#1 – The Fam: A Brief History of Slapstick Comedians, Expectations, Ups, Downs & Drive

​My name is Tessa Maurer. You probably haven’t heard of me, but there’s a very high chance that you have heard of my family.​ My great-grandfather was Moe Howard of The Three Stooges, and his bros, Curly and Shemp Howard, were my great-uncles. Wild, I know. You don’t know how strange it is to have a pencil growing up with your great grandfather’s head carved and bulging on top of it, to turn on the TV and every other comedian mimics your great-uncle. It’s surreal, when I stop and think about it. Mostly, it was absurdly normal. Laughably so. My family history is a Google search away. I can find my great-great grandfather’s photos online. I can ask Siri how old my grandmother is if I forget, which I have.

What the hell, right?

Moe, Curly & their parents (my great-great grandparents).

I was born to a family of artists—painters, writers, actors, musicians. In that regard, I was lucky, but I was also stubborn, so either way, I would have become an artist. It’s intrinsic. It’s always been there. That isn’t luck. There was nothing really to “become.”

It hasn’t all been fun and fame. There was a lawsuit back in…1994? We lost the bulk of our rights to a replacement Stooge’s family. I'm told that laws were made as a result of that suit to prevent it from happening to families in the future. Too late, of course. It was and is our legacy, and yet we don’t really control it. I'm not here to point fingers or stir anything up. Still, I’ve known how unfair the world can be since I was a little kid. Maybe someday, somehow, it’ll change. I hope so. I always have.

My grandfather, Norman Maurer, was a writer, comic book illustrator, producer… I’ve heard he was the youngest person to make comics. He was 12 or 13, I think. He and his brother, Leonard, along with his bud Joe Kubert, invented 3D comic books. Unfortunately, he died of lung cancer in 1986 at age 60. I was born in 1992. I’m told he would’ve loved me.

Joe Kubert (left), Norman Maurer (right).

And closer to home, my dad was and is a freelance screenwriter. He’s worked on countless things for countless countries, but when you’re a freelance writer, work and money are not consistent. So, while I grew up with MASSIVE success a few generations away, I also grew up with money worries and woes close to home. In my home. And I knew that things were fickle, that the entire mountain you built from nothing could become someone else’s. I learned that movie deals fall through—more than half my life of falling throughs.

This gives me two options, right?

I can either say “fuck it” to all the bullshit, all the downs with the ups, and ride that passion in my blood, knowing that if they can do it, I can. Consequences be damned. Financial fears be damned.

Or, I can get a job—a 9-5, write in my spare time, and most likely slowly decay. That’s probably the easier route. I would be “safe.” I would be adequate. Maybe someday I’d be more. Maybe.

When I was younger, I had the idea that you should only write (or do art) on the side. That you should have something "stable" to catch you and save you.

But doesn’t that mean you don’t have to have success? That you don’t have to write and draw and make art to live? Doesn’t it stop being vital and start becoming…optional? Forgettable? Secondary?

Wasn’t gonna fly for me, and it still isn’t. Once I started writing, I knew I had to do something with it. I knew I could make something of it. My current circumstances allow me to keep creating as my primary function, but I can feel the pressures of life welling. The ease makes it easy to let my dreams be distant things—things that I don’t have to push for, and the looming financial dooms if I don't make it go right light a fire I often want to jump away from and pretend isn't there. I should push. I want to. I’m trying to. Other people are probably trying more, but they aren’t me, and that’s something you should never forget. No one else is you.

My family did it. So can I. But I’d do it anyway, even if none of them existed. I am an artist. I am a writer. It’s at my core of cores. It is my anchor and my guide; it is my fear and it is my love. I have that added push, though, that name to live up to, that extra spark in my blood.

So, I have to get my life together. I have to be what I’ve invested 13 years into. I have to make you know my name, too.

Hang on. It’s probably gonna be a bumpy ride.​
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