Indeed, so many choices; where do I begin.  Since the person asking me for my best worst story is a comedian friend of mine in England for a book he’s completing, I thought I’d kill two comics with one stoner.   And, since it’s a London project, let’s start with probably my worst gig I ever had in England.  Now.  Many of my followers know of my incessant ranting and panting of how great the London comedy scene was and how I rode the wave as long as I could, and was ultimately brought down by British agents, who really only needed to push me a little further on my own petard.

New York Said Fuck YOU! 

After moving to NYC in 91, initially to interview the great comedian Alan King for a book I was writing at the time, I decided to spend a month in the city of my birth, although I was born in Long Island.  But, Manhattan was the core of the boroughs and through an odd connection through the Sex Pistols film Sid and Nancy, I ended up getting an apartment/converted hotel room at the world infamous Chelsea Hotel, or as the insider residents called it, the Hotel Chelsea.

Sandy Baron was a comedian, actor, and improviser, whose role as Charles ‘Chuck’ Hookstratten in the 1966-67 NBC series “Hey, Landlord”, and better known to my generation as indeed himself as the corned beef roundtable narrator of Woody Allen’s 1984 ode to small time entertainers “Broadway Danny Rose,” but was also returning character Jack Clomps on Seinfeld, as well as famously playing legendary comedian Lenny Bruce on Broadway.  But for me, there is only one role.  That of Stanley Bard, the manager of The Chelsea Hotel in Alex Cox’s 1986 film “Sid and Nancy,” which was about the last days and death of the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious (as brilliantly portrayed by “Churchill actor” Gary Oldman) and his knife-wielding live-in girlfriend, Nancy Spungun, Oscar worthy-ly portrayed by Chloe Webb.  It was Sandy Baron who recommended me to Stanley Bard, the manager of the Hotel Chelsea and whom Stanley was portraying in the film. My 30 days at the Chelsea extended to an incredible 14 years maintaining apartment 507 and included living with my then girlfriend Kathrine and getting to know all sorts of other residents such as Dee Dee Ramone, a wonderful artist for Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine, Richard Bernstein, and Viva one of Warhol’s so-called “Superstars”. During that time, I met in various stages of passing: Woody Allen, Arthur Miller, Keith Richards, Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore, and Ethan Hawk. Living at the Chelsea was a purposeful change-up from literally 10 years banging around The Comedy Store and indeed was my entrée into a writing career. I’ll need to devote entire chapter to my Chelsea life whenever I get around to writing that book people keep suggesting I do, but for right now, I want to focus on my worst comedy gig. Or one of them anyways.

The only break I got stand-up-wise in New York of consistent comedy spots, was Silver Friedman, who took-over the Improv at 44^th and 9^th, it’s original location when Budd moved west; where Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Andy Kaufman and Carol Liefer launched their fine careers.   Like Mitzi with The Comedy Store, Silver got The Improv as part of her divorce settlement, and rumor had it her lawyer got Budd to sign a covenant that he couldn’t open an Improv within 100 miles of New York. So when Silver’s incarnation of The Improv shuttered, mostly due I assume to overdevelopment in the Times Square area, I literally had no other clubs to work. Lucien Hold at The Comic Strip kept teasing me how good I was but never gave me work. I did a big bringer at Caroline’s, brought over 60 people thanks to Katherine who was working Comedy Central at the time, but I never got actually booked at what would soon become the big business sucking out of the smaller clubs NYC comedy flagship. And, although I signed with a really good New York book agent, and did a play or two, my father, who was ill, implored me to “go back to London” once more. For him. And, so in 1995, I kissed Katherine goodbye and that I’d “be back in 3 weeks” and there I went.

Again, it’s entire chapter about my London comedy life and how great it was, everything I’ve always dreamed of and more. But, for the purposes of the book for my friend William Wilding, I’d like to tell you the tale of “Stage Death”.

