Bill Dawes - August 25, 2008

(Why I Became a Comic, Part 1)

I got fired from 'Burning Blue,' ostensibly, for calling a woman a 'cunt.' But that's not all the calculus in the equation.

Let's three-arrow-bloop-bloop-bloop TiVo rewind from the dropping of the cuntomic bomb to the previous night, where I got another anonymous and petty note, this time about my underwear.

The costume designer had quit the show several weeks ago, so we actors, for the most part, were left to our own devices in terms of wardrobe decisions. Considering I'm naked and/or half naked throughout, I bought a pair of goofy American flag boxers to wear in the second act as a comedy call-back to silly Smiley-Face boxers I sported in the first act. "Shit, I'm stripping and naked and wet in November, the least these fuckers could do is let me have a little fun with my underpants," I reasoned. Again, the bookended boxers got a big laugh plus they completely worked with the irreverent mischievousness of my character. However, it wasn't written in the play, hence the note that Thursday - despite the fact that I had been wearing them the whole week.

The new directive confused and frustrated me, so I asked the stage manager why I couldn't wear them. He didn't answer; he simply smiled sarcastically and left in a spritz of gay smugness. When I went to my dressing room, I was further chagrined by the fact that my underwear had literally been HIDDEN from me.

I don't want to go TOO DEEP into the specifics of the firing, but let me just say this: apparently, some women get offended when you call them 'cunts'. I seem to find, In particular, that cunts think it especially offensive. Although I understand the catastrophic power of the 'c' word, I think when used appropriately it can accurately describe the heinous behavior of a woman (or man) better than anything else in Webster's. Now there are some people who liken it to the 'n' word, and those people are 'STUPID cunts.' The 'n' word is a racial epithet, while the 'c' word strictly connotes behavior. In order for someone to get the label of a 'c', their behavior has to be 'c' - worthy, and it has nothing to do with color of skin or type of genitalia the person possesses.

This woman was 'c' - worthy, to say the least.

Without instructions about WHAT drawers to don and not having any other options provided by the production, I retrieved my funny boxers and wore them onstage the following night. As I came offstage for a quick change in the dressing room, the assistant stage manager - let's call her Twatty McStinkybox -- barged in and verbally accosted me in front of the entire cast for wearing the aforementioned boxers... loudly... during a show. Did I mention it was during a show?

I quietly told her to address it "after the show." She said, "Fuck you." I told her not to speak to me "like that in the middle of a performance." She repeated, "Fuck you." Target activated, C bomb dropped. Tada! Simple math.

Although I didn't get a chance to talk to anyone about the incident, the assistant stage manager ran to the producers that night and, thusly, without a conversation, chance for rebuttal or defense, I was fired on the spot due to the "sexual and incendiary nature" of that delicious and frankly, underused, word.

I know this all sounds ridiculous and it's just my side of the story. I mean, don't you wish you had a New York Post article about this scandalous incident and the subsequent firing? Substantiated by witnesses and written by a third, objective, and credible party?

Ok, here it is:

Click for the full New York Post article, "Naked Aggression"

As a caveat to the article, I think it's important to note that I don't have a HUGE penis. I sit comfortably somewhere between well above average and miniscule. Truth be told, some of my exes probably wanted to sue the post for libel. Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm a lucky guy, I could have probably been a porn star... in Asia... but what's more interesting is the fact that the NEW YORK POST dedicated the entire front page of their entertainment section to my turkeyneck.

Let me break the silence as to why an article about the scandal of my dismissal became a meditation on my manhood.

My agent called me on Monday (I had been fired Friday) telling me that gossip mongerer Michael Riedel wanted to do a "piece" about my firing. When Riedel called, I said, "No comment." He called 2 hours later saying that the director, John Hickock, had PLENTY TO COMMENT ON, namely that the cast was unprofessional and 'violated equity rules by changing the blocking' and crap like that. He's THAT guy, with the rules and the cellphone clip on his belt. On the flip side, he also pierces his ears and only wears black jeans, a little too tight for someone in their mid-forties living in Westchester. You know the guy. The nerd/midlife crisis hybrid. Yes, he got short-sheeted at camp when he was a kid. But now he's just an asshole with a Miata.

Anyway, after hearing Hickock's tripe, I pulled what many college football aficionados call the Statue of Liberty play. I decided to "randomly" bring up his public declarations about my dick. Sure enough, the article about my firing took a left turn down lingam lane. The New York Post couldn't resist and unfortunately for John Hickok, the other actors had phones as well, which could be answered in order to relay the truth - which was a hundred percent corroboration about my grievances. That bizarre abortion of an article, "Naked Aggression," is the result.

