When Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte last spoke to Jimmy Failla, the stand-up comedian and host of the eponymous “Fox Across America with Jimmy Failla” was regaling them with tales of bravery, as he described how he heroically stopped the gunman who tried to storm into the White House Correspondents Dinner and single-handedly saved the life of President Trump from imminent doom. At least, that’s the way Failla is telling the story now; when it actually happened, he told us he was chomping on a dinner roll before his Fox News TV show began, oblivious to what was happening in the room. But the point is, he was there. Hungry and puzzled, but there. Failla appeared on 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte in the Morning program to talk about the world and his busy schedule in the three weeks since then
Failla explained for Larry his philosophy for how a successful comic adapts to become a successful host on radio and TV: “You’ve got to be in the moment, man. I think a good comic, you don’t just show up to talk; you show up to listen, because you know jokes. You know inferences and directions you can take things in. But, if you show up and start forcing them into the conversation, you know, you’re now Pepe Le Pew- [you force it] on the girl whether she asked for it or not!”
Failla also discussed his opinion of the work ethic of Stephen Colbert, whose late-night show is ending this week, particularly how Colbert did little to advance the acts of other comedians: “They’d have a taping on Thursday night [and] Colbert wasn’t even there; they would just bring in an audience and ten stand-ups… There was no world where, on the night your set aired, you could get called over to the couch, because you shot it on a different night. But when you talk about a detachment from stand-up and comedy, that’s the thing about Colbert that bothers me. Everybody else is like, ‘Well, he got so political’, but there’s a lot of reasons to be bothered by him, and it’s not just that. And the political thing, as you guys know, is not about politics, it’s about purpose, okay. [Johnny] Carson made fun of every politician in the news; he just didn’t tell you how to vote in the midterms, okay. That’s the difference.”
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