A Comedian's Perspectives: Tammy Pescatelli

You can read part 1 and part 2 of this series here. (This is Part 3 of 4)

Pescatelli is tough, she’s been around the block a few times and her advice to anyone just starting out in standup comedy is, “Ten-thousand hours.” She added, “I would say, to women in comedy, don’t try to be a ‘female comic’—be a comic!” Her generation of female comedians just wanted to be comics. When I brought up the subject of various movements like, “Me Too,” and “Time’s Up,” Pescatelli admitted that there is a freedom now, that has liberated female comics, “They can dress sexy, or do whatever they want, but when we first started we didn’t do that. Don’t forget I was 22—I’m not saying I was a supermodel, but I was young, y’know and I had to dress and tape my boobs down, y’know? You’d wear the big boyfriend jackets, because you didn’t want to embrace that sexuality. Now these women are posing naked on their album covers—and that’s fine for them, but then the thing is, you can’t complain that they only see you as a sexual being.”

When Pescatelli was up-and-coming, women didn’t have that option. They just had to do what they had to do to get stage time. “Honey, in the comedy business, if you wanted to work in the nineties, you went to a club and they had a condo, [where comedians would stay], it was a three bedroom apartment that I would walk in and I’d meet two strange men and I’d have to live with them for seven days, so I’ve experienced stuff that mere mortal women would crumble. But you have to be tough. There’s not a veteran comic, at my age—a woman—myself, Kathleen Madigan, Wendy Liebman, Judy Gold, Whoopie—there’s stories we could tell people that their hair would curl, but we handled it in a different way.”

Pescatelli had even written an article about these challenges before the movements came about. “I’m like, ‘We built the roads,’ like we didn’t even know what sexual harassment was—If we complained, we just didn’t work! They’re like, ‘Oh really? Well, I guess we can’t put you in the condo so I guess you can’t work.’”

In a recent review of Netflix, there were 220 standup acts to choose from and only 38 of them were female comedians. That’s a mere 17 percent. Surprisingly, Pescatelli said, “I think that’s a correct percentage.” She went on to explain, “It’s hard, it is not an easy life. It’s easy to be a comic in your twenties when you’re single, but then you want to grow up, and have a family, then you look and there’s a differentiating line. What’s success? There’s a million comics, there’s a lot of guys that are professional comics and they don’t all have specials. Look at the percentage, so there’s 220 and 38 were women, but, there’s way more male comics that are out there, that don’t have a special.”

Once one gets going in the business and gets funny, Pescatelli believes that comedy supersedes gender. “Look, I’m a 48 year old woman—no one wants to make a TV show with me. Y’know what I mean? It’s more [about] ageism, almost, than it is [about] sexism, and I think women have perpetuated the ageism, sometimes, because some of them are the decision makers in these rooms in Hollywood and [they’re] not taking meetings.”

There are those rare gems like Jane Fonda, who just turned 80, and whose career is as hot as ever with the Netflix hit “Grace & Frankie” co-starring comedic genius, Lilly Tomlin, and then there’s veteran actress Kathy Bates, running a cannabis dispensary in the sitcom, “Disjointed.” Pescatelli says, “Jane Fonda is super human, Lilly Tomlin, Kathy Bates, you can name as many as you can, I bet you can’t get passed twenty.” Admittedly, these are unique programs with famous Oscar winning actresses who’ve been around forever, it seems.

As far as her own personal favorite comedians, male or female, Pescatelli’s always loved Eddie Murphy. “Even though I didn’t like dirty stuff—I was a kid—I loved Eddie Murphy, and I still do! I loved Rodney Dangerfield—anything he was in used to make me laugh—everything! I ended up marrying a guy that is similar to him—not his looks, but, ‘Gimme two uh’those—Gimme two uh’these. . .’ that’s what my husband’s like. I just love to laugh.”

At this point, Randy, the owner of Boca Black Box pops in to check up on the time and Pescatelli tell him she needs a cup of coffee. “Cream and sugar, like, diabetic amounts of sugar.”

More to come. . .