PASADENA, Calif. — At first life didn’t seem too promising for comedian Louie Anderson. He grew up in the projects, number 10 of 11 children, suffered a learning disability, and was fired from his job at Clark’s gas station in Minneapolis because he couldn’t get the money right.
All that didn’t bode well for the chubby kid who was bullied occasionally because of his size. “I didn’t finish school but I went in and did volunteer social work,” he recalls over lunch in a hotel here.
“One night we were out with our social-work friends and they were having open mic night. I said, ‘They’re not funny.’ They said, ‘You think you’re so funny, why don’t you try it?’ The next week I signed up. Then I just started doing that, and whatever night I could get on, I did it. I didn’t earn a living.”
In fact, he was counting on Clark’s gas station to see him through, but when that failed he tried unloading boxes from trucks. “It was horrible — unloading box after box,” he rolls his eyes. “We went to lunch and I never went back. My dad said, ‘What are you doing?’ I said, ‘I quit.’ He said, ‘What? You can’t quit a job!’ But I did.
“Then I worked with my dad cleaning McDonald’s at night. I worked as an all-night counselor at a shelter. I was good at that, the kids liked me, and I was a nice person. I’d been through a lot of stuff and they’d been through a lot of stuff, so it was nice. Then I stumbled on comedy at 25,” he says, digging into his broiled salmon.
Finally Anderson loaded up the ’68 Malibu Classic his nephew had given him, pocketed the $600 he’d saved, and drove to L.A. to get serious about comedy.
His friend, comic Jimmy Walker, convinced Mitzi Shore, the exacting owner of the Comedy Club, to let Anderson try out. “Then she made me an unpaid regular and (later) a paid regular. I’m still friends with the Shores,” he says.
In spite of the ups and downs of those early years, Anderson, 63, says he never wanted to quit. “I’m not a quitter. My dad drank for his whole life and I hardly ever drink. I have some champagne once in a while. Dad was a famous musician with Hoagy Carmichael but his alcoholism hurt his career,” he says, ordering a small glass of champagne.
It was a fellow comic, who did a bit with an out-of-tune harmonica and a plastic pickle, that gave Anderson his mission. “He pulled me aside and said, ‘Louie, if you do stuff about your family and you’re a clean comic, you’ll be famous.’
“For some reason I took him up on it. I cleaned up my act, didn’t swear at all on stage. I just did stuff about my family then started doing stuff about my dad, then my mom, little brother, and it resonated great with people.”
In 1984 Anderson snagged the Holy Grail by appearing on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.” “He really loved me and that night was THE best, that was such a great night,” he smiles. “I went from obscurity, making a few hundred dollars a week to making $1,000 a night.”
His family remains the essence of his comedy. He lost his only younger brother in February, a thought that still brings tears to his eyes. “That was the hardest. I miss him so much. That’s what really changed me as a human,” he nods.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to worry about anything again. I’m not going to be troubled by things anymore. I’m going to live every day and that’s it. I’ve been able to do it.”
In spite of his success, Anderson still regrets that he wasn’t kinder to his mother and closer to his dad. But he more than makes up for that imagined neglect with his homage to his mother in FX’s “Baskets,” in which he portrays Zach Galifianakis’ mother.
“I’ve always played my mother in my act,” he shrugs. “I’ve always played my mom-character. And all I was trying to do was how can I channel my mother without being too cartoony because in my act it’s a little cartoony. So I said how can I find humanity in that character? How can I make Louie Anderson completely disappear? So that’s what I do every day in the show.”
He also continues to hone his standup. He says he can’t help himself. “I think it’s in your blood. I don’t think you have any choice. Why do I keep doing it? I’m making a nice living, I don’t need it, but I love it. It’s part of who I am,” he says. “People need it, and I need it. I get the love. I think I do it for love.”
‘ARCHIE’ COMICS HOLLYWOOD STYLE
The title of the show “Riverdale” sounds harmless enough. And it should be. It’s a retelling of the Archie comics, which premiered Jan. 26 on the CW. But it’s a way darker version. How it got that way is a typical story in Hollywood. Producer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa recalls they’d sold the idea to Warner Bros. “The contracts are sorted out, and then we get a phone call that one of the vice presidents at Warner Bros., who had not been in the pitch, would like to have a kickoff meeting with me and (director) Jason Moore. And I was like, ‘Great!’ He’s like, ‘I wanna get in there on the ground floor. I love you guys.’ We’re like, ‘Great! This will be fun.’
“So we go to the kickoff meeting, and he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about this, and I think you guys kind of need to do something a little more high concept, a little bigger than just a coming-of-age show.’
“And I said, ‘Great. We’re open to that.’ He’s like, ‘I want you to think about time travel.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘Archie traveling through time.’ And I said, ‘OK.’ We sort of sat there. And we’re like, ‘OK.’ And he’s like, ‘It seems like you don’t like the time travel thing. I got another thing. Portals.’ And I’m like, ‘Portals?'(“‘Portals are huge. This is a portal to another dimension.’ And we’re just sitting there like gobsmacked. And this was the greatest one, which I think is actually a funny idea. He’s like, ‘What if Louis C.K. is Archie?’ And it was like an episode out of ‘Entourage.'”
