Rodney Dangerfield’s It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me: A Lifetime Of No Respect But Plenty Of Sex And Drugs
“My life is nothing but pressure. All pressure. This pressure is like a heaviness. It’s always on top of me, this heaviness. It’s always there since I’m a kid. Other people wake up in the morning, ‘A new day! Ah, up and at ’em!’ I wake up, the heaviness is waiting for me nice. Sometimes I even talk to it. I say [adopts cheerful voice] ‘Hi, heaviness!’ and the heaviness looks back at me, [in an ominous growl] ‘Today you’re gonna get it good. You’ll be drinking early today.’”—Rodney Dangerfield, No Respect
Rodney Dangerfield has the face of an overgrown toddler and the haunted, sad eyes of a man who has suffered. As a child I gravitated to Dangerfield’s cuddly despair without comprehending the genuine anguish underneath the rapid-fire self-deprecating one-liners. It was shtick, but it was shtick rooted in genuine pain. Consider the excerpt quoted above (and if you don’t own his 1980 stand-up album No Respect, download it now). It’s a funny bit rooted in Dangerfield’s lovable-loser persona but it’s also an eloquent personification of depression so evisceratingly dark and dead-on it leaves a bitter aftertaste. Dangerfield had a genius for alchemizing pain into comedy, but in that bit he lets the anguish bleed through.
Rodney Dangerfield’s 2004 memoir It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me: A Lifetime Of No Respect But Plenty Of Sex And Drugs is in many ways a typical stand-up comic’s book except for one thing: It’s agonizingly sad. In between jokes recycled from his stand-up routine (one-liners fans already know by heart), anecdotes involving famous people, and career highlights come bracing moments where the literary equivalent of a fake smile subsides and the author’s self-hatred bubbles unabashedly to the surface. Here’s Dangerfield on why he turned down a dinner invitation from Jack Benny, one of his idols: “The truth was that I didn’t go because I knew I couldn’t be myself with Jack Benny. I mean, I’d have to play the part and be a gentleman. Can you picture me saying to Jack Benny, ‘Man, I’m so depressed. It’s all too fucking much?’”
Dangerfield grew up alone and unloved, the son of a vaudevillian, stockbroker, and womanizer who abandoned his family when Dangerfield was a small child. His mother, let me tell you, she was no bargain either in the sense that she was cold and unsupportive and burdened her son with bottomless insecurities.
It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me’s liveliest and most engaging passages cover Dangerfield’s early years in stand-up, when the field was wide-open and populated by the kind of wild men who would repay an invitation to a fan’s home by fucking the fan’s wife, then stealing his coat. Dangerfield reportedly wanted to name his book My Love Affair With Marijuana, and while he didn’t get his wish there are still plenty of ribald anecdotes about drinking and drugging and carrying on that my 10-year-old, Rappin’ Rodney-owning self probably would have found scandalous.
Dangerfield rubbed elbows with Lenny Bruce and paid his dues before giving up on comedy in his thirties to sell aluminum siding. He returned to the stage in his early forties, older, wiser, and eager to make his mark on a comedy world that had chewed him up and spit him out. But the heaviness persisted. In the late 1960s, Dangerfield scored a sweet gig doing skits opposite Dean Martin on Martin’s super-popular variety show only to discover that Dean liked to duck out early so Dangerfield ended up acting all of his scenes opposite an empty chair. Martin and Dangerfield’s scenes “together” were the work of constructive editing. When fame and fortune did arrive, they proved an awkward fit—Dangerfield was more comfortable sharing joints and a laugh with limousine drivers than the wealthy, successful people inside the limos.
At one point, Dangerfield reconnected with his father and asked him to share the wisdom he’s accrued through decades of hard living:
My old man was really old by now, but he was still pretty sharp. One time I said to him, “You’ve traveled all over the country, must have slept with hundreds of women. You’ve done everything, been through it all. What’s life all about? What’s the answer?”