My Interview with the legendary Jeanne Robertson

tell me genie what was it like growing up in graham north carolina oh small town in the south um perfect environment everybody was happy we knew everybody walked to school on the sidewalk with others and walked all the way home and looking back on it now we sat around in the yards air conditioning was a wash rag on your head you were trying to keep cool at night so you'd sit out in the yard before you went to bed and tell stories and catch fireflies and i think that probably helped me become a professional speaker not the main thing but looking back on it lots of stories from my childhood which is what we were talking about earlier on the way that about you you know the southern culture yeah telling stories what's the there seems to be a connection there well it is you know it's it's it's fascinating because in the south most of the people who say i am a storyteller i am a humorist for example in the national speakers association are from the south or the southwest the northeasterners maybe tell a lot of one-liners type things but with us when you're sitting around even if it's a small child and aunt sue joins the crowd everybody turns to the child and says tell him buddy boy tell him that story you just told us now the fact that all of us had heard it didn't matter we just wanted him to tell it again and we always at family gatherings we would tell the same stories over and over and of course they got a little longer oh that's a good line and then of course you wind up when you finish telling stories even as a child i say you left out that line about such and such and so you jump in and tell it and i think that was true throughout the south there wasn't a lot of money some um some towns didn't even have picture shows as we called them a a picture show and so you made your own entertainment and swapping stories was what it was about any family event any family event did you have a uh you know and i say this uh lovingly you know the sort of aunt sue or the person who told lies oh oh we revered people who told lies we loved especially the younger ones sure you did most of us sat there and thought i want to be like her i want to be like aunt sue now of course in the south they may keep them in the attic but if we bring them out for weddings we don't hide our people all the time we accept everybody you just accept everybody and then you tell the stories about them and they and they probably have some they're telling about you you've known another truth i think it was a now as a humorist a person who makes her living making people laugh i find that when i tell a story what i want them to say is the same thing happened to me she's been a fly on my wall so we've got these common experiences we didn't have the same nutty ant but we all had one and if you think you don't look back you might be the one they're talking about so uh okay so then you grew up in graham and eventually became miss north carolina i did i was a student at auburn university dropped out and entered the miss graham pageant had never been in a pageant before my sisters both said i wouldn't be in one of those things i i wanted to be up front i thought this would look like fun but the advantage was that when i won the title of miss north carolina back then pageants were so big during that year i was 19 and turned 20. i'd drop out of college for a year i made more than 500 little speeches and the first not one hour programs that you would do now but the first week of the tour i said some things and people laughed and i thought whoa i like that and even though i tried to find some old jokes things that were floating around when i talked about being a six foot two basketball player in the miss america pageant which is the way we say it in the south but miss a miracle pageant when i did that i found out when the speech was over that people came up and commented about the true stories more now was i embellishing oh sure even at that age but but you had a gem there a seed of something that happened and then i could go on and take it but to be able to make more than 500 500 times in one year get on your feet and have to address a crowd even if it were for 10 minutes i wanted to make them laugh and their reputation spread i crowned the next miss north carolina the following week spoke at three conventions and never looked back i finished school and i talked but i spent every vacation day and all summer speaking and finally something had to get had to give i either had to become a coach or go into speaking and when i stopped teaching my friends in education said you're giving up a real good job here you think you can just come in here next year and then the next breath they'd say are you going to tell them that story about the such and such so i knew that this was what people wanted to hear so the influence and i know that you're speaking humorous but the the influence that that your your life in graham and then as miss north carolina now and particularly miss north carolina you know i mean it was a rather serious thing for you right sure but you joke about it now and you talk about it you tell great stories about that well even that year i was saying i was the tallest who have ever been in the pageant and i still am even 49 years later but i would quickly say even at 19 which makes me the tallest to ever lose in the missile miracle because people laughed and if i could get them to laugh i found the reason that i had so many speaking invitations that year was they knew that i could come in and not just cut the ribbon and say it's wonderful to be here but i'd say how much time can you give me can i have 15 can i do 20 and so the word spread that i could do that and that's why i had more invitations as a speaker or as a humorist or even in in the realm of telling stories who was your influence who inspired you i think i'm very lucky because we're going to start over no no no no no no no no okay yeah keep rolling okay so the mentors right now this this is another era remember this this was pre-internet it was pre-seen women on tv being funny to at my early age and i think i had a tremendous advantage over a lot of other professional speakers i spoke from 63 to 78 before i joined the national speakers association it wasn't even around so i didn't have anybody i had