“Have fun storming the castle.” In London with Carol Kane.
Next came Throw Momma from the Train, directed by Danny DeVito, who was also my costar. I learned a lot by watching Danny act and direct himself. A funny, dark movie, it opened at number one at the box office. After that, I cowrote a movie with my great friend Eric Roth. It was called Memories of Me and starred Alan King and JoBeth Williams. Alan and I played an estranged father and son. Working with Alan was like going to the Museum of Comedy every day. He had a big personality and an endless wealth of stories, and we became fantastic friends. The movie didn’t do well, but I had learned how to take body shots and keep moving forward. Eric is now one of Hollywood’s best writers; he won an Academy Award for Forrest Gump and has been nominated for Oscars numerous times.
In 1986 HBO’s Chris Albrecht along with Bob Zmuda created Comic Relief, a telethon featuring every comedian they could get to raise money to help the homeless. Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and I hosted it, and by the time we had finished all nine of our shows, we had raised over $50 million to supply medical aid to homeless people on the streets of America. We also cemented a friendship that will never fade away. They are powerful talents who go about being funny in different ways. Whoopi is smart, outspoken, and fearless. Robin is simply a comet. The challenge of keeping up with him onstage is one I relish.
At Comic Relief with the cast of Your Show of Shows, Sid Caesar, Howard Morris, Carl Reiner, and Imogene Coca. These are the people who made me want to be funny!
The first time I saw him was in 1977. I was asked to be part of a benefit concert in San Francisco for the Boarding House nightclub. David Allen ran the club, and he was a most loved and respected man, but it had fallen on hard times and many of its regulars who were now big stars gathered to help David keep the club open. Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Neil Young, Melissa Manchester, and many others were splendid. I did a brief, strong set, and to close the show a young, local comedian named Robin Williams took the stage. He not only took it, he lifted it into space. Comedy, as I knew it, changed instantly. I had never seen anyone like him. He was Jonathan Winters but on warp speed. He was all over the stage, he was in the audience, and he didn’t use a microphone, which made the two thousand or so in the audience listen even more intently.
In a short time the world would see what I saw that night, when Mork and Mindy aired and blew everyone away. We got to know each other, and now are the closest of friends. His mind still races at a speed few can keep up with. When we get a chance to riff together, it’s as close to jazz as you can get without instruments. On our first Comic Relief broadcast, we left the stage after our opening and our producer Pat Tourk Lee said, “The phones are ringing.” We all started to well up. People were watching; people were giving. I now had a career that, after my show had been canceled, I hadn’t thought was possible. Right before I turned forty, I was asked to host the Grammy Awards. Oy.
The Five Stages of Forgetting Things
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5.
Conservative
Lately it’s getting harder for me to feel optimistic about the world. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, this is why:
“Good evening, I’m Wolf Blitzer with bad news.”
“I’m Chris Wallace, with even more bad news.”
“I’m Rachel Maddow, don’t even ask.”
“I’m Brian Williams. They’re wrong—it’s worse.”
It’s become a race between what’s falling apart faster, the world or my body. All the problems in the world have gotten me so angry that now I, Billy Crystal, a lifelong liberal, am becoming a tad … conservative.
Not on social issues; I’m still the pro–gay marriage, pro–civil rights, anti-war, feed-the-hungry-and-house-the-homeless, it’s-okay-to-have-red-wine-with-fish, liberal-thinking guy I always have been. But in other areas, I’m drifting. It’s like I’m my grandfather driving his car in the left lane of the freeway at twenty miles per hour (sitting as low as possible, so people behind him can’t tell if anyone is actually behind the wheel), and s-l-o-w-l-y the car is drifting to the right.
