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Article written by Jason Gay www.observer.com
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Stern und Lange: Comedian Gets Dream Job With Howard
by Jason Gay
If Howard Stern distilled his audience into a single person, that person would probably come pretty close to resembling Artie Lange. Thirty-four years old, with thinning brown hair, a barrel chest, cheeks like tennis balls and a potent New Jersey accent, Mr. Lange looks and sounds like he should be doing doughnuts in a Meadowlands parking lot, car radio cranking, howling to Mr. Stern’s harassment of celebrities and assorted nitwits–that is, if Mr. Lange wasn’t suddenly, surprisingly, sitting in a studio on West 57th Street every weekday morning a few feet from the host’s chair, howling to Mr. Stern’s harassment of celebrities and assorted nitwits.
Feel good for Artie Lange. Not long ago, he appeared to be on a one-way ride to John Belushi/ Chris Farley—ville: tortured fuck-up, showbiz cliché, snorting coke off the back of a nightclub toilet one night with some idiot he’d just met, blowing through the cash he’d accumulated as a cast member of MAD TV until he got booted off the show, and finally plunging into a bolt-the-door depression that drove his poor, widowed mother up the wall. Back then (which wasn’t that long ago), Mr. Lange was a lonely blue-collar kid who didn’t know how to be rich, tormented by the memory of his late father. He was on the verge of becoming a sad little 200-word item in the front of Entertainment Weekly about the death of another overweight comic.
But then he pulled it together. His mom and kid sister saved him, and friends helped–and, oh yeah, there were those cops who tossed him into the L.A. county jail (Mr. Lange calls that an "intervention," too). Then one day, Norm Macdonald–a guy Mr. Lange didn’t know but sort of worshipped–called him out of the blue and asked if he wanted to be a movie star. Maybe it wasn’t such a good movie (Dirty Work–perhaps you’ve caught it, baked in your boxers, on Showtime some night), but it was a second chance. A clean Mr. Lange, fresh from rehab, flew to Toronto to film. When the plane landed, he told himself that if he fucked this up, he deserved to die.
He didn’t fuck it up. Dirty Work tanked, but then Mr. Lange followed Mr. Macdonald to Hollywood, where he got a role on the ABC sitcom The Norm Show. It was an O.K. show–Mr. Macdonald never looked too comfortable trying to Drew Carey around for Disney dollars–but for Mr. Lange, the point was that he was back in show business. He did some other movies–Lost & Found, Mystery Men, The Bachelor–and then, this spring, word came that Howard Stern’s sidekick, Jackie (the Jokeman) Martling, had quit because of money, and that the King of All Media was going to be auditioning for Jackie’s chair. They needed comics, funny people who knew the show and would be willing to get up very, very early, take a lot of grief and eat their breakfast in front of strippers. They were looking for someone, it turned out, like Artie Lange.
The old man had introduced him to the show. Arthur Lange Sr. climbed roofs for a living, fixing television antennas, and he used to play Howard Stern in his van. One day he came home to the family’s house in Union, N.J., and told his 13-year-old son: "You gotta hear this guy."
The old man was like that. Back then, most dads probably would’ve rather let their teenage sons drive an 18-wheeler cross-country than listen to WNBC’s new afternoon shock jock. But Artie Sr. had a comic’s heart. "He was a crazy motherfucker," his son said. "Dropped out of high school, blue-collar guy, but really a good provider, great father to his son. Crazy, though."
One afternoon, just after Artie Jr.’s 18th birthday, Artie Sr. couldn’t get to the peak of a 30-foot roof. So he put a ladder on a picnic table–"which he’d done about a million times," his son said–but no one was there to hold it and he fell on his head. He was paralyzed, a quadriplegic. Like the rest of his family, his son was devastated. "It tore him up," said Artie Jr.’s childhood friend, Dan McGrath. "It was like losing his best friend and his father."
The old man was in the hospital for over a year. He fought on for four more, while his son tried to be the man of the house. It was tough. College and Artie Jr. didn’t take. He drank; he screwed around with other stuff. He flopped around a few jobs and wound up working as a longshoreman in the Port of Newark. At 22, he decided to have a go at comedy. People had always said he was funny, like his dad, so he figured it was worth a shot. He saved up six grand and told himself he would give it a year to make it as a stand-up. The guys on the dock wished him well but laughed. They told him he still had a job when he got back. "They were saying ‘when it doesn’t work out,’ not if," Mr. Lange said, chuckling.
