Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (8 page)

Corey: I want to get into that, too. When you do what you do, it’s not just a job. It’s not, ‘I’m gonna go to the office and put in my 9 or 10 hours and I’ve got my evenings and weekends free to do whatever.’ This is a life, the life that you’ve chosen.

Kathleen: Yeah. (laughs) It always cracks me up when people say—especially when people say it about gays, the Right Wing—it’s a lifestyle. First of all, not really. I would say doing heroin is a lifestyle. You’ve got to get up every morning and figure out, ‘Where am I gonna get more heroin?’ Then you’ve got to get needles, and you’ve got to talk to creepy people, and you’ve got to come up with the cash, but then you don’t have a job. You’ve got to figure out how to steal something or pawn something. That’s a fucking lifestyle. What I’ve chosen, comedy, this is a life. It’s my life, but I freely chose it, and I’ve had plenty of chances to get out. I like it.

Corey: Do you ever get scared, because this is your life, and what is it going to be like five years from now? Ten years from now? Fifteen years from now?

Kathleen: No, the good thing is it’s stand-up comedy. I’ve seen the Joan Rivers, the Don Rickles, the Phyllis Dillers. If I chose to do it forever, I absolutely could. Or you could just be Roseanne and sit in your nice house and put moles on your body on the Internet, comparing to see if you have skin cancer. I mean, let’s say nothing else changes, it all remains the same. Financially, I told my brother, at 55, I want to be able to be done if I want to be done, and that’s assuming nothing changes. Nothing gets any better; nothing gets any worse. So I have a plan. I’m sure I will keep doing it.

Corey: Did you see the Joan Rivers documentary and get the sense that she’s terrified that there’s not gonna be work, not be something? And she’s 80 years old. I just saw her like six weeks ago, and she’s still hilarious, sharp as they come.

Kathleen: I saw her in New York. Lewis Black is part owner of a little restaurant and bar, and in the basement there’s a little 100-seater. She’s fucking hilarious. I don’t feel that way. When I look at an empty book, I get excited. When she looks at an empty book, she panics. I don’t need work. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would go tell jokes for charity. This is the life, but I could build a whole different lifestyle. I could be in Hawaii. I could be here, there. I don’t need to be on stage. It’s fun, and I really like it. Fuck, when I have two weeks off, it’s like pulling teeth to get me to go to the Improv and do a set. The only reason I go is because I’m hungry, and I want chicken wings and beer—for real—or to see my friends. I don’t feel the need to perform. I like it, but it’s not like a burning desire.

Corey: As your parents get older, does it get you thinking about mortality and ‘I’ve been on the road so long; maybe I haven’t spent enough time with my family as I could have if I was in St. Louis teaching?’

Kathleen: No, because I think about how much time I am there, which is a shitload. Let’s say I had a real job in St. Louis. I’m still two and a half hours from them in Lake of the Ozarks. I probably would go down there one weekend a month. You get home from work at 8 o’clock on a Friday after happy hour. Do you feel like driving down? I’d see them more, but it wouldn’t be as intense as when I do. If I live in California and I had a real job, and I hear people say, ‘I’m gonna go home once this year for two weeks,’ that would drive me insane. That would not be OK with me. I love the freedom this job affords. I can pretty much do what I want when I want.

Corey: I can tell by listening to your stuff over the years how close you are with your family. Maybe that’s a Midwestern values thing. What about your friends though? Because of the life you live, does it make more sense to be close friends with other comedians, because they get it?

Kathleen: It does. Then they never complain about you being gone or not participating or whatever. I think because I started comedy so young, aside from a couple of high school friends, the only friends are comedians because those are the only people I met. I started when I was 23. If you think about all the friends you gather after high school and college, it’s usually gonna be work or somehow related. I do have my non-comedian friends, but most of them somehow are involved with show business.

Corey: Does it help, too, to have these people that are good contacts as well?

Kathleen: Yeah, because there are so few comedians, and 90 percent of us are nice. And 90 percent of us are trying to help each other. There’s people above me that try to help. There’s people I try to help. Half of our shit is, do you know about it and are you in the front of my mind? It totally helps.

Corey: What about the time you spend with your openers, like Jason? Is he trying his new stuff out on you? Are you trying stuff on him?

Kathleen: Oh yeah. He’s progressed. He was on the road. I can’t have you on the road if you don’t have new shit. I’m a big fan of throwing shit out there. If it doesn’t work, so what? It’s OK. He’s gotten a shitload better. He’s helped me with some jokes. Lew and I are always talking about shit. I golfed with Ron for a couple days, and we talked about shit. I don’t think we consciously think about it.

