Punchline Magazine

Rob Schneider: Our next big political comedian?

His first ever comedy album, Registered Offender — a collection of sketches — is officially out this week, he’s on a nationwide stand-up comedy tour through February 2011 (so far) and well, he’s got a lot of smart shit to say. Forget what you thought you knew about Rob Schneider. Things are about to get real serious. Chatting with Rob Schneider – comedian, actor, animal, gigolo, hot chick, surf ninja – is something of a surreal experience. No wait, scratch that: it’s a very surreal experience. And as the conversation progresses into a 45-minute think piece, this sense of surreal-ness begins to stem increasingly not from the realization of speaking with someone whose work I idolized as a child, but from the things that the much-maligned oddball comic is discussing with me at length. “I don’t find Obama’s policies any different from Bush’s or Clinton’s,” he says, for example. (An utterance at which, I’m ashamed to admit, I have to bite back my tongue to refrain from replying with a plaintive “makin’ copies!”) “He’s the same guy, because at the end of the day, you can’t change this military industrial complex or this medical industrial complex, and you just think it’s unchangeable. And what’s really going to sink us is not our 40% spending on the military – it’s that no country has ever survived spending that much on the military.” Huh? Can this highly educated, well-rounded bit of biting social commentary really have sprung forth from Rob Schneider, the star of decidedly un-intellectual fare like The Animal and Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo? Indeed, Schneider is full of surprises – the living embodiment of an enigma wrapped in a mystery, microphone clutched firmly in hand as spitfire smarts rain down on his crowds from atop his onstage perch. If you’re a member of the Millennial generation, like me, chances are you owe a great deal of cultural debt and comedic awakening to the early ‘90s Saturday Night Live powerhouse troop of Schneider, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Chris Farley, god rest his limber, light-footed soul. Who could quickly forget the social reverberations of the “Gap Girls” sketch, or the innocuous ripple effect caused by Schneider’s Richard Laymer character. (See aside on Obama quote above.) But if you do indeed count yourself among the SNL quoting elite, chances also are that you’ve been largely disappointed with Schneider’s film career – a seeming waste of a genuine comedic original and talent on one outlandish, convoluted plot-line after another. But this year has seen Schneider step out of the clunky shoes of Deuce Bigalow and into the role of a born again stand-up comic – one who has been criss-crossing the nation nonstop in his first headlining tour, and causing audience members both young and old to fall into stitches with a healthy dose of sharp, insightful wit, at that. “You know, it’s interesting, because I used to be a stand-up. I hadn’t done it in 17 years,” he says. “I’m like a performing butterfly – ‘he emerges every 17 years from the ground to…’ It’s like about my life, it’s about being 40 now, and having a different take on things. But I really take it seriously, the art form. I’m not just some celebrity doing a victory lap.” (Note: portions of this interview and introduction were originally published in Real Detroit Weekly.) Where did the idea for this comedy tour come from? What propelled you to do it? Adam Sandler has been telling me for 10 years, “Hey, you should just go back and do this, blah blah blah.” Then I saw George Carlin’s last concert. He was amazing! It made me think that man, I never got that killer hour, and this guy’s been doing stand-up for 30 years. Then, I worked with Chris Rock and Adam Sandler in Grown-Ups last year, and I asked Chris how to go it, and he was like, “You’ve just got to get back into it, man.” So I… I did. I started writing jokes last summer, making notes for stuff, and then I started kinda doing it here and there, but then I said screw it, and just took a year off to do it. What sort of sources did you tap into for your material? There are so many things going on in the world that you could talk about. It’s interesting to me; you know, whether it’s the economy, or whatever. I’m enjoying just having contact with that immediacy. You know this movie we made, Grown Ups – we did it a year ago, and I couldn’t even tell you the jokes in the movie. It’s taken a year for it to come out. It seems like it’s a sort of “back-to-your-roots” career move. Yeah; I like it a lot. It’s just kinda fun to talk to all the people who I can’t believe all the movies they’ve seen. It’s when the real fans come out. I just want to put on a good show for them and have fun. America’s kind of bitter and angry – I’ve never seen it like this before. It’s like a sense of a real, terrible… well, actually Jimmy Carter never used the word “malaise,” but there’s a really, kind of settling into the [attitude] of, “Wow, things aren’t going to get better any time soon.” It’s such a new kind of attitude; I find it to be almost British, where we’re screwed, and that’s just a wonderful backdrop for comedy. Do you think it’s almost easier to do comedy now than when you first started out? Absolutely. First of all, I’m smarter. I’m adept at this because, hey, I made it already. I don’t have to prove anything, so now I can just talk about what I want to talk about. I mean, literally. And I don’t want to be too self-indulgent, but I feel like I need to do stuff that’s interesting to me, otherwise why am I doing this? So in that sense, I still have to entertain first, but I want to talk about what’s interesting for me to talk about. If that makes sense. [audio:http://www.punchlinemagazine.com/audio/Schneider1.mp3] Since there was