Episode 926 - Dave Itzkoff / Robin Williams from 2010
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it how you doing you losing sleep like everyone should be
Marc:Are you?
Marc:Is your conscience weighing heavy on you as it should be?
Marc:It's difficult, you know.
Marc:Good morning.
Marc:Good afternoon.
Marc:Good evening.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Everything okay in the car?
Marc:Everything okay with the kids?
Marc:Everything okay at work?
Marc:Is it?
Marc:How's it going on the treadmill?
Marc:You doing all right?
Marc:How's that walk?
Marc:How's your dog?
Marc:That's a nice looking dog.
Marc:Hope everything's okay.
Marc:Did everything turn out all right at the thing?
Marc:All right.
Marc:Just checking in with as many people as I can.
Marc:Is your eye okay?
Marc:Is your ear okay?
Marc:Is your fingers okay?
Marc:Did that thing with your stomach work out?
Marc:How's that foot?
Marc:Your foot all right?
Marc:How's the toe?
Marc:Did that... It wasn't that bad, right?
Marc:You're asleep for most of it, right?
Marc:And you don't even feel what's happening.
Marc:You'd think it'd be embarrassing, but you don't feel it and you don't know what's happening.
Marc:But...
Marc:It was clear.
Marc:Good.
Marc:How's everyone doing?
Marc:Should I start again?
Marc:Are we okay?
Marc:Today on the show, the author of Robin, the biography of Robin Williams, Dave Itzkoff is here.
Marc:We had a great chat, mostly about Robin Williams, and we thought it would be good to
Marc:to play the full interview with Robin that we did in 2010 after the discussion in its entirety.
Marc:So we're going to do that.
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Thank you.
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Marc:So I'm going to talk to David Scoff.
Marc:He's the culture reporter for the New York Times, and he's on the show to talk about his biography of Robin Williams called Robin, which I read, which was great.
Marc:I read most of it at the time that I talked to him.
Marc:I'm very good at almost finishing books before I talk to people who wrote them.
Marc:But I want to make it clear again that after the interview, we're going to play the full interview I had with Robin Williams back in 2010.
Marc:Since many of you have never heard it, and some of you might want to hear it again after listening to Dave and myself talk about it, we figured it's best to just post it here rather than make you go pay for our premium archives or go hunt for a bootleg version.
Marc:So first, me and Dave talking about Robin and a lot more, and then a full Robin interview from 2010.
Guest:This is me and Dave Itzkoff.
Guest:what did you rent a car yeah yeah um i mean i i was in the bay area at the start of the week then came down to uh as like first thing thursday morning i came down to burbank uh-huh do some stuff out there and yeah just rented a car out there and been driving around so the bay area like so that's a robin land yeah that's why we did it there yeah what'd you do
Guest:I did a bunch of radio stuff, but then I was also doing live events, in-store appearances in other places.
Guest:The first one was in Cora de Madera, which is just outside Tiburon.
Guest:His old high school was literally walking distance from that store.
Marc:And what were the crowds like?
Marc:Were they robbing people?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like packed out kind of deal or what?
Guest:No, I mean, they were very nice.
Guest:People who...
Guest:Not that they knew him personally, but they all had encountered him in their daily lives over the years.
Guest:Like one woman whose daughter had gone to ballet class with his daughter back in the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Those kinds of connections.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They have a sense of ownership of him, but they loved him, and they really appreciated what he brought to their communities.
Marc:Sure, man.
Marc:I mean, I guess I was at that last Tiburon house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if you'll remember, because we had a conversation.
Guest:Me and you?
Guest:Yeah, we talked.
Guest:I wound up using more of the stuff that you told me, I think, about the Throckmorton Theater scene there, but we did talk about your interview.
Marc:When he was up in the balcony?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But yeah, no, I imagine we'll get into it in some way.
Guest:But you've certainly caught him in that same period of time.
Marc:Yeah, oh yeah.
Marc:What was interesting, what I'm getting around to, and that I think I can reveal now, is that when I spent that day with Robin, or that hour or two, which I think seems to be one of the few candid conversations that exists in a public sphere with him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh you know outside of him ruminating and and riffing on suicide which oddly jonathan winters did too in my interview with him oh man i wish i i wish i had looked that up because that's i mean that's a little a little eerie i mean he definitely you know winters was uh a wounded figure too and you know he that was a great quite a day dude
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I'll definitely look that up.
Guest:That's extraordinary.
Marc:Well, it was like he was riffing about therapy and about the, you know, sort of like he was sort of oddly conservative in some ways.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, in his riff, it was a therapist telling the patient to go put a gun in his mouth or go like something, you know, like.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:It was different, but it came around the same time in the interview as the one that I did with Robin.
Marc:It was very bizarre.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But the other thing about Robin is that, you know,
Marc:We had to jump through a lot of hoops to talk to him.
Marc:I'm sure.
Marc:Primarily because of how insulated his people kept him because of this, of what you tracked and what tracks as the thing with Disney and about how people use his image and stuff to promote.
Marc:It seemed to be their primary concern that there was a window to this thing and that it would only be used in a certain way.
Guest:Oh, interesting.
Guest:I could see that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, they just, you know, his managers were, I mean, just in general, I think so.
Guest:I mean, you know, they understood on some level that they treated him, I think, like a commodity, you know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it seems like in the book that he's pretty pissed off about Disney using the Aladdin in the many ways that they did outside of the parameters of his deal with them.
Guest:And that's – I mean that's a rare instance of at least a public situation where he really kind of pushed back against that or even displayed any kind of disappointment or anger in that way.
Guest:But there was a lot of – certainly in those last few years of his career, I mean there was a lot more protectiveness than perhaps there needed to be or a lot less risk-taking.
Guest:I mean so much about the business and the culture had changed and –
Guest:he could have stand to take even more chances.
Guest:I thought it was really interesting when he did that Broadway play that was sadly short-lived, the one Bengal tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.
Guest:But that was such a great performance and a perfect role for him.
Guest:And he really could have done more stuff like that.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I mean, it seemed like he did it...
Marc:in the smaller movies.
Marc:But the thing that struck me when I was in Tiburon at the house, outside of the fact that we couldn't take a picture or anybody could sort of identify where we were.
Marc:Rebecca took a picture of us.
Marc:But the thing I'm getting at was that there was a room in Robin's house
Marc:where I was getting ready to leave after we talked.
Marc:He's like, oh, come here, I want to show you something.
Marc:And I'm like, all right.
Marc:And he's like, you can't tell anybody about this in his Robin voice, which I can only do occasionally.
Marc:Ooh.
Marc:So he brings me to this room, and in this room are the soldiers.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And they're all equally spaced.
Marc:There's no clutter to it.
Marc:They're the same type, same size, which is kind of larger than a G.I.
Marc:Joe in my recollection.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:But they were sort of like these meticulously done toy soldiers that were about, in my mind, foot, foot and a half tall.
Marc:Is that right?
Guest:That could be.
Guest:I mean, I don't know what he had, other than inventories that I've seen in some of the legal papers.
Guest:I don't know the exact quantity or the inventory that he had at that point.
Marc:specific style and of the same manufacturer, and they're all set up in this room, almost a museum-like.
Marc:That could be, yeah.
Marc:And he was like, don't tell anybody about this.
Guest:I'm like, this is the big secret?
Marc:This is the thing you're hiding from everybody?
Marc:Is this room full of toy soldiers?
Marc:Maybe I was a...
Marc:I didn't know enough about them to make a judgment.
Marc:They looked like a bunch of scale models.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I didn't think it was that big of a secret that he was a big aficionado of that sort of thing.
Marc:That's funny.
Marc:Yeah, no, he kind of swore me to secrecy on that.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Everything that you went through in that day and that experience and that's the thing.
Marc:Yeah, he came clean about joke stealing, about relapsing, about suicidal thoughts, about his heart.
Marc:But don't tell anybody about the soldiers.
Marc:It's going to stay between us, man.
Guest:Well, you did keep the secret.
Guest:I did until now.
Marc:But now after I read the book, it's like clearly I'm an idiot.
Marc:All he talked about was fucking toy soldiers.
Marc:His whole life was toy soldiers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is an important thread.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, clearly.
Marc:Well, yeah, because you sort of track it, I think rightfully so, to the unleashing of his imagination as a lonely kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:In an attic with enough money to have full armies to riff with.
Guest:Well, literally, like the first... The Friends...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:well off enough that his parents could get that for him and that made him stand out.
Guest:That distinguished him.
Marc:Yeah, a couple people remembered it.
Marc:So let me ask you this, though, before we embark on some of the stuff I'm curious about.
Marc:You know, why this subject matter, number one, and I know what compelled me
Marc:it wasn't just because he was a comic and I was doing comedy.
Marc:I had a reason.
Marc:My reason was that I literally, no matter how I felt about him as a comic coming up, which for my generation is relatively dismissive.
Marc:You know, in the sense that, you know, he was very specific.
Marc:He was always unto himself.
Marc:But whether it was for joke stealing or fake improv or whatever it was, you know, there was something saccharine.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there was not it wasn't so much that there wasn't love for him.
Marc:There was just sort of like Robin, you know.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But I got mad when the generation below mine, these 20-year-olds, were dismissing him.
Marc:I'm like, look, we knew exactly- We earned our right to do that.
Marc:Well, at least we took into mind that he achieved anything and everything a comic would want to do.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Whether we liked him or not wasn't the point.
Marc:There was a respect for his achievement.
Marc:He started out as a comic and did everything any comic wanted to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:At least somewhat.
Marc:So who are you to condescend?
Marc:Like, my-
Marc:compulsion was to make sure that you know that he got the respect that he deserved right now i that was my intent you know and outside of like i didn't know what i would get out of him right i had no anticipation no no you couldn't have gone in knowing that it would be the conversation that you had sure well i was lucky and i think you made a point in here and i don't know who said it i don't know if it was you or somebody else in the book that like if there's more than one person there he's gonna put on a show yeah if it's really if it's two people you're fucked
Marc:But the fact that there was nobody around, which I don't think happened very often.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, there was no reason to entertain.
Marc:And also because I was a comic and he did like me and he knew me a bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what was your reason?
Guest:It's funny because it almost parallels yours.
Guest:I obviously...
Guest:I didn't experience him the way that a fellow comedian would.
Guest:I'm not a performer.
Guest:I have no desire to be.
Guest:But I also had an experience that was somewhat akin to yours because I had written about him the year earlier.
Guest:And I had spent time with him on the road when he was restarting that Weapons of Self-Destruction tour.
Guest:And so in the background were a lot of the same things that you dealt with in your conversation, the relapse into alcoholism, the rehab, the divorce, the heart problems.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All I knew for the most part about him at that point was what everybody thinks they know is his body of work.
Guest:And I was a little wary only because these are very sensitive things to have to bring up to somebody.
Guest:Celebrities in particular are kind of guarded people.
Guest:But this was in the interview.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I had spoken to him once before because I wrote a piece about World's Greatest Dad, really more of a profile of Bobcat.
Guest:And I thought that was a terrific film.
Guest:And, of course, he was a voice in that piece.
Guest:And even in that, that was just a phone conversation.
Guest:But I just remember how kind of subdued he was and very relatively easy to talk to.
Guest:And that did not jibe with my expectation or what I thought he would be.
Guest:And then in the course of these conversations on this larger story,
Guest:Everything came out of him.
Guest:All you had to do was scratch the surface and just this outpouring of maybe not emotion, but just honesty and candor.
Guest:We definitely didn't talk about suicide and certainly not in the way that you did with him.
Guest:But all the other things, and I think a very clear understanding on his part of...
Guest:Or at least his feeling that, you know, he'd really hurt and wounded people with his behavior when he was getting drunk again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The real desire to want to be sober, the commitment to that.
Guest:So just the fact that he was so open about himself really just put himself on the table.
Marc:That surprised you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that compelled you to or made you assume and believe that there was more to this guy than you assumed.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And again, even, you know, we were one on one and he would still occasionally, you know, throw out a voice just passingly.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:But it's only got one place to land.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, he's doing it.
Guest:You know, he wants to get he still wants to get the laugh out.
Guest:to you he's putting himself at ease a little bit because you're unfamiliar to him and that's a way for him to make himself comfortable that was all interesting I tell the story in the book but also in the course of working on this story and this wasn't meant for consumption in that article he wasn't like trying to butter me up but then you know just in our chit chat I mentioned to him that we both we discovered that we were both big comic book fans collectors and I mentioned the store that I like to go shopping at in New York and
Guest:He's like, oh, I go there.
Guest:The next time I'm in New York, maybe we'll go there.
Guest:And it's like one of those things that celebrities just say to you when you're writing about them.
Guest:It's like, they don't really mean that.
Guest:That's never going to happen.
Guest:They're just trying to make you write nice things about them.
Guest:But then he actually did.
Guest:A few weeks later, and the story wasn't done.
Guest:He called me up.
Guest:He was in New York, I think, to see Zach and maybe do some other stuff.
Guest:And we went shopping.
Guest:And it was a really...
Guest:It was just a nice thing to do, and I later discovered that, of course, he did lots of generous things like that for people, things that were easy for him to do that were very meaningful to the other people, but also just to see how people reacted to him in a way.
Guest:Just a public setting where he's totally unguarded, unprotected.
Guest:And the way people's jaws just drop to encounter him like that.
Guest:That was very... I'm not saying that's the sole reason I wanted to do it, but that experience was memorable.
Marc:Yeah, because there's that fine line between... But I don't think that he... I think he definitely...
Marc:is on the other side of it but there is a line between you know is this generosity coming from a con you know a different manifestation of the need for sure recognition and attention it could be and to be thought of in his role but i don't know i i think he was generous and yeah and that was it the the the few times that that i hung out with him or met him you know it was weird you know it was just because you're sitting there at the comedy cell or whatever he'd show up and yeah i can't remember the first time i met him but i remember
Marc:He took some interest in my one-man show.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:But I just remember one time in New York when I lived there, I got a message like, Mark, this is Robin.
Marc:I can't do his voice, but hello, Mark, it's Robin.
Marc:And he started talking.
Marc:He said, we should talk about your one-person show and making it in.
Marc:And I'm like, what's happening?
Marc:And he didn't leave a number or nothing, and I ended up calling Shapiro.
Marc:And he's like, what?
Marc:He called you?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Just fucking went nowhere.
Right.
Marc:But, you know, after all was said and done, I was happy he had my number and he gave me a call.
Marc:And I think he'd left me another message once before about something.
Marc:But, you know, to sit with him, his real self was clearly a shy, unassuming person.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And like being a product of a depressive, you know, if I think back on it, you know, it was always sort of there.
Marc:There was a nag of it there.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think not to pat myself on the back too much or plug myself, but to even start to really learn some of the facts about his upbringing and his childhood and his parents.
Guest:And I think it's like the Rosetta Stone that you really understand once you see who his parents were.
Guest:It's like a mathematical equation.
