Bobby Slayton The first question I get from Bobby Slayton, who's currently touring with his stand-up act and playing Joey Bishop in an upcoming HBO film called The Rat Pack, is "Are you ready for me? Are you prepared?" My answer was yes, but now I'm not so sure. Before I can get the veteran stand-up on tape, he begins to tell me of his new CD, Raging Bully, the new movie, and his daughter's newfound career in show business. Slayton has been in the business for longer than most would guess. The picture on the back of Raging Bully doesn't seem to show a man working a different club every week for years, and is finally breaking through. There's a lot of energy on the CD, more characteristic of an angry young man than of a veteran stand-up comedian. He describes his style of comedy as "take no prisoners," and that applies to interviews, as well. [Slayton begins talking as the tape starts to roll] All that great stuff's been edited out. Now it hasn't even been recorded. Have you written it down? Okay, Bobby Slayton is coming to Buffalo for the first time ever. Bobby Slayton - one of the greatest stand-up comics of all time. He's been doing stand-up comedy for twenty-one years. He should be making a splash this summer as Joey Bishop in the movie "The Rat Pack" starring Ray Liotta and Joe Montegna. Slayton - I'll just write the whole article for you, okay? I had questions but you were going. I was going to say, life seems good for you - you have the CD out and the movie's coming out. Well, things are going well. I've been doing this for twenty-one years. I mean, my career could be a lot farther along than I want it to be, but I've chosen to take a certain path. You know, I been basically on the road for so long that, a lot of times, opportunities have come up for me, but I haven't been able to read for the stuff because I've been busy on the road making a living. You know, I've read for so many bad sitcoms, and I've had some really bad management. I've had a couple of bad breaks, you know. But a lot of this business is about luck. A lot of it is being the right place at the right time. I could tell you a million stories. Everything from the Seinfeld show barely making it on the schedule because it got such a bad response. I'm sure you've heard those stories, right? The pilot didn't go over very well. The worst response of any pilot NBC has ever, ever done. You know Paul Riser's career basically got kick-started with Diner because he went to it with a friend who was going to read for the movie, Paul started screwing around with the secretary. She said I really like this guy and she had him read for Barry Levinson, the director, and he got that part, and that started his career. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is luck. Being in the right place at the right time with all this talent. And I have tons and tons of talent and tons and tons of bad luck. I guess if you're going to have bad luck, talent's a good way to cancel it out. Yeah, well, at least if I wasn't talented, I'd say the reason I'm not getting anything is because I have no talent. But it makes it a little more frustrating when you see a lot of lesser talents making it, but you know what? It doesn't bother me anymore. I'm making a good living. The CD came out so well. I've had so much incredible response with this CD. A lot of music industry people have been asking for it, said it's the funniest thing they ever heard. And I didn't do it to make money - if the thing doesn't sell, it doesn't sell. We did it sort of, you know, just to give it to writers and journalists and give it to radio stations so when I go in at least they'll have some information before they talk to me. You know, the people that play it on the radio. But it's gotten such great response I said, hey that's great. And now this movie came out so well. And unfortunately with the death of Frank, which is just going to add more notoriety to the film, I think it should help us. Not that I wanted him to die, but everybody knew. He was on a deathwatch for the last six months. I guess it was kind of inevitable. It always comes in threes, so who knows who's next? Maybe me. Me, Katherine Hepburn, Kirk Douglas, and Gregory Peck. We're the biggies that are left. How do you relate to a character like Joey Bishop in a movie like the Rat Pack? How do you get into character? It's funny because I haven't done that many movies and that many sitcoms. I was in Get Shorty for a few minutes and Ed Wood for a few minutes. I've done about a dozen sitcoms but every part I've always played has been myself. I've never played a real living person. So what I did was I went to this incredible museum of broadcasting in Los Angeles and I went to a lot of the stuff Joey Bishop did. And I've already read everything that was out about Dean and Frank and the Rat Pack even before we started working on this movie. Two books have been released