Jimmy Tingle Conversation
Jimmy Tingle, UMass Dartmouth ’77, was a recent guest at the University of Massachusetts “Someone to Be Proud Of” series. Jimmy was interviewed by Glenn Mangurian, University of Massachusetts Executive in Residence. Dr. Jean MacCormack, Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, co-hosted the event. Following is a summary of that interesting and amusing conversation.Jean MacCormack: Thank you for inviting me to co-host this event, particularly because Jimmy Tingle is an alum of UMass Dartmouth. Jimmy graduated in 1977 with a degree in history. As a commentator and humorist, he's entertained and informed us from various places—on Sixty Minutes II, David Frost's* programs, The Tonight Show, Larry King Live. He’s performed on Conan O'Brien shows and in his own club. And he's appeared in many movies, including Head of State and Damned in the USA the Emmy-award winning documentary on censorship.
Even with all his success, Jimmy never forgot where he came from, and he has been a wonderful friend to UMass Dartmouth. In 1999, he established a scholarship in his parents' name, Jim and Francis Tingle. That scholarship has allowed students to pursue the dream that Jimmy had in 1977—to get a college degree, because at UMass Dartmouth, as at many of the other UMass campuses, about 65 percent of our students are still the first in their family to go to college. So, it's with great pride that I introduce our guest today, Jimmy Tingle, UMass Dartmouth Class of 1977.
Jimmy Tingle: Good morning God’s Children!
Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming everybody. I'm really psyched about being here.
Glenn M.: We had an opportunity to have coffee last week, and we discovered that we grew up in neighboring towns. I grew up in Arlington, and you grew up in Cambridge. Cambridge is a distance from Dartmouth. How is it that you decided to go to UMass Dartmouth—SMU at the time?
Jimmy Tingle: Well, I'll be honest; of all the schools that I applied to, SMU was the only one that accepted me. Framingham State said, “I don't think he's ready. I don't think he can negotiate Route 9.”
I had a great guidance counselor at Cambridge Latin, Mr. Morgan, and I was looking at different schools. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I wasn't a particularly good student, about a C, C+ student in high school. I played basketball, and that's what I really cared about in high school. I know you're saying, "Well Jim, with your height it makes sense that you’d play basketball." But Mr. Morgan said, "You should check out Southeastern Massachusetts University. It's a distance from the city. It's like being away, but still being in the state." I didn't know anybody who went there, but it sounded great. So I went down there and looked at it—and I got in!
You know what I loved about SMU and about UMass today … they really did take a chance on me. I wasn't a good student in high school. I didn't have high grades. I played basketball—that's all I cared about, really, in high school. Mr. Morgan said to me, "You know, Jimmy, they're going to take you, but whoever makes the decision will say, 'This guy will be home at Christmas. He won't last at school.' “
When I got there, though, I was among people who really cared about grades, and they wanted to do well in school. All of a sudden basketball was no longer the motivating force. You know how in high school it's “sports” a lot of times, and that's kind of how you get prestige and notoriety. But when I was there, kids were taking their grades seriously, and they would compare, "How'd you do on this test? How'd you do on that test?" It was almost … it became cool to be smart and to do well. So I loved it. I loved being away and taking advantage of the courses—sociology, history, political science. It was great. I could identify with a lot of the courses I was taking; I was from Cambridge, a diverse place. I was taking sociology classes, and I was getting every answer right! It was awesome! I don't want to brag, but I was the smartest kid in the class.
Glenn M.: Did you give up basketball?
Jimmy Tingle: I did. I actually played on the freshman team, but I had put so much into basketball in high school … We had to work really hard to be good, and we had a good team. And Arlington had a great team. Arlington, Newton, and Cambridge Latin were tied for the Suburban League Championship one year. But it took so much time in high school to play, and when I got to college, I really didn't want to play as much as I wanted to in high school, so I stopped playing. I got more into academics.
Glenn M.: In high school you weren't in the drama club or anything like that?
Jimmy Tingle: No, no.
Glenn M.: When did you discover you were funny?
Jimmy Tingle: Five minutes ago! I don't know … I started doing open-mic nights in 1977. The whole time I was at SMU, they used to have a folk night at the Ratskeller. It was a coffee house, and I would listen to the folk singers. They didn't have comedy, but they had people performing. It was inspiring to listen to them, because they all had a point of view.
