"Jeff Caldwell"

And, if you have a chance to catch a Jeff Caldwell performance, do not miss it! Your sides will ache for days after the amount of laughter Jeff will induce.

The Laugh Doctor: Jeff Caldwell has had a career that has spanned several decades, has included some TV work, and has, really, a very, very unique voice. I am really proud to have a chance to interview you.

I want to ask you a few questions, Jeff, and try to get some perspective on your view of comedy. Who taught you how and when to laugh? Who was your influence on what was funny? Jeff Caldwell: I think it was probably my dad - he had a very dry, very understated style and it would make women laugh, which I think was ultimately what I was after, making women laugh, and I still am on some level. Although it’s an undercurrent now.

I think dad was pretty good. My grandfather also was pretty funny and pretty clever.

The Laugh Doctor: So the Caldwell men set the standard.

Jeff Caldwell: Caldwell and Taylor, my paternal grandfather and paternal father.

The Laugh Doctor: You discovered you could do it apparently. What led to you deciding you could do it for a living?

Jeff Caldwell: Really, desperation.

I was so unhappy in the academic world and in the business world. I had done ten months of engineering - which is what I had studied to do and graduated a Civil Engineer. I did that for a while and it was just dreadful.

I didn’t know anything; I had this expensive education and was completely incompetent so I scrambled back to grad school and did that for a couple of years. And then I was expected to come up with a thesis. Well that’s too hard.

So I had been doing open mic nights and starting to get paid as a M.C. in comedy clubs and, very impulsively, I said “Well, I am going to do this and that’s all I am ever going to do again.”

I have stuck to that. There have been some lean times…followed by more lean times. It has been hard but eventually, only lately, have I started to feel really competent at this and that’s a wonderful feeling. Where you just don’t feel like a complete fraud up there. I really love that. That makes it so much nicer. You don’t feel like you’re stealing.

The Laugh Doctor: You are the last one to be convinced of that.

Jeff Caldwell: I think I had moments of competence; there were kernels amongst the chaff, but too much chaff. I was the chaff master.

The Laugh Doctor: Not so anymore.

Jeff Caldwell: I feel like now I have a show that I am pretty proud of and I think it gets better all of the time. I sort of got the hang of how to make it better, so I think if I just keep bashing away it is going to keep getting better.

And I hope it keeps making people more and happier. Onward and upward!

The Laugh Doctor: When I first met you your persona came and went on stage. Now you’re that guy and it’s all Jeff Caldwell…you are consistent throughout the act.

Jeff Caldwell: I had always hoped to take who I am off stage and do it onstage. Obviously with 45 minutes of jokes.

I hated the sort of fraudulent characters that were so prevalent when I first started out. They were screamers and guys who would sit and pick their toes. It’s like, why can’t you just be a funny guy and say funny things? That to me is really the greatest stuff…subtle, clever stuff that is beautiful.

That is always what I wanted to do, so if I am doing that it’s a beautiful thing.

The Laugh Doctor: I think you are.

The Laugh Doctor: Surrounding yourself with this, as you do as a professional, dealing with laughter a lot on and off the stage, I am wondering if you have had any experience over the years that illustrates humors power to heal? Obviously that is my angle on humor and, either personally or anybody that you know, where you can say humor really had a healing affect? Jeff Caldwell: I remember reading when I was fairly young, Norman Cousins, he did early work on this I think, he did some research on this.

The Laugh Doctor: Yes, back in ’79.

Jeff Caldwell: OK, that was really interesting. For me the healing, I think, comes to the practitioner.

I don’t know what the effect is; I would hope it would have a salutary affect on people who are watching me. I know, for me, it’s really therapeutic to create something and see it be successful on stage. I think my friend Brett Leake, who has muscular dystrophy and he has been doing this for a long time, I think for him it has been a really positive, helpful thing to be able to do something that is completely separate from this overwhelming physical condition, not just a distraction.

I think that there is probably something biologic that goes on when you are creating something so wonderful and making people happy. And I am sure there are good chemicals that are spinning around so selfishly it makes me feel good. I would hope it would make others feel good.

I don’t really know; I don’t have any direct experience working with patients. I have suggested going into hospitals and saying, “Let’s take them off of their drug therapy and just let me talk to them and see what happens.” But often, they won’t…there is pretty strict protocol in hospitals.

