BONUS Archive Deep Dive - The Legends
Guest:So this week was our Carol Burnett episode.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that came together pretty good on your end?
Guest:Oh, sure.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, like, it's a very full, thorough talk that you had with her, which, you know, I wasn't surprised that it was.
Guest:But also, you know, pretty much a straight line.
Guest:Like, you guys didn't, she didn't, you know, she could tell the story.
Guest:She knew, you know, how to do it.
Marc:Oh, for sure.
Marc:And I noticed that when I was kind of going over her life and watching the old stuff and sort of getting my personal relationship with her together in terms of remembering when I was a kid and just how funny it all was and remains.
Marc:And I knew that she had talked a lot.
Marc:I mean, she's done these over her life.
Marc:There's been documentaries and whatnot.
Marc:So when that happens, I find it to be...
Marc:not intimidating, but I have to realize that you get to a certain age and you have the stories you have.
Marc:And there was maybe one or two moments where I think we got some new things and some new memories and some new moments.
Marc:But there's also things that I notice about talking to these older performers and stars that there is a sort of
Marc:a place where if you do ask them a question that is more personal or a little off the beaten path in terms of their life, that you do register a moment of awkwardness, if not just sort of like, you know, not unwillingness, but just sort of like, I don't know, I have to access that.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:It's almost like a momentary paralysis of their brain.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:And they're not expecting to talk about it and they may not want to.
Marc:And it's just not part of the groove they're in.
Marc:But I've become sensitive to that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what were you talking about specifically with her, like when you brought up her daughter or...
Marc:Yeah, because, I mean, that was, you know, yeah, the daughter and the alcohol abuse and the Russian outreach thing was, it's part of her story, but I feel like she maybe talked about it when it was happening, which was a long time ago now.
Marc:Yeah, and then she put that away.
Marc:Right, that's right.
Marc:And, you know, and she addressed it, but it was not on the front burner.
Marc:Not a going concern, yeah.
Marc:It didn't go anywhere, really.
Guest:Right.
Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, you know, I thought it was interesting, though, that the very first thing you brought up with her was going up to that area, same area, to interview Jonathan Winters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what it made me do is go back and look at that episode.
Guest:And it's interesting.
Guest:That episode was in 2011.
Guest:It is episode 173.
Guest:And that was the first time you ever talked to anyone of that age group and stature.
Guest:for the full Marin subscribers that there are, you know, episodes from 500 backwards that only you subscribers can get.
Guest:And, you know, so we like to draw attention to the things that are in the archives that you might want to listen to.
Guest:And that's where the bulk of these episodes with those legends happened in those first 500 episodes.
Guest:But I did think it was interesting that it wasn't until, you know, over two years of us doing the show that that you wound up talking to Jonathan.
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, there was sort of the, it's intimidating to, you know, to converge on those things, you know.
Marc:I think Pasternak had something to do with setting it up.
Marc:I think it was almost 100% Dan Pasternak.
Marc:Yeah, he keeps a relationship with a lot of those guys, the ones that are still left.
Guest:Who is Dan Pasternak for people?
Marc:Dan Pasternak, you know, started as a comic.
Marc:He was at the Comedy Store a bit before me and had his own run in with drugs and Kenison and all that.
Marc:And then I guess he kind of eased out of it a bit.
Marc:And then he became an executive at Comedy Central for a while.
Marc:But he's also a guy who who has done some interview shows.
Marc:He's put a lot of interviews together with some of these legends.
Marc:He's he's always on, you know, within the world of comedy, facilitating this or that.
Marc:Like he was the talent executive on a couple of shows.
Marc:He was almost a talent executive on on my show at Comedy Central.
Marc:I think he brought me into Comedy Central.
Marc:Did he have something to do with IFC when you did Marin over there?
Marc:Oh, yeah, that's it.
Marc:Yeah, he must have been at IFC then.
Marc:And he had something to do with, he reissued, he had something to do with the reissue of, or the first issue of a lost Jonathan Winters album.
Marc:He's just a guy that's part of the fabric of comedy.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:He was at IFC.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In terms of when I did my show there, but he was not the guy on my beat.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But yeah, but he's always in touch with me and he's a big archivist of comedy and a comedy historian in his own right.
Guest:it's similar to like how you know people told Robin Williams you know Mark Pitta told Robin Williams you should do this show this you know Mark Maron he's talking to comedians and I think it was like Greg Berent told Ben Stiller to do the show because that was how the show was getting spread around in those early years it was like
Guest:comics were listening to it or people who are in the comedy community.
Guest:And then they would get the people they wanted to hear on the show to do it.
Guest:I remember Aziz Ansari told Amy Poehler to do it.
Guest:Like he was like, you got to do it.
Guest:I want to hear your episode of it.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Well that, yeah.
Marc:Well that was how we booked it for the first many, many episodes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'd forgotten about that with Barron.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But Pitta, like, you know, he was mad at me for a while.
Marc:Uh, cause I don't know, he felt I didn't give him enough credit for, uh, for landing Robin.
Marc:And then I tried to make it right.
Marc:And I think I kind of made it right.
