Part 14 (1/2)

Judd: Are you happy doing the clubs or would you like to play the larger audiences?

Jay: I like doing the clubs. Two hundred to four hundred seats is about the maximum for ideal comedy, where you play with the crowd and all. I mean, obviously the big rooms are nice because there's more money. But performance-wise, the smaller rooms are more fun to do. I mean, it's like anything else. I like this. I'm happy where I am now, and-you know, the whole idea is if you keep coming up with new ideas and new material, everything else just falls into place.

Judd: Who are the people that you've opened up for?

Jay: Oh, everybody. Everybody from Stan Getz, Mose Allison, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Chick Corea, all the way to like John Denver, Tom Jones, Perry Como, Kris Kristofferson. All kinds of people.

Judd: I thought I saw you once on Laverne & s.h.i.+rley.

Jay: Oh!

Judd: What is the point of doing that show at this stage in your career?

Jay: Well, the point of doing that show is the same point of doing this show. Somebody asks you to do it, and you go, Well, why not? I like Penny and Cindy and all those people, they're good friends. People ask you to do the show, and it's nice. I mean, okay, the show is not exactly King Lear, but that's all right.

Judd: But it's the kind of thing you make fun of in your act.

Jay: It is. Sure it is. But I'm not above doing something I make fun of in my act. I also eat at McDonald's and all those other things I make fun of. That's all a part of the business, you know. I do Hollywood Squares. I do whatever people ask me to do. Unless it's something which is just totally, oh, I don't know, I mean, s.e.xist or racist or something of that nature. But when you do those kinds of shows it just helps, you know. When I'm on TV, I'm either on The Tonight Show or the Letterman show, which is on after eleven-thirty at night in most parts of the country. Consequently, there's a whole generation of people that never see you or know who you are. So when you do a show like Laverne & s.h.i.+rley, it gives my relatives a chance to see me on television.

Judd: Would you want more people knowing you? Is that something you want?

Jay: That's something every performer tries to get. It's like anything else: You do your work and the more people you can please with it, the better it makes you feel.

Judd: What prompted you to go into this?

Jay: Oh, I don't know, it seemed like a fun way to make money at the time. I was in college, and I used to do ah-all those college shows, you know, like in Boston there are two hundred or three hundred colleges. So consequently every Sat.u.r.day the cafeteria would become the Two Toke Cafe or something like this. And there would be nineteen-year-old folksingers with guitars ODing on the stage, and I used to emcee some of this stuff. And I would ah-you know, I would say, ”That was so-and-so.” Boo, get off the stage, man you stink, get outta here. The audience was terrible, I was terrible, the acts were terrible. But it was fun being onstage and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around and-I started going around other coffeehouses and things like that and getting onstage. I was making five bucks, six bucks a night, which is what friends of mine who were waiters and waitresses were making at the time.

Judd: When you were in college?

Jay: Yeah. Colleges. I used to work strip joints. All kinds of places like that.

Judd: Strip joints? How did that work out?

Jay: Oh, your eyes light up, huh? Well, there were no comedy clubs.

Judd: What year is this?

Jay: Seventy-three, '74. Most of the comedy clubs didn't come along until about '77, so the only place you could work was strip joints. You know, I had read Lenny Bruce and Milton Berle and all those people, and they all seem to have gotten their start in strip joints. So I used to go in and do strip joints. They were terrible. I was like nineteen, with long hair. It was terrible. But I thought it was fun.

Judd: What kind of reactions did you get?

Jay: Terrible. ”Get off the stage, you stink.” I had a guy jump me with a Heinz ketchup bottle once. Split my head open. I got eight st.i.tches on that one.

Judd: Why'd he do that?

Jay: (Laughs) Why? Why did he do that? I don't know. Why do people beat up grandmothers and rob their purses? You want a rational explanation for why a guy came onstage and hit me on the head, and knocked me out? I don't know. If I knew why, I wouldn't have done it.

Judd: What did you study in college?

Jay: I don't know. My mom has the degree in the living room. Ah, speech therapy. I went to college and I said, ”What requires the least amount of studying?” Speech courses had-at the end of the year you had to give a talk. I figured, well, I can do that. So I get up and give my talk and get a C and then get out of there.

Judd: So you're doing comedy at that point, at the end of college. You knew that was what you were going into?

Jay: Well, I was also a Mercedes-Benz mechanic at the time. I didn't have any expenses. I didn't have any lifestyle to maintain. I liked doing it. I would drive hundreds and hundreds of miles to work for free for four or five minutes. I didn't know if I would ever really make a living at it. It was just a fun way to screw around. I'd make thirty bucks a week or forty bucks a week at best. But that was enough to live on. I had a junky car, and it was fun, you know. But that's the whole key. You gotta keep moving. You gotta work every kind of job there is. I used to do old people's birthday parties for the state. Which is real depressing. I had a friend who worked in social services in Ma.s.sachusetts, and I'd get like eight bucks to drive out to Duxbury, to an old folks' home. And it would be like, (quietly) ”Bessy, we have a comedian here, you know.” Oh, it was real. I mean they were nice old people. And they would kind of look at ya. It was sad. Real bizarre.

