It's Not Easy Bein' Me

by Rodney Dangerfield

  At first I said, “I don’t know.” Then I said, “Okay.”

  So we all go into a room and talk. The APA agents tell me, “You’re wasting your time just working at Dangerfield’s. We can get you good jobs. We’re talking big money—much more than you’re making now in your club.”

  My kids were older now, so I finally said, “Okay, I’ll give it a shot with these guys and see what happens.”

  They said, “Great. Who’s your manager?”

  I said, “I have no manager.”

  They said, “How can you not have a manager?”

  I said, “I just don’t. I just do things myself.”

  They said, “Well, we can’t work with you unless you have a manager.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll get a manager.”

  I turned to Estelle and said, “Wanna be my manager?”

  She laughed. “I couldn’t be your manager,” she said. “I’ve never done anything like that.”

  “Are you kidding?” I said. “You’re smarter than all of them. In two weeks you’ll know more than they do. You’re my manager, okay?”

  She said, “Okay.”

  That’s how Estelle became my manager. I didn’t even ask her if she’s a good driver.

  I was right about Estelle—she was the best manager anyone could ever have. She got me into movies.

  In the late seventies, Estelle called me up one day and said, “There are these three young, funny guys doing a movie called Caddyshack, and they want to know if you’ll meet with them.”

  So I meet the three guys who’d written the movie—Doug Kenney, one of the founders of National Lampoon and a cowriter of Animal House; Brian Doyle Murray, who played the caddymaster in Caddyshack; and Harold Ramis, the director. I liked them, and they liked me, so we made a deal. Boom. I get the job on Caddyshack.

  It actually cost me money to do Caddyshack. I had to give up at least a month’s work in Vegas. So it cost me $150,000 to do the movie, and they only paid me $35,000. People think I’ve made a fortune off reruns, merchandising, and stuff like that, but I got nothing: $35,000; that was it. My part in Caddyshack did get me into doing movies, though, so I guess it paid off in the end.

  Early on, when we first started shooting Caddyshack, Estelle made a funny observation: “With the clothes you’ll be wearing, it’ll be like the whole movie is in black-and-white, and you’re in color.”

  What a wild bunch that was—Kenney, Ramis, Brian and Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Ted Knight. It was like being stuck in a bag of mixed nuts. None of us knew Caddyshack would be as big as it was, although whenever you start on a movie, you think you’re making Gone With the Wind. Most of the time, though, the anticipation is far greater than the realization.

  When Caddyshack came out, the reviewer in the New York Times said it was “immediately forgettable.” Well, it grossed about $40 million at the time, and twenty years later, people are still repeating a lot of those “forgettable” lines. Here are a few of my favorite ones from Caddyshack written for my character, Al Czervik:

  Hey, baby, you must have been something before electricity.

  He called me a baboon. He thinks I’m his wife.

  This is the worst-looking hat I ever saw. Looks good on you, though.

  When you bought that hat, did you get a free bowl of soup?

  Somebody step on a duck?

  Let’s go while we’re young.

  You wanna make fourteen dollars the hard way?

  My dinghy is bigger than your whole boat.

  Hey, everybody! We’re all gonna get laid!

  Because of Caddyshack a lot of people think I’m an avid golfer, and I’ve probably been invited to play at every great golf course in the country. The truth is, I never play golf, and if I did, I’d probably be horrible at it, the worst. Not my kind of game. But I am sorry I had to give up those crazy clothes.

  * * *

  My golf game is getting real good. Last week I got through the windmill.

  * * *

  Caddyshack wasn’t my first movie. The first movie I did was The Projectionist in 1969, the same year Dangerfield’s opened. In the movie I played a theater manager who in the dream sequences became a bat.

  Chuck McCann played my enemy. He was the good guy and I was the bad guy. In one scene Chuck was chasing me up a hill. I noticed he was having a tough time running. I had to slow down and look around bewildered to give him time to catch up to me. Finally we end up fighting on a cliff. After giving me a terrible beating for a couple of minutes, Chuck threw a dummy off the cliff. Not me, another dummy.

  * * *

  It was a low-budget movie. We went to location by subway.

  * * *

  Thanks to Caddyshack, though—and Estelle, who passed away during the making of Back to School—I went on to make a lot of movies. Here are a few stories about some of them:

  * * *

  You were the inspiration for twin beds.—EASY MONEY, 1983

  * * *

  My next movie was Easy Money, which I cowrote.

  One day, while we were filming on location in Staten Island, I had some time to kill between takes, so I was hanging with a couple of the limo drivers. After a few laughs and a few beverages, I had to go to the bathroom, but my trailer was all the way on the other side of the set, so the limo drivers suggested that I do what they did—use the bathroom in the funeral home across the street. They told me the man in charge was very accommodating.

  So I walk across the street to the funeral home.

  I walk in, say hello, and the man points me to the bathroom. I walk down a flight of stairs, make a left, and just before I get to the bathroom, I glance to my right. I was spooked when I saw a dead guy lying on a table.