Marc:And I invited him on the show and you, you know, I, I don't know, you know, what, what can you do?
Marc:But with Jonathan, you know, that journey was, it's an important thing.
Marc:That was before Robin.
Guest:No, it was after it was about, you know, over a year after Robin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was really the first time you ever went and spoke with someone.
Guest:I mean, just frankly, spoke with someone elderly.
Guest:Like prior to that, these were all I think, you know, you had done a talk with Ron Shock, who is in ill health, but he wasn't exactly old.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's things that we learned over the time of doing interviews with older guys.
Marc:But I remember driving up to Jonathan's and I knew that Pastor Nack had told me, like, you know, I hope you get a good day.
Marc:You know, when you have somebody with mental illness that's profound and older, you know, it just it might not be your day.
Marc:And and it worked out.
Marc:You know, he was he was kind of juiced about it.
Marc:I don't have a very specific recollection of who was taking care of him.
Marc:But I do remember some things, and I probably said it on the episode, because it's a story I tell all the time that for me was really the highlight of the thing.
Marc:It's a very nerve-wracking thing for me to be around very elderly people sometimes, because I'm not used to it.
Marc:And I don't know how together they are, how fragile they are.
Marc:We learned over time that if I'm going to interview a person of a certain age to bring the boom...
Marc:So they don't have to hold the mic.
Marc:I think we noticed that first with maybe a might have been Shelley Berman where, you know, the mic just kept drifting down.
Marc:You know, for me, it's second nature to hold a mic and maybe at another time in their lives, it was for them as well, but not anymore.
Marc:And they kind of, it kind of ends up closer to their hip as, as the conversation goes on.
Marc:And I don't, I don't think we, I don't think I boomed Jonathan.
Marc:I think he held the mic, but you know, it was a beautiful house and they had moved.
Marc:You know, his bedroom downstairs or closer to where everything is, as they do.
Guest:Like in like a main room, right?
Guest:Like a great room.
Marc:It was right off of the main room, you know, and Jonathan was it was very interesting and very intimidating.
Marc:to get him going.
Marc:But again, not unlike Robin, you know, if there's not a big audience, you know, he'll kind of focus, but he's always going to be doing funny things.
Marc:I remember he was pretty funny the whole time, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And he was doing characters and like slipping in and out of
Guest:them without telling you like that's that was like you you know you didn't get that with robin but but for the right reasons right like you just had a connected conversation with him but with with jonathan it was almost like watching him do his art right like instead of painting he was doing the characters well i mean i think that's sort of you don't see that too often but bamford has that as well is that you know i think they actually speak through certain characters and
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That it's innate.
Marc:I don't think Robin had what Jonathan had in terms of living, breathing characters that he's lived with and spoken through for 50 years.
Marc:Robin will do impressions and he'll do voices.
Marc:He can turn it on.
Marc:He can turn it on on purpose.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I think these were Jonathan's friends.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you just, you know, you just talked, they're all on the spectrum of Jonathan, but there was definitely characters that were kind of defined and part of him.
Marc:And I remember like, you know, he was moving slow, but boy, that walk down the hallway was the best.
Marc:That was the best.
Marc:That was when you were seeing all the pictures that he had up?
Marc:Well, yeah, it was the pictures, but he, but that wasn't what he wanted to show me.
Marc:Like...
Marc:He said, you know, after he felt comfortable and we did the interview, and I think what was, you know, the big thing about that interview was that both he and Robin did sort of a riff on suicide at the end of their interview.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Which was kind of interesting, given the nature of the two of them.
Marc:And, you know, I think Jonathan...
Marc:unlike robin really in a real in a big way was you know notoriously mentally unstable and there are real like crazy stories about him and booze and unmedicated manic depression and he talked about being in the mental hospital and that was pretty funny stuff i remember but he says to me after the interview he says i want to show you something and
Marc:And I'm like, OK.
Marc:So we're walking down this hallway.
Marc:And this to me was the most profound thing in terms of both of these things were profound to me and kind of revealing, you know, where Jonathan comes from in terms of emotionally and psychologically.
Marc:It's this hallway that's got 100 pictures in it of him on in movies with stars with like just like a classic life in pictures kind of thing.
Marc:And we're walking by it and it's kind of amazing.
Marc:And then he stops and he points at this picture, this really ancient looking picture of a boy and a dog.
Marc:And he looks at that picture.
Marc:He goes, I miss that dog.
Marc:And it was clearly a picture of him when he was probably 10 years old.
Marc:But that speaks to, you know, what makes him so...
Marc:There's a childlike wonder to everything about him and something emotionally there.
Marc:And it's also very bittersweet in terms of how far he's come and that boy still lives in him.
Marc:But then we walked down the hall and what he wanted it to show me was...
Marc:He had there was a big four poster bed in this room down there.
Marc:And there must have been like, you know, 100 or 50 model airplanes hanging from the ceiling.
Marc:He's like, those are my planes.
Marc:And I'm like, wow, you really are that kid with the dog, huh?
Yeah.
Marc:that's so wild though because Robin did the same thing with you after the interview he wanted to take you and show you like the top secret rooms that he had yeah but his didn't look like toys they you know these were collectibles yeah they were collectible they weren't they were a little bigger than G.I.
