BONUS The Radio Days - Eli Wallach, Charles Barkley and Nora Ephron
Hey, folks, I imagine if you listen that on last week's bonus episode, we were talking about an old interview that I did with Eli Wallach on Air America Radio.
Now, these are the interviews at Air America.
This was morning radio.
They were shorter interviews.
They were geared toward the format, which was morning radio.
But this is where I kind of cut my teeth.
It's how I learned how to talk to people on the air.
It was obviously a huge changing point in my life in terms of learning a new medium and being comfortable with it.
And so we found a bunch of these interviews because somebody wrote into the full Marin on the comment pages to ask if we can play the Eli Wallach interview.
So we found it.
So it's kind of amazing that Brendan had this stuff.
And when he was looking for that interview, he found some others from around the same time with other people who have never been on WTF.
So here you'll hear Eli Wallach from June 20th, 2005, Charles Barclay, which I don't even remember, from April 13th, 2005, and Nora Ephron from June 15th, 2005.
And these were all...
conducted with my co-host at the time mark riley the audio quality isn't great it's not as good as what we usually put out because all these files were compressed a long time ago for storage purposes but it's still listenable and this is a very early me kind of learning how to do what i've become known for doing enjoy
Welcome back, people.
34 past the hour.
I'm Mark Maron with Mark Riley.
This is Morning Sedition.
You're listening to Air America Radio.
And the man accompanying that familiar music is, at 89 years old, the senior most guest ever to appear on Morning Sedition.
That's quite an achievement by itself, but he's also a legendary actor of the stage and screen, and now he's written a memoir called The Good, The Bad, and Me.
Eli Wallach is here.
Mr. Wallach, let me ask you right off the bat, how many films have you been in?
If I call you Mark, will you call me Eli?
Of course I will.
Eli, you've got a deal.
All right.
How many movies have I made?
Yeah.
Counting TV movies?
Sure.
Why not?
Maybe about 80.
80.
And when did you start your acting career?
Where was it?
Here in New York?
Yes.
Yes.
Well, I started as a little boy in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Uh-huh.
Then I went to the University of Texas.
Really?
That's where I learned to ride horses.
Yeah.
And I wound up playing spaghetti westerns and all kind of westerns.
The horse would always turn around and look at me and say, oh, God, a guy from New York.
But I did them.
So when you were in Texas, what drove you to the University of Texas out of all places?
$30 a year tuition.
Oh, that's a good deal.
And the opportunity to ride horses.
Yeah.
When you finished at the University of Texas, you came back to New York, you started doing theater at that point?
No.
Everyone in my family were teachers.
It was decided by a family vote that I was to be a teacher.
And I thought every doctor, lawyer, accountant I know all wanted to be actors.
Yeah.
And I wanted to be an actor all my life.
So my brother said, you've got to take it.
Take the teacher's exam.
You'll be a teacher.
You've got a pension.
You get all of that.
So I took the teacher's exam and fortunately failed it.
Good for you.
And I got a scholarship to an acting school.
In the class with me was Gregory Peck, Ephraim Zimbalist, Tony Randall.
All these people were together.
Which class was this?
The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater.
And I'm on the board of that school.
Now.
Wow.
Now.
But then I didn't make my first movie.
When I graduated from that school, I kept saying, Broadway, here I come.
Yeah.
And Uncle Sam said, wait a second.
Wait a second.
So it...
1940, the end of the year, I got the lowest number in the draft, and I was drafted.
After five years of that, I kept saying, Broadway, I'm coming, I'm coming.
You just took a little side turn.
Yeah.
But I didn't do any movies from 1945 to 1955.
Now at the Neighborhood Playhouse, when you're with Gregory Peck, you're with Tony Randall.
What were those guys like then?
Was Tony Randall annoying?
Was he in your recollection of these people?
No, I think they were gifted, talented young men.
Were there any in there that didn't make it as big?
Me, me.
You're right.
You did all right.
80 films, I figured you were okay.
Yeah, but I didn't do my first movie for 10 years after I got out of the Army.
My first movie was shot, now Mark, in Mississippi.
Uh-oh.
In 1955 or 56.
And it was written by Tennessee Williams.
And it was called Baby Dog.
