Episode 1346 - Jerry Stahl
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it how are you
Marc:Are you guys all right?
Marc:Did you keep all your fingers?
Marc:Are the kids okay?
Marc:How'd your dogs recover from the fireworks?
Marc:The cat's all right?
Marc:Is your hand okay?
Marc:Did you treat that burn?
Marc:How's your toe?
Marc:Maybe you should be careful next time when you're outside with no shoes on.
Marc:What do you think?
Marc:Right?
Marc:I'm sorry that your pie didn't work.
Marc:He said to himself, my pie didn't work.
Marc:Yeah, I'm talking.
Marc:This is me talking.
Marc:And I almost lost my fucking mind.
Marc:You know, there's so few things we have control over.
Marc:And it turns out that baking a pie is just another one of those things that we have limited control over.
Marc:I just wanted a pie to work.
Marc:It was an interesting turn of events on the 4th of July.
Marc:I don't know how yours went.
Marc:Um...
Marc:But here's what, I was invited to a party that I go to almost yearly.
Marc:I haven't been there in a couple years because it hasn't happened.
Marc:My buddy Dan, Gimme Gimme Dan from Gimme Gimme Records and his wife Jen, the acupuncturist, have a party up where they live where you can see all the fireworks in the neighborhood, my old neighborhood.
Marc:And it was all going to happen.
Marc:So I happen to be going through Whole Foods the day before, the Sunday before the 4th of July, picking up a few things to make the pie that I was going to bring to the party from Whole Foods.
Marc:I text Jen.
Marc:And I'm like, you want me to bring some brisket?
Marc:And I was thinking about this other piece of brisket in the freezer.
Marc:It was just a flat, not the whole brisket.
Marc:I thought I'd throw it on, just bring it.
Marc:She goes, yeah, sure.
Marc:And then I bought that big brisket.
Marc:I'm like, fuck it.
Marc:I'll bring the whole thing, the full brisket.
Marc:So the next day,
Marc:And this is all I'm coming around here to introducing my guest because he comes up in this story and I'll introduce him.
Marc:I'll tell you who it is.
Marc:All right.
Marc:It's the way I'm going to do it today.
Marc:So, Monday morning, I get up at 5, 4.15, actually, the day of 4th of July, and I pull that brisket.
Marc:The night before, I salted and peppered it.
Marc:That's all I did.
Marc:Half and half.
Marc:Salt and peppered it.
Marc:That's the rub.
Marc:Next morning, I wake up 4.15, pull it out of the fridge, go back upstairs, come downstairs at like quarter to six.
Marc:I get the Traeger going, 225, super smoke, and I put the brisket on there, and it's in there for about an hour and a half, and I get a text from Jen, the party's canceled.
Marc:So now I've got an 11-pound brisket smoking in the Traeger, and I've got to have a party.
Marc:I've got to pull a party together.
Marc:I've got to get it going.
Marc:So I texted friends or people that I wanted to come over.
Marc:It was sort of a scramble in a way.
Marc:But the first people I text, first guy I text is Jerry, Jerry Stahl.
Marc:My dear friend Jerry Stahl, the writer, and his girlfriend Zoe.
Marc:I'm like, you guys want to come to eat some brisket?
Marc:And he immediately was like, yeah, what time?
Marc:What do you need?
Marc:Anything?
Marc:I'll do this now, but Jerry Stahl is on the show today.
Marc:One of my closest friends out of the three is Jerry Stahl.
Marc:And he's a guy with boots on the ground here in L.A.
Marc:out of my close friends, out of my two or three close friends.
Marc:He's my bestie right here in L.A.
Marc:Now, you may know Jerry Stahl.
Marc:He's written quite a few books, 10 to be exact, among them.
Marc:Permanent Midnight, I Fatty, Plain Clothes Naked, many books.
Marc:He's written for Esquire Magazine, New York Times, Vice, The Believer.
Marc:He's been around, man.
Marc:Been writing a long time.
Marc:Television writer, filmist.
Marc:He wrote Hemingway and Gellhorn, written for CSI.
Marc:He did work on Escape from Dannemora, that Ben Stiller produced thing with Benicio and the Arquette lady.
Marc:He received an Emmy nomination for that.
Marc:And now he's got this new book out, 999-NEIN, One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust, which is a disturbing memoir as he takes a bus tour to all the major concentration camps.
Marc:But Jerry is a dear friend.
Marc:Truly one of my best friends.
Marc:I'll talk about that more in a minute.
Marc:But the party, I invited Dana Gould and his fiancee, Kat.
Marc:I invited Kevin Christie and his girlfriend, Marcel.
Marc:I invited Lara Bites and her boyfriend, who I've only met once, but he couldn't come.
Marc:But that was the core group, and I fucking made this brisket.
Marc:I was just going to bring something.
Marc:to a barbecue, and I ended up smoking a brisket for 10 and a half hours, doing it the Aaron Franklin way, wrapping it midway through, taking it off, putting it in a towel, putting it in a beer cooler so it stayed hot until people came over.
Marc:I made a chess pie, and here's how I know my brain's working pretty well.
Marc:I'm cooking all day long, and I notice that a third of a cup
Marc:the plastic scoop for a third of a cup is dirty i'm like what did i use that for there was no call for a third of a cup and i realized like oh fuck and i knew the pie looked a little weird the pie was fucked up it was all runny it was fucked up i mismeasured something so the pie was toast the pie was garbage kit cat lady kit obviously came i tell i make this pie for her because she likes the chest pie i like it too but she loves it i was so fucking mad
Marc:That it didn't come out.
Marc:I can't even begin to tell you How fucking mad I was that it didn't come out Can't even tell you Beside myself that I fucked it up like that and I just took that opportunity to beat my To beat the shit out of myself and see the world in a negative way that didn't take much work
Marc:So the pie goes right in the garbage.
Marc:She was like, can we still eat it?
Marc:I'm not presenting that pie.
Marc:It's garbage.
Marc:It's garbage.
Marc:I don't have time to cook another one.
Marc:So then I reached out to everyone who was coming, bring some dessert.
Marc:It all worked out.
Marc:Everybody came over.
Marc:The brisket came out perfect.
Marc:I made a salad as well.
Marc:And I cooked a big piece of salmon on a plank.
Marc:And it was fucking beautiful.
Marc:The brisket was amazing.
Marc:Everybody enjoyed it.
Marc:Before I go on, thanks to everyone who signed up for WTF Plus.
Marc:You can click on the link in the show description or by clicking on the WTF Plus links at WTFPod.com.
Marc:And for everyone else, I hope you're enjoying the hundreds of new episodes we put in the free feed.
Marc:For future WTF Plus bonus material, I want to start doing more listener mailbags.
Marc:Remember?
Marc:You know what those are.
Marc:Listener mailbags.
Marc:It's it's a classic listener mailbags.
Marc:So send me some stuff.
Marc:Email me.
Marc:Maybe I'll read it and talk about it on the mic.
Marc:Our email is WTF pod at Gmail dot com.
Marc:I guess I'm going to get some trolling.
Marc:But sometimes those are all right.
Marc:So let's talk about Jerry.
Marc:Can we?
Marc:Jerry Stahl.
Marc:has been there for me for many years.
Marc:We've been friends.
Marc:Jesus.
Marc:It goes back now.
Marc:It really does.
Marc:I remember when I got here to L.A., I met him at one of the secret society meetings.
Marc:And I was familiar with him, but I'm like, I want to be this guy's friend.
Marc:You ever been in that position where you're sort of like, I wonder if I could be that guy's friend.
Marc:And as a grownup, that's not easy.
Marc:And I don't know how long it took for, you know, I would see him at meetings.
Marc:I'm trying to be cool because it struck me that Jerry Stahl was probably the darkest, coolest motherfucker around, you know.
Marc:And I was new in town and I would see him around.
Marc:I'm like, God damn it, man.
Marc:I want to be friends with that guy.
Marc:That guy's got to have some dark wisdom.
Marc:And I think I started pestering him.
Marc:I'd see him just sitting in the back at a thing, and I'd be like, hey, what's up?
Marc:And I'm just trying to be cool, trying to be cool.
Marc:And I don't know where it turned, but we just became closer.
Marc:And I just started, became around sobriety, and I started calling him and stuff.
Marc:And I'll tell you, man, the evolution of a friendship, it's wild.
Marc:It's wild, really.
Marc:Because I would have never known that we'd get as close as we've gotten.
Marc:Because we're difficult guys.
Marc:He's not the easiest guy in the world to get to know.
Marc:But it just started to evolve.
Marc:And I'll tell you, when I got divorced that second time, I was at the end of my fucking rope.
Marc:And that guy, Jerry Stahl, talked to me every fucking day.
Marc:Every day after my wife left me.
Marc:There were a couple of people that I would talk to.
Marc:Every day he'd fucking talk me off the ledge.
Marc:Every fucking day.
Marc:Never forget that.
Marc:When somebody shows up for you for real.
Marc:For fucking real, man.
Marc:You know?
Marc:When everything's on the line.
Marc:He's around when I started the podcast.
Marc:And he... We had a deal together at HBO...
Marc:to create a show that we came up with and we were going to write it together.
Marc:And this was like right before the writers strike.
Marc:This is sort of the luck of it all.
Marc:You know, we wrote this amazing script.
Marc:I liked it.
Marc:And poor Jerry, he was at that time still full of the hep C and struggling daily with just the exhaustion of that and the sickness of that.
Marc:And then the writer's strike hit.
Marc:And I just remember we couldn't write nothing.
Marc:And then he just leaned into writing this novel, The Painkillers.
Marc:Massive book, almost killed him.
Marc:I would talk to him.
Marc:But Jesus, it was almost killing him.
Marc:We couldn't write the script.
Marc:I remember I didn't talk to him about this in the interview, but we haven't really fought.
Marc:We had one fight where I talked to him with the wrong tone during the process of writing the script.
Marc:I just remember, man, he snapped on me so hard.
Marc:I was like, oh, fuck.
Marc:There it is.
