Episode 1108 - Dan Aykroyd
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:You alright?
Marc:Is my tone too chipper for the pandemic situation?
Marc:How are you taking it?
Marc:How's everything with you?
Marc:How are the kids?
Marc:How are you holding up?
Marc:Are you supplies?
Marc:Is supplies okay?
Marc:And just a little bit of a hello to the people that are by themselves again.
Marc:um i hope you you're all doing okay i know there's some people that are trying to stay sober out there and they're getting into the online meetings i guess on the zoom app which i need to get uh you know stay in touch with people through this friends family check in as much as possible there's no reason now not to text or call or facetime or skype or zoom your mom your dad your close friends it's important when there's a lack of
Marc:Ability to to sort of touch and hug and socialize to to do it somehow.
Marc:It's important for people to listen to people, to talk to people, to feel like they're part of a people thing.
Marc:If you don't do that, people start to lose their fucking minds.
Marc:And certainly if you're putting the wrong shit into your brains while you're isolated, you're going to lose your fucking mind.
Marc:I mean, it happened to about 35% of this population for different reasons.
Marc:But isolation is something that existed before this.
Marc:There are a lot of people who are, most of us are isolated in terms of how we live our lives in a way.
Marc:Or else our worlds are fairly small.
Marc:I mean, there are people that have always worked from home.
Marc:There are people that didn't have jobs to begin with who were shut-ins and at home.
Marc:There are people that didn't even need to buy food because they'd stocked up on chips and soda.
Marc:And they're still, you know, they're locked in a room
Marc:spewing garbage online.
Marc:That was before this.
Marc:But isolation is a real problem.
Marc:I think it's one of the issues that so many people that we know and even people that we think might be intelligent can't quite wrap their brain around what's happening, but it's happening.
Marc:I mean, I'm guilty of it, man.
Marc:I mean, I'm not out in the world pretending like nothing's wrong, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around the real destruction and pain and death and everything else and the lack of supplies and
Marc:And the hardships that people are going through because of this thing.
Marc:Because I'm sitting in my house.
Marc:I'm alone.
Marc:You know, I read stuff.
Marc:I got an email last week from that woman in Italy.
Marc:But all of us live these sort of isolated, insulated lives.
Marc:Even when there's no pandemic.
Marc:And just to have a consciousness of this thing.
Marc:And, you know, I'm not being...
Marc:sort of it's not apocalyptic thinking it's not overreacting but it's we're it we're in it man and i can't be too glib about it but i just uh i just hope people are taking care of themselves and more importantly um reaching out to people any way they can that that have been in their lives just to throw a line connect say hello
Marc:And I'm going online.
Marc:I'm doing stuff.
Marc:I'm playing my guitar on Instagram.
Marc:I'm trying to not even have a life.
Marc:I mean, there's a lot of what's happening now that used to be the way I lived as a young comic.
Marc:You just sit around, write, and think all day and play guitar and nap and cook food.
Marc:I guess the point of this is I talked to my buddy Dave.
Marc:And he was freaking out.
Marc:He was in a rabbit hole of, you know, symptoms and statistics and who gets what and what, you know, what are the outcome?
Marc:It's bad.
Marc:But you can't just sit there and defeat yourself.
Marc:Do what you can do in the moment that you can do it for yourself and the people around you.
Marc:And don't make it worse than it already is.
Marc:Just understand the reality.
Marc:Understand your part in it or your place in the world.
Marc:And try to live your life and be ready to be helpful.
Marc:Or to run.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Where, though?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Where do you run from the bug?
Marc:Dan Aykroyd is on the show today, and he's like one of these guys about the aliens.
Marc:The aliens here!
Marc:It's a coronavirus.
Marc:These renegade strands of RNA looking for a partner to helix with.
Marc:Our cells.
Marc:They're not full bodies.
Marc:They just need to be full bodies, but they can only do it with ourselves.
Marc:Virus.
Marc:Virus.
Marc:Also, sometimes the foundation of some relationships.
Marc:I'm not a whole person until I glom onto you and use you to be a full person to replicate myself and leave you a drained husk.
Marc:Dark.
Marc:Dark.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Dan Aykroyd is on the show.
Marc:He was around, so I got to talk to him before the shit went down to the point where we couldn't leave.
Marc:We don't know really what's going to happen in terms of that.
Marc:I read the order from the L.A.
Marc:Public Health Department about what is and what isn't essential businesses.
Marc:And in the media realm, podcasts are okay, sanctioned, essential businesses.
Marc:So, you know, we do have some episodes, some interviews in the can, which we'll keep using.
Marc:And I think I've got one or two interviews set up for the near future.
Marc:But I can offer a fairly safe space, just me.
Marc:And I'm healthy and I will sit six feet away from you.
Marc:And I have spray and wipes.
Marc:So if you come by yourself, we're good.
Marc:We're golden.
Marc:So we'll see what happens.
Marc:If not, if people aren't going to come, we'll...
Marc:Figure out another way.
Marc:We'll figure out another way.
Marc:But panic.
Marc:So I had some panic.
Marc:Everyone's having panic.
Marc:Do we have it?
Marc:Do we not have it?
Marc:Am I just a carrier?
Marc:Do I have it and it's not going?
Marc:Is it not showing?
Marc:Well, the testing, I don't have exact information on how they're prioritizing that, but it seems to be
Marc:people who have been around people who have confirmed it.
Marc:And I don't know.
Marc:I just know there's not enough of them and it's a little chaotic and it's hard to stay isolated, but want to, you know, check, you know, what if you need to go to the doctor?
Marc:I know, but I've had panic.
Marc:I've woken up like, why is my chest fucked up?
Marc:Why do I, why is my chest heavy?
Marc:Why can't I breathe?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then I realized like, Oh, that's what happens when I panic.
Marc:But I also realized as some of you know, or remember, um,
Marc:when we had a sponsor here that ever really well did a food sensitivity thing.
Marc:And it happened to be all the foods I was eating at that time.
Marc:Like I had a high sensitivity to egg whites.
Marc:I had moderate sensitivity to almonds and yogurt and kale and, uh, cashews, like all the healthy shit I was eating.
Marc:I had sensitivity to, and right a week or so ago when this all started going down, uh,
Marc:You know, the stockpiling, storing food.
Marc:I was like, fuck it, man.
Marc:You know, I'm not really allergic to anything.
Marc:Those sensitivities were bullshit.
Marc:I'm going to get kale.
Marc:I'm going to get almonds.
Marc:I'm going to get cashews.
Marc:And sure enough, for the last week, I've had a little tightness in my chest.
Marc:And guess what's a symptom of allergies?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Got no fever.
Marc:Got no other symptoms.
Marc:And I didn't eat almonds or any of them yesterday.
Marc:And it feels better.
Marc:And I've been hiking.
Marc:But it is where I feel stress as well.
Marc:You can manifest symptoms with your brain if you commit with panic and fear.
Marc:And your brain, you know, you can focus and manifest almost all symptoms.
Marc:So don't fuck your head like that.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Try to relax.
Marc:I've been writing a bit.
Marc:Actually, not so much.
Marc:I've been cooking a lot, and I've been watching some movies I haven't seen, catching up on series, watched a Cassavetes movie last night, playing guitar, spending time with my cats, and talking to you and doing shit around the house and hoping for the best, but it's definitely a scary time.
Marc:Definitely a scary time.
Marc:And I had this thing happen and it's been happening and I need to fucking put it out there and I don't even know if I can explain it properly, to be honest with you.
Marc:Cause it makes me nervous.
Marc:I don't know what it is or what to do about it.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I'm going to try to lay it out because I tried to talk about it on Tom Sharpling came over and did a, an episode of the best show in my driveway where he threw a cord out his window and I hooked up one of my mics and Lynn Shelton and myself, um, me and Lynn Shelton, however, the proper way to say that, uh, Lynn Shelton and I, I don't know.
Marc:I stood outside his car and did an episode of that, and I tried to communicate exactly what I was feeling to describe this phenomenon that's happening to me.
Marc:It has to do with my phone and my brain.
Marc:Okay, first off, I guess, like, have any of you had a genuine out-of-body experience, like a near out-of-body experience where you may not have gotten far and you may not have gotten all the way out, but you just all of a sudden have this estranged consciousness of your body as something other than you.
Marc:I guess is the way to put it like that.
Marc:You kind of like your brain sort of has a consciousness of the fact that it's just housed in this thing that moves.
Marc:And that's the sort of feeling.
Marc:You know, obviously the brain is in charge of the thing, but there is because the self is housed in the brain or somewhere like that.
Marc:The self is sort of like, wow, I think I'm just going to cut loose here.
Marc:Do you know that feeling where yourself tries to cut loose from the body, from the vessel, or gets a little distance from it, even almost leaves?
Marc:Well, my point is that that's the feeling I'm getting sometimes when I look at my phone too much.
Marc:If I'm just in my phone, I'll all of a sudden realize that my body is separate than me.
Marc:My brain itself is connected with the phone, and somehow my hand is holding it, but I've got nothing to do with that.
Marc:Does that make sense?
Marc:It's happening a lot.
Marc:There's a sort of disassociation to it and it's sort of creeping me out.
Marc:It's sort of like this is the singularity.
Marc:It's happening to me personally.
Marc:Can anyone, is that making sense?
Marc:Should I be concerned?
Marc:This is no time to go to the doctor to try to explain that phenomenon that I just tried to explain to you.
Marc:Now is it?
Marc:No.
Marc:All right, well, look, Dan Aykroyd, he's always promoting his Crystal Head vodka line.
Marc:He's also back as Ray Stantz in the upcoming Ghostbusters Afterlife.
Marc:But he was one of the guys.
Marc:He's one of the original guys.
Marc:He's one of the original SNL guys.
Marc:And this is me talking to him.
Oh.
Guest:Are we going to roll here?
Guest:Sure, yeah, let's do it.
Guest:Well, let me know because then I can formally, let me say, acknowledge where I am.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're on.
Guest:I love your location here in Culver City.
Guest:Thanks for sending the golf cart.
Guest:You know, I'm just across the road here at Sony at Ghost Co.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Ivan Reitman-administered Ghost Co.
Guest:And so it was great to be so close to the studio and get over here that way.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:We took the tunnel from the old Sony Columbia Tunnel, the one that Harry, what was his name, Mayor, Louis B. Mayor had.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:And we took the golf cart.
Marc:We tried to make it convenient for you.
Guest:Oh, that was so great.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:And then you come here, and it's the old film tower, right, in Culver City.
Guest:So we went up the elevator, and here we've got a beautiful view of the city, and what a spot.
