CHAPTER 109

Noam: I always knew that he was leaving half to me and half to Ava. And he was concerned about there being … Two people running a business together is a common way to cause a lot of disagreement between two people. So he was concerned about it becoming an issue in my relationship with Ava, because we have a very good relationship. So he would try to give us advice about that. But he didn’t encourage me to take more interest in the Comedy Cellar. I think he figured that I had the Cafe Wha and I had that other stuff, and that Ava would basically run the Olive Tree and the Comedy Cellar day to day, and that’s how it would be.

Author: Okay. So after he had died, did Ava run the Comedy Cellar?

Noam: She did, but Ava has no interest really in show business and so …

Author: She was a teacher?

Noam: No that was a different wife of his. I’m sorry to confuse you. No, her name was Carol. Ava he got with later, when I was already in law school.

Author: What did she do?

Noam: She used to work as a bartender and then as a manager of the Olive Tree, and she’s an artist.

Author: Did your wife work as a bartender?

Noam: Yes, my wife worked as a waitress around seventeen years ago.

Author: Like father like son.

Noam: Like father like son, right.

Author: So Ava wasn’t interested in the Comedy Cellar really, so who was running it?

Noam: She was running it. She was interested in it, she just didn’t get any joy out of the fact it was a comedy club, you know, and she was doing most of her work during the day, and Estee was taking care of most of the booking and stuff like that at night, and that’s the way we went on for a few years.

Author: And what kind of form did your resistance take? You just didn’t hang around there? Did you find the comedians difficult?

Noam: No, I didn’t have any bad feelings about it. It kind of went back to what I had said to you before. I didn’t see the Comedy Cellar as a vehicle for me to … It was a fully cooked idea. It was successful. It was nothing that needed any improvement. And the real talent was the comedians. So, you know, it was hard to get all excited about getting involved in it.

Author: So why did you start getting involved it? Was there a trigger?

Noam: Yeah, the main trigger was that Ava was getting totally burnt out, and she’s a very fine artist, and she was not able to find the time to paint or draw anything for years. So I told her that I would take it over.