such a long gap between when you last performed and now, was there anything in particular you did to get back into the swing of it? Well, my fiance is a wonderful lady. I’d been doing a week of gigs, and the first couple shows were rocky. And I said, honey, I don’t know. But she just pushed me and said, “You can do this, you can do this.” But anyway, there’s no shortcut. I mean, if I go three to four days without performing, I feel stiff. I miss performing all the time. I’ve written some jokes and I’ve written some routines and stuff I like to talk about, and I’m figuring it out as I go. I’m really more kinda turned on by this than I’ve been in a long time. What’s the main difference between Rob Schneider the stand-up and Rob Schneider, the actor? Well, I think people are always kind of amazed that I have some grip on the issues. They’re much more shocked about that than anything else. There’s [this conception] that there’s not much thinking going on in comedy, but comedy’s much more complex than you feel. If the comedy in a movie is not working – and there are so many things that can kill it – the chemistry’s off, the music can be off, the editing can be weird, there are so many things that can kill it in a comedy movie. No one really ever says, “Wow, they worked hard on that comedy.” It’s either funny, or it isn’t. And that’s why comedy hardly ever gets nominated for an Academy Award, but you ask Al Pacino or any other actors about comedy, they’ll tell you it’s the toughest. But I respect them, and I kinda like to do things a little difficult. But with stand-up, you really have to work to kind of constantly keep it tight. There’s the thing about comedy and brevity going hand-in-hand, so I can’t take too many little breaks just to talk about what I want to talk about. But at the same time, I feel I need to push it, and see if the audience is receptive to being pushed. That’s a good little struggle, and I’m not minding it. Do you feel that you’ve developed a lot not only as a performer, but also as an individual? Absolutely. We’re not the same people we were a few years ago. I don’t think we’re the same people we were two years ago. Like, I don’t know who they thought Obama was, but that guy turned out to be a real disappointment in our leadership, and it’s not just his fault; the Republicans have tried to stop him at every turn. But at the same time, I don’t find Obama’s policies any different from Bush’s or Clinton’s. He’s the same guy, because at the end of the day, you can’t change this military industrial complex or this medical industrial complex, and you just think it’s unchangeable. I think it’s kinda sad, in that sense, and I don’t know who we thought he was. He kinda ends up being a little bit of a war-mongerer, like Kennedy, but we’re dumb because we voted for him. He said, “I want change!” but yeah, I didn’t realize it was minute change. It’s the same status quo that exists without getting rid of these insurance companies, taking that money, putting it into the medical program and saying, “This just doesn’t work.” And what’s really going to sink us is not our 40% spending on the military – it’s that no country has ever survived spending that much on the military. Nobody ever has because you can’t survive that way, and that’s why we’re broke. At the same time, what’s really going to bankrupt us is our healthcare. It’s not that we can’t [reform] it, it’s that we don’t have healthy people. Like we tax cigarettes, we’ve got to start taxing fast food. That’s what makes people sick. And instead of the corn lobby… there’s this whole idea that there’s a free trade agreement. There’s no free trade agreement. It’s a free abuse agreement. We protect our corn, we protect our timber industries, and corn gets subsidies, but corn makes people sick. It’s an unfair trade practice, because when it subsidizes your industry like that, corn in other countries can’t compete, and that’s why the Mexican corn industry went bankrupt. So now they’re coming over the border to get jobs, and we’re having the immigration issue. This is all because of NAFTA, and unfair trade. It’s illegal immigrants that are doing it, and they’re paying them lousy, substandard, almost slave wages. This stuff is ridiculous, and government regulations aren’t meant to handcuff it – it’s to protect the people. So this is part of the things we need to educate ourselves with. And I love talking to people, because maybe I can have more of an impact than with making movies. Is this a sampling of our stand-up that I’m getting here? Well, this is the more straight version, but you’ve got to start talking about some things if you want to make change. So when Obama talked about change, it was minute change. You know, not closing Guantanamo Bay is cowardice. We need to throw a lot of it out; we need to start over. Unfortunately, in this country, we’re susceptible. Until we change, until we [get rid of] lobbyists and make a more democratic system, we’re going to have a democracy that’s for the rich, rather than for all the people. Do you tend to invoke more topical anecdotes on stage, as opposed to biographical material? Yeah. Well, I do a little bit of half and half. Have you been getting a good reaction to it? Oh, they love it. Why do you think people aren’t as familiar with this side of your personality? Because people just know me as an actor. I don’t want to be famous for being on TV, doing stump speeches about politics. I like to get to people through a comedy club setting, because it’s a lot more interesting. I don’t like to preach, but I like to talk about these issues in a way that they can get to people. A comedy club setting is very subversive – even Hitler knew you’ve got to be careful about what we allow on the screen. It’s funny to me when people talk about the left and liberal media. There’s no such