E-mail a friendBernie Mac
airdate August 12, 2008
Even though he's refused to change his image for Hollywood, Bernie Mac has made his mark on Tinseltown. He started his career in stand-up and was a featured comedian in The Original Kings of Comedy. He went on to produce and star in an award-winning self-titled TV series and earn roles in features, such as Ocean's 11, 12 and 13, Charlie's Angels 2, Pride and Mr. 3000—his first starring role. Mac has also written several books, including Maybe You Never Cry Again.
Tribute to the comedian-actor. (14:28)
Bernie Mac
Tavis: The day before we learned of the death of Isaac Hayes came the shocking news that Bernie Mac had passed away at the age of 50. The award-winning comedian spent many years as a hidden talent in the world of comedy before achieving enormous success.
At the age of 16, with his mother dying of cancer, Bernie Mac saw Bill Cosby on the "Ed Sullivan Show" one night and vowed to follow in his footsteps. But success was a long time coming, and Bernie Mac struggled through a number of jobs, including one as a janitor and as a school bus driver. By the early '90s he was a hit on the road, which led to the formation of "The Original Kings of Comedy" - a tour later featured in Spike Lee's groundbreaking documentary.
When Bernie Mac paid us a visit just last year I began by asking him about the long road he endured before finally getting a chance at his own TV show.
[2007 conversation:]
Tavis: You know what's funny about this - and this is going to sound strange to people who came to know you just a few years ago - but you and I have been friends for years, have known each other for years, and I used to always - I don't want to say I felt sorry for you, that's the wrong way to put it, but I used to be really upset about the fact that so many other comedians, your contemporaries, were getting TV shows - we ain't going to call no names - but getting TV shows and other opportunities.
And I'm like Bernie is one of the funniest cats out. It took a while for your ship to come in, but when it came, it was a big ship. From the TV series to the stuff you're doing now, it just took a while for your stuff to finally hit with mainstream America.
Mac: But that's okay, because once again, it all depends, Tavis, on what an individual's doing something for. I chose to do this when I was four or five years old. I never wanted to do it for superficial reasons - for women and money and cars and stuff like that. All the time everybody was doing their thing, I was in the gym. I was in the gym, man, 47 weeks out of the year, performing twice a night. I was selling out 13, 12, 14,000 by myself, and I was the best-kept secret for years.
Tavis: For years, exactly.
Mac: And I was my own person, I was my own man, I always thought for myself. It was no pressure on me. So when the television show, when all these other opportunities came, I was ready. And that was something that I've always been taught. It never, ever bothered me. People always tried to make things bother me, because how come this, how come that? I was always taught to run my own race, and I'm glad I was.
Because I saw other people - and Redd Foxx was the same way. Redd Foxx was in Vegas, at the Hacienda Hotel. People didn't know where he was. They said he was too raunchy, he was too blue, he was too hard, and all that kind of stuff. But Richard Pryor was an upscale version of Redd Foxx, and they called him a genius. So you have to - as an individual, I tell people when I do seminars and stuff, you have to wait your turn.
Tavis: But you never took it personally, though.
Mac: No, it ain't personal. Don't nobody owe me nothing. I don't look at it personal, I do my own thing. I've always been a reserved cat. When I play sports, there's people used to get mad at me because I didn't hang out and things like that. I've never been that kind of person. Nothing has changed in that regard. I've never been posse, and all that. I'm a quiet storm.
I like doing my thing and then when I get done I like being around people who I enjoy. Because as a little kid growing up, I was always forced to be around people that I had to, because they lived next door to me or we went to school together. If I wanted to go outside, I said, "Big Mama, can I go outside?" She'd say, "Yeah, you make sure you stay in the front, don't go off the block. And you play with Milton and them." I never liked him. (Laughter)
Always broke somebody's window and stole something and we got in trouble all the time. I never dug him. Now, as an adult, I can pick and choose, Tavis, where I want to be. People get upset about it, but that's okay. They're always going to be upset when you be your own person. I'm my own man.
Tavis: When you look back now at those five seasons, you hit the magic number - 100 episodes. When you look back on that series now, what do you make of it in retrospect, what do you think, to your earlier point, when you look back on your career, on your body of work? What did that TV show do for you? What did it mean for Bernie Mac's career?
