Episode 791 - Eugene Levy
Guest:Lock the gates!
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 the fuckopotamuses?
Marc:Someone sent me that one.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my show.
Marc:If it sounds different, it's because I'm not in the garage.
Marc:Does it sound okay?
Marc:I think it sounds better.
Marc:I just adjusted a knob.
Marc:Sounds better in my head.
Marc:Did you notice the knob adjustment?
Marc:Well, where am I?
Marc:Am I hidden away?
Marc:Am I in a bunker somewhere?
Marc:Did I split?
Marc:Am I fucking out?
Marc:Am I off the grid?
Marc:Kinda.
Marc:I kinda am.
Marc:I'm in Canada.
Marc:I'm in Canada for two nights, and I gotta be honest with you.
Marc:You know, and I say this with a heavy heart, but I feel fucking relieved, man.
Marc:I'm just here two days and I feel relieved.
Marc:I'll talk about it.
Marc:I just was in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Ridgefield, Connecticut.
Marc:Great shows.
Marc:I'll tell you about them in a second, but there's something going on this month that you're probably going to hear about.
Marc:whenever you listen to podcasts this month in March.
Marc:And I feel like I should let you know.
Marc:I should bring you into the loop.
Marc:And it's not just this one.
Marc:It's an industry-wide initiative going on right now called Tripod.
Marc:And the goal is to enlist you, the loyal podcast listeners, to get other people you know listening to podcasts.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:We're on a mission.
Marc:Be pod missionaries.
Marc:I know this might shock you, but some people still don't get podcasts.
Marc:It's still a mystery to them.
Marc:My father, for instance, who I doubt has even listened to the interview I did with Barack Obama.
Marc:I don't know how what he says to his friends or people he knows who bring it up to him, but I'm pretty sure he hasn't.
Marc:I'm not sure he's listened to one fucking podcast, my dad.
Marc:But obviously we're getting into a different issue.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Right now.
Marc:Pretty much every top podcast producer is taking the time this month to encourage listeners to get the word out.
Marc:Tell a friend or a family member about your favorite podcast.
Marc:Tell them any way you want.
Marc:And if you do it on social media, use the hashtag tripod, T-R-Y, pod.
Marc:All right.
Marc:And thanks for spreading the word.
Marc:You know, we're just doing a little push for the medium.
Marc:For the medium of podcasting.
Marc:So, yeah, I'm in this very pleasant hotel in Montreal.
Marc:Oh, by the way, Eugene Levy, speaking of Canada, is on the show today from SCTV and from many movies, from many things you've seen, from all the Christopher Guest films, the very funny and quirky movies.
Marc:Guy's been at it a long time, Eugene Levy, getting into a little of that SCTV history.
Marc:And it's odd that I'm doing the intro in Canada.
Marc:That was not planned.
Marc:It just happened that way.
Marc:I flew in, me and Singer, Ryan Singer on the road.
Marc:He's with me.
Marc:So we flew into New York on Wednesday, rented a car, drove up to Ridgefield.
Marc:It was the Ridgefield Playhouse.
Marc:And it seemed like an old school.
Marc:Brendan, my producer, Brendan McDonald, met us up there.
Marc:He drove up from New York.
Marc:It was a pretty great show.
Marc:It was a pretty sweet show.
Marc:It was a packed little room.
Marc:But the interesting thing about it was after the show, I'm backstage.
Marc:And the woman who runs the place, she comes up to me and she says, hey, Mark, there's a couple of guys that said they went on a teen tour with you.
Marc:Does that ring a bell?
Marc:And I'm like, fuck yeah, it rings a bell.
Marc:If it's the guy that took all my money on that bus playing poker with me, I'd like to see him.
Marc:It's we I went on a barren teen tour when I was like, I don't know how old I was, maybe 14.
Marc:And these were these tours and most of them came out of.
Marc:Long Island.
Marc:It was like an alternative to camp.
Marc:You just get on a bus with like 30 or 40 other kids and you start to really look forward to the places that you actually sleep in a hotel.
Marc:But I was on a bus for like a month or so with these guys, these kids.
Marc:There was a lot of us.
Marc:And I was surprised at the memories that I had because I've been around a long time and I've been a lot of places.
Marc:But why was it so stuck in my head
Marc:You know, this particular trip, like this teen tour.
Marc:Well, I'll tell you why.
Marc:Because for some reason on that teen tour, I got sucked into a compulsive gambling habit.
Marc:I was like 14, 15 years old.
Marc:And there were these kids from Long Island.
Marc:I know who they were.
Marc:Craig and Mike.
Marc:And we would just play fucking cards all the time on the bus.
Marc:And I lost a lot of money.
Marc:I lost all the money that I had for the trip.
Marc:And I had to wire my aunt so my parents wouldn't know for more money, which I lost to these fucking card sharks, these hustlers, these young, I don't know what, professional gamblers from Long Island.
Marc:And it was embedded in my memory.
Marc:And I remember a lot of guys, I remember a few people from that team tour.
Marc:So she said they're here and I'm like, all right, bring them back because I need to settle a score.
Marc:And sure enough, in walks, and we're all in our 50s now, Craig and Andy and their wives.
Marc:And I'm like, I know you, man.
Marc:I know you, Craig.
Marc:I know you, Andy.
Marc:Now, Andy didn't play cards, but Craig did.
Marc:And I said, you got to be straight with me.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Marc:I know you're surprised that I remember, but I fucking remember because I think you cheated me out of a lot of money.
Marc:Now, just tell me right now, was that a rigged game?
Marc:I got right in his face and he told me no you're just a shitty card player which is true and actually remains true but it was sort of fascinating to see these guys it's always fascinating to see people I mean what has it been 35 36 years 35 years ago they had some pictures of the teen tour and
Marc:It excites me whenever I see people that I knew for any amount of time that I remember and they're still alive and they're okay and they're doing well.
Marc:That's who I am.
Marc:No resentment.
Marc:Even if he said he'd stolen the money, I wouldn't have cared.
Marc:But he didn't.
Marc:Shitty card player.
Marc:I'm going to have to accept that, right?
Marc:I'm going to have to accept that.
Marc:That's just the way it is.
Marc:So we had a great show.
Marc:Great show in Ridgefield at the Ridgefield Playhouse.
Marc:Very enjoyable.
Marc:It was nice seeing Brendan.
Marc:He went back to New York.
Marc:And then Ryan and I, the next day, drove up about three hours or so.
Marc:Got jacked on Dunkin' Donuts coffee.
Marc:I ate a few donuts.
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:Fuck it.
Marc:All right, I'm taking the pills.
Marc:I can eat what I want now.
Marc:Isn't that the right thing?
Marc:Isn't that how a grown, aging man with slightly high cholesterol...
Marc:Puts things into perspective.
Marc:I could eat healthy and just really manage things.
Marc:Or part of me could be like, well, every once in a while, why not just go to fucking town?
Marc:I'm taking the pills, right?
Marc:Right?
Marc:I got to live a little.
Marc:I don't know when this shit's going to end.
Marc:Right?
Marc:There's a dialogue I engage with.
Marc:So then we drove up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Marc:This landscape is very familiar to me.
Marc:Running that drive from New York to Boston to Connecticut.
Marc:I did one-nighters all throughout this area all my life.
Marc:Not all my life, when I was starting out doing comedy.
Marc:So it was all very familiar, and it's very wintry.
Marc:It's very crisp.
Marc:It's very clear.
Marc:All the trees have shed their leaves, and there's an intensity to it.
Marc:There's a certain quality to the light and to the air in the winter in New England.
Marc:It was all coming back.
Marc:All the feelings, all the confusion, all the anger, all the not knowing of being in college, of starting comedy, of setting out to do what I want to do, and the panic of cigarette smoke and coffee in my shitty VW golf, running around to unknown little townships to play one-nighters in pubs and bars and grills.
Marc:And it all just came back.
Marc:But it's a beautiful nostalgia, you know?
Marc:As the world around us gets chaotic and dark, sometimes nostalgia is the only thing that can float your heart above the fucking surface so it buoys there.
Marc:So it's not just sinking like it's stuck to a fucking anvil.
Marc:We go up to Portsmouth and it's this little coastal town.
Marc:I think I've probably been there.
Marc:I feel like I've done a gig there.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't remember.
Marc:But it all looked very familiar.
Marc:And my buddy Jimmy, my buddy Jimmy met us in Portsmouth.
Marc:Now, Jimmy just quit his government job.
Marc:The last job he had was working in the State Department for flying around the world on the plane with Senator John Kerry, Secretary of State John Kerry.
Marc:It was exciting to get the deep understanding of how actually the government works in all its nuanced ways.
Marc:But nonetheless, Jimmy and I go way back.
Marc:We go back to college.
Marc:And it was great seeing him.
Marc:We did that show last night at the Music Hall.
