Stand-Up Comic Carole Montgomery on Funny Woman of A Certain Age
Show Snapshot:
Meet Carole Montgomery—stand-up comic, writer, actress, and producer of two Showtime comedy specials, Funny Women of A Certain Age and More Funny Women of A Certain Age. After a 40+ year standup career on stages from Vegas to small clubs, often as the only female comic, Carole shares how she got an all-women comedy special greenlit in an ageist entertainment industry. Plus, what’s making her LOL, and the female comics to put on your radar.
In This Episode We Cover:
1. How Carole got Showtime to say yes to Funny Women of A Certain Age.
2. Why the midlife market is comedy gold (think money, plus free time).
3. Why Carole launched a comedy career.
4. A behind-the-scenes look at the life of a touring comic (and mom).
5. What if anything is off-limits in comedy?
6. Comedy has fiiiiinally accepted female comics. But what about aging comics?
7. Carole’s comedy heroes plus, up-and-comers you need to know.
8. Only in midlife funny moments.
9. What show business gets wrong about women (in general) and female comics (specifically).
Quotable:
Stand-up comedy was one of the last boys’ club to have the barriers break down. I think people were like, ‘Well, we’re comfortable, we’ve got all these guys. There are a couple of funny women, and we’ll use them, but let's just stick with the guys, it’s easier.’
Women have camaraderie. Show business wants you to think that women compete, because that’s what the Real Housewives series is all about, women backstabbing each other. For the first special, we had a monitor in the back so that the women could watch the other women. They were glued to the monitor, watching and cheering.
Word of Mouth. Carole recommends:
More Funny Women of A Certain Age
More Resources:
Funny Women of A Certain Age Cast
Carole Montgomery
More Funny Women of A Certain Age Cast
Carole Montgomery
Julia Scotti: Funny That Way documentary
Comics to put on your radar:
Kaytlin Bailey
Book:
Road Comic: Heartbreak, Triumph and Obsession on the Comedy Circuit
Follow Carole.
Transcript
Katie Fogarty (00:03):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women on life after 50 who are unafraid to age out loud. I’m your host, Katie Fogarty.
Please put your hands together and help me welcome the woman to the show who has been gracing stages for more than 40 years, Carole Montgomery. Stand-up comic, writer, producer, and actress. From the legendary start-up venue, Catch A Rising Star, to Vegas, to Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, Carole has done it all. Her most recent projects, the Showtime comedy special, Funny Women of a Certain Age, and its sequel made history in 2019 as the first TV comedy to feature female comics over the age of 50. She’s here to help answer the question: 2019? Why did it take so long? Welcome, Carole.
Carole Montgomery (00:51):
Yeah, why did it take so long, huh? [both laughs] It’s always amazing to me because you know, people over 50 are such an underserved demographic, but you know, like I always say, we’re the ones that have all the money.
Katie (01:08):
Yes.
Carole (01:09):
So, it always surprises me that it took so long to actually recognize that there are not just women, just people over 50, you know, it’s such a huge demographic and we’re still vital and we’re still out there doing stuff and it’s still considered this like, well you’re over the hill. 50 is not over the hill. I’m 63 now, I wish I was 50.
Katie (01:41):
[laughs] That’s so funny. Carole, I’m curious, I totally agree with you. We are a large, powerful affluent market. We’re still here, we’re still vital. So, I totally feel you on that. But I’m curious because I’ve seen movies, we’ve seen TV, we see people when they have an idea for a show like your Showtime special and they go pitch it to a packed room, they tend to say things like, “It’s like Friends, but if Friends were on Mars. It’s like Mad Max meets Martha Stewart.” What was your pitch for Funny Women of a Certain Age?
Carole (02:17):
Basically, it was what I just said. The over 50 market is underserved and people want to watch…even the New York comedy scene, the Los Angeles comedy scene, when you go to comedy clubs in major cities, they’re called showcase rooms. They’re not rooms that are in Chicago or St. Louis because those are considered actual full comedy clubs. The people who go to the showcase rooms, they’re younger, yes absolutely. New York and LA they’re younger, they’re hipper. But when you go out to the rest of the country to go to a comedy show on a Saturday night, chances are, it’s going to be older people. They’re gonna be the ones to go out and spend the money and not have to worry. What happens is, when you’re in your twenties and you’re single, you have money to burn, right? Then you get married, then usually right after marriage, love, and marriage, what comes after, baby. Basically let’s say, from 25 to 40, you’re taking care of your children. So, people over 40 and 50, their kids are out of the house. They don’t have to pay for a babysitter, they can just go.