Mac: It was innovative, it was new, it was different, it was mine, it was my vision, it was my heart, it was my life, it was nothing fictitious, it was a true story, it was my humor, it came from my heart, and that's why I felt so much. Being a different style of comic, my comic is wide open. I'm very open with my comedy. And what I mean by that, Tavis, is I'm not the type of guy to do punch line jokes.
I'm not the kind of guy to sit there and just talk about a topic just on the strength of trying to get a laugh. Everything that I talk about comes from here. I have experience, I've lived it, I've done it in some form, shape, or fashion. So when I take it to the stage, it's ideal is that the people understand and they get a glimpse of it's a part of them.
They see it coming from my heart. One thing people - especially the new comics - don't give credit. They don't give the audience credit. The audience is not dumb. You might get by, but you ain't going to get away, and that's something the television show, when I did that, they wanted a laugh track so bad. They wanted a multi-camera.
But the multi-camera, personally, didn't fit me. The multi-camera didn't fit my story. It didn't fit the story that I was trying to tell. I wanted to not insult the audience; I wanted the audience to understand that I was coming at them. They knew what's funny, they know when it's time to laugh, they don't have to be coached, they don't have to be guided.
So when we did the single camera, I wanted to shoot it like a movie. And the single camera was interested in me because the look was different. I didn't want to be like everybody else. And they thought I was crazy at first, but that's okay. But I fought for it. I stood strong on it. And one thing I can say, out of five years, regardless of how they took us off and how they played us, because that show should have done everything.
Because that show was hot, that show was good. And that show survived for five years on its own. They moved us - we was on every time, date, every different day of the week for five years. People didn't even know where we were, but our ratings were still top flight, top notch, and I'm proud of that. That's one thing I learned, if you've got a true product, and if you stay true to yourself, Tavis, can't nobody beat you.
Tavis: You know what's ironic about what you just said, though, is that so much of what one could argue that perhaps the majority of what we get from Hollywood does dumb down the audience.
Mac: All the time.
Tavis: So I hear your point about not insulting the audience. But my own take is that so much of what we get out of this industry, though, does play to the lowest common denominator.
Mac: Because they want to insult you so bad, and our audience, you have to constantly educate them. It's our job, like it's your job, Tavis. It's your job to up out the product and tell the truth. Because the media fabricates so much stuff and they put up false fabrications. Just like people, when they always say, "It was in the paper. It was on the news." (Laughter) And I'd be like, "So what?"
Tavis: So what, yeah. (Laughs)
Mac: What's that mean, dude? You hear people arguing at the bars and the barber shop. "Boy, let me tell you something, (unintelligible), he did, he did. He get, what, $15 million just for one commercial. It was in the paper." (Laughter) That's the most BS mess in the world. Coming from the streets of Chicago, sometimes when I come to Hollywood I feel like I'm in the street. (Laughter) Because I'll be, like, "Man, I'm from the street, dude."
Tavis: I've seen this before, yeah.
Mac: I've heard this, I know the game. And they mess with the audience so bad. They put all this false information and stuff out, and that's why I stayed so low-key. You'll notice that me and you talked when we first came in, you been trying to get me for five years. But by you being on your own television show, I couldn't get away.
Me and you been tighter than a pair of drawers. It's nothing more that I would love to do and come and support, because we always been that way. But the point's still you got to do your thing, I have to do mine. But it's so hard, Tavis, telling the truth, because people don't like the truth. And that's something that I have a hard time with, so I don't do certain things.
You don't see me in Los Angeles a lot. I go back home, because I can't play the game. I can't - my tolerance - I know I'm getting old; I'll be 50 this year. And you know how I know I'm getting old? Because my tolerance level is low.
Tavis: (Laughs) I must be getting old, too, then.
Mac: You know what I'm saying? (Laughter) I don't like (unintelligible), you know what I mean? I know I must be getting old - I had to look in the mirror the other day, man, my cousin called me. And he shot some game at me and I had to put the phone down, I went "Game." "Game." And you just want to - me myself, I'm legit.
