Episode 389 - Sam Simon
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:This is Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Um...
Marc:It's a pretty intense and amazing and funny and nice talk we have today.
Marc:Sam Simon is on the show today, one of the co-creators of The Simpsons, former writer and showrunner for Taxi, a tremendous philanthropist.
Marc:He's lived quite a life.
Marc:He actually, I think you would say, has one life.
Marc:He won life.
Marc:He retired when he was 35, and he's done amazing things, both...
Marc:As a producer and writer and as a guy who gives back to the world, a very interesting guy.
Marc:I guess I'm a little stumbly because I'm trying to figure out how to frame this.
Marc:And Merrill Marco, who is a friend of Sam's and a friend of mine, told me I should talk to Sam.
Marc:Because he has cancer and he has cancer.
Marc:So that's that's what's going on.
Marc:He has he has terminal cancer.
Marc:And that kind of that resonated with me in that I wanted to have a conversation with this guy at this point in his life because he doesn't know, nor do I know how long his life is right now.
Marc:See, I don't know Sam.
Marc:I know his work.
Marc:And quite honestly, I'm not a huge Simpsons guy.
Marc:You know, I obviously watch Taxi.
Marc:But it really comes down to what really compelled me to do this interview and to reach out to Sam was that, you know, he is a guy that literally had everything anybody could ever want.
Marc:And he lived life exactly how he wanted to live it.
Marc:And he earned it.
Marc:And now this horrible thing happens.
Marc:He gets cancer.
Marc:And I was just, I guess, curious because we all have that fear.
Marc:You wonder what is the most important thing in life?
Marc:What is really important?
Marc:I mean, I go through that all the time.
Marc:And I'm in this chaotic schedule right now trying to show up and promote my show, promote my book.
Marc:These are supposed to be the big payoffs for me and all the work that I've done in my life.
Marc:And it's very exciting.
Marc:But then...
Marc:As you start to really sit with stuff, you're like, well, is this it?
Marc:Is this what's really important?
Marc:And sometimes I don't really know.
Marc:I'm not really clear.
Marc:I'm not that evolved a person to know what is important.
Marc:So part of the thing that compelled me to talk to Sam outside of his accomplishments was how he's handling this.
Marc:How do you handle cancer?
Marc:I'm fortunate I have not had to deal with something like that, especially to deal with it at a young age.
Marc:He's not an old guy, and he had a lot more years in front of him, and he had a lot of things he wanted to do, and he's done a lot of amazing things.
Marc:Outside, as I said, of TV work, he's an amazingly charitable guy.
Marc:And, you know, I was nervous because I'm a self-involved person.
Marc:You know, I don't think I'm going to catch cancer, but I'm afraid of it.
Marc:So in some ways, you know, talking to him, you know, I don't think my drive was essentially, you know, tell me about the Simpsons or what about taxi.
Marc:And I'm not sure that's necessarily what he really wants to talk about now either.
Marc:We just had to feel it out.
Marc:And, you know, I did not...
Marc:Sort of shy away from the fact that he had cancer.
Marc:I think I brought it up pretty quickly and we just started there and we kind of went back over it.
Marc:And I think in my own heart, I was trying to to get a sense of what you know, what really is important in life.
Marc:And I think this is somewhat of a new search for me because I think that, you know, generally I'm just, you know, kind of, you know, flying by the seat of my pants trying to feel better and trying to just sort of like, you know, put myself out there and, you know, sometimes not in the greatest way.
Marc:I don't know if I ever really sit down and ask myself, am I, you know, what's important?
Marc:Am I living life?
Marc:You know, I don't want to say to its fullest, but that's, you know, you do that within reason.
Marc:But do I know, do I have a sense of priority?
Marc:or priorities as to what is important.
Marc:And I would have to say no.
Marc:I'm a selfish, self-driven, aggravated person that doesn't take much time to consider other people's feelings sometimes, to consider what I've accomplished, to consider really to be grateful or to have any sense of happiness.
Marc:These are all things that I'm slowly learning.
Marc:So that's sort of how I came into this interview.
Marc:I drove out to...
Marc:to malibu that area to uh you know i'm glad sam could make the time he uh you know i pulled up and you know i met him and he gave me quite honestly the best cigar that i've ever had in my life we went into his wine cellar cigar stash place and he gave me this beautiful giant cohiba and he had one as well
Marc:So if you hear that, if you hear me pulling on that cigar, that was one of my life's priorities in that moment was to not only have this conversation with Sam about his career and his illness, but also to enjoy this massive, beautiful Cuban cigar.
Marc:So that was going on.
Marc:So I guess what I'm saying is on some level, probably on a surface level, I was enjoying, quite honestly, one of the best things I've ever had in my life, certainly for cigars, as I talked about Sam and to Sam about his life and his struggle with this disease at the moment.
Marc:Let us go now to my conversation with Sam Simon, as I said, co-creator of The Simpsons, showrunner for Taxi, an important guy in television.
Marc:He did a lot of other stuff, too.
Marc:I'll talk to him about that.
Marc:But I just want you to know that, and this is not a heavy conversation, but it all revolves around where he's at right now, which is battling terminal cancer.
Marc:So let's go now to my chat with Sam Simon.
Marc:Sam Simon, I'm at your house.
Marc:You look good.
Marc:I've never met you before, but I know that you were diagnosed with cancer.
Marc:Yes, I have terminal cancer.
Marc:And we're having a cigar, and you look well.
Guest:Well, I actually, you know, cancer is a battle.
Guest:I have good days and bad days.
Guest:People tell me that I look great and I don't have looks cancer.
Guest:I will be a good-looking corpse.
Guest:I've always been good-looking.
Guest:My noble features will not be affected by this horrible disease.
Guest:But...
Guest:I did just get some I was given three to six months to live six months ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just got my scans back after six months of chemo, which is it's just so awful.
Guest:I can't even tell you.
Guest:And right now is the best.
Guest:feel because I'm a week on chemo drugs then I get a week off and like over the course of that week the last couple days I'll start feeling you know pretty good yeah and then like Wednesday morning I go in and I start the whole thing over again but these scans say that my tumors have shrunken and
Guest:and what does that mean i don't know because my doctor refused to explain it to me said look we're meeting on wednesday can't i just do this on wednesday no well you would you would uh that's that's what i should have said but i i just go okay i guess so yeah you know does it mean they're gonna all shrink and go away does it mean the chemo it's like you know i i don't know but
Guest:I will accept he told me it was good news and he told me he was very happy with it.
Guest:So I'll just take his word for it for a week.
Marc:Do you think about it a lot?
Marc:Do you think about like, you know, on a day to day basis?
Marc:Is it best if you don't think about it or do you like?
Guest:I would say it enters my mind every three minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You think about it constantly.
Guest:What is the thought?
Guest:Like, fuck.
Guest:uh it's when i the my main thought is because most of the time i don't feel good and most of the time i can't really do anything it's a you know with with dogs um
Guest:I've had to euthanize all my dogs.
Guest:People get upset that PETA euthanizes animals, but I love my dogs, and I've killed every one of them.
Guest:And I've done it when the time was right.
Guest:And what does that mean?
Guest:It means you write down the three things your dog likes the most.
Guest:And when they can't do that stuff anymore, it's time to put them out of their misery.
Guest:And...
Guest:One of my three things would be laying in bed and watching TV.
Guest:You're going to hang on for a while.
Guest:So I go like so by that criteria, I will never be euthanized.
Guest:But but I do think like just I wish I could.
Guest:do something.
Guest:I wish I can't drive.
Guest:I can't do, you know, there's, there's a lot of stuff and I, and I, and then I just go, I don't, I just don't feel up to it, but I just started smoking pot.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Um, for the first time in your life, uh, like I tried it in high school and smoked a little in high school, probably a few times.
Guest:I just never liked it.
Guest:I'm, I'm completely for drug use.
Guest:Uh, uh, I, I don't know about that, but, uh, I think it's a choice people can make and yeah,
Guest:Pot is certainly the most innocuous drug, but if I were a pothead, I would be really happy I got cancer because everybody gives you pot.
Guest:These people come over and I had, and I should say I used to have, I didn't know how fast you could smoke that stuff.
Guest:But I used to have a whole cigar box full of little glad snack bags full of different kinds of pot.
Guest:But it does work.
Guest:And I guess as opposed to when I was in high school, they've identified different breeds and strains of pot.
Guest:It's all gotten very complicated.
Marc:Hybrids.
Marc:Yeah, there's hybrids.
Guest:But the indica seems to...
Guest:It takes away, like, the anxiety, and it takes away the nausea, and it doesn't make... It used to make me paranoid.