to develop my own style i didn't know what i was doing i mean i don't think at that point i had an organized plan to become a professional speaker and a humorist i just knew that i would develop my own style it's very difficult to go and hear a lot of storytellers or a lot of speakers and not just subconsciously copy a little bit what they do and what they say and so nobody ever said to me you might not want to use that southern accent i was just doing what i was doing and i had all those years to develop my own style the person that i really admired was irma bombeck because at that time in the 60s she was the number one columnist in my opinion in the nation my problem was that the more i read her columns and i did get to go to her house and meet her eventually but the more i read her material and then i would sit down and try to write a story i was sounding like irma bombeck and so i just had to forget it and almost stop doing that so that i could at that time then go ahead and develop my own style looking back on it i think i was influenced in the 60s by i have a lot of physical humor you might have noticed that but i think if i did that mess it up um barney the character don knotts played of barney fife if you look at barney fife and i think that's probably the greatest television show that's ever been produced i'm biased but if you look at his physical comedy we all liked it so much and about the same time of course lucy lucy was the rage such a show and she used physical comedy so i began in an early age not to say in the seventh grade i was six feet two inches tall the seventh grade boys were all down around my ankles i was saying the seventh grade boys all down around by my ankles and i think it was encouraged because i was seeing other people doing that i i was just stumbled into it but i know i use a lot of physical physical humor and i doubt i do it on purpose but but there weren't a lot then then at that point the reason i specifically call myself a professional speaker who is a humorist a woman who uses stories that she's created to illustrate points is that at that point the late the women in comedy were not women who gave a message that meeting planners would have hired and my job was trying to to get as many speeches as i could do um but phyllis stiller who i understand was a lovely woman her character a lot of people thought well maybe that's not who i want to come and speak to my people i'm not sure what she's going to do or if you had uh to go on um or just just any number no the names are unimportant so i deliberately said i'm not a comedian i am not a comedian and the difference is that the humorist weaves the story like the ones that we're seeing at the storytelling festival the ones you hear in speeches but the entire time all the story can be very funny it's leading to a point and that point is something the meeting planner who booked you wants you to come in and do so i i'm not saying that at an early age i was a savvy business woman but i was smart enough in an early age to say okay now how am i going to get booked here at these conventions and these association meetings and at that time the old rotary club ladies night i put the quotation marks around that because that's what it was in those times those times i had a tremendous asset the year i was miss north carolina the jaycees told me to come over to raleigh in december to discuss i'd only had the crown about six months but to discuss giving up the crown so in december they asked me to come over to raleigh and i'd only been miss north carolina about six months but to discuss giving up the crown this is interesting because in those days there was no internet so at the state pageant on statewide tv the judges would get up and leave to go decide the winner and between each of the divisions like swimsuit talent and all that they would bring in higher singers and dancers to come in and kill time while the judges went out and decided who won the swimsuit who won the talent well what they suggested to me was that the following year they not do this they don't bring in because actually the people they're bringing in are doing the same type talent that they just saw 10 contestants do singing and dancing and playing the piano and so forth so i said what do you mean and they said what if you just stood off to the side for four nights the last of which was on national i mean excuse me statewide television and anytime we need a filler we just call you out and you come out there and be funny now i had six months i said oh that'd be great i can get more i can even get more stories and they said well on tuesday night the parents of all the contestants and i think they were 80 or 90 are at a at a banquet with the raleigh merchants and so rather than have a miss america which we've done every time come in why couldn't you do the stories they'll be back do it too so here's what i did and by then i was 20. we went in and on tuesday night i had a banquet with all these business people from raleigh and business people from all over the state whose daughters were in the pageant and i spoke to them on tuesday night i did an after dinner speech 35 40 minutes then the next four nights anytime they needed a filler they'd say genie let's bring genie out well that toasted along and already when people were coming up afterwards and saying on those first three nights that weren't on tv fathers were saying and mothers could you come and do this for my employees could you string those stories together well on the last night it was on statewide live television and twice they had to call me out and then i did a funny giving up the crown speech and it was bam you can't buy that you cannot buy the thing but i worked that six months to have enough material to come out and not repeat stories for four nights it's amazing what about in the in the realm of actually crafting story i don't want to give you give away all your great secrets but oh i'll tell them you know how do you craft a story or how do you massage the story how does it sort of evolve well some are gifts from heaven they drop out you don't have to do a thing but pick them up and tell them they have their own punchline they have their own setup but most of them don't and they can get two ways that it works and i have a system that i use called don't let the