Marc:Joe size yeah
Marc:But they were, you know, miniatures, you know, done in detail.
Marc:I think they were military personnel from different countries.
Marc:It was a very bizarre room.
Guest:Well, I remember in that Dave Itzkoff book about Robin, there's a, you know...
Guest:a lot of times where Dave was following Robin around so he could, you know, interview him for the book.
Guest:He, he was doing the book while Robin was still alive and he, he died when the book was written.
Guest:Um, and, uh, there's stories about him just wanting to go, like if they were together on a city street or something and they came across like a comic book shop that had memorabilia and stuff, right?
Guest:Like forbidden planet down at union square.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like he'd be like, Oh, we got to go in there.
Guest:And like, that was his thing.
Guest:He wanted to find, you know, curios and,
Guest:Little things to put in his collection.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:This childlike thing of those guys is kind of interesting.
Marc:And Robin was an only child, so it makes more sense.
Marc:I can't remember if Jonathan was.
Marc:Maybe he was too.
Marc:You know, that... Yeah, I can't remember.
Marc:That entertaining yourself at an early age with stuff.
Guest:And also, like, that thing, too, of, like, they put together these little worlds for themselves all the time.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:That was a big day, though.
Marc:And then we went out to lunch.
Marc:I remember he put on this...
Marc:This Union soldier corporal hat.
Marc:Like not the little cap kind, but the kind with the tassels, full brim.
Marc:So he puts on this Civil War hat, and we go into town, and everyone knows him, of course.
Marc:And he's walking around like the colonel.
Marc:It was funny.
Guest:Those are those moments when we first started doing this and you would tell me that and I'd be like, what?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like you did what?
Guest:I know.
Guest:I couldn't even believe it when you told me it happened in the first place.
Guest:Cause I think, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you don't even remember this.
Guest:I think he called you.
Guest:Like, I think that from the story I remember was that you got a phone call.
Guest:You didn't recognize the number, but you picked it up and you heard like, oh, are you a friend of Dan Pasternak?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, that was it.
Marc:Yeah, because Pasternak had given him my number, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, that happened.
Marc:Those calls are always kind of great.
Marc:I got one recently from Jason Patrick.
Marc:A guy called twice.
Marc:I don't know where he got my number.
Marc:The actor.
Marc:And it was because, oh, I remember, it was just recently.
Marc:A relative, right, of his?
Marc:Well, I picked it up the second time.
Marc:He's like, Jason Patrick, and he's like, hey, and I thought I should know him, but I didn't put it together.
Marc:I'm like, oh, it's you, the actor.
Marc:You're good, man.
Marc:You're good in...
Marc:Geronimo and that other one, that cop movie.
Marc:What was that one called?
Marc:Oh, Narc.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And in that, uh, that Neil of you one, he had that scene in the sweat.
Marc:Remember friends and neighbors.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He, and, and the lost boys.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Rush.
Marc:Rush is a good movie too.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, he's a great actor.
Marc:And he's like, he's like, Hey man, you know, he's just like that freaking thing.
Marc:That was great.
Marc:You know, cause I was on that set.
Marc:His dad was the priest.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Never heard from him again.
Marc:Didn't get the number.
Guest:No, he just had an impulse to tell you it was a good show.
Guest:That was, I think, was when Friedkin had died.
Guest:We reposted the episode.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Well, you had already mentioned Shelley Berman, but that was the next...
Guest:legend that you spoke with and it was about a year and a half later this was in 2012 episode 332 and i don't even remember how that one came about
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It might've just been, I don't either.
Marc:Maybe Danny LaBelle.
Guest:Oh, maybe.
Guest:Was it because Shelly was doing curb at that time?
Guest:Like he had.
Marc:I don't know if he was doing anything.
Marc:Maybe he was doing curb, but I'm not sure how we booked it, but it didn't feel like we didn't have bookers.
Marc:No, actually I'm going to do a little spoiler here.
Guest:None of these guests were at the time when we had bookers, we were doing all of this ourselves.
Guest:So there's a story, some kind of story behind how all of these people were booked.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, I feel like somebody like knew Shelly, you know, and I feel like it might have been Danny LaBelle.
Marc:That makes sense.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The one thing that I'm sad that we never got was a Pat Cooper interview because Danny knew him.
Marc:I owe Danny a call.
Marc:But, um...
Marc:But, yeah, going to Shelley's in Beverly Hills, you know, I also thought that, like, Shelley, you know, doesn't get the respect that he deserves, really, in the big picture for being, you know, a really kind of amazing stand-up comedian.
Marc:And, you know, there's that famous Lenny Bruce story about Shelley Berman on stage in Chicago and...
Marc:You know, he's getting some gruff something.
Marc:The audience is loud.
Marc:You know, he starts busting their balls and they were like mobsters.
Marc:You know, like I can't I can't remember the bit, but it was definitely Lenny Bruce talking about Shelley Berman being on stage, getting mad at this group who were clearly mobsters.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I have to go back and listen for the bit.
