Episode 461 - Ed Begley, Jr.
Guest:All right, let's do this.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:What the fuckers?
Guest:What the fuck buddies?
Guest:What the fucking ears?
Guest:What the fuck next?
Guest:What the fucking Alex?
Guest:What the fucking X?
Guest:What the fucking avians?
Marc:Hi, I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:I appreciate it.
Marc:Appreciate you being here.
Marc:I really do.
Marc:I was going to read an email, I think.
Marc:Where the hell did that thing go?
Marc:Oh, yeah, I just got this one.
Marc:Ed Begley's on the show today.
Marc:Ed Begley Jr.
Marc:You know the guy.
Marc:He's that guy.
Marc:That guy.
Marc:You know him.
Marc:You know him.
Marc:He's that guy.
Marc:He's been that guy for a long time, man.
Marc:He's been in like every movie.
Marc:Well, he's been in a lot of movies.
Marc:You know him.
Marc:Ed Begley Jr.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Look.
Marc:We had an amazing conversation about Hollywood.
Marc:I'm a little fascinated.
Marc:I'm fascinated with something.
Marc:I'll get back to it, I promise you.
Marc:All right?
Marc:I wanted to read this email.
Marc:This is in reference to me realizing, and not in a bitter way or cynical way or a megalomaniacal or grandiose way, that more people don't know me than people that do know me, and that's fine.
Marc:I'm just happy that the people that do know me and like me are there.
Marc:I was never looking for global domination.
Marc:I'm not an entertainment fascist.
Marc:Don't know what I would do with that type of attention.
Marc:Probably crumble.
Marc:But I appreciate everybody who digs what I do.
Marc:Can only do it the way I do it.
Marc:And those who it resonates with, I am grateful for them.
Marc:But who's this Marin guy?
Marc:Subject line.
Marc:That's in quotation.
Marc:So I must have said that.
Marc:I don't know everything I said.
Marc:Dear Mark, I was listening to one of your shows today.
Marc:Will Forte or Andy Samberg.
Marc:I can't remember as I listened to them both back to back.
Marc:And I was pained to hear you say that even with your recent successes, nobody knows who you are.
Marc:Well, I just want to say, screw you.
Marc:What are we chopped liver?
Marc:You have a legion of malcontented, unfulfilled antisocial assholes that depend on you two or three times a week to reassure us not that we are normal.
Marc:Oh, no, but rather that we are not so abnormal as to be completely alone in our self-imposed prisons of guilt and shame.
Marc:We may not be the most glorious bunch, but we appreciate you sincerely.
Marc:Mark in Portland, Oregon.
Marc:Thank you, Mark.
Marc:I do not want to to make anyone feel that I'm not grateful for the people that enjoy what I do.
Marc:And I certainly wasn't complaining.
Marc:I'm happier out there.
Marc:I would hope that some people are not as malcontent or filled with guilt and shame as I am or once was.
Marc:Can I put it in the past?
Marc:When can I put it in the past?
Marc:When it goes away, Mark, when you're not sitting there asking yourself, is it in the past?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Oh, my physical results.
Marc:I don't know how much I told you about my physical.
Marc:Had my yearly finger banging and ball coughing from my doctor.
Marc:Lovely woman.
Marc:But you get those tests.
Marc:You don't know.
Marc:You don't know.
Marc:You don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:I don't eat shitty.
Marc:I haven't stuck my dick into anything too weird lately.
Marc:But you still, there's that outside chance.
Marc:It's like, I don't know, does something crawl up in there?
Marc:Well, did you use a condom, Mark?
Marc:I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
Marc:So, so what?
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:HIV-1-2 screen, negative.
Marc:Boom.
Marc:Hepatitis C virus, AB result, non-reactive.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Chlamydia, DNA, SDA report note, not detected.
Marc:Good.
Marc:Gonorrhea, DNA, SDA, not detected.
Marc:Good.
Marc:I didn't think I had any of those.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Everything's looking good, man.
Marc:Heartbeat's good.
Marc:Blood pressure's good.
Marc:Looks like all the urine-related business is good, whatever this stuff means.
Marc:Triglycerides, normal.
Marc:HDL cholesterol, normal.
Marc:LDL calculated, high.
Marc:Cholesterol, high as fuck.
Marc:It says right there on here, cholesterol, high as fuck.
Marc:I get this in the mail.
Marc:Your cholesterol is very high.
Marc:You need to be on cholesterol medication.
Marc:Call to discuss your treatment options.
Marc:What the fuck is that?
Marc:Is it genetic?
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:when this happened when i got that high cholesterol count i'm like holy i'm 50. i hate when that happens like i'm just moving through my life i don't have to you know i see my cats are getting old i understand that's a that's a marker i don't have kids but the cholesterol thing just sent me spiraling it's like holy why should i even do any work on my house how long do i got with this cholesterol
Marc:I don't know why I'm sharing this with you.
Marc:I just want you to know that my cholesterol is a little high and I'd appreciate it if you help me not eat bad things and make me exercise.
Marc:I don't want to make this a codependent relationship, but God damn it.
Marc:What am I going to do about that?
Marc:God damn it.
Marc:I don't like being reminded that my body is a fragile thing and it's not going to last forever.
Marc:Don't know about you, but I'd appreciate not to be reminded of that every day when I wake up.
Marc:So I had Begley's on today and we talked about the era, the late 60s and early 70s in Hollywood.
Marc:And I have got, you know, I am mildly obsessed with that because I think a lot of my wiring was put in place by the pop culture of that time.
Marc:69 through 72, maybe 73, 69.
Marc:I was six.
Marc:Six, seven, eight, nine.
Marc:That's important.
Marc:I mean, my personality was in place, but I was already yearning for something dark.
Marc:Then thankfully, the big dirty hippie wave was crashing and it was turning into just a rock and roll free for all.
Marc:Just fucking dirty, long hairs everywhere.
Marc:And I wanted to be one of them, man.
Marc:I had a poster in my room of Dennis Hopper on his motorcycle from the movie Easy Rider.
Marc:And Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson on the other bike.
Marc:Dennis Hopper flipping the bird.
Marc:That was 1978.
Marc:So I'm six, seven years old.
Marc:Never seen the movie, but I knew I wanted to be part of that.
Marc:I had a mini bike, a Suzuki mini bike, and I had the American flag fucking Easy Rider helmet.
Marc:That's who I was.
Marc:That's what I wanted to be.
Marc:I also, for some reason, for some fucked up bad parenting reason, my parents let me have the blacklight poster of the sexual positions of the horoscope.
Marc:I'm like I'm seven, eight years old.
Marc:I don't know where that I got at Spencer's Gifts or somewhere.
Marc:I wanted to be part of that fucking crashing wave of the filthy hippie 60s right into the rock and roll free for all.
Marc:No ideological concerns.
Marc:It's not about love and peace.
Marc:It's about let me put this in there.
Marc:Let me smoke some of that.
Marc:And is that going to hurt me?
Marc:Because it feels good.
Marc:Right on, man.
Marc:Free it up.
Marc:Do you care about the future?
Marc:Fuck the future, man.
Marc:Let's just get on our bikes and ride.
Marc:That was me at 7.
Marc:So I get Begley in here, in the garage...
Marc:And I had no idea.
Marc:Look, I'd seen his name on the wall at the comedy store.
Marc:He did do comedy.
Marc:He did do it back in the day.
Marc:He was around in the late 60s, early 70s.
Marc:His dad was a character actor.
Marc:He was in some westerns.
Marc:He was in 12 Angry Men.
Marc:But Begley was wandering around.
Marc:I'd heard he was a little out of control back in the day.
Marc:And you see Ed Begley now.
Marc:You're like, that guy?
Marc:The Prius guy?
Marc:The guy who runs his house on sun?
Marc:But, you know, and he seems like a pretty sort of not preppy, but sort of like conservative dude.
Marc:But he was fucking out of control back in the day.
Marc:And the thing that fascinates me about Hollywood at that time, Hollywood has always been an industry town.
Marc:It's always been a showbiz town in every generation or every era in Hollywood.
Marc:You know, there's always been tabloid.
Marc:There's always been sorted business around show business.
Marc:But for most practical purposes, it was a small town.
Marc:It was a small town.
Marc:There was a few networks, a few studios.
Marc:few labels, but it wasn't blown out.
Marc:There wasn't cable.
Marc:There wasn't a million stations.
Marc:There wasn't a million production companies.
Marc:So if you were running around the hills of Hollywood, you know, you were seeing, you know, those, the fucking groovy people.
Marc:Wasn't all broken up.
Marc:You know, if you had access, you were in it.
Marc:You were in the star chamber.
Marc:You were in the upper echelon of the freak show that was Hollywood at that time.
Marc:It was a small town.
Marc:And that whole Laurel Canyon scene.
Marc:In the early 70s, late 60s, it must have been so much fucking fun when culture was just exploding.
Marc:Everything was new.
Marc:You know, all of a sudden people could, you know, have sex with more than one person publicly at a party.
Marc:And there'd be people sitting around laughing while you did it in excitement, perhaps masturbating, snorting coke and whatnot.
Marc:Maybe that's the 80s.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Late 60s, man.
Marc:I romanticized that time.
Marc:Seemed like it would have been fucking amazing.
Marc:And Begley lived through it.
Marc:And I had no idea.
Marc:But there's some stuff here, man.
Marc:It's going to be surprising.
Marc:All right.
Marc:This is me and Ed Begley Jr.
Marc:Well, it's nice to meet you.
Marc:It's nice to see you.
Guest:You too.
Marc:Ed Begley Jr.
Marc:You're a guy that everybody recognizes.
Guest:I'm lucky to still be doing it since 1967.
Guest:Isn't that amazing?
Guest:Still working.
Guest:I can't believe it.
Guest:I was just looking at your credits, and I'm like, oh, my God.
Marc:Where do you even start?
Marc:It looks like you work every other week.
Guest:I can't believe at age 64 I'm still doing it.
Guest:64?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You still got them fooled, but you're an efficient character actor.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm happy.
Guest:Whatever they want to call me, I'm still doing it.
Guest:But you grew up, did you, I mean, this was part of your life always, was it not?
Guest:Yeah, my dad was an actor, so I was around the sets and the backstage on Broadway, and I just wanted to do what my dad did.
