LC#24: Second Chancers

On the late bloomers of comedy.

I always found fascinating how different comedians have different relationships with stand-up: some use it as a starting point to launch successful TV or movie careers, others stick to it through the highs and lows of parallel endeavors, and there are also those who turn to it after a crisis or epiphany. Whatever the role of stand-up in their personal and professional journey, the comedians I am writing about today are all somehow linked to it as late-bloomers, second-chancers, performers who found themselves — or a more stable, perhaps healthier version of themselves — a bit later in life. But first, the usual link thing.

I was watching burn compilations on YouTube and they are still one of the things that makes me laugh the hardest. I often conflate their especially uncompromising tone with a particular comedic voice, shaped by the more recent iteration of the Comedy Central roasts, but it turns out they were pretty outrageous back in the 70s as well.

I have written before that comedy is more prevalent than ever in these days of scrolling and tweeting, and podcasting in particular seems to have become pretty much a standard in every comedian’s résumé. A large part of the responsibility for that lies with Marc Maron, whose WTF podcast famously went from a mere garage project to a globally recognized cultural appointment (you can see him with Obama below).

(image from the WTF website)

Unlike his MMA-savvy counterpart Joe Rogan, when Maron started WTF he was coming from a string of professional disappointments, a couple divorces, and a past full of addiction and unpleasant encounters with many members of the comedy scene. I started following it in 2011, and to be honest one of the reasons Maron’s podcast was so good is it did not try to be funny, but mostly consisted in long, intense conversations with fellow comics that often sounded like they were part of a 12-step program. So many times guests openly admitted their previous memories of the host were not very nice, and while Maron’s constant comparison between himself and his interviewees did not seem very healthy on occasion, such unfiltered exchange of memories and thoughts among peers was refreshing to listen to. Almost as a therapeutic result of those conversations, over the years me and the other WTF listeners witnessed Marc’s slow metamorphosis into a more peaceful (if still characteristically neurotic) comedian and individual.
Maron’s redemptive success eventually brought him several Netflix specials and new stand-up audiences, but, while the podcast did raise his profile as a comedian, it’s fair to say his cultural impact has been more significant as a podcaster than as a comic (although his role in Glow makes me think we might become more familiar with him as an actor in the future, a bit like Odenkirk). I remember one sentence from one of the 1000+ episodes of WTF especially well: “There is truly nothing more serious than comedy”. That’s it for me: Maron takes comedy and the comedic craft too seriously to be “just” a successful stand-up, and that’s why his poetic contribution to the craft lies in the radical sincerity of his off-stage, in-garage conversations. Marc’s empathic appeal and his ever-developing emotional intelligence through hours of interviews are inseparable from the quasi-failure of his pre-podcast comedy career, and that’s why he is so inspiring as a cultural figure.

In Maron’s case, then, we could say stand-up (the craft) was ultimately no longer the goal, but a fertile cultural ground connecting him and lots of interesting people with whom he shared venues, anecdotes, friends and (fr)enemies. One of these people is Eddie Pepitone — or “the Bitter Buddha”, according to a movie that documents his career. A true New Yorker and a staple of the LA comedy scene, Pepitone is the type of comedian that will get off stage and turn back to it to heckle himself, or make a disruptive entrance as an audience member in a live WTF episode. Eddie is a self-declared umpteenth-chancer in the making, and his act is the unfolding of a sometimes grotesque, always funny struggle with himself and the world (but mostly the former). I’ve written about stand-up personas built around comedic failures in another edition of this newsletter, and to be sure self-deprecation is a recognizable stylistic element in stand-up, but the big gap in Pepitone’s Wikipedia page seems to confirm he might have had the struggling career he addresses on and offstage — apparently he’s been active since the mid-80s, but the credits listed date back to the early 2000s. In any case, today Eddie is definitely on the map; if you see him live, the energy and charisma of his performances demonstrates he is an experienced professional and a true stand-up. The crafting of his struggling persona, not unlike Maron’s, is in a way a leitmotiv that sustains and motivates the many ups and downs of the diverse other showbiz endeavors he undertakes.

The comics above demonstrate stand-up is clearly a hard industry to emerge from, but occasionally it can be something to fall onto instead — or at least it was for Steve-O, of Jackass fame. I’m not going to say I am a big fan of his stand-up, but it’s likely the confessional quality of some of the performers mentioned above might well have inspired his comedic work. In a way Steve-O’s stunts and drug-fueled performativity have always had much to share with a stand-up comedian’s self-deprecating drive, a semi-controlled self-destructive arc towards some form of notoriety. On the other hand, for the clownesque stuntman stand-up as an art form is not necessarily a native ground slowly nurturing the rebirth of his next career phase, but rather a sort of “healthier”, cathartic stage on which to resolve other issues. Considering there is a new Jackass movie out (with the vaguely menacing title Jackass Forever), Steve-O’s comedy might not be strong enough to become his main legacy, but him venturing into its language and increasingly independent productive formats makes a lot of sense.

Even though the Internet definitely helps a lot when it comes to leveling the field for second-chancers, we should not forget one of the most iconic stand-ups of all time was a textbook late-bloomer. Born Jacob Cohen, legally renamed Jack Roy, and finally christened Rodney Dangerfield in his final showbiz incarnation, the comic known for getting “no respect” only came into his own in the late 1960s, having revived his performing career well after turning 40. The format of his ascent was the most traditional at the time (a Johnny Carson spot), and no less remarkable than Maron’s or Pepitone’s, albeit in a different way. Dangerfield was a master of self-deprecation, and while his catchphrase was after all just an act (comics who remember him say he was a very smooth and charismatic person) he really did have a difficult life — abandoned by his father, struggling financially, working hard to maintain his family. Eventually Jack Roy gave up his name for the stage persona of Rodney Dangerfield, a choice that turned out to be extremely fortunate. So much so, in fact, that Dangerfield’s (a NY club by his name) contributed to launch the careers of many other now legendary names in comedy. Watching Rodney’s Carson appearances and archetypal stage presence today feels like encountering a remote yet familiar relative: not only his impact on later generations of comics is immense, understanding how true and yet always painstakingly constructed a stand-up persona has always been (name included) reveals the value of all the second-chancers that followed him. Stand-up as a workshop for life, in other words.