Marc:But, you know, listening to Shelley Berman and also for me,
Marc:The idea that he was sort of a guy that sat on a stool.
Marc:He worked from a stool, and he did long bits.
Marc:And I remember studying him inside Shelley Berman and outside Shelley Berman, those two records.
Marc:And he had a great delivery, and he had a comfort level that I found inspiring.
Marc:So I wanted to talk to him, but then he'd do deeper research on him.
Marc:And he's a guy that's had a chip on his shoulder for a long time.
Marc:And for two reasons, you know, Bob Newhart, number one.
Marc:And then number two, they did sort of like a lifestyle piece on a TV show back in the 50s that that really fucked his career up because he was backstage throwing a shit fit about something.
Marc:And they captured it all and they put it on.
Marc:And I just talked to somebody who remembered watching it.
Marc:Who, who were the guests?
Marc:Was it Larry?
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was Larry David in his dressing room.
Marc:Cause I was talking to Larry about Berman who he didn't want to talk about really.
Marc:I mean, I probably could have brought it up, but like, you know, with Larry David in live, I really had to stay in the lines of, because it wasn't like, it wasn't like Stern away, you know, this is a live audience.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You want to do the things that would make him entertaining, not the things that make him get pissed off or have to go inward.
Yeah.
Marc:Or just talk casually.
Marc:When you're in front of 3,000 people, your intention is to bring them in, not to get lost with me in minutia.
Marc:So...
Marc:But he said, yeah, he remembered seeing that on TV and how and he was a kid and it was uncomfortable.
Marc:Like he remembered seeing it at home that that footage of Berman having that fit.
Marc:And he remembered it was like surprising and jarring and uncomfortable.
Marc:And it really kind of fucked his career up, I believe.
Marc:But he always the biggest thing is he really believed that.
Marc:and this is something you learn about comics in general, that there's no reframing something after a certain point, that Newhart had ripped off the device of the phone.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because Berman's big bits were him on the phone.
Marc:There's a man hanging from the ledge of the 10th story.
Marc:It's all him reacting to people you can't hear on a telephone.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when Newhart got huge...
Marc:with his phone bits, you know, it just, it never, it never left Berman.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But like, what, what's your, you've spoken to both of them now.
Guest:Like, what's your take?
Guest:This is just like, I mean, it's a phone.
Guest:It's a pretty common tool that people, that human beings were using.
Marc:So I get, well, I mean, I, I understand it.
Marc:You know, there's a timing to it though, you know, that if you're going to do a lot of bits of,
Marc:with that device, with the idea of it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Where you're talking to someone fictional.
Marc:I mean, you're writing for that.
Marc:It's like Jackie Vernon with the slideshow bit.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Like, you're not seeing slides, but he's got a clicker, and the bits are him reacting to these slides you can't see, and he paints a picture, or he doesn't.
Marc:Or, you know, like Berman's bit was like, there's a man hanging from the window, and then there's this sort of like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, I'll hold.
Marc:And it's him being...
Marc:You know, move through the switchboard, you know, to try to help this guy's hanging from the window across the way.
Marc:So the entire device of the bit is a fake conversation.
Marc:So, yeah, the phone or picking up a phone or holding your hand like a phone or speaking.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, that's not really stealable.
Marc:But I think the the timing and delivery and the device of one side of a conversation for lengthy bits, you know, I can understand why he was upset.
Guest:Well, and I do remember it was like it was one condition of Bob Newhart's interview was they told us he won't he doesn't want you to talk about Shelley Berman.
Marc:Never goes away, Brendan.
Marc:It never goes away.
Marc:You know, it's like, I've got a couple of those.
Marc:They just don't go away.
Guest:But I wonder, like, I wonder if that was from Newhart's perspective.
Guest:Does he not want to talk about it because he feels like he can't answer for taking the bit or doing a bit that was entirely too similar?
Guest:Or is it just like, I'm so sick to death of this fucking guy being up my ass my whole life about this bit?
Marc:Well, it's also just sort of like, you know, he's over it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, for whatever reason.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't think it was like, you know, I mean, the truth is, is a lot of these guys, especially someone like Newhart, who, you know, then went on.
Marc:You know, after two, maybe three standup records to have this extraordinary and long career in television.
Marc:It's like the it's like, you know, it's like a major leaguer, you know, talking about, you know, the guy who, you know, didn't get out of the minors.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's not his problem.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I remember you saying that at the time, like when we were talking about the new heart episode, I remember you were like, I don't need to talk to him about, what is this guy going to say about Shelley Berman?
Guest:He probably hasn't thought about Shelley Berman for 40 years.
Marc:Like what, why would he be thinking about that guy?
Marc:Well, that's the funny thing about bitterness and about, you know, owning it or not owning it is that you're going to decide that it was something other than you that stopped your career.
Marc:And also there's a lot of other things that have to come into play.
Marc:But, you know, clearly, you know, Newhart managed his talent and his opportunities in a way that, you know, that launched him.
Marc:And Berman did not have the temperament for that.
Marc:Or the specific talent for that.
Marc:Or the look.
Marc:Or whatever the fuck it was.
