Guests on this program were:

• Robert Klein
• Kevin Pollak
• Larry Miller
• David Cross

Bill's Opening-

Bill: Hi, I'm Bill Maher. You know, we've been doing our show all week from here at the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, and so it seemed natural to do a program with just comics. It was either that or skiers.

[ Laughter ]

And nobody really wants to see that. So tonight, join me with four of the finest comics I know -- all satirized for your protection.

[ Applause ]

Panel Discussion-

Bill: Thank you very many. All right. Let's meet our panel. He has too many TV credits to list and his films include, "Pretty Woman" and "For Richer or Poorer." His next is "Chairman of the Board," opens this Friday. Larry Miller!

[ Applause ]

Larry? Come on, give. Say uncle.

Larry: Uncle.

[ Applause ]

Bill: He's the Emmy-winning writer/performer who puts the David in "Mr. Show with Bob and David," David Cross.

[ Applause ]

How are you, buddy?

David: Good.

Bill: Good to see you. His films include, "A Few Good Men," and "The Usual Suspects." He'll be seen soon in HBO's "From the Earth to the Moon." Kevin Pollak.

[ Applause ]

How are you? And finally, he's at work on his seventh HBO comedy special. His next movies are "Goosed" and "Primary Colors," which opens March 20th. Robert Klein.

[ Applause ]

Robert Klein.

Robert: Gentlemen.

Bill: All right. Well, this is very unique for us. We have never had on this show in our five years four comedians. I always avoided it. Because that was not the idea of the show. It was to mix different people. We always thought four comedians wouldn't work. So --

[ Laughter ]

And let me first ask this. The reason why is because comedians are competitive. True or not?

Kevin: What are you saying?

[ Laughter ]

Robert: Can I get something off my chest? Monica Lewinsky. All right, that's the last time it'll be heard.

Bill: Yes.

Kevin: The dichotomy. They're competitive and loving at the same time. There's an absolute brethren and sisteren, whatever. And at the same time, it sort of breeds an organic competition, I think.

Larry: I have never heard such a load of tripe in my life.

[ Laughter ]

I don't know. Come on, we've talked about this before. When we were all baby comics in the clubs there in New York. You know, that we were all friends. We used to like to watch each other. I didn't -- I know this sounds like Pollyanna. But I didn't -- I never bought into the competitive thing. We're all thrilled when each of us started doing the talk shows. As we move along, everyone's happy.

David: Hey, you beat the crap out of me one time at Catch when I wanted to go up and do five minutes. And you said, "I'm Larry Miller. I want" -- you know.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: Yeah, Larry. What, you talk about a load of crap.

Larry: You know something? As if one night out of a life makes a difference.

[ Laughter ]

Robert: It's traditional. You know, W.C. Fields, one of my absolute favorites, was terrified of Chaplin and Chaplin's fame. And Chaplin thought Fields was, you know, tremendous. So it's not unprecedented.

Bill: Right.

Robert: Rodney used to say, Dangerfield used to say, on "The Ed Sullivan Show," --

[ Impersonating Dangerfield ]

"One comedian's on, the other one hopes he does fair."

Kevin: Yeah, how many times have you been waiting just in the wings while a comedian is finishing his act and he comes through the curtain towards you. And as he walks past you, he says "Follow that, pal."

Bill: Yeah.

Kevin: How many hundreds of times has that --

Larry: Well, now, you've said that a lot, yeah.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: You mentioned Rodney Dangerfield. Rodney Dangerfield said that he worked with a guy, never said who it was, who was funnier than anybody who he'd ever worked with, but he never made it.

Robert: We're not talking about Joe Ansus, the aluminum siding salesman?

[ Laughter ]

Bill: He may be. But --

Robert: He's hilarious, I can tell you.

Bill: Joe Ansus was?

Robert: Yeah, and especially if you wanted to buy siding from him, you got a private -- but that was as far as it got.

Bill: There is the idea that the best, funniest people never make it. That have you to compromise to become a --

David: Uh, Carrot Top?

[ Laughter ]

Bill: But you see, that would be an example of someone --

Robert: I didn't understand that.

[ Laughter ]

When you started laughing, then I got frightened.

David: Carrot Top's a gentleman who --

Bill: He does very, you know, mainstream.

Robert: Don't be so inside, man. America's watching here. I can say Harold Ginsburg. What does it mean?

Larry: You know what, though? I actually -- I have to say this and I disagree completely. I think Carrot Top is very creative, very funny, does a great job. And it's not just because I'm co-starring with him in that movie you mentioned. It's not that --

[ Laughter ]

It's not that at all. No, I really -- I think he's great.

