
To say that comedian Paul Provenza has been around would be an understatement.
He was still a high school student when he made his 3am standup debut at an open mic night hosted by none other than Jay Leno (then just an up and coming comic himself). Since then he’s appeared on all the big late-night shows, including David Letterman’s two shows, The Tonight Show (with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno), The Daily Show, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!.
He even hosted his own late-night show on what would become Comedy Central, where he welcomed comedy legends the likes of Steve Allen, Phyllis Diller, and Sam Kinison alongside then-newcomers like Ellen DeGeneres, Norm Macdonald, Bob Odenkirk, and Larry Wilmore.
This week in part one of a two-part episode of Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff, Provenza discusses preparing for his killer first Carson set, almost getting Johnny Carson to appear in his Aristocrats documentary, and appearing with a then-unknown Chris Rock on an episode of The Morton Downey Jr. Show.
Provenza also shares stories of opening for Diana Ross (could not have been nicer) and Paul Anka (he was told not to make eye contact), and hiring Jon Stewart to open for him at the taping of his 1990 Showtime comedy special.
Click the embed below to listen now, or find Inside Late Night on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Visit Paul Provenza’s YouTube channel to watch clips from his various projects over the years, including rare video from his early 90s Comedy Channel series, Comics Only.
Show Transcript
Mark Malkoff: Paul Provenza. It’s been a while.
Paul Provenza: It has. And I have been, in lieu of actually talking to you, I’ve been listening to your podcast and loving it, loving it.
Oh, thank you so much. No, I appreciate that.
You’re Rain Man, aren’t you? Things like, uh, comedy and late night, well, late night, for sure, you definitely, man, it’s a beautiful thing to behold.
I’m good with Saturday Night Live, certain years, and I’m good with, um, with Letterman and Carson, for sure, but somebody like Dan Pasternack, when you go general, oh my goodness, there’s these guys, there’s Arthur and Ian, they can do the SNL hosts in order with dates, the musical guest. I, I can only do that for like maybe five or six seasons, which is still like, or would it be a great world if that had any value at all, but it does for our lives somehow.
Here’s the thing. Okay. Everything that I’ve been doing in my entire creative career for the last easily 25 years, I’ve been doing for me at the age of 14, everything I choose to do, I sit back and it goes through this filter of when I was 14 years old and I was obsessed and consumed by comedy. What would this have done to me? And so everything I do is about that. Your podcast is, is one of those. If I had heard your podcast when I was 14, 15 years old, learning about comedy, immersing myself in comedy, all that sort of stuff, I would have gone nuts.
I would have as well, because it was a giant mystery to anything and how somebody got on Carson and Saturday Night Live and all that stuff. It was just, there was no blueprint back then. But I mean, you’re, you know, you’re growing up, you’re going, you grew up in the city, in New York City, and you know, going to Bronx High School of Science, and then You were like 15 or 16 when you did your first open mic or your first spot at the improv and it was, Jay Leno was actually the, the host, right? It was like three in the morning or something like that? Wasn’t it like really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, um, uh, the great thing about this story for me personally was that I don’t know how many years later I was a guest on The Tonight Show when he was hosting and got to tell him this story, which was great. Uh, you know, back then we’re talking, we’re talking like mid to early seventies at this point, you know, I’m like 15, 14, 16 in that range there. And I used to go to the Improv as a patron because I used to hear comedians on TV all the time talk about, oh yeah, the Improv, Improv, Improv. And, uh, so I started going to the improv just as a patron and back in the seventies there, and especially in the early seventies there, they didn’t really check ID. They weren’t really concerned with things like that. So we’d sit there and have a two drink minimum myself and a friend or, you know, or two here or there. My cousin was like my big brother and we’d watch, you know, Franken and Davis and Gilbert Gottfried and Richard Belzer and Elayne Boosler and Ed Bluestone. And I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. Um, Andy Kaufman used to pop in, you know, we’d see him doing stuff, doing weird, nutty things. Lenny Schultz. I mean, icons, ike real icons today to the average audience comedy fan, but also icons to the, you know, people in comedy that maybe the general populace doesn’t really know about. I don’t know how many people know about Lenny Schultz, but what a phenomenon, you know, so I was a kid going to the shows and then I learned about the, you know, open mic process and, um, the way it worked back then was, uh, you literally started lining up at like eight o’clock in the morning and, uh, you waited on line in position until they opened the doors at like around maybe seven at night and you got your position in the lineup. So you would literally be there for, you know, eight hours waiting to get just to get a number. So that was, uh, one night that I was doing, I think it was the first night and I got a really, really, really late number. And around like three o’clock in the morning, I still hadn’t gone on. The audience had dwindled. There were very few people there. Mostly the other comedians still waiting to go on and their friends, you know, came to support them, whatever. I still had a few more numbers to go because back then The Improv used to stay open until 4 AM, which is legal curfew or. The last audience member left, and it was usually closing at four because there were always a couple of hookers or pimps that would come in and sit in the back and drink just to, you know, get out of the cold. Uh, so there was always almost always somebody there until 4 in the morning. So, uh, it was about 3 o’clock in the morning and Jay was the emcee and, and by the way, I have to tell you that Jay Leno. I know this is a lot of people don’t like to hear this, but Jay Leno is one of the best standup comedians to ever set foot on a nightclub stage. He was unbelievable. And so he was hosting the open mics that night. And I went up to him and I said, uh, Mr. Leno. Uh, it’s not my turn yet. There’s a few more numbers to go, but I have to be in school in about three hours, so I was wondering if maybe you could slip me in early? And he laughed he chuckled and he did and he brought me up Early the next day and that was my my first time ever doing stand up on a stage.
It’s incredible Yeah, you know the thing with Jay is interesting is that took him a while to debut on, was ii, I think it was 1977 on Carson, and he got turned down a bunch of times, and I know Steve Martin recommended him, and then Johnny saw him at, um, um, was it Comedy Store, The Improv, and just said, you know, you’re not ready, but Leno was the star of the club. It just Jay said he was just so, you know, like, kind of, um, you know, big with physicality and, you know, just frenetic energy and stuff, if that’s the word and…
I wouldn’t call it frenetic, but he was definitely a performer. You know, he wouldn’t stand there and tell jokes. His big closing bit at the time was this Elvis thing that came out of nowhere. And he, he inhabited and looked exactly like, you know, like we do this thing with his hair in the front and he twisted into, you know, that, that Elvis curl there. And, uh, uh, it just blew the audience’s away.