Guest:I just remember being paranoid.
Marc:When you were a kid?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You have less to be afraid of right now.
Marc:It's all very specific.
Marc:You have one thing.
Guest:So maybe I could smoke sativa.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Maybe I could smoke some of the hybrids.
Guest:Take it all on.
Guest:But...
Guest:But I just started smoking pot to alleviate the nausea, and it works.
Guest:I have a vaporizer.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:You don't have to inhale the hot smoke into your lungs.
Marc:Someone got you set up.
Marc:Did you have a kid come over?
Marc:Did you have a pot guy set you up?
Guest:All the pot guys explained to me, this is what you do, this is where I have various delivery systems.
Guest:And, you know, I actually, because I said, I didn't know how fast you can smoke all that stuff up.
Guest:And I'm going like, oh my gosh, I got to go back to the pot store.
Guest:And so I found my...
Guest:Jennifer went with me.
Guest:See, I had a... You know, this is supposed to be medical marijuana from these dispensaries.
Marc:Sure, yeah.
Guest:It's categorized.
Guest:And so I went to this one that's on Pontius near the 405.
Guest:And I'm in the waiting room, and it's all...
Guest:uh skateboard kids you know like in their 20s people who are sick just yeah right and uh fat black people yeah and they're you know and one of them disappears and comes back and he's waving his thing like ha ha ha i got a pot certificate that you know
Guest:And my note was a note from a rather illustrious doctor at UCLA named Dr. James Goldman.
Guest:And, you know, saying, Sam Simon is a patient of mine.
Guest:He has terminal cancer and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And I think that marijuana may be beneficial.
Guest:So I show this to the guy.
Guest:He goes, sorry, I can't use this.
Guest:Now, I don't know what these other people had.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But Vine was no good.
Guest:You've got to go get the $40 pot script from the pot dog.
Guest:So that's what they said.
Guest:They said there's another place.
Guest:Next door.
Guest:On Pico.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we go down there.
Guest:And in the waiting room are the same...
Guest:Fat black people and skateboard kids, and they're doing the same thing.
Guest:They come out of the room.
Guest:So I take my letter, and I go back in, and this place was kind of downscale.
Guest:And the doctor's office...
Guest:was literally, which I don't mean really, really.
Guest:I mean, literally, it was an old mop closet and it still had that big mop sink in it.
Guest:And he had this little tiny desk and he had his University of Costa Rica medical school.
Guest:school certificates up there and you know i gave him the letter and for forty dollars i got my uh my pot certificate but you had to go to that guy i had to go to that guy with the letter and he actually see he's he actually was like oh you know i'm sorry about that you know because it's like what does he uh migraine headaches stress anxiety what do they usually what do they say to get get
Guest:Pain.
Marc:General pain.
Marc:General.
Marc:General pain.
Marc:Fibromyalgia.
Marc:So when you sit around now and reflect about your life, are there places you go?
Marc:How far back do you go?
Guest:Well, my attitude towards my life is, like, I don't... I would love... I was looking forward to getting old.
Guest:I thought I was going to live a really long time.
Guest:And I was always the youngest...
Guest:Sort of of my generation to do the things that I did.
Guest:I was the youngest.
Guest:I was running taxi when I was 23.
Guest:I was the youngest showrunner.
Guest:I was the youngest to go into syndication.
Guest:I was the youngest at, you know, all these milestones.
Guest:I was kind of ahead of the, you know, the writers of my generation.
Guest:And I thought, well, maybe I'll be the oldest actor to do this.
Guest:It turns out I'm going to be the youngest to die.
Guest:I'm going to be the first one to die out of the group.
Guest:But I retired when I was...
Guest:35 and so I've lived an incredible life and you know when I think about regrets the my honestly my biggest regret is that I was diagnosed about a week prior to going with the sea shepherds on the on the
Guest:operations zero tolerance in the antarctic and i just think that and i i was so excited about that and so up for that i had all my equipment i had everything and they they they're a anti-poaching organization that uh are the subject of the tv show whale wars right and i just bought them a a ship and
Guest:So my ship was in their fleet now with the Bob Barker and the Steve Irwin and the Brigitte Bardot.
Guest:The Sam Simon joined them.
Marc:Those are the people that bought boats for them?
Guest:I think Bob did.
Guest:I think the other two names are honorary.
Guest:I know Bob did, but I know Brigitte Bardot didn't.
Guest:By the way, she's a citizen of Russia.
Guest:She made news because there was some sick elephant in the Paris Zoo or something.
Guest:And I saw this was on the news everywhere.
Guest:Now for you kids, Brigitte Bardot was a sexy movie star.
Guest:Back what?
Guest:Late 60s?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she looks incredibly hideous now.
Marc:Does she?
Marc:Is it because she's tried to keep the beauty?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Whenever anybody says that, you go, there's no good ending.
Guest:The plastic surgery is, you know, there's Joan Rivers and Brigitte Bardot, and you just go.
Guest:Sometimes it works.
Marc:It's a Hobson's choice.
Marc:So you grew up, but you grew up in show business?
Guest:No.
Guest:You grew up here, though?
Guest:I grew up in Beverly Hills.
Guest:And, uh, it was Beverly Hills that was, uh, a little different.
Guest:It was really, uh, like a small community in the middle of Los Angeles.
Guest:It was kind of quaint and, you know, we had our stars, but, uh,
Guest:there weren't paparazzi and, and, uh, you know, you'd see Beverly Hills.
Guest:The sit, the town was very small.
Guest:We go there after school and you'd see Fred Astaire and you'd see Lucille ball.
Guest:And, uh, it was just different.
Guest:Our, um, uh, uh, my neighbors growing up where you'll like this.
Guest:It may be why you asked that question, but, uh, Groucho Marx lived across the street from us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when I was, uh,
Guest:Do you know this?
Guest:No.
Guest:Jennifer Tilly is here observing.
Yeah.
Guest:When I was five or six, and I have to phrase this delicately because I did not walk in on Groucho Marx and my mother having sex.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I did walk into my parents' bedroom, and Groucho Marx and my mother were...
Guest:sitting on the bed and he reacted to me by being so nervous and kind of acting like he got caught.
Marc:Did he roll his eyes and tap his cigar?
Guest:it was a kid what's the kid doing so yeah well i i say like uh you don't like that i i heard them talking and he was uh he was uh he said oh mrs simon i love you will you marry me are you rich answer the second question first and then she went oh my gosh get out of here right now he said wait don't leave in a huff leave in a minute and a half
Guest:Can't you see I love you?
Guest:Could I have a lock of your hair?
Guest:And then my mom said, oh, Groucho, I had no idea you felt that way.
Guest:He goes, really?
Guest:I was going to ask for the whole wig.
Guest:So that's what Margaret Dumont, who wasn't really like my mother, that's what that would have been like.
Guest:So that did happen.
Guest:And Groucho came over to our house a few times.
Marc:Was your parents married at the time?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Yeah.
Marc:Did you get any validation from anybody at any point in time?
Marc:Was there a conversation with your mother?
Guest:No, I was too young and I didn't really see anything.
Guest:The other thing that happened was my dog ran away and Elvis Presley brought him back in a limousine.
Guest:Seriously?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because he lived up the street?
Guest:They lived... Priscilla's house was... We shared the back...
Guest:uh border boundary or whatever property line yeah and so i guess he went up the street he went up the hill to her house and then elvis was on his way and and uh decided to drop he was in the back of the of the of the car but see when that happened like when people hear that they go oh my god a god yeah
Guest:you know, brought back your dog.
Guest:But Elvis wasn't a god at all.
Guest:Elvis was kind of a joke for, you know, like, really, I think, like, the last few years of his life, you know, this was the, you know, the uncool... Was it the late 70s?
Marc:No, this would have been 72.
Marc:So he's starting to really kind of puff up and... He's...
Guest:Well, he's starting his Vegas comeback.
Guest:Elvis on tour was a movie that came out about the same time.
Marc:I remember that.
Marc:It was just in the white outfit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The live concert.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the TV show that resurrected him, that was like in the late 60s with the black leather outfit.
Guest:Where he did the choreography and he did Jailhouse Rock.
Marc:So this is where he's starting to kind of blow it out a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:and he's like his hair is longer yeah and like you know my recollection because i was you know i do remember the beatles on the ed sullivan show i do remember how that changed things i was a beatles fan that elvis was very uncool and he was like uh he was old show business already yes so he was cheesy he was cheesy yeah yeah so and he was sort of like the local hill but i mean i'm glad he was no no no he was
Marc:Here comes that Southern fella.
Guest:Those damn Presleys.