Corey: How much time do you spend now putting together new material, compared to 10 or 15 years ago?

Kathleen: The same. I never sit down and write stuff. Shit happens, and I say it on stage, or shit flies into my head. The only time it doesn’t fly into my head is when I am stressing over serious shit, meaning OK, there goes the flight leaving for D.C. We’ve got a show at 8 o’clock tonight. How the fuck is this gonna work? Then nothing’s funny. It’s work. It’s like I have a real job.

Corey: Do you keep a journal at all?

Kathleen: Oh no, Corey. You know why I really wouldn’t do it because Oprah says to do it. Therefore, I won’t. Fuck you, Oprah.

Corey: What about when you’re old and crazy and your nieces and nephews want to know about your life?

Kathleen: They won’t care, Corey. They’re just gonna wanna know, ‘How much money does she still make off these CDs?’

Sort of a suds dud when it was released in theatres, comedy troupe Broken Lizard’s movie “Beerfest” found a larger audience on DVD and cable—sort of like Lizard’s raucous cops breakthrough, “Super Troopers.”

The former flick follows some reunited college buddies as they train for a secret beer-drinking competition held in Germany during Oktoberfest.

It also features the ticklish Cloris Leachman as a German granny with a particularly saucy taste for summer sausage, so to speak.

Three of the Broken Lizard dudes—Jay Chandrasekhar (who also directed the film), Steve Lemme (who plays “Fink” in the movie) and Kevin Heffernan who takes on twin brother roles in the film—called me to chat about their favorite yellow liquid—beer.

To try and keep things straight, I suggested that Steve sing all his answers, Kevin reply his in a British accent and Jay offer his as if he were very cross.

The concept only worked for a minute.

Corey: When was your last sip of beer?

Steve Lemme: (Singing falsetto style) Just last night!

Kevin Heffernan: (As a proper English gentleman) I’m having it with my breakfast cereal.

Corey: Your first sip?

Steve: (Still singing) From a baby bottle.

Jay Chandrasekhar: I collected beer cans when I was 9 or 10.

Kevin: I thought it was butterflies.

Jay: No, that was after the beer cans. That was sort of in vogue in Chicago at the time. We used to find old Coors cans. Occasionally you’d get a nice, warm sip from the beer that was left in the dumpster.

Corey: Maybe a cigarette butt, too?

Jay: Oh, on occasion.

Steve: Why do you think Jay won’t play along and do angry guy?

Corey: I don’t know. Maybe I will provoke him or something. What do you think of the tradition of a father giving his son a first taste of beer?

Jay: I think it’s a time-honored tradition. My dad used to drink beer out of a silver mug with a glass bottom and when I was a kid I’d look up at the dinner table. I could see his mouth glugging the beer—his tongue lapping it up—and it looked like he was smiling and the beer was so delicious. He gave me my first taste of beer.

Steve: Wasn’t that a ride on Coney Island? Look Up Your Father’s Glass Beer Stein?

Corey: You’ve probably been asked this before, but how much beer can you drink before you absolutely have to drain a Broken Lizard?

(They all laugh.)

Jay: Man, a lot.

Steve: Certainly during ‘Beerfest’ a lot.

Corey: Were there a lot of beer breaks during filming?

Kevin: A lot of beer breaks. There were a couple vomit breaks.

Steve: Just like a regular night out. From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., there was nobody going to the bathroom. After the floodgates were open, it was literally like after every take.

Corey: Steve, how much would you have to drink to arm-wrestle an orangutan?

Steve: Nothing. I would arm wrestle an orangutan for free.

Corey: Kevin, how much beer to make out with Cloris Leachman?

Kevin: I would do that in a second. She’s a sexy woman. She has an Oscar, you know.

Jay: I actually did make out with Cloris Leachman. She would get up into my lips.

Steve: She would have to kiss Jay every day before we shot. Each day would get a little more serious.

Corey: Best it stopped where it did?

Kevin: Where did it stop, Jay?

Jay: Quiet, Cloris, I’m on the phone.

Corey: What do you guys think of fake or near beer?

Kevin: That’s what everyone else drank on movie except for us. We drank real beer.

Corey: Ever tried fake?

Jay: That first non-alcoholic beer, (my dad) got caught up in the ad craze. He hated it.

Corey: Would he drink that out of the mug?

Jay: Yeah. He wasn’t smiling, though. It was a frown in the glass bottom.