Judd: You sound like you've played, like, any kind of place where people congregate anywhere.

Jay: What do you mean, I still do.

Judd: What are the other strange places?

Jay: Everything. Indian reservations, any kind of job I could get. You know, that's it. You learn from the bad jobs. You don't learn anything from the good jobs. When you go into a club and everybody's happy to see you and you do your jokes, and the jokes that normally don't work, work, you say, well, this is terrible. Give me a place that's awful. Like I was in New Mexico a while ago at an Indian reservation, just a very strange setup. Nice people, but-and they laughed. So I said, Okay, this stuff is gonna work on the Letterman show.

Judd: And how did you progress to better places?

Jay: Well, what happens is you get better money after a while. The places don't get any better. You know, it just depends how much respect you get.

Judd: How did your comedy change over the years?

Jay: How? Well, I don't know. I mean, you just get better the more you do. The real trick is to listen to it and throw out everything that's not funny. You've interviewed a lot of comedians, you've seen a lot of comedians. I'm sure you've seen a lot of new people, too. And I'm always amazed when I go to clubs and I see new comedians, and night after night they do the same jokes that don't work. If a joke doesn't work, you just get rid of it and do something else. Better you do eight minutes of really funny stuff than sixteen minutes of hit-and-miss, you know. That really seems to be the whole key to it. You bring a tape recorder, you tape it, you say, Gee, every night, this kind of gets a laugh, but not really. Well, get rid of it. It's not etched in gold, you know.

Judd: And when did you start doing talk shows like Mike Douglas or Dinah Sh.o.r.e?

Jay: First show I ever did was Merv Griffin. Then about a year and a half went by where I didn't do anything. Then I did The Tonight Show, and that's where everything really started moving. The Tonight Show kind of officially puts you in show business, you know.

Judd: Is acting something you want to do?

Jay: I like doing this better. I mean, doing films is fun. I'm not as-when I do a scene in a film I have to stop and say to somebody, ”Is that any good? How was that?” Whereas in comedy, I hear the laugh, great, I know it worked, thank you, goodbye, I'm outta there.

Judd: Right now you're doing Letterman every month. Is he someone you knew before?

Jay: Yeah, I knew David years ago in L.A. We both used to write for Jimmie Walker.

Judd: You wrote for Jimmie Walker?

Jay: Yeah, yeah. We both used to write comedy. Jimmie was great. Any struggling comic, Jimmie would pay them a hundred bucks a week, and we'd meet once a week at his house, and throw jokes around and ideas, and-it worked out pretty good. He was real good to a lot of people that way.

Judd: What about comedy alb.u.ms? Have you ever wanted to do that?

Jay: I don't buy comedy alb.u.ms myself, and I'm a comedian. So no, I don't have any interest in them. I mean, if I was gonna take every joke I've ever done and never do it again, then I might put it on an alb.u.m and sell it. I know, as a kid, I would get annoyed if I buy a comedy alb.u.m and then go to a nightclub and see the guy and for an hour, I hear exactly what was on the alb.u.m. I'd rather do it this way, kind of door-to-door comedy, and do my act.

Judd: How would you describe your comedy if you had to? It's a little sarcastic and observational- Jay: (Laughs) That about sums it up. Sarcastic and observational. I don't know. I try not to-you know, I don't even say I'm a comedian onstage. I just do it and let people form their own opinion about what it is. To sit and pontificate about the wonder of it all is a bit narcissistic. You just do it. As you move along with the business, you get a little bit more experienced. Like now I can go into Letterman, think of a joke that day, and do it on the show and there's a ninety-nine percent chance it'll work. Whereas the old days, you kind of had to go over the routine more and more. Working with an audience is like being an animal trainer. If you go in the ring and you're a little bit nervous and your hand's shaking, the animals sense it and they rip you apart. Same thing with audiences. If you get up there and go, ”Well, hi, everybody...ah, how you doing...ah, ah, ah...,” people go, ”Get off the stage!” They're not gonna laugh. But if you use a little bit of authority and kind of take charge...

Judd: Is most of your humor worked out on the stage? Some people work it out on paper, and they think about it- Jay: Oh no, I don't have anything on paper. I've never written anything down. I suppose I should. Everybody says, Oh, you should make notes. I seem to remember the funnier stuff and forget the stuff that isn't that funny. Once in a while I forget a funny one, but no, I don't write anything down.