Episode 490 - Alan Bursky
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck sticks what the fucking ears what the fucksters what the fucking billies how are you hello it is i mark maron i host this show relax take it easy take a breath feel
Marc:sent to yourself if you're driving uh keep your eyes on the road stop texting if you're on the treadmill uh could you uh just pay attention don't slip on the treadmill that is an embarrassing moment especially if you if you don't hurt yourself that's embarrassing if you do hurt yourself it's really fucking embarrassing don't just slip on the treadmill uh all right okay get hold of yourself marin what's going on all right here's what's going on today
Marc:We have Alan Bursky on the show.
Marc:I will explain that later in a minute, and it needs to be explained.
Marc:Let me give you some updates.
Marc:Can I give you some updates about what's going on?
Marc:I will be at the Trippany House at the Steve Allen Theater tomorrow, Tuesday, April 22nd, and Tuesday, April 29th.
Marc:These are the last two.
Marc:I added them.
Marc:They are benefits for the theater.
Marc:Come and see me if you'd like.
Marc:I've got some stuff.
Marc:It's taking shape.
Marc:This Friday night at midnight, I will be at Moontower Comedy Festival at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas.
Marc:I will be in Austin.
Marc:Yeah, Friday and Saturday.
Marc:I don't think I'm doing anything Saturday.
Marc:I'll probably be eating meat.
Marc:Do I want to talk about Jesus real quick?
Marc:Yeah, I was just in Raleigh at good nights over the Jesus weekend, a good Friday and the day after good Friday.
Marc:I don't know what day that is.
Marc:The Saturday after, is there a name for that day?
Marc:And I had great shows.
Marc:I really enjoy Raleigh.
Marc:I enjoy the people down there.
Marc:A lot of people came out to see me.
Marc:I was surprised.
Marc:I didn't even realize it was Jesus weekend and still great crowds.
Marc:But I did feel the necessity to do some research on Jesus because I don't really know the story.
Marc:I didn't have Jesus.
Marc:Jesus has never been in my heart.
Marc:He's never been in my mind.
Marc:I I never had to use Jesus for anything.
Marc:I just Jesus was not part of my life because I'm a Jew.
Marc:I'm a Jew, but I was aware of Jesus.
Marc:I'd seen paintings of him.
Marc:I'd seen pictures of an idea of what he looked like or what was presented to me as the Jesus.
Marc:But whatever the case, I don't think I really and I saw the passion of the Christ.
Marc:I don't think I really knew the story of Good Friday.
Marc:And I just decided to read it and spend the day thinking about Jesus.
Marc:I probably spent more time thinking about Jesus on Good Friday than most Christians.
Marc:And I was in the South, and it had resonance for me.
Marc:And I learned.
Marc:I imagine most Christians know this story.
Marc:And I'm not even sure I know it.
Marc:And obviously, it might not be the real story.
Marc:This is the story that was passed down to us by the people that wrote the Bible.
Marc:You know, those fellas, the people that said, you know, let's lay out this mythology so people can hang their hopes on this idea of this guy, of this Jew.
Marc:As a comic, I was able to relate to Jesus a little bit.
Marc:Now, obviously, I'm not comparing myself to Jesus in any real sense.
Marc:You know, I'm not worthy of that to compare myself even to the idea of Jesus.
Marc:I...
Marc:You know, I'm not really willing to die for anyone's sins.
Marc:I have trashed a couple of relationships and part of my career to help people out.
Marc:Not even specifically to do that, but that's the way it went.
Marc:And I think that people might find some solace in the fact that, you know, I have fucked up a good deal and I persist.
Marc:And I think that's uplifting for some people.
Marc:Again, not comparing myself to Jesus, though we are both Jewish, but still not comparing myself to Jesus, though I do have a little beard going.
Marc:I am not comparing myself to Jesus, though my hair is growing out.
Marc:I am not comparing myself to Jesus.
Marc:I am on a cross right now.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:I got I got away with myself.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:Listen.
Marc:So here's how I can relate to Jesus.
Marc:Is that because I didn't realize I didn't really realize what happened.
Marc:And again, I'm just going by the biblical story, not not by the truth.
Marc:And I don't know that.
Marc:And I don't want to offend anybody.
Marc:I do not want to offend anybody with this.
Marc:Best I can understand it, Jesus was in a little bit of trouble.
Marc:That wasn't clear to me from what I read, but he was in trouble.
Marc:He's a troublemaker of some kind, a quiet troublemaker in this particular instance, because he wasn't talking much, I guess, when Pilate was judging him.
Marc:And Pilate said, all right, this guy's a troublemaker, but I don't think we have to kill him.
Marc:You know, I don't want to deal with it.
Marc:Send him to the Jews.
Marc:So they sent him over to the Jewish judges, Herod and his people, I think, is who it was, if I remember Jesus Christ Superstar correctly.
Marc:And Herod was like...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, he's a problem, but I don't have to kill him.
Marc:And then they send him back over to Pilot.
Marc:And at this point, Pilot's got an unruly crowd.
Marc:They're demanding entertainment.
Marc:And he's like, well, I don't know what to do.
Marc:Let's let the crowd decide.
Marc:And they're like, you know, kill Jesus.
Marc:And I'm paraphrasing.
Marc:But what this means to me is that if you just break it down, Jesus was killed by a shitty crowd.
Marc:And as a comic, believe me, I know what that feels like.
Marc:I do relate to that.
Marc:A shitty crowd can ruin your day.
Marc:And apparently a shitty crowd can give us the largest religion on the planet.
Marc:A shitty crowd.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:That's all I'm saying.
Marc:And by the way, Good Friday was not, it was probably the worst day Jesus ever had.
Marc:I don't know who changed the name up, or maybe they couldn't think of something better.
Marc:But, and again, I'm not condescending.
Marc:But, whew.
Marc:All right.
Marc:We lost a comic last week.
Marc:And I don't know how many of you know who Otto and George were.
Marc:Otto and George were a ventriloquist act.
Marc:I have to assume George is not moving on.
Marc:But I'm only being funny because he was funny.
Marc:But Otto Peterson and his dummy George were hilarious.
Marc:They were a very unique act.
Marc:They were a crass act.
Marc:They were filthy.
Marc:They pushed the envelope of certainly what a ventriloquist act really is.
Marc:And also comedy.
Marc:I think they were a great inspiration to some people.
Marc:Certainly the more filthy among us comedians.
Marc:And Otto passed away in his sleep last week.
Marc:And it's sad...
Marc:When comics die, certainly someone who's 53 years old sat when anyone dies.
Marc:But this was a truly unique act.
Marc:And I think really an act that that most people don't know.
Marc:And I reached out to Otto because I did a live WTF in Brooklyn back when I was doing more of those.
Marc:And I had booked this woman.
Marc:Heather Knight, who had designed a robot that that told jokes.
Marc:And in my mind, the only way to to to to counter that would be to book Otto and George on the same show to answer what I thought was going to be sort of a charade.
Marc:And I didn't like the whole idea about the joke robot.
Marc:But Heather was stunning.
Marc:And she turned out to be a great guest.
Marc:But but Otto and George also did the show.
Marc:And I remember it was really the first time I met Otto and I'd known about him for years.
Marc:And he was very sweet and he's very old school in a lot of ways.
Marc:It was just hilarious.
Marc:I could not stop laughing.
Marc:And he's definitely going to be missed.
Marc:But but more than more than that.
Marc:I want people to know about Otto and George.
Marc:And I want to share with you, if I could, this clip of Otto and George.
Marc:Because I really think it exemplifies at least the relationship between Otto and George.
Marc:And also just exactly what made them so great.
Marc:This is from episode 157 of WTF, which was live from the Bell House in Brooklyn in March 2011.
Marc:We're going to miss you, Otto.
Marc:And this was really a high point of...
Marc:of all the live shows that I did.
Marc:So please enjoy it if you have not heard it.
Guest:Yeah, people like that subtext that a ventriloquist is mentally ill, so I always try and feed that a little bit.
Guest:But you're not.
Guest:Well, I have mental issues, but I don't have the thing where I talk to the puppet offstage.
Guest:I've been spared that horror.
Guest:Now, when you were a kid, though, like, why this?
Guest:Well, he finds you interesting.
Guest:I fucking hate you.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Despise you.
Guest:Jeff Dunham made 37 million last year.
Guest:You're working in a fucking strip mall in fucking Scranton.
Guest:Fucking suck on the end of the shotgun, you fucking loser.
Guest:Be alone.
Guest:Don't be negative.
Guest:Does it piss you?
Guest:Did you ever think about making more puppets?
Guest:Next question.
Guest:All right now.
Guest:Oh, you mean... This guy's trying to squeeze me out of the app.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Yeah, get 17 more fucking puppets that could fail in shoulders for 50 fucking years.
Guest:I tried to get on a Jerry Lewis telethon.
Guest:They said, I couldn't get you on that show if you had the disease.
Marc:That was Otto and George.
Marc:I was beside myself with laughter there.
Marc:That was episode 157 of WTF, live from the Bell House in Brooklyn in March 2011.
Marc:Now, look, where are we at now?
Marc:Where are we at now?
Marc:Our guest today is Alan Bursky.
Marc:Again, many of you may not know who Otto and George is.
Marc:I'm sure even fewer of you know who Alan Bursky is.
Marc:Now, Alan Bursky in the world that I come from...
Marc:For years, I'd heard Alan Bursky's name.
Marc:He was infamous for years.
Marc:And this is going back a generation.
Marc:This is more important to the generation before me than it is even to my generation or perhaps to the people who are younger than me.
Marc:But for years, Alan Bursky was the name I had.
Marc:He was known to be the guy that gave Freddie Prinze the gun that Freddie Prinze
Marc:used to kill himself.
Marc:The rumor was it was Alan Bursky's gun that Freddie Prince used to commit suicide with.
Marc:That's all I knew about Alan Bursky.
Marc:And then his name would come up here and there, Bursky, Bursky.
Marc:I'm like, who the fuck is this Bursky?
Marc:He had this dark power over my mind.
Marc:I'd never seen him.
Marc:I didn't know who he was.
Marc:And then I ran into him at Cantor's Deli.
Marc:This guy, this slightly rounded guy with no hair, very pleasant gentleman.
Marc:He goes, hi, I'm Alan Bursky.
Marc:I'm like, you're Alan Bursky?
Marc:You're the dark wizard?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm like, we got to talk, man.
Marc:Because as it turns out, you know, Berski is, he's just another piece of the amazing dark puzzle that is the comedy store.
Marc:A lot of you guys, you know, you listen to my show.
Marc:You listen to...
Marc:uh to all these episodes and you know that i'm obsessed with the comedy store you know that uh that that it's important to me to put some sort of history together i those of you who are regular listeners or who are wtf uh you know you know deep cuts people you'll be able to recognize some of the names in this conversation there's a lot of callbacks it's actually what's weird is you
Marc:The only moment of friendly banter that I had with Gallagher on the infamous episode of this show where he stormed out of a hotel room, the only moment where we actually had a little bit of levity was when Alan Bursky came up.
Marc:And you know what?
Marc:I'm actually I'm going to play the clip for you.
Marc:This is from this is from the Gallagher episode of WTF.
Marc:This is Gallagher talking about the gun, which which Alan we which Alan will address in the interview.
Guest:Alan Bursky.
Guest:Mr. Bursky.
Guest:You don't remember Mr. Bursky?
Marc:Freddie Prinze's gun was rumored to belong to Alan Bursky.
Marc:That's how he fits into the mix.
Guest:Rumored?
Guest:Of course it was.
Guest:Why do you say that?
Guest:Because Alan liked guns, and he played around with the two of those guys who were friends, and sure, but you can get guns in L.A.
Guest:I'm not going to blame Alan.
