Clothing Optional (5 page)

Lovely plan. Please let me fall onto my cutlery.

GOD

…and you, you get the real plum.

MENDEL

I can't wait to hear this one.

GOD

Ready?

MENDEL

Yeah, yeah…

GOD

Brunch.

MENDEL

What's that?

GOD

A combination of breakfast and lunch.

MENDEL

I never heard of such a thing.

GOD

No one has. But trust me, by the time Brillstein's guests wake up, they'll be dying for it.

MENDEL

Could work.

GOD

It'll be a big hit.

MENDEL

I'll give it a shot.

GOD

Big, big hit.

And it came to pass that Joshua smote the Amorites and the sun rose upon Mendel's village…. And Brillstein's guests devoured the brunch and said they were stuffed. Whereupon they returned to their homes, had a snack, said they were full, had their dinner, said they couldn't eat another bite, had a snack, and went to bed.

—
ALAN ZWEIBEL

Herb Sargent

We had just started
Saturday Night Live.
I was an apprentice writer, twenty-four years old, and I felt intimidated. Chevy was hysterically funny. So were John and Danny and Gilda and Franken. And Michael O'Donoghue, well, Michael simply scared the shit out of me. So I stayed pretty much to myself. One day I came to work, and on my desk was a framed cartoon. A drawing—no caption—of a drunken rabbi staggering home late and holding a wine bottle. And waiting for him on the other side of the door was his angry wife, getting ready to hit him with a Torah instead of a rolling pin. I had no idea who'd put it there. I started looking around, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a white-haired man in his office, laughing. He had put it there. That was the first communication I had with Herb Sargent—which was significant, given that he never spoke and he gave me a cartoon that had no caption.

I had seen him years before. Or at least I thought I had. When I was a kid. My father manufactured jewelry and had his shop on Fifty-second Street between Fifth and Madison. I used to come into the city from Long Island and run errands for him during the summer. And no matter where the delivery was supposed to go, I made sure I got there by going through the lobby of what was then called the RCA Building, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, with the hopes that maybe I would see Johnny Carson (whose show was upstairs) or some of the people from
That Was the Week That Was:
Buck Henry, Bob Dishy, David Frost—or Herb Sargent, who was the producer. I knew his name from the credits. As a young boy who wanted to be a TV writer someday, this was like hanging around outside of Yankee Stadium waiting to see the players going through to the clubhouse.

And now, now I was actually working with Herb Sargent. We gravitated toward each other (or should I say I forced myself upon him?) because my background was in joke writing and he was basically in charge of “Weekend Update,” which was all about jokes. So I found my way into his office, and we would go through the newspapers together and write jokes for “Update.” We made each other laugh. The silence was comfortable. And over time, the relationship grew deeper.

I believe that you choose people to fulfill roles in your life. And I cast Herb in the role not only of mentor but—there's a Jewish expression,
tzaddik.
A tzaddik is a just person. A person who embodies wisdom and integrity. I cast Herb in that role. He was the oldest person I knew, and I treated him with the kind of respect usually reserved for people who symbolize a person's private definition of truth—to the point where he was the one guy I knew that I couldn't lie to. And as the show became more successful and I started making a little money, he was the only one I didn't do drugs in front of. Still later on, when I was having problems with a girl I was going out with, I went to Herb, who had been married thirty-four times, for advice.

As a native New Yorker, I was also drawn to Herb because, to me, Herb was New York. But an older, more romantic New York that took place in black and white, like the kind of TV I grew up on and wanted to be a part of someday. Comedy with a conscience. And mindful of its power to influence. From the silly “Franco is still dead” jokes to softer ones about global warming, Herb taught us about the equal weight they carried.

When Lorne founded the show, he said that our generation was not being spoken to on television. So the politics on
SNL
were addressed to our generation—the baby boomers who had grown up watching television and went to Woodstock and thought it was absurd how Gerald Ford fell down so much. But here was Herb, a charter member of the older generation, who validated us. And encouraged us. And quite often led the way. What a curious hybrid he was—a man who was older than my father and at the same time younger than my Republican brother, but who wasn't preachy. Or controversial. But he lived in that place where he was writing about those things that he genuinely felt. Herb was grounded in his beliefs. So when he wrote, he wrote from within.

When I left New York and moved my family to Los Angeles, I knew my city was in good hands because Herb was there. And that I was still connected there because to know Herb Sargent was to be two degrees of separation from anyone on the planet. It was in his office that I'd met Mort Sahl and Herb Gardner and Art Buchwald and Avery Corman and Ed Koch and Bella Abzug. So in my mind, even though I was now living a full continent away, all I had to do was call Herb, remind him that I disliked L.A. as much as he did, and I was home. It was as simple as that—and all he asked in return was that I not join the Writers Guild, West.

