Tim
and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White covers the lives of Tim Reid
and Tom Dreesen who were a comedy team in the late sixties and early seventies.
Reid and Dreesen originally teamed up in 1968 to take part in a drug prevention
campaign in Chicago schools. At the suggestion of a student, they became a
comedy team. Reid was black and Dreesen was white; this made their stand-up act
different from any before or since. The book outlines how their great
friendship created opportunities for material no one else could do, but their
comedy team had many unique challenges.
Chicago in 1968, like much of the US, was
volatile because of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement. That year
Chicago was host to two riots. The first riot followed the assassination of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, and the second occurred outside the
Democratic National Convention. Tensions were high. According to Reid, “There
wasn’t a day that what was happening in Chicago, and what was happening in
America, didn’t affect how audiences saw us.” (89) According to Reid and
Dreesen, audiences had different expectations. The black audiences expected
them to be funny while white audiences expected some kind of message in the
show. Tim and Tom were on trial from the moment they hit the stage; Dreesen
said, “…one of the things I learned in sales is true in comedy, too: when
people don’t know you, you only have a minute or two to make a favorable
impression. So if people have negative feelings about you going in, you don’t
have much time to turn them around.”(88) They had only a precious minute to
diffuse those concerns and get the audience on their side; despite this
challenge, they were able to rise to the occasion and get audiences laughing.
A larger frustration was when they found bookers,
clubs, agents and talk show producers reluctant to book them. The entertainment industry considered an
integrated act ‘hard to sell’ due to the highly segregated nature of night
clubs and programming. Reid commented on the reluctance of the industry to
accept them:
They were analyzing
the business part of it… And I think the bookers were worried that we might bring
a black clientele to their clubs…I thought for sure somebody would see the
potential in what we were doing, would see that race is something we’re going
to be talking about in this country for a long time and would want to develop
us. But even when the audiences showed they were willing to accept us, the
industry wasn’t. That was hard to get used to. (90-91)
The comedy team broke up after five years
due to frustration with the industry and the divergent creative goals of Reid
and Dreesen. Reid was interested in acting, and Dreesen was a pure stand-up
comedian. So while “Tim and Tom was his [Dreesen’s] twenty-four-hour
obsession,” Reid became more frustrated and dissatisfied with their lack of
progress. (120) Reid captured the motivation behind of their break-up in this
statement:
“It was getting to the point where I
couldn’t take the disappointments anymore,” Reid says. “I kept thinking this
was not the way it was supposed to be, that it should have happened by now. I didn’t have the passion for standup that Tom
did—I was always more interested in acting—and I didn’t like nightclubs. I
didn’t like going into a room full of people drinking and smoking cigarettes
and sitting there saying, ‘Make me laugh.” (118)
After the
break-up, both went on to success in their respective fields. Tim Reid became a
successful actor, writer, and producer while Tom Dreesen flourished in stand-up
comedy during the waning decades of Rat Pack Vegas.
Tim
and Tom is a good read for stand-up comedians and scholars of: television,
civil rights or stand-up comedy history. The majority of the book alternates between
narratives of Dreesen’s and Reid’s careers. The second and third chapters,
devoted to their family and upbringing, show the rough neighborhoods Reid and Dreesen
started out in which created the foundation for their humor and the
understanding that made them friends. These chapters were the most concise of
the book. Later chapters, particularly after Tim and Tom split up, appear
choppier in terms of timeline and focus. As the chapters are based on live
interviews, this isn’t completely unexpected, but it does give the feeling of
two incomplete biographies as opposed to a book about the Tim and Tom years.
Overall, Tim
and Tom is a quality book about a comedy act that did not make it which is
just as valuable (if not more so) than the ones who achieved great success. In
addition, it chronicles the challenges faced by performers in that pre-comedy
boom era as well as challenges of traveling in a racially charged and divided
nation. It showed resilience of performers truly struggling to make ends meet. The
book also demonstrates the destructive nature of comedy on personal
relationships. There are many lessons to be gleaned from the experiences of
Reid and Dreesen. Below are eight important lessons that comedians can learn
from Tim and Tom.
Lesson #1: The challenges of comedy teams
Comedians
seldom work as teams anymore. The primary driving force behind the solo
stand-up is a financial one. It’s challenging for stand-up acts to get paid at
all, let alone a decent wage, and cutting that amount in half would make
success as a full time act nearly impossible. With that said, a team act like
Tim and Tom had unique advantages over other acts because it could portray two
viewpoints; certain jokes were acceptable from a black man that could never
work from a white man and vice versa. Plus, there was extra manpower to work on
bits, ideas, self-promotion, booking and making contacts. One of the best
advantages was that Reid and Dreesen had different strengths; Reid had access
to two cars, and Dreesen was great with people.
Another advantage to having a partner is
being able to share the experience with someone else and motivate one another
through the failures and successes. Many
well known comedians such as Reid, Dreesen, George Carlin, George Burns, and Elaine
May started out in a comedy duo before striking out solo which means it may
have some value for new comics. Even though they did not continue as a duo,
Reid and Dreeson clearly gained valuable skills from working with one another.
On the other hand, being in a duo has its
negative points. Motivation can determine whether an act succeeds or fails. And
if the motivation between partners differs, then the act is in danger. There
came a point where Reid wasn’t interested in the act anymore; he wasn’t as
passionate as Dreesen and he “no longer believed in [their] dream.” (140) He
lacked the optimism, drive and ambition for stand-up, as his true interest and
goal was to be an actor. Reid’s change in focus (with the addition of him
meeting Della Reese who basically Yoko Ono’d the team), broke up the act,
leaving Dreesen to start from scratch as a solo act. Therefore, with a second
person involved, the act is in danger of being unusable if your partner dies,
becomes ill, flakes out, changes careers, etc. The pros and cons of working as
a team must be carefully weighed out.
