Episode 816 - Senator Al Franken
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuckadelics what's happening i'm mark marin this is my podcast wtf
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:I imagine a lot of people are tuning in today for the first time because of my guest, Senator Al Franken from Minnesota.
Marc:Yeah, Al Franken, the hilarious Al Franken and the very decent and
Marc:engaged and active senator democratic senator from the state of minnesota mr al franken senator al franken i talked to him in dc and i know a lot of you are tuning in because it's nice to have a conversation i don't have a lot of uh specifically political conversations here on the show i did talk to a president
Marc:president obama but this is really the first um senator i think this is the first sitting senator i've had on i he's the first senator i've had on at all really and uh and i'm excited about it because al has a new book out and uh it doesn't uh it doesn't inherently or exclusively mean we talk about politics only because al's book
Marc:um was about it's a memoir it's it's a memoir the book is a memoir and it's called uh al franken giant of the senate and you can get it now wherever you get books but you know i like al and i've known al a long time in some degree we were at air america together but also as a kid i was a huge fan of alan snl and uh anytime i saw him appear anywhere i thought he was uh hilarious he is hilarious
Marc:He I wait for him to be funny.
Marc:I look at him and I want and I just wait for him to be funny.
Marc:And I remember when when he became a senator, I was like, oh, boy, now he's not going to be funny anymore.
Marc:And he's so specifically funny.
Marc:And this book.
Marc:But China, the Senate is funny and it goes through the full arc.
Marc:And I talked to Al about a lot of different things.
Marc:I talk about his life and I talk about his evolution in comedy.
Marc:I didn't realize he started as a stand up.
Marc:I didn't know he had time at the comedy store.
Marc:I didn't know about the early SNL from his point of view and how he evolved out of that into public service.
Marc:is is all in the book but he doesn't give short shrift to his comedy career and what that implied at the time he was in it and also once he became a candidate for senate and then once he became a senator it threads through it all his his comedy career is important and does become uh for for times a liability but he he doesn't uh he doesn't dismiss it and he's very proud of it he should be because he's a brilliant comedic mind
Marc:But it's also important to have Al there to have Al in the Senate at this juncture in history is very important because he's a decent guy and he he believes in American decency and he believes in helping Americans in a real way, in a practical way.
Marc:And he talks about that.
Marc:And I'll tell you, this book.
Marc:If you read the book, it's almost a primer for how to get into politics.
Marc:And it's something I think we should all do at whatever level we can.
Marc:And I believe me, I'm guilty of being disengaged, lazy, even apathetic at times.
Marc:But I do what I can.
Marc:So before I get too far into my rambling, because I do want to get to Al, because I know people are here to listen to Al, because this is a nice, rare sort of hour-long chat with Al.
Marc:But I'm going to be doing it again.
Marc:I'm going to be interviewing Al in front of a live audience tomorrow, June 2nd, at the Book Expo in New York City at the Javits Center.
Marc:The following day, me and Brendan McDonald will be participating in the BookCon in the same place, the Javits Center, doing our shtick about our book.
Marc:So if you're in New York, come to either or both of those events.
Marc:So folks, I don't get into the fray much of the politics, but I'll tell you, man, you know, there's some real heroes out there.
Marc:There's some real heroes out there and some of them are giving their lives to maintain decency and law and order to some degree and the pursuit of truth and democracy.
Marc:You know, a reporter gets beaten up and it's celebrated by certain people and
Marc:You know, that's not that's not American.
Marc:There's there's a there's a type of belligerent, immoral, violent, willfully ignorant, proudly dumb strain of behavior going on.
Marc:Now, that's not it's not political.
Marc:It's not American.
Marc:It's fucking crude.
Marc:And it's just dangerous.
Marc:Why are you proud of that?
Marc:So there are some unsung heroes.
Marc:The journalists right now are taking up a lot, a lot of their lives and energy to provide a check, you know, on the government that needs to be there because we don't have a lot of outlets.
Marc:There's got to be checks and balances and, you know, to beat up on real journalists who are just looking for truth and
Marc:It's weird, man.
Marc:This presidency is probably the most transparent presidency, certainly in my life, just by virtue of journalists doing their job.
Marc:This administration does not want it to be transparent and it's transparent.
Marc:We can see right into it.
Marc:I do want to say, you know, say a few words about these people that have stepped into the fray to protect other Americans from hate and violence.
Marc:You know, two people died in Portland doing the right thing.
Marc:One guy was injured doing the right thing, protecting another American from a lunatic who was radicalized by white nationalists, American white nationalists.
Marc:We've got to get each other's backs because, you know, those who believe in America in the idea of tolerance and the idea of mercy, the idea of charity, the idea of of everybody having a shot, you know, at living a free life in their dream of of diversity, of the things that make America interesting and great and strong.
Marc:Those of us who believe that.
Marc:are at odds with the belligerent, immoral, violent, willfully ignorant, proudly dumb anti-American forces that just want to steamroll the evolution and progress of democracy.
Marc:So you might have to get dirty.
Marc:You might have to step in.
Marc:You might have to speak up.
Marc:You should.
Marc:But the great thing about talking to Al...
Marc:Is he does that and he does it from the United States Senate.
Marc:We all have a part.
Marc:Got to play a little part, just a little bit.
Marc:So after reading Al's book, I laughed.
Marc:cried I grew with him as he became a civil servant a senator who is deeply rooted and believes in helping and working with the people of this country in Minnesota his state in helping people that have less or do not get the services needed in ways the poor the the the disenfranchised he does he does all the things that
Marc:A decent, progressive, democratic or anybody American should do.
Marc:He works towards those things.
Marc:And obviously now the the government is tilted in one direction.
Marc:It's highly polarized.
Marc:So he's got his work cut out for him.
Marc:But the interesting thing about Al is that, you know, he's got endurance, he's got persistence and he's got drive.
Marc:And he's one of the most active members right now in the Democratic side of the Senate in terms of seeing him speak up and and confront like to watch him deal with that question.
Marc:Jeff Sessions, Senator Sessions, during his confirmation hearing was a profound and amazing thing that led to the ultimate recusal of sessions in this investigation into the administration's collusion with Russia.
Marc:So, you know, government is exciting.
Marc:And it is challenging and you got to be cut out for it and you got to stay in it and you got to believe in it.
Marc:And Al Franken does.
Marc:And, uh, I'm proud of him.
Marc:I'm proud.
Marc:He's a U S Senator.
Marc:And, uh, you know, it's, it's amazing to see somebody who evolved out of show business and into, uh, you know, finding his heart in a public service.
Marc:And it was great to talk to him.
Marc:This is me and Al Franken.
Marc:Uh, his book is called Al Franken giant of the Senate.
Marc:And, um,
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:I was able to sit with him at his chief of staff's house in D.C.
Marc:And we had about an hour.
Marc:And then he had to get out and do some things.
Marc:Senator things.
Marc:So this is me and Al.
Marc:Senator Al.
Guest:Yeah, I'll be honest with you, Senator Franken.
Mm-hmm.
Marc:I didn't quite finish the book.
Marc:I'm about 20 pages shy.
Guest:That's okay.
Marc:But at the end, is there some practical solution to all the world's problems that can be enacted quickly?
Marc:It's actually on the last page.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:i knew it would be there yeah oh thank god thank god it's all gonna work out it's all gonna work out i wanted to stay i don't know if i ever told you the story but i'm gonna tell you the story sure when i was a kid there was uh i went to a camp with a kid whose uh whose father worked at nbc so i must have been 14 or 15 and he was gonna i was a big fan of snl
Marc:I wanted to meet John Belushi.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:So he set up my grandma, Goldie, from New Jersey.
Marc:I was visiting her, and she took me to NBC.
Marc:Okay, Goldie.
Marc:Me and Goldie, we went up to 30 Rock.
Marc:We went up.
Marc:We're going to meet John Belushi.
Marc:We go to the waiting area, and we're waiting.
Marc:And some guy comes out with a big Jufro in glasses.
Marc:It's you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're kind of giggling a little bit.
Marc:I don't know what happened just beyond the door that you came out of.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:But you're like- We were at a comedy show.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so it could have been someone said something funny.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:I wasn't implying anything.
Marc:But you said, yeah, John's not, he can't come out.
Guest:Oh, I was sent in to tell you that?
Guest:Oh, I'm sorry.
Guest:It's all right.
Guest:And you're 14?
Guest:Yeah, something like that.
Guest:Al, tell the 14-year-old kid.
Guest:What year is this, you know?
