I Ain't Scared of You (9 page)

That ain't no muthafucking ‘Elbow'! That's Smokey Robinson!

I tell my nieces and nephews, “That's the same song! Let me go get my LPs!”

When I play the song, they just be lookin'. They be in silence.

Then they go: “But I like the new one better, though.”

How you gon' like somebody unoriginal shit better than the original? How you gon' do that? He stole it from him! All you hear is remakes:
When I'm riding through the alley with my gat in my hand/And I had four women, you understand. Bitch is dead/muthafucka kill 'em, shoot 'em dealing with Fred/I told him that he'd be dead.

Naw, man. Naw, man. How you gon' dance to that when you get 70? (If you make 70.) You'll be toothless, still cussin', talkin' to your grandkids: “That muthafucka there was the jam!”

Naw, man.

I'm not a a big fan of the music today, but one thing's for sure: I'm not one of those people who blames music for everything. People are always sayin' that music made their kids do wrong.

Bullshit, man.

I don't think anybody can influence your child except for you.
Your responsibilities are yours. My grandmother used to say, when you act a certain way when you're outside, it's a reflection of your home.

You can put it on Snoop if you want to—but Snoop ain't got a damn thing to do with your crib. His video ain't but two minutes long.

So if something's wrong with your child, something was wrong from the get-go. If the people in your home ain't shit, you ain't gon' be shit. People want to censor this and change that or put a sticker on this.

Man, put a sticker on ya mama. She's raisin' you.

I still love comedy, and not just as a performer. I love to laugh, to be entertained. But speaking just as a comedy fan, not as a comedian, I don't really like a lot of what I see. They want everything fast, quick. They're just in it for the money.

They don't have the proper training. They just accept whatever. They don't commit themselves to the joke. They want something right away because cable TV has destroyed the comedy system. There's no more comedy club where you could get the basics. Comedy owners had control. They told what you could and could not do. You couldn't mimic. You couldn't steal; you couldn't copycat a motherfucker—or they put your ass in the back of the line, and they wouldn't hire you.

Now, they comedy at McDonald's, Burger King, I Fry Kingdom, Kentucky Fried Chicken. A motherfucker goes up there and talks about somebody's mama. People ain't payin' they money to be humiliated. They don't know how to host. They don't know how to MC.

Comedy clubs provided the right training. Those things are gone. People don't really go to comedy clubs. They turn on BET. They turn on Comic View. They get the raw image. So now they think, “Hey, that motherfucker is doing it. I can do it. I can go out
and talk about a sum'bitch all night, and I can get paid. That's not comedy. Comedy comes from the heart and from the soul. You have to know what comedy is. You can learn to tell a joke. But being funny comes from inside. Everybody can tell a joke. Everybody can't tell a story. A storyteller is someone with imagination, someone who has range. This motherfucker ain't sittin' up here perpetrating a fraud, going up there listening to somebody else, and then going across the street and re-telling a joke you already heard.

But when you're a comic and those sum'bitches don't laugh? You ass out! And that's the difference between then and now. They don't want to pay their dues.

Bernie joins the band on the
Midnight Mac Show.

You got to pay your dues. It's no different than if you gotta take a bullet outta somebody's ass on a Saturday night. You lucked up and took that motherfucker out with some pliers. Now they want to call you a doctor?

One thing comics do that I don't like is, they pick people out of the audience and make their act about that person.

People who did do that who were great were people like Don Rickles and Robin Harris. Some cat imitating them might pick you out of the audience, “Look at this muthafucka, he . . .” And you got your woman with you. See, Don and Robin didn't do that. They say, “Hey, man, your head is like a question mark. You should be at the end of a sentence.” And you start laughing with him because he had a certain look on his face that described that it was all love. He made you part of the show, so to speak. He didn't try to damage you.

But now? You got your girl with you for the first night and you trying to impress her and some sum'bitch talk about you? You know, how one arm longer than the other one. You know, you sitting up there—you got cerebral palsey, your mouth twisted, your shit just now straightening up. Your girl, only reason she out with you is you got a little money. You sitting up there gettin' talked about. You want to square up on him and fight, but you know one leg is longer than the other. You walking all off balance and shit. Only reason you sit in the front row is you can't see from the back, you know.

And you a comic and you want to eat him up? Naw, I don't believe in that.

Not that I couldn't do it, you understand.

I like Eddie Murphy. I think he's the most talented sum'bitch when he ain't into himself. Like when he did
Raw.
It was the glove and diamond on the glove. I think he lost a few muh'fuckas with that.

But if I had to see somebody who can do standup, I think it would be Eddie. The funniest comics are when they aren't into themselves. You see the best. When they aren't tryin' to be politically correct, they can be funny.

Today, I can't even watch a lot of these movies. Back in the day, it used to be Cagney, George Raft, who talk to you like, “Yeah, you double-crosshed me, shee. Yeah, shee, now I gotta bump ya off . . .”

Now? If it ain't no soundtrack or explosions, the movies ain't shit. Now you gotta have a muh'fucka run up a wall, flip backwards, then that sum'bitch gotta slide on two knees shooting guns from the side.

