Episode 270 - Chris Elliott
Guest:are we doing this really wait for it are we doing this wait for it pow what the fuck and it's also what the fuck what's wrong with me it's time for wtf what the fuck with mark maron
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fuckeridians?
Marc:What the fucktuckians?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:God, the list keeps growing.
Marc:I think that's all for today.
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Thank you for coming on board.
Marc:Hey, I just wanted to... All right, do I want to do that?
Marc:Yeah, before I talk about anything else...
Marc:If you don't have my new CD, why don't you go get it?
Marc:You can get it on iTunes.
Marc:It's called This Has To Be Funny.
Marc:Just a reminder.
Marc:Just a reminder that I'm selling CDs occasionally.
Marc:Thinking about putting some new t-shirts together.
Marc:But let's not talk about merch.
Marc:I got a great show for you today.
Marc:I was very excited to be able to talk to Chris Elliott because I've been a fan of his for a long time.
Marc:I have very distinct memories of watching the first Letterman show, the original Letterman show, the year that it started.
Marc:I hope my dates are right when I was in college and just seeing his characters.
Marc:What a funny fucking guy.
Marc:And also just the fact that, you know, he comes from a legacy of show business, Bob and Ray.
Marc:His father was Bob Elliott.
Marc:And, you know, it's it's it's just very interesting to me to be able to talk to him about what that meant to him, what the you know, what is how it impacted his career, you know, how you know how it impacted his comedy, because I'm sort of fascinated with people that grow up in show business.
Marc:But we'll talk to him in just a second.
Marc:But I'm not unathletic.
Marc:I'm not incapable.
Marc:The problem is that I'm too obsessive and too panicked to do things the right way, to have the patience to do it.
Marc:I'm pretty good for a half an hour.
Marc:Like, for instance, I just bowled against Chris Hardwick.
Marc:I bowled 146.
Marc:Never bowled 146 before because I'm not a bowler, but I am able to do shit if I focus.
Marc:And I think just the fact that Hardwick was there and that he's like a professional bowler, I knew I couldn't beat him, but I wasn't going to look like a fucking pussy.
Marc:So I bowled a 146.
Marc:That's something.
Marc:It's not relevant.
Marc:It's not important, but I did that.
Marc:Just to point out that I can focus my obsessions if necessary.
Marc:But sometimes...
Marc:They bite me in the ass.
Marc:I don't know if this has happened to you.
Marc:I was laying in bed.
Marc:That's a lie.
Marc:I wasn't in bed.
Marc:I was going to leave town for a few days.
Marc:I went to Colorado.
Marc:And every time I leave town, that's when I start to think, well, what could go wrong while I'm away?
Marc:Let's nip that in the bud.
Marc:So I decided I better check the roof to see if there are pine needles up there because I only got one rain gutter.
Marc:And if that gets clogged up, there's a real good chance water will build up and start pouring through the roof and out of the cabinets of my house.
Marc:And I don't like I don't know about you, but even if I'm not home, I don't want someone to open a cabinet and have a wave of water come out.
Marc:It happened once and I'm panicked about it.
Marc:Haven't been up on the roof lately.
Marc:Not since I put the AC thing up there.
Marc:So now it's 830 at night, the night before I'm supposed to leave.
Marc:And I'm sitting there packing.
Marc:I'm like, fuck, I got to check the roof.
Marc:So I go.
Marc:I get outside.
Marc:You know, Jessica is in the house.
Marc:She's packing.
Marc:I get the big old ladder.
Marc:My roof is probably about 30 feet because of the side of my house.
Marc:Does that seem unreasonable?
Marc:Let's say 25 feet.
Marc:Is that a lot?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's up there.
Marc:It's high because of the way the side of the house is designed.
Marc:So I'm just going to put the ladder up there, climb up.
Marc:I've done this before.
Marc:Climb up over the roof, check out the gutter, make sure it's okay, throw out some pine needles.
Marc:So I climb up that ladder.
Marc:It's at night.
Marc:It's an aluminum ladder, but it's sturdy.
Marc:I climb up.
Marc:I climb over.
Marc:I'm on the roof.
Marc:I'm like, cool.
Marc:Rain gutter looks okay.
Marc:I'll move this shit.
Marc:Fine.
Marc:Then when you're going back down, that's where it gets a little weird because I got to throw my leg over the edge of the roof and I realize I'm pretty high up here.
Marc:I get both of my feet on the ladder and I had this thought.
Marc:I thought, what kind of idiot
Marc:falls off a fucking ladder i mean what kind of i mean it's pretty clear you got your balance the ladder set up right should not be a problem that is a thought i had as i took two steps down the ladder and then i don't know what happened but i didn't fall backwards but the ladder started to move sideways on its own just started to move sideways and there's that moment it's a decisive moment it's a
Marc:You know exactly what is happening.
Marc:It's the same moment that you have when you're about to hit another car.
Marc:It's a decisive moment only in that you have to decide how, if possible, you're going to get into an accident.
Marc:It's good.
Marc:It's better than being surprised by an accident.
Marc:Maybe not.
Marc:Maybe you're more relaxed then.
Marc:But this ladder started moving to the right, and I realized this isn't going to stop.
Marc:I'm still 15, 20 feet up, and it's moving.
Marc:And then you're like, this isn't moving.
Marc:It's not just moving.
Marc:The ladder is falling.
Marc:You are falling off a ladder now.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:And then it just turns into slow motion.
Marc:I felt the ladder go.
Marc:It kept going.
Marc:I grabbed hold of the rain gutter that's on the side of my house as if that's going to help me.
Marc:And the ladder just goes, falls down to the side.
Marc:I'm now facing up in a free fall, pulling down a rain gutter on top of me.
Marc:I hear the ladder clank down.
Marc:Then I hear me hit the ground.
Marc:Then the rain gutter hits on top of me.
Marc:And I'm laying there.
Marc:And I have not had that feeling in a long time.
Marc:That feeling where you're like, I'm mortal.
Marc:I just fell off my bike.
Marc:I'm about to cry.
Marc:I think I hurt myself.
Marc:Those kind of happen in sequence.
Marc:But the first thing that happens is like, all right, I can still feel my arms and legs and I need to lay here for a minute.
Marc:And then I'm like, shit, that was bad.
Marc:I wonder if anything's broken because that's going to piss her off because we have to travel tomorrow.
Marc:That was my thought.
Marc:Like, I don't want to piss her off and ruin this trip by breaking something or ending up in a wheelchair.
Marc:And then, like, I just laid there and I'm like, okay, felt like I hurt, but I don't think anything's broken.
Marc:And then I noticed that I scraped myself up and I got up and I was okay.
Marc:But you know that moment where a kid falls down and he gets up and he knows he's okay, but if someone's around who saw it, he's going to start crying.
Marc:But if no one was there, he probably would have just walked it off.
Marc:Well, I didn't do that.
Marc:What I did was I got up and I was a little shocked at myself.
Marc:And what I should have done was just shut the fuck up, put the ladder away and never mention it.
Marc:What I chose to do because I'm a five-year-old is run into the house and go...
Marc:I fell off the ladder.
Marc:I fell off the ladder.
Marc:And she's like, what?
Marc:What?
Marc:Jessica said, what?
Marc:And I'm like, I fell off the ladder.
Marc:She's like, what are you talking about?
Marc:And I walked her outside and I showed her the rain gutter and I showed her the ladder and I looked at her like, no.
Marc:And I don't know what the point of it was other than to get her upset because she started getting overwhelmed with emotion at the thought that she would have walked outside and found me laying in a pool of blood or unable to walk.
Marc:What did we learn here?
Marc:A couple of things.
Marc:Don't go up a ladder yourself.
Marc:If you do and you fall down like an idiot and you don't hurt yourself, just keep it to yourself.
Marc:Don't run in like a five-year-old and cry.
Marc:Just keep it to yourself.
Marc:That's a secret.
Marc:That's one of those.
Marc:It's not a white lie because she didn't know what happened.
Marc:If a guy falls off a ladder on the side of his house at 830 at night because he was obsessively worrying about whether or not there were pine needles in the rain gutter and no one was there to see or hear him fall, did it happen?
Marc:Nope.
Marc:That's just between you and you.
Marc:All right, I'm going to call Jim Gaffigan.
Marc:He's got this special out.
Marc:Came out yesterday.
Marc:And I want to talk to him about it.
Marc:He did the same thing Louie did.
Marc:It's available online at jimgaffigan.com.
Marc:But I told him I'd call and just talk to him a bit about it.
Marc:Because this is exciting, man.
Marc:Comics are taking complete ownership of their shit, and it's a beautiful thing.
Marc:So let's give Jim a call.
Guest:Hello?
Guest:Hello?
Marc:Jim.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Mark Maron.
Guest:Oh, hey, Mark.
Guest:How are you?
Marc:What's up, buddy?
Marc:I wanted to talk to you about the special.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:That would be great.
Guest:I'd appreciate it.
Marc:You've jumped in, and now you're going to sell your special online exclusively, and this is a whole new what?
Marc:What is it, 90 minutes, an hour and 15?
Marc:What is it?
Guest:It's an hour and 15, 75 minutes.
Marc:And it's nothing that anyone has heard before from you.
Guest:Well, if you've been to live shows, you've seen it.
Marc:Well, but I mean, most people have not seen it.
Marc:So how does this work?
Marc:How do people get... When is it up?
Marc:Is it up today?
Marc:Today being Thursday?
Guest:Yes, it is up.
Guest:It's been up for a day.
Guest:And it's an interesting thing.
Guest:I'm going off of Louis Vliet.
Guest:I was looking at completely different ideas.
Guest:I wanted to do something where I had...
Guest:My idea was that...
Guest:an advertiser like microsoft would make you watch a commercial for a minute and then people would be able to download it right for free and right microsoft would give me you know uh... you know it would just be like this key thing but of course microsoft would like who who are you you know it they're like what no that's great i don't know who you are about that while i was doing that in talking to the usual suspects louis did this thing and and located
Guest:It's Louie.
Guest:Louie, he figured it out.
Guest:He was like, all right, you make it a really low price and you make it really easy to buy.
Guest:And I struggled.
Guest:Jeannie and I were thinking of ideas, how can we do this different?