 Cosmic Justice

The Cosmic Comedy Club was a really cool comedy club. At 177 Fulham Palace Road in Hammersmith London, it was just a train or short cab ride away. I had already done something there before I ever did comedy there. I was in a film playing “the American big time TV producer”; the Cosmic being the filming location of an important scene. And when I first started doing comedy in London again (I first played the London Comedy Store 3 times in 1982) I did a gig which happened to award 100 Pounds to the best act of the night as voted by the audience, and I won and won against all the local British comics on the bill. That contest was at The Cosmic. So, I got known a little bit by the owner of the club, a woman named Joss. She started giving me regular spots and I don’t remember how many I did, but I do remember the last time I did a gig there.  Believe me; I wished I didn’t.

It was a Friday night and I started my gigs that night at Simon Randall’s Ha Bloody Ha comedy club in Ealing, which was like doing an early gig in Pasadena then doing another gig in Santa Monica. And these things never time out right. One gig starts late, you call the second gig, they say they’re running behind, then after you hang up, the next comic doesn’t show so they put on the headliner. Total chaos unless there wasn’t.   I did my little “stormed it” in Ealing, then got a cab straight to Hammersmith to do my spot at the Cosmic Comedy Club.

When I got to the Cosmic, it was a packed house. 350 men and women in the crowd, drinking and laughing. What I didn’t know about was who they were laughing at. Comedian Noel Britten from Bath, England. And what I didn’t know about Noel was that his act at the time was largely based on “how stupid Americans are”.   Now. Going back to my touring Canada days, playing every Yuk-Yuks from Toronto to Moose Jaw, I already had my built in opener, which was designed to “let the steam outta the room” a little up front and to show “them” that I knew their game.  I would always open my touring act this way:

“Good evening. My name is Steven Alan Green and I am from Hollywood, Los Angeles California, the United States of America!”

Then I’d just stand there like Superman. Every single time, the audience would do a mass “boooo!”. I would then feign trying to figure it out and then say:

“Ah! I know where I went wrong. Let’s try this again. Please welcome Steven Alan Green!”

To my delight, the audience would applaud even greater this time and then I would say into the mic:

“My name’s Steven Alan Green and I am from London!”

The crowd would cheer; then I would strike a second time…

“So. Do we have any Americans here tonight? I hate those bleedin’ wankers.”

The crowd burst into laughter every single time and loved me from then on out throughout my set. But this time, this night at the Cosmic Comedy Club was quite a different experience indeed.  Remember British comedian Noel Britten and his anti-American act?

So, by the time I got to The Cosmic, Noel was finishing up a rip-roaring storming killing set. I wasn’t paying attention to it because I had to get ready for my set, which was to immediately follow. Noel finishes to a virtual standing-O and leaves the stage. And not his fault whatsoever, he leaves the stage empty. This was because the emcee, a comic named Wara, was nowhere to be found. I mean the stage was empty with all that great comedy inertia generated by Noel just dissipating, having nowhere to go other than that bad place. After an interminable 3 minutes, Wara hastily returns to the mic and says without any sort of professional encouragement to either me or the audience: “Please welcome your next comedian. He’s from America.” Didn’t even say my name. The crowd began to boo even before I hit the stage.

The crowd began to boo even before I hit the stage.

Thinking (stupidly, as it turns out) that, “Ah HAH! This will play right into my opening gambit’s hands, I felt more confident than ever. I leaned into the mic and said with all force and bravado: “My name is Steven Alan Green and I am from Hollywood, Los Angeles California, the United States of America!”. Well. This was akin to literally throwing gasoline on a fire. The entire audience of what must’ve seemed like 350 office blokes, all started to shout back at me, and heckle me and put down America and they just wouldn’t even give me a chance. I tried to let them get it out of their system, but the more I did nothing, the more they spewed drunken venom at me in particular, simply because I was an American. I finally called them all “cunts” and left the stage. I passed the night manager, some uptight stupid office type girl who rather than giving me a shoulder to cry on, she scolded me even more. I left dejected, hurt, confused. I tried to straighten it out with Joss days later, but wasn’t having it and maybe months later I called her and apologized, even though I didn’t think I was entirely at fault here, if even at all. Her response, and I’ll never forget this. Joss said to me on the phone: “I accept your apology, but you can never work my club again.”   Great. Cosmic justice. Couple of years later at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I would run into Noel Britten, who was doing a show at the same venue I was. I remember we sat and talked and what a nice bloke.