Guest:Well, here he comes again.
Guest:You know, we're going to be, we've got some moonshine.
Guest:We've got a barbecue this weekend.
Guest:And we're wondering, if there's a barbecue this weekend, there's going to be a lot of fucking and sucking and fighting.
Guest:Right out in the yard.
Guest:Let's keep the kids inside.
Guest:What should I wear?
Guest:Wherever you want.
Guest:It's just going to be you and me.
Guest:So did he die in that house?
Marc:No, he died in Graceland.
Marc:No, he died in Graceland.
Marc:Because they were still together, I guess, when he was taken.
Guest:No, not Priscilla.
Guest:No, he was with, what's her face?
Guest:Linda Thompson.
Marc:Linda Thompson.
Marc:But when he brought your dog back.
Marc:He was with Priscilla.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So you grew up in, what business was your father in?
Guest:Shmata business, the rag business.
Guest:They would go to Fashion Week.
Guest:or whatever the equivalent was steal all the designs and uh and in a week they'd be shipping to Sears Roebuck or JCPenney so he's a big schmata guy he was yeah yeah so you grew up with that with those characters
Guest:No, they had kind of a dignified business.
Guest:He wasn't a character.
Guest:No?
Guest:No.
Guest:I always want those guys to be characters.
Marc:No.
Marc:Did he start in the Lower East Side?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:He was aristocratic.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:My...
Guest:Great, great grandfather emigrated to the United States in the 1860s to Galveston, Texas.
Guest:So it wasn't the usual, you know, New York, Russian Jews.
Guest:They were Estonian.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So they were like with the first class of import, export business people that came to the South and Texas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Actually, my great, great grandfather was shot by the Dalton gang.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He was a bartender in Galveston.
Guest:Well, at least it wasn't for being a Jew.
Marc:Just a bar brawl.
Marc:They had no idea.
Guest:And and so he moved to Canada to get away from the Wild West.
Guest:And most of the Simons are in Canada.
Guest:But my grandfather lived here and he was in the schmata business, too.
Marc:So when when did you decide to get into show business?
Guest:I was destined for law school.
Guest:Just I you know, I think that's what my parents would have approved of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just I just couldn't do it.
Guest:And so I was I was a cartoonist.
Guest:In college or what?
Guest:Really all my life.
Guest:But in college, I was professional.
Guest:I was doing cartoons for the San Francisco Examiner.
Guest:Single panel kind of things?
Guest:Yeah, I was doing sports cartoons for them.
Guest:And then I went to Stanford.
Guest:The Palo Alto Times did my stuff.
Guest:And then I did stuff for the Stanford Daily, too.
Guest:And I thought, well, maybe I can syndicate a comic strip.
Guest:And the head of Filmation Studios, which was a crappy animation studio, saw my submission and offered me a job doing storyboards.
Guest:So I started as a storyboard artist at Filmation Studios working on just the worst...
Guest:uh i mean it was really awful so you take you go from you'd read the scripts and then you'd have to do the beats illustrated so it wasn't really cartooning as much as it was it's not only that but you had to um you would work side by side with um a book of stock footage because everything was done so cheaply you'd have to pad the cartoon with you know if it was
Guest:We did Mighty Mouse.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it wasn't like you remember the Terry Tunes Minor.
Guest:This was the new adventure.
Guest:They did the new adventures of Mighty Mouse, the new adventures of Echo and Jack.
Guest:They should have just said like the cheap, crappy new adventures because they were awful.
Marc:Would they license them?
Marc:Is that how they got them?
Guest:Yeah, they buy the rights to them, to some washed up old thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The only thing they did that was good was Fat Albert.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And that was, you know, there's people that love that show, but they didn't do very many of those.
Guest:Back in the old days, they could just, if you had 13 shows, you could just rerun them, and kids would get older.
Guest:and they'd forget about them.
Marc:The kids turned over.
Guest:Yeah, you know, and you could run those Warner Brothers cartoons on the Bugs Bunny Hour forever, forever, and they were better cartoons than ours, and they were funnier than ours, and you'd just go, well, this is the goose that's laying golden eggs for CBS, but then... Did that land in your head, though?
Marc:I mean, did you understand that on a business level early on?
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:That cartoons are timeless?
Marc:You know, you can do...
Marc:20 pieces, and then they can run forever.
Guest:Well, that's what they were doing, but that doesn't work now because there's five different cartoon networks that run.
Guest:Do you remember the only time there was TV for you was Saturday morning?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Do you know what that must be like for a kid now that just any time of day you can turn on and you have your choice of all these different.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You had to wake up early because it started early.
Marc:I mean, it started shitty.
Marc:I remember there was a couple of shitty ones at seven.
Guest:That was me.
Yeah.
Marc:And then you had to wait for the good ones.
Marc:My brother likes, not necessarily cartoons, but Land of the Lost and those other shitty ones.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, the sweet stacks.
Guest:They did a couple of those at Filmation.
Guest:They did one called Jason of Star Command.
Marc:So this was your first sort of learning of how to structure shows anyways.
Guest:Well, what I learned, honestly, that was so valuable was just...
Guest:through just complete naivete, I said, wouldn't, because they made me a writer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They said, we want you to write script.
Guest:For Heckle and Jekyll?
Guest:For Heckle and Jekyll.
Guest:Mighty Mouse?
Guest:Mighty Mouse.
Guest:Not the Cosby show.
Guest:uh i wrote one cosby show you wrote the fat albert i wrote oh my god it was uh you know they had a social message so it was like about a kid and bill cosby like the rule on the show was there's never there's no white people at all on the show on fat albert yeah that was just like it takes place in a completely world
Guest:Bill Cosby said, what if the girl's white?
Marc:The retarded girl.
Guest:Retarded girl.
Guest:We'll make history on the Fat Albert show.
Guest:But one of the ways they tried to keep the shows fresh was Bill...
Guest:Cosby came in one day and this is before the Cosby show so he wasn't really You know his stand-up.
Guest:I don't know how you feel about it.
Marc:I think it's transcendent I I just go like I don't know I watched that bill Cosby himself in the last few years in really sat with it and it was like he just decides I saw him come out and he said I'm sorry.
Guest:I'm late We didn't have a mic check
Guest:and he walked off the stage and he brought a chair out.
Guest:And he just sat there and started talking and I just, and it was all,
Guest:kind of a theme, and it was the difference between, you know, people say their wife is their best friend, and he says, my wife is not my best friend.
Guest:My best friend is this guy.
Guest:And then he just started talking about the differences between a wife and a best friend, and he'd go off on tangents, and he'd go off on... And he kind of ended it with...
Guest:uh somehow his car broke down from the airport at three in the morning and it was this decision whether to call his wife or whether to call his best friend and he's imitating what's her name her name turquoise or sapphire or something i don't know he's like uh he's like what
Guest:Do you know what time it is?
Guest:Take a cab.
Guest:I just thought it was masterful, and I don't watch a lot of stand-up.
Guest:I know you have really high standards, and I just think so much of it is like TV.
Guest:It's just not really funny.
Marc:Well, it's not really in character.
Marc:The difference between telling jokes and having a point of view.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I don't mind telling jokes either.
Guest:Like if you want to get up and tell jokes and you tell them really well, you know, that's, that's fine.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But don't get up like you've got this take on the world and then just do, you know, the hacky jokes.
Marc:Hacky.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Things you've heard before.
Guest:Stuff that I've heard before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, what'd you study in college though?
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Um, I, uh,
Guest:Did you care?
Guest:I mean, were you connected?
Guest:No, I wasn't really a good student.
Guest:I wasn't... I would never have gone to... I wasn't going to go to college, but I was recruited to play football at... Well, a couple of schools, but the only school I applied to was Stanford because they kept saying, turn in your stuff, take your SAT, and so they nudged me a little bit, but I...
Guest:To me, it wasn't a great experience.
Guest:Did you play ball?
Guest:No.
Guest:I quit the first day.
Marc:You got a football scholarship?
Marc:I didn't get a football scholarship.
Marc:You didn't need a scholarship.
Marc:They wanted you to play ball.
Guest:They wanted me to play.
Guest:They knew I could get in.
Guest:They knew my grades were good.
Guest:They thought they had a spot for me.
Guest:And then the day before,
Guest:the first practice i saw the guy that was ahead of me as a freshman at my position in the gym yeah i just thought like wait a minute because i like playing football but i didn't like practice right that much yeah and i just go you know i i finally made my way to where you know you're kind of like a
Guest:you're treated well on the team you know and then like i'm not gonna hold bags and get my ass kicked every day it just so and then the coach was we never we never walk on this field we you know i always had um like authority issues and i always felt like rules didn't
Guest:apply to me I always thought I was special and I've always been kind of combative and my whole life I've been labeled as someone that has a bad attitude yeah but now that I have cancer all those qualities I get unsolicited from my doctors you know you have a really good attitude about this and it's all the stuff that made me a shitty person now like you know when this when this doctor said I have three to six months to live
Guest:They did a story about it on the Howardster News.