Guest:It's like, I'm obviously not going to charge more than $5.
Guest:And I was like, all right, I'll make it.
Guest:I'll make it $4.
Guest:And then I was like, well, that's, you know, there's nothing unique about that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I was like, all right, I'll, you know, every dollar from every, $1 from every purchase will go to a charity.
Guest:You know, obviously Louie gave money away, but it was like,
Guest:built in.
Guest:And then, you know, Louie even said, he goes, you know, the irony is, is you could end up giving away more money than I did, which is a very nice thing to say.
Marc:But let me understand.
Marc:So you and Louie are competing for the amount of money you give away to a charity.
Guest:No.
Marc:This is basically just a competition.
Guest:Suddenly it turns into a deposition.
Guest:Could you not say that Louis C.K.
Guest:and you are in a competition?
Marc:No, no.
Marc:What I'm trying to show you is that this is, you know, ultimately your special is a competition with Louis to see who the better person is.
Guest:Well, first of all, let me be very clear.
Guest:Let me be very clear.
Guest:Louis...
Guest:Louie did something that, Louie is the comedian of today.
Guest:There's just, and it's undeniable, and early on I realized that I was not going to sell as many as Louie.
Marc:Jim, I'm excited about your special, and I want you to get excited about it.
I am.
Marc:I think I think that Gaffigan fans around the world, I think you and Louie are different comedians.
Marc:You're both very popular and big comedians.
Marc:You have you have different audiences, but you share some of the same audience.
Marc:You're professional.
Marc:People love you.
Marc:You sell out theaters all around the country and you bring entertainment to people of all ages.
Marc:And I just think you're going to have to live with that.
Marc:And I think, like, not only am I excited about this special, but my listeners will be excited.
Marc:And that's why I'm talking to you right now, because I want people to go buy it.
Marc:So why don't you tell me where they can get that before you disregard the entire project?
Guest:You know what?
Guest:You are such a dick.
Guest:But JimGaffigan.com.
Marc:How am I being a dick?
Marc:I'm listening to you speak honestly about your special, but you're being a little self-demeaning, and I think that you're a great comic, but that's great.
Marc:So it's at jimgaffigan.com, and how much did you decide on for the money?
Guest:Well, I'm giving it $5, and from every purchase, a dollar goes to the Bob Woodruff Fund that helps veterans and their families.
Marc:Well, that's fucking awesome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, I mean, I'm excited because...
Guest:I think that I've figured out off of Louis Lee that, you know, to take the commerce out of the purchase.
Guest:It's like, it's a low price.
Guest:You know, this is not about greed.
Guest:A dollar of it's going there.
Guest:I'll make my money back.
Guest:Maybe I'll make a little money.
Guest:But, like, this is not some elaborate plan to get a giant pile of money.
Guest:This is...
Guest:going off of Louis Vliet.
Marc:Yeah, but ultimately what it does do is it gives you a lot of creative control.
Marc:It gives you the experience of producing your own special, of making your own choices, of doing it exactly the way you want to.
Marc:So I think outside of whether it's to make a pile of money or not, that
Marc:or whether or not it's to give a bundle of money to charity, which is wonderful.
Marc:It's just that it's a new way of presenting the artist's work that the artist has complete control over, and I think that's very exciting.
Guest:Yeah, no, it is really exciting, and it's also one of those things where...
Guest:You know when you go on stage, when you haven't been on stage for a while, and there's that fear, but it's the fear that you love?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because that's what I've been feeling for two weeks.
Guest:It's like, I'm confident some people will buy it, but I have no idea.
Guest:In the end, comedians, I think, there's...
Guest:this thrill-seeker kind of risk-taker.
Guest:You know, there's nothing normal about going on stage and making strangers laugh.
Guest:It's very familiar.
Guest:It's a very...
Guest:It's a fun thing.
Guest:It's a scary high.
Marc:No, absolutely.
Marc:And I think that what is amazing about what you're doing and what Louis did, and I think Aziz did it as well, is that it really is a movement towards complete creative freedom with what we do, which I think is fairly unheard of.
Marc:And I'm happy it's happening.
Marc:I'm waiting for somebody to spoil the party.
Marc:I'm waiting for somebody to say that they own the Internet.
Marc:But that hasn't happened yet.
Marc:And in terms of how long did it take you to put together the material?
Guest:Well, Jeannie and I, we wrote it for two years.
Guest:I mean, you know, this is definitely, you know, harvesting the crops of two years.
Marc:Well, that's an incredible bargain for $5.
Marc:See, that's the amazing thing is that you offer something at a good value in a unique way.
Marc:But, you know, you worked fucking hard, and I'm sure it's great.
Marc:Oh, well, thanks.
Marc:so okay so they just go to jimgaffigan.com yeah and you can get it there yeah it's I mean I think you know when I bought it I think it was like three clicks you know it's like click here type in you know I typed in my Amazon and you know there it was all right well well well I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna obviously play this on the podcast and and send some people your way thanks buddy I appreciate it do you feel good about everything that's happened here on the phone
Guest:I feel great about it.
Guest:And I actually, since Grand Rapids, I've been kind of sitting there thinking of what this phone call is going to be like.
Guest:I'm like, how crazy is crazy Marc Maron going to be?
Guest:Is he going to confront me on my laziness or my floppiness?
Guest:Or is he going to be kind of
Guest:you know the the champion of comedians or is he going to be the older brother i've known for fifteen years where we can bond on our anger and what it was what was a i think i think it was the older brother that uh...
Guest:It was two crazy old men talking.
Marc:Yeah, but I'm also thrilled for you, and I hope you do well with this thing, Jim.
Marc:I harbor no contempt towards you, and whatever happened in Grand Rapids, whatever misscheduling that happened and you had to cancel at the last minute,
Marc:That that that anger is all gone.
Marc:I let that go because I know you're busy and and and I and I know that that it was not an intentional thing.
Marc:And I have absolutely no malice towards you whatsoever.
Marc:And I have a great deal of respect for you.
Marc:And I like you.
Marc:And I think you're funny.
Guest:Hey, that's that's the only one that matters.
Marc:And I never say anything bad about you ever.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:The thing that's so great about podcasts, it's like comedians are just sitting there talking.
Guest:And in a way, you know, comedians just end up being the Kardashians of podcasts.
Guest:It's like people are listening, just going, these lunatics.
Marc:I don't know if that's true.
Marc:I mean, okay, so now you're taking a shot at what I'm doing for a living.
Marc:Listen, Jim, you snuck one in on your older brother and you think you didn't notice.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:How's the kids?
Yeah.
Guest:They're multiplying as we speak.
Marc:You have more?
Guest:No, they're great.
Guest:How many have four?
Guest:And, you know, it's great.
Guest:It really is great.
Guest:I mean, it is exhausting and it's...
Guest:It would sound like every cliche you've ever heard, but I would have it no other way.
Marc:Are you calling it quits, though?
Marc:Is this it?
Marc:You done?
Guest:I would say there's... I would not bet I'm done.
Guest:Wow.
I just...
Marc:That's nuts, and you don't even have to do that now, and it's not even part of your religion.
Marc:You're addicted to children.
Marc:I think you should maybe go to a meeting for that.
Guest:No, it's funny.
Guest:You know how there's something about when you go on stage and you say something, and there's a little bit of a shock.
Guest:It's not just saying something irreverent or taboo.
Guest:It's about you say something, and you see a twinkle in someone's eye that...
Guest:you know, there's almost something kind of fun about it.
Guest:That's not the reason why I'm not doing it, but there's almost kind of like, I love kind of a panicked, concerned look when people find out I have four kids.
Guest:It's almost kind of
Guest:We all love to surprise a little bit, right?
Guest:I mean, I love it.
Marc:I thought you were going to go a different direction with that.
Marc:I thought you were going to say that moment where you say something on stage and you see that sparkle in somebody's eye, that you can get that all the time with children.
Marc:And that's why I have to keep having them, because once they get older than 12, that goes away.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:My oldest is seven, and there is something about...
Guest:uh... something so terrifying and overwhelming about children that um...
Guest:You know, you just walk around just, you know, in love, happy, and defeated at the same time and grateful.
Marc:I mean, you know what I mean?
Marc:In love, happy, defeated, and grateful.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that the name of the special?
Marc:Because that should be.
Guest:It's great.
Marc:All right, man.
Marc:Well, I wish you the best of luck with it, and we'll talk soon.
Guest:All right, thanks, buddy.
Guest:I appreciate it.
Marc:You bet, Jim.
Marc:Talk to you later.
Guest:Thanks.
Guest:Bye.
Guest:Bye.
Marc:All right, so you can pull that thing into your face.
Marc:It should just turn around and move.
Marc:Hello.
Guest:Chris Elliott, I'm glad you're here.
Guest:I'm happy to be here.
Guest:Thanks for having me, Mark.
Marc:You're not living here.
Marc:You just came out.
Marc:No, I wouldn't live here.
Marc:Are you crazy?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I think it's good for you.
Guest:Yeah, I understand that.
Guest:I had nowhere else to go.
Guest:Well, no, I know.
Guest:You got kind of run out of New York.
Guest:I did.
Marc:I got ran out of things I invented and actual things ran me away from New York.
Marc:You don't live in New York, though.
Marc:You live in like Connecticut.
Guest:I grew up in New York.
Guest:I live in Connecticut now.
Guest:I live like two hours out of the city.
Marc:That's why I want to ask you, because I'm sort of obsessed with old comedy, and I know your dad is an old comedian, or was an old comedian.
Marc:Is he still with us?
Guest:He's still with us.
Guest:He just turned 89.
Guest:Is he still funny?
Guest:He's funnier than ever at 89.
Guest:It is really amazing that he is so funny at 89.
Guest:He still can do these looks and these takes and say things that just floor you.
Guest:And his brain's good?
Guest:His brain's great.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:He's still doing crossword puzzles and all that.
Guest:I mean, like anybody at 89, things are physically slowing down a little bit, but he can still watch Jeopardy and know all the answers.
Guest:What's amazing about him...
Guest:I gave him for his birthday an old stand-up radio that works and also plays CDs.
Guest:And he put in, you know, he has all this music because he started as a DJ in Boston.
Guest:What year would that be?
Guest:Oh, God, in the 40s, you know, early 40s, you know, playing big band music.
