bill burr
written by Ken Carlson (May/June 07)
“I haven't had a day job since 1995. I'd been doing stand-up for 3 1/2 years. I was living at home driving a piece of shit car. I saved every fucking dime. By the time I moved to New York, I had ten grand, paid off my credit cards and had the thought of getting a day job. I was ready to go. Then I got a couple of gigs so my focus became less about the day job and more about getting gigs.”
It’s a Sunday night show at Caroline's. On the TV’s over the bar in the dimly li
t downstairs lounge, North Carolina & Georgetown are going into overtime. About 200 people have gone into the theatre, buzzing in expectation of the show. I have a chance to chat briefly with the headliner before he heads in. The audience is waiting for the guy from the Chappelle show, the guy from the comedy specials. I’m talking to the pensive guy who’s going over his notes in his head while struggling with his cufflinks.
“Believe me. Every time I walk into a club, I take a peek and wonder if this is the week they figure out that I'm a fraud. I have no idea who goes to comedy clubs. I loved it growing up but never went to a comedy club. I wish I did. I remember early on, I went to the Nick's Comedy Stop in Randolph, Mass. to see Steve Sweeney. He fucking killed. I was dying. He had me on the ground laughing. You get such a great perspective as an audience member. You forget that sometimes; if you are on stage and absolutely killing and you've got people doubled over; how amazing that is. That's happened a few times in my career. When I saw Something About Mary there were some parts where it was killing like a comic and I remember everybody dying laughing and thought it must be like this to sit in a crowd and watch a really good comedian. That is the greatest thing about stand-up comedy. No matter how funny something is, nothing will make you laugh every six or seven seconds like a good comic does. What I love about comedy is, there's nothing worse than a bad one, but there's nothing better than a great comedian.”
“Most subjects are not difficult. It's your own fear in your head. You end up mind-fucking yourself. The first time I ever did an all-black club, I had to walk around the block three times just to get the courage to walk in there because I didn't have a set spot. I just said to myself, what's going to feel worse – going in there and bombing or going to bed tonight knowing that you pussied out and didn't have the balls to go up there. I went in there and it ended up going great. What I like about comedy, is that it's endless. There are levels. The hard times in comedy are when you feel like you plateau. You can't see what’s the next thing to get to. Sometimes it takes a couple of days, sometimes it's months. It gets brutal. When you see that next level, you get that excitement. Actually, I wish I drew more of a mixed crowd. My goal is to go around the country and have a mixed crowd like here in New York. That's when you can really talk about what you really want to talk about. I've always said that when a white comic does a race joke in front of an all-white audience, it starts to feel like a meeting. That's a joke I use in my act and it's a way to get people to relax. I try to make sure that the point I'm trying to make comes across.; like when you talk about women – people say, 'Ah, you're a women hater,' or they'll misinterpret something I've said. After one of the shows this weekend, I heard some comments made in the bar and it made me wonder if I was just an ignorant jackass up there spewing hatred, or did they not understand it. A lot of the shit I do up there, if I'm not in a good mood, tilts it that extra two degrees to the right and I will look like a psycho."
“A lot of people say that stand-up is aggressive. I don't think that's true. If you do it right, your personality comes out. Both Patrice O'Neal and Rich Vos, I don't think aggressive is the right word, as much as honest. I've always instantly liked comedians where they – if I see someone who panders to a crowd, it turns my stomach. I just zone out. Anybody who does the 'This guy knows what I'm talking about!' Every comedian uses those tricks out there if the crowd is a little chatty. If they, right out of the gate are hamming it up, all the opinions are right down the middle; they're just not the kind of comedian I want to watch. For my money, guys like Patrice, Vos, Norton, Nick DiPaolo, Colin Quinn – all the 'Tough Crowd' guys, they're all unique. None of them sound like one another. Ted Alexandro's another guy I like. He has some really edgy stuff. His style is not that aggressive, it's more subtle. But his shit is really blasting stuff. That's why I like watching Ted.”
“I learned a long time ago that the secret to not drying up was to continue to write. I don't write anymore. I see a topic and decide I want to talk about that. If I'm being disciplined, I'll actually tape record it and upload it to my computer. It's funny, most of it I never even listen to. I just know that if I'm fucking up a couple of words, I can go back and listen to it. 'Oh yeah, that's how I was doing it.'
