Six entertainers reminisce on six showbiz legends we lost in 2014

RIP Harold Ramis, Jan Hooks, Mike Nichols, Joan Rivers, Robin Williams and Sid Caesar. Interviews are in conversation with Patton Oswalt.

Judd Apatow(writer/directior, This is 40, on Harold Ramis

We lost Harold Ramis this year. He’s gone. He made the majority of the movies that made me want to be in comedy. When I was a kid, Ghostbusters was like Gone With the Wind. The night it opened, I went to see it at the UA Plainview on Long Island, and it was like going to see the Who. The place went crazy from the minute it started.

Yeah, that was Star Wars for comedians. It was big and crazy and still funny and intimate and human. And then he pulled off one of the great comedies of all time, Groundhog Day.

No, I’m sorry, that’s not one of the great comedies of all time, that’s just one of the great ?lms. That’s a great movie that happens to be a comedy.

It was the essence of Harold and what he believed. That affected me in a big way, because I had never thought about any of those ideas when Groundhog Day came out. My parents weren’t religious; they didn’t even talk about religion to say they weren’t into religion.

When I said I wanted to be bar-mitzvahed, they said, “You just want the money.” They didn’t let me do it. I mean, their only religion was “No one said life was fair.” So I got zero religion. And in that movie, you got what Harold believed in. And what Harold believed in was very simple — that this is probably it, so why not be a great guy?

Aidy Bryant, (actor, Saturday Night Live) on Jan Hooks

A lot of the guys in Monty Python fought to be the straight man in the sketch, because the person reacting to all the craziness always found a way to get bigger laughs than all the craziness going on.

There was a sketch on SNL I’m reminded of with Jan Hooks, where she’s woken up after a one-night stand with Bill Murray. He’s a nightmare, and she is trying to gently get him out of her apartment. She plays it straight, that’s what’s so funny about the sketch.

Yeah. I feel like that’s such a skill, too, particularly at SNL, I think, because you’re already juggling so many weird things that you wouldn’t juggle in a normal television show, where you could maybe do a second take.

You’re thinking about cards and all these different things like, ‘OK, I know this is being shot on this camera, so I need to turn this way. And then it’s a quick cut to that one, and I need to turn the other way’.

There’s so much technical stuff, which I wouldn’t have thought about. Whenever I watch a sketch like that, or the Sweeney Sisters, or whatever, I’m like, ‘Wow, she is full-throttle comfortable performing. It seems like she’s not even thinking for a moment about any of that stuff’.

Nicole Holofcener (writer/director, Enough Said) on Mike Nichols

Do you have a favourite Mike Nichols ?lm? Maybe Carnal Knowledge. The ?rst time I saw that, I was way too young.

Me too. I saw it as a teenager because I borrowed a friend’s old Playboy, and they had pictures of Ann-Margret in bed in that movie. So I’m like, Oh, I gotta see this. I watched it, and I ended up being like, Is that how adults...?

Yeah, it was so disturbing to know that adults could be so stupid and hateful. And also the ending I’ll never forget. Jack Nicholson goes to this hooker to try to get an erection because he can never get one. And the ending is literally her just saying, “It’s getting bigger now, it’s getting bigger.” She’s talking him up, literally. It’s so tragic.

Yeah, that probably really f**ked me up. Yeah, thanks, Mike Nichols, that was really damaging.

That guy must have gone through some battles. What was the conversation like when they saw the last scene of Carnal Knowledge? I don’t know, it seems like at that time, in the ’70s, those kinds of movies were allowed to be made, more ambivalent and disillusioned.

Jim Norton (comedian) on Joan Rivers

I think Joan was the most underrated comic. And I really mean that, man. I think people just forget her because they’ve seen her in so many different non-stand-up venues, you forget she’s a stand-up. You see her on Entertainment Tonight or whatever. She’s so iconic you almost forget, people forget to include her as a stand-up comic.

Yeah, and it’s also good to be reminded of people like Chris Rock saying she was one of the people he never wanted to follow onstage. I went and saw her at the Cutting Room here in the city. And it’s the only time I ever watched her perform live.

A hundred people was all it sat; it was a small room, and she’d work on her material. She had a few notes on the ?oor, just bouncing around ideas. And — I’ve said this before she died — it’s the most barbaric set I have ever seen a comedian do. And I mean more than Pryor, more than Kinison. It was age jokes, it was 9/11, and I mean really, really harsh jokes. I loved her so much for that.

Maria Bamford (actor/comedian) on Robin Williams

There’s been times when I didn’t know if I’d make it to 63. He went to 63, which meant that the power of his creativity and his sense of humour was pretty superhuman to begin with, and it was just whittled down over decades by this thing.

Yeah. Not that anyone’s life is a lesson, because that really demeans the individual’s life. But also I think that we think certain people would be able to handle anything, or we look at them from the outside and think that somebody is handling things well.

And I have experienced that. And show-business is very much about appearances, so as long as you can still keep doing the job, nobody cares. Nobody cares.

The last time I saw him, I was doing a show at Meltdown Comics on Sunset. We talked about comic books for like 10 minutes. And I guess this is gonna sound so petty, but the fact that this guy looked forward to new comics every Wednesday, there’s a stupid part of me that’s like, Why didn’t you just stick around for the comic books alone?

I totally know what you mean. Just the simplest joys of life, like can’t you stick around for cake?

I would like to think he knew that so many people would have dropped anything to pull him out of that wasteland he was in.

I know that if I were to get as depressed as I was three years ago — I was hospitalized three times — if that happened again for a longer period of time, like you just don’t know how to... I think I under-stand now why people really do it, just because it is so exhausting.

And even when people love you, it is tiring to the people around you. I mean I had beloved friends who came to visit me in the psych ward every day, and they were the greatest. But at the same point, they feel like: ‘‘Oh, Jesus, Maria’s in again? Well, I guess we aren’t gonna go to Sacramento this weekend.’’

Todd Glass (comedian) on Sid Caesar

You have a Sid Caesar story, right? I want to hear this.

I made a big mistake when I was younger, and I’m only saying it because maybe someone will do it today. When you go back and look at old comedy sometimes, maybe it’s just because I was a younger guy, I would just zip by it.

Just the way it was shot, it just looked like, Oh, this is from another era. This isn’t my thing. Which probably sounds not very intelligent comedically. But then I was about, I don’t know, 19, and I’m at the Comedy Works, and Sid Caesar is in the audience, and there’s about 300 people. It’s packed; it’s a Saturday night.

This is the Comedy Works in Philly?

Yes. And I am not really familiar with him. I should’ve been. You meet new comedians today, I don’t care if they’re 18, they know everybody. I should’ve known who he was. So the owner told me what to say.

I was very nervous. So I went back up, whatever he said, I repeated it. I said, ‘‘Ladies and gentleman, there is a legend, a living legend sitting amongst us.’’ I said his name. I have never in my entire life seen a standing ovation like that before.

They stood and they stood and they stood and they stood and they applauded. And I got the chills; I got the chills. And then I ? gured I should go home and watch some of his stuff.

From The New York Times