Taken from JRE #1985 w/Steven Wright:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7g25rF756CFsEhN8q2NjFQ?si=b4e9d0ce3c854604

The jerogan experience what you're just starting off first of all

July 79 oh wow what was the scene like well it was the comedy connection the little 1 downstairs no nose it was on Warrenton Street it was street level.

So it was the same comedy, excuse me, the same 1 that was the Charles Playhouse, right?

You got straight in, and it was right in there.

And then I thought, What I was doing is I was, you know, into comedy from watching The Tonight Show.

That's when I really got like, oh, these comedians, you know, Carl and Robert Kline, all these guys.

I had to watch The Tonight Show because my brother was older than me, and we had to watch what he wanted.

So I, you know, I started watching, then I started to like it.

And then I heard that there was a club in town and I thought I should go down.

I was 16 when I really was into it, but then when I was about 23, I heard of the club and I thought well Maybe I gotta go to try it out.

I mean I wouldn't have to move to Los Angeles or New York and I didn't I what my character then I couldn't have 23 and I'm not gonna move to Los Angeles.

So I went to the Comedy Connection and I watched a show and then I learned that there was a the open mic nights was every Wednesday so then I thought I'm gonna go back in 2 weeks

I don't remember I remember the first joke was but I don't remember the rest of it was, I said I went into a bookstore and I started talking to this very French looking girl.

She couldn't read in 2 different languages.

No, see, I didn't even write anything until I went to the open, watched the show, and when I knew I was going back in 2 weeks, during that 2 weeks, I wrote things, but I had never written comedy at all.

Right, but when you first started writing comedy, it was always that style?

Laughs I was influenced by Carl and talking about everyday little things and that's what I, I said, oh I'm going to do that.

And then the structure of a joke was from listening to Woody Allen's stand up albums.

But that I had no, that's just how it came out with those 2 influences, plus my own mind.

Like, You have a very difficult style to write for, I would imagine.

Because your style is non-sequiturs, and a lot of it's very absurd.

Is it hard to, like when you write, Do you sit in front of a computer?

Do you just come up with ideas as you're walking around?

In the beginning, I would sit down and look at the paper, like look for a word to jazz my mind or look for something.

And I would try to find jokes on purpose in the first 6 months.

And then after that, like, I had this thing once.

I was looking through the paper, and it was an advertisement for electrolysis.

Just the sound of the word, what it means, both things at once, what the hell?

And then, I don't know, my mind, because your subconscious is like a factory.

It's working when you don't even know that it is.

You're minding your own business, you're in line doing something.

And what my mind did with that was I came up, I had this thing about I'm living in an apartment building where they allowed pets and I had a pony.

I had a Shetland pony named Nicky, and he was once involved in a bizarre electrolysis accident.

All the hair was removed except for the tail.

Now I rent him out to Hare Krishna family picnics.

And that whole thing came because I saw the word electrolysis.

So I would try to find things on purpose, but then after a while, I didn't, My mind was, I would just notice things, because I think comedy, all art, is based on noticing what's around you.

And I would draw realistically in high school and stuff.

And like if you were gonna draw this cup and this, the 2 shapes, and then you notice, if you're trying to draw it real, you, this shape, this shape, and then there's the shape that's in between.

That's also a shape, which helps you get it accurate.

So you don't really notice that shape unless you were trying to jar it.

So I think that exercised my mind of noticing.

Then later on, doing the comedy, I was already noticing, I think was noticing just some people were very aware of what's around.

And you know like in the tower at the airport where the radar goes like this, like it just goes like this, and then there's the little beeps of the planes, like those are the planes.

So I think my mind got like, scanning like that, subconscious, like I'm not going out, I don't walk down the street thinking I need another joke, I'm gonna go walk down that street.

I'm just going around my day just doing it, but the thing is going...

And then, oh, and then like write it down.

And I think of the joke, the wording comes pretty fast, like, very, like, in a minute.

It's like, because in my mind, it can only be 1 way it can be written.

And then I just would write it down and then go on with what I was doing.

Don't you think what you do is you're reacting, right?

You're talking about the world, but you have to Really see the world.

Just I think ever I think ever of all the my years of comedy I mean, it's it's hard now because you you go back and watch it now it's like you got to realize it's a totally different time in the world it's it's not it's not it doesn't it's not our culture it's a different culture it's the culture of 1980s things were more risque They're more like when you said things, they were more shocking.

