Episode 370 - Dick Van Dyke

Episode 370 • Released March 17, 2013 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Guest:Lock the gates!

00:00:07Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:08Guest:Really?

00:00:08Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:09Guest:Are we doing this?

00:00:10Guest:Wait for it.

00:00:12Guest:Pow!

00:00:12Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:14Guest:And it's also, eh, what the fuck?

00:00:16Guest:What's wrong with me?

00:00:17Guest:It's time for WTF!

00:00:19Guest:What the fuck?

00:00:20Guest:With Mark Maron.

00:00:24Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:25Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?

00:00:26Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:27Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:29Marc:What the fuck nicks?

00:00:30Marc:What the fuckaholics?

00:00:31Marc:And what the fuck me's?

00:00:32Marc:How are you?

00:00:34Marc:I am Mark Maron.

00:00:34Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:36Marc:Great show today.

00:00:38Marc:Before I get into it, real quick.

00:00:39Marc:right up front here i do want to say that you can pre-order my book attempting normal it's a book of essays by me mark marin please pre-order it if you're planning on getting it you can pre-order it at amazon or powell's or barnes and noble whatever your favorite place to get books is you can pre-order the ebook the enhanced ebook the hardcover uh tempting normal by me mark marin out uh april 30th but the pre-order the pre-order helps apparently

00:01:06Marc:So let's get into what's happening today.

00:01:09Marc:Dick Van Dyke, my friends.

00:01:11Marc:How ingrained is Dick Van Dyke in your mind?

00:01:16Marc:Do you remember as a child?

00:01:18Marc:I mean, I don't know when I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but I know I saw it.

00:01:22Marc:I know there were parts of it that were spectacular.

00:01:24Marc:There's a flying car, and then there was the weird cave place with all the thrown away kids that was kind of scary.

00:01:31Marc:And you just remember Dick Van Dyke being amazing.

00:01:34Marc:I can't even remember when I watched it.

00:01:36Marc:I'm not sure when it came out.

00:01:37Marc:I have to assume...

00:01:38Marc:That it had been out already, and this is just sort of regular viewing, but we didn't have videos back then.

00:01:43Marc:I'm curious now.

00:01:44Marc:1968.

00:01:45Marc:So, you know what?

00:01:47Marc:I probably saw it when I was a kid.

00:01:51Marc:I probably saw that when it came out, and it's just...

00:01:54Marc:etched into my brain mary poppins came out in 64 i did not see that then because i'm sure i wouldn't remember it if i went when i was one years old but again dick van dyke chiseled into my brain he had such an amazing magnanimous kind of beautiful goofy energy and he was so acrobatic almost and so funny i it just he's like an archetype living in my head a comedy archetype in my brain and now like i got this uh

00:02:22Marc:They've got the Dick Van Dyke show.

00:02:24Marc:You can get a whole box set, a Blu-ray box set that's out from Image Entertainment.

00:02:29Marc:It's the complete Dick Van Dyke show with Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Maury Amsterdam, the whole crew watching some of that.

00:02:37Marc:And you just you know, what's amazing is really to see a guy.

00:02:43Marc:That was so naturally gifted.

00:02:45Marc:I mean, a lot of times people forget that there are some things you can learn and there are some things that you can maybe do a few times.

00:02:52Marc:But if you're just a naturally gifted, funny dude with a sort of dexterity and the kind of physical timing that Dick Van Dyke had, it was a gift.

00:03:01Marc:And there's not very many people like him.

00:03:04Marc:I don't think there's anybody like him.

00:03:05Marc:Dick Van Dyke is an original.

00:03:07Marc:And I was thrilled when I got the opportunity to do this interview.

00:03:11Marc:I was able to set up the interview.

00:03:14Marc:His wife is a comedy fan.

00:03:17Marc:Her brother's actually a comic, and she's a fan of WTF.

00:03:21Marc:So I think, look, I wasn't sure how it would go.

00:03:25Marc:I mean, Dick Van Dyke's 87.

00:03:27Marc:You don't know what you're getting into.

00:03:29Marc:I have talked to very lucid and quick 87-year-olds to 90-year-olds.

00:03:33Marc:I've talked to a couple that were mostly there.

00:03:37Marc:But I didn't really know what I was getting into.

00:03:39Marc:And I drove out to Malibu and I actually have never been to this part of Malibu.

00:03:43Marc:I don't think I've ever been to Malibu, maybe once to drive by it.

00:03:46Marc:But I always think like Malibu, it's sort of this mythological place.

00:03:49Marc:I always like I have this weird picture of Bob Dylan's house in my brain.

00:03:53Marc:I always think I'm just going to see Bob Dylan's house.

00:03:55Marc:So I'm looking for Bob Dylan on my way to Dick Van Dyke's house.

00:03:59Marc:get there early, which means they got to sort of park in front of Dick Van Dyke's house.

00:04:03Marc:That's always the awkward thing is like, I don't want to show up too early.

00:04:05Marc:It's his house.

00:04:06Marc:So I'll just park out here and be creepy.

00:04:08Marc:I'll just park in front of the house for a little while.

00:04:12Marc:So I did that and I walked in, you know, the publicist was there, Tim, and he prepped me a little bit, but I, while I was waiting, I should preface this.

00:04:22Marc:Like I was early enough to go get Chipotle and I,

00:04:26Marc:I don't know.

00:04:27Marc:Many of you have gotten the hang of how I do my show.

00:04:29Marc:And when you're talking to somebody with as an expansive a career and life as Dick Van Dyke, I mean, what how do you really you know, how do you do it?

00:04:38Marc:How do you wrap your brain around it?

00:04:40Marc:I mean, I ask myself these questions every time I interview anybody who's had a very prolific career because you don't want to you don't want to screw it up.

00:04:48Marc:You don't want you want to make sure you cover stuff.

00:04:50Marc:And I just remember sitting there at the Malibu Chipotle, just sort of meditating on Dick Van Dyke.

00:04:57Marc:I mean, that's all that's what I do.

00:04:58Marc:I mean, I can check facts to a certain degree, but ultimately you want to get in there, sit down and just have a real conversation with the guy.

00:05:06Marc:That's going to that'll make up for anything.

00:05:08Marc:And I got to tell you, what a great guy.

00:05:11Marc:I have a feeling that he really wanted to, because I got a feeling that his wife, Arlene, had sort of said, this guy, he's a good guy, he's legit, and it worked out beautifully.

00:05:22Marc:He's got a nice house, a modest house, and just on fire, man.

00:05:26Marc:The dude was firing all cylinders, and he's just got that voice.

00:05:30Marc:I mean, it's Dick Van Dyke, man.

00:05:32Marc:I'm just sitting there on a couch trying to keep my shit together.

00:05:36Marc:But you know, ultimately, people are just people.

00:05:39Marc:They really are.

00:05:40Marc:And as I get older, my respect for the older generation of performers gets deeper and deeper.

00:05:46Marc:And...

00:05:47Marc:I had a lovely time.

00:05:49Marc:It was, again, a thrill.

00:05:51Marc:I mean, between Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, and now Dick Van Dyke, who obviously without Carl Reiner would not be the Dick Van Dyke that we know.

00:06:00Marc:I told him I talked to Carl, and it's nice to have that.

00:06:04Marc:Look, I'm not gloating.

00:06:05Marc:It's not a humble brag.

00:06:05Marc:I'm not claiming to be anybody's friend.

00:06:07Marc:But I'll tell you, for me,

00:06:09Marc:I never thought I'd be here.

00:06:10Marc:I never thought I'd be sitting at Chipotle wondering what I was going to say to Dick Van Dyke.

00:06:15Marc:I never thought I'd be parked in front of Dick Van Dyke's house wondering when the right time to go in would be or wondering whether or not they were suspicious about the car.

00:06:24Marc:And I never thought in my life that I'd get to talk to Dick Van Dyke.

00:06:27Marc:And I'm happy to share it with you.

00:06:29Marc:So now...

00:06:31Marc:Well, walk with me into Dick Van Dyke's house.

00:06:35Marc:It's always interesting, you know, going over to someone's home or going to somebody's office because, you know, they're never right there.

00:06:42Marc:You know, you're always wondering, am I going to wait?

00:06:44Marc:Where are they?

00:06:45Marc:Are they hiding in the room?

00:06:46Marc:But, you know, he was right there.

00:06:47Marc:You walk in.

00:06:48Marc:There's Dick Van Dyke.

00:06:49Marc:How you doing?

00:06:50Marc:OK, let's.

00:06:52Marc:And I'm setting up my mics.

00:06:53Marc:and it's always a little it's always a little humbling man i gotta be honest with you in a good way you know to be the guy kind of like getting comfortable setting up the mics setting up the boom making sure he's comfortable making sure i'm comfortable making sure i'm hearing everything all right and then okay focus blast off let's talk to dick van dyke

00:07:20Marc:You know who else I interviewed?

00:07:24Marc:I had never really been out here to these parts.

00:07:28Marc:It wasn't out here, but it seemed similar.

00:07:31Marc:I interviewed Shelly Berman.

00:07:34Guest:God almighty, where is he?

00:07:36Guest:I haven't seen him in years.

00:07:37Guest:Yeah, didn't you guys do a thing together like a million years ago?

00:07:41Guest:We did a Broadway review.

00:07:43Guest:Right.

00:07:43Guest:Bert Lahr, Nancy Walker, Shelly Berman, and me.

00:07:46Guest:Yeah.

00:07:47Guest:And a young chorus singer who ended up writing Annie.

00:07:53Guest:Girls and Boys.

00:07:54Guest:Girls Against the Boys.

00:07:56Guest:Girls Against the Boys.

00:07:56Guest:Yeah.

00:07:57Guest:But what was his name?

00:07:58Guest:He became a producer and he wrote Annie, the musical.

00:08:02Guest:Uh-huh.

00:08:03Guest:And I forget quite a few things.

00:08:05Guest:And he was just a chorus boy in that review.

00:08:08Guest:And that's how it starts.

00:08:09Guest:I think it was the last review ever done on Broadway.

00:08:13Guest:Old-fashioned, you know, songs and sketches.

00:08:15Guest:Right, right, right.

00:08:16Guest:I thought it was pretty good, but I was emceeing game shows, doing the news, children's shows.

00:08:21Guest:I took every job I could do.

00:08:22Guest:1960, so that Bye Bye Birdie was the first big break, right?

00:08:25Guest:Right.

00:08:26Guest:Yeah.

00:08:27Guest:Yeah, I had gotten a contract with CBS in 55 and came to New York.

00:08:31Guest:From where?

00:08:32Guest:From, I was down in New Orleans doing local television.

00:08:36Guest:But that's not where you grew up.

00:08:37Guest:No, I grew up in Illinois, Danville, Illinois.

00:08:39Marc:Danville, Illinois.

00:08:40Marc:Yeah.

00:08:41Marc:How many, like, is that rural?

00:08:43Marc:I can't picture Danville, Illinois.

00:08:44Guest:Well, it's about 30,000 people.

00:08:46Guest:Yeah.

00:08:47Guest:130 miles south of Chicago, five miles from the Indiana line.

00:08:51Marc:Right.

00:08:51Guest:We're Beckley Hoosiers.

00:08:52Guest:Yeah.

00:08:52Guest:and it was a lot of corn yeah it's all corn you just uh coal mining strip coal mining yeah and there used to be uh some manufacturers there but i think the last time i went with an appointment was 30 percent yeah and getting worse did you go you go down there though do you yeah i've gone home you got family there still you should see

00:09:16Guest:The Danville commercial news after I got the SAG award.

00:09:19Guest:Oh, really?

00:09:19Guest:I wasn't just on the front page.

00:09:20Guest:I was the entire newspaper.

00:09:22Marc:They ran with it for a week.

00:09:26Marc:Well, that's amazing.

00:09:26Marc:I mean, do you still have family there?

00:09:30Guest:Not really anymore.

00:09:31Guest:I used to have aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents.

00:09:36Guest:I could walk in any direction and find another.

00:09:38Guest:There's nobody left.

00:09:39Marc:Isn't that weird?

00:09:40Marc:They're all gone.

00:09:40Marc:No cousins, no nothing.

00:09:42Marc:Nothing.

00:09:42Marc:Weird.

00:09:43Marc:Now, what kind of family did you grow up in?

00:09:45Marc:Big?

00:09:45Big.

00:09:45Guest:Well, just my brother and myself.

00:09:47Guest:You and Jerry?

