Episode 590 - Drew Friedman / Mick Jagger

Episode 590 • Released April 1, 2015 • Speakers detected

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

00:00:10Guest:How are you?

00:00:11Guest:What the fuckers?

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

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

00:00:13Guest:What the fuck sticks?

00:00:15Guest:What the fuck stirs?

00:00:17Marc:This is Mark Maron.

00:00:18Marc:This is WTF.

00:00:19Marc:This is my show.

00:00:19Marc:It's my podcast.

00:00:22Marc:Folks.

00:00:24Marc:Big stuff today.

00:00:27Marc:primary guest drew friedman cartoonist artist life changer for me uh first guest we got a short interview today with somebody most you know he's in a band but before i i talk about that specifically

00:00:48Marc:I do have to admit that I've gotten perhaps a little arrogant or maybe insensitive or maybe I'm just sticking by my guns.

00:01:00Marc:I'm not sure, but I'll try to explain.

00:01:03Marc:I'll explain the story to you.

00:01:05Marc:So I got an opportunity to interview somebody.

00:01:08Marc:This is a big guest.

00:01:09Marc:OK, it's a big guest.

00:01:11Marc:And the opportunity was, look, you know, you can have him for 10 minutes and it's got to be pretty specific.

00:01:21Marc:And, you know, he doesn't really like getting personal.

00:01:26Marc:And, you know, it's a big thing.

00:01:31Marc:He wants to do the podcast.

00:01:33Marc:Now, I guess I should tell you, this guest is Mick Jagger.

00:01:37Marc:Mick Jagger.

00:01:39Marc:They have a nice 10-minute chat about the new tour, 15-city tour that they just announced.

00:01:48Marc:The Rolling Stones, the Rolling Stones are doing a tour.

00:01:52Marc:They're also re-releasing Sticky Fingers on May 26th.

00:01:59Marc:This is what's going on for the Rolling Stones.

00:02:02Marc:So someone thought that it would be great to have them on the show.

00:02:06Marc:And then I talked to their main publicist and she thought it would be great to have her show.

00:02:10Marc:And then I'm like, well, look, you know, I said this and I got a cop to it.

00:02:13Marc:I got to own it because it's fucking ridiculous.

00:02:18Marc:So I'm like, well, you know, I usually do an hour interview, and that's sort of the format of the show.

00:02:23Marc:It's like an hour interview.

00:02:26Marc:And this woman, Fran, was like, I know what you do, and we love what you do, and Mick, listen to what you do, but that's not what we're doing.

00:02:34Marc:And I'm like, yeah, I know, and I'd love to talk to Keith for an hour.

00:02:38Marc:If Mick can't do it, Keith would be great for an hour.

00:02:42Marc:She's like, I appreciate that, and I'm not ruling out that possibility in the future, but that's not happening now.

00:02:47Marc:What we thought is we'd have maybe Mick and...

00:02:50Marc:you know, Keith and maybe Ronnie, you know, on your show for 10 minutes leading up to the tour.

00:02:55Marc:I'm like, well, you know, it's not what the show is.

00:02:58Marc:So let me talk to my producer and partner, business partner, Brendan McDonald.

00:03:02Marc:And let me get back to you on this because I'd really like to do an hour if that's possible.

00:03:07Marc:And I was like, well, where are they exactly?

00:03:09Marc:And she's like, I don't know where they're going to be.

00:03:11Marc:We'll see what happens, where they're going to be.

00:03:14Marc:And I'm like, all right, because I could come to them.

00:03:16Marc:They're like, well, no, we're not really doing that.

00:03:18Marc:But it's not what we're doing.

00:03:19Marc:And I'm like, all right, well, you know what?

00:03:21Marc:It's not what I do.

00:03:22Marc:So let me just check with my producer.

00:03:25Marc:So I call up Brendan.

00:03:28Marc:And rightfully so, he says, what the fuck is wrong with you?

00:03:35Marc:Mick Jagger wants to talk to you on the phone.

00:03:37Marc:Who cares what about her for how long?

00:03:41Marc:I mean, it's Mick Jagger.

00:03:42Marc:You talk about the Stones constantly.

00:03:45Marc:Really, if you look at the arc of the 550 or 80 or whatever episodes, they come up.

00:03:51Marc:I got a poster of Mick Jagger.

00:03:53Marc:I got the Gimme Shelter poster right here.

00:03:56Marc:My first guitar was a Telecaster once I got enough money to buy a guitar because Keith played a Telecaster.

00:04:03Marc:I used to stick my cigarette in the top of the guitar like Keith.

00:04:09Marc:I used to sing along with Mick.

00:04:12Marc:I knew I can do the Mick finger shake.

00:04:16Marc:I listened to the Rolling Stones for the first time on a school bus when I was in eighth grade.

00:04:20Marc:My buddy Eric Tittman brought a panasonic tape recorder, and his dad had Exile on Main Street, and he held that tape recorder up to that speaker, and he recorded several of the songs from Exile on Main Street, one of them being Sweet Virginia, there being a skip at a certain point in that song, and I awaited that skip every time I heard that song for at least two decades.

00:04:41Marc:It's past now because I no longer remember where the skip was.

00:04:45Marc:Midnight Rambler changed my life.

00:04:47Marc:It's the Rolling Stones, all right, so...

00:04:49Marc:brendan's like shut the fuck up man just talk to mick jagger who cares what how long it goes on what what's wrong talk to mick jagger and i'm like holy fuck you're right dude what am i thinking jesus so mick jagger's gonna call me and i wanted to you know i i couldn't believe it now now once i had said like yeah we and it got all set up

00:05:15Marc:You know, I was like excited.

00:05:17Marc:I was like, I can't believe I'm going to talk to Mick Jagger.

00:05:19Marc:And it got me emotional because it's an important person in my life, Mick Jagger.

00:05:24Marc:The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards, Charlie Watt, Bill Wyman, Ronnie Wood.

00:05:29Marc:They're important to me.

00:05:32Marc:So now I'm nervous and I'm excited.

00:05:34Marc:I'm freaking out.

00:05:34Marc:And I'm like, I want to share this experience with somebody, you know.

00:05:39Marc:So I was like, Dean Del Rey's the dude.

00:05:41Marc:Dean Del Rey, you know, he worked for them kind of.

00:05:44Marc:He should be here to, you know, with me.

00:05:46Marc:And he should like, if he wants to, he should put some headphones on and enjoy this experience with me.

00:05:54Marc:Texted him.

00:05:54Marc:I'm like, dude, I'm going to talk to Jagger for like 10 minutes.

00:05:57Marc:Do you want to be part of this?

00:06:00Marc:And he's like, hold on.

00:06:04Marc:Hold on.

00:06:05Marc:Let me see if I can.

00:06:07Marc:Look at that text exchange.

00:06:09Marc:You want to come over and listen on the cans during the call?

00:06:12Marc:He goes, hell yeah, when?

00:06:14Marc:And I go, between 12.15 and 12.45, come over at noon.

00:06:17Marc:He goes, fuck yes, I am there, man.

00:06:19Marc:Kick ass, thank you.

00:06:22Marc:And then he came over.

00:06:23Marc:So you'll hear it unfold momentarily.

00:06:27Marc:Me and Dean Del Rey leading up to the Mick Jagger call, then a conversation with me and Mick Jagger, and then me and Dean Del Rey trying to keep our shit together

00:06:38Marc:Post Mick Jagger call.

00:06:42Marc:All right, so now let's go to me and Dean waiting for Mick Jagger to call the garage.

00:06:58Marc:I'm nervous, dude.

00:07:00Guest:I'm going to talk to Mick Jagger.

00:07:01Guest:It's insane, man.

00:07:03Guest:It doesn't get any bigger than that.

00:07:05Guest:I only got like 10 minutes.

00:07:07Guest:Yeah, but you know, I know that's weird because you're like, what do I ask?

00:07:10Guest:What do I ask?

00:07:10Marc:You want to connect with him.

00:07:12Marc:You don't want to just be like, I don't know if he's sitting there with a bunch of, like he's going back to back doing a phoner junket.

00:07:19Marc:Yeah.

00:07:19Marc:I don't fucking know.

00:07:21Marc:Like, I don't know if I'm the only call on the docket or if he's like, you know, who am I talking to now?

00:07:27Marc:Who's this again?

00:07:28Guest:Yeah.

00:07:29Guest:All right.

00:07:29Guest:Let it rip.

00:07:30Guest:Oh, this is the fellow in his garage.

00:07:32Guest:In his garage.

00:07:35Guest:I mean, all those years you love the Stones, you have a million things you want to ask him.

00:07:39Guest:Kind of.

00:07:39Marc:But like, I'm more astounded that I'm going to talk to him.

00:07:43Marc:Like, I don't even know.

00:07:44Marc:What do you really ask him?

00:07:45Marc:You just want to say like, what's up?

00:07:48Marc:Yeah.

00:07:48Marc:How about Altamont?

00:07:50Marc:Yeah.

00:07:50Marc:there's part of me that wants to ask him that what's your favorite stones record oh that's a good question right i think like you know more so than not i go like beggar's banquet i go back to a lot right i mean you know and i like um i've been listening to the real old stuff lately oh yeah i'm not down with that stuff that brian jones era yeah yeah all that shit like it's really some of it's great like some of it's like straight up blues stuff you know what i mean oh absolutely

00:08:16Marc:And it's a real clean sound.

00:08:17Marc:And I'll play some of that for you when we go back, like out of our heads.

00:08:20Marc:And what is it?

00:08:22Marc:December's Children.

00:08:23Marc:What day does the tour start, dude?

00:08:24Marc:Oh, I forget.

00:08:25Marc:I'm not ready, man.

00:08:26Marc:I'm not ready.

00:08:28Marc:May 24th, San Diego.

00:08:29Marc:There you go.

00:08:30Marc:I can't.

00:08:31Guest:I mean, he's calling the garage.

00:08:32Guest:You got to think when you started this podcast.

00:08:34Guest:Mick Jagger calling the garage.

00:08:36Guest:Calling the garage, dude.

00:08:38Guest:When you started the podcast, you didn't think that Jagger was going to call the garage, right?

00:08:43Guest:No.

00:08:44Guest:At all.

00:08:45Marc:No.

00:08:45Marc:Why would I think that?

00:08:46Guest:You know, you're just doing something that you want to do.

00:08:50Marc:I feel like I'm waiting for a chick to go.

00:08:51Marc:I keep checking to make sure the phone's on the receiver.

00:08:53Marc:Like, old-timey.

00:08:54Marc:You know what I mean?

00:08:55Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:55Marc:Is the phone working?

00:08:57Marc:Should I double-check it?

00:08:58Marc:See if there's a dial tone?

00:09:01Yeah.

00:09:01Marc:This is nuts.

00:09:02Marc:We're just sitting around waiting for fucking Mick Jagger to call.

00:09:05Marc:You know, people are like, Mick Jagger, so what?

00:09:07Marc:Fuck you.

00:09:08Marc:Oh, no.

00:09:08Marc:Whoever says that is out of their mind.

00:09:10Marc:I don't know if anyone's ever said it, but sometimes you think, like, are the Stones, does anyone care about the Stones?

00:09:15Marc:Who cares if anyone cares?

00:09:16Marc:He's fucking Mick Jagger.

00:09:17Marc:Yeah.

00:09:18Guest:There's only like five guys that have done what he has done.

00:09:22Guest:You know, still playing music.

00:09:25Guest:He's doing football fields, man.

00:09:27Guest:And baseball parks.

00:09:29Guest:The greatest rock and roll band in the world.

00:09:31Guest:Like, not one, two, not five songs.

00:09:35Guest:You know, hundred songs that are played on radio every day.

00:09:40Marc:Now I'm starting to think like, give him the wrong fucking phone number.

00:09:45Guest:Oh, that's the worst.

00:09:48Guest:Right.

00:09:48Marc:Well, I guess so.

00:09:49Marc:Whatever, man.

00:09:50Marc:You know, it's like if it doesn't happen.

00:09:51Marc:I hear you.

00:09:53Marc:What am I going to do?

00:09:56Marc:So now we're in a deficit.

00:09:58Marc:We're in overtime.

00:10:00Guest:It's going to happen.

00:10:01Marc:Now it's just going to be sad.

00:10:02Marc:It's going to be me and you like slowly getting disappointed.

00:10:06Marc:Minute by minute.

00:10:07Marc:I guess not happening.

00:10:07Marc:Then we'll go back in like, let's go listen to Sticky Fingers.

00:10:11Guest:Yeah, that's a sad day on York Street.

00:10:16Guest:That's our record.

00:10:17Guest:Oh, no.

00:10:17Guest:What?

00:10:17Marc:It's my other phone.

00:10:20Guest:Unbelievable.

00:10:21Guest:Hello?

00:10:22Guest:Yeah.

00:10:23Guest:Hello?

00:10:25Guest:Yeah.

00:10:25Marc:Yeah.

00:10:26Marc:Good.

00:10:26Marc:How's it going?

00:10:28Marc:Oh, really?

00:10:30Marc:Another promo call?

00:10:34Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:10:35Marc:Yeah.

00:10:35Marc:Like, when are you thinking?

00:10:36Marc:Well, you just want me to sit here or do you want to give me a little window again?

00:10:41Marc:Well, I mean, it's just, well, look, I'm around.

00:10:43Marc:I'm just saying that like, you know, I've been sitting here just waiting for a half hour looking at my phone.

00:10:49Marc:So if you're telling me I should keep doing that for another hour, I can.

00:10:56Marc:But if you can tell me like maybe like another half hour window, like if you want to try, if you think he can do it between 115 and 145, what do you think of that?

00:11:06Marc:Okay, so that's 130 and two here.

00:11:09Marc:Okay, deal.

00:11:10Marc:Let me know if there's a problem.

00:11:11Marc:I'll come back out here at 1.30 and we'll wait it out.

00:11:15Marc:Thank you.

00:11:16Marc:Bye.

00:11:18Marc:Well, we know it's happening.

00:11:20Marc:I got nothing.

00:11:22Marc:Did you hear me, though?

00:11:24Marc:Yeah.

00:11:24Marc:He's caught up in another call, another promo call.

00:11:28Guest:You are so married.

00:11:29Guest:It's hilarious.

00:11:31Guest:You know what I mean?

00:11:32Guest:Oh, really?

00:11:32Guest:I'm number 38?

00:11:33Guest:Yeah, okay.

00:11:35Guest:Well, I'm just out here in the garage.

00:11:36Guest:We'll go get in my phone.

00:11:37Guest:I could have a grilled cheese sandwich right now, but no, I'm out here.

00:11:41Marc:Let's take a break.

00:11:44Guest:Okay.

00:11:44Guest:It's so fucking funny.

00:11:48Guest:Hello.

00:12:00Guest:Hello.

00:12:01Marc:Mick.

00:12:03Guest:Hey, Mark.

00:12:03Marc:How are you, sir?

00:12:04Guest:I'm good.

00:12:05Guest:How are you?

00:12:06Marc:I'm thrilled to talk to you.

00:12:07Marc:I'm going out of my mind.

00:12:08Marc:I'm sitting here.

00:12:09Marc:I'm like, oh my God, is it going to happen?

00:12:11Marc:And there you are.

00:12:12Guest:I'm sorry I'm late.

00:12:13Guest:I got the times wrong.

00:12:15Guest:I had a whole bunch of interviews and I started late.

00:12:18Guest:I'm so sorry.

00:12:19Marc:Oh, no, it's no problem.

00:12:20Marc:We're just we're just hanging out here in the garage waiting for you to call.

