Getting to the Punch Line : Despite Low Pay and Bad Venues, Comics Say Laughs Are Worth It

I had no place to go but up when I got into comedy. I was driving a truck in Chicago, busting my butt to live at the poverty level. I was held up on the job, shot three times and stabbed twice. Comedy completely turned my life around, and I’ll consider my comedy career a success if I don’t get shot again. --Rocky LaPorte on the lure of a stand-up’s life

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The best comics make it look so easy. You just hop up on a stage and make people laugh. The world loves you, sitcom offers pile up at your feet and your life is graced by fame and fortune. Just ask Roseanne Arnold and Tim Allen.

The reality of making a living in the comedy business is a bit harsher. Top comics may be well-rewarded for the laughter they coax from us, but getting to the top is not easy. It can take a decade of hard work to become an “overnight” comic success. Those who take the plunge into the world of comedy often put up with the indignities of low pay and the discouragement of less-than-glamorous working conditions. But, in pursuing their life’s passion, they say the laughs are worth the struggle.

“My very first paid gig was for a department store Christmas party,” remembers Bill Hicks. With a recent hourlong HBO special, comedy albums in production and a profile in the Nov. 1 issue of New Yorker, the acerbic comic can consider himself a success. But his career did not begin auspiciously.

“The party was in a basement cafeteria at 7 a.m. before they opened. I got second billing to Shari Lewis and Lambchop. The organizers didn’t think there was enough time for me to go on stage, so they put me between the powdered eggs and the bacon on the breakfast line, and I told jokes as people came by with their trays. It was pretty depressing, but I did get paid. And I still had an overwhelming, all-consuming desire to perform comedy. The first night I worked in a comedy club, I made six bucks. And I thought that was a huge achievement. Six bucks! Fantastic!”

Hicks may have received the best boost in his career a month ago when he taped an appearance on David Letterman’s show, only to find out later that his performance was edited out for raising too many controversial issues. The resulting attention has made it easier for his manager to book him into clubs. (He will be making local appearances this month, Nov. 16 at the Brea Improv and Nov. 17 at Igby’s in West Los Angeles.)

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After 15 years of stand-up work, John Mendoza got a big break this year when he made the jump from club headliner to star of his own sitcom, NBC’s new “The Second Half.” Mendoza says that he always loved comedy but managed to surprise even himself when he chose it as a career.

“I heard myself telling my bosses that I was quitting my day job to work as a comic,” he says. “That’s when I realized I really wanted to do this all the time.”

Mendoza began working at New York’s Catch a Rising Star, where he tried to make a living one dollar at a time.

“I was getting $2 on weekdays and $5 on weekends. My first year, I cleared $400 and I thought I was doing pretty well. I also did some street comedy, and I swear people gave me money just because I looked so pathetic.”

Life started to become a lot more comfortable for Mendoza after he made several appearances in the mid-’80s on the David Letterman show and “The Tonight Show.”

“Suddenly, I wasn’t so pathetic anymore. I was wearing $8 undershirts instead of the $4 ones, and my ex-wife suddenly wanted more money out of me. But, after years of not having a dime in your pocket, when a comic has some success, life becomes pretty good. My life now is a goof.”

The attraction of a career in comedy is still potent. Even as the comedy boom of the late-’80s continues to taper off--the number of clubs overtaking the number of good comics and interested audiences--young stand-ups still are turning in pink slips at their day jobs and taking to the road.

Kathleen Madigan began her career four years ago after quitting a job editing a St. Louis athletic club’s in-house magazine and embarking on a 10-week club tour.

“Right away, I missed the health insurance and some of the other things that people consider important, like income,” she says. “But I’d saved up enough money so that I didn’t have to live too badly. I never had to sleep in a rest area or make a box of Lucky Charms last a week. And I got a phone card from my dad, because I knew that bookers and club owners probably didn’t like to be called collect.”

Madigan’s career has moved along steadily since her first outings, and she’s recently made her second “Tonight Show” appearance. “I was very nervous. I stood behind that curtain and thought: ‘If I run away now I can probably still work in Omaha.’ ”

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Jay Leno says that a desperate edge and a lack of income can actually help a comic get started.

“I always thought that the worst thing you could do as a comedian was make $20,000 or $25,000 a year doing something else. That’s just enough to rope you into rent and car payments, and then you’re locked into place. I worked as a mechanic just so that I could travel as a comedian. A gig might pay $500, but it would cost $450 to get there. And when I came to California, I left behind my crummy little apartment in Boston with the door open and all my possessions inside. I said, ‘Let’s just pretend there was a fire.’ You have to be ready to go and you have to be ready to gamble everything.”

Leno felt that his gamble had paid off the first time he got to do stand-up for “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

“It was like first sex--new, exciting and over before I knew it. I didn’t remember much afterward, but I wanted to do it again.”

For successful comics, comedy is a passion and a calling as much as a profession. At 27, Todd Glass already has 12 years’ experience in clubs, and he says he heard his calling even before he began working. “I look back and realize that I had already made my career choice by the time I was 10. At that age, I didn’t realize that not every kid was rushing home from school to catch the new comics do their bits on ‘The Merv Griffin Show.’ ”

Devotion to the craft can get a comic through years of financial struggle, but there are some moments of terror that have nothing to do with sickly bank statements.

Nine years ago, Karen Haber left the counter of a vegetarian restaurant for the stage of the Comedy Store and remembers more fear than laughter at her early gigs.

“It was beyond scary. I was paralyzed. I had no idea who was talking while I was up there. When (Comedy Store owner) Mitzi Shore told me to start coming every night, I actually felt sick to my stomach. I started thinking of ways I could get out of it. But, after a couple of shows, I was completely in love.”

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Rocky LaPorte also remembers his early days of comedy as emotionally punishing and compares them to a less-successful career from his past--his seven fights as a pro boxer: “Comedy’s harder than boxing. If somebody beats you up, it’s just physical pain. But comedy can be mental anguish because your ego is on the line. Even now, getting on stage can be scarier than getting in the ring, but at least I don’t bleed as much.”

The only people as close to the struggle for laughs as the comics are the club owners. Bud Friedman of the Improv feels the one great necessity for any beginning comic is an intense single-mindedness.

“My feeling has always been that comedians have to be totally concentrated and dedicated,” he says. “Unless a comic approaches the job full-force and develops their own voice, they’re going to fall in the morass of mediocrity that pervades the scene. I don’t think the comedy business is particularly healthy right now, but the cream still rises. Every once in a while I look up at a new comic and say, ‘Aha, that’s why I’m in this business.’ ”

Laugh Factory owner Jamie Masada believes that he has an obligation to aid comics in getting their careers started. Masada gives individual critiques to every comic who appears at one of the club’s open-mike nights and says that owners should be working harder to foster a sense of community in the comedy business.

“Club owners like to say, ‘I made so-and-so what he is today,’ but it isn’t true. A comic’s talent is what makes him a success. We club owners tend to forget that if it weren’t for the comedians, we’d be coffee-shop owners.”

Despite the pitfalls, comics and owners agree that success and satisfaction are still possible. “If you feel like you have to pursue comedy, you do it regardless of anything else,” Leno says.

Todd Glass agrees. “If somebody asks if I’ve really done anything in the last 12 years, I say, ‘Yeah, I’ve made a living doing what I love.’ ”

Assessing his career, Mendoza figures he’s come out way ahead. “I started out in comedy just looking for a free T-shirt from Catch a Rising Star. Everything since then has been gravy.”