Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [10]
My manager drew up a schedule of eleven comics. I was batting third. Marci Klein, the SNL talent coordinator, and a few others from the show were sitting in the back of the room with the dreams of eleven human beings in their beautiful, shiny, Saturday Night Live hands. It was about 99 degrees outside; it was also the night that the air conditioner at the Boston Comedy Club broke.
Heat definitely rises. As people got loaded and danced in the pub downstairs, their body heat mixed with the 200 or so people sitting shoulder to shoulder in the comedy club. The room became unbearably hot, and comic after comic performed in front of some very uncomfortable customers. The heat in the room reminded me of when you go into the attic of your house in the summer as a kid. As the mercury rose, Marci Klein and company became increasingly irritated.
I went on third, and the SNL group all left immediately after my set. Eight comics busted their chops that night, not realizing that the people they were showcasing for were long gone. They had probably tipped two different cabdrivers by now and were no doubt sipping apple martinis someplace with a powerful air conditioner. They watched three comics that night, and I was one of them. Seriously, what are the odds? They’re so tough that when Jim Carrey auditioned long ago, he wasn’t picked.
Barry pulled me aside that night after my set and told me that Marci really liked me and wanted to see me again, the next time with Jim Downey and some of the cast and writers. I foresaw a tremendous problem falling asleep that night, so I began to get blissfully shit-faced.
A week later, I showcased again for Saturday Night Live at Stand-Up New York on the Upper West Side. I carried a very pessimistic attitude into my second audition, which I convinced myself was realism. I didn’t take the showcase very seriously. I figured, Why get my hopes too high for something that was nearly unattainable? I decided that my best bet was to just relax and have fun. What I was really doing was keeping my “monitor” down—a term that Buddy Hackett would use years later to explain the DNA of a comic performance.
I would meet Buddy on the set of the film Paulie, and my friendship with him became one of the great treasures of my life. For some reason, Buddy took great pleasure in giving me bits of advice and insights into stand-up comedy. I couldn’t think of a better comic to be dispensing advice. Buddy truly believed that stand-up comics were special people—not special in their individual talents, but special in our capacity to provide happiness to others. Buddy also believed we as comics had a brotherhood: We were an amazing circle of people with a responsibility to take the stage and give 100 percent every night to make others’ lives brighter. He sure made mine brighter.
One day Buddy asked me what my monitor onstage was. I asked him what a monitor was. A monitor, Hackett explained, was the number of distracting thoughts in your head when you’re onstage. Thoughts such as “What’s that sound?” “Why is the waitress talking so loud?” and “Why aren’t those people laughing?” are all part of the negative and counterproductive side of your monitor. Basically, any thought that inhibits the projection of your natural self is a piece of your monitor.
Buddy’s theory was that the first time a comic goes onstage, his monitor is almost 100. Standing onstage is so foreign and standing in front of a live audience is so frightening that being yourself is the hardest thing to do. Yet in spite of nearly everything in your brain working against you, you still earn applause. Even though you had used less than 1 percent of your