Marc:Yeah, isn't it great?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're the first guy to actually admit where we were, and I try to keep it a secret, and I appreciate it.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I knew this was a satellite to your real location, which, incidentally, folks, I couldn't get to because Mark came down to see me, and I was going to go up.
Guest:But you are in a missile silo.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:I think it's North Dakota.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I come out here occasionally to interview people, and they let me use this.
Marc:This is the only location I'll use.
Guest:I love the missile silo.
Guest:You know, my brother and I were looking to buy one.
Marc:It's beautiful.
Guest:There's no missile in it, but it has the whole tube.
Guest:It's quiet.
Marc:It's nice down there.
Marc:We just got refrigeration working on a steady basis.
Guest:It was all battery run initially.
Guest:This is where some of us have to be in the world if we're talking about things that matter.
Guest:It's great to be with you, man.
Marc:Nice to be with you.
Marc:You got a lot of papers.
Marc:You come prepared.
Marc:You broke it down.
Marc:What do you got on the papers?
Marc:What's the plan?
Guest:Well, first of all... Seems like you plan more than me.
Guest:You're a great interviewer, and you interviewed Terry Gross.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I just kind of was curious, because she got me to reveal secrets about myself.
Guest:You know, she has that voice.
Marc:Did she really?
Guest:She did, yeah.
Guest:You know, that I eat worms or whatever.
Guest:Wouldn't you eat fried worms?
Guest:Well, I don't know what I revealed, but she really gets...
Guest:You're going to talk about yourself, and then you're introspective.
Guest:You forget she's there.
Marc:She's not there, though.
Marc:She's unbelievable.
Marc:She's usually on satellites.
Marc:You didn't sit with her, did you?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:You're sitting by yourself?
Marc:She put the hypno coin on me.
Marc:Yeah, she's very hypnotic.
Marc:And if you listen to MPI, you're very used to her.
Marc:You're comforted by her presence in your head.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like it's happening.
Guest:Did she come into the studio?
Marc:No, I did a weird, not a weird gig, but it was when she we did a live gig.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And she chose me.
Marc:She said she would do this radio.
Marc:It was a radio benefit, I think, show.
Marc:and she said if I interviewed her, she would do it.
Marc:So it was actually live in front of about 2,000 people that we did it.
Marc:Oh, neat.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:It was tricky.
Marc:It was tricky because she's not really that type of show person, and to sort of keep it candid and figure out a way in.
Marc:But at that point, that was several years ago, and I think it's still kind of like that.
Marc:People know very little about her.
Marc:So you could find a way, you know, there was gaps in the small amount of information that was available that would sort of like what happened there.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What else?
Guest:She's buttoned up, you know, but she's a great man.
Guest:You know, I think she's buttoned up on the radio, but she's a master broadcaster.
Marc:Oh, no, she's great.
Marc:And you it seems to me that your life is you have a sort of weird, deep respect for broadcasters.
Guest:Well, as a veteran of 26 years of House of Blues Radio Hour, and my persona is Elwood Blues, forgive me for the cheap Chicago accent, but really, you know.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'm an adopted son of that city, so I can do it for him.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Guest:So Elwood was on there on the radio.
Guest:We had the House of Blues Radio Hour.
Marc:But when you were a kid, something about it must have planted the seed or wired you that way.
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:You know, my dad gave my... He was 98 yesterday.
Marc:Congratulations.
Guest:My dad is an old engineer there, and I used to watch the black and white television, the Ud Sullivan show.
Guest:And so my dad, one day, they chopped off the top of a hockey stick, and he took a black electrical tape, and he made it into a microphone.
Guest:He put a little cord there, made it into a toy microphone, and gave it to me.
Guest:And I started to imitate announcers and that one.
Marc:So that's when it started.
Guest:It did, yeah.
Marc:You were fascinated.
Guest:I loved the voices.
Guest:I loved all the impressionists that were on those shows.
Marc:Could you do Ud Sullivan?
Guest:Uh...
Guest:I don't know too many people will remember this next gentleman who's been on the show so many times.
Guest:Of course, tonight we have Wayne Schuster.
Guest:You know, he was a gossip columnist.
Guest:It's close to Nixon, isn't it?
Guest:Well, down in here.
Guest:Down in here, yeah.
Guest:And I could say some profanities, but I'm not going to.
Marc:You're allowed to here.
Guest:Mr. Presley, so good to have you in the White House today.
Guest:Imagine him and Elvis met, you know.
Guest:Good to be here.
Guest:But it's just great that you're going to help with the drug effort.
Yeah.
Guest:But no, tonight, Topper G. Cher.
Guest:Topper G. Cher.
Guest:And The Flying Relentist.
Guest:He was a gossip columnist, and there's a famous movie called Sweet Smell of Success with Tony Curtis.
Guest:And J.J.
Guest:Hunsaker, played by Burt Lancaster.
Guest:Ed Sullivan was the basis for that character.
Marc:Was he?
Guest:I thought it was the other guy.
Marc:Walter Winchell.
Marc:Walter Winchell.
Guest:Walter Winchell, both of them kind of, they were kind of muckraking gossip scandal guys, but they parlayed their careers.
Guest:Winchell into a columnist, of course.
Guest:Very influential.
Guest:And then Ed Solomon into the Variety Show host.
Guest:Now, when Winchell's memorabilia sold, no one bought it.
Marc:Oh, is that true?
Guest:Did you know that?
Guest:I had no idea.
Guest:His hat, his typewriters, his pencils.
Guest:No one gave a shit.
Guest:No one bought Walter Winchell's.
Guest:No one cared, Dan.
Guest:What's that say about a tabloid reporter's life?
Guest:I...
Guest:It means people thought he was garbage.
Guest:Well, Walter Winchell had a spectacular voice, and you'll remember it from... In 1932, Elliot Ness and his untouchables raided a warehouse on the north side of Chicago.
Guest:Frank Niddy was caught in, you know... Mr. Ness, of course, Robert Stack.
Marc:But when you grew up in Toronto...
Guest:uh i was born in ottawa canada yeah and i am a canadian through and through and here's how canadian i am i was born on july 1st that's canada yeah that's the independence day of canada when we became a dominion of the crown i was born a grandson of a royal canadian mounted police staff sergeant did you know i was french i knew eddie very well and my uh mother was french canadian and my dad was a high anglican english man
Guest:So he wasn't from Canada?
Guest:No, he was from Toronto, so he was a wasp.
Guest:So it was kind of the French Catholic wasp marriage.
Guest:French Catholic marries a wasp.
Guest:Grew up Catholic, though?
Guest:I was raised Catholic.
Guest:My dad converted for my mom's family.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, I was at my dad's baptism there, him kneeling there on the...
Guest:And also his confirmation when the bishop slapped him.
Guest:That's a weird moment, right?
Guest:Weird moment?
Guest:Remember?
Guest:Did they?
Guest:It was a weird moment.
Guest:The bishop slaps you even as a grown man?
Guest:Confirmation, yes.
Guest:Yeah, you get the whack, you know.
Guest:Really?
Marc:I didn't know that.
Guest:Of the bishop.
Guest:And as a little kid, you get the whack from the bishop.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that's sort of like welcome?
Guest:Well, yes, because, you know, you're being, now the Holy Ghost is visiting you when you get that whack.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Some see, some see the Holy Ghost.
Marc:Did you?
Guest:As I do today, I see the flame every day.
Guest:Every day.
Guest:Every day I see the flame.
Guest:But my dad was a very interesting man.
Guest:He was an old kind of, you know, engineer, road engineer.
Guest:What does that mean, road engineer?
Marc:He built highways.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah, he built highways.
Marc:So he's out in the world with the navigating.
Guest:Bulldozers.
Guest:Yes, he blew the top off of Granite Mountain, and I watched him do that as a kid.
Guest:What a great upbringing.
Guest:So I'm very Canadian, born in Ottawa, capital city, grandson of a Maudie, French-Canadian mother, high Anglican wasp father.
Guest:Brother, sister.
Guest:I have a brother, Peter, very funny.
Guest:You'll know him out there in the world as the Java Junkie.
Guest:Do you remember that clip from SNL?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Do you remember that clip?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Great performance as a guy drinking coffee.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The film by Tom Schiller.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Is Schiller still around?
Guest:I believe so.
Guest:He's a director.
Guest:He does all kinds of stuff and commercials and short films.
Guest:He was so brilliant.
Guest:My brother's a Java junkie.
Guest:So I'm Canadian.
Guest:I was born in Ottawa.
Marc:But the Catholic thing, how religious were you brought up?
Marc:Pretty strict?
Guest:Let me say, I went back as far as being an altar boy that had to get up.
Guest:At seven and eight years old, I was getting on a bicycle and bicycling to the church.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And serving mass.
Guest:And then I went into, I was actually hodwinkled to go into a seminary.
Guest:I attended St.
Guest:Pius X Minor Preparatory Seminary for Boys in Ottawa.
Marc:Were you thinking about doing the thing?
Guest:Well, the interview was very interesting.
Guest:We were with Father Lunny, a great priest and a great mentor.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And my mom and dad were sitting there with me.
Guest:And Father Lenny looks at me.
Guest:And my dad and mom wanted me to go to this Catholic school, not go to the public school.
Guest:And he looks at me and says, Dan, so you are here.
Guest:You're considering a vocation here.
Guest:You'd like to join us in our calling.
Guest:And here's my response in front of my parents and Father Lenny.
Guest:Well, and I see my mom wants me to go to this school and my dad would relieve him because he was on the way to work.
Guest:He could drop me off.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So you'd like to be a priest.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:So we did three years of that.
Guest:And it was a good upbringing.
Guest:And I learned a lot.
Guest:And there were some terrific people there at that school.
Guest:Between 58 and 78, St.
Guest:Pius had all boys there.
Guest:And there are 5,000 of us went through there.
Guest:Guess how many became priests out of 5,000?
Marc:400.
Marc:Two.
Marc:Two people?
Marc:Two people.
Marc:So it was just a school.
Marc:It was just an education.
Guest:Well, it was an experience, you know.
Guest:So I was pretty Catholic there all the way through.
Guest:But you believed.
Guest:Well, I believe in the cosmic engineer.
Guest:I didn't buy a lot of the hooji-booji, but I think that the words of the Christ and the lessons of Christ could be... Yeah, there's some hooji-booji going along.
Marc:There's centuries of hooji-booji.
Marc:I think my question, though, when I was thinking about you coming over was that I realized that if you have the foundation of believing at the ability to suspend your disbelief and believe in God at any point in time in your life, it kind of makes you vulnerable to believe in just about fucking anything.
