by Sarah Fayad
Daily Lobo
Scott Carter took an audience from laughter to catharsis, from the porn industry to asthma over an hour and a half on Saturday.
The former writer for Bill Maher's "Politically Incorrect" and "Real Time" presented a comic solo performance to a packed crowd in Theatre X.
His monologue, "Heavy Breathing," outlined the story of a young writer's life - one that was not always so lavish.
Carter moved to New York years ago in search of fame, and became a writer for a pornographic magazine.
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Carter described his family as devout WASPs, people who believed "Sex was a sublimination of the work impulse."
"I catered to the largest spectrum of perversion in the world," he said.
From 7 a.m. to 4 p.m, Carter was locked behind an unmarked glass storefront door, just beyond an art room covered in shiny genitalia-ridden wallpaper. The owner of the magazine, a man Carter said looked and talked like Marlin Brando in "The Godfather," enforced this locked-door policy, assuming writers needed as much time to write the pieces as it would have taken him.
They did not. As a result, Carter, who said he always had his eyes on a position where he didn't have to describe positions, began to work on a play and a stand up routine.
The play was a farcical "The Scarlet Letter" entitled "Red Letter Day," and the stand-up routine was waiting for him after he was eventually fired for being "too intelligent for smut."
He stopped wasting his time and began joke-jockeying every night in any club he could. In the workshop he held in the conference room of UNM's drama department, he suggested stand-up as a way for young writers to break into comedy.
After moving to Los Angeles for a brief period, he returned to New York, where he said he found himself not getting nearly as much as he wanted done with his life.
Carter had asthma since he was young. In New York he had the most intense asthma attack of his life and nearly died.
When he was released from the hospital, he got a new lease on life. Carter said he told everyone who mattered to him how much he loved them, gave to the poor and tried to find the god with whom he'd been at odds for so many years.
He said he struck a deal with the universe that anytime anyone wanted to discuss religion with him, he would do so to further his knowledge. Now Carter prays before every show.
Carter's family discovered he had asthma at the age of two. Because of this, he spent a great deal of his time in front of the television, attempting to avoid an attack.
"I began to see life through a celluloid screen," he said.
A move to Arizona was among the changes his family had to make. This put a strain on his father's business and made him apologize to his father for all the trouble he thought he had caused.
He said his father's response was, "Don't worry about it. One day, just send for me in a Cadillac."