Marc:Anyone can get a gun in this country.
Marc:Again, that was probably the most pleasant portion of the Gallagher episode.
Marc:Gallagher is episode 145.
Marc:It's one of the most listened to episodes of this show.
Marc:If you haven't heard it, you can get the app and upgrade to premium to hear it.
Marc:Also, if you have not heard the Alan Steven episode, it's a great companion to this episode.
Marc:That one is still up for free.
Marc:That's episode 475.
Marc:The other ones.
Marc:Here we go.
Marc:Let's put the Comedy Store puzzle together.
Marc:The other ones you should listen to if you have the premium upgrade.
Marc:Jimmy Schubert, episode 202.
Marc:Jimmy Walker, episode 327.
Marc:And Don Barris, episode 411.
Marc:All right, there's a lot of things in this episode that are callbacks to things that those guys talked about.
Marc:I think even a little bit of Richard Lewis, if I remember correctly.
Marc:And also, I hope some of you are correct.
Marc:If you don't know who Freddie Prince is, Freddie Prince was one of the youngest comedians to ever break.
Marc:He was in a sitcom called Chico and the Man.
Marc:He was a great comic.
Marc:It was interesting for in the Latino community.
Marc:I mean, many people, you know, know who Freddie Prince is.
Marc:He didn't live long.
Marc:He died very young at his own hand.
Marc:And you'll hear Burski talk about it.
Marc:But Freddie Prince and Alan Burski were two of the youngest guys to ever do The Tonight Show.
Marc:And we'll talk to Bursky about that.
Marc:But Bursky sees himself as a comedic historian.
Marc:Another real historian of comedy is, of course, my friend Cliff Nesteroff, even though he hates being called that.
Marc:I talked to Cliff.
Marc:That's a great episode, too.
Marc:If you got the premium app, listen to that one, too.
Marc:That was astounding.
Marc:And I'm going to be doing it.
Marc:more stuff with Cliff, hopefully.
Marc:But I had Cliff on primarily to talk about his event tomorrow night that's at the CineFamily here in Los Angeles.
Marc:It's an evening with George Schlatter who is, you know, who created Laugh-In.
Marc:He's, you know, he is the source of all things TV funny after a certain point.
Marc:But Cliff is hosting an event with him and I'm going to talk to Cliff about that now.
Music
Marc:cliff nesteroff is here the man who you might remember from his episode a comedy historian i've decided you have decided i hate the word historian i prefer a writer not comedy writer but a writer who specializes in writing about comedy i will accept historian but in what way do you like to write about comedy let's just get to the the semantic root of this do you how do you write about comedy cliff
Guest:Well, I like to discover things and information that people haven't written about previously.
Guest:From the past, Cliff?
Guest:Nobody loves a historian, Marc Maron.
Guest:Nobody loves a historian.
Guest:People talk about their favorite musicians, their favorite writers, their favorite comedians.
Guest:Nobody talks about their favorite historians.
Marc:Well, the truth of the matter is I am a big supporter of your work.
Marc:I like the way you write about comedy.
Marc:People who have not read your work or have not listened to our hour-long episode of WTF, where do they go?
Marc:Where do you send them?
Guest:You can read my stuff on the WFMU website, their website.
Guest:Beware of the blog.
Guest:You can follow me on Twitter and find a link to all those essays about the history of show business and comedy at classicshowbiz.com.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On Twitter.
Guest:And you like to scour the dark and sordid corners of the show business experience.
Guest:Certainly.
Guest:Well, I think naturally speaking, the stuff that's most interesting in history and simply if you're constructing a story, it's got to have action.
Guest:It's nice to have some sex.
Guest:It's nice to have some violence.
Guest:It's nice to have some drugs.
Guest:And I don't sell myself as like a Hollywood Babylon exploitive writer, but let's face the facts.
Guest:Drugs are interesting.
Guest:Violence is interesting.
Guest:Sex, struggle, failure, and succeeding.
Guest:That narrative I find fascinating, and I think other people do too.
Marc:I like the way that you, a Canadian who rides his bike around, is now fully embracing and integrating himself into the show business realm.
Guest:I fucking love show business.
Guest:I love Hollywood.
Guest:You do, man.
Guest:I love Los Angeles.
Guest:I make no apologies for embracing Los Angeles.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:You don't like it for the right reasons, necessarily.
Guest:Well, what's the right reason to like it?
Marc:Because you believe in the beauty of the business of show.
Marc:You like it because it's like just layers and layers of sordid stuff has gone on.
Guest:Well, I like the success and the failure.
Guest:I like the yahoos and the talented people.
Guest:And I believe that there's room for both.
Guest:And as we both know from observing show business, at the top of show business, there are incredibly talented people and completely untalented people.
Guest:But there's a spot for both.
Guest:And on the bottom is the same thing as well.
Guest:I love all of that.
Guest:I just eat it up.
Marc:So what is this?
Guest:You're involved with the CineFamily Theater?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So basically what we're doing now at the CineFamily at Fairfax and Melrose, which is a great little theater, is I'm starting to present shows there that are kind of live versions of what I've been writing about based on the history of comedy.
Guest:Some involves the mob, some doesn't.
Guest:We have a show that by the time this airs will be over with Mel Brooks.
Guest:It's our tribute to Sid Caesar.
Guest:We're presenting a 35 millimeter screening of 10 from your show of shows, which is a 1972 theatrical release of 10 of the best sketches from the early 50s NBC show that starred Sid Caesar that Mel Brooks wrote on that Carl Reiner worked for that Neil Simon wrote on.
Guest:And coming up on April the 22nd, a Tuesday, I'm presenting an evening with George Schlatter, a fellow who I've talked about before on your show.
Guest:And if you talk to any guy from the 60s or 70s on your show, generally George Schlatter's name came up.
Marc:All the way into like he was part of something I did in probably the 80s.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Producing some stand up showcasing.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:It was a boom era 80s show.
Guest:Just another one of those millions of boom era.
Guest:He was part of it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Sort of a heavy set guy with a beard.
Marc:But you've built this relationship.
Guest:I mean, he created Laugh-In.
Guest:He created Laugh-In.
Guest:The thing about George is he harkens back to another time, not just another time of comedy, but another time of approaching show business.
Guest:He is an incredibly affable, personal guy.
Guest:He's one of those guys who probably had a lot of verbal contracts with people that lasted their whole careers.
Guest:But in the 50s, he started as a bouncer and then entertainment booker at Ciro's Nightclub on the Sunset Strip.
Guest:Ciro's became the comedy store.
Guest:Became the comedy store.
Marc:You and I, we're going to do a whole episode on Ciro's.
Guest:Yes, we must do that.
Guest:So George was there in the 50s, and that's how he met everybody in show business, because it was a key nightclub.
Guest:The Will Maston Trio with Sammy Davis Jr., you know...
Guest:Any big star in the early 50s, comedian or otherwise, went through Ciro's.
Guest:George got to know them all.
Guest:Because of that, got hired at NBC as a talent booker for the Dinah Shore show, which was a big variety show at the time, and went on to do a lot of interesting things.
Guest:The Steve Lawrence show, the Judy Garland show he produced, he used to drink with Judy Garland.
Guest:She'd phone him at three in the morning crying.
Guest:He'd have to go over there.
Guest:And drink Lowenbrow with her.
Guest:Had to be Lowenbrow.
Guest:Had to be Lowenbrow.
Guest:George got fired after six episodes of producing the Judy Garland show.
Guest:The musical director was Mel Torme.
Guest:The director was Norman Jewison.
Guest:Just had this storied career.
Guest:Created Laugh-In.
Guest:Gave Lily Tomlin her big break.
Guest:Gave Goldie Hawn her big break.
Guest:Hired Lorne Michaels when he was nobody in 1969 to write on Laugh-In.
Guest:Gave Andy Kaufman his first regular series pre-taxi.
Guest:Gave Robin Williams his first shot pre-Mork and Mindy.
Guest:Gave Roseanne her first TV shot pre-Carson.
Guest:Just he's had this incredible multi-decade career.
Guest:And it's had this eye for talent all throughout it.
Guest:And if you go to his office on Beverly Boulevard, it's this incredibly old school Hollywood office with a framed photo of him with everybody imaginable from John Wayne to Betty Davis to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan.
Guest:You know, there's a photo of him on the wall with Barbara Bush giving him the bunny ears behind him.
Guest:And you're like, well, what?
Guest:what how did that happen what is that yeah all you did was create laughing how did you create this massive network cozy up to so many republicans yeah bizarre bizarre but everybody loves george and he's a uh he's a he's a real uh left-wing liberal but he also loves to be in the annals of power and he is and he always has been and he's loved by everybody in the business even though he can be a cutthroat businessman
Guest:So how do you structure this evening?
Guest:April 22nd at the CineFamily.
Guest:It's an evening with George Schlatter.
Guest:I'll be interviewing him on stage and we've called some incredible clips that haven't been seen in over 45 years from his archive.
Guest:He's got a copy of everything he ever did at his office.
Guest:Things that have never rerun since.
Guest:So I'm going to be interviewing him on stage.
Guest:It's much in the same format.
Guest:of some of the interviews I've published online with guys like Jack Carter and Shecky Green, where it's fairly detailed and we go into the crannies of things that typical interviews do not address or ask them about.
Guest:So I'll be talking to George about his relationship at Ciro's and with Mickey Cohen, the little tough guy mobster in Los Angeles at the time.
Guest:George used to have to drop off hat boxes at his haberdashery full of money and then come back with these other boxes full of something or other.
Guest:We'll be talking about that.
Guest:He was there the night that Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:returned after he lost his eye.
Guest:Harry Kahn, the head of Columbia Pictures, had sicked the mob on Sammy Davis because he was romancing his white, blonde, blue-eyed movie star, Kim Novak.
Guest:And he said, I don't want, you know, I won't use the word, but I don't want a black guy dating my starlet when Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:didn't break up with him.
Guest:With her, Harry Kahn sent the mob after Sammy.
Guest:Sammy lost an eye in a car accident.
Guest:George was there the night Sammy came back to Ciro's, the big triumphant return to showbiz.
Marc:Wait, was the eye lost because of the mob?
Guest:Yes, he was ran off the road.
Guest:They tried to kill him in a car accident.
Guest:This is a storied legend.
Guest:And I don't know what it was that he punctured his eyeball on in the...
Guest:in the car george tells this story better than i do and he will tell it on stage on the 22nd but george was a key figure at all these moments in showbiz history so we're going to be talking about that and then throwing to some very rare clips we have an extremely rare clip from the steve lawrence show in 1964 something called the uh the great gleason express
Guest:When Jackie Gleason moved his show from New York to Miami, he took a train and threw a 48-hour party on the train with him and Steve Lawrence and Frank Fontaine, Crazy Guggenheim.
Guest:And he hired Albert Maisels, the great cinema verite filmmaker.
Guest:From Gimme Shelter.
Guest:from gimme shelter and salesman and gray gardens yeah when he was nobody another talent that george discovered yeah hired him to film the whole train ride with jackie gleason this great black and white cinema verite gleason getting increasingly drunker and drunker over the course of the trip uh so we're showing that and that hasn't been seen since 1964 the whole thing or just clips it's about uh 10 minutes long that uh segment in its entirety
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And by Albert Maisel's, it's fantastic.
Guest:You got to see.
Marc:But is that all the footage that was edited together was just 10 minutes as a segment on the show?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I asked George about that, like what happened to the rest of the outtakes.
Guest:And he said, well, in those days for TV, they just threw everything out.
Guest:It wasn't considered art back then, even though it was Albert Maisel's.
Guest:This is the pre-success.
