Cosby's life as a senior-citizen
David
Cosby in Winter
America’s favorite father has become a senior citizen. Anguishing over
the loss of his son and frustrated by modern life, the comedian
explores health and aging in a new book
By Allison Samuels
Nov. 3 issue — Imagine for a moment that Cliff Huxtable has
been possessed by the ghost of Fred Sanford. That’s the first thing
that comes to mind when Bill Cosby greets you at 3 in the afternoon in
his palatial Manhattan brownstone, still puttering around in red-plaid
flannel pajamas on an unusually warm fall day.
IT’S BEEN A decade since the 66-year-old comedian stopped
playing TV’s favorite dad, and in retirement he’s grown older and more
ornery than we remember. The round, friendly face is worn and thinner,
and the mischievous sparkle is dimmed by weariness. In case you were
wondering why he’s wearing bedclothes to an afternoon interview, Cosby
cuts a playfully defiant look that screams “I dare you to say a word,”
and explains, “In my house, on my couch—I love it. It’s the best work
environment you could ask for.”
He wants to talk about his latest effort, “I Am What I Ate...
And I’m Frightened,” a comic, poignant memoir about letting go of the
finer things in life—namely cigars and potato chips. For years Cosby
ate the way he did as a teenager; after all, his mom dined on lamb
chops and fried potatoes, right through four minor strokes, and lived
into her late 80s. But Cosby’s doctor laid down the law early last
year when he went in for a regular checkup and came out with test
results showing a high cholesterol count and a 30 percent blockage in
the carotid artery that feeds the brain. If he wanted to keep playing
his newest role—as a real-life grandfather—he’d have to trade in pork
rinds for grilled fish. “They will never know that side of me,” Cosby
says, with a laugh, of his two infant granddaughters.
A phone call interrupts his monologue. It’s Michael, a former
Morehouse College classmate of Cosby’s late son, Ennis. The comic’s
face lights up as he learns that Michael has passed the bar exam, on
his first try. (A longtime champion of black colleges, the comic loves
nothing more than to see minority kids getting their education.) Cosby
tells his caller to hold. He dashes into the foyer and stands in front
of a massive bronze bust of his son, adorned with spiritual crystals
placed there by his wife, Camille. “Ennis, Michael passed on his very
first try,” Cosby addresses the bust. “Isn’t that something? That’s a
Morehouse man for you. Nothing can stop you.” Before heading back to
the phone, Cosby places a kiss on the bronze forehead.
This is hardly the dad in the bright, colorful sweaters we
remember from “The Cosby Show,” the one who hid his potato-chip habit
from his wife and delivered a deadpan eulogy as he flushed his
daughter’s goldfish down the toilet. America’s favorite father has
become a senior citizen, weathered by life’s aches and pains. The loss
of his 27-year-old son to a robber’s bullet six years ago hangs over
Cosby’s life, from the vivid oil paintings of Ennis that decorate
several rooms of the family home to the tidbits he constantly offers
about the late young man (“Ennis was gonna pledge Alpha,” he says when
you comment on his own fraternity key chain). Where Dr. Huxtable could
afford to make fun when Claire nagged him to snack on rice cakes, a
more frail Bill Cosby knows there’s nothing funny about heart attacks
and strokes. Nor does he find humor in what many of today’s black
comics are doing with the legacy he left them. Where Cosby’s routines
were mostly good-natured and colorblind, he thinks comics now are
foulmouthed, misogynistic and too eager to reinforce negative
stereotypes of black people.
When Cosby went to collect a lifetime achievement award at
this year’s Emmys, cohost Wanda Sykes asked him in all of her
stereotypical finger-snapping, ghetto-girl glory how he managed to get
where he did. “I spoke English,” Cosby remarked. He’s particularly
irritated that the image of African-American equality he gave us on
“The Cosby Show” isn’t more of a reality. Furious at the increased
opposition to affirmative action, Cosby says, “There’s no admission at
all at the severe lack of equality minority kids have from day one.”