Why is it the Statue of Liberty play? When friends of mine told me they read the article and I said, "the one about me getting fired?" they often responded, "uh... you were fired?" Look at lady liberty!

A piece about my firing became a piece about my piece. Tom Brady would have been proud.

Regardless, the genitalia junket was a Pyrrhic Victory. Being fired is a lot like being dumped. Even if it's a shitty situation and you want out, and even if you tell everyone you know how crappy and untenable the relationship is, when your power gets summarily usurped like that, and quickly, it taps into the most insecure 'mommy doesn't love me' childhood memories stuffed away into the deepest spaghetti folds of your mind. You can feign insouciance, but Proustian memories swell up that smell of epilepsy puke on an elementary school carpet covered with sawdust and a day of single-file silence down celotex interiors.

I was left reeling. All I wanted to do was sleep. In a fetal position. I did that for the full weekend. I simply couldn't get out of bed. Then I wandered the streets for the following week like a zombie, sleeping 'til 2pm and staying up 'til 6am watching comforting fodder from my youth in the 80's. Thank you, Saved by the Bell reruns.

Latent issues regarding my life and/or status as an artist were awakened. Here I was, in my late twenties, unhappy once again. Burning bridges and seemingly unable to stop myself, once again. Should I quit acting in the theatre? Did I even like it?

When I looked into some of my dissatisfaction, I noticed that often, in my career as an Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway actor, I felt like I was held hostage by mediocre writing and mediocre direction, despite the mythology that those venues were the crucible for "great work." Not that all theatre is like this, I just have often found that having an unbelievably rewarding theatre experience has to be a perfect confluence of cast, direction, writing, set, costume, lighting, you name it. Somewhere along the way, somebody will (usually) inevitably suck balls at their job. This play wasn't festering with ineptitude, but there was a certain axiom in effect that, I think, ended up serving as the flimsy asphalt paving the way to the hell this play was steering itself. (Did I just mix like 7 metaphors? Oh well, maybe I should be a playwright.)

The axiom is this: the playwright is God. The words of the playwright are immaculately shat from the turdcutter of Krishna and, by the sheer grace of universal divinity, we lowly actors are able to catch the nuggets onto our scripts. Any deviation from this axiom means only one thing: YOU'VE GOT A FUCKING ATTITUDE PROBLEM!

Playwrights' words should be respected. I get it. But sometimes, shit they write might not work. As a performer whose dedication is to service the production of a living piece of theatre, I don't feel the need to flog myself with a horsewhip like a Goddamn albino monk if I use the word 'this' because it flows better than 'the' in the moment.

I changed one word and got almost waterboarded by the playwright; I wore funny underwear and I was pranked and subsequently accosted. Both of my choices got huge laughs in places where huge laughs were required or at least needed. What was really going on here? What was I really coming up against? I didn't get.

I dolly-zoomed out and took an inventory of my life and reached a sad, and sobering, conclusion:
I had put myself $60k in debt from NYU grad school in order to worship at the altar of SACRED THEATRE and it was all... ego and bullshit. The curtain had been pulled back and the wizard was just a moderately talented gay dude with time on his hands and a script-formatting program.

These simmering thoughts fired up the tension that resulted in my immediate dismissal, as described by the New York Post.

What's the final result of all of this unnecessary drama and bullshit?

The spontaneous 'gobble' line set in motion an unrest that left me so disillusioned with SACRED THEATRE that I paid 5 bucks, stepped onstage at an open mike, and bombed for a deliciously opiate 4 minutes.

5 years later, I'm a closer and a beast. If you want to challenge me when I'm stage, you better wake up early. I have fun. I literally drink on the job. I say whatever the fuck I want and my only obligation is the sometimes slippery result of making people laugh. Once, I even did an entire audition scene for a movie from the stage to an audience member without anyone knowing what I was doing. Why? Because I can.

And the audience? Usually they love me, although some in the crowd are bored. Yeah, some even hate me. Every so often, I get a heckler. Once I even got a death threat.

But I have never EVER gotten the glow from a blue pen.

- - - - -

This May marked the five-year anniversary of my first professional gig as a comic. In a nice bit of serendipity, it also marks two years of my touring relationship with Jamie Kennedy. A meeting that has allowed me to travel to Iraq, South Africa, the Phillipines, and all over the world doing precisely what I love most. Well, with my pants on.

This summer also ends my time as the comic-in-residence and golden boy of the New York Laugh Factory. It has now changed names and ownership since my manager and mentor, Jamie Masada, has packed his bags from the NY scene.

Similarly, I am packing my bags and heading west. I hope I meet some of you out there and I hope you come to the LA Laugh Factory to see me perform.

And make sure you leave the notepad at home.

Posted by Bill Dawes at 8:50 AM