Johnny Steele
written by Rich Freedman
Johnny Steele doesn’t mind playing figurative chess. He would simply rather do it against an opponent more challenging than a mixed martial arts pay-per-mugging subscriber or a front row bachelorette party whose collective I.Q. makes Paris Hilton look like a Rhodes scholar.
Unfortunately, that epitomizes the 45 year-old stand-up comic’s career. Astute comedy club fans left this bus a few stops ago, Steele laments. It’s tough delivering a clever, intelligent act when the audience couldn’t solve a Rubik’s Cube that’s entirely blue.
“The brand of humor I’m doing is not going to work. Not just in clubs, but in corporate and private gigs,” said Steele.
A message echoed by comic turned national motivational speaker Michael Pritchard. “Johnny Steele is too smart to be famous. He has integrity, which pretty much eliminates him from 90 percent of what goes on in Hollywood.”
It’s a sunny Fall day at one of Steele’s favorite hang-outs, a cafe about 100 yards from the condo he shares with Alison Hatcher, his wife of two years and his trusted in-house critic. Steele is tormented these days, realizing the demographics of Leno and Letterman bid adios to his age group a decade ago while the prospects are tough for a one-man show by a guy whose gift is off-the-cuff absurdities.
There’s nobody to blame except Steele, the man himself admits. He had his shot after winning the 1992 San Francisco International Stand-Up Comedy Competition.
“The producer said I had the most political set of anyone who has ever won it,” Steele says.
With a career that shifted into second gear, Steele was set for Hollywood. Or not. His aggressive humor needed blunting, his manager insisted. But Steele refused to tone it down for the sake of mainstream.
“My manager says, ‘Try not to scare people.’ I was at the Laff Factory and I said, ‘I lost my virginity at 15. It could have been 9, but I wasn’t an alter boy.’” Steele snickers. People laughed, but they squirmed. Not a bit that impresses talk show talent coordinators.
Steele’s stock flourished in San Francisco, firmly establishing the former football player as one of the city’s top comics outside of Robin Williams. He didn’t mind being one of the sheep in Los Angeles. He was just a very, very impatient sheep. This is a guy who could have been publicist for Attention Deficit Disorder Weekly. He didn’t want to pick a number and wait in line, especially at the acts he saw standing in front of him.
“People who wouldn’t even get stage time in San Francisco would be tearing the room up in L.A.,” Steele says “I had climbed to a level of success and I’m in the back of the room in L.A. watching a guy who wouldn’t MC for me in San Francisco.”
Against his manager’s advice, Steele fled the scene and took a job in San Francisco radio as the morning man replacing Alex Bennett, a popular personality who left for New York.
“I was warned that after a year, someone will buy the station, pull the plug and I’ll be screwed,” Steele remembered. “Of course, CBS bought the station and Howard Stern took my job.”
Because his wit actually takes a serviceable brain to diseminate, Steele was stuck.
“My kind of humor works in four places: Berkeley, San Francisco, Oakland and, for the most part, New York,” says the rapid-fire comic. “America is New York and San Francisco separated by ‘Hee Haw’ without the cameras,” Steele says. “Most people can’t pick Iraq out on a map.”
People don’t want to hear a smart comic. They want escapism, Steele says. And when it comes to plucking down big bucks for a ticket, they want some guy who’s been on the screen. Doesn’t matter if he’s as cordial as a trapped possum.
“Bill Maher is unlikeable,” Steele says. “But he’s been on TV and TV is God. I can’t get on TV without a following and I can’t get a following without TV.” Conversely, Leno or Letterman want acts that “won’t tax the mentality of a seventh grader, as my wife says,” notes Steele. “And they won’t have anyone on over 40.”
Steele, brother of award-winning L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez, said his act is part journalism rant and part Lenny Bruce, with some Mort Sahl tossed in. “They don’t want that in a comedy club and they don’t want that on TV,” Steele says. “How many stand-up comics have you seen go on a variety show and do jokes about Iraq? Zero would be my answer.”
Steele describes his act as satire, where “I don’t lie in my set-ups, I lie on my punch lines.”
Potential. There’s rarely a greater weight. And Steele felt the burden. He could have been a contender. A star, so his manager told him. If only he paid the price, swallowed a bullet, and dropped anchor in L.A. for three years.
“My manager said I would be rich and a star,” Steele says. “But I chose lifestyle living in San Francisco 10 years and now Berkeley 10 years. I am fully aware of my mistakes. I was young then.”
When he, as he said, “drank the Kool-Aid,” and stuck around L.A., there was an audition for a Japanese potato chip commercial. Steele gave it a shot. “You have to get on stage for 30 seconds and I’m looking at another 100 guys who want the job,” Steele says. “Someone says ‘You have 30 seconds to look like a funny chicken’ while two Japanese guys are scribbling in the back. I’m thinking, ‘For this I drove for an hour and a half?”
It’s the holiday season. Once the gold for a comic at the end of a year’s rainbow. Not in this economy. Steele’s had more time off than elves in July. What gigs he had, he seized the day.
