Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy (9 page)

Amy:
I’m only choosing and pitching what I’m interested in. If there is a great idea—something that I think that is kind of vulnerable and untouched, uncharted territory—I say, let’s do it. I try to think of the ideas that are the most awkward.

Judd:
What has been the most talked-about political sketch on your show so far?

Amy:
We did one about rape in the military.

Judd:
And does taking on a subject like that change the way you approach your work going forward? Does that inspire courage to write about different things?

Amy:
I’m going to pitch things that I think are funny, but I will also pitch things about subjects that I think are unfair. I do feel a responsibility to be exploring some issues and so I try to always stay up on that stuff, reading every article I can get my hands on, trying to stay up on what’s going on. I want to do something about the Equal Pay Act this season. I read every article on feminism.

Judd:
Not too long ago, you gave a speech at Gloria Steinem’s birthday party. Did people have a strong reaction to that?

Amy:
Yeah. I got asked to do a monologue the year before, for some event, I can’t remember what it was called. It was me and all these tiny actresses and I just felt like I needed to joke about it because we looked like an evolution chart or something. I felt like a big, blond monster, standing with a bunch of girls who had never seen semen before. But my speech really came off strong because I was actually talking about some real things, bad things that had happened to me—and the other speeches weren’t as hard. And so Gloria asked me to come talk the following year at her birthday party. So I wrote this speech about losing all my self-esteem in college, and a kind of painful night that I tried my best to make funny.

Judd:
What about it do you think connected with people?

Amy:
Just the feeling of losing all your confidence and feeling like you’re worthless because of how other people are treating you. And then having to realize that the real issue is actually how you’re treating yourself. I think that’s something most people have experienced, feeling like they don’t deserve love.

Judd:
Do you ever go back and read your own speech, to cheer yourself up?

Amy:
Yeah, and my friends will quote it to me.

Judd:
That must be a big change, to go from doing stand-up, just trying to get laughs, to realizing that people are paying attention to what you’re saying. And that they’re moved and inspired by certain things you say. It’s not just about being funny.

Amy:
I’m taking this responsibility seriously. I’m looking at it as an opportunity. What do I want to say? What have I really learned? Where am I, really? I’m not interested in just saying something for shock value anymore. I do feel more of a weight about the message that I’m sending because I know what it’s like to be on the other end of that and I don’t want to be in denial about what success means—and like how many people I’m reaching now. I want to make people feel better.

I remember watching Chris Rock’s act in the late eighties and thinking,
Not all of this guy’s jokes are perfect, but his best jokes are better than everybody else’s jokes by far.
And slowly, over the next decade or so, we all watched as his entire act became as great as his best jokes, and he ruled the comedy world.

When I started doing stand-up again in 2014, I spent the better part of four months at the Comedy Cellar in New York, waiting for my turn onstage, watching other comedians. I saw so many incredible performances, so many inspiring new voices and original acts. But I also came away from it thinking,
Chris Rock is not only the best comedian in the world, he is WAY better than everyone else. Period.

Judd Apatow:
It’s funny. We’ve been in the business for twenty or thirty years now, long enough to where, you know, we’ve seen the winds blow in both directions.

Chris Rock:
Oh, it’s unbelievable. If you put it in a movie, no one would believe it.

Judd:
Right.

Chris:
No one would be like, “Really?” You’re in a big movie, and suddenly, people call you up who haven’t talked to you in years. “Yeah, we’ve got to hang out! Come on the boat.” Whatever.

Judd:
“Come on the boat.”

Chris:
Get hot, you’re on the boat. Cool off, and you don’t get that boat invite like you used to.

Judd:
It’s almost impossible to keep success going because you have to stop at some point, to rest and learn something new. It’s essential. People’s interest in you goes away so quickly, but you have no choice but to step off the boat sometimes.

Chris:
Yeah, if you’re going to try to stay interesting.

Judd:
People don’t get that. In Hollywood, they think you going onstage to do a play means: Whatever happened to Chris Rock?

Chris:
Exactly. I mean, doing a play is literally the equivalent of: Oh, he’s doing open mics again.

Judd:
When was your last HBO special—2008?

Chris:
Yeah, about then.

Judd:
How do you decide when you’re in the mood to pursue stand-up again, and do a new special?

Chris:
To me, the key is, you got to ask yourself, what kind of comedian do you want to be? You can be a guy who plays every night or every week, the guy who has the same act, or maybe the same act with a tiny bit of turnover. Seinfeld and I always have this debate: the guy versus the act. You can keep the same act and work all the time, like Jerry does. But I don’t want to be that guy. I have nothing against that guy. Most guys I love are that guy.

Judd:
Like Leno. He never did a special.