With Carl Molden, Carol Baker, and me.
That was a controversial movie.
It still was.
It was condemned by the Catholic Church.
And I thought, I don't understand why.
What did we do wrong?
But Time Magazine said this is probably the most pornographic movie ever made.
Really?
It's so dirty it would make Boccaccio blush.
Why?
It's filled with Priapian details.
And I didn't know what Priapian was, so I ran for the dictionary.
It means if you've got a constant erection.
I thought, I didn't realize that was happening.
Anyway, that's in my book.
Now, the book is called The Good, The Bad, and Me.
Underneath, it's in my anecdotes.
I put that in.
And I also put in The Good, The Bad, and Me.
And it's about my...
experiences in movies, theater, television, that.
Now, you were in 80 films.
Was there ever a role that you turned down and then later regretted when you saw the finished product?
I turned down one role, but I didn't regret it.
I was supposed to do, after I did the Rose Tattoo by Tennessee Williams for a year, a year and a half,
The next play he had, I was to do, called Camino Real, to be directed by Kazan.
And I thought, oh, God, this is my great opportunity because it's a great, great play.
They couldn't raise the money because it was a fantasy and nobody wanted to go see that kind of thing.
So I went and did a screen test and I passed the screen test.
They said to me, one picture, a seven-year contract.
I said, no, no, I'll do this one picture.
If you like it, fine, then I'll do another one, but I won't do seven years.
Then the money came through for the play.
Now I had to choose.
I got the role in the movie.
Do I play the movie or do I do the play?
And I chose to play because I felt that was a great experience.
The movie was called From Here to Eternity.
And Frank Sinatra played Maggio.
Every time he'd see me after that, he'd say, hello, you crazy actor.
That was the part you were up for?
That's the part.
Did you remain friends with Elia Kazan?
It was a difficult relationship.
Because I know a lot of people had a falling out of them after the...
years later committee three years later he's going to california to get an honorary award and uh he said what am i going to do he felt it would attack him i said you go out there and you go out on the stage and you say
I've flown 3,000 miles to say thank you and walk off.
He didn't do that.
He brought De Niro out with him.
But no, I was born in Red Hook, Little Italy, Brooklyn, in the middle of an Italian neighborhood with a mafia.
And I was the only Jew in a sea of Italians.
But I love Italy.
But as a kid, I learned you never squealed.
You never snitched.
And he knew my feelings about that.
But this was a great opportunity for me as an actor to work with a genius, a great director.
And that's what I did.
We've talked about film.
We've talked about theater.
We haven't talked much about your work in television.
Was there something that you felt was just like your best work on TV?
Well, I've done a lot of television.
For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The most mail I get for anything I've ever done.
Stage, movies, anywhere.
It was one episode of Batman.
Really?
Yeah.
The TV series.
The TV series.
I played Mr. Freeze with a German accent.
I'm going to freeze the whole world.
I got $350 for one episode, a half-hour episode.
Two years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr. Freeze in the Batman movie.
Right.
He got $20 million.
So I said, I can't believe it.
I'll never see 20 million my whole life.
I don't understand this.
Anyway, I'm getting more and more frustrated.
My wife said, lift weights.
Lift weights.
Now, a month ago, less than a month ago, we're being honored in Washington for something.
You don't know what it was?
Yeah, I knew what it was.
But the lady who arranged it called up Schwarzenegger and told him this story.
And a day later she said, there's a present for you in the hotel.
I go to the hotel and there's a box.
I open the box.
It's from the governor of California.
And in it are two weights that are half a pound.
I thought you were going to say, and $20 million.
Oh, yes.
Good luck.
He's having trouble balancing the budget out there.
So a couple of quick questions before we go.
Where are you going?
I'm not going anywhere.
We can stay here all day.
You want us to order food in?
Who is your favorite director to work with?
I have three children.
Yes.
If you said to me, which one is your favorite?
You'd have an answer.
I'd say, no, I wouldn't.
I wouldn't.
Okay.
That's cheating.
You don't do that.
I worked, the first director was Kazan.
Sure.
The second director was a man named Don Siegel, who was a... Dirty Harry.
Didn't he direct Dirty Harry?
Yeah.
