Call Me Russell

by Russell Peters

  Gene Simmons, me and Shannon Tweed.

  Now that things were really taking off and my brother was manning the ship, he started to focus on what he calls “data mining”—rebuilding my website and making sure we had a solid database through which to communicate to you guys, the fans. Whenever something important is going on with me or I’ve got a show in your city, I send you an email blast so you know what’s up. I do use Facebook and MySpace and Twitter (well, who uses MySpace anymore?), but I’m not really one of those social-networky, blog-happy guys. I’m not about to bother you every day to tell you what colour socks I’m wearing. (Although I should mention that I do like to wear colourful socks. It’s my thing.) From what I can see, most of you respect the fact that I don’t harass you. And here’s something else: I actually hate talking about myself, so I’m not about to send you emails going on and on about me. Doing this book has been a challenge, because to sit here and just talk about myself seems ridiculous. Anything that I say sounds like I’m bragging, and I hate when people do that … speaking of which.…

  So now that I had a fan base set up, the next thing we decided to do was shoot a special and get a DVD out there. My brother worked tirelessly behind the scenes to get everything right, but I’ll tell you it wasn’t easy. Several companies were interested in producing the special and distributing the DVD, but their visions didn’t necessarily jive with what my brother and I wanted do. The way we saw things, we owed my fans a really good product because they’d supported me and had helped me get to this level. We felt that by offering them a wicked DVD, with lots of good bonus features and audio commentary, we would be honouring their part in the whole process. We didn’t want to skimp, and we wanted to offer some added value for fans who couldn’t make it to see me live. Now, producers don’t usually think that way, and Brother and I started to wonder if it wouldn’t be better to produce and finance things ourselves. Brother’s the type who would do anything to see things done right. We had already turned down Comedy Central, who wanted me to do a half-hour special instead of an hour-long show. My agent, Nick Nuciforo, said that we shouldn’t do a half-hour, considering the amount of material that I had at my disposal. Then Comedy Central came back and asked if I’d tape my special at their inaugural Miami Comedy Festival. At the time, I didn’t think that Miami would be the best place for me to do it. We were pushing to produce this special ourselves, but the agents thought we were crazy. We even had CAA check with Comedy Central to see if they’d buy a Russell Peters special through acquisitions. They replied that we’d turned them down twice now, so “No!”

  In the end, we made a deal with Parallel Entertainment, a management and production company that had a “put-through” arrangement with Comedy Central (a deal where Comedy Central had to broadcast any specials that Parallel gave them). Parallel also had a DVD distribution deal with Warner Music in the States.

  Working with all these outside entities was new to us. We’d grown used to doing our own thing and planning our shows in Canada. All of a sudden, we had new agents telling us how to do things and when to do them. We had a big production company deciding where we’d record and a broadcaster telling us when they’d take delivery of “the product.”

  It was decided that we’d shoot at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco and that I’d do two shows back to back in one night. It was a nightmare. I had a cold at the time and my throat was shot, but the show had to go on. Ideally, it would have been better for me to shoot about three months later, when I was feeling better and had a chance to fine-tune the material more. But when you’ve got a crew of more than a hundred people working on the production and fans have put down cash for their tickets, the show must go on.

  At some point, a girl in this group actually puked—I’m talking projectile vomit.

  The first show was fantastic. It went really well, and the audience was great. When the second show started, I knew we were in trouble. A whole crew of Indian kids arrived in the third row. At first, I was happy to see the browns in the crowd, but then, as I continued the set, I realized they were drunk out of their minds. They started yelling things out at me at the top of their lungs, and they weren’t even making any sense. They were yelling old bits, like “Be a Man” and “Do Somebody!” I was getting increasingly pissed off. At some point, a girl in this group actually puked—I’m talking projectile vomit here—right in the middle of me recording my first major special with an American broadcaster. The next thing I knew, her friend came over to help her and wiped out in the girl’s puke. Great. I’m trying my best to go on with the show and give what should be the best performance of my life, but it’s becoming impossible. At some point, I just gave up and turned to the audience and said, “None of this is going to be usable.” I was so fucking angry.

  When it was all over, I was really concerned about how the whole thing was going to turn out, but after postproduction and the editing process, the special turned out well. You couldn’t tell I was sick, and you couldn’t spot any projectile vomit on the stage (the camera guys managed to cut around it). If you listen carefully, there’s this one spot where I do my Chinese joke, and you can hear my voice crack just a bit, but overall, the material worked, and people really like it. We wanted to add more bonus features to the DVD, but the producers didn’t feel it was necessary and didn’t okay the cost. There was also drama over the cover art. I didn’t like what they had come up with, and we were frantically searching for an alternative that we could all agree upon. It got so bad that at one point, when we were on tour in Australia, my brother was on the phone with Warners and the producers and they even discussed selling everything back to us. In the end, it all worked out. Mind you, that didn’t stop one of the executive producers from bad-mouthing me and my brother around town, saying that we were difficult to work with. I don’t think we were difficult; we just had a different vision for the project than he did and weren’t doing the whole “yes sir, no sir” thing with these guys. We stood our ground when we needed to, and they weren’t expecting it—especially from a couple of guys who were not only Canadian, but Indian too, double-outsiders who in their minds should have just been happy to be there. My brother had already been through that mentality at his corporate gig and wasn’t having it. All in all, a good first lesson on some of the things we would come to expect from Hollywood.