Guest:So he was familiar with that radio because that's what he came out of.
Guest:That's what he came out of.
Guest:And he can listen to the first note of any tune and say, oh, that's Harry James.
Guest:The big band stuff?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Anything from that era.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And, you know, Bing Crosby, who he, you know.
Guest:Do you do brain exercises?
Guest:I'm doing one right now.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Can't you see it moving?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's flexing right now.
Marc:But like crosswords and stuff, I'm starting to worry.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I really don't.
Guest:How's your memory holding up?
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah, and I don't.
Guest:And I don't know.
Guest:That part of my dad's talent, I did not inherit.
Guest:He was always great at building things.
Guest:And I could do that with him.
Guest:I could do the physical side of it.
Guest:But he could figure out the math about how long a board has to be and all that.
Guest:And I just could never do that.
Marc:Well, what are your earliest memories of him actually doing the funny work?
Marc:Did they both hang out at the house?
Guest:What, Ray?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, they slept in the same bed.
Guest:I mean, they were a team.
Guest:They had to be together.
Guest:They had to work on the material at some point.
Marc:And your mom just kind of had a bed down the hall?
Guest:Yeah, and Ray's wife, they slept together in another room.
Guest:Yeah, they all understood how this works.
Guest:Every team does that.
Guest:Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello.
Guest:They all did that.
Guest:You gotta sleep together.
Guest:You gotta do it.
Guest:How are you gonna know what's funny?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, if you don't build that weird dynamic.
Guest:Actually, I don't think my dad saw Ray much.
Guest:But I'm trying to think when I was aware of that he was funny.
Guest:I mean, I was aware around the house that he was funny.
Guest:But I mean, going to the studio.
Guest:But going to the studio, I used to go to the studio, his office in the Graybar building in New York City, the Bob and Ray office was great.
Guest:It was just this huge rambling office.
Guest:He had his accountant there.
Guest:He had his editor there.
Guest:He had an engineer there.
Guest:And they had a full recording set up in their office.
Guest:And back then, that must have been something.
Guest:It was huge.
Guest:Like reel-to-reels and stuff?
Guest:It was reel-to-reels and then this giant sound effects cart machine.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:With these big, I guess, 8-track cart things that you had to push in, and then you pushed a button.
Guest:And I never went to camp or anything in the summer, and he just used to sit me in front of that machine and put headsets on.
Guest:And I would just pull out these sound effects and put them in and just hear, you know, boom, boom, boom.
Guest:and then just play it over and over and punch number six you know 10 different wolfman howls uh you know so they didn't have that plugged in they were just sort of like let the kid yeah let him occupy himself no but to this day people are amazed that i can do like you know fight sound effects with my mouth as well as i can and it's because i spent hours just listening to
Marc:That could have been your act.
Guest:Well, it's actually going to be my second career after I run out of my act.
Guest:Well, don't tell Michael Winslow.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:He's been a human sound effect machine since the 80s.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:But what did you glean or learn about show business at that time?
Marc:Because I have to assume that somehow it defined your sensibility.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, my dad has a very sarcastic sense of humor, and so does my mother, and a cynical view to a degree of show business, which actually Dave Letterman had when I started working for him and has now.
Guest:So it seemed like a perfect fit for me when I worked for Dave.
Guest:But I guess, you know, my dad's, you know, just his sort of attitude about things taught me, you know, that not to take the shit seriously, you know.
Guest:Not only that, but to subtly attack it within its own walls.
Guest:Especially, yeah, in a slightly bitter but all intelligent way, which is basically what I've been doing for, you know.
Guest:In all different forms.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, is attacking show business in a bitter and hopefully slightly intelligent way.
Marc:Well, it deserves it.
Marc:And unfortunately, if that makes money, show business will absorb you anyways.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:He's making fun of us.
Guest:He's making us money.
Guest:I love this kid.
Guest:Yeah, no, it's true.
Guest:I haven't made anybody any money, though.
Guest:Yeah, me neither.
Guest:That's why I'm in my garage.
Guest:This is terrific, though.
Guest:It actually is, you know, it's very well appointed.
Guest:Thank you very much.
Guest:It's a mess.
Guest:You look like a hoarder.
Marc:But no stacker.
I mean, I don't think...
Marc:Hoarding doesn't become hoarding until the stacks.
Marc:You have to climb over stacks to get to other stacks.
Marc:No, Mark, seriously, I think we can, you can do away with, you don't need that, do you?
Guest:With the mail, with the listener mail stack.
Guest:You don't need that.
Guest:No, I do need that.
Guest:You can part with that.
Guest:No, no, there might be some.
Guest:Scale of one to ten.
Guest:No, no, there might be something important in there that somebody wrote to me.
Guest:We're going to be here all day if you do that.
Marc:Oh, I'll throw this other thing away.
Guest:This empty bag that I eat nuts out of, I'll throw it away.
Guest:I feel for those people in that show because everybody, I guess, does have a little bit of that in them.
Guest:That's why people watch it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And after I look at that, I look at what my wife saves and I start to get on her about it.
Guest:And she says, well, yeah, your closets are kind of full too.
Guest:And she's right, but I just didn't see it.
Guest:I'm living with it.
Marc:We're all fighting.
Marc:If you have that personality, you're all fighting that moment where you realize that all of this is just, as I get older, slowly losing its meaning.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And if I were to really take everything out of here that really meant something to me, I would be left with three books.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And I'd have to live with that mark.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I know exactly what you're talking about.
Guest:And I think I do have this idea that, oh, well, someday my house is going to be a museum.
Guest:Do you really, though?
Guest:They're going to have it cordoned off and people are going to walk through and tour it.
Guest:No, it's just your wife going around with a bag.
Marc:Throw that out.
Marc:That's nothing.
Guest:Yeah, no, I know that we can do without a lot of our stuff.
Guest:But, you know, we have sentimental attachments to a lot of plastic lids.
Guest:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:So you're a plastic lid guy.
Marc:No, I still have the bottom to this.
Marc:You might need it.
Marc:The saddest thing about Hoarders is that that show never ends where you feel like, oh, this guy's going to be okay.
Marc:No, I know.
Guest:Ever.
Guest:I know.
Marc:At least with intervention, you know they're going to be in treatment for a month.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, I think they're starting to do follow-ups to that hoarder show now where they go back and they see how they've done.
Guest:Because I think I saw one of those.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's literally like 50-50.
Guest:It's what you expect.
Guest:Some of them are keeping it clean.
Guest:Should we feel bad about watching that shit?
Guest:I don't feel bad about watching that shit.
Guest:No, it's on for me to watch.
Guest:That's all I watch.
Guest:I don't watch any other television.
Guest:I don't watch, you know, I can't watch like, you know, network television.
Guest:Not because some of it isn't good.
Guest:It's just, yeah, it still exists.
Guest:But it's also, it's just like I know a lot of people that are working on it.
Guest:I know I can hear, you know, rewriting lines on sitcoms.
Marc:So it's that weird mixture of resentment and disappointment.
Marc:Resentment, bitterness.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also just like not wanting to be at work.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:Versus like, oh, I'm glad I'm not that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is what people say when they watch me, whenever I do anything.
Marc:That is not true.
Marc:Tremendous amount of respect in the industry from those of us who are bitter and disappointed as well.
Guest:You've done great.
Guest:What do you have to be bitter about?
Guest:You're living your life.
Guest:You're an artist.
Guest:You're out here.
Guest:You play music.
Guest:You're funny.
Guest:And you're doing terrific.
Marc:Yeah, well, I guess that's true.
Marc:I mean, you're happy.
Guest:You seem really happy.
Marc:I'm happier than I was.
Marc:You're a lot happier than when I saw you before.
Marc:Yeah, well, that was probably very early in the morning.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Marc:And I was filled with anger about many things.
Marc:Yeah, no, I'm definitely happier than that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So what, when did you, uh, how did you get to Letterman?
Marc:I mean, what were the first jobs that you had?
Guest:I was a runner.
Guest:I was hired as a runner.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:Like 20?
Guest:21.
Guest:So right out of college?
Guest:I didn't go to college.
Guest:You didn't?
Guest:Which I know is impossible to tell when you're talking to me.
Guest:No, you're wearing, you're wearing college oriented glasses.
Guest:I'm wearing, yes.
Guest:The glasses.
Guest:Brooks Brothers glasses.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Progressives.
Guest:See that?
Guest:Oh, you got the progressives too.
Marc:And what a line of shit they are, aren't they?
Guest:They're a lot of shit, except I like them.
Guest:I don't think I could do with just bifocals.
Guest:And also, my eyes are completely different, too.
Guest:One is way more fucked up than the other one.
Guest:Do you ever get blurry vision?
Guest:Well, yeah, but I caused that.
Guest:It's not really something that just sneaks up on me.
Marc:I pretty much know when I'm going to have it.
Marc:Today, I'm having a problem with my right eye, and I'm just trying to stay away from Googling brain cancer.
Marc:Oh, Jesus.
Guest:That's the goal of my day today.
Marc:Yeah, do it after I leave.
Guest:No, let's do it now, Chris.
Guest:No, I really- I want you to walk me through this.
Marc:I don't want to console you.
Marc:Please hold me.
Marc:Look, all the symptoms mean I have it.
Marc:I don't even need to go to the doctor.
Marc:I'll just go to tell them I have it.
Guest:You're going to be fine.
Marc:Oh, that's a nice thing to say.
Marc:That's all I can muster up for you.
Guest:You didn't go to college?
Guest:You didn't want to?
Guest:No, I hated school.
Guest:I didn't want to go to college.
Guest:Your dad was all right with that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:I'm the last of five kids.
Guest:You didn't want any of us to.
Guest:Actually, I think...
Guest:One of our, my sister, my second oldest sister graduated, but the rest of us, you know, I didn't even try.
Guest:I didn't even, everybody else I think went for a semester and then said- Three out of five went for a semester and then fucked off?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What did they end up doing?
Guest:They're all doing great.
Guest:Two of my sisters are illustrators, one's a yoga teacher, and my brother's had a long career in retail sales and so forth.
Marc:The yoga teacher went through some shit though, right?
