The Amazing Johnathan from 2014
Marc:one of my first tv sets was following you i do remember that yeah yeah yeah because the a-list they used to put the headliner on first and then the new guy and it was the reason i remember it is i'm waiting to go on and some guy comes up he's like we'll bring you right out after we clean up the blood yeah that's why i headlined because nobody could follow me because not because of the material because of the mess right but i had to you'd cut your arm off yeah
Guest:I always used stage blood, cutting my arm off or drooling blood out of my mouth or something.
Guest:Was it always that?
Guest:I mean, was it magic first?
Guest:I mean, where did you start out?
Guest:I started out doing magic, but I was not really good at it.
Guest:I did my high school talent shows, the last show I ever did.
Guest:As a magician?
Guest:Yeah, it bombed so horribly.
Guest:What did you do?
Guest:Listen.
Guest:Where did you go to high school?
Guest:I went to Frazier, Michigan.
Guest:You're from Michigan?
Guest:Right outside of Detroit.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:That's where you grew up?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Wow, and you're a little older than me.
Marc:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:Yeah, I'm 55 I am.
Marc:I'm 50.
Marc:Are you?
Marc:So when you were growing up in Michigan, were you into rock and roll?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Bob Seger.
Guest:You saw them when they were coming out?
Guest:Oh, yeah, I know Bob Seger.
Guest:He used to own part of the Comedy Castle.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, he'd come in once in a while because I watched his investment.
Guest:I remember him saying to me, I'll buy as much cocaine as you can find.
Guest:That's what he said.
Guest:And he said, you're talking to the wrong guy, man.
Guest:You just lost your money.
Guest:And I couldn't find any.
Guest:Bad night?
Guest:Yeah, nobody had a thing.
Guest:I felt so bad.
Guest:Nobody's ever said that to me since.
Marc:You are one of the sort of like the mythology around Amazing Jonathan and cocaine is epic.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, I was.
Guest:I did a lot of it.
Guest:I did a lot of it.
Guest:And for a long time, I wasn't one of the guys who quit after Robin Williams and that Belushi's party.
Guest:Were you at that party?
Guest:No, but that's when everybody quit around that year.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Everyone thought, well, this is serious.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:People are going down.
Guest:This could kill you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I kept going, man.
Guest:That didn't faze me at all.
Guest:Well, you eventually ended up smoking it, right?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I ended up smoking it.
Guest:And then, you know what got me off of it?
Guest:What?
Guest:Speed.
Speed.
Guest:A little crystal meth.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Took the edge off.
Guest:I couldn't get coke one night.
Guest:I had speed.
Guest:There's the only thing left to do.
Guest:So I actually smoked that too.
Guest:And that just jammed in for like days.
Guest:It wasn't like it is today.
Guest:It was like speed.
Guest:It was like you don't smoke it.
Guest:You snort it.
Guest:But I smoked it anyway.
Guest:right and i would write like a fiend i'd go in my garage and i would write get things organized yeah yeah just build all kinds of great props for my show and really yeah it would really i the whole show was written on that and then it stopped i stopped being creative on it and learned how to eat again and it was just like now i was a normal guy would just with a habit yeah yeah it wasn't the same but it took a while to get there didn't i mean so you start in michigan you're growing up wait what's your real name
Guest:uh john zealous and zealous and i changed it to jonathan didn't drop the h because i didn't know you were supposed to drop the what is zealous hungarian yeah good call yeah so your parents were they actually hungarian no my dad was parents my dad was hungarian but he was born here his parents are from hungary did he work in the auto industry
Guest:He designed tanks and machine guns.
Guest:He was a draftsman, so I would get to watch the tanks go to work.
Guest:There's a big test track in the backyard of this place, and there was a straight-up incline of cement.
Guest:It must have gone 60, 70 feet, and the tanks would try to get to the top of that.
Guest:And he was like a tank engineer?
Guest:Yeah, he was a tank draftsman.
Guest:He just drew the plans out and stuff.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, and he did that.
Guest:He hated his job, and he worked for 30 years at this job, and finally he retired, and he died a week later, man.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, he never got to get one retirement job.
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:And he hated it.
Guest:He was looking forward to it.
Guest:He was going to travel a little bit and relax.
Guest:How old was he?
Guest:I think he was around 60.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was, I was, God, I had to be about 24 because I was playing at the Jeff Valdez's Club comedy.
Guest:In Denver?
Guest:In Colorado Springs.
Guest:I was in Colorado Springs.
Guest:With Ollie Joe Prater, who was- Ollie Joe Prater?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And his gout and his cane, and where is he?
Guest:No, he was still walking at this time.
Guest:Yeah, Ollie Joe Prater, I saw him fall off a bar stool completely backwards, just tip his head back and bang, down he went.
Marc:One of the great joke thieves, Ollie Joe Prater.
Guest:Yeah, he was a great joke thief.
Guest:And proud of it.
Guest:Yeah, he was.
Guest:Yeah, that's when you didn't get into trouble, or he didn't take shit for it.
Guest:I think it was before.
Guest:He made a lot of money being a joke thief.
Guest:I think he was stealing hacky jokes.
Guest:But he would kill, though.
Guest:He would actually, he would drink all night during the set.
Marc:By the time I saw him, it was over, you know?
Marc:like i was well i was a doorman at the comedy store in 87 and he was already on a cane and he you know mitzi would had was putting him up at the top when she owned that little house at the top of the ramp of the parking lot of the hyatt there was a little house there yeah you know i lived in crest hill but she had that one too and he was up in there when he wasn't on the road and he was already kind of ill yeah he got sick yeah he got sick pretty pretty bad but i remember watching he's the first guy i ever saw do cocaine
Guest:Really?
Guest:Him and A. Whitney Brown and me went to the Jack Tarr Hotel in San Francisco and I watched him snort coke and put water up his nose.
Guest:He used to just snort, cup water in his hand and snort it.
Guest:I'm like, what the hell is he doing?
Marc:It's a pretty amazing day that first day you see somebody do coke.
Marc:When was your first?
Marc:I think I was in high school and I think it was where I was working at a bagel place and the owner was sort of a blow monkey.
Marc:And I believe the first time I did it was because he turned me on to it.
Marc:I was probably 14 or 15.
Marc:You take to it really fast.
Marc:Well, if you're into it.
Marc:I mean, I think some people see that shit and they're like, what the fuck?
Marc:And other people are like, I need to be part of that for about 30 years.
Guest:Yeah, I think that once you decide to do it the first time, you're into it right away.
Guest:But when you were a kid, you weren't into it?
Guest:Not really, no.
Guest:I never did coke.
Guest:I did other stuff.
Guest:I did like...
Guest:mescaline and stuff like that you know people even never you never hear mescaline anymore no it's a it's a that's a rare one yeah nobody makes mescaline i don't think mescaline i would take it anyway so you put it you put a line of coke in front of me right now and i freak out i would just like i wouldn't do it i the smell smell of it makes me just like it brief all these memories come flooding back how long you've been off though oh
Guest:Oh, a long time.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Are you cleaning everything?
Guest:No, not, you know what?
Guest:Well, I'll tell you the story.
Guest:I just got diagnosed about six years ago.
Guest:I got diagnosed with a heart condition.
Guest:Is it like congenital or did you do it?
Guest:It's degenerative.
Guest:But did you do it?
Guest:I could have very well done it.
Guest:I mean, no one would be shocked if I said... Yeah, everyone... What they said is because I might have had a virus when I was a kid and it caused... What's it called?
Guest:Cardiomyopathy.
Guest:But, you know, I didn't tell the doctors what I was doing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You can fool an x-ray with speed, I'm sure.
Guest:So you were on it when you got the x-ray?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I wasn't on it when I got the x-ray.
Guest:But after I found out the results, I said, you know what?
Guest:If I'm dying, you know...
Guest:why not you know and now i was i've been given like a time stamp like you got two years really yeah it tops maybe a year to two years because they're my right now my heart is is failing and and um they can't give me a transplant because i'm diabetic and they won't give it to a diabetic were you always diabetic uh for the for the last maybe 15 20 years type two though uh-huh
Guest:but never took care of it never took care of it you know um so what's going on if i did my medicine like i did my medicine sure and then i'd be you know so you could die any minute yeah i could right now right now it's within the last seven or eight months i found out that you know if these drugs we're giving you don't work you have about a year to two years but you know what mark i mean do you have a pacemaker or something no i have a whole thing i gotta wear that's a defibrillator that's over my heart you have it on now no i took it off before i came
Guest:Why'd you take it off now?
