A version of this was originally posted on cpluscomedy.com in 2020.
Comedy has grown multiple subgenres over the past few decades. Vaudeville, alternative, surreal. There’s no limit to the lengths comedy can reach. In the early 2000’s, I gravitated towards the genre easily bouncing from age appropriate cartoons to sketch shows like All That, ultimately landing on non-age appropriate Madtv, Monty Python, and In Living Color.
With sketch came a love of standup. Free HBO weekends led to me finding Ellen DeGeneres and Eddie Murphy. Struggling to stay up until 11:30 PM saw me catching glimpses of Conan O’Brien and David Letterman. Finding Comedy Central was when I discovered anyone could perform comedy -- onstage and alone -- as a career. There, I caught repeat showings of Kings of Comedy and Blue Collar Comedy Tour. Two different worlds with completely separate audiences but the same end goal: to make people laugh.
A couple of weeks ago, during a growing pandemic, Dan Whitney (known the world over as Larry the Cable Guy) and I had a long conversation concerning his new special, Remain Seated. I ask him what to call him. He says whichever name is easier. I’d slip up once or twice.
“It stinks running stuff over to my mom. Running stuff down to my sister.” He already sounds tired and it’s not even noon. “I’m kind of the person running all the errands and doing stuff.”
What he thanklessly does now is similar to his previous jobs in the service industry. He recalls being a bellhop in Florida with veneration.
“They called it the Hyatt Palm Beach, but it was in West Palm beach. We were over the river.” We share a laugh. His sounds raspy and cheerful, much like you would expect if you’d seen him on TV for decades. “We weren’t in Palm beach. We were over the river.”
Management would see the machinations of his comedy career interfering with his bellhop work. They told Whitney to take as much time off as he needed should the two conflict. He took three months off and never looked back.
Whitney’s humble about his work. He tells me there was never a worry if he’d be working or not if he didn’t make it in comedy because there was always a job offer waiting around the corner. He’s that likeable. That same accountability is easily applied to his standup.
“[If] you’re a good worker and you’re good with people and you got a good personality and you’re outgoing, you can pretty much work anywhere. ‘Cause everybody wants an employee like that.”
Thankfully, comedy worked out for him. Now, he uses his good fortunes to help others. Take what’s going on during this current pandemic with the coronavirus. As celebrities donate their funds to organizations both local and worldwide, Whitney isn’t to be outdone. He understands the impact a worldwide shut down brings to people who are working paycheck to paycheck like waiters at clubs. He’s been in their shoes.
“If people that have been blessed, if they’re well off and it doesn’t affect them as bad. If they would find 10 people they know that are in the service industry and pay their rent in the month [...] I mean, what’s it gonna cost you?”
Later in our chat, Whitney would tell me he may even hold a charity show at his friend Colleen’s comedy club in Omaha, Nebraska if need be.
Whitney is the exact opposite of his character. And that’s what Larry The Cable Guy is: a character. That’s not saying the two may or may not share the same beliefs but Whitney doesn’t necessarily follow the same logical path as Larry.
Coming up in the 80’s had a pre-persona Whitney and frequent collaborator Jeff Foxworthy dipping into country personas as they told stories. Whitney credits All In The Family for giving him inspiration for Larry The Cable Guy. The show’s patriarchal Archie Bunker was a relic of his time, a caricature even when the show aired. He was crude and selfish, vile to the extent of dislikeable. But the character was written in such a way that audiences endeared him. Whitney wanted to develop the better qualities into a workable personality.
“I wanted to create a character that was like Archie but likeable.” He’d go into a story about the early radio days of performing the character only to listen to two people giving dissenting opinions on whether or not “Larry” meant what he said. “I want him to be likeable but outrageous.”
He loves writing for Larry, putting a ton of thought into what could appear to be a one note concept. One of the better parts of performing as Larry is that Whitney can test a new joke out as the character on stage and without any preparation.
Whitney is very knowledgeable when it comes to comedy. He’s recalls early days of standup with the likes of Colin Quinn and Emo Phillips revenerently. Oddly enough, doing showcases or spots would lead to more showcases and spots -- mirroring his work life prior to comedy.
“I’ve always been a fan of those one line of comedians. One liners have always made me laugh.” He almost hesitates bringing up his next anecdote that one of his favorite shows is Green Acres because of its use of one liner styled jokes.
“There’s not a lot of people that do that style anymore. When I had my Christmas special for VH1, my first one I remember, I had Jeffrey Ross as one of my cast. I really like Jeff a lot… He does the roast jokes, he’s a one liner guy [...] It’s a dying art. There’s not a lot of them anymore.”
Whitney’s life started off as simple as his drawl implies. His parents, Tom and Shirley, took opposite stances on his future career.