Guest:Well, here's the thing.
Guest:People do believe in anything.
Guest:Catholics believe in the Virgin Mary.
Guest:The Mormons believe in the angel Marani and the golden plates and the magic spectacles.
Guest:In the underwear.
Guest:Yes, and the Scientologists believe in Zenu, the super god, and in the Hindu religion, there's a belief of Vishnu.
Guest:So my approach to it now is, okay, believe what you want.
Guest:I am not here to question what you believe.
Guest:If you believe...
Guest:that there was a zinger up in the sky that hit the Virgin Mary and caused Christ to come into the world, and I say I'm a fan of Christ.
Guest:I really am.
Guest:Yeah, a zinger.
Guest:You know, if that zinger was true, and you believe in that, fine.
Guest:It's up to people to have their own beliefs and not for me to question, and really not for me to be questioned on my belief as a spiritualist.
Guest:I am a spiritualist.
Guest:That's an old...
Guest:That's an old title, spiritualist.
Guest:Well, it comes from basically the 1800s.
Guest:Was it theosophy?
Guest:Was it a Blavatsky thing?
Guest:She definitely was a part of that movement.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And it's a belief that not only does the energy of the soul survive, but the consciousness survives after death.
Guest:We're surrounded by him.
Guest:Many consciousnesses.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:There was an old... I got you my dad's book here, History of Ghosts, and
Marc:Well, it was sort of interesting to me that you come from this.
Guest:It's like centuries of... Yeah, it is since really my great-grandfather Sam was a dentist, and he started exploring this stuff in the 20s.
Guest:And in the book here, it talks about a guy named Arthur Findlay, and he was a medium in England, and he was very good at it.
Guest:He brought channel forth many, many entities, and he used to go to the theater, and he'd be sitting in the theater, just try to watch a movie, and then all these voices would come from where he'd been channeling, and the people around him would go...
Guest:Shut up, man.
Guest:He brought the entities with him.
Guest:I thought that was a very funny story.
Marc:But I've been here sitting with you for 10 minutes, and I've heard at least a dozen entities.
Guest:The best one is July 1932, Elliot Ness and his untouchables.
Guest:Rico, Rocco.
Guest:That's a good entity.
Guest:The best one is Robert Stack, though.
Guest:Lee, Rico, bring around unsolved mysteries.
Guest:A man walks down a beach.
Guest:A pebble hops up at him.
Guest:Who's inside the pebble?
Guest:You're channeling.
Guest:I love him.
Guest:Now, we've lost a great man in Hollywood recently, Kirk Douglas.
Guest:Yes, 103.
Guest:Too young, too young.
Guest:Too young.
Guest:My dad's 98, and he goes to me, no more, no more.
Guest:Kirk and I...
Guest:I shared a movie set.
Guest:I was honored to have made a film with him.
Guest:John Asher directed it.
Guest:John Asher is kind of Hollywood royalty himself.
Guest:His mother was Elizabeth Montgomery, and his father was a producer and writer, and John directed this film.
Guest:what was it and it was called diamonds and uh kirk played uh it was about you know the sunset sundowning syndrome and alzheimer's and i had i played a son his son who had to put him in a home eventually but there's this scene in there where they where he insists on driving you know and this is funny 90 in his mid 90s so we take he goes he sits in this car and he said i'm driving i'm gonna drive this scene and he was there he was and he'd
Guest:Great stunt driver.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:On purpose?
Guest:I wasn't scared at all.
Guest:I wasn't scared at all.
Guest:But what a pleasure.
Guest:And my dad came on the set, too, at the time.
Guest:So to have the two of them sitting there.
Guest:Five years apart, having a good time.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:Exactly right.
Marc:So, OK, but the spiritualism and the channeling and also the idea that we don't question others' beliefs.
Marc:But you would question others' beliefs if they had dangerous intent or violent intent.
Guest:Um, sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, and boy, there's enough malevolence in the world that we should be questioning what's going on, you know?
Guest:Have you read this book, The Uninhabitable Planet?
Guest:No, but I feel it coming.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How much do I need to know?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But in our time, it was the bomb shelter.
Guest:With me, I'm a little older than you.
Guest:I remember when I was in primary school, and I'm sitting there, and I put this in the Blues Brothers, by the way.
Guest:They showed up one day, and they put up an air raid siren, a pole right there.
Guest:And that was the one that was on the top of the car.
Marc:And the funny thing is, in retrospect, they would have not been helpful at all, really.
Guest:No, no, no, because by the time that ICBM hit wherever it was, it would be done.
Guest:And I'm going under the horror of that, the nuclear horror, you know, and so that was what we were living under.
Guest:And then there was polio.
Marc:You know, with the nuclear horror, you know, there was just a there was at least a human element to it in terms of like someone's going to push a button.
Marc:And with this environmental L thing, it's sort of like, I think the button's already been pushed, and no one's going to take their finger off it.
Guest:So it's different.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, this guy's saying we reach close to 2.8 degrees, and we're going to see planetary rises of 10, 15 feet in places.
Guest:So I think, you know, the real estate industry should be really on board with this.
Guest:Miami, New York, they're talking about the seawall in New York.
Guest:They've got it figured out in Rotterdam.
Marc:Get the beachfront property in Nevada.
Marc:Yeah, or 32nd Street.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're in Canada.
Marc:You're not going to be a priest.
Marc:When do you start sort of getting involved in the comedy?
Guest:Well, all the way, how about grade 10, grade 9, grade 10, grade 11, class.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:You know, in class there's me and another guy there.
Guest:No, no, that was bad.
Guest:And then I did plays and I did sketches and stuff.
Guest:You did sketches?
Guest:In high school and all throughout high school.
Guest:In college, I was in a performing group and was one of the minor players.
Guest:What group was that?
Guest:It was at Carleton University, which is a very good university in Ottawa.
Guest:Do you know any of the fellows that was in the group with you now?
Guest:I haven't seen them.
Guest:They went on to great careers as directors.
Guest:Yeah, directors.
Guest:And there were many good actresses there.
Guest:Went on to great careers in Stratford and Shakespeare up in Canada.
Marc:No kidding, because I didn't realize.
Marc:I was recently shooting a movie in Hamilton.
Guest:Oh, I love that town.
Guest:I love that hammer, man.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Great people there.
Guest:When was the last time you've been up there?
Guest:Dead infrastructure.
Guest:You know, no, it's a thriving bar scene.
Marc:There's a thriving something scene.
Marc:No, no, it's cool.
Marc:They're trying to come back around.
Marc:Yeah, interesting.
Marc:I was there.
Marc:Well, there's a pretty big film industry that's spreading throughout Canada.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:And Hamilton's made itself available for those dicier shoots.
Marc:Were you playing a steelwerk?
Marc:No, no, I was playing a record A&R guy, a PR agent.
Guest:What's the film?
Marc:I'd be very interested to see that.
Marc:It's about David Bowie's first trip to the States.
Guest:Oh, neat.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:It should be interesting.
Marc:It's a small movie.
Marc:Who plays Bowie?
Marc:Bowie is played by this guy, Johnny Flynn, who is a popular English songster.
Marc:I recently played Jerry Wexler in a movie.
Marc:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:I knew Jerry, of course, because when we were at Atlantic with Blues Brothers, I knew Jerry and Ahmed and Nasui.
Guest:And they were all alive then.
Guest:When was that, the 80s?
Guest:I knew Ahmed, good.
Guest:Well, Ahmed, Ahmed.
Guest:But Jerry was more like this, right?
Guest:Jerry talked like this, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Great, wow.
Guest:So that's fun, man, playing parts like that.
Guest:I played, I think, I played James Brown's manager in Get On Up.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I remember.
Marc:I remember, that's right.
Marc:You were kind of, yeah.
Marc:But the reason I brought up Hamilton is I had no idea that it was such a big comedy sort of source.
Marc:I mean, didn't Ivan go to... McMaster, Marty Short.
Marc:Yeah, they all come from there.
Guest:Eugene Levy, Marty Short.
Guest:Marty Short's brother is a great writer, of course, and Ivan Reitman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And I had no idea when I was there.
Marc:I was sort of like, this place has fallen apart.
Marc:But then people were like, it's got an amazing history.
Guest:It does.
Guest:It does.
Guest:Well, the university is very strong there.
Marc:But you didn't go there.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:No, I went to Carlton.
Guest:But I like the hammer because I love dead technology.
Guest:Dead technology?
Marc:I love the look of it.
Guest:Rusting vats?
Guest:Yeah, cinematic.
Marc:Oh, of course.
Marc:Cinematic look, it's great.
Marc:I performed out there.
Marc:It's a place called the Steelworks in Pennsylvania, which was a giant- The Bethlehem.
Marc:The Bethlehem.
Marc:They turned into a mall.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, it's actually an art space.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you perform, and behind the stage, it's all windows, and there's the dead Steelworks there.
Marc:Bessemer furnaces.
Guest:And they light them up.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Of course, those were Carnegie's furnaces and Phipps and those guys.
Guest:So you're fascinated with dead technology.
Guest:Well, I'm also fascinated with the Industrial Revolution and just how fast it's gone from coal and coke and rail steel production like 1880 to now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How fast we've heated up the planet.
Guest:And I think that's what fascinates me is the speed of innovation.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And it's so exciting that we have other nostalgists who are currently in power that seem to think that coal is a good idea again.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, there is a way to do it.
Guest:And the way to do it is you've got to have a scrubber on there that just eats up all of your profits.
Guest:So you're providing energy to the consumer and you're burning coal to do it, but there's no profit in it.
Guest:You've spent it all on your scrubbers.
Guest:Now, if there's a company that's doing coal out there, willing to do that, to go out there and spend all of the money so that it's clean, still in business for the consumer,
Guest:But any profit that's out of it goes to keeping the scrubbers going.
Guest:I think it could be feasible because a lot of countries need power.
Guest:Yeah, and nuclear power scares you.
Guest:How do you feel about it?
Guest:Well, I'm mixed on it.
Guest:Germany has removed all of the nuclear plants.
Guest:But we have a leading environmental cause advocate, Bobby Kennedy Jr., saying nuclear may be a choice.
Guest:We do have it in Canada.
Guest:We've never had an accident.
Guest:Three Mile Island was an interesting occurrence.
Guest:Then Fukushima, pretty bad.
Guest:Chernobyl, eh.
Guest:You had cows dying in Oregon from the fallout.
Marc:Pretty bad.
Guest:Did you watch the show?
Guest:Did you watch the series?
Guest:What a beautiful piece of television.