I don’t know if this is true, but I heard that Elvis, the only two impressions he really liked were Andy Kaufman and Leno, but I don’t know if he actually did see, uh, Leno do it, but I, that’s what I, yeah, I heard.
But I’m telling you, Leno’s stand up was unbelievable. I mean, he was a powerhouse. It was all funny and smart and engaging and, and just, and, and it was just beautiful. Boom. I mean, every punchline, every bit was just boom. He was phenomenal. Uh, you know, it’s a shame that most people only know him from The Tonight Show where he was, you know, very, very narrow parameters. And he wasn’t really Jay Leno. You know, he was Jay Leno, the company man doing NBC’s job, which I don’t say as a criticism, that was his work ethic. You know, he was Boston blue collar working class. You know, he was doing the job. He was, he was hired to do.
And he got it to number one. It’s just interesting. If people go back and I don’t know, there aren’t a lot of clips, but before they made the announcement, he was going to get The Tonight Show. And he was just the permanent guest host. He definitely was more edgy. He would insult the guest. Sometimes I talked to actress Elizabeth Ashley and she was like, wasn’t happy with how with James something he’s he had said. And I went back and I was like, wow, it was a little bit different. I don’t I don’t know if it would have worked if he would have kept that even inheriting that Carson audience where Johnny’s manners were just, you know, impeccable for the most part.
His job was to take the show to number one.
And he succeeded wildly with the ratings.
And he succeeded wildly. So whatever, whatever, you know. Whatever choices he made he did them because he’s he’s a guy who delivers what is asked of him I I don’t like the Jay Leno bashing that you hear a lot from comedians, you know, especially younger comedians who don’t know Jay’s history and it didn’t see his his rise Jay was great and he has been a huge, huge supporter of comedy his entire life. And you know, again, this thing about being a company man has negative connotations and that’s fine, but really he was just doing what he was hired to do. There came a point where they started using standups less and less and less, and a lot of that has to do with, I know you spoke to somebody on one of the episodes, you spoke to somebody who talked about how NBC started getting minute by minute ratings, and they could actually track when the audience was happy and not happy, when they were tuning away, when they would come out, and they found that the standup actually drove people away. Uh, you know, unless it’s a big star, you know, stand up or Robin Williams, Steve Martin, you know, whatever, uh, the stand up actually drove people away. So he was like, okay, let’s cut back on the stand ups, not because he didn’t love stand ups. And if it were, if those parameters weren’t in place, he would have a stand up on every show because he loves comedians. He has been stand up’s biggest champion and uh, anyway enough about belittle. I know I just like him and I hate that.
He’s always been very uh nice to me. Yeah, he wouldn’t come on my Carson podcast, but I was able to talk to him a couple years ago for a project I’m i’m doing. Do you recall that la times article? It was like 1983 where you were featured with Jim McCawley and he was he was going to comedy clubs and He almost got fired because of this piece and he praises you. It basically follows Jim around the club commenting on different comics, and…
That was actually, uh, Lawrence Christenn wrote that piece.
Was it? What happened is, is that he did this piece. And this is according to Jim, that Peter Lassally and Fred de Cordova, I guess, weren’t happy with the piece. And I don’t know if it’s just because he got all this press. I mean, it was huge, big article, and I just don’t know if they were just they were happy they wanted the press or whatever but they weren’t happy and then according to McCawley, Dave Tebet wanted um McCawley fired but Johnny just laughed and thought it was he’s, like, it’s fine Jim apologized for it but basically he was saying why some of the comedians didn’t work and why you work this is what I don’t understand. You know, McCawley, some people loved him, some people, you know, I mean, he had a really tough job, but like, I only really know, for example, two comedians, you and Steven Wright, that he invited out on his boat, do you recall when you almost thought you might die on his boat? Did that ring a bell?
Yes, yes it does, yeah. Uh, I went out on his boat. That came about because he found out that I was a scuba diver. And he also was a diver. And he said, oh, you should come diving with me. And you know, there’s really not that many opportunities to just pick up and go diving on a weekend. You know, for me, it would always be a trip somewhere. But he was like, yeah, just meet me at this pier and we’ll go out on my boat. We’ll go out to the Channel Islands. And we did and we went diving and I, and I almost got killed because, uh, all of a sudden these seals came around me and swirling around and it became very, very disorienting and all of a sudden the swell started throwing me into these rocks and I put my head up and I’d be shouting, Hey, hey, hey, hey. And then all the seals would pop their heads up and they look like people in scuba hoods barking like crazy. So nobody could hear me. I couldn’t hear anybody but barking. And, uh, yeah, it was a pretty hairy thing. We went diving through the kelp forests and everything. Um, but I think I only did that with him once or twice. It wasn’t like a, you know, we weren’t like pal pals and it’s just like, Oh, here’s a guy that I like and he scuba dives. Let’s go diving, you know? Um, but, uh, Jim McCawley got a lot of flack from comics because he would tell them what to do and comics are, you know, in their DNA, they don’t like to be told what to do and they do their thing. Uh, I happened to be pretty young. I mean, I was maybe like 23 or something like that on my first Tonight Show shot. And that article was being written at the time that I was prepping for my first Tonight Show shot. So the journalist was coming with Jim McCawley to watch me do my set and in the office talking to him and stuff like that. And I found that Jim’s advice was I mean, basically, I don’t think he said it in these words, but Jim McCawley basically said to me, you know how to do stand up. I know how to do stand up on The Tonight Show. