter—when he knocked someone down, he’d actually help them up. Dad worked Friday and Saturday nights, so my brothers and I usually watched television with our mom, who, oddly enough, loved boxing. The Friday night fights were a television staple for us, and we got to see all the great boxers, like Gene Fullmer, Carmen Basilio, and Sugar Ray Robinson.

  But the fighter we really loved was Cassius Clay. We loved his crazy antics, his predictions, his poetry, and, most of all, his skills. His rise to fame echoed that of the Beatles, who hit America at the same time he was hitting anyone who stepped into the ring with him. In 1964, he beat the “big ugly bear” Sonny Liston and became the new champion. Things quickly took another twist after that upset victory. He became a Muslim; then he changed his name, first to Cassius X, then to Muhammad Ali. He became a polarizing figure, confusing many of his fans, including me. My family didn’t know much about Black Muslims; we just knew we were scared of them. Later, Ali refused to join the armed services when drafted, saying, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.” He claimed he was a conscientious objector—the fighter who wouldn’t fight. He was convicted of draft evasion and immediately stripped of his boxing title and his passport. It was an enforced exile. Howard Cosell became his great defender during the three years when Ali wasn’t allowed to fight. And this is when I looked at him in a totally different light. He was more than the greatest fighter of all time; he was a cultural phenomenon. While his appeal case moved through the court system, Ali spoke out on college campuses and wherever he could to protest the war. My mom admired him for that.

  One day while I was still in high school, a white envelope from the Selective Service arrived
at our house for my brother Joel. It sat on the table while he stared at it. Finally, he opened it, and sure enough, he was going to be drafted. Mom was beside herself. She had recently lost her husband, and now the army wanted her son. She wrote an impassioned speech to the draft board, and in a switch from our usual roles, she performed it for us in the living room. Finally she appeared before the board and told them, “You can’t have my son. He is my sole support. I have another boy in college and another on the way. I don’t believe in this war, and I just can’t let you have him.” Talk about a heavyweight fight. Mom versus the draft board. She won by decision. Ali was her inspiration.

  Whenever she saw him on TV, my mom would say, “This is a great man. He gave up everything for what he believed in. It’s a lesson in life. Whatever you do, make sure it’s what you believe in.”

  Cosell was in my vocal and nasal range, and once I was doing stand-up, I studied his cadence, his attitude, and, yes, his pomposity. He was an easy send-up. Finding Ali’s voice was pure accident. I had just seen The Godfather and was so mesmerized by Marlon Brando’s performance that I tried to imitate him. To my surprise, one day Vito Corleone’s “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse” became Ali’s “I am the greatest of all time!” The voices, it turns out, are close, and one leaked into the other. Once I had that, the rest—the eyes, the mouth, the attitude—just followed.

  The Ali impression was a big thing for me in the beginning. If I was having a rough set, I would make a sharp right turn into Ali. It always worked, because I was a little white guy doing a really good impression of “the greatest” black guy.

  One afternoon, I was feeding eighteen-month-old Jenny in her high chair when I got a call from my agent. She’d just received a call from Dick Schaap, who was not only a great sportswriter and broadcaster but also the editor of Sport magazine. The publication was doing a TV special honoring Muhammad Ali as the Man of the Year, and Schaap had called to see if Robert Klein was available to do some sports-themed comedy. Klein was one of the best stand-ups around, but he was unavailable, so she’d told him about this substitute teacher in Long Beach who did a killer Ali imitation. “He wants you,” she told me. “Friday night at the Plaza Hotel.” I was so thrilled I didn’t realize I was putting mashed peas into Jenny’s nose. If Janice had walked in, I would have said, “I think she has a cold.”

  Dick called me a few minutes later to introduce himself and give me the particulars. “Do you want to hear my Ali?” I asked.

  “No, not now—I’ll see you Friday.”

  “Will Ali be there?”

  “Of course—you’ll be sitting right near him on the dais. This is going to be great.”

  I was more scared than excited. Dick had explained that Sport did these yearly dinners honoring the best athlete in each sport, and all those stars would be there as well. Muhammad was the overall Man of the Year for beating George Foreman and reclaiming the heavyweight title. You must understand that, other than Mickey Mantle, to me Ali was the greatest athlete of any time, of any era, and, for reasons beyond sports, the most important. With Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. both gone, Ali had become the hero for my generation. Or at least the portion of my generation who hated the Vietnam War and what it was doing to our country. Now I would have a chance to perform for him.

  “Jenny, we’re going into show business,” I said in my Ali voice, as I kissed her green pea–covered face.

  I always performed in casual clothes, and the only suit I owned was a black velvet “mod” cut I had bought on Carnaby Street in London. Very hip and appropriate if I was singing with Herman’s Hermits. I ran to the local men’s store and purchased a formal velvet bow tie and dress shirt, so the suit would look like a sort of cool tuxedo. When I arrived at the Plaza three days later, everyone else was in business attire.

  I met Dick, who I instantly realized was one of the nicest, most charming, and unassuming people I would ever know. He told me I’d be performing for three to five minutes, and then he asked how he should introduce me. Considering that up to this point I wasn’t sure who I was, I told him to just introduce me as one of Ali’s closest and dearest friends. I figured I’d be too nervous to set up the routine, so I’d get off to a fast start by going right into my Cosell imitation.

