The Third Annual San Francisco Comedy Competition was over, and I was coming off the most exciting month of my life. But when the competition was over it was like the circus leaving town. I lasted about a month in SF after the competition. This was 1978; there was no real work to speak of. THE HOLY CITY ZOO was the only real venue for a comic in town. Maybe I could get a couple of spots there a week if I hung out, but I was desperately hungry for more than that. I had to go someplace where I was going to be able to perform more often. This has been sort of a theme in my life, I go to where the work is and work it until it isn’t around anymore. I guess it is a little like being a prospector, out looking for the mother load of gigs and stage time. Or maybe more like a nomad, just traveling around o wherever the food supply was. I called my grandfather and he gave/loaned me the money to get back to Chicago, (read as Lyons IL) and I only lasted there until mid-December.
I lived with a waitress and her musician boyfriend J.B. Sky. They both worked at THE WOMB. Some things had changed since I was gone. The Womb had moved across the street. The new room was bigger and more like a restaurant. And frankly I was getting bored there. I remember one night that was not boring though. Jay Leno was in town working at a real nightclub, what I believe was one of the last Nightclub gigs that still existed, Mr. Kelly’s. I had seen a caricature of him in a frame at THE WOMB on the wall. I think I had seen him on The Tonight Show once, and I had heard of his name. Ted Holum went and brought him over after his set at Mr. Kelly’s and he went up. I had seen many comics by now, from painfully awful to great. I had even seen Robin Williams explode on stage in front of 500 without a microphone. But I had not seen anyone really come in and do a masterful set like this. He was sooo funny, and he just hammered for 30 minutes. Just killed and he ended with a bit that tied up all of the other bits together. Killer. And he walked over to the bar and whispered something in one girl’s ear, and then another, and then another, and then this girl picked up her coat and left with him. Unbelievable. This comic titan with a chin that can be used to excavate your back yard came into our kingdom, like Lancelot, and killed the dragon and went off with a princess. I had never seen anything like it before, that amount of confidence, BALLS. That is what the man had GIANT BALLS. The thing that has always stayed with me was that he asked 2 girls if they wanted to go and “hang out” with him, and they both said NO, and the third girl said yes.
Now I have a little confession to make. I have often suffered form the sin of envy. And after Jay left I said some things that were not true about him. About 2 weeks later I am at the THE WOMB and I get a phone call from Jay. “Hey, what’s this I hear about you saying bla bla bla?" I was completely busted and I copped to it and he said it was no way for me to act and don’t do it again. The point of this little story is that when I moved to LA a few months later he never mentioned it again. And he never held it against me. He always seemed to be a regular guy, who took care of him own squabbles, and didn’t hold a grudge.
As the fall started to lead into the beginnings of what was going to be one of the worst winters in recent history my one pair of shoes (sneakers which were my gym shoes from my days at west point) were not going to get me through a Chicago winter. I didn’t have a coat, and I wasn’t happy. I knew I needed to go to the next level. I had seen a few of the best comics in country and they were living in LA. I was bored and I wanted to go to where the action was, it was time to make the move to LA.
I had had many conversations with comics in Chicago about making the move to LA or NYC or staying put in Chicago. Staying in Chicago was not an option, I knew that it had given me what it had to offer, a place to get on stage and put together the beginnings of an act. I wanted to go to NYC, but I knew that eventually I would have to go to LA. The way I looked at it was LA was where you had to eventually go. Now many argued that you should get ready, be ready, for LA. But my logic was that I was 23 years old, I had a long ways to go in getting ready, but I assumed that it would take me a while to even get into the LA scene, and I might as well be getting ready in the place I was going to eventually have to be in anyway.
So I packed up my duffel bag once again and went home to Florida for XMAS with the family. I sold what few possessions I owned that were of any value, (my black body Nikkormat FTN camera) and I bought a one-way ticket on Western airlines to LA CA in the middle of January 1979.
I knew virtually nothing about LA. A friend from college had moved to an area North of LA, and she let me stay with her for a few nights. And then a comic whom I had met in the SF Comedy Competition, Al Alan Peterson offered to let me stay on his couch for a few weeks. He was right in the middle of West Hollywood, walking distance to both THE COMEDY STORE, and THE IMPROV.
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About Lucien