Guest:um she went through a number of different jobs yeah i know yoga teacher is always a nice it's almost a spiritual ending to a to a personal search of some kind it's like i'm working and i feel great yeah i think one of the oddest jobs shannon had was like working as a uh um and it wasn't at a it was like an egg farm or something her job was just to collect eggs really yeah
Guest:That's kind of meditative.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Healthy eggs.
Marc:She went from there to... Were they happy chickens?
Guest:Was it a happy chicken place?
Guest:I think they were.
Guest:I think it was a... Is she a happy chicken person?
Guest:She is a happy chicken.
Guest:And that's what led her to yoga.
Guest:I've never done yoga.
Guest:She's once... Obviously, she'd like me to or everybody else to.
Guest:Well, I think you should definitely tape that.
Guest:I don't see any reason why you shouldn't.
Guest:So you tape me doing yoga?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Someone should have a camera in there for you.
Marc:for your first yoga experience, and I think you'll be a YouTube phenomenon.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Especially if you do some of those sound effects during yoga.
Guest:I'm so scared of that.
Guest:I'm scared of stuff that people took footage of me, like, you know, that may, you know, pop up somewhere.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Well, I was talking to somebody the other day.
Guest:I used to do summer stock theater when I was a kid, believe it or not.
Guest:When I was in my teens, I went and I was like apprentice, these summer stock theaters.
Guest:And I went down to this one place in...
Guest:the Outer Banks down in North Carolina, the Lost Colony, this outdoor drama.
Guest:And they had an intern program where you put on plays after the main show at night.
Guest:And we did Equus.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And I was the lead in Equus.
Guest:How old?
Guest:I was, I think, 17, 16.
Guest:So you're playing the kid.
Guest:I was the kid.
Marc:Thank God you weren't playing the doctor.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But the kid gets naked.
Guest:But this was kind of a conservative town we were in, and they didn't allow that.
Guest:So I was in, like, underpants.
Yeah.
Guest:And the girl was in underpants.
Guest:And tighty-whities, not even like boxers.
Guest:And it was outdoors, so I assume they were scared that people were, you know, if we were naked, there'd be people.
Marc:Other 17-year-olds might see you naked.
Guest:Other 17-year-olds, yeah, or elderly people, which would be worse.
Guest:But apparently there had to be photos of that.
Guest:Somebody had to have taken that, and I'm just so scared one day I'm just going to see these pictures of mine.
Guest:It's better if not a video.
Guest:Yeah, well, back then, 76, I don't know.
Guest:No, no, it was very large.
Guest:Yeah, that was a big, bulky thing.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, nothing you could do subtly.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Who's the guy in the front with the equipment the size of a car?
Marc:That's something called a Betamax.
Marc:It's the first one.
Guest:That was actually, yeah.
Guest:No, I, oh, I thought you were talking about me and my underwear.
Guest:No, no, I have no idea what you look like then.
Guest:Were you heavy?
Guest:My equipment, or...
Guest:My equipment lost a little weight.
Guest:Really, usually that tends to gain a little weight as you get older.
Guest:No, it works out.
Guest:Not with you.
Guest:It does yoga.
Marc:Just the equipment.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You act as a yoga instructor.
Guest:I just know when it's happening and I don't pay attention.
Marc:Let it do its own thing.
Guest:It's like, okay, this is going to be an hour.
Marc:I just have to sit down and not go outside.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So how old were you when you went to Letterman?
Guest:I was, uh, 21 when I got that job and, uh, uh, he was using me sort of right away.
Guest:He was, and I was a runner, but he, he, uh, he put me on television.
Guest:I think like the first show I was on and, uh, his first show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The first, uh, right when he got, right when he got the, yeah, he did like a tour of the studio and he went into the control room and there was like an Oktoberfest going on in the control room.
Guest:I was in Ledehosen and drinking a big beer and, and, uh,
Guest:He took a shine to me early on, and like me, I was goofy-looking and silly.
Guest:Did he know your dad?
Guest:And he was a fan of my dad's, for sure.
Guest:Did he talk to you about that?
Guest:Yeah, well, I did meet him before I went to Letterman.
Guest:It's a story I've told, but it is true.
Guest:I was a tour guide at Rockefeller Center, and he came up to the observation deck, and I started just blabbing about who my dad was to him right away.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's funny because he said to me, well, you know, it's interesting because we've always whenever I've subbed for Johnny, I always want to try to get Bob and Ray on.
Guest:And for some reason, I just said to him, yeah, well, my dad doesn't do the Tonight Show unless Johnny's hosting.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:And I just kind of like brush that off.
Guest:But apparently remembered me when I went and got hired.
Marc:Your memories of him, though, he's become sort of odd in terms of what gets out and what gets in over there.
Marc:Most people I know who I talk to who work on the show currently, they're like, oh, no, he's over there.
Marc:Like he seems almost inaccessible.
Guest:I think that's probably inevitable with that kind of success and that amount of time with that kind of show and the turnover.
Guest:I mean, people do go there and then leave on their own for their own reasons.
Marc:But I mean, initially, when the show was first starting, I mean, how engaged was he with the creative process and with the writers?
Guest:He was engaged.
Guest:It was a smaller group of people, so it was hard for him to avoid, you know, being engaged.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there was... You know, we were in small offices up on the 14th floor.
Guest:You were up there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You remember that.
Guest:And, you know, I do remember him taking me out to breakfast once, and it was...
Guest:I felt like an idiot because he asked me.
Guest:It was like the second week I was there.
Guest:And he said he was staying at a hotel, him and Merrill Marco, that was near where I was still living with my parents.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In the city?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was saying, do you want to go to this coffee shop for breakfast?
Guest:And I thought he was busting on me.
Guest:And I was like, oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'll be there.
Guest:What time?
Guest:830?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he walked out that day, and I was manning the desks at the front, and he said, so we're going to show you tomorrow, right?
Guest:And I was like, yes, sure.
Guest:And that morning I woke up, and I was thinking, well, I don't know.
Guest:And I went to the coffee shop, and he wasn't there.
Guest:And I went, eh, I'm just such a moron.
Guest:And I sat down, and then I looked up, and there was Dave and Merrill, and they walked in and sat down, and he...
Guest:He brought me into that fold pretty comfortably.
Guest:He really liked me, I guess.
Marc:How long were you just that guy before you became sort of a writer and performer on it regularly?
Guest:Well, I think I'm still that guy, though.
Guest:Even though I was a writer, I wrote stuff for him, but in general, I was always writing for myself and always trying to figure out what could I do on the show next.
Guest:Because once I got a laugh,
Guest:that i sort of wrote it was suddenly like oh that's kind of you know cooler to me than hearing somebody else do it and right so you just tried to get yourself into as many character sketches as possible yeah or my own i mean he was giving me my own spotlight every week he was letting me come out and do my own thing he was calling me chris elliott he was saying now another visit from chris elliott or here's another running character from our right
Guest:our friend Chris Elliott, but the whole act with me was that I'm this sort of slightly deranged staff member who's, you know, is desperate to be famous and has absolutely no talent.
Guest:Disgruntled.
Guest:And is disgruntled and bitter about his fame.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:And, but there is, you know, there was a little truth to that.
Guest:I certainly, I think I had talent, but I was certainly inexperienced.
Guest:I had no idea what I was doing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, you know, it fit perfectly.
Guest:I remember the guy on the floor the best.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, the guy in his seat was, that's going back, but.
Marc:But that attitude, just sort of like that fuck it all kind of disposition was so fucking funny.
Marc:Well, he liked that.
Guest:Because he laughed at it.
Guest:Yeah, and I was kind of that way with him up in the office sometimes.
Guest:He'd just try to joke with me, and I'd just say, oh, I guess that's funny.
Guest:you know nobody else was doing that was there an awareness so that you guys were like hot rodding that that style of late night show that was there a compulsion to to kind of take it to a you know a place that's never been did you feel that or were you just kind of having i felt that to a degree with uh the stuff i was doing right and and i guess to a degree some of the stuff that i was writing for dave you know it was always we always tried to do something big for the sweeps period like some sort of theme show which i love doing you know like the christmas with the letterman show or the uh
Guest:uh, uh, reverse image show or whatever, you know, we did like these sort of silly theme shows and that, that seemed to be pushing that a little bit.
Guest:And, and the, the thing that was so comfortable for me on that show right away was that it was making fun of show business, even though it was sort of like a real Fernwood tonight.
Guest:It was actually making fun of what it was and,
Guest:And and that just felt perfect for what I was doing, because I came out and made fun of sort of running characters on other shows.
Guest:And right.
Marc:Were you aware of like Ernie Kovacs and that kind of stuff?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, he of course he was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I mean, and absolutely.
Guest:And Steve Allen, for sure.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and he had a number of little running characters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was amazed at how much some of that early stuff that I did was sort of like my dad's stuff.
Guest:You know, when he was like really young and him and Ray used to do stuff on the Ed Sullivan show where suddenly my dad's popping up in the audience with a mustache and a wig on, you know.
Guest:And it's not like the Bob and Ray stuff that you sort of think of them for doing the sit down interview.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Straight lace button down kind of humor.
Marc:They used to do wacky shit.
Marc:They were doing wacky.
Guest:wacky stuff watching that stuff on tv i don't remember seeing it when it was on i did see like after i had started doing stuff i went to the museum of broadcasting for a bob and ray retrospective and suddenly saw all this stuff and i was like well well that's where this is coming from with me yeah obviously yeah oh that's and then the writers at late night that that you know worked with me and he was so like i remember like i was on board with that stuff like right when it started i was in college i think
Marc:And his tone and what was going on, you really felt like you were watching, like, you know, this is like completely fucking new television.
Guest:And there was nothing else like it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Well, also his attitude.
Marc:I mean, you know, the edge that he had that he brought to interviews, it was sort of like, well, we don't care about that.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:Like he would actually say that to people.
Marc:There's one moment that happened.
Marc:in my mind and i and i'd like to believe it's real because of the way i remember it but he had some guy on there that wrote a book who had found god he'd been involved with the mob right right and he and i guess in the book you know he had talked you know in a vague way about hits he was involved in yeah and uh he started going on about how you know he was uh you know he'd found god or that he's a different man now and dave was like we don't care about that tell us about the people you killed
Guest:i vaguely remember that too that's it's real that's he was real and and is i think i mean it's i always like sort of you because i would rehearse stuff with dave you always knew and the home audience knew if he was in a bad mood or if he was in a good mood that day and he never bothered really trying to hide that it was like but he was professional in the sense that he would go through the show and it would be just as funny but there were nights when he was more grumpy than other nights right and uh
Guest:I guess that's why people loved it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was just completely honest.