Chris:
Leno, yeah. And Rickles. Most guys have the same act, they really do. But then you’ve got this other crew of guys—the Carlin/Pryor school—who never wanted people to know what they were going to say. And in order to make that work, you have to live life. You’ve got to live like a musician, basically. You go on the road and drop an album and then you go off and live life for a couple of years. You come back and, hey, the world’s changed a little bit. And so
you’ve
got to change a little bit.

Judd:
Who are the comedians that have had the most impact on you?

Chris:
Eddie Murphy. Even though the guy hasn’t been onstage in twenty-five years or whatever, he was really into the idea of: It’s got to be an
event
.
He’s the main influence. I got spoiled hanging around him at a young age. And from him, I came to realize that my words have to be an event. It has to be a big deal. It can be big. You know, I saw Chappelle at Radio City not too long ago. It’s like, you’re seeing me in the same place you see Prince; why can’t it be as good? Some guys look at it that way. When I was young, though, most guys didn’t think that way.

Judd:
Today, I feel like people put the special out, and then think they have to have the next act written, too, so they can tour off the special with a completely new act. That’s a crazy amount of work.

Chris:
I’ve never done that. I do a special. I tour for—until it’s literally like, “Okay, I’ve been everywhere.” But you want to leave some money on the table. The best advertisement you can have is for there to be a person out there that
didn’t
get to see your show. That motherfucker’s like, “Oh my God. You’ve got to leave a few of those in every city.” Once you get to that point, it’s like, “Okay, let’s do the special now. Let’s film it. Let’s put it on HBO.” And that’s it. And hopefully it’s good enough that you don’t have to work for the next three years or whatever. Hopefully it’s good enough that it plays. If you get people’s attention as a stand-up, you don’t really have to do anything for a while. That special will last.

Judd:
Do you get the urge to do stand-up again because you feel like the culture has changed and you have something new to say? Or is it just, like, “Okay, I guess it’s time to start thinking about a special again”?

Chris:
It comes from having something to say. It comes from being a new person. Have you lived enough life? Are you seeing the world differently? It can be something as simple as getting up onstage and talking about your kids, you know. I didn’t really talk about my kids in my last special, but the special before that one, I was talking about Lola being born and keeping her off the pole. You know what I mean? So if I decide to talk about her tomorrow, twelve
years
will have passed. I’ll be talking about a thirteen-year-old kid. You’re talking about a different person.

Judd:
Suddenly the stripper joke’s not as silly.

Chris:
I have two daughters. That joke is never silly.

Judd:
And then, the older your kids get, you have to think about their awareness of your act. My wife is going to see me do stand-up tonight. We’ve been together for nineteen years, and she has never seen me perform live. She’s only seen a video of me doing stand-up once, and that was like the first week when I was hitting on her. And my older daughter, too. She has never seen me do stand-up. She’s about to turn seventeen. And half of my act is about her.

Chris:
Wow. That’s my dream, that I can stay big long enough for my kids to come see me, with their friends, and it’s a cool thing. It’s not charity.

Judd:
How aware are they of what you do? Do they go on YouTube when you’re not looking and watch?

Chris:
They must. I mean, the oldest one must. I’m sure when she’s at her friend’s house or whatever. When I pick them up from school, I can tell every boy has seen everything I’ve done. They’re way too nice to me. They talk to me like I’m Mingus or something. Like I’m Monk. They’re freaking.

Judd:
Do you ever think about changing your act as your kids get older, to help them digest it?

Chris:
Nah. I’m not going that far. I always say I’ve got kids like Eminem’s got kids. Having kids hasn’t seemed to affect his act.

Judd:
It’s funny, I’ve been going through your career, just looking at all the stuff you’ve done—and it struck me, how you seem to have done everything. I mean, I didn’t realize that you wrote a memoir—in 1997!

Chris:
I wouldn’t call it a memoir, but yeah.

Judd:
Okay, but you’ve been around a long time.

Chris:
I try never to brag but I’m probably the only person who has been on
60 Minutes
twice and isn’t dead.

Judd:
That’s hilarious. But you’ve done everything from
Beverly Hills Cop
to
Lethal Weapon
to some records. Wasn’t your first album a rap album?

Chris:
No, my first album was a comedy album. I put out a comedy album eight years before I got on
SNL
. At one point, I did have a record deal,
though. I had a deal for a rap record before I had a deal for a comedy record. I used to rap. I used to be a DJ. I sucked at it. I sucked at rapping. I sucked at DJing.

Judd:
What’s your connection to hip-hop? Are there rappers you’ve been close with?

Chris:
All the old-school guys, yeah. We’re like the same age. Me and Run are literally the same age and we’ve lived near each other. Jay, Doug E. Fresh, Flash is an old friend. MC Lyte, Kid ’n Play, Latifah, Busta. We’re all the same age, hung out at the same clubs. It’s like we went to high school together, in a way. I’ve known Queen Latifah for twenty-five years—as long as I’ve known Sandler or any of those guys. Now we see each other at funerals.

