Episode 1029 - Steve Sweeney
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:I'm out of town.
Marc:It's early in the morning for me.
Marc:And I'm in a place where the sound bounces around, which you probably can't appreciate as much as I can.
Marc:Appreciate not being the word that I really want to use.
Marc:I mean, I'm not appreciating it.
Marc:I guess that is the word.
Marc:I'm acknowledging it.
Marc:How's your morning going?
Marc:I thought I was ready to do this, but I don't have much time.
Marc:I have a small window of time here.
Marc:Today on the show, Steve Sweeney, the veteran comic, one of the Mount Rushmore figures of Boston comedy.
Marc:I knew him when I was starting out.
Marc:He's here today.
Marc:He's got a movie out.
Marc:It's called Sweeney Killing Sweeney.
Marc:It's available on iTunes and Amazon.
Marc:When I was starting out in Boston, this guy was the king.
Marc:He was one of the kings.
Marc:There was like three or four kings, and Steve was one of them.
Marc:So it was kind of interesting.
Marc:I don't think I've really talked to him probably ever, but maybe I talked to him a few times back when I was a kid, just a sprouting comic.
Marc:Back at Nick's Comedy Stop in Boston.
Marc:But I certainly haven't talked to him as an adult.
Marc:And it was very interesting for me.
Marc:It's like a trip back to a younger me.
Marc:So let me explain what's going on here.
Marc:Last time I talked to you, I was in St.
Marc:Louis.
Marc:And then on Sunday morning, I packed up my bags at 5 in the morning.
Marc:I went to the St.
Marc:Louis airport.
Marc:And I flew to Toronto, Canada.
Marc:Toronto, Ontario.
Marc:And now I got here on Sunday afternoon, checked into a hotel, and went to a fitting for a movie.
Marc:I got off the plane Sunday.
Marc:I tried on a bunch of clothes from the 1970s.
Marc:I selected a few.
Marc:And then I went and tried on a wig.
Marc:And then that night I went and relaxed and I looked at my work for the next day.
Marc:I'm shooting this David Bowie film with Johnny Flynn.
Marc:And it's interesting about this movie has been out in the press a bit and people's immediate response was like, no, no, don't ruin Bowie.
Marc:You can't, you know.
Marc:Look, I'm a pretty big fucking David Bowie fan.
Marc:And I read this script and I found it to be quite interesting.
Marc:It's a very intimate movie.
Marc:It's a very specific movie about a very specific time in Bowie's life.
Marc:It's not some arcing biopic with a big scope.
Marc:It really kind of takes place over like a three-week period of time on Bowie's trip to America in 1971.
Marc:I play a music label, Mercury, publicist.
Marc:named Ron Oberman, who I don't really know anything about.
Marc:He's still around, but apparently he's not really functioning that well, so I couldn't do that much research.
Marc:But I see the lines, and I get it, and I'm just doing the work, man.
Marc:Now I'm in it.
Marc:It's the third day of shooting.
Marc:We're shooting 12-hour days up here.
Marc:But it's really the difference in shooting things, and I know this is kind of a new world for me, but...
Marc:When you're shooting, shooting can take a long time, but all these scenes are very intimate, and there's only a couple of people involved so far.
Marc:The crew is pretty small.
Marc:There only seems to be one camera.
Marc:The director shoots very quickly.
Marc:The cinematographer, the DP...
Marc:He's 80 years old, and his name's Nick Noland, and apparently he's been shooting stuff forever, and he actually shot John and Yoko in bed in a short documentary, and he shot some Mark Boland footage back in the early 70s, and I think my director, Gabriel Range, works with this guy a lot, or has worked with him before.
Marc:But the idea that this guy shot these guys at that time is pretty trippy, man.
Marc:And the fact that the dude is still working.
Marc:I mean, schlepping cameras around, getting on the crane, getting into the little camera seat at 80 and just like killing it, which is a word I don't use that much.
Marc:It's pretty astounding.
Marc:I wish I had time to talk to him, but this is going to be a cram, man.
Marc:So the response to the Eve Ensler episode has been kind of overwhelming.
Marc:And I'm getting a lot of feedback about the impact that episode had on people's lives, both men and women.
Marc:And it's heavy, man.
Marc:And I'm happy that that happened.
Marc:Thank you for the feedback, and I was happy to provide that service, really, which was to have that conversation with Eventsler and to share it with you guys.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I've got three pages of dialogue to do today.
Marc:It's an outburst.
Marc:I get mad at Johnny Flynn's David Bowie and have a little scene.
Marc:I make a scene for the scene, and, you know, I mean, you folks know me.
Marc:That's a stretch.
Marc:So there's a lot of things going on that I don't have in front of me.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour to check out all the tour dates.
Marc:There's been a couple added since I've maybe last talked to you.
Marc:The Montreal Just for Laughs Festival.
Marc:I'll also be up here in the Toronto Just for Laughs Festival.
Marc:Glow is coming back on the air.
Marc:Sword of Trust, which is S-W-O-R-D, Sword of Trust.
Marc:The film I made with Lynn Shelton is opening, is premiering in theaters in July.
Marc:And then as July kind of moves on, it's going to spread to a few theaters, about 24, 25 theaters.
Marc:I believe that, I don't know if the dates for that are up on the website, but you can go to swordoftrust.com, I think, to get all the information on that.
Marc:Oh my God, I think I need a break, you guys.
Marc:I think I'm going to need a break.
Marc:Is that okay if I take a break?
Marc:Would somebody please give me a vacation?
Marc:Mark, I'm talking to you.
Marc:Mark, give yourself a vacation, will you?
Marc:Can you?
Marc:So Steve Sweeney, how do I talk about Steve Sweeney?
Marc:I oftentimes do not know how young Mark did what he did.
Marc:I have no concept.
Marc:I was in Los Angeles in the late 80s.
Marc:Got all fucked up on drugs and went back to Boston to restart my comedy career that I'd started in Los Angeles at the Comedy Store.
Marc:And that was 1988.
Marc:And some of you know this information, but I came in second in a big comedy contest there.
Marc:And from that, like August 1988, I've been a working comedian since then.
Marc:Long time.
Marc:But there was a local comedy scene.
Marc:It was really a regional comedy scene that had this group of comics that just dominated it for years.
Marc:And I was entering that world because I was living in Boston and it was a one-nighter market.
Marc:And that's how I made my bones.
Marc:Was running around to bars, discos, pubs, bowling alleys, hotel conference rooms of all different sorts all over the New England area doing these gigs.
Marc:And one of the big dudes at that time, there were a few of them.
Marc:was Steve Sweeney.
Marc:Steve Sweeney was like Boston's own comedic superhero, man.
Marc:You just had this crew of people that a lot of people don't know because they were New England comics.
Marc:I mean, they spread out sometimes.
Marc:They took trips and they went to New York and they went to L.A.
Marc:And they did the evening at the improv and this and that.
Marc:But in terms of working comics, a lot of people didn't know and there were dozens of them.
Marc:and Steve, Steve Sweeney, was one of the big guys.
Marc:If you were to go to New England and mention, if you were to say to anybody in the sort of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island region, you know a comic from Boston named Steve Sweeney?
Marc:They would be like, of course, of course, of course I know Sweeney.
Marc:He did these big characters, big, and he just, he owned them and he leaned into them and he just had a huge presence on stage.
Marc:And I remember, I always, it wasn't a matter of intimidating.
Marc:It was just that he was sort of mythic.
Marc:I mean, you'd see him, you know, sometimes he'd do, you know, 10, 15 minutes when he's supposed to do 45 or he'd do 20.
Marc:And then sometimes he'd do, you know,
Marc:an hour, but you just, he was sort of always delivered the goods.
Marc:But at the time back in the day, and this was, I think before he sobered up, you just, I don't know.
Marc:He was intimidating.
Marc:He was a little crazy.
Marc:You know, he was kind of wild.
Marc:So my memories of him are kind of like awe of some kind and sort of like, you know, what's that guy about?
Marc:You know, and just knowing that he was, you know, he was the guy.
Marc:He's the king of fucking Boston.
Marc:Comedy-wise, in that world, I, of course, entered the world of Catch a Rising Star where it was me and Dave Cross and Janine Garofalo and Laura Keitlinger and Louie and Chuck Sklar and John Groff, Lauren Dombrowski, whatever.
Marc:We were a generation beneath them, and we were in this little basement club in Cambridge.
Marc:Yet there was this regional scene, you know, this regional comedy community.
Marc:And I worked within it, you know.
Marc:I was there doing one-nighters with a lot of these guys.
Marc:But it was intimidating in a weird way for me to talk to Steve Sweeney because, like I said, he held this place where I was like, this guy was the biggest guy.
Marc:And there was a couple of things that he did that I thought were just sort of astounding.
Marc:And I really haven't seen or talked to him much, maybe in passing, but not really, in, you know, what, almost 30 years?
Marc:But he came by, and I was excited for the opportunity.
Marc:And he's created, made a new movie called Sweeney Killing Sweeney.
Marc:It's available on iTunes and Amazon.
Marc:And he'll be at the Improv Asylum in Boston this Sunday, June 23rd, doing his one-man show, Townie.
Marc:And this is me talking to Steve Sweeney back in the house, back in the house in California, Steve Sweeney and me.
Guest:So, it's good to see you.
