Episode 777 - John Larroquette
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:If you're new, hang out, have a seat.
Marc:You'll get the hang of it.
Marc:You don't have to say anything.
Marc:Well, you know what?
Marc:Actually, you can.
Marc:You can talk during it.
Marc:You can do whatever you want during this podcast because I have no control over that.
Marc:And if that's what feels good...
Marc:When you're engaging with it, occasionally go, oh, Mark, shut up.
Marc:Shut up, Maren.
Marc:You can do that.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because I can't hear it.
Marc:I cannot hear it.
Marc:Today on the show, to me, an interesting guest because I get opportunities to talk to people and I would never think I would have the opportunity to talk to them or necessarily think of it.
Marc:But John Larroquette is on the show today.
Marc:He's currently on a TNT series called The Librarians.
Marc:But most of us knew him from Night Court and from his law.
Marc:That show was on forever.
Marc:And he for years was the quintessential cranky, cynical, funny guy.
Marc:a very funny, smart dude, you know, and he was around.
Marc:It's just one of those things where it's like, I know he's been working for a long time, but I wouldn't have thought to say, we got to get John Larroquette on the show, but I was happy to talk to him.
Marc:And I know his kid, some of you know his kid, Jonathan Larroquette and Seth Romatelli are the hosts of the show, the podcast, Uh Yeah Dude, and they were in here.
Marc:But I see Jonathan Larroquette down at Future Music all the time.
Marc:Because now that I'm not shooting a show and the transition into the new year, I'm out and about wandering around with my notebook and my desire to not nap too much.
Marc:So I'm in Future Music a lot.
Marc:It's right next to Permanent Records down the street there.
Marc:And I see Jonathan all the time.
Marc:And then when I told him I was going to have his dad on, he was like, great, that should be good.
Marc:You know, I got a little prep from him.
Marc:I got a little bit of insight.
Marc:But John Larroquette came over later in the afternoon and we had this interesting chat.
Marc:So that's going to happen in a few minutes.
Marc:How's everybody?
Marc:My show, Marin, from the IFC Network, the fourth and final season is now on Netflix in the U.S.
Marc:I know that for sure.
Marc:And people are digging it.
Marc:It's really kind of an amazing thing, this Netflix business.
Marc:Yeah, amazing.
Marc:This Netflix, that whole idea really took off, didn't it?
Marc:Man, I wish I had thought of Netflix.
Marc:But no, because like so many people don't get IFC or they don't watch it on IFC or they don't know IFC exists or whatever it is, when the seasons are released on Netflix, it gets an entirely whole new surge of people watching it because they can watch all of it at once.
Marc:And I'll tell you honestly, I'm very proud of that last season.
Marc:And it was very...
Marc:challenging emotionally and very funny and certainly the darkest season we did but it's up there it's up there for you to enjoy and binge and go at it however you want i'm just happy it's out there uh the tour is coming up my first date is january 24th i will be at this is the two real tour and i thought you know you just got to name these things i'll be in tallahassee florida january 24th at ruby diamond concert hall
Marc:And then I pick up again in February at the Carolina Theater, February 17th in Durham.
Marc:I'm at the Night Theater in Charlotte, February 18th.
Marc:I'm at the Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, Connecticut, March 2nd.
Marc:The Music Hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, March 3rd.
Marc:Olympia de Montreal in Montreal, Quebec, March 4th.
Marc:Danforth Music Hall in Toronto, Ontario, March 5th.
Marc:That one sold out, I think.
Marc:College Street Music Hall, March 10th in New Haven.
Marc:Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, Troy, New York.
Marc:March 11th, Flynn Center in Burlington, Vermont, March 12th.
Marc:Fox Oakland, Oakland, California, March 24th.
Marc:The Moore Theater in Seattle, Washington, March 25th.
Marc:I'm at the Vogue in Vancouver, March 26th.
Marc:I'm at the Paramount in Austin, March 31st.
Marc:Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado, April 7th.
Marc:The Paramount in Denver, April 8th.
Marc:The Aladdin, April 21st in Portland.
Marc:And the Aladdin again, April 22nd in Portland.
Marc:I'll be at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, April 27th.
Marc:The Orpheum in Madison, Wisconsin, April 28th.
Marc:Pantages.
Marc:in Minneapolis, April 29th, for two shows.
Marc:We're going to be shooting a special.
Marc:And then I'm at the Miriam Theater in Philly, May 12th, and at the Warner Theater in D.C., May 13th.
Marc:That's the tour.
Marc:And that might be it for a while.
Marc:I got an email from a guy.
Marc:And this has to do with ego and insecurity, being full of grudges and wanting revenge or payback, that kind of thing.
Marc:You know, we all have it in us.
Marc:There's part of your brain that's sort of like, you know, I'll show them.
Marc:It's bizarre because I got this email.
Marc:And this is a minor thing.
Marc:But I'll share it with you.
Marc:In the subject line, it says 40 years ago.
Marc:Hey, Mark, I know it's been about 40 years since I hung out at your house in Albuquerque when we were at Sandia Prep, but I wanted to reconnect.
Marc:Love your work, your excellence of being you, smart, kind, thoughtful, and loving.
Marc:I just discovered the world of podcasts on January 1st, and there you were with Fresh Air and Malcolm Gladwell.
Marc:Your John Prine and Lin-Manuel Miranda encounters touched my core.
Marc:Anyway, I hope this shot in the dark gets you interested.
Marc:I've been working in positive youth development with on the edge youth and families for 30 years now and would like to send an arrow in your direction.
Marc:Love rules, my brother, Ted.
Marc:Now, I know this guy, I know Ted, and I was good friends with his brother, Mark.
Marc:I know them from when I was younger.
Marc:Ted was older than me.
Marc:But this is interesting.
Marc:This guy seems like he's doing amazing work.
Marc:He sounds like a grounded guy, hearts in the right place, doing socially proactive work out there in the world, making a difference for for kids and families.
Marc:I don't know the details of it, but it's inspiring.
Marc:And here's the odd thing is that I remember Ted.
Marc:But what I remember is that.
Marc:When I was in probably seventh grade, maybe eighth grade, what I remember, and this is me, this is hypersensitive, kind of self-involved Mark, eighth grade Mark.
Marc:I was in love as much in love as an eighth grader could be with this girl, Jessica, who was older than me.
Marc:I just was obsessed and had this huge crush on her and she knew it and it was cute to her, but it's very serious to me.
Marc:as that happens you know she was I'm sure like well that's cute the eighth grader the chubby eighth grader who seems very sensitive as a crush I mean she was nice to me but I don't know what I was expecting really but Ted who wrote this email she was Ted's girlfriend but I didn't really let that stop me and I think I feel like I had the crush before they started going out but stop me from what I'll tell you what
Marc:I wrote a song, my first song, and I was playing in a band, kind of.
Marc:It was me and Eric Tittman and Dean Hines, and I can't remember who played bass.
Marc:But I wrote a song called Jessica, for Jessica, nothing like the Allman Brothers song.
Marc:And, you know, looking back on it, you know, I think you had the chords that were roughly like It Don't Come Easy by Ringo Starr.
Marc:Looking back on it, I think those were similar chords.
Marc:But, you know, it had a build at the end and a jam.
Marc:But none of us could really play and I couldn't really sing.
Marc:But there was a talent assembly at school.
Marc:And, you know, word was out.
Marc:It was a small school that, you know, I was going to play this song, this love song for Jessica.
Marc:And, you know, I just wanted to play this song.
Marc:And, you know, I had no confidence in singing.
Marc:So Eric sang it.
Marc:It wasn't even me singing, but I wrote the song for Jessica.
Marc:And she was going to be there.
Marc:And we did it.
Marc:We did it.
Marc:We did that song.
Marc:And it was good.
Marc:It was in a gym.
Marc:People sitting on the floor.
Marc:The point being...
Marc:My memory of Ted, other than knowing him and being friends with his brother, was after that assembly, after I played this song to and for his girlfriend, declaring my love, he came up to me and gave me a good punch in the stomach.
Marc:And looking back on it, not unreasonable.
Marc:I'm not a violence guy.
Marc:And I didn't fight back or anything.
Marc:In retrospect, I had it coming.
Marc:But I think part of my brain was demonizing him for taking that action.
Marc:And now I read this email.
Marc:And now for 30 years, he's been doing nothing but great things.
Marc:And I wonder if he remembers that.
Marc:I'm going to reconnect with him.
Marc:and uh and then find out more but i like i'm not i'm not upset about it but it's i guess with grudges and and resentments and hurt feelings and all this other stuff you you you know you you forget that you know people you know they grow and they move on and and uh you should too that that was all i remembered about him and out of nowhere i get this beautiful email from the guy who's been doing great work and i'm like yeah you're the guy that punched me in the stomach
Marc:I had it coming.
Marc:All right, so Ted, if you're listening, let's regroup.
Marc:I'm over it now.
Marc:Are you?
Marc:I hope you are.
Marc:I think you are.
Marc:Okay, one more thing.
Marc:I think it's interesting what can happen and what ripples occur when I talk out loud.
Marc:As you know, we've gone through this together.
Marc:If you do listen to me in these portions of the show with the knife injury, the flap,
Marc:It seems that the flap... It didn't quite... It kind of took, but it seemed like most of it was just protecting the area where I didn't cut all the way through to the... All the way through the skin.
Marc:But the very tip part...
Marc:Where I did cut all the way through, that seems to be taking, but the rest kind of peeled off like a dry blister, and now it's just red and sensitive.
Marc:But I'm able to play guitar, thank God, right?
Marc:You're all like wondering, when's that going to pick back up?
Marc:But the point I'm making is that because I talked about cutting that tip of my finger off, I got a couple of weird things.
Marc:Not weird, but it's just interesting what comes in.
Marc:I got this email that just says, knife gift.
Marc:It says, Mark, here you go, dot, dot, dot.
Marc:And for some reason, it says number eight.
Marc:I don't know where he got this, but it's number eight of something.
Marc:Some knife owners believe that you never truly own a knife unless it has bitten you, tasted your blood.
Marc:Once a knife has taken its owner's blood, the owner will never sell or trade that knife with anyone.
Marc:A similar superstition states that a knife that has bitten its owner will stay sharp longer and is less likely to accidentally cut its owner.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:I think his name's Kevin, but he didn't sign off on it.