Marc:Let's not open that door again.
Marc:But it taught me a lesson, man.
Marc:It's like you talk to people with respect, even when you're aggravated.
Marc:People don't work for you.
Marc:We were working together.
Marc:But we worked hard on that thing.
Marc:And then the writer's strike happened.
Marc:He wrote a novel.
Marc:And when the writer's strike ended, they changed people at HBO.
Marc:And we no longer really had anyone in our corner.
Marc:It just went away.
Marc:But that story in that pilot script showed up in the show Marin on IFC, which Jerry wrote with me.
Marc:Jerry was on several seasons of my TV show, writing for that show.
Marc:And I don't know, man.
Marc:It's just, uh, he's definitely, I love the guy.
Marc:One of my closest friends for sure.
Marc:Been with me through divorce, like hands-on, uh, and through the death of my girlfriend and through, you know, just, you know, day-to-day struggles.
Marc:And then eventually it became sort of a, a kind of a, a fun two-sided, you know, friendship and, uh, and, uh, you know, get a lot of laughs, go out and do some standup.
Marc:He'll come out with me.
Marc:It's just like, you know, over the years, this was a guy who I met so many years ago.
Marc:I just wanted to be his friend.
Marc:And I didn't think I would ever get a laugh out of him.
Marc:And now we just fucking crack up all the time.
Marc:And now he's written this great book, this concentration camp tour memoir.
Marc:And this is, I think it's probably his third time on the show, but there was always sort of this sticking point of like, I don't know if he ever felt like he got his full episode.
Marc:And this is finally, after so many years, my best friend Jerry's full episode, and I'm glad we finally got to talk.
Marc:We always talk.
Marc:Jerry and I always talk.
Marc:It's just like I know that there was some part of him that was hung up on this idea that the first interview we did was like it was back when the show had three acts.
Marc:Then the second one was just a shorter interview to promote, I think, OG Dad.
Marc:But this is the time.
Marc:This is the full treatment for Jerry Stahl on the release of this book, 999.
Marc:So listen, Jerry Stahl's book, 999, One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychotic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust is available now wherever you get books.
Marc:And this is it.
Marc:This is the big talk with my good friend Jerry Stahl.
Marc:What are you doing with your phone?
Marc:You want to put your phone outside?
Marc:Or you can put it in a bush?
Guest:I'll find it later.
Guest:I swear I will.
Marc:You can put it in a bush and then go, wait, where'd I put it?
Marc:Go put it in your wheel well?
Guest:I did that with drugs so many times.
Marc:What?
Guest:Oh, hiding it?
Guest:I know exactly which bush I'm hiding this under.
Guest:And then you go back and you're finding like fucking condoms.
Marc:And the guy who watched you hide it is sitting next to you.
Marc:He's having a blast.
Marc:Smiling.
Marc:Doing it right in front of you.
Marc:How's the timber of my voice in your head?
Marc:Loud or is it all right?
Marc:The timber is spectacular.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:And my lisp is coming through, so that's good.
Marc:No, you need that.
Marc:That's what indicates you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:I'm in lisp denial in real life.
Guest:I have one, too, dude.
Guest:No, you don't.
Guest:I do.
Marc:You so don't have a lisp.
Marc:I do have a lisp.
Marc:I have a lisp.
Marc:It's a mild lisp, and I roll my R's.
Marc:Well, that's kind of hot.
Marc:It's not.
Marc:If I focus on it, it drives me nuts.
Marc:I don't even know what rolling your R's means.
Marc:I don't do, is it L's or R's?
Marc:L, la, la, la.
Marc:I roll my L's, which just means I don't use my tongue for my L's.
Marc:I don't go la, la, la.
Marc:I do it for my throat and I go la, la, la.
Marc:So it's really a W.
Marc:I'll do respect.
Marc:I'm not hearing a W. No, I know.
Marc:You don't hear it.
Marc:I've been doing it all my life.
Marc:I've adapted.
Marc:But I'm not going to get any of Sam Elliott's gigs doing voiceovers.
Marc:I think primarily.
Guest:You know, at some point in life, you just got to accept what's not going to happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're not getting Sam Elliott's gigs.
Guest:There's a lot of things.
Guest:Shock it up, man.
Guest:No Peabody's.
Guest:No Peabody's for me.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:What?
Guest:I think you're speaking too soon with the Peabody.
Guest:Oh, fuck.
Guest:I know a couple people on the committee.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They talk about you constantly.
Marc:I don't think I would, at this point, because I've gone past the point of like, well, we should have gotten one.
Marc:I'm okay with it too.
Marc:Like, fuck them.
Marc:I doubt they'll give me a Peabody.
Guest:Well, it's the experience I've had within both publishing and show business.
Guest:You know, failing all genres being my motto.
Guest:It's like, I fucking love this.
Guest:I mean, we would never, ever do this.
Guest:I showed it to my wife.
Guest:Oh, we were laughing our ass off.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Marc:There's no future for this.
Guest:And not only that, but are you okay?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah, that's the one, the sympathy one.
Marc:I find that...
Marc:when i'm on stage sometimes i just see people who are too close to the stage who are just looking at me like oh it's not a sad thing but it is like if i if i let myself kind of uh get in that moment i'm like you're right you're seeing the correct thing yeah well i've seen the close sitters and how they're affected sometimes at the comedy store i'm not feeling that sad last night i kind of ripped it up last night uh a little bit and uh
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I have found some I don't know if it's new courage, but there's certainly nothing to lose anymore.
Marc:You know, after this this the the tossing out of the Roe v. Wade.
Marc:And what is it?
Marc:The Dobbs decision?
Marc:Is that what they call it?
Marc:What is it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, you know, I just started doing that material about abortion.
Marc:Are you talking about Angel Factories?
Marc:Yeah, the Angel Factories, and I've added some stuff.
Marc:But how'd you respond to this Roe v. Wade thing?
Marc:How did it affect you?
Marc:Because we're dudes, I get that, but it seems to me, like I've been saying on stage, we've all at some point kicked in for one of these.
Guest:Oh, I mean, look, I'm just going to say that I've done enough.
Guest:There's actually a seat with my name on it at the Englewood Women's Clinic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm not bragging.
Guest:Things happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and some of them were probably mine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Marc:Yeah, we just want to help out.
Guest:I'm not always a mark.
Marc:But it's just interesting that there's not a lot of male voices, myself included.
Marc:No, there should be, though.
Marc:Because there is no bigger proponent for the right to choose than panicky men.
Marc:No, that's the irony.
Guest:It's a different reason.
Guest:That is the irony.
Guest:I think we should be at the front of the line in every march because there is an equal—we don't have the same kind of skin in the game—
Guest:But right.
Guest:Absolutely there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's just weird when people frame it as a woman's issue.
Marc:And like, I don't know lately.
Marc:I don't know about you, but I've something sort of shifted in my capacity for empathy in general, you know, around.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It maybe had something to do with Lynn passing or whatever.
Marc:But I mean, I'm also able to see women in a more full context somehow.
Marc:Like I can I can empathize in a way that I don't think I was able to for whatever.
Guest:Well, sometimes life will drop kick you into enlightenment.
Marc:yeah yeah yeah and it's a horrible price to pay when all you're thinking about is them the empathy is limited it's tempered well i suppose it depends you know i guess so like what the feelings yeah yeah what the feelings are but but like i did feel like you know an incredible despair for just the fact that they you know that more than half the population is sort of robbed of their you know physical autonomy
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:And the specifics, the 15-year-old raped by her father, the 12-year-old raped by her bro, and has to carry it and have a kid, and that's it for her life.
Marc:She's done.
Marc:But I found myself despondent, and I've been waking up
Marc:This is like, you know, between us and like, you know, and I've talked about it vaguely before, but like my brain, like I woke up this morning, you know, with an hour of suicidal ideation.
Marc:That's why we're friends.
Marc:Like, I don't feel, you know, like all of a sudden the distance between suicide, thinking about it and doing it, it's not, it doesn't even seem that dire.
Yeah.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Do I know what you mean?
Marc:Yeah, it's not like I'm planning it, but I'm saying it's sort of like there's just a disposition that's not even fundamentally depressed.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:It's just sort of like I can't even explain it to you.
Marc:No, it's like, yeah, of course.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's just a matter of time.
Guest:It's not.
Guest:What time is it now?
Guest:It's not drama.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It becomes like, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, what keeps me from doing it?
Guest:And, you know, this is one of the few defining rules of my life is, you know, the blood sprays on a living.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you're fucking everybody.
Guest:You might be out of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Although who knows?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, it's a terrible thing to do to people.
Marc:The thing is, like, I always think that it's like, yeah, I'll be gone.
Marc:But then, like, the only thing that hangs with me is, like, if I'm not going to be gone, I'm just going to be a disembodied consciousness.
Marc:Like, you know, that's just sort of like, oh, fuck, now where am I?
Guest:And what do you do when you're a disembodied?
Guest:you know, an ectoplasmic depressed chunk of consciousness.
Guest:I'm assuming I won't feel fat.
Guest:Can you really assume that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:If I don't have a point of reference... I mean, I love the cockeyed optimism, but I don't know that... Who said ghost can't... I mean, you know.
Guest:I don't know if it's a ghost thing.
Guest:But it's a feeling.
Marc:The key word was feel.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Feel.
Marc:I know, but if you're not looking at yourself and there's nothing to pinch and you don't have limbs or hands... I mean, look at Casper.
Guest:He was a little plump.
Guest:He was friendly, but he was plump.
Marc:I'm assuming that you're not going to... I'm not thinking there's going to be a body.
Marc:Like, I don't think there's going to be.
Marc:I'm just thinking it's going to be a presence.
Marc:But you're talking about feelings.
Marc:So you're going to have something.
Guest:So it's going to be even more expensive.
Guest:Maybe all you have left is your sense of grotesque self-awareness.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And like, this is it.
Marc:That's real hell.
Marc:That's real.
Guest:That's total.
Guest:Forget start.
Guest:Hell is other people.