So our relationship continued long-distance. I still tried hard to please him. Make him proud. I sent him a copy of anything I wrote or produced. Poor Herb, I actually sent him seventy-two videotapes of
It's Garry Shandling's Show
because his neighborhood didn't get Showtime in those years. I also sent him first drafts of plays, movies, magazine articles, and book manuscripts. He'd call and give me notes. And in those pre-Internet days he'd send reviews from New York papers. “Did you see this one about the Jon Lovitz special you did? Congratulations,” he'd write. And when I'd get a bad review, he'd say, “Don't read
Time
magazine.”

But after a while, for some reason, I lost touch with Herb. I'm not sure why. He might have been mad at me. I'm not sure of that either. For some reason I never asked. Never called to clear the air or simply reconnect. Years passed. Until I saw him at the memorial of a former
SNL
associate producer. Herb had been sick and now looked, well, now looked his age. It threw me. He'd never looked his age.

I moved my family back to New York and started calling him again. Tried to jump-start a friendship, make up for lost time. Calls were returned—but not as quickly as they once had been. I misjudged the situation and took it personally. Figured it to be nothing more than the vestiges of our estrangement. A sign that things between us were not yet back to where they were. But I was determined to remedy that. I wrote a novel. And when it came time to submit the names of people on the acknowledgments page, I mentioned Herb and tried my best to figure out how and when I would let him know about it. Should I send him the galleys and have him come across it? No, too much had transpired for me to give him that kind of homework. Should I call and tell him? Let him know outright how grateful and indebted I felt? No, I knew that would only serve to embarrass him. Make him blush. Herb hated recognition. Hated blushing. So I waited. Decided to send him the published product once it came out and put a bookmark in the page that his name was on. It proved to be yet another miscalculation on my part. Herb died about a week before I had the chance to do so. I never got to tell him how much he meant to me. Somehow, some way, I hope he knows.

Comic Dialogue

MAY 1974

Upon graduation from college, I had to make a crucial choice about my future. Should I attend law school or pursue my longtime dream of becoming a comedy writer?

As it worked out, that decision was made for me by all twenty-three law schools I applied to. Feeling both rejected and relieved, I met Catskills comic Stu Cooper, who, over a cup of coffee at the Stage Deli, introduced me to my new profession.

—Basically, kid, there are six levels in show business.

—What do you mean?

—Like, you're either an unknown, or you're a semi-name, or you're a name, or you're a star, or you're a big star, or you're a superstar.

—I never thought of it in those terms.

—Oh, sure. And once you've been in the business for a while, you find that trying to get from one level to the next becomes your life. For instance, take Dickie Newfield. He's an unknown.

—Uh-huh.

—So is Dickie Pearl, Benny Diamond, Davey Opal, Jackie Stone…

—Right.

—…Davey Leigh, Lee Burton, Burt Lewis, Lou Stevens, Lew Burns, there's Dave Lenny and Lenny Martin and Marty Craig…All of them are unknown.

—Right.

—Marty Reynolds is unknown.

—I see.

—So's Lee Reynolds and Herbie Day and Jackie Dawn and Larry Storm…

—Got you.

—Then there's Mel Silvers, Burt Gold, Eddie Pines, Mickey Scott, Jackie Scott, Scotty Drake…. All of these guys are unknown.

—I see.

—You know what I mean?

—Sure.

—Oh, there's dozens of them.

—Right.

—Lenny Drake and Jimmy Robbins and Les Hanes…

—Right.

—Now, all of these guys are very good professional comics. They work the Catskills or they can come out and do twenty solid minutes in any room, whether it's opening for big stars like Steve and Eydie or even a superstar like Sammy.

—Couldn't they open for semi-names?

—An unknown opening for a semi-name? Who would come to see them?

—I'm not sure that I understand.

—Well, a superstar can have an unknown open for him because people will come to see a Liza or a Tom Jones or a Humperdinck no matter who the opening act is. But semi-names are only known by a few people, and unknowns aren't known by anyone. So what would be the draw?

—Oh, I get you.

—You see, semi-names are semi-recognizable, because occasionally you can see us on a talk show or on TV commercials, so we get paid slightly more in clubs—but we still have to share the billing with a big star or superstar. Do you know what I mean?

—Right. Now, who are some of the semi-names?

—Well, there's me, Marty Blake, Morty Gunty, Mattie Rose…

—Pat Henry?

