Episode 1087 - Joe Mantegna
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Marin.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:I assume from judging by the reaction to the Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio conversation that I've got a few new people out there listening.
Marc:Welcome aboard.
Marc:How are you doing?
Marc:Do you want to introduce yourself to the rest of the people?
Marc:Do you want to stand up and say your name and maybe where you come from and what you do?
Marc:And if it's appropriate, you can name your disease.
Marc:I have a fairly sort of intimate and fairly deep relationship with a lot of my listeners.
Marc:And I like to check in.
Marc:So I just want to make sure you guys are okay and you're comfortable.
Marc:Now I'm going to talk to some of the other people that I listen all the time.
Marc:Hey, did you get that thing fixed on your car?
Marc:How's that?
Marc:How did you guys did you guys make up or what?
Marc:Now, what was the fight about?
Marc:Did you hear back from the doctor?
Marc:Is that thing going to be all right?
Marc:How long are you going to be on the crutches?
Marc:How did you get the flu?
Marc:Seriously, did you get vaccinated?
Marc:You're not one of those people, are you?
Marc:Your hair looks very nice today.
Marc:All right.
Marc:See, that's the kind of thing.
Marc:Now, you know, you may not have heard the answers, but they're there.
Marc:And again, welcome.
Marc:You can all sit down now.
Marc:I appreciate you being here.
Marc:I got to be honest with you.
Marc:The response to that episode was fairly massive.
Marc:And I did not expect it.
Marc:Today on the show, Joe Montagna is here.
Marc:And you know him from being Joe Montagna.
Marc:He's on the CBS show Criminal Minds, which is on its 15th and final season.
Marc:But he's been in a lot of things.
Marc:A lot of people only know him from The Simpsons.
Marc:And I didn't even know him from The Simpsons.
Marc:I just remember from his movie work.
Marc:early on with David Mamet and whatnot.
Marc:But, you know, always struck me as a nice guy, solid guy, grounded dude.
Marc:And when the opportunity came up to talk to him, I was very happy to do that.
Marc:And it turned out to be great.
Marc:I have to be honest with you, I'm reinvigorated.
Marc:Since I've last talked to you, I left Los Angeles.
Marc:I went to Atlanta on Sunday.
Marc:And I worked on Respect, the Aretha Franklin movie, for two days.
Marc:Came back yesterday.
Marc:Then I'm going to go back out there on Sunday.
Marc:And somewhere along the line, I got a fucking cold.
Marc:But what I was talking about before is...
Marc:These conversations I've been having like for me to not have any perspective about myself and what was really happening there with Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.
Marc:It just tells me that there's some parts of me that just are unchanging and there's nothing.
Marc:I guess there's things I can do about it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:There's definitely some things that are unchanging.
Marc:I know I've gotten better at doing this and I know that I've done it for a long time.
Marc:But every time I talk to somebody, I'm still freaked out.
Marc:And then when it's good, I'm amazed.
Marc:But the fact that I walked out of that and so many people enjoyed it so much and I had no fucking idea what I got.
Marc:I was having a good time, but a lot was going on in my mind.
Marc:And that ended up being one of the reasons it was so good.
Marc:So do you change that?
Marc:My fucking neck, I'm telling you.
Marc:These physical things, man, I mean, my chest tightened up on me, man.
Marc:You know, last week it's been in and out.
Marc:And when I get stressed out, when I get panicked or scared or whatever it is, and it's hard for me to track it, but like, and this has happened my entire life, my chest just tightens up.
Marc:It feels like someone's stepping on it.
Marc:And for some reason this time, like it's happened before, I was just like, well, I'm 56.
Marc:I mean, this could be it.
Marc:I don't think it's a hard thing.
Marc:Maybe my lungs are shot.
Marc:Maybe I got cancer, whatever it is.
Marc:Why should I assume I'm okay?
Marc:And that just compounds the stress.
Marc:And clearly it was about doing the movie again because I had the issue with the movie before where it's a big deal to do a bigger part in a movie for me with a bunch of people at the level I'm doing it at.
Marc:And I guess the nerves and the dread just kind of tightened me up.
Marc:But when I got on set two days ago, it just all went away and I got eased back into it.
Marc:Got in makeup, got the hair done, became Jerry Wexler, got my New York accent on, and did the work.
Marc:I think one of the reasons I got a cold is that everybody was smoking those fake cigarettes, man.
Marc:I mean, like, all day long.
Marc:All day.
Marc:No reprieve.
Marc:I wasn't even smoking them.
Marc:I'm inhaling it.
Marc:It was a fucking mess.
Marc:So...
Marc:We were shooting the recording of Never Loved a Man, Aretha's first big song, and they rebuilt or they recreated the Muscle Shoals studio,
Marc:And that was the set.
Marc:And it was pretty fucking exciting.
Marc:Because they got the instruments right.
Marc:They got the outfits right.
Marc:I was in the booth.
Marc:Jennifer was at the piano.
Marc:And they got guys playing the musicians.
Marc:A guy playing Spooner Oldham.
Marc:A guy playing all of them.
Marc:And I was primarily...
Marc:working with this guy, Mike Watford, who was playing Rick Hall, the owner of Muscle Shoals Studios.
Marc:And I had a contentious relationship with him, Jerry Wexler did.
Marc:So there was a lot of, we did a lot of work together, a lot of scenes together, a lot of arguments, and it was pretty great, man.
Marc:I gotta be honest, and having Marlon Wayans around, who I work, he's there too, he plays Ted, who is Aretha's husband,
Marc:To be in the scene for that long and to do the scenes over and over again, I really got the feeling of both what is tedious about acting in movies, but also what's amazing about it is you really get into this other zone.
Marc:It was like time travel and you're doing the song and you're locking in and there's one scene where me and Mike and Marlon and the dude who's playing Tom Dowd, and we're in the booth all day and there's scenes where we just have to listen.
Marc:That is just they're just shooting us listening to this song unfold to hearing Aretha Franklin become Aretha Franklin during the song that it happened on.
Marc:And it's intense work, man.
Marc:It's intense work to listen intensely and have that experience of revelation every time.
Marc:But nonetheless, a lot of laughs in the sense not not on screen, but off.
Marc:I was cracking Marlon up, man.
Marc:It was fun.
Marc:I'm going to admit to you.
Marc:It was fun.
Marc:And I got a cold and I ate the craft that the catering was nuts.
Marc:That's why I can't.
Marc:That's why I had to come home.
Marc:I think I could have stayed there for four days, but I can't I can't do it, man.
Marc:They changed to caterers in the first day.
Marc:There was steak and lobster, bread pudding, four kinds of ice cream.
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?
Marc:The next day, Marlon's giving me cookies because he thinks it's funny because I eat and hate myself for eating.
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:So midway through this, recreating this recording session, I'm told that Spooner Oldham and Rick Hall's wife, Widow, and Dave Hood, bass player and trombone player, Patterson Hood's dad, one of the original Muscle Shoals guys, they're there.
Marc:They're hanging out.
Marc:They're watching.
Marc:And the producer of the movie comes in and says, they're like, oh my God, that's Jerry.
Marc:He's doing it.
Marc:That's Jerry.
Marc:He's he's nailing it.
Marc:So that was a nice little ego boost.
Marc:That was a nice little moment to have.
Marc:And to meet Spooner Oldham and Dave Hood, it was great.
Marc:I mean, I've interviewed Patterson, but it was great to to talk to those guys.
Marc:Spooner's not not a big talker.
Marc:And I ran into him back at the hotel.
Marc:Actually, he's got to be almost he's got to be in his 80s.
Marc:And we went up in the elevator together.
Marc:I said, yeah, it's very exhausting to be Jerry Wexler all day.
Marc:And Spooner goes, well, it was very exhausting to be around him too, even for 10 minutes.
Marc:And I'm like, all right, I know that guy.
Marc:I think I might be that guy.
Marc:Or I have that guy in me, that's for sure.
Marc:But it was definitely an honor to meet those cats.
Marc:And also to work with Mike Watford was great.
Marc:All right, so there you go.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:So Joe Montagna is on the CBS show Criminal Minds.
Marc:It's on its 15th and final season.
Marc:It airs Wednesday nights and it's streaming on CBS All Access.
Marc:The two-hour series finale is on February 19th.
Marc:You may know him from his other work, many movies.
Marc:Plays, I think, what is it, Fat Tony on The Simpsons?
Marc:But this is a conversation I have.
Marc:I've had great talks with some of these older actors lately, and it's making me... It's reinvigorating me and my job here in my house.
Marc:And also, I got the rug out in the new garage, and I put the curtains up, so we're probably going to make the move back out there very soon.
Marc:Not that you'll be able to notice, but we'll be back in the garage for the new year.
Marc:All right, this is me talking to Joe Montagna.
Joe Montagna.
Marc:So wait, so the Lenny Bruce, who's the guy playing Lenny Bruce?
Guest:Ronnie Marmo.
Guest:He wrote it.
Guest:He wrote it.
Guest:He performs it.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:For many years.
Guest:It's called, I'm not a comedian.
Guest:I'm Lenny Bruce.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's one man show.
Marc:How do you know the guy?
Guest:Ronnie came to me about 20 years ago.
Guest:He started a theater company out there called 68 Cent Theater.
Guest:He's from New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Grew up in New York.
Guest:Came out here, started this theater company.
Guest:He basically got a script to me somehow 20 years ago saying, I wrote this movie.
Guest:I've always thought of you playing this one little part.
Guest:It would be like one day type of thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I get that shit.
Guest:But anyway, I read it and I go, you know what?
Guest:I liked his chutzpah.
Guest:I liked his moxie just to try to get to me.
Guest:So I met with the guy.
Guest:I liked him.
Guest:He seemed like a New York version of me.
Guest:And I wound up doing the movie, bottom line.
Guest:But I learned to really like the guy because, like I said, he has this theater company, 68 Cent Theater.
Guest:And the reason it's called that is when he moved out here to LA, he had 68 cents in his pocket.
Guest:All he wanted to do was theater.
Guest:And has been doing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then I directed a play.
Guest:He had this series of John Shanling plays.
Guest:And he did like 15 of them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All at once.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he thinks big.
Guest:So I directed one of them.
Guest:At the place?
Guest:At his theater.
Guest:Anyway, he came to me.
Guest:He's obsessed with Lenny Bruce.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because he had done this other play written by somebody else years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he did it.
Guest:And he liked the play, but he'd done so much more research on it.
Guest:And he went to the playwright and said, you know what?
Guest:I really think if you had this, this, this, this.
Guest:And the guy says, no, no, no.
Guest:I wrote my play.
Guest:You want to do that?
Guest:Write your own.
Marc:And he did.
Marc:He wrote his own Lenny Bruce play.
Guest:So he wrote his own Lenny Bruce play.
Guest:And so he came to me with it.
Guest:He says, Joe, I like it.
Guest:Would you be interested in directing it?
Guest:I says, well, let me see what you got.
Guest:So he stood up in front of me.
Guest:And it's like 90 minutes.
Guest:He just did his 90-minute basic work.
Guest:And it's not just, it's maybe 30% his bits.
Guest:It's his life from beginning to end.
Guest:So he's telling the story of his life.
Guest:Tells the story of his life, incorporating the bits as well.
Guest:So when he was done, I said, yeah, I'm a believer of it.
Guest:If it's on the page, it's on the stage.
Guest:And I just thought he'd done a wonderful job of writing it and performing it.
Guest:I said, yeah, now let me do my voodoo, which is move stuff around, change it, give it a whole beginning, this, this, this.
Marc:But it's essentially a one-man show.
Guest:One man show.
Guest:We opened in LA.
Guest:We ran like 11 months here.
Guest:Then we took it to New York off Broadway and nine months there.
Guest:Now it's in Chicago and it's doing great.
Guest:We opened in October.