Marc:Well, it must have been, what, 77?
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Does that make sense?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, he was moody.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, in and out, cranky?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He can get very cranky.
Guest:I mean, he, you know, 77, I'm sure by then he was doing too many drugs.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And that he was kind of this moody Albanian anyway.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But once he, I don't know if you know this, but people who are addicted to drugs can get extra moody.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Sure, when they don't have their drugs or they haven't slept.
Guest:Or something.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I'm familiar with that.
Guest:I remember actually once, I think it was probably the next year, Kate Jackson, I think it was her hosting.
Guest:It doesn't matter who was hosting.
Guest:But he was really in bad shape.
Guest:And in dress rehearsal, Jim Downey and I had written a piece, and John just was terrible in it and didn't know his lines.
Guest:So I said to Downey, between dress and air, let's go to John's dressing room and just run the lines with him.
Guest:and Jim kind of was reticent to do it because I wish she was on a good mood but I go in there and I go John I noticed that you were unfamiliar with the lines and the sketch and he just said get out of here and he put his fist up and and
Guest:uh jim looked at me and i went he's not you know i just i just looked at him so he's not going to hit us he's just he doesn't do that he does not going to do it so i said i john i'm going to read i'll just read the lines to you so when you say them on the air they'll seem familiar to you well that's when the fist went up actually yeah
Guest:And so that's all we did.
Guest:We just kept running the lines, but he wouldn't run the lines.
Guest:But Downey and I would just did the sketch for him.
Guest:So then when we're there on the air, it would sound familiar to him.
Guest:And did it?
Guest:I got better.
Guest:It was better.
Guest:I think we had done our job.
Marc:So I didn't know a lot of things.
Marc:I do comedy, and I work at the comedy store, and I saw Franken and Davis on the wall at the comedy store.
Marc:I knew you must have been there at some time, but I didn't know the whole arc of your comedic career.
Marc:But before I start that, you grew up in Minnesota, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, your father, what was his business?
Yeah.
Guest:Well, he was a printing salesman for the most of the rest of his career.
Guest:He started working when he was 16 because his dad died.
Guest:And he didn't graduate high school, so he never had a career as such.
Guest:But we moved to Minnesota when I was four years old.
Guest:And we moved to a little town, Albert Lee, Minnesota, southern Minnesota, to open a quilting factory.
Guest:And my grandfather, my mom's dad, had a quilting factory.
Guest:And we moved to Albert Lee to open a quilting factory, and it failed.
Guest:And a quilting factory makes quilted fabric, which is... For any use.
Guest:Any use.
Guest:It lines.
Guest:You can make bedspreads out of it.
Guest:Winter coats is mainly what it was used for in those days.
Guest:And the factory failed after two years.
Guest:And then...
Guest:We moved up to St.
Guest:Louis Park, Minnesota, the Jewish suburb sort of.
Guest:It's 25% Jews.
Guest:You religious?
Guest:No.
Guest:I'm very Jewish, but I'm not devout.
Guest:But this was called St.
Guest:Jewish Park by delightful people in Minnesota.
Marc:The nice people of Minnesota.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:We called it that ourselves.
Guest:But this was 25% Jewish, the town, the suburb, the suburb, and the
Guest:That in Minnesota is a shtetl.
Guest:That is very Jewish.
Guest:So we moved up there.
Guest:But when I was like, I don't know, my teens or something, when I finally thought about it, I said, Dad, why did we move?
Guest:Why Albert Lee?
Guest:Why Albert Lee?
Guest:And he said, well, your grandfather.
Guest:My dad was a New Yorker and also had inhaled a pipe throughout his entire adult life.
Guest:Your grandfather wanted to open a factory in the Midwest, and the railroad went through Albert Lee.
Guest:And I said, okay, why did it fail?
Guest:It went through Albert Lee, but it wouldn't stop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was funny.
Guest:He was a terrible businessman.
Guest:He didn't know what he, you know, and then he became a printing salesman and he was the sweetest guy.
Guest:You know, it's funny.
Guest:I listened to Dana and to I've heard that one and Springsteen.
Guest:and I know that you had a difficult relationship with your father, and Dana, of course, did.
Guest:Yeah, that was something.
Guest:And Springsteen did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm just, my dad was the sweetest guy.
Guest:You're lucky.
Guest:And he was very funny.
Marc:I'm very lucky.
Marc:Yeah, and that's why I think that you're probably a sweet, more grounded fellow.
Marc:I like to think so.
Guest:I really wanted to be a dad always because my dad was such a great dad.
Marc:Yeah, and you don't have the absent dad either emotionally or physically chip on your shoulder.
Marc:I don't have certainly don't have that chip.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's funny.
Marc:I don't know what chip I have, but I don't have that one.
Marc:My dad was such a sweetheart.
Marc:It's funny because about that train thing, because you actually worked on legislation later in life around the on the agricultural bill.
Guest:There's something called captive shipping.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Which is the railroads enjoy kind of a monopoly in this country.
Guest:Many do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and uh so they kind of can not ship or not ship your stuff and this is really affects you got to pay them to stop exactly yeah and uh if you want to put a complaint into the surface transportation board yeah this is who uh oversees the railroads it used to be like a huge amount of money it's like 25 000
Guest:And David Vitter, a senator from Louisiana, who he and I never saw eye to eye on anything.
Guest:We worked on this thing to get down to three hundred dollars.
Guest:And you did file a complaint for three hundred bucks.
Guest:So if your grandfather had opened a business after you fixed it, we might have been able to file a complaint.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I might have grown up in Albert Lee.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And get those quilts out to the world.
Guest:Quilting.
Guest:Quilting.
Guest:Quilting fabric.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I apologize.
Guest:I got to get this stuff right.
Guest:When Sputnik went up, my parents, everyone was petrified.
Guest:You're too young for this.
Guest:But when Sputnik went up, the Russians now were ahead of us in space and had nuclear weapons.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so everyone was petrified.
Guest:My parents marched us into our living room, sat us down, and said, you boys are going to study math and science so we can beat the Soviets.
Guest:I thought that was a lot of pressure to put on a six-year-old, which I was.
Guest:And my brother was 11.
Guest:But we were very obedient sons.
Guest:And so we studied math and science.
Guest:And both of us were very good at it.
Guest:Got into MIT.
Guest:He was the first in our family to go to college.
Guest:And he actually graduated with a degree in physics.
Guest:But he was disgusted by the Vietnam War and saw that a lot of what MIT did with his physics was make stuff to kill people.
Guest:And so he became an anti-war activist and was Gene McCarthy's photographer.
Guest:Oh, so he traveled with him and did the whole number?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And in fact, when I was a junior in high school, I went to Milwaukee to watch McCarthy.
Guest:And that's when I saw Nixon on that trip.
Guest:And LBJ dropped out during that trip.
Guest:really yeah it was a wisconsin primary during the wisconsin and you were in high school yeah were you excited about politics yeah you were yeah and well i was you know i was very against the vietnam war right um what got us is what got me interested in politics was the civil rights movement right and uh we watched the news uh
Guest:And every evening, it was either Cronkite or Huntley Brinkley, we sat in front of the TV with tray tables and ate dinner.
Guest:As a family.
Guest:As a family.
Guest:And my mom was a great cook.
Guest:We didn't have TV dinners.
Guest:We had really good dinners, but we watched the news.
Guest:And when the civil rights movement was happening and southern sheriffs at demonstrations put billy clubs and fire hoses and dogs on demonstrators, my dad would point to the TV and say, no Jew can be for that.
Guest:No Jew can be for that.
Guest:And that was a very big lesson, which is politics is about justice.
Guest:My dad had been a Jacob Javits Republican, a Republican.
Guest:He's a liberal Republican.
Guest:There used to be such a thing.
Guest:And he switched to being a Democrat in 1964 because Barry Goldwater was the nominee and he had voted against the Civil Rights Act.
Guest:So the Civil Rights Movement was...
Guest:the first thing that got me really engaged in politics.
Guest:The family deciding factor.
Marc:Well, my mom had been a Democrat, so it was my dad.
Marc:So at the point when you, like, as the 60s go on and things get very heated and polarized in the country and young people are, you know, protesting and everything else, when you initially started doing comedy, did you have heroes that were fighting the power or was it part of the intention that you thought this was the best way to do this?
Guest:No, we just like comedy and we like satire.
Guest:And so Tom and I, this is Tom Davis and I met in high school and we started doing an act.
Guest:And we did a lot of Nixon.
Guest:We just thought Nixon was hilarious.