  When I’d finished in the bathroom, I went back upstairs, and—boom!—I see another body on a table in another room.

  On my way out, I chatted with the man in charge for a few minutes. I told him I’d been a little surprised to see dead bodies there.

  He said, “I’m having a good day. And I got one more coming in.”

  A woman named Thelma, who I mentioned earlier, worked for me for thirty years as a housekeeper. Actually she was much more than that. She helped me bring up my two children. She was family. She was a character and we had many laughs.

  One day while I was shooting Easy Money, I got up early, about eight o’clock. Usually I don’t get up until noon. Thelma says to me, “How come you’re up so early?”

  I told her, “I’m doing a movie.”

  She said, “Oh.”

  The next day, I got up early again. She said, “How come you’re up early today?”

  I said, “I’m doing a movie.”

  She said, “You did the movie yesterday.”

  * * *

  One thing about my wife, she gives great headache.

  —BACK TO SCHOOL, 1986

  * * *

  When you make movies there are always some hassles. When I made Back to School, there were some little problems and one really big one. When I made my deal with Orion Pictures, the writers who were going to write with me flew to Atlantic City, where I was performing.

  We would write all afternoon and I would do my show at night. We were there for two weeks and then we went to Vegas. After two weeks in Vegas, we had the script written, so we went back to L.A.

  The studio loved our script. I wasn’t nuts about it, but I thought it was good enough. A little while later, I ran into Harold Ramis, who directed Caddyshack. Harold’s a really nice guy and a very talented writer and director. I asked him to read the script and he agreed. The premise of the movie was that I’m a poor schmo who has to go back to college to motivate his kid. So far, so good.

  So Harold read our script, and called me with a brilliant suggestion—he thought it would be a lot funnier if I went back to college as a rich guy. I agreed with him. Now I couldn’t imagine doing the movie any other way, but I had to convince Orion to make a deal with Harold Ramis for a rewrite. They said,
“What are you doing? We’ve got a great script here. Are you nuts?”

  After two weeks, they finally came around and saw it our way. If they hadn’t, the movie probably never would have been made.

  Back to School took in nearly $100 million.

  There is never a good time to get the gout. My first attack hit while we were shooting Back to School. In the scene that day, I was supposed to talk to Ned Beatty, who played the head of the college (we called him “Dean Martin”), in his office. The gout really started to hurt my left ankle, so I lifted my leg to ease the pain and rested it on the chair next to me.

  When Ned Beatty saw my foot there he said, in character, “Mr. Mellon, if you don’t mind…”—insinuating that it was disrespectful for me to have my foot on his chair.

  So I, also in character, said, “I’m sorry, Dean Martin,” and took my foot off the chair and put it on his desk. I did that to keep my foot elevated, but it looked so funny we had to keep it in the movie.

  I got lots of funny letters from kids after that movie. Here’s one of my favorites:

  Hi Rodney. My name is Tom O’Malley. I’m 10 years old. In the movie Back to School you did a dive, the Triple Lindy. I say you really did that dive. My mother says you didn’t. Who’s right?

  I wrote back. I said, “Tom, listen to your mama.”

  Here I am with my kids, Brian and Melanie. My son, Brian, lives in Florida and loves to write songs. My daughter, Melanie, lives in New York with her husband and their newborn son, Joshua.

  Courtesy of the collection of Rodney Dangerfield.

  When Adam gave me a part in his movie Little Nicky, I thought it was a reference to my anatomy.

  Courtesy of the collection of Rodney Dangerfield.

  * * *

  She does a lot of charity work. She handles all the policemen’s balls.

  —LADYBUGS, 1992

  * * *

  In 1992, I did a movie called Ladybugs, in which I coached a girls’ soccer team. On the set, I met one of the executives of Mountain Valley Water, which I think is the best bottled water there is. We made a deal: I would publicize Mountain Valley Water in the movie. In return, they would give me Mountain Valley Water free for the rest of my life.

  I like the Mountain Valley people very much, and I’m pretty sure they like me, but sometimes I wonder if they’re happy that I’m still around. But then again, here I am, still plugging their water.

  * * *

  Now I’m gonna take your eye out and show it to you.

  —NATURAL BORN KILLERS, 1994

  * * *

  One afternoon, I got a call from the Academy Award–winning writer-director Oliver Stone, who wanted me to be in a movie he was about to shoot, Natural Born Killers. (At first I thought it was a movie about my wife’s family.) Oliver explained the character he wanted me to play. It was a dark, twisted role—completely different from what I’d done in my previous movies—but I was interested. I asked him if the part was written yet. He told me no and he asked if I’d like to write it. I said okay and we made a deal.

  If you saw the movie you know what a horrible person I played. In the film, I make it with my own daughter, played by Juliette Lewis, who is great. In one scene, I’m holding her and looking at her with a sick face. I say to her, “Go upstairs and take a shower. Make sure it’s a good shower, ’cause I’ll be coming up later to see how clean you are.”

