Don't applaud. Either laugh or don't. (At the Comedy Cellar.)

by Andrew Hankinson

  Author: He wasn’t laughing?

  Erika: No, not at all.

  Author: He sat at the table and …

  Erika: He was just like, ‘Wow’, and then as we talked about it the more he thought about it, the more he thought it was horrible too, but he was like, ‘I’m proud of you for taking this stance.’ Not that it really matters, I’m one person, but I was just like, gosh, this person, if nothing else he should just maybe think a little more about talking about children. I just feel like children are off limits. Everything else you can joke about I guess.

  CHAPTER 145

  Before that, Erika receives an email from the Comedy Cellar,

  Thank you for coming to the Comedy Cellar. We are always trying to improve, and we find that honest customer feedback is the most valuable resource we have. If you have a chance, please let us know what you enjoyed and what you thought could have been better. We cannot promise a reply to each and every email, however we do answer quite a few every week. Every email comment we receive is read carefully by the owners. Please be blunt.

  Erika replies,

  Okay you want blunt, I’ll be blunt. I had the worst comedy experience of my life at your venue last night. A disgusting person, I won’t call him a comedian because he’s not humorous, Sam Morril, took the stage and spent the first few minutes of his act disrespecting Lane Graves, the two-year-old child who was murdered by the alligator at Disney. He even cracked ‘jokes’ about his parents and his funeral. I have never in my life been so offended and repulsed by someone. I immediately left and stopped to tell your staff why. They followed me to make sure my drinks were being paid not because I had just had to listen to a sick man try to use a child’s death as a pathetic shock value attempt at being a comedian.

  Furthermore, upon speaking with friends who worked for a comedy club for over ten years, I learned that your venue had to know his set prior to him taking the stage which meant someone approved of this garbage. You should be ashamed of yourselves too. The girl who was introducing all the acts simply replied to my outrage with ‘different people are offended by different things’. Oh really?! I would expect all human beings would be offended by a sicko making jokes about a 2-year-old baby’s tragic death, saying his mother probably said ‘later gator’ at his funeral, etc. I have posted about this on every social media account I own and asked people to share it. The comedian himself replied to me to say ‘pretty strong act huh? Tonight was my first time trying that one out’. What a complete and utter pathetic excuse for a human. He doesn’t deserve to breathe the same air or live on the same planet as that precious little boy’s family. So there’s my review. The other acts were fine. I really enjoyed the staff girl who introduced everyone until I received her heartless rude response to my feedback. She can fly a kite too.

  Noam asks Liz if anything was left out. Liz says not. Noam replies,

  I’m a parent with two small children and I completely understand your reaction to Sam’s joke. Comedians generally hold nothing sacred. For them, the bizarre nature of the incident inspires a kind of gallows humour which others may find offensive or just not funny. To be very clear, no, we don’t approve of any comedians’ material before they take the stage. You note in your email that this was the first time that he told the joke, so not only did we not approve it, we had no way of knowing he was going to say it, since he had never said it before. But even if we had known what he was going to say, I have to tell you that I would not have intervened. I cannot censor the artists who appear at my venue. Believe me, sometimes I would like to but I can’t. You simply can’t imagine the resentment that I would engender if I were to tell Louis CK, who has done jokes about pedophilia that were controversial, or any other comedian, what they can or can’t say. Stand-up comedy by nature lives close to the line. What one person considers thought-provoking another considers irreverently funny and another considers unacceptably offensive. It’s simply impossible to lay down an objective standard that everyone could agree on. It’s the same reason the First Amendment is interpreted so broadly. It’s virtually impossible to decide what speech is acceptable and what can be forbidden. In the end it would all become about not offending me and my particular sensibilities. As a club owner, all I can do is stop booking a comedian if they are not doing well with the audience, and that determination can’t be made after any one set that did or did not go well. All the comedians have bad sets and almost all offend someone at some time in their careers. Having said all that, it’s no pleasure for me that you left unhappy. If there’s anything I can do, perhaps refund your cover charges or invite you back to a better show as my guest, please just say the word. I hope this has been helpful to you in some way.