“I’ve got a new set since the HBO special. I’ve put together an hour and twenty minutes over last two years. My next goal is to do an hour special to sell to somebody on TV. I'm just doing what every other comedian is trying to do. Nothing original there. There were actually a couple of jokes that I didn't do tonight that I'm working on. It's a little frustrating, really, the last chunk. I have a blueprint of how I want to do my act. It's a way that I don't get pinned down into anything. I do a little topical stuff, some shit about my life, a little commentary on what's going on in the world. I'll talk about anything from ridiculous dumb stuff. Tonight I did a bit on the population problem. I always try to make it clear that I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm talking about. I make point to say that I read a little bit but none of this shit is researched. I'll read a paragraph and it just sets my mind going.”
“Billy constantly has new material. He’s always working on stuff. His delivery, along with the physicality, and the nature of the material; everything is hilarious. You pay attention to everything he says. It's topical. It's what's happening to today.”
– Doug Saulnier, comedian
It’s after the show now. The bar is loud with mainstream music you hear in cell phone ads. The fans come to Bill in waves asking him for picture, thanking him for the show. He’s patient and warm with every one of them.
“I was a totally introverted kid, socially retarded. That's why I always loved comedians. I thought it was a great job. The reality is, the reason I got into it, other than it looked like a lot of fun, I thought that comedy was going to save me. I thought it would help me so I wouldn't have to deal with my issues. I had it in my head, that I hated who I was. I was a total loser. I figure, I'll just be a comedian. I'll get on stage. I'll make people laugh; then everyone will stop fucking with me. Somehow, I thought everything would fall into place with fifteen minutes of comedy on stage. What ended up happening, was that the only thing I ever worked on in my life, was becoming a better comedian. Right now, I'm not balanced. I'm here as a comedian, but everything else – I can't cook. I'm not good at fixing things or relationships. I'm bad at computers – I'm just past the starting line. I'm trying to catch up.”
“The show you saw tonight was the reason I do it. It was one of those nights where I was totally free on stage. Most of shit I said, I'll never say again. It just came out. There were people yelling out, but it wasn't annoying. It kind of added to it. It was just a great crowd. I had friends there. It was New York City. It had all those things there.”
“What do they get out of it? I never really thought about it. You'd have to ask some of them. The complement I love getting the most, other than, ‘You're hilarious,’ is ‘I saw you last time and you have a whole new act. I don't think you repeated one joke.’ That's what I love hearing. That's what keeps people coming in to see you. Sometimes people yell out stuff I've done before. They think they want to see it again, but they don't. Maybe they do. One of the reason I work so much, other than that I get bored is that I have this psychotic paranoia, that if I come to a town and do the same jokes, the whole crowd will point at me saying, 'You did that the last time. That guy's a fraud!'”
“In reality, becoming famous is probably one of the stupidest things you could ever do. The closer you get to feeling a little notoriety... The level I'm at now is fuckin’ great. Maybe two or three times a week, someone will come up and say, ‘Hey, you're that guy!’ It's fun. I look at celebrities, they can't take a shit without some guy in a tree taking pictures of them. I always think it's funny when they show these stars on MTV Cribs where they say, 'He has his own theatre. He has his own tennis courts.' Why? Because he has to! He can't go play tennis anywhere. He can't go to the movies. I obviously wouldn't be in this shit if I didn't want to be famous. But, I really just want that cool level of fame, like Steve Buschemi. He just puts out these killer movies. You never see pictures in magazines of him trying to get coffee at Starbucks or him driving with a baby in his lap. You don't even know what Steve's doing? He could be shooting heroine in Times Square, nobody would know.”
“When I was a kid in the 70's, it was hilarious, the most amazing thing you could see on TV. I had no idea what comedy clubs were or what stand-up was. I loved all those guys on Hollywood Squares, like George Gobel, Paul Lynde, Foster Brooks, David Brenner. I saw him on the Tonight Show, or was it Mike Douglas? I know I wasn't staying up that late. Sister Mary Elephant with Cheech & Chong. George Carlin. In the 80's there was Eddie Murphy, then Seinfeld. Then, when I started doing comedy in Boston there was Frank Santorelli, Kevin Knox, Tony V. They just looked like they were having fun. That's what I wanted because I was so anxious when I started. Once you start doing stand-up, you don't want to be free on stage, free like the way I'm talking to you. We can just joke around. When I first came down to New York, I was blown away by Dave Attell, Louis CK, Dave Chappelle. I'd see these guys go on at two in the morning with a dead crowd and in an instant they'd be killing. I was just in awe. How do you do that? Louis CK. One night I saw him. I'll never forget it. It was an awful crowd. He just came up with this exaggerated wave and said, ‘Hello’ (Bill's using Louis' goofy inflection) in that booming voice of his. When you see someone totally original like that, it's so fresh. I can't explain it. Chris Rock was the first to do an HBO special, then come around with a totally new act. He was the one who showed me the difference between a star and a superstar.”
