Episode 418 - Michael McKean
Lock the gate!
Alright, let's do this.
How are you, what the fuckers?
What the fuck buddies?
What the fuck sticks?
What the fuckaristas?
What the fuckanucks?
How is everybody?
This is Mark Maron.
This is WTF.
This is my show.
Welcome to it.
I appreciate you guys listening.
I appreciate all you new folks that are coming in.
I'd also want to say one thing up front.
If you have the WTF app...
You want to you might want to update it because there was some there was some buggy stuff on the new update and they fixed it.
So just make sure everything's updated on the WTF app.
And speaking of that, if you don't have it, you should get it.
You can get the free app, which is fun.
And then you can upgrade it to like premium for like eight bucks or whatever it is.
And you can stream every episode of this show.
A lot of people have been coming up to me at stand up shows and whatnot.
saying that they just got into the show and they didn't have any idea that you could do that and they were excited that they could do that so i'm sharing that with you if this is old news to any of you so be it today on the show the uh the honorable michael mckean is here one of the great comedic actors and improvisers a man whose career spanned decades of of comedy and film and it was a a just a pleasure
to talk to Mr. McKean.
I couldn't believe it happened.
It's actually a pretty interesting week with that because one of his contemporaries and friends, Catherine O'Hara, will be on Thursday.
And I can't tell you how fucking excited I was to talk to these people.
What an impact they had on me.
Catherine O'Hara, Michael McKean, amazing comedic talents.
I've been trying to get her for years in terms of talking to her, and that was great.
That'll be on Thursday.
Michael McKean will be here in just a few minutes.
I just got back from Denver, Colorado, the drunkest place on the planet.
Denver rivals only Glasgow in its downtown drunkenness.
I was in Denver for two days, and I saw no less than...
Two or three drunken couple fights on the street, not physical, but just, you know, couples yelling at each other about bullshit, which is usually what it is.
I saw no less than two shirtless men screaming things at nobody in particular, non sequiturs.
And I saw a lot of hobbled women on high heels that became taxing as the evening went on.
But I do have to say that the comedy works in Denver is ridiculous.
Really one of the best comedy clubs in the country.
I'll tell you, man, no matter where you're at, I would go out of my way to not go to corporate comedy clubs, if possible.
Go to smaller rooms that kind of really exemplify where comedy comes from and what real club comedy is.
I'll tell you that Comedy Works is really the fucking best.
I mean, they're sitting on the best comedy club in the world there.
And granted, look, I have been doing some small theaters.
I'm not bragging.
I enjoy doing small theaters.
I'm not a massive theater act.
I'm still a I guess you would call a boutique act.
Would that be the word to use?
I have fans.
You know who you are.
You're probably listening to this and you come out and see me.
But they're not millions of you.
And I think we should keep those other people out.
I mean, you know, if they don't want in, fuck them.
It's just us.
I like it when something happens in a show that will never happen again, no matter how embarrassing.
And the problem, and it's not a problem, it's part of the job when you do stand-up comedy clubs, as opposed to theaters filled with people that only want to see you, is you deal with people who have no idea who you are.
Yeah, you deal with people that you're not even sure why the fuck they're at the place.
One show, late night, late show Friday, bachelor party showed up, which is an anomaly.
An anomaly.
An anomaly.
Generally, bachelorette parties come and destroy the evening to that night.
It was a bachelor party.
And it's weird, man, because I can I can be sitting backstage listening to Troy Walker, my opener, do his show.
And I can tell, man, I can tell the sound of an audience from the backstage area.
Like the first show Friday was sweet.
You could hear them.
They were just talking pleasantly.
You take a peek through the curtain, look like nice grown up people.
And then the second show, I'm just listening.
Like the conversation's louder.
You can hear the fucking alcohol in the chatter before the show.
And I knew it.
And usually I think I can pick it out.
And sure enough, there were some dudes.
I heard a lot of this before the show even started.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A little of that going on.
Never a good sign.
So I started to put my armor on after doing a first show where it was all off.
A lot of a lot of open, you know, straight up raw comedy.
And then the second show, I'm like, all right, I guess you got to put that.
You got to got to put the helmet on.
Get the shield out.
Where's my fucking sword?
I'm going into a small battle arena.
Now, the thing was, they were just drunk and they were a bachelor party.
They were in the wrong place.
I don't have a vagina.
I don't have fake boobs.
I don't do lap dances.
I can't pretend to like them.
This is not my job.
Bachelor parties are not my job, but they are comedy club audience.
And that was my job.
Now, the problem with this situation is, you know, I have a lot of fans in the room and they want to see a Marc Maron show.
They don't necessarily want to see Marc Maron, you know, man babysitting, man babysitting drunken neediness.
I mean, put a fucking lid on it.
Go to a strip club, you know, be a goddamn dude.
So like I dealt with them because you could not deal with them.
The room's too intimate.
And even if they were just grumbling or talking loudly, it's going to distract.
So I had to lock in and try to give them the attention they needed.
You know, I just had to serve their dumb drunk needs.
I don't think I had to do what I ended up doing, but it was certainly funny coming from me.
I think I feel a little ashamed of it, but I did show them my tits.
Showed him my tits, did a little dance, tweaked my nipples a little bit, turned around and sort of bumped my ass up and down.
Did a little pole dance on the mic stand all the way down to the ground and threw my feet in the air.
Then got back up and that was that.
I'm not sure it was the one they were looking for.
And I think that's why I can accept it as not just pandering but being comedy that I don't think that was the strip show that they were anticipating.
So I completely was able to perform an ironic strip show
Though they did see my tits, but so did everybody else.
And I don't think everybody was expecting that.
They were kind of bothersome for the rest of the show.
And it was just a it was a management situation.
My management doing this.
But, you know, sometimes in those situations you get the best.
You know, when you have a license to be abusive to audience members for being just kind of drunky douchebags.
I am able to dump a lot of my week's anger out in an appropriate way.
I've grown to appreciate anger.
I know I have an anger problem, but sometimes I think like, well, you know, anger makes things simple.
Whether you're sad or frustrated or disappointed or hopeless or whatever those feelings are under the anger, sometimes you don't want to deal with them.
Sometimes you don't want to talk about them.
Sometimes fuck you is enough.
And I don't think that's bad in some situations as long as you're not hurting anybody.
And that's also arguable.
You could talk to my fiance.
So progress being made.
At least I'm thinking about it, right?
What else did I do?
Then I wandered around Denver with my bag of records.
And I remembered somebody told me.
There was a Rothko exhibition at the Art Museum event, Denver, the Denver Art Museum.
So I walked me and my sad bag of records.
That was the other thing.
There was this moment in the record store where there was just some old dude, long gray hair, probably a few years older than me, that was just buying a couple records and then chose to sort of corner the punk rock chick behind the counter with...
You know, his talk about the old days, about seeing whatever band of the record he was going to buy.
And it was just one of those moments where I realized, like, yeah, yeah, I'm kindred spirits with that guy.
And I got to fucking check myself sometimes before I start babbling sadly about past concerts to young people.
So that was that lesson.
So I go over there to the Denver Art Museum to see the Rothko's and then I find out it's the early Rothko.
It's Rothko in transition.
God damn it.
It was beautiful to see those two canvases where he just left the fucking planet.
And I was excited to have this exciting experience looking at art.
I have to force myself to go look at art.
And I've talked about this before.
And I'll talk about it again.
Force yourself to go.
Go reckon with the canvases.
Stand in front of it.
Don't be a bully.
Don't sit there and dismiss things.
Because that's what happened.
I was moved.
And I haven't been that moved lately by the right kind of things.
I.e.
a lot of anger lately over nothing.
Just over my heart.
Just wrestling with the wrestling with trauma, wrestling with trauma.
People say everything's going good for you.
Fine.
What do you got to complain about?
Well, I still have the same brain.
I still have the same heart.
Come on, man.
So I got my record bag and I'm like, damn it, man.
Do I got a pen?
I got a pen.
And I sit down after I it was quite honestly after I went and looked at this guy, Nick Cave sculptures.
So you sculptors who were offended by my condescension during the David Sedaris episode, I'm back.
I'm back on board because that guy, Nick Cave, he did some sort of weird, almost costume-like human sculptures, sculptures that you could wear that were fucking mind-blowing.
Mind blowing.
And I went into a little theater to see the things in action because there were some performances.
And you start to realize, like, wow, art is so specific and so insulated in terms of where people can actually see it.
You have to go seek it out.
And it's so fragile.
It's.
So fragile in a way.
And I was overwhelmed with this idea that people would come in here and mock this stuff because it is important.
It is provocative.
It does take you places.
How do you go find it?
You got to go look for it.
So I'm possessed with the spirit of writing something down.
And I got a record bag and I got a pen.
And this is what's on the record bag.
This is what I wrote down after looking at Mark Rothko's early paintings.
And after watching these films that engage these Nick Cave sculptures, I wrote, "...the courage it takes to commit to a unique vision that requires follow-through and construction and exploration is profound in and of itself.
The fact that it can be condescended quickly and dismissed by minds who demand context is sad."
being dragged down to their context, which is rarely theirs.
It is culturally assumed lazy.
That's what I wrote down on a record bag.