His first gig was at the old Improv in Hell’s Kitchen, at 44th and Ninth Avenue. He sucked. He went back, and sucked some more. He got better. By the end of the year, he had an agent and hit the road. Three and a half years later, he got the MAD TV gig. "I went from making eight grand a year to, like, 10 grand a week," he said. Of course, you know what that does. Add that MAD TV was taped in Los Angeles (Mr. McGrath said his friend hadn’t been farther from Jersey "than Florida"), and it spelled trouble down the road.
Trouble found Artie Lange, all right. He liked MAD TV and the major-league cash, but it was hard work, and he hated L.A. Habits got worse. "The coke was the worst thing," he said. "I had to stop that or else it would have been over. It was pathetic. I got stuff that a lot of people would dream of having, and I finally got my foot in the fucking door, and I [was] going to fuck it all up because of this. It was horrible."
His mother, Judy, was beside herself. Mrs. Lange said the MAD TV people told her they were worried about her son, and she recalled a time she went to L.A. to see what was happening. "He was living out of a suitcase," she said. "He didn’t want to be there. He was very unhappy."
Mr. Lange finally got arrested for possession of cocaine, and his career at MAD TV was finished. This is the part of the story where, according to the usual rules of show business, you’re supposed say, "Whatever happened to Artie Lange?" or perhaps read about his woozy comeback performance at Skipee’s Clam Shack in Bangor, Me. But his mother and sister got him into rehab in New Jersey. Rehab helped, but again, this is not one of those happy-type deals where Mr. Lange emerged 28 days later in a sweatsuit riding a unicycle. He was out of work and wasn’t doing too well. "I was really depressed, and I was in the basement for two months eating," he said. "I put on 40 pounds."
But not long afterward, Norm Macdonald rang about Dirty Work. The night of his audition, he won $2,000 off of Mr. Macdonald playing pool. Mr. Lange’s agent told him that probably wasn’t such a hot idea. He still got the part of Mr. Macdonald’s loser buddy. Other not-so-fantastic films followed, as did the Norm show. But it all appeared to be leading up to a seat on his and his dad’s favorite show of all time.
"This is the biggest thing that has ever happened to me," Mr. Lange said over lunch at the Brooklyn Diner near Seventh Avenue. He was dressed in jeans and a navy Yankees T-shirt with Thurman Munson’s name and number on the back; his beard was a couple days’ worth of scruff. "Howard is like the Johnny Carson of today."
It’s not an easy job. In joining Mr. Stern’s show, Mr. Lange has been thrust into the strange array of characters composing Mr. Stern’s radio universe. His role isn’t perfectly defined yet; unlike Mr. Martling, for example, he’s not passing scribbled jokes to Mr. Stern every few seconds. More often, Mr. Lange weighs in as a kind of comic Everyman, the person who says what the listener at home might be thinking–but hopefully funnier.
For now, Mr. Lange said he’s simply trying not to get in the way ("I don’t try to crowbar my act into the show," he said), but that hasn’t absolved him from being hazed by Stern Nation. Barely a month and a half into his run, he’s already been subjected to merciless poundings from on-air colleagues and especially listeners. To put it bluntly: If Mr. Lange didn’t know before that he was large-bodied and losing his hair, he certainly does now. "Artie sucks my nuts and I hope he dies!" one person recently posted on a Stern fan site, where the debate over Mr. Lange’s bona fides rages. Another was more forgiving: "Artie, I love you! Let’s make mulatto babies together, honey cheeks!"
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Interview by Curt Holman Creative Loafing, 6/13/98
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The interview with Norm Macdonald, late of "Saturday Night Live" and star of the upcoming slob comedy Dirty Work, took place in the meeting room of a tony Buckhead hotel. But it could just as easily have been in the smoke-filled rec room of a frat house, as Macdonald and his Dirty Work co-star Artie Lange took each question as opportunity to insult each other without inhibition or correctness. Even Atlanta was ragged on, as Lange explained how to give a guy from Atlanta a circumcision. (Kick his sister in the chin.)
A case in point: In addition to promoting Dirty Work, Macdonald and Lange were in town with a touring show comprising stand-up comedy and an uncensored "South Park" episode. Macdonald explained the evening's lineup as "a cartoon that's one-dimensional, then Artie who's two-dimensional, then me who's three-dimensional."
Lange, a former regular on "Mad TV," adds, "The fucked-up thing about following 'South Park' is that it's cartoons of kids saying 'fuck' and 'cocksucker,' and everyone laughs. So what am I going to do? I'm just a guy saying things like 'fuck' and 'cocksucker.' I'll be saying 'cocksucker' a lot, because I'll be drunk."
"Don't say 'cocksucker,'" suggests Macdonald.
"Why not? Does it offend you? Hit too close to home?" replies Lange.
"You know when he usually says 'cocksucker' on stage?" asks Macdonald. "When people are heckling him, in answer to their questions like 'How would you describe yourself?' 'What's your favorite hobby?'"