Guest:No kidding, man.
Guest:Everybody was perfect.
Guest:Fucking incredible.
Guest:Just beautiful.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:I love that.
Marc:That was so great.
Marc:So when do you meet Lorne, like in Canada?
Guest:I saw you.
Guest:Yeah, you interviewed him.
Guest:Well, in 1960.
Guest:You did two days with Lorne.
Guest:Yeah, did you?
Guest:Yeah, well, pretty fascinating.
Guest:Probably the greatest empresario of our time.
Guest:He's something, huh?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:St.
Guest:Michael's College, University of Toronto.
Guest:That's Lauren.
Guest:I went to the CBC with a friend of mine and a partner, Valerie Bromfield, and we went together.
Guest:We had written some material as a team, and we had a cable show in Ottawa.
Marc:It's my belief that any talented person, if you stay in Canada, will eventually get a show.
Oh.
Guest:A government-sponsored show.
Guest:So that's what we were looking for, a government-sponsored show.
Guest:We had a show called Change for a Quarter.
Guest:It was 15 minutes of comedy.
Guest:We brought the tape in.
Guest:It had a handle on it.
Guest:It was a full-inch wide videotape, like the size of it.
Guest:It was a foot and cross, a full-inch wide.
Guest:It had a handle.
Guest:That's how big.
Guest:So we brought that in and showed it to a few executives, and they said...
Guest:well, you know, it's not really our kind of thing here on this floor.
Guest:But downstairs, there are a couple of guys putting together a new comedy thing.
Guest:And it's new people and it's young.
Guest:Lauren Michaels and Hart Pomerantz.
Guest:So we got an interview.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Lauren hired Valerie and I.
Guest:for a summer TV special called The Great Canadian Humor Test.
Guest:So in 1969, I still wasn't out of college.
Guest:I was still at Carleton.
Guest:He hired me that summer to play old men, basically.
Guest:I don't think one character was under 40.
Guest:So what was your impression of him immediately?
Guest:Loved him immediately.
Guest:The brilliance, the wit, the fun, the sense of being guided by a true mentor with...
Guest:massive knowledge of uh you know the tv uh comedies of the 50s oh yeah of the of yeah and of the the cat skills and what was heart like heart was funny he was a lawyer oh yeah he was funny and uh lauren had shoulder length hair and a zapata mustache and heart was uh and they did an act together and one of their components was the great canadian humor test right and valerie and i were on there so that's when i met him
Guest:Then a couple of years later, I'd been at Second City.
Guest:You were at Second City?
Guest:I was at Second City.
Guest:In Toronto?
Guest:Yep, 70, 71, 72.
Guest:Who was the crew?
Guest:Radnor, Candy, O'Hara, Levy, Jerry Salzberg, who was brilliant, Rosemary Radcliffe, Martin Short was in and around there with the Godspell Kids, Second City and Godspell Kids.
Guest:And so the kids from Godspell kind of migrated over to Second City.
Guest:And that was the first production of Godspell.
Marc:It was.
Guest:It was pretty famous.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, that's why.
Guest:Now, when I met those kids, I was driving a mail truck, and I was on the radio at City TV.
Guest:Lorne got me that job as well.
Guest:He did?
Guest:But you weren't working for them?
Guest:Not at that point.
Guest:What were you doing on the radio?
Guest:I was a shot box announcer, you know, doing like fast rap kind of announcing, you know.
Guest:That's part of your blood.
Guest:It was.
Guest:I worked for Moses Neimer at City TV.
Guest:I was a game show announcer and a commercial announcer.
Guest:In 69?
Guest:70, yeah, 71.
Guest:And then I drove across country in 72 in my Slush 6 Chevy Biscayne.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we drove from Toronto to New Orleans to Tijuana.
Guest:Who?
Guest:My friend John DeVicus, the artist who designed all the Ghostbusters stuff there.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Still around?
Guest:He's still around, the Viking.
Guest:Yeah, he's good.
Guest:We drove across, and we stopped in L.A., and Lorne put us up at his suite at the Chateau Marmont.
Marc:When he was out here writing for... It's Lily Tomlin.
Guest:Yeah, Lily Tomlin and laughing.
Guest:And he said, Dan, I'm going to reinvent the live television of these 50s.
Guest:He put you up at the Chateau.
Guest:He put me up in his room.
Guest:Sad prophecy.
Guest:And we were there, John and I, and he told us he wanted to do...
Guest:Colgate Comedy Hour and the Sid Caesar Show, and he was going to recreate it in New York on stage where they did it, and he was going to do live, and he was real smart.
Guest:When they offered him a pilot, he said, no, no, I want to do seven.
Guest:And he said you were in?
Guest:No, not exactly.
Guest:He said, I want to, you know, he's just telling me about the concept, and sort of I'll call you.
Guest:Then I did have to audition a couple of times.
Guest:I was not...
Guest:accepted right away.
Guest:I did have to, even though I knew him and I had a history, I think part of the problem was that Belushi and I had met and we'd already formed like the Blues Brothers and some other ideas.
Guest:Where'd you meet?
Guest:We met at my 505 club, the little speakeasy that I had.
Guest:You had a speakeasy?
Guest:I had an after-hours club in Toronto.
Marc:Where?
Marc:In Toronto?
Marc:505 Queen Street East.
Marc:While you were driving the truck?
Guest:This is Second City time.
Guest:He came over to Second City to raid us, to raid Gilda for Lampoon, and I met him that night.
Guest:Oh, John Belushi.
Guest:We'd cooked up the Blues Brothers by the time we got to our Saturday Night Live auditions.
Guest:Did he know a lot about the Blues?
Guest:Not too much.
Guest:He was more into heavy metal, but he was from Chicago.
Guest:He had been to all the great places, had heard all the great artists, but he was more into heavy metal.
Marc:A hard rock at that time, I would think.
Marc:And that stuff.
Marc:Grand funk.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He loved the grand funk and cream and all that.
Guest:So Lorne was afraid that we'd met.
Guest:We already had the Blues Brothers concocted.
Guest:He didn't want to cabal.
Guest:Lorne looked at the two of us and said, uh-oh, that's a power base that might be trouble there.
Marc:Now, you guys, first going back to the Viking, when you drove to New Orleans.
Guest:And it was trouble.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:Immense trouble.
Guest:How could it not be?
Guest:Look, gray hairs on Lauren's head are probably single-handedly caused by John and I and maybe Chase.
Marc:Chase, yeah.
Marc:I mean, he still causes gray hairs for people.
Marc:So when you go across country, you go to New Orleans and stuff, you're stopping in to see music?
Marc:Is that part of the journey?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Jazz fest, absolutely.
Guest:Rockin' doopsy, man.
Guest:Love it, right?
Guest:Clifton Chenier, Beau Jacques, the great Zydeco players.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I love that stuff.
Marc:Professor Longhair.
Marc:Dr. John.
Guest:Saw him many times, many times, yeah.
Guest:Tipitina's Club.
Guest:Yeah, you love it, right?
Guest:Oh, I love it.
Guest:You've been in New Orleans?
Marc:I've been there.
Marc:I haven't done the music thing much.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So you and John, was it love at first sight, or how did that work?
Guest:it pretty much yeah he walked in the back door it was a blizzard night it was the february night you know we were doing the set yeah second city and we were backstage there and the door flew open which directed which directly uh uh accessed the alley there and it was a step above the little pit where we were working in with our costumes and that and and john appeared
Guest:He opened the door and there was a silhouette there.
Guest:He had like a hexagonal driver's cap on and he had a white cable knit sweater and a white scarf and a pack of cigarettes and a butt going and sneakers.
Guest:Totally underdressed for Canada.
Guest:And he came in and, of course, he did the set.
Guest:I think he hit the wall for us that night and everything.
Guest:He got on stage and did the riffing.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He hit the wall for us, I think.
Guest:That was his famous thing of running from the front of the stage, hitting the wall, and then sliding down.
Guest:That was his famous thing?
Guest:Well, everybody did it.
Guest:Everybody did it.
Guest:That was a bit.
Guest:That was a bit, yeah.
Guest:And Tino and Santa did that.
Marc:I mean, many people hit the wall.
Marc:Who were the... In your recollection of Second City at that time, who were the improvisers that you just... Everybody was like, holy shit.
Guest:Oh, well, Murray.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Murray.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:And Flaherty.
Guest:Joe Flaherty.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And Brian Murray, you know.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Brian, you know, Bill's brother.
Guest:Very funny.
Guest:What was it about Bill?
Guest:Because he doesn't, like.
Guest:Danger.
Guest:Danger.
Guest:Danger, man.
Guest:You know.
Guest:High voltage.
Guest:You know, the hurricane.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:You never knew what was coming next.
Guest:You know.
Guest:It could be verbal.
Guest:It could be physical.
Guest:It could be.
Guest:Just beautiful, beautiful excitement.
Guest:What about Candy?
Guest:Candy was lovely.
Guest:He was a lovely improviser because he was so full of so much heart and soul and wild Dr. Tongue, you know.
Guest:And then in Tino and Santa, his beautiful friend and partner, you know.
Guest:Oh, those were great times.
Guest:Great strong women too, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Gilda and... Yeah, Rosemary Radcliffe, Catherine O'Hara.
Guest:Oh, Catherine's so amazing.
Guest:Yeah, and Betty Thomas who went on to direct a Broadway Betty Thomas.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was quite the crew.
Marc:Were you involved in the Lampoon Hour as well?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I guessed it on a record produced by Chris Guest.
Guest:I played drums and I think I did a- Was that the Lemmings record?
Guest:I think it was.
Guest:No, it was another Lampoon record.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But you see, that's why John can come up to Toronto.
Guest:And he did succeed in getting Gilda to go back down to New York to work on Lemmings and work-
Guest:And we'll work on Lampoon Radio and their records and that.
Guest:But I didn't want to leave Toronto.
Guest:I had a good racket going, man.
Guest:I had the 505 speakeasy.
Guest:What was it?
Guest:Well, everything closes at one o'clock in Toronto, or did at the time.
Guest:Where's a streetcar driver or a cop or a waiter or waitresses or somebody off duty?
Guest:Where are they going to get a drink?
Guest:Well, we supplied that for them.
Guest:When we left, there was a wall high.
Guest:There was just a wall of bottles that went up seven, eight feet high.
Guest:So you just, an all-cash business selling liquor?
Guest:All-cash, yeah.
Guest:We did that.
Guest:We did that.
Guest:And then I had Second City, and I had a radio business with Dave Thomas.
Guest:So you didn't want to go?
Guest:I didn't want to go.
