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Q & A with Jim
Norton of
the Opie &
Anthony Show
by
Michael Parrish
This Saturday night (2/21)
at the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia, comedians
Artie Lange
and Jim Norton will share the stage for the first time. Two comics
getting together for a show is nothing new, but when you consider this duo are
third mics on Howard Stern and Opie & Anthony, the pairing comes
with a bit of drama due to the relationship between their bosses. Both will
tell you they leave that drama behind on the dial, as they should since
each is highly successful in their own right. Lange just saw his book, Too
Fat to Fish, hit #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Norton has also
appeared on the Best Seller list with I Hate Your Guts and Happy
Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch. He also recently hosted HBO's
hit comedy series, Down and Dirty with Jim Norton, which had one episode
that featured an appearance by Lange. FMQB caught up with Jimmy
on his birthday in New York City for a conversation about the Philly show and
exactly why a highly successful comedian continues to play around on the radio
every day.
Let’s start
with the plug and talk about how the show with Artie came to happen.
I became
friends with Artie after we got thrown off the air in 2002. He’s always been
cool with me and we’ve never exchanged bad words. My agent came to me with
Live Nation’s idea of doing a show with Artie and I was dying to do shows with
him. Why not? We’re in the same kind of gig. He’s got a great gig
with Howard and I’ve got a great gig here. For comedians, it’s a dream job. I’m
really happy to be doing it and most of our fans crossover.
Why was
Philly chosen for the show?
We both do
well in Philly. I’ve done the Tower Theatre on my own and I’m sure he’s done it,
so we should be able to sell out together. Hopefully it sells out because
I would love to be able to do more. I would love to do Cleveland, Boston and a
bunch of other markets. There should be a good mixture of Howard and O&A
fans, who are all very similar in their make-up. They are all kind of animals…
very vocal fans. If you are good, they are going to love you and if you are not
good, you are in trouble.
Why is it
important for you to be waking up at 4 a.m. every day to be on the radio?
It’s a great
job and creatively very satisfying. I’m getting to hang out with my
dumb friends for five hours a day and make money. We can talk about whatever we
want to talk about and it never gets old. The content is fresh every day,
whereas with stand up, you repeat content, which is fine, but in here it has to
be fresh. We can rail on whatever we want to rail on and we know people
are listening. It’s like performing for five hours a day.
Which one is
easier for you – coming in here every day or putting together your stage show?
[The radio
show] is a little easier because the pressure is not only on me. We’ve got Opie,
Anthony, sound clips and the guys, where the stage show is just me, so if
something goes wrong, it’s my fault. If something falls flat, you can tell
directly from the crowd’s response. If something falls flat on the radio, you
can’t tell immediately because you don’t see the audience. And if
something falls flat on the radio, at least I’m in the trenches with other
people.
You’re
comedy has a certain edge to it. Talk about the challenge of reigning in
that edge for the CBS portion of the O&A show.
I just can’t
curse and you know certain content and racial issues they are going to panic
about, but the meanness is still there. I am still me. It’s always more
fun to be uncensored. There’s this stupid rumor that radio guys tell themselves
that half the fun is dancing around subjects. Bullshit. Dancing around content
is never fun. Richard Pryor was never as funny when he was on the
Tonight Show as he was uncensored. Whenever you limit your language or content
it is never funny. Look, it’s a reality in radio and they have to do it,
but this thing where they tell themselves it is half the fun… no, it’s really
not.
You open
your latest book, I Hate Your Guts, by talking about George Carlin.
Why do comedians revere him the way they do?
Because he
was so prolific, never lazy and was fearless. The guy would say anything and he
stopped groveling for the audience’s approval. He wanted them to laugh, but I
don’t think he ever cared about their approval. He was a very pure comic that
said what he wanted to say. He didn’t pander or use soft terminology and
would spit it right in your face.
When you
were writing your book, did you ever stop yourself thinking you went too far
with a subject?
No. Never.
No one asked Stephen King to write about murdering children. I love
Stephen King, but people have this really weird thing with comedy about where
the line should be and yet if you are writing a horror novel, all bets are off.
Or if you are writing a crime drama, you can have this horrible rape in it.
These people are allowed to use this stuff under the umbrella of their art, but
comedians get shit for it. The only one I wish I had written different was
Hillary Clinton because I like her more now than I did then, but I don’t feel
bad that I brutalized her.
You guys
were already on satellite radio when the line was starting to be drawn of what
you could say and couldn’t say on the radio. Stern went through it, then
subsequently what happened with Imus, or even JV & Elvis. Was that frustrating
for you as a comic to see that happening on the airwaves?
It was,
because it is a special interest pussies who want to be heard. When they
complain about something it is a mock and pseudo outrage. The same people that
were outraged at Imus don’t seem to be outraged over Jesse Jackson offering to
pay the tuition of a girl that lied about being raped by three white Duke
students. It’s phony and fraudulent. It’s really a sign of white executives
being pandering and condescending that they will not call out black activists.
Are you
surprised by how well your book has done?
Yeah, and
then Artie came along and hit #1. He was a fucking wrecking ball. I sold
more copies than I did of
Happy
Endings, but the highest I made it was #13 while
Happy
Endings
topped out
at fourth.
You recently
laid some seeds of peace by helping bring Andrew Dice Clay back to the O&A show.
Is this another step in the process of working things out between the two shows?
Nah, it’s
not my place to do it, because there is nothing I can do about it. I would love
to see it work out, because to me, it’s in everyone’s best interest for it to
work out. We all need Sirius XM to work in order to survive. It’s
stupid for our show not to push Howard’s package or for Howard’s show not to
push our package. It’s financially in the interest of everybody to succeed.
So I would love to see things work out because we all want to have a gig. |
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