Robert Schimmel, CANCER ON $5 A DAY, author, standup comedian: Mr. Media Interview, Part 3

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BOB ANDELMAN/Mr. MEDIA: One of the things I wanted to ask you about was who makes you laugh now, but you mention Jackie Vernon, and I’m thinking, Great comic, but Jackie Vernon makes Robert Schimmel laugh? Who would’ve guessed?

ROBERT SCHIMMEL: A lot of people make me laugh. There’s a lot of guys on the road that I work with that people never hear about. Chappelle makes me laugh, Dennis Miller makes me laugh, and Sarah Silverman makes me…There’s a lot of people. I love to laugh. I just really do. And one of the biggest things for me, as far as in my comedy career, is my manager called me about a year and a half ago, and he goes, “Did you read The New Yorker magazine this week?” And I said no. He goes, “There’s an interview with Jerry Lewis in there, and they asked him who his favorite comics were, and he said you and Richard Lewis.”

ANDELMAN: Wow!

SCHIMMEL: I’m like, “What?” So he said, “You should call him up and thank him.” I said, “I’m not gonna call Jerry Lewis!” I was in love with this guy. You can’t tell by my act, but I used to emulate him as a kid. I would knock stuff over intentionally. I wanted to be him so badly. I even wore white socks with a suit. And I said, “I can’t call Jerry Lewis up. I can’t. Rodney you can call, but Jerry Lewis, that’s another level completely.” He said, “Well, at least call his office and just leave a message for him.” So I call up, I leave a message for him, and I said, “I just wanted to please tell Mr. Lewis that I read the thing in The New Yorker and that I really appreciate it.” I go to lunch with my wife, and my cell phone rings like a half an hour later. And I go, “Hello?” and it’s Jerry Lewis. I’m like what? He goes, “What can I do for you, kid?” And I couldn’t talk. I really couldn’t talk. And he goes, “I don’t like the phone. What are you doing tomorrow?” And I said, “Nothing.” He goes, “Why don’t you fly up to Vegas? We’ll have someone pick you up at the airport, and we’ll hang out tomorrow.” I almost started crying. You have no idea. This is why I can’t not be positive about life, okay, because I’ll tell you how wild it is in this world and this business. I would’ve never, ever dreamt in my wildest imagination that Jerry Lewis would ever know who I was, ever, before I was in comedy and even when I was in comedy. And I know for a fact that he does not go for profanity at all. It’s something that he detests. He doesn’t like it.
And I go up there. He said, “I saw your HBO special. I was in the hospital. I gotta tell you, kid, I almost started crying. You made me laugh so hard.” And I sat there, and I couldn’t talk, and he said, “You don’t want to talk to me?” I said, ”I can’t. I can’t believe I’m with you.” He said, “You’ll get over it.” And I was there like all day. The night before, I didn’t go to sleep. I literally was like a girl, asking my wife, “Should I wear these pants and this shirt?” I was getting to meet my idol.

ANDELMAN: Right.

SCHIMMEL: And then he was so nice to me. I spent the whole afternoon, and I gotta tell you. You hear these stories about people, Streisand and Jerry Lewis and these other people that are supposed to be real assholes and everything. Well, I don’t think they’re assholes. I think that they’re maybe perfectionists and that it’s their career, it’s their name, people are coming to see them, and they just want the shit to be right. It’s not being an asshole if you want it to be right, and he told me that. He goes, “I would love to tell you that Dean and I were geniuses and that we had the whole thing planned out, but it wasn’t. We were really lucky. We were two guys at a time. The timing was perfect. It was right after the war, and people really loved the camaraderie between Dean and I, and we were getting $50,000 a week in the fifties.” In the fifties, they were getting $50,000 a week, and he said, “Our best jokes would be throw-away lines for real comedians who are getting $50 a week.” And he told me that he missed Dean every day and that he talked to him everyday from the day Dean’s son died in a plane crash, and he said, “It’s not true that we never talked to each other. It’s just that I couldn’t go anywhere without them asking where Dean was, and Dean couldn’t go to a party without them saying, ‘Where’s Jerry?’” and that they had to know who their own identity was for themselves and that he wanted to be a director. He liked staying on the set and doing all that stuff, and Dean would want to do his thing and go play golf. He said it wasn’t that they hated each other and was a big blowout thing, that they decided to end while they were on top because he said they knew it could only last so long and that they didn’t want to split up on the way down.

ANDELMAN: Robert, you mention Jerry Lewis, which is interesting to me, because as I was reading the book, I was actually thinking a little about him because one of the things that happens in the book is that you, and just by virtue of publishing the book I’m sure this is the case, sharing your story and talking about it, in some ways, you are kind of helping people. And I was actually thinking about Jerry Lewis. I can’t really make a neat, clean parallel here, but here’s a guy who was affected by something at some point and just really changed the tenor of his career.

