Episode 593 - Henry Winkler
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuckadelfians?
Marc:What the fucktonians?
Marc:Is that what you call what the fuckers from Boston or what the fuckers?
Marc:I don't know, but here we are.
Marc:I don't know what to call the what the fuck DCers.
Marc:I'm doing those because I started my tour.
Marc:Oh, by the way, I'm Marc Maron.
Marc:This is my show, WTF.
Marc:Welcome.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:I know my voice doesn't sound great.
Marc:That's because I've only been a performer live on stage for probably more than half my life, but I don't always use my voice properly.
Marc:And I have a microphone.
Marc:So how fucked up is that?
Marc:that after my second show at the Wilbur in Boston, I decided to go off mic a couple times and do some straight-up theater work.
Marc:And perhaps I didn't come from the diaphragm.
Marc:Perhaps I came right from this place.
Marc:How about this place instead of this place?
Marc:Right?
Marc:Why don't I come from the place that I come from when I'm sitting on this mic?
Marc:Or it could be the woman that gave me a hug and then afterwards said, I have laryngitis.
Marc:Could have been that.
Marc:Don't know.
Marc:Hope not.
Marc:Got shit to do.
Marc:Got shows to do this week.
Marc:But I do want to thank the people of Washington, D.C.
Marc:for making the first night of the tour fucking unbelievable at the Warner Theater.
Marc:Just fucking spectacular.
Marc:And, you know, I make myself crazy before this shit because a lot of you came out.
Marc:You saw the workshop shows that the Tripany House.
Marc:I was going in through that hour.
Marc:I was doing that hour.
Marc:And then there was like two and a half months there, two months, however long it was where I didn't do the hour.
Marc:And I had to get back into the hour.
Marc:So I went to Rochester.
Marc:And that was amazing.
Marc:The comedy club that that kicked it all into gear in real time.
Marc:And I did a couple other warm up shows, the Tripany.
Marc:So by the time I got to D.C., whether or not I was being consistent with the hour that I prepared, I was certainly engaged in the relationship.
Marc:Between me and a comedy audience, my comedy audience.
Marc:And it was fucking great, man.
Marc:All the shows were great.
Marc:The DC Warner Theater was amazing.
Marc:The Warner Theater was great.
Marc:Philly, great fucking city.
Marc:Two shows at the Trocadero, which is a great venue.
Marc:Something strangely magical.
Marc:Not only about Philadelphia, but about that venue.
Marc:There's some history there.
Marc:There's some ghosts in that place.
Marc:And you can feel it.
Marc:It's well worn in.
Marc:And then last night at the Wilbur in Boston, it's spectacular.
Marc:It was great going back to Boston.
Marc:Some interesting things happened over the course.
Marc:Ashley Barnhill is doing a great job opening the show for me.
Marc:And it's funny because I'm traveling with Ash and she's helping me out with some other stuff.
Marc:I'm selling posters and shit and she's killing opening the show.
Marc:But like I know all these cities and some of those cities, you know, she's never been to.
Marc:And I don't you know, I may be relatively smart.
Marc:I don't think I'm an intellectual in any way.
Marc:And I'm certainly no fucking historian.
Marc:I will tell you that right now.
Marc:I have no capacity for maintaining or just really having history in my head.
Marc:I'm not even going to say I even learned it.
Marc:But we're going to historical cities.
Marc:And I'm like, you want me to show you?
Marc:Maybe I'll show you some stuff.
Marc:I've been to these cities.
Marc:I'll show you some stuff.
Marc:And it's such a limited, embarrassing bit of old man dumbness.
Marc:Just like going to the mall in D.C.
Marc:That's the Washington Monument.
Marc:And if you look at the top, there's like a pyramid on top of it.
Marc:It's an obelisk.
Marc:And that was built a while ago.
Marc:And that's the Capitol over there.
Marc:And there's the Lincoln.
Marc:Lincoln's in there.
Marc:You can see that's Lincoln in there.
Marc:In the memorial.
Marc:The White House.
Marc:I'm hungry.
Marc:I'm ready to eat.
Marc:Ready to eat something.
Marc:Philadelphia.
Marc:Yeah, a lot of stuff went down here.
Marc:They signed a thing.
Marc:They signed one of the things here.
Marc:That bell's here.
Marc:The Liberty Bell.
Marc:It's broken.
Marc:It's cracked.
Marc:I don't know what happened to it, but it's been cracked a long time because it's cracked in most of the pictures that you see of it.
Marc:Do you want to get a sandwich?
Marc:Boston.
Marc:Yeah, that's the Boston Tea Party happened there.
Marc:Right there.
Marc:They're the boats.
Marc:Did you see them?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's a pretty quick ride from the airport.
Marc:Yeah, there's the Statehouse, the Boston Common.
Marc:This is the Boston Common, the one, and that's the Statehouse.
Marc:It's all gold on top.
Marc:Some stuff went down there in this area, these very old homes.
Marc:Oh, that's where Cheers is based on, the bar that Cheers is based on.
Marc:You want to get something to eat?
Marc:That's what it's like.
Marc:Interesting thing happened in in Cambridge.
Marc:I was invited to the Harvard Lampoon to be initiated.
Marc:I am now a sir in the Harvard Lampoon.
Marc:I'm I don't know what you call it, an honorary member.
Marc:They invited me.
Marc:The the members of the Harvard Lampoon invited me to to be hazed and initiated into into their organization.
Marc:And, you know, I know it doesn't sound like much, but I was pretty honored in a way because I've always had this weird thing in my head about Harvard.
Marc:Those of you who have listened to me interview people who went to Harvard and can feel my resentment towards those who have gone to Harvard.
Marc:So to be asked to be part of it was good, and I got a little ribbon and a little medallion thing for the Harvard Lampoon, and I'm sworn to an oath of secrecy not to reveal the initiation process, which was arduous and taxing and completely frightening.
Marc:I thought it would be much funnier than it was.
Marc:But, you know, I feared for my life at a couple of moments and and it didn't look like I was going to get in.
Marc:And I didn't expect that.
Marc:And on top of that, these are all 20 year olds who go to Harvard and and 99 percent of the ones that I met have more confidence and focus than I have now.
Marc:That's what they produce here.
Marc:I don't know if the kids have it going in or it's what they do to people.
Marc:There's just this strange self-assuredness.
Marc:And I guess maybe you could call it entitlement.
Marc:Maybe a lot of those kids are wealthy.
Marc:Maybe their legacies doesn't matter.
Marc:They exude a confidence that does not seem falsified that I find completely annoying.
Marc:And I did experience some waves of resentment even in this process where they're doing this nice thing for me.
Marc:But I was like, you fucking Harvard people.
Marc:But but I've got the metal and I've got the scars from the initiation from the hazing.
Marc:And it's good to know that, you know, if shit goes down, that I have something to hawk.
Marc:Did I mention Henry Winkler is on the show today?
Marc:The Fonz?
Marc:Did I mention that?
Marc:The Fonz is here.
Marc:Now I'm old enough to remember when the Fonz was happening.
Marc:It happened in my lifetime at an age where I was impressionable and I loved the Fonz and I had a Fonz t-shirt and I got a leather jacket that I borrowed to dress up as the Fonz-ish kind of character once for a Halloween thing when I was in elementary school.
Marc:So being with the Fonz was not nothing for me.
Marc:Outside of producing and acting and always working, Henry Winkler is on All Hail King Julian, which is on Netflix, and he's published the latest book in his best-selling Here's Hank series.
Marc:A lot of books.
Marc:He gave me a lot of them.
Marc:I have no children.
Marc:I sent them to Brendan, who has a child, and now that child will have books throughout a good part of his life.
Marc:Because they go for all ages up until about, I think, 11 or 12.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But get your kids some Fonzie stuff.
Marc:I mean, by all means.
Marc:We'll talk to him in a second.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:Look out.
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Marc:That's JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Get the WTF blend.
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Marc:They were there from the beginning.
Marc:Look, it doesn't matter.
