Laughing Legends by Jeffrey Gurian

Author:Jeffrey Gurian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2016-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Joe Bolster

Joe Bolster is a comedian and comedy writer and is a regular on late-night talk shows and at festivals such as Just For Laughs in Montreal. He previously had a half-hour special on HBO called One Night Stand and starred in the Comedy Central shows Sports Monster and Short Attention Span Theater.

When did you first get to The Strip, and what are some early memories?

I didn’t get to The Strip until 1979. And in that year, I was working for Bill Bradley in his senatorial campaign. I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and my dad was the director of admissions at Princeton when Bill was a student there, so I knew him from about the age of ten on.

They had been in touch for years, and when Bill announced he was going to run for Senate, I was fresh out of college and needed a job, so I was hired as a jokewriter.

Some of my later credits are The Tonight Show, Letterman, Conan, and an HBO One Night Special. I’m the oldest of fourteen children, which was the foundation of my original act.

By the time I came, the performers themselves used to be the MCs, Jerry Seinfeld among them, a policy that was rife for corruption. Jerry was the MC the night I came to audition and he passed me, so that gave you entrée to hang out at the club and that would lead to you getting spots, and the spots would improve as you improved yourself.

Any funny stories?

I think so. A couple of months after I passed, I was fortunate enough to get not only one spot on Saturday night but two spots. We used to have three shows in those days, as they do now. And, as I’m sure you know, Lucien, who was an iconic figure here, was both articulate and verbose. But this was my first encounter with the Lucien that we all came to know and love.

Now on the weekend it was very important that you show up, unlike during the week when people would be hanging out who would move in like sharks to take someone’s spot if they didn’t show up. But on the weekend shows there were only five guys and you had to show up, ’cause if you missed your spot, it was huge, ’cause there was no one to plug in.

So here I am with two Saturday night spots, and after the first show I guess I did well, ’cause I was fortunate enough to meet a young lady after the show. Now there was a comic named Peter Bales who had an apartment that he’d let us use if we needed it. So I took her back there, and things got out of control, and I wound up missing the second show. I had only been performing here like two months, so it wasn’t like I had any equity built up where I could walk in like a big shot and go, “Yeah, I didn’t make the show.

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