Marc:What a great venue.
Marc:Been there since the 1800s.
Marc:Great crowd.
Marc:We had a great show.
Marc:And Jim said, why don't we, I was going to fly.
Marc:Me and Ryan were going to fly to Montreal.
Marc:We're going to drive back to Boston, fly up.
Marc:But Jimmy said, let's drive it.
Marc:So we drove up here through that fucking beautiful winter crisp air, a few snow squalls.
Marc:Is that what they're called?
Marc:Squalls.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:And again, bringing it full circle here, I got to be honest with you.
Marc:We got in, we got through customs and just physically and mentally, I felt a relief to not be afraid of the country I'm in.
Marc:And that is so fucked up.
Marc:and sad and i'm only here for two days not like i'm living here but i did feel a tangible sort of like all right the you know whatever's you know whatever the psychic vibe culturally that's going on in my country is not here and i'm gonna enjoy it i'm gonna meditate for a couple of days in this i'm gonna take it in i'm gonna fucking relax
Marc:for a couple of days.
Marc:Is that okay?
Marc:Is that all right with you guys?
Marc:Next week, I'll be at College Street Music Hall in New Haven on March 10th.
Marc:Troy Savings Bank Music Hall March 11th in Troy, New York.
Marc:Flynn Center March 12th in Burlington, Vermont.
Marc:That's next weekend.
Marc:You want to hear me talking to Eugene Levy?
Marc:It's always an honor to meet these cats, especially these old... The SCTV people, I still got to get them.
Marc:I've got a few kids in the hall.
Marc:I've got a couple of SCTV people.
Marc:I don't have any Monty Pythons.
Marc:I got to do that, too.
Marc:Let's enter the world of back in the garage.
Marc:And this is my conversation with Eugene Levy.
Marc:He's currently in the show Schitt's Creek, which is now in its third season.
Marc:You can watch it Wednesdays on Pop TV, although our Canadian listeners are scoffing because they've already been watching it on the CBC up here in Canada where I am.
Marc:All right.
Marc:This is me and Mr. Levy.
.
.
Marc:You look nice.
Marc:You look very well put together, Mr. Levy.
Guest:Do you know how tough it is to find sleeveless water vests in this town?
Marc:I assumed you got it online.
Marc:I didn't even know they made them anymore.
Guest:I don't shop online.
Guest:You like to go?
Guest:My son keeps telling me, why don't I shop online?
Guest:I said, I don't know.
Guest:It's just kind of a drag to send stuff back.
Guest:But I think I'm going to start doing that now.
Marc:Do you like going to the store?
Guest:No, I'm not really.
Guest:I don't like shopping.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, I like looking.
Guest:I don't like trying on stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it only makes me feel bad about myself.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I just find it exhausting.
Guest:It's exhausting.
Guest:And pants is like just a pain in the ass.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because you think you're a certain size and then you're not.
Marc:And then you're not.
Guest:And you've got to deal with that shit.
Guest:Yeah, and then it doesn't do up, and then you're thinking, why do I need jeans?
Marc:Why do I need to leave the house?
Marc:Why do I need to leave the house?
Guest:Why do I need to dress?
Marc:How are you feeling about things?
Marc:Are you feeling funny in general?
Guest:I never feel funny, except I'm going to take a sip of water and let it purposely run down my face just to get me funny.
Yeah.
Guest:oh there it is yeah no funny funny yeah uh i'm i'm not i'm not really a funny guy that's the biggest enigma about me yeah i'm not a stand-up i've never done stand-up right just i i i went into improv theater because if i'm gonna go down i want to take some people with me
Marc:Right, at least have the protection.
Guest:Yeah, I'm not just going up there and blowing it all myself.
Guest:Right, pick up where you left off.
Guest:You can't look like a total asshole.
Guest:I want some collateral damage.
Marc:Well, where do you come from?
Marc:You grew up in Canada?
Marc:Well, you don't have to say it like that.
Marc:Yes, I did.
Marc:I mean, I knew that, so I generally would have just said, where did you grow up?
Marc:But I chose to insert the information.
Guest:But there was something about Canada, the way you said it on your face, it looked like it was as though you grew up in Canada.
Guest:In other words, bracket, you're kidding me.
Marc:No, no, absolutely not.
Marc:I've had a lot of important Canadians in this garage, important show business Canadians.
Marc:I talked to Monty Hall at his house.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:And he's from Winnipeg.
Marc:Lorne Green, was he?
Marc:I missed Lorne Green.
Marc:I didn't get the opportunity.
Marc:I did talk to Lorne Michaels.
Marc:Yeah, he's also big.
Marc:Yeah, Ivan Reitman I talked to.
Marc:Went to school with Ivan.
Marc:So what part of Canada did you grow up in?
Guest:Explain it to me.
Guest:I grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, which is about 40 miles southwest of Toronto.
Guest:Oh, so it was like a suburb of the city in a way.
Guest:Well, it's not a suburb of Toronto.
Guest:I don't think Hamiltonians would actually love to hear you say that.
Marc:I don't want to alienate any Canadians.
Marc:I might have to live there soon.
Guest:No, Hamilton was kind of the Pittsburgh of the north.
Guest:It was kind of a steel town.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Is it still?
Guest:Nicknamed the ambitious city.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So it's sort of like, all right, Pittsburgh, that's a good analogy.
Guest:Yeah, there were a lot of steel companies going on in the 50s and 60s, and then they're gone now virtually.
Marc:Not unlike America.
Marc:The industry is gone.
Marc:Have you been back to Hamilton?
Guest:I used to go back to visit family.
Guest:In fact, I still do.
Guest:I have some aunts and uncles.
Guest:Well, now it's one uncle.
Guest:I had two uncles that lived to be 99.
Guest:That's encouraging.
Guest:I just visited my aunt in San Francisco over the weekend, who is 97.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Powerful genes.
Guest:The baby brother is 94.
Guest:Her baby brother?
Guest:Yeah, Sid.
Guest:He's still golfing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah, that is good.
Guest:And I had a few other aunts and uncles well into their 90s.
Guest:But anyway, the trips to Hamilton are getting kind of fewer and fewer, and I still have family back there.
Marc:But when something like that happens in Hamilton, is it like here?
Marc:I mean, does the economy collapse?
Marc:Is there despair when, like, the steel leaves?
Guest:There's despair generally, I think.
Guest:No, Hamilton's a lovely city, but it did go through a tough time in the 70s, 80s.
Guest:You know, it's just...
Guest:The plants closed.
Guest:Steel closed.
Guest:Malls opened up outside of Hamilton, which took all the business out of the city.
Guest:Drained it.
Guest:And drained it, kind of, and then went through a major depression.
Guest:And did it bounce back?
Guest:Is it okay?
Guest:Is it hip?
Guest:Hamilton is bouncing back in a major way.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:A lot of gentrification happening and cafes and a lot of...
Guest:Great things happening.
Guest:It's still home of the Hamilton Tiger Cats.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Is that hockey?
Guest:No, Mark.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:No.
Guest:I took a shot.
Guest:It's not, but actually, as a guess, it's a good guess because I'm from Canada.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So hockey would be the major guess.
Guest:I thought I was going to nail it.
Guest:No.
Guest:Hamilton Tiger Cats.
Guest:What are they?
Guest:You know, my friend Joe Flaherty is a football team.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:They used to be part of a nine-member Canadian football league.
Guest:Two of the nine teams called the Rough Riders.
Guest:So the Tiger Cats were, as my friend Joe Flaherty used to say, the most ridiculous name for a team he's ever heard.
Guest:It's like calling a team the Monkey Apes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's Hamilton.
Guest:Proud to be a Hamiltonian.
Marc:Was your family in the steel manufacturing business?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:What did your old man do?
Guest:Not remotely.
Guest:My, my dad worked in a, uh, in a car plant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and, uh, was a kind of a foreman in the, uh, in the plant and, uh, grew up, uh, basically doing a lot of.
Guest:physical you know yeah running the line he was a working guy and your mom working guy and my mom was a housewife um you know just managed uh you know how many kids i have an older brother i have a younger sister how they doing so she they're doing well i just saw my sister on the weekend oh yeah in san francisco and my uh my brother's back in toronto anyone in show business
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:Well, my brother is a producer on our television show.
Guest:Schitt's Creek?
Guest:Schitt's Creek.
Guest:Did you create that?
Marc:I created that with my son.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Schitt's Creek is a father-son operation.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, and do you both write on it still?
Guest:I was writing with him.
Guest:To be honest, I was in the writing room the first year when we started the show until I realized he can just run with it now.
Guest:It's all you.
