Maybe if Bill knew that the vast majority of the world’s pornography was produced in his backyard, he might have bucked up.
David DeBesse
When we graduated high school, I didn’t really think much of it because it was just this thing that happened. But Bill was so honestly happy for us; it was striking. I remember seeing him right after the ceremony; he was really thrilled. It was just a real honest enjoyment that we were done. It was the stepping-off point for this huge life he envisioned for himself.
It didn’t really occur to me at the time, but maybe it’s because when he graduated, he packed up and started something. For the rest of us, we were sticking to the script. This is what you do: you graduate high school, you go to college. It was a continuation of something that was very much more the norm. Maybe Bill’s excitement was because he had a different sense of what was going to happen, or what could happen.
I don’t know if he had any use for high school other than, if he did well enough to stay in, then he could continue living by himself and work at the Comedy Workshop. It was a means to a much greater end for him. He knew if he graduated, he could then go on and do all of the things he wanted. I think he saw it in a much wider scope than we did.
It was an interesting time for me; it was almost like reading Catcher in the Rye. I had been surrounded to a large extent by people who were like me. And being around Kevin and Bill and Charles made me aware for the first time of how much else there was. Looking at my own life from a different context, I had this strange, bland set-up for myself; a not-very-interesting plan of going to school. I tried to play football in college at Southwest Texas State but I had discovered I wasn’t very good. But I actually approached college very differently because of Bill. It’s hard to give one person credit for that but because of the whole thing that happened — getting in the band, meeting Bill, expanding my outlook – I started doing things I wouldn’t have done otherwise. I said to myself, “I’m just not going to be on this narrow path.”
I took classes in music theory, and ultimately I ended up taking a non-majors acting class for fun. And that hooked me. What had been my plan of economics as pre-law changed to my being an acting major, and going on to having this pathetic career for all of these years.
The whole reason I took the non-majors acting course, was because of Bill. I got interested in acting because at his urging I decided to sign up with a local talent agency. I ended up not getting involved with them when they wanted money and it was clearly a scam, but they later called me to let me know about auditions for the movie Taps. The producers were trying to find the leads from unknowns, and were casting in Houston. I ended up getting down to the final eight, not overall but in Houston, and that was all because of Bill saying, “Do this. Go do this.” He was way more confident about it than I was. “You can do this.” So, I really do have him to blame, now that I think about it.
Anyway, I had transferred from Southwest Texas State to the University of Texas, and changed my major. I was taking a summer course in comedy by a professor, Lee Abraham, and it was a silly class in that the teacher knew in advance he wasn’t sure where it was going to take him. By and large the course dealt with physical comedy, using material from Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin films. We talked about the elements of comedy in taking a normal situation and turning it into something funny. For example, you are having lunch in the cafeteria, how can you make that funny?
I talked to the teacher and told him my friend was a stand-up and maybe he could come in. Bill did. There was this whole discussion about what you could do – everything leading up to something – then it reached this point where Bill would say, “Then you’re funny.” You do something funny or you say something funny. He couldn’t break it down any more than that. Ultimately you have to have this skill. You can talk about it, but you need actually to be able to do it.
Either you are funny or you aren’t. Bill was funny but there was nothing he could tell people to teach them how to do it. And that could frustrate him. He really didn’t understand that he was special and that things were easier for him than for other people.
He experienced that with the audience as well. He wanted the audience to go from A to Z in one show. People show up to get a laugh and maybe they are going to leave at C. And maybe when they are at home they are going to think about it later and perhaps find their way to ? over a few months. It was going to take time. But it was hard for Bill to not have them be Jim Jones converts by the end of the night. He got it. But people weren’t as sharp as he was.
To say that Bill was confident and knew what he was trying to say, and felt the fact that he was right – well, he really did believe the stuff he was talking about – that doesn’t mean he had no concern about the feelings of others. Knowing him well, I also saw the person who was affected by things. On some level you have to think that was one of his best qualities because it is also the genesis of wanting to change the world; wishing to make it better because you really want life to be good for people, not just to show somebody they are wrong. Sometimes that is hard to do with Bill because so much of what we saw of him was his public life.
When somebody is the class clown, as Bill was, it is hard to know when he’s being himself and when he isn’t. People talk about how he was trying to change the world, but he also just loved to laugh. He really enjoyed laughing at things. You get the right people together – and one of the things I remember most about Stress is how much we laughed – and you can laugh yourself silly doing the most ridiculous things.
But I know things did bother him sometimes because there seemed to be something incomprehensible to him on a simple level. For example, when I saw Bill for the last time, he and Kevin had just had a fight about playing music together. It was about playing the blues. Kevin didn’t want to and Bill was really upset about that. He was just bothered by it because he couldn’t understand what the deal was. “Why couldn’t he just play the blues with me?” It wasn’t like he was angry at Kevin. That was never the impression I got. But he just couldn’t understand, and it really mattered to him.
It gets kind of easy to talk about Bill and forget he did things that were black-and-white and things that were controversial. Or to be more accurate about it, for the purposes of his act he saw the world in very black-and-white ways.
Bill as a messenger is not necessarily the same as the message. There are people who espouse the notion that Bill was very spiritual, and in his own mind he was a preacher – he said as much to his mother – and he was really trying to make the world a better place through his belief system. That’s all true, but at the same time he was talking about pornography and drug use and things that were a lot more controversial. Some people want to sweep the vehicle of the message under the rug. It’s: let’s see Bill as this person with really wonderful goals to change society and make the world a better place, but let’s not talk about the way he did it because that’s kind of uncomfortable. I’m not into drug use in any way, shape or form, but so what? That doesn’t mean I couldn’t listen to his stuff and laugh and think about the hypocrisy in his comedy. You don’t have to agree with everything he talked about specifically to agree with the overall message.
Just look at the world in a broader context, even if you are talking about drug use. It’s a horrible thing, then you get the same people going, “Well, we’ve done our job today. We worked on our campaign for ‘Just Say “No” to Drugs.’ Let’s get to the bar because there’s still half an hour of Happy Hour left.” They’re doing the same thing. It’s just a different vehicle.
I find it odd when someone can’t stand back and look at the whole picture. I think people get so close to something in a weird way that they get hooked into an idea that Bill was this way and he was perfect, or he was this way and he was horrible. He was just a human being like everybody else. Albeit one with an amazing energy and gifted in so many ways.