Still Foolin’ ’Em Read online

  One night, as I was doing my set in front of the club’s famous brick wall, I saw a familiar face in the back watching me. It was Bill Cosby. He was the best stand-up comedian of any generation. I aspired to his skill at storytelling and his ease with a joke. Yes, he did great pieces like “Noah,” but it was his anecdotes about his family and the kids he grew up with that stayed with me. He always left a tip. After my show, he came backstage to introduce himself, and we went out and talked. He did this a few times, and it meant the world to me that someone of his stature would take the time to mentor me. He would call me occasionally after a television appearance to tell me that he liked what I had done or to give me advice. “Just talk,” he said. “Don’t let them see that you’re working.”

  Buddy also had me play different kinds of places, to give me some muscle. I played a lot of Playboy Clubs, which were not cool but paid well. All the Playboy Clubs around the country looked the same, sort of like McDonalds with cleavage. Businessmen in ties and jackets “enjoyed those Jewish skits.” They certainly weren’t my core audience, but if I could reach them and not give up my integrity (too much), I was way ahead of the game. Buddy then got me my first big job, opening for the hot band Blood, Sweat & Tears. David Clayton Thomas, their mercurial lead singer, had made “Spinning Wheel” a huge hit. The gig was at a theater in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I was to be paid $125 dollars for my twenty minutes. I didn’t care that the tolls to Scranton were almost that much.

  I kissed Janice and little Jenny good-bye and, after taking care of the garage door, drove to Scranton. Backstage prior to the concert, I met the band and loved the feeling of being part of a big show. But when I was introduced to the eager crowd—eager for BS&T, not moi—I got a very skeptical response. I had yet to do any network television or anything beyond Catch a Rising Star—no one knew who I was.

  In those days it was difficult to open a show for a rock group because the audience had timed their drugs for the headliner. I started fast and the audience warmed up quickly—a really hot crowd. Twenty minutes later, I earned a big ovation from them and I was ecstatic. I can do this! I thought to myself over and over again. This wasn’t just working a small club, this was for a paying crowd of a thousand people or so, and I handled it easily. I stood in the wings feeling a tad cocky and totally thrilled. The excitement in the house built when the lights went down and Blood, Sweat & Tears gathered onstage behind the curtain. Bobby Columby, their dynamic drummer, counted them down and the horns started to kick in, the curtains opened, and the crowd went berserk. If this is a rock and roll movie, the close-up is now on me, the young ingénue watching with anticipation as David Clayton Thomas takes the stage. He eyes the panting crowd and starts to sing “What goes up…” The audience goes crazy but then he abruptly stops, curses the sound, throws the mike down, causing a terrifying noise that blasts from the speakers, and then he storms off. The band keeps playing as Columby motions for the curtains to be closed. “Shit,” moans the promoter who’s standing next to me. Columby runs up to me and asks me to go back out there and do a few minutes while they talk Thomas down. “I don’t have anything else,” I tell him. “Make something up, just talk to them, we’re losing the house.”

  I go back out to the confused and murmuring crowd and start to say there’s a sound problem and the band will be back soon, but in the meantime, I spot someone in the crowd. “Where are you from and what do you do?” I ask. I keep doing the same thing with different people; I don’t remember what anyone said, but it got really funny with me just improvising with the crowd, which now likes me. After a few minutes, Columby catches my attention in the wings with a thumbs-up and I introduce the band again. Curtains part, music starts, David Clayton Thomas comes back onstage, starts singing “What goes up, must come … Sorry, fuck this shit”—and leaves again. Columby looks at me and I mime no. The promoter begs me to go out there, and with the promise of other jobs that would give me a chance to net another $8 out of the $125 after tolls, I go out again.

  “We have to stop meeting like this,” I say as I saunter out onto the stage. I get some more laughs from the crowd and just before I’m about to ask, “Who’d like to see my act again?” Columby whispers to me, “We’re ready.” I say good-bye to a big ovation now, and … yes, it happens for a third time. When the curtains close this time, the crowd starts chanting my name. “BILLY, BILLY, BILLY.” I turn to the promoter and say, “I can’t do this again. I know where everyone is from.” He gives me a check for $150, a $25-dollar tip for the extra time on stage.