00:09:48Guest:But we were surrounded by cousins and relatives everywhere.

00:09:53Guest:And what was your old man's business?

00:09:55Guest:He worked for the Sunshine Biscuit Company.

00:09:57Marc:He sold cookies.

00:09:58Guest:They still sell those, don't they?

00:10:00Marc:Yeah, they still sell them.

00:10:01Marc:Sunshine's still a brand.

00:10:02Guest:He was on the road.

00:10:03Guest:You know, five days a week.

00:10:05Guest:Selling cookies.

00:10:06Guest:Yes, selling cookies.

00:10:07Guest:During the Depression, you know, not too many people eat cookies.

00:10:10Guest:To grocery stores, I'm hoping, or door-to-door, no.

00:10:13Guest:No, grocery stores.

00:10:14Guest:Yeah, he represented the company.

00:10:16Guest:Right, he's not going door-to-door with a bag of cookies.

00:10:18Guest:So the one thing I had a lot of as a kid was cookies.

00:10:20Guest:Plenty of cookies.

00:10:22Guest:Not Oreos.

00:10:23Guest:What did they call the Hydrox?

00:10:24Guest:Hydrox.

00:10:24Marc:Hydrox.

00:10:25Guest:You remember them?

00:10:26Marc:Yeah.

00:10:27Marc:I think they're still around.

00:10:28Marc:I haven't seen them.

00:10:30Marc:I don't know.

00:10:30Marc:I know the company's still there.

00:10:32Marc:Right.

00:10:32Marc:And when did you start knowing that you could do the performing thing?

00:10:40Guest:Well, I don't know.

00:10:41Guest:It was kind of fate.

00:10:43Guest:Yeah.

00:10:44Guest:I had been on the freshman track team.

00:10:47Guest:I was pretty good, 440 and high jump.

00:10:50Guest:Yeah.

00:10:51Guest:I went for my junior year to get, my sophomore year, to get the doctor's thing.

00:10:55Guest:He said, you have a heart murmur.

00:10:57Guest:I don't want you doing any more running.

00:10:58Guest:A heart murmur.

00:10:59Guest:Turned out the draft board didn't find any heart murmur.

00:11:03Guest:I went right to service two years later.

00:11:06Guest:Oh, my God.

00:11:06Guest:You were kind of hoping on that, Hartman.

00:11:08Guest:Yeah, I thought I was going to be, no, sir, right in.

00:11:11Guest:But anyway, I joined the Dramatic Club and started doing plays and musicals and loved it.

00:11:16Marc:To avoid getting into the trenches?

00:11:19Guest:No, no, I loved it.

00:11:20Guest:I liked performing.

00:11:21Guest:Yeah.

00:11:21Guest:I'd been a magician when I was 11 or 12.

00:11:25Guest:But anyway, I was taller than the girls and I had a voice that would carry.

00:11:31Guest:So I got in all the plays.

00:11:33Guest:But I never took it seriously because it was just too far a dream to think of getting into show business.

00:11:38Marc:What did that entail, though, when you were drafted and you wanted to do that?

00:11:43Marc:Where did you perform?

00:11:43Marc:How did those shows, how were they structured?

00:11:45Guest:Well, I joined the Air Force.

00:11:47Guest:I got into pilot training.

00:11:49Guest:I took the test, and I was healthy and everything.

00:11:52Guest:But I had the gain.

00:11:53Guest:I weighed 135 pounds.

00:11:54Guest:I was 6 feet wide.

00:11:55Guest:Oh, my God.

00:11:57Guest:And I had to weigh 141 to get in.

00:12:00Guest:So I took the physical three times.

00:12:02Guest:Finally made the 141.

00:12:03Marc:That must have been fun eating.

00:12:05Guest:Oh, boy.

00:12:06Guest:Six weeks later, I weighed 170-something.

00:12:09Marc:Oh, my God.

00:12:09Guest:But then the war started to wind down.

00:12:11Guest:It was the end of 44 when I went in.

00:12:14Guest:So they put me in entertainment.

00:12:16Guest:And I did a little radio show.

00:12:19Guest:And then we did shows for the USO.

00:12:21Guest:Right.

00:12:22Guest:Being in the service, we could steal material from anybody.

00:12:24Marc:Everyone was doing everyone's material, right?

00:12:27Marc:Right.

00:12:27Marc:It was just the way it went then, kind of.

00:12:29Marc:Oh, sure.

00:12:30Marc:Now, who was it?

00:12:30Marc:Like, you did reviews.

00:12:32Marc:Right.

00:12:32Marc:Yeah.

00:12:32Marc:And who were people in your reviews?

00:12:35Marc:Anyone still around?

00:12:35Guest:No.

00:12:36Marc:Nobody.

00:12:37Marc:Not one.

00:12:38Marc:Because I know that other people have done those kind of things.

00:12:41Marc:I think Carl did.

00:12:42Marc:I don't know if he did those kind of reviews.

00:12:43Marc:Mel was in the service.

00:12:44Guest:He did in the service.

00:12:45Guest:I think Carl did.

00:12:46Marc:Yeah.

00:12:47Marc:He did shtick.

00:12:48Marc:Yeah, I just fell into it.

00:12:49Marc:Yeah.

00:12:50Marc:And what was it mostly?

00:12:51Marc:Singing or stand-up?

00:12:53Guest:They called us all in.

00:12:54Guest:All the trainees were pilot training.

00:12:57Guest:Said that the war is winding down.

00:12:59Guest:We're washing out the training program.

00:13:04Guest:Some of you will be going to Japan as tail gunners and others will be assigned according to their talents.

00:13:10Guest:And I started tap dancing and singing on the spot.

00:13:13Guest:Yeah.

00:13:13Guest:This is it.

00:13:16Marc:Here's a great motivator.

00:13:17Marc:I like that.

00:13:19Marc:Did you tap dance or you didn't know?

00:13:21Marc:I can fake it pretty good.

00:13:23Guest:I can still fake it pretty good.

00:13:25Guest:And that's how I got in and saved my life.

00:13:27Marc:And when you got out, you realized it was a career or no?

00:13:31Guest:Well, I had gotten a job.

00:13:33Guest:While I was still in high school right the radio announcer.

00:13:36Guest:Yeah, but everybody was getting drafted, right?

00:13:38Guest:So I worked after school and weekends did the news records everything so I went back to that station was 19 In Danville, yeah WDAN and I worked there for a while and a friend of mine Kind of a friend an older guy said you want to go out to LA and do an act and

00:13:57Guest:Yeah.

00:13:58Guest:And I said, you know, what time will you pick me up?

00:14:00Guest:And we came out here to L.A.

00:14:03Guest:and started doing a little record Panama Mac.

00:14:05Marc:Who's that guy?

00:14:05Marc:Who was that other guy?

00:14:06Guest:His name was Phil Erickson.

00:14:08Guest:He passed away.

00:14:10Guest:And we knocked around town for a few years.

00:14:12Guest:So you're a comedy team?

00:14:14Guest:Yeah.

00:14:14Guest:Well, Jerry Lewis did it.

00:14:16Guest:Right.

00:14:17Guest:And it was the same thing.

00:14:19Guest:I was in my Jerry Lewis period.

00:14:20Guest:Okay, so you put records on.

00:14:22Guest:And pantomime, yeah, lip sync.

00:14:24Guest:And did goofy stuff.

00:14:25Guest:Yeah.

00:14:26Guest:Yeah.

00:14:26Guest:It was very hot back there with a lot of those acts around.

00:14:29Guest:Really?

00:14:30Guest:But it was just a lark.

00:14:31Guest:We thought, you know, we'll go home and do something useful in our life.

00:14:34Marc:Was there a straight man?

00:14:35Marc:So you were the goofy guy?

00:14:37Guest:I was Jerry Lewis, and he was Dean Martin.

00:14:39Marc:And were you literally riffing on what Jerry did?

00:14:41Guest:Well, actually, I had never seen Jerry Lewis.

00:14:43Marc:Oh, so, okay.

00:14:43Guest:When I first saw them, I said, he stole my act.

00:14:48Marc:So you were completely physical?

00:14:49Marc:Oh, completely.

00:14:50Marc:And you'd never done any clowning or anything like that?

00:14:53Marc:Well, I was somewhat of an idiot in high school.

00:14:57Marc:But it just came natural to you.

00:14:58Guest:It was not a trained thing.

00:14:59Guest:Oh, no.

00:15:00Guest:No, I just loved it.

00:15:01Guest:Yeah.

00:15:02Marc:So how long did you tour with that?

00:15:05Guest:A couple of years.

00:15:06Guest:We went from here to, we played Vegas and Reno and places like that.

00:15:10Guest:We went to Atlanta, Georgia.

00:15:12Guest:This is in 1950.

00:15:14Marc:Vegas at that time.

00:15:15Marc:That must have been like, what, was it four hotels, five hotels?

00:15:18Marc:It must have been very small.

00:15:19Marc:It wasn't many more.

00:15:19Marc:And were there other performers around that you remember?

00:15:24Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:15:25Guest:Sinatra was already playing the Flamingo.

00:15:27Guest:All the big stars of that day.

00:15:29Marc:Did you guys hang out at that time at all?

00:15:32Marc:No.

00:15:32Guest:You just kind of went in and out?

00:15:33Guest:Nobody knew who we were.

00:15:34Guest:The star of our show was Eddie Peabody, who played the banjo.

00:15:39Guest:And I got to introduce him, and my big joke was, Eddie Playbody will now pee for you.

00:15:44Guest:That was my big.

00:15:45Guest:That was your opener?

00:15:46Marc:Boom.

00:15:47Marc:We're in.

00:15:47Marc:Here we go.

00:15:48Guest:Killed him.

00:15:51Marc:So you went to Georgia.

00:15:53Guest:Went to Georgia.

00:15:54Guest:Liked it so much, we both bought homes on the GI Bill and started families.

00:15:58Guest:In Georgia.

00:15:59Guest:In Georgia.

00:15:59Guest:Atlanta.

00:16:00Guest:Atlanta.

00:16:01Marc:Huh.

00:16:02Marc:Yeah.

00:16:02Marc:So you were out here in L.A.

00:16:04Marc:and show business was here.

00:16:06Marc:Yeah.

00:16:07Marc:I imagine your heroes were here on some level.

00:16:09Marc:Oh, of course.

00:16:09Marc:Like who would that have been when you came out here?

00:16:12Marc:Well, I was a big Stan Laurel.

00:16:13Guest:I grew up copying everything Stan Laurel.

00:16:16Marc:He was your inspiration.

00:16:17Guest:Yeah.

00:16:17Guest:And I finally got to meet him years later.

00:16:19Marc:How was that?

00:16:20Guest:And of course, I found him in a phone book.

00:16:23Guest:He was in the Santa Monica phone, but I just called him up.

00:16:25Guest:Really?

00:16:26Guest:Yeah.

00:16:27Guest:And he answered?

00:16:28Guest:Answered and invited me over.

00:16:29Guest:Did he know who you were?

00:16:31Guest:Yeah, this is after I'd started the Van Dyke show.

00:16:34Guest:But I was amazed to find that Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, a lot of people made pilgrimages to Stan's house.

00:16:43Marc:And what was that like?

00:16:45Marc:Is he a quiet guy?

00:16:46Guest:He was very quiet, quite the English gentleman, but sweet and kind.

00:16:52Guest:called me dicky uh-huh and i would sit and just play him with questions you know how did you think of this idea how did you think of that and he loved to talk about it did he have answers oh yeah he loved to talk about comedy and what did he think of uh uh oliver hardy like in retrospect he said oliver hardy was the funniest man he ever knew uh-huh he said he would break him up uh-huh he said i would have to start laughing

00:17:15Marc:So they had that dynamic where they loved each other and they fed off each other.

00:17:20Guest:And it all came through on film.

00:17:23Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:17:23Marc:They were like two kids.

00:17:25Marc:It was an amazing dynamic with those two.

00:17:27Guest:Nobody's ever matched it.

00:17:28Marc:And Stan always ended up crying.

00:17:30Guest:I know, which he hated.

00:17:32Guest:He did.

00:17:32Guest:He did not think the crying was funny.

00:17:34Guest:He did.

00:17:34Guest:And they made him do it.

00:17:36Guest:For some reason, he didn't like the crying.

00:17:37Guest:Who made him do it?

00:17:39Guest:Probably Ollie.

00:17:41I don't know.

