Episode 193 - Richard Lewis
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Really?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Are we doing this?
Marc:Wait for it.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:What the fuck?
Marc:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Marc:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Marc:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What the fucks the bulls?
Marc:What the fucks?
Marc:What the whatever?
Marc:Maybe I should make a new list.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe I should turn the power off on my air conditioner.
Marc:Maybe I should do a lot of things.
Marc:Maybe I should get my cat out of here before he pees on my books.
Marc:My cat is an anti-intellectual.
Marc:He's a philistine.
Marc:He's a barbarian.
Marc:He's a barbarian.
Marc:He comes in here and he pees on highbrow books.
Marc:He peed on my copy of Susan Jacoby's Free Thinkers and also on Hitler's Willing Executioners.
Marc:Those are two books that I almost read.
Marc:And Parting the Waters.
Marc:I don't know why all three of those together.
Marc:One's about Martin Luther King.
Marc:One's about the so-called good German.
Marc:And the other's about the right wing's complete misunderstanding of the founding fathers.
Marc:But Boomer just peed on all of them.
Marc:Just peed on them.
Marc:Boomer likes to pee on books.
Marc:Boomer likes to pee on books.
Marc:I think that could be a chorus of a repetition of a song of some kind.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening today.
Marc:I'm very excited to talk to Richard Lewis.
Marc:Richard Lewis, who had a profound impact on me.
Marc:Richard Lewis, a kindred spirit.
Marc:Richard Lewis, who I remember when I was in college seeing on Letterman, probably the first season, or I don't remember when he first went on, but I was watching Letterman in college, the first season of Letterman.
Marc:I thought it was just the greatest thing to ever happen to television.
Marc:And then this dude comes out waving his hands, wearing black, being Woody Allen on like 78 speed.
Marc:And I was like, what is who is this tornado of Semitic neuroticism?
Marc:Who is this kindred spirit for years?
Marc:I've seen Richard Lewis and I've always been curious to chat and we chat and that will happen soon.
Marc:So I'm excited about that.
Marc:I hope you're excited about that as well.
Marc:what else is going on i did the real time show with bill maher that was a thrill very exciting uh there might even be some right wingers listening right now uh because i you know i got my chops back together you know i don't do a lot of politics on this program but many you know my background you know where i stand on some things i i choose to deal with life uh as opposed to uh
Marc:Channel my anger into things that I may or may not feel I have control over or are necessarily all that interested in all the time.
Marc:But things are getting heated up.
Marc:And I had to put on my political satirist hat and jam on some irreverence.
Marc:do the big business on bill marshall but i was thrilled to be asked to do the show because i i like bill i've liked bill a long time i have not done uh any of his shows i i haven't been on i wasn't on politically i was on the like i was on politically incorrect when it was out at comedy central for god's sakes
Marc:And I was excited.
Marc:I didn't I didn't know what to expect.
Marc:You know, I still get a very big thrill from doing television and from going, you know, it tapes over at CBS.
Marc:But it's interesting when you do these short TV spots over your half my life.
Marc:I've been doing those things.
Marc:And it's always sort of interesting to see what you're walking into.
Marc:And they tape over at CBS.
Marc:And I believe that.
Marc:If I'm not mistaken, they tape on the same stage as The Price is Right.
Marc:So you see there was some snowmobiles.
Marc:There were some things that I guess people guessed upon or guessed the price of.
Marc:They were all outside the main studio.
Marc:And then you walk in and there's the big, beautiful, real-time set.
Marc:The audience is set back further than I thought.
Marc:And you just never know how it's going to feel when you go out onto a stage in front of an audience on television.
Marc:And it was wild because on TV, everything obviously is larger.
Marc:But really, you walk out and it's three people.
Marc:It was Mark Cuban and Krisha Freeland, Dan Savage, and a famous vegan doctor, Campbell, I believe is his name.
Marc:He was interesting.
Marc:Dr. T. Colin Campbell.
Marc:And, but the weird thing is you walk out when you're waiting in the wings to go on, you realize, Oh my God, it's just, there's just four people sitting out there in the middle of a big studio at a, at this makeshift desk.
Marc:And they're just people.
Marc:And we're going to just be people.
Marc:And the audience is set back.
Marc:God, it must've been about 40 feet behind the cameras.
Marc:So you could barely see them.
Marc:It's a very dark set.
Marc:And it was, it was incredibly intimate, uh, which I didn't realize and,
Marc:And I got out there and me and Bill locked in and we had a conversation.
Marc:And then we shifted gears.
Marc:We got into some stuff.
Marc:We were talking about my past and my radio past at Air America.
Marc:And then we got into Michelle Bachman and her husband somehow.
Marc:And then it got a little gnarly.
Marc:Some some serious irreverence occurred with me and Dan Savage, and it seems to have rattled the cage of the right just a bit.
Marc:It doesn't take much.
Marc:It's it's pretty interesting to me, and it was pretty exciting.
Marc:It felt good to be back in that arena.
Marc:And, you know, I appreciate the I appreciate the gig.
Marc:And then you walk off, you go backstage, you wipe the makeup off your face, you have a snack at the little after party upstairs and you watch them take the the backdrop of the set and they roll it past you and you just see how TV works.
Marc:But it was very fun to do it.
Marc:And I'm glad I had the experience.
Marc:I did show up about four hours early for the show because I thought Carmageddon started that afternoon, Friday.
Marc:I thought it started at five o'clock Friday.
Marc:And even though I was going east to west, I prepared.
Marc:It's amazing the hype behind that thing and how it can fuck with your head.
Marc:I mean, I left.
Marc:I couldn't get out of my driveway.
Marc:I literally I was putting, you know, I brought I brought my phone.
Marc:I brought my pad.
Marc:I brought my pens.
Marc:I brought three shirts.
Marc:I didn't know what I was going to wear.
Marc:I ended up buying a new shirt.
Marc:But literally, it took me about a half hour to get on my driveway because I didn't know what Carmageddon would yield.
Marc:I might as well have been going back for a second pair of underwear, perhaps a sleeping bag, maybe some gorp.
Marc:Maybe I needed a bag at Gorp.
Marc:I didn't know how long I'd be out there in the wild.
Marc:Maybe I needed to have one of them truckers friends.
Marc:What are those?
Marc:The things that you pee in on the road.
Marc:I had no idea, but I ran into absolutely no traffic at all.
Marc:So I was there two hours early by myself with the people that set up the show.
Marc:But again, good times.
Marc:Glad I did it.
Marc:And if I if I did, if you are a conservative listening to it right now out of curiosity, thinking like, who is this fucking bastard?
Marc:Who is this guy that talks that kind of shit?
Marc:I don't have to respect politicians.
Marc:I don't, I don't have to revere them.
Marc:I don't have to consider them good people or noble people.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:I honestly think, I think I pissed off both sides a little bit, but I can live with it.
Marc:It was amazing when I was preparing, I had this overwhelming anxiety and almost a flashback to when I did morning radio.
Marc:There was this, this moment where I'm sitting with a stack of news stories that I've got to highlight, get angles on, understand.
Marc:I,
Marc:And I was just a guest on Bill Marshall.
Marc:I wasn't even on the panel, but my brain just walked into that because I used to do that every fucking day.
Marc:I'd get up at two thirty three in the morning after sweeping about six hours, but just jam a bunch of coffee into my face and just go over the day's news.
Marc:and underline and panic and just sort of, you know, kind of get myself into this weird manic state where I became this kind of angry, funny delivery system just fueled by Dunkin' Donuts coffee and handfuls of M&Ms.
Marc:Oh my God, right now I'm starting to sweat.
Marc:Just that day-to-day compulsive need to be on top of the goings-ons and the arguments and the points of view and just...
Marc:I mean, it's exciting.
Marc:I don't know if it's necessarily important.
Marc:It's certainly not what I do anymore.
Marc:But I am not afraid to talk about things that have some personal impact on me or if they be political, so be it.
Marc:But I got to be honest with you.
Marc:Michelle Bachman has annoyed me for years and it was a relief to get that out of my system.
Marc:So that's that.
Marc:Just got back from a little barbecue and I have to admit to being a grill bully.
Marc:I'm a grill bully.
Marc:If I go to a barbecue and the dude is in charge of the burgers or is in charge of the chicken or is in charge of the grill in general, and they are just disorganized or not fucking doing it, I'm going to bully him out of that position.
Marc:I just have no patience for it.
Marc:I got there.
Marc:The dude was flipping her hamburgers over and over again, kept opening the grill, kept playing with the positioning, did not have the buns in the right place.
Marc:And I did that thing that...
Marc:it wasn't the guy that was having the party.
Marc:So I didn't feel like I was stepping on anyone's territory, but sometimes man, I mean, you just got to step in and grab that spatula, grab those tongs and, and do it like it needs to be done.
Marc:Just, you know, get, you know, I, I am not a classic man in that way.
Marc:You know, I'm not a car guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm not a sports guy, but when it comes to, to, to taking over a grill, uh,
Marc:Sometimes you just got to do it.
Marc:I mean, I didn't insult him.
Marc:I didn't call him a grill pussy.
Marc:I just I said, do you mind?
Marc:And I took the equipment and I fed 20 people.
Marc:That's that's what I did.
Marc:And it was a birthday party and I didn't bring a present.
Marc:So I was able to kind of detach and say, you know, they were very grateful that I took charge of that.
Marc:And I said, well, happy birthday.
Marc:You see how that works?
Marc:I did service today.
Marc:I did grill service in lieu of birthday present.
Marc:And I thought I thought that was a noble thing to do.
Marc:I'm no grill genius either, but I got it in me.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It was always my plan B. There's always the plan B that is completely faded away now.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:This is all I got.
Marc:But somewhere in the back of my head, I thought I can always go back to the grill.
Marc:You want headphones or no?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do I need them?
Marc:Well, if you want to hear yourself.
Guest:Well, this is not live.
Marc:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, you can... I hate myself.
Guest:Why should I have to do it?
Marc:You can regulate your voice appropriately if you hear it in the head.
Guest:You're like, all of a sudden, you're some kind of professor of radio.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:I'm just trying.
Guest:What's the language?
Marc:There's no language problems.
Marc:I want Richard Lewis to be the best Richard Lewis he can be.
Marc:I want him to be able to regulate.
Guest:That's what they want every night from both of us.
Marc:So I'm exhausted.
Marc:Is this rolling?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's a very lovely house.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Are you exhausted?
Guest:I'm beyond exhausted.
Guest:I had been on the road, and I forgot to take a break, so it was 41 years in a row.
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Marc:Yeah, you should probably relax a little bit, take a little time off.
Marc:Not here, not in this house.
Guest:This house is great.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:It's overlooking the Alamo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it seems that way.
Guest:It seems like people can rush up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The last time I saw you, I was at LAX.
Guest:And I'm a liberal, by the way.
Guest:Let me just say this.
Guest:And I had this driver who's a Native American.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he keeps talking about the, you know, now you're in the barrier.
Guest:I go, I don't give a fuck where I am.
