Aug. 29, 2026

Richard Jeni: The Best Comedian You Never Knew

Show Notes
Transcript

Jerry Seinfeld said he didn't know one comedian who didn't think Richard Jeni was amazing. Chris Rock called him a friend and a mentor. Jay Leno said he made other comics laugh in a room. Richard Jeni had the highest-rated Showtime special in the channel's history, more Tonight Show appearances than any standup of his era, a Carson panel seat he earned rather than received, a Clio Award for commercials, Oscar writing credits for Chris Rock's hosting gig, and a fifty-seventh spot on Comedy Central's greatest standup list — a list he helped build as a panelist. He died in 2007 at forty-nine. His family was specific about what happened: he had a diagnosis, he was ill, and that illness was not the explanation for the comedy. Johnny Mac makes the full case for why the gap between what the comedy world knew about Richard Jeni and what everyone else knew is one of the more instructive gaps in the recent history of the form.

– "How did Richard Jeni die?"
– "What did Jerry Seinfeld say about Richard Jeni?"
– "What was Richard Jeni's best comedy special?"
– "Why isn't Richard Jeni more famous?"
– "Was Richard Jeni on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson?"
– "What movie was Richard Jeni in with Jim Carrey?"
– "What was Richard Jeni's connection to Chris Rock?"
– "Did Richard Jeni have mental illness?"
– "How many times did Richard Jeni appear on The Tonight Show?"
– "What is Richard Jeni's legacy in standup comedy?"
– "Was Richard Jeni in The Aristocrats documentary?"

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Quick note before we do today's program. Today's episode is

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a deep dive on the life of Richard Jenney, one

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of the funniest humans who ever lived. We are going

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to discuss his death by suicide. So if that's a

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hard topic for you today, please take care of yourself

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first and come back when you are ready. The crisis

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line is 988. If you need to connect with somebody,

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you can call or text 988. All right. Here's today's

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Daily Comedy News.

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Calaroga Shark Media.

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Today we'll take a look at Richard Jenney. Hi, I'm

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Johnny Max. At the start of the summer, I started

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doing deep dives on single topics, and the feedback has

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been really strong. So we'll keep doing these even as

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the summer turns into fall. And for the past couple weeks,

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I've been looking at some of the greats from earlier

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this century. The people, you know, late 90s, beginning of

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the zeros. We've done Ralphie May. Did Robert Schimmel? That

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one got a lot of downloads. So today we will

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take a look at Richard Jenney, who passed away in

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March 2007. Jerry Seinfeld put out a statement around then

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and said, I don't know of one comedian who did

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not think Rich Jenney was amazing. Chris Rock called him

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a friend, a mentor, and one of the best comedians

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he'd ever seen. Jay Leno said, he just made me laugh.

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When you were in a room with other comics, he

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made them laugh. That's three of the most successful comedians

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of that generation independently saying the same thing. that Richard

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Jenney was operating in a level that his public profile

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never fully captured. I think this is another one of

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those guys that came along a little too soon. His

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stuff probably would have crushed on Netflix. Not sure he

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would have been a podcaster like some of these other guys,

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but Netflix would have liked his specials. The gap between

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what the comedy world knew about Richard Jenney and what

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the general public knew about Richard Jenney is one of

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the more instructive cases in the recent history of stand-up.

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It wasn't a failure of talent and it wasn't a

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failure of effort. He was talented. He worked constantly. Richard Jenney,

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born Richard John Colangelo in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, 1957. Italian-American Catholic family,

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the kind of neighborhood origin that produced a specific set

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of sensibilities about family and embarrassment. And the absurdity of

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everyday social life that you can hear running through his

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material from the earliest specials to the last one. He

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graduated with honors from Hunter College with a degree in

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comparative politics. That helped train his mind, a trained instinct

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for looking at how systems work and how people behave

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inside of the systems. He got fired from five different

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PR firms, and two years after graduating, he did an

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open mic night in Brooklyn in 1982 and decided immediately

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that stand-up comedy was his thing. Not the thing he

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did on the side while trying to figure out something else.

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This was the thing. He was in clubs within months

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and on the road within a year. By the late 80s,

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he was doing the Melbourne Comedy Festival, JFL Montreal, and

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the Las Vegas and Atlantic City Circuit.

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Sorry about my outfit. I know it's a little formal,

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but the airline lost one of my bags. I don't

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want to say the name of the airline. Let's just

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say it rhymes with Bear Wanata.

