Episode 578 - Harry Shearer

Episode 578 • Released February 18, 2015 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:All right, let's do this.

00:00:10Marc:How are you?

00:00:11Marc:What the fuckers?

00:00:11Marc:What the fuck buddies?

00:00:12Marc:What the fucking ears?

00:00:13Marc:What the fucksters?

00:00:15Marc:What the fuckadelics?

00:00:16Marc:I am Mark Maron.

00:00:17Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:18Marc:How are you?

00:00:19Marc:Welcome to the show.

00:00:20Marc:This is my show.

00:00:21Marc:This is my garage.

00:00:23Marc:These are my pants that I'm wearing.

00:00:26Marc:All right, my shoes.

00:00:29Marc:Today, my guest is Harry Shearer.

00:00:31Marc:If you don't know who Harry Shearer is, I don't know what to tell you.

00:00:34Marc:You might know him from The Simpsons, Spinal Tap, SNL, the Christopher Guest movies, and his long-running radio show, Le Show.

00:00:42Marc:His most recent project is a YouTube series called Nixon, The One.

00:00:46Marc:Harry Shearer.

00:00:49Marc:Brilliant man.

00:00:51Marc:And it's interesting.

00:00:52Marc:It was one of those situations where it's not that I'd heard weird things about him, but I heard he might be a little cantankerous.

00:01:00Marc:But I had a great conversation with Mr. Shearer.

00:01:03Marc:Much respect.

00:01:05Marc:Went both ways, and I think you'll enjoy it.

00:01:08Marc:So what am I going to tell you about what's going on?

00:01:11Marc:How'd the show go since I last talked to you?

00:01:13Marc:Well, it was mostly a three-day weekend.

00:01:16Marc:Worked again with Rick Shapiro and Bobby Kelly was on set yesterday.

00:01:22Marc:Patton Oswalt was on the show.

00:01:24Marc:I worked with him today.

00:01:25Marc:Very interesting to work with a dude like Shapiro, Rick Shapiro, who I've known for years.

00:01:30Marc:Some of you may know from comedy, might know him from the first Louis C.K.

00:01:35Marc:show that was on HBO.

00:01:37Marc:He's in some of Louis' movies.

00:01:39Marc:But Rick is this incredible force of nature.

00:01:42Marc:He's done a show.

00:01:43Marc:He's done my show before.

00:01:45Marc:But I just love the guy, and I've known him for 25 years, and now he's suffering a bit from the Parkinson's, but he's fighting it, and it's pretty amazing what that kind of fight will do to a person in the sense of connecting them to their heart and slowing them down a bit, but also making them focus and sort of adjust in ways that really weren't there before.

00:02:10Marc:He's a very beautiful guy, beautiful actor.

00:02:14Marc:beautiful things going on for Mr. Shapiro.

00:02:16Marc:And just when I work with Rick, it's just exhausting and engaging and exciting.

00:02:22Marc:And, uh, I'm, I'm just thrilled that he's on the show, but he's another guy that, you know, not unlike me, we've been sort of pushed aside or pigeonholed at different points in our careers for our intensity or our attitudes, or, and I'm not comparing my talent to his by any means, but just in the way that we're sort of outsiders, you know?

00:02:41Marc:And, uh,

00:02:43Marc:And I guess I guess what I'm getting at is I watched the 40th anniversary of SNL.

00:02:50Marc:And before I watched, I just watched it, the half of it yesterday and half of it today.

00:02:54Marc:So not the day it went up.

00:02:55Marc:But I tweeted something because I saw people starting to live tweet it.

00:02:59Marc:And I was in my mind is like, really, you're going to live tweet that television show.

00:03:03Marc:So I said live tweet hashtag SNL 40.

00:03:06Marc:I don't think so.

00:03:07Marc:And then I got a little flack from people that, you know, they took it as like, who are you, Mr. Condescending, Mr. Mr. Hipster Guy, too good for it or whatever.

00:03:18Marc:I was being kind of a dick, but it was really about hashtagging a TV show.

00:03:21Marc:But I'm not backpedaling.

00:03:22Marc:But there were some accusations that I may still be bitter about what happened at SNL.

00:03:30Marc:And because I have this known kind of mild obsession with Lorne Michaels and my meeting with him, you know, people think that I'm bitter about it.

00:03:40Marc:And I got to be honest with you.

00:03:42Marc:I watched the show and I didn't know what to expect.

00:03:46Marc:And and you sort of get tired over the years of how SNL repackages itself or how it's constantly presented.

00:03:53Marc:I mean, for years, when you know, when there was a DVD market, when there's a VHS market, you know, there was there were clips of different different versions of clip shows being sold all the time.

00:04:03Marc:And the repackaging and sort of reselling of SNL has just been with us almost as long as SNL has.

00:04:09Marc:So I was a little bit, I guess, resistant.

00:04:14Marc:But I do want to address the idea of bitterness around that meeting.

00:04:19Marc:I don't think I am bitter about that meeting.

00:04:22Marc:I do think it was an important juncture in my life, and I think I was disappointed for a couple of years.

00:04:27Marc:But in reality, there was no way I was ready to handle the responsibility of that show at the time.

00:04:33Marc:I'm not sure I can handle it now.

00:04:35Marc:So there's this idea that certain people are delivered to a type of success, a type of mainstream success, a type of...

00:04:44Marc:Of power over, you know, millions of people because of their their their talent and what they've done with it.

00:04:50Marc:I don't know that I've ever been one of those guys and I don't know that that my insecurity enables me to do that.

00:04:56Marc:It's it's it's a liability on some level, but I seem to have found my niche, but I'm not bitter about it.

00:05:04Marc:And I don't know if you people know this, but I feel like I must have talked about it before.

00:05:09Marc:The first two seasons of SNL were incredibly important to me.

00:05:13Marc:I was it was it was just I was obsessed with it.

00:05:18Marc:I used to do Chevy Chase impressions.

00:05:21Marc:I used to do John Belushi impressions.

00:05:23Marc:I used to do impressions from the show.

00:05:25Marc:I had the SNL book two or three years in when they released that book.

00:05:29Marc:I had the album.

00:05:31Marc:I was completely obsessed with the idea of SNL.

00:05:33Marc:And I was sort of obsessed with Lorne Michaels at an early age.

00:05:36Marc:It was a very important thing to me, that show.

00:05:38Marc:Mid 70s, 76, 77, 13, 14 years old.

00:05:43Marc:But as time went on, I knew I didn't do characters.

00:05:45Marc:I knew I wasn't a sketch guy.

00:05:47Marc:I knew I wasn't really the guy for that show.

00:05:49Marc:But of course, in my heart, I always wanted to be on that show.

00:05:52Marc:And just and then there was that weird meeting when my grandmother took me up to the studio because some kid I knew.

00:05:58Marc:uh, from camp.

00:06:00Marc:His father worked at NBC and set me up.

00:06:01Marc:I was supposed to meet Belushi.

00:06:03Marc:I ended up meeting, uh, what looked to be a fairly, a fairly high, uh, Franken and Davis, but, uh,

00:06:12Marc:But the thing was, is that, you know, in retrospect, you know, I'm not really bitter.

00:06:17Marc:I just there there there's something I may need to know about that meeting.

00:06:22Marc:But whether or not I talk to to Lorne Michaels or not ever, I mean, I could sit down with Lorne Michaels and he could have no recollection of it all of even talking to me.

00:06:31Marc:And that would be sort of devastating and heartbreaking.

00:06:33Marc:And why do I make it such a big deal?

00:06:35Marc:Because it was that show was so important to me.

00:06:38Marc:And I remember even when I was talking to Warren, I was like that first that first year.

00:06:41Marc:Right, buddy.

00:06:42Marc:He's like, there's been a lot of good people.

00:06:44Marc:And I was so sort of like the mythology of those first couple of years.

00:06:49Marc:That was what was fascinating about watching.

00:06:51Marc:the the 40th anniversary because i look man i my guilty pleasure is schmaltzy entertainment and when fallon and justin timberlake did the musical opening i loved it the the i i liked a lot of it i i liked miley cyrus's uh singing it's nice like it was kind of interesting to realize that she you know she is sort of this country singer when she wants to be and that was pretty amazing and the the sandler and sandberg thing with the people laughing and

00:07:17Marc:There was a reminiscing there and seeing the old clips was great.

00:07:20Marc:Seeing Louie on the show was great.

00:07:21Marc:I thought Seinfeld and Larry David were great together.

00:07:25Marc:That was hilarious.

00:07:26Marc:I love comedy.

00:07:27Marc:And I just found myself, despite whatever bitterness you may think I have or however resistant I am or haven't really engaged in the show for so many years.

00:07:37Marc:I watched the whole thing and I had there was a lot of good there was a lot of great things about it.

00:07:41Marc:But it's really kind of heartbreaking, I guess, because because I'm not married, because I don't have children.

00:07:47Marc:I don't know that I'm always aware that I'm aging.

00:07:50Marc:I think that if you have people around you who are aging with, you have some sort of sense of it.

00:07:54Marc:But but seeing some of my heroes.

00:07:56Marc:You know, on television that, you know, seeing them at different points in their career through clips and then seeing them on TV and seeing them in high definition.

00:08:04Marc:It's a little beautiful and a little heartbreaking simultaneously.

00:08:08Marc:My point is, is that...

00:08:12Marc:A lot of that was part of my childhood, you know, that first couple of seasons of SNL and seeing those people was great.

00:08:18Marc:And my obsession with Lauren is not because I was bitter about what happened.

00:08:21Marc:I would have had a different life, I'm sure, if I'd gotten the show.

00:08:24Marc:But the one thing you got from watching SNL 40 is that a lot of people went on to nothing.

00:08:28Marc:And you don't know where they are.

00:08:29Marc:And then there was the weirdness with Eddie Murphy coming out.

00:08:32Marc:And, you know, you have these expectations.

00:08:34Marc:And what is he battling with?

00:08:35Marc:I mean, what struggle does he have with the shadow that a younger him casts on him?

00:08:40Marc:I don't know.

00:08:41Marc:Steve Martin was funny.

00:08:43Marc:Alec Baldwin was funny.

00:08:44Marc:It was great to see Norm and Will Ferrell.

00:08:46Marc:You know, look.

00:08:48Marc:What can I tell you?

00:08:49Marc:Don't misunderstand my obsession with Lord Michaels or with early SNL or with that fact that I didn't get on as bitterness.

00:08:59Marc:Look, I'm happy I'm making a living.

00:09:01Marc:You dig?

00:09:02Marc:All right.

00:09:03Marc:It was also good seeing Colin.

00:09:05Marc:It was good seeing a lot of people on there.

00:09:07Marc:I enjoyed SNL 40.

00:09:10Marc:I enjoyed it.

00:09:11Marc:I got some good laughs.

00:09:13Marc:I was happy to see some people.

00:09:15Marc:Happy to see some friends.

00:09:16Marc:Happy to see that audience of actors and stuff look like a fun place to hang out.

00:09:21Marc:Was I jealous I wasn't there?

00:09:23Marc:No, because I don't know.

00:09:26Marc:You know, I like to be involved in things.

00:09:29Marc:Maybe I was a little, maybe I would have liked to have been there.

00:09:32Marc:But again, not bitter.

00:09:33Marc:Not bitter that I didn't get on SNL.

00:09:36Marc:Okay.

00:09:36Marc:I'm just going to keep repeating it to myself.

00:09:41Marc:I had a cup of coffee today, the first one in almost three months, and it punched my face from the inside.

00:09:49Marc:Good.

00:09:50Marc:Good.

00:09:51Marc:Okay, let's talk to Harry Shearer, folks.

00:09:53Marc:And the bumper music here comes from our sponsor, The Loop Loft, featuring Charlie Hunter on guitar and Eric Harland on drums.

00:10:10Music

00:10:11Marc:It's a very odd thing.

00:10:12Marc:Because I watched a couple of the Nixons.

00:10:15Marc:Yeah.

00:10:15Marc:And it's not a comedy.

00:10:17Marc:Well, it is and it isn't.

00:10:18Marc:No, I get... Okay.

00:10:20Marc:Well, these are... I call it a very dark comedy.

00:10:23Marc:But it's taken from the actual transcript.

00:10:26Marc:Yeah, it's not made up.

00:10:26Guest:Right.

00:10:27Guest:Yeah.

00:10:27Guest:It's just but selected for comic value.

00:10:30Marc:Right.

00:10:31Marc:Yeah.

00:10:31Marc:But you're drawing from the exact transcripts and the tapes.

00:10:33Marc:Yeah.

00:10:34Marc:And you're reenacting scenes of Nixon in certain situations.

00:10:37Marc:Yes.

00:10:38Marc:And the makeup is Nixon makeup.

00:10:40Marc:Yes.

00:10:40Marc:And you look like Nixon.

00:10:41Marc:Yeah.

00:10:42Marc:You're acting like Nixon.

00:10:43Marc:Yes.

00:10:43Marc:Dressed like Nixon.

00:10:44Marc:And so the idea is if you contextualize by choosing these segments that they will read, you will see something.

00:10:51Marc:It actually serves to humanize him a bit more than I thought it would.

00:10:54Marc:I'm not saying he's a good human.

00:10:55Guest:Well, yeah, right.

00:10:56Guest:Exactly.

00:10:57Guest:Exactly right.

00:10:58Guest:You got it.

00:10:59Guest:I mean, you can't, if you listen to the tapes and you try to perform them precisely, I mean, we literally were listening to them

00:11:12Guest:And you did perform him precisely.

00:11:14Guest:Yes.

00:11:14Guest:I mean, you can compare our performances to the tapes and it's pretty eerie.

00:11:18Marc:Yeah.

00:11:19Guest:They have to come out as human beings.

00:11:21Marc:Yeah.

00:11:22Guest:You know?

00:11:22Guest:Right.

00:11:23Guest:Willy nilly, they have to.

00:11:24Guest:I mean, it's not even a choice.

00:11:25Marc:So even the comedy of what he was doing before the resignation speech.

00:11:31Marc:Yeah.

00:11:31Marc:I get how you're cutting it and the choices you're making, but the comedy was that he was sort of trying to distract everybody and himself from what was about to happen.

00:11:43Guest:Well, yes, although I thought while we were rehearsing it, I thought of what else was going on.

00:11:49Guest:Because that scene, I'd watched that scene forever.

00:11:51Guest:It had been bootlegged around.

00:11:53Guest:It was a videotape.

00:11:54Guest:It was the only thing in the series that was not from his.

00:11:56Marc:From one of the cameras that were on before he went, before the cameras.

00:12:00Guest:Yeah, the CBS engineer hit the record button.

00:12:04Guest:And so I memorized that scene and we got stoned and watched it with friends.

00:12:08Guest:I mean, it was like part of my DNA.

00:12:10Guest:And it always just struck me, okay, this is goofy.

00:12:14Guest:This guy who has no gift for small talk, no affection for being around strangers.

00:12:19Guest:As a matter of fact, people creep him out.

00:12:22Guest:Yeah.

00:12:23Guest:Ironically, since the name of his committee to reelect was the committee to reelect the president.

00:12:28Guest:Creep.

00:12:28Guest:Yeah.

00:12:29Guest:And now in his final moments as president, what does he choose to do?

00:12:33Guest:Chit-chat.

00:12:34Guest:Chit-chat with the crew.

00:12:35Guest:It just seemed fucking goofy.

00:12:37Guest:And then while we're rehearsing, because you can't help it when you're acting, you have to figure out what the fuck is going on.

00:12:42Guest:Right.

00:12:44Guest:It dawns on me.

00:12:46Guest:The door was opened by the tape stopped when the speech ended.

00:12:50Guest:Yeah.

00:12:51Guest:But while we were doing the show, I ran across a memoir online about

00:12:56Guest:by a Nixon White House staffer who'd been in the room that night.

00:13:01Guest:And he said what the last words Nixon spoke before he walks out the door, which is on August 8th, he says to the crew, have a Merry Christmas, fellas.

00:13:10Guest:And it suddenly clicked.

00:13:12Guest:Because that's the goofiest thing in the world.