The Laugh Doctor: I think you should be grateful that they refused that for you, Jeff. There are so many things that they would be listening to other than you.

I have had some performers tell me they have had some symptoms, maybe a headache or a fever…feel like they are getting the flu, they get up and perform and as the performance goes on those symptoms ameliorate.

Jeff Caldwell: There have been times which I have been so sick that I’ve thought, “There is no way I can do the show.” I think its adrenaline. I mean you probably know better than I do, but the excitement of knowing you are going to perform shortly - you get through it somehow. I mean, you are exhausted later but you are able to muddle through and people go, “I didn’t know you were sick.” It’s incredible. So whatever it is - whether it’s, you know, you have a mission and you have to accomplish it, your immune system recuperates somehow.

The Laugh Doctor: It rises to the occasion maybe?

The Laugh Doctor: Let’s shift the focus for a minute. A lot of people think that America and Americans have lost their sense of humor and we take ourselves too seriously and things like political correctness have crept in and kind of made it more difficult to laugh at times.

Do you have any observations about this? Have you noticed anything like that?

Jeff Caldwell: I don’t know. It seems to me that when people say…like they will tell a joke and people don’t laugh, they go, “Oh, that’s politically incorrect?”

It’s often a way to cover up for something, usually offensive, that you’ve just said. I am in favor of not offending people, not poking at people’s sensitivities. We have this huge legacy in America of racism, treating people badly for hundreds of years, and keeping them from educational opportunities and economic opportunities and I think that has to be treated with delicacy and respect.

I don’t think that is being politically correct. I think some matters need to be treated sensitively. I think that’s often a cover for people who just are rude and insensitive.

The Laugh Doctor: Do you ever find yourself taking yourself too seriously and what do you do in circumstances like that? That is probably just another way of asking you: what makes you laugh? What lightens Jeff Caldwell up when you need to be lightened?

Jeff Caldwell: Well there is so much great stuff out there that makes me laugh. I have literary people that make me laugh, a lot of authors like Kingsley Amis, the book Lucky Jim, if you haven’t read it, you can’t read it in public because it will make you laugh so hard people will think you are insane.

Great things are coming out on DVD - some of the SCTV shows are wonderful, Fawlty Towers. If I am feeling kind of depressed I will turn on a couple of episodes of Fawlty Towers and in ½ hour I’m alright again.

There are a variety of things that really makes me laugh, Donna Watts, Brett Leake, Bob Somerby…and Dr. Cliff Kuhn, the Laugh Doctor. The “Guffawlogist.”

The Laugh Doctor: I wasn’t going to move on to the next question until you cleared my name. You were quick on the uptake there.

Jeff Caldwell: I could see the yearning in your eyes.

The Laugh Doctor: Thanks, I really owe you now.

The Laugh Doctor: This is one of those questions that sounds hokey, because it probably is, but it has produced some good answers and I would like to hear your answer to it. If you had to give up all of the skills and resources you depend on for producing your humor, and keep only one skill, which skill would Jeff Caldwell retain above all of the others?

Jeff Caldwell: That’s hard. I first have to enumerate my skills…and then eliminate them. Skills, what are my skills? You know I am formally an engineer and I like to be precise.

The Laugh Doctor: OK, how about I give you a few. There are things like listening, articulation, and sarcasm.

Jeff Caldwell: I love sarcasm…can I keep sarcasm? I think, that, to me is really hilarious. Just somebody presenting information in a sarcastic way, if done cleverly not just sneering.

You can really puncture pomposity with sarcasm. I think that’s a good skill.

Speaking truth to power that’s what we really ought to be doing up here. We have this wonderful platform, and it’s very hard in comedy clubs, politically you have to be very careful, because people want to believe that their leaders are working for their best interest. But if you can use sarcasm or other comedic skills to sort of enlighten people, which would really be something worth while.

You know you have to open men’s eyes not tear them out. I think that’s really my goal to open men’s eyes, and women’s too.

The Laugh Doctor: If someone tells you that they can’t laugh because of some hardship, or perhaps illness or pain, they have lost their sense of humor, they have stress in their life, what steps would you recommend to them in order to get their sense of humor back?

Jeff Caldwell: Well that seems presumptuous of me and if they have gotten to that level they must have some pretty dreadful things happening in their life.

