Episode 677 - Mike Binder
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucksters?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:I am Mark Maron.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:WTF.
Marc:My podcast.
Marc:Thank you for coming.
Marc:If you're new here, welcome.
Marc:If you've been here before, welcome back.
Marc:If you're leaving right now, see you later, fucker.
Marc:It's alright.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:Maybe fast forwarding up to the interview.
Marc:Whatever you want to do.
Marc:It's really okay with me.
Marc:As I detach more and more from what I think your expectations to be, I find freedom in that.
Marc:But nonetheless...
Marc:Today on the show, I have Mike Binder, the comedian, filmmaker, actor, and now author of a... He's written a new thriller.
Marc:You know, I'll tell you about Binder.
Marc:He just wrote a book.
Marc:He wrote a thriller called Keep Calm.
Marc:It's available everywhere tomorrow, February 2nd.
Marc:A thriller.
Marc:But this guy...
Marc:was a comic, and he's one of the reasons why I actually, not that I started doing comedy, but I love comedy.
Marc:I'll try to explain that in a minute.
Marc:Let me see if I can get some other business out of the way.
Marc:Well, as some of you know, Louis C.K.
Marc:did an amazing thing.
Marc:There's a few amazing things about what he's done with his new piece of work, Horace and Pete's.
Marc:This is a downloadable piece of... What would you even call it?
Marc:It's definitely not a television show because he has brought new definition to what is possible...
Marc:through self-producing and through internet distribution.
Marc:Well, here's what happened.
Marc:A couple weeks ago, Louie was in town.
Marc:He was here for the Television Critics Association thing out in Pasadena.
Marc:He was here with Zach.
Marc:And he came over, and we didn't get on the mics.
Marc:We just went out, and we had something to eat, and we sat in here and talked for about two hours about this thing he was doing that I had to be sworn to secrecy about.
Marc:You can go to louieck.net and download Horace and Pete.
Marc:And it all takes place on one or two sets.
Marc:It's in a bar.
Marc:But here's the beautiful thing about it.
Marc:Everybody was running around going, what's Louie going to do now that he's not doing the show?
Marc:What's he going to do?
Marc:Well, he sort of compulsively created this very dark but beautiful series that when you watch it reads like a stage play.
Marc:It stars Alan Alda, Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco, Jessica Lange, Stephen Wright, Kurt Metzger is fucking genius in it.
Marc:Fucking Kurt, Nick DiPaolo's there.
Marc:But he told me about this whole thing where he just self-financed this project.
Marc:He got all these amazing talents to work for whatever they're working for.
Marc:He reached out to a bunch of people.
Marc:He found out Paul Simon was a fan of his, and he met with Paul Simon, and Paul Simon agreed to do the song for it.
Marc:It was so beautiful.
Marc:He's sitting here.
Marc:He's playing me the theme song of Horse and Peace.
Marc:He's like, who is that?
Marc:And I'm like, oh, fuck.
Marc:I know that voice.
Marc:And it's like, fucking Paul Simon.
Marc:It's Paul Simon.
Marc:But anyways, we talked for like an hour, over an hour about this thing, about how it all came together, off mic, and then the fucker, we get up, he's like, oh, we really should have recorded that.
Marc:Yes, we should have.
Marc:Because the story of how Louis self-produced and kept secret an incredibly dark sort of undefinable
Marc:project I mean it's almost like an O'Neill play it's like it's like theater it's shot on a soundstage and there's no audience and it's full of dramatic pauses it's not you know necessarily funny all the time Alan Alda is doing something that I've never seen him do and it's all written by Lou and it's just Louie executing the Louie vision in a completely unfiltered way but in a completely structured way like I've never seen him do before and
Marc:And it's weird when you have a friend, and we are friends, who is possessed by a certain genius and gets things done.
Marc:So that's the difference between people who accomplish things and people who get upset about people who accomplish things or who chip away at people who accomplish things.
Marc:That's what they put their energy into.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:is people who accomplish things accomplish things.
Marc:They set their mind to something and they do it.
Marc:They harness their creativity.
Marc:They harness their passion.
Marc:They harness their instincts and they understand their limitations and work within them to create things.
Marc:And then there are people.
Marc:There are people out there that don't do that but still demand attention, demand to have a voice.
Marc:What was amazing to me was that Louis...
Marc:Just fuck Twitter.
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:Got off because he understood the vortex of it.
Marc:He understood his own compulsion around it, as I do, but I can't get out of it just yet.
Marc:Because I'll kick tomorrow.
Marc:But it takes... You really have to make a choice not to be a maggot among maggots.
Marc:Ferociously feeding on the corpse of culture.
Marc:Just fucking monsters out there.
Marc:It's just like...
Marc:I guess my point is, Louie's a fucking doer, and he's inspired, and he's a fucking genius, and it's always amazing to see a genius do what they do on their own terms.
Marc:And I think if you go watch this Horace and Pete thing, you'll be like, what the fuck is it?
Marc:Doesn't matter.
Marc:It's beautiful on a lot of levels.
Marc:It's something completely unto itself, and it's released...
Marc:Completely in its own world.
Marc:It's something that he is solely responsible for.
Marc:And nobody else got involved with it.
Marc:And it involves an amazing ensemble of talent.
Marc:And an amazing ensemble of what seems to be lighting and camera operators and art deck.
Marc:But it's like nothing you've ever seen before.
Marc:And it's just Louis once again kind of breaking the mold.
Marc:Shifting the paradigm.
Marc:Showing people what they can do if they just let their creativity fucking just let it roll.
Marc:So this is not a pay plug.
Marc:This is a friend plug because I got so fucking excited when I was talking to him.
Marc:Like I was beside myself that he had done this amazing thing and then I couldn't say anything about it, which isn't that big a problem.
Marc:I don't talk to many people, but I couldn't wait for it to be released.
Marc:Because how often does somebody do something that nobody knows anything about with that amount of talent and that amount of production?
Marc:It was just fucking spectacular.
Marc:Anyways, I loved it.
Marc:It's powerful.
Marc:It's dark.
Marc:It's moving.
Marc:It's multi-leveled.
Marc:It's theater.
Marc:It's fucking theater.
Marc:louis ck now can add playwright as far as i'm concerned to his uh long resume so check that out again not a sponsored plug friend plug i wish we would have fucking recorded the stories he told me in making that thing but anyways check that out horse and peace go to louisck.net mike binder mike binder's coming i can't like this is one of those people that you know many of you might not know
Marc:But I was fucking dying to talk to him.
Marc:When I was a kid and I watched the stand-up shows, Mike Binder was this young guy, almost looked like a kid.
Marc:He had his hair combed over, his blonde hair, he looked like he was like 20.
Marc:He was hilarious.
Marc:He was a hilarious comic.
Marc:I still remember the bits.
Marc:A day at Disneyland.
Marc:And also, I remember one thing I saw him do.
Marc:He grabbed a camera from someone in the audience, took a picture of his crotch, and he said, explain that to the guy at the drugstore.
Marc:And he made me want to do comedy.
Marc:Mike Binder.
Marc:And then when I got to the comedy store, he was this mythic guy there.
Marc:Like, you know, he hadn't been there in years, but he was like the golden boy.
Marc:He was like the, you know, he was Mitzi Shore's pick to be the next big comedy star.
Marc:He was at the comedy store when he was 20.
Marc:I don't know how old he was, maybe in his teens, 22, way back when the original crew was there.
Marc:He got all fucked up on drugs and pulled out.
Marc:But, you know, he went on to make pretty amazing movies.
Marc:Coupe de Vil, Crossing the Bridge, Indian Summer, Blank Man.
Marc:The Mind of the Married Man on HBO was his creation.
Marc:The Upside of Anger was his movie.
Marc:Rain Over Me was his movie.
Marc:But he was one of those guys that during the beginning of the independent movie thing, he was a guy writing and making his own movies.
Marc:And now he's writing thrillers.
Marc:But to me, he was this young guy who was hilarious.
Marc:So to get the whole story from Mike was really a treat for me.
Marc:So let's go now to my conversation with Mike Binder.
Thank you.
Marc:I've wanted to have you on for a long time because I think, if I'm really remembering, I think you were one of the first guys I saw do stand-up on television.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Is that possible?
Guest:Probably, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I started really young.
Guest:I was on television when I was 18 years old.
Guest:So what year would that have been?
Guest:jesus that's 74 no 77 77 yeah so i would have been like 14 yeah so i was 18 you're only that you're only a few years older than me yeah but i was 18 when i was on the tonight show and merv griffin right and i feel like it was merv griffin yeah i was on that i was on that about seven or eight times you know a day in disneyland right yeah that's right
Marc:And I know that you, when I talked to you on the phone, that you were nervous that I would get hung up on this stand-up because it's so long ago.
Marc:Well, no, it's not that.
Guest:It's just that, you know, the people that are into the comedy store and the comedy store scene are so into it.
Guest:And it's like, for me, it's such a small part of my life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I got there when I was 18 and I was gone when I was 26, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Out of stand-up.
Guest:Yeah, so it was like, it was an extended college for me, you know what I mean?
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:And no, I wasn't completely out of, I was out of the comedy store when I was about 26, and I was out of stand-up probably when I was about 28 or 29, you know?
Guest:It became one of those things where, you know, how many things can you do, you know?
Guest:Right, but let me just track it.
Guest:So where'd you grow up?
Guest:Detroit.
Guest:In the city.
Guest:In the city of Detroit, Seven Mile in Libanoi, yeah.
Guest:And what was that?
Guest:I lived a block from Baker's Keyboard Lounge, which was the world's oldest jazz club.
Guest:But when I was a kid, I would drive my bike through the alley, and then one day I remember seeing the marquee said, Comic Lenny Bruce.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:And I said to my dad, and this was...
