Episode 426 - Robert Wuhl
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck'll berry thins what the fucksters oh shit i am mark maron this is wtf thank you for listening i appreciate you listening i uh i like talking to you
Marc:Is that a weird thing to say?
Marc:I like talking to you guys.
Marc:I think I talk to you really more on a personal level in terms of what's going on in my life than I do most people.
Marc:And you're my friends.
Marc:I mean, I talk to people here in the garage.
Marc:I talk to the guys at work.
Marc:You know, the problem with not having a regular crew of dudes that you hang out with or if you don't socialize a lot is that, you know, you just become too much information guy.
Marc:And that's who I am.
Marc:And I've always been that.
Marc:And it's always a tricky bit of business putting people in that position.
Marc:Everything's OK in my life.
Marc:Everything's great.
Marc:Things are, you know, I'm doing I'm busy.
Marc:I'm doing the work I want to be doing.
Marc:It's creative work.
Marc:Everything's going great.
Marc:But I'm an emotional moron.
Marc:I'm an emotionally crippled guy.
Marc:I mean, I can talk to you guys.
Marc:I mean, this is between us.
Marc:But when it comes to interpersonal relationships, I'm a troubled man.
Marc:I wish more than anything, quite honestly, that I could be one of those guys where people say, just man up or shut up or pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and just get it together, man.
Marc:Snap out of it.
Marc:God damn it, I wish I could do that.
Marc:All I know is that I'm about to get on a plane here and I'm packing recovery literature.
Marc:All I know is that I'm going to be the guy on the plane reading the book on codependency.
Marc:That's what I know about me.
Marc:Because I get to a certain point and things just get difficult and aggravated and I shut down and I blow up and it's just fucking ridiculous and I'm tired of it.
Marc:Sorry to dump this on you.
Marc:I know you're on your way to work.
Marc:I know maybe you got your kids in the car and you don't have time to help me out.
Marc:But I'm about to be 50 years old and I've got unresolved emotional issues of a five-year-old child.
Marc:And at some point it's like, all right, look, I got the sobriety in place.
Marc:You know, I got that going, but now I got to deal with the other shit.
Marc:How long do we got to wait for the other shit?
Marc:And I know some of you are like, look, man, just shut up, man.
Marc:Just shut up.
Marc:Just, you know, just deal with it.
Marc:Just deal with it.
Marc:Look, I envy the people that just have a life.
Marc:You know, there might be some problems, but not every problem is a goddamn life threatening concept.
Marc:They just kind of roll with it.
Marc:For me, mundane problems just turn into sort of malignant hurricanes of bullshit.
Marc:And I'm the guy walking up the street like he's fighting wind.
Marc:because of something that's going on in my head are you fucking kidding me god damn it and then i say the more grandiose parts of me thinks it like well i haven't all great men had their issues you know i'm i'm you know i'm sure that uh gandhi lost his shit sometimes
Marc:But who the fuck am I to compare myself to any great man?
Marc:It's just such a grandiose fucking rationalization.
Marc:I might as well just go with Jesus.
Marc:That's what he's for.
Marc:But then there's other parts of me that's sort of like, what would Keith Richards do?
Marc:I guess he'd just bail, go to his house in Jamaica, hang out for a while, smoke some weed, get fucked up, play with the local musicians, then maybe pop back up to his house in New York or maybe to his house over in London, hang out for a little while, blow some steam off, have sex with a few groupies.
Marc:Yeah, what's missing in that picture for me is the other houses, the ability to smoke weed or get fucked up, the ability to go have sex with some groupies without destroying everything.
Marc:So the what would Keith Richards do idea doesn't play out anymore.
Marc:At some point, I got to say, you know, what would Marc Maron do?
Marc:Well, he doesn't know all the time.
Marc:Stop talking about me like that.
Marc:Shut up.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:So for those of you following the saga of me, for those of you who are locked in and listening in order, did I mention Robert Wool is going to be on the show today?
Marc:Some of you might not know who he is.
Marc:Robert Wool.
Marc:The first time I think I saw Robert Wool, to be quite honest with you, was on the dating game when I was a kid.
Marc:On the dating game as a contestant.
Marc:Yes, they used to use comedians as contestants.
Marc:Some of you might know him from Good Morning Vietnam.
Marc:Some of you might know him from Arliss, Bull Durham, Batman.
Marc:But the Hollywood Nights I saw in high school was sort of an Animal House knockoff, and he played the Belushi-ish guy.
Marc:It's a very loud and big and broad and cheerful act.
Marc:And I had one of the great conversations with him.
Marc:This is a great WTF conversation.
Marc:I had no idea his history in comedy and the part in his life that Rodney Dangerfield played and how he came up and...
Marc:he's also doing uh the the hbo is on hbo assume the position 101 and 201 you can get that's his uh his riff on uh on history it's sort of like a class thing he does sort of a stand-up history lesson teaching things very proud of that but it was a great conversation and i and he's a great guy but some good stories here folks some really good stand-up stories from robert wool that's coming up in a second
Marc:I'm just struggling a little bit.
Marc:I'm not looking for sympathy.
Marc:I'm not looking for self-pity.
Marc:I'm looking for the fortitude to plow forward with the work I need to do on me.
Marc:I know it sounds selfish.
Marc:I know some of you think I'm a navel gazer.
Marc:I know some of you think this is bullshit.
Marc:Believe me!
Marc:If I could just shut up and man up, I would.
Marc:But my man up guy is a little apprehensive.
Marc:I'm really trying to be a better man and I'm trying to do the right thing in my relationship and I'm trying to treat Jessica well and I'm trying to navigate this love.
Marc:But I'm having a hard time.
Marc:It's difficult times here.
Marc:I want it to work out.
Marc:I want us to be happy.
Marc:I want it to work out.
Marc:But I've got some sort of emotional cancer in me.
Marc:So we had a long discussion.
Marc:It was not a great discussion.
Marc:It was a sad discussion the other night on Friday.
Marc:And I was pretty beat up by it and kind of lost by it.
Marc:And saddened.
Marc:And I came out here to the garage.
Marc:And to plink out a few blues tunes.
Marc:So I figure, you know, if I'm going to play blues for nobody, I better play them for me when they mean it, when I can feel it, when it can make me feel better.
Marc:And I'm out here probably feeling sorry for myself, probably feeling some sadness, some relief, a mixture of feelings.
Marc:But, you know, it was just one of those sort of like frank, horrible relationship discussions.
Marc:And I just felt like, oh, man.
Marc:I can't deal with this again.
Marc:I can't deal with all this trouble.
Marc:What am I going to do?
Marc:I got to do something.
Marc:I got to help myself.
Marc:I got to figure this out.
Marc:I got to take some action.
Marc:Just sitting out here with my guitar feeling a little beat up.
Marc:I hear noise outside on the little stairway by the deck.
Marc:I hear the sound of a
Marc:Of a cat eating.
Marc:And I put my guitar down.
Marc:I went outside and I stuck my head around the corner.
Marc:And fucking deaf black cat.
Marc:Deaf black cat was eating some cat food.
Marc:Looking pretty good.
Marc:Looking pretty good.
Marc:I had not seen him since Monday.
Marc:Since I released him back with his stitches.
Marc:Thinking like, I don't know if he's going to make it out there.
Marc:fucking on my deck, looking right at me with that same beautiful, fuck you, I made it look.
Marc:I'm all right, buddy.
Marc:I'm not mad at you, I guess.
Marc:Just don't put that trap out there again.
Marc:And I thought, yeah, man, I hear you.
Marc:I'm trying not to put the trap out for me again.
Marc:I won't put it out for you unless I have to.
Marc:It's good to see you.
Marc:Have some food.
Marc:Take your time.
Marc:We're going to get through this, pal.
Marc:Let's talk to Robert Wool.
Marc:I think you'll enjoy this one.
Marc:You're a professional.
Guest:Yeah, I have a radio show tonight I have to do, so I put headphones on.
Guest:Do you?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I'm doing a thing for Sirius Radio once a week.
Guest:I do fantasy baseball for him.
Marc:You know, this is an interesting thing.
Marc:We'll get back to my memories of you in a second, but sports, you live for it.
Marc:I really don't.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:I've had...
Guest:I enjoy baseball a lot.
Guest:I'm a big baseball fan.
Guest:Always have been.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I enjoy going to a lot of sporting events.
Guest:I'm not a hockey fan.
Guest:No.
Guest:I respect the hockey.
Guest:Actually, hockey fans are, as my dad used to say, they are the most loyal, the most passionate, the craziest fans in the world.
Guest:The problem is that there's 20,000 of them in each city and no one else gives a shit.
Yeah.
Guest:At least, you know, if you didn't grow up with it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So it's sort of like soccer in other places.
Marc:Pretty much.
Marc:Well, I mean, soccer is very popular everywhere, but here, soccer seems to be catching on a little bit.
Marc:More so, because we were growing up with it.
Marc:Well, I was just in Portland, and it's crazy up there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Is that where I was?
Marc:Portland, do they have?
Marc:Yeah, they got a soccer team.
Guest:Makes sense.
Marc:The green, they're green.
Marc:Now I'm going to get a lot of hate mail from Portland.
Marc:How can you not know?
Marc:But people are decked out.
Marc:They're going.
Marc:No, it's great.
Marc:This is another language to me.
Guest:Yeah, but sports.
Guest:Sports I grew up with.
Guest:I played sports.
Guest:Mostly intramurals.
Guest:I wasn't like on high school teams.
Marc:You did Arliss, which is about a sports agent.
Marc:Yes, it was about a sports agent.
Guest:It was a world, but that was not because of...
Guest:See, Arliss was... About show business to you?
Guest:It was about a guy doing a job.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was about... My greatest compliment came one time when I was going to a party and I ran into Fran Lebowitz.
Guest:Yeah, sure, sure.
Guest:And she had her chain smoking and she comes out to me and goes...
Guest:I hate sports, but I love your show.
Guest:And I'd say, you know, that's not about sports.
Guest:It's about characters in the world of sports.
Guest:That's different.
Guest:I was much more interested than, because most things about sports comes down to the big game.
Guest:And numbers.
Guest:Right, and that's totally unemotional.
Guest:The big game, unemotional, crap.
Guest:I cared about a guy doing his job.
Guest:My father ran a business, so I was interested in a guy running a business.
Guest:I was interested in the characters of...
Guest:The world of sports, for example, the woman who was the choreographer of the Laker girls.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was interested in that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's her story?
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot of stories there that might be interesting.
Guest:And the guy who was selling peanuts.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, what's his story?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, when he's making, you know, 25.
Guest:Because I sold- When he's loading up the truck.
Guest:Yeah, with his peanuts.
Guest:With his peanuts.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then suddenly, he can't sell them on the corner.
Guest:He sold them forever.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I was interested in personal things in the world.
Guest:The athletes themselves had interested ... See, what it was, it was about a guy who was an agent, and an agent by nature is a parasitic profession.
Guest:You don't got to tell me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:By nature, it's parasitic.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So many professions like that, Robert.
Marc:Especially agents.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But the very nature of how show business is structured or in the sports or whatever business it is, is that not only is it parasitic, but you can't get anywhere without them.
Guest:Well, it's helpful.
Guest:But basically an agent, if you don't worry, he's taking a piece of what you make.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, but in order to get access, you need that guy.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And he serves a purpose.