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but and I was like, okay, I know it’s it’s different. You know, things have to change. And so he worked on a set with me and we put together some things and then I would go out and I would try it, you know, a few times a night, do six minutes at various… Comedy Store, The Improv, Laugh Factory, whatever. I’m not sure if the Laugh Factory was open yet, but, um, and he would call and check in, you know, like a week before the show, he’d say, how’s it going? I’d say it’s going great. Uh, I think we got a good set going here. And then like two, three days before I was supposed to do the show, I called him. I said, Jim, I’m freaking out. It’s dying. It’s dying. I’m doing the exact same set and it’s dying and he goes that’s because it’s ready for television I was like, this f*cking weird. And uh, uh, um, sure enough I went on and it was a monstrous set and largely because of the way jim helped me Put this set together and things he chose to leave out things. He thought if you go from this to this and that to that, you get a nice flow and it absolutely blew me away. And so on my first shot, Ed McMahon came up to me afterwards and he said, that’s the best firsst appearance I’ve ever seen since Freddie Prinze. I know most of you people listening don’t know who Freddie Prinze was. I don’t know much about him, but, um, he was a phenomenon. His first shot was like, you know, life changing. Um, so it was a great compliment from Ed. And Johnny came back to talk to me and everything, and I found out afterwards that Jim had stacked it in my favor in a big way. Now, Johnny was howling, like, at one point. You know, I can see Johnny out of the corner of my right eye, the band in the corner of my left eye, they’re banging, banging saxophones on the, on the plexiglass. They were howling because Johnny was, it was, I was getting bigger laughs because the audience was watching Johnny go crazy over some of the stuff that I was doing. At one point he spins out of his chair and he starts banging on the, uh, you know, on the, the platform. I swear, I was like, I was like, what is happening? It was an out of body experience for me. But it turns out I had closed with what was very trendy thing at the time about designer jeans. Okay, so we’re talking about early 80s and I had this bit about Gloria Vanderbilt and Gloria Vanderbilt jeans and Gloria Vanderbilt would would appear in the commercials and she was. Basically, I did this bit about Gloria Vanderbilt and how really who wants to take advice from her, and she’s had so many facelifts. She has another one. She’s going to have a goatee, which they actually let me say on the air, which I couldn’t believe. Anyway, it turns out Johnny’s, then most-current ex wife was a very good friend of Gloria Vanderbilt. And so he had spent a lot of time in his life with Gloria Vanderbilt and he hated her and didn’t tell me this, but he made this the closing bit and it made Johnny go nuts, he loved it. And so it was phenomenal. So I have nothing but good things to say about Jim McCawley and Jim McCawley’s judgment. But that’s just me. Everybody has their own journey with him, but you know, I thought he was, I thought he knew exactly how to work with me for sure.
I was watching your 1983 debut on Carson and it’s one of those things where it’s like, you know, there are, some people it’s it’s not a long list at all where they were called over to the couch and a lot of it it has to do with if they have time if they’re behind, or he needs to get a guest on he won’t do that but the second best thing after that and this again is a very very small group of people and i can name them that johnny gets up from his desk and gives a handshake which you get, I mean it’s you, Gabe Kaplan who killed, Louis Anderson, Maureen Murphy who then yeah did the show like 12 times and yeah Johnny was a big fan there weren’t a lot. I can maybe think of maybe one or two more people but to even get that is you That says a lot.
It was amazing. And he actually said to me after the show, he came, he came into my dressing room. We talked quite a bit after the show. In fact, he gave me some tags for some bits, uh, uh, say, I have to say, I don’t remember exactly what they were, what the bits were, but for years I did them and sometimes they work and sometimes didn’t, and if they didn’t work, I would just tell the audience. I don’t care if you like that. Johnny Carson wrote that for me, f*ck you. Um, uh, yeah, no, he just loved it. And he said to me. He said, I wanted to bring you over to the couch so much, he said, but I couldn’t, because Art Pepper was on the show, and he said, I bumped him three nights in a row, and he has to be back in New Orleans to do a gig, and I had to put him on, so I couldn’t bring you over to the couch. So what he did instead was, he came over to me at the atar. The, you know, at the, uh, the mark for standups, he came to me and shook my hand on camera and through the commercial. So, yeah, so, uh, you know, that’s what I have a lot of these mini Oscars where it’s like, I don’t, I die knowing that that’s what happened with Johnny. I don’t care if anybody else knows, but I take that to my grave as a little mini Oscar, my own personal little, you know, Oscar kind of thing. Uh, so it was just great. It was great. It also resulted in the single regret I have in my entire career. I don’t regret anything except one thing. And it was, they called me and asked me to come back on the show, like a week later, a week and a half later. And I was so fearful that I would suck compared to my first, that first spot was great. I mean, the audience was going nuts at Johnny going nuts over, over this set. And, uh, and yeah, it was funny. It was just entertaining. It wasn’t, it wasn’t about it. It was, I was just doing funny sh*t, you know? And I was so scared that my second shot would be such a disappointment compared to my first shot that I declined And I used very legitimate, you know excuses like I want to wait to come back when I have something to promote because it means so much, blah blah blah, but really what it was was I was just scared I was frightened that I would do so much worse the second time than I had that I couldn’t I couldn’t sustain it. And I was so scared of that. It was a while before they had me back. Uh, not that there was any hostility or anything, but if I had gone back and done that, if I had just done, even just okay, I would have been on the track that a lot of people like Jerry Seinfeld had been on where they just come back every couple of weeks for a long time. Steven Wright, you know, they just, they could call on him anytime and they had a killer set and they were ready to go. And that’s the biggest regret that I have, because I didn’t do that because of fear. That’s the, that’s the killer fear. Yeah. So it was great. And also the result of it was my biggest single show business.
The fact that you got to do the show with Johnny, you know, you did it with him twice. You did it with Jay as a guest host four times. And I mean, you’ve worked with so many amazing people over the years. It’s unbelievable. And then fast forward to when you did the aristocrats. Movie that I think that was 2005 the directed by you and Penn Jillette. Johnny mentioned that joke on the air Um on his Tonight Show a few times he didn’t tell the joke, but he referenced it a few times Which I found interesting because nobody in america is gonna have any idea what he’s talking about First of all, can you talk about that movie? And I you and Penn were gonna have dinner With did he agree to have dinner with the two of you at that point? It was his favorite joke, right?
