_____You always knew what year it was from Koo’s material, but never what the issues were. Housing shortage. Vets in college. Fins on cars. Men in space. Let Mort Sahl come onstage with a newspaper, Koo Davis walked on with a golf club. But then came the goddamn Vietnam thing, and the country was divided as it had never been before, and Koo just couldn’t help himself. Like everybody else, he had to come down on one side or the other:
_____“I didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl, and it turned out to be a sheepdog.”
_____“Of course, Canada’s a fine place for people with cold feet.”
_____Nobody needs a majority more than a comic. You’re standing there in front of all those faces and you say your line, and you don’t want six jerks in the corner with a tee-hee, you want every face split open. If you don’t have the instinct for the majority, you don’t make it as a comic. Koo went over to politics because the audience wanted it. Inside himself he had two conflicting instincts–give them what they want; stay out of politics–and he had to choose.
Buy it here:
Reviews:
Patrick Anderson (Washing Post)
The Westlake Review
Bill Sherman (Blogcritics.org)
Vince Keenan
Backstory:
Max Allan Collins
Charles Ardai Interview with Scott Butki (Blogcritics.org)
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