Guest:I had a radio commercial business with Dave Thomas.
Guest:I was at Second City.
Guest:And I was on an afternoon sitcom for kids called Coming Up Rosie.
Guest:And I had this speakeasy.
Guest:I had all these little hustles going.
Guest:I didn't want to move.
Guest:I was set up.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You had a radio ad business?
Guest:Yes, radio ad business.
Guest:Radio ads.
Marc:We wrote radio ads.
Guest:Okay, and so companies would come to you and go- That's right.
Guest:Yeah, write us a 30, write us a 60.
Guest:So for Canada, you were doing great.
Guest:Doing great.
Guest:I was making more than the prime minister made one year.
Marc:How old were you?
Marc:22, 21?
Marc:Right about that, yeah.
Marc:And so what eventually gets you to go to New York?
Guest:SNL, the final offer.
Guest:Okay, you're in.
Guest:So there was a wonderful actor and improviser named Ben Gordon, and I remember I had to pick something up at the-
Guest:the fire hall where second city ended up.
Guest:And so I pulled up on my 1971 XOPP, uh, Harley Davidson FLH, uh, with the saddlebags all packed.
Guest:And I get in front of the building there and Ben Gordon's there, my buddy.
Guest:And you know, he's like the last person to see me before I go off to SNL and I wave to him and I'm,
Guest:I hit the highway.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:On the bike.
Guest:On the bike.
Guest:And I'm riding down the highway, down high, over 90, then to highway 81, southbound on 81.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm driving along and I'm thinking, wow, the future's ahead of me.
Guest:This is wonderful.
Guest:And I'm on the bike.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I see a station wagon full of, like a family passing me, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're passing me and they're waving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're waving.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, this is before I'm known or anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then another car goes by.
Guest:It's a young couple in a sports car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're pointing at me and waving.
Guest:What the?
Guest:And then in the third night, by the time I look back at my saddlebag, I'm full on fire back there.
Guest:There's flames.
Guest:I had an old chess board, you know, in my chess set.
Guest:It was a cardboard chess.
Guest:And it hit the muffler.
Guest:It was burning off the muffler in a canvas saddlebag.
Guest:That thing, it looked like just rooster tail of flames.
Guest:I looked like a rocket car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, jeez, I pull over, and a couple of bikers, they were from the Breed Motorcycle Club.
Guest:I'll remember that because I wrote a paper on bikers in college.
Guest:You did?
Guest:What did you write?
Guest:What was that about?
Guest:Well, just the society.
Marc:The culture of it?
Marc:Was it before?
Marc:Well, no, because Hunter had already written in Hells Angels.
Guest:Well, and Yves Leving is a great reporter for that there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the Breed, they gave me some oil, and they hosed me down, and they sent me on my way.
Guest:And then I pulled into Manhattan, or to the George Washington Bridge.
Guest:It was about midnight.
Guest:And I come across the George Washington Bridge, and all of my electrics cut out on the motorcycle.
Guest:On the Harley?
Guest:On the Harley.
Guest:All of the electrics cut out.
Guest:And there's no breakdown lane on the George Washington Bridge.
Guest:There is no.
Guest:You don't have a place to go.
Guest:No.
Guest:So I had to unwire the front, the headlight, and go out with pliers and a screwdriver, and we wire the thing with transports whipping by.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:So I get into the city and I don't know which way I'm going.
Guest:I just take the first exit.
Guest:I end up in the depths of Harlem and one-way streets with people.
Guest:Hey, one-way, man, one-way, one-way.
Guest:And I'm driving.
Guest:Finally, I get downtown and I get to a bar and I see a bar in the West Village there and there's all these beautiful Harleys all lined up.
Guest:And I pull at the bar and I back in and I go in and I look and there's guys dressed exactly like me, black jeans, black, you know.
Guest:Leather jacket.
Guest:Leather jacket with neckerchiefs hanging out of their pockets, different colored neckerchiefs.
Guest:I mean, you know, I've got a red one there because changing the oil and I go in and I have a beer and, you know, and
Guest:And, uh, you know, and they, one of them said, ah, police bike.
Guest:And we're talking bikes and everything.
Guest:And then I said, I get some change.
Guest:I called John and I say, uh, so John, I'm down the street here at this bar, uh, you know, and he says, what bar is that?
Guest:That's the one on the corner with all the motorcycles.
Guest:Yeah, that's, that's, that's like, just, that's the heavy metal gay biker bar of the city.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, yeah, well, I'm here and I'm going to be here and I'll, he says, so, well, come on over.
Guest:And, you know,
Guest:I looked just like all those guys, you know.
Guest:And in the end, Harley riders are Harley riders, man.
Guest:We're just talking about bikes and stuff.
Guest:And so that was my sort of first welcome into Manhattan.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so how did it shift that, you know, how did Lauren decide to put you on the show?
Guest:I think basis of the audition tapes and some writing pieces and an appeal, a last minute appeal from three people.
Guest:And they would have not have, I would not have been on there if they weren't for the lobbying of Gilda Gratner, Tom Davis, and Senator Al Franken.
Guest:The three of them lobby, they say, you got to have Ackroyd, they got to.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:When you started, when I talked to Lorne, and I've talked to Al Franken several times as well, it seems like that it was sort of a very engaged ensemble of people in terms of the creative process, that that first season was just crazy, right?
Marc:Staying up all night, working shit out.
Guest:We had a schedule.
Guest:I don't know if it's the same there now.
Guest:I'll get to what I feel about the show now, and it's just nothing but enthusiasm and joy.
Guest:It's been so great, but...
Guest:And Monday, we'd pitch the ideas.
Guest:Tuesday, go away, think about them, write them.
Guest:Wednesday, read them through, rewrite them Wednesday, then shoot them for blocking Thursday and Friday, then three shows on Saturday, basically, a dry run, dress rehearsal and show.
Guest:And the thing was, we just all gelled.
Guest:There were frictions and everything, but we understood each other's humor, even though we came from different worlds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was just we appreciated each other's gifts, you know, the brilliance of Schiller and Zweibel and Michael O'Donoghue and...
Marc:Michael O'Donohue, man.
Marc:It's like that guy, he blew my mind when I was young.
Marc:Because I was like 13 when you guys were doing that first season.
Marc:You've got about 11 years on me.
Marc:So he was really fucking with my head.
Marc:And anything O'Donohue would do, I'm like, what is this guy doing?
Marc:precision writing he taught me discipline and writing something really taught me precision and format and and laying out beats you know he was he was really uh but he was like his humor kind of cut deep and dark and out there man right oh yeah oh yeah absolutely you kind of do some of that stuff too i remember like i mean i got that stuff like landed in my head so hard that first season bass-o-matic was that first season
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I don't know that that's dark humor.
Guest:It's not dark, but it's just like, how did that happen?
Guest:We got letters.
Guest:About the fish?
Guest:You can't put a fish.
Guest:You can't do it.
Guest:How could you do that to a fish?
Guest:Well, the fact that I met her, I was 10 years before.
Guest:I was 13 years old.
Guest:I was at my aunt's house.
Guest:in Quebec there near Montreal, and my aunt was the Julia Child of Canada.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Her name was Helene Goujon, and she had her own shop, her own radio show, TV show, cooking show.
Guest:She's your aunt?
Guest:She was my aunt, yeah.
Guest:She's deceased now.
Guest:She's a wonderful woman.
Guest:She brought the first Cuisinart into Canada.
Guest:And so one night, we're sitting at her place on the river near Montreal, and I see the blender going, and I see her pop a whole trout into the blender and hit the button.
Guest:I said, Aunt Helen, what about the eyes, the head, the bones?
Guest:Oh, it's a bouillabaisse.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:It's supposed to be in there.
Guest:It's supposed to be in there.
Guest:What?
Guest:And that shot, I was, what?
Guest:Whoa.
Guest:So later, 10 years later- The French use everything.
Marc:They use everything.
Guest:They use.
Guest:And she hit the blender and the thing liquefied.
Guest:So 10 years later, I'm with Lorne and Paul Simon and Chevy Chase, and we're having dinner at Elaine's.
Guest:And they say, well, they're talking about, he's cooking that fish up there.
Guest:And he said, I hope he uses a Bass-O-Matic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and what was you know and and uh you know yeah that's where you put the and bassimatic somehow paul he laughed at that yeah yeah he laughed and he laughed and he was doubled over i think he lost like you know lost it and i thought wow you know paul's one of the most brilliant people alive yeah and if i can get a laugh like that out of paul simon i'm writing this thing up right so i wrote it up and but it seemed like you guys were having a fucking great time
Guest:It was hard.
Guest:It was video commando time.
Guest:There was a lot of stress, and it got to a point where I had to kind of get a little upset there, and I was because we were writing the show, and then the card people couldn't keep up.
Guest:Now, the show is red.
Guest:If you're going that fast, you have to have cue cards.
Guest:And they were coming to me and saying, Dan, we can't take these pages from the writers at the last minute and put them up.
Guest:They just won't get up there.
Guest:yeah so i led a little revolution and you know we were able to slow that process down let me ask you a question though since you're the front like the cards have always been read and and you know why because you're going fast you're you're cutting five cameras and you you and the cameras cut on cue they cut on words yeah and and also you're you're moving fast and uh and you've got you're not enough time to
Guest:memorize shit it doesn't help some well it helps to memorize and people do memorize and i memorize but you know when you gotta go to the cards they're there for you yeah they those guys and and ladies they're they're just heroes on snl they're beloved and they're just it's a sharpie on a card but boy
Guest:If you're doing a rap that has to go fast or if you're doing update or something, it's just a boom to have them.
Guest:Teleprompters don't work because the card holders, they're human.
Marc:They have control.
Marc:They can hear you.
Marc:They can feel the rhythms.
Guest:They can see you.
Guest:They feel when you're going to get to the end of a line.
Guest:The card is whipped away.
Guest:They can feel when you're approaching the top of the line.
Guest:You're at the middle of the line.
Guest:The card can be moved.
Guest:They feel the rhythm of the whole piece.
Guest:They get that about the actors.
Guest:Really a wonderful interplay, and to make it happen.
Marc:But it wasn't like you were on camera with Belushi a ton that first season, or the first two seasons, right?
Marc:But you guys were pals, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And did you share a writing room, or did you share... We shared a room with bunk beds and a couple of desks, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:We shared a writing room, and then I was living for almost the whole of the first year.
Guest:Well, let me say, at least four months with John and Judy, so...
Guest:They let me stay at their place.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:She's still around, right?
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Judy's my partner in Blues Brothers stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, she's in town here, just saw her.
