Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir Page 18

  Richard looked at me—an admitted coward—looked at the seething black women, and said, “No!” We both walked away from the bar, leaving our dates to fend for themselves.

  Another time a bunch of us went to Chinatown after a show at the Improv, including Pryor and a white comic named Bob Altman, who went by the name Uncle Dirty and wrote for Richard. Dirty was always bragging about something—how much money he made, how he was the hottest comic, something. We were having dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and Dirty boasted about his twentieth-degree black belt and that he was a martial arts champion.

  For whatever reason Richard decided he was not going to pay the check. He told the waiter that he found a cockroach in his food and instructed us to get up and walk out with him. As we approached the door a dozen Chinese waiters, cooks, and others formed a wall to block us from leaving.

  “You know that martial arts stuff you were talking about?” Richard said to Dirty. “You’re going to need it now!”

  Of course, we knew Dirty was full of shit and we couldn’t fight our way out of a takeout bag. We went for our wallets.

  Legend has it that when he was playing a Vegas date, a casino owner tried to convince Richard to tame his act a little. Richard snapped. He rushed into the casino itself, ripped off his shirt, jumped onto a card table, and yelled, “Blackjack!” Even if that did not happen, no one would have been surprised if it had. Anything was possible around Richard.

  One day in June in 1980 I got a call around midnight. It was my agent.

  “Did you hear about Richard Pryor?” he asked.

  “What? Drug overdose?”

  “Close,” he said. “He was freebasing coke while drinking 151-proof rum. The alcohol ignited and he caught on fire!”

  “So why are you calling me?”

  “He was supposed to do a new movie with Mel Brooks, The History of the World, Part I. Since he won’t be available, I got you a meeting with Mel this morning.”

  “Geez,” I said, “Richard’s still smoldering!”

  That’s Hollywood. I went to the meeting, but Gregory Hines ended up with the part.

  The drugs and the madness ensured that Richard was rarely in any physical or mental condition to put together an act. He could never have done it on his own. There was brilliance that came out of him, but Richard would never have remembered any of it. He had the characters, like the wino, who gave Richard pathos—funny but also sympathetic. He also had the energy and he did the performance. But it was Paul Mooney who helped radicalize him, collaborated with him, wrote down his bits, arranged his act, and put it all together for him. Mooney also got Richard’s ass on stage. And then to get Richard to do a performance again and again—that was a yeoman’s job. Without Mooney there would not have been a Richard Pryor, and he does not get near enough credit for that. Every black comic who has followed in Pryor’s footsteps, from Kevin Hart to Dave Chappelle, owes Mooney a debt of gratitude.

  No one, however, could have reined in Andy Kaufman—because there was no Andy Kaufman; he was always someone else.

  I was at the Improv in New York when he first appeared as Tony Clifton. As one comic finished up, Budd went on stage to bring on the next act.

  “Oh,” he said, supposedly interrupting his introduction. “I think I see a young man in the audience who used to work here as a singer and now he has his own room in Vegas. One of the brightest talents in show biz today, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tony Clifton!”

  Andy sat in the audience sporting a cheesy suit, black toupee, mustache, and sunglasses. The audience didn’t know who Tony Clifton was, but they politely applauded.

  “I wonder,” Budd said, “if it’s possible for Tony to come up and sing a song. Maybe if we give him a round of applause, he’ll come up.”

  Again, some applause.

  Clifton said, “Nah, nah.”

  Budd fired them up. “Ladies and gentlemen, a little more applause, let’s get him up here!”

  Onto the stage trotted Clifton. He looked around for a minute and said, “This place is a fuckin’ dump! How much does it cost to get in here?”

  Someone yelled, “Seven bucks.”

  “Really? You paid seven bucks to come to this fuckin’ dive? I don’t know why I’m up here. This is shit.”

  From the back of the club a woman’s voice was heard. “Hey Mr. Clifton, where are you working in Vegas?” It was one of the waitresses, maybe Bette, Liz, Shelley, or Elayne.