So apparently, and I write like this sometimes, but I think there is an ongoing, unfinished term paper in my head that comes out in fragments at museums and in moments of me trying to understand things in an intellectual way.
I just wanted to share that with you.
And now, my friends, it is time...
to go now to my conversation with the amazing, talented, funny, and just one of the great comedic talents ever, Michael McKeon.
Michael McKean.
Mark Maron.
Yeah.
We're saying each other's names.
I rarely do that kind of setup, but we can set it.
And I feel bad because we're having a lovely conversation about Norm MacDonald.
Yes, we are.
And how you just don't know a guy is really what it comes down to.
Like I said, he always seemed to have a couple of inches of separation.
Right.
Yeah.
Even though he was very friendly and a lovely guy.
But obviously from your show, there was a lot going on that you don't know about.
Well, he was gambling thing.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I kind of knew about that stuff, but he was one of those guys where I make assumptions, and this is what happens a lot in what I do, is that you make assumptions about people from their public personality.
Like, I know that guy, kind of.
And I was nervous.
I didn't know whether he would be able to talk like a person.
But then all of a sudden, it was like this whole thing opens up, and I'm like, oh, my God.
I mean, I literally walked out of here thinking, like, we got to put this up now.
Like, there was an urgency that people know Norm MacDonald's.
in the way that they haven't before.
Well, Norm, I was at SNL for a key moment when there was a guy named Ian Maxton Graham.
Still is, as far as I know.
He's a writer on The Simpsons, but he was a writer at SNL that time.
And he was always after Norm to not smoke in the places you're not supposed to smoke, which was everywhere except for one little room.
But Norm didn't care.
He liked smoking cigarettes.
He was walking around.
And so Ian just kept getting after him.
So one day Ian came back from a run and he's in his sweats or his shorts or something.
And Norm's got a cigarette going.
Yeah.
And Ian takes his water bottle that he'd been carrying with him.
Right.
And just gave him a shot in the face, basically, to put the cigarette out, but also to humiliate.
Sure.
And so Norm did something.
You don't see...
in in a grown-up office setting too much yeah but norm gave him a good pop i mean he really nailed him and it was gonna get really good in the head yeah uh yeah i think so yeah i think he's right in the kisser he's a scrapper huh well it was pretty fast uh-huh yeah yeah those scottish people man yeah they're always a couple of beers away from you know yeah it's
Somewhere in there.
Even if it's a few generations back, it's right there.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just programmed to light up.
So it didn't go anywhere.
Farley actually kind of stepped in, as Farley could step in.
Right, sure.
It was like a van backing in.
Wait a minute, what's happening?
Come on, watch you guys.
And, you know, it didn't go anywhere, but it was really kind of fun to see a little scrap like that where it didn't get bad.
Right, right.
Because I don't like to see that.
Well, it's kind of, that's another dimension of a person that you don't always know about.
Like, I'm not a fighter guy.
I've never punched a guy in the head.
Have you?
Yeah, when I was 15...
i kind of accidentally on purpose got into a fight with an old friend a guy i'd known since i was seven yeah and for some reason we wound up on opposite sides of something and uh so i really kind of promoted this fight i was thinking i'm 15 it's about time i had a fight and he fucking you know well it didn't work out well for me i did the thing where i'm gonna stand up there and i'm gonna throw punches like i do in cowboy movies right and and and he ran in and he butted me in the stomach
And I didn't breathe for, you know, the next couple of days.
So he actually, he won the fight at that moment, but I kind of stood there and kind of sweat.
I can't breathe.
I'm just, man, I guess I'm not, I'm not doing this.
That's one of those moves where you have to, it doesn't sound like either you really knew how to fight.
And you were modeling yourself on something and he was just sort of like.
Yeah, yeah.
Where'd you grow up?
Long Island.
Really?
Seacliff, Long Island.
Where is that?
On the North Shore.
Oh, okay.
It's about 26 miles from Penn Station.
So you grew up going to New York?
Yeah.
What years are we talking about?
You're older than me, so you're like a real- 61, 62, I started going.
I was born in New York City.
My parents moved out to the island, to Hicksville, and I was there for three years.
Hicksville, right.
Which is, yeah, where Billy Joel is from.
That's their claim to be.
Did you hang out, you and Billy?
No, never met him.
But we were in the same town when we were babies, and also we were in the hospital one day at the same time.
Really?
Yeah.
Recently?
No, in 1979.
Why?
I had pericarditis.
What is that?
Pericarditis is a virus that attacks that sac that your heart is in.
Oh, my God.
That's called the pericardium.
Yeah.
And it feels like I was 28 or 9 or something.
And it feels like the devil has reached into your heart and gone, this is mine.
I'm taking this if you don't mind.
It's horrendous.
It's crazy.
And you think, well, great.
Okay, I'm 29.
I'm going to die.
So my father, I was visiting in Long Island.
I had a wife and a son at this time.
and uh so my father drove me to the glen cove hospital or hicks uh wherever it was north shore hospital of some kind or another right and i was a little bit famous from tv so you know the nurses came down from lenny yeah so uh the nurses came out you know that billy joel is here too he's having an operation in his eye or something like that
I thought, well, that's cool.
So we don't meet again.
Did you go to a celebrity suite of any kind?
No, I had a private room.
He probably did too.
You could talk Laverne and Shirley.
You could talk the piano man.
When you were in the herd, I was working for the rich kids.
I worked their lights at Angano's.
This is all true, by the way.
Really?
Yeah.
The Herd was his first band?
The Herd, yes, was a band.
And my brother-in-law's band, The Rich Kids.
Yeah.
My brother-in-law was a bass player.
Uh-huh.
And... Were you guys rich kids?
Well, they went to good schools.
Denny Baleen, who was the lead singer, was Perry Como's nephew.
That was like kind of... Wow.
He was connected at that time.
He was so way connected.
And, yeah.
But it was... They were...
In the wake of the Rascals having this huge hit, and the Rascals early on dressed like... Good Love?
Yeah, Good Love.
They dressed like our gang.
They had short pants and like things.
And they got rid of that pretty quick.
But in the wake of that...
bands would try and do kind of gimmicky things like that.
And my brother-in-law's band were the rich kids and they had like little Lord Fauntleroy outfits.
Oh my God.
Shorts.
Shorts, long socks.
It was a gay fantasy.
They just didn't know it.
There were four straight guys from Long Island.
so uh yeah and so they played a couple of gigs at ungano's which was a club uptown up in the 70s i think and i worked the lights and by that i mean there were two light switches just like we have red white red no no just on and off and that was when they would do do you feel it which was their big yeah yeah big finish i would do you feel it flash flash flash flash flash that was my that was the effect yeah
and the herd was on that bill uh no but they came in to see the rich kids and i really and yes and they i actually i clocked them i don't think i said hello because i was just the light man but but were they a popular band was a they played the same clubs they played uh the cheetah circuit okay well in new york and this was what the mid 60s this was 66 wow and now young billy joel was in there young billy joel yeah but
There were other Long Island bands, the Vagrants, Leslie West came out of there.
Yeah, Leslie West, and he plays one of these.
He plays one of those Les Paul Juniors there, I think.
Oh, does he?
Yeah, he's got that big old meaty sound.
Yeah, yeah.
Chunky sound.
Chunky sound for a chunky man.
Chunky man, yeah.
So that was your first thing, though.
Music was it, right?
Well, no, not necessarily.
I had gone to Carnegie.
Oh, so you weren't in bands?
No, I was in high school and then in college, too, and between my two college experiences.
Where'd you go to undergrad?
Well, I had one year at Carnegie Tech, as it was then known.
This was before the melon money.
In Pittsburgh.
In Pittsburgh.
Yeah.
And that didn't work out.
I was not ready to be away and getting myself awake in the morning and things like that.
Oh, really?
Not staying up past five.
Shit like that.
You required more parenting.
I really did.
My mother used to get me up for school because I had insomnia, as I still do.
You do?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But my mom would come in with an ice-cold wet washcloth and put it over my face.
That was what it took.
You're not sleeping anymore because when you got that.
She waterboarded you.
She totally waterboarded you.
Pouring a pitcher of water so you felt a drowning sensation.
Time for school.
Everything makes sense now in that respect.
So I didn't know how to do that.
So I didn't do well at college.
But I met people that... I met David Lander there, who was... Swiggy.
Yeah, we actually created those characters there.
George Gerties, Loudon Wainwright.
These are people who have been friends of mine for a long time.
Loudon Wainwright, you guys are in the same generation-ish, and he was at Carnegie?
Yes.
And he became quite a popular sardonic folk singer.
Absolutely.
He's a great songwriter.
Yeah.
Seriously great songwriter.
Yeah, and so that was the crew at Carnegie in what?
Yeah, David Lander.
60, what are we talking?
65, 65, 66.
And that was your first real experience with performing comedy?
I'd done a little bit of it, you know, in high school, because I was into, you know, Second City stuff, the rare recordings that we heard of Second City.
Where'd you find that stuff?
There was an LP, which had a great scene with Barbara Harris and...
alan arkin where he's this folk singer and she's this very pretentious society lady and it was just just gold you know alan arkin now people i i didn't like see i don't even know that i fully knew that he was in second city that he was a comedic performer he was he was the star of that company really of the first company that did anything outside of chicago which was pretty much the original company uh-huh
They kind of evolved from another thing called Compass Players.