Guest:It's just been extended into January.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, and- Which theater?
Guest:It's at the Royal George in Chicago.
Guest:We're across from Steppenwolf Theater for people from Chicago.
Marc:How many seats is that Royal George?
Guest:It's about 180.
Guest:And they're packing out?
Guest:Packing out.
Guest:It's doing great.
Guest:Kitty has been such a huge supporter, Kitty Bruce.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because she says it's the only time a portrayal of her father that she's kind of-
Guest:bought into.
Guest:Oh really?
Guest:And also the material too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we've had great, Eric Idle came and saw Billy Crystal, Bonnie Hunt.
Guest:We've had great, great press.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, it's been really great.
Guest:I got to see it.
Guest:Yo, I'd love you to see it.
Guest:He's done over like 250 performances.
Marc:I guess I don't know why the hell I swept on it when I was here.
Guest:It'll be back because whenever we change venues, we bring it back here.
Guest:I tune it up a little bit.
Guest:Sometimes I add a little something, tweak it a little bit.
Marc:When you see that, so you directed this version, right?
Marc:So when you see it, what are your instincts around it immediately?
Marc:When you look at a guy doing a one-man show, he's playing Lenny Bruce.
Marc:It's a character.
Marc:As a director, what do you think has to happen?
Marc:Oh.
Guest:For me, it's just like I saw him do what he had.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I start to sometimes visualize things within that of like, for an example, when he did it for me, he opened it up with a bit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In fact, in one of his more controversial bits, which is the N-word bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is a lot of people familiar with.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So he opened with that, so it's the question.
Marc:Where he calls everybody the name?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Makes.
Guest:Yeah, and then in the house.
Guest:Makes, makes, kites.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he opens with that.
Guest:So then we finished doing the monologue, not a monologue, but we did his version of this show of his.
Guest:I said, why do you open with that?
Guest:He goes, well, I want to grab him right away, shock him.
Guest:I says, yeah, you're shocking him already.
Guest:He says, you open with that.
Guest:Half the people might walk out, they'll start yelling it, because they don't know you.
Guest:They don't know nothing.
Marc:Right, they're reeling from it.
Guest:They're reeling from it.
Guest:But one line he did say in that piece, he says, I always found dead naked on the toilet.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And I went, that's triggered something in my head.
Guest:I said, how do you feel about getting naked?
Guest:Guess what are you talking about?
Guest:I says, that's how we open the place.
Guest:On the floor?
Guest:I says, no, on the toilet.
Guest:Wasn't he on the floor?
Guest:Well, this is where Kitty helped.
Guest:Kitty gave us information.
Guest:Kitty's story is that not only the way they found them is they put him, propped him back up on the toilet, stuck a needle in his arm that the coppers did this because they all hated him anyway.
Guest:They've been busting him so many times.
Guest:He's a junkie.
Guest:He's dead on the floor.
Guest:Let's really show him something so that the pictures they took were him on the toilet with a needle in his arm.
Guest:And I actually heard those lapsed tapes he made before he died.
Marc:When he was doing, basically reading from the court hearing.
Guest:Yeah, because I did the play Lenny, the one by Julian Barry, back in 1973 in Chicago.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I understudied Lenny, yeah, in Chicago.
Guest:That's another reason I had attraction.
Marc:Is that what the movie's from?
Marc:Yeah, the movie's based on.
Marc:So you did it before the movie?
Marc:Yeah, way before the movie.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:So you played Lenny Bruce.
Marc:I understudied Lenny.
Guest:I was in the cast doing other parts, and I never went on as the understudy, but I did understudy the lead role, which forced me to know the material.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Did you ever see Lenny?
Guest:The real Lenny?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, but I remember being in Chicago when he was there, and I was too young.
Guest:I was like 16, and he was playing at the Gate of Horn, or maybe, or Mr. Kelly's, or whatever.
Guest:Right, Mr. Kelly's.
Guest:This is where...
Guest:I think I talked to Shelly Berman about it.
Guest:Right, Shelly Berman, yeah.
Guest:It was an institution in Chicago.
Guest:I remember seeing, I was doing the play Hair there in 1969.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Marc:At Mr. Kelly's?
Guest:No, at the theater.
Guest:No, no, no, no, at the Shubert Theater.
Guest:But we went to Mr. Kelly's because the guy in our cast, Michael Federer, was dating Bette Midler at the time, and Bette was opening for Dick Shawn.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So, she was just the opening act.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, we all went to see her because she was Michael's girlfriend, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, we all go see her and then she became a good pal of ours.
Guest:Support the friends.
Guest:Support the friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was funny is after the show, she's telling us, she goes, I'm taking adding girls to the show, like having these things, we'll call them the Harlettes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And smart me, I'm sitting here, no, Beth, that's stupid.
Guest:You don't need it.
Guest:You really got so much.
Guest:What do you want to split the money for?
Guest:You don't need three girls behind you.
Guest:But she wound up hiring two of the girls from our cast, Ula Hedwig and Charlotte Crosley to be the original Harletts.
Guest:And Andre DeShields, who just won the Tony this year, who was in our company, he choreographed them.
Guest:I said, well, okay, you want to do that?
Guest:Of course, it was a great idea.
Guest:And then her piano player was Barry Manilow at the time.
Guest:She let him do a song or two and stuff like that.
Guest:Isn't that wild?
Guest:Yeah, but I'm 72 years old.
Guest:This is like part of my... You grew up in Chicago.
Marc:You were born there, everything.
Marc:Born there, everything.
Marc:Your old man, your mom, everyone from Chicago.
Guest:My dad was born in Oklahoma because my grandfather came over from Sicily.
Guest:That's an interesting story.
Marc:Went to Oklahoma?
Guest:You know what it was?
Guest:And I think they all came from this one town.
Guest:There's a town in Sicily called Calle Sibeta, which is as big as this room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They must have found out in the early 1900s that there was this coal mine in Krebs, Oklahoma.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And that if you went there and worked in the coal mines, you could make enough money to buy land because that the Indians, the Native Americans, because it wasn't even a state yet, would sell you the land.
Guest:And I was at the town in Sicily, Calle Sibeta.
Guest:The only thing you can grow there is old.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's a...
Guest:It's all rock.
Guest:It's the top of a mountain.
Guest:Everybody's buried in mausoleum because it's rock.
Guest:So I'm sure my grandfather, among other Sicilians of the time, said, land?
Guest:50 acres we can get?
Guest:I'm in.
Guest:So you go there today, which I've been there.
Guest:Where'd the racket start, though?
Guest:One guy must have stumbled on it.
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:And he called his buddies and said, hey, Luigi, Angelo, let's go.
Guest:So they show up.
Guest:My grandfather worked at a coal mine.
Guest:My brother's into all this, so that's where I got all the information.
Guest:Oh, he did the research?
Guest:Yeah, and we have the deed.
Guest:We still own the farm.
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, I swear to God.
Guest:In Oklahoma?
Guest:In Oklahoma.
Guest:You go there, the sign says Krebs, Oklahoma's Little Italy, because they're still settled by the remnants of those people.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:The farms.
Guest:Yeah, they're all like, there's us, the Randazzo's are the farm next door.
Guest:What are they growing?
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Old.
Guest:No, I don't know.
Guest:No, they're growing there.
Guest:They grow what they grow.
Guest:I'll show you pictures later.
Guest:I'll show you my grandfather's gravestone.
Guest:It's all in Italian.
Guest:He's buried there.
Guest:In Krebs?
Guest:Well, he's buried in Henrietta, which is the town.
Guest:Krebs is so little.
Guest:Oklahoma.
Marc:So they go, they work the mines?
Guest:They work the mines.
Guest:He worked there for five years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Saved $100 a year.
Guest:And after five years, he had $500.
Guest:Because we got the bill of sale.
Guest:I got all of this.
Guest:My brother got all this.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:$500.
Guest:The Indians sold you the land for $500, 50 acres.
Guest:So it was true.
Guest:All true.
Guest:My grandfather built the house.
Guest:He used rails from the ... They must have snatched them at night.
Guest:I mean, like the metal rails from the train.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He uses those like a support beams in the house.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So they built this house.
Guest:My dad was born.
Guest:in that house it's still there the house it's it's it got hit by a tornado and so it's it's flat it's just the rails remnants no no the remnants are there you can still looks like a house but looks like a house like like from wizard of oz oh yeah like a flattened right but i was there and i and i've got i'll show you i'll show you later i got pictures of me standing on the rubble and all that and with the randazzo family i interviewed because i do a show on the outdoor channel i've been doing a show
Guest:for nine years called Gun Stories, which is not as ominous as it sounds.
Guest:It's about the history of firearms throughout the history of the planet Earth.
Guest:Was that your idea?
Guest:No.
Guest:Hosting it?
Guest:Outdoor Channel's idea, and it came to me, and I had to host it.
Guest:It seemed like fun because I used to shoot competitively years ago.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No big deal.
Guest:You get to travel too, right?
Guest:Yeah, I'd go to Italy, I'd been to Germany.
Guest:For the show?
Guest:For the show.
Guest:Yeah, but one of the episodes we did were the firearms of the immigrants.
Guest:And so when I told them this story, they said, let's do that.
Guest:So we shot the whole episode on my grandfather's farm in Krebs, and I shot his shotgun that nobody had shot since he shot it in like 1922.
Guest:Your brother had it?
Guest:No, my cousin Johnny had it, and he brought it down from Oregon.
Guest:How'd he get it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:He must have grabbed it.
Guest:I mean, he's bigger than the rest of us.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:So you guys all spent time on that farm when you were kids?
Guest:No, I spent no time on the farm.
Marc:How the hell did he get the gun?
Guest:Somehow he must have got it.
Guest:No, because my grandfather died on the farm when my dad was only like 15, 16 years old.
Guest:So the whole family then moved to Chicago.
Guest:My grandmother picked up all the kids.
Guest:She was smart.
Guest:The farm was paid for, obviously, so she kept it.
Guest:But all the family moved to Chicago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's why my only connection to Oklahoma was when my dad would tell me the stories of growing up there.
Marc:And you knew your grandmother, though?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I knew my grandmother.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My grandfather died before I was born, obviously.
Guest:But it was kind of fascinating because my dad was really still- Oklahoma.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Weird.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when my father died, he died fairly young because he had tuberculosis.
Guest:He was disabled most of his life.
Guest:But in 1971, he passed away.
Guest:I'm at the funeral.
Guest:Now, I've been doing the play here at that time.
Guest:And I got to remember, my only reference to Italian guys at this point are Chicago types.
Guest:Chicago, New York, Chicago, urban.
Guest:All of a sudden, I see these two guys walking up to the funeral home dressed like cowboys.
Guest:They got the jeans, they got cowboy hats on, they got fur little vests.
Guest:But they're dark looking.
Guest:They look like they stepped out of Sergio Leone movies.
Guest:So they come up to me and go, how do you do it?
Guest:You tell us where Joe Mantegna's funeral's at.
Guest:And I'm like, what the hell?
Guest:I said, cowboys who talk, you know, look like Italian, but they're talking.
Guest:I said, I'm his son.
Guest:He's in here.
Guest:Well, we were your daddy's friends from Oklahoma.
Guest:We knew him as a boy, and we had heard he passed away.
Guest:And I'm like...
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I mean, it was like watching Martians.
Guest:Because here's these guys looking like Clint Eastwood and talking like that.
Guest:But their names are, and this is Angelo, and here's Guido.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, this is not computing.
Guest:That's wild, man.
Guest:But anyway, that was my background with my dad.
Marc:So how many kids in your family?
Guest:Me personally?
Guest:I got two daughters.
Guest:No, but like you, how many brothers?
Guest:Oh, just my brother.
Guest:Just the two of you?
Guest:Yeah, just the two of us.
Guest:And he's older?
