Brad
Zimmerman
February 10, 2014
"I'm enormously successful. I'm just not rich or well known yet. And if I don't ever get any further than I am, I'm still enormously successful." – Brad Zimmerman
Guy MacPherson: Hello, Brad. This is Guy
MacPherson in Vancouver.
Brad Zimmerman: How are
you?!
GM: Good, thank you. You were
expecting my call, I hope.
BZ: Not only am
I expecting your call but you're four minutes late so I got worried. I said,
'Uh-oh.' But first of all, more important than that, I'm on a cellphone, I'm in
Coral Springs, Florida, so hopefully we'll have the same clear connection. How
long is this interview going to be?
GM: Well, we'll just see how it
goes.
BZ: Okay. Well, I'm here,
bubala.
GM: Okay, good. And my clock says
I'm two minutes late. I thought I'd give you two minutes to get ready, you
know.
BZ: It doesn't matter
because you sound like a great guy. If you didn't sound like a great guy, man,
I'd spend ten minutes telling you that I'm very, very prompt.
GM: I like that.
BZ: Is this radio? What is
this?
GM: This is print.
BZ: Oh, cool! Oh, okay,
great. What newspaper?
GM: It's called The Georgia Straight. It's a
weekly in Vancouver.
BZ: The Georgia Straight.
Okay. So let's talk, bubala.
GM: Bubala? What is that?
BZ: Bubala is a Jewish term
of endearment. It's a beautiful word. Bubby is grandmother, and bubala... I use
it to everybody. Whatever. Even to you, who is a gentile.
GM: Good. I like that. Have you
been to Vancouver before?
BZ: I was there once many years
ago with a group of three other comics. We just basically did comedy.
GM: Do you remember where that
was?
BZ: I think it was at the
Chutzpah Festival. Maybe it wasn't. I'm not exactly sure but I know we did the
Vancouver JCC but I'm not sure if it was the Chutzpah Festival or not. I really
don't know.
GM: Who were you with?
BZ: I know Cory Kahaney was one
of them. And the other ones I don't really remember. Maybe Tom Cotter, who is a
very good friend of mine and just finished second in America's Got
Talent last year or two years ago. And the other one might have been
Ross Bennett. He's great also. Ross was just on Letterman about
four or five months ago. Did great.
GM: I've seen your clips, both
standup and one-man show. What are the little tweaks you have to make from
standup to one-man show?
BZ: Well, you know what's
interesting is that, first of all, what you've seen – and this is what I really
pride myself on; it's really what I'm about and really is what separates me
from a lot of people and why I think so much is going to happen in the future,
because I did sell the rights to my show so I just started a national tour –
but to answer your question, my piece is a hybrid. It's part standup, part
theatre. When you're doing a one-man show, you're basically saying this is a
play. So there's not as much audience work between jokes or whatever. It is a
play. I stick to the script, whereas if I'm opening for somebody or if I'm
headlining somewhere in a comedic venue, then I can do whatever I want so it's
a little bit looser. But basically when I say hybrid, I mean part standup, part
theatre, so basically it's outside the box of traditional one-person shows, which
are basically a story. Billy Crystal's one-man show is a story about him and
his father over 700 Sundays, or whatever the title of it is. But most of them
have your traditional beginning, middle and end. Mine is a little different. It
is a little outside the box in the sense of there is an arc and there is a
beginning, middle and an end, but part of it is standup and part of it is
theatre. It's not just funny; it's very moving. So when you ask the question what
is the difference, it's just kind of a mindset I have. When I go out on stage
to do the one-person show, I don't feel the kind of pressure to get the laugh.
Which is huge. In fact, even in the standup now, the laughter is really the
byproduct. My focus is on the connection. No matter what I'm doing, when I'm
connecting, that's what I'm really about. The clip that you saw, one of them
was probably from 2010. In fact, probably both of them. But the reality is that
in the four years I've grown so much. Because what I think what I'm really
about is ultimately mastering what I'm doing and I think it's paving the way
for all these possibilities for me in other mediums, whether it be TV or film.