Guest:It saves me 12 hours in a writing room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh trying to crack story but uh so he's right he's running the show now and uh we and it's and he's doing a great job and you're working with katherine o'hara katherine o'hara genius yeah she's she's um she's pretty damn good we've been working together just for you know eons great like how many years like 40 40 is it 40 yeah that's amazing isn't it yeah
Guest:She started out, she was, we met, I think, even before Second City opened in 1973 in Toronto.
Guest:I was in a production of Godspell in Toronto in 1972.
Guest:You were in that mythic production.
Guest:It was a pretty good production of Godspell.
Guest:Who was it?
Guest:Was it Martin Short?
Guest:It was Martin, yes.
Guest:Was Gilda Radner?
Guest:Martin also from Hamilton, Martin Short.
Guest:Oh, is he really?
Guest:Yes, went to school together as well.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And so we were the only two kind of Hamiltonians.
Guest:You went to high school together?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:We met at McMaster University.
Guest:But I knew of Marty in high school because Marty for a period of time was dating my sister.
Guest:So I knew I've heard I heard tell of the name Marty Short through my sister back in high school.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, when she was in high school.
Guest:But I didn't meet Marty, really, until McMaster University.
Guest:So what is McMaster?
Guest:What is that college?
Guest:You know, it's funny because, well, not that funny, but McMaster basically was a college started by some Baptists back in the whatever it was, 20s, 30s, something.
Guest:And majored really in engineering when I was there.
Guest:That was kind of a big thing.
Guest:There was no drama course.
Guest:There was no film course.
Guest:There was nothing pertaining to the arts.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It was all kind of extracurricular.
Marc:I didn't even know what an engineering degree enables someone to do.
Guest:Well, you can build a bridge.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Well, that's important.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you can build a bridge.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In fact, you would have a rosy future now with all the infrastructure work that's going to be going on.
Guest:Yeah, that's coming down the pike.
Guest:Yeah, it's all going to happen.
Guest:In this country.
Guest:But it was all extracurricular.
Guest:All the drama, the film, you know, that's where I met Ivan.
Guest:Ivan Reitman.
Guest:Running the film club at McMaster.
Marc:But he was there, so there literally was no arts, yet you met these people that went on to become tremendous contributors to comedy and art.
Guest:Yeah, because we could do, we could just make movies and nobody's telling you what to do.
Guest:You just take a camera and make it the way you want it.
Guest:It's not like a class where you're passing or failing.
Guest:Who was in charge of that?
Guest:Well, Ivan took it over in 1966 when I got there and when he got there.
Guest:It was kind of an underground-ish kind of film club, right?
Guest:But it was about making films, not about watching films.
Guest:No, it was about making films.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:When Ivan took over, he actually formed the club into a money-making venture.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I think he told me about that.
Guest:Yes, because he did have film nights.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he had horror film nights where people would pay money, and you'd have an all-night film festival where films would be bicycled around two or three theaters.
Right.
Guest:And right.
Guest:They'd be going on all night.
Marc:But not these are these are mainstream movies that he would show for money.
Marc:Mainstream movies show for money.
Guest:OK.
Guest:And then he also started a he organized the making of the movies by, you know, having a you would have to submit an idea for a film and the top five ideas got chosen.
Guest:That's how mine got chosen.
Guest:And that's when I first met Ivan.
Guest:We all made our own movies.
Guest:What was your movie?
Guest:My first movie, I made two movies.
Guest:My first one was called Garbage.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And I worked garbage for two, three summers up in Hamilton.
Guest:What does that mean, you worked garbage?
Guest:It means you kind of stood on the back of a metal truck in 110 degree heat in the humidity of an August Hamilton summer.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:and dumped garbage at your feet and then packed it down so that you got seven tons of garbage into a truck into a truck and then you'd go to the dump and unload it and then go back and do it all over again so you're what you're what we used to call a garbage man uh yes a garbage man yes or sanitary engineer sorry right you went to engineering school that's right yeah so so what was the uh the film garbage about
Guest:Well, it was a very complicated story.
Guest:Basically, it involved seeing students writing an exam, thinking of what they want to write down as an answer, and then cutting to a bunch of garbage coming out the back of a garbage truck being dumped onto the dump.
Marc:That was the tag.
Guest:So the theme of it was, because a lot of people still may not quite know what it's about,
Guest:School was kind of garbage.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was a four and a half minute movie.
Guest:No sound.
Guest:And then I made the first talkie.
Guest:Oh, good for you.
Guest:Finally.
Guest:You broke the audio boundary.
Marc:The first synchronized sound.
Marc:That was you.
Marc:That's amazing.
Marc:I had no idea that I was talking to somebody that had that big a place in film history.
Marc:Well, you and a nation.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:um it's weird because a lot of people i think uh think that was the jazz singer or something right that was uh one of the first talkies well that was uh that that talkies scored a bit more publicity right than my talkie yeah what was it what was yours called jack and jill interesting yeah yeah and it was it based on the poem it was uh based although i used the poem yeah
Guest:At the end, as a surprise.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah, but it was about a bunch of emotionally disturbed people.
Guest:Was it a comedy?
Guest:No, although it did turn out to be.
Marc:It did.
Marc:So you shot a serious talkie called Jack and Jill that was not meant to be funny.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:How old were you, 20?
Marc:Yeah, I was about 20.
Marc:But this was a serious film.
Guest:Yeah, it was a serious film that turned out to be kind of funny.
Guest:That's pretty much the story of my career.
Guest:I'd go into audition for movies, for serious movies, and end up getting laughs at the audition.
Marc:So you became that guy, the guy who had to learn that he was funny.
Guest:Long after everyone else knew.
Guest:Never got the part, but good comic relief for the casting people.
Marc:But Jack and Jill, now I'm obsessed with it.
Marc:So what is it?
Marc:It's early 70s, and it's a serious film.
Marc:And what was it about?
Guest:It was about a guy in a home for emotionally disturbed adults who had a crush on one of the girls in the home and made up...
Guest:a story about the romance between him and the girl, which we actually saw his story.
Guest:And at the end of the movie, you find out that this story that you think is a real story is he's writing this story.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:And he's actually in this home, and then the other people come in while he's writing it, and they take the paper that he's writing, and they look at it, and it says Jack and Jill, and they all make fun of him.
Guest:And then they...
Guest:recite Jack and Jill.
Marc:To him?
Guest:To him.
Guest:Like together?
Guest:Until he dramatically turns and screams into camera, stop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and that's it that's it wow yeah now that was a feature that was an 18 minute feature yeah yeah do you have this uh digitized is this available on youtube well i there is a there there is a story which i will not go into uh here but but i did i looked for years to try and find these movies you know your movies yeah they were left at mcmaster and then i moved and went on with my life
Guest:And years later, I said, gee, I'd love to try and get a hold of the movies that I made there.
Guest:Of Garbage and Jack and Jill?
Guest:Yeah, and nobody knew.
Guest:Anybody going to McMaster, they didn't know.
Guest:Anything about the film board had ceased to be.
Guest:Everything had stopped.
Guest:We don't know where the things are.
Guest:People looked for them.
Guest:They had no idea.
Guest:A couple of years ago, not even that.
Guest:I had my cousin, who now works at McMaster, said she heard that there was somebody running a film night in Hamilton where they're showing McMaster movies.
Guest:And I went, whoa.
Guest:Well, then give me the name of this guy because I want to get a hold of him to find out how he got a hold of the movies.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:He got a hold of your movies?
Guest:He got a hold of all the movies.
Guest:Ivan's movies, my movies.
Guest:When was this?
Guest:This was this year.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got a hold of the guy.
Guest:And I said, how do I get a hold?
Guest:He said, well, I'll send you the link.
Guest:And not only that, he personally went through and cleaned up.
Guest:Restored them.
Guest:Digitally restored.
Guest:The first talkie.
Guest:The movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's it.
Guest:So now I have them all.
Guest:What was it like watching them again?
Guest:It was pretty amazing because you're just seeing a whole chunk of your life, really, because the people in the movies are your friends, the people you went to school with.
Guest:And so it's like 40, 50 years never quite happened.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And are you in that movie?
Marc:Did you play the role?
Marc:No.
Marc:No, just directed and wrote them.
Guest:Just directed and wrote them and provided a voice, I think, in one of the movies.
Guest:One of the voices.
Guest:In fact, Ivan and I voiced a section of Garbage.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because we didn't have sync sound, so we had to kind of see two people talking and then we created dialogue so it looked like a dubbed movie in a way.
Guest:Kind of fit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how do you go from there?
Marc:So that began your relationship with Ivan.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, that was a good, and Ivan, to be honest, is the one person responsible for, I would say, me being in the business because when he left to do his first feature in Toronto, when he left McMaster, he left a year before I did, and I wasn't doing that well because I was doing a lot of drama.
Guest:I was doing a lot of film, involved with the film board and working on the paper, and I loved it, never went to class.
Guest:Where'd you do drama?
Guest:At McMaster.