Guest:I'm going to do Mark's show.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And he's out there nervous in the car.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's waiting.
Guest:He's out there shining bows and arrows.
Yeah.
Guest:I said, you don't have to protect me.
Guest:And he had a globe with him, too.
Guest:He didn't even know where he was fucking going.
Guest:The whole thing was a... Really?
Marc:Is that the new thing?
Marc:No, he didn't want the GPS?
Guest:He just went old school with a globe?
Guest:He's pointing to the boot of Italy.
Marc:This is where we're going.
Marc:Well, let me ask you something, Richard.
Guest:You better, otherwise it's dry.
Guest:It's just going to go.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I woke up at 4 a.m.
Guest:for this.
Marc:You did not.
Marc:What do you do at 4 a.m.?
Marc:Can you not sleep?
Guest:No, I've been on the road.
Guest:I did about 12 shows in 18 days, and I finished a script all in 18 days, and I'm nuts.
Marc:What's a script for?
Guest:A television show, and then I'm trying to go out with a bang, man.
Guest:Yeah, I understand that.
Guest:41 years.
Marc:Has it been 41 years?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Since you started?
Guest:41 years ago.
Guest:Since you started?
Guest:Yeah, first time on stage.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:At a club in the village that's no longer there.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:It's called the Champagne Gallery.
Guest:And where did you come from?
Marc:My mother's vagina.
Marc:How was that for you?
Marc:Horrible.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:You never got over it, did you?
Guest:Well, she wanted to push me back in.
Guest:Still?
Guest:She's dead.
Guest:They're all dead.
Guest:But I mean, I was a mistake child.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Guest:I have about 8,000 billion pages in my computer of premises, so you're not going to be catching me doing routines.
Guest:But the truth is, I really was a mistake baby.
Guest:There's no way they wanted me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My siblings were much older and my father looked like a Jewish, looked like Michelangelo with a fucking beard.
Guest:I said, man, what the fuck am I doing here?
Guest:And then everyone moved out.
Guest:My brother moved out to hear Allen Ginsberg stand on a corner and do Howell.
Guest:He moved to San Francisco?
Guest:No, I think Ginsburg was in New York, but will you do some research before you call me the next time?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's unbelievable.
Guest:Everything you've said so far has been wrong.
Guest:Well, that's to provoke conversation.
Guest:I don't need you to be wrong to provoke.
Guest:You're very similar.
Guest:You're hilarious, but...
Guest:Allen Ginsberg is a New Yorker.
Marc:Right, but he read Howl for the first time in City Lights books.
Guest:I made some dumb... You know what?
Guest:I take back that whole fucking comment.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:It was stupid, Mark.
Guest:I can't believe we're already here.
Guest:We've been going 10 minutes.
Guest:I think it's going quite well.
Guest:All right, good.
Guest:Where were you born?
Guest:I was born in Brooklyn.
Guest:I'm a New Yorker.
Guest:And then they moved to New Jersey, and I was raised there, if you want to use that word.
Guest:Did you do anything else before comedy?
No.
Guest:I was in my mother's womb.
Guest:What could I do?
Guest:I was in AAA ball.
Marc:Was there another trajectory?
Marc:That's my only question.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:I mean, was there like, I'm going to get a job and do this?
Guest:No.
Guest:I had a job.
Guest:I did that.
Guest:There was comedy writing, but it wasn't in my heart of hearts.
Guest:And my father had to send me to college in Europe and all this shit.
Guest:I just felt like I couldn't.
Guest:I had the balls to say, you know what?
Guest:I'm going to give it all up and...
Guest:and work for free and see what happens.
Guest:Couldn't do it.
Guest:So what did you end up doing?
Guest:He died very soon after I graduated college, and it was a real shocker, man.
Guest:So it catapulted me on stage, because I was writing jokes with all these...
Guest:You know, these Borscht Belt guys.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Well, I guess the most famous was a guy named Morty Gunty.
Guest:But there was a handful of them.
Marc:You wrote one-liners for... For all these guys who were doing the Borscht Belt.
Marc:So did you go up there to watch your act and everything?
Guest:Fucking A. You sat up there at the hotels?
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to see if they delivered it right.
Guest:And did they?
Guest:No.
No.
Guest:And they gave me back everything.
Guest:99% they said, this won't work for me.
Guest:And I realized why.
Guest:Because it was about me.
Guest:Then suddenly, when my father dropped dead, I realized that there was such a hole to fill in that.
Guest:It was pretty horrible for everybody in the family.
Guest:My mother and brother and sister and everybody else.
Guest:Anyway, so the truth of the matter is going on stage did really help fill that hole.
Marc:In terms of the grief and everything else?
Marc:Totally.
Marc:That's exactly what I'm talking about.
Guest:The first time you actually understood what I said.
Marc:Yeah, I've understood most of it.
Marc:Oh, I've been inarticulate.
Marc:No, I don't think so.
Marc:You've been in my brain for most of my adult life.
Marc:I remember the first time I saw you on David Letterman.
Marc:And I was like, where the fuck did this guy come from?
Marc:I must have seen.
Guest:That's very nice.
Guest:Compliment?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It must have been your first appearance because it was electric.
Marc:You spoke to a direct channel in my mind.
Marc:And I was like, that's the guy.
Marc:That's the guy.
Marc:That's the guy.
Marc:And people compare me to you, and I don't know what to do with that.
Marc:But it's not an insult to me.
Guest:Paul Reiser had that problem, too.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:But wait, I like the idea of a young Richard Lewis sitting at the- I don't care what you like.
Marc:I know.
Guest:I'm sitting at the Concord.
Guest:I'll be 64.
Marc:Go on.
Marc:Go on.
Marc:sitting at the Concord Hotel at the feet of these fat, sweaty old Jewish men that do half their act in Yiddish.
Guest:Come on, there's only a few Jews left.
Guest:We gotta be nice to ourselves.
Guest:There were fat Jewish women there too.
Guest:Yeah, their wives.
Guest:And their children were fat and Jewish.
Guest:I'll tell you something, in my 30s,
Guest:I had sold out of Carnegie Hall, and it was a great night.
Guest:I'm a recovered drug addict for like 17 years, and so I basically showed up pretty all right, and then I hammered my life away.
Guest:Has it been 17?
Guest:Yeah, well, it's incredible.
Marc:I'm coming up on 12.
Marc:I'm trying to remember.
Guest:Are you really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:But you hosted the A-list.
Marc:I was on the A-list when you hosted.
Marc:If it wasn't for the teleprompter, I'd still be there.
Yeah.
Marc:And you were still drinking then, right?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:89?
Guest:That was 89.
Guest:Yeah, and with a teleprompter as a piece of cake.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I was drinking.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Teleprompter, it looked like, you know, it was so great.
Guest:That was my rider.
Guest:Teleprompter.
Guest:No, but all he does is get on a horse and go over a hill.
Guest:No, I need a teleprompter.
Guest:All right, so going back.
Guest:Oh, the Concord.
Guest:So the manager says, he says...
Guest:listen, it's a lot of bread for an hour.
Guest:And I said, yeah, but this ain't my kind of gig.
Guest:He says, yeah, but you're in New York.
Guest:I said, fine.
Guest:So I rented a stretch, four great friends, a lot of champagne.
Guest:I told the limo guy, go on the Concorde, keep the engine running.
LAUGHTER
Guest:So I take a picture with the owners, with the owners, the older guys who are my age now.
Guest:They're not old or younger even.
Guest:And I can't believe how fucking old I am.
Guest:Anyway, so I take a picture and I go out and I hear, and it's 3,000 people eating.
Guest:And I hear, ladies and gentlemen, Richard Lewis, not even Citizen Kane.
Guest:Not even that even.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they don't even look at the stage.
Guest:3,000.
Guest:Eating Jews.
Guest:Well, Jews like to eat, but at the expense of a spoken word, it's a murder.
Guest:So I said to them, I looked at my watch and went, look, because I had the check in my wallet.
Guest:It was a lot of bread for an hour.
Guest:It was a joke.
Guest:So I said, look.
Guest:I got 32 minutes and 18 seconds.
Guest:I had a stopwatch.
Guest:I said that, and then I heard 2,000 people go, I didn't get pairs, Lenny.
Guest:And that's really a loud sentence when 2,000 people say it.
Guest:And it was almost mystical.
Guest:So I bombed.
Guest:So dig this.
Guest:The guy, Peter Allen, he's passed away.
Guest:He was with one of Liza Minnelli's whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Husbands.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was on the next night.
Guest:And he apparently was there.
Guest:And a friend of mine was there for a weekend, as was my uncle, who's still alive at 97, who was divorced then, but I was still his uncle.
Guest:His nephew, rather.
Guest:And he told the group of people, he said,
Guest:My nephew, he's in this series with Jamie Lee Curtis and he just did Carnegie Hall and he's going to be on.
Guest:He was real proud, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the end of the show, my uncle Milton said, who's still alive, he's doing great, he's 98, he's cool.
Guest:He said to the people after the show, I think he's my nephew.
Yeah.
Guest:I think he was so humiliated because I absolutely got no laughs.
Guest:So I go up to the suite and the suite at the Concord was like being in your grandmother's bathroom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was, you know, it was just, it smelled, it smelled like, I thought the pogrom was going to rush in.
Marc:Little rose-shaped hand soaps and things.
Guest:Yeah, all that shit.
Guest:I mean, it was all, it was all bad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was all negative.
Guest:And there was a bottle of Dom Perignon, which was great.
Guest:I'm an alcoholic.
Guest:And the car was running because I saw it outside the window.
Guest:Big white stretch, real grandiose bullshit.
Guest:So I read this note.
Guest:And it was from the owner's son.
Guest:Anyway, the son said, you can't be all things to all people.
Guest:And that meant a lot to me because he was a huge fan.
Guest:And obviously, these people could care less about what I had to say.
Guest:They weren't my target market.
Guest:four-year-old kids running around or breastfeeding or throwing pineapple at each other's necks like aborigines, you know, with boomerangs.
Guest:So, you know, I realized that they were right.
Guest:I mean, I got hammered on the way home and I kept flaunting the check real grand.
Guest:Look what I just made for doing nothing.
Guest:But it hurt, right?
Guest:Oh, it's horrible.
Guest:It's the worst.
Guest:It's the worst fucking feeling.
Guest:But that was, oh, but dig this.
Guest:So Peter Allen, a friend of mine was there.
Guest:I don't know why he went there for singles weekend if my uncle was there at 70.
Yeah.
Guest:What was he even thinking?
Guest:But he's gay too, right?
Guest:Yeah, he was gay.
Guest:He was gay.
Guest:He's a dead gay man.
Guest:Nice guy, talented guy, but he goes on stage, my friend says, the next night and goes, boy, I hope I do better than Richard Lewis.
Guest:And I heard that.
Guest:I went, that son of a bitch.
Guest:We're in the fucking arts.
Guest:It's murderously hard.
Guest:All I ever wanted to do was pay the bills.
Guest:and be a humorist.