Yeah, um, uh, this is me a little backstory to that, uh, and by the way, the dedication at the end of the movie is to Johnny Carson because of 2 things. First of all, we were this close to getting him over the edge to agreeing to do the movie. Um, uh, he had arranged dinner with Penn or arranged to arrange dinner with Penn, we really felt like we might get him over the top because of the history of this joke. And we do know that he loved it. We did know that at the time. Uh, and he died the day we debuted at Sundance. So we took, you know, before the film was released, we dedicated it to Johnny. Yeah, he had mentioned it a number of times on the show and also one time when I’m on the show and I’m, you know, I’m backstage waiting for the curtain to open, waiting for the intro in order to sort of ease my anxiety because there’s always anxiety to do the show. In order to even as I’m talking to the stagehand who had been there for, I don’t know, a million years, you know, I said to him, I said, listen, I remember once watching the show, they cut away for commercial. I, he goes, I think it was, I said, I think it was Don Rickles on the panel, uh, and I said, and you cut away to commercial and when you came back, the audience was in absolute hysterics. And I heard this… I had heard what had happened, but I wanted confirmation and the stage hand goes, yeah. What happened was that the commercial break, you know, normally the band plays and he said, uh. Rickles started doing The Aristocrats joke, and he hit the punchline right before, you know, 3, 2, boom, right before they came back, he hit the punchline, and the audience was in hysterics, and Johnny, of course, was in hysterics, and so he confirmed to me that that story that I had heard was that you know, Rickles had done the, uh, The Aristocrats joke and it tore Johnny up. And that’s why, if you see that episode, I’ve never, I haven’t had the chance to like research it and look for it. But if you see that episode, they come back to commercial and everybody’s just in tears and Johnny can barely, you know, contain himself. Uh, and it was the aristocrats joke. So we knew this about Johnny. We knew that he loved that joke, but when he retired, he really retired. I remember listening to an episode of your, your podcast, where you’re talking about how he did a bunch of things after he retired, but really not. I mean, when you see most. Other people who retired, they got other projects going or whatever. I mean, he would do the occasional benefit, you know, but he didn’t, he didn’t really, I mean, he really retired. So it was a challenge to get him to come and go and be on camera. And we were close, but it didn’t happen.
So Johnny Carson, you and Penn then find out that he died and you were together at the time. And I believe you told me when we, the last time that you talked that there were tears involved. I mean, it’s Johnny.
Oh, yeah. We both were really, we were really heartbroken. I mean, we both grew up every comedian of my generation. Johnny was like, you know, he was it, he was it, he was the icon and he made so many careers in comedy for people even. And one of the things I loved about him was not just that he liked a lot of comedy and was really supportive of comedy, but sometimes he would explain to the viewing audience what’s great about this comedian. Like you might not get it. You know, uh, uh, Bob Newhart, or you might not get a Brother Theodore, or you might not get, you know, certain offbeat kinds of comedians, and in his intros, or when he sat down at the panel and started talking about them, he basically explained to you why this is so good. He was just great. He was just great.
I wanted to ask about an episode of the Morton Downey Jr. show. It was very
Oh my god! With Chris Rock!
He’s this very, it was for people, the younger people who’s this, this very, I did not know when I was a kid watching it, that he was absolutely doing a character. Um, but he was this very controversial, yelling at people, blowing smoke in people’s face and they did it…
He was the progenitor of Rush Limbaugh. Of, uh, all of those people, uh, Jerry Springer, ultimately. Yeah. Yeah. Morton Downey was like, he started as a local show, and I think it got picked up late at night.
It then went national with WOR, and I mean, Joe Pine before him, who, that was before my time, but this guy was completely outrageous at the time, to be yelling and screaming at people on the show, and he’d have, he’d have a panel, and he did a show called Um, can comics go too far? I think it was ‘89 or ‘90. It was you, Pat Cooper, unknown Chris Rock, Bobby Collins and Joey Adams. What stands out?
What stands out was, first of all, they tell us, you know, that that was the premise of the show. Is it, you know, do comedians go too far? Do young comedians go too far, whatever. So I’m sitting there with Chris Rock and, uh, uh, he and I are right next to each other and it’s weird, a little Politically Incorrect. You know the original politically correct kind of a setup there kind of a shoe Horseshoe thing and uh, and i’m sitting next to Chris Rock and they start the show and the announcer goes Comedians the old comedians versus the young comedians. They hate each other. We’re gonna find out why. And Chris Rock and I go, what just happened? And they tried to create this whole conflict that really didn’t exist. I mean, I love Pat Cooper for sure. You know, in fact, we were friends until he passed away. Um, it was not, it was such nonsense. It was so, it was the first. Inkling in my experience of what I think politics and show business is like now, just this calculated creating, you know, creating conflict out of nothing. Um, we were just stunned. We were just stunned. And, uh, I don’t remember anything other than that. Really. I just remember that the whole thing was. Kind of a joke and I and I like we didn’t know should we should we play along should we not play we know we didn’t really Chris Rock was like 5 years old I was like 10 years old I mean we were just baby comics, you know?
Completely manufactured. Bill Boggs who was the producer told me that they would would meet all around a table. And they would decide how Mort would argue because they would have controversial topics, how, how he would, um, what his talking points would be, they would give it to him and how he would argue pro would be against for against. And I had, I mean, it was just amazing that they were able to, um, I mean, it was, he was on Saturday Night Live. He made a cameo. He was huge for a while, that show, but yeah, completely manufactured. What was it like opening up for Paul Anka at the Golden Nugget in 84? Because I know that Anka wrote essentially, I mean, he wrote Johnny’s theme song. I mean, Johnny got co credit 50 percent just because he could, um, but what was it like working with Anka?
Apparently that was a gift from Paul Anka.
Yeah. I mean, they both made a lot. They both did very well financially, but what was it like opening up for Anka?