Guest:You know, this was probably 63, 64, so I was only five years old, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Six years old.
Guest:And I said, what is a comic Lenny Bruce?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, that means comic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this guy's name is Lenny Bruce.
Guest:I go, what is a comic?
Guest:He said, it's a guy who stands on stage and tells funny jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went, oh, I want to do that.
Yeah.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah, no, my dad told me that story.
Guest:He goes, okay, that's what I want to do.
Guest:But Detroit was a great place to grow up.
Guest:What was your dad's business?
Guest:My dad was a builder.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:He was a builder and he was a home builder and he ended up doing very well.
Guest:He was from poor Russian family and he ended up working through the...
Guest:the generations of detroit and and and did very well his your grandparents were uh russian immigrants actually yeah jewish yeah everybody yeah oh yeah so yeah i mean that's uh i i don't know why i assume that but i always assume that yeah with comedians yeah here's a jewish and you know that i mean nobody in my world or my family was in show business right
Guest:But my parents liked it.
Guest:I'll tell you, there was a thing called the Children's Orthogenic School, which was like for underprivileged kids who had mental deficiencies.
Guest:Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, and my parents became the fundraisers and they would put on a big show every year for the Children's Orthogenic School at Fort Artorium and they would bring in the guests.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:So this was 69, 70, 68 in that era.
Guest:And this was in another era of show business because like one year, Sonny and Cher were the headliners.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they had their own network show.
Guest:Variety show.
Guest:And my mom and my dad and I picked them up at the airport.
Guest:I mean, this wasn't limos and all that, and I don't know if that was just Detroit, but they didn't seem, oh, you're picking us up, you know?
Guest:So we pick them up, and Sonny was from Detroit, so he was really excited to be there.
Guest:And we drop Cher at the Pontchartrain Hotel.
Guest:And my mom and her go up because my mom wants to see all her wigs or whatever.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And my dad and Sonny and I go to a place called Detroit Coney, Lafayette Coney Island, downtown Detroit.
Yeah.
Guest:Sonny has to have a coney, which any Detroiter understands.
Guest:What is it, a hot dog?
Guest:Yeah, it's a chili dog with mustard, chili, and onions.
Guest:And Sonny looks out the window.
Guest:There's construction in the middle of the street, downtown Detroit.
Guest:And he gets out, and a guy comes out of the sewer, and Sonny yells, Uncle Davey!
Guest:And Sonny goes in the middle of the street and hugs this guy that just came out of the sewer.
Guest:It's his uncle.
Wow.
Guest:And we brought in Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet with their opening act was Richard Pryor.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And who bombed horribly and did all these retarded kid jokes that...
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:He got himself in a lot of trouble.
Guest:You saw that?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I was there.
Guest:I went to the airport and brought him back.
Guest:Were you like 11 or 12?
Guest:I was probably 11 at that time.
Marc:So, he wasn't quite the Richard Pryor that we know.
Guest:No, he was total unknown.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was an opening act for Steve Lawrence and Idiot and May.
Guest:And he felt horrible and he had bombed.
Guest:And I remember driving him in the car with him.
Guest:But so...
Guest:Early on, I kind of sensed that people in show business were different and unique, and I liked how important they were to my parents.
Guest:How many kids in your family?
Guest:There were four boys.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Four boys.
Guest:And then my dad remarried, and I had two stepsisters.
Guest:So they got divorced?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, my parents got divorced when I was young, yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And did you stay in touch with everybody?
Guest:Or you have good relationships with both of them?
Guest:I can get any of them on the phone right now, I swear.
Guest:It will not be a problem.
Guest:All my brothers and sisters pick up the phone for me.
Guest:No, I'm the second.
Guest:In the larger family, I'm the third.
Guest:Between my brothers and I, I'm the second.
Marc:So when did you decide to do, I mean, comedy, if you started that young?
Guest:Oh, I was doing stand-up in high school.
Guest:And I would go up to Ann Arbor and play clubs called the Pretzel Bell.
Guest:And there was a place called the Delta Lady in Ferndale, Michigan.
Guest:No comedy clubs yet at this time.
Guest:No, there were no comedy clubs.
Guest:The fact the first comedy club, the first real comedy club was in Detroit, Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle, which I'm sure you know of.
Guest:I don't know it.
Guest:No, it's been there forever.
Guest:It's still there?
Guest:That was the first.
Guest:No, listen.
Guest:In the big cities, there were the showcases.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Catch Rising Star.
Guest:Catch and the comedy store and the improv and up in San Francisco, you can go up and you can get on at the Holy City Zoo.
Guest:But there hadn't been places that put a headline comic and really made a night of comedy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we were all, all of us, channeling.
Guest:gallagher and bruce baum and we were all on a show called make me laugh right which came out at the perfect time it was a syndicated show and it was it came out at 11 p.m at a time when everyone was tired of the news yeah it was right before the iranian hostage situation yeah and nobody watched the news for about a year it was just a
Guest:People, so this, there was this 11 o'clock strip show and it was a big hit.
Guest:Bobby Vance, right?
Guest:Bobby Van, Bobby Van.
Guest:Van, Bobby Van.
Guest:And so Mark Ridley, this guy in Detroit had the idea.
Guest:He called me, he said, look,
Guest:Why don't I do a club where you come in, and then I'll have two locals open for you, and it'll be a comedy club, just like the comedy store, only without 15 guys in a night.
Guest:And then there was one in Cleveland, a guy named Dino Vance.
Guest:Dino Vince and a couple guys opened the Cleveland Comedy Club, and then it started to take off.
Guest:There was Columbus and Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Comedy Club, which was managed by a guy named Jimmy Miller, who ended up becoming a huge man.
Guest:Dennis's brother.
Guest:Dennis's brother.
Guest:And Dennis used to open for me in Columbus, in Cleveland, at the Cleveland Comedy Club, which, in fact, that was Dennis' first road gig.
Guest:When he was a prop act?
Guest:He was a huge prop act, and we used to tease him about it.
Guest:It would take 30 minutes to set that damn act up, and then he does it for 15 minutes.
Guest:But his first road act was opening for me, and then he opened for Coulier for a week, you know?
Guest:So when you started doing it when you were like 16 or whatever, were you doing dinner clubs?
Guest:You opening for musical acts?
Guest:No.
Guest:When I first started, I would go into jazz clubs because that's what I read that Lenny Bruce used to do.
Marc:Who were your heroes at that time?
Guest:Who were you watching?
Guest:Woody Allen.
Guest:I wanted to be Woody Allen my whole life.
Guest:You had that record.
Guest:I did too when I was younger.
Guest:Loved it.
Guest:The stand-up year.
Marc:The stand-up record is amazing.
Guest:I shot a moose.
Guest:I shot a moose.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the moose ate the Berkowitzes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so we would go... I would go in and I would take a friend of mine and we would go to a jazz club and we'd say, hey, I'm a comedian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this was... There were no comedians at this time.
Guest:This was in between... This was right before Steve Martin took off nationally.
Guest:And it was in between Klein and Carlin and Cosby.
Guest:And stand-up comedy had died.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It just... There was...
Guest:There was a rumbling of it I didn't know of or I became aware of in New York with the Catch Rising Star with the Richard Lewis and the Ed Bluestones and the David Brenner in that.
Guest:Ed Bluestone, I haven't heard that name in a while.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and the improv was there too.
Guest:So I would say, can I go on?
Guest:And they'd say, yeah, comedian, what the hell is that?
Guest:And the audience didn't know how to react to me, you know?
Guest:And some nights I'd get them and some nights I wouldn't.
Guest:You were like 17.
Guest:I was 17.
Guest:They must have been like, what's this kid doing up here?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, it was fun.
Guest:And sometimes they'd heckle me.
Guest:One guy said, you're about as funny as my middle leg, you know?
Marc:Your middle leg.
Guest:You know, it was like...
Guest:And then I'd be downtown Detroit.
Guest:That's when I really started to get funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was when I'd be downtown Detroit playing to all black audiences and I would go, you know, okay, a little white boy here.
Guest:It's time for a little white boy to teach you guys what funny is.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Record scratch, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was good.
Guest:You know, I ended up getting, I would always go on stage to these all black audiences and
Guest:and they'd be like, you know, we're going to eat you alive.
Guest:Right, it's hard.
Guest:And I'd always end up getting a huge applause at the end because they'd go, he got us, you know, and he worked his ass off.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it's a different type of room.
Marc:You better show up.
Marc:You better do the job.
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And I was able to really just...
Guest:You know, I would disarm them.
Guest:It was so different.
Guest:And I did a lot of jokes about being downtown Detroit from the suburbs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, but it was fun.
Guest:And then at a certain point, I just, as soon as I graduated high school, I left.
Guest:I drove out to California, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I ended up at the comedy store, you know, and I spent... What year was that?
Marc:Must have just been what?
Guest:77.
Guest:77.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So she'd been at it for about four years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Three or four years, but it was still the original crew.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were the old guys.
Guest:I was like the freshman when Robin Williams, Robin McClorum, when I first saw him.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And he was also from my hometown.
Guest:Robin was?
Guest:Yeah, Birmingham, Michigan.
Guest:So we had a lot in common.
Guest:He didn't always go by Robin Williams?
Guest:No.
Guest:First it was Robin McClorum.
Guest:That was his real name?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I never knew that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who else was around?
Guest:David Letterman was around.
Guest:He was a big bearded guy.
Guest:And George Miller and Tom Dreesen and Elaine Boosler and Ed Bluestone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was the crew.
Guest:Ollie Joe.
Guest:Well, yeah, but Ollie Joe at the time when I first got out here wasn't quite a comedian yet.
Guest:He was just Ollie Prater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was the doorman and he wasn't funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And one day he put a cowboy hat on and became Ollie Joe Prater and got funny, you know?