Guest:And that's what all I've been doing.
Guest:So were you able to let that anger go?
Guest:No.
Guest:It was seething.
Guest:I once became homophobic.
Guest:I mean, I'm a liberal.
Guest:I almost started building devices and toss them into gay pride parades.
Guest:I got nuts.
Guest:So what happened was I was at the Four Seasons.
Guest:I had to go to hotels in Hollywood and bring notes with me before a tour, just look at thousands of new premises.
Marc:You actually check into a room to prepare?
Guest:No, I go in the lobbies.
Guest:Oh, you just sit there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Seriously?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, actually.
Guest:Why is that funny?
Marc:Oh, I'm sorry.
Guest:No, no, I want to know why.
Guest:Mark, seriously.
Marc:Because you can go anywhere.
Marc:There's a coffee shop.
Guest:Well, my house is only, you know.
Marc:You can walk to the Four Seasons.
Guest:I don't like coffee.
Guest:I like, I know.
Guest:I like five-star hotel lobbies.
Marc:And you just sit there.
Guest:Why should I go leave my home?
Guest:I'm not going to.
Guest:Which was built in the 20s, which is a gorgeous house.
Guest:It's almost like a Frank Lloyd Wright.
Guest:It's not.
Guest:I wish it was.
Guest:And to go to like a, you know, a motel lobby.
Guest:Might as well go to like.
Guest:Chateau Marmont or the Peninsula or the Four Seasons.
Guest:So you don't go or you do?
Guest:I do.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Like three or four times.
Guest:Don't yell at me.
Guest:I'm not yelling at you.
Guest:I'm just trying to engage.
Guest:No, I like you.
Guest:I like you too.
Guest:You engage in a way that could provoke an argument.
Marc:Is that unfamiliar to you?
Guest:No, I have an argument even with insects.
Guest:How does that go?
Guest:You think you're better than me?
Guest:Well, I...
Guest:Well, that's very funny.
Guest:No, I crushed the praying mantis once.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:Actually, I sliced them in half.
Guest:I'm frightened of them.
Marc:And then the other... You know, it's illegal, I think, in New Jersey.
Guest:I don't give a fuck.
Marc:All right, you're a fucking rebel.
Marc:You're killing praying mantises everywhere.
Guest:Let me tell you something.
Guest:Why?
Guest:I'm a mantis killer.
Guest:I hear that.
Guest:Because those... Anyway, I saw Peter Allen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, can I talk to you for a minute?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, Richard, Richard.
Guest:I don't mean to do a gay voice or anything.
Guest:That's all right.
Guest:It wasn't barely.
Guest:It was sort of... Go ahead.
Guest:I don't do impressions.
Guest:I'm not asking you to.
Guest:What would it sound like?
Guest:Howlin'?
Guest:Maybe.
Marc:I mean, I would, no.
Marc:What's this?
Marc:Elton John?
Marc:No, it just sounded like a guy going like, Richard, Richard.
Guest:Yeah, like a guy in third grade.
Guest:Let's play volleyball.
Marc:Yeah, you didn't go, Richard.
Guest:I didn't want to do it right on.
Guest:Is that how he sounded?
Guest:I don't want to get into any, you know, by doing a gay voice, some people might.
Guest:Anyway, look, we're getting way off the subject because of you.
Guest:Okay, go ahead.
Guest:It's not my fault.
Guest:So I wanted an apology.
Guest:And I said, you know, I've been doing this for the time, 30 years.
Guest:And I said, I had just sold out Carnegie Hall.
Guest:I got two standing ovations.
Guest:I foolishly did something I never do.
Guest:It's something that I don't feel is right for me for the money.
Guest:And I did it.
Guest:And I paid the price.
Guest:It was a humiliating hour.
Guest:I don't need another fucking artist.
Guest:to step on me the next night.
Guest:Just do your show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Do your fucking show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why the fuck should you put me down?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he became, like, screamingly apologetic in a way that was, he almost got tossed out of the lobby.
Marc:Did he start playing piano in singing?
Guest:No, he almost started playing me.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:So he got on his knees and was apologizing.
Guest:Oh, my God, you're right.
Guest:I was wrong.
Guest:But he was sweet about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got an apology.
Guest:Hanging on to resentments are really bad in this business because we're fucked over by so many people in the business end.
Marc:Well, it's hard to understand that, and I'll look to you for this because I do respect you and everything, but when you are a unique performer and you are an authentic voice and that is what you do, some people don't understand and then some people take advantage, but it's very hard to get our needs met when we're as crazy as we are.
Marc:That was your telephone, right?
Marc:I'm turning it off.
Marc:That was so fucking rude.
Marc:I didn't mean to.
Guest:I turned my phone off miles before we hit the house to remind myself, and it's your show.
Guest:It's all a plan.
Guest:Your popular show.
Guest:But you're right.
Guest:No, you're right.
Guest:What's your point?
Marc:My point is that it's hard not to be filled with resentment because on some level, we think that Hollywood is our parents or our friends or that we're entitled to something.
Marc:But you seem remarkably well-adjusted for you lately.
Guest:Well, put it this way.
Guest:Honestly, I had written a book about a decade ago, about seven years into my sobriety, because I wanted to tell the truth, because I felt if I couldn't, if anything, if I had any gift...
Guest:other than a way to make people laugh is that I was the same guy on stage I was off.
Guest:I thought that was sort of cool.
Guest:I didn't actually think it was cool.
Guest:It just turned out that way.
Marc:But that's the way you wanted it to be.
Marc:Your journey was to be true to yourself, right?
Guest:True to myself, but I didn't think that by me going on stage and talking about a rash on my ass, which was there, would be funny.
Guest:Because I would do it on Letterman.
Guest:If I wake up and I had a rash in my ass, I'd come right, you know, I didn't give a shit what they wanted me to say.
Guest:What are you going to talk about?
Guest:I would say, shirts, God, Hawaii, hello, goodbye, and shelves.
Guest:Don't ask me.
Guest:But see, they have to write notes down.
Guest:Now, they're all so afraid of me.
Guest:Because they have segment producers.
Guest:I used to work with the same guy, Conan, as you did with Frank Smiley.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:I know Frank forever.
Guest:I had to take Frank by the neck, like the scruff of his neck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And drag him.
Guest:before one of my shots with Conan and said, look, Conan, I said, I've been doing this for almost 40 years.
Guest:I said, Frank called me at midnight on the road.
Guest:He says, what are some of the things you're going to talk about?
Guest:Well, let's hear a few.
Guest:I go, fuck you.
Guest:I mean, I like Frank.
Guest:We don't see each other.
Guest:But he's very cynical sometimes in a funny way, but still.
Guest:I said...
Guest:I'm not telling you.
Guest:You're not my audience.
Guest:You're just one person.
Guest:I said, if I can't be trusted, and I said, I just did three shows in four days.
Guest:I got two standing ovations.
Guest:I'll do some of that shit if that makes you feel any better.
Guest:I said, but I'm not going to perform.
Guest:I was in the middle of Wisconsin.
Guest:It was 10 below zero.
Guest:I got Frank Smiley by a fire in Manhattan going, so what are you going to talk about?
Guest:And I went ballistic.
Marc:On him?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then did he go, what else you got?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, he's funny.
Guest:He's funny, frankly.
Guest:He's really funny.
Guest:He's a nice guy, too.
Guest:So before I went on this, I was on.
Guest:And between breaks, I signaled to the exec producer, Conan.
Guest:This is when he was still with NBC.
Guest:And I said, come over here a minute.
Guest:I said, look, if you want me to do this show, and I was very supportive to the guy when he was getting creamed in 94.
Guest:I was just sober, and I was in this kind of bubble, and I couldn't do enough for people.
Guest:And I called the guy.
Guest:I said, hey, man, fuck the critics, and just find your style.
Guest:And if it's meant to be, it'll happen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Don't listen to all this bullshit.
Guest:So, you know, and he's been good to me, Conan, and very fair.
Guest:But, you know, he still engages in these segment producers.
Guest:I said, look, I can understand if it's some actor or actress from a soap opera.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you go, what do you want to talk about?
Guest:I think I saw a picture of Christ on a stapler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we'll open up with a staple of Christ.
Yeah.
Guest:That I understand.
Guest:I said, but I might make that up while I'm sitting there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I don't want to be, I can't be in jail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Frank Smiley called me on the road and traced me down at midnight.
Guest:What am I going to talk about?
Guest:I threw the phone out of the fucking 12-story window.
Guest:So I grabbed them over in front of the exec producer and Colin.
Guest:I said, if you want me to do this show, I said, I'll...
Guest:I'm telling you, ask me what I'm going to do next time.
Guest:Spirituality, alcoholism, divorces, fear of intimacy.
Guest:Is that enough?
Guest:Because I could talk for like 18 days on each one.
Guest:And I promise you that a lot of the stuff I've done on stage.
Guest:And I'll never repeat anything on your show that I've done anywhere.
Guest:So I will never give you any answers anymore.
Guest:And they don't ask me anymore.
Marc:Did you do that with Letterman, too, at the beginning?
Guest:I do it now with everybody.
Guest:But from the beginning?
Marc:Oh, you have to when you're a kid.
Marc:You had to give them what you were going to say.
Guest:Yeah, but what I would do is that it's actually your life.
Guest:So when you get up there,
Guest:You know, you could piss them off.
Guest:Because I understand this.
Guest:I mean, look, you go and then there's another, there's like, you know, 18 guests a week.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're just another day at work.
Guest:I learned a lot.
Guest:I learned a lot of valuable lessons doing these shows.
Guest:I once, early in the 80s, it was, I did more Letterman's than almost anybody.
Marc:And I'm actually the panel guest.
Marc:You were the guy that was like, I always look forward to you sitting down.
Marc:To me, it was a respectable thing.
Guest:Yeah, well, Letterman was the guy who told me, you'll never do stand-up on my show.
Guest:You're much better on a panel.
Guest:You're too physical.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you engage, too.
Marc:He can move you along.
Guest:And because of him, it set a precedent for me back in 82.
Guest:And I've never, even without a series, I said, no, Lewis doesn't do stand-up.
Guest:If you want him, he just sits down and squirms in his seat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's because of Dave.
Guest:That was a great thing.
Guest:But two things.
Guest:Letterman really gave me my first real break.
Guest:Because I was on like every six weeks for years.
Guest:And I had endless amounts of material, so that wasn't a problem.
Guest:And the thing is, once I was talking about Hawaii, and I said to the woman during the day, all right, he can ask me.
Guest:I understand you were in Hawaii.
Guest:I said, the whole thing is so fraudulent to me.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It just sounds fake.
Marc:You mean when you're talking to a segment producer?
Guest:Yeah, I said, what, Karnak?
Guest:You were in Maui.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You fucking know.
Marc:It's not a real question.
Guest:No, but Dave, they're great at what they do, but still, to me, it was a fake.
Guest:But that's what happens all the time anyway when they have these categories on paper.
Guest:So he says, I understand you're in Hawaii.