And a lot of that stuff's already been said so many times now that if you go back and listen to it, it's like some of it doesn't really hold up the same way.

But for the time, in those days, those guys were the cream of the crop.

And if you had to follow them in Boston, like, good fucking luck.

Because I don't think anybody ever killed half

I didn't, I didn't, those guys, I didn't want to go on after them.

I did, because I was proud of the lineup.

But I knew that the sound from the audience of the laughs, I knew it was gonna be more than me, but I just accepted it.

Because it was like wave, you know, when a big wave hits, boom, boom, boom.

Boom, Gavin Sweeney, boom, boom, Donovan.

Did you feel any pressure to sort of ever to change your act in the beginning before you made it?

Whether it was it like we just committed to that kind of style?

It was like, like I told you, that's how I wrote it, and it came out like that.

This is how I speak, and for some reason, accidentally, the abstract jokes went good with my voice.

But the audience, they weren't thrown off from it.

People ask me, well, it was different, would the audience take a while to come around?

And they didn't because right from the first 3 minutes, they laughed at some of it, and they didn't laugh at other things.

So then I knew right then, it wasn't how I was saying it or my voice or anything.

I don't give a shit as long as it's funny.

So they thought some of it was funny and some of it wasn't.

And Mike McDonald helped me a lot because he saw me the first time and I was naively disappointed because I didn't laugh at everything, which is insane, but that was out of being naive.

Take that set and take out the stuff that didn't work and put other stuff in that works, I mean, that should try out.

And when I left, from him telling me that, I thought it was a success because they laughed at some of it.

Here I am wanting to, I was 16, wanting to try it.

And then I, they laughed at a minute and a half.

When I left, I was like, oh my God, oh my God, I gotta keep changing and changing and changing.

But I didn't think of changing my style or anything because like I was saying, a fingerprint before, it was just how I, just what it was.

It didn't even enter my mind to change it.

And I'm glad there wasn't any show business there because someone might have said, you can't be mumbling over on the side.

And all of those guys that we were just talking about, none of them are like the next guy.

It was like a factory that only made 1 car, and then they made a different car.

Every 1 of those guys is completely unique.

1 of the interesting things about the documentary, when stand-up stood out, was that you were kind of the first guy that got discovered in Boston, and then you took off, and then it became a different thing, because then people realized that that was possible.

And so then there was, in the documentary at least, there was this attitude where a lot of guys had like, hey, what about me?

And it became where a lot of guys were trying to make it now.

I knew later when I heard about it after I had gone.

But I mean, we all wanted to go on the TV.

Everyone wasn't doing it just to be doing it in Boston.

And then I got a lucky break because Peter LaSalle came to Boston and he saw me in the club because there was an article about the Ding Ho a freelance writer wrote about it and went into the LA Times this weird comedy club Chinese restaurant and then he read it and then he went back east looking at colleges for his kids.

They did a summer trip to Boston and New York to look at schools.

And he remembered the article, and he called up the club.

I'm going to go in, and then he saw me, and then I went on there.

But I know you're talking about like, I mean I was just insanely lucky.

And then, But that's, Fran's movie, I mean he never even made a movie before.

And that was a very interesting thing because say we were all rowers, like a row guy is not going to make a movie, but a comedian, a creative guy, he's going to make a movie about the time.

You don't have a movie of your time in high school or your best time in college.

We have a document by 1 of our own guys of the time.

And it's still, all of us, 1 of our favorite times in our whole lives.

So it's a precious gift that Fran made the movie to see, to see this thing.


Speaker 0: The jerogan experience what you're just starting off first of all

Speaker 1: July 79 oh wow what was the scene like well it was the comedy connection the little 1 downstairs no nose it was on Warrenton Street it was street level. That was the first 1. Before Knicks. Before Knicks.

Speaker 0: So it was the same comedy, excuse me, the same 1 that was the Charles Playhouse, right?

Speaker 1: Yeah. You got straight in, and it was right in there.

Speaker 0: It was

Speaker 1: an amazing room. Yeah, little, like... 150 people, probably? I don't even think that many. Maybe 100, maybe 90.

Tiny ceiling. Yeah, low. That's where I... I went to see an open mic there. And then I thought, What I was doing is I was, you know, into comedy from watching The Tonight Show.

