Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [26]
Marlo: In Jerry Seinfeld’s documentary, The Comedian, you come backstage and talk to Jerry about that. In the film, Jerry has been putting his act together, beat by beat, joke by joke, and you tell him you just saw two hours straight of Cosby, with all new material.
Chris: All new. All great. Confident.
Marlo: Right. And Seinfeld’s face just falls. At this point, he has six minutes of new material, and that’s all. We know exactly how he feels. But you not only keep coming up with new material, you also have something different from Pryor and Murphy. What do you think that is?
Chris: I guess just a different set of experiences. I didn’t spend that much time on the chitlin circuit, so as a comic, I’m kind of raised by Jews, essentially. I was around guys like Robert Klein and David Brenner. I’m one of the rare black comics who got to spend a lot of time with Jewish comics. And because of that, I can perform just about anywhere.
Marlo: Like a lot of black comedians, you take white people to task. But you spend equal time taking black people to task.
Chris: I take everybody to task.
Marlo: Right. When I watch you on stage, I think there’s got to be a preacher in your family somewhere because . . .
Chris: Oh, yeah—my grandfather.
Marlo: You’re kidding me!
Chris: My grandfather and my great-grandfather.
Marlo: That’s so funny. I was actually joking—but when I watch you, I think, My God, this guy is sermonizing to people. “Don’t drop out of school. Get a job. Be responsible for your kids. Don’t hit women.” I mean, there’s a whole moral code there, just like with preachers.
Chris: I like preachers. They’re essentially doing the same kind of gig as me, just not trying to get a laugh. And we’re both trying to hold people’s attention.
Marlo: Right, and to lead them.
Chris: And to lead them. One of these days I want to do one big sermon as a TV special. A sermon can be about one topic for an hour and ten minutes. I would love to try to pull that off as a comedian. Literally talk about just one thing.
Marlo: I’m sure you could pull it off. You obviously picked up a lot from your grandfather.
Chris: Well, I spent a lot of time with him when he was preaching. He was like one of my best friends. He had tons of talent and used to preach on the weekends. He’d drive a cab during the week, and I’d sit with him in the front of the cab. And he would never write the sermon—he would just write the bullet points, then kind of rip the sermon. And I write my jokes in the same way. The important thing is what I want to talk about. We’ll figure out how to make this funny later, but right now, the most important thing is the topic.
Marlo: Exactly. Like your jokes about our having so much food in our country, that we have the luxury of being allergic to it. You say, “There’s no dairy intolerance in Africa.” That’s such a great observation. Was your grandfather also funny?
Chris: Oh, he was hysterical, hysterical. Some people are just accidentally funny, but he loved being funny.
Marlo: In his sermons?
Chris: A little bit in his sermons, but mostly in his life. He was kind of a Mr. Magoo, and full of contradictions—he was a reverend, he went to jail, he cheated on my grandmother constantly, just loved the ladies. One of those complete guys.
Marlo: Did he get to see you be funny on stage?
Chris: A little bit, but he never got to come to a big house. He was gone before I bought the big house.
Marlo: Did he tell you jokes?
Chris: No, he never told me jokes. My whole family’s humor was mostly about how bad they were going to kick somebody’s ass that day.
Marlo: Like?
Chris: Like, my brother once told