Marc:Let's talk about something truly important, aside from the fact that I'm a sir at the Harvard Lampoon.
Marc:Again, don't get the wrong idea.
Marc:I'm not going to be any different.
Marc:Not going to be any different.
Marc:I don't even know what it entitles me to.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Can I go over there and just ring the bell now and show my medallion and go inside and sit at the table?
Marc:Can I write for the magazine?
Marc:I don't know what it means.
Marc:I do not know what it means.
Marc:But I do know that it happened.
Marc:So look, folks, I have some pretty big and very exciting news that I do not want to to just slip by because so many of you were so essential in facilitating this.
Marc:And I know a lot of you may have been wondering, you know, what happened with that?
Marc:Because about a year ago, or I don't know when it started, but there was a terror just ripping through the podcast community when this personal audio company, they were called the Personal Audio LLC, had a patent that they claim was a podcasting patent, that they had patented podcasting.
Marc:Several people were sued, including Adam Carolla, which I think you knew about.
Marc:Many of us received mildly coercive letters asking for licensing fees.
Marc:But it was it was completely traumatic, anxiety inducing, terrifying that somebody could just out of nowhere claim to have a patent that covered podcasting, then demand money.
Marc:It was a shakedown on all levels.
Marc:You know, Adam was in the in the hot seat by being an actually sued.
Marc:But we all risk the threat of being sued.
Marc:And there was a lot of activity.
Marc:I talked about it a lot.
Marc:We all got a very quick and and and.
Marc:very intimidating education about the reality of patent trolls.
Marc:And this was a patent troll.
Marc:So ultimately, over the course of the terror, many of us podcasters met.
Marc:We met with a guy who was a patent troll buster that would have cost us millions of dollars.
Marc:He told the strategy.
Marc:He told us this and that.
Marc:But many of us didn't know what to do.
Marc:We didn't have legal representation.
Marc:We couldn't afford legal representation.
Marc:But it threatened our livelihoods.
Marc:And it also threatened the future of podcasting.
Marc:Whether you people believe that or not, it was a true thing.
Marc:So ultimately what ended up happening is, you know, we got the EFF involved.
Marc:We told them about it.
Marc:And they're a grassroots organization, non-for-profit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, defending your rights in the digital world.
Marc:And we we hit them to our struggle.
Marc:They were very clear about, you know, not being able to represent podcasters, but they took it seriously.
Marc:It was in their wheelhouse.
Marc:And then I reached out.
Marc:I reached out to you people and many other podcasters reached out when the EFF.
Marc:filed a re-exam.
Marc:They needed money to file a re-examination at the patent office of this patent.
Marc:They needed prior art, which is essentially proving that this patent was not the invention that they claim it was.
Marc:I can feel my voice changing again, talking about it.
Marc:So when I reached out and I asked for money,
Marc:And several other people did.
Marc:You guys stepped up and you funded this reexamination and then some, you know, within 24 hours, they had the money they needed to reexam.
Marc:And then after that, it all went into further action in this very important area that the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you know, does their work.
Marc:And also, I want to point out that it looks like a guy named Jeff Haynes was the first guy to find the things they used to prove prior art.
Marc:And he found them because he's a listener.
Marc:And we had asked people to go look for prior art.
Marc:And thank you.
Marc:Thank you, Jeff.
Marc:You were key, man.
Marc:WTF listener.
Marc:Look, we were all it was a group effort.
Marc:And then when Adam was in trouble and he chose to fight the good fight and stay in the saddle and take them on in court, you guys sent him money.
Marc:Eventually, they wrote a letter saying they'd lay off us.
Marc:But the re-exam was still underway.
Marc:And the jury's in.
Marc:The U.S.
Marc:Patent and Trademark Office invalidated key claims in the so-called podcasting patent after a petition for review from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Marc:A decision that significantly curtails the ability of a patent troll to threaten podcasters big and small.
Marc:That's from the press release from the EFF.
Marc:You can go read that if you go to EFF.org.
Marc:It's a big deal, man, because now the patent is useless.
Marc:Even though they said they'd lay off, this was what really needed to happen.
Marc:Some people were critical that, you know, some people said like Adam should have stayed in it, but he didn't have the money, man.
Marc:None of us had the money.
Marc:It was a complete shakedown.
Marc:And then the litigation costs were phenomenal.
Marc:That's how they get you.
Marc:But this is a small victory in a very big problem.
Marc:And it's our victory.
Marc:And I just wanted to thank you guys.
Marc:And again, we should all feel very proud.
Marc:because there are a lot of people out there who love podcasts, a lot of podcasters, a lot of people in the pro bono legal work over at Harvard, actually, the cyber law clinic at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Marc:They crafted the petition for review for the patent office and a lot of pro bono attorneys working.
Marc:It's just a spectacular, righteous victory that you are all part of.
Marc:And again,
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:All podcasters, thank you.
Marc:Even the ones that didn't take this seriously.
Marc:You want to talk to Henry Winkler?
Marc:Let's talk to the Fonz.
Marc:I like it to also work out.
Marc:If you can, you know, that's a hard one.
Marc:It is.
Marc:Right?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It is.
Marc:I put all kinds of stuff over there just in case people want to fidget, they get nervous.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Don't hammer, no hammering.
Marc:No hammering, but I could build.
Marc:Sure, you could build and work out your hands.
Marc:I'm working out with this thing squeezer.
Marc:Is it a knife here that you could hurt me with or yourself with?
Marc:No, that I won't do.
Marc:Okay, fine.
Marc:No hurting.
Marc:You know, you're coming over.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Henry Winkle.
Marc:I'm going to go ahead and say your name.
Marc:Go ahead.
Marc:For some reason, I remembered the Lords of Flatbush commercial.
Guest:The Lords of Flatbush.
Marc:I remember the commercial.
Guest:The Lords of Flatbush is a moon.
Guest:Isn't that great?
Guest:I don't mean to boast, but you'll dig it the most.
Guest:It's rated PG.
Guest:I don't remember that at all.
Guest:I remember making the movie.
Guest:I remember meeting Sly Stallone.
Guest:I remember not getting paid.
Guest:You didn't get paid?
Guest:We got paid $2,000 for 12 months worth.
Guest:Who shot that movie?
Marc:Because I was getting it confused in my mind.
Guest:Marty Davidson directed it.
Guest:And Steve Verona and Marty Davidson produced it and maybe Steve wrote it.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And Sly wrote additional material.
Guest:I remember that.
Marc:I don't remember that.
Marc:Because that was 74, so I was 11.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I ended up seeing the movie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I remember the one line was, Stanley, the rubber band didn't work.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And I was a kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I'm like, what do you, what?
Marc:Like I learned something about something.
Guest:You thought that was like a sexual thing.
Guest:It was a sexual thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But all I thought about was complete discomfort in the, in using a rubber band.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then later as I cut off the blood, you don't do anything.
Marc:You don't, there's no, it might actually, you know, keep you going a little longer.
Marc:You think?
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I mean, I think that's the whole idea of a cock brand.
Marc:No, but, you know, in general.
Marc:We don't need to talk about this kind of stuff.
Marc:You're, you know, a grown man.
Marc:Sure I am.
Marc:We don't need to be filthy.
Guest:But was that a, that wasn't your first acting job, though.
Guest:No, it was not my first acting job, but it was my first real big movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was the only time that my career intersected with Richard Gere.
Guest:He was let go and I was hired.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you know him or you didn't know him?
Marc:I never met him.
Marc:It just happened?
Marc:It just happened.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:So Richard Gere was going to be that guy.
Marc:But you were sort of made to be that guy.
Marc:Now, did Happy Days cast you because of that guy?
Marc:No, that guy didn't come out until several months later.
Marc:So they used Happy Days to sort of launch it.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:But I went to California.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After we shot the last scene, which was the wedding scene at the end of the movie, which was like many months after we had finished the movie, got on a plane with Perry King, American Airlines, landed in California, and a week and a half, two weeks later, I got the Fonz.
Marc:Oh my gosh.