Marc:You know, Berman stalled in a certain place and lived there.
Marc:And Newhart, you know, transcended it.
Marc:So what are you going to do?
Marc:I remember going to Shelly's house and he was cranky.
Marc:You know, he had his wig on and, you know, and...
Marc:That was a big thing.
Marc:I thought that was a bigger thing when I asked Larry about him for the first time in his life working without his hairpiece.
Marc:Larry said it wasn't a big deal to him.
Marc:I'd heard it was, but Larry didn't seem to think so.
Marc:But he had this weird collection.
Marc:He's sitting in someone's living room.
Marc:It's him and his wife.
Marc:But he's a temperamental guy.
Marc:You listen to that interview.
Marc:He was not a guy comfortable in his life.
Marc:And he was easily triggered by stuff and defensive.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not a happy fella.
Marc:But I do remember he had a very large collection of knives that were under glass all around his house.
Marc:He was very into knives.
Marc:And I'm not sure if we talked about why, but he had a weird thing for knives.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I love, I love that they, all these guys have these like collections and these, like that kind of brush up against their actual personalities.
Guest:This sharp, you know, abrasive.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It didn't, I didn't get the sense that he was, you know, taking the knives out, but they were certainly around.
Guest:But this is like when the kid comes to interview you at 80 and they're like, oh my God, he had all these records.
Guest:There were so many records.
Marc:I know.
Marc:What's he even going to do with these things?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where are Shelley Berman's knives now?
Marc:Where, where are Jonathan's planes?
Marc:Who got Robin's dolls?
Guest:Those.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those are probably worth something.
Guest:So my guess is that he, my guess is Robin would kept buying the rarest of rare things.
Marc:I felt that way.
Marc:That was probably true that these were special.
Marc:Cause I'd never seen anything like them.
Marc:Uh, I wouldn't even know where to get them, but, um,
Marc:But yeah, but he was like, he really didn't want anyone to know about that room.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He told you to turn the mics off.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In the doll room.
Guest:Well, to go from Shelly Berman, you know, a guy who, you know, had a real place in comedy and yet was, as you thought, kind of unheralded.
Guest:We went just about a few months later, and this was toward the beginning of 2013, episode...
Guest:three 58 it's you know pretty much the polar opposite of that a guy you in the intro of this said he won life and that was mel brooks yeah and uh you know really to me one of our very very best episodes ever uh one of the great moments of doing this show period was to be able to have that and put that out in the world
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That was great.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:Again, these guys don't know.
Marc:They all still have AOL addresses.
Marc:They don't know what I'm doing.
Marc:They know I'm coming over there with a microphone.
Marc:And when I show up by myself, they're always sort of like, just you?
Marc:You know, like...
Marc:But I went over to Mel's office, yeah, and his assistant was there, and she just, you know, led me into the room, and he was, you know, getting a cracker or something.
Marc:I remember, so he was like, you want one of these?
Marc:You know, I'm all right.
Marc:You know, and it just was right away.
Marc:He was, like, locked in.
Guest:I think at some point he had a sandwich.
Marc:Yeah, I think that's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I remember he was, like, one of those guys, you want a sandwich?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Anything?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, uh, yeah.
Marc:And I just sat with him.
Marc:Uh, and that was a very interesting interview because there was all these little pockets of his life that were kind of fascinating.
Marc:You know, the childhood friendship with Buddy Rich, you know, and you knew that stuff.
Guest:He was so excited that when he, you, you would bring up these like big band people to him and he'd be like, Oh yeah.
Guest:And he would launch into his stories of drumming.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Those are like that's a real entry point.
Marc:If you can find those things and you're intuitive about it or you have instincts about it, it's it's a it's a great place to start with almost anybody.
Marc:You know, like there's fluky things that happen like that, like like like John C. Reilly.
Marc:If I didn't have a clown painting in my house, that interview would have been 20 minutes long.
Guest:I was thinking about that with the Carol Burnett episode because you talked about that clown, right?
Guest:Emma Kelly.
Marc:Emma Kelly, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I brought that up because in my mind, there was a connection with clowning.
Marc:And her recollection of it was interesting because she liked that guy.
Marc:But also with Carol, you start to realize that...
Marc:And just having done shows myself, this show even in particular, is that you have over a career, hundreds of guests.
Marc:What's really going to stand out?
Marc:Really, what are you going to remember?
Marc:But that seemed to be almost an artistic piece with Emmett Kelly.
Marc:And I don't know if it got her anywhere different than where she would have gone, but it was an interesting thing to bring up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think it was also interesting that it was like she was interested in putting the things on that show that spoke to her as a little girl going to see that stuff with her grandma.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Emma Kelly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know who doesn't get I never hear about his Red Skelton.
Guest:Yeah, I remember Red Skelton.
Guest:Like, from that same era, from, like, you know, watching Carol Burnett stuff.
Marc:Even a little before.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:I mean, because he had his own show, The Red Skelton.
Marc:I remember watching it when I must have been, like, five years old.
Marc:But, yeah, with Mel...
Marc:It was just a mile a minute.
