Episode 228 - Merrill Markoe
Marc:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Marc:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fucksikins?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fucknicks?
Marc:What the fuckstables?
Marc:What the fuckups?
Marc:What the fuck you pie, Wall Streeters?
Marc:Of course, all you what the fuckanots.
Marc:Did I ever say that?
Marc:I don't even know anymore.
Marc:I should get the main list, the big list.
Marc:the all-encompassing list of what-the-fuck names, but I don't have it.
Marc:I am Marc Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I'm thrilled that you're here.
Marc:I'm jacked up way up on coffee, justcoffee.coop.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:I'll tell you right now, it's five in the afternoon here.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Pow.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That was a double thing.
Marc:I just shit my pants and I think I can't feel my hands.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just coffee dot co-op available at WTF pod dot com.
Marc:Let's get some things out of the way.
Marc:I've been up since five thirty.
Marc:Is that something I need to get out of the way?
Marc:That's just something I'm telling you.
Marc:my uh my girlfriend gets up at 5 30 and i kind of sleep but i don't she wakes up and i see her get out of bed and then miraculously in like two seconds she's leaving for work i don't know what happens at that time i just shut my eyes and bang she's saying bye bye then i'm kind of half awake having some weird waking dreams i had a weird dream but hold on today on the show merrill marco the original writer one of the original writers i believe the original head writer
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Well, she was I'm not even going to talk about who she was, who she is now is a very popular humorist and writer.
Marc:Her new book, Cool, Calm and Contentious is out.
Marc:We talk about that.
Marc:She's hilarious.
Marc:Do prepare yourself for some air conditioning.
Marc:I'll say that now.
Marc:Now, back to my dream.
Marc:I woke up in sort of a frenzy.
Marc:I was performing in my dream, in my head, in my unconscious, subconscious, whatever level of consciousness I was at.
Marc:I was performing in a club as big as the world for everybody in the world.
Marc:I was performing and I had a bad set.
Marc:There were other comics on the show.
Marc:I can't remember offhand who they were, but I definitely tanked because they were looking at me like I tanked.
Marc:And then I was wandering around the mall that was the world in my dream, and people were giving me that, there's that guy look.
Marc:And I felt it.
Marc:I felt ostracized from the world.
Marc:It was painful.
Marc:I don't even remember.
Marc:Someone asked me on Twitter, did I sell any merch?
Marc:Usually in that situation, you don't.
Marc:They give you the sort of charitable, like, hey, good job.
Marc:And then they kind of look at your merch like, why would I want this?
Marc:You made me feel bad, not good.
Marc:It was that.
Marc:And I tanked in front of the world.
Marc:Wow, I hope that's not some sort of prophetic or premonitory.
Marc:Is that a word?
Marc:Premonicious?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But that was what I woke up to.
Marc:Bombing in front of the world.
Marc:But I'm back.
Marc:I'm in it.
Marc:Couple of heads ups.
Marc:Couple of heads up.
Marc:How do you pluralize heads ups?
Marc:Neptune Theater next weekend.
Marc:Black Friday, November 25th, me.
Marc:If you're coming and you want to buy the new poster by Coop, whose studio I just went down to, that was fucking cool.
Marc:Going to Chris Cooper's studio, checking out the artwork, seeing the Japanese toy collection, listening to some garage rock and some other shit that he had going, and just being that big loft, being the big studio.
Marc:Maybe you want a bigger garage.
Marc:I need to get maybe a garage that wants house semis.
Marc:Semis.
Marc:Semis?
Marc:Semis.
Marc:Semi-hemis?
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But it was cool meeting him.
Marc:But the poster's going to be done.
Marc:We're doing a printing of 100.
Marc:He's getting 100.
Marc:I'm getting 100.
Marc:So I'm going to only have 100 of these bad boys.
Marc:And Coop is the shit.
Marc:So if you want to buy one of those, I'm thinking 50 bucks.
Marc:And I'll wrap it up nice.
Marc:And I'm thinking in butcher paper.
Marc:So if you're coming into the Neptune and you want to grab one of the very short run of the Big Daddy Roth style Marc Maron and a Plymouth Fury poster,
Marc:Bring 50 bucks.
Marc:OK, I don't you know, I'm not soliciting.
Marc:I'm just telling you, I don't have one of the middle little credit card swipers because I can't get one because I can't get a fucking iPhone unless I want to pay four hundred dollars more.
Marc:I'm in a plan with Sprint.
Marc:I'm a hostage to Sprint.
Marc:I'm a Sprint slave.
Marc:For another four months.
Marc:So unless I want to pay $400 on top of the $400 that I would have to pay for the new iPhone, I'm locked into this fucking BlackBerry nightmare.
Marc:This ever-seizing, ever-thinking piece of shit that I have to pull the battery out of.
Marc:How is BlackBerry still in business?
Marc:Because corporations are BlackBerry puppets.
Marc:And they need the BlackBerry network.
Marc:I don't need it.
Marc:I don't even know why I have it.
Marc:It was easier to type on.
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:Why am I complaining for a change?
Marc:I'll be at the Arlington Draft House in Arlington, Virginia, November 2nd and 3rd.
Marc:That's a D.C.
Marc:area gig.
Marc:Come on out for that.
Marc:Merrill Marco here and my air conditioner soon.
Marc:Coming.
Marc:Prepare yourself.
Marc:Prepare yourself for a wonderful conversation.
Marc:And maybe you'll feel a little chilly.
Marc:Perhaps you should listen to it in a room that's highly heated.
Marc:You know, I don't know about show business.
Marc:I know what I'm doing now, but there are some things I don't understand.
Marc:I got to tell you, I was just in New York City.
Marc:Some of you know that.
Marc:Some of you follow me.
Marc:Some of you are on The Pulse.
Marc:I was in New York City.
Marc:I went there to shoot a small part in a small movie where I played a corporate consultant.
Marc:I shaved my face.
Marc:I have no beard, no mustache.
Marc:Soul patch, gone.
Marc:Mustache, gone.
Marc:Identity compromised.
Marc:Isn't that odd?
Marc:All it does is take me to be clean shaven.
Marc:I look pretty good, actually.
Marc:I'm pretty happy with my face.
Marc:I'm glad it's still intact and not sagging.
Marc:But I'm surprised at how much of our identity hangs from our faces or from our eyeglasses or our hair.
Marc:I came home.
Marc:My girlfriend was like, I don't know.
Marc:I'm like, what do you mean you don't know?
Marc:It's me.
Marc:It's my whole face.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I just got used to the other one.
Marc:I kind of got used to it.
Marc:I missed the mustache.
Marc:I'm like, it's been five minutes.
Marc:You can't accept my face for my face?
Marc:I just look too normal, I guess.
Marc:Is that all it takes?
Marc:Is that all it takes to honor, the age and pain and wisdom of my life?
Marc:Is that soul patch and that mustache?
Marc:I say yes.
Marc:God knows I've branded everything with that shit.
Marc:I'm going to have to bring it back.
Marc:I'm going to have to bring back the dirty soul patch and the creepy sexy mustache.
Marc:So that's coming back.
Marc:It's going to come back on its own time.
Marc:But nonetheless, I'm in New York for a couple of days.
Marc:Really just overnight.
Marc:I got in.
Marc:It was two nights.
Marc:They put me up right across from Lincoln Center and I was exhausted.
Marc:I had to get up at 430 in the morning, get a seven o'clock flight to get to New York.
Marc:And I get there.
Marc:I'm wiped three hours later.
Marc:I just want to eat.
Marc:I haven't eaten because I'm on that dumb diet.
Marc:Today's my cheat day.
Marc:And yes, I've eaten three brownies.
Marc:Someone just sent me a box of fucking brownies.
Marc:Good timing on that.
Marc:So Lincoln Center is right across the street and it's a perfect fall day out.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, there's something about fall in the on the East Coast because that's where fall exists.
Marc:That's its habitat is on the East Coast because it's beautiful.
Marc:It's crisp.
Marc:It's clear.
Marc:It's just chilly enough to keep you feeling alive.
Marc:And I'm looking across at Lincoln Center.
Marc:Now, you know, Lincoln Center houses the New York City Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
Marc:None of those things do I ever go to ever, ever.
Marc:Never.
Marc:I haven't been to a ballet since I was four and I was bored then.
Marc:I've been to one opera and the guy who was supposed to be in it had a stand in and he just stood there in the stand and sang for him.
Marc:It was horrible.
Marc:I've never been to the symphony once.
Marc:I saw Josh Bell back in the day when I knew Josh Bell and he used to hang around alternative comedy a bit.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:I don't have a context for any of this shit.
Marc:But I'm walking around.
Marc:All I want to do is eat and bring it to my room and watch cable and maybe masturbate.
Marc:That was my big plan.
Marc:I'm tired.
Marc:I got to get up at 5 a.m.
Marc:to do a shoot.
Marc:I will go.
Marc:I'll find some food.
Marc:I'll bring it back to the room.
Marc:I'll watch some cable.
Marc:I'll tell myself I'm not going to masturbate and then I'll masturbate and then I'll go to sleep.
Marc:But then I walk over to Lincoln Center and I'm wandering around.
Marc:I'm like, dude, this is your chance.
Marc:This is New York.
Marc:You can impulsively immerse yourself in real deal culture, in big art, in the in the in the shit, man.
Marc:And I'm standing out in front of my just do it, dude.
Marc:You're alone.
Marc:I'm saying to myself, yes.
Marc:So what?
Marc:That's OK.
Marc:People go to things alone.
Marc:Where else in the world can you just spontaneously go to the fucking Met?
Marc:The Met is only in New York.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:So I go over to the Met and I go up to the ticket box window.
Marc:I go, what's playing?
Marc:And I look at the sign.
Marc:It's a it's a Philip Glass opera about Gandhi.
Marc:I'm like, oh, OK.
Marc:So I walk up to the box office.
Marc:I say, are the tickets available?
Marc:Yes, there are.
Marc:Of course there are.