And a favorite of Clint Eastwood.
Which film did you do with Don Siegel?
It was called The Line Up.
And I said, I read the script.
I kill four people.
I'm going to kill the fifth person.
I don't want to.
He says, listen, Eli, it's a movie.
It's in San Francisco.
You'll do very well.
I said, all right.
And as a joke, I said, all right.
I want 10 grand a killing.
He said, all right, you got it.
Now I'm stuck.
My wife sees the movie with the world premiere.
And the last scene is a...
A mother and her daughter in a, where the fish are, what do you call it?
Aquarium?
Aquarium.
And I'm there, and I say to this little girl who has a doll, she's carrying drugs, and I say, give me the doll.
And every time I was going to shoot somebody, I'd open an attaché case like this.
Yeah.
And they take out the gun and put the silencer in, all that stuff.
So my wife and I are watching the movie in California.
Our eyes are still smiling from all the pictures they took of us out there.
And I'm in, the shot comes where I say to the kid, give me the doll.
And I go, and I open the suitcase.
And my wife says, if you shoot that mother and child, I'll never speak to you.
So there you have it.
And did you?
Did I know?
I think I died.
I made the first five movies.
I died in three.
I got shot by Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven.
Yeah.
My son was beside himself.
He was six years old.
He says, see, Dad, couldn't you outlaw Yul Brynner?
I said, Peter, it's in the script.
If I get shot, I get shot.
Yeah.
Anyway, that's all in my book.
Well, I tell you, it's been a pleasure talking.
Has it?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Now, come on.
Why would I say that?
Well, of course it has.
I'll tell you something.
What?
This has been one of the most pleasant interviews I've had.
Have you had some bad ones?
Well, it's relaxed, and you haven't read the book.
I have the book.
But you haven't read it.
Well, why would I ruin it?
Because then I'd be finishing the stories for you.
I wouldn't be able to let you tell the story.
You hit the key right on the head.
Yeah, I didn't want you to tell the stories.
You want me to give you one last joke?
Sure.
You ready?
I'm ready.
Sure.
This old man is 94 years old.
I tell jokes about it.
Okay.
He's 94 years old.
It's his birthday.
And his two sons decide to give him a present.
And they go out and they hire a hooker.
And she goes to the apartment and she knocks on her door.
And the old man comes in and says, yes, what?
She says, I'm your birthday present.
And I'm here to give you super sex.
There's a long pause.
He says, all right, I'll take the soup.
Eli Wallach, thank you.
Thank you, Eli Wallach.
The book is The Good, The Bad, and Me in My Anecdotage.
We're going to wrap things up in just a minute.
This is Air America Radio.
48 past the hour.
Mark Maron here with Mark Riley.
Good morning.
Okay, it's morning tradition on Air America Radio.
Charles Barkley was named one of the 50 greatest NBA players of all time.
He won the NBA's Most Valuable Player Award in 1993 when he played for the Phoenix Suns.
In 1992, he played for the U.S.
Dream Team, which won the Olympic gold medal.
Barkley was involved in controversy over the roughness of his play.
You definitely suck me as a guy you don't want to piss off.
Barkley is a studio analyst for TMT's Emmy Award-winning program Inside the NBA.
And he was here.
We talked to him about his new book, Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?
It features interviews on race relations in America with Bill Clinton, Samuel Jackson, a few other people, right, Riley?
Oh, yeah, Barack Obama, Morgan Freeman, Ice Cube, a whole bunch of folks.
I think we were both surprised.
After a certain point in the interview, he kind of hung out and he got candid.
Yeah, he got real candid.
So this is our interview with Charles Barkley.
Charles Barkley is with us.
Good morning.
Thank you.
I'm glad to be here.
We're excited to have you here.
I've got the book right in front of me, Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?
What is the theme of the book, basically?
Well, I just want to write a positive book on race.
Racism is the greatest cancer of my lifetime.
And I just want to write a positive book.
We've got so many young black kids out there who are screwing their life up, killing themselves, having kids they can't afford.
And I want to just write a positive book because race is like the great taboo in America.
Nobody wants to talk about it.
And I just want to write a positive book.
And I was fortunate enough to have some great contacts.