Guest:It's really good to see you, Mark.
Guest:I watch you, and I watch Joe, and I watch other people.
Guest:It's such an interesting thing to come back here to Los Angeles, because I lived here for eight years.
Guest:And I remember having all of these...
Guest:And then I came back out for a few auditions and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I didn't get them, I got flooded with those old feelings of like, why am I here?
Guest:And just this terrible, terrible third world kind of 405 freeway kind of jumping out of my skin.
Guest:Loneliness and pain experience.
Guest:From when you lived here.
Guest:From when you lived here.
Guest:But see, when I come out and I actually have something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I feel like a valid human being.
Guest:And then I come out to this place.
Guest:I get to watch guys like you and Joe Rogan and Bill Burr and all this.
Guest:And I remember all of you guys.
Guest:When we were kids?
Guest:Well, I remember a lot of you freaking opened for me.
Guest:And I tell people, you want to get successful in this business?
Guest:Open for me.
Guest:And then I'll get to watch you go buy me.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:It's not a race.
Marc:It's not a race, Steve.
Marc:It's a fucking crapshoot.
Marc:This is like fucking standing at a roulette wheel.
Marc:When you got the talent, you hope that you fucking hit your number.
Guest:Well, let me put it to you another way, okay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's times in life when you fall into things.
Guest:Then there's times in life where you make conscious choices.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So sometimes you make a conscious choice out of total desperation.
Guest:Yeah, desperation.
Guest:So I left here.
Guest:I was with a woman.
Guest:I was engaged.
Guest:I like these podcasts because you can get personal.
Guest:I don't have to do shtick.
Guest:And then I came back, and it was the one winter where it was like raining every day.
Guest:It was like a tsunami.
Guest:And I had a guy.
Guest:I had one of those Oakwood apartments, you know those corporate apartments?
Guest:Sure, the furnished ones.
Guest:The furnished ones.
Guest:And so the guy next to me...
Guest:You could hear through the wall.
Guest:He had to call Africa every day at 3 because that's when they wake up.
Guest:And I like that he spoke from his heart.
Guest:But I was getting homicidal.
Guest:No, this is an important call.
Guest:I have to make this call.
Guest:It's my family.
Guest:And then I was just overwhelmed with this tremendous sense of isolation.
Guest:And what I said was...
Guest:I don't know where I have to go, but I got to get the fuck out of here.
Marc:But let's go back, though, because when I was in Boston, I came in second in that riot in 1988.
Marc:Well, that was Chicago, the riots.
Marc:No, that was an earlier riot.
Marc:This was the WBCN riot.
Marc:So I lost to Sue McGinnis.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You remember her?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How's she doing?
Marc:Do you see her around?
Marc:She's still doing it?
Marc:I guess.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she's probably doing it.
Marc:So I started working then around Boston doing the one-nighters, working, driving you guys around to different parts of the world.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I remember driving Dick Dougherty somewhere, Dick Dougherty.
Marc:You know what your problem?
Marc:You're insecure.
Marc:You're insecure.
Yeah.
Marc:But that's when I started doing the thing, when I started working for 11 was 88.
Marc:And that's when I first started meeting you guys.
Marc:And your crew was you and Gavin, George McDonald.
Marc:Lenny.
Marc:Lenny Clark.
Marc:Kenny Rogerson.
Marc:Kenny Rogerson.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was it Warren McDonald, Mike McDonald, Seisler, Lazarus.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:They were all around.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, everybody was around.
Marc:Leary before he got big.
Marc:So you guys were like, you know, you were the big guys in the Boston area.
Marc:And the weird thing about Boston, I don't think that people know, but I've talked to a few guys on the show, is that it was its own thing.
Marc:It's always been its own thing.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:There are guys that, you know, have made a living, a good living for you.
Marc:Joe Yannetti started with me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:for years right and you know and it was its own you know you could work every weekend somewhere yeah but you were like it was like i just remember the first time seeing you it must have been at like nicks yeah and then i started doing shows there and it was a scary place steve for it for an aggravated sensitive jew like myself it's amazing i lived through it
Guest:It was a scary place for me.
Guest:I know.
Guest:You know, we are not on camera, but this is a great joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I want you to ask me, was Nix a mafia joint?
Guest:Ask me that.
Guest:Was Nix a mafia joint?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:So what I just did was I said no and yes with a headshot.
Marc:Well, I mean, I remember those guys.
Marc:I just remember there were, like, you know, here's what I'm thinking.
Marc:Like, here's the fucked up thing about, like, you know, you're coming over and in my mind, I'm like, what happened to Trigger?
Guest:Trigger Burke.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Trigger is no longer with us, but I gotta tell you something.
Guest:You know, it's so funny.
Guest:Where I grew up, I grew up with guys.
Guest:Which town?
Guest:Charlestown.
Guest:They made a movie of it called Town.
Guest:But I grew up with professional criminals, okay?
Guest:And my rite of passage was shoplifting, okay?
Guest:Which I...
Guest:I was so bad at.
Guest:I mean, I was just like the worst.
Guest:But Trigger, who was a petty thief, he'd done some time, whatever, but he was around the scene.
Guest:I'll never forget this.
Guest:400 people at Nick's.
Guest:I'm doing great.
Guest:I'm on the stage.
Guest:The waitress, of course, they got no clue.
Guest:They bring me a note.
Guest:I figure somebody's car's being towed or somebody had a heart attack.
Guest:Trigger Burke had sent me this note.
Guest:Toaster ovens, 20 bucks.
Guest:He was selling hot frickin' ovens.
Marc:In the parking lot?
Guest:So I grew up with this one guy and he, I was like selling, I wasn't selling, I was like in these cars and we ended up in this sort of armed robbery, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:But anyway, that part of it's not interesting, but this part of it is.
Guest:So I do Knicks, and I look out in the audience, and there's this guy from Charlestown, Joe, Joe Rocco.
Guest:I'm going to use his name because he's no longer with us.
Guest:And I killed.
Guest:I got 400 people, practically a standing ovation.
Guest:So I see him afterwards.
Guest:He comes up to me, and I said...
Guest:I was expecting him to say, Jesus, great you got out of Charleston.
Guest:Or I liked the show, I didn't like the show, but something to do with the event.
Guest:So this is exactly what he said to me, Mark, and he had that look in his eyes.
Guest:He says, there's got to be a lot of money in here.
Guest:I said, you came here so that I could case the joint from the freaking stage.
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Guest:But this is, the comedy just, you know, I guess the word is organic because get all these guys in the street corner.
Guest:You know, they're funny and why don't we try this?
Guest:But when I started, there was no comedy clubs.
Guest:But like, let me ask you something.
Guest:I was opening for, you know, B.B.
Guest:King and Sugar Shack and all this stuff.
Marc:But who was like at that time, like in Charlestown, like how many kids in your family?
Guest:I'm the youngest of five.
Guest:Of five.
Marc:And it's not Southie, it's Charlestown.
Guest:You better fucking believe it.
Guest:Don't ever make that mistake.
Guest:There's the North End and there's Charlestown.
Marc:You go over the bridge and there's Charlestown.
Marc:You're a little older than me.
Marc:What was the neighborhood like?
Guest:It was unbelievable.
Guest:In a good way?
Guest:But it's normal.
Guest:I thought it was unbelievable in a great way.
Guest:But there was a mix of people that...
Guest:Things were normal.
Guest:In my one-man show, which I called Townie, I talk about these events that happened to me in my life that were like, and people, you know, like Vietnam, for example.
Guest:So I went to see a psychiatrist because I got drafted and everything.
Guest:And I said, okay, so you know, like when you see someone get shot and they fall down and the blood's coming out.
Guest:You know how like when you're having armed robbery and everybody leaves and no one says that?
Guest:And the psychiatrist said to me,
Guest:No.
Guest:That's totally outside my experience.
Guest:Do you think everybody, I said, isn't that normal?
Guest:So it was this wonderful mix.
Guest:Everybody knew each other.
Guest:It was like Charlestown was all Irish.
Guest:The North End was all Italian.
Guest:And I will never forget this.
Guest:One of the most important things in Charlestown was
Guest:You didn't have to win, but you had a fight.
Guest:You didn't have to win, but you had a fight.
Guest:Now, there were individual fights, and I'll never forget Davey Ladder and the projects.
Guest:He broke one of the rules.
Guest:These were fist fights, Mark.
Guest:He kicked me in the balls, and it was like...
Guest:You know, it was like Pavarotti hitting the high notes.
Guest:So then everybody jumped in and they got him.
Guest:So those were the individual fights.
Guest:But then there were town fights, the Irish guys against the Italians.
Guest:So we were lined up on the bridge.
Guest:So you'd be lined up against one guy.
Guest:But I feel like you like movies, I assume.
Sure.
Guest:I felt like I was watching a movie because being Irish, we don't have any feelings.
Guest:Everything's suppressed.
Guest:Even the way we dance, it's like everything's stiff.
Guest:And this guy's across from me.
Guest:It's like an operation.
Guest:I'm going to take your fucking ear.
Guest:I'm going to tear that off.
Guest:You're going to have to fucking swallow that.
Guest:Then I'm going to take your fucking arm.
Guest:And so I'm an actor.
Guest:So when you're an actor, there's always you, and then you watching you, and then you watching the scene.
Guest:I said, this is fucking great.