So it's been incredibly rewarding doing this one-person show because it
resonates universally for not just Jews but for anybody. There's not just one
message in it, but it really is about a guy who waits tables for a long, long
time but doesn't give up the notion that he has a purpose on this planet, and
it's to bring his humour to the world and to inspire or to make people
reassess. Because it's really staying the course; it's not giving up. And
that's really what ultimately the piece is. And also if you can find what you
love to do, which very few people can, or you're willing to struggle... Bruce
Jenner once said something. It was one of the greatest quotes of all time. He
said when he won the decathlon many, many years ago – they asked him what it
felt like to be the best athlete in the world. He said, "I'm not the best athlete
in the world. The best athlete in the world is sitting behind a desk
somewhere." So what he was really saying was, 'Who's willing to pay the
price to be truly great?' You can count on your fingers how many people.
Especially those who are not phenoms. I wasn't a phenom at this. I wasn't
necessarily born to be a comedian or an actor but I worked my tail off and
outworked other people who were much more naturally gifted. My work ethic is
very strong and my attention to detail on this piece I'm doing in Florida now,
I'm just tweaking. Which is maybe just adding a word or taking out two words.
And that's really what it's all about is that kind of detail.
GM: And that's something you
can't do with a play because you have to stick exactly to the script.
BZ: I can do anything I want.
Absolutely. And that's wonderful. What's great is the producers and the people
that I'm with have enormous faith. I just did it in Phoenix for six weeks and
the response was tremendous. After the show, I'd go out and sell the book that
I wrote as a souvenir and the bonding after the show was as enjoyable for me as
doing the show. People telling me how much it meant to them and how it
resonated for them. It's been a sublime experience. Although I started in 2005
and in 2013 is when the show sold. Essentially I'm really bearing the financial
fruit of the piece now. So that's after nine years. It doesn't matter. It takes
as long as it takes and I just stuck with it in addition to doing my comedy and
all these other things and working with Joan Rivers and some of these other
people and also headlining in various theatres and arts festivals. So it's been
a real uphill battle but at this point, I feel like I'm warming up. And that's
kind of an interesting feeling. I'm the late bloomer's late bloomer.
GM: It's got a great title that
hooks you immediately.
BZ: Yes, that's a great point.
That's a really good point.
GM: A Jewish Tragedy... Is it
specific to Judaism?
BZ: Here's the bottom line: There
is a joke that goes there's a big controversy in the Jewish view of when life
begins. In Jewish tradition, the fetus is not considered viable till after it
graduates from medical school. So what that means is, when you think of Jews,
you think of lawyers, doctors. That's their idea of success. It's all about
money. So if I'm waiting tables for 20 years and not making a dime – and a lot
of that had to do with my own personal demons: fear, lack of belief in the
product. It really kept me on the sidelines – so naturally that's in a sense
the tragedy, that I'm not this multi-millionaire who the mother can brag about.
I'm this waiter. So you feel guilty about it. My mother, of course, plays a
huge role in the play. So when you grow up as a Jew, this is a generalization
or stereotype or whatever, but Jews are very ambitious for whatever reason, a
lot of them. They're go-getters. And if you look in show business, if you look
in government, if you look in the money business, so many of them are Jews.
It's a shame that people think of success in terms of how much you're worth
financially. A psychiatrist once said to me if you're happy, you're successful.
Now, I'm not saying I'm happy, but I have moments of happiness. Because we're
not always happy and I do suffer from a certain amount of depression, like any
artist. But when you love what you do, and you feel you have this enormous
purpose... You know, I'm enormously successful. I'm just not rich or well known
yet. And if I don't ever get any further than I am, I'm still enormously
successful. I've done something that very few people can do: write a play and
be able to hold an audience for an hour and twenty, to twenty-five minutes. And
that's a huge accomplishment. There's not a lot of people who can do that. I
think it's from being authentic. And that's part of what the goal is. I'm a
huge believer in quotes, but Seth Godin, who's a big motivational guy, said we
need art that is genuine, that connects, not fake that entertains. And we have
so much fake that entertains that if you can get genuine that connects, we need
that so desperately. Now obviously there's a huge segment of the population
that just wants really dumb comedy, you know, punch, punch, punch, punch,
punch. They have short attention spans and they don't have the ability to
process something that is smart. But I'm not writing for that audience; I'm
writing for a theatre audience. I'm writing for sophisticated people, cultured.