Guest:It's like you put those two together, and of course the outcome is going to be a child and a person like Robin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Who, on the one hand, gets a lot of the exuberance of his mother and the humor from her, but also the lack of attention from both of them, or at least what he perceived as a lack of attention.
Marc:Right, and then sort of being introduced to these half-brothers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I found that what was...
Marc:interesting was how he came to it that it's like i couldn't help but after reading it that there is some out that that he he seemed almost like he was on the the more sort of more enlightened part of the spectrum somewhere yeah but i don't know that he was ever diagnosed with that but it just seems you know what i mean
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's just something just kind of, I don't know.
Guest:He was just like so attuned to things.
Guest:Kind of touched.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And even in the way, you know, again, I'm going to plug myself, but like in the book, the stories that some of his friends tell about their experiences...
Guest:Right when he died and the way that they kind of felt like the universe was communicating to them in different ways.
Guest:Like Jeff Bridges running into Radio Man at the premiere for his new movie and thinking that he sees Robin.
Guest:Or, you know, Terry Gilliam being in London and watching that Family Guy episode that was actually pretty nasty to Robin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But all these little things, you know, just kind of being... It's just a weird...
Guest:It's a weird thing.
Guest:Somebody who is just a little bit more sort of tapped into how things work and how people work than most of the population.
Marc:Well, I think the big thing about when he died and how he died.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:The idea of not having him on the planet was a problem for me, you know, and it was a sad blow, but nothing surprises me necessarily.
Marc:I mean, I think that, you know, when the world's clown kills himself, that it does have bigger implications.
Marc:Than just a guy killing himself.
Marc:But I think the one thing none of us knew was how long he was sick and just how sick he was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, I talked to Bobcat, who was, you know, after the fact.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who was cagey about it.
Marc:It's like, well, people don't really know what was happening.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you really tell what was happening.
Guest:Well, because it came out in his autopsy and because other people did eventually.
Marc:No, but what I'm saying, people around him, it seems that for at least a year,
Marc:They watched him.
Marc:They didn't know what was happening, but he was coming unhinged, physically and mentally.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And with somebody who's had a history of drug use, you just assume like, oh, fuck.
Marc:But no one knew that he had this mental sickness.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, just to back up just to the circumstances of his death or the world learning about his death, and it did lead to...
Guest:A kind of mythologizing of that, too, or the fact that everybody's kind of first instinct is like, you know, the cliche of the sad clown or the, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's an aspect to it, but...
Guest:We don't really even know how conscious of a decision it was on his part.
Guest:In terms of how delusional he was?
Guest:It's possible.
Guest:I mean, there are people that I spoke to, you know, Dana Carvey told me that story about running into him at the Throckmorton a few weeks prior and really feeling like Robin was trying to kind of... Made an amends for joke stealing.
Guest:Yeah, kind of a settling of accounts.
Guest:There are people who do feel... It's also part of sobriety, though.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:But Billy Crystal, I think also, I mean, he doesn't have an equivalent experience, but also sort of alludes to the idea of, you know, that there was a conscious decision, but we don't know that.
Guest:Oh, that would have implied foresight, too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:According to the police report, they searched his computer.
Guest:They did not find Google searches of methods of suicide, for example.
Guest:There was no evidence of suicidal ideation as far as they could find, which is unusual.
Guest:It doesn't preclude anything, but unusual.
Guest:So there's evidence either way, I suppose.
Guest:But the idea, I mean, people's, I think, first sort of instincts or assumptions before we knew anything was this was a guy who was somehow,
Guest:upset about wherever he was in life, the state of his career, maybe financial trouble, maybe just all far out speculation, and therefore he did X. And then I think the conversation kind of evolved to a conversation about mental health and awareness and how you can reach out to people who may be having problems of that nature.
Guest:And it
Guest:I'm sure it was a very helpful conversation for people, but I don't know that it quite described what Robin was experiencing.
Marc:Well, yeah, because the last part of the puzzle was Parkinson's.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, then, right, a week later after his death, a statement comes out that he'd been recently diagnosed with Parkinson's, which he had.
Guest:In his own lifetime, he was given a diagnosis of Parkinson's.
Marc:Yeah, but it sounds like to me that, you know, I don't know when that timeline starts on his physical manifestations that initially were dismissed as hypochondriacal or anxiety based.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, but some of them sound fairly dramatic.
Marc:You know how long that was going on that you can sort of back load.
Marc:Those were symptoms.
Marc:It wasn't cocaine.
Marc:It wasn't alcohol that was fueling these paranoiac flights of delusion.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:But it was a sickness.
Guest:But I think even when the statement about the Parkinson's diagnosis came out, when that was made public, I think it's still...
Guest:I can't speak for everybody, but I think it still steered people in the direction or the assumption that, okay, he knew or had learned he had something that was going to be degenerative and progressive.
Guest:And so, again, that he made a kind of active choice so that he wouldn't suffer over a long period of time, that he made this choice to end his life.
Guest:And...
Guest:Again, I don't want to say definitely yes.
Guest:I don't want to say definitely no because I don't know.
Guest:But I don't think there's – there's a difference, of course, between Lewy body and Parkinson's.
Guest:And that's something that wasn't learned until many months later.
Guest:And I just wonder if –
Guest:You know... What's Lewy body?
Guest:So that is akin to Parkinson's in that both of those diseases come from a buildup of protein in the brain, which is normally made in normal quantities useful, but in excess it becomes toxic.
Guest:So with Parkinson's, that...
Guest:primarily is attacking the motor part of your brain.
Guest:So that's why people with Parkinson's, they may have stooped posture or other movement problems, what they call clockwork rigidity, the limbs kind of stop in certain places.
Guest:Lewy body goes on to attack other parts of the brain that have to do with cognition, reasoning, and how you just even perceive stimuli and information.
Guest:So the people who have that, they can have...
Guest:severe anxiety that basically becomes paranoia.
Guest:They can have wild mood swings, drastic mood swings.
Guest:They can have memory problems.
Guest:Another common symptom of it is that the person will seem to kind of shut down in their own body.
Guest:They won't react to things.
Guest:You can see that a kind of a light is on, but they can go for minutes or hours just not reacting to anything.
Guest:So those are all sort of separate from what a Parkinson's
Guest:a patient might have.
Guest:So there was a thought that he might have had that?
Guest:Oh, he definitely had Lewy body.
Guest:Or I should say, in his autopsy, they analyzed brain tissue and they found those proteins and they found it in the parts of the brain that basically are consistent with Lewy body.
Guest:And people who knew him, spent time with him, or encountered him in those last weeks and months certainly describe symptoms consistent with that.
Guest:So and again, another of the symptoms are, you know, some people who have Lewy body experience hallucinations and delusions.
Guest:So that's why I say, you know, we can't know exactly where the impulse came from.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, you know, it's one of those things.
Marc:Right.
Marc:whether you know that or not there's a logic to it you know as somebody you know there you know there's two types of people in the world there's a there's more than two but but you know the kind of person who thinks that holding on to life no matter what yeah you know and certainly you know in the in the book you talk about his relationship with christopher reeve you know you know helping him you know being there right after the horrible accident when he's paralyzed and
Marc:and really being a very available support system for a guy that couldn't feel anything below his neck, but persisted with life.
Marc:Obviously, you're going to need help if you're him to kill yourself.
Marc:So what he thought in his dark... But he seemed to be very proactive and sort of like, I'm going to live this out.
Marc:But there are those people, and then there are the people that are sort of like, I don't want to go down like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean...
Guest:Let me just preface it by saying I just don't want to sort of put my finger on one side of the scale or the other too much because to me I think the factual record is ambiguous.
Guest:But now I'm going to contradict my own sort of preamble by saying if you look –
Guest:And especially now, there's this recurring theme of him expressing a fear about what's going to happen to me later in my life when I get older.
Guest:On the one hand, the fear that I'm going to squander my career or my fans are going to desert me.
Marc:And that's stuck with him forever.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:After he'd done everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there is also the fear of what is going to happen to my body or what would happen to me if I started to experience something that was degenerative and incurable.
Guest:And it crops up in, I mean, even going all the way back to his standup routines from the Roxy in the late 70s, you can see that through line.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The old man stuff.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:No, yeah, and I thought that was great that you were able to sort of seek some of that stuff out and talk about, you know, how, like, I don't remember who was talking about seeing that improvisation where he did the old Robin and then ended up trimming it up.
Marc:Was it Pryor who saw that the one manifestation of it, which was more theatrical?
Guest:I talked about that myself a little bit, that when he does it in the Roxy special, that it's pretty clearly supposed to be him as an old man.
Guest:But wasn't there one where- Well, later when he does it, by the time you get to Reality What a Concept, his first album-
Guest:By that point, it's no longer meant to be him.
Guest:The character has a name.
Guest:He's much more kind of leering and sexual and full of innuendos.
Guest:That aspect is kind of drowned out.
Marc:Well, I think that was interesting, too, about tracking.
Marc:Obviously, throughout the book, you feel that there's nobody like Robin Williams in terms of how his brain works, how he figured out how to piece together these bits and pieces into...
Marc:You know, sometimes improv, sometimes seemingly improv.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that, you know, there are no segues and, you know, the sort of rapid fire that he was very quick.
Marc:But also, you're not you don't dismiss the idea that a lot of his shit was repetitive and some of it was broad and some of the stereotypical voices were dubious on some level.
Guest:Yeah, some of that stuff.
Guest:I mean, it's interesting to know why he likely had a fascination with Jews or with people of color, minority groups, gays.
Guest:But certainly that material did not age especially well.
Marc:Yeah, but you don't, you know, but you don't take, you can't deny the, what kind of moves through the whole book and even in your prose to a certain degree is this persistence and the energy of sort of creating in the moment.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, and also just his sort of dynamic control of stage presence and that, you know, that his presence in general was sort of, you know, had to be reckoned with once he took a stage.
Guest:Yeah, it was kind of euphoric.
Guest:I guess somebody else used the word ecstatic, but I think that that's true.
Marc:Yeah, and for someone like me, maybe someone like Overton or Bobby or these other cats that you talked to that knew him back then, I didn't know him back then.
Marc:And if you watch something, even if you watch live at the Roxy, you do have that mediated distance that you could sort of go like, why is he climbing up that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, when he's like climbing into the balconies, yeah.
Marc:But Martin Short used to do the greatest impression of him.
Marc:Did you ever see that old SCTV impression?
Guest:Is it scathing?
Marc:Well, no, no, it's very on the money.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:But just by virtue of that, just by virtue of not being Robin, could appear scathing.
Marc:Right, I see, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because there's a ridiculousness to it.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:But they were obviously good friends.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But what I'm saying is had I been there, what would that have felt like?
Marc:As a comic saying, no, look at this fucking guy.
Marc:I've responded, as you say in the book, that Letterman and, who is it, Larry Miller?
Marc:I guess it's over.
Marc:I guess whatever we're doing.
Guest:I thought that was extraordinary for somebody as clearly as talented as Letterman was.
Guest:He's showing up in town from Indiana.
Guest:The comedy story.
Guest:Yeah, he's kicking off his career and clearly a talent of his own and seeing what Robin is doing and just feeling like, if this is where comedy is going, what is there for me?
Guest:I got to pack it in.
Guest:That's right, but that's such a comic point of view.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, that there's a singularity of where comedy is going.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like all of a sudden the existence of a Robin means that there's no reason for us to exist.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think it does also point to, and Robin fell victim to this himself.
Guest:Which Jim Carrey, you said in the book.
Guest:And definitely with Carrey and even before Carrey with Eddie Murphy, that, you know, the perception that it's, this is all a zero sum game.
Guest:And if somebody is in ascendance, somebody else has to be in decline.
Guest:And most likely the person in decline is me.
Okay.
Marc:Yeah, but like it's zero-sum game at a certain level with five guys at any one time.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:You know, what about the other thousand?
Marc:Or what about the other 30 that are equally as famous but not that?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like the idea that there's a king, you know, and that king will be eventually usurped or forgotten or-
Guest:Well, I think he, but I think Robin had.
Guest:I think it's true to some degree.
Guest:I think he had some, you know, firsthand experience.
Guest:I have a reason to believe that.
Guest:I think particularly because of the experience of Mork and Mindy and how fast the kind of bottom fell out on that.
Marc:I didn't realize that.
Marc:See, all this stuff in the book about how, like, you know, the critical reaction to him.
Marc:And also the sort of, you know, things that he did that were not great.
Marc:And also, you know, just the fact that Mork and Mindy didn't even last long enough to be syndicated.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Whether it would have survived that anyways.
Marc:That like, you know, he it seems that really throughout his career in terms of how I read what you wrote is that, you know, the the good stuff that was said about him was far outnumbered by the shitty stuff that was said about him critically.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Later on, yeah.
Guest:I mean, certainly the ratio, the balance gets all out of whack.
Guest:But if you go back and look at certainly even the initial response to Mork and Mindy is just this outpouring of, I mean, people immediately declaring him, this guy is the funniest guy on TV.
Guest:This is the best news show of the season.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's a huge, and the numbers bear that out, that it's an immediate top five hit.
Marc:Well, I think that what's interesting is that, you know, it becomes clear from the book that, you know, once show business discovered him, they're like, now we got a cash cow here.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, in that, you know, everybody in this town in Los Angeles is like, this guy is a singular talent and no one's seen anything like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then like, but it was sort of scary to me to read it, like,
Marc:Just how easy it turns, man.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how there were forces out to, you know, not intentionally take him down.
Marc:A lot of them coming from within him.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But, you know, yet, you know, once you are at that level of the game, the sort of expectation to perform is overwhelming.
Guest:Well, there's so much serendipity involved even in him getting cast as Mork the first time on Happy Days.
Guest:And all the people that have to pass on the role, they're trying to get Jonathan Winters.
Guest:They're trying to get John Biner.
Guest:People who were real sort of first-tier comedians at that time, Dom DeLuise, who just either passed or weren't available.
Guest:And they have to basically do a kind of fire sale mass audition to just get to him.
Marc:To sort of deal with bringing new life into a show that's Jump the Shark, literally.
Marc:Literally.
Guest:That was the season of the Jump the Shark episode.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then the episode doing pretty well and Gary Marshall kind of on...
Guest:You know, basically making the Mork and Mindy up out of thin air because ABC is just hungry for new shows and doesn't feel like they have anything better to go with that season.
Guest:So all of that wonderful kind of happenstance working in Robin's favor.
Guest:And then basically the very next season, all these other forces, as you mentioned, they move the time slot.
Guest:They try to put it up against Archie Bunker's place, which is a huge mess.
Guest:They try to sort of move it away from the kind of family orientation, make it more of a TNA type of show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So almost within the very next year, it's already sort of running out of gas.
Marc:Understandably so, really, when you really frame it up like you did.
Marc:It's like, where are you going to go with that premise?
Marc:Right.