00:17:41Guest:But Stan did all the writing and everything.

00:17:45Guest:Ollie was not that ambitious.

00:17:49Guest:At the end of the day, he wanted to go play nine holes of golf.

00:17:51Marc:Sure.

00:17:53Marc:Well, those big guys then have big personalities.

00:17:55Marc:In general, in my mind, it seems like the larger comedy personalities were always a little more towards, let's have a good time.

00:18:03Guest:Of course.

00:18:04Guest:He was a pretty good dancer, too.

00:18:06Marc:Who?

00:18:06Marc:Oh, really?

00:18:07Guest:Very graceful.

00:18:08Guest:But you know those slow burns that Ollie would do in the camera?

00:18:11Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:18:12Guest:Stan would wait until it was time for him to play golf and keep him going.

00:18:16Guest:And then Ollie would start to get pissed off.

00:18:18Guest:And that's when he was really mad.

00:18:21Marc:So the intensity of the slow burn really got delivered.

00:18:25Guest:It was genuine.

00:18:26Guest:So cute.

00:18:27Guest:Nobody's ever had that relationship before.

00:18:29Marc:Yeah, I don't know if I've ever seen it.

00:18:31Marc:I don't know that teams really exist in that way anymore.

00:18:34Guest:No, the straight man was always rather rough, like Abbott and Costello.

00:18:38Marc:Yeah.

00:18:39Guest:And unkind.

00:18:40Guest:But they were like two siblings who loved each other and depended upon each other, totally, but fought all the time.

00:18:47Marc:And you used to watch them when you were a kid.

00:18:49Marc:Oh.

00:18:49Marc:Every Saturday.

00:18:50Marc:So when you go in there to talk to Stan Laurel, you must have been nervous at first.

00:18:55Marc:Do you remember specific things?

00:18:56Marc:Do you remember your first icebreaker?

00:18:58Guest:Well, when I called him on the phone, I said, you know, Mr. Laurel, I've stolen a lot from you over the years.

00:19:06Guest:And he said, yes, I know.

00:19:08Guest:We were friends right away.

00:19:12Guest:He wanted me to play his life if they ever did a movie.

00:19:15Guest:Why didn't you?

00:19:16Guest:Nobody ever wanted to make the movie.

00:19:17Guest:Isn't that odd?

00:19:18Guest:No.

00:19:18Guest:He didn't feel there was a real story there.

00:19:21Guest:I think he was married five times, twice to the same woman.

00:19:24Guest:That sounds like five stories to me.

00:19:27Guest:Or at least five stories.

00:19:28Guest:And then Ollie died back in the 50s.

00:19:31Marc:Yeah, early on.

00:19:32Marc:I never got to meet him.

00:19:34Marc:But you so you come to L.A.

00:19:35Marc:and you get a sense of show business and you know this is where it is.

00:19:38Marc:And you're like, yeah, I'm going to go to Georgia.

00:19:40Marc:I mean, what kind of decision was that?

00:19:41Marc:I mean, what was the plan?

00:19:42Guest:Well, we think more.

00:19:43Guest:We love the town, despite the fact that it was, you know, segregated, segregated, which was a shock to both of us.

00:19:50Guest:But it was only about a quarter of a million people back then.

00:19:54Guest:Lovely city, and we loved the people.

00:19:56Guest:We wanted to settle down there, having no idea what we were going to do with ourselves.

00:20:00Guest:And you started a family.

00:20:02Guest:You started a family.

00:20:03Guest:And how many kids do you have?

00:20:04Guest:I have four now.

00:20:05Guest:Two of them were born in Atlanta.

00:20:07Guest:And you stayed in Atlanta for how long?

00:20:09Guest:Uh, till 54, 54 or 55.

00:20:12Marc:And you're still performing in the team on the road?

00:20:15Guest:No, we, uh, uh, eventually I got a television show.

00:20:19Guest:Did you own a nightclub?

00:20:20Guest:No, he did.

00:20:21Guest:Oh, so, okay.

00:20:22Guest:Called The Wit's End.

00:20:23Guest:Yeah.

00:20:24Guest:And he began to put together little comedy sketches and troops and improv.

00:20:28Guest:He finally put up about three shows all out on the road.

00:20:32Guest:He became quite good at producing.

00:20:34Guest:And I went into television.

00:20:36Guest:I was in New Orleans for about six months.

00:20:38Guest:How'd you get that gig?

00:20:40Guest:They asked me a little improvement in... They just found you because you had performed down there with your partner and they said... No, my partner stayed.

00:20:48Guest:He had his nightclub.

00:20:50Guest:And by that time, we'd kind of separated and each went our own way.

00:20:54Guest:So I was in New Orleans...

00:20:55Guest:For about six months I had a show, an hour every afternoon, five days a week.

00:21:02Marc:Like a magazine show?

00:21:03Guest:No, I had a little trio, sang, danced, interviewed people on the street, everything.

00:21:08Guest:Where'd you pick up the singing?

00:21:09Guest:When did that start?

00:21:11Guest:I'm just a shower singer and always have been.

00:21:14Guest:But nobody noticed.

00:21:16Marc:Right, but it's all about personality.

00:21:17Guest:Of course.

00:21:19Guest:And I got a friend at CBS.

00:21:23Guest:I went up there and did a little audition and they gave me a contract, a seven-year contract.

00:21:28Guest:I had like twice the money I was making.

00:21:30Guest:Great.

00:21:30Guest:Big break for me and the family.

00:21:32Marc:So we all moved to Long Island.

00:21:35Marc:Long Island after New Orleans?

00:21:36Marc:Yeah.

00:21:37Marc:Okay, so you started a show in New Orleans, and they give you the contract in New York.

00:21:40Marc:Right.

00:21:41Marc:And what was the show in New York?

00:21:42Marc:Nothing.

00:21:43Marc:They just hired me.

00:21:45Guest:I did a little audition.

00:21:46Guest:Those are the best kind of deals.

00:21:47Guest:They tried me at everything.

00:21:50Guest:I didn't know what I did.

00:21:51Guest:Like what?

00:21:52Guest:I knew I wasn't a stand-up or a singer or a dancer.

00:21:55Guest:I didn't know what I did.

00:21:56Guest:So what'd they try you?

00:21:57Guest:What'd they run you through?

00:21:58Guest:They had me doing Saturday morning cartoons.

00:22:03Guest:Suddenly I became... Hosting them?

00:22:04Guest:Yeah.

00:22:05Guest:Uh-huh.

00:22:05Guest:Then I became the anchor of the CBS Morning Show.

00:22:09Guest:Really?

00:22:09Guest:The anchor, 29 years old.

00:22:10Marc:So now you're a newsman.

00:22:12Marc:A newsman.

00:22:13Guest:Did the news, interviews, weather.

00:22:15Guest:My newsman was Walter Cronkite.

00:22:18Marc:Oh, really?

00:22:19Marc:Yes.

00:22:19Marc:He was just a reader, like a newsreader?

00:22:21Guest:Yeah, he just did the news.

00:22:23Marc:So that was like his first gig.

00:22:24Guest:Yeah.

00:22:25Guest:Isn't that interesting?

00:22:25Guest:I think he'd been on the radio first.

00:22:27Guest:He'd been a journalist originally.

00:22:29Guest:Nice guy.

00:22:30Guest:One of the nicest people I ever met.

00:22:33Guest:Yeah.

00:22:33Guest:He was a sweet, sweet man.

00:22:35Marc:Yeah.

00:22:36Marc:The world grew to rely on that guy.

00:22:37Marc:Isn't that interesting?

00:22:38Marc:He could have been president.

00:22:39Marc:Yeah.

00:22:39Marc:You were there at the beginning and now he became the voice of America.

00:22:42Marc:Like people depended on him for some straight.

00:22:46Marc:And they trusted him.

00:22:47Guest:Yeah.

00:22:47Marc:Yeah.

00:22:48Guest:And he was a good guy.

00:22:49Guest:Good guy.

00:22:50Guest:I have a picture that he sent me many years later of the two of us on the news set.

00:22:54Guest:And he wrote, how did you ever make it without me?

00:22:57Marc:Is that sweet?

00:22:58Marc:He would have been the ultimate straight man.

00:23:01Marc:Right.

00:23:02Guest:Wonderful, wonderful guy.

00:23:04Guest:And one of the copywriters on my show was Barbara Walters.

00:23:08Guest:Oh, my God.

00:23:08Marc:She wrote the copy.

00:23:09Marc:I can't imagine.

00:23:11Marc:She was in her 20s?

00:23:12Marc:Yeah, she would have been in her early 20s.

00:23:14Marc:What was she like?

00:23:15Marc:Was she spunky?

00:23:16Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:23:18Guest:She had a lot of confidence, even back then.

00:23:20Guest:Her dad was Lou Walters.

00:23:22Guest:I don't know who that is.

00:23:23Guest:The Latin Quarter.

00:23:23Guest:Oh, really?

00:23:25Guest:Excuse me.

00:23:25Guest:It's a nightclub?

00:23:26Marc:Yeah.

00:23:27Marc:Oh, yeah?

00:23:27Marc:Big nightclub.

00:23:28Marc:With performers and whatnot?

00:23:29Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:23:30Marc:It was top of the line back in the night.

00:23:33Marc:Oh, really?

00:23:34Marc:So she probably lived on Long Island, too, huh?

00:23:36Marc:I don't know.

00:23:36Marc:Or in the city?

00:23:37Marc:I'm just trying to picture Barbara Walker.

00:23:40Marc:It's so interesting to picture these people as young people because I'm 49, and I don't remember her being young ever.

00:23:47Marc:Of course not.

00:23:48Marc:With you, everyone sees your movies.

00:23:50Marc:No matter what age you are or what decade it is, you're going to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

00:23:55Marc:You're going to see Mary Poppins.

00:23:56Marc:It's part of growing up.

00:23:57Marc:That's right.

00:23:58Marc:It was very interesting about that because the woman I'm dating now, she's like, yeah, Dick Van Dyke was my ideal man when I was like five or six years old.

00:24:06Marc:Yeah, right.

00:24:06Marc:And then someone else on Twitter said, like, oh, everyone loves Dick Van Dyke.

00:24:10Marc:Like, I didn't know you were the sex symbol for preteen girls.

00:24:14Marc:I didn't either.

00:24:15Marc:My God.

00:24:15Marc:There you go.

00:24:16Marc:You think I'm not a pedophile, huh?

00:24:18Marc:No, no.

00:24:19Marc:I think you were just, at that time, I think, when kids have their fathers.

00:24:25Marc:And then they see a grown-up.

00:24:26Guest:Well, I think I was kind of a father figure, really.

00:24:29Marc:But you're goofy.

00:24:30Marc:You seem to have a good sentiment.

00:24:31Marc:You know what I mean?

00:24:32Marc:You're a nice guy.

00:24:33Marc:You can sing.

00:24:34Marc:You know, I'm sure that kids are like, my dad doesn't do any of that.

00:24:38Marc:Right.

00:24:38Marc:So you do this goofy show where you're driving basically a magazine show on Saturday mornings, right?

00:24:45Guest:Yeah.

00:24:46Guest:I think it was Heckle and Jekyll.

00:24:48Guest:Do you remember that?

00:24:49Marc:Sure, the two crows.

00:24:50Marc:Two black crows.

00:24:50Marc:What was the new show?

00:24:51Marc:That was a daily show?

00:24:52Guest:yeah it was on but that was before there was any cable between the two coasts right we did it three hours a day we do an hour and then the third hour would be a repeat for the west coast and you do the third hour we do it yeah live isn't that people the amount of work that went into live television oh yeah and there's no repeats there's no rewrites i mean you're in it

00:25:16Guest:I know.

00:25:17Guest:People don't even understand that.

00:25:19Guest:Yeah.

00:25:19Guest:They would say, well, couldn't you do a retake?

00:25:21Guest:Yeah.

00:25:21Guest:There's no retakes.

00:25:23Marc:Were there some good moments where things went wrong?

00:25:24Marc:Wonderful.

00:25:26Marc:Wonderful.

00:25:26Marc:I bet you wish you had those on tape where things just went south.

00:25:30Guest:I was hoping there'd be some kinnies around because things went wrong.

00:25:33Guest:Yeah.

00:25:34Guest:Yeah.

00:25:34Guest:A lot of the times, if you were interviewing someone, an actor or a musician or something, who had been up until 3 in the morning, they didn't go to bed.