Katie (03:35):
And New York City, LA, babysitters are expensive.
Carole (03:38):
Expensive, [Katie laughs] they’re very expensive. So, when I went in, the reason I went with showtime is because when we did the showcase, we had a big showcase for all of the networks. Everyone was there: HBO, Netflix, Amazon, Showtime, Lifetime. Everyone was there. But in the end, everyone, of course, understood, they got it. Also, just to pat myself on the back, the show that they saw happened to have three of the best female comics in the country. So, they all got it because this was such a perfect show, it was like everything kind of fell into place.
The reason I went to showtime was because they gave me my first big break, right after my son was born in 1992, I think my son was about six months old. I was on a show called the Showtime Comedy Club Allstars, which was they used to do this little touring comedy show through Showtime in all the different cities. At the end of the year, they would take six people and those were the best of the entire country. The year I did it, Don Rickles was the host. So, they gave me my first break. Even though all these people were like we love it, we want to do it, I told my partner, we know his name. I said, I really want to go with Showtime. But Showtime was great. I cannot tell you how great it was to have a network that got it the moment I walked through the door, which is really unusual.
Katie (05:13):
It sounds like it’s probably rare and I love that you had that loyalty. You said, “They gave me a break and I’m repaying that and I’m picking them.” So, I’m curious, you said that you had three really talented female comics in that showcase. Can you share those names with us?
Carole (05:26):
Absolutely. Veronica Mosey, Leighann Lord, and Vanessa Hollingshead. It really was such a perfect show because one of the biggest problems I’ve always felt in stand-up comedy when it comes to women is you’ll always hear that women talk about the same things, you always hear that women all talk about the same thing. It’s like, okay, sure. And each of these women, Veronica she’s an older mom, she had her child when she was older. Leighann has been single, you know, she was married but now she’s single she doesn’t have kids. Vanessa was married, she didn’t have kids. So, they each brought a unique set of jokes and none of them were the same. And I wanted to do that also, I wanted to prove that women, there were six women in each of the specials. You can have six women and if you didn’t like that one, you’re gonna like the next one, you didn’t like the next one, you’re gonna like…you know what I mean?
Katie (06:33):
Sure.
Carole (06:34):
I was hoping that I could break the barriers of when people go, “Oh yeah, they all talk about the same stuff.” It’s like really? Seriously?
Katie (06:41):
Why does nobody say that about men? We’re not monolithic…there are so many different types of women. Do you ever hear that complaint about male comics?
Carole (06:49):
No. I’ve said that they’ll say women are all alike and yet every male comic goes on and talks about how he gets high in his parent’s basement. [Katie laughs] You know what I mean? It’s like, okay.
Katie (07:04):
You’re like, “Been there done that, I’ve heard that joke.”
Carole (07:06):
I think it has to do, you know, when I started there weren’t a lot of women. If there were 15 women, and I started in the last seventies. So, it was unusual for a woman to be, because we were still breaking down the barriers at that point because we had the women’s lib on one end, but stand-up comedy was still very much a boys’ club. It’s interesting, there were two types of women. Either women who were very tough looking or they made themselves not look good on stage. By either being overweight or you know…
Katie (07:52):
They weren’t sexy. There weren’t sexy comics, is that what you’re saying?
Carole (07:55):
No, no, no, no. Not like now. Because now, women, you know, there are many women who are stunning and funny. All of a sudden we went, wait a minute, I can do that. [Katie laughs]
Katie (08:08):
I’m hot and humorous, right? I’m curious, you were talking about how there were fewer and fewer, there weren’t a lot of you when you first started out. Has that changed? Have you seen the numbers go up?
Carole (08:24):
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I mean, I don’t know if we, I don’t think we outnumber the men, but I’d say we’re probably, I wanna say maybe 70-30, 60-40. 40% being us.
Katie (08:41):
And what about the decision-makers? You were going into a room and having to get someone's attention, getting them to say yes. Do you feel that one of the reasons we’re seeing more men on the stage is because there are more men in the decision-making roles, casting those male comics versus females?