Marc:But before that, you'd done a little TV.
Guest:I did plays.
Guest:I did a lot of commercials.
Marc:Well, before we get to the Fonzo, where did you grow up?
Marc:I grew up in Manhattan, Westside.
Guest:So you were always a city kid.
Guest:Always a city kid.
Guest:In the 60s.
Guest:In the 60s.
Guest:I was born in 45, so the 50s, the 60s.
Guest:Oh, so really the 50s.
Guest:And I left 73.
Guest:73.
Guest:And what was your family like?
Guest:They were very short Germans.
Guest:German Jews?
Guest:German Jews.
Guest:The worst.
Guest:I say that as a Jew.
Guest:No, but when you bring them up, I remember I had them.
Guest:I feel I mourn that I did not have a relationship with them.
Guest:Why didn't you?
Guest:I don't understand.
Guest:Because they were...
Guest:They were very difficult human beings.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, they were.
Marc:Was it an arrogance?
Marc:Because I don't want to generalize, but my mother dates a Jewish guy who's very proud to be a German Jew.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And there's arrogance to it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Was that the kind of thing?
Guest:Well, look at the CEO of Lufthansa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We know everything.
Guest:There is nothing we don't know about our pilots except the fact that I forgot to tell you we knew he was suicidal.
Guest:I don't think your parents were German.
Guest:They were actual Germans.
Guest:They were actually born in Berlin.
Guest:My mother was born in Rothenburg auf dem Tauber.
Guest:A small town, a medieval town, where they make very tiny, beautifully painted, small wooden figurines.
Guest:Not Hummel figures.
Guest:Not, no.
Guest:But a different kind.
Guest:The wood ones.
Guest:The wood.
Guest:A lot of bunnies.
Guest:I'm not kidding, because we had a collection of them.
Guest:That's what she brought from home?
Guest:She didn't bring them, no.
Guest:You bought them, and they reminded her of home.
Guest:Now, did they get out just under the wire?
Guest:They got out just under the wire.
Guest:My father was able to get a work visa to come to New York, but he knew, didn't tell my mother, that they were never going back again.
Marc:Because it wasn't looking good.
Guest:No.
Guest:His brother, Werner, who I never met, stayed one extra day when he was going to take a submarine.
Guest:A group of them were going to meet up with the submarine and get out of Germany.
Guest:And he decided to stay, Werner, one extra day because his dinner jacket was going to be finished at the tailor and he was going to take it with him.
Guest:And that night they came and got him.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's a family story.
Guest:That is a family story.
Marc:Sometimes, as I get older, I get more emotionally reactive to things.
Marc:And the idea of that.
Marc:It's something you grow up with as a Jew, the knowledge of it.
Marc:And obviously, your parents' generation, I don't know of anybody in my family that was lost in the Holocaust.
Marc:But just to hear they took him.
Marc:They came in.
Guest:And they took him.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I never had real grandparents.
Guest:I never had real aunt and uncles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Most of them were the Jewish community that came and were friends of my family.
Guest:And they became my aunts and uncles.
Guest:So you had a lot of people that didn't get out.
Guest:I had a lot of people that didn't get out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All my grandparents, four grandparents, aunts, uncles.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:And that all happened while your parents were in America.
Marc:So they knew.
Marc:They knew they were lost.
Guest:They found out after the war where they went.
Guest:I think somewhere in a briefcase from Guatemala.
Guest:Really?
Guest:My father brought it back from Guatemala.
Guest:Your father went to Guatemala?
Guest:Well, he worked in the wood business.
Guest:He wanted to buy.
Guest:He sold and bought.
Guest:He was the middleman in buying lumber for gun stocks, railroad ties, ship decks.
Guest:The lumber middleman.
Guest:He was a lumber middleman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And somewhere he went into Guatemala because mahogany came from South America.
Guest:High end wood.
Guest:High end.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Very classy wood.
Guest:Came with a scarf.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, a nice silk scarf.
Guest:No, but in somewhere in a in a briefcase from Guatemala of like lizard skin is some documentation of my.
Guest:family at Auschwitz.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:I have papers with the swastikas and stuff.
Guest:He found that stuff.
Guest:He found it or kept it or got it and when they passed away in the 90s, I took it with me to California.
Marc:That's a disturbing document.
Guest:I have outside our kitchen a spider plant.
Guest:You know how they keep multiplying?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I have a cutting.
Guest:I brought a cutting from our windowsill in our apartment in New York City that came out of Germany at Tante Erna's feet.
Guest:She was smuggled out in a coffin.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And everybody in New York got a cutting from this spider plant.
Guest:This is your great aunt.
Guest:No, just one of the women that my parents knew.
Guest:That was an aunt.
Guest:So it came from Germany.
Guest:It came from Germany when she was smuggled out.
Guest:I grew up with this spider plant reproducing on our windowsill.
Guest:I took a cutting and I now have this gigantic plant outside of my kitchen that came out of Germany in the coffin with Tante Anna.
Guest:That is amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I looked at it the other day.
Guest:You know, I water it every day.
Guest:It's been there.
Guest:Now I've been in California since 1974, actually moved here for real.
Guest:And this is the same one?
Guest:Same one.
Guest:And I brought it with me, and so it's been with me.
Guest:Now one of your kids has to take a piece.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:It just came to me maybe two days ago as I was walking by it.
Guest:I have to cut off one of the babies at the end of these long shoots.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:and put them in pots for Jed, Zoe, and Max.
Marc:That's a great story.
Marc:Touching.
Marc:There's a poetry to it.
Marc:Do you think about that often?
Marc:I don't.
Marc:Obviously, two days ago, you thought about it for whatever reason.
Guest:Well, look, my son, Max, said I should be on this podcast.
Guest:And several days later, no more than five...
Guest:I got an email that I was invited to come, and that's why I got here so quickly, because I thought, oh, this is kismet.
Guest:I'm supposed to be in this chair.
Guest:You are.
Guest:In your soundproof garage.
Guest:Kind of.
Guest:There's not a car in sight.
Guest:Yes, you're supposed to.
Guest:Many guitars.
Guest:You play the guitar?
Marc:I do.
Marc:You do?
Marc:Yeah, I'm a garage guitar player.
Marc:Do you jam with or you play it by yourself?
Marc:I play by myself generally.
Marc:Occasionally, I jam with, but it's been sort of my reprieve, my meditation for years.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Like, I can sit down and play with records or by myself and get out of myself a little bit.
Marc:Yeah, I've been wanting to talk to you, and I'm glad we can make it happen.
Marc:I don't know what happened with Uber, but...
Guest:Well, the first guy, first of all, let me just say, I would have driven here by myself.
Guest:Now, I am, and everybody knows because I say it ad nauseum, I am a learning challenge.
Guest:So driving a long distance to a place I haven't been is a challenge.
Guest:I need oxygen, I need food, I need a sleeping bag, because you never know.
Guest:I could be on the road for days before I got here to this microphone.
Marc:So even with one Uber screw up.
Marc:It's not even a joke.
Marc:Isn't it sad?
Marc:Well, how does your learning disability manifest itself on something like that?
Marc:What do you have?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I have, the umbrella is dyslexia.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And, you know, I can't spell.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Can't do math.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I will pass my house that I've lived in for 15 years in the dark, in the night, that I know.
Guest:I know where the driveway is.
Guest:I will pass my house more times than not because the visual cues are not right.
Guest:So driving here, go three points of a mile.
Guest:Then you turn left.
Guest:It's just connections.
Guest:Connections.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you've had that your whole life.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I have that.
Guest:I get so nervous.
Guest:I don't know what to do.
Marc:Now, is this something you had in childhood?
Marc:Is this something that went undiagnosed?
Marc:No.
Marc:This was undiagnosed until I was 31.
Marc:So you didn't have this experience.
Marc:You must have had it when you were a kid.
Marc:I had this experience.
Guest:So how did your parents handle it?
Guest:They did not know and thought if I sat at my desk long enough, I would get whatever the subject was.
