For Robert Schimmel, the act is very personal
The comedian isn't shy talking about his battle with illness.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
There's nothing funny about cancer.
No one knows this more than comedian Robert Schimmel, who in 2000 was diagnosed with Stage 3 Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Fortunately, Schimmel's life was saved when his body reacted positively to an experimental chemotherapy drug.
Six years later and still in remission, Schimmel remains as popular as ever on the comedy club circuit. Yet just like any other cancer survivor, his world is different.
"I think it made me a better comedian because I'm a lot more honest on stage, not that I didn't tell the truth before," said Schimmel, calling from his Los Angeles home. "They say if you have a bad set on stage that you die on stage and you learn early in your career that there's life after death and you get to come back, but once you go through what I went through, there's nothing really to be afraid of anymore."
He added, "All of my material is based on [stuff] that comes from my real life. And I think it's obvious to anyone who sees me that these aren't the kind of things that you can sit down at a Starbucks with a pen and paper and say, 'Okay, write a thing about how my daughter went to a rainbow party.' These aren't the kinds of things you can make up. To me these are all things in my life and the fact that I would share it with the audience is what makes me who I am."
Such honesty normally comes with a price, but Schimmel feels such an open book approach is why his fans buy his CDs, DVDs and tickets to his shows. In fact, audiences love his cancer material so much that a bootleg market developed. A fan admitted to Schimmel that they had videotaped -- a big no-no! -- one of the comedian's club sets to show a friend who was fighting cancer.
How he reacted
Unfazed and completely understanding, Schimmel took the master copy and produced "Authorized Bootleg: Live in NYC 10.21.06" DVD, which is available at his Web site (www.robertschimmel.com).
"I think it's a really cool thing," Schimmel laughed. "I remember a time when Cheech and Chong made it and they weren't on network television. They made it strictly from word of mouth. They came out with an album and people were like, 'You gotta hear this' and were making tapes and the next thing you know they were doing concert venues. They went from tape to concerts to film so there is something there."
Already popular on the talk-show scene, including dozens of memorable appearances on "The Howard Stern Show," Schimmel remains loyal to the road, where he's learned many valuable lessons over the years. One of which took place in Cleveland a few years back when an elderly woman was in his audience. Backstage, club officials and opening comics took bets on how long into Schimmel's brutally honest and perhaps offensive set she would leave.
"I didn't want her to walk because unlike other comedians that think that it's hip to walk someone in the audience, I don't want to do that to anybody," Schimmel said. "So she stayed for the whole show and at the end of the show she was in the bar and I walked over to her and said, 'Comics were betting you'd walk out on me,' and she said, 'There isn't anything you talked about up there that I haven't thought about, heard about, read about, tried. The only difference is you talk about it out loud with a microphone and most people don't talk about it.'"
Schimmel returns to Northeast Ohio on Friday and Saturday at the Cleveland Improv. While he admits his set isn't for everyone, he does make one promise.
"There's a lot of guys you can see that will be funny and you don't know them," Schimmel said. "Tell me something personal about Carrot Top. And I'm not saying this as a put-down. He can make them laugh for an hour but they don't know who he is. There is no way that people walk out of the club and not know who Robert Schimmel is."