20 Questions: Yakov Smirnoff

When 32-year-old Russian comic Yakov Smirnoff (green card A21702322) arrived in the U.S. six years ago, he knew no English. He has since learned enough to make audiences see humor in life in the U.S.S.R. When Contributing Editor David Rensin saw Smirnoff's act in Los Angeles, he brought him to our attention. Rensin's report: "Smirnoff lives in the Hollywood Hills. He drives a Mercedes 450SL that he recently bought in Germany. His bedroom is equipped with a stereo and video system. I think he likes it here."

1.

[Q] Playboy: How did you get into comedy in Russia?

[A] Smirnoff: Just by being funny between friends. Same thing as here. I started in small clubs and then realized maybe I can make money at it. I used to work Russian cruise ships on the Black Sea. I did show in Russian. We had tourists from eight countries, and they would be laughing, though I didn't know how they could understand me. This was my first clue that I possibly will be able to be a comedian.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a Russian Tonight Show?

[A] Smirnoff: No. There are big comedians, like Bob Hope, who have been around a long time, but television is not big on comedy. They like people who don't talk. Here there are talk shows. There, they have don't talk shows, like Shut Up Your Face. Well, there was the Brezhnev talk show. He talked, you listened.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Did you have trouble getting out of Russia?

[A] Smirnoff: Yes. It's a very tough process. There are two years of preparing to apply, getting all the papers together. Then two years waiting for the visa--and then they give you a MasterCard. And they make it miserable after you apply, because they make sure everyone knows you're a traitor and you're treated like you're running away from the motherland that gave you food and education. I was fired from being a comedian, from the government agency that employed me, and the only way I survived was to work unofficially and get paid under the table. The club managers knew me and knew I wouldn't say anything in my act that would put them in danger, so I worked. Ship captains liked me, so I got hired on as dishwasher.

I don't know why they let me go, and I didn't ask. Things are processed and, suddenly, you have a week to get out. And if you don't, they keep you. My parents and I were booked on the last train we could legally take. And they wait until the train is almost ready to leave to start searching your luggage. They throw it all into a pile, and--just like in the movies--you have to throw it all back into the suitcase and run to the train. I jumped on the moving train and pulled my mother and father on after me. If we had missed it, they would have said, "Sorry, you had your chance."

4.

[Q] Playboy: Did you come to the U.S. with the idea of being a comedian?

[A] Smirnoff: No. I just wanted to get that feeling of freedom, something I couldn't get there. When I worked on cruise ships, I talked to people and found out our living conditions were horrible compared with other countries'. I never had a car in Russia. We didn't have a shower in our apartment. We had five families in one apartment with one kitchen and a communal shower ten blocks away. You had to pay money to go there and shower with 200 guys watching.

5.

[Q] Playboy: Has the U.S. taken some getting used to?

[A] Smirnoff: I'm like a five-year-old. A while ago, I was standing in front of The Comedy Store and this guy comes over and puts his arm around me and touches me and says he saw me on the Today show and tells me, "You were great!" He was tall, nice-looking. I've been living in Hollywood for a while, and I thought he was trying to pick me up. Thank God the doorman from The Comedy Store asked him for an autograph--I realized, knowing that doorman, he wouldn't ask a gay guy for an autograph. And it was Monty Hall. Later, my former manager said, "This is a man who made millions talking to people dressed as tomatoes and potatoes." Now I know to take door number three. Do you want this picture of Brezhnev or what's behind the iron curtain? When I got to America, my first girlfriend said that if I was a comedian and I was good, I'd eventually get on the Johnny Carson show. To me, "Johnny Carson" and "Jimmy Carter" sounded exactly the same. So I went home to my mother and said, "Here the President has his own television show."

6.

[Q] Playboy: Ever date a Russian woman weight lifter?