  CHAPTER 144

  Days earlier, Erika’s on holiday with her husband. It’s their first time away since becoming parents. They love comedy. The Cellar has great reviews, plus it’s in a fun part of town. They get tickets. Liza Treyger is the emcee. She does her Holocaust jizz joke. She usually does her Holocaust jizz joke if a darker comedian’s coming on, just to get it out of the crowd’s system. Liza introduces Sam. He asks if anyone heard about the baby who was killed by an alligator. He doesn’t use the child’s name. He says baby instead of child. He says he doesn’t want to come across as a right-wing nut, but maybe if the baby was carrying a gun? He asks if anyone watched the televised funeral. It wasn’t televised, that’s part of the joke. He describes what he saw. Erika stands up and walks out of the showroom. On her way out she complains to Liza. Liza tells her people are offended by different things and she can leave if she wants. She leaves. She cries. She tweets,

  Comic @sammorril makes part of act jokes about 2 yr old being killed by alligator in Disney. He should be boycotted. I left immediately

  Sam retweets it and adds his comment. Other people tweet to Erika. Sam doesn’t want it to be a thing. He feels bad. Erika reads the tweets from strangers,

  People like you don’t belong at comedy shows

  It’s called a comedy show, they tell jokes and shouldn’t be politically correct.

  Comedians should have most freedom of speech

  So his set was fine until he made a joke YOU were sensitive about?

  if something offends you then it has too much power over you (Louie CK)

  I hope your baby is eaten by an alligator, and then gets reincarnated into an alligator and eats your 2nd baby

  CHAPTER 143

  An alligator kills Lane Graves.

  CHAPTER 142

  The author phones Noam about the book proposal he’s writing,

  Author: I think I said in the email that it’s like an empire, and you’ve taken over this empire, and someone I was talking to, I think my agent, said it’s like an allegory for America, you know, this great empire, booming, expanding, but somewhere on the horizon, everyone’s wondering, when is this boom going to end? When is the downturn coming? I wondered how much that’s in your thoughts?

  Noam: All the time. It’s all the time in my thoughts. I was just talking to Dan Naturman about this. You know, I try to fairly assess what my contribution has been without arrogantly assessing it. So, for instance, comedy is booming now, the Comedy Cellar is booming now, and some of that can be luck. On the other hand, the other comedy clubs are not booming, so clearly it wasn’t pre-ordained that it would have to be booming now, as opposed to and distinct from the previous years of boom, where every comedy club was booming and they could just open up and people would pour in. It’s not that kind of boom right now. Right now the Comedy Cellar is, I think, quite often attracting eighty or ninety per cent of all the people in Manhattan who are going out to see comedy on any given night. So that means we’ve done certain things very well and I think there’s a certain kind of … One really good comedy club makes it hard to have any other good comedy clubs, because there’s not that many good comedians. There’s really like fifteen, twenty really good comedians in
town on any given night, if that many. And I mean, even if you compare it to a baseball team, you have the nine best players in the country or something on your line-up, but even in that line-up, the end of the line-up is still batting two hundred. So even among the best of the best there’s a huge difference. Even among the best of the best comedians, if twenty of them are in town, really only about seven or eight of them are home-run hitters. So, as I have opened up so many shows and have so much space and am giving all these best comics three or four spots in a night, they are not playing anywhere else. And that’s, I think, made it very hard for the other clubs. And then social media. Everybody’s very well informed these days. So they’re aware of it. Years ago they wouldn’t have known that. So that’s helped me. On the other hand, there’s no place to go but down, which scares me, and eventually it will go down, you know.

