Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [28]
Marlo: In what way?
Chris: When you’re in a club, you can do a quilt of jokes and get away with it. You can go from joke to joke to joke, and do that for fifty minutes—people are pretty impressed by that, and it’s a fine feat. But if you’re at Radio City Music Hall or Madison Square Garden, you have to have a show.
Marlo: Right.
Chris: You’re standing in the same spot Prince was two nights earlier. And your ticket price isn’t that much different from his. So it can’t just be joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke. I mean, you have to get the laughs from the joke, joke, joke, but it’s got to be more like a movie. And the houses help. I mean, you’re not competing with a waitress, and it’s all set up for you. So you should take that extra time and really use it to get that extra laugh.
Marlo: In a way, you’re a lot like Lenny Bruce. He was very shocking at the time, mostly because of his language. But when you look back at it now, what he was basically saying to people was: “Wake up! Look at what’s going on in this country and in this world.” You do that, too.
Chris: I try. I’ve seen Lenny Bruce. This YouTube invention is the greatest thing of all time—punch up any comedian you want. Sometimes I’ll sit for hours, just watching comics.
Marlo: What do you learn from them?
Chris: That the times can dictate a comedian’s impact—that the years in which someone is doing comedy can help the comedian as much as anything else. Richard Pryor is great, don’t get me wrong, but the times he was performing in—my God! How could you mess up in that era? Look at what the country was going through then. How could you not be great during segregation? Then you’ve got a guy like Eddie Murphy, who’s great, but it wasn’t really a deep time when he was on stage. By the eighties, the struggle was over for the most part, you know what I mean? It was a different time. Lenny Bruce was part of such a great time. Probably no comedian has been of a better time, really.
Marlo: You seem to have no trouble finding social issues to talk about, either. I laughed hard at your piece about blacks and Jews, where you say that blacks don’t hate Jews, they hate white people. You talk about not putting everyone in little categories, which allows us to laugh at our own prejudices. That’s a very brave and honest thing to say, and it helps to bang down doors. You also did a very strong piece about “blacks versus niggers,” which you’ve since retired. Why?
Chris: I’m always retiring stuff. That’s the downside of the YouTube era; people can watch your act at any moment, and you can’t be up there doing old stuff. You used to be able to write an act then ride that act for twenty years.
Marlo: That’s what my dad and all those guys of his era did. Tell me about school. Were you the funny kid?
Chris: No, I barely spoke. I was bused to school, and was the only black boy in my grade for five or six years—there were two girls. It was scary, but that’s what was going on in ’73. You could still be the first black kid somewhere, even in the seventies.
Marlo: So if you weren’t funny at school, when did you start figuring out you could make people laugh?
Chris: I was always interested in being funny. I was a weird kid. I remember I could watch any TV show and tell you exactly what the next joke was.
Marlo: Really?
Chris: Really. Even when I was eight years old, I would watch a brand-new show and say, “Okay, now they’re going to say this . . .” And I always loved comedians. I couldn’t wait to see The Dean Martin Roast. What kid wants to watch a Dean Martin roast? Couldn’t wait. And I loved Alan King. Black kid in Bed Stuy worshipping Alan King.
Marlo: What about your