Mel Gibson as William “Braveheart” Wallace

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Which of the following quotes are from Braveheart and which are from Mel Gibson’s phone calls to estranged girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva?

A. “I understand you have suffered. I know about your women.”

B. “My soul is screaming because you don’t have one to join mine.”

C. “I hope you’ve washed your ass this morning.”

D. “Fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live … at least a little while.”

E. “Now, you have one more chance, and I mean it.”

F. “You make me want to smoke.”

G. “Alba gu bràth.”

H. “Aaaaaaaaaaaggrrrrhhhhh.”
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Answers:

A. Braveheart

B. Phone call

C. Braveheart

D. Braveheart

E. Phone call

F. Phone call

G. Braveheart

H. Both

A real character: Rickey Smiley

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by Colleen Dougher

Rickey Smiley, the Alabama-born comedian and syndicated radio-talk-show host, may be best known for making prank calls and portraying fictional characters such as churchgoing granny Bernice Jenkins and Lil Darryl, a 7-year-old with thick glasses and a seemingly limited mental capacity. This Friday, Smiley will host Alonso Mourning and Dwyane Wade’s Summer Groove Comedy Jam. Smiley recently talked to us about his comedy, childhood and Sea-Doo obsession.

I understand your mom took you to concerts that inspired you to learn how to play music, but that you were so funny, you had to be a comedian.
I remember going to see Kool and the Gang, James Brown, Funkadelic and the Bar-Kays. I saw Marvin Gaye in concert when I was a kid and I was inspired. I really wanted to do something. My home church was definitely an inspiration in watching our church musicians, so I knew I had to be something. I think my little mind was just trying to gravitate to anything that was entertaining. I started taking piano lessons, which I really enjoyed, and had an obsession with the piano. And then, I ended up in a comedy club on Nov. 13, 1989, and the rest is history.

I guess the church is a big inspiration in your comedy, as well.
Absolutely. I grew up in the church and went to church every Sunday, and whatever extra programs my grandmother attended. I grew up in an awesome church with an awesome pastor and awesome musicians. I’m still a member of that church. I still to this day play sometimes for the 8 o’clock service in the Sunday school at my home church.

How has your comedy evolved since 1989?
We went from doing little gigs, open-mike nights, bars, grills and backyard barbecues to going onstage and performing in front of thousands. I ended up host of BET’s Comic View and did specials on Comedy Central and Showtime, Latham Entertainment Presents, Def Comedy Jam, two appearances at Showtime at the Apollo and three movies — All About the Benjamins, First Sunday and Friday After Next. Now, I’m into radio.

You’re also in a movie coming out in September, right?
Yes, Stomp the Yard 2. I played myself hosting the step show. It was an easy role because that’s what I did pretty much at the beginning of my career. I used to host all the Greek shows, so that was pretty easy to do and a lot of fun.

What’s your favorite memory from making that movie?
It was fun being there with David Banner and comedian Lil Duval. … It was hard work. I was tired because I had done a radio show that day and it was getting late into the night and I had to be on the air again. The most fun I had doing a movie was First Sunday, when I was playing Bernice Jenkins because it was in and out, three or four takes.

Out of all the characters you portray in your comedy, which is your favorite?
Bernice Jenkins, the old lady. She does the church announcements and people lose their minds.

I understand audience members get out of control with their laughter at times.
Oh, yeah, I’ve come off stage a few times and had to comfort and wipe tears. And sometimes, I’d put the mike to their mouth and let the whole audience hear them laugh. I’ve done some crazy stuff.

How many kids do you have?
Biological, two. But I’m raising about six.

How do you escape the stress of your schedule?
There’s a nice lake in Alabama — Lake Martin — and I go out there. I’m obsessed with Sea-Doos, and that’s what I do. I ride my Sea-Doos and I fish. I do everything and anything at the lake. I’ll go sit on the side of the lake and get on Twitter as long as I’m at the lake or the beach.”

Is your family coming to South Florida?
Yeah, I’m bringing the kids and we’re gonna have a good time.

