| Robert Klein |
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| By Ruth Bashinsky | |||
| Tuesday, 02 June 2009 18:58 | |||
A Comic God With Robert Klein, you never know when the jokes begin or when they end. 
At the legendary Friar’s Club one rainy Friday evening in May, Klein greets me with a glass of red wine and that trademark grin. We find seats, I clip the microphone from my tape recorder to the collar of his shirt and head to the bar to get peanuts. As I walk away, Klein speaks slowly into the mic: “Reporting. Going over for nuts. There is a flu virus, so use a spoon.” Seconds later: “Do you want some gefilte fish?” he asks, raising his brow. After more than three decades, Klein is still the master of observational comedy, finding the humor in everyday things and doing what he does best: making people laugh. His delivery and style are still as fresh, witty and intelligent as they were back in the ’70s when he, along with comedians George Carlin and Richard Pryor, took the stand-up world by storm. Klein’s talent and wit helped change the comic landscape for the next generation of comedians – Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal and Richard Lewis, among others. For Klein, a former pre-med major, comedy became his destiny when his college drama teacher encouraged him to pursue acting. After studying at Yale Drama School, Klein went on to the prestigious Second City theatrical troupe in Chicago, the comedy institution where many young, talented comedians such as Klein, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Martin Short got their start. After completing his stint at Second City, Klein came to New York and producer Mike Nichols cast him in the Broadway musical Apple Tree. In between performances, Klein worked on his stand-up material at the original Improv where he honed his craft learning from comedian Rodney Dangerfield. Dangerfield saw Klein’s innate talent and gave him the help he needed to launch his career. Klein was on fire and it didn’t take long before people started to take notice. In 1975, the young star became the first comic to appear on HBO’s original live comedy concert series. His popular one-man shows were bold, innovative and edgy and helped set new standards in the industry. It was an exciting time for the young comedian, as well as for cable television. “It was revolutionary because it took a young comedian like myself and showed a full hour at a college where I really bloomed, instead of that six minutes on The Tonight Show when you were restricted in so many kinds of ways. The language being free was one element of it. ”
More than three decades later, Klein’s relationship with HBO is still going strong. In fact, at the time of this interview Klein was busy working on his next special for the cable giant – his ninth show – that is set to air in December. Enthusiastic about the upcoming production, he gives me a sneak preview by breaking out in song. While laughing out loud, I make sure to keep up my end of the deal by not publishing anything just yet, but what I can say is that Klein fans are in for a real treat. “It is not easy to write a new repertoire, but I feel like I have never been better at what I do, ” he says. In 2006, Klein published his first book, The Amorous Busboy of Decatur Avenue, a coming-of-age memoir about Klein’s early years growing up in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood in the North Bronx during the ‘50s and ’60s before embarking on a show business career. His autobiography became a labor of love for the actor, who spent four-and-a-half years working on it. The book earned him a glowing write up in the New York Times book review section. “There is so much in my life I would go back and change but with the book, there are very few things I would change. I have such a feeling of satisfaction.” It is evident that at age 67, Klein shows no signs of slowing down. Earlier this year he appeared on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and completed two comedies, Demoted and National Lampoon’s Dirty Movie. He is also working on a second book for Simon & Schuster. And he continues to travel across the country entertaining audiences with his stand-up. Tossing another handful of peanuts into his mouth he reflects, “I am in the perfect business for me. I love show business.” And show business loves Klein. For the last 44 years, Klein has been a regular fixture on the show business scene appearing on stage, in film and on television. The multi-talented actor has been in more than 40 films and countless Broadway and theatrical productions. Over the last 20 years, he has been a regular guest on The Tonight Show, The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan O’Brien. His accomplishments are vast. He was nominated twice for a Grammy Award in the Best Comedy Album of the Year category for his albums Child of the ’50s and Mind Over Matter. He received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor and won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for his performance in the hit Neil Simon musical They’re Playing Our Song. In 1993, he won an Obie and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig. And his song Colonoscopy, which he collaborated on with his longtime producer/composer Bob Stein for his 2000 HBO special, was nominated for a primetime Emmy Award as Best Song of the Year. His act never gets old, whether he is talking about a recent trip to Radio Shack, discussing American politics, or singing songs about his personal experiences … it’s all part of the shtick. One element that excites and inspires Klein are the comics of yesteryear: Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters, the Marx Brothers, Peter Sellers, Monty Python, WC Fields … “Lenny Bruce was a social critic, which excited me, instead of a comedian being funny, and Jonathan Winters, who was not a socially conscious comedian, took the stage like a whirlwind.” Richard Pryor was another comic great that Klein admired and was one of the best comedians he’d ever seen in person, he says. He talks about the exchange they had in the fall of ’66 at the Improv on 44th and 9th, which at the time was the only club of its kind. “He was collegiate, cute and dorky and could be funny in any style but after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. he disappeared off the scene for over a year and came back a different person … a harder, more authentic Pryor. One time I asked him, ‘What college did you go to?’ – you know, Jewish geography. He laughed for five minutes. [He said] he was brought up by whores and pimps in Peoria, Illinois [where] his grandmother ran a brothel. He had a heart attack and wrote about it. He burned himself up smoking crack and wrote a brilliant bit about it … all revealing and more than that, brilliantly funny. If you could be funny about something that is not so funny, that is comedy at its best.” Johnny Carson is another comedian Klein talks about with passion. In the early days, Klein made close to 100 appearances on The Tonight Show. “I always get so nostalgic about Johnny because he meant so much for my career.” Last summer at a comedy festival in Carson’s hometown of Norfolk, Nebraska, Klein said when he saw a photo of Johnny with his brother and sister that had been taken two weeks before Carson died, “It gave me chills.”
A few minutes later, he tells me that he made up his own plagues for the Passover seder this year. Dipping his pinky finger into his glass of wine, he begins to pray, Klein-style: “Vermin … frogs … Kathie Lee Gifford … no cable….” When you are with someone like Klein, the jokes just keep coming. Comparing stand-up to the sport of bullfighting, he adds: ”It takes courage because there you are, alone.” Whether he is solo or not, Klein is one gifted individual. “I love making people laugh. For a moment, you forget certain moments in your life … your illness, your marriage, your children, and you laugh …” As the evening winds down and the crowd at the bar starts to thin out, Klein surveys the room, lowers his head, puts his thumb in his mouth and asks, “Can I go home now?”
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