Gerry Bednob (2014)

Yeah he really is.

You can ask another question if you want.

Very impatient with people who ask second questions.

Just kidding. Good question. Well, in life I hate dishonest people. I try to live my life so that people know where they stand with me. Just tell me the truth. Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me what you really think.

In terms of my career, it comes a far second to my family.

That's basically who I am.

No plans yet, but thank you for saying that.

If you're in Las Vegas, I'll be performing at the Tropicana Thanksgiving week. And if you're not in Las Vegas, I still will be performing at the Tropicana, Thanksgiving week.

I left in '78.

The star of the show, Al Waxman, was trying to get me on the show but the racial climate was a little messed up at the time.

Al came to see me at Yuk Yuks in Toronto. He was a great guy.

To answer your question about my path from Toronto to Hollywood: I came as a stand up comedian. At the time, the comedy scene in Toronto and Canada had not blossomed into what it is now. So I was thinking maybe I should move here and give it a shot. I took my son and my wife and came to LA and started doing stand up comedy.

Three people helped me unconditionally: Fred Willard, Joan Rivers, and Judd Apatow.

Stand up comedy. On stage, I'm my own producer, writer, and actor. It's my comfort zone and have made a good living doing stand up. I still consider myself a stand up comedian first, which led to nice roles in TV and movies.

>What is your best story from the stand-up boom in the 80s?

When Joan Rivers took me as her opening act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, an employee approached me and intimidated me telling me "there's a clock on the wall, twenty minutes is all you do, not one second more". So to be sure and to be safe, I did eighteen minutes. This was a big mistake because Nell Carter was the middle act and she wasn't ready to go on stage yet. That caused a little interruption in the show. Joan found out and asked me what happened and when I explained about the guy who warned me about the clock, she said to me, "fuck him. You work for me, not Caesars Palace. You do as long as you want to do."

So the second show, the guy approached me again and said "don't forget what I told you", and I said "fuck you, talk to Joan Rivers, I don't want to talk to you for the next two weeks we're here"

I went on stage and did 28 minutes, 8 minutes more than I was supposed to do, just to piss him off.

Joan was the best.

Those days, sometimes people thought getting on the stage meant you were a comedian. It didn't take long before they realized that it took a lot more than getting on stage, it meant you had to produce on stage. In those days, a lot of comics did jokes that they would do at a friends party and that didn't really translate well on stage in front of total strangers who paid money to see a show.

Where are they now: they're all Fortune 500 CEOs.

Just to add on to this, here's a quick story about my early stand up career.

My first time on stage was at the now-famous Yuk Yuks comedy club in Toronto, Canada. It was just one night a week in a church basement. We had to pay two dollars to get in to see the comics. They were just starting out but they were very good. Guys like Rick Moranis. So I paid for two weeks in a row. During those days, they did it like the old Vaudeville. If you were bombing on stage, a guy from the corner of the room would come from behind the curtain with an actual hook and hook you by your neck off the stage.

I asked the owner of Yuk Yuks, the legendary Mark Breslin, if I could come next week and do a few minutes. And he looked at me skeptically and said "are you a comic?", and I said "no, but I see you're giving people who are not comics a break".

He said "well you know what, get about five minutes ready and come back in about two weeks. But you see what's happening there on stage? If you're not doing well, we'll have to hook you off the stage."

I said, "yeah I know". So I rehearsed for about two weeks at home in front of my mirror and I changed my name. I did this because the people who got "hooked" were published the next day in the newspaper, the Globe and Mail and I didn't want the people at my office to know it was me. I was a high school counselor.

So I went all prepared, nervous, and was pacing up and down in a makeshift green room at the club. And I overheard Mark Breslin tell another comic, Briane Nasimok to "get the hook ready, that new guy is going on".

So I went on stage, doubly nervous now. Every line I delivered I looked to the corner to see if the hook was coming. The audience laughed AT me because all I cared about was not being hooked. I was saved because they were laughing at the situation. Basically, I got rescued because I was bad as a comic.

Mark Breslin called me after the show, "you know you have some very good jokes. All you need is stage time. Come back in a couple weeks and I'll give you some time."

And that's how I started.

Being on stage as a stand up comic. Judd Apatow saw me and is familiar with my comedy because he himself is a stand up comic.

I'm a pimp on the side.

It's NOT about butt hole pleasures.

He was very generous. Judd and Steve allowed me to improvise. That scene was a lot of improvising.

The script didn't contain:

• double decker dildos
• pussy juice cocktail
• alligator fuckhouse
• butthole pleasures

It gave me a different thing to do other than swearing and doing comedy. It was a nice show where I was allowed to play a straighter role as opposed to a crazy character. That made me feel good.

The year I arrived in LA, I met Steve. I worked with him the night before he committed suicide.

I didn't know he died. At the time, there was a comedian strike. I walked into the meeting with all the comedians and everybody was unusually quiet. Stupidly I said "what's going on? Did somebody die?" and another comic said to me, "are you crazy? Steve Lubetkin died" And that's how I found out.

Steve was a handsome guy, and a very talented comedian.

It was improv. The original line was "go fuck yourself".

I just decided to say "go fuck a goat". Also "anal sex" was the original line. I changed that to "butthole pleasures".

I'm a real poet that way.

You know something? That's a good name. Ed Bluestone. He writes the type of jokes that I wish I had written.

Yes it's hard because quite often, auditions are the hardest things to get through. People who are auditioning you sometimes, don't really know what they want.

It's easy for me when the material is written with me in mind. So they give me the leeway to improvise.

It wasn't a good situation at the time for Indians and Pakistanis in Toronto at the time. This is why Al Waxman wanted to have me come on the show but I don't think the studio/network wanted it.

Here's one. During a lunch break on set, I was wearing the whole Guru outfit and I was trying to concentrate on getting my lines down.

An extra who was, lets gently say "annoying", peppered me with questions all the time when I was trying my best to remember my lines. Finally, he asked me "how did you get this part".

So I said, "well this morning I came in as an extra. The director pulled me aside and said 'I think we may have something for you, you should report to wardrobe'".

The look on his face was priceless. He actually believed me.

Thanks for the compliment.

I've had so much fun doing a lot of different roles. One where I was most comfortable, was a show called Free Radio, which ran for two seasons.

That's how I speak all the time.