A Short, But Eventful, Comedy Career

So I was going to finish regaling you all on my brief moment as a comedic genius. In 1977 I was a pretty big deal in the world of unpaid comedy writers. I had sheets and sheets of worthless and unwanted jokes. But, you know, I was writing ahead of my time and for future appreciation. Besides, my jokes always got a few yucks from my mother.

While I was doing the sketch comedy work for the Laughing Stock Company (see below) I placed an ad in the Daily Variety offering my irreverent comedy writing for A List stand-up comics. Days, weeks and then months went by with no calls from the A List, soon followed by the B and C Lists. Just as I was getting discouraged I got a call from someone on the D+ List, which just happened to be my college grade point average at the time, a curious bit of symmetry, wouldn’t you say?

The caller had just been released from the hospital and wanted some new material to re-launch his fading career. I was just the guy to do it and, as he told me, was also the most economical in my pricing at $100 per minute. I know what you’re thinking; $100 per minute seems like a lot. But it’s $100 per minute of joke telling or, to put it in perspective, one double-spaced typed sheet of paper. It’s not really that easy to write original funny stuff and this guy wanted three minutes.

We met at a really, really nice McDonalds in a seedy side of Hollywood. He was, to put it nicely, a bit strange. He made crude comments, loudly, about the anatomy of the minimum wage staff behind the counter and seemed to lack a sense of humor, which, as it happens, is an unhelpful attribute for a comedian. I was given the type of comedy he preferred and it was a bit broad for my taste. He simply said, “Write me something funny.”

I went back to my dorm room where I would write comedy amidst the four-month-old pizza crusts and sweat socks that had not been washed during an entire semester. As a quick aside, my roommate and I won a dorm award for filthiest room, with a lot of competition I might add.

I toiled and paced and lay awake at night rolling jokes around in my head instead of remembering I had a Biology of Cancer mid-term the next day. Of course who needs to fulfill a life science requirement when you’re helping a guy re-launch a fading career?

Several days later I felt I had enough material to present to my new client. Also it looked like I was going to be asked to leave UCLA and never return so I needed a career alternative. I met the comedian at the same McDonalds and I noticed he had brought with him a pair of scissors and a ruler. He carefully went through my work and did not so much as smile as he read. A bad sign, I thought.

After reading, he pulled out the scissors and began to meticulously cut sentences and paragraphs out of what I had written and placed the remainder on a separate page. He did this for each of the three and a half pages I had given him. When he was done, he measured what was left and it came to something like 2.45 pages, or minutes, and offered me $245 for my remaining work. He then invited me to watch him perform my material the following Saturday, which I excitedly accepted.

The club that would be the scene of his career re-launch was called Jon’s Place in Hollywood and was literally owned by a Safeway baggage clerk. Apparently Jon was doing better bagging groceries than he was as a club owner or comic. Jon didn’t pay any of the comedians so it became known as a place to safely try out new material instead of a top-notch comedy club.

I remember the first act. A guy was dressed in a too-small gray suit and red bow tie and was with a girl who looked like an adult Raggedy Ann Doll. Their entire act was taking things out of a trunk, holding them in the air, and screaming. To this day, I swear the guy in the bow tie was Pee Wee Herman, but who knows?

Soon my guy came on stage. He was given three minutes to perform as Jon kept a pretty tight schedule. He had taken an egg timer with him and placed it on the stool in front of him. This got a few chuckles as he explained the purpose. He begins on my first joke and he is delivering the lines perfectly; just as they were written. “Yes!” I was thinking to myself, you don’t just “tell” a joke, you “sell” a joke.

I was beaming with pride as he was re-launching his career and launching me, a rising star in the world of comedy. The punchline was just around the corner when he stumbled and then stopped. He scratched his head, shrugged and said, “I forgot the punchline.” The audience, which likely included other baggage clerks and Jon’s mother, got a laugh out of this. I guess it’s pretty funny to get close to the punch lunch and then forget it. That is, if part of the joke is forgetting the punchline. The good news was, however, that only my soon-to-be-re-fading comic and I knew there was supposed to be a punchline.

He then went into the next joke and was moving along pretty well with it until he stumbled, scratched his head and then told the audience he had once again forgotten the punchline. This admission got no laughs. In fact it got Jon off his feet to put an end to the act. I guess two people dressed like idiots, grabbing things out of a trunk and yelling at them isn’t offensive, but a forgetful comic is.

I was beginning to bury my head in my hands when the comic decided to announce that his writer was in the audience and pointed directly at me. I was outed as the bad joke writer right in the middle of other fading comics and union super market workers. There was no place to hide and all I could do was wave at the hostile audience.

I decided it was best to leave and nodded for the comic to follow me out the door and back into obscurity. I asked what happened, how could he forget the punchlines? At that moment I learned I should have asked him why he was in the hospital. It turns out he had undergone surgery to remove brain tumors and one of the byproducts of such surgery is memory loss. I wish I had asked earlier because I could have done a bit about a forgetful comedian. Now that would have been funny!