Carole (08:58):
I think, you know, we were one of the last, stand-up comedy was one of the last male, last boys club to have the barriers break down. So, I think that it’s a mixture of everything. I think it’s a mixture of people just going, “Well, we don’t want to work harder to push women forward when we have this funny guy.” Do you know what I mean? I don’t think it’s, laziness isn’t the right word, but I think people are like, “Well we’re comfortable, we’ve got all these guys. There are a couple of funny women, and we’ll use them, but let's just stick with the guys, it’s easier.”
Katie (09:41):
Yeah, we’ll just stick with what we know and the people that we hire. So, how did you get started? I mean, you’ve had this career for a couple of decades now, what first put you on the stage?
Carole (09:50):
Well, my father was a high school teacher but was always very funny. So, he was the one that gave me the love of comedy. My earliest memories are, he was a teacher, so when he’d come home for dinner, we’d have dinner and we’d have the black and white TV in the kitchen and we’d watch Lucy at 6:00. So, I always remember laughing a lot. We watched Abbott and Costello and the Bowery Boys and my father turned me onto the Marx Brothers who ended up being my heroes of comedy.
Through him I learned that laughing was a great thing and ironically, what was funny, I didn’t realize this until I was in my mid-twenties. When my father was, we would have the summers off, so he was a bartender up in the Catskill mountains. So, as a kid, when my father was setting up the bar, at 6 at night or something, I would keep him company because I wanted to hang out with my dad, and you know, Rodney Dangerfield would walk in and do a mic check, or Totie Fields. So, I was around comedy. Literally, when I had the memory I said to my father, “Of course I was going to be a comedian, it was in my blood, I was around it every summer.”
Katie (11:15):
That’s so cool, I love that, I love that. So, you’ve had this 40-year career doing stand-up which is basically standing on stage saying many of the things that some of us think but that we’re afraid to say out loud. In a minute we’re going to go to a commercial break, but when we come back, I want to ask you, are there things that are hard to say? Are there things that you won’t say?
Carole (11:35):
On stage?
Katie (11:36):
Yes, hold onto that thought. We’ll be back in a minute because I want to hear.
[Ad break]
Katie (13:04):
Carole, you’ve been doing stand-up on some of the biggest stages in the country for years. You’re an expert at saying uncomfortable things, but are there some things that are harder to say than others? Is there anything that’s off-limits?
Carole (13:19):
Well, okay. I’ll give you an example of how I raised my son because I think this fits in with the question. So, when I was raising my son, and they all knew, which is ironic. He grew up in Las Vegas where I was working as a comedian in a burlesque topless show where the dancers were topless and I’d come out and do funny stuff. So, everyone was aware of what I did. I was a comedian. But the rule in the house was, you could say whatever you want, including curse words, but you had to make sure it was funny. You couldn’t say anything just to use the word. The only thing that I, if anyone tried to do a racist joke or a homophobic joke, I’d stop them in their tracks. I literally had, one time I was driving a bunch of boys to little league and this kid starts with one of these racist, you know the setup was horrible. I literally pulled the car over and stopped the car and said, “What did you just say?” He goes, “But it’s a joke.” I said, “If I ever hear you say that again, you will never ever play with Layne again. In fact, you’re lucky I don’t make you walk to the game right now.” And he was mortified and he apologized.
So, you know, actually, my son and I were having this conversation recently about comedy because now there’s a cancel culture and the woke people and they’re all fighting and everything. You can’t punch down in comedy. When you make fun of somebody, if you make fun of yourself, you can do that, because it’s you. But if you’re punching down at a group of people that hasn’t had much success, that’s not funny, that’s just sad to me.
Katie (14:57):
That’s a great, great filter that we should all be using beyond comedy. Just don’t punch people below your fight weight. And I feel like we’ve just come out of four years of somebody punching people he should not be punching. So, I love that. I love that as a filter. But also the idea for you know, for your son, it’s like, make it funny. There’s a lot of ways to have uncomfortable conversations or to just mine the truth in your life and that you know, the F-bomb is perfectly okay, as long as it’s got a funny set up in front of it, maybe. [laughs]
Carole (15:38):
Right, right. I mean, and my act is you know, what’s funny is I’m considered a blue comic. When you see what the younger comics are doing today, I look like a nun now. [Katie laughs] But there’s a way to do, but besides the Marx Brothers, but my number one hero is Richard Pryor and then George Carlin. Both of them used cursing as seasoning. That’s the best way I can describe how I’m cursing. First of all, I’m from Brooklyn so the F-word is an adjective, you know what I mean?