Marc:And, you know, and I was really loaded for Bear in terms of his life, you know, in the military service and, you know, on through, you know, our show of shows, writing for Sid Caesar.
Marc:And it was just, you know, and also his Jewishness and his upbringing, all of this stuff.
Marc:Like he was just all there and lucid and willing to bounce around in his memory.
Marc:And it was just, it was a great time, you know, and again, it was one-on-one and it really worked out.
Marc:But, you know, there is always that the thing about traveling with the mics to do a thing, even with Carol, it's it doesn't go away where you're like, you know, there's a vulnerability to me showing up with this one piece of equipment that we hope works that has fucked us up in the past.
Marc:And with two mics and in an alien environment, a hotel room or an office or someone's home.
Marc:And it's it's it there's there's a graciousness that I I have to assume and a vulnerability to being out of my own element that I would hope adds to it.
Marc:But it does put me in on a different level of vigilance around.
Marc:You know, am I getting this?
Marc:Am I, you know, is it working?
Marc:Is it on?
Marc:Like, I mean, that thing that happened with John Turturro, that was a fucking nightmare.
Marc:And I think it happened with John Hodgman like twice.
Marc:I think we lost two John Hodgman interviews.
Marc:But in the Brad Pitt thing, he was excited that the thing was fucking up or I was having problems.
Marc:But yeah, there's, there, you know, there is, there's a presentness to it or an immediacy to it.
Marc:That's not just about me and the guest.
Guest:Well, there was this thing that something happened with the Carol Burnett interview that you couldn't get out of your head the whole ride back to LA.
Guest:Like you were like, I don't know, man, I think I might've fucked something up.
Guest:And you were explaining it to me.
Guest:And I was like, it doesn't sound like it's fucked up.
Guest:Sounds like it's saved.
Guest:And you were so nervous the whole way back.
Marc:Dad, didn't I stop and check it before I got home?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Well, it was because like...
Marc:I generally what I do is I push stop and then I turn off the recorder and I feel like I didn't, I felt like I didn't push stop and I just turned off the recorder.
Marc:So I thought it was all gone.
Marc:And, but, but for me, like that just harkens back to the trauma of the panic of doing this show from the beginning and doing remotes and actually having lost episodes before, um,
Marc:I think John Hodgman was the only one we really lost.
Marc:There was one other one that was pretty fucked up.
Guest:There was one that got fucked up not remote.
Guest:It got fucked up in the garage.
Marc:It was Lucinda Williams or Catherine O'Hara, one of them.
Guest:They got fucked up and we fixed them.
Guest:We had somebody do a great job fixing it, but Kevin Allison came over and his turned into digital garbage.
Guest:It sounded like a fax machine.
Yeah.
Guest:Uh, and that was before we realized what the problem was.
Guest:So he has to come back and do it again.
Guest:Oh, it was some, there was something broken in the, I think that's when you got a new, um, mixing board that was the same as the old mixing board.
Marc:Oh, that fucking MX six.
Marc:I'm so weird with that shit that I, I lock into things.
Marc:And then like, even if you get better machines, I'm like, that's the one though.
Marc:It's the one I got comfortable.
Marc:And that thing's a piece of garbage.
Guest:yeah well it was garbage enough that it that whatever was in it processing wise broke and it screwed up a couple it was like it was like the two interviews that got it was like one was like just barely right one just barely had robot noise like robot voice
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And then it went full robot voice.
Marc:But they didn't even make that thing anymore.
Marc:Some guy had to go dig one out of the basement of the guitar center that was missing knobs for me to get it.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And it was just one of those things that's like, dude, you just figure out.
Marc:I have this mixing board here.
Marc:I don't use any of the knobs.
Marc:But whatever.
Marc:Yeah, there was a couple ones where we had clicking that turns out it's fucking cell phones.
Marc:You get cell phones too close to these SM7s, you get that clicking.
Marc:And I think that's what happened with Brad and Leonardo.
Guest:Yeah, but Mel went off without a hitch as a technical thing.
Guest:Sure, it was so funny.
Guest:That one, I got to tell you, you know, people who are listening to this who haven't heard that one, I'm not exaggerating when I say it's one of the best ones.
Guest:It's not just one of the best ones, like in terms of hearing a talk and hearing you interact with the person.
Guest:We used so much of that interview when we made our book.
Guest:There's just great life lessons in it.
Guest:He's just such a it's like a font of wisdom that it's not canned wisdom.
Guest:it's stuff that came up out of like just things you talked to him about.
Guest:Like, you know, he was talking about how he did the producers on Broadway and then went and did the young Frankenstein afterwards, which was not a hit after the producers has been a hit.
Guest:And he was like, but I don't care what I thought.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:I wanted to have fun.
Guest:That's all you live for in life.
Guest:You live for a grilled cheese sandwich sometimes and fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then it's that conversation.
Marc:And we talk about Gene Wilder, him and Gene Wilder and the commissary of one of the studios.
Marc:But really what came out of that, that was the best was that story with Carl Reiner.
Marc:That was the best.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:So Carl was the very next episode we aired, although it didn't happen like that.
Guest:We recorded them separately, like by quite a number of weeks.