Guest:Oh, so they had a club.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:With a good director of drama who was brought in from Toronto.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so we actually did a lot of plays.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:But there was no course.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Mostly serious plays?
Marc:Mostly serious.
Marc:You wanted to be a serious actor?
Guest:Well, it was the 60s.
Guest:So there was a lot of those plays where you're crawling, crawling on the floor and creating human pyramids and things like that.
Guest:Screaming.
Guest:Screaming.
Guest:Anything but acting, I guess.
Marc:Group theater stuff.
Marc:Group theater.
Marc:Or like, what was it?
Marc:Theater of cruelty.
Guest:Experimental theater.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:The Polish lab theater from the late 60s was a huge influence.
Guest:So that's what I was doing.
Guest:And so I really was bombing out of academically and realized I had to get a job.
Guest:So I knew Ivan was in Toronto starting his first movie.
Guest:I called him to say, Ivan, I'm failing my year.
Guest:I'm really going under here, but I think I need a job.
Guest:I think school is over for me.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you didn't finish?
Guest:And he said, no, I never finished.
Guest:I left school.
Guest:I wouldn't have been able to pass anyway.
Guest:I was so far behind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, well, boy, if you'd have called me a week ago, I could have got you a job in props.
Guest:I could have got you a job in painting or something.
Guest:But every job is gone.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:Coffee boy is the only job.
Guest:But I said, great, I'll take it.
Guest:He said, no, I can't give it to you.
Guest:I said, I'll take it.
Guest:He said, no, I can't give it to you.
Guest:It's really not a real job.
Guest:It only pays 60 bucks a week.
Guest:And I'm too embarrassed to give you the job.
Guest:So I said, please give me the job.
Guest:So that was my first job.
Guest:And then Ivan's second movie that he did.
Guest:What was that first movie?
Guest:It was called Foxy Lady.
Guest:It's a movie nobody's ever seen since the day it was released.
Guest:I think he told me about that.
Guest:Were you in it too?
Guest:I was Coffee Boy on the movie.
Guest:And then at the end, he gave me a cameo.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:At the end, because he knew I did a lot of work at McMaster, a lot of acting work, comedy, and he thought that was funny.
Sure.
Guest:So on his second movie, Cannibal Girls, a movie he was thinking of doing, he said, do you want to be in the movie?
Guest:Do you want to be in the movie?
Guest:Star of the movie, and you can star with Andrea Martin.
Guest:And I said, great.
Guest:Did you know her?
Guest:I met her on Foxy Lady.
Guest:I served her coffee.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And so I met Andrea and Foxy Lady, and then we did Cannibal Girls.
Guest:Popular movie?
Guest:Together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It won some award in Spain.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Best horror comedy or something.
Guest:Well, that's good.
Guest:Was it a good movie?
Guest:No, not remotely.
Guest:It was mostly improvised and not well, I would say.
Marc:Well, it's interesting because out of McMaster's extracurricular clubs comes this sort of tour de force of Canadian comedy in a way, that first wave there.
Guest:well yeah i mean ivan came out of there marty short myself dave thomas um doug henning the magician sure i remember him um what was that show we did on broadway the magic show the magic show i think i saw it smiles a lot kind of hippie yeah mustache yeah marty marty short used to do a good impersonation of uh oh it's the magic is illusion and illusion is magical and yeah
Marc:He's a good character.
Marc:So before SCTV, was the production of, what was it, Godspell, the first thing that brought everyone together?
Marc:How did that kind of happen?
Guest:They just came to town and auditioned, and I auditioned for it.
Guest:Marty was still writing his finals at McMaster.
Guest:Marty was in social work at McMaster University.
Guest:And I called him to say, Marty, you should come in and audition for the show because it's a musical show.
Guest:It's like big, big New York production.
Guest:Was he already doing stuff like that?
Guest:Marty?
Guest:At McMaster.
Guest:He was?
Guest:Yes, he was acting.
Guest:In fact, I directed Marty in a musical at McMaster.
Guest:called Benji, which was an original musical that was written by my roommate, Bob Sandler.
Guest:And a great musician in Toronto, Tony Koznik, did the music for it.
Guest:And so we put it on there.
Guest:So Marty was performing.
Guest:But again, like everybody, like me and everybody else that was doing it, you never thought about doing it professionally.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It never occurred to me once while I was doing all these plays at McMaster that wouldn't this be nice to do this professionally?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You didn't become an actor.
Guest:Nobody became actors.
Marc:Really?
Marc:It was just something you were just kind of having fun with?
Marc:Just having fun with.
Marc:And was Marty, like, could you see the Marty we see now in the Marty then?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same.
Guest:Same impressions.
Guest:I mean, amazingly good impressions.
Guest:He was doing that then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Same voice.
Guest:Same great singing voice.
Guest:So you tell him to audition for Godspell and what happens?
Guest:So he came in and auditioned.
Guest:And of course, we both end up making the final...
Guest:The final show.
Guest:And who else?
Marc:You had this amazing cast, right?
Marc:Wasn't Gilda in it?
Guest:It was me and Marty.
Guest:Yeah, Gilda Radner, Andrea Martin, Victor Garber.
Guest:Victor Garber.
Guest:Paul Schaefer was our musical director.
Guest:So that was a big show.
Marc:But it seems to me, when I talked to Ivan about it as well, that it felt like something professional and something was happening and that these talents that all went on to other things and that you went on to work with, that seemed to be the first place it kind of happened.
Yeah.
Guest:That actually was our first taste of show business, our first professional show, and meeting some really amazingly talented people.
Guest:And then, you know, right out of Godspell, Second City opened up.
Guest:I mean, we were really lucky.
Guest:Yeah, timing-wise.
Guest:Being in Toronto at that time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, Godspell was a major production coming in from New York, right?
Guest:Great.
Guest:Second City was the great improvisational company that decided that Bernie Sullins, who owned the company, owned the theater, decided to open up
Guest:A theater in Toronto because they had played Toronto in the mid-60s and got amazing reviews.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we just happened to be there in Toronto when Second City came to open up a Toronto theater.
Guest:The first franchise.
Guest:First franchise.
Guest:And that's where I met John Candy and Dan Aykroyd.
Marc:But they were all Canadians, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So where did they come in from?
Marc:You had never met them before.
Marc:So Second City opens and everybody wants to be part of it.
Marc:Like people who are performing comedy want to be part of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what was the structure of it?
Marc:How did it work?
Marc:How did you get in?
Marc:Was it a workshop situation?
Marc:You had to audition.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You had to audition, you know, exercise called Five Through the Door, five characters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you'd have to create a character and they'd give you a situation like it's a complaint department at a department store.
Guest:So somebody is the person working for the department store.
Guest:You've got in for a complaint and then you do your complaint.
Guest:You go through the door.
Guest:You come back again as a different character complaining.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then another character.
Guest:And then you would go through some improvisations.
Guest:and they made a choice.
Guest:And they cast it.
Guest:And they cast, yes.
Marc:Like, who was in charge of Second City there?
Marc:Like, I don't know.
Marc:I didn't know some of the history.
Marc:I mean, I think I talked to Shelly Berman about the Compass players, and then that became Second City.
Marc:But, like, who did they send up as the guys who knew what they were doing?
Marc:Well, Bernie and Del.
Marc:Del Close.
Guest:Oh, Del Close, of course, yeah.
Guest:He came up.
Guest:Del Close would come up, and Bernie would also...
Guest:come up and work and be involved in directing shows but he wasn't you know he wasn't so much a director yeah bernie as he was just he owned it yeah right but dell was that's a young dell close dell was yeah dell was pretty amazing he was an amazing character yeah like how so like what would you learn from that guy
Guest:Well, you learned kind of how basically through Second City.
Guest:This is the great thing about Second City for us, who were lucky enough to get in it, is it's a great comedy school.
Guest:The shows were intelligent.
Guest:They were bright.
Guest:They were really funny, but really smart.
Guest:And they were all improvised?
Guest:Well, the shows were improvised, and then you hone the improvisations down.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:a Second City show is, I mean, you go and see the actual show, but every scene in the show was created through improvisation and then honed to the point where we now have a solid piece.
Guest:So then you put all these pieces together, you do your show, and then at the end of the show, you go out and take suggestions from the audience, and you take 15 minutes, you go back, talk about them, how are we going to do it, and then you come out and improvise
Guest:the pieces and how many people like seven well five six or seven people sure in a cast and over time the pieces that you improvise when it comes time to starting your next show seven six seven eight months down the line you take the improvisations that you were doing that seemed like they were successful and you go back and try and recreate those improvisations
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And you start honing those down, and they become the scenes for the next show.
Guest:And how did Del, like, what was Del's, like, process?
Guest:He just knew what he was doing.
Guest:It's hard to do, you know, Del was, oh, that's, you know, you're doing it right.
Guest:Oh, that's it.