Marc:But he was always like a pretty responsible or he cared about the craft of broadcasting.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:That's like the difference between like, you know, when I watch Jay Leno, it's just this never ending tumbling car.
Marc:Like, you know, just something that's spinning in slow motion.
Marc:But like, you know, when you watch Dave, everything's like crisp and clean.
Guest:Right.
Marc:He's like, he knows how to hold a camera.
Marc:He delivers well.
Marc:Like he's a very proficient and professional broadcaster.
Guest:And he was always that way.
Guest:As soon as he was late night, he was like that.
Guest:He respected.
Guest:It's like he had been in that business forever.
Guest:He respected the elders in the business.
Guest:Even though he made fun of, you know, some of them to a degree.
Guest:But he felt that, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, he definitely knew where it came from and how he got there too.
Guest:I mean, he had been a weatherman for a long time too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I love that.
Marc:When I do watch him, I still notice that, that there's just such a refined nature to his technique of podcasting.
Guest:Yeah, and part of it was even like, you know, the way he was dressed, you know, that he was like, you know, in a suit.
Guest:I think the early, we did a couple of shakedown shows.
Guest:And sneakers though, right?
Guest:Didn't he wear a suit and sneakers?
Guest:Yeah, and wrestling shoes.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And he did, you know, his early shows, he wore a sweater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember Meryl Marco, I think, was the one who said he should wear a tie.
Guest:And she told me that, you know, he can get away with more if he's, you know, wearing a tie and a jacket and looks more preppy and straight laced.
Guest:And he was right.
Marc:Do you still talk to him?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, between, you know, commercial breaks, if I just did the show last week.
Guest:Oh, you did?
Guest:Yeah, so, you know, it's... What's that like?
Marc:Is it touching?
Marc:I mean, are you touching each other, but do you find, like, there's an emotional component to it or the history that you have?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I mean, and I think he does.
Guest:I think there's a slight, you know, nostalgic thing here that goes on when we do, we get together.
Guest:I don't, he doesn't, we don't chat.
Guest:I don't see him outside the show.
Guest:Oh, you don't, yeah.
Guest:No, but I...
Guest:I mean, it's basically like we were showing a pre-tip and it's like, how's your family?
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:How's your family, you know, and all that.
Guest:But I know just from what he says on air about me, whether it's in the intro or after I've done my little bit, you know, that it means something to him to see me every now and then.
Marc:Well, I think he's gotten, like, to me, since the heart operation, he's gotten visibly more emotional.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and that would make sense.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Yeah, he's definitely involved.
Marc:You have to surgically open your heart.
Guest:At least someone did it for you, but it's open now.
Guest:I remember in the early days of late night, I remember he would get guest lists of who's coming up, and I remember one of the guests was Treat Williams, and he crossed him off, and somebody in the talent department said, why Treat Williams?
Guest:And he said, well, I'm never going to have anybody on my show named Treat.
Yeah.
Guest:But he's evolved and softened and Tree Williams has been on the show.
Guest:So, you know, he's changed that.
Marc:Thank God he jumped that quirky hurdle.
Marc:So what happened right after the Letterman show?
Marc:I went and did Get a Life.
Marc:Now, this is a question I got to ask for you because, like, it seems that that show was, like, way the fuck ahead of its time.
Marc:Oh, that's nice to hear.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I think it was part of a wave of comedy that it was part of.
Guest:I don't know that it started a wave of comedy or anything like that.
Guest:I think that it was...
Marc:But it seems to me that if that show existed now, given the success of Arrested Development, Tim and Eric, that there are these precedents set.
Guest:Arrested Development was actually a working title for Get a Life.
Guest:It was one of my ideas for a title.
Guest:Yeah, years ago.
Guest:And then Get a Life came up.
Guest:I had heard Joan Rivers say Get a Life to somebody.
Guest:I thought, oh, that actually fits perfectly.
Guest:How many episodes did you do?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think we did... Well, we did 22 the first season, maybe, and half of that, I guess, the next season.
Guest:And what happened with it?
Guest:Did it just...
Guest:Um, I think it was just one of those things.
Guest:It was not what Fox wanted initially.
Guest:They, I think they smelled a bait and switch to a degree.
Guest:We were doing a show that was really, you know, um, not a traditional sitcom.
Guest:It was making fun of itself.
Guest:It was making fun of the genre.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember being in an early Fox meeting where, you know, they said, you know, we really want the next Cosby show, you know, and they were looking at me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was saying, well, who better?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm your man.
Guest:And, uh, Adam Resnick, Dave Merkin, and myself, uh, did this show that, you know, the pilot, it's interesting.
Guest:If you watch the pilot, it's a little bit more, uh, mainstream, even though I'm still being an idiot in it.
Guest:Um, and, but then once that first episode came out of the gate, which was, uh, the, um, male model episode, that really sort of just said what the show was going to be.
Guest:And it was basically a fuck you to, you know, the world sitcoms.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But they ran with it for 22, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, and I, you know, it did well.
Guest:It did well ratings wise for them in terms of new shows and all that.
Guest:I think it just was like one of those things where there was a change in the, and this usually happens in the hierarchy at Fox and the executives and the person coming in.
Guest:I have a feeling I made, I crossed the wrong person or something and who knows.
Guest:Yeah, but you can't put a, you can't put your finger on it exactly, but.
Guest:My suspicion is some guy I remember was pitching like some promo ideas early on for Get A Life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the ideas were horrendous.
Guest:They were all like fast motion like Keystone Cops ideas with goofy Benny Hill music in the background.
Guest:And I remember like just making fart noises in the background on the phone.
Guest:Yeah, no, that's a great idea.
Yeah.
Guest:And making the writers laugh.
Guest:And this poor guy was tap dancing and trying his hardest to sell me on something.
Guest:And I think he actually moved into the position of being in charge of the show.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:I wonder how many careers have been dashed by making writers laugh.
Marc:Making fart noses.
Guest:Just like playing to the guys that are that requires so much darkness to laugh.
Guest:It's either that or it's that, you know, years ago, I remember when I was a kid, my parents were selling their townhouse and Roy Cohn came to see it on a Sunday and unannounced and just knocked on the door.
Guest:The famous lawyer.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:The famous, brutal, closeted gay lawyer.
Guest:who was notorious for vendettas and holding grudges and all that.
Guest:And he knocked on the door and said, I want to come in and see your house.
Guest:And my mother said, well, it's not showing today.
Guest:And he said, well, don't you want to sell it?
Guest:And my mother, you know, bless her heart, said never on Sunday and slammed the door in his face.
Guest:I guess never on Sunday was kind of a popular phrase back then.
Guest:Right, it was.
Guest:And...
Guest:I've always had the suspicion that somehow Roy Cohn has fucked up my career ever since then.
Guest:And he may have had something to do with Get a Life.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Well, I mean, I think his tentacles probably spread out pretty far.
Guest:He probably said, watch that kid.
Guest:He's five years old now.
Marc:You know what's scary about that whole train of thought is that you start to realize as you get older is that there is a pretty small crew of people and different businesses that actually do know each other and could squash you like a fucking bug.
Guest:I am amazed to this day, and I'm still putting my foot in my mouth.
Guest:I'm amazed at what I say to people that comes back to haunt me.
Guest:Like what?
Well...
Guest:You're going to hear some shit about you.
Guest:Really?
Guest:In the future?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I've just, I'm amazed at what you just said, how small the community is.
Guest:And it's getting smaller.
Guest:I mean, everybody, I live in Connecticut.
Guest:I don't know anybody really anymore, but like my daughters are both in the business and they know everybody.
Guest:Everybody knows everybody now.
Guest:It's weird, right?
Marc:It is weird.
Marc:I think that has to do with technology, though, too.
Marc:I don't know if the business is getting smaller, but people are more accessible.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like between Twitter and Facebook and people wanting to be part of that.
Marc:Older people are like, what is this Twitter?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And all of a sudden, Lorne Michaels is like, you know, he's not on there.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But you know what I'm saying.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I'm not on there.
Guest:You don't have to be.
Guest:Everybody's telling me I should, you know.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:But that just seems like work to me.
Guest:It seems like I got to write jokes in the morning.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And I don't want to do that.
Marc:And then the risk is that you get addicted to it because then you get like you want to see the feedback.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:It's all very immediate.
Marc:And then you can end up like me and spend three hours.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I like, you know, I torment over the stuff that I write, you know, my daughter Bridie has a really has a popular Twitter account and people follow her and she's really funny and I'm amazed.
Guest:I watch it and I just like, oh, my God, that's great.
Guest:How did she come up with that?
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and then suddenly there's another thing there, you know, just stream of thought consciousness stuff that she's thought of.
Marc:do you think that get a life like i i have to assume that because of the you know you've been in a lot of movies and you've you've been you're very specific comedic talent uh that's uniquely yours that i have to assume that people have had have paid you some respect like younger people that have come up have you gotten gratitude for that have people said definitely definitely and i mean i mean it's
Guest:At a point now where, like, this show that I'm doing on Adult Swim, Eagle Heart, is written by, you know, three guys, Jason Walliner, Michael Komen, and Andrew Weinberg, who were all fans of mine and kind of grew up with me.
Guest:So they know your shit.
Guest:They know my shit, and they can write for me perfectly.
Guest:They have my voice down, and it's funny to me because I start, you know, dealing with them like, oh, well, we're contemporaries.
Guest:Like, you know, I'm hanging out with them like I was hanging out with the writers back at Late Night, you know, and then suddenly I realized, oh, wait, these guys are, like, in their 20s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:I'm 51 here.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And Get a Life had a lot to do with that.
Guest:That and the stuff at Letterman, I think.
Marc:Right, because they appreciated it.
Marc:I'm sure when it got taken off, they were like, those fuckers don't know anything.
Guest:This is the best show in the world.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Eagleheart is basically like a Chuck Norris.
