Sandra Bernhard reflects on her decades-long friendship with the late comic.
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On May 19,Paul Mooney died from a heart attackat the age of 79.
Mooney was one of the most influential figures in the history of modern comedy.
He worked as a head writer onIn Living Color, creatingHomey D. Clown.
Fifty years into his career, he became aChappelles Showbreakout star.
He was a stand-up that influenced generations and a mentor.
Youre a cigarette come to life.
They bonded instantly and remained, as Bernhard puts it, soul mates from that point on.
The day after Mooneys passing, Bernhard spoke to Vulture about their special friendship.
Im so sorry for your loss.Yeah.
It was a bit of a shock.
When was your last interaction with him?We talked a couple of months ago.
Without going too deeply into it, he had some dementia so it was hard to …
But he sounded good.
I think he knew who I was.
He was a big old movie buff.
I guess that was his comfort zone.
Theres just a million things.
He was on my radio show five years ago.
We were just playing a clip of it, because I do my shows on Thursdays.
I said, What do you think about it, Mooney?
He goes, I think theyre all like Dracula.
The dirts just falling off of them.
He had already been writing for Richard Pryor and all thisSNLstuff.
He was just a figure that was bigger than life.
They both became sort of my soul mates.
Lotus was my Jewish soul sister; Mooney was my Black soul brother.
Everything I learned about comedy and life and relationships and style came from both of them.
He was always like my rock.
What was Pauls advice like?Basically, just to always shed your skin.
Night after night he would say, Just go up and be like an onion.
Peel away another layer of yourself.
Reveal more of who you are.
To this day, every time I get onstage, I think about that.
Do you have any specific memories of those early shows with him in L.A.?Oh yeah, absolutely.
Mooney would always show up.
He would just be there.
He liked to go on late anyways.
So I would go on at like one in the morning.
He would just hang out.
Then sometimes wed go out dancing, and wed drive around.
Theyd pull us over, and wed laugh and talk to the cops.
I said, Dont worry, everythings fine.
We just came from the Comedy Store.
We never really got too upset.
Sometimes wed go to Black clubs down in the hood.
We kind of went everywhere together.
He introduced me to Black culture.
He was very much ensconced in the Beverly Hills scene as well.
You mentioned the Black clubs.
Also, the vibe and the energy of a Black club is totally different.
Its funky, its groovy.
Theres just an inherent sophistication that you wont necessarily find in a white club.
I think they just got a kick out of me.
I was really young.
I usually did very well at those clubs.
That was just part of my schooling under Mooney.
What did you love about Pauls comedy?
What was so special about it?Just his outrageousness.
Of course, its all a misnomer anyway.
He was a social commentator.
You werent under a microscope the way you are now with social media.
Of course, you had to be somebody as brilliant as Paul Mooney to achieve that.
Youve got to have a point, and Mooney always had a point and a purpose to his comedy.
That happened almost every night at the Comedy Store when Mooney got up.
You name the night, and Mooney was pushing it to the limit.
How did he think about people who left?
Did he find it as a point of pride?
How did he think about those people?No, no.
He didnt give a shit if they left.
Hed say, Get the fuck out.
If you cant handle it, fuck off.
Thats what he would say, just like that.
So Mooney was his sounding board.
How did he feel about his career?
I dont think that Pauls goal was to be the superstar.
I think he liked his anonymity in a certain way.
He liked being able to prowl around and not have people tracking him and exploiting him.
He saw what it did to his friends like Paul, like Dave Chappelle, like Eddie Murphy.
Mooney never had to do that.
Mooney just kept doing it.
He was always there giving material.
He worked for these people; they paid him.
But he was behind the scenes, and he was pushing them along.
He knew that everybody knew.
It would be hard to rip off Paul, because it was so specific to who he was.
So theres kind of no way to really one-up Mooney.
He was just always there for me.
He allowed me to be the same with him.
His friendships, I think, came before anything.
Thats what motivated him and kept him inspired.
Wed do these old road trips together and be in little clubs around the Southwest or California.
As we were driving or staying in little motels, everything got unpacked.
Mooney knew exactly who I was and vice versa.
In terms of style, Paul Mooney was one of the best dressers in Hollywood.
He could have been a clothing designer.
He would go to the secondhand store and get vintage clothing and just wear it out and look amazing.
Hed buy me stuff all the time and help me.
But he saw it and he knew it, and that really helped develop me.
Fashion and style are such an important part of my work as well.
He was interested in peoples families.
He knew my brothers, he knew my mom.
He would check in.
He had a real humanity about him.
That ability to just put everything aside and see who you were.
That was always, along with everything else, so important for me.
On Twitter, you once called him ahopeless romantic, which I thought was really sweet.Yeah.
Well, I think he fell in and out of love many times along the way.
I think that maybe his work eclipsed his relationships and his marriages.
But I think he liked the idea of being in love, like we all do.
I think he was a romantic.
You then retweeted that.
Just staying interested in life and engaged.
Music, art, theater Black culture has informed everything about white culture.
I knew it back then when I befriended Mooney, and I got to see it firsthand.
To me, there was no more valuable lesson than to have that respect and understanding.
We went out dancing and it was very, very late.
We came back to the Comedy Store because my car was parked there.
I was wearing super high heels and he was wearing cowboy boots.
That just sort of summed up everything.
We laughed our asses off and wandered into the night.