Guest:He's eight years older.
Guest:I had a brother.
Guest:He died at birth, though, when I was five years old.
Guest:I mean, I remember distinctly when that happened, though.
Guest:You do?
Guest:Only because my mother was pregnant.
Guest:And I remember her going to the hospital, saying she was going to come home.
Guest:And I was all prepped, like, you're going to come home with a child.
Guest:And then when she came home, and I remember she opened a door.
Guest:They didn't tell her.
Guest:I'm five years old, and it was a long time ago.
Guest:They don't tell you everything.
Guest:So I opened up her coat, because she left so big.
Guest:I saw she was normal sized.
Guest:And I was like, what happened?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they kind of explained to me, oh, well, you know, God took so-and-so away, and it's okay, and so on.
Guest:Oh, they must have been devastated, yeah.
Guest:Well, they were probably obviously devastated.
Guest:At five years old, what the hell do I know?
Guest:Yeah, you were like, okay.
Guest:I'm like, okay, mom's normal-sized again, on we go, you know?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when you were growing up, like, what did your dad do?
Guest:He was an insurance man for a while, but he only had part of one lung.
Marc:When did he get the TB?
Guest:During World War II.
Guest:He was only in his 20s.
Guest:Right after he married my mother and they had my brother.
Guest:My brother's eight years old.
Guest:My brother was one years old.
Guest:My dad's diagnosed.
Guest:And they attributed it to the farm.
Guest:Because his two older brothers had got it and also died from it.
Guest:And they said, back then, if you had something about the cattle, the cows, if they carried it, the milk is unpasteurized, whatever, you can contract it.
Guest:So my dad, they sent him to a sanitarium in New York, McGregor.
Yeah.
Guest:And he was at the sanitarium for like three years.
Guest:They took the lung out, they took out part of the other lung, and they took out the ribs on that side.
Guest:When my dad took his shirt off, he looked like the letter S. It was like this.
Guest:I mean, he shouldn't have lived.
Guest:I mean, he really shouldn't have lived.
Guest:Because he smoked like two packs a day.
Guest:He drank.
Guest:He was like...
Guest:But I thought like everybody's father must be like this.
Guest:It never occurred to me that he was like a freak of nature.
Guest:But he finally, he only lived to be 57.
Guest:And they put him on disability like in his 40s.
Guest:He just couldn't, because he would always- From the military?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He missed the war because he was in the hospital for all of World War II.
Guest:All my uncles were in the war, but he missed it because he was in the hospital.
Guest:But when he got out, the insurance company, he worked as an insurance man for a while.
Guest:Then they put him on disability because he just couldn't handle it.
Guest:So he was in maybe mid-40s.
Guest:And he lived at 57 years old.
Guest:And then the smoking and the drinking, forget about it.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So you grew up in that house full of cigarettes?
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, the car is full of... I mean, you know, that was the thing.
Guest:Especially in Chicago in the winter, those windows are up.
Guest:It's like sitting in a cloud, you know?
Guest:But that was the way it was.
Guest:And your mom, she worked?
Guest:She worked at Sears Roebuck, wrapped packages.
Guest:Yeah, she always worked.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:She smoked too?
Guest:No, no, she didn't smoke.
Guest:My mother lived to be 101.
Guest:101?
Guest:101.
Marc:You got a good, that's good.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:I mean, I guess so.
Guest:She was a pisser, my mom, yeah.
Guest:She just passed away a couple years ago.
Guest:Was she cogent all the way through?
Guest:Pretty much.
Guest:Near the end, she got a little skunkad, you know what we'd say.
Guest:In other words, she'd know who I was and my kids were and stuff, but if anybody else, she'd have to remind her, this is so and so, okay, you know.
Guest:But my mom was, I think what kept her alive partly is,
Guest:And that side of my family, my mother's side, they're very much like, they're the kind of Italians that are very, they're like Dean Martin, like, hey, everything's dandy.
Guest:Or the Sicilian side, my father's side, forget about it.
Guest:They get a little too, they get very nervous.
Guest:But my mother's side, my mother, I don't think she knew what I did for a living, really, to tell you the truth.
Guest:Towards the end or all the way through?
Guest:Towards all of it, toward all of it.
Guest:I mean, being an actor, what the hell does that mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I mean, my brother made a comment.
Guest:Even when you were on TV, you couldn't point.
Guest:She figured out I'm on TV, but she figures that's maybe, well, okay, that's nice.
Guest:I get to see him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my brother, at her funeral, this was funny, at the funeral, my brother got up to speak.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We both did, because he got up to speak first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He says, I got to say something about our mother.
Guest:He says, she was so very simple in a lot of ways.
Guest:She says, and my brother Joey, I don't think he even knows this, but when he got the TV series, and I got to remember, I'd been doing mostly theater, that stuff, and I did the movies once, you know, and that.
Marc:But you're talking about Criminal Minds?
Guest:I'm talking about, yeah.
Guest:When I was working regularly on a TV series, which she knew I'd been in plays, and she knew I'd been in movies, but she'd always hear about it.
Guest:But then she calls my brother.
Guest:She goes, Ronnie, I'm worried about your brother, Joey.
Guest:And my brother goes, why?
Guest:She goes, he's only working an hour a week.
Guest:She was dead serious because she figures now she figures on Wednesdays at 9 o'clock.
Guest:She's on CBS, but that's it.
Guest:It's over at 10.
Guest:How's he making a living?
Guest:How can he make a living?
Guest:My brother's telling her, no, it's okay, Mike.
Guest:He's doing fine.
Guest:He's doing all right.
Guest:He's doing fine.
Guest:But that was my mother.
Guest:God bless her.
Marc:What's your brother's racket?
Guest:What did he end up doing?
Guest:He was advertising for Montgomery Wards.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:Because that was a real Chicago-based company.
Marc:What Montgomery Wards was?
Guest:Monkey Wards.
Guest:It's like Sears Light.
Guest:No, I don't remember Montgomery Wards.
Marc:But Sears was in Chicago too, no?
Guest:Yeah, the original Sears.
Guest:And we lived across the street from it for many years.
Guest:The original Sears building?
Guest:Yeah, the Sears building on Holman and Arlington.
Guest:I mean, it's the west side ghetto right now.
Guest:But back then, it was all right.
Guest:I think they made build your own houses, too, at some point.
Marc:Didn't they, Sears?
Marc:Like you could buy a kit and build a house?
Marc:I'm sure they did.
Marc:Everything I owned was Sears.
Guest:I mean, my underwear, my clothes, my anything.
Guest:Because my mom worked there.
Guest:She was right there.
Guest:And she had profit sharing.
Guest:They'll give you that.
Marc:So when you were growing up in Chicago, I mean, because I'd grown to love Chicago.
Marc:It's a great city.
Marc:It's a real city.
Marc:It's its own thing.
Marc:Without question.
Marc:And were you right downtown?
Marc:What was the neighborhood?
Guest:Oh, no, no, no.
Guest:I grew up on the west side of the city, which is now- Was that Italian?
Guest:At the time, it was a lot of Italian.
Guest:It was mixed, though.
Guest:I mean, the one kid next door was Mexican here.
Guest:There was Jewish here.
Guest:There was Irish here.
Guest:It was mixed up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then we moved to Cicero.
Guest:That's where I went to high school.
Guest:Cicero?
Guest:Cicero, Illinois, which is famous for Al Capone and all that stuff.
Guest:It's that one town that's just border Chicago on the southwest border.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's where I went to high school and junior college.
Guest:But I grew up on the west side, and the west side was... It's pretty much... It's a pretty depraved area right now.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Unfortunately, it's pretty much...
Guest:You hear about a lot of the shootings that go on in Chicago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good percentage of them are happening.
Guest:Oh, it's around there?
Guest:My old neighborhood, yeah.
Marc:And when you were growing up, did you know, there was not a mob thing when you were growing up, was there?
Marc:I mean, or was that just a mythology?
Guest:No, it's not a mythology.
Guest:There was a mob thing, but it wasn't, it's a mob thing.
Guest:Same way that the politician, the democratic machine was a reality too.
Guest:Daly's machine?
Guest:Yeah, I think it all coexisted.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you always knew there was the local politician, the precinct captain who dealt with politically.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But there was, when you talk about mob, it was low level kind of stuff.
Guest:And there was, I'd go to the barbershop with my dad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And half the time were guys going in and out that are going into the back room, the bookie, because there's a bookie joint.
Guest:They're all making bets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then also we had a party line on our phone.
Guest:And I remember I'd pick it up sometimes and they'd say there's a bed bug there.
Guest:And I'd go, bed bug?
Guest:Who the hell is bed?
Guest:And I'd find out it was like my uncle.
Guest:And he says, no, no, no, that's Uncle Willie's phone number.
Guest:You call, you get him the phone.
Guest:So there were these things going around.
Guest:Money would change hands and stuff.
Guest:But it wasn't like, no, people weren't getting shot in the streets.
Guest:It was none of that Al Capone crap.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it existed.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:Especially growing up in Cicero, a lot of the kids I went to school with, their fathers were
Guest:Like, hey, how come your dad's wearing cardigan sweaters at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on a Thursday and my dad's selling insurance?
Guest:What does he do?
Guest:We don't know what he does.
Marc:So when did you start getting involved with acting?
Marc:I mean, did you want to do it when you were a kid?
Marc:Did you like movies?
Guest:No, I still don't even really like movies.
Guest:I love movies.
Guest:I shouldn't say that, but what I mean is I'm not like a buff.
Guest:I don't watch a lot of movies.
Guest:I don't watch a lot of television.
Guest:So it's not my idea of entertainment.
Marc:Well, where were your head then?
Guest:So my head was not in it at all.
Guest:But what it was is, honestly, what really triggered it was I saw the movie West Side Story as a kid.
Guest:And when I saw it, I thought, oh my God, I'm kind of like, this is not like I was living this life.
Guest:I wasn't like in a gang fighting Puerto Ricans.
Guest:But yet I was in that urban lifestyle.
Guest:I lived in an apartment all my life.
Guest:I never lived in a house.
Guest:So I loved the movie.
Guest:It was like a fantasy to me.
Guest:So what happened is I went to high school.
Guest:I was a junior in high school.
Guest:I got to understand, me being an actor, you might as well said you want to be a Martian.
Marc:Was it like the early 60s?
Guest:Early 60s, like 62, 63.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they had signs up in the high school saying, auditions for West Side Story.
Guest:And I look at the signs and go, what are they talking about?
Guest:I've seen the movie maybe eight, nine times, but what are they talking about?
Guest:And then I asked somebody and they go, no, it's a play.
Guest:I go, it's a play, it's a movie.
Guest:They go, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:The movie was based on a play.
Guest:And I'm thinking, really?
Guest:And I'm thinking, wow.
Guest:So I got in my head like, maybe that would be fun.
Guest:I love this movie.
Guest:Maybe I could do like one of the parts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I learned a song off the record.
Guest:I decided to go down, and I go down with one of the guys.
Guest:I was playing baseball then.
Guest:I wasn't that good, but I played on a team.
Guest:So I go with one of the good players from the team.
Guest:He and I were gonna go together, because he liked the movie too.
Guest:We get up to the theater up at the high school that night, and I didn't even know the little theater existed at that time.
Guest:I walk in, and there's all these kids in black.
Guest:Right on campus.
Guest:Yeah, right up in the high school, but I didn't know the theater was there.
Guest:And they're wearing leotards and stuff.
Guest:It's the theater crowd.
Guest:It was like watching people from another planet.
Guest:And the guy, Glenn, his name was Glenn Sowell.
Guest:He became a state's attorney or something later in Chicago.
Guest:He looks at me and goes, I'm out.
Guest:I'm not doing this.
Guest:I'm out.
Guest:He takes off.
Guest:So now I literally know nobody.
