Gasping for Airtime Read Online Free PDF Page A

me that Marci really liked me and wanted to see me again, the next time with Jim Downey and some of the cast and writers. I foresaw a tremendous problem falling asleep that night, so I began to get blissfully shit-faced.
     
     
     
    A week later, I showcased again for Saturday Night Live at Stand-Up New York on the Upper West Side. I carried a very pessimistic attitude into my second audition, which I convinced myself was realism. I didn’t take the showcase very seriously. I figured, Why get my hopes too high for something that was nearly unattainable? I decided that my best bet was to just relax and have fun. What I was really doing was keeping my “monitor” down—a term that Buddy Hackett would use years later to explain the DNA of a comic performance.
    I would meet Buddy on the set of the film Paulie, and my friendship with him became one of the great treasures of my life. For some reason, Buddy took great pleasure in giving me bits of advice and insights into stand-up comedy. I couldn’t think of a better comic to be dispensing advice. Buddy truly believed that stand-up comics were special people—not special in their individual talents, but special in our capacity to provide happiness to others. Buddy also believed we as comics had a brotherhood: We were an amazing circle of people with a responsibility to take the stage and give 100 percent every night to make others’ lives brighter. He sure made mine brighter.
    One day Buddy asked me what my monitor onstage was. I asked him what a monitor was. A monitor, Hackett explained, was the number of distracting thoughts in your head when you’re onstage. Thoughts such as “What’s that sound?” “Why is the waitress talking so loud?” and “Why aren’t those people laughing?” are all part of the negative and counterproductive side of your monitor. Basically, any thought that inhibits the projection of your natural self is a piece of your monitor.
    Buddy’s theory was that the first time a comic goes onstage, his monitor is almost 100. Standing onstage is so foreign and standing in front of a live audience is so frightening that being yourself is the hardest thing to do. Yet in spite of nearly everything in your brain working against you, you still earn applause. Even though you had used less than 1 percent of your natural talent, people still saw a spark in you and wanted you to come back. Buddy went on to explain that as you do more comedy and spend more time onstage, your monitor naturally begins to decrease, and eventually it becomes so small that you can stand onstage and give the audience nothing but your true, funniest self. (Inevitably, I asked Buddy what his monitor was. I assumed, of course, that it would be zero. Buddy replied, “One.” “One? Why not zero?” I asked. He then leaned close to me and whispered, “I always figure out where the fire exits are.” Then he added, “After that, though, it’s 100 percent of 99 percent for the rest of the show!”)
    At the time of my second showcase for Saturday Night Live, my monitor was about ten. I thought about all the other comics on the show, about how they were all wearing their “funny” shirts and had groomed themselves to near perfection for their sets. I figured I would be the guy that didn’t primp and iron; I wanted them to see what I looked like before the shower. I went to the gym that night around 8:00 P.M . and showed up at Stand-Up New York around 9:30 P.M . I was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants and I was still sweating. Sure enough, every other guy there looked like it was class picture day. I ordered a beer and joked around with my roommate Mike DeNicola, a comic from Brooklyn by way of Wisconsin. Mike and I drank beer and hit on girls until I was in the on-deck circle.
    My approach was simple. The last time they saw me, I was doing my act. This time I figured I would be less structured and show them a lot of different impressions. I can either do an impression right away or