00:25:42Guest:They would just come.

00:25:43Guest:Yeah.

00:25:44Guest:Stoned.

00:25:44Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:46Guest:I would prop them up on a sofa.

00:25:49Guest:I would ask the question and answer them.

00:25:51Guest:Hope for the best.

00:25:52Marc:Really?

00:25:52Marc:There were moments where you weren't getting anything back?

00:25:54Marc:Oh, nothing.

00:25:55Marc:No.

00:25:56Marc:Musicians are tricky like that even now, even if they're not drinking.

00:25:59Marc:They're not ultimately big conversationalists.

00:26:02Guest:No, no.

00:26:03Guest:A lot of monosyllabic guests would just stare at me.

00:26:09Guest:And I wasn't that experienced.

00:26:11Guest:Right.

00:26:12Marc:So you're probably nervous energy, sort of like filling the gaps and laughing in weird places.

00:26:18Guest:I had to get up at four on Long Island, leave at five to be there by six.

00:26:22Guest:before we run through the show, and then on the air from 7 to 10.

00:26:26Guest:That's a crazy schedule.

00:26:28Guest:I did it for a year, and they finally let me go.

00:26:31Guest:They realized that I wasn't cut out.

00:26:32Marc:That wasn't your thing?

00:26:33Marc:But you still had, what, five years on your contract?

00:26:36Guest:At the end of three years, they dropped me.

00:26:38Guest:Yeah.

00:26:39Marc:Because they didn't know what to do with me, and neither did I. And was that a feeling of like, you know, in show business, I do comedy, and I've been through different periods of my life.

00:26:47Marc:Was that a frightening kind of like, you know, what the hell happens now?

00:26:50Guest:I had three kids.

00:26:52Guest:by then i'm renting a house on long island and no job and it was oh i was scared to death what happened what did i do i started doing a game show from the latin quarter uh-huh live game show live game show called mother's day what was that

00:27:11Guest:Egg frying contest, diaper changing.

00:27:16Guest:I was awful, and I was bad at it.

00:27:18Guest:I hated it.

00:27:19Marc:Did you understand the game?

00:27:21Marc:I had one opportunity to host a game show, and I couldn't even wrap my brain around the game.

00:27:25Marc:I didn't know the game.

00:27:27Marc:No, not really.

00:27:28Guest:Well, Rogers and Cowan, then a great big PR and production company, came to me and said, we're trying out a new idea for a game show.

00:27:38Guest:Right.

00:27:38Guest:Would you come in and emcee it?

00:27:40Guest:We'll get people off the street.

00:27:41Guest:Right.

00:27:42Marc:That's always good.

00:27:43Marc:People off the street.

00:27:44Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:27:45Guest:That's going to be a good show.

00:27:45Guest:It was The Price is Right.

00:27:47Guest:Oh, my God.

00:27:48Guest:I went home and said, is this the dumbest idea for it?

00:27:52Guest:Guessing how much something costs, that's a game, you know?

00:27:54Guest:It's never going to last.

00:27:56Guest:40 years ago and it's still on.

00:27:57Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:27:58Guest:This is crazy.

00:27:59Guest:No one's going to watch that.

00:28:01Guest:Of course.

00:28:02Guest:I still think it's a dumb idea.

00:28:03Marc:Was Bob Barker the original host?

00:28:05Marc:you know, no, uh, Bill, Bill.

00:28:08Marc:Oh, what is it?

00:28:09Marc:Yeah.

00:28:10Marc:See Cullen, Cullen, Bill Cullen.

00:28:12Marc:Oh my God.

00:28:12Marc:How did I know that?

00:28:13Marc:That is unbelievable.

00:28:15Marc:Huh?

00:28:16Marc:He was born to do games.

00:28:17Marc:Yeah.

00:28:17Marc:And he did forever.

00:28:18Marc:Greatest.

00:28:19Marc:So when did the big break come?

00:28:20Marc:When did, when did you enter Broadway?

00:28:21Marc:How did that happen?

00:28:23Guest:That every day when the, uh, mother's day went off the air, I would head for the theater district and start auditioning.

00:28:31Guest:And I, I,

00:28:32Guest:said I could do anything.

00:28:33Guest:I auditioned.

00:28:34Guest:I got a few callbacks on shows, and I finally auditioned for Gower Champion, who gave me the part right on the spot.

00:28:44Guest:Apparently,

00:28:45Guest:Because we were about the same size and build.

00:28:48Guest:I think he saw himself in the part.

00:28:49Guest:Yeah.

00:28:50Guest:And hired me on.

00:28:51Guest:And I told him I couldn't dance.

00:28:53Guest:And he said, well, we'll teach you the steps.

00:28:55Guest:And the reviews opening night were very good, except at the bottom it just said, Mr. Van Dyke is adequate.

00:29:03Guest:Adequate.

00:29:04Guest:Adequate.

00:29:04Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:29:05Marc:That's not something you put on the resume.

00:29:06Guest:There you go.

00:29:07Guest:Well, I was a nervous wreck.

00:29:10Marc:And you had to learn how to dance.

00:29:12Guest:Yeah, but I got good at it once I relaxed.

00:29:15Guest:I was really swinging.

00:29:16Marc:Well, you got a style.

00:29:17Marc:You got the Dick Van Dyke style.

00:29:20Marc:Whatever that is.

00:29:21Guest:Well, you get into it.

00:29:23Guest:But then I was in it for a year, and I won a Tony.

00:29:27Guest:Yeah.

00:29:27Guest:Bye Bye Birdie.

00:29:28Guest:Huge hit.

00:29:29Guest:They still do it in high schools.

00:29:31Guest:I'm always getting calls from a fan.

00:29:32Guest:Look, my kid's doing Bye Bye Birdie.

00:29:34Guest:Would you?

00:29:35Marc:I've seen it a lot.

00:29:38Marc:What do they want from you?

00:29:39Marc:Could you come over and help him?

00:29:41Marc:We saw you when we were kids.

00:29:42Marc:Yeah, give him some pointers.

00:29:44Guest:It was really too frolic on the stage.

00:29:47Guest:It was good two hours of entertainment.

00:29:49Marc:And then that's what started the whole role.

00:29:52Guest:Yeah.

00:29:52Guest:Carl Reiner saw me in Bye Bye Birdie and had me fly out and do the pilot.

00:29:57Guest:And I was in.

00:29:59Guest:Things have been very nice.

00:30:00Marc:For the Dick Van Dyke show.

00:30:02Marc:Yeah.

00:30:02Marc:And that was originally meant for him.

00:30:06Marc:He always seems to bring that up.

00:30:08Marc:It was for me.

00:30:08Guest:He shot a pilot.

00:30:09Marc:Yeah, yeah, right.

00:30:10Guest:And he wasn't right for it.

00:30:12Guest:He played it way too nervous and anxiety ridden.

00:30:15Guest:He was, you know.

00:30:16Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:17Guest:And he's, as a writer, jeez.

00:30:20Guest:There's nobody like him.

00:30:21Guest:Who are the rest of the guys on that writing crew?

00:30:23Guest:Bill Persky and Sam Denoff came in from New York.

00:30:26Guest:Yeah.

00:30:27Guest:And became associate producers.

00:30:28Guest:They wrote a lot of shows.

00:30:30Guest:We would buy a few scripts outside and then rewrite them.

00:30:34Guest:Right.

00:30:35Guest:Because Carl knew what he wanted.

00:30:36Marc:And when you did that, did anyone have any idea?

00:30:40Marc:I mean, what was the landscape of television like at that time?

00:30:43Marc:Because it seems to me that the timing of the Dick Van Dyke show, so that was 1961.

00:30:47Marc:Right.

00:30:47Marc:So that means like the 50s are over.

00:30:50Marc:America's changing.

00:30:51Marc:You know, the ways people live are changing.

00:30:54Marc:You know, there's a little backlash from the Eisenhower years and you're now moving in to the 60s and things are loosening up.

00:31:01Marc:Right.

00:31:02Marc:And it seems to me that the Dick Van Dyke show set the model.

00:31:06Marc:for sitcom relationships that really still exists today, that the dynamic between you and Mary Tyler Moore and the way that the workplace was characterized and the sort of middle-class nature of the situation and the comedy, that's repeated.

00:31:23Marc:I mean, have you ever thought of it that way?

00:31:25Marc:No, but I...

00:31:26Guest:So many writers became writers from watching our show and thinking, hey, I want to do that.

00:31:32Guest:But I think it was the first sitcom in which the father actually had a job he went to.

00:31:37Guest:Usually he just would come home and say, I'm home.

00:31:39Marc:Yeah, I'm home from the thing.

00:31:40Marc:He'd take his hat off and put the briefcase down or whatever.

00:31:44Marc:And she gets the coffee.

00:31:45Yeah.

00:31:45Marc:Yeah, I think that was a big difference.

00:31:47Marc:Because I don't even know what the sitcoms were.

00:31:49Marc:At that time, what was on?

00:31:50Marc:You worked with Phil Silvers a bit, right?

00:31:52Marc:I did two of the Sergeant Bilko's.

00:31:55Marc:That was a big television show in the 50s, correct?

00:31:58Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:31:58Marc:Huge.

00:31:59Marc:And then the Honeymooners were on?

00:32:00Guest:Yeah, Gleason and even Burl was still on, I think.

00:32:04Marc:Ed Sullivan was still on.

00:32:07Marc:But see, it doesn't seem like the dynamic.

00:32:11Marc:It seemed like a big jump from those type of shows to your show.

00:32:14Guest:Yeah, Carl said, I want them to realize that you have sex.

00:32:21Guest:Yeah.

00:32:21Guest:And there was.

00:32:23Guest:that you didn't see in other shows.

00:32:25Guest:You felt that a lot of people, a lot of the public thought we were really married in real life.

00:32:30Marc:Oh, really?

00:32:31Marc:Yeah.

00:32:32Marc:And wasn't that the first show where you swept in the same bed?

00:32:34Marc:Was that a big deal?

00:32:35Marc:No.

00:32:35Marc:Oh, you never did?

00:32:37Guest:Bob Newhart got to sleep with Suzanne Plachette.

00:32:41Guest:No, Mary and I were still stuck.

00:32:42Guest:That was in the 70s, wasn't it, Newhart?

00:32:45Marc:It took that long?

00:32:46Guest:Yeah.

00:32:47Yeah.

00:32:47Guest:We couldn't say the word pregnant.

00:32:51Guest:Really?

00:32:52Guest:We weren't allowed to say it.

00:32:54Guest:And when Carl started writing a couple of shows about black citizens, one about where we thought the baby was, oh, the network went crazy.

00:33:05Guest:Freaked out.

00:33:06Guest:Oh, he had to fight for that show, and it was probably the longest laugh I've ever heard.

00:33:11Guest:20 minutes.

00:33:13Guest:What was the line?

00:33:15Guest:Well, I think we've got the wrong baby.

00:33:18Guest:And I call the other couple, they show up, and they're a black couple.

00:33:21Guest:And when they walk in the door, I've never heard such a scream in my life.

00:33:25Guest:Oh, my God.

00:33:26Guest:We just cut the cameras, and they just kept screaming.

00:33:28Guest:Because no one had ever seen that before.

00:33:30Guest:Never.

00:33:31Guest:No, he broke a lot of ground in that area.

00:33:34Guest:And it was, to me, so satisfying that he did it, people accepted it, I think it was a big step in race relations.

00:33:44Guest:I really do, to do it with humor.

00:33:46Marc:Yeah, absolutely.

00:33:48Marc:Because I don't think people know, and I don't think I know, just how segregated the culture was, even in unsegregated areas, because there's still tension now.

00:33:55Marc:Still is.

00:33:56Marc:Yeah, exactly.

00:33:57Marc:And that there was just, to even engage that joke, it must have just been explosive.

00:34:03Guest:It was unbelievable.

00:34:04Guest:He did one other one in which we were trying to help Richie make a Halloween costume.

00:34:09Guest:And we dyed a sheet black.

00:34:12Guest:And we ended up with black hands.

00:34:14Guest:And I had to go speak to a black audience about race relations.

00:34:24Guest:So I put gloves on to hide it.

00:34:28Guest:And then right in the middle of the speech, he says, what am I doing?

00:34:32Guest:And he takes it off and shows his black hand.

00:34:34Guest:That was another one that the network thought, oh, went great.

00:34:38Marc:What do you think they were afraid of?

