AVC: Did you think of the show as an ideal format for your style, maybe even more than stand-up?
JK: I don't know about the format, but the character. Playing a guy with my name, and my voice, and my likeness. And in animation, you don't have to shave, you don't have to worry about how you look. It's kind of a wonderful world, animation.
AVC: Do you think of yourself first and foremost as a stand-up comedian, or as a writer?
JK: I think I'm a comedian trapped in the body of an accountant. When I got onstage in Boston, I really felt like an accountant after following guys like Lenny Clark, Steve Sweeney, Kevin Meaney. Really wild guys. I would get up and people just sort of filed out slowly.
AVC: You should've packaged yourself with other low-key, slow-talking comedians. You and Steven Wright could tour together.
JK: I always wanted to do The Odd Couple with Steven Wright in summer stock. Spread the word.
I said to my manager once that Steven Wright is the only guy that made me feel dynamic. There's one other guy like us, but I don't think he does comedy any more, so I'm not going to mention him. Margaret Smith was really a low-energy comedian, and wonderful. She's half of one of my favorite episodes of Dr. Katz. It's her and Andy Kindler, in an episode called "Mourning Person," about a death in the family.
AVC: Why did Dr. Katz eventually wind down? Why isn't it on the air right now?
JK: I honestly can't answer that. It's a Comedy Central question. It's got something to do with money.
AVC: So it wasn't that you felt you'd done enough?
JK: No, I think it had to do with the network identity. It was sort of shifting demographically from middle-aged Jewish guys to young men.
AVC: Do people still call you "Doctor"?
JK: No.
AVC: Never happens?
JK: Well, it happened when the show was on the air, and people thought for years that I was an actual shrink. I stopped denying it at one point. I just started billing them.
AVC: You've had a fairly long-term friendship with David Mamet, correct?
JK: Still do.
AVC: When did you meet?
JK: We met in college in 1965, when men were men.
AVC: Which college?
JK: Goddard College. Goddard was like a hippie school. A druggie, hippie school, in the turbulent '60s… and even for that time, it was considered bizarre. David was a total misfit there. And I became a total fit, sadly.
AVC: What were you guys studying?
JK: He was writing plays and reading stuff and writing stuff. I was exploring the differences between men and women all day and all night. Also, I made my debut as an actor at Goddard. I played the boy in The Fantasticks. I had to wear a rug. [Pause.] Sorry, old joke.
And then David wrote a revue called Camel, and we discovered that if you perform, it might be fun for you, but it should also be fun for the audience. He charged the students 50 cents to get into this play, which was unheard of. He did it because he wanted to pay the actors. He was on a real mission.
AVC: After you guys got out of school, you obviously stayed in touch to the extent where you could appear in his work later on.
JK: Yeah, I went to Chicago at his suggestion to work at the Niles Children Theater, and I auditioned for Alice In Wonderland and I didn't get the part. So I stopped acting for 20 years until he cast me in Things Change. I was so devastated, because nobody had ever said no to me as an actor.
AVC: Did you immediately go from being a failed actor to being a comedian?
JK: No, I went to being a failed musician. I had a band called Katz And Jammers for a couple of years, and a cabaret act, before I made the transition to stand-up. I eased into it.
AVC: You did songs and jokes?
JK: Yeah, then I phased out the music and phased in the comedy.
AVC: Somewhere during that period you worked with Robin Williams, correct?
JK: Thank you for reminding me. Yeah, in 1978 he was on tour with his first album, called Reality… What A Concept, and I was one-fourth of his band. I was his musical director, and that was my main credit for years, until someone pointed out that Robin didn't sing. But I had a great time. It was really fun.
He actually did two of my songs in his act. One I had written with David Mamet, called "This Heart Is Closed For Alterations." Which Robin later did on Mork & Mindy. And another called "Born To Be Punished." We still get checks from Belgium for like $13. It's not really a lucrative thing.
AVC: How is your health these days? Has your multiple sclerosis subsided to a point where you can work regularly?
JK: Yeah. I'm working right now. What, you think this is fun?
If you were somebody I'd known for many years, you'd notice that I'm moving very differently. I don't walk as well as I used to. I cry like a girl. But it's mainly my mobility that's been affected.
I'm writing a book with a friend of mine named Bill Braudis, called Finding The Disease That's Right For You. He calls me up once in a while, saying, "Jon, there's got to be something bad about MS. Because not only do you not complain, you make jokes about it!" Which is either an incredibly great characteristic, or I'm in denial. So I write, though I don't read.
AVC: You don't read?
JK: I read my press to the blind once a week.
AVC: Have you been able to maintain a steady work schedule through all this?
JK: That was a damn good joke. I read my press to the blind every week. See, if I say it louder—not that funny.
Yeah, I've slowed down a little bit, but not significantly. I was never that fast to begin with. Although I am the former New York State ping-pong champion. I don't know if you read that anywhere. I was one of the best players in the country for many years. Nobody believes it.
AVC: People will read this and check to see if you're lying.
JK: Some people dispute it, but it's true. I was.
AVC: What's it take to be a top-flight ping-pong player?
JK: It took complete devotion and ignoring everything else in life. I pawned my violin to buy better ping-pong rackets. I used to steal from my mother so I had enough money to go across town and play with the best players. Americans thought they were the best in the world.
AVC: But it was the Chinese, right?
JK: The Chinese, and the Swedish, oddly enough. And the Japanese and the Koreans.
AVC: Did you get to play on the international level? "International" meaning "not just in this country"?
JK: Only in Canada. I would have gone to China, but instead I went to Goddard. I would have been on the team.
AVC: You were a ping-pong champion until you went to college, and that was that?
JK: It's a great place to meet chicks, by the way.
AVC: College, or ping-pong?
JK: Both. David Mamet and I used to travel around hustling people. We'd go from college to college, and I'd let him beat me. We'd pretend we were playing for money, and then David would say, "If you want to play me, you have to beat my friend first."
I'm not proud of this lifestyle. My favorite hustle was, I would spot somebody 15 points, and during every point, I had to recall some really painful experience from my adolescence.
AVC: You were saying them out loud as you were playing?
JK: No. It was the honor system.
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