Guest:If he does a good job, they serve a purpose.
Guest:Well, if they're really good and they care, they can serve a purpose, a good purpose.
Guest:So he ran a business.
Guest:So the only thing about his clientele was very unique because they were a very young clientele, sports figures.
Guest:The average...
Guest:life expectancy, career life expectancy of a professional athlete, depending on the sports, about anywhere from three and a half to five years.
Guest:It's like an actress.
Guest:An actress has more than that, not much.
Guest:Here's how I compare.
Guest:When I hear people say athletes make a lot of money, they make too much money, I go...
Guest:First of all, you don't have to throw any benefits for these owners.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you can't fuck up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can't screw up a franchise more than Frank McCourt screwed up the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It is impossible.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And he sold the team and he walked away with $2 million.
Guest:To how much?
Guest:$2 billion.
Guest:No, that's not much.
Guest:So it's like, don't worry about what this guy's making for four years, five, he's making $20 million.
Guest:This guy's doing okay.
Guest:That's number one.
Marc:So in defense of the athlete, you're saying, look, okay, you don't begrudge them their money because they got a three to five year window.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's for with most examples, with rare exceptions.
Marc:But isn't that sort of the same in comedy and in show business?
Marc:I mean, you know, I mean, you know, if you're good and you can nurture a career and do other things.
Marc:But, you know, if you hit and the heat is on you, you got that window to make bank as best you can.
Guest:But you have a career after, even though you're not making as much bank, you have bank.
Guest:Ball player's career is over.
Guest:They're not making any more than playing ball.
Guest:Unless they can get on a mic or, you know.
Guest:No, but they won't be doing any playing ball, as I say.
Guest:Their passion.
Marc:Here's the example I always use.
Guest:Remember, there was a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers whose heyday was in the 1960s named Don Drysdale.
Marc:I heard the name.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Very famous Hall of Fame ball player.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His had the great consecutive innings pick streak scoreless.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And he broke the record in Los Angeles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:on the night that Bobby Kennedy is shot.
Guest:In fact, Bobby Kennedy began his speech that night.
Guest:He was excited by saying, first of all, I want to congratulate Don Drysdale for doing the shutout and breaking the record.
Guest:And then, of course, afterwards, he walked off and got shot.
Guest:Now, so his career ends, I think Drysdale retires in 1970, 71, something like that.
Guest:So that's 42 years ago.
Guest:On his high school baseball team is Robert Redford.
Marc:Really?
Guest:So it gives you an idea a little bit of career expectancies.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:When Redford's got two movies coming out this month.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like... And where's Drysdale?
Guest:He's been in baseball.
Guest:He's playing baseball for the big man upstairs for quite a while.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But his career ended in 1970, 71.
Guest:You know, 40 years later.
Guest:That's what I'm saying.
Guest:When these athletes make money, it's for a very short period of time.
Marc:But do you draw strength from that?
Marc:I mean, you know, you've been in the racket a long time here.
Marc:You've been in show business a long time.
Marc:You know, my experience with you...
Marc:is that you know when i was a kid what year did hollywood nights come out 1980 i shot i came out here in 79 shot in 19. i saw that in high school right like i went and saw that in high school and you were hilarious and i had seen you do stand-up before i think i like for some reason i have a recollection of you being on the dating game is that possible correct that's 100 correct for how long how many episodes the dating game did you do i think i did three
Marc:And people don't maybe realize that that was a showcase for comics.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:It was a paying gig.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:When I first came out, I talked about living in Eagle Rock.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You moved to Eagle Rock.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I moved from New Jersey to Eagle Rock.
Guest:How the fuck did you find Eagle Rock?
Guest:What happened was I was starting out at the Improv in New York.
Guest:A guy named Bob Shanks, ex-TV executive and now a producer, he was going to do a pilot for the Tony Tennille show.
Guest:So he came to the Improv to see what young talent was there.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So wait, what year is that?
Guest:I move out for good in 79.
Guest:So this is about 78, 77, 78.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I started in like 77.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So 77, I mean, in a way, the improv, it sort of arced its heyday a little bit.
Marc:So you can the tail end of that.
Guest:I'm there with my group was Larry.
Guest:Larry David.
Guest:Larry, Jerry, Paul Reiser.
Guest:George Wallace was there at that time.
Guest:Bob Shaw, Barry Diamond.
Marc:Bob Shaw, Bob Shaw.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I love Bob.
Marc:Bob Shaw once said to me, by the time I got to the improv, it was already the late 80s.
Marc:So Silver owned it.
Marc:Bud was out.
Marc:And Chris was out.
Marc:Who?
Marc:Chris Albrecht.
Marc:Yeah, he was gone.
Guest:Oh, that was way over.
Guest:See, Chris put me on stage.
Guest:See, Chris was the one who put me on stage.
Guest:So when did Bud move out here?
Guest:Bud moves out before I get there.
Guest:Maybe a year before I get there.
Guest:About 76, 77.
Marc:So you were at the tail end of that, of the New York improv scene.
Guest:I was after the group of Leno, Elaine Boosler, Richard Lewis, Bluestone.
Guest:Kaufman.
Guest:Right, they had already gone.
Guest:Now, interestingly enough, my wife...
Guest:was a waitress there who came out with Bud.
Guest:So she actually was part of that group there.
Guest:Now, she was working as a waitress.
Guest:She was a teacher.
Guest:Bud came out here in what, 76, 74?
Guest:76, 77, something like that, right?
Guest:76.
Guest:So that's when he came out.
Guest:So I came into the improv in New York around, tail end of 76.
Guest:How old were you when you started doing stand-up?
Guest:24, 25, something like that.
Marc:So you knew, so those guys were all your contenders.
Guest:So you go back and forth.
Guest:I didn't know any of them.
Guest:I didn't know any of them.
Guest:I knew, like I said, the guys I knew were, I started with was Riser.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know them then.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But so you were going back and forth from the comic strip to the improv to Catch a Rising Star.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Bob Shanks sees me, he gives me a job performing and writing on the Tony Tennille pilot.
Guest:So I come out here and I do that, and it turns out one of the other writers on the pilot had a house in Eagle Rock.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I said, I'm going to move out here.
Guest:He rented me the house.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And I stayed there only a couple of months, and then I moved to Westwood.
Guest:With your wife at the time?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Not married.
Guest:No, I wasn't married at the time.
Guest:We were just starting dating.
Guest:She was a comedy club waitress from the improv.
Guest:She was a waitress.
Guest:She was a bartender, and she actually was moonlighting.
Guest:She was working at Simon & Schuster, but moonlighting as a bartender.
Marc:So that scene then, because I've talked to, who have I talked to in here?
Marc:Yeah, I talked to Jimmy Walker.
Marc:So you're going to get the generation before you, that history.
Marc:Right, that was before me, yeah.
Marc:But by the time you got in, Richard Lewis is gone, too.
Marc:Lewis is gone, too.
Marc:They're all gone.
Marc:So that whole first generation of what was the first wave of modern American stand-ups.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:It went.
Marc:But your generation, which is really the second generation, Seinfeld, Reiser, Wolfberg.
Marc:Right, Dennis, Larry.
Marc:Larry David.
Marc:Gilbert.
Marc:Gilbert.
Marc:So these guys were the guys that you would go to the diner with.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And that scene, so they were very aware that comedy was, it had blown up.
Marc:It was a big business.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, it started because what had happened was in the previous years was Saturday Night Live started and then it exploded.
Guest:Robin Williams, no, Robin Williams didn't explode yet.
Guest:He was about to.
Guest:Steve Martin had exploded.
Guest:Right, because that was when I was in high school.
Guest:Woody Allen, Annie Hall had exploded, won the best picture.
Guest:that was the the comedy clubs were starting yeah there weren't many comedy clubs to work then i mean pips and sheepshead bay sure and you pick up a club in new jersey a club here and you did that oh yeah oh sure oh sure so you were chasing it sure yeah yeah like everybody starts that way absolutely
Guest:So how long- And I come out here in January of 79 where Bob Shank says, I'm going to get you a deal at Universal.
Guest:I have a deal over here.
Guest:Come out and get you a holding deal.
Guest:So I come out.
Guest:Now, I had an advantage in that right off the bat, I started writing for Rodney Dangerfield.
Guest:I was one of the first kids.
Guest:In New York?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Rodney was great to me.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was about 25, 26.
Guest:So you've been doing comedy a couple of years.
Guest:Oh, no, no.
Guest:I've been doing comedy a couple of months.
Guest:A couple of months and Rodney sees you.
Guest:No, I go to Rodney's dressing room.
Guest:Where?
Guest:On the door at Dangerfields.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's still working there.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He's still walking around his bathrobe.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And he opens the door and he says, what is it, kid?
Guest:And I said, I got a couple of jokes I wrote for you.
Guest:They told me to come here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he goes, okay, kid, let me hear him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, okay, I'm all right now, but last week I was in rough shape.
Guest:You know, a guy comes up to me at the airport.
Guest:He says, let me $5 till payday.
Guest:I said, when's payday?
Guest:He says, I don't know.
Guest:You got the job.
Yeah.
Guest:And he says, okay, kid, the jokes are good, but don't do me.
Guest:And then I wrote a couple of jokes, and he did them on The Tonight Show.
Guest:And he would call me.
Guest:What was great is I did some work with him over the next year or so.
Guest:And he would try.
Guest:He liked me.
Guest:He said, you're a good joke editor.
Guest:You're not an edit.
Guest:Which I have to say, I confess, I'm fairly good at that.
Guest:And what he would do is he would leave.
Guest:He would call my message machine at home when I was living in Jersey City at the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would call my home, leave a joke on the message machine, and actually pause for the laugh.
Guest:One after the other.
Guest:He would do jokes like, a message would go, hey, Bob, what do you think of this one?
Guest:I'll tell you, I worked some rough clubs, you know.
Guest:I worked Vinnie on the menu.
Guest:They had broken leg of lamb.
Guest:So what do you think?
Guest:He was the best.
Marc:He was great.
Marc:I think, honestly, though, in the big picture, one of the most underappreciated comedians.
Guest:Without a doubt.
Guest:I talk about it all the time.
Guest:The great comic artists.
Guest:of i think of now there's a lot of them yeah i mean i don't want to listen but when they talk about prior and cosby uh carlin rodney rod actually rodney starts with lenny bruce he would tell me stories about jack roy jack roy yeah jack roy and joe ansis joe ansis were best friends right and lenny and right and do you know joe ansis yes you did yeah because of rodney
Marc:Okay, well, let me ask you a question then.
Marc:And we'll talk about his importance, because I'm a big champion of the legacy of Rodney Dangerfield.
Guest:Oh, he was the greatest.
Marc:Because he was such a heavy-hearted dude.
Marc:And when I first met the guy, I was a kid, but I was a doorman at the comedy store.
Marc:But there was something about...
Marc:he was a real loner in a way.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And that he didn't feel like he come into it, he comes back, he doesn't get his big break until he's in his 60s.
Marc:And then all the dudes that, he didn't seem to be one of the guys.
Marc:He had his own thing.
Marc:And I think that show business sort of treated him that way in a way.
Marc:And that when he got back to school in that big break, in my mind, I would like to think that Rodney's like, oh, fuck you.
Guest:He was like that, yeah.
Guest:Here's the thing about Rodney.