And when did this drift to the right start? It started years ago when I was watching the news and saw that vile Richard Speck, who was in prison for life for killing eight student nurses, had been injecting himself with female hormones and was growing breasts and having wild sex with his inmate boyfriend. Some punishment. That’s not prison, that’s spring break. Why is he still alive? I found myself asking. I knew I was really driving in the right lane the day I saw Jared Lee Loughner pleading guilty with an idiot smile on his face to killing six people, including that beautiful little girl who’d had her whole life ahead of her, and critically wounding Gabby Giffords. Six people are dead, a great woman is permanently damaged, and he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison? We’re paying to keep that sick smile on his face?
Up until then, I was against the electric chair. Now I’m for the electric stadium. Vendors and everything: “Last meal, get your last meal here.” Everybody stands for the national anthem, and when they all sit down, we throw the switch and get rid of all the crazies at once. Think of the money we could save—think of the money we could make! We could sell rights to pay-per-view, and don’t forget corporate sponsorships. Why not? People paid money to see The Passion of the Christ, and that was a snuff film. Okay, I’m kidding. I’m really not for the electric stadium. Let’s make it solar-powered, because I’m an environmentalist.
There, I got the big conservative rage out of my system, but the little everyday things that annoy me are still there. These annoyances hang around and torment me like relatives who stay too long over the holidays, or that piece of food that gets stuck between your teeth and then you use dental floss and the floss rips, leaving that little bit of frayed floss that you can’t seem to reach. The only thing you can use to work it out is a toothpick, and then you think, Why didn’t I use this in the first place? I’m talking about the things you can live with but that annoy the crap out of you.
Honestly, I don’t want to be the grouchy old man. You know: “Don’t hit the ball in old man Crystal’s yard, you’ll never get it back!”—that guy. I just want to get rid of the frayed floss in the teeth of life.
Speaking of floss, fat people annoy me. I have compassion, believe me; I know obesity can be an addiction or a disease. But they drive me nuts with their excuses. They’re not big-boned, they’re fat. And they crowd me on airplanes and they eat excessive amounts of food that starving children need and they cause health-care costs to skyrocket. Worst of all, they let their kids get fat. Six-year-olds shouldn’t be having bypass surgery. Obesity numbers are skyrocketing. Illegal immigrants can’t get in anymore; there’s no more room. Everybody eats too much. The only thing Jewish women won’t swallow is their husbands. People are so immense, they can’t even walk. They ride their Rascal scooters. Really fast. Have you been to Las Vegas recently? They roar through the casino buffet like a Harley gang tear-assing through a small town. One time at Caesars Palace, I got caught behind a whole flock of them and I thought I was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade!
Another thing that drives me crazy is when people use their cell phones in restaurants—and the restaurants that allow them to. About a year ago, Janice and I are out for our anniversary, we’re having a nice quiet romantic dinner, and there’s a guy at the table next to us. He gets on his phone just as my entrée arrives.
“That tumor weighed six pounds, it was benign, but I had to cut through his ribs and the abscess to get at it, all that pus.… Waiter can I have another chardonnay? The tumor was larger than I thought, it was like delivering a baby— Waiter, I’ll have the liver and onions.”
I wanted to kill him. And I could have, because I wouldn’t get the death penalty, and I could live out my days with a sick smile on my face, far away from these annoying people.
I just want to tell
them all, STOP.
Trolls: STOP. The crap you post on Internet forums and in comment sections is mean, it’s vicious, and it’s untrue. And if your parents knew you did that, they would ask you to move out of their basement. P.S.: If you’re going to post, learn to spell.
NBA players who thump their chests and scream like mating dinosaurs after a dunk: STOP. I can honestly say I never do that after I dunk. If LeBron and I don’t do it, neither should you.
Westboro Baptist Church: STOP. Stop protesting the funerals of our soldiers who died in action because you are anti-gay. When one of you dies, I’m going to show up with a couple of gay veterans and we’re going to do a musical at your funeral.
Congress: STOP. I mean start. Do something. How can these politicians get to Washington, D.C., and actually brag that they’re not going to pass anything? We pay their salaries! If you want to get paid for doing nothing and blocking progress, become a movie studio executive.