  “Excuse me, who the fuck are you?” answered the ticked-off Clifton.

  “You said you had your own room in Vegas,” she said. “We might come out there and see you.”

  “Are you here with your boyfriend?” Clifton asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s paying for your drinks too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I mean. These fuckin’ broads, man. They come to the fuckin’ show, they don’t pay a fuckin’ dime, they have to spread their legs later so they can come to this show, and when I’m on stage they have to take up my time.”

  Sometimes a guy in the crowd would get upset at his abuse of the woman: “Hey! Take it easy, man!”

  The woman would chime in with “I just wanted to know where you were. You don’t have to be an asshole.”

  The audience would agree and applaud for her.

  Clifton pushed further. “Excuse me, fuckin’ lady, if you think you’re tough enough to knock me off this stage, bring your ass up here and do it.”

  The “customer” would strut angrily onto the stage. As she did, the fire exit door next to the stage was opened from the outside. Andy had taught the waitresses how to take him by an arm and flip him so he flew through the door and out of the club. The move was the beginning of his wrestler character a few years later. Then the door would slam shut.

  The audience, not really sure whether what they had witnessed was real or an act, would applaud wildly in either case. At first, I too thought Tony Clifton was funny, and his Elvis too. But Andy just went on too long. It is said that jokes have three beats—badda, bing, punch line. Andy’s humor was five beats. It just kept going and going. I watched him and thought, “Are we there yet?” I was not surprised that Kaufman said he went to a Pryor concert and never laughed once. That’s because Richard had actual jokes.

  He stayed in character off stage too. When people saw Andy at the bar after his act, they would say, “Hey Andy, that was great.” He would blow them off because he was still Tony Clifton, and Tony Clifton was a prick. If he had played Foreign Man onstage and another comic said, “Andy, I liked that bit,” he would talk like Foreign Man and ask, “Who this Andy?” He was the same with everyone, including the hordes of women who flocked around him.

  Boosler, who dated him for years before everyone moved to LA, thought he was great. There are others who also thought he was brilliant. To them I said, “Next time, you need to bring enough drugs for everybody.”

  For Richard, Freddie, Andy, and all of us who had come to the West Coast, our first stop was at the Store. Formerly the legendary Ciro’s nightclub, in 1972 the place was reopened as the Comedy Store, featuring a ninety-nine-seat theater, by comic Sammy Shore, who had opened for Elvis Presley the previous few years in Vegas. For Sammy the club was a playground for him and his comic pals, from Buddy Hackett and Redd Foxx to Rudy DeLuca and Flip Wilson. The next year, when Sammy had to return to Vegas for an extended solo gig, he left the club in the hands of his wife, Mitzi. By the time he returned a month later she had not only transformed the Store; she had begun to transform comedy itself.

  She painted the inside black, put in a two-drink minimum for the now two shows nightly, created a Monday open-mic night, and established lineups and time slots for every comic. Mitzi was the first to have a schedule, right up there on the wall—no waiting around. Instead of comics hanging out until the owner said, “You’re on,” there was a plan. You had some idea when you might take the stage. In New York, like at the Improv, you could show up at 9 p.m. and no
t get on until 1 a.m. Now at the Store, comics had to call in on Monday to find out when or if you were booked for the rest of the week. When comics met at Canter’s or Theodore’s, the first words out of their mouths were, “Did you get your times?”

  Your slot was for twenty minutes, and when you saw a red light flash, that meant it was time to wrap it up and for you to get off the stage. When Pryor or Robin Williams came by, they took the number of slots needed for one to three hours. But everyone was fine with that because it was written into the schedule. It did not always go smoothly, but at least there was an idea of order.

  Not unexpectedly given the drastic changes, divorce proceedings between Sammy and Mitzi followed. In exchange for lower monthly alimony payments, Mitzi was given the business and custody of their son, Pauly.

  Only months later Budd Friedman arrived to open an Improv in the Fairfax District on Melrose Avenue. By some cosmic comedy coincidence, he too had gotten a divorce from his wife, Silver, and she too had won his comedy club in the settlement. Seeing the comedy tide switching coasts, he decided to open a new Improv in LA. It is amazing how many laughs have since come out of two divorces.