Guest:If he was a plumber, I'd probably be fitting, you know, galvanized steel, galvanized pipe or copper pipe now.
Marc:Yeah, and you'd probably be retired.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:And living an entirely different life.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:But I mean, I've only had one other guy in here that comes from that, and that's Cranston.
Marc:Oh, Brian.
Marc:Yeah, his dad was like a studio guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And because of that, it seems like, because I don't think his father was necessarily, well, definitely not as big as your dad, but he's got a very kind of utilitarian, kind of plumber point of view of acting.
Marc:He does.
Marc:It's kind of interesting.
Guest:It is interesting.
Guest:And he grew up in the valley like me.
Guest:He's from Canoga Park.
Guest:I'm from Van Nuys.
Marc:Yeah, but his dad just went to work on the lot.
Marc:And he's got this very sort of... But your dad had sort of a larger career than that.
Guest:He did, but he was a factory worker that made it in his 60s, really.
Guest:Started to make it in his 50s.
Guest:He started to make it in radio and on stage in his 50s, to be fair.
Guest:But then he really made it by winning an Oscar and getting really good roles in his 60s.
Guest:He was a guy that worked at the wire mold plant in Hartford, Connecticut.
Guest:And he wanted to be an actor his whole life.
Guest:And finally, he started to do it.
Guest:In Connecticut?
Guest:In Connecticut, yeah.
Guest:Like a dinner theater situation?
Guest:He was with a group called the Guy Hedlund Players there in Hartford.
Guest:And he worked with them.
Guest:Then he got a job at WTIC station there.
Guest:And he did radio.
Guest:And he did a million voices because his dad was what they call a hod carrier, an Irish kind of worker where they carry two boards like this with a stick.
Guest:And they carry either bricks or mortar up.
Guest:They don't do the...
Guest:the stonemason work, but they carried the shit up to people.
Guest:And his dad was that?
Guest:His dad was that.
Guest:He was a strong lad, but he was a raconteur and he did different dialects and what have you.
Guest:So my dad learned that from him and it served him well in radio, of course.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:And then how did he make his break?
Marc:I mean, how did it sort of unfold that he ended up in Hollywood?
Marc:What was the process?
Guest:it was radio in hartford yeah then he went to new york because he was doing well in hartford yeah and he did well in new york and radio and then he started to do some stage in new york and he did well on stage and then you know hollywood beckon different movies boomerang and other movies like that and tulsa and sorry wrong number and you know he did a lot of those movies and eventually you know then eventually 12 angry men and that was the movie
Guest:yeah that was the big break that was a big break for all those guys you know amazing you know jack warden and my dad and ed bins and you know all those guys you know robert weber e.g marshall henry fondard already been he was already he was uh an established actor right it was it's that movie still holds up it's still oh yeah lee jay he was an established character actor but that took him to another level wait yeah that was amazing amazing
Marc:Did you meet Lee J. Cobb?
Marc:I never met Lee Cobb.
Guest:I wish I had.
Guest:I know his daughter.
Marc:Your dad's friends.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:So your dad won an Oscar for that?
Guest:No, he won an Oscar for Sweet Bird of Youth.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:He won it in 63 for the year 1962.
Guest:i don't know that i've seen that film it's with paul newman and geraldine page it's a good movie oh that's exciting yeah so you grew up in that home yeah but we grew up in the valley he had a lot of friends who were like ex-factory workers from hartford but then there was one family we used to visit when we drive up to san francisco we'd visit these this couple this old couple i was like can we finish up with these old people i want to get up and ride the the you know the trolley car in san francisco i want to ride the trolley uh
Guest:Who are these people?
Guest:His name was Paul, and the woman's name was Bella.
Guest:It turned out that was Paul Muni.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And I was like in the presence of greatness, like a 12-year-old.
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:Just old people.
Guest:Oh, you did a play with him?
Guest:What was a play again?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then I years later realized it was 12 Angry... I mean, it was Inherit the Wind, for which they both won Tonys.
Guest:And this was a guy that was in Fugitive from a Chain Gang and many other... He was a brilliant actor.
Marc:Yeah, he was...
Guest:huge what do kids know you know i didn't know anything so you're a kid you're growing up uh but so your dad wasn't like a major movie star so you didn't have to no but then he started to hit it when he won an oscar he started to go on to another level and he had like a business manager now and he had all this other stuff and then he did a movie with debbie reynolds and i of course knew debbie reynolds from singing the rain and tammy and all that my dad's hanging out with debbie reynolds we went into beverly hills which we never went to beverly hills right we didn't know the
Guest:those people and so we're going to beverly hills and hanging out meeting carrie fisher and wow how she's married to harry carl at that point they had this fat house with this big pool it was like jesus christ what did i fall into my dad my dad's hooked me up here it's a big time big time so that's when you met carrie fisher yeah are you guys friends we're still friends to this day i love her yeah now all right so you're in this and you want to be this and you're in high school because you started acting what were you you were in your teens weren't you
Guest:Yeah, I wanted to be an actor and a comedian from the earliest age.
Guest:My dad taught me some stupid joke that I would tell in front of adults and they would laugh.
Guest:It was a ridiculous joke.
Guest:But I wanted to do what he did.
Guest:And then finally, I did some theater in high school and I did some other summer camp theater.
Guest:And then finally, I started to work at age 17.
Guest:But I didn't get it.
Guest:The first job I did was My Three Sons.
Guest:Oh, Fred McMurray.
Guest:Yeah, I had one day on My Three Sons, and I literally thought, now that I'm in Screen Actors Guild, which I wanted to be in Screen Actors Guild my whole life, and I'm in SAG, I was literally waiting by the phone.
Guest:Man, it's going to ring now.
Guest:Let me stay close to it.
Guest:I just did a My Three Sons, and it just aired.
Guest:That phone's going to start ringing.
Guest:father give you the lowdown oh he did but I didn't believe him I thought he's trying to like one time I also was years ago a compulsive gambler when I was a kid we went through Vegas and I said yeah put a quarter in this thing yeah I was convinced that I was gonna win the jackpot if he just put it you know I was like 14 or something please put the quarter in the thing he put it in he had his back to me and he did a thing and pulled it he turned around and went put his arms up in the air went see you didn't win anything I
Guest:I was convinced he didn't put it in.
Guest:I was convinced so much of my fate that I deserved something, not having to work for it.
Guest:It was the same with acting.
Guest:I had this horrible attitude, wake me when I'm famous kind of attitude.
Guest:I want to be a big star like my dad.
Guest:Come on, get me a series.
Marc:So you track that sense of entitlement and slight compulsive delusion to the same thing that sort of compulsive gambling to everything else.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I just like, you know, get me a dad.
Guest:Can't you get me a Gunsmoke?
Guest:Get me a Perry Mason.
Guest:What's the problem?
Guest:And I didn't get it.
Guest:I would go up on interviews for some of these.
Guest:He got me an interview for Gunsmoke, for God's sake.
Guest:One of those shows, a wagon train or something.
Guest:I went and read.
Guest:I sucked.
Guest:I didn't get the part.
Marc:What was it for, like, the kid on the wagon?
Guest:Some sort of thing like that.
Guest:And I didn't get it, and I was shocked.
Guest:I didn't realize you have to train, whatever.
Guest:If you're going to be a plumber like your father, you've got to apprentice, and you've got to see how the steel galvanized pipe fits together and how the copper is welded.
Marc:But he did step up and say, like, all right, I've got a guy.
Marc:Go meet this guy, the casting agent.
Marc:See if my kid can fit into this.
Marc:He did.
Guest:But there's only so much you can do, right?
Guest:Exactly, and I didn't get anything.
Guest:Then, finally, he got me.
Guest:I begged him.
Guest:I wanted to take acting lessons, and he got me acting lessons.
Guest:With who?
Guest:And then Paul Kent at the Melrose Workshop, and then after that, I started to work.
Guest:Now, what kind of, like, Paul Kent, now, was he a big guy?
Guest:He was not a, a huge, uh, you know, uh, figure in the acting, you know, uh, you know, in the, in the, uh, acting lesson world in LA.
Guest:I later studied with some people who were very big in that world.
Guest:I went to the Strasburg Institute.
Guest:I studied briefly with Lee Strasburg, you know, in a big classroom kind of a thing, not a little, you know, 10 or, but that was well into your career.
Guest:Yeah, that was a few years into it.
Guest:1970, I started doing that.
Guest:Then there was somebody I met there called Peggy Fury.
Guest:She worked there and she was great.
Guest:And she, you know, great people like Angelica Houston studied with her later and Sean Penn and other wonderful people.
Marc:What is the, just for my own curiosity, because I got to do some acting tomorrow.
Marc:Oh boy, on what?
Marc:On my show for IFC, the show Marin.
Marc:I did 10, we're doing 13 more.
Marc:And I look at myself.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:I look at myself as an actor.
Marc:I think I'm close, but I think I suffer from the same thing that a lot of comics do.
Marc:There's a slight self-consciousness.
Marc:So if you were to give me one pointer in terms of acting that I could be aware of, something that I could have in my head or enter a scene with, what would that be?
Guest:A couple things.
Guest:One thing, Spencer Tracy said it so well, acting is listening.
Guest:If you're really, really listening, then when you next speak, you're going to be engaged, whatever the lines are.
Guest:And then once you get it going, you're into the scene, really forget about that.
Guest:Did I get that line right and all that?
Guest:It's about what you're thinking.
Guest:I want to get that guy to give me my goddamn $500 back.
Guest:That's the subtext.
Guest:The lines may be...
Guest:have you been in town for the full week?
Guest:Whatever the line is.
Guest:But the subtext is, are you going to give me my goddamn $500?
Guest:And then you'll be engaged with that thought.
Guest:That's one thing.
Guest:Acting is listening.
Guest:If you're really listening and staying with your subtext, then the words just come naturally.
Guest:And the other thing, this is a great thing, this guy, Roy London, who was an acting teacher I studied with in the 90s when I was working on some show, and he said something that I dismissed at the time.
Guest:I went, what does that even mean?
Guest:He said, the most interesting thing to watch
Guest:a performer do is how they deal with pain.
Guest:I went, that's bullshit.