Guest:By the way, I tweet at Simon Sam.
Guest:S-I-M-O-N-S-A-M.
Guest:But they did a Howard 100 News story about me being sick.
Guest:And in part of the story, I said I was given six months to live, and that was five months ago.
Guest:And a lot of people thought that meant I was going to die in a month.
Guest:I was saying it like... I guess that's why you need emojis and you need to see a person talk.
Guest:They said I had six months to live.
Guest:That was five months ago.
Guest:I'm not going anywhere.
Guest:But people thought that meant I have a month to live.
Guest:The countdown begins now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But...
Guest:For whatever reason, when the doctor said that, I just didn't believe him for a second.
Marc:Right.
Guest:How can you?
Guest:Oh, I don't know.
Guest:No, because some people roll up in a ball and die.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think that's a really bad thing to do.
Guest:I plan on getting better.
Guest:I'm not sure exactly what...
Guest:that means, but I'm doing all sorts of stuff.
Guest:I've got the regular doctors, I've got the quack doctors, I've got homeopathic doctors.
Marc:What kind of quacks are you going to?
Marc:Well, I don't want to say... You're not going to say their name, but the style of quackery that you've hung some of your hope on.
Guest:Oh, I don't want to... The reason I like him... This doctor was recommended to me
Guest:by Mary Lou Henner.
Guest:And I should say, it's a brutal process, and it's just so dehumanizing and discouraging, and when they say it's a fight, it is a fight, and half of the fight is with your doctors.
Guest:So Mary Lou recommended this one guy to be like my homeopathic Eastern guy.
Guest:And I Googled him, and the first thing was, quack to the stars.
Guest:And I thought, that's exactly what I need.
Guest:I want someone that'll kiss my ass and act like they're happy to sing.
Guest:see me and be encouraging and be like a human being.
Guest:And so that's why I don't want to say his name because I don't think he's a quack, but like he's...
Guest:He has an MD.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I believe you.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I know, but he also says, you know, crystals are good.
Guest:He does.
Guest:I said, well, I said, Jennifer Tilly got me this giant quartz crystal.
Guest:He goes, put that on your stomach.
Guest:I go, you believe in that?
Guest:He goes, I believe in everything.
Guest:Yeah, why not?
Guest:I mean, the prognosis is so tricky.
Guest:Exactly, and that's why I've told every doctor, I've said,
Guest:If I beat this thing, well, I may have been really audacious and said when I beat this thing.
Guest:And I said, when I beat this thing, I'm going to write a book.
Guest:And you're not going to get any credit.
Guest:I'm giving myself the credit.
Guest:You were very negative throughout this entire process.
Guest:Well, when my...
Guest:You just get thrown into this.
Guest:I'd been feeling sick for a long time.
Guest:I went in and got some tests.
Guest:I was misdiagnosed with a virus or something, but I didn't get better.
Guest:I went in.
Guest:They found something in my blood.
Guest:I had to...
Guest:leave called at work you got to get to for a scan at UCLA so then I got and I meet the doctor for the first time I meet him yeah and he shows me my scans and I don't know what I'm looking at I go whoa that's really cool you know he goes all the white parts are cancer I go oh fuck yeah
Guest:Not so cool anymore.
Guest:No.
Guest:And it's in your liver.
Guest:It's all through your connective tissues.
Guest:It's in one kidney.
Guest:It's in your colon.
Guest:And it's in your lymph system.
Guest:And I go, you know, you're a writer.
Guest:And sometimes, you know, it's a cliche.
Guest:You should avoid cliches.
Guest:But I was in the moment.
Guest:And I said, is it curable?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was my question.
Guest:So it's okay.
Guest:That's what you ask.
Guest:And he said, we don't use that word.
Guest:And I went, oh, fuck.
Guest:Because they'd be happy to use it if they cured anybody.
Guest:I go, that's not good.
Guest:So I said...
Guest:Well, how long do I have?
Guest:Another cliche.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, how long do I have?
Guest:And he goes, we don't answer that question.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I got upset.
Guest:I said, look...
Guest:I'm not going to hold you to the answer.
Guest:I don't know what these rules are.
Guest:This just seems ridiculous to me.
Guest:Just as a hypothetical question, if you saw this scan on somebody, worst case scenario, how long do they have?
Guest:And he goes, well, I suppose under those circumstances, I can answer the question.
Guest:I would say you have between, and then his cell phone went off.
Marc:Did he answer it?
Guest:And he answered it.
Guest:And it was his... Can't write that thing.
Guest:And it was his... There was some confusion between him and his wife, Oprah, who was going to pick his daughter up after judo class.
Guest:And he straightened that out.
Guest:And then he's going, where were we?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:No, but... What?
Guest:It's real?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Doctors can be so fucking... Well, that's what this guy is like.
Guest:Did he tell you then?
Guest:yeah that's when he said three to six months and then what'd he say we good no no then he said he said are you all right i go what he goes your eyes look unfocused and i said well yeah that news you gave me
Guest:with your great bedside manner that stuff you broke to me so gently yeah it's a little upsetting because your eyes look unfocused what was your first what was the first gig in television
Marc:Those cartoon shows.
Marc:No, but I mean after that.
Marc:Taxi.
Marc:How did that come about?
Marc:I wrote a script and I mailed it in.
Marc:How many seasons had it been going?
Guest:That was during the third season.
Marc:So it's still in the middle of the run.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you send the script in.
Marc:They bought it.
Guest:They made it into the show.
Marc:But you decided you're going to be a TV writer.
Guest:I decided as long as I'm writing TV, I should write something I'm not embarrassed about.
Guest:No more Heckle and Jekyll.
Guest:No more.
Guest:No more.
Guest:I was going to say that the things I learned... I learned how not to do things at the cartoon studio.
Guest:And when I did The Simpsons... For example, the idea... And they don't do it anymore because they don't need to.
Guest:But the idea of playing the scenes out with actors...
Guest:Bouncing off of each other which they don't even do in the features, you know It just seemed to me so so important to make sure we had that and a little bit of a fight But you mean everybody in the same room.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah, so you wrote for taxi and then they hired you on that script You wrote you wrote the on staff and they put you on staff and he moved you were already here So you just go you're writing you're in the staff.
Marc:Yeah third season and when do you get to run the show?
Guest:fifth year
Marc:And they still had, what, three or four more years?
Marc:No, that was it.
Marc:That was it?
Guest:Yeah, it was actually canceled twice when I was on the show, because ABC canceled it, and then we moved to NBC, which was a big thing at the time, and then they canceled us.
Marc:Because I worked with Judd Hirsch.
Marc:He played my dad in my IFC show for two episodes.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:I love Judd.
Guest:Say hello to Judd for me.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know if I'll see him again.
Marc:We did two.
Marc:He was there for two.
Guest:Oh, you just did two?
Marc:No, I did ten, but it's... Oh, he just did two?
Marc:Yeah, he did two as my father, and we talked a little bit.
Marc:You should be in every episode of Maren.
Marc:I am in every episode.
Marc:It seems to me like you're, I don't want to say star, but you're kind of the star of the show.
Marc:My name's on it.
Marc:It's titled.
Marc:You're really capitalizing on everything.
Marc:I'm 49 years old.
Marc:This is going to happen.
Marc:It's got to happen now.
Marc:Something's got to happen.
Marc:But does it ever occur to you like this was so big for you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is the podcast.
Guest:Mark has a very low overhead.
Guest:And this is not like, you know, the truth is, because I was going to do, I do a radio show outside of my Twitter at Simon Sam.
Guest:I do a radio show on Radio IO.
Guest:I'm not going to plug that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I wouldn't want you to plug it.
Guest:I'm not going to.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:No, I don't care.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's about, that people wouldn't like.
Guest:It's about animal rights.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What do you mean that?
Guest:Two hours, two hours a week where I talk about orcas and turkey abuse and things like that.
Guest:But I was going to do the show.
Guest:how great was this going to be?
Guest:I was going to do the show from the Antarctic aboard the ship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was going like, what?
Guest:And so I said like, you know, what do I, you know, what do I need to do it?
Guest:And they showed me like this.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's all you need.
Guest:And well, I needed to feed into the internet.