Marc:I got nothing on Philip Glass, but how many people really go to the opera on a Friday night necessarily?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe it's packed.
Marc:Who knows?
Marc:But they said there's tickets.
Marc:I say, you got good tickets?
Marc:She says, yeah, we got good tickets.
Marc:I say, how long is it?
Marc:She goes, four hours.
Marc:I'm like, wow.
Wow.
Marc:Who can I talk to about maybe trimming that down a little bit, maybe taking that in, maybe shortening that up?
Marc:I haven't got that kind of time.
Marc:I got to get some rest.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That's what I said in my head.
Marc:But what I said out loud was, oh, no, I can't not.
Marc:I can't do that.
Marc:So that wandered over to the New York Philharmonic and I walked up to the window.
Marc:I go, what's up?
Marc:Where are we at?
Marc:What do we got?
Marc:She said, well, we got tickets.
Marc:And I go, what's playing?
Marc:Like, as if that would matter.
Marc:And she said, well, it's Strauss's Don Quixote, and then an intermission, and then Beethoven's Symphony No.
Marc:6 in F Major.
Marc:And I go, wow, that sounds like, how long is this performing?
Marc:Is this a week?
Marc:Should I have brought camping equipment?
Marc:She goes, no, it's just under two hours.
Marc:I'm like, shit, that fits my time frame.
Marc:I didn't say that.
Marc:I didn't want her to know that I was trying to fit
Marc:this high art and high culture into a time frame so I could get some rest.
Marc:But I said, OK, I'll do it.
Marc:So I paid 130 bucks for the best seat in the house.
Marc:I was in the center of the orchestra, 10 rows up from the stage.
Marc:Now, I don't know anything about classical music, nothing.
Marc:I know what Beethoven is.
Marc:I know who he was.
Marc:I've heard a couple of things.
Marc:Have no idea who Strauss was, what the history of it is or anything.
Marc:So I read the program.
Marc:Don Quixote, sort of a poetic, lyrical piece of music.
Marc:based on the story of Don Quixote.
Marc:And there's an interplay between there are two soloists.
Marc:There's a cello, a bass cello and a viola, a viola, viola, viola.
Marc:Let's go with that.
Marc:And the viola is Sancho Panza and the bass cello is Don Quixote.
Marc:And they go back and forth at times.
Marc:This sounds exciting in the program.
Marc:I really don't know anything about classical music, but I do know how to listen.
Marc:And I do know that I'm in the New York Philharmonic.
Marc:I'm at Symphony Hall or whatever it is, and it's fucking beautiful.
Marc:And I'm surrounded by people that look like they're extras in a late Woody Allen movie, one of the later ones, just New York intellectual types.
Marc:The audience of Symphony seems to fit the symphony.
Marc:You know, kind of practically dressed, but not too fancy.
Marc:A lot of women, older women that go ahead and keep the hair gray.
Marc:Go ahead and wear those big glasses.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:I love it.
Marc:It's earthy.
Marc:It's nice.
Marc:And I'm there.
Marc:I'm like, don't pressure yourself.
Marc:Read up on this stuff.
Marc:Try to just listen.
Marc:Try not to drift.
Marc:Try to stay in it.
Marc:So I'm sitting there.
Marc:I brought a lot of cat hair on my jacket with me.
Marc:And I'm sitting there, and I just take it in.
Marc:I don't pressure myself.
Marc:I'm like, I know how to listen to music.
Marc:How much do I need to know?
Marc:Then the conductor comes out.
Marc:There's a lot of pomp and circumstance, or at least manners, to the symphony.
Marc:And there's handshaking and standing and a lot of respect all around, a lot of instruments, bassoons.
Marc:There's bassoons, as you remember.
Marc:Rainn Wilson was a bassoon player.
Marc:The conductor was Bernard...
Marc:Hey, tink, hey, tink, hey, tink.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Old guy did it beautifully.
Marc:As far as I could tell, he was a fucking ace.
Marc:He was just great.
Marc:But I'm just sitting there and I'm trying to just open my mind, open my heart to this art.
Marc:And it was amazing.
Marc:It was just amazing.
Marc:I drifted a couple of times.
Marc:I thought about Don Quixote.
Marc:I thought about windmills.
Marc:I tried to play some music.
Marc:I did not have, I just didn't know what I was listening to, but it was still music and it was still amazing.
Marc:I mean, just to see this dude, I was literally 25 feet away from this guy playing bass cello.
Marc:All right, he's sitting center stage.
Marc:He's just beneath the conductor.
Marc:He's rocking back and forth with his bow dragging along the strings, making this wood just sing.
Marc:I mean, I can feel him.
Marc:I could feel him manifesting this music from his memory through his arms and his hands into the bow, the horse hairs, the resin, the gut strings, the old wood vibrating a steady sort of cradled, magical centuries old vibration, summoning the spirit of this piece of music that's been around for centuries.
Marc:And it's just pounding into my head.
Marc:It was awesome.
Marc:I did some traveling.
Marc:It was transcendent.
Marc:And then there was an intermission.
Marc:Then I tweeted about being at the symphony, of course, because I'm a modern person.
Marc:And then there was Beethoven.
Marc:And I don't know any of these things.
Marc:I don't know the piece.
Marc:I'm not familiar with it, but it was beautiful.
Marc:And one thing I think that people who know classical music know is that there's a lot of points in classical music where it feels like, well, this must be the ending.
Marc:Here comes the ending.
Marc:Oh, this is it.
Marc:This feels like it's building to an ending.
Marc:That happened like nine times.
Marc:But I just let it wash over me and it was fucking amazing.
Marc:And I was completely I was completely out of myself and completely just kind of carried in this centuries old.
Marc:That's what's magic about music.
Marc:They summon the spirit of Beethoven and dumped it into my head.
Marc:Through all that wood and reeds and things and strings.
Marc:It was amazing.
Marc:It was amazing.
Marc:Then there was applaud.
Marc:There were four curtain calls.
Marc:Definitely a good idea to close with Beethoven.
Marc:Four curtain calls.
Marc:Lights come up.
Marc:And there's an old man sitting next to me going, where's my glove?
Marc:I had the two gloves.
Marc:I came in with gloves.
Marc:And him and his wife are looking for the glove.
Marc:That's where you go.
Marc:You go to the heavens on the strings and in the horns of Beethoven, and then we just plummet down to the floor looking for a glove.
Marc:Where's my glove?
Marc:That was a good glove.
Marc:How far away could it be?
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Now, again, Merrill Marco in my garage.
Marc:It was very hot.
Marc:There is an air conditioner also appearing in this interview.
Guest:But I'm really good at editing now, and I never would have, I used to sit in editing when I used to work on TV shows, sit there endlessly bored, eating, drinking, pacing, watching, waiting for somebody to keep punching numbers in, then I'd go, no, no, two more frames off.
Guest:It's so thrilling to just take the two frames off.
Marc:Well, what are you shooting?
Marc:What are you doing?
Guest:Whatever you want.
Marc:Well, what are you working on?
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:I do way too many dog movies because there's a cast that are just sitting there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Do you YouTube them?
Guest:If there were whoever'd be sitting there, I'd be sure.
Guest:Yeah, I have four of them and I do a lot of footage of them because they're endlessly hilarious and they're always staring at me.
Guest:So which makes me laugh.
Marc:So you put them up on YouTube and stuff.
Guest:I have a lot of them up on YouTube.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And how do they do?
Guest:You know, let me just say that I've never met the standards of the blurry parrot, which is what I measure everything by.
Guest:There's a blurry parrot I saw.
Guest:It's 34 seconds long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nothing happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it had like 650,000 hits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just thought, damn, if I can get closer to that blurry parrot, that's the mark.
Marc:What is it?
Marc:It's just a parrot?
Yeah.
Guest:It's just so I don't you know, I wonder, are people hitting it just to get to something else?
Guest:They're just looking at every parrot.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:But somehow that damn blurry parrot had nothing going for it.
Guest:It barely says a word.
Marc:And that's your barometer for success on YouTube.
Guest:I've never come close.
Guest:And I work really, really hard on my little videos.
Marc:So those are the top ones, the Blurry Parrot and Russell Peters.
Marc:Those are the two big.
Guest:I don't even know who Russell Peters is.
Marc:He's only the biggest comedian in the world.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Isn't that odd?
Marc:No, but no one in the States knows him.
Marc:He's like an international phenomenon.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, I'm going to go home and Google him and give him hit number four billion.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:So I'm so happy you came out here.
Marc:Merrill Marco is here.
Marc:In my garage.
Marc:You made it.
Guest:It's a great garage.
Marc:From Malibu.
Guest:I did.
Guest:Malibu.
Marc:That's nice.
Guest:It is nice.
Guest:It's got very nice weather some of the time.
Marc:Is it cooler down there?
Guest:It's a lot cooler.
Marc:I'm going to leave the air on for a while.
Marc:I don't think that the sound is that intrusive.
Marc:I think that if I turn it on and off, it becomes more noticeable.
Guest:Or if when we talk, we go...
Marc:Yeah, that would be it.
Marc:I got to be honest.
Marc:I was a little intimidated that you're coming over here.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah, because you're fucking Merrill Marco.
Guest:Yeah, but you're Marc Maron.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:You're like, what are you?
Guest:I had a stomachache coming over here like that.
Guest:No, you did not.
Guest:No, yes, I did.
Guest:I listened to your podcast.
Guest:It's really brilliant.
Marc:Yeah, I know, but you're like the... I know, but I'm so amazing.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You're Meryl Marco.
Marc:I mean, you're like, what would you say, the grand dom of comedy writing women?
Guest:I wish.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:Well, all right.
Guest:Let's not me argue and bring myself down.
Marc:I read parts of your new book.
Marc:I got the galley copy.
Marc:Cool, calm, and contentious.
Marc:Yeah, it's got the please don't ever sell this or try to give it away as a gift or anything cover.
Guest:And it might also have a lot of typos in it.
Marc:I'm not your mother.
Marc:I did not.