  Finally the band got through the first eight bars of “Spinning Wheel” and I ran to my VW and drove the four hours or so to Janice and Jenny. I grew to love driving home alone late at night in my VW after a good show. It was the beginning and I knew I was on the right road. Then I started opening for big-time music acts like Billy Joel, Sha Na Na, Melissa Manchester, Harry Chapin, and Barry Manilow, and I got some television spots as well. Mike Douglas did a wonderful talk show in Philadelphia. He had me on many times, and it was so exciting to be picked up in a limo and driven down to Philly to perform on his show. Like Merv Griffin and unlike Johnny Carson, he always had you sit and talk with him after your spot, no matter who else was on the show. This was so important to young performers.

  The day after my first appearance on Mike’s show, I went to visit my grandma Susie. “How come you didn’t mention me? I gave so much money to charity,” she complained. She was also a tad confused that I wasn’t on the next day as well. “Did you get fired?” she asked. One time on Mike’s show, I sat between Jimmy Stewart and Lucille Ball. Mike said, “Nice pair of bookends, huh?” I turned to Jimmy Stewart and said, “I love Lucy of course, but I have seen Gone with the Wind fifty times.” Lucy fell out of her seat, and Jimmy just held a stare during the huge laugh and winked at me, letting me know he had a line. “Yes,” he said, “I did some of my best work in that one.” The great Norman Lear saw me perform at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and created a part for me on All in the Family; I played Rob Reiner’s best friend, “Al, the Nut Boy.” It was the week after Rob and Sally’s baby was born, and this show would be one of the highest-rated All in the Family episodes ever. People tuned in hoping to meet Joey, but instead they got to see me get married on the show. It was the start of a great friendship between me and Rob. We instantly felt like we had known each other forever. It would also begin a creative relationship that would change both our lives.

  * * *

  In 1975, two important things happened that had polar opposite effects on my career. First, on October 11, I was booked to do a guest spot on a new NBC show called Saturday Night, produced by Lorne Michaels. We had met a few times at Catch a Rising Star, and I’d realized that Lorne wasn’t your typical television producer. He was a young, cool funny man, not the middle-aged-comb-over types I had been meeting. When he started talking to me about this new show he was developing, he said, “It’s a show for us.” The idea was that after regular programming ended, at eleven-thirty, these young funny people would take over. He was putting together an ensemble of sketch players for the cast, and a guest would host the show each week. It would also feature the best musical acts in the world. He didn’t want me for the regular cast but asked me to do stand-up spots on the show and suggested that I would make several appearances and perhaps, in time, get to host the show myself. This was the break I’d been hoping for. It was an opportunity to be with the kind of talent I really admired on a show I knew would be important. I met some of the cast. John Belushi had started to come down to the Other End to watch me work. I became friendly with Gilda Radner and some of the writers, like Alan Zweibel, who to this day is one of my closest friends and wrote 700 Sundays with me. One night, Lorne brought the head of NBC, Marvin Antonowsky; the head of talent, Dave Tebbet; Gilda; and Chevy Chase to the Other End. I couldn’t have been more excited.

  Lorne asked me to be on the premiere. The Friday night before the first show, there was a full dress rehearsal with
a live audience. George Carlin was the host; there were two musical guests, Billy Preston and Janis Ian, and three new comedians: me, Andy Kaufman, and Valri Bromfield. The run-through was a little spotty—George was funny, of course, yet the sketches didn’t play very well. My piece was very strong, and Andy as “Foreign Man” did “Mighty Mouse,” which brought the house down. I felt great. Afterward, during the notes session, Lorne not only asked me to cut my six-minute spot down to two minutes, since the show was running long, but also told me that my spot would be on at twelve fifty-five. After having it play so strongly, I was confused; more importantly, I couldn’t figure out how to take that much out of my piece and keep it funny. I had nothing else that was only two minutes long that would be effective. I was suddenly in a terrible position.