Lesson #2: Importance of practicing
Reid and Dreeson learned the value of
practice from Vince Sanders, who made them rehearse ad nauseum (that’s fancy
talk for – until you wanna puke) until they knew their act well enough to try
it before a live audience. According to Dreesen, “He was tough on us. He talked
about our dress, our material, our timing. He became the third eye we
needed.”(82) Their experience with Sanders was a collaboration that some
comedians do with writing partners where they bounce material off of another
comic or creative mind. Having a good partner can enhance your comedy act
without detracting from your personal voice.
Lesson#3:
Quantity Stage Time
From
their experience at Playboy clubs, which put on five to six shows a night, they
learned the value of quantity stage-time. Reid said it was, “almost like
getting paid to rehearse.” (97) In other books like
Born Standing Up (Steve Martin),
Bossypants (Tina Fey) and
One
More Time (Carol Burnett), I’ve seen a pattern where the entertainer gets
an opportunity to perform constantly as they develop. Each biography is
consistent with the “10,000 hours rule” from the book
Outliers which has found that it takes 10,000 hours to master
anything. (Hence, Lewis Black’s
advice
to me.) Nothing is going to improve your stand-up comedy more than stage
time; we’re talking quantity here!
Lesson #4: Learn to read the audience
From being booked in small rough towns with
different racial divides, Reid and Dreesen learned how to read an audience.
“When Reid and Dreesen began performing, it never occurred to them that their
success on any given night might depend on the racial makeup of the audience.”(87)
They learned quickly that different audiences had different expectations of
them. Learning to read people is important for the show and sometimes for the
safety of the performers. Stand-up comedians should take note of this and
determine if they’re doing enough to learn about the audience by observing them
before the show, observing how they react to other comics, and how they react
to specific jokes as a guide for how to proceed.
Lesson #5: Networking
Reid learned from Dreesen the importance of
talking to the people around you because you never know who could give you a
lead, a hand, a connection or put in a good word for you. This came in handy
for their act and for Dreesen personally multiple times. This is a skill that
all comedians must learn in order to make the connections to get work. According
to Reid,
Tom could walk into a room full of
strangers and twenty minutes later he’d be introducing them to someone like
he’d known them for a year and a half. I could be in a room full of strangers
for four days and walk out not having spoken to one of them. ..I regret it. There
are people I’ve met in show business I would have liked to know better.
(119-120)
Dreeson more than made up for Reid’s
introversion and “became the act’s manager/ agent/ publicist/ promoter.” (120)
He made it a point to talk to everyone because all people are potential bookers.
Lesson #6: Comedy is addictive and it can
have negative consequences on your relationships
It is important to understand the upheaval
stand-up comedy can have on your life. Comedy ended up destroying the marriages
of both Reid and Dreesen. Dreesen’s wife was against comedy from the start, and
despite Reid’s financially and emotionally supportive wife, they did not
survive the transition either. Comedy has an addictive quality that is hard to
describe to non-performers which is why family, friends and spouses can have a
hard time understanding why someone would leave a good steady job to a very
unstable and uncertain future. According to Dreesen, “The only thing I could
say was that I had the bug…The first time I wrote professional entertainer on
my income tax form it hit me. This is what I wanted to do, what I had to do.”
(119) It is a difficult road to be a comedian, and not all partners are
supportive enough to come along. (See Last
Words and Rickle’s Book for
stories about comedians who had long marriages).
The lack of support from close friends and
family can be why there are relatively fewer comedians than other artists as
well as a lack of females in comedy (e.g. imagine the guilt someone would put
on a young mom who decided to go out every night to open mics—enough said).
Dreesen was once a caddie at a Jewish country club where he observed the
cultural difference that made him understand the prevalence of Jewish comedians.
He saw Jewish adults encouraging the children to tell jokes and be funny for
family and friends. On the other hand, where Dreesen grew up, children were to
be seen and not heard. “…Irish and Italian and Polish families…they didn’t
encourage that kind of behavior. You start telling jokes in Catholic school and
they’d take a ruler to your ass.” (49) Having a supportive community to back
you up can make the hard road of comedy a lot smoother.
If you are getting into comedy, you must
decide where your priorities lie; especially if you’re married. Make sure that
you have supportive people around you, and tend to those relationships as much
as you tend to your career.
Lesson #7: Optimism and perseverance
Another lesson to be gleaned from Tim and Tom is the importance of optimism
and perseverance. Tom Dreesen adopted an optimistic attitude that “at times
seemed to border on the delusional”; his personal mantra was: if it is to be,
it’s up to me.” Dick Owings, a writing
partner for Tim and Tom, said, “…Tom would change every defeat into a
victory…It was one of the things that kept him going.” (118) Despite the odds,
setbacks, being dumped by his partner, and being homeless, Dreesen kept going
and did not take no for an answer. Although I wouldn’t classify Reid as a full
on pessimist, he did not recover from rejections as easily as Dreesen. Reid himself confesses, “I didn’t enjoy it as
much as I should have…I didn’t always allow myself to appreciate the good
times. I spent too much time anguishing over the failures. We really did have
fun—I see that now—but at the time I was too caught up in the frustrations. It
makes me angry at myself.” (122) Eventually, Dreesen was able to break through
and have a successful career in stand-up comedy because of his perseverance.
Lesson #8: Do what you love
Reid, on the other hand, did not continue in
stand-up comedy. He made the wise choice to break off from Tim and Tom in order
to pursue acting which was what he really wanted to do. This was not an easy
choice for Reid, but in pursuing acting, his true passion, he was able to
become successful as well. Making the final and most important lesson from Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and
White: do what you love.