Guest:fuck art how about just a historical archive you would think but really everything it's amazing that george has anything at all because most stuff from that era did either get burned for shelf space or was uh recorded over or shot live sure yeah yeah and uh kinescopes were of a poor quality sometimes they caught on fire in storage you know there's any number of stories why this stuff uh doesn't really exist wild man
Guest:One of the most insane things that we're showing is actually Red Fox's primetime debut from 1968, a show called Soul.
Guest:It was a spinoff of Laugh-In.
Guest:George was a big groundbreaker in civil rights.
Guest:He wanted to do an all-black version of Laugh-In, and he did.
Guest:It only aired once.
Guest:It stars Slappy White, Red Fox, George Kirby, Heinz, Heinz & Dad, which was Gregory Heinz before he was famous, Lou Rawls when he was still a soul singer before he got into jazz, and...
Guest:And Martha Reeves and the Vandellas.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So we're going to be showing footage of that, and it is really, really cool.
Guest:It's from 1968.
Guest:Well, this sounds amazing.
Guest:So it's April 22nd?
Guest:April 22nd at 7.30 p.m.
Guest:at the CineFamily.
Guest:You can go on their website, cinefamily.org, and find that listing April 22nd.
Guest:I'm also tweeting about it regularly these days.
Guest:But it's going to be a great show.
Guest:There's going to be some surprise guests in the audience from George's career.
Guest:It's going to be a lot of fun.
Guest:All right.
Guest:So can I get in?
Guest:You can come if you want.
Guest:Yes, by all means, please do.
Guest:And these are going to be a regular thing at the CineFamily from now on.
Guest:Currently, we're planning a 100th birthday party for the Professor Erwin Corey, who turns 100 years old on June 29th.
Guest:If he's alive still, June 29th, we'll be doing that show.
Guest:Have you been in touch with him?
Guest:Yes, he desperately wants us to put this on and desperately wants to come.
Guest:He's a little bit weary of flying because he's not in Hollywood.
Guest:He's in New York.
Guest:But I said, you know, what better way to die than en route to your 100th birthday, you know?
Guest:How did he take that?
Guest:He was totally game.
Guest:And he's, you know, he was one of the first guys to do marijuana-related material, which, you know, pot humor is a hack thing now.
Guest:But in 1947...
Guest:when another professor, the professor Irwin Corey, did it on stage.
Guest:It was fresh, it was new, and he's still a chronic pot smoker.
Guest:So we want to bring him out here, get him his medical marijuana license in California, and get him to light a joint off one of the hundred candles on his birthday cake.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:Well, thank you, Professor Nesterov.
Marc:We'll talk again soon.
Marc:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:So that was Cliff Nesteroff.
Marc:Go to that.
Marc:You can go to www.cinefamily.org and find the event information if you want to talk to George Schwatter.
Marc:I should actually have George Schwatter on this show.
Marc:It's Burski time.
Marc:It's time for Burski.
Marc:Okay?
Marc:It's time for Burski.
Marc:This was a strange honor for me because he's one of the lost voices of the dark history of the Comedy Store.
Marc:Please enjoy my conversation with Alan Burski.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Marc:i probably was on the tonight show when you were in high school i know i was wondering about that your first tonight show was 1970 what three april but you were a kid you were in high school i was at first year of valley college uh-huh actually move that mic in so you don't get too far away from it is this on yeah oh just didn't i don't see any lights it's a garage i know but so 18 years old you do the tonight show
Guest:yeah um yeah i did i started out you know as a kid like a lot of kids you know doing magic you know i was always here where'd you grow up though um brooklyn is far rock away bensonhurst borough park far rock away but you're out here at 18 how the hell that happened my parents moved out here they did when i was like just about 16. it's a long long story my dad was just one of these guys yeah you know what kind of guy
Guest:You know, my dad was a cross between Leo Gorsi, you know, a Slip Mahoney character and Archie Bunker kind of guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He actually did time for truck hijacking.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Was he mob affiliated?
Marc:Kind of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody in Brooklyn growing up in that area had relatives who married into them.
Marc:But he was hijacking trucks on his own volition?
Yeah.
Marc:With people, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:How much time do you do?
Guest:16 months, Rikers Island.
Guest:When you were what, 15?
Guest:No, when I was much younger, 11.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So he's working on the angles, your father.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And his parents both died at 49 years of age of heart disease.
Guest:Anyway, so he has a heart attack at 40.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:1972, something like that.
Guest:And he just really didn't want to work again.
Guest:He was a truck driver and he was also a caterer, a good deli man.
Guest:My uncle, well, my father's first cousin, they would grow up because my dad was orphaned at 15.
Guest:He lived with his cousin Murray, first cousin, Uncle Murray.
Guest:And they were, you know, my father's side of the family were Jewish delicatessen slash mobsters.
Guest:And my mother's side, Greek, all diners.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The restaurant family, though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So anyway, the point is, so he always worked after the heart attack off the books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, delis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nate and Al's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Cantor's.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:And was he a meat guy?
Guest:Yeah, counter guy.
Guest:Yeah, counter guy.
Guest:My dad, you know, Thanksgiving, you think he died.
Guest:He died in 1987, 56 years old of lung cancer, five heart attacks, you know, 400 cholesterol and freaking lung disease killed him.
Guest:But the thing was, I was going to say is, so we moved out here when I was like 16.
Guest:um and i was you know going around open mic nights you know doing magic well no i didn't do magic then i i grew up doing magic and from that i worked after schools and you know holidays at lieutenant's one of the biggest magic stores in the world at that time where was that 42nd and 6th oh yeah and uh in this building it's long torn down that whole area's changed and um
Guest:You know, after school, people would say, oh, that's how Johnny Carson started.
Guest:And, you know, I was like 14, 15.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go, who the hell is Johnny Carson, you know?
Guest:So I would stay up late at night and watch, you know, The Tonight Show when I can.
Guest:And started to do a talking magic act.
Guest:I did one of those acts where, here I'll show you, my first 8x10, 8x14, Baffling Bursky.
Yeah.
Guest:anyway that was that was your stage name yeah baffling bersky and and 14 yeah and you know people say were you the class clown i go no i was a class wit class clown was the idiot who stuck pencils up his nose right he's probably working walmart today you know i always had or maybe you know i always had a smart remark you know yeah you uh you're clever clever so you know i was pretty good and you know
Marc:Well, my feet.
Marc:Where are you from?
Marc:I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:Family's from Jersey, though.
Marc:God, you seem like such a New Yorker.
Marc:Well, yeah, I spent a good part of my life in the East Coast.
Guest:Wow, Albuquerque.
Guest:Well, they're from Jersey.
Guest:I know, but it just sounds so ... I've never ... I know.
Marc:It just seems so ... Some renegade clan of Jews moved to Albuquerque.
Guest:They just didn't make it to LA.
Guest:Okay, but the point is ... You know what a hitter is?
Guest:hitters are guys you know the school kind of bullies tough guys yeah hitters they'd stand on street corners right and you know if you walk by them they go what do you say about my mother you know and we had starting shit yeah we had one guy ronnie at your area and if i would see him you know central avenue far rock away on in front of the pizza place i would cross the street and walk around them
Guest:Well, one day I'm walking up the street, you know, must have been 12, and I didn't notice the guy.
Guest:He was like, you know, my our age, but a bigger kid, you know, and a tough kid.
Guest:And I didn't notice him.
Guest:And as I walked by, I hear, what did you say about my mother?
Guest:And I turn around, it's Ron H. Rivera.
Guest:I said, wonderful woman raised three lovely sons.
Guest:And he just kept walking.
Guest:He started laughing, and I kept walking.
Guest:And that was the beginning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you know just in the moment where you know to not get your ass kicked yeah and i did save me from an ass kicking yeah you know one time i'll tell you the ass kicking i did get my mother said to me when are you gonna start washing behind your ears and i said when are you gonna start cleaning behind the refrigerator and she gave me a smack in the head yeah so there you go you knew both sides of comedy so i start doing a magic act i do a talking magic act and i start collecting comedy albums what's it what do you mean talking magic act versus what
Guest:Versus, you know, like, you know, the guys who come on, you know, the classic one, like Channing Pollock.
Guest:Lance Burton started with, you know, the music would play and he would just produce cards or birds.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you're doing shtick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm doing, I'm doing a, they call a manipulative act, meaning sleight of hand card fans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, the cards keep coming, billiard balls.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that kind of act.
Guest:From that, I start doing tricks, but talking in between them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm actually kind of funny.
Yeah.
Guest:I started going to open mic night.
Guest:Where?
Guest:And my parents would take me to the village, the champagne gallery, the African room Jimmy Walker started there.
Guest:I put together a little bit of London Lee, a little bit of David Brenner.
Guest:I had the one Gabe Kaplan joke, which everyone told me wasn't his joke anyway.
Guest:And that's why Gabe hated me for stealing a joke.
Guest:And I get a reputation as a kid for being a thief.
Guest:I'm 15, 16 doing open mic nights, you know?
Guest:David Brenner, I was 16, he was 35, threatened to kick my ass because I took material of his at open mic night.
Marc:And he saw you at open mic night or what?
Guest:A friend of his saw me at open mic night and told him.
Marc:So it was as big a deal then as it is now.
Guest:It was, you know, then you would have gotten your much bigger deal.
Guest:Then you would have gotten your ass kicked.
Guest:You know, you would have seriously, you know, somebody would have caught you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and, you know, you know, it would have been big bad news.
Guest:But in those days, I heard, you know, Gabe Kaplan.
Guest:They said that Robert Klein grabbed him and threw him out of the improv.
Guest:I remember in the late 80s, early 90s, Robin Williams was biggest star in the world.
Guest:If he was in Catch a Rising Star, guys wouldn't go on.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I heard that, too.
Guest:um uh you know and people you know you know but back you know in my day sounds so old you know you you just wouldn't do it but i got a reputation as i mean i never took someone's act or or any material and went on television and did it or what you know went and got paid you were a kid trying to figure it out yeah so anyway yeah so you're 16 17 you come out here we come out of here miker yeah and you're already a thief
Guest:Yeah, and on those days, you went to the little club where Joan Rivers used to break in material, where she moved up.
Guest:Where was that?
Guest:Cannon Drive, and it was below Santa Monica Boulevard.
Marc:So this is 72?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:71.
Marc:71.
Guest:Moved out here February 71.
Marc:So there's no comedy clubs yet?
Guest:No.
Guest:Anyway...
Guest:The comedy store opened April 10th, 73.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm walking up.
Guest:There was a place on Riverside in Lancashire.
Guest:It's now a jewelry store, a tire place.
Guest:Art Crown's Comedy Showcase.
Guest:And he didn't have a liquor license.
Guest:He just sold, you know, coffee and juice and sort of.
Guest:And Mitzi sure said I was the first one to always put just straight comedians on, you know.
Guest:I said, no, Art Crown.
Guest:She goes, you're crazy.
Guest:But she doesn't know.
Guest:Art Crown.
Guest:So all these guys like Mike Shai became Michael Sherman.
Guest:Murray Langston and Freeman King, the unknown comic.
Guest:They were a comedy team.
Guest:George Miller.
Guest:In those days, you know, they had singers there too.
Guest:But I used to go to the Ice House.
Guest:You would see Lily Tomlin in the height of laughing.
Guest:Smothers Brothers, Pat Paulson, Gabe Kaplan worked there a lot.
Guest:Craig T. Nelson did stand up.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, I used to see him there.
Guest:Is he funny?
Guest:Yeah, he did some great stuff.
Marc:Yeah, well, I could see that.
Marc:So there was no real showcase room that was lower key than a showroom.
Guest:There were no showcase rooms where the improv is was the Ash Grove.
Guest:They were called hootenanny nights.
Guest:Talent nights were called hootenannies in those days.
Guest:And there were a lot of those kinds of rooms.