Marc:Just this weird little bit of information that's number eight of something.
Marc:And then I love this.
Marc:Because of the story I told about cutting my finger, someone on Twitter sent me a link to a Sylvia Plath poem called Cut.
Cut.
Marc:And, you know, I would not have read this.
Marc:I would not have known about it.
Marc:But what's amazing is that, you know, I can talk about this and nauseate some of you with my flap story.
Marc:But at some point, this genius Sylvia Plath, this poet, cut her finger and wrote this.
Marc:And I will read it to you because occasionally poetry happens here.
Marc:Cut by Sylvia Plath for Susan O'Neill Rowe.
Marc:what a thrill my thumb instead of an onion the top quite gone except for sort of a hinge of skin a flap like a hat dead white then that red plush little pilgrim the indians axed your scalp your turkey waddle carpet rolls straight from the heart i step on it clutching my bottle of pink fizz a celebration this is out of a gap
Marc:a million soldiers run redcoats everyone whose side are they on oh my homunculus i am ill i have taken a pill to kill the thin papery feeling saboteur kamikaze man the stain on your gauze ku klutz clan babushka darkens and tarnishes and when the bald pulp of your heart confronts its small mill of silence how you jump trep and veteran dirty girl
Marc:thump stump uh right now i'm going to talk to uh john larroquette he's uh currently on the tnt series the librarians uh the season finale is next sunday january 22nd and uh we had a lovely chat
Marc:So you don't come out to this part of town much?
Guest:Just to see Jonathan occasionally at the shop.
Guest:I don't know this area well at all.
Marc:So you go to the shop?
Marc:You go over to Future Music?
Guest:I have, yes.
Guest:Not as a regular, for sure.
Marc:Yeah, it's a classic place.
Guest:It is that.
Marc:Yeah, it's one of these places, now that I've had a little time off, I go back to an old habit I used to have when I was younger, where you just go and you jump into a conversation for a little while and then you move on to the next store.
Marc:That's how it works.
Marc:I'll go next door to the record store and do that.
Marc:And how long have you been in this house?
Marc:2006.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Is that right?
Marc:No, 2004.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I've been up here for a long time.
Marc:So you've had a long and busy career as an entertainer and an actor.
Guest:An actor, more precisely an actor, I think.
Guest:Entertainment is, I guess, subjective.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're stuck in the mind from the Night Court years.
Marc:Everybody knew that character, knew you, but you've certainly been around before that.
Guest:A little bit, yes.
Guest:I mean, not anything really nationally recognizable.
Marc:But little bits?
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:Like if you were to go back after Night Court, you'd be like, oh shit, there's John Larkrat right there.
Guest:And probably the thing that was the most public was like three years before, three years?
Guest:Two years before Night Court.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Stripes.
Guest:I did the movie Stripes.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:You were like the second to Warren Oates, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was his commanding officer, Captain Stillman, the incompetent, bombastic, vacuous commander in chief, as it were.
Marc:And working with Warren Oates at that age.
Marc:Working with Warren Oates.
Marc:That must have been interesting.
Guest:It was indeed.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:It was indeed.
Guest:He and I didn't have that much to do together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'd grown up watching him in the movies as a boy in New Orleans.
Guest:And I loved him.
Guest:I thought he was a real actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And everybody else in the cast were great.
Guest:They were fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they're comedians.
Guest:They were, you know, John Candy and who I only met these guys in the movie.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:We became friends afterwards.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Me and John Deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Became long, fast friends and did plays together after that.
Guest:And I hired him for other parts and the La Roquette show and other things we had done together.
Guest:But to hang around Warren Oates, he was, you know, no nonsense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when he wasn't working, he got on a plane and went home.
Marc:That was it.
Guest:Came back.
Guest:That was it.
Marc:It's weird when you learn that about acting.
Marc:I've done some lately in the last few years, and all my illusions of the tremendous community and unity and everyone being pals were sort of not broken, but it's a job for a lot of people, and they're pros, and they come in, they do their job, and then they leave.
Guest:I think on a series, it gets maybe a little more personal, because you're particularly a long-running one.
Marc:An ensemble.
Marc:You're like a family.
Guest:But then again, when you're with a bunch of people five days a week, like we did on Night Court, I mean, you don't really... I was never that close to any of them off-camera.
Guest:We spent time together.
Guest:We ate together and stuff.
Guest:But we don't hang out.
Guest:We didn't hang out.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It's probably better that way.
Marc:I did radio for years, or a couple years, and I had a guy I worked with every morning for four hours, three hours.
Marc:And we never did anything off the air.
Marc:We were on the air, and then it was like, all right, see you tomorrow.
Marc:And you would think we were best friends.
Marc:The illusion.
Guest:I think, I mean, I couldn't speak to it completely effortlessly, but I think Jonathan and Seth are a bit that way.
Guest:They're very intimate when they're on the air.
Guest:But I don't think they spend a lot of time socially together.
Guest:Seth will occasionally, depending upon the holiday, Thanksgiving or something, if he's an orphan in town, if his mother's not here or he's not gone back to Boston this year, he'll come to our house with Jonathan and have holidays with us.
Guest:Well, they're sort of very different type of people.
Marc:You think?
Marc:It couldn't be more of a complete opposite vibe to the two of them.
Marc:It works.
Marc:Which obviously works.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Jonathan's the kind of all over the place guy.
Marc:And then you got the little tight guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's sort of like Linus and Schroeder.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Very organized.
Guest:Seth is very organized.
Guest:And it's good that he is because he brings so much material to Jonathan every week.
Guest:that Jonathan can then riff on.
Guest:They can both riff on it, but left to his devices, Jonathan would show up and decide, what are we going to talk about today?
Guest:But Seth has, you know, there's a framework.
Marc:To drive it.
Marc:You need that guy.
Marc:The driver and then the reactor.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:So New Orleans is where you come from.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And do you feel close to it now?
Guest:No, it's interesting we're having this conversation.
Guest:Last night I was talking to who's now my oldest friend, my oldest oldest friend, whom we met in the fourth grade, died a few years ago.
Guest:My second oldest friend who lives here in LA, he and I were talking about that very thing last night because I was wondering with him, we're talking most Sunday evenings when he comes home from work.
Guest:He owns a cheese store in Beverly Hills, the best cheese store in town.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Anyway, and he said, why didn't we leave?
Guest:Why did we leave New Orleans?
Guest:Why did we leave?
Guest:Because he left about the same time I did, late 60s, early 70s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come to California, try to become a star.
Sure.
Guest:and I think because we didn't have deep connections.
Guest:He was actually born in Europe, moved to New Orleans when he was like seven with his mom.
Guest:My family was not very tight.
Guest:My father was gone by the time I was two, so I didn't really have any connection to the La Roquette.
Guest:Dead?
Guest:At all.
Guest:Now, yes.
Guest:But then he just left?
Guest:He left.
Guest:He had another family, had a son named John La Roquette.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:His name was John La Roquette, my father.
Marc:Simultaneously or after?
Guest:I don't quite know that.
Guest:I just never found out anything about them.
Marc:And you never found out anything about him?
Guest:Not a lot, no.
Guest:I decided one day that I should go see him and learn about him.
Guest:How old were you then?
Guest:I was in my late 20s, and I was in LA working on my first television series.
Guest:Baba Black Sheep, it was called.
Guest:Robert Conrad.
Marc:Robert Conrad.
Guest:And I was making money.
Guest:And I thought, you know, it's time I went to New Orleans and see who this guy is.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He died.
Guest:He died.
Guest:Before I could get there.
Guest:Good try, though.
Marc:You know, it was.
Marc:Sort of.
Marc:The thought was there.
Guest:But, you know, what's the weird thing, and this story is just, it chills my spine a little bit.
Guest:After the big storm, Katrina.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Went to New Orleans with Elizabeth, my wife.
Guest:First stop was the cemetery.
Guest:Make sure that no relatives had popped up out of the ground, which can happen in New Orleans.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All locked up.
Guest:I climb over the walls, open the gate for Elizabeth.
Guest:She comes in and I'm looking at our family plot, which is actually the Oremus plot, which is my mother's maiden name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Everything's fine.
Guest:Everybody's still underground.
Guest:And my wife's walking around as a New Orleans cemetery tourist.
Guest:You look at those mausoleons and stuff.
Guest:And I hear her go, oh, fuck.
Guest:And I thought she tripped or something.
Guest:She said, come here.
Guest:And I walk over 10 feet from where my mother is and there's a plaque on the wall.
Guest:Because in New Orleans there are these...
Guest:file vaults as well as as coffins where you just kind of stick into a wall right right now yeah and there's john la roquette my father yeah right there no i no idea he was buried there 20 feet from my mother all of those years wow i wonder if he knew um i mean he must how far did they die did he die before yeah yeah like uh oh yeah like 20 years before that's wild yeah
Guest:But just that.
Guest:So the connection to New Orleans is slight, I think, now at this age in my life.
Guest:I don't have any relatives there that I'm close to.
Guest:But you definitely grew up there.
Guest:Born and raised.
Guest:I didn't leave until I was 20.
Guest:So the first two decades of my life, very formative.
Guest:I mean, I am a New Orleanian through and through.
Guest:A yacht, as we say locally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because the greeting is usually, hey, we're yacht.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We're called yachts.
Guest:High school, everything there.
Marc:What was it like then?
Marc:I mean, it's like I've been there now and I was there once before Katrina, but did it infuse into you?
Marc:Because what I know about going there is that it's a whole different time zone psychologically than anywhere else.
Marc:I mean, you get there and you're like, I'm in a different place.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I didn't know that then, of course, because I thought every place was home.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Every place was like New Orleans.
Marc:But looking back on it, what were you doing?
Marc:What was...
Marc:When you were growing up, was music important to do, you know, I mean, that's what everybody sort of.
Guest:I was a musician, started playing when I was eight in third grade.
Guest:Which one?
Guest:Clarinet.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Because they didn't have accordion in the band, which is what I wanted to play.
Guest:I don't know why, but they didn't.
Guest:So I literally closed my eyes and pointed to the chart of instruments and it came up clarinet.
Guest:Clarinet's in Dixieland jazz though, if you want.
Marc:Oh, absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's part of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Completely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Years later, I worked for a short time for Decca Records and Pete Fountain was one of the artists and I used to go to Pete's club on Bourbon Street and sit with Pete Fountain when I was like 16 years old.
