Arrive Magazine - May/June, 2007

talked. He was always very honorable, too— he’d
never steal a joke. And he never acted superior, like
he knew everything about comedy. He was just the
opposite. He never seemed happy. He’d be like,
‘Advice? Why would anybody want my advice?’”
Maher was starting to wonder about himself, as
well. At home, the aunts and uncles were getting
skeptical—so the English major doesn’t wanna teach
school? For four years, he’s working the business,
and finally, he gets booked for Tonight. “That’s when
you’ve legitimized your pursuit of this profession,”
Maher says. “At first, family members were saying,
‘My gosh! What is he doing?’ At Christmas, you’d
hear an aunt say, ‘Oh, did you hear Billy’s trying to be
a comic?’ Trying to be. Once you get on Tonight and
you have Johnny’s seal of approval—and he gave it
to you if you made him laugh because he loved young
comedians too, like Rodney did—you weren’t trying
anymore. You were a comedian.”
Today, even with the success of ABC’s Politi-
cally Incorrect, and now Real Time with Bill Maher,
Maher still needs to go live at a comedy club. That’s
where you work new ideas and give them a chance
to breathe, he says. That’s how you keep the most
critical aspect of comedy—timing, of course—sharp.
Maher may be the smartest guy in the room—capable
of breaking down arcane political policy and finding
the utter horse manure that lies within—but he’s a
comedian first and always.
“In the last five years, I’ve enjoyed doing stand-up
more than I ever have,” he says. “I’ll do the clubs all
Spend time with him away from the glitter, and

over, from the West Coast to the old East Coast clubs I used to do. I can appreciate it now more than ever because I don’t have to worry about establishing myself with an audience anymore. You can bring to the table what they expect, and they get you right away. So you can try out new lines about the day’s news and see what works and what doesn’t, all of which helps me with Real Time.”

As he’s talking, he’s in his home office in Beverly Hills, one that overlooks an elegant koi pond on his property. Yeah, that’s right: Little Billy has gone Hollywood. He’s in jeans and a black T-shirt that says, “Rehab is for Quitters.” He just wrapped an interview with Playboy, a magazine close to his heart, given the lifelong bachelor’s penchant for dating porn stars. But when you get a chance to spend time with him away

from the glitter, you conclude that the often dagger-tongued Maher can be, well, a nerd.

He’s currently geeked about his office furniture, which includes an ornate mahogany desk and fireproof file cabinet, where he keeps press clippings, reports and research for his shows and books.

“I can actually be quite an anal-retentive person,” Maher says. “I’ve always been very focused on having an orderly office in my life, even when I was just out of college in New York and I lived in a studio apartment over a bus stop on Eighth Avenue. My life had to revolve around my desk and my office. Now I have this fabulous office and desk! I mean, this is the kind of desk that they used to sign treaties on. It’s a real honey.”