CHAPTER 167
Anthony Cumia’s drinking in the Olive Tree. Jon Stewart’s in the Olive Tree. Jon shakes hands with people, but won’t shake Anthony’s hand. They argue. Noam asks if they’re okay then walks away. They shake hands. It’s written about. Noam writes a statement which is published on the Interrobang website. It includes the line,
disagreements in good faith are normal and healthy
CHAPTER 166
The New York Times publishes a story about a Cellar show which happened on 11 January, 2017. Most of the advertised line-up was bumped and the line-up became Jon Laster as emcee, Ryan Hamilton, Dave Attell, Jerry Seinfeld, Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, Aziz Ansari and Dave Chappelle. The headline in the New York Times is,
A ‘Billion Dollars’ Worth of Comedians’ for $14 and a 2-Drink Minimum
CHAPTER 165
Author: So that night, 11 January, 2017, you were hosting a show that ended up with Seinfeld and all those people on. Did you know it was going to be a big show?
Jon Laster: I think a lot of people have this misconception about what was happening. Val was the manager that night, so when I came in we knew that just the opposite was going to happen, that they weren’t going on.
Author: So you knew they were up here but they weren’t going to go on?
Jon: We knew that they weren’t going on. When I walk in the line-up is there, but the manager kind of tells me what’s happening when we have people here, so she basically said, ‘Don’t worry, here’s the people that aren’t going on.’ So they definitely weren’t going on. To let you know how much they weren’t going on, I did all my time up front. Ryan stayed on the show and did all of his time. There’s no way they would let us do that time if we thought all of them were going on. First of all, they would have cut Ryan, they wouldn’t have let him go on. But they weren’t going on.
Author: Do you remember what phrase Val said?
Jon: Yeah, she said Amy was around the corner hanging out with Colin Quinn. She wasn’t going on. Chappelle wasn’t going on until the next show for sure, and she said maybe Seinfeld would go up and maybe Chris, but the rest of them definitely weren’t, and we didn’t think that we had time for them. It was throughout the course of the show that all of them decided, ‘Hey, I’m going to go up,’ ‘I’m going to go up.’
Author: So you went up, did your time as a host, then Ryan went up, did his time. Did you know at that point it was going to be a different show?
Jon: No, no. The trigger was Dave and Chris were downstairs talking. Amy had come downstairs …
Author: Dave?
Jon: Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock. And Chris is kind of like asking Dave, ‘Hey man, which one of us is going to go up next?’ And Amy overheard them and said kind of like, ‘Fuck that, you guys are going on? I’m not going to miss this.’ Schumer’s going to the bathroom. She was just walking through the conversation. So then she basically said, ‘Hey, can I do five?’ What am I going to say, no? She turned around and said, ‘Can I do five?’ So then once I put Amy up, that’s when the dam broke.
Author: Okay, so she goes up, and then you’re in the hallway at that point?
Jon: Yeah, because you can’t light them, so I’ve just got to wait until everybody gets off stage, but fortunately, that’s when everybody kind of started looking around, ‘This is about to turn into something.’ Everybody’s being respectful, they’re getting off stage pretty quickly, you know what I mean?
Author: So they didn’t do long, did they?
Jon: No. Chris did some time. By the time he got on, he did some time.
Author: So Amy went up and then just said, ‘Right, ready to come off’?
Jon: Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was like, whatever, whatever.
Author: Did someone say to you who was going to go up next?
Jon: Yeah. Then Val was saying, ‘So and so’s next, so and so’s next.’
Author: How did you feel at the end of the night?
Jon: Oh, man, it was surreal. I knew that there’s no way there could ever be a show that came together like that which was bigger than that. There’s no way. There’s no way you could have that many people that could fill up Madison Square Garden on the same show. No one’s ever … I knew no one had ever seen a show like that.
[After eleven minutes]
Author: When you were sleeping on a train, a few years before you were passed at the Cellar, what train was it?
Jon: Oh man, I used to sleep on the 2-train.