Guest:All you know is dying and feeling fat.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:We figured it out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like, but still.
Marc:So, but you come from suicide.
Marc:I come from a guy that never shut up about it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, different techniques.
Marc:I mean, yeah.
Guest:Just drag the living down with you while you're alive.
Guest:So much worse.
Guest:Because it never ends.
Guest:Never ends.
Guest:And it's, I mean, the stories you tell about your father sitting there at breakfast with a bowl of cereal and a gun.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:I mean, look, it's hard to say who wins in this situation.
Marc:Well, I mean, at least you got closure.
Marc:My fucking dad's still alive.
Marc:Total closure.
Marc:His brain is dribbling out of his ear.
Guest:Well, that that's a whole other issue.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, lucky me at 16.
Guest:I had an excuse to feel as fucked up, depressed, alienated and self loathing and weird as I already felt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But now it's like lucky me.
Guest:I can blame the like garage door and carbon monoxide situation.
Guest:And that was your dad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I dined down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I dined out on that baby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But like, did you find him?
Guest:No, I wasn't living at home at that point.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was 16.
Guest:And you were already gone?
Guest:I had been shipped off to a Episcopalian school.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From Pittsburgh?
Guest:From Pittsburgh, yeah.
Guest:Same place Oliver Stone went, not to brag, couple of the Bush kids.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah, and it was weird.
Guest:How'd you end up there?
Guest:I had never even seen a stereo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was all these, like, rich fucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And, you know, you want to talk about being the only Jew?
Guest:We had to go to chapel every day.
Guest:So I just started doing ass.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah, looking at the stained glass.
Guest:What year was that?
Guest:Wow, talking about dribbling out of your ears.
Guest:What year was that?
Guest:That was senior and junior in high school.
Guest:Wow, so what, 16?
Guest:I don't know if you were born yet.
Guest:I think I got out of high school in like, let's see, high school in 16.
Guest:I think it's like 1970, 71, 72 I got to high school.
Guest:You're like exactly 10 years older than me.
Guest:That's right, to the day.
Guest:You're 27th, I'm 28th.
Guest:That's why we celebrate our birthdays.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You're gonna kill yourself?
Guest:Nah, let's wait another year.
Marc:Just maintaining the balance.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:That fine balance between thinking about death and doing death.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Doing it, you just don't.
Guest:See, I think I would fuck it up.
Ugh.
Marc:Yeah, that's, yeah.
Marc:That'd be bad.
Guest:Well, I think I told you about that story with this guy I met when I was teaching at San Quentin for two minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This guy got in a lot of trouble.
Guest:He tried to off himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fucked up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Blew the bottom half of his face off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then gets busted for a third strike on weapons possession.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because of the suicide attempt?
Guest:Because of that.
Guest:And then does life with like half a fucking face.
Oh.
Marc:It's the worst.
Marc:There's no end to the possibilities.
Marc:And there's no guarantee.
Marc:Of horror.
Marc:Living horror.
Guest:I'm not good mechanically.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:I don't feel like either of us are going to do it.
Marc:I'm just like, it always concerns me that my brain does that as a soothing mechanism.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's really, it's like when I feel hopeless.
Guest:It's almost like it's philosophical self-medication.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:If I feel hopeless, it makes me feel better.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I guess it's probably not that unusual.
Guest:no so when you're at the prep school which prep school was it it was called the hill school where is it potstown pa uh my father uh well he didn't make it out the year but uh he was living uh like in philly yeah half the time yeah and uh mother was in pittsburgh and not really getting along with you know mom had her issues yeah a little bit of electroshock action
Marc:She did that, too?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So you come from... Yeah, well, I know this.
Guest:I'm just saying that for the sake of the interview.
Guest:Yeah, and then the battery would drain.
Guest:Oh, so the electroshock would work?
Guest:It would work for a little while, and then the battery would run down.
Marc:Why am I laughing?
Marc:Because you have to.
Guest:What else are you going to do?
Guest:You have to keep from crying.
Guest:Well, it's like Hemingway said, you know, the greatest gift an artist can have is an unhappy childhood.
Guest:So lucky fucking us.
Marc:Let's not bring him up as a point of an aspiration.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:The guy who ate a fucking shotgun.
Guest:Isn't that what he did?
Guest:Yeah, he ate a fucking shotgun because he had had electroshock.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his memory started to go.
Guest:This is shit I wanted to put in that fucking HBO movie.
Guest:And his memory started to go.
Guest:And he was supposed to write a speech for Kennedy, of all things.
Guest:JFK.
Guest:And he couldn't remember anything.
Guest:And he couldn't write anymore.
Guest:That's what happened?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, at least they didn't get the lobotomies.
Marc:No.
Marc:I mean, my dad had electroshock in the last five or six years.
Guest:I'm just saying that- Really?
Marc:In the last five or six years?
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:There was a period there where they do it differently.
Marc:No, I think it's much more, I don't want to say benign.
Marc:It's not Nicholson style.
Guest:I think they might even put you out to do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Okay.
Guest:I think.
Guest:I once heard, and this could be mythic, but I once heard that Bernardo Bertolucci did it recreationally.
Marc:Yeah, okay.
Marc:Those Italians, I guess.
Marc:Yeah, you know.
Marc:I don't know if that's a- Party down.
Marc:I don't think there's any stereotype there.
Marc:Did you talk?
Marc:No.
Marc:What does that even mean?
Marc:That's so not even applicable.
Marc:Yeah, like if it were the French-
Marc:But you know what?
Guest:You said it fast.
Marc:Well, you know, I was thinking French, you know, because the French French.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Well, what came to mind was, you know, who is that?
Marc:Who is the artist that could come just by thinking about it?
Marc:Was it Cocteau?
Marc:I think like Cocteau came to mind for some reason.
Marc:Cocteau.
Marc:Yeah, Cocteau.
Guest:He did that?
Guest:He could make himself come just by thinking?
Marc:Yeah, I think that was the guy.
Marc:That could be messy.
Marc:But I think it was like Burroughs referenced it.
Marc:There's a lot of connections.
Guest:Really?
Guest:How did I not know that?
Marc:But for some reason, I don't know, I guess we could look it up.
Marc:My brain went to Cocteau, Man Ray, and then all of a sudden you said that Bertolucci liked electroshock therapy.
Marc:I have to give that with a caveat.
Marc:I mean, I could be wrong.
Marc:What do you know?
Marc:Somebody told me that, yeah.
Guest:So, okay.
Guest:Doesn't keep me from saying it.
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:So, I don't think I got this backstory.
Marc:So, you're doing asset at the prep school with the scions of the American aristocracy.
Guest:Yeah, some of them.
Guest:A lot of them.
Guest:Is that right?
Guest:It's one of those words I've written.
Guest:Scions?
Guest:Scions?
Guest:Cyborg?
Guest:I have no fucking idea.
Guest:It's S-C-I-O-N.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But they're the legacy.
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The kids are the kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of fail sons.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the kids who, like, get sent there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I hope it works out.
Guest:I think Bissell.
Guest:Bissell.
Guest:You know, Richard Bissell, Bissell kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, vacuum cleaner, defense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that combo.
Marc:The Bissell crew.
Marc:They were there.
Guest:The Bissell crew, yeah.
Marc:You knew that guy?
Marc:You knew that kid?
Guest:I knew a Bissell.
Guest:And I seem to remember the nice guy, but my memory's a little shaky because I was doing mescaline every fucking day and acid and shit, you know.
Marc:In high school?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where's the mescaline coming in from?
Marc:That seems kind of exotic.
Guest:Oh, you know, we were getting it from Philly, from UPenn.
Marc:Right, because if you got the rich kids, the rich kids are going to get you this shit.
Guest:So you got it from the labs in Philly?
Guest:From the labs in UPenn?
Guest:I don't know where they made it.
Marc:But this was the old-timey acid, right?
Marc:This was the real acid.
Guest:Yeah, it's old-timey acid.
Guest:And then once I was a senior, and all those guys are just like going to college in Philly at Penn.
Guest:I mean, forget about it.
Guest:I would just go out there and stay overnight and come back.
Guest:Did you do college?
Guest:I did college, yes.
Guest:I attended Columbia, thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And dropped out.
Guest:So that worked out.
Guest:The prep school helped you.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Look at me.
Guest:I'm an academic.
Marc:You are an academic.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:You've done some teaching.
Marc:You've written some books.
Marc:I've done a couple things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, yeah.
Marc:But so when you go to Columbia, is that when, so that's 1972?
Marc:It was like the Vietnam War era.
Marc:72?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How'd you avoid the draft?
Guest:I'll tell you exactly how I avoided the draft.
Guest:I didn't avoid the draft.
Guest:My number was 73.
Guest:That's back when they had the lottery.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it ended that year, I believe, in the 50s.
Guest:I made no plans whatsoever fucking ever.
Guest:So you almost went.
Guest:Well, you know, there's always the guys who stick peanut butter in their crack and then get down there
Guest:and then act crazy.
Marc:Well, they get down there and like scoop it out and eat it in front of the guy.
Marc:How many times did the draft board have to see that shit before they were like, hey, it's another shit eater.
Guest:I mean, bring it.
Guest:You know, bring toast.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:Yeah, what is it with these kids?
Guest:Yeah, here we go with the fucking shit eating.
Guest:We've seen it, buddy.
Guest:Try apple butter next time.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:No plan.
Guest:I made no plans and ended up dropping out anyway for a year or two.
Guest:Going to Europe, doing that whole thing, being a bartender in London, living in a cave in Crete.
Guest:I never talk about this shit.
Guest:A cave?
Guest:In Matala.
Guest:It was like the tail end of the hippie era.
Guest:You can't do that shit now.
Guest:Were you long hair?
Guest:My hair doesn't get long.