Guest:Because it'd be so cool to die on your show.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:It'd be so great.
Guest:It'd be better than Gallagher walking out.
Guest:It sure would.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:So, no, because it's a real pain in the ass to wear it.
Guest:It's all over the place.
Guest:I got electrodes all over the place.
Guest:You have to wear a defibrillator that, what, kicks in?
Guest:Yeah, this thing will... If I pass out...
Guest:This thing will detect that, and I have 30 seconds to shut it off.
Guest:If I don't shut it off, it shoots this blue jelly all over me, conductive jelly, and zaps me.
Guest:It warns people, stay away from it, because people will start to touch you and shake you.
Guest:Are you all right?
Guest:It'll stop their heart and start mine.
Guest:It's kind of like the ultimate practical joke.
Guest:I know.
Guest:You go on stage with that on?
Guest:uh yeah i have i i did my last show last weekend i announced that i was retiring from from doing shows i did my last shows in toledo and uh i'm done now i'm finished really yeah i'm gonna do uh i'm gonna go to the magic castle and shoot a special uh do six shows there and and two in two nights and shoot a special and that's that's not for the public though but right last show for the public's over oh my god yeah i'm done man so so you ask me if i'm partying
Guest:fuck yeah man i'll get my hands on anything right now and i'll do it because you know the pain seriously yeah because the pain in my hands and my feet right now are so it's so bad it's from what from my heart not pumping blood to my extremities oh really yeah so so it's my hands are always tingling i always feel like like my feet my feet i can't walk more than 20 feet they lock up
Guest:The last few shows I did, halfway through, I started locking up.
Guest:Everything started seizing up.
Guest:My hands were like a claw.
Guest:You know when you get cramps?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:You'll see me looking for heroin in about two months.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Wouldn't you if you were dying?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it depends what quality of life you want to have.
Guest:Well, this is no quality of life.
Guest:But you're awake.
Guest:I'm getting married, too.
Guest:That's the sad part.
Guest:You're getting married?
Guest:I'm getting married, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But so we don't want to be doing heroin when you're married.
Guest:No, but if I start feeling really bad pain, I start going fast.
Guest:I've never tried it, and I would definitely try it.
Guest:You've never tried heroin?
Guest:No.
Guest:Have you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, how is it?
Marc:I didn't boot it.
Marc:I just snorted it.
Marc:That's what I would do.
Marc:Yeah, it kind of made me nauseous, and I fell asleep.
Marc:I didn't get the full effect.
Marc:I didn't lock in.
Marc:That sounds great.
Marc:Nauseous and sleep.
Guest:That's how I'm feeling now.
Marc:But I'm like you, man.
Marc:I like to go fast.
Marc:I like... Yeah.
Guest:i like i like focused drugs i never was a drinker i never drank yeah never drank i always did drugs that make you focused and not sleep you know be awake all the time so but so you start and you start as a kid as a magician yeah and then the talent show stopped me from doing that the talent show that i did at my high school yeah went so horribly wrong that the next day in school the kids didn't tease me they didn't tease me kids get cruel about that stuff yeah it was so bad they just
Guest:They didn't say that word.
Guest:They avoided me, man.
Guest:They just avoided all eye contact.
Guest:How did it go so bad?
Guest:You couldn't find the coin or what?
Guest:Listen, I did six tricks, and all six tricks went wrong.
Guest:I mean, the girl in the sword box had a leg cramp, and she said, I have to get out.
Guest:I have to get out of the sword.
Guest:Stop it.
Guest:Seriously.
Guest:So she got out of the sword box halfway through the trick and knocked all the sides off and two mirrors smashed.
Guest:I killed my dove.
Guest:You did not.
Guest:I produced a dove and it ran.
Guest:It got out of my hand and was running and I chased it and it stopped real fast and I couldn't stop that fast.
Guest:You killed the bird.
Guest:I ran right over it.
Guest:I squashed it with my foot.
Guest:That's why they didn't make fun of you.
Guest:Yeah, and then I exposed the levitation.
Guest:You could see the steel bar holding the girl up in the air the whole entire time.
Guest:It was supposed to be hidden until I got right in front of it.
Guest:Well, you had some pretty
Guest:big tricks for a teenager yeah i had illusions i was i was this was going to be my big you know yeah this could get me the chicks in high school this was going to be it made me from an idiot you killed the bird you showed the trick the chick wouldn't stay in the box and then the final thing was the guillotine and i said that can't go wrong because the blade falls it goes penetrates the neck and doesn't cut the head off and that's the trick
Guest:And then they shut the lights off.
Guest:Well, they shut the lights off just as the blade started to drop, so you never saw it penetrate the guy's neck.
Guest:It just blacked out.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:All done to Elk John's funeral for a friend.
Guest:And I'm dressed like a dick from Godspell with the rainbow suspenders and the heart on my forehead.
Guest:Come on!
Guest:I thought that was so cool.
Guest:Like Doug Heading?
Guest:Yeah, I had my hair permed like Doug Heading, and I just tanked, man.
Guest:And I went to Toronto and got so shit-faced after that night, and I said, I'll never do magic again, and I never did.
Guest:Never did a serious magic show after that.
Guest:So how many brothers and sisters did you have?
Guest:I had two sisters, two older sisters, no brothers.
Marc:Are they still around?
Guest:uh yeah they are yeah they're around and so now all right so how do you decide to get into show business after that disaster all right well listen this is funny this is really really funny this is i i used to be able to bend spoons i figured out how to bend a spoon with using my mind but it was just misdirection i would make them look away for a second i would bend it and
Guest:Is that what most swipe of hand is?
Guest:Yeah, but I did it really well, and I did it for my physics teacher, who I really admired, and he said to me, is that real?
Guest:Are you really doing this, or is it a trick?
Guest:And I was really unpopular in school.
Guest:I was not standing out at all.
Guest:So I lied, and I said, yeah, I can really do it, thinking that that would be the end of it.
Guest:Nah, the next hour I'm sitting in class, I hear him speak, Jonathan, John Zellows, please come to the principal's house.
Guest:shit this has something to do with the spoon bending i know it does yeah i walk in there there's my mom and my dad who they call out of work a bunch of spoons on the desk and a local reporter from the macomb daily paper yeah i'm like fuck this is not good so the physics teacher set you up to this yeah he asked me if it was real and i lied to him and said yeah so he called he told and they got a reporter to come down they wanted me to demonstrate my powers my mom took me aside before this
Guest:i said can you really do this are you just lying and i looked it straight in the eye and i said i can really do it this is like a snowball going down i said i can really do it yeah and so i proceeded to bend all the spoons and they freaked out and then i thought you succeeded in the trick at all times yeah i i bent everything and the reporters he's chomping at the bit to do this great story about a psychic kid but i had to figure a way out of it because i figured that magicians local magicians would bust me on it and make me a fraud but but but
Guest:They can't give away the trick.
Guest:Why would they?
Guest:They would say, I'm lying.
Guest:This is what he's doing.
Guest:Like magicians do.
Guest:You know, magicians, they bust Uri Geller for doing it.
Guest:They'll bust me, too.
Guest:I mean, if it's in the paper, you can bet someone's going to come forward and go, that's bullshit.
Guest:He's just tricky.
Guest:So I had to figure a way out of it, and this is how I got out of it.
Guest:I told my mom...
Guest:That I wanted to be a normal kid.
Guest:I didn't want to be a freak in the school.
Guest:I just wanted to be a normal kid.
Guest:I didn't want everyone looking at me like I was weird.
Guest:And she bought it.
Guest:They all bought it.
Guest:Nobody did the story.
Guest:But it leaked.
Guest:This is the good part.
Guest:It leaked out.
Guest:And I didn't get that press, which I didn't want.
Guest:But everyone thought I was this mysterious.
Guest:I got pissed.
Guest:mad pussy i got like mad pussy my senior year i did yeah okay you're like that yeah i was like yeah man who fell to earth yeah yeah so and that's when you knew show business was the thing yeah yeah man if a chick thinks that you can read her mind or anything like that you're in did you try to do that with chicks oh yeah would they go to the bathroom i'd go in through their purse take their license out get their birthday you know there's zodiac sign i have all the details we could put it back real fast in their purse and
Guest:They'd come back and we'd be doing lines.
Guest:Let me touch your forehead for a minute.
Guest:Boom, you're a Virgo.
Guest:Boom, you're a barn.
Guest:So you were doing lines in high school?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, no, lines of speed and lines of PCP.