I started writing poetry. I had an epiphany. I started writing poetry when I was there. Not good poetry, but I discovered that I had a creative voice inside me; I just didn't have an outlet. I wasn't a musician. I wasn't a poet. I wasn't a singer. But then comedy came around in the late 1970s. There was a club … a friend of mine, Lenny Clark was hosting open-mic nights in a place called the Ding Ho in Inman Square in Cambridge. It was actually a Chinese restaurant.
Glenn M.: You remember the Ding Ho?
Jimmy Tingle: I grew up two blocks from the place. After I'd get off stage, Lenny Clark would say, "If you want to follow Jimmy's career, go out here, take a left, go two blocks, there's his house." So I started to play harmonica and write song parodies. I felt like there was a voice inside me.
Glenn M.: You had a paying job there too, right?
Jimmy Tingle: I was the daytime bartender and janitor, and the doorman and an open-mic performer at night. I discovered that comedy is a great way to express your point of view. I also discovered that I was using much of my education.
My education didn’t lead to a professorship in history or education. It grew into social and political humor, the seeds of which were planted at UMass, at Dartmouth. I would pay attention to the serious topics and then find the humor in those topics as I got older and got into comedy. If you watch the Daily Show or if you watch Dick Colbert, in order to be good at that type of humor, you have to know what you're talking about. That's the best thing I got out of UMass Dartmouth—Southeastern Massachusetts University—taking the courses—sociology, history, political science—and literally becoming educated in those subjects. When I graduated, I already had a background that gave me the foundation from which satire could emerge.
Glenn M.: After you graduated, comedy was just getting started in the Boston area, isn't that right? Boston was one of the first places. So you had Lenny Clark, you had yourself. Was Steve Sweeny there?
Jimmy Tingle: Steve Sweeny, yes.
Glenn M.: I believe Sweeny is a UMass Boston alum. Who else was coming up at that time?
Jimmy Tingle: Steven Wright, Barry Crimmins, Mike Donovan, Mike McDonald, a lot of great Boston comics. If you ever go to the comedy shows, you'll see these folks; they’re really fantastic. Not every comic in the Boston area is famous, though. It's like New Orleans for jazz or Chicago for blues. The fantastic performers in this city are not necessarily household names around the country, but they're the best at what they do, and they've been doing it for 30 years. A lot of us started at that place in Inman Square, in Cambridge, and at the Comedy Connection in Boston—and at Nick's Comedy Stop and Play It Again Sam's, and at Stitches in Brighton.
Glenn M.: Then there was a time in which you left Boston. Things were starting to heat up. Did you go to Los Angeles?
Jimmy Tingle: I went to New York City. I went to New York after seven years. Boston is a great place to learn the craft, but it's not an industry town. A lot of films are being made here, but at the time, the agents and managers, and the industry were in New York City and Los Angeles. Shows like Letterman and The Tonight Show, or HBO and Comedy Central … they were all happening in New York or Los Angeles, so it was important to be there. When I moved to New York, within a year I ended up on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Then I got an HBO special, and things started to take off. It was great.
Glenn M.: How did you get on The Tonight Show? Do you apply to get onto the show?
Jimmy Tingle: No, no. This is the advantage of being in New York. You work in the clubs, and people would come in looking for talent. Jim McCauley, the head talent guy for The Tonight Show, would visit the clubs. He just wanted to watch at performance. He would give the club owner a heads up: I'm coming in tonight. Can you set up eight people to look at? He came into Dangerfield’s, and he saw eight people, and I was one of them. I got a call from the club owner: "Jimmy, he really liked you. You should call him. Here's his number." I called, and that basically started the relationship. But I still had to go to Los Angeles there and audition. I performed at different clubs in LA, including the Comedy and Magic Club. Jay Leno does a show there every Sunday night. He was the host that night, and he got me up there for five minutes. Jim would watch the act and say, "You should change this or put this in," and we would work on the actual performance for The Tonight Show to make sure was appropriate for the show.
Glenn M.: Appropriate for the show?
Jimmy Tingle: For The Tonight Show’s national audience. It’s different doing national television, especially if you're from Boston.