Guest:So you had chops.
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:As I euphemistically say, around 17 or 18, I realized I could talk better than I could blow.
Guest:So I took the reeds out.
Guest:And also in the 60s, clarinet wasn't cool, so I started playing tenor sax in my rock and roll band.
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:What was that called?
Guest:The noodles.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:The noodles.
Guest:Let's not even talk about that.
Guest:Doing covers?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had a couple of solos.
Guest:I did Taxman by the Beatles and something else.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Maybe Hoss of the Rising Sun.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:We played around clubs in New Orleans.
Guest:It was a big band because there were three horns.
Guest:There was a bass, drums.
Guest:So it was like eight of us.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Was that the only band you were in?
Marc:Only one.
Marc:How old were you, like 16, 17?
Guest:16, 17.
Marc:Never cut a record?
Guest:Man in high school, never.
Guest:There might be some tapes.
Guest:Another fellow that was in the band I occasionally speak with, he lives in Florida now, and he still plays with friends and stuff around on the weekends.
Guest:But I don't know if there's anything that exists.
Guest:So you didn't walk into music for a life.
Guest:I wasn't good enough.
Guest:I really didn't think I was good.
Guest:I was a really good reader.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I could cold read really well.
Guest:But I never thought I had that, you know, I was never going to be Pete Fonten or Ackerblick or any of those guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wasn't going to, I didn't have that sort of abstract grab to it.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Like a good musician should.
Guest:Couldn't riff?
Guest:No, not very well.
Marc:Yeah, so then what was next?
Marc:Radio.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Just what, you were a jock?
Guest:Yeah, for a long time.
Guest:What kind of music?
Guest:At first, the first job I had was at a classical radio station in New Orleans owned by the PBS station.
Guest:Did you know anything about classical music?
Guest:No.
Guest:But it was instrumental in me losing my accent because I didn't think saying Beethoven was quite right.
Guest:You had a real accent.
Guest:I had a New Orleans accent.
Guest:Matter of fact, I don't know where it is, but when I was about nine years old, back in those days, there was an amusement park called Pontchartrain Beach, and you'd walk into a little booth like a photo booth.
Guest:But for a quarter, you could talk for 30 seconds, and it would spit out a little record.
Sure.
Guest:I still have it.
Guest:A voiceograph or something?
Guest:Yeah, that's probably exactly the right thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I was sort of just telling my grandma about how much fun I was having at the beach with mama.
Guest:Very New Orleans accent.
Guest:And you know, I say this constantly, but it's true.
Guest:The New Orleans accent is not Southern.
Guest:It's actually closer to New Jersey than anything else.
Guest:Why?
Guest:There was a huge migration of longshoremen to New Orleans to work on the river in the early 1900s, and many of them from Hoboken.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So, toddy, toddy, and toddy came with them.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And it mixed with whatever patois, the French Creole patois was in New Orleans, and that's why O-I's are usually pronounced like R's.
Guest:You say turlet, not toilet.
Guest:Ooster, not oyster.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Woik.
Guest:I'm going to put it on my shait and go to woik.
Guest:And that came in from the East Coast.
Guest:Yes, it did.
Guest:But there was such a melting pot down there.
Guest:It was.
Guest:I was reading yesterday, actually.
Guest:It's very interesting, and I would like to know more about the history of this.
Guest:There was a time when New Orleans was sort of three distinct cities because the Creoles, my family, my family came to New Orleans in the mid 1700s from Paris.
Guest:Long time ago.
Guest:I got the actual paperwork from one of the boats that Francois La Roquette came over on.
Guest:So I'm not occasioned.
Guest:We didn't come from Canada, came directly from France by definition of Creole.
Marc:Right, so the French Canadians came through Canada as furriers, a lot of them.
Guest:Yes, and were also thrown out by the Huguenots, the English, and made their way down to a French colony, which was New Orleans.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's where they settled.
Guest:But not you guys.
Guest:No, we came directly from.
Marc:So did you feel better than the other?
Marc:No, I didn't know.
Marc:I didn't know anything.
Marc:You didn't know until yesterday?
Guest:I didn't know.
Guest:A little before that.
Guest:But when the Americans came to New Orleans, the English, as it were,
Guest:because the river became so important as a port that they hated the Creole section of New Orleans.
Guest:So it was actually three different cities.
Guest:There was the black slave free color area, the Creoles, which was very mixed.
Guest:I was reading also that in those days, free people of color and even slaves, horrible word,
Guest:they could move very freely within the city limits of New Orleans, within the French Quarter.
Guest:The Americans moved uptown, and so it was very segregated in the truest sense of those three sections.
Guest:Eventually, they melted together.
Guest:But also, it was the Americans who said, no Storyville, no gambling, no prostitutes.
Guest:They closed all of that down eventually because they had the money.
Guest:But it's, you know, growing up, it was a very... I mean, I loved it.
Guest:I mean, I really did love the city.
Guest:What part of town?
Guest:The Ninth Ward.
Guest:And that was underwater, right?
Guest:Yes, indeed.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:When I was... In 1965, there was a storm that came from New Orleans called Betsy and the water on my street because I stood in the middle of the street was up to my collarbone.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But Katrina...
Guest:The water was about, as I hold up my fingers, three inches from the very top of the roof and stayed there for three weeks.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sat there underwater for three weeks.
Guest:Long before that, I had moved my mother out in the 80s when I started making money.
Guest:And the house that I grew up in, which was a shotgun, the front door to the back door, you could walk in a straight line.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No doors on any rooms except the bathroom, just for ventilation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I lived there from 10 years old or so till about 17 when I moved out.
Guest:But it's still, the last time I was there, which was November, I did a movie there.
Guest:First time I ever worked in my hometown.
Guest:Which movie?
Guest:It's called Camera Store.
Guest:Just played at the Palm Springs Film Festival.
Guest:Little independent film.
Guest:But anyway.
Guest:Did you like doing it?
Guest:It was a strange experience, actually, Mark, because I had never worked in my hometown.
Guest:I was there for the entire month of November, basically.
Guest:And it was actually a very strange, icky, kind of depressing, angst-ridden month.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Because of the movie?
Guest:I think part of it.
Guest:What was the movie about?
Guest:About a real depressed kind of guy who had been stuck in this camera store.
Guest:It's a flashback, not a, what do you call it?
Guest:A period piece from the 70s.
Guest:And you're the guy?
Guest:I'm the guy.
Guest:Prior to digital, it's like the last legs of analog cameras and stuff happening.
Guest:And he's just a miserable fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And stays a miserable fuck the entire film.
Marc:So that probably had some impact on how you were feeling there.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Because my wife, I've never considered myself a real actor.
Guest:I sort of say that I make sausage.
Guest:Sometimes it's delicious sausage, but it's sausage.
Guest:But I think I do get affected by the people I play somewhat.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so it was unusual.
Guest:Also, that's the first time I'd been there since my best friend, James, who I nicknamed Hannibal when we were like 10 years old.
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:But his name was Hannibal as far as I was concerned.
Guest:We met in the fourth grade.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He had died.
Guest:Matter of fact, I found him.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:In his apartment, dead.
Guest:Weird story.
Marc:Out here?
Guest:No, New Orleans.
Guest:Before you left?
Guest:No, three years ago.
Guest:I had done two Broadway plays back-to-back.
Guest:I'd gotten done with the second one, came back to L.A.
Guest:My wife said, what's going on with you?
Marc:Which play were you just finishing?
Guest:The Best Man, Gore Vidal with James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury.
Guest:Great time.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Before that, I did a year with Dan Radcliffe with How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Marc:That was a big hit, right?
Guest:My first Broadway show.
Marc:You wanted Tony for that.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You said it and I didn't have to.
Marc:I didn't give it to you, but you're welcome.
Guest:Thanks for knowing that.
Guest:But I felt really terrible and I said, I'm going to go home.
Guest:You didn't know why it just came out.
Guest:I didn't know why because with him also, he had no answering service.
Guest:He had no computers or anything like that.
Guest:So if he wasn't home, he wasn't home.
Guest:If he didn't want to answer the phone, he didn't answer the phone.
Marc:When you felt terrible, did you call him to tell him you were coming or what?
Marc:I tried, but I couldn't get him, which wasn't unusual.
Marc:That didn't really ring any big bells yet.
Marc:But you had no idea what the impulse to go home was.
Marc:None.
Marc:There was no reason to go.
Marc:Your mom was not there anymore.
Marc:No one was there.
Guest:You just felt compelled.
Guest:I felt compelled to go home, which used to happen when I drank.
Guest:I would wind up on a plane going into Worley's.
Guest:That's another story.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I got to New Orleans and couldn't raise him, knock on his door, couldn't.
Guest:Then I managed to get into his apartment house and when I went upstairs to the floor where his apartment was, there was a, you know what a king cake is?
Guest:It's a confection in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.
Guest:It's a big ringed,
Guest:piece of sugar basically that people give during Mardi Gras.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Very colorful.
Guest:And I had sent him one and it was still leaning against the front door of his apartment.
Guest:How long ago?
Guest:Three weeks.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And so I found the landlord.
Guest:We broke in and I found him dead on the floor.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And he'd been dead for about two or three weeks.
Guest:Gross story.
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:What'd he die of?
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:Drinking, congenital heart failure.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Just sort of giving up, I guess.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Had you been in touch with him?
Marc:Oh, all the time.
Guest:I mean, we've been still close friends for 55 years, or however long the hell it was.
Marc:Well, that's some connection that you felt something.
Guest:Yeah, and we met at a time, and I think about that relationship and the fact that we were both sons of single mothers whose husbands had left and Catholic and just sort of connected with each other.
Guest:We both used humor to sort of deflect whatever pain, how ridiculous that sounds at this point, but whatever pain we were feeling.
Guest:We wrote together a lot in the 60s, did a lot of drugs together in the 60s.
Guest:We were close.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hitchhiked around together.
Guest:What did he end up doing with himself?
Guest:He, for about 30 years, made beignets at Café du Monde in New Orleans.
Guest:Those are good.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:That's what he did.
Guest:He did that and he wrote.
Guest:Was he a sort of tortured guy?
Guest:I think that might be a good description.
Marc:Because, you know, you have those in our lives, you know, talented people who are gifted that just can't get out.
Marc:And they end up sort of kind of like, you know, keep chipping away, but they work a job and it becomes this dream.