Marc:This is your buddy you came with?
Guest:Yeah, the buddy I came with saw him out.
Guest:He saw and realized this is not for him.
Guest:But I had learned a song.
Guest:I figured at least I could do is go up and do the thing.
Guest:Put the work in.
Guest:Yeah, put the work in.
Guest:So I get up.
Guest:I get on the stage.
Guest:There's the floodlights are hitting me, the footlights.
Guest:It's a little theater, but I can't see who's out there.
Guest:And I sing the song and I get to the end.
Guest:Well,
Guest:Maria.
Guest:And all of a sudden you're clapping coming out of the darkness.
Guest:And it was like, nobody had ever clapped for anything I had ever done in my life, ever.
Guest:And now I'm hearing this clapping.
Guest:So I go, that's it.
Guest:It was like a lightning bolt hit me in the chest.
Guest:I said, I got to recapture this moment somehow.
Guest:So that started it.
Guest:I mean, I wound up not getting cast on the Play-Doh.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:No, I was too...
Guest:That's a whole other story.
Guest:I was in school a year sooner than I should have been because my parents changed my birth certificate because my mother needed to get back to work at Sears.
Guest:So they changed my birth certificate when I started in kindergarten and never told me until I was 16.
Guest:So I had my birthday.
Guest:I celebrated it for 16 years on the wrong day.
Guest:So that's a whole other story.
Guest:But anyway, they didn't cast me because I was too small.
Guest:But he liked my chutzpah, the teacher.
Guest:So bottom line, they saw I had this interest.
Guest:So he says, well, why don't you take a drama class?
Guest:And they put me in the drama class.
Guest:And I never looked back.
Guest:Really?
Guest:From literally that day, I said to myself, this is what I'm going to do.
Guest:I want to do this for a living.
Guest:I had no plan B. What the hell else am I going to do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, what are you, 16?
Guest:16.
Guest:But I had no aspiration.
Guest:I wasn't that good at anything else.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I wasn't sure I was good at this, but I knew I liked it.
Marc:So you just took drama classes and you started doing plays?
Guest:Took drama classes, started doing plays.
Guest:I started being successful at it in high school.
Guest:And then I went two years junior college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then I applied for the Goodman School of Drama, which was a pretty... In fact, Shelley Berman went there to school back then.
Guest:It's a pretty... It became... Now it's part of DePaul University.
Guest:Back then it was called the Goodman School of Drama.
Guest:And then I tried out for the play Hair in 1969 and got cast and that started my professional.
Marc:What is the Goodman School of Drama?
Marc:Like what would they...
Guest:It was a famous, I mean it was famous at the time, luckily Chicago had this acting school.
Guest:It was in the Art Institute back then, in the Art Institute.
Guest:I didn't have the money to go there, but what I did is I took a student, you can take a government loan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I applied for the government loan, I got like two grand, and I paid the 800 bucks of tuition, and I think I bought my parents a television with the rest of the money, and paid rent when I was living with somebody at the time.
Guest:And what did they teach you?
Guest:They teach you, well, I mean, like I said, now it's called a theater school at DePaul University.
Guest:They teach you the basics.
Guest:They teach you voice control.
Guest:They teach you movement.
Guest:They teach you all the different stuff with acting, scene study.
Marc:Is that the last time you studied?
Guest:Pretty much.
Guest:I mean, you learn as you go.
Guest:Sure, of course.
Guest:I've been in this profession 50 years now.
Guest:If I ain't got it down by now, it's too late.
Guest:I mean, I wanted to play left field for the Cubs, but I think that ship has sailed.
Marc:Yeah, that's not going to happen for you?
Marc:No, it's not going to happen.
Marc:No, I just always wonder, because I talk to actors, and it just seems that a lot of it is something natural.
Marc:It is.
Marc:But a lot of people, they do that two years, or they do the year, whatever, and most of the tools they got, that really sort of got them grounded in it, that was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I found out, as it turned out, the best actors out of that school were the ones that usually either got kicked out, quit, whatever.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Well...
Guest:We didn't have a lot of big stars that came out of that school, to tell you the truth.
Guest:But as a rule, at least the ones I would run into as working actors, the ones that were serious about it, were the ones that were just like, you know, it's too academic for me.
Guest:I got to go do it.
Guest:You got to go work.
Guest:The ones that actually did it, then went on and got master's degrees somewhere else.
Guest:Maybe they taught and stuff, but they didn't necessarily...
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:So what were you doing?
Marc:Were you working during the school or did you get a job?
Guest:I was in a band.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah, I was in a band.
Guest:Like a rock band?
Guest:Yeah, it was a rock band and we actually did pretty well.
Guest:In fact, to this day- What'd you play?
Guest:I played bass guitar.
Guest:I was the lead singer in bass guitar.
Guest:Can you still play bass?
Guest:Badly, yeah.
Guest:As bad as I did then.
Guest:Good enough to get by though.
Guest:Well, to this day though, I'm very close to the band Chicago.
Guest:Yeah, those guys.
Guest:Because we used to tour with them when they were called the Missing Links.
Guest:What was your name?
Guest:What was your band?
Guest:The Apocryphals.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:The drama teacher at my school came up with the name because he felt to support me.
Guest:He supported my band and kind of helped us out.
Guest:So wait, so were you playing original songs or covers?
Guest:No, no, we were a good cover band.
Guest:That's why we never got anywhere.
Guest:But we're a very good cover band.
Guest:Mid to late 60s?
Guest:Yeah, from about 64 to 69.
Marc:So you were doing psychedelic shit?
Guest:We did whatever you wanted.
Guest:In other words, if it was a place they wanted psychedelic, we'd put on the Paisley shirts and the mod stuff and comb the hair that way.
Guest:If we're going to a black neighborhood, we'd put on the white temptation suits that we bought on Maxwell Street.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:And we would do four tops.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I swear to God.
Guest:We were like whores.
Guest:You paid a freight, we'll do what you want.
Guest:But that's why I knew we weren't going to make it because the guys, the missing links, they became Chicago, right?
Guest:So you knew those guys?
Guest:You knew Terry Caff?
Guest:Oh, knew them all.
Guest:Absolutely knew them all.
Guest:To this day, I know them all very well.
Guest:I sang with them about two years ago here at the Greek.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah, I swear to God, they brought me up on stage to do one song for old time's sake.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Oh, no, I love them.
Guest:Walter Perzader, who's just left the band, a sax player.
Marc:How many of the original guys are still in it?
Guest:Today?
Guest:I think only three.
Guest:It would be Lee Lockley, the trumpet player, Pankow, the trombone player, and the keyboard player, Bobby Lamb.
Guest:Walter just left the sax player, but there were four.
Marc:The retired left?
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, these guys are older than me.
Marc:Because there was sort of a resurgence around Terry and his guitar playing recently.
Guest:Terry was brilliant.
Guest:Yeah, he was, right?
Guest:Jimi Hendrix thought he was the best guitar player he'd ever heard.
Guest:And he was depressive?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:Terry was just, Terry was wild.
Guest:I mean, that whole thing, like, you know, some people say, oh, he killed himself.
Guest:He didn't kill himself.
Guest:He was fucking around.
Guest:It was an accident.
Guest:He took the gun.
Guest:Oh, that was it?
Guest:Yeah, he put it up to his head.
Guest:Yeah, like thinking it was empty?
Guest:Yeah, whatever it was.
Guest:Oh, it's terrible.
Guest:But he was great.
Guest:And when I first met him, he wasn't even a lead player.
Guest:He was the bass player of that band, the Missing Links.
Guest:They had another guy playing lead, but they kicked that guy and his father, who was the manager of that band, out.
Guest:And that's when they started the new group.
Guest:Chicago.
Guest:Chicago, which we thought they were nuts.
Guest:For doing, because we were playing at a place called The Cheetah in Chicago, which is a very popular club.
Guest:So we're at The Cheetah.
Guest:They came to see us on our break, and they said, hey, we busted up the band.
Guest:We got rid of the lead player and his father.
Guest:Terry's going to play lead now.
Guest:We brought in a keyboard guy, and we brought in a trumpet, and we brought in a trombone, because they already had the sax.
Guest:They already had Walter.
Guest:They had Danny Serafin, the drummer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we're saying, oh, so now you're going to go from four to seven guys.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:They leave and we're thinking, they're nuts.
Guest:Are they crazy?
Guest:Too many guys.
Guest:We're trying to find ways to play less.
Guest:Like Jimi Hendrix had just come out then with three guys.
Guest:We're thinking, every four piece band was thinking, who could we cut out of the band?
Guest:So we can make more dough.
Guest:These guys are up in their band of seven.
Guest:But needless to say, their first album came out, and that's when I knew.
Guest:When I heard that first album, I went, okay, I'm in the wrong racket.
Guest:I'm going to steer myself toward acting.
Marc:Right, because they were doing this R&B thing.
Guest:Well, but they were doing original stuff.
Guest:But to tell you the truth, early in their career, and this is honest to God truth, they would play.
Guest:I remember there was one club called the Blue Village.
Guest:It was another very popular club in Westmont, Illinois.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:We worked a lot because we were a good cover band, like I said.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were off this particular Saturday for whatever reason.
Guest:I get a call from the owner of Blue Village.
Guest:He says, this group, Chicago Transit Authority.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Their album hasn't come out yet.
Guest:He says, they're playing here.
Guest:They refuse to play any songs that the kids want.
Guest:They're playing all their own crap.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I'm throwing them out.
Guest:Can you guys get down here to finish the night?
Guest:We did.
Guest:We packed up the truck.
Guest:We went out there.
Guest:And I will never forget to see them.
Guest:I'm seeing them throwing their stuff in the truck.
Guest:They weren't pissed at us.
Guest:They were just pissed about the whole thing.
Guest:And we said, oh, guys, we're sorry.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:Yeah, well, these guys, they don't know what the hell they're missing.
Guest:We're thinking, yeah.
Guest:And we're thinking, one of these idiots is going to just smarten up and start doing some temptation stuff and doing some...
Guest:What the kids want.
Guest:Yeah, do what the kids want.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:You know, smart me, yeah.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:So that's what you were doing while you were going to school, playing?
Guest:Yeah, we did well.
Guest:I mean, I actually, you know, I made a living at it because we worked, back then in the 60s, a lot of venues, a lot of live music was big.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, it was before disco.
Marc:Well, yeah, in the 60s, it was way before disco.
Guest:Yeah, so I mean, live dance clubs for teenagers.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You play the rock and roll.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you could literally, we could work every weekend without... You're playing school dances and shit?
Guest:You play proms, you play school dances, you play teen nightclubs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, actually, you know, just clubs.
Marc:So what made you hang that up?
Guest:Well, I was doing both for a long time, or a long time meaning through junior college and through my two years at the Goodman, because on the weekends were open.
Guest:But then when I tried out for Hair, I'd play Hair, I got cast.
Guest:That was my first professional job, where they offered me the job.
Guest:Now I have to do eight shows a week.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And you can't, that means my weekends are long.
Marc:And you had the long hair, you were all set?
Guest:Yeah, I had the long hair.
Guest:I was halfway there anyway.
Guest:I wound up letting it really go.
Guest:What role?
Guest:I started out in the tribe, which was basically one of the chorus, but I worked up to Berger, which is one of the lead roles, and I wound up doing that for a long time.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For how long?
Guest:About a year and a half.
Guest:traveling with it yeah i did we did we played chicago for over a year yeah a year and a half and then we wow and then we toured for about actually toured i would have kept touring but actually that's when my father died while i was on the road i was in pittsburgh and he died and when i came in for the funeral and i i think i just realized and i was and i was the girl who was playing um genie at the time in the play which is the pregnant character in the play right
Guest:Her and I were dating at the time, and we're still together 50 years later.
Guest:She's my wife.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Hell yeah.