The worst part of this story? Now that I’ve written it and remembered it, it’s not by far my worst ever gig. Having said that, it’ll do for now.

This is Steven Alan Green and I’m an American!

For The Hollywood Dog,

This has been Steven Alan “Whoofy” Green

Sag, The Naked Blogger, 4/22/18

stevenalangreen.com

Water Lilies (Nympheas) by Claude Monet, once described as “The Sistine Chapel of Impressionism”, as a random example, taught me that if I did a little studying before taking that young lass to the art museum, I might stand a decent chance of getting some good ole American action.  It never worked.  I never left a good enough impression.  And in the same way, seeing comic actor Larry Hankin’s one-man show tonight, I did a little studying as well.  I was homeless.  Well, not smelly pushing a shopping cart full of plastic sharks down Venice Boulevard homeless; no.  I’m talking about couch-surfing at every type of other people’s domiciles from a crooked short hard business couch in the basement of a party crack house to a full bedroom in someone’s glorious home to occasionally sleeping in my car (or trying to), famously sleeping at spas in Koreatown, as well as a few sleepless nights at “the coffee hotel,” as I call it.  An all nite diner. Drinking coffee and trying not to pass out.   You see, even when I was at poverty level, I did have my standards.  Larry Hankin, on the other hand, has no standards and that’s exactly what we love about him.  He is above standards.

“He’s chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature”

(Bowie’s The Bewlay Brothers – Hunky Dory 1971)

If you took the late Lord Buckley, infused him with a little Charles Bukowski, then just very lightly sprinkled him with the magic of the late Marty Feldman, you get actor, character actor, chameleon, comedian, and Corinthian Hankin.  From his utterly iconic role as the actor who the fictional network within the series of Seinfeld wanted to cast as “Kramer” rather than the real Kramer, who was actually Micheal Richards whose character was based on some real guy named Kenny Kramer.  (Head explode yet?)   The packed out sold-out house at The Fanatic Salon (the most user friendly comedy theater venue on the West Side; free wine darlings…at least for this show) were like little children unwrapping their anticipated gift, and not only finding their favorite toy, but batteries too. Rusted leaky batteries, but batteries nonetheless.  An amazing soul stationed within a tall thin tough but with intense and specific character looking sweet guy.   The convict you want to be on the good side of when you go to prison, because I know you, the reader, cheated on their taxes and I ratted you out to the Feds already.

“When you’re homeless, there are only two things you have to worry about.  How you’re gonna get through the day and where you’re gonna sleep tonight.” – Larry Hankin’s How To Be Homeless

How To Be Homeless is not a Debbie Downer by a long stretch.  What I witnessed tonight was like discovering the most talented troubadour street person who is university professor smart and yeah, maybe a little nuts.  Yes, nuts. But, “nuts” in the way your dad would pretend to be a scary monster to show he loved you more than anything in this world, including the annoying wife he married for her looks which were left out by the curb a decade ago and her money’s running out.  Tonight’s show consisted of four stories, each one about what seemed like a real person, but when improbable detail upon ridiculous circumstance hooked up, one knew they were being put on in the best possible way.  Larry Hankin wants one thing of his audience.  He clearly wants us to have fun.  He’s a complex performer and one can occasionally see the seams fraying within his mind, but to our delight, his recovery is as acrobatically adept as when Carson would screw up a joke.  “Sometimes Jones” is the first character we’re introduced to, and we think and indeed believe this is a real person Larry hung out with when he was homeless in San Francisco for a stretch.   Sometimes Jones steals the president’s wallet and in the wallet is a “get out of death card” and when the grimmest of reapers shows up for his soul, Jones hands him the card, gets to live impermeably and then, just as he’s about to make his getaway, he nicks the card back.