Marc:It's like a sort of a slightly tragic but romantic idea, you know, that someday you'd be, you know, found or...
Guest:He had, and I don't know why we're talking about this so much, but I guess because the anniversary of his death is coming up in a month or so too.
Guest:But he had a taste of success with a small play he had written that was accepted at the O'Neill Festival in Connecticut and then a very small production of it done off, off, off, off Broadway.
Guest:But that was the only real taste of success he had.
Guest:But when I cleaned out his apartment, I found...
Guest:I took all of his writing and it would fill this room.
Guest:Really?
Guest:The boxes of notebooks and spiral notebooks and legal pads.
Guest:He wrote incessantly.
Guest:He wrote the dictionary.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:He just wrote.
Guest:Probably to learn words.
Guest:He had a very good vocabulary.
Guest:Did you read any of this stuff?
Guest:I have started, yes.
Guest:I started reading the journals first.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at first they were abstract and artistic and then they sort of became just sort of
Guest:almost Beckettian in the sort of dialogue with oneself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What are you going to do today?
Guest:I'm going to write.
Guest:No, you're not going to fucking write.
Guest:You're going to smoke and drink like you do every day.
Guest:No, I'm going to get up.
Guest:I'm going to go to the... He had this restaurant.
Guest:He went to a coffee shop.
Guest:I'm going to sit outside.
Guest:I'm going to finish.
Guest:No, you're not going to fucking do that at all.
Guest:This is what he's writing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:These conversations.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That sounds like a kind of fertile... It could be, if it went past that.
Guest:But when it stays there, it doesn't exactly illuminate.
Guest:Well, how many notebooks did you look at?
Guest:A hundred, maybe?
Guest:It stayed there?
Guest:Yeah, it stayed there.
Guest:Some of it way back.
Guest:I mean, I'm talking about from the 60s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He wrote when he was in the Navy, and he wrote all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And some of it's very good.
Guest:And some of his plays are very good in character.
Guest:He didn't have a whole lot of life experience, or the plots of the plays were not succinct, or they didn't really go anywhere.
Guest:There were no epiphanies, no inciting incidents.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But because he worked in the...
Guest:Basically, the food industry all of his life, starting as a dishwasher and then a cook and then beignet maker.
Guest:He worked with the real backbone of New Orleans, the one that I knew.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:The poor working.
Marc:It's been there forever.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he caught their lives beautifully.
Guest:But it's sort of like a friend of mine and I wrote a soap opera once called Lives Going Nowhere.
Guest:It's just sort of in this circle of, what are you going to do?
Guest:I think I'll water the plant.
Guest:Did you water the plant?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:What are you going to do tomorrow?
Guest:I think I'll water the plant again.
Guest:That's basically.
Marc:How many episodes did you write of that?
Marc:A lot.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was it a satire?
Guest:It was.
Guest:It was called Conversations in Wax, actually, that was the title of it.
Marc:So you guys were, you know, it's interesting to think about not having a father around, because that sort of, like, forces you to do something on your own.
Marc:I guess it does.
Marc:You know, my father was around physically.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, but but I talk to people, there's a lot of people that have, you know, absent fathers that, you know, they it sets something going some sort of, you know, if it's in, you know, if you can manage it, there's an ambition there that, you know, the self parenting and you're kind of hard on yourself because you're missing the guy to be hard on you.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:I think also, though, and my mother was very caring, but she worked every day.
Guest:She sold clothes on Canal Street in New Orleans for 35 years, 40 years, however long she did it, and worked every day.
Guest:We moved in with her parents, and until I was 12, when she remarried a very nice man, a welder named Joe, and then we moved to a house that he had bought for her and I, or for her and I came along.
Marc:You have siblings?
Marc:No.
Marc:Just you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, other than the ones I don't know.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:there were four of those and i've never met them either huh and now is is the fear of uh of doing that or the the on the the non-desire to do that now because you would think as you get older you'd be curious yeah but uh what do you think stops you
Guest:I think it's probably like a person who's never heard of the word car or seen one and then say, oh, by the way, you've owned a car for 55 years.
Guest:It's in the garage.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:I don't have any connection to it.
Guest:I don't know what to do with it.
Guest:I don't know what I would do with meeting these people.
Guest:Because growing up, I never had any connection.
Guest:But they're half your blood, right?
Marc:They're half your blood.
Guest:They are.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess it might be emotionally overwhelming too.
Marc:It could very well be.
Marc:What do you need that for at this point in your life, I guess, on some level?
Guest:Without a doubt.
Guest:But there were times as I was younger, like I said, when I decided, I'm going to go see who he is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't make it because he didn't stay around.
Guest:And it just, you know, my life became, you know, I never had any connection to them.
Guest:So it just became my life here with my wife and my children.
Guest:And it just never went and I never went.
Guest:You know what, now that I mention this, I was in New Orleans years and years ago hosting a charity event for the Children's Museum with Taylor Hackford at his bar.
Guest:He had a bar in this- The director.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:Married to Helen Mirren.
Guest:And he had a bar down there, and he was hosting.
Guest:And it was an evening of comics.
Guest:And I was just saying, and now from Buggaloosa, here's whoever.
Guest:So I'm sitting in the bar after this evening with Taylor Hackford.
Guest:And I see a man walking toward me, a young man.
Guest:And my only thought is, he looks like my father.
Guest:I have one picture of my father when he was in the Navy in the early 40s.
Guest:And he walks up to me, and he seemed a bit no worse for wear, and said, hi, I'm Kenneth LaRquette.
Guest:I'm your brother.
Guest:I went, oh, okay, hi, how are you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:He sort of went, okay, great, nice to meet you, and walked off.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That was the extent of it.
Guest:And I didn't follow him, I didn't pursue it, so I don't know.
Guest:I just never felt impelled enough to go figure out what the hell's happening.
Guest:Did he look like you?
Guest:No, you look like my father.
Guest:I look like my mother.
Guest:I'm definitely on the Oremus side, which I'm not even sure where that's from.
Guest:I think Spanish or Greek or something.
Marc:So you brought up real Catholic?
Guest:Very.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did it hold?
Guest:No.
Guest:What knocked it out?
Guest:Drugs?
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:I think I used to euphemistically say that I discovered Frederick Nietzsche in my penis, but I think by- At the same time?
Yeah.
Guest:While reading, God is dead.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Because when I was young, I was very devout.
Guest:And really, I thought being a priest would be a great gig.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:At least the ones that I knew in grammar school and high school.
Guest:You got some good ones?
Guest:Lived in the rector.
Guest:Yeah, nobody ever, you know, they slapped me around.
Guest:Maybe I wasn't cute enough.
Right.
Guest:Every couple of years, they got a new station wagon.
Guest:They had a great old house in New Orleans to live in next to the church.
Guest:They were respected.
Guest:Completely.
Guest:They were good teachers.
Guest:I was taught by Franciscan priests and then Holy Cross brothers.
Guest:I have to thank them for enlightening me whatsoever to literature.
Guest:No, my family was not an intellectual group of people.
Guest:There weren't heady conversations around the dinner table.
Guest:It was more past the crawfish kind of conversations.
Guest:The priests were another world.
Guest:Timothy Hickey was his name, actually, gave me a book once.
Guest:And I think, and I say this again, it may be just bullshit where it came from, but it was Waiting for God.
Guest:I remember as like 12 years old, having a copy of Waiting for God, I said go back.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because somebody, a priest saying, you know, I think you'll find this interesting.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And I read it and it sort of went baboom and then I started reading.
Guest:So I have to thank them for that.
Guest:Godot started it.
Guest:Godot.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:And a priest gave you it.
Marc:An Irish priest.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:He must have sent something.
Marc:I guess he did.
Marc:This kid's already.
Guest:He's certainly depressed enough to appreciate Beckett.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Were you a depressed kid?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I was scared.
Guest:I remember being scared.
Guest:I'm scared now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Until I sort of grew into myself a bit, you know, and really discovered that I can diffuse tremendous energy with comedy.
Guest:You know, I was not a comic ever, but I was funny.
Marc:But you're very funny.
Marc:You know, it's a rare thing to have that natural, like you have a sort of cranky funny.
Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Right?
Marc:You know, I mean, that character on Night Court was kind of... Is it cynical, the right word, or just kind of... Yeah, I think he was.
Guest:I think he probably was cynical.
Marc:Yeah, that's a very delicate and natural archetype, the cynical, cranky comic.
Marc:That's still endearing.
Marc:It's not easy to do.
Marc:That's, I think, the key word is endearing.
Guest:Oh, the endearing crank?
Guest:Hard to do.
Guest:I had conversations with my late manager, Bernie Brillstein, about that very thing, because he was...
Guest:a brilliant man, and he was also sort of responsible for Dabney Coleman's show, Buffalo Bill.
Guest:Do you remember that at all?
Guest:Sure, yeah.
Guest:And he and I had a conversation about that, and it was really my wife who had brought it up at one point, that where Dan Fielding could be a boar and a jerk and an asshole, but at some point, he would either do something human, or he would sort of glance at the fourth wall and go...
Guest:No, but I can't help it.
Guest:So he knew he was an asshole.
Guest:Whereas Dabney Coleman's character, I don't think would ever admit he was an asshole.
Guest:And there was nobody around him who could say, you're an asshole.
Guest:The judge character, Harry Anderson's character, could look at me and go, you're an asshole.
Guest:So could everybody look at Dan Fielding and say, you're an asshole.
Guest:And he'd go, yeah, I know.
Guest:And so I think people kind of forgave him things.
Marc:Well, that's everybody.
Marc:I mean, that's a lot of people.
Marc:They find relief in that.
Guest:Yeah, I guess right.
Marc:I mean, on some level, even Archie Bunker, he didn't have a lot of self-awareness, but you knew he couldn't help himself.
Marc:Yes, you're right.
Guest:Yes, it's absolutely right.
Marc:And that's what made him endearing.
Marc:He represented something, but you didn't hate him.
Guest:No, you couldn't hate him.
Guest:Although my grandfather hated him.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because I talked about that show.
Guest:He said, that's not fucking funny.
Marc:So when do drugs and acting happen?
Marc:Did you join the service?
Marc:Sounds like your friend joined the service.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I was in the Navy for a short time, did my reserve duty, and then got out of that.
Guest:Where'd that take you?
