Last Man Standing

When I first arrived in Los Angeles in the early 1990's I went to one of those first-lesson-free nights of a stand-up comedy workshop. The coach was a funny enough woman, mid-40's, who asked all the new prospects to write down the name of their favorite comedian.

At first I found the question incredibly difficult. I've loved everyone from Richard Pryor to the Smothers Brothers to Jackie Gleason and George Carlin, even Totie Fields (anyone?). As a kid I enjoyed Alan King and Robert Klein as well, later Steve Martin, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory...the list was broad, but no one who first came to mind seemed like "the one."

Then I remembered Rickles.

Having watched the John Landis-directed HBO special, Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project earlier this week, I've been scouring YouTube for both classic and recent clips. As said in the show, at 81 years old, Don Rickles is the last man standing from the Rat Pack era, the age of mob-controlled Vegas (and they were the better bosses, according to some of the interviewees), the time of a particular showbiz firmament that all seemed to revolve around the twin poles of Frank Sinatra and Johnny Carson. But of all the comedians of that era, Rickles was the one who was so obviously the least canned.

That made him special. Fueled by his coiled body of energy and brilliant playing with the line between funny insult and plainly offensive, he was known for his adlib abilities above all. He wasn't so much a stand-up act as maybe a stand-up act stripped of all jokes, save those directed at hecklers. It was as if Rickles decided not to wait for your heckles -- he just started laying into you pre-emptively.

By "you" I mean anyone in the audience lucky enough to be selected by him and highlighted for their ethnicity, physical appearance, or reaction to him. Or celebrity, which as the special explains became a right of passage; you hadn't really made it in Hollywood unless you were insulted by Rickles at one of his shows.

The special also reminded me how great a character actor Don was, with standout performances especially in armed forces roles, from Run Silent Run Deep (with Gable and Lancaster) to Kelly's Heroes (with Eastwood and Savalas, and where he met then-young gofer Landis). And there's a (typically) great interview with Toy Story director John Lasseter all about Don turning into Mr. Potatohead in their very first meeting. With the clip of him-as-toy saying, "What're you lookin' at, you hockey puck?" to what is revealed as an actual hockey puck. The ultimate tribute to his act.

But the best thing about the Landis doc is Don's act, shot back in March in Las Vegas. Sure, his body's spread out and he walks with a touch of that old guy stoop, he still has the ability to send an audience, and me on the couch, into paroxysms of laughter. Making fun of a Japanese American guy ("I spent three years in the jungle looking for your father.") or a heavy guy or just a guy who doesn't move his chair fast enough as Rickles nimbly navigates the audience, you can't imagine it'll really be funny, but there you are. Instead of being insultingly racist it comes off as satire of some prevalent attitude or stereotype that you realize Rickles in no way shares. It's the precursor to Borat, to Sarah Silverman, to the Andy Kaufman wrestling period, what back in it's day was the only comparable high-wire act at that level of show business success. And until the act gets to the more sentimental stuff about his life, towards the very end, Rickles never seems as old as he is. His secret really is his spontaneity -- and his speed. He's still as fast as a younger audience. We're still waiting for him to drop his next bombshell of insensitive irreverence.

When I revealed my choice to the comedy instructor, she greeted it with a sort of put-down, "you can't really mean that" reaction. As if, "Oh, really, you would name that man as your...favorite?" That was, of course, when she lost me as a student. My favorite comedian growing up, the only one who consistently lit up all of my bumpers, spinners and rollovers, was too transgressive for her.

There have been meaner comedians since then and maybe that's what different times call for, but as Rickles spells it out, he's never really mean because he doesn't mean a word of it. It's a neat trick of rhetoric -- there's the safety net of knowing Rickles offstage really is Mr. Warmth, but it's still biting enough to be funny.

It's Rickles exposing our prejudices to light baldly but stripped of preaching. As anyone knows who has ever tried to relate one of Rickles' bits to someone who didn't see it, maybe by trying to imitate Don's delivery, it's a fool's quest. You end up sounding like the hockey puck all alone in the room. It works because its him.

Here's to the last man standing. Buy his book, go see him on tour. As you realize when he goes over who's died on the photo wall in his study, it's shocking the guy is still alive. But he's never really lost his connection with the contemporary audience, never went out of style, he's not even in the kind of sea-change career comeback that George Burns had in his later years, after having been invisible for over a decade.

Rickles is still the real deal.

Most of all, Rickles is still funny.