Police today confirmed The Post’s Thursday report that Artie Lange, comedic sidekick to Howard Stern, tried to kill himself with a 13-inch blade, repeatedly stabbing himself in the chest.
Lange’s frantic mom called 911 Saturday morning after she entered his Hoboken apartment and found the bloodied funnyman, a law-enforcement source said.
Lange sustained six “hesitation wounds” and three deep plunges
In a recent interview with The Post’s Mandy Stadtmiller, Artie Lange opened up about death, demons and the comedy “exercise” that parallels his tragic life.
LISTEN TO FULL AUDIO BELOW (Recorded: October 30, 2009.)
Mandy Stadtmiller: I just watched your appearance on Jimmy Fallon. That was so hysterical.
Artie Lange
: Thank you very much, Mandy.
Stadtmiller: That was laugh-out-loud funny. I haven’t read your book, but I just read the pig chapter, and that’s really intense. I want to ask…
Lange: The chapter about my father, you mean?
Stadtmiller: No, the chapter about when you were on Mad TV.
Lange: Oh right, right, right. The pig story.
Stadtmiller: So was that what you refer to when you say it’s your most personal revelation?
Lange: No, no, the most personal revelation is the suicide attempt.
Stadtmiller: So where are you in terms of…how are you doing?
Lange: I had a heroin problem. And I’ve been clean since April. Off of everything. And I’ll tell you, I was taking Subutex to combat that, and I put more weight on me than I ever have, and I got off of that, I got off of heroin, and I lost about 50 pounds, and I tell you I’ve never felt better. I’m completely clean and sober now.
Stadtmiller: And when did you have the…because you also were gone and you said that you had had a mental breakdown pretty recently?
Lange: It wasn’t a mental breakdown. Obviously if you read the book, my father climbed roofs for a living. He was a roofer, installed antennas.
Stadtmiller: And he had the accident.
Lange: And he had the accident when he was 42. And he, you know, was, like a hero to me. And I had to go through the birthday where he fell, and I was the same age and it was very difficult, very difficult, and that just sort of played tricks on me, and I missed a couple shrink appointments and I had a little bit of a breakdown, you know. So it lasted a couple of days and then I went, then I went back to work, and I went back to the shrink and everything’s fine.
Stadtmiller: But you weren’t using. It was just crippling depression.
Lange: No, I wasn’t using.
Stadtmiller: So I had asked people that I work with, ‘What would you ask if you were interviewing him?’ And that was one of the questions, what is your relationship with depression? You’re one of the funniest men alive and then—
Lange: I don’t know if that’s true.
Stadtmiller: You’re very naturally funny. That Fallon appearance is, you’re super quick and you’re a killer storyteller. So, take the compliment, man.
Lange: Well I’ve always had that ability but being on Howard Stern for years obviously helps.
Stadtmiller: But yeah so talk about, if you were just to say what is your relationship with depression. Is it just the opposite side of the coin from being such a funny guy?
Lange: I think a lot of comedians would tell you that they suffer from depression and are addicts, and I don’t know, it’s the most surreal thing to do for a living. Because you know you’re on stage being the life of the party and trying to get laughs and then in a lot of ways, you don’t have anything to give once you give it to the people. And for the last decade I’ve been doing it on the radio for five hours a day and then on the road all over the country on stage, you know what I mean? So, you know, you have a lot of dark times. The road is a lonely place and that sounds like a cliché, you know, like what is my life? I’m like the master of ceremonies being funny and then sometimes people you’re with, girlfriends and stuff are like, ‘God I wish I had the person on stage to be with all the time.’
I have a girlfriend now who’s like a saint, or she’s very supportive of me, I see her and I smile, and that helps too but sometimes you drain a person. It’s so easy to take advantage of a person like that if they’re so giving because you can be selfish. You’re like well, there’s a lot of times where I’m like, you know what, I can’t go out and have dinner with some of our friends and have fun because I just did five hours of radio all week and then I went to Pittsburgh and flew back and stuff and you know, comedy without question, as another cliché, comes from tragedy. And so much of my material is very dark. I talk about my problems, I talk about my drug use, I talk about a lot of things, especially on the Stern show and the book is very honest. When I became a standup comic my hero, one of them, was Richard Pryor and you know, I think that comedians like, comedians talk about hacks, and what a hack is, is someone who does stuff that’s not original.
