My Cat Makes Me Laugh a Lot (Ep. 55 - Bette Midler) (Patreon)

My guest this week is writer and comedian H. Alan Scott, whom you may know as co-host of the fabulous Out on the Lanai podcast. But he first came to my attention when I was working as a nightlife photographer in LA. There was this one guy I'd photograph at a bar every now and then who was shy, who hung back from the dance floor, and who whenever I took his picture would have something to say that made me laugh.

And that man ... was Howie Mandel. Just kidding, it was H. Alan Scott.

I never told him this, but I didn't just look forward to photographing him because he was funny and friendly. H Alan was a pleasure to shoot because he never posed. It may not come as a total surprise that in Los Angeles, many people are very concerned with how they are seen, and so whenever a camera is nearby they contort themselves into an improbable shape that they believe is the most flattering, and as a result, pictures of them are often more about the posture than the person. 

H Alan, on the other hand, always looked into my camera honestly, sometimes with a smile and sometimes not. I didn't know it, but at the time he was emerging from a long and difficult ordeal that had changed his life. And when I pointed my camera at him, I was pointing it at a man who had no use for putting on a happy face.

Watch clips of the things we talked about in this week's episode: http://www.mattbaume.com/sewers-shownotes/2016/4/6/my-cat-makes-me-laugh-a-lot-ep-55-bette-midler