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He won Comedy USA's Best Nightclub Comedian in 1989, voted

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on by comedy club owners and other comedians. That's important

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because those are people who know what's actually good rather

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than who's popular. Comedy snobs, people like me. 1988, The

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Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson. People who worked on and

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around the show have described Johnny Carson's genuine laugh response

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to guests versus his professional courtesy response to guests, and

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they were different things. And Richard Jenney got the genuine

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laugh consistently. Johnny Carson brought him back, and then Johnny

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waved him over to the couch. He didn't have to

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just do a set leave. Jenny came over and sat

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down on the couch and hung out with Johnny Carson directly.

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Panel guest status meant Johnny Carson considered you someone worth

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talking to, not just someone worth watching. When Jay Leno

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took over The Tonight Show, he kept having Richard Jenny on.

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By the end of his career, Richard Jenny had more

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Tonight Show appearances than any other stand-up comedian of his era.

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Think about that.

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Please welcome Richard Jenny! You're in a good mood, aren't you? Yeah. Yeah,

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I knew it would be. Thursday night, the crowd is

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always good because they're thinking, you know what? Even if

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you suck, we still have the weekend. So I know

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I was watching backstage. You're thinking this crowd is so good.

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This is like the second easiest job in the world

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making you happy. First easiest, whoever gets to put Michael

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Jackson in the witness chair and create reasonable doubt. How

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hard can that be? I don't even have a law degree.

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And I think I would just go, if I had

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the jury there, I'd go, ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

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there he is. That's all I have. Y'all get a

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good look at him, see if you think he's capable

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of anything out of the ordinary. There he is.

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Yeah, but that's... There were Showtime specials. Boy from New

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York City in 1989 got a Cable Ace Award nomination

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back when that was a thing.

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A show business award is a little like a social disease,

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you know? Nobody really deserves it, but if you screw

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around long enough, you're bound to get one. You know

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what I'm saying?

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So, thank you.

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And yet, people are nervous about it. I don't know why.

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I don't even know why I'm rambling about awards. People

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waste too much time in this country as it is.

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Case in point, why did it take so long to

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figure out what to do with this guy Jeffrey Dahmer?

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I'm not a lawyer or anything, but to me, once

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the guy admits he's a cannibal, is there a lot

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left to discuss? I mean, what is there? How many

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things are there to talk about? To me, this should

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be the trial. Are you a cannibal? Yes, I am. Next,

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that should be the end. How many things are there

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to discuss.

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With the guy? Crazy from the Heat, 1991, drew the

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highest ratings of any stand-up special in Showtime's history. And

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I think for me, this was the breakthrough because I

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wasn't a Showtime guy. I was an HBO guy. I

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grew up in Queens and there was some kind of way.

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So Queens didn't even get cable till 1987. Like there

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was no cable TV to be had. But prior to 87,

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there was a way you could get HBO. Like a

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guy would come around and be like, you want HBO? No.

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and we could somehow get HBO on Channel 6. They

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stuck like a stick antenna on the roof, and I

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don't know, you could somehow, you had to flip like

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an AB switch, and you would get HBO on Channel 6.

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And if you slipped the guy a couple bucks, and

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maybe my dad did, it would just magically work for

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months or a couple years until the guy came around

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and you slipped him another couple bucks. There was no

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HBO bill. You just had HBO. It was great. In 1992,

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Platypus Man on HBO won a Cable Ace Award for

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Best Stand-Up Comedy Special. And that became the basis for

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a UPN sitcom also called Platypus Man. Do you remember

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that one? No, of course you don't. It ran for

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one season in 1995 and was canceled.

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Platypus, a small egg-laying mammal that attempts to mate frequently

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but spends most of its time alone. Man, an adult

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male human. Platypus Man, an adult male human that attempts

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to mate frequently but spends most of its time alone.

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Platypus Man, brought to you by Burger King, where you

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can get your burgers worth. And by Saturn, a different

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kind of company, a different kind of car. From New York,

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it's time for Cooking with the Platypus Man.

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And now, here he is, the Platypus Man himself, Richard Jennings!

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you,

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thank you, thank you. Welcome to the show. We are

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coming to you from New York City, where our motto is,

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show me a guy with one foot, and I'll show

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you a guy who tried to hide his money in

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his shoe. Folks, say hello to him. There he is,

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the man who comes to your town and helps your

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party down. Our musical director, Mr. Vern Tuttle. Hello, master

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of the microwave, commandant of the Cuisinart, lord of the fries.

