Personal loss has led an award-winning entertainer to admit that “too many bad things” have cemented his decision to turn away from God.
(Video Credit: CBS Sunday Morning)
Many who’ve experienced loss or hear stories of terrible tragedies have found themselves asking why a merciful God would allow bad things to happen. Counting himself among them, actor, comedian and filmmaker Billy Crystal confessed in a new interview about his one-man show that he no longer talks to God because “I don’t trust Him.”
Hardly his first time taking a position against the Almighty, Crystal lamented his own losses of last year that inspired the Broadway show “860” as motivation during an interview with Tracy Smith for “CBS Sunday Morning.”
The conversation specifically addressed the Palisades Fire that took his home of decades as well as the killing of longtime friends, Rob and Michele Reiner, leading Smith to ask if the comedian took those painful losses to God.
“No ’cause I don’t trust Him,” said Crystal, prompting the follow-up, “Are you serious?”
“Too many bad things have happened. The Earth is in bad shape. This is a weird, scary time. So no, not anymore,” he added.
Named for the street address of the destroyed home he and his wife, Janice, raised their children and grandchildren in, the actor recalled how he felt a grief like that of the loss of his father when he first saw what remained of “860,” which he then processed through comedy.
“When we were finally able to get back to our house in the Palisades, which I lived in for 46 years, like thousands of you, our house now looked like this,” he recalled, sharing a photo of the damage. “I stepped onto the grounds and fell to my knees and I wailed. I had not cried like that since I was 15-years-old and I was told that my father had just died. I remember looking in the mirror back then with my whole life ahead of me, thinking, ‘What’s my life gonna be like without him?'”
“And now, folks, I’m 76-years-old, without a mirror and a lot less life to ponder, thinking, ‘What is my life going to be like without our home?'” said Crystal.
Reiner was said to have inspired the title, and the actor addressed how he last spoke with his friends, allegedly killed by their son, Nick Reiner, at a holiday party the night before the slaying.
“We said goodbye … And then, what?”
Asked how he manages to find the humor in tragedy, he responded, “That’s what I do …Â It’s a healer.”
“I’ve absorbed the biggest pains that people can go through — the loss of home, dearest of friends — and I’m okay,” added Crystal, who contended, “When life gets tough, all you can do is laugh.”
Years after his Tony Award-winning one-man show “700 Sundays,” which touched on his Jewish upbringing, the entertainer released the book “Still Foolin’ ‘Em” in 2013, wherein he wrote, “Now, I’d love to believe that there is a God watching out for us, but I can’t. How would he explain things?
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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