SCHIMMEL: I know, but he won’t talk about it. When I was with him that day, he said, “You can ask me anything you want except why I do the Muscular Dystrophy Telethon. That’s a personal thing, and that is gonna go to the grave with me, but you can ask me anything else.” And people can make fun of him and say that’s a real hacky thing and that it’s all a put-on the way he acts. Well, I spent a day with him, and I don’t know what it is. Something definitely happened that he’s that passionate about it, but you can say whatever you want about him, but there isn’t anybody else raising that kind of money for Muscular Dystrophy. How can you knock him for doing that? Talk to people, parents, that have kids that have it, and they’re not gonna say he’s a hack. Where would they be without him? God knows how much money he’s raised since he started. It’s a lot. So I don’t think it’s selling out doing stuff like that.

That selling out thing with comedians is a really bizarre deal. You do network television, and then people go, “He sold out.” Well, that’s just like saying that people say you’re a “Comedian’s comedian.” That’s great, but being a comedian’s comedian doesn’t pay a lot. Comics don’t pay to see other comics. You get in for free. And for you to not do “The Tonight Show” or Letterman because you want to show people that you’re not gonna do that kind of thing, well, not only is it shorting yourself, but don’t you think even if you were me or Sam Kinison or Bill Hicks or Richard Pryor or whatever, that if you did Letterman or “The Tonight Show” or Conan, that all your fans would say, “Wow, he’s on ‘The Tonight Show’? I knew this guy was funny 20 years ago.” Nobody’s gonna say we don’t like you anymore because you did network television.

ANDELMAN: You were on Howard Stern last week so he teased you by saying that you were finally going on “The Today Show” but only because you got cancer. Lots of people knew you were funny, but it took that to get you on there. How did that go, and what did you think about that?
SCHIMMEL: First of all, that was the wildest radio show I was ever on. My wife has absolutely no desire to be in show business. She did not go there to be on Howard. She’s never been on Howard. My daughter’s been on with me a few times and that was only because once, the first time I went and my daughter went with me, she was in the Green Room, and Gary went and got her and brought her in. That was the first time I ever saw Howard back down was with my daughter because he said, “Wow, you’re a really cute girl,” and she said, “Oh, thank you.” And Howard said, “How’d you like to model a couple of bikinis for me?” My daughter said, “Sure. Bring your daughter in, and we can do it together,” and he changed the subject immediately.

The first time I did Howard I had no idea what to expect. My CD had just come out on Warner Brothers, and the president of Warner Brothers was friends with Howard, and Howard’s soundtrack for his movie was on Warner Brothers. He sent Howard my CD. He thought it was funny. I go there, they bring me in, I sit on the couch, he goes, “Here’s a real funny guy, Bob Schimmel. He’s a new comedian.” Howard is the only one that calls me “Bob.” As he goes, “Bob Schimmel, and he’s got a really funny CD out,” I sit on the couch, and he goes, “You had a kid that died, huh?” That was the first thing he said, and I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “Wow, that must’ve been really something, huh?” And I’m like, Geez, where’s he going with this? So I said, “Howard, yeah, I did have a son. His name was Derrick, and he passed away in 1992. And I gotta tell you that, when Children’s Hospital sent him home and said they couldn’t do anything anymore, the Make-a-Wish Foundation came to our house, and this is a true story. They said, ‘We’d like to make a wish come true for your son,’ and I said, ‘Well, his wish is to watch Dolly Parton blow me.’” And Howard screamed. They cut to a commercial, and Gary Dell’Abate came over to me and said, “You can be on for the rest of your life.” I said, “Why?” And he goes, “Because that was unreal. There is no way that Howard expected that kind of comeback. You could’ve made him look like a real creep at that moment, and instead, you came up with the line that got him.” What Howard originally got famous for was getting the best out of people where they wouldn’t do it on any other show. And he was really great.

Howard used to call me when I was in the hospital. He actually called me once, and I was live on the air, and I didn’t know. I felt really shitty. It was like after my sixth chemotherapy, and I’m really just beat up badly. I’m laying in bed, and the phone rings, and he goes, “Hey, Bob, it’s Howard.” And I said, “Hey, Howard, how you doing?” He goes, “Can I ask you a question? Do you think you’re gonna make it to New Years Eve?”

ANDELMAN: Oh, I remember that.

SCHIMMEL: I said, “What?!” And he said, “… because Robin’s got Anthony Quinn in the death pool, and I don’t know whether to pick him or you.” I said, “Are you shitting me?” And he said, “Hey, watch your mouth, we’re on the radio!” And I’m like, ”We’re on the radio? You’re calling me, and you don’t tell me? You know what? Go with Anthony Quinn because I’m not dying.” Then Anthony Quinn fucking dies! I can’t believe it. This guy wasn’t even sick. He had a kid when he was 75 years old or something. He dies, and Howard said, “I picked the right person.” I’m like, “Oh, man, I feel really shitty that that happened.” I just really did.