00:13:14Guest:And I realized what was going on.

00:13:16Guest:He's starting his next campaign.

00:13:18Guest:And the next campaign is all those guys go home and they say,

00:13:21Guest:He wasn't upset.

00:13:22Guest:He wasn't mad.

00:13:23Guest:He was joking with us.

00:13:24Guest:He's a nice guy.

00:13:25Guest:He even wished us a Merry Christmas.

00:13:27Guest:So he thought he was coming back.

00:13:28Guest:Of course he did.

00:13:30Guest:He's plotting the next campaign.

00:13:31Guest:That's who he was.

00:13:33Marc:That didn't pan out.

00:13:35Guest:It did.

00:13:35Guest:He became, you know, this respected foreign policy alliance agrees among people who believe in that shit.

00:13:41Marc:But wasn't that because they let him off?

00:13:43Marc:I mean, in a sense that even though he made this grand gesture that...

00:13:48Marc:You mean the pardon?

00:13:50Marc:The pardon and the political associates he had and framing him that way.

00:13:54Marc:There were plenty of right-wing ideologues in colleges and to start framing him as an international policy mastermind.

00:14:03Guest:Yeah, well, it was because of those unreadable books he wrote.

00:14:06Guest:But yeah, I think he knew the pardon was in the works.

00:14:10Guest:Right.

00:14:11Guest:I think he sussed out.

00:14:12Marc:Are you obsessed with Nixon at all?

00:14:14Guest:Ah, fascinated.

00:14:16Guest:Yeah.

00:14:17Guest:I wouldn't say, you know, I don't dream about it.

00:14:19Marc:Well, but what's interesting is knowing that the age difference between us, I'm 53, you're what, 70?

00:14:24Marc:Yeah.

00:14:25Marc:Is that, you know, you lived through it.

00:14:27Marc:I mean, I've talked to some people recently.

00:14:28Marc:I've talked to peers of yours.

00:14:29Marc:I've talked to- I have no peers, sir.

00:14:31Marc:Yes, you do.

00:14:33Marc:I talked to Mr. McKean.

00:14:34Marc:Okay.

00:14:35Marc:But, you know, I always had a certain envy of you guys who actually were- You envied people who lived through Nixon.

00:14:43Marc:Yeah.

00:14:44Yeah.

00:14:44Marc:Okay.

00:14:45Marc:Well, I envy people that were there when everything turned.

00:14:49Marc:Yeah.

00:14:50Marc:In the mid to late 60s where you were at an age where it meant something to you.

00:14:54Marc:Yeah.

00:14:55Marc:That you could actually feel everything changing around you and you kind of had to decide where you were going to fall and what you were going to do.

00:15:01Marc:And there was some weird wide open playing field in terms of what you could get away with.

00:15:05Yeah.

00:15:06Guest:Yes, and you did get faced with those choices.

00:15:09Guest:I mean, I literally sat in an office in the federal building in downtown Los Angeles across from a lieutenant in the Army.

00:15:19Guest:It was a yellow stripe painted on the floor between us, and he invited me three times to walk across that stripe and accept induction into the United States Army, and three times I refused, and he said, okay, you can go home.

00:15:30Guest:But were you drafted?

00:15:32Guest:No.

00:15:32Guest:They were asking you.

00:15:33Guest:They were trying to draft me.

00:15:35Guest:Volunteering.

00:15:35Guest:And I was refusing induction.

00:15:37Marc:Okay.

00:15:38Marc:You could just do that.

00:15:39Guest:Yeah.

00:15:40Guest:You could do that.

00:15:41Guest:You faced, of course, the fearsome prospect of federal prosecution.

00:15:46Guest:But I had a lawyer who had gotten all the Beach Boys off.

00:15:51Yeah.

00:15:51Marc:You got a Beach Boy lawyer.

00:15:53Marc:Yeah, I got a Beach Boy lawyer.

00:15:54Guest:Not that Brian needed a lot of help in staying out of the Army, but the other guys might have.

00:15:58Guest:Brian was a self-saver.

00:16:02Guest:But he said, you know, your file is so full of mistakes that the draft board made because they were basically volunteers trying to enforce law and they didn't know anything about the law.

00:16:11Guest:Right.

00:16:12Guest:He said, no prosecutor will prosecute you.

00:16:14Guest:Yeah.

00:16:14Guest:He said, you're good.

00:16:16Marc:So in some ways the draft was for suckers.

00:16:19Marc:No, no.

00:16:21Guest:The draft was for people who couldn't find the Beach Boys lawyer, the Beach Boys lawyer, or who couldn't fake, you know, a certain kind of mental illness credibly.

00:16:32Guest:Right.

00:16:33Guest:Or, you know, who couldn't stay up for 72 hours and not pee for that length of time and screw up their body.

00:16:40Guest:I mean, there were all sorts of ways out, but you did face those choices, you know, and it was...

00:16:45Guest:meaningful time and of course you had something then as a result that we didn't have during Iraq and we're not having now which was you had professors coming out of their little

00:17:04Guest:little offices and people who understood the history of Southeast Asia and having these odd things called teach-ins where they actually explained what the fuck was going on.

00:17:16Guest:Teachers who could speak their minds.

00:17:18Guest:Teachers who could speak their minds and could talk to crowds and could say,

00:17:21Guest:Here's where we are.

00:17:23Guest:Here's what we've gotten into.

00:17:25Guest:Here's how this started.

00:17:26Guest:Here's what we've picked up the French colonial mantle and are walking.

00:17:29Marc:And perhaps here's why it's wrong.

00:17:31Guest:Yeah.

00:17:32Guest:They didn't really load that.

00:17:33Guest:It was basically just explanatory for kids who had never heard of this place before they got a draft notice.

00:17:40Guest:Would that we had that in Iraq.

00:17:42Guest:Would that we had that now.

00:17:43Guest:But, of course, the urgency of the draft is gone.

00:17:46Guest:And so the kids would rather just text each other.

00:17:48Marc:Everything's so compartmentalized.

00:17:50Marc:It's weird.

00:17:51Marc:It's not even a matter of preference of texting.

00:17:54Marc:It just seems like some things happen in a different world.

00:17:56Guest:Well, if your ass isn't on the line, you're not as curious about.

00:18:00Guest:That's right.

00:18:01Guest:I mean, it's as simple as that.

00:18:03Marc:When you were almost drafted, what was that, 67?

00:18:06Guest:it was 68 were you in show business still i was i was on the radio with the credibility gap as a matter of 68 yeah yeah i just started and i i took a cassette machine in to record my induction thing induction they took my my tape machine away from me they did oh yeah give it back to you uh you don't know no i don't remember but but it was weird oddly enough that wasn't what was primary in my mind at that moment

00:18:28Marc:Whether you're going to get the tape.

00:18:31Guest:Yeah, no, it was whether I was going to stay out of the army.

00:18:33Guest:Yeah, live.

00:18:34Guest:Yeah, live.

00:18:35Marc:But it's interesting because there was a shift from what I could see to your later show business career or your re-entry as an adult and what you went through as a child.

00:18:47Marc:There was a gap there.

00:18:49Marc:Now, you started very young.

00:18:50Marc:Seven.

00:18:51Marc:Seven.

00:18:52Marc:And was that a choice of yours?

00:18:54Marc:Is it something you always wanted to do?

00:18:55Marc:I mean, I don't know what kind of choices you make at seven or why it happened.

00:18:58Guest:Yeah.

00:19:02Guest:You know, it was laid before our family by this woman who had become a children's agent.

00:19:09Guest:We had known her because she was my piano teacher from the age of four.

00:19:12Guest:And she said she's changing.

00:19:13Marc:Where did you grow up?

00:19:14Marc:Down in L.A.

00:19:15Guest:What part?

00:19:16Guest:In West Adams, which is, you know.

00:19:20Marc:Yeah, it's right.

00:19:21Marc:So it's sort of by downtown.

00:19:22Marc:So it's a community that's being gentrified at this point.

00:19:26Guest:It has been being gentrified for as long as I've known it.

00:19:30Guest:But it was, aside from South Pasadena, it's the largest collection of, or has been the largest extant collection of original California bungalows.

00:19:39Guest:And beautiful neighborhood, 80 foot tall palms.

00:19:45Guest:My house is now the number two westbound lane of the 10th.

00:19:49Guest:No, it's gone.

00:19:50Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:19:51Guest:But so she said, I'm going to be a children's agent.

00:19:55Guest:Can I try to get Harry some work?

00:19:57Guest:And my parents were both European immigrants and they thought this was some kind of joke, but they said, OK.

00:20:01Guest:And they knew I was.

00:20:03Marc:So they were first.

00:20:04Marc:You're first generation American.

00:20:06Guest:And they knew I loved radio and television.

00:20:10Guest:My dad's friend made home phonograph records.

00:20:14Guest:He had a lathe at home.

00:20:16Guest:And so there's a phonograph record of me when I was three years old.

00:20:19Guest:And he was asking me, what are my favorite shows?

00:20:21Guest:And I would tell him what nights they were on, what networks they were on, who sponsored them, what cities they originated in.

00:20:27Guest:Radio?

00:20:28Guest:Radio at that time.

00:20:29Guest:three yeah so yeah uh so when she calls up she has an audition for the jack benny program so you knew jack from the radio oh my god yeah the best right yeah the best yeah and and you get the you get the gig aced it baby yeah aced it baby and you meet jack yes do you have actual memories oh yeah yeah the the key ones were third show i did for him he comes out afterwards radio show yeah

00:20:56Guest:hugs me and gives me, he's had a transcription made of the show while we were performing it, and gives it to me, which was basically saying, you're in.

00:21:05Guest:Oh, wow.

00:21:05Guest:You're in.

00:21:06Guest:And then a couple shows later, the first time we're doing a read-through of the script, and I do a little nuance in the line, and it's the first time I made him laugh, and he just slams his hand on the table and throws his head back and cackles, and I mean, it's...

00:21:26Guest:That was it.

00:21:27Guest:Mind-blowing.

00:21:28Guest:Oh, I want more of that.

00:21:30Marc:More of that, please.

00:21:31Marc:Do you think that because of those experiences and because of that early, you know, that connection to radio that you find you love radio?

00:21:40Marc:Because you obviously love radio.

00:21:41Guest:I love radio.

00:21:42Marc:Um...

00:21:43Guest:partly from that's where i started but partly from uh it's cost efficient it is it's erg efficient yeah it's very erg efficient uh i remember on the on the morning david letterman show yeah he had a band leader this was before he ran into schaefer and he had a black band leader named frank owens and schaefer and i always used to joke about this yeah always remember this line and uh just one morning to make conversation letterman says

00:22:10Guest:Frank, if you could live anywhere you wanted to, where would you live?

00:22:13Guest:And Frank Owens says, Las Vegas, Dave.

00:22:16Guest:And Dave says, really, why?

00:22:18Guest:The E's.

00:22:21Guest:The E's?

00:22:22Guest:And that's my answer about radio.

00:22:24Guest:The E's.

00:22:24Guest:Yeah.

00:22:25Marc:You know?

00:22:25Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:26Guest:So me and Frank Owens.

00:22:28Marc:But you were in movies and television shows throughout your childhood.

00:22:33Guest:Yeah.

00:22:34Marc:And that was what you were doing.

00:22:35Guest:Yeah.

00:22:35Guest:I was in the robe.

00:22:36Guest:I was the first Cinemascope child.

00:22:37Marc:Wow.

00:22:39Marc:Yeah.

00:22:39Marc:Did you have other friends who were actors?

00:22:41Guest:No.

00:22:41Marc:As a child?

00:22:42Marc:No.

00:22:42Marc:You were just still at home with your folks?

00:22:44Guest:Home with my folks.

00:22:45Guest:What'd your dad do?

00:22:46Guest:My dad had trained as an opera singer in Vienna and then came over here and ran a gas station at Jefferson and Figueroa in downtown Los Angeles right across from Giant Felix Chevrolet.

00:22:56Guest:Could he sing?

00:22:57Guest:Yeah.

00:22:57Guest:And your mom was what?

00:22:59Guest:My mom had trained, had gone to college originally to be a paleontologist, then came over here, studied accounting and bookkeeping and was a bookkeeper for a small oil company.

00:23:09Marc:And were they running from Hitler?

00:23:12Guest:They were running towards him.

00:23:14Marc:Yeah.

00:23:14Marc:But is that why they... Yeah.

00:23:16Guest:Yeah, the rest of their... Give me some Hitler, they yelled.

00:23:19Guest:This guy doesn't seem like a good fella.

00:23:23Guest:Yeah, I know.

00:23:24Guest:I like the cut of his jib.

00:23:27Guest:Yeah, they were the only survivors of their mutual family, their respective families.

00:23:31Guest:Really?

00:23:31Marc:They got out.

00:23:32Marc:So you grew up with that, the weight of that.

00:23:34Guest:The weight and just the teeniness of the family.

00:23:38Marc:Yeah, and were you brought up religious?

00:23:41Yeah.

00:23:42Guest:In a way, I was made to go to a temple.

00:23:45Guest:Sure, me too.

00:23:47Guest:Friday nights at Bar Mitzvah.

00:23:50Guest:High holidays.

00:23:51Guest:And then at 15, my mom, my dad had passed away by then.

00:23:54Guest:At 15, my mom admitted she didn't believe in God.

00:23:56Guest:And I said, well, why didn't you put me through all that?

00:23:59Guest:Well, I wanted you to know what it was like to be a Jew.

00:24:01Guest:It's important, isn't it?

00:24:02Guest:It's important.

00:24:03Guest:But is it important?

00:24:04Guest:Well, I don't know.

00:24:06Guest:I mean, it's...

00:24:09Guest:I can't really make up my mind about that because when you're in a tribe, it feels good.

00:24:16Guest:But when you look at tribalism as an overall human phenomenon, it may not be the best of things.

00:24:22Guest:It's unavoidable.

00:24:23Guest:But there's a sense of community, a sense of shared... I was talking to a friend yesterday who is a non-practicing Jew and his wife is an atheist.

00:24:33Guest:And he was trying to figure out why she loves to go to a temple.

00:24:38Guest:And he said, I forget whom he was quoting, but he said, somebody had said, I don't go to temple to be with God.

00:24:46Guest:I go to temple to be with Jews.

00:24:48Marc:Exactly.

00:24:50Marc:In this town, though, I mean, it's not hard to find Jews.

00:24:53Marc:So, all right.

00:24:53Marc:So you do this.

00:24:54Marc:You do the show business thing throughout your entire childhood.

00:24:57Guest:Yeah.

00:24:58Marc:You're good at it.

00:24:58Guest:Yeah.

00:24:59Marc:Right?

00:24:59Guest:Yeah.

00:25:00Guest:You're a good actor.

00:25:01Guest:I'm working.

00:25:01Guest:I'm a working actor, working child actor.

00:25:03Marc:Making money.

00:25:04Guest:Yeah.

00:25:04Yeah.

00:25:04Guest:Putting it away.

00:25:06Guest:Are you?

00:25:06Guest:As per the Jackie Cooper law.

00:25:08Marc:That was the law?

00:25:10Guest:Yeah.

00:25:10Marc:It is a real law?

00:25:11Guest:Yeah.

00:25:11Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:25:12Marc:Really?

00:25:13Guest:Yeah.

00:25:13Guest:Because he was a child actor and the parents frittered away his money.

00:25:17Guest:So there was a law passed to prevent that from happening.

00:25:20Marc:I didn't know that.

00:25:21Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:25:22Marc:So did you put it in bonds?

00:25:23Marc:Do you still have any of that money?

00:25:25No.

00:25:25Guest:That money got me through my 20s.

00:25:29Marc:But when did you get disillusioned or sort of like decide?

00:25:34Guest:About show business?

00:25:35Guest:Yeah.

00:25:36Guest:Every day?

00:25:37Guest:Every fucking morning.

00:25:40Guest:When I woke, what time is it?

00:25:41Guest:Yeah, when the eyes open.

00:25:45Guest:No, as a kid, it was great.

00:25:48Guest:It was absolutely brilliant.