Guest:And they tried to sort of get back to basics in the fourth season, but by then, really, the writing was on the wall.
Guest:That was the year that they finally brought Winters in as a cast member to play Mirth.
Marc:Which was great for Robin and Jonathan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, it was fun for them and I think gave Robin – it wasn't his idea but gave him some incentive to kind of just ride it out, whatever it became.
Guest:But I think the large lesson that he took from that experience was that this could all go away in a minute and it's probably going to.
Guest:That something's – whether by your control or not, you're going to lose it all at some point.
Marc:He did in a way that the pressure was all was always on him like you don't get see like you know if you're operating it if you're like the funniest guy in the world or you're a singular talent that no one's ever seen before and it's in comedy.
Marc:It's a lot of pressure because it just doesn't happen that often.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And to hold that but like actors can go forever.
Marc:You know I mean they can do bad movies and still be movie stars.
Marc:Comedians, it's harder, especially someone who's trying to straddle what he's trying to straddle.
Marc:But I also like how in the book you really talk about him as a young man, being a guy that comes from money but never having money, never having anything in his pockets, being kind of smelly, not changing his pants or his shirt, running around in suspenders, this hairy man.
Marc:The constant reference to how hairy he is throughout the book is sort of- It's an important theme.
Guest:No, I think it is.
Marc:I'm not diminishing it.
Marc:But you do give a very good portrait of who he was as a young talent, as a young comic, and sort of being a comic, knowing that energy of running around doing all these sets, how Mitzi reacted to him at the store.
Marc:But I just really thought you sort of really put into perspective
Guest:you know, that part of his life.
Guest:I appreciate that.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think also what's interesting is, understandably, we've talked about the sort of comedy portion of his life, that strain of his career, but I think the comedy was something he kind of fell backwards into, that he really wanted the sincere passion of his was acting, and that's what he trained in, and that's what he studied at three different colleges, including Juilliard,
Guest:And then only ended up in comedy because he dropped out of Juilliard and came back to San Francisco at a time when comedy was happening again, a different kind of comedy that that suited him well.
Marc:But yeah, it seemed that that though he may have wanted to be an actor and you're telling of it, which it sounds right to me that that.
Marc:The constraints of a role that he couldn't completely turn inside out on his own volition, just shy of rewriting it, was not that satisfying to him.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, certainly it's something that he bumps up against in his very first couple of film roles in Popeye and in The World Carding to Garp that...
Guest:His first two directors are Robert Altman and George Roy Hill, who are obviously not going to let him dick around.
Marc:But also both doing something they had not done before.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:As directors.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, Altman kind of...
Marc:You know, for different reasons, it was a really out of character movie for him.
Marc:And, you know, he wasn't the first choice to direct it.
Marc:No.
Marc:And he hadn't handled a movie like that before.
Marc:I didn't know any of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's wild to think that.
Guest:I mean, of course, first of all, you know, it's Robert Evans, you know, producing it and assembling this whole thing and wanting Dustin Hoffman to play Popeye, but also, you know,
Guest:If he could have gotten John Schlesinger to make it, that was a choice of his.
Guest:Yeah, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, who knows how much of it is Evans just kind of putting these names out into the universe and just hoping, just by saying it, that it's going to- Jacked up, Evans.
Guest:Coked up.
Marc:God forbid that the Hollywood wunderkind producer wouldn't bring in like, you know, Minnelli or somebody, not Liza, her dad, what was his name, was still alive.
Marc:Vicente.
Marc:Vicente might have been still around.
Marc:Why not bring an actual musical director and resurrect, you know, you can have like these rebels.
Guest:Yeah, Hal Ashby.
Guest:Yeah, that would have been something.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:But...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I love Popeye.
Guest:I know I probably am squandering all my credibility by saying that because it's such a it's such an offbeat movie.
Marc:I liked it, too, because it was there was a darkness to it.
Guest:Yeah, I love the fact like he, you know, the first half of the movie is him just being hated on by all the other residents of the town and having to win them over and having to prove to them.
Guest:that you know he has something to offer and can be one of them and there's something really satisfying about that that arc i mean then it kind of goes off the rails and they clearly ran out of money but that oh some of the stuff you wrote about it but they didn't even have money for the octopus to work it's like the flip side of like what happened to spielberg in jaws where the the shark not working was the best thing that happened to him the the octopus not working in popeye just screwed the whole movie
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it was interesting that the elements that Altman did bring of his own style, the sort of weird chatter and, you know, kind of it's like there was chaos on the margins.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was sort of interesting.
Marc:But but but, yeah, I mean, I mean, I understand what you're saying that, you know, that that he was up against that in the acting roles.
Marc:But then some people learned how to use it.
Guest:I just.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:you know, like the failed attempt years later with Mike Nichols for Godot, you know, how they thought that, you know, you could riff within it would be an acceptable thing to Godot scholars or Godot freaks or, you know, or people that... Right, the purist, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, I understand that too.
Marc:I mean, but it's one thing to sort of, you know, to place Shakespeare in different, you know, timeframes.
Marc:It's different than, so let's just rewrite this chunk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm better than Samuel Beckett.
Guest:I could do a polish on Beckett.
Guest:But it's, I think, not to excuse it, but I think, again, when you look at the earlier parts of Robin's career, even as a student actor and being allowed to take these kinds of chances and kind of put it- At that time, too, in the early 70s, late 60s.
Guest:And getting a lot of renown in the Bay Area for kind of putting his own stamp on Malvolio in Twelfth Night and making that a kind of Jonathan Winters-esque character.
Guest:So if you have those formative experiences, of course you think, and certainly the success of Mork and Mindy and getting a lot of the credit, not all of it deserved for rewriting that on the fly.
Marc:Yeah, I thought that was interesting too.
Marc:There's a lot of things that you put in here as a journalist I thought were right.
Marc:But they do make the machinations of show business a little more dark.
Marc:But also what they do to a guy like Robin, not necessarily dark, but he gets carried away with himself.
Marc:And just by nature of who he is is dismissive or insensitive or a bit morally lapsed.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, especially when it's his kind of first time through the ringer and certainly his first exposure to that kind of fame and that kind of celebrity.
Marc:All the women, the drugs, the money starting to come in.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then trying to figure out how to live that life or do you live that life and what it means.
Marc:And the fact that, you know, the thing that I definitely appreciated throughout the book was that, you know, his weird fucking relationship with the, you know,
Marc:like he seemed to have this from the very beginning that you know he had a resentment against mork he had a resentment against the idea of selling out yeah you know in that you know the fact that he was doing coke and drinking and showing up late and that was he was living the life but it seemed that throughout you know the bits and pieces of the monologues and bits and pieces the act that you captured that you know he knew in his heart that he had sold that that he wasn't that that the only pure thing he could do was something he had complete control over
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you can hear it on an album like Reality, What a Concept, when he calls out for an improv subject or a cue and somebody shouts out Mork.
Guest:And the tone just changes immediately.
Guest:And you can hear it in his voice.
Guest:And he tries to play it off in a comic way, but...
Guest:I'm sure that was happening to him on a nightly basis that people wanted to see Mork and not Robin.
Guest:And how could that not get under your skin?
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I also think that there was the idea that he seemed to judge himself very harshly and that he was somehow not honoring a more... That he was a sellout.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, I think that...
Guest:He certainly thought of himself as being capable of so much early on.
Guest:I think even when he got cast in Popeye, it seems to feel like, just based on interviews he gave at the time and the way that his castmates and colleagues on the show reacted, he really seemed to think that that was going to propel him into yet another echelon and that that might be his ticket out of the show.
Guest:That if he could kick off the movie career with that, then that could get him...
Marc:get him past more and into whatever he quote unquote really wanted to do right well that was interesting to me that this guy who you simultaneously sort of claims to not really know about show business and give a lot of the power to other people was completely aware that you know that he you know not only expected it but had the talent to sort of
Marc:cross over or break bigger.
Marc:It's a conscious thing.
Marc:There was not a luck thing to it.
Marc:He was looking for an Oscar nomination.
Marc:He was looking for the awards.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Guest:I think beneath that is also that kind of inherent contradiction of
Guest:Being intimidated by a celebrity, being fearful of what it was going to do to him and the requirements that it demands to just perpetuate itself, but also on some level desiring it a little bit and feeling like he was destined for it in some way.
Guest:That he could feel both of those things simultaneously.
Marc:Well, I think that that that is one thing that I think, you know, goes, you know, sort of unsaid, but clearly indicated in the book is that this was a guy that over time knew exactly what his talents were and exactly how to use them, whether it was innate or or very much perceived.
Guest:But I think there is also an underlying truth about him that he never... I don't think he ever believed he was as talented as people gave him credit for.
Guest:Does anybody?
Guest:There's something kind of sad.
Guest:I mean, it's sad for anyone, but there's a story that his half-brother McLaurin told me.
Guest:From later in Robin's life, towards the end where they were out having a meal at a restaurant and they're served by a waiter and the waiter goes away and Robin makes a remark to him about how, is there really any difference between me, Robin, and this waiter?
Guest:Maybe just a few lucky breaks here and there, but otherwise, we're no different.
Guest:There's no reason why he couldn't have what I have.
Guest:I don't deserve what I have.
Guest:There's something sad about that.
Marc:Yeah, I think so.
Marc:But I also feel like that to me, when you read the book, that it wasn't beyond Robin to sort of attract attention through self-pity.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:And that's a device of a selfish person.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:And somebody who is insecure and hard on themselves.
Marc:But like there's a couple moments where it reads like that, that, you know, that that's why I think it was hard for so many of his of his friends, you know, when he was in trouble or depressed.
Marc:I mean, depression, you know, if it comes and goes in someone's life, you know, one of the real manifestation that especially with a charismatic depressive is is self-pity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, so meaning like that, that's a, that's a way of looking for reaffirmation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That's their way of kind of putting it out to some, but they, they, they can't articulate it in quite that way.
Guest:So that's how they, they do it.
Guest:That's interesting.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:For someone to go like, come on, you know, like if you're insecure and you're going to go that way, which is also a fairly common trait of the alcoholic personality, you know, that however you're going to draw it into your, your pathological self-centeredness.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, and I was happy that you filled in the blanks about the night of Belushi's death and also about his relationship with Pryor and appearing on that Pryor variety show.
Guest:Yeah, I think that was a very instructive thing.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, because in a way, the lesson that he took from that was like, it doesn't pay to be pointed and political.
Guest:It better to be a little bit more audience friendly.
Yeah.
Marc:But I didn't know.
Marc:There was a mythology around the night Belushi died.
Marc:I don't know what was covered in Wired or what had been covered previously.
Marc:How did you come to your accounting of it?
Guest:Well, some of that does come from Wired, which I think is...
Guest:Fairly accurate.
Guest:And also from, I mean, Pam Dauber, who I spoke to, is the one who had to break the news to Robin that Belushi had died after Robin had been out with him the previous night.
Guest:So she could give me at least that side of the story, that portion of it.
Guest:And it certainly aligns with...
Guest:The idea that even though he had encountered Belushi that night, that nothing of significance or interest had really gone on.
Guest:There's some discrepancy about – it's pretty minor that Woodward says that when Robin was in Belushi's room, they did cocaine together, and Robin denied that.
Guest:But otherwise, the account of what actually happened while he's in the bungalow is pretty –
Marc:The scary lady came with the heroin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he kind of knows that this is not a place that he, that he should stay.
Marc:Definitely felt that, you know, like that was around the comedy store.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like, you know, but yeah, I, I, I thought that was great.
Marc:And I, and I also thought like, cause you know, you look at this, like this filmography and it's kind of fucking insane.
Yeah.
Marc:That's the thing about guys who do the work and whatever you want to trivialize.
Marc:The guy was in like 100 movies.
Guest:Yeah, and pretty much making a film to two films a year on top of everything.
Guest:And huge films.
Guest:That's the other thing about the difference between what critics say and what America wants.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's true to that.
Marc:He had to live with that.
Marc:What I think evolved into what must have been an internal critic or how he was going to be received.
Marc:But the fact is, who gives a fuck?
Marc:That film made $150 million.
Guest:Well, there's few... I don't know.
Guest:Maybe I'm overstating this, but there aren't too many examples, I think, of movies where the critical reception and the box office reception really diverged.
Guest:I mean, maybe something like Jumanji.
Marc:But initially, yeah, I think that even with Doubtfire, there was just as many bad ones as good ones.
Guest:That's true.
Marc:And the same with even fucking Ebert's reaction to... To Dead Poets Society.
Marc:Yeah, like it was malicious almost.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And Hook, which I think, I thought that tanked, but it didn't.
Guest:No, I mean, it did okay commercially.
Guest:And what I find so interesting is, you know, if I talk to people who are maybe from the generational cohort younger than mine, because I remember seeing Hook in theaters and just being kind of bored by it and not understanding it.
Guest:But to younger viewers, people love that film.
Guest:It's on, you know, cable all the time.
Guest:And it really has found a kind of, you know, a second life.
Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know if I remember seeing it.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:But I remember it not being great.
Guest:Yeah, the premise in some ways is so dazzling and so perfect and it just doesn't.
Guest:And Spielberg, all those things like just that should have combined to make, you know, the best movie of 1990 or 91.
Guest:And it was not it was not that.
Marc:And also realizing that, you know, Hollywood was a small town still.
Marc:1974, 75.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, that the show business was small.
Marc:You know, when you talk about kings of this or that, you know, there's just so many different areas, so many different markets, so many different.
Marc:You know, it's not as easy in a way to sort of hold a mantle or be a global personality.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, if it's not in music.
Marc:So it's definitely a different time.
Marc:And I think you sort of see how that sort of starts getting by him, how some of his shtick is not aging as well as it could have.
Marc:And that he does, you know, he doesn't get to become very old, but he did feel that go by him.
Marc:And then the Oscar success happened so far into it.
Marc:But that waiting is just something people do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he could never have played the goodwill hunting role that Dr. McGuire.
Guest:I mean, you need somebody who's lived in a bit and can relate to that kind of wounded person, somebody who suffered enough loss to be able to play.
Guest:It's not the kind of thing he could have done.
Guest:earlier, but it's also, you know, again, we talked about, like with Mork and Mindy, how that blew up and then was immediately squandered, and the Oscar success also was something that, I mean, as crowning an achievement as that was that, you know, that he never kind of capitalized on that or parlayed that, I mean, that was immediately followed by things like Patch Adams and Flubber and, you know,
Marc:Hard to turn down $15 million, I imagine, or however much he was making at that point.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, we all know what that's like.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, not me.
Guest:I mean, I happen to think he did a lot of really terrific work.
Guest:Certainly, like, a lot of the smaller films in the early 2000s.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:You know, things like... Bobby's movies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, and, you know, something like, you know, World's Greatest Dad.
Guest:I mean, it's... Sadly, I mean, there's just too much...
Guest:resonance now and just the suicide aspect of that film I think makes it probably very hard to watch.