  On the day of the show, Buddy and Jack and Charlie Joffe came to the set and talked and argued with Lorne about my piece behind closed doors. They asked for five minutes and a more reasonable time slot. They were trying to protect me, and Lorne needed to protect his show. I had no idea what was happening until just before the run-through, which started around seven P.M., when Buddy came out and said that I had been bumped from the show. In a state of shock, I left 30 Rock. I watched the show that night and knew that a major chance had been lost.

  The next month, I was booked to do three shots on Howard Cosell’s Saturday Night Live. It was an Ed Sullivan–like variety show, actually coming from the Ed Sullivan Theater (now the Letterman theater), not the ground-breaking show that Saturday Night was. The shots went very well, but the show was a bust, and once Cosell was canceled, NBC renamed its show Saturday Night Live. Little-known fact: Howard’s show featured three funny semiregulars who did sketches. Called the Prime Time Players, they were Bill Murray, his brother Brian Doyle-Murray, and Christopher Guest. Their name inspired Lorne to call his troupe the Not Ready for Prime Time Players.

  I was still reeling from the lost opportunity when the second important event of 1975 occurred. I was booked to do my first Tonight Show. At that time, doing a good Tonight Show shot could make your career. Johnny Carson was and is still the greatest comedy star of all time. He was a god to young comedians, and if you could get on the show and make him laugh, it meant everything. I was to do Tonight on a Tuesday, and on the Sunday before, I was in Las Vegas to appear on a Dean Martin roast for Ali. Dean had taken the Friars Club roast concept and made it a weekly event. My Ali imitation was my big-ticket item, and there I was with Ali, all of these legendary personalities, and, of course, Dean, who was a thrill to meet. It went great, and as I walked backstage after the taping, I saw Orson Welles, who at this point in his career was a regular on these roasts. He was sitting on a stool going over his jokes for the next show, which would tape shortly. At NYU, Scorsese had taught us about Welles and his amazing body of work, which included Citizen Kane, and I was in awe of him. Sky-high from my performance, I couldn’t help myself, and I walked over to the massive man on the stool. He was smoking a smelly cigar as he rehearsed his new jokes: “Jimmie Walker was born a clarinet.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Welles,” I broke in. “I’m Billy Crystal. I was on the roast with you, and I want you to know that I studied your—” He cut me off and bluntly said, “Films, and you’re an innovator and a great director and blah blah blah. I’m busy, go fuck yourself.” I didn’t know what to say, so I just walked away. I flew to Los Angeles and met my now good friend Christopher Guest and told him what Welles had said. Chris said, “You just walked away, you didn’t say anything?”

  “I was too stunned.”

  Chris said, as only he could, “Why didn’t you say, after he finished, ‘No, that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say, You’re a fat piece of shit who peaked when he was twenty-five”?

  It took us about an hour to stop laughing, and the next day I arrived at NBC’s studio in Burbank with as much pressure on me as I could ever imagine. I got to my dressing room and was too tense to even sit down. Then from the next dressing room I got a whiff of a smelly cigar, and through the door I heard that unmistakable voice. It was Orson Welles! He was also a guest that night. My anxiety increased to a full panic. The show started, Johnny did his monologue, and then he brought Welles on. They did a funny segment, and I was led to my mark backstage, behind a curtain, to make my entrance. My routine was called “The Mood Comic.” I played a comedian who did his act like a late-night lounge singer. There weren’t many jokes in it; it was attitude and timing, not the kind of one-liner monologues other comics were successful with. It was what I closed my sets with, and now I would be opening with it.

  Before the show the stage manager had told me that when I was done, to stay on my mark and watch him. If his hands were up, it meant stand there and take a bow; if he pointed to the desk, I was to go over to meet Johnny. The odds of that were almost nil. You really had to earn your way to the couch. As far as I could recall, only Freddie Prinze had ever done a first Tonight Show spot and been called over. Every other new comic had this painful look on his face as he took in his applause while his anxious eyes fixed on the stage manager, who had his hands up.

