Written by Kelley Simms
Published by Bear Manor Media
Back in 1980, I had just finished an acting course, which served me well when I joined up with a local Cincinnati-area comedy troupe. I was also one of the two head writers for the group. It was a fascinating time, filled with rehearsals, cast members coming and going, a TV show, a recording session, a live stage show in downtown Cincinnati, and one live nightclub appearance.
In total it all lasted about seven months before we broke up in a haze of sex, drugs, and politics—you know, kind of like real show business!
I got custody of two of our three female members and came up with another, more streamlined, comedy troupe which did some radio work before we just drifted apart.
During all of this, we were meeting and sometimes working with local standup comics, too, and I got to see that being funny wasn’t easy, and being a stand-up required a major commitment and thick skin…which most of the ones I knew didn’t have.
The reason this comes up is today’s book, They Said It.—Entertainment’s Biggest Stars Speak, compiled by interviewer Kelley Simms for Bear Manor Media. The book consists of a number of short interviews of more than 30 celebrities of varying levels of fame (none of whom could be called “biggest stars”). Most were brief publicity pieces for local appearances and were published in issues of a long list of magazines and papers we’re told Simms worked on at various times over the past twenty-plus years.
Many of the subjects of these interviews are stand-up comedians. Seven of those are people whose names I really don’t recall ever encountering previously. But the stand-up interviews are my favorites in the book. All of these folks, from Bob Saget and Tim Allen to Jo Koy and Lisa Lampanelli, have similar takes on the business of stand-up and it was fascinating to me to see that they aren’t that much different than what I encountered all those years ago.
It’s not just stand-up comedians, though.
Other interviews are with music world figures such as Chris Isaak and Billy Gibbons (from ZZ Top) to Melissa Etheridge and the sad and somewhat infamous former teen idol, Leif Garrett.
Actors including Ed Asner, Jeff Daniels, Tony Danza and Steve Martin with Martin Short (long before Only Murders in the Building. That last one is probably my favorite of the interviews. Either theirs or Drew Carey’s, where he opens up about his life, his sitcom, doing stand-up, weight-loss, and the Price is Right.
Kelley Simms is consistently a good interviewer, with some good questions, but sadly a number of the folks on the other ends of those questions don’t have particularly good answers.
Rob Schneider is here with an interesting piece from 2018, apparently just before he became a right-wing extremist. Paula Poundstone and Jeff Foxworthy are enjoyable. A few entertainers I haven’t even thought about in ages turn up, even—Piff the Magic Dragon, Christopher Titus, and Yakov Smirnoff.
Back when I was growing up, most local newspapers and TV stations had an “entertainment reporter” who would speak briefly to performers coming through town just as Kelley has done here. It was, as here, mostly fluff, but generally interesting fluff, and every once in a while, a bit of the real person would show through, or a bit of substantial info might slip out that had never before been known.
Even if a surprising number of the interviewees in this book were strangers to me, it was fun to spend a little time with them. They Said It! is a worthy continuation of that entertainment reporter tradition.
Booksteve recommends.