  The author asks if Noam’s children will take over one day,

  Noam: Well, I hope so. You know, it’s funny. I even put it on Facebook, my daughter said something so funny to me yesterday. She said something, and I wasn’t paying attention I guess, or I didn’t laugh, and she said, ‘Daddy, is that funny?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s funny.’ And she goes, ‘Well, you didn’t laugh.’ I said, ‘I know, I’m sorry.’ She said, ‘Listen, Daddy, if you laugh I know it’s funny, if you don’t laugh I don’t know if you didn’t think it was funny or it’s not funny at all.’ This was my four-year-old daughter. And I said, ‘That’s all you need to know to run comedy shows. If they don’t laugh, it’s not funny or they didn’t think it was funny, and that’s it.’ So, I mean, that’s not an answer. I don’t know how long it will last. I own the building where the Olive Tree is, and I don’t own the Underground, so I guess if it deteriorated, the first thing I could do is close the Underground and just the run the Comedy Cellar as it was originally. I said something to my wife recently. I said, ‘Listen, if it ever gets back to the point where we’re struggling to make ends meet, I think I just want to sell it or get out, but I don’t want to live that way again.’ My father had and I have a little PTSD from the years when things were very tough.

  CHAPTER 141

  Author: When did you kind of decide to stop telling that joke?

  Gregg Rogell: Well, after watching the special I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it. Personally, whenever I watch anything I’ve done I don’t like it, I’m very critical of it, so I tend to, once I put it out there, I stop doing it in general. But since being to the Middle East I really regret it. I think a lot of people, it would benefit them if they saw more of the world. You tend to, before I travelled … I mean I’ve travelled abroad during my career. I’ve been to England, Amsterdam, but until I supported Russell Peters … With Russell Peters I was in Africa, I was in Kenya, I was all over India, Sri Lanka, I’ve been to these places and you meet these people and, you know, Americans, we seem to think that anywhere out of America is kind of Third World, and it’s not. Some of the places we stayed, especially like the hotels, they blow America away. Some of these hotels in India and the Middle East, China, the toilets, they clean your ass for you. We don’t even have that here. It really gives you perspective, you know? So now I’m very careful with my material as far as, I don’t like really making fun of other cultures. I make fun of myself.

  CHAPTER 140

  Gregg: Three weeks before the tour we got a call. I got a call from Russell’s brother that the promoter in Jordan said that I couldn’t go on because I’m Jewish and he was concerned, because he has to work there, and there’s going to be a lot of Palestinians in the audience and it could be a controversial thing, so I can’t go on, but I’m welcome to go to Jordan you know.

  Author: That’s really shocking, that because you’re Jewish, no matter where in the world for me, you shouldn’t be stopped from going on a stage.

  Gregg: If they can let me go on in Saudi Arabia, why can’t they let me go on in Jordan? But as it turned out, I did go on in Jordan. The day of the show, during the sound check, Russell’s brother had them shine my name on the back of the stage, and the promoter said, ‘He’s not going on,’ and then Russell’s brother, Clayton, said, ‘Yeah, he is going on.’ Clayton put his foot down and said, ‘He’s going on.’ So I went on and I killed. They loved me. And then Russell came on and he said, ‘How about a hand for Gregg Rogell?’ And he kind of whispered, ‘He’s a Jew.’ And again, they all laughed. There was a big laugh. But nobody cared. It was not an issue at all.

  CHAPTER 139

  Gregg: No, I didn’t talk about any religion in those countries. You avoid it, religion, politics and explicit sexual material but, you know, you can curse.

  CHAPTER 138

  The Cellar hosts its first debate. The subject is the Iran deal. The panellists are Alan Dershowitz, Fred Kaplan, Matthew Kroenig and Jim Walsh.

  Author: I wondered if you could put into words why you value people being able to openly debate, to debate honestly?

  Noam: I just find it interesting. I don’t know how to put it. I just … It’s just part of my nature to, you know, think about things and the first question I have is, ‘What am I missing? What are the arguments on the other side?’ And then sometimes you really don’t know whether … Nothing is as convincing as seeing someone who can’t defend their position. In other words, people say, ‘Blah, blah, blah’, but when you see someone in a debate and you realise they haven’t got an answer to that, and somebody asks another question, they haven’t got an answer to that. That is the most effective way to change somebody’s mind and the most effective way to demonstrate that a position is weak. What we have now, most of the time, is just somebody making arguments and they very, very, rarely, more than ever, they very, very rarely present the opposing arguments in their best light. So what you read mostly, even in the best newspapers now, is a takedown of a diluted, unfair version of the other side, and then they declare victory and move on. And, you know, it’s just not interesting to me.

  CHAPTER 137

  Jordan Sargent writes a story about Louis CK for Gawker. The weekend after it’s published he’s in his apartment reading the responses. There’s an email from a name he knows.

  Jordan: If you wanted to include this in whatever you’re writing you could say it’s some sort of well-known Hollywood person. You can anonymise it in some way. I don’t want her name to be in the story. Anyway, we can go back on the record.

  Author: So her name’s off the record?

  Jordan: Yeah. Just not her name. You can anonymise it in some way. So she emailed me and was like, oh, I forget exactly what she said, but like, ‘I’ve heard all this kind of stuff about Louis before, let me try and like gather some stories for you.’ And she emailed this duo. She emailed them and she was like, ‘I really think… You guys, this reporter’s trying to write about Louis CK, I really think you should talk to him.’ And they responded to her and she forwarded me the email and they said, ‘We don’t want to talk about this. If we talk about this no-one will ever book us again.’

  CHAPTER 136

  Author: You had a big argument with Noam where you were saying … This is maybe two or three years ago, downstairs, where you were saying … He was talking about club owners on the road and how you had to give them a bit more slack … You were kind of having a go at club owners. And you said, ‘This is nothing to do with you, you didn’t build this place,’ or something like that?

  Robert Kelly: I did?

  Author: Yeah.

  Robert: When?

  Author: Two or three years ago.

  Robert: Where’d you get this?

  Author: From Noam.

  Robert: I said that?

  Author: Do you remember having a big argument with him downstairs?

  Robert: No. I mean, I think … It’s weird that you say that because … I hope he’s quoting the right thing. I think Noam has a big part of this.

  Author: ‘This is nothin
g to do with you’?

  Robert: What?

  Author: I guess the Cellar?

  Robert: Oh no, that’s crazy.

  Author: I don’t think he thinks you meant it, but you got angry at the time.

  Robert: I don’t think … I don’t remember saying that. I really don’t. I just know that his father … His father … It was weird, because his father so loved this place. Estee, Ava and his father were this place. And they just really cultivated their own breed of comic, almost like a team. Like a league or something. And they made you feel like you had a home and they took care of you. It was just this surrogate family that they created for all of us. They had a big part of us becoming a community you know.

  Author: A lot of people have told me Manny was like a dad to them.

  Robert: I loved Manny, because one time I said, ‘You’re like my family.’ He goes, ‘Look, this is business.’

  Author: Did he say that?

  Robert: He goes, ‘This is business.’

  Author: How did you react to that?

  Robert: I remember one time Manny actually said, ‘You can’t work the other clubs.’

  Author: Specifically the Boston round the corner wasn’t it? Where did he say that?

  Robert: Right downstairs. He took me from the table to another table. He says, ‘I’ve got to talk to you.’ He goes, ‘You can’t work the Boston. I can’t have people working here and then working there.’ And I said, ‘Well, that sucks Manny that you say that, because I really care about you and I love you guys and I consider you like my family.’ He goes, ‘This isn’t family, this is business.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, that’s what you think, but I’m going to have to say, I have bills and things to pay, and that’s business, and I really don’t want to not work here, but I can’t have you tell me where I can and can’t work. That’s crazy.’ And he went, ‘Alright, you can work the club.’