—Oh, sure, Pat's a semi-name. But, you know, now that I think of it, everyone knows that Pat's been opening for Sinatra for so long that he could very well be a name already. Pat does okay. So does Corbett.

—Corbett Monica?

—Yeah. Luckiest guy in the world. Ever see his act?

—No.

—Fair, at best. But people still know who he is from when he was on
The Joey Bishop Show.

—I remember that program.

—Joey threw him a bone, so Corbett's a name. But that's the power of the tube. Red Buttons, Jan Murray, Morey Amsterdam, Larry Storch, Phil Foster, Foster Brooks, Marty Ingels, Marty Allen, Bernie Allen…Look at Nipsey Russell. Perfect example.
Perfect
example. The guy gets up, right? He reads a few poems. Okay, they're cute, but they're not going to change the world. You know what I mean?

—Uh-huh.

—But he does a few game shows and a few Dean Martin roasts, so people know who he is, and that raises his price for what he gets in a club.

—I like Woody Allen.

—There's another example. He makes movies, they're cute—a lot of New York Jewish shtick—that's okay. But put him in a room in Vegas and nobody knows what he's talking about. The audience just sits there—he's too deep.

—God, Woody Allen's my idol.

—Hey, don't get me wrong. Woody's very clever. But, a nightclub audience who pays fifty dollars a couple wants to laugh. They don't want to have to figure out what the guy is talking about and then decide if they should laugh. You know what I mean?

—Well…

—You can disagree with me if you want to.

—Sure. I know.

—But I'll tell you one thing—and you can take this from me, because if there's one thing I know, it's comedy—and I'll bet you that if you put Woody Allen in the same room with Jackie Gayle, Woody'd never know what hit him.

—Who's Jackie Gayle?

—The greatest lounge act in the history of Vegas. You know, you might think I'm crazy, but between you and me, I think he's even funnier than Shecky.

—Shecky Greene?

—Yep. I think Jackie's much funnier. But Shecky's got that Madame Butterfly routine that's a classic. That and “ca-ca on the moon”—twenty minutes of wall-to-wall screams.

—“Ca-ca on the moon”?

—Oh, you know that one.

—I do?

—That's the routine where Neil Armstrong had no place to go to the bathroom while he was in the spaceship, so that's why he was in such a hurry to land, so he could make a ca-ca on the moon.

—Oh…right.

—Shecky always had the best material, that's what made him. And that's what I need: some surefire material. Do you want to write for me?

—Sure. But…

—Well, you want to be a comedy writer, don't you?

—Sure. But I don't even know how to go about doing it.

—This stuff you sent me in the mail isn't bad.

—Really?

—It's a little sophomoric, but…

—Well, that was just some material that I wrote when I was in college.

—It's also a little bit too wordy. You've got to get to the punch lines quicker. The setups are way too long. Have you ever seen me work?

—No…. Well, I mean not recently. My parents used to take us on weekend trips to the Catskills, so of course I saw you then.

—I'm pretty frenetic onstage. I like to move around a lot. I like to play the room, the way Carter does.

—Jack Carter?

—Sure. Hey, let's face it—we're all doing Jack.

—Of course.

—So that's why I need a lot of quick one-line zingers. I never stand in one place long enough to do a setup joke. It'd break my rhythm.

—Okay. Is there any special subject you want me to write about?

—No, not really. Just so long as it's funny. That's all I care about.

—Okay.

—My audience likes to laugh at just about anything. Like marriage, or divorce, or in-laws, or a date coming to pick up your daughter, or the commercials they do on TV. You know what I mean?

—Sure. I'll do my best.

—Great. And if by some chance you can come up with a hook for me…Christ, that would get me to the next level, or even make me a star, so fast it'd make your head spin.

—What's a hook?

—An image. An identity. A shtick. It's something that'd let people know that “Stu Cooper—he's the guy who is such and such.”

—Oh, I see.

—You know what I mean?

—I think so.

—Like Jack Benny's cheap—that's his hook—that's what made him. Alan King's angry, Gleason's fat, Hackett's got that speech impediment…. All the big stars have some hook, and that's how the audience knows them, and that's what I'm looking for.

—Right. Okay.

—Hey, it's not that easy. I'm real hard to find an attitude for. I'm forty-four, I don't have a big nose, and I look sort of handsome in my tuxedo—so the audience doesn't believe it when I make fun of myself. You know what I mean?

—Uh-huh…

—No one would believe that “I don't get no respect.”

—Right.

—You know what I mean?

—Sure.

—That line is great for Rodney because he looks that way. But that could never work for me. I'm too classy-looking. You see, the audience has to believe that the comic could actually have those things that he's saying happen to him. To be someone that people remember, you got to be a believable character.