Guest:In fact, you weren't scheduled to talk to Carl.
Guest:It was because this was how we booked the show back then.
Guest:It was all like
Guest:you know, Tarzan swinging from vine to vine as, you know, people, he had a book coming out.
Guest:And so Mel said, you should talk to Carl.
Guest:And it was very easy to get that moving with Carl's manager.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:Shapiro.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:george shapiro yeah george shapiro yeah so that happened very soon after that and we aired it we aired them in the same week a monday and a tuesday so episode 358 was mel and episode 359 was carl and i do both parts of the story right that's right you did it as a as a cliffhanger you told at the end of the mel talk that mel walked you to the car and he said what he said to you
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You got to go listen to that story.
Marc:I did a version of it on Letterman.
Marc:It tightened up pretty good.
Guest:But what's interesting is that Carl was a different kind of guy to talk to.
Guest:And it wasn't, I mean, he's a little older than Mel.
Guest:He was about four years older at the time.
Guest:But I remember you feeling like he was more like you were in his house and he was more of like the guy holding court for the interviewer who came by as opposed to the Mel thing where it was just like sitting around having a chit chat.
Yeah.
Marc:And the fact that they spent every night together as, you know, best friends and widowers, you know, hanging around.
Marc:It's very interesting that the two of them are friends because they're so different.
Marc:And you can hear that in the 2000 year old man stuff.
Marc:that Carl is a straight man.
Marc:He's the straight man.
Marc:But the interesting thing about Carl is I don't know that I ever really appreciated his particular comedy, whether it be in movies he's written or performing, as much as I related to Mel, which was a more aggressive New York, shamelessly Jewish guy.
Marc:And I think that Carl...
Marc:you know, put a lot of work into, you know, kind of repressing his Jewishness as an actor because he wanted to be an actor.
Marc:And I, you know, it was similar to like, you know, like interviewing McCartney that, you know, despite the fact that,
Marc:I had this opportunity to interview Paul McCartney, the Beatle.
Marc:In my mind, I was like, well, I'm kind of a John guy, but I'll do it.
Marc:So, you know, it's ridiculous, my brain.
Marc:And it was the same with Carl.
Marc:I'm like, I like him, okay.
Marc:But, you know, how are you going to top Mel Brooks?
Marc:But, you know, I...
Marc:I pushed that stuff down.
Marc:You know, I, I know that it's, it's, it's not, it's, it's not good thinking.
Marc:And, and, and the interview was fine.
Marc:It was, it was a bit dry, but it was fine.
Guest:He has some great stuff that stuck with me forever though.
Guest:Like he was telling this story about Sid Caesar.
Guest:about how Sid Caesar was such a genius actor that he would do pantomime of things and not realize he was even doing it.
Guest:Like he put the lid back on a fake pickle jar that he had been opening in a scene and they like called cut and he went like nonchalantly, like closed it up, put the lid back on.
Guest:Did you see what you just did?
Guest:You put the lid back on a thing that didn't exist.
Yeah.
Guest:He also talked about how he and Mel used to pick chicken feathers out of the pillows.
Marc:Oh, yeah, out of the upholstery.
Marc:Yeah, that whole thing.
Marc:What do you do?
Marc:This is what we do.
Marc:He was picking these down feathers out of the upholstery.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Who wants ice cream?
Marc:Anyone want ice cream?
Marc:But that moment where there's a publicist in the room and Carl's there and Shapiro's sitting in another chair.
Marc:And I swear to God, right when we started the interview, Shapiro was sleeping.
Marc:He went right to sleep.
Marc:And he was sitting there like three feet away from me sleeping the entire time.
Marc:And right when I turned the machine off, he sits up and goes, what a great interview.
Marc:It was the best.
Guest:I remember you told that story to Letterman and you were like, that's a good manager.
Guest:That's how you know you got a good manager.
Guest:Just right out of sleep, he jumps right into manager mode.
Marc:Yeah, he was, I think he was his nephew, I think.
Guest:Oh, that makes sense, yeah.
Marc:But he was Seinfeld's manager.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Yes, as seen in the movie Comedian.
Marc:Oh, yeah, I'm with George.
Guest:He signs Orny Adams.
Marc:That's the Orny Adams story.
Guest:Well, the last of these legends that happened in this paywalled section for you full Marin listeners to go listen to is episode 370.
Guest:And that's with Dick Van Dyke.
Guest:That was in 2013, which was that was another like connection thing, right?
Guest:It was his wife.
Marc:Yeah, his wife was a fan of mine or maybe even did some comedy at one point.
Guest:She's a makeup artist.
Guest:And I know that she was like around.
Guest:That was what I remember.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:She really liked my show.
Marc:She liked our show.
Marc:And we thought it would be good for him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And yeah, that was a journey, man.
Marc:You know, that was like I'd drive out to Malibu.
Marc:Go to Dick Van Dyke's house not knowing what to expect.
Marc:You know, because a lot of these guys, you know, I wasn't that well versed in them.
Marc:You know, like I knew the Dick Van Dyke show.
Marc:I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
Marc:I saw Mary Poppins, you know.