Guest:He was just a door guy.
Guest:Yeah, he was just a door guy.
Guest:And I was a door guy.
Guest:That was my job.
Guest:Well, I was a door guy for a year.
Guest:Yeah, I was a door guy.
Guest:There was a system in place.
Guest:My favorite story is I'm sitting...
Guest:Standing in front of the Westwood Comedy Store one night.
Guest:We had just booked a Saturday show.
Guest:It was packed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a little car pulls up.
Guest:A little bumbling guy gets out of the passenger seat.
Guest:He says, there's a table for Neil Israel and his name is at the door.
Guest:And he's drunk out of his mind.
Guest:He's just saying what he was told to say.
Guest:I go, excuse me?
Guest:He goes,
Guest:There's a table for Neil Israel and his name is at the door.
Guest:And I realize it's Ringo Starr and he's drunk out of his mind.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we seat him and way at the back, this table with him and Neil Israel and their wives.
Guest:And he starts to heckle the shit out of David Letterman, the young David Letterman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Letterman just chews the guy up, chews the guy up.
Guest:And the audience doesn't know that it's Ringo Starr.
Guest:Does David?
Guest:No, but he finally, Ringo tells him, Davis Ringo.
Guest:And he goes, Ringo who?
Guest:Ringo Starr.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It's Ringo Starr?
Guest:He goes, so you're going to fuck my career up like you fucked yours up?
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was a great time.
Guest:You know, again, I was 18 years old.
Marc:What do they call you?
Marc:They call you... Kid comedy.
Guest:Kid comedy.
Guest:And then one night I'm there and Norman Lear comes up to me afterwards.
Guest:Didn't even know he was there.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, hey, I want you to call me tomorrow.
Yeah.
Guest:And Norman Lear at the time was huge.
Guest:Was Jimmy Walker around then?
Guest:Yeah, Jimmy Walker was around.
Guest:He was the one guy that was a star.
Guest:He was the only guy that was a star out of that young.
Guest:So when he would come in, it would be, oh my God.
Guest:Then Richard started coming around again.
Guest:He had been gone for a few years.
Guest:But after I was there, about two years, he started coming back.
Marc:That must have been amazing to watch.
Guest:Yeah, that was great.
Guest:That was great.
Guest:That was really special.
Marc:Did you ever tell him you saw him when you were a kid?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he knew the whole story, and he remembered it completely.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:He didn't remember me being in the car, but he remembered the whole night.
Guest:And years later, I was on this dinner with Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet, and they remembered it exactly.
Guest:They were like, we were so mad at Richie.
Guest:We were so mad.
Guest:We had taken him everywhere, and he was horrible that night.
Guest:They remember.
Guest:Oh, she remembered it.
Guest:So what happened with Norman Lear?
Guest:He told you to call?
Guest:He had me do a pilot.
Guest:I did a pilot for him called Apple Pie.
Guest:It was my first.
Guest:And I'd only been out in town less than a year.
Guest:And it was a network show that was very short-lived.
Guest:But it was with Dick Libertini and Rue McClanahan and Jack Guilford and Dabney Coleman.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It was an incredible.
Guest:And you were like 19?
Guest:I was probably not 19 yet, you know.
Marc:So you're out here in Hollywood, and the Comedy Store is in its most exciting time, probably.
Marc:Jay Leno's around, too, I imagine.
Guest:Yeah, Jay Leno became like my older brother.
Guest:He was one of my best friends.
Guest:Really?
Guest:After about...
Guest:And you were a little out of control, right?
Guest:Yeah, and that was the problem.
Guest:Jay was really, really, really great guy to me, but we had a parting of the ways.
Guest:But I used to go to his house with him every night after the show, and we'd watch The Tonight Show, and whoever was on, and we'd play Risk.
Guest:And they'd get up in the morning and call them and come over and we'd hang out all day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and I got sick.
Guest:I got very sick as a kid.
Guest:I was doing a lot of drugs and I was eating a lot of garbage and I was away from home and I got a form of colitis.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And Leno took me to the hospital late one night and called my dad and...
Guest:I was in the hospital for about three weeks, and he really took care of me because my father couldn't come out at the time, and they ended up becoming friends.
Guest:Your dad and Jay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My dad loved old cars and had some old cars, so whenever he would come to Detroit,
Guest:my dad would let jay driver and there's these vintage cars around for his his gigs you know yeah but and they stayed friends to till the day my dad died you know that's sweet yeah but you didn't stay friends with him yeah i did i just we had a phone out of the ways you know over the strike you know you were there for that yeah i was there for the strike and i just didn't really understand it you know and because you were like 18
Guest:Yeah, it didn't make sense to me.
Guest:It felt like everybody was just really mean to Mitzi, and they were playing Bud's Club, and he wasn't paying anything either.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:So I was there all day shooting a movie.
Guest:The other thing is I got this role in a CBS movie to play Alan Bursky in the Freddie Prinze story.
Marc:Because he couldn't get Bursky to play Bursky?
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:Bursky was always mad about it.
Guest:But I made a mistake.
Guest:Jay was such a good friend to mine and Tom Treeson.
Guest:One night I just went on.
Guest:I went, this is stupid.
Guest:Mitzi talked me into it.
Guest:I went on and I remember going outside and I could just see Leno was so upset.
Guest:He goes, they say you went on, but I know you wouldn't do it.
Guest:I went, no, I did.
Guest:I went on.
Guest:I just think the whole thing's stupid.
Marc:You didn't quite understand it.
Guest:I made a mistake.
Guest:I mean, it was dumb.
Guest:It was probably the stupidest thing I ever did in my whole career.
Guest:Was being a scab.
Guest:Yeah, and it didn't hurt my career in any way because that wasn't really show business.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's what people found out either right away or never found out, that the comedy store was not show business.
Guest:It had nothing to do with show business.
Guest:I remember years later I was sitting on the set of a movie and someone from the comedy store called me
Guest:And I just realized they're not in the business.
Guest:Oh, it's its own world.
Guest:But it was stupid of me.
Guest:But how many people... And I also think at the time, you've got to understand my father...
Guest:You know, it was this kind of entrepreneurial Detroit guy who built himself up from nothing, who didn't have any sense of the unions.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:He was not a union guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the time, in his mind, the unions were destroying Detroit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so he was like, I'd call him and I'd say, Dad, there's this thing and Jay and Elaine Boozer, they're starting a union and they don't want... Well, Mitch, he's been good to you.
Guest:I go, I know.
Guest:I don't know what to do.
Guest:And I'm shooting the movie there.
Guest:He goes, just...
Guest:fuck these guys yeah fuck these guys yeah you know and it was you know he was a mistake because he didn't know what he was talking about and and I should have listened to Jay and Jay was like really good to me yeah he was really really good to me as a young guy you know yeah and um I mean we stayed friends and I would go on the tonight show when he was on and
Guest:You know, we never fought, but you could just see in his eyes he was never as warm to me again, you know?
Marc:It's interesting because a lot of people don't know about that strike, and I talk about the book a lot, the Nodalsayer book, you know, I'm dying up here.
Guest:I never saw it, but, you know, it's funny.
Guest:I know that there were... I mean, people have told me what's in it.
Guest:I was...
Guest:I thought it was a pretty good book.
Guest:I was... What have you heard?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I just... It's all about that.
Guest:I was in London shooting Upside of Anger and I'd shot like for 18 days and I promised him I'd do this interview and I was sitting in Hyde Park for maybe two hours talking to him about a world that I didn't even remember, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and i i remember thinking i remember just talking about just the way i'm talking to you about it like at the time it was a big deal but it was only a big deal to us nobody wasn't like national comedy was shut down this week you know yeah day 114 in the comedy shut down no one cared well it was just it was just guys trying to get paid and mitzi was insisting that it was a workshop and didn't want to pay
Guest:Yeah, and in her defense, what it really was, and this is the truth, although I do say that it was stupid to cross a picket line with your peers.
Guest:I wouldn't do that today.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was also fueled on by the guy, all the people that didn't get spots.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, all the people that it was...
Guest:In her mind, it was a real meritocracy and the best comedians got the best spots.
Guest:There were a lot of people that weren't getting good spots and said, this is bullshit.
Guest:We got to bring her down.
Guest:And they came to hate her.
Guest:And she said, I'll pay you guys 35 bucks a spot.
Guest:And that wasn't good enough.
Guest:And they were striking from Bud's club and Bud wasn't paying anything either.
Guest:It was just the way it was.
Guest:It never bothered me that we weren't getting paid because I felt like it was just high school or just college and we were getting paid.
Guest:We were learning and we were going to get paid up the road.
Guest:And I felt most of the guy, you know, when the strike started, I spoke to Letterman about it and he was like, I think it's stupid.
Guest:I don't think anyone should get paid.
Guest:This is a showcase.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Leno was one of the few guys, Leno Andreessen and Elaine Boosler.
Guest:Elaine Boosler wanted to be Norma Rae.
Guest:She was very passionate about it, but those three were the only real working comics that wanted to strike.
Guest:Yes, they wanted to do what was right, but a lot of them just wanted to tear her down.
Guest:All of them...
Guest:she was a very divisive character.
Guest:She was, she had her favorites and if you weren't one of them, you know, you were, she was evil, you know, which I understand.
Guest:You know, listen, again, like I say, my thing was, it was a great, you know, it was a great place to have gone through, but,
Guest:You stay there after a while, it means you failed.
Guest:It doesn't mean you're succeeding.
Guest:Yeah, it's a little dark.
Guest:Was it dark back then?
Guest:Yeah, it was dark.
Guest:But Jay used to say that to me.
Guest:He'd say, you know, do you understand?
Guest:The goal is not to get in to the comedy store and be a regular and stay there.