Marc:No, I thought it was great.
Marc:I thought that was a wonderful performance.
Marc:That's why I think that on some level he didn't, like you said, he didn't believe that, like he always did these roles that were sort of
Marc:Way outside the box for him because I think he wanted to challenge himself and prove to himself and to others that he was this real actor.
Guest:I think he found them satisfying artistically.
Guest:I think he certainly had the aptitude for it.
Guest:And it's just a shame that those aren't the roles that could have paid him $10 or $15 million.
Guest:Because he, at that point, kind of... When I say... I mean, he needed to do them, not because he was like...
Guest:You know, short on cash, but that to just maintain that kind of lifestyle at that point or when you're at that level, you have to basically take, you know, a studio role every year and you've got to take what's available.
Marc:Divorces will kill you, I guess.
Guest:And I think just, you know.
Guest:You know, he had two houses.
Guest:He had, you know, household staffs for them.
Guest:I mean, it just, it cost money to live like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, so that sort of forces you in some way to take things like, you know, RV or what have you.
Guest:So if he could have only or continued to focus on, I think, some of these kind of character pieces of these older men who have suffered and who are a little bit more contemplative and inward, which he could totally do.
Guest:I mean, there was – and I think also the Broadway play that he did, Bengal Tiger at the Bad Dead Zoo.
Guest:I mean, they all just sort of pointed to the potential for at least one more reinvention, I think.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You know, I mean, but, you know, it's weird with a guy who's the thing that everybody loves about him is also the thing that becomes sort of saccharine and difficult to take after a certain point.
Marc:It's but but the one thing the book makes clear is that he did everything.
Marc:There was nothing, you know, sure, there were more he could do.
Marc:But in terms of his success in show business or maintaining a career one way or the other and making a lot of shit, it's sort of monumental.
Marc:And also being a singular force in the universe that everybody immediately recognizes is going to have whatever feelings they're going to have.
Marc:But I tell you, after he died, even people who didn't like him were like, oh, fuck, really?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:But coming into this, having written a memoir about cocaine and having a cocaine-addicted father, which you did,
Marc:What were you able to resolve?
Marc:What kind of baggage were you bringing to this?
Guest:It's so interesting that you say that because nobody will believe this when I say it.
Guest:It wasn't something that I was consciously thinking of as I'm writing about Robin, but I do feel like...
Guest:In the opportunities when I got to interview him while he was alive, there were certainly parallels that I saw with how my father behaves and that kind of relentless confessional quality of the recovering or recovered addict.
Marc:Your dad got sober?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And basically did what Robin did the first time.
Guest:There was no 12-step involved, no kind of program.
Guest:It was a cold turkey thing.
Guest:And damn if it didn't take many, many tries to get right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But he got sober with the recovery eventually?
Guest:Basically, the brute force method.
Guest:After 20 years, really, of abuse.
Guest:Your dad.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he had and still has that quality, I think, of just wanting to tell you what he's been through and wants you to know that he's been this other person and how he got past it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Not that it's boastful, but that it's like, you know, you should be aware of it.
Guest:And I think Robin had that, too.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:So I guess there's got to be some kind of identification or empathy in that way that, you know, looking for that.
Guest:I guess I'm going to say it out loud, but looking for that father figure in some way or in that piece of him.
Marc:But also having a natural interface with that personality.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:Right.
Yeah.
Marc:I mean, I don't know how your dad was, but was he a charismatic, unpredictable guy?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess now that you mention it.
Guest:No, it was fascinating.
Guest:You know, when I was working on the memoir and I would like go to him, he's a furrier and so he sells like
Guest:the raw animal skins that eventually get made into clothing and stuff so i would go with him to like these uh auctions and sales and like canada and stuff and to see how his like other industry uh like colleagues competitors rivals reacted to him and it was really so different from how i knew him that these people had even a little bit of like a a fear of him or intimidation like is this guy going to kind of swoop is he if he's here at the sale is he going to swoop in and try to underbid me or is he going to try to corner the market on a reputation
Guest:yeah it was so interesting and like it really this was not the man that i knew at home at all who at least when he was sober was much more uh you know gentle and quiet and thoughtful and very literate and just turned on by a lot of things culturally and then to see that that sort of killer instinct side of him is fascinating uh so yeah i guess that that's the charisma
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I just find that like, you know what, like, however you, like you're, you come from a, you're, you're emotionally wired as by, you know, what you grew up with.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And, you know, even if it's not apparent immediately, if you find yourself interfacing pretty quickly with somebody is because you got some, you know, some genetic component of your emotional makeup is like, no, this feels like home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I don't think you spend the time on something like this if you don't feel connected to a person at that level.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And how long did it take you to write, Robin?
Guest:The writing portion was maybe like a year, year and a half.
Guest:The whole project all told is probably three and a half to four years.
Marc:And you weren't doing it expecting it to be posthumous.
Guest:I was.
Guest:I mean, the work on the book started after his death.
Guest:I mean, I had done, you know, a few different pieces about him for The Times, other stories that were sort of adjacent to him because the pieces about Bobcat or the pieces about Billy Crystal that he factored into.
Guest:So I had that base of reporting.
Guest:But no, I mean, I didn't start working on the book until after his death.
Guest:And this is your fourth book?
Guest:Yes, that's right.
Marc:The first two are memoirs?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The very first one was about just my experiences getting started in the magazine industry and working at the Lad Mags of the early 2000s.
Guest:Then the other one that you mentioned was Cocaine Son, which is about my dad.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:Cocaine Son.
Marc:Yeah, Cocaine Son.
Marc:And then you went about Chayesky?
Guest:Yeah, Mad as Hell, which was about- I got to check that out.
Marc:What was it about?
Guest:I mean, it was about the making of Network, but in order to tell that story, you've got to tell the story of Paddy Chayefsky and his life and career because he is... I mean, the film is essentially his.
Guest:It's his creation.
Guest:I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of Chayefsky's papers are owned by the New York Public Library, so I got to spend a lot of time just kind of stewing in them and seeing not only all the drafts for Network, but just all the...
Guest:The prep that went into that and lost works of his.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like TV stuff that he wrote in the 60s that never got made.
Marc:I think I have a book of like four plays.
Marc:Is there a book?
Guest:Yeah, there's one anthology of his TV plays and then one anthology of his stage plays.
Marc:And was it that you were more fascinated, you were fascinated with him?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I thought that the movie is, of course, very special.
Guest:And just to get to spend time with his papers and, you know, really see from the ground up how a movie like that came together was really rewarding.
Marc:An old leading man like William Holden.
Marc:To me, the sort of sensitivity, the natural sort of humility that he had because he was older.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was really something to see.
Guest:Yeah, no, I mean, it's...
Guest:I think for each of the principal actors, there's a very kind of weird, perfect alignment with whoever they happen to be at that point in their life and career.
Guest:They were so well suited for those roles.
Guest:It was true of William Holden.
Guest:It was true of Faye Dunaway.
Guest:It was true of Peter Finch.
Marc:Duvall?
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:I mean, Duvall, I think he's come around to liking that film, but I don't think he particularly enjoyed making.
Guest:Yeah, really?
Guest:Well, because, I mean, he was arguably the biggest name in the film at that moment, maybe Dunaway, but just didn't, he knew going in that the role was, as great as he plays that character, that he was not really one of the main principal people.
Guest:It was really more about Holden and Finch and Dunaway.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But the funny thing is that that character, you know, who was great in that movie was... Ned Beatty?
Marc:Ned Beatty.
Marc:Oh, yeah, of course.
Guest:You have meddled with the primal forces of nature.
Guest:And there's a great impression.
Guest:And you will atone.
Guest:Am I getting through to you?
Guest:I love the way that it turns like that.
Guest:The best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was sales.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was awesome.
Marc:Am I getting through to you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it goes from the height of this operatic exaggeration and then it becomes small and quiet and pointed and personal.
Marc:Well, it's just sort of like that's the hustle.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Is this working?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's so funny because- Because he goes out of his way to say, I could sell anything to anybody.
Marc:So this is like, he's like, how do you sell to this fucking lunatic?
Marc:It's very true.
Guest:I love, I mean, it's interesting because of course, Finch's mad as hell speech is like, that's the scene that everybody remembers.
Guest:That's the epicenter of the movie.
Guest:But I think Beatty's speech is just as good.
Marc:Oh, no, it's great.
Marc:To me, that's the one.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, it's like it's like an apocalypse.
Marc:Now, the only thing that I remember is like, what are you going to do?
Marc:Go out and land on a fraction, man.
Marc:You're going to land on one.
Marc:Like for me, all the apocalypse now is just opera.
Marc:But no, but the way they lit baby.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like it was just genius.
Guest:Yeah, and they really kind of stumbled into that because they wanted to shoot the scene.
Guest:They initially were going to do it at the New York Stock Exchange, and then they had to give the Stock Exchange people like a draft of the speech.
Guest:And then, of course, they review it, and they're like, there's no way we're letting you do this scene here.
Guest:So they had to do it at the New York Public Library.
Marc:Well, they made it look like an old-timey conference.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's sort of like everything about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The wood.
Guest:Yeah, the banker's lamps.
Guest:So lighting is sort of like, this is how it's always been.
Guest:This is Valhalla, Mr. Beal.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Why are you telling me this?
Marc:Because you're on TV, dummy.
Marc:Well, I'm very interested to read that book.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:That movie, I watch it every so often.
Marc:I go back to it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:In a way, I mean, I really enjoyed the project, but it's like if that book could have just come out maybe two years later, it would have been, I think, even more apt.
Guest:I think there was even a feeling in 2014, people were like, why is network important?
Guest:Who cares about the risk of putting angry people on TV and letting them shout into the void?
Guest:And now I think maybe that message is a little bit more readily received.
Marc:but also you know the the sort of prophecy of what tv becomes sure sure you know like that what i was going to say is the guy who played the the the head of the news department that that character actor who played that guy you remember that the guy with the mustache sort of a tall you know like he just buckles immediately under ruddy like you know you can't do that to my news department we're doing it shut up okay
Marc:That guy, you remember that guy?
Guest:I know who you mean, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, forget his name.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I think that there's, that whole style and spirit of movie making, I think it's kind of lost.
Marc:That's where I was thinking about that the other day, because you have these huge movies, like what does it take to make a money making movie, and then everything else is just some version of an independent movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Whereas like these movies that were independent in spirit, but also cutting and every, like Hospital was a pretty big movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that was a commercial hit and an Oscar winner.
Guest:And, you know, two different studios finance network.
Guest:That was MGM and United Artists when they were still separate.
Guest:And in a weird way, I mean, neither Chayefsky nor Sidney Lumet really came out of that like new Hollywood tradition.
Guest:They were not really rebels in that sense.
Guest:But the idea that they got to basically use studio money to tell the studios and tell mass media how stupid it was.
Guest:I mean, there's something... It was at that time, too, though.
Marc:It was at that time, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, the studios had run out of ideas of how to get young people into movies, right?
Marc:So it's that book, that Raging Bull... Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, that's the whole thing, is that, I mean, those guys are not...
Guest:Part of that scene.
Guest:I mean, they benefit certainly from the success of all those other movies.
Marc:They're from the last sort of generation of studio guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're more TV guys.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Lumet was a live TV guy before he transitioned to filmmaking.
Guest:And same with Chayefsky.
Guest:They both come from that.
Guest:Sort of golden age, that first era of TV when the medium seems so sort of pliable and could be so many different.
Guest:And then they immediately see it kind of get categorized and everything has to be a Western or a cop show or a family comedy.
Guest:And then there's no other categories left.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They both kind of felt alienated by that in different ways.
Marc:Well, look, man, I definitely want to pick that book up.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:But this Robin book's a great read.
Marc:It's one of those ones where you want to keep reading it, even though you know what happens at the end, sadly.
Marc:But all of it, the sensitivity to who he was publicly and personally, and also the choices he made without being...
Marc:you know, a cheerleader, but being sort of honest and kind of showing him as a full human was great.
Marc:Great job.
Marc:Thank you very much.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
Guest:My pleasure.
Marc:So that was me talking to Dave Itzkoff.
Marc:The book is Robin.
Marc:It's available now wherever you get books.
Marc:But now I'm going to share with you the Robin Williams interview I did in 2010 in its entirety.
Marc:This interview was a very important day for me.
Marc:It was a very important day for the show.
Marc:I think Robin had a nice time.
Marc:It was just one of those things, you know, we we tried to get him on the show.
Marc:It took a lot.
Marc:We had to jump through a lot of hoops to get to him.
Marc:But the day that it finally happened, you know, I drove up there by myself with my little flash recorder and I sat in his home up there in Tiburon.
Marc:And it was just me and Robin in a room in his house on the water.
Marc:And it was a very candid and very connected interview.
Marc:It was a very honest interview.
Marc:I think he said things in that interview that were never said before.
Marc:And that interview put our show on the map in a very big way, put the podcast on the map.
Marc:So I'm sort of forever indebted to Robin for drawing attention to the forum.
Marc:And, you know, he was a sweet guy, and it's lovely to have this to share with you, but it's sad that he's no longer here.
Marc:So this is me and Robin Williams from 2010.
Guest:It's old school.
Guest:It's like a classic stand-up mic I made in that.
Marc:Welcome back.
Marc:I think it's going to be all right.
Marc:So I appreciate you doing this, and I was nervous.
Marc:I was nervous coming up here.
Marc:I usually don't get nervous.
Marc:Why?
Marc:I don't know why, you know, because we've hung out before, we've talked before, but then at some point in my mind, I'm getting ready to do this, and I'm like, I felt like I was interviewing a former president.
Marc:I never knew.
Marc:It's going to be like the Williams-Marin interviews.
Marc:This is going to go on for days.
Guest:What phone call?
Guest:What?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:What did I do?
Guest:It was a blackout.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:Was there a prostitute involved?
Marc:I don't know how long you were drinking for in this little run you took, but I have to assume that driving home had to be an inspiration to stop.
Guest:I only drove drunk that I remember once.
Guest:And then one time I woke up the next morning and go, where's my car?
Guest:And it turned out the bartender had driven me home.
Guest:He was a sweet guy and he drove me home.
Guest:And the next day I couldn't find the car and I thought, oh my God, my car's been stolen.
Guest:And they actually, no, they parked it for me in a safe parking lot.
Guest:So it's nice when people take care of you when you're that loaded.
Guest:It's the benefit of celebrity, I guess.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Take Mork home.
Guest:I get a cinema economy, right?
Guest:No.
Guest:What?
Guest:Now I can do this.
Guest:I walked home one time from a bar in Toronto, and I woke up the next morning.
Guest:To here?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Yeah, that's a really great blackout.
Guest:I was a two-month walk, and I woke up the next morning with a mitten, and I went, oh, my God, this is a child's mitten.
Guest:And then the worst thought is the next morning, that's the man.
