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Misery Loves Comedy Page #6
this thing, which is to
sort of be slightly, kind of,
a little bit cheeky, like,
we're comedians, you know?
You know, I'll have a little dig at
you and you have a little dig at me,
but it's all done
with good humor.
And Coogan comes out and he... he
introduces himself to both of us
and he's very sweet
and he says, "Oh, I...
I've seen your show
'The Office' and I'm a big fan."
And then he said,
"If my career is ever on the skids,
I'd love for you to
write something for me."
And my mouth... I just went, "Well,
you'd better get in touch now, then."
But, like,
for no reason, like...
His career was going
from strength to strength,
it was... like, it was just...
What?
And he sort of went...
He kind of... "Eh?"
And he sort of was... And Ricky just
looked at me, like, that's a weird...
And I would...
No, I just... no...
"Obviously, you don't... your career
is going so good that you don't...
"It's ironic,
I'm saying, you don't...
"It was absurd. You don't need
to get in touch, 'cause..."
And I just...
I think he went, "Right."
And they kind of tried to have a
conversation for a little while
and then, he went, "Sorry,
I... sorry, what did you mean?"
And I went, "I'm sorry, I...
"What I meant was,
so you don't need to
get in touch with us."
"But why would you say that?"
"No, but that... yeah."
And it just...
and it kind of...
it just fizzled out, you know,
and we just went off
into the day.
And I don't... I've never
really been able to, you know,
never had the opportunity to sort of
explain myself or apologize to him.
He must have just thought,
"What a dick."
I'd like to be able
to try and make a point
and then still be able
to tell a joke
about f***ing getting sh*t on
you dick or whatever, right?
And I love that Carlin
can say something so precise
and so well and then,
"Now I'm gonna talk about
farts for five minutes."
He had the same hard line
when it came to farting,
if that makes sense.
But as I said,
I only became
a huge fan of Carlin
when I realized how hard it was
to be really good at this.
Groucho, Groucho,
Groucho, Groucho.
Not so many people talked Zeppo
or Chico, but I loved Harpo.
I loved... Because Harpo,
to me, was insane,
and there was
an unpredictable nature.
He'd just, you know,
be cross-examining the passport guy
and he'd just jump on
the thing and start, you know,
doing the pens
like it was a plane,
And I thought, this guy,
because I don't know,
literally, there's no way I can
look away for five seconds
because I'll miss
some transition.
Lenny Bruce decides
that that kind of
philosophical honest speech
is gonna be called
stand-up comedy.
And right from that moment,
you've created Pryor and Carlin.
We don't know who
they're gonna be, you know,
but they have to happen.
I remember seeing Richard Pryor
on an "Ed Sullivan Show."
Yep.
In which the routine was about
the toughest kid in school.
And for no reason at all,
the toughest kid in school
would like point at ya
and say, "You, after school,
I'm gonna bite
your foot off."
And you'd have to believe him
because he'd be walking around
with a big shoe
hanging out of his mouth.
I mean, that was
his routine for the...
for "The Ed Sullivan Show."
Ed Sullivan. Yeah.
"You, after school,
I'm gonna bite
your dick off."
And you had to believe it because he
walked around with a dick hanging...
I mean, no, it was pretty funny
when you realized that.
I mean, my favorite
and sitting...
sitting in the coach
with the African guy,
and he says, you know,
"The man smell,"
and he does this thing and it
was like...
And this whole...
and it was like,
"Oh, I'm watching the smell,
I can see it."
But then he says,
"And then I looked at him,
and he was like...
You stink, too."
And I thought, "Oh!"
Okay!
And I understood.
Richie Pryor, who had
a big acting career,
did his greatest acting
in his stand-up,
where he would break your heart
and involve you in story.
I mean, you know, and you could
see it in his concert films.
Extraordinary, realistic acting.
And with movies, it was...
He just didn't give it that kind of
dimension that he did to his stand-up.
Richard was in love
with Pam Grier,
okay, like every guy
was in the '70s.
And he got his hands
on an old tape
of some of my dad's stuff
that wasn't so funny,
that wasn't that good.
They sit down and Richard says,
"Oh, I got some stuff, I got...
Y'all gotta hear this,
this is some great sh*t."
And he starts playing
some of my dad's old material
and my dad's getting hot, right?
He's kind of
shitting all over him,
my dad finally
just says, "F*** this!"
And he gets up
and he lays out Richard,
takes both girls, and splits.
Now, I'm not lying.
I didn't make this story up.
This story was told to me
by... by "Growing Pains,"
by Joanna Kearns, man.
Like, I'm sitting in the trailer
the end of the story,
I think she realizes,
"Oh, sh*t, he was married
and this is his son,"
and, like, goes into
this reserved, kind of...
But he was... he was
a very sweet man.
The news came on and they said
that Freddie Prinze
had just killed himself.
so much of a big...
make a big splash
in this world, you know,
and so many people are affected
by somebody
who makes them laugh.
It's an important job.
And for some reason, his passing
was the thing that
sent me out to L.A.
I was in Rochester, New York.
I was an absolutely
nobody, part-timer,
just jack of all trades, would
asked of me and one day,
The mic went on
and he just spoke his mind
and he was outrageous,
he was funny.
Uh, he was sensitive at times
and a lightbulb
went off in my head
where I realized, "Oh, my God,
I could do this different.
Just you gotta just be yourself.
And, uh, and just...
Everything I knew about
radio after that day.
I think the only vision
I had of it,
and many people
I believe say this,
is of "The Dick Van Dyke Show"
and the writer's room
of Buddy and Sally, and, um,
uh, Rob Petrie
thinking of ideas.
I used to sit home
and I used to watch it.
And I look at this
guy Rob Petrie,
and, you know, he was married
to Mary Tyler Moore,
he had a very nice house
up in New Rochelle,
he had a kid named Ritchie,
and he spent his days
at work lying on a couch,
just, you know, joking around
with Buddy and Sally
and I went,
"I think I want to do that."
I feel like I had a vision of,
"Oh, I'll write."
Somehow I'll get in a office,
but I think it was more
I just want to be around
people who do comedy
or say funny things.
As a got older, when Letterman
came on in high school,
then I had an idea,
I would like to write
for the Letterman show
and live in New York,
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"Misery Loves Comedy" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Aug. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/misery_loves_comedy_13834>.
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