in the last couple of months. But I'm sure it's just a rehashing of everything I already know about these guys. There wasn't a lot of stuff I had to do. I mean I vaguely resemble Joey already. I've been doing stand-up comedy for twenty years, I'm Jewish, I'm from the East Coast. And if I take the growl out of my voice, the hoarseness out of my voice, I sound like Joey anyway. By the time they gave me the hair cut and the 1960s suit, there wasn't really a lot I had to do. I talked to Joey after the fact. He didn't really want to get involved in the movie. I didn't talk to him. There wasn't a hell of a lot I had to do to get into character for this. My part was not that big. I had about a half a dozen scenes. And the director was great. He let us ad-lib a bunch of stuff. He was really trying to get, more than just look alikes and sound alikes, he really wanted to get the camaraderie that the Rat Pack really had. Did you find that you were able to get into a good click with the ad-libbing in character? Yeah. We all ad-libbed a lot of stuff. Tina Sinatra was bad-mouthing the film at first. I think she's backed off a lot when the family saw that we weren't making a hack job out of Frank. But initially, HBO didn't want to use her as a consultant because she wanted total control of the film. And from what I hear she wanted a few scenes cut out of Frank drinking, and Frank yelling. She just wanted everything all glossed over and there's no way HBO was going to do that. You've read a lot about Sinatra in the last week. He was very generous, could be a very wonderful man, very giving, but he also had an incredible dark side and incredible anger against everybody, including his friends, and strangers, and he had quite a temper. So that's shown in the movie also. I think she wanted to tone a lot of that down, make him like Santa Clause the whole time. That's not what HBO wanted to do. She wasn't a consultant on the film so she started to lash out against it. You're known as "the pit bull of comedy." How would you describe your style of comedy, your style of stand-up? The way I would describe it is· I don't like to compare myself to anybody because I think it's fairly unique, but as far as comparing it to people, certainly Don Rickles has been an influence, Lenny Bruce has been an influence, Robert Klein and George Carlin, and Howard Stern's been an influence. That's a lot of influences. So as for my style, I'd say, search and destroy. Take no prisoners. Kill or be killed. How do you avoid comparisons to other comedians, to "shock comics," per se? It doesn't matter what you do, people are going to compare you to any of your predecessors. It doesn't really matter what you do. If you look at any kind of artist, there's always got to be some influence. I'm not saying you're taking anything from these people but I think anyone in any kind of artistic field grows up looking at and emulating and studying, and even worshipping other artists. It's like saying the Rolling Stones, the predecessors were the blues. Even Elvis and Buddy Holly and the Beatles· I don't think I've copied anybody, but when I started listening to stand-up, it was everything from Henny Youngman to Robert Klein to Rodney Dangerfield to Lenny Bruce. Even the old guys before that, the vaudeville stuff. I've been a student of comedy. But I think it's hard to be really different these days, but I think I've managed to do that. I think I've managed to stand out among the stand-ups. I don't just do shock for shock's value. I've done it before to wake up and audience. I love Howard Stern. Howard Stern's doing stuff just to piss people off, just to wake them up, just to slap them around, to make controversy. Yeah. I think basically what he does is he's a really good comedian. At one point on the CD you mention that if your wife were in the crowd you wouldn't be saying some of the things you're saying. When you do the more personal material, are you ever concerned at how your family might react? Not really. If I was concerned about that I wouldn't do it. My wife is fairly convinced that a lot of the material is not really autobiographical. She thinks a lot of it I just make up. She thinks a lot of it is about ex-girlfriends. So I'll let her continue thinking that. To be honest with you, she comes to my shows and I do almost all of it. But I'm just conscious of when she's there. About halfway through the show I forget about it. But I'd rather not have her in the audience. Doing comedy in front of my wife is sort of like having sex in front of our parents. I could do it if I had to, but I'd rather not. With titles like "Porn," "Sexism," and "Death Penalty/Kids," what do you tell your daughter about the album? Has she heard it? No, she hasn't heard it. I won't let her listen. I told you I won't let my wife listen to it, why should I let my kid listen to it? The album came out a few months ago, my wife