Guest:And you would just try and get on.
Guest:So were they music clubs or anything like that?
Guest:They did music, singers and stuff.
Guest:So it was a variety show kind of.
Yeah.
Guest:I was telling Richard Scheidner the other night, we just were at the Laugh Factory in Las Vegas, when the improv had all these singers.
Guest:And I just called Jay Leno and I spoke to him yesterday.
Guest:And Jay didn't remember any of them, but Adele Blue, he used to date her in like 75.
Guest:There was Rick Moses, Lisa Mordente, the daughter of Rita Moreno and Tony Mordente, Lisa Mordente, Rick Moses, Bruce Scott.
Guest:Marilyn Rubin.
Guest:I went on naming, you know, and Leno says to me, I said, how do you remember these names?
Guest:I said, I don't know.
Guest:But Rick Moses was doing Merv Griffin shows.
Guest:He was getting very hot.
Guest:So you talk to Leno often?
Guest:Yeah, a couple times a month.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Jay used to eat at my house almost every day, you know.
Guest:So what I was saying was, anyway, comedy store opens.
Guest:I'm walking up the street, April 10th, 73.
Guest:I'm walking up the boulevard, Sunset, with Abe Carno about...
Guest:7.30 at night.
Guest:So there are these guys hanging out in front who I knew from Art Crowns or Jimmy Martinez.
Guest:He was there the first night the comedy store opened.
Guest:Jonathan Moore, British comic who played the bagpipes when he first went on.
Guest:All these guys are there.
Guest:I said, what's this?
Guest:He goes, it's this comedy store.
Guest:And I tried to go in and they wouldn't let me in.
Guest:I was 17.
Guest:That'd be 21.
Guest:So Sammy and Rudy
Marc:Sammy Shore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let me go on.
Guest:It's 5 to 2 in the morning.
Guest:I could go in and then walk out.
Guest:A month or two later, I get a job parking cars there just for tips.
Marc:In the back what?
Guest:Right on the side there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Long story short.
Guest:A year to the day later, I did my first Tonight Show.
Guest:Drove everybody crazy.
Guest:They were ripping my pictures down, you know, comics.
Guest:The comics.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you were a novelty in a way.
Guest:Well, three weeks literally after my 18th birthday, Byron Allen says he's the youngest.
Guest:He says he's 17 now.
Guest:He's full of shit.
Guest:Byron was 18, but for six months longer than his birthday than I was.
Guest:Then comes Freddie Prinze Sr.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, that's basically how it started.
Guest:How'd you get that?
Guest:Get what?
Guest:The Tonight Show.
Guest:I started just getting better and better and better at the comedy store.
Guest:You know, I go from five to two in the morning.
Guest:This is before Mitzi.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sammy's show was the owner and runs it.
Guest:Mitzi would come in and run it when Sammy or Rudy were out of town.
Marc:But the idea was that Sammy wanted a clubhouse almost for his old buddies.
Guest:Well, not really.
Guest:Just Sammy was working the horn a lot and wanted a showcase more or less for himself.
Marc:Are you still friends with him?
Guest:I saw him last year in Vegas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Still looks good.
Guest:Still, you know, 84, 85.
Guest:You know, very, very active.
Guest:Very, you know, lucid.
Guest:Very, you know, I mean, I hope you and I should be in that shape at 84.
Guest:So...
Guest:You know, in those days, a manager came in, Jerry Cutler signed me.
Guest:People started coming in and hearing about me.
Guest:You know, in those days, you know, I don't know, you look back, it's nostalgia or something.
Guest:You know, Mitzi chased the industry out of there.
Guest:But in those days, it was, you know, by 74, 75, when Mitzi first took over.
Guest:But when Jimmy Walker was at the height of good times, and then Freddie Prinze and Chico and the Man and Gabe Kaplan, Welcome Back, Cotter, Steve Martin was always there, Richard Pryor.
Guest:There were lines around the block.
Guest:Clint Eastwood was there, you know.
Marc:Let's get to there.
Marc:So Sammy has this place.
Marc:So now you're there.
Marc:You're actually almost grandfathered in.
Marc:Kind of, yeah.
Marc:So Mitzi comes in.
Guest:What happens?
Guest:What was the story?
Guest:Well, I got on the Tonight Show before Mitzi came in.
Guest:Sammy, the place wasn't real.
Guest:Were you living with Freddie Prinze yet?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Freddie Prinze moved in with me December 73.
Guest:So who were you living with?
Guest:My folks, my parents.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:when you did the tonight show yeah what's so funny what isn't funny alan i don't know but that's cute i'm not laughing for the wrong reason i know that but it just seems like you know i tell this to people and people look i wore the pin today because i met chaplin people go i spent time with woody allen i met charlie chaplin um so people go you're a freak i go what are you 90 i said no i
Guest:Anyway, the point is, comedy store things kind of level off, and Sammy needed to make money, so he goes back on the road.
Guest:So was he making money at the store?
Guest:No, they ran it, him and Rudy.
Guest:So he lets Mitzi take it over.
Guest:Now, Mitzi, in those days, there was no lineup.
Marc:But was it this was with the, she took it over when he was, what, this was before the divorce?
Marc:Before the divorce.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:so mitchy you know you if anybody important came in like george slaughter in those days or yeah sammy would go on and rudy would go on with uh you know craig t nelson and barry levinson was there all the time the director pat mccormick would go on jackie gale would go on you never knew when you would go on you would hang out there all night they just wing it yeah and if and if you weren't one of the better ones or on tv or one of the names you know red fox would come in or you know really yeah what was that like
Marc:Red Fox?
Marc:Watching these guys.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Jackie Gale was probably one of the greatest nightclub comics ever.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You didn't ever see him, did you?
Marc:I only saw him in Broadway, Danny Rose.
Marc:And I think I did a little research, but he was a club comic.
Marc:There's no records or anything.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But he's one of those guys who made a good living but didn't become a star.
Guest:Like Mitchell Walters?
Guest:I grew up with Mitchell in Brooklyn.
Guest:Mitchell.
Guest:I bought a lot of material from Mitchell Walters that he has sold to 10 other guys.
Guest:And he claims he sold me the car bit and he goes, I only sold it to you to use on ships.
Guest:I said, Mitchell, you sold it to me and you sent me a contract and I have it and I got to show it to him.
Guest:The car bit?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What's the car bit?
Guest:You name a car and Fiat, fix it again, Tony.
Guest:Kia, kills innocent Americans.
Guest:Jaguar, Jews and Germans usually argue retail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every car and the end bit is Corvette, small penis.
Yeah.
Guest:You know, Mitchell's actually a good, just some really good sleight of hand card tricks.
Guest:I mean, he did magic.
Guest:That's how I knew him.
Marc:I only knew him briefly.
Marc:By the time I got to the store in 87, I was out of my mind on Coke.
Marc:And Mitchell was in and out in terms of like he was on the road all the time.
Marc:But he was a character.
Marc:And I always heard stories about Coke and gambling.
Guest:Well, I'll tell you two stories about Mitchell.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then I'll deny one because he'll want the money back.
Guest:I'll say I made it up.
Guest:But Mitchell showed me a card trick.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We lived in an apartment building on the corner of Selma Avenue and Laurel Avenue up the block from the Laugh Factory.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Greenblats.
Guest:My dad managed a building.
Guest:They used to call it Fort Burski.
Guest:In the building, Mike Binder lived, Alan Stevens, Roseanne Arquette when she started breaking in as an actress.
Guest:My dad managed a building.
Guest:My mother and father lived in one unit.
Guest:I lived in another.
Guest:They took over a unit that Dave Madden lived in the whole time he worked on the Partridge film and everything.
Guest:He must have saved a fortune.
Guest:The manager?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On the Partridge family?
Guest:Yeah, I played his nephew, Alan King.
Guest:I'll show you a picture of me on the Partridge family.
Guest:They showed me on the Tonight Show, wrote me in for the last season.
Guest:Anyway, Mitchell, my father's parents' balcony in their apartment overlooked a swimming pool.
Guest:Mitchell has me pick a card, shuffles it back in the deck, walks out to the balcony, throws the deck in the air, lands in the swimming pool.
Guest:All the cards are floating face down.
Guest:One card is floating face up.
Guest:Stop it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I still knew magic.
Guest:I'm always at the Magic Castle.
Guest:You know, I still collected magic books and everything.
Guest:I'd never seen this before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Couldn't freaking believe it.
Guest:How the hell?
Guest:I mean, to this day, and I've seen some great stuff.
Guest:This was one of...
Guest:One day, I walk in the magic shop, Hollywood Magic on Hollywood Boulevard.
Guest:They just closed.
Guest:And the guy shows me a trick.
Guest:Not that trick, but something like it with a trick deck.
Guest:And I went, son of a bitch, Mitchell.
Guest:That's how you did it.
Guest:Two-sided card?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He forces the card on me, and I wasn't paying attention.
Guest:Let's say it's the nine of hearts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Every card in the deck has double backs on them, right?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And the nine of hearts has a double nine of hearts on either way.
Guest:That's how he did it.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Oh, there you go.
Guest:As we walked across the living room to the balcony, he put the deck in his pocket, took out the fake deck, and threw that in the air.
Marc:Right.
Right.
Marc:So he got you.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, for years, I couldn't figure this out.
Guest:It's the best trick you ever saw.
Guest:I mean, and I've seen some great tricks.
Marc:What's the other Mitchell Walter story?
Guest:Mitchell, I've gone broke.
Guest:This is like the third time in my life.
Guest:I've lost three fortunes in my life.
Marc:How?
Guest:Spending it.
Guest:How?
Guest:On what?
How?
Guest:I have maybe three dozen ties in my closet that were $250 a tie, brony ties.
Guest:No gambling, no drugs?
Guest:Drugs, yeah.
Guest:The ATM was giving me my money already rolled up.
Guest:good one you know you know and those you know you know people my doorbell would ring at four in the morning and there'd be a playmate there yeah you know i was trying to collect you know a year of playmates not that one year but i've got an april i've got a february you know all right huh and then they go hey you want to party let's do coke you know you know late 70s early 80s again in the early 90s
Guest:You know, I mean, I've gone broke belly up again in 93.
Guest:Mitchell had won a lawsuit like about $300,000.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mitchell says to me, I'm in Port Jefferson.
Guest:You know, I was staying when I went back broke in 86 the first time.
Yeah.
Guest:My father was dying.
Guest:My grandmother was dying.
Guest:My grandfather was dying.
Guest:My mother's taking care of all these people.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Poor Jeff at the house.
Guest:I'm living there making $50 a month from, you know, on my ass.
Guest:I'm contemplating suicide.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:So I lived there.
Guest:That's when I met you.
Guest:And I start working regularly.
Guest:And I start doing well with Lane Boosler, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Anyway, Mitchell says to me, 93, busted again.
Guest:Made a lot of money and spent it in two years.
Marc:How'd you make the money?
Marc:Just touring?
Marc:Lane Boosler touring, cruise ships.
Guest:Opening for a lane, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, cruise ships.
Guest:And we were making 100 grand a year.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So anyway.
Guest:Mitchell says to me, and I had this big, beautiful Pontiac sedan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As I said, beautiful car.
Guest:Mitchell says to me, come from Port Jefferson to Woodmere, one end of Long Island to the other end of Long Island.
Guest:Let's go in the city.
Guest:I'm going to go to OTB.
Guest:I'll buy you lunch.
Guest:We'll get some packages, Coke.
Guest:Anyway, I pick Mitchell up.
Yeah.
Guest:His idea of going to lunch was the Korean grocery store next to OTB.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's pulling money out of the ATM and he's showing me the balance, $281,000.
Guest:And he's got it set up.
Guest:He could take as much money as he wanted.