It’s amazing to be in this. I loved making people laugh ever since I was a kid. I didn’t know I was gonna be a comic. I don’t know if you know, but I got into this business totally by, I was tricked into it, basically.

ANDELMAN: I didn’t know that.

SCHIMMEL: I was married already to my first wife, living in Scottsdale, Arizona. I grew up in New York. I had Jessica, my daughter who was on Stern last week, and I was managing a high-end stereo/video store in Scottsdale, Arizona. It’s called Jerry’s Audio, and it was great. I was having a great life. We had a brand new house we lived in. I went to visit my sister in L.A. It was just me; my wife and daughter didn’t come. On Saturday night, she took me to The Improv on Melrose, and even though I watch comics all the time on TV, I had never been to a comedy club. This is 1980 before the boom, and there weren’t clubs everywhere, and she signs me up on this amateur thing. And the way it works is you put your name on a piece of paper, you fold it up, you put it in the wastepaper basket. Bud Friedman, the owner of The Improv, actually was the emcee of the show. He would stick his hand in the bucket, pull out a piece of paper, read the name, and you got two minutes on stage. He had an egg timer on the bar stool on stage, and they would set it for two minutes, and when the timer went Ding!, you had to say, “Good night,” even if you were in the middle of a joke and you couldn’t get to the punchline. “Good night,” and that’s it. Well, my sister signs me up without telling me, and I’m sitting in the audience, and I’m having a beer with her, and all of a sudden, he goes, “Robert Schimmel!” And I’m like, What? She goes, “Come on, you’re funny. Get up there!” And I said, “I can’t get up there!” and Bud’s like, “Come on, don’t chicken out. Where are you? Don’t we want him to get up here?” And the crowd is clapping. So I go up, and I said, “I’m not really a comedian, I’m a stereo salesman, and my sister signed me up because she thinks I’m funny, and I don’t know anything about show business. I could sell you speakers…” and they started laughing! I said, “Please don’t laugh, because everybody has a sexual fetish or a fantasy, and mine is to be humiliated in public in front of a lot of people.” And somebody yelled out, “Go fuck yourself!” and I said, “Thank you very much.” They started laughing. I got off. Bud came over to me, and he said, “Sign up for spots. You can work here whenever you want.”

ANDELMAN: Wow!

SCHIMMEL: And that’s all I needed to hear. That two minutes on stage hooked me right away, and I go back home, tell my wife I want to be a comedian, put the house up for sale, quit my job, pack everything up in a U-Haul. “We’re gonna drive to L.A., we’re gonna crash at my sister’s until we find an apartment, and I’m gonna be a comedian.” Well, we drive to L.A., I get off the Hollywood Freeway on the Melrose exit because I want to show my wife the club that I’m gonna be performing at, and it burnt down the night before we got there.

ANDELMAN: And was this the first divorce or the second divorce?

SCHIMMEL: No, this is the first.

ANDELMAN: Okay.

SCHIMMEL: And it was still smoldering.

ANDELMAN: Wow!

SCHIMMEL: The sidewalk and the street were still wet, the windows are boarded up, there was this smoky steam coming out of there, and Bud was out in the street talking to insurance guys and whatever. And my wife said, “Oh, my God!” and I said, “Don’t worry; I’m sure they have insurance.” She said, ”Who gives a shit about them? You sold the house, you quit your job, and now the place doesn’t even exist!” I walked over to Bud, and I said, “Wow, what happened?” And he said, “Do I know you?” And I’m like, You gotta be kidding me! He didn’t even remember who I was anymore, and that was it.

I got a day job selling stereo equipment in Beverly Hills, and I wound up -- this is such a crazy life -- I wound up selling a stereo to Steve Martin. And I go to his house to install it, and I’m in Steve Martin’s house, and I’m on my hands and knees. I’m laying speaker wire, running it under the rug from the living room into the den and this other room, and he’s there. He’s home while I’m doing it, and he comes into the room because I was working at the stereo store in the daytime and then getting on stage on amateur nights at the Comedy Store and the Laugh Factory and Osco’s Disco and any place where they had a comedy night. And I said, “I’m a comedian, too,” and Steve said, “Yeah, that’s why you’re installing my stereo system.” And then I’m like, Oh, God, I sound like Rupert Pupkin. I wind up getting discovered by William McEuen, and he’s the guy that discovered Steve Martin. If you look at all Steve Martin’s albums, they say, “William E. McEuen presents Steve Martin.” That’s what it says on mine: “William E. McEuen presents Robert Schimmel.” On my second CD, Steve Martin wrote the liner notes.

© 2008 by Bob Andelman. All rights reserved.