Marc:uh-huh it just gets wide and then i can't fit through a door that's you for i look like the ace of spades so you go to columbia i have wide hair yeah yeah yeah yeah it's flat on top it's kind of the the layer yeah mine does that too yeah oh yeah great hair man well i keep it trim but like it's flatter and on top and then the sides will push out really you got the side for it yeah but uh we should start a band it's called side for us more you know aging
Marc:Jews playing rock music like they mean it yeah well they're out there but you know so before so there was a time where you know you were caught up in the times and you were at Columbia and you were do you were like on the road to some sort of artistic kind of within the margins life kind of I remember taking over a building with some sort of nebbishy guy and we're in like the dean's office or something and I
Guest:He sees his file and he opens it.
Guest:They have like an assessment and it's like great filler material.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:That means he's nothing special.
Guest:But the guy was really depressed.
Guest:That's what it said, his file?
Guest:That was their... It's like, you know, you need some of these things.
Guest:Was that high school or college?
Guest:Well, that was the college's assessment of him for admission.
Guest:And they're thinking, we need a little filler material.
Guest:Yeah, we need one of these guys.
Marc:The guys are just in the middle.
Marc:They're just like, they're not going to make waves.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But so what happened?
Marc:So you go to Europe when you're at college in the summer?
Guest:Yeah, I dropped out into Europe.
Guest:You dropped out in that one year.
Guest:Yeah, for a while, and then went back and finished fast.
Guest:Basically, I started writing for The Voice.
Guest:You know, it's really what I wanted to do, just be in New York, be a writer.
Guest:I wasn't exactly... Right.
Guest:Who was at The Voice at that time?
Guest:Who was at The Voice?
Guest:Like Nat Hentoff?
Guest:Was Nat Hentoff still at The Voice?
Guest:It was like Guy Trebay, Elliot Fremont Smith was my book editor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know what happened to him.
Guest:And yeah, not great with names.
Guest:I mean, Mailer started it, but he was way gone.
Guest:Mailer did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this is what, 73, 74?
Guest:You know, the date thing, man.
Marc:You're hitting me with chronology.
Guest:No, I know, but I'm just trying to figure out.
Guest:It's around there, yeah.
Marc:Because he graduated high school, 71.
Guest:I think I staggered out of college a year later than I should have in like 76.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So New York was on the rebound a little.
Guest:New York was pretty intense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the 70s in New York, it was like the thing on the subways when it's like the wolf pack.
Guest:It's like on the one hand, yeah, it's a bunch of little kids, like 14-year-olds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the other hand, there's seven of them and they got blades.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's no way to look cool.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know, they're going to take your shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that happened?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what about, like, so were you doing the downtown thing?
Marc:Were you hanging out with those?
Guest:Well, you know, it was the punk era.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:For real.
Guest:I knew a guy I went to grade school with.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who's since passed.
Guest:He was the, like, first, first, first, first, first drummer for Blondie.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I would go to CBGB and see some of that shit.
Guest:And then we did Acid together.
Guest:And then it fucked him up.
Guest:He dropped out.
Guest:Worked in, like, I don't know, like a garbage can factory or something in Pittsburgh.
Guest:And 30 years.
Guest:And blamed me.
Guest:That's the kind of business.
Guest:And blamed me.
Guest:That they had in Pittsburgh.
Guest:Became like a chemist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Something.
Guest:He was a top dog in the garbage business.
Guest:Garbage can business.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He blamed you for losing his mind?
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:But you didn't lose your mind.
Marc:I don't know, you tell me, here we are.
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Marc:So, but back then, did you know, did you meet Tasha and those guys in that time?
Guest:I never met anybody cool in the day.
Marc:I always met people later.
Marc:Right, and you were like, were you at that show?
Marc:I was at that show.
Guest:Yeah, that kind of thing.
Marc:But I didn't go with the cool people.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you know, I was in all that shit, but I was never a joiner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So punk was happening.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I went down there.
Guest:I saw it.
Guest:I saw like Patti Smith trudging through the East Village.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fucking big old boots and shit.
Guest:You can still see that.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:She still does it.
Guest:And you don't even know if it's her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because there's so many people who- She's so fucking great.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:The hair alone.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:She's fantastic.
Marc:She's like, she's out there doing it and you know, she means it and she's full of love, like really spreading the joy.
Marc:Seriously.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean like, you know, you go to her shows and it's uplifting and elating.
Marc:Like she's like, like so present.
Guest:Isn't that, isn't that what people say when they leave your show?
Guest:What they feel uplifted?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:Some of them say like, what did I say?
Marc:What did I do?
Marc:I don't, don't worry about it.
Guest:Or your favorite that I always like.
Guest:Is he okay?
Guest:Is he okay?
Guest:Should we wait?
Guest:I don't want an autograph.
Guest:I just want to see if he's okay.
Guest:Well, you know, it gets pretty heavy in here, man.
Marc:You know, I think most of them think I'm okay.
Guest:Now you're totally okay.
Marc:Now they wonder if they're okay.
Marc:Yeah, but what are you covering in the 70s in New York?
Marc:Like, what are you doing?
Marc:I'll tell you.
Guest:The first story, I used to write for the New York Press, too.
Guest:This is no longer an acceptable word, but at the time, and forgive me, this is not an acceptable word.
Guest:We'll just say there were shows, I think up in the Bronx, a Puerto Rican...
Guest:We're going to say midget wrestling.
Guest:Little people wrestling.
Guest:That's not a good word.
Guest:Wrote about that.
Guest:I wrote about.
Guest:I covered the weird shit.
Marc:It's so funny when you ask somebody their first story.
Marc:How are you ever going to forget covering little people wrestling?
Marc:I can't.
Marc:Puerto Rican little people wrestling.
Marc:Very specific.
Marc:Very specific.
Marc:Was it a cultural phenomenon with the Puerto Ricans?
Guest:I don't think it was just Puerto.
Guest:There were all kind of people there.
Guest:And it was just like, wow, this shit is going on.
Guest:I always liked subcultures.
Guest:This shit is going down.
Guest:I love subcultures.
Guest:And then I had kind of a, I never went to journalism school or anything.
Guest:So I wrote a thing for The Voice about confession magazines.
Guest:And I don't know if you remember that.
Guest:Apology?
Guest:True Confessions.
Guest:Oh, the cop ones, right, yeah.
Guest:Apology, yeah.
Marc:There was a guy who did the apology line.
Guest:I know the apology hotline, yeah.
Guest:This was confession mags, and the woman wouldn't see me, you know, the main editor.
Guest:So I ride an elevator with her.
Guest:And I hear her say to one of her coworkers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I slapped them.
Guest:My coworkers, the only difference between me and my readers is that my IQ is over 70.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I put that in a story.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:Quoted her.
Guest:Fuck her.
Guest:Oh, no, man.
Guest:That is not journalism ethics.
Guest:No.
Guest:I had to go and apologize.
Guest:I mean, I just didn't even occur to me.
Marc:That you couldn't do that.
Guest:That I couldn't.
Guest:That was off the record.
Marc:You're eavesdropping.
Guest:Well, I'm on an elevator with some woman.
Guest:I mean, she probably felt safe, and then I'm in there fucking, you know.
Guest:She wasn't even talking to you, though.
Guest:Not even in the slightest.
Guest:Didn't even know I was there.
Guest:She did later, and then I heard from the editor, you want to work in this?
Guest:Why don't you go fucking apologize?
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and I had to.
Marc:I did.
Marc:You confessed?
Marc:I...
Guest:I wrote a story, you know.
Guest:I eavesdropped on the editor of this very magazine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that happened.
Guest:And when does that, when do you start?
Guest:It sounds prestigious, doesn't it?
Marc:I mean, really ripping the lid off stuff.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:It was powerful work.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I was going deep.
Marc:I just realized, I think that little people have been involved in wrestling since the beginning of wrestling.
Marc:There's always been sort of like, you know, little people tossing and all that kind of weird.
Guest:Oh, that's a whole other thing.
Guest:That started happening.
Guest:Remember in the rock videos and shit?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a whole other level.
Guest:I mean, these guys had dignity.
Guest:They were fucking tough.
Guest:Did I cover music?
Guest:I wrote about Ry Cooter.
Guest:I started writing for the Santa Cruz Times for $8 an article.
Guest:When you come out here, though.
Guest:When I ended up out there later on.
Guest:So when did you go to the cave?
Guest:When you were living in the cave?
Guest:Caves.
Guest:Caves are when I dropped out of college.
Guest:Didn't know if I was going back.
Guest:I'm living in a cave in Matala.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Were you homeless or was it cool?
Guest:I didn't have a lot of money.
Guest:It seemed like an interesting thing to do.
Guest:Were there other people living in the cave?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of old hippies had been there, so there was a lot of feces.
Guest:If you went too far back... And I remember I was with a bunch of British guys, and when they were gone, I looked at one of their journals, and he's like, I'm not going to do the accent, but I read it and it said, this weird American bloke has latched onto us.
Guest:You know, and I felt like an idiot.
Guest:That was you?
Guest:That was me.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so there are other people in the cave yeah you know yeah it was like sleeping back you know it's a hippie thing how long how long were you there and i think i was in the cave for a couple of weeks okay all right and then you worked in i mean i don't think i qualify as a cave dweller no no no not for a couple weeks you definitely cave tourists i wasn't yeah no absolutely just passing through yeah i wasn't getting my mail there yeah so and then you worked in a restaurant you said
Guest:Yeah, I worked in London.
Guest:I ended up, let's see, where else did I live?
Guest:Yeah, I worked at a place called the Brush and Palate in London, which is where the, you probably don't remember.
Guest:There was something called the Profumo scandal.
Marc:No, I don't know anything about that.
Guest:Just some scandal, the typical shit involving prostitutes, isn't it?
Guest:But the gimmick at this restaurant was that they had a nude woman sitting in front of the diners with like a fake French guy and like the little beret painting him.
Guest:So I was like a dishwasher, so I just got the straight view.
Guest:But then I was going out with the woman
Guest:Who was the model.
Guest:She was an American, I knew.
Guest:And, you know, I felt I had conflicting feelings.
Marc:Right, about her doing the posing?
Marc:Yeah, I mean, but you know, you live, you learn.