Well, um. The first of all, he played like, you know, classic venues that just had so much romance for me, like The Golden Nugget in Las Vegas and, you know, and I just loved all of that stuff. And that’s one of the things that I did through the course of my career was I really played. A huge array of kinds of audiences and contexts. I just loved that. I loved the romanticism of opening for, you know, a superstar singer in Vegas. Just so like, that’s not really me but I wanted to be able to do it and doing it was so much fun, you know. I liked doing that work, but Paul Anka was an a**hole. I’ll say that right out. Let him come and get me. He ain’t nothing. Let him come and get me. He was an a88hole, he was an awful person who was mean to everybody. If you were in the hallway when he came passing by, you had to turn away. You couldn’t look him in the eye. I mean, that kind of bullsh*t.
Even you, even the opening act? He wasn’t…
Yeah.
I want to say when I went to his home in Thousand Oaks in 2014 or whenever it was, he was very pleasant, he offered me water, he got me water, and um, um, actually gave me some gifts when I left, um, but that was a long time ago, um, 1984 to, yeah, whenever I was with him at his home, but I’m sorry that you had that experience, how, how many times did you open for him? Was it just the one?
I don’t know, I did a week at a time, a handful of times. In fact, some of those sit downs were, uh, like I also, you know, I did that with Diana Ross, too. I opened for her off and on for, like, three, four years. And, uh, you know, people like that, they don’t, like, do tours the way musicians do tours now or bands do tours now. They just would keep adding gigs. They would just get gigs and keep adding gigs. They’re icons.
You know, you said she was great. You said she was very pleasant.
Diana Ross was fantastic. I had been warned by so many people that she’s difficult and she’s, you know, unpleasant and she’s blah, blah, blah, blah. She could not have been nicer to me. She was so sweet and so generous. My first time ever opening for her. I’m at Caesar’s Palace. It’s my first time opening for Diana Ross. It’s my first time playing a Vegas showroom and on the first night, I’m a nervous wreck and I’m waiting to go on and I turn to my flash goes off and I turn to my right and there she is in her bathrobe getting, you know, she’s going to get ready while I’m on. In her bathroom taking pictures of me and I said, wow, this is so backwards and she laughed and she said, oh, I saw you on Johnny Carson show. I thought you were fantastic. You’re going to have a great time. It’s so nice. So happy you’re here. And then, you know, various gigs she would offer to, like, sometimes the gigs would be like a one-nighter here and then the band would get on a bus and she would get in a limo and they’d go to another venue. They do a one-nighter there. And she invited me more than more than a couple of times to come and ride in her limo, which I never did, because I thought, hey, that’d be a little bit uncomfortable, but be, uh, the band is always more fun. So I would, I chose to go in the band bus. I didn’t want to feel beholden to anybody for anything. She invited me out one night. So we were in San Francisco and she had some old friends from the, from the hood Coming to see the show and she was gonna take them out to dinner afterwards. So they call a restaurant and the restaurant closes. She shows up, you know, closes to the public at like 11. We show up at like 11 30 or 12 or I forget what time it was after a big show And there I am having dinner with her and all these people that she grew up with And she used to tell me these amazing stories about how you know, The Supremes were like They never really thought about what they should be wearing on stage. And so at the last minute, Berry Gordy peels off of, you know, a handful of bills and gives it to one of his girlfriends at the time and says, go buy some clothes for the girls, make them look, you know, make them look pretty. And apparently this girlfriend had been like a hooker at one point in her life, which is why the Supremes kind of look like they might be hookers in the first few appearances they have on things.Um, uh, but yeah, she tells these amazing stories and everything. So she was really, really sweet to me. In fact, at one point she even told me she was, I’m working on a pilot. See you. I was going to be like, well, I’ll, I’ll wait for that call. No problem. Uh, she was fantastic to me. A lot of the musicians felt that she was brutal because she is a perfectionist and she never asked them to be any more diligent than she was. She would put in the hours in the rehearsals. If things weren’t perfect for her, she would stay and stay. And she put in just as much work as she was asking the band to make. And they knew that too. They knew that this was first class stuff, but she could have been a really tough task master for employees. I fell in that little, I wasn’t really an employee because I was another artist. You know, doing a solo bit, and so, she treated me perhaps a little bit differently than the band members.
You worked and you knew so many comedic legends. Phyllis Diller, remind me, what did she tell you? You’re playing these huge Vegas rooms, and this would, this, this would sound, this to me would just be like such a minor thing, but she has so much wisdom and she gives you one note and it makes, I think you told me that in this, that it made the world of difference in terms of…
Yes, yes,
What was it?
It was fantastic. Now I had known Phyllis a bit because I was very friendly with her personal assistant at the time. And so she had introduced me and she had introduced Phyllis to what I did and everything, and she was lovely, uh, and it’s Phyllis Diller, you know, she’s great. And then at one point I had done a comedy cruise, which was on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the primetime 8pm headliners were Phyllis Diller, Jerry Van Dyke, and Norm Crosby, and then on Tuesday and Thursday, they did midnight shows for the younger crowd. And that was me and Richard Jeni. So it was a real comedy cruise, right? So we’re all, you know, on a cruise ship, you got to hang out with your own tribe. You got to find them. And so we’re all hanging out. And so we became really, really tight with Phyllis and became lifelong friends. But anyway, so I’m opening for her, for Diana Ross in Vegas, I’d come out the center of the curtain. And so ladies and gentlemen. I have set this up to the whole story with that Diana Ross was, I got no billing. So, you know, imagine it’s Caesar’s palace. So what are we talking about? 2,500, 3000, I don’t know, 2000, everybody dressed to the nines. There’s bottles all over the tables, you know, it’s his first class and, uh, the crowd is just jazzed and psyched, no billing. The lights go down, the timpani comes up. Ladies and gentlemen, Ceasars Palace is proud to present The Diana Ross Show! BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM Drumroll! Please welcome Diana’s special guest for the evening, Paul Provenza! And you’re gonna hear 3,000 people go, “Aw.” They got him so excited, and I was such a letdown. But so I had been coming out of the center Curtain and I was struggling a little bit for like the first five minutes of my set Phyllis was appearing somewhere else down the strip and she came to one of my late show one of the Diana Ross late shows And uh, so i’m hanging out with her afterwards and she goes I got one piece of advice I said, what’s that? She says, why are you coming out of the center of the curtain? Because it’s what it’s, you probably know this, the expression “In one,” which is an old vaudeville expression, which is in front of the main curtain, because behind the main curtain is a 35 piece orchestra. So you, I would be doing in one, my solo shot. In front of the main curtain. So I would walk out the center of the curtain to the microphone right there. She said, why are you coming out the center of the curtain? I go, I don’t know, that’s where they told me to come out. She said, don’t come out the center. She goes, come out the side. He said, why is that? And she said, because the, the amount of time it takes for you to get from the side of that Las Vegas Caesar’s palace stage to the center where your mic is. All that chatter that people have when do I do I know this guy? Have I seen this guy before? Where do I recognize him from? Oh, I saw him on The Tonight Show. No, I don’t know who this guy is. He better be like, all that stuff takes place before you even get to the microphone. And I said, I’m gonna try it tomorrow night and it changed everything. Changed everything. And I thought that’s what a million years of experience tells you. And that’s the only thing that could ever tell you that it’s a million years of showbiz experience. It was great. It was great.