Like Sam Kinison was the direct opposite of a hack. Or Richard Pryor or my friend Norm MacDonald is the direct opposite of a hack. Colin Quinn is the direct opposite of a hack. They actually try to think and draw from their life and try to be funny through stories or characters and not just like you know, what it’s like listening to the seatbelt speech in an airplane, you know. And I said, look, Richard Pryor. When you’re 23 you think you’re invincible. And Richard Pryor you know, he’s a drug addict and died and had a dark life but he also was doing everything I dreamed of doing so I can do a little dark stuff and addiction if that happens to me as long as I can be funny like him and I wanted to. When he used to tell stories, like he could get laughs telling that he accidentally lit himself on fire freebasing cocaine you know, and you’re sitting there listening to this guy. And watching Pryor was like watching a jazz musician. Like the microphone—in real life he was such a f—-up. He was a womanizer, he admitted to beating women, he was a drug addict, he wasn’t a good father, um, but when he got onstage, something magical happened. Like when he had that microphone, he was so honest and like I said, there’s a great line in the pool movie, “The Hustler” where Paul Newman says, ‘Tonight I feel so hot the pool cue’s like an extension of my arm.’ And for Pryor it looked the microphone was a part of his arm. He was supposed to be up there telling those stories, and his misery made people laugh, and that impressed me so much and I got all of his albums and other people like Richard Lewis, who talked about you know how depressed he was and everything. But in such a funny way. And that’s what comedy is.
I mean comedians we’re just people who whine. But we happen to be funny when we whine. Like if Jerry Seinfeld wasn’t funny you’d want to punch him in the face, he’d just seem like a whiner to you. But the fact is that he’s funny. Look at how honest Chris Rock is. Chris Rock got up and said there’s black people and there’s n—–s. It’s like you know that’s from a real place. That’s not a hack. You know? Dave Attell is another guy who’s just, his jokes are from such an original place and I went to Afghanistan with him and Nick DiPaulo and the rebellious attitude on stage is amazing. Like they told us in Afghanistan you can’t talk about masturbating, okay, so Attell gets on stage, and so I had to close. I had to follow, Jimmy Florentine, Nick DiPaulo and Dave Attell, which is not easy but because I was on the Stern show, it was my tour. So we called it Operation Mirth.
Stadtmiller: (Laughing)
Lange: That was my idea. And listen, I was in Afghanistan with Florentine, DiPaulo, and Attell and we’re all in an army barracks and we realized, we’re doing something that’s nice and we’re trying to help people but we’re seeing the horrors of war and after we make people laugh, we’re all in this army barracks just miserable. We’re just miserable people who just hate everything. ‘I hate this. I hate that. This guy’s an asshole.’ You hate other people in show business who are successful. ‘That’s a hack. She’s a hack.’ But that’s what people like. People like bulls—, blah, blah, blah. With Attell and Nick, I really think it’s true, they’re true artists. But with me, I don’t give myself that kind of credit which is another cause of my depression. But they said we couldn’t do masturbation, so Attell goes on stage and he goes, ‘Look guys, I can’t talk about masturbation, so let me tell you about the time I was f—ing a sock with shampoo in it.’
And we just broke every rule and they couldn’t yell at us because of course the soldiers laughed their ass off and one time I did a college with Nick DiPaulo, we did George Washington University, in DC, and Suffolk College was so politically correct nowadays that there’s actually woman on stage making sign languages for the deaf. She was a cute blonde and it’s me and Nick, you know, and I said at the beginning, ‘Listen, maybe I can give you some time off sweetie, are there any deaf people here?’ No one said anything, and I said, ‘Well we don’t need you.’ I’ll make sure you get paid, but she said to say everything I said, whether I was insulting her, she had to say it to the audience. So me, being the jerk that I am, I said, ‘Well what’s the sign for ‘p—-‘ and she actually made a triangle by her crotch. Okay so now at that point, a sorority was paying us, and the girl running the sorority was like a feminist, very politically correct and was like, ‘Don’t be…this is a smart crowd, it’s a very hip liberal crowd. Don’t be crude, because you now I know you’re on Stern, I know Nick is brilliant but can be dirty but they’re not going to appreciate that.’