And the people I interviewed, I put that list up against anybody.
I'm very happy with the book and hopefully a lot of young kids, black, Hispanic kids, poor white kids will read the book.
You know, one of the things I got from looking at the book is,
is the idea that there really is no black monolith anymore, that black people have a diversity of thought about a number of issues, including race.
Did you experience that in talking to people as diverse as Barack Obama, for example, and Morgan Freeman?
What I thought was that when I put the list together,
I think the black people, Hispanic people, get a really bad rap on how they're portrayed on television and in movies and things like that.
So that was the reason, you know, I got such a rap.
When I talked to Sam Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Ice Cube, I wanted to talk about how blacks are portrayed in movies.
I talked to Ice Cube also because I think rap music, there's only two times that black people and white folks in
Jewish people and everybody get together is sports or entertainment.
They don't ever spend a lot of quality time with each other, except if it's the rap music or has brought more white people to black culture, but also sports brings that together.
I was impressed with everybody I talked to, and I want to make the book really fair.
That's why I talked to a rabbi.
I talked to George Lopez representing Hispanics.
And George was really funny because he agreed with me.
You know, he said when he first got his show, he had, like, ten white guys writing his show telling him how Hispanics are supposed to be.
And it was all sort of BS, canned, this is how the Hispanics are supposed to be.
And I actually have gotten offended at times.
Because you think about it, the majority of the black people on television, they got to be goofy comedians.
It ain't like nobody say, let's do a nice black drama with great strong black guys and strong black women.
It's like, no, they can't be funny and act a fool.
They're not going to be on television.
But it was interesting talking to everybody, getting their opinions.
You know, when you talk about how blacks are portrayed on television, what television executives will say is that when we do these kinds of dramas, when we do serious television, when, for example, Tim Reed did Frank's Place, which is now 20-some-odd years ago, strong, positive black male role models, people don't watch.
Well, that's because the biggest hypocrites in the world is the Nielsen ratings.
America is the greatest country in the world, but it's slanted.
There's no way they know what everybody is watching, and there's no way they can tell you that.
I'll tell you again a good example.
When you saw Chris Rock hosting the Oscars, he did the little spoof that was really kind of like funny but true.
He was showing that black people don't watch the same movies as white people.
Hispanic people don't watch the same movies.
Rich people and poor people don't watch the same things.
So for them to go around and tell you who's watching what or who's listening to what is just bogus.
Trust me, as a black man with a lot of money, you get a lot of freeloaders.
And I ain't never met a person with a Nielsen box.
Trust me, if you're a black man with money, you inherit black people that you didn't know existed.
And there ain't no black people got any boxes.
You talk to Barack Obama, who's the product of an interracial relationship.
You talk to Tiger Woods, who himself is in an interracial relationship.
And I'm curious about whether or not you got a lot of flack yourself for being married to a white woman.
You hear many, many black women when they talk about black athletes and entertainers.
They get upset.
They see red about black men of prominence who marry white women.
You've heard that before?
I heard it many times.
But first of all, that's just stupid.
Because first of all, let me tell you why it's stupid.
There are a lot more poor black men married to white women than rich celebrities.
So the theory that...
Once a black man makes it, he gets a white woman.
That's just bogus.
Trust me.
I will bet by everything I got that there are more poor black men married to white women than the other way around.
Oh, no, you're right.
From my own life experience.
Yeah, but that's just stupid.
But as far as, man, I don't have to apologize for not being racist.
You know, John Thompson, who's one of my heroes, somebody I really admire, he was talking one day, they were giving him a hard time about having a white agent.
And he says something very profound.
He says, I don't have to apologize because I'm not racist.
And I look at that the same way I look at people go out with whoever the hell they want to go out with.
I shouldn't have to defend myself because I'm not racist.
You know, I mean, it's just funny.
When I hear that, I always start laughing.
The theory that every successful black man is,
is going to go out and marry a white woman, that's just stupid.
Because there's hundreds of more regular poor black folks who are married to white women who don't act.
They never said that to them.
They only give the black jocks or the black entertainers who marry white women a hard time.
So I ignore that theory altogether because it's ignorant.
Racism is always there.
Right.
It's always there.