Guest:So we stayed together.
Guest:That's insane.
Guest:Congratulations.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's one of those freaky things.
Guest:God bless us.
Guest:There's love for you.
Guest:But I remember that when we came in from my dad's funeral, so I took that week off from the play.
Guest:And when I went back to Pittsburgh, I realized the bloom was off the roads.
Guest:It was just like, I've done this play enough.
Guest:It's just like- A year and a half.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was time to just move on.
Guest:So I quit the play.
Guest:And we quit together.
Guest:But then I did Godspell shortly after that and did that for- You had the hair, so you're set.
Guest:It went even longer.
Guest:I played Judas then.
Guest:So I was like, you know, I kept thinking, well, where do I go next?
Guest:And you did that in Chicago?
Guest:Did that in Chicago, yeah.
Guest:For how long was Godspell on?
Guest:About a year.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago.
Marc:So, I mean, I guess on some level you get some chops in place.
Marc:You overcome a lot of fear.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:I mean, in fact, now I was thinking, this is my career.
Guest:I'm going to be a musical comedy actor.
Guest:I'm going to be like a Jim Dale.
Guest:I'm going to be the guy that goes to Broadway.
Guest:I'll do...
Guest:You know, I'll do the musicals.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's kind of what I thought would happen.
Guest:Obviously, my career took a different turn again.
Marc:When did that happen?
Guest:Well, that happened right after Godspell.
Guest:One of the guys that I'd done hair with, who was the actor Andre DeShiels.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I said, won the Tony Award just this year for a play he's doing now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was in a group called the Organic Theater in Chicago.
Guest:Organic Theater.
Guest:That sounds like some hippie shit.
Guest:It was some hippie shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it had some good people and John Hurd was in that company.
Guest:John Hurd's great.
Guest:Yeah, John Hurd was in that company.
Guest:Passed away.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:His sister Cordis Hurd was in the company.
Guest:Meshach Taylor, Dennis Franz.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:We all joined around the same time at that time.
Marc:So you and Hurd and Franz were in it together?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's Franz up to?
Guest:Franz, I just talked to him.
Guest:He's golfing is basically what he's up to.
Guest:God bless him.
Guest:He did that as many, I've got to forget what it was, 12, 13 years on NYPD.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The day that that show wrapped, he said, good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are, I'll be on the golf course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And God bless him.
Guest:That's Dennis.
Guest:He's done.
Guest:So he's good.
Guest:He's absolutely good.
Guest:He's got three grandchildren.
Guest:He's living the life.
Marc:He was smart with his money, and that was the end of it.
Guest:That was the end of it.
Marc:Showed up in a couple of things, maybe.
Guest:He did nothing after I went pretty blue.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:If I offered him, Dennis, please do 30 seconds with me for a million dollars, he'd say, no, I don't do that anymore.
Guest:That's Dennis.
Guest:Done.
Guest:Done.
Guest:But God bless him.
Guest:I mean, if I had to pick three guys in the world to watch my back, that's him.
Guest:He was a Vietnam vet, combat vet.
Guest:So Dennis, he's one of those guys.
Guest:He's deep.
Guest:I mean, he's deeper than you think.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:I could see that just by that character.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I mean, you could feel all of it.
Marc:So you show up at the Organic Theater, and you and Hurd and Franz kind of get there at the same time.
Marc:Well, he came in.
Guest:Heard had already been there, and then he left shortly thereafter because he had been in this play called Warp that closed in New York, and then the organic came back to Chicago and regrouped.
Guest:So John left, Dennis Franz and I, Misha and Taylor.
Marc:So he must have been fresh out of Vietnam almost.
Guest:Pretty much, because, yeah, exactly right, because he probably was out of Vietnam in about 71, 72, and this was 73.
Marc:Oh, so he must have been intense as fuck.
Guest:You know, yes and no.
Guest:I mean, that's Dennis, though, because Dennis was very good at kind of keeping it all under wraps.
Guest:And the only one I would press him, and I did a couple times.
Guest:On stage?
Guest:No, no, not on stage.
Guest:In life?
Guest:I'm in life.
Guest:Just talk to him about it.
Guest:Say, Dennis, why?
Guest:Tell me a little about, and then reluctantly he would tell me, then I realized, okay, I don't want to even go into this one now because I can see it's uncomfortable for him and it's not a happy part of his life, but God bless him.
Guest:This guy also collects Hummel dolls and stuff like that.
Guest:I mean, on the other hand, he's- Sweetheart.
Guest:Yeah, he's a real sweetheart.
Guest:I love him to death.
Marc:Well, I'm glad to hear he's doing all right.
Marc:No, he's doing great.
Guest:He's doing great.
Marc:So what happens at Organic?
Guest:Well, Organic, I did five years at Organic, and it was a wonderful time because we did new stuff there.
Guest:We created stuff.
Marc:We did Kurt Vonnegut's- So this is before Steppenwolf, like years before Steppenwolf.
Guest:This was a few years before.
Guest:They were like the new kids on the block when they came in, and I got to know them all very well as well.
Guest:I'm very close to all of them.
Guest:All of them, which is ironic because the Lenny Bruce play director is playing right across the street from the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
Marc:So you're friends with the original crew, the four or five of them?
Guest:Oh, very much.
Guest:Gary Sinise.
Guest:Well, Gary Sinise.
Guest:Metcalf and Sinise.
Guest:Laurie Metcalf, Joan Allen, Malkovich, all of them very close.
Guest:John Maloney.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Maloney's gone.
Marc:Sad.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, he was a great guy.
Guest:I bet.
Guest:But Gary, I mean, Gary and I, we've been hosting a National Memorial Day concert together.
Guest:This will be my 19th year doing it.
Marc:Hosting the National Memorial Day concert?
Guest:Yeah, in Washington, D.C.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Because he and I were both, we do a lot for the military, especially Gary.
Guest:I'm one of his ambassadors.
Guest:He's like, I mean, he picked up where Bob Hope left off.
Guest:This guy does so much for the military.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But yeah, the organic was back then, early 70s in Chicago.
Guest:They had been kicked out of the University of Wisconsin because Stuart Gordon, who created the organic, he had done this nude version of Peter Pan on the campus.
Guest:It wasn't all nude, but I think Tiger Lily was nude or something.
Marc:Kids came with their parents.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But it was very experimental.
Guest:But we did all this original stuff.
Guest:We did the book of Huckleberry Finn, parts one and two.
Guest:We did the entire book based just on Mark Twain's dialogue.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We did original plays like Cops, Bloody Bess, a pirate play.
Guest:And then a play that I conceived called Bleacher Bums, which is about the people who sit in the bleachers at Wrigley Field.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Back when the Cubs were terrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that became actually very successful.
Guest:We did that off-Broadway.
Guest:And to this day, they tour it all around.
Guest:Bleacher Bums.
Guest:I'm still going yeah I mean you know as a it's a very big summer stock show and you wrote it I conceived it and co-wrote it with the original cast so you guys still get a little scratch oh yeah I get a couple hundred dollars every six months or something like that that's great we split it up with all of us but it's great is that the only play you wrote
Guest:Yeah, I don't fancy myself as a playwright.
Guest:I came up with the idea.
Guest:I had this idea because I used to sit in the bleachers at Wrigley Field and used to look around me thinking, this is more entertaining than the game.
Guest:I mean, the Cubs kind of sucked in that time.
Guest:And I thought, what's going on in the bleachers with the gambling and this and the girls and the bup-ba-da-bup?
Guest:and it became actually a very successful play.
Guest:It must have been fun.
Marc:It must have been a local phenomenon, and then it just had legs, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:No, it's not where they play.
Guest:I get checks, residual checks from all over.
Guest:Samuel French, the publishing company, will send me the checks, and it'll list where it's been done.
Guest:Army bases in Guam will do it in the summertime because it's a comedy.
Guest:It's a fun show.
Guest:It's fun.
Guest:Lighthearted.
Marc:It's very lighthearted.
Marc:So you get a lot more chops there doing the intimate theater, I guess.
Marc:Doing that theater, exactly.
Guest:Putting your heart on the line.
Guest:Well, doing a lot of experimental stuff.
Guest:And luckily for me, David Mamet, the writer, was kind of doing the same thing in Chicago at the same time with the group called the Wisdom Bridge Theater, I believe it was called.
Marc:I talked to him, you know.
Marc:Did you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's an accomplishment in itself.
Marc:He doesn't talk to everybody.
Yeah.
Marc:We did all right.
Marc:You know, I kind of steered him.
Marc:I can see you and him getting along.
Marc:No, we did fine.
Marc:You know, it's just like, you know, he's one of those guys, he wants to push some buttons and I wasn't going to let him.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:So, like, I was able to kind of keep him.
Guest:Keep him on track.
Guest:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Good for you.
Marc:Yeah, because I know he's a little metal.
Marc:Well, yeah, I just love, because you can just, I know that, you know, I'm a Jew.
Marc:I know that kind of Jew.
Guest:He's a linesman, I guess.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, like, you know, he's coming at me with that stuff and I'm like, I know what you're doing.
Marc:I'm not going to, I'm not going to.
Marc:You're not going to turn me- No, that's great.
Guest:No, I could see you two getting along.
Guest:I really could.
Guest:You did all right.
Guest:No, but he's like, I should have his picture hanging over my bed because he's been like- He's the guy?
Guest:He's been my guy, I mean, as it turned out.
Marc:So what happened?
Marc:So you're at Organic and he's at this what?
Marc:What was it?
Marc:It was called the St.
Marc:Nicholas Theater Company.
Marc:Right, but he went on to do the Atlantic, but this is way before.
Marc:This is before Atlantic.
Marc:So what happens with you and Mamet?
Guest:Well, what happens is he's a struggling playwright while I'm the struggling actor.
Guest:And he saw me do this one production, I think it was Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, Ray Bradbury's show, which was pretty successful in Chicago at the time.
Guest:We're talking 1973.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Now, let me ask you something.
Marc:Back then, because he's a guy that's like, whatever he fancies himself, he does say, we were all Democrats once.
Marc:But he seems to have shifted into this character as an older man with a lot of swagger and a lot of alphaness.
Marc:But it seems like back then he wasn't quite that, was he?
Guest:No, but I don't think any of us were that political about it.
Guest:I mean, look, I did hair in the 60s.
Marc:Right, but he seemed like a softer guy.
Guest:He was.
Guest:No, I definitely think he was, but he'd have to address that.
Guest:I can't speak for him, but whatever.
Guest:But yeah, in fact, when I first met him, I can remember people often ask me, how did you first meet David?
Guest:Because you had this long relationship.
Guest:I said, as I recall, I was coming to the Goodman's Theater to go say, this was like- At the school?
Guest:At the school.
Guest:I came to maybe see a teacher or something.
Guest:And you have to go down these long stairs because it was at the Art Institute, which is below ground over on Michigan Avenue there.
Guest:So I'm coming down and I see this guy coming up and it was fairly nattily dressed.
Guest:I remember he kind of had a scarf, right?
Guest:Scarf, coat, hat, looking like sharp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No way dressed like I would be.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And he stops me.
Guest:He goes, hey, I saw that play you were in an ice cream suit.
Guest:I really thought you were great.
Guest:I'm a playwright.
Guest:You and I will have to work together sometime.
Guest:I'm thinking, yeah, great.
Guest:Who the hell are you?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sure, pal.
Guest:And as it turns out, he writes this play called Sexual Perversity in Chicago.
Guest:Sure, big play.
Guest:And it turns out he goes to the Organic Theater and Stuart Gordon, who was our producing director, loved the play and decided, yeah, we'll do it.
Guest:Now, this was at the summertime when our normal season at the organic was over.
Guest:And during the summer, everybody would go do what they needed to do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But they had enough money to just mount this play because it didn't take much money.