00:25:49Guest:If you have sane parents, it's the most fun way to spend a childhood.

00:25:53Marc:Being on movie sets and going on TV studios.

00:25:56Guest:Yeah, hanging out with great grown-ups.

00:25:59Guest:I didn't like the child thing anyway.

00:26:01Guest:I thought it was lame.

00:26:02Guest:I did too.

00:26:03Guest:And it was like...

00:26:04Guest:what i'm supposed to care about this shit you know yeah these little critters and student government and all that crap oh so it was it was a it was an answer to a prayer i didn't this was an opportunity to hang out with grown-ups in a in a uh shall we say in light of what we know now a uh a more wholesome way than other kids had sure and out and other than jack benny who were some of the heroes that you were able to spend time with

00:26:27Guest:I was on the Ann Southern show, who was a great comic actress of that era.

00:26:33Guest:I was on the Hitchcock show.

00:26:36Guest:So you work with Alfred Hitchcock?

00:26:39Guest:You know, he would come in and bank his stuff long.

00:26:41Marc:Right, right.

00:26:42Marc:He'd come standing sideways.

00:26:43Marc:Standing sideways, yeah.

00:26:44Marc:And walk away.

00:26:45Marc:In the shadow.

00:26:45Guest:Yeah.

00:26:46Guest:So I didn't actually work with him.

00:26:49Guest:But Benny was the one that, you know, really, I mean, I worked for him for eight years, so...

00:26:54Marc:Did you have a relationship throughout his life?

00:26:57Guest:You know, I didn't see him for a long time.

00:26:59Guest:And then Albert Brooks and I were working on a record together.

00:27:05Guest:Which record?

00:27:06Guest:It was the second one.

00:27:07Guest:It was called A Star is Bought.

00:27:09Guest:And the premise of it was that every track on the record was aimed at a different radio format.

00:27:16Guest:Uh-huh.

00:27:16Guest:So at then and still now, there were radio stations that played old radio shows.

00:27:21Guest:So we made an old radio show, supposedly Albert's prenatal work.

00:27:29Guest:And so following the format of the old comedy shows...

00:27:33Guest:Benny would do reciprocal guest appearances with Hope and Fred Allen and all that.

00:27:41Guest:And Albert's dad had been a second banana for Eddie Cantor.

00:27:45Guest:So he knew that world.

00:27:46Guest:So we wrote a show where Benny was paying a reciprocal.

00:27:49Guest:Albert had been on Benny's show the week before and Benny was paying a reciprocal visit.

00:27:53Guest:And we thought, well, come on, who better?

00:27:55Guest:I was a kid on his show.

00:27:56Guest:Albert was Parky Carcass' kid.

00:27:59Guest:Come on.

00:28:00Guest:So we called up Benny's manager, Irving Fine, and said we wanted to talk to Jack Benny about it, and he made an appointment.

00:28:07Guest:It was right around the corner from Nibblers.

00:28:10Guest:Do you remember Nibblers?

00:28:12Guest:It was on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

00:28:15Guest:And so we had a little coffee in Nibblers to rehearse our pitch.

00:28:20Guest:And we went in, and we described it to Benny, and he said, look, fellas,

00:28:28Guest:i've been on television i've been in movies i've been on stage why would i go back to radio we said no mr benny it's not a radio show it's a and we went through the i know but fellas why would i do radio and clearly his manager had gotten the idea wrong right and that was it he had locked in he'd been briefed and locked in and

00:28:51Guest:You never saw two more disappointed people standing in front of Nibblers than Albert and me.

00:28:56Marc:You couldn't explain to him.

00:28:57Marc:Couldn't get through.

00:28:57Marc:How old was he at that time?

00:28:59Guest:Well, he was up in his 80s.

00:29:00Guest:And his manager was probably what?

00:29:02Guest:Oh, God, yeah.

00:29:03Guest:Well, his manager was around for a long time more because I hired him as an actor much later.

00:29:07Marc:Oh, really?

00:29:07Guest:Yeah.

00:29:07Guest:For which movie?

00:29:08Guest:For a show for HBO called Viva Shea Vegas.

00:29:11Guest:He played Paul Schaefer's manager.

00:29:13Guest:Okay.

00:29:13Guest:But I heard Irving...

00:29:15Guest:This is a lesson.

00:29:17Guest:Don't let your representatives live longer than you.

00:29:20Guest:Because Irving had lived longer than Benny, had written a book about Benny.

00:29:24Guest:And I heard him driving up the coast of California.

00:29:26Guest:I was listening to a radio show out of San Francisco.

00:29:28Guest:And the host said, what was one of Jack Benny's great comedy bits?

00:29:34Guest:And now I'm hearing Irving Fine doing Jack Benny's material.

00:29:38Marc:You don't want your material.

00:29:39Marc:You're managing doing your material.

00:29:41Marc:No, they're not supposed to talk in front of the microphone.

00:29:45No.

00:29:45Marc:So after you go through this whole childhood, was there a time where you're like, my image of it is that once the 60s hit, was there ever a higher calling?

00:29:55Marc:Was there an idea that maybe show business is not the thing?

00:29:58Guest:No, this had nothing to do with the 60s.

00:30:01Guest:This was earlier than that.

00:30:03Guest:I just thought this was a nice thing to do as a kid.

00:30:06Guest:yeah but you know i was expecting to be like a serious person when i grew up you know i was a grown-up a grown-up yeah i was highly educated i was very smart where'd you go to school i went to ucla yeah la high before that john burroughs junior high before that

00:30:22Guest:Um, but I mean, I zipped through school.

00:30:24Guest:I really did.

00:30:25Guest:I just, uh, I got five better fucking kappa for that matter.

00:30:28Guest:You know, I don't think it's normally referred to in that.

00:30:31Marc:No, that's people who actually get it can refer to it.

00:30:34Guest:Yeah.

00:30:34Guest:I, I, I, it's, it's of a piece with when Derek Smalls played, uh, in New York at a very revered venue, the first words out of his mouth were Carnegie fucking hole.

00:30:47Guest:Um,

00:30:48Guest:So I was expecting to be either in teaching or in journalism or in government, and I actually dabbled in all three of them.

00:30:56Guest:I worked for a year at the state legislature in Sacramento.

00:30:58Guest:I taught school for two years in Compton.

00:31:01Guest:They happened to be draft dodges, but they also happened to be what I was interested in doing.

00:31:04Guest:And I wrote journalism.

00:31:06Guest:I worked for Newsweek, covered the first moonshot out of JPL in Pasadena, covered the Watts riot.

00:31:15Guest:You did.

00:31:16Marc:Yeah, so I tried all that.

00:31:17Guest:stuff you've had like nine lives it seems yeah in a way uh kind of yeah when did the music uh were you playing music all the way through well i'd been taking piano lessons i i know but sometimes that drifts and i went back to piano lessons my mom found me a really serious piano teacher uh who could trace her lineage through cerny back to beethoven uh-huh

00:31:37Guest:and uh i was the only real yeah and i was the only one of her students who was not being groomed for a concert career you know they're all practicing eight hours a day she was lucky to get one out of me and did you stick with it eight years but i mean can you play now i can play i didn't you know i i ran fleeing from it for years and that's why i took up the terror the terror of having to read yeah uh i picked up the bass and learned it learned to play it by ear

00:32:01Guest:But now I've gone back to piano and I can play it, kind of.

00:32:04Guest:I mean, I have a friend who's a composer and I've learned one of his pieces and, you know, so I can do that, kind of.

00:32:10Guest:And you like to play.

00:32:11Guest:I do like to play, yeah.

00:32:12Guest:It's nice, right?

00:32:13Guest:It's great.

00:32:14Guest:It's a wonderful instrument, as is the bass.

00:32:16Guest:I fell in love with the upright bass.

00:32:18Marc:Yeah, I love to play, too.

00:32:19Marc:Just in general, having that ability to do that is very meditative.

00:32:22Marc:Calming, calming.

00:32:22Marc:Yeah, definitely.

00:32:23Guest:And, you know, when I was on tour with this play in England for the month of September, and I got to re-experience what it's like being in a life without a musical instrument nearby, and it's not fun.

00:32:36Marc:Yeah, you just need it just to grab it.

00:32:39Marc:Yeah.

00:32:39Guest:Hang out.

00:32:40Guest:And then my wife, who was a proper piano player, always raved about the difference between, she'd play a keyboard, but the difference with having a big resonant piece of wood vibrating next to it.

00:32:56Guest:So when I discovered the upright bass, it was the same thing, except that big resonant piece of wood was right here, right on the thigh.

00:33:02Guest:And so that was later in life?

00:33:04Guest:Yeah, that was when we started doing the Volksmann.

00:33:06Guest:it was that was the first time you started playing the upright bass first time you even tried it yeah when it was saturday night live and we made up the this bit about the folksmen uh which came which became the mighty wind guy yeah yeah yeah but it was it came out of an interview that we had done for rolling stone when spinal tap came out right and the writer said what are you guys going to do next and michael just was bullshitting and said i don't know maybe we'll do a folk trio and

00:33:30Guest:And so when he, Chris and I were on Saturday Night Live and Michael guest hosted and this was like four or five months later and we were, you know, searching for something to do.

00:33:41Guest:I said, how about that folk trio thing?

00:33:44Guest:And that's how it, and then so I had to pick up the bass to play it to be able to be in that trio.

00:33:49Guest:And the guy who had taught me bass originally, Jim Fielder of Blood, Sweat and Tears, was,

00:33:54Guest:uh had taught me left hand technique of an upright player so how'd you know that guy my through my first wife who was also a singer um so he had taught me left hand upright technique so i had to change that for for the electric guitar to write guitar technique then you had to change it back yeah but now i at least knew what it knew what it was

00:34:13Marc:it's interesting how long you've fucking known these guys though like you know like the the fact that you go back that far with guest and albert brooks and how well when you did the credibility gap how did you get involved with that i talked to him about uh he met david yeah back east yeah and they went to school together right in pennsylvania somewhere carnegie tech yeah and then where do you meet up with these guys

00:34:37Guest:I joined the credibility gap.

00:34:39Guest:It had started as this renegade group of straight news guys, except they weren't straight.

00:34:45Guest:They were, you know.

00:34:47Guest:Clowns.

00:34:48Guest:They were vipers.

00:34:49Guest:Yeah.

00:34:50Guest:And this was a radio station that was always second in the market, the second rated top 40 station, which is like, you know, that'll get you a ride on the bus.

00:34:59Guest:Right.

00:35:00Guest:So the news director convinced the management to let it go a little kind of

00:35:05Guest:you know this was the 60s right you could the the magical thing about that time was and why it was exciting to be part of it is that it's that magical moment when the guys in charge don't know what the formula is right they don't know how to who the audience is and they don't know what the formula is and change quickly and yeah and then you can get some shit done right so that was when he could pitch management on the idea of letting the news kind of morph into this comedy thing yeah

00:35:32Guest:and then the comedy guys did it for a while and but got a little you know too crazy blasted out by well it was just it was a three shows a day it was a really hard gig yeah so they were looking for somebody to kind of come in and i'd been doing radio commercials for this rock venue which was also a movie venue in hollywood um across the street from the palladium you know that building on sunset it was called the kaleidoscope it became the aquarius theater but and it was run by the two guys who later ran the la the original la film festival

00:36:02Guest:and so I couldn't afford to buy time for the rock and roll shows on the number one top 40 session, so I was buying time on KRLA, and the salesman who was selling me the time said, hey, they're looking for somebody to do this show.

00:36:15Guest:So I made a tape at home, drove to Pasadena, dropped it on the desk of the receptionist, ran out the front door, drove home.

00:36:25Guest:By the time I got home, there was a message on my answering machine saying, you're hired, can you start tomorrow?

00:36:31Marc:Who was that who called you?

00:36:33Guest:The assistant of Lure, a woman named Stephanie Greenblatt.

00:36:35Marc:And you'd not done any comedy other than TV parts and this and that here and there.

00:36:40Guest:I had been an editor of the Humor Magazine at UCLA.

00:36:43Guest:So I edited like six or seven issues of Humor Magazine and written a lot of the stuff for the magazine.

00:36:49Marc:In the 60s, so eight 60s.

00:36:51Guest:No, in like 64.

00:36:53Guest:Oh, so early.

00:36:54Guest:But every university had their humor magazine.

00:36:56Guest:That's how I met Terry Gilliam, is he was editing FANG, which was the humor magazine over at Occidental.

00:37:01Guest:Right.

00:37:02Guest:Oh, really?

00:37:02Guest:He was right here?

00:37:03Guest:Yeah.

00:37:03Guest:And he grew up in Panorama City.

00:37:05Guest:Oh, my God.

00:37:06Guest:Yeah.

00:37:06Guest:And so he had to get out.

00:37:08Guest:And so we would send each other, you know, you'd see other campuses.

00:37:11Guest:And The Realist was around, right?

00:37:13Guest:The Realist was around.

00:37:14Guest:My God was The Realist around, yeah.

00:37:16Marc:Was that something that was on your radar when you were in college?

00:37:18Guest:Oh, my God.

00:37:19Guest:I remember having these impassioned arguments with people saying,

00:37:22Guest:There was this legendary piece in The Realist, the parts left out of the William Manchester book.

00:37:27Guest:Do you know that?

00:37:27Marc:Is that the LBJ thing?

00:37:29Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:37:30Marc:Yeah.

00:37:30Guest:Need we say on that?

00:37:31Guest:Do we want to say?

00:37:32Marc:I talked to Krasner on the show.

00:37:33Marc:I went up and saw him.

00:37:34Marc:Yeah.

00:37:34Marc:I spent two hours with him.

00:37:35Guest:Oh, my God.

00:37:36Guest:What a guy.

00:37:36Guest:Yeah.

00:37:37Guest:But have you discussed that?

00:37:39Marc:No, I don't think I've discussed that.

00:37:40Marc:It was...

00:37:41Marc:LBGA.

00:37:42Guest:All right.

00:37:42Guest:Well, let's set the stage.

00:37:43Guest:Okay.

00:37:44Guest:Eight months after the assassination, this guy, William Manchester, writes this very ponderous tome, Death of a President.

00:37:51Guest:And so Krasner apes this style perfectly.

00:37:57Guest:to write the chapter that was left out.

00:37:59Guest:And the chapter that was left out supposedly was on the flight back from Dallas to Washington on Air Force One.

00:38:06Guest:There's Jackie, there's LBJ, and there's the body.

00:38:09Guest:And Jackie's back in the passenger compartment.

00:38:11Guest:LBJ is up with the body.

00:38:13Guest:And actually, at the time, I don't know if Krasner knew

00:38:18Guest:how dick proud lbj was it turns out lbj was as dick proud as milton burl uh-huh yeah uh but he has lbj stick his dick in the neck wound yeah and fuck it yeah exactly and as outrageous as that sounds it's still outrageous it's still outrageous i'm i'm i'm outraged that i said it no but what were the arguments you had about that whether it was just appropriate no whether it was true

00:38:45Guest:Well, it was real because it seemed plausible because no, it didn't seem plausible.

00:38:51Guest:But Krasner's mastery of the style was so supreme that he had convinced me that somehow this was really this was a shockingly real scene that of course had to be left out of the book.

00:39:03Marc:Was that one of those moments where... Because, like, I mean, you're sort of considered a satirist, you know, as that goes.

00:39:10Marc:You know, like, because it's hard to define that word, really.

00:39:13Marc:Yeah.

00:39:13Marc:But certainly with your history in terms of political satire and satirizing in general, was that one of the moments where you realized that it can cut this close and it can be this real and it can be... That satire is powerful because it's that provocative?

00:39:28Guest:Oh, my God, yes.

00:39:29Guest:And that...

00:39:30Guest:The getting the style of your target, of your intended or of the frame that you're using exactly right is so powerful.

00:39:39Marc:It's important.

00:39:40Guest:That's very important.

00:39:42Guest:Very, very, very.

00:39:43Guest:Three verys.

00:39:44Marc:Because, well, no, because that's sort of what you did, you know, and Guest as well and McKean and those movies, certainly.