Are you riding Sea-Doos here?
Yeah, I have my Sea-Doos down there. I hate to rent now that I’m a Sea-Doo owner because you have to have them back by a certain time. I can get my Sea-Doos and go to a sandbar and join a party on the Intracoastal and kick it. The only thing about riding a Sea-Doo in Florida is that there are so many rules [and] no-wake zones, and you get pulled over a lot. But in Alabama, man, you’re just free and the lakes are so huge. … I also have a boat I just purchased two months ago that I’m obsessed with. We love the water. When I get off the air, the kids are already ready to go and they’re waiting in the car.

How are your prank phone calls coming and what kind of response are you getting to your online prank phone call submission-request forms?
I haven’t checked in a while because we’re redoing the Web site, but we would get thousand upon thousands. … A lot of people are hip to prank phone calls now so it’s getting harder and harder to find people. You might make 200 calls in order to get 20.

Is this your first Summer Groove?
I did it before, probably about five years ago and I had an awesome time. I think it was me and Bow Wow. It’s always good to come down there. WEDR 99 Jamz is No. 1 in South Florida [editor's note: Actually, the station ranked fifth in the most-recent Arbitron ratings report; the next one is due Friday] and I’m really looking forward to coming down there to touch down with the listeners and fans, and I’m looking forward to raising as much money as possible for Alonzo Mourning’s foundation, and see Zo and Dwyane Wade and all the other NBA players that are gonna participate. I’m really excited about that, and we’re gonna have a good time.

Rickey Smiley will headline the Summer Groove Comedy Jam, featuring George Willborn, Damon Williams, Gary Owen, Rodney Perry, Melanie Comarcho and Red Grant, 7 p.m. Friday at Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, 1 Seminole Way, in Hollywood. Tickets cost $45-$100. Call 305-476-0095 or visit Thesummergroove.com.

Contact Colleen Dougher at cdougher@citylinkmagazine.com.

My life as a dog: Tom Green left MTV to find success — and even more silliness — with an online talk show.

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by Joanie Cox

After a soul-sucking experience helming The Tom Green Show on MTV, comedic loon Tom Green went on to star in cult films such as Freddy Got Fingered and Road Trip before taking to the Internet to revamp his talk show. He now boasts the most-watched talk show online, and is amped up about returning to his roots as a standup comedian. This month, he’ll bring his World Standup Comedy Tour to the Improvs in Hollywood, Miami and West Palm Beach.

What material are covering on your tour?
I cover a wide variety of topics. I tend to make fun of myself a lot, which is pretty easy. I touch on all different things, from moving to Los Angeles to things in the news and things going on in the world. I talk about technology. I’ve been on a rant lately about technology and Facebook, cell phones, text-messaging and all this stuff that’s starting to really seem crazy to me. It’s hitting a tipping point for me, so I love to talk about that stuff. I do some music, as well. The thing about standup is it’s completely free so you can get up and you don’t have anyone telling you what you can or can’t say. It’s not like television in that regard. And it’s been a great experience. I’m having a great tour.

Do you have a Facebook or Twitter account?
I do, but it’s sort of out of necessity because of what I do. I built this television studio in my living room and I’ve got the No. 1 rated online talk show right now. If you go to Tomgreen.com, you can watch hundreds of shows on there. I’ve got all sorts of big-name celebrity comedians and guests on there. And because it’s very interactive and people communicate with the show through Facebook and Twitter and all the social-networking sites, it really is sort of a crazy digital world I’ve immersed myself in. I think because I’m so involved with it and I’ve been doing it so long, I really understand how absurd it is. That’s part of the reason why I’ve really started making fun of it so much.

Weren’t you interacting with your fans before Facebook?
This has been part of my experience for a lot of longer than social networking started. I started doing a television show when I was in my 20s. When I was a teenager, I was doing standup comedy. A lot of my show has always blended reality and fiction. From waking up my parents in the middle of the night and doing pranks on them and barging into their house when I was a teenager. Something I’ve gotten used to was everyone knowing a lot about my private life. My personal space has been invaded or I’ve been invading it, and it has sort of become normal. But it has caught up, and now everybody is going through the same nightmare. People don’t realize what they’ve gotten themselves into. So now, everybody’s got photos of themselves all over the Internet posing in bikinis.