Well, I knew about them because I interviewed Shelley Berman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
And he's got stories of Mike Nichols, Elaine May.
Yeah.
And I think, wasn't Ed Asner involved in the Compass Players at some point or maybe early Second City?
He might have been.
So that was, you were not necessarily, you were always compelled towards sketch.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
But also, I was a big fan of... Well, I loved silent comedy, and I loved Laurel and Hardy and people like that.
Right.
And there was something about the nature of live theater, because I did a lot of plays in high school, I did reviews and stuff, and played with bands and everything.
There was something about the nature of...
live performing that i thought was really cool right and i saw a guy named stanley holloway who is mainly known for playing liza's father in my fair lady okay he's great english music hall performer right you know in his later life yeah 60s i guess yeah became a star in
in the movies that's always a good story to hear isn't it is it is it's great i've still got time how about this one boris carloff didn't play the frankenstein monster until he was 49 years old wow that was the beginning of his career that was his breakout that was his yeah 49 frankenstein anyway
So you do that, too?
Do you make note of people?
I used to more than I do now.
Like, you know, there's still time.
Yeah.
Like, for me, it was like, you know, you start out with your generation.
Yeah.
And then you see them sort of rise, and you're like, we've got to find somebody.
And then it always becomes Rodney Dangerfield.
Really didn't surface until he was in his late 60s.
Yeah, yeah.
But stand-up wasn't a thing for you.
You know, not really.
I just did a little bit of stand-up when I first got to L.A.
and when I was about 75, kind of before.
That's when you came out?
I came out in 1970, actually, to work on The Credibility Gap.
the credibility gap was like uh there were i thought that was a bay area thing that was a la thing no it was la because that wasn't fred willard's thing no fred was up in the bay area doing uh well he was with second city right and then but they had a there was a there was i'm thinking about new york there was this weird competitive sketch group thing you know i'm drifting on the name but the credit was ace trucking company right that's it ace trucking company
They may have been partly based in the, yeah, that was George Memoli, Billy Saluga, who later became sort of famous for, you don't have to call me Johnson, you can call me Ray, you can get that guy.
That guy, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and Memoli was an amazing character.
But the Credibility Gap, who was in that?
Harry Shearer.
Right.
David L. Lander, who became Squiggy, my pal, and a guy named Richard Beebe.
And there had been a different personnel, and then there was a big fight.
And so Harry, the name Credibility Gap was owned by the KRLA News Department, the head of which was Richard Beebe, who was also kind of a great straight man and a great funny guy.
Yeah, but also a good actor.
He'd been to the Pasadena Playhouse classes and everything.
He was legit.
And so, yeah, we did sketches on the radio.
It was going for about two years by the time I got there because another person had fallen out.
And so David Lander, who I know from college, called me and said, come on.
Was it mostly political stuff?
Yeah.
Because Harry remains very politically motivated, and most of his satire is around that.
Because most people know him from the movies, which are not really political, but his bread and butter, his thing.
The bread and butter he doesn't get paid for is his radio work.
Well, he's that guy.
He's been on the radio since he was seven years old.
Yeah.
And that's...
Now, when you left Long Island, I mean, were your parents, I mean, was this a thing that they were supportive of?
Oh, yeah.
Because you seem like a very well-adjusted person.
You know?
Like, you don't seem like no one, no, I can't imagine anyone going, Michael McKean's a fucking asshole.
Oh, no, there are people who think I'm an asshole.
Really?
I hope so.
You want to make that impact out there.
Yeah.
Whenever I criticize somebody on the right on Twitter, I find out that there are people who think I'm an asshole.
Of course.
I mean, politically.
But those people are assholes.
But that doesn't count.
I mean, you're a good guy, right?
I try not to fuck anybody too bad.
Or badly.
So when the credibility gaps out here, you come out, how old were you then?
22.
So you were like, fuck it, I'm going.
You were young.
You finished Carnegie?
I don't know.
No, I did one year there, and that was a year off, and I played with a band.
What band was that?
It was a band.
They had had a couple of hits.
They were called The Left Bank.
They had a couple of hits, Walk Away Renee and Pretty Ballerina.
Walk Away Renee is a big song.
Big song.
But then nobody was speaking and the band kind of fell apart.
Someone had the name.
Someone had the name.
Mike Brown, who was the main composer and keyboard player.
And his father...
harry lukowski aka hash brown yeah as in hash brown and his orchestra yeah um they they kind of own the you know the entity yeah and so they put together a new band and i was the guitar player and my friend warren david who had been the original drummer but wasn't very good they brought him back right he's the guy who got me into the band and a singer named bert summer okay and who played bass and so we kind of rehearsed for about three months and
and got our pictures taken got new clothes got instruments and everything it was oh my god my life was the guitar do you remember the guitar oh man vox vox the vox the teardrop no no no this was they had really gotten crappy oh really somebody took over i don't know sure sure yeah you're dragging this out of me i haven't thought about this for years i haven't thought about that guitar but anyway mike brown and his dad got in a huge fight and it was like party's over we're not going to do this anymore
In the interim, we released a single.
And when I say we, I had nothing to do with it.
It didn't write it.
It didn't play on it.
But if it had been a hit, we would have gone out in support of it.
So I grabbed the best of the guitars, which was the Gibson, and took all my nice, pretty new clothes.
And I went back to school.
I went to NYU for two years.
And studied what?
Acting.
Okay.
Yeah.
That was always the deal.
So you have a brief rock and roll.
You had a moment where you at least got outfitted.
You were outfitted and got out.
I did.
And I got a chance to kind of be in that movie, you know, where you're a young guy who doesn't play guitar very well.
Right.
Who is in a band and he, you know, pressure on me to get better.
I wrote one song that they liked and we were going to do that too, you know.
And it all fell apart before.
It all went away, yeah.
Before anything happened.
Yeah, before anything happened.
It was a gift.
It was a gift.
It really was.
It was kind of like, you know, remember when Bob Dylan had this terrible automobile, this motorcycle accident, broke his neck.
And then, you know, eight months or a year later, he started coming back again.
And David Lander said, you know, he kind of did the James Dean thing right.
We had his death already.
And now he came back.
Now he's making new stuff.
He didn't die.
Yeah, yeah.
So it was kind of like that kind of experience.
And my father was in the record business, so most of his working life.
Is that true?
Yeah, yeah.
Doing what?
He was mainly in what you call editorial services.
So liner notes, press releases.
He would interview people.
So he wasn't an A&R guy, didn't he?
No, no, not really, no.
What company was he with?
First with DECA, before I had any memory of it.
That's a big one.
Big one.
And then Columbia for a good chunk of time.
And then RCA Victor, which was great because we got deals on like color televisions and stuff.
Oh, that's great, yeah.
A color television.
So he worked in the city?
He worked in the city, yeah.
I took the train every day from Glenhead Station.
Put his tie on, that whole business?
Yes, he did.
And he came home and took it off.
Yeah.
And had a pitcher of martinis.
Yeah.
And said, this is the life.
This is it.
But at NYU, were you there with people that I would know now?
Yeah.
I always like hearing that.
Tom Leopold.
You know Tom Leopold?
I do know that name.
Yeah.
He's been a writer on Seinfeld and Cheers, and he's a novelist, and he's a great guy and old friend.
Yeah.
um him christopher guest you might have heard of sure he was at nyu with yeah so you guys go back that far you go back to 1970 or something yeah it was for the first week at school and um he had his guitar case with him and i said uh hey boy yeah hey other 19 year old boy can i see your guitar
And he showed it to me, and it was the red version of the one that I had.
Oh, I got that.
It's the same thing.
And he said, who do you like to listen to?
And I said, well, you know, I'm really into this Electric Flag album.
He says, you know, they're playing at a thing tonight.
And I said, yeah, I know, I'm going.
So we actually, it was the same, you know, very much the same area.
So your dream was to be a music guy.
Come on, own it.
I'd go either way really on it, but I really thought, oh, here's what I thought my life was going to be.
I would come home from Pittsburgh or wherever.
Yeah.
And eventually I would be a guy who lived in my house on Long Island and I'd take the train and I'd work on the stage in New York because that's what I wanted to do.
Wait, lived in your parents' house?
Well, yes.
Well, maybe.
I really liked C-Cliff.
I really liked the town.
I still do.
It was your dream to keep your old room.
I just wanted to keep my original room.
No, no, no, no.
I have their room now.
They're gone.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So you just get the house.
Yeah, all right.
But I, of course, didn't foresee that.
I just had a vague idea that I wouldn't have to live in New York City, but I would work there.
I would commute, which is totally impractical.
But you loved your hometown, I guess.
I did.
And I wanted to be an actor on the stage.
I didn't think I'd ever be right for anything.
That's what I wanted to do.
So how did you decide to move to Los Angeles?
Well, David Lander called me, and he had just gotten married, and he was working on this show, and he was getting paid.
Is he still around?
Yes, he is.
He suffers from multiple sclerosis for years and years, and he's dealing with that, mainly, but he does voiceover work and stuff, and he's an amazing human being, and one of the funniest men who ever lived, who ever drew back.
And being with David in college, we were both teenagers, was like...
He was kind of, it was that always on thing, but not the irritating kind.
