Chili Challis
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My Blog
Blog
THE READER'S DIGEST VERSION OF MY CAREER
| Posted on September 10, 2014 at 12:36 PM |
comments (7)
|
Funny
how my life as a stand up was hardly ever just that. Performing stand
up comedy; traveling, comedy clubs, (Funny Bones, Ice House, Comedy
Caravan, Improvs, headlining Atlantic City, etc etc) one nighter's in bars, theaters, concert
halls and colleges, that was the schedule at least I THOUGHT I'd have
when I first started... and I did, but it was far too short. So
very soon into my career (very early 80s) I began opening for touring
musical groups, Leon Redbone, Todd Rundgren, Kool and the Gang, the
late Count Basie and his Orchestra, Jeffrey Osbourne and even a night
with George Clinton and the P Funk All Stars. That was fast and
furious, omg those shows to me seemed like colliding freight trains
of atmosphere, experience and passion. I was in the back stage door,
on stage in front of 1-3,000+ people and then it was over! I'm REALLY
sorry there were no cell phones at that time to make an easy capture
of pics of me with Rundgren, Redbone, Ray Charles even, damn! Those
would have been so worth it. Not
to mention the Bill Hicks, Ron White, Sinbad, Ellen Degeneres, Kevin
Nealon, George Lopez, Drew Carey, Ron White, Bill Engvall, Kenny
Rogerson years. Oh well, I got memories. Why didn't it ever occur to
me to carry around a freakin simple camera?? Actually I did get a few
pics of my Sugar Ray Leonard and Drew Carey days & nights.
Woohoo! I suppose there's much more but that is just a brief
description of the high speed stand up comedy train I was on. Then
it REALLY happened. My joke writing and coaching abilities took over
and I got set upon to sell my writing to others...many many others.
Almost immediately my friends and comedy acquaintances began to ask
me to spend some time with them in helping write their jokes and
assist them in performing. I had a knack for it you might say. It
was at this time in the 80's I began to be asked to help host and run
'comedy camps', the forerunner of comedy classes and workshops. So I
did. And I was good at it, very very good at it if I do say so
myself. Born to do it as many would say. Not everybody can coach,
especially comedy but I had a passion for it, nobody questioned that;
they just took advantage of it and assisting many talents gave me my
doorway to the inside of big time entertainment. Along
about that same time agreements with cartoonists to write for their
national comic strips, TV animation and political cartoons etc such
as: (Pulitzer prize winning political cartoonist Mike Peters- &
'Mother Goose & Grimm' cartoon strip-GRIMM Productions) began to
happen. Then
came a little performing and writing relationship with a startup
national syndicated radio show (Bob and Tom). I don't know whatever
became of them. ;) The
almost impossible thing presented itself when NBC 'Tonight Show with
Jay Leno' took notice of me in '92. I began to be paid by Jay Leno's
production co 'Big Dog Productions' to run back to the hotel from my
road gigs and watch the show so I could send jokes, sketches and Jay
Walking ideas to Leno for the next day and week's monologues. That
lead to a very rare all purpose staff AND sketch writing/producing
job for this historical network billion $$ monster show, and before I
knew it...it was 2002. I was more than ready to get back to my roots
of stand up, developing and working with new talents. MORE than
ready, you could say I was jonsing for it. My
career has been anything but easy however along the way I forged
major friendships with Emmy and Pulitzer prize winners, ,
award winning filmmakers, motion pic and high profile advertising
commercial actor spokespersons, writers/creative consultants and TV
producing innovators; not to mention famous TV and radio talk show
hosts and well known performers, , nationally known authors, boxers &
of course comedians....phew! Remember the kick ass Emmy winning soap
opera with a cult following 'Passions'? (Google them) I knew some of
those creative humanoids, I still do!! Some off beat twisted
wonderful people actually. And
so so so many great talents you don't know yet but you will, have
found and keep finding their way into my life thru my newly founded artist portal called the Comedy Dojo. I feel fortunate
for it and it's not a new thing with me, I've been doing it for over 3 decades. Helping other talents is a BIG part of my history... and future. So there's a VERY Reader's Digest review of my career so far,
weird huh? ----------------------- *If
you find the comedy tips helpful and would like to contribute some
funds to aid in giving scholarships to the Comedy Dojo workshop and
to continue this FREE information you can use the donate to the dojo
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