Guest:This guy's amazing.
Guest:I forget I'm supposed to be fighting him.
Guest:So it was all, it was, you know, homogeneous.
Guest:Is that the word?
Guest:Did you grow up in a mixed neighborhood?
Marc:Not really.
Marc:I mean, where I grew up in New Mexico, Albuquerque was about when I was growing up is about 60 or 70 percent Latino.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:It wasn't really mixed in the same way the East Coast places are mixed.
Marc:Like my my high school is mostly, you know, it's a large Latino community.
Marc:but you're jewish i'm jewish yeah we came by way of jersey how do you spell your last name m-a-r-o-n it's not i just went you know i just did that finding your root show it's not a jewish last name and it wasn't changed but i'm a jew all the way back 100 dna test came back jew
Guest:Ashkenazi Jew.
Guest:I can see you in New Mexico with the Latinos.
Guest:Hey, you're still like Jackie Mason.
Guest:I want to tell you the truth.
Guest:Pueblos, hey, come on.
Guest:We're going to go up to the Pueblos.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:It was a little like that.
Guest:What about American Indians?
Guest:Were those guys there?
Marc:They were around.
Marc:Yeah, they were around.
Guest:Are you a spiritual person?
Guest:Somewhat.
Marc:I don't know if I am.
Marc:I probably, not actively, are you?
Marc:Yes, very much so.
Marc:Like, what do you do?
Marc:Are you still Catholic?
Guest:Only for funerals.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you have to be respectful.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:But I have practices, but I'm also interested in that part of the world for the Native American kind of thing, the Pueblo culture and all of that.
Marc:You can go see all that stuff.
Guest:D.H.
Guest:Lawrence wrote a book about... He lived in New Mexico.
Guest:Yeah, and he said, you know what?
Guest:This place... And, of course, he was English.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, this place does not fit human beings.
Guest:He said, there's something off about this because he was from a European culture, which is indoors.
Guest:Oh, he wrote that when he was in New Mexico?
Guest:Yeah, he said, you know, Europeans are more indoors and everything.
Guest:No space.
Guest:Anyway, I have a fascination with those open places.
Guest:What I do is every summer...
Marc:Dennis Hopper did a lot of coke at that D.H.
Marc:Lawrence place back in the day.
Marc:Did he?
Marc:I think he lived up there for a while.
Marc:Yeah, you have a theory.
Guest:You know, I love Dennis Hopper.
Guest:Greatest.
Guest:Great.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:He had a look, you know, when he was in, like, Apocalypse Now.
Guest:This man's unbelievable.
Guest:I'm telling you, you want to see this guy?
Marc:You're going to go out and land on a fraction.
Guest:Yeah, but then how about in Blue Velvets?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Don't look at me.
Guest:Don't look at me.
Guest:And then with Starkwell there, who I later met when he played Roy Orbison.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Candy called a clown.
Guest:Candy called a clown man.
Guest:Whispers in his arms.
Guest:And then between each bar, they were kicking the guy.
Guest:But there was something about him that I just found lovable.
Guest:And then...
Guest:I'm really not going to get too personal about this, but in Hoosiers, when he played the alcoholic father, do you remember that movie?
Guest:I love it.
Guest:He was so vulnerable.
Guest:He was beautiful.
Guest:But I saw him in New York.
Guest:He was directing.
Guest:He was a multi-faceted guy.
Marc:Did a few movies.
Marc:His movie, Out of the Blue, is one of the most devastating, fucked up movies I've ever seen.
Marc:I've never seen that.
Marc:But you're talking about open spaces.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, that's what I do.
Guest:I'm sober 26 years, coming up on 27.
Guest:All the way through?
Guest:Well, Sundays.
Guest:We also give chips, you know, at AA.
Guest:I always say, with salsa?
Guest:But anyway, we're not going to go there.
Marc:We can go there.
Marc:I'm almost 20.
Guest:Wow, that's great.
Marc:I'm fairly open about it on the air because I think it helps people.
Marc:Tradition be damned, but that's my trip.
Guest:Yeah, no, that's fine.
Guest:So in the program, they say, find a God of your understanding.
Guest:So what I wanted to do, Mark, was...
Guest:I didn't want to just say, okay, here's what I want in a God like a freaking casting session.
Guest:I said, well, if I'm going to find this, I have to experience it.
Guest:It's like Carl Jung on his deathbed.
Guest:They said, do you believe in God?
Guest:And he said, no, I know God.
Guest:So what I did was I just went out to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon and all of that.
Guest:Is that Utah?
Guest:Yeah, and Red Rock Canyon outside of Vegas.
Guest:And that's where I experienced the higher power.
Guest:The white light moment?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of them.
Guest:Yeah, that's great.
Guest:Yeah, what happened for me was I lost the obsession.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which was very freaking painful.
Guest:Took a while, right?
Guest:A few years it took for me to really not think about it.
Guest:I got it once.
Guest:I got it once because I bounced for 10 years and then I just prayed.
Guest:I didn't know what I was praying to and that left.
Guest:Then, of course, the obsession went right to the woman who had just left me.
Guest:That fucking thing lasted forever.
Guest:I took courses in what they call mind-stopping.
Guest:Mind-stopping?
Guest:What's that?
Guest:You picture a white...
Marc:card and you just every time you get caught up in it but the way to the obsession the obsession because it's an obsessive compulsive personality disorder I'm living in it are you really every day sure yeah mine manifests in like I get like I either go to dread and sort of get into a paralysis yeah or I get anxiety where you know I have to do a bunch of little things here and there and I'm always I'm eating these nicotine lozenges I'm drinking tea all day
Marc:It comes up in different places, but as long as it's not making my life unmanageable.
Guest:I can help you.
Marc:With the white card?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Would you like me to help you?
Marc:Right now?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Are you going to tell me something, or are you going to hit me?
Marc:You've got to back me upside the head.
Guest:You've got to be open to this.
Guest:Are you open to this?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I work in jails.
Guest:I work at the Plymouth County Jail, and I worked at Dedham, and I work with kids.
Guest:So this is something that was taught to me.
Guest:There's two things.
Guest:This is for your mind, which is the future's anxiety, the past is depression.
Guest:Where are my feet?
Marc:Yeah, right here.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:So you keep coming back to the same moment.
Guest:But what really worked for me with all of this was to practice a breathing exercise.
Guest:Breathing in four, breathing out four.
Guest:Now, you're like me.
Guest:You're all up in your fucking head.
Guest:I know you're not going to do it.
Guest:No, I'll do it.
Guest:No, you won't.
Guest:I know you.
Guest:You're bullshitting me.
Guest:But I'm telling you, when you're in some airport, which I've just been through for flights and the San Diego freeway...
Guest:I just practice breathing deeply and the mind listens to the breath.
Guest:So it helps me.
Guest:Do you meditate as well?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I practice what they call mindfulness.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Which meditation's got all this- That's the breathing and the- Yeah.
Guest:I sit there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I start with these breathing techniques and-
Guest:I feel like Russell Brand now, giving my bullshit out here, but anyway.
Guest:No, no, it is helpful.
Guest:What do you do in jails?
Guest:I teach what I've just told you.
Guest:I teach guys how to be in the moment, and my official title is substance abuse counselor.
Marc:Oh, so did you have to log some hours and get a little certificate?
Guest:I have a master's in psychology and counseling.
Marc:See, I used to hear this about you.
Marc:You were this mythical character that I'd hear about occasionally.
Marc:Seriously, and we can get back to the evolution, but one of the last memories I have, I remember when you were in trouble.
Marc:You were in trouble.
Marc:One of the last conscious memories I have, and maybe I've seen you once or twice since then, was back in the 80s at Nick's.
Marc:And I don't know, you had lost your mind.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were in the back room and you were bloody.
Marc:And I don't think there was anyone else involved.
Marc:I don't remember what happened.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:But I just remember that Dominic was there.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Maybe Jackie was there.
Marc:Credica was there.
Guest:There's a thing that I would like to introduce you to that if you don't know, it's called cocaine induced psychosis.
Guest:I had it.
Guest:Well, let me do the dialogue.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Did you hear that?
Marc:No.
Guest:Did you hear that?
Guest:I didn't hear it.
Guest:Did you hear that?
Guest:No.
Guest:You had to hear that.
Guest:That's cocaine induced psychosis.
Marc:My problem when I had it was like, do you hear the voices?
Marc:I hear the voices.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you hear them?
Guest:You hear them?
Guest:No.
Guest:And then the guy gets pissed off.
Guest:You tell me he didn't fucking hear that.
Guest:I was with a Vietnam vet who said, I said, listen, I got to go home.
Guest:Why are you leaving?
Guest:Well, we've been sitting here for 12 hours sweating, looking at each other.
Guest:I think it's appropriate to leave.
Guest:Isn't it amazing we lived through it?
Marc:It's fucking amazing, man.
Guest:It's a gift.
Guest:It's a gift.
Marc:So from Charlestown to acting, I mean, how do you make the decision to get off the bridge and pursue the dream?
Guest:My brother was 19.
Guest:I was 19.
Guest:My brother calls me up.
Guest:He's at Smith College.
Guest:He says, do you want a job for the summer?
Guest:And I said...
Guest:I don't know, I guess so.
Guest:And he said, what is it?
Guest:He said, acting.