Marc:Well, that was the first, that was the beginning of whatever the fuck you ended up evolving into?
Guest:Just a stop along the way.
Guest:It's all about acceptance, Mark.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Acceptance.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Drink it a little too much.
Guest:My head was the size of a basketball.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Because I was working, you know, then I start working in a bar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're living on like rashers and bangers and Guinness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Rashers and bangers.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Going to get me started.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's all sex with you.
Guest:But you know the weird thing about that gig?
Guest:What?
Guest:It was every Sunday, all the pregnant ladies would come in to like hammer the fucking Guinness.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Because they thought it was packed with iron.
Marc:Is it?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I don't know what's in Guinness.
Marc:It seems healthy.
Marc:It looks healthier than most beer.
Marc:Oh, that was the real Guinness.
Marc:You could put a spoon in that and it would just stand straight up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it's easy to be a bartender because there's really not a lot of mixed drinks.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, in England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when does the problem start?
Guest:You weren't taking me back.
Guest:I know.
Guest:When did the problem start?
Guest:Three.
Guest:Three.
Guest:Four.
Guest:When mom did the enemas.
Guest:Oh, yeah, we missed all that.
Guest:That was good.
Guest:No, I'm just saying, when did the problem start?
Guest:Yeah, you were clean.
Guest:When did your problem start?
Guest:You were clean inside.
Guest:I was clean and sober.
Guest:Yeah, clean inside by your mom.
Guest:Well, yeah, it's like you were talking the other day.
Guest:Was it Ms.
Guest:Berlant?
Guest:Is that how you're saying?
Guest:Yeah, about the colonics.
Guest:Yeah, the colonics.
Guest:Which is really weird.
Guest:Your mom was an early adapter.
Guest:Well, it was more like a turkey baster.
Guest:It was like Harpo's horn.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And no lube.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was weird.
Guest:You know, when I was over a couple years ago in Poland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, all over, like, Krakow and also Berlin, you know, all these sounds, these, like, signs on little billboards were, like, kolonik.
Guest:I don't know if I'm getting the accent right.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It sounds good.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I mean, can you imagine?
Guest:It's a craze.
Marc:Get a fucking German kolonik.
Marc:That's some primal.
Marc:Yeah, with German instructions.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't understand it, so it all seems primal to me.
Guest:Auf die Knie.
Marc:That's the only German I know.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't even do it right, but it's definitely kind of a, what was the word I want?
Marc:There's a, it's a, there's a, yeah, yeah, a lot of that.
Marc:Is that what it's very guttural?
Guest:Yeah It sounds like the noise is coming if you're like a men's room stall and port Authority me and somebody's you know having like an emotional bowel movement in the next Yeah, a lot of that
Marc:But when does the... I know the age three, sure.
Marc:I don't know when my... I can't... Yeah, it's somewhere in there.
Marc:But I mean, like, when did... Did you write... Were you writing for Goldstein or no?
Guest:I wasn't writing for Goldstein.
Guest:I was writing fake sex letters for Penthouse.
Guest:That would have been Guccione.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:I probably read those when I was a kid.
Marc:And a lot of stories... My dad used to buy Penthouse.
Marc:Yeah, that was me.
Marc:The fake dad.
Marc:I saw my early work.
Marc:I used to like Xavier Hollander's column.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Call Me Madam.
Marc:Was that what it was called?
Guest:To the Happy Hooker.
Marc:The Happy Hooker, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but she used to have a monthly column at Penthouse.
Marc:Call me madam.
Marc:I believe so.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And it was just, you know, it was a column that I remember reading when I was a kid.
Marc:Damn.
Marc:Because my dad got that shit.
Marc:Did it get you?
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Marc:How old are we talking?
Marc:Is that some early?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:It was probably 13, 14.
Guest:Yeah, it was around the right time to start seeing that stuff.
Guest:So was your earliest jerk-off material like pictures or reading dirty stuff?
Yeah.
Marc:I don't even think, I don't know if it was associated with anything.
Marc:I think it was just associated with the feeling.
Marc:But when I started to become conscious, it was mostly my brain thinking.
Marc:But then it became, I think there were some pictures
Marc:Yeah, but it started off imagination.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then someone got hold of a porn magazine.
Marc:It was like, oh, my God, that's when you learn how everything works.
Guest:Oh, my God, yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, I got a hold of these, like, fucking, I don't know, Elizabethan and Victorian era, like, you know, porn, like The Pearl, you know, and these weird stories, you know, and the autobiography of a flea.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:What was that about?
Guest:Just these weird stories with, like, everybody was frigging.
Guest:I didn't know what that meant.
Guest:Autobiography?
Guest:Isn't it, like, Alexander Pope or something?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Somebody.
Guest:But, like, it took me, like, two years before I realized it wasn't public hair.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It was pubic hair.
Guest:But isn't this literature?
Guest:Like, isn't it the autobiography of a flea?
Guest:What is that?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It was...
Guest:There were these paperbacks.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:It's an anonymous erotic novel.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:First published in 1887 in London by Edward Avery.
Marc:Nice.
Marc:I don't know what that means.
Marc:Well, might not have been him.
Marc:No, he didn't write it.
Marc:He just published it.
Marc:So that was the first, the dirty books.
Guest:That was, you know, oddly, my first dirty books were like in weird Elizabethan English.
Guest:So you were just writing the fake letters to Penthouse?
Guest:I wrote the fake sex letters in Penthouse back and forth.
Guest:I just go to the other side of my desk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The answer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My girlfriend is into scars.
Guest:And then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The greatest hits.
Guest:And then, you know, I wrote Starwood for like Beaver.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was so naive.
Guest:Beavers.
Guest:That was a lot of meat in that one.
Guest:A lot of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of.
Guest:And I remember I was such an idiot.
Guest:I wrote a story for them.
Guest:And the guy said to me, don't you want to use a different name?
Guest:I'm like, no.
Guest:I'm proud.
Guest:Trust me.
Guest:Because I just wanted to be a writer so bad.
Guest:You wanted to be Jerry Stahl from Beaver.
Guest:Yeah, which I ended up being, so it all worked out.
Guest:It looks good on a resume and it opens doors, is what I'm saying.
Guest:It opens something.
Guest:I'll say.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's not Sesame.
Marc:That was not one of the classier convenience store porn publications.
Marc:No.
Marc:Beaver mag.
Guest:Well, then I ended up, how I got out of New York to LA with a brief three-month stop at the YMCA in Columbus, not to brag, was that I got a gig as like a humor editor at Hustler.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Doing this thing called Bits and Pieces, where people would send in like pictures of like erotically shaped vegetables from Wisconsin.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:You know, and you'd have to write the gag line.
Guest:Those dirty Wisconsinites.
Guest:Oh, my God, those cheesehead monsters.
Guest:And, you know, it's a classy gig.
Guest:And that's what got you here?
Guest:Yeah, six months to the day, I got fired by Paul Krasner, of all people.
Guest:What the fuck did you have to do to get fired by that guy?
Guest:I don't know, but I did it.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:I did it.
Guest:And Larry Flint had got shot.
Guest:I mean, it was a lot of drama.
Guest:When you were there?
Guest:When I was in Ohio, he got shot, and then we moved out here.
Guest:And, you know, it...
Guest:formed some lifelong associations.
Guest:What was in Ohio?
Guest:That's where he was.
Guest:He started out in Columbus.
Guest:I remember because he had one party where he invited the whole staff to his house in Beckley, which is this upscale section of Columbus, and in the basement, in a diorama, he had recreated the shack where he grew up.
Guest:Which I just thought, wow, that's money.
Guest:That's an ego right there.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when does the dope start?
Guest:When does the dope start?
Guest:Well, dope was in and out.
Guest:I was always doing shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Somehow in my, kind of a late bloomer, late 20s, 30s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Again, chronology, sketchy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was just strung out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you just realize you're fucking strung out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're shooting dope every day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this was before AIDS.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, I'm sharing needles and shit like an idiot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We did the little, like, alcohol swab.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And then I got the hep C. Yeah.
Marc:You know, I was thinking about that, though, because I just watched this Karen Dalton documentary.
Guest:Oh, Karen Dalton.
Guest:She's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What?
Marc:That voice.
Marc:Oh, she's great.
Marc:But she was strung out.
Marc:I think Tim Harden got her strung out.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:But yeah, I mean, it was a problem.
Marc:But the way they all talk about it, you get these old folkies talking about shooting speed and dope.
Guest:You're James Taylor you had in the show, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, but I just can't picture it being so accessible and around that there's just gatherings where people just hanging out bootin' dope.
Marc:As it evolved, that became like a shooting gallery situation, but it seems like it was just a regular party and somebody would pull out the fuckin' works.
Marc:Slammin' and jammin'.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But there was, because to me it always strikes me as something that's kind of sordid and fuckin' creepy.
Marc:But I guess it wasn't at that time.
Guest:That's where it goes.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I never had folk parties where we were playing guitar.
Guest:Michael row the boat ashore.
Guest:You, you go.
Guest:I missed that.
Guest:But like so many movements, I just missed it.
Guest:So the dope got a little sore.
Guest:Folk dope, you missed the folk dope parties?
Guest:I missed them.
Guest:They were probably going on.
Guest:I lived in Laurel Canyon for a while.
Guest:I heard some folk, but nobody invited me in.
Guest:I was doing the crack by then, too.
Guest:Cracking dope?
Guest:Well, I was trying to get off the dope, so I thought I'd switch to crack.
Guest:To crack?
Guest:Just smoking the crack?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not the best decision I ever made.
Guest:Solitary adventures for you?
Guest:Oh, they were adventures.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that's that story where I thought I was getting arrested because I lived in the bottom half
Guest:of a house, and I'm coming back one night at 3 in the morning, and the landlady's out there waving her hands, and the cops have pulled up.
Guest:I'm like, I just kept going.
Guest:I didn't pull over.
Guest:Turned out, landlord had had a heart attack and needed a ride to the hospital.
Guest:And you bailed.
