‘Their job was to laugh and love me and pay attention.’ : Fear of Flying

For those who have wondered whatever became of Shelley Berman, I have good news.

He is as sour and iconoclastic as ever, which explains simultaneously why he continues to be one of the funniest men in America and why he is raising and selling chives for 39 cents a bunch in Bell Canyon instead of being idolized by fans who recognize his comic genius.

“People think I died,” he said to me the other day, frowning at the notion. “Others think I’m a pain in the ass, which might explain a lot of things. I’m not hot anymore, because I’m not swell and loveable and wonderful. But I’m still funny.”

He thought about that for a moment, his expression not dissimilar from that of a man who has just been sued for impotency by his wife and paternity by his secretary and can’t prove either case.

“I’m not even an acceptable minority anymore,” he finally said. “Jews once dominated comedy. Now it’s blacks and Chicanos. They’re more fun, I guess. Look how we tap dance!”

Thoughtfully: “I’d like to fight back by getting more whites on basketball teams.” Pause. “Somehow we’ll have to start producing taller whites . . . .”

Berman, who lives in a beautiful house with beautiful furniture, does not really sell chives for a living.

He tells people that like any good satirist he just can’t resist lampooning the social order, including that portion of it he occupies, with an iconoclast’s disdain for self-pity.

He does raise chives, but he also makes television commercials, lectures, writes and performs in plays and concerts.

It is through his writing that I became reacquainted with Berman. He sent me a copy of his new book, “Up in the Air,” which is a very funny book about flying.

If you have ever taken off in a DC-10 in bad weather and it has flashed on you We’re going to crash and I’m going to die! then this book is for you.

But it wasn’t the book that intrigued me, it was Berman.

I used to frequent a place in the 1960s called the hungry i, which was a night club in San Francisco’s North Beach.

The club was run by a man named Enrico Banducci and featured bright unknowns like Woody Allen and Mort Sahl and Bill Cosby and the Smothers Brothers and Shelley Berman.

Berman caught my attention with a routine on flying, especially that portion of it in which he, as an airline passenger, looks out a window of the jetliner and sees an engine burning.

He says nothing because maybe it’s supposed to be burning and “I’d rather die than make an ass of myself.”

I liked him because his comedy was rooted in the frustrations of those trying to shuffle along in the fast lane of an often bewildering and depersonalized society, which is just about all of us, and because it was delivered in the dour manner of a man who had just bitten into an unripe lemon.

So we got together at Berman’s home, appropriately overlooking the wretched proletariat of the San Fernando Valley, and talked about whatever became of him.

“I haven’t done night clubs in years,” Berman was saying. “I couldn’t take doing my best for people eating spaghetti in my face.

“I demanded a certain behavior from audiences. My job was to be funny and their job was to laugh and love me and pay attention.

“You can’t pay attention and eat spaghetti at the same time.”

Illinois-born, Berman began doing comedy with a group that became Chicago’s famous Second City Review.

He wanted to be a two-man act, he explains, but since he was emotionally incapable of cooperating with anyone, he began using a telephone prop, which was his second person.

“Then I needed something to sit on so I borrowed a bar stool. I used the stool in hundreds of clubs. People began to think I couldn’t walk.”

After three gold records and a Grammy for comedy recording, Berman began doing one-man shows in concert where, as he puts it, “I could get clear focus, good lighting and full attention.”

Plays also followed. One turned into chaos because Berman insisted on adapting the character to his own style, creating friction among the cast.

“In the next play,” Berman said, “I wanted to stay beloved and popular and not be a pain. So I didn’t say anything and the show closed overnight.

“I’m not sure I could have saved it, but being swell and not speaking up sure as hell didn’t do anyone any good.”

What he would like to do now, Berman says, is try a television sitcom.

“I would even be a second banana,” he said, “just to get people over the notion I am someone whose behind is glued to a stool. I can get up and walk around. Look.”

He demonstrated by standing and walking around, frowning all the while.

“Also,” Berman added, “I have grown up. My attitude has changed. I’m more mature.”

As I left, he invited me back sometime for a social evening. Then, when I was almost out of earshot, he turned to his wife and said, “While he’s here, we can have him clean the garage.”