Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir (25 page)

She painted the inside black, put in a two-drink minimum for the now two shows nightly, created a Monday open-mic night, and established lineups and time slots for every comic. Mitzi was the first to have a schedule, right up there on the wall—no waiting around. Instead of comics hanging out until the owner said, “You’re on,” there was a plan. You had some idea when you might take the stage. In New York, like at the Improv, you could show up at 9 p.m. and not get on until 1 a.m. Now at the Store, comics had to call in on Monday to find out when or if you were booked for the rest of the week. When comics met at Canter’s or Theodore’s, the first words out of their mouths were, “Did you get your times?”

Your slot was for twenty minutes, and when you saw a red light flash, that meant it was time to wrap it up and for you to get off the stage. When Pryor or Robin Williams came by, they took the number of slots needed for one to three hours. But everyone was fine with that because it was written into the schedule. It did not always go smoothly, but at least there was an idea of order.

Not unexpectedly given the drastic changes, divorce proceedings between Sammy and Mitzi followed. In exchange for lower monthly alimony payments, Mitzi was given the business and custody of their son, Pauly.

Only months later Budd Friedman arrived to open an Improv in the Fairfax District on Melrose Avenue. By some cosmic comedy coincidence, he too had gotten a divorce from his wife, Silver, and she too had won his comedy club in the settlement. Seeing the comedy tide switching coasts, he decided to open a new Improv in LA. It is amazing how many laughs have since come out of two divorces.

By this time I was a fixture at the Store. But I had my roots with the New York Improv and with Budd, as did many stand-ups. So when Budd needed money to get the club going and offered me stock in the company for $2,000, I bought in, more as a grateful friend than a businessman. I never expected to see a dime of it returned. Freddie, Harvey Korman, and others also invested. Then when Budd needed help to launch the club, I, Freddie, and many others who had played the Improv in New York and now had a little juice performed there to get him on his feet.

Mitzi was pissed.

“You can’t play the Improv,” she said in that grating, whiny voice of hers. “It doesn’t work that way. You’re a Comedy Store guy. What about loyalty? How could you even think of playing there?”

In New York everybody played everywhere, several clubs a night. No problem. But she saw the Improv as the competition and, therefore, the enemy.

I ignored her and continued to roll into the Improv on any given night after playing the Store. What was great about the Improv was that the building had a foyer that doubled as a hangout room for the comics. At the Store you could only gather in the busy waitress area or outside in the parking lot.

“How dare you go there!” Mitzi screamed at me. “You go down there again and you’re banned from the Store!”

I went to Budd. “Fuck that!” he said. “You belong with me! You started at my place and this is where you should be!”

“Come on, Budd! I’m just a comic trying to get a laugh somewhere.” The same tug-of-war was going on with other comics. Just like a child in a divorce, I should never have been put in the position of having to make a choice between parents. Mitzi and Budd wanted custody—only this time it was custody of certain comics!

Mitzi was a pioneer and I loved Mitzi, but she was also crazy to work for.

Jackson Perdue was doing well at the Store. One week he called in for his schedule and was told there were no spots for him. The next week he called again, and again there were no spots for him. He called Mitzi.

“Why am I not scheduled?”

“You’re not aqua enough,” she said.

“What?”

“I saw you on stage and you had a nice aqua shirt on and you were fabulous,” she explained. “The next night I saw you in a yellow shirt and you didn’t look so good. From now on I want you in aqua every time I see you.” He changed shirts and was back on the schedule.

That was the sort of thing she would do that drove comics insane. She never did that to me. I guess she liked my wardrobe.

We were forced to choose which parent we would spend most, if not all, of our time with. Pryor, Letterman, George Miller, Tom Dreesen, Landesberg (who was living with Mitzi), and others chose the Store. Freddie, Leno, Richard Lewis, Andy Kaufman, and others chose the Improv.

The Store was where I had been performing on a nightly basis. The Store had my name on the marquee, attracting the tourist crowd on Sunset Boulevard thanks to
Good Times
. I decided to stay with the Store. In this divorce settlement Mitzi won custody of Jimmie Walker.

