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 Bob NelsonBob Nelson is not a stand-up comedian. For most of his career, he has been uncomfortable with the term. He prefers to be called a clown, like his idol, Red Skelton. When you see his show, you won't hear about what Nelson finds funny - you'll see it. Like Jonathan Winters - another idol - he does characters. Becomes them, actually. So much so that when you call Nelson's house, you won't hear his voice on the answering machine. The voice you'll hear belongs to Jiffy Jeff, his punch-drunk fighter character. On stage, you'll see Jeff, Eppy Epperman, the football player, and all the characters that Nelson has brought to his work in movies like "Brain Donors," with John Turturro, and television shows like "Double Muppets Hold the Onions." He won an Emmy as host of that show. Seeing him live, it's easy to tell why. I recently spoke with Nelson from his home in Massapequa, Long Island, where he got his start. [Nick] You got into this business in a strange sort of way. Can you tell me about the phone pranks that led to your first job as a stand-up? Sure. What happened was, when I worked for a company called Volt Information Sciences, we used to do telephone book ads for the South. We had a department called quality control, and I was the paste-up artist and we'd see something wrong with the yellow page ad, say it was open from 8 AM to 8 PM, and I'd be making the ad, and on the bottom they would want me to put open 24 hours. So that was obviously a discrepancy and we'd have to call down. And quality control would give it to the secretaries in the front office to call down to, let's say Shreveport, La. It would be a tractor company and they'd have to talk to the owner of the tractor company and find out if they're open 24 hours or 8 to 8. Instead of letting the secretaries call, I would call in one of my characters. I'd call down as, you know, a guy from New York named Tony Cappuccino [affects a Brooklyn accent] "Hey, dis is Tony Cappuccino, you're ad's really stupid." And the guy'd be going, "I'm sorry, what'd you say?" And I'd say, "I said you're ad's really stupid. You're not stupid, you're ad is stupid." You know, doing that. The secretaries and everybody in the office would be listening on the speakerphone in the other room. And I'd be messing with the client. I'd call in different characters all the time. I'd call down as a gay guy. You know, [affects a lisp] "Hey there, this is New York City." Depending on what the company was, we'd figure out some kind of character I would call down as. Apparently what happened was, one day, the secretaries had forgotten to dial the area code, so we'd gotten a local business on Long Island where I live. It turns out that they had called Richard M. Dixon. I guy who looks like Nixon, who talks like Nixon, and who acts like Nixon. He happened to be opening a club on Long Island. Here I am thinking I'm talking to someone down in Texas or something, and I got this guy who doesn't know what I'm talking about. And I thought my office had set me up with someone else in another room. I thought maybe I was talking to someone else from my office in another room. It was like a sting, you know. They're trying to get me. So what I did was I poured it on, I really was making fun of this guy. Saying, "You can't be Nixon. You're supposed to be in jail." And he was laughing on the other end. And he didn't know who I was, and he kept telling me he's opening up a club in Massapequa. I said, "Well I'm from Massapequa and there's no club there like that name so now I know you're lying." He said, "No, no. This place used to be called The Hideaway. It's not The Hideaway anymore, it's The White House Inn." And after a while I started to realize, oh yeah, I remember that place. And it turned out to be legit, this guy was legit. He invited me to come down to do his open mike night the following Wednesday. So that's how I got started. I went down to the open mike, and everybody in the office wanted to see what I was going to do. I had three different jobs. I had the people from that office, and where I pumped gas. I was a stock boy at one job, and a security guard. So I had the place packed. [Nick] From there you went on to doing regular shows? Yeah, well, it kind of snowballed. I was doing a lot of those nights every Wednesday, And my friends stopped coming. It got difficult. I pressed on because one guy - kind of a weird story - this guy was telling me I wasn't funny. I wasn't really funny, it was just because all my friends were there. And my friends stopped coming the first time I bombed about five weeks later, and he was laughing, saying, ""I told you, man. You weren't funny.'' I probably would have walked away from it and said, ""I don't need this.'' But it was a personal thing. I had to prove to this guy that I was funny. It just kind of snowballed. I just started getting paying gigs, and it was pretty incredible. [Nick] What was your impulse to keep going after that? Well, it just started to become lucrative. And it really started to become fun, especially because I really didn't have anyone to model my comedy after. I just had whatever was put into my head from watching cartoons, old Red Skelton shows, Jerry Lewis