Part 6 (2/2)
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: You know, that thing where it's just like, it literally doesn't matter who's in front of you. I find more and more comedians complain about the crowd these days. Or they're always asking, ”How's the crowd?” And I'm like, ”Why do you give a f.u.c.k about the crowd? I mean, if you kill tonight, is the crowd going to get the credit? And so don't give it to them if you bomb. It's not them, it's you.” But I don't know. We have a lot more comedy, I would say that. There's a lot of risk taking.
Judd: Are you still engaged, creatively? Do you still feel as enthusiastic about your work as you always have? Are you on fire right now, or do you have a sense of fatigue, of just, Wow, I've done this for a long time. It's hard?
Chris: The only time I ever feel fatigue is the fact that it's really hard being up with kids early in the morning and being at a club late at night.
Judd: It's brutal.
Chris: I've got to make myself take a nap during the day if I'm going to properly do stand-up. So I do feel that fatigue. But as far as creativity? I honestly feel the energy even more now, I think. It's like that Tiger thing. Tiger is chasing Jack Nicklaus. He just is. And what is it, how many Masters does he need? I'm chasing Richard Pryor, man. I have not done-I still haven't done my version of his Long Beach concert. I've done some good stuff, but Richard Pryor in Long Beach? It's the greatest piece of stand-up ever done. It just is. I haven't got there, in my act. I got some stuff-you know, some of it is good and some of it is good in comparison to other people of my era. Pryor's special was kind of late in his career. He's not a kid doing it. That's what I'm going for.
Judd: What was your relations.h.i.+p like with Pryor?
Chris: I met him on the set of Harlem Nights. It was quick and funny. I was just hanging out and we were talking about Eddie and he was like, ”Yeah, he'll get married as soon as he find a p.u.s.s.y that fits.” It's like exactly what you want to hear from Richard Pryor. But I had no career then. I might as well been the water boy. I met him again, years later, when I was getting ready to do the Bring the Pain special. At that point, he was in a wheelchair, full-on MS-helped onstage, helped offstage. We were both performing at the Comedy Store every night for a month, and I would follow him.
Judd: Wow.
Chris: And a lot of nights he would actually watch my set and he would say nice things afterwards. One of the last times I saw him was-oh, I wish I could find this picture. The last time I saw him, he came and saw me at the Universal Amphitheatre. I was coming offstage and there's Richard Pryor, in a wheelchair, telling me I did a great job. It's one of the highlights of my life. One of the greatest stand-ups-you know, the Willie Mays of comedy. You know, Pryor's Willie Mays, and Cosby's Hank Aaron. Because Hank Aaron has more hits, more home runs, more RBIs than anybody. He's number one or two in every freaking category.
Judd: I was listening to the Richard Pryor box set that they put out last year. It has one disk, which has all sorts of odds and ends on it, and there's a lot of stand-up that he did about being sick. It's remarkable.
Chris: He was funny, even then. That's the crazy thing.
Judd: He was doing a bit about a girl walking up to him in his car-he's flirting with some pretty girl and he's p.i.s.sing himself because he's sick and he can't control himself. He's trying to act cool as he p.i.s.ses his pants.
Chris: Wow.
Judd: It was amazing. But even the great stuff he was doing around 1976-about, you know, the Bicentennial and Patty Hearst-it all sounds like he's playing for a hundred people, in tiny clubs.
Chris: That was the genius of the guy. The guy believed in working it out. He was like, ”Okay, so I'm going to have a bad set tonight, big deal. But when you pay to see me, it's going to be right.” Most comedians just don't have the guts-especially famous comedians-to get up there and not be funny, to just feel your way around this thing.
Judd: How tragic is it that Eddie Murphy won't do stand-up anymore?
Chris: Tragic. Because he can do it, you know what I mean? It's like, what if Mike Tyson could still knock people out and didn't fight? That would be sad, right? Eddie Murphy, right now, would be top three in the world. Probably number one if he worked at it. But he doesn't want to. Only financial ruin will get that guy back onstage.
Judd: I do understand how it happens, though. You feel like, I've made a lot of stuff and I don't feel the need to get up there and go through that again. But as somebody who hadn't done stand-up in twenty-two years and then just started doing it again, I see instantly why it's necessary for people like him, if they want to do interesting work in whatever medium they're doing. You have to force yourself to experience it again, and to connect with the crowd.
Chris: You should go to Eddie Murphy's house on the next fight night. You'll be entertained by the funniest man on earth. He has amazing fight parties. There's lots of people there, every black comedian imaginable-and he's funnier than everybody there. But I've given up asking him. I don't even bring it up anymore.
Judd: As you're preparing your new act, do you begin by thinking about what's important, what really needs to be said right now?
Chris: A little bit, yeah. Some of it's for the crowd, and some of it's for you. There's definitely a part of you that goes like, Okay, there's a lot of this police brutality going on. I got to look over this and figure out what my take is because people want to hear about it. I'm going to have to find a real, original take on it-not just, you know, ”Hey, stay away from football players!” I'm going to have to dig deep, regardless of what else I want to talk about. You have no choice. You've got an obligation because people are paying to hear that. But again, it also depends on what kind of comedian you are. If you're Demetri Martin, you probably don't have to do that. Jerry Seinfeld doesn't have that pressure, either.