Guest:I had been hired to do the understudy for Lenny in Julian Berry's play Lenny, which was going to be at the...
Guest:at the Legit Theater in Chicago.
Guest:So I was gonna be making like 300 a week, as opposed to $75 worth of organic.
Guest:So they asked, so Mamet wanted me to play the one part in it, but I said, and again, I didn't know who the hell he was, but I'm saying he was nobody.
Guest:But I liked the play, I read it, and I went, oh, I like it, but hey, I'm making 300, understudying money, I can't do it.
Guest:So to this day, if I had to look at my regrets, it was like I could have done the world premiere of that.
Guest:I mean, it did what it did and it went on.
Guest:I came over that particular production.
Guest:But still, I would have liked to have done it.
Marc:It was his first big one.
Guest:First big one.
Guest:But thank God he didn't forget me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because then what happened is A Life in the Theater, which is another one of his plays.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The world premiere of that he came to me to do in Chicago with Mike Nussbaum, who's another one of the actors who worked with him a lot, who's now in his 90s, still working in Chicago.
Guest:It's a two-hander, and he asked us to do it, and we did.
Guest:And so Mike and I did the world premiere of that.
Guest:And then Dave would always call me to do whenever there was...
Guest:The library would want him to do excerpts of some of his stuff, especially because now in New York, his stuff was starting to get some play in New York.
Marc:Was he directing?
Guest:No, he wasn't directing back then.
Guest:He would write the plays.
Marc:Who directed him?
Guest:Greg Mosier.
Guest:He did Glengarry.
Guest:Mosier did a lot of stuff with Mamet, right?
Guest:He did Life in Theater.
Guest:He did Glengarry.
Guest:I think he did the movie too.
Guest:He did American Buffalo.
Guest:I think he did.
Guest:Oh, American Buffalo, yeah.
Guest:But different people would direct his stuff.
Marc:Okay, so you do those two plays with him and then he moves to New York?
Guest:Yeah, all of a sudden he started to get some attention in New York.
Guest:Life in the Theater, Off-Broadway does well.
Guest:Then American Buffalo, Robert Duvall does well.
Guest:Duvall was teaching the original?
Guest:Yes, he did the original.
Guest:Robert Duvall did the original.
Guest:Yeah, Pacino did it later.
Guest:So by now, David was getting a rep.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:So anyway, in the meantime, no, I'd moved to California.
Guest:I came out here.
Guest:For what?
Guest:Well, I'd gone to... The Organic Theater, we toured out to California.
Guest:We came out here in the late fall, early winter, and I saw what the weather was like.
Guest:And I'd already been to Italy on a European tour with the Organic, and I'm thinking, you know what?
Guest:I'm done with Chicago.
Guest:I'm...
Guest:My chromosomes are Mediterranean.
Guest:I'm not staying in Chicago.
Guest:So I convinced my wife we should just come out here and even if we're not working, we'll hang at the beach.
Guest:So we're out here for a little while.
Guest:I'm doing this, that.
Guest:We're doing plays out here.
Guest:Dennis Franz and I, Meshach, we remounted our production of Cops from Chicago out here.
Guest:We did Bleacher Bums out here.
Guest:Bleacher Bums ran out here for 10 years.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It was one of the longest running waiver plays in LA history.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, it ran from 1980 to 1990, it ran out here.
Guest:Anyway, I did it for about a year and a half.
Marc:But anyway- But you doing movies?
Marc:You doing TV yet?
Guest:Who, you?
Guest:No, a little bit parts.
Guest:Yeah, I do a little bit here.
Guest:Two lines here.
Guest:Soap, I did the show Soap.
Guest:I did eight episodes of the show Soap playing Juan Juan.
Guest:I played Gregory Sierra's sidekick.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:I did all these little bits.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:I was doing all right.
Guest:You'd work, you'd go on unemployment, then you'd get another job, go back on unemployment.
Marc:But you're doing little bit parts, and it looks like a lot of things.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But then I get the call from Mamet saying, look, I wrote this play.
Guest:Looks like they're going to hopefully take it to Broadway, but at least we're going to open it in Chicago at the Goodman.
Guest:I'd like you to play this part.
Guest:And I didn't know that's all he told me.
Guest:So he says, I'm going to send you the script.
Guest:So I'm living out here in a one-bedroom apartment with my wife.
Guest:He sends me the script.
Guest:I look at it.
Guest:It's all about real estate.
Guest:It's Blengarry Glen Ross.
Guest:I don't know dick about real estate because I never lived in a house.
Guest:I mean, at that point in my life, still, the first house I lived in was the one I bought.
Guest:The one you're in now?
Guest:Ultimately, well, I've gone through a few since, but the first one I bought, that was it.
Guest:So, I didn't understand it.
Guest:Leads and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:So, I read it and I didn't quite understand it.
Guest:So, he calls me the next day.
Guest:He goes, what did you think of the play?
Guest:So, I lied.
Guest:I said, oh, you know, Dave, I didn't really get to it yet.
Guest:I'm going to read it definitely today.
Guest:And I figured I better find out what this is about.
Guest:So, I'm calling up guys.
Guest:I said, what's a lead?
Guest:What's a this?
Guest:What's a mortgage?
Guest:What's escrow?
Guest:What the hell is this stuff?
Guest:So now I start to figure it out.
Guest:You're calling what, grownups that you know?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:People you know.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Adults.
Guest:So now I got a general idea of what he's talking about.
Guest:So then I think, I look at my wife and say, what do we got to lose?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's go.
Guest:It's nothing else.
Guest:It's a free trip to Chicago.
Guest:We'll hang out if the show's a flop.
Guest:See the family.
Guest:See the family.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we go to Chicago.
Guest:Boom, boom, boom.
Guest:Which guy did you play?
Guest:Ricky Romo.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, the guy.
Guest:The slick guy.
Guest:The slick guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:We do it in Chicago.
Guest:That's a great part for you.
Guest:Oh, well.
Guest:I'm just telling you.
Guest:You didn't know that.
Guest:Well, I figured it out because we get to New York.
Guest:Next thing I know, I get nominated for a Tony Award.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I win the Tony Award.
Guest:The plague wins the Pulitzer Prize.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And so in one swell foop, my career, my 15 years of like... Yeah.
Guest:It goes kaboom.
Guest:I get skyrocketed up here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's why I have that 8x10 mammon hanging over my bed.
Marc:Thank mammon every day.
Guest:But I tell you, this guy's been nothing but honest with me, straight shooter.
Guest:So here, I'm doing his part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, I do it on Broadway for a year.
Guest:We tour it, and I go tour it for six months with Peter Falk.
Guest:He plays Shelley Levine on the tour.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:Which is that part.
Guest:And we had a great time.
Guest:This was like 19... Oh, Peter Falk.
Guest:You got to know him, huh?
Guest:Oh, we were like this.
Guest:I got him his star.
Guest:That's another story.
Guest:I got him his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I gave the speech for him.
Guest:I had to put... It's next to mine.
Guest:I had them put it next to mine because he'd never gotten... They offered it to him back...
Guest:You know, a million years ago.
Guest:But Peter was that guy like, you know what I mean?
Guest:He never bothered.
Guest:You got to follow through.
Guest:You got to pick the day.
Guest:You got to go.
Guest:You got to act like you give a shit.
Guest:So when he died, and I was one of the last people, his wife only really allowed me and maybe one other person to see him near the end.
Guest:We were that close.
Guest:What did he have?
Guest:He started to get Alzheimer's.
Guest:He started to get dementia.
Guest:And there was some talk that he had had some dental work done and the anesthesia really, he was never really the same after that.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, because it came on really quick.
Guest:But anyway, I loved him to death.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:I just loved him to death.
Guest:He's a great human being.
Guest:But we did that play together.
Guest:So now I've done the play now on Broadway, six months touring with Peter.
Guest:While I'm on tour with Peter,
Guest:Mamet comes into my dressing room on the road, and he used to carry his little mail bag, like a mail sack and stuff in it.
Guest:He says, I want to tell you something.
Guest:He was always blunt, as you probably realize.
Guest:That's something he always had.
Guest:Yeah, he doesn't beat around the bush.
Guest:He says to me, he goes, I got to tell you something.
Guest:I just had a meeting today.
Guest:They're making the movie of Glengarry Glen Ross.
Guest:You ain't doing it.
Guest:Pacino's already attached.
Guest:Now, you got to understand, too, Pacino had been offered to play before I was, but it turned it down because back then it was a new play and it had a lot going.
Guest:And I think they offered it to De Niro next.
Guest:He turned it down for the same reason.
Guest:Thank God Mamet back then said to the producers, we're not going through every well-known Italian guy in Hollywood.
Guest:Now I got my picks.
Guest:And that's why we had all no-name guys in that original Broadway production.
Guest:God bless them.
Guest:But anyway, so now he tells me, you're not doing a movie.
Guest:And I'm like, okay, Dave.
Guest:Carol Channing didn't do Hello, Dolly, either.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:But he reached in his mailbag and pulled out two scripts, and one was for the movie House of Games, and one was for the movie Things Change.
Guest:And he laid them on my dressing room table.
Guest:He said, I won't make these two movies without you.
Guest:And those were both lead roles.
Guest:And what do you say?
Guest:Of course, at the time, I didn't know...
Guest:that I was gone to do them, that we did do them, but we wound up, of course, doing them.
Guest:But what do you say?
Guest:Like, thank you, man.
Guest:And it's like, wow, that's the king of dimensions.
Guest:I mean, how righteous can you be?
Guest:Like, I'm going to give you the bad news, but here's the good news, which to my mind, more than made up for it.
Guest:I would have loved, of course, to have done the movie, Glengarry, but, you know, that's the way...
Marc:It was interesting because, you know, I wonder, like, because the movie Glengarry Glen Ross was a pretty big movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, like, those other two movies, they must have been about the same, really, in terms of popularity, right?
Guest:But I wasn't Al Pacino.
Marc:No, no, no, I get it, but I'm saying that, like, all in all, it evened out.
Marc:Yeah, whatever.
Guest:Like if somebody said, would you trade doing that movie for those other two movies?
Guest:No, I wouldn't have.
Guest:House of Games to me was- Yeah, and you'd already done that guy.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And these are new guys.
Guest:No, new guys.
Guest:And House of Games actually is, that film is like a cult film.
Guest:I mean, in Europe, in France- Interesting movie.
Guest:They talk about, they run that movie every once in a while in the movie theaters.
Guest:That was you and Lindsey Krauss, right?
Marc:Yeah, Lindsey Krauss, yeah.
Marc:And Ricky Jay's in it?
Guest:Uh-huh, Ricky Jay's in it.
Marc:Oh, he's gone too now.
Guest:Oh, I know.
Guest:Yeah, I was at his memorial service.
Marc:Yeah, it was a great movie.
Marc:It was a real clever movie, and it was a mammoth movie.
Marc:It was different.
Guest:Yeah, it was different.
Marc:And he directed it, too.
Guest:That was the first thing he directed.
Marc:Now, let me ask you something, because he said something earlier.
Marc:If it's on the page, it's on the stage.
Marc:Now, is that a mammoth thing?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I don't think so.
Marc:Did you learn anything from him?
Marc:Because he has a very interesting approach to theater, and I talked to him about it, because I'm not sure I agree with it.
Guest:Oh, no, I agree.
Guest:I understand what you're saying, because I don't necessarily agree well out of what he says, either.
Guest:Because what he's saying...
Guest:And I get, at least from my opinion, it's true because, but only because it applies to him.
Guest:So in other words, when he says something like, all you got to do is say the words.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In your case, that's probably true because you're a master of writing the words.
Guest:Right.
Guest:A lot of guys don't write that good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so you got to sometimes got to massage that or finesse that or hopefully bring something more to the dance.
Marc:I think I talked to him about it.
