She Never Said Much.
She Just Said
Come Back for Ten.

The Sebastian Maniscalsco Story

The Person Who Believed In Me  ·  Hosted by David Begnaud

"Mitzi Shore never really got to know him, and he never really got to know her. The only thing Sebastian Maniscalco clearly remembers her saying to him were four words: come back for ten. She died in 2018. He has thanked her in the credits of every special he has ever produced. He never said it to her face. This conversation is the first time he has said publicly what he wishes he had."

- David Begnaud

The Audition. The Hot Spots. The Method to Her Madness.

Sebastian Maniscalco arrived in Los Angeles in March of 1998 carrying a memory he had held since childhood: a twentieth-anniversary HBO special of the Comedy Store, watched from Chicago, that told him exactly where he needed to go. He had known since second grade that he wanted to be a stand-up comedian. He told his teacher that during career day and received a look that said otherwise. He came to LA anyway.

A comedian named Michael Wheels Parisi saw his act and recommended him for an audition in front of Mitzi Shore. The customary path was three minutes, then six, then ten. Sebastian skipped the middle step. After his three-minute set she told him he'd come back for ten minutes the following week. He did. That Monday, the call came: paid regular at the Comedy Store.

Being a paid regular meant calling in each week with your availability and letting Mitzi decide where you belonged in the lineup. Early on she gave him good spots, nine-fifteen and nine-thirty, when the crowd was already warm. Then the spots shifted. One in the morning. One-thirty. Four people in the seats, two asleep, two otherwise occupied. She put him after dirty comics, after clean ones, after acts doing the complete opposite of everything he was doing. He had no idea what she was building. Looking back, he says it was exactly the education he needed.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The Comedy Store audition story - ~1:33

The Hairdresser. The Lawnmower. The Quadruple Bypass.

Sebastian's father is a hairdresser, about to turn eighty, and he is still cutting hair. Sebastian still talks to him frequently. His dad has been through it, and he is still going.

When Sebastian was young and wanted to start a lawn-cutting business in the neighborhood, his father said he could use the lawnmower, then charged him rent for it and made him pay for the gas. Sebastian came home crying from every single job because he was allergic to grass, dust, and ragweed and had to cut with a mask on. His father did not care. A business has expenses, and his son was going to understand that early.

When his father had a quadruple bypass, ninety-nine percent blockage, he lay in the hospital bed hugging the pillow they give you after chest surgery. His first words were: why can't I go back to work? His chest was open. He was already thinking about his next blowout appointment. Sebastian says he doesn't know too many people built like that. Unfortunately, Sebastian's parents split up when he was an adult, but their separation is still something that is hard for him, as his family dynamic was tight.

▶ Watch on YouTube: His father, the lawnmower, and the bypass - ~14:53

Satellite Dishes, September 11, and the Four Seasons.

Before he was Sebastian Maniscalco, he was a waiter at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. From 1998 to 2005, he refilled Robert De Niro's water glass and served Al Pacino, a man he would later share a film set with, twenty-five years after first meeting him over a dinner table. He never told either of them what he was actually doing with his life. It was against company policy, and Sebastian followed the rule. He just did his job and waited.

At one point he left the Four Seasons entirely, convinced he could make more money selling satellite dishes out of a kiosk at Baldwin Hills Mall in South Los Angeles, right across from the gas company. He blasted Michael Jackson on a loop to draw people in. Folks would stop to dance, some of them moonwalking in front of his kiosk, while Sebastian tried to explain that you get a hundred channels for forty-nine ninety-nine a month. It did not work out.

On September 11, 2001, while the rest of the country stopped, Sebastian drove to Baldwin Hills Mall and opened his kiosk. He looked around the empty hall. It was him and the jeweler. The Pentagon had just been hit. He sat there and waited for people to come buy a satellite dish.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The satellite dish kiosk and September 11 - ~21:28

The Bowling Alley Behind the Boxing Ring. A Hundred Bucks.

In Los Angeles in those years, you got fifteen minutes onstage, maximum. To get more time you had to leave the city, so Sebastian drove to Manteca, California, about an hour outside of Sacramento, with two other comedians. They checked into a Motel 6. They went to the venue.

The venue was a bar. Inside the bar was a boxing ring, and behind the boxing ring was a bowling alley. He asked where the stage was. They pointed to the ring. He climbed in and found blood on the canvas from the night before. He did his thirty-five minutes to a room full of people watching the game while someone behind him picked up a spare. They paid him a hundred dollars. He drove back to LA and did it again the following week.

He also remembered a gig at an Italian restaurant in Santa Barbara where he walked in, asked for the stage, and someone pointed to a wooden crate in the corner. He stepped up on it. People were eating chicken parmesan. He started his set. That was the training. That was the whole thing.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The boxing ring in Manteca - ~40:34

The Sandman. The Lesson. I Can't Wait to Do This Again.

Before the Comedy Store, before any of it, there was Northern Illinois University. He entered a contest to open for the national headliner coming to campus, won it with three minutes in front of students, and had never done stand-up before in his life. They gave him ten minutes to open the show.

The crowd started yelling one word at him. Sandman. He kept going because he had no idea what it meant. When he got offstage, someone told him: Sandman is what the crowd yells at Showtime at the Apollo when the act is so bad they want a man with a hook to come drag them off. That is what they had been calling for during his set. It was, he said, one of the worst nights of his life. His parents were in the audience. They had spent good money on his tuition, his room and board, and here he was dying onstage doing stand-up comedy in front of people who wanted a hook to come get him.

And then, stepping off that stage, something unexpected happened: he thought, I cannot wait to do that again. Not out of delusion. He knew he had won the contest. He was good enough to be there. He just hadn't won that particular night. And from the age of second grade, watching Johnny Carson with his father and feeling something click into place, some part of him had already decided this was the only place he was ever going to belong.

▶ Watch on YouTube: The Sandman night at Northern Illinois University - ~42:05

Thank You, Mitzi. You Don't Know How Much It Meant.

Mitzi Shore died in 2018, and what Sebastian had with her was never a relationship in the conventional sense. He may have spoken to her on the phone once, briefly. She never really got to know him, and he never really got to know her. He has thanked her in the credits of every special he has ever produced. He never said it directly to her face.

When David asked what he would say if he could call her now, Sebastian paused, then said he wished he had reached out more while she was alive. And then he said what he would tell her: thank you for giving me the opportunity. You don't know how much it has meant to me over my entire twenty-eight-year career.

He described the relationship plainly. Her love for him was expressed through the spots she gave him. His love for her was in never letting those spots go to waste. No phone calls, no long conversations, just the stage and what he chose to do with his time on it. He said this show was the first time he had really stopped to trace it back and ask himself who it was that set everything in motion. And when he got there, it was a woman who had watched three minutes of him and decided he was worth ten more.

▶ Watch on YouTube: What he would say to Mitzi now - ~53:59

Stories like Sebastian's are what we do.

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