Isn’t that amazing that Phyllis Diller, just like that one little thing, would make such a difference. You wouldn’t think that something so simple. I mean, she had decades of wisdom and experience.
Yeah, yeah, it was. It changed everything. She was, uh, she was just great. She was so generous and warm and kind and friendly. And on that cruise, uh, Richard Jeni and I would, uh, would spend a lot of time together and sometimes we would all get together, all five of us, you know, and Phyllis was fantastic. Phyllis would come out late at night. I remember there was one night where. You know, part of the cruise ship was sort of closed off because it wasn’t very busy at, you know, two, three in the morning. And, uh, there was a piano in one of these piano bar areas that was not very, not busy at all. It was pretty, basically closed. And she would have bottles of champagne sent over. And then Richard Jeni and I, at like four o’clock in the morning, we’re like, we gotta get some sleep. She’s like, okay, see you tomorrow. And she stayed there playing piano and drinking. Champagne by herself. She was so cool, and she could drink any of us under the table.
It sounds like Sinatra.
Jerry Van Dyke was amazing, and it was a chance to watch him work. And Jerry Van Dyke is a solid pro, and he had the best It was 45 minutes from the intro to the time he said goodnight. It never varied. He’d been doing this act since the 50s, and it was one of the funniest sets i’ve ever seen anybody do ever it was brilliantly hilarious. So funny So silly so playful. He was fantastic Norm, Crosby was going on the last night the last primetime show on Friday night And so he was grumpy the whole week because you want to be like now you’re being compared to all these people who are killing, you know, and he’s like he was so nervous and frustrated He didn’t really hang out with us too much because he really was like intimidated by Phyllis and Jerry Van Dyke killing. Jeni and I killed too, because the audience was not a typical cruise ship audience. There was a big percentage of people who just, Oh, here’s a cruise on these dates. Let’s book this one. But a lot of people specifically chose to go on this comedy cruise. And, you know, there were events where they get to get autographs and stuff like that. Uh, so it was a pretty comedy, comedy, uh, appreciative audience, as opposed to your regular cruise ships, which are, you know, “Is the buffet open?,” you know.
Richard Jeni did Carson a bunch of times. Was there any inkling that he was having some depression issues or mental health issues leading up to him taking his life?
No you know um uh and that’s the thing is a lot of people think that he took his life because his career was in a bad place or what all that stuff and it wasn’t it wasn’t it wasn’t Richard who took his his life it was this other guy because he had apparently was bipolar and had a whole bunch of You What was called bipolar at the time, uh, had a whole bunch of mental issues which developed, I guess, over time. Uh, there were no real inklings and there was nobody funnier to hang out with. I mean, he had me in stitches constantly the whole, the entire time we were on that ship, he had me in stitches. And yeah, nobody really knew about it, but a close mutual friend of ours, Len Ostrovich, he and Jeni were really close and he was actually on suicide watch with Jeni because Jeni decided to stop taking his meds. Because like you hear this a lot from a lot of comedians who, you know, when they talk about therapy or mental health or whatever, Jeni felt like they’re going to kill the funny. And so he was, and of course they do take a toll on you. They change your personality. They level, you know, they take, cut off all the highs and lows and everything. And it just made him feel like if I stay on these meds, I’m not going to be the best comedian I can be. It’s a common thing among comedians, or at least it was, until maybe the attitudes about mental health have changed over the years. But, um, so he started to not take his meds and Len went out to Vegas where, where, um, Richard was living at the time and basically was on suicide watch. And he would call me from there and he would say, it’s really, you know, sometimes we get up to take his meds and sometimes we can’t. Um, and then he had to leave to go do a gig. And that was when Richard killed himself. Um, so yeah, it was a pretty sad thing. He was pretty bright light. I mean, he was a spectacular performer.
I got to meet him once. I saw him at Caroline’s and he was really nice to me afterwards. Um, I knew somebody that knew him. I think it was Tom Dreesen that was telling me about, um, they had a memorial for him. I guess you, you were there as well, but it was all comics and when you get comics and it’s Jeni, um, it gets very raunchy and dirty and like lots of laughs, but definitely inappropriate stuff. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, I believe it was at the laugh factory and, um, Leno spoke and Leno said, you know, that Jeni was just the best of the, you know, that crop of comedians. She goes. Jeni was just the best. He thought he felt like Richard Jeni just got all the juice there was out of any premise, like you, there was just no place left to get it from. He just squeezed it all and was just brilliantly hilarious. He was a great, he was a great standup. Uh, one of my favorite things he ever does is about the, um, NFL referee.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
The premise of it, I’m not going to do justice, so I won’t try and recreate the bit, but the premise of it is that the NFL referee has that microphone and what an amazing, you know, power that is to have this stadium listening to whatever you want to say, you know, and he just basically did this, this, uh, referee getting a little bit too personal. I’m talking about my wife doesn’t understand me. It was just so funny and it went on and on and on and got funnier and funnier and funnier. He was fantastic.