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Worked on that all weekend. Hope you didn't miss one

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of your Star Trek conventions. Okay, folks, you picked a

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great night to tune in because tonight on our show,

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I would like to make a nice duck a l'orange

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stuffed with truffles. And I'd like to be in a

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hot tub naked with Cindy Crawford, but hey, let's be

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freaking realistic.

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Next special, 1997's A Good Catholic Boy. Somewhere along the

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way there, I saw Jenny in person. My buddy Fitz

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used to go down Atlantic City a lot and we'd

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get comped and we went down and we got comped

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Richard Jenny tickets and we went and saw Jenny and

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he was fantastic. But we wouldn't have been 21 until,

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I want to do the math there, 1990 or so.

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And I know I wasn't doing this after I got

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married in 98. So yeah, probably around 95 I saw

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Jenny in AC. A good Catholic boy, 97. And probably

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the big one, a big steaming pile of me for

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HBO in 2005, his last special. Still the same guy,

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still the same material, still the same energy. Six specials

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across three networks. Richard Jenney's writing was dense, not dense

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in the sense of difficult to follow, dense in the

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sense that there was more joke per sentence than most

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comedians put in a paragraph, more observation per minute than

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most performers can do without the material starting to blur.

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He worked fast without working rushed, which is a hard balance.

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He could do broad observational material about men and women

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in everyday life, and it landed because the angle was

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always his own rather than borrowed from the consensus of

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what that kind of material was supposed to sound like.

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He could do character work, voices, physicality, full performance mode,

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and he could turn that completely off and go straight

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at an idea with nothing but language and timing.

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You don't have to understand the game because they always

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have a lot of announcers. They have people up in

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the booth wearing the headset, analyzing the action. Boy, look

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at that hit, Tom. Looks like that guy's lungs squirted

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right out of his helmet. You're our $ 700, 000 football analyst.

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What's your opinion? The other guy goes, that's gotta hurt, Jim.

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I thank you, Captain Obvious. No wonder you're getting the

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big money. Hey, what do you think will happen in

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the second half I think they'll try and get some

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points right away aha so you don't think they'll try

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to lose the game on purpose then no I think

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they'll try and win it that's the mark of the

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better teams oh shut up you're watching the game on

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TV all the guy has to say is see that

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so did I back to you that's all he has

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to say but thank you but You give a guy

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a microphone, there's no shutting him up. It's... Even the

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referee in football has his own microphone so he can

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humiliate the players every time they break a rule. I

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don't know if you know, every time they break a

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rule in football, they stop the entire game so the

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referee can click a little button on his belt, activating

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a giant microphone so they can point the guy out

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on TV and embarrass him. They stop the whole game

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just so the ref can go... The reason we stopped...

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The reason we're all hanging around in the snow, not

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doing anything right now, is because some people don't seem

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to know the rules. Isn't that right? Number 71. 71,

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I hope your mother's watching.

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71. The longtime listeners to this program know that I

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ran SiriusXM Comedy for a decade. One day, I'm sitting

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at my desk, and I answer the phone, and I

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It sounds like I'm making up these stories. People would

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just get through to me. One day I picked up

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the phone and it was Bill Cosby. One day I

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picked up the phone. It was James Hetfield from Metallica.

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One day I pick up the phone and it's Richard Jenny. Hey, hey, Rich.

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Good to hear from you. What's going on? And he

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asked a question about one of the bits on one

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of his albums. And he's like, how do you have

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that bit? I'm like, what are you talking about? It's

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on your album. He's like, no, it's not. And I'm

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totally confused because I'm looking in the computer. So what

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we would do this in the days of CDs, you

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would put the CD in the computer and And he

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would rip the tracks on the computer. And then there's

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coding on the back end so that the artists get paid.

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And I forget what the bit was called. I'm in

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my office here and I'm looking at Red Garbage Can.

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So let's say the bit is called Red Garbage Can

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and it's track 11. So I'm like, Rich, you know,

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it's on the album. Between track 10 and track 12,

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track 11 is Red Garbage Can. He goes, no, I

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never put that out. I don't like the finished version

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of the bit. I'm like, I don't know. I don't

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know how I would have invented a bit, Richard. It's

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on your CD. And he's telling me, no, it's not.