The Laugh Doctor: I guess I am presuming that you think it would be helpful if they could find a way to reclaim the capacity to laugh.

Jeff Caldwell: Absolutely.

The Laugh Doctor: How would you help them do it? Assume they are seeking your advice. It’s not something you intrude or impose your taste on them but they are saying, “Jeff Caldwell, how do I get it back? How do I laugh again?” Any advice for them?

Jeff Caldwell: To come back to my buddy Brett, who has this pretty serious affliction, I think he really appreciates it when I treat him just as roughly as I would anybody who doesn’t have any sort of problem. Just call him on the carpet totally about minor things.

I think sometimes, just to shock them, I think people can be treated too gingerly. Maybe when they are in dire circumstances, treat them just as badly as you would any other human being. Maybe treat them a little worse possibly.

The Laugh Doctor: That’s interesting. Jerry Lewis, when he is around some of the kids, he will do that. He will walk up to a kid and say, “Get that wheelchair out of my way. I’m trying to get across the room. What are you doing with that wheelchair?” And the kids love it. The parents are having fits off to the side, but it relieves some of the tension. I think it has to do with being treated normally.

Jeff Caldwell: Funny is funny. I think you can sort of remove yourself and, look, somebody yelling at a kid to move his wheelchair, someone being insensitive and obviously not being serious about it. It’s got to be funny.

The Laugh Doctor: I think so. And he does it playfully and the kids know he is an advocate for them. He doesn’t cut them any slack and I think that’s what you are saying.

Jeff Caldwell: That is exactly what I’m saying. The Laugh Doctor: See – Jeff Caldwell is a genius.

Jeff Caldwell: Jerry Lewis and I both are comic geniuses…in France.

The Laugh Doctor: Maybe in some parts of Italy as well?

Jeff Caldwell: Rural valleys. Which is disputed territory.

The Laugh Doctor: And one remote village in Borneo I think.

The Laugh Doctor: You know that my interest is in developing credibility for humor as a component of healing and I advocate it with patients who have cancer and other chronic illnesses. As a purveyor of humor, as a professional humorist, what can a physician, a health professional such as me, do that would actually aide you in what you’re trying to do?

Jeff Caldwell: I think hiring me for lucrative performances at cancer wards.

The Laugh Doctor: Back to that again I see.

Jeff Caldwell: Hospital shows…paying me large sums. I think this would help me to help the people (and help you because I would give you a little kick back).

The Laugh Doctor: I get it, I do. I get it.

Jeff Caldwell: Good comedians. That’s what is going to help the people.

The Laugh Doctor: Advocate for creative comedy? If I might offer an interpretation in the service of letting you know I think I understand your message: maybe I shouldn’t take myself quite as seriously.

Jeff Caldwell: It seems like you know what you are doing; you want to help people exercise their senses of humor to get better. That seems like a very worthwhile goal.

The Laugh Doctor: The money thing sounds good too.

Jeff Caldwell: Yeah, let’s not rule that out. We are flesh and blood. We are not saints here.

The Laugh Doctor: You know what? On that note of truth, Jeff Caldwell, I just want to thank you for giving me the time and your perspective on these things.

Jeff Caldwell: Thank you. My time is your time.

Attention
As a special bonus you can actually download the audio file of this interview and laugh along with Dr. Kuhn and the Jeff. FREE OF CHARGE!

To download an audio file of this interview, you can:

• Click the link with your left mouse button and download the file right into your computer's media player.
• And/or you can click the link with your right mouse button and choose to save it on your "desktop." From your desktop you can choose to play it using any media player you have on your computer's hard drive. (Just click on the interview file with your right mouse button, once it's on your desktop, to see your options)

If you need any help downloading the audio file (it is VERY simple, but can seem intimidating at first), contact us by using this page and we'll be glad to help you.

Click here to download the audio file of Dr. Kuhn's interview with Jeff Caldwell

Important Stuff That You Ought To Know All information on this site is copyrighted by Clifford Kuhn, M.D. and Laugh Doctor Enterprises. Nothing here may be used or reprinted without permission of Dr. Kuhn or Natural-Humor-Medicine.com. Natural-Humor-Medicine.com is an organization dedicated to teaching people about the natural medicine of humor. All revenues generated by this site are reinvested in growing the reach of the organization and educating the public about this powerful medicine.