Oh, right, right.
It was always, he would shift, downshift into kind of an interview show mode with you sometimes.
And other times he would, you know, be just a guy who could do 10 minutes of completely extemporaneous cornball, brilliant comedy stuff.
Just, you know.
And he talked like a regular person.
Yeah, more or less.
More or less.
Because, you know, in my mind, because I grew up with Laverne Gay, and, you know, like there was the whole gimmick was like a very extreme type of delivery.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, we discovered very early on when we were, like I say, 18.
that we each of us knew a couple of guys who had the same kind of like twang that couldn't quite be bothered with me so we just started kind of mirroring each other and we were physically so different yeah that it was like well they're from another planet right it was that the original context no well the original context was just the two dumbest guys you knew in high school okay they were so dumb that not even the other dumb kids would hang around with them
And so they kind of developed this world around them.
And then so he calls you up.
He calls me and he says, look, there's a guy who's... The group used to be this.
The credibility gap used to be this.
Lou Irwin and... I'm not getting all the names, but Len Chandler, who was a singer-songwriter, and some other guys who I don't really remember.
I never met them.
and they're all leaving now and there's this guy bob goodwin and and he he kind of we kind of think he's leaving too would you come and be the fourth guy like on a semi-regular basis and i i just made some about eight hundred dollars which was a shocking amount of money uh in for me anyway and uh i just doing recording some kids songs for you know kids records and new york nursery rhymes yeah how'd you get that gig
uh you know what through a guy named john mcclure who was one of my dad's friends yeah who was the head of classical and special products at columbia and he said you you know you want to say yeah yeah and it was just singing yeah just doing these things so i did that and i got 800 bucks and i went you know what i'll do i'll go out there i'll stay for a couple weeks maybe i'll do this show a couple times right
And also I'll see this girl that I got involved with in Connecticut.
She's in L.A.
now?
She's in L.A.
She lives in Orange County.
So I'll go for two or three weeks.
You're 21.
Why not?
And I went there.
It was 11 degrees when I left in February in New York.
And I got here.
And it was 68.
And David's wife, his then wife, Taya, picks me up at the airport, sticks a lit joint in my kisser.
And I say...
Stay here.
I'll stay here for 43 years.
And I'm still waiting to hear the other end of that sentence.
That's beautiful.
But your dad being in the music business must have been somewhat like thrilled.
Well, he was very much responsible for me being exposed to a lot of the music I was exposed to.
Although the stuff your dad likes is not necessarily the stuff that you like right away.
He was a huge jazz fan and aficionado.
He used to write for Downbeat and these magazines reviewing jazz stuff.
Okay.
And so that was my dad's music.
Yeah.
And I didn't get it.
But he got the business.
I mean, he wasn't sort of like, why would you throw your life away?
I mean, you know.
No, he knew that, but he also knew the pitfalls.
Sure.
Yeah.
And he later on when he was at Columbia, the second time at Columbia, after Victor, he was in the advertising business.
Then he went back to music business.
He was with Columbia for a good chunk of time.
And he really had to deal one-on-one with a lot of artists who were coming up and getting big.
And some of them made him insane because they were so...
so gimme gimme and so kind of what about my needs and uh and stuff it was and he had a deal with his hands-on well some of it jazz artists or were they no not so much jazz artists he interviewed uh monk several times but that must be challenging just yeah but he really he just was so fascinated by you know he just thought it was a great kind of found object you know and loved his music uh-huh
And if you have the old vinyl of a Monk album called Underground, you can read my father's liner notes.
Okay.
They're really funny.
Okay.
Yeah.
So anyway, I forgot why I... Oh, we were just talking about him being supportive of... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like I say, my parents said, you want to be an actor, that's great, but you need something to fall back on.
Music.
Well, that was the joke.
I think they meant teaching or something sensible.
And did you have that?
No.
All right, so you come out here to do the credibility gap, and then that's when you meet Harry.
Met Harry, yes.
And where's Christopher Guest in all this?
Where did that relationship go from college?
Well, he stayed back in New York.
Okay.
And he started working with, in the early 70s, he started doing the Lampoon stuff.
The Lemmings.
Lemmings.
Uh-huh.
And the radio shows.
Uh-huh.
And, you know, what was the radio dinner, the first...
record they did.
Right.
Which had a lot of the stuff that later wound up, I think, in Lemmings.
Yeah.
So that's kind of what he was doing.
But he was also like a guy that was a sort of... He wanted to be music.
Yeah.
And he chose to work funny.
Well, we wrote a lot of songs together.
We were roommates for a year.
Oh, okay.
My second year at NYU...
We actually lived together.
Yeah.
Because he was without a girlfriend and I was without a girlfriend and without an apartment because my girlfriend had given our apartment to her dad who had just... Her parents had just gotten split and he wins.
Right.
So I had to find a friend to live with.
Right.
So Chris and I started writing songs together.
Right.
Funny songs or real songs?
No, really kind of love songs.
He seems like a pretty serious guy.
He can be.
Have you seen the Family Tree show?
Uh-uh.
There's the end.
There's a song that he wrote with Harlan Collins and C.J.
Vanston.
And it's a really great song.
I got Ron Sexsmith to sing it for.
Oh, yeah.
That's cheating.
Yeah.
Right there to have this beautiful voice.
But...
yeah it's really he's yeah so you live with him for a year and he was there a discussion like i'm going to la or weren't you guys that tight no because after nyu i went back to my parents house because i didn't know what the hell i was going to do so i went back to my parents house and i kind of you know just hung around and drank too much and and just kind of killed time until oh actually i'd gone to um
The O'Neill Theater in Waterford, Connecticut.
I did that in the summer.
And that's when I met this woman who later I went to, you know, I was going to hook up with and eventually marry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so... So you get to LA.
Yeah.
And how does, like, you know, how did, like, because...
What was the path of Lenny and Squiggy?
Because you got to talk about that in the sense that that was where it started.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, because it was huge.
It was like this phenomenon.
I mean, I remember Laverne and Shirley.
I remember watching it as a kid.
But Lenny and Squiggy became this big thing.
Well, they were in their own show.
And occasionally, a couple of scenes a week, they'd walk in and let you know what was going on upstairs.
How did you get found?
I mean, did Gary Marshall find you?
Eventually.
Penny Marshall was married to Rob Reiner.
Right.
And Rob was an old friend of David's.
I think they actually roomed together for a while in L.A.
And David appeared in a play that Rob had written, and they wrote together, did a couple of things for TV.
Right.
and then David got this gig on the credibility gap, and Rob would sometimes guess, this was before All in the Family, he would sometime guess on the credibility gap.
And his dad was Carl Reiner.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
But he, and then eventually, you know, then he got all in the family in 71 or 70 or 71.
Now, when you were here, like with someone like Rob Reiner, who comes from sort of like Hollywood royalty or comedy royalty, I mean, was there those situations?
Would you find yourself over at his house or was Albert Brooks around?
No, I didn't know Albert.
Well, I guess I met Albert through the credibility gap because he knew all those guys.
Yeah.
He and Harry.
Yeah.
because i always try to picture like what the crew is like and like it's the 70s you know the 60s are sort of kind of over but the the fashion of the 60s is still kind of hot yeah and it's kind of rock and roll and groovy i wasn't really a party guy you know i i mean i would if i found something to drink yeah i would i would hang right i would hang in that end of the bar sure the bar end but uh you know i didn't really kind of run with those guys i didn't you know didn't have any money didn't run to go to comedy clubs and stuff okay i would hang out at home and i had friends and stuff we'd all hang out there but uh
so anyway we did these characters from the word go david and i've been doing them since we were teens yeah and uh rob just thought they were hilarious yeah and rob and penny did right and then penny sold this show you know this show that she that her brother created with lowell gans and mark rothman and they had a um a presentation
short that they did yeah sold it to the network and they had been on on happy days characters so anyway so they they got to go on the show but they had no show really you know yeah one other character they wanted some more people you know so uh penny says look come to this party we're gonna have a party celebrating this thing that i sold the show come to this party and uh you know maybe maybe do the guys you know because the producers will be there this bedroom this sort of like living room performance business amazing
I mean, it happened a lot.
I mean, like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner used to do the 2000-year-old men at parties.
That's exactly right.
So you're at a party.
Yeah.
Gary Marshall's there.
Network people were there.
No, Gary wasn't there.
Mark and Lowell were there and some other people who were going to be on the staff.
So you're all hanging out and Penny goes, you got to- Do the guys.
Actually, Rob said it.
Do them.
Do the guys.
Do the guys.
Do the guys.
Yeah.
And we did.
David and I went into a thing that we'd never done before and have never done since.
and it was the two of them discussing that maybe they should go to butler school, because there's always a need for butlers.
So it was the two of us trying to learn how to buttle.
I have no idea the content of it, but we were getting laughs.
And then Monday we went and met Gary Marshall, and he said, you know, we need some writers, maybe the three of you, meaning David and myself and Harry, could be writers on the show.
You could be apprentice writers, we can't pay you full, we'll pay you to them.
So we did that.
And of course, the idea was maybe a few shows in, we'll try and work our characters in.
So we wrote ourselves into the first episode.
And we wrote ourselves into every episode because the stuff worked.
It made people laugh.
People didn't quite know what the hell it was.
