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Remembering Scott Kelman

Scott Kelman had seen me perform stand-up satire at Town Hall in
New York in 1962, and again twenty years later at the L.A. Stage Company
in Hollywood. He moved to Los Angeles and in 1984 launched an
alternative theater in the grungy, old, industrial skid-row area of
downtown. He named it the Wallenboyd (at the corner of Wall and Boyd)
Theater and invited me to open there as soon as it was completed.
In fact, on the first night of my performances, the crew was still banging in
the final nails. At the time, I was living in San Francisco, so Scott slept at his
office and I stayed at his apartment in Venice Beach. A year later, I moved
to an apartment on that same block. Scott became my producer and my
close friend. We never had any need for a signed contract.

As my producer, he would occasionally give me suggestions and I
would follow those that I felt worked for me. He’ d say in his distinctive
gravelly voice (he was addicted to cigarettes), “It doesn’ t matter if you
fuck up—it’ s how you recover.” That was theatrical advice, but it also
applied to life.

And it was a two-way street. For Scott, whatever happened in life
automatically became grist for his theatrical mill. He was an exemplary

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