Guest:PCP in high school?
Yeah.
Guest:I know.
Guest:PCP's a funny one, isn't it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I didn't do that one.
Guest:No, don't, man.
Guest:Yeah, I used to do PCP.
Guest:Isn't that crazy time?
Guest:Yeah, I remember trying to hang the Christmas lights up, being on PCP with my mom and dad in the living room looking at me, knowing what's wrong with them.
Guest:What does it do to you?
Guest:Not be able to hang Christmas tree lights up.
Guest:That's the list of things you can't do.
Guest:Well, it depends on what you're doing.
Guest:Sometimes you want to just go to the hospital.
Guest:Sometimes.
Guest:But my friends would never take me to the hospital.
Guest:Because he's just freaking out?
Guest:I would lie there and go, take me to the hospital.
Guest:I'm freaking out.
Guest:And they're fucking with me.
Guest:They're dividing my shit up.
Guest:I want his bike.
Guest:I want his stereo.
Guest:You know, doing that kind of stuff.
Guest:They're tripping me out even more, you know.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So how'd you start performing?
Guest:I went to San Francisco...
Guest:The whole trip was going to be, we're going to look for peyote in the desert.
Guest:We're going to go to... Who?
Guest:Who went?
Guest:We just read those Carlos Castadena books.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you were with a friend?
Guest:I was with my cousin and a guy from high school and a girl who I ended up teaming up with.
Guest:And we went out, we drove out from Michigan to California.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:found an indian yeah we found peyote and we also found poppers which i've never tried before yeah and uh amyl nitrate and we so the indian had peyote and poppers yeah a well no no the indian had peyote and another indian uh had the poppers the disco it was an all indian deal though yeah uh
Guest:We knew to look for Indians.
Marc:I guess.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The poppers are sort of outside the box, I think.
Guest:Yeah, poppers.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know why he had poppers.
Guest:I'd never seen them before.
Guest:Real ones?
Guest:Real Amos?
Guest:Yeah, the ones that were like... The little white.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:You have to break them open.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so...
Guest:learning the self-discovery uh trip that we had made us discover that we we all fucking hated each other and by the time we got to california they had dropped me off on the side of the road with this girl and they took off back home they wanted to go home and i didn't want to go home my whole thing my whole thing was i was going to build a tree house this is how stupid i was naive i thought i could build a tree house in malibu or california up in the woods right live in the tree house rent free that was my whole plan so no plan to be an entertainer
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I just wanted to live in a tree house and I didn't have plans to do anything.
Guest:You know, I just wanted to build a tree house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Swiss Family Robins.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I figured that'd be the cheapest way to go.
Guest:You and this girl.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And of course that never happened.
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:I don't think anyone's really built a tree house and lived in it.
Guest:That was over 17.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we just hitchhiked around and we ended up in San Francisco and we were so broke that I needed money and I started doing street performing.
Guest:what was that in the 70s 77 78 i was a street performer so who was on the street whitney brown was a whitney brown was on the street and uh harry anderson he's the first one i saw that really blew my mind out there harry anderson um i set my stuff up and was doing my show and i went to grab a bite and i came back and harry had packed all my stuff up and was in my spot harry anderson yeah street performer in san francisco yeah and a whitney brown because no one knows whitney is that
Guest:No, no.
Guest:A. Whitney Brown had a dog act.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He had a great dog act, a comedy dog act.
Guest:He inherited this dog from his partner who shot himself in the head.
Guest:He was with A. Whitney and he was gay and he really liked Whitney and Whitney wasn't gay.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it frustrated this guy so much that he shot himself in the head.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:In front of Whitney.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so Whitney got this guy's dog and this dog was trained to do everything, man.
Guest:It could do everything.
Guest:His name was Brownie Breezebottom.
Guest:That's what he called him.
Guest:A. Whitney Brown and his Dog of Renown.
Guest:That was the name of the show.
Guest:And this was where, like in Down on the Wharf?
Guest:Yeah, he was working in the cannery, inside the cannery, on the little outdoor stage.
Guest:And it was a great act.
Guest:The dog would jump up and take the hat off his head and go through the audience getting money.
Guest:oh really yeah and every time he would tell a dog joke the dog would run into the dog house and slam the door closed like he was mad oh my god yeah it was great and it was was he sort of a hippie kind of dude like long hair yeah he didn't have long long hair but he was a hippie because he ate all natural foods and he was yeah he was and harry anderson what was he like
Guest:Harry was a hustler.
Guest:Harry was doing a three-card money on the street, sidewalk shuffle, and stuff like that.
Guest:And he was great, though.
Guest:He got the crowd.
Guest:He got huge crowds.
Guest:And close-up magic?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And doing close-up magic, he would get like 200 people standing on the street, as opposed to me, like 40 or 50 people.
Guest:But what was your act then if you didn't know magic?
Guest:I did know magic, but I wasn't good at it.
Guest:So that was the joke.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Watching all these other acts, they were all doing comedy.
Guest:They were all putting comedy in their shows.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I put comedy in my show.
Guest:A. Whitney took me under his wing and showed me how to write a joke.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:The formula.
Guest:He gave me Robert Orban books.
Guest:Do you remember those?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think he's still alive, actually.
Guest:Yeah, I think he is, too.
Guest:I think he was a speechwriter for the president.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He was a great joke writer and he writes for radio stations.
Guest:But I remember I go into the library and you couldn't check them out, but you could copy jokes from them.
Guest:And I learned how the style of writing a joke from that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:because the jokes were so old you had to update them all you know that's how i learned and then my the street act made me really good really fast because that's what the streets do because you got to pull people in oh yeah if you're bad for a second they'll you'll lose their whole crowd will walk walk away where did pen and teller start because they were street performers too right well when i was street performing they were on off broadway in san francisco uh doing a show there were three of them originally
Guest:uh they were called asparagus valley cultural society and that's what they were called it was pen teller and a guy called we're chrisomer who was a musician and they did basically what they're doing now with three people but they they got one guy to leave the pete best of of right yeah but he was a street performer i remember talking to pen they started they did renaissance fairs and stuff
Marc:Well, he was, I think, wasn't he solo for a while, this Penn?
Guest:Yeah, and yeah, he Penn was a juggler, and he did Renaissance festivals, and they worked a lot of San Francisco street fairs and stuff, but they had a pretty good run in an off-Broadway show, and I used to go watch them when I was just 19 or 20, I used to watch them.
Marc:So when was the first, you know, sort of spectacle?
Marc:When did you start to develop the style of kind of over-the-top insanity?
Guest:Somebody once gave me a blood capsule.
Guest:I used to do the razor blade trick where I would swallow razor blades and swallow thread and bring them up all on a thread.
Guest:But someone said, you know, try just doing that with a blood capsule and freak them out.
Guest:Pretend like you cut yourself.
Guest:So that's the first thing.
Guest:The reaction from that when I...
Guest:When I started drooling the blood and pretending like I cut myself, people would come around.
Guest:It's like an accident.
Guest:You can't take your eyes off it.
Marc:Did you ever admit to that it wasn't real blood?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I think they knew it wasn't real blood because I would smirk on it and laugh about it.
Marc:So that was the first, that was the portal.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so every trick after that had blood in it.
Guest:Even cut and restored rope, I would put somewhere there would be blood in it.
Guest:So, yeah, I learned how to do shock stuff on the street.
Guest:And there was a water drought.
Guest:I remember you couldn't use a lot of water because it was a huge drought.
Guest:And I would tell the crowd if they didn't stop, I was going to pour out.
Guest:I had all these buckets of water.
Guest:I'd pour them out and say, if you don't stop, I'm wasting all this water.
Guest:I'd grab a little kid and hold a knife to his throat.
Guest:I would do it.
Guest:Anything.
Guest:And I learned on the street.
Guest:And then Shields and Yarnel were just leaving the streets at that time.
Guest:The Mimes.
Guest:The Mimes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They were in San Francisco?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:This is this whole world of comedy.
Guest:It was a whole generation of comedy out there.
Guest:And who else was out there?
Guest:Wailing Flowers and Madame came out a few times.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i was just saying i wrote a funny joke the other day i was just saying this would be funny to get whaling flowers and madame if he was still alive and willie tyler and lester and book them in a show a big country show yeah call it whaling and willie right you get a thousand country people in there and it's a gay guy and a black guy with puppets i i would watch that show that would be so fun you just wrote that yeah yeah i just wrote that
Guest:So how do you make the break from the street?
Guest:All right.
Guest:So I made the break from the street because they kept getting arrested.
