Self-Taught

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When I was 22, I began doing musicals in Toronto, near where I grew up. My first show was Godspell, with people like Gilda Radner, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy and Dave Thomas. The musical director was Paul Shaffer. It was around this time that the improvisational group Second City came to Toronto from Chicago to form a sister company. Everyone was so excited about it, but I didn't even audition. It felt like too much pressure to get up on a stage and just come up with funny stuff.

Instead, I did Cole Cuts, a revue of the music of Cole Porter. I did Harry's Back in Town, a revue of the music of Harry Warren. Meanwhile, the kids who did Second City moved on to SCTV and Saturday Night Live. They were hip. Comedy was hip. And I was doing The Apple Tree.

After Harry's Back in Town closed in January 1977, I was out of work. I was only 26, but I felt my career was going sideways. My peers, who had momentum, had gone into plastics while I had stayed with aluminum siding.

So I went to Los Angeles. Nancy Dolman, my girlfriend of several years and now my wife, was pursuing a record deal there. One day I got a call from Paul Shaffer, who was in town and on hiatus from Saturday Night Live. He wanted us to visit him at the Sunset Marquis hotel, where he was staying. Bill Murray and John Belushi were stopping by too. We'd have some drinks and hang by the pool.

Nancy and I were staying nearby and decided to walk there. I was quiet, but dark thoughts were running through my head. By the time I hit the corner of De Longpre and Flores, I couldn't go any farther. I told Nancy I had to sit down right there on the curb with her.

The well was open, and my thoughts came pouring out. I said, "I can't go and hang at Paul's hotel. Not only do they all have success, but they have direction. I don't know what I want to do, and I'm so pathetically lost that I just want to sit on this curb. I feel fine as long as I stay right here." Nancy said, "I think you're having a breakdown," and I replied, "Well, then we're on breakdown corner."

After about two hours, Nancy got me to leave. We were staying with a friend who happened to have tickets to an improv show called War Babies. Going there was the last thing I wanted to do. But to avoid saying why I wouldn't go, I said, "Sure, sounds great." So we saw War Babies, and the cast was hilarious.

That show changed my life. The actors were improvising, and my mind was going with them. It was like an oven whose pilot has burned out, and suddenly the pilot is lit. I was so excited. I phoned Andrew Alexander in Toronto, who ran Second City there. He told me a cast member was leaving, and a week later I joined the Second City.

For the first time, I realized that I could channel the way I could be funny at a party into my onstage role. But before that evening, I had never put the pieces together. I had never seen my potential.

Within two months of joining Second City, I was improvising and creating characters. Second City taught me how to write and how to trust my instincts onstage. That led to SCTV, which led to Saturday Night Live, which led to my current career of performing material I've written or created (like Primetime Glick) and material other people have written (I am currently performing in The Producers in Los Angeles with Jason Alexander).