Bobby Slayton Turns Laughter Into Tough Love

LAS VEGAS (TNA) – Though he’s clearly out of breath when he answers the phone, huffing, puffing, and clearing his throat, Bobby Slayton wants you to know he’s not been jerking off in anticipation of your call.

Bobby Slayton's slash-and-burn routines have earned him the nickname, 'The Pit Bull Of Comedy.'

“This heavy breathing? Don’t fucking flatter yourself,” he says, deadpan.

Such is life for Slayton, the so-called “Pit Bull of Comedy” who – after decades working the national club circuit to generally packed houses, appearing occasionally in films like “Dreamgirls” and “Get Shorty” – has set up long-term shop at Hooters Casino Hotel in Las Vegas. His current contract runs through March 2008.

“This place is great. It’s like you’re walking into a Hooters – they’ve got the cocktail waitresses, the chicken wings, the orange carpet, whatever the fuck, and then this nice little showroom that sits a couple hundred people,” says Slayton. “That’s where I do my thing.”

Then, he adds, “I’m looking out this gym window at the pool here and it’s like a minefield of pussy. It’s a little mind-boggling. You really should be here.”

And that’s Bobby Slayton in a nutshell: the astringent, Id-on-the-run firestorm coupled with the “we’re all in this together” ethos. His frank, sometimes pugilistic hilarity is designed  to foster an in-group sense of community, not unlike Lenny Bruce, Howard Stern, or Richard Pryor before him.

Slayton, who has been named one of the 100 Greatest Stand-Up Comedians of All Time by Comedy Central, checks his audience early in the set to see what kind of neighborhood he’s building, and then he just lets fly.

“I’ve got, like, four hours of material, but I’m always making up new shit too,” he says. “You just get out there and go for broke every night, as if you were doing your HBO special or ‘The Tonight Show’ with Keith Richards on your heels. Every night’s like those nights, with everything you’ve got.”

Slayton earned the “Pit Bull” moniker almost three decades ago, “when pit bulls were just coming out in the news because they were, like, chewing up children and eating people and fucking everything up.”

While doing a live interview with a San Francisco drive-time jock, Slayton made a questionable crack about McDonald’s. Within minutes, a radio station account executive stormed the room saying the fast-food eatery had just canceled their $50,000 advertising account with the station.

“And the host just looked at me and said, ‘you’re like a fucking pit bull, Slayton. I put you on and you bite the hand that’s feeding me,’” Slayton recalls. “It just kind of stuck. And it’s a good hook, right?”

Slayton confesses that for however much he loves to hurl the uncompromising fastball, sometimes the pitch can slip away.

“I’ve gone too far before,” he says. “But I’d probably go there again. If people don’t like it, fuck ‘em.”

The 52-year old comedian believes you can joke about anything.

“The Holocaust? Yes. AIDS? Yes. Cancer? Yes,” he says. “You’re not making fun of the victims. You’re making fun of the shit around it. Nothing is sacred, but you’d better be doing it to be funny, not just to be outrageous. Funny forgives everything.”

Slayton insists that he was always funny, “a regular comedian,” he says, growing up in New York. He is also aware that the “shitty at sports, kind of a loner” back story is fairly cliché.

“I wish I had a better story for you, man, but that’s the truth,” he says. “I got by in my life by being funny, and I am funny.”

Despite his abrasive comedic style, Slayton seeks to distance himself from his brethren who are, in real life, “incredible assholes.”

“A lot of comics are loners. A lot of them have mental problems, which is one of the only reasons you do this for a living. And a lot of comics are incredible assholes,” he says.

“But if you stop and think about it, most politicians are incredible assholes, a lot of cops are assholes. Most people are fucking assholes,” he says. “A lot of comics are genuinely good guys who shoot straight. Maybe that makes us assholes, but I say we’re calling it like it is.”

Get Slayton talking about craft and colleagues, and it’s not long before you find the pit bull’s sweet secret – he’s actually got a lot of love for his fellow comedians, “even Carrot Top, who is the butt of every joke,” he says.

“You wanna know something? He’s a really nice guy. He’s made a nice niche for himself. I have no problem with Carrot Top. What I hate is people who like Carrot Top,” Slayton jabs. “Dane Cook too. A great guy. I just can’t stand his act, and I hate the people who like him. But he’s a fucking good guy.”

Perhaps this is Slayton’s way of shadowboxing his way through Sin City’s competitive theater scene, where more than a dozen marquee-level comedians can be found playing almost every night of the week. Slayton admits it, he feels the heat.

“There are, like, 30 shows that opened in Vegas in the last six months. Cirque du Soleil alone has half a dozen shows here,” he says. “At some point, all this talent starts cannibalizing itself. There’s not going to be a sell-out audience for everything all the time. A big guy like Chris Rock or Lewis Black, even they’re going to have some empty seats sometimes. A guy like me has to work hard.”

Slayton says that Hooters’ off-the-strip location is also a challenge to bringing in packed houses every show. He is, however, grateful to management for providing him a state of the art room and all the flexibility he could ever want.

“They were brilliant; they hired me knowing exactly what they were getting, and so there’s nothing I can’t say on stage,” Slayton trumpets.
“My show’s a tough love program. I tell it like it is. I’m a comic who just doesn’t give a fuck,” he says. “And I think that’s refreshing for audiences.”

As an added incentive, Slayton boasts, “Plus my show is only half the price of these other fucking comedy shows!”