And I love how these self-righteous people think. They’re still college kids, I don’t give a f— if…I’m not saying, if a d-ck joke is smart, it’s smart. It’s just amazing they get on this self-righteous soapbox and say that we can’t be dirty because these kids are smarter than you. So when I asked her how to say p—-, it got the biggest laugh ever. So for the last half of my act, no matter what joke I said, for no reason I just said ‘p—-’ at the end. So she would have to sign the joke and then make the triangle. At the end of my act, I said ‘p—-’ 100 times in a row and she kept having to make the triangle. And I’m telling you I never got harder laughs in my life. And that, I told you, I go look: I didn’t go to college, I did a lot of drugs when I was your age and I had jokes about that and it’s depressing but it’s therapeutic. I think if you ask a lot of comics they have such dark things in their mind or….My main source of pain is my father. He was like my best friend and when he fell off the roof at 42 he became a quadriplegic and he lasted four years. And once a week he would ask me to kill him. And finally four and a half years later he died mercifully and we think a friend of his, a crazy friend of his helped him commit suicide but me and my mother had to deal with that. And he was like my best friend and he used to hurt my mom when we played catch and he couldn’t wipe his ass or nose for the last four years of his life and I had to see that.
And I started doing a lot of drugs to medicate myself, and I gambled money I didn’t have. If a bookie beat me up I wouldn’t care. I stopped caring and my mother and sister thank God are not addicts. They dealt with it in a different way and they’re like saints. Because if they were [addicts], the family would have been in ruins. Because I went through a bad coke problem as you could see from the pig story. But I was able to conquer it because two weeks before my father died he said ‘You gotta take care of your mother and sister.’ Look he was old school, he got through the 10th grade, he grew up in the streets, I don’t think he realized or wanted to put all of that guilt on my shoulders and any man from a working class family in Jersey, especially Italian, would take that as money. Make sure they got money. You know because we had to go on welfare when he got hurt, and uh, I’ve taken care of them with money but not emotionally. Like over the years I’ve made money and had success but one of the problems that I paid was a horrible addiction. And my mother and sister and my girlfriend right now too are the kind of people who they’d rather live in a closet and me be healthy and they truly are like that. I mean like I shower them with stuff because I force it on them but they’re just like, we don’t care. We want you to be alive and healthy. And that’s a good support system. So that’s my main source of pain.
And so when I get on stage, all of that pain comes out and I mean, Richard Pryor, he grew up in a whorehouse. His father beat him and his mother and grandmother were hookers and he used to see that and he [his father] used to beat him up and he used to tell stories about that that were so friggin’ funny and then do characters. So telling stories like ‘The Pig Story’ that was the worst day of my life when it happened but then a couple years later I told it on Howard and Conan and it became funny. Time goes by and you can joke about it. And that kind of rebelliousness, like Norm Macdonald, I’ll give you another example with the Attell thing. I used to open for Norm, and we were in San Francisco at the Palace of the Fine Arts and I had only played the Punchline in San Francisco, and Norm comes up to me, and he’s one of my favorites, he’s one of the most original guys, so he comes up to me, I told this story on Fallon, the date rapist thing and he comes up to me before the gig in San Francisco and he goes, ‘Hey man, I’ve seen your act, this is San Francisco. No gay s—.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve played the Punchline,’ and he’s like, ‘That’s a club, man, there are critics out there. No gay shit. Don’t ruin my life.’ And he scared the hell out of me. So I struggled through 20 minutes of not using gay stuff and that left me with about 30 seconds. And I was able to get through it but it was stressful. And then Norm goes out, I introduce him. The first thing he says is, before he says, ‘Hello, good to be here,’ the first thing out of his mouth…’Hey, how about that AIDS?’