Guest:The goal is to get the hell out of the comedy store.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:And a lot of these guys didn't see it that way.
Guest:And I was really lucky.
Guest:I was very lucky in...
Guest:the sense that number one make me laugh took me on the road yeah playing the comedy clubs and also opening for big names in comics and musicians yeah yeah yeah never for comics opening but i would open for kenny logins and that was the gig wasn't it yeah yeah
Marc:Yeah, because there was no comedy club, so you'd get on those concerts.
Guest:No, so I'd be on the road.
Guest:I went on the road with Andy Williams one summer.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think Mitzi used to live in his old house.
Guest:No, she lived down the street from him.
Guest:Oh, from Andy Williams?
Guest:Two houses away.
Guest:But...
Marc:But were you like part of the family though?
Marc:I mean, Mitzi really took a liking to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You'd hang out at the house.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Who was she dating?
Marc:Like Steve Landisberg?
Marc:Steve Landisberg.
Marc:At the time.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:And I also took care of Pauly and Peter during the day as one of my first jobs.
Guest:To babysit?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But again, when you run into any of the shores, when you run into, they talk about the strike as if it was, you know, I had this guy, I'm not going to say his name, but he came over to my office and he wanted to show me old photos and books.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would, we changed history.
Guest:We were at the apex.
Guest:Do you realize?
Guest:No, we didn't.
Guest:We didn't.
Guest:Honestly, I'm sorry.
Guest:But the strike, us, that time period.
Guest:No, it was the pinnacle of American comedy.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, you know what the one thing is?
Marc:Is that the door deal in the store in the main room still holds.
Marc:So on a good night, you can make a couple hundred bucks.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:And actually, she had agreed to do that, but they still wanted a strike.
Guest:Did you know LeBitkin?
Marc:Yeah, sure.
Marc:And he was an unstable guy anyways, huh?
Guest:I never saw it like that.
Guest:I never saw it like that.
Guest:But obviously, when you jump off a hotel building, you're unstable.
Guest:You know, stable guys actually just check into the hotel and go to sleep.
Oh.
Guest:You know, the unstable ones jump off the roof.
Guest:I mean, especially when you're jumping off because you're not getting spots at the comedy store.
Guest:It's a problem.
Guest:All right, you know, I mean, and they wanted to turn Lebetkin into a living legend or a legend.
Guest:A martyr.
Guest:But the fact is...
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:When your homeland is taken over, maybe then you light yourself on fire.
Guest:But when you don't get spots at a local comedy club, jumping off a building is...
Guest:A decision you made to end your life, and I'm not going to turn you into any great hero, you know?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because you are.
Guest:You're a little unstable.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But he was a great guy.
Guest:I mean, I didn't know him well, but he was always nice to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I never saw it as, I saw it as like, why would you do that over the strike?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I've always felt that, you know, whenever, listen, I've had some suicide in my family, you know, and, and the best line when I, and there's a great AA line, you kill yourself, you, five dollars.
Guest:Five years.
Marc:You, you, you killed the wrong guy.
Marc:Yeah, if you kill yourself in the first five years of sobriety, you're killing the wrong guy.
Guest:Well, Steve Lebedkin, if he had lived four days, he would have realized he killed the wrong guy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, the,
Guest:That was not a good reason, unless there was other stuff going on, which we never know.
Guest:When someone kills themselves, God bless them, because you just don't know.
Guest:But in terms of people were saying he did it to shine a light on the injustice at the comedy store, and I was like, that's the wrong light.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, it haunted that place forever.
Marc:So...
Marc:You're doing the comedy.
Marc:The make me laugh thing happened, so now you're getting work.
Marc:You're making a living in show business.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Can you just substantiate some story?
Marc:Was there a story where you were on the roof of the comedy store and you pulled a billboard down?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What was that?
Guest:That was funny.
Guest:That was...
Guest:There was a guy right across the street from the comedy store.
Guest:It was in a different era.
Guest:I don't think he could do this anyway, but he bought an ad.
Guest:It was an actor and he bought the billboard of himself.
Guest:Dan Davis, actor.
Guest:And it was him and he was in his head stuck above the billboard.
Guest:And we went out in the middle of the night and we tied a rope around his head.
Guest:And we sawed the head off just enough so that a good tug, it would come off and had the rope across string and had the audience go to the window.
Guest:And we all pulled the rope and just pulled the guy's head right off.
Guest:The billboard just was driving me crazy.
Guest:I was doing like 10 minutes a night on the fact that a guy, look at this guy.
Guest:In the original room, you could
Guest:see it out of the window you know and everybody waiting in line saw it coming in so they they knew dan davis it was a great piece and it just built to the point where harris pete and i rigged this thing up and we pulled this guy's from across the street yeah we were and blake harris blake clark and i we we climbed up during the day and you know thank god one of us didn't fall you know it was crazy but
Guest:But it was a fun time.
Guest:That was a good performance piece.
Marc:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:So when did you like, because your career is so varied and you've had a long one and you've done a lot of amazing things.
Marc:So what is that moment like where did the cleaning up coincide with stopping comedy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It did.
Guest:I was playing the clubs and traveling and when I was about 25, I was doing a lot of drugs and alcohol.
Guest:Did you know a comedian named Jesse Aragon?
Marc:Maybe his picture.
Marc:I knew Harris briefly because I was a doorman in 87.
Marc:I got there late.
Marc:So your generation was already like a mythology.
Marc:You guys established the mythology of the place, but it still sort of operated that way.
Marc:And Harris was sort of still around.
Marc:And Blake was still around, but they were in their 40s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, we... Jesse Aragon.
Guest:Jesse was the first guy that got sober in AA.
Guest:And I was in town, and I needed some pot or something.
Guest:I'm sober.
Guest:how'd you do that and he took me to an AA meeting and I didn't like it and uh some guys followed me out and said what's the problem you know and I said well first of all I'm a Jew and you have your meetings in in churches right so we'll start from there second of all I'm not really sure I don't want to smoke pot I just don't want to drink anymore do blow yeah
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But the fact is, it started to work for me.
Guest:I started going to these Uncle John's Men's Pancake House luncheons on the west side.
Guest:Guys were funny.
Guest:And I got sober, and I just went off the road.
Guest:And the other side thing that took me away from comedy was the fact that I was getting acting work.
Guest:And I also wrote, I had done a special for HBO, which really cut my ties completely with the Comedy Store.
Guest:I did a concert in Detroit with me, Dave Coulier, Paul Rodriguez, and Howie Mandel.
Guest:So it was a comedy special.
Guest:It was called the Detroit Comedy Jam.
Guest:But first it was just a live series of concerts we did, which did very well in Detroit.
Guest:And you produced it?
Guest:I produced it.
Guest:I put it all together and hosted it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Chris Albrecht was my agent at the time at ICM.
Marc:Chris Albrecht, who actually started as a doorman at the Improv in New York.
Marc:In New York, yeah.
Marc:Went on to head HBO.
Guest:Yeah, but first he went on to become an agent at ICM and handled a lot of comedians.
Guest:And I brought him back to show him this big show we did.
Guest:And he said, let's do this as a special.
Guest:And it was an HBO special called the Detroit Comedy Jam.
Guest:And Mitzi was like, that's my shit you're doing.
Guest:I go, what, guys with a microphone?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:What part is yours?
Guest:It's in Detroit.
Guest:It's in a concert hall.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, you shouldn't be a producer.
Guest:You should just be a comedian and let me produce that.
Guest:I said, well, okay.
Guest:And so apparently she hated me for that for a long time.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah, that was it.
Marc:That's interesting.
Guest:So I did this thing called Detroit Comedy Jam.
Guest:And then I did... The guy that bought the specials from HBO at the time and took them to colleges...
Guest:was a guy, I'm bummed that I'm blanking his name, because he was such a great guy, but he also, he ran Columbia TriStar Home Video, and he would make little independent movies, and he made Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and Drugstore Cowboy, his name's gonna come back to me, I'm just blanking, it's one of those brain farts, but anyway, he had sold my special to HBO,
Guest:I wrote a script called The Bridge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was me and my friends growing up in Detroit in the early 70s, getting into some trouble.
Guest:It was a real coming of age piece.
Guest:And Bobby took it to this guy.
Guest:And he said, if you want to make it for $3 million, I'll let you make this movie.
Guest:And he gave me $3 million through Bobby Neumeier, the guy who did Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we went to Minneapolis, and we kind of recreated my childhood.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you wrote the script.
Guest:I wrote the script and I directed the movie.
Guest:It was a little $3 million movie.
Guest:And Josh Charles was the star.
Guest:He played me and Stephen Baldwin was in it.
Guest:And it became Crossing the Bridge.
Guest:And Touchstone bought it.
Guest:Disney bought it.
Guest:And that kind of changed my life in the sense that it was a little movie.
Guest:It didn't make any money.
Guest:It got great reviews.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it got me going.
Guest:Jeffrey Katzenberg said, what do you want to do next?
Guest:And I said, I want to do this piece about my childhood at camp.
Guest:up in canada katzenberg and eisner watched my movie late one night at eisner's house and said this is our childhood you know let's buy this all right and they bought it and then i went into a meeting with him and said what do you want to do next i said i want to do this thing called indian summer and that was a big movie for you i mean that was a big movie it had amazing cast yeah and those did whoa it was like for
Guest:You know, it was like the number two or three movie for two weeks in a row, which at the time was a big deal.
Guest:It was at a time when Touchstone was trying for a lot of singles and doubles and weren't doing big movies.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was a program that they quickly discarded.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But again, I made the movie for nine million.
Guest:It made like
Guest:maybe 30 million or something for them.
Marc:How did you get on your feet with all that stuff around, you know, directing and producing?