Katie (16:16):
It’s an exclamation point, right? [laughs]
Carole (16:18):
Yes, exactly. So, there’s a way to do…you know it’s funny, there are two shows in Las Vegas. For the second show that I did, they were two separate shows, for my own head, I decided I wasn’t going to curse, but I was still going to do the type of material I do which leans a lot on sex and taboo subjects like that. Then one night I decided, and this is purely just for my own head, I’m gonna throw in some F-bombs. And the next day I got a call from the producer going, “They said you were really dirty last night,” and the only thing I had changed was putting in the F-word. And I mean, I’m telling you, when I say I was doing graphic material about sex and never cursing, that was okay. It was such a bizarre experiment for me.
Katie (17:20):
That is so bizarre. That is so bizarre. I watched your comedy shows back to back last night. I watched Funny Women of a Certain Age and then I watched More Funny Women of a Certain Age and I watched them with my husband and my 20-year-old daughter and we were crying laughing.
Carole (17:36):
That’s nice, that makes me happy.
Katie (17:39):
And it was so funny. She’s 20, I’m 51, my husband is 50, we are across ages, across genders and we were dying. I loved your friend, I think it’s maybe it’s Veronica or Victoria? Sort of starts off with Mrs. Maisel outfit, and she’s just
Carole (17:56):
Oh, Lynne. Yes.
Katie (17:58):
Is it Lynn? I mean, she is just like extraordinary. I thought she was such a riot. I’m just curious. Do you feel like jokes are generational, are some things universal? What’s your take on that?
Carole (18:10):
I think jokes…they say in show business that there are only five movie plots and it’s everyone's take on what they do to make it their own. My material comes from my soul, do you know what I mean? Like I used to say that when I first started out, I was in my early twenties so, at that point, I was dating a lot, trying to find a boyfriend, then I met my husband, then it was talking about him, then I got married, so it was talking about him, then I had my son. So, for me, it’s always been close to the truth with, like I said, a little seasoning put into it. So, I don’t really know, that’s a good question.
Katie (18:56):
Do you feel like your funny has changed at all as your age? You’re talking about you’re sort of mining the truth of the life that you’re living right now. Have you seen your own sense of humor change at all as you’ve aged? Does the same stuff crack you up every time?
Carole (19:15):
The same stuff cracks me up. I see someone slip on a banana peel, and it’s really. Like right now, during the pandemic, my husband and I…I’m a big, I love old sitcoms. One of my friends Julia Scotti, who you know, was on the second special, she said, “You should watch the Dick Van Dyke Show because they have the pilot on Hulu.” The pilot, it wasn’t the Dick Van Dyke Show, I forget what it was called but it was Carl Reiner who ends up creating the Dick Van Dyke Show. So she said we should watch it so of course then we started watching it. And Dick Van Dyke is such a, you know, he’s a dancer. So, he’s so physical, so every time he falls…me and my husband, with the opening, he trips over the ottoman, because sometimes we doesn’t, and sometimes he does. So, we’re both waiting like, is he gonna trip? And when he trips, we still laugh, and we know he’s tripping. So, I like slapstick, I like good, you know if it’s a good joke, I’m pretty much gonna laugh at it. But I do like the physicality of comedy a lot.
Katie (20:28):
Yeah absolutely. You saw that the show that you did had I think five or six, or six to seven comics in each show. Some of them embrace more of that physical comedy where it’s the faces, some of them it’s more of the stories. It’s a mix, it’s a really nice mix.
One of the things I noticed on, I think it was the first Funny Women of a Certain Age. Because you intersperse the comics with a little bit of a Q&A where you get their perspective on what it’s like to have been a woman of a certain age or to be a female comic and you say you are tired of being asked what it's like to be a female comic, which is totally fair. Men probably never get asked this question, but I would like to hear your take on what it’s like to be an aging comic. You’ve been at this for 40 years, show business is notoriously youth-obsessed. How has it been to age in this industry?
Carole (21:32):
You know when I turned 50, and like I said I’ll actually be 63 in a couple of weeks, but when I turned 50, I saw the writing on the wall. So, when I was in Vegas with my son, I did most of the shows, I was in my early to mid-forties. So, when I got back to New York, now I was a road comic for many, many years and that all disappeared because you know, with social media and YouTube and all these internet stars, what is it called? The influencers. They weren’t even looking at people who had material, they just wanted, “Oh they have a million Twitter followers? They must be funny.” It was such a weird time when I hit 50 because I was like, “Uh-oh [Katie laughs] what am I gonna do?” Because I have no other skills, I always say that to people. The only reason I’m still in this is because I seriously can’t do anything else.