Guest:I don't want to see somebody, oh, I'm in pain, I'm in pain.
Guest:But it wasn't that, that wasn't what he was saying at all.
Guest:How you deal with pain and you keep the, try to keep the lid on the pot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, how Meryl Streep and Sophie's Choice.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What did this woman go through?
Guest:Then you later see what Sophie's Choice was and what have you.
Guest:And even, and it works in comedy too.
Guest:Laurel and Hardy are carrying a fucking piano up the stairs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they fall.
Guest:And not only do they fall, the piano falls on them.
Guest:And you're laughing your ass off.
Guest:It's how they deal with that pain.
Guest:Comedy or drama.
Guest:And again, you don't want to say, oh, I hurt so bad.
Guest:There's a time to show pain.
Guest:There's a time to not show it.
Guest:But that's a universal rule.
Guest:You find pain is another word, discomfort, anxiety, whatever the word is for that scene.
Marc:You just described me.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:You're going to do very well.
Yeah.
Guest:i gotta hide them better i guess you know and if you look at any scene what really engages you in raging bull and any movie that you really like great movies it's how these people are dealing with pain emotional physical whatever and it's and that's what's compelling as a fellow human to watch somebody in this journey wow that's how they deal with pain interesting maybe i'll use that information next time i'm in pain right that's interesting man that's interesting to me that you said like you dismissed it initially isn't it aren't
Marc:when you get older isn't it amazing how all of a sudden something that someone said to you you're like oh fuck that was that wasn't bullshit it wasn't bullshit at all those are the best things to hear because it sticks in your head as something you fought against and you you know like yeah i'm not gonna and then all of a sudden but it stuck in there for a reason you know like some part of you knew like that's deep you just all that stuff those old women said to you when your kid the aunts the grandmothers you know
Guest:Wait till you have kids of your own.
Guest:That's sage wisdom right there.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:All that kind of stuff.
Guest:You'll learn the value of a dollar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Another brilliant statement.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:And you don't give a fuck when you're younger.
Guest:No.
Guest:All right, so now you're taking these acting classes.
Guest:What are you, 20?
Guest:Yeah, I'm 20 years old.
Guest:1970, I'm 20.
Guest:I'm taking acting classes.
Marc:What's going on in fucking L.A.?
Marc:It must be out of control.
Marc:1970, Los Angeles.
Guest:Oh, it was insane.
Guest:I...
Guest:From 1971 through 78, I partied hardy.
Guest:I really, I did everything you could do.
Guest:With who?
Guest:Well, you don't have to throw people.
Guest:Everybody.
Guest:I mean, you know, everybody famous and not famous.
Guest:I was at Tana's every night of my life.
Guest:Me and Perfect.
Guest:At Dan Tana's?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You see the crossword?
Guest:I do the crossword every day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I talked to Harry Dean Stanton because he does it every day too because he thinks it keeps his mind alert and it must.
Guest:I would see him every night.
Guest:We'd hang out at Tanas every single night.
Guest:This speaks volumes, the story I'll briefly tell you about how much we were there.
Guest:We were there at Tanas all the time, and we both got a movie together, this Warren Oates movie directed by Monty Hellman called Cockfighter, and we're in Georgia, and we're there about five days or something.
Guest:It went...
Guest:We should, Harry, we should call up Tanas and say hello to Guido.
Guest:He probably misses us.
Guest:We've been gone five, when were we last gone for five days?
Guest:So we call up Tanas.
Guest:Hello.
Guest:Good evening to Tanas.
Guest:It's Guido.
Guest:Guido, hi, it's Ed Begley and Harry.
Guest:Hey, it's Harry.
Guest:Harry and I are here.
Guest:We just want to say hi.
Guest:We're in Georgia.
Guest:Jesus Christ, I'm glad you called.
Guest:We're going to call the police.
Guest:I swear to God, we thought you guys die and leave the gas on by mistake at Harry's house.
Guest:We thought you were both dead.
Guest:Five days, Jesus Christ, what happened?
Guest:He couldn't believe we weren't there.
Marc:Well, I've heard about what was going on there and what that place represented, that particular bar and restaurant.
Marc:But who was there on the scene in that time?
Marc:I know that Harry Dean still goes there every week.
Guest:Yeah, he goes there a lot.
Guest:But in that day, I had heard by way of rumor that Jack Nicholson went in there.
Guest:And so I would go, and I heard he occasionally, once in a blue moon, even went into the Troubadour to see people perform.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I went back and forth between the Troubadour and Tanas hoping to see Jack Nicholson.
Guest:My dream was realized he came in when he went there rarely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he wasn't hanging out all the time.
Guest:He was up at his home, you know, preparing for the next part and doing what he does.
Guest:Because he's a big star at that point.
Guest:Big star.
Guest:Five Easy Pieces.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Cuckoo's Nest was coming up.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And so I saw him there.
Guest:That sealed the deal.
Guest:I just hung out there every night hoping he'd come back.
Guest:And I later became friends with him.
Guest:There's a wonderful actress, a friend of mine, Cindy Williams, and she invited me because she was going with Harry Giddes, a friend of Jack's.
Marc:Cindy Williams from television?
Guest:exactly yeah wonderful actress at that point she'd been in the conversation she'd been with travels with my aunt and she is before Laverne and Shirley and she was and is a wonderful film actress and so she somehow I met Cass Elliot through her and so suddenly I was invited up to Jack Nicholson's for dinners and what have you and going out to the opening of the movie concert for Bangladesh with Jack Nicholson and Cass Elliot was like how did I fall into this you must be a good guy
Guest:Well, I don't know about that, but I was certainly, uh, I had a lot of fun and I remember it all.
Marc:Well, they like hanging out with you.
Marc:It seems like you have a lot, like you always show up places, you know, even if it's for a second, you're like, was that a Begley on the drums in that spinal tap?
Marc:Two seconds in spinal tap.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:What was that?
Guest:Yeah, I love it.
Guest:You know, yeah, that's because of my dear friend, Christopher Guest, you know, and Rob Reiner and everybody and Harry Shearer and Michael McKean, they're all friends of mine.
Guest:So they brought me to do the drummer.
Marc:Let's build up to that.
Marc:So it's now 1972.
Marc:You've already worked with Monty Hellman.
Guest:No, that happened actually in 74, but 72, I'm hanging out at the Troubadour.
Guest:I'm doing like movies with Rock Hudson and Dean Martin.
Guest:I did a Western with him.
Guest:And you're a kid.
Guest:I'm a kid.
Guest:And then finally, you know, through people that I- Rock Hudson and who?
Guest:Dean Martin.
Marc:Now, did you spend time with Dean Martin or were you just sort of in and out?
Guest:A little bit of time.
Guest:He wasn't big on hanging out with me or most people.
Guest:He had, you know, he kept to himself.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I read that.
Marc:Did you read that book, Dino by Nick Toshas?
Marc:No, I never read it.
Guest:It's fascinating.
Marc:I'd like to
Guest:read it it's it's it's fascinating because he really paints him as this guy that was very much a loner yeah rock Hudson was very friendly yeah very nice and you know he was very you know very nice Dean wasn't rude but he just wasn't as inclusive so okay so you do that stuff
Marc:And now why, I'm a comedy store guy.
Marc:Why is your name on the wall of the comedy store?
Guest:Oh, I've left out a major chapter.
Guest:I started a stand-up comedy career back in 1969 with a partner by the name of Michael Richards.
Guest:We had a duo.
Guest:Like the Michael Richards?
Guest:The Michael Richards from Seinfeld and what have you.
Guest:And we had a duo and we played at the Troubadour back in 1969 and Doug Weston wanted to sign us to a contract and what have you.
Guest:So you're opening for musical acts?
Guest:We were.
Marc:I'm finding this out before the store opened really officially in what, 72, 73.
Guest:We were there the week that they opened, me and Michael Richards.
Guest:When Sammy opened it?
Guest:Sammy still owned the comedy store.
Marc:So Burski was parking cars or something?
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:Sam, it was Sammy's place.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, but before that, there was no real venue other than opening for musical acts.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Like Steve Martin as well.
Guest:And Richard Pryor and other people and Lily Tomlin, other people who played the Troubadour or the Ice House.
Guest:Michael and I never got any opening act gigs.
Guest:He went off and joined the military.
Guest:So I was on my own.
Guest:So I did a single and I started to get bookings at the Ice House and I would open for Jennifer Warren's.
Guest:And I would open for, oh God, I opened for Loggins and Messina and Poco and John Sebastian.
Guest:At the Ice House?
Guest:No, that was later.
Guest:At the Troubadour, I also opened for Neil Sedaka and Don McClain.
Guest:Don McClain kind of discovered me at the Troubadour.
Guest:And because of him, I went and I would occasionally open for him and open for other acts.
Marc:Well, that's interesting.
Marc:So who else?
Marc:So Cheech and Chong was also the big success story.
Marc:Oh yeah, they were huge then.
Marc:Well, because it was, what's his name, Don Adler?
Marc:Lou Adler.
Marc:Lou Adler.
Marc:Well, it was sort of fascinating to me that they were made by the music industry.
Marc:I mean, there was no comedy club.
Marc:So all these music execs would be at the Troubadour because they had acts there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And so Hollywood would come in.
Marc:Hollywood was a much more intimate environment.
Marc:at that time.
Marc:It was.
Marc:Like, you know, you could go to Tana's, you could go, like, these places were the places, and it wasn't all spread out, and then the business was intimate.
Marc:So you could actually be at a place, and someone could see you, and it could change your life.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it did for many people.
Marc:So, all right, so you're doing the Troubadour.
Marc:And also, I want to just, you know, give some love to the Ice House, because I work there, you know, a few times a year, I'll go out there, and I never... Good for you.
Marc:It's right down the street.
Marc:You know, I do the store, too, but I'll go do an hour or so.
Marc:And that room...
Marc:actually has more history as a comedy room than any room in the city.
Marc:I think you're right.
Marc:And it's one of the greatest comedy rooms in the world still.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's wonderful.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:I was working there in the late 60s.
Guest:Michael and I went up there a few times, and then I started in the early 70s actually getting paid to go there and perform.
Guest:What was your act?
Guest:I was a prop comic.
Guest:I had a whole bunch of props and different things.
