EPILOGUE

Author: You said on the phone the other day you were worried about something I’d asked you about, which was cancel culture, where I said, or implied in one of my questions, that you might be more forgiving of what someone said because you were worried it might happen to you.

Noam: Yeah, I remember that. No, it’s not because of that. I’ve always been that way.

Author: You’ve always been that way?

Noam: I remember very clearly, when Mel Gibson was in trouble for making that movie…

Author: Which movie?

Noam: Passion of the Christ, which had some blatant anti-Semitic images. As a matter of fact I even wrote a letter that was published in the Weekly Standard discussing the blatant anti-Semitism. Also, he had some things on tape, or he said some things about Jews, I don’t even remember all the things. It was pretty clear. And I remember thinking that they should let him keep making movies and you can see them or not. I’ve always been reluctant to embrace the idea of a mob retaliation for something somebody said.

Author: Is that because you think he’s going to learn and improve?

Noam: No, I just think it spins out of control and it’s arbitrary. It’s the … It’s quite often unfair. Quite often facts come out a year later that were unknown, and I just don’t believe in putting that kind of blood in the water. I think the cure is much worse than the disease, which is not to say that anybody who gets cancelled is necessarily not deserving of being cancelled. It’s to say that when you encourage this kind of retaliation, very, very quickly it’s going to become unfair. As I said, the cure will become much worse than the disease, and I think we’ve seen that already.

Author: A lot of people are fearful of … Particular comedians are fearful now of that kind of culture, where you say the wrong thing so you’re branded forever. My agent was over at the Cellar a few weeks ago, he went to see a show, and he said he kind of felt, and he might be wrong, but he felt some of the male comedians were self-censoring. Have you noticed that at all?

Noam: I haven’t really. I have to say, I haven’t.

Author: So you think people are getting up on the Cellar stage still and saying what they want?

Noam: I mean, I don’t want to sound naive, but yeah, I think they are.

Author: Are you still doing that thing with the phones where people have their phones taken off them now? Or is it just for certain shows?

Noam: Yeah we’re still doing it.

Author: For all the shows or just some shows?

Noam: All the shows.

Author: You think that’s helped, because there’s a much smaller chance that anybody in the audience is going to film it and put it online? Do the comedians feel freer to do what they want to do because of that?

Noam: Probably. Probably they do.

Author: Is it not something you’ve discussed with any of them?

Noam: I haven’t heard that from the comedians. I hear that going around. I haven’t heard it directly from anybody. But what I have heard from the comedians is they feel the audience is much more in the moment and paying attention. I mean, look at what happened with this guy Shane Gillis and these Legion of Skanks comedians. They’re not censoring themselves.

Author: Yeah, but it seems like those guys have really had to develop their own audience and, you know, they sacrifice …

Noam: That’s what happens. I think that the comedians who are fuelled by the kind of in-your-face controversial presentation, they don’t know any other way of being, so they just do it and they … Look, and you’re right, they develop their own audience, like Andrew Schulz, a comedian I think is terrific, he just takes it directly on YouTube, he has a million followers, he sells out all over the country, and nobody can really touch him.

Author: Okay.

Noam: Look, even Louis … Louis could still sell out Madison Square Garden. Maybe even … The issue would be that people would attack Madison Square Garden for allowing him to perform there, and that is where we really cross the line into a bad situation, you know, where … And the hypocrisy is obvious. A university can invite virtually any leader in the world. China has a million Muslims in concentration camps. Does anybody object if the leader of China comes to speak somewhere? But Louis CK, who has never even been accused of breaking the law, who’s done something he should be ashamed of, is now not permitted to work at venues which leant themselves to the general showbiz industry. It’s … I don’t see any … It’s just a very seat-of-the-pants, make-it-up-as-you-go-along type of procedure.

Author: And at the start, when Louis first came back, you were under pressure, and I remember you had a couple of protestors outside, but you kept allowing him on anyway. Did you have any protestors after that?

Noam: No. Just the two women that one night.

Author: The pressure just dissipated, did it?

Noam: Well, to be accurate, that was the only night that we listed his name on the line-up, a lot of people had criticised me for not listing his name on the line-up so I gave it a shot, suspecting it would blow up in my face, and it didn’t work out, so we didn’t list him on the line-up anymore. We just did the swim-at-your-own-risk policy. So that was that, and yeah, it dissipated. He hasn’t been at the Cellar in a year, but he’s touring all over the country and he’s selling out everywhere.

Author: Yeah. You had to cancel a debate recently as well? Can you explain that?

Noam: And by the way, Mike Tyson, I’ve said this a million times, Bill Clinton and Mike Tyson, who’ve also been accused or even convicted of things worse than Louis was accused of … Bill Clinton, he’s welcome everywhere. Yeah, we cancelled the debate because there was a lot of rumbling on Twitter that people were going to come to disrupt it.

Author: Because of the subject of it?

Noam: Because of the subject matter, yeah.

Author: Which was?

Noam: It was about reparations.

Author: Okay.

Noam: And I just didn’t want to put my staff in that kind of risky situation, you know.

Author: You said on the phone a few calls ago, when we talked about the book, that you might not have agreed to do it if I started doing it now, you know, since things have changed. I wondered what’s changed? Is it you that’s changed? Has the world changed? What’s different now?

Noam: Yeah, I just have a whole … Suddenly … The book started before Louis, correct?

Author: Yeah, yeah.

Noam: Because this was going to be a nice book about the history of the Comedy Cellar, and now it’s a book about, you know, about a confrontation in a sense, and I have a whole PTSD from that whole chapter, you know. I never really recovered from it. It was horrible. So I just don’t want anything that could open that wound again.

Author: You say you kind of have PTSD. It affected you badly did it?

Noam: Terrible. I mean, we were getting threats of violence. People who worked for me, who were wearing Comedy Cellar t-shirts, were accosted on the subway.

Author: Really? Did that happen?

Noam: Yeah.

Author: Wow. What do you mean accosted?

Noam: People would say, ‘How could you work there? Blah, blah, blah.’ People yelling and screaming. There’d also be … The honesty of the reporters who would take your words and chop them up like a guy snipping out words from a magazine to write a ransom note, and put them together to write whatever story they wanted …