Still Foolin' 'Em by Billy Crystal Read Free Book Online Page A

suit sleeve. I’m telling the waiter how great the lobster looks and he’s suddenly throwing water on my left arm and ripping off my burning jacket. If that wasn’t bad enough, the shirt I had on was too big for me, so we’d shortened the sleeves with safety pins and rubber bands. With my jacket scorched, I ended up sitting there looking like a little boy wearing his father’s shirt, next to my lollipop-red bride, who was in constant pain. (“It hurts to sit down.”) Now, that’s romantic.

June 4, 1970. I did.
    We spent most of our honeymoon running lines for the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which I was opening in shortly after we returned. I played Rosencrantz, and Janice played everyone else. Over the course of our marriage, she has played, among others, Sally (before Meg Ryan did), Curly from City Slickers , and even Hamlet. Though she’s not an actress, she gave Ken Branagh (who played Hamlet in the 1996 movie; I was the gravedigger) a run for the money. Seeing the mother of my kids, in a nightgown, say, “Alas, poor Yorik, I knew him well” is something I’ll never forget.
    As Janice and I settled into our married life, the comedy trio continued to perform, but we couldn’t break through. I loved Dave and Al, but inside I knew I was really a stand-up comedian. I started to think about how to go out on my own, which seemed very daunting. The group finally caught a big break when we were signed by David Frost to make an appearance on a network special called That Was the Year That Was.
    It was hosted by Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber, a popular comedy team at the time. Our sketch documented the making of the first marijuana commercial. (It was our best piece.) I played a stiff Ted Baxter kind of actor who gets progressively smashed as he does take after take, smoking “the product.” We taped the show, and the audience loved it. We knew that appearing on a network program could really help get us going, so on the night of the broadcast we had a party to celebrate our television debut. What we didn’t know was that the network wouldn’t air the sketch because it was about pot. Our agent couldn’t reach us, so there we were, first all excited, then freaked out as the show went on and on and no 3’s Company. Finally, Jack and Avery said good night, the credits rolled, and there we were, waving and smiling, standing next to the hosts. They were able to cut us out of everything but the closing credits. The phone started to ring. It was the relatives: “Very good waving,” “You looked good, Billy, I like the way you wave.”
    Things continued in this vein, the three of us always taking chances that never panned out. After a while, it gets lonely at the middle. My anxiety got worse and worse. Then Janice got pregnant. I have to admit, I was kind of shocked when she told me. It happened so fast. The Crescent should be this fertile. We weren’t set up financially for a child. Janice had a good job, which she would have to stop at some point, and the substitute teaching brought a cool forty-five bucks a day into my Swiss bank account. The most money I had ever made with the group in one year was $4,200. After a few years like this, we were audited because I had well over $12,000 in travel expenses. Janice did our taxes at the time, and when the auditor sternly asked her, “Why is he in this business?” Janice simply said, “It’s in his blood.”
    Now I was to become a father, before I could legitimately call myself a comedian. The responsibility of adding a new person to the world—not to mention our tiny apartment—was overwhelming. Still, I felt sure it was coming time for me to leave the group and go out on my own.
    As the pregnancy progressed, we took Lamaze classes and, being the suburban hippies we were, decided to try natural childbirth. The relaxation exercises and the breathing techniques worked great in the class, and once Janice started having contractions … “THIS FUCKING