Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy Read Online Free Page A

accomplishment.
    Judd: Do you ever worry about, you know, say ten years in the future—a lot of comedians get bored after a while, they just cut stand-up out completely.
    Jerry: Yeah, I know. I don’t think I’ll be one of those comedians. I have a lot of respect for it as a craft. I don’t see it as just a stepping-stone. I mean, it’s a hard life in some ways. But I have a fascination for it.
    Judd: A lot of people do it and they just—they hate it.
    Jerry: Well, they use it as a vehicle, which is fine. You know, you can get seen real easy. But it’s a tough thing to do. It’s a tough thing to put yourself through when it’s not gonna be a career for you. It’s a difficult thing to play at. It’s kind of like catching bullets between your teeth: If you’re gonna do it right, it would be something to learn it and then not make a career out of it.
    Judd: When you’re onstage and everything is going great, is that like the ultimate idea?
    Jerry: I think so. Yeah, for me it is. Because that’s what I like. I like jokes and laughing more than anything. Everybody has an appetite for a different thing. And comedy is something that I have an endless appetite for.
    Judd: When did this all start, being funny?
    Jerry: I wasn’t a class clown per se. I mean, I wrote some funny things for the newspaper and I was always trying to be funny around my friends. And watching comedy was the thing I enjoyed more than anything else. Iknew every comedian, I knew all their routines. That’s how I got into it. I wanted to be around it, you know. I never thought I’d be any good at it. But that turned out to be an advantage because it made me work harder than most other people.
    Judd: When did you first do it?
    Jerry: I did Catch a Rising Star one night. I guess this would actually qualify as my strangest experience. This is definitely it. My first time onstage, I write the whole act out, you know, and I put it there on my bed and rehearse it, over and over again. I’m standing there with a bar of soap, like it’s a microphone. And I got the scene memorized, cold. I get up on there, and it’s gone. I can’t remember a word. I was—I stood there for about thirty seconds with—saying absolutely nothing, just standing there, freaking out. I just couldn’t believe it, all these people were looking at me. And then, I was able to just remember the subjects I wanted to talk about. This is absolutely true, I’m not embellishing this at all, I stood there and I went, “The beach…ah, driving…your parents…,” and people started laughing because they thought this was my act. I couldn’t even really hear them laughing; I was like absolutely panicked. I think I lasted about three minutes and I just got off. That was my first show.
    Judd: How do you get steady work?
    Jerry: Well, you audition; you start off at three in the morning and you fight your way through the order by doing better than the guy they put on ahead of you. Then the next night they put you on ahead of him. Then you try to do better than that guy. But if you’re good, people notice you. That’s the greatest thing about comedy. If you’ve got talent, it’s unmistakable. No one misses it and you don’t have to wait around for a break. It’s very easy to get a break. It’s very hard to be good enough.
    Judd: When did you do your first TV appearance?
    Jerry:
Merv Griffin
was my first talk show.
    Judd: And how did you get that first booking?
    Jerry: The same thing. I was out working at the Improv. If you’re clean, and you’re clever, and you’re killin’, they’re not gonna miss you.
    Judd: What’s it like doing
Johnny Carson
or
Merv Griffin
?
    Jerry: It’s the ultimate.
The Tonight Show
is—to stand up there is a dream. It’s like the Olympics of comedy, you know.
    Judd: How do you prepare a certain ten minutes to go on?
    Jerry: Well, you try to put it together like a small regular set. In other words, it’s an hour set condensed into ten minutes.