Guest:And so we would do so much Nixon that if Nixon was talking to Kissinger, Tom was Nixon.
Guest:If Nixon was talking to David Eisenhower, his son-in-law,
Guest:I'd be Nixon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Tom was better.
Guest:It just made sense.
Guest:So both of us did Nixon interact.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which was stupid if you think about it, but somehow it worked.
Guest:And you started when you were in high school, the two of you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We started in chapel.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Here's the deal.
Marc:That's a prep school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I went to public school through the end of junior high.
Guest:My brother goes to MIT.
Guest:So my parents, who think education is everything, figure that now he's gone to college, he's the expert on education.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my brother, unbeknownst to me, calls my parents, calls my dad, and says...
Guest:Alan should go to Harvard not MIT yeah because everybody is a wonk and a nerd here but the wonks and nerds who are best prepared here went to private school they're much better prepared so I didn't hear that I didn't know about this conversation till years later but my dad comes to me a little while later and goes Alan
Guest:You're going to take a test for a school for smart kids.
Guest:And I go, okay, smart kids, that sounds good.
Guest:Or that sounds okay.
Guest:And so I go to this campus there and take this test.
Guest:It's a beautiful campus.
Guest:And a few weeks later, Alan, you passed the test for the school for smart kids.
Guest:So I go, okay.
Guest:And I've gone, you know, I've been from first grade on with this group of kids in public school.
Guest:And I kind of didn't like the idea, but again, obedient son.
Guest:So then about a week before I go to the school, they have an ambassador show me around.
Guest:And I don't want to say who the kid is.
Guest:He was from kind of one of the old families in Minneapolis, but he was not a smart kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was kind of a mouth breather.
Guest:So you knew the system was great.
Guest:So already I'm going, huh.
Guest:And then he tells me, you know, you have to wear a coat and tie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go like, wow, that's weird.
Guest:Okay, I could do that.
Guest:You have to play a sport.
Guest:Okay, I can do that.
Guest:They have soccer.
Guest:Yeah, well, okay, I'll do that.
Guest:We have chapel in the morning.
Guest:Chapel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Chapel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a school founded in 1901 for Protestant boys.
Guest:But I didn't know the boys part until he said, oh, we have a sister school.
Guest:There are no girls.
Guest:And I go, what?
Guest:There are no girls.
Guest:So I go down to the parking lot, and my dad goes, so how did you like it?
Guest:And I go, like, I'm not going.
Guest:I'm not going here.
Guest:And he goes, well, why not?
Guest:There are no girls, Dad.
Guest:And he goes, oh.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, we've paid the deposit.
Guest:And so I go to the damn school because we had paid the deposit.
Guest:And so I go there and so I'm in chapel and there are all these Protestant hymns.
Guest:A mighty fortress is our God.
Guest:And onward, Christians.
Guest:And I don't sing them because I'm Jewish.
Guest:And you probably didn't know them.
Guest:No, you have a little hymnal and you can figure them out.
Guest:So I'm just not... But this is a weekend...
Guest:And we get our first test back from math.
Guest:And our math teacher had given us sort of just a test to see where we were.
Guest:I was really good at math and science because the intention still was to beat the Soviets.
Guest:And I got the top score in the class at the school for smart kids.
Guest:And so he says, Mr. Franken, would you stay after class?
Guest:And I go, sure.
Sure.
Guest:And I'm thinking he's going to say, like, it's great to have another math mind here or something like that.
Guest:But he says to me instead, after everyone's left, I notice you don't sing the hymns.
Guest:And I go, oh, boy.
Guest:And I say, well, yeah, I'm Jewish.
Guest:And I feel like, you know, maybe be like sacrilegious.
Guest:You know, I just was trying to think of anything.
Guest:And he says, uh-huh, you want to go to a good college, don't you?
Guest:And I went, wow.
Guest:Yes, yes, I do.
Guest:And your math grades will really be important for that, won't they?
Guest:And I go, yeah.
Guest:I'd sing the hymns.
Guest:he said so like the next day in chapel i'm just going onward christian soul i don't really care yeah and actually yeah i kind of like yeah they're fun those hymns and and um here's what chapel was chapel was beginning my comedy career because after at the end of chapel there'd be announcements and
Guest:and Tom Davis did an announcement with some other students.
Marc:You knew him before, though, right?
Guest:No, I did not know him.
Guest:You met him at chapel?
Guest:I saw him in chapel.
Guest:He was hilarious.
Guest:And so after chapel, he's a year younger than me, and after chapel, I went up to him, and I went, you were really funny, and he said, you know, tell me about the announcements and how you did it.
Guest:So what ended up was that's when Franklin Davis was born and we just did chapel announcements.
Guest:So chapel is like the best thing that ever happened to me.
Marc:That is the beginning.
Guest:And Tom and I started doing, you know, started doing every announcement.
Guest:People wanted us to do announcements.
Marc:As a team thing.
Guest:As a team, and we did every influence, whether it was Laurel and Hardy or Johnny Carson or whatever.
Guest:We did parodies of things.
Guest:I remember we did, like, if you don't go to homecoming, you'll spend a night in the box.
Guest:And that was Cool Hand Luke or something like that.
Guest:That was the hit at the time.
Guest:Strother Martin.
Guest:That was a bad Strother Martin.
Guest:Strother Martin hosted the damn show, you know.
Guest:did he yeah he was he's a uh he was amazing actually it's such a unique great yeah how what like first or second year something like that yeah wild man i think he was our first host actually to die oh i mean it's very weird when you do a show yeah i guess it isn't so weird when you do a show it's weird when you're on this planet earth right that people die
Guest:When you're old enough to know people who died.
Marc:Strother was the first.
Marc:To die when the show was still on.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:So when do you start?
Marc:You work with Davis, obviously, during the summer and stuff.
Marc:When does it become a thing that you can make money at?
Marc:When do you start working in clubs?
Guest:We literally made money fairly soon.
Guest:We worked at this place called the Brave New Workshop.
Marc:Was that like a hippie coffeehouse kind of thing?
Guest:a little sort of that not so hippie uh very minneapolis yeah at the time and just a uh just it was an improv based comedy club it was like third city it was like second city was second city because they weren't new york but this is 1970
Guest:This is 68, 69 is when we started going there.
Guest:While we were in high school, we started going there.
Guest:And they would do a show, and then they'd do an improv set, just like at Second City.
Guest:And they were actually trained by Del Close, who trained the Second City people.
Marc:The grand wizard of improv.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And so Tom and I just kept going to the improv sets, which were free, so we could go there.
Guest:And we started to get to know...
Guest:And they had the equivalent of an open mic night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they would let you get up on stage.
Guest:And we met Dudley Riggs, who had started the place.
Guest:And Dudley watched us on a Monday night and said, you guys are great.
Guest:And we started doing shows there, like two-man shows.
Guest:Then he suddenly had two theaters.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're doing scripted bits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You had like, what, three or four?
Guest:bits that you go back and forth yeah on open mic night we did uh uh i remember we did our world war iii newscast which was tragedy death catastrophe highlight tonight's news after this message yeah well the stock market closed today for good and now with the weather barney you know new house barney well temperatures up to 10 000 degrees cooling off tomorrow to a low of 3 000.
Guest:Don't get at those umbrellas yet.
Guest:You know, I mean, it was.
Guest:And it killed.
Guest:It killed.
Guest:And it was, yeah, it was a local news show.
Guest:And that was actually part of the package that we submitted to SNL later.
Guest:Later in, I guess, in 75.
Marc:So once you start working, how do you get to L.A.?
Marc:What makes you decide?
Marc:We hitchhiked to L.A.
Marc:You did?
Marc:We hitchhiked from Minneapolis to L.A.
Guest:Kids don't do that.
Marc:You were 18, 19?
Guest:No, we were older.
Guest:I was in college by then.
Guest:I think it was before my senior year of college.
Guest:And we were doing shows during the summer at Dudley's and getting paid.
Guest:And I was also working on the street crew for the city, my suburb, St.
Guest:Jewish Park, St.
Guest:Louis Park.
Guest:But then we decided, Pat Proft,
Guest:uh a really really funny writer he wrote uh the police academies he wrote um one of the writers of the naked guns yeah really really funny guy joke guy a joke guy yes and he had been starting to do stand up at the comedy store and he said why don't you guys come out and so we actually had a friend who was going to des moines
Guest:So we got a ride to Des Moines and we stuck our thumbs out and got a ride.
Guest:We got a ride right to Sacramento.
Guest:All the way.
