Comedy didn’t just begin the day I had the light bulb moment at the advertising job. It was something I had been subconsciously pursuing since I was a teenager. I’ve developed a basic philosophy throughout my acting and comedy life that applies to everyone, regardless of one’s career or passion: You’re either inspired by greatness or you’re inspired by mediocrity. One of those two extremes is what throws everyone into pursuit of his dreams. Meaning, you either see something that is so great and inspiring that you leap into action and attempt to replicate it. Or you see something so mediocre and pathetic that you immediately think, Look at that sad bastard. I can do better.
Take fire, as an example. Some younger readers might believe that fire came about when the iPhone created the lighter app for use at concerts, but I’ve got a different theory. Fire came about either when a caveman saw a fellow cave dweller successfully light fire and then get laid by all the hottest, hairiest cavewomen that same evening, or it came about when the same guy saw a fellow cave dweller rub some rocks together and explode in flames and said, “Well, I can’t do any worse than that.”
My inspiration came in both forms. Yes, the greatness/mediocrity principle is not a mutually exclusive principle and is not a zero sum theory. It can be simultaneously applied as a paradigm and, when looked at as a bell curve, the greatness factor has an inverse relationship to the mediocrity factor. If you have no idea what I just said don’t worry because neither do I. It’s just something I picked up in my three months in the Ph.D. program at UCLA and I figured I might as well use some of that language since I spent eight grand acquiring it. I dropped out of academia and with that abandoned my dreams of being a learned prophet. I let down Professor Enzo, my mother, and the entire Westwood condominium community. But there was another mentor I’d always looked up to, and I intended to do right by him.
The Persian Eddie Murphy
I got into comedy because I was inspired by greatness—that of my earliest influence, Eddie Murphy. Growing up I was a big fan of Eddie on Saturday Night Live. His comedy was ingenious and he was everything I aspired to be. I had his albums at home and Eddie even taught me and my six-year-old brother how to cuss. We would go around the house practicing: “Goddamned, motherfucker, punk-ass son of a bitch!” Our parents, being immigrants, had no idea what we were talking about. “Dere English is getting good! Dey are using multisyllabic vords. And complete sentences! Who says American public eh-schools are bad?”
I studied all of Eddie’s sets and TV appearances, and I decided that I was going to make it as a comedian, only younger and better and edgier. My first opportunity to give it a shot was at age seventeen, the peak of my sexual perversity. There was a high school talent show that was looking for acts. I had no discipline and no game plan, and my comedy back then was solely sexual in nature. Things like, “Why are genitalia located in the least agile parts of the body? Wouldn’t they be more accessible if they were on the hand? Then you could go around having sex all day simply by high-fiving each other.” I would write it down and think, Wow, this is brilliant stuff, I’m on my way! The next day I’d read what I’d written and have second thoughts: This is total horseshit. Who the hell wrote this? I was only a teenager and I had no idea how stand-up worked. I had yet to learn it takes years of writing and honing and trying out stuff for it to become good material. Given my lack of confidence, I chickened out of performing at that event, and it turned out to be a good decision. When I showed up to watch the other performers, I saw that the audience was made up of juvenile delinquents from a nearby prison. Somehow the organizers had neglected to relay that small detail. I counted my blessings. The last thing I needed for my comedy career was to be shanked at my first performance. Talk about a discouraging start.
As inspired as I was by Eddie Murphy, I still did not have the courage to do stand-up onstage. I’d been in a lot of school plays up until then. But with acting, there are writers, directors, other actors, the orchestra—an entire army of folks to blame if things go wrong. With stand-up, there’s only one person to blame, and I was not confident enough to risk it. In college, I had no more confidence. I had taken a few acting classes and attended some shows. I remember wandering into a bar, and they were having this stand-up comedy competition for National Lampoon, which was looking for the funniest unknown comedian in America. There were only two guys in the competition, and they were onstage doing their thing. They were both awful. I sat there thinking I could have climbed onstage right then, without any practice, and done a better comedy set than either of them. And boom—just like that, based on witnessing utter mediocrity, I told myself that the next time an opportunity to perform came around, I would take it.
