Publication: Herald News
Publication Date: 05/31/2002

Behind the Standup Comedy Mike

By: Michael Kapellas

They used to set out a sign-up sheet at 7:30 p.m. on Monday open-mike nights at the Lyon's Den in Chicago.

Then it became hazardous.

Comedians would argue over who arrived first and fight over the pen to get their names at the top of the list. Get near the top and you'll be among the first few people to tell five minutes worth of jokes.

"For everybody's safety," said Lyon's Den owner Joe Tozer, "we went with a lottery."

Scott Derenger wasn't aware of the change. Derenger spends a lot of his time telling jokes on the road, last year logging 11,000 miles in his car on one 17-state tour, playing comedy clubs, bars and about any other place that would pay him to be funny.

He arrived at the Lyon's Den on Irving Park Road at a little after 7 p.m. on a recent Monday, hoping to be one of the first ones on the list.

Instead, he scrawled his name on a slip of paper and plopped down in a seat at the bar to wait for the lottery. For $12, the bartender explained to him, he could get a bucket of five 16-ounce cans of Budweiser.

"I'm a comic," Derenger said. "I don't have $12."

He had just gotten paid earlier in the day. Well, paid in an unemployed struggling comedian's sense. He took three grocery bags of summer clothes to the thrift store. They gave him $18.

"That's a tank of gas and some lunch," Derenger said. "I'm just excited for the fall to come around so I can sell all my shirts with long sleeves."

Derenger uses open-mike nights as a chance to trot out new material. You can tell a joke in front of a mirror a hundred times and not get an accurate reflection on how funny it is. An open microphone is just slightly better. After all, nobody pays to get in. The crowd is mostly composed of comedians more concerned with what they're going to say on stage than with anything anyone else has to say.

There were 47 comedians who signed up for the open mike. Derenger drew No. 45 in the lottery. At five minutes per comedian, plus a minute or so in between with the host, he was scheduled to hit the stage in about four and a half hours. He was not pleased.

"It's almost like I've paid my dues already," he said. "I've been stiffed out of money. My car's broken down in Arkansas. I've paid my dues."

Telling five minutes worth of jokes to what would amount to a couple people lingering in the back as the clock approached 1 a.m. wasn't another due Derenger felt like paying.

He told the host to scratch his name off the list. He was gone by 9 p.m.

Paying his dues
 

When the fifth annual Chicago Comedy Festival kicks off this weekend, Scott Derenger will be there. You just won't hear him telling any jokes.

For the third year in a row Derenger, who lives just south of Plainfield in Shorewood, auditioned for a spot in the festival. For the third year in a row he didn't get selected. He'll do what he did last year, though, which is anything that the organizers need him to do. He'll pick up comedians at the airport. He'll shuttle them around. He'll go around accumulating stuff to put in goody bags that will be given to out-of-town guests. He'll rub elbows with people from the industry, encouraging them to check out his Web site, [WEB SITE]. He hopes the right person listens.

This year about 100 comics will perform over the four-day festival, according to founder and organizer Dan Carlson. Twenty-two of them will perform as Fresh Mugs, which are up and coming comics from around the country. That was the group in which the 27-year-old Derenger hoped to be included.

"In the competition he was up against, he wasn't up to the level of the 22 people who were selected by the panel and by me for the Fresh Mugs," Carlson said. "He was up against hundreds and hundreds of people."

When you're a comedian, you've got to be willing to massage your definition of success in much the same way you mold a joke, telling it to yourself a hundred times, then to a room full of strangers over and again until it sounds just right.

Derenger's done plenty of both. He took the stage for the first time at in December 1996 at a bar in Oak Lawn where a friend's band was playing. He did 17 minutes of rather disjointed jokes. He was hooked.

At the time he had recently received a certificate from the Illinois Center for Broadcasting and just completed internships at WKBM-FM 100.7 and in the CLTV sports department. He set out for Los Angeles.

He made it to Phoenix. During the eight months he spent living on his buddy's couch, he decided he was a bit unpolished to go to L.A. He ended up with another internship in the video department of the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals. During that time he was appearing at open mikes in Arizona and began taking comedy classes.

The fact that he's still working six years after he started says enough about his viability on the comic scene, said Carlson, who spent seven years on the road before he decided being with his family was more important.

"If you're a fast talker you can possibly get yourself one night," Carlson said. "You've got to produce to get booked back. He's working. He's making a living telling jokes. How can that be bad?"

Derenger has made several appearances at Zanies in Chicago, performed on two military tours to Korea and Japan, and has made as much as $750 for an hour's worth of comedy. When he does a weekend set of four or five shows in three nights, he can pull in $500. The gigs don't always show up every week, however.