00:12:25Guest:I'm so sorry.

00:12:25Guest:I just realized I got the times.

00:12:28Guest:I would start like half an hour late and everything.

00:12:31Marc:No, it's great.

00:12:32Marc:It's great.

00:12:33Marc:I'm thrilled to talk to you.

00:12:34Marc:How are you feeling?

00:12:35Guest:Good.

00:12:36Guest:I'm feeling good.

00:12:36Marc:Where are you calling from?

00:12:38Guest:The West Indies.

00:12:40Marc:Oh, really?

00:12:41Marc:Wow.

00:12:41Marc:Yeah.

00:12:42Marc:Is it nice down there?

00:12:42Guest:Can you hear me okay?

00:12:43Marc:I can hear you.

00:12:44Marc:Great.

00:12:44Marc:Are you at the beach or something?

00:12:46Guest:Not on the beach, but I'm near the beach.

00:12:49Marc:Oh, that's sweet.

00:12:50Marc:So I'm psyched to talk to you.

00:12:53Marc:Is this the first time you've been on a podcast or have you before?

00:12:56Guest:I think I've been on podcasts before.

00:12:59Guest:But I'm very pleased to be on yours.

00:13:01Marc:Good.

00:13:02Marc:So you're re-releasing Sticky Fingers.

00:13:06Marc:Now, how much did you spend any time with the record when they were remastering it or anything?

00:13:11Guest:Oh, yeah, I remastered them.

00:13:12Guest:I was there for the remastering.

00:13:13Guest:What was it like to listen to that stuff again like that?

00:13:16Guest:It's great.

00:13:17Guest:I really like that album.

00:13:18Guest:It's a really good album.

00:13:19Guest:Oh, it's a great album.

00:13:21Marc:But I mean, when you sit and listen to those songs, do you go back in your mind to where it was recorded?

00:13:26Marc:Didn't you do that down in Muscle Shoals?

00:13:29Guest:A bit of it.

00:13:30Guest:Yeah.

00:13:30Guest:With three tracks in Muscle Shoals and the rest in London.

00:13:34Guest:And when you hear those songs, do they trigger stuff?

00:13:37Guest:Do you get emotional about them or do you have some distance from them?

00:13:42Guest:Well, I mean, I sing them a lot now, so it's not like I'm listening to them for the first time.

00:13:48Guest:You know what I mean?

00:13:49Guest:It's like...

00:13:50Guest:you know so the as a song it's like from you know it's now for me it's not like i haven't heard it for like a hundred years i mean some songs you don't do and when you listen to them you think wow that's that takes me back but you know when you played wild horses like a couple of months ago it's not quite the same well when was the last time you played like uh sister morphine or or moonlight yeah we played it on stage not for a long about 10 years ago i should think the last time we played that

00:14:16Guest:Yeah, I haven't played that for a while.

00:14:19Marc:Would you think it'd be hard to get your head back into that one?

00:14:22Guest:No, I'd get into it.

00:14:23Guest:I could get into that.

00:14:25Marc:In terms of the tour, so you guys are going to be playing just the classics?

00:14:31Marc:What's the plan?

00:14:32Guest:I don't know yet.

00:14:33Guest:In rehearsal, we'll make a bit of a mixture.

00:14:37Guest:We'll play well-known songs.

00:14:39Guest:We always try and find a song that we've never done before, a couple of songs we've never done.

00:14:44Guest:We might feature a few songs from Sticky Fingers, a more unusual one, maybe like the one you mentioned, maybe a couple of others.

00:14:51Guest:So it'll be a mixed bag, and it won't be just all, like, hopefully it won't be just by the numbers, you know?

00:14:57Marc:Sure, man.

00:14:58Marc:And do you get excited?

00:15:00Marc:Like, do you have any ideas of some of the songs that you haven't played in years that you might want to play?

00:15:06Guest:Well...

00:15:07Guest:Ah, I'm going to see in the rehearsals.

00:15:11Guest:I always go through a long list, and then we try them, and they say, ah, that's not going to work.

00:15:16Guest:Or that sounds like it's got possibilities.

00:15:18Guest:And, you know, we might feature some of the less well-known songs from Sticky Fingers, because I think, you know, that would be good.

00:15:23Marc:That'd be amazing, because I heard a rumor that you guys were just going to play that whole album right through.

00:15:28Guest:Well...

00:15:29Guest:You know, the thing about it is that that might work and it might not work.

00:15:33Guest:So, you know, it's got quite a few slow songs on it.

00:15:36Guest:Yeah.

00:15:38Guest:But don't you think people would be like, oh, my God, they're playing the entire record.

00:15:41Guest:Don't you think that like people?

00:15:43Guest:Maybe it'll work.

00:15:44Guest:You know, you've got to see.

00:15:45Guest:Yeah.

00:15:46Guest:Maybe it's going to work good.

00:15:47Marc:So when you when you decide, like, if you have an older song that you guys are just playing around with to see if you can play it, what determines whether or not you can do it or not?

00:15:56Marc:What makes you say like, nah, it's not going to work?

00:15:59Guest:You can just tell when you rehearse it.

00:16:02Guest:You can just tell if it works, if it doesn't work.

00:16:05Guest:Right, just by the feel of it?

00:16:07Guest:Yeah, just by the feel.

00:16:08Guest:And if it really rocks or has some emotive thing to it, then you can really tell.

00:16:13Guest:And then you know when it's not working.

00:16:17Guest:Right.

00:16:18Guest:And how are you and Keith getting along?

00:16:21Guest:Pretty good.

00:16:21Guest:I saw him the other day.

00:16:22Guest:He's pretty good.

00:16:25Guest:Are you going to speak to him on this podcast?

00:16:27Guest:I think so.

00:16:28Guest:Is Mick Taylor going to play with you guys again?

00:16:31Guest:No, I don't think.

00:16:32Guest:He's not going to play on this tour.

00:16:37Marc:No?

00:16:37Guest:It's just going to be us.

00:16:39Guest:We had a great time with him.

00:16:41Guest:I really enjoyed it.

00:16:43Guest:We did a load of gigs.

00:16:44Guest:We went all around the world.

00:16:45Guest:We started off in London.

00:16:47Guest:It was going to be just one show in London.

00:16:49Guest:And, you know, went all around the world together.

00:16:51Guest:But this is like another beginning of another tour.

00:16:53Guest:So, you know, so I don't think he's coming on this.

00:16:57Marc:So do you have any special guests in mind that might play with you?

00:17:00Guest:Yeah, we'll see about special guests.

00:17:02Guest:You know, we did a lot of special guests on our last American tour and it was a lot of fun.

00:17:06Guest:And so, you know, I think that

00:17:09Guest:kind of works or maybe, you know, we should do something different.

00:17:12Guest:I like doing guests.

00:17:13Guest:Yeah.

00:17:14Guest:Sometimes the guests, you know, come up with amazing things.

00:17:18Guest:Sometimes it's, you know, it works out differently than you think, but it's always fun.

00:17:24Guest:What made you laugh?

00:17:26Guest:What exactly were you thinking when you said that?

00:17:28Guest:Well, you know, sometimes the guests want to do different songs than you've imagined and, you know, you always want to be kind and, you know, you always want to be

00:17:38Guest:you know, they, they're giving of their time.

00:17:40Guest:So you want to go along with it.

00:17:41Guest:And sometimes that really works.

00:17:43Guest:And sometimes it doesn't, but, but, but, but, um, it's, it's, I've had great experiences with it because like we had special guests from all kinds of types of music, you know, it wasn't just like rock music, special guests, you know, and all age groups and all kinds.

00:18:00Guest:And so we, we, we had a really good time with that and you never quite know what's going to happen.

00:18:05Guest:So I like, I like the sort of unknown part of that.

00:18:07Yeah.

00:18:08Marc:Do you ever miss Bill Wyman up there on stage when you're up there?

00:18:11Guest:Oh, yeah, I miss his dancing.

00:18:14Guest:But I managed to get, I see Bill quite often in London.

00:18:17Guest:He's a very sweet guy.

00:18:18Guest:But, you know, it was a long time ago that he left the band now.

00:18:24Guest:You know, it's years.

00:18:25Guest:I don't know how many years.

00:18:26Guest:It seems a long time.

00:18:27Marc:Well, the last time I saw you live was in 1981 at Madison Square Garden.

00:18:31Guest:Whoa, that's a long time.

00:18:32Guest:You must come more recent, more, you know, come again.

00:18:36Guest:Definitely.

00:18:37Guest:I definitely want to come again.

00:18:38Guest:It was such an amazing experience for me because I was, you know, we've gotten our tickets to a lottery.

00:18:45Marc:And I remember at the time, I don't know if you remember, I think that James Brown was supposed to open for you, but something happened in Screaming Jay Hawkins.

00:18:54Marc:That was in the garden, and then he canceled.

00:18:56Marc:Yeah, and Screaming Jay Hawkins opened.

00:18:58Guest:That's right, but that's a pretty amazing opening act.

00:19:01Guest:It was a trip, man.

00:19:02Guest:I mean, he was up there.

00:19:04Guest:Totally mad.

00:19:05Guest:Yeah, he's up there with his voodoo stick all alone.

00:19:07Guest:It was crazy.

00:19:08Guest:Yeah, really crazy.

00:19:11Guest:So you remember.

00:19:12Guest:You've got to come more than once every 30 years.

00:19:14Guest:I know, Mick.

00:19:15Guest:I'm gonna.

00:19:16Guest:I'm gonna.

00:19:17Guest:I just... So you're gonna come.

00:19:18Guest:So you're gonna... You should give me a call.

00:19:21Guest:You should book the tickets.

00:19:22Guest:Come with your friends, and we'll make a special place for you.

00:19:25Guest:Really?

00:19:25Guest:And come and enjoy yourself.

00:19:27Guest:I'm gonna... I will definitely take you up on that.

00:19:30Marc:Yeah.

00:19:31Marc:Yeah.

00:19:33Marc:I would die.

00:19:34Marc:I tell you, man.

00:19:35Guest:Are you in Los Angeles?

00:19:37Marc:I am, yeah.

00:19:38Marc:And I love you guys.

00:19:39Guest:You come to San Diego.

00:19:42Marc:I will.

00:19:43Guest:I've loved you guys all my life.

00:19:45Guest:And when I knew I was going to talk to you, I had no idea what that was going to feel like for me.

00:19:50Marc:I'm sitting here.

00:19:50Marc:I've got to post...

00:19:51Marc:I got a huge poster right here in the garage.

00:19:53Marc:I got a bunch of stuff on the wall.

00:19:55Marc:And there's a huge poster for the reissue of the Gimme Shelter movie with your face.

00:19:59Marc:So I see your face every day.

00:20:00Marc:And me and my buddy Dean Del Rey were just in the house listening to Stones music.

00:20:07Marc:It's crazy, man.

00:20:08Marc:I'm a huge fan.

00:20:09Guest:So I look forward to seeing you there.

00:20:11Marc:Well, Mick, it was great.

00:20:12Marc:It was a real honor to talk to you.

00:20:14Guest:Nice to talk to you.

00:20:14Marc:Take care.

00:20:16Guest:Take care.

00:20:16Guest:Bye.

00:20:17Guest:Bye.

00:20:17Guest:Dude.

00:20:20Guest:Dude.

00:20:21Guest:Oh, man.

00:20:21Guest:That was fucking amazing, man.

00:20:25Guest:You were like, your tears were... No, I had tears because it's like... I get choked up because the guy is so nice and real and alive.

00:20:37Guest:Yeah.

00:20:37Guest:You know what I mean?

00:20:38Guest:He's so alive.

00:20:39Guest:He's like, hey, Mark, how are you?

00:20:42Guest:I'm in the West Indies.

00:20:43Guest:And you're just like...

00:20:44Marc:I wanted to keep him on the phone.

00:20:46Guest:My fucking arm.

00:20:46Guest:I was losing my mind.

00:20:48Guest:He was so nice, man.

00:20:50Guest:And I worked for the band.

00:20:53Guest:But you don't talk to the band.

00:20:55Guest:That's like a conversation he has with people.

00:20:57Guest:You know what I mean?

00:20:58Guest:Yeah.

00:20:59Guest:That you just think like, God, man, what a great dude.

00:21:03Guest:Yeah.

00:21:04Guest:How great was he?

00:21:06Guest:great dude i can't believe it like what did you see what happened though right after we were leaving i know right after the chick says to call in an hour we're leaving we're leaving the room i couldn't believe it we almost missed that dude i kept that was crazy and i started fangirling out at the end he's trying to get off the phone i'm like i just uh yeah but still man at least he knows he didn't just call and he invited you and your friends which i'm your friend dude to san diego man

00:21:34Guest:It sounded like they were kind of planning on doing the whole whole steak.

00:21:38Guest:I know, right?

00:21:39Guest:He's like, yeah, maybe.

00:21:41Guest:I mean, there's a lot of slow songs, but I don't know why I'm trying to sound like them.

00:21:46Marc:Maybe I can make that show.

00:21:47Guest:Come on, dude.

00:21:48Guest:We got to go.

00:21:50Guest:Oh, how crazy was that?

00:21:52Marc:I can't even believe it.

00:21:54Guest:I can't either, dude, because we were walking out of the garage and it's like, boo, you're a little landline.

00:22:00Marc:I know.

00:22:00Guest:And then he's like, no one told him, I'll call in an hour.

00:22:04Marc:You could tell.

00:22:05Marc:He's in the West Indies.

00:22:06Marc:No, they just thought he was.

00:22:07Guest:No one told him.

00:22:08Guest:That was insane.

00:22:09Guest:And we would have missed that.

00:22:11Marc:I wonder if he's on the phone right now.

00:22:12Marc:I didn't like him at all.

00:22:14Guest:No, he's not like that.

00:22:16Guest:He was genuine, like, cool.

00:22:19Guest:He was laughing and stuff.

00:22:21Marc:Okay, man.

00:22:22Marc:Well, thanks for hanging out.

00:22:23Guest:It's so crazy.

00:22:24Guest:We had these headphones on.

00:22:25Guest:It was like he was right here.

00:22:26Guest:I know.

00:22:27Guest:I look over at you.

00:22:27Guest:You're welling up.

00:22:28Marc:I know.

00:22:28Guest:I couldn't believe it because I was just like, wow, man.

00:22:31Guest:What's happening?

00:22:32Guest:The guy is just a legend to me.

00:22:34Guest:Mick Jagger.

00:22:34Marc:Oh, yeah, man.

00:22:35Guest:You know what I mean?

00:22:36Guest:It's beautiful.

00:22:37Guest:It's beautiful.

00:22:38Guest:All right, dude.

00:22:39Guest:God damn it.

00:22:47Marc:So that was insane.

00:22:48Marc:Was that insane?

00:22:50Yeah.

00:22:50Marc:Dean and I went into the house after that and just sat on the couch, sort of numb, and I played... We played Can't You Hear Me Knockin' off the original master recording of Sticky Fingers, the album, the vinyl, louder than I've played anything on my stereo.

00:23:06Marc:And then we played the non-live version of Midnight Rambler, loud, louder than I've played anything.

00:23:12Marc:And we sat there...

00:23:13Marc:Two grown ass men slowly rocking our heads and occasionally I would jump up and play a little air guitar or break into a bit of air drumming with some singing.

00:23:24Marc:We both did some singing.

00:23:26Marc:And after it was done, it was just, you know, he looked at me and said, dude, you just talked to Mick Jagger.

00:23:33Marc:I'm like, God damn, it's fucking crazy.

