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Authors: Marlo Thomas
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see.” He was very serious. So the movie starts, and . . . I never laughed so hard in my life. Ben kept turning around and looking at us to be sure that we were not embarrassed, but all he saw was me laughing. As for that scene, what can I say? That’s Ben. He really throws himself into a part.
Stillers: The Next Generation
Ben: I think what you learn when you have kids is that they come with their own personalities. My kids are so ridiculously funny to me. They love to do little characters. It’s like they channel it from somewhere, and it makes you realize that they’re born with it.
Jerry: Well, like all grandchildren, there’s something special about them, and you never know what’s going to happen. But I hope to God—and I really mean this—that they don’t go into this business. They’d have to live up to two generations already! If they do, I hope they can navigate through it all, which is not easy.
My father was a bus driver, the funniest bus driver in New York. He would have gotten me a job—he had seniority and all of that—but I said no, and went off to be a comedian. He never really thought much of my work. He wanted to be a comedian himself.
But, God Almighty, was he funny . . .
THE DANGERFIELD ZONE
Remembering Rodney
“My wife only has sex with me for a purpose.
Last night she used me to time an egg.”
“I was making love to this girl and she started crying.
I said, ‘Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?’
She said, ‘No, I hate myself now.’ ”
“Last night my wife met me at the front door.
She was wearing a sexy negligee.
The only trouble was, she was coming home.”
“If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have no sex life at all.”
“My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss
in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.”
“My wife likes to talk on the phone during sex—
she called me from Chicago last night.”
Chapter 13
aka Orson
W here do you get your sense of humor from?
“I don’t think you can learn to be funny,” Larry Gelbart told me, “but you can grow up in an environment where you appreciate the surprise in a joke. You can develop a sense of humor.”
You know the old saying, there are two kinds of people—those who see the glass half-empty, and those who see it half-full? Well, there are three kinds of people when it comes to seeing the funny in something—those who don’t see it for years until they look back at it, those who will never see it, and those who see it as it’s happening.
I remember one night my mother and father were bickering about something at the dinner table. The words flew back and forth, things escalated, and Dad angrily got up and left the table.
We all watched wide-eyed as my father stormed across the marble floor of our entry hall to the bottom of the long, winding staircase. Placing his hand on the carved oak banister, with the Viennese chandelier hanging overhead, he turned in fury to us and bellowed:
“Rose Marie, I cannot live like this!”
Then he doubled over in laughter. We all did. As angry as he was, he suddenly saw himself—a man standing in his opulent Beverly Hills stairwell announcing he couldn’t live like this anymore. It took about a second for him to recognize the absurdity of it.
Where did he get this ability to instantly see the funny? Certainly not from his stern father, my scary Lebanese grandpa. My grandparents were very poor. They had ten kids—nine boys and a girl—and little else. And as in all of the immigrant families in their neighborhood, my grandmother was cook, laundress and nanny for the entire family. But after giving birth to her fifth son, my father, she became too ill to care for him, so for a while he lived with Grandma’s brother, Tony, and his wife, Julia. They couldn’t have children of their own, so for them this was a true blessing.
Uncle Tony was what the family called “a real card.” He saw the humor in just about everything. My father once
Stillers: The Next Generation
Ben: I think what you learn when you have kids is that they come with their own personalities. My kids are so ridiculously funny to me. They love to do little characters. It’s like they channel it from somewhere, and it makes you realize that they’re born with it.
Jerry: Well, like all grandchildren, there’s something special about them, and you never know what’s going to happen. But I hope to God—and I really mean this—that they don’t go into this business. They’d have to live up to two generations already! If they do, I hope they can navigate through it all, which is not easy.
My father was a bus driver, the funniest bus driver in New York. He would have gotten me a job—he had seniority and all of that—but I said no, and went off to be a comedian. He never really thought much of my work. He wanted to be a comedian himself.
But, God Almighty, was he funny . . .
THE DANGERFIELD ZONE
Remembering Rodney
“My wife only has sex with me for a purpose.
Last night she used me to time an egg.”
“I was making love to this girl and she started crying.
I said, ‘Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?’
She said, ‘No, I hate myself now.’ ”
“Last night my wife met me at the front door.
She was wearing a sexy negligee.
The only trouble was, she was coming home.”
“If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have no sex life at all.”
“My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss
in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.”
“My wife likes to talk on the phone during sex—
she called me from Chicago last night.”
Chapter 13
aka Orson
W here do you get your sense of humor from?
“I don’t think you can learn to be funny,” Larry Gelbart told me, “but you can grow up in an environment where you appreciate the surprise in a joke. You can develop a sense of humor.”
You know the old saying, there are two kinds of people—those who see the glass half-empty, and those who see it half-full? Well, there are three kinds of people when it comes to seeing the funny in something—those who don’t see it for years until they look back at it, those who will never see it, and those who see it as it’s happening.
I remember one night my mother and father were bickering about something at the dinner table. The words flew back and forth, things escalated, and Dad angrily got up and left the table.
We all watched wide-eyed as my father stormed across the marble floor of our entry hall to the bottom of the long, winding staircase. Placing his hand on the carved oak banister, with the Viennese chandelier hanging overhead, he turned in fury to us and bellowed:
“Rose Marie, I cannot live like this!”
Then he doubled over in laughter. We all did. As angry as he was, he suddenly saw himself—a man standing in his opulent Beverly Hills stairwell announcing he couldn’t live like this anymore. It took about a second for him to recognize the absurdity of it.
Where did he get this ability to instantly see the funny? Certainly not from his stern father, my scary Lebanese grandpa. My grandparents were very poor. They had ten kids—nine boys and a girl—and little else. And as in all of the immigrant families in their neighborhood, my grandmother was cook, laundress and nanny for the entire family. But after giving birth to her fifth son, my father, she became too ill to care for him, so for a while he lived with Grandma’s brother, Tony, and his wife, Julia. They couldn’t have children of their own, so for them this was a true blessing.
Uncle Tony was what the family called “a real card.” He saw the humor in just about everything. My father once
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