thing as the liberal media. If you think Time Warner is a liberal media, you’re wrong: it’s not anything less than the right wing. I’m sorry, but until we see Noam Chomsky hosting a program on CNN, I’m not going to say that that’s a liberal outlet. You know, most of the damage that was done to the banking was done not under Bush, but under Clinton. Clinton was the one that really let the banks get away with deregulation, and let the banks take over. The idea was that Clinton was looking out for the best interests of the average Americans was hogwash. How flawed his health care plan was, it was the first genuine effort to help poor people. Rich people are always going to be okay in this country, but you have to help out the people who are going to be left behind. I always hear attacks that socialized medicine sucks, but hey, you’ve never been to Canada; you’ve never been to France. Only four percent of the American population has passports, but they think they know what goes on in other countries, and just believe the crap you see on the news. That’s what Noam Chomsky talks about in Manufacturing Consent. There’s so much propaganda, because people believe the New York Times. It’s just so much, and with most of the stuff, you have to fight to get an interesting, consumer-related story in there. Are you active in many political causes or non-profits? Yeah, but in a way, it’s like I don’t want to be famous for that. It’s going to be a lot more tougher [sic] now, because it’s going to be more and more of a push to cut back. The schools are already butchered; we have a 50% dropout rate in Los Angeles Unified. We’re just creating two groups of people: people who have no chance in society, and are going to struggle their whole lives, and then people who don’t. It’s proving to be what I joked about 20 years ago, which is like the middle-class, which is the strength of the American society, is going to end up being, in the second-half of the 21st century, an apparition that has outlived its time. It’s just funny, though, because the same kinds of people that are the victims of the right wing Fox News propaganda are the people supporting it. It’s the same people being punished by these programs; they’re buying into this propaganda. It’s an interesting time, but I think at the same time, it’s an opportunity – an opportunity for Americans to wake up and realize what’s most important. I just hope we realize it before it’s too late, you know? America is a very well-intentioned country, but we’ve caused a lot of harm. I mean, the reason why Pakistan has nuclear weapons is because of the United States. What do you think needs to be done to make Americans more aware of these issues? I think they’re going to have to hurt a little bit more. I think people are going to have to do some ground-roots support, and people are going to have to realize that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party aren’t really there to help people. We’re going to have to have another group that challenges us. We also need to realize that presidential powers have been abused for the last 30-40 years. If you look back at the leaders we admired most, there was George Washington, and this was a guy who walked away from power, from more power. People are just going to have to get involved, and I think a parliamentary system would work a lot better than what we have now. We really have, in the United States, one of the oldest forms of government that exists. It’s not really responsive to meet to the needs of the people. It’s completely usurped by big money, and just by lobbyists. It’s almost impossible to be in Congress right now without this huge, constantly, endless campaigning. I think it’s democracy usurped, whereas real democracy is ugly, in the sense that it’s messy. In the ‘60s, when people were protesting in the streets, they called it democracy in action. It’s supposed to be messy, but people have been pacified here. I remember with the Iraq war, for the first few months people were in the streets, but then they just went back to their jobs. If we want things, we’re going to have to really protest. But people are going to have to stand up, because they’re not going to get better, they’re going to get tougher, and if they want to keep their rights, they’re going to have to stand up. But look, hey, we’ve got to get involved, and if I can have a positive impact in some small way, that makes all the difference. [audio:http://www.punchlinemagazine.com/audio/Schneider2.mp3] Is this one of your goals with your stand-up tour; to educate people about these issues with humor? Absolutely. Rather than keeping your kids off drugs, I’m like, “Keep your parents off drugs.” Prescription drugs, of course. I don’t think a lot of people realize how dangerous these drugs can be, even though they’re legal. You’ve got the military industrial complex, but you’ve also got the medical industrial complex. That’s why every commercial on TV is some kind of medicine. They’re just drugging America to death, and it’s all about money. They never used to allow advertising of drugs on TV, and now it’s every other commercial. Why? Because the lobbyists were able to change the laws, and now there’s no way to double check; it’s exactly what the big pharmaceutical companies want. It’s all about profits, of course; they don’t care about us. This is just this insane system that has not been changed under this new health care program. It’s not helping people – it’s helping big business.I’m not saying the whole medical establishment is evil: it just needs to be completely abolished and started over. How do you reconcile these two parts of your personality? There’s of course the goofy, comic actor that everyone is familiar with, but what I’m hearing here is a very civically minded, tuned-in individual. Well, people are of course