Guest:And I wasn't getting it no matter how long I sat there.
Guest:Because you had this problem.
Guest:And so they were like, what's harder, study harder.
Guest:How many times do I have to show you how to solve the same problem?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:There are parents today that are still saying the same thing to their children.
Guest:I was interviewed by a young girl, 17 years old, two years ago, for a high school project.
Guest:I graduate high school in 63.
Guest:1963, 2012...
Guest:And I'm telling you the stories that she told me, her experience that she explained to me did not change one iota from my experience all of those years ago in 1963.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In 1958.
Guest:Because the parents, they don't know.
Guest:The parents don't know.
Guest:And the way the mind works, the learning challenge, one out of five children is the same.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:experience for most people that understand it that have it so do you think that caused some of the whatever your your the the thing you were talking about initially the tension with your parents or the detachment
Guest:the uh that not understand no well they also were they were strict beyond repair the german thing there were they were strict in where it was no longer making any sense oh really yeah you have brothers and sisters i have a sister who had said to me we must have grown up in the different apartment yeah because i don't have that experience really but maybe they treat boys differently than girls but
Guest:I made a choice.
Guest:I spoke to myself every day.
Guest:I'd be a different parent.
Guest:That my children could say whatever was on their mind as long as they didn't make me weep.
Guest:Maybe once or twice.
Guest:I wept.
Guest:But for the most part.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you did it.
Guest:And I listened.
Guest:And they were able to change policy in my house because Max, the youngest, is a director, a film director.
Guest:And he would stand up, push his seat in at the dinner table, say, don't say anything until I'm done.
Guest:And then go through five or six things he thought were unjust and said,
Guest:needed changing, needed to be looked at.
Guest:Some of them I just couldn't do because I was a parent.
Guest:Some of them I said I'm going to take under advisement.
Guest:Some of them we changed right then and there.
Guest:The policy was changed immediately because he made sense and I didn't know what I was thinking when I came up with the rule.
Marc:Is this how every dinner was?
Guest:No, this was not.
Guest:Because that sounds pretty strict in a different way.
Guest:Yeah, well, no.
Guest:It's a format.
Guest:They felt open enough to say what was on their mind.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And all three of them, Jed, Zoe, and Max could say, and if they made sense, then things were changed immediately.
Marc:So when did you start acting?
Guest:In my mind?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was old enough to reason.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wanted to be an actor.
Marc:What made you want to?
Guest:Who did you see?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You don't?
Marc:Spencer Tracy I loved.
Marc:Oh, he was so good.
Guest:Because Spencer Tracy and Anthony Hopkins and these incredible actors, there was no space between who they were and what they were able to communicate on a screen or a stage or a...
Marc:Yeah, I just watched Spencer Tracy in something recently.
Marc:Older Spencer Tracy.
Marc:He's probably one of the best actors ever.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Unbelievable.
Marc:And you probably saw some of those movies when you were a kid when they really happened.
Marc:Like when they came out.
Guest:Yes, I did.
Guest:I did, yeah.
Marc:It must have been thrilling.
Guest:It was.
Guest:And then I knew I wanted to do it.
Guest:But it's quite a journey to get to that place.
Guest:I'm not there yet where they were.
Guest:Oh, to get there as an actor.
Guest:As an actor.
Marc:You feel that?
Marc:You don't feel like you're there?
Guest:No, I absolutely don't.
Marc:And is it something you still aspire to?
Guest:In 1991, I took a turn in changing my approach to acting.
Guest:Consciously?
Guest:Consciously.
Guest:I've thought about it, thought about it, wanted it, tried it, scared to try it.
Guest:What was it specifically?
Guest:Actually, something I wrote down in my drama book when I first started drama school.
Marc:Where'd you go?
Guest:I went to the Yale School of Drama.
Guest:First, I went to Emerson College in Boston.
Guest:I know that college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they accepted me.
Guest:And then I went to Yale Drama School.
Guest:That's a hard one.
Guest:Well, you know, I didn't need academics to get in.
Guest:I only needed to audition.
Guest:But that's one of the best.
Guest:It's one of the best, no doubt about it.
Marc:Were you there with Robert Klein or anybody?
Guest:I was not.
Guest:I was there with Jimmy Norton.
Guest:Jill Eikenberry was in my class.
Guest:And I just saw a play, You Can't Take It With You, with James Earl Jones.
Guest:And one of the understudies was somebody in my class, Charles Turner.
Guest:Isn't that something?
Guest:And so what did you write in your drama book?
Guest:Okay, relaxation, concentration.
Guest:I didn't understand about relaxing.
Guest:I could not relax.
Guest:I was so neurotic about being perfect in my life that I couldn't...
Guest:I'll tell you something.
Guest:I would do a play and I would sweat through the costume.
Guest:And then I would have to change my shirt.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As soon as I started to relax and just concentrate on what I had to do, I stopped sweating as much.
Marc:You know, you can get dress shields.
Marc:You ever wear the dress shield?
Guest:I did.
Guest:I wore them everywhere on my forehead, on my temples.
Marc:But you know, that's what happens.
Marc:That perfectionism thing is a killer.
Marc:It's a killer, but it makes sense.
Marc:You come from these strict parents that are beating you down all the time and have these expectations.
Guest:You're going to internalize those.
Guest:I guess that must be true.
Guest:I never put that together until right this minute, except that I know perfectionism is...
Guest:is destructive.
Guest:Beating the shit out of yourself is a killer.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:Makes more sense that way.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, but Yale, that's a, like, I don't- I learned a lot.
Guest:Well, Emerson was always at art school, huh?
Guest:No, no, no, communication school.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And it's still an unbelievable- Oh, yeah.
Guest:Small liberal arts communication school.
Guest:Right in Boston.
Guest:Right in Boston.
Guest:All right, one of the greatest experiences of my professional life, I was doing a movie in Boston called Here Comes the Boom with Kevin James.
Guest:Having a great time.
Guest:And I went to Emerson on three days off and taught three different master classes.
Guest:Never did it really before.
Guest:in acting i was in heaven one was a musical um theater class one was a shakespeare class and one was acting for the movies class and they would do scenes for me and i was high as a kite as if i had peyote
Marc:It just was exciting and thrilling and rewarding.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Because you have to concentrate.
Guest:You have to think on your feet.
Guest:You're trying to help these kids feel something they've never felt before.
Guest:You take them to another place if you can.
Guest:It was...
Guest:Thrilling.
Guest:Why don't you do more of that?
Guest:I will.
Guest:At the moment, I'm very fortunate.
Guest:We start Children's Hospital for the seventh year.
Guest:Yeah, you're working.
Guest:Then I fly to England because the books that my partner and I write, Hank Zipser, The World's Greatest Underachiever, is a television show on the BBC.
Guest:I get to play a part in that.
Guest:And then maybe I'm going to do a brand new project starting in August.
Guest:But I don't know yet, so I can't say.
Guest:You've never been without work, Mr. Winkler.
Guest:I am now knocking on the wood handle of the hammer that is in front of me.
Marc:I mean, it's astounding.
Guest:I am astounded.
Guest:Grateful.
Guest:I am grateful.
Guest:I live by two words, say this a lot, tenacity, gratitude.
Guest:Tenacity gets you where you want to go.
Guest:The gratitude doesn't allow you to be angry along the way because it can be so difficult a job to get as an actor.
Marc:It is a difficult profession.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But Yale, like Emerson, I know a lot of guys went to Emerson.
Marc:I just had Paul Thomas Anderson.
Marc:He went there for a year.
Guest:No kidding.
Marc:Yeah, for a year he went there.
Guest:The director?
Guest:I heard that interview.
Marc:He said that he went there for a year.
Guest:No kidding.
Marc:And yeah, David Foster Wallace was his teacher.
Wow.
Marc:Because I guess he was there for a year.
Marc:And that was way after me.
Marc:Who else?
Marc:Who was the older guy that I talked to that went to Emerson?
Guest:Jay Leno went there, I think.
Guest:No, older.