60 Minutes … I was on that show for about three weeks when suddenly I'm getting the letters and e-mails from people around the country. One woman wrote, “That Jimmy Tingle makes my skin crawl with his Boston accent and his grimacing face and his wide-eyed look of wonderment.” The next week I did a show on it, and I did that exact piece. I talked about her letter on the air, and I looked out and said, "This is a sample of some of the letters I'm getting,” and I wrote her thing 'wide-eyed look of wonderment'. At the end of the show, I said, "Sorry."
Glenn M.: For those of you who don't know, when 60 Minutes created 60 Minutes II, which I think was a Wednesday night show, you were in the Andy Rooney role. How did that come about?
Jimmy Tingle: I was working in Los Angeles. I had started to do the one-man show, and I produced a show there. I rented a theater and hired a publicist, and I put on a show, Uncommon Sense. It got great reviews, but nobody came. I mean nobody came, and I was there for three months. I kept saying, “I know they’re coming.” Actually it was the same week that El Niño started in 1998. All it did was rain. But it never rains In Los Angeles, so literally every night the TV weatherman would say, "It's raining like crazy tonight. Whatever you do, don't leave the house. But if you do go out, don't go to Tingle's show.”
So, it was very difficult to get audiences, I would have 10, 20 people in the audience, and I was losing money. I was so down in 1998, so down. I was going to get out of the business. I lost a lot of money doing the show in Los Angeles. It got great reviews. Artistically it was very good, but if audiences don't come, you can't sustain a show.
I was returning to Boston to do a “one-nighter” I had been booked for. On the plane, a copy of USA Today was sitting on the seat next to me. I read an article that said 60 Minutes was doing another show called 60 Minutes II, and they had all their correspondents; the only person they didn't have was the “Andy Rooney” person.
I had been pitching people in Boston and in Los Angeles to let me do commentaries like Andy Rooney. For two years, I went to all the television stations in Boston, and I went to a lot of them in Los Angeles. I said, "Let me do a minute, two minutes on television. I've got these commentaries that would be great. And they’d say, "Oh, gee, how could we do that? How could we possibly…?" Nobody was interested.
60 Minutes II … I sent them a tape, and they loved it. The man loved the tape, and he hired me. Basically that's how it happened. I had a manager and a top-notch management team at the time but they did nothing for me for five years. Then I find the article in the newspaper, and I tell my manager, "Send these people this tape. I'm perfect for this job." When he sent the tape, that's when I got the job. You would think that this genius management agency would say, “Gee, one of our clients would be perfect for this,” but they never put two and two together. So, I kind of lucked out in a sense, but I also knew that I was right for the role.
You know what's funny about 60 Minutes II? This was another eye-opener, being from Boston. I thought the whole country was going to have the same comedic and political sensibilities as people from Cambridge and Somerville. You know what? They don't! There's a reason Bush got elected. It's a different mindset. It really is.
Glenn M.: When did the Somerville Theater start?
Jimmy Tingle: I started that in 2002.
Glenn M.: Where did that idea come from?
Jimmy Tingle: You know, I was just in town, and I was looking for something else to do. I had always wanted to perform in my own place. I went to this particular theater to get booked. I had a meeting with the gentleman to book me into it. The theater had just started, and I said, "You need a publicist. You need lights. You need sound. You need a box office. You need all these things." And he said, "You know what? We don't really want to do this anymore. If you want to try to take over the theater, I'll introduce you to the landlord." I looked at the place, and I said, “I think this has great potential.”
So that basically is what started the ball rolling. And it’s been five years. We just ended on October 31. For five years, it was great, but I really didn't want to do it anymore. I wanted to do something else. It was so consuming. It was like having a restaurant. Anybody in small business knows it's 24/7. I always felt responsible. It was affecting my reading. It was affecting how much time I had to write. It was affecting my family life. I have a 10-year-old son. I really wanted to spend more time with him and my wife. It was always about getting audiences, and it was really, really hard. It was very rewarding, but it was also very, very challenging and very difficult. We were voted Best Alternative Theater by Boston Magazine in 2007. I took that as, “That's just great. That's just great. I think I want to just do something else now.”
Glenn M.: What do you think you might do next?