Guest:So I said, Jimmy, you know I'm not gay.
Guest:Why do you ask me that?
Guest:Because everybody who I knew in Charleston, that was gay.
Guest:But it was Smith College.
Guest:And I went up there, and it was all girls.
Guest:I loved it.
Guest:But I got to tell you...
Guest:You've done some acting.
Marc:Yeah, but you weren't in the acting program.
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:I was nothing, but you've done some acting.
Guest:So when you first start and you feel an emotion, you really think you're good.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I'm still in that phase.
Guest:But I was doing Shakespeare, and I had that horrible Boston accent, but I was a big tall guy, so I was Macbeth.
Guest:I was like, is that a dagger that I see before me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you think you're being great, you know, or, you know, Richard III.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ahas.
Guest:Ahas.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:You know what it's like?
Guest:But where were you doing this?
Guest:But that was at Smith.
Marc:I know, but like you weren't in the college?
Marc:You were just a job?
Guest:It was a summer theater, summer theater.
Guest:Oh, I get you.
Guest:And then I went back to UMass and I studied it.
Guest:But have you ever sat through some of these college productions?
Guest:Not lately.
Guest:Well, it's fucking awful.
Guest:And-
Guest:But the other kids, they were all from New York, and they had accents too.
Guest:You know, I want to tell you the truth.
Guest:But then I got the bug, and I love theater.
Guest:I still love it to this day.
Guest:And I was a doorman at the theater.
Guest:Where?
Guest:As a stagehand at the Schubert, the Colonial.
Guest:And it's now the Wang Center.
Guest:And I saw all these amazing actors.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Well, I saw him.
Guest:He wasn't performing.
Guest:But Joan Plowright was doing a play, and she was married to Laurence Olivier.
Marc:No, yeah.
Guest:So Laurence Olivier came in, and I swear to God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're not going to believe this.
Guest:I'll believe it.
Guest:But he went in the sub shop to buy a sub.
Guest:I said, Laurence Olivier is ordering a freaking sub.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my mind is saying.
Guest:Guy's got to eat.
Guest:Guy's got to eat.
Guest:But I'm saying to myself, he's saying, I love the pepper and cheese with the onions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You set for here and a go.
Guest:But I'll tell you who I saw, and I was later, did a movie with him, was Christopher Plummer.
Guest:Saw Richard Burton do Equus, Jack Lemmon.
Guest:You know, it was wonderful.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:And you were, what, you were a kid, like 20?
Guest:Yeah, early 20s, yeah.
Guest:And I did a one-man show, and I fell into stand-up, because I did a one-man show of all these characters, and then I was broke.
Guest:And the guy said, why don't you go up there as yourself?
Guest:The first year, I didn't even use a mic.
Marc:Yeah, you could get big, man.
Guest:Yeah, but I fell into it, man.
Guest:I fell into it, and I said this to Joe.
Guest:I said, I got into stand-up to get acting work, and I'm still fucking waiting.
Guest:You've been in a few things.
Guest:No, I've been in a lot of movies, and I just produced my first movie.
Guest:Sweeney killing Sweeney.
Guest:And listen to this cast.
Guest:Stephen Wright, Bobby Slayton, Frank Santorelli, Tony Miller, Nick DiPaolo.
Guest:Jonathan Katz I saw in the trailer.
Guest:John Katz.
Guest:How brilliant is he?
Guest:He's got a great line in the movie.
Guest:He said, you know...
Guest:And my uncle, who was a well-known judge, and even when he was down and out, he was a bum in the Bowery.
Guest:People still said to him, may I approach the bench?
Guest:How great a line is that?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:No, the movie, it looks good and it looks fitting.
Marc:I completely get the premise because you were and are the character guy, but it's interesting just the arc of it.
Marc:So you're doing a one-man show and who approaches you?
Marc:There's no stand-up at that time.
Marc:There's no clubs yet.
Marc:Is that what you're telling me?
Guest:No, they started, well, no, there were no comedy clubs.
Guest:I did the one-man show at the Charles Playhouse.
Guest:Oh, yeah, and that became the Comedy Connection, right?
Guest:Yeah, and then they said, you know, I was just doing this crazy shit.
Guest:Then I did it at the Ding Ho, and I was exploring, and that was, you know.
Guest:So the Ding Ho was around?
Yeah.
Guest:That started like years later.
Guest:But I was still doing these fucking crazy characters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like my heroes were like Lily Tomlin, Jonathan Winters, that stuff.
Marc:There was a precedent for doing that type of comedy.
Guest:And to me, since then, nobody touches Carl and Pryor, Lily Tomlin, Jonathan Winters for me.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Guest:No one's touched them.
Marc:So you're doing this stuff and when do you start working this comedy?
Marc:Because I'm sort of fascinated with that whole thing because I got there a little late.
Marc:The first time I started doing comedy there was in college in 84.
Marc:Where did you go to college?
Marc:Boston University.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the first time I tried stand-up, I was doing open mics and played against Sam's.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Stitches, the original one.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:what happened to harry harry yeah harry conforti i think he's still probably working for pat lyons okay yeah uh i remember harry you know he's a good guy yeah yeah and uh you know but it was like he could work at ace hardware harry yeah he could work anywhere you know he had that kind of hey what's going on yeah it goes through guys like that go through life they don't go through life like us
Marc:No, no, they find a gig, they enjoy life.
Marc:They seem like the kind of people.
Guest:Everything bounces off them.
Guest:Their whole attitude is like, whatever.
Marc:Yeah, I can't, I envy it, but then some days I'm grateful.
Marc:So that's 84, but when the Ding Ho was, I went to open mics at the Ding Ho.
Marc:Yeah, that was Lenny's night, Wednesday nights.
Guest:My night was Sunday nights.
Marc:Lenny's night that's right I always had these issues with like you know what Kenny Rogers and used to have the open mic it played against Sam's and you put your name on a fucking list and he gets shit-faced in the middle of the show and there was like a couple of times where like he just forgot to put me on and I stayed there all night but when you're an open mic or half he is hoping you don't go on but I just used to watch and watch and the names would go by the names would go by and then he closed the show and be like what the fuck and
Marc:Here's how I look at it.
Guest:All of those humiliating, debilitating, awful experiences create who you are.
Guest:For me, I remember this guy said to me, and I was making a living and everything, and he said to me, why are you bitter?
Guest:And I said, wow, this is a choice I make.
Guest:But I can remember being humiliated doing this job.
Guest:There was one incident played at Ground Round, me and Jay Charbonneau, and the guy was throwing ice.
Guest:How's Jay Charbonneau?
Guest:He's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the guy was throwing ice on the stage.
Marc:You could always count on Jay for a snap.
Marc:He'll snap, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that would happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he did his thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At my opening line, Mark, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Can you imagine this?
Guest:Yeah, I can.
Guest:You go to a fucking comedy show and the comedian's opening.
Guest:That's a ground round.
Guest:The opening line of the comedian was this.
Guest:I said, any motherfucker that throws a fucking piece of ice at me, I'm fucking going right over.
Guest:Now let's have fun.
Guest:I mean, it's like, forget about it.
Guest:You had to, but that was the nature of the one nighter.
Guest:But I feel like...
Guest:It's humiliating, it's debilitating, but it builds you up.
Guest:So that now, I don't take any shit.
Guest:If they're texting, turn it off.
Guest:I'm not gonna be clever.
Guest:I got one line for it.
Guest:I said, look, you're putting us out of a job.
Guest:Because the community of the future, I'll text you a joke, you text back LOL, that's the end of it.
Guest:But I had one woman in the audience
Guest:and she looked at me in this kind of superior way.
Guest:Well, I can multitask.
Guest:I said, oh good, so when I stick it up your ass, you're still gonna be, you know.
Guest:But then, when I came out here the last time, and I was on Joe over there at the improv,
Guest:The audience was fantastic.
Guest:I said, oh my God, they're here to actually see comedy.
Guest:I can see why people like it out here.
Marc:Yeah, there's good nights now.
Marc:The clubs are kind of popping again.
Marc:Joe pulls people in.
Marc:The comedy store is great.
Marc:It's always packed.
Marc:Is that where you work?
Marc:I do primarily the comedy store when I'm in town.
Marc:I like it.
Marc:I had a lot of experiences there.
Marc:I feel like I belong there.
Marc:I had a lot of experiences there, believe me.
Marc:I'm sure I had similar experiences.
Guest:With Sam Kenneth.
Marc:I had them too.
Marc:The same experience.
Marc:With Sam?
Marc:With Sam, but later probably.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:We were up at Joni.
Guest:He bought a house from Joni Mitchell.
Guest:The one in Malibu?
Guest:No, this was up on a hill.
Guest:What year was this?
Guest:I lose track of the years, but we're all up there and we're in this little room with all the stuff.
Guest:The stuff, yeah.
Guest:And I said, I could be in fucking Somerville in an alley.
Guest:This is like...
Guest:It was crazy.
Guest:The boy is Sam.
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Guest:I spent a lot of hours with him.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:Look me in the eye, Sweeney.
Guest:I can't trust a man doesn't look me in the eye.
Guest:He had that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was like, fuck.
Guest:I thought I was bad.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I was like, what am I doing in this room?
Marc:I was a one-on-one, man.
Marc:Three days.
Marc:You were?
