Rubber Balls and Liquor Page 18

  But seriously, folks … I killed. I was a regular Charles Bronson up there on that stage, gunning down this unsuspecting Emmy audience. There were peals of laughter. There were howls of merriment. There was even some pant wetting, I was later told, all of it followed by a giant wave of applause. I mention this not to tell readers how great I am or to feed my ego. (Okay, maybe a little.) No, I mention this to make a point about the press, which for the time being appeared to receive me with its usual indifference. I left the stage to hoots and hollers and guffaws, and then I was met backstage by reporters and photographers who all seemed to take turns wondering why they now had to talk to me. After all, they’d spent all that time ignoring me on my way in to the theater, so why should they now have to acknowledge me on my way out?

  Normally, at that time in my career, when one of the paparazzi screamed my name, it was to tell me to move a little bit to my left because I was blocking their shot of Ted Danson. And that was still very much the case. I’d left the audience spent and exhausted from all that belly laughing, but the media couldn’t have cared less. I was still ignored by the reporters and photographers. Even the autograph seekers were looking straight past me, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cast of thirtysomething.

  At least that’s how it was at first, but after a while some members of the press started to pay attention. It’s possible that there was just a lull in the proceedings, and I was the only remotely famous or attention-worthy person in their line of sight, but for a moment or two I was the center of attention. Okay, maybe I wasn’t the center of attention, not even for a moment or two, but at least I was nearby. One or two photographers actually wanted me to turn and face their cameras. One or two reporters actually shouted out questions for me to answer. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest I’d set off a media frenzy, but there was a stillness backstage at the Emmys that had more than a little something to do with me.

  I was a hit, at least in Gilbert Gottfried terms—a big fat pile of steaming hit.

  And then, just like that, I wasn’t. Somewhere between the press room and the Governors Ball, something happened. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I left the theater and headed over to the Governors Ball, but then when I got there the governor stood and zipped his pants and asked me to leave. A few people came up to me and told me they liked my set. Even Sam Kinison came over, to tell me he loved the fact that people had been so worried about him and here I’d done this little end-around and taken some of the heat off of his performance.

  (He said this in a good way, I think.)

  Then he asked where I shopped for my tuxedo.

  After a while, though, the tone of all this admiring small talk seemed to shift. It was subtle at first, this shift, but it became more and more noticeable as I made my way around the room. Soon, the positive vibe felt a little bit negative, and I started to hear a buzz or a groan or a whisper of speculation that my bit might be cut from the show’s West Coast feed. The show had been broadcast live in most of the country, but it had yet to air in California and some of those other states on that side of the map, and this troubled me. The reason this troubled me was unquestionably selfish. I’d killed, and I wanted the whole world to know that I killed. Even people in California, which of course was where we were at the time—and where the sight of me killing could only help my career. I didn’t care all that much about censorship or double standards or any of the other big-picture issues that seemed to surface on the back of this decision to cut me from the broadcast, even though I would take up these points later on in interviews and profess moral outrage to make it appear as if I gave a shit about something bigger or other than me.

  It’s amazing, really, the about-face the media took in response to my appearance. At first, all these reporters and photographers had been quietly tolerant; then, they were mildly interested; now they were indignant, and offended. Suddenly, I was the guy in the Pee-wee Herman spot, in the pages of all these newspapers, and on all these news and entertainment shows. Instead of a mug shot, there was a picture of me in my handsome tuxedo, making a gesture with my right hand that I suppose could have been interpreted as masturbatory. If I had been a politician, my gestures could have been seen as emphasis-adders, to help me make an important point about taxes or health care, but since I was a comedian with a long history of dick jokes they could only be seen as the sign for jerking off.

  One headline called the show “The X-Rated Emmys,” and a columnist referred to my appearance as “a new low.” (Personally, I kind of liked that one.) The same reporters who had ignored me on the red carpet the night before were now calling me for interviews. In some of the articles I even read that the entire Emmy audience sat in shocked, stony silence the whole time I was onstage. The only time the silence was broken, the articles said, was when the harrumphing crowd took turns murmuring to each other how deeply offended they were by my appearance. This was certainly not the case, but I didn’t have it in me to object.

  All I cared about, really, was that they weren’t referring to my physical appearance, because I thought I looked smart and spiffy. And I’d just started wearing my hair a new way that was meant to be fetching.

  And then a curious thing happened. The more critics and pundits and media types weighed in to tell how offended they were by my performance, the more people had a chance to be offended by my performance. Millions and millions of people who would have never seen my performance in the first place. It was another one of those delicious ironies, only this one came wrapped inside an enigma with a side of coleslaw. The bit that had been cut from the broadcast was played over and over on all these news outlets. Newspapers printed my filthy comments, almost word-for-word. The entire mainstream media seemed to be in general agreement that I was the most offensive degenerate in Hollywood, and that no caring, thinking, decent person should be subjected to my views, and then they went out of their way to make sure that every caring, thinking, decent person had a second chance to do just that.

  Oh, the hypocrisy! (Such great fun, don’t you think?)