Guest:All the way to Sacramento.
Guest:In a truck with a guy with a family.
Guest:It was a guy.
Guest:No, it was one guy who figured he needed some help because he wanted to go straight through.
Guest:And I remember he had a hole in the floorboards.
Guest:I thought you were going to say his throat.
Guest:No, no, no.
No.
Guest:That's where you went right away.
Marc:You know, the guys smoke through the hole in their throat.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That thing.
Guest:And so, but he had a hole in the floorboards on the passenger side.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I remember him sleeping in the back and Tom insisting on driving while we were going over the mountains.
Guest:And it was freezing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I was getting all this really cold.
Guest:Anyway, that was going out to the Comedy Store.
Guest:And then it took us quite a while to get from Sacramento to L.A.
Guest:But then we slept on a couple of couches at Pat's and we went up and did the comedy store.
Guest:For Mitzi?
Marc:It was actually for Sammy.
Marc:So this was like 72, 71?
Marc:Yeah, it was like 72 or something.
Marc:So it was before she took over the store.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And who was there?
Marc:What was going on there?
Marc:When you got there, did you see any of...
Marc:I can't remember.
Guest:I think Charlie Fleischer had maybe started.
Guest:And I just... I'm trying to remember.
Guest:Then, after I went back... Pre-Mitzi store.
Guest:That's wild.
Guest:Pre-Mitzi.
Guest:You know, that was only just a few days.
Guest:You know, just a few days.
Guest:And enough so that we kind of established ourselves on the... You know, as people... Oh, there's this team, Franklin and Davis, among comedy people.
Guest:So...
Guest:Then we went out to Harvard for my last year.
Guest:Tom came out for the spring.
Guest:To Boston?
Guest:To Boston, stayed in my room.
Guest:And we'd go down on weekends to the improv.
Guest:We worked the improv and Bud Friedman was there.
Guest:And that was with, like, Freddie Prinze, The Untouchables.
Guest:Oh, Jay Leno would come down.
Guest:Jay Leno came down from Boston, actually, when we did, too.
Marc:And Kaufman, he saw Andy Kaufman there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, Kaufman was killing.
Guest:And then after college, boom, back out to the comedy store.
Guest:And then we were for the Sammy Mitzi transition.
Guest:But then it was Gabe Kaplan.
Guest:Was doing it.
Guest:And, oh, I know Jimmy.
Guest:Walker.
Guest:Jimmy Walker.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was there.
Guest:It was in New York, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, you know, that era.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that was the very beginning.
Marc:Like, you know, Jimmy Walker, he went out there and then Bud opened the place down on Melrose, like in 74.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I found that place for him.
Guest:you did it was the ash grove yeah and there were the pitchle players who were um an improv group yeah come down from san francisco bought the ash grove and then it failed it was failing and i knew that and we used to perform there with a credibility gap
Guest:Harry Shearer, Mike McKean, Dave Lander.
Guest:And they were great.
Guest:And we'd perform at the old Ashgrove, but they were folding.
Guest:And then I came out, Tom and I came out, and we were doing a gig in New York, or we were doing the improv in New York, and Bud said, do you know any place in LA?
Guest:And I said, yeah, the old Ashgrove.
Guest:They're selling that.
Guest:And boom, it's that, no finders fee, nothing.
Marc:He probably doesn't even remember you telling him.
Marc:He probably thought he found it himself.
Marc:I reminded him.
Marc:I reminded him.
Marc:So you're working there and you're dealing with Mitzi.
Marc:You're dealing with that.
Guest:I can get on at the improv anytime I want.
Guest:Oh, good for you.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:Still.
Guest:I think so, yeah.
Guest:I haven't tried it.
Guest:Yeah, grandfathered in.
Guest:Since the Senate, I have not tried it.
Marc:There's still time.
Marc:You can always go back.
Marc:I know.
Guest:I know.
Marc:So how long do you stay in L.A.?
Marc:And then what takes you to the SNL?
Marc:Tom and I are doing the clubs.
Marc:Did you deal with Mitzi, though?
Guest:We dealt with Mitzi.
Guest:In fact, we were there for the strike.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Remember, no one got paid anything.
Marc:Were you there when Steve LeBitt came?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Boy, that was... Terrible.
Guest:That's taking comedy too seriously.
Marc:Yeah, jumping off the building.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You were there, though, during that, the strike thing.
Marc:Were you at meetings?
Marc:Did you do that thing?
Marc:I did not.
Guest:By the strike, Tom and I had kind of moved on and started doing gigs at the Ice House and other places.
Guest:And also, we got an agent in the Midwest and started doing colleges in the Midwest for $500 a pop.
Guest:that's good yeah it was fun we went around in our Volkswagen van and how long was the act the act was like an hour yeah something like that and we really enjoyed doing it and we were getting paid we were getting paid but it was some we had some you know these are weird not weird gigs they're just
Guest:small colleges in the midwest they still exist those gigs yeah you can you can do those again if you want i uh you know they were it was a lot of fun and uh but uh you know we moved moved on from that and now i'm in the u.s center yeah when does the dead start coming into your life oh right after we moved to la from from harvard uh from boston
Guest:That's when the... Yeah, well, Tom was a deadhead already, and Tom introduced me to the dead, and we just loved the dead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we just went to a lot of concerts, and... But you really stuck with it.
Guest:I mean, you stuck with the dead a long time.
Guest:I'm still... I still... On my... On our official car in Minnesota, I drive all around the state.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We have Sirius, and I listen to Sirius 23.
Marc:I do, too.
Marc:Yeah, you can hear, like, 90 versions of the same song.
Yeah.
Marc:well uh but they have like an amazing repertoire of music but you're right no no i know i love the dead i you know if you have a brain that can uh you know connect with it it's a it's a real joy to have that i was never a serious deadhead sound like no no no i'm true it's true i'm really i i i liked the dead when i was in high school a little bit but i in college i had two roommates that were deadheads i saw him in worcester in 84 and i saw well then you get it
Marc:Oh, no, definitely.
Marc:I definitely get it.
Marc:I just watched a documentary.
Marc:They sent me a screener that you're in.
Marc:And I completely get it.
Marc:I just never could commit to the full lifestyle.
Guest:How am I in the documentary?
Marc:Oh, you don't know you're in the documentary?
Guest:No, I don't mean how am I in the documentary.
Guest:I meant how am I in the documentary.
Guest:Oh, you're great.
Marc:You're great.
Marc:it was it was actually a great beat it's a sweet documentary and it was uh yeah i find myself get very choked up about it about not just the dead but when i see what music was like then and the sort of community around it and and what the world was like then we're old guys so yeah you know you get sad thinking what it was like then
Marc:Yeah, and I feel like I miss most of it.
Marc:I mean, my primary years were the 70s and 80s.
Marc:I thought you guys had the beautiful time.
Marc:But yeah, it was a rough time too, I guess.
Marc:Probably a little more fun.
Marc:But let's just talk about SNL.
Marc:How do you get the gig?
Guest:We submitted a writing sample yesterday.
Guest:That's how it got.
Guest:It was very odd.
Guest:We were the only writers that got gigs that Lauren hadn't met.
Guest:And we put together a writing sample, which was actually quite short, but it included the World War III newscast.
Guest:It included a commercial parody.
Guest:or or a sketch i think it was a it was i think now that i remember it was a a parody of the sunny and share show oh yeah and uh which was a really one of the few i remember our our our agent said um
Guest:I want you to write a writing sample, not for SNL or anything, just because we wanted to get jobs as writers.
Guest:And so there was no, the only existing shows, comedy variety shows at the time were The Tonight Show, which we just weren't right for.
Guest:Carol Burnett Show, which was a really good show, but we were generationally just wrong.
Guest:And then Sonny and Cher, which was Drek,
Guest:And so I think we wrote a parody of that.
Guest:But we said there's no show on the air that we want to write a sample for.
Guest:So we wrote for a show that we'd like to see.
Guest:So this had a newscast, a commercial parody, a sketch, and a film, a little film piece.
Marc:That was in your package?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you designed the show.
Marc:That is almost exactly what SNL is, right?
Yeah.
Guest:yeah i mean we um and it was like 14 pages long it wasn't it wasn't long at all yeah there was an early point in the show where the show was popular and people would send in submissions and we'd actually read them yeah and then very soon we stopped doing that because someone sued us because they had written a piece about the cia and the cia was in one of our pieces and we got sued it was like what
Guest:okay uh can't read pieces but people would like write really long things and say and you'd call mom go we're sorry you know we're looking for a distinctive voice or something right you'd be nice and they would go i'll send more no no no no and we had a very short thing yeah
Guest:You have to pop, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you did.
