BOB SAGET Interview

Bob recently took time out from his busy schedule and answered some questions for me.

SUZY: Most people know you from Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos but may not know that you are one of the funniest stand-ups who ever stepped on a stage. Are you back doing standup or did you really never go away and I’m just not observant?

BOB: First I'd like to say how honored I am to be on a site whose byline has anything to do with 'comics going somewhere to die...' A lot of my favorite comedians have passed on and I truly look forward to seeing them all in open mic purgatory in the afterlife. I just hope I don't go on too early.

Your above question is a compliment, right? Yeah, I just reread it... Yeah people do know me from those two shows, but ya hope, through tragedy plus time, that people see, it was just great family gigs I had, but that wasn't my only comedy sensibilities. Who knew when left to my own facilities, I would be such a dirty bastard. It wasn't premeditated. I love the standup and always have—I started doing it when I was 17 and my stuff was always odd-- or 'edgy' as people say. I've never really stopped doing standup and never will in some form or another. Hosting a quiz show like "1 VS 100" is what it is, and it employs some of the craft of just doing standup. But the shows I've been doing this year, colleges, theaters, larger venues than I've ever played on a regular basis-- truly invigorate me. So I've never gone away, but I'd like to think I've grown to be whatever this spin-art is now that I do, and the audience I've always wanted to see my stuff and relate to it has somehow found me. Incredibly nice yet sick bastards that I love performing for.

SUZY: You wrote and directed the 2006 movie, The Farce of the Penguins, which is hilarious. As I read the end credits I saw that you used more funny people in one movie than anyone since Mel Brooks. A lot of comics and ‘comedic’ actors in Hollywood are afraid to surround themselves with funny people; why aren’t you?

BOB: First, thanks for even mentioning my name near Mel Brooks. I love that man. Yeah that penguin film I did was conceived as obviously as one may expect. I had watched the "March of the Penguins" at a friend of mine's screening and called my buddy David Permut the next day and said, "I couldn't stop voicing over this thing." He said, "Let's make a voice-over R-rated comedy out of it." It was kind of like what I did on that video show, voicing over cats and dogs who’d just been hit in the nuts, except there would be a 'story' and it would have to be completely made out of stock documentary footage since we weren't allowed to us one frame of National Geographic films. With our editor, Michael Miller, I'd cut together a twenty minute truncated version of the film with temporary voices on it, and Samuel L. Jackson read the script I'd written and saw the first twenty minutes and decided he'd like to be the narrator. Just before that, Lewis Black, Tracy Morgan, Mo'Nique and then Christina Applegate signed on to be the lead cast. And it kind of snowballed after that...A silly dirty penguin movie made completely out of stock footage where the eyes don't move...Friends of mine who did me the solid by being in the film, wanted to be part of the stoner movie of the moment. It’s exactly what I did in my early twenties....Sitting around with comedians, up all night, maybe a bit high on something or another and dubbing the TV with the sound off. Sounds pathetic, and it was, but it was also funny. And it's a gift to be surrounded by so many funny people. On this one, I got to do it in out-of-control voice-over form. I hope I didn't poach all my favors. ("I'd love you to be in my new film." "Oh sorry, you used me as the 'Bitch Slapped Penguin," and now my children won't speak to me anymore...Sorry, Bob, you’ve used up your favor of this life.”)

SUZY: Many people thought your part in The Aristocrats was the most twisted and the best. Anyone ask you out as a result of that movie?

BOB: I was asked out by an entire family. Much like the Aristocrats themselves. They brought me over and wanted to show me the act they were working on. I told them I'd seen it and ran away before they started dancing with their poo. I have a girlfriend, but did not at the time of "The Aristocrats" release. I don't think that performance secures a new relationship, but actually, yes, I did meet a couple of intriguing women who simply liked my cameo in that film and wanted to talk to me about it. But I don't think I've been 'asked out' technically, for twenty years. Does your girlfriend count?

SUZY: If I printed out your IMDb.com list of credits, it would take 3 people to lift it. Here are some comments people left for you:

- He’s a hottie
- The same as Stephen Colbert
- Do people really worship him?

Do you agree with any of those statements and why?

BOB: I'm a hottie? Weird right? I'm flattered. Some people call me a DILF. I guess women and men who dig my work may like (cause I've heard this) that I don't really work with a net. That I'm hopefully a nice guy, saying terrible things sometimes, because they're funny. Anyone who calls me a hottie I want to thank. They're really gonna think I'm cute when I get a full plastic surgery do-over in a few years. I'm going to put my ears where my eyebrows are. It's gonna be so friggin' hot!

Steven Colbert is immensely talented. I guess some people think we’re similar, 'cause we're both tall, (he's thinner) and maybe we look like we could be related or something, but our comedy isn't that similar. I'm not as smart as he is, but I do appreciate his work immensely. He's really great at what he does, so again, being compared to someone as good as he is flatters me.

