Jerry: Yeah, there’s not too many people that are scary in terms of the type of things they talk about. Nobody seems to be treading on thin ice. That doesn’t seem to interest people anymore. I mean, comedy hasn’t changed really in thousands of years. It’s the same. If it’s funny, you’re funny, and people like you.
Judd: Do you think that people have gotten into comedy who shouldn’t have? Since there’s so many jobs now with so many new clubs opening up.
Jerry: It’s an interesting question. I’ve been thinking about that actually, and I think that there will always be only a very few great comedians because comedy itself is so difficult. No matter how many people do it, it’s just a rare combination of skills and talents that go into making a great comedian. If everyone in the country decided to become a comedian, there would still only be six terrific ones like there are now.
Judd: Do you think that there’s certain topics that shouldn’t be spoken about, or certain things that shouldn’t be done onstage? For instance, there’s gonna be a guy on tonight, who I’ve seen, who does something about Linda Lovelace with a glass of milk. And it’s—it’s rather crude. I won’t go farther.
Jerry: Right. Well, it depends on how you’re asking me. Do you think I should do something? For me, I wouldn’t do it. I think it’s wrong.
Judd: What about the egg white? Do you think—
Jerry: I think anyone should do whatever they like. I don’t think there should be any rules.
Judd: As long as it gets laughs?
Jerry: If it doesn’t get laughs, you’re not gonna get work, and you’re not gonna be a comedian. So the audience ultimately decides. It’s a very democratic system.
Judd: Are there certain topics that you stay away from in your act?
Jerry: A lot. A lot of topics I stay away from. Mainly the ones that have been covered or the ones that are easy. And I want—sex is easy, basically.
Judd: Gilligan’s Island.
Jerry: Gilligan’s Island. TV shows. Commercials. I won’t go near it, because I’m trying to find new, fresh, original, interesting things. I want my comedy to be the things nobody else talks about. Not necessarily things people don’t want to talk about, but just things that everybody else missed. That’s what I like.
Judd: What is the difference between an audience at the Improv or a local club, and Atlantic City or Las Vegas?
Jerry: What they came to see. Basically, the audience at the Improv is interested in comedy, and if it’s an easy joke or an obvious joke, it’s less appealing to them than a really clever, original observation. The reverse applies in Atlantic City. They don’t want to hear a comedian. They want to hear the main act. If you are a comedian, do something that we don’t have to pay too much attention to. You see, at the Improv they’re watching: We’ll listen to you go with it. You know. We’ll listen. Try that. Let me see how far you can go with that idea and if you can make it work. And at Atlantic City it’s enough if you can just get them to listen to you. I do the same act, but it’s a different type of performance. It’s much more instructive because they don’t know where the laughs are in my act because it’s not “Two men walk into a bar—bum bum bum, punch line.” And if the audience doesn’t know where the punch line is, you can’t get laughs. So I have to really slow it down and explicate exactly what I’m doing because to them, I’m like Andy Kaufman. They’re not used to my kind of comedy. They’re used to an older style. Traditional jokes. Polish jokes. They don’t understand. Why is he talking about socks?
Judd: Do you have to change your act in different parts of the country?
Jerry: Some people do; I don’t. There’s a central core of what I do that pretty much works everywhere, and the only variable is the way I perform it. I do the same jokes, but I do them differently. Little lines that some people come to hear. They love the little stray thoughts that you throw in. That makes the pieces interesting for people that know comedy and are beyond the very basic level of it. But in places where they don’t want to hear you, you can only do the stuff that—the tips of the icebergs.
Judd: How do you handle improvisation and talking to the audience in your act?
Jerry: See, that’s something I’m really getting into a lot now, having a lot of fun with it. When I do my act in comedy clubs, where I get to do like an hour, I’ll take questions at a certain point and just, you know, ad lib. It depends on how much I can get the audience to accept me. If I can get them to accept me, a lot of times I’ll take off on routines that I do normally and change them and take them a different way. Whenever I’m doing new material, I’m always ad libbing.
Judd: What is the strangest experience you’ve had doing comedy in a club?
Jerry: Strange? Um. I mean, I’ve played places where people didn’t know I was on. I did a disco one time in Queens on New Year’s Eve. And they’re screaming, yelling, and screaming and yelling and they sent me out on the dance floor to do my act, and I stood there but the screaming and yelling never diminished by even a couple decibels and I just stood there for thirty minutes, and walked off and I don’t think anybody even knew I was onstage.
Judd: Anything else like—
Jerry: Bombing is a riot. The looks on people’s faces is just priceless. They look up to me going, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came for a show, and you’re the show and I don’t understand you. You seem normal but you don’t make any sense.”
Judd: You did a show the other day that didn’t go that good. That still happens to you?
Jerry: Oh, yeah, all the time. Every show varies and there are very, very few shows that go just right. Because every audience is completely different—a completely different group of people with a completely different personality. And you have to shape your act to their personality. Every set is an accomplishment.
Judd: Do you ever worry about, you know, say ten years in the future—a lot of comedians get bored after a while, they just cut stand-up out completely.
Jerry: Yeah, I know. I don’t think I’ll be one of those comedians. I have a lot of respect for it as a craft. I don’t see it as just a stepping-stone. I mean, it’s a hard life in some ways. But I have a fascination for it.
Judd: A lot of people do it and they just—they hate it.
Jerry: Well, they use it as a vehicle, which is fine. You know, you can get seen real easy. But it’s a tough thing to do. It’s a tough thing to put yourself through when it’s not gonna be a career for you. It’s a difficult thing to play at. It’s kind of like catching bullets between your teeth: If you’re gonna do it right, it would be something to learn it and then not make a career out of it.
Judd: When you’re onstage and everything is going great, is that like the ultimate idea?
Jerry: I think so. Yeah, for me it is. Because that’s what I like. I like jokes and laughing more than anything. Everybody has an appetite for a different thing. And comedy is something that I have an endless appetite for.
Judd: When did this all start, being funny?
Jerry: I wasn’t a class clown per se. I mean, I wrote some funny things for the newspaper and I was always trying to be funny around my friends. And watching comedy was the thing I enjoyed more than anything else. I knew every comedian, I knew all their routines. That’s how I got into it. I wanted to be around it, you know. I never thought I’d be any good at it. But that turned out to be an advantage because it made me work harder than most other people.
Judd: When did you first do it?
Jerry: I did Catch a Rising Star one night. I guess this would actually qualify as my strangest experience. This is definitely it. My first time onstage, I write the whole act out, you know, and I put it there on my bed and rehearse it, over and over again. I’m standing there with a bar of soap, like it’s a microphone. And I got the scene memorized, cold. I get up on there, and it’s gone. I can’t remember a word. I was—I stood there for about thirty seconds with—saying absolutely nothing, just standing there, freaking out. I just couldn’t believe it, all these people were looking at me. And then, I was able to just remember the subjects I wanted to talk about. This is absolutely true, I’m not embellishing this at all, I stood there and I went, “The beach…ah, driving…your parents…,” and people started laughing because they thought this was my act. I couldn’t even really hear them laughing; I was like absolutely panicked. I think I lasted about three minutes and I just got off. That was my first show.