Guest:He became hot in the mid... He was starting to become hot in the mid-70s because all the... He was on The Tonight Show and Carson loved him.
Guest:I got to tell you, as a college kid back then, we'd watch Rodney.
Guest:Rodney was like... Because the jokes were just so fucking good.
Guest:He's the most underappreciated comic writer ever.
Guest:that I've known in my life.
Guest:And the delivery system was perfect.
Guest:The character was so intact.
Guest:What's interesting is when you listen to his early comedy albums, like The Loner, I think his first one is The Loner, he's not doing the same thing.
Guest:He's storytelling.
Guest:He's a brilliant storyteller.
Guest:But then when you ask him about what happened, he said it was after The Godfather, and The Godfather, they had all this stuff about respect, respect.
Guest:And so he one day said, I got no respect.
Guest:And that hooked on.
Guest:And he started to do bang.
Guest:He was like doing rock and roll in the sense of he would have these wonderful stories.
Guest:Have you ever
Guest:Did you hear the story of how he got his name?
Guest:It's a monologue.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:So one time, a guy comes to see me.
Guest:He goes, you know, you got a good show, but it's your name.
Guest:And he goes, well, what's in the name?
Guest:He goes, what's in the name?
Guest:Shakespeare said that.
Guest:The guy said, you're going to listen to me, you're going to listen to your friends.
Guest:Do you know?
Guest:He would do jokes.
Guest:He goes, I got a name for you.
Guest:He goes, what's the name?
Guest:A name that when somebody hears it, they'll be saying it forever.
Guest:He goes, what's the name?
Guest:He goes, Rodney Dangerfield.
Guest:And he goes, Rodney Dangerfield.
Guest:He goes, see, you're saying it already.
Guest:He goes, listen, try it out for two weeks, but do me a favor.
Guest:Don't give it a bad name.
Guest:And he comes back later, and about two weeks later, and he goes, Rodney Dangerfield.
Guest:And he goes, oh, he goes, who?
Guest:He says, who?
Guest:And he goes, Rodney Dangerfield.
Guest:He goes, oh, yeah, Shakespeare's friend.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Guest:So he told these wonderful stories.
Guest:I mean, just so smart and so hip.
Guest:I've never seen that record.
Guest:Oh, it's great.
Guest:I think it's the original one called The Loner.
Guest:But then he started talking about it.
Guest:He knew the attention span.
Guest:He said, one-liners, bang, bang.
Guest:And his whole thing was, when you go on The Tonight Show, you've got to do damage.
Guest:That was just like, do damage.
Guest:So he would have his thing, and he knew he was going to have 32 jokes he had written out in his legal pad, which jokes, and we'd go over the whole routine, and which was going to be panel, which was going to be so-and-so.
Guest:And of course, he was a craftsman in that way, and he loved young comics who had something to say.
Guest:He had no patience for comics who were just your bland, observational comics.
Guest:And he goes, I remember, he would heckle him.
Guest:He would come back, and he would come, because Roddy's a big pothead.
Guest:He would say, Bob, the problem with you is you don't keep your pipe clean.
Guest:You've got to keep your pipe clean.
Guest:Okay, I'll work on it.
Guest:So Rodney, he would come and he'd hang out at the improv, sit in the back.
Guest:In New York.
Guest:Yeah, a couple of drinks and everything.
Guest:And the comic would come on, and if he did, he was thinking, you know, what's with the color green?
Guest:The guy would come up, what's with the color green?
Guest:Everything is green.
Guest:Green means go.
Guest:And Dangerfield would start heckling.
Guest:He goes, he'd say, you know, when you go to the supermarket and do this, something like that, and then Rodney would say, come on, man, tell me a joke.
Guest:Tell me a joke.
Guest:Next you're going to tell me where I buy my fucking shoes.
Guest:So he was, so he brings me out here.
Guest:So Rodney brought me out here in about 19... So how long did you write for him?
Guest:about a year or so, but I was always there when he asked me to do a little something.
Marc:So that was really, you know, that was your first show business job outside of comedy, and you sought him out.
Guest:My first job, the first thing I wrote was, because I was writing comedy down when I went to college, but that was in Texas, and then I came back and I wrote, Stiller and Mira had a little five-minute interstitial programming show on WNBC in New York, and I wrote a sketch that they bought for a couple hundred bucks.
Guest:That was my first gig, and I first met Ben there.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:When he was a kid?
Guest:Yeah, Ben was like 13, 12, I don't know.
Guest:So, um...
Guest:But then Rodney, you know, gave- And you sought him out because you loved him.
Guest:I was a huge fan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought I could write for him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then I went to Rodney, and Rodney brought me out with him.
Guest:Before you moved out here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was going to do it tonight, so he brought me out here, and he introduced me to Mitzi at the comedy store.
Guest:So I came in with a leg up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Rodney had done it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's how I got out here.
Guest:From there on, I get some nice spots.
Guest:I'm doing well.
Guest:A casting director sees me.
Guest:I audition for Hollywood Nights.
Guest:I get Hollywood Nights.
Guest:That's how that happened.
Guest:So you grew up in Jersey?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And what was that life like?
Guest:Suburbia New Jersey, Union, New Jersey.
Guest:Union.
Guest:Which is interesting because what's funny about it is I knew I wanted to get out of there.
Guest:I always wanted to make films.
Guest:I always wanted to be a storyteller.
Guest:I always wanted to be a filmmaker.
Guest:And I always enjoyed writing.
Guest:Union's right by Jersey City, right?
Guest:No, it's Union City.
Guest:It's Union City.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Union is about 20 miles from New York City.
Guest:What county?
Guest:Union County.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And what's interesting is it's a very mixed town, mixed ethnic town, big time.
Guest:And what's funny is I got out of it and I never thought I was going to get out of Union.
Guest:And I liked it.
Guest:I had a great time growing up for the most, but I didn't like high school.
Guest:But I had a good time with good life.
Guest:And what's interesting is it's like two other comics came from Union after me.
Guest:Jeff Ross is from Union.
Guest:sure that makes sense and then arty lang is from union really and they both said they always point to me and i now i'm feeling like you know like the godfather of comedy and they go you don't understand robert because because of your success we could point to somebody and say i can do it too he comes from the same town i could do it which is like you know that's like it makes you feel really good you feel old but it makes you feel good and it's like that's so cool and both of them are good friends of mine yeah that have become good friends of mine
Marc:They're good guys, and there's something about Jersey.
Marc:My family's from Jersey.
Marc:I didn't grow up in Jersey, but Jersey's Jersey.
Guest:A lot of great talent came out of Jersey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, John Travolta, Frank Sinatra, Danny DeVito.
Guest:I mean, all the comics I'm talking about.
Marc:A lot of great comics.
Marc:When you talk about your old man before about that he worked and that he had a business, so what did he do?
Guest:He was a fruit distributor.
Guest:They had a fruit market.
Guest:It was a family business.
Guest:My grandfather started the business.
Guest:Down in Newark, in the Newark Farmer's Market, they were fruit distributors.
Guest:They were the middlemen between, say, Sunkist and A&P in the markets.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:They were the distributors.
Guest:So he had trucks?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There were a lot of trucks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And my father grew up.
Guest:His father was tough on him.
Guest:His father was very tough on him.
Guest:It was a family business.
Guest:My dad either wanted to be a writer or in finance.
Guest:Interestingly enough, my brother's in finance, and depending on who you ask, I became a writer.
Marc:So your grandfather, did he start with humble beginnings, immigrant, like he had his own fruit stand?
Guest:No, he wasn't an immigrant.
Guest:I mean, people were over here for a while.
Guest:They came from Kiev originally, but they were over here for a while.
Guest:He and his brother started Wall Brothers Produce.
Guest:And it's still around today.
Guest:It's a very successful business.
Guest:It's still around.
Guest:Our family's not involved anymore, but it's still around.
Guest:And so he started that.
Guest:My father goes to World War II, and he comes back.
Guest:And he got married, had three kids right away, gained 50 pounds, and was miserable every day in his life going to work.
Guest:But he was funny.
Guest:But my dad was funny.
Guest:My dad could tell jokes.
Guest:He loved jokes.
Marc:So you grew up with the, you know, like, I brought some oranges.
Yeah.
Guest:Not really, yeah, but not really.
Guest:That wasn't that much because he was there so early in the morning.
Guest:I didn't see him in the early part of my life because his dad was tough on him.
Guest:He had to be at the buyers at the docks at like 8, 6 o'clock in the morning in New York.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:And then he came home like 6, 7 o'clock at night.
Guest:Now, as it went on, he became a partner and then my grandfather dies and the hours became better.
Marc:So was he supportive of you?
Guest:Well, that's a great story.
Guest:My mother was very supportive because she knew what I wanted to do.
Guest:My father had a good heart in the sense that he knew there was money to be made in show business.
Guest:He didn't quite understand me going to New York at midnight every night so I can go on stage for nothing.
Guest:But my mother supported that.
Guest:She said, let him chase his dream.
Guest:In the meantime, I went to the American Bartender Academy so I could have a bartender's license.
Guest:I never used it.
Guest:You got it though?
Guest:Yeah, but I've never used it because I started making money.
Guest:I started actually supporting myself.
Marc:Is that something you have to update every year and take a test?
Guest:I got 100 on the test, wouldn't know how to make a drink in my life.
Guest:But if you went in and got a bartender, this is out of date.
Guest:Well, a couple of things happened.
Guest:One is when I was in college, me and my buddy would always watch a $20,000 pyramid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I would play along with this thing.
Guest:I said, I think I can beat this thing.
Guest:So I auditioned to go on this show and I won.
Guest:Who was hosting then?
Guest:Dick Clark.
Guest:Really?
Guest:He was there then?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And Sandy Duncan was my... I have a clip of it.
Guest:I showed it in my one-man show.
Guest:And I win.
Guest:And so that gave me... By the way, I'm just starting at the improv then.
Guest:So suddenly... In New York.
Guest:So they shot in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So suddenly, I won this $20,000 period.
Guest:So it's like, oh, Robert won the $20,000 period.
Guest:That's very impressive.
Guest:So that was good.
Guest:So what was funny is my dad and my mother were vacationing in Florida.
Guest:And like I said, my dad up to this point, he didn't say anything about it.
Guest:He didn't know what I was going to do.
Guest:My mother had been supportive.
Guest:But that night that it aired,
Guest:uh april 21st 1977 uh it was my mother's birthday uh it aired and everybody who was staying at the hotel who would sit around and watch it with my dad you gathered everybody around yeah yeah he bought champagne for everybody right yeah yeah and he watched it i went on tv and i said did you place any bets or anything like that yeah and uh he said they told his mother that my mother that night uh you know maybe he's just he's gonna make it in this business and he went to bed that night died in his sleep your father that night yeah after the 20 000 yeah
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's heartbreaking.
Guest:That's a tough one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was a tough one.
Guest:In certain ways, however, I have to confess, my dad was a pretty controlling guy, brilliant, the most brilliant guy I knew, funny as hell, told great jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he was very tough.
Guest:I mean, he came out of that greatest generation thing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And he actually had been a codebreaker.
Guest:He was on the island of Tinian as a cryptographer, which is where the Enola Gay, his commanding officer was Paul Tibbetts, who
Guest:Who flew the Gnola Gate?
Guest:That was his connection.