Guest:To do it live?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To do it live.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it was so doable and it was like no equipment.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:You can do anything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's just fantastic.
Guest:so when when you were on taxi i mean how crazy was it not crazy at all wait like with andy and andy that i gotta say is a complete fiction it is uh well complete 90 of it is fiction you know he did enjoy to put you on a little bit right but that's the that there's a guy named bob zamuda yeah i interviewed him i do i have a two hour two and a half hour interview with bob zamuda
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Well, he has a vested interest in keeping that myth of Andy alive.
Guest:And he's the go-to guy.
Guest:They made the movie about Andy based on his book.
Guest:And Andy was completely professional.
Guest:He told you Tony Clifton was him.
Guest:I mean, it's just, you know.
Guest:So that's all Zemuda.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and a little bit of press and hype.
Guest:And I'm sure Andy loves it.
Guest:You know, he would love that.
Marc:You said he loves it.
Marc:So is he still alive?
Marc:Are you hiding?
Marc:Is he here?
Guest:No, but, you know, at his service, someone got up and went, ladies and gentlemen, Andy Kaufman, and every head...
Guest:turned to the you know to see you know whether it was him but no andy you know i mean he was dying a long time yeah did you spend any time with him when he had cancer no no you weren't friends no he he was i think he kept it a little secret and he was he was going to um
Guest:psychic surgeons and you know really like even I won't do that yeah I don't even know what that is it's like a carny thing where they reach in they palm a chicken liver and they reach into your stomach that still happens people still oh absolutely
Marc:So when you were on Taxi, is that where you built a relationship with Brooks?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and we did a lot of shows together.
Guest:I did Cheers after that, and then Jim started the Tracy Ullman show.
Guest:I went to that.
Guest:The Simpsons were...
Guest:little bumpers on that and they wanted to make that into a series and that was taken right from his panels right i mean that was the first you know uh animated simpson pieces were on that show we're on the tracy oman show and there's actually people forget the first not that they forget something they never knew they can't forget but uh the first season uh it was 50 50 there was another cartoonist
Guest:I think named MK Brown.
Guest:I'm not sure what her name was, but it was, there were two cartoon cartoons on the Tracy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like that Brian Dunkelman or whatever that the, the co Ryan Seacrest cohost on, on American Idol.
Marc:Yeah, he does.
Guest:And then they just got rid of him.
Guest:And, uh, Ryan Seacrest is now the most popular biggest thing in show business.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Dunkelman.
Marc:Unsung hero.
Marc:Unsung hero.
Marc:He does stand-up.
Marc:MK Brown.
Marc:I don't remember her name.
Marc:I don't know her name.
Guest:It was about a psychiatrist.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't remember too much about it, to be honest.
Guest:All the Simpsons stuff.
Guest:You know, this is 25, 30 years ago.
Marc:Well, when did you meet Matt?
Marc:How'd that happen?
Marc:Just on the show?
Marc:Yeah, he was doing the bumpers.
Marc:And he was just hanging around doing those in the area.
Guest:He was one of the people selected.
Guest:And I think it was Polly Platt, who is a she's gone now.
Guest:But she was a big fan of life in hell.
Guest:So she brought him to Jim.
Guest:She works on Feats.
Guest:She was a movie producer.
Guest:And so she was very helpful to Jim on terms of endearment and broadcast news.
Guest:She's like a muse, I think.
Guest:She was.
Guest:And she was a big fan of Life and Health, so she brought in Matt.
Guest:And he pitched...
Guest:like a family that fought each other all the time.
Marc:To you and Jim.
Marc:To Jim.
Marc:Just to Jim.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that became one of the bumpers and it was these kids.
Guest:And, you know, Homer really didn't do that much in the bumpers.
Guest:Marge didn't even have a name.
Guest:But there was a lot there, you know.
Marc:And you were just a writer or you were a showrunner at this time?
Guest:I was, you know, I think at the time I was just a director.
Guest:I think when I started doing The Simpsons, they made me an executive producer of The Tracy Ullman Show, too.
Guest:I don't really, you know.
Marc:So when you met Matt for the first time, did you guys hit it off or what?
Guest:Yeah, we hit it off.
Guest:Yeah, we were friends when it started.
Marc:Because you understood animation, and it was what you started in.
Guest:Yeah, and I could draw, too.
Guest:So I designed a lot of the Simpsons characters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which ones?
Guest:A lot of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just interviewed Hank.
Guest:Mr. Burns, most notably.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, I'm sure there are people listening that are who hate me right now because they're sitting there.
Marc:They're probably sitting at home going, ask them about that.
Guest:And what about that?
Guest:The questions are all the same.
Guest:And and really, I'm not I'm not I'm I'm very grateful to the fans of The Simpsons.
Guest:And I don't know why they still buy DVDs, but they do.
Guest:I have a good deal on the DVDs and.
Marc:When you say design to character, though, what does that mean when you sit down with Matt and you could draw?
Guest:At first we would do it together.
Guest:Like if there was a big scene, what do you think of this?
Guest:What do you think of this?
Guest:And you're just drawing like one sort of model of the, you know.
Guest:But when you think about it,
Guest:Are they fat?
Guest:Are they tall?
Guest:Are they short?
Guest:You know, there's a lot of stuff, and it's pretty intuitive.
Guest:And I'll show you in my office what Mr. Burns was supposed to look like.
Guest:And on that...
Guest:it was a fax actually which is why it's faded so much but on that i it was a it was a very stocky kind of edward g robinson gangster yeah and i and i just thought right yeah and i just thought like no no no no no that's not what this is at all this is supposed to be this uh kind of vulture like old guy that uh you know and so i just did
Guest:just off the top of my head, I just drew a version of it, which literally became the model for the character.
Guest:Sometimes they would fix them up, but the artists and the directors knew that they would just get a lot of information from my sketches, so they would ask me to draw stuff every once in a while.
Marc:And in scripting it, because you were there at the beginning, you created this show.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What was, you know, how did you approach it that you think was different than how it was, you know, other animated things were being approached?
Marc:I mean, it seems like it was the first.
Guest:Oh, well, definitely we weren't doing it for kids.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there, and, and, um.
Guest:There wasn't even when there were primetime cartoons before.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:Did grownups really watch the Flintstones?
Marc:No, I don't know.
Guest:Jetsons.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It seemed like kid stuff to me.
Guest:That's when primetime started at seven.
Marc:And also the Flintstones were taken directly from the honeymooners.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Top Cat is.
Guest:Sergeant Bilko.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the Jetsons is just one of those family shows.
Marc:Yeah, family show.
Marc:So none of those really inspired the Simpsons other than that you knew you weren't going to do it that way.
Guest:I made art.
Guest:There were two writers named Tom Gamble and Max Pross.
Guest:I don't know if you've heard of them.
Guest:But I actually wanted them to be... I only had staff for 28 days.
Guest:No, 13 episodes.
Guest:I only had staff for 26 days of the first season.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The rest of the time it was just me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wanted to...
Guest:I wanted to get Max Pross and Tom Gamble, but they took a different job.
Guest:Boy, I bet you every time they hear you say that, they hit themselves in the head.
Guest:On a show called Seinfeld.
Guest:So they did okay.
Guest:Oh, they did all right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So no one's complaining in that camp.
Guest:No, and they've worked on The Simpsons for probably five times longer than I have.
Guest:So they came back around.
Guest:We didn't get Max and Tom.
Guest:We got Al Jean and Mike Reese.
Guest:And I would say to them, and then I had writers that wrote scripts and stuff.
Guest:I said, I want Max and Tom to like the show.
Guest:So they were our target audience were these two people.
Marc:Why were they it?
Guest:I just like their sensibility.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:It sounds like a crazy thing to say, but I really did say it.
Marc:The two writers you couldn't get, you wanted them to like it?
Guest:Yeah, I wanted them to like the show.
Marc:And these guys knew that?
Guest:We were going to do shows that Tom and Max will laugh at.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Are they a tough laugh?
Marc:It had to be smart?
Marc:Not especially.
Guest:I just thought if they liked it, I will have done.
Guest:Because my goal was to do 13 great shows.
Guest:And I used to say, we're 13 and out.
Guest:We might as well make them great.
Guest:And I know that that really upset Matt.
Guest:He didn't express this to me at the time.
Guest:If he had said...
Guest:you know, Hey, you know, this is really important to me.
Guest:And when you say that, it makes me think like the show is going to be a failure.
Guest:And I don't think it's, I would say, Oh, okay.
Guest:Well, I won't say I can, I can understand.
Marc:But you were saying that because you'd been in show business and you knew that, you know, most things fail.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And, you know, and so like, let's just try and make it as good as we can.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they would, they would say, Oh, you know, this language is going to be children watching.