And then there’s like a mull, and then he says, ‘You know I always hear a lot of bad stuff about AIDS, like AIDS is so bad, but then last week I read that AIDS doesn’t discriminate and that’s kind of nice.’ And you know what? It got an enormous laugh and there was a critic there who ended up loving the both of us. And that rebellious attitude, not pandering to the crowd. Like when the crowd wants something and you give it to them that’s something else a hack does. Like there’s an exercise comedians have and some of them are amazing at it. Nick DiPaulo happens to be amazing at this. We do it at the Comedy Cellar or sometimes at a club. You purposely go on stage and dig a hole. Like you purposefully say, ‘Good evening, ladies and ni—-s’ or something. You say the most offensive thing on the planet and get moans and boos and then see if in the next 15 minutes you can be good enough to dig out of that hole. That’s a hard thing to do and there are some great comics who can’t do it. If I could be Chris Rock or Jerry Seinfeld, I’d be Chris Rock. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect Jerry Seinfeld. I’m not saying Seinfeld is a hack because he’s clean. It’s just about drawing from your life and being original. And my darkness helped my comedy and, uh, I know this is a very long-winded answer to your question, but to me, and to a lot of comedians depression and comedy go hand in hand.
If you saw the Fallon thing the other day. You said he mentioned we were at a wedding together and he said I was very funny and I said well yeah because I was on coke. I’m the only fat guy who ever got fat on coke and I went to Afghanistan I talked about being under mortar attack in Afghanistan being scared but the kid did make a funny joke. He goes, he kept making fat jokes about me like I was going to be too much dust for him to clean up. And to look at the band, I did Conan like 20 times, and to see the band, who are usually edgier guys, laugh at that stuff is so great. And you know and even a guy like Letterman who people think are uptight, if they’ll have me back on again I can’t wait to do Letterman again, and just to be the guy. I’ll just say, ‘Look – I know you’re friends with Steve Martin and Regis but please just call me, Dave.’ Because I’m going to try to help him out with this whole intern thing, I think I can help. I’m dying to just say that and dig a hole, see if I can get out of it. It’s just more interesting.
I think every great comic I know who’s truly funny thinks they suck, thinks the audience sucks and if the audience likes – it’s like Woody Allen told the old Groucho Marx joke at the beginning of ‘Annie Hall.’ He goes, ‘I would never want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.’ Every big comedian I know thinks they suck and if a crowd accepts them and thinks they’re funny then the crowd must suck too. And I’m telling you that’s every great guy I know. It’s just depression and anger go hand in hand with great comedy to me. There are exceptions to me like a Jerry Seinfeld but a guy like Dane Cook, a lot of guys bash Dane Cook in comedy. I’ve met Dane Cook, he couldn’t be a nicer guy, I respect the living hell out of his success but is it my cup of tea? No. Fifteen-year-old girls go to see Dane Cook. You take a fifteen-year-old girl to see my act you’d probably be arrested. And um, I actually do a joke in my new DVD I say, I say something very offensive and I forget what it is, and people go, ‘Oooh,’ and I say, ‘You’re not at a Dane Cook show.’ But then I say ‘But 40,000 other people are. At the National Coliseum.’ I’m making $11 tonight and he’s getting blown on a private jet. I don’t bash Dane Cook he does what he does and I’m sure he has his own pain, but I’m more interested and can relate to the guys with the anger and the pain and I have my own and that’s where my writing has always come from.
Stadtmiller: So it’s interesting, what you said about the digging a hole because I wonder if you’ve ever thought about it – it’s almost like you’ve done that in your life and career.
Lange: Well, you know. You should be a shrink.
Stadtmiller: Thanks, man. That was deep huh?
Lange: That’s a perfect analogy, sure. I, you know, when my father fell I was 18, I had to go to summer school to get out of high school. I was a horrible student. I wasn’t going to go to college anyway. Me and my two friends were hustling 9-ball at a pool hall, and we were horrible at it. We were the only hustlers who lost money at it. And you know, and then because it was hard to see my old man like that and look, I’m famous on Stern for saying, ‘Waaah’ about stuff. ‘Get over it’ and the irony is I’m the king of that.