has not heard the album yet. She has not even wanted to hear it, so it's fine. It's absolutely fine with me. I don't push it, I don't question it, I don't say, "Don't you want to hear this?" She's seen me work so many times she probably figures it's just my act. She doesn't realize how good it came out. She probably doesn't want to hear all the stuff about her. And why should she? Why should I open up a can of worms that doesn't have to be opened? As far as my daughter, on the way to school, we put on the oldies station. She doesn't listen to Howard. She watches "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" we don't let her watch "Dawson's Creek" afterwards. She knows what daddy does for a living. I was in the movie "The Shaggy Dog," I was on "Clueless," I've been on a bunch of other sitcoms. She can see that. She doesn't have to see everything I do. Now that the tape is rolling, I hear she has a career of her own? She does, now that you mention it. She's working on a new MGM animated series called "Lion Hearts" that's coming out next year. She's got fourteen episodes. I imagine it's going to be on Saturday mornings, but I'm not sure. I was very reluctant to let her get into show business at first, but she's been wanting to do it so much, and it's after school. She went for an hour and a half a week after school. It's great. There's a teacher on the set to make sure they don't get beaten too much. And she'll have enough money to pay for college, so I think it's great. Which do you prefer, acting or stand-up? What do I prefer? It depends on where I'm doing the acting and where I'm doing the stand-up. If I'm acting in some kid's show as compared to doing stand-up in Carnegie Hall, I guess I'd go for the stand-up. When it comes to doing a great movie like "The Rat Pack," which is going to be a great movie, compared to performing in some little town like Chattanooga, Tennessee in some comedy club in the back of a Holiday Inn, I'd rather be doing the acting. It all depends. I'd rather do the acting for now because I've been doing the stand-up so much for so long it would be nice to step away from it for awhile and take a breather. When you do it every week like I do, you get better and better and better and stronger, but you tend to get caught up and do a lot of the same material. I think if you can take a break and step outside of it for a while, look at it, just walk away from it for awhile, you can come back to it with a fresh, new approach. It seems like the ideal for a lot of comedians, what they're searching for, especially in light of Seinfeld, is the sitcom. Absolutely not. No, that's the last thing I'm looking for. I wanted to do a sitcom for the longest time, like many comics. I've done my share of them. I worked on "The Tom Arnold Show." You know what? It's a lot of pressure, it's a lot of work, and unless you have complete control over that show, which very, very few comics do, you're going to have to answer to a lot of idiots in suits, a lot of network jagoffs, and a lot of writers, and you have no control over them. And it's very hard to get complete control of a show unless you're big, so I'll become really big, and if they want me, I'll come back on my terms. Although my buddy Robert Schimmel, who is a great comic, came up with an idea for the two of us, and we're going to go pitch that. He wants to pitch it to the networks, I'm just a happy going to HBO. You can get away with a lot more stuff. But we'll see what happens. And if it doesn't work out, hopefully when the movie comes out, tentatively at the end of August, I'll have some more offers. Then I'll spend the rest of the year doing stand-up. If I have to do that for the rest of my life I've got no problem with that. Do I get tired? Yeah. Do I get burned out? Yeah. Do I get sick of it? Yeah. But so does everybody with every job. So we'll see what happens. How do you approach it when you come to a town like Buffalo you've never been to before, a crowd you've never seen before? You've got to remember something, if I go to a city a million times, ninety-five percent of the people in that audience is different. The crowd's almost always different. And they're basically the same people - they all wake up in the morning, they all have to put gas in their car, they all go to work and school, the all hate their spouse, so it works out perfect. It's all the same everywhere. You get the hippies and the lesbians and the gay and everyone who is overly sensitive, so that makes it great. Yeah, it's the same everywhere I go. It's not so much the city as the club. It's weird. I've done some great cities and the clubs have been horrible. And I've been to some horrible cities where the clubs have been great. -Nick An abbreviated version of this interview appeared in the Buffalo News.	Home   Viewfinder   Presswire   Spotlight     Sounds   Films   What Bytes   Dead Trees     About Us