In 1994, the last of my five network development deals ended with the death of the sitcom pilot, "Buddies," co-starring Ric Ducommun. Apparently, ABC had decided not to put any unfunny sitcoms on their fall schedule for the first time in over twenty years. I asked my agent for our next move. He explained his next move was searching for new talent to represent and presented me with a going-away gift -- a booking in Charleston, South Carolina, "There's nothing for you in Hollywood." I thanked him for believing in me until the network money stopped flowing and walked the William Morris hallways unrecognized for the last time. I happily got on the Big Airliner. Getting big laughs as that week's star liquor pimp in the nightclub of a mid-sized American city was always the best salve for fresh Hollywood wounds.

The new comedy club in Charleston was located in a "state-of-the-art" sports bar. I found out that basically meant that a TV screen was viewable from every inch of the bar's 16,000 square feet. That was all part of the information given to me by my ride from the airport, the assistant manager who was a recent Gamecock graduate with a degree in Food and Beverages and a minor in Microwavable Nachos.

We drove straight to the club, which was not even the least bit coincidentally directly across the street from a brand new arena for the local minor league hockey team, The Evangelical Revival. This night, it housed The Eagles in the midst of their two-year tour celebration of Hell freezing over.
In any nightclub in America, the Friday night second show is the most notorious of the week for tired drunken crowds. A comedy show might have seemed like a great idea at Happy Hour, but the combination of a long work-week, lack of a proper meal and fourteen kamikazes can turn even the best intentions into loud, unfocused table talk punctuated by almost incomprehensible outbursts along the lines of, "What did he say?" The second show Friday night is the punch-the-clock show, where you feel like that bird whose job was to be the Flintstone's phonograph, periodically lifting its beak from the record to explain, "It's a living."

A heckler appeared early in my set -- a really good, helpful heckler. That may be a paradox to some comics, but not me. A good heckler, who never jumped into a routine, but popped up between bits to play the straight man, was a gift from the shtick gods of Mt. Shecky. Nothing pulled the audience together and onto the edge of their seats convulsing with laughter like a great heckler exchange. The audience may respect and love well-honed acts, but they drop them and bend over for in-the-moment improvisation. By this time in my career, I had so much material that, no matter where he led, I had jokes stashed. Even my prepared material appeared to be cooking off the top of my head. This heckler and I got into a rhythm. We would do a little volley. But as soon as I hit a vein of material, he'd disappear. After digging every bit of comedy from that mine, I'd go to the stool to drink water and wait for him to point out the next set of waves. Sure enough, as soon as the laughs faded, he'd reappear with a fresh line, leading me, and the audience, to a new vein.

It became one of those sets where you try any punch-less premise that's worming through your brain. I ad-libbed about feeling unsure about the new mental cure-all, anti-depressants, that some good can come from depression. If Ernest Hemingway had written on Prozac, his books might have been less memorable: "The Sunset also Rises, then it Crosses the Sky, Sets and Does it Again Tomorrow." The heckler yells, "For Whom the Pill Tolls." We total three strangled chuckles from the audience, but bond even in our big momentary drop on the laugh-o-meter. I left to a huge ovation and, before my stage high started to fade, the assistant manager bumped it. "That guy heckling you was Sean Penn. He's waiting for you in the manager's office."

Five seconds later, Sean Penn jumped from the manager's stained waitress couch to praise my talent. Employees, who at the beginning of the night had no idea who I was, now invited me to barbecues. Sean proceeded to entertain me with a four-hour monologue of poetry, song lyrics and what I think was a mental house cleaning of unused movie dialogue. He was dynamic, intelligent and blazing at four AM. I had no idea if he was taking any stimulants. Maybe this was the natural state for a genius actor when there is no imaginary persona to anchor his psyche. If I started to grow sleepy, all I had to do was remind myself of my new film career as Sean Penn's comedic sidekick.

At five in the morning, Sean finally finished regaling me with his impressions of my contemporaries, such as Sam Kinison and Jerry Seinfeld, with this line, "You have to move out to LA. All the good comics are there." I then realized he didn't know who I was. My ego had convinced my Massive Insecurities that Sean had seen me perform at the Improv, or Comedy Store or one of my numerous television appearances. Finding himself in Charleston, S.C., with nothing to do, Sean had come to see one of his favorite shtick slingers.

No. That's not my career. Sean had come to Charleston to see the Eagles. Unfortunately, the backstage catering Sean had come to appreciate from the early days of Hell's ice age had changed since Joe Walsh's rehab. The open bar and plates of cocaine piles were replaced by a juice machine and woks of stir-fry. It was enough to send a Hollywood Rebel scrambling across four lanes of Friday night drunk drivers looking to salvage an evening. Sean Penn simply thought I was a funny guy he stumbled across in South Carolina. I was now careening on two wheels into the pre-dawn curve of heavy thoughts with the fresh information that, after twelve years of giving my life to making it in Los Angeles, no one knew who I was.
It was later, alone with my Waffle House eggs and grits that I began to understand that Sean's genius extended beyond his screen acting. He had been sent to Charleston to deliver the message to me. I must move to LA. Sure, LA had been my mailing address since 1982 , but I lived on the road, spending twenty days a month as a traveling jester. Los Angeles wasn't a residence as much as a place to bank, change clothes and be late for an occasional audition.

The next Monday, I returned to LA and called every comic I knew who had a sitcom to ask for a writing job. Fortunately for me, Roseanne had just finished burying a staff of writers and was looking for fresh bodies to populate the Gulag. I have lived and worked in LA ever since. Thank you, Sean. I guess.