Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (17 page)

This interview originally took place as a panel at the Austin Film Festival in 2005.

Yes, I was a Harry Anderson fan, too.

When I sat down with him, he was a magician and stand-up comedian whom I’d seen on
Saturday Night Live
a few times, doing his bit, and on
Cheers
, where he had done some memorable guest spots as an actor. I interviewed him just before
Night Court
started airing, so to me he was just this demented, semi-famous magician whom I happened to find hilarious. We talked for a long time—much longer than a teenager with a high school radio show should ever have hoped for—and he went pretty deep. He talked about some very personal things with me. I remember being a little taken aback by how open he was about his life—his successes, his struggles, and his pain. I remember having this vague sense of being moved by it all, but in ways I didn’t fully understand yet, and am only coming to understand now. What I took away is a lesson that has proved absolutely vital in my career: Do not be afraid to share your story, or to be vulnerable and open when telling it.

Judd Apatow:
On
Cheers
you play a con man—and it seems to be true, right?

Harry Anderson:
If I were, I guess I would lie and say no.

Judd:
No, but I saw you on
Letterman
the other day and you said you got in trouble in New Orleans for—

Harry:
A shell game. I ran a shell game for about three years on the street.

Judd:
Taking people’s money?

Harry:
Yeah.

Judd:
And living off that? Were you doing stand-up at the same time?

Harry:
No, I didn’t do stand-up. I got into magic when I got my jaw broken doing the shell game, and I gave up gambling and then turned it around and did a comedic exposé of the shell game, which really wasn’t an exposé but it was more of—there was no gambling, I just passed my hat at the end of it. This is back before street performers were so common. I was on the street from the time I was fifteen until I was twenty-five.

Judd:
When did you get into magic?

Harry:
I’ve always done magic as a hobby. I’ve done it professionally, too. I played at amusement parks in Southern California when I was a kid, did birthday parties and things.

Judd:
At fifteen you started hustling?

Harry:
When I first went out at fifteen, I did a street act with linking rings, but I wasn’t very serious about it. I didn’t make much money at it. When I was twenty-one, I went to San Francisco and started hustling full-time with the shell game because the money was better that way.

Judd:
You just had people bet and they thought they could beat you out? Just like the guys on Eighth Ave.—

Harry:
And Seventh Ave. and Sixth Ave. and Fifth Ave….

Judd:
And you made a lot of money doing that?

Harry:
Well, no. I made better money but I didn’t—too dangerous. I wasn’t really cut out for it. I wasn’t tough enough and, if it comes right down to it, I wasn’t black enough to be doing that kind of work. Because the mobs that were running were black mobs, and I never had a mob. I never had shills. I did rough hustling, what they call playing against the wall. I just played myself with the players so I would pay, I would make them shill. I would pay certain players and then take from others. But it’s a real rough way to do it. Sometimes it’s called dumb hustling.

Judd:
You were able to support yourself?

Harry:
Well, yeah, I made a living, but then I got my jaw broken so—

Judd:
How did that happen?

Harry:
A guy didn’t like where he found the pea. And that was—

Judd:
So was it a—

Harry:
It was a fix. There’s no way to play the game fair. Because the pea won’t stay under the shell.

Judd:
What kind of fix? How did you work that?

Harry:
The pea was not under the same shell where it started. Obviously, I was cheating the man. It should have been under that shell.

Judd:
So you just lift up the shells without him knowing?

Harry:
I can’t explain the technique, you know. But it’s a cheat and the fellow didn’t like it. It was just one punch. I didn’t even see him coming. He just was there and I was down on the ground. Somebody else took my money and left. So after I had my mouth wired shut for six weeks, I had a lot of time to think about what I should be doing. I’d always been a reasonably funny guy, so I decided to take a less serious, more comic approach to things. I went back out and did the shell game but it became more of a lampoon—a parody of the shell game. I created this character that I still have of a guy who is a little bit of a nincompoop—I’m poking fun at street hustlers. I didn’t make quite as much money as one would gambling, but it was a lot safer.

Judd:
You did this on the street?

Harry:
Yeah.

Judd:
So instead of people betting, you just passed around a hat?

Harry:
I would demonstrate how the game is played and I’d fool them, and uh, I’d do the shell game and then a couple of card things and then just pass the hat.

Judd:
And then how did the magic get into it?

Harry:
If you do sleight of hand without trying to cheat someone, that’s what magic is. A card trick is what a gambler does, only you’re not cheating
someone, you’re entertaining them. It’s the same technique, applied differently.

Judd:
Did you have training from anybody?

Harry:
Oh, from all sorts of people. I hung around these kinds of guys when I was a kid. But no formal training. I picked it up the same way most guys do. A lot of guys when they’re seven or eight, and they’re going through the variety of hobbies, will do magic for a while. Pretty much everybody starts around that age and then they stick with it or they don’t.

Judd:
What kind of childhood did you have if you were out on the street at fifteen?

Harry:
Fine. Fine. I was just anxious to make some money. We weren’t particularly rich.

Judd:
Where was this?

Harry:
I lived all over the country. We traveled. We never stayed anywhere much.

Judd:
What did your parents do?

Harry:
Well my mom and dad split when I was young and my mom hooked. She was a hooker, and that’s how I ended up meeting the people I did and learning what I learned.

Judd:
When did your act move into a club atmosphere?

Harry:
Oh, about four years ago. Ken Kragen asked me to open for Kenny Rogers in Las Vegas.

Judd:
Just off the street?

Harry:
Not off the street, I was playing the Magic Castle in L.A. He saw me there and asked me. I had not done much nightclub work. I was playing colleges in Texas, Arizona, and California. It was a lawn show—I would put up a tent and do a noon show and pass the hat. And then I would go to L.A. and play the Magic Castle. I haven’t played the streets since then.

