Background

“You’ve got to watch this guy, he’s the best!” my Dad exclaimed from his spot directly in front of the rounded tube television that sat atop the clunky 1980’s entertainment unit in my parents’ living room. He was always positioned right in front, with me by his side on Saturday mornings. We had landed on a commercial for a VHS collection of The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts and each clip of the celebrity roast cast had my Dad laughing harder and louder than the one before. I had no idea what we were laughing at, but the laughter was infectious, and soon we were roaring together. That’s when it all started for me.

I knew who Dean Martin was because I had heard his music, but the roast was something altogether different.  Comedians like George Burns and Lucille Ball were dressed to the nines in tuxedos and gowns. The material was clean, so different from comedians today. Each dripped with class while they delivered joke after joke to an insatiable audience. It was an epic back and forth which sometimes escalated to the roasters breaking character and everyone screaming with laughter together. My mom would poke her head in from the kitchen from time to time, a bewildered look on her face. She didn’t have a clue how anything on earth could be funny enough to produce the sounds we were making, which only made me love it more. I was completely hooked.

The bond my Dad and I shared over comedy only got stronger over time. I start doing impressions of these old timer comics at the dinner table to make him laugh and laugh hard he did. It must have been a real trip for him to watch a young kid doing impressions of famous celebrity comedians. When Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, starring comedian Jim Carrey, came out we went to the theater together and laughed so hard I thought we would be asked to leave. That day will forever live in infamy for me.

These days, I can watch the roasts on demand anytime I want but there’s something that will never be better than the magic moment we caught that infomercial, and my lifelong obsession began. I’ve had the privilege of roasting my father twice, about ten years apart. I’m aiming for a third. 

Fast forward to present day. Anytime I get a laugh on stage or a roast joke I wrote hits, that dopamine shoots through my brain and brings me right back to that living room where I sat with my dad. And that same moment I realized that making people laugh is the most important thing in life. Period.

Ryan Panucci

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