Guest:And I did satire on TV and commercials, one of those kind of acts.
Guest:And it was mildly amusing.
Guest:I got booked a lot.
Guest:I did The Bottom Line and Max's Kansas City and The Troubadour and The Ice House and clubs and colleges and concerts.
Marc:What did you have, like 20 minutes?
Guest:Yeah, I had about 20 minutes.
Marc:That's all you needed when you were opener.
Guest:That's all I needed.
Guest:Yeah, just an opener.
Guest:I would do it.
Guest:Man, I'm opening for Dave Mason.
Guest:I was a big Dave Mason fan.
Guest:Neil Sedak and these people.
Guest:And Don McClain discovers me and goes, I want my manager to handle you.
Guest:And now Don McClain's manager is handling me.
Guest:It was like big stuff.
Marc:And were you doing the shows like Dinah and Mike Douglas?
Guest:I did Mike Douglas show.
Guest:Very good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I did the Mike Douglas.
Guest:I didn't do Dinah.
Marc:So you were a working comedian.
Marc:I was.
Marc:At 22, 23 years old, what?
Marc:How old were you?
Marc:I was 20, yeah, 22, 23, exactly.
Marc:So you're getting your comedy chops together, you're doing parts on television, little parts in movies.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's all starting to happen.
Marc:So McLean got you a booking agent, but you must have had a regular agent.
Guest:I had a regular agent, but when I signed with Don McLean's manager, he wanted me to stay away from doing these small parts in movies.
Guest:He wanted to groom me as a comedy star.
Guest:So he actually had me turn down some things so that I could just concentrate on stand-up and write more material and what have you.
Guest:It was a good idea, but I was lazy.
Guest:I didn't have the work ethic to keep writing.
Marc:Well, what was the sort of drug intake at that time?
Guest:Oh, huge.
Guest:I drank a quart of vodka every day, nearly every day.
Guest:I drank a quart of vodka nearly every day from 71 through 78.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I did any, whatever you got, pills, blow, anything.
Guest:You were just that guy?
Guest:I was that guy.
Guest:I was the party animal that could not only do that, but drive.
Guest:I would get in my car and drive around LA.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know how I didn't kill anybody.
Marc:Yeah, there was less people here then.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:It wasn't, you just, you take fountain.
Guest:That's what you do.
Guest:One night I ran into all these cars at Sunset and San Vicente, right in front of the cops, two sheriff's department guys, because this was LA County, you know, property.
Guest:It wasn't, there was no West Hollywood back then.
Guest:LA sheriffs kind of ran Sunset Strip right next to them.
Guest:I leapt out.
Guest:I said, I talked to all the cars I'd hit.
Guest:Guys, I'm going to talk to you in a second.
Guest:Let me deal with this.
Guest:Officers do me one favor, one only.
Guest:It's Christmas Eve.
Guest:It was Christmas Eve, 1975.
Guest:Cuff me and take me in.
Guest:They looked at me like I was insane, which I was.
Guest:But I'm in so much adrenaline, I'm talking something like this.
Guest:I'm like on vodka and Chardonnay and Quaaludes.
Guest:And Quaaludes back in the day.
Guest:And so I'm saying, cuff me and take me in.
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:I said, I've been pumping these brakes since back at Doheny.
Guest:The brakes don't work.
Guest:This car is defective.
Guest:I'm going to sue them.
Guest:I'm going to sue the motor company, and I'm going to make a million dollars.
Guest:It will help me if you come.
Guest:Well, calm down, son.
Guest:Calm down.
Guest:Have you been drinking?
Guest:Of course it's Christmas Eve.
Guest:I had a couple beers.
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:Write it up whatever way you want.
Guest:I'm rip-roaring drunk.
Guest:But these brakes, I had them under the car checking the brakes.
Guest:Is there a leak in that master cylinder?
Guest:I'm going to pull up in the parking brake.
Guest:Is the cable broken?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:for all this bullshit there was nothing wrong with the brakes oh my god i couldn't see the people i was so blind drunk and they let me get in the car and go that was the root of that's the roots of your political activism right there yeah not only did they not arrest me they let me get in the car and drive home and the guy whose car i destroyed i convinced him i went up and hung i went over he's dialing for a taxi the guy whose car i totally destroyed a honda civic i almost killed the guy
Guest:And I said, I will not have it, sir.
Guest:I hung up the phone on him.
Guest:I'm driving you home.
Guest:And he's on crutches because he had been in a skiing accident.
Guest:He's driving with crutches and one foot in a cast.
Guest:And you destroyed his car.
Guest:I've destroyed his car.
Guest:I said, I won't have it.
Guest:I'm driving you home.
Guest:But by the time I fill out all the paperwork with the cops, there's no more adrenaline left.
Guest:So now...
Guest:Where do you live again?
Guest:You're down in, okay, you're Franklin, Franklin Coonga.
Guest:I'm gonna get you home, my brother.
Guest:And he's like, let me out of the car.
Guest:He's like, hit me with his crutch.
Guest:Let me out of the car.
Guest:Because I'm like smashing into rear view mirrors on Sunset, not intentionally.
Guest:I'm just whacking these mirrors with my right rear view mirror, breaking them, not intentionally.
Guest:I can't control the vehicle now because I'm back to being in all these substances.
Guest:And you got home.
Guest:And the cops aren't around.
Guest:Yeah, the guy got out of the car.
Guest:You got lucky.
Guest:Yeah, I made it home somehow.
Guest:And you were still living in the valley?
Guest:Yeah, I didn't make it to the valley.
Guest:I crashed at a friend's house on Laurel Canyon.
Guest:I couldn't even make it back to the valley.
Marc:Laurel Canyon's rough when you're wasted.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Lots of turns, apparently.
Guest:You can't go straight up there, apparently.
Marc:Okay, so now your career is sort of being driven towards being a stand-up.
Marc:I guess Steve Martin was doing props at that time.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:Gary Mule Deer was doing props at that time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Gallagher was around.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:Correct.
Marc:So there's a bunch of prop guys.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And you're partying.
Marc:You're running around Hollywood.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:You're in the mansions with all the freaks from the 70s.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Did you ever run into Manson?
Guest:That's interesting you should say.
Guest:I actually met Charles Manson.
Guest:I went out to the Spahn Ranch in 1969.
Guest:Come on!
Guest:68 or 69.
Guest:For what?
Guest:My friend James had a friend.
Guest:I can't remember his name.
Guest:James will remember.
Guest:A guy I went to college with.
Guest:James and I, James Jeremias and I said, let's go out to this ranch.
Guest:My friend's living in one of those rooms above the thing.
Guest:We went to visit this guy.
Guest:This guy was shooting speed.
Guest:This guy, I can't remember his name.
Guest:We visited him.
Guest:He said, and we hung out with him, and he might have shot some speed.
Guest:We certainly, I never did that.
Guest:Neither did James, of course.
Guest:And so he said, well, I gotta go down the main house.
Guest:Come down with me, and maybe we'll smoke a joint.
Guest:Okay, went down the main house.
Guest:There was a guy there with some long hair.
Guest:He was kind of in charge.
Guest:We smoked a joint with him.
Guest:His name was Charlie, apparently.
Guest:And so we hung out with him and some other people.
Guest:It was the Manson Gang.
Guest:We hung out with the Manson Gang.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And then later learned who they were, you know, when the Tate Labianza murders occurred.
Guest:But we hung out with them there back at the Smon Ranch in the late 60s.
Marc:Isn't that interesting, though?
Marc:Because that to me is like I don't think people really understand just how this landscape, how Hollywood like I know it just from being here for a long time.
Marc:But it goes back to the intimacy of the business is that like if you're doing drugs in Hollywood in 69, 70 and you're hanging out in certain circles, you're going to know somebody out there.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:It's just sort of like, there's this guy, Charlie's got this place.
Marc:Like, yeah, let's go party.
Marc:Let's take a ride.
Marc:It sounds fun.
Marc:And you sat there, you don't have any recollection of him being like, you know, throwing the gaze on you or anything?
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:He was just some weird hippie guy that kind of seemed to be in charge, you know, but all those people were there.
Guest:I didn't know which one was, you know, Krenwinkel and this one was this one.
Guest:I didn't really get their names.
Guest:I didn't.
Guest:But when I saw the report, I remembered meeting him.
Guest:I went, wow, that was the guy.
Guest:He was the guy kind of in charge down at the main house.
Marc:But at that time, like a commune or that type of lifestyle was not that unusual.
Marc:Not at all unusual.
Guest:There's nothing unusual about it.
Guest:Only in retrospect, after the big horrible events happened, I went, oh my God, that was that guy and those people were probably Patricia and this one and that one.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Tex and all of them.
Guest:Wow, that's fascinating to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so now you're in it.
Marc:You're in the great explosion, the great post-60s explosion of just pure debauchery of Hollywood.
Marc:Yeah, the West Order.
Marc:Right, well, so how much of your, I mean, you were still working.
Marc:I mean, you're working through all this.
Guest:I was working, yeah.
Guest:I had this ironclad rule.
Guest:I went, wow, I never drink when I work.
Guest:I would actually say that, and I believed it.
Guest:I would just drink 20 beers.
Guest:That would be me not drinking.
Guest:I look back at some of these movies, like Blue Collar.
Guest:I started to get parts in good movies.
Guest:With Richard Pryor?
Guest:Did you hang out with him much?
Guest:Yes, he was very nice.
Guest:Was he at the store?
Guest:Harvey Keitel.
Marc:Was he at the store when you were there?
Guest:He was at the store.
Guest:Not when I was at the store.
Guest:He might have been there, but I never saw him until later.
Guest:I kind of got on to his work.
Marc:So you were at the store when Sammy owned it and then Mitzi came in.
Marc:Were you still working there?
Guest:I worked there a bit after that.
Guest:Even as late as 1980, I still did stand-up occasionally.
Guest:I would go down to the La Jolla store or the Westwood store.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I would go on a bit in the belly room or the other room.
Guest:I can't remember.
Marc:The original room, the main room, the belly room.
Marc:But you didn't hang out there.
Guest:No, I stopped.
Guest:I cut way back on doing it in about 76, not about, exactly 76 because I got married.
Guest:I thought, wow, I'm married and my wife's now suddenly pregnant.