In answer to your last thought-- Yeah there's this website that says it worships me and I am that holy guy people pray to. I get a little scared of that, 'cause we all know, 'I'm just a man,' but I met this guy who runs the site a few years back when I was out doing standup and he really seemed like a nice guy. Just a fan that makes a joke saying that I am to be worshipped. In my bedroom I do have a shrine of myself where you can light incense and hear the rap song "Rollin' with Saget" on a loop, while my girlfriend anoints me with Frankincense.

SUZY: One thing I picked up from your IMDb.com listing was that there is a Student Academy Awards and in 1977 you won with your film Through Adam’s Eyes. Were you contemplating standup back then or did you want to be a director?

BOB: I started making student movies when I was nine. All 8mm and then Super 8mm. By the time I got to college at Temple University in Philadelphia, I was shooting 16mm. I'd made like sixty hours of student films. Mostly terrible...A movie called "Beach Blanket Blintzes" where a fifty foot blintz turned people into sour cream. "Through Adam's Eyes" was a documentary I made in 1978 about a young boy who underwent facial reconstructive surgery and he narrated it. I'm very proud of it to this day. I always wanted to be a director, and throughout my career I have directed and produced projects that attracted me. I've got quite a few movies as director still in me. Maybe I should have them removed 'cause they really are impacting my bowel. Maybe I shouldn’t have wedged those DVDs so far up my ass. See I could've stopped on that train of thought sentences ago, but why deny millions of bloggers such “A” material… Sarcasm never reads well. Sorry.

SUZY: You’re also the champion of a cause that is dear to your heart. You lost your sister Gay to scleroderma and in 1996 directed the touching film, For Hope, for her. That must have been a very difficult part of your life. How does a person as funny as you cope with such a loss?

BOB: Yes, that was a crazy tough time for my family. My sister Gay was 47 when she passed away from complications of scleroderma. And we didn't know what we now know about the disease. I am certain her medical care should have taken a different path, but at the time, when those things happen to people, the family puts their faith in the practitioners. They just wouldn't treat her today with the techniques they were guinea pigging her with thirteen years ago. And my whole family, heralded by my late dad, Ben, would use humor as a mechanism to help us all deal with the horror of the situation. Even my sister Gay knew that sadly, it was her time, and chimed in with her own beautiful self-effacing gallows humor. She was an amazing, smart, wonderful person. In the movie "For Hope," the family joked about bringing Hope (played by Dana Delany) out to breakfast once she had passed, ALA "Weekend at Bernie's." ABC let us air it, and the script, written by Susan Rice, had so much more impact due to the sick comedic tone throughout what they would call in the day, a "disease of the week" TV movie. It was obviously horrific to go through the loss of my sister (I'd lost another sister, Andi, to a brain aneurysm ten years earlier) and that further motivates me to continue working for the Scleroderma Research Foundation. We put on three events within two years, called "Cool Comedy Hot Cuisine" where we raise as much as we can for the scleroderma research centers we fund throughout the country. The one at Johns Hopkins, funded by Dr. Fredrick Wigley, is one of the most impressive. Our next fund raiser event is November 6, at Caroline's Comedy Club in New York. This past year we raised almost $700,000 at the event in San Francisco with Dana Carvey and Lily Tomlin performing. This November’s at Caroline’s will definitely be an incredible event, with the food by Susan Feniger of the Border Grill restaurants and some of the best comedians alive. For more details check out the Scleroderma Research Foundation.

SUZY: One of the best things about you is that you look like the priest next door but then you open your mouth and you’re irreverent and dirty. In the beginning of your career as a standup, did anyone try to tell you to clean it up?

BOB: Yes, the Church. I guess as I've done standup for thirty years, it was always a voice that had a weird quirky sick humor instilled in it. No one has told me to stop anything. When I've done a theater or event and I see little kids or conservative adults in the audience, there's no reason for me to work blue. It'd be silly. What I do in my standup that I love, 'cause there's no censor except the one I police myself with, is just let my mind be open to what crazy assemblage of material is going to spew itself onto the audience. I guess I do look clean cut like people's friend, dentist, priest, although I'm Jewish...and maybe that serves the 'opposite day' of what the standup persona is. All I know is its fun. And also, I think we've all learned that analyzing comedy is the death of comedy. Soon as I talk about how and why I say things, it ceases to be funny to me. So this Q & A could be dangerous. Do not operate heavy powered machinery while reading this. It could put you to sleep and you could lose a foot.

SUZY: You have an HBO special airing tomorrow night called That Ain't Right. Anything you want to say about that except Watch It and Buy It?