Guest:And my dad was a cryptographer and I asked him, he got a piece of the message.
Guest:He didn't know what it was.
Guest:It was something like little boy down, you know?
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When they dropped it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had no idea what it was.
Guest:But so he came from that world and in certain ways it was very liberating when he died for me because I didn't have to worry about him over my shoulder the whole time so I could do things.
Guest:I miss him terribly.
Guest:I would have been much better off making decisions with him around.
Guest:But at the same time, you make your own life.
Marc:Right, but also there's something about the fact that it was a successful note.
Marc:Yes, at the end.
Marc:Right, I went off on a grace note.
Guest:Like he went to bed and he just saw it.
Guest:Right, no, exactly, exactly.
Guest:No, there is that, there is that.
Guest:My mother died very shortly thereafter.
Guest:My dad died at 53, my mom died at 60.
Guest:Oh, that's very young.
Guest:Yeah, very young.
Guest:I mean, they're dead, my father's dead now at 77, so what is that?
Guest:That's...
Guest:Almost 40 years.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And my mom's dead almost.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:I'm 61.
Guest:And so my mom, I just had my, she died right about a year after we got married.
Guest:So we just celebrated 30.
Guest:So she's down on about 30, 29.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And all your siblings are around still?
Guest:They're all fine.
Guest:My brother and sister are fine.
Marc:And no show business for them?
Guest:No.
Guest:My brother is on Wall Street.
Guest:Oh, he is.
Guest:He is on Wall Street.
Guest:My sister was a school teacher.
Guest:Now she lives down in Boca.
Marc:oh okay no that's nice you know far it is where you go yeah but but that's a pretty touching story so he wasn't really able to see the whole evolution he saw my joke being done on the tonight show by rodney dangerville and he saw me win the pyramid all right so okay so rodney takes you out here and he introduces you to everybody and then you go back to new york you just stay here
Guest:I think I went back to New York briefly.
Guest:Pack up your shit.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I come out here in January of 79, and within two months, I have a pilot deal at ABC, and I have the lead in the movie called The Hollywood Nights.
Guest:I said, ooh, this is the way it happens, huh?
Guest:Okay, good.
Guest:This is fine.
Marc:This is perfect.
Marc:But at that time, so Larry David's in L.A., Ryzer's still in L.A.
Marc:Everybody from your group is kind of in L.A.
Marc:They're just starting to come out there.
Guest:Larry, I don't know if it arrived yet.
Marc:Well, I don't think he came out till much later.
Guest:Not much later because he does Fridays.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:That wasn't in New York?
Guest:No, it was here.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:He does Fridays.
Guest:That's not too much later.
Guest:So I came out.
Guest:I was only at the improv about a year, less than a year.
Marc:In New York.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So you'd only been doing comedy how long?
Guest:About a year.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's all I did.
Guest:It was actually... I came out... I really developed an act very quickly and it went very well and I was working my ass.
Guest:If I would do three shows a night, I'd do every club and I was just... I think... Who was it?
Guest:Larry Miller, who was another one, and Jerry called me the machine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He just said I just went out there.
Guest:I was very tunnel focused.
Guest:I mean, great... I mean, I was just...
Marc:We had a very... I mean, I remember seeing you then because you were intense.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You were sweaty.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was a mile a minute.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you just kept hitting.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And did you do comedy when you got out here?
Guest:Well, yeah, sure I did.
Guest:Now, the thing was that I realized that...
Guest:Back then, okay, my whole gameplay wasn't to do The Tonight Show.
Guest:That wasn't a be-all and end-off for me.
Guest:It was Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show.
Guest:It was a great avenue to do everything because it was The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Guest:Can't negate that.
Guest:But because the guy, I think his name was Jim McCauley, was the booker.
Guest:The booker, yeah.
Guest:And he was doing his job, I suppose, because his job was to do what does Johnny like, to be fair.
Guest:And I don't know if...
Guest:And Johnny saw me, didn't like me, Bobby, I don't know.
Guest:But for whatever reason, I wasn't getting on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson as much.
Guest:And I said, well, I can't, I'm not going to let that do my career.
Guest:I mean, that's ridiculous.
Guest:At the same time, Merv Griffin adored me.
Guest:And I went on his show, and Merv doesn't get the credit he deserves, because Merv broke a little, you know, had comics on much before Johnny.
Guest:Johnny would have him on when they were already, he'd seen him, and, you know, he would, you know, with the exception of maybe Letterman prior.
Guest:Right.
Marc:All these guys were on Merv Griffin much before Johnny.
Marc:Well, yeah, no, I remember seeing them after school on Merv Griffin.
Marc:I saw Leno on Merv Griffin.
Marc:I saw a lot of people on Merv.
Marc:And then you sit in the big chair.
Guest:I remember prior on Merv Griffin and everybody.
Guest:And then you sit in the chairs, right?
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:So anyway, so Merv was great.
Guest:He gave me a contract that I was on every month for like three years.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So I had to come up with material.
Guest:So you had to go out and do it.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:Did you tour?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:I did all the clubs, absolutely.
Guest:Because after Hollywood Nights, that comes out, and it wasn't like I got a lot of film work.
Guest:I didn't get any film work for a couple of years.
Guest:So I was touring and writing.
Guest:I was always writing.
Marc:But it popped up your visibility?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, they could book me as New Bomb Turk from Hollywood Nights and stuff like that.
Marc:Right, and that was on the, it came after Animal House, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:See, the thing about Hollywood Nights, it comes out, Hollywood Nights comes out in 1980.
Guest:It's a cross between, as they wanted to say, American Graffiti and Animal House.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's how they sold it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what's interesting is that it was one of the first movies when HBO starts to become popular.
Guest:They put Hollywood Nights on it, and they ran the shit out of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And fathers would watch it with their sons.
Guest:I hear that all the time.
Guest:My dad used to watch it with me.
Guest:What's interesting now is it's a generation later, and when it comes on, the sons who have now grown up are watching it with their sons.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's kind of cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was a punk rock band named New Bomb Turk, my character's name.
Guest:It was very cool.
Guest:So I'm writing all during that time.
Guest:At the same time, I hooked on... I remember the line.
Guest:I've had this taste in my mouth before.
Guest:A little wang to it.
Guest:You got a little wang to it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You peed in the punch.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And at the same time, in like...
Guest:in the early 80s also at the same time I did Hollywood nights the Zucker Brothers came and saw me because they wanted me to audition for airplane yeah I didn't get the part but then they started this TV series called police squad and they asked me to be a writer on it so I did that for the two months we had the job because I took it right off the air but it was a great you know it was a great again the whole you know one experience learns to another but it's interesting because you know again when you have a generation of comics and
Marc:And, you know, you went to movies, you adapted to movies quicker and really probably uniquely out of that generation in a way that was very successful.
Marc:And a lot of those guys didn't.
Marc:Was there any sort of weird sort of tension of like, you know, well, you know, Robert's getting away from comedy or, you know, he's not doing it.
Guest:Never thought about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think ever... I never wanted to be an old-time stand-up comic.
Guest:I mean, that was never a goal of mine.
Guest:To me, I was using stand-up comedy as an... I came from theater.
Guest:So, to me... But I had this huge background in film, and I love comedy.
Marc:But you loved Rodney Dangerfield, and you knew... I love comedy.
Marc:You knew the gig.
Guest:I knew every comedy.
Guest:I mean, I could tell you the routines of Pryor and Pryor and Klein and Alan King, who is very overlooked now.
Guest:People forget how great Alan King was.
Marc:He's kind of a dick.
Marc:He might have been a dick, but when you watch him, you watch the routines.
Marc:Well, he was very important for sort of updating and moving the Jewish sensibility to the suburbs.
Guest:More than that, the anger.
Guest:Remember, people forget.
Guest:Survived by his wife.
Guest:That's a great routine.
Guest:But up to the moment, he would come on and go after the airlines and go after the insurance companies and name names and get sued.
Guest:And they'd drop all the suits.
Guest:And he'd go on and you'd realize this is ballsy.
Guest:He would go after stuff like that.
Marc:So he doesn't get the respect he deserves.
Guest:No, not from a comedic standpoint.
Guest:Yeah, he can be tough.
Guest:There's no question about it.
Guest:I remember one time I was working in Atlantic City, and I was doing the top... There were two shows a night.
Guest:I was opening for, I think, Melissa Manchester, or The Temps or something like that, the first show, and he was doing the second show.
Guest:So we'd switch dressing rooms and everything.
Guest:And he sees me, and I'm with my childhood friend.
Guest:He says, come on into the room, and Alan can drink.
Guest:So Alan starts... Gin, right?
Guest:I forgot what he said.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So Alan starts... And starts telling me all his business details with my buddy.
Guest:He says, they wanted me to do this for $30,000.
Guest:I said, what am I gonna do?
Guest:I go, I got my kid here.
Guest:What do I give a shit about you?
Guest:But he just went on and just opened up.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Somebody's talked to him.
Guest:But okay, so I came...
Guest:So I can't so I came because my background in theater where did you do that in college?
Guest:Yeah, but I was love theater.
Guest:Yeah, I always love theater And I love structure, you know, I was into you know, so because then I was a film You know sort of like not a major, but but I'm a film aficion.
Guest:Yeah big time So I had all this comedy background as far as that goes so I knew
Guest:You know, how to do that.
Guest:You know, so I had a background in that.
Guest:So when I came out, in fact, because I was successful in films, I think it hurt me a little bit.
Guest:It hurt, of course, my ego that I didn't do more TV.
Guest:Because at the end of the day, TV is what's more important.
Marc:That's something... In terms of making a living.
Guest:In terms of a lot of everything.
Guest:In terms of TV reaches so many people.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You can be a TV star, but have a bomb film.
Guest:You go back to do TV, nobody cares.
Guest:You know, you're in the movies, you have a bomb film, then you got to start, what am I going to do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you felt that happen to you?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Marc:But you were in big movies.
Guest:That comes later.
Guest:That comes a little later.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was very fortunate because there was a period between, let's say, 1981 to about 85.
Guest:I don't really work much in films.
Guest:I did a couple of guest stops on TV.
Guest:I don't work much.
Guest:I get a break.
Marc:Was it a nervous time?
Guest:I was on the road writing, and I was doing stand-up all the time.
Guest:I was doing clubs, and I was writing.
Guest:So you're making a living.
Guest:I would carry around this huge K-Pro computer with me, which could never get on an airline anymore nowadays.
Guest:And I'd always be writing and stuff.
Guest:What were you writing?
Guest:Screenplays.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Screenplays, you know, stuff like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And TV shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then...
Marc:Any of those get sold or made or bought?
Guest:A couple of them got optioned.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did an episode of a show called Sledgehammer.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And I had a couple of writing, because I did Police Squad, which sold an idea to Warner Brothers.
Guest:And then Paramount had me in their wing, which was a great writer's wing.
Guest:They had this whole thing they were doing just for a very short period of time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great people involved in it, though, all of whom went on to big things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I get Barry Levinson had always been a supporter.
Guest:He always liked my work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did he see you at the comedy store?
Guest:Yeah, he'd see me on TV, see me at the comedy store.
Guest:He had me audition for Diner.
Guest:He had me audition for a lot of stuff.
Guest:And he cast me in Good Morning Vietnam.
Guest:And that was the beginning.
Guest:Because from that, now, of course, I knew Robin forever.