Guest:And I'd say, I don't, I don't know about that.
Guest:We're, we're doing our show.
Guest:That's your problem.
Guest:We're on right next to married with children.
Guest:So I don't see why I can't say, you know, son of a bitch or something like that on the show.
Guest:But but I when when I was saying it, I meant let's be free and let's be creative.
Guest:Let's make it great.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that was that was the whole that was the momentum of that first season.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we succeeded.
Marc:Obviously.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I mean, because the show was good.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and pretty original.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:And so you were there, you sort of established what that show would be.
Marc:How much did Matt have to do with that?
Marc:You know, once you got hold of the...
Guest:He had a lot to do with it, especially the tone of it not being negative.
Guest:You know, there was like a little Married with Children undercurrent where, you know, with cartoon characters, you know, it's a little bit of a trap that it's funny that shitty things happen to them because they're just a cartoon thing and they're the lead of the show and, you know,
Guest:But a lot of times Matt would go, that's sour.
Guest:And it was a really good note.
Guest:And it really helped us.
Guest:Because the positivity.
Guest:They were the first self-aware, dysfunctional family on TV.
Guest:But originally, Homer wanted to be a good father.
Guest:He wanted his family to work.
Guest:You know, and it bothered him that it was such a disaster.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Although it's really not.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, the stuff that Bart does that like you would like you'd be proud of him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You go, what a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:He just got the prime minister of Australia to.
Guest:what i don't know yeah like you know like the stuff is so big it's uh it's it's impressive and and i uh i had a stepdaughter for a while and one thing that the simpsons it's not a well observed uh
Guest:show about parenting you know it's sort of a fantasy um and because i know the things you know i learned later in life that the things that really drive you crazy about kids or something it's just too horrible to put on television sour it's sour it's just no no no no
Guest:It's just, you know, that's the stuff that makes you crazy.
Guest:And I've never seen that on TV, to be honest.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Because people are trying to get away from that.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that was when he said it was sour.
Marc:It just meant that it tipped a line to where, you know, the character becomes.
Marc:You've got to love your character to have a hit show.
Guest:oh really yeah oh yeah you I better learn how to love myself if I don't learn to love myself it's a character okay here's my advice to sitcom writers yeah story above all there's three rules story above all don't be afraid of the quiet moments number two and number three love your characters
Guest:That's my advice for young writers.
Marc:And that's good advice.
Guest:That's the best advice ever.
Marc:Where do you see that fail?
Marc:I mean, can you give an example of a show that... Fail?
Marc:Yeah, no.
Marc:Where do you see, like, when people don't follow those rules?
Marc:I mean, have you seen shows... Oh, my God.
Marc:I mean, I know that a lot of people don't even invest much into characters sometimes, and that makes a show fail.
Marc:But have you seen shows that had such promise?
Guest:Well, I work on a show right now.
Guest:I do half a day a week on the Charlie Sheen show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The past 20 or so years, I've only worked on friends' shows, and I do consulting.
Guest:I go in, and usually it's for a run-through or something like that.
Guest:But on the Charlie Sheen show, all they do is just sit around and...
Guest:and bang their heads against the wall.
Guest:Oh, wait.
Guest:This isn't like one of those shows.
Guest:People actually listen to your podcast.
Guest:I'm used to doing stuff that nobody listens to.
Guest:No, it's all helpful.
Guest:Anyway, it seems like the pressure of the production on the Charlie Sheen show, which is what's called a 1090 show.
Guest:That's a new thing, right?
Marc:It's death.
Guest:It's just the end of anything being good.
Marc:Is there a 1090 show?
Marc:No, I'm on AFC.
Marc:Well, you did 10.
Marc:I did 10, that's it.
Marc:Now we've got to wait and see if they want to do some more.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:It's old school.
Guest:Well, the 1090 shows are you do 10 and then they pick up 90s.
Guest:that's fucking nuts it's i don't believe it's true either what like are you saying like it's this thing like in 40 episodes no one is watching and it's horrible like no you picked it up like everybody just leaves and like come on well they just pay him out if it's garbage of course they would yeah yeah so you know what's going on over there
Guest:I think like shooting two shows a week is really hard.
Guest:It's four days of shooting a week.
Marc:Are they invested in it?
Marc:Do they give a shit?
Marc:Who?
Marc:Like Charlie and the crew?
Marc:I mean, they think they're doing a good thing over there?
Guest:Well, I don't know.
Guest:They think they're doing a good thing?
Marc:Do they love their characters?
Marc:Are they pausing?
Guest:I'm saying like the...
Guest:the process the normal process of doing a sitcom yeah uh is you get a lot of chances to fix stuff yeah and you know and that's why i go story is the most important thing because if you have a story mark
Guest:And I want you to hear my voice in your head when you have a writer compatriot.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:We had four of us.
Marc:There were four of us.
Marc:Four of us?
Marc:And we did ten, and they were all my stories.
Marc:The stories were pretty good.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, the stories, like if you actually have the events of the story are funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Meaning...
Guest:Like, here's the worst example.
Guest:Mark goes on a date and really hits it off with some woman.
Guest:Well, who the fuck wants to write that scene?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, it's just, you know, it's just, you've seen it a million times.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:She's going to laugh at some shit you say, and da-da-da, and then you're going to go to your best friend, and you go, oh, it went really well.
Guest:I really like it.
Guest:She's smart, and she's funny, and she's...
Guest:that's what they always say, you know, but so like right away, I, and the Charlie Sheen show is a lot of, of dating and like, I, I just, you know, and then it's, so you're saying it's hard to avoid being hack.
Guest:Being familiar, certainly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If not.
Guest:But like if you've got a story where this happens and then the person decides to do something about it and that goes screwy and you can pitch it and you're not pitching the lines from the show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, then, you know, you have a good story.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like a story you tell your friends about something that happened.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Where the events go a place you didn't think they would go.
Guest:Well, I always... That's a thing that I feel on that show.
Guest:It's like these guys went to comedy writing school and I guess I don't know, you know, I don't know how to do a story because to me, a story is like where something happens and something else happens and that makes something else happen and that makes... And I'm happy at the end of the show that we're being sued by...
Guest:by the Screen Extras Guild.
Guest:One Simpsons, the Walla Group, they worked in the first scene and they worked in the last scene and they went to their union and said, these are two separate shows.
Guest:None of, you know, they tried to hire us for one show, but they put us in two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they said there's no way this could be the same episode of the show.
Guest:And I said, well, no, we got an act two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We weren't trying to, you know, we weren't trying to cheat you.
Guest:But to me, that's a compliment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But this, they feel that like if Charlie, if Charlie wants to go on a date,
Guest:First, you need to do a scene where Charlie laments how he can't meet a nice girl.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Then you've got to set up who the girl, and then it's just like, I don't.
Marc:There's no story.
Marc:It's all set up.
Marc:I don't get it.
Marc:But with The Simpsons, you could do whatever fucking, you could take anything.
Marc:With animation, you could take it to any limit you want.
Marc:There's no limit.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:And how many seasons were you there?
Marc:Four.
Marc:And what happened there?
Marc:How was the breakup?
Marc:Why did you leave?
Guest:I left because I wanted to do my own stuff.
Guest:I didn't especially like it there.
Guest:I was being asked to do things that I wasn't good at, which means...
Guest:They hired a bunch of other writers to do three on-air shows at ABC.
Guest:I wasn't going to be full-time on The Simpsons.
Guest:And I wanted to do my own stuff.
Guest:And I had a great...
Guest:Technically, I was never fired from The Simpsons.
Guest:I still earn a salary, and I kept all my points in the show.
Guest:To me, it's not remotely a regret.
Marc:Yeah, but there's no bad blood anywhere.
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:I see Jim once in a while.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't see Matt very often, but we just don't travel in the same circles.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:So then you just did other stuff?
Guest:I did, but I also didn't, you know, but The Simpsons quickly went into syndication.
Guest:Do you think it hurt the show?
Guest:Well, I think it's tough to be on for 25 years.
Guest:You know, I mean, it's got to hurt the show.
Marc:But it's been such a training ground for amazingly talented people.
Marc:I mean, like, well, Dana Gould was there for years.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Conan O'Brien was there.
Marc:Conan O'Brien.
Marc:Dana's a genius.
Guest:Yeah, well, no one from The Simpsons has created a hit show.
Guest:Why do you think that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You don't have any idea?
Guest:Because, for one thing, running a show is not the same as creating one.
Marc:You're walking into set characters.
Marc:There's a method to it.
Guest:It's completely well established, and they've got all the money in the world to...