Guest:When I started getting really good, the crowds would get really big and they would go out into the street and I would try to get it, rein them in, but I couldn't do it because it was like 200 people.
Guest:And they bust you for that?
Guest:yeah they bust me for it because i was the one causing it so they get you for obstruction right and the businesses on the fisherman's wharf didn't really want street performers so they made sure the cops whenever they could bust us would bust us so i was spending weekends in jail all the time and whitney was coming to bail me out all the time and and uh it just got to be ridiculous and then now had the drug started
Guest:Yeah, I was doing, buying sugar cubes on the street.
Guest:Of acid?
Guest:Yeah, Union Square, there'd be a guy that sells sugar cubes.
Guest:The late 70s, so it was a good acid?
Guest:77, no, but half the time it was fake and half the time it was real.
Guest:You never knew if- So you'd be tripping and street performing?
Guest:no i didn't really perform when i was high that back then yeah i would wait you know till that night time and stuff yeah and do it yeah i always could perform i never did a drug that would hamper my performance like like i said i like focus drugs uh i've seen guys in san francisco do acid go on stage and i'm how the hell do you like ray booker and those guys yeah yeah how the fuck are you doing that so did you do clubs in san francisco
Guest:Yeah, that's what I did.
Guest:When the streets were over for me, when I decided I had to get off the streets, then I went to the Holy City Zoo, auditioned for Tony DePaul in Cantu.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They gave me regular spots because, I mean, a street act doing that with that energy put on a little tiny stage.
Guest:They never seen anything like that.
Guest:That was a tiny room.
Guest:Yeah, they had never seen an act like that.
Guest:Now, who was around then?
Guest:Steve Pearl?
Guest:Yeah, Steve Pearl, Dana Carvey, Ellen DeGeneres.
Guest:I was with...
Guest:Bob Rubin.
Guest:Bob Rubin.
Guest:Bob was my opening act in Vegas not too long ago, like two, three years ago.
Guest:Was he all right?
Guest:Yeah, Bob was great, man.
Guest:I mean, I love his act.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:They don't know how to take him.
Guest:And I think that's funny to watch the audience not know how to take him.
Guest:The old Rube.
Guest:So tall, taller than the tallest.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I would love it.
Guest:The more he didn't go over, the more I laughed.
Marc:It's nice to be with somebody you like to watch.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he's trying to come back around.
Marc:Is he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, he was in that movie.
Guest:I was watching Boondock Saints.
Guest:He had a huge part.
Guest:He was a villain in it.
Guest:Yeah, I think he kind of had some rough times.
Guest:He always does.
Guest:He's always up and he's down.
Guest:He's up and he's down.
Guest:That's his problem.
Guest:Mostly down, mostly down, but he'll never give up, man.
Guest:So you're doing the zoo.
Guest:Yeah, so I'm doing the zoo, and I remember Robin Williams came in and was showing everybody his Mork and Mindy contracts, and he was making five grand a week.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were all pouring over that, you know, and he would come in and do sets almost every night, you know.
Guest:And then Cobb's Pub was around.
Guest:And then there's a lot of rooms back then outside of San Francisco that I would do.
Guest:The Country Store Tavern.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Remember that Country Store Tavern?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:That was before my time.
Guest:It was Rooster Teeth Feathers.
Marc:Rooster Teeth, yeah.
Guest:That's what it turned into, Rooster Teeth.
Marc:Yeah, that's still around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a good room.
Guest:It is a great room.
Guest:The energy in those rooms were fantastic.
Guest:It's a nice setup.
Guest:It's a nice setup.
Guest:So I did that for years and years.
Guest:I played San Francisco and developed my show and then did the comedy competition.
Guest:For John Fox?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:John Fox is the guy that got me my first big break.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He took three comics from San Francisco to the Improv in LA.
Guest:They were doing a showcase industry night.
Guest:None of us had ever played in L.A.
Guest:before.
Guest:Who were the comics?
Guest:It was me.
Guest:It was Will Durst.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was, God, was it Billy Jay?
Marc:Probably.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:What happened to that guy?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't either.
Marc:I saw him in New York for years, and then I just don't know what happened to him.
Guest:Yeah, so the three of us showcased at the improv, and I did a killer set that night.
Guest:And after I got off stage, all these producers came up, and I got three TV shows in one night.
Guest:That's what started.
Guest:What were you closing with?
Guest:I was closing with putting a bucket on my head, taking the bucket off, and my head was shaped like a bucket after that.
Guest:Yeah, it was a cartoon effect.
Guest:How'd you do that?
Guest:I had a bucket inside of a bucket.
Guest:It was the stupidest thing.
Guest:Do I look pale?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So John Fox, it's nice to hear a nice story about John Fox.
Guest:Yeah, I owe him that.
Guest:And then after that, I got Thick of the Night.
Guest:Remember that show?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:The show that was going to replace Carson.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I got Thick of the Night.
Guest:I got HBO's Young Comedian Special.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:The 8th Annual.
Guest:Who was on with you?
Guest:John Candy.
Guest:I was on with Steve Sweeney, a guy that does Mystery Science, Joe Hodgson, Paula Poundstone, myself.
Marc:And Poundstone was San Francisco at that time, wasn't she?
Marc:Or no?
Marc:Yeah, she was.
Marc:Paula was.
Marc:She'd left Boston already.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, she was with us.
Marc:So it was you and Paula and Joel and Steve Sweeney.
Marc:Steve Sweeney and Carol Siskind.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:I can't think of who else.
Guest:I think there was maybe one or two.
Guest:kenny rogersson was supposed to be on it but he got too drunk before the show and he didn't use his set and you can see him in the background during the during if you watch that special you'll see him back there by himself at a table looking down like oh i know i do it i know and he was so good yeah all the boston comics he's still funny man
Guest:Yeah, they were all fucking drunks.
Guest:Boston probably contributed a lot to my use.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:There was a guy there.
Guest:He was in the mafia.
Guest:He was a hit man.
Guest:Everybody knew.
Guest:And he was the guy that used to deal the coke in Boston to everybody.
Guest:And he said he'd sold church bells, but we all know what he really did.
Guest:Down at Nick's?
Guest:Yeah, down at Nick's.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:He was good, man.
Marc:The nostalgic, warm memories.
Guest:Yeah, well, I mean, two times he offered to lend his services to me, and two times I was tempted to do it.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah, I was going to use it.
Guest:It's scary how easy that is.
Guest:Well, somebody stole $300,000 from me.
Guest:That's a lot of money.
Guest:Yeah, so he said, do you want me to take care of him?
Guest:And I'm like, fuck, yeah, I do, but he's going to come back and get me.
Guest:He's going to come back and haunt me.
Marc:It will haunt you.
Guest:So I told him no.
Marc:Well, he was just going to work him over or he was going to do him in?
Guest:No, he was just going to do him in.
Guest:But I...
Guest:I kind of thought maybe just doing them over, I wouldn't get in so much trouble.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I didn't do it.
Guest:Did you get the money back?
Guest:No, I never did.
Marc:How the fuck did he steal $2?
Guest:No, my agency did it.
Guest:Do you remember Spotlight?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They had every comment.
Guest:Yeah, I remember.
Guest:They went bankrupt and everybody lost all their money.
Guest:And they had collected deposits from all these clubs and put them, instead of escrow, they put them into the general funds to try to keep the company low.
Guest:So when they did finally close, we had to go out there and do all the dates that we had to honor, all the dates that they took the money for.
Guest:I'm talking like Jay Leno and Lenny Clark.
Guest:They had everybody.
Guest:So we all got pimped.
Guest:I lost 300,000 because I had a game show at the time.
Guest:Merv Griffin wrote me a game show, and I was doing a game show.
Guest:So now, wait, did you move down to L.A.
Guest:then?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I went from San Francisco, then I moved down to L.A.
Guest:Now, when does the cocaine you start picking up?
Guest:During that part, it never stopped.
Guest:And he loved it.
Guest:I always had a good time with it.
Guest:I never had a bad experience with it.
Guest:Never?
Guest:Never.
Guest:Well, what do you consider?
Guest:I mean, the next morning, the lights coming up and the birds are saying, no, only never thought I was going to die, but here I am.
Guest:Dying.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's funny, isn't it?
Guest:I laugh at it, man.
Guest:I'm like, of course I'm dying.
Guest:I thought I'd be dying.
Guest:I'm always thinking I'm dying, you know, the way I lived.
Guest:But it never happened.
Guest:Never happened.
Guest:It happened this time.