Guest:And so it was very comfortable.
Guest:Did you work at the comedy store?
Guest:Sure, all the time.
Marc:So you were there in the late 70s.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Well, very late 70s.
Guest:I come in 79.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like early 80s.
Marc:So that's when, you know, like Jim Carrey's there and Robin Williams there.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And Roseanne Barr is coming around.
Guest:I saw Jim Carrey, believe it or not, in Toronto.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was doing, I think, Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle in Detroit.
Guest:And I went to Toronto for something and I saw on a builder, you know, some master of impression, Jim Carrey.
Marc:Did you know then that he was some sort of inspired madman of comedy?
Guest:I'll tell you what's interesting, though.
Guest:I went to school at the University of Houston.
Guest:So I went back down there for something, and a bunch of my friends had started a comedy club down there.
Guest:And, of course, I had been in the movie.
Guest:Which club?
Guest:It was called the Houston Comedy Connection or maybe something like that, whatever it's called.
Marc:Not the Laugh Stop.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:That was where I was working probably.
Yeah.
Guest:But they had the comedy connection.
Guest:And my friends were, you know, a guy named Steve Epstein, and he had his friends like Jimmy Pineapple.
Marc:Jimmy Pineapple and Riley Barber.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Well, Epi and I were college classmates.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:And he was part of the original Outlaws.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:So I go down there in 1981, and I see two guys down there, one of whom I had no idea how young he was, was Hicks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Hicks, I said, boy, this guy.
Marc:16, 17.
Guest:Oh, yeah, Max.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the other guy is Kinnison.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and the two of them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's why I first meet them down there, you know, before they move out here, before anybody.
Guest:And I go, boy, they're saying something down here.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:They're kind of cool, those two guys.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:I mean, was that called the Comedy Workshop?
Marc:Comedy Workshop.
Guest:That's what it was.
Marc:So that was your friend's place?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because that was a pretty famous place.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, for all those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Carl LeBeau, too.
Guest:Yes, yes, they were all there.
Guest:So then I come back and I get from, I'm doing stand-up.
Guest:I'm always doing stand-up, working gigs.
Guest:And then I would do, I got Good Morning Vietnam.
Guest:Then I audition and get, right after I get Bull Durham.
Marc:Bull Durham.
Marc:So let's talk about the Good Morning Vietnam thing because so Levinson, who I think started as a comic somehow.
Guest:Yeah, he was a comedy team with Rudy DeLuca.
Marc:And did you remember seeing them?
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:That was before, that was early comedy store stuff.
Guest:Yeah, that was before me.
Marc:So, okay, so Levinson sees you, and he casts you in this thing, and you had a relationship with Robin before that?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So you guys could riff together?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And you had a dynamic?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That was a huge movie, Robert.
Marc:I mean, you don't get much bigger in movies than that.
Guest:Well, at that time, Robin had come off a couple of bombs.
Guest:A couple of failures.
Guest:What was it?
Marc:What, Moscow and the Hudson or something?
Guest:No, I think that's before or afterwards.
Guest:I think that might be a... I mean, Popeye was beforehand.
Guest:Oh, right, right.
Guest:The Altman movie.
Marc:Right, so you get this gig.
Guest:Right, I get this gig, and it was just fun.
Guest:I mean, we were all together like a boy's dorm in this hotel, and I got to meet the group.
Guest:Bruno Kirby.
Guest:Bruno was the best.
Guest:He was one of the great... I miss Bruno a lot.
Guest:He gives my birthday party.
Guest:We just had one, and I miss him.
Guest:Bruno was one of the great human beings of all.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Great human beings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, so we do that, and we're like six, eight weeks there, and it was great.
Guest:And that comes out, and so it gives you a little leg up.
Guest:And then I get to meet on Bull Durham.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what Ron Shelton said was the worst.
Guest:In fact, I called Bruno before the audition.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the guy only had three lines in the script.
Yeah.
Guest:And I said, I'm just a pitching coach.
Guest:And he gave me the key to it.
Guest:He says, it seems to me, Bruno said, if the manager goes up, he goes up with his pitching coach.
Guest:He usually takes the pitching coach with him.
Guest:So I said, I got it.
Guest:I'm a yes man.
Guest:That's all I had to know.
Guest:So I played it like that.
Guest:And I started improvising during the audition.
Guest:And Ron Shelton said, worst audition I have ever seen in my life.
Guest:I said, that was the worst audition I've ever seen.
Guest:The casting director apologized for bringing me in.
Guest:He goes, that's fine.
Guest:Kyra immediately.
Guest:He says, because what he can bring, I can't get.
Guest:He goes, he's going to bring us.
Guest:And then that began the relationship with me and Ron Shelton, which led to a couple of other projects.
Guest:And then right after, and then before the movie opened up,
Guest:We were watching Bull Durham in the screening and Tim Burton came to see it.
Guest:And the great casting director, Marion Dougherty, who was the greatest casting director of all time, she started it, was always a fan of mine.
Guest:She actually had me audition for George Roy Hill for GARP.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:But they were going to go with a movie star.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Interesting movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so she had me, she was always having me in, but she said, I want you to meet Tim Burton.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's when Batman comes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And your role, were you a reporter?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you were always there.
Marc:It was a very present role.
Marc:It was a great gig.
Marc:And Keaton's great.
Marc:The whole movie was a great experience.
Guest:And Jack.
Marc:And Jack.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:I had Keaton in here.
Guest:He's a sweet guy.
Guest:Keaton's a very interesting guy.
Guest:Yeah, very interesting guy.
Guest:He's got a very dark side, you know.
Guest:And he's really, I mean, he could have- He's hard on himself.
Guest:He's very tough.
Guest:Well, he made decisions that he was very true to himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm sure, you know, he's a Pittsburgh kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And- Do you remember seeing him as a stand-up?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah, he's good.
Guest:We knew each other a little bit as a stand-up.
Guest:Not much, but I saw him a couple of times.
Guest:In fact, when Tim said, when we went out to dinner one time in London during Batman, he said, who's going to play the reporter?
Guest:And he said, I got this guy Robert Wall.
Guest:And he'd only seen me a couple of times and he went, perfect.
Guest:But I remember Michael's whole stand-up stuff.
Guest:And I remember, in fact, we talked about how
Guest:John Lovitz did a character called... Remember, he was like, yeah, yeah, that's a ticket.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Michael did something very similar to that earlier.
Guest:And I asked him if he ever thought about that.
Guest:He goes, yeah, I don't know if it's... He goes, yeah, sure I did.
Guest:You know, it's like... Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because he was always doing... Because they were both imitating... Michael was great at imitating, like, Cagney.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That was his influence, Cagney and those guys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, but Michael was wonderful.
Guest:Michael was wonderful.
Guest:I remember the shit that flew when they announced Michael Keaton as Batman.
Guest:People forget that the shit that flew.
Guest:I mean, the Batman enthusiast said Michael Keaton.
Guest:He'd just been in Beetlejuice and he'd been in Mr. Mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he'd been in Night Shift.
Guest:He was a great Batman.
Guest:He was in Night Shift.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, he was comic.
Guest:And they didn't see Batman that way.
Guest:They saw him like a Christian Bale type.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like darker before.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:No, arguably, he's one of the best Batman.
Guest:Yeah, well, what happened was they didn't know Michael, number one.
Guest:Number two is I went and saw Clean and Sober, that movie.
Guest:Oh, geez, that was rough.
Guest:How good is he?
Guest:Great.
Guest:How good is he?
Marc:That opening scene where he wakes up with a dead girl, that was genius.
Guest:That movie was so good.
Guest:He's going to be great.
Guest:So, okay.
Guest:So, when you do something like... And then after Batman, then Batman was so big.
Guest:So, that's when it really... That's when things became... That's when you became... You became a guy.
Guest:You're a made guy.
Guest:You're making a living now.
Guest:You're doing okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, did you talk to Jack Nicholson?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:All the time.
Guest:Jack was the greatest.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I used to drive in and out of the set because the set was about an hour away.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And hanging out with Jack a few times I did was the greatest thing of all time.
Marc:Just as almost like a fan as a kid, you know?
Guest:Well, first of all, he's incredibly smart.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And a great storyteller.
Guest:He was one of the great raconteurs of all time.
Guest:He would say, you know, a girl comes up to me at the dance and the other day she says, you want to dance?
Guest:I said, wrong verb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He would tell me stories about, you know, he goes, so one day, this is years ago, and I'm cooking up Princess Margaret.
Guest:Oh, my God, yeah.
Guest:But he would tell stories about, I met John Wayne one time.
Guest:It was right after Easy Rider or Five Easy Pieces.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're in an elevator.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And doors open, the duke comes on with his guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I see him, the guy's whispering into the duke's ear.
Guest:And he says, as he gets out, he goes, I hear you're an actor.
Guest:I go, yes, sir.
Guest:He goes, talk low, talk slow.
Guest:And he walks out.
Guest:He goes, that's what the guy says to me.
Guest:He goes, that's what the guy says.
Guest:But I'll tell you, nobody talks slower than I do.
Guest:I mean, he was the best.
Guest:I mean, there was nobody like Jack.
Guest:You're so smart.
Guest:Anytime I had a question about doing something, I'd go to Jack for advice, always, always.
Marc:Did you, like these relationships that you built at this time, I mean, have you talked to him lately?
Marc:I haven't talked to him, but when we run into each other, you know, yeah.
Marc:You spawn thing.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:and like with uh with larry and those guys did you in the comic friendships did those still hold up i always when i see larry yes i mean i'm not interesting i was never by the way i wasn't in the group that tight although i started with those guys i wasn't really the one hanging out in the diners with all those guys together because i was going out to another gig or doing something right um so you were kind of you're out busting your balls and they were staying in the city you know a little bit more like that yeah
Marc:Okay, so I would assume that after Good Morning Vietnam, then the heat's on you, right?
Marc:I mean, you're like this guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, it was good because I went from that to Bull Durham to Batman.
Guest:So that threesome really helped a lot.
Guest:And then what happens after that?
Guest:Well, what happens after that is I do a movie called Missing Pieces that went nowhere.
Guest:Not a lot of fun.
Guest:I did it with Eric Idle.
Guest:That was a good gig.
Guest:Terrible movie.
Guest:And then I wanted to do my own movie.
Guest:I wanted to write and direct.
Guest:And so I put a lot, for about two years, I put a lot of effort into that and money into that.
Guest:And I did that.
Guest:What movie was that?
Guest:It was called Open Season, which was a little, it was a satire on the ratings industry.
Guest:And a great experience for me, but the movie went nowhere.
Guest:Got nice reviews.
Guest:If you look up, if you look up like Jeffrey Lyons, not Jeffrey Lyons, uh,
Guest:Who's the guy who's got the TV book with all the movies?
Guest:Malton.
Guest:Leonard Malton.
Guest:He gives me this glowing three-star review.
Guest:And then right after that... Was that heartbreaking for you, though, or you're in a mindset?
Guest:It was, right?
Guest:Yeah, you don't want to say anything.
Guest:After two years... It disappears on a weekend.
Marc:It amazes me the commitment people have to make.
Marc:This movie took six years to make.
Marc:I'm like, how the fuck do you commit to it?
Guest:It took about 10 years to write.
Guest:And then it disappears in a weekend.
Guest:How do you commit to that?
Guest:It's tough.