Guest:Norman Lear went there?
Marc:Yes, Norman Lear.
Guest:Norman Lear went there.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So, okay, so you graduate Yale.
Marc:So the idea is you're going to be a theater actor.
Marc:Now, are your parents proud of your chosen path?
Guest:No.
Guest:Now, they were not proud of me, nor did they want me to be an actor.
Guest:They wanted me to take over the family business, of course.
Guest:My father brought it from Nazi Germany.
Guest:He established it.
Guest:He was a woodman in Germany?
Guest:He worked in a firm that bought and sold wood, yes.
Marc:So he was like he left Germany like meeting submarines and getting smuggled out.
Marc:They have money.
Marc:This was not, you know, they were not.
Marc:He was a real guy.
Guest:My father smuggled my father's mother's jewelry out of Germany encased in a box of bonbons, chocolate.
Guest:He melted the chocolate down.
Guest:poured it over the pieces of jewelry, put it under his arm so that when he went through the checkpoints, he said, you can open my bags.
Guest:I have nothing.
Guest:And it was all in the shop.
Guest:And then he sold the jewelry to a pawn shop.
Guest:had money in order to live in New York until he was able to buy back the jewelry.
Guest:And on my bar mitzvah, my 13th birthday, I got my great grandfather's pocket watch that came out of Germany in chocolate.
Guest:I love this.
Marc:Between this and the plant, there's a real connection to it.
Marc:But you were not brought up religious, were you?
Guest:We were very religious.
Guest:We were conservative.
Guest:We were not orthodox.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I was brought up conservative.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were brought up conservative in New York City.
Guest:And I have fallen a little bit from there.
Marc:I mean, Judaism is hard to maintain the practice of, but culturally... Culturally, I am proud of my heritage.
Guest:Right, but as a spiritual... Spiritually, it is easier to be religious than it is to be practical.
Guest:Emily Dickinson, the great poet, I think her church was her garden.
Guest:She just spoke to God in her garden.
Guest:However you got to do it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So they don't love that you've chosen to be an actor.
Marc:No, they do not.
Marc:And you graduate Yale and you do well.
Marc:You do Shakespeare.
Marc:You do all the movies.
Guest:I do Shakespeare, but I know that that is not my forte.
Guest:You do sword fighting?
Guest:I'm a good sword fighter.
Guest:I'm a good sword fighter and not a good rhyme coupleter.
Marc:Yeah, I can't wrap my train up.
Guest:Iambic pentameter is not my, my tongue is not friendly with that.
Marc:But it's not because of learning disability.
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:You do.
Guest:I just didn't get, until on my honeymoon, I went to England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we went to the theater and we went to the Royal Vic, the old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Guest:We saw Shakespeare.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I never had heard people speak the lines of Shakespeare as if they were living it at the moment where they made it so accessible.
Guest:And was it great?
Guest:My teeth dropped.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I realized at that moment, I really will not be able to do this form.
Marc:You realize at that moment, wow, you really got to be British to do this right.
Marc:Or another kind of actor.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you knew what?
Marc:That you were going to do, what, Odette's?
Marc:Didn't know.
Marc:You didn't know.
Marc:Didn't know.
Marc:I don't know why I just picked Odette's.
Guest:I love Odette's.
Guest:Odette's is great.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Odette's is great.
Guest:Now, Odette's belonged to the group theater.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And my teacher at Yale was a member of that group theater, Bobby Lewis.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There was a few people that come out of there.
Marc:The Method came out of the group theater, right?
Marc:Strasburg was in the group theater?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Stellar Adler was also my teacher.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Luther Adler, who I acted with in a terrible Italian mafia movie called Crazy Joe with... I'll think of his name in a minute.
Guest:That wasn't Peter Boyle.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was.
Marc:It was Peter Boyle.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But he also was Joe.
Marc:Yeah, he was Joe.
Marc:So- That was a scary movie.
Guest:But this was Crazy Joe.
Guest:This was not very good.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you leave, you get out of Yale, and you come here-
Guest:I got out of Yale, went to New York, did commercials, did plays for free at the Manhattan Theater Club, did a Broadway play that opened and closed in one night.
Marc:You have to have that experience.
Guest:Made The Lords of Flatbush.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Stayed alive, as I said, by commercials.
Guest:Love commercials.
Guest:And Stallone was in New York?
Guest:Stallone was in New York on Lexington Avenue in a walk-up apartment with a mastiff bulldog and his wife, his first wife, Sasha.
Yeah.
Guest:So you guys were friends.
Guest:I knew that this guy was amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And amazing.
Guest:He talked like this, you know, his mouth was kind of like off to the side.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he was brilliant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was a writer.
Guest:And he was funny.
Guest:Really, genuinely dry, witty, funny.
Guest:Not was, he is.
Marc:Sorry, so you move, you do commercials, you do Lords of Flatbush.
Marc:And what makes you decide to come to Los Angeles?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:John Kimball was the agent in New York City for Joan Scott.
Guest:Joan Scott was my first agent.
Guest:John Kimball moved to California to open an office for Joan Scott.
Guest:And he said to me.
Guest:If you want to be known in New York, stay here.
Guest:If you want to be known to the country, move to California.
Guest:But I, as a very short, neurotic person who worried all the time, thought, I can't go to Hollywood.
Guest:I mean, I'm not like this tall, good-looking guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, I'm telling you, it took me weeks to convince myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Finished The Lords of Flatbush, made money doing commercials for H&R Block Taxes and Schick Razorblades, saved my money, got on a plane for one month.
Guest:Two weeks later, I was cast in a pilot for a new show, Happy Days.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And you didn't do any work on TV shows before that?
Guest:No, only commercials.
Guest:Oh, I did the Mary Tyler Moore show.
Guest:The Mary Tyler Moore show was the one week after arriving in California.
Guest:Bit part.
Guest:Bit part.
Guest:I had four lines and they allowed me to ad lib it to eight.
Marc:And you were with Mary or Ed Asner?
Guest:We were in.
Guest:Ed Asner was just my father on Royal Pains.
Guest:He was my first job.
Guest:I was right there with him.
Guest:Just your father recently, you mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Recently, he played my dad.
Marc:He's something, isn't he?
Marc:He's something.
Marc:I shot something with him over here, a pilot presentation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And still fiery.
Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:So he was your first job and you just worked with, did he remember that?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He's adorable.
Guest:It's an adorable film.
Guest:Okay, so you did that.
Guest:I just saw him in the hallway of Salami Studios when I was recording an animation for Netflix called King Julian that's on.
Guest:And he was down the hall.
Guest:He was standing in the doorway recording something else.
Guest:And we hugged.
Guest:And that was it?
Marc:It was Mary Tyler Moore and then Happy Days?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, then I did the Bob Newhart show.
Guest:The original Bob Newhart show.
Guest:The original Bob Newhart show.
Guest:With Bob.
Guest:With Bob.
Guest:Sweet guy.
Guest:And Suzanne.
Guest:And you were what, a patient or what were you?
Guest:I was a patient.
Guest:I was a crook who was drawn back in.
Guest:I just finished my jail time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was drawn back into the robbery game.
Guest:And then I did the pilot for Rhoda.
Guest:You did?
Mm-hmm.
Guest:Those are great comedy shows.
Guest:The three biggest shows.
Guest:They were so loyal.
Guest:That company, MTM, was so loyal.
Guest:If you scored for them, they would have you back.
Guest:So it was a company thing.
Guest:That was Mary Tyler Moore's company, right?
Guest:Mary Tyler Moore.
Guest:But her husband, Grant Tinker, I think was the... And that was a big television production company.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And all the great writers came out of there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like who?
Guest:Who'd you work with?
Guest:Gary David Goldberg, I believe.
Guest:Stephen Bochco.
Guest:Is there anyone else in show business in your family?
Guest:Nobody.
Guest:Nobody.
Guest:Well, my son now, he's a director.
Guest:My oldest son, Jed, works for a production company.
Guest:My daughter is a teacher.