But anyway, getting back to
what you're saying, the interesting thing about the title is that I didn't come
up with it; somebody else did. The original title was something else. When I
first had it produced in Florida many years ago, the director of the theatre
said, "Put Jewish in the title. It's a great selling point. Especially in
Florida." And some guy in the theatre came up after seeing it and said
this should be the title. And I actually paid him. He didn't expect it but he
deserved it because he came up with it. You're right, it's a great, great
title.
GM: I would imagine the best of
all the art is genuine and connects and entertains.
BZ: I would agree with you 150
percent. There's another element to that. Entertained, yes. My play's very
entertaining. But it also has a tendency to make you think. People have told me
that. It can make you think. And I think that really good theatre has that
ability. If you just want to turn off your mind and just be entertained by
something that has no depth, just surface stuff, that's fine. I have no problem
with that. But mine goes deeper. Mine goes to, Can you find something that you
love? When I think of all the people that I started out with in this business,
there's very few left. They're priorities changed. They didn't want to
struggle. They wanted security. They wanted a family. I don't have a family.
I'm all by myself. I love children but the fact that I don't have any? Oy! I
am so happy, you have no idea. Because this way I can devote all my time to my
work. Now, that doesn't mean that some day I don't want children, but right now
I'm just about the work. It would be selfish to have a kid and not be able to
devote all my time. So it is entertaining – enormously entertaining. But if
it's just entertaining, then it's not a one-man show. I mean in my book. I
think it's gotta have an emotional undercurrent if you're doing a one-person
show. I mean, loads of people do it. Jackie Mason and so many other people do
one-person shows where it's just funny. But I think if you can touch people
deeply, which I do – or at least some people; everybody's touched in their own
way – I think they have an experience, they have something to think about, it
can stay with them, they relate to it, and it may make them reassess their own
lives and say, What's important to me? What am I not doing that I need to be
doing? I also think being creative, even if you don't make a living, is huge.
In some ways.
GM: You're playing the Chutzpah
Festival but as you said, this isn't for any specific group, right?
BZ: No. In fact, Phoenix has a
large gentile population. It's almost half and half. I've done it for old Jews,
I've done it for old gentiles, and I've done it for a mixture. So I think again
it's just for people who are willing to go with my journey and have a certain
kind of, let's say, intelligence and enjoy culture. That's really what it is.
It really resonates universally. The more specific you write, the more
universal it is. People just relate to it. You know, a mother is a mother is a
mother, whether you're Italian or Jewish or African American or Chinese.
Mothers have a lot in common in terms of how they deal with their child.
GM: There are so many Jewish
comedians and we love them. Watching a Woody Allen movie, we get the experience
even if we haven't experienced it quite that way ourselves.
BZ: Absolutely. Absolutely.
That's a very good point, why it is that there's so many Jewish comics, I'm not
sure. Some of it probably has to do, for me, with survival. I felt insecure s a
kid and humour was a way of feeling better about myself. First of all, the fact
I make my living, that I went from being this shy, kind of aloof kid that was
totally into sports and that's it to ages later opening for George Carlin, it's
shocking – shocking – that that's how I ended up. I would never in a million
years have imagined me as a comic. I'm not a comic; I'm really an actor who
does comedy, but nonetheless.
"If you're good, you're good. I don't care if you're a truck driver during the day, if you're funny, you're funny." – Brad Zimmerman
GM: You started in 1978 trying to
become an actor?
BZ: What happened was I
moved to New York to become an actor – and this is part of what the play's
about – but I didn't really pursue it because I never, never felt for a long
time... It really boiled down to a lack of belief in the product. So I just
stayed in acting class for many years. I never really did anything but wait
tables and study acting. Then I sort of dropped out of acting because I was
getting bitter and I felt like I had no purpose. And finally I was turned on to
the right psychiatrist and blah, blah, blah and took a standup comedy class in
'96 and that's when I finally went out into the world. It's so ironic that what
I was afraid of was failing – because failure was always so humiliating.