So, I started looking into directing and developing solo shows. So, I’ve directed a gentleman named Jim Florentine, his special is on Amazon Prime right now. I produced another special called SHANG is SHANGRY. And I started to realize I enjoyed that too. And I also started to teach and develop solo shows. Because when you have 40 years of experience, you can tell. You know your stuff. With Jim and I, the first few weeks we started to work, it was something as simple as just going, “You need to change that word,” and he would look at me and go, “I’m not changing that word.” And we would fight over changing a single word. And then when we finally put the show-up, and then, of course, it worked as well as I knew it was going to work, he went, “All right, you were right, we should have changed the word.” [both laugh] So, I started to do that.
My fifties was all about rediscovering myself. Because like I said, I don’t think 50 is old, but I think people looked at me a certain way. So, then I started thinking, let me do this and let me do that. I was still partially doing stand-up but the, what’s the word, the road was drying up anyway. So, in other words, I used to, this is how long I’ve been in…years ago, when I was in my thirties if I had a date fall out because I worked basically three weeks every month. Let’s say I was supposed to work this week we’re talking. If somebody called and said, “Carole, the club burned down, we have to cancel.” I could literally call a club and go, "Hey I just lost my week of work” and they’d say, “Hold on, I’ll call you right back… You want to come in this week?” But it’s not like that anymore. Now there are so many comedians and too little of the road rooms. The road was my life. I took my son on the road when he was six months old. So, I decided, okay let’s figure this out.
When I came up with the idea of Funny Women of a Certain Age, I happened to be doing a podcast. One of the women on the show was Veronica Mosey who ends up doing the show at The Crane for us when we did that big showcase. It was two other female comics and we had so much fun talking and laughing. I literally said to my husband, I was walking to the subway from the podcast studio and I said, “This should be a show with just female comics, we’re all older.” And that’s how Funny Women of a Certain Age started. It’s a little bit long-winded.
Katie (25:22):
No, no I love it. It’s sort of like sitting around with your girlfriends and just like, crying with laughter about the things that are just totally cracking you up. And it’s so smart to say like, how can we bottle this magic and make it available to an audience that’s gonna love it because they get it and we’re talking to them. As you said, every comic brings their own unique twist on things and the jokes aren’t all the same. But together it’s like hanging out with a group of girlfriends.
Carole (25:52):
Right. And all the women that did the show, I’m not going to list them because if I do, literally always forget somebody because I just do, because I’m 63. [Katie laughs] But what I loved about both of the shows, and this is something that you don’t really see with male comics, it’s not a put down of the men at all, but women have a camaraderie. Show business wants you to think that women compete with each other because that’s what all that Real Housewives series is all about women backstabbing each other. If I tell you, in both shows, for the first special we had a monitor in the back so that the women could watch the other women. They were glued to the monitor, watching and cheering.
Katie (26:45):
I love it.
Carole (26:45):
You know like, just before they’d be like, “All right you’re going on.” And just before that would happen everyone would be like, “Go get ‘em!” and then the second special, Vanessa and Kerri Louise both came back to support the show, they were there to support the other women. Kerri Louise, God I love her so much, a bunch of us were really nervous. I wasn’t, but I was doing a bunch of other stuff, but I heard somebody say, “Why don’t we do cue cards?” So, they started writing cue cards, and then I thought I’m gonna do cue cards too. Because I’m the performer but I’m also the producer so I didn’t have enough time to just go, “ All right, now I have to be a comedian.”
So, when I go out, every comic will tell you this, that first moment when you go on stage, especially when you’re taping a television show is, as soon as you get that first laugh, everything goes away, all the fear, all your worry. So, I get the first joke and I hit it, and everything is going great and everyone is laughing so, I didn’t have to look at the cue cards. But Kerri was in the back, and every time I turned she had the cue cards. If I went somewhere, she ran over to the other side. She could not have been kinder and that’s the kind of camaraderie female comics have. We know how hard it’s been. In the olden days, when we started, we were in more competition with each other because there were only one or two spots. So, if somebody got the spot, you didn’t get the spot because they were only going to use one woman. Now there’s more of us, so now it’s like, “Yeah go do it, go do it, that’ll be good for all of us.”