  Once the DVD of Outsourced came out, and after the special was broadcast on Comedy Central on August 29, 2006, sure enough, some downloading bastard posted it on YouTube. Once again, the world was picking up on what I was doing, and once again, I had nothing to do with it. Like I said before, I don’t like talking about myself, so when Outsourced was released, I had to do a whole whack of press … and this was, and still is, a challenge for me. The record label in the States had set up a series of radio morning-show call-ins for me to promote it. These radio tours always suck unless the morning guys know who you are, and at that time, 99.9 per cent of them had no idea who I was.

  Once I got back to Toronto, it was another round of press. Newspapers, radio and television. I hated doing all that press and it shows if you read the interviews. My brother spazzed out on me over the phone when I missed a phone interview with a Toronto paper and I said some not-so-nice things about “all these managers and agents with their hands in my pocket.” Unfortunately, I’m not very good at hiding my feelings. I couldn’t go from being yelled at by my brother—who was just frustrated in general about trying to get me to do press—to being Happy Guy in the next interview.

  I should point out that by this point, the fall of 2006, my entire world had changed radically. I had all these agents and people in Hollywood telling me that I was the next big thing and how great I was. I had also made more money in the preceding twelve months than I had in my entire career. It was a lot to handle, and I didn’t handle it very well. I didn’t start drinking or doing drugs like some guys do, but I was definitely adjusting to the challenges of growing fame and the mounting demands that celebrity puts on yo
u. Let me be clear: I was still the same guy I was two years earlier, but everyone else was starting to treat me differently, including my own friends.

  I had a new million-dollar home in Los Angeles, new cars, new friends, basically a whole new lifestyle. My brother was quick to tell me that I had to make compromises with my time and that I had to promote myself more if I wanted to maintain that new lifestyle. I got to the point where I was saying crazy things like “I don’t care about playing bigger venues! I’ll just go back to playing clubs. I don’t want to do press or talk about myself. I’ll just walk away from all of it! I don’t care about the money!” Even though I had dreamed about getting to that place for the better part of my life, I wasn’t prepared when it actually happened.

  All of this put a lot of stress on my brother and me. There was even a time when we stopped talking for a while and he seriously thought about not managing me anymore. He was going through his own changes too. He’d bought a new home in Oakville and had recently gotten engaged. We weren’t just a couple of close brothers who lived in a small townhouse in Woodbridge anymore. And what was going to happen with my new DVD? Would anyone even buy it? Was it any good? My world had grown so big so fast, and I needed to grow as well.

  The fall of 2006 was difficult. After Outsourced came out in Canada in September, I had a bunch of tour dates set up. Now that it was out on DVD and everyone would know my act, what the fuck was I supposed to do when I got on stage? As far as I was concerned, I had no fresh material! My brother kept insisting that I could do the material from Outsourced. “It’s not like people have it memorized,” he told me. As far as I’m concerned, once I release material, it’s done for me. I wipe it from my memory bank and need to start over with new stuff.

  I remember one show I did in Brampton, at the Rose Theatre. It’s a small theatre and they made me a special offer as part of their grand opening. The tension between my brother and me was high, and I showed up for the show right at the last minute, still convinced that I had nothing to offer the crowd. I did the show … and freestyled most of it. I included lots of local references about my hometown, and the crowd seemed happy. I wasn’t, though. I left for gigs in Ottawa a day or so later—without my brother. He thought it would be better for him not to be there. I did the shows in Ottawa, and again, rather than draw from my existing repertoire, I freestyled a lot of the show. It wasn’t great, and a couple of fans later wrote to complain. What can I say? I just couldn’t bear repeating myself, and in my own way I was trying to give the fans something new.

  I finally emailed him back about how depressed I was: “I don’t feel like talking to anyone. I feel blah and lethargic.”

  After Ottawa, I went back to L.A. and was completely depressed. My brother and I were hardly talking, except through very brief emails. On September 19, after receiving a list of “pending” items from him—tours in Singapore and India, media opportunities—I finally emailed him back about how depressed I was: “I don’t feel like talking to anyone. I feel blah and lethargic. No thoughts, no motivation. I’m uninspired and down. I want to go to sleep for a long time and wake up in the future …” At 3:38 A.M., my brother wrote back: “The most important thing to me is that you’re happy. If you’re not happy, I’m not happy.” (This was thirty-six years deep and had nothing to do with him being my manager.) “You’re overanalyzing everything and putting too much pressure on yourself.… It’s always been my job and will always be my job to make sure that you’re okay and to guide you—whether you’re the biggest comedian in the world or the funniest guy working in a factory. Frankly, it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at.” He also talked about his own battles with depression, which I didn’t know anything about. Through this email exchange, we effectively closed off this dark chapter and started to move forward with our plans for 2007.