Guest:Pensacola, Florida, as far as I ever got.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But before that, when I was working for the first radio station, which was an automated station, right?
Guest:It was just a wall.
Marc:We started this whole thing with you learning how to get rid of your accent on a cloud deal.
Guest:I had a little Grundig tape recorder, a little spy reel-to-reel tape recorder.
Guest:And I would record Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite.
Guest:And then in the morning, I would read the newspaper trying to imitate Walter Cronkite.
Guest:I'd just try to get rid of that voice.
Marc:So you're conscious of it.
Guest:Yeah, very conscious.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I often say that I didn't really study to lose the accent, but I think just by osmosis and hearing these other people, that it sort of slipped away from me.
Guest:You were trying to be a broadcaster.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, at a classical radio station.
Guest:So, you know, you wanted to have an FM voice, right?
Guest:And so I did that for a while and then was asked by some other, I don't even know how that happened, some other radio station to come on there.
Guest:And at that point, there was no underground radio yet.
Guest:This is like 65.
Guest:There was a little bit, KSAN had sort of started, I guess.
Guest:65, huh?
Guest:65, 66.
Guest:Wow, what would have been underground?
Guest:Well, KSAN, you know, Tom Donahue and those guys, that was kind of starting.
Guest:KPPC was doing some stuff.
Guest:I signed theater was on the air.
Sure.
Guest:And another fellow named Richard had brought some tapes, and I think from WBZ or something on the East Coast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where they were just starting because of the FM signal being multiplex and able to broadcast in stereo.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of a sudden you had these stereo albums.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Nothing was on the FM band.
Guest:Every AM station had an FM band connected to it.
Guest:It was simulcast all day long with about an hour of original programming at midnight in order to keep the licensor.
Marc:Right.
Marc:On the FM band.
Marc:On the FM band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Richard Shank was his name, very intelligent, creative fellow, convinced the station we were working for, which was at the time, was I would be on the air at 2 PM saying, it's drive time.
Guest:Here's a little, you know, Stephen Eadie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Middle of the road, I think.
Guest:So this is after classical.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And he convinced the owner of this station to give him four hours a night from 10 PM to 2 AM.
Guest:He did two hours and I did two hours of what was happening.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because nobody was playing Jimi Hendrix in New Orleans.
Guest:Right.
Guest:A friend of mine was fired from a radio station for playing Purple Haze.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Top 40.
Guest:So you're going 12 to 2.
Guest:10 to 2 a.m.
Guest:10 to 2 a.m.
Guest:But you split it with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And eventually, I'm going 12 to 2, yeah.
Guest:And eventually, we took over the entire station.
Guest:Richard went off somewhere else.
Guest:I became the program director.
Guest:And for a good solid two and a half years, we were the free form radio station in mostly all of the South.
Guest:So this isn't the Beatles.
Guest:Yeah, that's everything.
Guest:I mean, basically every DJ was his own program director.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Bring in anything you want.
Marc:And what'd you gravitate towards?
Marc:You know, Jimi Hendrix and T.S.
Marc:Eliot.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:He had T.S.
Marc:Eliot reading?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I think I have a record of that.
Guest:Yes, indeed.
Guest:Holloman and all of his stuff.
Guest:Korean wedding gongs, as I like to say.
Guest:And we had a very small transmitter.
Guest:If it rained in Alabama, we could go off the air.
Guest:Were you riffing comedically?
Guest:But the only thing we did, which I think every, you know, some city has always done, we would sometimes say, you know, in New Orleans every Saturday night, a horror movie, you know, light up a joint, turn off the sound, tune into the radio station.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And me and the fellow I was mentioning earlier, Norbert, and a few other DJs would sit around and fill in the dialogue for the movie, much like science fiction 3000 or something like that.
Marc:Right, right, mystery science theater.
Guest:But in the 60s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just all stupid stuff.
Guest:And none of that exists either.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:None of that's around.
Guest:But it gave you some freedom, some creativity.
Guest:Totally, because you're logged.
Guest:There might be two commercials an hour.
Guest:They were for the new whatever free or album or Janis Joplin album and the head shop in the French Quarter that was trying to sell beads and bongs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the only time that you could sell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Everything else was trade-outs.
Guest:We'd get free lunches at a restaurant in the French Quarter.
Marc:It's the best.
Marc:Barter's the best.
Marc:Free waterbeds.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Which I didn't...
Guest:We didn't know what a waterbed was, so I just filled it up with no frame and no blanket.
Guest:And I woke up the next morning and my body temperature was like 50 degrees because I had no idea how to use it.
Guest:It's stupid.
Guest:But we kept doing that.
Guest:And then I moved to another radio station in Houston, Texas for a while, back to New Orleans.
Guest:And that whole period between like 66 and 70 was sort of like a pinball.
Guest:Were you hosting concerts and stuff?
Guest:Were you doing that?
Guest:Some of the radio stations hosted the MC The Who concert in Houston.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ritchie Haven's concert in Houston.
Guest:The Yardbirds in New Orleans.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:There was one club called The Warehouse that everybody came to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's where I saw everybody from Frank Zappa to Captain Beefheart.
Marc:Oh, you saw them all in the prime, huh?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what were you tripping?
Marc:Were you tripping on acid and doing the whole thing?
Guest:Yes, sir.
Guest:I admit so.
Guest:Yeah, discovered that pretty quickly and preferred it.
Guest:I didn't drink at all, very much at all in the 60s.
Marc:Just weed and acid?
Guest:Yeah, primarily.
Marc:Yeah, and did it change your perception?
Guest:um i guess it sort of opened up part of the brain that hadn't been to you know sort of the sort of some sort of aesthetic and i and knowing then that i thought i don't know what i'm going to stay in new orleans for i don't know what will happen to me if i stay here again my friend and i were talking about it last night i would have discovered i don't know how to become a bartender or i don't know i don't i don't i couldn't have stayed i don't know what would have happened when did you start acting in in how did you train what was the deal you didn't
Guest:In 1970, I got a job in San Diego, California, working for a new record company that had just started.
Guest:Some guy had inherited some money and wanted to start a record label.
Guest:He had run across a friend of mine who was a songwriter.
Guest:He calls me and says, this guy's looking for somebody to set up distribution for this new company.
Guest:And I knew all the guys at one stops around because of radio and having worked for Decca.
Guest:So I moved to San Diego.
Guest:You worked for DECA?
Guest:Yeah, for a short time as an assistant promotion director in New Orleans.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Basically, I would go around a radio station and say, hey, have you heard the new Elton John?
Marc:And you knew everybody.
Marc:Sure, yeah.
Marc:Basically, yeah.
Marc:So now you're working in San Diego.
Marc:What was the label?
Guest:Harbor Records.
Guest:Harbor Records.
Marc:Did they ever do anything?
Guest:One record.
Guest:What?
Guest:Hubert the Rainmaking Hippopotamus.
Marc:Get out.
Guest:That I produced and did all the voices on.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I swear to God.
Guest:That was your first gig?
Guest:Yeah, it was the only thing that ever existed.
Guest:That wasn't my job.
Guest:My job was to promote the records that they were going to make.
Guest:Please tell me it wasn't a children's record.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Marc:Please tell me it was a concept comedy record for people on acid.
Guest:No, it's actually based on a very successful book called Hubert, The Rainmaking of a Potomac.
Marc:And they had it licensed?
Guest:Yeah, by a fellow named Thorn Bacon, a children's book writer.
Guest:So I did that and then the fellow ran out of money and I thought, well, what am I going to do in San Diego?
Guest:And
Guest:You know San Diego?
Guest:Yeah, a little.
Guest:Old Town.
Guest:There's a section of Old Town where there's lots of Mexican restaurants and stuff.
Guest:And in Old Town, there's a theater.
Guest:I walked in one night.
Guest:The actors were sitting around a table reading a play.
Guest:I sat and just watched and went, that's really fun.
Guest:Started to leave.
Guest:Lady says, are you an actor?
Guest:No.
Guest:Next week, we're going to read a play where we're minus one male voice.
Guest:Would you want to come back and just sit and read with it?
Guest:I'm like, okay, fine.
Guest:I went back the next week.
Guest:It happened to be a Tennessee Williams play called Vucaré, where I lived.
Guest:And after reading it, I walked out of the theater, walked home, worked to the apartment that I was living in and the girl who I happened to be with at the time as well, I said, I'm gonna be an actor, I think.
Guest:So I really sat down at the kitchen table and said, okay, there are three choices.
Guest:Go back to New Orleans and open up a theater.
Guest:go to New York and try to break onto Broadway, but I'm only 100 miles from Hollywood.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Let me go to Hollywood and become an actor.
Marc:And this is 1970 what?
Marc:1973.
Marc:Oh, the heyday of insanity.
Marc:Oh, well.
Marc:You were just catching the wave that went all the way into the 80s.
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:so you came here almost drowned me but yes you came here in 73 august of 73 the film industry and tv industries were still pretty intimate no no no connections no education no no nothing but an appetite nothing not not even a clue as to how i would go about doing this but you knew you liked to party
Guest:Yeah, and even that was sort of amateur at the time.
Guest:It was indeed, yes, but it was still mostly smoking and the occasional mushroom.
Guest:Not professional yet.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Not really professional yet.
Marc:And Blow wasn't big yet.
Guest:No, that was late 70s when I became unfortunately acquainted with that.
Marc:And that's the one that did you in?
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Marc:I boozed me in.
Marc:I was a drunk.
Guest:I mean, I preferred drinking, I think.
Marc:But you weren't drinking yet.
Marc:No, I wasn't.
Marc:So you got no connections, no nothing.
Marc:I'm sober, too.
Marc:That's the reason I'm talking.
Marc:Yes, I know that.
Marc:Because I know that you're sober, and I'm glad I'm talking to another alcoholic today.
Marc:I needed it.
Marc:Good.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Glad to be here for you.
Guest:So what happens with nothing to go with?
Guest:Literally, I was on the bus going to the unemployment office.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the bus stopped and I looked out the window and there was a sign on a door that said, acting lessons, $10 a week.
Guest:I got off the bus, walked into the room, gave the guy $10 and stayed there for a month.
Guest:And mostly he wanted to have girls get naked on the stage so he could talk about how they have to open themselves up to the process.
Guest:But another fellow I was with said, you know, I just read this ad and there was a drama log, which makes... Do you remember the teacher's name?
