In the years before Seinfeld, I was performing a strange little comedy off-off-Bway called “Erpingham Camp” by Joe Orton. In the cast was Amy Stiller, Jerry’s daughter. One night her entire family showed up in support of her. We met them all in the dressing rooms afterwards and Jerry graciously invited me along for drinks afterwards with one or two fellow actors, Amy, her mom Anne Meara and her brother Ben. Ben mostly glowered at the table until he left early. He had just achieved a bit of stardom on Broadway in “House of Blue Leaves” by John Guare and maybe he didn’t like sharing attention with his sister; or maybe he considered off-off-Bway actors too low rent to be seen in public with. Mom Anne Meara was a bit cold to me and I think she thought I was interested in her daughter (I was not) and was already giving me the once over. But I got to sit next to Jerry at a big round table and it was one of the great experiences of my career. He was expansive, animated, interested in everyone’s story (and every actor has an extended version of it) and genuinely excited to be with us.

I grew up watching the comedy team of “Stiller and Meara” on TV, watched their countless appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and other variety programs. Like Nichols and May (and before them Burns and Allen & Lucy and Desi), they were the vanguard of domestic comedy routines; where Nichols and May were intellectually ironic and biting, Stiller and Meara was closer to The Honeymooners, with working class domestic issues, a running gag of mis-interpretations and man/woman differences in POV. They were masters of timing, the double take, the frustrated long burn, but most importantly, progenitors of the form of comedy at that time, ala Borscht Belt: quick, to-the-point, a predictable arc that was always buttoned up at the end. Its how I learned the form.

Throughout the evening I questioned Jerry about the early days in Greenwich Village, sharing the stage with Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Lord Buckley, Bob Dylan and peers like George Carlin, Richard Pryor and Woody Allen. They played the Cafe Wha? on MacDougal, Folk City on W. 4th, Top of the Gate down the street from it and other venues that are long gone from the scene. It was an exhilarating walk through the time period that drew me to New York and I was laughing and drinking with the royalty that spawned it. The world of comedy had gotten sharper and younger at this point and Stiller and Meara weren’t seen as often as they were just a few years ago, perhaps they were considered corny and old school by comparison to Robin Williams’, Carlin’s and Pryor’s edgy push of the envelopes. So they were in a middle zone, with Frank Costanza waiting in the wings to emerge in just a few short years.

Of course the evening always comes to an end. Anne warmed up a little but was anxious to usher Jerry out of there lest we eat up his entire night. As we said goodbye, he gave me a quick look and said, “you’re funny, keep it up”.
If you play golf, you know that there’s one stroke you do in 18 holes that’s so perfect in form and movement, so exhilarating in its accuracy that you keep coming back to try to repeat it. That was the effect of those 5 words for me. I remember that look, that handshake and those words like it was yesterday and it was the psychic food I needed to keep pursuing my craft and career. The next day, before the show, Amy winked at me and said, “Dad liked you”.
See ya, Jerry, and thanks.