Bill Grundfest [Interview]

Why hello there old comedy loving friends. As you may have noticed in the last few months, we have grown quite fond of the world of stand up comedy lately. It is an ever-loving passion we have had for quite some time, but we have worked to bring to to an all new light lately. And today we have a perfect guest to help put us directly on top! Today we are speaking with the legendary comedian/writer/founder of the acclaimed Comedy Cellar in New York City, the great Bill Grundfest.

If you are any sort of fan of stand up comedy, or truly funny in general, there is no possible way you are not aware of the the legendary Comedy Cellar. It has appeared in just about every project that took comedy even remotely serious, including the recent De Niro fronted film The Comedian, which I have I recently watched on a plane, and have to say was actually pretty damn entertaining. Anyway, our main man Bill is the man who’s ass you should all be proverbially kissing, because he is the man who developed the original concept, and created the now legendary Comedy Cellar.

And what is more interesting….he left it all. He developed a comedic empire, and then simply gave it away. Why the fuck would you do that, you may ask? Well, when the end result would eventually be to become a Golden Globe award winning television writer on the coast with more sunshine, it probably wouldn’t seem so crazy. And that is exactly what he did. A man like Bill Grundfest is loaded with so much talent that it is almost unfair to his peers. He has had an incredible career that has spanned decades.

And we are so damn excited that he was gracious enough to share a few words with us here at Trainwreck’d Society today! We have had some legends in the past, but having Bill here today feels absolutely surreal, and we are so damn happy to have him! So please enjoy some great words from the amazing Bill Grundfest!

What was some of the earliest material you can remember performing when you first began telling jokes?

My first joke was when I was 5, and my audience was my Post World War II immigrant, barely-speaking-English parents. It was the Knock Knock, who’s there?, banana/orange joke. If you need me to write the joke out, forget it.

I was 34, had had a radio show on NBC, a couple of cable specials, but I wasn’t becoming a star, and could see 40 looming. I wanted to be in the major leagues of television and if it couldn’t be as the star of a sitcom or talk show, then as a writer/producer would be fine. Rule #1: If you are willing to do literally anything to achieve a clearly envisioned goal, the odds are actually pretty good you’ll achieve it. Most people aren’t willing to do literally anything. I was – starting with being brutally honest with myself about my chances of becoming a star.

It would work still today. New anythings in this business need to step outside the norm and do something crazy. You must break out of the safety of the “norm.” Failure to become a success is what’s normal in show biz. If you want to succeed in anything, you have to risk looking like an idiot.

There’s an amazing amount of good TV out there. My only complaint is: can we stop with the “anti-hero” bullshit? It’s not funny, not cool, it’s really coarsening the culture and destroying the very idea of a “value system.”

Writing a sitcom is like writing a song – to be a hit you have to write a great song and have a great performer sing it. As writers, our staff was among the best in TV, and we had Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt to sing what we wrote.

It’s in a shrine my mother has to her sons, in between my 3 Emmy nominations, and a Peabody award.

I’m attached to a couple of pilots and am very big in China, where we adapted Mad About You for a Chinese cast and audience – and were the number one show for our run with hundreds of millions of views.

BMy kids. They love me. Go figure.

Just so you know, Bill was not over exaggerating about the impact of Mad About You in China. Check out this amazing insight from The Wall Street Journal: