Steve Mazan
written by Ken Carlson
“It took me a while to find the right “Letterman” set,” says comedian Steve Mazan, “but it really helped me expand my act with an influx of new material. So that is kind of where I’m at right now.”
Where Steve Mazan is now is difficult to pinpoint. Some people are in a hurry to chase success, whether it’s through artificial deadlines; got to make my first million by the time I’m 30 – got to move out of my parent’s house by the time I’m 40. Some, under the heady glamour of show business, feel they’ve got to make it big while they still look young and vital. For some it’s money; they quit the day job and force themselves to sink or swim. There’s the sound of the clock. But what if that clock measures something even more serious.
Most people who follow comedy know about Steve Mazan. He contracted inoperable cancer and focussed his remaining days with the goal of performing on Letterman. He started a campaign through a website, DyingToDoLetterman.com. The website’s message, “It’s not how much time you have. It’s what you do with it.” But a funny thing happened to his dream; it came true.
“Steve is one of the most optimistic, upbeat guys I’ve ever met,” says comedian Gary Cannon. “He is a guy that has such a hard work ethic and is constantly writing new material and performing it wherever he can. Most comics complain about others getting work and getting things first. Not Steve. He always just kept working hard, staying positive and trying to deliver the best comedy product possible.”
Now, after ten years in stand-up, Mazan is a headliner with appearances on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson and The Late Show with David Letterman, earning his living making people laugh. He’s happily married to a woman who has worked with him to keep the disease at bay. And like many of those who in this unsentimental field who arrived before him, he gets to share in the unbridled benefits of the comedy world. Having just completed a weekend gig at Zanie’s in Chicago, our previously scheduled phone interview was delayed two hours while he dealt with being kicked out of his Chicago hotel room. Yeah, it’s a glamorous business.
Mazan grew up in Hanover Park, a suburb outside of Chicago of strip malls and a population of 20,000 back then. Today it’s got a few more people, a few more strip malls, but it’s a convenient solace when faced with overzealous hotel employees who thrive on arguing over checkout times.
Mazan is a veteran, serving a stretch in the US Navy, based in Norfolk Virginia during the Gulf Crisis, where he says the most serious action he saw was in the Bahamas. He landed a great job in the dotcom boom era in San Francisco where he started performing. The day job had a high salary and a flexible schedule that allowed him to take time off for gigs which he pursued patiently. Three years in, the dotcom bubble burst and Mazan, suddenly out of a job, as he put it, “Was pushed from the nest.”
“Steve Mazan’s positive attitude is contagious, he lifts the spirits of everyone he meets,” says comedian Cash Levy. “Steve’s a fiercely loyal person who’d you’d want in your bunker, and not just because he was in the military!”
As a new comic starting out in San Francisco, Mazan found the comedy audiences occasionally snooty, which pushed him to write better material.
“As far as coming up with my material,” says Mazan, “it’s definitely changed over the years. As a necessity, when I started, I sat down for 30-60 minutes a day and forced myself to write. Free-writing, hoping that funny things would come out. Since I had no material at that point I did this until I had a couple five-minute sets I could perform. From that point I slowly started splitting time between the free-writing and writing down any daily inspirations. Since I was finally getting stage time, the free-writing slowly waned away and I’d let ideas come to me and throw them up on stage as soon as possible and start to talk them out first, letting the audience tell me what parts of the idea were funny. Then I’d go back and write it out in a tightened form.”
Mazan stuck with that method until about three or four years ago when he needed to come up with lots of new material to try and get on Letterman. “My older stuff had been passed on, or used on other shows,” says Mazan. “So I went back to free-writing a couple hours a week to try and come up with lots of ideas... then i’d go back and try to tighten them, and then take them to the stage.”
At this point, the stage meant working the road. It was a shift from the attitude some San Francisco comics turned their nose up at. “I hated to be known as a road comic. You’d hear someone say, ‘Oh, they’re just playing the road...’ Looking back, I don’t know why.”
Much of that road work has been entertaining our troops. He formed a connection with comedian Danny Villalpando. They had worked together in clubs. Villalpando toured military installations and got Steve connected with Comics on Duty. Steve was quickly sent to Afghanistan.
“They’d have me flying around in helicopters,” says Mazan, “doing as many shows as possible, maybe three or four a day. Soldiers are excited to see anyone out of uniform, not wearing camouflage. It’s a touch of home. They don’t get much entertainment there. They form an immediate connection with the crowd. It’s you and maybe three other comics, putting on a 1 1/2 to 2 hour show. Then there’s a meet and greet which may last even longer than the show.”