That's when I really got like, oh, these comedians, you know, Carl and Robert Kline, all these guys. I had to watch The Tonight Show because my brother was older than me, and we had to watch what he wanted. So I, you know, I started watching, then I started to like it. And then I heard that there was a club in town and I thought I should go down. I was 16 when I really was into it, but then when I was about 23, I heard of the club and I thought well Maybe I gotta go to try it out.

I mean I wouldn't have to move to Los Angeles or New York and I didn't I what my character then I couldn't have 23 and I'm not gonna move to Los Angeles. It was like, that was too much for me. So I went to the Comedy Connection and I watched a show and then I learned that there was a the open mic nights was every Wednesday so then I thought I'm gonna go back in 2 weeks

Speaker 0: Do you remember your first act?

Speaker 1: I don't remember I remember the first joke was but I don't remember the rest of it was, I said I went into a bookstore and I started talking to this very French looking girl. She was a bilingual illiterate. She couldn't read in 2 different languages. And then it, and that's how you started. Yeah, I had about 3 minutes.

Speaker 0: So did you always write in that style? Like the sort of non-sequitur,

Speaker 1: absurdist... No, see, I didn't even write anything until I went to the open, watched the show, and when I knew I was going back in 2 weeks, during that 2 weeks, I wrote things, but I had never written comedy at all.

Speaker 0: Right, but when you first started writing comedy, it was always that style?

Speaker 1: It was about

Speaker 0: 70%

Speaker 1: like that. It was more like normal-ish. I don't know why it came out like that. I mean... Laughs I was influenced by Carl and talking about everyday little things and that's what I, I said, oh I'm going to do that.

And then the structure of a joke was from listening to Woody Allen's stand up albums. But that I had no, that's just how it came out with those 2 influences, plus my own mind.

Speaker 0: Your writing process must be... Like, You have a very difficult style to write for, I would imagine. Because your style is non-sequiturs, and a lot of it's very absurd. Is it hard to, like when you write, Do you sit in front of a computer? Do you just come up with ideas as you're walking around?

Like, what's your process?

Speaker 1: In the beginning, I would sit down and look at the paper, like look for a word to jazz my mind or look for something. And I would try to find jokes on purpose in the first 6 months. And then after that, like, I had this thing once. I was looking through the paper, and it was an advertisement for electrolysis. And I thought, What an interesting word.

Just the sound of the word, what it means, both things at once, what the hell? So I made a note of that. And then, I don't know, my mind, because your subconscious is like a factory. It's working when you don't even know that it is. You're minding your own business, you're in line doing something.

This just in. And what my mind did with that was I came up, I had this thing about I'm living in an apartment building where they allowed pets and I had a pony. I had a Shetland pony named Nicky, and he was once involved in a bizarre electrolysis accident. All the hair was removed except for the tail. Now I rent him out to Hare Krishna family picnics.

And that whole thing came because I saw the word electrolysis. So I would try to find things on purpose, but then after a while, I didn't, My mind was, I would just notice things, because I think comedy, all art, is based on noticing what's around you. And I would, my mind, like I drew a lot. I know that you used to draw too. And I would draw realistically in high school and stuff.

And like if you were gonna draw this cup and this, the 2 shapes, and then you notice, if you're trying to draw it real, you, this shape, this shape, and then there's the shape that's in between. That's also a shape, which helps you get it accurate. So you don't really notice that shape unless you were trying to jar it. So I think that exercised my mind of noticing. Then later on, doing the comedy, I was already noticing, I think was noticing just some people were very aware of what's around.

And you know like in the tower at the airport where the radar goes like this, like it just goes like this, and then there's the little beeps of the planes, like those are the planes. So I think my mind got like, scanning like that, subconscious, like I'm not going out, I don't walk down the street thinking I need another joke, I'm gonna go walk down that street. I'm just going around my day just doing it, but the thing is going... Right. And then it'll see a word.

It's like... Oh, maybe that... Oh, okay. And then, oh, and then like write it down. And I think of the joke, the wording comes pretty fast, like, very, like, in a minute.

It's like, because in my mind, it can only be 1 way it can be written. And then I just would write it down and then go on with what I was doing. But the noticing never stops. Don't you think what you do is you're reacting, right? You're talking about the world, but you have to Really see the world.