  The first time we did this scene, as soon as I said that line, Oliver yelled, “Grab her ass! Grab her ass!” I felt very strange doing that—she was a pretty girl and all, but I hardly knew her. Being a serious and dedicated actor, though, I grabbed her ass.

  Just my luck, we did that scene in one take.

  * * *

  Sex after ten years of marriage…Should the wife know about it?

  —MEET WALLY SPARKS, 1996

  * * *

  After Natural Born Killers, I went back to comedy. I cowrote Meet Wally Sparks.

  Casting that movie almost got me evicted.

  Since the early nineties, I’ve lived in Los Angeles. My new wife, Joan, and I live in a condo in a fancy building near Beverly Hills. Some of the residents are rather prudish.

  One of the characters in Meet Wally Sparks was a hooker, so we had the actresses auditioning for that role wait in my lobby and then come up to my apartment and audition one by one. A lot of the girls came in character—that is, dressed as hookers. Sometimes two or three girls would be in my lobby.

  Some of the tenants got very upset and complained to the building manager and security, “There are prostitutes sitting in the lobby!”

  They thought these actresses were real prostitutes, and that I was running them up to my apartment in shifts.

  When my wife came home, the head of security and the manager of the building pounced on her. They told her about the tenants’ complaints, and Joan explained that the girls were actresses. That calmed down the manager and the security guy, but I don’t think all the tenants believed her.

  It’s been several years since that happened, but some of those people still look at me in the elevator like I should be ashamed of myself.

  * * *

  With my wife, I don’t get no respect. The other night there was a knock on the front door. My wife told me to hide in the closet.

  * * *

  Very often when Joan and I go out, she will drive the car. After I am in the car, I realize I am uncomfortable. My pants are tight on me, so I open them and pull down the zipper so that I have more room to relax while we drive around.

  The problem is when we come back to our building. As we pull up to the entrance, the valet guys who take care of the cars see me pulling up my zipper, like something exciting just took place. They must wonder, What’s going on with these two? In fact, I’ve had the feeling for quite some time now I’m the talk of the building.

  * * *

  It’s our night! We’re gonna paint the town yellow!

  —ROVER DANGERFIELD, 1991

  * * *

  I put some of my own money into an animated movie about dogs. It had some songs, which I wrote, and I even sang a few. In character, of course. I thought it was a funny movie, but I had some trouble with the studio, and they buried it like a bone.

  In 2000, I did My Five Wives, which was based on an idea I got because my wife, Joan, is a Mormon. I started thinking that a movie about polygamy could be funny.

  At the premiere of the movie, Joan and I renewed our wedding vows. Fabio was the best man and Adam Sandler was the ring bearer. It was a very classy party. The whole night only two fights broke out.

  * * *

  I got lucky with one thing, I’m married and I got a good woman. I got a woman who loves me for my money and my fame and not for what I am. She’s a lovely girl. Her name is Joan. She comes from Utah. She’s a Mormon. I’m very happy with her, very happy. In fact, next week I’m marrying her sister.

  * * *

  The 4th Tenor came out in 2002, on my eighty-first birthday. In it, there’s a scene in a restaurant where two people who are rather heavy sit down and start eating ferociously. I go over and say hello to them, they don’t even look up. They just keep eating. No matter what I say, they won’t stop.

  Finally I say, “When you get to the white part, that’s the plate.”

  We had to do three or four takes of that same scene. We did a close-up, a master, we had to repeat it, and through it all, these people just kept eating.

  Then someone yelled, “Lunch!”

  They were the first ones in line.

  * * *

  This pot should be good. I bought it from a cop.

  —EASY MONEY, 1983

  * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  I’m Not Going!

  You don’t know who to believe anymore. They say, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” What am I supposed to do? Jerk him off, too?

  People always say to me, “Rodney, who makes you laugh?”

  When I was a kid, Laurel and Hardy
were my favorites, but I also loved the Marx Brothers, Jack Benny, W. C. Fields, and Mae West. I loved their images, and I loved their lines.

  One of my favorite lines by Mae West: “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”

  When I was fifteen, I was in love with Henny Youngman. His act was laugh after laugh after laugh—boom-boom-boom. He’d tell a few jokes, play the violin, then tell a few more jokes. One of his best jokes was: “My wife and I, we’re together fifty years. Where did I go wrong?”

  Here’s another: “I told the airline, fly me to Chicago and fly my luggage to Toronto.”

  They said, “We can’t do that.”

  I said, “Why not? You did it before.”

  Youngman was also quick with an ad lib. I was in a nightclub in New York called the China Doll about sixty years ago, and Youngman was in the audience, listening to a girl sing. In the middle of her set, she said, “And now I’d like to take you on an imaginary trip to the Far East…”

  Youngman stood up and yelled, “I’m not going!” And walked out.

  I admire smart lines from anybody. This is from an Indian comedian named Charlie Hill: “They say Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean. My people were living here for hundreds and hundreds of years. We never noticed it?