Guest:That's what I wrote about my mother in this book.
Marc:I did not go through it for typos.
Marc:That's all my mother would have seen.
Marc:Yeah, I was, you know, there is the chapters you told me I should really look at because I didn't have but a day or two to read it.
Marc:This thing about crazy mommies in relation to stand-up comics.
Marc:I mean, there's some shit in here, Meryl, that was pretty right on, man.
Guest:Well, I think about it a lot.
Guest:I'm very I'm very analytical just by nature.
Guest:And so whenever I hear two statistics that are the same, I start making a list for some reason.
Guest:And then the list comes back when I hear statistic number three.
Guest:And over and over and over again, I have, you know, I have mostly friends who are in comedy over and over and over again.
Guest:I kept hearing the saga of the disturbed mother.
Guest:First, I noticed it really, really prominently with women comedians.
Guest:It's just about 100% with women who are compulsively funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I also noticed it's just about 100% for women compulsively funny who didn't have kids.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Just about 100%.
Marc:But their reasons for having kids were not connected to that?
Marc:This was an observation you had?
Guest:No, I don't know whether... I don't think most people sit and analyze themselves the way I do, or perhaps you do, about why they did or didn't do everything.
Guest:But I always do.
Guest:I feel like it's part of the interesting thing about being alive to figure out what...
Guest:at the core of everything.
Marc:But the sad thing is once you figure it out, that doesn't mean that you're going to go any further with it.
Marc:You've just tracked it down and the possibility of changing your behavior, that's still 50-50 at best.
Guest:It is, except for that there's also the theory that once you've tracked it down, you just are not the same with it again.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Well, that's good.
Guest:You can't be the same with it again.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You see it then every time it's coming back at you.
Marc:And you can beat yourself in a new way.
Marc:You have a definition.
Guest:Well, you take a different route a little bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just can't really... That's true.
Guest:Unless you really are determined to be self-destructive or ridiculous.
Guest:And that's relevant.
Marc:Or the butt of your own joke.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, this is like... I'm just going to read this.
Marc:For the creatively inclined...
Marc:Growing up under the thumb of a good old-fashioned, insensitive, dismissive, difficult, or in some cases, wholly unbalanced mommy can be a lot like growing up permanently enrolled in a graduate seminar in comedy.
Marc:Shit.
Guest:Well, the reason I thought of that is once I noticed that everybody had the screwy mommy, it wasn't just me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not sure my mom was as bad as most of the moms my friends had.
Marc:Well, if moms aren't definitively crazy, like if they're not talking to plants, my mother talked to animals, but that's not crazy.
Marc:My mother is very selfish.
Marc:That's not completely crazy.
Marc:She's got a perpetual eating disorder.
Marc:But still, it's not.
Guest:Yes, they are.
Guest:How far do you have to go to get the word crazy?
Marc:But I never looked at it as crazy.
Guest:Well, an eating disorder right there is a really big problem.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And the selfishness.
Guest:And really selfish.
Guest:Right.
Guest:These things don't add up in a good way.
Guest:And they don't pay off either, by the way.
Marc:Somehow, Crazy Mommy magically senses that by backing her kids into a corner, forcing them to feel alone and under attack in a world that doesn't make sense, she is also offering a hands-on daily workshop and how to assemble from scratch the most classic of all comedy characters, the disenfranchised, put-upon little guy.
Guest:Yeah, that's good.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:It's so fucking good.
Guest:I'm glad you liked it, because I actually had to argue it into the book.
Guest:It bummed out a lot of people who don't want to hear anything bad about mommies.
Marc:What, you mean publishers?
Marc:Are you serious?
Guest:Well, yeah, I've had some resistance from people about it, because it's not a positive look at mommies, and mommies are the...
Guest:You know, although it's not necessarily a negative look at mommies, it's a look at it's just a look at a piece of what I see to be reality.
Marc:But it's funny.
Marc:It's solid.
Marc:You know, it's relative to your profession and to the people that are your friends.
Marc:I mean, why would a publisher say that this is what your sixth book?
Marc:Eighth.
Marc:Your eighth book.
Marc:Are they somehow drawing some line where it's like, this is so out of character for you, Meryl.
Marc:I mean, you know, this is too honest and dark.
Guest:Well, it is more honest and dark than my usual stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's just sort of where life has led me is getting more honest and getting dark.
Marc:As you get closer to the light, it gets darker.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, I was trying to write a book.
Guest:Well, when you start doing anything, you just for me, you either start.
Guest:I feel like you either start repeating yourself or you start taking a route past what you did before.
Guest:And for me to go past what I'd done before made me feel if I wanted to emulate what I admired in others, I needed to be more honest in general.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think that this book, like even that towards the end of that chapter, like I'm sort of hung up on this chapter.
Guest:Um, I'm glad you, I'm so glad you liked it.
Guest:That makes me really happy.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Uh, and it, and it speaks to me.
Marc:So this, this paragraph too, I'm just going to keep reading from your book and maybe we'll talk.
Marc:Um, therefore, when people ask me as they sometimes do how to get into comedy, I have mainly one piece of advice.
Marc:I tell them, try to be raised by a woman who was, who has at least five or six of the following traits, which I culled from descriptive lists solicited from the people whose crazy mommy stories you just read.
Marc:Uh,
Marc:Bright, clever, crafty, fearless, complex, artistic, resourceful, and inventive, while at the same time oblivious, controlling, manipulative, neurotic, tasteless, intractable, solipsistic, thwarted, repressed, inconsistent, critical, self-destructive, depressed, angst-ridden, furious, suicidal, violent, narcissistic, fearful, self-loathing, selfish, and sadistic.
Marc:If your mother has some qualities from each of the two areas, congratulations.
Marc:Entertainment-starved drunks await you.
Marc:You're a little like that's so right on.
Marc:But your sense of stand up.
Marc:Did you ever do stand up?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I did it for years, but I never I never really saw the path opening up in a really welcoming way to hotel entertainment, which is where it seems to seem that some point you either diverge and get the hotel contracts.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Oh, you mean like performing hotels or being in hotels all your life?
Guest:Well, performing at hotels.
Guest:I still like going on at clubs.
Guest:Clubs, I like.
Guest:Depending on the club.
Guest:And I really loved it when alternative comedy showed up.
Guest:What I had greater difficulty with was before the Letterman show, I used to do just regular stand-up.
Guest:And...
Guest:An alternative comedy opened this door for me that was the greatest gift anyone ever gave me, which was you can bring a piece of paper on stage with you.
Marc:And you had a sympathetic audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Audiences that responded to vocabulary choices.
Guest:I thought, yippee.
Marc:Somewhere in between a theater audience and a stand-up audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Where they're like like-minded.
Marc:They're expecting something interesting and new.
Guest:And also the bar had been changed in that you weren't supposed to be doing the same material you did before.
Guest:Therefore, trying new stuff was a good idea.
Guest:You didn't have that one.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:One liner.
Guest:That was so incredible.
Marc:It didn't force you to do that.
Marc:So let's I want to go over the history of you a bit because I know it would bother me if people didn't know who you were or where you came from.
Marc:In reading the book, I learned some things about you.
Marc:I had no idea that you... Well, why would I?
Marc:But you grew up in Berkeley, and you went to... I didn't grow up in Berkeley.
Guest:I just went to college there.
Marc:But you grew up in Northern California.
Guest:The latter part of high school.
Guest:My parents moved a lot.
Marc:Why?
Guest:My father was a circus performer.
Guest:No, he wasn't.
Guest:I used to say that.
Marc:It was going to be such a good story.
Marc:I just see little Merrill sitting with the freaks.
Guest:I'm so sorry that I don't have good stories like that.
Guest:I used to try to just add them anyway.
Guest:But now I have to say he was a builder and he just had, you know, building buildings.
Guest:Real estate market changed and then we'd move where the real estate market improved.
Guest:And then we so I moved like six times.
Marc:But where was your most developmental?
Guest:I would say Northern California.
Marc:But like in my mind.
Marc:So you were in college in the late 60s, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So late 60s, Berkeley must have been a clusterfuck of all kinds of excitement.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:That's why I went there.
Guest:I wanted to go to art school, and my parents weren't going to hear of that.
Guest:So I had to pick, because it was inexpensive, the college out of the UC system that had the most interest for me.
Guest:And that, of course, was Berkeley, because it was Berkeley.
Guest:It was more Berkeley then than it is now, although I'm guessing it's still a lot of Berkeley.
Marc:What was it like at that time?
Marc:I mean, what were you walking into?
Marc:What was happening?
Guest:Just loopiness, just craziness.
Guest:It was a place where you were...
Guest:expected not to watch tv and to dress weird and to be a lunatic and i just loved that yeah that's what i was looking for that's all i wanted freedom yeah yeah and and what was the original uh and i was an art major on top of that just to make sure just in case there was going to be any rules yeah that uh what was the art what were you doing uh painting you were painting that's a hard art to be good at yeah and who were your like what if you were to look at one of your canvases do you still have them
Guest:I do have them.
Guest:I used to paint with a brush with one hair.
Guest:I did really, really detailed, realistic kind of hyper.
Guest:But they were getting funnier and funnier.
Marc:So like more cartoonish?
Guest:No, they were more kind of just super realistic is what I like.
Guest:It's a realism.
Guest:I like Magritte.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And right now I'm not thinking of all the great artists that I love and I'm going to kill myself later.
Guest:Don't kill yourself.
Marc:Like Surratt or who Dots?
Guest:No, I guess I like the surrealists, the people working in subject matter.
Guest:And then the people in Vermeer.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:The Dutch realists.
Marc:Did you see the Vermeer exhibit ever, anywhere?
Guest:Yes, I have seen Vermeer exhibits.
Marc:Like they had one that was in, like it traveled, like with the girl with the pearl earring and all that stuff.
Marc:Fucking amazing.
Guest:Yeah, I really love art.
Guest:I still go and see.
Marc:Yeah, I'm a big Rothko guy and I like the the expressionists in the and I like I like a lot of stuff.