movies and whatnot. I never really saw a stand-up do his thing. I was only like 19, 20, so I decided I had to try this. And I was just having fun, because I was coming from a different point of view, too. The things I was doing were very physical, very off the wall, very visual. Different characters. I created my own stuff so I was fresh and brand new. It wasn't like I was doing observational comedy. [Nick] So there was never any impulse early on, as a kid, to do anything like this? Not really. I didn't think I really had it in me to do that. It wasn't like, most people in show business have a father or an uncle, and the next thing you know, they're big stars because Tori Spelling's father is the biggest producer. They all seem to be related even if they don't have the same names. [Nick] Just watch the teeth, you can see the bloodline. Yeah, it's just incredible. But I just developed a love for it. I was always the class clown. I was always very funny. I was always doing wacky stuff. So it's a natural progression that I got into it. I probably would have liked to have gone the acting route. I think it would have been easier. Because when you become a comedian... If you're an actor and you go meet with someone for a part, they say, [puts on an official sounding voice] "Okay, what have you done, what's your resume?" You know, very flat, like that. But when you're a comedian, they say, "Make me laugh. Do that thing, you know?" They put pressure on you. [Nick] Make me laugh right now whether I'm in the mood to or not. Yeah, right. [back to Tony Cappuccino] "Make me laugh. We'll see how funny you are." [Nick] That eventually led you to Dangerfield's. Pretty early in my career - I guess I was doing comedy about eight months - I started traveling, doing different clubs. I had different offers. I was doing "The Merv Griffin Show" very early. And I was down in Florida and Rodney had seen me down in the Fort Lauderdale Comic Strip. He said I should work his club in the City. I started working his club in the City, and he knew of me, he had seen my act, and he just felt that what I did was really different from what he did, and it would be really good for me to open for him. So I traveled and opened for him for like, 6 or seven years. [Nick] You've said that you never felt comfortable being labeled as a stand-up comic until Red Skelton clarified it for you. He said you were a clown. What about that felt right? When I first started, back in the day, Jerry Seinfeld was in New York, and Paul Riser, and Bill Maher, Larry Miller, Carol Leifer. That was "the gang." And I was a Long Island comic, and I used a lot of props. And they would always discourage the Long Island comics who came in who were different, and who were really funny and did really wild stuff. They discouraged us from using props. They wanted us to do more observational, more classic Lenny Bruce or Jay Leno type stuff. That wasn't my thing, you know? They really looked down upon prop comics. There was even one point where they came up and took my props off stage to see if I could still do it, and I still did it. I told Red Skelton when I was in Vegas, I'm not comfortable with the term "stand-up comic." I don't feel like I belong, I don't feel like that's what I do. And he said, "Well, you're not a stand-up. You're a clown, like me. Basically what you're doing is, you don't have a circus, you're just using their stage as your temporary circus ring." So that really kind of set me free in thinking, I am different. I am a clown. And there are a lot of clowns out there. Like Jim Carrey - he's not a stand-up comic, he's a clown. He's very visual, he's very slapstick. He's not afraid to humble himself on stage and show a vulnerable side. There's some guys who get up there, you know, they're in three hundred dollar suits. They start to sweat and they walk off stage. [Nick] What drew you to the character you do? What was the inspiration? I just enjoy going into "character mode," you know? That's one of the things I do. I guess it comes from watching guys like Red Skelton and Jonathan Winters. Jonathan Winters could pop into a character at a moment's notice. And I just really enjoyed that. It was something that I really wanted to do. And with Red Skelton, you could see his characters were very precise and definite. So that's the way I went - to create characters. I've always tried to present them in a different way. Like Whoopi Goldberg does characters. Her HBO special was all characters, but she did one character, then she moved on to the next. That's basically how John Leguizamo did it, too. He's a character comic. But what I do, my characters interact with each other. So I jump around. My Eppy Epperman character will have an argument with Ping Yea, who is my Asian guy, and he'll argue with my grandpa character. So, my characters interact with each other. I think that's kind of unique and different. [Nick] You've done some shows for NFL functions. How do football players react to the football player character? They think it's awesome, they think it's hysterical. They're not actors, so basically what I'm doing is I'm making fun of the fact that they're out there in the limelight, they're called to do Coca-Cola commercials. They fumble through it