“I make collages out of clarity for art.  I mix up reality for cash”

Hankin doesn’t act out these stories in character; he narrates them, but then when his characters need to speak, Hankin seamlessly steps in, voices, then quickly steps off the character boat and swiftly back onto narrator’s deck.  And he does it without taking a breath.  His energetic art of delivery at top of the show was incredible doggerel poems, literally worthy of the best Hip Hop by way of the great Lord Buckley.  The show is presented without form, without pretense and without a break.   Once strapped in, we’re suddenly on a rickety roller-coaster, commanded by a man who has either just robbed a bank or worse, discovered the cure for cancer and is about to be assassinated by Big Pharma.  The thing about actors is that like all of them have never lived a real life outside the profession.   Even when he was truly homeless, living out of his car, Hankin was an entertainer.  The skills he used to survive were not just how do I eat and where do I sleep, but what can I observe, what can I learn, because it all goes into one big personal creative melting pot.  That of his craft.  There are just so many twists and turns — all completely unexpected — one forgets Hankin is also a writer; and a good one at that.  Both Swiftian and Dickensian, Larry Hankin is a Hollywood treasure in the same way the great Scottish actor Tom Conti is in the UK.   Hankin’s extremely recent appearance on Bill Hader’s new series “Barry” as the assassin has some in this godforsaken town buzzing.  And I mean duh.  This Second City and The Committee company member learned from the masters, worked with the masters and by artistic alchemy, Larry Hankin is a master.

I caught up with Larry after tonight’s performance and did a micro-interview:

SAG: “Larry.  Because I wanted to simply cut and paste your exact wording you emailed me, I’ve put it in this fake interview format.  I hope you don’t mind.  Thought it would save time.”

LH:   “No problem, Steven.  I appreciate the good review, by the way.”

SAG:  “No problem.  One day I may come to you and ask for a favor…”

LH:   “What?”

SAG:  “Nothing.  So, please tell me in your own words, which I will copy and paste into the end roll, as it were, of this piece, what your show is about.”

LH:   “Certainly, Steven.  I love the top-hat by the way.  

SAG: “Thanks.  I got it up on Hollywood….”

LH:    “Lose the tights.”

SAG: “Pardone?”

LH:  “It’s a show I wrote about my experiences of being homeless for about a year in San Francisco back-in-the-day: I kind-of folded it all up into funny fables, stories and rants based on what I did, saw and heard that year, and the scams and schemes to just get through the day. The show’s mainly told through two characters I met and still write about: one is a 15 year-old master pickpocket I call Sometimes Jones; and the other is a 70-year-old, self-proclaimed ‘Urban Survivalist’: a homeless, poet-window-washer-panhandler street guru I named Emmett Deemus: he’s still homeless after 40 years, proud of it, and now living on the beach in Venice, California and the show is also about his take on the difference between being, ‘…homeless an’ bein’ Home Free’. It’s me telling stories of not only what homeless and hungry is like and the trips you find yourself going through, but really the bazaar or clever schemes you’d never-ever think you or anyone else would think up just to get through one day. It ain’t easy. But yeah: to me, in hindsight, the worse it got, the funnier it was.” 

I am in nothing but awe of Larry Hankin; both his art and his life, or as those in the know like to think of him: Larry Hankin.

“How To Be Homeless”  was written & is performed by Larry Hankin and enjoys its limited run at The Fanatic Salon with just two more shows remaining.  This Friday April 20 and next Friday April 27.  8pm show, plenty of parking.  Free wine (possibly again).    Tickets only sold at the door and call in reservations a must to guarantee a seat.  Call 310 622 2046

For The Hollywood Dog,

This has been Steven Alan “Whoofy” Green

Sag/4/14/18

Album cover art took a powder on August 1st, 1981.

That dreaded date will live in infamy, for MTV was born as it was the beginning of then end of the fetishization of rock n roll album art.  Soon shrunk to a DVD, iconic visual imagery of the music makers would forever (it seems) be relegated to the swift electronic flashes of the music video.  Music would devolve into assembly line production of electronic melody, beat boxes and choreography.  Marshal McLuhan was right.   The medium is the message.  Few music artists would not just survive the video onslaught, but would make hay with it in ways we couldn’t even begin to comprehend.  Bowie, Talking Heads, Devo, and of course Madonna.  Oh, yeah; and Michael. Those guys kept their videos music true to who they were as musical artists.  Dancers and other visual acts who happen to be great musicians. Flash forward a 100 years and wowzie; the Internet has spiked the ever-evolving youth culture into a new land of visual delight and explanation.  Welcome to the world of rock n roll photographer Mark Maryanovich.