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:I mean, I lived in that fucking house up behind the comedy store later.
Marc:I was there in 87, so you must be talking about early, before he broke, right?
Marc:Or was it... No, this was after he broke.
Marc:And he was big, but he... Oh, maybe it was later.
Guest:But he was brilliant.
Guest:When were you out here?
Guest:You know what, Mark?
Guest:You keep asking me years.
Guest:Oh, I'm sorry.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:But I'm just trying to figure out was it before or after?
Guest:You understand that I don't remember a day of the 90s.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:But I was here when Lenny was here.
Marc:Like, I was here when Lenny was in that crew.
Guest:Yeah, it was Lenny, Carlebo, Sam Kenneth.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:So he was running with them, but you weren't around.
Marc:So you were already back home or you hadn't come yet.
Guest:Yeah, but he would bring himself.
Guest:Sam.
Marc:Yeah, would bring him.
Guest:And then I did the movie with him back to school.
Guest:Back to school, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was before me.
Guest:Then he had another.
Guest:wonderful opportunity he was like but the best comedian I ever saw and ever will see was Richard Pryor right at the comedy store yeah I saw him every day but I also saw his movies and he was thrilling but George Carlin oh yeah those guys you know sure
Guest:So the ding-ho, the Sunday nights, that was your night.
Guest:I just did characters, that's all.
Guest:I just get up and do characters.
Marc:But people don't realize that this was a Chinese restaurant that had a showroom.
Marc:Jimmy Tingle was the bartender before he became a comedian.
Marc:Mark Clark was the doorman.
Marc:Mark, that's right.
Marc:Mike booked it.
Marc:Mike Clark booked it.
Marc:But Barry Kremen started the whole thing.
Marc:Right, on the Wednesdays.
Marc:Him and Lenny.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you just so you would host guys.
Marc:It wasn't an open mic yours.
Marc:You'd have you and you do like.
Marc:No, I did all characters.
Marc:It was just me.
Marc:So you just do it for an hour, hour and a half.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:When does the sort of career really in Boston take off?
Marc:When does Nick's happen?
Guest:I did.
Guest:Well, I did HBO Young Comedians with John Candy.
Marc:Oh, yeah, that's right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That was like, I'm going to tell you right now if you want to date, 83.
Marc:All right, so I did that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then I was on Letterman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember seeing you on Letterman.
Guest:Yeah, so I did a lot.
Guest:A couple times.
Guest:How many times did you do that?
Guest:Just once.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or as Kenny Rogers would say, I did it when it was in black and white.
Guest:So then I did that.
Guest:Kenny was so fucking funny.
Guest:How's he doing?
Guest:Kenny's doing great.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:And, of course, he's condemned.
Guest:You know what the moving prisons are, don't you?
Guest:No.
Guest:They're called cruise ships.
Guest:That fucking life.
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Marc:Him and Gavin.
Marc:Doesn't Gavin live on a dock?
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:Does he live in Portland or something?
Guest:No, he lives in Boston, but oh my God.
Guest:This is a weird subject to talk about, but I think I can talk about it with you safely.
Guest:The isolation of that kind of life is just, if you are drinking, you're all set.
Guest:Yeah, if you are.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Marc:You're not going to run into anything.
Guest:If you're not drinking, oh my God, this is a floating bar room.
Marc:There's that too, but you and I seem similar in that what you were explaining when you were out here, living in those apartments and not working, that I can feel very isolated among people.
Marc:It doesn't matter where I am.
Marc:If I get that loneliness now, I'm not part of it.
Marc:And it's just paralyzing and dark.
Marc:It can get very horrible very quickly.
Marc:And the idea of being on a boat, not only not drinking, my biggest concern is what if you have a shit show?
Marc:You got to walk up and down the fucking boat and those people that you perform for, they're going to be there for the whole three or four days that you're on the boat.
Guest:You're captive of the audience.
Marc:You can't get away.
Marc:No.
Guest:Don Gavin does a great thing at the end of his act.
Guest:He says, listen, if you see me on the ship and I'm reading or whatever, don't come up and say hi to me.
Guest:And they all think it's a joke.
Guest:And then they'll come up to him and say, he'll say, didn't I tell you?
Guest:Don't bother me.
Guest:But yeah, you're stuck with the audience.
Guest:There's just a, my life has changed because.
Guest:Wait, we're back in 1983.
Marc:So you do Letterman.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Go ahead.
Marc:And then you do the Young Comedians and you do Letterman.
Marc:And then there was that moment, this is sort of the question I have.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where, you know, there's something about Boston where, you know, you're taking care of, you know, Mike Clark's working, you got the, you know, you're in it, they're taking care of you.
Marc:And that, you know, that's scary and good when Nick's is taking care of you.
Marc:But there was a time there where...
Marc:You know, all those, like Mike and everybody, there was a lot of work, and Nick's was opening rooms everywhere.
Marc:But you wanted to make a go of it, so you came to New York.
Marc:I remember you going down to New York and trying to cut in.
Guest:Yeah, I was in New York, and I was in L.A.
Guest:I was in the New York laugh-off, and I came in fifth, fourth.
Guest:What a fucking humiliating experience that was.
Guest:You know, you're standing on the stage, and, oh, Joe Bolster.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But you're standing on stage, and then they...
Guest:they announce the other three, and you gotta go up and pretend you're happy.
Guest:I remember I auditioned for Ed McMahon's show, do you remember that one?
Guest:Star Search.
Guest:And I said, here I am, auditioning for something I don't want, and I'm being rejected.
Marc:That's the fucking thing about show business.
Marc:You feel like you should go for everything or you got that desperation of like, I got to make a break.
Marc:And then you're doing shit like it's just terrible.
Marc:I did things on camera where I'm like, why the fuck did I do that?
Marc:They didn't even need a funny guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But okay, so you decided to move to LA to make a go of it, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I had been out here earlier because I went to USC for graduate school.
Guest:For what, two years?
Guest:That was three.
Guest:And then I came- In acting?
Guest:No, I got my master's in writing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, MFA in writing.
Guest:You went to a lot of colleges.
Guest:Yeah, I went to school.
Guest:But this was after you did comedy or before?
Guest:Before, yeah.
Guest:So when I was going to USC, I loved it.
Guest:I was living in Venice.
Guest:I was so poor, I was taking buses.
Guest:Who the fuck takes buses out here?
Guest:I know, I don't know how long it takes.
Guest:I don't know how long, you can only assume it takes.
Guest:You know, I got a friend of mine, Jimmy Labriola.
Guest:He's always wanting to go one foot in and one foot out.
Marc:I know that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so he wanted to be a bus driver.
Guest:You know, you always are thinking, too, there's got to be another job.
Marc:I want to be a grow guy, cook.
Marc:I just want to flip eggs.
Guest:So the bus drivers out here, I was so fascinated.
Guest:How many routes do you do a day?
Guest:And they only do a few because the streets are so long.
Guest:And, you know, I went back and I'd say to the bus drivers back on board, how many do you do a half?
Guest:20, I fucking hate it, you know?
Marc:I fucking hate it.
Marc:So anyway.
Marc:I took a bus to my first evening in the improv down there in Santa Monica.
Guest:I did five of those evenings at the improv.
Marc:In the late 80s, right, at the one in Westwood, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Or wherever, Santa Monica.
Guest:They had great hosts for those things.
Marc:Sure, they had everybody.
Marc:Yeah, that was cool.
Marc:Bud was always good to me.
Marc:Yeah, I saw him the other night.
Marc:You did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:His daughter had a benefit for a school at the improv, and he was there.
Marc:I think he might have had a little stroke or something, but he's good.
Marc:How old is Bud now?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:He's got to be almost 80, if not more.
Guest:He was always very nice to me.
Guest:Well, that's good.
Guest:When I was out here, there was like a thing where you work the improv or you work the other place.
Guest:You can't work both.
Marc:Well, I couldn't work either.
Marc:I was a doorman at the store in 87.
Guest:You were?
Marc:Yeah, that's when I got in trouble with Sam, yeah, for about a year, a little less than a year.
Guest:Did you work with that fighter out there?
Guest:Remember there was a fighter?
Marc:He came, Vinnie Curdo.
Marc:Vinnie Curdo?
Marc:Curdo, no, he came after.
Wow.
Marc:I was in and out within a year.
Marc:I was fucked up with cocaine psychosis.
Marc:I went back to Boston, and that's when I met you guys.
Marc:You could feel it in the comedy store.
Marc:When you walked in, you could feel it, the darkness.
Marc:Oh, dude, it's gone, though.
Marc:A lot of that was in my head.
Marc:It took years to shake it, because when you have cocaine psychosis, everything means a lot more than it really does.
Marc:Oh, it's unbelievable.
Marc:It's all loaded, man.
Guest:Never good.
Guest:How about when...
Guest:Somebody, yeah, there's this incredible need to say something, even though there's absolutely nothing to say.
Guest:Oh, yeah, and you're interrupting people to say it.
Guest:You get to say nothing.
Guest:But there's that moment where I timed it one night.
Guest:A guy said goodnight, and he didn't leave until another hour.
Guest:Amen.
Guest:No, I'm leaving.
Guest:Okay, guys, I'm leaving.
Guest:Okay, really, I'm leaving.
Guest:I used to watch those dudes, man.
Guest:Because you're afraid to be alone, you're afraid to be together.