funny stuff get away because i think if we if we don't jot it down somehow very quickly did we lose what made it what was that made it so funny so the first way of course is something happens and it's a funny premise that's a seed there's an idea there and you know that can make a funny story and then you start the crafting of it always though at the end have to have a dynamite punchline if you're not going anywhere and it just sags at the end so it may take years to keep massaging it and working and i've had a couple of stories that i really have had on the burner for years and then you brought them out it may be that they're similar to another story you're telling so you don't want them both in the same program but you now the other way is get a funny punchline and write a story that leads up to it and that works just as well and i do a couple of tricks if i keep my eyes and ears open all the time and hear a one-liner i don't want anybody else's material if they're professional but people just on the airplane may say something then i if it's funny and everybody laughs that's a story in the happening and then you have to go back and write up and the question becomes what does the audience need to know for that to be funny when you get to it and you can't set that up right before the end because it gives it away if you go back and say oh and i need for you to know this too well you need to put that back up way back here for that to be funny another trick i use all the time is i try out one-liners on things the people that say things and if a couple of people laugh or two or three people laugh i say okay that works well i don't want to give a program where jeannie said and i said and i said and i said because who wants to hear it so i create a person across the aisle and i tell the situation and then i just say a woman across the aisle said da da da da and i get a laugh she didn't say it she wasn't i said it but when you're crafting the entire hour you just can't say so i see it every time and you let just craft other people that do it for you it's it's an everyday craft and a story is an everyday uh challenge for me because if i don't do it every day i get out of the habit for it and you want to look around now just looking around again you don't want anybody else's stories if my system for getting material works which i think it does i'll tell you a quick synopsis of it in a minute then give the system to everybody because they get their own stories it's the whole thing for years i thought if i can find one funny thing a day i've got more speech material than i can ever ever use then i went down to a banquet and the ballgame was on the left brain didn't go down there with me being my husband of course he said i'm watching the ball game when i came back in the room he said to me did you get your did you get a funny story and i said oh you won't believe what i was talking to this woman blah blah blah and she said and a little bit later i said oh i got to tell you about this woman that sat next to me she'd blah blah and he said well did you write that one up too and i realized i had locked myself into getting one funny thing so i'm letting all this other get away so my answer to left brain was if you would travel with me every day and then when i talk to the cab driver or check in the hotel or meet with the meeting planner or go to the then you would say did anything funny happen he said well i'm not going to do that and i i didn't really want him to so we made a sheet of paper that takes my day and i'm not i don't want to know where i ate lunch this is not a diary it's not a journal of everywhere i went and that's fine of somebody it's looking for humor nothing goes on that page unless it's something somebody said so when i'm sitting at a banquet and the question of course the most people say to me how did you get into this i found myself telling the same stuff over and over and hearing myself i want to steer it away from me i know those answers what i want to say is how long have you been coming to this convention or coming to this meeting or coming and they'll say oh for years and i said i bet you've seen some funny things what's about the funniest thing you've ever seen happen at this meeting and let them talk that's how you get your stories you don't have to show off how funny you are all the time you just let some other people say some things and you lead them into it i'll do the same thing with the cab driver how long you've been driving the cave for years oh my gosh what's the funniest thing you've oh ma'am you wouldn't believe well you get a lot of bad stuff but you all you're looking for is those few good things that you can embellish a little bit and make a story based on reality so i just look for it all the time now it has become not only the way i make my living it's my hobby i'm very fortunate that what i love to do and i can craft stories it's also it's also my hobby and uh i have people that call who excuse me who called me and say to me you know genie we were on our vacation and you just wouldn't believe what happened and we thought of you what a compliment good tell it to me tell it to me that can be it i passed i was in a in in arizona and past three men outside of a restaurant businessmen had little briefcases and they were dressed up and i just had my ears open that's all i didn't stop and talk to him i don't know what they said before i walked up or what they said when i walked away but when i walked by and one of them said my wife told me you want a hot breakfast throw a match in your cereal now now you can't you're just walking along and you hear this and it's on airplanes i'm always leaning way back in the airplane because i want to hear what they're talking about behind me and it's just become a way of life the good thing is that by looking for the humor and the stories every day what we really do is affect the way we approach traveling all the time i'm on airplanes 27 days a month so and if you're not on an airplane then you're driving to the speech as i drove to the storyteller festival it's not so far when you go in smile at the person behind the counter and engage them in conversation listen to the people in front of you in line that's where it's that's where it is that's what it's all about i'm help up on it aren't i doing terrific