However good I am now, it's because I went out and failed over and over and
over again and learned from it. So what I was afraid of is the reason I'm good!
GM: So those eighteen years, from
'78 to '96, were spent in acting classes?
BZ: No. Anything I did
outside of an acting class, it really didn't pay anything. I think I did two
one-person shows but there was no money involved. I did one when my dad died in
'93. And the first one I did was in '87. But other than that, nothing. Maybe a
few non-union commercials, but really nothing. Truly nothing. And even once I
started doing the comedy, I didn't stop waiting tables until 2007. What's interesting,
Guy, we lead one life. And I think ultimately what I said to myself was I'm
gonna commit to this, and I'm gonna get out into the world in whatever it is,
whatever happens, happens but this is my life and I don't need to be a
grandparent some day. I'm an artist. So this is my life for better or worse.
And if I die poor, which I won't because I think it's all ahead of me, then
that's my choice. You know what I'm saying? But the struggling, which is why so
many people leave it, I just thought of it as part of the whole process. If
you're on this planet to master something, which I think is why I'm here, the
ultimate purpose, then struggling and insecurity and living in the unknown and
not knowing when the next gig is coming, that's all part of it. So I don't
think of it as anything special, like, Oh, you have so much courage or this or
that; I just think of it as this is what I do. Learning to live struggling...
I've lived in the same apartment forever. It's just this tiny place. And I'm
fine there. That's not as important as my work. So I'm a little different than
most of my contemporaries and people I'm good friends with, some of who are
very successful financially and some of who are in my bracket.
GM: Did you just take to standup
when you started out?
BZ: I think that, having
done some of the one-person shows, I had some restaurant pieces and a couple of
mother pieces so I went out into the world with five minutes of some restaurant
stuff. And the restaurant stuff became at that time my signature piece. And it
is still to some extent my signature piece. Because nobody's ever done the
restaurant stuff the way I do it. And if you come see the show, you'll see that
it's truly one of a kind what I do. So I think that what happened was I finally
found something. Remember, when you're acting, you're acting with somebody
else. I found that working alone, writing my own material, being my own boss,
and having a certain amount of comedic chops that I got in acting class, I
think it was just a great fit. The combination of all of those things. I knew I
had a certain kind of sense of humour. It's like a muscle, if you do have it.
If you're not funny, and there are so many people who are not funny who try to
do this... But yes, I think I was different from the get-go. Tommy Smothers
said something to me. When George Carlin did his last HBO special, I was
opening for him. Carlin's manager had actually signed me to a deal. He said,
'I'll have HBO film you at my expense and we'll see if we can market the tape.'
So HBO was there and I did 32 minutes. And Tommy Smothers came backstage,
because he's friends with George, and he has a winery up in the wine country –
we did it in Santa Rosa – and he said to me, "I love your air." And
what he was saying was, 'I love the pauses that you take.' And if you watch
comics today, very, very few work as slow as I do, or have the ability to live
in silence. And that takes a lot of confidence. Tommy said, "People don't
work like that anymore." So much of the laughter you can get is when you're
not saying anything. And I've learned to do that. I see so many of my
contemporaries who, if they would employ some of that and not rush... People
are afraid of silence. They're afraid they'll bore the audience. They gotta
bombard them. And as my therapist says, an audience needs time to process. If
you can make them just feel relaxed so they can enjoy you because you're not
bombarding them, they love it. Especially if you're interesting.
GM: I would say as an audience
member, as long as the pause is purposeful, it's good, not when we get the
sense you're struggling to figure out what to say next.
BZ: Oh, absolutely. All my pauses
are purposeful. In fact, the more I do the show – I did eight shows a week in
Phoenix – the best thing about it was having a chance to repeat over and over
again, like coming up to bat in baseball, and to make adjustments on those
pauses. Getting comfortable on stage as a comedian is so hard. Louis C.K. said
it takes 15 to 20 years. He's so on the money. When he's talking about comfort,
he's just talking about that there's no pressure. The audience is there to see
you; they're not going anywhere. So get into that mode where I don't have to
rush. I'm gonna make them laugh. I've done my work. And even if you don't,
sometimes it's not your fault. All you can do is what you can do. I have so
many different responses. The hardest thing for a comic is one night a line
will just blow the roof off and they applaud and the next night they don't get
it. So learning to play with that wide range of response on each line, if you
took it personally it'd be like you're in a heavyweight fight getting
sucker-punched every two seconds.