I started doing drugs and gambling and I did, in a way I said: I’m going to dig a hole in life for me, and if I get out of it then fine and if I don’t whatever. But then when my father took take care of my mother and sister and so I thought well now at least financially it’s time to dig out of the hole. Financially I did, we’re fine. I’m a millionaire. I bought my mom a house, I bought her a car. My sister is a very successful fashion designer so she doesn’t need my help, but I try to give her generous gifts, and it’s all great and they’re very, very complimentary and nice about it. But they’d rather me not be an addict and still be working as a longshoreman at the Port, and that love is great, but you’re right. In a sense I did dig a hole in life that eventually I had to get out of, but I only got out of it financially. I am a testament to the old bumper sticker, ‘Money ain’t everything, man.’ I’ll tell you – there’s so much more to life – and I’m trying to figure that out now – and being off heroin for 8 months is making me think a lot clearer. Look at Kurt Cobain, you know. People – somebody called up after the show once after Courtney Love was on and said she was stupid and I said something which I guess got me in a little trouble with management which I said, ‘Stupid? She was smart enough to kill a genius.’ I think Kurt Cobain had all that pain and he blew his head off. Kurt Cobain wasn’t kidding. I think that’s the last time music meant something, and I was a big Nirvana fan and that didn’t help at 24 to hear a song like – I mean he wrote a song called, it’s either ‘Happy’ or ‘Dumb’ – where the premise is…
Stadtmiller: ‘I think I’m dumb…maybe I’m just happy’ Yeah I know the lyric you’re referring to…
Lange: The premise is if you’re happy…you’re dumb. And I believe that I see someone unbelievably happy like I see the Kardashian sisters happy and I’m like ‘What the f— are you so happy about?’ Because of that store they own? You know, the reality show with the Kardashians that I’d want to see is what their old man did with that bag O.J. [Simpson] gave them with the knife in it – that’s what I’d want to see.
Stadtmiller: You like to call out the impolite things that no one else will talk about.
Lange: Exactly, like I do a joke on stage, like the Kardashians that’s what I want to see. Like these kids — I know your store is great and your store is taking over Miami but do you know where your father put the bloody knife that killed Nicole [Simpson]? And that’s just how I think. Because there’s so much darkness in life. O.J. f—ing killed two people and he’s still dating women. This sums up LA when that sniper got caught who they’re going to kill now – you know that sniper in Washington when he got caught I was in Los Angeles having lunch with some people and it came over the news that he got caught and they put a picture of him up. And there was a table of four girls behind me and it said ‘Sniper Who Killed 10 People Caught’ and they put his picture up and every girl just went, ‘Oh my God, he’s so cute.’
Stadtmiller: Ha.
Lange: And you realize O.J. had a bunch of girlfriends after he decapitated a woman and they were all hot blondes. I mean – fame and money – Bin Laden would be dating like a Playmate if he was here, you know, if he didn’t kill them. And that’s – and a lot of comedians who are hilarious would be broke. If I didn’t get lucky and get on the Howard Stern Show, which has been everything to me and it was the perfect fit because I’m willing to be honest and he likes that. There’s 100 comedians out there funnier than me but they’re not going to talk about the sh– that I talk about. and they’re not going to get their balls busted as easy because you’ve got to have a thick skin. But I had done ‘Mad TV’ a couple years, I did a sitcom a couple years, I did a sitcom, I did a sitcom, I did a few movies that made no money. I had done everything you could do and then The Stern Show fell out of the sky and now I’m a comic who’s kind of wealthy. Without that luck, and it’s so much luck, I would be like a lot of comics who are way funnier than me living paycheck to paycheck and Bin Laden’s not caught, you know what I mean? I can’t go to bed thinking about – I go to bed at night thinking I don’t deserve this house because there’s a seven-year-old black kid freezing to death somewhere or getting raped.
Stadtmiller: Do you really think that?
Lange: I think that all the time.