Guest:Fuck it.
Guest:It's, you know.
Guest:All right, cat's out of the bag.
Guest:You're fired.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Were there structures that were, like, because I know that Del had some exercises and things, right?
Guest:Yeah, it was great.
Guest:He was great at what he did.
Guest:He was a great improvisational teacher, kind of very guru-ish.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he was there for years.
Guest:And he was a guy that also had a lot of personal problems and addictions and things.
Guest:At that time?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was there a system that you learned from him?
Marc:What did you learn about improvising from him?
Guest:You know, you learn here.
Guest:The thing about we learned from Dell and certainly Second City, because it really was a hallmark of the company since it was created, was just, you know, always perform at the top of your intelligence level, which is something you don't think you need to hear.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you do.
Guest:I mean, it's amazing when you hear it.
Guest:You go, oh, I get it.
Guest:Because even if you're doing something cheap, play it smart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If you're playing a cheap character, play it smart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So don't go for the easy laugh.
Guest:Don't go for an easy laugh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just make it smart.
Guest:Make the laugh smart.
Guest:Or if you're creating a character, whatever, make the laugh come out of the character.
Guest:But make it smart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, don't don't just don't just throw it away and step over the line.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So never think you're smarter than your audience.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so those are guidelines that we anybody in Second City as goes on to use for the rest of your career, basically.
Marc:So in that first crew, it was you and Aykroyd and Candy?
Guest:The first company in Toronto was at a different theater, and that was, yes, Dan Aykroyd, Valerie Bromfield, a great, very funny writer-performer.
Guest:And a couple of local people, Joe Flaherty, Brian Doyle Murray, his brother.
Guest:And that was the company.
Guest:And then it closed because it didn't have a liquor license and people just got tired of having crepes and Cokes.
Guest:So they closed.
Guest:It had only stayed open about six months.
Guest:And then it was reopened at the old fire hall in Toronto.
Guest:And that's...
Guest:That's when John, yes, John and me and Joe were in that company.
Guest:When John got hired, John Candy got hired for Second City, they sent him down to Chicago.
Guest:That's how good they thought he was.
Guest:Del wanted John Candy in Chicago, in the company with Bill Murray.
Guest:So that was already going?
Marc:Bill was already down there?
Marc:Bill was in the company, yes.
Marc:And they wanted John.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, they wanted him in Chicago.
Marc:What was amazing about John when you first met him?
Guest:He was just funny.
Guest:I mean, he was funny.
Guest:He kind of had a very cute, adorable face.
Guest:John wasn't that heavy.
Guest:Initially?
Guest:Back then.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was kind of plumpish.
Guest:Nevertheless, it was okay to do fat jokes back then, and he was the guy leading the charge.
Marc:It almost seems like the model of... It's weird when you look at these sketch troops or these improv troops that later created all you guys, that there almost seems to be a type...
Marc:You know, that there's a comedia della arte element to it that people fall into a role like, you know, like the sort of bombastic, slightly heavy guy is sort of thematic throughout, you know, all of these groups.
Marc:You know, they like it seems like Belushi and Candy were kind of the beginning of it.
Marc:And then you get this legacy of that.
Marc:Maybe I'm just romanticizing it or mythologizing it, because I see all you guys as these archetypes of what is now sketch comedy.
Marc:Everybody comes out of improv now more than stand-up.
Marc:There was a while there where it was stand-up heavy, and now it's all about those models that were created at Second City that now sort of guide show business.
Guest:Yeah, that's true.
Guest:Although I think SNL really still kind of, there's still a lot of stand-up that gets people going into SNL still come out of stand-up, although they have been coming out of the committee or...
Marc:um, UCB or the lampoon back that back in the day, the committee is not, that was a long time ago.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, that's how our show got started in Toronto because, because SNL, when they started in 1975, really the two groups were second city, um, and, uh, national lampoon.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um, and Bernie Solins who ran second city saying, boy, we're going to work.
Guest:We're going to have our people just draining right out of Second City, going right into SNL.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Whoa, let's stop this here.
Guest:Maybe we should have our own show.
Guest:In Canada.
Guest:Well, it so happened we started in Canada because I guess most of us, John and Joe and myself, were in Canada doing Second City Theater.
Guest:And Marty?
Yeah.
Marc:Marty came in later.
Marc:So the idea was to counter SNL and create a show there to hold on to talent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why should Saturday Night Live be taking all of our Second City talent?
Guest:Why don't we have our own show where Second City can funnel talent going in?
Marc:I think National Lampoon felt that way too.
Marc:I've heard stories that the whole format was just pilfered by Lorne from Lampoon and just drained everybody out.
Guest:It's a conspiracy theory.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:Well, you know, it's funny because, you know, Ivan, I was with Ivan when we first saw the National Lampoon Touring Show with Belushi and Harold Ramis and Bill and Gilda.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a really funny show and, you know, out there.
Guest:You saw it in Canada?
Guest:Yeah, they came up to Toronto and played a club in Toronto and then
Guest:Ivan went back and talked to the cast.
Guest:We all did.
Guest:Yeah, great show, great show, great show.
Guest:Next thing you know, Ivan is working out a deal with Matty Simmons to create a permanent club in New York so this group can perform permanently.
Guest:Matty Simmons from National Lampoon.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which is amazing when you think what Matty Simmons owned and why would he need an Ivan.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And yet he did it.
Guest:Ivan was a, yeah, went into partnership with Maddie.
Guest:And then out of that, of course, came animal house.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, Ivan's career.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, all right.
Marc:So you guys, so who it's Bernie's idea to do second city first, second city TV, SCTV.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how does that start to unfold?
Guest:Well, we got together.
Guest:We just said we got together with Del was involved, Harold Ramis, myself, Joe, Dave Thomas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we kind of brainstormed.
Guest:The idea of a television network where we could do TV parody and make it like a programming day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was the idea.
Guest:With the behind the scenes and the bits.
Guest:Yeah, behind the scenes, we wanted a storyline running through the show.
Guest:And I can't honestly remember whose idea that was.
Guest:It could have been Bernie's.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or it could have been Harold's.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:But anyway, that was it.
Guest:So that storyline through the show was really a key thing for our show because instead of it just being a series of sketches, we had a storyline where we needed some characters who worked at the station to carry some of these storylines.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like Johnny LaRue, John Candy's character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what was Firedy's character's name, the owner of the station?
Guest:Well, Guy Caballero.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And that came out of an improvisation on the floor in front of the camera.
Guest:Harold Ramis, one of the smartest, funniest guys that I have ever met.
Guest:May he rest in peace.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was doing a character called Mo Green in the first season of our show.
Guest:He was the station business manager.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or the manager.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And kind of a Weasley guy.
Guest:And he did a show called Bowling for Dollars.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would take calls on his Bowling for Dollars.
Guest:And we would, in the first season, improvise a lot of these things.
Guest:So Joe got on the phone with Harold on camera.
Guest:saying, who am I talking to?
Guest:And he says, Green, this is your boss, Guy Caballero.
Guest:And you could see Harold laugh on camera because it's a play on Gay Caballero.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:uh anyway and so that kid that's where that character started yeah in an improv and then he became the the boss of the station so the whole idea which made it different from snl in a way that was probably more easy to refill was you had this whole umbrella which was the network so you could just that was in place so it was just a matter of creating characters satirizing existing people and just moving them through this network day
Guest:Yeah, it was a great format for a show for kind of poking fun at TV, news programs and dramas and comedies and sitcoms and whatever.
Marc:I remember having to watch it like it wasn't on here until later.
Marc:It was on 1 o'clock or something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that was as it was happening because when I was a teenager, I would watch it.
Marc:But that was current.
Marc:It wasn't like we weren't watching it after.
Marc:It hadn't run.
Marc:I can't remember what years those were.
Guest:What years were they?
Guest:It's in 1976.
Guest:76, 77, we were doing half hours.
Guest:78 was still half hour.
Guest:And we got syndicated.
Guest:In our second year, a syndication company picked us up and syndicated our show in, I think, 40 U.S.
Guest:cities.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That must have been when I was watching it.
Guest:Late at night.
Guest:And it came on after SNL.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Or maybe it was Friday night.
Guest:I can't remember.
Guest:But I think it was after SNL.
Guest:I think so.
Marc:1 o'clock in the morning.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:and then there were those of us who were kids who were sort of like this is its own thing you know like it had its own following and it was clearly different it was different it was like when python came on the scene if we would watch python and it was like wow where's that come from foreign is this weird i've never seen anything like it yeah exactly i remember seeing like martin do robin and you know and then the whole backdrop of all these other characters the weird what was that i have in costello bit i was trying to remember
Guest:Well, we did a piece called the – this will mean probably nothing to the listeners because these are shows that are going back.
Guest:But we did a show called The Midnight Express Special.