GM: When you're doing 30+ minutes
of standup, you weren't just doing restaurant material, were you?
BZ: No, I do a lot of topical
stuff. Not political because I'm not smart enough. Not religious because I'm
not smart enough. You think about it as a guy who's waited tables, we all see
the world differently. We're all wired differently. I do restaurant stuff. That
sets the table for who I am, for a guy who's struggled. And then I talk about
the world the way I see it, whether it be reality television, whether it be the
world today versus the world I grew up in where everything was simple and there
was no technology, or my social life, which has been almost non-existant, or
the Jewish mother. Just loads of different things. Or some of the comedy
stories that I have. Some of the bombs where somebody will say, three minutes
into my act, "Get to the punchline." That's what separates me from
comedians and why I don't work clubs, is that comedians have to have, like, six
punchlines a minute. I don't work that way. When I write, I never worry about
the punchline. I know there's going to be one and you have to get there, but sometimes
you gotta wait for it. So that's why I don't do clubs. Because I'm not a
comedian in the purest sense of the word.
GM: The clip I saw of your
standup was from Caroline's Comedy Club.
BZ: Now that was interestingly
enough in 2002 and that was a bringer show. I started in '96. A bringer show is
the most important, probably, event that you can do as a beginning comic, where
you bring ten people, you get ten minutes, and they hire a videographer. Now, I
did 30 bringer shows and six years after I started that tape that you saw from
2002 is the reason that I work. Because I sent it out and I started getting
booked on that tape. And I used it for eight more years until I edited my
one-man show, which I did in 2010, and started using eight minutes from that.
And started to really slow down in 2010. Really slowed down.
GM: You got booked from that into
other clubs or did you just say no to clubs right away?
BZ: I started doing clubs, I
started opening for Joan Rivers, Brad Garrett, then George Carlin, all on the
tape. All on that tape. Country clubs, Jewish country clubs, synagogues,
casinos, all different kinds of places. All based on that tape.
GM: Did your stories of exchanges
with customers all happen to you or are they an amalgamation of other stories
you heard?
BZ: Some of them definitely
happened. The whole waiter thing started when I was working on a one-man show
the year my father was ill, in acting class. The teacher said to me what's
missing from the play – I've never taken a writing class so I didn't know
anything other than whatever it is I knew from not taking classes – she said,
"You need stories. You need anecdotes." And I went back home and I thought
about what she said and I wrote a restaurant piece. It was basically based,
very simply, on something a woman said to me at a table. I was bitter at this
time. I was not a happy person. I was waiting on this party and a woman said to
me at one point, "My sister doesn't think you like us." And I said,
"It's not that; I'm very busy." She said, "I understand that.
That doesn't mean you can't smile." And that was in one of the pieces that
I wrote initially – it's not in my act anymore. It started me off on writing a
lot of waiter stuff. Remember, when you've waited tables for 29 years, you have
a lot of stories. And yes, the amalgam or whatever you want to call it, the
woman who can't make up her mind or all of those kinds of things or there's
this one bit in my one-man show where we're about to close and there's nobody
in the restaurant. I'm already doing my side work and a customer comes in. If I
were doing a sitcom, the opening scene would be her coming in and me going to
my locker and getting a rifle and you see the dot on that person's head. You
don't fire the gun but you just see the dot. It's like the rage that you feel
about a person that comes in right before you're closing and has the audacity
to sit down. And the manager who seats the person. So it's a combination of so
many things. Humour starts with the truth but then you can stretch it. And that
what you do sometimes. And then sometimes it's totally not stretched. My thing
about reality television, my thing about a lot of things, is pure. There's no
stretching because the truth is what's funny.
GM: When you were doing standup
and talking about being a waiter, that's brave because my sense is that some
comedians are embarrassed if they have a day job. They wouldn't want to admit
that. They'd want the audience to think that this is what they do
professionally.
BZ: That's a great point.