Marc:But nobody in the other family, cousins, others?
Guest:No.
Guest:Nobody.
Guest:You're not related to Erwin Winkler?
Guest:I am not.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:It's a shame.
Guest:I tried to pretend I was.
Guest:Tried to find him on the family scene?
Guest:I tried.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so you get the pie at the happy days.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you had no idea you would be- I had six lines.
Marc:A national meme, an icon.
Marc:Six lines.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just was going to make- What were they?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, one of them was-
Guest:hey, Richie, next time you deal with this, you leave it to me, all right?
Guest:I know girls.
Guest:Or something like that.
Guest:And then, oh, hey, Patsy, let me teach you how to open a bra.
Guest:And I don't remember the others.
Marc:You know when he did that Obama commercial?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:That was mind-blowing, how all you guys, you and Ron Howard.
Guest:Well, that was only Ron.
Guest:And Andy did it in North Carolina.
Guest:I think he lived in North Carolina, and he was too old to travel, so he was there.
Guest:But Ron called me up.
Guest:He said, hey, I think we have to do something.
Guest:Would you be open to this?
Guest:I said, okay, now, Ron, what is this?
Guest:And let me just say, before you tell me,
Guest:whatever you suggest i'm saying yes yeah and he said would you play the fonts and i went that was not where i thought you were going and he said i'm gonna play richie we're sitting in the trailer we're getting made up we're talking about our children i have three he has four
Guest:He has three girls and a boy.
Guest:We're talking about the same problems.
Guest:Doesn't matter who you are, what you do, where you live.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we're just sitting there.
Guest:They're putting on the wig.
Guest:They're combing his hair.
Guest:I'm putting on the white shirt.
Guest:I'm putting on the wig.
Guest:And we are walking now to the set from the trailer to this 50s car, which is several hundred feet away.
Guest:And we're just walking.
Guest:We're still talking.
Guest:Credit cards, daughters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:They give you a they promise you that.
Guest:And then they don't.
Guest:And then I lean against the car.
Guest:ron walks around the car and it was we shot back 40 years
Guest:In a millisecond.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He walked around and said, hey, Richie, you do your homework.
Guest:So what's this thing with this chick in like moose?
Guest:She shoots moose.
Guest:And I don't know, something.
Guest:And then boom, we were in it.
Guest:Like that.
Guest:Like that.
Guest:It's muscle memory.
Guest:Sense memory.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:I mean, well, you guys did like 300 of those shows.
Guest:255.
Guest:That's crazy.
Marc:How could it not just come, you know, like it was most of your life almost.
Marc:It's true.
Marc:I loved it so much.
Marc:I mean, it was important to me.
Marc:I mean, I was, so I was 74 to 84, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I went through junior, I was 11 or 12 when it started.
Marc:So that's where you get it.
Marc:I had a Fonzie shirt.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, I did the thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I did it, you know.
Marc:And then I was in high school.
Marc:I mean, at some point I left.
Marc:Now, where did you grow up?
Marc:Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:No kidding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Breaking bad country.
Uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah, so the Fonz was... Now, was there ever a point where you're like, I got to detach from the Fonz?
Guest:Well, I thought that I had to detach from the Fonz.
Guest:It's a decade.
Guest:What I didn't know... No, I didn't feel like I had to detach from the Fonz just to do it.
Guest:I thought I didn't want to be typecast.
Guest:What I didn't realize was...
Guest:That comes with the territory.
Guest:I am typecast even today.
Guest:It never goes away.
Guest:It never, ever goes away.
Guest:Now, I have wonderful jobs, so that's perfect.
Guest:But I did a lot of talking when I was younger.
Guest:You know, I'm not the Fonz.
Guest:My name is Henry.
Guest:I, you know, I'm different.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And really what I learned is that I just should shut the hell up.
Marc:Well, the weird thing was is I remember because I had a relationship with that show and the idea of it.
Marc:My father was a real nostalgic for that time.
Marc:So the music and everything resonated with me.
Marc:Still great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:and uh what music do you listen to now do you play you said you play records and you play your guitar well today i listened to i actually listened i was playing some stuff for some some people who were over i listened to the rolling stones yesterday um what i listened to i listened to velvet underground i listened to a lot of stuff oh yeah and i you know i don't have any i have some buddy holly i have a roy orbison box i have um you know some older uh motown stuff i have some wilson pickett stuff
Guest:I wrote love letters to Roy Orbison.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Love letters?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:To a girl named Jill.
Marc:Oh, I thought you were writing love letters to Roy Orbison.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:No, I didn't write them to him.
Guest:I wrote along with As He Sang on my record machine.
Marc:He's beautiful.
Guest:No voice like him ever again.
Marc:Yeah, these records sound beautiful.
Marc:But I remember what I was going to say is I remember the big thing was that like, you know, Henry Winkler has written and directed Heroes.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Only acted.
Guest:Oh, just acted.
Guest:Jeremy Kagan directed it with Sally Field.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Wanted, first met Meryl Streep, but because she had no name at the time, Universal would not hire her.
Yeah.
Guest:But I knew when I was in the room with her that I was in the presence of greatness.
Guest:So they'd already cast you.
Guest:I was cast.
Guest:We were now looking for the girl.
Guest:And then we were lucky enough to find Sally Field.
Marc:See, I remember it because... I'm sorry I got it wrong in the writing and directing.
Marc:That's okay.
Marc:But I remember it because it's like, the Fonz, this is over.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And he's doing this thing now.
Marc:You were a Vietnam vet, right?
Marc:I remember going to see the movie.
Guest:That's exactly right, with Harrison Ford, who had just finished...
Guest:Star Wars in England.
Guest:So what year was that?
Guest:77.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that was a big, like I think all of us were like, all right, we're going to have to see Henry Winkler in this new way.
Marc:And did you feel good about that?
Guest:I felt good about it.
Guest:And then that's one of the jobs after the Fonz was a complete character.
Guest:I would change my voice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Change my body.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:was able to do that heroes when i saw it i realized i'm not there yet i'm not there yet i got a long way to go so you didn't feel good about the performance no then i did another movie that year called the one and only yeah about uh gorgeous george about wrestling i kind of remember that did you play gorgeous george i did with the way yeah and how'd you feel about that one
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:As I said, Carl Reiner directed it.
Guest:I felt good about that.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you seem like you're very hard on yourself.
Guest:I might be, but I think I'm also right.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In this area.
Marc:So you felt like you were out of your league or you didn't?
Guest:I know.
Guest:I felt like I was not whole.
Guest:I was pushing.
Guest:I was acting too much.
Guest:I was acting too hard.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you hadn't done the relaxation?
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That would come, that was 77.
Guest:The relaxation, I tasted it really for the first time, 91.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Took me that long.
Guest:Do you know music?
Guest:Do you know about music?
Guest:So here's my question.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is completely, I just, but it's on my mind.
Guest:So I listen to Sia now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:She's unbelievable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there is a very similar sound to Adele.
Guest:It seems Sia has been around a long time.
Guest:And I wondered if anybody knows who influenced who.
Guest:Oh, I couldn't tell you.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Let's move on.
Guest:I have to check with somebody.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I think my buddy manages Sia.
Okay.
Guest:Tell your buddy to tell Sia I send my deepest respect and regards.
Guest:I will do that.
Guest:Because that is a singer that is like in another stratosphere.
Guest:She touches me.
Guest:I mean, it just jumps into my body.
Marc:Oh, that's sweet.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, well, I think like a lot of times, it seems to me what you're talking about, and I think what I experienced in my own life, is that sometimes it takes a long time to accept yourself.
Guest:Yes, to, yes.
Guest:You know, I used this metaphor for somebody else for a long time, and then I realized that it was true for me.
Guest:I was like a muffin that you stick a toothpick in when you're baking the muffin to see if it's done.
Guest:I wasn't done for a very long time.
Guest:Yeah, right, but you kept working.
Guest:I did.
Marc:I worked toward being done.