Guest:Well, you don't plan on it.
Guest:It just happens.
Guest:And then at the same time, as I'm doing that, right after I finish that, I do Cobb.
Guest:with Tommy Lee Jones because Ron Shelton and I talked about doing that.
Guest:So you're a baseball guy.
Guest:Yeah, we're both baseball guys.
Guest:But that was just a great story.
Guest:So right after that, so I knew that Cobb was going to open, but... Did all right, right?
Guest:No, terribly financially.
Guest:But right after that, I had written a pilot.
Guest:Before that, I'd written the pilot for Arliss.
Guest:And that changed a lot of things because that's a TV series, and it was on HBO, and it was Albrecht.
Guest:Chris, your old buddy from the improv.
Guest:Well, what had happened was that Chris Albrecht had risen from being a comic.
Guest:Remember, Chris starts as a comic.
Guest:He was part of a comedy team, Albrecht and Zamuda, comedy from A to Z. Bob Zamuda.
Guest:Yeah, A to Z, comedy.
Guest:So that team, when Bud moves out to the West Coast...
Guest:He says, Chris, forget it being a comic.
Guest:You should be a manager.
Guest:So he sells Chris a piece of the club, and Chris manages the club.
Guest:He puts me on stage.
Guest:So I always delivered for him.
Guest:So Chris then becomes an agent, and then he gets over at HBO.
Guest:And I write the pilot for Arliss.
Guest:We rewrote it.
Guest:And Michael Fuchs at the time would not give me a green light.
Marc:He was the head of HBO.
Guest:He was the head of HBO.
Guest:Would not give me the green light for the show.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because he had done...
Guest:first and ten that was the first series at HBO which was with OJ Simpson of all people yeah and Delta Burke it was like a TNA thing and they were sort of embarrassed by it and he thought here comes another sports thing I guess it's not gonna be that and so he gets fired and Chris says I don't know anything about sports but I trust Robert and I think this is funny so he gave me the go-ahead and then we were on there for seven seasons of course we were always a stepchild there but you know we developed a huge
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because Carolyn came in?
Guest:No, Carolyn was always there.
Guest:The reason we were a stepchild is that A, was sports.
Guest:I learned that, that the people have a great antipathy.
Guest:There are certain part of the population, especially the critical population in sports, who have a great antipathy towards sports.
Guest:Sports, it wasn't as big then as it is now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's number one.
Guest:Number two is...
Guest:We just became it because then they had step upstairs sex in the city came on and then they had sex in the city and they had the Sopranos yeah, and they had Six feet under it's sort of a heyday for this was the heyday Yeah, and we were the first one out of the box But we were always and they kept moving us we were never in one position the same then finally put us after sex in the city and whereas we
Guest:People say well that doesn't make sense putting these two and I go just leave it there and what happened was that whereas in the beginning we would get like 27 percent women and 63 percent male by the end of the run seven years later we're 53 percent women because
Guest:I knew I had Sex and the City ahead of me getting these huge numbers.
Guest:I didn't want to lose any more of the audience than I had.
Guest:It was basically a female audience.
Guest:So I pushed the part of Sandra Oh as Rita, the secretary.
Guest:And I pushed her character.
Guest:And I knew she was my conduit to that.
Guest:So I gave her a larger role.
Guest:And that worked.
Guest:And then people got into the show, like the Fran Lebowitz story.
Guest:And that was just great.
Guest:That's very clever political thinking on your part.
Guest:That's real show business thinking.
Guest:That's just smart thinking.
Guest:I mean, if I got an audience here, if I lose that audience, they're going to move me again.
Marc:But it's interesting when the creative force makes those decisions and not some executive who's just winging it.
Marc:Like if somebody came to you and said- It made the show better.
Marc:Oh, well, that's great, but it also came from you.
Marc:But I wonder if somebody said, we need more of the girl, in that moment, would you be like, that's not what the show's about.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But it wasn't about that.
Guest:She was a character in the world of sports as far as I was going.
Guest:Because what's interesting is one of the big agents, sports agents in town here who helped me, his assistant actually went to high school with me.
Guest:Now, I didn't base anything on the character on that.
Guest:But I just said, what's her life like?
Guest:It's like Peggy in Mad Men.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you know, it's... Yeah, I get it.
Marc:But when you found yourself in this situation where, you know, you're doing these big movies and you had a few, you know, other people's movies that didn't go well and you had this horrendous disappointment with your own movie, that, you know, in those times, you know, what propelled you not to crumble?
Marc:I mean, you know, I have to... Well, I was working.
Guest:I remember that was the hardest thing I ever did was we're doing Arliss because we, first of all, unlike, again, the...
Marc:But before Arliss, I mean, you had this movie two years into it, and then it craps out.
Marc:How were you not like, oh, this is it?
Guest:We were already about to shoot the pilot, so I didn't have time to, and I knew that.
Guest:Oh, well, yeah, that was fortunate.
Marc:That was fortunate.
Marc:So you didn't have a dark period of like, what the fuck am I doing?
Marc:Right, right, right.
Guest:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:It crapped out on me.
Guest:Right, right, right, right.
Guest:We just got to keep going.
Guest:I mean, that's one thing about being sports, and when you're in sports, especially baseball.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Baseball is a very long season.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I use analogies like this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Baseball, unlike football, which we got, it's like baseball is 162 games.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got another game tomorrow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You just got another game tomorrow.
Guest:It's like I would go on the road.
Guest:I remember I forgot the name of the female comic I was with, and we were on the road together.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And she was bummed out after a set she had done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, what are you all bummed out about?
Guest:You got another show tomorrow.
Guest:And she goes, I go, you just got to let it go and work for the next show.
Guest:And she said, I can't believe it.
Guest:I hope I never have that attitude to take.
Guest:I said, it's the only attitude to take.
Yeah.
Guest:I said, otherwise you're going to drive yourself crazy.
Guest:Now, I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't make the corrections, make the adjustments, but don't beat yourself up.
Guest:You got another show tomorrow.
Guest:You know, it's like you get the rest of the week to worry about it.
Marc:I'm not sure.
Marc:I don't think that way.
Marc:And I think it's very good advice what you're giving.
Marc:But I think that there's something about the comedic sensibility or fundamental insecurity that, you know, some of us get a lot out of beating the shit out of ourselves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, we all do.
Guest:I mean, that goes with the nature, but it is a profession.
Guest:See, again, it goes back to my father running a business.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:See, it's the other thing, too, is if I come from, like, I always make jokes that my father was Republican, my mom was a Democrat.
Guest:You know, it's like, so I see both sides.
Guest:I know both sides politically are full of shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I understand running a business and, you know, it's show business, the artistic side versus the business side.
Guest:So, yeah, that's the balance.
Guest:And, of course, the baseball thing is great because you have to do another show tomorrow.
Guest:No matter how good the show is today, you got to do another one tomorrow.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, so and and the people won't care, but it's it's exactly that struggle that you know You and I have both seen people that crumble and it's exactly do it.
Marc:Yeah You you can't help but carry your influence is sure I look at early parts of myself and I'm like, you know I thought I was Hicks and you know, or I you know I was influenced by that talked about me in the beginning mile a minute It was Rodney.
Guest:It was Woody.
Guest:It was Alan King again It was you know, I can see all of them.
Guest:Yeah until you develop your own style
Marc:Yeah, I couldn't see those in you, really.
Marc:I mean, now.
Marc:Right, not now.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Not now, but you could early, for sure.
Guest:Okay, so you had the arc with Arliss.
Guest:Right, and then Arliss happens.
Guest:And Arliss is incredibly hard work.
Guest:But Arliss is the best gig of all time because I'm making a movie a week.
Guest:I'm making little movies.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:So that winds down.
Marc:And then what are you confronted with?
Marc:Then you're confronted, what are you doing next?
Guest:What am I going to do next?
Guest:You've got a game tomorrow.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I've got a game.
Guest:I've got to figure out what the game is.
Guest:I guess that's the hardest part about your analogy, isn't it?
Guest:Where is the game?
Guest:So I did some stand-up, and I didn't want to do that.
Guest:I'll tell you, I stopped doing stand-up for the most part.
Guest:I just hate drunks.
Guest:I gotta tell you.
Guest:I don't like dealing with drunks.
Guest:I don't like being around drunks for the most part.
Guest:I don't drink, so I just don't like drunks for the most part.
Guest:So I was with Albrecht, and I said, Chris, I got an idea
Guest:about doing something with history mm-hmm I said I could do something with history where I could make and then bring it to today yeah and so he says okay because the one thing I know about this is you cannot develop the show he's got to shoot it yeah it's like develop your stand-up yeah
Guest:So I came up with this idea and I started workshopping in these monologues all around Los Angeles.
Guest:I told the kids at the colleges, if you stay and listen to me for an hour afterwards, I'll give you free pizza.
Guest:So we would come in with the pizza.
Guest:You'd go to classes?
Guest:I would go to college classes all the time.
Guest:And basically I'm building, that was my comedy clubs.
Guest:I was building the monologue.
Guest:And then I shot this thing called Assume the Position with Mr. Wall.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I saw that.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:But tell me about this workshopping process.
Guest:We would put together material and graphics and stuff like that.
Guest:Who'd you call?
Guest:Who'd you call to say, can I take over?
Guest:Well, I hired a kid to produce it.
Guest:I had my partners.
Guest:It was a couple people wrote on it.
Guest:Alan Steven was one guy who wrote on it.
Marc:Alan Steven?
Marc:I remember him from the comedy store.
Guest:Yeah, Alan worked on those, the first one.
Guest:Rebecca Reynolds, who I knew from Orlis and I knew from The Improv.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:And then I hired a kid who was suggested to me by HBO, a 23-year-old kid to produce, named Will Reiser, who, in the middle of this, a great kid, and in the middle of the first show, gets sick, and he develops cancer.
Guest:And I couldn't believe it.
Guest:And he says, oh, yeah, because I got something on my back or something.
Guest:It's really weird.
Guest:And I go, do you know what it is?
Guest:I think they're going to biopsy it.
Guest:And he says, so his girlfriend...
Guest:He's got to go to Cedars-Sinai and be there at 6 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:His girlfriend lives across the street who's an actress.
Guest:And he says, listen, I got to be here at 6 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:I'm going to crash at your house tonight.
Guest:She says, you know, I got to audition in the morning.
Guest:Might not be a good idea.
Guest:Here's a guy going in for cancer surgery.
Guest:Good girlfriend.
Guest:And the actress says, I got an audition tomorrow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:More story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's fine.
Guest:He has to do everything else.
Guest:I said, you know, Will, you ought to write about this a little bit, right?
Guest:He writes a screenplay called I'm With Cancer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But his best friend is Seth Rogen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They get the idea.
Guest:They do it, and it becomes 50-50.
Guest:It's a good movie.
Guest:It's a very good movie.
Guest:Yeah, I liked it.
Guest:That's a story of Will.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, of course, he made the girlfriend a little bit different.
Guest:By the way, the girlfriend now is on the new... He says, you know that girlfriend?
Guest:He goes, she's doing well.
Guest:She's on the new Chris Guest Show.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, we do that and what happens is we were going to shoot a 10-minute presentation pilot or a 15-minute presentation pilot for HBO.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:But how'd you organize the colleges?