Guest:And it turned out a waitress had given me her, she had tiny hands, and she'd given me her mitten because I'd lost a glove, but that's the worst thing when you wake up going, what's this?
Guest:There's a road flare.
Marc:Oh, yeah, your car has got blood and hair on the fender.
Guest:Is that human?
Guest:No, it's rabbit blood.
Guest:Oh, thank God.
Marc:So I was doing some poking around, you know, because there's a part of my comedy career that, you know, where I spent time at the comedy store, and, you know, you were this myth there at that time.
Marc:Oh, totally.
Marc:And, you know, I started looking at stuff.
Marc:And, you know, I talk to a lot of younger comics now, and their history of comedy really starts at Mr. Show or maybe 10 years ago.
Marc:And, you know, when you mention Robin Williams or Pryor or Kennison or anybody, they're like, yeah, I don't know.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Those are crazy times because Sam, you know, Sam's first night up was just, I remember seeing, who's the guy screaming?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And supposedly Sam got on because he rescued Mitzi from Argus.
Marc:Right, it was Argus Hamilton who was strangling her in some sort of drunk frenzy.
Guest:And then, ah, get away!
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Sam rescued her and then they put Sam on.
Guest:My favorite nights were the nights that Pryor was working on Live on Sunset.
Guest:The first one before he set himself on fire, the first stand-up.
Guest:and you just it'd be these weird nights where you just watch him and then sometimes you get to go on after him once in a while like he would you know have people come on stage with him and then there'd be people in the audience like Willie Nelson would play music at the end after everyone split and you go it's like jazz it's pretty wonderful
Guest:But now, did Pryor sort of take you under his wing somehow?
Guest:Well, he took everybody under his wing because he had that variety show that he had on, I think it was NBC.
Guest:It was like, the first show was amazing because he had this thing, it pans up here, he's not wearing, you'd think he's just got his shirt off and he goes, look at me, it's Richard Pryor.
Guest:I'm on TV, I didn't have to give up anything.
Guest:I'm on NBC, live.
Guest:And then they panned down and he's a Ken doll, he's got no genitalia.
Guest:And then after that, they started saying, you know, Richard, you can't do that, you know.
Guest:And then he, by the time the last show aired, they said, okay, Richard, he was kind of angry at them, and he said, okay, just film me doing stand-up.
Guest:And they said, oh, great.
Guest:They filmed him for 45 minutes.
Guest:They had 30 seconds they could use.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Yeah, but it was like, he had, everybody was Mooney, Sandra Bernhardt.
Guest:He just hired all the comics to be like his players in this comedy troupe, and it was pretty wonderful.
Guest:But I think he just loved hanging out there, you know, and you'd see him backstage.
Guest:One night somebody yelled out at him, they said, Richard, do Mudbow, and he went, fuck you, you do it, you know it better than me.
Guest:And he did a piece one night that was the most beautiful piece I'd ever seen him do.
Guest:He did a piece about God coming back to earth to pick up his kid.
Guest:He's going, where's my boy?
Guest:And then he had everyone all the, you know, and they go, you want to tell him?
Guest:And I went, I don't know.
Guest:You know, get the Pope.
Guest:He'll tell him.
Guest:Where's my son?
Guest:We killed him.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Well, we killed him, but he came back and then he split.
Guest:And we haven't seen him.
Guest:And then Pryor looked around and went,
Guest:And then God was like, I'm going to destroy him.
Guest:And then all of a sudden he took a moment and went, all right, that's it.
Guest:I'm leaving.
Guest:I'm not coming back.
Guest:I'm going to leave you love.
Guest:And if you fuck that up, you're on your own.
Guest:And then he walked off stage.
Guest:And you can see the entire audience go like, huh?
Guest:They never did it again.
Guest:But it was a weird kind of like, I just went, the most strangely beautiful piece.
Guest:And the response of the audience was like,
Guest:That wasn't a character.
Guest:No, that was just him.
Guest:I love that kind of shit.
Guest:It was wonderful.
Guest:It's like those nights you see when you go on and someone says something so fucking wild and wonderful.
Guest:And deep.
Guest:Deep.
Guest:So deep that even people in the audience are going, that's deep.
Guest:I don't know how to respond.
Guest:Yeah, it's too deep.
Guest:It was.
Marc:Yeah, that was one of the questions I was thinking of when I was coming down here is that despite whatever problems you had throughout your career that I never sensed any animosity towards an audience.
Guest:You can't be angry at them.
Guest:You can't.
Guest:I can't, no.
Guest:There's times when I've run across hostile audiences.
Guest:Towards you?
Guest:Yeah, but just because they're hostile towards everybody.
Guest:I remember one audience years ago when I was on stage, they were sending up kamikazes, which was vodka and lime juice.
Guest:And after about the third one, I realized, you want me to get fucked up, and I said it, and they went, yeah!
Guest:And you want me to crash and burn, yeah!
Guest:And it was like, oh, fuck.
Guest:It was, I went, oh, I get it.
Guest:Did you do it?
Guest:No, I finally went, good night, because I went, I got to stop, because you really just want to see me pass out, don't you?
Guest:And they were going, fuck yeah.
Guest:You know, it's that weird, you know, from Hanging with Sam, that crash and burn, that's the way to go.
Marc:Well, I mean, but that's the way I did it.
Marc:Because I was trying to put into perspective, like, you know, despite my own drug and alcohol problems throughout the years, they never garnered me, you know, any... You know, if I was drunk or fucked up up there, I would go after an audience.
Marc:I would blame them.
Marc:I would...
Marc:I would say, I have open shows by saying, what do you fucking want?
Guest:Oh, the worst case of that I saw was Keith Jarrett played recently at the Civic, I guess at the concert hall, Symphony Hall, Davies Symphony Hall.
Guest:And he's an amazing solo pianist and he plays his things, but he wants absolute quiet.
Guest:And if you cough, he literally, after he finishes the piece, he goes, listen, people don't cough when I play in my studio at home.
Guest:Can you try?
Guest:And he called it a failure in concentration.
Guest:The Japanese don't cough.
Guest:And then finally, he played this beautiful piece, and he got to a quiet part, and this woman went, and you could see him literally go like this, and then he went up to the mic again to start to tell people, hey, that's not cool, and someone went, just play!
Guest:It was like, dance for me, black boy, and you could see him kind of go, and he walked off.
Guest:And then he came back out because he realized, wait a minute, I can't let you win.
Guest:He could have because in Italy he told everyone to go fuck themselves.
Guest:But he walked out on stage and he said, okay, what do you want to hear?
Guest:And they started yelling requests and he played some beautiful like old standard.
Guest:And then he played Somewhere Over the Rainbow, this jazz rendition really beautifully.
Guest:And at that point, even the hardcore were like, great, I love you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he did, you know, he walked off stage, he got the first kind of, and I think the hardcore, the people that are angry going, just play, they split.
Guest:And then he did five encores, so by the fifth encore, it was just the people who knew, hey, and they were totally quiet, and it was so beautiful.
Guest:By the end, he had kind of done the Buddhist thing of rather than tell them to go fuck themselves, he said, what do you want, like you said.
Guest:He did what they wanted, and then the hardcore, the nastiest, the entitled white people who are now picketing now today.
Guest:They split, and then what was left was that people go, I get it.
Guest:We're sharing this experience.
Guest:But it's so weird.
Guest:Sometimes you get an audience that's just like the gift, and then other times you get the audience from hell.
Marc:I just don't completely understand the non-angry based comic.
Guest:I guess what's hard to say when you've got like, there's not a lot for me to be angry at.
Guest:I guess that's true.
Guest:When you have a show, especially when Mork and Mindy was on, someone turned to me, you used to come out and just say, hi, and people go, ha, ha, you haven't said anything funny.
Guest:That's the scary thing is, there's that kind of, oh, you're famous, you're funny.
Guest:But the weird thing is, what do you got to be pissed about?
Guest:It was like that weird thing, I used to joke, I was 16 before I went to Europe, no, that doesn't sound good.
Guest:Don't you hate it when you have to walk to a private plane?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:No, fuck.
Guest:How many people have problems with their maid?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, one of my houses, it's like when all of a sudden there was the Malibu fires and people are forced to leave their second home.
Guest:I went, ain't life a bitch.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I guess that's true.
Guest:But it's weird, but you can still get angry with, like you said, ignorance or just drunks.
Guest:But being angry at a drunk is like bitch slapping a cow.
Guest:It's not really effective.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I guess that's true.
Guest:I mean, when did you do, how old were you when you did Mork?
Guest:I was about 29, 27, and that was crazy shit.
Guest:You know, I'd go from, you know, doing the show and then come to do the comedy store and then go to the improv.
Guest:And then you'd go hang out at clubs and then, you know, end up in the hills in some coke dealer's house, you know.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:Angel, it's Robin.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then you'd wake up the next morning going, oh, and I don't wake up, you haven't gone to sleep.
Guest:And, you know, you're like a vampire on a day pass going, how are you?
Hi.
Guest:yeah and then you have to go do it again you know I have no regrets I met a lot of interesting people logged a lot of hours few pirates that you just like I mean you're Robin Williams and you're in this room with a guy who says he's a gaffer some guy with an eye patch and you're waiting for some other guy to bring shit that you don't even know where it came from and if you're famous most of the time you get it for free which is weird it's like the same thing when you get gift baskets at award shows going I don't need this stuff thank you but my cookies will go here dude
Guest:Yeah, we love you.
Guest:We want to see you die.
Guest:You want to see you die?
Guest:I don't want to get you high because it's part of our advertising campaign.
Guest:I got Robin loaded.
Guest:Yeah, and they like being connected to you.
Guest:And it's part of the whole thing of a little dust for you, and then you'll spread the word on other celebrities, and eventually if they get busted, then they can subpoena you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But also they get to hang out with you.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:And then they realize, Jesus, on Coke, you're a boring fuck.
Guest:You look out the window a lot.
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:There's ninjas coming up the wall.
Guest:Ninjas and maybe just cops.
Guest:I mean, yeah.
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:What's that noise?
Guest:It's a spider.
Marc:But that Hollywood Hills thing then, I can't even imagine what it was like.
Marc:Because by the time I was there with Sam, I mean, it seemed like the wave was crashing.
Marc:I mean, he was the most demonic manifestation of that scene.
Marc:I mean, shit, you were there.
Guest:I had to bail him out once.
Guest:I had to go...
Guest:I think it was one of the houses, I don't know if you lived there, but one of the houses, he trashed a house, and they were going to take him to court, so I ended up paying the cleaning deposit.
Guest:And another time, he did it to a hotel room in New York, and they were about to take me, and I ended up saying, okay, I'll cover your hotel bill.
Guest:But it was weird, that whole kind of, you know, throwing TVs out the window, you're going, it's old school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This old English rock and roll.
Guest:But isn't necessary.
Guest:Why are you doing that?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Shitting on the carpet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, taking it, you know, what are you doing?
Guest:Took a dump on your RV.
Marc:Were you there doing it?
Marc:I was gone when he was doing that.
Marc:No, I know, because I was there.
Marc:Yeah, you were there.
Guest:There was talk of you.
Guest:Yeah, he'd gone.
Guest:At that point, I moved back up to Napa.
Guest:But you'd been clean then, by then, weren't you?
Guest:I had 20 years sober before I relapsed recently, and it was like...
Guest:It was that whole thing about my son being born.
Guest:It was just like, fuck, I can't do this anymore.
Marc:I remember you did material on that about having the kid and having it be like Coke.
Guest:Yeah, it said you're awake, you haven't slept, you smell like shit and piss.
Marc:What the hell do you think happened this time?
Marc:What brought you out?
Guest:What made me relapse?
Guest:I was up in Alaska.
Marc:Enough said.
Guest:Yeah, there you go.
Guest:Who's up there?
Guest:People witness protection.
Guest:Go to the bar and say, nice tooth.
Guest:It's another planet.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Even when I was drinking there, even the bartender went, I thought you were sober.
Guest:I am.
Guest:Can you keep a secret?
Guest:And I started drinking with a tiny little bottle of Jack Daniels, like the little ones you get in the airplane.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I thought, this is...
Guest:It's fine.
Guest:Yeah, it's a small bottle.
Guest:And a week later, I was hiding them.
Guest:You know, a big bottle of Jack Daniels and just like, fuck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It went quick.
Guest:And it was just being in Alaska.
Guest:What were you doing up there?
Guest:This movie called The Big White.
Guest:And just totally just thinking, what am I doing here?
Guest:This is crazy.
Guest:And then feeling kind of like isolated.
Guest:And all of a sudden went, well, there's one cure.
Guest:And all of a sudden you feel, I feel warm after this.
Guest:And then it was just so fucking quick.
Guest:Were you publicly drunk?
Guest:A couple of times, yeah.
Guest:A couple of times when people had to kind of go, maybe you should go home now.
Guest:You know, it's nice.
Guest:It's like, I think you said this once at a Coke dealer.
Guest:Actually said, that's enough.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sent me home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's when you know you're fucked up when your dealer's going.
Guest:I think you've got to stop right now.
Guest:At least for the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, they start talking that shit to you.
Guest:It's time to go.
Guest:Yeah, you've got to clean up your act.
Guest:And then it was three years of just, and denying, and the whole myth with alcoholics, that vodka doesn't smell until you sweat.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And then you just start acting out and acting out and acting out and acting out.
Guest:And then until eventually I was in Cannes at a fundraiser on stage, you know, just drunk off my ass and I looked up and I went,
Guest:Oh, that's a wall of cameras.
Guest:That's kind of cool.
Guest:At this point you're going, why don't you just take a shit on the stage and then people might notice.
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:And you're not really the kind of guy where they're like, ah, it's Robin.
Guest:Yeah, no, no, at that point they're going...
Guest:Oh, this isn't good.
Guest:Oh, Opie's doing crack.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Can't be.
Marc:And do you think it was something... You can really... I mean, I know drinking is just drinking and the mind says... No, no, I think it's trying to fill the hole and it's fear and you're kind of going, where am I doing in my career?
Guest:And you start thinking, you know what would be great at this point?
Guest:Rehab.
Guest:But it's the idea of...
Guest:Just bottom out.
Marc:Yeah, you felt a sort of emptiness and a fear of where you go next.
Guest:Where do you go next and what am I doing?
Guest:Rather than kind of go, okay, this will pass, you go, no, this will pass quicker.
Guest:It's so interesting to me that you have these experiences.
Guest:You're an international superstar.
Guest:The weird thing is people say, you have an Academy Award.
Guest:The Academy Award lasted about a week.
Guest:And then one week later, people go, hey, Mork.
Guest:So you're back.
Guest:And it's like,
Guest:All that stuff.
Guest:You still get that?
Guest:You don't get that anymore.
Guest:Oh, God, yeah.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Once in a while, just because it's on Nickelodeon or you get people kind of go, that's a memory bank.
Guest:A show like that is in people's Kishik memories.
Guest:Does that bother you?