  I heard Johnny introduce me, the curtains parted, and then, as if I were a bull rider in a rodeo, I was let out of the stall and into the ring, trying to hold on for dear life. The band played me on, and I walked to my mark on rubbery legs, feeling like I had to cough up a hair ball. Wow, there’s Doc and the band, I see Johnny to my right—it was very surreal. I had been watching this show for so long, and now I was on it. The piece played very well, and when it was done the audience gave me a big hand, and I looked over and son of a bitch if he wasn’t waving me over. I tried not to run, to act like I did this all the time, but inside I was a parade. I thought of my first home run in high school when I yelled, “Oh baby!” and my coach said, “Don’t say that again.” In essence, act like this has happened before. I shook Carson’s hand and then Orson Welles’s. We looked at each other and I stopped myself from saying, Go fuck yourself.

  Johnny said a few nice things about my performance, and we went to a commercial. They had told me not to talk to Johnny during the break if I did sit next to him; he doesn’t do that. Doc and that fantastic band were playing, and there was the great man drumming away on his cigarette case with his pencils. I found myself staring at him. Johnny had very sharp features, blue eyes, gray hair, and other than Ali and Cosby, he was the first superstar I had been this close to. He must have sensed that I was staring, because he looked over and gave me a quick smile and I blurted, “How’s it going?” He laughed and said, “It’s going pretty good.”

  Craig Tennis, the segment producer, joined us and asked what I wanted to do in my short segment. “Let’s go right to the Ali question,” I answered; that would lead me into the imitation and I’d be okay. “We’re back,” said Johnny. “This Thursday you’re on the Dean Martin roast with Ali—what’s the connection?” At which point Welles said something like “He’s terrific on the show” and patted me on the back. I’d like to think it was his way of saying I’m sorry. Johnny fed me the Ali line, I did the impression, Johnny laughed a lot and said, “Come back anytime,” and I was in heaven. They don’t all turn out like this.

  * * *

  In 1976 Michael Eisner and ABC signed me to a development deal and I put the plug back into the garage door of my building and we moved to Los Angeles. It was hard to leave our families and the town where I’d grown up, but it was time.

  We arrived in Los Angeles on the evening of August 2, and that night I went into a supermarket to get some food. In the frozen food section I saw one of the actors from the film West Side Story. He wasn’t the cool member of the Jets anymore. He had a belly and a bald spot and was reading the label on a bag of frozen peas with a cigarette dripping from his mouth. “Rough town,” I murmured to myself. The next morning we were awakened by a lot of commotion outside. I opened my door, and Buddy Ebsen was sitting in the yard. They were shooting an episode of Barnaby Jones, and the front of our sma
ll apartment complex was the location. Welcome to Hollywood.

  I was very excited and nervous when, a few months later, Saturday Night Live asked me to do a spot on the show, which was to be hosted by Ron Nessen, press secretary to Gerald Ford. That night, Dan Aykroyd did the Bass-o-Matic sketch, where he put fish in a blender and drank it. I did “Face,” which was a funny and poignant monologue where I played an old jazz musician friend of my dad’s who had seen me on television. When I was little, he was the first one to call me “Face,” which became my nickname. Now he’s older and down on his luck, and we have a bittersweet reunion. The hook he kept saying was “Can you dig it, I knew that you could.” It played beautifully; it was great to be back there. And I didn’t do the show again for eight years.

  I was soon sent a pilot script for an ABC series called Soap. The producers wanted me to play a character named Jodie Dallas. Jodie was funny, he was charming, and he was … gay. There hadn’t been a homosexual lead character on a series, so taking the part was a real gamble. I had been out in public with Rob Reiner many times when people called him “Meathead”; I didn’t want to be the gay guy from Soap. But this was a great script. I decided to meet with its creator, Susan Harris; producers Tony Thomas and Paul Witt; and the director, Jay Sandrich, who, following his great run with Mary Tyler Moore, was thought of as the best director in television. They laid out the “bible” for the show. We talked about where Jodie would go as a character—emotional places that had never before been reached with a gay character on television. We went over the pilot, which was two half-hour shows. In the first I had only one line, but in the second, I had a very funny scene with my mom, played by Cathryn Damon. Jodie was caught wearing one of his mother’s dresses, high heels, and a blond wig. When she saw me she said, “Stop wearing my dress—Oh, you wear it belted.”