Canadian born and America burnished, Maryanovich doesn’t just capture the moment like a wild beast, he invites it in and offers it a cup of tea.

Avidly aware of corporate marketing need, as well as the sacred trust of the artist to keep his or her message pure, Maryanovich meets both artist and suits halfway and does it without compromising either side.  Take for example his work with the late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell.  The image of Cornell resting next to his Gibson electric is both symmetrical as well as conflicted; compounded in a way which darkens the green of his guitar, contrasting it with the purity of his bright white T-shirt, as well as the darkening encroaching Abbey Road like bricks on either side, giving the inescapable conclusion this is an important, complex and indeed ultimately doomed musical artist.  One gets the feeling Maryanovich is clever-er than he even lets on, which is always a delight when as one of the record keepers of history and the corporate curators of culture, not only understand, but employ artists on every level of product.

The glowing stage presence of Guns N’ Roses/Velvet Revolver bassist Duff McKagan is akin to photographic evidence of life on Mars; the clear depression of golden hair, sweaty skin and tethered leather second skin gives all we need to know about that moment, but at the same time, ominously too pure an image.  And that seems to be what Mark Maryanovich does best.  Not just capturing the right moment.  What Mark Maryanovich actually does is what all great photo-artists of his time do.   They influence our vision.

From book to album covers, portrait and journalism, like a really good singer, Maryanovich covers it all.

His work with women shows their power, their beauty, their intelligence and not in a fetishistic way.  Maryonovich and his camera act like keepers of the flame, as evidenced by the simply unadulterated clarity of his work. The observer gets the feeling that he not only loves what he does for a living, there’s ample evidence Mark Maryanovich loves his subjects. That concept compared to the all time greats, Adsel Adams loved his pine trees, Diane Arbus loved a good freak, and Annie Leibowitz loves Mick Jagger’s lips. Maryanovich loves the unknown, both the actual unknown, but also the unknown within the known. (Wait a second. Did I just say that?)

From book to album covers, portrait and journalism, like a really good singer, he covers it all. Ultimately, what makes Mark Maryanovich a stand-out in the field of personality photography is that he’s quiet, unassuming, and friendly.   He can afford to be. He’s armed with a camera.

To learn more and see his incredible work, as well as contact info visit markmaryanovich.com

For The Hollywood Dog,

This is Steven Alan “Woophy” Green

Sag

The Naked Blogger

4/9/18

Well, first of all I’m naked. That’s my thing.  In order for me to write my best, I need to be naked. Got me thrown out of Starbucks but hey; we all have our creative methods. Guess they didn’t approve of my laptop; ha bloody ha. For most of my childhood and adult life, nothing has been more important to me than comedy. Comedy got me through a very rough childhood, where yelling and divorce and never seeing mommy or daddy ever again; and then rinse and repeat over the course of 10 years, yeah; you too would be as fucked up as me.

However, I learned very early on, that the best thing you can do for yourself in this lifetime is to choose your fucked-up-ness.  It’s gonna happen anyway.   Nobody is so-called “normal” and we don’t trust them anyway.  They voted in Trump, remember?  No.  My chosen reality is to see life as a comedy, ’cause if I don’t, then it’s just way too boring.  Which finally brings me to comedy showman Ron Lynch.

Ron Lynch is the Comedy Devil Incarnate

There are nice people in this town and I should introduce Ron to some of them, because after all, he is the epitome of a nice man.  As the voice of “Ron” on Carton Network and Fox’s Bob’s Burgers, Mr. Lynch is somewhat the Billy Bob Thornton of comedy.   His singular late night creation, The Tomorrow Show, is insiders comedy for the outsider.   Imagine Soupy Sales asking the kids to send him a tittie magazine, rather than a dollar.  Add some Terry Gilliam’s surreal madness and throw in a little Andy “Is he for real?” Kaufman, and you pretty much have a slab of dead flesh and I’d call the cops and split if I were you.