Speaker 0: Yeah, you have to really see the world

Speaker 1: top quality. You can't get better than those guys

Speaker 0: You can't get better

Speaker 1: than really laugh out loud

Speaker 0: Just I think ever I think ever of all the my years of comedy I mean, it's it's hard now because you you go back and watch it now it's like you got to realize it's a totally different time in the world it's it's not it's not it doesn't it's not our culture it's a different culture it's the culture of 1980s things were more risque They're more like when you said things, they were more shocking. And a lot of that stuff's already been said so many times now that if you go back and listen to it, it's like some of it doesn't really hold up the same way. But for the time, in those days, those guys were the cream of the crop. And if you had to follow them in Boston, like, good fucking luck. Because I don't think anybody ever killed half

Speaker 1: of them. I didn't, I didn't, those guys, I didn't want to go on after them. I did, because I was proud of the lineup. But I knew that the sound from the audience of the laughs, I knew it was gonna be more than me, but I just accepted it. Because it was like wave, you know, when a big wave hits, boom, boom, boom.

Yeah, all of those guys. Yeah. Boom, Gavin Sweeney, boom, boom, Donovan.

Speaker 0: Did you feel any pressure to sort of ever to change your act in the beginning before you made it? Whether it was it like we just committed to that kind of style?

Speaker 1: Well, committed means a decision. There was no decision. It was like, like I told you, that's how I wrote it, and it came out like that. It meshed with how I speak. This is how I speak, and for some reason, accidentally, the abstract jokes went good with my voice.

But the audience, they weren't thrown off from it. People ask me, well, it was different, would the audience take a while to come around? And they didn't because right from the first 3 minutes, they laughed at some of it, and they didn't laugh at other things. So then I knew right then, it wasn't how I was saying it or my voice or anything. They don't care about anything.

I don't give a shit as long as it's funny. So they thought some of it was funny and some of it wasn't. And Mike McDonald helped me a lot because he saw me the first time and I was naively disappointed because I didn't laugh at everything, which is insane, but that was out of being naive. And he said, look, take that material. He never did it before.

Take that set and take out the stuff that didn't work and put other stuff in that works, I mean, that should try out. And when I left, from him telling me that, I thought it was a success because they laughed at some of it. Here I am wanting to, I was 16, wanting to try it. And then I, they laughed at a minute and a half. I, oh my God, they laughed at it.

So then he made me leave. When I left, I was like, oh my God, oh my God, I gotta keep changing and changing and changing. But I didn't think of changing my style or anything because like I was saying, a fingerprint before, it was just how I, just what it was. It didn't even enter my mind to change it. Some of it worked, some of it didn't.

Change it, try more, try more, try more. And I'm glad there wasn't any show business there because someone might have said, you can't be mumbling over on the side. Get a sport jacket and talk loud. You know what I mean? There was no 1 watching from that angle.

And all of those guys that we were just talking about, none of them are like the next guy. It was like a factory that only made 1 car, and then they made a different car. It was like a Mustang, then this. There was no assembly line. Every 1 of those guys is completely unique.

Speaker 0: Every 1? Yeah. 1 of the interesting things about the documentary, when stand-up stood out, was that you were kind of the first guy that got discovered in Boston, and then you took off, and then it became a different thing, because then people realized that that was possible. And so then there was, in the documentary at least, there was this attitude where a lot of guys had like, hey, what about me? Like, where's my thing?

How come it's not happening for me? You know, I'm a headliner. I'm a this, I'm a that. Like, why isn't this? And it became where a lot of guys were trying to make it now.

Speaker 1: Do you

Speaker 0: remember that time?

Speaker 1: I knew later when I heard about it after I had gone. But I mean, we all wanted to go on the TV. Everyone wasn't doing it just to be doing it in Boston. I wanted to someday go on TV. I had no idea how I would get there.

And then I got a lucky break because Peter LaSalle came to Boston and he saw me in the club because there was an article about the Ding Ho a freelance writer wrote about it and went into the LA Times this weird comedy club Chinese restaurant and then he read it and then he went back east looking at colleges for his kids. We're getting out of high school. They did a summer trip to Boston and New York to look at schools. And he remembered the article, and he called up the club. I'm going to go in, and then he saw me, and then I went on there.

So I got a very lucky break. But I know you're talking about like, I mean I was just insanely lucky. And then, But that's, Fran's movie, I mean he never even made a movie before. He never made a movie. And that was a very interesting thing because say we were all rowers, like a row guy is not going to make a movie, but a comedian, a creative guy, he's going to make a movie about the time.

You don't have a movie of your time in high school or your best time in college. We have a document by 1 of our own guys of the time. And it's still, all of us, 1 of our favorite times in our whole lives. So it's a precious gift that Fran made the movie to see, to see this thing.

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