00:23:38Marc:Drew Friedman, the master.

00:23:41Marc:Master caricature artist, master cartoonist, master artist.

00:23:45Marc:Drew Friedman, who changed my life, I think the first time with his art, in a book that he put together with his brother, Josh Allen Friedman, it was called Any Similarities to Persons Living or Dead is Purely Coincidental.

00:23:56Marc:Drew did the art.

00:23:57Marc:I think Josh, I think they both did a little of the writing, but mostly Josh did the writing.

00:24:01Marc:And it's just the type of satire.

00:24:04Marc:There's something about the way he captures show business personalities, primarily, with just the...

00:24:12Marc:the slight there's a slight darkness to it there's a slight you know it's not a rawness but there's something haunting about the way he caricatures people and then he did another book with his brother called warts and all which were also disturbing but beautiful and then there's the old jewish comedians from fantagraphics fantagraphics is a great a great press a great comic press uh you should go check out fantagraphics anyways

00:24:38Marc:At Fantagraphics.com.

00:24:40Marc:But let's get back to Drew Friedman.

00:24:42Marc:The old Jewish comedians are just pictures.

00:24:45Marc:They're just portraits of old Jewish comedians.

00:24:47Marc:And there's old Jewish comedians.

00:24:49Marc:And there's more old Jewish comedians.

00:24:50Marc:And there's even more old Jewish comedians.

00:24:52Marc:And these are spectacular books.

00:24:54Marc:It's sort of specific, but it's fucking amazing, man.

00:24:58Marc:It's fucking amazing.

00:25:00Marc:the way he captures them there's something about the there's something almost demonic and beautiful about the way he captures show business person there's a vulnerability there but there's a darkness there it's hard for me to even explain he did the fun never stops he did too soon famous and infamous faces 1995 to 2010 he's probably just a part of that the point being

00:25:25Marc:That Drew Friedman is a master at the caricature art and at cartooning.

00:25:30Marc:And I just love him.

00:25:32Marc:And I've always loved his work.

00:25:34Marc:And he's got a new book out now called Heroes of the Comics.

00:25:36Marc:It's available from Fantagraphics.

00:25:38Marc:It's got a foreword by Al Jaffe, another cartoonist who changed my fucking life.

00:25:42Marc:Al Jaffe, if any of you are old enough to sort of grow up with Mad Magazine, Al Jaffe was the fucking best.

00:25:50Marc:You can also check out all his work.

00:25:52Marc:He does a lot of there's a lot of posters available at Drew Friedman dot net.

00:25:56Marc:He's done amazing portraits of John Lennon, Frank Zappa, Frank Sinatra, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf.

00:26:03Marc:I mean, they're just for some reason, his sensibility and his subject matter just completely locks up with my my sensibility.

00:26:13Marc:And the most glorious thing that happened was he did a portrait of me and I haven't used it with anything yet.

00:26:19Marc:And I'm about to get it framed.

00:26:20Marc:And it's just, it's one of the, it's, it's, I honestly folks between Drew Friedman doing a portrait of me and me talking to Mick Jagger today, these are the, like, these are high points.

00:26:32Marc:This is bucket list shit.

00:26:34Marc:So it was a real pleasure for me to talk to, uh, to Drew Friedman.

00:26:38Yeah.

00:26:46Marc:The first book of yours I got was, you know, Any Similarities to Person's Living That's Purely Coincinnocent.

00:26:50Marc:And I'm glad they reissued it because I don't even think I have my original paperback copy got so beat up because it was so mind-blowing to me.

00:26:58Marc:And I couldn't, I'm not even sure I completely understand why, but it was haunting and it had an effect on me for my life.

00:27:04Marc:Somehow it made sense of something that seemed to be lurking in my being since the beginning.

00:27:10Marc:And I'm not sure what it is.

00:27:12Marc:And then when you do all these other books about the old Jewish comics, I'm like, there it is again.

00:27:16Marc:There's something equally as disturbing and haunting about these characters as they are funny.

00:27:22Marc:I mean, I don't know where it comes from.

00:27:24Marc:Where do you find it?

00:27:25Guest:I guess I've always had an obsession for things that nobody else is obsessed by.

00:27:28Guest:That's it?

00:27:29Guest:Basically, that's it.

00:27:30Guest:Nobody else gave a shit about this stuff, but I did for some reason.

00:27:33Marc:Well, let's figure out what the reason is.

00:27:35Marc:Where'd you grow up?

00:27:35Marc:In New York, right?

00:27:36Guest:I grew up, yeah, New York, Long Island.

00:27:38Guest:First 12 years of my life, Long Island, then Manhattan.

00:27:42Guest:I moved to Manhattan when I was 12.

00:27:45Marc:Why'd you move?

00:27:46Guest:I think my parents got bored with Long Island, finally.

00:27:49Guest:First, they hated Glen Cove, and then they hated Great Neck.

00:27:51Guest:Yeah.

00:27:52Guest:And then we finally made the plunge and moved to Manhattan.

00:27:54Marc:But your father was a writer.

00:27:56Guest:Yeah, and he still is.

00:27:57Guest:Bruce J. Friedman.

00:27:59Guest:And he was working in Manhattan, first as a magazine editor at this company called Magazine Management, where Stan Lee worked at the next table to him.

00:28:06Guest:But he was also writing his own books and plays and short stories, and for the theater as well.

00:28:11Marc:Well, he's a very respected guy.

00:28:13Marc:He's one of the great dark wizards of the 70s.

00:28:15Marc:That generation like Heller and Vonnegut and the satirists that kind of wrote funny but kind of dark stuff.

00:28:22Guest:And those guys were his friends.

00:28:23Guest:Right.

00:28:24Guest:The guys I grew up with who were his pals were Mario Puzo and Terry Southern and Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut.

00:28:31Marc:Wait, so you're a kid.

00:28:32Marc:You're 11.

00:28:32Marc:How old's your brother?

00:28:33Marc:12.

00:28:33Guest:My older brother Josh is two years older than me.

00:28:36Marc:And he wrote the Tales of Times Square.

00:28:39Guest:He wrote that book and he wrote a lot of the material in the first book, Persons Living or Dead, and we collaborated on comic strips early on in the 80s.

00:28:46Marc:So you're growing up and you have a sister too?

00:28:48Guest:No, we have a younger brother, Kip, and I have a younger sister, Molly, but we didn't grow up with her.

00:28:53Guest:She came a little later.

00:28:53Marc:Right, a second marriage thing?

00:28:55Marc:Yeah.

00:28:56Marc:All right, so you're growing up in the 70s, in the late 60s, and who could be at the house at any given time?

00:29:02Guest:Well, like those writers I named.

00:29:04Guest:Terry Southern.

00:29:06Guest:Terry Southern was one of his best pals, and Jules Pfeiffer was his friend.

00:29:09Guest:He had all these writer friends, but the guys who most impressed me were the cartoonists, that he was friends with Jules Pfeiffer.

00:29:15Guest:That blew my mind, and Maurice Sendak.

00:29:17Guest:And later, he got to meet people like Harvey Kurtzman.

00:29:19Guest:Those are the guys that impressed me.

00:29:21Guest:Those were my heroes.

00:29:22Marc:So you didn't like Terry Southern, not an entertaining gentleman?

00:29:25Guest:I took him for granted.

00:29:26Guest:It was great to have him around and see him in the house and- Drinking?

00:29:29Guest:Those guys.

00:29:30Guest:Yeah, well, yeah.

00:29:31Guest:I was too young to notice that kind of thing at the time.

00:29:33Guest:But I was friends with their sons.

00:29:35Guest:Right.

00:29:35Guest:So I was friends with Terry Southern's son, Niall.

00:29:37Guest:Are you still?

00:29:38Guest:We're in touch.

00:29:39Guest:Yeah, Niall is making a movie about his father, Terry, now, actually.

00:29:42Marc:Finally.

00:29:43Guest:Well, Ashley's been working on it, I think, for the last 15 years.

00:29:45Marc:I think I heard that somewhere.

00:29:47Guest:It's a lifelong project, I think.

00:29:49Marc:Sons do that, man.

00:29:51Guest:Yeah, I have no plans to make one about my dad, but I guess I'm- Maybe just a long comic.

00:29:56Guest:I haven't thought about that.

00:29:58Guest:Yeah, it would be more in the lines of a comic strip.

00:30:00Marc:I had that guy, Denny Tedesco, whose father was in the Wrecking Crew, the studio musicians out here in LA.

00:30:08Marc:And he'd been working on this documentary for like 15 or 20 years.

00:30:12Marc:And Tommy Tedesco is his father.

00:30:14Marc:And he finally got distribution.

00:30:15Guest:Wow.

00:30:16Guest:It came together.

00:30:17Guest:Wow.

00:30:17Guest:Well, I know Niall's film is going to be great when it finally happens.

00:30:20Guest:I've seen some footage and I've talked to Niall about doing the poster for it, possibly.

00:30:23Guest:Yeah.

00:30:24Guest:So when it happens, I'm sure it'll be terrific.

00:30:25Marc:So when you were a kid and but you were part of this this world that was fairly, you know, a very specific and and kind of insulated world of like kind of a groovy New York intellectuals and writers and stuff.

00:30:38Guest:I guess I was there, and I kind of grew up at Elaine's, which was my dad's hangout.

00:30:42Guest:So you went to Elaine's.

00:30:42Marc:You were in a booth at Elaine's growing up.

00:30:44Guest:Basically, but I didn't like it.

00:30:45Guest:I didn't like it so many.

00:30:46Guest:It was great to meet Al Pacino and Frank Sinatra and George Plimpton and all those guys that were at the tables and stuff, but I finally took it for granted.

00:30:53Guest:I want to be back in my bedroom with my guinea pig and my comic books and mad magazines and monster magazines and TV.

00:31:00Guest:I wanted to just be in front of my TV.

00:31:02Guest:I didn't want to go to school or camp.

00:31:03Guest:I just wanted to watch TV.

00:31:05Guest:I just wanted to watch The Three Stooges and

00:31:06Marc:On Channel 11?

00:31:07Guest:Yeah, Channel 11, Channel 5, Channel 9, WOR.

00:31:10Guest:Channel 11 was WPIX.

00:31:12Guest:That had Joe Bolton and Jack McCarthy, those gods.

00:31:15Guest:Yeah.

00:31:15Guest:And Soupy Sales was on Channel 5, Metro Media.

00:31:17Marc:So you remember Soupy Sales show when it was first on?

00:31:19Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:19Guest:I remember Soupy telling the kids to go take money off their parents.

00:31:22Guest:You remember it?

00:31:23Guest:I didn't do it, but I remember it, and I respected him for it, and I loved the fact that they suspended him for two weeks and brought him back, and I remember all that specifically.

00:31:30Marc:You know his kids?

00:31:31Marc:You know Hunt and Tony?

00:31:32Guest:I know all about them.

00:31:32Guest:I haven't met them, no.

00:31:33Marc:Oh, but you know some of those musicians around.

00:31:36Marc:Growing up in New York, that must have been exciting, right?

00:31:38Guest:It was, but again, I took it for granted.

00:31:39Guest:I had my own little world with the stuff I was obsessed with.

00:31:42Marc:Were you like a loner?

00:31:44Guest:I was like a weird little, you know, I wasn't.

00:31:46Guest:In fact, I was, you know, I always had lots of friends and stuff.

00:31:49Guest:And popular in school, I was a class clown.

00:31:51Guest:You know, I have no respect for class clowns.

00:31:52Guest:It's too easy.

00:31:53Guest:The audience is built in, you know?

00:31:54Guest:It's like you don't win, you don't earn that audience.

00:31:57Guest:I came to learn that later, but...

00:31:59Guest:But I was always popular, but I just wanted to be in my room.

00:32:02Marc:You were hard on yourself about being class clown?

00:32:04Guest:I thought about it later on.

00:32:05Guest:I said, that's nothing to brag about, being class clown.

00:32:08Guest:It's like people who say, you know I was the class clown.

00:32:10Guest:That sucks.

00:32:11Marc:Did you ever have any aspirations to perform?

00:32:14Guest:Yeah, I did actually, but I was also kind of shy when I was younger.

00:32:17Guest:I was always obsessed with drawing.

00:32:19Guest:If you talk to people who knew me back when I was a kid in school, I was always bent over the desk drawing.

00:32:24Guest:That wasn't always a good thing because I was drawing my teachers naked, doing horrible things all over the desk.

00:32:30Guest:I knew then I wanted to be a Mad Magazine contributor.

00:32:34Guest:That was my goal.

00:32:34Guest:I wanted to be one of the idiots.

00:32:36Marc:You read Mad before when it was small, when it was comic book form?

00:32:39Guest:I got them later on in the paperback, but I was born in 58 and Mad became the magazine in 55.

00:32:47Marc:Because that had a profound impact on me too when I first started reading it, but I think you're a little older than me, but I can't remember the first ones I read, but my grandmother's neighbor had a stack of them.

00:32:55Marc:Like Al Jaffe always was like the guy to me.

00:32:58Marc:He's terrific.

00:32:59Marc:I loved him.

00:32:59Marc:It's amazing what a profound influence it has on your life, isn't it?

00:33:04Guest:Of course.

00:33:05Guest:You know, it had an influence on me, but also I wanted to be part of it.

00:33:08Guest:It wasn't just like I loved it.

00:33:09Guest:I wanted to be in it.

00:33:10Guest:And that was my obsession to be a mad contributor.

00:33:12Guest:Sure.

00:33:12Guest:And I finally did at age 35.

00:33:14Guest:You know, that came true.

00:33:16Guest:Yeah.

00:33:16Guest:That was my goal when I was a little kid, to work for Mad, do work for Tops Bubblegum, like wacky packs and ugly stickers and stuff.

00:33:22Guest:That all came true.

00:33:23Guest:But also, like, I became, I wanted to be a Nash Lampoon, and that happened.

00:33:27Guest:So, you know, I guess I'm lucky because my childhood goals came to pass.

00:33:30Marc:And so you're done.

00:33:32Guest:Basically.

00:33:33Guest:But I was just obsessed with drawing all the time.

00:33:35Guest:Bent over my desk drawing at all times.

00:33:38Guest:But I knew I'm not fit for anything else but what I do.

00:33:42Guest:So I knew that from an early age.

00:33:44Guest:I've never had a job in my life.

00:33:46Marc:Well, what do you think?

00:33:47Marc:Because when I think about MADD, I guess it gave me... Because your subject matter is fairly specific and very unique.

00:33:53Marc:And I have to assume it's something a little more interesting than just doing something that no one else is doing.

00:33:58Marc:Because Mad Magazine and the Three Stooges and watching Channel 11, those black and white TV shows, you seem to have a mild obsession with Thor.

00:34:06Marc:Thor, I mean.

00:34:07Guest:Thor, yeah.

00:34:08Marc:And Joe Franklin.

00:34:09Marc:Yeah.

00:34:10Marc:And there's a freak show element to it.

00:34:12Marc:And I just remember the first time that I was a kid and I got...

00:34:15Marc:And I saw that lobby card for Freaks.

00:34:16Marc:Before I even saw the movie, I saw that when I was like, you know, eight or nine.

00:34:19Marc:And it was like this portal into something I couldn't even figure out or understand.

00:34:22Marc:This humanity that was like vulnerable and creepy and sympathetic and everything just was loaded up in there.

00:34:29Marc:Did you feel that something was like, did you feel like a...

00:34:33Marc:Like, it's not morbid.

00:34:34Marc:I don't even know what I'm trying to get at, really.