Marc:My mother was a painter, kind of.
Marc:She never made it as a painter.
Marc:I mean, she ended up splattering sweatshirts as a business idea, but it started out with painting.
Guest:That's a business idea.
Guest:Was it a good business idea?
Marc:I just know at some point towards the end of things, some phase.
Marc:She did her master's in painting and didn't finish because she was intimidated, I think.
Guest:I got a master's, too.
Marc:You did?
Marc:In painting?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not your mother, am I?
Marc:No, I don't know.
Marc:There'd have to be more about me in this book other than that one chapter.
Marc:So you were never an abstract person?
Guest:No, I'm really not abstract at all.
Guest:I'm sort of the opposite of that, whatever that is.
Marc:Really concrete.
Marc:Yeah, and it has to be controlled.
Guest:I go in for details.
Marc:I want to see some paintings now.
Marc:Do you still paint?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I stopped painting.
Guest:I've been trying to start it again just for fun because I'm so competitive with it in my head that I never learned to see it as just enjoyment, although I really enjoyed it.
Guest:And then when I switched over and became a writer, I put it aside because I used to spend eight, 10 weeks, 24 hours a day sitting there with a brush with one hair.
Guest:And now I don't have that patience.
Guest:Writing has changed all that.
Marc:Was any of that out of spite towards your parents?
Guest:Out of spite, no.
Marc:To be a painter?
Marc:I mean...
Guest:No, I'm not sure what they wanted from me, now that I think about it.
Guest:I think that what my mother wanted from me is for me to be exactly like my mother, but just a little worse off in all ways, so that I could always look to her as being quite a bit better than me and all the things I wanted to be.
Marc:It is definitely sad in a way that the two chapters I read about your mother, that you could never really get through or get any of the sort of attention that you wanted that was positive or supportive or anything.
Guest:Well, she just didn't have that gene in her.
Guest:But, you know, it was a really that one of the reasons I wrote that piece about the crazy mommies and comedy is I started realizing what a great gift comedy is when you twist your personality that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The day I think I realized it most is the day that I repeated a really devastating thing that she said to me when I first showed her a script I'd written.
Guest:I was moving down to L.A.
Guest:to be a TV writer.
Guest:I was changing careers because I needed money and I was tired of being broke and stuff.
Guest:And so she wanted to see the script I'd written.
Marc:Do you remember what it was for?
Guest:It was a spec script for like Maud.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Or Mary Tyler.
Guest:I had written one for Mary Tyler Moore, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were, you know, they were as good as I could make them.
Guest:And she wanted to read it.
Guest:And she considered herself to be sort of the last word in all things grammatical.
Uh-huh.
Guest:the english language and stuff so uh so i showed it to her really nervously yeah and i paced around while she read it and i left the room and i came back and i left her finally she turns to me and she goes well i don't happen to care for it but i pray i'm wrong
Guest:And that was just devastating.
Guest:I went to the next room and I took a shower and I went to L.A.
Guest:anyway, despite that.
Guest:But it wasn't until years later when I repeated that on a stage and I got a huge laugh that I realized I'm not the only one who thinks this is weird.
Marc:Yeah, but she probably thought it was a compliment somehow.
Guest:I mean, she thought she was giving you... No, she said, I don't happen to care for it.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:But she's like, maybe, you know what I mean?
Guest:Like, you know, there's some sense of... No, what she thought was, and I think it... I don't know if it's that whole generation of Jews.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or it's...
Guest:just my mother and the others just like my mother with narcissistic personality disorder or what it is but i think she's thinking if the people who love you can't be blunt and rude to you who will you hear it from as though it's a good thing that you that tactlessness is has got some kind of a and is an achievement and it's a lack of it's also a lack of empathy it's weird because honesty can be used as a weapon so easily
Guest:Well, honesty makes no sense unless you, I've learned, unless there's something constructive that you are aiming it toward.
Guest:Just to say to someone, you know, you really look like a slob.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Isn't really going to do anything but make that person feel horrible.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's going to hurt them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how did you switch from painting to TV writing?
Marc:I mean, what was...
Guest:Well, I got a job teaching art at USC.
Guest:I taught painting at USC for a year.
Guest:And while I was at USC, it dawned on me that my entire class that I was teaching, I taught freshman painting and drawing and life drawing.
Guest:And my whole class were the children of people who were in show business.
Guest:And we're all taking classes in the, I learned that the USC film department wasn't a big department on campus.
Guest:None of this stuff had dawned on me before.
Guest:And so I started auditing classes in USC.
Marc:As a teacher.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then you were just sitting in.
Guest:And I got super excited.
Guest:It never had occurred to me that I could go into film or TV or anything because at Berkeley at that time, that just seemed like a thing that was passed on from fathers to sons who paid somebody.
Marc:It just didn't seem like a career choice, unlike today, which it is.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Everyone sees it as a possibility.
Guest:And you can just put your stuff on the Internet.
Guest:You can't get paid for it anymore.
Guest:That's the downside.
Guest:The good side is you can get a piece of editing equipment and just make it.
Marc:But then it was still like three networks, a handful of studios.
Marc:I just didn't know how it was done.
Marc:It was a pretty insulated business, yeah.
Guest:And I'd stop watching TV when I was in college.
Guest:Nobody watched TV at Berkeley.
Marc:Couldn't have a TV in the late 60s.
Marc:No way, man.
Guest:You'd be thrown out of there.
Marc:Get out in the streets.
Marc:Live.
Live.
Guest:So I didn't even watch TV or anything until I decided I was going to write for it.
Guest:I'm not exactly sure.
Guest:I guess that's how I decided.
Marc:Did you love it, though?
Marc:I mean, were you able to appreciate Mary Tyler Moore and the things you wrote spec scripts for?
Guest:I did not like Mary Tyler Moore.
Guest:In fact, you want to know a really funny story is when I first moved to L.A., I was living in a place of mattresses on the floor with a roommate.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was working, her uncle had gotten her a job as like an intern on a show on Chico and the Man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they got me a job interview at Welcome Back, Cotter.
Guest:And I went into this job interview having watched maybe one episode of Welcome Back, Cotter.
Guest:I just, it was something I just didn't watch, wouldn't watch.
Marc:So what is this, like 72?
Marc:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:This is, no, no, no.
Guest:I moved to L.A.
Guest:in like 78 or 79.
Guest:So it's in the mid-70s, right.
Guest:Might have been the last days of that.
Marc:No, I don't know what the timeline is.
Marc:I'm just judging by, like, college.
Guest:At least it was 79.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:78, 79.
Guest:So I went into this job interview, like, welcome back, Cotter, and the guy said to me, do you like this show?
Guest:And I thought that was a trick question.
Guest:Like, if I said yes, he'd go, well, then you're an idiot, and we don't want to.
Guest:I was so on my own planet.
Marc:And what did you say?
Guest:I think I Fumford.
Guest:I didn't get that job.
Marc:Gabe's really funny.
Marc:Something like that.
Marc:It couldn't be nothing without Gabe.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so then what was the transition?
Marc:Because I don't know if people know this, or a lot of my listeners know this, but, you know, what we're moving towards is that you became the original head writer for Letterman, correct?
Correct.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that that was on the original head ride in the night show.
Guest:And we had a morning show.
Guest:I remember that we did a pilot before that.
Guest:I did three shows.
Marc:So let's get to there.
Marc:So how did you what were your first jobs in show business?
Guest:I got a job.
Guest:My first job, like I came after that that job, I didn't get it.
Guest:Welcome back, Cotter.
Guest:I was sort of hanging around the improv and not doing stand up.
Guest:You did.
Guest:No, I started doing stand-up a little bit later.
Guest:I was briefly working with Andy Kaufman, who I met.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:Doing what for Andy?
Guest:Well, he was claiming I was a writer, but there's no such thing as being a writer for Andy.
Guest:No matter what anyone tells you, everything was coming out of Andy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was really on... Talk about a guy on his own planet.
Guest:Did not take ideas or... Well, he had all the ideas he needed, and he would like people to say yes to them.
Marc:So did you work for him?
Marc:Did you...
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:I was kind of helping him with.
Guest:In fact, I wrestled with him.
Guest:No, I wrestled for him once.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Believe it or not.
Marc:In front of him.
Guest:He was doing a show at the improv in the middle of the night called Midnight Snacks, where he had a desk up on top of a platform so that he was looking down.
Guest:It was an interview show looking down at his guests by a span of about.
Guest:Three feet, the host sitting way above the guest.
Marc:So this was when he was huge.
Guest:No, this is right off of Saturday Night Live, though.
Guest:He was huge in my mind.
Guest:I never met anyone who was on TV.
Marc:But he was like a popular.
Marc:I mean, people, it was before Taxi?
Guest:Yeah, it was before all of that.
Guest:And I was attracted to him because he reminded me of art school.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He was such a sort of an art.
Marc:It's like a performance artist, like in his own world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was he a nice guy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you know, it's hard to say what he he was so odd.
Guest:He was a very odd guy.
Guest:So I talked to him and he'd be really fun to talk to.
Guest:And then other times it'd be like he didn't recognize me.
Guest:I wasn't sure if he had ever met me before.
Marc:But did you get a sense that it was all intentional or that he was truly on his own planet is what I got?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Really.
Guest:I don't have an analysis.
Marc:So he was you were incapable of really it was he capable of conversing?
Guest:Yes, sometimes he'd be super fun to talk to, and then other times it'd be like he's so lost in his own thing that I wonder if he'd met me.
Marc:So what made you gravitate?
Guest:Did I make that up?
Marc:I was working for you, right?
Marc:So what made you gravitate towards the improv, I mean, and get into this world?
Guest:I just, gee, you know, I'm going to have to, that one I can't exactly figure it out.
Guest:Well, comedy was always the world I was heading for.
Guest:I was just a wisecracking person since age one, I think.
Marc:I know, but, you know, the culture of stand-ups is very specific.
Guest:Well, I started writing when I was writing the spec scripts.
Guest:Those were for comedies.