Guest:I don't want to spend all my life in saloons because that's what comedy clubs were back then.
Guest:There were saloons, which they are today.
Guest:and so I'm gonna you know I'm gonna stop doing the stand-up I'll just concentrate on the acting because I was doing I did a wonderful movie called Citizens Band with Jonathan Demme yeah I'd done you know Blue Collar with Yafit Khodor and Harvey Keitel and Richard Pryor directed by Paul Schrader wound up doing other Paul Schrader movies which Paul Schrader movies
Guest:I did Cat People.
Guest:I did Hardcore.
Guest:I did Blue Collar.
Guest:I did, in very recent years, Fairly Recent Years, Autofocus.
Guest:Paul Schrader's given me a lot of work.
Guest:That guy fascinates me.
Guest:Fascinating.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, he's hardcore, man.
Guest:He is.
Guest:He's an amazing writer, an amazing director, and a dear friend.
Guest:And he was giving me work, and then Jack Nicholson was a friend, and I got a job on Going South.
Marc:That's a pretty funny movie.
Guest:It was a very funny movie.
Guest:I was on that, and I was in such party mode then.
Guest:This is how bad I was.
Guest:I'm in the El Presidente Hotel with a drink in my hand, trying to outdrink Jack Nicholson's father figure, this guy, Shorty George Smith, who, you know, you can't outdrink this guy.
Guest:He was not an actor.
Guest:He worked for the railroad company in Jersey, but he was a guy that had a face.
Guest:You could tell.
Guest:Oh, this was Jack Nicholson's... Jack Nicholson's... Right.
Guest:Yeah, he was married to Lorraine, Jack's...
Guest:And actually, Jack thought was his sister for a while.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:That's a complicated story.
Guest:Sister, daughter, sister, daughter, sister, daughter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I tried to out drink him.
Guest:Who comes up behind me, takes a drink out of my hand, puts it down, said, you got to get outside and get some fresh air and see the Durango sights, dude.
Guest:You're drinking too much.
Guest:Who was that person that thought I was too far gone?
Guest:That was John Belushi.
Guest:I was too far gone for John.
Guest:John was like, dude, there's a limit.
Marc:there's a frigging limit really yeah so you were john saved my life john and judy got me out of that bar i might have drank myself to death i was trying to out drink a guy you couldn't out drink oh my god so you were like i can't it's just amazing how much like like how much of the bonds of of of these groups i mean because like you know you now even when i came in when i was hanging out with canison and that the comedy story oh wow it
Guest:Great era, Sam, yeah.
Marc:And I was like 22, and I was doing a lot of blow, drinking a lot, living in the house up behind the comedy store that Mitzi owned.
Guest:Oh, yes, that house.
Guest:Wow, that famous house.
Guest:Jesus Christ.
Guest:I lived there for about eight months.
Guest:I still see Argus once in a while and some of that gang.
Marc:He goes up every night.
Marc:Well, yeah, you see him at the, yeah.
Marc:Well, he goes on stage every night still.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:God bless him.
Marc:Well, who were the guys you hung out with back then, the comics?
Guest:I would see Jay there, Jay Leno.
Guest:I would see David Letterman.
Guest:Were you buddies?
Guest:I was friendly with him.
Guest:I didn't hang out with him after the thing.
Guest:But when I was at the La Jolla Comedy Store, there were guys like that.
Guest:I think Jay was there at the same time at that La Jolla, that condo that they had when you were playing the La Jolla.
Guest:Right there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think maybe Letterman came when I was leaving or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because when I see those guys, they certainly remember.
Guest:I remember the Invisible Man routine.
Guest:You had that thing where you walked.
Guest:Invisible Man, tell him I can't see him.
Guest:Yeah, they remember this stupid prop comic bit that I did.
Marc:Oh, that's hilarious.
Marc:How much of the bonding that went on in the 70s revolved around drugs?
Marc:A lot of it.
Guest:When I got sober, which was, uh, 79, I really bottomed out in 78, but you know, I, I kind of had a few days left of me in December of 79.
Guest:But I, uh, when I stopped hanging out in, you know, in those places, I, I had to change friends to a certain extent and that was good, you know, because I was really headed for a toe tag.
Guest:What was the bottom like?
Guest:The bottom was I almost died.
Guest:I had, you know, said once again for the 50th time after having the DTs or what have you, not the 50th, but like the third or fourth time after I had gotten really sick, I went, okay, I'm just going to have a little wine with dinner.
Guest:I'll be real careful.
Guest:And then two weeks after that was the last time I went out in 78 in a big way.
Guest:Two weeks after I'll have a little wine with dinner, I was in full-blown, you know, a gram of blow and a vodka tonic and what have you and blackout.
Guest:And I woke up after that going, I can't take the DTs again.
Guest:I called up this doctor.
Guest:I said, I need some medicine for the thing.
Guest:Can I get some Valium?
Guest:My regular doctor wasn't in.
Guest:The other guy prescribed to me Thorazine.
Guest:which doesn't mix well with liquor.
Guest:I think he was trying to kill me.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:So I kept taking them, waiting for that Valium kind of sand the rough edge off the hangover thing.
Guest:And it wasn't happening like that.
Guest:Thorazine is a very different drug.
Guest:Took one, two, three, four.
Guest:Kept taking them, not as a suicide attempt.
Guest:I took about eight of them.
Guest:And then finally went out and finally was awoken by my then wife, my first wife, wonderful lady.
Guest:She slapped me around, not for the usual reason.
Guest:She slapped me around saying, wake up.
Guest:Your color's bad.
Guest:Your breathing's bad.
Guest:There's something wrong.
Guest:There's something really wrong.
Guest:Were you both using?
Guest:Yeah, me more than her.
Guest:She was kind of a social 70s kind of a person, but I was the real hardcore.
Guest:And so Cindy Williams actually drove me to Cedars-Sinai and I made it.
Guest:They gave me some Epicac and got out whatever remainder of the pills was there.
Guest:But my heart and lungs were shutting down.
Guest:I was dying.
Guest:God.
Guest:And I made it to Cedars and lived and went, I will never.
Guest:And I had a little one-year-old daughter and she was trying to hold me.
Guest:I'm in this bed with all these tubes and IVs and going in.
Guest:She couldn't get to me because of the tubes.
Guest:I went, this is as low as a person can go.
Guest:My daughter who I cherish beyond anything and my wife who I love, they can't really hold me because of the tubes that are going into me.
Guest:Never again, never again being relative.
Guest:For a couple of days in 79, I tried a few beers and half a bottle of wine and just made me sick.
Guest:So I stopped.
Guest:And then you got straight with it.
Guest:I got straight with it.
Guest:But 78 was the bottom when I almost died.
Guest:September 30th of 78.
Guest:And I've never had to do that again.
Marc:Well, that's the year you did Going South.
Marc:That's the year you did Blue Collar came out.
Marc:Going South came out.
Marc:So at the worst of your using, you did some big movies.
Guest:Yeah, and then I got that same year, just a short time after that, I got this movie, The In-Laws.
Guest:So I had to go off to another country, Mexico.
Guest:We went down to Cuernavaca to shoot that.
Marc:Oh, that's right.
Marc:You played the FBI guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, I love that fucking movie.
Guest:And I'm going down there to... Thank you.
Guest:I love that movie too.
Guest:Oh, it's a great movie.
Guest:Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So I'm going down with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin.
Guest:going down to meet them there.
Guest:They're already there.
Guest:And I'm going to work on this show.
Guest:And they got free drinks on the plane, what have you.
Guest:And I know I'm going to get high, but somehow I don't.
Guest:I'm just done with it.
Guest:And I go down and do that movie totally straight.
Guest:And it did very well for me.
Guest:It got me other work because it was a very good movie.
Guest:I had a small part in it, but it helped me.
Marc:But you had this, like, it's a very specific thing that you do.
Marc:There's a, you know, there's a weird kind of almost, when you do comedy, there's an earnestness to your buffoonism.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Does that make sense?
Guest:I made a career out of that.
Guest:Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
Guest:That's my career in a nutshell.
Guest:And earnestness to his buffoonism.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's my mantra.
Guest:I'm not being insulting.
Marc:Not at all.
Marc:Because you are a type.
Marc:I am.
Marc:But, you know, when it comes to that, but like working with those guys, I mean, Alan Arkin, he's too much.
Guest:The greatest in Peter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Could I ask you something?
Guest:On the night of the 14th, did you actually take that gun and put it back in the drawer?
Guest:I mean, Peter was the greatest.
Guest:You did Columbo, right?
Guest:I did Columbo, yeah.
Guest:I did a couple of them.
Marc:You did a lot of small TV parts.
Marc:Yeah, a lot.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:It's just like, it's unbelievable the career you had.
Marc:And everybody, like, everyone knows you.
Guest:I mean, you're one of those guys.
Guest:I've been around since, you know, 1967.
Guest:So yeah, in this town, I know a lot of people.
Guest:A lot of people know me.
Guest:So I'm very lucky.
Marc:And now when your father saw you, did he live long enough to see you take?
Guest:No, he didn't see me do much.
Guest:He saw me do a little.
Guest:When he was still alive, I wasn't getting much acting work and I desperately wanted to work in TV and film.
Guest:So I started working as an assistant cameraman.
Guest:and had something of a career doing that, a first assistant cameraman.
Guest:And that was good work and paid well.
Guest:Union work?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't get in the IATSC, but I got in another union called NABET.
Guest:And they did a lot of commercials and stuff.
Guest:These companies, Wakeford Orloff and Kaleidoscope, they did a lot of commercials.
Guest:I worked on a million commercials and a few low-budget movies.
Guest:And I started to
Guest:you know do well as an assistant and made some good dough and so uh i thought that was it and then the show room 222 beckoned you know karen valentine that's right and james l brooks was head writer and i think he liked somebody did yeah oh my god and so he a great great writer yeah but it's like i used to watch that with my my parents
Guest:yeah like I like I my recollection of that is like as a little kid I had no idea that James L Brooks I mean it's so weird that these people they start and they say I know that the guys that lock in they really lock in they lock in unbelievable brilliant from the get-go so suddenly I had this much easier job of acting back and you know
Guest:the early 70s.
Guest:So I put the camera work aside and just focused on the acting.