Guest:And I cringed when I heard that.
Guest:Look, I get it.
Guest:Show business.
Guest:Yeah, show business.
Guest:So I start doing stuff about Hawaii.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I wrote thousands of premises, not thousands, hundreds.
Guest:in that week yeah so in the during the taping dave said who truly has been incredibly uh supportive to me for you know 40 years uh 35 years or so yeah he said on the air oh i guess this is your maui hunk
Guest:And I went fucking nuts.
Guest:It took away all the, you know, like it broke the fourth wall.
Guest:It made me feel like I was just doing like my bar mitzvah speech.
Marc:But it's also sandbagged you in a little bit because you were against that anyways and all of a sudden he put that on you.
Guest:Well, you know, I don't know if he did it just, it snuck out.
Marc:He's probably trying to be funny.
Guest:He was probably trying to be funny, but I went crazy.
Marc:What happened?
Guest:I went nuts in the dressing room.
Guest:I didn't give a shit anymore about the show.
Guest:And it was so important to me, that show.
Guest:I lived for that show.
Marc:Were you drunk?
Marc:No.
Marc:Is it sober?
Guest:Well, I don't remember.
Guest:I mean, sometimes I might have been a little high.
Guest:But I never stumbled into it.
Marc:And what happened because of that?
Guest:Well, he heard me screaming and yelling.
Guest:I got to my hotel room.
Guest:And, you know, he's a pretty reclusive guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he wants to be, obviously.
Guest:And...
Guest:I get a call at the hotel.
Guest:Dave wants you to come over, too, after their little rehearsals.
Guest:And I went fine.
Guest:I figured it was it.
Guest:Like, I dare you and fuck you and scream.
Guest:I don't scream.
Guest:My crew was there.
Guest:And it was just the opposite.
Guest:He says, boy, that was the most unfair comment to make to another comedian.
Guest:All of a sudden, I was billboarding the fact that you had material on Maui.
Guest:And I asked you about it.
Guest:And then I...
Guest:Like you said, I did feel sandbagged.
Guest:So that was pretty cool of him.
Guest:And on Carson, you had to do five minutes and like 31 and a half seconds.
Guest:It was like psychotic.
Guest:It's four minutes and 15 now.
Guest:Is that what it is?
Marc:On Ferguson, anyways.
Guest:I dig this, Mark.
Guest:I had this routine for like 10 years.
Guest:And I loved getting them on the show and then throwing them out.
Guest:Unless I was in a place where the audience snuck, I just wanted to get off stage.
Guest:So I did this routine on the division of motor vehicles.
Guest:And it really was a strong routine.
Guest:It was about seven minutes long.
Guest:So I cut it down to about six and a half minutes.
Guest:And I remember the week, because Rodney was in town, and we both drank and did drugs, and we loved women, and we just went crazy.
Marc:You and Rodney?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he was really very supportive of me.
Guest:Anyway.
Marc:Sweet guy in his way, right?
Guest:Oh, God, yeah.
Guest:The darkest guy I've ever known, practically.
Guest:He was so miserable.
Guest:Unbelievably miserable.
Guest:What he used to call the whole, what the humanity was, not the dark, maybe the darkness.
Guest:Oh, hey, I'll tell you the heaviness.
Guest:Yeah, the heaviness.
Guest:The heaviness.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:So I walk in.
Guest:I had written about this.
Guest:I'll make it brief.
Guest:I walked in.
Guest:There were changing shows.
Guest:All I wanted to do was my two monologues.
Guest:I told, at the time, Bud Freeman, who was running the joints.
Guest:I said, look, Bud, I just want to do my monologue and get out.
Guest:I'll do both shows.
Guest:He says, fine.
Guest:So I see Rodney and he sees me.
Guest:I said, oh shit, I'm cooked, man.
Guest:Because I usually used to stay around, close the place, look for women, drink, hear rock and roll.
Marc:Where was this?
Marc:Anywhere.
Guest:But certainly at a comedy club.
Guest:And I was making some sort of name for myself, so it was easy to meet women and all that shit.
Guest:So I see Rodney, and he says, hey, Richard, you'll come sit with me after you're set.
Guest:I don't do impressions with him.
Guest:I mean, that was closer to Rodney than, say, Dick Van Dyke, wasn't it?
Marc:Yeah, no, it was good, yeah.
Good.
Guest:No, I'm serious, I got it.
Marc:It had a feel of Rodney.
Guest:Yeah, it's attitude.
Guest:So I said, Rodney, I feel I can't.
Guest:I just wanted to go home and hear the tape and time it.
Guest:That's all I cared about.
Guest:For Carson.
Guest:Yeah, I mean that Carson, because David Brennan once told me when I was 23, he says, one five-minute spot on Carson is like doing the improv.
Guest:Every night, full house, three shows a night for like, he had it all figured out, like 18 years.
Guest:He had the math done, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was a maniac.
Guest:So 18 years is right.
Guest:So you better not walk through any of this shit.
Guest:And when I see younger comics, I go, whether it's radio or whatever, if I sound like an old folk guy, I don't give a shit.
Guest:I think it's good advice.
Guest:You never know who's listening.
Guest:And once you don't take your art seriously and passionately,
Guest:You'll never be as good as you can be, and then you're going to burn a lot of bridges.
Guest:So I believe that.
Marc:And you learned that from experience?
Guest:Well, I just had good mentoring early on.
Marc:You didn't burn bridges ever?
Guest:No, I mean, there were some people that, you know, I was, you know, there's been a few places, you know, perhaps I couldn't be on because they didn't like me.
Guest:I like when people, I used to always, Cassavetes, I'm a big, you know, huge fan, and he used to see a screening, and if the audience liked it, he would make it, he would go back and fuck it up so they wouldn't like it.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:He wanted people to be annoyed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I never want, you know, I want to be Bob Hope, for Christ's sake.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:All right, so Rodney pulls you over.
Guest:So no, so I say, I lied.
Guest:I went, Rodney, I feel like shit, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Rodney said, hey, great, you're halfway there, huh?
Guest:And when he said, you're halfway there, I froze.
Guest:I mean, to me, and I said, I'm done.
Guest:I said, I'll be right back.
Guest:Let me just do my monologue.
Guest:I'll be there.
Guest:And we closed the place down, as usual.
Guest:But here's the thing.
Guest:I had this monologue.
Marc:Seven minutes.
Guest:Not even.
Guest:Five something.
Marc:But that's how long yours was.
Marc:You had to cut it down.
Guest:Yeah, I had to cut it down from the club.
Guest:So I go on stage and, you know, God, it was such torment.
Guest:People should know.
Guest:It's like first getting it and then honing it and doing it for years.
Guest:And I don't work that way anymore.
Guest:I haven't for decades.
Guest:Now I just free associate half the shows.
Guest:And it's more like improv.
Guest:I just can't take it anymore.
Marc:And you can't take structure.
Guest:I don't have an act.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I just don't have, I never, I really don't have an act.
Guest:I have literally 1,500 pages of premises and I scroll them and I print out the last years and I bring it on the road with me and I try to remember some of it.
Marc:The yellow notebooks.
Marc:I saw you at the bottom line probably in the late 80s.
Guest:No more notes.
Marc:No more yellow notebooks?
Guest:Not for a decade.
Guest:It's never been better.
Guest:So dig this.
Guest:I'm on the show, Richard Lewis.
Guest:This is before I had a sitcom so I had to do stand-up.
Guest:And I go on there and I'm destroying this Burbank, which is known for, notorious for being pretty square and not an easy audience.
Guest:And my lack of experience made me play it more like a nightclub room than the camera.
Guest:It's really the camera that matters.
Guest:When that red thing goes red, that's in the bedroom of millions of people.
Guest:You were aware of that?
Guest:Well, I was not as much as I should have been because I got too physical and I was like trying to, you know, playing the front row as if they were ordering two whiskey sours.
Guest:But I learned young enough that I didn't burn any of those bridges.
Guest:But the thing about this was it was so amazingly frightening was that midway through the monologue and I was so in heaven.
Guest:I'm killing.
Guest:This is maybe the strongest shot I've seen anyone do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're an unbelievable comedian.
Guest:And you would know when there's laughs, you wait till they peak and then you move on.
Guest:So I did that.
Guest:I waited.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, underneath the camera, a technician comes, the stage manager, gave me the wrap it up sign.
Guest:I went, wrap it up?
Guest:I'm halfway through.
Guest:It would make no sense.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I said goodnight right now, I never would get the show again.
Guest:So you're getting too many laughs.
Guest:And applause.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had to make a decision.
Guest:If I never get the show again, which I wouldn't, I said, if I didn't get off, I'd have to say I was too good.
Guest:And I could live with that.
Guest:I was too funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That I could live with.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I get off stage, and the talent coordinator went fucking nuts.
Guest:And the agents were with me.
Guest:And they were sort of cluelessly funny.
Guest:They went, hey, you did two shows in one.
Guest:I said, no, you don't understand.
Guest:That's the fucking reason I'm not coming back, you methyl cases.
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:This guy is screaming at me.
Guest:Carson is going to be livid after the meeting.
Guest:So I had a date.
Guest:I was dating, well, I dated a lot of waitresses, but slash actresses.
Marc:And who are now massage therapists or Christians.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:I don't care anymore what anyone does.
Guest:I just hope they don't have a painful death.
Guest:Or your child.
Guest:Yeah, no, that's not happening.
Guest:I'm married now, but I had a five-year window, but I didn't want to have... We don't hang out that much, but my child would have a horrible... He'd have a neediness battle.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:He'd be sucking my thumb, his thumb, my uncle's thumb.
Guest:Why are you crying?
Guest:Daddy's hurting.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:He'd care more about me.
Guest:I have a temperature.
Guest:Let me take your temperature, Richard.
Guest:Even if you didn't call me Richard.
Guest:Don't call me Dad.
Guest:Makes me uncomfortable.
Guest:So I get off stage and I go to the Palm, which I always used to love.
Guest:There used to be a legendary guy named Gigi who ran it.
Guest:He's dead now.
Guest:He was the greatest.
Guest:And I went there with the two managers, a date, nice woman.
Guest:And I was crestfallen because I went, you know, in an hour and a half, you close your eyes and you go, you see all the apartment houses on the East Coast.
Guest:Lights will go on in a bedroom and there you are.
Guest:Different apartment houses.
Guest:How many in this apartment are going to see me?
Guest:How many in this?
Guest:I mean, I was a trip on that.
Guest:But I said, they're going to see me destroy.
Guest:You know, I didn't think that they could edit.
Guest:I forgot about that.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I'm sitting there, and all of a sudden, 10 feet away is Carson.
Guest:He's still in his makeup like I was.
Guest:The odds that he was at the table next to me was a billion to one shot.
Guest:Sure, he went home maybe.
Guest:Anything.
Guest:I bolt over like Jack Ruby, ready to shoot him in the head.
Yeah.
Guest:And I got on my knees.
Guest:He was there with his lawyer.