Still, in his own, funny way, Cosby seems to be making peace
with loss and disappointment. Rather than let the footlights dim on a
phenomenal four-decade career, he performs almost every weekend, doing
—stand-up routines in front of sold-out crowds or making fund-raising
appearances at black colleges. He’s writing and producing a “Fat
Albert” movie for release late next year, and created a new show for
Nick at Nite based on his best-selling book “Fatherhood.” He admits
that even when his pain was the most unbearable, he never thought of
giving up his life’s work. “Comedy is what I do, and nothing changes
that. I like to make people laugh,” he says. “It was so hard the first
few months after Ennis’s death because people would look at me with
such sad faces. I was used to people seeing me and immediately smiling
and laughing.” Still, he’s found ways to draw from the hand life has
dealt him for inspiration on new projects. His “Little Bill”
children’s books, which have been turned into a Nickelodeon series,
are an homage to Ennis.
Socializing at home with friends one day after getting the
lecture from his doctor, Cosby was inspired to write “I Am What I
Ate.” “My friends would always end up talking about the medicine we
forgot to take, or the blood pressure that needed to be lower,” he
says. The book is filled with the kind of crotchety humor that could
come only from a man who’s been told he must part with his beloved
scrapple, a fried mush of pork scraps and cornmeal. “I look at some of
these people coming out of these fast-food restaurants and some of
these people look very large. But they are still up and walking
around,” Cosby writes in his trademark rambling style (which is a bit
more rambling these days). “I see a woman who must weigh 270 pounds. I
weigh 180 and I want to know why my doctor said I can’t have it and
her doctor said she could continue to go there and get some fries. I
want to know why and now I’m a very, very angry person. Sometimes
these people just don’t want me to have fun.” Hardest for Cosby to
part with were his Cuban cigars. He’d been smoking five a day for
nearly 30 years. But he quit cold turkey, drawing inspiration from one
of his jazz heroes. “I just thought about John Coltrane and how he
kicked his heroin habit just like that,” Cosby says. “He just decided
to stop one day, and then he just worked and worked so he wouldn’t
feel the withdrawal.”
While Cosby draws strength from the old school, he’s never
cared much for the younger generation of black comedians and their
profanity-filled humor—guys like Martin Lawrence, Jamie Fox and Eddie
Murphy (who parodied Cosby in his concert film “Delirious,” telling
the older comic to “have a Coke and a smile and shut the f—- up”).
Cosby’s disappointment with the younger crop has only grown with age.
“I do miss the days when comedy wasn’t mean,” Cosby says. “When jokes
weren’t at other people’s expense and you used profanity rarely.
Getting people to laugh without being vulgar and cruel is the creative
process at its best.”
If Cosby is hard on the younger guys, it’s because he thinks
their job isn’t limited to getting laughs. Whether they know it or
not, they are role models as well. Though it may have gone over the
heads of many, “The Cosby Show,” which reigned for nine years on NBC,
was practically a public-service announcement on behalf of equality, a
30-minute reminder that minorities can and should enjoy the same
success, quality of life and family joy as every other American.
During the “Cosby” years, the comic says he would often get complaints
about how unrealistic it was for a black family to have a doctor and a
lawyer as parents. “But then I watched ‘Friends,’ and any number of
other shows based in New York, and no black people are in them. How
realistic is that?!” Cosby says.
Yet Cliff Huxtable lived in an idealized world, and Cosby’s
blood boils every time he is reminded of this. “I watch these talk
shows and hear the people complain about affirmative action, and it
just makes me angry,” Cosby says. “You’d think that all black people
are doing is begging for money and for special attention when they
don’t deserve it.” His disappointment is palpable whenever the subject
of inner-city education comes up. In spite of the millions he and his
wife have spent on educational charities, his outlook is still bleak.
“Some of these urban elementary schools don’t have enough books to go
around and then the pages are missing. It’s maddening to me.” He
reminds you that Ennis was going to be part of the solution: he was
studying to be a teacher when he was murdered. “That guy didn’t know
what he was doing when he took Ennis away from us and from others.
That kid had so much to offer and he wanted to become a teacher to
give it all back. That’s the kind of young man that’s gone.” Gone, but
never forgotten, in Cosby’s world.