Guest:And then the acting wasn't getting me the parts I really wanted.
Guest:Then I did the stand up so I could write my own part, if you will, by writing a stand up act.
Guest:And that was kind of then again, I got married and the stand up just didn't seem like the right life because I was trying to straighten up and what have you.
Guest:And so I stopped doing that and just focused on the acting.
Guest:And that's been it since 70s.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because in the beginning, you can do anything.
Marc:I mean, you're a real character actor.
Marc:I mean, you can do straight roles.
Marc:That's very nice.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:But real quickly, Monty Hellman and that whole crew and Warren Oates and those guys, before we get out of the 70s, I mean, Monty Hellman really made two important movies.
Marc:And what was it?
Marc:Tulane Blacktop.
Marc:Tulane Blacktop and the Cockfight.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then, like, working with guys like that, I mean, and even Paul Schrader, who has gone on to, you know, he wrote a lot of movies, and he's a very challenging character, that there was a sense of art in the 70s that really defined a whole generation of filmmakers.
Marc:I mean, were you conscious of that?
Guest:Very much so.
Guest:I wanted to work with all those people at BBS.
Guest:I worked with Bob Rafelson on a movie called Stay Hungry, which was Arnold's first movie.
Guest:Arnold Schwarzenegger was in that, and Sally Field was in it, and lots of other good people were in it.
Guest:And so I worked on that.
Guest:And I was working with Monty Hellman.
Guest:I was working with Jack Nicholson.
Guest:I was working with Paul Schrader.
Guest:And they were all aware that they were changing the game in a
Guest:yeah it's that wonderful book you know uh easy writers raging raging bulls yeah it's a very good book and i think pretty accurate by what i know of of things at that time and when uh so when the break came i mean i guess saying elsewhere is the biggest thing right the big break before that my kind of mini breaks were mary hartman mary hartman i was the deaf mute on that but that was such a popular show i'd walk through the airport and people recognized me
Guest:And it led to some work.
Guest:And the next kind of mini break was the in-laws and then to a lesser extent cat people.
Guest:But then St.
Guest:Elsewhere from then on, you know, I'd have to really scrub bad to not be able to work after you do a show like St.
Guest:Elsewhere.
Guest:And you were a made guy then.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But like Mary Hart, Mary Hartman, I mean, who was, Fred Willard was on that, Martin Mull, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, like everybody that became that crew of, I don't know, was Harry Shearer involved in that?
Marc:Where'd you meet those guys?
Guest:Those guys I met, I met Harry Shearer because I was a fan of the credibility gap and I knew David L. Lander a bit and I knew Michael McKean a bit.
Guest:Maybe I knew Harry first, I can't remember, but I knew those guys.
Guest:I loved the credibility gap, they were so good.
Guest:And then through Christopher Guest, I guess I got to know them better.
Guest:How'd you know Guest?
Guest:I met him through his sister, Alyssa Guest, and I actually met him around that same time through Tony Hendra, when he was, Tony Hendra was editor of the National Lampoon, and they were doing the Radio Dinner album, or maybe they'd already done that, they're doing more, you know, radio stuff.
Guest:So what year was that, was it the late 70s?
Guest:Yeah, this is a mid-70s now.
Guest:All right, so you're still high.
Guest:Oh, God, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but they were in New York, wasn't it?
Marc:Wasn't Hendrick in New York?
Guest:He was, and that's where I met Chris Guest for the first time.
Marc:With the Lampoon, the Lemming stuff in the radio show.
Guest:Yeah, and I was friendly with Harry Wilson, too.
Guest:Is that where you met Belushi, too?
Guest:I met John at with TV TV, this group that was Michael Schamberg and it was Hudson Marquez and it was Harold Ramis.
Guest:And it was.
Guest:Where were they?
Guest:Alan.
Guest:They were in L.A.
Guest:This was in L.A.
Guest:They had a place on Robertson.
Guest:Alan Rucker, and they were these people who did this kind of gorilla video with three-quarter inch decks.
Guest:Three-quarter was like small equipment at that time.
Guest:You know, they would do these things kind of, you know, and they had some portable three-quarter inch decks, which were unheard of or what have you.
Guest:They did a wonderful video thing, a show about the Oscars with Lily Tomlin that's worth watching.
Guest:It holds up to this day.
Guest:They did lots of these gorilla.
Marc:So this is like right after Chicago, John Belushi.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So it was before New York.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He got Saturday Night Live right around that same time and he had done one of these videos for those guys at TV TV and I met him then and then saw him on Saturday Night Live and went, Jesus Christ, I had no idea how immensely talented he was.
Guest:I never saw him at Second City, but I heard he was great and he was great and then we worked together on going south and became good friends.
Guest:And you mentioned Harry Nelson?
Guest:harry nilson and i were pals we met in la years before you were really in with the fucking hardcore yeah harry nilson one night no it's one afternoon in new york when new york he said meet me at six i'll i'll come by in a cab and we'll go over we're gonna have dinner with some friends i went okay we get i get in the cab we go with harry nilson and we stop at the dakota yeah
Guest:I go, no, it couldn't be.
Guest:He said, we're going to have dinner with friends.
Guest:It's not those friends.
Guest:Go up in the elevator, door opens.
Guest:Hello, Yoko, look who's here.
Guest:It's Hattie and Una.
Guest:And who's this bloke?
Guest:Wait a minute.
Guest:I know you.
Guest:You're in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.
Guest:Yoko, it's a deaf mute for Mary Hartman.
Guest:He was like asking me questions about Louise Lasser.
Guest:He's acting like slightly starstruck about the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm trying to keep my face from cracking.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Because, you know, I'd hung out with Ringo and love Ringo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was a friend.
Guest:I met him through Harry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'd never met Paul or George or John.
Guest:And now you're at his house.
Guest:I'm at his house having macrobiotic food that Yoko made.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And Sean's asleep in the other room.
Guest:It's like it was crazy.
Guest:It was a good dinner.
Guest:It was a great dinner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A great time.
Guest:Because he's a funny guy, right?
Guest:Very funny, very charming, and very open, kind of like, Harry, it's not like it was, he said.
Guest:When we come into Kennedy Airport, there's not throngs of young women waiting anymore.
Guest:I can move freely around New York, he said, you know, now.
Guest:ominous way.
Guest:I'd walk through Central Park with the baby and we'd push the pram and there's no problem, nobody bothers us.
Guest:And then his sense of freedom was perhaps misdirected.
Guest:But how many years after that?
Guest:This was 70.
Guest:Not too long after, huh?
Marc:When did he die?
Guest:Yeah, it was a few years later.
Guest:It was years later.
Guest:But I guess you can't live in... He lived the better life not living in fear of that, I suppose.
Guest:I wish he was around longer, but he didn't want to live in fear of something like what did happen or anything.
Guest:He just moved freely.
Guest:What an incredible man.
Marc:That must have been so overwhelming to be there.
Marc:And Harry, I mean, Harry, like I just started getting into Harry.
Marc:I mean, I've got the box set over there and I just started buying his records.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:What a great singer songwriter.
Marc:I never knew the depth of it.
Marc:And I just started getting into it because I was seeing like there's a vinyl resurgence.
Marc:So you start seeing these people that people start talking about Harry Nelson.
Marc:So I start buying this stuff and I'm like, holy fuck, a guy could really sing.
Marc:He could sing.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:And the sweetest guy that ever lived.
Marc:And I just watched that documentary.
Marc:Did you watch it?
Guest:No.
Marc:There's a new documentary about the sort of arc of his life and his career.
Marc:I gotta watch that.
Guest:I'm a big fan.
Marc:Were you friends with him till the end?
Guest:I was, very much so.
Guest:We hung out regularly, and he and Ringo and I would spend time together.
Guest:He was a great friend, and Una, his widow, a great friend, and I knew his kids a little bit.
Guest:I haven't seen Una the kids in a while, but she's since remarried, and she's doing fine, but what a great guy he was.
Marc:It's an interesting doc.
Marc:You should watch it on Netflix because it really tracks...
Marc:you know, his career in all its phases and it really kind of goes into a little bit that friendship with Lennon and that record they made together and how like there was a sort of weird, you know, competitiveness between them and how they pushed each other to the to the limits, you know, creatively.
Marc:And it's very interesting because it suggests that during the recording of that record, you know, John had, you know, sort of pushed Harry too hard and that, you know, it shredded his vocal cords.
Guest:something did happen to his vocal cords and i don't know it might have happened then i never knew when it happened something definitely happened yeah you should watch that all right so back to you saying elsewhere yeah turns everything around turns everything around then i was kind of set for life after you're after you're on a show like that hill street blues saint elsewhere la law yeah you have to screw up in such a big way to not work the rest of your life and this happened when you were sober so i mean you were you were kind of you know you were on a good path
Guest:I was on a good path.
Guest:I was several years sober, and I got the best job at that point in my career, and I cherished every minute.
Guest:I was wise enough at that point to not go, oh, well, you know, finish me up so I can get home.
Guest:I was, like, happy to be there every day, walking through the hallways of the St.
Guest:Allegius, you know, set.
Guest:whistling every day and smiling.
Guest:It was a great job.
Guest:Bruce Paltrow was a great friend, and he really took a character that wasn't at all a regular.
Guest:I tried out for a regular part in that show and didn't get it.
Guest:So they threw me a bone, gave me this character, Ehrlich, that was in one episode, then it was in two, then it was in three, then it was in six, and pretty soon it was a regular and had a certain amount of focus of the show was on that character.
Guest:uh-huh and so when did your father pass he died 1970 now so before everything he didn't get to see that i wish he had how about your mom she died in 98 so she got to see all that stuff she got to see the grandkids and everything uh she yeah she met uh yeah she she met my two grown kids yeah and uh got to know them wonderfully so you've got two grown kids and a younger one
Guest:Yeah, I've got a 36-year-old daughter, wonderful young lady, this eco-hero who's beyond me in a green sense and in many other ways, and my son, wonderful son, also a green activist, but he's an electrical engineer, and he's this genius beyond description, genius, computer coder and everything, and he's given me two wonderful grandkids.
Guest:And they turned out all right.
Guest:They turned out great.
Guest:That's a good story.