Marc:I mean, you just took to it or did you hire good ADs?
Marc:Who guided you to that?
Guest:No, you know, I had written this movie called Coupe de Ville.
Guest:That was the other, I skipped that.
Guest:So I was cleaned up, stopped doing stand-up.
Guest:Did you miss it?
Guest:At first I did, yeah.
Guest:At first I did, but I didn't want to be in the clubs until I felt really good and stable.
Guest:But I was writing, and I always, from day one, I was always writing screenplays.
Guest:I wrote so many of them, and I wrote this script based on a true story in my family about my dad and his two brothers taking a Cadillac down to Florida.
Guest:And Larry Bresner, who was Robin's manager, who I knew through Robin,
Guest:read it, and helped me get it made, and he really godfathered my whole career.
Guest:He really became my mentor, and he really, he got the movie made.
Guest:A guy named Joe Roth directed it, who ended up becoming a big head of the studios.
Guest:That was Coupe Deville.
Guest:That was Coupe de Ville.
Guest:So I had had to produce screenplay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I wrote this other one, which was another three guys in a car, Stephen Baldwin, Jason Gedrick, and Josh Charles, and growing up in Detroit.
Guest:And it was really an era.
Guest:And I got it made.
Guest:And like I said, Katzenberg and Eisner liked it.
Guest:So they gave me a big deal at Disney.
Guest:which that and you directed that one though that was i directed the second one uh it became crossing the bridge and how did you how did you like learn how to direct you don't you just you just bullshit you just bullshit you know you get a good ad i was on the set of the coupe deville and i watched joe roth and i thought if this guy can do it i can do it right you know and
Guest:And I got a good AD, and Bobby was a good producer.
Guest:He had worked with first-time directors, and he got me a really great... I mean, my DP, the director of photography, was a guy named Tom Siegel who... Right, the good DP.
Guest:That's important.
Guest:He became Thomas Newton Siegel, and he became a big-time DP.
Guest:He is a big-time DP.
Marc:Well, those are the guys that really like as a director, I don't know why I was saying AD, but the DP, he's the guy where you go, well, this is what I want.
Marc:And he's like, all right, we can do it from here and from here and then we'll do that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay, good.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:So the truth is you can direct if you admit you don't know what you're doing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's what Bobby and Sharon Bialy, my first casting director who's still direct casting every movie I've ever done, they said, don't pretend you know what you're doing.
Guest:Just ask for help.
Guest:Right.
Guest:and so i did and i just made the movie and then this indian summer we went back up to my old summer camp and you know and sam ramey who was a kid in my cabin played was one of the stars of the movie and and it was really it was just again i spent the first few years just recreating my life you know in sequence that sam ramey was a childhood friend of yours oh yeah
Guest:Sam and I were friends since we were little kids.
Guest:We still are to this day.
Guest:He's one of my best friends.
Guest:He's a good director.
Marc:Yeah, he's a good director.
Marc:Do you guys talk about that stuff?
Guest:About what stuff?
Guest:Directing?
Guest:Yeah, we talk about how much more successful he is than I am, how much more money he has.
Marc:But you're still friends, that's good.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he was great in the movie.
Guest:He played this weirdo maintenance guy that we kind of knew.
Guest:He was aping a guy we knew.
Guest:He was brilliant.
Guest:Him and Alan Arkin did these incredible physical scenes together.
Marc:That must have been amazing working with Arkin at just second time out directing.
Guest:Well, I worked with... He was in my first movie that I wrote, Coop de Vil.
Guest:The guy who was in Coop de Vil.
Guest:He's in Coop de Vil.
Guest:And he was in Indian Summer.
Guest:He's hilarious, man.
Guest:He's hilarious.
Guest:He's an incredible guy.
Guest:And so anyway, by that point, I had to say, okay...
Guest:And what happened was I got another HBO special out of my special, a one-night stand they wanted me to do.
Guest:And I got a gig opening for, I believe, the Pointer Sisters at Caesars Palace.
Guest:And at the same time, I was prepping this movie, you know?
Guest:And I did the one-night stand, and I did Caesar's Palace.
Guest:But there was a... It's funny.
Guest:And the one-night stand, I shot it in...
Guest:In Chicago, they would do two one-night stands and one night at these little concert clubs.
Guest:Was it an hour or a half hour?
Guest:It was a half hour.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So, Ellen DeGeneres did a half hour and I did a half hour.
Guest:And I just... Between that and then I had to go back to Vegas and then I had to go and prep this movie.
Guest:And it was too much.
Guest:I was stressed out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And again, I didn't want to drink, you know.
Guest:So, something had to go.
Guest:So, I...
Guest:The last stand-up I ever really did, other than a benefit with Jay for Charlie Hill, the last stand-up I ever did in my life was Caesar's Palace.
Guest:I played Caesar's Palace with the Pointer Sisters, and it was good, and I did that half-hour HBO thing, and I just said, okay, you know,
Guest:I'm not that good at it.
Guest:I'm basically doing the same act I always was.
Guest:And if I go with the movies, I think I have a chance to really... Be creative.
Guest:Be creative and do a new thing every year.
Guest:And I made a conscious decision.
Guest:And I was probably 28 or 29 years old at the time.
Guest:And I just, I never did it again, you know, and I, it was such a big part of my life that I thought it was going to be hard to quit, you know, because it becomes a drug that need to get up every night.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Get up.
Guest:Did you get up?
Guest:I'm going out.
Guest:Can I get up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and to the point of years later, I'd go into comedy clubs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'd be sitting in the back and someone would come up and goes, the owner wants to know if you want to get up.
Guest:no i'd say i'm just you know do you want to get up yeah you know and i just it was like no i really when when you get far enough away from it it's alien again to get on stage so that and probably terrifying well the other thing that really became great was
Guest:I would go to see comedy shows, even in that quick time after I quit, and go, yeah, he's funny.
Guest:Oh, I wish I did it.
Guest:That's a good joke.
Guest:But after a couple years, I'd be there laughing my ass off with the crowd.
Guest:And I forgot how great it was to love comedy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You get cynical, yeah.
Guest:Because, you know, I remember some of the magician friends I had, they'd just watch it and look at how the trick's done, you know?
Guest:And that's what happens.
Guest:And I got back into this thing where I'm a great audience member.
Guest:I laugh my ass off at a funny comedian.
Guest:And I got that back.
Guest:Oh, that's a gift.
Guest:So, again, by the time I was 30, I was making a movie every year.
Guest:I was doing things.
Guest:And I didn't miss it at all.
Guest:And it was also...
Guest:I guess really the only stand-up that I stayed really good friends with was Tim Allen and Dave Goulier.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they were Detroit guys, you know?
Marc:How's Tim doing?
Guest:Tim's doing really good.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Yeah, we just went down to the opening of the Broad together.
Guest:Oh, how was that place?
Guest:Beautiful?
Guest:It's beautiful, yeah.
Guest:Eli Broad is my godfather.
Guest:He is?
Guest:Yeah, he's from Detroit too.
Guest:And he was my dad's best friend growing up all his whole life.
Guest:And so I know him very well.
Guest:And he's still around?
Guest:He's still around, yeah.
Marc:And this is his collection?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that the idea?
Guest:He basically gave a billion-dollar gift to the city of Los Angeles.
Guest:Did he live out here?
Guest:He lived out here for many years.
Guest:He still does.
Marc:And he was friends with your father growing up?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so he's got this.
Marc:So you knew a lot of the art from his house?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I know them very well.
Guest:I've traveled with them.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:I mean, they're part of our family, you know?
Guest:And you have kids?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:How many?
Guest:I have a 21-year-old son and a 22-year-old daughter.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you married to the same mom?
Guest:Yeah, same mom.
Guest:I've been married to the same woman for 28 years.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, congratulations on that.
Guest:Yeah, thanks.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:I've been sober 31 years.
Guest:That's incredible, man.
Guest:And, you know, I met her at the bank where the comedy store writes the checks on.
Guest:And I'd come in all messed up.
Guest:To cash the check?
Guest:To cash the check.
Guest:You know...
Guest:Can I see the managers?
Guest:Bullshit.
Guest:What are you bouncing my checks for?
Guest:And then this 20-year-old blonde manager would come over.
Guest:She was so hot.
Guest:But she was such a bitch.
Guest:And I used to call her the bitch at the bank.
Guest:And I actually moved to another branch because this woman was so hard on me.
Guest:And I just had this total crush on her.
Guest:But I was a screw-up.
Guest:I was a screw-up.
Guest:I mean, I was...
Guest:All my checks were for $90 to the same person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Figure that out, you know?
Guest:And Domino's Pizza.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:And she would look through these and she'd go, Mr. Binder, you know, you got to keep money in your account if you're writing these checks.
Guest:And she could just see.
Guest:She knew.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I got sober and I ran into her at an AA meeting.
Guest:And she had been sober a few years longer than me.
Guest:And she just knew me as a deadbeat at the bank.
Guest:But she was like, I am so glad you got sober.
Guest:And we started dating and I married the bitch at the bank.
You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's sweet.
Marc:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:But like the number of movies you made is pretty astounding to me.
Marc:I mean, you made a lot of movies.
Guest:Yeah, and a couple of them are good.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:No, that's the thing.
Guest:I mean, I really had to flounder because I didn't have any training and I didn't really... All I knew was Woody Allen and those guys, you know.
Guest:But, you know, it's been a really great experience making movies because...
Guest:It's like doing an hour and then you get it and you get it done and then you start over with nothing again every year.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But like the directors I've talked to and like the process of it, you're all in for a couple of years.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, you know, listen, some of them take five, six years to get made, and some of them, I write a lot of scripts and a lot of them, but by the time you know you're going to make it, you're all in for a year.
Guest:It's a year.