[A] Smirnoff: No, because if I had, I wouldn't be here talking to you. When they jump your bones, they really jump your bones. Crunch. Well, there was this one girl. She looked a bit like Orson Welles, only a different-color beard. I'll tell you the truth: Russian women don't take care of themselves. There is no Oil of Olay, though there is perfume, Evening in Prison. But it's understandable. If you look at a Russian woman's night table, you see that in daytime it's a stove. Also, Russian women must work harder than men. A man can spend 18 hours behind the plow; but the woman is in front of it. So it's tough. And if you wonder why Russian men's team wins in Olympics all the time, it's because if they don't win, they become Russian women's team.

7.

[Q] Playboy: What's the difference between a Russian and an American blow job?

[A] Smirnoff: Simple. In America, you can get it. Also, here they don't use a gun.

8.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us some more of your Russian jokes.

[A] Smirnoff: A comedian in Russia won first prize in a contest with the joke "How many Russians does it take to screw Poland?" There was no punch line. They gave him 20 years to provide one.

In Russia, designer jeans are called Calvin Kremlins. If they could talk, you'd be shot.

Russian TV is wonderful. We have great shows: Marx and Mindy, The Young and the Arrested, One Day to Weep, Bowling for Food. We've even got commercials: "You asked for it, you got it: hard labor." "The Russian Express Card. (continued on page 188)Yakov Smirnoff(continued from page 135) Don't leave home."

In the U.S., it's "innocent until proven guilty"; in Russia, "guilty until you die."

To keep warm during the Russian winter is easy. You hire a bear to hug you. But in Siberia, it's no problem. They have solar heating. No roofs.

Growing up in Russia is fun. We have wonderful schoolboy games: Simon demands. Hide and stay hidden.

Here you have freedom of speech. You can go up to Reagan and say, "I don't like Ronald Reagan." You can do the same thing in Russia. You can go up to the party chief and say, "I don't like Ronald Reagan."

9.

[Q] Playboy: Why don't you use the word fuck in your act?

[A] Smirnoff: Because I use yup. Yup means almost the same thing in Russian. Also, I'm planning to have a long career, and that means Atlantic City and Las Vegas and television. Those places don't accept cussing. So why waste my time developing something I won't be able to use anyway? That's the Russian school of comedy coming in handy. There it was politics and government I couldn't joke about. Here I put limits on cussing and cheap fart and shit jokes--which make me sick personally, anyway. But if I get personalized license plates for my Mercedes, they'll say Yup.

10.

[Q] Playboy: Recently, we saw a picture of Russian kids with punk hairdos listening to Sony Walkmans. Do you think they have been co-opted by Western values? Do you think that will eventually spell the end of East-West tension?

[A] Smirnoff: No way. The government is letting those things happen. It's the same with Sakharov and the other dissidents. The government lets them talk, because it doesn't hurt and it makes the West think they are still open-minded. A lot of Americans will see that picture and think things are not so bad in Russia. But maybe there are only five kids like that and they got them all together for the picture.

When I was on The Merv Griffin Show with Roy Clark, Roy was saying how wonderful it was in Russia; he'd been there for a few weeks. They showed him the best things they have. They took him to wonderful supermarkets. He saw happy people. But it's a setup. A friend of mine told me that when he came to America, he couldn't believe the supermarkets were real, because in Russia, they set them up to show foreigners. He thought he could go shopping again in a week and the market would have disappeared. Russia is really just like the world's biggest movie set.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Have you had any problems with the Government here?

[A] Smirnoff: Not so far. I did in Europe. I went to Germany to get my Mercedes. They saw that my papers said I was a comedian. They said, "What is a comedian?" I said, "I make people laugh." They said, "Well, make us laugh." I said, "I don't have to do that. I have the right papers. I can do anything I want to." They said, "That's funny," and put me in jail.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been debriefed by any of our Government agencies?

[A] Smirnoff: Yes, a couple of times. They just wanted to make sure I was legit in what I was doing. They saw me on television after I'd been in America only six months, and since my records said I couldn't speak English, they wondered how I'd learned so fast. So I got a visit from a couple of guys in New York. It was very intelligent, not like K.G.B.--no arm twisting. When they realized I was for real and had nothing to hide, they were supportive and wished me luck.