Author: Did you have a sleeping bag or anything?
Jon: No.
Author: So you just went and sat on the train?
Jon: And nod off as long as you can.
Author: I’ve seen people doing that, it looks horrible.
Jon: Oh yeah, brutal. It was brutal.
Author: How long did you do that for?
Jon: Three weeks, yeah, probably.
Author: How did you get out of it?
Jon: I decided to check myself in.
Author: You checked into a rehab?
Jon: Yeah.
Author: Can you do that for free?
Jon: Yeah you can.
Author: Where did you go?
Jon: I went to Kingsboro, a place called Kingsboro, a rehab centre in Brooklyn. Yeah.
Author: So you got off the train and went there and said, ‘Look, I need to fix my life’?
Jon: Yes.
Author: Did it work first time?
Jon: No. No. I had to go a couple of times.
Author: Did you go back to the same one the second time?
Jon: Yeah.
Author: How long was it between the first time and the second time?
Jon: Oh god, maybe six weeks. Maybe.
Author: Oh, because there’s one time when you came out and went straight to the liquor store?
Jon: Yeah.
Author: That was after the first time I take it?
Jon: Yeah.
Author: What did you buy at the liquor store?
Jon: Vodka. More vodka.
Author: Oh man. That’s amazing. Thanks for talking to me, Jon.
Jon: Yeah.
CHAPTER 164
Before that, the line-up for the 9.30pm show on 11 January, 2017 is Jon Laster as emcee, Ryan Hamilton, Dave Attell, Hasan Minaj, Judah Friedlander and Michelle Wolf. Ryan finishes his food and goes on. The crowd claps politely,
Ryan: I feel like I just disappointed everybody. I just felt the whole crowd go, ‘Oh no, this guy, I don’t even know who he is. I was going to give him a chance but we don’t know him. We don’t. Where’s Louis? Where is he? Where’s Chris? Where’s Jerry? We don’t know him.’ Well, you’re going to get what you paid for right now.
Ryan does his spot. He goes home. He’s got an early flight to Atlanta. Dave goes on, but the rest of the line-up gets bumped. Jon goes back on. He tells the crowd not to record videos. He introduces Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry tells the audience he doesn’t care about video. He says to the audience,
Jerry: ‘They’re so special and what they’re doing is such magic. We can’t let it out of the room.’ But it’s not. It’s nothing. It’s jokes. We’re doing jokes.
CHAPTER 163
The author writes an article for the New Yorker about the comedians’ table being moved. Noam hates it. He tells the author it reads like he planned to move the table, but it was moved against his wishes and he was fixing that error, so he didn’t take a chance that failed like Colin’s quote says. And regarding the new table, Noam says it’s almost impossible to determine exactly where the table was before the renovation, but contrary to the quotes from Liz and Colin, it is back in the same spot.
Noam: The whole thing is just stupid. Anybody who’d ever done renovation knows it’s tough and you’re tweaking things and you’re figuring thin
gs out, and it’s not done until it’s done. And the idea that this was some sort of decision, you know, it was just absurd, it’s not the way it happened at all. On the contrary it was always supposed to be not moving, the table. Period. That was always it. I mean George, my business partner, said, ‘Yeah, you said it over and over.’ It was the only part of the whole renovation I was really interested in. Like, ‘I don’t know about kitchens, you guys can do whatever you want in the kitchens. Liz, whatever equipment you need, the answer’s yes, the only thing I care about is that the table doesn’t move.’
CHAPTER 162
Before that, the author emails Liz, the Cellar’s general manager. Noam told the author to ask her for any measurements. The author tells Liz that Colin thought the table’s not back in the same spot it used to be. She emails back,
The table is MAYBE a few inches off from where it was previously.
The author includes the line in his article.
CHAPTER 161
Before that, the author phones Colin Quinn,
Author: Hello Colin you alright? It’s Andrew.
Colin: Hello Andrew, how are you?
Author: Are you alright to talk now Colin?