free to not come to my shows if they don’t want to. I just think at the end of the day, people want to laugh, and there’s fun in that. Those movies, I had a lot of fun with that, but after my dad passed away – he was on 10 different medications at the end, and none of them were helping him – he died at 68, and I realized, this is so totally unnecessary. All this stuff is making him more sick. For whatever reason, I’ve achieved whatever fame I have, but if I can just affect a few people in a positive way – not being too preachy, like I am now – they can sit and talk to me and find that I do have knowledge about this stuff, and I love to talk to people about it. I got my mom off all her drugs: she was on arthritis, blood pressure, pain pills, cholesterol, water pills. I said, mom, you’re going to die if you keep doing all those things, and I got her off all of them. Now she’s doing great – she works two full time jobs, and she’s 81. We’ve got to get all the old people off the drugs. The death of a society is not allowing… the most valuable members of our society are our seniors and children, and by not feeding them well or not educating them, then we’re losing out on both ends of our society. Why don’t you want to be known for this? I do; I mean, I’ll talk to people about it, but I just don’t wanna, I don’t know. To me, I’m an entertainer. I’m talking to you about it right now, so it could end up in the newspaper tomorrow, but I’m not ready to run for Congress. I think I could do more as an entertainer. Why not? Al Franken did, and he’s been pretty successful with it. Well, Al Franken isn’t an entertainer. He’s a very selfish, self-minded guy. It makes perfect sense that he ran for senate, because Al Franken was always out for Al Franken. That isn’t to say hey, Rob Schneider isn’t out for Rob Schneider, but whatever. I’d rather have him in there than that moron who was there before him. That really staunch conservative guy who’s now in a think tank… Norm Coleman. As much as I don’t particularly love Al Franken, I know that he’ll have the interests of Minnesota a little bit more instilled in him. The Democrats are a mess, but at least they in some way resemble what America looks like. There’s women, there’s Latinos, there’s blacks, there’s whites, there’s middle income people and lower income. That’s more or less America, whereas you look at the Republicans, and there’s just gated communities, white people, wanting to build up fences and not spend any money, protect themselves. I find that to be very transparent. What are some of your other goals with this stand-up tour, as opposed to just using it to educate people? Um, I eventually want to film a movie of it, and do an independent film, but I also just want to talk to kids, and get them more involved. Would you say that it’s a fair assessment to say your comedic side is some of a catharsis, since you’re obviously a very serious-minded individual? Yeah, I mean, I’m able to talk about things, but at the same time, I just think that if people aren’t sitting down and talking about these things, well, somebody’s got to. For whatever reason, I feel that it’s made sense that I’ve finally been able to be in a place where I can. People have to step up and use whatever influence they have. But I tell ya, if the Republican Party points to Sarah Palin and says, “That’s our guy,” and if Fox News doesn’t have its license pulled by the FCC… this is so blatantly just for big business, and it’s no longer news; it’s just pure propaganda. Yet look at their shows – they’re much more popular than CNN. But you have to admit that Palin is a comedic goldmine. Well she is, but so was Hitler. If you look back at articles in the late ‘20s, it was all like, “Eh, [the Nazis are] just a bunch of thugs.” She had to be within a heartbeat of the presidency. The Democrats only win when the economy tanks so badly, and look at Obama. He said change, but we should have asked what that was. His policies are no different from George Bush’s or Bill Clinton’s, with the exception of this health care bill, which is just a watered down piece of garbage. Unlike Hitler, don’t you feel that Sarah Palin’s all talk and no action? No, I think she’d be just as dangerous. I don’t want to be a fear-mongerer, but I find loathsome, her lack of knowledge. She’s just a reactionary. I think if you want to run for higher office, that should make you ineligible. I think what we should do is have the most talented, educated people, like from Harvard Business, Cal-Tech, MIT… Be careful – that’s where Bush came from. But Bush, he got grandfathered into it. We take the most talented people we have, in business and in the arts, we stick them all in a hat and be like, “Here you go, you run things for the next couple of years.” They would make some unpopular decisions, like, “We have to cut this, get rid of this.” That’s one of the things that’s disappointed me with Obama. How do you see your career continuing to evolve? Are you going to stay focused on stand-up for a while? Yeah, I wanna do it at least for a year, and then see where it goes. I mean, I’ve made 40 movies; it’s not like a new movie is going to make that much difference for me. I’ve been very fortunate, and I would like to see where this leads. I’m not interested in a political career, but I am interested in seeing peoples’ response to talking about things like this. Have your shows been attended by both your older fans and also newer converts? Yeah, both. I’d like to see younger people keep coming out, because those are the people you can really reach and make a difference with. You can make change pretty quickly, if you want to. For more info on Rob, including tour dates, check out his official site at RobSchneider.com. Buy Rob’s album by clicking the image below.
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