One day I was listening to the biggest hip-hop radio station in the Bay Area and they announced that they were hosting a Dirty Dozens comedy competition for local comics. I had no idea what Dirty Dozens was, but I figured it meant there would be twelve people competing and maybe they wouldn’t have to shower before the show. It was open to anyone, and even though I still had not performed stand-up comedy onstage, in my mind I was the next Eddie Murphy and funnier at least than the two guys I had seen bomb in the bar. I had a buddy record a video of me doing character impersonations and I sent it in. There were more than one thousand submissions, and I was one of sixteen finalists selected to go down to the radio station to promote the competition that would take place in front of thousands of people in a theater in Oakland. I put on my best outfit, strutted down to the studio, and prepared to take my place among the comedy greats. After a few moments, I realized my mistake: Dirty Dozens meant a “yo mama” comedy competition. While it was very Eddie Murphy in nature, I did not yet have the chops to hang with those guys.
All the other comics were black. And they knew one another from the comedy circuit, whereas I had never performed stand-up. Paranoia set in quickly. I decided they had not chosen me because my act was tight; they chose me to be the dude who everyone would laugh at and boo offstage, like they do on American Idol or Showtime at the Apollo. They were laughing at me, not with me.
But I couldn’t just leave, and I had made a promise to myself that I was going to try. We were shuffled into the deejay’s studio, and the other comedians were going around the room doing their best yo mama jokes directed at one another.
“Suki’s mama so fat she can’t wear a Malcolm X T-shirt because helicopters try to land on her.”
“Coco’s mama so ugly, she make blind children cry.”
“Yo mama so fat people jog around her for exercise.”
I just sat in the corner in silence, thinking, Oh god, please don’t let them notice me. I don’t have any yo mama jokes. And if my mother found out someone insulted her on the radio and I didn’t defend her honor, she would never let me hear the end of it.
“You let dem call me fat? On deh radio? And you didn’t beat dem vith a hanger? You are a disgrace to deh Jobrani name and deh entire Persian community.”
I was sweating, panicking. I had no idea what to say when it was my turn. I was scared to do a yo mama joke because black guys take their mamas seriously. Back in California in those days, you could get killed for insulting someone’s mama, especially if the yo mama joke hit too close to home. Finally after what felt like an hour of yo mama jokes, but was actually about two minutes, the deejay asked all the comics in the room to introduce themselves. They had gotten to the part of the show where I could participate. After all, I did know my own name. I listened as they all gave some cool shout-outs to their friends—“This is Suki from Viejo, shout-out to Pookey. You gonna be out of prison soon, homey!” “What-up, this is Coco from Oakland. Shout-out to the good Lord!”
Finally it was my turn. I’m not sure what happened, but suddenly I transformed into a black comic: “Yo yo yo! What’s up WHAT’S UP?! This is Mazzy J, sayin’ what’s up?”
Mazzy J? Who the hell was Mazzy J? And how many times was I going to say, “What’s up?” I left the radio station feeling less funny, but more black, which was an interesting trade-off.
Fortunately for me, the promoter had a hard time selling tickets for this show, and it was canceled. Again, the comedy gods had smiled upon me by taking me out of a situation in which I would have been scarred for life. I dodged getting shanked once, and now I was dodging getting booed offstage at a black comedy competition.
I Used to Wash Toilets
My comedy dreams took some time to marinate, about five years. A fresh dropout from UCLA working the advertising gig, I decided I had to get serious about this comedy thing, so I enrolled in a stand-up class. The first thing they teach you is to write what you know and what makes you unique. In a class filled with guys, girls, straight people, gay people, short people, tall people, Asians, and even an Arab, I was the only Iranian. I’m guessing that’s because most other Iranians were in law school or medical school, making their mothers happy and my mother jealous. The teacher told me to write about the struggles of being Iranian in America. This was easy, because Iranians had been vilified for so long. They say comedy comes from tragedy, and being Iranian in America from 1979 on had been quite tragic. I’d had some struggles myself, but in stand-up comedy I was able to take the reality and exaggerate it. Sometimes it would come across a bit cheesy, but the audience still laughed. Some of my earliest material was about my family life and how difficult it was to invite other kids over to spend the night because their parents were concerned we were going to take the kids hostage. I know, rimshot. But it worked.
