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The Joe Bob Briggs interview! Part 2 DC: As you branched out into other ventures, a live show, a radio spot, and so on, did you ever feel like the character was sort of taking over, like Sherlock Holmes took over from Doyle? Bloom: Yeah, because when I first started doing it, I had a pretty good freelance career, and would get a lot of assignments. I remember a magazine editor called me and said, "We'd like you to do this article," and they'd pay so much, and I said "Are you calling about John Bloom or Joe Bob?" And he said, "Who's John Bloom?" (laugh) Not that I minded. KY: At what point did your character switch over from being a print medium character to being a TV persona? What brought that about? Bloom: Well, it's something I just fell into because I got fired - let me correct that. Joe Bob got fired, and John Bloom quit. (laugh) I did a column in April of 1985, a parody of "We Are the World," that a local politician said was racist. [Ed. note: read the controversial column by clicking here.] The politician had a protest at the paper, and at the end of the protest, the editor says, with the TV cameras rolling, "As of this moment, Joe Bob is dead," and the place erupted in cheers. Then the editor came to me and said he wanted me to continue writing as John Bloom, but he didn't want Joe Bob anymore. So I resigned in solidarity with Joe Bob. (laugh) It was quite a cause celebre in Dallas, for several weeks actually. I got a lot of speaking invitations that way. I had always done things like the Elks Club, the Unitarian Church, things like that, but these were invitations - they wanted Joe Bob. I'd never really performed Joe Bob, I'd only written Joe Bob, and actually most of those three years people didn't know who wrote Joe Bob. I tried to keep it a total secret; it gradually leaked out, and there were theories about who wrote it, and everything. It's really hard to do that kind of literary hoax anymore, because there's too many media, too many ways to find you out. KY: Too many people willing to blow the whistle on a secret like that. Bloom: I sort of thought the next step would be, Joe Bob appears somewhere, and I was going to do an Andy Kaufman thing and not admit I was John Bloom. So I started working on the wardrobe and the voice and the accent, and I thought I'd try it out someplace easy, just do it like a speech, I won't do a performance. So the next invitation that came in, I said, "John Bloom isn't available, but Joe Bob will come." I just, like, did a lot of material from old columns, stuff that had some good jokes in it. It worked pretty well. Then I got this call from a concert promoter in Cleveland, who wanted to book Joe Bob. I said, "Book Joe Bob for what?" He said, "We want to book your show, you know, for one night. I'll promote it, and I'll pay you…" I think it was a pretty good piece of change, more than I've ever received - I think it was $4,000, something like that. I said, well, I've never been to Cleveland. For $4,000, I'll go to Cleveland. (laugh) And if I totally bomb, I don't know anybody in Cleveland, (laugh) and I'll be back home the next day. So the idea was, I'll develop this show, and I'll go and do it in Cleveland, sort of as a lark, and if it didn't work I had nothing to lose. I thought it would be a way to try out material. Driving up to Cleveland, I'm still, like, trying to memorize the show, right? And I'd written a couple of country music parody songs, and I had to get there a day early and hire a couple of guitarists who could back me up on these songs. What I didn't realize is, he was such a good promoter that I was on the front entertainment page of USA Today - I was, like, the lead entertainment item in USA Today. The night before the show I was on all three six o'clock news broadcasts. There was a rock-'n'-roll radio station with a couple of deejays who were tied into the show and were promoting it all day… KY: So much for being able to slip away out of town when you're done… Bloom: Yeah, and so, they had, like, a thousand people, they sold a thousand tickets. It was the Berea Convention Center in Berea, Ohio, which was in the flight path of the Cleveland airport… (laugh) It was actually Berea High School but they call it the Berea Convention Center. About, I would say, 20 minutes before the show, I went into this total panic mode - I'm like, "What have I gotten myself into? If I'm going to do a show, I shouldn't do it the first time in front of a thousand people who heard about it on the radio…" I went on, and I'd say about 20 minutes into the show - this is a problem where you should never memorize a show, because I skipped about three pages, and if you skip pages you can never go back. There's no way to go back and pick up those three pages, you know, it doesn't make sense, but I'm going to keep doing it. At the intermission I thought, "Let me out of here - I don't ever want to do this ever again." In the second half of the show I kind of loosened up, and it went better. The audience was very forgiving; they knew it was my first time, and so