i'm just wondering about sun in your eyes it moved on me yeah yeah i was about ready to pause because i've got i've got two more questions okay so so let's you're a speaker and a humorist you know what is the difference between let's say even a humorist and a storyteller well i think it's the one of the ways is where you work uh this storyteller festival um telling festival this is the 40th anniversary of it and this is my 49th year of speaking this wasn't around now people have kept folklore stories alive forever but the people here are creating their own personal stories from their life experiences and they tell them at the festivals from my early days i was trying to get booked to make money and use my talent and and and travel this one wasn't available and so you can take a talent telling stories you can put it in a comedy club go i that didn't appeal just doing straight comedy comedy clubs didn't appeal to me i had a background speaking in at meetings from that year and so i continued that but storytelling is enter is straight entertainment now when i go in for a convention speech not one of my theater speeches those stories have to lead to a point uh the meeting planner for most associations and the corporate world can't have you walk out and everybody say she was hilarious what was that about why were we all away from our desk sitting here listening to this i mean why why he has to justify spending that money and so that's the more it's the market that i went in this is a wonderful market these people are telling stories and and they're very very similar and i have learned a lot by being here and watching them speak again they don't want my material i don't want their material but when you watch the way people craft their stories it makes you get home and craft yours and we even work on more now i'll tell you one thing there are people here that the speakers can learn from this there are people here who record their tape here and they do a different tape every year if i tell professional speakers that they would say every year every year because you know some people ride one speech for an entire time and that's a choice maybe they tell a story about something that happened that that's what their goal in life is to tell about this uh atrocity or some story that they tell remember stories don't have to be funny mine are funny and but not necessarily but here when they come every year they can come with new material a lot of speakers might want to think about that too just a little extra material these people are delightful and they're out here and they're busy and there's a storytelling festivals somewhere almost every weekend in the world in the entire world and it was started right here in jonesboro and of course ten thousand people are packing here this weekend to hear and these big tents but but i heard a speaker a couple of days ago excuse me a storyteller a couple of days ago and he told four straight stories about his family and he didn't have those stories on his list a year ago and he will come back next year with more he's on four or five times i mean it's it's fascinating and if you want to see other people develop their stories and what but remember a lot of speakers telling stories is not the main thing but if telling stories is your main thing this is a place you might want to come and spend one some time one weekend just to see how other people are doing it we're always learning so and then last question is about um you mentioned in your presentation last night um in your humor last night the uh do you want to move over just a tad more yep things coming up yeah i was noticing it too oh i know so this is laughter okay you know you talked about now did you want to mention about the cousin's thing or we died with that let me let me work it no let me mention that i'm going to say um people say what's the difference in comedy being a speaker calling yourself a storyteller and i think we're all in the same family we're cousins we're just cousins everybody's goal may not be the same different areas but we definitely can and we do have a common bond and as we like to tell stories and see the people in the audience light up and so the other thing that's common about all of those but even the the man and woman on the street is the idea of capturing your story and well i believe that we've all heard over and over you can't take it with you you can't take it with you and of course they're talking about money because you can't take it with you um plenty of people have probably tried but you can't and i think if you just say you can't take it with it though and you think about stories if we don't capture our stories and in the olden days the only way to capture them was to pass them on from generation to generation now we have the internet we have recording devices we can film ourselves we can interview people and if we don't capture our family stories the sad thing is when we pass on we do most definitely take them with us and they're gone forever i think that will do it that's terrific okay well y'all thank you is left brain going to change am i not a chance but we know that we're going to look for humor every day and looking with each other is a real good way to start we have humor buddies that come to us and say we found something funny and we thought of you well in that better than i heard some gossip and i thought of you if you go on vacation you see something funny yes please do call me i also look around at my friends for humor and you can do the same don't point toward anybody in here and that might let me go to tell you about my friend norma she's my bestest friend y'all know norma rose by the way it's funny when you talk to people nowadays because of youtube and internet and all this people come up to me and say you left out a line you left out does this happen why are there any other storytellers in here this happened they'll come and say i think you reversed that line that particular line on the other my bestest friend and i know i know don't y'all come up here and tell me afterwards you can't have the word bestest because didn't we learn it this way good better best never let it rest till the good get better and the better get best for you younger people that think what in the world is this gibberish you can't be better than best because