Guest:I mean, you just talk to a teacher or- No, Will would go ahead and they'd find out we'd go to a community college, we'd go to USC, we'd go to UCLA.
Guest:And I'd basically be sitting in a room just talking and seeing what are they responding to?
Guest:What do they know?
Guest:What don't they know?
Guest:Because I can't do something, I can't tell a story about history and saying, but what you don't know is if you don't know the story to begin with.
Guest:You can't say, well, here's a story, but what you don't know.
Guest:That doesn't work.
Guest:That doesn't work.
Guest:So what was the angle of the... The angle was that history was pop culture.
Guest:And I could show how pop culture is history.
Guest:It affects history through the... And I told the story about Christopher Columbus and the world is round.
Guest:I told the Paul Revere story about how Paul Revere gets credit for something he didn't do.
Guest:And just stuff like that and having fun and having a point.
Guest:Because otherwise I'm just debunking myths, which wasn't my point.
Guest:Right.
Marc:The point was in a broad sense to get people engaged with history.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so what we did is we wound up, I worked with, I went to Sheila Nevins, who was a documentary person at HBO, who I've known forever.
Guest:She put me in touch with the Penny Bakers.
Guest:the great D.A.
Marc:Pennebaker.
Marc:The documentary guys.
Guest:And so we went to NYU, and we just, I said, you know, if we're going to do a 10-minute pilot, if I'm going to shoot 10 minutes, I might as well shoot 30.
Guest:I'm going to shoot 40.
Guest:So we shot it.
Guest:So we shot like 45 minutes, 40 minutes.
Guest:In a real, it was NYU, you know, we did two or three shows.
Guest:We cut them together.
Guest:As long as I wore the same outfit, I knew continuity would never be a problem.
Guest:And so we cut together, and everybody said, this is really good.
Guest:This is really good.
Guest:And Chris says, Chris sees and goes, it's really good.
Guest:I don't know what to do with it.
Guest:I go, Chris, put it on the air.
Guest:We never cleared anything.
Guest:So I had to get clearances.
Guest:I go, put it on the air.
Guest:It's a special.
Guest:Just put it on the air.
Guest:They put it on, and it's the best reviewed thing I've ever done in my life.
Guest:I mean, to this day, people stop me left and right about.
Guest:So he goes, do another one.
Guest:I want to see.
Guest:He goes, can you do a series of this?
Guest:I go, Chris, there's a lot of history.
Guest:So he said, can you do another one?
Guest:So I do the second one.
Guest:Just before it airs, Chris gets fired.
Guest:Has the incident in Las Vegas and gets fired.
Guest:The new regime comes in, and it's, again, the best.
Guest:The research report, they test everything.
Guest:The research reports on these shows
Guest:is the best research report you've ever seen in your life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As I say, the top two boxes of 89% in every Democratic category.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the new regime comes in.
Guest:This isn't their business model.
Guest:They don't want to do it.
Guest:Is that when Carolyn stepped up?
Guest:How did that work?
Guest:Well, it wasn't Carolyn.
Guest:It's a temporary thing.
Guest:Yeah, but they hired the new regime.
Guest:It was Michael Lombardo and the whole people.
Guest:They're good, and they're still my friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had this deal with them, you know, so at the time, but they just never went ahead with Green Lid.
Guest:I'm still trying to get this thing because every day of my life somebody stops me about this show.
Guest:So I've been trying to do that for a while now to get that to another network.
Guest:And they each have, you'd think the History Channel, but they don't really do that.
Guest:They do Duck Dynasty.
Guest:You know, they do, that's not really, History Channel has very little to do in history.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so then I turned it into a one-man show.
Guest:We went down to La Jolla and did it with the artistic department there.
Guest:So we've been doing that.
Guest:I still tour with that.
Guest:And now I just wrote a play that just had its premiere in New York.
Guest:What play?
Guest:A romantic comedy.
Guest:A screwball romantic comedy called Hit Lit.
Guest:H-I-T-L-I-T, which is a mistaken identity comedy.
Guest:It's a satire on publishing.
Guest:And I got, again, great reviews.
Guest:So it looks like we're going to be moving it within the next year or so to Broadway in some way, shape, or form.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So I got to direct that.
Guest:So that was great.
Guest:And so that's pretty much it up to now, I guess.
Marc:So that's it.
Marc:But it's very exciting that you're a guy, like I don't talk to a lot of guys like this, that you had a tremendous amount of success, and then you just kept plugging along, and then you had another different thing happen for yourself, and then you tried something that you've tried things that didn't work out, and you just keep pushing, and you're excited.
Marc:You have a very good disposition about this shit.
Guest:You have to.
Guest:I mean, believe me.
Guest:My wife would tell you other stuff, me bitching and moaning and stuff like that.
Guest:But what's the option?
Guest:I mean, what's the alternative?
Guest:At this point, there's no plan B, right?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Did you ever think about really teaching?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, yes.
Guest:I'm doing a serious radio show.
Guest:I did a radio show for two years, too.
Guest:I did a Westwood One sports talk show, which was not a very good experience in the sense that it was just, you know, I like sports.
Guest:I don't want to talk about it.
Marc:That'll ruin anything for you.
Guest:If it was movies, I could deal with that.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:If I could do an eclectic show like a Charlie Rose thing, I'd love that.
Guest:Right, but keeping up with stats every day.
Guest:And of course, it's all about fantasy football.
Guest:And I'm not into fantasy football.
Guest:Fantasy baseball, yes.
Guest:But not fantasy football.
Guest:The...
Guest:I do the show on Wednesday nights on Sirius, which is fun.
Guest:I do it with a partner.
Guest:But that's a goof.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's no money in that.
Guest:So you go for the next gig.
Guest:And I put myself into a head now where I said, well, OK, I'm 61.
Guest:And the demographics of this business are real.
Guest:And you just got to do, unlike others, I haven't pissed away the money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so you look for the next project.
Guest:You're practical.
Guest:Practical.
Guest:Yeah, but again, my father's business side of this thing.
Marc:But also, I think some people are just like that.
Marc:It's a comic sensibility, too.
Marc:If you don't have a huge ego, it's sort of like, I don't know when I'm going to get the next money.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:True.
Guest:Something like that, yeah.
Guest:My wife is great.
Guest:I mean, we've been married.
Guest:We celebrated last week.
Guest:It was our 30th wedding anniversary.
Guest:That's a miracle.
Guest:I've been with you an hour.
Guest:I don't know how she does it.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I totally get it.
Guest:And I have a dog.
Guest:We have no kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we have dogs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we travel everywhere.
Guest:I travel everywhere.
Guest:My dog's been to Paris six times.
Guest:I mean, we go everywhere.
Guest:I mean, I travel.
Guest:I love, you know, I have a place in New York.
Guest:Where's that movie?
Marc:A Dog's Day in Paris.
Guest:She knows French.
Guest:I mean, I've got three generations of dogs.
Guest:You're a cat person.
Marc:Yeah, I grew up with dogs.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:Unconditional love.
Guest:Also, I'm going to re... When I did the play the other day, a mystery author, big mystery author, grew up in New Jersey.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We were born in the same hospital, it turns out.
Guest:We don't know how we found it.
Guest:Which hospital?
Guest:Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey.
Marc:I was born in Jersey City.
Marc:Margaret Haig.
Guest:Okay, so he comes to the show, and I say to him, it looks like I'm going to be adapting one of his books now, because I like to do that.
Guest:I love adapting stuff.
Guest:I'm good at that.
Guest:I'm good at putting together puzzles, like Rodney said, and adapting stuff.
Guest:It's very cool.
Guest:I'm looking forward to that.
Marc:Rodney seems to be this current through your spirit, because you refer to what Rodney said, good at puzzles.
Marc:Do you miss guys like that?
Guest:Do you ever think about it?
Guest:Well, you miss... Remember, everything's so generational.
Guest:When you're younger, your influences are all over the place, are easy, you don't have the responsibilities.
Guest:I miss Rodney, sure.
Guest:I mean, I just miss Rodney for...
Marc:Did you keep up with him through the whole time?
Guest:Yeah, always, always.
Guest:In fact, I spoke to him, he said, somebody told me I was the last, when he, I visited him in the hospital, he was in a coma, and I left a note that I was there.
Guest:I spoke to him before he went in for the last operation on the phone, and he goes, and I said,
Guest:How long is he supposed to be in there?
Guest:He goes, well, it depends.
Guest:If everything goes well, about a half an hour.
Guest:And unfortunately, and he says, you like that one, huh?
Guest:He goes, yeah, maybe I'll use that one.
Guest:And my funny friend, David Permit, who was with him constantly, said, that was the last joke.
Guest:He said, that was the last joke before he went in.
Guest:Yeah, I missed, you know.
Guest:It's funny Rodney was on camera.
Guest:He was funnier off camera.
Guest:Because Rodney had opinions.
Guest:Rodney had, you know, Rodney had everything.
Guest:Rodney would...
Guest:And he would tell stories about, you know, Joe Ansis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because his relationship with Ansis was crazy.
Guest:You know, Joe Ansis was a clean freak.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was germphobia.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, total germphobia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Rodney would say the most outrageous stuff, but he had a thing for black girls.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Joe Ansis had a big thing for black girls.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And Dangerfield would say, how can you figure out... And of course, Rodney didn't have a filter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Rodney was old school, so he'd call anybody anything names.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he'd say, how do you figure out Joe answers?
Guest:He goes, you know, he washes his hands 15 times.
Guest:You have to go into the bathroom and then go south on Schwartz's.
Marc:Go south on Schwartz's.
Guest:It's a little wrong, but you know, it's generational.
Guest:Yeah, it's totally generational.
Guest:And he'd always call them whores.
Guest:They were never whores, they were whores.
Guest:Who was.
Guest:Who was.
Guest:He told me a story about when he would go to... One thing, he'd go up to the Catskills and he would go in with Lenny Bruce.
Guest:And he said his mother was crazy, you know, Sally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He'd say she'd rail out of the basement, you know, we'd be ready to get in the car.
Guest:And he goes, and she'd yell out, make sure my kid gets laid too!
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:By the way, I'm sure you're a film freak.
Guest:When was the last time, if you've ever, I'm sure you've seen the Stanley Kubrick film, The Killing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:The next time you watch it, which I sort of- It's one of my favorite movies.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Do you remember the scene where Stanley, Sterling Hayden, is staying in that fleabag motel?
Guest:And he's like, that's where he gets the gun.
Guest:He keeps the gun there and everything.
Guest:It's just in the middle of nowhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He gets out and you'll see across the street, there is a theater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's like a burlesque house.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And you can just see him.
Guest:As he gets out and he dumps his money into a bag and everything, he's putting it into a car.
Guest:In the background, you see a burlesque house and it says, also appearing Lenny Bruce.
Guest:You'll see it.
Guest:It would be like, you know, one of these things.
Guest:Yeah, far away, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but it's clear as a bell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's clear as a bell.
Guest:You can read it.
Guest:But it had to be somewhere like a Western or something like that.
Guest:Probably not even Western.
Guest:That's too nice.
Guest:But it was something like that.
Guest:And I said, oh, that's cool.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's very cool.
Guest:That's a great tidbit.
Guest:Yeah, watch it next time.
Guest:You'll see it.
Guest:It comes up twice in the movie.
Marc:That moment.
Marc:It's outside the motel.
Marc:I'm going to look for that.