Guest:He's making $1,000 bets.
Guest:My lunch is the Korean grocery store.
Guest:I go to the Hotel Chelsea.
Guest:There was a dope dealer there we knew, Ray.
Guest:Poor guy died of asthma.
Guest:I go pick up packages, you know, Coke.
Guest:For Mitchell and I. I'm fighting with Mitchell.
Guest:I had the last $100 in my name.
Guest:I'm fighting with Mitchell to give me my money back for the Coke.
Guest:He promised a treat.
Guest:When we left...
Guest:He wants to take the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
Guest:I want to go to 59th Street Bridge, the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
Guest:I'm fighting with him for the $3.50 toll.
Guest:We're going to eat.
Guest:I had to argue with him for McDonald's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm furious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This son of a bitch.
Guest:You know, this is like November somewhere around 93, something like that.
Guest:And I'm going to kill him.
Guest:You know, I'm just furious.
Guest:I get home at midnight and I'm a neat freak.
Guest:And I clean out the car, all this garbage, you know, McDonald's and shit.
Guest:One o'clock in the morning, I get a phone call.
Guest:Mitchell goes, I left a little piece of paper in your car.
Guest:I said, what?
Guest:He goes, it looks like a little receipt.
Guest:It literally looks like a little, you know, one of those little, you know, cash register, you know, two inches by one inch, you know, receipt like that.
Guest:It's a OTB ticket.
Guest:I won.
Guest:I said, there's nothing in my car.
Guest:Go, go.
Guest:I go look in the car and I cleaned it out.
Guest:Mitchell, there's nothing in there.
Guest:Son of a bitch, he's furious.
Guest:That afternoon, I take my mother.
Guest:Mother doesn't drive.
Guest:I take it to the market.
Guest:And all of a sudden, in the corner of the seat, there's this little white piece of paper.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I open it up.
Guest:OTB.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go to OTB.
Guest:900 bucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go, fuck Mitchell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You got it back.
Guest:So someone, Mike Reynolds said to me, if you tell him that, he'll want his money.
Guest:I said, I know, but I'll tell the story.
Guest:And then when Mitchell comes to me, I'll say, Mitchell, I made it up.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So let's go back.
Marc:So Mitzi's running the store when Sammy's gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what Mitzi, again, Mitzi has no ego about performing.
Guest:So she starts making a lineup.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So now you know when you're going on.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if you were a Freddie Prinze or a star, you got better times.
Guest:If you were getting better, you got better times.
Guest:If you were sleeping with her and you were the worst comic in the world, you got better times.
Marc:Who were those guys?
Guest:Danny Stone.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Back then?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In 1983, the main room lineup would be Sam Kinison, not many particular order, Sam Kinison, Roseanne Barr, Barry Sobel, Bobcat Goldthwait, Kip Adada, Argus Hamilton, Arsenio Hall.
Guest:In the middle of those acts-
Guest:was danny stone yeah i know the show would come to a grinding halt doing his rodney impression yes and bob woods material all right so she's making a lineup and this is 1974 74 when the divorce came my dad was then you know managing the club my mother worked there part-time oh really he moved over from the like he had the apartment building and he was working at the club both and even when we moved from the apartment building and uh how'd he get that job
Guest:My parents were hanging around with me.
Guest:You know, I was a kid, you know.
Guest:You know, in those days, again, you know, Christmas, Easter, you know, Greek Orthodox Easter.
Guest:I'm Greek Orthodox.
Guest:We'd have big dinners, Thanksgiving.
Guest:And these guys, Richard Lewis and Elaine Boosler, you know, Tom Dreesen was my father's best friend.
Guest:Mary Ellen, his ex-wife, who just passed away, was my mother's best friend.
Guest:So these people were always at our house all the time.
Guest:Billy Braver.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:George Miller.
Guest:Thanksgiving Eve.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Natalie Wood had died the day before.
Guest:We're sitting at, there was a girl who was girlfriends of two comedians.
Guest:She was the dope dealer.
Guest:She lived in my apartment building too with her boyfriend.
Guest:It was a comic at that time.
Guest:You go up to her apartment.
Guest:Shit.
Guest:Should I name names?
Guest:From Belushi to Freddie Prinze to- If they're dead, you can name them.
Guest:Lou Rawls.
Guest:A lot of big stars who are living.
Guest:Hanging out, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, even, you know, Robin, who admits to being a cokehead, but other major stars.
Marc:Just hanging out because she was the chick that had this stuff, right.
Guest:So now she's living someplace off of Hollywood, like Stanley, off of Melrose, somewhere in that area.
Guest:And it's a guest house in the back of an apartment building.
Guest:And Richard Pryor's there.
Guest:I'm hanging out with Pryor.
Guest:doing blow all night yeah it's a the sun's not just about to come up yeah and he's gonna drive i lived on doheny a little below sunset and um he has a rolls royce and he's gonna drive me back to my place i don't remember why i didn't have my car with me he's gonna drive me back to my place
Guest:And I looked at him and I said, you know, Richard, not that I'm complaining, you're my idol.
Guest:This is how big of a star he was.
Guest:He was about to do Superman 3.
Marc:Yeah, so it was later in his career even, really.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, mid-career, mid-Richard Pryor superstardom.
Guest:So not that I'm complaining, you know, my idol.
Guest:And I knew him before the comedy store opened.
Guest:He would come around somebody open mic nights to hang around with the guys and take us to breakfast, you know, pay for it and shit.
Guest:So, and he's playing with the Coke vial.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Doing bumps.
Guest:He's not saying.
Guest:I said, but you could be anywhere in the world right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With anyone in the world.
Guest:Today's Thanksgiving.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you're here with me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't get it.
Guest:And he's...
Guest:fucking around trying to get the coke even on the spoon in the vial.
Guest:And he's doing some bumps.
Guest:He's giving me some bumps.
Guest:Literally several minutes go by doing this and he doesn't say a word.
Guest:And he just looks at me and goes, I got the demon.
Guest:that was that yeah last time i saw him was the comedy store when you know george slaughter had the comedy awards and uh he was couldn't talk he was almost oh you saw him at the end yeah he wasn't quite a vegetable yet but he was and he just had this smile and i started to cry heartbreaking yeah anyway the laugh stop when mike caley opened the first laugh stop in santa ana february 77 and
Guest:He was the one who created the comedy condo.
Guest:He was the one who created the MC middle and headliner thing.
Guest:He gave Robin Williams his first paid job.
Guest:Anyway, they opened it in Encino Laugh Stop in the 81, 80, somewhere around there.
Guest:Mike Cayley had managed to piss off so many comics, nobody would work for him anymore.
Guest:So he had a partner, Mark Lemkin.
Guest:They make my dad a partner, and they changed the name of the club to Herman's Cabaret.
Guest:My dad's name was Herman.
Guest:Now Robin Williams is playing at the club.
Guest:Tom Dreesen, everybody's playing at the club.
Marc:In Encino.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's how my father sort of kind of got in the business, but backdoor through me.
Marc:So now Mitzi, he's working for Mitzi.
Marc:He's managing the club.
Marc:Your mom's there part-time.
Marc:You're like 18, 19 years old.
Guest:I think I was 20 by then.
Guest:This was 75.
Guest:And the divorce comes.
Guest:Mitzi and Sammy.
Guest:And the judge said to Sammy, if you let her keep the club, you don't have to pay child support.
Guest:And he had four kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he should have kept the club, I guess.
Guest:Look, everything's hindsight in 2020.
Guest:And that's how he lost the club and she took over.
Guest:I didn't know that if you were a comedian, you could make a living if you weren't a star.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was a kid.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I thought you weren't.
Guest:At Sullivan, The Tonight Show, you were a star, you were a millionaire.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, the only three comics in those days, well, Jackie Gale, four, who you would come to the store...
Guest:You know, new cars, money, Gabe Kaplan, Kelly Monteith, Moondog and Mule Deer, medicine show, Gary Miller.
Guest:Gary Miller, yeah.
Guest:Had a partner, great act.
Guest:And, you know, Jackie Gale.
Guest:I never saw these guys on TV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I would park their cars.
Guest:And I figured out that the car lot sat, you could park 14 cars easily.
Yeah.
Guest:And I would only park Red Fox, Pat McCormick.
Guest:I would tell people it's celebrities because they would give me five bucks.
Guest:And one night I came home and I had like 80 bucks and my dad saw this.
Guest:My dad could park an 18-wheel truck parallel park.
Guest:He would come down after working at Nate and Al's and he would stick 60 fucking cars in that lot.
Guest:We were making $400, $500 a week.
Guest:That was your racket.
Guest:And one day, it was like July, August or something like that.
Guest:Sammy saw me taking out all this money.
Guest:He goes, where'd you get that?
Guest:I said, parking cars.
Guest:My dad's here.
Guest:They fired us and took over the lot.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:We didn't make any money, just tips.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my dad stuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Literally 40.
Guest:The most I remember counting was 44 cars.
Guest:Figure 44.
Guest:Backed out to sunset, all the way down the driveway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then it's a real pain in the ass to move somebody.
Guest:He got them out, in and out, every night.
Guest:And in those days, Jesus, $400, $500 cash.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, people were, you know, salaries were $150 a week in those days.
Guest:Yeah, it was a good deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, anyway.
Marc:So that's the crew.
Marc:So Leno was there.
Marc:Are you coming in?
Guest:No, Leno came like 74.
Guest:And Richard Lewis came 74?
Guest:74, Lane Boosler.
Guest:When did Freddie come?
Guest:Freddie came December 73 to do his first Tonight Show.
Guest:Where did he come from?
Guest:New York.
Marc:He did.
Marc:He didn't stay.
Marc:Well, I mean, he was a kid, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you didn't know him in New York.
Guest:No.
Guest:You know, I had done the Tonight Show April 73.
Guest:A couple months later, I got a phone call from Freddie Prinze.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He goes, hey, I'd love to meet you.
Guest:You know, I'm getting ready.
Guest:And he was getting hot.
Guest:He did the Jack Parr show.
Guest:I never did that show.
Guest:He had a Jack Parr at a show at 1130 at night.
Guest:Freddie did that.
Guest:And then he was coming out to do his Tonight Show.
Guest:I never saw cocaine until the night Freddie Prinze came out, December 3rd, 73.
Guest:I pick him up.
Guest:and we go to my place and he had um you know those wool pea coats yeah well he had one that went down to his ankles like a top coat that he always wore right he loved his coat it's pouring rain you know what wool smells like yeah now freddie i i first met him beginning of november 73 i was in new york and i said come out you stay with me anyway this thing is soaking wet it smells and freddie was six two yeah 190 pounds
Guest:I, you know, this is the heaviest I've ever been.
Guest:I literally, I'm 5'4".
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, 115 pounds I was.
Guest:And I'm chasing him around his apartment, jumping up to reach his shoulders.
Guest:They get this fucking coat off to hang it up.
Guest:And he's, you have a mirror and a blade, razor blade?
Guest:I thought he wanted to shave.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I never saw cocaine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he takes out this little...
Guest:wax paper package with a rubber band around it in there is tin foil in there is more wax paper and there's this crushed up what looks like crushed up sugar cubes he goes no man i said you don't look like you have to shave or shave no for this i said what do you need because i said i have a takes my picture of woody allen off the wall yeah and i had an exacto knife he starts chopping it up so what are you doing he goes i'm still cocaine
Guest:I went, oh, that's cocaine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He goes, you never done cocaine?
Guest:I said, done it.
Guest:I'd never even seen it.
Guest:Anyway, he gives me cocaine.
Guest:That night, I was polishing the front of the air conditioning.
Guest:Yeah, and that's how it starts.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:He used to call me Felix Unger Jr.
Guest:He'd go, Felix!
