Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny Read Online Free PDF Page B

after a horrible earthquake. So they were very poor.
    Marlo: Did they live with you? Did you see them a lot?
    Joy: I grew up in a tenement in Brooklyn, one of those apartment buildings with fire escapes. My mother and father and I were on the fifth floor; my grandmother and her children were on the third floor, as was my aunt, her husband and mother-in-law—who was a witch. So I’d just go up and down in the building, and do shtick for them all day long.
    Marlo: So you were the funny one. Were your mom and dad funny, too?
    Joy: My father had a little bit of a streak . . .
    Marlo: And your mother?
    Joy: I think if you talk to a lot of women comics, you’ll find that they had mothers who were sort of depressed.
    Marlo: Oh, really.
    Joy: Yeah, a little depressed. And because they were not actualized, they could have used some medication. “Hello. A little Zoloft for the ladies?” That generation was stuck at home. And my mother was not a housewife. She couldn’t afford to be because she was married to a gambler.
    Marlo: Wow.
    Joy: So she had to work—she was long-suffering, the poor thing. And so I found that my escape from all of that was to make fun of everything. I got a lot of material just watching my mother and trying to make her laugh.
    I think I had some kind of a funny gene, even as a little ten-year-old kid. I have recollections of how I was always performing. We’d go to wakes, and when we’d come home, I would make fun of everybody who was at the wake. And I liked acting crazy—like Jerry Lewis. Just being a little whack-job. My aunts and uncles on my mother’s side were like a built-in audience. Then I’d go up to Springfield, Massachusetts, where we had other relatives. I would just kill in these places as a kid.
    Marlo: That’s a riot. You’d just kill . . . at ten !
    Joy: They were like sitting ducks for me, you know? The problem—and this is an interesting point, I think—the problem was that I got so much attention and response from my family, that when I went into the real world of show business—where people don’t know or care about you—I wasn’t getting that kind of reaction. So I thought I wasn’t good enough. The truth of it was, I had to win them over just like I had done as a child. I mean, I worked at it.
    Marlo: Right, of course. You knew the room.
    Joy: I knew the room. It’s just that when I got a bigger room, I had to start from scratch in a way, and it took me a while.
    Marlo: Were you funny in school?
    Joy: I was always funny in school. I would get myself out of jams by being funny.
    Marlo: Were you like you are on The View, with a strong point of view and not afraid to speak up?
    Joy: Yes, I think I was always like that. And I really do credit my family for that. They never, ever told me to shut up.
    Marlo: You started late as a stand-up, right?
    Joy: Yeah, I was about thirty-eight.
    Marlo: What were you doing up until then?
    Joy: I was a high school English teacher.
    Marlo: You must have been very funny as a teacher.
    Joy: I was in some classes—if they were bright. If they weren’t, I couldn’t do it. I had to be strict.
    Marlo: What other kind of jobs did you have?
    Joy: I worked in a mental hospital—which prepared me for The View . I worked at an employment service. I did a lot of different little jobs, and then got a job at Good Morning America as a receptionist.
    Marlo: How was that?
    Joy: Good. Then I was fired.
    Marlo: You’re kidding.
    Joy: Well, you know what they do in television. If the ratings go down, they fire the receptionist.
    Marlo: That’s smart. “It’s her fault!” At some point, you made a turn and your humor became more political.
    Joy: Yeah, I’m kind of like Bill Maher in that way. I call myself a “fundit.”
    Marlo: I love that term. And the fundits are taken seriously.
    Joy: Well, yeah, because they have a lot to say about issues, especially during elections. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert.
    Marlo: I’ve talked to both of them.