“In Boston, I would see guys come to town after doing TV and they'd be doing the same shit. I saw him come to town and it was all new stuff. He threw out an hour of shit, had a new hour of shit, better than the last hour. After that, I saw guys doing that like Damon Wayans, Dave Chappelle.”
“I was a middle act in Boston and I lied when I came down here and told people that I was a headliner. I had closed a couple of outside rooms. The bottom line is, the only way you learn to do 45 minutes is to do it. You gotta have 45 minutes first of all. I screwed up a couple of them. I remember when I first started being a headliner, I'd always be great for 37 minutes. I could set my digital watch. I'd do great, then dip at 37, then go up at 43, then get off the stage right at 45. To this day, I don't do long sets. An hour's the limit for me. That's as long as I can watch somebody. So, I get up there and beat the shit out of it for an hour, then leave. Leave them wanting more, like that old show business thing. I get sick of hearing myself talk. I've seen guys do an hour and twenty. They made me laugh the whole way through. Maybe that's something else I need to learn how to do.”
“I thought I'd be famous when I was seven or eight years into it. Now I'm fifteen years into it. The weird thing is, I would dream of being a professional comic when I was working in a warehouse in Westwood, Mass. Warehousing was awesome. It was great. Great! Stock some shelves, unload some trucks, get fucked up on weekends, being broke on mondays. Some of the happiest times in my life. When your that age, fucking up isn't such a big deal because you have so much time to recover.”
“Doing the Apollo or BET, I knew I wanted to do that even before I began to do comedy. I already envisioned doing that. I saw Eddie Murphy on the Raw tour. I saw Rodney Dangerfield. Both of them, I saw at Greatwoods in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Rodney killed. He was awesome. It didn't dawn on me then that it was an all white crowd. When I saw Eddie Murphy, he was wearing that blue leather jacket. I had lawn seating so he looked like a blue spec that big. I remember when he went up there, I was eighteen, it made me think that he made everybody laugh. If I ever got to that level, I'd want to have a mixed crowd and make everybody laugh.”
“Bill Burr is the cream of the crop. He is smart, fearless and has a unique, laser sharp perspective. I love watching him because he always has new stuff and he'll talk about anything from race to politics to relationships. The best comics inspire me to want to go home and write, and that's what Bill does.
People talk about athletes being ‘in the zone’; that's how I've felt about Bill watching him these past few years- he's in the zone.”
– Ted Alexandro, comedian
“When I first started, I would just hang onto the mic stand and never move. Every word was written out. It was like reading a teleprompter, I wasn't even remotely free. Then, I was so introverted, taking the mic out of the mic stand was a major goal for me. When I watch my old tapes, it's hilarious. I am so nervous on stage. I never stopped moving. I paced throughout my whole set. I don't even know how my jokes worked. I was such a spectacle. It was like watching tennis when they show the crowd looking back and forth. When I started doing black rooms, I wondered, did I have the balls to do that? I was doing a lot racial material. Can I get them to laugh at that like they do in the mainstream rooms. I wanted to be comfortable in front of every crowd. When I first came down to New York, I'd watch a bunch of angry white people, which is what I am and what I grew up with. Whenever I saw anyone in a doorag, there was an extra level of nervousness. I had to get over that. I felt I had lot of jokes initially that would do better in those kind of rooms and they needed to be worked out. Back at the Boston Comedy Club on Sunday nights, the talents and will shows, those were some of the best shows, other than my HBO special. They were unbelievable.”
“My worst show turned into my best show ever. The Philly thing up on YouTube - part of Opie & Anthony's Travelling Virus. We were doing 10,000 seaters. Long story short – we get down to Philly, which to me has always been hilarious. I've watched them boo Destiny's Child. They throw snowballs at Santa Claus and cheered when Michael Irvin broke his neck because he was on the Cowboys. From afar, I've always admired their work. But, being in front of them on that night was brutal.”
Nick DiPaolo added his thoughts about the Philly scene, “It’s just a vicious city. the pope could be there and they’d be throwing shit at him telling him to fuck off. There’s something wrong with them Seriously. They thrown ice balls at fuckin’ Santa Claus during Eagles games. It’s a fuckin’ shithole.”