There were so many of those shows with the comedy boom and years after where you could watch Jeni and I remember him doing that bit when you did evening at the improv with Steve Allen is is hosting in 81 the original host of The Tonight Show. What was that like? Do you get any time with Steve Allen? Did he, he might have done your show. I’m not sure. Years later.
Yeah, he did a number of appearances on Comics Only. Shout out to T. Sean and Fred Wolf. Yeah. Uh, and Hugh Fink by association. Uh, um, I loved listening to their episodes. It was fun. Steve Allen. See, one of the things we did on Comics Only was, and I, and I continued this through all the way up through The Green Room. It’s, it’s kind of in my nature. It’s like, you know, musicians, Are like the young musicians idolize the old cats. They don’t look at them as having, you know, as being washed up. They look at them as like icons. And comedians are the same way. And so I like to mix up old and young, younger generation comedians. And to have comedians on, you know, something with people they idolize, you know, it’s always such a, such a treat. And, um, Steve Allen did a number of episodes of Comics Only. He did one or two as a guest, and then he did a million sketches for us. He was just great. He was great fun. He was up for almost anything. He wasn’t a very outgoing person, but he was in the pocket. He was always there to listen to your ideas and say, yeah, let’s do that. Having respect of him professionally meant a lot more to me than getting to know more about him personally. Because he’s Steve Allen. You know, I remember we did one sketch on, on comics only, but the premise of it was We were really a parody of The Tonight Show. The premise of the, uh, of Comics Only was that I always watched the Tonight Show for the comedians. I almost didn’t care who else was on. And I said, what if we have a Tonight Show that’s just comedians? And so that was the premise of it. But we wanted it to have the same form as a regular talk show, which is where the host comes out and does a monologue. But I never get to do a monologue. The whole thing was, nobody ever did stand up on this show. They were either doing material from, you know, on panel. Or doing sketches or whatever, but nobody actually did a standup set. Uh, so we did one where I’m coming out to do a set. That was always the premise. I come out, it looks like I’m going to do a set, but it never happens. Something always makes it not happen. And so one time I’m doing this joke and I can’t get the joke out. I can’t get the joke out. It keeps screwing up the joke. And I go, hang on a second. I go backstage and we had Steven Allen standing in this box. In this red box with a, you know, breakable glass in case of comedy, emergency break class that break the glass. He comes out. He does a joke. You know, he was my, my, uh, comedy emergency guy. Uh, um, he would do all sorts of things like that. Um, uh, he did a lot of sketches for us. And so I have, even though I hardly got to know him, he was a goer. He was like, let’s do this. This is funny. Let’s do it.
You had your own show on Ha!, which became Comedy Central and I never saw the videotape when you did Milton Berle, when you wore a dress, was Milton Berle a guest that night? Or was that just a separate thing that you were doing Berle that episode?
I actually don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything like that. Um, but no, Milton wasn’t on the show, but we did have Phyllis on for an entire, you know, half hour show and she was fantastic. And she did some weird little role ins for me. Very dark, very dark, uh, running role in for that episode where. We basically did this contest where you get to spend a night with Fred Wolf. And so we got this poor girl, we cut away to the hotel room where he friend is just not getting that. It’s not nothing’s happening because this is a horrible scenario. And so there’s this really dark, cringy kind of bit that was running through the whole thing. And she would comment on it. And, and, you know, talk about how weird and creepy that is and, um, in fact, when she first came on, she, uh, tripped and fell and, you know, the whole studio, everybody was like, Oh, my God, did we just break Phyllis Diller’s hip? What the f*ck happened? She gets up and she dusts herself off because I ran over and a bunch of the crew ran over to help pick her up and she goes, I’m okay, I’m okay. The whole cameras were rolling because i’m not doing that again. She was fantastic. I loved it.
You have a YouTube Channel, and you have all these amazing clips from Comics Only
Really a small number of things. I I just have never gotten around to putting everything I want to put up.
Please keep putting stuff up. I mean was it your was your first The first episode with Bill Hicks?
It might, that might, that might be the case. Yeah. Cause I was a big Bill Hicks fan. Oh yeah. And we were friends just from the comedy world, you know, I said to him and, you know, he didn’t do a lot of like, he didn’t do Evening at the Improv and, you know, Caroline’s on the Road. I don’t think he did a lot of those. You probably count on one hand the number of times he did anything like that. But I said to him, I said, look, I’m doing this show. I want you on the show. He said, I said anything that they won’t let you do on any other show. I want you to do on my show. So he did the show like three, four times. In fact, once he flew in from me, when he was over in London, where his career was burgeoning much more, uh, uh, excitingly than, than here in the States, he flew in and showed up in the studio with his luggage. He literally went from the airport to the studio to do it. And he said, I love doing this because I get to do what I really want. Yeah. He might’ve been the first guest. I love Bill.
Fantastic. I want to name some people that were on your show and any stories that you have from them being on the show or just in general, Norm Macdonald?
Norm Macdonald. Norm Macdonald came on the show and he spent the entire segment talking about how not funny he is.
And he’s the funniest guy in the room.
I don’t understand why people come to see me. It’s always disappointing. Yeah, it was hilarious. It was very, very Norm Macdonald. And, uh, you know, we had a lot of people like Norm would come back occasionally and hang out at the studio. I don’t think David Spade was a guest ever. He might have been. I can’t recall. This was so long ago. Uh, but he used to come and hang out because he was really good friends with Fred Wolf. And, uh, he was already, I believe, at Saturday Night Live and he was one of the people who were telling Fred to fax in sketches and stuff, you know, and Sandler, they would come and they would hang out.And it was so great I catch them on camera, you know, doing some little thing with Fred or whatever. And so what we tried to do is create this vibe that comics are just hanging out here all the time, you know, and it was really nice that they would come and hang out because it really gave us a shot in the arm. It’s Adam Sandler, it’s David Spade, it’s Norm Macdonald, you know, it’s not just Steve Allen and Rip Taylor, you know?