Guest:And then after that, it was comedy.
Marc:And the improv was sort of a place to hang out.
Guest:A place.
Guest:And then I started thinking... So I got a job.
Guest:Because I was hanging around, I got an agent.
Guest:And then he got me a job.
Guest:I got a job.
Guest:And they were trying to bring back Laugh-In.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The new Laugh-In, which was the first job for Robin Williams.
Marc:As a writer?
Guest:No, he was the one person in the cast that...
Guest:became somebody it wasn't Rowan and Martin no it was Laughan had died and it was long dead so Ruth Buzzi not in the picture nobody that you ever associated with Laughan had anything to do with it and it was so it was all new writers it was George Slaughter trying to do it again yeah
Guest:Like a decade later.
Guest:Remember Laugh-In, everybody?
Guest:This will be even better.
Guest:It's the new Laugh-In.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it was all new writers and a whole new cast.
Guest:The only one of whom became anything was Robin, although Ed Bluestone was also in the cast.
Guest:Do you remember him?
Marc:I do remember him vaguely.
Marc:Maybe I'm thinking of somebody else.
Guest:He was a really funny, dark stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You should try him on YouTube.
Marc:Is he around?
Guest:He's around.
Marc:I don't remember him.
Guest:I haven't seen him in a long time.
Hmm.
Guest:Yeah, he was one of, he was like, before Stephen Wright, there was Ed Bluestone.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Dark, weird, surreal.
Marc:Who were the other comics on the scene at the improv at that time?
Marc:Andy Kaufman was doing Middle of the Night Show.
Guest:The whole bunch of the ones that are the old guys now.
Guest:Leno.
Guest:Leno and Letterman and Lewis.
Marc:But wasn't Letterman mostly comedy store?
Guest:Yeah, he was mostly comedy store.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:There was a big split.
Guest:You weren't allowed to do both.
Guest:You had to pick one.
Guest:Gary Shaling was around.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you go to the comedy store?
Guest:I was at the comedy store.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was actually at the comedy store more than I was at the improv.
Guest:But I was hanging around the improv.
Guest:And because of laughing, I met Emily Levine, who's a stand-up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who I started thinking, well, I'll do stand-up.
Guest:So I went to Monday night at the comedy store.
Guest:Potluck.
Potluck.
Guest:And then I also, yeah, it was the potluck night.
Guest:And I also was so frustrated working at Laugh-In where they wouldn't let the writers on the set.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So you, as a writer, you wrote jokes all day long and you'd put them in an out basket and then they'd come back with a number on them.
Guest:Number 4760, number 4890.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:how many jokes had been submitted in general for the show and then they were going to take all that and call it and make a script and we were sitting in these cubicles writing these jokes all day i i never knew if anyone liked them didn't like them so i was driven to want to find out i'm writing jokes all day long so you might as well get up there and do it yeah so i did i started getting up there and doing it and then through that i met letterman yeah who was a graduating senior i was like an incoming freshman right and he was a graduate he was like big man on campus him and leno
Guest:at the comedy store the comedy store they were the big guys yeah and then he he got the deal and he brought you in or how did that work well he and i uh started uh well no actually we we started dating we had the same agent that was i think our initial conversation was oh you're with him yeah i'm with him too and uh
Guest:And then I started dating him, and then I immediately became codependent and started helping him write his hat.
Marc:Did he appreciate it?
Guest:Because that's kind of a personality.
Marc:Did he defer to you, though?
Marc:I mean, were you, I mean, obviously.
Guest:No, he didn't defer to me, but he.
Marc:Is that the right word?
Guest:He deigned to use some of my jokes occasionally.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:But I mean, you were with him a long time, weren't you?
Guest:Ten years.
Marc:In a relationship?
Guest:Relationship, yeah, and a writing capacity for most of it, I'd say.
Marc:So in so you were just started out by writing jokes to them.
Marc:You guys were dating.
Guest:He was he was getting on The Tonight Show as a guest host at that point.
Guest:Well, he wasn't actually he did his first Tonight Show after I met him.
Guest:And then he started getting the guest host gig sort of alarmingly quickly, which was a big, big deal.
Guest:At that time, that's a piece of history.
Guest:People probably don't even know anymore either.
Marc:What the guest hosting thing?
Marc:Well, I mean, he had a lot of guests.
Guest:So Shanling, Brenner, I guess we should say it was Johnny Carson's tonight.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:But it was a big deal because no one like in this day and age would ever think about giving up the seat ever.
Marc:I mean, that's really interesting is how competitive and how diversified the market has become that.
Marc:I mean, Carson was stable enough and he knew he was the king.
Marc:And there was such an intimate media landscape that he would take weeks off.
Marc:And Joan Rivers, Gary Shandling, David Brenner, Letterman, Martin Mull, I mean, Martin, such a wide array like the I mean, that is a pretty.
Guest:And weird people too, like Burt Reynolds.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.
Marc:Like his favorite guests, he would let kind of run the thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that happened a lot.
Marc:I mean, David Brenner must have guest hosted that thing hundreds of times.
Marc:He used to say how much in his press materials, but no one remembers that.
Guest:Yeah, isn't that funny?
Marc:So Letterman, so when you met him, was that always the direction he was headed for?
Marc:Did he want to host a show or did that something that dawned on him?
Guest:He was always headed in that direction.
Guest:In fact, the first thing that I remember thinking when I watched him on stage at the comedy store is how much he reminded me of Carson.
Marc:And did he model himself after that?
Marc:I think so.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, but he was a contemporary warp on it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Okay, so he gets his gig, and then I think the fact that you were with him during that, because I vaguely remember that morning show.
Guest:The morning show was the really, really flat out crazier version of the night show.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, it was so bizarre.
Marc:Was that like when he got that opportunity?
Guest:Well, first we did another pilot.
Guest:We did a pilot called Leave It Today for the NBC ONOs.
Guest:That was a different talk show that was going to be a syndicated talk show.
Guest:And it was a real misstep.
Guest:Everything there was screwed up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So by the time we got the morning show.
Guest:Well, then the misstep on the morning show was that it came to Dave via this... The then head of NBC was this guy, Freddie Silverman, who... Yeah, I remember that name.
Marc:He's a big guy.
Guest:He was the guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he wanted Dave to do a show that would be like a young Arthur Godfrey show.
Guest:Arthur Godfrey, a name that probably means nothing to anybody who...
Guest:But he was, he didn't mean anything to us either.
Guest:We'd never seen The Art of God.
Marc:Yeah, that's like the 50s, right?
Guest:It was, and I don't even, I guess it was on TV too.
Guest:Certainly nothing I ever saw.
Marc:But he was like one of the original sort of TV, you know, from radio guys, I think.
Guest:And in a way, I think he's the guy who they were making fun of in A Face on the Crowd.
Guest:Did you ever see that movie?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's one of the greatest movies ever.
Marc:I recommend people.
Marc:It's hard to find for some reason.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:There's a couple of movies like that that are great dark comedies that for some reason are not that accessible and a lot of people don't know them.
Marc:Ace in the Hole is another one.
Marc:The Billy Wilder movie about the media with Kirk Douglas as the reporter and the guy stuck in a hole in a mountain at a rest stop in New Mexico.
Marc:And Kirk Douglas does everything he can on all levels to keep the guy in the hole until the story blows up.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I got to see that one.
Marc:It's a great movie.
Marc:It had two names.
Marc:Ace in the Hole was one.
Marc:And then there was, I can't remember the other name of it, but it's a Billy Wilder movie.
Marc:And it's just one of those, like Facing the Crowd.
Marc:It's Bud Schulberg, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And Elliot Kazan.
Guest:Story of a country boy who makes it big in show business and has sort of a...
Marc:the megalomaniacal insanity that ensues when he becomes huge and how dark he becomes because of the success but the most interesting thing about that movie is when because even at that time when the politicians got involved that was that was wild is that you still had that there was a corporate influence because he was sponsored and then the actual candidate for president was having meetings with him and the corporations to sort of carry water for him as a candidate that that shit was so far ahead of its time yeah that's true I'm
Marc:That's going on now.
Marc:It is.
Marc:It's been going on forever.
Marc:And it's just weird to see it in that context.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, OK, so the morning show.
Guest:They wanted a family because Arthur Godfrey had a family on the show, apparently.
Guest:You know, that was an old style vaudevillian kind of a throwback idea, I think, of a singer who came on every day and did a tune.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Like Lawrence Welk, like all those variety shows.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But you can't just assemble a family.
Guest:A family either is there, like Monty Python.
Guest:You can't just assemble a Monty Python.
Guest:Those people went to college together.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like the people, whatever.
Marc:Like Jack Benny had his people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So did you assemble one?
Guest:We did, and it didn't really work out.
Marc:Who was it?
Guest:Well, they were great people.
Guest:Do you know who Valerie Bromfield is?
Marc:She was a comedian, right?
Guest:She was actually on the very first Saturday Night Live, and she used to do a stand-up with Dan Aykroyd.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Edie McClurg.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:She still acts.
Guest:She's very funny.
Guest:She's everywhere.
Guest:And this guy Bob Sarlat from San Francisco?
Marc:Yeah, Bob Sarlat was a big comic up there, yeah.
Guest:He was a really good friend of Dave's.
Guest:And Rich Hall.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Anyway, there were about five or six people.
Guest:We got them all to move to New York.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then it didn't work out because it turned out in order for them to make enough money to live in New York, we had to have them all on the show every day for them to make enough in after fees for them to get a large enough paycheck for them to be able to pay for their apartments.
Marc:So it was a daily show, though.
Guest:Was it 90 Minutes a Day Live?
Guest:L-I-V-E Live.
Marc:Is any of that stuff around still?
Marc:I haven't looked on YouTube.
Guest:It is.
Guest:No, it's not on YouTube.
Guest:It was in the closet in my house for years and years, and I finally had it sent back to Dave thinking, well, it's his legacy.
Guest:He should...