Katie (28:29):
Yeah, there’s more room and you’re building your own thing. You’re creating opportunities to pull other people in and that’s been a bit of a theme on this show. I hear a lot of women who are my guests, and it’s a theme in my own life, that we’re supported by our friends, by our professional colleagues. I think I mentioned this on a recent show that I often say to my kids: there’s enough sunshine for everyone. And they all roll their eyes and they think mom is so tragic. But I totally believe it to be true. Just because the sun is shining on you doesn’t mean it can’t shine on me. We support each other. Those are the women I seek out in my life. I guess not everyone is like that because the Real Housewives do exist and they are backstabbing each other, but maybe they have a secret behind-the-scenes pact that they are agreeing to be awful to each other just to boost the ratings but they really are supportive. Do you think that could be true?
Carole (29:30):
I mean it might be, most people don’t realize this but most reality is scripted anyway. None of the stuff you see is like what they’re actually doing. I remember one time, the star of the show that I was doing in Vegas, her husband was in another show and they were following her around for one of these types of reality series. And at one point they came back because they wanted to interview her and everything. So, I hear the producer say something about, maybe next year we’ll use their show. I looked at them and I said, “Well, not with me. If somebody has a camera on me right before I go on stage, somebody is getting punched.” And you’re not gonna tell me, “Turn around and go oh, I’m so nervous,” because I’m not. I was doing 13 shows a week. Doing shows in Vegas was just my job, you know what I mean.
I’ve always been the type of woman that wants to bring up other women, somewhat to a fault and it’s probably held me back in my career too because I wasn’t that backstabbing type of woman. I always wanted to just be like well if I can’t do it I’ll get another woman to do it. If I may, one of the things I’m proudest about is that both specials have female directors, female stage managers, female warm-up acts, we had female camerawomen, female line producers. There were men, I mean my producing partner is a man and the showrunner of our show is a man, but I made sure, I said, “Guys…
Katie (31:14):
This is my baby and we’re gonna make sure…
Carole (31:15):
…this is my baby.” And you know what’s really nice? Is in the end, and this sounds so cocky, in the end, everyone has to defer to me. And you know why? Because it’s my show.
Katie (31:26):
Because you’re the boss, I love that. [laughs]
Carole (31:30):
Do you know what I mean?
Katie (31:30):
That doesn’t sound cocky at all, that sounds like, confident. This is mine, I have created this. And it’s also like even though it’s an ensemble piece and other people are playing roles, part of the reason they’re playing that role is because of what you said earlier, you didn’t create a career out of backstabbing, you created a career out of supporting people. That’s why people showed up to be a part of your show because they wanted to be part of something that you built because they probably liked and trusted you, which is important.
Carole (31:58):
And the girls know that. I’ve been very lucky in the sense that we started doing this as a live show first. Everyone understood what the vision was and still is the vision. The vision for me was always to, selfishly, always work with my friends. When you’re on the road as a comedian in general, it’s a very lonely life. You literally go from being on stage for 45 minutes, everyone is laughing at you, everyone is applauding. You talk to everybody after the show and then they go home to their families and you walk to the hotel room by yourself. There’s a reason why there’s a lot of comedians that end up with addictions. Because if you’re literally like “Okay, I’m gonna go to my room now. What’s on TV? Oh, nothing.”
Katie (32:52):
Hang out with my friend vodka, or something.
Carole (32:55):
Yeah so, every time I’ve been on the road with friends, we’ve had the best time. Right after the first special aired, we were really lucky to get a sweet gig in I want to say Arlington, Virginia but I’m probably saying the wrong name. It was in the DC area. I was going to rent a car and Vanessa was going to drive down with me and Kerri Louise who lives in Westchester, I think, she was going to drive down and we were gonna meet at the theatre. Then Kerri calls and says, “You know, I have a minivan,” because she’s a mom and has three boys, she goes, “Why don’t I just pick you guys up?”
Katie (33:30):
We’re gonna carpool!
Carole (33:32):
And oh my God, it was…I wish I had had an actual because it’s one thing to do stuff with your iPhone, I wish I had a camera. We didn’t stop laughing the entire time.
Katie (33:44):
Oh my god, I love it, I love it. Do people do weird things backstage when they’re hanging out like knit or crochet?
Carole (33:51):
That’s interesting.
Katie (33:52):
How do you while away the time when you’re like backstage at a comedy show waiting to go on, if you’re not drinking your friend vodka or something. [both laugh]
Carole (34:00):
Or snorting cocaine
Katie (34:01):
Or snorting cocaine. We’re definitely not gonna do that.