We honed our material over the course of seven weeks and ended with a showcase at the Melrose Improv, where we were told big-time managers and agents would be in the audience to discover us and send us on the road to fame. A lot of acting and comedy classes in Los Angeles use these showcases to lure students in and get you to pay five hundred dollars to train with them. You’re actually convinced that after less than two months of doing stand-up, someone will see you and put you on Saturday Night Live. The reality is much different. Now that I’ve been a stand-up for seventeen years, I know there is never one big night when everything comes together. It is a series of big nights and many years of hard work that, if you’re lucky, will eventually pay off. If you ever take an acting or comedy class and after only two months a big agent wants to sign you, chances are he’s trying to get in your pants. The night of my big showcase, there were no agents or managers, but someone much more important did attend: my mother.
I was a bit wary, because my mother had attended a play I had done a few years before called Belind Date. (Basically Blind Date, said with a Persian accent.) It was a comedy about a Persian guy who’s a big bullshit artist and who goes on a blind date with a Persian girl who’s a gold digger. It turned out to be a huge hit. At the time I was still living at home with my mom and I needed the ego boost. I came offstage and people were congratulating me and buying me drinks. I was getting a big head as I waved and shook hands with my hordes of new fans. I found my mom and escorted her to the valet line so that she could get her car and head home. Even as we waited in line, people congratulated me and I thought that she would finally realize what a star I was. That’s when my mom chimed in.
“Thanks, Mom.”
She got in her car and started to drive off, but not before pulling down her window and blurting out one last thing.
“Just remember, funny man, dat tomorrow is your turn to vash the bathrooms.”
This was said loud enough so that my fans could hear, bringing me back down to Earth. Head back to normal. Mission accomplished.
So when my mother appeared at the stand-up comedy showcase it made me nervous. I knew how high her standards were. If it didn’t go well, she would never let me hear the end of it. Even if it went well, she would probably still embarrass me in front of everyone: “You did a good job, Maz. Next time make joke about how you vet your bed until you vere ten.” This woman had a lot of secrets on me. I had to be careful when I took her out in public.
In a show with a bunch of lousy amateurs, I succeeded in being one of the better lousy amateurs. Afterwards, as people congratulated me, again I found my mom and braced myself for her to blurt out an inappropriate comment.
“You vere good!”
“And?”
“And vhat?”
“Aren’t you going to say something to deflate the compliment?”
“I vould never do dat!”
“Last time you reminded me it was my turn to clean the bathroom.”
“Dat vas just fact! Vhy you so sensitive?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I have mother issues.”
“Or maybe you’re just a pussy.”
People ask me all the time how to become a stand-up comedian. The answer is simple: Get onstage as much as you can and write as much as you can. This sounds easier than it is because if you’re not committed it’s easy to be discouraged. I have done gigs in coffee shops where no one is listening and the barista decides to make the foam for the cappuccino right as you hit your punch line. I’ve done shows in church basements with only eight audience members, all of whom were there to perform their own variety acts as soon as I finished. The most bizarre show I ever did was in a strip club, where the club owners had sold the place the night before and taken the microphone with them.
The show was at a place called Treasure Island, the treasure being scantily clad girls dancing on greasy poles. The booker was a guy who did old-school jokes like you might hear in the vaudeville days. “Take my wife . . . please!” This guy booked the room so that he could get himself stage time on a weekly basis and work on his jokes, which were atrocious. (This is a common occurrence—guys who no one else will book deciding to get their own venue.) I was new to stand-up, so I took any gig I could get. Truth be told, I was quite atrocious myself.
The guy told me he would pay me five bucks for every audience member I brought. I was excited that this would be my first paid gig, but I didn’t want to overpromote because I wasn’t ready to perform in front of a large crowd. I told a few friends and asked them to keep it a secret. The opposite happened. In a room with thirty-eight audience members, thirty-one had come to see me. That meant I would make $155 that night, but also that I would bomb in front of enough people to get the word out to the community that I stunk. Furthermore, it wasn’t until I showed up at the venue that I was told that the microphone was missing. It was decided that the show must go on and we would just shout our stand-up at the crowd.