Guest:No.
Guest:I go, it paid for the ranch.
Guest:It paid for the house.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was great experiences.
Guest:I got to meet wonderful people and it paid a lot of bills and kicked my career way in the ass.
Guest:Dom Herrera said, without that, where the fuck would you be?
Guest:I would go, you're right.
Guest:Did he say that recently?
Guest:No, that was, oh, fuck you.
Guest:But it's, you know, it was that weird fucking thing of, yeah, you have all this stuff, but the weird thing, the only sanity clause, that sounds like a much, but hey, I don't believe in a sanity clause.
Guest:The idea is going on stage is the one salvation.
Guest:Now, how long did you stay away from stand-up?
Guest:I mean, you never really... Not long.
Guest:I mean, it would come and go.
Guest:It became like after the 2002 tour came after 9-11.
Guest:It was literally... We were doing this Mark Twain Award in Washington, and it was like, I think, almost a month after 9-11, and people were kind of going... You could see that there was just like, almost like lifting a siege, and you went, oh, Jesus, man, it is good to get back out and do this shit, you know?
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I mean, I saw you at Stand Up New York a couple of times.
Marc:That's what I love going on there.
Marc:And it's a very small place.
Marc:We're at the Comedy Cellar.
Marc:And, like, I mean, your desire to connect and your style, like you were saying before, there's this weird thrill where the people, they see you get to take the stage.
Marc:But then the thrill wears off, and then you've got to find stuff.
Marc:And then, yeah, you've got to get in it.
Marc:And we were talking about that before at the Comedy Cellar, that the honesty...
Marc:where you're at your point in your life now, where you're at the age you're at now and you're having the experiences you're at now, I mean, it takes some balls to really deal with that stuff.
Guest:To deal with it, I mean, I'm not to the point where Pryor could talk about it in so fucking deep.
Guest:But that's your inspiration?
Guest:Yeah, my inspiration.
Guest:The people I see doing, I mean, you talk about it honestly, Chris Rock, Chris did the most amazing thing recently, he said, you know, it's weird.
Guest:All of a sudden, if you get a sexual, you know, if you cheat on your wife, everything is a felony first degree.
Guest:But that should be like, if you get a blowjob in Georgia from a stewardess, that should just be a misdemeanor.
Guest:If you fuck a best friend, that's a felony.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you go like, have you done this routine for your wife?
Guest:Not yet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's that balls about what can you talk about?
Guest:Isn't it funny?
Guest:The balls, it's not relative to transgressing any cultural taboos, but it's like, well, I don't know if she'll take that shit.
Guest:Those are the real butterflies.
Guest:They really are.
Guest:When you come home to that, you know.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Even if you've only been dating them two months.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:And you go, well, can she tolerate that shit?
Guest:And then you can't pull that thing.
Guest:It's like, it's my act.
Guest:It's not your act.
Guest:I was with you when that happened.
Guest:That was us.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That was me.
Guest:That thing when you look like you're going down on a girl, that's what you look like.
Guest:Fuck off.
Guest:And it's like, you know, that's the scariest part.
Guest:It's also people when you do jokes about famous people or anybody, and then you run into them.
Marc:Well, Sam never forgave me for something.
Marc:Serious?
Marc:Kind of.
Marc:I mean, I did this joke where I used as a descriptive, you know, like I mocked Adam Sandler fans.
Marc:And then I run into him at the improv one night and he's like, I hear you're talking about me.
Marc:And I'm like, yeah, I did on television.
Marc:You've got to get over it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's like, what's your problem?
Marc:And I'm like, dude, you're a cultural icon.
Marc:At some point, we can't.
Marc:You don't get immunity.
Marc:Well, I'm in no position.
Marc:It's not like I have any cachet.
Marc:I'm still able to make those kind of mistakes.
Marc:The liability for me is like, well, you're not in the group.
Marc:You will be excluded.
Marc:Or also that you'll never get in now, you fuck.
Guest:You would never get in.
Guest:Do you want in?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Do you want to be a member of a club that would have you as a member?
Guest:No.
Guest:It's a fucking frightening thing.
Guest:I mean, one time I was doing this thing, and it was a benign impression of Stallone, you know, as being monosyllabic.
Guest:And Billy Crystal leaned over and went, he's here.
Guest:Hi!
Guest:And then you've got to deal with it.
Guest:How did he deal with it?
Guest:He was funny.
Guest:He's not saying like what Bobcat said during the Vietnam War, he was teaching Jim to Swiss schoolgirls.
Guest:That, he was a little upset.
Marc:If you actually attack their character.
Guest:Yeah, if you attack their character and actually go after a real hardcore personal point, then they get like, I'll kill you.
Guest:How do you take it when people... It hurts, but then you realize, and you, what do you do for a living?
Guest:I make fun of people.
Guest:Good luck.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I guess you have to get Buddhist and say, you're there, dude.
Guest:Like you said, you're in the mix.
Guest:When you fuck up, you're in the mix.
Guest:Like a week ago.
Guest:I did this thing on Letterman, and I thought, this is pretty benign.
Guest:I just come back from Australia, and he said, how is Australia?
Guest:He said, no, Australians are like English rednecks.
Guest:Cut to, I land in L.A., and they said, the Prime Minister of Australia was offended by the remark.
Guest:He basically said, perhaps Mr. Williams should spend some time in Alabama before he calls someone a redneck, which triggered the governor of Alabama to call the Prime Minister of Australia and said,
Guest:You know, people in Alabama are decent, hardworking people.
Guest:In other words, we're not rednecks either.
Guest:Now he's campaigning against Australia to keep his seat.
Guest:No, he's a linguist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, you don't ever call us there.
Guest:G'day, now, what are you saying?
Guest:And it was just weird to go, oh, wow, I pissed off a prime minister.
Guest:That's this weird thing.
Guest:But then it was like, then I went on Australian radio going, I was talking linguistically.
Guest:If you combine an English accent and a good old boy, you get this.
Guest:If you go, hello, good to see you, and hey, how are you?
Guest:You get, hi, good eye, y'all.
Guest:That was the joke?
Guest:The joke was... I didn't even say that joke.
Guest:That was the joke I did.
Guest:That wasn't spin?
Guest:You were trying to... I was trying to spin it back so I don't land in Australia and get a cavity search.
Guest:Hi.
Guest:Roman, step back here.
Guest:I'm being fried.
Guest:We're putting on an oven mitt.
Marc:When I talked to... It's very coincidental, but I actually had Steve Pearl in my hotel room yesterday.
Guest:Fucking A, he said that.
Guest:He's been so wonderful to see him back here and so sane again.
Guest:And he would be funny as shit because he got so dark when he lived in L.A.
Guest:I know, and that's how I knew him.
Guest:That's when I met him.
Guest:You knew him in the dark, dark Steven.
Guest:Well, that's what's going on.
Guest:The anti-Steven.
Guest:And now he's still fucking hilariously funny, but it's like he's got a girlfriend and he's up here and he's away from the black hole.
Guest:Yeah, and the black hole in himself seems to have filled in a little bit.
Guest:Oh, big time.
Guest:He's happy.
Guest:He's chipper and it's like...
Guest:Sparky.
Guest:But he's still like, he's fucking, he does the same.
Guest:I'll tell you right now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he does all this, and he's like, you see him at the Throckmorton, and he's like, he kicks ass.
Guest:Is he killing?
Guest:Killing.
Marc:Well, that was the interesting thing, because like, you know, in the San Francisco, like, I get a lot of comedy nerds that listen to this show, and they're sort of an elite bunch, some of them.
Marc:That must be a weird group.
Marc:Well, they are weird.
Guest:Just this side of comic people.
Marc:Well, exactly, but they've sort of latched on.
Marc:I think it started with Mr. Show, with Bob and Dave, and there's a sort of intelligentsia element to it.
Guest:People who know I've found, and I also think people like finding young comics or finding, they find niche comics that they go, I found this guy.
Guest:No one knows about it.
Marc:Well, that's what it is.
Marc:There's a whole community around that.
Marc:Like you performed at the UCB, I think, a couple of times.
Marc:Oh, my favorite.
Marc:Yeah, and that's sort of like ground zero of that.
Guest:That's ground zero for weird, strange, like kicking it comedies.
Marc:Well, that's like the analogy I was trying to make and trying to talk to Pearl when I could talk to him.
Marc:When you were swimming upstream.
Marc:Being bombarded with the history of civilization in small fragments.
Marc:San Francisco, I guess in the late 70s and early 80s, when you guys were here...
Marc:really defined a type of comedy.
Marc:And I don't think people really talk about it that much.
Marc:And I think that you and Pearl were sort of at the center of what became a riff style.
Guest:There was a lot of people.
Guest:There was him and Pearl.
Guest:There was Paula Poundstone.
Guest:There was all these weird... A. Whitney Brown, or now he says the Whitney Brown.
Guest:There's all these... And Dana Carvey.
Guest:And a lot of...
Guest:Because it had weird clubs.
Guest:Bobby Slayton.
Guest:They're Jews, old Jews.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Jews and Chinese.
Guest:It's Godzilla versus... The Battle of the Ancient Cultures.
Guest:Give me the Mo.
Guest:I want the Mo.
Guest:Well, you've got to think the clubs kind of brought that out, like the Holy City Zoo, which is a weird kind of wine bar next to a hardcore rock and roll bar, or the other cafe located near... The streetcars are going by.
Guest:All of a sudden, you'd be doing a show and... Ding, ding!
Guest:And then you'd see the weird people getting off and...
Guest:And it was that, the other cafe, some cobs when it was down in the marina, weird clubs that kind of brought out weird styles.
Guest:And it seemed like the community in San Francisco sort of indulged your indulgence.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:You can't do it anywhere else.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I think you're right.
Guest:It was an eclectic mix.
Guest:And a loud, you know, like weird comedy like Freaky Ralph, who eventually set himself on fire.
Guest:To close?
Guest:No.
Guest:To end his life.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:To close.
Guest:Close.
Guest:Yeah, that's the ultimate closing.
Guest:But seriously, I'll be here until five minutes from now.
Guest:God, man, you're killing yourself.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:Oh, fuck.
Guest:Yeah, to close only a comic record.
Guest:To close.
Guest:How did you see the first and second show?
Guest:It's not an opener.
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:So the style that you like.
Guest:Mine was just based on the fact that I didn't use a mic.
Guest:Because if you're on mic, if I can go off mic, and also wading into these clubs is the only way to kind of, you know, wading.
Guest:If people started heckling, you just wading over into the audience and kind of go near their table or move away from them and use the other side of the room and fuck the loud people over here and the drunks at the bar.
Guest:So you're from the beginning.
Guest:And improvising, and just playing off a shit that was going on, or just trying to go, okay, coming in with some ideas, but not like, good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
Guest:One of the great, strange performers at that time was Jeremy Kramer.
Guest:There's an eclectic name that Jeremy would go on and just do loud, wonderful characters.
Guest:He was like the West Coast Gilbert Gottfried.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he would be like, loud!
Guest:Hi, everybody!
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would do, you know, weird kind of wonderful, strange characters that literally, if people would love him or drive people out of the room, there was no middle ground.
Marc:Well, there was some integrity to that at a certain point in time that if people left.
Guest:You know, when Gilbert would do the entire rock opera of Tommy as Jerry Lewis,
Guest:That's a ballsy move until he'd empty the room, and the only person left was Larry David.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's when you go, that's commitment.
Marc:Yeah, and I think that there's still something to be said for that.
Marc:You don't see people with that much balls anymore.
Marc:I think it does take a certain amount of balls to cut that type of territory on stage.
Guest:Cut that type of territory and realize, or...
Guest:like lenny schultz in the middle of one time this is the strangest name in comedy you know giant lenny steroid pumped up lenny on stage doing a children's showcase for a nickelodeon uh-huh and at one point he realizes this isn't going well then he pulls out a double-headed dildo how is this for your fucking kids and then starts playing playing turkey in the straw with a double-headed dildo and going oh man
Guest:That's comedy.
Guest:That's comedy.
Guest:Yeah, that's the real stuff.
Guest:That's the business, my boy.
Guest:Well, that's interesting, though.
Guest:So you come out of Juilliard doing it.
Guest:I left school.
Guest:I fell in love with this girl.
Guest:Did you finish?
Guest:No, I didn't finish.
Guest:They even wanted me to finish, and they kept saying, come back.
Guest:And I went, I fell in love with this girl, moved back here, couldn't find acting work, and one day went...
Guest:There's a weird comedy workshop.
Guest:What year are we talking?
Guest:Probably 76.
Guest:Yeah, three years ago.
Guest:Probably maybe even 75.
Guest:And just doing this comedy workshop in the basement of the intersection coffee house.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, they had a night of lesbian poetry and stand-up comedy, which is a great audience to begin with.
Guest:Sure, because you know they're going to like you just being a man.
Guest:A man, yeah.
Guest:There's going to be a lot of love there.
Guest:Big male penis violence.
Guest:But it was weird, and starting with that, and then this weird kind of comedy thing of a lot like the zoo had one night of comedy.
Guest:A lot of clubs at that time were kind of going, we'll try a night of comedy.
Guest:Whereas in the 80s, everything, every disco, every other club had a comedy night.
Marc:But I think that whole no mic thing really defines, you know, still that.
Marc:Because when I go off mic, the control you have of a room changes dramatically.
Marc:Totally.
Marc:People are forced to kind of go, what?
Marc:Yeah, they're like, take it in.
Guest:And so you were able to sort of like, you know.
Guest:But I know guys who do that, you know, who really, that's why when I do stand-up, I use a wireless mic.
Guest:I just, I don't, this is hard for me to go, okay, good evening, thanks.
Guest:And it seemed to me almost old school to go, hi, everybody, nice to be here.
Guest:Holding the mic.
Guest:Holding the mic.
Guest:And when I've had to go to clubs where I do, I kind of leave it in the stand and kind of come and go to it.
Guest:It's almost like, oh, come back.
Guest:Point of reference, come back.
Guest:But it was also the thing, I've got to move.
Guest:A moving target, literally.
Guest:And you still put it out there, man.
Guest:You've got to.
Guest:For me, and the reason when we go on at the Comedy Cellar, it's therapy.
Guest:It's a relief from that shit, like you said, of this weird thing of this celebrity and all that other crazy shit.
Guest:where you can go on stage and especially like you go on stage late and like you said with an audience it's kind of especially i don't know there's certain audiences want to go okay so it's something new right and they're a little beaten up if you go on late you know and it's they're beaten up and then they're going and then you know if you find something new it's new then it's new and also different or really honest or really like you said deep or just fucking crazy shit
Marc:But I think the personal truth becomes more daunting.
Guest:For me, it's a difficult thing to do.
Marc:It's like if you want to pontificate or take a soapbox, which I've done plenty of in my life, and I'm just at this point, and I'm a little younger than you, where it seems to me that the real risk, the one thing that all of us share is that existential fear, the panic of what does it really all fucking mean?