Colin: Yes I am.
Author: Fantastic. Great. How did your physio go?
Colin: It’s good, it’s good, it’s fine.
Author: Knee still?
Colin: No it’s my Achilles, nine months ago, but it’s getting better, but it never gets completely better they said, so it’s over for me in many ways.
Author: Ah, no.
Colin: Where are the snows of yesteryear? Where are the snows of yesteryear?
Author: Erm.
Colin: Erm, so yeah, so the table.
Author: Yes, great, so this is a piece I’m doing for the New Yorker. It’s not like a huge feature, it’s just the Talk of the Town section. It was commissioned at eight-hundred words but I think it’s going to, it was eight-hundred-and-fifty words when I submitted it, and they asked me to put some more quotes in, so it’s going to be a thousand words or something like that, but the point of it is, it’s about the history of the table a little bit, but the reason I’m writing about it is that … So Noam took this decision to extend the kitchen in the Olive Tree, which seemed like a risky move to me, but he decided to do it and that resulted in moving the table. The table was moved around for a little while and then he had a permanent position for it, and there was, like … Rachel Feinstein described it as a bit of a backlash against him having moved the table, and I think Chris Rock sat down and had a rant at him, and a couple of people have said stuff to him.
Colin: Hilarious.
Author: And so he paid $20,000 to get the walls pulled down again and get the table moved back. I think it’s a really nice story.
Colin: Oh my god. A really nice story? Yeah, it’s a really nice story, the extortion of Noam by the fucking comedians. What a story.
Author: I kind of laugh when I talk to him about it, but he can afford it, he’s alright, I wouldn’t laugh if it was, like, really putting him in a bad spot.
Colin: Oh my god, yeah, well I mean, you know, I didn’t know anything about this part of it, because I’ve just been kind of MIA from that room for a while, I just haven’t been going in, but I mean the table, it’s funny, because Liz, you know Liz the manager, I was talking to her about this yesterday and she said, yeah the table, it’s … You’re in the middle of everybody but you’re separate, like you’re there and you’re not there, and that kind of was it, like, they didn’t want a private room.
Author: Liz by the way, I wanted to know the dimensions of the table and Noam …
Colin: She told me, she sent me the whole, yeah …
Author: So Noam said, oh Liz will do it for you, and I was like, it was really awkward because I’ve never met Liz before, and then, it’s like trying to ask her to do a favour for someone she’s never met, but anyway, so she probably didn’t think much of me, but yeah, exactly, I mean, I know that you hadn’t been at the table for a while and I heard you say that the table was over, but for a period you enjoyed that atmosphere of being in the Olive Tree, being amongst it, but still having …
Colin: Oh yeah, I mean, it’s still a great place to sit down with people, you know what I mean, but as far as it being a bad version, a dumb version of the Algonquin round table, those days are over, yeah.
Author: People like Joe List and Mark Normand, they love being around it, you know, those sort of younger comedians do love it still.
Colin: Sure, yeah, I’m sure they love it now, it’s their table, you know.
Author: I mean, do you think it was a wise decision by Noam to move it?
Colin: Do I think it was what?
Author: A wise decision for Noam to move it. To risk upsetting, like, Bill Burr said Noam ruined the whole aura of the place or something, and then Chris Rock kind of had his say, so people were clearly unhappy with the fact that he moved the table. I wondered what you thought, whether, you know, you thought that was …
Colin: Well I mean, I wouldn’t … You know, the history of the table is very simple. Nick Di Paolo once said to Manny, there’s no place to hang out in this fucking place, and the next day the table said for Cellar comedians only, so that’s how it happened, that’s how it began.
Author: I spoke to Nick and he told me about that, which was great.
Colin: Yeah, it’s pretty interesting, so he takes full credit, as he should, because I was there when he said that.
Author: Were you?
Colin: Yeah, I heard him say it, in the litany of complaints that he had that night, that was one of the things that was thrown in. And then erm, but I would say the table, I mean … I guess Noam … I didn’t know … I wasn’t sure where Noam moved it to. I guess he moved it out into the room?
