DAVE HILL—COMEDIAN, MUSICIAN, WRITER, ACTOR, RADIO HOST
I had this idea, that I was just joking around, thinking of the worst place for me to do comedy. Me, specifically, because I don’t do a lot of crowd work, I’m not very likable. Where it would go really badly? I thought, prison’s probably the worst place for me, and for most people.
I called Sing Sing, because I wanted it to be like maximum security, because if I’m going to do it, I should do it, right? I set up the show, and I thought, “This is really funny.” I thought, “If it goes well, that’s great, and if it goes badly, that might be even better.” It was just fun to talk about with my friends, and then about a week before the show, I was like, “Wait a minute, this is an awful idea. This is like a horrible prank I’m playing on myself. This is going to go awfully. This is not going to be fun for me, I’m not going to walk out of there.”
I was about to go to my computer and e-mail and cancel, and the administrative person, she ended up beating me to the punch, was like, “Hey, we’re just checking to see if you’re still all set for next week. The inmates are really excited, we can’t wait.”
I put it on my Myspace page, because I thought that would be really funny. The administration contacted me, and were like, “Hey, why do you have this on your Myspace page? You know people can’t just come to this show.” I was like, “Yeah, I know, I just wanted to have it on my page.” They’re like, “All right.” I was like, “Shit, I guess I got to go now, they’re expecting me.”
I had sent a photo, they wanted to make a flyer to hang around the prison, and I intentionally sent literally the gayest-looking photo I had of myself, because I thought that would be really funny. To have this photo of me around prison, I was like, “Oh my God.”
I said to them, “I want it to go well, I think I know what to expect a little bit, but can you give me some information?” She’s like, “Yeah, so far about two hundred and fifty inmates have signed up to attend your show. They’re all maximum security, violent felons, and they really like jokes about being in jail, and their favorite comedians are, like, the Wayans Brothers, Cedric the Entertainer.” Basically, she’s like, “They will no doubt be your toughest crowd.” She put that in quotes, and then put a smiley face emoticon, just to, like, fuck with me or something. I was like, “Oh, man.” I was just really dreading this.
I’d never done this before, really written a set specifically for an audience. I just usually go out and do the thing, and hope people like it, but this I was like, “I’m going to make an exception.”
I read up on prison, and learned some lingo, and wrote like a fifteen-minute stand-up set, all based on prison jokes. I ended up bringing two other comedians, Laura Krafft and Carl Arnheiter, and my friend Clark.
I wanted the inmates to respect me right away. I came out guns blazing.
“I heard a good thing to do is just beat the shit out of somebody as soon as you get there, so everyone respects you. As soon as I pulled in here today, I punched my friend Carl in the face.” They got a big kick out of that. It’s not the greatest joke, but they were thrilled. Because they were like, “This is the biggest pussy we’ve seen in twenty years.”
I found this out after the show, my friend Carl was in the back, and a guard came over to him. On the way in, they had warned us, they’re just like, “Look, if anything happens, the superintendent”—now they call the warden the superintendent—“he told me to tell you that we’re here to help you out, not bail you out. You’re on your own, whatever happens.”
I’m like, “Whatever happens? If I get attacked, you’re not…?”
They’re like, “We’re not calming them down, if they heckle you.”
Then apparently before the show, this guard comes over to Carl, and is like, “Hey, just to give you the heads-up, these guys can be really harsh. He better come on really strong, because if they’re not into it, he’s going to know right away.”
So I came out with my guitar, and just started playing guitar solos first thing, like heavy metal guitar solos really loud. Like at an area rock concert, and I was baiting them to clap for me and stuff, and Carl said the guard walked over to him, and he was like, “He’s got them. I know these guys, they like him. He’s got them already.” I did that, and then I told my fifteen minutes of prison jokes, most of which were all like based on whether or not I would be a prison bitch. They loved it. It was just hacky, like, “I had my first cavity search today, and blah, blah, blah.”
There’s a thing called a fifi, which is an artificial pussy they make out of a garbage bag, or a rubber glove, whatever. It’s fairly elaborate. It’s a thing you make and keep under your pillow or whatever.
Before the show, I was able to hang out with a few inmates, and I asked them for lingo that I could pepper my set with. Then I said, “Can I ask you something? Is there a thing called a fifi, is that a thing?”
They’re like, “What the fuck did you just say?”
I was like, “Oh, man. A fifi. I’m sorry.”
They’re like, “Yeah, but how the fuck do you know that?”
“It’s on the Internet.”
The guy’s like, “You guys, get over here, you’re not going to believe what he just said.”
They’re like, “What?”
“He’s asking me about a fifi, and he says it’s all on the Internet.”
I was like, “If I talk about that, will these guys think it’s funny?”
They’re like, “Oh my God, they’ll love that.”
I talked about that stuff a lot.
I had a blast, man. I got a standing ovation, and we walked out, like through the cell blocks, and they were all screaming, “Dave! Dave!” Clapping. And we got outside, and they were all hanging out the bars, like the end of Shawshank Redemption or something.
I was just basking in it. I was like, taking all this time. And one of the guards was like, “These guys really respect you if they say anything to you. They just usually ignore people when they walk out of here. You’ve made friends here today.” I was really psyched.
This is the twist I wasn’t expecting: Afterward, I noticed my anxiety level had dropped significantly. Not because I thought I was a badass all of a sudden, or like I’d done a good deed or something. I think my buildup of being so freaked out to do this, and then having a really great time, I knocked something loose.
BERT KREISCHER—COMEDIAN, ACTOR, TELEVISION HOST
This Will Smith deal came out of nowhere.
I was right out of college. I was this number one party animal. I would just go up onstage and fucking tell jokes about eating acid, and drinking and smoking weed, doing coke, real party shit. These kids would love it.