  I could rant and rave about this, but I don’t think I will. What else is there to say? Also, I can’t shake this picture in my head of Betty White rolling around on the floor and I feel a sudden urge to rub one out and it’s difficult to type with just my left hand.

  13

  The Air up Here

  When you’re starting out as a comic, you work a lot of shit jobs. I’ve certainly worked my share. I think I’ve even worked some of Bob Saget’s shit jobs, but this was understandable because once he became a big television star someone had to do it. I mean, big television stars like Bob Saget just don’t do Sweet 16s—the parties, I mean.

  Birthdays, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, corporate events … those are the worst, but they come with the territory. In the beginning, they’re low-end birthday parties and corporate events, or you wind up working in abandoned, decrepit lofts with a bunch of folding chairs for the audience, but as you move up that celebrity ladder the stakes start to change. The venues are a little nicer. There’s more money. They send a car for you—or, sometimes, a first-class plane ticket.

  The whole time, as you get going on your career, you like to think you’ll reach a point when you’ll develop a big enough name or such a big following that you won’t have to take any more of these private gigs, but you never quite get there. Or maybe you do but there’s so much money being waved in front of you that you can’t help but grab at it. Or maybe it’s just me who never quite gets there. Anyway, with me, I’ll grab at pretty much anything. Put a dollar on a stick and wave it around in front of me and I’ll do whatever you ask. Except that. That I won’t do. Certainly not for a dollar. These days, that will cost you two dollars, at least. This and that and that other thing? That runs a little steeper.

  A couple years ago, long after I’d hit it “big” as a movie star, not-having-sex symbol, celebrity game show contestant and fashion trendsetter, I did a gig at the “21” club in New York. It was a birthda
y party for one of the heirs of William Randolph Hearst. It sounded oddly glamorous, but it turned out just to be odd. I didn’t know what to make of the booking when my agent called to tell me about it, but I took the job because I heard the hamburgers were good at “21.”

  Again, maybe it’s just me, but when I hear the term heir I start thinking the kid is five years old, only here the instructions were straightforward. The guest of honor was a big fan. He’d seen me doing all those Friars Club roasts, and he’d seen The Aristocrats, and he was said to have a really wild sense of humor. The guy really got me, I was told.

  “Go crazy, Gilbert,” the heir’s assistant informed me when he briefed me on the party. “This guy can take it.”

  So I took the assistant at his word. You don’t have to tell me more than once to go crazy. I never heard from the guest of honor on this, but the information seemed solid and I was good to go. If this guy could take it, then I could certainly dish it out.

  When I got to the club it looked like a throwback scene from some Marx Brothers or Three Stooges film. All of the guests were old, old, old. And rich, rich, rich. The men were all white-haired, and tuxedoed, and the women were wearing long gowns, and everyone was sipping martinis. I think I even saw a few monocles. It felt for a moment like I’d been asked to perform onboard the Titanic, but then I checked and realized we were on dry land. Right away, I decided that all the clown-fucking jokes I’d written for the roomful of five-year-olds I was expecting would not be suitable. This worried me, at first, because I hadn’t prepared anything else, so I decided to go with the clown-fucking jokes anyway. What the hell did I care if they were suitable?

  Before I went onstage, a woman took the microphone to make a few remarks. I had no idea who she was, but the guests seemed to recognize her. She spoke only for a moment, but she made a passing reference to Rosebud, which of course was the name of the sled in Citizen Kane, which of course was said to have been based on the life of William Randolph Hearst, the deceased newspaper mogul and relative of the guest of honor. If I was smart or clever, I might have made a couple of Rosebud jokes myself, but far be it from me to appear smart or clever. In any case, I’d been led to assume that such a reference would be no big deal, according to the no holds barred directions I’d been given by the assistant, so I was surprised by what happened next: people started booing. In fact, as soon as this woman made her remark, she was booed mercilessly—although to be honest I can’t recall a situation where someone was booed mercifully.

  The woman seemed surprised, as well. She couldn’t get off the stage quickly enough, and I stepped up to take her place. It felt to me like I was taking a bullet for her—only it was a bullet being fired from a really, really old gun, so it wasn’t likely to penetrate the skin. I didn’t know enough to put two and two together after that surprising reaction, though. Or maybe I did, and came up with five. Anyway, I continued on in no holds barred mode. I’d learned, for example, that the guest of honor was really, really old, and really, really rich, and that he’d recently married a really, really young woman, so that was a place to start. I went into a whole bit about this guy’s wife hoping to get rich off her geezer husband. I said, “Once she realized her name was in the will, she encouraged her husband to take an apartment on the fiftieth floor of their building. And she was always saying, ‘Hey, honey. To hell with the elevator. Let’s walk up.’”

  I said, “Sometimes, when he’s sleeping, she’ll come into the room and fire a gun in the air.”

  I rattled off a whole bunch of gold digger jokes, each one louder and lewder and more inappropriate than the one before, and I don’t think I noticed that no one was laughing. Or maybe I did notice, but I don’t think I cared. The more inappropriate, I thought, the better. It was the “21” club, after all. They were paying me well. So I kept at it, and as I did the mood of the room became more and more uncomfortable. I looked out across the crowd and saw everyone’s jaw hanging open—and it wasn’t just to make room for those fat, juicy hamburgers.