Guest:I mean, the doctors told me six years ago I was going to, you know, but...
Guest:From this, right, but you're still kicking.
Marc:Yeah, but I'm still kicking, yeah.
Marc:Now, what is this?
Marc:I was told that there was a period where you went to Alaska.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But that was before you went to L.A.?
Guest:Yeah, Michael Davis, the juggler, he said that the Alaska date was an amazing gig to play because that taught me how to do cocaine proper.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:These guys would come off the pipeline with so much cash in their pockets, not knowing what to do with it, and spend it on all the strippers, and that's where I worked.
Guest:I was an emcee at a strip club.
Marc:So this is before you made the break?
Guest:Yeah, this is before I had my break.
Guest:How long would you go up there for?
Guest:They wanted me up there for...
Guest:but probably three four weeks at a time right maybe once in the summer once in the winter so i get all dark at one time and all light one time yeah but i lived in a trailer in the parking lot of the strip club right so the strippers when they were done in between sets would come to the trailer and do coke and funk me so that's how i learned how to
Guest:fuck right stripper will tell you if you're fucking wrong yeah she they don't have no patience for that that fucking here it is motherfucker put your hand there yeah learn how to fuck and and and i learned how not to be picky yeah at that time right because they were strippers and yeah some of them were you know weren't were really beautiful but because they worked in the last year they get the best strippers but where would you but it was just for these pipeline guys for these rigors oh yeah they would they would milk these guys they would come down off the pipeline and they they would take every penny they had and and and
Guest:And you were doing magic?
Guest:Yeah, I was just trying to do magic.
Guest:My intro would be something like, you want to see some titties?
Guest:But first, here's a magician.
Guest:And they hated me.
Guest:Literally, I had guns pulled.
Guest:You could wear guns on sidearms in Alaska.
Guest:I had a gun pulled on me.
Guest:I got beat up.
Guest:But I wrote to A. Whitney Brown.
Guest:I said, I'm dying up here, man.
Guest:Send me every book on Heckler Lines.
Guest:Every Heckler Lines book you can send me, give it to me.
Guest:And he sent me all these books.
Guest:And I copied them on paper, and I would just read them
Guest:I didn't bother to hide the paper or memorize them it was too fast and furious and I would just like boom boom and I got really good I committed to my head still to this day I can do 100 heckler lines right off the top of my head and I got good at it and then I got
Guest:I became actually witty.
Guest:You got your timing.
Guest:That's when the timing, but more importantly, the lightning fast response to anything that somebody could yell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was the best.
Guest:I think that was the best experience for my show is doing that strip club.
Guest:The streets were rough.
Guest:The strip clubs were rough.
Guest:And by the time I was done with that, I had a polished show that worked anywhere.
Marc:And you could do cocaine professionally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I could do cocaine.
Guest:I used to do it on stage, Mark.
Guest:I would say, it's time for some Coke, and I would pretend like I was snorting Coke off my table, but I wasn't pretending I was doing it.
Marc:But you did that for years.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The cocaine thing.
Guest:Oh, I would just snort that big, huge jug of it, and that was fake.
Guest:But I would literally snort lines off the table, and everyone thought I was fucking around.
Guest:But the guy on stage knew I wasn't because he saw it going off the straw, but nobody else did.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:I used to write bits to keep me off stage, so when I started smoking it, I had to get off stage, and I would go...
Guest:I wrote a bit that I had an audience member up there following directions, taped instructions on how to do a trick.
Guest:And I was in the back hitting the pipe.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I was a loser.
Guest:I was a loser.
Guest:But I never missed a gig.
Guest:I never missed a gig by oversleeping.
Guest:I never did a gig that wasn't worth what they were paying me to do.
Guest:I mean, money-wise.
Guest:So, I mean, I kept it together.
Marc:What was the Merv Griffin show?
Guest:Well, Merv saw me do...
Guest:Some late night TV show.
Guest:But he hired me to do, in Atlantic City, he owned Resorts International, a casino, and I did a show for him there, a live show.
Guest:I replaced Rip, what was his name, Rip?
Guest:Rip Taylor.
Guest:I replaced Rip Taylor.
Guest:You replaced Rip Taylor.
Guest:Yeah, it was called Red Hot and Rowdy, the show.
Guest:So I was the headliner in that, and I brought in a lot of business.
Guest:At that time, I was starting to get a good draw.
Guest:so i brought in a lot of business and he called me up after it was over and said oh i got a great idea he says you want to do a game show you want to host a game show and i went well i'm not really the game show type you know and he went well this one you're the you're because i based it off your show right so we want to do it with the game is going to be different every time every day there's the game will be different we will never play the same game twice right that was the whole thing
Guest:so i said yeah and we went and we we worked on it we wrote it and some writers i hired uh the guys i hired to write one of them now is the uh president or vice president of abc which guy mike mike davies oh really yeah his brother uh wrote uh lethal weapon and he was just a guy that used to pick my audience contestants now he's like big big guy yeah he's the guy man yeah yeah
Marc:yeah all these guys that go on to become really huge i've never asked them for favors and they've never offered them yeah but you did all right i did all right myself yeah i never really wanted to be an actor did you uh maybe a little you did well i'm doing a show now yeah i mean i can you act i'm okay i mean i'm i i can be present like i like i did a season like first season of my show i did okay this season i'm a little better just like listening i do all right how are you at memorizing the lines i'm good at that
Guest:really yeah have you always been good at memorizing yeah i seem to be able to do it that's what scares me the most it's not the fact that the acting is that memorizing the lines yeah well how did how did the game show go did you well here's the thing yeah it well we did we did the pilot and it was really really cool and uh nbc loved it and they picked it up and we shot 65 episodes of it we we did wow yeah we did 65 and that was that your big payday the first big payday well it was going to be if that's the 300 000 i got
Guest:ripped off that was like maybe a quarter of the check oh wow yeah but i yeah they stole all of that money and but um yeah we did 65 episodes and i made i made some money off of that one and and then i i quit the show because merv i did two episodes they never aired and they didn't pay me for them and my contract said even though if they air or not i still get paid for them well they didn't want to pay me for them and i walked off the show and
Guest:And then when NBC found that out, they dropped the show.
Guest:And Merv lost the show.
Marc:So there's no love between you and Merv.
Guest:Well, yeah, we made up.
Guest:Rodney used to live at the Beverly Hilton.
Guest:He used to come down all the time with his bathrobe on.
Guest:He lived there at the hotel.
Guest:And I saw him at the pool.
Guest:And then I went over to have lunch.
Guest:You were friends with Rodney?
Guest:No, I just saw him there.
Guest:I knew he lived there, and I saw him at the pool, and I talked to him for a little bit.
Guest:I'd never met him before, so I introduced myself, and then I went to have lunch, and Merv was there having lunch with some of the bigwigs, so I took all the silverware from all the tables secretly and put it up my sleeves, and I had it all ready to go, and it was a big gag, and I said, Merv, no hard feelings.
Guest:I want you to know I'm doing fine right now.
Guest:I'm like,
Guest:And all the silverware just dropped.
Guest:It made the loudest noise in the world in the middle of this restaurant.
Guest:And he died laughing.
Guest:I thank God he died laughing.
Guest:And that kind of was all right after that.
Guest:But, yeah, it was great working with Merv because he was there every single day, man.
Guest:He would tell the best stories, man, because he had that show for so long.
Guest:He's met everybody.
Guest:I would listen every morning.
Guest:I'd go down there.
Guest:I couldn't wait to go to work, you know, and get up and tape another game show, you know.
Marc:And listen to Merv talk.
Guest:and you're doing the blow then too no i stopped doing the blow then i didn't do i had to be real focused for that one because there was so much to do on memorizing the rules since the games were very different every day the games i had new rules every day couldn't be out of your mind and i had we only gave away cash which was merv's brainchild because it was ahead of his casino and anyone who won the cash would have to walk through the casino to get to their car and basically put it back right in merv's pocket yeah
Guest:So we only gave cash away, and we played the coolest games.
Guest:Whatever we came up with, Merv would build it for us.
Guest:I mean, we came up with some wild shit.
Guest:We were the first ones to do the Velcro wall, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we got in trouble with the gaming commission because we kind of cheated on a lot of the things.
Guest:We would cheat on the games.
Guest:It would be rigged.
Guest:We didn't know you weren't allowed to rig the games if there was money involved in stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I would be like a block stacking contest with somebody under the table pushing a rod up through my blocks.
Guest:Mine would always be one higher than theirs, you know, and they couldn't figure it out.