Guest:Well, no, I mean, they wrote a pilot that was kind of a Chuck Norris parody of like Walker, Texas Ranger.
Guest:But then I got involved with they couldn't find the Chuck Norris guy.
Guest:And of course, you know, I don't know why they didn't think of me first, but.
Guest:I came in to do it, and then when I got involved, they sort of changed it, and the show suddenly became this very surreal, violent action comedy that the Chuck Norris aspect is just a jumping-off point.
Guest:I don't even really look like him anymore.
Guest:It's sort of more or less like, okay, we'll package it under that.
Guest:Just a vehicle for... For them to take the stories anywhere they want, and for me and... Macabre slapstick.
Guest:Brett Gelman and Maria Therod act like total morons in the whole thing.
Guest:And this is season two now?
Guest:Yeah, season two starts April 12th, and the DVDs come out on the 3rd.
Guest:How long are each episode?
Guest:Each episode is 15 minutes.
Guest:That's great, right?
Guest:It is really fun, actually.
Guest:I mean, it's like my dad used to have an old 20-minute show on NBC, and it is fun.
Guest:And for me, I think it's actually the perfect amount of time for me to be on the air.
Guest:for anybody to sit through me.
Marc:But it's almost like an extended, it becomes more of a, it's tighter and it's more of a sketch sensibility, I would imagine.
Guest:Yeah, well, you know, and what I used to do on Letterman, I used to do, you know, film or tape pieces every now and then that were like five minutes long, so this is not that much longer, and it feels just right to me.
Marc:And it seems like Adult Swim definitely has a built-in audience, and they definitely give creative people a lot more freedom than any other.
Marc:Oh, you couldn't do this show anywhere else.
Guest:Ever, right.
Guest:There's no place...
Guest:Ever, yeah.
Guest:And are people loving it, or what?
Guest:It seems to have quite a following, which is good.
Guest:I guess it did really well last season, and we're hoping it'll do the same this season.
Guest:But yeah, Adult Swim, they were fans of mine as well.
Guest:I do sometimes feel like kind of an elder statesman, and I have to...
Guest:you know realize that well i am old i'm 51 now and you know it's in this business doing what i do it that is but you've never really stopped i mean were there ever times where you're like i'm fucked yeah are you kidding no i'm not kidding well right now
Guest:No, you're good.
Guest:This is good.
Guest:No, I meant this interview.
Guest:I know what you meant.
Guest:No, right after Cabin Boy, I thought I was fucked.
Guest:I thought, oh, okay, that's how that happens.
Guest:What happened?
Marc:I know you probably told that story a million times, but how did that all come together?
Guest:Well, I mean, Tim Burton had seen an episode of Get a Life, specifically the one where I build a submarine and get stuck in my shower with it, a home submarine.
Guest:And he had me and Adam Resnick come in and told us he wanted to do kind of a Pee Wee's Big Adventure for the 90s.
Guest:And we pitched a Captain's Courageous idea, which I had always wanted to do kind of a parody of Captain's Courageous.
Guest:But Adam and I both knew, well, if Tim Burton's going to direct it, we've got to put it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Creatures in it or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Something creepy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we said with like Ray Harryhausen creatures.
Guest:So we'll have claymation and stop motion animation and whatever.
Guest:So you can have fun too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you can play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he loved it.
Guest:He loved the script.
Guest:And then the last minute decided he wanted to do Ed Wood instead and suggested Adam direct it.
Guest:And so he went to do Ed Wood.
Guest:He did take a number of his creative team in terms of special effects with him.
Guest:so you got hung out to dry by the by the director attached oh when it came out we i felt like we were totally hung out to dry yeah there was no explanation of what it was i vaguely remember commercials and they were sort of like what is that well look yeah well i mean it they did you know it was too wide a release for that kind of film it was a short film and uh a small film really you know when you look at it has to have its fans it has a following yeah i know isn't that amazing
Guest:nobody's more amazed than me no but i mean that we live in a world where people can find it like you can still get it and it still grows and right it's one of those things where it's like if he's doing this and the dude's like no oh dude yeah like yeah you're one of those guys but i have to admit i never thought it was a bad movie i always thought oh this is a good movie they're you know flawed for sure but i thought oh well this is a weird funny movie it's not what you normally see why did you think it was going to be a career killer
Guest:Well, it was vilified by the press for one thing for the reviews for the most part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And literally the phone stopped ringing.
Guest:I mean, that was the first time in my career.
Guest:I think I was so ignorant.
Guest:You know, I don't get a life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were canceled, but we were already in production for cabin boy.
Guest:So it didn't bother me that much.
Guest:um i had done eight years at working for dave then i did get a life then i had my own movie and i think honestly i was thinking well i'm going to do boy two three and four after this and uh or or at least something else i think i was so dumb that i just thought well if it doesn't work they'll still let me do another movie right that ain't that ain't how it works right so how but like in that like how long did the phones not ring really i mean was there a period of like desperation
Guest:It was a little frightening.
Guest:It was a little like, oh, no one wants to hear a pitch right now.
Guest:No one wants to hear this or that.
Guest:Because he had stink on you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, a couple of years later, you know, there were already people that were fans of Get a Life were moving into positions where they wanted to see me.
Guest:You were re-understood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there were, right from the start, fans of Cabin Boy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, were behind me.
Guest:So the kids came to the rescue again, the fans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah the fans did and saturday night live that was why i we were out in la and that's when i uh when cabin boy opened that's when i uh uh embalmed and and i didn't have any work that's that's when i decided to do snl and they were nice enough to offer me that year coincidentally to come and do the show and i and i talked to a lot of snl people here and i i think you have talked about it publicly a bit but i haven't heard it
Marc:Um, I, I've not yet been able to find somebody to, to give me even a slightly disturbing vision of, of Lauren Michaels.
Marc:I, I find that everyone I talked to is like, Lauren's wonderful.
Marc:And I don't know why I'm searching for that.
Marc:I have some personal, I need to talk to Lauren personally.
Marc:What was your, you've met him, haven't you?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I was, I, he made me, I jumped through the hoops to get on the show and I had that encounter, you know, where it was very awkward, but I, I, you're bitter.
Marc:Yeah, no, and I've got a little bit of bitterness.
Marc:I don't know that I could have handled doing the show at the time that I was jumping into those hoops or how I fucked it up, but I think there's part of me that wants to sit down with Lauren again and go, how did I fuck that up and what was going on?
Guest:Well, he has an aura about him that you want to be in his camp.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he has that thing that makes you want to be under his wing.
Guest:And if you are under his wing, he's very good to you.
Guest:And he was always, I got to say, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but he was always really nice to me before I ever went there because he was a fan of my dad's.
Guest:He knew my dad.
Guest:He enjoyed late night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:but he was always very supportive of me and i was i was telling somebody this the other day i look back on it and i'm amazed all those guys were chevy chase was really supportive of me yeah and really sweet to me and really like you know what you're doing is really funny maybe you want to go upstairs you know one of these days meaning to snl you know and i had a couple of opportunities to go there and uh i stayed at late night because dave was giving me my own you know format there yeah yeah
Guest:And by the time I went to Saturday Night Live, it was the wrong time for me.
Guest:I was just, I had done Cabin Boy.
Guest:I had done Get a Life.
Guest:I had, you know, I wasn't ready to go at that point.
Guest:I didn't have the eye of the tiger.
Guest:Well, you were right, because you thought you had already arrived and that was taken away from you.
Guest:It really has to be your first job, I think.
Guest:It has to be your first job.
Guest:You have to be hungry.
Guest:You have to not really know what working on a sitcom schedule is like.
Guest:Right, and your confidence had been shattered.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My confidence was shattered when I went there.
Guest:And I but I was also what I realized is that I had established myself as a guy who makes fun of himself whenever he's on television.
Guest:And even if I'm doing an impersonation of Marv Albert or Morton Downey Jr.
Guest:or Marlon Brando, it's Chris Elliott doing this impersonation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And.
Guest:You can't do that on SNL.
Guest:You have to live the incarnation of whatever character you're doing.
Marc:It was an odd cast, wasn't it?
Guest:It was a huge cast, and it was sort of the last year that Adam Sandler was there, Chris Farley, David Spade.
Guest:So it was you, Garofalo, Spade.
Guest:They brought me and Jalene in, added us to an already large cast that included, you know, Jay Moore and just a lot of like those people.
Guest:A lot of people.
Marc:That was like that first year where it's like, just keep being like where the credits went on forever and featuring.
Guest:And I was amazed that, you know, you know,
Guest:Even the stars of the show at that point, which were Adam Sandler and David Spade and Farley and those guys, that there was still sort of a, I don't know, a competition, I guess, to get on the air.
Guest:With that many people, you have to be.
Guest:But that's something I was not used to because I had my own TV show and my own little spot on Letterman.
Guest:I was never in competition with anybody for anything.
Guest:So you had to align yourself with a writer or write stuff to try to get on?
Guest:And that was another thing.
Guest:I didn't want to write anything.
Guest:I thought, well, I wasn't hired as a writer.
Guest:There's a staff of writers here.
Guest:I'll come up with an idea, but I'm not going to stay here all night working on it.
Guest:And I didn't.
Guest:So, I mean, whatever... It was a lackluster year for me there.
Guest:You were only there a year?
Guest:Only there a year.
Guest:I was going to...
Guest:there was talk offer to come back and do uh uh update bits once a week right which probably would have been right for me to do but i think at that at that point i was ready to move on um but um uh i felt uh it like it was totally my fault that oh i realized i can't do i can't break the fourth wall like i was always doing at letterman on this was there ever a point where you're like how come lauren's not helping me out
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I think I probably went up to his office a few times and told him, I think I suck here.
Guest:You know, this is horrible.
Guest:And he's always very supportive and just said, no, no, you're doing fine.
Guest:You know, it's fine.
Guest:It's a tough thing.
Guest:And I always enjoyed his company.
Guest:He has great stories.
Guest:I used to like listen to his stories.
Guest:I'll tell you one thing about him.
Guest:I first met him years ago when my dad got me an interview when I was like 18.
Guest:I was working as a tour guide at Rockefeller Center and he got me an interview...