Marc:Was he anybody?
Guest:Did he... I shan't say that.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:He's still around?
Guest:As far as I know, he's still alive.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And of course, they claim they made my career, which is fine.
Guest:They can.
Guest:That was the only acting lessons I've ever taken.
Guest:Did you learn anything there?
Guest:I learned that I was funny.
Guest:That's what I learned.
Guest:Because so much of it was just improv on the stage, set up a scene.
Guest:And I thought, yeah, I can make people laugh, it seems.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But this other fellow had an ad and it said, open call for casting for a play.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we went and it was, you know, Ron Saucy, you know?
Guest:I don't know him.
Guest:The Odyssey Theater, been around for 40 years.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And now on Sepulveda, there's like three theaters in a row right there between Olympic and Pico.
Guest:Anyway, at the time he was at Bundy and Santa Monica where the Starbucks is now.
Guest:And there was an open reading for a production of The Crucible.
Guest:Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
Guest:Arthur Miller, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I read for it and I got cast as the priest, naturally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I did it.
Guest:I just showed up and did that.
Guest:And then a few people in that place said, you know, we want to do a comedy.
Guest:And we think you would really be good in it.
Guest:Do you want to do that with us?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, I guess.
Guest:And I had a job.
Guest:I was working at an actually an answering service.
Guest:Hello, Mr. Phillips resident.
Guest:Can I take a message?
Guest:On Sunset Boulevard.
Guest:You used that voice.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And so I did this other play and... Was it an original play?
Guest:No.
Guest:It was Joseph Stein's basic... Based on Carl Reiner, his biography, his autobiography called Enter Laughing.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:That actually started Alan Arkin's career in the 60s on Broadway.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And I was cast as the lead character in it.
Guest:Did that.
Guest:Met my wife then in that play.
Guest:She was in it as well.
Guest:And I got a decent review.
Guest:It said that in Variety, it said John LaRiquette approaches the character with Ilan.
Guest:I had to look up what Ilan meant.
Guest:But it was, oh, that's an okay review.
Guest:And filled a bunch of envelopes, sent pictures out to agents with a cover letter.
Guest:I'm an actor looking for an agent, so what the fuck is new?
Guest:If you want to laugh, come see this play.
Guest:One guy showed up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Called me the next day and said, yeah, you want to try to do something?
Guest:And I had an agent.
Guest:How long did you stay with that guy?
Guest:Oh, Christ.
Guest:Let's see.
Guest:That was 75, six, seven years.
Guest:All the very early stuff, the little bits on Ellery Queen or Kojak or Remington Steele, the little guest shots that I did.
Guest:Sanford and Son?
Guest:Sanford and Son.
Guest:So you were working?
Guest:Steinberg and Son.
Guest:I was working.
Guest:I was a day player.
Guest:And then a guest shot on series, you know, Mork & Mindy, Three's Company.
Guest:Did you meet Robin?
Guest:Oh, yes.
Guest:Had scenes with Robin.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you hang out at all?
Guest:No.
Marc:No?
Guest:No.
Guest:I hung out more with Jonathan Winters.
Guest:Jonathan Winters.
Guest:Who was playing his son then, you know, about this point in the series.
Guest:He told me, the last thing he said to me was, you're a good lad, but you better get to those fucking magic meetings or you're going to die.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Said that to me.
Guest:So you were already, so that's 19... That's 79 years.
Marc:Thereabouts I guess so when you're out here and you're doing these bit plat parts and you're running around Hollywood Did you have a crew were you you know doing the Laurel Canyon thing?
Marc:I mean where where were or were you one of those sort of drinking alone guys?
Marc:When did the booze start?
Guest:Yeah, the booze started I would say in 70 Six ish with the series that I did the Baba black sheep series because I was that on
Guest:Huh?
Guest:Did it make it on TV?
Guest:Yeah, it was on for three years.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was about Navy pilots during the Second World War in the Pacific, based on a famous pilot's life, a guy named Greg Boyington, Pappy Boyington.
Marc:Were you the comic relief?
Marc:No, there were seven of us.
Guest:There were seven black sheep, the pilots.
Guest:Me, Dirk Blocker, James Whitmore Jr., Robert Ginty, Jeff McKay, W.K.
Guest:Stratton.
Guest:Larry Minetti.
Guest:Conrad was the Boyington character.
Guest:And it was action adventure.
Guest:It was a war series.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were on opposite Charlie's Angels.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And still survived for a while.
Guest:But that's when the drinking sort of started with those guys.
Marc:Because you were making money.
Marc:You got a gig.
Guest:I was making like two grand a week.
Marc:If I bought your first house.
Guest:No, that didn't happen until sobriety.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:But you're living with a woman, right?
Marc:You married at this point?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:In 77, Jonathan was born.
Guest:She had a daughter, and she became my daughter, who was born in 1970.
Guest:Elizabeth and I met when Lisa was three, and so we were a family.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I think, you know, this is all bullshit.
Guest:I don't know what's real and what's not real, but I think that Jonathan being born, nothing to do with him, but it set up some sort of paradigm between me and my father.
Guest:Now I have a son, like he did,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I sort of went off the deep end for whatever.
Marc:Really, you triggered something.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:I don't fucking know.
Marc:It's hard to figure that stuff out.
Guest:No, I'm a drunk.
Guest:That's why I went off the rails.
Guest:I'm a drunk.
Marc:There's no reason we're thinking about it.
Marc:Why not think about it?
Guest:I guess you can think about it, but there's no real answer.
Guest:Why do you drink?
Guest:Because I'm a drunk.
Marc:Well, yeah, that, but I mean, but the, you know, what started it?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I think, you know, whatever chemistry's involved, whatever, you know, there just was never enough.
Guest:I want more.
Guest:Give me more.
Marc:Is there more?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Let me have some more.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It's best to accept that.
Guest:But even in the 60s, before booze, I was known in the French Quarter as the lab.
Guest:People would send me shit and say, take this and tell us what it does, because we're not sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you do it.
Guest:And I had no fear.
Guest:I had no qualms.
Guest:Okay, let's see what happens.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were that guy.
Guest:And I survived.
Marc:Bunch of people looking at you.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And I survived so the 70s rolled along you know fits and starts and That's the way it was and then it sort of I sort of hit bottom when I did stripes And then so here was that 81 that was it, huh?
Marc:Yeah, you're drunk on the set of stripes first only time you'll ever see me drunk on cameras in that movie and you know at that point How is the family holding together?
Guest:It was better than it had been for a bit.
Guest:My wife actually sort of told me to take a hike for a bit, and I sort of did that thing for a bit.
Guest:But she had faith.
Guest:She had faith in me.
Guest:And the other thing that I know now when I look at people who I've loved who have died, and even sober have died, have taken their lives or whatever, I guess I never lost hope.
Guest:That may sound corny.
Guest:But I never got to a point where I thought this might not change.
Guest:I always thought this could change.
Guest:It could.
Guest:You thought that you would stop drinking or that things would just get better?
Guest:I don't know which.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought they would get better, but I knew that they're not going to get better if you keep doing this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So eventually those two things met, you know, the moment of clarity, the fork in the road, take it, et cetera.
Guest:All happened at once.
Guest:One night sitting at a table drunk.
Marc:well you're lucky stopped you're lucky yes because like you know for some people you know that once you get introduced to it and i imagine you do the magic meetings occasionally that once you get introduced to it that's in your head so if you go back after you know once you identify yourself like i'm a fucking alcoholic and then you go back out then you're fighting against that thing that's right here yeah
Guest:That was not my reality.
Guest:My reality was drank, drank, drank, drank, sober.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Done.
Guest:But you got help.
Guest:Done.
Guest:I got help.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There's certain philosophers I read a lot of.
Guest:As a matter of fact, I thanked him when I won my first Emmy, Bill W. Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:I read a lot of him.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, you got to.
Guest:Also Aldous Huxley and also other people.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You read the ones that align with it properly.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You don't want to read the... Not too existential.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:Simple.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pretty simple.
Guest:You don't want to go into the darkness.
Guest:But I got sober and things started looking up.
Guest:I was showing up.
Guest:I was sooning up.
Guest:And a year after that happened, I got to audition for the Night Court show.
Guest:And that changed everything.
Guest:It did, indeed.
Guest:Gift of sobriety.
Guest:I would definitely give it credit because I certainly would not have.
Guest:That would not have happened had I not.
Marc:And that was a hell of a run.
Marc:That was a long run.
Marc:Nine years.
Marc:Nine years.
Marc:Did it ever get tedious?
Marc:Oh, yes.
Marc:Oh, yes.
Guest:Any long-running show does.
Guest:And particularly after, you know, in those days, particularly, and this is true of any show, I suppose, in a half-hour world like that.
Guest:Whoever creates it stays around.
Guest:They get it on the air and make it a huge success.
Guest:And they get very rich, particularly in those days, the salad days of sitcoms with syndication, et cetera.
Marc:Still only a few networks on the air.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Three networks and public TV, and that's it.
Guest:A little UHF going on.
Guest:HBO was just going, ah, ah, coming out.
Guest:And so the creator usually leaves.
Guest:At some point, if they're not driven like Chuck Lorre or Jimmy Burrows or the Charles Brothers, they leave.
Guest:And then a series of producers come and run the show and they try to put their stamp on it.
Guest:So it changes the dynamic.
Guest:It changes a lot.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And every sitcom in those days eventually jumps the shark.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And Night Court's no exception in that, I don't think.
Marc:So when it ended, you were ready.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Matter of fact, I don't publicize this, but I was offered a spinoff in year six, I think, or year seven.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're done with that guy.
Marc:And also somewhat self-serving is that I thought because of the kind of humor that Dan Fielding started to represent Yeah, it would be a long time before I was off at the part of a dad or just sort of straight fellow It was so so out of there right it was so cutting and so popular like four Emmys Yes, and you know is a people loved the guy for who he was very hard for TV actors to To rise above or pull out of a character that is so embedded in the American culture in the mind it is
Guest:But you were able to do it.
Guest:A bit.
Guest:The La Roquette show was successful considering in those days 100 episodes of a television show is not successful.
Guest:But it could have been more so had I been a little smarter and a little more... You did 100 John La Roquette shows?
Marc:And that was focused a bit on your life.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:It was just based on... It was written by a fellow named Don Rio, a very talented writer.