they were very supportive. I told them it was my first time. I wanted them to know… (laugh) I went down at the end of the show and sang "We Are the Weird," went out in the audience like a faith healer, hugging people, and we were swaying, you know… (laugh) Finally, I said, "This is going to sound strange to you, but I thought of everything except how to end the show." They laughed; they thought it was a joke. I said, "No, you think I just made a joke. That wasn't a joke." And they laughed again. (laugh) Then I said, "I really don't know how to stop. So what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to walk out into the lobby, but I'm not coming back. (laugh) So, I want you to know, thank you for being here, this was great." They're looking at me like, is he kidding? I said, "No, I'm putting the microphone down now, so I won't be able to talk to you anymore, it's going down on the stage." And it's like, they're watching me, but they're still sitting there. They're not getting up to leave. (laugh) And I'm saying, "Okay! Goodnight!" and I walk down the aisle and go out into the lobby, and they continue to sit there. They're sure that I'm coming back. So I go back into the theater and I say, "I'm not coming back! (laugh) Go to Denny's!" They still think that it's material, and none of it is material. Finally I said to the manager, "Please go in and tell the audience that the show is over." And I thought, thank God I never have to do a show like that ever again. But what I didn't realize is that, when he did tell them the show was over, they all came out towards me. (laugh) So they stopped in the lobby and surrounded me and wanted to talk. But they were so nice and so encouraging that I did decide to do it again, I just decided never to do that show again, and never to be that unprepared. But that's how it started - that's the long answer to how I started to do the performing. It was called "An Evening With Joe Bob Briggs" and then it was called "Joe Bob Briggs Dead in Concert," and I probably did it a hundred times, different places around the country. Usually I would just do it in a place that syndicated my column. DC: It was basically stand-up? Bloom: That wasn't so much stand-up, no, because I also did comedy clubs. I didn't really like comedy clubs, because comedy clubs have a lot of drunk people in them, and I would tend to do long story jokes, Bill Cosby kind of jokes that take forever to tell, and you can't really do that in a comedy club because people hate you if you do that. (laugh) Also, I didn't have any profanity in my act. I didn't ever say "fuck" or anything. I started out saying "fuck," because if you're doing the one o'clock show with Japanese tourists in a comedy club you'll start saying "fuck." (laugh) It's the only English word they really understand. But I would have to just destroy my show to do the comedy clubs, because it was more of a storytelling, Will Rogers thing, it had music in it - at one point I performed all the parts in "The Last Temptation of Christ" (laugh) - for my big closer, I would perform the whole movie… That led to the Movie Channel. I was noticed by Showtime, and they gave me a hosting job on the Movie Channel. That's when I started doing TV hosting, which is a lot easier than those stage shows. Audience: What year was that? Bloom: The Movie Channel was '87. Originally I was just a guest host on a Friday night show called "Drive-In Theatre," and they kept inviting me back every month, and eventually I just became the permanent host. They had four hosts through the whole network, and they would film these MTV style inserts at this studio in New York, and then they kept slowly firing hosts, and I was the last one left. Audience: Last host standing. (laugh) Bloom: It was spooky, because they had this big studio in Spanish Harlem, and it would just be me in this big room with my little drive-in set over in a corner, and all the other empty abandoned sets where the other hosts used to be. (laugh) DC: You did that - how many years? Bloom: I did that for nine years - DC: And TNT for… Bloom: TNT for four years. KY: I'm curious about the origin of the term "fu" as used on the show. Did you coin that? Bloom: Yes, originally when I wrote the column, it became a synonym for mindless violence - any kind of mindless violence was a "fu," and the "fu" could modify an action or a person. So you could have "bimbo fu," or you could also have "tire iron fu." DC: It seems that's part of a lexicon you've invented for appreciation of these movies. I always think, "here's somebody who's doing it on their own terms," and you're not looking for themes or social commentary. Bloom: Right, and also I did like the films. One thing I don't like about Elvira, for example - even though I like her as a person, she's a sweet person - but I don't like the fact that her character obviously doesn't like the films she's hosting. I think it's much more interesting to be a champion of the films and treat the films on their own terms and be the populist guy who understands them. Next page: 'It's defensible on etymological grounds...' |