Judd:
It’s freaky.

Chris:
Yeah. When I was on
SNL
, and even when I started doing stand-up, there were no young black stand-ups around. George Wallace was it. George Wallace, Mike Ivy. No one was hanging out with me. Everyone was like, “Get away from me, kid.” So I would do sets and then I would go to the Latin Quarter or wherever the younger black people were at—and they were mostly these rap clubs. There was nothing else. Stand-up was—me and Sandler were younger than everybody for a long time. It was not a thing a twenty-year-old would do.

Judd:
How does it feel hanging out in the clubs now?

Chris:
I’m the oldest guy at the club every night now. Sometimes the guys are into me and sometimes they’re just humoring me. Sometimes I can tell they think I suck or I’m a hack or it’s like, “Fuck you and your Maserati out front.” I can feel it sometimes. You know.

Judd:
It is weird to be this elder statesman. You feel this need to really
show
them why you’re in this position.

Chris:
Oh, I totally feel that. I love going to the Cellar and spanking the shit out of everybody. I love going there, at my age, and having an act that’s better than the guys who are fifteen or twenty years younger than me. I’m like, “This is my seventh special. What’s your fucking excuse? I got rid of six hours of shit. Why aren’t you funny yet?”

Judd:
Do you feel like comedians have gotten better? Are people funnier now?

Chris:
I don’t know. In some ways, they are better. There’s more comedy to choose from, I would say. Hannibal Buress is kind of weird and Demetri Martin is kind of weird and, you know, Sarah Silverman has a totally different act than Kathy Griffin. So in that aspect, yes, I think there’s more variety in comedy today. People are talking about different things. On the other hand, I don’t know if comedians know how to work an audience anymore.

Judd:
Yeah.

Chris:
You know, that thing where it’s just like, it literally doesn’t matter who’s in front of you. I find more and more comedians complain about the crowd these days. Or they’re always asking, “How’s the crowd?” And I’m like, “Why do you give a fuck about the crowd? I mean, if you kill tonight, is the crowd going to get the credit? And so don’t give it to them if you bomb. It’s not them, it’s you.” But I don’t know. We have a lot
more
comedy, I would say that. There’s a lot of risk taking.

Judd:
Are you still engaged, creatively? Do you still feel as enthusiastic about your work as you always have? Are you on fire right now, or do you have a sense of fatigue, of just,
Wow, I’ve done this for a long time. It’s hard?

Chris:
The only time I ever feel fatigue is the fact that it’s really hard being up with kids early in the morning and being at a club late at night.

Judd:
It’s brutal.

Chris:
I’ve got to make myself take a nap during the day if I’m going to properly do stand-up. So I do feel that fatigue. But as far as creativity? I honestly feel the energy even more now, I think. It’s like that Tiger thing. Tiger is chasing Jack Nicklaus. He just is. And what is it, how many Masters does he need? I’m chasing Richard Pryor, man. I have not done—I still haven’t done my version of his Long Beach concert. I’ve done some good stuff, but Richard Pryor in Long Beach? It’s the greatest piece of stand-up ever done. It just is. I haven’t got there, in my act. I got some
stuff—you know, some of it is good and some of it is good in comparison to other people of my era. Pryor’s special was kind of late in his career. He’s not a kid doing it. That’s what I’m going for.

Judd:
What was your relationship like with Pryor?

Chris:
I met him on the set of
Harlem Nights.
It was quick and funny. I was just hanging out and we were talking about Eddie and he was like, “Yeah, he’ll get married as soon as he find a pussy that fits.” It’s like
exactly
what you want to hear from Richard Pryor. But I had no career then. I might as well been the water boy. I met him again, years later, when I was getting ready to do the
Bring the Pain
special. At that point, he was in a wheelchair, full-on MS—helped onstage, helped offstage. We were both performing at the Comedy Store every night for a month, and I would follow him.

Judd:
Wow.

Chris:
And a lot of nights he would actually watch my set and he would say nice things afterwards. One of the last times I saw him was—oh, I wish I could find this picture. The last time I saw him, he came and saw me at the Universal Amphitheatre. I was coming offstage and there’s Richard Pryor, in a wheelchair, telling me I did a great job. It’s one of the highlights of my life. One of the greatest stand-ups—you know, the Willie Mays of comedy. You know, Pryor’s Willie Mays, and Cosby’s Hank Aaron. Because Hank Aaron has more hits, more home runs, more RBIs than anybody. He’s number one or two in every freaking category.

Judd:
I was listening to the Richard Pryor box set that they put out last year. It has one disk, which has all sorts of odds and ends on it, and there’s a lot of stand-up that he did about being sick. It’s remarkable.