Guest:I used to follow him around.
Guest:If you watch that old Mike Douglas show, that's one.
Guest:I saw that, yeah.
Guest:I used to follow him around with an ashtray.
Guest:This guy would just, you know, we'd get a burger.
Guest:I said, don't you want a plate?
Guest:Were you coked up on Mike Douglas?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He, right before I came out.
Guest:Right before I walked out, he was backstage.
Guest:Yeah, do something, do something.
Guest:I said, I've never done, I've never been high doing anything.
Guest:And he's shoving it up my nose and I'm starting to do this.
Guest:And you see me walk out, welcome to Philadelphia.
Guest:I mean, I was...
Guest:Three seconds, four seconds, Scheidner and I were talking about it.
Guest:Just lost.
Guest:I didn't know where I was or what the fuck I was talking about.
Guest:That set that I did was my first Tonight Show set.
Guest:I did that set again on Mike Douglas two years later.
Guest:Not one laugh.
Guest:The room was spinning.
Guest:Mike comes over to me and says, some fucking audience, huh?
Guest:Out of the side of his mouth.
Guest:Somebody wrote next to my name on the chalkboard in the office, hydrogen bomb.
Marc:Oh, God.
Guest:And I did five more after that.
Guest:Mike Douglas.
Guest:Yeah, but not one laugh.
Guest:That show with Freddie was an evening show, 5 o'clock.
Guest:The show I did, not one laugh, was a 9.30 in the morning show.
Marc:That's a tough time.
Guest:In Philly.
Guest:9.30 in the morning.
Guest:I've never done a morning show like that.
Marc:So when he comes out, that's when you guys became best friends?
Guest:you and freddie we met in new york yeah and we were the only guys around the same age he was a year older than me yeah and he moved in with me and for a few months then he moved around the corner when he became a star you know 7777 hollywood boulevard he got married and then he she kathy and freddie had a house up at the top of nichols canyon and then he was coked up and gun crazy and they were getting divorced she threw him out they had a baby baby was 10 months old when freddie died
Marc:And that's when he killed himself?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were you around that day?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My mother was in New York visiting family.
Guest:I get a phone call like 4.30 in the morning.
Guest:She goes, did Freddie have an accident?
Guest:Because she was up.
Guest:It was around 7.30, 8 o'clock.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:7.30 in the morning there.
Guest:I heard all the news.
Guest:I said, no, I just spoke to him.
Guest:That night.
Guest:It was a Thursday night.
Guest:I drove up to NBC with Marty Klein to own APA to see Steve Martin host The Tonight Show for the first time, guest host.
Guest:That time, that was the first time that I hadn't seen Freddie in about 12 days, 10 days, because he went to Washington in three years.
Guest:I hadn't seen him in about 10, 12 days, because he went to Washington, D.C.
Guest:to do the inauguration of Jimmy Carter.
Guest:As I pulled up with Marty Klein...
Guest:Freddie was pulling out, and we stopped at the gate, talked.
Guest:He was, where are you going?
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:And he was ranting and raving.
Guest:And I said, well, Steve's hosting tonight.
Guest:So then we're going to dinner.
Guest:He goes, all right, call me later.
Guest:Love you, blah, blah.
Guest:He used to call me chief or little boss man.
Guest:And I remember Marty goes, well, what the hell is his problem?
Guest:I said, I don't know.
Guest:I get home at 1130 at night.
Guest:I call him.
Guest:I say, hey, how was Washington, D.C.?
Guest:And he said, Freddie considered himself a political pundit.
Guest:He read comic books.
Guest:He said, I got a lot of new hope for the country.
Guest:I thought he said he got a lot of new coke.
Guest:And I said to him, what's new coke?
Guest:He goes, no, I don't do cocaine anymore.
Guest:He was doing three grams of cocaine a day those days, especially the last six months of his life, and 10 Quaaludes.
Guest:People didn't know what cocaine psychosis set in.
Guest:Nobody knew what that was in those days.
Guest:Freddie was at the Beverly Comstock Hotel, which is now the Beverly Hills...
Guest:And we would hang out.
Guest:Every Saturday, he'd come by the house, pick me up.
Guest:And, you know, I lived in one apartment.
Guest:My parents lived in the other apartment.
Guest:And he'd walk through the courtyard.
Guest:Go, Alan's mommy.
Guest:Can Alan come out and play?
Guest:You know, we get in the vet, you know, around 10 in the morning.
Guest:And we'd cruise Beverly Hills or we'd go to a movie.
Guest:I guess they just tore it down.
Guest:The Afco Cinema Center in Wilshire while they're redoing it.
Guest:In the back is the cemetery where Marilyn Monroe is buried.
Guest:Farrah's buried there.
Guest:Farrah Fawcett.
Guest:Dean Martin.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:Anyway, and we'd cruise around all day or go to a movie.
Guest:The last movie I think I saw with him was Young Frankenstein.
Guest:And then we'd go into Beverly Hills and pick up women up and down Rodeo Drive.
Guest:And then we'd go back to the place and do coke.
Guest:And Freddie had one of those big, he was the first one to have a videotape machine.
Guest:Those big ones with the three-quarter inch units.
Guest:And he would get movies from the studio, The Godfather and Deep Throat.
Guest:And we'd watch movies all night and do Blow.
Guest:And before I would leave, now four or five in the morning, anything I touched...
Guest:Napkins, matches.
Guest:I had to flush down the toilet.
Guest:Anything I couldn't flush down the toilet.
Guest:Glasses.
Guest:I had to wipe my fingerprints off of doorknobs.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Well, now I know it's cocaine psychosis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those days, I just thought he was fucking with me.
Guest:He would go to my apartment, make me leave the apartment and hide cocaine.
Guest:then at three in the morning he would call me and say bring the coke and meet me somewhere and i'll give you a hundred you know a hundred dollars in those days this was you know 77 or 200 bucks still a lot of money yeah and i had this is the first time i'd gotten broke i'd go up to like moholland and laurel canyon and that area there was all woods 3 30 in the morning it would be you know you know october you know rains would come or foggy and night
Guest:And I'd be there, and I'd see the Corvette parked all the way off to the side.
Guest:And I'd go to the vet, and Freddy's not in the vet.
Guest:I mean, what the fuck?
Guest:What the hell is this?
Guest:And I'd see a flashlight in the woods, a light blinking, like a morse coat.
Guest:And I'd walk into these woods, and there'd be Freddy in that stupid peacoat with that gun in his one hand that he shot himself with, the Astro Constable, a .380.
Guest:It was a cop, I'll tell you that in a second, a copy of the Walther PPK, James Bond gun, and a flashlight.
Guest:I go, why aren't you in the car?
Guest:He goes, anybody follow you?
Guest:Who the fuck?
Guest:I don't curse on stage or anything.
Guest:I feel stupid saying, who the fuck would follow me?
Guest:For what?
Guest:Are you crazy?
Guest:He goes, shh.
Guest:Listen, anybody hear footsteps?
Guest:I said, I hear the wind and the rain.
Guest:Here's the coke.
Guest:He goes, get in the car.
Guest:We walk back to his car, do a little blow for an hour, sit there.
Guest:I'd be waiting for cops to surround us.
Guest:Do blow for an hour, sit there, bullshit.
Guest:And he'd give me a couple of hundred bucks.
Guest:And I go, what the fuck was that about?
Guest:Yeah, cocaine psychosis.
Guest:Nobody knew what it was.
Marc:So he lost it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was with Belushi 48 hours before he died.
Guest:That must have been a mess.
Guest:I was managing Tony Danza in those days.
Guest:I gave up performing when Freddie died for nine years.
Guest:I was an agent at APA for a few years.
Guest:Then I had a management company with Steve Binder and Rick Bernstein.
Guest:Anyway, Paramount had a big wrap party for all their shows, Happy Days, Taxi, and Police Squad.
Guest:And Belushi was there because he had made a guest cameo appearance for Police Squad anyway.
Guest:And hanging out, I knew John.
Marc:He's big then, right?
Marc:I mean, like physically, physically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So John used to pick me up, turn me upside down and jump up and down if I didn't have any Coke to see what would fall out of my pockets.
Guest:Freddie at one time made me strip at gunpoint to my underwear because I told him I didn't have any cocaine.
Guest:Did you have connections?
Guest:Were you the Coke guy at that time?
Guest:No, everybody was.
Guest:People accused me of that.
Guest:No, everybody was.
Marc:Everybody had a guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody had cocaine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everybody.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was still around when I was there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A bit.
Guest:It's still around today.
Guest:I mean, shit.
Guest:Heroin.
Guest:People are heroin addicts today.
Guest:I go, what the fuck?
Guest:Freddie never fucked with a needle.
Guest:People said they didn't do heroin.
Marc:Well, they can snort it now.
Guest:You can snort heroin?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They smoke it and they snort it.
Marc:There's a lot of ways to avoid a needle.
Marc:The quality's pretty high.
Guest:Can you die of an overdose that way?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Anyway.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Freebasing wasn't around either of those days.
Guest:That's all Freddie Prinze would have needed was freebasing or crack cocaine.
Marc:Well, I mean, Pryor was doing it.
Marc:I was later, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Freddie died 77.
Guest:Freebasing was by 80, 81, 81.
Guest:Boom.
Marc:That's ugly to watch.
Guest:Anyway.
Guest:Belushi.
Guest:Belushi.
Guest:It's now, I'll never forget, I looked at the clock.
Guest:It's 2, 2, 2 in the morning.
Guest:And Danza and I are just fading.
Guest:And he's still, you know, we're up there.
Guest:They kept the place open.
Guest:He was a big star.
Guest:Tony was a big star.
Marc:Where was this?
Guest:On The Rocks, private club on top of The Rocks.
Guest:John would take a shot of vodka.
Guest:put his finger in it, and then swirl it around his nose to douche out his nose.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He took a plastic drinking straw, packed one end with Coke, put that end in his nose, and asked me to blow up the other end.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Couldn't get it up his nose anymore.
Guest:It's the last time I saw John.
Guest:I found out he had been up on... And I remember when Tony dropped me off at my apartment.
Guest:I said to Tony, what's keeping him awake?
What?
Guest:tony and i both looked at each other i don't know i you know we were you know i you know i've done blow a lot you know i've never been able to stay up like that like a week well i mean even even doing blow and still and drink you were drinking yeah you know you know line shot line shot line shot you you know you still didn't have that energy like like it was just continually getting right higher you know what's upper and upper and upper if there's such a word
Guest:I go, what does that to somebody?
Guest:How can you do that?
Guest:I didn't know speedballing then.
Marc:And so that was that party.
Marc:You didn't go to that.
Marc:You're probably lucky, huh?
Guest:It's so funny.
Guest:Nobody was there.
Guest:Everybody says nobody there.
Marc:Everybody left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Janice Joplin died at the Highland Gardens Hotel in Franklin.
Guest:It was named something else.
Guest:But people say she died in this room or she died in that room.
Guest:She didn't die in any room.
Guest:All her friends, she was overdosing, put her in the hallway.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Nobody wanted to be...
Marc:That's what happens.
Marc:Every time you hear that someone died alone, someone was there.
Marc:People don't want to get, they don't want to go down.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Everyone denies that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how did the story that Freddie Prinze shot himself with your gun start?
Guest:You know, for the love of God, I don't know.
Marc:But that's the story.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Yeah.
Guest:Freddie, in August, you know, we're going out.
Guest:Freddie says, what kind of gun did James Bond have?
Guest:I'm always a big Bond guy.
Marc:Were you a gun guy?
Guest:No, I never, no, I never even had a gun.
Marc:You didn't even know people could snort heroin.
Guest:I said to Freddie, it was a Walther PPK.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he says, where can I get one?