00:39:50Marc:Yeah.

00:39:51Marc:It carries right through.

00:39:52Marc:But a lot of the stuff, the Albert Brooks real life was, which you co-wrote.

00:39:57Marc:Co-wrote.

00:39:58Marc:So that was always, and then even the credibility gap was doing something that could not, could have been misunderstood as real news for a little while, right?

00:40:06Guest:Oh my God, yes, yes.

00:40:07Guest:And, you know, it was sort of, we evolved, certainly meeting Albert helped me evolve what my part was in that show.

00:40:20Guest:In the credibility gap?

00:40:21Marc:In the credibility gap from- How was Albert involved?

00:40:23Guest:Well, he wasn't.

00:40:23Guest:He just was around in front of David's.

00:40:25Guest:So now I join.

00:40:28Guest:Now it's me and the newsmen.

00:40:30Guest:Now one of the other.

00:40:31Marc:These are real newsmen.

00:40:31Guest:Real newsmen.

00:40:32Guest:They were the guys who used to say, Carolee News at 5 o'clock.

00:40:36Guest:Slash.

00:40:37Guest:And Carolee Weather right ahead of much more music.

00:40:40Guest:they all had the big voices sure and uh so now one of the guys who's been doing the comedy he'd been doing LBJ's voice on the shows and he's now paranoid he thinks he smokes a lot of dope and he thinks the FBI is after him and he doesn't want to do this anymore so now we're looking for another guy yeah of course now we realize years later he wasn't paranoid they were after him

00:41:00Guest:Were they?

00:41:01Guest:No.

00:41:01Guest:They were after other people.

00:41:03Guest:They weren't keeping an eye on people.

00:41:05Guest:One of the people who would come in and do female voices occasionally, a wonderful actress named Sally Smaller, still around, lovely woman, she said when she found out that we were looking for somebody,

00:41:16Guest:She said, well, I have an answering service.

00:41:19Guest:She didn't have a machine.

00:41:20Guest:She had an answering service, which was people at a switchboard would take your calls and take your messages.

00:41:26Guest:Yeah.

00:41:27Guest:Immortalized in the movie.

00:41:28Guest:Bells are ringing.

00:41:29Guest:Yeah.

00:41:30Guest:She said, there's this guy who takes my messages and gives them to me.

00:41:33Guest:And he's really funny.

00:41:35Guest:Yeah.

00:41:36Guest:So we said, OK, well, tell him to come in.

00:41:38Guest:We'll meet him.

00:41:39Guest:It was David Lander.

00:41:40Guest:Really?

00:41:41Guest:Yeah.

00:41:41Guest:That's how he got the job.

00:41:42Guest:He was a funny message giver on the answering machine.

00:41:44Marc:But was he trying to be funny?

00:41:46Marc:Yeah, of course he was.

00:41:47Marc:It was Hollywood.

00:41:48Guest:Yeah.

00:41:49Guest:Everybody's auditioning all the time.

00:41:50Guest:Right.

00:41:51Guest:And then after we hire him, he says, oh, you got to meet my friend McKean.

00:41:55Guest:Oh, you got to meet my friend McKean.

00:41:56Guest:Always talking about my friend McKean.

00:41:57Guest:I didn't even know Michael's first name for two years.

00:41:59Guest:Yeah.

00:42:00Guest:My friend McKean.

00:42:00Guest:Yeah.

00:42:01Guest:And Michael finally comes out and he comes into play and we just...

00:42:04Guest:oh okay then yeah yeah and that was it yeah and uh so you guys were on the radio for a while yeah we were on two years yeah uh three shows a day and then we got fired and then we moved to another station and we were on one show one 15 minute show a day for another year and then that whole station was cleaned out

00:42:25Guest:And you started doing it live a bit?

00:42:26Guest:Started doing live shows.

00:42:28Marc:Because, like, I can't imagine, like, when I talked to McKean and I talked to Ed Begley Jr., and I talked to guys who were doing, like, radical stuff around that time, it feels like that, you know, LA, for that type of comedy, was a very small town.

00:42:42Marc:And, like, it sort of seemed like everybody kind of knew each other, and they were sort of running in the same circles.

00:42:47Marc:Is that possible?

00:42:48Marc:Yes and no.

00:42:48Marc:I mean, you...

00:42:50Marc:It's not like it is today.

00:42:52Marc:It's all blown out and blown up, and nothing seems to be that relevant unless larger powers declare it relevant.

00:42:58Guest:Oh, I see what you're saying.

00:42:59Guest:Yeah, in that sense, well, it was easier to make a little mark.

00:43:04Guest:I mean, we were on the radio.

00:43:06Guest:We were on the radio on a second-ranked rock and roll station, and we were getting more mail than the rest of the station, the DJs or anybody.

00:43:14Guest:People were into it.

00:43:15Guest:People were into it.

00:43:16Guest:Had there been satellite distribution in those days...

00:43:20Guest:We would have been nationwide.

00:43:21Guest:We might have been, you know.

00:43:23Marc:But you were also on the pulse of what was happening.

00:43:25Guest:Oh, my God.

00:43:26Guest:Yeah.

00:43:26Guest:We were doing real newscasts that started out as real newscasts.

00:43:29Guest:And then, you know, some story that we decided was fodder for a sketch would veer off and suddenly it would be in this thing.

00:43:36Guest:And what I was saying before is as time went on, I certainly, and I think the other guys, got more interested in making this stuff sound realer.

00:43:45Guest:Right.

00:43:45Guest:And it sounded like comedy sketches originally.

00:43:48Marc:After.

00:43:48Marc:Originally.

00:43:49Marc:Right.

00:43:49Marc:Well, I got that album, Woodstick.

00:43:51Guest:Yeah.

00:43:51Guest:That was sort of emblematic of our comedy sketch days.

00:43:55Marc:Well, you had a premise.

00:43:56Guest:Yeah.

00:43:56Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:43:57Guest:And we were trying to...

00:43:58Guest:By that time, it was a record.

00:44:00Guest:We were trying to make it sound a little realer.

00:44:01Guest:But the sketches on our first station really sounded like comedy sketches.

00:44:06Marc:So you're looking to be like Orson Welles' War of the Worlds.

00:44:08Marc:A little more.

00:44:09Guest:A little more.

00:44:10Guest:Trying to get a little more into stylistic stuff and fool the listener a little bit.

00:44:17Marc:So people wouldn't... Yeah, exactly.

00:44:19Guest:So they wouldn't know.

00:44:19Guest:Just give them a little jolt.

00:44:20Marc:But you guys were sort of at the cutting edge of that.

00:44:23Marc:Yeah.

00:44:23Guest:Well, we in the Firesign Theater were sort of pursuing the same kind of sonic adventures with different kind of comedy agendas.

00:44:34Guest:But you were actually on the radio.

00:44:36Guest:Were they on the radio?

00:44:36Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:44:37Guest:They had a show on KPFK.

00:44:38Guest:So there was- Four guys doing a comedy show on KPFK.

00:44:42Guest:I don't know a lot about them.

00:44:43Marc:Yeah, they were- I know they're funny and they're respected, but I never listen to their records.

00:44:48Marc:Yeah.

00:44:48Guest:The records are interesting to listen to.

00:44:51Guest:I don't think they're laugh out loud funny often.

00:44:53Guest:They're very clever.

00:44:55Guest:Yeah.

00:44:56Guest:They're almost like linear descendants in a way of the goons in terms of sort of surrealism.

00:45:03Guest:Right.

00:45:04Marc:Surrealism is not my bad.

00:45:05Marc:Comedy surrealism.

00:45:07Guest:Yeah.

00:45:08Guest:they were i think uh lauded and deservedly so for their adventurousness in uh the audio production of those records they were brilliant they were really brilliant so you're hanging out with guest and and lander and albert brooks and and these are hilarious guys yeah and you still friends with albert no that end badly yeah

00:45:33Marc:You've got a reputation, Harry.

00:45:36Marc:Me?

00:45:36Marc:Yeah, a little bit.

00:45:38Guest:You want me to talk about it?

00:45:39Marc:Yeah, we can talk about it.

00:45:41Marc:But let's put it in context.

00:45:43Marc:You want to go outside and talk about it?

00:45:44Marc:I do.

00:45:45Marc:Maybe at the end of this.

00:45:46Marc:I'm going to have to bring the mics out.

00:45:47Marc:Yeah, all right.

00:45:48Marc:Yeah.

00:45:49Marc:I don't have any beef with you.

00:45:51Marc:You said a thing that I quote constantly.

00:45:53Marc:What's that?

00:45:54Marc:I don't know if you even remember.

00:45:55Marc:I interviewed you when I was on Air America, and I'm not sure.

00:45:58Marc:I don't remember what it was for.

00:46:00Marc:Yeah.

00:46:01Marc:But it was a phone interview.

00:46:02Marc:Yeah.

00:46:02Marc:And you said that stand-up comedy is controlling the reason why people laugh at you.

00:46:09Guest:Oh, why people go into comedy.

00:46:11Guest:Yeah, basically.

00:46:12Guest:Yeah.

00:46:12Guest:Is to control why people laugh at you.

00:46:14Marc:Yeah.

00:46:15Marc:I love that.

00:46:15Guest:Yeah.

00:46:16Guest:Well, I mean, I...

00:46:17Guest:You know, it made me think of that.

00:46:19Guest:I was my third or fourth Jack Benny show.

00:46:24Guest:My parents used to sit in this booth above the stage, which is called the client's booth where the advertisers sat.

00:46:30Guest:Right.

00:46:30Guest:And they said, one day we just want to sit in the audience and see the show from that side.

00:46:34Guest:Yeah.

00:46:34Guest:So don't look for us up there.

00:46:35Guest:We won't be there this time, but you'll be fine.

00:46:37Guest:and uh okay so now the the uh before the show we're always introduced to the audience by Don Wilson the announcer of the show we're standing in the in the corridor between two studios and the door is open and we hear Don call our names and we walk out and take a bow and sit down and get ready to do the show so I'm talking to somebody probably no I don't know who it was uh

00:47:02Guest:eight eight years old schmoozing and I hear Harry Harry and I walk out to take my bow and instead of applause I get a huge laugh and of course I look down to see if my zipper is undone and no it's not and I fuck bad feeling bad feeling yeah

00:47:22Guest:And I sit down, Mel Blanc, the great Mel Blanc is sitting down already, and I can't see my parents, so I'm just like, I can't see them in the audience, so I'm just feeling very lost.

00:47:32Guest:And he said, he was announcing Mary Livingston.

00:47:35Guest:He was calling Mary, not Harry.

00:47:37Guest:That's what...

00:47:39Guest:So you want to control the laugh.

00:47:42Marc:Mel Blank, you had a relationship with that guy.

00:47:44Guest:Yeah.

00:47:44Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:47:45Guest:He had a 12-year-old.

00:47:46Guest:He had a kid who was the same age as me.

00:47:48Guest:So, you know.

00:47:50Marc:That one's been fascinating.

00:47:51Guest:Yeah, I think he just took a fatherly interest in me.

00:47:53Guest:I don't mean in a Catholic sense.

00:47:54Guest:I know.

00:47:55Guest:Yeah.

00:47:56Guest:But it was very, you know.

00:47:57Guest:Did you get to see him work?

00:47:58Guest:i didn't get to see him work he gave me two cells of looney tunes cartoons two original cells and i'm mortified to say that we didn't know how to take care of them and i just would watch over the years as the they deteriorate paint would flake off them did uh what did he do voices around you though just on the show oh yeah just on just the stuff for the benny show you know oh that was but you saw him work oh god yeah

00:48:22Guest:Oh, he was brilliant and effortless.

00:48:23Guest:It seemed effortless.

00:48:24Guest:You know, he did this guy who was like a... Well, he did the sound of Jack Benny's old car.

00:48:30Guest:He did?

00:48:30Guest:Yeah.

00:48:33Guest:See, I don't... Really?

00:48:35Guest:No, I can't even do it.

00:48:36Guest:Yeah, of the car starting and...

00:48:40Guest:did all that stuff with his mouth.

00:48:42Guest:Oh, my God.

00:48:43Guest:And did this Spanish-speaking assistant to Benny, who was a character.

00:48:48Guest:We did a bunch of them.

00:48:49Guest:Did a bunch of characters.

00:48:50Marc:But at that time, wasn't it on television yet?

00:48:53No.

00:48:53Guest:He did that on radio.

00:48:55Guest:On television, he would play like one guy.

00:48:59Guest:Like Frank Nelson would, the guy who always bothered.

00:49:02Guest:Are you trying to drive me crazy?

00:49:04Guest:Ooh, am I?

00:49:05Marc:It strikes me as odd that later in your career that you are somewhat defined by the Simpsons' voices and you have this amazing pedigree.

00:49:14Guest:It's lunatic, isn't it?

00:49:15Guest:And if you were writing it, you'd think there's a straight line between them, but there isn't.

00:49:19Marc:Or at least something planted.

00:49:20Marc:But you don't know.

00:49:22Guest:No, and I mean, I was doing, you know, little sketches with my friends into a tape recorder.

00:49:27Guest:Right.

00:49:27Guest:Even, well, probably right around the same time that I was working in the business, so it was in me.

00:49:34Marc:Right, but yeah, but to sit there and watch, like, you know, Mel Blanc, who defined the voiceover.

00:49:38Guest:Yeah, but he never said, here's how you do it.

00:49:40Marc:Right, right, but you could watch however.

00:49:42Marc:You could watch it.

00:49:43Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:49:44Guest:You watch how people, especially in the Benny show, you watched how people...

00:49:53Marc:carried themselves as professionals it's amazing right yeah i mean i get so whacked out by it like if i do a live wt if i do a live podcast and i got four guys bill hater whoever you know sitting there and i'm just sitting there you know being a host and i'm watching that person i'm watching the side of their head just talk to five six hundred people and then i hear the laughter and i'm just seeing this guy who's just a guy

00:50:19Marc:And there's this thing, there's this magic you can't explain.

00:50:23Marc:And it's like that show business.

00:50:24Marc:Like when you're standing backstage and you're about to go on to the stage, that moment where you're like, I'm just going to go out there and do this.

00:50:31Marc:Like, I don't ever think like it's showtime, but there's something so amazingly magic about it.

00:50:37Guest:Yeah, there is.

00:50:38Guest:I mean, I just did this play for almost two years, and I had my little routine of what I would do in the dark before I went out.

00:50:46Marc:You did?

00:50:47Marc:What'd you do?

00:50:48Guest:I did exercises.

00:50:49Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:50:50Marc:Yeah.

00:50:50Marc:Get the what going?

00:50:51Guest:Well, I had to dance.

00:50:53Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:50:53Guest:Yeah, so I had to do ballroom.

00:50:55Guest:My character did ballroom dancing.

00:50:57Marc:Did you have to learn how to do that?

00:50:59Guest:Did I ever, yeah.

00:51:00Guest:And was I an unwilling pupil?

00:51:03Marc:But it's fun, though, once you figure out the steps, right?

00:51:05Marc:Everything's fun once you figure it out.

00:51:07Marc:I know, but it's the dread of getting to the fun.

00:51:09Marc:Yeah, yeah, exactly right.

00:51:11Marc:A lot of dread getting to the fun.

00:51:12Marc:A lot of dread.

00:51:12Marc:What do you mean?

00:51:13Marc:I got to go to the place?

00:51:14Guest:Yeah, I got to go to the place and do the thing?

00:51:15Guest:Yeah.

00:51:16Guest:But this guy, this wonderful kid, he was like in his mid-20s and he's a dance coach on the English equivalent of Dancing with the Stars.

00:51:26Guest:It's called Strictly Come Dancing over there.

00:51:28Guest:And he said, it's almost like a threat.

00:51:31Guest:He said, and he's just got this love of this stuff.

00:51:34Guest:He really, he just oozes it.

00:51:36Guest:And he said, you're not going to just dance.

00:51:40Guest:You're going to enjoy it.

00:51:41Guest:And about four weeks in, I said, fucking Matt Flint.

00:51:45Guest:It was right.