Marc:But sobriety was at the center of it.
Guest:Yes, but that was his, not mine.
Guest:I took a year off after Night Court ended.
Guest:I stayed home by that time Ben was born, our youngest.
Guest:And I just hung at home and started reading scripts and came across this one called Crossroads at the time about this guy who we discover five hours sober.
Guest:That's how we meet him.
Guest:He's five hours sober.
Guest:working the midnight shift at a bus station in St.
Guest:Louis.
Guest:And I met with Don and loved him, and he and I went, hey, you wanna try to do this?
Guest:And I had a deal set up at NBC, obviously.
Guest:Not obviously, but I did.
Guest:And so we did it, and it lasted a while.
Guest:I blame myself for its lack of longevity in a sense because we were so in love with the idea of doing a comedy about that dark subject that I think both he and I kind of shoved it down the audience's throat a little too much too often.
Guest:The first 12 episodes were based on the 12 steps of a particular self-help group.
Guest:But I should have done it over two years.
Guest:We should have just done like every third episode do it based on that.
Guest:And I think it just became a little tough for the audience to swallow every week.
Guest:But it was funny.
Guest:It was very funny.
Guest:And it was also unusual in that it was a very mixed racial cast.
Guest:We had Chill Mitchell and Shai McBride and Liz Torres.
Guest:I mean, great comics.
Guest:Lenny Clark was... Lenny Clark.
Guest:Lenny Clark.
Guest:In those days, too, I mean...
Guest:Some of the guests we had, I mean, Drew Carey was a guest.
Guest:Romano was a guest.
Guest:Guys who, you know, sitcoms were being given to comics by this point.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Not many of them survived.
Guest:Ray Romano certainly did.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And that was a little later, too, I think, right?
Marc:He got it later.
Marc:He was a bit player.
Marc:Like, everyone was out here doing that thing, showing up on shows like you did, like everybody does.
Marc:Everybody does.
Marc:Except for me.
Marc:I didn't.
Marc:But I do a little now.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, so when did you hook up with Brillstein, though?
Guest:during la roquette he came to me during he and i got to know each other during night court and at the time i thought i don't need a manager what am i going to use a manager now for who knows how long this show is going to last i don't so you didn't have a manager you just had the agent yeah i just had agents then um and so when la roquette started i called bernie and said i'd like some i just like your input in my my career so he and i got together
Marc:And what was that like?
Marc:Because I don't talk to many people about him too in depth, but he was certainly a legend.
Marc:And there was a generation of people that he personally represented.
Marc:I've only known a couple.
Marc:What was the impact he had on you when you sat with him?
Guest:I think that he, you know, historically he knew everybody.
Guest:You know, he knew how things worked.
Guest:He knew where to go to ask the right person.
Guest:Nobody would not pick up the phone if Bernie called them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, which I have often said I think is the definition of a good manager is that everybody will take their call.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, they might not get you the job, but they're going to take his call.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he helped negotiation in La Roquette and just sort of,
Guest:you know, he and I became close during those years.
Guest:I mean, I think also, you know, I didn't, I wasn't with him at the pinnacle.
Guest:You know, it wasn't SNL or, you know, Jim Henson days or, you know, the big, big time of Bernie.
Guest:It was, well, he was on a plateau and enjoying it.
Guest:His daughter became my agent, Lee, at ICM for a long time.
Guest:And it was just a good guy to go to for advice and to, hey, what do you think about, I'll give him a call, wait, we'll find out.
Guest:oh yeah you know and if something didn't work out his his line was just fuck him next you know just move on and it was great to be around him and i'm still with the organization yeah once he died i went with another manager over at brilstein gray yeah well that's a yeah he like i i think i met him once um and uh i didn't you know you just you meet legends sometimes you don't know them but you're just like that's the guy
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But he was really all that.
Guest:And I would go and sit in his office all the time and talk, and he was very friendly.
Marc:Have good stories?
Guest:All of a sudden, Martin Short would be in the room with me, because he was Marty's manager for a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And during those years, I was really busy, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:the only the only uh he he actually while i was doing night court i did a movie that before i was with him but that he produced yeah and you know and he owed me for that because it was a horrible movie and so i would often mention it to him that you made me do second sight so you got to really help me out the next time we have a chance to really do something good but you were always showing up in a lot of movies yeah it's just it's interesting you always worked and the big success was on television
Guest:Oh, absolutely.
Guest:Very, very small actual film profile.
Guest:Does that bother you?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, maybe I'm not, you know, I'm not, I don't know.
Guest:It used to a bit, I think, but I was always so busy that I figured, well, that's my thing.
Guest:You know, baseball's been very good to me, so television's been very good to me.
Marc:And then you got another Emmy for the practice?
Guest:Yes, I did.
Guest:And that was as a recurring character that was only... He was in... It wound up being in like four episodes, but the first one was really a one-off, but then David Kelly the next year said, I want to bring him back.
Guest:And Joey Herrick was the character's name, came back the following year as a guest.
Marc:And that wasn't a comedic character.
Guest:No, but I find humor in all characters.
Guest:No, he was a homicidal, homosexual murderer.
Guest:So no, that's not exactly Peter Sellers in The Party.
Guest:Sure, right.
Guest:But it was a great character.
Guest:And David Kelly is a great writer who I then worked for for a few years later on.
Marc:In which one?
Guest:Boston Legal.
Guest:yeah he's a good guy that david kelly yeah smart guy a lot of shows on and just wrote that's all he did was write yeah i mean he would write 20 episodes a year of an hour show with delicate and intricate cases and stuff and you're still working is because you love to work
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I don't know what I would do.
Guest:I don't know what else to do.
Marc:Well, I mean, I imagine like starting to do real Broadway and stuff in terms of like whether or not, you know, whatever your movie profile is to win a Tony and to be in a major Broadway, like for a guy that that didn't necessarily train as an actor other than on the job to be on the stage at that point in your career as a seasoned guy must have been sort of jarring and exciting.
Yeah.
Guest:Very exciting and also very... I told my wife many times during that beginning period of rehearsal, they're going to fire me.
Guest:I'm done with this.
Guest:I'll tell you how stressful it was, Mark.
Marc:For which one?
Marc:How to succeed?
Guest:The first one.
Guest:How stressful it was.
Guest:I shouldn't admit this, but I forgot my wife's birthday.
Guest:For the first time in 40 years, I was so turned into my brain thinking, I can't dance.
Guest:I can't sing.
Guest:What the fuck am I doing in a musical?
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:I was gone.
Guest:For the first month, I was absolutely gone.
Marc:Just really beating the shit out of yourself?
Guest:Oh, just not.
Guest:I get, you know, one, two, three.
Guest:One, two, three.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:I'm getting a one, two, three.
Guest:Just really.
Guest:Oh, man.
Marc:I can't imagine.
Marc:Tough.
Marc:And you got to do that in front of people.
Guest:Yeah, luckily, the dance captain, she was a husband and wife team.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Both very nice English people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My wife is English, so I get along with the English.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And his wife, Sarah, Chris Bailey's wife, Sarah O'Glebe, was my dance captain.
Guest:And she had the patience of a saint with me.
Guest:And I would get in.
Guest:It was 10 hours a day, six days a week.
Guest:And for the first three weeks, I didn't care about the script.
Guest:I didn't care about the acting.
Guest:I can find the jokes.
Guest:I'll find the jokes.
Guest:Don't worry about it.
Guest:How do I dance?
Guest:I've got to get this down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she choreographed the dance.
Guest:And there's really one big number that he does with Dan Radcliffe.
Guest:He and I do this sort of, it's called a groundhog song about football.
Guest:It's a football song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And eventually, I started to be able to stop thinking about it so incessantly, constantly while I was doing it.
Guest:And eventually, it became, I wouldn't ever say easy, but it became doable for me every night.
Marc:Through repetition.
Guest:Through repetition.
Guest:Like I said, the jokes and the humor, I didn't have any problem finding.
Guest:It's pretty simple.
Guest:And the fact that in a musical on stage like that.
Guest:And also, most of my career had been in front of an audience.
Guest:Nine years of Night Court, four years of La Roquette, 300 people every Friday night were there in the house.
Marc:You weren't worried about that.
Marc:You just wanted to make sure you could dance.
Guest:I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't embarrass anybody.
Guest:and do you yeah do you love doing stage yeah very much and to think about that and again the high-class problem was many times prior to that time which is 2011 when we started how to succeed many times prior to that I was asked to go to New York by Neil Simon Herb Gardner great playwrights but I never had the time right you've got what three or four months off well they identified you as a great comic talent
Guest:I guess.
Guest:But I never had the time to give Broadway.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I didn't want to go in as a replacement over some or something.
Guest:If I do Broadway, I want to show up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so after Boston Legal is when I said, OK, stop.
Guest:Let's stop and let me go see if anybody would really give a shit if I showed up in New York.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I got actually an off-Broadway play at the Cherry Lane, beautiful little thing.
Marc:I like that.
Marc:That's where they first did True West, I think, in New York.
Guest:Yes, because I talked to Gary Sinise about it.
Guest:Edward Albee's seat was always right there waiting for him.
Guest:And he came to see the play one night.
Guest:But a small play, I got that.
Guest:The first time I went to New York as a professional was to host SNL.
Guest:I knew nothing about New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I got an apartment at the Marriott on whatever it was and sort of lived in New York.
Guest:Walked to the theater.
Guest:What was the play?
Guest:It was called Oliver Parker, written by Elizabeth Merriweather, screenwriter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Funny, very funny, talented lady.
Guest:A weird little dark kind of comedy play.
Guest:manageable venue for the first time in totally yeah because it was like the equity waiver out here right I could I could see the back row right so it was fine I wasn't and then I went okay that was okay I could do something else and then the offer for how to succeed came across my desk and then what was the big show you did with James Earl Jones
Guest:A play written by Gore Vidal in 1960 called The Best Man, which takes place at a political convention.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One man running for president, another man running for president, one being sort of Kennedy-esque, the other being more right-wing, et cetera.
Guest:Gorby Dahl wrote it in 1960 kind of with Kennedy in mind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And James Earl Jones plays the sitting president who comes to try and figure things out.
Guest:And Gorby Dahl was still alive when we started rehearsing.
Guest:Unfortunately, he died while we were during the run.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But the cast, I mean, James Earl Jones played the president, as I said.