For that reason, during his quest for comedic fame Derenger has worked almost as many rooms with a tray as he has with a joke. He's waited tables at Planet Hollywood, Lone Star, Macaroni Grill, Olive Garden and J Alexanders.

He's been, um, let go from a couple of the restaurants. He has a bit of an issue with authority, which materialized early in his days at St. Mary Nativity in Joliet. Back then little Scott Deininger (he changed the name to Derenger when he took to the stage because it rolls off the tongue and is easier for people to remember), earned grades that were good enough for the honor roll, but he never made it because his report card always contained negative marks in the "practices self control" and "works well with others" sections.

He might not have worked well with them, but he sure could make them laugh. He would quote from "Delirious," one of Eddie Murphy's raunchy standup videos, and Andrew Dice Clay's dirty nursery rhymes.

"Those aren't the best guys to be talking like," Derenger said. "We're talking about Jesus walking on water in class and I'm doing 'Little Miss Muffett.' "

Custodians at St. Mary's didn't spend as much time in the hallway as Derenger did during sixth grade. His mom, Bernie McMahel, lost count of the number of times she had to come in to the school to get him out of the principal's office.

By then, of course, she knew what her son was capable of. He uttered his first swear word at 2. The phrase sounded like "done rich" because he left off the "of" and the "a."

It might have been cute, she said, if they weren't in church at the time.

Derenger's still swearing. Much like those of Andrew Dice Clay and Eddie Murphy, Derenger's act is R-rated. McMahel and the "thrift store for fat women" she used to own in Joliet play a role in some of the jokes.

"My church group has asked me more than once to get Scott to come in and entertain the seniors group," said McMahel, who said she occasionally gets turned off by the vulgarity in her son's show. "You know I appreciate that but I don't think his material is for those old people. They'd be falling over dead."

Keeping his chin up
 

Derenger is standing shirtless, shaving his head in the bathroom of his room at the Castle Hotel in Peoria, where he's scheduled to do four shows over the next three nights at the Jukebox Comedy Club.

He explains that he got the tattoo of the University of North Carolina bulldog on his arm when he was 18, at about the same time he got a license plate that said "Heels R 1."

He would have fit in perfectly if he had ever made it to the University of North Carolina. Driving around Illinois, however, he said people mistook him for a women's shoes salesman.

Derenger is just as funny off stage as on. No matter what type of mood he's in, a joke usually isn't too far off.

Earlier in the day he received word that he didn't get selected to be in Laugh Riots, an annual competition that could have landed him a spot on Comedy Central.

"You don't have as much control as you think you do," Derenger said.

Sometimes doubt creeps in. He mentions scrapping the comedy thing. Maybe he'll finally write the book about a favorite uncle of his who owned an ice cream stand in Joliet and died recently after a two-year struggle with cancer. Maybe he'll finish up the screenplays he's working on. Maybe he'll give a career in TV or radio a chance.

Before he starts believing the doubt, he calls the Jukebox Comedy Club and finds out he's supposed to be there at 7:30 p.m. to judge an amateur comic's contest. There are 12 finalists doing five minutes each.

"Tonight I'm No. 13 instead of No. 45," he said.

The winner of the competition, he was told, gets $400, or $50 more than Derenger gets for his five shows.

"I should have just entered the contest," he said.

Because of the contest, his stage time was cut in half on Thursday from 30 minutes. The headliner, Kirk Noland, also had to pare down his show to the point where he didn't even get to do his signature bit — prank phone calls from the stage while speaking in a voice that is mechanically altered to sound like he's a midget.

Noland, who is from Detroit but now lives in Los Angeles, got his start in stand-up 14 years ago, at the tail end of the comedy boom.

"When I started, there were guys who were quitting college to do comedy because they could make more money doing it than with their degrees," said Noland, "That's the wrong reason to get in this business. Now the guys who are getting into it love doing it."

Derenger fits the bill. He hopes to get seen eventually, maybe have someone build a sitcom around his life or maybe write for somebody else's.

By comedy standards he's a relative neophyte, even though he's done more than 1,000 shows.

"When I got into this business I had a lot of people tell me you don't find your voice until you've been doing it for seven years," said Carlson of the Chicago Comedy Fest.

Derenger believes he's found his. Now he's just hoping the right people will hear it.

He recently moved back into his mom's house from his Chicago apartment. But he hasn't unpacked his bags. He's trying to string together another tour and is contemplating finally making the move to California.

"As tough as the business can be sometimes, for the 30 minutes I'm up there it's my show," he said. "There's not a whole lot of jobs where you can spout out four-letter words, have a couple beers and have people pay to hear your drama." ·

 

Contact STAFF WRITER Michael Kapellas at (630) 416-5275 or mkapellas@scn1.com. Contact staff photographer Tim Klein at (630) 416-5244 or tklein@scn1.com.

 

05/31/02