If you watch television every day, you read the newspaper every day, there's some type of racial incident that happens.
So it always comes into play.
But in the same way that you're saying that the Nielsen ratings don't represent the black community because there aren't black people that have these boxes, that maybe the unspoken voice of the black community could eventually transcend the racism in this country.
You don't believe that to be true?
No, I don't think.
I think it's been too ingrained in our psyche.
And you think about this.
One of the things we talk about in the book, America was built on racism, but also racism.
When you look at, one of the reasons I interviewed Sam Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Ice Cube, all the bad guys, we always had the stereotypes.
And the bad guys used to be the Indians.
The bad guys were the black guys.
Now they're the Muslims.
You know, they portray Jewish people in a bad, negative light at times.
And the Hispanics, they're just like blacks.
They get portrayed in a negative light.
Racism is always there and it's perpetuated, number one, through history, but also by the way it's shown on television, you know, the racial stereotypes.
I mean, we can't do great television.
You know, we're the drug dealers.
We're the crooks.
We're the killers.
So racism is always right there.
It's probably just covered up better.
I hear what you're saying, but I'm just saying, like, in the context of the book, there has to be some hope.
What are your hopes in terms of addressing the issue of race in a proactive way?
I think what happens in America, people are afraid to talk about race until something bad happens, and then it's too late.
I want to write a positive book and start a dialogue because, first of all,
All these people, I had never met anybody.
I had met Sam Jackson before.
Tiger's my boy, so I'd met him many times before.
But all those other people were like, yeah, racism does exist, and it's prevalent in this country.
So it's not like it's no secret.
Let me just say who those other people are for our audience.
In the book, you talk to Bill Clinton.
You talk to Jesse Jackson, Peter Guber, the film producer.
Ice Cube, you said Rabbi Stephen Letter.
Yes.
It's interesting.
You really have covered the gamut of types of people.
Well, because I wanted to make a fair book.
Number one, I wanted this to be a positive book to start positive discussion on race.
Because having an interracial daughter, I want her to understand some of the trials and tribulations that she's going to come up with through history.
And I want her to also just be a, you know, I don't want you, sometimes when I watch television, the way they portray black people makes you embarrassed and not want to be black.
And I don't ever want her to ever have to worry about, I say, I want you to be a strong black woman, not that crap you see.
They think if you braid your hair and you wear a throwback jersey, that makes you black now when you're watching television.
It's frustrating to watch how we are portrayed.
You grew up in the South.
Yes, which is far and away the worst.
Yeah, during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, not long after you were born, in fact, the four young girls were blown up in the 16th Street Baptist Church.
Yet you've always been a very assertive individual, coming from a region where blacks being assertive sometimes could get you killed.
How did you manage to negotiate that?
You know, it's really weird.
That's a great question, but it's really weird to thinking that right when I was born, they're blowing up churches.
They're shooting guys with water and shooting dogs on them at the march in Selma.
But one thing my mother and grandma said, you need to learn about this when you grow up.
They made a conscious effort that you need to know where you came from so you can go forward.
But one thing they always instilled upon me, man, there were a lot of great white people.
in those battling with those black folks.
So they made sure, number one, that I was not racist.
They said, hey, those people over there, they're ignorant.
But I want you to always notice when you see these people getting shot with water and these dogs and getting beat with billy clubs, there are a lot of great white people are marching with them.
And they just said, hey, just be a strong man.
You're not right all the time.
If black people are wrong, tell them they're wrong.
All black people ain't always right.
Your name has been connected with a possible run for political office.
You still thinking about it?
What I want to do, number one, yes, I think about it.
What I want to do is get on the radio and TV like I am right now and tell these black kids, poor white kids, Hispanic kids, they can do great things.
We don't know what we can do until we push ourselves.
But you've got to put the effort and the time in.
You've got to get your education.
The problem I have with politics, they're full of it.
You got these idiots.
If I never hear the word Republican, Democrat, liberal, conservative again, because that only benefits a certain group of people in life.
The majority of people in this country don't benefit from being liberal or conservative.
To me, that's just like...
A catchphrase to get you involved with a certain group so you can really discriminate against another group.
Or get a job on the radio.
Yeah.
But you know what?