Do you try to get the audience involved in your standup show?
The audiences have been crazy, and it’s really high-energy and people are coming out and drinking and having a good time and going nuts, and I’m trying to keep the energy very, very high for the show and very fun. It’s gonna be cool going to Florida. I’m very upset about what’s going on right now in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s something that honestly affects me and depresses me. Even though I don’t live there, I’ve spent a lot of time in Florida and Louisiana, driving up and down the coast, and I think it’s going to be an experience to be out in Florida this time. After the tour in Florida, I think we’re going to drive over to the more heavily affected areas of the coast to do some interviews for the Web with some people and really try to shine a spotlight on it without a mainstream media editor coming in and sanitizing everything. I’ve been getting a lot of calls on my Web show from people around the country who are increasingly frustrated with the economy, and what I’m doing on the Web is a good outlet for people.

Do you see yourself going in a more serious direction at some point?
I don’t think serious is something I’d ever like to use when applying to comedy. All comedy often spins off very serious things. Sometimes, it’s important to be able to laugh in the face of horrible experiences. But I don’t think there’s really anything funny about this oil spill, though. The only thing that really you can look at that is shocking is this complacency we’ve found ourselves in in society where we’ve kind of allowed this to happen. I talk about that. As people we continue to consume, consume, consume and don’t stop to honestly question ourselves about what the consequences of things are. I don’t think anyone really figured that there could be an accident like this. I think it’s gonna change a lot of people’s views on how we consume energy.

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Who has been the most-interesting guest on your show?
I’ve had a lot of amazing guests on, but I was very honored and proud to have had Ed McMahon on the show a few times before he passed away. He was a true icon of television, a legend. And to have him come out to my house a few times to support my Web show was really cool. We had a lot of great conversations about his years on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. And so I enjoyed having him on, and Jimmy Kimmel and Kathy Griffin and Val Kilmer. I’ve had all sorts of people on who are just hilarious. Kat Von D — a lot of people like her — and Steve-O is one of my favorites. It’s been a fun way to meet people, too. Living in L.A. for almost 10 years now, the last four I’ve been doing the show, and I get to invite all sorts of people who I don’t know or have never met out to the house, and it’s been a really positive thing.

Since you were on Celebrity Apprentice, would you ever do something like Dancing With the Stars?
You know, I’m sort of deciding that I’m steering away from a lot of that kind of stuff. I did like doing Celebrity Apprentice, though, but that’s just because Donald Trump is a funny character to me. I’ve always sort of enjoyed watching that show, because I find him so interesting to watch on TV. I also enjoy doing what I do as a producer and I thought I would go on and win it. When you do reality TV, even I sort of forgot how obviously manipulated everything is. They take a bunch of jerk-off type people and put them on a show and film them in a room. It’s not really ever going to be a completely pleasant experience no matter how much you’re aware of what they’re doing. We may be putting together a reality show, though, about the behind-the-scenes of doing a Web TV show in my living room. It’s something I’d like to put together, but that’s still in development.

I love the notion of a noncheesy reality show and cutting out the contrived network middleman. Would you agree?
Yeah, and they really are very cheesy, too. I don’t think people in society realize how cheesy and ridiculous it is. We all assume what we watch on TV is an artistic point of view coming from a comedian. It’s really not. It’s this committee of people who get together and they’ll hire a comedian and he’ll sit there and have a certain degree of creative control. But at the end of the day, really everything is written for him by writers that are approved by the network and passed up to executives. It’s a bit of sham. After spending all of my adult life creating a show on public access and getting it on MTV, you realize, “Man, this isn’t really what I thought it was supposed to be. This isn’t really that fun.” I thought you work really hard, get really good at making TV and you get to make a TV show. But really, you’re a little bit more of a puppet, and it’s not something that I necessarily loved doing. I’ve spent the last few years trying to figure out a way around that little problem. And I think because of the Internet — fortunately, we’re living in a time to be able to do this completely without restrictions. I don’t know what I would do if it wasn’t for the Internet. It would be a bummer. Basically, you would have to sit down and eat crow all day making a TV show that’s very watered down.

Do people expect you to be completely insane when they meet you in person?
I think a lot of the time, yeah, but it’s more like people who don’t really know me through what I do on the Web over the last few years. Anyone who’s a big fan of what I do understands it’s comedy. I wasn’t doing a reality show. I wasn’t this crazy person people were filming. I was going out there trying to come up with the funniest, craziest pranks, but it was a produced, clinical thing putting these things together. People that are fans of me have read articles about me and have known for a long time the person I am is a lot different than what you would expect if you just saw the craziest prank I ever did.