Guest:And she's doing all right?
Guest:She's doing okay.
Guest:Yeah, she's doing okay.
Guest:I mean, you know, that was a tough thing.
Guest:They were high school sweethearts.
Marc:I know.
Marc:And so when you guys are working together and you see the culture that's sort of happening there with drugs and whatever, but you weren't that one in your bag, huh?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, back then, the greenie was plentiful.
Guest:Right now, if we lit one up, I'd sneeze.
Guest:The ironic thing is the terpenes that give it the taste is what I used to like about it.
Guest:But I would be sneezing here.
Guest:You wouldn't believe that.
Guest:I'd be so loud.
Guest:The weed's too much now.
Guest:Well, the terpenes produce some allergy in me, ironically, because back then... Back then, it was kind of fuel, the greenie, but...
Guest:Never was into the Coke or the powders of the pills.
Guest:That wasn't my thing.
Guest:Booze?
Guest:I've never had a problem.
Guest:I've always been able to moderate my alcohol consumption.
Guest:I am in that business now.
Guest:I have a vodka line called Crystal Head Vodka.
Guest:The Skull Head.
Guest:The Skull Head, yeah.
Guest:Now, my brilliant...
Guest:manager, managing partner, Jonathan, he went to the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, wonderful.
Guest:He said, you know, come on and go on a mark show and talk about the head, talk about the head.
Guest:Well, I'm not going to talk about the head.
Guest:No, no, just to wind him up.
Guest:I will say that it's crystal head vodka.
Guest:It's the zero additive vodka.
Guest:If you want to have a vodka...
Guest:It's the cleanest one on the planet.
Guest:I know brown spirits are huge.
Guest:Every bartender and bar chef uses brown spirits, but every bar has to have a vodka, and why not Crystal Head?
Guest:You pay a little more for it, but it's only 32 cents more a shot.
Guest:Here are the notes.
Guest:Sweet vanilla dry crisp with a kick of heat off the finish.
Guest:That's all I'll say.
Guest:Moving on to aviation.
Marc:What's the foundation of the vodka?
Marc:Is it a potato or a rye?
Guest:Well, so as you ask, we have a corn and a sunset wheat.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:What makes my vodka difference is we don't add glycol, we don't add sugar, we don't add terpenes, we don't add any lemonene at all.
Guest:We just have the good old Newfoundland water which comes from the glacier that melted into the province and it's sitting underneath the province and we have a pipe that goes down into a well and up it comes and it's just beautiful.
Guest:Vodka is a Russian word for water, so if we start with good water, we get there, yeah.
Guest:I didn't realize you could make vodka almost out of anything.
Guest:You can.
Guest:Grapes, dandelion, rice.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Potato, sure.
Guest:Turnips.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But we like that.
Guest:Our corn is called peaches and cream.
Guest:That's the brand of corn.
Guest:So it's called the peaches and cream corn.
Guest:It's nice and fat and juicy.
Guest:So you really involved it from the ground up here.
Guest:You go to the place where they make it.
Guest:Well, yes, I've been twice.
Guest:I've got to get back there.
Guest:I've been traveling the world selling it for them.
Guest:In Newfoundland?
Guest:Yes, Newfoundland, Canada.
Guest:You know, the people there talk with a beautiful Irish accent.
Guest:They're lovely, lovely people.
Marc:I've never been up there.
Marc:Here, it's beautiful.
Guest:It is spectacular, and it's just a colorful, wonderful place.
Guest:People walk down the street.
Guest:They're not in their phones.
Guest:They're holding hands.
Guest:They're talking to each other.
Guest:So we felt that not only the water, but the love of the people.
Guest:They make it.
Guest:So I've traveled the world selling the thing.
Guest:I have no problem.
Guest:I'm able to consume safely.
Guest:But I encourage anyone who does consume to do so moderately.
Guest:You know, I mean, it's just like I make a Ducati.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I make the best vodka out there, I believe, and Ducati believes they make the best motorcycle.
Guest:Ducati makes a motorcycle that goes 200 miles an hour.
Guest:I make a vodka that, sure, after eight shots, you're not going to get a hangover, but I don't recommend drinking that much.
Marc:Is that clean?
Guest:Well, it is, because there's no glycol.
Guest:We're doing well with them.
Guest:We're having fun, and we're meeting some neat people.
Guest:And again, we are encouraging sobriety everywhere we go.
Marc:Well, that's a question.
Marc:It's sort of a nice segue.
Marc:It's like, you know, when you saw John starting to get out of control, was there just no stopping him?
Marc:I mean, you know, I'm a sober guy.
Marc:I've been sober a long time, so I know the deal.
Marc:But were there attempts made?
Marc:Was it... Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Many.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We flushed a lot of coke down the toilet.
Guest:We intervened, but he'd wriggle away from us and... All through it.
Marc:Starting when?
Guest:It started basically in the...
Guest:the first year of the show, but he'd been exposed to it before.
Guest:That was the currency of the generation back then.
Guest:Yeah, sure, no, I get it, yeah.
Guest:It was, yeah, the blow was the currency of the generation.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And a lot of people were on it, and... He loved it.
Guest:And he did, that was what kind of got him going, and he just had an addictive personality, and...
Guest:So it's a prolonged heartbreak of not being able to.
Guest:I think of him all the time, especially when I go into a house of blues.
Guest:I think of him all the time because here we built these beautiful blues palaces for music and fun.
Guest:And he's not going to enjoy it.
Guest:How many are there still around?
Guest:There's 13.
Guest:Still?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:It's owned by Live Nation, the great concert company.
Marc:That was the first big, that was a huge business thing for you.
Marc:Well, I learned a lot.
Marc:You've always been a business dude.
Guest:Well, I tell you, you know, you go into show business, even at Second City, going to the cabaret or working for CBC.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You have to negotiate your deals.
Guest:You have to know your value.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You have to manage the money when it comes in.
Guest:You know, I've always, you know, it's show business.
Guest:So I've been in show business a long time and it is a business.
Guest:You know, you broker your talent, you work with an agent, a broker.
Guest:and you put the product out there and sell it.
Guest:My dad worked for the government.
Guest:He did not have a business sense in terms of doing that.
Marc:But it seems like you always did.
Marc:You were running a speakeasy for cops after hours.
Guest:That was beautiful, man, the 505.
Guest:It's still there, 505 Queen Street East.
Guest:What a spot.
Guest:It's still a speakeasy?
Guest:No, no, I think some lawyers are in there now.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, but it just seems like, you know, with the House of Blues deal and sort of the vodka deal that you like making the deals.
Guest:You like doing the thing.
Guest:I enjoy the people that I work with because of the creativity, how smart they are.
Guest:The crews, like the House of Blues staff, man, they're amazing.
Guest:They love working there.
Guest:And then these creative people I was involved with, with Tigrit and...
Guest:And all the people that found it.
Guest:And then the fun of going to, for instance, the House of Blues in Vegas with the greatest view of the strip at the foundation room at the Mandalay Bay.
Guest:Going there, hanging there, ordering a vodka, having 50 people for dinner, you know, friends and partners and thinking, wow, I mean...
Guest:Didn't Elvis live like this?
Guest:Didn't Frank Sinatra live like this?
Guest:Staying up till three in the morning, going to shows, playing shows, playing a concert with Jimmy and going upstairs and partying at the three in the morning at the nightclub that we have an ownership in, drinking fluid that we're making.
Guest:Wow, how grateful I am.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:You have a great life.
Guest:Most certainly, we all do living in the Western world.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Weren't you living out in Nantucket for a while?
Guest:Martha's Vineyard.
Guest:That's my primary residence in the U.S.
Guest:Oh, you're still there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I see my dad a lot in Canada because he's 98, as I said.
Guest:But you love the vineyard.
Guest:Love the vineyard.
Guest:Love the vineyard.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:It's like its own ecosystem out there.
Marc:Its own world.
Guest:I love the Northeast.
Guest:I love the history in Boston.
Guest:I love it.
Marc:yeah the terrain up there is pretty yeah no it's beautiful love the coastline up in up in the main even it's great beautiful place so so you're on you did snl for like four or five years four years 74 to 75 and then we wrote the blues brothers and we had to leave to complete the blues so oh so john was there that long too
Guest:Yes, yeah, 74, 75.
Guest:Well, he left to do Animal House, so he was there gone for a few months.
Guest:And Lorne, you know, John left to do Animal House.
Guest:They offered me the part of D-Day, and I just couldn't leave, ultimately, I couldn't leave Lorne shorthanded short of a writer.
Guest:I knew that he didn't want me to go in the worst way, and I knew it would hurt the enterprise a bit.
Guest:And I knew I made the right decision there.
Guest:Well, it was nice.
Guest:Did Lorne appreciate that?
Guest:all the time man to this day yeah yeah so okay so you then you and john put together the booze brothers we did and we couldn't stay at the show because then because we were shooting the shooting went over into the fall and uh the first Chicago and then we went over into the yeah and went over into the you know kind of fall and then you know kind of winter into the we had to be in LA and it just was time to leave you know
Guest:And that was huge, right?
Guest:The Blues Brothers did okay.
Guest:It was a box office hit and went on to, I think, some people credit it with reviving the careers of these great artists.
Guest:Who, Stephen Duck and... Oh, well... Matt Guitar Murphy and... Yep, and Aretha and Ray, who were recording and performing.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:It helped boost it with an audience that might have been less familiar, I think.
Guest:Was Cab Calloway the show?
Guest:Cab Calloway and James Brown, one of my best friends.
Guest:I say, oh, I don't know if you thought that about me, but I certainly thought that about him.
Guest:He opened five nightclubs with us, and he did three movies with me, Dr. Detroit and the first Blues Brothers and the second.
Guest:You were able to have a real relationship with that guy.
Guest:Yeah, I went to his birthday party in Augusta, Georgia.
Guest:And hung with him many times.
Guest:So once John was out here and you kind of went your own way... Well, John died in 82, after the movie.
Guest:So that was kind of a blow, and I didn't know what to do with that.
Guest:But then I managed to pick things up and do the writing parade.
Guest:I remember the picture of you leading the procession.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:On the bike.
Guest:Yeah, that had to be done.
Guest:I mean, it had to be done.
Guest:John loved Harleys.
Guest:He loved riding together.
Guest:Powerful image, dude.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:That was a tough day.
Guest:Tough day for sure.
Guest:He was 33.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I do Born in Chicago now, I sing the old Nick Gravonitis, Paul Butterfield tune.
Guest:I love that song.
Guest:I sing that song and I say, and my second friend went down when he was 33 years of age.