Yeah.
Guest:There was a show on NBC, a late night music show, called The Midnight Special.
Guest:What was that guy's name?
Guest:The Midnight Special with Catman, not Catman, Wolfman Jack.
Guest:And then the movie, Midnight Express.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we combined...
Guest:the midnight express special yeah as the wolfman jack show right hosted by abbott and costello but the idea of the storyline through midnight express of somebody trying to smuggle heroin or heroin hashish right into the country or get it out of the country we we incorporate it into the abbott and costello routine
Guest:um so we did that we sometimes took a couple of things mixed them together and and and um uh but by the same token our show was a post-production show we we did have the opportunity to write the show uh you know first or at least get the writing started and then shoot the show and then we could we we were involved in the editing and it wasn't there wasn't an audience no i think that was the primary difference that you just play just playing the
Guest:And that is the primary and always is the primary difference.
Guest:If you're performing for a studio audience, you want to get a response from the audience.
Guest:And to get the response from the audience, your performance has to come up and that's where you get sitcom.
Guest:The performances are elevated to a...
Guest:right it's right out of vaudeville a kind of a yeah a bit kind of a heightened yeah comedically heightened the same with uh snl right and you guys were and yeah we play right to camera so we could keep the we could keep the subtlety of what we're doing just right into camera right and hold the characters a little harder hold the character and they did they did add a laugh track to the show which which you know couldn't do anything about it really oh really yeah
Guest:Well, we tried in our very first show in the first season.
Guest:We thought, we don't want a laugh track.
Guest:We just want this to play without a laugh track.
Guest:And we cut the show together and looked at it, and it just seemed like it was laying there.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Where there should be laughs.
Guest:Oh, we need a laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then we brought in an audience, and we played the show for the audience and recorded the audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that wasn't good because the audience would laugh, but they would laugh over another line, like they'd laugh over a joke or a laugh line.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:The laughs were coming in weird places.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we said, oh, get the guy with the machine.
Guest:And so he would do as good a job as he could.
Marc:So the original crew of the first season, how was that?
Marc:It was you, Candy?
Guest:The first season was we started the show with Joe Flaherty, John Candy, myself, Dave Thomas, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, and Harold Ramis.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In her third season, 78-79, I think somebody didn't come back.
Guest:Catherine was gone that season.
Guest:John Candy was gone.
Guest:So they brought in, that was the season Rick Moranis joined the show, and then they brought in Robin Duke and Tony Rosado.
Guest:also passed away this year.
Guest:So they were in the show for one season in the half-hour format.
Guest:And then when we came back in the 90-minute format on NBC, it was Joe, John, me, Rick, Dave, Andrew, and Catherine.
Marc:And is that when the Great White North thing started and all that stuff, the thing started to stick?
Marc:Who was producing that one, the hour and a half one?
Guest:Well, we had, as a creative producer, you mean?
Guest:It was on NBC.
Guest:It was on NBC, and we had executives from NBC who hated coming up to Toronto.
Guest:Not only Toronto.
Guest:We were also shooting the show in Edmonton.
Guest:When we started the 90-minute show, we were in Edmonton, Alberta, shooting the show.
Guest:I know that place.
Guest:So nobody wanted to fly up to Edmonton, so the executives from NBC would fly up occasionally and just say...
Guest:Hey, why don't you put your A material up front, like we do on SNL.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Put your A material up front, and then the middle portion, you know, do your material, which is okay.
Guest:The experimental stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:put that put that at the end you know because because the demographics are you know the audiences uh we're getting good numbers in the first half hour and then it drops a little bit last half hour you don't want to worry about it so we say oh interesting interesting and they'd go back and you know we just kept on doing what we're doing always ignore them yeah how long did it last in that form
Guest:Three seasons and 90 minutes.
Guest:And then our last season was we were on Cinemax.
Guest:And there was just four of us on that last season.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So we're getting into some indulgence stuff in our last season.
Guest:So it was a good run.
Guest:It was a good run, and you know what the thing was?
Guest:Like, the inmates were running the asylum.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:We really had nobody telling us what to do, and we got spoiled a little bit, because that's not the way shows are run, and chances are you'll never get to do that again, but...
Guest:Although we're having a pretty good shot at it with our current show, Schitt's Creek.
Guest:But, you know, it's great when you can do what you want and you don't have to do something you don't want.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you have a bunch of friends with you.
Guest:And you have a bunch of friends with you because we did.
Guest:We worked together.
Guest:We partied together.
Guest:And it was like a dream, really.
Marc:Were you ever considered for SNL?
Marc:Was that something you thought about doing?
Marc:I may have thought about it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I never... I...
Guest:You were never summoned?
Guest:No, I was never summoned.
Guest:I remember one year Lorne Michaels came up to when we were doing Second City stage or filling in or whatever, whatever.
Guest:And I know Joe and John did some stuff like audition pieces on a thing, but they didn't get hired.
Marc:But it's interesting, all you guys, like a lot of you, certainly had good careers in television.
Marc:Obviously, you're still going.
Marc:John did some big movies.
Marc:Joe had recurring roles for years.
Marc:Everybody did good.
Guest:Yeah, Joe's on Freaks and Geeks.
Guest:Marty's just still going strong.
Guest:John Candy had a great film film.
Guest:career yeah john was like the biggest star he was a major became a major film star yeah did some great work he did great work funny guy and you know we're still we're still going i went through um um i think got into some directing stuff in the late 80s yes you know i got in canada
Guest:Yeah, some in Canada.
Guest:One feature film that I did here, it was actually shot in Europe, but for Dino De Laurentiis.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:What was that?
Guest:It was called Once Upon a Crime, and it was a feature that we shot in Rome and Monte Carlo.
Guest:It was a comedy?
Guest:It was a comedy, yeah.
Guest:It was kind of a farce, John Candy...
Guest:Jim Belushi, Sybil Shepard, Sean Young, George Hamilton.
Guest:And that was your first big movie directing?
Guest:Well, that was my first and only feature directing.
Guest:No story there.
Guest:I think that says it all, doesn't it?
Guest:But it actually was really funny.
Guest:It was a funny movie.
Guest:It had some very funny moments.
Guest:It just got a little weird.
Guest:We couldn't quite get the third act going.
Guest:They hired writers and writers, some big-name writers and stuff, but still couldn't get going.
Guest:And there were a few issues with Dino while we were shooting.
Guest:Did you deal with Dino?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I actually liked Dino De Laurentiis.
Guest:It was it was he had a reputation like, you know, I'd heard before I started working on that movie that, you know, some directors would just.
Guest:in their contract, they say, no, he's not allowed on the set.
Guest:And when we started the movie, he was so great.
Guest:He was like a second dad.
Guest:He was just great.
Guest:He liked to laugh.
Guest:The scouting trip in Europe was an experience in itself.
Guest:It was just first class all the way down the line.
Guest:It was like first class hotels.
Guest:He would take you out to the best restaurants.
Guest:It was...
Guest:got along great with them yeah we started the movie everything was going great and then things just you know uh uh oh we got into some issues about the script and what he thought was funny and what i didn't think was funny and and while i was over there in pre-production yeah dino was still in los angeles and we'd have some screaming matches on the phone really yeah like i mean screaming matches where he
Guest:He would be faxing pages that he got some guys to work on for free.
Guest:And, you know, this is a good joke.
Guest:That's a good joke.
Guest:The woman here comes by with the big boob and, you know, walking across.
Guest:Dino, I don't think that's funny.
Guest:What?
Guest:You know, screaming.
Guest:To the point where when he finally did come over, when we started shooting, I met him in his hotel and I had a stick with a white flag on it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Waving my white flag.
Guest:Did that work?
Guest:It worked for about 10 minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I think Belushi did him on SNL, I think.
Marc:Didn't he?
Marc:Belushi's like, my Kong, talking about the King Kong movie.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I think, yeah, that's right.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:I hadn't even thought about that until you just mentioned it.
Marc:So when did you move sort of down here and start doing that?
Guest:I would come down sporadically for a lot of different projects.
Guest:The first time I came down, honestly, was for anything serious.
Guest:We did a second city in Pasadena in 1975.
Guest:Right.
Guest:A live show.
Guest:Yeah, the live show.
Guest:That was my first trip to California.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In 1980, we came down to do a movie called Going Berserk with Joe Flaherty, John Candy, and myself, a movie that David Steinberg directed.
Guest:And it was not much of a script, I remember, at the time.
Guest:And I was in Toronto, and Joe and John were down with the writers working on this thing, and I'd say, hey, send up some pages.
Yeah.
Guest:Uh, yeah, well, we will when we get it down, you know, which is not ready yet, but we're working on it.
Guest:But boy, there's a great part for you.
Guest:And there's some funny scenes.
Guest:Great.
Guest:A month later, because send up some pages.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I can read.