  By this time I was a fixture at the Store. But I had my roots with the New York Improv and with Budd, as did many stand-ups. So when Budd needed money to get the club going and offered me stock in the company for $2,000, I bought in, more as a grateful friend than a businessman. I never expected to see a dime of it returned. Freddie, Harvey Korman, and others also invested. Then when Budd needed help to launch the club, I, Freddie, and many others who had played the Improv in New York and now had a little juice performed there to get him on his feet.

  Mitzi was pissed.

  “You can’t play the Improv,” she said in that grating, whiny voice of hers. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re a Comedy Store guy. What about loyalty? How could you even think of playing there?”

  In New York everybody played everywhere, several clubs a night. No problem. But she saw the Improv as the competition and, therefore, the enemy.

  I ignored her and continued to roll into the Improv on any given night after playing the Store. What was great about the Improv was that the building had a foyer that doubled as a hangout room for the comics. At the Store you could only gather in the busy waitress area or outside in the parking lot.

  “How dare you go there!” Mitzi screamed at me. “You go down there again and you’re banned from the Store!”

  I went to Budd. “Fuck that!” he said. “You belong with me! You started at my place and this is where you should be!”

  “Come on, Budd! I’m just a comic trying to get a laugh somewhere.” The same tug-of-war was going on with other comics. Just like a child in a divorce, I should never have been put in the position of having to make a choice between parents. Mitzi and Budd wanted custody—only this time it was custody of certain comics!

  Mitzi was a pioneer and I loved Mitzi, but she was also crazy to work for.

  Jackson Perdue was doing well at the Store. One week he called in for his schedule and was told there were no spots for him. The next week he called again, and again there were no spots for him. He called Mitzi.

  “Why am I not scheduled?”

  “You’re not aqua enough,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I saw you on stage and you had a nice aqua shirt on and you were fabulous,” she explained. “The next night I saw you in a yellow shirt and you didn’t look so good. From now on I want you in aqua every time I see you.” He changed shirts and was back on the schedule.

  That was the sort of thing she would do that drove comics insane. She never did that to me. I guess she liked my wardrobe.

  We were forced to choose which parent we would spend most, if not all, of our time with. Pryor, Letterman, George Miller, Tom Dreesen, Landesberg (who was living with Mitzi), and others chose the Store. Freddie, Leno, Richard Lewis, Andy Kaufman, and others chose the Improv.

  The Store was where I had been performing on a nightly basis. The Store had my name on the marquee, attracting the tourist crowd on Sunset Boulevard thanks to Good Times. I decided to stay with the Store. In this divorce settlement Mitzi won custody of Jimmie Walker.

  Budd went ape-shit. He labeled me “the most ungrateful comic I’ve ever known.” I felt personally very hurt. A lot of comics hated Budd—comics rarely like club owners—but I never had anything bad to say about him. Years later a check came in the mail that repaid my $2,000 investment by at least twenty times, and other major payments followed. My stake in the Improv had paid off handsomely. But Budd never understood that the real issue was between him and Mitzi.

  Oh, by the way, none of us were paid—at either venue—to perform. The only difference between someone starring on a TV series and Joe Unknown was that I could ask to perform certain days and at certain times—say, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 10:15 p.m. Otherwise I was just like any other stand-up.

  Whether in LA or New York, comics at the showcase clubs performed for free for the chance to work out material on stage and the exposure in front of talent coordinators, casting directors, movie and TV executives, and so on. Never mind that the clubs charged admission and sold drinks. Comics were allowed no more than one guest admission unless it was your parents. If it was your birthday, you might be given two free soft drinks or food. That was all—even after Mitzi expanded the Store in 1976 to add a 450-seat Main Room to the smaller Original Room and opened a second Comedy Store in Westwood near UCLA.