Marc:You did a lot of television, but at some point, was the move to start producing because you were... The move to produce was because there was a... Everything...
Guest:comes because there was a lull in my acting career.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so my lawyer at the time, Skip Brittenham III, said, oh, I'm going to create a production company for you in the last year of Happy Days.
Guest:And I said, I have no idea how to do that.
Marc:That's something that a lot of actors do.
Marc:They set up a production.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And out of that production company, I had several partners that were non-starters.
Guest:And then I was partnered with a guy named John Rich, who Skip knew.
Guest:And we sold two pilots, one with Jeff Tambor about a blind English professor, we only did 13, called Mr. Sunshine.
Guest:Very funny show.
Guest:He's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But very funny show.
Guest:And the other was MacGyver.
Guest:Huge show.
Guest:Seven years.
Guest:Then I partnered up with a woman named Ann Daniels who was a vice president at ABC who I sold MacGyver to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She left ABC, became the head of my company.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:We sold sightings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know that.
Guest:Did seven years of that.
Guest:All things paranormal.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:We did seven years of that.
Guest:of that show and you were active hands-on active every single day and you loved it i did not love it no it's my least favorite job ever in my life i'm not kidding cleaning a barn is easier than producing producing is like holding sand in your arms yeah the you never stop the drip of a problem
Marc:Because once you said it's during lulls, so like during lulls, you get these things going, but then they're going.
Marc:And maybe the lull's over.
Guest:Well, the lull is longer than you can imagine.
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was a long lull.
Guest:You did, yeah.
Guest:Oh, I got a hammock out.
Guest:Let me tell you, I had plenty of time to just swing in the breeze.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When did that happen?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That was from 74, 84, 84 until 91.
Guest:And then I started directing.
Guest:But I never...
Guest:You know, my directing career is like starting a lawnmower.
Guest:You know, before you pushed a button, you pulled that line.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You pulled that line.
Guest:My mower never started.
Guest:I directed a feature film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I directed 13 Days of Another Feature Film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I directed some television episodes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I directed some commercials.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I never... That never got off the ground.
Yeah.
Guest:But that was something you wanted.
Guest:I like that job second.
Guest:My favorite job is acting.
Guest:My second favorite job is directing.
Guest:And one of the things I'm most proud of is being a writer of these books with my partner, Lynn Oliver.
Guest:Which was the most lucrative job?
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Which was the most lucrative film?
Guest:I have to assume it was producing.
Guest:No.
Guest:Acting on Happy Days, because Skip, my lawyer, made a wonderful deal eventually for me.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Producing, I'll tell you what was lucrative also.
Guest:I produced with Michael Levitt two years of Hollywood Squares.
Guest:The last two years of its life.
Guest:The newer version.
Guest:The new version.
Guest:After Whoopi Goldberg was the center square for a long time.
Guest:And then when they changed regimes, I was brought in with Michael Levitt.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And that was lucrative.
Marc:Who was the center square when you were there?
Guest:Well, we had Simon.
Guest:We had Ellen.
Guest:We had Brad Garrett.
Guest:We had a lot of- Caroline Ray.
Guest:Huh?
Guest:Caroline Ray.
Guest:Caroline Ray was a square, but not at the center square.
Guest:And then eventually-
Guest:Martin Mull, the second year we did it, we realized we don't need to have like a major, major person.
Guest:Martin Mull is so funny and such a great writer that he became the center square for the entire year.
Guest:And you made some good money on that.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And also, like, I forget, I always forget, like, you're, you know, Happy Days is, you know, created the jumping the shark, right?
Guest:Yes, a guy named John Ahime was sitting in his dorm with his friend, and they came up with jumping the shark.
Guest:And God bless him.
Guest:You know, it's America.
Guest:He got a book, a board game, and now he does a radio show on Sirius Radio.
Guest:And that's directly attached to the episode of Happy Days, right?
Guest:It was directly attached to when the Fonz jumped the shark.
Guest:And I'm the only actor in the world who has jumped the shark twice.
Guest:What was the other time?
Guest:On Arrested Development, they had me actually jump over a shark on a dock in one of the episodes.
Guest:Oh, that's clever.
Guest:And that must have been great to work with those guys, huh?
Marc:Great to work with.
Marc:But by that point, like, I have to assume that, you know, okay, so, okay, we talked about producing, so it was acting first with the Happy Days, then the production with Hollywood Squares, you made some red bread.
Marc:But then I would assume that once the rest of the development starts to happen, now you're on the Children's Hospital, now you're a cultural reference, but also you've grown to appreciate, you know, the fact that you're a cultural treasure and reference, and you're comfortable with yourself.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And now you've found your level of acting in a different way entirely.
Marc:Like, you know, what you do on Arrested Development has nothing to do with Fonzie, but everything to do with Henry Winkler.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And everything to do with Mitch Hurwitz, who is like a real, real bona fide genius.
Marc:Right, but also you are now able, despite what you said earlier, to, you know, you as Henry Winkler, the person who is now older and wiser, is a lot closer to the surface as he comes into roles.
Guest:Yes, he is getting much, much closer to the surface now.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, I'm meeting myself.
Guest:I'm allowing myself to bubble up.
Marc:That's great, and Hurwitz appreciates that.
Marc:He knows how people know how to write for you now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's true.
Guest:It is.
Guest:It's very lovely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, all right, so this part of your life, this career of writing children's books is something that comes out of a very... A lull.
Marc:Not a lull, but a real... Okay, a lull.
Guest:Another lull.
Guest:Another lull.
Guest:I had no idea and no passion and absolutely no thought that I, Henry Winkler, would ever write a book ever, ever, ever.
Guest:Because of your learning disorder?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just thought, I don't know what to write.
Guest:I can't write a book.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:So how the hell did this happen?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Alan Berger.
Guest:Now an agent at CAA.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What was he before?
Guest:He was a manager of mine for about 90 days before Mike Ovitz's company imploded.
Guest:I went for a meeting.
Guest:Was that the beginning of a lull?
Guest:That was a lull.
Guest:But I was in the middle of a lull.
Guest:It was an extension of a lull.
Guest:And they were taking off the art off the wall.
Guest:And I was having a meeting.
Guest:And Alan suggested I write books about my learning challenges for children.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And I said, no.
Guest:And he said like a month or two later, he said, I'm telling you, you should write books for kids.
Guest:And out of nowhere, out of nowhere.
Guest:And I dismissed it out of hand.
Guest:And then he said, I'm going to introduce you to Lynn Oliver, who is my friend who knows everything about children's books.
Guest:And I said, okay.
Guest:So we had lunch and then we've written 28 novels together.
Guest:But that's a hell of a manager.
Guest:I dedicated one of the books to him for that very reason.
Guest:The fact that he stuck to it.
Guest:He decided you're the guy.
Guest:He did.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I never thought of that until now.
Guest:And I tell the story all the time.
Guest:He stuck to it.
Guest:He said, no, I really believe that this is something you should do.
Guest:That doesn't happen.
Guest:That's what a manager is supposed to do.
Guest:Holy mackerel.
Guest:And then he went to and he became an agent at another company.
Guest:Still friends?
Guest:Still friends.
Guest:I talk at his class.
Guest:He teaches a class at USC.
Guest:And I speak at his class once a year.
Guest:are you friends with harrison ford no i i i waved to him once yeah yeah since uh 77 who are the people that like because i'm always shocked by that like you know i assume that all you guys no you're friends do you know what no one ever is mark i'm telling you no one ever is yeah ron howard yeah uh you know the cast of happy days uh um gary marshall yeah
Guest:Friends.
Guest:Friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But otherwise, my very best friend is a psychiatrist.
Guest:One is a composer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's interesting because you just go to work with.
Guest:And I think this is that I thought I just did a movie with you.
Guest:So I'm going to call you after the movie's over.
Guest:We're going to have dinner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was in 1983.
Guest:I called this person.
Guest:Never.
Guest:I'm still waiting for them to call me back.
Guest:2015.
Guest:Maybe you should call again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, this time I sent a carrier pigeon.