NRA: STOP. Or you’ll shoot. Eighty-two percent of Americans want background checks, and the only reason you are against them is because you’re afraid what craziness they’ll find in your background.
People with so many tattoos that their bodies look like graffiti-covered abandoned buildings: STOP.
Iran: STOP. If you’re going to threaten Israel, tell your president to wear a fucking tie.
People you love who die too young: STOP DYING. And people you hate who live too long: STOP LIVING. What do you know, Jared Lee Loughner made a return appearance in this chapter.
I’m annoyed at people who, every four years during the World Cup, tell us that Americans are dumb because they don’t love soccer and that this is the year we all become soccer fans. So all of you announcers, here’s your new life goaaal: STOP. Stop telling us how great soccer is. It will never catch on here. Americans like sports where the fighting is on the field, not in the stands.
I’m annoyed by Cats … the musical and the animal. People who like either, STOP telling me how great both are. One I ignored, and the other ignores me. If I wanted an aloof companion I would have married a Presbyterian.
I’m sorry Al Gore invented the Internet. They say the Internet is for everybody. Except the newspapers it put of business, the music industry it crippled, the bookstores that are now closed. And, oh yeah, I’m really annoyed at the Internet because it is responsible for the most annoying website of all time: WebMD.
WebMD: STOP. The truth is, we’re all addicted to WebMD. It starts innocently. You wake up one morning and have a slight pain in your left side. You start to think, Is the appendix on the left or right side? So you go to Google, enter the word “appendix,” and up pops WebMD. So you click through. You enter the words “appendix pain,” and in a millisecond, there are twenty-two million articles to look at. After a four-hour search through the top five hundred, you realize two things: (1) the appendix is on the right side; (2) you had it out when you were ten years old. So you go to log off, but all that staring at the screen has made your vision blurry. So you look up blurry eyes. Blurry eyes are a symptom of twenty-six thousand diseases. It could be a stroke, a brain tumor, a detached retina, it could be you were bitten by a tsetse fly. With each cross-reference you find out that you have the symptom of … everything. And then your eyes drift to the side of the web page and there’s a banner ad for the Jacoby & Meyers wills specialist. How did they know! Now you get ready to call him, because without even spending one second with a trained medical professional, without one day in med school, without even passing high school biology, you have successfully diagnosed that you have: sleeping sickness, a carcinoid tumor of the lymph glands, beriberi, scarlet fever, diverticulitis, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Super PACs: STOP. The Supreme Court decision to allow this has disenfranchised all of us and ruined our country. It’s now a game show: The Country Can Be Yours, If the Price Is Right or Who Wants to Be Owned by a Millionaire. We used to have Lincolns and FDRs and JFKs, now we have … who cares? Big money and corporations have made all voters feel like Jews do every election. That’s right. Jews feel disenfranchised. Other than in New York and Florida. Everywhere else, elections involve nonstop talk about Jesus this and Christ that and how we are a Christian nation. I get it, but do you have to rub it in my face? Don’t make me feel like, well, like a Jew at the Easter Parade. Look, I know there aren’t many of us, but there aren’t a lot of penguins either, and they get more attention and respect than we do. At least Morgan Freeman narrates their lives.
And I am really annoyed at teachers who have sex with students. STOP. It seems like once a week you hear of a thirty-five-year-old math teacher who had sex in her car with some sixteen-year-old. I am furious. Where was she when I was growing up?
Climate-change deniers: STOP. Look out the fucking window. How much evidence do you need? People who deny climate change are probably the same people who still think O.J. was innocent. And it’s not just the climate deniers who annoy me. I’m annoyed at people who kill endangered species for profit, as well as those who eat them. There are less than one hundred Javan rhinos left. We can’t take the planet for granted. The Earth is like that baseball you catch at the ballpark and it’s so white and pristine and you take great care of it, but over time it gets brown and then you play with it on concrete, so it gets scuffed up, and finally it unravels and you can’t play with it anymore, so basically it’s worthless.
