The dichotomy is somebody who deals with what I deal with, then standing in the midst of 80,000 screaming people, is crazy.” It’s so hard for me to even be out of the house. It’s just like, I just gotta get up on that stage. “When you’re there and you’ve been asked to play that event, you’re not aware of everybody that’s there with you.And there isn’t a comedian alive that doesn’t want to be a rock star.” “An 80,000-seat stadium? You can’t prepare yourself for the kind of timing that you need in that.”.“This was a traditional, iconic thing to do.Gregory Hardy HOWIE MANDEL: GATOR GROWL QUOTEBAG Our phone interview from October 7, 2021, is presented as edited for length and clarity. He means it when he says, “The beauty of what I do is that I don’t plan.” Howie Mandel was about to elevate from “rock star stuff” of the 20th Century to “reality TV show judge stuff” of the 21st Century. (Not to mention that in the nineties he still sported a full head of hair before he elected to go the clean-shaved bald route around 2000.) While his daytime talk show would only last about a year before ending in 1999, it was by accepting the hosting job of NBC’s Deal or No Deal in 2003 that launched him into his biggest phase yet of entering the world’s living rooms via TV. Yet in a way, when Howie Mandel arrived at Gator Growl, he was on the cusp of yet an even higher level of fame in his career. “To be able to say that you’ve actually done stand-up comedy in front of 80,000 people, live. And comedians of my era, then they wanted to do their own concerts. The first thing I ever wanted to do was the Johnny Carson show. So I’d already been doing all those things. “That was one more year from ending Bobby’s World. I was already at that time fairly established as a comedian. So I knew of it, and I never been asked to do it. It was a year before I did the daytime talk show. I was a decade out of having done four or five movies, and I had done St. “I had already done maybe about ten cable specials by that time. He was, after all, “at that time fairly established as a comedian” (in what might win the award for the most self-deprecating description of all interviews in this series). After I mentioned to him that as a Child of the Eighties I’ve always admired that a stand-up comedian could be the voice behind Gizmo the Mogwai in 1984’s Gremlins, Howie put the rest of his decades of the eighties and nineties in context when the Florida Blue Key producers came calling. When Howie Mandel arrived in Gainesville in 1997 at age forty-two to be the headliner of “The World’s Largest Student-Run College Pep Rally,” he required no introduction. On the other end of the spectrum, Gator Growl featured comedians who were undisputed legends when they took the stage: Bob Hope, George Burns, Rodney Dangerfield, Dana Carvey and the now-disgraced Bill Cosby. Gator Growl’s bread-and-butter became inviting comedians when they were on the cusp of national stardom: look at Jerry Seinfeld in 1988, Dave Chappelle in 1998, Jim Gaffigan in 2006. One of my biggest aims of this Gator Growl comedian project is to give context about where each of these comedians was at in their careers the year when they took the stage. Author’s Introduction: ‘That’s Rock Star Stuff’ “Mandel, one of the busiest comedians today, is currently performing his ‘One Woman Show’ in 200 dates around the country.” Gator Growl producer Greier Pressly said the billboards were ordered to encourage excitement for Gator alumni and fans to attend the show. “What I like about 70,000 is that it’s so much more intimate than my regular 90,000.” - Howie Mandel A page 3 news story in the August 25, 1997, edition of The Independent Florida Alligator student newspaper announces that for the first time Gator Growl is being promoted with billboards along Interstate 75. Want to know what it was like to perform stand-up comedy in a packed college football stadium? Check out the Gator Growl Comedians Oral History Series. The Gator Growl pep rally at the University of Florida became a history of stand-up comedy unlike any other.
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