Guest:Well, we're good.
Guest:We're almost there.
Guest:We got something.
Guest:Next thing you know, I'm flying down to Los Angeles.
Guest:They're shooting in a week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I've already signed.
Guest:still waiting and they said well come down here we'll give you the thing when you get down here yeah and so i got the script i went back to my hotel i i got into bed i turned on the lamp started reading got to page 15 called my lawyer i said oh my god ted i this is horrible i mean what are we going to do the script is horrible it's garbage i can't do it again i can't
Guest:do it i love the guys i can't i can't do it what was the problem were they just were they partying or they lost it was uh it just it just wasn't good yeah let's put it that way it was it just wasn't good so i went in to uh so my lawyer says well you know we'll go in we'll take a meeting with david steinberg in the morning we went in and had the meeting and i said he said so gene i
Guest:I understand you have some problems with this script.
Guest:I said, well, Dave, honestly, I don't think it's ready.
Guest:You're shooting in a week, personally, and I know this means nothing to you.
Guest:I don't think it's ready.
Guest:I don't think it's ready.
Guest:It needs a lot of work.
Guest:Well, of course it needs work, Gene.
Guest:You know, this is not the movie we're shooting in a week.
Guest:We're constantly making amends to the script.
Guest:And tell you what, why don't you stick around for the week and work with the boys and redo the scenes you feel like you want to redo.
Guest:We're not doing this.
Guest:It's going to be much better by the time we start shooting next week.
Guest:So stick around for the week and see what you can do to help things.
Guest:So we leave the meeting and my lawyer says, okay, you know what?
Guest:Just do the movie because you're not going to come out of this smelling too good.
Guest:If I have to go and tell the studio that you've decided to back out at the last second.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, even though the director said, yes, you can leave now.
Guest:But if you stick around and work on it.
Guest:And if you don't if you don't like what at the end of the week, then you can just go back and leave.
Guest:That's not going to happen.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So just do just do the movie.
Guest:And I did.
Guest:And it was great fun.
Guest:Not a great movie, but it was actually a very cultish kind of movie.
Guest:So many people have come up and said, going berserk is insane.
Guest:And I said, it is.
Guest:What year was that?
Guest:That was 1980.
Guest:And then the splash was 83.
Guest:And then I'd come down and do that.
Guest:And then, you know, we...
Guest:traveled to Jamaica for Club Paradise in 84, and then I was back in L.A.
Guest:in 85 to do Armed and Dangerous with John Candy.
Guest:And so my trips were... Frequent.
Guest:Yeah, I would come down and do work down here for years.
Guest:You and John were real tight?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you and Joe?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's good.
Guest:Still see Joe.
Guest:Still see the people.
Guest:We still see each other on a semi-regular basis.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:Marty.
Guest:Marty, of course, all the time, because, you know, he's my oldest and dearest friend.
Guest:I mean, we... Do you live by each other?
Guest:Yeah, we're one minute apart.
Guest:Oh, so yeah, so you're around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:Yeah, one minute apart.
Guest:Marty's probably the funniest guy in show business.
Guest:I don't think there's anybody faster.
Guest:I don't think there's anybody who's got a faster mind than Marty.
Guest:And case in point, Jiminy Glick, if you love that character.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a lot of that is just off the cuff and it is absolutely brilliant.
Marc:He's amazing.
Marc:You know, he transcends, you know, show business almost.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He embodies it and transcends it.
Guest:He, he definitely embodies it and he is the anchor to, I mean, he knows everybody in the business and everybody loves him and,
Marc:So how did you get involved with, because I think like most people now, maybe that's not right for me to say, outside of American Pie, which is a franchise you've been connected with for years.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's like 12 of them now, right?
Guest:Well, no, no, not 12.
Guest:No, no, not 12.
Guest:Eight.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But that's a good gig.
Guest:The gift that keeps on giving.
Guest:Yeah, it was a good gig.
Guest:Four theatrical features and four straight-to-DVDs, and that was great.
Marc:But the Chris Guest movies, who you work with Catherine a lot.
Marc:Catherine, Fred, yeah.
Guest:Fred Willard.
Guest:Oh, great, great cast.
Guest:And Chris, of course, who's another comic genius.
Guest:How did you meet him?
Guest:How did I meet Chris?
Guest:He called me.
Guest:I knew of Chris from going back to Lampoon and the radio shows and the albums.
Guest:I knew Gilda was doing work there and Schaefer was doing work there and Bill Murray.
Guest:I knew those voices, but there was one voice that I'd never heard, Chevy.
Guest:One voice that I'd never heard, and that was Chris.
Guest:And it was brilliant.
Guest:His character work was astonishingly great.
Guest:And I kept saying, who is that guy?
Guest:Who is this guy?
Guest:Who is this guy?
Guest:I got a chance to work with him on a Billy Crystal special in the mid-'80s.
Guest:Not working directly with him, but when he was shooting his stuff, I would go and make sure I'd go and watch.
Guest:You're a fan.
Guest:Huge fan.
Guest:And then years later...
Guest:I get a call.
Guest:I'm in Toronto, and I get a call, and it's Chris, and he says, I'm thinking of doing a movie, and I'm wondering if you would like to come down and write it with me.
Guest:And I'm thinking, I don't even know the guy.
Guest:I met him twice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How many people turned it down before you called me?
Guest:So he said, yeah, I've got a cabin up in the northwest region of the country, and we could go up there for a week.
Guest:I'm thinking, wow.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And in my mind, in milliseconds, I'm thinking, I'm trying to work it out, thinking, okay, this could be great, or it could be horrible, or it could be
Guest:I don't know the guy, and this is great.
Guest:Now we're in a cabin, and what if it's not working?
Guest:Well, I guess I'll just go back to the airport.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Well, you got to lose.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:So I flew down to meet him there, and from the first second he picked me up at the airport, it was just laughs and just great.
Marc:And that was the beginning.
Marc:Isn't that interesting, though, like out of nowhere, a guy that you respected so much and that you had no real sense that he knew...
Marc:What about you?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, you know, why you?
Guest:Well, you know, it was years later, almost at the end of our run.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I put the question to him, Chris...
Guest:why did you call me that day?
Guest:How, who did you approach for, how many people did you approach before you went?
Guest:He said, no, you were my first choice.
Guest:I said, based on, based on, I was a fan of your show, SCTV, and in particular,
Guest:loved your work on the show so i called you i said what boy i wish i'd asked you that in the very beginning because i always thought i was number nine on the list why would he stay with you for four movies i don't i don't i you know well the first one worked out but you know i i uh it was kind of an odd thing
Guest:Yeah, Chris is very, very funny and insanely funny.
Marc:No, yeah, it's transcendent.
Marc:There's something about his commitment to things that's really amazing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:His sensibility is completely unique.
Marc:Had some great laughs putting those movies together.
Marc:But you co-wrote four of them, right?
Yeah.
Guest:yeah guffman uh best in show mighty wind for your consideration yeah you were with him now what do those scripts look like are they well they're outlines they're they're pretty detailed outlines that that got more detailed as we went along i mean i i think the script for guffman was maybe 15 pages and you know we lay out the story
Guest:From scene to scene, scene to scene, we lay out the story and we describe what exposition has to come out in every scene to keep the story going.
Guest:The movies are improvised.
Guest:So we don't really write dialogue.
Guest:If we thought of something funny as a joke, we would put it in the outline and hope the character uses it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was just really keeping the story moving from scene to scene because you've got to have an anchor that if you're improvising a movie and it's just a free-for-all, then good luck.
Marc:It's hard to put together.
Guest:It's hard to put together.
Guest:So you've got to have something that keeps the story moving, and that's what we did.
Guest:And with every movie, we got more...
Guest:involved in back character backgrounds and actually writing those writing who the characters were where they where they went to school what books they wrote for the actor for the actor uh-huh and did that did they appreciate that yeah oh well yeah sure yeah and sometimes they added to it
Guest:and sometimes in a major way added to it.
Marc:And then you just, there's a sort of ensemble sort of started to reveal itself through those movies.
Marc:Like there were core players that seemed to be in a lot of the movies.
Guest:Yeah, we started out, I mean, Guffman was just Catherine, myself, Chris, Fred, and a very talented improvisational actress in Toronto, Linda Cash.
Guest:who played my wife in that movie Waiting for Guffman.
Guest:And Bob Balaban, of course.
Guest:Balaban.
Guest:And that was kind of the core for Guffman.
Guest:And then it just expanded with Best in Show.
Guest:We brought in Jennifer Coolidge.
Guest:Jane.
Guest:uh who i had uh uh seen i didn't work with her but i saw her when american pie came out and i and i recommended her to she's great i just talked to her she's astounding in a way really really great and quirky and funny and jane lynch great and um and then michael mckeon yeah um and that was for uh best in show and michael higgins oh yeah he's interesting michael higgins yeah
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was that.