  My brother was right by my side during all the madness that came after that, and he’s at my side to this day (even writing these words right now)—managing all aspects of what has become a very well-oiled machine. I think what we have, both as brothers and as professionals, is a special thing. Often, we’ll meet people who will say, “Oh, I wish I could work with my brother the way you two work together, but he and I don’t get along.” I don’t really respond to these comments, but in my head I’m always thinking, How can you not get along with your brother? He’s your brother! And I guess that makes us different from a lot of other people out there. Family matters in a way that I’m not sure it does for everyone. There’s no question in my mind that my brother and I are in this together. We’ve always had a very close and unified relationship, and if you don’t have that, nothing else seems worth the trouble.

  Skinny ’90s brothers.

  Baghdad, November 2007.

  On our way to Australia, 2006.

  Backstage in San Fran for Outsourced.

  AFTER TENTH GRADE, I GOT KICKED OUT OF “REGULAR” HIGH SCHOOL—

  “regular” high school being where most of you went to school. I got kicked out.

  I don’t know how it works in America, but in Canada, in high school you earn eight credits every year, so by the end of tenth grade, you should have sixteen credits. Well … I had seven. Actually, I had five—but I picked up two in summer school because I was trying to catch up.

  So the school I was going to genuinely thought I was slow. Like they thought I was a fucking retard. They just did. You know how I knew they thought I was slow? Not because they kicked me out and sent me to the “retard school”—that was obvious.

  I knew they thought I was slow because I remember the day the guidance counsellor called me to the office. He started speaking to me all sloooow. Now, at the time I didn’t know that he thought I was slow. I thought he was slow—and I didn’t want to make him feel bad, what with all my “fast speech.”

  BACK IN THE MID-’70S, when I was in grade school, no one was really aware of ADD—attention deficit disorder, or ADHD as it’s often called now. In case you’ve been living in a hole and have no idea what this is, it’s a disorder characterized by inattention, hyper-activity and impulsive behaviour, and it’s not something you just grow out of. I have never been officially diagnosed, but it’s obvious to anyone who knows me well that my powers of concentration are scattered all over the place. You may have even noticed in this book that I jump around a lot. It’s just the way my mind works. I’m always doing several things at the same time. It’s not uncommon for me to be talking to someone, listening to music, checking my iPhone and working out a comedy segment in my head, all at the same time. ADD follows you throughout your life, but if you’re lucky, you learn to get better at managing it. It’s pretty common today for kids to be diagnosed with attention problems, but when I was growing up no one really knew what the hell these were, and kids who were like me were often dismissed as dumb, lazy or troubled.

  Throughout school, I put up with years of the same kind of comments on my report cards from teachers at Georges Vanier Catholic School, where I spent nine years of my elementary life. My teachers would make comments like “Russell is sharp but fails to apply himself.” In other words, they knew I wasn’t an idiot, but they suspected I might be a lazy ass. For the record, I’m not an idiot but I am a lazy ass. My parents never seemed overly concerned about my crazy energy levels and lack of attention. As far as they were concerned, I was just a kid. And you know, I’m lucky that I had friends at the time who didn’t see me as a fuckup but as just another kid who wanted to goof around like they did. One of my best friends, Marlon Dubeau, had ADD too.

  Marlon’s the closest thing I have to a second brother. We met at one of the parks behind the townhouses on Bramalea Road when I was eight and he was seven. He was this little Jamaican kid, and when other kids were picking on me, he wasn’t. He was like, “Hey, why don’t you come to my house and we’ll eat crackers?” So we went to his house, opened a can of tuna and brought out some Ritz crackers and Kool-Aid to eat on his front steps. That was the sweetest, most delicious Koo
l-Aid I’ve ever tasted in my life … because Marlon put so much friggin’ sugar in it.

  Elementary school was pretty good for me—for the most part. Still, this was where I started to get a sense that there might be something just a little different about me, something that set me apart in ways I didn’t quite understand at the time. I’d show up in the schoolyard, and the other kids would say, “Ooo, the Paki’s here.” I’d be like, “Where? Where’s the Paki?” For a long time, I didn’t get it. I thought the Paki was some sort of ghost or something, and when the kids would yell, “Run, run! The Paki’s here!” I’d high-tail it out of there along with them.

  “Run, run! The Paki’s here!”

  So things like that happened on occasion, but still, elementary school was good. By Grade 8, I had a clique of friends, and in the summer before I began Grade 9—the summer of ’84—my crew and I spent almost every day breakdancing. Rap and hip-hop were just emerging. I felt like that music defined me, like it was my discovery. We were listening to “Freakazoid” by Midnight Star, “Rockit” by Herbie Hancock and “It’s Nasty” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. We’d learn our moves by watching videos, like Malcolm McLaren’s “Buffalo Gals,” “Party Train” by the Gap Band and “Save the Overtime for Me” by Gladys Knight & the Pips. That’s all we ever wanted to do, just breakdance all the time. Mom and Dad’s front lawn on Finchgate was totally dead because I’d covered it with cardboard for the entire summer. We would practise routines all day. We would time them for just when we saw the bus coming down Balmoral Drive. It would stop right in front of our house and we’d do the routine for the people on the bus.