00:51:45Marc:It would have made me cry if he said that.

00:51:49Marc:I don't enjoy.

00:51:51Marc:Don't push me.

00:51:52Marc:I don't enjoy anything.

00:51:53Marc:Yeah, don't push me to enjoy.

00:51:54Guest:I haven't enjoyed life.

00:51:57Marc:Okay, so now let's get from the credibility gap because it's not that we have a lot to cover, but you want to talk about being a notoriously difficult person.

00:52:07Yeah.

00:52:07Marc:And I'm glad you want to talk about that.

00:52:10Guest:Well, I'm willing to talk about it.

00:52:11Guest:I don't yearn to talk about it.

00:52:14Guest:I don't ache.

00:52:15Guest:I don't wake up in the morning saying, gee, I hope he asked me about being a notoriously difficult person today.

00:52:19Marc:Well, you've alienated some pretty seemingly talented and at one time or another close friends.

00:52:27Guest:I believe they've alienated me.

00:52:29Guest:Of course you do, Harry.

00:52:30Marc:What is that, Dr. Marin's voice there?

00:52:35Marc:It is, yeah.

00:52:36Marc:No, but when did you, what is the timeline?

00:52:39Marc:So before you do, obviously before you do Spinal Tap, you wrote with Albert, you wrote Real Life.

00:52:43Guest:Well, Real Life wrote, worked with him on all those short films he did for Saturday Night Live.

00:52:49Marc:You were in some of them, no?

00:52:50Marc:Yeah.

00:52:50Guest:Yeah.

00:52:51Marc:Yeah.

00:52:51Marc:And now I kind of remembering.

00:52:52Marc:Yeah.

00:52:52Marc:And so you guys were buddies and he's sort of a genius and you're your own genius.

00:52:56Marc:So working with him on real life, which I think is one of his best movies.

00:52:59Marc:Yeah, I do too.

00:53:00Marc:Personally.

00:53:01Marc:Yeah.

00:53:01Marc:What was that?

00:53:02Marc:What was the process?

00:53:04Marc:Was it mostly improvised?

00:53:05Guest:No, that was totally scripted.

00:53:07Marc:It was?

00:53:08Guest:Yes.

00:53:09Guest:And Albert had an office on the, what is now the Warner Brothers lot.

00:53:15Guest:And we'd go into his office every day.

00:53:17Guest:And normally I'd been the typist in every collaboration.

00:53:24Guest:Because that's the one thing I learned.

00:53:25Marc:When you were with The Gap?

00:53:26Guest:Yeah, it was the one thing I learned in high school was how to type.

00:53:29Guest:So I could just type very fast.

00:53:31Guest:Yeah, and not look.

00:53:32Guest:And just stuff would get down on paper very quickly.

00:53:34Guest:But Albert found it distracting.

00:53:36Guest:Typewriters are noisy.

00:53:37Guest:Yeah.

00:53:38Guest:We didn't yet have the wonderful world we have today with the silent keyboard of the computer and all the wonderful magic.

00:53:43Guest:Amazing the future is.

00:53:44Guest:The future is just fabulous.

00:53:47Guest:So I wrote Longhand.

00:53:50Guest:Yeah.

00:53:50Guest:and write down the script longhand.

00:53:53Guest:And it was him and me batting stuff around and then he'd stick around at night and this other writer would come in, Monica Johnson, and they'd do some stuff and we'd sort of meld what they came up with into what we were doing and it was an interesting... Was Rob Reiner hanging around?

00:54:09Guest:Rob was around, not while we were writing real life so much, but Rob was a friend of David Landers again, so he'd come to see the credibility gap shows that we would do.

00:54:18Marc:And he was a friend of Albert's from childhood.

00:54:20Guest:And he was a friend of Albert's from childhood, yeah.

00:54:21Marc:Right.

00:54:21Marc:So you write that with Albert, and then when does SNL start?

00:54:26Marc:When do you have the falling out with Albert?

00:54:27Marc:Is it after real life or later?

00:54:29Guest:Yeah, kind of.

00:54:30Guest:It began after real life.

00:54:33Guest:Yeah.

00:54:34Guest:It's just I was led to expect that I'd be playing a part in the movie, and then Albert said, well, I can't act with... I can't convince myself that you're another guy, so... And that was it.

00:54:44Marc:That began... That was the...

00:54:46Guest:Yeah, and I had a girlfriend at the time who knew Albert really well, and she would see the problems I was having with Albert, and she said at one point, you know, you do realize he doesn't get that you're a separate person, right?

00:55:04Marc:You're just an extension of Albert?

00:55:07Marc:Yeah.

00:55:07Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:55:09Marc:I got a dad like that.

00:55:10Guest:Yeah, so that kind of went in.

00:55:14Guest:But then Lorne had... I'd gone with my buddies in The Credibility Gap to 30 Rock.

00:55:22Guest:We'd been asked to do a sketch that was a takeoff on the Tom Snyder Tomorrow Show on the Tomorrow Show.

00:55:29Yeah.

00:55:29Guest:Mid 70s?

00:55:31Guest:Yeah.

00:55:32Guest:As in the summer as Saturday Night Live was getting ready to go on the air.

00:55:37Guest:75.

00:55:37Guest:Yeah.

00:55:38Guest:So Franken was there.

00:55:40Guest:Franken and Davis.

00:55:42Guest:Franken and Davis were both there.

00:55:43Guest:So we come in to do the Snyder bit and we're hanging around 30 Rock and so we go see O'Donohue and go see Al and Tom.

00:55:51Guest:You know Michael O'Donohue.

00:55:53Guest:Yeah I knew Michael O'Donohue a little bit.

00:55:55Guest:And so.

00:55:57Guest:And they were just trying to put that first show together.

00:55:59Guest:They were just trying to figure out anything.

00:56:01Guest:And so a couple years later, Lauren offered me a job writing on the show, and I was writing out here.

00:56:12Guest:I said, I can write on television out here.

00:56:15Guest:I'm a writer-performer.

00:56:16Marc:So it's like 78, 79?

00:56:16Marc:Yeah, 77.

00:56:19Marc:Oh, yeah?

00:56:19Guest:Yeah, so I'm working at that time with Martin Mullin for Tonight, and I'm writing.

00:56:22Marc:That was an amazing show that I barely remember.

00:56:25Guest:Wonderful show.

00:56:25Marc:I was a young man.

00:56:26Marc:Yeah.

00:56:26Marc:But I remember staying up for it.

00:56:28Marc:It was like there was Firmwood Tonight and there was Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

00:56:32Guest:Yeah, Mary Hartman came first.

00:56:34Marc:Right.

00:56:34Marc:And that was the spinoff.

00:56:35Guest:Yeah.

00:56:35Guest:Kind of.

00:56:36Guest:Yeah.

00:56:36Guest:And then another show spun off from Firmwood Tonight called America Tonight, which was basically the same show, but it would have celebrity guests.

00:56:42Marc:But that was one of those ones where that thing that you were doing with the credibility gap or the idea of cutting it close to the bone or presenting it as real as possible was sort of taking hold a bit.

00:56:51Guest:A little bit.

00:56:52Guest:There was a wonderful moment.

00:56:55Guest:The first... We're getting away from Saturday Night Live.

00:56:57Guest:I'll get back there.

00:56:59Guest:I love talking about Lauren.

00:57:02Guest:First week of shows is in the bank at Fernwood Tonight.

00:57:06Guest:Yeah.

00:57:07Guest:And Fernwood Tonight was the weirdest collection of people.

00:57:10Marc:Yeah.

00:57:10Guest:I mean, you had Fred Willard.

00:57:11Guest:It was the first time I had a chance to watch Freddie work at great length and just...

00:57:16Guest:be in stunned awe of his ridiculous moronic talent.

00:57:24Guest:It just defies any explanation or understanding.

00:57:27Marc:I can't imagine seeing him as that young a man.

00:57:31Guest:Oh, his energy level was furious.

00:57:34Marc:And he come from that, what was his group called?

00:57:35Marc:Ace Trucking Company.

00:57:36Marc:Yeah, up in San Francisco, right?

00:57:38Guest:Yeah, he came from, I don't know where they founded it.

00:57:40Guest:He was from Chicago.

00:57:41Guest:Oh, right.

00:57:42Guest:But yeah, and they did very, very broad material.

00:57:45Guest:And I looked down on it a little bit.

00:57:48Guest:And then Credibility Gap.

00:57:49Marc:Lowbrow.

00:57:49Guest:Lowbrow.

00:57:50Guest:Yeah.

00:57:51Guest:And then Credibility Gap actually toured with Ace Trucking Company.

00:57:54Guest:And I became an admirer because I got- Isn't it funny how karma works, Harry?

00:57:58Marc:Yeah.

00:57:58Guest:Yeah.

00:57:59Guest:It's weird.

00:58:00Guest:So Freddie is on the show, Martin Mull, Norman Lear executive produces it, and he hires some good writers, and then he hires to produce the show as the showrunner, Alan Thicke.

00:58:13Guest:What?

00:58:14Guest:Alan Thicke.

00:58:15Guest:Not known for humor.

00:58:17Guest:Not really known for humor.

00:58:18Guest:Not known for much.

00:58:21Guest:Well, he's known for a few things behind the scenes.

00:58:24Guest:And he's Robin Thicke's dad, of course, for the kids who are listening.

00:58:28Guest:And Alan had been producing this show by this 18-year-old singing sensation in French Canada, René Simard.

00:58:35Guest:So he would commute between Montreal where he produced the René Simard show and Hollywood where he produced Firmware Tonight, this hip thing.

00:58:43Guest:Yeah.

00:58:44Guest:Anyway, it's about a week of shows under our belts, and we have a meeting, and all hands are there to talk about which way the show is going, because Martin and I think it's going a little kind of broad, and we want it to be, this is because you're saying close to the line, and a guy named Ben Stein, do you know who Ben Stein is?

00:59:08Marc:The speech writer?

00:59:08Marc:Yeah.

00:59:09Guest:Yeah.

00:59:09Guest:Yeah, the guy who became famous from Ferris B.O.N.,

00:59:13Guest:He had gotten hired by Norman Lear as a creative vice president.

00:59:19Guest:That's how goofy Norman Lear was.

00:59:21Guest:Well, he'd written a praising review of Mary Hartman in the Wall Street Journal, and Norman Lear went, I love this guy.

00:59:28Guest:Let's hire him.

00:59:29Guest:The bad guy, he likes me.

00:59:30Guest:Yeah.

00:59:31Guest:He likes my shows.

00:59:32Guest:So Ben is sitting here in this meeting and Martin and I are saying, you know, Jesus, you know, there's this guy, there's this bit in an iron lung and it's just, we're going a little bit far down the road here towards Broad.

00:59:44Guest:And what's funny about this show is this small town attempt to do a Tonight Show, just the...

00:59:50Guest:the effort and the failure of the effort but this earnestness of this effort to put on a show without any of the wherewithal that would you know and the reality of that is what's funny and nobody says a word and then ben pipes up and says you know this reality is okay for improv but we're doing tv and that was it and that killed it so i've always remembered ben fondly for that moment

01:00:16Guest:close yeah another obstacle yeah to the realization of your vision just another one yeah hey you know and then what happens with Lauren so another couple years goes by couple years John and Danny are leaving yeah and I guess are you friends with them

01:00:31Guest:I did not know them.

01:00:33Guest:Yeah.

01:00:34Guest:I met John a couple times.

01:00:37Guest:One time he kept trying to force me to drink something that I didn't want to drink.

01:00:41Guest:Yeah.

01:00:41Guest:I mean, tried to force me.

01:00:43Guest:Held you.

01:00:44Guest:Yes.

01:00:44Guest:Yeah.

01:00:45Guest:Almost sitting on me.

01:00:47Guest:So I was aware of his power.

01:00:49Yeah.

01:00:49Guest:Not of anything else.

01:00:51Guest:Anyway.

01:00:52Marc:His strength and also the power that he turned on himself.

01:00:55Guest:Yeah, exactly.

01:00:56Guest:Yeah.

01:00:56Guest:So I had gotten two phone calls that summer.

01:00:59Guest:Yeah.

01:01:00Guest:And so I made a trip to follow up on both phone calls.

01:01:04Guest:One was to Washington, D.C., where I was being interviewed for the possibility of hosting Morning Edition, which was then starting on NPR.

01:01:14Guest:And I said, well, I'll see.

01:01:15Guest:But I have this other meeting in New York.

01:01:17Marc:Didn't you want to do comedy?

01:01:18Guest:Yeah.

01:01:20Guest:Yeah.

01:01:20Guest:But it was radio.

01:01:21Guest:Yeah.

01:01:22Guest:And then I meet with Lauren and he offers me, you know, the slot in the cast that is going to be vacated by either John or Danny.

01:01:32Guest:He wasn't going to fill both of them.

01:01:33Guest:He just was going to fill one.

01:01:35Guest:So I said, okay.

01:01:37Guest:And then the next time I came up to New York, you know, cleaned up my affairs in L.A., got prepared to move to New York, and I meet Lorne in the auditorium of the Winter Garden Theater where he's producing Gilda Live, which is a series of sketches that started on Saturday Night Live, later to be a movie, the slogan of which was, things like this only happen in the movies.

01:02:02Guest:And I'm thinking...

01:02:02Guest:No, it happened on stage and it happened on television.

01:02:05Guest:Why are you lying?

01:02:05Guest:And Lorne sits in the audience and the very first thing he says to me is, and I'm hired.

01:02:12Guest:This is my welcome.

01:02:15Guest:I've never hired a male Jew for the company before.

01:02:17Guest:I've kind of gone with the Chicago Catholic thing up to now.

01:02:23Guest:That's fair warning.

01:02:24Guest:Sure.

01:02:25Guest:That's a nice how-do-you-do.

01:02:26Marc:That is kind of bizarre, huh?

01:02:28Marc:It's peculiar, yeah.

01:02:29Marc:That's a good one.

01:02:30Marc:It is a wonderful one.

01:02:31Marc:It's a good nugget.

01:02:32Guest:Yeah.

01:02:33Guest:Then we had a little retreat.

01:02:36Guest:They had scheduled a retreat at this place called Mohunk.

01:02:39Guest:So before the season started, we all got together and went up to this retreat on the Hudson at Mohunk.

01:02:44Guest:And it was basically, they all knew each other, and I was the new guy.

01:02:48Guest:It was Bill Murray, Garrett Morris, Lorraine Newman, Jane...

01:02:54Guest:curtain jane curtain and me and al and tom were featured players also fucking funny and uh no and uh tom schiller was making films yeah who was a very funny guy and uh then andy kaufman was doing guest appearances that year a lot of guest appearances with the wrestling stuff so you're at this retreat and what happens nothing much i mean i'm just trying to make some kind of lauren's up there lauren's of course lauren's up there

01:03:22Marc:And he's walking around like what?

01:03:24Marc:Like the Prince of... Plantation owner?

01:03:26Guest:Yeah, the Prince of Tides.

01:03:28Guest:And I just make a little, you know, kind of here's who I am speech and say, you know, I come from this show business background and I think...

01:03:39Guest:The wonderfulness of this show is its liveness, and I've been living on the West Coast all these years, and there was a tradition in the old days of network broadcasting that before tape and everything, they would do a show for the East Coast and then wait three hours and do the show again for the West Coast.

01:03:58Guest:I just think the West Coast is being deprived of this excitement, and I think we should come back at 2.30 in the morning and do it again.

01:04:04Guest:That was your bit?

01:04:05Guest:That was my bit.

01:04:06Guest:Did you get a laugh?

01:04:07Guest:Yes.

01:04:07Guest:Good.

01:04:09Guest:The last laugh I got there for a while.

01:04:13Guest:It got so grim.

01:04:16Marc:Okay, you're back in New York.

01:04:17Marc:You're doing a show.

01:04:18Marc:What happened?

01:04:19Marc:What the hell went so wrong?

01:04:23Guest:Some games started being played.

01:04:25Guest:Although I was hired as a member of the cast, I did not appear in the opening credits.