Marc:So we did.
Guest:We got the job.
Guest:We wanted to perform.
Marc:You meet with Lauren.
Marc:What was Lauren like as a young man at that time when they were just starting the show?
Guest:In some ways.
Guest:The same.
Guest:I mean, I remember the first time I met him, I just thanked him for the job.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:And I don't do Lauren as well as Dana or any of those guys.
Guest:But he was, I think, more hands on in the writing in those days.
Guest:Uh huh.
Guest:we had a long pre-production period.
Guest:And Lauren's theory on that was that we would start writing stuff and a kind of a group sensibility would emerge.
Guest:And we'd write out, we'd get past the old stuff we were writing or something.
Guest:I mean, pick people for having a unique voice.
Guest:Michael Donahue was not going to start writing like Franklin and Davis.
Guest:But also what he did was he had worked on Laugh-In.
Guest:And Laugh-In...
Guest:the writers would be in a building somewhere off lot and the material would go to the lot and they do the show and the writers had nothing to do with the production of the material.
Guest:And at SNL, uh, what Lauren wanted was the writers to produce their own pieces.
Guest:And that I think was, uh, crucial for, uh, the way we all work together.
Guest:And of course the cast wrote like people like Danny wrote.
Marc:And, uh, it must've been a blast.
Uh,
Guest:It was really, really fun.
Marc:Like exciting?
Guest:You know, the one thing people ask me the most is being a senator is as much fun as working on Saturday Night Live.
Guest:And the answer is no.
Guest:Why would it be?
Guest:You know, but...
Guest:Being a senator is the best job I've ever had, and I'll explain that when we get past the comedy.
Guest:But when I say that, why would it be?
Guest:People ask me also, what was the funniest thing or the moment you remember most from Saturday Night Live?
Guest:And there isn't a moment, but what I remember the most is rolling on the floor laughing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it could have been, you know, Danny coming up with a new character, Jim Downey writing a line or going on a riff, or any of these people, Gilda or...
Guest:So I Bell or Smigel or Conan or all these people that I worked with.
Guest:I worked on the show for 15 seasons.
Guest:I worked for the first five, left for five.
Guest:Then I came back as a Lorne again writer and did those 10.
Guest:And the quintessential moment of joy from that show was...
Guest:Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, rolling on the floor, laughing.
Guest:And that is, there's nothing quite like that.
Marc:Being around that many funny people who are consistently funny, who are always surprising, you're exhausted and you've been going at it and it's just hilarious.
Marc:Unfortunately, we're not exhausted.
Guest:No.
Guest:You know, I I used to say because, you know, I write in the book pretty frankly about the fact that there were drugs.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And that I did.
Guest:I did acid at that.
Guest:grateful dead concerts i smoked dope i um snorted cocaine but i only on those tuesday night wednesday morning things i only snorted enough cocaine so that i could stay awake to make sure that no one did too much cocaine good for you yeah yeah you were the i was being responsible well you leaned towards codependency you didn't lean towards i was very i'm very codependent yeah you didn't you didn't go the other way yeah codependent at heart yes exactly
Marc:Well, this is an odd question because, you know, there are people like, you know, our crumb and certainly Jerry and he watches documentary and it really talked a lot about how, you know, acid, you know, we sort of configured how they looked at the world.
Marc:Did you have any experience like that where you were like, well, this outside of just doing it where you're like, oh, I see it all differently now.
Guest:I don't think it gave me a whole new worldview, but I know when I was tripping, I had one.
Guest:But I don't remember it or something like that.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:It all made sense.
Guest:I didn't do it that much.
Guest:It wasn't like my... But I would do it for dead concerts.
Guest:And I remember...
Guest:doing a lot of thinking during the dead concerts yeah and uh i remember literally working out sketches oh really yeah yeah i remember like i'll go to the show and i'll write yeah i'll write in my head so i think that you're you and tom's political stuff was very cutting you know and it definitely had a punch it definitely had yeah you know that you know you were you were speaking truth to power
Guest:Eh, we were doing satire.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:And we were funny.
Marc:Well, right.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Look, I'm not going to overdo it.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:No, but there was the actual conflict and the story that's in the oral history about the Kissinger thing that Kissinger wanted to come to the show.
Marc:Oh, God, yeah.
Guest:Well, the Rolling Stones were doing the show, and he, I guess, wanted tickets for David.
Guest:David, yeah, a TV executive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, who became a TV executive.
Guest:And I once met Kissinger years later, and he was like a dad because he was going like, well, David now is over at whatever he was with, Sony, and I wonder if that's a good place for him.
Guest:Like, wow.
Guest:He's just a dad wondering if his son.
Marc:That's the hardest thing, isn't it?
Marc:Because even in the book, you talk about relationships with Sessions and Mitch McConnell.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:And even when I talk to people, it's like, well, he's just a guy.
Guest:Well, Sessions' wife, Jeff Sessions' wife, knit a baby blanket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:for my grandson which is his favorite blanket was his favorite blanket he's moved on yeah but i mean it's hard to hate the guy that but now i'm getting to work it up a man and you know i mean what what in the senate you sort of if you end up liking people you completely disagree with
Guest:and you don't want to unfairly demonize someone who you work with and is your friend.
Guest:On the other hand, I was able to fairly demonize him in the hearings because I felt, first of all, in the hearings, he...
Guest:In the material they submitted, he was asked to submit the 10 cases that he was personally engaged in, the most important cases he was personally engaged in.
Guest:And four of those were civil rights cases, and he was not personally engaged in them.
Guest:So I kind of grilled him over that.
Guest:And then it turns out also that he, in answering...
Guest:A question that I asked, he misled the committee under oath about whether he had met with the Russians.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then he ultimately went on to recuse himself, but he still got the job.
Guest:Not only that, but he still weighed in on this firing of Comey, which he should not have...
Guest:been involved in because he had recused himself yeah on the russia investigation and that's comey i think was involved in that yeah and um i'm pretty sure that's why he got fired you know every day is an affront every day is a year every day is a year
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So.
Marc:So, like, all right.
Marc:So, fine.
Marc:No truth to power.
Marc:Just satire.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, Kissinger.
Marc:But, you know, ultimately.
Guest:Kissinger.
Guest:I think the story that you were referring to.
Guest:Kissinger called for tickets for his son.
Guest:And the, you know, the NBC switchboard operator said.
Guest:called us up and said, I have Henry Kissinger on the phone, or maybe it was someone from the news division, and he wants tickets for his son for Saturday night.
Guest:And I said, well, tell him if it weren't for the Christmas bombing, he'd have the tickets.
Guest:And they said, well, I can't tell him that.
Guest:Well, then, you know, tell him.
Guest:And then I said something bad.
Guest:he said something bad so he didn't get the tickets and you know he was i guess some had some relationship obviously with nbc news i was not a fan of his yeah well understandably yeah but you do get do you get pushed out of saturday night live at that point
Guest:When Lauren left, we all left and we were, you know, in a way we were stupid, but in a way we had done five years of the show.
Guest:The fifth season was a little harder than other seasons because we lost both Belushi and Ackroyd to do the Blues Brothers.
Guest:And I think we were tired now.
Guest:as you get, especially at the end of the season.
Guest:You know, when we get together, when they get together now at the beginning of the season and at the end of the summer, you look the best you'll look all year.
Guest:And you get worse and worse all year.
Guest:By the end of the year, we just said, you know what?
Guest:We did five years.
Guest:It's good.
Guest:And then... You never got Update.
Guest:Oh, and then we wandered in the wilderness for a few years, and then we came back.
Guest:And the reason I finally left the show was, after doing 15 seasons of the show, I sort of wanted to do Update.
Guest:I wanted to be the Update anchor.
Guest:And in retrospect, they made the right decision, because I was wearing my liberal...
Guest:Bias on my sleeve.
Guest:Yeah, and with Downey and I write about Downey as kind of the greatest Political satire writer on the show and head writer for years head writer and also just a brilliant brilliant guy and a conservative He's a very thoughtful conservative and I like to think of myself as a thoughtful liberal thoughtful progressive and we wrote a lot together and we
Guest:did not feel that the job of the show was to have any political bias.
Guest:We thought the job of the show was to write satire that was smart and funny.
Guest:And Jim had this thing, which is reward people for knowing stuff, but don't punish them for not.
Guest:So we're trying to write stuff that everyone could like.