00:34:39Marc:I mean, what do you think they thought was going to happen?

00:34:41Guest:I don't... They didn't want to offend anybody, mainly.

00:34:45Marc:Yeah, the South.

00:34:46Marc:Oh, right, right.

00:34:47Marc:Them.

00:34:48Marc:Big market.

00:34:50Marc:And by this point, were you still living out on Long Island?

00:34:52Marc:Or you were out here now?

00:34:54Guest:No, it was here.

00:34:55Marc:You shot it all out here, yeah.

00:34:56Marc:Now, when you met Mary Tyrell Moore, I mean, how... Because you guys are still great friends, right?

00:35:00Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:35:02Marc:Did you know you had chemistry right away?

00:35:03Marc:Did you know that it was going to...

00:35:05Guest:No, not right away.

00:35:07Guest:I came and met her and we read the first clip.

00:35:11Guest:And I thought, she's awfully young.

00:35:13Guest:She was 12 years younger than I. Oh, really?

00:35:15Guest:Yeah.

00:35:16Guest:And she had a kind of a mid-Atlantic Katharine Hepburn delivery.

00:35:23Uh-huh.

00:35:23Guest:Not a comedian.

00:35:24Guest:No.

00:35:25Guest:Right.

00:35:26Guest:Had never done any.

00:35:27Guest:Right.

00:35:27Guest:At all.

00:35:28Guest:And I said to Carl, you know, she's awfully young.

00:35:31Guest:Can she do comedy?

00:35:32Guest:Right.

00:35:32Guest:Which today.

00:35:34Guest:Clearly.

00:35:35Guest:She caught it.

00:35:37Guest:She got it almost immediately.

00:35:40Guest:And the chemistry worked.

00:35:41Guest:We were like an improv team.

00:35:43Guest:It was such fun.

00:35:44Marc:Was there a lot of improv on the set?

00:35:45Guest:During rehearsals.

00:35:46Guest:Yeah.

00:35:47Guest:We rehearsed all week, and everybody threw lines.

00:35:50Guest:Right.

00:35:51Guest:You know, Carl was really open to... He said sitcoms are rewriting.

00:35:55Guest:That's what it's about.

00:35:56Guest:Right.

00:35:57Guest:So by the night of the show, we knew we had a solid show.

00:36:01Guest:And that shot live.

00:36:02Marc:Yeah, live.

00:36:03Marc:And you had Rose Marie.

00:36:04Marc:With an audience.

00:36:05Marc:Yeah, and Maury Amsterdam, who were hilarious.

00:36:07Marc:I mean, where did they... Like, I should know, but I mean, were they both stage performers?

00:36:12Yeah.

00:36:12Guest:Oh, Maury had been a nightclub performer forever.

00:36:16Guest:Right.

00:36:16Guest:And Rosie had started out at, I think, three or four years old as Baby Rosemarie in vaudeville.

00:36:23Guest:Oh, my God.

00:36:23Guest:So they both had a big pass.

00:36:26Guest:Yeah.

00:36:26Guest:Chops and razor-sharp timing.

00:36:28Guest:So you did, what, five seasons or six?

00:36:31Marc:Five.

00:36:31Guest:Carl, at the outset, said he wouldn't do more than five.

00:36:34Guest:That's probably smart, right?

00:36:36Guest:Well, not in my opinion.

00:36:38Guest:Yeah.

00:36:38Guest:I'd still be doing it.

00:36:40Marc:You'd be doing it now.

00:36:42Marc:Yeah.

00:36:42Guest:It was the most creative, fun time.

00:36:45Guest:Yeah.

00:36:45Guest:And there's no other writer like Carl.

00:36:48Guest:No, the rest of us would have gone on forever.

00:36:50Guest:But he felt that you would begin to get repetitive.

00:36:54Guest:But look at Seinfeld.

00:36:56Guest:What, 11 seasons?

00:36:57Guest:Yeah.

00:36:58Marc:Yeah, a lot of things go on past they need to.

00:37:01Marc:I think we could have done a few more years, personally.

00:37:04Marc:Yeah, well, have you brought that up with him?

00:37:06Marc:Do you bring it up with him every time you see him?

00:37:09Marc:Just three more.

00:37:09Marc:We could have had three more.

00:37:11Marc:We could have had three more.

00:37:13Marc:But you worked with Carl after that.

00:37:15Marc:You did the films?

00:37:16Marc:We did a film called The Comic.

00:37:18Marc:That's a hard film to find.

00:37:20Marc:I've only been able to watch it in pieces.

00:37:22Marc:Oh, really?

00:37:22Marc:Yeah, I'd like to get it on DVD.

00:37:25Guest:That movie, we had so much fun shooting it.

00:37:28Guest:Columbia released it, and that was it.

00:37:30Guest:Two weeks later, it was gone.

00:37:31Marc:Well, I think it's a difficult movie to chart the sort of slow kind of, what would you call it?

00:37:39Marc:I mean, this is about a silent film star.

00:37:41Marc:Right.

00:37:42Marc:Who makes a move into talkies, correct?

00:37:46Marc:Yeah.

00:37:47Marc:And then just gets beside himself with lust, alcoholism.

00:37:54Marc:You know, it's just a slow crumbling.

00:37:56Guest:We used Buster Keaton a lot because Buster did that.

00:37:59Guest:Did you ever meet him?

00:38:01Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:38:01Guest:He was another one I looked up.

00:38:03Marc:Yeah.

00:38:03Marc:The greatest.

00:38:04Marc:Genius.

00:38:05Marc:So you befriended him when you came out here to do the Dick Van Dyke show.

00:38:09Marc:Well, I found him.

00:38:10Marc:After that.

00:38:11Guest:Once I found Stan Laurel, I was on a roll.

00:38:13Guest:Yeah.

00:38:13Guest:It didn't take much.

00:38:15Guest:No.

00:38:15Guest:How did you find him?

00:38:17Guest:Through somebody who knew him.

00:38:19Guest:He lived out in Woodland Hills.

00:38:21Guest:And I called him and got to go out and visit him.

00:38:24Guest:What age was he at at that point?

00:38:26Guest:He was about 68, I think.

00:38:28Marc:Right about in there.

00:38:30Marc:And how was that?

00:38:30Marc:Because he seems like a very heavy-hearted dude.

00:38:33Guest:He was very shy.

00:38:36Guest:His wife, Eleanor, I went out one Sunday afternoon to meet him.

00:38:39Guest:I was sitting in the living room with Eleanor, and I see him walking around outside.

00:38:44Guest:I said, is he coming in?

00:38:47Guest:And all of a sudden, he popped in with that flat hat of his and a ukulele, singing, singing a little song.

00:38:54Guest:Oh, Mr. Moon, moon, careful line of moon.

00:38:57Guest:And then I got to sit and talk to him.

00:38:59Guest:He was so shy.

00:39:01Marc:That was your first encounter with him.

00:39:03Marc:You're sitting in a living room.

00:39:04Marc:And if I saw you wandering around outside waiting for you without coming in, you'd almost feel like you were watching a movie.

00:39:12Marc:You must have laughed a little bit.

00:39:14Marc:There's Buster Keaton.

00:39:15Marc:He's wandering around outside.

00:39:16Marc:But you said he's very shy.

00:39:18Marc:And he was.

00:39:18Marc:Yeah.

00:39:19Marc:And what did you talk to him about?

00:39:21Guest:His career, of course.

00:39:22Guest:I'm asking him.

00:39:23Guest:At one time or another, he had broken every bone in his body doing his stunts.

00:39:29Guest:He broke his neck once and kept shooting.

00:39:33Guest:He was a pool shark.

00:39:33Guest:He loved to shoot pool.

00:39:35Guest:He had a special cue that screwed together and went in a leather case, and he gave it to me.

00:39:40Marc:So I have that.

00:39:41Marc:Yeah.

00:39:42Marc:You have Buster Keaton's pool cue.

00:39:44Marc:Yeah.

00:39:45Marc:Did you spend more time with him, like regularly, or just that one time?

00:39:48Guest:Yeah, I get to go out on Sundays.

00:39:49Guest:He loves to cook.

00:39:51Guest:He had a little electric train that went out along his fence to a

00:39:55Marc:picnic table back in the corner and we go toot toot now would come our hamburger he was cute and somewhere in the middle of the bridge did he blow the bridge up so the entire train fell down and have to rebuild that's the most amazing thing that movie what is that the general the general where they had that one shot man you know that that train could only fall down once and and he that's rolled the dice that's an incredible uh risk to take there's a scene where they stop at the water tower and the water comes rushing out on it

00:40:23Guest:That's where he broke his neck.

00:40:25Guest:Oh, really?

00:40:25Guest:Fell off the train and broke his neck.

00:40:27Marc:And that's when he kept shooting.

00:40:28Marc:Because that was his big movie.

00:40:29Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:40:30Marc:I think that was the first major full-length movie.

00:40:32Marc:I don't think it was his funniest one by far.

00:40:34Marc:No, no.

00:40:35Marc:The shorts were the funny ones, right?

00:40:37Marc:Yeah.

00:40:38Marc:Yeah.

00:40:38Marc:Okay, so you meet Buster Keaton.

00:40:40Marc:And where are we going with that?

00:40:41Marc:Oh, the comic.

00:40:42Marc:So you and Carl wrote that film together.

00:40:45Guest:Actually, Aaron Rubin, who had written for Bilko and was a producer of Andy Griffith.

00:40:50Guest:The two of them wrote it.

00:40:52Guest:I came in and threw in my two cents.

00:40:55Guest:But we ended up rewriting every day.

00:40:59Guest:Nobody in a suit ever came and bothered us.

00:41:01Guest:We were out in location.

00:41:02Guest:We just did what we wanted to do.

00:41:04Guest:And there are pieces of the film that don't make sense because we would have a funny idea and throw it in, even if it was a non sequitur.

00:41:14Guest:So we had more fun than the audience did.

00:41:16Guest:And why didn't the movie succeed?

00:41:20Guest:They didn't publicize it at all.

00:41:22Guest:It got nothing.

00:41:23Guest:It just opened unannounced.

00:41:24Guest:And I have people today who say they've seen it and like it.

00:41:28Guest:We went for authenticity.

00:41:31Guest:We shot in 16mm, 18 frames, and then dragged it through my backyard to mess it up.

00:41:38Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:41:39Marc:Oh, for the silent sequences.

00:41:41Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:43Marc:I think it's a good film about that era.

00:41:46Marc:Yeah.

00:41:47Marc:And did you find that when you were playing it, because I know that you've you've had your own struggles with the bottle.

00:41:53Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:41:54Marc:And was that did it seem prophetic to you?

00:41:58Marc:In any way.

00:42:00Guest:Really is what happened to Buster Keaton, who became a badly alcoholic, disappeared.

00:42:06Guest:And then in his late life, he was back doing commercials.

00:42:10Guest:He was in Mad, Mad, Mad World.

00:42:12Guest:And all of a sudden he had another career.

00:42:14Guest:Right.

00:42:15Guest:He didn't marry a young girl like Billy Bright did.

00:42:20Guest:Yeah.

00:42:22Guest:He got married inside an oxygen tent.

00:42:25Guest:He did.

00:42:26Guest:For some reason, that always strikes me so funny.

00:42:28Marc:It's a little dark for people, I think.

00:42:30Marc:Maybe.

00:42:32Marc:So that was after Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, right?

00:42:34Marc:Yeah.

00:42:36Marc:It was about 69, I think.

00:42:38Marc:And after Mary Poppins, too, right?

00:42:40Guest:Yeah, Poppins was in the year 64.

00:42:43Marc:And when those started to happen for you, so that was in the middle of your run on television as well, right?

00:42:48Marc:You were in between seasons.

00:42:49Guest:Yeah, the 60s was my big decade when I worked constantly.

00:42:53Marc:Comic genius Dick Van Dyke, let's use him as much as we can.

00:42:56Marc:Let's wear this guy out.

00:42:58Guest:Yeah, of course, we did 39 shows back then, 39 in a series.

00:43:04Guest:The minute we'd break, I'd do a movie and then come back to work in the fall.

00:43:07Guest:So for 10 years, I never stopped.

00:43:09Guest:When did your brother start performing?

00:43:12Guest:In the Air Force.

00:43:13Guest:He was six years younger.

00:43:15Guest:He went in during the Korean War and ended up in a show called Tops in Blue and stole everybody's act.

00:43:22Guest:Uh-huh.