Guest:and did he was i wanted to bring it on the show i went on the show a few times and i wanted to bring it on on a big truck and just go did you guys did you want this stuff he didn't have it he didn't have it though before you sending it to him no i had it until about six or seven years ago and then i just had it shipped to him i just thought it's taking up an entire closet in my house and i don't know if it's needs to be refrigerated you know it's three quarter inch tape i don't yeah
Marc:Was he happy to have it?
Guest:You know, I don't know.
Marc:You guys are.
Marc:Are you friends?
Guest:No.
Marc:OK.
Marc:So that's that.
Marc:That didn't end well.
Guest:So.
Guest:So now I'm now I've lost my train of thought.
Marc:Well, we're moving towards the night show.
Guest:Yeah, so we are.
Guest:So we ended up having to lose the family, which meant that five people we really cared about got shafted.
Guest:And that was a horrible experience.
Guest:And we learned that what you have to do to do a show like that on a continuing basis is it's enough work to focus it on one person as opposed to focus it on the individual needs of five people.
Guest:sure and trying to manufacture this vibe and it was a daytime show so he was probably doing weird how original material for five people five days a week it's crazy it's mind-boggling and you were doing like housewife segments right i mean basically we weren't because they they wanted us to but uh i would remember sitting at a meeting going they're saying this is not what women want women want this and women want that and i'm going i'm
Guest:I'm the only woman here.
Guest:How are you telling me what women want?
Guest:Of course, me having no idea what women want because I was just.
Marc:Yeah, you're a comedian.
Marc:You didn't even live in the real world.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Hanging around nightclubs and doing stand up.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So we got canceled.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But we had a huge college following by then because the college kids will find you.
Guest:We were just doing such weird things.
Guest:Well, we were doing a lot of the same stuff as the night show, but even more and weirder.
Marc:What were some of the segments that you put together that are still on the show?
Guest:Well, Stupid Petrics was on the morning show.
Marc:And that was yours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, it was it was it was mine.
Guest:But it was came out of Dave and I sitting around endlessly trying to think of what else can we do?
Guest:What else can we do?
Guest:What else?
Guest:And things that you could do many times in a row.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What were some of the other ones?
Guest:Well, anytime we'd get any one thing that you could do, we'd try to spin it into nine things you could do.
Guest:So out of stupid pet tricks, we thought of stupid human tricks.
Guest:We considered stupid baby tricks, but we were afraid there'd be child abuse that would come out of that.
Marc:Abusive parents coming out with their kids and dangling them.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Swinging them around their head.
Guest:And you know that would happen.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:And someone would get killed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that'd be the end of careers.
Guest:Yeah, that would.
Guest:Well, we thought of we used to do this thing.
Guest:I don't know if they still do it.
Guest:Small town news where we subscribe to every small newspaper from every city in the United States and then look for weird little articles that you could question someone about.
Guest:And then it would end with a phone call.
Marc:Was there any research process when you guys like because I know, you know, Dave sort of gets compared to Ernie Kovacs and compared to some of the more abstract TVs.
Marc:Did you guys ever sit around and ponder that shit?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, we did.
Guest:In fact, I was just on that Ernie Kovacs thing.
Guest:They're selling a box set, and they had a little panel discussion the other night that I was on.
Guest:So I recently re-watched the whole Ernie Kovacs oeuvre, which is phenomenal and really even better for the growth arc.
Guest:It starts out, you watch the early stuff, and it's like, hmm, why did I like about this guy so much?
Guest:By about a year later, it's whoa.
Guest:And two years later, it's wow.
Guest:It's really...
Guest:just went for, he got smarter and smarter and better and better, which is really what you want to see in an artist, I think.
Marc:So you were in New York and you guys got the night show.
Guest:And we went to the Museum of Radio and TV and we watched old Kovacs and we watched old Steve Allen.
Guest:Yeah, me and Dave.
Marc:And Jack Parr too or no?
Guest:Par two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we know we.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What we learned in addition to the fact that Kovacs had thought all this really brilliant stuff up and Steve Allen had a really fun adventure spirit.
Guest:And did you know, by the way, that Kovacs felt that Steve Allen was ripping him off?
Marc:Everyone thinks everyone really.
Marc:I had no idea, but he probably was.
Guest:Yeah, apparently he was.
Guest:I assumed that some of that stuff came from Steve Allen, but Kovacs had it first, that man on the street stuff.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, making fun of the people in the audience stuff.
Marc:I think there's a weird thing when something becomes public, even if it's format, that for some reason people don't think it's stealing after a year or so.
Marc:They just think, well, that's what the medium will bear, and we can do our take on it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And it just becomes like that's a new system that we can use.
Marc:It's odd because after a certain point, when you watch Dave now even, it becomes difficult to stack on new reusable bits that have not been done.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:Well, we were really consciously eating up a lot of free space because we were under orders not to emulate The Tonight Show too closely.
Guest:So that was the mandate or that was the manifesto when I got to say who came on after him.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And that was Dave.
Guest:So the mandate was you can't have an announcer who sits down with you.
Marc:No sidekick.
Guest:No sidekick.
Guest:And so that was why whenever Dave would come in and sit down, he talked to Paul.
Guest:Paul would stay behind the.
Guest:It would be Paul rather than an announcer, you know, standing in the band area, not sitting down at the desk.
Guest:And then he wasn't supposed to do a topical monologue.
Guest:And then there were those things that The Tonight Show was doing at the time.
Guest:The Tonight Show was very circumscribed.
Guest:It was pretty much a two shot and a one shot and a two shot and a one shot and then stumped the band.
Guest:I don't know if you remember those.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:So that, to me, to not emulate that, that to me was like... He couldn't do a topical monologue?
Guest:They didn't want him to do a topical monologue.
Marc:So what did that leave you with at the beginning?
Marc:I can't remember.
Guest:We had something called opening remarks that were one or two little jokes, and then we'd do a piece.
Guest:So we started doing written pieces.
Marc:At the beginning of the show.
Guest:And again, in the middle of the show.
Guest:But to me, to not emulate The Tonight Show, they were doing hardly anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So it was like the whole world of other things.
Marc:You could just do anything else.
Guest:It would be okay.
Marc:The hallways, the people coming in.
Guest:Everything.
Guest:Just think of all the things that aren't Stump the Band.
Guest:You could do any of those.
Marc:And who came up with Chris Elliott coming out of the floor?
Guest:Oh, that was Chris.
Marc:Who was the original crew of writers?
Guest:The original crew was George Meyer, who became a seminal influence on The Simpsons.
Marc:That bit you have of his in the Mommy's piece?
Guest:Isn't that great?
Marc:That made me laugh fucking out loud.
Guest:I know.
Guest:He's so great.
Marc:I mean, that was insane.
Guest:He's one of my favorite writers.
Marc:Son, art, trash.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I was laughing in bed.
Guest:He's very, very funny.
Guest:And we gave him his first job.
Guest:He was at the time he was introduced to me by his two friends who I hired, Tom Gammill and Max Pross, who write for everything and had already written for Saturday Night Live by the time.
Guest:I hired him, but they referred to George, who they knew from college, as the funniest man in Arizona.
Guest:So he was doing biochemical research.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:At the time.
Marc:And you rescued him from that.
Guest:Sent him into something so much more valuable than cures for cancer or what have you.
Marc:We bring joy any way you can.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You do what you can to help.
Yeah.
Marc:And who else was on there?
Guest:So it was Tom and Max and George and Andy Breckman who went on to create Monk and a team named Steve Weiner and Carl Tiedemann who I've lost track of and my friend Gerard Mulligan who was from San Francisco who went on to
Guest:stay with the show until like last year when he retired.
Marc:I remember that guy, big guy, right?
Guest:He was on the morning show even.
Guest:He was my old pal from San Francisco.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I gave him a job with Dave on the morning show and he stayed there until about a year ago.
Marc:Yeah, I remember meeting him a couple of times.
Guest:He's a lovely guy.
Marc:So you guys were still in a relationship during the night show?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, we were in a relationship until like 88.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:But I stopped.
Guest:What?
Guest:It's a whole thing then.
Guest:Yeah, it was a big problem working together.
Marc:Being romantically involved?
Guest:Yeah, that's not a good idea.
Marc:No, it can't be.
Guest:No, it's not on set.
Yeah.
Marc:You were okay on set?
Guest:It's just like... Yeah, yeah, but I mean, well, no.
Guest:It's just not a good idea to mix that stuff up.
Guest:It's a really dangerous mercurial idea because it just is.
Marc:Because the ego involved outside of a relationship and just what's involved in an intimate relationship, then the egos of actually working together must be insane.
Guest:Well, you know, looking back, I mean...
Guest:There might have been more merit to the working situation than there was to the personal one.
Guest:So it's really sort of too bad that we hadn't just become a working partnership and that we ever had the dating stuff simultaneously.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was less successful than the working part.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now, I mean, we don't have to talk about lettering the whole time and we can move on from that.
Marc:But.
Marc:But what's curious what I want to know is that because he is like he was like he was my guy.
Marc:You know, I never really watched other people like when I was in college.
Marc:That's when that started.
Marc:And I was there at the beginning.
Marc:I have tremendous amount of respect for the dude.
Marc:But, you know, as he's you know, he's gotten older and you start.
Marc:Do you like as somebody who knew him when he was young?
Marc:and do you ever watch him now no okay all right all right well i i used to i was watching clips and stuff but i've uh i've given that up for lent is it lent now i don't know when it is i just like i'm just curious about him as a as um like when you talk about comedians and you talk about you know what they come from um
Marc:He's so isolated and seemingly so, you know, peculiar, you know, as a person.
Marc:And now, like, he's just gotten very cranky and honest and sort of, like, doesn't seem to give a fuck anymore.
Marc:And it's really kind of good.
Marc:It's probably better than it's been the best.
Guest:Well, I sort of wonder if that's the truth.