Guest:Like a Jack Ruby that just wanted attention, didn't want to kill a president.
Guest:Well, I just went, well, that's a way of looking at it.
Guest:But to me, I felt like I was, the way it looked, it looked like I was going to assassinate him.
Guest:What was the first thing in your head?
Guest:Like, I got to apologize?
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And I said, look, Johnny, because I had done the show.
Guest:I said, Johnny, look.
Guest:I did this monologue for 10 years.
Guest:I couldn't wait to get it over with.
Guest:It killed.
Guest:You were there.
Guest:I said, the guy wanted me to get off.
Guest:I said, I didn't want Johnny Carson to think I didn't know what I was doing.
Guest:I said, so I called an automatic.
Guest:I did the whole routine.
Guest:I know it went twice as long.
Guest:But I'd rather you know that I know what I'm doing and never do the show again than to say, what the fuck was that all about?
Guest:It made no sense to me.
Guest:And the next day I got a call from the talent coordinator and said, you're a lucky man that you ran into him.
Guest:Because had I not, I would have had to have crashed a lot, maybe never gotten in.
Marc:What did he say to you?
Guest:He didn't say much.
Guest:He was scared.
Guest:I was like, you know.
Guest:Panicked.
Guest:I looked like a guy who was going to kill him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because my eyes were like a...
Marc:Coyotes.
Marc:And he just said... He says, don't worry about it.
Guest:Don't worry about it.
Guest:Something to that effect.
Guest:And I never looked back.
Marc:So if you don't mind, because I... I don't mind about anything.
Guest:What, you want me to leave?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:I identify with this transition you made.
Marc:Okay, I think it's interesting that...
Marc:You started doing comedy right after your father's death to sort of... Fill the void.
Marc:Yeah, fill the void.
Marc:I'm sorry I meant to speak for you.
Marc:That's all right.
Marc:And then you developed this style, which was your style.
Marc:You did create a voice through written material, but then all of a sudden you detached from the material because I find that the idea of being exactly the same on and off stage is very compelling and that there's no distance between who you are on stage or off stage.
Marc:I like that.
Marc:because it's emotionally satisfying you don't feel like you're being a fraud right right and you feel like you have a connection to the people that are there now one thing I've said about you is that do you think there are moments where do you feel like you're healthier now I mean mentally I mean do you think that you know something has has over the time that you've been expressing yourself you know that you've gotten any sort of shit together
Marc:Not much.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Why do you think that is?
Marc:Is that something you commit to, or do you think it's something that just is the way it is?
Guest:Well, first of all, I got married at 57.
Guest:I met a woman 13 years ago, and she's great.
Guest:But I found somebody who has a point of view other than my own.
Guest:Yeah, and you can't bully her.
Guest:And I'm an addict.
Guest:So I either was an addict, for those who don't know,
Guest:And this is buzzword crap, but it's like we're very grandiose.
Guest:We want what we want when we want it.
Guest:And then the flip side that can happen instantaneously is that we feel that we're worthless.
Guest:So I either was with women, and I was no easy package, but I was either with slaves, basically.
Guest:Like, you're going to watch every Kubrick film this week or it's over.
Guest:I mean, it was that controlling.
Guest:okay i guess that's better than hitting them is forcing them to sit through eyes wide shut even though you might not even like it that much i didn't like it as much as i wanted to let me die before we finished and maybe you would have saved it yeah but um or or i would be with the worst women on the planet and tortured me and just fight constantly fighting and just sabotaging me and fucking me around and
Guest:using me for my connections.
Guest:So I found somebody.
Guest:I had one or two really good women in my life, but I wasn't ready.
Guest:I was a drunk, an active drunk.
Guest:But when I sobered up, I met Joyce about 12 years ago.
Guest:But she has a point of view.
Guest:And it's still hard.
Guest:I mean, I did get help from my therapist.
Guest:But I mean...
Guest:and being so but it has it has first i had to stop drinking and doing those those kind of recreational drugs i'd be dead but so that's that's important meds everything anything that would get me high do you do any meds meds yeah med i mean are you if i go to antidepressants or something no no i was they wanted me to i couldn't do i didn't want to do it on principle
Guest:No, I didn't want my brain to be messed with.
Guest:It was more of a dumb creative theory that I wouldn't come up with certain thoughts if I was middled out and calmer.
Marc:I agree with you in the same way.
Marc:I won't do it.
Marc:Yeah, because I have this weird persistence.
Marc:Maybe it's a grandiosity that through behavior we can change our actions a little bit.
Marc:Acting as if and all that shit.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:No, I agree with you.
Marc:That we can change the way we think and not deaden part of our brain.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, if I'm going to be an asshole, you know, and I can just try to do another, take another action.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And rather than take a pill.
Marc:So you found a woman that somehow... Who got me.
Guest:Yeah, she got me.
Guest:She's not an addict, but she was in the record business a long time now.
Guest:She's in a great charity, urbanfarming.org, I might add.
Guest:It's a great site.
Guest:And they grow food in the inner cities for the homeless.
Guest:Do you farm?
Guest:Not only do I not farm, I can't even watch farm documentaries.
Guest:And I've never put gas in my car.
Guest:I've never put gas in my car or changed a tire.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You didn't drive over here.
Guest:You don't like to drive, right?
Guest:No, I hate driving.
Guest:but I don't know how to change a tire.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:But that's a decision, right?
Guest:You could learn.
Guest:You want me to teach you?
Guest:No.
Guest:It would take two minutes.
Guest:It's not because I died.
Guest:Lewis died without changing a tire or Lewis died without filling up.
Guest:I go to a gas station near me and it's not full service anymore except for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're the guy?
Guest:I'm like Elvis.
Guest:I tip the guy $20 and he does everything.
Guest:They open the garage for you?
Guest:We don't use this anymore, but let's get it up on the lift.
Guest:Yeah, when I drive in there.
Guest:How's the car?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:All right, we'll put it up.
Guest:Go to Greenblatt's and we'll come back in three hours.
Marc:Because there's part of me that thinks, like with guys like us, and I'm going to compare myself to you, not comedically, obviously, but just in a sort of neurotic, compulsive, addictive, self-involved way.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Yeah, but isn't that the name of a new one-man show?
Marc:I think I might add that to my bio.
Marc:I thought that was in your bio.
Marc:Well, our bios are now interchangeable apparently.
Marc:No, but there was a part of me that thought when Prozac became popular that somehow or another guys like us were going to be moved out of the way because people are going to be like, isn't there medicine for his comedy?
Marc:Can't he feel better?
Marc:But you do, I think, feel better.
Marc:I think age sometimes does that a bit, and what?
Guest:Age, for sure.
Guest:I mean, I'm scared now of dying.
Guest:I never thought I would be.
Guest:I'm not a religious guy.
Guest:I'm more of a spiritual guy.
Marc:What does that mean?
Guest:I'm afraid I could drop dead here.
Marc:Well, that might happen, but we'd handle it.
Marc:I'd make sure everything was taken care of.
Guest:Would you consider this dying on stage?
Marc:No, I thought that if you dropped dead, I would go tell your driver that we've got a problem.
Guest:Call my wife.
Marc:And I'd call your wife.
Marc:I'd go through your pockets.
Guest:And say Richard's dead.
Marc:And say Richard's dead.
Marc:And then I'd probably detach from it after that.
Marc:Then it's not my problem.
Guest:You know what you'd find in my wallet?
Guest:What?
Guest:Picture you and Donna Reed.
Guest:How'd you get that picture?
Guest:So, uh, but- No, no, they're separate.
Guest:Donna Reed and you.
Marc:Okay, all right.
Marc:So spirituality, that means you just have a, you know, a sense that you're not alone or what?
Guest:Yeah, I used to come back.
Guest:I lived with this really great woman in the Middle Ages.
Guest:I was a really horrible drunk.
Guest:And I'd come home after embarrassing her and myself and ruining the night.
Guest:And I would look in the mirror and I'd say, Richard, I pray to myself.
Guest:I go, I'm praying to myself.
Guest:How can I pray to me?
Guest:It was unbelievable.
Guest:And I remember they wanted to take me to rehab and they did.
Guest:And so I walk in there with an ex-girlfriend.
Guest:and who's taking me to rehab in Hazleton, which I bolted from, and I still had two more days.
Guest:Isn't that in, like, Minnesota or something?
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To see if I could kill myself two more times.
Marc:It's always just booze or blow, too?
Guest:Crystal meth was, at the end, a lot of that.
Marc:Man, that's a... I can't even imagine you on meth.
Marc:Three days into that?
Marc:Did you... I imagine that... Six days.
Guest:I was like, how would you use as a rabbi?
Marc:So that must have been a lot of notebooks then, huh?
Guest:You should see me trying to stay on a lot of hanging pictures.
Guest:It was like a Lowell and Hardy movie.
Guest:You would stay up hanging pictures?
Guest:Yeah, totally loaded.
Guest:I mean, I got a million horror stories, but we don't want to do drug horror stories.
Marc:You on meth is just beautiful.
Marc:I can't even imagine.
Guest:Well, the best meth story that I have is two.
Guest:One was loaded and breaking down who's a friend of mine.
Guest:I'll call him a good acquaintance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:who let me use a quote of his in a book I wrote years ago, which I believe in this quote.
Guest:It's a lyric from Springsteen.
Guest:It's a sad man, my friend, who's living in his own skin but can't stand the company.
Guest:And that's who I was.
Guest:That's what every drunk is.
Marc:So what was the worst mess thing?
Guest:Well, Bruce.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I had never met him.
Guest:I knew the band.
Guest:Some of the guys even opened up for me.
Guest:And it was very tight with the E Street Band.
Guest:But Bruce, I had never met even.
Guest:So the cops, they all knew I was loaded.
Marc:Where was this?
Guest:The Meadowlands.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You were hanging out backstage?
Guest:No.
Guest:I wasn't that close with Bruce.
Guest:I just went with a model and four friends and their dates.
Marc:Good seats watching the show.
Guest:Great seats.
Guest:And I forced myself down into the bowels of the Meadowlands.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because all I really wanted to say basically was...
Guest:Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and now you.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:There was some grand, stupid little- You've been planning it for like an hour to say that?
Guest:Hours since Kennedy was assassinated.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't even know Springsteen was born.
Guest:You're a prophet.
Guest:I could have written him a note.
Guest:I could have gotten it to any number of guys who I know.
Guest:Niels Lofgren's a great writer.
Guest:Anybody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, but I didn't.
Guest:I chose to bang on the door, and the cops are going, Richard, please, we'll take you to your seat.
Guest:They were really trying to save my ass.
Guest:But I said, no, no, no, I was high.
Guest:I mean, I couldn't hear anything.
Guest:So Bruce comes out, and this was his, like, workout phase.
Guest:Yeah, big, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Big guy.
Guest:Little guy, but muscular.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, and I was out of my mind high, and I said, Woody Guthrie, Bob, and you.
Guest:And he looked at me, and he nodded his head and turned around and went inside.
Guest:Now, he could have floored me.