Take the show in Antioch, a Bay Area suburb down the road from Steele’s hometown of Pittsburg. He sharpened his teeth on the struggling town, “the epicenter of national foreclosures,” says Steele. “So I say, ‘I know there are tough times here. In fact, I heard on the news that the Antioch motto is, ‘Buy one house, get one free.’”
Steele laughs. A waitress walks up and asks if the 6-3, 220-pound vegetarian if ordered a pastrami sandwich. He declines, sticking to his tea. Not that comedy club fans care if he eats burgers. They want mundane, says Steele. Most would rather not have to exercise a brain cell, especially when Steele rants about the Kennedy assassination and Dealy Plaza.
“My manager used to say, ‘You’re like the guy pulling wires under the hood of your car,” Steele grins.
So, instead of becoming a TV or movie star like several of his colleagues — think long-time pal Carlos Alazraqui in TV’s “Reno 911” — Steele labors through the endless quest to find a niche. He’s surely not without his own select fan club.
Rick Overton, veteran of a dozen motion pictures including Fun with Dick and Jane, Groundhog Day, and Mrs. Doubtfire, is a devoted member of the Steele fan club.
“Johnny is a unique performer,” says Overton. “He’s a razor sharp, dangerous and edgy act with a conscience. He takes on the biggest, baddest guys with his style and it works.”
Political stand-up Will Durst, who had his stint doing a one-man show off Broadway a year ago, agrees with Overton.
“Johnny Steele is the lanky street-wise conscience of the working man. The tall, goateed hat-wearing, outraged compassionate working man,” Durst says. “He rails against the ludicrous injustices of modern society in a voice wrenched from the moist depths our own throats. He’s also way too nice to be in show biz.”
Barry Katzman, a board member of the annual Comedy Day in San Francisco, calls Steele one of his all-time favorites because, as he puts it, of his, “Funny, fanciful, free association and worth the price of admission,” Katzman says.
The industry is so discouraging, Steele can’t even land a job in his own brother’s movie. The Soloist, released nationally next March, is based on columns and a book by Steele’s journalist brother and stars Jamie Foxx and, as Lopez, Robert Downey Jr.
“You know what part I play in the movie? No part,” says Steele. “I have a SAG card. I can’t even get a job in my brother’s movie.”
Then again, Steele believes his job is getting on stage and making people laugh and think, Unfortunately, most check that “think” part along with their coats at the front door.
“I’m not bitter. I am a little cynical,” Steele says. “I wanted to do something a little smarter, a little clever in a nation that’s fallen into semi-illiteracy or post-literacy. I’m grappling with that. So I either rework my act or write a one man show. Ambivalence and procrastination has been my problem. I take much of the blame for the fact I’m not a household name. I made the decision along the way to not become rich and famous.”
Then again, he could have become another face in the crowd. Another failed L.A. comic who left empty-handed back to Oregon, Idaho or Parts Unknown.
“Tons of guys went to L.A. and never made it big,” Steele says. “I just wanted to get laughs on stage, to bring my opinion on stage. I enjoy comedy. I love comedy. I love studying comedy. I love watching good comedy.”
And he learned from watching master Williams, who has shared his territory with Steele several times.
“I learned from watching Robin more than I’ve learned watching anybody,” Steele says. “His commitment to character, risk taking, playfullness. And he’s a great guy who has given more money to charity than anyone.” Besides, Steele smiles, “I think he likes my wife’s ‘crop top.’ I can’t blame the guy. Of course, I’ve never actually asked what he thought of my act. He might say, ‘Son, Earth does not have that much time.’”
If Robin Williams is the king of San Francisco comedy, few would argue Johnny Steele is a prince.
“I think we consider him a San Francisco Bay Area comic still and that’s a cool thing,” Steele says. “I know I look up to him, even if he is the hairiest man on the planet.”
For Steele, he knew it was the end of playing comedy clubs one night when members of the audience looked like grandkids he’ll never have.
“You look out there and come to the conclusion, ‘I don’t think I’m going to impart much wisdom,” says Steele. “At one show, someone got thrown out for smuggling booze in, someone else threw up in the bathroom, and people got angry because they weren’t getting their drinks. One guy yells while I’m on stage, ‘Hey comic, can you get me some drinks?’”
So Steele does the corporates, the private parties, and he self-produces many of his own shows, adding comic buddies to the bill. He sticks to his guns, even if it backfires.
“(Comic) Kevin Rooney once looked at me and said, ‘Steele, if you’re going to be a spy in the military, don’t go sprinting into the enemy’s camp wearing a Marine uniform. You sneak in.’”
“I’m not always subtle,” Steele shrugs.
The election of Barack Obama could put America — and comedy audiences — back on an intellectual track, says Steele. Though he’s not holding his breath. “Why is it that a guy who reads a book is a clown, a jerk or elitist?” he says.
Rich Freedman is a writer from California.
For more on Johnny, visit JohnnySteele.com.