  Finally, I ran out of jokes. My time was up. So I stepped from the stage and crossed to the back of the room. No one would look at me. Everyone just sat there, all white-haired and monocled and stony-faced. Except one guy who came up to me afterward and asked if I’d like to meet the guest of honor. Just then, I didn’t think this was such a good idea, but I remembered that the assistant had said his boss had a sense of humor, and that I should feel free to say whatever I wanted. He’d said this guy could take it.

  So I said, “Sure, what the hell. Bring me over.”

  My plan was to just wish the guy a happy birthday and get the hell out of there. He was paying me a lot of money, and I didn’t want to appear rude, but when I walked over to him I noticed he wasn’t all there. Actually, he wasn’t there at all. Physically, he was in the room, but that was about where it ended for him. He was completely out of it. I seem to remember that he was in a wheelchair, but I can’t be certain. He’d apparently just had a series of severe strokes. He was sitting with a woman who appeared to be his full-time aide, whose job was to wipe the drool off his face as he stared into thin air.

  A lesser man might have been embarrassed or humiliated by this discovery, but as I have by now indicated there are no lesser men than me. Plus, the heir to the Hearst fortune didn’t appear embarrassed or humiliated, so why should I? Instead, I was outraged because this seemed to me the sort of thing the assistant might have told me when he briefed me about my performance. I mean, this was information I could have certainly used in my act. I was dying out there. I had a whole bunch of gold digger–stroke victim–drool cup jokes I could have used.

  Another time, I thought I was dying when in reality I was killing. There’s a difference, you know. This was at a birthday party in Los Angeles—on Yom Kippur, no less. The holiest day on the Jewish calendar. This presented a problem, at first, until I told my agent that since the gig fell on the one day of the year we Jews were not supposed to work, I’d have to charge a little bit more.

  The client was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who made the call to my agent himself. He was throwing his own party. He told my agent he was my biggest fan. (It’s possible he meant he was my tallest fan, but he was certainly enthusiastic.) It would have been easy to say the same thing right back to him, the first time we met, but as I’ve written I didn’t know the first thing about sports. I didn’t even know the second or third things. The fourth thing, I happened to know, and it turned out that the fourth thing was that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was an exceptionally tall black man who played basketball.

  That much, I knew.

  I thought, A birthday party for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, on Yom Kippur … this I have to do. If nothing else, I could get a chapter out of it for my book, and it seems we have all now stumbled across the very chapter where this particular story appears.

  Usually, there are ground rules. Even when there are no ground rules, like the party for William Randolph Hearst’s heir, there are things I should know going in. Here, Kareem’s assistant called and told me I wasn’t allowed to tell any jokes about being tall, which I could only assume meant no jokes about playing basketball, either. Or, having a name no one could pronounce. It was kind of like being hired for Dolly Parton’s party and told to avoid tit jokes.

  Yes, Gilbert, Linda Lovelace would like you to perform at her bridal shower. Just one thing, though. No blow job jokes.

  I accepted the booking and promptly forgot about it, but then a few days later I answered the phone and a voice on the other end of the line said, “Hello, Gilbert. This is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.”

  I hung up, thinking it was a crank call. But after a moment it hit me what a coincidence it would be, getting a crank call from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar a couple days after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar himself had hired me to perform at his birthday party. And even if I wasn’t doing the party, what crank caller in the history of the telephone would ever call someone up and claim to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? It had to be way down there on the list of “Do you
have Prince Albert in a can?”–type gags.

  Kareem called back a moment or two later and introduced himself again. This time, I didn’t hang up. This time I said, “Sorry, I thought you’d sound taller.”

  Jump ahead to the weekend of the party. I was flown out to Los Angeles and put up at a very nice hotel. When I got there, a woman was in the lobby, organizing rides back and forth to the restaurant where the party was being held, but there was a message informing me that Kareem himself would be picking me up. Then I got another message, telling me that when Kareem arrived he’d wait for me on the left-hand side of the lobby, just a few feet from the newsstand, which seemed to me an important piece of information, because of course there was no way I would have spotted a twenty-foot black man in the lobby of my hotel if he didn’t tell me exactly where he’d be standing.

  The party came and I did my thing and it felt to me like I’d bombed badly. Nobody laughed. Or if they did, they did so in a quiet, subtle manner, as if they didn’t want anyone else to know. I performed for only ten or fifteen minutes, but it felt to me like three or four hours. I could only imagine how long it must have felt like to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his friends. The minute I got offstage, I grabbed my jacket and found the woman who was organizing the rides and asked her to arrange for a car to take me back to the hotel as soon as possible. Before she could make the call, a large shadow crept over me and I looked up and saw that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was now standing over me. I just about ruined my pants. I don’t mean to suggest that I almost crapped myself. I mean that I almost came in my pants, seeing such a famous Muslim looming over me in such an up-close and intimidating way.