Guest:I mean, the guy hadn't performed in four years.
Guest:There's 20,000 people.
Guest:You can hear him going, bruise, bruise.
Guest:And here I am breaking up the band meeting the first night on the road.
Guest:So you can bumble.
Yeah.
Guest:That was pretty bad.
Guest:That was really bad.
Guest:And then I got the next day, all over the New York papers, Drunken Lewis, this, Drunken Lewis, that.
Guest:Was there more to the story?
Guest:Well, I did.
Guest:I went to a Knick game and I was drunk during the post-game interview.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then I ran over to Connie Chung and was starting interviewing her on Marlon Brando for no reason.
Guest:In the middle of a Nick game.
Guest:Was that a big idea you had too?
Guest:No, I was drunk.
Guest:I had no idea what I was doing.
Guest:I was gone.
Guest:The crystal meth thing.
Guest:I'm name dropping, but you know why?
Guest:It doesn't matter anymore because I don't give a shit.
Guest:I happen to know a lot of celebrities.
Guest:I'm really good, and I'm an art collector.
Guest:So I bought a lot of Ronnie Wood stuff.
Marc:I like Ronnie Wood.
Guest:And he's a sweet guy.
Guest:I know him for about 25 years.
Guest:And so long story short, Ronnie says I'm going out...
Guest:to dinner tonight with Rod Stewart and his, probably his third wife, 15th wife, and his manager of mine, no longer, whatever.
Guest:He was like six, and I was dating this 23-year-old, drop-dead killer, smart model, sweet.
Guest:Although she was into ecstasy and that kind of shit.
Guest:I always remember, you're so much nicer on ecstasy.
Guest:Why drink?
Guest:But she didn't know any better.
Guest:She should have just thrown me into a fucking lockup place.
Guest:But that was her responsibility.
Guest:But at any rate, we're sitting there.
Guest:And I said, the only way I'll go is if you call your dealer.
Guest:who had to drive like 90 miles and meet me at the bar of this restaurant with like three grams of crystal meth.
Guest:That was a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I was going to save some, I thought.
Marc:Oh, God.
Guest:She sees him an hour later.
Guest:I go into the bar.
Guest:I give the guy his bread.
Guest:I go downstairs to this restaurant on the Strip, a famous restaurant.
Guest:In fact, it's no longer there.
Guest:It was Le Dome.
Guest:And I never come out.
Guest:I never come out.
Guest:I lose all sense of time.
Guest:And I come up, they're all done with their dinner.
Guest:I didn't spend any time with them talking.
Guest:They were so angry.
Guest:I mean, it's funny, because Rod and those guys are in and out of stuff.
Guest:And I think Rod just drinks.
Guest:And I don't know if he has a problem.
Guest:I doubt it.
Guest:But Ronnie is very publicized.
Guest:And I've been trying to help him forever.
Guest:And he helps me too.
Guest:But the truth is,
Guest:The model was this real, she was so gorgeous and so tough in a lot of ways.
Guest:She was just sitting cross-legged like a hippie at Woodstock eating a veal chop.
Guest:They wouldn't give her a chair.
Guest:Because she did a little crystal meth too, so she was a little loaded.
Marc:So you left the girl with the guys and you went and disappeared to do a prank.
Guest:Yeah, disappeared for two hours.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a big faux pas.
Guest:That's a faux pas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's bad.
Guest:And the last one is a couple months ago, a year ago, actually, in Burbank, I ran into this beautiful woman who looked familiar, vaguely familiar.
Guest:And we started talking, and she had a little girl with her.
Guest:She says, you know, Richard, you were the last drunk I ever went out with.
Guest:I went, thank you.
Guest:It was very lovely.
Guest:And you remember her.
Guest:No, four months.
Guest:This woman, lovely woman actress, was my girlfriend for four months.
Guest:And I had an entire blackout for the entire dating time.
Marc:Well, that makes things interesting as you get older.
Marc:People showing up going, do you remember?
Marc:And you're like, oh, fuck.
Guest:Well, you don't know, though.
Guest:That's scary.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm your grandfather.
Guest:You're 10 years old, more.
Marc:That hasn't happened.
Guest:So we got into the drug stuff.
Marc:Well, OK.
Marc:I just read an article on Shecky Green.
Marc:Did you ever, like in your past, because I'm not gonna say you're older, but it seems to me... I am, 63.
Marc:But you honor the legacy of great Jewish comedy.
Marc:I love those guys.
Marc:Right, and I told you I interviewed Jonathan Winters, and you love him.
Guest:He's like one of my best friends.
Guest:I talk to him every day for the last six years.
Guest:Oh, you do?
Guest:And I go out and visit him.
Guest:That's sweet.
Guest:You know why, because I remember as a kid hearing how Dick Van Dyke and others would pay homage to Stan Laurel, had this very modest one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica.
Guest:Stan fucking Laurel.
Guest:It doesn't get much better than that guy.
Guest:And they go visit him and stuff?
Guest:Yeah, always.
Guest:So when I became closer to Jonathan, I wanted to be like, I just wanted to be like his standing room only audience friend for his riffs.
Guest:Let him just riff.
Guest:It's amazing, right?
Guest:He's Picasso to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he's different than Lenny and Pryor.
Marc:Did you ever see Lenny?
Guest:No, I was too young.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How about Richard?
Marc:You probably knew.
Marc:Yeah, Richard I knew and saw.
Marc:Well, you were at the comedy store, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, mainly the improv.
Guest:But he worked out mainly the comedy show.
Guest:But I saw him in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In New York, I saw him in town hall.
Guest:I saw him in clubs.
Marc:Were you friends with him?
Guest:Not great friends.
Guest:We never socialized together.
Guest:But he respected me, though, I think.
Guest:And I think arguably he's the greatest because not only does he tell the truth.
Guest:I feel the same way, yeah.
Guest:But he has more weapons.
Guest:Not only did voices and characters, which is always, it's not an easy out, but it's fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I do know, but he talked about himself.
Guest:He was the same on and offstage, tragically.
Guest:And he was just drop-dead funny.
Guest:You know, you can't get much funnier and more provocative than that guy.
Guest:And Lenny opened the door for him.
Marc:Yeah, well, Lenny sort of created the template.
Marc:For us.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's very interesting.
Marc:You listen to those old Richard Pryor albums.
Marc:He almost sounds Jewish.
Guest:Like when he first got...
Marc:Well, he sounded like Cosby, but once he started to talk about real shit, it was almost as if he took the Lenny Bruce system and applied it to how he was going to approach comedy.
Guest:Yeah, no, absolutely.
Marc:It's interesting.
Guest:And free associates.
Marc:Where does Woody Allen stand in the Richard Lewis?
Guest:Well, Woody Allen, first of all, a lot of these guys...
Guest:Like Larry David, who no one knew, was a great comedian.
Guest:Albert Brooks, you know.
Marc:Albert's so good.
Marc:I wish he would come on the show.
Guest:He's afraid of it or something.
Guest:And his book's terrific, too.
Guest:But the truth of the matter is these guys all quit.
Guest:Well, Larry in his 30s.
Guest:Albert and Woody in their 20s.
Marc:Quit doing stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know...
Guest:Jealousy is the wrong word, but this is my 41st year, so I never quit.
Marc:Did you expect that to be the case, though?
Marc:I mean, you've had sitcoms, you've had TV success.
Guest:Well, I think the alcoholism and the drug addiction probably prevented me from maybe by this time I had directed a few movies and throwing away millions of dollars and giving away, at the height of my career, opportunities because I just wanted to party.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I know people who hung themselves.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:So is it hang themselves?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hung themselves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I mean, it's sort of like I didn't burn.
Guest:I'm with you right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so I mean, I'm alive.
Marc:But is there any of that moment?
Marc:Do you ever feel like, fuck, I'm doing stand-up still?
Guest:No, stand-up to me is one of the great crafts of all time.
Guest:I love it, it's so pure.
Guest:And the only notes I give are what I get from the audience, if they laugh or not, and what I feel about my show afterwards.
Marc:Now with Larry, you guys go, how far back do you go?
Guest:We go back to when we were 12, and I had mentioned this, and I can do it in 20 seconds or less.
Guest:I went to this sports camp, which was very famous in New York State, and he was there.
Guest:Larry, a gangly, despicable human being, annoying.
Guest:I hated him.
Marc:You hated him at camp.
Guest:I hated him hate.
Marc:But that's why you remember him.
Marc:But he hated me.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:But that's what bonded you.
Guest:Well, what happened was, usually when you meet somebody at a camp,
Guest:We say, hey, maybe our parents will drive us into Manhattan.
Guest:We'll go to Radio City and see Ben-Hur or some shit.
Guest:We're 12.
Guest:But he was, as my mother would say, that Z on my list.
Guest:That always made me laugh.
Guest:Because the last thing I would ever do was see this fucking guy.
Guest:He annoyed me that much.
Guest:And vice versa.
Guest:So I became a comic first.
Guest:And he was a real fan.
Guest:He liked me.
Guest:He liked me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Then he became a comic, and I heard about him.
Guest:I went, whoa, what a fucking brain this guy's got.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he helped me move out of my college girlfriend's apartment.
Guest:We were inseparable.
Guest:Every day I saw him.
Guest:I performed every day, two or three sets a night.
Guest:At Catch and the Improv.
Guest:Everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would drive to Long Island for $5, 100 miles round trip.
Guest:I did not care.
Guest:In fact, this guy, George Shultz, who we saw in a club, Pips in Brooklyn, said to me, he says, you got it, but if you don't eat, shit, suck, and fuck this business, you'll never make it.
Guest:You've got to be ruthlessly passionate about it.
Guest:I'm paraphrasing the last line, but he did say you have to eat, suck, shit, and fuck this.
Marc:He was the owner of Pips.
Marc:Well, he wasn't like John Keats.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But did he own the place?
Marc:Was that that guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they called him the Ear because he really knew.
Guest:He really knew.
Marc:And you and Larry would go down there?
Guest:No, not Larry.
Guest:Larry and I worked out the improv.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And catch mainly.
Guest:The original improv.
Guest:So one night around one o'clock, you know, he wasn't a drinker or a big drug guy at all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was.
Guest:So I don't know if I was loaded or whatever, but I looked at him, just like I'm looking at you, and I went, there's something about you that's scaring the hell out of me, man.
Guest:And he got spooked really fast.
Guest:He said, stop it, what are you scaring me?
Guest:I said, no, no.
Guest:It was like Rosemary's Baby.
Guest:It was like half a sheep, half a Jew, comedian, Jewish.
Guest:So he says, what are you talking about?
Guest:I said, no, no, there's something about you that's scaring me.
Guest:So somehow we got into retracing our childhood and I got back to 12 and I went to this camp.
Marc:You guys didn't remember each other?
Guest:Until I said, I went to this Camp All America.
Guest:He said, I went to Camp All America.
Guest:And then it hit me.
Guest:I went, wait a minute.
Guest:You're that, Larry David?
Guest:He says, you're that, Richard Lewis?