  The crowd filed in, all excited about the evening. To be in Ali’s presence at this time in his career was a thrill. He was at the top of the world once again. Many people had thought he’d be killed in the ring against the mighty Foreman, but he had “rope-a-doped” George into exhaustion and knocked him out. The Terrace Room at the Plaza Hotel was packed with New York’s elite.

  It wasn’t just Ali—I was surrounded by sports stars: Gino Marchetti of the Baltimore Colts, Franco Harris of the Steelers, the Heisman trophy winner Archie Griffin, and, to top it off, two other legendary heavyweight champions, Neil Simon and George Plimpton. All in business suits and ties except yours truly, Mr. Velvet. We were asked to take our seats on the dais, and then there he was: Ali awash in his magical glow, greeting fan after fan. Sometimes when you see someone you idolize in person, they can seem smaller. Ali seemed bigger. He seemed to know everyone, and everyone wanted to know him. Then everything went into slow motion: that smile, those eyes. I kept thinking of how important he was to me. As I settled into my seat, the great Ali stared at me with a “Who the fuck is this?” look on his amazing face. Maybe he was thinking, “Who invited Joel Grey, and why is he wearing velvet?”

  I was only a few seats away from Ali as the special officially started to film. Two-hundred-and-seventy-five-pound Gino Marchetti was seated on my left, and Melba Moore, who would sing the national anthem, was on my right. I liked sitting next to Melba; she was the only one at the dinner close to my size. I watched as members of the audience surveyed this dais of sports stars; when their eyes came to me, they all got that same confused look Ali had.

  Dick Schaap was a genial host. Plimpton followed splendidly, and then Neil Simon came on and was really funny. It was my turn. Dick, at the microphone, looked at me and said, “And now, one of Muhammad Ali’s closest and dearest friends.” I walked to the podium to a hesitant but polite smattering of applause. I passed right behind Ali, feeling his confusion, and got to the microphone, where I launched right into being Howard Cosell in the ring in Zaire.

  “Hello, everyone, Howard Cosell talking to you live from Zaire. Some would pronounce it ‘Zare’—they’re wrong.” The audience laughed hard.

  At this point, someone started yelling at me from the audience: “YOU GOT ’EM!” Two lines into it, and I’m being heckled? He wouldn’t stop yelling. I realized it was Bundini Brown, Ali’s flamboyant cornerman. So as Howard, I told him I’d handle it. He got quiet and I got good laughs, but it was awkward, to say the least. I’d always had the ability to think on my feet, even as a little kid, except this was my first time on television and Bundini was getting in the way. I continued as Cosell:

  “Muhammad—may I call you Mo?”

  More laughs; then I switched and became Ali.

  “Everybody’s talking ’bout Joe Frazier!”

  Screams, applause.

  “Howard,” I said as Ali, “I’m announcing I’m changing my name again. I have new religious beliefs. From now on I want to be known as Izzy Yiskowitz. Chaim the greatest of all time! It’s Jewish boxing. You don’t hit the guy, you just make him feel guilty.” BIG LAUGHS. If this was a fight, I was way ahead on points.

  Ali was fantastic. He started joking around with me during my act, hiding his face with his napkin. When I was done, the crowd gave me a huge round of applause, Dick told them my name, and then Ali hugged me. “You are my little brother,” he whispered. That is what he calls me to this day.

  * * *

  One night Jack Rollins came to see me at Catch a Rising Star. This was the first time since that fraternity house that Jack would see what I was doing. A quirky, interesting man, he came off more like an eccentric English professor than the dean of comedy managers
. I was nervous that he was there, but I had a great set. We met afterward, and I thought for sure he was going to tell me he was giving up Woody for me. We had settled into a booth in a quiet restaurant when Jack said, “I didn’t care for what you did tonight.” I wanted to stab him with a fork. “Why?” I spit out. “Listen,” he said, “the audience loved it, and you can do very well with what I saw, but I have no idea what you think about anything. You didn’t leave a tip.”

  “A tip?” I managed to ask.

  “Yes, a little extra something you leave with the audience: you. I know what Ali thinks—what do you think? Don’t work so safe, don’t be afraid to bomb. Come back tomorrow and don’t use any of this material; we know it works. Just talk. Let me know how you feel about things. What it’s like to be a father, what it’s like to be married, how you feel about politics—put you in your material. Leave a tip.”

  At first I was angry, but somewhere inside I understood what he meant, and I did just that the next night. I bombed, but I knew why. I started to talk about what was going on in my life. A few nights later, it started to click. It’s the best advice I have ever been given.

  Once I had a solid half hour of material, Buddy got me playing tasty small clubs like the Exit/In in Nashville, the Boarding House in San Francisco, the Great Southeast Music Hall in Atlanta, and Larry Magid’s Bijou in Philadelphia. In Manhattan he booked me into the famous Other End (formerly the Bitter End) for weeks at a time. Under the guidance of club owner Paul Colby I went from an opening act to a headliner. It was on Bleecker Street in the West Village and was the home of Cosby and Woody and other great comedians. I got some good reviews, and people started to come down to see me. There’s an excitement that you can get only from performing in a storied venue in New York City. Being a part of the heritage was a thrill.