Jimmy Tingle: I don't know. I don't know what I want to do. I do a lot of corporate speaking and private parties. I still perform all over the place. I want to perform and write … I'm not sure.
Glenn M.: What is your current show about?
Jimmy Tingle: My new one-man show is Jimmy Tingle for President. I hope I have all of your support in November! I'm not delusional … I may not win the presidency of the United States of America, but we're going to have fun. We're going to raise issues and awareness, and we're going to have some fun doing it. I have a lot of ideas that aren't being discussed.
Glenn M.: What’s your stand on Global Warming?
I have ideas about global warming. I think it's great that Deval Patrick wants to put wind farms in Nantucket Sound. I said, "Deval, this is Massachusetts. There are lots of windy places. Why do we have to put all of the windmills in Nantucket Sound? Why can't we put some of the windmills in the breakdown lane on the Mass Pike? Look at all that untapped wind! Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom. Think about it—using wind generated by foreign oil to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. You see why I have to run? Clinton’s not coming up with this. Romney’s not coming up with it. It’s Tingle who’s come up with the ideas! Under a Tingle administration, I would put a windmill on every traffic light in America, on every traffic light, a little windmill to generate the power to run those lights. Red, yellow, green; red, yellow, green; red, yellow, green. Now I know what some of the naysayers, my opponents, are thinking. They're already attacking me in the debates: "Candidate Tingle, what happens if one day the wind doesn't blow? Do you know how much gasoline we waste waiting for those lights to change?”
Glenn M.: How about immigration reform?
Jimmy Tingle: Immigration reform … Go to UMass Dartmouth. You’ll see we're a nation of immigrants. Go to Fall River or New Bedford. You see people who have come from Portugal, from Italy, from all over the world. That's the great thing about this country, the great thing about this state.
How about the Pilgrims? The first immigrants, the mighty pilgrims. People were persecuted in England for their religious beliefs. They left England and went to Holland. They were persecuted in Holland for their beliefs. Feeling ostracized and rejected by the entire world, they had a meeting one night. "We're persecuted in England. We're persecuted in Holland. Where in this world can we go and practice our religion freely?" And one of them said, "How about the Cape?" "The Cape? Could we get a place? It's the off season, and it's 1620."
I love immigrants. To me, they’re the modern-day pilgrims. Think about the risk that people take to come to America. It's unbelievable. Even the people who sneak in … they're sneaking into America to work. Think about that … sneaking into a country to work. It's unbelievable. That's like somebody breaking into your house to clean it! I want these people in this country.
But I still want accountability. I think most of us want accountability. You wonder who's in the country and what they're doing here. The anti-immigration people are saying the immigrants are taking more from our country than they are bringing to the table. The pro-immigration people are saying that the immigrants are bringing more to the table than they are taking.
As president, I would suggest a debit card for all non-citizens. Every non-citizen would have a debit card to be used in every public and private transaction, and at the end of the month, we’d just add it up to see who has taken what from whom. Let's see … you've been here for 30 days. What have you taken from our society? It says here that you used the public streets. You used the public transportation. You used the public sidewalks and the public parks. Your children are going to public schools. And when you got hurt running across the border, sir, you used the public emergency room. Yes, you did, sir. Yes, you did. Sir! Those are our crutches. Okay, they were made in Mexico, but they are ours now.
Now, let's see. What have you brought to the table? It says here that you have painted three houses. You've cleaned 13 yards. Your wife babysat for 14 families. You started a landscape business. You wrote a computer software program. And according to our records, sir, it says that you pitched two innings in the World Series. We owe you $4 million!
Those are just a few of the positions I’d have as a candidate.
Glenn M.: You mentioned that you have a ten-year-old son. Does he think you're funny?
Jimmy Tingle: No. I just did a show about the environment and a film. It's a short film. It's not out yet. Anyway, my wife and I watched it with him, and at the end of it, he said, "Dad, it's good, but don't call it a comedy."
Glenn M.: Let me open it up to the group for questions.
Audience Question: Which do you prefer—working in the theater or working in clubs?