But, if I weren’t you (and I assure you; I’m not and wouldn’t want to be, no offense) I would catch the next Tomorrow Show.  That is, if you can.  The show tends to sells out nearly every Saturday, but I think you can get tickets in advance; I’m not sure and they’re not paying me enough for this blog review to look it up, or as you kids say, “Google it”.

Rita Hayworth was married to Orson Wells

And I have no fucking clue if that has anything to do with this story, other than The Tomorrow Show Starring Ron Lynch ended its successful multi-year run at The Steve Allen Theatre as the city of Los Angeles loved The Tomorrow Show so much, they demolished the building.   Now, The Hayworth Theatre on Wilshire is in danger as Ron Lynch and his incredible eye for the oddity talent has relocated to the brand spanking new bitched up venue.   Dynasty Typewriter – is the grand overseer, the venue runner, the curators of great new comedy.   In fact, some upstart comic, Adam Sandler is his name as I recall, well he did a run there a few weeks ago and my sources tell me Messer Sandler is planning his Netflix special to be filmed at Dynasty Typewriter.  Don’t quote me, but that’s what I heard and again, I’m not Googling it.  I’m naked. Isn’t that enough?  Former artistic director of the Hollywood Improv, Jamie Flam is the man behind the vision of the rebirthed and rebranded venue.   And with the recent sad demise of Nerd Melt on Sunset, as well as the ever growing popularity of Chick-fil-A, this is assuredly happy comedy news.

“Ron Lynch is the Walt Disney of Weird and the world he creates every week is far beyond our collective unconscious to fully understand.  But, like all great entertainment and art, it’s worth a try.”

— and you can quote me!  Steven Alan Green, The Hollywood Dog

With polymath talent extraordinaire Martin Olson

on the keyboards and on stage as Lynch’s literal comedy lynchpin, he’s like Paul Shaffer to Ron Lynch’s Adolf Hitler.   ‘Cept Ron ain’t no Shicklegruber; no sir.  Ron is like Dan Rowan if he was secretly dosing himself through his whisky and soda with LSD, meanwhile the comedy soul of Buster Keaton tied up backstage, with Ernie Kovacks in his earpiece feeding him genius lines and moves.  Every Tomorrow Show is different.  All of them have guests, both musical and comedy and there’s always sketch comedy that seems to come out of nowhere.  Forth wall?  We don’t need no stinking 4th wall, as Lynch will literally count then juggle 200 sets of eyeballs and somehow make magic with all of our minds whether we go kicking and screaming or willingly like lemmings off the comedy cliff of death.   Olson, another genius polymath, is best known for his head writing on Disney’s Phineas and Ferb; but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find a modern-day Ambrose Bierce as evidenced by Olson’s brilliant satirical tomb The Encyclopedia of Hell.

What the hell else are you gonna do on a Saturday night at midnight? In LA?  Hello?

What?  Sit at Canters and try and count the age lines on Rodney Bingenheimer’s forehead?  Listen.  This is the place to be.   The Tomorrow Show Starring Ron Lynch at DynastyTypewriter at The Hayworth Theatre.  It’s only 10 bucks and plenty of parking if you walk a block or two you lazy Angelino fucks.  Perfect date.  Bring your tattoo buddy to a DTLA food truck, dine in style, see a movie, feel sorry for the homeless, then get to the The Hayworth and see and be part of what always feels like comedy history.  You never know who you’ll see on stage or literally in the next seat.  It’s a real Hollywood crayzo interesting “celebrity” magnet.

FOR MORE INFO, DATES, SHOWS, HOW TO GET TICKETS, ETC, THEN CLICK HERE, THE GREEN BIT, THE ENTIRE GREEN BIT

But Steven.  Do you guarantee that we’ll have a great time?

No.  Fuck no.  You’ve never seen anything like The Tomorrow Show and I guarantee you never will.  Take a Saturday afternoon cat nap and get there.   Trust me; I’m a doctor.

For the Hollywood Dog,

This has been Steven Alan “Woofie” Green

The Naked Blogger

4/6/18 

STEVEN ALAN GREEN DOT COM