Marc:Now, when you do, like, you wrote, you wrote Blank Man?
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:Blank Man was an aberration.
Guest:It's the only movie I've ever done that I didn't write.
Marc:You just directed it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Damon and I were friends from the comedy store.
Guest:He used to be so good, didn't he?
Guest:He still is.
Guest:He still is, man.
Guest:He's a great stand-up comic.
Marc:When I was a doorman there, he would come in and just do this free-form shit.
Guest:Oh, he was brilliant, and what happened was after Indian Summer, I had gotten, Disney wanted me to do another movie, and that weekend, I ran into Damon at the theater.
Guest:He was there watching the movie, and he said, you want to do this Blank Man, and it was like a Batman parody.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I remember.
Guest:And I loved Batman growing up, and Sam had just done Dark Man, which, you know, and
Guest:So I said, yeah.
Guest:And my agent, Jim Berk at the time said, this is going to kill your career.
Guest:And I said, it's not my movie.
Guest:I'm producing a friend's, it's like producing a friend's album.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:How could, how, why am I going to, if it doesn't do well, it's his fault.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I said, we're going to make it funny as hell.
Guest:He said, it's going to kill you.
Guest:And Jeff Katzenberg, he had Jeff Katzenberg call me and said, don't do this.
Guest:And I said, look, I want to work with Damon.
Guest:I gave him a year in my life.
Guest:It was the best year.
Guest:He, David, Alan Greer, and I, we laughed our ass off.
Guest:We made a movie that tested through the roof that Sony thought was going to be a huge hit.
Guest:and damon was really funny in it and it was a really good version of that thing and a batman spoof and um it bombed yeah and i i couldn't get a movie made for three years it killed my career and my agent was i told you so you know did he stay your agent
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then you come back with one of your own movies or no?
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:Then I made a little small little movie.
Guest:I had to kind of reinvent myself.
Guest:I made this little movie called Sex Monster with myself as the star and Meryl Hemingway.
Guest:I made it for $600,000.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that kind of got me going again.
Guest:Did anyone go see it?
Guest:I don't know if anyone went and saw it, but I don't even think it was released.
Guest:I think HBO bought it as well.
Guest:It went up to the Aspen... Yeah, Comedy and Arts Festival.
Guest:Right, and it won Best Picture, and I won Best Actor, and Chris Albrecht said, you gotta do a show for us, which became Mind of the Married Man.
Guest:Yeah, I like that show.
Guest:So they bought that movie and they bought the show.
Guest:And so that's what it is.
Guest:It never really was in theaters.
Guest:But it helped me a lot.
Guest:And it changed my, you know, it kind of moved me to another direction.
Guest:And I worked on the show, which to me was just little movies, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had total creative control.
Marc:What happened to that?
Marc:How many of you did what?
Guest:Two seasons?
Marc:Two seasons, yeah.
Marc:With Bobby Slayton.
Guest:Bobby Slayton was great.
Marc:He was great in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He still wishes it was going.
Guest:Slayton, he sent me the funniest thing.
Guest:When the show got canceled, he wrote me a note.
Guest:Binder, thanks for having me on your show.
Guest:In retrospect, a little more of me, a little less of you, we'd still be on the air.
Guest:Slayton.
Guest:What happened with that show?
Guest:I don't know, you know?
Guest:I mean, the show was a little snake bit from the get-go, you know?
Guest:I mean, we aired Tuesday, September 11th, 2001.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I was on the air.
Guest:We were in New York.
Guest:We had a premiere party September 10th in New York City.
Guest:In the morning I got up on September 11th and I go, I'm sitting with Diane Sawyer on the air showing clips from the show that airs tonight.
Guest:And she's in the middle of my interview.
Guest:She says, excuse me, but.
Guest:We're going to break away to a news thing now.
Guest:And the news is Charles Gibson saying that a small plane's hit the World Trade Center.
Marc:You were on the air, on a panel, on a show.
Marc:And Good Morning America.
Marc:Before they knew what was happening, really.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And yeah, they actually still show that interview on the anniversaries of...
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, for ABC, Good Morning America, would they take you back and show you?
Guest:And Diane Sawyer, you know, so the show came out and, you know, it was one of those things that was supposed to be a male sex in the city and it was very real, but...
Guest:A lot of women had problems with it, and a lot of guys had problems with it.
Marc:Like, why are you talking about it?
Guest:Yeah, there was that.
Guest:Or the other group was, that ain't me.
Guest:This is puerile.
Guest:This is juvenile.
Guest:And, you know, it's like what I learned from that show, because we did good work.
Guest:It was really good actors, and Bruce Paltrow directed it.
Guest:I mean, we did good...
Guest:A married man, white man's sexuality is the third rail of American comedy.
Guest:In fact, any married man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Chris Rock did this thing, I think I love my wife.
Guest:I went, you're dead.
Guest:I ran into him at a premiere of one of my movies.
Guest:He told me that was the title.
Guest:I said, change that title and that movie's not going to work.
Guest:Because...
Guest:women don't want to see a movie about a married guy that wants to fuck someone other than their wife.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they don't want... You can't go... You don't go in packs with your friends to see that and the wives don't go, oh, he just wanted to go see that movie with the guys all fuck masseuses.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't... Whereas we don't... Guys go...
Guest:Okay, Sex and the City movie, you guys all went and you had fun and the girls all got laid by studs, that's fine.
Guest:Just come home on time, you know?
Guest:We don't care.
Guest:But guys would tell me, I have to pretend I'm asleep when my wife walks in the room when mine and the Mary's on, or else we're going to get in a fight talking about... Do you think that way?
Guest:No shit, so it couldn't go either way.
Guest:Yeah, so it's just not a...
Guest:And just in general, any time you've tried to do that, kind of, anyone who does that kind of horny men thing, you know?
Guest:So we were, you know, listen, our ratings were really good, you know?
Guest:And some people liked us and some people hated us, you know?
Guest:And it was also...
Guest:It was a time at HBO that they really started getting into star-fucking, and they bought some really expensive shows.
Guest:So they didn't have the money to do a third season, but they hired me to write it.
Guest:And I went off and did Upside of Anger.
Guest:Was that the one with Kevin Costner?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That did all right, right?
Guest:Yeah, it did very well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you were in it?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Did you play a sleazy guy?
Guest:Yeah, I played a sleazy guy.
Guest:With the mustache?
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:Yeah, that's funny, yeah.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And, you know, when I came back, Chris was like, okay, maybe we should do a third season.
Guest:And he hemmed and hawed.
Guest:And I started this movie with Ben Affleck called Man About Town.
Guest:And by the time that was done, you know, they take a year.
Guest:It just, it was too far away.
Guest:You know, a lot of the actors had series.
Guest:And so that's what happened.
Guest:You know, it just, it was one of those shows that either you loved it or you hated it.
Guest:And the people that hated it were really loud about hating it.
Marc:Men and women.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A lot of our biggest problems were men reviewers.
Marc:Keep your mouth shut.
Guest:It wasn't that.
Guest:There were a few of those, but there were a lot of these guys that just don't have that camaraderie with other guys, and they don't sit around and talk about pussy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:guys don't talk like that.
Guest:And this is just his, you know, these are sick guys, you know?
Guest:And the truth is a lot of guys do, guys would, I would be out running.
Guest:And I'd see a guy park a car, he'd pull me over and he'd run alongside me and go, dude, you're giving away all the secrets, you know?
Guest:And I had more guys, you know, tell me that.
Guest:And I also found it to be a good Rorschach test.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:The people, when I would run into a married couple and they watched it and liked it, and there were a lot of them.
Guest:I always knew they had a good marriage.
Guest:Because my wife, she didn't understand.
Guest:She'd go, why do women get so upset?
Guest:You think I don't know that he thinks like this?
Guest:You think I don't know the way these guys behave when we're not around?
Guest:yeah you know so anyway it was uh you know listen it should have it should have gone longer but it was perfect for me because it was time for me to move on again you know it was like I say upside of anger really helped me out a lot and then I made this movie with Ben Affleck and then I made Rain Over Me with Adam Sandler that was a 9-11 movie that was a
Guest:more or less a 9-11 movie.
Guest:Aftermath.
Guest:It was like about a story of what happened three years later.
Guest:And it had to do with the fact that I was there that night and on the streets with people covered with dust and sitting around telling stories on curbs about what they'd seen.
Guest:And then I came back about a year and a half later with my family and I thought, man, because there were some people that night walking the streets of
Guest:2001 that were you could tell you just look at them and go their lives are ruined someone they lost somebody they were just they were just mumbling yeah i was saying i lived in nastoria then it was devastating of the weeks after with the pictures everywhere it was devastating smell and that yeah so about a year and a half later i was there and i thought i wonder there are probably some people still wandering these streets that that night never ended for and i just wrote this piece and i wasn't going to do with tom cruise and javier bardem
Guest:And Tom wanted to do it, and Javier wanted to do it, and whatever happened, it ended up Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle, which was fine.
Guest:And we had a great time making it, and it was a very tough movie, and we showed it to the surviving families, the groups, and they loved it.
Guest:And Adam was really quite good in it.
Guest:you know it you know it with anyone else in it it would have been people would say it did really good you know maybe 24 25 million dollars i make my movies small yeah but adam's uh 24 25 million dollar adam sandler movie is a bomb you know but it was a different type of movie for him yeah yeah he knew and he knew that but he took it so personally
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I mean, I was just talking to this about somebody because I think he was really good in all those kind of movies he did.
Guest:But because none of them were big box office bonnet hits, he kind of turned back to his...
Guest:You know, Jack and Jill and Zardoz and, you know, whatever that, you know.
Guest:And I think he just said, fuck it, I'm safe here and this is what my fans want.
Guest:And I think he could really have been like Tom Hanks.