Guest:So we got a lot of letters of complaint, and we would answer them by taping a quarter to the paper and say, here's a quarter, call someone who gives a fuck.
Guest:Murr found out we were sending out these letters, and he just blew his stack.
Guest:And then we got to get legit.
Guest:We got to get legit, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a fun show.
Guest:It was fun.
Guest:But after that, after the money being stolen from me and quitting the show, that was the downward spiral.
Guest:That started the drug use again.
Guest:And then were you just doing clubs and stuff?
Guest:Yeah, I was doing clubs, but I wasn't healthy.
Guest:It was a bad state of mind.
Guest:Two times I've been in a bad state of mind, that and when I got divorced.
Guest:Both times, I never ever think about suicide ever, but I was just...
Guest:kind of contemplating.
Guest:Like when I got divorced, I was sitting there with a gun in my mouth.
Guest:It wasn't loaded, but I just wanted to feel the drama.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Divorce is horrible.
Guest:It was really bad because my mind was really bad because she just didn't tell me why.
Guest:She just said, I'm going back to Australia.
Guest:I'm leaving you.
Guest:She wouldn't tell me why, really.
Guest:I thought we had a good marriage.
Marc:But were you out of control?
Guest:No, I wasn't out of control.
Guest:I'm never out of control.
Guest:Even though I've done... Drugs don't make me out of control.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I've always been there paying my bills and always been doing my shows.
Marc:So after you lost to $300,000, what happened?
Marc:Would you just go back to the road?
Marc:Yeah, I was just kind of like...
Marc:Now, you worked with a lot of people.
Marc:I mean, everyone knew you.
Marc:You were a respected guy.
Marc:You worked with Seinfeld.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was with Jerry when his dad died.
Guest:We did a show that night.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It was for the president of the United States.
Guest:Get the fuck out of here.
Guest:Yeah, we got a call.
Guest:I got a call from the Secret Service.
Guest:I was in the hotel room in Atlanta, and I got a call, and I was like, this is the Secret Service.
Guest:Do you want to do a show for the president?
Guest:And I just hung up, you know, thinking I was like, you know, my friends, because they do that shit all the time.
Guest:So my agent calls back and says, what the fuck are you doing?
Guest:That was really the Secret Service.
Guest:So they did a background check and found out I didn't have any arrests and my background was clean.
Guest:And so they told me, if you want to do the show, be at the corner of 58th and Broadway at like 730 in the morning and we'll pick you up.
Guest:And a black van will pull up.
Guest:We can't tell you where you're going or where the location is.
Guest:Real hush hush.
Guest:So I went, and I paid for everything.
Guest:They didn't pay for anything.
Guest:So when I got there, there was Seinfeld and Yakov Smirnoff.
Guest:What were they doing in Atlanta?
Guest:No, I got the call in Atlanta.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:We had to go to New York.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And we got in this van.
Guest:The three of you.
Guest:Yeah, and they took us under this tunnel under the Hudson Bay, Governor's Island.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Which is like a military base.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's where the president was going to be.
Guest:And they flew him in a helicopter, and we did a show for him.
Guest:He was way far back in a reviewing stand.
Guest:They kept us away from him.
Guest:Was there a crowd?
Guest:Yeah, there was a crowd.
Guest:And there was kids, and there was a big lawn, and then there was the president.
Guest:Did you meet him?
Guest:The president of France was there, too, President Mitterrand.
Guest:Did you meet him?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, they kept us away from them.
Guest:They kept me away from them.
Guest:What year was that?
Guest:This was a bicentennial year for the Statue of Liberty's fireworks show.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Guest:Yeah, so I decided, well, this is the first time I ever did Ecstasy, right?
Guest:I'm gonna do a hit of Ecstasy and do a show for the president.
Guest:It's only natural, right?
Guest:And so I started getting off on it and never done it before, and the Secret Service just was beating down on me, man.
Guest:healthy i felt our eyes on me every second i felt them fucking staring at me and i'm getting really paranoid yeah and then my road manager shoot tests my blank gun off like an idiot he shoots off my gun backstage yeah freak out oh they they materialize like out of star trek man they just came out of nowhere and tackled his ass to the ground really yeah they knew it was fake they wanted to prove a point right so he's like 400 pound guy you know they had him down like hog time
Guest:So you're out of your mind on ecstasy performing for Reagan.
Guest:Watching my role manager get beefed down to the ground.
Marc:Oh, I got to clear something up.
Marc:Now, the one rumor that there was always around was that you got banned from Letterman because you flipped somebody off.
Marc:I did.
Marc:I did.
Guest:yeah i got banned from letterman because i made a bet with a dj named kevin matthews who worked in chicago and i bet him that i wouldn't flip flip him off sometime during the show it was like a hundred dollar bet yeah and that cost me it was your first letterman first letterman uh i he called me over to sit down and i scratched my nose with my middle finger right thinking that that's that's the winning bet yeah and it wouldn't look obvious but i mean
Guest:it looked really bad i'd watch it now today and i see it and i go and it was robert morton who who was producing the show then and he thought i did it to him right because he had cut my time back down by a whole minute and i was mad and he thought i was flipping him off and so he told me you'll never be on the show ever again
Marc:Did he say, I knew what you were doing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he knew exactly what I was doing.
Guest:And I couldn't convince him that I wasn't doing it to him.
Guest:You tried to tell him that it was a bet?
Guest:Yeah, I said it was a bet.
Guest:It was.
Guest:And so I didn't do the show.
Guest:Then he got fired.
Guest:Maybe 15 years later, he got fired and Letterman saw my Comedy Central special and personally called.
Guest:He himself called to have me on the show.
Guest:yeah and i said i wonder if he remembers that i had done a show before yeah now if you watch me come out on the second time i did letterman he's you see me laugh my head off when i'm walking out after the intro it's because he stood up behind his desk and did did this to me like flip me off and i started laughing though it's all he does remember this right so listen to this i did probably the best set i've ever done on letterman it kicked ass yeah
Guest:And I was in my dressing room getting undressed, and I was so happy.
Guest:Producers came back there and said to me, we can't air that, what that set you just did.
Guest:And I'm like, what are you talking about?
Guest:I just killed it.
Guest:And I said, well, I stabbed a girl in the head.
Guest:My assistant was a girl.
Guest:And I stabbed her in the head with a pair of scissors, and it looks really extremely real.
Guest:And he took offense to that.
Guest:And...
Guest:Who did?
Guest:Well, the guy said, Dave wants to see you up in his office.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He'll explain why.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he says, I don't know why, but nobody goes up to his office.
Guest:He doesn't want anybody up in his office.
Guest:So I go up to Dave's office, and he said, I want to explain something to you.
Guest:I have a real strong position against violence towards women.
Guest:And I went, well, Dave, it's slapstick is what it is.
Guest:So what you're doing basically is you're, because it's a woman.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it's also the classic sort of assistant, the magician's assistant.
Guest:Yeah, and it was a slapstick gig.
Guest:But then he said, the way he started it, he says, nobody's a bigger fan of yours than I am.
Guest:And after he said that, he could have said anything.
Guest:It didn't matter.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because after I heard that, I'm like, well, that's all I could think about.
Guest:And they pulled it.
Guest:They know.
Guest:They said, we're going to hold the same audience for 15 minutes.
Guest:If you can come up with another set and get out there and we'll tape another set.
Guest:I don't have my props.
Guest:I'm a prop comic.
Guest:I don't have 15.
Guest:I don't have another five minutes.
Guest:So I went out and did the same material, except for I took the bit with the stabbing out and put something else in there.
Guest:So the audience was watching the same set, laughing, trying to make it sound.
Guest:It was nowhere near as good.
Guest:Did they run that?
Guest:Yeah, they ran that.
Guest:And you can see the discrepancy is because the audience just, they're kind of stunned by me coming back out again and watching me do the show again.
Marc:They didn't explain it.
Guest:Yeah, and so every time I do Letterman, it's surrealistic like that.
Guest:Then I did a show at Foxwoods Casino, and we were sold out, and he snuck in to see my show.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they told me he was there, but he didn't come up to me and say anything.
Guest:So I called his office the next day, and I said, were you at my show last night?
Guest:And he went, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was there.
Guest:He loves you.
Guest:Yeah, he does like the show a lot.
Guest:Yeah, he's a big fan.
Guest:So that's good because not a lot of people like Prop Con.
Guest:It's amazing.
Guest:Who called you that you're most impressed with that found out that they loved your show?