There were people who told me that I should say that I was a
waiter. And I decided no. No, that's not what I'm going to do. I'm going to
tell them that I still wait tables because that's the truth of the matter. And
that's a great point on your part. I wasn't concerned about people thinking I'm
not professional. That never bothered me. It probably bothered other comics who
advised me more than me. It never bothered me. If you're good, you're good. I
don't care if you're a truck driver during the day, if you're funny, you're
funny. So that's the way I saw it more than anything else.
GM: Who did you sell the rights
to?
BZ: I'll tell you what
happened. I signed with a manager in 2013, in February or March. The first
thing he did was he got me three weeks at a theatre called the Stage Door
Theater in Coral Springs. And the show kept getting extended because of word of
mouth. The owner of the theatre knew these two producers who produce a number
of different shows, one of which – and I'm sure he's been up in the area; do
you know Steve Solomon?
GM: No.
BZ: His play is called My
Mother's Italian, My Father's Jewish, I'm in Therapy. He now has a
whole bunch of them that he's written. He has other people playing them now.
And after three years, I can do that, too, if I agree on who they cast as me. I
don't have to do the show for seven years. They have the rights for seven
years, but just the touring rights. One of them is a guy named Dana Matthau.
He's Walter Matthau's nephew. The other is Phil Roger Roy. They're great
producers. They're wonderful guys. It's a great fit for me. They came down and
saw the show and made an offer the next day. So I just finished six weeks in
Phoenix. When I finish Vancouver – and they didn't book me; Cory Kahaney might
have recommended me – but after Vancouver I'll be in Maryland, I'll be in
Boston for five weeks, I'll be in San Diego for the whole summer and then
another part of California. It's an amazingly gratifying thing to have this
kind of situation where a comic only lives in the unknown and I'm not really
living in the unknown because they have to book me a certain amount of times to
make a certain amount of money each year. So that's great. It's the first time
in my life that I've never not worried about money. I can't even tell you what
that's like. It's beyond heavenly. It's amazing. It's an amazing feeling not to
be juggling bills.
GM: This could be like Defending the Caveman.
BZ: I never saw it but I
know it's the biggest-selling one-man show ever. Did you ever see it?
GM: Yeah, I saw it in Vegas.
BZ: It has its own theatre.
That's how the guy made millions, by doing it and then farming it out to other
actors but he still gets paid every time anybody does it. Did you like it?
GM: Yeah, it was fun.
BZ: I never saw it. Quite
frankly, I don't know if you'll get a chance to see mine but without even
having seen his, I'm very competitive so I can tell you I'm sure mine's better. (laughs)
GM: I'm sure yours if funnier.
BZ: I'm sure it's funnier
and it's very, very moving. Defending the Caveman I'm sure
doesn't talk about the death of his father. That's part of it, is that my
father never saw me become successful; he only saw me as a waiter. I have a
brother who worked for him. That was another thing. I have two other brothers
and they worked for him for a time and both eventually quit and the youngest
one eventually sold a kayak business for millions of dollars and my father
never saw that. That's life. That's part of life and that's what I'm presenting
in the show. It's not funny; it's sad, it's touching, it's poignant, it's this,
it's that. It's such a variety of emotions. It takes you on such a journey.
That's really what it does.
GM: But Brad, it's not a
competition.
BZ: What's not a
competition?
GM: You don't need to compete
with the Caveman.
BZ: Oh, I'm not. Can I tell
you something? I'm not competing with the Caveman but when I
was a kid, and the first piece talks about this, I was very competitive. I was
a great athlete. And being competitive in my life is something that's never
really left. And part of that you can say is healthy; part is unhealthy. It is
what it is. When Dustin Hoffman's acting teacher said, "You don't have
it," he said he was always motivated by revenge. Even to this day. He said
it on Inside the Actor's Studio. And my therapist would say
whatever does it for you, as long as you can maintain a certain amount of
humility. We always know who we're better than. I'm exactly where I should be.
I don't think I should have my own sitcom, even though if I was out there doing
that, I think I'd be landing roles all the time but that's not the way I wanted
to go. I'm very content doing this and seeing how far it takes me. It's kind of
a challenge and it's kind of thrilling in its own way.