Stadtmiller: Well that was the second thing I was going to ask you – is because the thread that seems to run through everything is the current of self loathing that seems to run through everything, and I don’t know, I was watching the E! Special on Chris Farley’s life and it was really fascinating – I guess I had never, I hadn’t been that aware of just how much the self-loathing contributed to everything. So do you identify with that?
Lange: Oh my God, my shrink told me, ‘I’ve never met someone who hates himself more.’ And he’s an Upper East Side shrink. He goes why – he goes you – see, I don’t want to get too crazy, but when my father fell, I would help him work sometimes, and my job was to hold the ladder you know, and he fell off the top of a ladder and instead of working with him, I went and shot pool that day, so I had that guilt – but that was 1985 and my shrink said something to me. He said, ‘When is the statue of limitations? When are you going to stop beating yourself up? When are you going to stop hating yourself for that?’ And I tell that to other people – I say if you hate me, I’m so envious of you because you can get away from me. I hate me, but I’m everywhere I go. I look at myself on the Stern show, that camera angle, you know when we do the TV show it’s like, my looks, the obnoxious stuff I say. When they cut to me on The Stern Show, when there’s a stripper there, I think I look like the Grimace from McDonald’s commercials like, ‘Show us your t–s!’ You know my mother must be mortified. I just have such an awful self-image and it started young.
Because – the Farley thing is interesting. The movie I did with Norm, ‘Dirty Work,’ Farley is in, and I worked with him for ten days up in Toronto. And I never worked with someone funnier or sadder. And you could see it was just a matter of time – and he had a lot of issues with women – now I haven’t always been heavy. I was always a thin kid, I was an athlete. I got heavy from sh– living – so I’m able to get thinner but if you’re always that fat you know – society isn’t nice, and I think that was a problem with him, and you start to feel like the clown. And you know Belushi, before he died was so depressed because they wanted to put him in a movie where he wore a diaper. It’s a famous story – and he called his wife the night before he died and he said, ‘Judy they want me to wear a diaper.’ And she was like crying, saying ‘Just come home, don’t be out there,’ and he was dead the next day.’
And when you meet executives who are morons who just don’t get it – and agents there’s so few good ones out there who aren’t just idiots – and laugh at the stupidest s—, it depresses you. Show business is always undignified but now with reality TV, holy living Christ. Linda Stasi has a great article in The Post today – it’s about how many gross things she’s seen on reality TV – oh my God and the things that she lists, I didn’t know half of it. And I do a joke in my act now about how I grew up in the ’70s. I used to watch Carol O’Connor. And M*A*S*H and now it’s like everyone’s watching “Bromance” and if some guy or girl is going to pick 18 crazy people to give a rose to. People don’t – like Jack Nicholson in ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ was good at acting crazy – if they did that now as a TV show they’d hire the real guy, you know what I mean? It’s like — they offered me 200 grand to do ‘Celebrity Rehab.’ I love Dr. Drew by the way. Dr. Drew has been very nice to me. He calls me, he’s concerned about me. Dr. Drew is a great, great man but the ‘Celebrity Rehab’ I have a problem with. I don’t think that’s helping Jeff Conaway. There’s different schools of thought. And they offered me $200,000 to do it, and I said no because to me, you know, do I want to kill my mother? I just said no to a reality show. And they said it was about me getting better but if I relapsed they’re not going to air that, you know what I mean? My mother knows I’ve done coke but she’s never seen me do it. Jesus.
Stadtmiller: So you see yourself that you’re going to relapse?
Lange: I hope not. I don’t think, the last time I did coke was June 14, 1997. And I just got tired of it, I got to a point where this is killing me and on the road people will put it in my hand and I’ll go, ‘Look, dude, I know how much this costs, so you got three seconds, I’m just going to drop it or you can take it out of my hand.’ So I think I’ve got to that point with heroin. It’s been eight months, I’m over the physical addiction and I’m working on the mental part.
Stadtmiller: What does it give you mentally?