Marc:What do we do with this anger?
Marc:What do you do with the anger?
Guest:And what do you do beneath the anger is the fear.
Guest:Like you said, what's the fear?
Guest:And you talk about that, and you talk about it to a 20-something, and they're going, because they're like immune at that point.
Marc:Well, yeah, I do a bit about how I've gotten old enough to resent people for being young.
Marc:And I'll ask someone in the audience, how old are you?
Marc:And if they go like 22, I go, you know, fuck you.
Marc:You're 22.
Marc:You think you got life by the balls.
Marc:And I tell them, I say, you do.
Marc:You do have life by the balls.
Marc:But what you don't realize is that the cock of life is planted firmly in your ass.
Marc:And you're just helping it along.
Marc:And they don't really know what to do with that because there's no way they can – You can't fathom that.
Marc:Well, I do the podcast.
Marc:You know who can fathom it?
Marc:There's this – like I get emails from 14 to 18-year-old guys saying, you know, I really understand where you're at, the frustration, all this stuff.
Marc:And then when they get about 20, you know, 20 to 35, which is the prime demographic, I got nothing for them.
Marc:But, you know, 18 –
Marc:14 to 18-year-old kids, they understand the fear and the pain and everything else.
Marc:And then the cocky time comes.
Marc:And then when you get in your mid-30s, they're like, oh, now I get it.
Marc:So I've alienated the only profitable demographic.
Marc:I'm very clever like that.
Marc:You're basically clever.
Guest:18 to 25, nothing.
Guest:Fuck off.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's why they talk about Twitter to me.
Guest:I go, Twitter, why would I?
Guest:Twitter, the next step for me is stalker.
Guest:I'm having lunch, I know.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I might know the table near you.
Marc:Well, there's a website where they say, you know, where, you know, people are twittering so much that, you know, for criminals, they're like, well, he's not home.
Marc:He just told us he wasn't home.
Guest:And they talked about it on the news and went, great, even now you're giving them even more of a clue.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:Like, yeah, look, I'm having lunch.
Guest:Yes, so fucking A. We're at your house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thanks for the stuff.
Guest:Yeah, and your dog is not here.
Marc:I notice now with the last one, the weapons of self-destruction, is that what it was?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That you are taking more risks than you have before with your own life and yourself.
Guest:I am, but it's also that weird thing of still talking kind of in general terms versus hardcore specific terms, which is like that thing that you leave either foot there.
Guest:At one point I had a therapist go, are you comfortable talking about this?
Guest:I'm like...
Guest:Maybe, you know, it's that idea of, like I told you with Chris, he was talking about stuff, I went, wow, would that I had the balls, you know, but at the time I was in the middle of a divorce, you're going, not good.
Guest:Initially, I was going to call the tour, remember the alimony, and they went, maybe not.
Guest:Not until we get the paper signed.
Guest:You're not paying alimony, number one.
Guest:Number two, not profitable.
Guest:The idea of... Well, that's bitter.
Guest:There's a line where... Yeah, I mean, someone said recently that they saw John Cleese, who was going through this divorce, and he was on stage, and he was so angry that the audience at one point was like, stop, you know.
Guest:Right, because bitterness is not, I tried to sell it for a long time, and it's really just amplified self-pity.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:And it reads that way.
Guest:And people kind of go, I get it, but move on.
Guest:Right, that's the weird thing about people.
Guest:If you can talk, it's that old acting thing.
Guest:The more personal you make it, the more specific you make it, the more people relate to you.
Guest:Because they'll go, as personal as you think it is, there's a lot of people going, I feel that.
Guest:Well, that's where you get them, but where to get that in comedy is a little trickier.
Guest:Yeah, because you walk over that line and going, I feel this and I want to burn, and you go, no, no, we don't feel that.
Guest:Right, right, exactly.
Marc:Or they go, don't share that part.
Marc:Well, then you have to accept that idea that where either they laugh with you or they laugh at you.
Marc:At some point, you have to be comfortable if they're laughing at you.
Guest:You're comfortable with either one laughing at you.
Guest:Can you tolerate that?
Guest:And that's maybe sometimes where I go,
Guest:You know, the insecure part goes, no, no.
Guest:What are you afraid will happen?
Guest:I guess it's that fear of you'll recognize that, you know, as you know, how insecure are we really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How desperately insecure that made us do this for a living?
Marc:Well, I just, I went to your IMDB page, and over the 25 years of appearance changes, I think that they can.
Marc:I'm going, why the beard?
Guest:You have a beard, you have a beard, you're fat, you're thin, you're blonde hair, you're bald.
Guest:It's that weird thing.
Guest:But those are a lot of times for characters, but it's the idea of at what level of acceptance, like you said.
Guest:And look what we do for a living in terms of stand-up.
Guest:You get to do stuff that if you did it just on the street, people go,
Guest:Batman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He talked about his penis to me openly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you're going, but you're doing it in a club, all of a sudden there's license to thrill, that old thing, you can do this stuff.
Guest:But, like you said, the line, stepping over and back over the line of like, what are you going to find out?
Guest:You're going to find out that, you know, you're this weird, insecure guy who does this and looks, and looking like Lenny Bruce said, for love.
Guest:Going...
Guest:Do you love me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Temporarily?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And can you put that at risk going, I don't care if you love me.
Guest:I've got to say this shit.
Guest:And that's why I guess sometimes you go, is that an artist?
Guest:Or is that a sociopath?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or a psychopath?
Guest:Well, let's not make labels.
Guest:Let's not call him.
Guest:I'm not going to label him.
Guest:In fact, he stabbed that family.
Guest:He's a genius.
Guest:He's a genius.
Guest:He's a good man.
Guest:What's his name?
Marc:Buddy Hitler.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's the Norman Mailer School.
Marc:He can write that guy.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:God bless him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you find that, do you really feel like you, like when you grew up, because like my relationship with my parents sort of defined, you know, who I am.
Marc:Mine too.
Marc:But like, were your parents absent?
Guest:No.
Guest:My father, when I was young, he was off, he was a vice president of Lincoln Mercury, so like a sales division.
Guest:So he was all over the Midwest.
Guest:He'd come back and I know he'd come back because all of a sudden there'd be like this new corgi toy.
Guest:He'd be like, I brought you back a little, like a thing.
Guest:It was like,
Guest:Cool.
Guest:You were only child?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I have two half-brothers.
Guest:One I found out later on.
Guest:For a long time, they told me he was my cousin.
Guest:It's a bit like Nicholson.
Guest:Lauren's your cousin.
Guest:Then when I got to be 12, I went, no, actually, he's your half-brother.
Guest:I felt like Nicholson should walk in.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:Is it your brother or your cousin?
Guest:And then, you know, my mother is a very, very really funny terminal optimist.
Guest:Everything is wonderful, beautiful.
Guest:My father is, you know, the hardcore pessimist, you know.
Guest:I asked when I told him I wanted to be an actor, he said, great, have a backup profession like welding.
Guest:But it was like, between the two of them, I got this weird kind of, not cynical, but hyper-realism and this hyper-optimism of my mother of like, everything is rainbows and beauty.
Guest:And a bit like Tom Cruise, all you need is vitamins and exercise.
Guest:Then you'll be fine right even when I'm addicted to coke now.
Guest:We can get you through that that's vitamins yeah vitamin C yeah Colombian calcium But it was like between the two of them you get this weird desire to connect with her using kind of comedy and entertainment and you know and my father about you know look at the world realistically be hardcore, you know This is that point.
Guest:He's going to shit sometime
Guest:I guess it was this old, I don't know who said this years ago.
Guest:Your mother knows how to push your buttons because she installed them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I used to have this pillow that my mother saw that said, if it's not one thing, it's your mother.
Guest:And she was, what does that mean?
Guest:I went, I don't know, Mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What do you want it to mean?
Guest:See, them or the wife.
Guest:Someone's going to, you know.
Guest:Someone's going to get like, oh, fuck.
Marc:So how, because it seems like you're back on the scene, you know, doing stand-up regularly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you've got the big, how do you deal with the bitterness of your peers and what they direct at you?
Marc:Because, you know, things are said in the community.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, a lot of it's old school and a lot of it's true from the way past.
Guest:But, you know, I don't hang out in the community.
Guest:I mean, the community up here is pretty mild compared to down there.
Guest:i mean in new york i feel safe la i get kind of like what about the whole like you know i mean i i'd be remiss if i didn't address it because it's something that i i want to talk to you about and and it's something i hear all the time and i think it's demeaning this whole stealing issue i think in the old days it was if you hang out in comedy clubs when i was doing almost 24 7 you you hear things and then if you're improvising you all of a sudden you're repeating going oh shit
Guest:Right, that's the way your brain works.
Guest:My brain was working that way.
Guest:And then I literally had to go through a period where I'm not going to hang out anymore.
Guest:I can't because I don't want to get into that thing.
Guest:And I was also like the bank of comedy.
Guest:I went, oh, shit, here you go.
Guest:Here's money.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I didn't know that.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:Is that how you dealt with it?
Guest:I just paid shitloads of cash.
Guest:I was just like, here you go.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:And then after a while, I went, I bought that line already.
Guest:I saw it.
Guest:And then they have to pay again.
Guest:I went, oh, fuck, I'm sorry.
Guest:So just guys who would come up to you and say... Well, say, you know, I do that.
Guest:And I would go, but so does everybody.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like there's other stuff that's common material.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And there's other things that you go, fuck, you're right.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I heard that.
Guest:And then it was like, okay.
Guest:And then I went, I can't hang out in here anymore.
Guest:And then it took literally going...
Guest:When I go here to Throckmorton, I'll see friends and I can hang out like with Overton.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Or you see Steven and all these other guys and it's like, oh, cool, I'm okay.
Guest:That's why it's kind of like living up here, I don't worry about it.
Guest:In New York, I can go on and hang up upstairs in the restaurant and then go on stage.
Guest:I don't want to sit down and watch comics all the time.
Guest:But, you know, in the old days, yeah, there was that whole thing about just going from club to club to club.
Guest:That's one of my, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There were a lot of people that was like, you would say like, there were styles and you're like, but he's doing him.
Guest:I go...
Guest:Yeah, it's Anna Berthardt's doing Taylor Negron.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You know, you go like at that point, you're going, look at the blending.
Guest:Well, behind every genius, there's a guy going, he stole my soul.
Guest:Fucking hell.
Guest:But it's that whole thing of what's the bitterness versus do you want to hang out?
Guest:Do you engage in it?
Guest:You say, what's the truth of it?
Guest:Yeah, I know the truth of the old days, but now it's like,
Guest:I don't hang, so I don't know.
Marc:Well, the weirdest thing is that there's this idea that when you have show business, which is just a community of bitter people aspiring to something, and they're children because what they're aspiring to is ridiculous.
Marc:I mean, you've had a time.
Marc:You've had a tremendous career for a lot of reasons.
Marc:But there's a lot of people that go to Hollywood.
Marc:I used to do a line where I said it took me years to realize Hollywood wasn't my parents.
Marc:Wow, looking for approval.
Marc:Well, yeah, just like, I'm here.
Marc:Where's my trailer?
Marc:And I think that the bitterness that when people dismiss somebody who's had a career as big and huge as yours, that the idea that if he didn't take that one joke, he wouldn't be Robin Williams.
Marc:I mean, it's ridiculous.
Guest:I mean, even you look at someone like Pryor, who literally did Cosby for the first two years of his life.
Marc:Before the auteur theory of comedy happened in the late 50s, where comics actually owned their point of view, I mean, it was what people did.
Marc:I mean, Jerry, you know, the Warspelt guys were like, are you doing that bit about the uncle tonight?
Marc:Can I do it?
Marc:All right.
Guest:And it was interchangeable.
Guest:It's also the idea of, you know, common ground when you say, when there's certain fucking subjects, you go, you talk about, are you talking about the president?
Guest:Fuck, I talk about the president.
Guest:Well, yeah, but there's a difference between like... But a joke joke, a joke joke, you can get why it's a crafted thing going, if someone does a joke joke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then there's also jokes that are so fucking public domain.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Public domain just happens.
Guest:How can everyone not?
Guest:There's 10,000 comedians.
Guest:We're all drawing from the same reality pool.
Guest:Yeah, you go like, okay, you got the Olympic joke.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:You got to stop masturbating.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because I'm trying to examine you.
Guest:It's like these things.
Guest:But then the truly unique guys don't give a fuck.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:They were just like, well, I won't do it anymore.
Guest:But no one ever accused Andy Kaufman because he was so strange.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He's a genius.
Guest:Yeah, fucking A. Did you know him well?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I was talking to someone the other day.
Guest:I only had one conversation with Andy where he wasn't talking to me as a character.
Guest:And what was that like?
Guest:Were you concerned?
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:He just went, hi, Robin.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:I went, good, Andy.
Guest:How are you?
Guest:Really good.
Guest:I'm just here buying something.
Guest:It was at some health food store.
Guest:And then by the end of the conversation, slowly but surely, he went back to this.
Guest:And I went, okay, I'll see you.
Guest:Take care.
Guest:And that was that?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What were some of the most powerful moments for you, either in movies or just with people?
Marc:I mean, you've worked with everybody.
Marc:Where you were like, you know, that's who this guy is.
Marc:I never, you know, like De Niro or Pacino or, you know, or Pryor or any of those.
Guest:There's a great moment with De Niro.
Guest:We're shooting Awakenings and we're, you know, we're doing a scene where I'm taking him to the Bronx.
Guest:He's on the medication and we're taking him in a car in the Bronx for the first time out of the hospital.
Guest:We do one take and I'm driving around for another setup.
Guest:And all of a sudden this old black wino sees him in the front seat.
Guest:and yells out, hey, Bobby, you still like black pussy?
Guest:And then all of a sudden we go, rolling.
Guest:And he's just like, he's laughing so hard that it's just like, oh my God.
Guest:My other favorite moment is with Jeff Bridges, we're shooting a scene and something screws up and he says to me, he said, it's okay, it's a gift.
Guest:If something screws up, it's like the idea that it's a gift, don't be afraid of it.
Guest:It's like that idea of
Guest:every time when you're making a movie that forces you to make something special where you didn't plan to get it real yeah so real but also you know you're in that moment and you're forced to deal with it and deal with it together with the other actor and with him it was a blast because you're like you know you're playing off of someone who's so good that's why when he won finally it's like dude you know oh yeah I mean it's high time he deserved it so many other times oh big time you know he's one of those guys who's just like cranking away doing great work and finally went no take anything off the top shelf
Guest:yeah you know the bottom line for me with comics and like you said about the bitterness or whatever you just realize it's the world and you also start to realize i know it's out there but i still enjoy doing this i still enjoy performing and you know say what you say it's all right does it still does it kind of sting sometimes fuck yeah but it's also i still love doing this i'm not going to stop because all of a sudden you're going you fucking hack i went
Guest:I may be, but I love doing it.
