Are They Kidding? N.Y. Comics Say They Love L.A. : There’s Work, Comfort Here That’s Lacking in Big Apple

“All my New York friends had already moved to Los Angeles, and they convinced me to come out. They said, ‘You’ve got to get out of New York--it’s got bad air, bad weather and too much crime.’ I came out here and there was an earthquake, a flood, a drought and drive-by shootings. And you couldn’t get decent pizza.”

Richard Belzer hasn’t lost his New York edge. The actor/comedian remains as fast, brash and forceful as a barreling subway train. But despite his Manhattan state of mind, the consummate Big Apple comic has been a happy resident of Los Angeles since 1981.

It’s not supposed to happen that way. New York is the kingdom of sausage rolls, cigars and strong coffee, Los Angeles the capital of sushi, crystals and herbal tea, and, ostensibly, never the twain shall meet. But Angelenos would be surprised, and New Yorkers horrified, to learn just how many quintessential New York comics have left behind their great, gray city to find happiness beneath the incessantly sunny, if smoggy skies of L.A.

Of course, the process of acclimating is not always easy at first.

“I hated it when I came out here,” says Kevin Meany. “Hated it. Everybody seemed too nice and way too happy. I was used to New York where everybody is saying ‘Please put me out of my misery’ and trying to get hit by cabs. For two years, I kept telling everybody how much I hated L.A. Then I bought a house here. Now I think L.A.’s just a little piece of heaven.”

For years comics have gotten mileage out of the competing lifestyles of the coasts. In terms of building a comedy career, though, East and West are more than a battle of cliches. For performers such as Paul Reiser, Carol Leifer and Dennis Wolfberg, the two towns have served separate and equally crucial purposes. New York provided a vibrant, fast-paced training ground full of comedic inspiration, and Los Angeles offered steady, lucrative work and a comfortable home.

“Los Angeles is the most viable place for an actor/comic,” says 10-year-resident Reiser, star of NBC’s “Mad About You,” about a newly married couple who live in Manhattan. “I don’t think I would have ever gotten my show if I stayed in New York, but at the same time I couldn’t write my show taking place anywhere but New York. I started a screenplay once with ‘A man is driving up La Cienega.’ I couldn’t think of anything that happened to him. As soon as I changed it to ‘He’s driving up Third Avenue’--boom. I had a story.”

Still, Reiser says he’s become enough of an Angeleno that he occasionally pines for the West when he is back in New York. “When you step in a freezing puddle during a New York November, you think, ‘You know, it’s a little hotter and drier in Santa Monica right now.’ ” He also feels that standard New York notions of Los Angeles are no longer accurate. “The ‘70s and ‘80s cliche was ‘laid-back L.A.’ It’s hard to believe that when you’re rolling up your windows because you don’t want to get carjacked.”

Carol Leifer is also happy to be living and working in Los Angeles, but says that she was a more prolific comic in New York. “I’ve been out here a couple of years, and I wrote a lot more material when I was back in New York. I think it’s because more things are annoying in New York, and I find that the more annoyed I get, the more comedy I produce. I’m much less annoyed in L.A.--although I do like to find those ‘Born to Act’ bumper stickers and write ‘Destined to Recite Today’s Specials’ on them.”

After she moved to Los Angeles, Leifer thought she was maintaining a New York approach to life, but one day found herself possessing a Hollywood show-biz attitude.

“I went out of town to a friend’s barbecue, and there was a woman drawing clown faces on all the little kids. I told the hostess I thought that was great and asked where she had hired the clown-painter. She said, ‘What do you mean? That’s one of the moms.’ I was thinking Los Angeles, where you would hire somebody to play with your kids. I decided to get out of town more.”

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Dennis Wolfberg was a schoolteacher in the South Bronx when he began his comedy career in Manhattan. He was one of the last of his comic generation to make the trek west when he moved to Los Angeles in 1989 with his wife and child.

Los Angeles pizza may take its lumps, but Wolfberg sees some great nutritional advantages to living in Southern California. “Of all the multitude of fine features in Los Angeles, I think that the greatest is that whenever you’re stopped at a red light, someone will sell you fruit. Nobody gets scurvy at red lights in L.A.”

But Wolfberg doesn’t see much difference in the respective New York-Los Angeles comedy scenes or senses of humor. “In L.A. it’s far more likely that the club you’re playing in was once a tanning salon, but I think if your material is funny, it’ll work in either town. We’ve become reasonably homogenized.”

After 12 years of varied theater and comedy work in New York, and eight in Los Angeles, Denny Dillon has had the satisfaction of living in California while portraying a brassy New Yorker--secretary Toby Pedalbee on the HBO series “Dream On.” “People are more direct in New York,” she says. “They tell you if they love you or they tell you to get the hell away from them. People in L.A. are harder to read because everybody’s cheerful. Cheerful but restrained. When I get recognized in New York, people jump up and down and yell ‘Yo, Toby.’ Out here they smile and quietly say, ‘Loved last week’s episode.’ ”

Some New York transplants remain immune to the charms of Los Angeles, however. Richard Lewis moved here in 1976 for a part on one of Sonny and Cher’s TV shows. He’s been here ever since, but still has trouble calling Los Angeles home. “I’m not comfortable yet. I’ll never be comfortable in L.A. In fact, I have a house full of uncomfortable furniture, to remind me how uncomfortable I am here. I worry that if I ever took a nap on a nice sofa, I’d never wake up. That’s the way I feel about L.A.”

Ask Lewis, who stars in Fox TV’s series “Daddy Dearest,” what exactly bothers him about Los Angeles, and he responds with his signature manic rant, picking up speed as it careens along. “People in L.A. make plans a year in advance--’Hey, you want to get Chinese a year from tomorrow?’ I ask someone where they live and they say, ‘You know where the canyon hits the falls?’ That’s it for me. I’m not using four-wheel drive to have a hamburger somewhere. And there are actually wild animals in the city--I’m afraid of house cats.

“I bought property here and it’s all vertical. I can’t have a back-yard party unless I invite bats and goats. I go for invigorating walks in New York, but if you go for a walk in L.A., you either get a ticket or attacked by a dog.”

Lewis has managed to find at least one enjoyable pastime in L.A. but even that is tainted. “I love to got to Angel games, but I still don’t know how to exit Anaheim Stadium without winding up in Utah.”

Longtime Angeleno Belzer says he’s achieved a perfect bi-coastal balance in his life. “I’m in both cities a lot, and I love both places. I’m not one of these New York snobs that feels the need to detest L.A. New Yorkers talk big, but there are a lot of great things happening out here too.”

And Kevin Meany has embraced his adopted hometown, but says there are some ties to the East that can’t be broken. “I love living here, and I plan on being here a while. But my parents still call me all the time and say, ‘You better be careful with those crazy earthquakes. And we hear it’s Stage 2 with the smog today, Kevin. You better stay inside.’ ”