Guest:Lenny's good and sober now too, right?
Guest:23 years, yeah.
Marc:Oh my God, do I remember you guys, man.
Marc:I remember you guys.
Guest:He could go, man.
Guest:He could go.
Guest:I mean, I guess that's part of it.
Guest:If you look at a lot of great artists, people used to say to me,
Guest:all the comedians, are you all just always screwed up?
Guest:I said, only the good ones, really.
Guest:Because if somebody was really looking for a job with short-range, mid-range, long-range goals, this is not the job.
Marc:There's a whole new generation that seem a lot more socially adept than we were, I'll tell you that.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, the people that come up and sketch and working with other people.
Guest:Working with other human beings.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I mean, it's a whole different thing.
Guest:But the old school guys, yeah, a lot of us are amazing.
Guest:you know I went back to the improv the last time I was out here and I hadn't been there in years and I expected people to look at me what's this old fart doing here and everything and people were so respectful oh yeah it was nice and they knew me yeah which was like I always feel like I'm just this regional guy but you know I've done a lot of stuff and I mean you know when you look at your past sometimes I saw Bill Murray in a great interview have you interviewed him too no I'd like to he's one of the guys it's like a white whale I can't get him
Guest:Charlie Rose, who we don't even have to get into where he is now, but he said to Bill Murray, he did all this stuff, and Bill Murray said, yeah, I wish I was there for it.
Guest:And I knew exactly what he was saying.
Guest:He wasn't in the moment.
Guest:He wasn't enjoying it.
Marc:Yeah, I'm trying to do that now.
Marc:Because you want to keep, I don't know what it is.
Marc:You don't appreciate the process.
Marc:And you don't even know exactly what your goal is, but it ain't what you're doing necessarily.
Guest:But maybe that's the problem we have is the idea of a goal.
Guest:In other words, it's like the journey is the destination.
Guest:So where are my feet?
Guest:That's what I say all day.
Guest:Where are my feet?
Marc:My ex-wife from years ago who got me sober, she used to do that trick with me.
Marc:When I was first getting sober, she had a few years.
Marc:And she'd go, when I'd be spinning, she'd go, what color are your shoes?
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah, where are we?
Guest:Where are we?
Marc:What's on the wall?
Guest:Oh, that's good, huh?
Marc:Yeah, the same idea.
Marc:So when you go out to LA the second time, how long were you out here?
Marc:Were you going to audition?
Guest:Yeah, I was doing the whole thing.
Guest:I got what they call a holding deal from Carsey Warner Productions.
Guest:They paid me not to do anything, and it was amazing.
Guest:Like one of those good ones, a couple hundred grand?
Guest:No, it was like 50 grand.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:This is fantastic.
Guest:It's like a city job you paid to just- And you're doing sets at the store?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then that ended, and I don't know what happened.
Guest:I just decided I didn't want to be here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I felt when you grow up in a close-knit community like Charlestown-
Guest:You would get used to that.
Guest:And that's where my people, my family, I loved my family and they were back east.
Guest:You still got people?
Guest:Yeah, I got great people back there.
Guest:One sister lives in Situate, one sister lives in Revere, my brother lives in Washington.
Guest:And I would like to say, though, that what I liked about doing this movie was just the first time I felt this in many years.
Guest:I got to that family feeling.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:You know when you do a play in college or whatever?
Guest:You mean with the people you were working with?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:We all pulled together.
Marc:Well, I mean, I want to, like, you know, I'm certainly, I just was trying to, like, because you mentioned Back to School, you were in that, and, you know, you've done, you sort of show up in the Farrelly Brothers movies that you're sort of around, and then you, didn't you have a gig where, you know, didn't you get a show for a little while, like a sitcom?
Guest:i did i had a sitcom in boston and i i was on that show alf out here i did a lot of these yeah right and that guy was insane which guy the guy alf you know that show yeah that guy was crazy man the guy who created it or the guy who did alf that he did it he did it yeah and he created it and he'd be underneath the desk and oh look at me wow this guy's got issues
Guest:Yeah, but then I wrote and I acted in a George Carlin's thing and I got to know him.
Guest:It was a sitcom that went to HBO.
Guest:What was that called?
Guest:I forget what it was called because they didn't pick it up.
Guest:It was a pilot, which was weird, you know, George Carlin, but I got to be around him.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:How was that for you?
Guest:One of the most brilliant minds I've ever met in my life.
Guest:We were in Portland, Maine, and we were driving back and he named all the constellations.
Guest:I said, wow, look what a mind.
Guest:He was meticulous, real anal dude.
Marc:He had all the jokes on note cards.
Marc:There was no riffing.
Guest:In his office in Westwood, he'd have all his albums stacked up and books.
Guest:He was just very nice to me.
Guest:He was good.
Guest:I saw his later specials and I saw him on Bill Maher.
Guest:He seemed like a different guy to me.
Marc:I think that when guys start to really, especially guys who are prolific and guys who were fighting the power, punching up, it starts to get dark.
Marc:I don't think anything happened to Carlin other than he got old and he got more cynical.
Marc:It makes sense.
Marc:How else was he going to go?
Guest:Yeah, that's a good point.
Guest:In other words, you've been doing it your whole life and you're still talking about the same stuff.
Marc:Yeah, and certain things aren't resolved and certain things are getting worse.
Marc:And for a guy like him who's pointing out the hypocrisies, you're going to get overwhelmed eventually and just be like, fuck it all.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Fuck it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But what I liked about George was he took shots at both sides, and he went after political correctness, which I think is fantastic.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:You've got to get the balance.
Marc:You've got to figure out the balance.
Guest:This creative power, man, that goes through all of us, you can't try to tame it and say you can say this, you can't say that.
Marc:Well, it's all up to you.
Marc:I mean, there's no law that says you can't.
Marc:You've just got to figure out where it's coming from and whether or not you're okay with that.
Guest:It's really still on you.
Guest:But do you feel...
Guest:I don't feel I'm in control of that.
Guest:When I'm really in touch with something, things come out of me like in one two minute, like I used to do this bit, beaver and all this bullshit, and it all came in once.
Guest:What beaver?
Guest:Oh, I had this bit about leave it to beaver, but it all came like in a flash.
Guest:So that creative energy, you have to turn off
Guest:me anyway.
Guest:Turn off the editor.
Guest:Especially when you're on stage.
Guest:I've had stuff get away from me that I do regret when I said certain things on stage.
Guest:You look at a guy like Michael Richard, is that who played Kramer?
Guest:Michael Richards, yeah.
Guest:So he leaves a sitcom.
Guest:Then he goes on stage, and he doesn't realize it's like a war out there sometimes.
Guest:Somebody heckles him.
Guest:He just says whatever comes up.
Marc:Now he's, you know, life sentence.
Marc:Well, I mean, I don't know.
Marc:It wasn't that, yeah, he was on a sitcom, but it wasn't like he was coming back to the stand-up stage.
Marc:I don't know that he was ever really...
Marc:his racket, really, and it got away from him.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:It's a brilliant physical actor.
Marc:Oh, no, funny as hell.
Marc:But, I mean, I don't think that there are those moments that you make mistakes, but I think it's the committing to the mistake and then defending it.
Marc:I think it's more about, like, is this...
Marc:Am I correct in where it's coming from in my heart?
Marc:Like, do I feel all right with that?
Marc:And if you can answer that with a yes, then you shouldn't have any problem defending yourself.
Marc:But if it's dubious, you should figure out why for yourself and then decide whether it's worth it.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That's pretty good.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it's like, is it that hard?
Guest:Why don't you write that down?
Guest:That was pretty good.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you know, I think about it all the time because there are fights to be fought, but some of them are, you know, are they really worth the fight?
Marc:You know, is it so essential to your bit that you say fag that, you know, you're going to go to the mats for that?
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:I do, but you know what?
Guest:I...
Guest:That's just an example.
Guest:I wasn't pointing at a specific bit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, it's like with me, I don't purposely offend people.
Guest:The object is not to offend people.
Guest:And some of it, if it's offensive, that's on you.
Guest:I mean, to me, it's all on them because I'm an actor.
Guest:I do different races, different dialects.
Guest:Yeah, I get that.
Guest:So does that make it racist?
Guest:Well, if you think that, that's on you because it's not.
Guest:That's not your intention.
Guest:And if there's any kind of objective criticism, then it's not.
Guest:Anyway.
Marc:I understand what you're saying.
Marc:But yeah, Carlin definitely took shots at both sides.
Guest:But it must have been an honor to spend time with him.
Guest:It was unbelievable.
Guest:But I did this movie with Denzel, and then I was working with Christopher Plummer, and I was just pinching myself.
Guest:I was saying, let me get this straight.
Guest:I'm doing a scene with Denzel Washington.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And then this other thing is, hey, would you frickin' say your lines?
Guest:Do your job.
Guest:Because you're looking at them.
Guest:Do your job.
Guest:It's like going one-on-one with Michael Jordan.
Guest:You say, I can't believe that I have this extraordinary experience to do this.
Guest:You know, it's a career that...
Guest:You just find yourself meeting these people, and it's like, wow, how the heck did I get here?
Marc:You don't know what the fuck's going to happen.
Marc:So like building back up to the movie, so you go back to Boston after Los Angeles.
Marc:You're still in the game.