Guest:And the one thing you can say about that boy, he made the front page.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was on all the front pages.
Guest:I had to run from our office where I was working on Ghostbusters and typing a line of his.
Guest:And I get the call from Bernie Brillstein that he was gone, and I had to run.
Guest:I remember it was a brilliant March day, severe clear, like they say in aviation, and I ran.
Guest:And there was the news.
Guest:It was just hitting the newsstands.
Guest:I had to run to Judy to let her know before anybody else did.
Guest:That was a long run.
Guest:I ran down from Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street all the way down to Morton Street.
Guest:Had she heard you?
Guest:No, I walked in.
Guest:She was just getting breakfast, and I had to tell her.
Guest:Oh.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it's kind of Leo, you know, sort of, oh no, we all sort of, if he knew he was kept going, it might go like that, but there was always a hope that he would, you know.
Guest:I think if he was alive today, he'd be a director on Broadway, he'd be doing theater, he'd be, yeah, he'd have a production, a theater production company, he'd be
Guest:He'd be doing all kinds of stuff, you know, back to the, you know, the work of the hard, nitty-gritty actor, you know, because he loved that.
Marc:I was in college, my freshman year of college when it happened, and I was devastated.
Marc:I loved the guy.
Marc:I didn't know him, but I was a big fan.
Guest:Oh, it was fun.
Guest:We went up to Boston once to sell the record, the Saturday Night Live record, and we went on radio on that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're driving around the town.
Guest:We pull over to a corner, and there's an elementary school there, a four-story elementary school.
Guest:And John gets out, and he goes to the front window and starts doing stuff.
Guest:And people start recognizing him.
Guest:And then second floor, third floor, fourth floor.
Guest:He had the whole school screaming at him by the time we left the place.
Guest:And his performance in Animal House is outstanding.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And his performance in the Blues Brothers is meticulous, meticulous.
Guest:when he says to the guy at Bob's Country Bunker, of course we'll be paying for those beers.
Guest:I usually sit in the car and write the check out on the dashboard.
Guest:I will be right back.
Guest:It's just a master, master comedian.
Guest:To get to know him and be with him for eight years, what a privilege it is.
Guest:a pleasure and an honor.
Guest:That scene with Carrie Fisher in the tunnel?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:We lost her, too.
Guest:That was a complete shock.
Guest:What a brilliant, wonderful person.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you used to be together, kind of.
Guest:We were going to get married.
Guest:We had blood tests, rings, the whole thing.
Guest:And we fell deeply in love.
Guest:And then we left the Blues Brothers set, and we took a Learjet, John and Judy and...
Guest:Carrie and I, and we flew to Martha's Vineyard in the middle of the night, and I was going to show Carrie the home where we were going to live forever.
Guest:This is where we're going to live.
Guest:I told Judy, just buy me a house there.
Guest:I don't care if it's on the ocean, just as long as it has nice views.
Guest:So Judy said, I found a house.
Guest:It's not quite vineyard style.
Guest:It's not Cape Cod.
Guest:So we pull up to this house in the middle of the night, you know, and there's Carrie and I'm sort of almost Carrie over the threshold.
Guest:Don't take it.
Guest:But we get inside and it's all kind of, it looks like Fred Flintstone's cousin built it.
Guest:It's got, you know, stone fireplaces, but fine.
Guest:And then all this modern kind of Eames furniture and stuff.
Guest:And I don't know, it just struck her as wrong, wrong, wrong, you know.
Guest:And I said, well, apparently there's a beautiful view, a beautiful view.
Guest:And the night went badly.
Guest:And the next morning I hear her on the phone with Paul Simon and she said, I got to go back to Paul.
Guest:I have to, yeah, I got to go.
Guest:So I drive her to the airport.
Guest:I wake up at 9.30 in the morning.
Guest:She wakes me up and I go, I get in the Jeep, you know, and it's fog is set in around this house.
Guest:And so I drive her to the airport, and finally the fog clears, and the plane's able to take off.
Guest:She says, oh, it was great.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:I'll call you.
Guest:We'll be in.
Guest:She flies back to New York to Paul, who she was with after that.
Guest:Paul Simon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go back, and I'm, wow, I loved her, and I'm a little brokenhearted, but maybe this is best for her and all of us.
Guest:And I drive back in the Jeep to the Vineyard House, and by now the fog has lifted.
Guest:And I get to the top of the hill and I find out that it's a 1959 Usonian house designed by Hideo Sasaki.
Guest:It's a beautiful glass paneled walls and it looks out over the sound and there's like a hundred mile view and you can see the sea from everywhere from five different angles.
Guest:And I thought, boy, if she'd seen this view, I don't think she would have left in the morning.
Guest:We might've gotten married, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that the house you still have?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I live there.
Guest:My, uh, live there, you know, when I can get to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then my daughters own it.
Guest:They own everything now.
Guest:I've given everything.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, of course.
Guest:How old are they?
Guest:I've got a daughter, Danielle.
Guest:Uh, she, uh, records and performs, uh, and is a writer and performer.
Guest:And then I have a daughter, Belle, and I've got a daughter, Steli, who's my writing partner.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, you still seem to... You show up in things, and, you know, the Ghostbuster franchise is still kicking.
Guest:Yes, they haven't shown me a thing because, you know, they know I'll talk about it.
Guest:The third one?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm saying, show me some stuff.
Guest:Nope, nope, nope, because they know I'm going to be bragging about it.
Guest:But we're getting excellent feedback from those who have seen it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What's your involvement in it, just as a producer, or does that work?
Guest:I was, well, let's say...
Guest:major cheerleader because it's, you know, it's the old family franchise.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I suggested some ideas to Jason.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did a little writing on it, but it was basically him.
Marc:Did Jason direct the last one?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, that was Paul Feig.
Guest:Feig, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The women's movie was really funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really good.
Guest:And some great ghosts and a great villain in the end with the red bow tie.
Guest:I just should have been watching the dollars and cents more as a producer.
Guest:But on this one, we did watch the dollars and cents.
Guest:What's
Guest:What's the angle on this one?
Guest:This one transfers the DNA of the first two movies to the third group, and Jason's written in, and it's really, really good, Jason and Gil.
Guest:And so I showed up to play a part.
Guest:He wrote up some scenes in there, which helped feed the story, so I agreed to...
Marc:Now, Jason, like, is he someone that you saw grow up from being a little baby?
Marc:Yeah, he was on the set.
Guest:Yeah, he's in the second movie.
Guest:He's the one who gives us shit at the party, the birthday party.
Marc:Yeah, I've talked to him and Ivan.
Marc:I talked to Ivan.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it was nice.
Marc:So, like, after SNL and you do, you know, the big hit was, like, it was Trading Places, really, right?
Marc:I mean, that was a huge... Well, I think that, you know, the... I love Neighbors, by the way.
Guest:Yeah, that was a Thomas Berger book that was adapted, and John Aptat and I kind of turned it into a screenplay, and there's some neat, bizarre stuff in there.
Guest:We should have, I don't know.
Guest:We switched parts.
Guest:Maybe we should have just kept the parts.
Guest:It was just an odd movie.
Guest:It was odd.
Guest:The book was odd.
Guest:But I think that character and John's character, he was so funny and cute in that.
Guest:Would it have made more money and done better had we switched parts back?
Guest:And if I'd been the meek guy and he'd been the villain?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Trading Places, great collaboration with Eddie Murphy.
Guest:And then we had the Ghostbusters movies and Spies Like Us, which was a wonderful collaboration with Chevy and with my wife, Donna.
Marc:Did you always like Chevy?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So I loved Chevy.
Guest:Chevy and I, when we first met in New York, got on tremendously.
Guest:I loved him.
Guest:He was so funny, and he was my biggest supporter, man.
Guest:He just kind of got what I was doing, and he was always lobbying for me and was behind what I was up to.
Guest:There was a weird... He was very... He was an ally of mine.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Because there was a weird... Was there bad blood when he left after the first season?
Guest:Nobody wanted him to go because he was a big star on the show and we felt that might hurt us.
Guest:Maybe there were some personnel that were happy he left, but I think that he left too early.
Guest:I'm sorry he left.
Guest:Now I'm even sorry he left.
Guest:We'd have had fun, but what did it get us?
Guest:Murray came on then.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:And you knew him from day one, from when I got hired, I was like, can we bring Murray too?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, oh, yeah, Murray introduced me to Second City when he was my chaperone when I went there.
Guest:And Billy, yeah, so he came on and then look at the work he did.
Guest:Are you still friends?
Guest:I hope so.
No.
Guest:We are.
Guest:We saw each other on the set, GB there.
Guest:And yeah, we're as close as brothers can be, I guess.
Guest:And brothers can sometimes drift and be close.
Guest:But no, there's never been a major rift with us.
Marc:It seems like your relationship with SNL is not only nostalgic, but you seem to keep up with it all the way through.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What do you think of the show now?
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I think it's really great.
Marc:Because you said you wanted to talk about that.
Guest:Really great.
Guest:Kate McKinnon as the devil.
Guest:That was great.
Guest:I was double over how the writing is really, really sharp.
Guest:Of course, they've got a lot to write about now.
Guest:And, no, I love the cast members now.
Guest:They're really outstanding.
Guest:Eddie was on there, and they did a spectacular scene.
Guest:Oh, that was something, yeah.
Guest:The cake-making contest.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I saw that.
Guest:Yeah, it was very funny.
Guest:I mean, really funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All funny.
Marc:Just terrific.
Marc:Yeah, it seems like it goes up and down.
Marc:It was so funny, because when I interviewed Lorne, I had this weird agenda, because I had gotten as far in the audition process for SNL as to meet with him, and then I did not get the gig many years ago.
Marc:So I wanted closure on that, and he was nice enough to walk me through what he believed might have happened then, which was great.
Marc:But also, he brought it to my attention, and I think a lot of people do at my age, where
Marc:I said, because your season, the first season or the first couple, it's sort of mythological.
Marc:It has a mythic presence.
Marc:But in his mind, as a guy who's been walking those halls for 40 years or whatever, it's like, that was a good one, but we've had other good ones.
Guest:Oh, no, no.
Guest:He's right there with them.
Guest:I would say he's right there today.
Guest:feeling the same way he did most affectionately and admirably.
Guest:He loves all his children equally.
Guest:You think so?
Marc:I do, I do.
Guest:And what about the environment?
Guest:All the way through, like all the way through.
Guest:Every year, there's something there that is salvageable for him, and now he's on a real triumph with this magnificent cast that he's got in the writing.
Guest:Do you talk to him?
