Rob Schneider FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines – The Gigolo has landed.
Probably best-known for his portrayal as a fish tank cleaner-turned-male prostitute in the 1999 movie “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,” American actor-comedian-director Rob Schneider arrived at the Solaire Resort and Casino in Pasay Tuesday. The brilliant comic was scheduled to perform a one-night stand-up comedy show, and he looked relaxed with his eyeglasses on as he sat on a couch at noon to answer questions from the media.
“You can do it!” someone yelled. Schneider repeated the mantra, his famous one-liner in the movie “The Waterboy” with Adam Sandler. “Yeah, OK. I heard you,” he answered, smiling.
Born to a Filipina mother and a Jewish father, Schneider stated that it was his first time to visit to Philippines. He said he’s looking forward to hanging out with his extended relatives and eating “adobo and pancit.”
“I have a whole bunch of cousins who are coming from Baguio. They already called, asking, ‘Rob, can we get 100 free tickets to your show? 200? No?’” Schneider said.
The Emmy-nominated comic is on a roll. He has just finished tours in Australia and New Zealand doing his lifelong passion – stand-up comedy. He believed the Asian market is ready for this kind of entertainment.
“Wherever I go, Filipinos are the most hardworking people, and when they’re not working, they’re eating and laughing. Humor is universal.” To stress his point, he performed a spot-on impersonation of Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone in “The Godfather,” complete with the actor’s signature drawl, to everyone’s delight.
He said the turning point in his life was when his father, a real estate broker in California, took him when he was young to a show of George Carlin, the famous satirist.
“I thought, Wow. I want to do this,” he said. Like all endeavors in life worth doing, he remarked that the profession can be a hit or miss for anyone. He gave advice on those who would dare.
“Write your own stuff, anything that makes you laugh. You can’t tell if it will work for others if you don’t gauge it on yourself. You must love it. It must come from a place of joy,” Schneider said.
The Show
Local stand-up jesters prepared their own brand of quirky barbs for the opening. “This is my first time to enter Solaire legally. By the way, that’s my only English joke,” Alex Calleja quipped. Mike Unson grunted about the ironies of social media and its effects on people.
“I never send forwarded emails containing Christmas greetings,” he said, then went on to recite one to a friend – by calling him on the phone.
After a 10-minute break, Schneider sauntered onto the stage. Dressed in a Hawaiian undershirt and black suit, he lashed out howlingly funny perspectives about life for more than an hour, revealing the idiosyncracies of becoming a middle-aged father, finding humor in everything from the humongous SM Mall of Asia to “blind people with gun licenses.”
“I checked the mall outside. God, it’s huge. If you lost a kid there, just get another kid,” Schneider sighed with deadpan delivery. His voice fluctuated between low rambling to wailing screech. One minute he is mimicking his mother’s voice yawping at him as a schoolboy to excel in class, and next, he becomes his wife, ballistic with rage, shouting at the real Rob, “You liar!” – the nickname he said his wife gave him.
Schneider sounded like a philosopher of the battered male psyche, speaking truths that resonate in men’s hearts. “If you ask a 20-year-old guy to party after a hard night, he’ll ask you, ‘Where’s the party?’ Ask the same question to a 30-year-old, and he’ll say, ‘I can party but I choose not to.’ Ask someone 40-year-old and he’ll say, ‘If I party again, I’ll f***ing die,’” he said, sipping wine between pause.
The comic was also fluent about the male-female dynamics. “Most women can organize stuff well. But sometimes, my wife loses her car keys. So I ask her, did you look in your purse?” Then Schneider mimed out opening a long zipper, put his entire body in the bag, made a few breaststrokes, gasped for air, and then went out. “Don’t you push me back. It’s so dark in there. Let’s just buy another car.” “OK.”
Here’s one on passing gas: “Wife: Did you just fart? Rob: Noooooo. Wife: Are you sure? Rob: Well… that was an hour ago.”
As a father himself, he shared a nugget of wisdom for expectant fathers: “A baby is cute, yes, but not when it cries. That thing’s not even human. That’s a piranha.”
The show perhaps wouldn’t be complete without the Gigolo’s take on the wild man’s sexual fantasies: “If you have one, don’t tell it to a woman. Try it on her, don’t say it.”
Despite a few uncomfortable moments, Schneider pulled off belly-crunching jokes one after another, eventually finding his rhythm like a practiced pugilist. Even local politicians were not spared from his bile: “I was told the President might come. He didn’t show up. Even Estrada didn’t show up. Hey (knocks on a door), where the f*** were you?”
In a country where popular stand-up comedians make fun of their audience’s physical appearance, Schneider’s off-beat banter sounded natural and refreshing, even with those fart jokes. He knows that it’s poison, man, and it’s better out than in.
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