Marc:Who's managing you?
Marc:Mike?
Guest:No manager.
Guest:Ever?
Guest:No.
Guest:I had a couple.
Guest:I had Ted Curland, who managed Pat Metheny.
Guest:He was a good guy.
Guest:You know, you don't need a manager.
Guest:What is there to manage when you're in Boston?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Well, that's the question.
Guest:So how do you stay in the game?
Guest:Well, back then, essentially.
Guest:Well, you know what the funny thing is?
Guest:And this is how the universe works.
Guest:So I'm out here.
Guest:I'm doing this.
Guest:I'm doing that.
Guest:Giving my power away to the big powers, whoever they are, and just trying to win the lottery out here chasing ghosts.
Guest:I come back and all these movies are starting to be made in Boston.
Guest:I get a movie with Peter Falk.
Guest:I get another movie with Danny Aykroyd and all these guys.
Guest:And one thing after another is just getting cast because directors like me because I go in and I make my audition an event.
Guest:Like it's not this polite thing, thank you very much.
Guest:I try to do something that's memorable and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Guest:But I show them a range of things, and they all want me on the set.
Guest:So if there's a part that fits, but like every actor, of course, 95% of the time you strike out.
Guest:But that doesn't mean anything.
Guest:Because I cast movies, and if you're not right, you're not right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Now, did you have a relationship with Rodney?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I met Rodney at Caesars, and he had been up for a day or whatever, and he was involved in the same junk that we were all with.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:And I went up to his room at Caesars Palace.
Guest:He had this table, and I swear to God, Mark, I had never seen so much Chinese food on one table, and that was just for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was in his bathrobe, and then...
Guest:We were down there, and then I went to a commercial.
Guest:Remember those Budweiser commercials he did?
Guest:Dan Friedberg, one of them was directing it.
Guest:And then I saw him again.
Guest:What I used to say about Rodney to myself was he was a good guy, but he wasn't a happy guy.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Whereas Carlin was pretty happy.
Marc:Yeah, Richard Lewis said Rodney used to call it the heaviness.
Marc:He had the heaviness, the depression, the heaviness.
Guest:When I knew him, he met this woman down on Malibu Beach, one of these beaches, and she didn't know who he was, and he thought, that was really great.
Guest:This woman doesn't know who I am.
Guest:At the time, he was like one of the most famous people.
Guest:He was unmistakable.
Guest:So even when we did our little scene, which we shot at USC, this guy, this homeless guy, he said, hey, Rodney, I don't get any respect either.
Marc:I mean, everybody knew him.
Marc:It was cool.
Marc:The funny thing and sad thing about Rodney is that after all is said and done, posthumously, he actually does not get the respect he deserves.
Marc:He doesn't, you know what I mean?
Marc:What's your favorite Rodney joke?
Marc:Oh, there's a few of them.
Marc:I remember the first time I encountered Rodney Dangerville was when I was a little kid and they used to have the My Favorite Joke section at the back of Parade Magazine.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It was that like I woke up and I went out to get out of the bedroom and the doorknob came off.
Marc:And then I went down and made some toast or something and the handle on the toaster came off.
Marc:It just built up to him going like, I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm afraid to go to the bathroom.
Guest:Yeah, he had the joke and then he added the character and the physical.
Guest:My favorite joke is because it's the misdirection.
Guest:Your mind goes in one direction.
Guest:He says, I go to the dentist the other day for yellow teeth.
Guest:He says, wear a brown tie.
Guest:I love that joke.
Marc:Yeah, I love him.
Marc:He was something else.
Marc:So you stayed up in Boston.
Marc:How does it look when you hit the wall with the shit?
Guest:Oh, you know, sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Guest:Then I went on and saved my life, and then I changed from the inside out, and I appreciate everything that I have now, whereas before I had a lot and I didn't appreciate any of it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Were you teaching at Harvard?
Guest:No, I taught at Suffolk, and I taught at UMass, I taught at Quincy College.
Guest:Acting?
Guest:I taught acting and writing.
Guest:And I liked it a lot.
Guest:Right now, though, I'm more into producing my own stuff because this John Katz did this years ago.
Guest:You did your own thing.
Guest:And Pete Fairley, of all people, he came to the opening of the movie.
Guest:And he said, this is the way to do it.
Guest:He said, you know, you got to just do your own thing.
Guest:He just did the green.
Guest:He's an incredible guy.
Guest:I can't thank him enough.
Guest:Green book, right?
Guest:Yeah, green book.
Guest:He wrote the screenplay and he won Best Picture and he directed it.
Guest:What's his brother doing?
Guest:Peter and Bobby.
Guest:Bobby's doing other similar things like that.
Guest:Are they Boston guys?
Guest:The Rhode Island guys.
Guest:Beautiful guys.
Guest:We only have so much time on this earth.
Guest:So I spend my time with people I like.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:I had to learn that in therapy.
Guest:My therapist said, do you know that you don't have to be with people you don't want to be?
Guest:And I said, really?
Guest:He said, yeah.
Marc:Then you got to be careful just not to be by yourself.
Marc:Because I have that thing where it's sort of like, yeah, okay, I don't want to hang out with certain people I don't want to hang out with.
Marc:Do you find now that you're famous, which you are?
Guest:It's manageable, though.
Guest:I have a manageable thing.
Guest:But I mean, I come up to your house and I say, this is great.
Guest:Well, I got no wife.
Marc:I got no kids.
Marc:I got no debt.
Marc:I'm saving money.
Guest:I don't know what for.
Guest:You got high bushes.
Guest:It's kind of beautiful.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Well, yes, it's all new to me.
Marc:Because you can't take it with me.
Marc:So I had to figure out, because I have a comic's brain.
Marc:It's sort of like,
Marc:I'm not going to spend any fucking money.
Marc:I don't know when that money's going to go away.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's good to think that way.
Marc:I still do.
Marc:But then I was sort of like, well, I got to enjoy myself.
Marc:Why not?
Marc:Like I've earned something.
Marc:Maybe this idea of buying a new place is a nice thing to do for oneself.
Guest:I went to Steven Tyler's house.
Guest:We know each other because of Boston.
Guest:He's a great guy.
Guest:Is he out here?
Guest:No, this was when he was in Marshfield, Mass.
Guest:He had the high hedges and the whole thing.
Guest:I said, that's nice.
Guest:You come home and you're at peace.
Guest:That's a nice thing.
Guest:Did he say he was?
Guest:You know, we're all driven.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I mean, if your idea of peace is like, and I get it why people want to do this, is to retire, for example.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So work is not part of peace.
Guest:For me, it's a process.
Guest:I've got to have meaningful work.
Guest:So what is the, now let's talk about the two things.
Guest:The one-man show is called what?
Guest:Townie.
Guest:It's about growing up in Charlestown, and I'm going to shoot that in November, I mean in September.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the other thing that I'm really proud of is called Sweeney Killing Sweeney.
Guest:I play six characters, and I have all of these incredible comedians and a great director.
Marc:But these are characters that you've done in your act.
Guest:Yeah, so what happens is HBO comes to town.
Guest:They say, we want you.
Guest:Get rid of the characters.
Guest:They're too local.
Guest:They want to do a special.
Guest:Yeah, so then...
Guest:the characters decide to try to kill me.
Guest:So they come after me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I get to work with all of these great guys, you know, Lenny, and as I said, Frank Santorelli, Tony V, and Stephen Wright, and John Katz, Bobby Slayton, Nick DiPaolo, you know.
Guest:I've interviewed all those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I've literally interviewed all of those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean,
Marc:Check the movie out.
Marc:You'll really like it.
Marc:I think it's sort of like when I read the description and I saw the trailer, it's like, you know, this is it seems to me that this is, you know, actually when I see you with Tony V in that car and he's going, you got to lose the characters like that.
Marc:This is a how's he doing?
Marc:All right.
Marc:Tony's doing great.
Marc:Is this a real conversation you've had?
Marc:Like, you know, there has been this struggle in your life that, you know, there was a sort of like the regionality, the regional nature of your act, which has been your bread and butter for your entire career on some level does hold you back.
Guest:But, you know, Bill Broadus wrote this script.
Guest:I started with Broadus.
Guest:Yeah, great guy.
Guest:And he wrote this script.
Guest:But that was the truth for me.
Guest:But then...
Guest:I chose life over a career.
Guest:So nothing's actually holding me back because what is it holding me back from?
Guest:But also, when I go other places, people ask me the stupidest questions.
Guest:Like they say, when you go to Las Vegas, do you do Boston jokes?
Guest:I said, yeah, I'm a real idiot.
Guest:I refer to Boylston Street.
Guest:What are you, out of your frickin' mind?
Guest:Do you think I'm that stupid?
Guest:Like when I did the improv out here, I came out
Guest:on stage, and I said, this is amazing, Los Angeles.
Guest:It reminds me of the National Park, all these people camping out on the street, and I said, the guy said, do you have any change?
Guest:I said, no, what you want is marshmallows.
Guest:You want to cook out.
Guest:And then I said, I was up in San Francisco, and I did all the touristy things, but then I wanted to be like a native, so I took a shit in the street.
Guest:And the people loved it.
Guest:So local is just a reference.
Guest:And you can riff.
Guest:Yeah, you can riff.
Guest:Of course you can.
Marc:Funny is funny.
