Rodney Dangerfield - Its Not Easy Bein Me: A Lifetime of No Respect but Plenty of Sex and Drugs

by Jim Carrey

I Was a Male Hooker

How Can I Get a Job Like That?

Plans for Conquering the World

Very Naked from the Waist Up

I Needed $3,000 to Get Out of Jail

Why Didnt You Tell Me You Were Funny?

Some Show Business on the Side

I Am Not High!

Can I Have Your Autograph and More Butter?

Let the Good Times Roll

A Night with Lenny Bruce

Stuck in a Bag of Mixed Nuts

Im Not Going!

Three Lucky Breaks

Turkeys in Wheelchairs

My Heart Started Doing Somersaults

End of the Line

T he book you are holding in your handsor clenched in your teeth, maybe?is the amazing life story of one of my all-time heroes, Rodney Dangerfield.

Ive read it twicethe first time, quickly, to see what he said about me, the second time to learn about his amazing life.

Rodney is, without a doubt, as funny as a carbon-based life-form can be. Watching his act is like watching a boxing match on fast-forward. His biggest problem is that he fires off his brilliant one-liners so fast that by the time youve recovered from one joke, youve already missed the next three. Rodney is a walking encyclopedia of stand-up comedy, spanning the generations, from nightclubs to websites, from Ed Sullivan to Conan OBrien. And through it all, for more than fifty years, he has remained high, I mean really hip.

In addition to performing his own comedy, he has given a big boost to hundreds of comics. As the owner of Dangerfields, his nightclub in New York, and through his HBO specials, he has always been a young comedians best friend. His eye for talent is unmatched, and he never took the safe way out. He fostered plenty of mainstream comedians, but his heart really went out to the edgy performers, those men (Sam Kinison) and women (Roseanne) who had a hard time getting booked when they were starting out because they werent user-friendly. He even helped discover a young impressionist from Canada who dreamed, at one time, of being the next Rich Little. (For those of you who are moving your lips as you read this, that young impressionist was me.) More than twenty years ago, I was performing in a small club in Toronto when I got my first gig opening for Rodney at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. That was a very big deal for me, a huge break, and someday, Im going to thank Rodney for giving me that break. Someday.

After that run in Vegas, Rodney took me on tour with him for a couple of years, and we had a lot of laughs, and a lot of bad airplane meals. One day, though, I decided to change my actI wanted to stop doing my impressions and start being myself onstage. Well, things got pretty weird for a while after that. And by weird I mean that I was bombing night after night. But I stuck with it, mainly because I could always hear Rodney laughing in the wings. After a show, hed say to me, Man, those people were lookin at you like you were from another planet! But I was making him laugh, so I knew I was onto something. A lot of comedians, even a star as big as Rodney Dangerfield, would have dumped an opening act that wasnt making his audience laugh, but Rodney stood by me, told me to keep on doing what I was doing.

He, of course, knew something about sticking with it. He struggled for decades before he reached the top of his profession. I dont know if anybody remembers the era of the comedy clubthey were quite popular places at one time, but you can only see them now in the Smithsonian, I thinkbut I did stand-up in clubs for fifteen years and sometimes the only thing that kept me going was the thought that Rodney had dropped out of the business when he was thirty but had come back and made it when he was in his forties. Made it big. In a business that almost always values youth over talent, he wasand still isabsolute proof that its never too late to make your mark. You may have to quit for a while and sell some aluminum siding, but you dont have to give up your dreams.

Most people dont know this about Rodney, but he is also a very sweet and generous man. Were talking about a guy who has dozens of people walk up to him every day of his life and say, Hey, Rodney, Ill give you some respect, as if hes never heard it before, and not once has he cold-cocked anyone. That alone is an incredible achievement. I know because, apparently, Im smokin!

Rodney has written thousands of great jokes, but for me, his funniest line is his classic setup, I dont get no respect. Thats almost an inside joke because from me, and from all the hundreds of comedians he has helped and inspired, and from anybody who digs great comedy, he gets nothing but love and respect.

H ere I am, eighty-two years old, writing a book. According to statistics about men in their eighties, only one out of a hundred makes it to ninety. With odds like that, Im writing very fast. I want to get it all done. I mean, Im not a kid anymore, Im getting old. The other night, I was driving, I had an accident. I was arrested for hit-and-walk.

I know Im getting old, are you kiddin? I got no sex life. This morning, when I woke up, vultures were circling my crotch.

Hey, you know when youre really old? When your testicles tell you its time to mow the lawn.

Its 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.

Many years ago, my wife and I were living with a friend of mine in Englewood, New Jersey. He had a big house, and we all shared it for a while.

One night I came home late and I was hungry. I saw on the kitchen table a big, beautiful German chocolate cake. Right away, the plan hit me. I smoked a joint and then I started drinking skim milk and eating chocolate cake.

Before I knew it, I had eaten half the cake.

I lit a cigarette, sat back, and relaxed.

I looked over at the remaining cake. I noticed the chocolate was moving. I didnt believe it. I looked closer. I saw there were thousands of red ants stacked at the bottom of the cake, crawling all over. But there were no ants on the side of the plate where I had eaten the cake. I knew the ants hadnt stopped at that imaginary line.

I realized I had eaten an army of red ants.

I called the hospital. They told me not to worry, it would all come out as waste. Funny. Thats what a lot of people told my mother when she was pregnant with me.

Jump forward ten years. Im forty, broke. My mother is dying of cancer. I owe $20,000 to an aluminum-siding company. My wife is sick. Ive got two kids. I need money now. What am I gonna do?

Hey, wait a minute.

To tell this story right, I gotta go way back.

R oy and Arthur was a vaudeville comedy team. Roy was my father; Arthur was my uncle Bunk. On November 22, 1921, after their last show that night in Philadelphia, Phil Roy got a call backstage, where he was told, Its a boy!