David: I was just sort of trying to get a cheap laugh. Let's be honest.

Robert: You know what the story is? The world is full of --

[ Laughter ]

Kevin: And if we weren't so competitive, we might have let you get away with it.

Robert: It was a good laugh. Don't say cheap. The -- an excellent laugh. Don't ever say that about your wonderful material.

David: All right, Robert.

Robert: All right, I'm just telling you. The world is full of great amateur comedians. Guy at the post office between shootings. You know, stuff like that. Everywhere at work, everywhere at school. Everyone has an uncle. My father was hilariously talented. He was a textile salesman. You must have that extra part above the talent to operate in show business. What this guy has gone through --

Bill: But I mean, you just said, you know, "It's an excellent laugh," whatever. It may have been. But there are such things as cheap laughs. Not all laughs are equal. Do you think all laughs are equal?

Robert: No.

Bill: I mean, there are jokes that are great and there are jokes that are crappy that people just laugh at because people laugh at crap.

Robert: Not knowing Carrot Top, it wasn't a joke at all.

Bill: How do you not know Carrot Top?

Robert: Who is Carrot Top?

Bill: Who is Carrot Top?

Robert: It's not fair to pin me down like that.

[ Laughter ]

David: That is surprising, though.

Bill: Yeah.

David: He's huge. I mean, he's all over the place.

Bill: And he's patterned his whole act after you.

David: Yeah.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: All right. We have to take a commercial. We'll be right back.

[ Applause ]

Bill: Okay. You know, I kidded you as we went out about, you know, Carrot Top.

Robert: Carrot, I'm sorry. Oh, that Carrot Top? I'm sorry.

Bill: That he had patterned his whole starting out after you. But you know what? I did. That's the truth. I started, you know, I listened to your albums. I absolutely recorded them and transcribed them, typed them out so I could be as much like Robert --

Robert: I could press charges now.

[ Laughter ]

This guy is -- theft of intellectual material.

Bill: But, I mean, you know, is there anything new is the question because we all pattern ourselves after -- especially in comedy.

David: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Bill: Who did you?

David: Who did I pattern myself after?

Bill: Yeah.

David: In the beginning, I was very, very influenced by Andy Kaufman. And I had a much different act than what I do now.

Bill: Andy Kaufman.

David: Yeah. He's -- he was a comic who was -- he was on "Taxi."

Bill: I saw -- I know.

David: I'm saying this for Robert Klein.

[ Laughter ]

Robert: I knew him. I knew him.

Bill: I never got that.

Robert: He died.

Bill: Yes, he did.

Robert: We all died many times, but he died for real.

David: But, actually, I was very influenced by kind of my generation of comics, too. You know --

Kevin: The kids today.

David: The kids today who are -- we all kind of worked with each other whether it was like Janeane Garofalo or --

Bill: Well, you're in a different generation. We're all pretty much in the same generation.

Robert: Then I'm way back!

[ Laughter ]

Bill: You're the beyond Carrot Top generation. I mean, we really admired you beyond anybody because you were sort of a pioneer in your day, and you have the arrows in your chest to prove it. I'm kidding, ladies and gentlemen. But --

[ Laughter ]

The question is, why so many Jews?

[ Laughter ]

In comedy?

[ Applause ]

That's really what we're getting to. Why all the Jews?

David: It's a real --

Bill: Everyone wants to know.

David: It's a simple answer -- because we run the media.

[ Laughter ]

We got this, we got that --

[ Applause ]

Robert: Banks, media. I think that this is actually a very legitimate question. Interestingly enough, hosting the Monty Python evening and, you know, Eric "Idlewitz" and all those other Jews in the Monty Python. It proves you don't have to be Jewish to be funny. I think there's a correlation somewhere between the tradition, which also not only includes humor heavily, although all people in the world laugh, as far as I know, it also includes the element of oppression. And very much comparable to American slave humor, Irish humor. Irish are hilarious.

Bill: Yeah, but there's not a lot of Irish comedians.

Robert: Well, that's not true. There are.

Bill: Compared to Jewish comedians?

Robert: We're overrepresented in -- medicine. We're overrepresented in comedy. Overrepresented meaning for our numbers. In the rabbinate, there are very few gentile rabbis.

[ Laughter ]

I never. Maybe one, I know a priest who became a rabbi.

Bill: But if you had four doctors on the show, they probably wouldn't all be Jewish. But we have four comics, all Jewish.

David: Well, I'm actually -- I mean, I was born Jewish, but I'm an atheist. I don't believe in God. I -- uh -- although I'm giving Scientology a shot tomorrow. But anyway --

[ Laughter ]

But I don't think it really has anything to do -- I don't feel like it had anything to do with my comedy or my sensibilities or --

Kevin: And yet the fact remains, doesn't it, Mr. Cross?