Guest:And my 14-year-old daughter, Hayden, she sings like an angel and plays a guitar, and she's
Guest:The apple of my eye now, as are my grown kids still, I'm just blessed.
Guest:I've got three wonderful kids and a wonderful wife.
Marc:And you must have a pretty good genetic disposition.
Guest:I guess so, to live through.
Guest:Mark, I never thought I'd live this long.
Guest:It doesn't sound like you should have.
Guest:When I'm 64, will you still need me?
Guest:You're 64.
Guest:I'm 64.
Guest:I never thought I'd live to 44, then 54, then 64.
Guest:I just never thought I'd make it.
Marc:And he never stopped working.
Marc:So let's talk about the relationship with these guys.
Marc:I had Catherine O'Hara in here.
Marc:Oh, God, do I love that one.
Marc:And Michael McKean I talked to.
Guest:I know, you just had Michael fairly recently.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And that crew, Christopher Guest, Bob Balvin, Shearer, the Spinal Tap guys, and the movies that Guest does,
Marc:There's something transcendent about what what happens in those movies.
Marc:You know, Fred Willard that I don't know if it's the improvisation or what or just the there's a type of comedy that goes on with that crew that that runs very deep.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:And and you know what?
Marc:How did that relationship sort of build with you with you and them?
Guest:You know, I met Chris in the early 70s, as I said, and then I started to work with Harry Shear and I think Michael a bit.
Guest:I was friends with them.
Guest:Michael and David L. Lander, Laverne and Shirley.
Guest:I'm hanging out with them there and I'm doing loop group stuff, you know, kind of...
Guest:ADR, automated dialogue replacement they do on movies.
Guest:They do a thing for crowd scenes and other individual lines like turning on a radio in a movie or a PA system.
Guest:You have to hire an actor to come in, a screen actor, skilled actor, to do those voices.
Guest:So I did that work with Harry for years and we became friendly doing that in many other ways.
Guest:We did other kind of live shows together.
Guest:We did Hollywood Primary with Chris Guest at first and some of those
Guest:I think Harry was part of it the whole time.
Guest:I can't remember that.
Guest:But Harry is a brilliant, brilliant comedian, brilliant writer, brilliant actor.
Guest:And so is Chris and Michael and David L. Anderson.
Guest:So I was friendly with all those guys from the credibility gap.
Guest:And and then suddenly, you know, Rob, who is an old friend to a great friend, they're deciding to do this show.
Marc:Did you grow up with him or did you?
Guest:no but i got to know him in the 70s yeah i was a big fan of all the family what have you and albert too i know albert a bit too yeah i met him through some friends yeah that went to carnegie tech with him and uh so i'm a big fan of albert a huge fan of his and got to be friends with him too yeah yeah he's funny
Marc:And so you and Rob, so Rob, so this comes to Spinal Tap?
Guest:Yeah, and then they go, hey, we're going to do this thing.
Guest:I know you still play the drums a little, don't you?
Guest:I said, yeah, I haven't played in a while, but I'm sure I can play whatever you're doing.
Guest:He said, we're going to do this thing.
Guest:It's like a flashback, you know, and you're going to be the first drummer.
Guest:You die in a bizarre gardening accident.
Guest:Okay, whatever.
Guest:When do we do it?
Guest:Tuesday.
Guest:Show up at this studio.
Guest:We did it.
Guest:It was part of really just the presentation they were using to get the money to do the movie.
Guest:It wasn't supposed to be in the movie, but it was such deliberately low-res stuff for the flashback kinescope-looking thing that they said, well, we're going to keep that in the movie, the real movie, now that we're doing the actual movie.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And they did it, and what a wonderful movie.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:one of the best movies, if not the best movie I've ever been in small part, but I don't care.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's sheer genius.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'd like to, I'd like to talk to Rob.
Marc:So like, but when you work with like on a mighty wind or the other one, the, uh, for your consideration and best in show now, what, what is the environment when you guys work together?
Marc:How does Chris run a set?
Marc:And like, is there, how much improv is there?
Guest:There's a lot of improv.
Guest:He gives you a 25-page treatment that in the first movies that I spoke about, Everything But Family Tree, it was him and Eugene Levy writing that treatment, doing all the heavy lifting and putting that time and effort into writing that treatment.
Guest:Then when you go on the set,
Guest:Perfect example.
Guest:The first movie I did was called Best in Show.
Guest:There's a line of stage direction, if you will, in the treatment.
Guest:It says, Jerry and Cookie Fleck try to check into the hotel.
Guest:Their credit card doesn't work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's the scene.
Guest:And then the rest, it's like, I'm there with Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, so I'm not worried about is there going to be any...
Guest:dead silence yeah you know I just kind of try to be a real guy at a clerk at a hotel and you know your credit card isn't working and do all this stuff to just try to keep it real yeah and then Chris says and we're going to do a thing in this closet too where you talk about the cleaning supplies and then you're going to eventually show them into the closet okay yeah great there's just lines of dialogue huh
Guest:I mean, not of dialogue, of stage direction with no dialogue.
Guest:Then you fill in the dialogue.
Guest:And occasionally, Chris, well, in Family Tree, they had a few lines written.
Guest:They had some lines to build to a certain joke with a line.
Guest:But for the early ones, I don't remember any lines written for my character.
Guest:But...
Guest:Who else but Chris Guest would allow you the freedom in the movie A Mighty Wind, for instance, where I'm playing a Swedish-American guy, this PBS kind of producer, to suddenly start spouting Yiddish?
Guest:Most other guys would go, they take off the headset at Video Village, go, I'll talk to him.
Guest:What the fuck are you doing?
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:You're a Swedish guy.
Guest:Why are you speaking Yiddish?
Guest:Do it again without that.
Guest:That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Guest:Chris didn't say that.
Guest:He said, wonderful.
Guest:We're going to move in tighter.
Guest:Let's do another one.
Guest:So you came up with the Yiddish bit?
Guest:Yeah, it just occurred to me sitting there because I had nothing.
Guest:I had nothing planned.
Guest:I went, what is funny about this?
Guest:But I figured Bob Balaban is sitting across from me.
Guest:His name is Steinblom, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I figured I'm one of those guys, those Goyesha guys that's trying to ingratiate themselves to some Jewish guy by peppering the conversation with Yiddish inappropriately.
Guest:So that's what I did, and Balaban just sit there, because he wasn't expecting it, looking at me like, what the fuck are you doing?
Guest:But Chris loved it, so we did it again and again from a few different angles, and that was it.
Guest:I'm sort of fascinated with Balaban.
Guest:He's a funny little guy.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:and so good in everything we just did this thing Muhammad Ali's greatest fight and he played this lawyer and he was smoking great as he always is yeah and he's been around a long time too forever like he was in Midnight Cowboy Midnight Cowboy in the bathroom that young guy in the bathroom yeah it's crazy amazing
Marc:So when did the because, you know, I interviewed you once, I believe, when I was on Air America about.
Marc:I think you did.
Marc:About the car, the car movie.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:About who killed the electric car.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When did the you know, when did it just were you struck by the desire to facilitate change or to live a different life?
Guest:yeah that started really in 1970 that started with the first earth day yeah i started recycling i started composting i became a vegetarian but still out of your mind on drugs and alcohol totally yeah it's great great you know vegetarian you know you've been a vegetarian that long yeah vegetarian addict activist
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I, um, yeah, I bought my first electric car in 1970.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It was not much of a car.
Guest:It was a Taylor Dunn, which was, you know, really like a golf cart with a windshield wiper and a horn.
Guest:But I drove around the Valley with it.
Guest:Occasionally I would venture over the hill, which was a real sight to behold going over the Cahuenga pass at 15 miles an hour.
Guest:Cause that couldn't do any better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a little tiny slow vehicle.
Marc:Well, what do you think that was?
Marc:Because you knew you were living a life of insanity.
Marc:Do you think initially it was just to sort of give your life purpose or to ground you in something?
Guest:Nothing was more important to me than the environment.
Guest:The acting I love, and that has a great deal of meaning for me, but I really back then thought, we got to do something.
Guest:This air is horrible in L.A.
Guest:Horrible.
Guest:It's different now.
Guest:Much better because it all worked.
Guest:All the stuff we hoped would work.
Guest:did work, catalytic converters on cars, combined cycle gas turbines.
Guest:Emissions testing.
Guest:All of it.
Guest:Spray paint booze instead of those VOCs going up in the LA air.
Guest:And now we have four times the cars since 1970, millions more people, and a fraction of the smog.
Guest:That's a success story.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Now if we can just get rid of some of the cars.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:If we can just get public transport.
Marc:To me, that was the most disturbing element of, I don't know if it was covered in that film, I don't know where I learned it, that
Marc:Literally, the public transportation infrastructure of the city was abandoned because of car companies.
Guest:It was.
Marc:Because of politics and business politics.
Guest:They had the red car and they bought up that system here in L.A.
Guest:and many other towns.
Guest:And they dismantled it and they threw the red cars out in Redondo Harbor, actually.
Guest:And there's a reef there where you can fish off the old decomposing red cars.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a guy that was harbormaster who's on the harbor commission.
Guest:He told me about it.
Marc:It's insane and disturbing that there's not a functioning, a convenient public transportation.
Guest:Well, it's better now.
Guest:Now we have not only the red line, but the gold line, the blue line, and the silver line.
Guest:Do people use them?
Guest:All the time.
Guest:Here's my pass.
Guest:I live in Studio City, so for me it's so easy to go to that Universal stop there.
Guest:I've got the red line bus right at Laurel and Ventura near where I live in Studio City, so I hop on that or take my electric car and drive to the Universal stop, and from there I can go all over the city.
Marc:And you do that.
Guest:I do it all the time.
Guest:When I did that David Mamet play a year ago in November at the Taper, it was ridiculous to even take the electric car there.
Guest:I wouldn't have dreamt of it because they charge you for parking.
Guest:You get a discount because you're doing a play, but you still have to pay for it.
Guest:I wouldn't have dreamt of doing that.
Guest:I got my pass.
Guest:I have my annual pass.
Guest:I buy every year.
Guest:So I took it there and back.
Guest:I could read my lines, study my lines on the way there and the way home every day, every night.
Guest:I rehearsed and did the play.
Guest:I take it.
Guest:Forget about the play.