00:34:36Guest:No, it was like the people that nobody else gave a shit about.

00:34:38Guest:I think as far as Tor, I just saw the potential in him.

00:34:41Guest:Tor Johnson, who was the big zombie who roamed around in Plan 9 from Outer Space and could hardly speak, the big ex-wrestler.

00:34:48Guest:But I just saw the potential in him as a comic book character, as a guy in comics, because he had the white eyes like Dondi and Little Orphan Annie.

00:34:54Guest:So that was already there.

00:34:56Guest:And just to have him, like, you know, just to... Those films that he made were horrible, like Plan 9, but the footage of him is beautiful.

00:35:01Guest:Right.

00:35:01Guest:right vampire roaming around the graveyards and whatnot so i just wanted to transfer that to comic form which is oh so that's the way your brain was sort of wired yeah you know you saw how people will fit into comics yeah i just thought he had so much potential as a comic comic star you know i saw that on the cover of uh of the uh any similarity is that shemp is on the cover who's on the cover shemp is another guy because he's always everybody's least favorite stooge shemp howard it's

00:35:25Marc:So you're like, that's your guy.

00:35:26Guest:I don't even know if he's my favorite.

00:35:28Guest:I love Curly Howard.

00:35:29Guest:To me, he's a god.

00:35:30Guest:He's from another planet almost.

00:35:32Guest:Curly, so insanely funny.

00:35:34Guest:It's like acting like a dog and rolling around on the ground.

00:35:38Guest:But I love all the Howard brothers, but there's something about Shemp because he looks like a real guy, I think.

00:35:42Guest:I figured it out.

00:35:44Guest:He looks like the guy I would see at bar mitzvahs and seders and stuff.

00:35:47Guest:Crazy uncles.

00:35:48Guest:Exactly.

00:35:49Guest:He didn't look like a comedian, although he did in a way.

00:35:51Guest:Right.

00:35:51Guest:He looked like just one of those crazy Jewish guys that I would see like a couple times a year.

00:35:55Guest:Character.

00:35:55Guest:He reminded me of that.

00:35:56Guest:Yeah.

00:35:57Guest:He was accessible.

00:35:58Guest:Right.

00:35:58Guest:Yeah.

00:35:58Guest:Where Larry was like sort of the, he was the guy in between.

00:36:01Guest:Yeah.

00:36:02Guest:He was like the audience's surrogate.

00:36:03Guest:You know, you could like always identify with Larry.

00:36:05Guest:Right.

00:36:05Guest:He was just like there in the middle, even though he didn't know why he was there.

00:36:08Guest:And Moe, of course, was so angry at all.

00:36:10Guest:And that was so great.

00:36:10Guest:Yeah.

00:36:11Guest:And still is just watching him on YouTube, the clips of him just so angry about, you know.

00:36:14Guest:Yeah.

00:36:15Guest:Everything.

00:36:16Guest:Yeah.

00:36:16Guest:And he's just as stupid as the others, but he's just angry and in charge somehow.

00:36:19Guest:Somebody elected him to be in charge and he knew it.

00:36:23Guest:But there's something about Shemp too and the greasy hair and parted in the middle.

00:36:26Guest:Right.

00:36:26Guest:And he looked like a gentleman.

00:36:27Guest:He was so ugly and he was voted ugliest man in Hollywood too.

00:36:30Guest:But I think I see beauty in ugliness.

00:36:31Guest:I always thought Boris Karloff was beautiful as Frankenstein monster.

00:36:34Guest:Yeah.

00:36:34Guest:And Shemp Howard to me is a thing of beauty.

00:36:36Marc:Yeah, I think that's it.

00:36:39Marc:That was it.

00:36:40Marc:You see beauty and ugliness.

00:36:41Guest:Yeah, that's it.

00:36:42Marc:And I think that's what sort of confronts people when you look at your work, because it's so detailed.

00:36:46Marc:And there's a slight caricature to it, but you're sort of like acne, bumps, pimples.

00:36:53Marc:That's right.

00:36:54Marc:Everyone seems to be a little wet.

00:36:56Guest:Right.

00:36:57Guest:There's a lot of moisture going on.

00:36:59Guest:People who smile too much.

00:37:00Guest:I pick up on all that stuff, but it's like the people like nobody else would, you know, my dad said, Drew always noticed the people nobody else would notice, like elevator men and the guys who sell newspapers.

00:37:10Guest:And it's true.

00:37:11Guest:I would like, you know, spend extra attention absorbing those guys.

00:37:14Marc:Do you sit there and do you have that moment where you're like, what is their life like?

00:37:18Marc:Because it seems like in any similarity, and we'll go through the other books, you created a life for Joe Franklin in a way.

00:37:27Marc:Well, yeah.

00:37:29Marc:Sitting in an undershirt or something.

00:37:30Marc:I can't remember now.

00:37:31Guest:The piece I did with Josh, which was his life story, we did some horrible things in that piece.

00:37:36Guest:He's actually coming out of his mother's vagina at the first panel.

00:37:39Guest:Looking like he does now.

00:37:40Guest:Right, basically the same head, and horrible things are happening.

00:37:44Guest:But Joe chose to sue me, finally,

00:37:47Guest:He did?

00:37:48Guest:He sued me for $40 million.

00:37:49Guest:And it was over a basically innocuous comic strip about him shrinking.

00:37:53Guest:And that was the thing.

00:37:54Guest:He's very touchy about his height.

00:37:57Guest:It was called The Incredible Shrinking Joe Franklin.

00:37:59Guest:The piece is in the first book as well.

00:38:01Guest:But Joe sued over that.

00:38:02Marc:And that's what was worth $40 million to him?

00:38:03Guest:Well, that was a reasonable sum, which I've always said.

00:38:06Guest:I had about $10 in the bank at the time.

00:38:08Guest:But he sued for $40.

00:38:09Guest:And it was finally dismissed.

00:38:10Guest:He also sued Nash Lampoon because it ran in heavy metal.

00:38:12Guest:You really pissed Joe Franklin off.

00:38:14Guest:That got to him, yeah.

00:38:15Guest:The fact that I went after his height.

00:38:17Marc:So it's no good with you two.

00:38:18Guest:No, that was like, you know, he sued Uncle Floyd for 35 million.

00:38:21Guest:He sued me for 40 million.

00:38:22Guest:Why'd he sue Uncle Floyd?

00:38:23Guest:He sued him.

00:38:23Guest:Uncle Floyd did the Joe Frankfurter show.

00:38:26Guest:Right.

00:38:27Guest:He put on a big head and did Joe Frankfurter.

00:38:29Marc:You know who I had in here?

00:38:31Marc:Who's that?

00:38:32Marc:Marty Allen.

00:38:33Marc:Ah.

00:38:33Marc:Marty Allen, he's 95, he wanted to do the show.

00:38:35Guest:Did he take off his wig when he sat down here?

00:38:37Marc:He didn't have a wig anymore.

00:38:38Marc:Oh, really?

00:38:38Marc:It's just sort of a weird thing going on.

00:38:40Guest:When he performs in Vegas, he lives in Vegas, I think he has like a Kathie Lee Gifford co-host.

00:38:45Marc:It's his wife.

00:38:46Guest:Oh, okay, okay.

00:38:47Marc:It's his wife.

00:38:47Guest:That's right.

00:38:48Guest:It's crazy.

00:38:49Guest:Remember when Steve Rossi, the way they broke up with, Alan and Rossi broke up, he got Slappy White.

00:38:55Guest:I didn't know that.

00:38:56Guest:Yeah, so it was like Rossi and White.

00:38:58Guest:Is that what he did?

00:38:59Guest:Yeah, he got Slappy White brief.

00:39:00Guest:So it was like a black and white team.

00:39:02Marc:But like Marty Allen, come on, he's walking up the hill.

00:39:05Marc:He's got a walker.

00:39:06Marc:There's two people that are with him and we're like, you need any help?

00:39:08Marc:He's like, no, no.

00:39:10Guest:Hello there.

00:39:11Guest:Hello there.

00:39:12Guest:What was he promoting even?

00:39:13Marc:I don't know why it happened.

00:39:15Marc:I think somebody who works for him said it'd be nice.

00:39:19Marc:They knew I did Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.

00:39:21Marc:So they're like, maybe Marty Allen.

00:39:22Marc:I never really thought about it.

00:39:23Marc:And I had to kind of go through the fact that it was a fairly substantial career he had.

00:39:27Guest:Well, yeah, of course.

00:39:28Guest:He was as big as Martin and Lewis in the 60s.

00:39:31Marc:But they'd kind of replaced them in a way.

00:39:33Guest:Exactly, yeah.

00:39:34Marc:Once they kind of, I guess, broke up, they were the guys.

00:39:38Marc:That's right.

00:39:39Marc:Between me and you, I'd never ever in my life, it was sort of endearing in some sad way, that he has to use the bathroom.

00:39:46Marc:He's 95, and then he leaves, they leave, and he had pissed all over the fucking floor.

00:39:50Guest:Wow.

00:39:50Guest:Did you clean up after him?

00:39:51Guest:I cleaned.

00:39:52Guest:It was the first time.

00:39:52Guest:I would go look at that piss if it was still there.

00:39:54Guest:Yeah.

00:39:55Marc:Well, I wish I had it for you.

00:39:56Guest:I would take a photo of it.

00:39:57Guest:I would take Marty Allen's pee.

00:39:58Marc:Marty Allen's piss.

00:39:59Marc:Yeah.

00:39:59Marc:I cleaned up after Marty.

00:40:00Marc:The first time I cleaned up after a guest.

00:40:02Marc:And I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't just piss on it on purpose.

00:40:07Guest:You know, I've had people piss on my toilet, too, over the years.

00:40:09Guest:On the floor, everywhere.

00:40:11Guest:In my apartment.

00:40:11Guest:Everywhere.

00:40:11Guest:I had Dan Aykroyd come up to my apartment once with my dad.

00:40:14Guest:They were working on a movie.

00:40:15Guest:It became a horrible movie, Dr. Detroit.

00:40:17Guest:But he came up and used my bathroom and pissed a little on the floor in the seat, and I really gave it some thought.

00:40:21Guest:Should I clean this up or just preserve it and turn it into a shrine?

00:40:26Guest:Marty Allen's would be worth preserving.

00:40:28Guest:I think so.

00:40:29Guest:But there's not that many of those guys left.

00:40:31Guest:I'm in Los Angeles now.

00:40:33Guest:Just two years ago, three years ago when I was signing, Carl Ballantyne joined me in the signing at Skylake Books, and now he's gone.

00:40:40Marc:But like you were saying before, you know, there's this like, you know, the idea, just the fact, the detail of Marty Allen's wig, that there is something, I think what you recognize, and I think as certainly as these people get older, is that there's something horrendously grotesque about show business.

00:40:56Yeah.

00:40:56Guest:You've noticed that too?

00:40:59Guest:Yeah.

00:41:00Marc:It's sort of specific because as things get glossier and you don't get to see, you don't have that experience, like the way you capture Bob Hope or Milton Berle as they're aging or in different situations where you're taking this icon and making them probably just as dirty as they really are on some level, that everything's gotten so squeaky clean and so protected that that type of show business doesn't exist anymore.

00:41:23Marc:Yeah, that's a good point.

00:41:25Marc:It's part of the charm of it.

00:41:26Guest:That's a good point.

00:41:26Marc:I just saw Larry Storch was, you know, he did his last show at the Comedy Store because he started there when it was Ciro's.

00:41:33Marc:I didn't see the show, but I saw him after.

00:41:35Marc:And there's something like even that place.

00:41:37Marc:You go to the Comedy Store?

00:41:38Marc:No.

00:41:39Marc:You've never been?

00:41:40Guest:Not for a while.

00:41:41Marc:I mean, it used to be Ciro's.

00:41:43Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:41:43Marc:That used to be the fucking place.

00:41:44Guest:Yeah, I should get over there.

00:41:45Marc:Well, you should just feel it.

00:41:46Guest:Yeah.

00:41:47Marc:I think you'd enjoy the feeling because she hasn't changed it much.

00:41:49Marc:Good point, yeah.

00:41:50Guest:I got to squeeze a lot into this trip, and that's something I'll do.

00:41:53Marc:Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you get off on that stuff.

00:41:57Marc:I mean, outside of like, you know, drawing these guys, do you get off on old Hollywood?

00:42:01Guest:Oh, I do.

00:42:02Guest:You know, when my dad was writing screenplays in the late 60s, he used to bring my brothers and I out, but he would bring us out individually.

00:42:07Guest:So he'd always scoop me up and bring me out.

00:42:09Guest:And I wanted to get right over to Hollywood Boulevard and just see whatever is preserved from the past.

00:42:13Guest:Right.

00:42:13Guest:Wherever Ed Wood worked, things like that.

00:42:15Guest:You're fascinated with Ed Wood?

00:42:17Guest:Oh, of course.

00:42:17Guest:We're actually doing an interview with Larry Kaczewski and Scott Alexander who wrote the Ed Wood film tomorrow.

00:42:25Guest:I'm going to join them for an interview.

00:42:26Guest:But they're pals.

00:42:27Marc:What was it about him?

00:42:28Guest:Well, the fact that he had just basically, he had virtually no talent, but he was just obsessed with proving himself, just putting his work out there, even though he had nothing to offer, basically.

00:42:39Guest:And I admire that so much.

00:42:40Guest:People have nothing to offer, but still they want to offer it.

00:42:43Guest:I think Zero Mostel says, all you can offer is failure.

00:42:48Guest:People demand success.

00:42:49Guest:All I have to offer is failure in producers.

00:42:51Guest:I love that line.

00:42:52Marc:How Jewish did you grow up?

00:42:54Guest:Not at all.

00:42:54Guest:I didn't go to Hebrew school.

00:42:56Guest:Nothing.

00:42:57Guest:No.

00:42:57Guest:We went to bar mitzvahs and seders and stuff.

00:42:59Guest:And I used to laugh at all my friends and relatives who had to go through that stuff.

00:43:02Guest:But my parents were fallen away Jews, I think.

00:43:05Marc:What screenplays did your old man write?

00:43:07Guest:Well, over the years, he's written... The Heartbreak Kid was based on his short story.

00:43:12Guest:Neil Simon wrote that, turned that into the movie.

00:43:15Guest:It's a great movie.

00:43:16Guest:Yeah, the original, not the new one.

00:43:18Guest:No, yeah, the original.

00:43:18Guest:Which I haven't seen yet.

00:43:19Guest:The original.

00:43:19Guest:Then he wrote movies like Stir Crazy and Splash.

00:43:22Marc:Did he write Stir Crazy?

00:43:23Guest:Yeah.

00:43:24Marc:That was a good movie.

00:43:25Guest:That's fun.

00:43:26Guest:Richard Pryor's great.

00:43:26Guest:Yeah.

00:43:27Guest:Yeah, there's some good stuff on that.

00:43:29Guest:He wrote Splash, Dr. Detroit, The Lonely Guy.

00:43:32Marc:He wrote The Lonely Guy?

00:43:33Guest:Yeah, with Steve Martin films.

00:43:34Guest:So he had a good run in the 80s.

00:43:36Guest:Grodin was great.

00:43:37Guest:He was.

00:43:38Guest:Yeah.

00:43:38Guest:He was.

00:43:39Guest:He was like very subdued.

00:43:40Guest:Grodin was actually obsessed with that book, my dad's book.

00:43:42Guest:Which one?

00:43:43Guest:Lonely Guy's Book of Life, which they based the movie on.