Guest:He said, in this town, any sporting goods store.
Guest:He goes, where?
Guest:I said, it was a big five right on Wilshire and San Vicente.
Guest:They don't sell handguns there anymore, but that's where we go.
Guest:Freddie asked for a Walther PPK.
Guest:They didn't have one.
Guest:They had an Astro Constable, which is either Italian or Spanish-made gun that looks exactly like it.
Guest:So he buys that.
Guest:It's a .380 bullet, like a .32.
Guest:And then he buys a Charter Arms .38 snub-nosed, chrome-plated revolver.
Guest:I said, who's that for?
Guest:He goes, for Kathy.
Guest:I said, aren't you going to buy the baby one?
Guest:No.
Guest:He was pulling that thing out every two minutes for somebody or always had it on him.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Towards the end?
Guest:The last few months.
Guest:He shot up one apartment, one hotel room, 212 or 214, and they moved him to 213, I think, where he shot himself.
Guest:And I used to tell him, get a .45.
Guest:He goes, why?
Guest:I said, because you'll stop shooting up, because that bullet will go through the wall.
Guest:And you'll stop shooting the couch, because you're going to kill somebody.
Guest:Because that bullet, that hollow .32,
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:That night, Freddie would call everybody all night long.
Guest:Paul Williams, Muhammad Ali, Richard Pryor, Jimmy Comac, Tony Orlando.
Guest:Everyone slept with their phone off the hook but me.
Guest:He called his business manager, Marvin Snyder.
Guest:They used to call Dusty Snyder.
Guest:Marvin went over there.
Guest:Now, Marvin never saw this before.
Guest:freddie with all this coke with a gun was freaking i'm not saying i could have done something or or tim thomerson or someone who knew him real well in those days but i would have said freddie let's go pick up some broads let's you know go to the coffee shop you know three in the morning you know ships is always open or or the you know someplace or let's uh let's go shoot out some street lights let's go up to you know we would do that
Guest:We would stand under traffic light and see who could hit the red light.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, you know, lunatics with this stupid 3380 robot automatic.
Guest:And Freddie, you know, didn't use it on himself.
Guest:And my mother called and I got to the hospital and three, I mean, about 435 in the morning at UCLA.
Guest:He lasted 33 hours on life support.
Marc:Yeah, it wasn't that he was a suicidal guy.
Marc:He was just caught up in the force and the drug.
Guest:He always talked about suicide.
Guest:He always said, could you see the headlines, Freddie Prinze dead?
Guest:And I used to say, you better hope there's not an earthquake that day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the irony to me was in New York, there was a big blizzard.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So he died on the 29th.
Marc:He shot himself.
Guest:It got pushed off the page by the- It said Snow Stun City in the New York Times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The bottom, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:But it's interesting to me that you're one of the only guys around, really, that has gone through the whole arc of the comedy storm.
Marc:I mean, you know, you were there before she got it.
Marc:You were there when she got it.
Marc:You were there for the strike.
Marc:You were there for the high time.
Guest:Yeah, I crossed the picket line.
Guest:I wasn't performing in those days.
Guest:I was an agent APA.
Guest:And I crossed the picket line.
Guest:And that's booked by somebody.
Guest:I'm dying up here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It has a lot of inaccuracies in it.
Guest:Good book, though.
Guest:A lot of inaccuracies.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:You know...
Guest:jim mccauley wasn't at the tonight show at the time he says he was there yeah i was there long before jay this thing about elaine boozler he wanted elaine in the book elaine won't do any of these books and he writes more about her than anybody else yeah so there's these other inaccuracies i'm gonna have to go through the book again it says i crossed the picket line with a sneer in alan berski yeah i crossed the picket line here here's the problem i had with them with the strikers yeah
Guest:I said, one, there were people striking on that who weren't even comics, for one.
Guest:Two, I said, you do this and you're going to make this a professional room.
Guest:No one's going to be able to come here and break in material.
Guest:This room is to sit there with notes and have a notebook in your hand and read material.
Yeah.
Guest:This is no longer going to be breaking rooms.
Guest:I said, what are you doing this for, 30 bucks?
Guest:It started with because one night Bob Shaw at Cantor's had no money for a sandwich, and she was making a fortune.
Guest:I said, these rooms are to get us to the Tonight Show.
Guest:Elaine and Leno and some of these people, I said, you guys are becoming stars.
Guest:You do this.
Guest:He goes, no, she'll see.
Guest:I said, she'll never see this any other way but as a personal attack.
Marc:And I was right.
Marc:What I'm starting to see in talking to you is that there's, you know, you actually saw, you know, the shift and the change and the evolution of modern comedy.
Marc:Like, you know, you were there, you got to touch and feel the old guard.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then you sort of saw the generation that you were involved in with Jay and David and everybody else, you know, take over for the guys that were there.
Guest:You know, the...
Guest:The interesting thing, I was thinking about this the other day, you know, giants once walked the earth.
Guest:The only one left alive, literally, is Jerry Lewis.
Guest:There was Bob Hope and Jack Benny I knew and Bob Hope I met, Benny I met, Milton Berle, I met Groucho.
Guest:These guys, when they became a star, you know, in the 30s, they stayed a star the rest of their lives.
Guest:The only ones I never met were Gleason, Danny Kaye, and Danny Thomas of that ilk.
Guest:But these guys, you know, I'm driving in Vegas on the Strip, and there's no stars.
Guest:You know, still the ones left, you know, Bill Cosby or the Smothers Brothers from that generation or Shelley Berman still didn't.
Marc:But do you think it's relative to the intimacy of show business at that time and to the way that they were treated?
Marc:Like, you know, the commodification of show business is broken open to a degree that it's very hard to maintain a career like that.
Marc:Back then, you had a few studios, you had three channels on television.
Marc:That was that.
Marc:So people were stars and the whole world knew.
Guest:I think, I actually think about this a lot.
Guest:Because when I was an agent, I tried to be an agent again at smaller, well-known companies.
Guest:But if you're not with one, there are 11 agencies today out of 100 that do 98% of the show business in all the world.
Guest:My feeling, because what I mean is, and I would get,
Guest:emails and telephone calls you know can i be a star of course the reality television people don't do anything today everybody thinks they could be a star because of snooki now i've never watched any of these shows but everyone today because of kim kardashian or you know what is kim kardashian famous for nothing being famous yeah everyone get that yeah everyone today thinks their life is so interesting that they could be a star these people were stars when you knew
Guest:You know, you could never be a star.
Guest:You know, if you wanted to be, if you were a kid and wanted to be a comic in 1960, you were so far removed from Milton Berle as I am from Prince Harry or William.
Guest:You know, today, you know, you have to, you know, you're going to be Prince.
Guest:Today, people think, you know, nobody thinks they could be Prince William.
Guest:But everybody thinks today they could be Ben Affleck or Beyonce or, you know.
Guest:What do you think that is?
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because of the, because it's everywhere now.
Marc:The access.
Guest:It's very easy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everyone sees it.
Guest:It's in the internet.
Marc:You can put your own thing up there and think like this will happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everyone today thinks...
Guest:Without any respect of talent or dues or anything else.
Guest:I don't know Justin Bieber.
Guest:I've never seen him.
Guest:But apparently, he became a star by putting stuff on YouTube.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before, you had to work shithole music bars, have an A&R guy from a record label come in.
Marc:And also, it's very niche-oriented, too.
Marc:These people, theoretically, can be stars in their little niche for 10 minutes, and that's that.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, so the access to becoming a star or the access to, you know, people are saving up $400 or $500 to go eat in somebody's restaurant in Las Vegas to see a star sitting there instead of paying $75 to see a show.
Guest:There are no shows anymore.
Guest:I used to go to Vegas, you know, and now I sound old.
Guest:It was Dean Martin and Bob Melvin opening.
Guest:It was Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:and Charlie Callis opening.
Guest:It was Alan King and Julie Budd.
Guest:It was the Smothers Brothers and Karen Wyman or Lana Cantrell.
Guest:Look up Lana Cantrell.
Guest:And, you know, this woman was a big star in the late 60s, early 70s, a singer.
Guest:It's gone.
Guest:I worked the last end of Miami Beach.
Guest:You got to Miami Beach.
Guest:I worked the Diplomat Hotel, the Fountain Blue, the Eden Rock, the Americana, the Doval.
Guest:They had stars from Engelbert Humperdinck with a comic to Tom Jones with a comic to Alan King with a singer in New York City, Town and Country, Nightclub, Flapwish, Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:would play it.
Guest:Copacabana, Nightclub, Martin Lewis, and even that closed in the early 70s would play it.
Guest:Latin Quarter,
Guest:alan king or steven eddie would play it the elegante in brooklyn or in the riviera in jersey within 12 miles five major nightclubs had the biggest stars in the world and opening act not only that around those clubs were the bitter end the bonsoir the den the blue angel all with the all up and coming people like you know um peter paul and mary in those days or whoever you know neil diamond richard pryor yeah
Guest:All of that is gone.
Guest:Even before that, as that was ending,
Guest:I saw Woody Allen every day in November 72, the last time, once the last time he ever did stand-up.
Guest:He did Las Vegas after that, Caesar's Palace opening for Harry Belafonte.
Guest:Woody Allen, every day, Topanga Music Theater, Valley Music Theater, Topanga Boulevard, Ventura.
Guest:It's the Jehovah's Witness Church today.
Guest:Jim Croce was the opening act.
Guest:He had San Jose Music Fair.
Guest:Sonny and Cher were there.
Guest:I went to see Andy Kaufman with Marty Klein.
Guest:And when I was an agent at APA, we signed Andy Kaufman.
Guest:How many of those are still open?
Guest:I think Westbury Music Fair in Long Island is still open.
Guest:There were a lot of those places.
Guest:They're all gone.
Guest:Today, because these guys are making so much money today in television, you know, guys used to want to get a TV series like Newhart or Rickles.
Guest:That brought their money up in Vegas.
Guest:You know, guys like Hackett and Shecky Green, they were always on television because that brought their money up in nightclubs and personal appearances.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Today, you're on television.
Guest:You have a TV series.
Guest:You're making $300,000 to a million dollars an episode.
Guest:And if you own the show like Tim Allen or Drew Carey did or like, you know, some of these other guys, Seinfeld.
Guest:Seinfeld's a billionaire.
Guest:A billionaire.
Guest:From TV.
Guest:He loves stand-up, so he'll still perform.
Guest:But these guys used to go to these clubs in Vegas and make, you know, and stay for two weeks at a time.
Guest:Hackett and these people were in Vegas four or five times a year, two weeks at a time.
Guest:That's gone.
Marc:Now, as a guy who's been a manager, an agent, a comedian, you know, a car parker, did your career pan out the way you wanted?
Guest:I mean, I wanted to be, you know, Billy Crystal's career, Seinfeld's career.
Guest:No.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I'm at peace with it.
Guest:There were guys today who, and I'm not going to mention them, who are literally suicidal and beside themselves.
Guest:That they're not, because they were headlining.
Guest:Didn't work out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they had a lot, all the opportunities and TV shows, even films.
Guest:And it didn't happen.
Guest:Some of them committed suicide.
Guest:Ray Coombs, Richard Jenny.
Guest:You know, Richard was a good friend of mine.
Guest:I loved Richard Jenny.
Guest:He had other problems, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, but the point is, Richard Jenner was probably the greatest, one of the top five single greatest nightclub comics I'd ever seen.
Guest:And I've seen everybody.
Guest:And because he didn't have his own TV series.
Guest:You know, I said to Richard, you know, you should be where Brad Pitt, you know, Brad Garrett is.
Guest:You should be like, you know, no, no, I want my own.
Guest:I said, Richard.