Bill began, “The first guy out of the gate was booed brutally. The ideal comedy show is around 90 minutes long. I went on three hours and fifteen minutes after that. The guy before me was booed and he was a national headliner from Philly. By the time I got out there, 500 assholes had turned into a mob, maybe half the crowd. I screwed up my first joke. I ran to my second joke, which was about Hitler. I forgot that it had been played on the radio, so the crowd had already heard it. They didn't laugh, so I gave them shit. Then they started booing me.”
“It's all up on YouTube. I had twelve minutes left, and decided, ‘I am not leaving and I am shitting on everyone in the crowd tonight.’ I was talking about their mothers, the Philadelphia Eagles. I said, ‘Fuck the Eagles. They haven't won a championship since they had facemasks.’ I got lucky, because that divided the crowd with all the folks from New York and New Jersey there. That show and any time I've bombed in front of a black crowd has been fucking brutal. It's like you're bombing on two different levels. You're bombing as an individual and for your race."
The last time I checked, Bill Burr’s YouTube video from that show had received over 300,000 hits. To 
watch a guy takes wave upon wave of verbal abuse for so long is an interesting phenomena. It seems at times that Burr is actually taking physical hits from the barbs. He pounds his mic stand occasionally for punctuation and occasionally leans on it for strength. Here are some of outtakes from Bill said in the show:
“11 minutes left! I hope someone takes a fuckin' beer stein and slaps you in your zit-infested shoulder in your man-tit tanktop. I hope the glass digs into your fuckin' shoulder blade. Does it really have to come to this, people? Does it really have to come to it? I really hope you run into all those black people you love so much here. I hope you all get carjacked and they shove their big black dick into your fuckin' mouths... 10 minutes left! (Some cheers come up from the crowd. You can also hear some laughs over the booing.)”
“The Flyers? Do they even exist? They haven't won shit since Gerald Ford was president. Why don't you send fuckin' ice capades out there instead? You probably couldn't tell the difference!”
“I'm standing here. I'm standing with a fuckin' broken mic stand. It's like a fuckin' cane! 7 minutes left! And i'm doing all fuckin' seven!”
“Fuck you and fuck the liberty bell. Shove it up Ben Franklin's ass. 6 minutes left! And I will be selling my cd after this shit!”
“This right here is theme of my set, a broken mic stand. What's that sir? Dave Chappelle? He's not here today. I wish I was on his tour instead. Three mother fuckin' minutes left!”
“Back to the jokes. I got a computer recently people. (Crowd roars) Two minutes left! This doesn't change anything. I still hate you fuckin' people.”
If you get a chance to visit YouTube to watch the video, you’ll notice comments from other viewers. They range from disgust to awe. It goes on so long that Bill is clearly grasping at any Philadelphia sports team or symbol to insult just to kill the time. It reminds me of a recording from a hockey brawl from 30 years ago. Visit brassbonanza.com (scroll midway down) to hear the original radio broadcast from a record-breaking bench clearing brawl between the New England Whalers and Minnesota Fighting Saints. It started as a scuffle between Bill Butters and Larry Pleau. Then two more players go at it. Then a line was crossed, and in the same way that this incident was no longer about the show, that affair between those teams was no longer about the game. It’s great radio from another time. It closes with Bob Neumeier exclaiming, "There are still fights breaking out everywhere on the ice. I've seen many a nasty brawl, but never one as vicious or as long as this one."
The night I caught Bill’s set at Caroline’s, I felt the crowd’s reception was subdued. There were moments when I felt a little angry they weren’t reacting more excitedly. Were we watching the same performance? Sundays can be that way. It was only after the show, when people stood to cheer, could you see how his talent is respected. His bold, blunt approach plays well across differences in race and age. He does a lot of material about race without sounding like a drunken yahoo or a politically correct sap. The fact that he’s not more of a household name recognized celebrity is surprising and might change very soon.
“I'm shooting a pilot for Fox. It's called Playing Chicken. It's an old-fashioned four camera shoot sitcom. I'm looking forward to it. I haven't done much acting since the Chappelle Show went off the air. I'm kind of excited about doing the LA bit.”
“In this business you never feel like you've made it. I'm at this position. If I stay here and not fall, can I move up? I still feel amazed in a way that I can walk into a club and people know who I am. In a club in New York City, they ask me if I want to go up on stage, I became that guy. The newness of that has not worn off.”
To find out where Bill is performing, visit BillBurr.com