Pit bulls: STOP. Yes, I know they can be affectionate, and yes, I know that it’s bad owners who make bad pit bulls, but guess what: there are a lot of bad owners out there. I never trust anything that even the North Koreans are afraid to eat.
Athletes who use steroids: STOP. Everybody knows that testing is mandatory, but somehow these guys are too stupid to realize that they’re going to get caught. You would think that with a size 15 head, there would be a brain in there.
People not impressed by NASA: STOP. When we were growing up, space flight was a wonder. The Mercury astronauts were my heroes, and I followed every flight obsessively. Now we land a rover on Mars and people don’t even care. Neil Armstrong’s death got very little notice. He walked on the moon! Meanwhile, Anna Nicole Smith dies and she gets twenty-four/seven coverage on five cable networks. Wake up, everyone. One day after we’ve ruined the Earth, we’re going to have to go live on another planet, and you know where we’ll be forced to turn to for space travel because no one cared about NASA? Scientologists.
Ageism: STOP. What is it with American society? In Asia, they revere their elders and venerate anything old. Over there, one-hundred-year-old eggs are a delicacy; here, it means Madonna is trying to get pregnant again.
It’s hard to believe that in 2013 there are still professions with mandatory retirement ages. If you’re not physically or mentally capable of doing the job, sure, I get it—but decide on a case-by-case basis; don’t lump us all together. Why do all FBI agents have to retire at fifty-seven, but J. Edgar was still wearing his heels and red evening gown to work until he was seventy-seven? I’d trust Sully Sullenberger to land a plane even if he were eighty. Maybe I wouldn’t let him drive me home afterward, but land a plane on the Hudson, sure.
Now, I get that there are people who can’t wait to retire; they’ve put in their time. For instance, I went over to a friend’s house for a retirement party. He was seventy-one years old and in his pool just walking back and forth, back and forth. I said, “Al, what are you doing? Why not swim?”
He said, “I worked all my life so that I could walk in a pool.”
But not everyone is like Al. Some people want to keep working, but even those in professions that don’t force them to retire are often encouraged to leave their jobs. When it comes to fighting ageism, I’m pro-choice. Each of us should choose if we want to retire or keep going. Sure, some jobs we can’t do physically. But there are plenty of jobs we can do. If we can’t continue in the jobs we’ve pursued all our lives, let us stay active; put us to work doing something meaningful. Not bagging groceries, not being crossing
guards, but something where we can make a real difference.
Fellow baby boomers, this is our new battle; this is our new war. We fought imperialism, we fought racism, we fought sexism, and now we need to enlist in the war against ageism. But if we are going to, we have to stay on top of our game. We have to meet the challenges. We have to show that we are better than those sprightly fifty-eight-year-olds. We have to challenge ourselves every day. And that starts with setting goals and having dreams of glory, and by that I don’t mean getting our triglycerides under 150.
If you want to run a marathon, walk one.
If you want to bungee jump, don’t.
If you want to learn Italian, forget it. Learn Chinese—they’re the ones we owe money to.
And if we really want to stay current and relevant, we have to use social media. And by that I mean Facebook.
There are one billion people on Facebook. Maybe older people should have our own social media. We can call it What Did That Doctor Do to Your Face Book? In fact, we can have our own text and Facebook abbreviations. We can have our own WTF, LOL, and LMAO.
GNIB: Good news, it’s benign.
OMG: Oh, my gout.
DMMLIMNWD: Don’t make me laugh, I’m not wearing Depends.
WAI: Where am I?
ITIHSBCR: I think I had sex but can’t remember.
ILI: I like Ike.
TKDC: The kids didn’t call.
DTLSTY: Does this look swollen to you?
CTDMELOFM: Call the doctor—my erection lasted over four minutes.
Still Foolin’ ’Em Page 11