But there was something kind of...
It was kind of the bizarro Fonzie, too.
Fonzie was the guy who looked like that and really was cool.
These two were trying for a Fonzie and didn't make cool at all.
And also, you guys were both goofballs.
The team dynamic was essentially one was sort of like completely moronic, and the other guy was moronic but had an angle.
Yes.
Right?
That's true.
I used to put it this way.
I used to say that Squiggy was the dumbest guy in the world, and Lenny was his stooge.
Yeah.
right right exactly that's kind of what it was so from there i mean that so that got you in i mean you know that was on the air for what six seven years that was uh well seven years eight seasons because the first season was kind of truncated and the last season was unwatchable it's so horrible because cindy left and penny was hardly in any of them
So it was the, you know.
Did you experience that sort of arc of heartbreak around that?
No, no.
You didn't care.
No, I had signed a contract.
I had renewed my contract for another year.
I knew it was going to kind of limp along for one more year.
And I don't know how you guys handle that stuff.
Oh, I handled it by letting other people handle it pretty much.
But like, you know, like even with the, you know, I've got this small show on IFC and just sort of like the investment, I guess it's different, you know, because I, you know, it's so much of my life is invested in it.
Right.
You know, so I just keep doing the shtick.
Network TV.
Right.
Network TV at that time was, you know, there really were only three networks at that time.
Right.
And, you know, they were terribly worried.
Everybody was always terribly worried about the show.
It slipped a point.
It slipped a half a point.
Right.
And the last couple of years, we weren't doing well in the ratings because the A-team came on and against us.
That was it.
Pounded us.
Yeah.
So we knew it was kind of tapering off.
You couldn't fight with Mr. T?
No.
No.
I still can't.
But knowing this, I went into the last season.
We were trying to get this Spinal Tap thing started.
We had worked on it for years on and off, and we had this whole thing that we were going to do.
You and Christopher?
Me and Chris and Harry and Rob.
What do you mean you worked on it?
We wrote the history of the band.
We wrote songs.
We did a demo version.
We were at a couple of studios.
The studios would fall through or they'd dump us.
So it was like limping along.
But there was a danger in 1981 or 82 that we'd actually go with the show.
So I went into Gary's office and said, look, whatever, I don't even want any more money.
Give me the same money I got last year and I'll try to do 13 shows.
But there's a really good chance I'm going to sell this.
We're going to sell this project and I'm going to have to be out of here.
The thought was it was a film always?
Yeah, it was always going to be a film.
It was always going to be a theatrical feature.
And the idea was that you would improvise.
Yes.
From the beginning.
From the very beginning.
You were like, if we could get into these characters and give them a backstory.
So that's what we wanted to do.
Um, and so we all had to be kind of plugged into everything, all the casting, all the, all the everything.
So, um, so I told this, Gary said, I, I, I'll, if you could put it on paper that I will do 13 shows unless this is spinal tap gets picked up or whatever it was called, called rock and roll nightmare at that time.
um what uh you know then i'm out of here so he said yeah okay and he let me do that deal yeah because he's a decent guy yeah he's a character he's awesome yeah he really is i never met him not just because he's he gave me a couple of huge legs up in my career but also that he really is a decent guy and i like i love him as an actor
He's wonderful.
In Albert's movie, he's great.
He's great.
I don't get it.
It'll be a thing for people to like about Vegas.
Gambling.
Having to point out to someone that people come to Las Vegas for the gambling, which just caused you to lose your ass.
It was great.
So he supported that.
He gave you that deal.
He gave me that deal.
And then, so I'm only in...
like four shows in that last season and I directed one which was weird but did it give you like people do that to learn how to do that you know so you say you did that yeah it's true but I the three camera thing to me is not not a director's medium no no and there are great people I mean you know there are people who do that do multi-camera
yeah but you wanted to try it so you tried it yeah it was all right right it was okay but it's not the kind of thing i wanted to do right all right so okay so how does how do you finally what what happens to you know because rob is a guy you know although he's got this great comedy pedigree and harry is harry but i mean he was a tv actor you know for the most part and director yeah he did he directed episodes of shows of all in the family and so uh-huh okay he did some might have done some so that's where he gets his chops and then like he you guys are committed to this thing i mean the spinal tap thing how long how many years
Well, the characters were first on a TV special that was shown in 1979.
It was initially going to be a pilot for a series called The TV Show, which was kind of like SCTV became a guy just kind of going through a broadcast day with a remote.
And it was all kinds of TV parodied every which way.
So he did this very funny pilot.
And do you remember Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack?
Yeah, vaguely.
Yeah, vaguely.
Rob playing Wolfman Jack had this band, this terrible band from England called Spinal Tap.
So we did one number.
And that was kind of it.
And then when Rob was looking to start a feature career...
They thought maybe, well, let's do a parody of Gimme Shelter, which I see over your shoulder there, or The Last Waltz.
A concert movie.
Yeah, a concert movie or a movie about a band, a tour thing.
You know, this band on tour.
Right.
And so that's kind of what we were committed to do.
And we started immediately writing the history of the band and everything.
The idea being that once the cameras are rolling, we all know.
You don't have to tell someone who was in the band with you, oh, remember that guy.
We all knew the stuff already.
So it's a really dense thing.
It's four or five pages of single space, real history.
And we wrote some songs and we did a demo version because we didn't want to write a script.
They hired us to write a script.
Right.
a studio called Marble Arch, which was Sir Lou Grade's American adventure, which didn't work out so well.
So they were going to do it, and then they collapsed, and we were kind of left with this demo tape of kind of an idea, 10 minutes worth of what this movie would be like.
Right, right.
So Rob shopped it around and eventually it wound up at Embassy Pictures, which Norman Lear was actually one of the co-chairs of that.
And so that kind of was an in for Rob.
And we got underway.
Very low budget.
Shot it here in L.A.
for five weeks.
Had all the funniest people we knew in.
You know, Howard Hessman, Paul Benedict.
One of the funniest and greatest men I've ever known.
um tony hendra hendra paul schaefer was that all was great i mean i remember being very excited to see it and and that the you know the buzz about it was insane and then you know as somebody's a fan of of movies the idea that you know that i think the word was that you know reinerd shot 60 hours of film probably that that in and of itself to to somebody like me what year did that come out 84
Right.
So I was in college.
We shot at the end of 82.
Right.
And it was just sort of like 60 hours.
Imagine how much hilarious.
Where's the rest of it?
Why can't we see the 60 hour cut of Spinal Tap?
A lot of it went away because it was linked up to other stuff.
There was a whole sequence where when Nigel leaves the band, he throws his instruments down, he leaves in a huff.
and he's out of the band for a while, and we try to do the Jazz Odyssey thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There is a scene between those two scenes where June Chadwick, or Janine, my girlfriend, comes up with a replacement.
And it's this guy who's terrific.
I have no idea who he was.
It's written down somewhere who he was, but he's not in the film, so he's not in the crawl.
um but he comes on he he was like we're in our late 30s at this point and he's this guy comes in and he's you know 22 or something and great just all over the stage like peter frampton yeah yeah yeah and he kind of he clocks me on the head with his uh with the guitar thing at one point you know as an accident right but it was like just on top of everything else he nearly killed me he's not only better and younger and sexier than i am but he hit me on the head
Yeah.
So there's that whole plot.
It had to go away because there was just no time to develop it.
Right.
Otherwise, it's just a scene that, you know.
Yeah.
And what is the other stuff that went away?
I mean, that's a whole... The ass casters?
Yeah.
The ass casters?
Remember the... Did you ever hear about the plaster casters?
Yeah, sure, sure.
These groupies who... Sure, that make cockpokes.
Yeah, cockpokes.
So this was the ass casters.
And it was a couple of girls who come in and they had so Harry Shearer and the keyboard player lying face down, bare ass on a bed and having a plaster of Paris applied to their asses.
So that scene isn't there.
We spared you that.
I can't believe he didn't do a reel of outtakes.
Well, you can find the, I think you can find the,
two and a half hour or three hours somewhere right i don't want to see that stuff i had to sit through all that you know so you were there because you edited the thing you were all i didn't know rob did most of it we all came in from time to time and checked out different cuts but the choice was the choice for a reason do you get that feeling where it's sort of like well we looked at that stuff yeah i mean might be interesting for fans but you know i don't you know you know it's like that old thing of how do you make a how do you carve an elephant out of a bar of soap right you cut away everything doesn't look like an elephant
So we knew what the movie wanted to look like, and we just got rid of everything.
It was mainly Rob.
It's a masterpiece.
Oh, thanks.
And Bob Layton was the editor, who is a genius, who does all of Chris's films now.
But this thing that you built with Chris, I mean, now there's a signature tone to the way you guys improvise.
I guess so.
Yeah, I mean, it sort of set a standard, I think.
It sort of gave other people the courage to actually shoot improvisation.
It doesn't seem to me that before that, you would hear about TV shows or movies where it's sort of like, it was all improvised.
There was no Larry David.
No.
Where actually there was enough confidence built in the crew and also within the director that you could do that.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a very rare thing.
Well, there were films that were created improvisationally, Cassavetes films, but they became scripts.
Some of them are pretty funny.
If Peter Fogg was in them, they were sometimes funny.
Right.
Yeah.