00:43:24Guest:And he was getting laughed.

00:43:25Guest:He was good at it.

00:43:26Guest:Yeah.

00:43:26Guest:But he got out of the service and suddenly he couldn't use the stolen material anymore.

00:43:31Guest:And he had to start writing.

00:43:33Guest:Were you guys close then?

00:43:35Guest:We didn't see a lot of each other because I was in Atlanta.

00:43:37Guest:He was traveling around.

00:43:39Guest:We never lived in the same town.

00:43:41Marc:Was there ever a tension because you were both in the same racket?

00:43:45Guest:No.

00:43:45Guest:No?

00:43:45Guest:No, not at all.

00:43:46Guest:Yeah.

00:43:47Guest:We ended up last year doing Sunshine Boys, the Neil Simon play.

00:43:51Marc:Oh, really?

00:43:51Marc:Where'd you do that?

00:43:52Guest:We did it here.

00:43:53Guest:In Malibu.

00:43:54Guest:And then we went to Dallas and did it.

00:43:57Guest:We rewrote it a little bit.

00:43:58Marc:Did he play the aggravated one?

00:43:59Guest:Of course.

00:44:00Guest:Yeah, he's the curmudgeon in the family.

00:44:02Guest:But we had to make it Gentile.

00:44:05Guest:We took out all the Yiddish sketches and jokes and kind of rewrote it for ourselves.

00:44:10Guest:And Neil Simon approved.

00:44:12Guest:And it worked.

00:44:13Guest:Yeah?

00:44:14Guest:Oh, my God.

00:44:14Guest:People loved it?

00:44:15Guest:They really did.

00:44:16Guest:Working with Jerry is so easy.

00:44:19Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:44:19Guest:He breaks me up.

00:44:20Guest:I have a hard time...

00:44:21Guest:keeping a straight face really yeah yeah it worked and we had a great time when did you have any idea when how did mary poppins work how did that like uh how did that all come together well i've i had been doing the van dyke show and when i got the call from disney i assumed well he needs somebody who can sing and dance right yeah and he likes my work he still refused to admit that you can sing and dance

00:44:44Guest:You could sing and dance by that point.

00:44:46Marc:You knew you could.

00:44:46Guest:I would just fake it so well the people don't understand.

00:44:49Guest:But Walt had heard me in an interview in which I said there was a dearth of family entertainment.

00:44:56Guest:And I didn't think the family entertainment there was was very good.

00:45:00Guest:And that's why he hired me.

00:45:02Guest:It had nothing to do with my ability.

00:45:03Marc:Right.

00:45:04Marc:He just wanted everyone to like it.

00:45:06Marc:The whole family.

00:45:06Marc:He wanted the kids and the grown-ups to enjoy them.

00:45:08Marc:Right.

00:45:09Guest:And it was a great experience.

00:45:12Guest:It was one of the few times in a production where you don't know, day to day, whether it's going.

00:45:18Guest:We knew this was magic.

00:45:21Guest:Julie Andrews, we kept saying.

00:45:23Guest:How'd you know?

00:45:23Guest:I don't know, just the feeling.

00:45:25Guest:And you got along with her?

00:45:26Guest:Oh yeah.

00:45:28Guest:You got along with everybody.

00:45:29Guest:It was a lot of hard work.

00:45:31Guest:Where'd they shoot that?

00:45:32Guest:All in the Disney Studios, all inside.

00:45:35Guest:A lot of people think we did it in England.

00:45:38Guest:There wasn't an exterior shot in the whole movie.

00:45:40Guest:All on stage?

00:45:41Guest:All on stage, yeah.

00:45:42Guest:Wow.

00:45:43Guest:But we knew, it had some kind of a winsome quality about it that we knew was good.

00:45:49Marc:And did you feel that way about Shitty Shitty Bang Bang 2?

00:45:52Guest:No, I fought the whole way through that.

00:45:53Guest:Really?

00:45:55Guest:It's a weird movie, right?

00:45:57Guest:It is a very weird movie.

00:45:59Guest:It lacked Walt Disney's touch, for one thing.

00:46:02Marc:Who directed that one?

00:46:04Guest:A guy named Ken Hughes, who didn't even like children.

00:46:09Guest:He was the wrong guy.

00:46:11Guest:He didn't like kids.

00:46:13Guest:He was always cussing in front of the kids.

00:46:15Guest:And I was always saying, would you please not cuss in front of the children?

00:46:20Guest:And we did a lot of rewriting.

00:46:24Guest:It lacked Walt Disney.

00:46:26Guest:The magic.

00:46:27Guest:And I was trying to bring that.

00:46:29Guest:Right.

00:46:29Guest:But what saved it was the Sherman Brothers wrote good music.

00:46:33Guest:Great songs.

00:46:34Guest:And Mark and Dee Dee, who did the choreography and

00:46:38Guest:Poppins, I managed to get them.

00:46:40Guest:You brought them in.

00:46:41Guest:I brought him in.

00:46:42Guest:So that's, as a matter of fact, I brought him into Disney.

00:46:44Guest:Walt had never heard of him.

00:46:46Marc:Really?

00:46:47Marc:So you actually spent time with Walt Disney?

00:46:49Guest:Yes.

00:46:50Marc:What was he like?

00:46:51Guest:He was avuncular.

00:46:53Guest:Everybody called him Uncle Walt.

00:46:55Guest:And he was that easy going.

00:46:57Guest:He was just an old shoe guy.

00:46:58Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:46:59Guest:Yeah.

00:47:00Guest:But, I mean, he was very strict about what he wanted.

00:47:03Guest:You better come up to snuff for him.

00:47:05Marc:But I liked him a lot.

00:47:06Marc:I'm trying to remember, because I was driving over here, and I'm not the greatest at research, and I was trying to remember, because I remember seeing Chitty Bang Bang, and I remember it being upsetting somehow.

00:47:17Marc:The songs were great, but wasn't there these... Wasn't that with The Land of Misfit Kids?

00:47:23Marc:Is that in that movie?

00:47:24Guest:Yes, The Child Catcher.

00:47:25Guest:Yeah.

00:47:26Marc:Yeah.

00:47:26Marc:And there was like a cave or a sewer where all these kids... Where all those kids were being hidden, yeah.

00:47:30Marc:It just haunted me.

00:47:31Marc:Like, I can't even remember the story of the movie, but I remember being horrified.

00:47:36Marc:All these kids were living underground.

00:47:38Guest:Well, I didn't realize at the time, people tell me when they were children, that Child Catcher scared them to death.

00:47:43Guest:That was it, yeah.

00:47:44Guest:He was really... But at the time...

00:47:47Guest:I didn't think of it.

00:47:48Guest:Yeah, and people still watch that thing.

00:47:50Marc:They love that movie.

00:47:51Marc:And it's three hours long.

00:47:53Marc:It's a big movie.

00:47:54Marc:It's a long movie.

00:47:55Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:55Marc:So when did the second television show with your name on it?

00:48:01Marc:Dick Van Dyke and Company.

00:48:03Guest:Oh, the variety show.

00:48:05Marc:Yeah.

00:48:06Guest:That was...

00:48:08Marc:Oh, I'm trying to think.

00:48:09Marc:Was it early 70s?

00:48:11Guest:Yeah, fairly early 70s.

00:48:14Guest:I did one out in Arizona, a sitcom that ran three years with Hope Lang called The New Dick Van Dyke Show or something like that.

00:48:21Guest:Right.

00:48:22Guest:And then Van Dyke and Company.

00:48:24Guest:It only ran for 12 shows.

00:48:26Marc:But that was the time of the variety show, wasn't it?

00:48:28Marc:Yeah.

00:48:29Marc:Like Carol Burnett and Sonny and Cher and Tony Orlando.

00:48:32Marc:Everybody had variety shows, right?

00:48:34Guest:We ran 12 shows and got canceled and then won an Emmy.

00:48:39Guest:And we were against Saturday Night Live.

00:48:42Guest:We beat out Saturday Night Live for an Emmy.

00:48:44Marc:So that must have been 76.

00:48:46Marc:That was 76.

00:48:46Marc:Somewhere in there.

00:48:48Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:48:49Marc:And Andy Kaufman was on this show with you?

00:48:51Marc:Yes.

00:48:52Marc:We kind of introduced Andy.

00:48:53Marc:What was that?

00:48:54Marc:I mean, he's such an oddball.

00:48:56Marc:How did you audition?

00:48:57Marc:What was that process with him?

00:48:59Guest:Well, we auditioned him, and the writers got up and walked out.

00:49:02Guest:Just said, this is nothing.

00:49:04Guest:What did he do?

00:49:05Guest:Played the bongos and then got angry and began to cry and picked up his bongos and left and the writers didn't get it.

00:49:13Guest:Did you?

00:49:13Guest:They just said, yes, I assume.

00:49:17Guest:So what we did, we would start a big musical number and Andy would wander on and interrupt us.

00:49:22Guest:Right.

00:49:23Guest:And I would finally in exasperation say, go ahead and go off stage.

00:49:27Guest:The audience loved him.

00:49:29Guest:Yeah.

00:49:29Guest:He was so hot.

00:49:30Yeah.

00:49:30Guest:And he really didn't do anything.

00:49:33Guest:Did you get along with him?

00:49:34Guest:Did you talk to him?

00:49:35Guest:Well, he was incredibly shy.

00:49:37Guest:Yeah.

00:49:38Guest:He barely spoke.

00:49:39Guest:He was a transcendental meditation.

00:49:41Marc:Yes, that was his big thing.

00:49:42Guest:So he was usually sitting on a blanket in his room meditating.

00:49:46Marc:Yeah, and that was his thing.

00:49:48Marc:So he didn't talk to anybody.

00:49:49Marc:Very shy.

00:49:50Marc:Now, when did you like, because I know that you did a lot of TV movies and you had another long-running series with the diagnosis murder.

00:49:58Marc:That ran for like 20 years.

00:49:59Marc:As long as I ever held a job.

00:50:00Marc:Ten years, actually.

00:50:02Marc:That was a good show.

00:50:03Guest:And they handed out the episodes piecemeal.

00:50:08Guest:They never picked it up.

00:50:08Guest:up a whole season.

00:50:10Guest:Five and then three more.

00:50:12Guest:We never knew what was going to happen to us.

00:50:14Marc:And you worked briefly with Carol Burnett?

00:50:17Marc:Brief, very briefly.

00:50:18Marc:Because it was on the Carol Burnett show.

00:50:20Marc:Yeah.

00:50:21Marc:And Corman left.

00:50:22Marc:Yes.

00:50:22Marc:And they brought you in.

00:50:24Guest:But supposedly not to replace.

00:50:26Guest:You can't, yeah.

00:50:27Guest:No, there's no such thing as replacing.

00:50:28Marc:I know, but I mean, at that point.

00:50:30Guest:But that is how it kind of turned out.

00:50:32Guest:Just by default, they kept writing the same kinds of sketches.

00:50:36Guest:And Harvey Korman was a character actor unsurpassed by anybody.

00:50:42Marc:You both have very unique approaches to comedy.

00:50:44Marc:They're very different.

00:50:45Guest:Harvey was nobody like him.

00:50:48Marc:Yeah.

00:50:48Guest:And Tim Conway's aim in life was to break him up.

00:50:53Marc:That's all he cared about.

00:50:54Marc:Do you know Tim?

00:50:55Marc:Do you have friends?

00:50:55Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:50:56Marc:Yeah, I know Tim very well.

00:50:57Marc:He was so funny.

00:50:58Marc:They were all so funny.

00:51:00Guest:They were funny.

00:51:01Guest:Yeah, and you got along with Carol, right?

00:51:03Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:51:03Guest:Carol had been on my show.

00:51:06Guest:Yeah.

00:51:06Guest:On my writer's show.

00:51:07Guest:And I had done the Carol Burnett show, excuse me, as a guest.

00:51:10Guest:number of times so it seemed kind of natural but uh it was just you couldn't replace harvey corman and that's the way it fell right and then you and then we all knew it wasn't working you know but it wasn't a hard feeling no no no we all said this this doesn't work now you got sober in 74

00:51:32Guest:Well, I got sober kind of in pieces.

00:51:35Guest:Yeah.

00:51:36Guest:It was over a long period of time.

00:51:38Marc:Because I'm sober 13 years.

00:51:39Marc:Oh, are you?

00:51:40Marc:Yeah.

00:51:40Marc:Oh, great.