best is best but women have ruined the word best especially southern women this one my very best friends this is my best friend since elementary school this is my very best friend that i knew from girl this is and she used to be my bestest friend right over there but i don't even speak to her anymore i can be in the grocery store talking to a woman and see one of my friends go by and say come over here come over here y'all come over i want you to meet one of my very best friends sue what'd you say your last name is so my bestest friend and i and her name is not just norma it is norma rose we always give our little girls two names in case they want to be in a pageant norma rose and i were talking not too long ago and she said to me well where are you going to speak next month jenny and i said all the places i was going to go and then one of them happened to be las vegas she said las vegas you're going to go to las vegas and speak again i never have been to las vegas genie and i said i didn't know that i've got plenty of airline miles let me call the client who booked me and i'll i'll see if i can get the cheaper rooms on the front end or on the back end and we can go out there and stay a while and have a good time she said well what do they do out there don't they just gamble and i said there is a little of that but the truth is that bill cosby has a show there that night and i think although i haven't seen from this weekend but the one i saw last night the storyteller was excellent donald davis whoo he was excellent but i love i think two of the what you would call celebrity storytellers bill cosby and bob newhart are two of the best i said norma rose bill cosby has a show there that week we could go see it she said well i would love to go genie and i don't mean that you can't gamble she said if you want to gamble it's okay if you gamble because you're methodist [Laughter] what your methodist methodists can gamble but i'm a baptist and baptist don't gamble i said well norma rose have they told all of them yet so we went to las vegas and we got in our hotel she had a little camera and she was just taking pictures of everything she saw oh it is a people-watching place we got over to the hotel where we were going to see the cosby show got our tickets had dinner and still had an hour before we went in to see the show and i said now listen norma rose this is what we're gonna do i'm gonna go in this casino and i'm gonna get twenty dollars worth of quarters and then you're gonna come in there with me and we're gonna play the quarter slot machine you've got to see what the true vegas is she said genie don't you remember i told you i don't gamble i'll just sit in the lobby no no you're going to go in there and doing that and anyway that's why i picked the quarter slot machines the slot machines are not gambling the word gamble means you have a chance we went in and it took a little time but i actually found a couple of the old-timey slot machines where you had to put the quarters in your hand get your hand dirty put the quarters in yourself and pull that lever that everybody else in the world's been pulling see it's all computerized now you sit down put your purse down here a door open up and an arm comes out and grabs you you can't win i said normal rose this won't i said if we by some chance would have in all five quarters and we would hear the thing go and three sevens came up and the bells and whistles went off just sit down and let me explain to you this is this is not hitting the jackpot this is let me put it in words you understand this would be a miracle so we got with the old timing machine i said pull it over here now here's how you do it and i put a quarter in and i pull the lever and wouldn't you know it the thing went do do do do do do and two quarters came out norma rose said you doubled your money if i hadn't seen it i wouldn't believe it you have won at the casino and i said no no no no no no no i'm not going to say that i have won at the casino the only way that i would win at this casino is if we picked up these two quarters got our purses got up and walked out of here and never in our lifetime went back into a casino again then on my tombstone in graham you put here lies the woman who won in the casino but norma rose we're not gonna do that we're gonna put these two quarters back in as fast as i get them and pull that lever and of course we lost it she said that's what i've always heard win a little bit get addicted lose it all loose it up i said oh come on we're just having a good time and we did and we played and we'd win and play now you know you're going to win some but you're going to lose you're going to eventually this is the way they make their living and it goes down and after a while pulling and talking and looking at people and so forth norma rose said is your right arm getting tired i said my right arm she said from pulling the lever it looks tired move it over and let me pull the lever a little while no no normal row i'm not going to do that normal rows because i'm not going back to north carolina having turned you on to a life of gambling she said why don't you call it like it is it's a good baptist helping a methodist with a tired arm now move it over put the money in pool she would oh we were having the best time and finally i said we're about to give out the money but we got to get to the show anyway i thought she was picking up her purse she came back said i found three dirty quarters in the bottom of my purse i'm gonna put them right here they're yours they're not mine anymore do with them whatever you want to of course i put them in and we lost them and then i said norma rose we got one two three we got five quarters left we haven't played five let's go for it and we put the five quarters in and she pulled it and our lives changed three sevens zip zipped and then bells ding ding ding ding ding above all this racket i could hear norma rose shouting what are you gonna do with your half of the money

Channel: Kevin McNulty Speaks

Views: 32,187

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Keywords: personal development, motivational speaker, change, transition, self help, success, learn, grow, education, inspiration, podcast

Id: 4MpUWACVApI

Length: 35min 0sec (2100 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 28 2021