Guest:But if you actually knew politics, maybe you could get a little bit more out of it.
Guest:And those people that you were awarded would always come back and watch SNL because, wow, okay, they referred to the Humphrey Hawkins bill or something.
Guest:And so we felt like there were just too many people on the show
Guest:And also, I think Lauren felt this way, that the satire on the show should not be, I mean, obviously most people on the show have your kind of typical New York Hollywood liberal bias, but that was not the job of the show.
Guest:Murphy Brown could do that.
Guest:Diane English created that show.
Guest:You know, Candace Bergen was Murphy Brown.
Guest:They could have a liberal bias.
Guest:They could do what they wanted to do.
Guest:That was the nature of that show.
Guest:We just had too many people working on the show to represent everybody's political views.
Guest:So we were kind of studiously and Jim and I would check each other.
Guest:We would keep each other honest.
Marc:Well, it seems like that motto is helpful in politics as well.
Marc:You can take a drink of water.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You're going to get it?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:We'll cut that out.
Guest:Will we?
Guest:No.
Guest:Where were we?
Guest:I just thought... Well, I wanted to just talk about Update.
Guest:By the time 95 came around, I had done stuff outside the show.
Guest:Wrote some movies?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But the political stuff I had done really showed that I had a liberal bias, and so I didn't get Update and went to Norm MacDonald, and I think that was the right decision.
Guest:I thought Norm was very, very funny on Update, but I was...
Guest:And I don't know if you know what that's like.
Marc:To be upset and angry and feel, you know, fucked over?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know if you know.
Marc:No, I have no experience with that.
Guest:Bitterness.
Guest:Well, let me tell you what it's like.
Guest:Anyway, so, and I was miffed and I just, I left the show and it was, you know, it was hard to leave the show.
Guest:The show was a very safe place.
Guest:It was a very exciting place to work.
Marc:I know exactly what you're talking about.
Marc:You mean feeling like you were pushed off the air by a sort of know-nothing CEO like I was in Air America?
Marc:Yeah, I know that feeling.
Marc:Sorry to interrupt.
Guest:Oh, no, no, no.
Guest:I didn't feel that way at all.
Guest:You sound... Actually, I never became bitter.
Marc:No.
Guest:But it sounds like you might have.
Marc:For a while.
Marc:I got through it.
Marc:I worked through it, and I found success in my own terms.
Guest:Well, you know what I think they probably felt at Air America is that you weren't good in the audio medium.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, they had real insight on that.
Marc:Good foresight on that.
Marc:You never work in that medium.
Marc:So you didn't get bitter, though?
Guest:No, actually, I didn't.
Guest:And I owed too much to the show, first of all.
Guest:And secondly...
Guest:yeah i i didn't really i for it it lasted like a week and again you can there's always an a time it might happen it could still happen get update yeah yeah well that's my dream that's my dream you know george burns worked till he was 100 yeah yeah so you know i can serve and he's pretty funny terms sure he was funny all the way all the way um do you talk to learn
Guest:yeah yeah yeah i'll see him i think um in a couple weeks do you ever talk about uh his decision to put trump on during the campaign i did not talk to him about that yeah i think i talked to him maybe about wow that was a bad show yeah
Guest:I may have talked about that.
Marc:But you guys are still close and you're friends.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So now let's do the politics thing.
Marc:Because the one thing I love about the book is that you don't pay short shrift to the comedy, but when you get into the politics thing, someone could read this book
Marc:and be inspired to get into politics.
Marc:I hope so.
Marc:It feels like that.
Marc:You really go through the process of deciding, of campaigning, of learning, and the tasks of it.
Marc:But it doesn't sound, even though you make jokes about it, it seems like you're fully engaged in all of it, even the bad parts, and that it seems like something people should and could do.
Guest:Well, if they want to, and there's different ways to do it.
Guest:You don't have to run for the Senate.
Guest:You can get involved in other ways.
Guest:You can go to a town hall meeting and ask your,
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Just a little bit.
Guest:Just get involved.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Voted for this unbelievably bad health care bill.
Guest:Or you can do a million things.
Guest:You can be an advocate for any, you know, if you care about mental health, if you care about climate change, if you care about housing, if you care.
Guest:There's a million things to do.
Guest:They make a difference to us in the Senate when advocates come and lobby you.
Guest:It makes it makes a big difference.
Marc:And it's also something you can do that you can also do your other life, too.
Marc:I mean, you can be involved in politics.
Marc:I think a lot of people detach from it because they don't see how it plays into their life or they don't have time.
Marc:But it seems like you can be relatively active and still have a job and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, you can do that.
Guest:And I actually, when I was a comedian, the easiest way for me to help was to campaign for somebody.
Guest:And usually that was fundraisers, but sometimes just campaigning.
Guest:And that was Paul Wellstone.
Guest:I did that the most for Paul.
Guest:And Paul was...
Guest:This very, very dynamic, very progressive senator from Minnesota who died in a plane crash right before the 2002 election, like 11 days before.
Guest:It's horrible.
Guest:And it's his seat that I ran for in 2008.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And was he, I know that you speak about him a lot as a friend and as an inspiration, as a personal hero politically.
Marc:But had you decided to pursue politics before that relationship became?
Marc:No, no, no.
Guest:Um, I, you know, I was in comedy and I did not, never considered running, uh, until Paul had, uh, Paul died and Norm Coleman, who, um, then went on to get elected 11 days later, uh, uh, gave a, uh,
Guest:interview to roll calls the first profile of him as a senator less than six months after Paul died and he said to be blunt I'm a 99% improvement over Paul Wellstone and I read that and I was working on lies and lying liars who tell them a fair and balanced look at the right at that time and my reaction was hmm
Guest:I wonder who's going to run against him.
Guest:Really is that there was no anger in the hum?
Guest:It was different language.
Guest:It was a thought.
Guest:I was alone.
Guest:And the thought had different language in it.
Guest:So who's going to run against that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jerk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Except it probably wasn't.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:So that's when I, you know, and I realized that, look, I'm going to be an empty nester next year.
Guest:My son was graduating high school and I can move back to Minnesota.
Guest:And I got this radio gig, this Air America thing.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:What happened to that?
Guest:Well, it was underfinanced, and I think that the people who made some decisions made some wrong decisions.
Marc:Several.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had Jerry Springer as a host.
Guest:Yeah, I remember.
Guest:That was probably the low point, I think.
Guest:I had wanted a very different thing.
Guest:I was kind of the flagship show, I'd say.
Guest:And we had some very, very good people.
Guest:You know, Rachel Maddow was a host and, you know, Janine Garofalo.
Guest:And we had...
Guest:But I wanted to do sort of a little bit of like an NPR, but that said we're progressive.
Guest:So I like wanted Robert Reich to do an hour business show.
Guest:every day like marketplace right do a progressive business show that's what i kind of wanted but it became very apparent very early that they first of all didn't have really the finances to do what they wanted to do um we had a crisis like right out of the gate it was insane i was there yeah yeah and so i just did my show right and i did my show and i um stayed out of
Guest:Did you know you were going to run for Senate when he started Air America?
Guest:I thought I might.
Guest:I thought I might because that was post-reading the Coleman thing.
Guest:And that's why I moved the show back to Minnesota at a certain point.
Guest:And I really...
Guest:Went back to Minnesota with the intention of, I went back early enough to be able to go around the state, go to bean feeds, and that's sort of the organizing way the DFL, Democratic Farmer Labor Party, does things in Minnesota.
Guest:We have bean feeds, and they can be burger bashes or walleye fries or something like that.
Guest:and to see if i liked it to see if i liked actually doing politics and uh i had a couple years to to see that and whether i was good at it you mean meeting the people hearing the people just meeting people and hearing what they were thinking and uh and trying i was watching amy klobuchar run for the first time for the senate and i'm watching her
Guest:She was, that's in 2006, she ran and won.
Guest:And she went to pretty much every bean feed or burger bash or spaghetti dinner.
Guest:And if she wasn't there, her husband and daughter were there.
Guest:And if they weren't there, her father was there, who was a beloved columnist for the Star Tribune.
Guest:and if none of them were there, I'd be going, like, am I in the wrong place, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I caught the bug.
Guest:I really liked it, and because I was speaking at these things, they got more people to show up, which helped the party, and very often these are fundraisers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I noticed in the book that this transition from being a performer, from being a guy, we want to be liked.
Marc:We like getting the laugh.