Guest:Who's the biggest celebrity that called you out of the blue that said, you know what, I really love what you're doing?
Marc:Well, Robin's been a pretty good fan of mine.
Guest:Robin Williams?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did he see you live and come up to you after?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, he's seen me live and he's left messages before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:It's nice when somebody calls you like that.
Guest:I got a call from Carlin.
Guest:And then you don't know if you're supposed to call back.
Guest:I never know.
Guest:If they leave their number and say call back, I would never call back.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I never would.
Guest:I'm bashful.
Guest:Carlin called you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I was in Vegas, when I started my run in Vegas, I was just supposed to do two weeks for Brenner to fill in while he was on vacation at the Golden Nugget.
Guest:And two weeks turned into 13 years.
Guest:That's where...
Marc:So you had tenure there.
Guest:I did.
Guest:I was there for 13 years.
Guest:Just last January is when I quit.
Guest:And that's big.
Guest:So you're all set.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:After that.
Guest:I mean, that was like $3 to $4 million a year, man.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That was big money.
Guest:Because I was filling up the rooms.
Guest:And...
Guest:uh, Carlin called me and left a 20 minute message.
Guest:He must've been tweaking or something, but he examined my whole show.
Guest:He took the whole show apart and said why it's funny and why he thought this was great.
Guest:And he was dissecting it all in his head as he was talking on the phone.
Guest:And it just, it wasn't rambling.
Guest:It actually, if you listen to it, it made sense.
Guest:But I mean, it was to the layman.
Marc:He really, he really took it in.
Guest:Oh, he loved it.
Guest:He said, Oh, I just love you, man.
Guest:I just love your stuff.
Guest:And the,
Guest:after that there was nothing that anybody no review nothing that anyone could say that would falter my confidence in my show because because after carlin says that who who do you have to fucking prove it yeah it's like being uh knighted it is like being knighted yeah man because god damn i'm sure he didn't do that he did that once when i was sitting with lenny clark he called lenny clark and did that to him when i was in the room once and then 10 years later it happened to me so
Guest:that's sweet yeah vegas was vegas is good in the fact that people come out and see you you know a lot of stars go to vegas and they'll come out and see you like right yeah in the audience they'll say kevin spacey's in the audience tonight really it's really fun yeah that was cool i like playing vegas for that reason yeah and you live there i'm starstruck too i'm like you i like i like to see stars oh yeah me too yeah
Marc:But you lived there, so you set up a shop there, and that was the big payoff.
Guest:I lived at the Gold Nugget for two years.
Guest:I lived inside the casino.
Guest:They gave me the suite, you know, the Frank Sinatra suite.
Marc:And they feed you and whatever you want.
Guest:Oh, you've got signing privileges.
Guest:When you're doing business in Vegas, you don't pay for anything.
Guest:You sign your name.
Guest:So that was like you won.
Guest:I did win.
Guest:I did win.
Guest:The first two years I was there at the Gold Nugget, I made more money than probably I ever saved in my hotel.
Guest:That whole career.
Guest:And what'd you do with it?
Guest:I put it in the bank because I've always been taught to save money.
Guest:So I lived on my merchandise money, my t-shirt money, and put my paycheck in the bank.
Marc:And what about the blow?
Guest:I wasn't doing blow back then.
Marc:No?
Guest:You think that coincides with whenever I was making the most money?
Guest:Like at a game show, I wasn't doing blow.
Marc:You just had this reputation.
Guest:Yeah, no, the reputation...
Guest:i don't think that really bugged anybody because of there wasn't any bad shows or no no i just was wondering like if that was true like you were like how much you were doing no i wasn't doing any any blow when i was doing the nugget i was clean i i've been i go through bouts of clean you know i go for two three years without doing it and then start up right yeah it hasn't been the entire time right and then i put all drugs away and was just i didn't do a lot of different ones i was just doing coke for a while and then it switched to speed for a while and
Guest:But it never affected me, except for now I'm dying of a heart condition.
Marc:But when you were in Vegas for 13 years, what did you end up like?
Marc:How extravagant did things get?
Marc:You bought a house in Vegas?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I bought a beautiful house.
Guest:I bought a mansion, man.
Guest:It's like a castle.
Guest:And I got 27 cars.
Guest:What kind of cars?
Guest:Muscle cars, mostly muscle cars.
Guest:American muscle cars.
Guest:Yeah, nothing foreign.
Guest:No foreign cars.
Guest:Some of them are back from the 30s, a Pierce Arrow, 32 Pierce Arrow, beautiful car.
Guest:what's your favorite one to drive um i it depends on what what kind of mood i'm in and how fast i got to be there like i like driving to work that's what i liked about vegas is my show was at 10 and i would leave the house at quarter to 10 right you know people would think i'm backstage getting ready but i'm still at home you know finishing dinner yeah and i i i could make it to the strip and in my corvette at 61 corvette yeah i could i could pull that in 10 minutes man i could be there
Guest:And all the cops knew me, so if I did get pulled over, I didn't get searched.
Guest:Because they knew you.
Guest:Yeah, they knew who I was.
Guest:And so living in Vegas, it's a really small community.
Marc:Who were your buddies?
Guest:Actually, at Care Top, I would hang out with him and Chris Angel.
Guest:They were all my friends.
Guest:We all have a group that we hang out with.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and it was really fun.
Guest:What about the old guard?
Guest:Are there any left?
Guest:Wayne Newton or anybody?
Guest:I never hung out with Wayne Newton, no.
Guest:I'm trying to think of the old guard.
Guest:No, I didn't hang out with any of the old ones.
Guest:Slayton?
Guest:Bobby Slayton?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was there for a year or two, yeah.
Guest:He tried.
Guest:A lot of comics came and tried to get their act permanently there, but it's not...
Guest:I don't know what it is.
Guest:It's not easy to do.
Guest:It's not easy.
Guest:First of all, the marketing, I'm spending 30 grand a month on advertising.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just on ads, you know, billboards.
Guest:You personally?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My deals have always been four-wall deals.
Guest:You know, I take whatever comes in.
Guest:All in, yeah.
Guest:Since I had to draw and I was filling the rooms, I like that deal the best because all the money goes to me, you know.
Marc:So you would market however you wanted to.
Guest:No, they'll tell you how to market.
Guest:They want control over you.
Guest:They totally want control over you.
Guest:That's the problem with the casinos.
Guest:I had a real rough time.
Guest:When I was leaving the Gold Nugget to go to the Flamingo, they were pissed off that I was leaving because I had really done a good job.
Guest:I made their demographic younger, and they were happy, and I got a better offer.
Guest:So I went, and they just slammed me.
Guest:The Gold Nugget...
Guest:bad mouth me and said it was hard to work with just tried to destroy me and and other casinos listen to that shit you know they believe it but the flamingo took me and i made more money at the flamingo what'd they say about you oh they just said i was hard to work with and and and all this crap and then then they had to eat crow because after i was done at the nugget they flamingo they made me a big offer to come back there and
Guest:oh really they made me yeah i got three they offered me three million dollars to come back uh i didn't have to pay for any advertising yeah i didn't it was a straight three million million in your pocket and so that after saying i was hard to work with they had i you know if i'm so hard i work with why are you making me this deal but to come back you know yeah yeah so i was ready to go i was ready to go back and and i got to sign the deal and then the week before i was to open they sold
Guest:MGM Grand sold the gold nugget to these two dickheads, Tim and Tom.
Guest:They started Travelocity or something, internet money, and they bought the gold nugget, and my deal went away.
Guest:Yeah, it went away.
Guest:They were supposed to honor the contract anyway, but they didn't.
Marc:So what else did you do with your money?
Marc:You bought cars, you bought a mansion.
Marc:I did stupid things.
Guest:You got a plane?
Guest:No, I recreated a drive-in movie theater I used to work at when I was a kid in Michigan.
Guest:I used to always work at drive-ins.
Guest:And I had all these cars.
Guest:And I said, how am I going to store these cars?
Guest:So I got this giant warehouse at the airport and I built a drive-in movie theater, an indoor one.
Guest:But you would swear that you were outdoors because I have a planetarium projector that projects stars up in the sky.
Guest:And who goes to this thing?
Guest:Oh, well, I do and my friends do.
Guest:And I rent it out once in a while.
Guest:Copperfields use it.
Guest:Panteras use it a few times, you know.
Guest:And yeah, people, I just, I was going to rent it out to the public, but I decided I don't want people sitting in my car.
Guest:So, but yeah, it was, it's amazing.