Guest:I do it all the time when I have to go to downtown, when I have to go to Hollywood.
Guest:I'm working.
Guest:Perfect example.
Guest:I'm doing this Amazon show called Betas.
Guest:We're shooting in Culver City.
Guest:I wouldn't dream of taking my electric car there.
Guest:You know, I take the red line to Metro 7th there, and I take the expo line right to Culver City.
Guest:How long does it take?
Guest:It's about an hour.
Guest:But what does it take in the rush hour?
Marc:45 minutes, yeah.
Guest:It'll take you an hour and a half at 9 o'clock to get there.
Marc:And you actually have time.
Marc:You can actually have some personal time.
Guest:I do the crossword.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I sit there and learn my lines and do the crossword.
Marc:As opposed to yell at people in your car.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Get all stressed out.
Marc:But I mean, but your activism goes, it seems to go deeper than that.
Marc:I mean, you're involved in a lot of ways.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With what exactly do you do?
Guest:I'm on a lot of environmental boards.
Guest:I'm on the board of the Coalition for Clean Air.
Guest:They do a lot of good work.
Guest:Part of the reason the air is cleaner today than it was in 1970 with millions more people and four times the cars is because of the Coalition for Clean Air.
Guest:It's one of the biggest champions.
Marc:How green is your house?
Guest:Oh, it's very green.
Guest:I have a 1936 home that was very energy inefficient.
Guest:I made it incredibly efficient.
Guest:And that I bought in 1988.
Guest:But we are now building a lead platinum home.
Guest:We're going to go on to another level of green, which is lower energy use in the house I'm in now, lower water use and everything.
Guest:more room to grow vegetables and what have you, and fruit trees.
Guest:And that house we're working on right now.
Guest:That's about a mile east of where I currently live, and we're building, my wife and I, a lead platinum home.
Guest:We're doing a show about it called On Begley Street that details all the successes and failures of trying to do this totally green home.
Marc:Who has one?
Marc:I was at Sam Simon's house, and he's got a full-on...
Guest:He's got green everything.
Guest:Sam's a dear friend.
Guest:He's got great solar.
Guest:He's got at least 10, maybe a 20,000-gallon rainwater catchment system.
Marc:Yeah, and I think his entire home runs on solar.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Yeah, does yours?
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Not the current home because I have shading to the south.
Guest:I can only fit on this small roof, six kilowatts of solar, and there's a lot of shading starting in October and ending in March from the house to my south.
Guest:And so because of that, I can't get fully off the grid.
Guest:But the new home, I will be off the grid.
Marc:Huh, that's fascinating to me.
Marc:And you do the gray water thing?
Guest:Yeah, I've got gray water.
Guest:The new home, we have gray water.
Guest:The current home, I have rain water, but only 600 gallons of rain water storage.
Guest:The new home, I'll have 10,000 gallons of rain water storage.
Guest:And gray water to supplement it.
Guest:Solar hot water, 10 kilowatts of excellent Panasonic solar panels, a Lutron system, which is this wonderful system that makes all the lighting and shades very energy efficient at times it by the sunlight and the time of day and what have you.
Marc:Now, in terms of this evolving into a practical way of life for more people, I mean, what really has to happen?
Marc:Because it's got to cost a small fortune to do what you're doing.
Guest:Exactly, and that's why I urge people to do it exactly the way I did it.
Guest:People regularly come up and say,
Guest:I can't afford a fancy electric car like you, a big six kilowatt system.
Guest:I went, good.
Guest:Neither could I in 1970 when I started.
Guest:I didn't do any of that stuff.
Guest:I didn't go into debt buying 1970 solar panels I couldn't afford.
Guest:It took me 20 years to do that kind of stuff.
Guest:Two decades.
Guest:Do what I did in 1970, the cheap and easy stuff.
Guest:You know, I started recycling.
Guest:I started composting.
Guest:Nowadays, you can buy these energy efficient light bulbs, energy saving thermostat, weather stripping that's easy to put up, you know, bike riding when weather and fitness permits.
Guest:I showed you my transit pass, public transportation, home gardening, home composting.
Guest:Everything that I just mentioned, Mark, cheap, cheap, and easy.
Guest:You do that stuff, you will save money.
Guest:Then maybe you move up the ladder and do a medium ticket item like a solar oven or a rain barrel to collect some rainwater.
Guest:Then you move up the ladder, maybe do some attic insulation.
Guest:What do you use the rainwater for?
Guest:You can use it for irrigation.
Guest:uh-huh to irrigate your your fruit trees and how much gardening do you how much do you eat from your garden a lot i a lot being like 25 30 percent right i go to the store a fair amount too yeah but uh you know i grow a lot i had a great i had two great uh crops of corn you know i had one in uh june june july then i had some uh august september do you can do you pickle do you
Marc:I don't I either give it away if I don't eat it fresh I like everybody to have it real fresh and I can so I if I've got extra tomatoes or extra something or extra corn I give it away but I but I eat most of it I don't give much away and and so in terms of like because you seem very uh you know open-hearted about this whole thing and not not proselytizing or or or or condescending about it I mean is the hope that uh you know that that people you know wake up to this still I mean in terms of
Marc:Do you think that there's a shift possible, that people will live like this in a large way?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think there's two big lies about the environment.
Guest:One is that there's no problem.
Guest:You don't have to do anything.
Guest:We're going to be just fine.
Guest:This is just a natural thing we're going through, and it'll be fine.
Guest:It won't harm us or any other species.
Guest:Don't worry.
Guest:That's, I think, a mistaken notion.
Guest:The other one is that it's so far gone, you can't do anything.
Guest:There's nothing we can do.
Guest:Forget about it.
Guest:Those two lies that the opposite end of the spectrum, I think, don't serve us.
Guest:I think there's much you can do.
Guest:And some people criticize me.
Guest:Ed's talking about light bulbs and thermostats, and we've got some serious problems with climate change.
Guest:That's like holding this handkerchief up to a massive head wound.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're correct, it is.
Guest:But sometimes you've got to hold a hanky to the massive head wound to make it to the emergency room.
Guest:And that's what we've got to do.
Guest:We've got to do that for now and get to the major surgery we have to do, which is getting off fossil fuels and getting to more sustainability.
Guest:But energy efficiency is the road to more sustainability and to more renewable energy.
Marc:And you think that the reason why there's apathy and cynicism...
Marc:is primarily because of the reinforcement of the fossil fuel paradigm and corporate interests through advertising, through misinformation, through everything.
Marc:Because you sort of wonder, like, myself, I'm going to do some work on my house, and I'm just me.
Marc:I don't use much, but I still use energy-efficient light bulbs.
Marc:Good for you.
Marc:But I haven't taken any real steps towards really thinking about that because there's part of me that thinks, like, what difference is it really going to make?
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what most people think.
Guest:People are resistant to change.
Guest:That's human nature.
Guest:So the fossil fuel industry doesn't have to work that hard to convince people to do nothing.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But the car thing is starting to change.
Marc:I mean, it's a valid option to get a hybrid or to get a plug.
Guest:yeah and some of the some of the hybrids have a plug like the chevy volt which is a great car which you can drive 40 miles on pure electric then you can drive to new york in it if you want on gasoline so it's a perfect one size fits all which one do you drive i have the rav4 outside it's a 2002 uh rav4 toyota that's a toyota pure electric that i still drive around how much does it eat up a lot of electric electricity
Guest:It would take a fair amount if I was just using the grid, but I plug it in on my home, which has a lot of solar, and I can buy power cheap at night, which you can sign up for if you have an electric car.
Guest:You can get what's called a time-of-use meter.
Guest:So you can get an 80-mile range charge.
Guest:That's how far the car will go, 86 miles.
Guest:You can get that amount of range for about $3, $3 worth of power.
Guest:So that's a pretty good price.
Guest:A gallon of gas is how much now?
Guest:Four something?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Three to four.
Guest:360, three something.
Guest:And you're going 80 some odd miles for maybe $3.
Guest:That's not a, you know, sometimes a little bit less.
Guest:That's a good deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you just plug it into the grid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you've invested as I have years ago in 1990, I invested in solar.
Guest:So I own that system.
Guest:I'm not making any payments on it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I own it.
Guest:And so that's a good way to charge my car and run my house.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And this stuff is really, you know, apart from anything else career-wise, the most important stuff.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's very important to me.
Guest:That's why I serve on so many boards.
Guest:I'm on Don Henley's Walden Woods Project Board, you know, the Thoreau Institute.
Guest:I'm on a lot of different boards and other stuff.
Guest:It's not just the environment.
Guest:I'm on the board of the Midnight Mission trying to help people downtown LA get their lives back together.
Guest:And, you know, I try to be of service.
Guest:I've been so lucky.
Guest:You want to be of service in every way you can.
Marc:Yeah, and I think that's one of the reasons why you're in such good mental and physical spirits.
Marc:You're very kind.
Marc:You too, buddy.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:I'm trying.
Marc:I don't eat well right now, but I'm not going to get into me.
Marc:Thanks for talking to me.
Marc:Thank you, Mark.
Thank you.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:How great was that conversation, man?
Marc:Didn't you want to go to those parties?
Marc:Didn't you want to hang out at the Manson Ranch for a minute just to see what was up?
Marc:The Spawn Movie Ranch?
Marc:Hey, Charlie.
Marc:So you're Charlie.
Marc:He didn't know.
Marc:He didn't know.
Marc:Ed Begley.
Marc:Real treat.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:If you forgot, this is WTF.
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Marc:As I said, if you upgrade to premium, very shortly you will be hearing some special behind-the-scenes, deep-cut WTF picks from myself and my producer, Brendan McDonald.
Marc:We'll be chatting as premium content
Marc:For you premium people, you're all premium to me, but you know what I'm saying.
Marc:You do a bunch of those, some other stuff coming in.
Marc:What else can I tell you?
Marc:You know what to do, man.
Marc:You know what to do.
Marc:Fucking high cholesterol, dude.
Marc:I ate oatmeal this morning.
Marc:I ate oatmeal this morning.
Marc:I exercised.
Marc:And I didn't.
Marc:And I'm not.
Marc:I'm going to go easy on the animal intake.
Marc:Go easy on the animal intake.
Marc:Boomer lives.