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The following post consists of quotations from Rodney Dangerfield’s book: RODNEY DANGERFIELD It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me.
I began writing jokes when I was fifteen. I think I was so unhappy all the time that I was trying to forget reality with jokes. I was always depressed, but I could tell a joke and get a laugh. But not from my mother…
I began writing jokes when I was fifteen. I think I was so unhappy all the time that I was trying to forget reality with jokes. I was always depressed, but I could tell a joke and get a laugh. But not from my mother…
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I guess that’s why I went into show business—to get
some love. I wanted people to tell me I was good, tell me I’m okay…. I’ll take
love anyway I can get it.
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Show business was my escape from life. I had to
have it. It was like a fix. I needed it to survive.
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At twenty-eight, I decided to quit show business….
To give you an idea of how well I was doing at the time I quit, I was the only
one who knew I quit.
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I sold aluminum siding for twelve years. I made a
decent living, but I wasn’t living. I was out of show business, but show
business wasn’t out of me, so I did the only thing that made sense—I created a
character based upon my feeling that nothing goes right.
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…I remember sitting in my dressing room waiting for
the show to start. I looked out the window. It was raining, but the streets of
midtown Manhattan were crowded, and I thought to myself. Look at all those
people who are going to miss seeing me tonight on the Ed Sullivan Show.
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Forty years ago, I was feeling really depressed
even more than I usually do, so Joe recommended a famous psychologist…. I still
remember two things he told me: “People are all fucking crazy, and
most of them are unethical.”
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I’ve talked with many psychologists and
psychiatrists. It has cost me a lot of money, but at least I got a few jokes
out of it.
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…I didn’t go because I knew I couldn’t be myself
with Jack Benny…. Can you picture me saying to Jack Benny, “Man, I’m so
depressed. It’s all too fucking much.”
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The worst depression I had was when I was in my
seventies…. For two years, I couldn’t function.
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I first started smoking pot back in 1942. I was
twenty-one…
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All the stories you hear about being getting wild
on marijuana are ridiculous…. Booze is the real culprit in our society.
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When you’re high, you become an avid reader…. one
night I smoked some pot, then started reading the newspaper. An hour later, I
said to myself, What am I doing? I was reading about fishing conditions in
Anchorage. And I don’t even fish. And the paper was a month old.
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I was sitting in an airport…. There was no one
around, so I lit up a joint…. Suddenly a cop came running toward me.
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…I ended up in intensive care…. I thought, Hey,
there aren’t too many people here, and it’s dark. I’ll light up a joint…
Two minutes later, a security guard came over….
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…I now have written authorization from a California
doctor that allows me to smoke pot…. Wish I’d had that prescription thirty
years ago; life would have been easier.
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It’s hard for me to accept the fact that soon my
life will be over. No more Super Bowls. No more Chinese food. No more sex. And
the big one, no more smoking pot.
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One time I said to him [Rodney’s
father], “You’ve travelled all over the country, must have slept with a
hundred women. You’ve done everything, been through it all. What’s life all
about? What’s the answer?”
He twirled his cigar and said, “It’s all
bullshit.”
You can’t fully appreciate that line until you’re
old.
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Living as long as I have, you can’t help but look
back on life and wonder what does it all mean. Sometimes I don’t even think
I’ve made it. Even today, if I check into a hotel and the bellman picks up my
suitcase, I feel awkward.
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I can accept getting older. I can even accept
getting old, but dying? Man, that’s a tough one to accept.
Life’s a short trip. You’ll find out.
You were seventeen yesterday. You’ll be fifty
tomorrow. Life is tough….
What do you think life is? Moonlight and canoes?
That’s not life. That’s in the movies.
Life is fear and tension and worry and
disappointments.
Life. I’ll tell you what life is. Life is having a
mother-in-law who sucks and a wife who don’t. That’s what life is.
Photo by Alan Light