Judd:
Not at all?

Harry:
Not at all.

Judd:
And after you got signed, what kind of work did you do after that?

Harry:
I started doing talk shows. Merv Griffin and John Davidson, Dinah Shore, Mike Douglas. And then last year I was signed to do
Cheers.
I did three episodes.

Judd:
Do you have an ongoing contract with
Cheers
to do it next year?

Harry:
I’m going to do at least one episode of
Cheers
, yeah. But we don’t start taping
Night Court
until October thirty-first, so I’ll have time to do at least one teaser. Not a major episode. I did one major episode for
Cheers.

Judd:
The poker game?

Harry:
Yeah. And I did several episodes where I just popped in for a teaser and I’ll do at least one of those next year.

Judd:
And wasn’t that, I guess that episode must have been, like, handwritten for you?

Harry:
Well, I wrote it. I didn’t write the script but I wrote the sting. I designed the game and the swindle for them. I told them who should cheat who at what time and that’s part of the work I do. I have a consultation company called the Left-Handed League and we advise scriptwriters on plots like that. So the League would, if you look at the credits, the technical consultation for that episode is by the Left-Handed League.

Judd:
Wait, you work for it or it’s yours?

Harry:
It’s my company. I am co-founder of it with a fellow named Martin Lewis, who is a British cheat, and a sleight of hand expert.

Judd:
So you’re doing many things. All grounds are covered, really.

Harry:
Oh yeah, I don’t know how long anything is going to last so I have to make sure I have something to do tomorrow.

Judd:
Are there any films that you are going to be starring in?

Harry:
I did a film called the
Escape Artist
for Francis Coppola. I had the title role.

Judd:
You were the escape artist?

Harry:
Yeah, a very small part because I’m dead during the film but I’m seen in flashbacks.

Judd:
I saw part of that. I saw a trailer—it got a good review with the two guys on Channel 11.

Harry:
Siskel and Ebert?

Judd:
Siskel and Ebert.

Harry:
They gave it a good review?

Judd:
They gave it a mediocre review.

Harry:
Well, it was never released nationwide. So it wasn’t that highly sought out.

Judd:
I saw a scene from it where it was at a party, the magician and he’s doing—I think flying through the air and disappearing, it was very strange.

Harry:
I wasn’t involved in the whole film, so I’m not sure. Was it the boy doing it? Or was it—

Judd:
It was a man.

Harry:
A man? Well that’s probably the uncle because what I did, I did the water torture stuff, the escape that Houdini did. The water.

Judd:
Did you do it for real?

Harry:
Oh yeah, I did it thirty times for real holding my breath in six hundred gallons of water, yeah.

Judd:
Oh my God.

Harry:
Yeah, my God.

Judd:
And is that how your character dies?

Harry:
I’m dead throughout the entire thing. Actually, he’s killed attempting a prison escape. A guard shoots him. And the kid’s aunt and uncle explain that he was shot accidentally while he was staging some publicity stunt but the kid finds out that his father was actually not a real well man. He was pathological. He couldn’t stand locks and he would open any lock
that he came across. And he was arrested for breaking and entering, essentially, and tried. Once he was in prison, he tried to escape because he couldn’t take locks and was shot trying to escape. And so the boy tries to duplicate his father’s feat and it’s all very convoluted. It was a real confusing film, which is why it’s going to be on cable any minute now.

Judd:
So you didn’t see the whole film?

Harry:
I’ve seen it on American Airlines but I fell asleep.

Judd:
That must say something for it.

Harry:
Well, you know. Off the record—no, not off the record, forget it. That’s the only film I made. I’ve read for a couple of films but I haven’t been taken on by them. I’m doing this very slowly. I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew and end up looking foolish.

Judd:
So you’re just doing your act?

Harry:
Well, my act and I’m breaking into acting very slowly.
Cheers
was a good first step because I got to write my own material.

Judd:
On
Cheers
, you basically played yourself.

Harry:
Yeah. And in
Night Court
my name is still Harry and I’m—my best friends are still three-card monte workers and I still have spring snakes hidden everywhere and joy buzzers, but I’m the judge.

Judd:
This is a new sitcom called
Night Court.

Harry:
Yeah, it’s by the guy who wrote
Barney Miller
for the last three seasons. Reinhold Weege. And it feels very much like
Barney Miller.
I’m the judge in a New York night court, and it’s the starring role.

Judd:
Do you think you’re going to get tied down if it’s a successful series?

Harry:
I wouldn’t mind. If it becomes a success, it will be a real joy to do it because it’s a quality show. I wouldn’t feel tied down at all. I would feel employed, you know.

Judd:
So for
Cheers
, they just spotted you and just saw your act?

Harry:
I’m not sure how it happened. I think somebody related to one of the Charles brothers—I took him at the shell game years ago. I got twenty
bucks off him or something. He remembered that and he saw me on
Mike Douglas.
But it is a very natural situation for a con man: a bar. Well, actually, when they brought me in, their suggestion was they wanted me to be an aspiring magician and I suggested, “Well, wouldn’t a con man be more natural in that setting?” What was unusual about it was, Harry on
Cheers
actually takes money from people and there’s something to despise in that and so making him likable—making a guy who is in essence a likable thief—there was the question of trade and practices. Can you present that kind of role model on TV? But then the poker episode really redeemed him because it showed that he would take a nickel here and a dime there, but when somebody’s in trouble, there’s enough Robin Hood in him that he will help people out. When he leaves with the money at the end of the game, you think,
What a jerk.