Marc:My feeling was, is that the idea was like, you know, anybody can do this.
Marc:You know, if you just read, just do the words.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah, no.
Guest:There's more to it than that.
Guest:But I think what, if he cast it right, though, that's the key.
Guest:So I think maybe he's not adding that little, you know.
Marc:No, I just, I remember he had the school, and my first wife,
Marc:was in the school.
Marc:I read his books.
Marc:The Atlantic is what I'm talking about.
Marc:There are guys that are just gifted.
Marc:The truth of the matter is, whether you go by the system or not, if you can act, you can act.
Guest:With his form of writing, there's no room for improv.
Guest:You don't change a word.
Guest:It's a different ballgame than even working with... I've done movies for Woody Allen, for Barry Levinson.
Guest:Both of them give you... A little more room?
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:They give you all the room in the world.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Pretty much.
Marc:So it's like you're honoring the playwright's vision here, and that's the job.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:In fact, I remember Woody Allen's case.
Guest:I was doing his movie, and I was so used to working for Mamet.
Guest:It's like a composer.
Guest:Some guys write the music a certain way and say, play...
Guest:Play the notes, which I get.
Guest:Other guys will say, okay, this is the score.
Guest:Feel free to jump around if you want.
Guest:So I did two Woody Allen pitches.
Guest:Alice was the first, and it was one of the first days on it.
Guest:And all I wanted to do was I saw the line, and it was something like, I cannot, and I wanted to say I can't.
Guest:So I said to Woody, I said, look, instead of saying I cannot, do you mind if I say I can't?
Guest:He had that look on his face like I was like nuts.
Guest:Like, of course, say whatever you want.
Guest:I don't care.
Guest:Of course, if you went too far, he'd say, go back to the script.
Guest:But it made me realize, okay, it's not everybody's, you know, like this.
Guest:And the same thing with Barry Levinson, he would let me do improv.
Guest:What movie is that?
Guest:I did a couple.
Guest:I did Bugsy and I did Liberty Heights.
Marc:Oh, he did Bugsy?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Wonderful director.
Guest:And that was Warren Beatty's Bugsy?
Guest:Warren Beatty's Bugsy.
Guest:I played George Raft.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:The actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That was a good movie, I think.
Guest:I thought it was a great movie.
Marc:Are you friends with Dave now?
Guest:Mamet?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, very close.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh yeah, he gave my, when I got my star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he gave the speech for me along with the three-star marine general I had to do it because I wanted to balance out my kind of connection with the military.
Marc:A three-star marine, a buddy of yours?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you weren't in the military, were you?
Guest:No, no, no, I wasn't, but I kind of, not that I feel guilty about it, but I dodged that bullet because I had a high draft number during the Vietnam War.
Guest:And then a lot of my family was in the military.
Guest:And once I started doing that Memorial Day concert, a lot of it just came home to me because I've been in a lot of military hospitals and visited a lot of these guys, and I think, Jesus, when I was 20, I had two legs, two arms, two eyes, and I've lived a pretty good life.
Guest:Some of these guys fought in conflicts that people have forgotten why we were there, and yet these guys got to live like this the rest of their life, and that changes a little.
Guest:So that's what that was about.
Marc:Well, it's good that you do that.
Marc:It's like a service.
Guest:Everybody's got a hot button, you know what I mean?
Marc:Whatever it may be.
Marc:So now, I mean, you've been in a million movies.
Marc:When you were coming over here, I realized that you're one of those guys that's sort of been ever-present seemingly my entire life.
Guest:Yeah, well, yeah, that's what happens.
Guest:Those years start clicking by.
Marc:It's sort of astounding.
Marc:You've done big movies, done little movies.
Marc:You just keep working.
Guest:You know, to me, it's a blue-collar job being an actor.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:For me, it is.
Guest:I mean, look, I don't mean to- Cranston.
Marc:Cranston.
Marc:Brian Cranston, yeah.
Marc:The way he feels that way.
Marc:He's sort of a proletariat kind of guy.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, if I read something and I like it, I think I could bring something to it or register something in my head like, yeah, it might be fun to do this.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:Why not?
Marc:How many weeks?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What's the money?
Marc:Where is it?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I've shot films in Europe that when the agent says, you got this offer to do this film in Italy.
Guest:I go, great, I'll read it on the plane.
Guest:I said yes before I even heard what the title was.
Marc:Because you're going to be in Italy?
Guest:Because I thought, really?
Guest:Well, how bad could it be?
Guest:Well, who cares?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And literally, out of probably the five movies in Italy, I think I've seen three of them.
Guest:And the other two, I don't even know the titles of.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's really the deal.
Guest:You go for the experience sometimes.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, not everybody feels that way.
Marc:Some people manage their career like it's a goddamn garden.
Marc:Well, God bless them.
Guest:That's not me.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:For me, I look over here.
Guest:If the door opens, I'll try to walk through it.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:If it's closed, let me see if there's an open door over here.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So it really is about how much time, where is it going to be?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you don't want to hopefully do stuff that you're going to be embarrassed about.
Guest:Have you done any of that?
Guest:Of course.
Guest:But you don't find out.
Guest:Sometimes you don't know that till later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you see the finished product and you go, oh, Jesus, what was I thinking?
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then you have to say to yourself, now, wait a minute.
Guest:At the time I made that decision, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Guest:Right.
Marc:For whatever reason.
Marc:But you've worked with big guys, you've worked with big directors.
Guest:Oh, the biggest, Coppola.
Guest:I've worked with Coppola.
Guest:I'm the one godfather that nobody likes.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know what's ironic though with that, when I meet some young people, when I'm saying young people, meaning anybody under 40 is young people to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Those who wouldn't grow up with the Godfather trilogy and maybe just see them randomly and out of order, I'll have people in their 20s or 30s say to me, hey, man, yeah, I finally got around to see them Godfather movies.
Guest:Hey, number three, that's my favorite.
Guest:I'm thinking, really?
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Good.
Guest:But it's like-
Guest:Okay, because they're coming at it maybe from another angle.
Guest:They're coming at it from without any preconception of like knowing how great those first two were and there wasn't an 18-year gap and a lot of expectation.
Marc:Well, what was the scene around that?
Marc:Yeah, I mean, what was the casting?
Marc:What was the feeling?
Guest:There was a whole, I mean, there was a lot of strange things about that.
Guest:I mean, you know, Winona Ryder was originally on the film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then she dropped out like last second.
Guest:Oh, Sophia's part.
Guest:And that's what caused Sophia to come into it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I don't doubt that a lot of it had to do with Francis also still going through a period of grieving over the death of his son.
Guest:And I mean, I know that's true.
Guest:And so in a way, I think for him, it was a time of bringing his whole family together because in Italy, his mother was there, his father was there, his nieces, his nephews, his son, his other son, now his daughter was visiting from art school.
Guest:So it was almost like, it seemed like serendipitous that all this kind of, it became almost like a movie under itself.
Guest:The family thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The real thing.
Marc:He's always been big around that though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And God bless him.
Guest:To me, he, he, he's entitled to it.
Guest:He deserves it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, if he wants, if that's the way he wanted it to be, then so be it.
Guest:He's the, that's what, those are the times when it does cross over.
Guest:It is an art form and it's like, and he is the artist, especially in a movie.
Guest:The director is, the buck stops with that guy.
Guest:I mean, it's so his vision.
Guest:But what happened to the movie?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it is what it is.
Guest:I mean, I just think perhaps in many ways the expectations were so high there was no possible way you're going to equal it, equal people's expectations.
Marc:And also, like, how do you age that guy?
Marc:How do you age Michael?
Marc:You know, I mean, Pacino at that point, I mean, he did all right, but it was a nebulous thing.
Guest:Yeah, and also, you know, Robert Duvall was in it up until, like, a couple weeks before we started shooting.
Guest:And I mean huge in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they couldn't make the deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I mean, part of it was, again, it gets down to Duvall had won the Oscar for Best Actor like the year before or something.
Guest:And I think basically they were offering him short cash.
Guest:And I think his attitude was, wait a minute.
Guest:I should be right up there.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And so for whatever reason, Duvall decided not to do it.
Guest:And you can't, you know, within a few weeks of shooting, you can't all of a sudden make major changes to a script.
Guest:Well, that explains a lot.
Marc:I mean, that explains a lot.
Guest:But it's okay.
Guest:My feeling is, hey, it is what it is.
Guest:And so it holds up as part three of that trilogy.
Guest:And I don't think there'll be a fourth one, but you never know.
Guest:There could be.
Marc:Yeah, I guess.
Marc:But it's so amazing because you'll do TV movies.
Marc:You do all the movies.
Marc:You play Dean Martin.
Marc:Oh, I love doing it.
Guest:Well, the thing is, I don't care about the venue.
Guest:My feeling is, first of all, it all winds up on somebody's phone anyway, ultimately.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I mean, what the hell do I care?
Guest:I mean, back then it was a big deal.
Guest:When I first started in the business, you were either a stage actor, a TV actor, or a movie actor.
Guest:And never the twain shall meet.
Guest:Now, it's all over the place.
Guest:In fact, most of your big movie stars came out of probably streaming.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Well, it's true.
Guest:I mean, you know, think about it.
Guest:All the big stars got that way because the little boys and girls saw them.
Guest:I mean, they created them.
Guest:I mean, even you talk about Johnny Depp and those guys like that.
Guest:they started doing little bits on TV and stuff like that.
Guest:That would have never happened back in the 40s.
Guest:Oh, 21 Jump Street.
Marc:That was like Johnny Depp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm just saying the young people create who they want to be stars, and they can get it off of a show that's maybe, well, you see what's happening with streaming now and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:uh but there's some guys like i mean you know brad pitt was on yeah a lot of guys started on tv back in the day yeah and made the graduation but i see what you're saying some like there's a whole world of actors i don't know who they are and the kids know who they are oh absolutely that's that's just the way time works no no and it all and the social media has made it so like depending on how many followers you have you have you have power all i want to do is get off of it now i'm on it and then you start once you get on it and you figure it out i mean i'm 56 and i'm like all right i fought to sort of find a place on it but now i'm like i don't
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:I don't look at it.
Guest:I mean, I keep it up because there was a guy that was impersonating me because I didn't know.
Marc:Which one do you do?
Guest:Twitter?
Guest:I don't look at them.
Guest:My assistant does it.
Guest:He does Twitter and he does- Instagram?
Guest:I guess.
Guest:Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.
Guest:I probably have them all.
Guest:I don't have Facebook.
Guest:But I really don't do them because I email and I call people.
Guest:It's all I can do.
Guest:It's all I can handle.
Guest:No texting?
Guest:No texting.
Guest:I text.
Guest:I got kids.
Guest:You got to text.
Guest:Otherwise, they'd never hear from me.
Guest:Or I'd never hear from them.
Guest:But the other thing is, I mean, I think it's okay.
Guest:I mean, social media has become this.
Guest:What I don't like about it is it gives everybody like an equal voice.
Guest:And it used to be, you had to earn that.
Marc:You know, it makes us all very accessible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it's like, but I had to get it because a guy was impersonating me and it really cost me money to get him off.
Guest:In other words, he had opened up- On Twitter?
Guest:Whatever it was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the way I found out was my stand-in came up to me and says, hey, I donated to your charity.
Guest:I go, what charity?
Guest:He goes, the one you have online or the Facebook or whatever.
Guest:Oh, fuck.
Guest:I says, I don't have that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it turned out a guy was sick because I hadn't gotten it.
Guest:He created it.
Marc:And how'd you, you had to get someone to hide it?
Guest:Yeah, get somebody to get it off and make mine the, what they call the verified one.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Did the guy get punished?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He just has to stop.
Guest:How much did he scam people for?
Guest:I have no idea because I don't know how long it lasts.
Guest:It don't take very long.