Lange: Heroin? Well it’s just, it’s a shame to say, because every time I say it I feel like a kid who’s going to try it who’s in pain but it’s euphoria like you can’t imagine. And I pray that someone you love never has this problem because it’s like being attached to an atom bomb. I struggled with it for four years but I’ve never been clean this long and hopefully I’m over it. It doesn’t make, my thought on heroin is: It doesn’t make you forget your problems, it does something even better, it makes you not care about them at all. It just sucks coming home, when I come home and put on the TV and seeing ‘Real Chance of Love’ or ‘Million Dollar Listing’ or ‘The Real Wives of Whoreville’…you know what I mean? I’m like what is going on? I’d rather see Susan Sarandon play a real housewife from Atlanta. In a great written show. I mean look at the Leno thing – they’re doing that because of the economy. Why try to write a great episode of “Law and Order” and produce it if you just throw Leno out there and do a monologue, and drive around in a green f—ing car you know? Everything’s hurting now because of the…
So you know, Mandy, I’m 42, I’m the same age Elvis was when he died. I remember thinking ‘when I was 33 I’m the same age Jesus was when he died,’ look at all Jesus did by 33.
Stadtmiller: Not as much as you, Artie.
Lange: I haven’t come close to that – he died for all our sins by 33 and all I did was, you know, tell some Mexican jokes at a club. And 42, Elvis died at 42. I’m 42, you know. He was Elvis. Part of me thinks it’s over. How much better can my career get? To me the Stern show is the best show of all time. I’ve been on it for a decade.
Stadtmiller: So does he support you in staying clean?
Lange: Oh God, yeah. Howard has been very supportive – on the show we joke around but I talk to him off the air and he said he’d do anything for me. He wants me to be okay.
Stadtmiller: So when was your last stint in rehab, and how many have you done?
Lange: In my entire life? I’ve tried four times I think. (The most recent one) it was in January. Yeah.
Stadtmiller: And so did he arrange that?
Lange: No, my family did, but he said take as long as you want, and you’ll have a job but he would never fire me because that’s real support you know. He’s like you take as long as you want and you come back – and it’s odd you know some of these guys you meet. Quincy Jones produced Mad TV and he told me the same thing there – he gave me a hug and he said, it was the funniest time, he says – I put this in the book, three years before I was loading ships in Newark as a longshoreman and now I’m on Mad TV and he’s hugging me – and he’s saying, ‘you a funny cat’ – you know he’s one of those guys who calls you cat and gets away with that. I used to load trucks and Quincy Jones is comparing me to Miles Davis. A good friend of mine…I never shot heroin, I never smoked cocaine…once you go to tying it off and shooting it, that’s death. I’m going to a funeral tomorrow. I can’t say who, but he was a good friend – something like that would be something that would make me relapse before Kim Kardashian believe me – but it didn’t. In a way I’ve been off the sh-t so long in a way it’s acting as a deterrent…he was 34. I’ve been to a lot of wakes for a lot of younger people. It’s the worst thing of all time. I think I’ve gotten to the point now with therapy and everything and being off it long enough where I’ve gotten to the point with heroin where I got to with coke where I just look at it as death and I have so much to live for.
Stadtmiller: Do you drink?
Lange: No – right now – I’m clean and sober. I used to do 2 shows – both shows were funny but for different reasons. And again – that’s depressing too is a lot of people don’t get it. Look I do racial humor and I say the “N” word in my act in a certain context sometimes. I refuse to apologize for jokes. In other words, if something’s a bad joke I’ll apologize for it not being funny but I won’t apologize for the intent because it was intended to be a joke. If you say to me, ‘Art are you afraid of getting f–ked in the ass?’ I’d have to say ‘yes,’ it might be my single biggest fear – I’m also afraid of heights, but I’d have to put getting f–ked in the ass right up there with heights. And I say you know what would really be the worst afternoon for me is if someone took me to the top of the Empire State Building and then f–ked me in the ass. I say…if stupid people think I hate gay people because of that then I don’t feel like catering to stupid people – I’m just going to do it – I think the smart people know the context. I could not – I really think – maybe there’s some ultra liberal analyst who would disagree but I really, really don’t feel I have an ounce of racism or homophobia in me — do I relate to a gay guy? No. But I don’t think he’s looking to get a sandwich with me either. (Me and George Takeai) We’ve become the best of friends.