Such repartee is no surprise coming from Macdonald, who, as the irascible host of "Saturday Night Live's" Weekend Update, showed a willingness to offend anyone in any possible way. Giving NBC censors and lawyers the sweats, Macdonald's targets ranged from Frank Stallone to Michael Jackson: Citing a report that Jacko had Shirley Temple posters in his hospital room, Macdonald quipped "But don't get him wrong: He's a homosexual pedophile." Macdonald hit the mother lode with O.J. Simpson, as when the not guilty verdict came down and Macdonald announced "Well, it's official: Murder is now legal in the state of California."
Although Colin Quinn, Weekend Update's current host, said, "If you do this job right, you shouldn't be able to work when you leave," Macdonald doesn't feel that he permanently insulted anyone. "People kind of like it, 'cause they get to hear their name on TV. Who cut more Hollywood people down than David Spade? And he's a big success now." He adds, "I never heard back from anyone, to tell you the truth. We did hear from Frank Stallone, and he wanted to come on the show. I was going to have him on, but they fired me. So I couldn't have Frank Stallone on."
Earlier this year, NBC honcho Don Ohlmeyer had Macdonald bumped from Weekend Update, then from the show entirely. Macdonald explains, "The president of the network didn't think I was funny. Apparently he never liked me, but I didn't know because you never see the guy at the studio. But I was told, 'Oh no, he never liked you.' Lorne Michaels, the producer, protected me for as long as he could, and then he couldn't any more."
After his ouster, the lanky comic says, he received more fan mail than he's ever gotten. "A lot of people wrote me to say they appreciated what I did. Especially after I got fired, I got all kinds of crazy letters. People liked me. Except for this one guy."
"Who happened to be the president of the network, darn the luck," Lange deadpans.
"The president of the network is O.J.'s best friend," Macdonald points out. "He should get a new best friend. Like Fran Tarkenton! He'd be a good best friend."
During his three years on "SNL," Macdonald was known more for Update than sketch comedy, although he wickedly parodied broadcasters like David Letterman and Larry King. His best-known impression, though, was Bob Dole, and Macdonald was delighted when Dole did a post-election sketch on the show. "When he did the show, he appeared with me, and I wanted to dress exactly like him. So we got the same clothes, and then right before we went on, he gave me one of his purple hearts to wear. It was great! I was wearing Bob Dole's purple heart. I even tried to steal it, actually. I just left it on my jacket and I hid it behind other jackets. But he has all these guys around him, so they tracked it down and found it."
Having been shown the door on "SNL," Macdonald now can focus on stand-up comedy and films, with Dirty Work harking back to free-for-alls like Animal House and Meatballs. (Were you expecting Merchant/Ivory?) "It's about two guys, me and Artie, they're no good at anything, they're losers, slackers. And what happens is they always get back at the people that fire them, and they realize that they're good at revenges, so they open a revenge for hire business." Macdonald adds, "We've got a bunch of good actors in it, and I just hang around and put my name above the title."
Directed by Bob Saget of "America's Funniest Home Videos" (an unlikely match for Macdonald), Dirty Work includes Chevy Chase, one of the founding cast members of "Saturday Night Live." "That was a great thrill for me and Artie," says Macdonald. "When we grew up, he was The Guy. We really wanted to get him in this movie, so we wrote a part for him. I always thought he was the best guy who ever did Weekend Update."
Lange points out, "It worked out good because Norm always thought that Chevy was the best guy who ever did Update, and Chevy always thought that Dennis Miller was the best guy."
Later this summer Macdonald provides the voice of one of the talking animals of Dr. Dolittle. He explains, "I play the dog. They try to shove a big thing up his ass, and he doesn't care for that."
"Which is odd that they'd cast Norm," says Lange.
"Eddie Murphy's in it, you know," Macdonald continues. "He plays Dr. Dolittle. I play 'Dog.'"
Despite -- or perhaps because of -- losing his Weekend Update job, Macdonald seems well-liked by Hollywood. The Canadian comedian has had bit parts on "The Larry Sanders Show," "NewsRadio" and in The People vs. Larry Flynt, as well as being a perennial late-night guest. For his next feature, titled Ballbuster, he apparently kidnaps himself, and he also expects to appear on Howard Stern's upcoming late-night TV show -- but not as part of the cast, as has been erroneously reported.
Colin Quinn has been quoted about the brightness of Macdonald's prospects. "He's got charisma, he's got a brilliant mind, he looks like Paul Newman." But Macdonald isn't so sure. "That I look like Paul Newman? Nah, I don't think so. He's like 80 years old."
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Artie Lange in Old School
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