Guest:But my assistant, who's been with me for 19 years, he's very good.
Guest:And so at least we use it as a form to just be able to inform like, hey, Criminal Minds is going to be back on, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:I'm doing this for the military on this day.
Guest:But I'm not there every day.
Guest:Personally, not at all.
Guest:I'm not saying, oh, by the way, I had like a sandwich this morning and my dog just bit me.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:That stuff makes me, I can't even...
Marc:Who needs to know that?
Marc:That's right, but also people get obsessed with that.
Marc:It attaches to the narcissism that we all have as people, and then it's your whole day.
Marc:You put something up, you see who people responded, you put another thing up, you see how they responded, you go over to the other platform, you put something up, see how that's going, and it's like half your day.
Guest:Look, I'm in a public profession, and I don't shun anybody.
Guest:That's the one thing.
Guest:I'll go out in the street.
Guest:People see me.
Guest:Hey, Joe, can we take a picture?
Guest:You must be that guy.
Guest:People love you.
Guest:They must do it.
Guest:It's harder to say no for me than to just say, sure, come on, we'll take a picture.
Guest:I'm supposed to go, no, no, no.
Guest:You got to do five minutes.
Guest:I agree with you.
Guest:I don't take pictures.
Guest:You put your collar up or sunglasses, pretend you're somebody else.
Guest:Please.
Marc:Sometimes when you're eating or something, you're with somebody else.
Marc:Well, sure, but as long as they're doing it politely.
Marc:You're sitting there eating.
Marc:Just one, they stick their head in and do the thing like that.
Guest:They usually don't.
Guest:Maybe because they've seen some of the characters I played, they figure maybe it's not a good idea to push me too far.
Guest:Don't fuck with that guy.
Guest:But no, for 99.9% of the people are very polite.
Guest:And look, without them, I don't have the life I live in.
Guest:I've had a pretty good life.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:Now, okay, so 15 years on a show, buddy.
Marc:Is that how long you were on it?
Guest:I was on 13 seasons.
Guest:The show's on 15 seasons.
Guest:So this is your 13th year and this is the end of it?
Guest:It's the end of it.
Guest:We shot the last 10 episodes.
Guest:The end of Criminal Minds.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:January 8th will start the first of the 10.
Marc:David Rossi.
Marc:David Rossi.
Marc:Now, how does that feel?
Marc:I mean, is this a sad thing?
Marc:Or is it...
Guest:Well, I mean, it's bittersweet.
Guest:I mean, because first of all, we all really liked each other, especially the last eight of us that were together.
Guest:It really gelled.
Guest:We really had a nice thing going.
Guest:Everybody really got along.
Guest:We had some that had been there a long time, some that were new.
Guest:It was a nice mix.
Guest:So it was somewhat bittersweet, but look, I didn't kid myself.
Guest:Like I say, I've been doing this for 50 years, so if nothing else, you know the business is transitory.
Guest:It's like nothing lasts forever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And this one happened to last a lot longer than, and look, I've been Fat Tony on The Simpsons for 30 years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's my longest running role.
Marc:I'm still doing that.
Guest:I'm doing one next week.
Marc:But so like just on a residual situation, you're doing good.
Guest:Not from the Simpsons.
Guest:Simpsons, my residuals, I could take you to lunch.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, that's because I'm not one of the- You're not vested.
Guest:main guys right right right but i i love the character yeah and they've they've treated me well they write well for my character i'll only do like two or three episodes it's fun yeah it's fun and and i think they say i've done the most guest shots of any of the characters i was on pride in that i was on one were you yeah i played myself oh great yeah and i interviewed uh crusty
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:Well, when I do the one next week, I'm going to say, we've got to get one back, you know, get us together.
Marc:Yeah, me and you?
Guest:Yeah, Fat Tony.
Marc:Yeah, have Mark Mirren do a podcast with Fat Tony.
Guest:It'd be great.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But, you know, 13 seasons was, I loved doing it.
Guest:And if they had told me, look, we're going to do more, I would have done more and not blinked.
Guest:It wasn't like, oh, man, am I glad this is over?
Guest:I'm tired of it.
Guest:But on the other hand, it's over, and so it's time to- It's a two-hour premiere?
Guest:The premiere's two hours, and then we'll do a single hour up until the final two episodes, and that'll be a two-hour finale sometime in February.
Marc:And it's a good season?
Marc:You like it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We shot it all?
Guest:We shot it all.
Guest:What's nice is we finished like in March, and so I don't even remember.
Guest:A lot of it.
Guest:So it's going to be new to me.
Guest:Like, oh, yeah, that's what it's about.
Marc:You know, I'm sort of new to it.
Marc:But like I did a series on Netflix called Glow.
Marc:And like, you know, you get done shooting it.
Marc:And I did all 10 episodes.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't remember what I don't know what it was about.
Marc:And then he comes on, you're like, oh, yeah, that's how that looks.
Guest:But the public out there, there are some people who are so into it.
Guest:And our fan base of Criminal Minds is, if anything, it's even bigger internationally.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Because there's less product for them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They don't get everything.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But the things that they gravitate to, they do a big way.
Guest:So they send us out for publicity tours all over the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I've been to France and Germany and Italy and Monaco and...
Guest:And I remember in France, this one writer comes up to me and goes, do you have any idea how popular you are in France?
Guest:He was the number one show in France.
Guest:I'm like, really?
Guest:This was like season nine or something.
Guest:Okay, great.
Guest:So you're big in France.
Guest:Good to know, big in France.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And did you find that's true when you go to France?
Guest:Do people- Yeah, well, you find it wherever.
Guest:I mean, I'll be walking on the street in Venice or whatever, and somebody will say, hey, David Rossi or whatever like that.
Marc:Is that mostly what they recognize you for?
Guest:Now, yeah, but it depends.
Guest:If I see a guy that looks a little whacked out, it's going to be either probably airheads.
Guest:Like, hey, man, I love airheads.
Guest:Or it might be somebody who's a certain age that come up to me and say, I grew up watching Baby's Day Out.
Guest:We watched it with my dad and mom for 10 times.
Guest:Or it could be if it's a guy like my age, it might be, hey, man, Dean Martin, I love that.
Guest:So it depends on the crowd.
Guest:And Godfather, too.
Guest:You'll get a lot of Joey Zaza, you know, that kind of thing.
Guest:So it really depends, but Criminal Mind's probably giving me the most face time.
Guest:And same thing with even The Simpsons, Fat Tony.
Guest:They're people, and so they know that I am that voice.
Guest:So if they see me, I've had one guy run up to me, lift up his shirt, and he's got a Fat Tony tattoo huge on his arm.
Guest:And I'm thinking, oh, I can't.
Guest:Well, I've got to make sure this guy's not following me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're not stopping.
Guest:No, you know, what, you retire?
Guest:What am I going to do, golf?
Guest:Like Franz.
Guest:Franz can do that.
Guest:I can't do that.
Guest:Yeah, he loves it.
Guest:He loves golf.
Guest:Do you golf?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I actually do.
Guest:I'm a member of a golf club, but I don't play.
Guest:I probably eat there more than I golf there, but I enjoy it.
Guest:It's a nice way to just get out.
Marc:Yeah, I've never really tried it.
Guest:Yeah, it's frustrating.
Guest:I mean, thank God I don't take it seriously.
Marc:Yeah, and then what about directing?
Guest:I like directing.
Guest:In fact, I'm supposed to direct this film next spring, which is very interesting because it's a comedy based on when Frank Sinatra Jr.
Guest:was kidnapped back in the 60s.
Guest:But it's a comedy in the sense that it's like a black comedy.
Guest:It's absurd because even though it's based on a true story, it was kind of absurd.
Guest:The guys who did it were like nuts.
Guest:They were a little wacky.
Guest:And it seemed through the eyes of them.
Guest:And it's kind of cool.
Guest:And it's actually, it's not disrespectful to junior or senior in the sense that it shows that there was a little tension between the two of them, which there was.
Guest:But in a way, there's a sweetness about it, how it gets resolved.
Guest:So I really liked the script.
Guest:So they came to me because I directed like nine episodes of Criminal Minds and I also directed a mammoth
Guest:play into a movie called Lake Boat.
Marc:So you got some chops now.
Guest:I got some.
Guest:I like to think I do.
Guest:And I felt good about the episodes I directed of Criminal Minds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And enough for these producers.
Guest:I mean, I didn't seek this out.
Guest:They came to me and said, we think you're the right guy for this movie.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:And I read the script.
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:And then I shot a pilot for Amazon.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And the reason I like that is I have two daughters.
Marc:You directed it.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:No, I'm acting in it.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:But it's the tentative title.
Guest:It's already running in Israel.
Guest:It's had run in Israel called On the Spectrum.
Guest:And it's about these three young people who are all on the autism spectrum.
Guest:They all live together.
Marc:This is based on an Israeli show is what you're saying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Jason Kadams wrote it, who's created Parenthood and created Friday Night Lights.
Guest:Wonderful writer.
Guest:And I read the script.
Guest:My oldest daughter has autism.
Guest:She's 32.
Guest:So when I read the script, I just thought it was a beautiful script.
Guest:I really thought it was great because it's got humor, but it's drama too.
Guest:It's like you think of a good doctor, which I think is a good show, but people on the spectrum don't all become surgeons.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:So what happens to the ones that are just like having to live their life?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's what this is kind of about.
Guest:Oh, that's sweet.
Guest:And so I did that pilot.
Guest:So we're going to wait to hear if that gets picked up.
Marc:And you play the father?
Guest:I play the father of the lead boy.
Marc:Oh, so that's something close to your heart.
Marc:Very close to my heart.
Marc:And it's something that brings awareness.
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:And also many of the people involved are on the spectrum themselves.
Guest:Oh, interesting.
Guest:And they reached out to me about perhaps having my daughter work in the makeup department because she actually has a strong interest in that and actually went to makeup school.
Guest:oh that's great years ago so I mean they're sensitive to that so I like the whole you know everything about it and I like Jason very much he's a gentle man and I know he has a son on the spectrum and so everything seemed right about it so again you gotta trust your gut feeling yeah but that sounds great oh it does we'll see and if it doesn't go it doesn't go and who knows what I do alright well man I'm sure you'll do something yeah I'll do something it was great talking to you same here I'm gonna have to see the Lenny Bruce thing so you told him to get naked at the beginning that's what we can expect
Guest:I told him, I want you naked on the toilet.
Guest:And that's how we opened the play.
Guest:As a dead guy?
Guest:Well, he's dead.
Guest:He opens up his eyes, looks in the audience and says, I was found dead naked on the toilet in 19... But before I get to that, then we start the play.
Guest:And then he gets a dress?
Guest:Then he starts getting dressed.
Guest:As he gets dressed, he starts talking.
Guest:He starts telling about... No, you got to see.
Marc:You especially got to see.
Marc:Well, you say hi to that guy and we'll try to figure it out.
Marc:Yeah, please do.
Marc:Thanks, Joe.
Marc:Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye.
Bye.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show, his show, Joe's show.
Marc:Criminal Minds is on its 15th and final season.
Marc:It airs Wednesday nights and it's streaming on CBS All Access.
Marc:And the two-hour series finale is on February 19th.
Marc:That's when it airs.
Marc:I guess I should go to a chiropractor.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I think I'm falling apart.
Marc:I'm sorry I have a cold.
Marc:I'm sorry I sound stuffed up.
Marc:I'm sorry if I'm discombobulated.
Marc:I'll be back on top of it.
Marc:Shortly.
Marc:I'll probably talk to you from Atlanta next.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com slash tour for all of my tour dates.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:You can do that.
Marc:And now I will play some echoey, somewhat sub-Saharan flavored music.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that the word I want?
¶¶
Guest:Thank you.
.
.
.
Marc:Boomer lives.