Guest:hire people i think there's two teams i don't think everyone even works on every episode i don't know what i don't know how they run the show now but i think it's like it's a machine evens it's a machine it's a it's a fantastic machine yeah that employs lots of human beings yeah yes but do you like uh does it sadden you at all that it became that
Marc:No, it pleases me.
Marc:It's a money-making machine for you.
Guest:No, if I had to watch it to cash my checks, I would.
Guest:If the bank said, now last Sunday, what happened to Bart?
Guest:I would go, oh.
Guest:I know exactly.
Marc:I watched.
Marc:But after four years at The Simpsons, when did you know you could retire forever?
Guest:Probably a couple years later.
Guest:That's when the big checks started coming in.
Marc:And you were like, why not?
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:I can't fathom what makes Jim Brooks work so much.
Marc:I don't know why people work when they're rich either, to be honest with you.
Guest:Now, I could see if you were...
Guest:a doctor.
Marc:Saving lives.
Guest:Saving lives.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Or you were... You know, I don't know.
Guest:There's lots of things, but I go, this...
Guest:You know, there's just not the real need for it or something.
Guest:And I would just rather spend my time doing other stuff.
Guest:And I've had lots of adventures and I've been able to do lots of things.
Guest:It's crazy what you've done.
Guest:Most people don't, you know, don't frankly have the time and then also the money to do.
Guest:So to me, like I beat the system.
Marc:You won life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And when you got, when you retired, what was the first thing you did?
Guest:Well, one of the first things I did was I started my foundation, which I'm really proud of the stuff we do, but I also work with other organizations.
Guest:For the animals?
Guest:No, I don't just do animals, Mark.
Guest:This is a stereotype.
Guest:It's not a bad one.
Guest:Well, some people think it is.
Guest:And I'll tell you, like animals in the environment get 1% of charitable donations in the United States.
Guest:And people that come up to me and go on Twitter at Simon Sam, they go...
Guest:why don't you help starving kids and you go well first of all i i do that i have a long relationship with save the children i've been on and off their board of directors uh we have the sam simon challenge fund every year so i mean i do not only do i do that i go to africa and i look at those kids and interact with them you do yeah and so i also in la i have the sam simon foundation feeding families program
Guest:We feed 200 unemployed Los Angeles families a day.
Guest:Families a day.
Guest:I pay for all that myself.
Guest:And I'm not saying... And then I tell people that.
Guest:They go, oh, my God, that's fantastic.
Guest:That they like.
Guest:They go, that's fantastic.
Guest:And I go, and it's cruelty-free vegan food.
Guest:They go, oh.
LAUGHTER
Guest:And they go, what if the people aren't vegan?
Guest:And I go, well, then I guess they can go to your food bank.
Guest:When did you become a vegan?
Guest:I've been a vegetarian for close to 40 years.
Guest:And I gradually evolved to, you know, when I found out about the horrors of dairy farming, and there's no free, if you really want to be pure, but...
Guest:But listen, anything somebody wants to do, if they want to just do a meatless Monday or something like that, it all helps.
Guest:But is it because you at some point... And the people at the food bank, they don't sign anything.
Guest:They can eat all the meat they want.
Marc:I'm just not going to pay for it.
Marc:It's groceries.
Marc:But at what point did you feel the pain of animals?
Marc:I mean, what made you go to... Oh, always.
Marc:Like when you were eating meat at some point, you were like, this is... I just don't want things to die so I can eat stuff.
Guest:You can feel the pain of it.
Guest:Well, I probably, you know, they go... Some animals... Now, this is going to sound really crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um...
Guest:I believe there are some species of animals that are more intelligent than people.
Guest:I just think we look at them and... From a human perspective.
Guest:From a human perspective, and they don't realize in 14 million years, they've evolved to communicate in ways we can't comprehend.
Marc:Just because they can't service our food, we don't feel bad about eating them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, on the whole, animals are far more intelligent than...
Guest:Like, oh, a chicken can run around with his head cut off.
Guest:Well, maybe a chicken can, but that doesn't mean a chicken is stupid.
Guest:I mean, I don't, you know, chickens can problem solve.
Guest:This is all propaganda from big farm companies and factory farming.
Guest:They want you to think there's nothing wrong with, you know, the Bible is another big problem because it says we have dominion
Guest:over animals, and people use that as an excuse for everything we do.
Guest:For corporate farming.
Marc:Do you believe in God?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I think that, and religion has changed a lot in my lifetime because it used to be,
Guest:sort of a message of tolerance and religions used to work together right and it was and the Bible wasn't meant to be taken literally and it's like I don't know how you can take that book literally it's the craziest bunch of nonsense yeah ever we watched this this movie called
Guest:The Bible directed by John Huston.
Marc:Oh, the old movie.
Marc:Yeah, the big movie, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They attempted to show Noah's Ark.
Guest:this boat that they stocked, and you just go, it's the most preposterous thing.
Guest:By showing it, it exposes it.
Marc:They're rebuilding it at the Creation Museum.
Guest:Oh, right, yeah.
Guest:They've got one of every species.
Marc:Preparing, yeah.
Guest:If you actually read Genesis, in one paragraph it says seven of every species, and then just a couple paragraphs later it says two of every species.
Guest:So...
Guest:There's holes all the way... No, it's ridiculous.
Guest:There's holes all the way through it.
Guest:And the idea of... There's a concept called human exceptionalism.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which, you know, we are the only...
Guest:creature that and you know they made up a whole bunch of stuff when I was a kid but we found out that animals make tools animals understand death animals communicate animals you know they they do just about everything but they certainly
Guest:suffer equally to us so forgetting intelligence forgetting you know how man makes art and all this you you know when you when I look at a orca in a little bathtub at SeaWorld or when I see a cow
Guest:you know, being hung by its leg for slaughter at a factory farm, I just go, that's misery, that's suffering, and that should stop.
Guest:So I'm trying to do what I can to accomplish that in the next six months.
Guest:It seems like you did a lot.
Marc:The clock is running.
Marc:Well, do you ever think about, do you have kids?
Marc:No.
Marc:Like when and if you pass, is most of what you have left going to go?
Guest:I've given most of it away.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I won't be rich until we get our quarterly installment from the Simpsons.
Marc:Which building?
Guest:PETA headquarters is in the Sam Simon Center.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:I get honored like crazy now because people think I'm going to die.
Guest:I love getting honored, though.
Guest:It's really fantastic.
Guest:Getting things named after me.
Guest:The Museum of Broadcasting called and they said, we figured you'd be doing an archive interview for us.
Guest:Would you mind if we did it now instead of... Feels a little pressing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, the subtext is... What's an archive interview?
Marc:What we're doing right now?
Marc:Oh, my God, I wish.
Marc:Would they have specific questions relative to specific?
Marc:It was very dry.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:I couldn't, no, I wasn't really happy with it.
Marc:Like episode by episode for Taxi or what?
Guest:Yeah, they were asking all this stuff and it's just so long ago.
Guest:I don't know, like, I really, you know, I don't think much about the, even the Simpsons or, but certainly like Taxi and stuff, that's a long story.
Guest:That's a long time ago.
Guest:The one cool thing was you can... When you're talking, you can say, this is for the time capsule.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can badmouth anybody you want...
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Well, that's the way I took it.
Guest:So they would set it up like that?
Marc:We won't play this.
Guest:You can tell us when we're allowed to play this.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Throw some people under the bus.
Guest:Yeah, if you want to say, like, when Jim Brooks dies or when you die.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Did you have a lot of that?
Guest:I did one, and I said, put that in the time capsule, and then I said, no, cut it out.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why?
Marc:What?
Marc:Why'd you take it out?
Guest:uh because i was doing it the the interview was very dry and uh i wasn't so i was really just trying to get my juices going a little bit and i was and the person was just like side venom like yeah you know uh and i just thought like oh what the yeah why should i bother that person at some point yeah i guess you gotta let it all go huh
Guest:Yeah, I wasn't really feeling it.
Guest:I was just going like, and then I did.
Marc:What about the poker thing?
Marc:When did that just became an obsession?
Guest:Well, my ex-wife is an outstanding poker player.
Guest:She's probably the most successful woman tournament player of all time.
Guest:You love it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She'll play right now.
Guest:She'll play poker like she just loves to play poker.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Seriously.
Guest:Do you want to play $100 freeze outs?
Marc:I'm no good.
Marc:I don't know how to bluff.
Marc:I am such a mark.
Guest:You can learn how in five minutes.
Guest:She'll teach you.
Guest:That's a good instructor.
Guest:There was a thing called the poker boom.
Guest:There were two things.