Guest:And he died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're running.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:I was evicted because I never opened my mail until finally she came downstairs.
Guest:Why the fuck?
Guest:You know, are you still here?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Essentially you killed me.
Guest:And that was in Laurel Canyon?
Guest:You killed my husband.
Guest:Yeah, it was right across from Wonderland Elementary.
Guest:So I would hear them sing.
Guest:You know when you're up all night?
Guest:It's not just the birds.
Guest:It's kids singing...
Guest:America, the... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it's like, oh, fuck.
Guest:Every day.
Marc:Five days a week.
Guest:Is it eight o'clock again?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I lived next to a school when I... Oh, so you know what I'm talking about.
Marc:Yeah, but I was sober by then, but it was right over there.
Marc:When I first moved to L.A., it was right next to a school.
Marc:It was the Bells.
Marc:You know, the ringing of the bells.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:All day long, too.
Marc:I live next to a place where they built a large building.
Marc:That was one I was using.
Marc:In Somerville, Massachusetts.
Guest:They were doing heavy construction?
Guest:Like pounding foundation.
Guest:Oh, my.
Guest:And you're... At 7 in the morning.
Oh.
Guest:And you got that coke head from the night before.
Marc:The depression is unspeakable.
Marc:The worst.
Marc:And it's shaking the house.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So you think you got the hep C's in the 70s?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:Probably the 80s.
Guest:I got it.
Guest:I mean, the guy I started out with, who I ended up doing weird movies with and stuff, like Cafe Flesh and stuff,
Guest:He ended up having a liver transplant.
Guest:Which guy's that?
Guest:His name is Steven Sadian.
Guest:He is a total genius.
Guest:At 21, he sort of did all Flint's ads with those weird ad parodies and all those crazy covers and shit.
Guest:Just a great guy, but he ended up having the transplant, which is...
Guest:where hep C goes, but somehow I got lucky.
Guest:Because I was also shooting dope, jogging and drinking wheatgrass.
Guest:So you've got to balance it.
Guest:I was covering the water.
Guest:Like a true Libra, just trying to keep the balance.
Marc:Does that make me a Libra?
Marc:I guess we're Libras, right?
Marc:Yeah, just kind of like balance.
Marc:I've never had balance.
Marc:But you strive.
Marc:The guy can dream.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, that's a good example.
Marc:The wheatgrass and the running and the heroin.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Yeah.
Guest:You get a lot of, you know, people don't know this.
Guest:What?
Guest:But you can shoot dope and get a lot of energy because you just don't feel, you don't feel the fatigue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I wasn't an otter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was a jogger.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sometimes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, you know, it went south.
Marc:Well, I mean, there were a lot of dudes I used to see in the old, when I lived down there on second between A and B that, you know.
Guest:Oh, you're, so you're doing the real thing with guys lowering the bag out the window.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was next door.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But like there were dudes that were old dudes that I think if you maintain your habit, you'll be all right.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But not now.
Marc:You don't know what you're getting.
Guest:It's like Burroughs said, you know, it's not the drug.
Guest:It's the lifestyle.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's what you got to do to maintain.
Marc:Like the crime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whatever.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Whatever you got to do.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's what gets dangerous.
Marc:Like I used to say that about drugs is that as soon as you get involved with them, you kind of exponentially are adding to the possibilities of
Marc:ways you could die outside of the drug.
Guest:Absolutely true.
Guest:And not just die, but fuck up.
Guest:Because I relapsed a lot.
Guest:I was the guy at meetings people didn't want to sit next to because they'd get relapsosis.
Guest:It took me a minute to lock in.
Guest:But as soon as you relapse, suddenly you lose your wallet.
Guest:Somebody T-bones your car.
Guest:And it doesn't even seem like you're responsible for any of it.
Guest:But just cosmically, it's like, fuck you.
Guest:You did this again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're fucked.
Marc:You're off your grid.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And it's just chaos.
Marc:It's not safe.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's for the kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you come out here for Hustler and then like, but the thing about the Hep C, because I don't think we talked about that, was like, I mean, I knew you when you were dying.
Marc:We were writing that thing for HBO, and you were sweaty and pale.
Marc:It seemed like you were very sick.
Marc:And then the writer's strike happened, of course.
Marc:Just another Jerry story where it's like, we're close.
Marc:No, no, writer's strike.
Marc:And then you wrote painkillers, and it almost killed you.
Guest:Yeah, well, later down the line, I was clean then.
Guest:No, no, no, you were clean.
Guest:But I was dying.
Guest:And I was told I had a year to live for a very long time.
Marc:And you were very sober.
Marc:I mean, you were like 15 years sober or something more.
Guest:Yeah, well, the hep C is weird because the main symptom is you feel kind of hungover and you're super tired.
Guest:I remember you saying, like, we talked later about, like, the Marin show.
Guest:It's like, I couldn't hire you, man.
Guest:You were kind of sweaty and green.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You were sick?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, not a guy you want to be around.
Marc:Well, it wasn't so much about being around you.
Marc:It was just like, I didn't know if you were going to handle it.
Marc:No, you can't hire a guy who might die too much.
Marc:I don't know if, I don't remember, but I remember you being sick because when we wrote that thing, you pulled out and then you almost killed yourself writing that fucking book, that huge Mengele book.
Guest:Yeah, that was weird.
Guest:That was my first brush with the Nazis.
Guest:Yeah, and that was about- I've been going deep, rolling Nazi deep for a real long time.
Marc:That was a few books ago.
Marc:It was a huge book, and Mengel is still alive, and he's in Highland Park.
Marc:But I guess the point being is that now they can cure Hep C if he got the bread, but you were on a drug trial.
Marc:Yeah, I got really lucky.
Guest:And you didn't get the placebo.
Guest:Well, no, because-
Guest:I defied doctor's orders for years.
Guest:About getting the other stuff.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:Interferon.
Marc:Yeah, interferon.
Guest:Yeah, I wouldn't do it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I knew somebody who killed themselves.
Guest:A woman we know from the program had this crazy thing where she like...
Guest:Mulholland like tried to kill herself.
Guest:Yeah landed on all four wheels in like a Some like a pool daytime soap stars driveway and just had to like it out of the car and call triple-a Yeah, oh my god, and it wasn't guaranteed that I was like 30 40 percent So right, but they kept telling me I was gonna die.
Guest:Yeah, I mean I paid
Guest:Because I had some dough back then.
Guest:I paid like 25 grand to go to the Dominican Republic, get a bang of stem cells.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Which kept me alive for like a year.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It was wholly illegal, but a doctor I was seeing said, well, I know a guy who knows a guy, and it was really weird.
Guest:When you go to the Dominican Republic for a day and come back and they're looking at you in customs, not easy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Long story short, I get on this trial drug program at Cedars, because I was interferon naive, and I get this drug.
Guest:This is sort of an acid-heavy episode, but it was like doing bad acid.
Guest:I would drive home.
Guest:I had tracks, because they were taking blood every couple of days.
Guest:And you're like 20 years sober, 15 years sober at that point.
Guest:Yes, but it felt like I was doing bad acid.
Guest:I would clutch the wheel and tell myself,
Guest:the road is solid.
Guest:Because the freeway felt wavy, you know, but it worked.
Guest:I think that's like on a philosophical level.
Guest:Is it solid?
Marc:It's words to live by.
Marc:It's worth pondering.
Marc:If any one thing is solid, let it be the road that we are walking.
Guest:But is it?
Guest:Anyway, long story short, Abbott Pharmaceuticals,
Guest:They came up short.
Guest:I think it was so unpleasant and fucked up that even though in, like, one week, like, it was zero.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, it wiped me out.
Guest:It was so atomic.
Marc:Okay, so this was the first- And then you keep doing it for 12 weeks.
Marc:But this was the first version of this drug that's now readily available.
Guest:Yes, Harvoni, which is like, Jesus, I think it's like 900 a pop or something.
Guest:Unless you're in Canada, in which case it's like 12 or something.
Marc:Yeah, $12.
Guest:Yes, not $1,200.
Guest:So I lucked out.
Guest:It just fucking cured me.
Guest:I mean, it was a nightmare.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But now if I'm like, you know, creepy and sweaty, it's on the natch.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I can't blame FC.
Marc:Did you feel a relief?
Marc:Did you feel a shit?
Guest:Oh, fuck yeah.
Guest:Are you kidding me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, on the other hand, because you feel like kind of like I'm looking death in the eye when you defy the doctors and don't do the shit they tell you to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're telling you you're going to die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, but yeah, that's kind of an outlaw mode.
Guest:But then I got it.
Guest:But then it was like almost like getting clean.
Guest:Like I'm now now I'm not dying.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Now what?
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Welcome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's your excuse now?
Guest:Yeah, no excuse.
Guest:And I had energy.
Guest:It changed everything.
Guest:It was wild.
Guest:I might be slightly green, but I wasn't like British racing green.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:I think you look good.
Marc:Your whole disposition eventually changed.
Marc:You went out and had a new baby.
Guest:All kind of weird shit happened, yeah.
Guest:But I mean, I got on that medicine.
Guest:I didn't know my wife at the time was pregnant, and they said, oh, and by the way, if you...
Guest:so much as touch a pregnant woman with like a drop of sweat, the kid will be born with like, you know, antlers and a three-day beard.
Guest:You know, it was like a total mutant.
Guest:So she had to, you know, the poor woman had to go, like, move to Texas.
Marc:Oh, that was during that?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Because you couldn't... Because she couldn't be around the medicine.
Guest:You couldn't even hold the pill.
Guest:I mean, this stuff was beyond toxic.
Guest:But that's why it worked.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I guess that the version they're using now is a little more manageable.
Guest:Oh, well, Abbott didn't get the gig.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Somebody, the Harvoni people, I don't know.
Marc:Abbott, now they got the COVID test gig.
Guest:Yeah, you know, they land on their feet.
Marc:Yeah, Abbott did, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've used many of those COVID tests.
Guest:No, it's like IG Farben.
Guest:Sure, they had slaves making their pills at Auschwitz.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:They did okay.