Guest:What you don't understand, when you get your own show, like you had your own show or other people have your own show, like Chris Titus, and it doesn't make you a star like Seinfeld or King of Queens or Ray Romano, you're in worse shape than you are trying to get the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's even harder.
Guest:Because you had your shot.
Guest:Yeah, you're harder.
Guest:Now they think this guy can't handle a show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:I said, when you get a show and it doesn't, you know, getting back, boy, that's tougher than getting there.
Marc:What's the best moment you've ever seen on stage?
Marc:I know there's a lot, but do you remember a comic where you're like, what the fuck?
Guest:A comic or an act?
Guest:I mean, I saw Neil Diamond live a couple times.
Guest:I saw Neil Diamond at the Nickelodeon Theater, used to be the Aquarius Theater.
Guest:He was taping a TV special.
Guest:So he was going to do his concert, and they took 15 minutes or 10 minutes of what he did, put it.
Guest:So I saw him do two hours in a theater with 500 people 30 feet away from him.
Guest:That was like, holy.
Guest:I mean, that was unbelievable.
Guest:I saw Sinatra up close.
Guest:That was, you know, Sammy Davis Jr.
Guest:Comics.
Guest:I saw Cosby.
Guest:Cosby scared me.
Guest:I thought I wasn't performing that.
Guest:I thought I could never do this.
Guest:I can't do this.
Guest:This guy, you know, this was 20 years ago, but he was still working on new material.
Guest:The callbacks, the end, and it was perfect.
Guest:It was perfect.
Guest:You know, Woody Allen.
Guest:You know, I'd say one of the great things I saw was Dick Shawn.
Guest:I saw a little theater in Beverly Hills.
Guest:The second half of his show was his music, singing and dancing.
Guest:But the first half was just his monologue.
Guest:He was great.
Guest:I saw the Smothers Brothers, the troubadour, a bunch of times.
Guest:They kept making comebacks.
Guest:But the fascinating thing was the opening...
Guest:act was tommy smothers by himself he was brilliant i saw carlin making his comeback when he went to the hippie thing just when he was doing am fm that album with the long hair at the troubadour 15 feet away from him it was brilliant i've seen richard prior so much that i can't see the genius anymore yeah i saw steve martin so much i can't see that but you know uh what about when he first saw kennison
Guest:I just thought, you know, Sam died owing me $2,000.
Guest:Sam didn't want friends.
Guest:He wanted disciples.
Guest:I think Sam was truly, you know, people are going to hear this and I don't want to get letters.
Guest:That's all right.
Marc:I think Sam was an evil guy.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I spent hours with the guy and he hurt my feelings badly.
Marc:Sam.
Guest:You know, Sam had that great bit about, you know, you know why this is sand?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's sand.
Guest:No, yeah.
Guest:The starving Africans.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And the thing about.
Marc:Moves to where the food is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the thing about screaming.
Guest:Ah!
Guest:Ah!
Guest:He had those two great bits.
Guest:Now, I saw Sam at the height now.
Guest:He's become a star.
Guest:This is 87.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's when I met him.
Guest:He's in New York doing the ballroom.
Guest:You know, he's got the tour bus with Carla Bowles and all the guys.
Guest:He walks out on stage and...
Guest:And he starts... It was the punchline.
Guest:Not like something to start with.
Guest:I don't think Sam could ever fulfill that 15, 20 minutes of material.
Guest:What do you think?
Marc:Oh, I just thought that as a younger comic, and I think he gets a little bit of short shrift in the big picture because he was sort of an evil guy and you can feel it.
Marc:But I think that for me...
Marc:a guy that had to study Lenny Bruce to understand it, it seemed that Sam said, if you look at a guy, it's like, well, what can you do and what can't you do on stage?
Marc:And you look at someone like Sam, and his sole intention was to push the envelope into the darkness, that he sort of set this weird parameter.
Marc:He made it clear to me that you can fucking do anything.
Marc:Well, you know, but, you know, Lenny Bruce did that.
Guest:Carlin did that before.
Guest:No, I know that.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:You know, and then there were guys.
Guest:I watch guys today.
Guest:We just work with a guy, you know, the emcee.
Guest:You know, fuck this, fuck that.
Guest:When did fuck become a color?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Comics actually go on stage, so I'm walking across the fucking street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now, I don't mean to sound old or sound like, you know, square, if they still use the word square.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But do you go to someone's house and say, pass the fucking potatoes at dinner?
Yeah.
Guest:Even if you talk that way, but you don't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't turn to a cop and say, you're giving me a fucking ticket?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't go into Macy's and say, do you have a fucking shirt like this in my size?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't.
Guest:But for some reason on stage, you do.
Guest:I'm guilty of it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I wanted to talk to you about that.
Marc:You sound like my grandmother.
Marc:I've done TV.
Marc:I can do it without it.
Marc:Do you say I shouldn't do it without it?
Guest:But here's my point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bob Schimel, who I loved, had all this dirty material, but it was not like, so I'm driving the fucking car.
Guest:The fucking, the cocksucking or whatever was part of the material.
Guest:It was in the joke.
Guest:It wasn't just a dirty joke.
Guest:So I never understood, you know, see, I came up, you wanted to do the night show.
Guest:My dream was to do the Ed Sullivan show.
Guest:David Brenner was on the last Ed Sullivan show, February of 72.
Guest:That show was gone by the time I got to be a pro.
Guest:But you couldn't do that on TV.
Guest:And you couldn't do that in a club.
Guest:The only dirty comic when we started, you know, Franklin Jai said, pussy, a motherfucker on stage.
Guest:And we were, oh, my God.
Guest:The point I'm saying, even today, you want to get on Letterman today or any, you know, you know, the name of the game to stardom as a comic is the most amount of exposure in the least amount of time.
Guest:You know, you did four tonight shows, you know, my day.
Guest:I sound so old.
Guest:You did four or five tonight shows in a year.
Guest:You were a star.
Guest:I guess today, if you could bump out three Letterman's, a tonight show, a Craig Ferguson and a Kimmel in one year, you'll be a star or Comedy Central.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, not the same level.
Guest:No, not.
Guest:When I did Tonight Show, 25 million viewers.
Guest:The next day, the Partridge family called.
Guest:Dean Martin called.
Guest:The world opened up.
Guest:So when I see comics, like you said, you're guilty of it, I say, why?
Guest:I've done Letterman's.
Guest:I've done it.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:But there are guys, though.
Guest:You don't do it.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:It's lazy.
Guest:You're brighter and more intelligent and obviously more talented.
Guest:When you say you do it, why?
Guest:Why?
Marc:It's lazy.
Marc:I'm just I'm asking for my own education.
Marc:That's a good question.
Marc:And I and I think it's lazy and I think it's it's a way of cheating, getting control of, you know, to to put the audience into a different zone a little bit.
Marc:You know, it's it's a good question.
Marc:I'll think about it.
Marc:No, no, because when you have to do clean, I know when I have to do a Letterman setter, I've got to be on Conan or something like that.
Marc:I've done a few Lettermans.
Marc:You work it out so it's clean, and it does feel a little weird.
Guest:I know, but I'm saying, but you haven't said, I said fuck a couple times, you haven't said to me, you haven't cursed at all.
Guest:You're not going to go to the market and say, how much is the fucking orange juice?
Guest:Sometimes I do.
Guest:All right.
Guest:You get my point.
Guest:I do.
Guest:So if you don't do that...
Guest:I'm asking you.
Guest:You are a comedian of another generation, even though I'm not that much older than you.
Guest:I still have a generation before you.
Guest:What is it for?
Guest:Why do it?
Marc:Well, I think that part of it is at some point you get into your head that you have the freedom to do that.
Marc:And if your heroes are guys that did that, if your heroes are somebody like Richard Pryor, your heroes are somebody like Lenny Bruce, or your heroes are somebody... Pardon me for interrupting, but again, Lenny and Richard never said, I'm crossing the fucking street.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Richard got pretty filthy sometimes.
Marc:If it wasn't, okay, the motherfucking street.
Guest:Look at Richard live on Sunset Strip or some of the other ones.
Guest:It's not like... It's not gratuitous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:And you sometimes, I've seen you a few times, and I like... Let me tell you something.
Guest:I thought you were great.
Guest:You and Bill Burrow were great.
Guest:It wasn't like...
Guest:You know, I watch Comedians Today and it was, and it's like, so I told him to shove it up his ass.
Guest:That's the punchline.
Guest:So the fucking, you know.
Marc:I don't use it for punchlines.
Marc:I use it for color.
Marc:And it's like, it's not necessary.
Marc:I get the point.
Guest:But I don't, that's what I don't get.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's lazy.
Guest:You know, Woody Allen, 90 Minutes, some of the great Cosby, the greatest stand-up I have ever seen.
Guest:Alan King at Carnegie Hall, you go, holy crap, it was relevant with Reagan and stuff.
Guest:Never said it once.
Guest:All right, I get it.
Guest:But I'm not trying to say, like, you know, I'm not trying to sound like Bob Hall.
Guest:No, you make your point, though.
Guest:I just want to know, when did the, when, someone said, I'm crossing the fucking street.
Guest:As I said, is that near Sweetshire?
Guest:What street is that?
Guest:I know, I know.
Guest:I hear what you're saying.
Marc:And I don't mind dirty material.
Marc:What you're saying is that it's lazy and it's not necessary.
Guest:It is just so foul-mouthed punky.
Guest:Get a little class.
Guest:You know, bullshit.
Guest:Class it up.
Guest:No.
Guest:And you don't talk that way or look.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know, I get dressed up when I perform.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I see comics on stage with a t-shirt and jeans that they played basketball that afternoon with dirty sneakers.
Guest:And, you know... What you're basically saying, Alan, is they don't respect the... I don't think people... You know, my feeling is the whole thing with today, no one takes responsibility.
Guest:It's no one's fault anymore.
Guest:And there's no formality in anything.
Guest:There's something... You know, you go back and you look at the old TV shows, people sit in the audience with Jack and Ty.
Guest:Do you know what's on?
Guest:I got to say this, because they always said there was never any film of them, of Martin Lewis in a nightclub.
Guest:You go to YouTube, put Martin Lewis, Copacabana, 45 minutes of them in a nightclub.
Guest:It's unbelievable to see.
Guest:And is everybody eating dinner?
Guest:Everyone's dressed up?
Guest:But, you know, women are going in with mink stalls.
Guest:You couldn't walk through Caesar's Palace in the 60s and early 70s without a jacket and tie on.
Guest:You couldn't go into the casino.
Guest:Flip-flops, bags of groceries, people today.
Guest:I mean, the whole, I don't get it.
Guest:Not just comedy performing.
Guest:I just don't get it.
Guest:You know, I'm all dressed up.
Guest:You know how many people kept stopping me in the casinos I walk through?
Guest:Where's the men's room?
Guest:Where can I get this?
Guest:I go, I don't work here.
Yeah.
Guest:One person said, why are you all dressed up?
Guest:And I said, because I have pride in my appearance.
Guest:And I walked away from him.
Guest:And he just stopped there dumbfounded.
Marc:I'm sorry it all changed, Alan.
Marc:What?
Marc:I'm sorry it all changed.
Guest:I don't, I mean, you know, if I wasn't a performer.
Guest:You're making me sad.
Guest:If I wasn't a performer.
Guest:Which brings me to your shaving.
Marc:I finally landed on something I like on my face.
Marc:Let me have it.
Guest:What's wrong with your face?
Marc:Nothing wrong with you.
Marc:thank you for being here thank you there you go he's like a demonic zealot he's been everywhere that was interesting wasn't it people wasn't it uh go to wtfpod.com get that app get do what you gotta do man uh what do we got wayne kramer on uh on thursday wayne kramer from the mc5 that is a fucking story holy goddamn shit
Marc:Boomer lives!