Guest:off camera I mean he really he used to always say ah what do they want from us this isn't brain surgery and to me that subtext of that always was yeah but I don't care about brain surgery this is what I care about this is the only thing I care about yeah like very so he's really he really really cares about making that show that show is his focus or was you know I can't speak for who he is now yeah but he was he stopped drinking before that show he was focused on that show he cared about that show working and he was
Marc:in constant terror that that show would be taken away right well i still feel that he's like he's everything you hear about him he's still like kind of on top of it and crazy about the show but uh it's just interesting when people who and i'm sure you've seen this a lot before that they have a tv persona and as they get older they you know it it
Marc:You know, they become more themselves because they can't help themselves.
Marc:I think that's a good thing that happens to all of us.
Marc:Like even you were talking about in this book that you get to a certain point in your creative life where you're like, you know, why can't I just be fucking honest?
Guest:Well, I sort of feel like if you don't do that, then you become a cliche.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You start repeating and retreading and you sort of a caricature of yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Clown.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And that's the worst thing that could possibly happen.
Guest:It's a stagnated pool of pus, isn't it?
Marc:Yeah, it is.
Marc:Definitely.
Marc:So now, did you date other comics?
Guest:No.
Guest:That was enough.
Marc:And then you just switched to musicians?
Guest:Yeah, I guess I did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, you seem like somebody who's done a lot of work on yourself and you still find the humor in that process.
Marc:Like, you know, you talk about codependency.
Marc:You talk about this awareness around your mother and what you come from.
Marc:There's part of me that thinks, like, I'm going to feel so good that I'm not really going to need to be funny anymore.
Yeah.
Guest:No, I think it's a tennis game.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I think that misery is what keeps you from depression is really what keeps you from doing anything where you just have no reason to even try.
Marc:You don't have the will.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, all that having a lot of self-examination gives you is a lot more language to use when you're making jobs.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The harm has already been done.
Guest:You don't have to worry about protecting it.
Guest:It's already, the scars are deep and they're not going anywhere.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But you could at least, you know, make yourself smarter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's my feeling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now, seeing that you've thought a lot about comics and yourself and where you come from and where your comedy comes from, do you...
Marc:Like if I really and you've listened to the show, like I try to figure out where where it seems to me that the real war outside of trying to understand the world is is some sort of there's a hypersensitivity to being a funny person.
Marc:And there's a for me, a kind of perpetual sadness that's right under the surface.
Marc:That seems to be what I'm fighting against.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Do you have that?
Guest:uh i have a i have a perpetual programming to look at everything as a disaster waiting to happen dread dread yeah so and then and then i have um an adjustment i've made to that that immediately finds a way to make a joke out of that right so that's kind of a lovely adjustment now now after letterman i mean you did go on to write jokes for other people yeah
Guest:uh i just started writing well you know what i got really driven by wanting to hear my own voice i mean i i had gotten so used to having my voice adjusted by others that i wasn't sure what my voice was and i i really knew how to write his voice and i know how to train other people to write his voice because i letterman yeah i'm really good at hearing voices i mean what was the instruction then i mean if you were if you were going to say like okay you want to write for dave here's one two and three
Guest:Well, I would say that the first thing that I remember thinking was when I was watching him is that his attitude was you, the audience and me, him, know that that guy's crazy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he was bringing the audience in, whereas when I was just writing jokes on my own before I started writing for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would often just write a fully warped world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you'd need to find your way to that world and join me in it.
Guest:But I wouldn't unite with the audience.
Guest:And I thought it was a smart thing he was doing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, get a load of this guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Get a load of this guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's what... That was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But after working with him and then all the guys that I work with on the show and stuff, and then I wrote on sitcoms a bunch and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Oh, I wrote a lot of episodes of things.
Guest:I wrote on The New Heart Show and I wrote... Now, was he a hero of yours in any way?
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Marc:And working with him?
Marc:Yeah, I'd love to talk to him because he was one of those guys... He was really a unique comedic voice.
Yeah.
Guest:He was really unique.
Guest:And you know what?
Guest:He's one of the two or three guys who who reinvented themselves successfully over and over again.
Guest:I was thinking it was he had like three versions of that show on like Cosby had several versions of the show on where they could take.
Guest:They'd made such a strong comedic persona for themselves that they could take it and reset it again and put it any input in different situations.
Guest:And George Burns did the same thing.
Guest:George Burns was such a great, strong comic persona that like at 90, he still knew how to turn 90 into a joke.
Guest:He wasn't trying to pretend he was 25, which is what Jerry Lewis sometimes looks like.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Well, he was all I thought Jerry Lewis was just perpetually 12.
Guest:Yeah, you're right.
Guest:25 is really wrong.
Marc:Too old.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you work with Newhart?
Guest:Well, I just wrote as a writer, a freelance writer on a lot of sitcoms.
Guest:Oh, you weren't on a staff?
Guest:And I was on staff a few times on shows that came and went.
Guest:And I got really obsessed with wanting to hear my own voice.
Guest:somebody offered me a column i started writing i wrote i started writing some pieces for rolling stone and now a magazine offered me a column it was called new york woman and myself and wendy wasserstein were both columnists yeah and it and that was the first time i'd ever heard myself speaking like that yeah and and it was um really exciting and also that when you got a byline it didn't go rolling by and then this right it was you this is my point of view
Guest:And also, it's the same as doing stand-up, only it's expanding it in all kinds of ways.
Marc:You don't have to wait for laughs, and you don't have to worry whether or not someone's not going to receive you in that moment.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And you can go for gray areas, or you can modulate or whatever.
Guest:You can expound.
Guest:And later, when that alternative comedy scene came around, I realized that all those...
Guest:All those years of writing columns made it perfect for doing alternative comedy, which is storytelling.
Marc:It's storytelling.
Marc:But now, as somebody that understands, like, you know, intimately both of those things, the difference between, like, a monologist who does straight stand-up or even somebody like Bob Newhart, who actually also told stories, but there was a different context to it.
Marc:It wasn't so much, you know, he was a persona, but you never got the sense that you were really hearing about his life.
Guest:Yeah, although you kind of, yeah, I guess you're right.
Marc:And like with alternative comedy, there seems to be a self-centeredness that is at the core of it.
Guest:It's sometimes placed between jokes and talking to your shrink.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:Or just saying like, you know, I'm the center of this universe and there's almost a narcissism to alternative comedy, which, you know, I'm part of and I get it, but they're both very valid and they're both very, you know,
Guest:And I've also come to realize that, you know, I'm very snobby about comedy.
Guest:I either think it's really funny or I don't.
Guest:Instantly, you're either on my wavelength or you're not.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I also realize that there's a whole world of things that people are laughing at that you cannot not call funny.
Guest:They are funny.
Guest:They're making a big group of people laugh.
Guest:They're not funny to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But they're definitely funny or a big group of people wouldn't be laughing.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, yeah, because as I talk to more and more comics, my snobbery has diminished in light of what it really takes to be funny.
Marc:No matter whether you like the jokes or not, to do comedy and to make it work is no small fucking thing.
Guest:task it's also just if it's what you love i mean it's really i think it's just it's a thing that i just love i love taking material and figuring out where the funny part of it is yeah i don't always know it's like a puzzle well no but i get assignments sometimes like lately i've written a couple of pieces for the wall street journal of all things and they give you a topic and i love when people give you a topic and i go okay roll up my sleeves there's got to be jokes here what are they you know
Marc:And what's that process start?
Marc:How do you do that?
Marc:How do you work that out?
Guest:Well, first I walk around saying I can't do it and I get really depressed.
Guest:I sit under a table for a while.
Marc:That's part of my process.
Marc:Like, why'd they ask me to do this?
Marc:It's not the right format for me.
Guest:God, I can't do it.
Guest:There's nothing funny here.
Guest:I never thought there was anything funnier.
Guest:And then you start to, like, assemble a jigsaw puzzle.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Do you do it from, like, but do you start to, like, my only recourse when I am dealing with that is, like, I can only speak for me.
Marc:So I start writing from there.
Marc:It's very hard for me to just look at externals and say, like, those two things together are funny.
Marc:And this, like, I have to be like, what is my reaction to this?
Guest:But don't you also, like, I've lately, because I'm now on Twitter.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I got on Twitter because I have a book coming out and they tell you, you know, get on this, get on that.
Marc:You probably have a good time with it, though, I would imagine.
Guest:Well, you know what?
Guest:I.
Guest:After I got over the shock of, oh, my God, writing for free, I didn't want to go on it because I was used to writing for money.
Guest:Right.
Guest:After I got over that, I realized it's a really fun exercise to wake up every morning, look at the news and figure out how to write three jokes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's how you've got a system.
Marc:That's what I've been doing.
Marc:I'm going to do three.
Guest:It's three.
Guest:I try to get at least three jokes, but I wasn't doing that before that.
Guest:I wasn't going through the news looking for jokes.
Guest:And when you do, it's kind of a fun little game to play.
Guest:Like, oh, well, there's something funny there.
Marc:I should try and do that because usually I just, you know, I tweet whatever...
Guest:And don't you see that like right when you're looking at stuff, don't you immediately get a sense?
Guest:I noticed before I even write a joke and my jokes, of course, I don't know if they're actually playing or not unless I get a million retweets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But but I get a sense right looking at the topic joke here before I even have read it.
Marc:Well, I don't like I should do more of that kind of exercise.
Marc:I've become so fascinated with my small world in my life and my sort of newfound ability to be influential.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, maybe.
Marc:But but more like, you know, like it's OK to be me and I don't have to like I'm not angry about it anymore.
Marc:So I just try to embrace it as selfish as that may seem like I've kind of shut off a lot of the outside world.
Guest:Well, that's a great thing, I guess.
Guest:Isn't it?
Marc:Yeah, it makes me feel better.
Marc:But then people are like, well, why don't you have anything to say about that?
Marc:I'm like, because I didn't even pay attention to it.
Marc:And like I used to be responsible for that stuff.
Marc:So that's a little weird.
Marc:I'm wondering when I'm going to tilt back into having opinions about bigger issues.
Guest:Well, you know, it's the province of being 22 to just to be so completely in misery.