Marc:And as progressive as any of us might be, I imagine that the depth of your empathy –
Marc:which I'm sure you have, obviously, anyways, and also the sense of justice, that when you start meeting constituents on a personal level, because you share some personal stories in there, that, I mean, I think the real shift of one's heart into really committing to politics has to be some moment where you realize that these are individuals with real problems that should be somehow dealt with.
Guest:well i kind of realized that already doing the radio show of course i was talking about these issues yeah and so i would have elizabeth uh warren on to talk about middle class squeeze right right tool gawande who writes well but but being with the people but the difference is you know you can hear elizabeth warren say half the bankruptcies in america are caused by a health care crisis yeah it's different when you meet somebody who and and
Guest:Going around Minnesota at that time, any cafe I'd go to or VFW, on a bulletin board, there'd be a thing for a fundraiser for someone who had gotten sick and didn't have insurance or actually had gone through their cap.
Guest:and so it was very different here seeing that and hearing that from from people yeah and so I was just got more and more motivated to do the job yeah and it's funny when I first got back I one of the first people I met with was Jeff Blodgett who had been Paul Wellstone's campaign manager for all his campaigns and he
Guest:said to me, well, as an exercise, you should write like a five-minute speech that has no jokes in it.
Guest:And I went, why would you do that?
Guest:You know?
Guest:And then that's, he was right, of course, but I was still a comedian.
Guest:And in 2006, when I was going around to the bean feeds, I was still, you know, I was still being funny.
Guest:Killing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I didn't realize that should have been a signal to me that, oh, the comedy is going to be a problem a bit.
Guest:And I learned to dehumorize my own material.
Guest:But they put everything I'd ever said over 40 years of comedy in.
Guest:through they meaning the Republicans and my opponent, Norm Coleman, through the dehumorizer, which was a $15 million machine built with Soviet old Soviet technology to take the humor out of every joke I'd ever told.
Guest:And the, uh,
Guest:And try to indict you with it.
Guest:Yeah, you know, it's satire, so a lot of it uses irony or hyperbole.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when you rob something of its context, it can look pretty bad, and they did that.
Guest:That's what they did, and that was sort of the theme of the campaign against me.
Marc:Yeah, and you talk about it, that sort of figuring out how to counter that, that there was a moment where to diminish their power over that, that you realized you thought it was a liability initially to be having gone to Harvard.
Marc:And then at some point you realize- We did a focus group.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And in the focus group, we found out that no one thought being a comedian meant you were smart.
Guest:being a successful comedian not smart or you're not smart uh i went to harvard he must be smart yeah he must be smart enough to do government work and so that was you know uh really weird uh that it was kind of the first time they realized that
Guest:I thought I'd have to hide the fact that I went to Harvard in a way or at least play it down as much as possible.
Guest:Turned out the exact opposite was the case.
Marc:And also it shows that people don't really know what goes in to making comedy.
Marc:And that's still the truth.
Guest:I won't say who the senator is, but...
Guest:The first time I got up to speak in caucus, Harry Reid, I was just there for a couple weeks, and Harry said, Al, I want you to get up and tell about who you are.
Guest:So I spoke for about 10 minutes, and I got laughs, and I got applause, and I got a standing ovation, and I went to my table where I'd been sitting next to a senator who was quite senior, and the senator said to me,
Guest:you know, when you first got here, I thought you were going to be stupid.
Guest:And I said, why?
Guest:And the senator said, because you're a comedian.
Guest:And I said, actually, comedians are really smart.
Guest:And the senator said...
Guest:I think the stuff they talk about is really dumb.
Guest:It's really stupid.
Guest:And I went, okay, forget it.
Guest:I'm not going to argue this one.
Marc:But there are moments you talk about in the book with senators that we know who, you know, once you, like they told the Broderick Crawford story.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Who was their session?
Guest:This was...
Guest:Five days after I got there, we started the Sotomayor hearings.
Guest:And during one of the questionings, she said that she had become a prosecutor because of the Perry Mason show.
Guest:And so I asked her, I said, why did you become a prosecutor?
Guest:watching a show where the prosecutor lost every case.
Guest:And she said, well, actually, Perry Mason lost one case.
Guest:And I said, what was it?
Guest:And she said, I don't know.
Guest:And I said, didn't the White House prepare you?
Guest:Which is, they're supposed to be prepared.
Guest:And then that got a laugh, which I... That had repercussions, which were stupid with people.
Guest:Why did he do a joke?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But...
Guest:Right after that questioning, we went into this this closed hearing on her the FBI background check and that that now we do every time because when when they did it on Clarence Thomas.
Guest:It tipped off everybody that there was a problem.
Guest:So these are just perfunctory now.
Guest:So we go in there, and the Internet just went nuts on Perry Mason and what case he had lost.
Guest:And so we walk into our normal hearing room.
Guest:We're in a bigger hearing room for the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
Guest:And Tom Coburn from Oklahoma comes in and goes, actually, Perry Mason lost two cases.
Guest:and then uh sessions goes you know what i liked dragnet and then uh cornyn uh john cornyn of texas goes uh i liked highway patrol and i said you know i worked with broderick crawford now these guys don't know me and
Guest:I felt sort of a little like the new kid at school in the lunch line.
Guest:And so I said, I worked with Broderick Crawford.
Guest:Broderick Crawford was a star of Highway Patrol.
Guest:He also won the Oscar for All the King's Men.
Guest:He was this great, tough guy actor.
Guest:All the Republicans, everybody kind of turns to me and goes, you worked with Broderick Crawford?
Guest:I go, yeah, he hosted the show.
Guest:And then I tell a story about that, and everyone's going like...
Guest:You really were in show business.
Guest:And I go, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so that was like my bonding moment with the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was funny because even now, like that moment with Perry during his hearings with the couch moment.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That there was a moment where you had to fight making the easy joke.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:He threw you a fucking softball.
Marc:Now I'm being self-conscious about saying fuck on my own show.
Guest:On your own show.
Marc:I know.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:I did that to you.
Marc:You did.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's very funny.
Marc:And you had to just ride it out.
Marc:I did.
Marc:But the timing of riding it out turned out to be just as well.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Then you learn some timing.
Guest:Now, what he had said was we had actually had Perry surprised me.
Guest:He's very charming guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And actually, he had been governor for the longest of any governor in Texas history.
Guest:And he knew a lot about how to pull levers as a governor.
Guest:And governors tend to have to do real stuff.
Guest:And so we had a really good time.
Guest:And he was sitting in a chair like you are now.
Guest:And I was sitting on a couch like I am now.
Guest:And we had a really good time.
Guest:uh in our our uh our meeting the before you know our um before the hearings we met in my office and so he just said to me uh i actually said to him like uh it was nice meeting you did you enjoy meeting me yeah which no one says but i yeah we'll laugh on that and right and uh he said well i hope you're as much fun
Guest:at the dais there as you were yesterday on the couch and um i did a pause and they got a laugh i mean it was stupid what he said right
Guest:And then he caught himself.
Guest:And then he kind of caught himself.
Guest:And so he said, can I rephrase that?
Guest:And I said, oh, dear Lord, please.
Guest:Yeah, something like that.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:Well, this is the weird thing about it.
Marc:It's like even when you're talking about it, even when Brendan and I are going over whatever happened overnight or in the last few hours in the morning with this president.
Guest:This is really all kidding aside.
Guest:This is a very, very disturbing and serious time.
Guest:Right, and you get to the point.
Guest:In so many ways, and it's hurting so many people.
Guest:This health care bill, incredibly awful.
Guest:I've gone around Minnesota when the first iteration of this bill came out that was scored as 24 million people losing health.
Guest:their health care, but also cutting $880 billion from Medicaid would be devastating.
Guest:And I went to rural hospitals and nursing homes and people crying at what the effect would be.
Guest:A health care provider saying my mom gets her
Guest:home health care through Medicaid.
Guest:And if this goes through, she will lose that.
Guest:And both my husband and I work.
Guest:I don't know what we will do.
Guest:And there is, you know, story after story like this is terrible what they've done.
Guest:And, of course, it was to give a $900 billion tax cut to people at the top.
Guest:People who earned $250,000 a year or more would get this huge tax cut.
Marc:But all this stuff across the board, like everything they're doing, cutting everything, deregulating everything.
Guest:Oh, well, on climate, you know, Pruitt.
Guest:I mean, the...
Guest:Some of these nominations for cabinet posts were just bizarro nominations, like the opposite person.
Marc:That was Bannon doing what he wanted to do, which is to destroy the government.
Guest:I think it was also Pence.
Guest:He was in charge of the transition.