Marc:But, you know, I had to really kind of, you know, go back in time to a time before me and really kind of, you know, get that guy in my head and frame him.
Marc:in a way that was respectful and, and understand his place in the history of comedy.
Marc:But I, I do remember it being a very great interview because, you know, he was very, you know, again, very lucid and happy to be alive.
Marc:And, and, uh, it was a nice drive to Malibu, got there too early and remember stopping for a coffee at that one shopping center right there.
Marc:And he lived in like the, I don't know, Malibu estates or something.
Marc:I don't remember.
Marc:It wasn't a ostentatious house in any way.
Marc:And,
Marc:But I don't remember the content so much as just being sort of amazed at how spry he was and how Dick Van Dyke he was.
Guest:It reminded me a lot of the Carol interview.
Guest:Like when I was listening to the Carol one, putting it together, I was like, this is kind of like how the Dick Van Dyke one went.
Guest:Where like it was just a totally willing participant.
Guest:And they were as willing and able to do it as any other guest that you have who meets that criteria.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I think what's interesting about these older guests and certainly the difference between them and some of the guests we get now who are savvy or even if they're not familiar with my show, a lot of them will listen to a couple the day before or the week before they have to do it.
Marc:But the old timers, they're very used to being interviewed in a very specific way.
Marc:And I think that given that, a lot of times I don't really become that, but I know...
Marc:that there's a different type of engagement.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That, you know, I'm going to do what I do, but I'm not going to interrupt as much.
Marc:And I'm going to, you know, if they're telling a story I've heard before, I'm going to let them do it.
Marc:If I find a way to get in there and move it around a little bit, I will.
Marc:But, I mean, this is the generation that, you know, they did interviews and people sat there and, you know, asked them questions with limited personality, you know.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:Except for talk shows, you know.
Guest:Well, and it's funny because Carol brought that up.
Guest:What a breath of fresh air it was to do something like Dick Cavett where you were just going to talk for 90 minutes on television.
Marc:Right, without feeling the pressure to score.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Boy, she was so funny.
Marc:You know, what a talented person.
Guest:That was literally what she said about doing Johnny Carson was like, oh man, you had to go on that show and you had to score.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but she was like, you watch it, like watching all the old footage of these guys, even like I just watched that, that Mary Tyler Moore documentary that's out now, you know, and all that stuff with Dick Van Dyke and that show and Carl and how she felt about Carl and how Carl really was her mentor.
Marc:And she didn't know how to do comedy at the beginning, like just how huge they were, dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, they you know, Mary Tyler Moore was was so huge in the risks she took after Dick Van Dyke and before the Mary Tyler Moore show and like really a boundary pushing, you know, game changing person.
Marc:But it all started with Dick Van Dyke and, you know, and Carl Reiner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and, you know, they're connected not just in that show.
Guest:Now they are connected in the archives of this show.
Guest:And so, yes, if you full Marin subscribers want to go back and listen to those as a companion piece to the Carol Burnett episode this week, I'll read those numbers again.
Guest:Episode 173, episode 332.
Guest:episodes 358 and 359, and then episode 370.
Guest:And that's Jonathan Winters, Shelley Berman, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Dick Van Dyke.
Guest:Uh, it's really great that we have these, not just because you had a great experience, but like I do seriously think it's important to like the history of comedy and entertainment that these things exist.
Marc:For sure.
Marc:And there was other ones, like I was just in Chicago and, uh,
Marc:Allie Makofsky and I, she opened for me, but we went to see this little exhibit at the Newberry Library that some fan had emailed me about, about Mr. Kelly's, which was that venue.
Marc:Tim Reed, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, Tim Reed and Dreesen, Tom Dreesen.
Marc:Tom Dreesen, yeah.
Marc:You know, both performed there and talked about it.
Marc:But, you know, Pryor was there, Freddie Prinze, you know, Carlin.
Marc:But it was kind of interesting to go kind of put it into perspective.
Marc:And the original location of it was right across the street from where we were staying.
Marc:But that's the generation after these old timers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, it's great.
Guest:And it's good.
Guest:It's good to have.
Guest:And it's good to go back and listen to them because there's a lot of happy memories and good history in there.
Guest:However, for the next time we do this, I will ask you, Mark, to plumb some not so happy memories.
Guest:And we will do the origin story of Break Room Live.
Cool.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:I just talked to Sam.
Marc:Again, my memories are sort of limited given the emotional stress I was in that whole time.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I just remember so much of this show and also with you and I on that show, just the fucking scrambling to get things done like it was life or fucking death.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Me and you on the road in those hotel rooms trying to do those dispatches from that Guardian thing with the technology we had and sometimes waiting all night for a file to send.
Marc:It's fucking crazy.
Marc:And the panic in the morning, like, did it go?
Marc:There was actually some weight to it.
Marc:Anybody gave a fuck.
Marc:No, only us.
Guest:i know it's always been the way we do this so it's good it's it's it's it's obviously uh worked out it has it maybe has taken a few years off of our lives but uh those are the bad ones anyway right yeah exactly uh all right well we'll talk about that next time and then until then go uh go listen to some of those legends back in the archives
Thank you.