We had some bullshit in our day too, now. A muh'fucka could pull a gun and shoot your gun out your hand.
Pow! “Ahhhh . . .”
Man, please.

Or muh'fuckas would have his hands in his pockets and act like he had a gun and could away with. He'd stick his hand in your back and be like, “Keep walkin'. Don't look back. If you turn around, I'll let you have it.”

People would be all scared and shit. “Don't shoot!” That muh'-fucka ain't have shit but a comb.

The first bomb I had was here in Chicago, when I first was starting off. The producer of the show had seen me actin' a fool at a barbecue that my mother-in-law was having. He saw me clowning and said, “Man, you funny than a muh'fucka. I got a show, and I want to put you in it.”

Then, my black ass.

I went on. Two minutes into my act, I heard people in the crowd: “Get yo' black ass off, man!” “Fuck you!” “You ain't-funny sum'bitch!”

All my family was there, my in-laws, all of them. I was hurt. They were just looking at me. I just walked the fuck off the stage. I was dying the death of a pilot. My shit was going
down,
dog.

So now all that clowning and shit I was doing? You know black folks. Every time I told a joke in front of my family after that, it was, “Yeah, you should've told that joke that night, muh'fucka.” “Muh'fucka, you wastin' all yo' funny jokes here.” “When you was up there, you ain't say a muh'fuckin' thang.” I went through that for a
while.

I was so afraid of a microphone after that. My confidence just left me. I was so nervous, I refused to touch a mic for months, for almost a whole year.

Eventually, I came back out of hiding. I was at the Crystal Palace on 119th and Michigan in Chicago. This dude told me he wanted to hire me for a big party.

I ain' gon' lie to you: I punked out. This is one of the most embarrassing stories I have to tell.

I got to the Crystal Palace, man, and it wasn't nothing but pimps, players, hustlers, and ho layers. I mean, it was
packed.
I'm sitting backstage, right? They got this little curtain, and I'm peeking through. Everybody's just sitting out there, talking. The room was just buzzing.

The producer of the show came back there, said, “Bernie, show time is in ten minutes.”

I started breathing hard, sweating.

He came back a short while later: “Five minutes.”

I walked out into the hallway, stood by some phones.

He came back by a little bit later: “Bernie, get ready to go on, man.”

When he walked by, I grabbed up one of the phones and pretended like I was having a serious conversation. Soon as he said, “Get ready to go on.”

I screamed into the phone, “What? I'll be right there!”

I turned to him and said, “Man, somebody done jumped on my motherfuckin' wife, man!” I started walking toward the door real fast.

He said, “Bernie! Bernie!”

I'm all loud, faking like I'm upset and shit: “Man, I gots to go take care of this shit here!”

“We'll go and help you.”

I said, “Naw, man, I got it!”

And I
ran
out the motherfuckin' door, man.

I got in the car. I drove two blocks. I pulled over. I said, “You
punk motherfucker.” I felt this small. One, for lying; two, for not facing my fear; three, for running.

But I was frightened. I had to get the fuck outta there.

As an actor, I've had to be careful about the roles I've taken. Because I know black folks: Whatever you play, whatever you do, they take for real. Like, I played the dude Jing-A-Ling in
Life.
He was supposed to be having a relationship with another man in prison. They wanted me to play him as a flaming homosexual, but I refused. Partly because that would've been too easy.

But also 'cause I know black folks—and I didn't want no repercussions.

So I had to make Jing-A-Ling so you really didn't know he was gay. I couldn't play him flaming. Naw, 'cause brothers will beat you up. They take shit for real. They don't know it's a movie. Black folks do not understand that this is pretend—like when you little and you play house, postman and all that shit. You playing.

But black people, they be serious. We watch
The Fugitive,
and we like, “Unh-uhh, he played that
too
well! Harrison Ford probably did something like that in real life!”

Or like in
Players Club
where, at the end, my character, Dollar Bill, gets hit over the head and thrown in a trunk.

I get people come up to me even today and say, “Hey, man, where they take you in that trunk?”

Now, these are fans—so I try to be nice. But you know I be wanting to say, “You stupid muthafuckas.”

This one guy asked me—and this ain't no lie—he said, “Hey, Bernie Mac! They killed you, didn't they? Man, how they be doing that?”

Bill Belamy, Laura Hayes, Michael Cuyler, and Bernie Mac, with Chris Tucker (crouching).

I just looked at him and said something. Then he said, “But they hit you with a bat! I know
that
was real!”

These muthafuckas something else; they be believing this shit. They do.

Now, I can see a little kid doing that. I got a friend, her grandson, cutest little chocolate boy you ever want to see. And he smart. He short as hell, 'bout three feet tall. Muh'fucka eight years old. He ain't growing no more, right? But he's smart.

Anyway, I went over their house and he went off: “How is Bernie Mac over here and he dead? They put him in the trunk!” He said, “Lord, what's going on here?”

Now that was funny to me because he's a little boy. But grown folks be coming to me with this bullshit—talking about, “Where Kid and Play at?

“We saw you in
House Party
last week, man. What Kid doing?”