Clean comedy, we swear

Wild Bill Bauer makes them laugh without resorting to profanity

By Dan Craft
Entertainment editor

BLOOMINGTON -- You would think someone nicknamed Wild Bill might be the kind of guy who'd curse like the devil with a thorn in his hoof.

But you would be wrong.

D---n wrong.

Meet Wild Bill Bauer, a mild-mannered comedian who just for the life of him can't get profane on stage.

Maybe it has something to with a Catholic upbringing that produced a priest, a nun and a Catholic school teacher among his multiple siblings.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that if you don't swear off stage, why would you do it on stage?

Maybe it's just a case of pulling a fast one on the audience that might assume if you don't batter them with four-letter epithets then your comedy can't have teeth.

Ha, ha, ha, notes the comedian who usually gets the last laugh.

Wild Bill Bauer, a one-time writer for Dennis Miller, Tom Arnold and others, says that when he takes to the stage of Bloomington's Tree House Lounge for four shows Friday and Saturday (8 and 10:30 p.m. each night), don't think that comedy-minus-profanity equals decorum.

Bauer, of Minneapolis, says that a lot of his comedy comes from the dark side, and a lot of it has to do with taboos related to family matters, sexual peccadilloes, religion quirks and other twisted facts of modern life.

And he's not afraid to go into clinical, scatological detail.

In other words, "It's very adult."

In fact, a movie script he once entertained writing was to be called, "The Sickest Movie Ever Made."

Without profanity.

Sickest or no, "My family are not big cursers," he says. "I like a lot of that stuff, but that's just not how I was brought up. I cursed a little when I started out, but I went, 'You know, this isn't me. It looks false.'"

And there is nothing worse than a comedian who doesn't appear to believe in himself or what he's doing.

Besides, "There are plenty of comedians out there using four-letter words," he says, noting that his refusal to join the club hasn't created a serious shortage.

To the public at large, Bauer is probably best known for his stints on the nationally syndicated "Bob and Tom" morning radio show, where he was a regular call-in comic for around a decade during the '90s, offering well-received pieces like "Russian Roulette," a lengthy and merciless discourse on the lighter side of blowing one's brains out.

Without profanity.

But Bauer is also a collaborator whose joke-writing skills have taken him into the folds of comedians like Arnold, for whom he has nothing but good things to say. "He's a great guy, and always liked what I did."

Arnold, also a Minneapolis native, hired Bauer to write scripts for his short-lived TV series, "The Jackie Thomas Show," as well as doing a rewrite on Arnold's 1996 feature, "Carpool."

Bauer was also hired by Dennis Miller to write for his HBO series.

"He hired five guys to contribute 20 jokes a week, for 350 dollars each. After the show began to gather an audience, they got a budget increase and they hired three full-time writers to write everything every day."

Bauer claims that "Miller loved the quality of the jokes I gave him, but I struggle with current events. A lot of it is really boring stuff to me, and the stuff that isn't, I have strong opinions on."

Because Miller's humor is driven by current events, the marriage probably wasn't meant to last. And Bauer's eventual firing wasn't taken personally. "Dennis Miller is a genius."

Wild Bill's comedy, he admits, tends to be heavily family-driven. And no one in his family is immune -- even his brother the priest.

"Someone asked me if it isn't difficult being a comedian in the same town where my brother lives. I said that my only fear is that the guy is going to do something that will embarrass me."

Barump.

And without profanity.

Speaking of family, Wild Bill can lay claim to another offbeat quirk these days: his opening act is his own 23-year-old son, whose uses the marquee handle P. Bau.

And dad is son's severest critic.

"His opening routine is really stupid," he says. "But he won't listen to me. Once you get by the first few minutes, though, he does well."

Best of all, Bauer adds, he does it -- yes -- "without profanity."