01:04:33Marc:You wanted to keep that Catholic, I guess.

01:04:36Guest:And so three weeks in, I'm writing stuff every week.

01:04:41Guest:Nothing gets on.

01:04:43Guest:And Al is not writing for me.

01:04:45Guest:He's writing for Al.

01:04:46Guest:So Al's the only one who knows me.

01:04:50Guest:So Bill Murray and I go to a Knicks game.

01:04:53Guest:And because he's a friendly guy.

01:04:57Guest:Yeah.

01:04:58Guest:And now we're walking back from Madison Square Garden to 30 Rock.

01:05:04Guest:Yeah.

01:05:04Guest:So we're walking about 30, 40 blocks and we have a chance to talk.

01:05:09Guest:And I say, Billy, what's going on?

01:05:12Guest:It feels like something very strange is going on here.

01:05:14Guest:He says, well, you know.

01:05:16Guest:we're, we're, we're members of this cast and we're looking at this guy and this new guy who comes in and writing stuff for himself.

01:05:22Guest:And we're going, why is he doing that?

01:05:24Guest:I said, cause I was hired as a writer performer.

01:05:27Guest:He said, well, Lord didn't tell us that.

01:05:30Guest:He just said he was hiring you as a writer.

01:05:32Guest:So that's what he told the rest of the cast.

01:05:34Guest:And I'm not in the credits.

01:05:37Guest:So I've signed a deal to be something that nobody else knows at the show.

01:05:41Marc:Is it on paper that you're a writer-performer?

01:05:43Guest:Yeah, of course it is.

01:05:45Guest:So he's fucking with you.

01:05:46Guest:Yeah, from the get-go, from the jump.

01:05:49Guest:So, and then Billy tells me about how rough a time he had when he started.

01:05:53Guest:He says, you know, it'll get better.

01:05:54Guest:So he's trying to be helpful.

01:05:57Guest:You like him.

01:05:58Guest:I like Billy.

01:05:58Guest:Yeah.

01:05:59Guest:Yeah.

01:05:59Guest:I've always liked him.

01:06:00Guest:And he was, he's, he's been a mensch when I've needed him a couple of times.

01:06:03Guest:So that's good.

01:06:04Guest:Yeah.

01:06:05Guest:Yeah.

01:06:05Guest:Even though he doesn't know what the word mensch means because he's Catholic, but you know, he knows, he knows.

01:06:10Guest:No, he's, he's a good guy.

01:06:11Guest:And it just goes on like this.

01:06:13Guest:And Paul Schaefer and I write a piece, a really abstruse piece called Backer's Audition on a week that Bea Arthur is the guest host.

01:06:25Guest:And the premise is it's a Backer's Audition for a Broadway rock musical about Charles Manson and one of the people he killed, Hollywood hairdresser Jay Sebring, and it's called Two Men.

01:06:36Guest:Yeah.

01:06:37Guest:And Paul and I write the lyrics and music, and we're the guys presenting the show.

01:06:44Guest:B is the hostess with a room full of angels who might invest in it, and all the cast are singing.

01:06:52Yeah.

01:06:52Guest:And at the party, so-called, I prefer to think of it as something more funereal, but that follows every show.

01:07:02Guest:Lorne says from his throne on high, the moment at the end of that sketch, that's the moment you became a star.

01:07:11Guest:I wasn't on the air for the next four weeks.

01:07:13Guest:I mean, it's just a little game going on.

01:07:17Guest:Yeah.

01:07:19Guest:One more story.

01:07:21Guest:late in the season uh i'm and i'm not i'm i'm saying to myself i'm smart i can figure this guy out i can i can play this game i can i can game him yeah so every week i come in with a new strategy that i've devised and every week it just fails because he's in your mind it's it's you and lauren yeah yeah well he's told me that yeah i don't hire people like you yeah plus

01:07:43Guest:He's hired... I produced a TV show.

01:07:46Guest:I produced this pilot with Rob Reiner, the TV show where Spinal Tap came from.

01:07:50Guest:Yeah.

01:07:50Guest:I've done it.

01:07:51Guest:I know how to do this.

01:07:52Guest:Right.

01:07:53Guest:His mistake to hire somebody who knows how to produce television shows.

01:07:56Guest:Right.

01:07:57Guest:Because I'm looking at this thing and going...

01:08:00Guest:you know uh so much time and effort is wasted uh the other thing i did is i read max liebman's book max liebman had produced a television show tell me if this format sounds familiar 90 minutes saturday night comedy sketches from studio 8h in new york city with musical numbers in between live

01:08:21Guest:Yeah.

01:08:22Guest:On NBC.

01:08:23Marc:Yeah, it sounds familiar.

01:08:24Guest:Wow.

01:08:25Marc:Yeah.

01:08:25Marc:How did anybody think of that?

01:08:26Guest:Yeah.

01:08:27Guest:It was called Your Show of Shows.

01:08:28Guest:It starred Sid Caesar and Carl Reiner.

01:08:30Guest:It had been done in the 50s.

01:08:32Guest:Yeah.

01:08:32Guest:And Max Liebman was the producer and he wrote a book about it.

01:08:36Guest:They started writing their sketches first thing Monday morning.

01:08:38Guest:Oh, by the way, the writing staff included Mel Brooks and Neil Simon and Woody Allen.

01:08:42Guest:Right.

01:08:43Guest:That was a help.

01:08:44Guest:Hell of a show.

01:08:44Guest:Yeah, hell of a show.

01:08:46Guest:They started writing that show first thing Monday morning.

01:08:49Guest:End of Monday, they got a script.

01:08:51Guest:rest of the week that's the show they rehearse they learn it saturday night live you're a sucker if you even come in on monday writing begins late night tuesday night it's a dorm sit kind of it's kind of kind of a dorm vibe yeah don't you like a dorm vibe right you know so it's like i came i'd come in at 10 tuesday evening people would look at me like i was nuts you know what are you doing you're supposed to be staying up it's you know saturday night live

01:09:16Guest:Readthrough isn't until Wednesday afternoon because people have to sleep most of Wednesday because they were up all night.

01:09:22Guest:Camera blocking starts Thursday, Friday.

01:09:25Guest:There's no time to rehearse.

01:09:26Guest:And by the way, Lorne puts into production a third more sketches than are going to survive.

01:09:32Guest:And doesn't choose which ones are going to survive until 1120 Saturday night.

01:09:37Guest:So there's no commitment all the way down the line.

01:09:40Guest:People don't bother to learn lines because why would you for a sketch that there's a one in three chance won't make air.

01:09:46Guest:And by the way, you know, the best way to make sure that nobody second guesses you or argues with you is to not make decisions until.

01:09:53Guest:panic sets in at 11 20 and what the fuck are we doing what show why is the show we're doing tonight yeah and you know the crew was waiting they have to figure out what camera blocking to do right because they've camera blocked everything and they've you know now have to figure out all these logistical things in the space of i wonder if he still does it i don't know i mean the crew did an amazing job every week just pulling this was like a crazy time like i mean this was coke time as they say yeah uh so the last the last story was uh

01:10:23Guest:Lauren invites me to take a sauna with him.

01:10:28Guest:This is a good story already.

01:10:29Guest:I figure, fuck, okay, you're on.

01:10:33Marc:We're going to do a schvitz.

01:10:34Marc:We're going to have a schvitz.

01:10:34Marc:We're going to do a schvitz.

01:10:35Guest:With the emperor.

01:10:36Guest:Like the Jews do.

01:10:36Guest:Yeah.

01:10:37Guest:And he says, you know, what's on your mind?

01:10:41Marc:So you're in the schvitz talking.

01:10:42Guest:I'm in the schvitz talking.

01:10:43Guest:And I say, you know, there's a sketch this week.

01:10:47Guest:featuring Sadat who was then the president of Egypt and I said you know you've seen this piece from the TV show the show that I produced Billy Crystal did Menachem Begin and I did Anmar Sadat and we were doing a light beer commercial arguing about whether the beer was better because it was less filling or more yellow and you've seen that piece you know I do a great Sadat Garrett Morris is doing it because he's dark skinned and Sadat is about 8 shades lighter than him anyway but

01:11:16Guest:You know, it just stuff like that drives me crazy.

01:11:19Guest:He said, I'll take care of that.

01:11:22Guest:I'll make a phone call.

01:11:23Guest:I'll call Al.

01:11:24Guest:Al was at that point head writer.

01:11:27Guest:This is Friday night.

01:11:28Guest:So I walk in Saturday at noon.

01:11:32Guest:It never happened.

01:11:34Guest:And the denouement of it is, so I'm sitting, I'm an extra in this sketch.

01:11:39Guest:And I'm waiting with Garrett to go on 20 seconds before live air.

01:11:44Guest:And he turns to me, he says, you do, Sadat.

01:11:46Guest:How does he sound again?

01:11:47Marc:No.

01:11:48Guest:So it's not a good experience for you that first round.

01:11:52Marc:But those stories, like, I mean, I've, you know, no one is willing to sort of, everyone's very diplomatic within the last 15 years of those casts.

01:12:01Marc:And I've talked to a lot of people.

01:12:02Guest:Well, because Lorne has just gotten more and more powerful.

01:12:05Guest:Why wouldn't you be?

01:12:06Guest:I guess that's true.

01:12:06Guest:You know, he controls New York show business at this point.

01:12:09Marc:But he controls a good chunk of, you know, national show business.

01:12:12Marc:No, no.

01:12:13Marc:And he's got The Tonight Show.

01:12:15Marc:He's got The Tonight Show.

01:12:15Marc:He's got The Tonight Show, yeah.

01:12:17Marc:All right.

01:12:18Marc:But the thing is, is that I always assume that I would have done exactly what you did, which is take it personally.

01:12:24Marc:How can you not take it personally?

01:12:26Marc:How can you not take it personally?

01:12:27Marc:Well, a lot of people seem to play along with the craziness.

01:12:29Marc:They just become codependent to the situation.

01:12:31Guest:I know.

01:12:32Guest:I never understood, for example, how Phil Hartman could take eight years of that.

01:12:36Guest:Of course, you have a wife with a gun at your head.

01:12:40Guest:But seriously, I loved Phil and I thought he was a huge talent.

01:12:44Guest:I never understood how he could put up with that for eight years.

01:12:46Marc:Well, then how did you come back to the show?

01:12:49Guest:spinal tap was invited on as a musical guest uh when the movie came out and by this time lauren was gone we come on so now you've had you've made your own success yeah this was a this just changed the game of everything spinal tap changed culture it becomes it's an identifier yeah everybody knows it yeah turn into 11 guys whatever it is guys decide on on whether they're they're going to continue dating their girlfriend by whether she gets spinal tap

01:13:15Marc:Yeah.

01:13:16Marc:I mean, it really is.

01:13:19Marc:It's deep.

01:13:19Marc:Yeah.

01:13:20Marc:It goes deep into the American psyche.

01:13:22Marc:So you're a guy now.

01:13:23Marc:And the English psyche, by the way.

01:13:25Marc:Yeah.

01:13:25Marc:Oh, I bet.

01:13:26Marc:Yeah.

01:13:26Marc:Of course.

01:13:27Marc:So now you're a guy.

01:13:28Guest:Yeah.

01:13:29Guest:So Dick Ebersole took over.

01:13:30Guest:He's producing the show.

01:13:32Guest:And we're...

01:13:35Marc:We're treated really well.

01:13:36Marc:We're the musical guests.

01:13:38Guest:We're treated really well.

01:13:39Marc:But you're also comedians.

01:13:40Marc:You're all genius comedians.

01:13:41Marc:Yeah, but we're just treated nicely.

01:13:43Guest:And so I figure, God, things must have changed.

01:13:47Guest:Although there was one little moment that should have tipped me off.

01:13:51Guest:We're doing one of their endless backstage sketches where they're around lockers offstage.

01:13:58Guest:And we're watching it being camera blocked, so we're not on stage yet.

01:14:03Guest:We're behind the cameras.

01:14:05Guest:and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

01:14:10Guest:She's funny.

01:14:10Guest:She is funny.

01:14:11Guest:She's great.

01:14:12Guest:And I guess Mary Gross, we're doing the front part of the scene, and they're dressed in bathrobes because they're supposed to be backstage.

01:14:22Guest:And suddenly Dick is out there on the floor.

01:14:26Guest:He puts a $50 bill on top of the lens of the A camera and says, this is for the first one whose tits fall out of their robe during the blocking.

01:14:34Guest:Uh-huh.

01:14:35Guest:fair enough okay yeah he comes from abc sports you know yeah it's gonna happen with those sports guys those sports guys they've been in the truck too long you know just trapped in the truck for too many years uh the truck being their brain yeah yeah so i uh dick invites chris michael and me

01:14:56Guest:to join the cast Michael passes Chris and I say yes uh I figure based on the Spinal Tap experience it's going to be different uh Billy comes in because he'd been a regular guest yeah and Marty short uh who was a friend of Paul's and and you go back with him so you know I but Paul had just told me how great Marty was and I'd watched him on TV of course

01:15:20Guest:And there was this really bizarre kabuki that happened when we all assembled, except for Jim Belushi.

01:15:29Guest:I'm sorry, except for Jim Belushi.

01:15:33Guest:Dick said, I'm keeping Mary Gross and Julia, but I want another female member of the cast.

01:15:41Guest:So you guys get to help me choose.

01:15:43Guest:what so now we're having this bizarre set of meetings with women but Gina Davis among them the wonderful Gina Davis who was put through this embarrassing ritual and it comes down to you know two people and we get to vote and it's really like oh really this is different and we think it's really different so we take advantage of the situation say you know what

01:16:10Guest:This show's got its audience now.

01:16:13Guest:We don't need to have these stupid guest hosts for ratings every week who can't do comedy, and most of whom are politicians just trying to humanize their image.

01:16:22Guest:Why are we serving that?

01:16:23Guest:Why don't we just be a really great comedy show?

01:16:26Guest:You've got all the talent you need here to fill 90 minutes.

01:16:29Guest:Let's kick ass.

01:16:31Guest:And so the first week of that season, there was no guest host.

01:16:35Guest:And that was the week that we did synchronized swimming.

01:16:40Marc:Legendary.

01:16:41Guest:Yeah.

01:16:42Guest:And we figure, all right, we're in Clover.

01:16:44Guest:And by week three, we're back to guest hosts.

01:16:47Guest:And Jesse Jackson is the guest host.

01:16:48Guest:And half of Operation Push is taking our desk because they figured out they can make free long-distance calls from NBC.

01:16:54Guest:Dick had said to me when he hired me, I know you're going to do most of the political comedy here, so I'm really going to depend on you for that.

01:17:07Guest:And so I write these Reagan sketches, and week after week after week I get into Reagan makeup, and the sketch is put into production, and it never makes air.

01:17:15Guest:And it just gets more and more depressing.

01:17:19Guest:And we do one more.

01:17:21Guest:Why do you think that was?

01:17:22Guest:I have no idea.

01:17:23Guest:I have no clue.

01:17:23Marc:There was no conspiracy?

01:17:25Guest:No.

01:17:26Guest:Conspiracy?

01:17:27Guest:To keep Reagan material off the air?

01:17:28Guest:I don't know.

01:17:29Guest:No.

01:17:30Guest:No.

01:17:30Guest:This is show business.

01:17:31Guest:Nobody cares about show business.

01:17:33Guest:Saturday Night Live?

01:17:34Guest:Who gives a fuck what sketch appears on Saturday Night Live?

01:17:37Guest:Except the idiots at Saturday Night Live.

01:17:39Guest:So, it was getting me down.

01:17:46Guest:Chris and I and Marty and Billy did one more really good piece, which was the 60 Minutes.

01:17:53Guest:I like that.

01:17:54Guest:Make my novelties.

01:17:55Guest:Marty is Mr. Therm.

01:17:58Guest:Yeah.

01:18:00Guest:And, you know, it was clear that what we loved to do was film pieces,

01:18:05Guest:on a live show.

01:18:07Guest:We were absolutely in tension with the format.

01:18:11Guest:But we were getting away with it for a little while.