00:51:41Marc:And I know that you've talked about it a little bit, and I just wanted to, like my big question about guys who drink in the time that you guys drink.

00:51:50Marc:Everybody drink.

00:51:51Marc:Right, everybody drink.

00:51:52Marc:I mean, you watch Mad Men.

00:51:53Marc:Do you watch Mad Men, the TV show at all?

00:51:56Guest:Yeah, but for me, having been there, it's inauthentic.

00:51:58Marc:Is it why?

00:51:59Guest:Not enough drinking or too much drinking?

00:52:02Guest:Not enough drinking.

00:52:03Guest:The clothes are not right.

00:52:05Guest:I kept saying, you've got to let me tell you how to do a Brooks Brothers suit.

00:52:09Guest:Clothes were wrong.

00:52:10Guest:They were.

00:52:11Guest:Yeah.

00:52:11Guest:Didn't look like the 60s to me.

00:52:13Guest:Too flashy or too...

00:52:16Guest:Too much shoulder padding, the eyes too wide, just a lot of little.

00:52:19Marc:Oh, really?

00:52:20Marc:A lot of little things, yeah.

00:52:21Marc:But like the drinking in the workplace and all that stuff and the smoking in the workplace, that was the way it was.

00:52:26Marc:Of course, everybody.

00:52:28Guest:I mean, three martini lunches.

00:52:30Marc:How do you do that?

00:52:32Marc:Yeah.

00:52:32Marc:I don't even think that my best day I could have done that.

00:52:34Marc:Oh, no.

00:52:34Marc:Without napping.

00:52:35Marc:I mean, that's my big question.

00:52:37Marc:Did you go nap?

00:52:38Marc:I mean, if you drank three martinis at lunch, did you go back to the office?

00:52:41Guest:Well, I actually didn't do it.

00:52:42Guest:I went to lunch with these CBS executives down at Louis and Armand's.

00:52:47Guest:And they would, I couldn't.

00:52:49Guest:Yeah.

00:52:50Guest:I couldn't do it.

00:52:51Guest:I didn't even start drinking until I was well into my 30s.

00:52:54Marc:Oh, yeah?

00:52:54Guest:Yeah, I didn't drink in nightclubs.

00:52:57Marc:Really?

00:52:57Marc:So you made it through all the nightclub act, all the early comedy stuff without touching a drop.

00:53:03Marc:And then in my early 30s, I got started.

00:53:06Guest:I was very shy.

00:53:07Guest:And I found a drink or two loosened me up, and I became really gregarious, or I thought.

00:53:13Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:14Guest:Just the life of the party until your memory runs out.

00:53:17Guest:But it took me a long time to realize that I'm dependent on this stuff.

00:53:21Marc:Yeah, how bad did it get?

00:53:24Guest:I never really got in any trouble.

00:53:27Guest:There are several times I should have had a DUI.

00:53:30Guest:Nobody ever stopped me when I was really gone.

00:53:33Guest:I never drank at work.

00:53:35Guest:You never performed drunk?

00:53:36Guest:No, I would drink at night and I always performed with a hangover.

00:53:40Guest:That happened.

00:53:42Guest:And I tried.

00:53:43Guest:I went to rehab a couple of times.

00:53:46Guest:Nothing.

00:53:46Guest:AA, of course.

00:53:47Guest:Yeah.

00:53:48Guest:What happened to me is it slowly stopped working.

00:53:53Guest:I would drink and feel a little dizzy and a little sick.

00:53:57Guest:Yeah.

00:53:57Guest:But, you know, I didn't get that...

00:53:59Guest:thing.

00:54:00Guest:Right, right, right.

00:54:01Guest:And it just went away.

00:54:02Marc:That's it.

00:54:02Guest:Little by little.

00:54:03Guest:I don't even think about it now.

00:54:05Marc:Isn't that the most frustrating thing when alcohol doesn't work anymore?

00:54:09Marc:Where you're like, how is this, you know, you have these expectations.

00:54:12Marc:I guess your drinking machine breaks.

00:54:14Marc:Yeah, you just, the body just like, nope, you need more.

00:54:18Marc:Yeah.

00:54:18Marc:Does that happen to you?

00:54:20Marc:Well, you know what ultimately happens is, well, you know what they say, that you're always chasing that first time.

00:54:25Marc:You're always chasing that feeling that you got the first time you drank for your entire life.

00:54:32Marc:You're never going to get back to that one great drink.

00:54:35Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:54:38Guest:Yeah.

00:54:39Guest:What I noticed was I was always a funny drunk.

00:54:41Guest:Yeah.

00:54:42Guest:But as time went by, I started to get...

00:54:45Guest:A personality change.

00:54:47Guest:I would get argumentative for no reason whatsoever.

00:54:50Guest:Sure.

00:54:51Guest:And I get a personality change, which really worried me.

00:54:54Guest:Right, you started to become sort of an angry guy.

00:54:57Guest:Yes.

00:54:57Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:58Guest:Cranky.

00:55:00Guest:A cranky drunk, yeah.

00:55:01Marc:No, not attractive.

00:55:02Guest:And I realized something, you know, there's not something right here.

00:55:04Guest:I'm not having any fun anymore.

00:55:07Guest:And you haven't had a drink in a long time.

00:55:09Guest:Oh, God knows.

00:55:10Marc:26 years.

00:55:12Marc:Wow.

00:55:12Marc:Cigarettes, too.

00:55:13Marc:You used to smoke a lot.

00:55:14Marc:Yeah, I've got cigarettes were harder.

00:55:16Marc:Oh, God.

00:55:16Marc:By far.

00:55:17Marc:I'm still on this stuff.

00:55:18Marc:All right.

00:55:19Marc:I take the, uh, you got the gum?

00:55:21Marc:I can't, I got, I got the lozenges.

00:55:24Marc:Oh.

00:55:24Marc:Yeah, you just suck on these.

00:55:25Marc:Oh, I'm hooked on the gum.

00:55:26Marc:Yeah.

00:55:27Marc:But it's not hurting my lungs.

00:55:28Marc:I feel the same way.

00:55:30Marc:It's the greatest thing.

00:55:31Marc:You've got to have something.

00:55:33Marc:Yeah, absolutely.

00:55:35Marc:I can't go anywhere without him.

00:55:37Marc:To me, it's sort of like this is my antidepressant.

00:55:40Marc:This is what's keeping me level.

00:55:43Guest:Even Freud said you have to have some kind of something that changes your attitude.

00:55:50Guest:Of course, he had cocaine.

00:55:52Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:55:53Guest:But you've got to have something.

00:55:54Marc:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

00:55:55Marc:What, are you going to just take life head-on?

00:55:58Marc:That's ridiculous.

00:55:59Marc:Oh, no.

00:55:59Marc:Who the hell can do that?

00:56:03Marc:So the SAG Award, that just happened, huh?

00:56:05Marc:I watched the acceptance speech.

00:56:07Marc:That must have been mind-blowing.

00:56:09Marc:When did you know that you had it?

00:56:11Guest:They told me several months in advance.

00:56:13Guest:I had been a bridesmaid a number of times.

00:56:15Guest:I gave Julie Andrews hers.

00:56:17Guest:Yeah.

00:56:17Guest:And the year before, I gave Mary Tyler Moore hers.

00:56:19Guest:I saw Mary Tyler Moore.

00:56:20Guest:I saw you give her hers.

00:56:21Guest:But then they said I was going to give her hers.

00:56:23Guest:I was tickled to death.

00:56:25Guest:I took all my kids, but they were surrounded by stars, and they just stargazed.

00:56:30Guest:They were blown away by everybody around them.

00:56:33Guest:Yeah, everyone was there.

00:56:35Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:56:35Guest:And some of your kids act, right?

00:56:38Guest:My son, Barry, who did a diagnosis with me for 10 years.

00:56:42Guest:Oh, that's right.

00:56:43Guest:And I had all my other kids on, too.

00:56:46Guest:I took nepotism just about to...

00:56:48Marc:The ultimate.

00:56:51Marc:Even had my grandkids on.

00:56:52Marc:A family brand.

00:56:53Marc:Yeah.

00:56:53Marc:The Van Dyke brand of acting.

00:56:55Guest:Well, that's what we liked.

00:56:56Guest:They always knocked that show because it was so retro.

00:57:00Guest:It was like the 50s.

00:57:02Guest:But we did it purposely that way to make it a family show.

00:57:06Guest:We kept it light.

00:57:07Marc:And he stayed on the air for a long time.

00:57:09Marc:Ten years!

00:57:10Marc:Yeah, and you had loyal people who watched it.

00:57:11Guest:Yeah, everybody got well on that show.

00:57:13Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:57:14Marc:So when you accepted that award, I mean, it always strikes me that those rooms, as amazing as that community is, it seems like a tough gig.

00:57:25Marc:To stand up in front of all of Hollywood.

00:57:28Guest:Yeah, all those people.

00:57:29Guest:Yeah, you're looking at all the great talent there is.

00:57:31Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:57:32Guest:Well, that's what I said.

00:57:33Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:33Guest:I'm looking at a great generation of acting.

00:57:37Guest:Because acting is different.

00:57:39Guest:If you look at a movie made in the 40s, everyone seemed so affected.

00:57:43Guest:It was a style, though, almost.

00:57:46Marc:It was a style.

00:57:47Marc:There was a clip to it.

00:57:48Marc:Yeah.

00:57:49Marc:That there was a pace.

00:57:50Marc:It seemed to be more of a...

00:57:53Marc:Writer's game in a way yeah that the actors we you just had that a patter there was it was more about the pace and there were there people who just Popped out of the screen.

00:58:04Guest:Yeah, who had screened like Spencer Tracy was a good actor.

00:58:10Guest:Do you know him?

00:58:10Guest:No, I never met him.

00:58:11Guest:He was something right, but he had impact on this Yeah, yeah a hell of a good actor, but there are not many people like that to me the Clark Gables and the Gary Coopers who

00:58:21Marc:just by stint of dint of who they were yeah a certain magnetism well that's but that's the weird thing about acting in general is that there's some people that just fit up there yeah and you can't really explain it you can't be taught or anything no they just fit on screen yeah and i think a lot of them for some reason are usually about five feet tall

00:58:41Marc:I've noticed that about stars.

00:58:43Marc:Like, you know, when you meet stars and you're like, oh, my God, you're like a dwarf.

00:58:48Marc:Yeah.

00:58:49Marc:Dustin Hoffman is short.

00:58:51Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:58:53Marc:Tom Cruise.

00:58:54Marc:They're all, like, this big.

00:58:55Marc:They can just sit on your lap.

00:58:57Marc:That's right.

00:58:58Marc:Yeah, I don't know how it works.

00:58:59Marc:And you're, like, lanky and tall, and you fit on there.

00:59:03Marc:Who were some of the great things that, like, in terms of your memories of working with people, were there moments where you were just like, oh, my God.

00:59:09Guest:No, I've never...

00:59:11Guest:I've worked with some very good actors, but none of the cream of acting.

00:59:17Guest:And I've always wanted to because they say

00:59:19Guest:that you rise to their level.

00:59:21Guest:If you're working, like playing tennis, you get better.

00:59:24Guest:But I've never worked with anybody really of that.

00:59:27Guest:I did a movie with Maureen Stapleton, who's an incredible actor.

00:59:32Guest:But most of them are about on my level.

00:59:36Guest:Very comfortable.

00:59:37Marc:What level is that?

00:59:38Marc:I don't know.

00:59:40Marc:But credibility.

00:59:42Marc:But you're like such a defined personality.

00:59:44Marc:Like everybody knows who Dick Van Dyke is.

00:59:47Marc:Do you realize that?

00:59:48Guest:I'm surprised to find it.

00:59:50Guest:Yeah, I get mail from Europe and Africa.

00:59:54Guest:Yeah, still?

00:59:56Guest:Yeah, still.

00:59:57Guest:As a matter of fact, it's picked up.

00:59:58Guest:Yeah.

00:59:59Guest:Maybe the SAG Awards.

01:00:00Guest:Suddenly I'm getting a lot of mail.

01:00:02Guest:What do they usually say?

01:00:04Guest:Always very nice, complimentary, you know.

01:00:07Marc:I grew up with you, that kind of thing.

01:00:08Marc:Right, right, right, right.

01:00:10Guest:But it's nice.

01:00:11Marc:When you did the, like, you know, the Dick Van Dyke show sort of defined, you know, everything about you.