Are you talking about people who only remember you humping a dead moose?
Yes. The moose thing was fun and it has been immortalized in an Eminem song. It was funny at the time. Eminem was still pretty new. I love rap music and didn’t realize how iconic “The Real Slim Shady” would be. I still hear it all the time all over the world. I’ll be in an elevator or a shopping mall hearing, “It’s cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose” It’s crazy, I’m in Sweden hearing that.

Tom Green will perform 8 p.m. June 15-16 at the Improv, Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, 5700 Seminole Way, in Hollywood. Tickets cost $23.32. Additional shows include June 23-24 at Miami Improv and June 25-26 at Palm Beach Improv. Visit Tomgreen.com.

Contact Joanie Cox at jcox@citylinkmagazine.com.

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by John Thomason

The cast of the Mad Cat Theatre has barely been rehearsing for five minutes, and already the references are flying, from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to Queen and Ted Kennedy, guttural satanic metal songs and impromptu renditions of Paul McCartney hits.

Not all these elements will make it into, or were even intended to be in, the company’s one-night only remounting of the theater’s classic experimental play Shepherd’s Pie, which will be staged next Wednesday as part of the South Beach Comedy Festival. Most of the cast agrees that the rehearsals, rife with improvisatory revelry, are just as entertaining for audiences as the play itself will be.

“This might sound pretentious, but I’ve always looked at our original pieces as like working on an album,” says co-writer and Mad Cat founder Paul Tei, who debuted Shepherd’s Pie in March 2001. “And if the audience could come and watch our sessions, they would have as much fun as seeing the final show.”

Tei is part-Irish, and Shepherd’s Pie was borne out of his frustration at not being able to find a seat in his favorite Irish pub every St. Patrick’s Day. “I wanted to vent in some way,” he says. “Most people don’t even know who Saint Patrick was. So I thought, what if there was a troupe of Irish actors who would tell his story in hopes of enlightening those people? And I wanted to do a piece that was not a traditional theater piece but was more along the lines of storytelling mixed with cabaret.”

Add to the play’s stylistic melting pot the minimalism of classic radio theater: At least four of the six company members play a combined 28 characters, saying their lines into standing microphones, supplemented by sound effects and the simplest of props and costume changes.

“Whenever you have a show where you’re playing multiple characters, it’s a lot of fun and you grow as an actress,” says Betsy Graver, who makes her acting debut with Mad Cat.

When the play premiered nine years ago, theatergoers sat at café tables and drank green beer during the performance at spitting distance from the actors. This time around, the inherent restrictions of the Colony Theatre prohibit this kind of intimacy, but Tei is still hoping for a homey, welcoming atmosphere, and patrons will enter to an Irish band performing in the lobby.

Tei saw Shepherd’s Pie as an important stepping stone for the theater. It was Mad Cat’s second production, leading into its first breakthrough play, Here in My Car, in which all the action was set in an actual car hauled into the performance space. He likes to view Shepherd’s Pie as the Revolver to Here in My Car’s Sgt. Pepper.

Actor Erik Fabregat, the closest actor Tei has to a creative muse, made a brief appearance in the original run of Shepherd’s Pie and has an expanded role in the revival. “I saw a portion of it for the whole run of the show nine years ago, and it was flat-out funny,” he recalls. “It’s as good as any show to be brought back to life.”

The play, updated with current pop-culture references, is intended for fans of politically incorrect satire such as South Park and Family Guy, so according to Tei, it’s appropriate that Comedy Central is co-sponsoring the event. But if you listen carefully, you also may learn something about Saint Patrick, who, to Tei, is an amazing figure.

“He was a guy who converted 90 percent of Ireland from paganism to Catholicism,” he says. “It’s a touchy subject matter. We don’t want to sound like a religious organization, like we’re trying to convert anybody. We make fun of it for what it is. Everybody gets skewered, but in a loving way. I take pride in my heritage, but the only way you can show love is to be dead honest about it.”

Shepherd’s Pie will be performed 7:30 p.m. Jan. 20 at the Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, in Miami Beach. Tickets cost $10-$50. Call 305-674-1040 or visit Southbeachcomedyfestival.com. Contact John Thomason at jpthomason@tribune.com.