Steinberg’s life of laughs
“My dad and uncle were always funny at dinners and places together, and I think that’s the constant,” Winnipegborn comedian, writer, actor, director and author David Steinberg told reporters recently, trying to explain what drives some naturally funny people to become comedians.
Filmmaker Barry Avrich’s homegrown biography Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story makes its TV debut Saturday, three weeks after it premièred at Toronto’s Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, and just a day after it began a limited theatrical run in Toronto.
Steinberg, 70, may not be the household name today that he was during the late 1960s and early ’70s, when he was one of the leading standup comedians in the U.S. He has made the science of comedy — what makes funny people funny, and why — his calling, though, in his post-standup career. Steinberg hosts and directs Inside Comedy for the U.S. pay-cable channel Showtime, in which he’s interviewed such luminaries as Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin, Ben Stiller and Mike Myers.
In Quality Balls, however, the spotlight falls solely on Steinberg and his unlikely journey from a strict rabbinical upbringing in Winnipeg to a career as a standup comic whose more than 100 appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was second only to Bob Hope. His religious-themed “sermonettes” for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour caused a stir with more conservative viewers in 1970s America, and hastened the show’s exit.
As a director, Steinberg counts Curb Your Enthusiasm, Mad About You, Friends and The Golden Girls on his list of credits. He was always funny, which is why he became a comedian, but it was his curiosity about the healing nature of comedy that shaped him as a director.
Quality Balls shows how, in his later years, Steinberg has decided to return to standup comedy older, wiser and, he trusts, funnier.
Steinberg is his own toughest critic where TV is concerned, he admitted to reporters.
“I’ve always felt that standup on television doesn’t work as well as it does seeing that person live,” he said. “It flattens out. (TV specials) have become successful as a form, so that makes this a lie in some ways. I still feel that when you see a standup live, though, it’s stimulating in a way TV isn’t. You get to respond to it, and it’s great.
The life of a standup comedian was not always something your parents wanted you to be, Steinberg admitted, regardless of your background.
“When I started out doing standup in the ’70s, if you were dating someone and she told her mother that you were a comedian, that was, like ... It was never a great thing to be. Now, I think it has to do a lot with economics.” (HBO Canada – 8:30 p.m.)