Guest:So I think a lot of those people are people that Pence had worked with.
Guest:Mulvaney, the last person you'd want.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At OMB, which is the budget office, was a Freedom Caucus guy.
Guest:And Pence has an ideology.
Guest:Trump doesn't.
Guest:Trump is about Trump.
Guest:And Pence is about this kind of Tea Party thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So now all these relationships that you built in the Senate or that you see these guys every day, and these are guys you've had a laugh with, you've socialized with Mitch McConnell.
Marc:No, I haven't.
Guest:I mean, I've socialized with him only to the extent of there is a spouse dinner every year.
Guest:But I mean, I say that I socialize.
Guest:I said I'm not going to write cliches.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In this thing, like even though Mitch and I disagree with each other all the time after a day in the Senate debating each other, we go to dinner and he laughs so hard that milk shoots out his nose.
Guest:That was a joke.
Guest:That was a joke.
Marc:I don't.
Guest:That doesn't happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I see your frustration, you know, when you talk publicly and obviously that this polarization thing and you speak a little bit in the book about how there are two conceptions about, you know, what America should be and how it should run.
Marc:But then there's crazy and then there's evil.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, that's pretty fair.
Marc:And you're a guy that you're diplomatic.
Marc:You like to be liked.
Marc:You have a codependent streak in you that, you know, that.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:that well no that no no it could be used there's good no no no i mean i talk about going to alan on which is for no but i mean there's a good part of it there's a good part of it i guess so i mean you have to it is if you're aware of it and right right but you know because it does make you connect with people and you think so yeah i guess so so what do we do man
Guest:Well, I'm working as hard as I can.
Guest:I mean, for your listeners, as we talked a little bit earlier, there are a whole bunch of things to do.
Guest:And these marches mean a lot.
Guest:The women's march the day after was very, very important.
Guest:And they continued going to these town halls, very important.
Guest:But also just working on issues that mean a lot to you.
Guest:whether it's the clean water or whether it is mental health is something that I've been working on since I got here and I've had some achievements that mean a lot to me any kind of
Guest:issue that you really care about.
Guest:And when I've brought this up to audiences around Minnesota, there's no limit to how many things people really care about, and they respond to that.
Guest:You may be in an advocacy group and be a foot soldier, but it's not long before you become an officer and become an important part of it.
Marc:I guess like, you know, I remember at the beginning when when it first happened, the event of him becoming president, that the election, then when he took office and all that, you know, weird kind of fascist theater that was going on.
Guest:That speech was the American carnage speech was.
Guest:I mean, I that was, you know, it was the inauguration of Donald Trump.
Guest:So it was a tough day for me.
Guest:But at least I got to be kind of far enough away and behind him that I couldn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Going to the State of the Union address or the joint, that was hard.
Guest:Because I was like 15 feet from him.
Guest:And I'm in that chamber.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the whole government is there.
Guest:The Speaker of the House and the Vice President are behind the President.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and all the cabinet is there except one, and the Supreme Court's there, and the Joint Chiefs are there, and every member of Congress is there.
Guest:And when Obama would do these events, I really felt like I was...
Guest:I felt moved by the whole thing because of this really smart, thoughtful, dignified, heavy-duty president.
Guest:And then this year, sitting there with Trump there, I really thought I was an 8-H.
Guest:And we were just doing a sketch.
Guest:He was a sketch.
Guest:And I just felt the whole office, in a way, has been cheapened.
Guest:And we see it every day.
Guest:Every day there's a new affront.
Guest:And then every day after that we're seeing that the story they put out was wrong.
Guest:And we just lie after lie after lie after lie.
Guest:And so all of that is just upsetting to me as an American.
Guest:But I've got a role to play.
Guest:I'm one of 48 in the Senate.
Marc:And you're doing a great job.
Marc:Well... No, I mean, you're speaking up.
Marc:You're taking people to task.
Marc:You're doing what you're supposed to be doing in a very focused... I think that the actual showbiz training has helped.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:You know, I'm on the Judiciary Committee.
Guest:I'm one of the few people on the Judiciary Committee who's not a lawyer...
Guest:But I can frame things.
Guest:And I think I got I think I learned stuff from doing comedy.
Guest:I think in comedy, comedians are good editors because you realize what works, what doesn't work.
Guest:And you realize what you have to take out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so it lands.
Guest:So it lands.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:so it lands and i have a lot of people and colleagues coming to me like your stuff lands they don't say lands but but and and i think it has to do with uh having done done stand-up
Marc:OK, well, then two questions.
Marc:So, you know, Obama talked about this, too, about incremental change, you know, you know, any progress on some level is good progress.
Marc:So now we're in a time that, you know, is is not only doesn't seem to be progressing, but is, you know, taking us back.
Guest:Yeah, or attempting to, but in some cases taking us back.
Guest:But this health care thing would take us back.
Guest:It would be horrible.
Guest:Now we'll see what comes out of the Senate.
Guest:We've been asking.
Guest:We just had a hearing yesterday in which all of the Democrats were basically asking Lamar...
Guest:Alexander, the chairman of the committee, whom I respect, to have us be dealing with health care, have hearings, do this process the way it was done in 2009, do that instead of to have this 12-man, literally 12-man committee meet behind closed doors and come out with something.
Guest:We need to have public hearings.
Guest:We need to do this in the right way.
Guest:Are they going to?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I think that it's so logical that we should do that.
Guest:And it sort of depends on Mitch McConnell, who I say one or two nice things about him because there are one or two nice things to say about him.
Yeah.
Guest:But he's kind of a little cynical.
Guest:And if he thinks that this is the way he should go and he can get away with it, that's what he's going to do.
Marc:So what you can do and what you're doing is chipping away, trying to make the Senate work in a bipartisan way around these things that you may not agree with, obviously, but it still needs to work.
Marc:And do you have any?
Guest:I think in the book, I kind of make the case for actually trying to make progress all the time.
Guest:And now this is going to be a period where we're fighting bad things from happening as well.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And do you have any, do you have hope or just persistence?
Marc:Both.
Marc:Both.
Guest:I have, you know, but sometimes I get a little down on what's going on because it is, you know, I just think the presidency here has been devalued in a way that is a real shame.
Guest:And it's been devalued so much that people talk about me running for president.
Guest:do you feel like it no no but i mean it's been like oh i see an entertainer can be who had no you know you never think about it no
Guest:you don't want the job too big it's it's i like being senator i like doing that i like that yeah i think i don't want a peter principal myself and two you know oh good yeah codependent president
Marc:I mean, but that's not a bad thing.
Marc:You know, if you can feel everybody's pain.
Guest:It's been done before.
Guest:Look, if you compare it to the guy now, I'd be, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What can you say?
Guest:We'll see what happens.
Guest:It's a long way off, but I do know this, that this job, when you get stuff done, and I've gotten stuff done on mental health, on health care, on energy, on... Mergers, media mergers.
Guest:Fighting back against media consolidation of...
Guest:People ask me if I'm going to be asked to come back and host SNL.
Guest:The Comcast people aren't thrilled with me.
Guest:They'll put a stop to it.
Guest:I asked Lorne, I said, well, okay, I'm going to be in New York on the 20th, and that's the last show.
Guest:In the last show, they have this big party, end-of-the-year party.
Guest:And I said...
Guest:It's okay if I go to that.
Guest:And he goes, as long as you don't yell at Brian Roberts, who's the head of Comcast.
Guest:I go, okay, if he doesn't yell at me.
Guest:Good.
Marc:I've got to check back in with you to see how that goes.
Marc:Thanks for talking, Senator Franken.
Guest:Well, I'm really honored to be on the show.
Guest:I mean, or on the podcast, rather.
Guest:Oh, thanks.
Guest:And thanks for doing it.
Guest:I knew it had to be a Wednesday or Thursday or Friday.
Guest:Right, because that's what it stands for.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I'm glad we were able to make that happen.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That was the funny and engaged and very active believer in democracy who's doing his job and loves his job as a United States senator.
Marc:Al Franken, I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:I am looking forward to some time off.
Marc:After this stint in New York, I'm going to be taking the summer to...
Marc:work at some stand-up at my own pace and to do the podcast, but just to sort of not lay low, just to figure out who I am and where I stand and what I need to be doing to move things in the correct direction.
Marc:A little soul-searching.
Marc:It's going to be a soul-searching summer.
Marc:No guitar today.
Marc:I hope you're okay with that.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Fight the good fight.
Marc:Get involved.
Marc:Boomer lives!
so