Judd: Okay. (Laughs)
Stephen: But also, when I was a kid, we had a tragedy in my family. My father and two of my brothers, Peter and Paul, the two closest in age to me, died in a plane crash. I was ten years old, and my mother, who had always been a very religious person—not overtly related to their death—would say to me—if anything was wrong with my life, if anything was going wrong—she would say, “Look at this in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity?” In other words, don’t worry about this little thing.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: And that light of eternity is another way of looking at everything. See it in the light of eternity. Don’t see this as your momentary worry. So, that helped me not worry, and because my father and brothers had died, what could worry you more than that? From that point on, I never worked in school again. I maybe did my homework six times from age ten to eighteen.
Judd: Wow.
Stephen: I barely graduated. I just read a lot of books, so I incidentally learned enough to bullshit by. There was no threat that anyone could hold over me. Nothing seemed important. So that made me think differently about almost everything that normally happened to a child. What are you going to threaten me with? What could a teacher possibly threaten me with?
Judd: Your mom sounds wonderful.
Stephen: She was a lovely lady.
Judd: It’s a great piece of wisdom, and her strength must have been ridiculous to be able to communicate that to you in a way that it landed. Because some kids—their parents would look at the big picture and then go take drugs and disappear.
Stephen: Well, I did take drugs.
Judd: (Laughs)
Stephen: But my mom was not bitter. She did not become a bitter person. She had an excuse to be, and she did not. She stayed grateful for life. And her example kept me from—I was a broken kid, don’t get me wrong, but I did not compound that by feeling guilty about not doing work, which is actually beside the point. The real point is it forced me to look at the world differently because, suddenly, the value system of checks and balances against the young mind did not mean anything to me anymore.
Judd: I can sense that spirit in your work. I noticed it when you performed for George Bush at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006, that level of confidence and not caring. I don’t think many people have that. I watched Leno do it once and he looked exhausted and nervous, and he had a rough set. Actually, what made me laugh the most is that he had to sit next to the first lady for like two hours before he had to do his set, and it was fun to watch them run out of things to talk about.
Stephen: I sat next to Helen Thomas. And she said, “So, are you going to do all of your jokes?”
Judd: (Laughs)
Stephen: And she goes, “How did you like the party beforehand?” Because there’s this big party beforehand, with the president, a few cabinet members, heads of news organizations, and maybe the Super Bowl quarterback, you know.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: And my mom, who loved the president, was there, with my brothers and sister. And Helen Thomas says, “Did you like the party?” I say, “I liked that party, yeah. It was nice. My mom had a good time.” And she said, “Now, after that party, are you going to do all of your jokes? Because that’s a smart party. There’s a lot of people—I’ve sat next to a lot of comedians who are cowed by that party.”
Judd: Oh, wow.
Stephen: Because you’re there, you’re being chummy with the guy you’re going to be making fun of. So I say, “Oh, yeah, I know what that means, but I think I can do it because I’m not doing it, my character is, and my character loves the guy.” That actually helped a lot.
Judd: I’ve always thought there should be a documentary about that performance.
Stephen: Well, there’s a lot to talk about.
Judd: Looking back on it, after 9/11, everyone was afraid to say the president didn’t know what he was doing or was making terrible mistakes. And that felt like the first time that someone said, “Oh, by the way, this guy might not know what the fuck he’s doing at all.”
Stephen: I wouldn’t say I was the first person to do it, because Jon certainly was doing it on his show.
Judd: But not to his face.
Stephen: Well, you don’t get an opportunity to do that very often.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: You know, there’s a woman I get my coffee from every morning. She is not a native to our country, she wasn’t born here. And she said to me the week of that dinner, she said, “Stephen, you look so tired, why do you look so tired?” I go, “Well, Anna, I been working late after the show. I’m writing a script to get ready for the Correspondents’ Dinner. I’m going to perform for the president.” She said, “You perform in front of the president?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll be like five feet from him.” She goes, “But you’re a satirist. You’re a critic. You’re going to do your jokes right next to him?” And I said, “Yeah.” She took my face in her hands and said, “This is a good country.”
Judd: Did you have a sense of the importance of the moment in the moment?
Stephen: Oh, no. Hell no. I knew what it was. I was thrilled to do it, because I knew I’d never be—I knew I’d never get this shot again. I just wanted to get to the next joke and the next joke and the next joke.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: I did ten minutes on the president and I did ten minutes on the press, too, which people forget. The last ten minutes were on the people in the room. And it was—there was something you were talking about earlier that made me think of the story about the party beforehand. Oh, I know what it was: It was feeling nervous sitting next to the first lady before you go in.
Judd: Right.
Stephen: After Helen Thomas asked me if I was going to do all my jokes, she looks down the table and the president is sitting there with his cards, about to go up and do his bit. And she goes, “He’s going over his cards, too.”
Judd: (Laughs)
Stephen: I said, “Oh, Helen, I can’t look at him right now.” And she goes, “Why not?” And I said, “Because he can’t be a person. He has to be his ideas.” He has to be his policies. I feel for another performer, but he has to be the object—he has to represent his policies and the actions of the administrations for these jokes to come out of my mouth. I can’t make a joke about a guy worried about his bit at a banquet.
Judd: When you did the routine, were you registering the reaction from him or the first lady?
Stephen: No, no. I know I’ve said this to some people before, but C-SPAN is not an entertainment company, and they don’t mic the room. So, what you didn’t know, if you watched at home, was that a lot of material was landing.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: It just wasn’t landing for the people on the dais, or the people in the front row, who were all from the news organizations who need to not piss off the people on the dais. But, you know, as a comedian, if a thousand people are laughing, that sounds like a lot of people. That sounds like bacon frying. It’s a big crowd. There were three thousand people in that room, so if a thousand of them laughed, it still felt like a great response.
Judd: Yeah.
Stephen: So, I did not feel like I was grinding my way through the indifference of a hostile audience. I didn’t think I was throwing Molotov cocktails. And that wasn’t my intention, either. I was there to do jokes, just like I did them on the show. I didn’t do anything different there than I did on the show.