That’s good too. When you have someone like a Sam Kinison come in, I’m guessing you knew him previously from the clubs, but that danger. Yeah. And that, um, you just never know what condition he’s going to be in and, and everything. What was it like, what were your impressions of him and having him on?
Okay. Well, I always, you know, Sam was one of those people who very early on in his career, I felt like this is going to be this. This flame is going to burn out. It’s just too intense. It’s too intense. He’s too much of a wild card. He was into too many drugs and, you know, hanging out with people that were certainly not going to keep him on any kind of straight and narrow. And I just kind of always was like, you know, Sam is a genius. Why is this happening? Uh, um, as if. It hasn’t happened before where a comic genius, you know, basically destroys himself. But at the time that he agreed to do the show, I think he had just finished. Was it Herman’s head? What was that series?
Yeah, I used to watch that… with Tim Matheson.
Us that it was Herman’s head?
I think it was Matheson was on that. Yeah, but I used to watch that He was he was on that and he played a baby on on was it that show or a different show? I forget. I think Bill Maher was on a show with him. It might have been I don’t remember but yes It was something on Fox or was it, Oh Charlie Parker. Was it Charlie?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Charlie something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Okay, so he had just done that series And he was kind of cleaning himself up. He kind of like had found a balance and I felt like, and this is just from me seeing him at The Comedy Store and chatting with him and hanging around with people. I, I spent time with him, uh, at Montreal, Just For Laughs. And I noticed the difference. I noticed that, wow, he seems like he’s back on his game, or at least it’s sort of like. I don’t want to go down that road anymore. I want to, you know, I want to make the best of my gifts. And, uh, it seemed like he was really turning a corner. I was really excited about it. And I asked him to do the show then, A, because he had finished the series. So I knew he was available. And B, I felt like. Oh, he’s he’s different. Like when I talked with him in the bar at the Delta Hotel in Montreal, he was different than he had ever been. And I felt like, oh, this is this could be great. I was very happy to have him on the show. And, um, like 2, 3 weeks later, he died and it really hurt because I really felt like, wow, he has really turned a corner and we’re going to get the best of Kinison again, and it was, you know, really tragic. But. The show that I did with him had not aired yet. Plus, whenever somebody like Sam came in, we would ask him, we did this with just about everybody. Steven Wright did this, a bunch of people. We would film a bunch of little roll ins that we would pepper across the season. Again, to create that feeling that, oh, these comics are just always here. You know, even though we shot all of Steven Wright’s stuff in one day, he was on like eight shows, you know, doing these little Roll ins, these little sketch pieces and things. And so we had Kinison in one where the premise of it was, uh, a writer we had at the time, Reid Harrison, was going to come on the show. And of course, nobody really knew. He didn’t have much of a stand up profile. Nobody knew who he was. So the premise of this episode was that we we have your televisions connected to our computers And you can pick and choose how the show is going to proceed and at one point, um, of course, it’s all nonsense But at one point we had the option of bringing out Richard Belzer, big tv star Sam Kinison or pathetic unknown Reid Harrison or something really derogatory about Reid Harrison, you know And the joke was that Reid Harrison won the audience poll. So he’s the guy who came out. So we shot Richard Bowser standing next to Sam Kinison standing next to read Harrison backstage in order to set this up. And the camera goes, should we bring out Richard Bowser, you know, TV star Richard Belzer, breakthrough comedian Sam Kinison or unknown you know, writing staff member, Reid Harrison, and the joke was they chose Reid Harrison, but before it aired, we took it back and I changed the voiceover since the shot was of panning across these three potential guests. I changed it to, should we have, you know, TV star Richard Belzer bring Sam Kinison back from the dead or bring out Reid Harrison in Writer, and I got phone calls through the roof when this thing aired, some comedians all over the country going, what the f*ck?
He I think he would have, he was such a so dark. Charlie Hoover, by the way It was the the show on FOX. I said Charlie Parker, but definitely, um was on FOX with Kinison. And then you had people like Ellen Degeneres who um at that point she might have been on Duet on FOX. I remember watching her maybe that was before but she was on a couple sitcoms. Just um, just ensemble
I think it was before any of that. I think it was shortly after she won The Showtime funniest person in America thing or I don’t know.
Yeah, that was a big deal. Yeah, she won that. I remember that.
She was still unknown except for people that, you know, were into comedy and said, Oh, this person is an up and comer. Uh, but she was still pretty unknown. I had Jon Stewart on before anybody really knew who he was.
You’re doing The Comedy Cellar back in the day because I was going through old research and I’m going to mention some things that I that I found and stuff, but yeah, where do you did you get to watch him and when he was starting out, Jon Stewart and what were your impressions of him?
I mean, we kind of came up together. I had actually been doing it for a while before, you know, he. Came along, but right out of the gate, you just knew this guy was hilarious. This guy’s a great comedian. And in fact, I had a huge, uh, I had a taping for my first Showtime special, called The Incredible Man Boy. And I asked Jon to open for me.
That was 1990 that it came out.
And so my manager and a couple of the Showtime people came to see him in a club to sign off on him being he opening act, right? And my manager actually said to me, are you sure you want this guy opening for you? It was like, why are you asking me that? He goes, he’s really good. I go, you’re saying he’s going to be so much better than me that it’s going to hurt me? And he went, I wouldn’t rule it out. And I said, let me explain something to you about me. I go, I want the best. He is the best. The crowd is going to be exactly where I want to walk out to them after Jon Stewart. He’s smart. He can be smart. Silly. He’s he’s incisive. His technique is flawless. I go. He is the kind of opening act. Any comedian who’s not afraid wants. And, uh, so he did. He opened when I taped and that night, all the Comedy Channel people at the time, it was, I don’t know if it had become Comedy Central yet. The Comedy Channel, there were two comedy channels. Ha! And nd Comedy Channel, and they merged to form Comedy central kind of channel was HBO, Ha! was MTV networks. So I think it was Ha! at the time. So there were all these MTV execs at the taping, and that’s how he ended up getting that show on MTV.
I had no idea that it was…
I know, and, and he probably has no idea, but my manager says, Jon Stewart should send you a Christmas gift every f*cking year.