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| Photo by Mike DeStefano |
Mike DeStefano, escaping death with comedy
April 23, 2010
By Diane Vacca (ComedyBeat)
The transfiguration of pain through comedy is something Mike DeStefano lives every day of his life. Hooked on heroin for the better part of 15 years, the stand-up comedian stopped using over 11 years ago. He credits comedy as a large part of the reason he’s been able to stay clean.
“Before [I began doing stand-up] I just thought I was crazy. I couldn’t live with myself, my thoughts, the way I saw the world. But now comedy makes sense of all that for me. It makes sense of all the insanity that’s inside of me. Before, my depression and anger was something I would do drugs over, but now I realize I can say it on stage and turn it into something that’s cool. And beautiful, because everyone laughs and they enjoy it.” He doesn’t tell jokes about everyday experiences in the way most comics do. “I think people,” DeStefano says, “really relate on a deep level to pain and suffering. Even though I was a drug addict, I talk about fear and loss and self-destruction.” DeStefano says, “You don’t have to be a drug addict to know what that’s like. All the suffering that everyone has— every single human being— we all lose people, we get sick, we die.”
Anyone who’s curious about the nexus between tears and laughter can tune into Mike DeStefano’s special on Comedy Central Friday evening, April 23, at 11:30.
DeStefano’s comedy isn’t an anesthetic: it doesn’t dull the pain. “Comedy shouldn’t be an escape,” he says, though many people use it that way. “It’s diving into it, into the middle of it, and then finding funny in that. But you’re really laughing about pain rather than being separated from it. You’re laughing in the pain, with it, so that you’re really feeling it. Getting distracted from your misery is only a temporary solution.”
Born and raised in the Bronx, DeStefano returned to the hood from Florida after his last rehab experience. Now he works the comedy clubs in New York City. “Not a road guy,” the comedian likes to stay in New York because he believes it’s the “best place to find your voice, who you are as a comic.”
He writes all his own material. “What’s painful? What’s interesting?” he asks himself when he writes his routine. ”Not what’s funny already, because if it’s already funny, then you don’t need me, do you?”
The comedian discovered his calling in rehab. DeStefano began using heroin when he was 15. When he was 31, he’d been clean about a year and was working as a drug counselor in Florida. He was depressed— his father had died the year before and his wife, also into drugs, had died of AIDS two years earlier.
“I started losing my mind,” he says, but “I actually was finding my mind, not losing it.” Bored with the substance abuse education lectures he was required to give, DeStefano began to curse as he lectured, “and they started laughing and loving it. That’s what got me interested— maybe I could be a comedian. I never thought I’d be a comedian when I grew up— I didn’t think I was going to live to 20. When I got past 25 and was still alive, I said ‘Hey— maybe I can do this.’”
The comedian’s first gig was a fluke— a serendipitous accident. He’d been clean only two or three months and was at a Narcotics Anonymous convention. The scheduled pool party was rained out, and everybody was at loose ends, gathered under a tent. He offered to entertain the audience, telling the organizers that he was a comedian and would volunteer his services.
“But I wasn’t a comedian; I was a crazy drug addict. I went up in front of all these people and started ranting about drugs. It was bizarre how they loved it,” DeStefano muses.Similarly, he stepped up to an open mike at a bar in West Palm Beach before the emcee had arrived. “I started doing crazy s--t and the first thing I said got a laugh. I was probably scaring the people because I was a maniac, but [they loved it]. I just equated that with: I’m at a comedy show, on a stage, with a microphone, and I made people laugh. That means I’m a stand-up comedian. Officially. That was it. From then on, I was obsessed with doing comedy.”
So you found something that really works for you, I observed.
“Yeah. Absolutely. Completely. It saved my life. Comedy. No doubt.”
I asked the comedian what makes him angry. “Phoniness. Hypocrisy. Bullies.” Privilege annoys him. “I like to kick up at people rather than kick down.” In his routine, DeStefano will go after people he feels are “up,” but not “down” at people who are less fortunate. When he’s not writing or performing, DeStefano likes to ride his Harley and schmooze with his friends— many of them from his childhood, as well as friends he’s made in recovery.
DeStefano never studied stand-up in any formal way. “There’s no way to teach comedy,” he says. “You learn by doing it.”
These days, Mike DeStefano can be seen at various comedy clubs in New York City. He’s had shows on Showtime and Comedy Central, and he’s appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brien.
In terms of income, the first years were pretty lean. Performing actually cost DeStefano money. “There were times I drove two hours to perform for five minutes for free,” he says, and if he was lucky, they would give him a drink or two. Since DeStefano doesn’t drink, they gave him water. In those days he supported himself by working as a bouncer at a night club. He also did drug and alcohol awareness seminars in the guise of comedy shows for college students. Now comedy is his sole support.
His first paying gig earned him $10. In New York, he says, a beginner doesn’t get paid. Otherwise, a stand-up will earn $25 per set during the week and $75 on the weekend. DeStefano pays no commissions other than to his lawyer, to whom he gives five percent of the contracts he negotiates. He has no agent, though he pays a small fee to a public relations firm, so he calculates that perhaps 10 percent of his income goes to business expenses.
His business plan? “Just winging it,” says DeStefano. “It’s always worked out. I’ve always had enough money to pay my bills and eat. So I’m good.”