Guest:Angela Lansbury, Candice Bergen played my character's wife.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Just a wonderful woman and a great actress.
Guest:We ran for, we extended, so we ran for like nine months.
Guest:Wow.
Wow.
Guest:So that's great.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:That must be exciting.
Guest:From How to Succeed, which was this great bubble of a comedy, to actually having an act.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you feel like you got it.
Guest:Well.
Guest:But you must have a method.
Guest:I memorize everybody's lines.
Guest:That's the only method I know I have.
Guest:And I don't do it on purpose.
Guest:I just know everybody's lines.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I really don't.
Guest:I don't say it humbly.
Guest:I show up.
Guest:I learn the lines.
Guest:I can find.
Guest:I just figure Michael Shannon said this when he was talking to you, I think.
Guest:That's where I heard it.
Guest:You want something.
Guest:What do you want in the scene?
Guest:So then you try to get it.
Guest:That's all there is to it.
Guest:What do you want?
Guest:And if I figure that out, any scene can be, no matter what else is going on, I really want to get out of here so that it informs everything else you do.
Guest:There's a great story about that with Uta Hagen, great actress, great teacher.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Had this scene on stage where she was going around a room.
Guest:She had to dust.
Guest:She had to put papers away.
Guest:She had to open the fridge.
Guest:She had to get tea, whatever she was doing.
Guest:Like 18 different things she had to do.
Guest:Did it.
Guest:And then the director said, that's great, Uta.
Guest:Do it again.
Guest:Let's do it a little faster.
Guest:And so she did it a little faster.
Guest:And some actor who was with her afterwards said, how could you take a direction like that without any motivation, just faster?
Guest:She said, well, I just decided that in addition to everything else, I had to catch a train.
Guest:She just figured out how do I do it faster with an actual object in mind.
Marc:Yeah, well, that's a good pointer.
Marc:I mean, I've heard that before, but like...
Marc:A lot of times I just work on instinct, but you actually say to yourself, what do I want here?
Marc:Occasionally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's pretty clear.
Guest:What did Jason Robart?
Guest:Again, I quote people because I have no original thought myself.
Guest:But Jason Robart once said, if it's not on the page, it's not on the stage.
Marc:That's right.
Guest:So if it's not in the body of the scene, if a director has to tell you what the scene is about, maybe you should think about rewriting this.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because if it's not there, if it's not clear to the audience for me, for my actions and my words, they're not going to understand what's going on in my head.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So I think that it's pretty, most of the time it's pretty, unless it's abstract and surreal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then it doesn't mean what it means.
Guest:It means something else.
Marc:Then you're off the hook a little.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So tell me about the new series because I haven't seen it.
Marc:And it seems interesting.
Guest:The Librarians?
Guest:Yeah, it's sort of, I describe it as a cross between Harry Potter and Indiana Jones.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:You know, it's magic and adventure.
Marc:And why the title librarians?
Guest:Because the people that are sort of the watchers of life and protectors of the realm, as it were, they're considered librarians.
Guest:There is this enormous library that is both real and- You're a book guy.
Guest:Not real.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Indeed.
Guest:But it's not just books.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's magical artifacts.
Marc:Everything.
Guest:And the job is to keep the magic guitar away from bad guys.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To keep the Ark of the Covenant.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:The Spear of Destiny.
Marc:Don't want these getting in the wrong hands.
Marc:No.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:And every week somebody tries to get them from us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or we discover one that we didn't know existed and we've got to go get it from the bad guys.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Noah Wiley did a series of three television movies based on this premise as the librarians created by John Rogers.
Guest:And they did three movies like 10 years ago.
Guest:Jonathan Frakes, Dean Devlin now is the executive producer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or was then as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And basically how I got the part was that the character was sort of fulfilled by Bob Newhart in the movies.
Guest:But Bob decided he didn't really want to work so much anymore.
Guest:And so they needed another guy.
Guest:And they asked me.
Marc:And you were like, okay.
Guest:I'm not a librarian.
Guest:My character Jenkins is not a librarian.
Guest:He's the caretaker.
Guest:And so he just sort of makes sure that everybody else has what they need in order to go do their jobs.
Guest:But he also happens to be immortal.
Guest:And so he has a lot of history.
Guest:He's got a lot of baggage.
Marc:From the beginning of time.
Marc:From the beginning.
Marc:He was Galahad.
Guest:We find that out.
Guest:He was Galahad in the round table.
Marc:Are you having fun?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, I like working.
Guest:And it films in Oregon.
Guest:And our daughter happens to live up in the Pacific Northwest.
Guest:So three months, four months of the year so far.
Guest:We've done it for three seasons.
Marc:Up by Portland-ish?
Guest:Yeah, around there.
Guest:Elizabeth and I get to go up there and spend time with our daughter, Lisa.
Marc:And work.
Guest:And work and make some money.
Guest:I mean, it's...
Marc:I like it up there.
Marc:I like the Pacific Northwest in general.
Marc:I do too.
Marc:I just like the weight of the atmosphere up there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You can really feel it, and the trees get real big.
Guest:Oh, they're so green.
Guest:I mean, obviously, it's like living in a terrarium.
Marc:Yeah, and the coastline and all those islands and things, I'd fucking love it.
Guest:When we first started thinking about leaving California in the, I guess the mid-80s, mid to late 80s, we explored that area a lot up there.
Guest:It was just a little too, the places that I wanted to were a little too remote, like Orcas Island.
Guest:How am I going to get to Burbank from here when it's raining?
Guest:You have to learn how to fly.
Guest:Yeah, but those days, you get on a private plane to SeaTac, but then if it's really socked in, you go, we can do it, right?
Guest:You've got instrument training.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's just go.
Guest:And then you wind up scraping me off rainier with a spatula.
Guest:I didn't want to do that.
Guest:So we chose a little closer place.
Guest:But it's gorgeous up there, and I like it up there.
Marc:Are you still thinking about getting out?
Guest:Yes, actually.
Marc:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We've lived, I've been back here for about 10 years.
Marc:From where?
Guest:What do you mean back here?
Guest:We had moved to Sun Valley, Idaho for a long time.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Built a house there.
Guest:That must have been nice.
Guest:Our youngest son went to middle school and most of high school there.
Guest:Was that nice?
Guest:It was very nice.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It was very nice.
Marc:And now you're thinking about getting out again?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, when you think about it, I mean, L.A., since 1973, I mean, it's a long bloody time.
Guest:It's not my hometown.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It has been extremely advantageous for me to be here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Work-wise.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, my family is from here.
Guest:All my children were born here.
Guest:Lisa and both Jonathan and Benjamin were, you know, they're Angelenos by birth.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:But you come here to work.
Marc:I mean, that's how I like it.
Guest:That's how I would like it.
Guest:I think more than I think about that all the time.
Marc:It's been like if I had a choice, you know, if what we do or what you do wasn't here, you know, would you come here?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:You know, like I really good question, because I mean, that's what like I sort of answered it for myself.
Marc:It's good enough.
Marc:But there's a lot of things that, you know, drive me crazy.
Marc:And there's a lot of things I don't know.
Marc:You just start thinking, like, I want some space.
Marc:You know, and people always think Southern California is gorgeous.
Marc:I guess it is if they don't have to drive here.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's very true.
Marc:But like, you know, I work here and I've built a world for myself, but you get to a certain point where it's sort of like, all right, there's a lot of other places.
Guest:There are.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And the lesson for that with me is even looking back 30 years ago with my wife and I, whenever we would have a little cash or a little free time, we'd be in the car and we'd be heading north.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Even if it was just as far as Cambria,
Guest:we would head out of L.A.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Get on the 101, and once you passed Agora, in those days anyway, you felt like, oh, I'm out of L.A.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there was something about L.A.
Guest:that wanted you to, that I wanted to leave, and so did Elizabeth.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just to be, again, just to be able to do that.
Guest:Right, yeah, exactly.
Guest:Completely.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And in the 70s, L.A.
Guest:wasn't nearly as constipated as it is now, getting around.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:When I lived in San Diego,
Guest:When we were doing this album, I would travel to... The Hippopotamus album?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:There's the White Album and the Hippopotamus album.
Guest:Sort of in the same brand.
Guest:I would travel up here to the mastering facility at Artisan or somewhere like on Coanga.
Guest:And I would leave San Diego.
Guest:I'd be up here in an hour and 10 minutes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just head up the five.
Guest:You know, pass Pendleton and zoom in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No more.
Guest:Listen.
Guest:And Coke was a nickel when I was a boy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's bullshit.
Guest:It's just old.
Guest:I'm old.
Guest:I'm actually old now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I'm actually old.
Marc:No, no, the city has gotten congested.
Marc:It has.
Marc:There's no question.
Marc:I imagine Coke was not a nickel, but, you know.
Guest:No, what was it?
Guest:I don't remember.
Marc:It used to be about, when I did, it was like 100 bucks a gram.
Marc:Yeah, that's about right.
Marc:80, like 60, 80.
Marc:And then there was always a guy.
Guest:It all depends on how much baby laxative they put in it.
Marc:Or, hey, if you get an eight ball, then it's cheaper.
Guest:I don't think I ever had that money.
Guest:I didn't have enough for that.
Marc:Well, there was definitely a big price break between buying the gram and buying the eight ball.
Marc:But I never wanted to commit to an eight ball.
Guest:I got to say that, I mean, not that I talk about this a lot, but Coke was really a vehicle with which I could drink longer.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:That was it.
Guest:More was about that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I liked Coke for about an hour.
Marc:And then, yeah, you had to drink just to keep the balance.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, we're good now.
Guest:How long you got?
Guest:35.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:Twice as much as me.
Marc:I got 17 and changed.
Marc:I just started later, that's all.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You're, what, 20 years younger than me.
Marc:53, I'm 53.
Guest:Yeah, I'm 69.
Marc:Really?
Marc:You look great, man.
Marc:Oh, thanks.
Marc:You're holding up.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Thank God this is radio.
Guest:Yeah, it's good to talk to you.
Guest:Good to talk to you, Mark.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:That's me and John.
Marc:Me and John Larroquette.
Marc:I appreciate him coming down.
Marc:Please go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:My finger is still a little delicate, a little sensitive, but I'm going to try to play guitar because I know so many of you are waiting for it.
Guest:... ... ...
Marc:Boomer Lives!