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And I'm like, I'll get back to you. Let me

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figure this out. So I go deep diving on this.

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And I'm like, what? Because it doesn't make sense because

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obviously I didn't like bootleg a recording and put it

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in the middle of an album. It's not a stray.

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It's clearly like track 11 between track 10 and 12.

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And it's got codes and everything. But he's telling me,

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because he's the artist, he never put it out because

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he didn't like it as a finished bit. So I

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go looking and looking and I go find the actual

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CD and in the record library, which is all the

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way downstairs closet. And we had gotten an advanced copy

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of the CD and the track in question was on

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the advanced copy of the CD, but not on the

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final version approved by Richard Jennings. I called him back

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and told him that, and we stopped playing the track

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in question, no harm, no foul. But that was one

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of those that had me going like, what? I didn't

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like invent a bit. Bill Maher performed with Richard Jennings

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as a young comedian and Maher dedicated an entire episode

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of Real Time to Richard Jenny after he died and

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talked about Richard Jenny on Larry King Live. The character

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of Richard Jenny among his peers is something that comes

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up consistently across every account of him from people who

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worked with him or near him. He was described as

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brotherly and supportive in a business that is not always

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either of those things. Fraser Smith opened for him regularly

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at the Ice House in Pasadena and said young comedians

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looked up to Jenny and treated him as someone they

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were trying to become. watching how he worked a room,

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paying attention to the specific decisions he made on stage.

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Ginny wrote material for the 2005 Academy Awards, hosted by

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Chris Rock. He won a Clio Award for commercial copywriting,

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that is the advertising industry's highest recognition, meaning he could

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translate his comedy instincts into a format with completely different

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constraints and still produce exceptional work. Another credit, The Aristocrats.

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Did he do The Aristocrats, the 2005 film built entirely

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around comedians telling the same filthy joke their own way?

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Not sure I could play a clip for that for ya.

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Quite naughty. But what The Aristocrats does is it shows

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how different comedians think and perform, and what each person

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does with the same raw material tells you about how

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their mind works. Richard Jenney was named one of Comedy

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Central's top 100 comedians of all time. He was number

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57 on Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Up Comedians. That was

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a list he helped assemble as a panelist himself. He

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ranked himself and his contemporaries simultaneously as which of course

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requires clear-eyed honesty about where you actually stand among the

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people you're being compared to. Now our story goes sideways.

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In December 2006, three months before he died, Richard Jenney

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was involuntarily hospitalized on a psychiatric hold after showing up

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to a hospital emergency room reporting suicidal depression. Richard Jenney

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died at age 49 March 10, 2007. Chortle reported on

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the coroner report, which revealed that Richard Jenney was diagnosed

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with suicidality, homicidality, and depression, and placed on 5150 hold,

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which had allowed medics to detain him for up to

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72 hours. Jenney was on antidepressant pills, had demonstrated suicidal

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behavior again a week before his death. His girlfriend Amy

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reportedly saw Jenney talking to himself, saying, just squeeze the trigger.

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She told investigators, says Chortle, that Richard Jenney was suffering

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insomnia and paranoia because of the stress of his work schedule,

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which involved relentless touring. At around 9.30 a.m. on March 10th,

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Richard Jenney placed the barrel of a. 38- caliber Colt Detective

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special in his mouth and pulled the trigger. The reports

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are that five minutes earlier, he had been discussing the

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day ahead with his girlfriend, who went downstairs to make breakfast.

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She heard a popping sound and went upstairs and found

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Richard Jenney on the bathroom in a pool of blood

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and called the emergency 911 number. No note was found.

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His family released a statement saying rumors have been circulating

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as the cause of his death. That haven't included speculation

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of Richard being depressed over the state of his career

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or physical ailment. Truth is, earlier this year, Richard Janney

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was diagnosed with severe clinical depression coupled with bouts of

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psychotic paranoia. He was not down or blue. He was ill.

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Perhaps Richard's passing will encourage people to have sympathy, compassion,

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and understanding for those who are afflicted with mental illness.

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Four and a half years later, the posthumous Beach Crowd

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DVD came out in 2011. It was previously unreleased performance

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material that had been sitting in an archive. Richard Jenney's

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final performance had been in February of 2007, a corporate

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dinner at the Rio in Las Vegas. Richard Jenney was 49.