Guest:Same with Bayer.
Guest:They came through.
Marc:Bayer, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also Braun, right?
Marc:The machine.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:My coffee grinder.
Guest:And like, you know, Hugo Boss.
Guest:Every bar mitzvah boy's suit is Hugo Boss.
Guest:Guess who designed the SS uniforms?
Guest:And they were sharp.
Guest:Hugo Boss.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:It never ends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I am such a boring font of this.
Guest:And the great thing about this book, for what it's worth, is I got to, because I don't write in a linear, I got to march out a lot of this stuff.
Guest:I love these crazy fucking details.
Guest:The rabbit holes.
Marc:It is indeed a rabbit hole.
Marc:The first book was Permanent Midnight, right?
Marc:And then it goes on through, was it Purve of a Love Story?
Marc:No, I think that...
Marc:Or short stories.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:Yeah, I guess it was Purva Love Story.
Guest:Yes, indeed was.
Guest:And then Plain Clothes Naked.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:That's the kind of noir one.
Guest:And then I Fatty, the genius I Fatty.
Guest:Yeah, which is still soon to never be a movie.
Marc:Another great Jerry Show business story that doesn't quite land.
Guest:Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Guest:God rest his soul.
Guest:was the initial guy.
Guest:Who wanted to develop, he optioned it first?
Guest:Well, Johnny Depp optioned it for eternity.
Marc:Yeah, okay.
Marc:So that happened.
Marc:Well, you need the bread, so there you go.
Guest:Yeah, I sure did.
Marc:It all worked out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But now it's in development hell, basically.
Guest:It'll be in development forever.
Guest:That's part of the joy of projects like this.
Marc:But that's a great book because that was one of those things where when you have to do research on something, you'll fucking do it.
Marc:The way you set up that era of Hollywood was so meticulous because you were all up in it.
Guest:Well, this is the grim backstory to that, which is not to drop names, but old pal...
Guest:bourdain you know was doing a series anthony yeah was yeah i think bourdain was doing a series for uh bloomsbury books of like non-fiction sort of like unknown icons yeah so he did one on typhoid mary uh-huh weirdly enough turned out to be a chef and i i started to do one on uh fatty arbuckle but it read like a fucking term paper
Guest:It was so dry.
Guest:I mean, I looked at it, it's like, what the fuck is wrong with me?
Guest:So I just threw it out without telling them.
Guest:I invented like this weird fake autobiography where he's telling the story and I got his voice.
Guest:Not hard to do when nobody's ever heard him talk.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Kind of have a little room to move.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it just freed me up and it just, you know, I got lucky.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It's a great one.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:And then the painkillers, which I swear to God, you almost died writing that.
Marc:Because we couldn't write the script, and I would talk to you, and you'd be like, I've been up all night.
Marc:I'm so sorry.
Marc:I can't.
Marc:I'm writing this.
Marc:Well, we couldn't write because the strike was on.
Marc:Yeah, it was all happening.
Marc:But it was just sort of like this thing that it was almost like you were racing against death to get this Mengele book done.
Guest:I did have a feeling, and it sounds so melodramatic that I never talk about it, but I really thought, like...
Guest:I gotta get as much down as I fucking can.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you always write like that, though.
Guest:Well, I do now, because, like I said the other day, I'm, like, a lot closer to dead than 40.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So, uh... Soon to be another title.
Guest:And... I like...
Guest:I seem to have this need to like write with this fucking naked desperation to just keep going.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and the Mangala thing was weird because I had to live in that and it's so dark.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't think it's affecting you, but it kind of is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you're kind of that dark to begin with.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's, you know... Just researching what he did in the camps?
Guest:Yeah, all that stuff.
Guest:What was done, what he did, what happened to him.
Guest:I mean, he fucking escaped.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And allegedly drowned in South America.
Guest:But some say he's still alive.
Guest:You know, the boys from Brazil.
Marc:I saw that movie.
Guest:Nice, huh?
Marc:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:The same kid.
Marc:Hey, there's that kid again.
Marc:Poor...
Guest:He did a lot of movies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, no, he's like, you know.
Marc:Yeah, it's that kid.
Marc:It's the Hitler kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And all these different, and like just, and who was that?
Marc:Lawrence Olivier as the Nazi hunter, the Jew Nazi hunter.
Marc:Is your father home?
Marc:Don't you remember?
Marc:Yeah, I do.
Marc:He played Zell in Marathon Man, the Nazi dentist, and he played someone- Is it safe?
Marc:Yeah, and then he played someone based on Simon Wiesenthal in Boys from Brazil.
Marc:He just covered all the bases.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Zell!
Guest:that movie's great oh it's fantastic i love that era i love those movies yeah man yeah when he's walking down through the diamond district that's him and he's got the porta blade i mean who doesn't want one of those oh yeah there's always a you know you always want to have one of those when you see your first switchblade you're like where do you get those mexico yeah
Marc:All right, so then you do other books.
Marc:Do some more books.
Marc:Massive non-sellers that I just kept doing.
Guest:But you made the big bread on what, the Bad Boys movies?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I wrote a lot of movies where my name's not on, a lot of those.
Guest:Bad Boys 2 put my daughter through Northwestern, which is great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you work with him for the TV shows too, right?
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Yeah, some.
Guest:I did some CSIs and stuff.
Guest:But you know, you reach this weird point, man, where you're like making good dough and I'm writing script after script.
Marc:Yeah, knocking them out.
Guest:And you know, I can never do it casual.
Guest:I always got to like find a voice and you know, it's a little pretentious, but whatever.
Guest:But then nothing gets made and you got to make this decision.
Guest:Do I want to die with, like, you know, a great house and cool living room furniture?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or do I want to fucking write some books and actually have a shelf?
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Went for the shelf, ultimately.
Guest:Ultimately.
Guest:Flunked out of show business or engineered.
Guest:We held on to the house for a while.
Marc:Yeah, it was good, you know?
Marc:So, all right, so now...
Marc:I remember when you went on the tour of the Concentration Castle.
Marc:That was initially for a magazine article.
Guest:For Vice, yeah, I did a six-part thing for Vice, not the video.
Guest:This was the online print.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Vice, yeah, they sent me over there, and I did- What was the assignment?
Guest:The assignment was I wanted to go over there,
Guest:But, you know, for me, the best kind of travel is when somebody else is paying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Vice paid for me to go.
Guest:But the catch was it was a bus tour.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Of the camps.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dachau, Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
Guest:So I'm riding on a bus.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For like, I don't know, 19 days, 18 days.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With a bunch of people, many of whom who had never seen a Jew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, we are all in the book.
Guest:Some of them are in the book.
Guest:Loosely based or not named.
Guest:No, renamed.
Guest:Renamed, yes.
Guest:I mean, you know, I'm not an idiot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But true, you know, true.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was fascinating because the first night we're there, we're in this like kielbasa grotto, some restaurant, going around the table like, well, you know,
Guest:I've always been interested in the Jews.
Guest:I've seen a lot in the History Channel.
Guest:And then there was a lot of Hitler's List.
Guest:Hitler's List.
Guest:Freudian slip, fuck me.
Guest:Schindler's List, then Hitler's List.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:A lot of Schindler's fans.
Guest:And some of whom, interestingly, were more interested in seeing the hotel were the stars.
Guest:of Schindler's estate than actual Schindler Museum.
Marc:Which camp was that he saved him from, that Schindler saved him from?
Marc:Which camp was in that movie?
Marc:That is a great question.
Guest:I wonder which one it was.
Guest:I do not know.
Guest:I think it was just, it was an every camp situation.
Guest:Yeah, I mean.
Guest:It was like a camp within a camp.
Marc:There's a lot of camps that were smaller that you don't even.
Marc:Yeah, like soccer housing, like outside Vienna.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's how you say it.
Guest:That's how I say it.
Guest:But not all of them killed Jews.
Guest:No.
Guest:For example, Auschwitz was a death camp.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But like Buchenwald, they didn't outright kill them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just worked them to death.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like, do you kill by like a bullet or putting instantly in the chamber or do you work them to death?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So Auschwitz was a... Straight up death camp.
Guest:And a Mengele Experimentation Center.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's where he was?
Guest:That's where he did, you know, he sewed twins together.
Marc:And that's where Eichmann was there?
Guest:Eichmann wasn't specifically at the camp.
Guest:He designed the entire program, if I understand.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, he was a planner.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:Yeah, they got him.
Marc:So this is sort of like the arc of this book, which I think is honest, is that your own self-preoccupation with your problems as you move through these Jew-killing... Yeah, one thread is the horrible truth that you want to go and you want to feel this.
Guest:You really want it.
Guest:A, it's like I begin to think that any emotion is unworthy.
Guest:Of like what these people went through be I got my own shit going on and inappropriately being a human yeah You know and plus you're seeing humanity.
Guest:I mean, you know my first day in Auschwitz You know there was a selfie situation
Guest:where these young girls, I think they're Filipina, young ladies, they come running up, they're like, grandma, grandma, and they thought I was Michael Richard.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah, so on one level, it's creepy on, let's look at this.
Guest:mortified that i look like michael richard i don't see it but then b that i'm even thinking about that yeah and c what is the etiquette they want to do a selfie i don't speak their language yeah um emily post never covered that so i just did a selfie as michael richard as a celebrity who i am not yeah and they were happy and then i go back and the people from my group are like looking at me like
Guest:what the fuck is wrong with you?
Marc:Have a little respect.
Guest:Yeah, but the selfie quotient, everybody was doing selfies.
Guest:Well, yeah, that's what people do.
Guest:They had to put a sign up like, you know, no Pokemon.
Guest:In Auschwitz?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or one of them?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So some people were wandering around.
Guest:Looking for like Rattata, whatever the fuck it is.
Guest:It's just... But then you realize, well, you get there and you're going for this emotion and it is there.
Guest:You've seen the pictures.
Guest:But then the first thing you see is the Auschwitz snack bar with these people dressed for fun day at Orlando Disney World having a slice and a Fanta.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They really have pizza at Auschwitz?