01:18:12Guest:And then Dick was walking around saying, you know how much that synchronized swimming piece cost?

01:18:18Guest:I'm thinking, I didn't produce it.

01:18:19Guest:Don't blame me.

01:18:20Marc:I just wrote it.

01:18:21Marc:Go blame the producer.

01:18:23Guest:She rented the pool.

01:18:25Marc:Rented the pool.

01:18:26Marc:That was the big cost.

01:18:27Guest:I don't know what the cost was.

01:18:29Guest:Anyway, so at about 143 on the morning of January 13th, which was the first night of the first batch of shows after Christmas vacation, Dick called me into his office and he said...

01:18:46Guest:You're not happy here, and we're not happy either.

01:18:50Guest:And I said, okay, well, just let me go and pay me the money you owe me.

01:18:55Guest:And he said, okay.

01:18:56Guest:And that was it?

01:18:57Guest:That was it.

01:18:58Guest:And I cleared out of New York.

01:19:03Guest:Nobody has ever, no mafiosi on the run has cleared out of New York City faster than I did.

01:19:09Guest:So I was sitting in my...

01:19:12Guest:My sublet in Tribeca on the floor, because all the furniture had gone already, and I got a call from AP that Monday morning saying, we have a word that, according to NBC, you've left the show because of creative differences.

01:19:27Guest:Do you have any comment?

01:19:28Guest:It's true, I think they asked me.

01:19:31Guest:And I blurted it out.

01:19:33Marc:yeah it's true i was creative and they were different that was that was the joke that was the joke what's the problem with that joke so you and chris are okay yeah you he understands you i understand him i it took me a long time and you and michael are okay it's so funny because as the bass player yeah in two movies i know i'm supposed to get along with everybody yeah

01:20:01Guest:Listen, sometimes you're that.

01:20:04Guest:Sometimes you're Python.

01:20:05Guest:Okay.

01:20:06Guest:You know?

01:20:07Guest:Sure.

01:20:07Guest:I mean, the Pythons, the only reason the Pythons got together was because they'd lost a million-pound lawsuit.

01:20:14Guest:Otherwise, they wouldn't have gotten it.

01:20:15Guest:I think John needed money.

01:20:16Guest:They all needed money.

01:20:17Guest:They had lost a million-pound lawsuit.

01:20:19Guest:You mean just the recent live shows?

01:20:21Guest:Yeah.

01:20:22Guest:Uh-huh.

01:20:22Guest:That's the only reason they did that.

01:20:24Guest:Two of the guys told me that.

01:20:25Guest:Ugh.

01:20:26Yeah.

01:20:26Marc:Because they don't like each other.

01:20:29Marc:Right.

01:20:29Marc:It's weird when show business gets ugly.

01:20:32Marc:But I mean, okay.

01:20:33Marc:Well, I don't know.

01:20:34Marc:What's the matter?

01:20:36Guest:I'm not going to discuss it on the air.

01:20:38Marc:Okay.

01:20:39Marc:But with Lauren.

01:20:40Guest:Yeah.

01:20:40Guest:Oh, I'll discuss it until the cows come home.

01:20:41Marc:But you're done with that.

01:20:42Guest:Oh, long since.

01:20:43Guest:And, you know, I mean, I don't talk about it unless somebody brings it up.

01:20:47Guest:I have no interest in propagating, you know.

01:20:51Marc:No, I like SNL stories.

01:20:53Marc:But when he came back, you never heard from him again.

01:20:55Marc:And that was that, right?

01:20:56Marc:Who, Lorne?

01:20:56Marc:Yeah.

01:20:57Marc:No.

01:20:58Marc:No, no, no, no, no, no.

01:20:59Guest:Nor would I expect to.

01:21:00Guest:Somebody came out with a list when this season began of 10 people that SNL should have back as guest hosts because the show's in trouble.

01:21:10Guest:And they put my name on the list, and I resisted the temptation to write back and say, the good Lord hasn't made enough wild horses.

01:21:17Right.

01:21:17Marc:But now you... It's sort of interesting.

01:21:22Marc:And Bob Balaban, he's a friend of yours?

01:21:24Marc:I know him.

01:21:25Guest:I like him.

01:21:25Marc:You just work with him?

01:21:26Marc:Yeah.

01:21:27Marc:Yeah, he's great, isn't he?

01:21:27Marc:He's wonderful.

01:21:28Marc:He's so funny.

01:21:29Marc:Because I always assume everybody's buddies.

01:21:31Guest:I have friends in English comedy, too, because I've been working in England.

01:21:34Guest:Yeah, I do.

01:21:35Guest:This guy, Harry Enfield, is one of the funniest people I've ever met.

01:21:39Guest:A lovely guy.

01:21:40Guest:Does...

01:21:41Guest:the most amazing characters.

01:21:43Guest:He and his partner did this great thing.

01:21:45Marc:I've got to look him up.

01:21:46Marc:I feel like I met him maybe.

01:21:47Guest:Harry and Paul, they do wonderful stuff.

01:21:50Guest:And they, BBC's Channel 2 celebrated its 50th anniversary, and they got to do a joke tribute show with joke clips of the history of a television network, which is just like, what a great gig.

01:22:03Guest:Wow.

01:22:04Guest:And Harry just did the lion's share of piss takes of all these iconic British television characters.

01:22:11Marc:So you're making new friends in Britain.

01:22:13Marc:Yeah.

01:22:14Marc:And you've got some friends.

01:22:15Marc:Yeah, I do.

01:22:16Marc:All right.

01:22:16Guest:I got a lot of friends in New Orleans.

01:22:18Guest:Don't happen.

01:22:18Guest:More music friends than.

01:22:20Guest:Right.

01:22:21Guest:I have more music friends than comedy friends.

01:22:22Marc:And The Simpsons did you very well.

01:22:25Marc:Financially.

01:22:27Guest:You know, I have to say about this, something that I learned from my six years of analysis, of psychoanalysis, which is one mark of adulthood is that you can hold two conflicting emotions about the same thing at the same time.

01:22:43Guest:Two things can be true at the same time.

01:22:45Guest:Of course.

01:22:46Guest:So it is true that as an actor on an insanely successful TV series, I am, by any standards of the human species, obscenely overpaid.

01:23:02Guest:Yes.

01:23:03Guest:It is also true that as an actor on one of the most insanely successful television series of all time, I am getting royally screwed.

01:23:13LAUGHTER

01:23:13Guest:Both things are true.

01:23:15Guest:But you earn a good living.

01:23:17Guest:Yeah, I'm comfortable.

01:23:18Guest:Yeah.

01:23:20Guest:To turn the joke around.

01:23:22Marc:But you've got a bit of a reputation for being difficult there, but it seems to me that a lot of that was righteous.

01:23:29Marc:It was a righteous fight.

01:23:31Guest:You know, I happen to be the guy who...

01:23:35Guest:sort of was in the lead when negotiating time came.

01:23:40Guest:I don't necessarily enjoy fights, but I don't shrink from them.

01:23:44Guest:Right.

01:23:45Guest:And when you're negotiating money with Rupert Murdoch and a couple other extremely lucre-oriented people, you're in a fight.

01:23:59Guest:You're in a bar fight, if not a bum fight.

01:24:04Guest:Right.

01:24:05Marc:But the truth that you were, the idea, I don't know what really happened, but it seems with any of those things.

01:24:10Marc:Read my book.

01:24:11Guest:Okay.

01:24:13Guest:No, I'm kidding.

01:24:13Guest:What's the book called?

01:24:14Guest:No, I don't even, I'm just writing pages right now.

01:24:16Guest:I have no idea.

01:24:17Marc:Oh, you haven't written a book yet.

01:24:18Guest:I'm writing pages right now.

01:24:20Guest:As we speak?

01:24:21Guest:No, as we speak, I'm talking to you.

01:24:23Marc:Yeah.

01:24:24Marc:So you're saying that is it everybody's fault?

01:24:28Marc:It's not your fault?

01:24:29Marc:Why do you think you get that?

01:24:30Guest:It's nobody's fault.

01:24:32Guest:It's what happens if you think you know what you want and you are determined to get it in terms of how something looks.

01:24:42Guest:Or how something is performed or how something is staged or how something is framed.

01:24:47Guest:And, yeah, you have to earn your spurs to be in a position to say that.

01:24:51Guest:But I'll give you, you know, and you also have an aesthetic case to make.

01:25:00Marc:So if you have a point of view and you have a way you think it should be, that's how you get a reputation as being a difficult person.

01:25:07Guest:Yeah, because you want it done that way.

01:25:08Guest:Right.

01:25:08Guest:I'll give you a great example.

01:25:09Guest:Okay.

01:25:10Guest:Also from Saturday Night Live.

01:25:12Guest:There was a sketch that I did with Howard Hessman.

01:25:15Guest:I wrote it for him where he's a visiting actor plugging the fact that WKRP in Cincinnati is changing his time slot.

01:25:24Guest:Uh, and I'm a morning DJ character.

01:25:27Guest:I later reprised in Wayne's world too.

01:25:31Guest:Um, actually that was based on this sketch.

01:25:33Guest:Um, and I'm the morning DJ who's got a million things to do and is paying no attention to the guest.

01:25:39Guest:That's the basic idea.

01:25:41Guest:So I come onto the stage where we're camera blocking this and, um,

01:25:48Guest:They have a table and a mic on a little circular stand sitting on the table.

01:25:54Guest:And I said, that's a temp, right?

01:25:56Guest:He said, no, that's the mic for the sketch.

01:25:58Guest:I said, but this is a radio studio.

01:26:01Guest:Mics hang down.

01:26:03Guest:They're not on a desk because people put their hands on a desk.

01:26:06Guest:You do... Yeah.

01:26:09Guest:I say, we're at 30 Rock...

01:26:11Guest:There are four radio stations, two floors above us.

01:26:15Guest:Go get a boom.

01:26:15Guest:Take an elevator ride.

01:26:17Guest:Go look.

01:26:17Guest:Do that.

01:26:18Guest:Okay.

01:26:20Guest:And I don't even raise my voice.

01:26:21Guest:I don't even.

01:26:23Guest:But for the rest of the week, if there's any delay in any camera blocking, what is it attributed to?

01:26:29Guest:Oh, it's Harry's mic.

01:26:31Guest:We're waiting on Harry's mic.

01:26:32Guest:It's a joke now.

01:26:33Guest:Yeah, it's a joke.

01:26:34Guest:It's a joke that I want it to look right.

01:26:36Marc:and that's i i i understand that and i i think that that that's an interesting it's a difficult situation in that somebody who's who's stubborn because of their vision uh you know really has to get that vision through yeah to where they win yeah and they're like so so enough people behind you can go he was right yeah yeah and uh and and by the way i'm doing it in a in a

01:27:02Guest:in a forum that I don't control, where the dominant aesthetic is not let's make it look real, where the dominant aesthetic is, hey, you can look like President Ford with a mustache or President Nixon with a mustache.

01:27:14Guest:Who cares?

01:27:15Guest:That's the aesthetic of that show.

01:27:17Guest:He's building stars.

01:27:18Guest:He's not making credible sketches.

01:27:22Marc:That's certainly what seems to be happening now.

01:27:24Guest:Yeah.

01:27:26Guest:On the other hand, again, with this Nixon show, you know,

01:27:29Guest:everybody got it everybody got that thing is beautiful that's david frost on there right yeah yeah i mean like i didn't really know what to expect from it and it's uh it looks great and it's meticulous and and you're like what i like about the way you're doing it is that it's not an impression no it's it's a it's a piece of acting it is it is and and everybody got top to bottom on that crew nobody had to be brought aside and told you know it has to look real don't you think

01:27:57Guest:They all got it immediately.

01:27:58Guest:They went and researched how the Oval Office looked during Nixon's administration.

01:28:04Guest:Here's how far it went.

01:28:06Guest:I called a friend of mine at CBS in Washington.

01:28:08Guest:I said, what were the cameras they were using to shoot the resignation speech?

01:28:12Guest:He said they were in Norelco or whatever they were.

01:28:15Guest:My crew goes and finds the one guy in England who has two working copies of the camera.

01:28:21Marc:Harry needs a Noroco.

01:28:23Guest:Two Norocos, please.

01:28:25Marc:Two Noroco cameras, this guy.

01:28:26Guest:And a backup.

01:28:28Guest:And they fly him down.

01:28:29Guest:They bring him down to London with his cameras.

01:28:31Guest:He operates one of the cameras.

01:28:32Guest:They're still working, so you can still see the black and white image through the eyepiece.

01:28:36Marc:It's like time travel.

01:28:37Guest:Yeah.

01:28:38Guest:And then I said to the guy at CBS, and what was the version of the CBS logo they had on the cameras?

01:28:44Guest:And they all got that that was...

01:28:47Guest:that's what the that's the vision that's the that's worth doing that it was worth doing it looks great yeah and it's you know it's the fight endless fight against nobody will notice yeah i'll notice yeah i'm not nobody but it does make a difference it does make a difference when the actors walked on that set it was a 360 set they all said oh i feel different now it's being here

01:29:10Marc:Really?

01:29:11Marc:Yeah.

01:29:12Marc:That's great, man.

01:29:12Marc:Yeah.

01:29:13Marc:Well, I'm glad that your vision is being respected and honored.

01:29:16Guest:In England.

01:29:17Marc:Yes.

01:29:18Marc:Some people got to go to England.

01:29:19Guest:Yeah.

01:29:20Guest:If you're difficult, go to England.

01:29:21Guest:So what brought you to New Orleans?

01:29:24Guest:I went to the Jazz Fest one, spring.

01:29:27Guest:What year is that?

01:29:28Guest:1988.

01:29:29Marc:Okay.

01:29:29Guest:And...

01:29:30Guest:fell in love with the city uh-huh literally it was like the city whispered uh a message in my ear and i understood the language and you're like fuck it i'm moving yeah well i took me it took me a while but i'm coming here as often as possible was the first thing i decided uh it's like oh my god this is the real deal now um there are

01:29:54Guest:There's some personal reasons why that may be.

01:30:00Guest:I'm an only child of a tiny little family in the most atomized city on the planet, Los Angeles.

01:30:05Guest:You know, it's the city of individualism writ large, writ on billboards on Sunset Boulevard.

01:30:10Guest:And New Orleans is a tightly knit community.

01:30:14Guest:Not a virtual community.

01:30:16Guest:Right.

01:30:16Guest:A real community.

01:30:18Guest:Right.

01:30:18Guest:Where strangers talk to each other and people, you know, when you're in the market or in the drugstore, you've got to bargain for about three times as long to get your business done because people are going to be talking to you and visiting with you.

01:30:32Guest:It's like a small town.

01:30:34Guest:Yeah, except it's a city.

01:30:35Guest:Right.

01:30:36Guest:And then there's all the other stuff.

01:30:38Guest:But I mean...

01:30:38Guest:So it spoke to me on a lot of levels.

01:30:41Guest:It spoke to me on the level of people pursue their chosen art there, not to get rich, not to get famous, but because that's what they have to do.

01:30:53Guest:That's why they play music.

01:30:54Guest:That's why they paint.

01:30:55Guest:That's why they write.

01:30:56Guest:It's a lot of heart.

01:30:58Guest:Lot of soul, lot of heart, lot of soul.

01:31:00Guest:So for people who've been in the Hollywood machine a lot, it's almost soul restoring to be there and to be back in touch with that reality after all this.

01:31:13Guest:You know, the thing that we, you saw the documentary that Joan Rivers did, the Joan Rivers documentary, A Piece of Work.

01:31:21Guest:You didn't.

01:31:21Guest:Oh, my God.

01:31:22Guest:It's fantastic.

01:31:24Guest:And the thing that she had the balls to show in that film was what all of us spend most of our time keeping the public from seeing, which is the fucking desperation.

01:31:35Guest:yeah she put it out there and that's the desperation not of oh god it's hard to do this work it's the desperation of this fucking business yeah and so when you go to some place where people aren't filled with that they aren't having to surmount that to get the work done they're just getting the work done they may never be famous they may never be known outside of the city but they're getting their work done and they're and they're that's what they live for that's very moving and very very restorative

01:32:02Marc:And how is the community around you and the city itself recovering from Katrina even now?