We benefit from being liberal.
Yeah, but you know what?
I'm so disgusted in the political system right now because I'm a liberal.
I'm an independent.
If I had to choose a party, I'd easily be – I voted for John Kerry because I think – I don't like using words like right-wing or conservative because they're so discriminatory as far as their practices.
And they've taken religion to the point where I'm really not feeling religion at all right now because the way I grew up as a Southern Baptist, religion meant compassion, inclusion.
for your fellow people and your fellow man, but now it is such a bad word in my eye, and it's just my opinion.
And it's just unfortunate where the country has went right now.
Absolutely.
You talked to Bill Clinton, and he's one of the great politicians.
You can definitely say that about him.
What kind of impact did he have on you?
What did he have to say that blew your mind or not?
But you know what's funny?
People, they always want to know what everybody was like.
When you think about Bill Clinton, you can say to yourself, whether you like him or not, you can say to yourself, man, he'd be fun to hang out with.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't normally get excited to meet people, but I was excited to meet him.
And it's two really profound things in the book.
When he talks about it, he says, listen, you might come from a bad neighborhood, you might go to a bad school, you might have a bad mom and dad, but you've got to find a way to be successful.
Because there are a lot of kids out there who are in poverty, that's their life, but they've got to find a way to be successful.
And the second thing that was very important was what Jesse Jackson said.
You know, a lot of these young black folks have dropped the ball because there are a lot of people who did, quote unquote, a lot of heavy lifting to put me in a situation where I can be successful.
And for me to go out there, do drugs, kill myself and kill other black folks or have kids I can't afford, I'm dropping the ball and I'm doing a disservice to my heritage.
But to get back to your point, man, Bill Clinton, it was everything I thought it was going to be.
And that was really one of the highlights for me.
Well, thank you.
It's been great talking to you, Charles Barkley.
The book is Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?
It's got a lot of great stuff in it and a lot of great people that Charles talked to.
Appreciate you being here.
No, thank you for having me.
Keep up the good work.
Thanks a lot.
We need more of you guys.
All right.
Thank you very much.
34 past the hour, Mark Maron here with Mark Riley.
Hey!
You're listening to Morning Sedition on Air America Radio.
So it was a 1960s hit TV show, and our next guest turned it into a 21st century film.
We're going to be talking here in just a second to Nora Ephron.
If you don't know Nora Ephron, you do.
She directed the film Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail.
She received Oscar nominations for screenwriting for When Harry Met Sally.
And Silkwood, the new film The Witch, which opens, I believe, on Friday.
Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, and Stephen Colbert.
Welcome to the show, Nora Ephron.
How are you?
I'm great.
It's nice to see you.
Thanks for coming down.
So how does the film Bewitched?
I mean, of course, we all know the TV show.
I mean, I had a crush on Elizabeth Montgomery, you know, for... I still do, I think.
How does it differ from the TV show?
Oh, it's completely different.
Completely different?
Well, it isn't completely different.
She's a witch, right?
She is a witch.
No.
Nicole Kidman plays a witch who wants to be normal.
Of course.
And so she moves to the San Fernando Valley because it's the most normal place she can think of.
I can't tell you how many witches I've dated that wanted to be normal.
I think that metaphorically this is a rich movie, actually.
Okay.
And because she has Elizabeth Montgomery's nose, the nose that she can twitch, but also that little perfect button nose, she is cast in a remake of Bewitched that a...
that a washed-up actor, played by Will Ferrell, has been conned by his manager into doing on the grounds that this time it will be Darren's show.
So it's a TV show within a movie.
The making of a TV show within a movie of an old TV show.
Yes.
It's actually very simple because it really is still about...
Can a witch and a mortal find happiness together?
One of my friends says that it's a timeless theme because every woman wants to know that a man will love her even when he finds out she's a witch.
Or magic.
Is the Agnes Moorhead character who played Samantha's mother in the original series, is that role reprised in this film?
Shirley MacLaine plays that role.
Oh, wow.
There you go.
I always, you know, but Agnes Moorhead was so evil, and I just really enjoyed her work in that.
I know.
Well, there were great actors on that show, and one of the things we wanted to do was to make the show a character in the movie rather than just to replicate it, because that show...
which weirdly enough has quite a lot of iconic power for people.