Guest:There was these kids that figured out
Guest:the game started winning these big tournaments like the World Series of Poker.
Guest:And that got people thinking like, oh, my God, anybody can learn, which is completely true.
Guest:And it's like, you know, when you watch golf on TV, you can never play golf like Tiger Woods.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But you can watch poker in a year.
Guest:You can be as good as those people, especially in tournament poker.
Guest:So that's real attractive because you get to compete on an elite.
Guest:level and sometimes win.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Uh, so it was the competitive aspect of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And also like, um, a lot of the things I do outside of TV, I liked it.
Guest:I'm just getting car.
Guest:I like that.
Guest:It's not, there's nothing I can bring right to the table and, uh, you know, no character sketches or, or, uh, uh, it's pure.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It's pure.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what about the boxing thing?
Uh,
Guest:Uh, that started as a similar thing.
Guest:I was working corners, um, for years.
Marc:Uh, what does that mean?
Guest:You were in the training, you were in the, uh, I would just, um, you know, help.
Guest:I was, uh, uh, I was training and competing in boxing in like, um, I would fight in like gym shows and bucket of blood, uh, like amateur nights stuff, which is, uh,
Guest:kind of kind of rugged but a lot of fun you know and um and so you know the gyms i was working at you know they were professional they were professional fighters yeah and uh i was friendly with the guys so i would be not the main trainer but an assistant in corners and i liked that
Guest:People didn't know who I was.
Guest:And that if I needed to get something done, I had to figure out a way to get it done.
Guest:If this stupid kid left his trunks at home or something like that, we're trying to figure out a way to make it work.
Guest:So I like being tested that way.
Marc:And in terms of like, well, you two seem to get along.
Marc:You were married.
Marc:You're not anymore.
Marc:You've done all right with that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know how you do it.
Marc:Well, it's not.
Marc:I don't do it.
Marc:She does it.
Okay.
Marc:That's all her ability.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you look back on everything, what do you think is the best, what are you most proud of?
Guest:You mean like it's a legacy?
Guest:Sure.
Marc:In any way.
Marc:When you're like, all right, so what did I do?
Guest:Well, the totality of it is really interesting because there's so many different things.
Guest:So I kind of like that when people talk about me, they talk about me as a special person.
Guest:I mean, I know I'm a borderline.
Guest:I would be a nut.
Guest:if I didn't have a lot of money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I would be doing... You'd be special in the wrong way.
Guest:I'd be doing the same stuff, but I'd just be ranting and raving, and I wouldn't have access to the people and the ability to... When they honor me, they're honoring me for check writing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm...
Guest:One of the best check writers.
Marc:I know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like Robert Graham did Joe Lewis, the Joe Lewis monument in Detroit.
Guest:It's just a giant 20 foot fist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it should be me with a pen signing a check to PETA.
Guest:one of the greatest check writers of his generation this guy i remember once we needed some money yeah and we were just up against it we didn't and then sam god damn if he didn't take out his checkbook i'll never forget a hero of check writing and he just filled in pay to the order of and it's just magic
Guest:Then our problems were over.
Guest:Well, I hope you get to ride on that boat.
Guest:I do too.
Guest:I think it's possible.
Guest:It would have been 77 days in the Antarctic.
Marc:Is it up there?
Marc:Are they doing it?
Marc:Is it happening?
Marc:They just finished it.
Marc:How'd it go?
Marc:Great.
Guest:They save any whales?
Guest:They saved probably 1,200 whales.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they sent the Japanese running.
Guest:Is it armed?
Guest:They're armed.
Guest:We're not allowed to be.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:They throw concussion grenades.
Guest:They aim guns.
Guest:They aim water cannons.
Guest:They ram the ships.
Guest:We don't do any of that.
Guest:And yet the U.S.
Guest:government seems to have turned against the Sea Shepherd Society and has issued a number of decisions and not gotten involved in some
Guest:real injustices in our society, and it's all because government is so corrupt.
Guest:They're whores.
Marc:They're just whores.
Marc:The government's just a money laundering system for corporate interests.
Guest:Well, if...
Guest:if I were to have, uh, you just said the government is just a money laundering system.
Guest:And if I took you back through the last year and a half of C shepherd court cases and all that stuff, your reaction would be the government is just a money laundering system.
Guest:So I'll spare you all the legal piece, but that's exactly it.
Guest:And, uh, um,
Guest:uh, uh, one of my best college friends is currently the ambassador to Japan.
Guest:I called him up.
Guest:I said, can you help me with this?
Marc:You know, they just, they just, they illegally kill whales.
Marc:They do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, um, but they prosecute the sea shepherds for crimes that they don't really commit.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:And so I said, you know, is there anything?
Guest:He goes, look, I'm on your side.
Guest:I completely agree with you, but there's nothing I can do.
Guest:And you go, well, why is there nothing you can do?
Guest:You're the exact right person to do something.
Guest:Just by some crazy quirk of fate, I happen to be friends with one of the few people on earth that could actually constructively engage this problem and do something.
Guest:this is a guy that got the pacific fleet to stand down during uh the fukushima power plant disaster so he could do something he could do something it's politics yeah he's got a career ahead of him yeah yeah
Marc:So what's the biggest fear that you have for the future?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I just think it's very bleak.
Guest:I think people have to wake up and start getting involved because as an American, you are losing your rights.
Guest:I think America is...
Guest:the worst version of it that's ever been and I just don't see how that can get better.
Guest:I just think there's so many, um, problems that are, uh, absolutely intrinsic to the way this country is right now.
Guest:Uh, and, uh, so, uh, that's, that's awful.
Guest:And, uh, and then I think the environment is,
Guest:I mean, it's too late to do anything about climate change, but we don't know what that means.
Guest:And I think it means
Guest:big cities outside of the fires and the droughts and the tsunamis and all this other stuff, I think for this country, it means we're gonna start getting hit by these hurricanes in ways that we just won't have the time or the money to fix stuff back up, which is true in New Jersey and it's true in New Orleans.
Guest:We still haven't brought that back.
Guest:um and so like the first time a category five hurricane hits new york that's it yeah where are people gonna go i have no idea what are they gonna do no it's really scary and then you go there's there's no manufacturing here what are there's no middle class here we manufacture assholes here yeah we do we're one of the the world's leading manufacturers of assholes
Guest:no it's true it's funny I was talking to that guy that's ambassador to Japan he's got this one daughter that's like she's she wants to be a nurse she wants to be a nurse in Africa with AIDS patients she wants to I go well you know that's fantastic that's having a purpose in life and it's the most noble thing I go what does your son do he's an investment banker
Guest:So I go, oh, so you have one child with a conscience.
Guest:I actually said, like, that wasn't a diplomatic thing to say.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But...
Guest:I said something else.
Guest:I said, you guys.
Guest:I was talking about the Japanese.
Guest:I go, but you guys.
Guest:He goes, hey, don't say you guys.
Guest:I'm on your team.
Guest:But he's not.
Guest:He is on their team.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But I shouldn't have said that.
Marc:That's his job.
Marc:I shouldn't have said that.
Marc:To maintain the diplomatic communication.
Guest:I could tell he got upset when I lumped him in with the Japanese whalers.
Guest:Are you guys okay now?
Guest:I sent him an email.
Guest:I said, I really think you can help this.
Guest:Think of it as the last request from a dying friend.
Guest:He sent back, I hope you get to go on your ship one day.
Guest:which is non-response and also like you can help me get back on my shit good luck with everything you could yeah you know yeah like again it was that thing where he's like i don't know why you're coming to the ambassador of japan about a problem between japan and the united states so i thought that was a really dismissive and
Guest:It's just not acknowledging that he could help.
Guest:Well, I do hope you... Just like me that it's a wish one day.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I do hope you get to go on it, and I hope you live a long time.
Marc:And thanks for talking to me.
Marc:I plan to.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:I had a lot of fun.
Marc:That's our show, folks.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:It was heavy, but I thought lighthearted and, you know...
Marc:Actually uplifting.
Marc:You know, he's fighting the good fight.
Marc:He's still enjoying life.
Marc:And he's had an amazing one.
Marc:I have to run, so I'm not going to ramble on too much here at the end.
Marc:But go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:Get yourself some JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:I got a book event coming up.
Marc:Where is that?
Marc:Look at the calendar.
Marc:I'm going to be in San Francisco.
Marc:Tomorrow night, Friday.
Marc:So I'm at the JCC in San Francisco for Sketch Fest.
Marc:So if you want to go to that, I think there's still tickets.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Everything's very harried right now.
Marc:So I'm going to go.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:All right.
Marc:Boomer lives!
you