[ Laughter ]

Bill: Yeah, I mean --

David: But I mean --

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

But -- but isn't that just a coincidence? I mean, in my case?

Bill: How could you say it's a coincidence when so much of the field is dominated by Jews.

Robert: Well, it's not a coincidence in my -- it may be a coincidence in his case. How about you fellows? You Episcopalians sitting here.

Bill: Yeah, Larry. I mean, I never met a bigger Jew than you, Larry.

Larry: Well, I --

[ Laughter ]

Well, what he means also is that I pray every day. I'm actually, you know, practicing in a -- I guess, a fairly strict sense, compared with Hollywood, which is not saying a lot, I know. But, I mean, what a control group. But, I mean --

[ Laughter ]

Look, I don't know. I think people who are vocal, who tend to be funny, I think overrepresentation. I think it's a remarkable, you know, group of people you put, what 1,000 years you put Jews down in any society, you get great stories and funny people. You know?

[ Laughter ]

Robert: A lot more.

Kevin: It starts a lot with the encouragement of the environment in the home.

Bill: How about the fact that Jews are [ bleep ] on, so they have to laugh. Are we missing that big point?

Robert: I think there is a little, but I can't prove it scientifically. But I think there is a bit of that, of course.

Kevin: Yeah.

Robert: Of course.

Kevin: Either very happy household or very repressed household. It was always black and white.

Bill: It's sort of like when you're a kid in school. If you're the one who's, you know, afraid to get beat up, maybe the way out of that is to make people laugh so they don't beat you up.

Kevin: But I think it's encouraged also by the parents in this, you know, religious upbringing.

Robert: My parents didn't want me to become a comedian, I can assure you.

Kevin: Not necessarily a comedian, but there's this -- I think a great deal of non-Jews that I've met, even performers and actors were sort of almost scolded for acting out or drawing attention to themselves, whereas, I have yet to meet a Jewish mother who doesn't say, "Isn't my kid the greatest?" You know -- "Have you ever seen anything so funny?" I mean, you know, it's really so encouraging it's like, you know --

Robert: My father had to go -- my parents had to go to the principal for me fooling around. I had to go to for my son. My parents --

Larry: By the way, the principal, a Jew.

Kevin: Right.

[ Laughter ]

David: I was, I was, you know, encouraged to get into comedy by your parents.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: All right. We have to take a commercial. We'll be right back.

[ Applause ]

Bill: All right. We're back with our four comedians. Now, I go back a long way with some of you. Less with others, but tell me some of your funniest road situations, 'cause that's our life for so many years.

Kevin: Hell gigs?

Bill: Yeah, I mean, a lot of times it was.

Kevin: For me, it boiled down to the worst introduction I ever got. You know.

Bill: Yeah.

Kevin: You know, comics tend to make way too much of what you're going to say about me before I come out. I guess the premise is the introduction should impress them so that my act doesn't have to.

Bill: Well, somebody once said the introduction is the first part of your act.

Kevin: Yeah, right. And I had this, "Ladies and gentlemen, we're out of thousand island, and now" --

[ Laughter ]

Larry: I've got one -- I've got one in the --

[ Laughter ]

I've got a --

Robert: Humiliating.

Larry: -- Another bad introduction story. We've all followed very sad things, at benefits or something, working the Iowa State Police Association convention.

[ Laughter ]

1,000 officers and their wives, a big dome ballroom. And just before -- I'm in the back with one of the cops, gonna walk me up. I've got my little suit on. And the chief is making a speech, does a couple of awards, and he says, "Before we bring on our entertainers, you know, last week, young Danny McFann was shot and kill in the line of duty." Now, he says this and you're watching like this. And so I just turned to the cop and said, "What are we doing?" He said, "We're going to have a little memorial service." And I said, "You know I'm a comic." And he said, "Shhhhh."

[ Laughter ]

Now, they bring on the guy's partner, the partner breaks down. Can't finish his speech. They bring up the widow and the children. This is -- unbelievable, a horrible tragedy -- to accept the foundation check. She passes out. And they have to cart her off with salts on a bier. And they lowered a flag, the length of the arch next to the guy's picture. Everyone sang a hymn and then as if this had been scripted, the guy says, "And now, here to make you laugh --"

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

Bill: Very funny.

[ Applause ]

David: I had to do -- I got this gig doing a biker bar in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Bill: A biker bar?

David: Biker bar.

Kevin: What were you are thinking when you said yes? I have to ask.

David: I was saying, "Wow, I don't --"

Larry: See we didn't know what was coming.