You had a crush on Elizabeth Montgomery, I believe you said.
Yes, and I think Riley just said he had a crush on Agnes Moorhead.
No, I don't think he said that.
I had a crush on Agnes Moorhead in the 40s.
oh okay all right some of those 40s movies i had a crush on an actress in it not a you know just admiring crush no on an actress named marion lauren who played aunt clara this totally dizzy and she was great she was completely great she kept bumping into walls and all the spells went wrong and and when i wrote this script with my sister delia ephra and we
We just were dying for Aunt Clara to drop into it, so she did.
And who plays Aunt Clara?
An actress named, oh, my God, oh, my God, her name is Carol Shelley.
Thank God it came to me.
This is the nightmare of live radio.
Carol Shelley, who's in Wicked, by the way.
Okay, so you wrote it with your sister.
You wrote the screenplay for this film with your sister.
I can't even imagine writing with a sibling and without fighting.
Did you fight?
Not this time.
What was the last film you wrote together?
Well, we have occasionally had our little moments, and they are horrible.
They're actually just horrible.
Yeah, I can't imagine it.
But I think you have that with almost anyone you work with.
Or you're married to, or anything.
Well, you know, I would never write with my husband.
Yeah.
It would be bad.
Bad, bad.
Wait a minute.
Husband, no, but sister, yes.
Well, yeah, for the obvious reasons.
Will Ferrell is the lead in this, obviously one of the funniest men in America at this point in time.
Did you have the part of Darren, were you thinking of him when you wrote it?
Was he on board before you finished it?
How would that work?
Well, actually, we started out thinking about Jim Carrey.
Jim Carrey was.
No.
Well, we did.
Jim Carrey had wanted to play Darren.
I could see him physically.
Physically, yeah.
He had sort of grown up thinking he kind of looked like Dick York.
Yeah.
And we even had a meeting with him, Nicole Kidman and I did, where he talked at some length about how he wanted this really to be a two-hander.
Uh-huh.
What does that mean?
I think he meant that he wanted Nicole's part to be as good as his.
Uh-huh.
Which I was interested in.
Okay.
Since it's a given on Bewitched that it's the other way around, isn't it?
So he walked in assuming the entire movie would be about him.
Whatever.
And he also actually went into a whole thing about how he loved Uncle Arthur.
Remember Uncle Arthur on the original Bewitched, played by Paul Lind?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he was extremely eloquent on it.
So then when when he read the script and turned out not to respond to it, we got lucky and went to Will Ferrell.
We're talking to Nora Ephron, her film that she's written and directed is Bewitched.
It opens next Friday with Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman.
Now, can we talk about some other stuff?
Sure.
Because you were married to Carl Bernstein.
Yeah, I knew you were going to do this to me.
Go on, yeah.
Well, you must have known about who Deep Throat was.
I did.
But did your husband say, like, you can't tell anybody?
No, he said, I won't tell you.
So he didn't tell you?
No, no, he never told me.
But we had a report, a guy, Tim Noah, who wrote a piece about your son supposedly knowing and revealing it at summer camp.
Yes, no.
See, Carl would not tell me.
Okay.
Okay.
But I figured it out.
No, no, no.
But I figured it out.
All right.
And I figured it out because there were all these clues that were right there.
There were very obvious clues in all the president's men.
Like that Bob Woodward had called Mark Felt my friend.
Okay.
Okay.
M-F.
Okay.
Mark Felt, my friend.
So I look at this, I go, this is so obvious, I don't believe it, and this is very Woodward-esque.
Uh-huh.
This kind of semi...
Well, it's just, it's kind of like very, it's an obvious kind of clue.
He does that?
He speaks in a sort of mild code?
I thought, I thought this was the kind of thing that would be Bob's idea of something kind of like a code that wasn't such a code.
You can decode the president's men.
So I said to Carl when we were together, um,
I know who it is.
Yeah.
And then I figured it out from another clue.
There was another clue.
Okay.
In a book that had been written before all the president's meetings.
Yes.
Where Bob Woodward told a writer named Timothy Kress that it was a Justice Department source.
So it was very obvious...