Guest:And we came to blows at the bar.
Guest:No, you didn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, but that?
Guest:Well, we hated each other.
Guest:But that's what happens to me.
Guest:It's a billion to one shot.
Guest:We went from hatred, best friends, to hatred, to inseparable again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, I don't see him much anymore.
Guest:He's divorced, obviously.
Guest:Everyone knows he has two beautiful daughters.
Guest:But, you know, we don't, you know, the thing I miss most about New York, one of the things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Everybody's around.
Guest:You're around, you hop a cab, I'll see you in a minute.
Guest:Yeah, right there, yeah.
Guest:Here, you know, all right, so is there, you know.
Guest:Can we meet halfway somewhere?
Guest:Yeah, really, it's 80 miles.
Guest:I don't care what kind of, is it Vietnamese?
Guest:I'll eat a dead dog, but I can't drive 80 miles.
Guest:I'll eat a dead dog for 40 miles.
Guest:It's horrible.
Guest:So I don't see Larry that often.
Guest:You talk to him?
Guest:Yeah, we email more.
Marc:But that's interesting to me that you have a sense of the fact that these guys, Albert Brooks, Woody Allen, and Larry David,
Marc:on some level are not the same type of warrior that you are in terms of stand-up.
Guest:Yeah, it sounded like I was boasting, but a lot of it has to do with- I'm still out there.
Guest:I was so judged by my family, particularly my mother, that it makes sense to me now that I would hear the words, ladies and gentlemen, Richard Lewis,
Guest:not have an act, not knowing what I was going to say, and say, all right, judge me.
Guest:I want to be judged every fucking night.
Guest:But it would turn me into a warrior on the road.
Guest:Like, yeah, I'm going to take this audience and try my best to just destroy them.
Guest:That's your thought?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you ever go through that period where you're defying them to like you?
Marc:There's part of me that's sort of like I almost want them to not like me so I can win them back.
Guest:The only thing I can come close to that is that early on in my career, if I was bombing,
Guest:I would want to bomb on my own terms.
Guest:So I would say, look, they're not even laughing at this good shit, at the gold.
Guest:So I'd say, anyway, so I bumped into Kafka and he's playing gym with Eddie Cantor.
Guest:I would just do meaningless bullshit that would really bomb.
Guest:Then I'd walk off, I'd go, you know, fuck, you know, in my head, fuck them.
Guest:But you know, it's not their fault.
Marc:I know, that's hard to learn though, isn't it?
Marc:How long did it take you to learn it's not their fault?
Marc:oh i don't know but it's a good question great question you know what i mean is there an algebra answer to that algebra no but some guy said something interesting to me this guy stuart lee british comedian yeah and he quit for two years because he couldn't take it anymore the fact that he how much he was angry at the audience for not fucking getting him and then something happened in his soul where he realized that when he sees somebody who's not getting him he feels bad for them because he knows he is who he is and he's not for everybody and there's a moment where he's like i
Marc:I'm sorry you made the wrong entertainment decision, but there's nothing I can do for you.
Marc:But I feel bad that this is how you spent your evening.
Guest:I actually apologize immediately when I go on stage.
Guest:I go, half of you were dragged here.
Guest:You can jerk off, you can go have a drink, but you don't have to stay.
Marc:What's the best thing that can happen on stage for you on any given show?
Guest:like is there a moment well i had to live so much that's that high is over with now it doesn't it used to be really great oh really that's gone jesus christ what else is there yeah i'll tell you when they rise to their feet okay there's nothing like it okay because for me you know if you say that one thing where you're like where the hell that come from you know but i really i'm not you do that too much i've been doing it for like 15 years that way so now i'm used to it yeah
Guest:I'm used to the, I don't, that used to be such a high.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you were doing, in particular, you know, the same 40 or 50 minutes and all of a sudden you stink something in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I laugh now when someone says, hey, I'm trying a new joke a week from Tuesday when I come down.
Guest:Wow, what the fuck are you nuts?
Guest:You know, but, you know, I was just playing in Dallas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this club owner said,
Guest:He's a nice guy.
Guest:And he might have done this tongue in cheek.
Guest:I remember telling my wife, because this is about the time I engaged, I asked her to marry me about six years ago.
Guest:And it was one of those nights, there was probably no more than two or three Jews in the audience.
Guest:Most of them were right-wing evangelical, which is fine, I don't give a shit.
Guest:Anyway, so I do this show.
Guest:It's a Sunday night.
Guest:And when you do nightclubs, and I do some at the nice rooms, the opening night audience, and in particular the Sunday night audience, when they come see you, they really want to see you.
Marc:That's the best.
Marc:Thursday and Sunday is the best.
Marc:The best.
Marc:That's because your fans come.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm there Sunday night, and it just happened to be jammed.
Guest:Yeah, 400 people or something.
Guest:And I was just on fire.
Guest:It was just one of those good nights.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they rose to their feet.
Guest:And I didn't know what the word was until I called my wife from Dallas.
Guest:I went, I'm walking through.
Guest:They're standing up.
Guest:It's always a thrill to make people rise to their feet.
Guest:Why that happened, you don't know.
Guest:And I'm not trying to boast here, but they kept applauding.
Guest:And this owner said, I have never seen anything like this.
Guest:I went, well, I'm grateful for it.
Guest:And take me back to my hotel.
Guest:And pay me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Get me out of here.
Guest:So he takes me back.
Guest:And while he's driving, I've never seen anything like this.
Guest:Because before we left the club, people would walk over aisles.
Guest:It's called the stigmata, when they wanted to touch the Christ on the cross.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:They were touching me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went, what's going on?
Guest:He says, I've never seen it.
Guest:He knew.
Guest:And I asked my wife, and she was back in L.A., and she says, it's like the stigmata.
Guest:They wanted to touch you.
Guest:I went, get out of here.
Guest:He said, no, no.
Guest:I said, this is maybe the greatest show that's ever happened.
Guest:In Dallas, isn't it?
Guest:In Dallas.
Guest:So I get to the hotel, and the guy gives me my envelope.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this is what show business is basically in a nutshell.
Guest:They want the best acts, actors, writers for the least amount of money.
Guest:So they're never going to boast too much about you.
Guest:It's a guy giving you an envelope.
Guest:That's what it is.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:Great name for a book.
Guest:Guy giving me an envelope.
Guest:They're clueless about why we're on stage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And why shouldn't they?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I said, and I thought, not being arrogant, but here's, you know, 400 Texans, you know, and I've been talking about Christ for 20 minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wanting to touch me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Feel my shirt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My skin.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It was weird.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I knew it was a positive thing.
Guest:They weren't going to put me up on a cross.
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:Maybe if you spent another day there and had a mediocre show, you might end up on a cross.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:Well, I rented it.
Guest:I got out of there.
Guest:No matter how, I have to get out, even if it's by camel for four weeks first.
Marc:Out of fear of drinking?
Guest:No, out of fear that they will hang me.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:Or the Klan or something.
Guest:So anyway, so I say to the guy, he hands me the check, and I go, well, I'll see you next year, okay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, well, maybe.
Guest:I said, maybe?
Guest:Had I been drinking, I wasn't a mean drunk, but I was a... Rage?
Guest:No, I said things I didn't mean, but I wasn't a guy going fisticuffs and shit.
Guest:But had I been drinking after that show, and this guy said maybe, I might have just jumped right into the window and tried.
Guest:I'm not a strong guy, but I probably would have punched him.
Guest:Because it was so grotesque that the guy couldn't give me credit
Marc:And you feel the heaviness there, right?
Guest:I'll tell you the heaviness.
Guest:Yeah, it just hits you right there.
Marc:Like, oh, why don't you take that away from me for you, little fuck?
Guest:Well, you know, my wife, again, she said to me, she said, when you go to some gigs are really cushy, and they pay a lot of money, and some gigs don't.
Guest:She says, regardless, if you're playing Dallas, there are people in their 40s or 50s that might have grown up on you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and watch you on Letterman when they're in college.
Guest:I said, and there you are.
Guest:And I'm not trying to boast.
Guest:He said, they're paying a lot of money.
Guest:It's a recession.
Guest:They want you to, you know, it's do it for them.
Guest:Fuck the owners.
Guest:Fuck the promoters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he said, otherwise, you're just sabotaging your own career.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I really do it that way.
Guest:You know, just before I go on, I go, just do it for those people.
Marc:Yeah, do it for the people who love you.
Guest:who paid money to see me.
Guest:Don't do it for the guy who's getting a blowjob by the safe.
Guest:But they deserve to make it.
Marc:So who are your friends in comedy?
Marc:Right now it's you.
Marc:Just me?
Marc:This is it?
Guest:I'm very isolated.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what does a day look like?
Marc:Do you eat healthy?
Marc:What do you do?
Marc:You exercise?
Guest:Yeah, I exercise.
Guest:I exercise and I don't eat.
Guest:It's very hard now for me to eat what I used to eat because of my wife.
Guest:She showed me pictures of cows like fucking.
Guest:What was your thing?
Marc:Were you brought up on the Jewish food?
Guest:On the Jewish food.
Marc:I just picture you because, like, you were... I grew up a Jew in New Mexico, so you were sort of like... You were?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:My parents are from Jersey, and I grew up mostly in New Mexico, but I go back to... I went to school in Boston.
Marc:I spent a lot of family in Jersey, but I'd always love to go to... We weren't part of Jersey because I lived in Jersey.
Marc:Pompton Lakes.
Guest:Oh, that's... By Wayne and... Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think it's... I lived right over the George Washington Bridge.
Guest:Yeah, in Fort Lee.
Guest:In Anglewood, yeah.
Marc:By Buddy Hackett.
Guest:Well, my father was a caterer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The best one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he catered every star.
Guest:And he was booked on my bar mitzvah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had to have it on a Tuesday.
Guest:My own father.
Guest:You had a bar mitzvah on a Tuesday?
Guest:First time in Jewish history.
Guest:So you grew up in the food business?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Unbearable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my name of my company is one of them, Melon Ball, because he could have brought home great food from the commissary, steaks, but he only brought home honeydew and cantaloupe in tins.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:We shit our brains out for 20 years.
Marc:I have my grandmother's melon baller.
Marc:I still have it.
Guest:The scoop.
Marc:The scoop, but it's got a wooden handle.
Guest:It was hers.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Marc:I held on to that fucking thing.
Guest:You should.
Guest:Those are cool.
Marc:Can I just, I want to give you a... Anything you want.
Marc:But I got to tell you this.
Guest:The only reason I'm a little slow today is because I'm just getting over this bad cough, and I did about 10 shows in the last two weeks.
Marc:It's actually good.
Marc:You relaxed.
Marc:I wrote a book in 2001 called The Jerusalem Syndrome, My Life as a Rocked Messiah.
Guest:Is it what Messiah?
Marc:Reluctant Messiah.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:Yeah, I'll give it to you.
Marc:You'll like it.
Marc:But I just got to point something out to you.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Because I've had to live with this.
Marc:And it has to do with you.
Marc:I did a bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I did a bit.