Guest:I like, and occasionally I'll find something and I'll go, I think it's good.
Guest:And I'm getting more, like when you see you, like you said, you go through your bitter phase and you come out the other side and you go, I just want to talk about this shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The thing is, is like about all that, you know, how people define comics and their bitterness, the consistency that you have to light up a fucking room is
Guest:Just to go on and just to try to light it up.
Guest:And people are just sitting there waiting.
Guest:When's Robin going to open it up?
Marc:And then you always delivered.
Marc:Is that something you... Well, for me, it's a fun thing to say.
Guest:Open it up is the idea.
Guest:That's the operative word to say.
Guest:If that's what you're looking for, to go to find that moment where you can, like you get it.
Guest:And then when you don't get to open up, it's a bit like, okay, didn't get that moment tonight, but maybe you will.
Guest:It's like open field running for a running back.
Guest:All of a sudden, there's the whole...
Guest:They broke through And you found it I've seen you do that too where you look and you got an idea I think it's the idea of why do we do it because it's there, but it's also that's still that same desire That started off going to love me, but now it's into something.
Guest:I'm okay I must still do it the one thing I'm trying to get rid of is it starts with love me and then I'm like do you still love me now I?
Guest:Well, I love you did the thing about, you said the thing about old Jesus, if he'd lived.
Guest:Oh, yeah, bitter Jesus.
Guest:Bitter Jesus in the water up to his ankles.
Guest:I used to be able to walk.
Guest:But it's like an amazing gift that I don't really, you know, like when people talk about stand-up, like I don't know where it comes from.
Guest:I don't know where the jokes come from.
Guest:I don't know how I stand up there and get the laughs.
Guest:Yeah, but you know what?
Guest:It's a weird thing of when it comes from that place you don't know.
Guest:When you find a new thing, isn't it a bit like, it's like a high and like an endorphin what the fuck moment?
Guest:Well, yeah, I think that I do what you do to some degree, is that a lot of times I just have ideas and I'll start talking about them on stage and hope something's delivered.
Marc:You're literally cornering yourself in a situation in front of people that you have to be funny to get out of this.
Guest:Yeah, and you're saying, okay, I'm going to go on stage and I'm going to...
Guest:I'm going to find it because you're going to help me find this.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:If I feel comfortable.
Guest:And you're going to empower me to break through.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if it's an intelligent audience, you're going to help me.
Guest:And if you're a drunken late night fucking bridge and tunnel crowd, I'm going to beat my brains out and you're going to end up doing a dick joke.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:But it's the idea of you're hoping for that moment of you're going to help me through this.
Guest:And that's the moment.
Guest:And then you just hope like, I hope I can repeat that moment.
Guest:I'm going to put that magic in the bottle.
Guest:How the fuck do I do that again?
Guest:I'll be back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can find myself.
Guest:So are you happy?
Guest:Are you all right?
Guest:Yeah, really.
Guest:Divorce done?
Guest:Done.
Guest:And dealt with, I mean, I think as much love as we can do with that situation.
Guest:And being around her, being around my kids is really much more like, I love you guys.
Guest:I live separately, but I'm okay.
Guest:How old are your kids?
Guest:28 now, 21 almost, and 18.
Guest:So they're old enough to understand.
Guest:Oh, way, way old enough.
Guest:And also to know that they're going, you seem better.
Guest:I mean, like they seem, because I'm not like, hey, you know.
Guest:I mean, it's difficult for them, but they're all like, they've dealt with it.
Guest:I used to do a bit where I'd say, you know, I just, I never recovered from my parents' divorce.
Guest:I was 35.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:It must be very hard because of the whole idea of the unit.
Guest:The unit is now two separate units.
Guest:But if there's not hostility and it's done, it's done.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, that is pretty amazing on that level.
Guest:And you have someone new in your life.
Guest:Yeah, a wonderful person and living here in this place.
Guest:And I'm pretty much like, okay, it's a different game.
Guest:The idea of going back out on the road right away?
Guest:No, I'm all right right now.
Guest:How's the heart?
Guest:The heart's good.
Guest:The new valve, the cow valve, which sounds like a Chris Walken routine.
Guest:More cow valves, but it's like it's working.
Guest:And as someone said, I was talking to somebody saying, do you realize that you've had so many second chances with, you know, number one, the alcoholism coming out of that, and then the heart surgery and divorce and all these different things going, there's a lot to talk about, my friend.
Guest:And you come out the other side going, what's to be angry about?
Guest:You're alive, fucker.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I heard you talk about it on Kimmel's show or something.
Marc:Because I noticed it with Letterman, too, is that after his surgery, the vulnerability.
Guest:Oh, he leaned over to me at one point.
Guest:Who, Kimmel?
Guest:No, Letterman leaned over and said, did you find yourself getting really emotional after this surgery?
Guest:And I started going, yeah.
Guest:And he said, we're back.
Guest:And I went, oh, fuck, I'm not going to break down.
Guest:I'm not going to pour a ball over Walters.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is that thing you get more emotional because literally they've cracked the armor.
Guest:You know, you've all of a sudden, you know, guys are like, fuck you, man, I'm armored up.
Guest:And they seal you open and it's like literally you are, you know, you have this scar here.
Guest:They opened your ass up and literally to the world went inside, fixed the box and then sealed you back up again and said, you're back.
Marc:It's wild that that box is really is connected to the, that the heart is really the heart.
Marc:Huge.
Guest:And to that, and how men, I mean, I don't know if women protect it as much, because they have the fun pillows, but the idea of guys will be like, you know, you'll see a guy toughen up like that, you know, why would you like that?
Guest:The typical body language of when guys get tense is like, yeah, you can't fuck with me, they suddenly tighten up here and tighten up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hackles on the neck.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then when they crack that open, did it stay with you?
Guest:I mean, you are conscious of it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're very conscious because there's wires and shit.
Guest:And you're literally like, you're so vulnerable in a weird way.
Guest:And the drugs they give you are so powerful that you wake up going, I went, where am I?
Guest:Cleveland.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Heart surgery.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The drug they gave me for the surgery was the drug that Michael was using to sleep on.
Guest:Michael Jackson was taking propofol basically for sleeping, and one doctor described this.
Guest:He said it's like taking propofol for sleep disorder is like doing chemotherapy because you're tired of shaving your head.
Guest:It is so fucking insanely powerful drug that it's designed for surgery.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the fact that somebody was administering to this, even though it was a doctor, said you're administering basically the most powerful anesthesia there is.
Marc:Now, did you, like before the heart surgery, were you somebody that was hung up on that?
Marc:The mortality element?
Guest:No.
Guest:Literally, I went, they found it.
Guest:I didn't go in going, you do this, what are the odds?
Guest:I knew with the doctor I picked that the odds are really great.
Guest:He'd done 4,000 surgeries.
Guest:All of them have gone well.
Guest:I didn't know the after surgeries, but the idea that...
Guest:The idea of dying under the knife with a valve replacement is really small.
Guest:But there you go, is it a possibility?
Guest:Everybody around me was like, oh God.
Guest:Once you make the choice, you've gone like, I'm in.
Guest:This is going to be better because right now I'm flapping in the wind.
Guest:And the idea of, if you didn't have the surgery, then you really are playing dice.
Marc:So, before you had the heart problem, I mean, you don't seem to be someone who's morbidly fascinated or hung up on death.
Guest:No, I mean, it's weird.
Guest:I mean, when I was drinking, there was only one time, even for a moment, where I thought, oh, fuck life.
Guest:And then even my conscious brain went...
Guest:Did you honestly just say, fuck life?
Guest:You know, you have a pretty good life as it is right now.
Guest:Have you noticed the two houses?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Have you noticed the girlfriend?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Have you noticed that things are pretty good even though you may not be working right now?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Okay, let's put the suicide over here on discussable.
Guest:Let's leave that over here in the discussion area.
Guest:We'll talk about that.
Guest:First of all, you don't have the balls to do it.
Guest:I'm not going to say it out loud.
Guest:I mean, have you thought about buying a gun?
Guest:No.
Guest:What were you going to do?
Guest:Like cut your wrist with a water pick?
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:So that's erosion.
Guest:What are you thinking about that?
Guest:So can I put this over here in the what the fuck category?
Guest:Yes, let's put that over here in what the fuck.
Guest:Because can I ask you what you're doing right now?
Guest:You're sitting naked in a hotel room with a bottle of Jack Daniels?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Is this maybe influencing your decision?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Possibly.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:We're going to put that over here.
Guest:And tomorrow morning.
Guest:And who's that in the bed there?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, don't discuss this with her because she may tweet it.
Guest:Okay?
Guest:This may not be good.
Guest:Let's put that over here in the what the fuck category.
Guest:We're going to put that over here.
Guest:Possibly for therapy.
Guest:If you want to talk about that in therapy.
Guest:Or maybe a podcast two years from now.
Guest:You want to talk about it in a podcast?
Guest:No.
Guest:I feel safe.
Guest:Are you talking about it in a podcast?
Guest:I know.
Guest:Who is this?
Guest:It's your conscience, asshole.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So have you ever thought about it since then?
Guest:No.
Guest:During the surgery, were you thinking about death?
Guest:No.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because you just were thinking everything's going to be fine.
Guest:Was that your mother talking?
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:She was a Christian scientist who had plastic surgery.
Wow.
Guest:Is that a mixed message?
Guest:Yeah, that is.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:We're going to go back to the podcast now because Mark's sitting here.
Guest:We're talking now.
Guest:I know it feels like golf commentary, but look, Tiger's back.
Guest:Tiger's playing.
Guest:Tiger's doing well.
Guest:I was hoping that some of the tweets would have golf metaphors like choke up rather than choke or like I'm going to hold you down and putt from the rough.
Guest:No, he didn't say that.
Guest:It's all good.
Guest:We're back.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:That was wonderful.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:It's a nice interval.
Guest:A nice interval.
Guest:Discussions of death.
Guest:It's very freeing.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Yeah, but I guess it's a little, you know, you've had all this stuff and there really is a certain degree of like, it doesn't matter.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:It just doesn't matter.
Guest:That's kind of the freedom, the ultimate freedom of letting go in a weird way.
Guest:Like when you talked about all this stuff, the shit that they say about you.
Guest:I know it's out there, and it used to be it would immobilize me.
Guest:It would hurt your feelings.
Guest:Oh, it hurts everything.
Guest:You're just going to go, well, I shouldn't perform.
Guest:No, you love performing.
Guest:Go out and perform.
Guest:People will say good things.
Guest:People will say bad things.
Guest:It's the nature of the world.
Guest:It's like Tina Fey once said, if you're ever feeling really good about yourself, there's this thing called the Internet.
Guest:Now, at this point in your life,
Guest:going on stage, being around people you have a good time with, and seeing people like Pearl, seeing people like Overton, and hanging out with friends, and you go, oh God, and hanging with you even at the Comedy Cellar, going upstairs and just riffing, that's worth it to me more than worrying about, oh, how am I doing?
Guest:I got the gig.
Guest:I remember one night sitting with Rodney Dangerfield, and he was, I think he was doing Blow, but he was going, I'm sweating.
Guest:I don't know why I'm sweating.
Guest:I own the club.
Guest:You know, it's weird.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:And he said, Robin, when you look in the mirror, how can you say you look normal?
Guest:And at that point, he had like a weird kind of afro, kind of a jufro thing going on.
Guest:Rodney, I don't know.
Guest:Don't tell me it's weird.
Guest:Joe says I'm a celebrity.
Guest:My dog's looking at me, and Joe answers it because you're a celebrity, Rodney.
Guest:But it's that weird thing of you got the gig at this point.
Guest:I mean, all that other stuff is like... And you live like a person up here.
Guest:You live like up here because there's no...
Marc:Well, there's this idea that celebrities... I mean, there is a rarefied air to it because you guys can't hang out with everybody.
Guest:But up here, up and living in Marin, which is kind of like north of San Francisco, is like the idea... I mean, if there's a paparazzi here, there's one.
Guest:And I don't know where he is, and he's probably wandering around.
Guest:But it's not ostentatious.
Guest:It's comfortable.
Guest:It's comfortable.
Guest:I mean, that's basically life right now.
Guest:It's the idea of this is it.
Guest:I don't need to live...
Guest:I can't.
Guest:I mean, I don't do well in L.A.
Guest:if I was living in a gated community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, even though this is down a little hill.
Guest:But all these people, they've got neighbors and they've got kids and they run around.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:It's like when you go to New York.
Guest:You know, the moment you walk on the streets in New York, you get good, you get bad.
Guest:Hey, you suck.
Guest:I love you.
Guest:Hey, fuck off.
Guest:You know, I ain't opening the door for you.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:You know, that's it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Where do you live now?
Marc:Yeah, me?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I live up in Highland Park.
Marc:I live in a small two-bedroom cabin-like house overlooking the barrio of East L.A.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:And it depends how I want people to experience the ride over.
Marc:If I want them to experience Juarez, I say, come down, York.
Marc:Ha, ha, ha.
Marc:If I want them to experience this, the upper middle class.
Guest:That's for me.
Guest:It was like when I come to L.A.
Guest:I had a friend who said, you know, you don't know L.A.
Guest:except for Beverly Hills.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of a sudden you go down lower Melrose and you get into this other area.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Fucking A, dude.
Guest:It's all there.
Guest:That's where I found this bike shop.
Guest:I went, this is my shop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What is that about the bike thing?
Guest:You spend how much time you spend in France a year?
Guest:I haven't been there since Lance quit, so it's been a while, and since they trashed Floyd, so I haven't been back.
Guest:Oh, you don't have a house over there or anything?
Guest:No, never.
Guest:You're not doing the Belzer?
Guest:No, the Belzer.
Guest:He's out there.
Guest:That's a weird thing.
Guest:To live in France, I don't think I could.
Guest:I like visiting there.
Guest:It's Belzer, R. Crumb, and Johnny Depp.
Guest:That's the expatriate community over there.
Guest:That's a great my dinner with.
Guest:Yeah, I'll say.
Guest:Fuckin' A.
Guest:Well, you know, I thank you for the time.
Guest:I'm glad you're feeling well.
Guest:Me too, boss, and thanks for coming here.
Guest:Thanks for making it easier than having to, you know.
Guest:Where are you going?
Guest:There's a hotel in the city.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Mr. Mann, yes, we are here.
Guest:Mr. Morgan, I love it for you.
Marc:Come on down.
Marc:That's what I thought.
Marc:Like, you know, thank God this is organized.
Marc:I didn't want to have like a, you know, King of Comedy moment where I'm in your house.
Marc:He's touching everything.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Rest in peace, Robin Williams.
Marc:You are missed.
Marc:And thank you, Dave Itzkoff, for talking earlier.
Marc:And thank you for writing the book.
Marc:And no music today.
Marc:It's okay to just sit with this.
Guest:Boomer lives!
you