But the idea that you could sustain comedic improvising through an entire film and have faith in that was pretty amazing.
Yeah, a lot of it was just having Fred Willard in is always a good idea.
Oh, yeah, bring Fred Willard for anything.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, that evolved as the crew of Chris Guest movies.
I mean, it seemed like Reiner did that one movie, and it must have inspired Christopher Guest to say like- Well, Chris did one film in traditional style called The Big Picture with Kevin Bacon.
I love that movie, and you were great in that movie.
I mean, it's a great movie about show business.
It is.
It's a cool movie.
And it wasn't a success, but he had spotted this thing.
He's got a documentary about a guy, a guy who is very much like Corky, if I can like Corky, the guy he plays in Guffman.
Yeah.
And he was an extra in an opera company.
Uh-huh.
He was a guy who studied all his life to be an opera singer, and now he's carrying a spear, and he'll probably never go on as a singer.
But it was him talking about his life and everything, and Chris fell in love with the guy and said, I'm going to do this.
I want to do it about a guy in a small town.
that's in a theater company and everything so uh eventually i was initially i was going to do it with him and then i got um uh the brady bunch movie and i was like i mean i'm not going to be available because he wanted to go up to his cabin uh you know in uh in idaho and really just do nothing but work on this the story yeah and i said i don't think i can do that you know and so he said oh okay and
So he got in touch with Gene Levy, who he did not know.
He was just always a big fan of Eugene's.
And just got in touch with him and said, you want to come up to my cabin and write a movie?
And I don't know whether he was suspicious or not, but he went and they put Guffman together and then he wanted some songs.
So I wrote some songs with him for the movie.
And he assembled this amazing Catherine O'Hara, always a good idea.
She's coming over tomorrow.
Get out of here.
Yeah.
Please give her a big hug for me.
I've been trying to get her on for months.
Yeah.
Because she's like one of these unsung heroes of comedy.
Can I tell you one thing that she won't tell on herself, but this is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen.
When we were doing Best in Show, there's a running thing where she keeps meeting her old boyfriends.
Yeah.
And they're all very kind of graphic in what they approach her with.
So we did this one scene where it's a meet and greet thing.
And I think there were three takes of her encountering one of her old boyfriends and him starting this line of shit.
And all three times her face went bright red when she saw him.
Yeah.
Wow.
And I said, that's pretty good acting.
That is awesome.
Yeah.
And I wanted to point it out to her and I never did.
Yeah.
And then I see it in the movie.
You can't really see it in the movie, but I was standing five feet away from her and that's what happened every take.
Wow.
Say, okay.
Deep.
Pretty great.
Yeah.
So with guests though, you guys all, like there's a shorthand, but there's also a collaborative thing that happens.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
I mean, not just in the improvising, but for him to reach out to you to write songs.
Yeah.
And there's also a tremendous sensitivity to remaining empathetic and still loving these characters.
I mean, that is the trickiest thing, is that even with Spinal Tap, you guys weren't clowns.
You were guys with lives, and there was a struggle there, and there was emotion there, and you never get the feeling with that movie or with Christopher Guest films that you're mocking these people.
Yeah.
I don't think so.
I think that's correct.
And if we didn't love rock and roll, we couldn't have done that movie for a second.
And if we didn't love fools, we couldn't do that movie.
And that's what they are.
That doesn't make them bad.
Some of the greatest fools, Laurel and Hardy were the greatest fools who ever lived.
Neither of them had a bad bone in their body.
Right.
And they're not one-dimensional.
There's a tone that you could have easily have... I mean, you were making fun of rock and roll, but these guys were the sort of sympathetic guys.
I guess that is the difference between a fool or somebody that... Well, even clowns are supposed to be sympathetic, but these guys had lives.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
And they weren't easy lives.
Yeah.
And they were...
They were difficult and they made lousy choices and they wrote lousy songs.
I mean, they, they, they were, their poetry was so, you know, ham handed and bad songs were good.
Well, this, but the songs were exactly what they were supposed to be.
Hopefully they were in a style and, uh, you know, when you toured on that, you know, when you guys went back out, what was that?
What was the agenda there?
Just for fun?
Well, sure, in 84, it wasn't an official tour.
We just went to places where the movie might have played well.
But you did one recently, though, not too long ago, right?
Well, we went on the road to a serious tour in 92, when we had a new album and a new material.
And we did a special, we shot it at Albert Hall.
And then in 2009, we did a couple of dates in 2000, 2001, but we toured, we did 20...
27 cities or something in 2009 but it was kind of plain clothes it was unplugged and unwigged but we played so we you know it was the three of us looking like this yeah and you know playing stuff were you in character no
No, but we would do the songs.
We would mix it up.
So we'd do a tap song.
We'd do a song from A Mighty Wind.
We'd do a song that was a government.
Harry did kind of a one-off song about Elvis.
It was just a mix.
And Annette, my wife, did Kiss at the End of the Rainbow that we wrote for Mighty Wind.
We sang that, and she sang the Bible song, which is in The Crawl of Mighty Wind, which is a great song that Harry and I wrote.
Now, Mighty Wind.
I can say it's great because I wrote it.
Well, no, it was amazing.
So you were nominated for an Oscar for that song?
No, for Kiss at the End.
Yeah, because it was a beautiful song.
Thank you.
Well, that was the other thing about that movie, too, in the same way.
Oh, yeah.
With Guffman, which you weren't a part of on that level, but even with Spongebob and Mighty Wind, you were mocking something.
But it was embracing it simultaneously.
Because you were rooting for them.
Right.
You know, Eugene's character in Mighty Wind.
Yeah.
It's like, that's one of the saddest people I've ever seen.
Yeah.
You know?
And you really just, oh, shit, man.
I mean, just, you got to get some help.
Yeah.
Whatever.
yeah i'm sure you've tried pretty much everything but you gotta get some help and you kind of rooted for him but you didn't want him to get any better because he was so hilarious as a sure as a train wreck sure so he just kind of the success of the character was he was able to take the stage yeah yeah now when you guys put that together what was the uh how did you how did you structure the improvising and how did you how much of the story were you part of
Oh, well, same way.
It was, you know, when I have a bigger part like that in, in one of Chris's movies, we were kind of plugged in all the time.
And I did work on all, you know, a lot of the music, um, writing with Annette and CJ and Chris and Jean and, you know, everybody.
Right.
I'm, I was the town bike.
Right.
Um, which I, I, I love.
Um,
And so, yeah, we were there a lot and, you know, just worked on the music every day and just really kind of kept it good.
Yeah.
And structured our story, the Volksman branch of that.
Right.
I had nothing to do with the, you know, with Eugene and Catherine's story.
That was other people.
Right.
And like that, you know, it was so, there was a division of labor, which was very clear.
Like how, when we say that it's improvised, I mean, how does it, how many takes do you do?
I mean, you improvise and say like, well, that worked.
Let's stick along those lines and then go again.
Yeah, kind of.
And then Chris will make a suggestion or one of us will make a suggestion about, you know what could have gone, you know where we could have gone.
Right.
And we'll try that.
yeah follow that yeah and meanwhile chris is also changing camera position right so that he can get coverage on the stuff that is similar right right right and then pick up on the stuff that's you know that's new and like chris like he's a mystery to me somehow uh you know and you guys are pretty i'm best friends
Yeah, pretty much, yeah.
I know he's funny, but he seems very intense.
Well, he's very intellectual.
Right.
For real.
For real.
He's very, very intelligent.
And when I say intellectual, I mean there's a certain kind of a polish to his...
Which makes him all the funnier when he goes a little crazy.
But he's very even-tempered for the most part.
He told me that somebody once talked to him about doing a play, and it was some passionate play, stage play.
And he actually said to Chris, you know, I think you can do the funny and the caring thing, but I'm not sure you can do the yelling.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
so I'm not going to offer you this part.
He said, yeah, that kind of sums me up.
But it's in his character.
He's very quiet, and he seems kind of withdrawn.
It's not really withdrawn.
He's just kind of that's who he is.
Right.
But I've known him for 45 years, and he's this awesome guy.
And there's a joke that he did one time.
There are two.
Let me tell you two Chris Guest things that he did to me.
One was he gave me a book
uh the odd the biography of john gilgood okay probably the most famous shakespearean act man gives me this book the you know john gilgood so i open in the fly leaf he has written dear mike this is the guy i was telling you about
So anybody seeing that book will think, Jesus, McCain's an idiot.
He didn't know John G. McMahon.
So there's that.
And the other thing is, whenever we were at a movie theater or something, or a gig, when he would get up to, you know, he would sometimes have to get up in front of me.
I'm telling this backwards.
He would occasionally let one go.
He would occasionally fart.
Sure, sure.
But immediately before doing so, he'd say, what's that sound?
Yeah.
Like...
It hasn't happened yet.
What's that sound?
And then he'd let one go.
And it was kind of semi-audible.
It was discreet, but audible to me because he wanted to make me laugh.
He did this for about five years, a couple of times a year.
It was just something always made me laugh.
So one time we're at a movie theater and he has to get up.
To go to the bathroom.
And he walks right in front of me.
His ass is right in front of my face.
And he says, what's that sound?
And he didn't.
He didn't do it.
He didn't, but he knew what would happen.
And I just, I laughed real hard.