00:43:46Guest:He used to read passages from it, so it was great that they got him.

00:43:49Marc:Was he a family friend?

00:43:50Guest:Yeah, he actually goes back with my father because he was in Steambath, my father's play, when it was off-Broadway.

00:43:56Guest:And then he starred in The Heartbreak Kid, so they've had this...

00:44:01Guest:Over the years, over 50 years now, because he was just in this short film that was made of one of my dad's short stories with Michael Cera.

00:44:09Guest:Yeah.

00:44:10Guest:And used Charles Grodin as his dad in that.

00:44:13Marc:You get along with your dad?

00:44:14Guest:Yeah.

00:44:14Guest:We're great friends.

00:44:15Marc:That's good.

00:44:16Marc:Yeah.

00:44:16Marc:Always?

00:44:17Guest:Yeah.

00:44:17Guest:We've never had any, and there's never been any issues.

00:44:20Guest:We're pals.

00:44:20Guest:Yeah.

00:44:21Guest:He's 84, and he's had some health issues, but we get along great.

00:44:27Yeah.

00:44:27Marc:Now, when you started drawing, like, when did you first start doing panels?

00:44:30Marc:I mean, as opposed to just doodling and really focus on, you know, creating comics.

00:44:35Guest:The first panel comic strip we ever did was actually the Andy Griffith piece, which was about, you know, Josh wrote it.

00:44:41Guest:Excellent, excellent script.

00:44:42Guest:And I drew it.

00:44:43Guest:It was the late 70s.

00:44:44Guest:I was still going to school, School of Visual Arts.

00:44:46Guest:My teachers were Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman.

00:44:48Marc:So explain to me and to the people that listen, because I know there's people that in the world of comics, there's the world that you're from, and then there's also the world of mainstream comics.

00:44:59Marc:Other than Stan Lee, it seems like a lot of the guys that you gravitated towards were not underground, but definitely off to the side of Marvel, right?

00:45:06Marc:Yeah.

00:45:06Guest:Well, I grew up, like I said, my dad worked next to Stan Lee, so he'd deposit all these comics into my bedroom every Friday.

00:45:12Guest:So there were stacks of that stuff, brand new.

00:45:15Guest:And I would hang out at Marvel Comics with a little kid, get to meet Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, those guys.

00:45:20Guest:And like I said, I wanted to be a mad contributor.

00:45:23Guest:But as I got older, I did become obsessed with Robert Crumb.

00:45:26Guest:I mean, that's like what he was doing just blew my mind.

00:45:28Guest:I had never seen anything like that.

00:45:29Guest:It changed my life.

00:45:30Guest:As far as an artist and my whole perspective.

00:45:32Guest:Was that in the 60s or was it around when it was happening?

00:45:34Guest:I was like way too young to even be looking at that stuff.

00:45:36Guest:Right.

00:45:36Guest:I was eight years old.

00:45:37Guest:You're supposed to be an adult.

00:45:38Marc:So like that one up there, like that first Zap comic maybe?

00:45:41Guest:Yeah, sure.

00:45:41Guest:Yeah.

00:45:41Guest:That might have been the first one I was looking at.

00:45:43Guest:Yeah.

00:45:43Guest:I actually drew that recently for another book where I discover Robert Crumb's work and it blew my mind.

00:45:48Guest:It was like, I knew I shouldn't have been looking at it.

00:45:49Guest:It was so forbidden.

00:45:50Guest:And I was like seeing things.

00:45:51Guest:I was like, what?

00:45:52Guest:You know, I was like looking at-

00:45:53Marc:That's where I learned where the penis went when you did that thing.

00:45:57Guest:Yeah, he educated us all.

00:45:58Guest:He did.

00:45:59Guest:He did.

00:45:59Guest:That's how it goes in there.

00:46:00Guest:You're a little younger than me, but I was eight years old in 1969, 68, and looking at this stuff.

00:46:06Guest:I slipped the comic book into the pile of stuff my parents were buying.

00:46:11Guest:They didn't pay any attention.

00:46:12Guest:I amassed a little collection, but he changed my whole perspective.

00:46:16Guest:Finally, all of a sudden, I didn't want to be a mad contributor.

00:46:19Guest:I wanted to do underground comics.

00:46:20Marc:Well, what was it exactly that resonated?

00:46:24Guest:I used to look at his work and think, there must be a bunch of guys named Robert Crumb because he had all these different styles, these beautiful styles.

00:46:31Guest:And I would learn later that he just would draw.

00:46:34Guest:He'd hardly do pencils.

00:46:36Guest:He would just draw with ink onto the paper.

00:46:38Guest:It was just all in his mind.

00:46:39Guest:And it came out like that.

00:46:40Guest:I don't believe in God, but I believe somehow he was touched by God to draw like Frank Sinatra sings.

00:46:46Marc:How's your process different?

00:46:48Guest:Well, I really work hard on penciling.

00:46:50Guest:I really do a tight pencil before I start painting.

00:46:53Guest:I really block it out.

00:46:55Guest:It's almost like a map, which I follow when I'm painting.

00:46:58Marc:And also, your style is very pointillistic.

00:47:01Guest:Well, it used to be.

00:47:02Guest:I used to do the little dots.

00:47:03Guest:No more?

00:47:03Guest:I guess not.

00:47:04Guest:Not for a few years.

00:47:05Guest:I switched over to watercolor to painting.

00:47:07Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:47:09Guest:I actually got bored with it, the stippling style.

00:47:12Guest:I don't even like the word stipple.

00:47:13Guest:But I'm not a fan of it.

00:47:14Guest:I was never a fan of it.

00:47:16Guest:But I love working with the brush.

00:47:17Guest:So my recent books, including my new book, Heroes of the Comics, is all watercolor.

00:47:22Guest:Everything's done with the brush.

00:47:23Marc:But you still have that amazing sensibility.

00:47:25Marc:It's very hard, I think, to do something that reads as realistically, but on some level, because of the way they're framed and the way their body is structured, there is a caricature element to it, right?

00:47:37Guest:Yeah, I've been labeled a caricaturist.

00:47:38Guest:I don't think I am also a portrait artist.

00:47:41Guest:I'm just saying element.

00:47:41Guest:There's a slight distortion.

00:47:43Guest:That's it.

00:47:44Guest:Yeah, just that's it.

00:47:46Marc:But there's a slight, but it's not like, you know, I don't- It's not an extreme distortion, which would imply caricature.

00:47:51Marc:Exactly.

00:47:51Marc:It's a slight distortion.

00:47:53Guest:I don't see a chin and have to exaggerate.

00:47:54Guest:I don't look at Jay Leno and say, I got to extend that chin.

00:47:57Guest:You know what?

00:47:57Guest:I'll make that chin even bigger.

00:47:59Guest:You know, that's what a caricature is.

00:48:01Marc:Exactly.

00:48:03Marc:So when you say a slight distortion-

00:48:05Guest:yeah just like and in fact it's like it happens naturally perhaps you won't even pick it up and perhaps in some cases there's no distortion right like with the Jack Benny Jack Benny Jack Kirby portrait on the cover I don't think there's any exaggeration it's what I wanted to capture was that melancholy like broken down spirit you know this guy who created all this work over 50 years what was his who was he well he like did all the early Marvel superhero stuff like he invented along with Stan Lee's writing the Fantastic Four and and and and the

00:48:35Guest:The Hulk and Captain America.

00:48:38Marc:He invented what Stanley invented does.

00:48:39Guest:He basically created all that stuff, drew all that early work.

00:48:44Guest:Yeah.

00:48:44Guest:And he was not very well compensated, especially later in his life.

00:48:47Guest:And they kept all his artwork.

00:48:49Guest:They finally returned some of it.

00:48:50Guest:He wasn't appreciated.

00:48:52Guest:He wasn't treated very nicely, I don't think.

00:48:54Guest:Did he ever get it?

00:48:56Guest:They returned some of his artwork years later.

00:48:58Guest:And only recently they worked out a deal, Marvel, who's owned by Disney.

00:49:01Guest:They worked out a deal to give his family some of the money that is due.

00:49:06Guest:Really?

00:49:06Guest:Yeah.

00:49:07Guest:Or some of the money they should.

00:49:08Marc:So this is like a sort of a beaten man kind of.

00:49:10Guest:It's kind of there.

00:49:11Guest:But still like reflecting that amazing universe he created behind him in that swirling Jack Kirby-esque artwork.

00:49:18Marc:Yeah.

00:49:19Marc:And do you find that a lot of, well, Stan Lee's doing fine.

00:49:21Guest:Yeah, well, he's 91.

00:49:25Guest:He still goes to conventions, and he's having fun.

00:49:27Marc:I'm sad to say, and maybe I'm alone in this, in that my sense of comics, I didn't grow up loving them, and there was a period maybe when I was in my 30s that I started reading a few.

00:49:41Marc:But I came into comics more around the stuff like Any Resemblance and the Art Crumb stuff.

00:49:46Marc:But in terms of mainstream comics, I never was that guy.

00:49:49Marc:Mad Magazine, definitely.

00:49:51Marc:But I don't know who a lot of these people are.

00:49:54Guest:Right.

00:49:54Guest:You mentioned Al Jaffe.

00:49:55Guest:He's in the book.

00:49:55Guest:So we got some of the mad guys in here.

00:49:57Guest:These are guys who started in comics, like in the 30s and 40s.

00:50:00Guest:So Al Jaffe and Mort Drucker, Harvey Kurtzman are in here.

00:50:03Guest:Yeah.

00:50:04Guest:And William Gaines.

00:50:06Guest:I know all about when I was younger and then kind of moved away from that world.

00:50:09Guest:And I kind of lost interest in mainstream comics as the years.

00:50:14Guest:When the Comics Code came into being.

00:50:17Guest:What is that now?

00:50:17Guest:That little code you see in that little box.

00:50:23Guest:Comic books became bland after that happened.

00:50:26Guest:They got rid of all the horror comics and crime comics and sex.

00:50:30Guest:There was no more sex in comics.

00:50:31Guest:It all became bland and whitewashed and sanitized.

00:50:35Guest:What year was that?

00:50:36Guest:So after that, I sort of lose interest in mainstream comics.

00:50:40Guest:And I jump a decade when Robert Crumb showed up.

00:50:42Guest:And that's when I get excited.

00:50:44Marc:S. Clay Wilson?

00:50:44Guest:Yeah, those guys.

00:50:45Guest:I love that guy.

00:50:46Guest:My next book project might be portraits of all those guys.

00:50:50Guest:The Zap guys, including S. Clay Wilson.

00:50:53Guest:Those guys are Robert Williams is still around.

00:50:54Guest:He's in Los Angeles.

00:50:55Guest:He's here.

00:50:56Guest:Yeah, he's terrific.

00:50:57Marc:Yeah, he's good.

00:50:58Marc:But he's after you, really, right?

00:51:00Guest:Well, you know, it's like he...

00:51:02Guest:like a zap guy he's like one of the original zap guys oh i guess so yeah yeah he dates he's like did that chrome like that right right yeah from the detailing yeah yeah but he was one of those like essential those seven guys right who did zapping spain yeah and him victor muscoso rick griffin who died years ago yeah he did a lot of poster art he did the psychedelic stuff that right yeah right what now like you were in lampoon and stuff i mean what are you a gahan wilson fan

00:51:27Guest:Well, yeah, sure.

00:51:28Guest:I love those guys.

00:51:29Guest:You know, I like kind of joined Lampoon when it was no longer funny in the mid 80s.

00:51:33Guest:Right.

00:51:33Guest:That's when I like, you know, started doing work for them and stuff.

00:51:35Marc:And what about the other guy?

00:51:36Marc:What's his name?

00:51:36Marc:Rodriguez?

00:51:37Guest:Yeah.

00:51:37Guest:Charles Rodriguez.

00:51:38Guest:He's something, right?

00:51:39Guest:He's terrific.

00:51:39Guest:Yeah.

00:51:39Guest:Great.

00:51:40Guest:He's a hero.

00:51:40Guest:Gross.

00:51:41Guest:Yeah.

00:51:42Guest:Sam Gross.

00:51:43Guest:Yeah.

00:51:43Guest:Sam Gross is still kicking.

00:51:44Guest:Yeah.

00:51:45Guest:Yeah.

00:51:45Guest:All those guys.

00:51:46Guest:Bobby London, all the Lampoon guys were like, you know, I idolized those guys.

00:51:49Guest:Like I said, I wanted to be a Lampoon contributor after absorbing all that stuff.

00:51:53Marc:What was that guy?

00:51:54Marc:What was his name?

00:51:54Marc:Bodie?

00:51:55Guest:Vaughn Baudet.

00:51:56Guest:Yeah.

00:51:57Guest:Well, Baudet, yeah.

00:51:58Guest:He died early too, but he's one of these guys who go to comic book conventions back in the 70s, and he would be there, but he looked like a rock star.

00:52:05Guest:He had long hair, like, you know, curled.

00:52:08Guest:It was curled.

00:52:08Marc:Kind of like Mark Boland almost.

00:52:10Guest:Yeah, he did look like him.

00:52:11Guest:I mean, he had groupies around too.

00:52:12Guest:Yeah.

00:52:12Guest:So, it was like the guys I drew in my book, Heroes of the Comics, are like these anonymous looking guys.

00:52:16Guest:They look like stockbrokers.

00:52:18Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:52:18Guest:Guys you would never notice.

00:52:19Guest:Right.

00:52:19Guest:And all of a sudden, they got these guys in the 70s that looked like rock stars.

00:52:22Guest:Yeah.

00:52:22Guest:Showing up at conventions with groupies around them.

00:52:24Guest:long hair what was a comic book convention like in the 70s you know they were like kind of like what is it like a big room with all these like versions who are like into buying comic books and you know and me i was like obsessed with ec comics i wanted to buy old ec comics and underground comics which one was those like tales from the crypt you know early mad when mad was a comic book it was an ec comic that was my obsession do you have a collection now

00:52:47Guest:No, I got rid of them years ago.

00:52:49Guest:Really?

00:52:50Guest:I used to have thousands.

00:52:51Guest:You let them go.

00:52:51Guest:Yeah, I sold them all.

00:52:52Guest:I sold a huge pile.

00:52:53Guest:Did you make money?

00:52:54Guest:When Kathy and I married, I was just like, I don't want to take this stuff with me everywhere we move.

00:52:59Guest:I made 500 bucks.

00:53:00Guest:I just said, let me just get rid of it all.

00:53:01Guest:Oh, do you regret that?

00:53:03Guest:No, because they were yellowing anyway.

00:53:04Guest:They smelled bad.

00:53:05Guest:It's like, what am I going to do with this stuff?

00:53:07Guest:I'd already absorbed them.

00:53:09Guest:I kind of went through them and I didn't need them anymore.

00:53:12Guest:I'm not an obsessive collector.

00:53:13Marc:Thank God, right, Kathy?

00:53:15Marc:Thank God, not an obsessive collector.

00:53:17Guest:No, I have stuff and people send me stuff, they give me stuff, which is wonderful, but I don't seek out anything anymore.

00:53:24Guest:But I have an amazing collection somehow.

00:53:26Marc:Now, as a guy, so you say you didn't do panels or stories until you and your brother started doing it after college.

00:53:33Marc:I mean, you were just drawing free.

00:53:35Marc:You were just doodling?

00:53:36Guest:Well, I was going to a school of visual arts.

00:53:38Marc:But when did you go?

00:53:39Marc:I mean, when you were in high school.

00:53:40Guest:I was always obsessively drawing.

00:53:42Guest:Just like Basil Wilberton, I was obsessed with him.