Stadtmiller: The quote from you about New York comedy – and the festival…
Lange: The Beacon. (doing sober) it’ll be. I played Carnegie Hall a few years ago and it sold out in 2 ½ hours for the festival and again that’s a testament to the Stern show and Caroline Hirsch and her people have been so nice to em – and I love them so much – but Carnegie Hall – that was something that was great and looking out and getting a standing ovation was awesome and my mother was there. But Carnegie Hall was more for my mother – the Beacon is rock and roll, you know and that Stones movie Scorcese did, I see the Allman Brothers there once a year – it’s such a great room. Me and my girlfriend were walking around the Upper West Side last week and I stopped by the security guy, he recognized me and I said ‘hey do you mind if I just go on the stage and check it out because it just got revamped,’ and they let us go on stage and look at it empty – and the word my mother or someone from another generation feels about Carnegie I feel about the Beacon because I also played Town Hall and Lincoln Center for them and both were fun but the Beacon is rock and roll and I always consider Howard a rock star and I’m lucky enough to get a taste of that when I go out on the road. So to me the Beacon is sort of my Carnegie Hall and I’m way more excited about that than anything I’ve ever played, and it looks like it’s just about sold out already and so – you know that kind of response is great – and New York is – I mean listen, it’s the capital of comedy. Look at the funny people who come from Brooklyn. Woody Allen stayed so good because he never left New York. Howard Stern stayed so good because he never left New York – Mel Brooks when he just got out of New York was doing “Blazing Saddles” when he left New York he started doing stuff like “Robin Hood Men In Tights” – he was in LA too long. He lost the edge. Letterman’s funnier than Leno because he stayed in New York. But Letterman wanted to go to LA — right — to do “The Tonight Show” – instead he does the Ed Sullivan Theater – what happens the first week he comes on, they open the door on 53rd Street and they meet the neighbors and they get four years of material. You can’t do that in Burbank. You know what I mean? You’ve got to drive a green car around and you’ve got to hope that Jennifer Love Hewitt has got a good anecdote about the “Ghost Whisperer”. In New York you don’t need that, you can make your own comedy just by opening the door and you get away from show business. Like, I work on the Stern show because it’s Howard. It’s not radio, it’s show business, and then I walk outside.
(The sound of a computer goes on in background.)
Stadtmiller: You using e-mail?
Lange: No, that’s my girlfriend. I told her to Google me and she did and now she’s packing her bags to leave.
Stadtmiller: So you read the Google results of you?
Lange: Well Googling me, you talk about being depressed. First of all there’s 18 web sites that predict my early death, there’s a guy who loves me and he really does love me, I know this, but the name of his web site is ‘Baby Gorilla Dot Com’, and the story behind that is in the movie ‘Dirty Work.’ Don Rickles, this is one of the greatest stories, the first time I did Letterman…Don Rickles…he couldn’t remember any of his lines and we made the mistake of writing insults…we said it’s Norm and Artie – just go up to them and insult them…it’s the first scene I’m shooting…and Don Rickles is an inch from my face and he goes. ‘Look at you. Look at you, you baby gorilla’ and then I burst out laughing 20 straight times. Finally we got it. Then he started talking to my stomach and then he said, ‘Are you having a good time in there, ice cream, dancing around?’ And then we finally got through me not laughing and then he got to Norm, and then with the camera rolling he insulted Norm as Norm…He would go, ‘How did you get a movie’ and they’d go, ‘Cut, you can’t do that Don.’ In the movie…
Stadtmiller: So do you have her Google you daily?
Lange: No, no, no I think sometimes she goes on the Web site to see what we talked about on the show, maybe a little bit, when we met she had no idea who I was, which was the greatest thing ever.
Stadtmiller: What does she do?
Lange: She has a psychology major, and she does fashion. She studied at Oxford. But I just beat her at Scrabble recently. I had the word ‘zig’ and she challenged it, and of course it’s a verb to zig. She’s 25, it’s, you know. But she’s smarter than I am.