Author: He moved it closer to the bar, which I think was a problem for people because … I think, like, Louis wasn’t happy.
Colin: Right, because then everyone’s looming over you, fucking harassing you. I mean, you know, and it’s noisier I guess, because the table, it’s like … There’s a reason the Last Supper happened in a private room in the back apparently, because otherwise, you know, Jesus would have been like, ‘Listen, this is probably, you’re not going to see much of me anymore,’ and somebody would have recognised him from the bar and said, ‘Jesus, you’re Jesus,’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m just, I’m in the middle of something,’ and they’re like, ‘Jesus, I can’t believe it,’ and he’s like, ‘No, I just want to do this thing where I give the bread to the one guy that’s going to betray me, it’s kind of a serious moment.’ ‘Yeah? I love it, what are you guys ordering?’ And he’s like … You know what I mean? It would have ruined the entire, you know, climax to the second half of the New Testament.
Author: So, so, so you understand, you know, why some comedians wanted it moved back to where it was then? You kind of get that?
Colin: Yeah, I mean, sure, I mean, of course, only because, you know, if you’re in the middle … I mean, there’s a lot of famous people come in there and I don’t blame … If you’re standing next to somebody famous, I certainly did that when I was a young drunken dickhead, I would be like, yeah … Obviously it’s got to have a little bit of a boundary to it. It doesn’t have to be a VIP fucking velvet rope, we are comedians after all, nobody cares that much but, you know what I mean?
Author: And what did you think of his decision to kind of renovate the kitchen and start selling like steak and, you know, higher-end food?
Colin: I mean, yeah, I liked it, because it’s like, nothing stays exactly the same, you know what I mean? You can’t just keep going, hey … I mean, the shocking part is that since I started going there in the Eighties it’s the same … All this renovation in the kitchen, all this renovation and everything … The bathroom is in the back of the room. It’s
small, uncomfortable, it’s exactly the same as it was back in the Eighties. So it’s like, we’re sitting here, I mean, basically, you know, mowing the lawn while the fucking house is on fire, in my opinion, but it’s like, yeah, go ahead.
Author: Can you describe the bathroom a little bit more?
Colin: The bathroom, it’s part of what keeps the Comedy Cellar great. It’s basically, you walk in the bathroom, you’re wedged in, even the guys’ room has a line, that’s how bad it is, not just the women’s room. The women’s room goes halfway through the crowd. There’s times when you’re waiting on line for the bathroom, you’re blocking the back table from watching the show and … But that’s part of the charm of it all. And then the guys, you’re lined up with a bunch of guys, you know, and everybody’s just wedged in this corner, and one guy’s … You literally, if you have any homophobic tendencies you might as well not go to that bathroom because you’re going to be brushing against a guy while he’s peeing, you’re going to be right behind him, basically dry-humping him while he pees, that’s just how it goes. So if you’re uncomfortable with that, don’t come to the Comedy Cellar. It’s like a clown car, you know, and it’s always in the middle of a show, so anybody walks to the bathroom, the comedian harasses them going there, and it’s been like that since the Eighties.
Author: And it’s kind of weird, because people are now going to be having this nice food, like, made by a proper chef up in the Olive Tree, but they then want to go to the toilet, they’re still going to have to get, like, the code, and go through one of the shows, and go through to that bathroom downstairs, aren’t they?
Colin: Exactly. It’s absurd, but I mean, you know, that’s how it is.
Author: Yeah, yeah. I want it to all just stay the same as it is, I don’t want them opening up new rooms or anything, I just want to keep it as it is, but it’s Noam’s business and he’s got to do what he’s got to do, you know.
Colin: Yeah, it’s like, everybody’s like, hey, we want to be quaint, except the person that’s … Really, you want to be quaint? You know, what I mean?
Don't applaud. Either laugh or don't. (At the Comedy Cellar.) Page 7