Marc:I used to do this bit about going to the Philip Morris factory.
Marc:because I wanted to quit smoking.
Marc:And then I got there and they had a sign on the desk that said, please feel free to smoke.
Marc:And I was like, this is tremendous.
Marc:And then I go to this film strip, right?
Marc:Did you try to get the job there because you knew you could smoke?
Marc:It was unbelievable.
Marc:I could have lived there.
Marc:So I go into this film presentation, not realizing how corporations work.
Marc:They own a lot of other corporations.
Marc:They own Kraft Foods, Miller Beer, and all this stuff.
Marc:And in the bit, I said, it looked like the food pyramid in hell.
Marc:In hell.
Marc:Not from hell.
Marc:Right.
Marc:the editor changed it to from hell and i said you got to be kidding me so anytime i have like there's only so much i can do but when i give the book to people i i correct it in the copy because i'm like that's not my bit but when it comes out in paperback you should put it in the forward it's only it only came out in paperback i'm no big star but i just i wanted to tell you that
Guest:Well, you know, I really did popularize that thing.
Marc:Of course you did.
Guest:I mean, it got to a point where I couldn't say it anymore.
Guest:I felt it was a hook.
Guest:It was an unintentional hook.
Guest:It was a metaphor for me for being victimized by everything.
Marc:It's like I don't get no respect.
Guest:Yeah, it was hyperbole.
Guest:But, you know, the truth of the matter is it's in the book of quotations, but they still didn't write it properly.
Guest:It was about me feeling of being a victim of any person, place, or thing.
Guest:And it was never my fault.
Guest:And the way they wrote it wasn't exactly the way I intended it on stage.
Guest:But that's okay.
Marc:I'm flattered that you would even... That may be very uncomfortable for a long time.
Marc:And I'm glad we were able to get closure on that.
Guest:Did people ever read it and say, doesn't Richard Lewis say that?
Marc:No, no, because it's just like it's one little thing in a book, but it bothered me because it was in hell.
Marc:It was a clear, I mean, I was making a visual.
Guest:Matt Gronick, life in hell.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I wasn't worried.
Marc:It wasn't the whole book.
Guest:Now I'm worried that you ripped two people off.
Guest:Oh, God, yeah.
Guest:How dare you.
Marc:But it was just, no, in hell, it's not the same.
Guest:No, it's not the same.
Marc:But I'm going to get over it.
Guest:Yeah, resentments are bad.
Guest:Did you ever meet Buddy Hackett?
Guest:Yeah, my father catered his son's bar mitzvah.
Marc:Oh, he did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he had a Saturday party.
Guest:I had a Tuesday party.
Guest:When I was in college, some professor brought me over a double album, Lenny Bruce Live at Berklee.
Marc:That's a motherfucker, that record.
Marc:I mean, you've got to listen to that nine times just to get his flow.
Guest:When I heard about it, when I heard it, I was only about 18.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he died a year later.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, I didn't know what I wanted to be, but I knew unconsciously it set a bar like if you can't even try to be this ferocious and fearless, what's the point?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that album's like the fucking Rosetta Stone because there's so many layers, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I still have it home.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The Koran Theater and Carnegie Hall, which I haven't heard because I don't like to hear, certainly from his head, premises because it's too close.
Marc:You've had to detach yourself from almost all comedy because of fear.
Guest:I have.
Guest:I haven't gone to a comedy club in...
Guest:About 20 years.
Marc:Was there a situation that provoked that or were you just protecting yourself?
Guest:No.
Guest:First of all, I wanted my palate to be clear.
Guest:If I heard you do a routine, let's say it was a B+, not even an A. Yeah.
Guest:Because you're really very, very funny.
Guest:But let's say it was a B+, but it was about a cardigan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wouldn't even, the cardigan would be off my brain maybe for years.
Guest:I'd say, oh God, he did it.
Guest:I don't want to even talk about a cardigan.
Marc:You got a mental file, throw that card away.
Guest:Yeah, but we all know that most people aren't that ethical and they steal.
Guest:The bad thing about stealing is that when people steal from younger comics and working on something and do it on a talk show,
Guest:they'll side with the famous comedian.
Marc:The business will and the fans will, yeah.
Guest:And the audiences, can you imagine these guys who go on cruises, they can rent any number of dozens of videos, take, say, 10 minutes out of Eddie Murphy's, 10 minutes, pardon me, stuff from you, from me, and they can do an hour that's fucking drop dead kill, and the audience won't know.
Marc:No.
Guest:Nor will they care.
Marc:No, they're waiting for the buffet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Pass the pears Harvey.
Guest:Yeah, so it comes all back around.
Guest:I didn't get pears.
Guest:I didn't get pears.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Marc:So, okay, in closing, and be honest with me.
Marc:Haven't I been?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you have a little peace of mind, a little happiness in your life?
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:Yeah, no, I do.
Guest:The biggest thing is that I was able to stop killing myself.
Guest:When you go from a day where when you're sitting across from a doctor in New York,
Guest:And you know that you're going to have to stop.
Guest:You're going to have to live the rest of your life without drinking and know that it's entirely impossible to do.
Guest:To almost 17 years without a drink, it's impossible not to have some sense of gratitude.
Guest:And what I try to do is not to squander this sobriety and try to figure out what got me so crazy to begin with that I wanted to medicate myself all the time.
Marc:Could you find out?
Guest:Well, there's still things I do that drive people crazy, but much less so.
Guest:And I think the two things that I think I do better than ever is I apologize immediately when I think I'm wrong.
Guest:But the other thing that I do, which is really great, and sometimes people mention it on TV and they're not supposed to, but I have helped people help themselves save their lives.
Marc:Well, that's part of the deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, the same deal.
Guest:I mean, there's 12-step programs.
Guest:I go to therapists.
Guest:I have like a smorgasbord.
Guest:But when you help somebody come out of the darkness, there's nothing better than that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the best standing of Asia.
Marc:Yeah, I agree with you.
Marc:But in retrospect... That's why I don't drink, by the way.
Guest:One of the reasons.
Guest:Not only would my wife just throw me into rehab and call a million people and they'd be in the house waiting for me like a posse.
Guest:But the truth is, I wouldn't be able to pick up a phone call like an hour before I go on where a guy whacked out of mine and then me getting on the phone call, get over to help me, he's going to die.
Guest:I couldn't do it because I'm sitting there drinking vodkas out of the refrigerator.
Guest:I would then lose my sheriff's badge to help other people.
Guest:So that helps me stay sober.
Marc:Now, in retrospect, in dealing with where that came from, because I struggle with that myself, do you trace it back to your folks?
Marc:I mean, can you feel where the love was missing or what the abandonment thing is or what created that?
Guest:Yeah, I was the youngest.
Guest:My sister, I had a niece when I was 12.
Guest:She was gone.
Guest:My brother was in the village wearing a beret reading Ginsburg poems.
Guest:What's the age difference?
Guest:11 and 9.
Guest:So, you know, they're in their 70s and...
Guest:But my father was a workaholic, never home.
Guest:He died in his 50s.
Guest:Never saw me perform.
Guest:Never saw me get into show business.
Guest:My mother did, but my mother had a lot of problems.
Guest:So when my father died, she basically cracked up.
Guest:She was maybe jealous of me.
Marc:So she tried to constantly put you down?
Guest:Well, I would hear from, oh, your mother loves you.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But then I would take her on shows like even on Stern.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she would do things that, you know, Stern loved it.
Guest:Maybe it had been good radio for him, but I was always trying to get her approval.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Until I realized it was sabotaging my career.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I did a warm-up for Carnot Hill in my hometown theater.
Right.
Guest:in Anglewood, New Jersey, and she came two hours before the show and stood in the middle of the lobby and introduced herself as my mother.
Guest:So they all knew, that's it.
Guest:Look, she had problems, I had problems.
Guest:So when I would do, you know, you're you, so you understand.
Guest:This is not a joke, but if I did, so my father had 12 penises, one had a skullcap, whatever it would be, some dumb thing, whatever, not dumb.
Guest:My mother would stand up and say, oh, your father didn't have 12 penises.
Guest:It was unbearable because she had to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I took her on the ABC news show in New York.
Guest:Three million people, the plug of date, brought her on again for her approval.
Guest:She says, you know what my son's best joke is?
Guest:And all of a sudden I got nervous.
Guest:I don't even tell that many jokes.
Guest:She did a Myron Cohen joke.
Guest:A Myron Cohen joke?
Guest:Like an eight-minute joke.
Guest:In Yiddish?
Guest:That ended in Yiddish.
Wow.
Guest:And I said, that's your favorite joke of mine?
Guest:Like, I really would say that.
Guest:And we're live in New York.
Guest:And I'm going, yeah, like, I'm really doing that joke.
Guest:And then the crew was all nervous.
Guest:It was like Rosemary's Baby in the vibe.
Guest:It was like 10 below zero in the fucking studio.
Guest:Because you actually had a fight with your mother.
Guest:Well, the bottom line is, and I've said this, but when I got to Tonight Show in the early 70s, I called her right across from the whiskey.
Guest:And I said, Mother, I'm going to be on with Johnny this week, Johnny Carson.
Guest:Took me two and a half years to get on the show, which is pretty fast, really.
Guest:Think about it.
Guest:And I said, I'm going to be on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Guest:And she said, quote, unquote, and this basically speaks volumes of what it was, who else is on with you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there you go.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's why I'm a comic.
Marc:The missing puzzle.
Guest:There's Rosebud.
Guest:We got it.
Marc:Thanks for sharing.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:So that's it.
Marc:That's my talk with Richard Lewis, a prince among men, a prince among Jews, a prince among Jewish comics.
Marc:It was nice to talk to him in the morning.
Marc:I thought he was, you know, it was good.
Marc:He was a little mellow.
Marc:He was focused.
Marc:It was an actual give and take.
Marc:Lovely.
Marc:Lovely.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com, the new WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get involved.
Marc:I'm very excited about that new website.
Marc:I just put up an episode list.
Marc:There is a full episode list.
Marc:So let's minimize the tweets of redundancy, if we could, about guests.
Marc:So do that.
Marc:Go get the app for iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, Droid, new merch, T-shirts, the schedules there, links to Just Coffee there, everything you need.
Marc:Check out the new Punchline magazine, which is called something else now.
Marc:Laugh Spin.
Marc:Laugh Spin dot com.
Marc:Go look at that new site.
Marc:Sparkly, shiny, good.
Marc:All the comedy news that's fit to print.
Marc:Laugh Spin dot com.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'm going to go.
Marc:Did I mention that today's episode was brought to you by Comedy Central?
Marc:Enter the Thursday dimension with all new episodes of Futurama and Ugly Americans, Thursdays at 10 p.m., 9 central.
Marc:Go to Comedy... Oops.
Marc:Uh-oh.
Marc:I screwed up in the silly voice.
Marc:Go to cc.com to see previews, exclusives, and behind-the-scenes videos.
Marc:Comedy Central.
Marc:My face is on fire.
you