My parents left me hanging in the “Providing the Boundaries Necessary for Me to Take Chances and Succeed and Fail with the Support and Guidance Necessary to Define My Character” department. I had to put my sense of self together from scratch. I spent a good part of my life moving through the world like a kid lost at a mall. Looking to other grown-ups as role models, I learned which cigarettes to smoke from Keith Richards. I dressed like Tom Waits for most of my junior year of high school. I looked to Woody Allen to understand what it meant to be smart and funny.
My mother was a bit sarcastic and could be a little cutting. She was funny. She was always expressing herself in a creative way. My father was unpredictable and explosive at times. Sometimes that explosion would go in, sometimes out. He thought he was funny, but he wasn’t. They both have a lot of energy. These are the things in the plus column.
It’s always good to learn about the struggles other people went through while they were growing up. I like that Paul Scheer felt comfortable sharing with me the very difficult situation he found himself in after his parents’ divorce. Same with John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats, who is still dealing with the pain his stepfather put him through. I was able to laugh in disbelief at Molly Shannon’s story of complete parental irresponsibility when she got on a plane without an adult and flew to New York City accompanied only by another child. I’m glad people still tell these stories about their childhoods. It took years of me talking to people in my garage to finally get some perspective on things I went through as a kid and stop them from undermining me as an adult. Well, that and a little therapy and some specific reading and age.
CONAN O’BRIEN—TALK SHOW HOST, COMEDIAN, WRITER
I think I was an anxious kid. I was not the class clown. I was funny for my friends, but quiet in the classroom. I worked really hard, and I was kind of grim. I have to say I didn’t really enjoy my childhood. I was not socially uncomfortable. I could make my friends laugh, but I was not easygoing. From fourth grade until, like, now.
SIR IAN MCKELLEN—ACTOR, ACTIVIST
The first three years of my life I didn’t sleep in a bed. I slept on a mattress under a metal table in our downstairs room in case a bomb knocked the building over, and blackout material so the light didn’t attract any German bombers that were coming over. Not much to eat, but quite healthy eating, rationing. Of course, when you’re growing up, you know that’s not the norm. I was well looked after. A lot of love in my house.
KEVIN HART—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
I grew up in Philadelphia, PA. My neighborhood is shit. North Philadelphia, Fifteenth area, Crime City. Right now I think we’re third in the world in deaths, probably. New Year’s we opened it up with five murders in my city.
Marc
Happy New Year.
Kevin
Yeah. It’s not the best place in the world, but I love it. It’s home for me. That’s what I know.
MEL BROOKS—COMEDIAN, WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, ACTOR, MUSICIAN
My mother, Kitty. Kitty Kaminsky. Raised four boys. You know, those days, diapers, you had to wash them. Yeah, I’ll never forget. One time I wanted to see a movie. She gave me three deposit bottles, each one was three cents apiece. So that was nine cents. You needed a dime. She went next door to Mrs. Miller and borrowed a penny so I could make the dime. I don’t know whether she was typical, but she was a wonderful, loving, caring, beautiful mother.
RUPAUL CHARLES—ACTOR, DRAG PERFORMER, SINGER, MODEL, WRITER, TELEVISION HOST
I was watching a kid the other day. He must have been about four years old, and he was so happy to be in a human body. He was just jumping around going upside down, and he was running over there, and he came running. It was like, “Oh my God. It’s great. I’m a human. Look at me. Look, I can do this. I can do…” That’s what I want to do. Just to move your hands, jump around, roll on the ground with an exhausted parent going, “Yes, you can. You can do that.”
Unfortunately, when I was a kid, my parents were in their own melodrama, and so I really couldn’t do that as much as possible.
Luckily for me, though, my sister Renee, she was the one who said, “You’re great. You should try this. Why don’t you do that?” I have that in my sister, so that was great.
JIM GAFFIGAN—COMEDIAN, WRITER, PRODUCER, ACTOR
Four boys and two girls and I’m the youngest of six. The oldest in my family is my sister Kathy, and she’s, I don’t know, she could be like a hundred and I wouldn’t know. My brother, Mike, is, I don’t know, fifties. It’s all a blur. It’s like, who cares? I kind of know that there’s six kids over seven or eight years, they’re just old.
Marc
You saw them all leave, I imagine.
Jim
Yeah, yeah, it was a little bit difficult. You’re leaving me here with these people that are crazy. A little bit of the enthusiasm wanes in parents, right?
“You’re still here?”
“Yeah, I’m still here.”
So there was some of that, but there was also such an amount of distrust that develops in parents of that generation. They had been lied to by so many teenagers, by the time I got there, they were just like, “You’re guilty!”
And I was like, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
They were like, “Just go to your room.”
JOHN OLIVER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR, TELEVISION HOST
When my dad first started taking me to football games, to Liverpool games, I would make him let me wear my full Liverpool kit, so this was me at eight, nine years old. My full Liverpool kit, underneath whatever I was wearing, because there was a part of me as a child that felt if someone got injured on the field, they would just turn to the crowd and say, “Does anyone have a kit so that we can carry on?”
And I would say, “Yes, my name is John. I’m eight years old,” and clearly somewhere in me, I think that this is going to turn out well. That this eight-year-old is going to physically compete with these twenty-nine-year-old super-fit athletes.
I wore cleats. You could hear this clip-clop of this eight-year-old kid going, “Let’s do this.”
MARIA BAMFORD—COMEDIAN, ACTOR
I used to play the violin and I used to be very good at it because, you know, I started when I was three. It was forced on me in a way that I was not conscious of until I was around eleven and then I said, “Oh, I think I’d like to quit.”
They said, “No. Oh, no. You cannot. Because we have put in a lot of time and money, and you’re freakishly good at it, so why not continue?” I was good at it, but I did not enjoy it at all.
PAUL SCHEER—COMEDIAN, WRITER, ACTOR, PODCAST HOST
My mom took my “Weird Al” Yankovic in 3D album and broke it over her knee because a song on there was called “Nature Trail to Hell.” It was on one of the devil worship lists that the church had given out. If your children have any of these albums, and one of them is a “Weird Al” album, you must find it and destroy it. That and my LL Cool J album. It was terrible. I was crying, like, “Nooooooo! My ‘Weird Al’ album!”
I got to tell “Weird Al” that story, which was awesome. There’s nothing satanic about “Weird Al” Yankovic.
Marc
Actually, that might be Satan. You never know. He’s very cunning. He’s charming.
Paul