Jimmy Tingle: My theater was great to work in. I loved it. It had 200 seats. I like the theater venues more than the clubs. In the clubs, the people are usually drinking, they’re on dates, and it's harder to get them to listen. In a theater atmosphere, they pay a little more to get in, they're more … I can do my type of humor in a better way in the theater rather than in the clubs. My theater was great; the Hasty Pudding Theater was great. I did that for a couple of years. The Charles Playhouse, places like that are really great to work in.
Audience Question: What’s your position on the current writer’s strike?
Jimmy Tingle: The writer's strike … I think the writers have to protect their work. In any media, there are always people who think they own the media, and there are always writers who want to be compensated for their work as it goes to a different level of media. It happened with VCRs, it happened with DVDs, and now it's happening with the Internet. So they have to protect their work, and I support them, obviously.
Audience Question: What was it like being on the Tonight Show?
Jimmy Tingle: I was so nervous. I had a twitch in my eye for about a month before I went on the show. I’d wake up at five in the morning and say, “I’m going to The Tonight Show," and my eye would start twitching. I’d think to myself, what if I get out there and can't talk. What if I can’t remember a thing to say. Remember Jackie Gleason’s character, Ralph Cramden in the Honeymooners when he'd say, "Hummana, hummana, hummana …" What happens if they say, "Welcome, Jimmy Tingle," and I respond, "Hummana, hummana, hummana"? I was so fearful of that, but it worked out just fine. I have to tell you, though, I was really nervous doing it.
Audience Question: How did you develop your ability to be funny?
Jimmy Tingle: Growing up—family, friends, that's really where it comes from.
When I got on 60 Minutes, my mother said, "Jimmy, I can't believe how God is working in this family's life, taking care of us. Ruthie got that beautiful house in Princeton, Mass. Gary got that teaching job in Everett. Your brother Bobby got back into the Carpenter's Union. That's your father working. Let's face it, Jimmy. You weren’t the most qualified person to be on 60 Minutes. That’s your father in heaven!"
Audience Question: Who were or are your favorite comedians?
Jimmy Tingle: I always loved Richard Pryor and George Carlin, the usual suspects: Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Jackie Gleason. I love Jackie Gleason, the Honeymooners. We would watch that show every Sunday night. The whole family would watch the Honeymooners and laugh. It was great. Those are probably my favorites, along with the people I started with in Boston who I just think are tremendous: Steve Sweeny, Lenny Clark, Mike Donovan, Mike MacDonald. I really like Paula Poundstone. She's from Boston. Leno, of course. I get a kick out of Barry Crimmins and Steven Wright. They really make me laugh a lot.
From time to time, the younger comics coming up … they're really funny, really clever. Massachusetts is great breeding ground for humor. I don’t know if it’s a combination of the academic world and the working-class culture here that has the, I don't know, the competition, the drive, or what. There's angst, and yet there's a sense of humor, a sensibility in this state.
Audience Question: Why did the 60 Minutes gig end?
Jimmy Tingle: Let me put an ugly rumor to rest. I did not get fired, is that clear? Here’s what happened. After two seasons, I was called into a room and told, "Jimmy, you've done a wonderful job here, but we're going in another direction." I didn't know exactly what that meant. "Where are you going?" I asked “Well, we're not going anywhere, Jim. You're going to the Marriott."
What really happened was, I had a hard time writing for television. I'm unedited in my shows. I'm unedited politically; I'm unedited creatively. That's how I've developed over 20 years. So when I got on television, because it's a journalism show and not Comedy Central, there are parameters. You know what I'm talking about. There are parameters. You cannot make things up on the air. Not that I was trying to make things up, but it's a different sensibility. It's not supposed to be as opinionated. It's not supposed to be a point of view so much. It's a different sensibility.
Half the pieces I did for 60 Minutes they absolutely loved, and I'm forever grateful for that show. We left on very, very good terms. Jeff Vega hired me out of hundreds of applicants. I wasn't the most qualified—I'm not a journalist—but he liked what I was doing from the tapes that I sent him. What happened was that they loved half of them, but the other half were always a struggle to get on the air.
So, when I get my show with Glenn as my co-host and Jack as our recurring guest, I think we will have a much better show, and I can do whatever I want!
Glenn M.: I call this program “Someone to Be Proud Of”. Jimmy, as a UMass alum, you are someone to be proud of.
Jimmy Tingle: Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Jean. Thank you all for coming.