Marc:And how do you, without spoiling it, I mean, like you say in your life, you've chosen life, so you have some resolution.
Marc:But, I mean, it seems like there's a deeper meaning and that Broadus knows you well enough to know that to be haunted by characters is...
Marc:is one thing, but to actually be physically pursued by them is another.
Marc:But is there some sort of cathartic conclusion to the end?
Guest:Yeah, it has a trick ending.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:It's two different endings.
Guest:There's a part of me, you know, it's funny you talk about this because...
Guest:I've always seen things through.
Guest:So you have this societal pressure that says success equals rich and famous.
Guest:So I never questioned why I left.
Guest:I knew it was the right thing for me.
Guest:Left here, sure.
Guest:I left once too.
Guest:I didn't want to come back.
Guest:But now, when people are opening doors, of course, it's a different place.
Marc:This is a shitty, horrible place when you got nothing to do, pal.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:It's the fucking worst.
Marc:And I've been here for that.
Marc:I've been back and forth several times.
Marc:There are different points in my career where when I lived out here back in the day when I was a doorman at the store, I left with cocaine psychosis.
Marc:I went back to Boston.
Marc:I figured it out.
Marc:I did six months of opening for Frank Santos, and I learned...
Marc:You know, I figured, you know, I got back to it.
Marc:I went back to the trenches.
Marc:I come back years later, get a divorce, things crap out.
Marc:I'm back in New York.
Marc:Like, you know, I've had that relationship with this city.
Guest:With the business.
Guest:Oh, yeah, dude.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then the irony of it is, is like my biggest success happens on my own, by my own will in my own fucking garage.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And that changes the whole game.
Guest:I remember reading about it.
Guest:I read about it, I think, in the Times and all this.
Guest:Right, the New York Times piece.
Guest:That changed it, yeah.
Guest:Mark Maron's doing this thing out of his garage.
Guest:And I always said, good for him.
Guest:You know, that's great.
Guest:You probably had to clean the garage.
Guest:I didn't.
Marc:I did eventually.
Marc:But no, that's a funny thing.
Marc:I don't think anyone's like, it's not like I didn't pay my fucking dues.
Marc:It's not like anything was handed to me.
Marc:It's good to be, you know, to find success later in life because there's not a lot of assholes could go like that fucking guy cheated.
Guest:He skipped his turn.
Guest:But did, did you ever feel like you were paying?
Guest:I never felt like I was paying dues.
Guest:I never felt like I was, I was, I was 30 years old.
Guest:I was making 40 bucks, 140 something a week living in a loft in the South end, but I was acting.
Guest:And I never felt like I was suffering.
Guest:I never felt like I was paying dues.
Guest:I enjoy the work.
Marc:No, I just felt like I wasn't good enough.
Marc:I didn't feel like there was some conclusion to it.
Marc:Obviously, I wanted to be a great comic.
Marc:But when I look back on my time in Boston and doing all those one-nighters with you guys, going...
Marc:to fucking Worcester, to Lemonster, to Cranston, to Taunton, to fucking Johnny Yee's.
Guest:That was Hyannis, Johnny Yee's.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, all over the place.
Marc:So there was, I don't really, looking back on it, I don't know how the hell I did that because they weren't easy things to do.
Marc:And I was a very specific type of guy.
Marc:But for some reason, your generation
Marc:you dealt with me you know there's other guys in my generation that you didn't deal with but for some reason i was wrapped up enough and you guys were okay with me somehow and then you know what we're good guys we're just regular guys oh i know but like i wasn't uh you know i wasn't a boston guy but i always appreciated the fact that i could do it but i don't know how the fuck i did it so when i said i paid my dues i'm like when if you asked me like what was that like i'm like it was fucking hell man
Marc:It was like it was warfare for me to figure out how to talk to a room.
Marc:Me, Marc Maron at age 21, this angry kind of existential, you know, heady fucking Jewish guy is standing like I remember one time going on after Leary at Nick's.
Marc:And Dennis, whether he did well or not, he was going to rip the room apart.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:And I got up there, I'm like, I'll just jump into his energy.
Marc:And I got up there, and I did seven minutes, and I tanked so hard.
Marc:I know.
Marc:The vacuum of it.
Marc:But, like, so what I'm saying is, like, I don't regret any of that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I definitely did by time.
Guest:I had to do the same thing.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But that's paying dues, whether you like it or not.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When I was doing plays, there was a backstage, okay?
Guest:there was a place where you prepared.
Guest:You work in these shitholes, always named after the guy, Vinnie's fucking dump hole.
Guest:There's no place that, it's like fucking, it's just right.
Guest:And I had to learn how to do that.
Guest:And then when you work in a theater and you're saying to yourself, shit, they're listening to me.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Then you have to work in the subtlety and not go for the immediate laugh.
Marc:I think I say that because I'm proud of it because, like, I didn't come up, like, I'm not an alternative comic or whatever.
Marc:Like, I came up the old way.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:You know what it's like?
Guest:You paid those emotional dues.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:It gives you something.
Guest:It does.
Guest:I'm proud of it.
Guest:Whatever it is, it gives you something, you know?
Guest:And you know what happens to me is, like, I'm a very nice person now as far as, like, CVSs and drugstores and Starbucks.
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:But I have this part of me that's like anytime I want, I can take over this fucking room.
Guest:She gives me a hard time.
Guest:I can make a speech.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:You're a black belt and asshole.
Guest:Yeah, very good.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I know how to be an asshole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you try not to bring it out.
Marc:But you don't want to use it.
Marc:It's illegal to use it.
Guest:But you know the thing is, you get cranky when you get older.
Guest:And there's certain things, like I grew up, you say, I say thank you, you say you're welcome.
Guest:So I pull up to like a McDonald's and I say thank you.
Guest:And then they don't say anything.
Guest:So there I'm giving a lecture to some 17-year-old kid.
Guest:Now when I say thank you, you say you're welcome.
Guest:I'm saying, what am I doing?
Guest:Spending my day giving lectures.
Guest:Giving him a memorable experience.
Guest:This guy came.
Guest:Or you say, thank you.
Guest:And they say, no problem.
Guest:And I say, I know there's not a problem.
Guest:But why am I in this conversation with these idiots?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:It's funny.
Marc:So do you still have a club that you're on?
Guest:No, I work at Giggles, Mike Clark's Club.
Guest:At the Leaning Tower of Pizza?
Guest:The Leaning Tower of Pizza.
Guest:That's still going, huh?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's a great room.
Guest:Yeah, it's great?
Guest:Yeah, and I work various places back east, and I'm trying to get these movies off the ground.
Guest:I got another one I wrote that we're pitching the Irish Film Board about my trips to Ireland.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Well, I wrote a movie about my bike trips in Ireland, and it's about how people act like their nationalities.
Guest:I've done four of these bike trips.
Guest:That's your thing, bikes.
Guest:Bike and hike, but the tour guide was always hungover.
Guest:He was Irish.
Guest:The Americans were always enthusiastic.
Guest:What are we going to do today?
Guest:And the Germans, very literal, they said to me, how was the town?
Guest:I said, it was all right.
Guest:So it was good?
Guest:Well, it was all right.
Guest:So it was bad.
Guest:No in between?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I got that going.
Guest:And then I have another movie that I want to get off the ground.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to see this one through.
Guest:And that's my thing right now is just producing movies.
Marc:Well, you look great.
Marc:You sound great.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:I'm very happy you're okay.
Marc:It was a treat to see you and talk to you.
Guest:You know, Mark, I'm so proud of you, man, because it's like you did it your own way, number one.
Guest:Also, you know, boy, it is a crapshoot, isn't it?
Guest:You just did something.
Guest:You weren't expecting anything, and here you are.
Marc:You don't know, man.
Marc:It's just like you always hear that's not a meritocracy, no shit.
Marc:And the sad thing is about very talented people is that they might destroy themselves.
Marc:It just might happen.
Marc:People who are just kind of talented but very focused, they seem to manage somehow.
Yeah.
Guest:They know how to do life.
Guest:Yeah, I did not.
Guest:But there's guitarists out there playing in little bars in Ohio.
Guest:That are geniuses.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:There's guys in rep companies, theater guys.
Guest:They'll never get anywhere.
Guest:My brother's one of them.
Guest:My brother's a brilliant actor.
Guest:They're out there and they're just creating magic and mesmerizing.
Guest:Does your brother have peace in his life?
Guest:Oh, yeah, he's out of the business.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So listen, the movie is on- The courage of that man.
Guest:Yes, you better believe it.
Guest:The movie's on iTunes called Sweeney Killing Sweeney.
Guest:It's going to be on Amazon on Wednesday, and it's been a real treat.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:It's good talking to you, Steve.
Guest:All right, my man.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:The legend, Steve Sweeney, Boston Zone.
Marc:Yeah, it was something, man.
Marc:It was wild, you know.
Marc:There was parts of it that were just as intimidating as they were when I was 25 or however old I was.
Marc:Again, his movie, Sweeney Killing Sweeney, is available on iTunes and Amazon.
Marc:He'll be at the Improv Asylum in Boston this Sunday, June 23rd, doing his one-man show, Townie.
Marc:I have to go shoot some movie now.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:Now I'm exhausted.
Marc:I haven't teed up for the day completely.
Marc:Okay, bye.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Boomer lives!
you