Carole (34:03):
No. No, no, no, nobody does that anymore.
Katie (34:06):
That’s just so Eighties.
Carole (34:09):
Let me think. You know, I do remember seeing some women doing crocheting. Now because everybody has phones you can just scroll down your phone and either look through social media or play games or even watch movies so I, you know, I pace. I’ve always been somebody who paces, even when I’m just working. First of all, before I do anything, five minutes before the show, I’m in the bathroom peeing because I’m an old…
Katie (34:38):
Of course, what do you think I did right before we hit roll tape on this? I’m like, “I’ll be right back I’m going to the ladies' room.”
Carole (34:44):
Yes, so I do that. And then I basically pace. But everyone has their own ritual. There’s really not a lot of room let’s say backstage in a comedy club. Usually, there’s a small room that they consider as the green room. It’s really like the closet. You saw in the second special where I was sitting going this was the greenroom.
Katie (0:35:08.7):
Yeah, it was like a utility closet or something, I don’t know what was happening in there.
Carole (35:10):
Yeah, that’s what it is. Usually, I want to get out of there because it’s like if I sit down I might get something, I might catch something.
Katie (35:18):
In my glamorous greenroom.
Carole (35:20):
In my glamorous greenroom.
Katie (35:22):
It’s so funny because it does look very glamorous when people are onstage and they're in front of an audience, standing next to Bill Maher. But you pointed out, a lot of it is being on the road, being in that glamorous utility closet waiting. Do you miss that though? Now that we’ve had COVID and people have not been going places and we’re all doing Zoom comedy? Do you miss being on the road?
Carole (35:48):
Yes. In fact, it’s so funny. I have a very good friend of mine named Barry Friedman, who was a very good road comic many years ago. And he wrote a book, and of course, I can’t remember the title of the book, he’s gonna be so mad at me. But his name is Barry Friedman, it’s a great book.
Katie (36:01):
I’ll put it in the show notes, I’ll Google it.
Carole (36:03):
Okay. It was all about being on the road. He asked me to do a one or two-sentence blurb about it. And basically what I wrote was that he wrote so vividly about crappy one-nighters that he actually made me miss them.
Katie (36:19):
Aww.
Carole (36:20):
Because, you know, I’m paraphrasing that actual quote but the stories, the horror stories of you know, because a lot of times comedy club owners didn’t want to pay for a hotel so they’d rent an apartment in the worst part of town that was cheap. One time, [laughs] I was in San Antonio and there were bats, actual bats, not Batman [Katie laughs], in the apartment. I called the booker and they said, “Well then, open the window.”
Katie (36:53):
Oh my [laughs] that’s crazy.
Carole (36:58):
Oh yeah. And you know, and then, of course, you’re sharing it with other the guys and they’re bringing home girls. You go to have coffee in the morning and you see somebody who is fully tatted and pierced and you’re like, “Oh, good morning.”
Katie (37:12):
Good morning. I’m not going to spoil it, but everyone is going to need to watch the comedy special to figure out why you never use mayonnaise [Carole laughs] in a shared apartment with other comics. [laughs]
Carole (37:27):
Yes, yes.
Katie (37:28):
We’re gonna leave it at that, we’re gonna leave it to the imagination. But tune in and you will find out the answer to this very burning question. [both laugh] Oh my gosh, you started out by telling us about the comics you admire, the Marx brothers, the physical comedy of I’m trying to even think, Groucho Marx, whoever. Are there any comics sort of like, newly on your radar, that are rising up through the ranks that we should be paying attention to?
Carole (37:55):
Yes, Liz Miele. Who is, it’s so funny, I call her a young comic, she’s in her thirties now but she started at 16. She’s like my comedy daughter. When I watch her I get jealous. She has such a work ethic and she’s so, she just, she writes new stuff all the time. I call myself a lazy writer because I do write but I have to have the inspiration to write so, I don’t write every day like she does. She’s put out her own albums, she’s put out her own specials, she just wrote a book, and I think it’s Simon & Schuster. She’s the one I always say to people, “You want to watch somebody who is consistently funny, Liz Miele.”