  With the Main Room her idea was to pay the major acts that came to play there. But she could not attract anyone. So she bundled Letterman, Leno, Robin Williams, myself, and others into “best of” packages that would play the Main Room, two shows a night on weekends. Just like when we would “workshop” at the Original Room, she did not feel compelled to pay any of us.

  One Sunday morning in early 1979, after doing two shows in the Main Room the previous night, a group of us went to Theodore’s. But Bob Shaw, one of the comics from the Original Room who sat with us, did not order any food.

  “You want anything?” someone asked.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  He wasn’t fine. He was hungry and he was broke. Despite some of us performing two sold-out shows where paying customers were shelling out $10 to $20 a head and buying expensive drinks, none of the performers had received anything. No one on stage, whether the Main Room or Original Room, should have left the Store that night hungry or broke. A lot of us were doing just fine, thank you, but there were too many comics who were working and yet still struggling, including sleeping in their cars. It didn’t seem right.

  Everyone was upset about Shaw’s plight, especially Boosler, Leno, Gallagher, and Mooney. Mooney, the rabble-rouser that he was, went in to talk to Mitzi about the situation.

  “Look, the comics think we should have a little share of what’s coming in. What do you think might be fair, for us and for you?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe like $5 a show. To cover food and maybe some gas.”

  Mitzi exploded. “You motherfuckin’ ungrateful bastards!”

  Mooney was stunned.

  “We’re the biggest, most important goddamn comedy club in the country,” she continued, furious and defiant. “You’re lucky to be on my fuckin’ stage. If you don’t want to be on my stage, fuck you! Because I’m not going to pay you fuckin’ guys a fuckin’ dime!”

  Even Mooney, who took no shit from anyone, was so taken aback that he did not know what to say in response.

  After relaying to us her reaction, he gave us his understated punch line: “I don’t think she’s going to go for it.”

  “Maybe we should stand up to her,” someone suggested.

  But Mitzi carried a big stick. Many comics were afraid to say anything more because those who protested might suddenly find themselves relegated to going on at one in the morning, if they got on at all, or be sent into exile at the Comedy Sto
re in Westwood. The Westwood Store held nowhere near the importance in entertainment circles as the flagship on Sunset.

  I was lucky enough to be making a living. I could withstand the potential threats and pressure, and so could a few others. Strategy sessions were held, including at my townhouse, and a group was formed called Comedians for Compensation. Larger meetings, often chaotic, took place at a union hall.

  If Mitzi had simply said, “Hey, I’ll think about it” or “I’ll give you a few bucks a show,” the whole controversy would have ended right there. But instead, she dug in her heels. There was no reasoning with her. She posted a notice in the waitress area, where we would congregate before going on stage, threatening that anyone moving forward with the idea of a “comedy strike” should expect to never again perform at the Store.

  But by March the only option left was to strike. Yet everyone knew that if major comics crossed the picket line, the comics’ organization would be unable to put any pressure on the Store or the Improv, which also refused to pay the comics. Dreesen told Bill Knoedelseder for his book I’m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-up Comedy’s Golden Era that he drove to my home first to get my support. I recall the emissaries being Gallagher and Leno. In any case, my position was clear: I loved Mitzi and did not want to hurt her, but I believed every comic should be paid something. In a way, the fact that they were not getting paid at the clubs helped bring talented writers who needed money, such as Leno, to my staff. But what was right was right. I told Gallagher and Leno that I would not join the picket line but neither would I cross it. Robin Williams then said the same thing, and Mooney brought Pryor on board. The marquee comics were a united front.

  Faced with that solidarity, Mitzi offered to pay the performers in the Main Room half of the cover charges. But that did not help those in the Original Room, those who needed financial help the most. So Comedians for Compensation turned her down.

  The time for talk was over. The strike was on—and it would be at the Improv as well as the Store. A mysterious fire at the Improv changed those plans. The bar, restaurant, and restrooms were saved, but the performance space went up in smoke. Police ruled it arson, and there were accusations about who was responsible, but no one was ever charged. Comedians showed up to help Budd salvage the venue and built a stage at one end of the restaurant. The Improv was back in operation two days later.