BOB: I shot it at NYU in the Skirball Theater. It really was an exciting fun thing for me to do personally, taking seven years that I'd been skirting around the same hour or so, finding different ways to tell the same stories, jokes, and then let myself tirade off on my weird rants. When stuff really does come to my mind the first time and it's injected into that hour and in this case, on an HBO special, it's just organically rewarding as an artist. The name of the special is "That Ain't Right," because it really isn't. The things I talk about are silly-- I'm basically a nine year old boy speaking of perversion where the punch line may be, "Hey don't have sex with a goat..." But that should be a given-- which is why I sometimes feel the need to lecture my young audience on the rights and wrongs of nature and the incorrectness of trying to mate with a tiny animal just because you think you could overpower it. It's not natural. HBO's promo department came up with the byline: "Good Guy Gone Wrong," which could have also been the title of the special. But it's not. “That Ain't Right” is. I'm very proud of it, and just hope no one is offended by it and young kids don't see it. It's about what a lot of comedians’ standup is about-- relationships, kids, parents, the flip side of fame-- all laced with organic profanity and some music, 'cause, at the end of the day, that soothes the savage beast.

DAVID BRENNER Interview

The first time I met David Brenner I was at a club in New York and he was standing at the edge of the dance floor. I walked over to him and pretended to watch what he was watching so I could talk to him. I probably said something very mean, yet surely true, about the people dancing and he laughed. He was incredibly nice and very funny and we went back and forth for about fifteen minutes. Then I noticed that my boyfriend, The Doctor Howard, was glaring at me from our table and I ended the conversation. As I walked away David said, “You should do standup.” He said that if I did I ought to contact his agent at the William Morris Agency. I was naïve back then and thought I had about a hundred years to come up with an act and that William Morris would automatically accept my calls at any time in the future. I was wrong, as I usually am about my career. The men I date. Or picking the right cantaloupe.

Many, many years later we met again on the New York set of Every Day with Joan Lunden, and David was the guest co-host. By then I was doing standup full time. Talk shows are impossibly difficult to do since the studio audience isn’t being served alcohol, which someone really needs to look into. But I heard Brenner laughing behind me and that’s what kept me going. I’m pretty sure he was the only one laughing.

I then ran into him years later when he was doing a run-through for his own game show here in LA and I was booked as one of the practice contestants. The premise was that David, the host, had his ‘assistant’ sit at a desk next to the host’s podium and interrupt him with scheduling questions, phone calls etc. At one point the director yelled ‘Cut’ and David announced to the crew and the other comics that he had worked with me and that I was very funny. I had reminded him earlier that we had done Lunden’s show together but he didn’t have to make that comment; it was just a nice thing to do. I had brought my copy of David’s book People Never See You Eat Tuna Fish to the set and at the end of the day I asked him to sign it for me. I clutched it to my 44DD’s all the way back to the parking lot, afraid to even peek at it in case it was bad news. (Dear Suzy, stop stalking me) How many of you gasped when you read how huge my boobs are? I could hear some of you from here. Fools, I don’t have 44DD’s. Yet.

I sat in my little grey Ford Festiva and opened the cover gingerly. He had written To Suzy, you are so funny. Trust me on this one; male comics are not that charitable when they refer to female comics. But David was a class act and he remains one of the most positive and generous comics I have ever known.

The last time we worked together was in Miami, for a variety show that was in pre-production. I had been hired as the head writer and often spoke with David on the phone since he was the host. Eventually the Executive Producer of that show stole all the money, took his coke stash and headed for parts unknown.

David comes from the generation of comedians that was really, really famous. They got that way without the help of reality TV or HBO specials. They didn’t need the comedy boom in the 80’s to help them either because they were working steadily long before that. David shares this legacy with other legends like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robert Klein and Bill Cosby.

Even though David has this to say about his web page, The eyewitness report on the sinking of the Hesperus is more up to date than my website, check it out for details on why I Think There's a Terrorist in My Soup came together as a book based on the aftermath of 9/11.

Suzy: Don’t you hold a record for how many times you were on The Tonight Show?

David: Yes and also for The Mike Douglas Show, and I’ve been a guest on more talk shows than any entertainer in the history of TV. It’s nice to hold such records, but let me tell you what it is really worth. If after performing a show I were to invite everyone in the audience to join me at a nearby bar for drinks on me, and after we all drank and had some laughs I went up to the cashier and said “I hold the record for the most appearances on The Tonight Show, Mike Douglas and have been a guest on more talk shows than anyone else,” she would reply “That’ll be $895.00, sir.”

Suzy: What are you the most proud of in what has been a long and remarkable career?

David: That I hold the record for…no, sorry. It’s that I never phoned in a show, always did the best I could every time I walked onto a stage, no matter how few were in the audience or how physically sick I felt, as long as they weren’t neo-Nazis.