If you’ve never done stand-up in a strip club, don’t. People who go to strip clubs are not there to laugh. Some might giggle depending on how the girl dances on their laps, but laughter is not the main motivation. We quickly discovered that this was the worst location for a stand-up show when one of the patrons from the main room walked into our back room, stripper in tow. This gentleman, dressed as a gangbanger and looking quite dangerous, proceeded to sit in the center of the room where our microphone-less show took place. He held a loud conversation with the stripper, who was sitting on his lap. The guy didn’t seem to care that there was a desperate comedian onstage shouting horrible jokes so everyone could hear. At one point the comic couldn’t ignore his chatter any longer.
“Sir, I’m telling jokes up here. Can you keep it down?”
“You talking to me?”
“Yes, I’m talking to you. Keep it down.”
“Mind your own business, asshole!”
The poor comedian looked to the rest of us for help—other comedians, the organizer, even the audience—but no one said a word. The guy had a stripper on his lap, and he seemed to be totally comfortable with telling the comic onstage to mind his own business. From the way he was dressed, we were certain this guy was capable of busting a cap in somebody’s ass.
A few of the people I had invited were shooting me stink eyes—what kind of a place had I invited them to? I shrugged. A typical selfish comedian, I was just relieved that this wasn’t happening during my set. Fortunately, the booker had scheduled me last to hold my audience hostage and have them watch all the other comics. I guess he figured we Persians had held Americans hostage for 444 days, so he could at least hold a bunch of Persians hostage for two hours. It only seemed fair. By the time I got up I looked out at the audience and saw a bunch of familiar faces bored to death and kicking themselves for having come out to see me.
“I told you guys not to come,” I wanted to holler. “It’s not my fault you can’t keep a secret.” It was all I could do to shout my jokes so that those sitting in the rear could hear. And I was working faster than I wanted to, just in case the gangbanger brought another stripper in for a second conversation. When I finished, my friends rushed out quickly, issuing me polite smiles of pity. Some of them still haven’t come back to see me perform. If any of you are reading this, please come back and give me one more shot. I promise—no strippers, no gangbangers, no bad jokes. But there’s still a two-drink minimum.
Persian Blackface
The biggest break I got in my early stand-up career was becoming a regular at the Comedy Store. Being a regular means that you have performed in front of the owner of the club and she has approved you. It’s a great honor and every struggling comedian wants to be a regular at all the big clubs. The Comedy Store in Los Angeles was, and is, one of the biggest clubs in the world. The owner, Mitzi Shore, who is Pauly Shore’s mother, is a comedy legend. Her club has had a hand in developing the acts of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, Sam Kinison, Roseanne Barr, Andrew Dice Clay, and many more. It was the Comedy Store where Richard Pryor made a comeback later in his life and Eddie Murphy would perform at the peak of his stand-up career. Even today you will see some of the hottest comedians stopping by to work out material. Sometimes it’s Chris Rock, sometimes Dave Chappelle, Louis C.K.—the list goes on.
I first auditioned for Mitzi in 1999. At the time, a lot of my material was about being Iranian. There wasn’t anyone else doing that material back then, so I stood out to her. After I performed three minutes one Sunday night, Mitzi told me to return the following week and do six minutes. I returned, did my six, and was told to return and do ten minutes. This was how you became a regular, with this painstakingly slow process that caused anxiety and crippling ulcers. Finally the day came for me to do my ten minutes in front of her. If I passed this obstacle I would be a regular.
Mitzi used to sit in the back seat next to the exit and watch the shows. If she liked you after your third audition she would grab your arm as you walked past, pull you in, and tell you that you were a regular. If she didn’t like you, she would just ignore you as you passed. This was brutal. You wanted to make eye contact in the hope she would smile and pull you in, but you didn’t want to make too much eye contact and seem presumptuous. You had to find a way to balance your anxiety for acceptance with a fake humility. It was like being in the fourth grade waiting to be picked for a kickball team. You hoped to hear your name but didn’t want to seem too anxious in case your name was called last.
I did my ten minutes in front of Mitzi and it felt good. As I walked the thirty feet from the stage to the exit, I tried to act nonchalant. At the last moment, she reached out her hand and pulled me in. It felt like she waited for me to almost pass her just to mess with me a bit.
“You’re very funny,” she said.
“I’m going to make you a regular.”
