Thirty Years of Robert Klein
September 24, 2007

In 1975, three years after the launch of Home Box Office, comedian Robert Klein appeared in a live concert on HBO’s new “On Location” series. He was the first comedian to perform on that program and he has done

“HBO was brand new and they were thinking, ‘Instead of movies, let’s do a show with one of these comics that plays college,'" Klein recalled in a recent interview with DVDialog. “It was a radical thing back then.”

Klein, who watched the eight included performances over a period of two months this summer (“It’s good work,” he declared), still marvels that he was allowed such a free range when selecting and performing his material in those early shows.

“I’m not Woody or Ingmar Bergman, but I had creative freedom. Usually you have the suits hanging all over you, but HBO let me be,” Klein recalled. “Even as a little pisher, I had a wonderful sense of freedom. It really had a lot to do with [former HBO head honcho] Michael Fuchs. He got good people to come on and do their thing."

Looking back at a decades-long career in a two-month period of time gave Klein plenty to reflect on—and he was happy with the conclusions he drew.

“It’s my story--and it’s a healthy body of work. Making people laugh for a living is a very high calling,” Klein said. “It’s a great, great art and a wonderful thing to do. But to do it professionally—on demand and for money—is a whole different thing. Even thought I’m older, I’m better now at what I do than I ever was.”

“Retiring a commercial pilot at 60 is strange,” he added. “It’ll be even harder to retire me.”

Posted by Laurence Lerman on September 24, 2007 | Comments (0)