00:53:44Guest:He was a guy who drew the insane monster faces.

00:53:47Guest:It looked like he was drawing noodles.

00:53:49Guest:It looked like his line was made from a noodle.

00:53:52Guest:Were these in the EC comics?

00:53:53Guest:Yeah.

00:53:54Guest:Sometimes easy, sometimes mad.

00:53:56Guest:He did his own comic books.

00:53:57Guest:You'd know his work instantly.

00:53:58Guest:He did a couple of covers of mad comic books.

00:54:02Guest:You'd never forget his work once you see his work.

00:54:04Marc:Like skeleton showing?

00:54:06Guest:Well, not really like grotesque kind of stuff.

00:54:09Guest:Well, yes, grotesque, but not monsterish.

00:54:11Guest:Right, right.

00:54:11Guest:Not like ghoulish kind of things.

00:54:13Guest:Like cartoony, but Robert Crumb was obsessed with him early on, and Art Spiegelman and those guys, and books of his work.

00:54:20Guest:Is he in this book?

00:54:22Guest:Your book?

00:54:23Guest:Yes, he is.

00:54:23Guest:Yes, he's in there.

00:54:25Guest:But guys like him and Harvey Kurtzman, Don Martin, all the mad guys are my idols.

00:54:29Guest:Mort Drucker, especially, and Al Jaffe, and Bob, even the lesser mad guys.

00:54:35Guest:I just would absorb stare at their work and just...

00:54:38Guest:A lot of the times I didn't even read the stuff.

00:54:39Guest:I just wanted to look at the artwork.

00:54:41Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:54:41Guest:So obsessed.

00:54:42Guest:But Don Martin's sense of humor and Morten Drucker's caricature work and all of it.

00:54:46Guest:I was just absorbed by all of it and I just wanted to be part of it somehow.

00:54:49Guest:And so here I am today.

00:54:53Marc:But when you went to college-

00:54:56Guest:Well, I was going to art school.

00:54:57Guest:I wanted to be a cartoonist, but I didn't know which particular direction to go in.

00:55:02Marc:What did you learn in art school, though?

00:55:04Guest:Not much.

00:55:04Guest:I was pretty hard to teach.

00:55:05Guest:I kind of went in knowing what I wanted to do, which was draw what I was particularly obsessed with.

00:55:11Guest:I picked up on the stipple work, just casually.

00:55:15Guest:I wasn't a fan of it.

00:55:18Guest:It slowed me down because I used to draw really fast.

00:55:20Guest:Yeah.

00:55:21Guest:And that was like a handicap because- The simple work was what?

00:55:24Marc:The point?

00:55:24Guest:Yeah, the pointillism really slowed me down.

00:55:26Guest:I had to concentrate.

00:55:27Guest:But you chose to do that for years.

00:55:29Guest:Yeah, I did.

00:55:29Guest:It was like an experiment.

00:55:30Guest:And then it became associated with you?

00:55:34Guest:Yeah, but it was good because I think it set me apart.

00:55:38Guest:It was like, oh, he's the guy who does that kind of work, and he's good at it, and there's nobody else really around who does that, especially cartoon humorous work.

00:55:48Guest:They're stipple artists, but most of their work is kind of boring.

00:55:51Guest:It's like drawings of curtains and clouds.

00:55:53Guest:Tapestry.

00:55:55Guest:So that's an actual- And I was drawing Tor Johnson's face and Shemp Howard and this meticulous stipple work.

00:56:01Guest:But finally in Too Meticulous, it just slowed me down.

00:56:03Guest:Also the tapping, constant tapping.

00:56:06Guest:We had a little apartment on 6th Street in Manhattan when Kathy and I first got together.

00:56:10Guest:And I would have deadlines and I'd be working at 2 in the morning tapping away.

00:56:13Guest:And the bed was like 3 feet away.

00:56:15Guest:And she'd have to get up to go to work.

00:56:16Guest:So finally-

00:56:18Guest:She had to say something.

00:56:19Marc:It's worse than cocaine.

00:56:20Guest:Yeah, it was driving her nuts.

00:56:21Guest:It was going to destroy the relationship.

00:56:24Guest:And it wasn't that important to me.

00:56:27Guest:So I phased it out over a year.

00:56:29Marc:But it was sort of an odd usage of a technique that you made your own.

00:56:34Guest:I think so, yeah.

00:56:36Guest:But mainly, it did slow me down because I was drawing way too fast.

00:56:39Guest:And I was not concentrating enough as much as I should be.

00:56:42Guest:I wasn't giving it enough thought.

00:56:43Guest:Just drawing way too fast.

00:56:45Marc:Who were your teachers over there?

00:56:46Guest:Well, Harvey Kurtzman was one guy.

00:56:48Marc:How old was he then?

00:56:49Guest:He was actually my age, and he was like 56.

00:56:52Marc:But he was one of the original mad guys?

00:56:53Guest:Yeah, he actually invented mad.

00:56:55Guest:He conceived mad, was their first editor, wrote everything in mad, the first 24 issues, practically everything.

00:57:03Marc:And what did you learn from him?

00:57:04Marc:He was a hero of yours, really.

00:57:05Guest:He was a hero, but I loved Harvey Kurtzman.

00:57:08Guest:I loved thinking about him and talking about him, but he was not a great teacher.

00:57:11Guest:I was not a great student, but he wasn't a great teacher.

00:57:14Guest:He was basically there just to kind of hang out with the students and show them stuff.

00:57:19Guest:It was mainly being around him, being in his presence.

00:57:22Guest:He was kind of a guru.

00:57:23Guest:So any kind of advice he offered, which was seldom.

00:57:28Guest:But anything was just right on the money.

00:57:30Guest:And he also recognized who in the class had potential or had talent worth paying attention to and who might go play.

00:57:38Guest:So he kind of singled me out, Mark Newgarden as well, my friend Kaz, cartoonist.

00:57:42Guest:I think I have some of his stuff.

00:57:44Guest:Yeah, he's terrific.

00:57:45Guest:I'll be seeing him later.

00:57:46Marc:Very different than you.

00:57:47Guest:Yeah.

00:57:47Guest:And actually, Kaz is an old friend and Kathy's friends with him too.

00:57:51Guest:We go way back.

00:57:51Guest:We didn't like each other at first because he was a Jersey City, Lithuanian punk.

00:57:56Guest:Yeah.

00:57:56Guest:And I was a privileged Upper West Side Jew.

00:57:58Guest:Yeah.

00:57:59Guest:And we just seemed to have nothing in common.

00:58:01Guest:And we kind of circled each other like we didn't like each other.

00:58:03Marc:But what do you call his style?

00:58:04Marc:It's sort of a throwback.

00:58:05Marc:You're right.

00:58:05Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:58:06Guest:His style is kind of like the next step from LZ Seeger, the guy who created Popeye.

00:58:11Guest:Right.

00:58:11Guest:He's like the updated Popeye, especially in the 80s and like the-

00:58:15Guest:like the punk era and the new wave comics and stuff.

00:58:19Guest:He kind of like took that style and like updated it to, you know.

00:58:22Marc:Yeah.

00:58:23Guest:And his stuff is still terrific and funny.

00:58:24Guest:And I think I'm the first guy who ever said to him like, Kaz, your stuff is really funny.

00:58:28Guest:And he never thought about that because he was like more into the artsy kind of.

00:58:31Guest:Right, right.

00:58:32Guest:And I was like briefly editing Nash Lampoon's comic section.

00:58:35Guest:I brought him in.

00:58:35Guest:I said, you know, and he said, why did you ask me to do?

00:58:37Guest:I said, I think your stuff is really funny.

00:58:39Guest:And he had never considered that.

00:58:40Marc:It was not his point.

00:58:41Guest:He acknowledges that.

00:58:42Guest:Yeah.

00:58:43Marc:He saw himself more as an artist.

00:58:44Guest:yeah yeah he was like but he comics artists he also loved Robert Crumb right he wanted to be a cartoonist and he wanted to do comics just like me so he had this parallel kind of existence and now Will Eisner is like this this grand you know this mythic presence and explain to me his importance well he was a

00:58:59Guest:He was a legendary guy in the world of comic books, although his work- For what reason?

00:59:04Guest:His work in comics was very brief, just a couple of years.

00:59:08Guest:But actually, when he was very young, like 20, 21, he started this artist's-

00:59:15Guest:shop what they call a shop with another guy 10 years older than them where they bring in when comics were exploding when Superman just happened so Will Eisner had the foresight to think about like opening this shop or hire all these young artists and turn out all this work and completed comic books stories and

00:59:31Guest:He'd hire writers, artists, inkers, and all these like 40 guys crammed in a room creating these comics.

00:59:38Guest:And he was like in charge and would block out stuff for them and everything was like in charge.

00:59:41Guest:But then he gave all that up to concentrate on his character, the spirit, which he started.

00:59:46Guest:And that was done for a newspaper supplement.

00:59:49Guest:It was like the first.

00:59:50Guest:It was like he broke away from comic books early on.

00:59:53Guest:But, you know, he was like another guy who was influenced by movies, especially like something like Citizen Kane.

00:59:57Guest:Right.

00:59:58Guest:Where his panel structure was just like so influenced by Orson Welles and what he was seeing in the film noir.

01:00:05Guest:And his panel breakdowns were beautiful.

01:00:08Marc:Like that long focus business.

01:00:09Guest:Yeah.

01:00:10Guest:And like, yeah, the angles and things you would never see in anybody else's work.

01:00:13Guest:And he was like there at the beginning with that.

01:00:15Marc:So that was groundbreaking.

01:00:16Guest:So he was a teacher, and he was from the old school.

01:00:19Guest:So his class was really structured, unlike Harvey Kurtzman, which was character, so casual.

01:00:24Guest:Will's class was really structured where one particular class would be all about word balloons.

01:00:30Guest:And in Will Eisner's mind, it's like how to draw comics the Will Eisner way was basically his thinking.

01:00:35Marc:But that's not a bad way to learn from it.

01:00:37Guest:Well, he had all these obsessive students around who were like, oh my God, Will Eisner.

01:00:41Guest:And I was there, and I just wanted to draw my stuff.

01:00:44Guest:And Will and I got along.

01:00:47Guest:He enjoyed my sense of humor.

01:00:49Guest:He didn't quite get what I was drawing.

01:00:51Guest:I was working on a comic about Fred Mertz in his class.

01:00:55Guest:And I would sit in the class and just stipple.

01:00:58Guest:And he'd look, and he'd say, Drew, what are you doing?

01:01:01Guest:He called me Friedman.

01:01:02Guest:Friedman, what are you doing?

01:01:02Guest:You're wasting time.

01:01:03Guest:Comics are not about William Frawley.

01:01:07Guest:They're about heroes and villains and heroines and sidekicks.

01:01:12Guest:Not about Fred Murch.

01:01:14Guest:He was baffled by that kind of stuff.

01:01:17Guest:He thought I was throwing away my talent on stuff like that.

01:01:21Guest:But I always enjoyed him.

01:01:22Guest:He was like a raconteur.

01:01:23Guest:He loved to talk about the old days.

01:01:24Guest:He was like he was old school.

01:01:26Guest:He was like, what are you doing?

01:01:27Guest:Who cares about Fred Mertz?

01:01:29Guest:He was old school, but also he was like 60 at the time, which to me, again, sounds really young now, but he wasn't like an old, old man.

01:01:35Guest:He was like 60 when I had him.

01:01:36Guest:But he was really old school, like from another era, from the 30s and 40s.

01:01:40Marc:And what was your relationship with Spiegelman?

01:01:44Guest:Well, again, he was another teacher and also- He taught there too?

01:01:47Marc:Jesus.

01:01:47Guest:Yeah.

01:01:47Marc:So was this like the folk, they had a comic major, cartoonist major?

01:01:51Guest:This was the late 70s.

01:01:52Guest:It was Harvey Kurtzman, Will Eisner, and Art Spiegel, and my three teachers during the week.

01:01:58Guest:Most of the students in the class, they didn't know who they were.

01:02:00Guest:It was nothing special.

01:02:01Guest:They were just like the teachers.

01:02:02Guest:Yeah.

01:02:03Guest:But for me, it was like the Mount Rushmore of cartooning.

01:02:06Guest:Right.

01:02:06Guest:Art Spiegel hadn't created Mouse yet, but I knew him from underground comics.

01:02:12Guest:He was very intense about teaching comics.

01:02:14Guest:Smoking those camels?

01:02:16Guest:Yeah, constant smoking of cigarettes, but also so intense, had such a deep love for comics and the history of comics and stuff that nobody else had appreciated yet.

01:02:24Guest:History of comics, including teaching things about... Lennon Moulton was the first guy who wrote a Three Stooges bibliography.

01:02:32Guest:No film scholar had ever thought about that.

01:02:34Guest:But Art Spiegel was the first historian or a comics historian or teacher that actually discussed Mad Magazine in the class or Mad Comic Book.

01:02:42Marc:Crazy Cat?

01:02:42Guest:Yeah, that stuff.

01:02:43Guest:Yeah, especially Crazy Cat and the stuff from the 20s.

01:02:46Marc:And what'd you learn from that?

01:02:48Guest:Well, it's like, you know, I was such a wise guy back when I was a teacher.

01:02:50Guest:I didn't want to be bothered with it.

01:02:51Guest:I mean, a student.

01:02:52Guest:I hardly wanted to be bothered.

01:02:53Guest:I wanted to be kind of left alone, do my own thing.

01:02:56Guest:But I appreciated his passion for that stuff.

01:02:59Guest:And then at the time, he was creating his own magazine, right at that time, 1980, called Raw.

01:03:03Guest:Yeah, I remember that.

01:03:03Guest:And he was looking for young contributors.

01:03:05Guest:And he picked specifically me and Mark Newgarden and Kaz to be in the first issue, which was terrific.

01:03:10Marc:What was the other guy's name?

01:03:11Marc:Panther.

01:03:11Marc:Yeah, Gary Panter.

01:03:13Guest:Yeah.

01:03:13Guest:Yeah, yeah, he's terrific too.

01:03:14Guest:He used to be in Los Angeles, he's in Brooklyn now.

01:03:16Guest:Yeah.

01:03:17Guest:But he did this amazing punk kind of- Yeah, yeah, it was interesting.

01:03:20Guest:And also did covers of Time Magazine and stuff at the same time.

01:03:23Guest:I think I have a couple of the old Raws up there somewhere.

01:03:25Guest:Yeah.

01:03:26Marc:That was amazing.

01:03:26Guest:That was a huge book.

01:03:27Guest:Yeah, it was like large size, it was like Life Magazine size comic.

01:03:31Guest:It was like the next step from underground comics, which were kind of like over at that point, 1980.

01:03:36Marc:Why did you and your brother, you and your brother did how many books together, two?

01:03:40Guest:We had two books come out.

01:03:41Guest:The first one was Person's Living or Dead with the Shemp cover.

01:03:43Guest:The second was called Warts and All with the warts, embossed warts that Stevie Wonder could enjoy.

01:03:50Guest:And then after that, we kind of drifted apart.

01:03:53Guest:He was a musician.

01:03:58Guest:He moved to Dallas.

01:03:59Guest:I moved to Pennsylvania.

01:04:00Guest:Also, I wanted to branch out and do work for... I was doing work for Spy Magazine, so I was doing a lot of illustration work.

01:04:06Marc:That was a good magazine.

01:04:07Marc:What happened to that fucking magazine?

01:04:08Guest:It had its time, and then everybody moved on.