Suzy: You’re one of the most prolific comics working today. How many minutes do you write every year? And just to give this question perspective, I write about 10 minutes a year and I’m lying.

David: If each joke lasts only two seconds, that is very impressive. Since I work off current events and the news, I do some new stuff every night, so I would guess that I write about twenty or thirty hours a year, but it’s easy for me, because I write on stage. 99.9% of all the jokes I’ve done were originally adlibs, but this is not a qualitative statement, just a difference in style, because the comedian who sits at the computer writing is just as talented.

Suzy: What’s the worst thing that has happened to you because you’re a celebrity?

David: About thirty people spotted me in front of a store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills one day and crowded around for autographs. Then more people noticed the crowd around me and they too joined the group. I could hear the plate glass window of the store behind me starting to give. I tried warning the group but no one listened to me so finally I just said loudly, “I’m so flattered that you’re asking for my autograph with Robert Redford standing around that corner.” I signed for the one probably deaf old lady who didn’t run away.

Suzy: What’s the best thing that has happened to you because you’re a celebrity?

David: Jack Benny said it first and it’s true – not waiting in line in restaurants, and the other is that I kept my childhood promise of making enough money someday to get everyone in my family and my street corner friends out of the slums.

Suzy: You said in an email to me that you don’t give a shit anymore and I’m guessing that pertains to Hollywood?

David: No, because I never did care about Hollywood and all the bullshit. I meant that nothing, absolutely nothing about show business bothers me anymore, from hearing other comedians doing my jokes and chunks of my act on sitcoms and specials to not hearing back from producers who said they loved me and wanted me for their projects.

Suzy: You have so many great stories but one of my favorites is the one you told me about how lots of comics couldn’t get gigs in Vegas in the 60’s, or was it the 70’s, because Rock and Roll had become king in that town. But yet you managed to work there on a regular basis.

David: I had been the opening act for Sonny and Cher from the time we first worked together at the Sahara Hotel in Vegas in 1971, when they were trying to make a comeback, right through their very last show together. The sudden demise of this hot duo left me with very little work booked for the remaining nine months of the year. In order to not drop off the monetary map (go broke), I walked into my agent's office, told him to put my ego in the bottom drawer of his desk and lower my price for one nighters and weekly gigs, figuring that when buyers could hire me for the same price as comedians not as popular, I'd get the gigs. It worked. On January 1 of the next year, my agent gave me back my ego and I raised my prices higher than they had ever been, which also worked.

After a few years of being the co-headliner in Vegas, I had offers from many of the hotels/casinos to be their exclusive headliner, based on estimations of my drawing 900 customers a show, often filling more seats than the headliners. Headliners made more money, as much as 25% more. Maybe even more appealing, their names were on the top of the marquee and they were called ‘Headliners.’ Once again, I put my ego in a bottom drawer and remained a co-headliner. Why? Do the math. Let's say the headliner earned $100,000 a week and the co-headliner got only $75,000 (which is far from 'only.') The headliner's exclusive contract called for six or eight weeks a year = $600,000 or $800,000 a year. I freelanced, worked all the hotels, mostly hired by headliners who knew I guaranteed them full houses for which they got all the credit. For over a decade, I averaged a yearly twenty to twenty-five weeks of work = $1,500,000 or $1,875,000 a year, so, bullshit titles & marquee placement aside, who made more money in Vegas?

Suzy: If you could give someone thinking of becoming a comic a piece of advice, what would it be?

David: Be original, talk only about what you know, feel and believe. Listen only to the audiences and not managers and agents and never give up.

Suzy: Jerry Lewis once famously said that women weren’t funny. Many club owners still agree with him and many of us have been discriminated against. Have you ever been discriminated against as a comic?

David: Only when I dress as a woman. No, I’ve always been accepted, and let me say that I believe women are just as funny as men and it's a disgrace that there is a glass ceiling above them in comedy.

Suzy: Who makes you laugh? I mean, besides me.

David: I still love the comedians my father had me watch – the old timers, and I think that it is a shame that most of the young comedians today don’t even know who came before them, because to know where you are and where you are going, you have to know where you’ve been. I had a meeting with the young head of comedy development for one of the networks, and I mentioned group comedians, such as The Ritz Brothers, The Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello, and I could tell from his blank eyes that he didn’t know who they were and I said something about him not knowing them. He replied, “Come on, David, they’re before my time.” I said, “The Civil War is before my time, but I know all about it.” Needless to say, I didn’t get the development deal.

Suzy: Is there anything in your career that you wish you had done but didn’t?

David: Hit the lottery, so I could quit performing and sail the parts of the world I haven’t seen yet. No, I have no regrets. I’ve danced around the top for more years than most and am grateful.

Suzy: If you had your life to live over, what would you do differently?

David: Not be born so damn poor and age only ten days every year.