Guest:I mean, they get to own that.
Marc:Yeah, they do.
Marc:I'm not meeting a lot of miserable 22 years old.
Marc:They seem a lot more confident together than I was.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:I guess I'm just looking at relatives.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:At least you have them in your life.
Marc:But I think that like what we were talking about at the beginning of the interview, to have all these resources at your fingertips to express yourself efficiently in so many different mediums without having to rely on anybody is a great thing.
Guest:It's great until you try to figure out how you're going to earn a living at it.
Guest:That's a dilemma they're facing that used to be sort of figured out where you would get a job.
Marc:Yeah, you'd have to make the cut and be part of the business.
Guest:Now you can find a lot of ways to have your work out there.
Guest:Of course, there's the downside of that.
Guest:I mean, I see stuff people put up and I just think I'm so glad when I was 23, I had no way to just spout off in front of everyone.
Guest:I just...
Guest:I had to keep my mouth shut.
Guest:I had a lot to say.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, now I want to address this a little bit only because, you know, you've done so well for yourself and you've been so influential in a lot of big things.
Marc:Comedy wise that, you know, as a woman and I know you're friends with a lot of like a lot of women you brought up.
Marc:But did you ever feel that you were thought of differently or that it was more challenging in your particular journey?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:I've thought about this a lot.
Marc:Because a lot of people ask me, like, why aren't there more women comedians?
Guest:There's a lot now.
Marc:I know.
Marc:There's tons now.
Marc:But still, there's this idea.
Guest:And they all seem to be doing pretty well.
Guest:And a lot of them are really, really funny.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Yeah, there's a lot more than when I started.
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot more than when I started.
Guest:And a lot of them just writing funny Twitters and blogs and stuff.
Marc:But what was the landscape like when you were writing for Letterman and doing these TV shows in terms of women?
Guest:Well, what there used to be was what used to be called tokenism.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like when I got a job on the new Laugh-In, I was supposed to be one.
Marc:An affirmative action hire?
Guest:Well, that's what was going on.
Guest:They would think that they needed to hire two people, which later went on, was pointed out to me.
Guest:When I was talking to Nell Scoville about this, who's a funny writer, that the days of... You never would have thought that tokenism would have been the good old days.
Guest:They went from having to hire two women to just going ahead and hiring no women lately.
Guest:Now there seem to be... I understand there's one woman on this show and one woman... More in sitcom, I think, than in...
Guest:than in the late night shows.
Guest:They just gave up hiring any women in late night shows.
Guest:I think they've got one on this one and one on that one.
Marc:And do you think like, I just like, I don't know what that is.
Marc:Yeah, well, in the 80s, like women were characterized as, you know, always talking about certain women things.
Marc:And that, you know, stand up has been, you know, primarily male for a long time.
Guest:And you really can't be hearing about women's things because there's so few women in the world.
Guest:Don't be weighing everybody down with those women's things.
Marc:Well, there was this idea in the 80s that like women are going to talk about their periods.
Guest:Oh, you don't want that.
Marc:No, you can't have that.
Guest:Well, do you remember, I remember a time when I was growing up when they wouldn't have women on the radio.
Guest:They said women's voices were unpleasing to people and they would never have, there wasn't a single woman announcer on the radio.
Marc:Yeah, but things are definitely different now.
Guest:Well, so in the period of time when I was coming up, we had Elaine Boosler, who was the top of everything.
Marc:I've got to get her in here.
Marc:I've got to write her.
Guest:And she was always really great and fantastic.
Guest:And the amount of shit she was taking, unbelievable.
Guest:The word that is being used about her, she was at the top of the game pretty much for women then, in my opinion.
Guest:She was writing political jokes.
Guest:She was writing personal jokes.
Guest:She was writing everything.
Guest:kind of joke that she could make work was that she was threatening threatening she's like five feet tall and she'd wear a little dress you know and you just go so the threat of this this like short little woman making you laugh is um that threat is what is that it's almost jihadist or something you know what is that so it's interesting it was really a kind of old boys network and there was an idea of how to manage
Guest:Well, just that word threatening got thrown around a lot, that they wanted women.
Guest:If you're going to be a woman, and I remember thinking when I was doing stand-up in that period, what do I do to not be threatening?
Guest:Like, you know, should I wear pants?
Guest:Should I wear a dress?
Guest:Is it too threatening if I do this?
Marc:So it was in your head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wasn't sure what the threat was, so I wasn't sure how to counter it either.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How do I de-womanize myself enough to not be intimidating to these men?
Guest:You have to de-womanize yourself so that you're not doing the woman's topics, but you don't want to be so woman-y that you're threatening.
Marc:Whose may have had the most impact on you, comedically or otherwise, in your career in terms of things said?
Guest:Weirdly, the two would be, I would say, my two heroes, my three heroes would be...
Guest:Ernie Kovacs and Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker.
Guest:I go back to them over and over again.
Guest:They are so brilliant.
Marc:I don't know who Robert Benchley is.
Guest:Robert Benchley, you know the Algonquin Roundtable.
Marc:Okay, that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Now his son is Jaws, right?
Marc:Or that's Peter Benchley.
Guest:That was his grandfather.
Marc:Grandson, okay.
Guest:Grandfather.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He was a witty writer from the 30s and 40s.
Guest:And the thing that's amazing to me about his writing, I was really studying him at one point years ago and rereading him and rereading him and rereading him, is that in an entirely different time period, he was catching and getting every weird, twisted, interesting joke so that it made 1938 or 1942 or 1945 or whatever year that was seem like yesterday.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Which is really interesting to me.
Marc:Timeless jokes.
Marc:Rare.
Guest:Yeah, Dorothy Parker is just amazing.
Guest:Every time I read her, I think, wow, how'd she do that?
Guest:How did she do that?
Marc:Yeah, I'm not that literate about that period.
Guest:Well, I should take on some new heroes, but every time I look at them, I'm always kind of amazed at them.
Marc:Those are great.
Guest:They're worth looking at if you have never seen them.
Marc:So the new book is Cool, Calm, and Contentious, your eighth book.
Guest:Yeah, and it's personal essays, and there's a piece I'm going to hell for in it where I actually went through my deceased mother's diaries.
Guest:I know, I thought about that.
Marc:But would you have done it had you found what you were looking for?
Marc:I don't want to tip it too much.
Guest:I don't want to spoil it.
Guest:Well, I'll just tip it.
Guest:When my mother died, I had a really contentious relationship with my mother.
Guest:And when she died, I went looking through her diaries thinking, well, I'm going to find out here what the missing piece was.
Guest:She was a seriously angry, depressed woman, and she would never tell me what she was so angry and depressed about.
Guest:She would just tell me that the things I was doing right then, whatever they were, were the reasons she was so angry and depressed.
Guest:So it was always me that was the cause of everything.
Guest:So I went looking for some actual reasoning.
Guest:And I never did find it because she wasn't self-examining.
Guest:But what I found were these diaries of hers where she complains about every single country of the world.
Guest:She goes from country to country to country to country with my dad.
Guest:They were widely traveled.
Guest:And just has something terrible to say about, I don't think a single, the only country that escaped is she liked Japan.
Guest:It was nice and organized and everything pretty.
Marc:But didn't that tell you at least that it wasn't about you?
Guest:Well, what really told me wasn't about me was when I found that she had criticized Charles Dickens, that there was an old textbook of hers from college.
Guest:And in the margin of Oliver Twist, she had written not one of his best works.
Guest:I was not impressed.
Guest:And I just thought, what did I expect from her?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The ego on that.
Marc:I mean, that's unbelievable.
Guest:She's flicking off Charles Dickens and I think she's going to like my work.
Guest:Jesus.
Guest:anyway I wouldn't have printed all this stuff if she were alive certainly yeah but the other thing was I was trying to think of what do I like in other people's books and I like when people are exposing their take on life and letting me see how they adjusted to living in the world really really honestly I'm always looking for that yeah so I thought well what the hell let me do it this was the world I grew up in why should I protect my world and
Guest:these elements when i like it when other people do it so i went ahead and and she did it and if you know if there's an afterlife and my mom's waiting for me there i'm gonna get so beat to shit in the afterlife i know but you've resolved some of this stuff that uh that caused you all this tourists in your life well i found it i learned to find it funny right so then maybe if you there is an afterlife you can just laugh in your mother's face
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, we hopefully will have separate apartments in the afterlife.
Guest:We're living together again.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:They don't put the whole family unit back together again.
Marc:I think you can make it.
Marc:I don't know if there's any specific rule book on that in terms of how it plays out.
Marc:Maybe in the Kabbalah or something.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Maybe there are living arrangements documented for the afterlife, but it's in text that I've not even come close to reading.
Marc:But I wish the best for you in the afterlife and that you don't have to live.
Marc:in the same house.
Guest:And I hope you're not living with my mother either.
Marc:Yeah, me too.
Marc:Good talking to you, Merrill.
Guest:You too.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:I'm going to try to resolve the air conditioner issue.
Marc:I'm thinking about refrigerating the garage the next time it's hot.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:All kinds of new gift stuff for the Christmas holidays and the holidays that you celebrate, whatever that may be.
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Marc:Again, Neptune Theater, Seattle, November 25th, Black Friday.
Marc:Bring a little cash so you can buy a coupe poster.
Marc:They're going to be beautiful.
Marc:Very few.
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Marc:Limited edition.
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Marc:Arlington Drafthouse.
Marc:Arlington, Virginia.
Marc:December 2nd and 3rd.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Do it.
Guest:Boomy.
Guest:Come here, Boomer.
Guest:Come here, Boomy.
Guest:Come on, say goodbye.
Guest:Boomer.
Guest:Boomy.
Guest:Come here, buddy.
Guest:What's it going to take to get this cat in here?
Guest:Come on, man.
Guest:Boomer.
Guest:Nothing.
Marc:He was just in here two seconds ago.
Marc:I gotta clean out my system.
Marc:Man.
Marc:I gotta start exercising again.
Guest:Oh, boy.