Guest:They have pizza.
Marc:Pizza at Auschwitz, alternate title.
Marc:I imagine at these places, they all have to have...
Marc:They are memorials to some degree.
Marc:They're museums on some level.
Guest:But you were on the place where the crime happened.
Guest:You're essentially trudging around a crime scene.
Guest:And I always had this sense.
Marc:One of the biggest.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But, you know, America's founded on a crime scene, so they've always been here.
Marc:Yeah, I just, I think the scope of it, like, I also think that there's something about, and I think the book speaks to it a little bit, that it is impossible to wrangle, you know, an empathy that wouldn't kind of destroy your entire sense of morality.
Marc:Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Marc:Because it's so overwhelming.
Marc:And your brain, when presented with something like that, is just going to want to focus on your own problems or on pizza or what's immediately going on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, how do you meditate on the realities of genocide?
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:And it's so profound and so real and so soul crushing.
Guest:But I got off the bus and I really had to pee.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can see the guys on the tour buses of a certain age, the prostators, you know, just making a beeline, cutting right in to like the Auschwitz toilet where I had one of my first of many revelations where it seemed like the only thriving industry in Poland were like toilet attendants.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:They were there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't know if you paid on the way in or the way out.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:It's a tip, and usually it's after you wash your hands, I think is the etiquette on that.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:I thought I had to pay to get in.
Marc:Oh, well, that's interesting.
Marc:Maybe you did.
Marc:I don't know how it works there.
Guest:And then, you know, I'm surrounded.
Guest:You know, what I did was I got pee shy.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:So I couldn't go at that one.
Marc:Why, the guy was standing there?
Marc:Did you think you didn't tip him enough?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:i don't know you know it's like i just kept thinking like if there was no holocaust this guy wouldn't have a job uh-huh you know the p guy yeah and is he like third generation fourth you know did his great great grandfather hold himler's helmet yeah maybe you know while he well there's that there's i mean that's those are good questions too about the legacy of the whole thing like how many generations back who was part of it you know are they still here well that's it's funny you say that
Guest:And this is something that I experienced, and maybe you've experienced if you've been to Germany or Poland.
Guest:I haven't.
Guest:You're like having breakfast at this buffet and looking at some 95-year-old bulbous-nosed monster who's giving you...
Guest:And you know, I feel like, is he giving me stink eye?
Guest:And there's no way not to think, you know, like 70 years ago, 80 years ago, when this guy was a teen, he was like bayonetting Jewish babies, you know?
Guest:And it's impossible not to think that.
Guest:So if you're a paranoid, it's a great place to be.
Guest:the jew killing countries because you really feel like you know any of these guys you've never felt more jewish absolutely well it's like my grandfather used to say if you ever forget you're a jew yeah a gentile will remind you yeah and it is never more powerful and profound than out there yeah those are the worst kind of gentiles the nazis i think that's established
Guest:Well, as people used to say about George Wallace, at least you know where he stands.
Marc:Was there something that was like... Because I remember in the book, there's definitely moments where you actually felt what you're supposed to feel.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:And then by judging by all the research you did and the rabbit holes you're in and also what seems to be happening in this country, there does...
Marc:The possibility of it seems a little too possible.
Guest:Yeah, it's actually and painfully true.
Guest:It was right in the dawn of the Trump era.
Guest:I know.
Guest:So it felt less...
Guest:Like visiting the past yeah, then visiting the future yeah, you know with Jews will not replace us, you know the proud but the whole Upfront in your face Trump released anti-semitism.
Guest:I mean, he's just a symptom.
Guest:Yeah, but you know Thanks to him on some level this shit was unleashed and here we are and You know whether it's from row on down
Guest:The Christian nationalist state is fucking here.
Marc:Yeah, it's well underway on state governments and now the Supreme Court.
Marc:And then just kind of radicalized grifting motherfuckers that don't give a shit and large corporate business interests that don't give a shit.
Guest:Yeah, but you know what?
Guest:Guess who made a lot of money, too?
Guest:The fucking Nazis.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Guest:You know, they were grifting.
Guest:They were stealing shit from all the apartments and houses they took over, and they got all that art, stored it in a fucking salt mine.
Marc:What the real question becomes is, like, when does othering become murderous?
Marc:Because, you know, in the sense of...
Marc:Because you think about, well, people are so capable.
Marc:When you look at pictures of lynchings, there's 100 fucking white people standing there posing, kind of smiling.
Guest:It looked like a picnic.
Guest:I got a postcard once that I bought somewhere, and it was showing the guys smiling and waving, and it's so grotesque.
Guest:But guess what?
Guest:That could totally happen now.
Guest:We're just like groups of people just kill people.
Guest:Well, you know, that's the interesting revelation I had that I didn't know I was going to have, which is like the Holocaust is not the exception.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The Holocaust are the rule.
Guest:And, you know, be grateful you're living in a time between because the axe is always falling.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's a nice way to go out.
Marc:It's uplifting.
Marc:Like to leave you feeling positive.
Marc:No, I love the book and I'm glad we kind of got the whole thing going.
Marc:Got the whole, the big piece, the big talk.
Guest:I think we covered it.
Guest:Do you feel good about it for now?
Guest:I couldn't feel better.
Guest:It's so great talking to you.
Guest:It's good to see you, man.
Guest:Good to see you, man.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:999, One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychotic Torment, and a Buzz Tour of the Holocaust.
Marc:It's available now wherever you get your books.
Marc:All right?
Marc:So, all right, look, here's what I want to do right now.
Marc:I want you people to hang out.
Marc:And if you do, you'll hear some previews of what's happening next week on the show and some other closing thoughts and some guitar.
Marc:Just hang out.
Marc:Okay, look, here's what's happening.
Marc:On Monday's show, I've got Naomi Ekperigen.
Marc:I met her once when she was guest hosting Two Dope Queens.
Marc:I believe I was on the show with her, and that's where I met her.
Marc:But then I kind of knew her from her stand-up.
Marc:She was a writer on Broad City, totally biased with Kamau Bell.
Marc:I never really had a long conversation with her, but I knew her, and we met, and...
Marc:So that's going to happen.
Marc:That's going to happen on Monday.
Marc:You can hear me talking to Naomi at Parajan.
Marc:It was nice.
Marc:It was a good talk.
Marc:I enjoyed it.
Marc:Today, I interviewed Orny Adams.
Marc:Now, many of you know that I have a weird history with Orny Adams.
Marc:And I don't know if it was resentment, but I've been awfully hard on him because he bothered me.
Marc:It was just a personal thing.
Marc:There was no foundation for it.
Marc:It was not based in anything that he deserved.
Marc:But I've been a dick to him for decades.
Marc:And I'm like, all right, well, I should talk to him.
Marc:It's time to talk to him.
Marc:So it turned out to be one of the great kind of comic conversations that this show is built on.
Marc:If you don't know Orny Adams, many of you might know him from the documentary Comedian about Jerry Seinfeld.
Marc:Orny was the annoying guy in that, kind of the villain of that documentary.
Marc:And we talk about that and the impact that had on his career and people's impression of him.
Marc:It was heavy, man.
Marc:It was heavy because he didn't know what to expect.
Marc:He knows me and he knows... Obviously, he's not completely so self-involved that he wouldn't know that I was kind of a dick to him.
Marc:But he showed up.
Marc:He showed up.
Marc:And I knew he would.
Marc:Why wouldn't he?
Marc:Huh?
Marc:He didn't know what was going to happen, but he showed up.
Marc:So that's coming up.
Marc:It's something to look forward to if you like what this show is.
Marc:Next week for WTF Plus subscribers, we'll be playing part of my town hall show from last November.
Marc:That was a big deal.
Marc:That was a show that I put together the new hour that I'm working on now.
Marc:That was the first big shot of it.
Marc:I got the New York Comedy Festival.
Marc:I got the gig to perform at Town Hall, and I set my sights.
Marc:I'm building a new hour, post-COVID, post-Lynn's passing, to perform at Town Hall, to do it there.
Marc:And I did one show there, and I'm going back there this December to shoot my HBO special.
Marc:So I'll be at Wise Guys in Las Vegas Friday and Saturday, July 15th and 16th.
Marc:It's next week.
Marc:I'm back at Dynasty Typewriter for two shows, Saturday and Sunday, July 23rd and 24th.
Marc:I'll be at Just for Laughs in Montreal for my gala.
Marc:on or gala however you want on saturday july 30th i'll also be doing um solo shows up there july 28th and 29th they haven't been advertised yet then i've got a lot of dates coming up i've got dates in august and september in columbus ohio indianapolis indiana louisville kentucky lincoln nebraska des moines iowa iowa city iowa tucson arizona phoenix arizona boulder colorado
Marc:and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Marc:Then in October, I'm in London, England, Dublin, Ireland.
Marc:You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.
Marc:Now I'm going to do something I don't usually do.
Marc:I'm going to sing a song.
Marc:And I'm allowed to because it's public domain.
Marc:It's also one of my favorite songs ever.
Marc:I just love the melody of it.
Marc:It became sort of a, I think kind of a protest song at some point.
Marc:I think it's a spiritual song.
Marc:Historically coming out of the slave spiritual tradition, I believe.
Marc:And I just, Taj Mahal and Ray Cooter covered it and I just love it.
Marc:So here's a few verses of it.
.
you
Guest:I shall not, I shall not be moved I shall not, I shall not be moved Like a tree planted by the water I shall not be moved
Guest:Run on my way to heaven But I shall not be moved On my way
Guest:I shall not be moved like a tree planted by the water I shall not be moved oh
Guest:Oh, preacher, I shall not be new Oh, preacher, I shall not be new Like a tree planted by the water
Guest:I should not be moved And I can sanctify all you
Guest:I'm sanctified and holy, I shall not be moved.
Guest:Sanctified and holy, I shall not be moved.
Guest:Like a tree planted by the water, I shall not be moved.
Guest:I shall not be I shall not I shall not be Like a tree planted by the water I shall not be