Guest:Yeah, I spoke to him.
Guest:I was supposed to go in and do something there, but I had another thing that I couldn't make it out.
Guest:I couldn't get out of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you guys are good.
Marc:Oh, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that environment that everyone talks about, either you can cut it or you can't.
Guest:It's pretty competitive.
Guest:And it always was?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It always was.
Guest:But in the end, we all pull together as a team and that's what makes it work, you know.
Marc:Because there aren't that many dissenters, oddly.
Marc:I haven't talked to.
Marc:Some people have chips on their shoulders, but most of the people that survive SNL think it was one of the greatest experiences of their life.
Marc:Well, I sure must say so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how did you figure out that you might have the Asperger's?
Guest:Oh, that's self-diagnosed.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I've never really gone to a medical professional about it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think that's probably more, I don't know, some early trauma producing like Tourette's symptoms.
Guest:You had that, right?
Guest:I had some early trauma.
Guest:I had some trauma in elementary school with a particularly abusive teacher.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I think that set me to where I got, you know, I do- Did you tell your parents about it?
Guest:They sent me to a psychologist.
Guest:I was in therapy between the ages of, oh my God, let's see now, 10 to 15.
Guest:What was the trauma?
Guest:Physical abuse with a ruler, a pointer, knuckles.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:For every day at school?
Guest:Mostly.
Guest:Catholic school?
Guest:Well, yes, it was.
Guest:And you feel that that triggered the... It may have, yeah, because I got tics and I got, you know, in the barkings and kind of... No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it really set me off.
Guest:And, you know, I was a quirky little kid.
Guest:Yeah, already.
Guest:What were the beatings for you?
Guest:Was he doing it to other kids?
Guest:Well, I won't say whether it was male or female.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Just you?
Guest:I was the one that was picked that year, yeah.
Guest:Holy shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you went to therapy?
Guest:Well, even going to that school, the old story, oh...
Guest:When I was a kid, I used to have to walk three miles through the snow to get to school.
Guest:Well, guess what?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I was seven, eight years old.
Guest:My mother would set me out the door.
Guest:At eight years old, I would go at the back door into the woods, into the Gatineau Park, go down a path.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:where the timber wolves were howling like a half mile away, go up under the hydro lines, down this steep, steep rocky cliff to a creek that was there.
Guest:And that creek was one that my dad, as the engineer, had built for drainage.
Guest:And I said, can you put a bridge there?
Guest:He said, we'll put a bridge, but not where you cross.
Guest:It'll be where most people cross.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, he didn't put a bridge there, but it was too far to walk.
Guest:So, I'd go down in the snow, and then I'd try to get across, and there was always like a board or something.
Guest:Inevitably, I'd fallen into my waist.
Guest:Then I'd go across this busy highway up into the neighborhood where the French Canadian kids picked on me because I was English.
Guest:They'd try to grab my books.
Guest:They'd try to attack me.
Guest:By the time I got to school, I was soaking wet, traumatized, and then I get in class, and this person goes after me physically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not a good day.
Guest:Every day, a shitty day.
Guest:It was bad in that one year.
Guest:Terrible.
Guest:But diagnosis, that's my own diagnosis.
Guest:I got a lot of other things.
Guest:I definitely know that I'm a...
Guest:I'm a heterochromiac syndactylite.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:I know for sure.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:That is a person with two different colored eyes and webbed toes.
Guest:Oh, you have the webbed toes.
Guest:Yeah, I'm one.
Guest:There's seven billion of us on the planet now.
Guest:I think there's two.
Guest:Of course, yeah.
Guest:Two that have both those things.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Do you know the other guy?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I wish I could.
Marc:It's just two people became priests out of 5,000.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Two people get the websites and the weird ass.
Guest:I know that I'm not.
Guest:That's special.
Guest:I know that I'm not, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What else do you know?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:What else?
Guest:What else?
Guest:Diseases.
Marc:I guess I'm pretty clear.
Marc:You're doing good?
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:So now getting through, like, you know, talking about, you know, spiritualism, what kind of gets you through the environment we live on now?
Marc:It seems like you're awfully busy and you've got a busy brain and you're interested in a lot of stuff.
Guest:I just, I'm trying to, I'm trying to, you know, just trying to be as loving as I can to my fellow human being.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm trying to recognize that every human I meet, even if it's just, you know, getting a burger across, you know, in and out, you know, that that's a person with feelings and with, you know, senses and that there's something going on in their lives.
Guest:And if I can make a pleasant moment for that person, like sometimes I get people come up with selfies and that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How can I turn that down?
Guest:This is a moment I want them to remember and go into the pleasant thing.
Guest:What's going on in their life?
Guest:I want to be treated that way.
Guest:That's a great Christian value.
Guest:Be treated as you wish you should be treated.
Guest:I try to live my life that way.
Guest:I'm not a perfect man.
Guest:I'm a deeply, deeply flawed human being.
Guest:However...
Guest:I think I'm on the right side of most issues morally and spiritually, and I look to not necessarily God, but I look to the cosmic engineer.
Guest:I do sometimes cast my eyes to the sky and say, Lord, can I get some help here?
Guest:I believe that we can all call upon that as universal energy.
Guest:Just open the top of your head to it and say, I just need a little inspiration, a little help.
Guest:I'm going through a lot.
Guest:Power of the universe, visit me.
Guest:So that's kind of where I'm at in terms of spiritual pursuit.
Guest:I don't think formal religion has done us well.
Guest:And so I'm a severely lapsed Catholic.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Mixing it up.
Guest:But fascinated with the Vatican, of course, and Rome and the two popes.
Marc:The deep magic.
Guest:The new pope.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The deep dark magic.
Guest:I went in there.
Guest:It was one of the most frightening places.
Guest:Dude.
Guest:Frightening.
Guest:Frightening.
Guest:A lot of dead wizards around.
Guest:Massive pictures of the popes.
Guest:And I'm thinking, I'm a peasant.
Guest:It's 1598.
Guest:I'm going in.
Guest:I'm bringing my grain in.
Guest:I'll bring more grain next year.
Marc:No, that's exactly it.
Marc:I've said the same thing.
Marc:You visit those cathedrals.
Marc:You look up and you're like, oh my God.
Marc:It's like, how is that not going to brain fuck you into believing?
Marc:The design of all the... The Vatican's the king-daddy place of it all.
Marc:Yeah, I know, but any of those churches in Italy, dude, any of them, they're all mind-blowing.
Marc:Beautiful, beautiful.
Marc:And just littered with magical corpses and bits and pieces of people.
Marc:Relics.
Marc:Sure, yeah.
Marc:There's full-on witchcraft in that religion all the time.
Guest:Oh, no doubt.
Guest:No doubt, absolutely.
Guest:It's hooji-booji.
Guest:It's myth and dogmen.
Guest:Hooji-booji.
Guest:What are my presents?
Guest:Are these my presents?
Guest:Yeah, I got a... This is a race dance Ghostbusters doll.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:And it's a real cute one.
Guest:Okay, thank you.
Guest:That's a neat diddle.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:And then, I don't know, I shouldn't give this to you because it's plastic.
Guest:That's all right.
Marc:What does that mean?
Guest:But it is, well, it's a stay-puffed water bottle.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Guest:That you can put ice cubes in.
Guest:Oh, thank you.
Guest:But nobody, I mean, what are we going to do about plastic?
Guest:Oh, what are we going to do about plastic?
Guest:What are we going to do about plastic?
Guest:You know, and here's my family business.
Guest:And if you do play a record from time to time, I got an artist named Vera Sola, V-E-R-A-S-O-L-A.
Guest:She's a protest singer, I could call her.
Guest:And she's written a song about the extinction of the Black Rhino.
Guest:And it's called Black Rhino Enterprises.
Guest:And I know it's on Spotify.
Marc:It's on Apple.
Guest:Oh, check it out.
Guest:Black Rhino Enterprises.
Guest:And all her music on Spotify and Apple.
Guest:Really powerful songwriter, crunch guitar composer, Vera Sola, V-E-R-A-S-O-L-A.
Guest:Big fan of hers.
Marc:Great.
Marc:I'll check that out.
Marc:And you consider the history of ghosts.
Guest:This is the family business.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mediumship through the ages.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is there.
Guest:I'm not.
Guest:I'm not gifted.
Guest:I'm not a medium.
Guest:I've never.
Marc:You are.
Marc:I've seen you do 12.
Marc:This is not 15 voices.
Guest:I've never channeled a thing except a digestive.
Marc:No, you've channeled things.
Marc:You channel things all the time.
Marc:But that's the question.
Marc:You see how versatile you are at moving through voices and feeling beings within you, even though they're popular beings that we've all grown to love through other mediums and their impressions.
Marc:But is there an element of hucksterism in this?
Marc:In this pursuit, Dan.
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Oh, it's pointed out in the book.
Guest:All the fakes are in there, too.
Guest:All the hoaxes, all the fakes.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Sometimes what happened is, you know, you'd have a very gifted medium like Eusepia Palladino.
Guest:She produced that ectoplasm, but then later in her life, her gifts left her and she had to fake it.
Guest:That's...
Marc:She produced ectoplasm?
Marc:She did.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:Well, it's in the book there.
Guest:It's kind of a mucous viscous substance.
Guest:It's psychic snot.
Guest:And in fact, I can tell you, no one knew what ectoplasm was before Ghostbusters 1.
Guest:We educated the world there.
Guest:Millions of people now know what ectoplasm is now because of Ghostbusters 1.
Guest:And we're going to get into it again in the third movie.
Guest:All right.
Guest:It was great talking to you.
Guest:Yeah, well, thanks for having me up in the tower here.
Guest:Beautiful.
Guest:Now we've got to get down.
Guest:Let me call the guy.
Guest:Okay, you know what?
Guest:Next time, let's do it in the silo.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:I'll meet you there.
Guest:I'd love it, man.
Guest:I'll rocket car in.
Guest:Okay, beautiful.
Guest:Take care.
Marc:Okay, so that was me and Dan Aykroyd.
Marc:Again, you know, Crystal Head Vodka is available.
Marc:And he's also going to be in the upcoming Ghostbusters Afterlife as Ray Stance again.
Marc:Call your friends.
Marc:Check in with your family.
Marc:Stay connected to somebody other than just the information on your phone.
Marc:Reach out if you're feeling too isolated and too up into your own shit or the darkness is closing in on you yet you're still well.
Marc:uh reach out man talk to a friend okay um i will now play three chords on my les paul jr through my 53 fender deluxe amp 1960 les paul jr pretty well cranked and uh and i'll talk to you thursday
Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.