I want to have fun. Life ain't no dress rehearsal. I want to have fun. I'm a comedian; I ain't no politician. So everything I do is with humor, with love. I ain't trying to prove - I ain't running for office. I ain't running for nothing. Only thing I want to do is entertain the people, I want them to be proud when they leave and they can recite something that I said or tell a joke that I told, Tavis, I've done my job.
When I can make people smile when there ain't no reason to smile, when they got test results that they scared, they don't know what the answer's going to be, when they ain't got no control over their kids, when they husband and the wife sleeping in separate rooms, and I can get everybody together and make them giggle for an hour and a half, a half an hour, whatever, that's my job.
Tavis: Let me jump in here. I don't want to get too deep, but I -
Mac: Well, that's okay.
Tavis: If you want to get deep with anybody, Bernie Mac can submerge with you. That said, I was just in a conversation the other day with my dear friend and mentor, Dr. Cornel West, and we were talking about love and whatever happened to the notion of love in our public discourse? Whatever happened to the notion of love in our comedy, in the work that we do?
Whatever happened to this notion of love for everyday people? You're the first comedian I think I've ever talked to, in all the interviews I've done, that used the word love anywhere in the conversation. I want to come back to that, because that didn't get lost on me. When you throw the word love out in this conversation where your work as a comedian is concerned, what does that mean? When you say, what do you - how does love factor into what you do?
Mac: It means the world. It means everything in your being. It means that you cannot do it without having that type of passion. That's an emotion, man, that you can't find on no shelf. That's something that's within, and everybody's doing it for fictitious reasons - for dollars and cents. You have to love what you're doing. Everybody call theirself a doctor. You can't be a doctor if you don't know the entire parts of the body.
You can't half do nothing. I love what I'm doing. I never - I've dreamt of it, I never thought that I'd be doing it on this level. I saw Bill Cosby. That motivated me to be. My mother was dying with cancer and was crying. I tell that story all the time. And I climbed on my mother's lap and I was wiping the tears off her face. And I asked my mother, I said, "Mama, why you crying?" And she said, "Nothing, Son." At that same moment, Ed Sullivan said, "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Bill Cosby."
Bill Cosby came on and he was doing a routine about snakes in the bathroom, you see, and he was talking to the people, and he was sitting up there, and my mother started laughing and crying at the same time. And I sat there and I saw my mother laughing; I started laughing. And at the end of Bill Cosby's segment I said - and I'm not messing with you - I said, "Mama, that's what I'm going to be. I'm going to be a comedian."
She said, "I believe you, Son." I said, "So you'll never cry again." Ever since then - the next day - they had a thing called Kiwi shoe polish, it was in the garbage can. We had to ask for everything that we wanted. And I said, "Big Mama, can I have this?" It was Kiwi shoe polish, liquid shoe polish you just rub on your shoes.
And she said, "What you gonna do with it?" I said, "This is going to be my microphone." And I used to walk around the house ever since then, and I used to go in my brothers and sisters and cousin's face, "How you do in school today?" "Mama, he doing those stupid jokes again, he's doing those stupid jokes." "Yeah, stupid, you stupid, that's why you failed your English test."
And I'll be doing little household jokes. I went from that to this. I learned how - I watched everything on television. I learned how to write through watching Alfred Hitchcock. I watched Rowan & Martin. I watched Johnny Carson, Flip Wilson. I watched all the - Andy Griffith. I used to sit on the TV, man, like glue, and I could tell you what the joke they was getting ready to tell, that's how good I was becoming.
I used to get the "TV Guide" on Sunday and read it, see who was going to be on Johnny Carson, because he always had a comedian on there. And I used to sit there, man, when I was (unintelligible) when I got older, I was a street performer. I performed from '76 to '77. And I was making maybe $100 a day.
People thought I was crazy when I quit, because Tavis, I felt like I was better than that. It was killing me. I wanted to be legit. I wanted them to call my name.
[End of 2007 conversation]
Tavis: The "Bernie Mac Show" not only brought Bernie fame and fortune but the rare distinction of receiving a Peabody Award. And despite his recent success in movies like the "Oceans" series, Bernie Mac hinted at retirement with the notion of savoring the rest of his life.
Sadly, that life was cut far too short due to complications from pneumonia. Both Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes will be dearly missed.
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