Farts are always funny.
They're always funny.
And what about Balaban?
I mean, that guy is another wizard of comedy.
He's really interesting, isn't he?
He really is interesting, and I don't know that people realize how long he's been around.
I mean, he was in the bathroom scene in Midnight Cowboy.
That's right.
I mean, he's been around forever.
That was his film debut, was going down on Jon Voight.
Yeah, and he found some sort of real resurgence in the Christopher Guest movies.
Well, Chris had known him for a while.
They had done a couple of things together.
Mm-hmm.
And what happened was Harry Shearer was originally supposed to play that part in Guffman.
And something happened.
He was unavailable.
He became unavailable.
And so Balaban stepped in, and he was a good fit.
And he was great in Mighty Wind, too.
He was really good in that.
There's just something about that guy.
Yeah, yeah.
But all the Second City people and Catherine O'Hara, of course.
But for your consideration, that seemed to be one of the movies that wasn't as big as the other ones.
But it was really for acting, it was more heartbreaking than any of the other ones.
Catherine O'Hara was like, that was amazing.
And the facelift thing she does, which is not makeup at all, it's just her.
It's like...
The first time I saw that on set, the first time I saw her do that, it was like Jekyll and Hyde, really, because here's Catherine looking like she looks, and then suddenly she just pulls her face back without touching it into this, you know, rich creature.
Yeah, pretty awesome.
But I think one reason that film didn't...
because I think it's a really good movie.
I do too.
It's an interesting film.
I think that there were no times when the characters talked to the camera.
We didn't do that in that one, except when it was on a game show or a talk show or any of those sequences there.
Then we'd see them talking like that, but it wasn't to us, the audience, at home.
or in the theater i think there was something it was a little bit it was it was it increased the distance a little bit i think maybe people didn't just know what it was sure it's a great title it's a perfect title for that but it's not a great commercial title right all right so like i don't want to miss out on the because i i'm obsessed with uh lorne michaels let's face it yeah i know
But you were there.
You were the oldest cast member.
I was.
I was the oldest one to be hired.
I was really being hired because they knew that Phil was leaving.
Phil Hartman was leaving.
Right.
And so my first six shows were his last six shows.
How did they pick you?
I was doing Coneheads.
I had done Coneheads.
Oh, the movie, yeah.
The movie.
Yeah.
You know, Dan and everybody.
So Lorne knew me from that.
And he also, weirdly, he was put in charge of having somebody to replace Letterman.
And he really didn't know kind of what.
So he said, would you do me a favor and host an evening of people that I'm going to look at, that we're going to be looking at to maybe take over?
So you hosted the auditions?
I kind of hosted one of the auditions at the improv.
For the 1230 spot?
Yes.
Okay.
And it wasn't until I was up on the stage and just kind of fumfering around that I realized, oh shit, this could have been my shot.
You were being auditioned.
But it never occurred to me because it was not something I ever wanted to do, to do something like that every night.
I mean, if he said, my God, you're the one, I would have said, absolutely.
Who was on that audition?
I know I wasn't.
No, you weren't.
um i'll tell you uh provenza uh-huh um um let me see john stewart uh ray uh you know ray romano ray romano drew drew carey
at least one or two others uh-huh uh-huh those are the one Lauren was in the room uh at the Hollywood he was in the room and there were some other people yeah right yeah and uh yeah and that's how that came but then he approached you after that and said well maybe you could it was you know he just we got along kind of well on the on that and I think he liked having someone who was kind of close to his age to talk about shit you know and and like what it hurt well you know kind of old music stuff oh okay you know okay
And I did what I always, if I really want to impress Canadians, I always throw in the names of a couple of Canadian bands.
Which ones?
Well, it's like, you know, I was listening to Anita and Sylvia or something.
You know that new Mandala album?
I mean, new is from 1967.
No, but I had known him before because in 75, the credibility gap was hanging around those offices trying to maybe get on the show.
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, what do you mean hanging around?
You knew somebody there?
I knew Chevy.
I knew Franken and Davis because we were... Me and Franken and Davis and David Lander and...
john brent severin darden um some other people that nobody knows about anymore john brent was one of the great geniuses and severin of course and um some others so this is before the first like the first season you were hanging around oh yeah yeah yeah but we had been in a company together called the pitchle players um roger bowen who was a very funny actor and
and great improviser from Second City and Compass and everything else.
So it was a little company called Pitcher Players, and we were at what is now the Hollywood Improv.
Okay.
And so I knew them from there.
So we would go, and we'd say they're putting this show together, and we were there doing the Tom Snyder show, actually, parodying Tom Snyder.
On his set?
On his set.
So if you go to...
the go to google or youtube yeah credibility gap tonight show a tomorrow show uh-huh you can find this sketch so you were just how were you able to shoot there and why were he was he had heard we did we made fun of him and he flew us to new york and said would you do it on the show okay okay would you do it on the show yeah would you come on the show and do it for us for me
Make fun of me.
And we did.
And it was really fun.
So we knew some of those people.
Like I say, I knew Chevy through Christopher.
From the Lampoon stuff.
Yeah.
And Franken and Davis from this other thing.
And so we'd hang out.
you know we did a couple little pieces for him you know just what kind of wasn't a good fit and lauren said you know no we don't we don't want this we have a group we don't want to hire a group to be within the group right now because they already had that the kind of franken and davis thing and yeah you know so anyway we didn't didn't work on so cut to 25 years later or whatever yeah it was well it was 90 94 20 years later yeah and lauren called and said you want to be on the show and i said
Yeah, okay.
And they started talking money, and I was surprised that the money was pretty good.
Yeah.
Because I still thought of myself as entry level, even though I was 44, or whatever I was.
Find it out.
Yeah.
And so I wound up doing the last six shows of the 93, 94 season.
Yeah.
Or...
yeah whatever it was god help me yeah yeah and last six shows and then uh the 94 95 season i did that full season and who were the guys on there with you farley mcdonald and adam yeah spade uh-huh um so you had a lot of these julia sweeney at first schneider at first aggressive young guns
Some of them, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it was not really the pinnacle of their creativity as far as the show goes.
A lot of it was people pitching ideas for Farley's next movie or looking for something that was going to break out and be the next Wayne's World.
Right.
Because that was still a recent phenomenon at that time.
It was like, oh my God, is that what we're going to do?
Fabulous.
So that's where the Spade-Farley relationship kind of built out.
I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you got a lot of stuff on?
I did, strangely enough.
I wrote some stuff with Jay, Jay Moore.
I wrote a couple of sketches with Schneider, one of which actually got on.
A bunch of stuff with Franken, a bunch of stuff with Dave Mandel.
Franken was so funny.
It's so odd, because I did Air America in the same building with him.
But I was always a fan of his... He's got a very specific way of attacking comedy.
Yeah.
And it's very subtle, but very cutting.
Yeah.
And it's so charming.
Yeah, no, no.
I love Al.
Yeah.
Do you talk to him as a senator at all?
You know, I haven't spoken to him.
We emailed a little bit when he was first elected, you know, and I'd love to run into him again, but he's a busy man.
Yeah.
And he's a really good senator.
Yeah, no, he's great.
He's great.
I think it's what he, you know, he wanted to do all along in a way.
So your experiences with Lauren were good.
Yeah, for the most part.
They cleaned house at the end of the 94, 95 season.
They got pretty much everybody left.
Spade hung out kind of for a little bit.
Right.
But that's when they really started bringing people like...
will farrell and yeah it was it was a you know it was a big kind of a new um daryl hammond you know who was her and i had spent the year doing a very crappy clinton in my opinion i i was following phil hartman right who was like fucking aced it you know yeah hartman had a unique ability with impressions to to really not only get them right but to really focus on the one thing that made them hilarious right well his sinatra was exactly the angry
bullshit tough guy that we always knew was lurking there you know that's that's how he was he was an amazing actor yeah yeah he was friends with him a little bit yeah and he gave me great advice you know I after the first show I didn't get I was on for like a second first show I did or I did one little piece yeah
and i was thinking oh christ i don't know what you know this is not good and at the party that night or right before right the end of the show yeah phil just said you really got to write for yourself yeah and i said do you have a writing credit on this show and he says no i didn't at first but i still i wrote for myself right i know what i can do now so i went home that night or the you know that that first day off or whatever and
And I wrote my first sketch using a character that I had done with the credibility gap, which was this ancient pig movie director.
Yeah.
And kind of like John Ford.
Right, right.
But still sort of alive.
Right.
And I pitched it to do with Helen Hunt.
And it's a really funny sketch.
And so it was like, oh, he's right.
This is how you do that.
So I would, you know, always really.
So did you make a list of characters that you could?
No, no.
It's just if a story would remind me of something that I thought I could do or a style I'd always wanted to do.
I did a Sterling, a Spalding Gray impression.
Oh, really?
And so I wrote a piece of Spalding Gray and Eric Boghossian having like a battle of the bands.
Oh, that's funny.
And Adam played Boghossian, you know.
and uh and did you do Robert Evans as well I did yeah it wasn't it wasn't great but it was I mean it was a funny character wasn't particularly like him yeah but it was still it was it was I was fascinated like everybody yeah yeah yeah I'm almost as fascinated as Patton Oswalt is with with uh with Evans yeah yeah he's on Twitter now huh he's on Twitter now Evans is yeah excellent it's weird who's on Twitter William Friedkin's on Twitter like it's just bizarre yeah yeah
Well, okay.