Guest:And those movies were honestly just a lot of fun.
Guest:And Guffman, we had more.
Guest:We didn't learn soon enough.
Guest:But on Guffman, there were a lot of scenes that we would laugh in the middle of a take.
Guest:Couldn't help it.
Guest:There were scenes where I would.
Guest:There were group scenes where I would drop slowly behind the person in front of me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On my hands and knees and crawl off the set while they're still shooting so that the scene would go on and I couldn't stop laughing.
Guest:The experimental theater experience paid off.
Guest:Yes, it did.
Guest:Yes, it did.
Guest:Crawling, crawling.
Guest:Don't be afraid to get the tummy dirty.
Guest:And then we learned that, you know, because it is improvised, you know, if you're laughing through something that's really funny, chances are you're never going to quite get that moment again.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it was... So you figured out a way to crawl.
Guest:Well, we learned, yes, crawling became a big thing.
Guest:Always make sure you're near somebody that you can move behind.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So you didn't lose that perfect take.
Marc:Well, like in Mighty Wind, that relationship that you and Catherine O'Hara had was like...
Marc:Outside of it being funny and tragic, it was really deep.
Marc:And I think that comes through with a lot of his movies, where you have these amazing characters and this vibe, but maybe it's the backstory, maybe it's the performers, but Jesus, man, I mean, they're moving.
Guest:Chris and I share that.
Guest:The one thing that made us work well together is we share that sensibility of not being afraid,
Guest:to kind of bridge that line between comedy and drama.
Guest:Case in point, A Mighty Wind.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, we were coming up with...
Guest:evolving the characters for the show.
Guest:And we're talking about Mitch and Mickey are two characters.
Guest:And the fact that they were the sweethearts of the folk music generation.
Guest:And their big hit song was Kiss at the End of the Rainbow.
Guest:And they would sing the song and then kiss at the end of the song.
Guest:Well, now we have, years later, a reunion.
Guest:And in the history of these two characters, they had a horrible split up and a horrible divorce and a horrible fight.
Guest:And they never saw each other.
Guest:And Mitch went into sanatoriums and just did drugs and lost it and became weird.
Guest:She remarried.
Guest:Well, what's going to happen when they come back?
Guest:to the reunion and they're gonna sing their hit song, how are these two people gonna kiss?
Guest:Are they actually gonna kiss at the end of the song?
Guest:Because they hate each other.
Guest:And we kind of had a moment where we realized
Guest:wait a minute, this could be the storyline, the A storyline for the movie.
Guest:But how scary is that?
Guest:We're writing, this is a comedy, and yet we're gearing this movie toward a third act where are these two people going to kiss at the end of the movie?
Guest:What are we getting ourselves into here?
Guest:Right.
Guest:this could be horrible because if it doesn't work, I mean, if it doesn't, if the audience isn't there with you, then it's going to be a, oh, it's going to be an ugger.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yet we both felt compelled to move in that direction because it seemed like the most exciting way to go in terms of a story.
Guest:So it's that kind of, it's that line between comedy and drama that has always...
Guest:been my comedic raison d'etre.
Guest:It's the most exciting way to do comedy for me, because I'm not a joke person, as is evidenced for the past hour and 10 minutes.
Marc:Well, no, but I don't know if that's true.
Marc:Your sensitivity to characters, even with Bobby Bittman,
Marc:you know back in the day which was a spoof on you know that generation of stand-up you knew what wasn't funny and how to make it funny i mean i i think you you do you know i'm not not that you need me to tell you that i i do think you have an understanding of yeah no no no no no no it's an understanding yeah no no no it's true but but but but the uh the the kind of comedy for me that from the very beginning is is character driven sure
Guest:So even on SCTV, it's always character driven.
Guest:And again, as broad as some of the characters were on SCTV, we committed to the characters.
Guest:We never had a joke at the expense of the character or stepped outside the character.
Guest:No tongue in cheek stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:uh that's right so that's always it's always been important edith prickly big big broad character and yet edith prickly is a that's edith yeah prickly that's who she is well maybe that's some of that stuff that came from that that instruction in a way of of dell saying you know keep it intelligent
Guest:Well, that's it.
Guest:That is the driving force behind everything.
Guest:Make it intelligent.
Guest:But to me, making it intelligent also means just making it three-dimensional.
Guest:Make a character funny but real.
Guest:You should be able to take an audience...
Guest:On a much more kind of rewarding trip than necessarily just kind of laughing.
Marc:And the way you guys played that out in Mighty Wind with it becoming, now that you say that it became the A story in a way, that whole third act where all the other performers are like, I don't know what's going to happen, right?
Marc:Yeah, very emotional moment.
Marc:They were all moving towards it.
Marc:And they brought the audience with it.
Guest:That's right, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, they come in and they move into the wings to see, are they going to do it?
Guest:Are they going to do it?
Guest:And then it really was an amazing moment that you could actually feel.
Guest:I'm getting choked up now.
Guest:When we were doing, when we were actually shooting it.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:You could feel it.
Guest:Because I remember looking into the wings and seeing Parker Posey with tears in her eyes while the camera's there and I'm doing the scene with Catherine.
Guest:So it was great.
Guest:And that...
Guest:That's the kind of comedy that I love.
Guest:And that's what we were doing on our movies with Chris.
Guest:Make the characters real.
Guest:I mean, the characters, the audience has to be able to grab hold of something.
Guest:And if you do it successfully, then you can take them on a nice ride.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And you're doing that now with the... Exactly what we're doing in Schitt's Creek.
Marc:Schitt's Creek.
Marc:And you have this dynamic, I imagine, with Catherine that is like it's weird when you do have genuine decades of history with somebody and you know their emotional nuances as performers that there must be a comfort level to that.
Guest:Yeah, amazing comfort level.
Guest:And we kind of know...
Guest:We have the same approach to our work, Catherine and I. We take it kind of very seriously.
Guest:Approach our work as actors approach a character.
Guest:And we kind of have a sense where somebody is going or could go.
Guest:So we work very well together emotionally on that aspect.
Marc:on that level.
Marc:Well, it's sort of interesting that when you talk about it, it's some sort of magic, because when you really think about the show you're doing with her now, or these Chris Guest movies, which are more subtle than I think SCTV is that,
Marc:You're not really playing, you know, the confidence you have to have in the character to not play for laughs, but to assume that they are comedic characters innately is some sort of gift.
Marc:I mean, you guys kind of invented some of that.
Guest:It's just a commitment to character work.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's really all it is.
Guest:I mean, for me personally on Schitt's Creek Now, and I should for your listeners mention that it is S-C-H-I-T-T-S.
Guest:And it's on Pop.
Guest:It is a person's name.
Guest:Pop TV?
Guest:It's a real name.
Guest:And it's on Pop and Netflix.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know, this is a commitment to character.
Guest:And, you know, my son, Dan, who I worked on the show with, created the show with, he came to me with an idea for this wealthy family that loses its money.
Guest:But he also came to me because the sensibility of the movies that Chris and I were doing, that's kind of the sensibility that he was looking for in the show.
Guest:And that's what we started kind of working with.
Guest:It's good he had connections with you.
Guest:It didn't hurt.
Guest:It didn't hurt.
Guest:Let's put it that way.
Guest:But to his credit, he would never ever... He spent eight years on MTV in Canada as a host and doing live stuff and doing it very well and writing funny sketches and...
Guest:And doing some great work, but I just, I never thought that the big question was would he be able to do something like this, a half hour comedy, a character that has got to be a genuine character.
Guest:you know, and, and writing.
Guest:And honestly, anyway, long story short, he's great.
Guest:He's, he's, he's quite brilliant at it.
Guest:And I just love watching him work and he's got a character on our show that is insanely funny.
Guest:And you must be proud.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Dad's proud.
Guest:Very proud.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Extremely.
Marc:Well, look, man, it was great talking to you and I'm, I'm happy that you're, you're, you're going and it's, uh, you're doing great work and correct.
Marc:Congratulations on the new season.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, thank you.
Guest:And I can't believe I'm finally here in this illustrious garage here.
Guest:And I've seen the pictures and kind of said, hmm, I wonder what it's like to be across the desk.
Guest:How was it?
Guest:From Mr. Marin.
Guest:It's delightful.
Guest:It's a great conversation.
Guest:I never heard action.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I don't do that.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So I take it, are we ready to go, or was this just preamble?
Marc:That was all.
Marc:We're about to start.
Marc:Oh, great, great.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:I enjoyed that.
Marc:It was a pleasure meeting him.
Marc:I like hearing the history.
Marc:You know I do.
Marc:I can breathe.
Marc:I'm just going to take it in.
Marc:I'm fear-free right now.
Marc:Fear-free.
Marc:Fear-free zone.
Marc:Boomer lives!