01:00:19Marc:Yeah.

01:00:19Marc:You know in terms of the public and with all this sort of physical comedy and stuff I mean how much of that because it like I'm always fascinated by there's very rare people It's very rare that somebody can just be funny sitting down or you know Just like they exude that there's a physical timing to it and everything else and that's something you that you can't really learn right I mean it's something you have and

01:00:41Guest:Yeah, the Stan Laurel always said, some people have a funny bone and others don't.

01:00:47Guest:But I know a lot of people who do comedy who don't really have a funny bone.

01:00:51Guest:They're not funny.

01:00:52Guest:Yeah, they're not funny.

01:00:53Marc:You sit and talk to them and they just shut down.

01:00:54Marc:They can play act.

01:00:55Guest:Right.

01:00:56Guest:My brother, Jerry, has a funny bone.

01:01:00Guest:He cannot help it.

01:01:01Guest:He's funny without even trying.

01:01:02Guest:Right.

01:01:03Guest:And he kills me.

01:01:04Guest:We laugh at my brother constantly.

01:01:07Guest:And he's not trying to be funny.

01:01:08Guest:He's just funny.

01:01:09Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:01:10Guest:And I have to try harder than that.

01:01:12Guest:Yeah.

01:01:13Guest:But if something tickles me, I can make it funny.

01:01:15Guest:You can push it.

01:01:16Marc:So like when you guys are doing like because you're very physical.

01:01:19Guest:Yeah.

01:01:20Marc:So there were there like with Carl and maybe with the other writers or whoever you're working with, with Mary, because I, you know, I, you know, I'm a I'm a heady kind of comic.

01:01:28Marc:I don't my physicality.

01:01:30Marc:I don't think to use it.

01:01:32Marc:But like with someone like you, you guys would literally say, well, try it.

01:01:35Marc:Maybe if you fall over here or you do a double take or you do this stuff that you kind of work it right.

01:01:40Marc:Yeah.

01:01:41Guest:Carl knew I loved to do the physical comedy, so whenever he could work it in, he would.

01:01:47Guest:And he would always work in a song and dance number for Mary and myself, if it fit.

01:01:52Guest:He knew that's what we love to do.

01:01:53Guest:So there's probably 50 song and dance numbers in that five years.

01:01:58Guest:Just because he wanted you to have a good time.

01:02:00Guest:You don't get that on most sitcoms.

01:02:02Guest:Yeah.

01:02:03Guest:Are you acting?

01:02:04Guest:Are you doing anything now?

01:02:05Guest:Well, mostly I have this quartet, The Fantastics, that I sing with, four young guys and myself.

01:02:12Guest:And we've done concerts in colleges, appeared for the president at the Ford Theater in Washington, sang the Star Spangled Banner for Staples, for the Lakers.

01:02:24Guest:We're everywhere, but mostly fundraisers.

01:02:27Guest:We sing for fun.

01:02:28Marc:Yeah, it's just something you like to do?

01:02:29Marc:Yeah.

01:02:30Marc:Yeah, and is acting done, or you just...

01:02:32Guest:No, but you know, my kind of stuff is they don't do much anymore.

01:02:36Marc:No?

01:02:37Marc:No.

01:02:37Marc:What would you like to do, acting-wise?

01:02:40Guest:I don't know.

01:02:41Guest:I was thinking maybe of King Lear, about that age.

01:02:46Guest:Dick Van Dyke, King Lear.

01:02:47Guest:Yeah, why not?

01:02:48Guest:Call Mel.

01:02:50Guest:Yeah, he would probably jump at that.

01:02:55Marc:Great.

01:02:55Marc:That would be amazing.

01:02:57Marc:Get Mel Brooks to direct Dick Van Dyke as King Lear.

01:03:01Marc:That would be hilarious.

01:03:04Guest:You know, four daughters to be angry at?

01:03:06Guest:Yeah.

01:03:06Guest:I think it'd be fun.

01:03:08Marc:That's amazing.

01:03:09Marc:So, like, how many of these guys from those days do you spend time with?

01:03:12Marc:I mean, how many are left?

01:03:13Marc:None.

01:03:15Guest:Really, everybody is gone.

01:03:17Guest:And you're 80 what?

01:03:18Guest:87.

01:03:19Guest:I just turned 87 in December.

01:03:22Guest:I talked to Tim still around.

01:03:23Guest:Tim Conway?

01:03:27Guest:Tim Conway.

01:03:28Guest:I just talked to Mike Connors.

01:03:31Guest:Do you remember Mike Connors?

01:03:33Guest:He did a couple of sense of movies.

01:03:35Guest:Mike's still around, but all my buddies in my hometown, there's one left.

01:03:40Guest:And he's Bob Hackman, Gene Hackman's uncle.

01:03:45Guest:Gene was from my hometown.

01:03:46Guest:Really?

01:03:46Guest:From Danville, Illinois.

01:03:49Guest:Do you know Gene Hackman?

01:03:50Guest:I knew him.

01:03:51Guest:He was a lot younger.

01:03:52Guest:Oh, so you knew him when he was a kid?

01:03:53Guest:He used to hang around us.

01:03:54Guest:He must have been an intense kid.

01:03:55Guest:Yeah, well, he was a lot younger.

01:03:57Guest:And we would say, Gene, you know, go away.

01:03:59Guest:Don't bother us.

01:04:00Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:01Guest:You're with the older guy.

01:04:02Guest:Yeah.

01:04:02Guest:So when I met him out here, I said, you know, if I had known, he was going to be a star with Ben a lot.

01:04:08Guest:He's an interesting actor.

01:04:10Guest:He turned out to be sensational.

01:04:12Guest:Wild.

01:04:13Guest:But I don't have the group I knew.

01:04:16Guest:Yeah.

01:04:17Guest:Are just about all gone.

01:04:18Guest:We were at Sid Caesar's house Saturday.

01:04:20Guest:Right, right, right.

01:04:21Guest:And Sid's, you know, very ill.

01:04:23Guest:How often do you guys go over there?

01:04:24Guest:Whenever we're invited.

01:04:26Guest:Mm-hmm.

01:04:27Guest:I love to be there because the anecdotes about the Sid Caesar show and Mel's got stories to tell.

01:04:34Guest:When we left Saturday night, Mel came up to me and said, you seem to enjoy the company of Jews.

01:04:44Is that great?

01:04:44Guest:That's the first time he's ever said that to you?

01:04:46Guest:You've never said that before, no.

01:04:48Guest:But we're always invited, and I didn't realize that we are the only Gentiles there, which I'm very flattered.

01:04:55Guest:Well, yeah, you were always surrounded by Jews.

01:04:57Guest:Of course.

01:05:00Guest:Billy Persky, who wrote so many good shows, said the secret of the show was...

01:05:05Guest:write Yiddish, play British.

01:05:08Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:05:09Guest:And it was really a Jewish attitude.

01:05:12Marc:Yeah.

01:05:12Marc:And I think it was.

01:05:13Marc:I think that, you know, the structure of television comedy was, yeah, built on that.

01:05:18Guest:Yeah.

01:05:19Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:05:20Guest:I always played a lot of guilt.

01:05:22Marc:Oh, yeah, did you?

01:05:24Marc:A little neurotic.

01:05:24Marc:Mary would lay on me, yeah.

01:05:27Marc:Well, it's been a pleasure, Mr. Van Dyke.

01:05:29Marc:I appreciate you talking.

01:05:30Marc:I enjoy talking.

01:05:32Guest:Hey, Dick, do you still sing the theme to the Dick Van Dyke show, the

01:05:36Guest:Oh, sure.

01:05:38Guest:Yeah, we sing it with the quartet.

01:05:40Guest:We do an arrangement.

01:05:40Guest:Let's go out with that.

01:05:41Guest:You know, nobody, it was never published.

01:05:44Marc:But was it written originally?

01:05:46Marc:Like, did he get music credit on it?

01:05:48Marc:No, he just did it for fun.

01:05:49Marc:Oh, he did it later.

01:05:51Guest:And it was never used.

01:05:52Guest:I don't think it was ever published.

01:05:53Guest:Yeah.

01:05:54Guest:And I've looked for somebody to ask if it's all right if we sing it.

01:05:58Guest:Yeah.

01:05:58Guest:But there's no survivors that I know of.

01:06:00Marc:That's one of the benefits of outliving everybody.

01:06:03Marc:Right.

01:06:03Marc:No copyright problems.

01:06:06Marc:You want to sing it?

01:06:07Marc:Sure.

01:06:07Marc:Okay.

01:06:10Guest:You ready?

01:06:10Guest:Yeah, I'm ready.

01:06:11Guest:So you think that you got trouble.

01:06:13Guest:Well, trouble's a bubble.

01:06:15Guest:So tell all Mr. Trouble to get lost.

01:06:18Guest:Why not hold your head up high and stop crying, start trying, and don't forget to keep your fingers crossed.

01:06:24Guest:When you find the joy of living is loving and giving, you'll be there when the winning dice are tossed.

01:06:31Guest:A smile is just a frown that's turned upside down.

01:06:34Guest:So smile on that frown or defrost.

01:06:37Guest:And don't forget to keep your fingers crossed.

01:06:40Marc:you don't have to follow over the ottoman it's basically radio thank you dick a pleasure i gotta say that was an amazing experience for me i hope you enjoyed that conversation he couldn't have been sweeter his wife was very they were very hospitable and nice thank you tim for setting that up and uh

01:07:07Marc:It happened!

01:07:08Marc:You know, that just happened.

01:07:09Marc:It just happened.

01:07:12Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs if you could.

01:07:17Marc:You can get some merchandise.

01:07:18Marc:You can get on the mailing list.

01:07:19Marc:You can kick in a few shekels.

01:07:20Marc:You can see who's been on the show.

01:07:22Marc:Get the app.

01:07:23Marc:Upgrade to the premium app.

01:07:25Marc:Go to the calendar where you will find that I am performing perhaps somewhere near you.

01:07:29Marc:We're going back to Boston to fill in for those snow days.

01:07:33Marc:I'll be at the Hukilau in Chicopee, Massachusetts on March 29th.

01:07:36Marc:I'll be at the Wilbur Theater in Boston on March 30th for a live WTF podcast.

01:07:41Marc:And a stand-up show.

01:07:43Marc:I'll be at Crackers Comedy Club in Indianapolis.

01:07:47Marc:Looking forward to that.

01:07:48Marc:Looking forward to doing that.

01:07:50Marc:I've been there in a while.

01:07:51Marc:Going to go over to Bob and Tom.

01:07:52Marc:Maybe do Chick McGee's podcast.

01:07:53Marc:And do like five shows at Crackers.

01:07:56Marc:Get ready for the special.

01:07:57Marc:I'll be at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco on April 13th.

01:08:01Marc:Excited about that.

01:08:02Marc:Love San Francisco.

01:08:03Marc:I'll be in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania at the Music Fest Cafe on April 19th.

01:08:08Marc:Haven't been there before.

01:08:10Marc:Excited.

01:08:11Marc:Yes.

01:08:12Marc:Moon Tower Comedy Festival, Austin, Texas, April 24th through 27th with the live WTF stand-up shows.

01:08:17Marc:And I'm going to be giving a sneak peek.

01:08:20Marc:Do you call it that?

01:08:21Marc:Can I call it that of my new show, Marin on IFC, which premieres May 3rd?

01:08:25Marc:And what else we got?

01:08:28Marc:Sure.

01:08:28Marc:Milwaukee, Pabst Theater, May 4th.

01:08:32Marc:And then somewhere in the middle of April, I'm doing a taping of the special in New York.

01:08:37Marc:I'll try and let you know when that is.

01:08:39Marc:Aside from that, I hope you enjoyed Dick Van Dyke.

01:08:42Marc:And if the show looks terrific on the Blu-ray box from the Dick Van Dyke show, the complete series, that's from Image Entertainment.

01:08:51Marc:Look, I'll be honest with you.

01:08:53Marc:I got it given to me.

01:08:54Marc:And I love it.

01:08:56Marc:But I think it's worth buying you guys.

01:08:58Marc:Alright?

01:09:00Marc:Okay.

01:09:00Marc:I gotta recover.

01:09:01Marc:I'm gonna be on vacation.

01:09:02Marc:Do you need to know that?

01:09:03Marc:Should I be telling you that?

01:09:04Marc:I need to tell you that.

01:09:05Marc:Alright.

01:09:06Marc:Boomer lives!