So you had a good experience.
I did have a good experience.
And when it was over, I thought, man, you know, I've only been fired once before in my life, which was also by NBC.
Oh, really?
So I'm beginning to think I should maybe not work for NBC.
But you knew it was just a way of the... It was really... Yeah, things were just changing.
And like I say, they really... Daryl came in and he did a great Clinton and a great Ted Koppel.
And, you know, he's a really, really good guy.
Yeah.
And, you know, it eventually evolved into the Tina Fey, you know.
Right, right.
Sure, sure.
But is Lauren somebody that you keep in touch with?
No.
No, I haven't seen him since then.
Yeah, I don't know why I'm so obsessed with Lauren Michaels.
Well, here, you know, I can't trash him for you.
I'm not looking for trashy.
I know, I understand.
Looking for a way in.
I understand.
He's just a kind of a, you know what a white shoe lawyer is?
Uh-uh.
They're white shoe law firms.
They're the people who handle the people who live in Newport Beach.
Uh-huh.
And, you know, they can have white shoes because they never have to do any work.
Right, okay.
I think that's what it is.
Yeah.
It's about, you know, and it's not this doesn't make him an elitist necessarily.
It's just that he's kind of way up there.
And, you know, he was making a lot of money then per show.
He's must be making 30 times that much.
And it's like he's just that guy.
But he's, you know, he was always decent to me.
So I can't, you know.
I think I got it.
He yelled at me once.
Oh, really?
Because I was reading a book during the show.
Oh, really?
I had nothing to do for like 20 minutes.
So I was sitting there reading this book about English soccer toughs.
Yeah.
Football thugs.
I couldn't put it down.
Yeah.
Let's face it.
So he comes over and he goes, catching up on your reading?
Wow.
I said, just cleansing the palate.
Anyway, but he was fine to me.
Now, you've been in really almost every movie ever, it seems.
You're one of those guys that works, and you show up places, and you're always sort of there, and some parts are bigger than others, but you just work.
I do.
I keep busy, yeah.
And how was your health after that thing that happened?
Yeah.
That was very scary.
What happened?
It was pretty scary.
I was standing on the northeast corner of 86th and Broadway.
I had just come out of the subway stop, and I was going to my home, which is on West End Avenue.
And a car going north wanted to make the yellow light, and a car turning east wanted to turn...
So the car going north hit the car going east and they double teamed me.
I didn't even have to step off the curb.
And they just came right up on the curb and they took me out and broke a leg in three places.
And they took me to the hospital.
They took me to the hospital I had been born in 64 years earlier.
Was Billy Joel there?
No.
Billy was in the hospital back in Higgsville no yeah and they put me back together and they taught me how to walk again and I'm good now doing good I'm fine was it scary as shit
It was pretty scary, but to realize, once I kind of, I went out for a little bit, you know, but once I came to and realized that it was just a broken leg.
Right.
And I was bloody and everything because my scalp had been cut open, but that's not a big deal.
What, because you hit the concrete?
No, I think I hit the windshield.
Oh, my God.
So you flew up on that.
Flew up onto the thing, yeah.
But to realize that I hadn't been killed and wasn't going to die from this was a very, very good feeling.
And my wife was there.
She was in L.A.
when this happened.
She was there nine hours later.
Yeah.
In the hospital with me.
Okay.
She stayed with me in the hospital every night for the first week or so.
This is the wife I met.
This is Annette.
And you've been with her a long time.
We've been together 15 years.
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
And how many kids do you have?
Together, we have three.
Wow.
Yeah.
So they're all pretty young.
We don't have any together.
No, no, no.
We don't have any together that way.
Biologically, yeah.
How old is your oldest kid?
My biological son is 28.
Uh-huh.
And the girls, who are Annette's girls, are 24 and 28.
Do you get along with your son?
Yeah.
Yeah, I get along with all my kids.
That's good.
They're awesome.
Any in show business?
Nell Geislinger, who is Annette's daughter by Bill Geislinger, her first husband, is an amazing actress up at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.
I mean, a seriously fabulous actress.
She grew up in it.
She grew up.
That's her hometown is Ashland, Oregon.
So she's like a kind of a star there.
She'd kill me if I said that.
But she really is.
She's the goods.
And she's one of those people.
She'll either become a star on the stage.
She loves the stage.
Yeah.
Or she'll run a theater company.
She'll take over, you know, the Guthrie or something.
Sure, sure.
She's that smart.
Right, right.
She's incredible.
There's a whole world of that.
And a writer and all that, you know.
So she's the one who's in the biz.
Okay.
Do you get Shakespeare?
I love Shakespeare.
I've only, I did, I played Gloucester, or as he's always called, poor old Gloucester in King Lear.
He's the guy who gets his eyes scooped out, which is a good finish for Act One, believe me.
Sure.
and it was that was the first time as a big boy I'd really worked on Shakespeare Sam Waterston played Lear and Bill Irwin was the fool and he was like amazing wow great women Kelly O'Hara and Enid Graham did you have to study up on that shit or I mean well you have to learn it you have to learn what it says but is there a way of doing Shakespeare that's different than doing anything else
Well, only because the language isn't as plain on first sight.
You have to know that this means this, because otherwise it won't make sense.
But Lear is an incredibly hard play.
And it's really, really hard work.
And it's three hours every night.
Sure.
And that's the cut version.
If you want to do all of King Lear, it's four hours.
Wow.
So I ain't going to be doing that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it was great.
It was really fun to work on.
And the director was wonderful.
And Sam was great.
Watching Sam Waterston try and learn the biggest part in the English language.
And he was always with Booked, always trying to get it.
And he had been working on it for months.
And I said, are you ever not running lines?
And he says, yeah, sometimes I catch myself not running lines.
That must be so daunting to be consumed by that.
Stage plays are so terrifying.
No, not for me.
Well, I mean, just the idea that, like, do I have my lines?
I mean, just getting that out of the way.
I am now learning.
I'm opening in a play at the Geffen.
And it's the biggest part I've ever had to learn.
So I've been doing that every night.
It's called Yes, Prime Minister.
It's based on a British series that was created by Jonathan Lynn, who directed me in Clue in 1985.
And it's very, very funny, but man, there's a lot of words.
yeah I mean it's like I've done some plays in my life but it's just terrifying there's like nothing more frightening than coming up on an opening and being like I don't know if I have the whole thing I've always been pretty good about that yeah you got the brain for it well I got I just know that it has to be done right you know
Even though when you're out there on the stage, you can go up.
I mean, it does happen.
It's never happened seriously to me.
I've always been able to pick it up.
But I've seen people go dry on the stage.
You can feel their clamminess from across the stage.
Yeah, the terror.
It's a terror.
I just did a show with James Earl Jones.
Really?
A huge part.
Yeah.
And he went up just one time.
And I wasn't on stage.
It was him and John Larroquette on stage.
What was this?
What play was this?
The Best Man in New York.
And it got to a point and James just didn't have the next line.
Yeah.
And he handled it so beautifully because he plays an ex-president of the U.S.,
And he's very kind of a chummy thing going on.
Big man, but we were talking, just the two of us together.
So he gets to this point where he doesn't have it.
And without missing a beat, he looks at Larroquette and he goes, can you help me out here?
And John said, I mean, John kind of basically took him to the next beat.
Yeah.
You're always telling me I'm such a something boy, rich man's kid.
And that got him back to the story.
It was a nice moment.
Yeah.
Some people go, even your James Earl Joneses go up occasionally.
Did anyone notice it other than you guys?
No.
That's beautiful.
I was backstage listening.
Well, our cat just took him to the next one.
Well, they just, they handled it really well.
Oh, that's a good story.
Yeah.
Well, thanks for talking, Mr. McKean.
Hey, man, this was a lot of fun, and I'll keep listening even when I'm not on.
Oh, I'd love for that to happen.
And I'm going to give you a fancy mug that a guy made me.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I'll give it to you in just a second.
Good deal.
And I'm going to show you my guitars.
Yes, sir.
All right, buddy.
That's it, folks.
That's our show.
I love that man.
Catherine O'Hara on Thursday.
They are of the same generation.
They are both equally as amazing.
I will be at Bumbershoot this weekend doing a live WTF and some stand-up comedy.
Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Get the app.
Get on the mailing list.
Kick in a few shekels.
Buy some merch.
We're going to have some new posters up there shortly.
Things are going to be happening.
Things are going to be changing, not drastically, but there's going to be more things, more WTF things.
I feel it coming, man.
I feel it coming.
Have I done everything I need to do?
Have I done everything I'm required to do?
Thank you, Denver.
Looking forward to going to Seattle.
We're starting production this week on Marin.
We're going to start writing.
Everything is moving along.
I am not complaining.
I am struggling with waves of profound anxiety and anger, but that's just the way I'm wired today.
and I'm on it, okay?
I've got a lot of people working on it.
All right, there's me, there's the three people in my head, and then the person I'm paying to deal with it, and also the program of recovery.
A lot of things.
A lot of things going into making me a sane motherfucker.
Okay?
All righty.
Boomer lives!
Boomer lives!
you