David: I didn't have to eat noodles and soup for a month.

Bill: A biker bar. What was the gig?

David: It was called Jimmy's. It was a bar in Dedham, Massachusetts. It's just a horrible road gig, one-nighter. You know, back when the boom -- and everybody had a -- you know.

Larry: Yeah.

Bill: Right.

David: Comedy in my -- in my closet, there was a room. Sorry. Sorry. Anyway, but -- so I get there and there's like this little, like, Radio Shack, tinny, you know, and there's no stage. And all these people are in folded metal chairs sitting like this. Everyone is hammered. Stupid and hammered. And the bar is over here and there's, like, this little three steps that lead up to here and there's no wall. It's just -- there's the bar and, like, a little railing, and so I go up there, and I start trying to do my act and I'm commenting on the situation, how ridiculous it is. And this guy starts stumbling up the steps and they're like, "Oh, sh -- here comes Frankie." And he's hammered and he's blind. His eyes are crossed. And he's pointing and starting lurching his way towards me. And they're like, "Oh, Frankie's up." And I was like, "Oh, well, Frankie's here. All right. Frankie, what have you got to say?" It was the biggest mistake I ever made. And I have the mike here, and I go, "Frank." He walks right next to me. "What do you want to say?" And he gets me in this huge bear hug. And the mike is now up to my face. So you can hear everything, like --

[ Snorting ]

"Cut it out!" And he gets me in this bear hug, this big drunk guy, and starts licking my face.

[ Laughter ]

And everyone's howling. It's the funniest thing! And --

Larry: I hope you closed with this.

[ Laughter ]

David: That, well, you know, I hired him. He works with me now.

[ Laughter ]

But -- and I said, "Dad." No, but that was the worst.

Larry: There's an interesting point. Never mind Jews as comics, but who becomes a comic? Who in society would go through what we're chuckling about? We've all had stories like that, where a Bonanza fight breaks out in the bar. Where the chairs are flying, the pitchers are hurling and you're actually thinking, "Well, what bit should I do next?"

[ Laughter ]

I mean, what other person, even among performers, would --

Bill: I disagree with that. I mean, I've heard that all my life. Comedy's the hardest thing, right?

Larry: No, that's not what I meant. I meant, not that it's tough and, "Oh, the fighter pilots of show business" or something like that. I don't mean that at all. I mean, how crazy are we to do that?

Bill: I don't think at all.

Larry: That's my point. We're fine.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: I'm serious.

Larry: I think also -- I say this also about acting, with auditions, about how many people out of 20, 30.

Bill: But acting is different, because acting, you either make it or you don't. Where we -- you know when we started, you could make a living working an hour a day. An hour a day.

David: A good living, too.

Bill: A good living.

David: Under the table.

Bill: Right.

David: And all the cocaine you want.

[ Laughter ]

Bill: And --

[ Laughter ]

Kevin: So then the biker bar circuit was not a bad thing?

David: I'm just saying, you know.

Robert: You don't have to ask me.

Bill: Don't you think that's overrated, that comedy is so hard?

David: I do. I do.

Robert: I just want to say, you didn't get to my bad story. I just want to say I had the exact experience as David.

Bill: The face licking.

Robert: I believe the same guy goes around and licks faces.

[ Laughter ]

For good stories later on. I was opening for Barbra Streisand in Vegas many years ago.

Bill: Well, that's a tough gig.

Robert: A little too prematurely. No, I was there too early. Jack Rollins got me a great gig. It was a lot of money and all. And they were drunk on New Year's Eve at the Hilton. And, you know, I was used to the hip Improv and things my way.

Bill: Right.

Robert: And someone went, "Hey, North Carolina!" And he threw a pencil. And I went -- I was really cool -- I went, "What made you do that?!" I guess they thought I lost control.

Bill: I can't believe somebody in North Carolina had a pencil.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

I'm kidding, North Carolina.
We've got to take a commercial.

[ Applause ]

Nick V.O.: Join us tomorrow when our guests will include -- Paul Rodriguez, Stephanie Powers and Betsy Hart.

[ Applause ]

Bill: All right. We just have a couple of seconds. Greatest comic of all time?

Kevin: Personally, Albert Brooks.

Bill: Albert Brooks.

David: That's what I'd say.

Bill: Yeah?

David: Albert Brooks.

Larry: I'd say there are a lot of guys that -- I think this guy's done it about as well as anybody has.

Robert: Well, that's very kind. I would say a combination of Lenny Bruce and Jonathan Winters together. And the best I ever saw alive do it was Richard Pryor.

Bill: Okay.

[ Applause ]

Stand up.

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