Guest:with lauren and i was just going to try to be like an extra on saturday night live right and i remember he uh the appointment was for like two in the afternoon i showed up and they sat me in studio 8h and they said okay lauren will be with you in a little while and it was like eight hours before i was called up to his office
Guest:And when I was called up to his office, though, people just brought me in and sat me down in front of his desk.
Guest:He was sitting there drinking a tab and the room was filled with people.
Guest:And everybody was somebody was opening a present and everybody was singing happy birthday.
Guest:Gilda Radner was in the room and Lorraine Newman.
Guest:Uh huh.
Guest:And I sang happy birthday to this person.
Guest:And one thing that's really nerdy, I remember like getting dressed up the way I thought I should look for Saturday Night Live, which was my, you know, this stupid 17 year old kid.
Guest:My dad had done some commercials for Goodyear.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And yeah.
Guest:They had given him a Goodyear, not a blazer, like a windbreaker.
Guest:So I wore that over like a Hawaiian shirt that I thought, okay, this will be cool.
Guest:This will pop.
Guest:Yeah, and some horrible big baseball cap that was too big for my tiny head.
Guest:And I'm sitting there and, you know, like after...
Guest:I don't know, literally like a half an hour of just like watching these people talk to each other.
Guest:I just heard Lauren just say, so Chris, what can I do for you?
Guest:And I just said, oh, well, I'd like to maybe be an extra on the show sometime.
Guest:And he said, well, that's no problem.
Guest:And I went, okay, should I go now?
Guest:And somebody gently took my arm and ushered me out of the room again.
Marc:Did you ever do it?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:You never went back?
Guest:I never got called to be an ex-ron.
Guest:I was just a kid.
Guest:There wasn't a lot of call for that, I guess.
Marc:It's so kind of cool that even though your dad is who he is, you had all this great comedic talent, so it must have felt good not to... It opened all these doors, but you could deliver, and you kind of knew that.
Guest:Well, I didn't know it then.
Guest:I didn't know it then.
Guest:I mean, I honestly fell into, you know, making Dave laugh.
Guest:I, you know, I had made people laugh, you know, when I was younger and so forth.
Guest:But I, you know, I had no, I had no game plan.
Guest:I had no, you know, I didn't map out what it is I do.
Guest:Oh, I'm going to do this kind of surreal stuff where I'm making fun of myself and doing, you know.
Guest:That happened naturally.
Marc:That just happened naturally.
Marc:And that's sort of what people, you know, use you for.
Marc:I mean, like that scene, what was it in the thing about Mary?
Marc:Was that the one where you had the facial rash?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Jesus Christ.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I mean, that's very memorable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, was that your thing?
Guest:I did come up with the rashes.
Guest:I remember when I met with Peter and Bobby fairly, I remember saying, you know, that script was so funny, right?
Guest:I didn't need the rashes.
Guest:I just wanted to feel like I added something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:What if I just my rashes, I have rashes and they get worse and worse as the, uh, the, and then Peter, I think came up with the actual boil on my eye at the end.
Guest:Those guys were, were so funny.
Guest:They were great.
Guest:And they, and, and still are.
Guest:I mean, I don't, I don't really, I'm not in touch with them, but, uh, that was just, that's movie holds up.
Guest:You know, you see that movie and Kingpin, you know, I see that movie.
Guest:It's just like really funny too.
Guest:Bill Murray is just insane.
Guest:Did you know him?
Guest:Um,
Guest:I, you know, that same night that I was waiting for Lorne Michaels, I saw him come in and rehearse.
Guest:And it was funny because everybody that everybody was waiting for him and looking for him over the PA system.
Guest:They're saying, where's Billy?
Guest:Where's Billy?
Guest:You know, and suddenly and this is my memory of it.
Guest:And I admit my memory may have.
Guest:changed a little bit but i remember him the elevator doors opening and him coming out with two babes on either arm and a bottle of jack daniels in one hand and he stumbled into the stage walked over to where he had to be and then flawlessly did his little commercial parody uh or whatever it was rehearsed it perfectly that's a good way to remember and then stumbled out
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was the first time I sort of saw him.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I met him for the first time at Letterman, and then I auditioned for Scrooge, I remember, and he read with me, and I met him there.
Guest:Were you in that movie?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, Bobcat Goldthwait got the role.
Guest:Got the role.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then I was in Groundhog Day with Murray.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then Osmosis Jones and...
Marc:I'm trying to think was there anything else I can't remember but I knew I was with Brian I had done you know work with his brother quite a bit he's funny too yeah he's great there's it feels like like whenever I hear people talk about that era of SNL like there was definitely like it almost sounds as if there was a party going on all the time and and yeah and I'd like to think that there was but was there really I mean would you remember it well like you know when I was there was a little more sedate already it wasn't nobody like when you went there in the 70s because I went to I eat like my dad did the show once
Guest:You know, that he did like this Bob and Ray, Lorraine, Jane and Gilch special.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I do remember even then, and I think I was like, I don't know, 17 when he did that.
Guest:And I remember going upstairs and there was a huge party going on up there.
Guest:And it was odd to see Bob and Ray in the midst of this party.
Guest:And even at 17, I knew what was going on behind somebody else's office.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was being smoked or toked or snorted.
Guest:And my dad, it's funny, my dad just never knew that.
Marc:He just never registered it?
Guest:No.
Guest:These kids are having fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He just sort of found that out a few years ago.
Guest:He said, I can't believe how they got all that stuff done if they were all stoned.
Guest:It's kind of amazing, isn't it?
Guest:It is amazing.
Guest:I mean, I can't work like that.
Marc:Because I remember going there.
Marc:Someone I had gone to camp with, his dad, was some executive at NBC and some other department.
Marc:And I wanted to meet John Belushi.
Marc:And I think I must have been 14.
Marc:And I went up to the offices.
Marc:It was all set up.
Marc:I went up with my grandmother.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, uh, and I waited and then Al Franken came out and he had the big sort of Jew for Oh, and he was just giggling.
Marc:He's like, yeah, John's really busy right now.
Marc:And I was very disappointed, but it was clear.
Guest:But you knew why he was busy.
Marc:Now I do.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, who knows if he was even there or awake or what, but they sent Franken out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's really busy right now.
Marc:He can't make it up.
Guest:No, I think Tom Davis actually clued my dad into what was going on in those years, and my dad was just really surprised.
Marc:He's still around there, isn't he, Tom Davis?
Marc:Not at SNL, no.
Marc:Was he around when you were there?
Guest:Tom, no.
Guest:Al was there.
Guest:Was he?
Guest:Oh, he was back?
Guest:And I worked with Al a little bit on some stuff.
Guest:He's so fucking funny.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:He's so fucking funny.
Marc:I worked with him on Air America.
Marc:There's some part of me that's sort of like, I'm glad he's a senator and everything, but God, he's...
Marc:Like, when he put his mind to it, he was funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, and he should be a senator, though, because I remember one of the amazing talents that he had is he could draw a map of the United States and draw the borders between all the states perfectly.
Guest:That qualifies.
Guest:He could do it on a cocktail napkin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was always amazing.
Marc:Yeah, no, I think he's a great senator.
Marc:He's a good guy.
Marc:But I always got a kick at him.
Marc:He's got a very weird sense of humor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but he was a huge fan of my dad's.
Guest:They all grew up with your dad.
Guest:They did all grow up with him, and Bill Murray was.
Guest:Bill Murray introduced them when they did the Bob and Ray, Lorraine, Gilda, and Jane show, which is a hilarious show.
Guest:I mean, that's just a great show.
Guest:It's the one where Bob and Ray like sing, If You Think I'm Sexy.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And I was at that show.
Guest:I was in the audience, and it was just so much fun.
Marc:Did you grow up with all the black and white pictures of your dad and stars?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Ed Sullivan?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My mother had a hallway full of those framed black and whites, which was a thing to do back then in New York.
Guest:I grew up in a townhouse in New York City.
Guest:And it was a thing to do.
Guest:You put that stuff up.
Guest:I used to have hours just staring at those things.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It's like the history of modern show business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there are a lot of photos from their TV show where Audrey Meadows was first on it and then Cloris Leachman took over because Audrey went to do The Honeymooners.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Or was it Jane?
Guest:Which one did The Honeymooners?
Marc:It was Jane Meadows.
Marc:Jane Meadows, yeah.
Marc:Were they sisters?
Marc:They were sisters, yeah.
Marc:Oh, I think it was Jay Meadows.
Marc:Now we're both... Did you ever meet Jackie Gleason?
Marc:No, I never met Jackie Gleason.
Marc:Your folks probably did, right?
Guest:I think my dad did.
Guest:I mean, their sphere of friends were more kind of in the literary world to a degree.
Guest:Not that my dad... Only because, I guess, you know, it was like...
Guest:You know, people like Art Buchwald or Henry Morgan and those kind of people, you know, kind of Dick Cavett, you know.
Marc:Well now, OK, so your experience at SNL was not it may have been miserable, but you blame yourself for the most part.
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:I mean, it wasn't it was what it is.
Guest:And that show has always run the same way.
Guest:So it's you know.
Guest:It's the kind of show where some days you have just great days, and then other days you just are in the depths of depression.
Guest:Well, now your daughter's on it.
Guest:Yeah, and she's experienced that as well, and she's been on it a lot longer than me.
Guest:This is her fourth season.
Guest:But when she was taking that job, I mean, was there a sit-down?
Guest:The only thing I said to her was that you don't have to take it.
Guest:That was the only thing.
Guest:I mean, which I think is actually the best advice I could have given her is just like, just think it through.
Guest:You don't have to do this.
Guest:You can do, you will do other things.
Guest:There are other opportunities.
Guest:But of course, I knew she was going to take it.
Guest:She was offered the show.
Guest:She came and auditioned and did a really funny audition.
Guest:And I knew that she was going to do it when they offered it to her.
Marc:And are you excited about that?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I am proud and just like blown away.
Guest:But, you know, it does this other thing to you, too, which is this time thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where you feel like, what is going on that, you know, my kids are kind of doing what I did.
Guest:And, you know, I'm sort of where my dad was when he was watching me do what he did.
Guest:And now he's up there in Maine watching me doing it and them doing it.
Guest:And it's just strange to me that it's just happened so quickly.
Guest:You're like a show business dynasty.
Guest:That's what you are.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:Three generations of funny.
