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It's called Saturday Night Live.
"I've had the chance to audition for SNL, but I'm always a little bit defiant. I don't want to have to go there to prove myself, that I can do it without being in their yacht club," says Williams, who brings his standup comedy to Calgary at Yuk Yuk's Komedy Kabaret tonight and tomorrow.
"Outside of Jim Carrey, there isn't anyone," he says of the current crop of stars headlining comedies, listing off Chris Rock, Mike Myers, David Spade, Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider.
"It's a tough club to break into. I've been fortunate for a guy who's outside the system."
Don't be fooled if Williams sounds bitter. The guy is an eternal optimist. "A lot of people let life live them ... I think if you don't follow your path, then you become bitter. I know 23-year-olds who are bitter. I know guys who are 34 and they're angry and bitter."
Ask Williams about the just-cancelled Geena Davis Show, on which he co-starred, and he sounds anything but shattered.
"It opens new doors for me. The show never got its footing. It never figured out what it wanted to be." And he has nothing but praise for Davis, who he reports was nothing like other movie-star-turned-sitcom-divas.
"The only gossip about Geena is that she's such a good person ... She's totally grounded."
Nor does he sound disappointed that he's not in the next movie, Shallow Hal starring Gwyneth Paltrow, by the Farrelly Brothers, with whom he worked with in Dumb and Dumber (as the highway patrolman who takes a fateful swig from an open beer bottle) and There's Something About Mary (as the serial-killing hitchhiker Ben Stiller picks up).
"We talked to the Farrellys but there are no sweet little cameos in this one. There's nothing juicy." Juicier, he reports, is Sorority Boys, which he describes as "Animal House meets Tootsie," which is due out later this year.
The movie and TV appearances -- on Letterman and Leno, in Freddie Got Fingered and in the lead role in the Disney comedy Rocketman a few years ago -- have helped Williams build a following, one that now turns out for his standup act. After years of obscurity, he now finds audiences cheering and applauding -- before he says a word on stage.
Which has its downside, of course.
"They know me. I didn't have to be good before when they didn't know who I was."
As for what he has planned for the Yuk Yuks crowd this weekend, he says only, "I like to walk the empty halls of unpreparedness."