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PERSONALITY PEEKS:
DAVID BRENNER, Comedian

by FRANK O'DONNELL
May 31, 2007

It was about 120 degrees in Las Vegas the day I called David Brenner there. “The heat doesn’t bother me,” said the veteran comic. “I can’t stand the cold.”

Ironically, one of his favorite things to do is to ski. “You prepare for it, you bundle for it, and you can have fun with it,” says Brenner, who lived in Aspen for a while. “It’s not that I’m not cold. I’m cold. But I’m enjoying what I’m doing. On the other hand, you’re walking down the street in New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, it’s 12 degrees, that’s brutal.”

Brenner performs at Catch A Rising Star Comedy Club in Lincoln on June 8 and 9. He’s played in Rhode Island before – he’s just not sure where. “I don’t think there’s a place in the United States I haven’t played.” As we talk, we decide his last local show must have been at the Warwick Musical Theatre.

I tell Brenner that comedian Richard Lewis had mentioned him in an interview with me a month or so ago. “We’ve been friends since we started. I’m up to what Rich is up to, except I’m not doing ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’ Not much of an interview, was it?”

Brenner lives in Vegas, because that’s where much of his work is. “I’ve been three-and-a-half years full time in Vegas. Now I have two little boys, so I try not to go out on the road the last two weeks of the month, which is when I see them. Every once in a while, I’ll go out, for a really good gig.”

His sons are 12 and 9. “They’re so close in age, they’re like opposing warriors.” Another son is 25.

I ask Brenner what he’ll be talking about in his local appearance. “Whatever is in the paper today is what I talk about.”

I wonder whether he’ll do any of the observational humor that helped establish him as one of America’s top comics. “I gave up on the observational comedy in 1998. I got bored doing it, and I got tired of hearing my jokes done by other comics. Once in a while, something does strike my fancy, and I’ll use it.”

Brenner loves working with current events. “That’s a toughie. When I did my HBO special live in 2000, I did the news of that day, that week, that month.” He really likes the oomph of doing topical material. “It’s like being a fighter. You’re in the ring, fighting a 500-pound gorilla that’s trained in boxing. There’s no safety net. I like that.”

He’s proud of his HBO special, at that point the highest-rated live comedy special of its kind. “I made the mistake of getting married at the end of it. We’d been together for 12 years, had two kids, and then we got married on live TV. We were done within a year.”

Brenner’s also proud of all of his guest appearances on TV talk shows. “Quantity isn’t quality, but as for quantity, I made more TV guest appearances than anyone else. I did all the talk shows – Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Johnny Carson.”

On “The Tonight Show” alone, Brenner made 158 appearances. “I did 157 monologues. Johnny liked sitting back to laugh. When I look back, the idea that I knocked out 157 monologues, I did it all myself, without any writers – that was pretty neat.”

Brenner misses Johnny Carson. “Johnny was wonderful. A special human being. No one’s come close to being him.” He is not a big fan of the current crop of TV talk hosts. “They don’t have guest hosts. They’re afraid.”

I ask if he’d been looked at for any of those slots. “I was training for that. People still say, there’s the guy who should have gotten the job.” But, Brenner was forced to withdraw his name from consideration, for personal reasons.

In retrospect, he doesn’t think he would have gotten the job. “I just do things on merit, I’m not political. I wouldn’t have campaigned. So I don’t think the executives would have picked me.”

Brenner also doesn’t like the way the shows themselves are going. “What’s missing most is, if you don’t have something to plug, you don’t get on the show. And if you’re are scheduled, and some actress gets out of a car half-nude, you’re getting bumped.”

But it’s not the fault of the shows or the networks. “It’s a sad commentary on society,” says Brenner. “It’s the new America – and not in the shiny brand-new sense of the word either.”

[David Brenner performs on June 8 and 9 at Catch A Rising Star Comedy Club inside Twin River in Lincoln, RI. For more information, check out www.twinriver.com. For tickets, call TicketMaster at 401.331.2211.]