Marc:Just don't call an Uber to pick him up.
Marc:I'm telling you.
Marc:But this is fascinating.
Marc:So this does, like outside of it being born out of a lull.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It has now become a passion.
Marc:It's a passion, but it's a gift.
Guest:It comes from a real place.
Guest:It helps kids.
Guest:It's a gift to me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it doesn't help.
Guest:It's a gift to the kids.
Guest:It's a gift to the kids because we write comedy first.
Guest:We figure like, you know, the way to a man's heart is food.
Guest:The way to a kid's heart is comedy.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So we write funny stuff.
Guest:First, and it happens to be about somebody who has a learning challenge, could not sell these stories in America as a television show.
Marc:And this is Hank Zipper?
Guest:Yeah, Hank Zipser.
Guest:Zipser.
Guest:Who was a woman who lived on the fourth floor of my apartment building.
Guest:Now the book you're holding right there.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The book you're holding right there.
Guest:Fake snakes and weird wizards.
Guest:Here's Hank.
Guest:Here's Hank.
Guest:That's second grade.
Guest:Brand new readers.
Guest:This is for kids who are just starting to read.
Guest:And we use a font that has never been used before.
Marc:This is a revolutionary font.
Guest:That it was developed by a dad in Holland.
Marc:What makes it special?
Marc:Well, open... I'm looking at it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But open another book.
Guest:No, two down.
Guest:Go two down.
Guest:Yeah, that one.
Guest:No, the next one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Open that and look at that.
Marc:How to scare your pants off your pets.
Guest:Now that is Ghost Buddy.
Guest:There are four of those.
Marc:These are young people novels.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:These are third, fourth, and fifth grade.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So you got to hold the thoughts.
Marc:What am I looking at?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Now look at the print.
Guest:Now open one of the bottom books at the same time.
Guest:And look at the difference in the font.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You see the difference?
Guest:It's that the font of Here's Hank makes reading friendly.
Marc:Yeah, there's a little more space between the letters.
Guest:Thicker.
Marc:Yeah, thicker, more defined.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, that's interesting.
Guest:Isn't it?
Guest:It's easier for your eye to negotiate the words across the page.
Guest:It is.
Guest:On a Here's Hank.
Marc:How did someone devise that?
Guest:Because his kids had trouble reading.
Guest:Do you get wonderful emails?
Oh, my gosh.
Wow.
Guest:Letters from entire classes, whether they have learning challenges or not, who say, we laugh so hard our funny bone fell out of our body.
Marc:Isn't that a great compliment?
Marc:But I imagine that this was something, you know, I just know this from doing the podcast.
Marc:It was not, this is more specific to, you know, clearly speaks to an issue.
Marc:Whereas I don't really.
Marc:But you get these emails of gratitude.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Where, you know, they're very heartwarming and fulfilling.
Marc:And they make you feel like you've given something to the world that is outside.
Guest:Because what do you do?
Guest:You are like opening a clam.
Guest:You're opening the petals of a flower.
Guest:Somebody sits in my chair.
Guest:You talk to them.
Guest:You're interested.
Guest:You're a good listener.
Guest:And you pry out of them.
Guest:And that story, my story, anybody's story is exactly the story of somebody listening at home.
Guest:And that gives you such relief, such relief.
Guest:calm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you're hearing we're all the same.
Guest:I'm not alone.
Guest:Oh my God, he feels the way I do.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She has the same thought.
Guest:She did it this way.
Guest:I'm going to try that way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what you give.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You give that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's helpful.
Guest:Yeah, I would think so.
Marc:And you give these kids a font they can wrap their brains around.
Guest:And hopefully a comedy that makes them laugh.
Guest:And then their parents write and say...
Guest:I'm walking by the kid's room.
Guest:My kid is laughing.
Guest:Not only is he laughing, he's laughing reading which he or she hated doing.
Guest:She's reading or he's reading her first book.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Didn't know.
Guest:Didn't know.
Marc:That's sweet.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So that's rewarding.
Guest:It's so rewarding.
Marc:Do you see yourself as an underachiever at this point still?
Guest:Not anymore.
Guest:Thank God.
Guest:When did that go away?
Guest:Yesterday.
Guest:No, but I can't deny how wonderful my career is, how wonderful my work life is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Can't deny it now, but I worry that it will be over in the next 10 minutes.
Marc:Well, you want to just stay here then?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:For 10 minutes?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:What do I do?
Guest:Can I help interview somebody?
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I don't have anyone else coming.
Guest:You have a third microphone?
Marc:You were it.
Marc:Yeah, there's a microphone under there.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:But you got a great family.
Guest:What's your wife do?
Guest:My wife is an unbelievable grandmother.
Guest:She was a champion for abused, abandoned, and neglected children in L.A.
Guest:And then she went...
Guest:and worked when Clinton was president in Washington for those children.
Guest:Except here's the sad thing.
Guest:Really, we talk a lot about children in America, but they don't write checks, so you don't really do a lot for them.
Guest:You just talk about them.
Guest:But the real reason is because they don't make contributions.
Guest:Which means?
Guest:Which means that we talk about how important their future is, how important their education is, but we really don't lift a finger.
Marc:Yeah, so nothing gets solved.
Marc:I was just talking about that today with a comedian friend of mine, Greg Proops, that the education system, if there isn't some context, there isn't some guidance, there isn't some sort of people that will engage these kids.
Guest:Well, we now teach toward a test.
Guest:Do you know that the number of prison cells is negotiated by tests taken by third graders?
Guest:What?
Marc:Is that real?
Guest:That's real.
Marc:That's real.
Marc:That's like one of the saddest things I've ever heard.
Guest:57% of human beings, or 62% somewhere in there, of human beings incarcerated, probably anywhere in the world, but in America and England, are in some way learning challenged.
Guest:They fell through the cracks.
Guest:I mean, of course, of endless... It's horrendous.
Marc:Yeah, and also there's a... Psychopathic.
Marc:Big prison business system here.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's big business.
Marc:So what do you do?
Marc:I mean, it's so sad to me.
Guest:Here's what you do.
Guest:You do it one little kid at a time.
Guest:Any child you meet, you tell them they're great.
Guest:You tell them they are powerful.
Guest:I travel and talk to children in classrooms.
Guest:I ask one question.
Guest:I say, anybody know what they're great at?
Guest:Every single child in that room, anywhere in the world that I have gone, knows what they're great at.
Guest:And that's where we should start in moving children toward being great adults on the earth.
Marc:Beautiful.
Marc:It's a beautiful way to end.
Marc:Do you feel good?
Marc:I feel so good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I'm a little worried because I have no idea how I'm getting home.
Guest:And I don't know where to... Hold on.
Guest:I'm going to take care of it.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But aside from that...
Guest:I feel great.
Guest:Did we miss anything?
Guest:No, I don't think we missed anything.
Guest:Good.
Guest:We talked about a lot of different things.
Guest:It was good.
Guest:That's what you want to do.
Guest:I think that's the best thing.
Guest:Did you feel good?
Guest:I do feel good.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Thanks, Henry.
Guest:Now, what do you do?
Marc:Do you edit it?
Marc:Yeah, a little bit.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:I have my producer do it.
Marc:Right now, I think I should turn off the thing.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Are you ready?
Marc:I'm ready.
Okay.
Marc:The Fonz is a sweet, sweet man.
Marc:What a guy.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:Love talking to him.
Marc:Love meeting him.
Marc:Very humble dude.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:It's really interesting.
Marc:I mean, he is, you know, in a lot of our minds, he's the Fonz and he's there and he's there forever.
Marc:He's there in our minds forever.
Marc:Forever.
Marc:It's a rare thing.
Marc:It's a rare thing.
Marc:So go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:The calendar.
Marc:Check the tour dates.
Marc:Want to play some guitar?
Marc:I got the Telecaster hooked up to a classic Ibanez Tube Screamer.
Marc:Earthquaker Grand Orbiter coming at you.
Guest:.
.
Guest:Boomer lives!