Budd went ape-shit. He labeled me “the most ungrateful comic I’ve ever known.” I felt personally very hurt. A lot of comics hated Budd—comics rarely like club owners—but I never had anything bad to say about him. Years later a check came in the mail that repaid my $2,000 investment by at least twenty times, and other major payments followed. My stake in the Improv had paid off handsomely. But Budd never understood that the real issue was between him and Mitzi.

Oh, by the way, none of us were paid—at either venue—to perform. The only difference between someone starring on a TV series and Joe Unknown was that I could ask to perform certain days and at certain times—say, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 10:15 p.m. Otherwise I was just like any other stand-up.

Whether in LA or New York, comics at the showcase clubs performed for free for the chance to work out material on stage and the exposure in front of talent coordinators, casting directors, movie and TV executives, and so on. Never mind that the clubs charged admission and sold drinks. Comics were allowed no more than one guest admission unless it was your parents. If it was your birthday, you might be given two free soft drinks or food. That was all—even after Mitzi expanded the Store in 1976 to add a 450-seat Main Room to the smaller Original Room and opened a second Comedy Store in Westwood near UCLA.

With the Main Room her idea was to pay the major acts that came to play there. But she could not attract anyone. So she bundled Letterman, Leno, Robin Williams, myself, and others into “best of” packages that would play the Main Room, two shows a night on weekends. Just like when we would “workshop” at the Original Room, she did not feel compelled to pay any of us.

One Sunday morning in early 1979, after doing two shows in the Main Room the previous night, a group of us went to Theodore’s. But Bob Shaw, one of the comics from the Original Room who sat with us, did not order any food.

“You want anything?” someone asked.

“No, I’m fine.”

He wasn’t fine. He was hungry and he was broke. Despite some of us performing two sold-out shows where paying customers were shelling out $10 to $20 a head and buying expensive drinks, none of the performers had received anything. No one on stage, whether the Main Room or Original Room, should have left the Store that night hungry or broke. A lot of us were doing just fine, thank you, but there were too many comics who were working and yet still struggling, including sleeping in their cars. It didn’t seem right.

Everyone was upset about Shaw’s plight, especially Boosler, Leno, Gallagher, and Mooney. Mooney, the rabble-rouser that he was, went in to talk to Mitzi about the situation.

“Look, the comics think we should have a little share of what’s coming in. What do you think might be fair, for us and for you?”

“What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know. Maybe like $5 a show. To cover food and maybe some gas.”

Mitzi exploded. “You motherfuckin’ ungrateful bastards!”

Mooney was stunned.

“We’re the biggest, most important goddamn comedy club in the country,” she continued, furious and defiant. “You’re lucky to be on my fuckin’ stage. If you don’t want to be on my stage, fuck you! Because I’m not going to pay you fuckin’ guys a fuckin’ dime!”

Even Mooney, who took no shit from anyone, was so taken aback that he did not know what to say in response.

After relaying to us her reaction, he gave us his understated punch line: “I don’t think she’s going to go for it.”

“Maybe we should stand up to her,” someone suggested.

But Mitzi carried a big stick. Many comics were afraid to say anything more because those who protested might suddenly find themselves relegated to going on at one in the morning, if they got on at all, or be sent into exile at the Comedy Store in Westwood. The Westwood Store held nowhere near the importance in entertainment circles as the flagship on Sunset.

I was lucky enough to be making a living. I could withstand the potential threats and pressure, and so could a few others. Strategy sessions were held, including at my townhouse, and a group was formed called Comedians for Compensation. Larger meetings, often chaotic, took place at a union hall.

If Mitzi had simply said, “Hey, I’ll think about it” or “I’ll give you a few bucks a show,” the whole controversy would have ended right there. But instead, she dug in her heels. There was no reasoning with her. She posted a notice in the waitress area, where we would congregate before going on stage, threatening that anyone moving forward with the idea of a “comedy strike” should expect to never again perform at the Store.