Guest:I had murals painted on each warehouse wall of more cars.
Guest:So it looks like you're sitting in a long row of cars.
Guest:Like you hang out with Copperfield and Chris Angle?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Do they look at you as a magician?
Guest:Not really, no.
Guest:Do magicians play?
Guest:If I fooled them, they get mad.
Guest:If I learn a trick and show Copperfield, I just showed him one recently, he got mad because it was me.
Guest:He couldn't figure it out?
Guest:Yeah, he couldn't figure it out.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And no magician could figure it out.
Guest:And you made the trick up?
Guest:No, I didn't make the trick up.
Guest:I was showing it.
Guest:Someone showed it to me and I showed every magician I showed to a professional didn't have a clue how it was done.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I'll show it to you afterwards.
Guest:It'll blow your mind.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But yeah, they look at me more as a friend.
Guest:See, I'm a neutral guy.
Guest:I'm not a threat to them.
Guest:So that's why they'll all hang out with me.
Guest:Because you're like a different type of entertainer.
Guest:Oh, they hate each other.
Marc:Oh, so you can't hang out with Angel?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:If Chris Angel hates Copperfield, I advise first.
Guest:They have a big feud going on.
Guest:Copperfield doesn't want to give up the crown.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Nor she.
Guest:And Chris wants it.
Guest:And so they're making up titles left and right.
Guest:The magician of the millennium and the magician of the century.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:These are like...
Marc:Do you guys ever bust each other's balls?
Marc:Do you ever play tricks on each other?
Guest:Me and Chris, yeah, Copperfield's got a good sense.
Guest:They all have sick sense of humor.
Marc:Well, Copperfield's boyhood friend was a comedian, right?
Marc:Ted Bloomberg.
Marc:Alan Bursky was.
Guest:He made him cry.
Guest:Bursky made David cry.
Guest:He did?
Guest:When David was little, he came into the magic shop with a business card, and he stole this logo from Alan, this rabbit that Alan had...
Guest:copyright right and alan yelled at copperfield at the magic shop and made me dave yeah dave uh never never forget that one really yeah but do you guys do pranks on each other oh yeah i do elaborate pranks man i do i'm a practical joker so i have a book out of practical talking what's the best prank oh i've got people on some amazing man i've i've sent people to do gigs that weren't even real
Guest:yeah i said i've done some really good that's horrible yeah at least well my whole house is rigged up so they all like they they i build these things and put them in my house and then they come over and see them and they want to have them i have a i put this in chris's angels bathroom i put a shelf and on the shelf's a cremation urn and it says this is my lucky rap my rabbit lucky yeah always in my heart yeah you know
Guest:And when people are in the bathroom, all you have to do is hit this remote control, and the shelf drops down, and the cremation room falls on the ground, and all this ashes spill on the ground.
Guest:People in the bathroom, they freak, man, because... Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and Chris is at the door going, is everything okay in there?
Guest:And they're...
Guest:trying to clean this mess up and and some of them don't come out and some of them come out and not like what i don't know what you're talking about it's so funny just to put people in that spot man and i yeah and i built stuff like that for them and the copperfields i built some wild shit for him too man to put in his house yeah he's got a room with the ventriloquist dolls he's got me
Guest:All the famous ones, Wailing Flowers.
Guest:He's got Madame in there.
Guest:Charlie McCarthy.
Guest:Charlie McCarthy.
Guest:And he's got Cliff Robertson one from Twilight Zone.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:There's a whole room of them.
Guest:They're great.
Guest:And I had rigged up so when people come near the room, it activates the sound.
Guest:You can hear them talking.
Guest:You hear them going, shh, shh, shh.
Guest:They're coming.
Guest:They're coming.
Guest:They're coming.
Guest:And then you hear glass breaking.
Guest:And then when you come in the room, there's a broken glass on the ground and no one moved.
Guest:Nothing's moving.
Guest:It's really eerie.
Guest:So I like that kind of stuff.
Guest:I like scaring people a lot.
Guest:Like haunted houses?
Guest:Oh, I built a haunted house in Vegas.
Guest:That's another thing I did with my money.
Guest:two years no two years ago um the plaza downtown yeah they gave me a hotel to check out they said you can have two floors in this hotel to build a haunted house do whatever you want yeah and i said are you serious i can do it and i had the use of the elevator i built the state-of-the-art haunted house man and uh two years ago we opened it and and
Guest:it was great it was such a good haunted house i mean there wasn't those rules that you can't touch right you got touched yeah you know yeah you got your ankles grabbed yeah so you just like designing this oh yeah i designed it took me it took me a year do you do do you do all the machine work on this stuff too i build stuff yeah i help build stuff but i
Guest:Now I'm delegating most of it.
Guest:I go in there and oversee it.
Guest:You design it?
Guest:I design it and oversee it being done.
Guest:But I have most of it.
Guest:My house is tricked out.
Guest:My house has been on TV a bunch of times on different shows, house shows.
Guest:People come over, and I've got a doll in a glass case hanging on the wall, a display case, and this girl's doll is in there, but I have it chained.
Guest:The arms are chained in the case, and I put some blood on the dress.
Guest:And they're like, right away, they're drawn to that.
Guest:Why do you have that?
Guest:And I said, well, it's from a famous movie.
Guest:A director read the inscription on the foot.
Guest:And when they get close to it, this doll comes alive and starts thrashing inside this case.
Guest:And the door opens.
Guest:And it's just the horror on their face, man.
Guest:I mean, just to see this doll.
Guest:You like shocking people.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Where do you think that came from?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Ever since I was a kid, my family was kind of like that.
Guest:If someone said, I'm going to go take a bath, you would run to the bathroom and hide behind the door, you know.
Guest:Just to freak them out?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We like scaring each other, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I always was building spook houses when I was a kid.
Guest:I never played sports.
Guest:You play sports?
Guest:No.
Guest:A lot of comics, they don't play sports.
Marc:I never did.
Marc:I'm not a sports guy at all.
Guest:I'm not a sports guy at all either.
Guest:So when they were all playing football on the street, I was building haunted houses and I would get them to come on and do that, you know.
Guest:so have you now with this heart condition have you have you had any problems i mean have you have you gone down have i gone down what had a heart attack yeah no but i've fainted uh three times i've fainted in the last year um because of the medicine i'm they're thinning my blood right now keeping it really thin so that my heart doesn't strain right so when i stand up real fast sometimes i i get dizzy and i i faint
Guest:uh it's happened to me three times and it's scary as hell one time i woke up i had a gas gas pump uh handle in my hand and then all my money was blowing down the street and i woke up and i'm like what the fuck i was pumping gas i must have been pumping gas yeah you don't remember what you're doing and it's really disorienting and you get mad you get and then i hit my head i once i passed out in my bedroom and it smacked my head and
Guest:yeah and but that's just from the medicine i think that that's what's causing that you look good i do you know i feel all right except for like i said if i try to do something my legs lock up and my hands lock up but but but other than that yeah other than that you feel all right yeah i do feel all right i feel fine man i feel fine and i don't think anything's gonna happen i don't see me going out that way oh good i see me going out maybe in an accident leaving here okay in the limo
Guest:No, don't do that.
Guest:Don't attach it to my show.
Guest:I want to have it attached to your show.
Guest:I should fake it right now.
Guest:If I faked it, you have to believe me.
Guest:That's my biggest fear is people think I'm fucking around.
Guest:On stage, if you drop.
Guest:Since I'm a big practical joker, everybody always, you know, there's a hesitancy about helping me up.
Guest:Well, you just got to tell them you're sick.
Guest:That's what I do to the audience.
Guest:I tell them, look, if I fall, I'm not kidding around.
Guest:Come get me.
Guest:Because a lot of people died that way.
Guest:Tommy Cooper died that way.
Marc:Dick Sean.
Guest:Dick Sean died that way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to do it here in this studio.
Marc:No, it's not going to happen.
Marc:Well, so this is it.
Marc:You're retiring.
Guest:I'm done, man.
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:If you want to see the show now, it's going to be reruns or you buy the tapes.
Guest:I've got to figure out what I'm going to do for money now.
Guest:I've got enough to live on, but I want...
Guest:I want money coming in.
Marc:Why don't you design some state-of-the-art haunted houses?
Guest:I am.
Guest:No, I have a practical gel company I think I'm going to start.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I hope your health holds steady.
Marc:I think it will.
Guest:Well, thanks for talking to me, man.
Guest:Oh, it's just as fun as I thought it'd be.
Marc:It's great to see you.
Guest:All right, man.