It had happened. I had been chosen. By the guru herself. I was going to be a regular. Things were finally coming together. I wanted to celebrate, but I had to play it cool, as though I expected nothing less. “Thank you, Mitzi. I really appreciate it.”
She pulled me closer. “Have you ever thought about wearing the outfit?”
“What outfit?”
“You know, the hat and robe.”
“Hat and robe?”
“Yeah,” she repeated, “the hat and robe.”
I stared at her confused for a few seconds.
Then it hit me. She was asking if I had ever thought about wearing Middle Eastern garb, a turban and a dishdasha, onstage. I didn’t know what to say. She was offering me a regular slot at the club where Eddie Murphy had performed, making one of my biggest dreams come true. But she was asking if I would dress as a sheikh or a mullah onstage. Was this racist? Was there a word for being both flattered and insulted at once?
“Well, I, uh, haven’t really thought about it.”
“Trust me,” Mitzi said. “Wear the outfit.”
The woman who held my career in her hands was basically presenting me with an ultimatum. If I wanted to perform in her club, I would have to don the Persian equivalent of blackface. This was outrageous. I could never do that to my people. I could never do that to my mother. It took only one second for me to make up my mind.
“That’s brilliant, Mitzi! I will definitely wear the outfit. What a great idea! Thank you again for making me a regular.”
I couldn’t believe it as the words came out of my mouth. My conscience wanted to maintain integrity, but my soul—clearly looking for Hollywood stardom—sold out. I walked to the back parking lot and instead of celebrating, I paced and contemplated what had happened. I didn’t want to perform in a costume. I would be the laughingstock of the club. My career would end before it even began. Then I had a thought. Mitzi was old. Old people forget things. Maybe by the time my next spot opened up, she would have forgotten about the whole idea.
The next day I called the club to give them my times for the week. The booker sounded very enthused to hear I was a regular.
“Maz, congratulations. I heard you passed.”
“Yeah, I can’t believe it.”
“And she told me you’re going to wear the outfit.”
“Excuse me?”
“The hat and robe. It’s a great idea.”
“First of all, it’s not a hat, it’s a turban. Second, it’s not a robe, it’s a dishdasha.” I grew irritated explaining this. “Third,” I said with conviction, “I’m not wearing the outfit.”
The air went out of the booker’s enthusiasm. “If Mitzi wants you to wear the outfit, you should wear the outfit.”
“What happens if I don’t wear the outfit?”
“Do I really have to answer that?” She didn’t. “Listen, if it makes you feel better, Mitzi is really good at these things. She’s a visionary. She took Roseanne Barr shopping for her clothes to create her onstage persona. She’s done that with a lot of comics. If she thinks you should wear the outfit, it will be good for you. Trust me.”
Mitzi hadn’t forgotten. In fact, she was so behind this idea, it was the first thing she’d mentioned to the booker. I hung up, disappointed. I didn’t think Mitzi had bad intentions, but I also didn’t want to listen to her instincts in this case because I knew she was wrong. Then I came up with a plan. A few years earlier, there was an Iranian entertainer in the United States who would impersonate the mullahs on Persian TV. This guy would criticize the regime back in Iran. I guess the regime didn’t find him too amusing because one time when he was performing live in Los Angeles someone showed up and threw a rock at him that hit him in the eye and made him go blind. I never researched this story, but that’s what I had heard. And most importantly, that was the story I intended to stand by in order to raise a high alert at the Comedy Store. Armed with this information, I called the booker again.
“It’s Maz,” I said dramatically, quickly, out of breath. “I was working on the outfit when I just remembered something.” I relayed the story of the possibly blind impersonator. “The last guy who wore the outfit ended up losing his sight because they threw rocks at him.”
“Oh dear.”
“And as much as I’m dying to wear the outfit, I would hate for it to get out that there’s a guy at the Comedy Store impersonating mullahs and have them come blow the place up.”
Silence on the other end. “Let me run this by Mitzi and see what she says.” A few minutes later I got the call. “Maz, forget the outfit. Just wear something casual.”
Thank God. Or should I say praise Allah.