If you read all the president's men and you saw when the leaks began from Deep Throat, that it was someone who had access to FBI files.
And that could only have been someone in the FBI a day or two after the break-in.
This is amazing to me that you had to do investigative work on your husband's investigative work.
No, it wasn't investigative.
It was just...
So, well, you know, that's not so unlike other marriages in certain ways.
But you're going for other reasons.
Yes, yes.
But wait a minute, I've got to ask you this because... Anyway, so I just want to say, so I said, it's Mark Felt and my then...
boyfriend slash husband, whatever he was, said... The guy who was there.
Said, I'm not telling you.
I'm not telling you.
So... And that was the end of your marriage.
Well, that wasn't... But then it did end shortly thereafter because it turned out I was investigating the wrong thing.
Well, yeah.
And... And...
And then we got divorced, and then my children got older, and they said to their father who's deep-throat, and he said, I won't tell you.
So they came to me, and they said, Dad won't tell us who deep-throat is.
And I said, well, I'm happy to, because by then I had told...
conservatively 10,000 people.
I mean, if you had had a radio show and had asked me 15 years ago who deep throat was, I would happily have told you.
Really?
Yeah, but you wouldn't have believed me because no one did.
No one believed me.
And you told that many people and your son went to summer camp?
And my son went to summer camp and someone said to him, who's deep throat?
And he said, Mark Phelps.
And the kid he said it to
assumed he'd heard it from his father.
You see, it was a kind of, we don't want to accuse an eight-year-old of sexism, but it was an eight-year-old thinking he must have heard it from his father instead of from his equally gifted mother.
So anyway, the kid then grew up and wrote a thesis in college about how he had sussed out who did throw us because he picked this information up from
My son, who was at summer camp, and it was like, so then we had to give a lot of interviews explaining that it was not Carl who had said that, it was me, and everyone made fun of me all over again.
But did you believe through Bob Woodward's denials?
Because Bob Woodward went on the record several times and said, no, it was not Mark Felt.
I don't know.
Did he say, no, it was not Mark Felt?
Yeah, he did.
Or did he say, well, then I don't pay attention to everything Bob does.
But the point is, it was obviously Mark Felt.
And as time went on, and he kept saying, they kept saying,
When he dies, we will reveal this, which I personally think if I had been deep-throat, I would start to find kind of irritating.
You know, sort of like the clock is ticking.
We're just waiting here for you to die.
And then we're going to tell everyone and make a lot of money, right?
But anyway, but the point is that Mark Felt was still alive.
And then it came out about two years ago that Bob Woodward had been to visit Mark Felt.
Right.
Yeah.
And so that was like the clincher, totally, as far as I was concerned.
So I think you have your next movie half written here.
Is that possible?
Yeah, I don't think so.
You know, I'll tell you something.
When this news came out, I got a whole bunch of phone calls and...
I said to myself, I'm taking the high road.
I'm not going to get into this.
This is not about me in any way.
Is there a high road in Hollywood?
Well, is there a high road anywhere?
But then, you know, finally I just thought, oh, booey, I'm just going to write about it.
So I did.
Can I ask one more very quick question about the movie this time?
Yes, thank you.
Thank you so much.
The movie is Bewitched and it opens June 24th.
June 24th.
Were you ever tempted during the Conceptionist movie to actually... You weren't deep-throat into it.
No!
To do the two downs.
Larry Tate was deep-throat.
No, but there are jokes about that.
Really?
There are jokes about that.
That's one of the, actually, I hope, extremely amusing jokes.
Yes, because...
They did replace Darren in the course of making bewitched without a word of explanation.
He just turned up as an entirely other person.
And so that is something that Will Ferrell has some fun with in the movie, among other things.
You don't want to give it away.
You see that, right?
No, I don't.
I don't because I don't do the line as well as Will Ferrell.
Well, yeah, so go see the movie.
It's Bewitched.
It opens next Friday.
Our guest has been Nora Ephron, and she's been a very good sport, and I really appreciate you coming down here and talking to us.
My pleasure, Mark and Mark.
We'll be back with the Cliff Notes and wrap this up.
So stay with us here on Air America Radio's Morning Sedition with Mark and Mark.
It's 46 past the hour.