Sam Kinison’s history with substance abuse was no secret. Alcohol and cocaine caused several problems for the comedian throughout his life, and those problems began before he was famous. According to his brother Bill’s book Brother Sam: The Short Spectacular Life of Sam Kinison, Sam’s addictions got him into some trouble with a couple of mob guys while he was staying in New York early in his career. The two had been giving him cocaine and were insistent on being his managers.
Sam played along in exchange for cocaine, but had no intention of actually being managed by them. Eventually, the guys grew tired of Sam’s games and asked him whether they were going into business together. When Sam said no, they started making threats. He cursed them out in response before being held down and beaten unconscious.
When Sam woke up, he was alone. He quickly went and got a friend of his, and the two of them went back to the place where it happened, armed with knives. Thankfully for them, Sam’s wannabe managers were nowhere to be found. After Sam sobered up, he was shaken by the incident and avoided going to New York for a long time.
By 1985, Rodney Dangerfield was looking to get Sam to perform on his latest Young Comedians Special on HBO, which was being filmed in Manhattan. It took some convincing, but Sam agreed to do the show, and it ended up being the big breakthrough he’d been waiting for. Afterward, Rodney asked Sam why he didn’t perform at his comedy club, Dangerfield’s, that often. Sam hesitantly told him about how he’d gotten beaten up in New York and was afraid to go there.
A week later, the two mob guys who knocked him out approached Sam behind the Comedy Store in Los Angeles and apologized for what they’d done to him. To this day, Sam’s brother Bill has no idea what Rodney said to them to get them to do that, but clearly, he got a lot more respect from people than he let on in his act over the years.
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