Marc:But that moment when that money starts blowing away.
Marc:Oh, it's a great movie.
Marc:And when I don't remember what the woman says, but are we going to run for it or whatever?
Marc:He goes, what difference does it make?
Guest:Yeah, no, that's a great... The Killing, I showed it to a couple of my nephews who are really into film.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Because it makes appreciation because they see Pulp Fiction and you can tell where Pulp Fiction playing with time comes from is The Killing.
Marc:Yeah, it's an amazing movie.
Guest:It's a terrific movie.
Marc:And it's like it's not... You know, it was a studio thing that he did.
Marc:So it doesn't really always fall into the Kubrick...
Marc:No, no.
Guest:Well, which is interesting because I got into a discussion one time with, it was after, I was writing the Oscars.
Guest:I went through that period where I wrote with Billy Crystal a bunch.
Guest:We jumped over that.
Marc:How was that?
Marc:You guys still friends?
Guest:Yeah, friendly.
Guest:Yeah, friendly.
Guest:What happens, my career went to a little bit of a dive.
Guest:As they all do.
Guest:When was that?
Guest:Before Arliss?
Guest:It was... Before Arliss, yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But was it after Batman, before Batman?
Guest:I remember.
Guest:No, Batman's before.
Guest:So it was like the late 80s, okay?
Guest:Anyway, I was... Period.
Guest:Like mid to late 80s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What happened was, again, you never know what gig you're going to get.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my magic time were George Shapiro and Howard West.
Guest:And at the time...
Guest:Carl Reiner's wife, Estelle, had a cabaret act.
Guest:And Carl was looking for a opening act.
Guest:She was going to be at the, what was the name of that club on Santa Monica Boulevard, the upstairs place, I don't remember.
Guest:Gardenia room, I think it is.
Guest:So looking for an opening act to do 25, 30 minutes, 20 minutes or so.
Marc:Before Estelle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And George Shapiro's Carl's nephew.
Guest:Right.
Guest:George shows him my tape.
Guest:Carl says, he'll be fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I go and I say, okay, do I want to do this?
Guest:So and so, okay, I'll do it.
Guest:So I do it.
Guest:I do my act.
Guest:And the opening night, of course, I didn't put two and two together.
Guest:Opening night, I walk out there and there's Mel Brooks and there's Anne Bancroft and there's Chris Guest and Jamie Lee Curtis and Billy Crystal and Dick, you know, every one of them, Carl Reiner.
Guest:And it's like, they're all there.
Guest:And it goes really well.
Yeah.
Guest:A couple of weeks later, David Steinberg, who I knew forever, calls me and goes, hey, Billy's hosting the Grammys this year.
Guest:You want to write with him?
Guest:I said, sure.
Guest:So we started writing together.
Guest:It was just the two of us.
Guest:And we did three years of the Grammys, and then we get to call to do the Oscars.
Guest:And again, when we first did it, it was just me and Billy.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:And then we added Bruce Valanche and then Mark Shaman, who did the songs.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:And we were there for the Jack Palance thing and all that.
Guest:And that was great fun.
Guest:So, again, you never knew where a gig could take you.
Guest:I've always been a believer of that pretty much, though.
Guest:Work breeds work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You never know, because I would have never gambled on that to develop my relationship with Billy to do that, because I won two Emmy Awards.
Guest:It wasn't because of me, although I did my job.
Guest:I loved working with Billy one-on-one.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Because we only had two writers.
Guest:It was just the two of us.
Guest:Now you got 15 writers on there.
Marc:Yeah, so you just bounced shit off each other.
Guest:We would bounce shit off each other, and we realized...
Guest:Early on, because I have, as you can know, I'm a pretty opinionated guy, and I'd say, it's not about the host.
Guest:That's the problem with the show now.
Guest:This is the problem with the show.
Guest:The host makes it about themselves.
Guest:It's not about you.
Guest:When you do that, you're dead.
Guest:You do your thing and welcome everybody, do a couple of jokes up front, get the show going.
Guest:Don't do pieces in the middle of the show.
Guest:Then it becomes about you, and it's not you.
Guest:And you got to remember, in fairness to all the hosts, very difficult show to do.
Guest:Tough crowd.
Guest:It's an incredibly tough crowd.
Guest:Because you got to remember, most of these people have never been in front of a camera before.
Guest:Forget the actors.
Guest:That only makes up 10% of them.
Guest:Everybody else has the crew members and everything else.
Guest:They've spent a fortune.
Marc:And representations.
Guest:Well, mostly, but all the people who are nominated, remember, they're all... You got five in each category.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you got between their wives and everything, that's 10.
Guest:It costs a fortune to go to the Oscars.
Guest:They have to get their gowns and everything else.
Guest:And the other thing is also is...
Guest:With each category that goes by you got four losers were pissed off.
Guest:Yeah, I'm pretending not to be pissed Yeah, and then they want there's a bar so they start to get drenched So with each category that goes by you got 80% more who are losers, right?
Guest:You know they want to get out of it because you can't pee you sit there for hours People don't realize how pissed off people are there.
Guest:They want to get out of there Yeah, and so it lasts in three hours.
Guest:It could be 20 people
Guest:With every lose who wants to get out.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Unless they're up for multiple.
Guest:At least four, but a lot of times you can have like three or four people in a category, especially in the crafts category.
Guest:So you've got all that, and you've got their people up there.
Guest:They've bought tickets for you.
Guest:It's cost a lot of money.
Guest:So they just want to get to the party.
Guest:They want to get drunk.
Guest:They want to go pee and everything.
Guest:So it's a tough, tough crowd to do.
Guest:It's a tough show to do.
Guest:The Oscars themselves, and I'm a member of the Academy, it's very difficult because they won't... See, I always treat it as... The way to treat this show is you are coming to our party.
Guest:You've got to make a decision.
Guest:Are you making it a TV show or are you making it an awards presentation?
Guest:You have to make that distinction.
Guest:And it's very difficult because...
Guest:I always felt as a kid, I was sneaking up to watch... Well, now there's so many of them, it's different.
Guest:But it's a very tough show to do, and you can't get rid of any of the categories because the Academy won't let you.
Guest:I mean, nobody cares about best short subject by a left-handed Lithuanian.
Guest:And my big beef, when we talk about comedy, okay, here's where I'll go on a soapbox.
Guest:I have been going to the Academy for years saying, okay, you have a best documentary category.
Guest:You have a best animated film category.
Guest:You got best short subject.
Guest:Comedy is a different animal.
Guest:Why don't we have a best comedy?
Guest:Why don't we have the best comedy?
Guest:And the true reason that they don't... They'll say this, that, and the other about it.
Guest:The real reason is because the Golden Globes do it.
Guest:And God forbid you should take an idea from the Golden Globes if you're in the Academy.
Guest:And who the fuck gives a shit anymore?
Guest:Well, it's the other thing.
Guest:To me, it's like a good idea.
Guest:I don't care where a good idea comes from.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the Golden Globes do it.
Guest:And I've talked to Harvey Weinstein's behind this idea, Ron Howard.
Guest:My buddy Tom Sherrick, who was the former president just last year, he said he was a marketing guy.
Guest:He goes, from a marketing standpoint, I love it.
Guest:Are you kidding?
Guest:If I can put nominated for best comedy on a poster, that's more business.
Marc:But it might be an issue that who the hell knows how many comedies are going to be done in any given year.
Marc:There's five.
Guest:There's at least five.
Guest:You think?
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:Here's the thing about comedy.
Guest:Here's where I get pissed off at critics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody agrees who has this half a brain that comedy is more difficult to do than anything else.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You've got to agree to that.
Guest:I mean, if you don't have half a brain.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yet, when you see Critics 10 Best List at the end of the year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How many comedies are on that list?
Guest:One?
Guest:Maybe two.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Yet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then they'll come out with their snarky worst 10 list.
Guest:There's seven comedies on it.
Guest:Oh, there's a Rob Schneider movie and there's an Adam Sandler movie and there's this movie.
Guest:And it's like, wait a minute.
Guest:They're doing something different.
Guest:How about the pretentious independent film I just saw?
Guest:Do you know it goes into deep meaning and it's such full of shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, they're trying to really make you think.
Guest:It's like, these are little comedies for nothing.
Guest:They're not trying to do anything.
Guest:So everybody knows comedy, but they agree they can't know how to do it.
Guest:But everybody can put 10 terrible comedies on their list.
Guest:So I have this whole thing about comedies and also with critics in general, about movie critics, because I'm a member of the Academy, so I go to all this stuff.
Guest:And I would say to critics, I go, let me explain something.
Guest:Guys, how many of you actually go to the movies?
Guest:Because when you go to a screening,
Guest:You sit down in your real plush chair, and basically it's roll film.
Guest:Okay, that's not the way people go to the movies.
Guest:You got to go to the movies.
Guest:So that two hour and 15 minute movie you just saw, that really should be an hour and 45, they'll say, it should be a little long.
Guest:I go, a little long?
Guest:They're all too long.
Guest:I go, when you go to the movies, you got to get there 10 minutes early to get a seat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got to get parking.
Guest:Then you got to watch five or 10 minutes of commercials before the 15 minutes of trailers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now you're in that theater at least a half an hour to 40 minutes before the movie starts.
Guest:So that two hour and 15 minute movie is now a three hour movie.
Guest:I go, these movies are all too long.
Guest:And it's all because of these egos of the directors and their final cuts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, every, I mean...
Guest:All of them.
Guest:All of them are too long.
Guest:By the way, the last few that won Best Picture were not that long.
Guest:Argo's not very long.
Guest:The Artist was not very long.
Guest:I forgot the one before.
Guest:That was not very long.
Guest:But all these directors, they want their final copy.
Marc:Did you like Silver Linings Playbook?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Love it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Comedy.
Marc:Yeah, comedy.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Comedy.
Marc:Well, that's a good fight to fight, Robert.
Guest:Yeah, I'm constantly getting shouted down.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Because then there's some direct... Well, how do you know if it's a comedy or a drama?
Guest:I go, if it's got a couple of... I mean, most of them... I understand what you're saying, if it's a dramedy.
Guest:But I said, okay, so that's better because they're not going to win.
Guest:Comedies don't win.
Guest:In my lifetime, how many comedies have won?
Guest:Annie Hall, Shakespeare in Love...
Guest:I think that's it.
Guest:I think that's it.
Guest:So you're saying that there is a prejudice.
Guest:It's not by nature.
Guest:There is a prejudice by nature.
Guest:Because, you know, like Woody Allen used to say, when you do drama, you sit at the big boys' table.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's not intent.
Guest:It's just that we take things that are just serious more seriously than comedy, which I'll fight that battle all the time.
Marc:All the time.
Marc:I appreciate you being out there on that battlefield.
Guest:Oh, that'll be my battle to the day I die.
Marc:Well, thanks, Robert.
Guest:You're welcome.
Marc:We'll be right back.
Marc:You can get the first 100 episodes of WTF on DVD.
Marc:You can go to WTFpod.com for that stuff.
Marc:You can take a look at some of the new merch.
Marc:We're making new ceramic mugs.
Marc:We're making new MTV Riff t-shirts.
Marc:Leave a comment.
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Marc:More new cool things coming in a few months to WTFPod.com.
Marc:And we celebrate today the return of Death Black Cat.
Marc:And as always, Boomer Lives!