01:04:10Guest:Kurt Anderson moved on to the radio, and Graydon Carter became editor of some magazine.

01:04:14Guest:I forget what it's called.

01:04:16Guest:Do you?

01:04:16Guest:Stuff like that.

01:04:17Guest:Everybody moved on and got bored with it.

01:04:19Guest:All the writers either moved to Hollywood or became screenwriters.

01:04:25Guest:It's like a stepping stone.

01:04:26Guest:I was happy with it.

01:04:27Guest:I even got bored with it finally.

01:04:29Guest:Sure.

01:04:29Guest:But at one point, it was like the magazine.

01:04:32Guest:You couldn't miss an issue of Spy in the mid-'80s, late-'80s.

01:04:36Guest:I had some fun.

01:04:36Guest:Although I did stuff like they said, Drew, we have a thing about Michael Milken.

01:04:42Guest:I said, okay, that's fine.

01:04:43Guest:You got to tell me who Michael Milken is.

01:04:45Guest:Or Lee Atwater.

01:04:47Guest:I don't know who these guys are.

01:04:48Marc:Do you have any room for my Milton Berle piece?

01:04:50Guest:Yeah, I was thinking along that.

01:04:52Guest:Like I could draw, like the politicians like Reagan, but like some of these guys are out of left field.

01:04:56Guest:I said, look, I'm fine with it, but you just got to explain to me who these people are, you know.

01:05:00Marc:But then you do, like you do a portrait, like, I got to buy some of these.

01:05:06Marc:You do a portrait, I'm doing research now on Norman Lear, and you've got a picture of Nat Hyken, who was very important to Norman Lear.

01:05:15Guest:Yeah.

01:05:16Marc:And you're a kid compared to Norman Lear, and where does Nat Hyken play into your mythology?

01:05:22Guest:To me, Night Hiking was the greatest.

01:05:24Guest:This is my opinion.

01:05:25Guest:I hate these guys.

01:05:27Guest:They make these statements.

01:05:28Guest:But to me, he's the greatest genius, comic genius who ever worked in television.

01:05:31Guest:He created The Bilko Show for Phil Silvers and Car 54, Where Are You?

01:05:35Guest:Yeah.

01:05:35Guest:Which to me is like a masterpiece.

01:05:37Guest:Every episode.

01:05:38Marc:And you did Joey Ross too, right?

01:05:40Guest:Yeah.

01:05:40Guest:Well, he's another guy.

01:05:41Guest:He's a horrible, obnoxious burlesque comedian.

01:05:44Guest:Nobody saw the potential in him as having any kind of career outside of burlesque comedy with strippers and stuff.

01:05:50Guest:Nat Hyken recognized it and actually called him in the middle of the night.

01:05:53Guest:Joey Ross was in bed with a hooker.

01:05:55Guest:And Nat Hyken called him and said, look, I want you to audition for the Bilko show.

01:05:59Guest:Joey Ross hung up on him.

01:06:00Guest:He thought he was being punked.

01:06:05Guest:But he called them back, and then he wound up on Bilko as Rupert Ritzik, who was the chef or the guy who worked.

01:06:12Guest:And then they co-starred with Fred Gwynn in Car 54, and he's brilliant, I think.

01:06:16Guest:I mean, he could hardly deliver a joke or a line, but he's just such a presence, such a face.

01:06:21Marc:Do you ever read, I don't know if you know about, do you know Cliff Nesterov?

01:06:25Guest:Oh, sure.

01:06:25Guest:I'm seeing him tonight, and yeah, I did a piece with him.

01:06:29Marc:I just want to make sure you guys know each other.

01:06:30Guest:Oh, sure, sure.

01:06:32Guest:He fascinates me because he's a really young guy.

01:06:34Guest:He's like early 30s.

01:06:35Marc:Yeah, when I started reading his stuff, I was like, who the fuck is this guy?

01:06:37Marc:He was up in Vancouver, and I met him.

01:06:40Marc:He used to do shtick.

01:06:41Marc:I do stand-up.

01:06:42Marc:He used to do stand-up, but I thought he was going to be this old wizard, and he's just this young, wiry, little nerdy guy.

01:06:47Guest:I know, I know.

01:06:48Marc:Not even Jewish.

01:06:49Marc:And he's fascinated.

01:06:50Guest:Go figure.

01:06:50Marc:Yeah, I don't know where he comes from.

01:06:52Marc:He really captures almost exactly the same thing that you capture as an illustrator, as an artist, the tone of his prose.

01:07:00Guest:He just put on Facebook, Drew and I are kindred spirits.

01:07:04Guest:I believe that.

01:07:04Guest:I don't know where he comes from either.

01:07:06Guest:I don't know much about his background.

01:07:07Guest:I know he's a young guy.

01:07:08Guest:I think I helped him get into this country when he wanted to move to Los Angeles.

01:07:12Guest:I wrote a letter on his behalf.

01:07:13Guest:explaining why he's a terrific writer.

01:07:15Guest:And also, he's writing this book on the history of 20th century comedy.

01:07:19Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:07:20Guest:I can't wait to see.

01:07:21Marc:I hooked him up with the agent.

01:07:22Guest:Yeah, for Grove Press.

01:07:23Guest:Right.

01:07:24Guest:I think he got the contract after he was on your show.

01:07:26Marc:Right.

01:07:27Guest:So, yeah.

01:07:28Guest:So, he should dedicate the book to you, I think.

01:07:30Marc:Well, maybe.

01:07:31Marc:There was a couple of things that he wrote that just sort of changed my mind about it.

01:07:37Marc:I just found the tone was perfect.

01:07:40Guest:He is.

01:07:40Guest:He's great.

01:07:40Marc:And he's a hell of a researcher.

01:07:41Guest:He's completely obsessed.

01:07:42Guest:I helped him with a few interviews, like he did Bill Persky, the Dick Van Dyke, who's a pal of mine from the East Coast.

01:07:48Guest:I hooked him up with him.

01:07:49Guest:And then I'm in touch with Jerry Lewis.

01:07:51Guest:So I talked to Jerry Lewis occasionally, and I said, Jerry, there's this guy, Cliff Nestorhoff.

01:07:56Guest:who was doing this book on 20th century comedy, he'd love to interview, Cliff Nesterov.

01:08:01Guest:He couldn't get over that name.

01:08:03Guest:He had to repeat it over.

01:08:05Guest:Drew, tell him to call me.

01:08:07Guest:I'll talk to him.

01:08:08Marc:And did he?

01:08:08Guest:I think Cliff called him and it was one of those, all right, call me back on Tuesday.

01:08:11Guest:I'll talk to you then.

01:08:12Guest:And I don't think it ever happened.

01:08:13Guest:So you're close with Jerry Lewis.

01:08:19Guest:Kathleen Freeman, when she talks about Jerry Lewis, people say, well, what's he really like?

01:08:23Guest:She goes, well, he's been nice to me.

01:08:25Guest:And that's my feeling towards Jerry.

01:08:27Guest:You hear all these stories and stuff.

01:08:28Guest:I don't know what to believe.

01:08:30Guest:Probably they're all true.

01:08:31Guest:But he's been nice to me.

01:08:33Guest:He calls me and goes, Drew, what are you working on?

01:08:35Guest:And I said, well, you know, I'll explain.

01:08:37Guest:I've drawn him a few times.

01:08:39Guest:And, you know, he's just like he called in once.

01:08:42Guest:He said, Drew, how do you do what you do?

01:08:45Guest:And I said, I can't explain that, Jerry.

01:08:46Guest:How do you do what you do?

01:08:47Guest:He said, I can't explain.

01:08:51Guest:But I love because he has no ego around me.

01:08:53Guest:It's like he doesn't talk about himself.

01:08:55Guest:And I only want to talk about him.

01:08:57Guest:You know, I love Jerry Lewis.

01:08:58Marc:I think there's a childish sort of weird emotional thing to him.

01:09:01Marc:Like it seems to me like like no ego because you think like on some level he's got a tremendous ego.

01:09:07Marc:And then on this other level, when I hear people talk about him, it's almost like he's like 12.

01:09:12Guest:Is that I think, you know, he's got a tremendous ego, but I think he thinks about things like, you know, people think I have a large ego.

01:09:18Guest:I got to come off like I don't have a large ego.

01:09:21Guest:So, you know, he comes off like sometimes catch him on a good day.

01:09:24Guest:It's like it's not there.

01:09:25Marc:What other people that you've drawn of that generation specifically in all of the three old Jewish comedian books did you build a relationship with?

01:09:36Guest:Well, Jerry is one of the first guys who called.

01:09:39Guest:And what happened was when the first book came out, the Fantagraphics sent it out to some of the still living comedians.

01:09:46Guest:So when it came out, I got a call from Mickey Freeman who was on the Bilko show.

01:09:50Guest:He since died.

01:09:51Guest:He loved, Drew, I loved the book.

01:09:53Guest:And Freddie Roman, who was the dean of the friars.

01:09:56Guest:He's still around.

01:09:56Guest:Yeah, Freddie's around.

01:09:57Guest:Sadly, his son, Alan, the Kirshenbaum died.

01:09:59Guest:Horrible.

01:10:00Guest:He became a good friend.

01:10:01Guest:We loved Alan.

01:10:02Guest:He's a nice guy.

01:10:02Guest:He was, real sweet guy.

01:10:03Guest:That was so sad.

01:10:04Guest:Freddie's still around.

01:10:05Guest:I think he's a little broken by that.

01:10:07Guest:Yeah.

01:10:08Guest:But Freddie called.

01:10:08Guest:He loved it.

01:10:09Guest:And then the third call was left as a message.

01:10:11Guest:Drew called me back.

01:10:12Guest:It's Jerry Lewis.

01:10:13Guest:And he left his number twice.

01:10:14Guest:Yeah.

01:10:15Guest:So I said to Kathy, I said, oh, shit, Jerry's mad.

01:10:17Guest:I said, what did I do?

01:10:18Guest:I gave him that stupid expression.

01:10:20Guest:Yeah.

01:10:20Guest:Or I didn't put him on the cover.

01:10:21Guest:I put Milton Berle on the cover.

01:10:22Guest:So I called him back.

01:10:24Guest:I got my nerve up and called him back.

01:10:26Guest:Hey, Jerry, you got the book?

01:10:27Guest:Yes, true.

01:10:28Guest:I got the book.

01:10:29Guest:So what'd you think?

01:10:29Guest:He said, I loved it.

01:10:31Guest:Jesus Christ.

01:10:32Guest:What a book.

01:10:34Guest:And then after that, we became friends.

01:10:36Guest:He invited us out to the second to the last telethon as his guest.

01:10:39Guest:Kathy and I went out to Las Vegas.

01:10:41Guest:How was that?

01:10:42Guest:It was kind of surreal.

01:10:43Guest:I think we lasted 15 minutes to watching the show, but it was mostly like watching Richard Belzer sit up there with Jerry's daughter and the whole Lewis clan.

01:10:51Guest:It was fascinating.

01:10:52Guest:That kind of stuff.

01:10:53Marc:Are you friends with Bells?

01:10:54Guest:I've met him over the years.

01:10:55Guest:No, I don't think I'm friends with him.

01:10:58Guest:He's a nice guy.

01:10:59Marc:Yeah, he is.

01:11:00Marc:So that's the only guy that you really got to know with Jerry?

01:11:03Guest:Actually, since then, we became friends with Larry Storch.

01:11:06Guest:He's done some signings with us.

01:11:08Guest:He was at a thing we did.

01:11:10Guest:Is he coming out tonight?

01:11:11Guest:No, I don't think... He's not in the greatest shape.

01:11:14Guest:Well, he's in good shape, but he's in his 90s, so it's hard for him to travel.

01:11:17Guest:Right.

01:11:18Guest:But we did a... I had a Jewish comedian show in New York at the Society of Illustrators earlier in the year where all the original art was shown.

01:11:24Guest:And the opening had Joe Franklin showed up and Paul Schaefer and...

01:11:30Guest:And Gilbert Gottfried and Robert Klein and Larry Storch and Abe Vigoda was a special guest.

01:11:38Guest:So people were like, and he sat there for an hour posing for photos.

01:11:41Guest:So it was, you know, everybody who passed on going to that opening, like regret, still regret it.

01:11:45Guest:That was the party of the century.

01:11:47Marc:Yeah.

01:11:47Marc:Now who wrote the text for the new book, Heroes of the Comics?

01:11:50Guest:I wrote all the texts for that.

01:11:51Guest:Yeah.

01:11:52Guest:I knew a lot of that stuff over the years.

01:11:55Guest:I kind of from an early early age, I became obsessed with learning about those guys who drew who drew those comics and wrote those comics.

01:12:02Guest:So I knew a lot of it.

01:12:03Guest:But I also like researched a lot, you know, for the new book.

01:12:06Guest:It was suggested that I might bring in another writer, but I said, no, this has to be from me, my feelings about them.

01:12:16Guest:Most of these guys I admire.

01:12:18Guest:Some of them I don't.

01:12:19Guest:It was suggested also that perhaps the book should be called Heroes and Villains of the Comics.

01:12:24Guest:But I said, no, I don't want it to be that specific.

01:12:27Guest:If there's some villains in the book, I'll let people figure that out for themselves.

01:12:32Guest:Are there?

01:12:33Guest:Well, it's debatable, but this guy, Bob Kane, who created Batman, I'm putting created in quotes because it actually was written by a guy named Bill Finger, drawn by a guy named Jerry Robinson.

01:12:47Guest:Bob Kane did the early artwork.

01:12:49Guest:Very crude for the first piece and some of the early stuff.

01:12:53Guest:But it was all like he had a whole staff.

01:12:55Guest:But they never got credit.

01:12:56Guest:That was a lot of things with these guys.

01:12:57Guest:Most of them never got credit.

01:12:59Guest:They did this work.

01:12:59Guest:They were happy to have the work.

01:13:01Guest:They weren't looking to make a lot of money.

01:13:03Guest:But they went uncredited.

01:13:04Guest:A lot of them did.

01:13:05Guest:So I'm giving them their due, I think.

01:13:08Guest:Just showing what they look like and presenting their life stories.

01:13:11Guest:But some of the other villains might be...

01:13:15Guest:Frederick Wortham would be the main guy.

01:13:17Guest:He's the last image in the book.

01:13:19Guest:And he's the guy who wrote Seduction of the Innocent, which was the book about how comic books are causing juvenile delinquency.

01:13:26Guest:And that led to the Comics Code and comic books and EC Comics ending and some of the other books.

01:13:31Marc:And was he a cartoonist?

01:13:32Guest:No, he was actually a psychologist with a lovely record of doing some great work.

01:13:38Guest:He operated at Harlem in the 20s and 30s, and then all of a sudden he became obsessed with how comic books were harmful for children and also changed a lot of the facts, changed a lot of his research where he would just add things just to make things seem more horrible than they were.

01:13:59Marc:And why'd you include him in the book?

01:14:00Guest:Well, he's like-

01:14:02Guest:He was a hero because he had such a profound effect on comic books finally, like shutting down EC Comics, shutting down Lev Gleeson, turning comic books bland.

01:14:11Guest:In a way, he could be a villain, but to me, he's a hero because he just... Spawns you.

01:14:17Guest:It would be hard to do a book and not include him.

01:14:19Guest:And also, it's interesting about him is later in life, as he was an old man, he became obsessed with comic book fanzines and even wrote a book about them.

01:14:28Guest:Sort of as a penance, maybe, for what he did to comic book.

01:14:31Guest:And then showed up at some of the conventions and got booed and never appeared again, which is...