Judd: Jerry doesn't have any pressure, apparently.
Chris: Jerry's got no f.u.c.king pressure. G.o.d bless him. Jerry Seinfeld, one of the greatest comedians of all time and one of the c.o.c.kiest b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to ever live.
Judd: How did he get that c.o.c.ky? If you're neurotic in any way-like, in a normal way-he looks at you like you're insane for not getting it.
Chris: To his credit, he writes some of the best jokes ever. He really does. I mean, they're like Billy Joel songs, you know what I mean?
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: There's a lot of hip guys in the world, but who can follow Billy Joel in America, you know what I mean? I don't give a f.u.c.k who you are, I don't give a f.u.c.k if you're Sting or Bono-if you're onstage in America, there's a part of you that just hopes Billy Joel doesn't walk in. I remember going to see Billy and Elton John in concert. I kind of wanted to see Elton a little more, and I came out of it thinking, Billy Joel is actually more American than Bruce Springsteen, you know what I mean? Bruce Springsteen's a f.u.c.king Russian soldier compared to f.u.c.king Billy Joel, man. That s.h.i.+t's American. Everybody likes those records. And Jerry Seinfeld writes jokes like that. Everybody gets those f.u.c.king jokes. I've seen that guy work f.u.c.king Mexican crowds, black crowds, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He's f.u.c.king c.o.c.ky and kills every night.
Judd: I sometimes think it seems everyone in our circle had their kids at the same time. You, me, Seinfeld, Sandler-it's a real shared experience.
Chris: It's weird. Our kids are all the same age. And we're all kind of married to the same woman.
Judd: We all have the same issues in our lives. Several decades in, everybody's kind of in the same place, trying to figure out the next phase. When people have had success and they've made money and they have families-and they're not dying to be accepted anymore, with a long career ahead of them-they're still trying to figure it out.
Chris: We're going to be old for a long f.u.c.king time, dude.
Judd: Then you see certain people, like Martin Scorsese, who just go on a tear, a late game tear. And that makes you wonder, Who am I going to be when I'm not a young punk?
Chris: You've got to make yourself scared. When I did that play not too long ago, it was like, Oh, this s.h.i.+t is scary. I'm out of my comfort zone. I'm the low man on the totem pole. I could really suck at this. But it's in moments like that that you are going to learn the most. Directing, too: What the f.u.c.k was I ever doing directing anything, you know what I mean? It scared me and I did some things that sucked. But you learn more from f.u.c.king up than you do from success, unfortunately. And failure, if you don't let it defeat you, is what fuels your future success.
Judd: What made you realize it was time to make Top Five, which is such a personal film?
Chris: Doing that play, a few years ago, inspired me. It showed me what work is again. The thing about the play was, it wasn't a revival. It was an original play. If you're doing a revival, you can rehea.r.s.e it at your house-the lines aren't going to change or whatever. But when you do an original play, when you're in previews, you get new pages, new lines, every day. ”I'm going to get rid of that scene and we're going to do this scene instead.” What? But being around actors really helped me. Being around creative people that had talents I didn't helped me. It opened my eyes. I don't know, I mean, I had directed two other movies in my life, but I haven't had a hit in a long time. There was a part of me that was like, Okay, if this one doesn't work, I'm kind of done. There was a part of me that was pushed against the wall, but there was also a part of me-there's a part of Top Five that's really personal, and it works. It plays like my stand-up. I did stand-up for fifteen years before I broke, you know.
Judd: So then you make this more personal movie. You show it in Toronto and the place goes crazy and you sell it to a big studio. That's the weird thing about creativity, right? When you get real, you have your biggest success.
Chris: It's the smallest movie I've ever written. Actually, it's the first time I wrote a movie. It's the first time I've written by myself.
Judd: I just finished a movie with Amy Schumer. At first, she wanted to write it with someone else, but I said to her, ”I think, in ways that are hard to describe, your point of view will s.h.i.+ft because you're going to make all sorts of concessions that are destructive to-”
Chris: You're going to have a consensus. You're not going to have a vision. That's what happens. So I wrote this movie by myself. Every other movie I've done-Head of State or whatever-was like, I wasn't even writing a movie. I was writing a poster. I was thinking about the pitch meeting before I was done with the movie.
Judd: I feel like, for a lot of people, there's that moment when you go personal with your work and everything changes. Look at Louis C.K. When he revealed himself, the whole world connected with him. I felt that way with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up and Freaks and Geeks-that's when I realized that if I just come clean, people connect in a completely different way.
Chris: I mean, there was an episode of Louis-the one where Melissa Leo gives him a b.l.o.w.j.o.b in the car. And then she says, you know, ”Now you're going to eat my p.u.s.s.y.” And that blew my mind. I watched that episode, and it was like the first time I heard NWA. It was like, Oh s.h.i.+t, you can do this?
Judd: Yeah.
Chris: And I thought, So why am I so scared? Why do I give a f.u.c.k about testing? All the nonsense I spent so long giving a s.h.i.+t about. And then there was the fact Louis C.K. is a guy who literally used to-you know, I hired him on my writing staff and here he is, doing this. It was like, Oh s.h.i.+t. Okay, whatever I do next has to be this honest.
EDDIE VEDDER.
(2013).
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