But by March the only option left was to strike. Yet everyone knew that if major comics crossed the picket line, the comics’ organization would be unable to put any pressure on the Store or the Improv, which also refused to pay the comics. Dreesen told Bill Knoedelseder for his book
I’m Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-up Comedy’s Golden Era
that he drove to my home first to get my support. I recall the emissaries being Gallagher and Leno. In any case, my position was clear: I loved Mitzi and did not want to hurt her, but I believed every comic should be paid something. In a way, the fact that they were not getting paid at the clubs helped bring talented writers who needed money, such as Leno, to my staff. But what was right was right. I told Gallagher and Leno that I would not join the picket line but neither would I cross it. Robin Williams then said the same thing, and Mooney brought Pryor on board. The marquee comics were a united front.

Faced with that solidarity, Mitzi offered to pay the performers in the Main Room half of the cover charges. But that did not help those in the Original Room, those who needed financial help the most. So Comedians for Compensation turned her down.

The time for talk was over. The strike was on—and it would be at the Improv as well as the Store. A mysterious fire at the Improv changed those plans. The bar, restaurant, and restrooms were saved, but the performance space went up in smoke. Police ruled it arson, and there were accusations about who was responsible, but no one was ever charged. Comedians showed up to help Budd salvage the venue and built a stage at one end of the restaurant. The Improv was back in operation two days later.

Feeling that a strike at that vulnerable moment would destroy him financially, Budd reached out to the comics. If they did not picket the Improv, he promised to adhere to whatever agreement Mitzi came to and to pay retroactively the commensurate amount. No specific numbers were offered, but the gesture was an olive branch, so the comics agreed to the deal. Leno, Boosler, Seinfeld, and others once again performed at the Improv.

Pickets walked the sidewalk in front of the Store. Among the signs were “The Yuk Stops Here,” “No Bucks? No Yuks!” and “I Said I Wanna Be a Star Not I Wanna Starve.” The press conferences were probably the most entertaining in the history of the labor movement. As time wore on, the press and the public sided more and more with the comics. Less secure comics gradually became braver and began speaking out. For us, Gallagher, Leno, Boosler, and Mooney were our leaders. Dreesen, who was respected by both sides and was a secure working comic, became the spokesman.

The Comedy Store Bombers, the basketball team we had formed for benefit affairs, played a charity game at the Forum, the then-home of the Los Angeles Lakers, during the first week of the strike. It was the last game that Letterman, Dreesen, Tim Reid, I, and others would play together as the Bombers. We never again could put on the uniforms Mitzi bought for us.

I went to the “union” meetings to keep informed. I also visited Mitzi, sometimes with a comic named Danny Mora, who was in Mitzi’s camp, to see if there was a way to end the strike.

“Come on, Mitzi,” I kept saying. “Maybe you should look at giving the guys a few bucks for a show.”

But she was hell-bent on not giving up anything.

“Fuck you!” she said. “Get the fuck out of here!”

The strike went on for months. I thought we would never win. But I was busy. With
Good Times
no longer taping, I had gigs in Vegas and on the road. When I was in town, I did game shows like
Hollywood Squares
and
Match Game
. Through it all, I was concerned that when the comics did return—and they would eventually—there would be retaliation from Mitzi.

One day, according to Knoedelseder, comic Biff Maynard, a Mitzi supporter, swerved his car into the Store’s parking lot where Leno and other strikers were standing: “There was a loud thump, and Leno went down.” Leno faked that he had been hit. But his theatrics ratcheted up the tension and seriousness surrounding the strike. Mitzi immediately heard about the “accident.” She called in Dreesen and told him she wanted to settle the dispute. By the next morning there was an agreement—comics playing the Main Room would receive 50 percent of the door; those in the Original Room and at Westwood would get $25 a set.

The picketing stopped and the comics went back to work. But the strike had destroyed relationships. Some comics, like Dreesen and Boosler, said they would never again play the Store. Others never forgave the comics who crossed the picket line.

And Mitzi broke her promise not to retaliate. Leno, who was a guy worthy of going on at 10:30, was getting time slots at 1 a.m., until he finally left. Letterman, Skip Stephenson, Allan Stephan, and Sam Kinison were sent to the minor leagues, to Westwood.