CALABASAS, June, 2005
Inside the Mind of Howie Mandel
He’s put down the glove and evolved into a devoted family man, but funnyman Howie Mandel lives in deathly fear of shaking your hand
By Anna David
It can be extremely difficult to determine whether or not Howie Mandel is joking. That’s because he is joking much of the time, and because he has mastered the art of the deadpan delivery to the degree that he should perhaps own the copyright to it. So, when he claims that he wears a helmet simply to convince people that he rides motorcycles, or that the patches on his Dolce & Gabbana jeans commemorate various contests he’s won, I find myself half-believing him – especially when he follows those revelations with a convincing stare. Because, let’s face it, Mandel has spent the past 20-odd years convincing the world that he’s incredibly weird, and thus chronic contesting and random helmet-wearing sound well within the realm of possibility.
Then again, it’s all part of the shtick that Mandel has been honing for the past half-century. He’s constantly creating humor out of his non-reaction, whether he’s encasing his head in a rubber glove or asking a craft store employee where he can find the correct tape for mummifying his dead grandmother — as he does in the pilot for Hidden Howie: The Private Life of a Public Nuisance, his hybrid hidden-camera and scripted half-hour sitcom that debuts on Bravo in August.
“To me, those quiet, awkward moments are the funniest, best moments that I’ll never forget,” Mandel – who shaved his signature curls for a role three years ago and has never gone back – says. “There’s nothing funnier than real situations.”
As a child growing up in Toronto, Mandel never imagined a career in entertainment. Still, there was an oxymoronic nature to his personality that perhaps hinted at his future. A quiet, well-behaved student most of the time (“I was never the class clown,” he insists), Mandel nevertheless showed his predilection for comedy in rather outrageous ways.
“I was thrown out of high school for asking some construction crews to come down to the school to give bids on how much it would cost to build an addition to the library,” Mandel recalls. When the principal called him into the office to discuss the incident, “I acted very serious and naïve, and said, ‘I’m being responsible, I’m getting three bids,’” he continues. “The humor was about how he would react.” Sure, Mandel was expelled, but he was also rewarded with one of the most memorable moments of awkward silence of his life. “As a responsible adult and parent now, it was probably the wrong thing to do,” he concedes.
After finding work at a carpet company, Mandel cut out the middleman and started selling carpets directly to customers. Despite his color-blindness (“There were a lot of ugly homes in Toronto because of me,” he says now), Mandel’s business flourished. “If you can entertain people, they’ll buy,” he explains. “I would just go in and do what I’m going now, but there was no two-drink minimum and they were buying carpet.”