Guest:I think that's how talented that guy is.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he really didn't want to go that direction.
Guest:And by the time he did, he tried a few other things.
Guest:They just didn't work, you know.
Marc:So that movie did all right.
Marc:It was a little heavy.
Marc:I remember I didn't see it because I thought it was heavy.
Guest:It did all right.
Guest:It did all right.
Guest:But the interesting thing about all these movies, not just my movies, but they have these incredible afterlives now.
Guest:So it's almost like a book.
Guest:And the...
Guest:The theatrical release is just a way to get the publicity out.
Guest:I just did this movie, Black or White, with Kevin Costner, which I think, between Canada and America, did $25 million at the box office.
Guest:We made it for $7 million.
Guest:It's doing so well on Netflix and iTunes and Amazon.
Guest:People are coming up to me all the time talking about that movie.
Guest:And it'll be around forever.
Guest:I got a text last night from some guy.
Guest:I said, I watched the movie.
Guest:And then we went and ran it upside of anger.
Guest:So in the old days, you didn't have that.
Guest:If the movie didn't work, the movie didn't work.
Guest:And maybe it would play on HBO late at night.
Guest:But now...
Guest:The movie comes out and within a month, it's going everywhere around the world and people can watch it on their big screens at home.
Guest:I mean, we've made a lot more money on black or white than we made at the box office already in television.
Guest:Isn't that amazing?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So the whole paradigm is shifting and it just kind of, and it didn't lose money, but it seems like none of your movies, they seem to do all right.
Guest:None of my movies ever lose money.
Guest:because again I made that movie for 9 million dollars Louisiana gave us 2 million back Kevin put up most of the money Kevin and I own that movie he obviously owns a lot more than I do but we own the movie forever and you know it's just a new as you say a paradigm and believe me
Guest:Within a blink, within the most two years, movies will come out same date, same place, everywhere in the world, everywhere you can buy a movie.
Guest:Just like an album.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, Beyonce puts out an album.
Guest:You can buy it anywhere in the world online.
Guest:But a movie, there's still this antiquated distribution where it doesn't come to Canton, Ohio for six months.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And it doesn't go to Belgrade and Belfast for three years sometimes.
Guest:And the internet has made the world so small.
Guest:But you're not hung up on the theater experience?
Guest:I'm not at all.
Guest:Not one bit.
Guest:I like the idea that eventually...
Guest:a movie will come out in the theater and you can go that opening weekend or for the opening weekend you can pay a premium and watch it on itunes yeah for 49 bucks right you know with the family with the family would be uh cheaper yeah a little bit yeah
Guest:And then eventually that price will come down and it'll come out of the theaters, but it'll open in the whole world and you can watch it on your iPad or your phone anywhere, anywhere, anytime.
Guest:And that's what we're getting to.
Guest:And for me, I have no, honestly, I can tell you that I've had great experiences in my sitting room with my wife and kids watching movies that are just as good as going out to the theater.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:and then i like to go to the theater sometime but it really has nothing to do with the size of the movie or how it really is you know sometimes what's your work ethic man because like you like you know i talk to writers and i got my own problems with writing but it seems like you can't help yourself i mean you know i i didn't know what we were going to talk about and i knew we're going to talk about movies and comedy but then you send me a book you write a novel
Guest:I have a novel coming out February 1st.
Guest:Is that your first novel?
Guest:Yes, my first novel.
Marc:You just can't stop working.
Guest:No, it's really sad.
Marc:Well, no, it's not.
Marc:It's a pretty good compulsion to have.
Guest:It's really funny.
Guest:I went to Aspen this weekend for this Charlie Rose weekend that he has.
Guest:And I was lucky enough to fly in a private plane on the way back with these people.
Guest:And after about 20 minutes, I said, I'm going to go back and write.
Guest:And the guy who's a builder...
Guest:He said, yeah, you did that on the way out here.
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:He goes, are you under some heavy deadline?
Guest:I went, no, I'm a neurotic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have to write every day.
Guest:Yeah, you do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a fucking gift.
Guest:It's a gift.
Guest:I've really, you know, it's been a great gift for me.
Guest:First of all, I mean, it's a God-given gift.
Guest:I really, I don't take it for granted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I always have an idea.
Guest:Oh, I've never run out of ideas.
Guest:That's a lot like Woody Allen.
Guest:I've always had... I have so many scripts in the drawer that I finished and I'll do another rewrite.
Guest:And I write every day.
Guest:And you like it.
Guest:I do.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:I write every day.
Guest:It's a little bit of a torture because it's like sometimes it's like a shit that won't come out.
Guest:You just got to squeeze.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you got to really work it.
Guest:And sometimes they come out like...
Guest:Just, you know, like black or white.
Guest:I had that idea in my head for eight years.
Guest:It was based on a true story that tangentially affected my life and the fact that my wife had this nephew, a biracial kid named Sean, who we just loved, whose mother died.
Guest:He had us up in Santa Monica, his family up there, and the family down in...
Guest:in South Central, and I always thought that'd be a great story to tell a little kid and do a custody battle, which we didn't have.
Guest:And it rolled around in my head for years, and then when I went to write it, it took three weeks.
Guest:And Costner just went, okay, we're doing it this summer.
Guest:And sometimes they come out like that, and sometimes it's a struggle, but I always have an idea.
Guest:I always...
Guest:and i get up every morning you know i get up and i have some quiet time and some prayer and meditation and and i get it together you know and i i spend three to four hours writing and and it's noon yeah you know and then i'm done you know and and um you know and then i i you know i i put some serious time into masturbation sure which which makes sense you gotta keep that those two things that's what keeps you young that's ernest borgnine
Guest:You know, but no, you know, I mean, I have the whole day basically in business stuff, unless I'm shooting.
Guest:I don't write when I'm shooting.
Guest:Do you have a movie in the works now?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I'm actually, I have two movies in the works, but I have this novel coming out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll keep calm.
Guest:And it's a thriller.
Guest:It's a thriller.
Guest:And I'm making a movie with New Line with Chuck Rovan and Alex Gartner at Atlas are producing it.
Guest:And these are the guys that did The Dark Knight.
Guest:Who's that?
Marc:Who you got signed up for stars?
Guest:Well, we're just putting it together now, so I don't want to say.
Guest:It sounds like a big movie.
Guest:It is a big movie.
Guest:It's like a $60 million action film.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:So it's different for me.
Guest:That's the biggest movie you've done, huh?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's big.
Guest:But it's also, the book is a real departure for me.
Guest:The book is, it's an American who's at number 10 Downing Street, and a bomb goes off, and he's framed for it, and he realizes right away, once it goes off, that's why I was invited, because he's got a past.
Guest:that would say they're gonna make him a suspect they're blaming on me and now before tonight by the end of the night they're gonna kill me yeah yeah yeah and they're gonna and then they're just gonna be this guy this nut did it right and so it's him trying to figure out how to stay alive while a young inspector in so 16 which is the anti-terror yeah
Guest:This young girl is chasing him across England because she knows he didn't do it.
Guest:And she knows there's something behind it.
Marc:So you could get a real action guy for this.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, I will.
Guest:And the young woman inspector, Steele, is a great character, which it's going to be a trilogy.
Guest:I've already got all three stories.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:it's a newborn identity yeah and the girl it because the guy's gonna run for three uh no no no he doesn't run for three years he gets he gets to sit down for a minute okay but uh but yeah it's and so i'm working on that and you know i just i'm just really lucky like you say i've always got the next thing coming out and uh i just wrote a script for reese witherspoon based on a book that she loved called napkin notes now she reached out to you
Marc:I think she did, yeah.
Marc:It's amazing to me because the reason I like to talk about comedy and just about your place in my mind is that you lock people in, and I think that's sort of the fear of staying in comedy on one level and also how you're perceived.
Marc:And I talk to a lot of guys that started in comedy, but it's rare, you're rare, that went on to do all these amazing things.
Marc:And I think you have to attach some of it to the introduction into show businesses through comedy.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:You know, it's sort of interesting how everyone's going to do their career and how they're going to make the break, you know?
Guest:I think so.
Guest:You know, I mean, by the same token, it's been an evolving journey for me that I would like to now... I actually... I really like writing novels.
Guest:You know, I'd like to create some television shows.
Guest:I'm working on Ray Donovan now.
Guest:you know and as what as a writer uh-huh and um i'd like to get into that world you'll still do staff writing or you're doing you know you you you're on staff over there yeah wow yeah i've never done it but i'm doing it yeah and um i did it for about eight weeks on uh one of chuck lori's sitcoms and realized that i had to get the hell out real fast which one
Guest:Mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, the writers were brilliant, but that whole Chuck Lorre world is a piece of work.
Guest:Well, do you like writing comedy?
Guest:No.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No, I didn't like that, but they were geniuses.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They were incredible.
Guest:And so when they called me about Ray Donovan, I was first like, oh, I already tried this.
Guest:But I love the show.
Guest:And I thought, OK, this is a little bit more in the type of show I would create if I did a show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, so I just see it as evolving to the books and more movies.
Guest:And, you know, eventually, you know, I just, I don't want to stay at one place.
Guest:And it might have, I probably would have been more successful if I just did one thing over and over again with one kind of movie or whatever.
Guest:But by the same token...
Guest:You know, it's really hard for me to do something unless I love it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm sure you understand that.
Marc:Yeah, it's a horrible thing to have to do something.
Marc:It's not why we signed up for this.
Guest:Also, when I'm looking at you, you know, you've created this whole world for yourself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You've created your show and you do your stand-up.
