CHAPTER 57

Author: Do you remember the date when you first left the Cellar and went to work at the Boston?

Lewis Schaffer: I don’t remember.

Author: The year? Do you remember the year?

Lewis: ’96? ’97? How do people remember this shit?

Author: I guess if something important happened in your life at the same time.

Lewis: Yeah.

Author: So you went to work at the Boston. Do you remember how Manny reacted?

Lewis: I’d been fired. He got somebody to take my … I don’t know how I told him. He was angry. He was mad at me, but he was also, I think by that point, a bit fed up with me. I mean people don’t like me. They don’t like me. I think he had thought, ‘Okay, we’ll get somebody else to do it.’ I remember what happened was, right after … Well, when I was there the place started to get buzzy on its own. So I was there for a year or two, I don’t know how long I was there for, but it was getting buzzy on its own.

Author: The Boston?

Lewis: The Comedy Cellar. It was getting buzzy and Chris Rock had decided to make a return. And so there were, you know, it suddenly became, not suddenly, but it was becoming busier, where it was busy at weekends, and then during the week it was busier. It wasn’t dead. So things were alright without me there towards the latter. I mean obviously I made a difference, okay. So I go over to the Boston about a year later and he would drive down West Third Street to get to MacDougal Street, driving in his car, coming from Ardsley or whatever. He’d drive by and every time he saw me outside with my clipboard and he would say, ‘Lewis, Lewis, look at the car, it’s a Lexus.’ And he’d drive on. He’d say, ‘Lewis, we’ve added a third show on a Saturday,’ and drive by. He’d say, ‘Lewis, do you know who did a spot at the club last night? Jerry Seinfeld.’ And he’d drive by. And it’s like, the Jews, they do drive-by gloatings. It was about just making me feel bad that his business was doing better than mine.

Author: Did you smile when he did that? Was he smiling when he did that?

Lewis: Yeah, it’s Manny. You know what I mean? I wasn’t angry at him. Okay. My feeling was, I was thinking what I think all the time, ‘Why don’t people appreciate me? Why didn’t he appreciate me?’ It was more confused, more confused, but I wasn’t angry at Manny, and Manny wasn’t angry at me. He was probably a bit relieved, he suddenly had a business again. I mean, he always had a business, it was always going to do well, but suddenly … Yeah.