Dying in Front of Eddie
I owe much of my success to Mitzi Shore and the Comedy Store. It was at this club where I was able to perform in front of small, drunk audiences night after night and grow exponentially as a comic. It was also Mitzi who launched my touring career. Because of Mitzi I was able to go on and do my own solo tours called “Brown and Friendly,” “Browner and Friendlier,” and “I Come in Peace,” all of which would have been more interesting tour names had I still been performing in strip clubs. It was during my first solo tour when I would come face to face with my comedy hero of all time, Mister Motherfucker himself, Eddie Murphy.
I had been on the road in Australia doing hour-long sets. The shows were in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people who had bought tickets to see me in concert. My dream of being like Eddie was coming true and I couldn’t have been happier with my career. I had even managed to get my mom on board, and she was now one of my biggest fans. (For an Iranian, getting your mother off your back is the biggest measure of success in anything you do.) Life was beautiful.
On Tuesday nights the Comedy Store hosted black comedy night. The rumor was that Eddie Murphy occasionally hung out in the back to watch comedians perform. This was around the time when everyone was talking about when he was going to get back onstage and do his next comedy special, so there were always whispers when he was in the club that he was looking for inspiration. I was just back from Australia for a day, and rather than taking the night off and relaxing, I decided to go down to the club and do fifteen minutes to get a workout. For nearly a month I had been on the road, doing shows that were four times as long. Doing an hour show and doing a fifteen-minute show are very different beasts. They require completely different rhythms and timing, and it was just one of those late Tuesday nights, an empty audience, when my act was not as good as it should have been.
There were three rooms at the club—one was the Main Room, which on Tuesdays hosted black comedy night. There was the Original Room, where I was performing, and the Belly Room, which has nothing to do with this story. Eddie Murphy was rumored to occasionally hang out in the back of the Main Room, but never in the Original Room, where comedians mostly worked out new material. What are the chances that a comic legend, and the one rock star performer who influenced my comedy from the beginning, would happen upon the workout room on the one night I was truly awful? Since I’m telling this story, the chances are pretty good.
I was having a bad set and the audience was quiet, maybe one guy in the room laughing. At one point I thought to myself that maybe I should do some older tried-and-true material to win the audience over. What if someone big was watching? Then I decided it didn’t matter if someone big was watching. I had been doing shows in this room for years and not caring about who watched. That was the magic of the Original Room and why I had been able to grow as a comic—it made you not care about anything but working out your material. All these thoughts were running through my mind as I was doing my set. That night, I resolved to stick to my guns and not pander to the audience. If I was going to bomb, I would do it on my terms.
I came offstage. A comedy groupie who hung around the club came over and told me the news. “Hey Maz, Eddie’s here tonight.”
You know the person is important if you can refer to him by his first name and you instantly know who he is. Eddie is Eddie Murphy. Oprah is Oprah Winfrey. Michael is Michael Jordan, or Michael Jackson, or Michael J. Fox, or Michael Moore, or Michael Ian Black, or . . . okay, this theory doesn’t necessarily work if your name is Michael.
Eddie Murphy had been sitting in the back of the room, listening to my set. My horrible, shitty, desperate set. I looked up and saw that he was occupying Mitzi’s chair—the same one I had been so scared to walk by years before. The chair you have to walk by to exit the room. I took a deep breath and proceeded to walk in his direction. I tried to act nonchalant but was hoping he would grab my arm: “Hey kid, you weren’t that bad tonight. Have you thought about wearing a turban?” Okay, I was hoping he wouldn’t bring up the turban, but I wanted him to acknowledge me.
Unfortunately, he didn’t pull a Mitzi. He let me walk right past. It really had been as bad as I thought. I walked down the steps and into the Comedy Store hallway, where I had to wait for my friend Anthony to come out so we could leave. When who walked out but my idol, Eddie himself. I stood there, hoping he might say hello, or offer me a handshake. Nothing. He gave me a quick look and then averted his eyes. He couldn’t even bear the sight of me.
Suddenly those two mediocre comics who bombed in that bar almost twenty years earlier, way back at UC Berkeley, and made me believe I could do better, came rushing back. What if I had become that mediocre act for Eddie? I saw him making a comeback and going on a late night talk show to announce his return. At some point Jimmy Kimmel would lean over: “So, Eddie, what inspired you to come back?”
“Well, Jimmy, I was inspired by mediocrity. One night I saw this horrible Iranian comedian perform and I told myself right then—I can do better. He was awful. He didn’t even wear a turban.”