Guest:you just do your own shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And for me, I'm better off just doing my own shit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, and so it just makes sense, but I can't do it unless it's like, okay, yeah, I,
Marc:i'm really into this i'm really into this right yeah and but do you ever get to that point though where you've gotten yourself into something and you just overwhelmed like it sounded to me like when you had to let go of comedy there's that time where you just just stretch too thin and you just gotta you gotta pick it there's only so much bandwidth i don't care who you are i don't care who you are and and that's why i think guys like woody allen have been really smart and
Guest:You know, it's always funny.
Guest:I'm friends with Albert Brooks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm telling him to come on the show already, will you?
Guest:He's never coming on the show.
Guest:All right.
Guest:But we go for walks.
Guest:No offense, but he just... He doesn't like to talk about himself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we go for walks in the neighborhood.
Guest:He's very smart.
Guest:You know, I say, why aren't you doing another...
Guest:albert brooks movie and netflix amazon anyone would let you make a movie um concentrating on the acting yeah you know he understands he's only got so much bandwidth right and um i've come to those places in my life and and uh i one of the things that i've been good at is
Guest:when i get a green light and i start a movie that's all i work on right for for the duration of the movie you know when i get back and i'm in the editing room i'm writing something else but while i'm making the movie while i'm shooting it while i'm casting it you know it that's what i do you know so you have to you have to really put blinders on yeah you know yep well you're making a good living in show business
Guest:yeah i mean i'm lucky yeah i'm lucky i mean i will tell you also that i had almost five years where i didn't make a dollar in show business in the middle of my after blank man no no i had three years then and then i got on a roll but after um after rain over me i didn't make a movie for five years what'd you do wrote
Guest:did you think about going back to comedy i did a lot no i opened up a hot dog joint on sunset boulevard you did i did that that was fun but then that was fun did it stay open no it was open for a couple years detroit style yeah oh yeah yeah next to the whiskey a go-go it was called coney dog oh yeah but but then i realized that this isn't just me hiding you know yeah and um so it was voluntary you didn't do the
Guest:movie you didn't know no it was a combination of every time i would get a movie together the financing would fall apart the the world changed for it was the strike came so i i used to make a lot of money writing scripts for other people like i wrote a movie for julia roberts and i wrote for bob zemeckis and that went away
Guest:And the kind of movies that I made, dramedies, there was no market for them for a while, whereas they're still hard, but at least now, you know, you make a movie for $7 to $10 million with a movie star, and you know that Netflix or Amazon or HBO or Showtime or someone is going to buy that thing.
Guest:You're never going to lose money on it.
Guest:It's like a buffer.
Guest:But there was four or five years where that buffer wasn't there.
Guest:The DVD went away.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right?
Guest:The DVD, you know, when I did Upside of Anger,
Guest:That movie might have made $25 million at the box office, but it probably made $70 million in DVD.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because every guy or woman, you know, Joan Allen, Kevin Costner, yeah, I saw that movie.
Guest:I could buy it for $19 and watch it forever or have it in my living room.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was at every store and everything.
Guest:And it sold like crazy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But that went away.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So until the Netflix and the Amazon and the iTunes came, picked up again, there was no second market for my kind of movies.
Guest:Did you get depressed?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I'd get depressed.
Guest:It was a very dark period of my life.
Guest:But, you know, without...
Guest:No, no, but without, you know, I mean, I was lucky because I'm sober and I really have a very strong faith in God, very strong faith.
Guest:And, you know, I thought this is a time in my life and I was 50 years old.
Guest:I thought this is either going to kill me and I'm going to start having an affair or I'm going to start drinking again or I'm going to gain 40 pounds or I'm going to go somewhere and run away.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or I'm going to just stay here and figure it out and keep writing every day and kind of turn inward and really find out who I am.
Guest:Not to say it was just some brave, you know, I wasn't, you know, but you really find out who you are during tough times.
Guest:And I remember a couple of the young guys or younger guys that I work with in AA,
Guest:they'd say man I don't know what I would have done if I couldn't if I went broke because I lost I built a mansion I lost it I mean I lost so much property wise physical wise but I gained so much because I really learned that I was okay with nothing as long as I was writing and as long as I was
Guest:a really good guy.
Guest:Kept your family together.
Guest:Kept my family together.
Guest:I picked up a lot of AA commitments.
Guest:I had a meeting that I ran, and I was the doorman or the greeter or the chip guy, so I had to be at a meeting every day.
Guest:And I really kind of had spent a life where my career and how successful I was was the most important thing.
Guest:And I was forced to for five years just how good a guy I was each day.
Guest:That became the most important thing.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And I had a sense that it was going to swing back for me.
Guest:I really did.
Guest:I really had a sense that it would swing back and I'd have an even more successful period in my life if I didn't melt down during this period, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was really hard.
Guest:Five years is a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Especially when, from the time I was 18...
Guest:And I always did something.
Guest:I always had a show, a movie, a this or that going every year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I wasn't as successful as Woody Allen, but I had the same life as him.
Guest:I was constantly casting, shooting, editing, going.
Guest:And then it just went away, you know.
Guest:But I look at it now as a really, it was as what I needed more than anything because it,
Guest:I think the work, not that the work is deeper because I think that's a cliche, but the work is clearer.
Guest:If I'm writing a thriller, I know exactly what I'm writing.
Guest:A lot of the reviews and the stuff that I could take some constructive criticism was that some of my movies didn't know what they wanted to be.
Marc:And now you're clear on that.
Marc:I bet you're clear on who your friends are too.
Guest:That's so true.
Guest:That's really true.
Guest:I mean, you know, my best friends are one's a dentist and one's a home builder.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you really realize that the guys in the business, they can't help but be affected by the price of your stock.
Guest:And you don't want them to be, but they are.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, the funny thing is, is like I said at the beginning, you know, I thought you were fucking hilarious.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:And it was like, you know, like I can still remember.
Marc:You had such a, as a stand-up, you had such a confidence and such a, like there was something, you know, completely fresh and like, you know, it was just.
Marc:Yeah, that's what I had.
Guest:I had a poised,
Guest:that my talent didn't quite get to know you know i mean i just was i was comfortable on stage yeah because i wanted to be on there so bad as a young guy and yeah and um and especially when i was sober i i i really had looked like a 50 year old in a in a 18 year old's body doing a real polished act
Guest:But it wasn't fresh.
Guest:There was no unique point of view to it.
Guest:It was just me doing jokes.
Guest:And as soon as I realized that, I said, okay, it's time to hang this up.
Marc:But just in terms of my personal life, I think that you were one of the guys I saw and I'm like, people do this.
Marc:You can do this.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And I appreciate that.
Guest:Well, I remember when I started and my dad would say, you're really going to be a comedian?
Guest:And I'd say, look, dad, let me just show you something.
Guest:And I showed him Billy Braver on The Tonight Show.
Guest:Do you know Billy Braver?
Guest:I had him in here.
Guest:Oh, yeah, okay.
Guest:With his lunchbox?
Guest:Yeah, I said, this guy, you've never heard of him, but he's making a living.
Guest:And then I showed him Tom Dreesen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This guy goes out.
Guest:There are hundreds and hundreds of guys around this country that are doing great as comedians.
Guest:You think because you don't know of them that I'm going into this horrible business.
Guest:But you're wrong.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Marc:Did he finally believe you?
Guest:He did, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, my dad came to love comedians.
Guest:He opened up a comedy club in Fort Myers, Florida.
Guest:He did?
Guest:Yeah, called the Bijou Comedy Club.
Guest:And he really, when he was retired, he financed it, put it this way.
Guest:And all the guys, Seinfeld and Tim Allen and...
Guest:so many guys came and played and my he was a great respect for you no no no it was a good gig yeah it was a good gig it was in fort myers florida and my dad would take them boating my dad had a fishing boat and he would call me up and go mike i'm here with tim allen mike i'm here with jerry seinfeld you know and um and they liked him and he loved he you know his through his friendship with leno
Guest:And through me, he really learned to love comedians.
Guest:My dad, he died young.
Guest:He had an accident.
Guest:At 72, he had a bad fall, and he was dead eight days later.
Guest:But he was a great guy, and he really, through me, learned to understand comedians
Guest:even long after I was out of comedy, he was friends with comedians, and he loved comedians, and he really understood not only what a tough life it is, but what a unique skill set it is.
Guest:And he would call me up and say, you've got to see this kid, Bill Hicks.
Guest:I said, yeah, I know Bill Hicks, Dad.
Marc:Did he ever bother you to get back in it?
Guest:no no he knew he knew that i was making movies and he liked that too he liked to come on the sets and you know he liked to uh pal around with kevin costner and sure and and you know i had this movie donald sutherland was in one of my movies and that made my dad happy you know that's sweet man that's sweet and you work with your brother
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My brother, not anymore.
Guest:We're doing our own things now.
Guest:He's, my brother's actually producing the biography of Dionne Warwick's life.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But you got a good relationship with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Great relationship.
Guest:It just, you know, you can only work with, for your big brother so many years.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, I'm a big brother.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It's not easy being a little brother ever.
Guest:Yeah, and at a certain point, plus it was very conveniently timed to the time when I stopped getting work.
Guest:He was like, hey, man, what's your next movie?
Guest:Because if not, I'm on my own.
Guest:And he's gone on.
Guest:He's done very well, actually.
Marc:And so have you, man.
Marc:I really appreciate you talking to me, buddy.
Marc:I'm really glad I came.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Thanks, Mike.
Marc:That was pretty cool.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:That was me and Mike Binder.
Marc:It was a very exciting talk to Mike.
Marc:Got a lot of respect for that guy for a lot of reasons.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Check out the merch.
Marc:Check out the posters.
Marc:Check out, you know, you can get on the mailing list.
Marc:You can comment there through Facebook so I know who you are.
Marc:So you're not just a maggot among maggots.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There won't be one of those people.
Marc:Cyber maggots.
Marc:Internet's full of them.
Marc:Boomer lives.