“My mom always supported me. My mom always thought she would come to the comedy club with her friend, and she’d sit there and she was so proud of me.” This may sound hokey but you could hear the smile radiating from his face through the phone.
Then a tone shift.
“My dad was indifferent. He didn’t want me doing it.” He rushed through the last two sentences as if to distance himself from the emotions they’d bring back up. “Only because he knew the garbage they have to put up with in the entertainment business and managers and bookers.”
His father -- a preacher leading congregations at two separate churches -- was also a musician, having played with the Everly Brothers and other bands.
“My dad was very complicated. I love my dad to death. [He’s] just very complicated.” Whitney rushes again. “He did a lot of jobs. We weren’t rich. A lot of people think we were rich.”
Tom only disliked the industry because he went through it as a guitarist for the Everly Brothers. This was after a time when he took condemned property in Pawnee City, Nebraska and fixed it up enough for his family to move into.
“No air conditioning, no heat. We had a fireplace. He’d put a fireplace in.”
It wasn’t until his son started touring with Foxworthy that he became accepting.
“He started to warm up to it because he really liked Jeff cause he thought Jeff was a good upstanding Christian guy. And so he knew that was somebody I could hang around with that he wasn’t too worried about me hanging around with.”
Four decades have passed since Whitney began his career as a comic. He’s toured the world over, performed for millions, and seen a shift in the comedy landscape. Even still, that doesn’t mean he supports said change.
“I think the thing that’s going to hurt comedy worse than the virus is political correctness.
I think that’ll hurt comedy more than any virus.”
The answer came out of the blue when I asked him about how comedy was going to bounce back after the pandemic ends. I let the record play.
“Look, what you find is offensive… There may be things that you think aren’t offensive, but I think ‘I can’t believe that you’re [going] there.’”
He’d go into an example of people talking in any capacity about Jesus Christ or God. That’s just a subject Whitney doesn’t go in on. His points are valid. Not everyone’s comedy is for everyone. But, I posit, what if what’s deemed offensive is outright hurtful? The example I lay out to him is when Saturday Night Live hired comedian Shane Gillis only to fire him for his unapologetic and derogatory racist comments about Asian people.
Changes to society have opted for the things Gillis had been saying and doing to deem that brand of comedy as unfunny. We have a back and forth about the changing tide -- not hostile, just tense. Whitney refers to Sam Kinison’s work and John Belushi’s Saturday Night Live Samurai ; I throw out modern contemporaries like Anthony Jeselnik. But the difference between them and comics who are being outwardly racist is steep I try to point out. Whitney cites that audiences have the right to choose who to support, asking should clips like Belushi’s samurai be banned? Or are they, as I responded, gauche?
“You don’t have to agree with everything a comic does. You don’t have to like everything a comedian does. But you have the freedom to not purchase his albums, to not purchase his specials, to not go to his show. You have that freedom to do. Who is it hurting?”
We’re both unmoved from our positions -- two brands of comedy on opposite sides. However, Whitney would soon bring up his comedic regrets of his own.
“Are there things that I don’t do anymore? Because I’ve got kids now and I’ve grown with my act. And I’ve learned how to write certain things and I don’t need certain things.” Is my act different now with kids and a wife than it was when I was single and out perusing around? Absolutely. Am I gonna ban somebody from doing jokes that I used to do that I don’t think are right anymore? Absolutely not.”
And then a definitive stance.
“Do I think it’s right? No, I don’t think it’s right. But there’s a lot of things that you could put in that category. I mean, that’s what I’m saying about. Who’s to decide what... everybody has a different sense of humor, you know?”
You don’t have to agree with him. Whitney’s a smart guy. It’s easy to see that. His comedy has grown from country boy to family man. But the same thought processes are still there. He’ll tell an anecdote about bowel movements or something referring to his genitals. Larry’s not built for actual commentary but to relate to audiences in a way that’s more ridiculous than it is normal.
I don’t watch a lot of standup now. Between the glut of releases spouting from Netflix and the drips from other outlets, specials don’t seem quite as “special” anymore. But the reverence I carry for the first comedians I ever saw along with those thereafter is still there -- even if I outgrew or drifted from their comedy.
Dan -- or Larry, whichever name you’ve landed on for this piece -- is a simple guy. He cares about his fellow comedians. He doesn’t agree with everything the more progressive comedians say but that’s more of a moral thing. But he does share ironic regrets for his more lizard brained jokes from his past. Don’t we all? (Seriously, anything pre-2018 on C+ Comedy alone should be deleted all together).
Whitney never did need to return to Hyatt Palm Beach. But he never did quit either.
“I still officially worked there. I’ve never quit the Hyatt.” He gives me his heartiest laugh yet. “I figure if something [bad] happens, I could probably go back there and start taking bags up to rooms.”