—I got you.

—Like, I have a friend, a comedian, named Larry Best. He does a very funny thing in his act: he pretends that he's eating an apple.

—Really.

—It's hysterical. He cups his hand and brings it up to his mouth and does these sound effects that are so funny, like he was actually biting into and chewing an apple. And the audience screams. And he goes on and on with these crunchy sounds and slurps to the point where you'd swear that the juice was actually dripping down his chin.

—Right.

—But as funny as it is, Larry's still unknown. Sure, people know that there's a guy around who does a very funny bit about eating an apple, but Larry never came up with a memorable character onstage to make people remember that Larry Best's the guy who eats the apple.

—I see.

—And it's been that way with him his whole career. Christ, I remember Larry before he was unknown.

—Huh?

—Oh, sure. I met Larry when he was first starting out.

—Oh.

—So it's tricky. How old are you?

—Twenty-two.

—Christ, I've been in this business since before you were born. I was nineteen when I started out….

—Uh-huh.

—And I've had every big writer write for me at one time or other, and none of them have been able to capture me.

—Really?

—Oh, sure. They all wrote for me. Arnie Kogen, Arnie Rosen, Arnie Sultan, Larry Gelbart, Larry Rhine, Mel Tolkin, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Danny Simon…

—Neil Simon?

—Sure. As a matter of fact, I discovered him.

—Really?

—Sure. He started out just like you. They all did. They sold jokes here and there, and then they graduated to selling routines. And when their names got around, they started writing for more and more comics, and then when one of those comics caught a break and got a TV program, the way Caesar did, the comic would ask the writers to work on that show and that's how they all broke into TV.

—Wow. That's exactly what I want to do.

—You can do it.

—Really?

—Sure. Like, for example, you write for me or any of the other comics that are around—I can introduce you to all of them—and if one of us gets a show, you'd write for it.

—That'd be amazing. You know, being a TV comedy writer has always been my dream, ever since I used to watch the old
Dick Van Dyke Show.

—Good program.

—Do you still speak with Neil Simon?

—Occasionally I call and he gives me a joke if I need it, but he's very busy. Do you have a car?

—No. I live with my parents, so I usually borrow theirs.

—Well, why don't you come up to the mountains with me one night this weekend? You can drive up to the house, have dinner with the family, and then you can come and watch me work.

—That would be great.

—Just pick a night. I'm at the Nevele on Friday, and I'm doing the late show at the Concord on Saturday.

—Well, I have work on Friday night, so I'll have to make it Saturday, if that's okay.

—Super. What kind of work do you do?

—Well, I have a B.A. in psychology, but now I'm just working part-time in a delicatessen on Long Island—until I can get things together a little bit.

—Oh, that's so funny.

—What's so funny?

—That's so funny—that your background in psychology helps you understand the pastrami before you slice it.

—…Right.

—Isn't that funny?

—Yeah…sure.

—Tell you what. I'm going to use that in my act tonight, and if it gets a laugh, I'll send you seven dollars. Then you'll really be a professional writer.

—But I didn't say that about the pastrami—you did.

—That's all right. I never would have thought of that gag if we didn't have this conversation.

—Oh…. Thanks.

—And I'll see you on Saturday and we'll take it from there.

—Great.

—I'm going into Vegas next month, and maybe you could come up with a couple of things by then.

—Sure.

—I'm opening for Tony Orlando, and I'd really like to knock 'em dead out there.

—Sure.

—Orlando's got that TV show coming up this summer and they're going to need comics, so I really want to show Tony's people what I can do.

—Sure.

—I'm especially interested in about five strong minutes. Something about jogging. Or sending the kids to camp…. Like I say, anything as long as it's funny. I want to do it in the spot where I usually do ca-ca on the moon.

—I thought Shecky Greene does ca-ca on the moon.

—Well, yeah. But we don't play the same places. So it doesn't hurt Shecky at all. And when I go into Vegas, I don't do it. That's why I need you to write me some material.

—Okay, Mr. Cooper.

—Stu.

—Sure, Stu.

AUGUST 1975

—Hello.

—Listen, did I wake you? It's Stu.

—No…no…that's okay…. What time is it?

—It's, let me look at my watch, it's eleven-thirty out here, so that would make it…

—…Two-thirty in the morning.

—Right, two-thirty New York time. Are you sure I didn't wake you?

—No, no. Is everything all right?

—Just super. Look, remember that inflation joke you wrote for me a few years ago?

—What joke was that?

—The one where I say that the price of meat is getting so bad that yesterday I stole a piece of flanken that had a street value of six thousand dollars.

—Right, I remember.