01:14:35Marc:Interesting.

01:14:36Guest:Fascinating.

01:14:36Marc:So the way you spin it is that even though he may have been misguided, the action that came from his research was to liberate cartoonists.

01:14:46Guest:Well, in a way, yeah.

01:14:47Guest:As I said, I lose interest in mainstream comics after what he was responsible for happened.

01:14:53Marc:So on some level, he freed you guys.

01:14:55Guest:I think so.

01:14:56Guest:And probably other people as well.

01:14:58Guest:I wasn't looking to the mainstream for that kind of stuff.

01:15:01Guest:And then Robert Crumb came along a few years later.

01:15:03Marc:Now, what do you use as source material?

01:15:05Marc:Because a lot of these guys are dead.

01:15:07Guest:Well, that's tricky because a lot of them, aside from being dead, I didn't want to annoy any relatives.

01:15:13Guest:I didn't seek out to like, could you send me photographs of...

01:15:16Guest:I made a couple of exceptions, like Bill Gaines' daughter, Wendy, who was an old family friend.

01:15:22Guest:She sent me a couple of photos of her grandfather, Max Gaines, who was Bill Gaines' father.

01:15:27Guest:Bill Gaines is the mad publisher.

01:15:28Guest:His dad, Max, was the guy who actually invented comic books in the early 30s.

01:15:32Guest:The first guy to figure out, just staple a bunch of newspaper comics into one magazine, and that was a comic book.

01:15:38Guest:That hadn't been done yet.

01:15:39Guest:That was him?

01:15:40Guest:The first one who figured that out.

01:15:42Guest:That was Max?

01:15:42Guest:Yeah, Max Gaines.

01:15:43Guest:And then later on, he was one of the guys instrumental in Superman and realizing the potential for Superman and Wonder Woman and some of that stuff.

01:15:52Guest:And then he started this company called EC, Educational Comics.

01:15:56Guest:It just limped along.

01:15:58Guest:It was bland.

01:15:58Guest:It was unappealing.

01:15:59Guest:It appealed to little children.

01:16:01Guest:Tiny Todd Comics.

01:16:02Guest:He died in a boating accident in 1947.

01:16:05Guest:He was in his early 50s.

01:16:06Guest:And the company fell to the son, William, who was training to be a science chemistry teacher, a high school chemistry teacher.

01:16:15Guest:He had no interest in comics.

01:16:16Guest:And all of a sudden, it was sort of like Citizen Kane, where all of a sudden, this company was his, and said, okay, let me make the best of it.

01:16:24Guest:And then it built up from there.

01:16:25Guest:He hired Al Feldstein, and little by little, it built up.

01:16:28Marc:To Mad Magazine.

01:16:28Guest:Well, it built up where they would introduce the horror stuff and the crime, and then he gave Harvey Kurtzman free reign to create Mad, and they did these beautiful war comics, realistic war comics for the first time.

01:16:39Guest:And then Mad, and then it just ended abruptly in 1955, and that was it.

01:16:44Guest:And just Mad was left.

01:16:46Marc:And Mad still exists, doesn't it?

01:16:47Guest:Yeah, it still comes out.

01:16:49Marc:And some of the guys are still around, right?

01:16:50Guest:only Al Jaffe that's it from the original now he's not he's not even one of the original guys but only Al but Don Martin's dead Jack Davis is retired Ward Drucker is retired they're still kicking Dave Berg yeah he died a few years ago

01:17:06Guest:Paul Coker.

01:17:07Guest:You might remember him.

01:17:08Guest:He's still around.

01:17:09Guest:He still does work for them.

01:17:10Guest:Very few.

01:17:11Guest:It's mostly new guys.

01:17:12Guest:I do work occasionally for them.

01:17:14Guest:Not too often.

01:17:15Marc:And what do you think about your contemporaries?

01:17:16Marc:I'm very impressed with that guy.

01:17:19Marc:What's his name?

01:17:19Marc:Charles Burns?

01:17:20Guest:Oh, he's terrific.

01:17:21Guest:He's one of my favorites.

01:17:22Guest:I love Dan Close.

01:17:23Guest:Close is great, yeah.

01:17:24Guest:Chris Ware.

01:17:25Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:17:27Guest:I love his stuff.

01:17:28Marc:And Bagg.

01:17:29Marc:Are you friends with Peter?

01:17:30Guest:Yeah, old friends with Peter Bagg.

01:17:31Guest:Yeah, he's a nice guy.

01:17:32Guest:He is.

01:17:32Guest:He's a terrific guy.

01:17:33Marc:I liked his stuff, too.

01:17:34Guest:I think Mimi Pond's work is terrific.

01:17:36Guest:She has a new graphic novel out.

01:17:38Guest:And there's a lot of great stuff.

01:17:40Guest:There's some stuff that's not so great, but I don't pay attention.

01:17:43Guest:There's so much of it.

01:17:43Guest:You've got to pick and choose.

01:17:44Guest:But Fanagraphics, I think, publishes the best stuff.

01:17:47Guest:Maybe I'm biased, but that's my feeling.

01:17:49Guest:When they put it out, there's usually something to it.

01:17:52Marc:They're like good curators in a way.

01:17:53Guest:Yeah, the old stuff.

01:17:55Guest:They bring back the old stuff and then introduce the best of the new stuff, I think.

01:17:58Marc:And now in terms of entertainment, do you still watch The Three Stooges?

01:18:03Guest:Occasionally, I still appreciate them.

01:18:05Guest:Mostly on YouTube, I'll put it on.

01:18:07Guest:People think I'm obsessed with Ed Wood and this stuff, but I'm more content just to be with my wife and our beagle, Darla, who we adopted a month ago from the local shelter.

01:18:17Guest:She was unadoptable, but we adopted her.

01:18:20Marc:But occasionally, you poke around and you like to-

01:18:22Guest:Yeah, I still mostly on YouTube and stuff or on TV, but I still poke.

01:18:26Guest:It still gets me.

01:18:27Guest:I'll have to watch it over and over.

01:18:29Guest:Like last week, I watched Moe Howard slapping Larry in the head.

01:18:33Guest:He was aiming for Shemp, but he slapped Larry.

01:18:36Guest:First I died with laughter, and then I just watched it compulsively over like 10 times.

01:18:40Guest:It's like poetry.

01:18:42Guest:It's like ballet to me.

01:18:43Guest:I mean, ballet puts me to sleep, but I can watch that over and over.

01:18:47Marc:I watched the two versions of, what is it, And Slowly I Turned?

01:18:49Guest:Oh, with Sidney Fields?

01:18:51Marc:Yeah, and then I watched Alvin Costello do it too.

01:18:54Guest:Yeah, beautiful, beautiful stuff.

01:18:55Guest:Well, then you have Joe Besser as Stinky.

01:18:57Guest:There's just nothing, you know, it's just sublime.

01:18:59Guest:And Joe Besser was not a great stooge, but he was a great Stinky.

01:19:02Guest:It's like, you know, like I said about Curly, he's like from another world.

01:19:06Guest:Yeah.

01:19:06Guest:Who comes up with stuff like that?

01:19:08Guest:Yeah, it was.

01:19:08Marc:His whole, the way he, his energy was bizarre.

01:19:11Guest:You're right.

01:19:12Guest:And it's like, we watch Abbott Costello shows occasionally.

01:19:14Guest:We have them on DVD and we, but we said, oh, I hope this is a stinky, you know, you know that feeling.

01:19:19Guest:You don't know them all by now?

01:19:20Guest:I do, but you know, that's the stuff I can watch over and over.

01:19:23Guest:I never get sick of it, you know.

01:19:24Marc:And what do you do for, what do you enjoy in current culture, you know, that like is entertaining?

01:19:31Guest:Oh, currents?

01:19:32Guest:I don't know.

01:19:33Guest:I really do turn towards the past.

01:19:35Marc:Yeah.

01:19:37Guest:I like Downton Abbey.

01:19:38Guest:Yeah?

01:19:39Guest:I do.

01:19:40Guest:I have to admit.

01:19:41Guest:Yeah.

01:19:41Guest:I do.

01:19:42Guest:That's like the opposite of what you're talking about.

01:19:44Guest:Whatever you don't expect.

01:19:45Guest:Yeah.

01:19:45Guest:But I really go back to the past.

01:19:47Guest:We watch TCM.

01:19:48Guest:We watch old movies.

01:19:49Guest:basically that's it yeah old TV shows you know Shout Factory I do work for them I did their Marx Brothers DVD recent their old Marx Brothers when they got old oh they put that out yeah the Marx Brothers on TV they did like from the 50s and 60s I gotta look at their catalog they send me stuff occasionally they send me a Richard Pryor box and they yeah I think they did the Bob Newhart they did the Mel Brooks box yeah oh that's right that's right they just came out yeah they came out with a complete Bilko

01:20:13Marc:Yeah.

01:20:14Marc:Oh, they did?

01:20:14Guest:Yeah.

01:20:15Marc:Phil Silvers.

01:20:16Marc:Are you on the advisory board there?

01:20:17Guest:No, but they hire me to do covers for them.

01:20:19Guest:I did the Ernie Kovacs cover for them.

01:20:22Guest:Yeah.

01:20:22Guest:For the box collection, the recent Marx Brothers on TV collection, and also when they re-released Melbrook, the producers, I did the cover for that last year.

01:20:31Marc:Now, do you think that because, like, it's great that they're, what is the market for that stuff?

01:20:37Marc:Do you have any idea?

01:20:37Marc:I mean, do you feel like that culturally we've lost something by losing the context of these guys?

01:20:42Marc:Yeah.

01:20:42Guest:I think there's a very limited market, and I think they know that too, but they put out stuff that they know is going to sell millions of copies, but then they're also compulsive about this stuff, and they'll put out something like Ernie Kovacs or Old Marx Brothers, and even if it sells, it doesn't matter.

01:20:59Guest:That's the way I feel.

01:21:01Guest:I never set out and say, what's going to really do well?

01:21:04Guest:I would never have done books on old Jewish comedians if I was thinking, what's going to really sell well this time?

01:21:09Guest:Sure.

01:21:10Guest:Or even old comic book artists, you know, from the past.

01:21:12Guest:Well, I love it.

01:21:13Guest:Never think along those lines.

01:21:15Guest:And, you know, maybe that's not so smart, but, you know, that's the only way I can operate.

01:21:20Marc:But are you a person that thinks that, you know, something is, you know, that things aren't as good as they used to be or we've lost something?

01:21:27Guest:No, I don't really buy into that.

01:21:29Guest:Yeah.

01:21:29Guest:No, it's like I think things are fine now, you know.

01:21:32Guest:I don't buy.

01:21:34Guest:I don't think that way.

01:21:35Guest:I think they were great then and I think they're great now.

01:21:37Guest:Yeah.

01:21:37Guest:I have no complaints, you know.

01:21:38Guest:I'm enjoying things now.

01:21:39Guest:No, I don't look back and like, oh, if only.

01:21:43Guest:There were horrible things that happened.

01:21:44Guest:Where are the new Three Stooges?

01:21:46Guest:There were horrible things that happened back then.

01:21:47Guest:Who wants to go back to that time?

01:21:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:21:49Guest:Look what was happening down south and whatnot.

01:21:51Guest:Sure, sure.

01:21:52Guest:Or to women.

01:21:53Guest:It's not a great time.

01:21:54Guest:But maybe the comedy.

01:21:56Guest:But they were originals.

01:21:57Guest:They were the guys who invented that stuff.

01:21:58Guest:That's right.

01:21:59Guest:So now you get guys who are kind of like doing it like Dumb and Dumber.

01:22:02Guest:Yeah, sure.

01:22:02Guest:Part three.

01:22:03Guest:Yeah.

01:22:04Marc:Did you watch his Three Stooges movie?

01:22:06No.

01:22:06Marc:The Farrelly Three Stooges movie?

01:22:09Guest:I watched it only because my pal Craig Berko was in it.

01:22:12Guest:That's the only reason I watched it.

01:22:14Guest:I thought the guy who did Moe was good, and that's it.

01:22:17Guest:I didn't think much of it.

01:22:19Guest:I watched the one.

01:22:20Guest:Remember the one from TV from a few years ago?

01:22:22Guest:They did a TV version.

01:22:24Guest:Again, I think the guy who did Moe was good in that one, too.

01:22:26Marc:Moe's the one to get.

01:22:27Guest:Yeah.

01:22:27Guest:If you're going to get one.

01:22:28Guest:Two guys they got Moe, but the rest of the guy's not so great.

01:22:31Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:32Marc:It's hard to do those.

01:22:32Guest:But I love watching the Bud and Lou movie with Buddy Hackett and Harvey Korman.

01:22:37Guest:It's fascinating how wrong they get it and how miscast those guys were.

01:22:41Guest:I didn't see that one.

01:22:42Guest:Just check that one.

01:22:43Guest:I don't know if it's available.

01:22:44Guest:It's got to be.

01:22:45Guest:And then the W.C.

01:22:45Guest:Fields and me with Rod Steiger.

01:22:47Guest:It's just so awful.

01:22:48Guest:Yeah.

01:22:49Guest:And Valerie Perrine, who I think gets naked in that.

01:22:51Guest:Yeah.

01:22:51Guest:I think it was in our contract back then.

01:22:52Guest:She had to be naked.

01:22:53Guest:In any movie.

01:22:54Guest:I think if she was in Mary Poppins, she would be naked.

01:22:56Marc:She's naked in Lenny, too.

01:22:57Guest:Exactly.

01:22:58Guest:Even though there's no reason for her to be naked.

01:23:01Guest:My dad wrote Steam Bath, and that was on PBS in the early 70s with Bill Bixby.

01:23:05Guest:Yeah.

01:23:05Guest:And Valerie Perrine is naked in that.

01:23:07Guest:Yeah.

01:23:07Guest:No, I brought that up with Gilbert Gottfried recently.

01:23:10Guest:You know, Steenbathe goes, oh, that's the one with Valerie Perrine.

01:23:13Guest:I said, I knew that was all you're going to remember from that.

01:23:16Marc:All right, man.

01:23:17Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.

01:23:18Marc:Great talking to you, Mark.

01:23:20Marc:And I like all the books.

01:23:22Guest:Oh, I appreciate it.

01:23:26Thank you.

01:23:28Marc:Love that guy, man.

01:23:29Marc:His brain is on fire.

01:23:30Marc:And you should definitely check out the books.

01:23:33Marc:You should definitely check out the books.

01:23:35Marc:If you're a comic book person, by all means, Heroes of the Comics is all Drew.

01:23:41Marc:He did the text as well.

01:23:43Marc:Great.

01:23:44Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.

01:23:46Marc:Check those tour dates.

01:23:47Marc:DC is coming up first.

01:23:49Marc:The first leg of the tour is coming up fast.

01:23:52Marc:DC on the 9th.

01:23:54Marc:Philly on the 10th.

01:23:55Marc:Both those shows are sold out.

01:23:57Marc:Boston at the Wilbur on the 11th, I believe.

01:23:59Marc:I think there might be some tickets for the second show in Boston.

01:24:02Marc:Definitely tickets for DC.

01:24:04Marc:That's a big-ass room.

01:24:06Marc:But go to WTFPod.com slash calendar and get the links to all the cities, wherever you are.

01:24:14Marc:Check it out.

01:24:17Marc:Get some JustCoffee.coop over there.

01:24:19Marc:Get the WTF blend.

01:24:21Marc:I get a little on the back end.

01:24:45.

01:25:09.

01:25:14Guest:Boomer lives!