13.

[Q] Playboy: How do you recognize a K.G.B. officer?

[A] Smirnoff: I know what I could say, but I don't know if I should. [Hesitates] OK, it's a free country. Here's a joke they used to tell in Russia. They knew there was a K.G.B. officer actively working somewhere in America, but they didn't know how to find him. So they hired a private eye and, somehow, he got him the next day. They asked how he did it and he said, "Well, we set up people near every public rest room, and the one who walked out while still zipping his pants was the Russian agent."

14.

[Q] Playboy: What can a Russian kid do to piss off his parents?

[A] Smirnoff: Talk about sex, because the parents are not really up to giving out legit information. They tell you about the stork, so kids are not well informed. In America, you have advantage of having Playboy. In Russia, there are no movies kids can sneak into and see what is going on. They have to learn in the streets. We experiment in the bushes, because there are no apartments unless you buy your parents double-feature movie tickets and take the girl home while they're gone. Otherwise, it's hard to make love when your parents are in the same bed. There's also no birth control in Russia. It's really bad. And abortion, seriously, is terrible. Girls are made to feel like their parents and schoolmates will know. There are no private doctors, so the clinic doctors must report her. Also, they don't use anesthesia, which is their way of punishing. This is true. Girls are made miserable so they will not get pregnant so easily again.

15.

[Q] Playboy: What made you start doubting the party line?

[A] Smirnoff: My father was a pretty open-minded person. Sometimes he listened to the Voice of America. During the war, he was in Bulgaria and Germany and he saw a different world than the government told us existed. Then, when I saw it for myself on the cruise ships, I became convinced. Also, I had a couple of friends who had gone to America and were writing to me what it was like. In order not to make suspicion, we agreed before to write everything opposite to what it was. So they wrote that America was a terrible place with no food, no clothes, no cars. And then I realized they were living in Cleveland.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Are you purposely making Russia sound worse than it is?

[A] Smirnoff: No. Sometimes I even try to make it look nice.

17.

[Q] Playboy: Is the Russian government serious about taking over the whole world?

[A] Smirnoff: Last time I talked to them, they were. That's the main line of the Communist Party. Since I was a kid, it's all I've heard. Nobody even explains why. It's just assumed our society is better than a capitalist one. When I came to America, I realized the difference. In America, man exploits man. In Russia, it's the other way around.

18.

[Q] Playboy: What's the strangest sexual experience you've had in America?

[A] Smirnoff: I was in New York. On Broadway and 42nd Street. It was three in the morning and I was walking. A guy comes over to me and says, "I have a girlfriend for you." I didn't speak too good English at the time and I thought he was just saying hello. But he introduced me to the girl and she fell in love with me. Nothing like that had ever happened before. So she took me home and gave me this little thing and said, "It's for protection. Put it on and I won't have babies." Well, we didn't have balloons in Russia, so I had trouble to find where to put it on. But then I did and everything was fine. Then all of the sudden she said, "I want to change the atmosphere here, so climb up on the dresser." I did. Then she put a bucket of water next to me and said, "Sprinkle it on me like it's going to be rainy. Also, turn the light switch on and off like lightning. And bump your leg on the dresser like thunder." I'm sitting on the dresser, nude, doing all this stuff, and she's lying in bed, covered by blankets, saying, "Oh. Oh. I need a man. I need a man!" So I say, "Where can I find a man at this time of morning? And in this kind of weather?" But she was nice. I waited for her to call me for three weeks. But she didn't, so I decided, babies or not, I'm taking this thing off.

19.

[Q] Playboy: Are there drugs in Russia?

[A] Smirnoff: No. No uppers or downers. Well, things similar to downers: bullets. They'll mellow you out. Drugs are five years in jail if they catch you. Also, they tell us in Russia that drugs will make our children look like lizards. So I didn't do them. I didn't want my babies going "Slurp, slurp."

20.

[Q] Playboy: Is there Playboy in Russia?

[A] Smirnoff: No. No Playboy. Just a guy playing with himself.