and they have a hard time. In the past I've done many, many NFL functions. I still work with Boomer Essiason quite a bit. I work with his cystic fibrosis foundation. I go all over the country and go in front of football audiences all the time. I do some high school stuff, football players. They just love it. I used to have the Giants and the Jets coming to my shows all the time when I'm in New Jersey close to the stadium over there. [Nick] It seems like either they'd love it or you're walking into the lion's den. I've never had a problem with a football player having a problem with what I do. They have a sense of humor. Basically, my whole act is stereotype crazy anyway, so if you don't get it, you don't get it. If you want to get offended by it, it's very easy to get offended by anything. I could get offended by the way my neighbor paints his house. "The jerk painted it purple," know what I'm saying? "What is he, an idiot?" I'm not saying I have a neighbor who has a purple house, I'm just saying people could get offended by that. [Nick] What do you find is the big difference between doing movies and the stand-up you've done? Movies you get a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth time to do it right. You get to do twenty takes if you want, if the director will let you. When you're doing stand-up comedy, it's one shot. If it works, it works, if it doesn't, you've got to move on. The live aspect of comedy is totally different from doing a movie. When you do a movie, an editor is going to help you look good, the director's going to let you do it over and over again, the director's going to direct you, they've got other people who are going to help - the lighting people are going to help you look good. When you're on stage and you're doing a comedy act, it's you and the people. It's do or die. That's the difference. And I love that. I enjoy that - it's a challenge. People think it's a cakewalk, but it's pretty tough. Especially if you want to make an impact. If you're going for a standing ovation. It's not easy. [Nick] "Brain Donors" especially seemed tailored to your talents. How did that role develop? I can't imagine that you stepped into that role as it was written. It was written by Pat Proft. And the director, Denis Dugan, used everyone's talents. You know, he was able to hone in on the strengths of each performer. He did tailor it. It seems like every movie I've done, the part was tailored to what I did. In "Kindergarten Cop" and "This is My Life," I basically wrote my own scenes in. But with "Brain Donors," there were a lot of people who were up for that part, of Jacques, and I did mostly the part that was written. But I did add a lot of improvisation - I brought a lot of myself to the character, with the juggling, and having props in my pockets all the time. That was already a done deal. They were going to do that anyway. [Nick] You also wrote a film - "Ryder, PI." "Ryder, PI" was a movie back in the early '80s which I did back in Long Island. It was a low budget type thing. That was Howard Stern's first movie - the first movie Howard Stern was ever in. [Nick] How did that come to happen? That was just a bunch of guys on Long Island who were just really big comedy fans. Because at that time, there were so many comedians out there, and they just wanted to put something together with all the comedians on Long Island and some from the City. To just have fun. To put it out there and see what happens. That's all that was. [Nick] You were just playing in Nashville, Tennessee. A lot of comics will talk about the difference between playing down South and up North. Do you notice any difference? Yeah, you know, the New York crowds seem to be... I guess because I grew up here [on Long Island] I kind of know where the Funny Bone is. Especially in New Jersey and New York, the suburbs, and whatnot, I can really get them laughing. The Midwest is the same thing. Sometimes I tailor my material to where I'm at, but I do great everywhere. The only place I ever have trouble is in California. For some reason, whenever I'm in the showcase clubs, like the Improv or the Comedy Store, I seem to have trouble there. I don't know what the problem is... I just don't feel comfortable in those places. But I do feel very comfortable anywhere in the United States. Like Nashville or Iowa, or Nebraska. I don't have a problem with anything. Most of my stuff is pretty universal. The other night I was up in the Catskills and I was playing the Villa Roma, which is a Catskill audience, but more Italian. And there was this lady in the front who didn't speak a lick of English, didn't speak any English at all. She was Italian. And she was hysterical. She was crying. I don't even think she knows what I was doing. She would just laugh because I'm so visual. The same thing happened to me years ago when I played a club in the City. I think it was the old Playboy Club in New York City. Half the room was Israelis, Israeli men. And they were hysterical. And one of the guys who spoke English came up to me after the show and said, "We don't know what you were doing, but you were having so much fun up there, we just figured we were going to laugh with you." -Nick |
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