Cleetus Friedman spent most of his childhood with his eyes glued to the TV set. “I was absolutely obsessed with Sanford and Son when I was growing up,” he says. “I used to walk around the house, puffing out my chest and honing my Fred Sanford impression. It probably irritated everyone around me, but I got really good at it. I idolized Richard Pryor and Robin Williams too. From that point on, I knew I wanted to be a comedian.”
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At his father’s house, Friedman was free to poke through his stacks of old soul and R & B records, but his massive collection of antique toys and comic books was off-limits. “I hated those toys when I was younger, because he wouldn’t let us near them,” notes Friedman. “If you wanted to see one, he’d reluctantly take it out of its mint box and wind it up for you.”
About a month before Friedman’s college graduation in 1995, his father passed away. Friedman’s grandfather died a month later. Shaken, Friedman reconsidered his postgraduate plans of teaching English in Japan and decided to move to Chicago to pursue his comedy aspirations. “It wasn’t hard arriving at that decision–the anxiety surrounded the idea of breaking it to my mother,” he recalls. “When I finally worked up the courage to tell her, she didn’t say a word. It was like that for a month until we went out to lunch with one of her friends, and she said, ‘My son is going to Chicago to get into comedy.’ That moment was huge!”
Friedman admits he’s still working out kinks in his material. When he was putting together Cracker: An Experiment in Hip-Hop Theater, a collection of the best pieces from his first two shows, he edited and revised most of them. And he’s joined forces with DJ Savage, whose turntable skills have helped Friedman add a musical backbone to his raps and improve the pacing of the show.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
