Basic HTML Version
Delta Living Magazine.com 9
can’t do an impression, he can’t sing,
he probably can’t ad lib. But he was
wildly successful. Not to mock Bob,
I love his stuff, but if an accountant
can be funny, anybody can be funny.
Okay, maybe not Dick Cheney.
I do teach classes. I just taught a
class in April here in Berkeley, general
seminar on how to do stand up. I’ve
taught 12-year-old kids how to write
jokes up in Marin. I also do one-on-
one with working comics. I’ve helped
beginners as well as comics who’ve
been on national TV, Letterman, etc. I
look at everything from performance
style to material to even wardrobe.”
I know your father recently passed
away. How are you handling this great
loss?
“
He’d been ill for some time and
his death was expected, so I thought
I was prepared for it. Well, you can
no more prepare for something like
this than you can prepare to be hit by
a truck. You can brace yourself, but
you’re still going to get whacked.
He was an absolutely great father
and at various times in my life he was
my best friend. After football games
in high school, before going out to
meet my pals, I would head home to
discuss the game with him. He would
set up chairs in the family room to look
like the offensive line and we would
go over certain plays from the game.
I loved it.
I can’t count the number of times
we went to Hawaii, the east coast,
Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe
together. It’s still tough to believe I
can’t pick up the phone and call him
and hear his, ‘Hey, Moe,’ greeting, a
nickname that goes back to the Three
Stooges.
He supported my comedy career
100%. In fact my sense of humor is an
almost perfect blend of my pop and
my mother. He was a little sillier and
goofy, while my mom is sharp and
edgy.
It’s a terrible experience to
lose your pop and I’ll be
dealing with
his
loss for
some time. But I’m
encouraged by the
outpouring of love
from friends, family, the
neighbors of my old
neighborhood, and the
folks from the New Mecca
Cafe who delivered
food to our front door
the night he passed and
were the first to call with
condolences.
This is something
everyone must go through and
it’s life-altering. I posted about his
passing on Facebook and I received
about ten times more feedback
than on any other post. Hundreds,
actually. It was incredible and very
moving. It just kept coming, day
after day. My brother did a series of
articles about him in the LA Times
and the response from his readers
was overwhelming. It’s horribly sucky
and it touches everybody.”
On a lighter note, what do you
love about doing stand-up?
“
I love
the freedom of stand up. In radio
I had to go to meetings every day
and discuss the show. In TV I had
a speaker in my ear and I was
constantly being told to do this or
that. In stand up I usually just do
what I want to do. I’m creator, writer,
director, editor and performer.
Yeah, I have to take the cultural
pulse of each particular audience
and work within their capabilities.
But I can rearrange my material any
way I like, ad lib if I feel like it, act out
bits and see how far I can go. I’ve
dabbled with the solo show format,
but found it tough to keep to a
script each night. My stand up is
always alive, always evolving,
not just from night to night, but
from minute to minute.
I also like that it’s a place to
vent. If I read something in
the paper that makes me
crazy, I can get on stage
and rant about it. I just
wrap some jokes around
it and off I go. It’s darn
therapeutic.
Teaching stand-up is
fun. It’s great to watch someone
learn to write a joke, see them get
excited about it. Also, I learn every
time I teach. It makes me go back
and look at the fundamentals.”
Career-wise, if you could turn
back time, what would you do
differently?
“
I’d have gone to LA. I
never moved there and you simply
cannot make it big if you don’t go
to LA. I didn’t like the town itself -
the sprawl, the traffic, the ugliness
- and I didn’t like the cut-throat
nature of the business. The quality
of life was so much better here in
the Bay Area, in SF, snowboarding
in Tahoe, windsurfing in the Delta.
But it cost me and I regret not at
least spending more time there.”
How ‘bout we wrap this up with
that nosey little question everyone
always wants to know the answer
to … how old are you?
“I’m 51, but
in some ways I’m going on about
12. My wife probably would say it’s
more like 8.”
What do you and Allison do for
fun?
“We love snowboarding, but
my bones are liking it less and
less. We also remodel houses and
Allison is a stager and interior
designer, so we always bum
around flea markets, antique
sales, and so on. Robin Williams
got me into road cycling, so I do
that a few times a week here in
the Berkeley hills and occasionally
with him up in Marin. That’s a real
eye-opener. I’m thinking I’m doing
pretty good, pedaling slowly up
a hill, then some 25-year-old kid
passes me like I’m standing still.”
Visit Johnny at www.johnnysteele.