Then there’s a young woman named Kaytlin Bailey, who I’m working with on a show, on her solo show called Whore’s Eye View. And I’m going to mess up this one line about the show, but it’s a 75-minute romp from the beginning of sex work, beginning till present. It’s a solo show. She talks about because she was a sex worker when she was younger. So, she talks about that, but it’s also funny and poignant. So, those are two women I think are the most important, young women coming up. Like I said Leighann Lord is one of the best female comics, well, comics in general.
Katie (39:33):
Okay, I’m putting all three of these in the show notes. I’m also gonna put in for anyone who hasn’t seen this, I also really love Ali Wong, who I think is absolutely funny.
Carole (39:41):
Ali’s great.
Katie (39:42):
She’s hilarious. Baby Cobra. I mean, she does two comedy specials, I think like nine months pregnant. I was just crying laughing. I wanted to go to the bathroom for her. I’m like, what is this woman doing.
Carole (39:53):
Here’s a great story about that just to show you the difference. Ali did her special, I wanna say, maybe five years ago, I’m not sure exactly of the timing. So, when I was pregnant with my son in 1991, because he was born in February of ’92, the last TV show I did was a show called Evening at the Improv, and I was seven months pregnant. When I went over, at the end of the show when I went to hug the host of the show, it was his comedy club, he visibly took a step back because he was afraid he was gonna hurt me.
Katie (40:32):
He recoiled [laughs]
Carole (40:34):
Yeah he did, he definitely recoiled. And what I wanted to do and I didn’t do it. What I was gonna do was take a glass of water behind my back and drop it and go, “Oh my God I broke water, I have to leave.” But they were so worried, they were so terrified. And I only did, that was a TV show, it was only a six-minute set, they were terrified something was gonna happen.
Katie (40:55):
Oh my gosh, that is a very, very fun memory. Things have definitely changed. She like headlined an hour-long special and is super, super pregnant and extremely, extremely funny.
All right, well we have a lot of great women to be watching. This has been so much fun, Carole. I do want to ask before we wrap up, you’ve already given up a couple of comics to keep our eyes on, but is there anything else that you want to share with our listeners about you know, shows that are lighting you up, or where people can follow comics, any kind of resource that you want to share before I let you go?
Carole (41:28):
Honestly, I’m plugging my own show.
Katie (41:32):
Go for it.
Carole (41:33):
I think the 10 women, I think it’s 10 women. Yeah because I’m the sixth person in each of them. Follow those women. Those women, every single one of them are so good at what they do. They were great on my special, but they all have other things that they’re doing. Kerri Louise writes, Vanessa Hollingshead, she’s teaching right now. Luenell has her own show on YouTube. Tammy is touring again, Tammy Pescatelli. Julie Scotti, they’re all touring. But watch them, like Julia Scotti has a documentary about her life because she’s a transgender woman and it’s called Funny That Way. And that movie is, I got to see a preview of it, broke my heart because I knew Julia beforehand, I know her now, and it’s so beautiful and funny and poignant. Just support. I gave you the young women, but these older women, support them all. Lynn Koplitz, Thea Vidale. See I’m forgetting everybody.
Katie (42:49):
No, this is such great advice. I have the two comedy specials which are going into the show notes, but I’m going to pull out the social media of every single comic in those two shows so that people can follow them. Because there are funny women of a certain age that are still out there, knocking it out of the park, doing incredible things, and we want, they need to be on our radar. How can our listeners keep following you and your work?
Carole (43:14):
Just go, you know, I’m all over social media. You can go to carolemontgomery.com, funnywomenofacertainage.com. On Instagram, I’m @carolemontgomerycomic, on Twitter @nationalmom. And thank you for saying that these women of a certain age now. Here’s the great thing about it, that’s just a small slice of what is out there. If it was up to me, I’d have a show on every week. And maybe you know, the more we do this because you know COVID hit right after the second special so, we’re starting to get our brand out there again. I could literally do a show every week with three different female comics of a certain age. And just go out and support live comedy. If you get to see a woman and she’s older, stay. Because I’m telling you, you’re not going to be disappointed.
Katie (44:11):
That is the perfect note to end on. Carole, thank you so much for being with me today.
Carole (44:15):
Thank you this was lovely. I had a great time, thank you so much.
Katie (44:21):
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women over 50 who are aging without apology. If you enjoyed this week’s show please head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to review the show because reviews help us grow so do your thing and feel free to give us five stars.
Join us next week when I sit down with silver hair evangelist, Katie Emery, of the popular blog Katie Goes Platinum. After 25 years of coloring her hair, Katie ditched the dye and now coaches other women on going grey. Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.