01:32:09Guest:It's a work in progress.

01:32:12Guest:You know, one mark of the success of the city is how many arguments are being had about gentrification now.

01:32:20Guest:Right.

01:32:22Guest:You know, they're not about Mickey Mouseification of the city anymore.

01:32:25Guest:They're about

01:32:26Guest:got all these new people are moving in and jacking up the cost of property and they don't know our folkways to which i say let's make a video when they when they get a house here's here's what we do so what ultimately ended up happening was not the the the weird sort of uh corporate annihilation but but sort of like piecemeal upscale people moving into areas that

01:32:47Guest:Kids, kids, kids feeling feeling this is a place where there's a lot of opportunity.

01:32:52Guest:And there are these neighborhoods that are, you know, undiscovered, which means poor people were living there.

01:32:57Guest:And so, you know, what I tell my friends in New Orleans is I remind them that it's had a 300 year history as a port city, always welcoming all comers.

01:33:09Guest:Then we had about a 50-year history as a very self-protective city in decline where we got very, you know, kind of, ooh, don't touch our thing.

01:33:21Guest:And now we're back to being kind of open again in a very true way.

01:33:26Marc:That's positive.

01:33:26Guest:I think overall it's positive.

01:33:28Guest:There are stresses in any situation where new people come into a community, and a community, as I say, is a real community with real roots and real interconnections.

01:33:40Marc:Real history.

01:33:41Guest:Real history and real traditions.

01:33:43Guest:I mean, the first time newcomers called the police to complain that there was a brass band in their street playing music outside, and that's disturbing the peace, that was sort of the alarm bell is, oh, we got to deal with this now.

01:33:53Guest:But on the list of problems that that city could have had in the wake of that flood, that's so far down the line.

01:34:00Marc:But it is bouncing back a bit.

01:34:01Marc:Yeah.

01:34:01Marc:Oh, it's great.

01:34:02Marc:Oh, good.

01:34:03Marc:It's great.

01:34:03Marc:And how's your health?

01:34:05Marc:I'm feeling good.

01:34:06Marc:Yeah?

01:34:06Marc:Yeah.

01:34:07Marc:You look great.

01:34:08Marc:Thank you.

01:34:08Marc:For 70.

01:34:08Marc:Thank you.

01:34:09Marc:Everything's like okay?

01:34:10Marc:Yeah.

01:34:11Marc:Good.

01:34:11Marc:Everything works.

01:34:12Marc:Good.

01:34:13Marc:Everything works so far.

01:34:14Marc:And what's your fascination with the Bohemian Grove?

01:34:19Yeah.

01:34:19Guest:Well, you know, when you find out that there's, growing up in Southern California, this was always someplace you heard about, this secretive retreat in Northern California.

01:34:28Marc:The wealthy, the rulers of the world go dressed like ladies.

01:34:32Guest:Yeah, and cavort and get naked and piss on redwood trees.

01:34:37Guest:But this came to me, a couple filmmakers, female filmmakers came to me with an idea of would I write a script about it?

01:34:46Guest:So I did some research, went up to San Francisco, got into the Bohemian Club's archives, and then wrote a script, and then had the good fortune to be invited.

01:34:59Guest:They were, I guess, trying to young up or drew up their membership, and I got invited to a weekend there.

01:35:05Guest:So I actually got to go there and fact-check my script.

01:35:08Guest:And...

01:35:10Guest:And I made this little film.

01:35:11Guest:It's a self-financed, incredibly independent film with some wonderful, you know, I was trying to be true to the concept, so I had to basically cast it with only funny goys.

01:35:27Guest:So there's a marvelous gallery.

01:35:29Guest:What's it called?

01:35:30Guest:It was called Teddy Bear's Picnic.

01:35:32Guest:If you go out in the woods today, you're in for a big surprise.

01:35:35Guest:But Kenny Mars, Fred Willard, Michael McKean, just wonderful people.

01:35:39Guest:when you were at the grove though were you sort of like let down was it sort of like no it was pretty much what i had what i had been led to believe by the research and pretty much what i had written but it's not nefarious it's it's every once in a while you know there the the one that's always cited is the manhattan project was hatched there so once every 50 years they decide to build an atomic bomb you know

01:36:02Guest:But mostly it's silly.

01:36:06Guest:It's people who are rich and powerful basically deciding that they are going to spend a valuable week of their life reverting to the sophomore year of college, but the hijinks are at a much higher price point.

01:36:20Guest:So when they do their big shows, they have the San Francisco Symphony playing the orchestra, and those guys attend.

01:36:27Guest:And, you know, it's just...

01:36:28Guest:And they get drunker than skunks.

01:36:30Guest:The head of one of the Fortune 500 companies was, you know, found face down on the golf course Saturday morning from having passed out the night before.

01:36:38Guest:I mean, they just loved it.

01:36:41Guest:And then they go across the river and hang with some hookers.

01:36:45Guest:And it's just...

01:36:46Guest:I'm pleased to say that the movie, while it didn't break box office records anywhere else, did break box office records at the little theater right across the river from Bohemian Grove.

01:36:57Marc:That's good.

01:36:58Marc:I guess the last question or the last idea at the window to talk about the process of doing the Christopher Guest movies, that in terms of doing those tremendous, long, improvised scenes in character, I mean...

01:37:14Marc:What would you say to somebody who wants to know, let's say it's me.

01:37:20Marc:So how does that go, man?

01:37:23Marc:You guys, they just turn the cameras on and usually you just start with something?

01:37:28Marc:We do scenes.

01:37:29Marc:Chris has got an idea?

01:37:31Guest:Chris says almost nothing.

01:37:33Guest:uh the only direction i've ever gotten from chris in the three of his movies i've been was in for your consideration where i'm playing an actor yeah who thinks he's there may be some awards buzz about him and so he's got the big head and uh fred willard is the host of an entertainment tonight type show yeah and he's coming to interview me uh for promo about the film that we're making and

01:37:57Guest:And so I'm sitting across from Freddie.

01:38:00Guest:Yeah.

01:38:00Guest:And just as before we start shooting, Chris puts his arm around me and says three words.

01:38:07Guest:Don't even try.

01:38:07Guest:Yeah.

01:38:09Guest:You're going to get run over by the Willard machine.

01:38:13Guest:Don't fight it.

01:38:16Guest:Don't even try.

01:38:17Guest:That's what you go into a scene with.

01:38:19Guest:Otherwise, it's scary.

01:38:23Guest:I'd never been in one of them from the beginning.

01:38:26Guest:For various reasons, my part would always start after production had begun.

01:38:31Guest:So for your consideration, I'm there from the first day when everybody's in the makeup room

01:38:35Guest:I'll get the teeth this time.

01:38:37Guest:I'll get the mustache.

01:38:38Guest:I'll get the funny hair.

01:38:39Guest:I'll get the ears.

01:38:41Guest:And I'm listening to Catherine O'Hara and she's saying, Jesus, I don't believe I'm doing this fucking thing again.

01:38:47Guest:Why am I doing this?

01:38:48Guest:This scares the shit out of me.

01:38:49Guest:And I'm thinking, wow, Catherine O'Hara is scared of this.

01:38:53Guest:Yeah.

01:38:54Guest:Whoo.

01:38:55Guest:That's a relief.

01:38:56Guest:Everybody's scared of it.

01:38:57Guest:It's very scary.

01:39:00Guest:But you look around.

01:39:01Guest:There's no absolutely no pressure and absolutely 100 percent trust.

01:39:07Guest:I think that's why Chris isn't making these anymore is because he's not getting that level of trust from.

01:39:12Guest:up above so he can't transmit it to us it's he trusts in us we trust each other we all are in a conspiracy to trust the audience so there's never any you know hey we've been running for 20 seconds i'm not hearing any jokes here people right none of that he's got a year to find the funny stuff you know right and you and you just you make your own character choices

01:39:34Guest:You make your own character choices.

01:39:36Guest:He and Gene or whoever he's writing with give you certain parameters.

01:39:40Guest:You make your wardrobe.

01:39:42Guest:You make your makeup choices.

01:39:43Guest:You can add to the backstory if you want.

01:39:46Guest:The more you bring in, the happier he is.

01:39:48Guest:Like in Mighty Wind was the dressing, the woman.

01:39:50Guest:That was from Chris and Gene Levy.

01:39:53Guest:I came in for a meeting one day and Chris said, I got a little surprise for you.

01:39:56Guest:Look at the last card and the thing on the board.

01:39:59Guest:And it was just like a great gift.

01:40:01Guest:It was just very funny because you played it so straight.

01:40:03Guest:Well, that's the only way I knew how to do it.

01:40:08Guest:But you look around the room and there are these wizards.

01:40:13Guest:There's Catherine.

01:40:14Guest:There's Fred.

01:40:15Guest:There's Higgins.

01:40:16Guest:I don't want to slight anybody.

01:40:18Guest:You can go down the whole list.

01:40:19Guest:They're the A team.

01:40:20Guest:They are the A team.

01:40:21Marc:Of this.

01:40:22Guest:Of this.

01:40:23Guest:And so you realize you only have one job as Chris presents it to you.

01:40:29Guest:Tell the story of this scene.

01:40:30Guest:Yeah.

01:40:31Guest:He's hired funny people to do it, so something funny is going to happen, but your job is to tell the story of this scene.

01:40:38Guest:You don't have to say anything.

01:40:39Guest:If you can get happening what your character needs to have happen in that scene without saying it, you don't have to say a word.

01:40:46Guest:You can do funny reactions or real reactions, but that is to say the only pressure is self-applied.

01:40:55Guest:The only pressure is from within.

01:40:57Guest:It's the only way you could do that, I can imagine.

01:41:01Marc:Well, it's the only place it happens so perfectly.

01:41:05Guest:A lot of people try it.

01:41:06Guest:A lot of people emulate it.

01:41:07Guest:And I don't think with a marked degree of success because you have to have a really carefully selected group of people.

01:41:15Guest:Everybody thinks they can do it.

01:41:16Guest:Yeah.

01:41:17Guest:uh the first thing that i always say to people is you know you have to understand there's a big difference between improv and ad-libbing ad-libbing is talking improv is listening and interesting if you're not prepared to spend a lot of your time on the set listening you know don't do this because it's you're going to blow the scene well what comes out of your mouth is based on what goes into your ears right

01:41:41Guest:now with Spinal Tap though that was Rob but we had all decided that we were going to do the movie that way not because we sat down one day and said let's do an improv film we were trying to figure out how to make this film look real who wanted that

01:41:58Guest:We all wanted it.

01:41:59Guest:Okay.

01:42:00Guest:And we all had tried writing a script, and we looked at it after about three days and thought, well, A, the studio isn't going to understand this anyway.

01:42:09Guest:Right.

01:42:10Guest:Look at this.

01:42:11Guest:So, B, why don't we just go shoot it as a demo, and how do we make this look real?

01:42:16Guest:writing is not going to ever get the feeling that we want.

01:42:21Guest:Let's just go do it.

01:42:22Guest:I hadn't come out of an improv experience that Credibility Gap wrote every sketch we ever wrote.

01:42:26Guest:First time I improvised was in Spinal Tap.

01:42:29Guest:And what about Chris?

01:42:31Guest:I don't know if Chris had done improv before.

01:42:33Marc:Michael hadn't.

01:42:34Marc:And Rob was at the helm.

01:42:37Marc:Was it his idea?

01:42:39Guest:No.

01:42:40Guest:The four of us had been the TV show that I mentioned that we did a pilot.

01:42:44Guest:Spinal Tap had made a little brief appearance in that.

01:42:47Guest:And we're supposed to be, at the end of our song, we're supposed to be covered with smoke.

01:42:54Guest:And a Busby Berkeley sequence where we're lying on the floor shot from above.

01:42:58Guest:And instead of smoke, the prop guy fucks up and hot oil is coming down on us.

01:43:02Guest:Drops of hot oil.

01:43:03Guest:And so we have two choices.

01:43:04Guest:We can either kill the prop guy or talk about what else do we do with these characters.

01:43:10Guest:And since killing prop men is illegal in California, we decided to talk about what else we could do with these characters.

01:43:14Guest:We thought, well, let's see if we can make a... And Rob was part of that.

01:43:18Marc:Yeah.

01:43:18Marc:Rob was making that show.

01:43:21Marc:Oh, he's making the show.

01:43:22Marc:Yeah.

01:43:23Marc:And because he went an entirely different direction with his directing.

01:43:28Marc:Yeah.

01:43:28Marc:but what, but he was definitely part of the whole process.

01:43:31Marc:Absolutely.

01:43:32Marc:And, and, and out of that, cause Chris had not been doing them previous to that.

01:43:36Marc:I mean, that was sort of, that was sort of the first one, wasn't it?

01:43:40Marc:Uh, of that type of movie of that, you know, the long form improv.

01:43:43Guest:well i mean i think john cassavetes movies well yeah i mean comedically comedically yes and then mike lee right in england uh he's those are great movies great movies and they built them on improv they they would do a year of improv right and then they specifically comedy yeah specifically comedy specifically that style yeah i guess we were the first good yeah it's nice to be the first of something right it's good to be the first

01:44:08Marc:Let me, before I go, is the show is still on.

01:44:10Marc:The show is still on.

01:44:12Marc:Some outlets don't have it anymore.

01:44:13Marc:Oh, some outlets don't have it anymore, but it's a podcast.

01:44:16Marc:There you go.

01:44:17Marc:Podcast rule, baby.

01:44:18Marc:You're telling me.

01:44:19Marc:I'm telling you.

01:44:19Marc:Save my life.

01:44:20Marc:Yeah.

01:44:21Marc:Well, good.

01:44:21Marc:I'm glad that's still going.

01:44:22Marc:Thank you.

01:44:23Marc:And I'm happy that you're not.

01:44:25Marc:Look, I didn't know what I was going to get when you're coming over here.

01:44:27Marc:What?

01:44:28Marc:I don't know.

01:44:28Marc:People are like, that is difficult.

01:44:31Yeah.

01:44:31Guest:I'm a sweetheart.

01:44:33Marc:That's a one guy I trust said that.

01:44:36Guest:You could talk to the people in England where we did this Nixon show.

01:44:41Guest:This was the most arduous experience producing a show, writing a show, starring in it, four hours of makeup every day, having this incredibly impenetrable dialogue to learn.

01:44:54Guest:You know, they all had a good time.

01:44:56Marc:Yeah, no, I know how these things get started.

01:44:58Marc:They're not based on anything, maybe one or two people's experience.

01:45:01Marc:But I appreciate the fact that you were such an asshole, you had to leave our country to get love.

01:45:06Marc:I appreciate that.

01:45:08Guest:True that.

01:45:08Guest:True that, baby.

01:45:09Guest:Thanks, Eric.

01:45:10Guest:Thank you.

01:45:16Marc:All right, that's it.

01:45:17Marc:Harry Shearer, the first one I've ever talked to to honestly, well, that's not true, Brewer, too, who had some, you know, not necessarily completely upbeat things to say about SNL.

01:45:30Marc:And it was a great conversation.

01:45:32Marc:I was honored that he was here.

01:45:35Marc:He's done a lot of great work, Harry Shearer.

01:45:37Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.

01:45:41Marc:Get on the mailing list.

01:45:42Marc:Check the calendar for tour dates in your area.

01:45:45Marc:You can leave comments through Facebook on the site there.

01:45:48Marc:You can check the merch.

01:45:49Marc:We're going to have new posters.

01:45:51Marc:Posters are being made for every stop on my tour.

01:45:54Marc:So we'll stock up that stuff in the merch store once we get done with that.

01:45:58Marc:What else, man?

01:46:00Marc:I can't get enough of this pedal.

01:46:01Marc:I'll tell you that.

01:46:02Marc:I'm going to piss my neighbors off.

01:46:04Marc:It's fucking 1039 at night.

01:46:06Marc:Maybe I should pull back.

01:46:13Marc:Boomer lives!