Guest:Yeah, well, I think so.
Guest:I mean, I don't think there are three generations of funny right now.
Guest:There will be.
Guest:I mean, I'm sure this is going to start a trend.
Guest:You'll see Ben Stiller's kids out there pretty soon.
Guest:You would think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they should be.
Guest:I'm sure they're all going to be funny.
Marc:They're not as old as your kids, though.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:They're younger.
Guest:So how old is Abby?
Guest:Abby's 24 and Bridie's 21.
Guest:And she's going into comedy, too?
Guest:Bridie does stand-up.
Guest:She writes.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:In New York.
Guest:She goes to these.
Guest:Is she living in Brooklyn?
Guest:No, she's living like in Harlem.
Guest:She's living like way uptown.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Which is so cool.
Guest:I love where she's living.
Guest:She's near Columbia, you know, and it's really cool.
Guest:She shares an apartment with a really nice guy.
Guest:It's not romantic, and it's just, you know, she's living.
Guest:They both started college.
Guest:They both did a semester and then said, no, sorry, we want to go into show business.
Guest:And I didn't talk him out of it, you know.
Guest:I didn't talk him into college.
Guest:What about your wife?
Guest:Was there any discussion?
Guest:No, I think we were both like, well, you know.
Guest:Makes sense.
Guest:It's, it makes sense if they're going to do this and they're either going to get it out of their system and go back to college or, or they're going to make a go of it.
Guest:So far they're both, you know, Abby's not going to go back to college.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:And, and Bridie isn't either.
Guest:She's, you know, I mean, they may take classes and all that.
Guest:And I have been encouraging both of them, you know, keep doing your acting classes or whatever, you know, on, on the side.
Guest:So how's your standup?
Guest:it's really funny it's really like you know she's such a shy she was such a shy person yeah abby was always out there abby was always performing so i sort of knew okay she's going to go into that bridey was always like like i was growing up really really shy and and did not want hated audience participation she nearly killed me once when i on her like seventh birthday we went to a mexican restaurant and i told the maitre d so he
Guest:brought a big sombrero and put it on her head and you know that that like humiliation like scarred her she hates that stuff but somehow i think she's you know it's like it's it's like facing your demon it's like going into a shark cage and there's a voice for that yeah there is and she gets up there and she does impersonation she does these sort of funny little stories about you know dating john wayne gacy and all this stuff and i just i don't know where this is coming from but it's great it's coming from growing up your daughter
Guest:The daughter of John Wayne Gacy.
Guest:And their mother is funny and all that.
Guest:I mean, it's a funny family or a goofy family.
Marc:And what about books?
Marc:Because the last time I interviewed on Air America, I know you had, I'm trying to remember which book you just had out.
Guest:Yeah, I had two.
Guest:I had Into Hot Air and then The Shroud of the Thwacker.
Guest:I think that was it.
Guest:I've just finished another book.
Guest:It comes out in October, which is an unauthorized autobiography.
Guest:So it's kind of as if Kitty Kelly- Wrote a book about herself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, didn't write one about me, and I wrote it by myself.
Guest:Oh, I see.
Guest:Okay, so it's an unauthorized autobiography.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Yeah, so I'm just making up a lot of crap about myself.
Guest:It's sort of a little emphasis on the romantic and sexual proclivity side.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Slightly exaggerated?
Guest:Well, I mean, I do say I had an affair with Shelley Winters, and there's some reason to back that up, but it's pretty much exaggerated, yeah.
Marc:So what all in all was, I mean, since you do a lot of character work and you show up on a lot of TV shows, you've been in a lot of movies, but I mean, what was really the most rewarding part of the show business career up to this point?
Marc:And I don't ask that to many people.
Marc:It seems like a hackneyed interview question.
Guest:Well, my answer is going to be hackneyed.
Guest:And honestly, it's...
Guest:Well, I'll give you two answers, but the one thing is fans.
Guest:And it does sound like sort of sappy for me, but I was never really, I don't think good in terms of keeping up with my fans.
Guest:I'm certainly not now in terms of being on Twitter or whatever.
Guest:But they've stuck with me all these years.
Guest:So that's very gratifying.
Marc:And some of them have changed the face of television on some level.
Guest:Well, the people that have gone into it that have been influenced by me or my father, you know, that means a lot to me.
Guest:But I'm just talking about the hardcore fans that are looking forward to season two of Eagle Heart, that, you know, remember Get Alive, that love Cabin Boy.
Guest:That and, honestly, what we were just talking about, seeing my daughters go into it and being successful and knowing that, oh, I know what they're feeling right now, you know.
Guest:It works both ways.
Guest:If something isn't going well, I know what they're feeling then, too.
Guest:the good thing about them and it's the same it was the same way with me growing up is that they they saw the ups and downs with me in my career and i saw it with my dad and uh my dad made an attempt just to leave that stuff and at the gray bar building and show business was just a job and i tried to do that too and we did try to make like okay that's dad has to go to la and do this show but right it wasn't a huge deal we didn't make a big deal out of it and uh you weren't running around the house going i'm
Guest:fucked i'm fucked no no i mean i i do feel that way quite often around the house but like your dad you felt that he struggled as well uh yeah well i know he did i know you know there were times financially and and also just in career times where oh yeah the phone wasn't ringing too but he always went into the office he always sat down and and he may have been painting he likes to paint he may have been doing something else than writing but something always seemed to come along
Guest:I'm a lot like him in the sense that I never had the desire to have something ready to go as soon as something else ends.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I just, I can't concentrate on more than one thing at a time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I can't, it's really hard.
Guest:Even now doing press, it's really hard for me to think, okay, I'm going to talk to Mark, then I'm doing Conan tomorrow night, but I got to think of something, you know, a bit to do on Conan.
Guest:Right.
Guest:At the same time.
Guest:This is actually really nice right now because I'm not like in the car, like going, okay, what am I going to do?
Guest:Nah, yeah, we don't need bits here.
Guest:No, I knew that.
Guest:Believe me.
Guest:Did you come up with a bit for Conan?
Guest:I think I have a couple of things.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Who are you working with over there?
Marc:Do you ever work with Frank Smiley over there?
Guest:Well, usually, yeah, but Daniel- He's the best.
Marc:He's like, what do you got?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then you tell Frank what you got, and he's like, yeah, what else you got?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then you're just waiting for him to go, ah, funny.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:Daniel's a little easier.
Guest:Daniel's a little easier.
Guest:He sort of laughs when you're talking.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Sounds great.
Guest:I think, I don't know.
Guest:I think I'm going to talk about my plastic surgery.
Guest:Yeah, you had a lot.
Guest:Finally reveal it.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:That sounds exciting.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But was there a point where... Like, the one thing I know when young comics talk to me or they... Because I pounded my head against the wall for 25 years and now, like, I've had some success here in my garage and people finally know me a little more.
Marc:But, like...
Marc:It's a heartbreaking fucking profession.
Marc:And there's no way around it, really, that, you know, the risk of doing show business, you're risking, you know, heartbreak.
Guest:Well, it always was a heartbreaking business.
Guest:It is way worse now with the Internet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Especially if you're young and you're just starting out and you do a couple of things or you make a couple of missteps or whatever.
Guest:I mean, the Internet can be pretty brutal.
Guest:And you never said that to your daughter, like, you know, it's a rough, you know, it can be.
Guest:I'm not even sure I knew that.
Guest:when abby started at s and right i'm not sure i knew what kind of you know things would be said i mean she also gets a lot of really beautiful lovely things publicly right yeah there's a lot of like you know gossip nepotism or whatever being you know and then gossip and that kind of stuff but uh um
Guest:That wasn't around when I was around.
Guest:You know, okay, yeah, maybe there'd be something on page six every now and then or there'd be something snarky here and there.
Marc:But usually he was only dealing with a very high level of celebrities.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And now like anything, anybody is attackable.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:That culture has gotten so big.
Marc:There's no real separation.
Marc:It used to be just sort of like, wow, the celebrities you never knew anything about.
Marc:That was where the sordid details would come out.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:But now it's like anybody's a target.
Guest:Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
Guest:And, you know, on the one hand, it's great for people starting out in the business because there's so many venues to try out stuff or to have shows or whatever.
Guest:On the other hand, that sort of openness is like, I mean, it's like every actor's nightmare, I think, or every comedic comic.
Guest:Did she talk to you about it?
Guest:There are times when she'll say stuff about it.
Guest:And, you know, what can you say?
Guest:You just say, you can't look at that.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:those people are you know yeah exactly it's what we said when they were playing softball is just you know shake it off you know shake it off good eye good eye get under it so you all get along
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's weird that my wife and I are empty nesters.
Guest:We bought this house in Connecticut and moved into it a couple of years ago and thinking that we still have like probably five or six years with the girls because they'll be going to college and coming back and so forth.
Guest:They said, forget college, move to New York and we're alone.
Guest:But you're close to like, what are you, an hour away?
Guest:actually we're like two hours away which is a little bit of a pain um we used to live an hour away do they come up they come up yeah but i mean abby's schedule is pretty tough and and uh we have a cabin up in maine and and that's the place that they were at when they were really little so and it's right next door to my dad so they come up they go up there more often well cool it's great to see you chris good to talk mark it was so nice for you to have me and great to see you again right on
Marc:All right, that's our show.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:What a lovely man, a lovely, funny man, a man with a history, Chris Elliott.
Marc:Hope you enjoy his show.
Marc:As I said, it's on tonight at midnight down on Adult Swim.
Marc:That's Eagle Heart.
Marc:You can always go to adultswim.com for the schedule and some more details.
Marc:I'm glad he was here and that we were able to sync these things up.
Marc:Doesn't always happen that way.
Marc:As always, go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Hey, if you don't have the shirt, get a shirt.
Marc:Get a poster.
Marc:Get on that mailing list.
Marc:Make a donation.
Marc:Go check out who's been on the show as opposed to tweeting me asking me to put people on the show.
Marc:There's an episode guide there.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:Go get my record.
Marc:I worked hard on it.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:I'm on this diet again.
Marc:That four-hour body thing.
Marc:So many beans.
Marc:So gassy.
Marc:Is that too much information?
Marc:Alright, I gotta... Yeah, I'm not gonna do that on mic.