Between Iraq and Afghanistan he’s travelled into the war zones seven times. Every once in a while, someone that he performed for there will come up to him after a show back here. “It melts your heart,” says Mazan. “We [the entertainers] leave and they stay there You always worry, did something happen to those guys?”
Mazan has lived in Los Angeles for the last six years. His quirky observational material stands out as unique, much as you’d expect from someone who lists Fozzy Bear as one of his comedy influences, [perhaps fitting since Mazan’s voice frequently drops into the same register as Fozzy’s friend, Kermit the Frog].
His career approach runs opposite to a lot of his fellow comics. In an area where many do comedy only to get sitcoms, he focusses on how his on-screen success can feed his road work. “I love comedy, not acting,” says Mazan. “I got into this to make people laugh in a fun environment.”
As far his health goes, he leads a pretty normal life. “In some ways I’m as healthy as I’ve ever been,” says Mazan. “My wife’s from California, a yoga instructor, and into alternative theories on healing. It’s still a waiting game, but it (the cancer and resulting tumors) hasn’t gotten any worse.”
Mazan admits that once he received the news about his condition, he wasn’t sure how many people he would inform. “Some would say in this business,” says Mazan, “that if you get sick, you can’t tell anyone about it. You won’t get work for fear you’ll be too sick. I heard George Lopez went through that when he had problems with his kidneys. But, I always wanted to be on Letterman. It’s always been a dream of mine, kind of a selfish one; with the sacrifices my family had to make. With all the bills I had, it would’ve helped if I had a job with better health benefits. But they’ve been incredibly supportive. Everywhere I go, so many have told me that I’ve inspired them to chase a dream.”
To perform on The Late Show with David Letterman, to have the approval of the long time comedian and talk show host, is a situation that’s difficult to overstate. To see what it means in the comedy world, you only need look to the media attention from the reissue of Bill Hicks’ never previously broadcast appearance that had been shelved for fifteen years and interview with Hicks’ mother.
“To get on the show,” said Mazan, “it was four years of back and forth; speaking with their people. They’d say they liked this joke, not that one. For almost a year and half stretch I didn’t hear anything. I thought I lost their ear. Many comics told me, ‘You will not get on that show because you have cancer. You have to earn it.’ I firmly believe that. Jim Gaffigan told me, ‘They’re only going to put you on if they think you’re ready. But you have to know you’re ready three or four years before hand.’ I’m a working comedian that’s good at what he does. For me, being on Letterman was like making an all-star team in sports.”
“Steve was so nice to work with,” says Eddie Brill from The Late Show with David Letterman. Brill was first told about Mazan on a recommendation from the management at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. “I heard about this kid with cancer; thought he was kind of funny, but we don’t just put people on because they have cancer. We’d have so many wishes the line would go on forever and ever.”
They had the chance to meet when Mazan opened for Brill at Punchline’s. “I told him,” said Brill, “that he could only get on by merit. I saw his act and gave him some notes. If felt it was mediocre at the time. It was funny and professional, but not special. It was stuff I’d seen a million times.”
“I heard about the website (dyingtodoletterman.com),” said Brill, “I really felt that if he put that much effort into his act, he would have been on sooner.”
Brill was rooting for Mazan, but wanted to him to be ready. “I thought it would be a great story,” said Brill. “Finally he had something. It was different and unique. He worked hard, did the show, and it was fantastic.”
After the appearance, Brill received verbal jabs from comedian friends of his, who, in good-natured gallows humor, asked what disease they had to contract to get on the show. Brill summed up the event simply, “Steve’s a good guy who worked really hard and made it."
Jim Short a comic that also appeared on Letterman, who Mazan knew from his early days, emailed Steve shortly after the show to say, “Welcome to the Club.”
Mazan still performs in comedy clubs across the country. He’s also started an cancer-related charity, Laughstrong. “Laughstrong is obviously a take-off on Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong,” says Mazan. “I started to get a lot of nice e-mails from people saying they were inspired by my story and quest to achieve a dream amidst my diagnosis. I figured it would be nice to have an outlet for that inspiration, so I started to sell LaughStrong wristbands and donate the money to a cancer foundation (The Walter Payton Cancer Fund--named after Mazan’s childhood hero). My goal is to eventually have LaughStrong on its own and use the money to help people diagnosed with cancer continue to chase their dreams despite their diagnosis. Almost every cancer foundation raises money for research, which is great, but I’d like to do more for the people living with the disease.”
For more on Steve, visit Steve Mazan.com.