Judd: But don’t you ever get bored of it?
Jay: I get a kick out of doing it. I change it a little bit on a nightly basis, try out new jokes and whatnot. The whole idea is to keep coming with new things and new ideas. No, it doesn’t get boring for me. I really like it.
Judd: A lot of your act is about television. Television commercials. What do you think about television? Do you think it’s really bad, because it seems like you really just—I mean you must watch it—
Jay: No I don’t. I mean, again: The whole trick to being a successful comedian is to make fun of the things you like. Occasionally when I really go after something I don’t like—it can come off vicious. People sense a hostility. I’m an average person, I watch a lot of TV. Admittedly, there’s a lot of stupid things on TV, but I have to watch it to make fun of it. And the fact that I’m talking about a show like Manimal or some incredibly stupid program like this—everybody laughs. They must have seen the show, too. So you find a common bond with people. The whole thing to do in comedy is finding a common bond with people in the audience. Everybody has a TV, so you talk about TV. If everybody had elephants, you’d talk about elephants. If you go right to television, old, young, right away everybody understands where you’re coming from.
Judd: Once, on Letterman, you just took out a TV Guide.
Jay: Yeah, that was the last time. I started reading about shows that were on.
Judd: And you just opened it, ’cause it looked like you were just—
Jay: Well, I had looked through the TV Guide earlier that day. That was an example of what I was talking about a minute ago. The real trick to doing the comedy, the real trick to knowing if you’re growing or not is—like, when I look at my first Tonight Show, there were a lot of jokes in it. I mean, joke jokes. Then one day I was sitting in a restaurant with a bunch of comedian friends, after a show, and everybody’s talking. And I was telling some stupid story about something that happened on the road. It’s one of those stories that didn’t have a beginning or an end. It just had a lot of—a lot of middle stuff. And everybody’s laughing. And I see, Gee, they’re laughing harder with this than anything else I do in my act. So the next night onstage I just got up and started talking, telling that story. You know, I said to the audience, “This doesn’t have a beginning or an end. I went into this store…” And everybody was laughing the same way. And I realized, Ooh, here is a major breakthrough for me. Because here’s a chance to just talk and be funny as opposed to sitting down trying to think up a routine and how to structure it. And that’s how you grow.
Judd: How do you handle hecklers?
Jay: The trick to working with hecklers is to give them enough rope so they hang themselves. I like a good heckler. Somebody who’s intelligent, who I speak to and they speak back, and I say something to them, and they say something to me. Everybody gets yeah yeah—those kind of hecklers. And those are awful, but the real trick is working in inverse proportion to the heckler. For example, if I have a guy that says, “Hey, what are you doing?” You know, some real dumb-sounding guy. Then I go, “Well, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, obviously an English professor here tonight.” Boom, boom, boom, boom. You just work the opposite. You try to throw them off guard. And most hecklers will back down. The second time you say, “What’s that, sir?” (Timidly) “Oh, ah, I just want to say you’re a jerk.” I like to have fun with them. I’m never hostile with anybody, unless it’s somebody who is just totally abusive. Then you can go for the throat.
Judd: What would be your strangest experiences in comedy?
Jay: My strangest experiences? Oh, I don’t know. God, I mean there’s thousands of them. I used to work the Playboy Club in New York and they would give a report card after each show. You know, like have a guy like Vinny from the Bronx: “Hey, you get a D tonight. I didn’t think you were that funny.” And they would tell you how they would mail these to Mr. Hefner to look at, you know, that kind of thing. So I’m working there one time and they—you know, they get tour groups in there—and they’ve got three hundred Portuguese and two interpreters. Nobody tells me they’re Portuguese. You know, I don’t know. So I go out there and I start my act, and I hear these two guys going, “Heh, heh, heh.” I hear two guys laughing and the rest of the audience is just staring at me. I said, “How you folks doing?” And they would smile and nod. But they didn’t speak English or anything. So I’m out there, like, this is unbelievable at this point. Finally one of the interpreters yells out that they’re Portuguese. So I come offstage and Vinny the room director says, “You get an F.” I said, “What’re you talking about?” He says, “You get an F, pal. Nobody laughed tonight except them two guys.” And I said, “Come on, they didn’t speak English.” He goes, “Well, you shoulda done Portuguese material.” I said, “Yeah, you’re right, it’s my fault.” And I have to sign this thing that says F on it. It was the stupidest experience of my life.
Judd: So, where do you want to go with this? You’re working a lot now. Is there something else that you want to be doing?
Jay: No, I like doing this. I enjoy it. I have a good time with it. If something else comes along and someone offers something else, I’ll try that for a while. But there’s nothing I enjoy doing more than this. I find it as challenging as anything else you can do. And I really haven’t reached a peak where I’m famous enough to go, Well, everybody’s seen the act, let’s try something else. When that happens, maybe I’ll try something else.
This interview took place in the office at Rascals Comedy Club in West Orange, New Jersey, in 1984.
JEFF GARLIN (2013)
In the late eighties, when I was on the road as a struggling stand-up comedian, I had the pleasure of opening a few times for a young guy named Jeff Garlin. His act was loose and weird and improvisational in a way I could never hope to replicate. He looked so happy up there. He seemed to enjoy getting huge laughs as much as he enjoyed creating awkward moments. And when you’re on the road with somebody, going from club to club and town to town, you get to know that person pretty well. And nobody’s more fun to be on the road with than Jeff. We would be driving down some small-town street and there would be a fast-food restaurant on every single corner, and Jeff would say, “I wonder if there’s a fast-food restaurant around here?” We would drive some more, and there would be seven banks in a row, and Jeff would say, “Do you think they have a bank in this town?”
Jeff, of course, would go on to be one of the minds behind Curb Your Enthusiasm and one of the stars of The Goldbergs, but to me he’ll always be this special individual who is somehow able to make something new happen every moment you’re with him.
Judd Apatow: Is it important to you if your kids are smart?
Jeff Garlin: No. I mean, yes, I hope they’re smart and self-reliant so they can enjoy life—but they’ll probably be more miserable if they’re smart. If they’re stupid, they’re going to have a great time. Because really, everything is created for stupid people. Books, movies, TV shows for the most part—they’re for stupid people. So, they would be much happier if they were stupid. But I think both my boys are going to be miserable just like their father.