Episode 966 - Sandy Hackett
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck a crats?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Marin.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:Well, we had a couple hours there where there was a little bit of relief.
Marc:I don't think that we were expecting to be relieved entirely because he's still alive.
Marc:But I do think that...
Marc:There was at least a little relief.
Marc:I don't know what we would have felt like, and I'm obviously speaking to us, not to them.
Marc:If you're one of them, just bear with me or move on.
Marc:Move on through.
Marc:Just pass them by, you are.
Marc:Take a look and then keep moving.
Marc:But I don't know.
Marc:Heading into this show that I have on Saturday night here in New York at the Beacon, I was really kind of nervous because I thought, well, if we...
Marc:If the House doesn't flip, everybody's going to be kind of paralyzed and hopeless, more so than every other day during this administration.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Thank you for voting, for getting out there, for doing that.
Marc:And it was relieving.
Marc:When I woke up yesterday morning, I was relieved.
Marc:And about five hours later, Sessions is fired.
Marc:And then there goes that relief.
Marc:This president is such a fucking...
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I could have come up with something more clever, but I did not do it in that moment.
Marc:What I'm saying was we had that moment where we all felt good.
Marc:I'm not saying we felt great, but we felt a little bit of relief, a little portal of hope.
Marc:Opened up.
Marc:And it's still open, but then Sessions quits or is pushed out or is fired.
Marc:So you get this arc.
Marc:You're Wednesday morning.
Marc:You're like, oh, yeah.
Marc:Thank God that hell.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:Fuck.
Marc:Now we're back in it.
Marc:Game on.
Marc:So I don't mean to sound chipper, but I'm not going to fucking, I'm not going down into the trenches of self.
Marc:I'm not going to do it.
Marc:We knew this was coming.
Marc:This is what's happening.
Marc:This is the fight.
Marc:We got to keep fighting.
Marc:So that's that.
Marc:This is just what it is.
Marc:It's America's turn for authoritarianism.
Marc:We can push back because our system is not completely crumbled.
Marc:Anyways.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Enough of that.
Marc:Congratulations.
Marc:Thank you for voting.
Marc:Got a lovely email here from Amber.
Marc:Somebody discomfort over regret subject line.
Marc:Look, I.
Marc:am the person who needs deadlines so of course i didn't vote ahead and i moved so there's the inconvenience of the provisional ballot and i have a nagging feeling my vote is lost in a sea of red in my state and yeah i had small kids to get to school and woke up today with a head cold and i worked 12 hours on my feet and drove for two hours but i fucking voted i couldn't have your voice in my head for the next couple of years
Marc:I've listened to episodes 900 through 980 of WTF in the last month, and you've been pleading with us to rock the vote almost every episode.
Marc:Just wanted to say you made a difference today.
Marc:I made it to the polls 10 minutes before they closed.
Marc:I chose temporary discomfort over regret.
Marc:I won't forget the lesson.
Marc:Thank you for everything you do.
Marc:Amber, then she sent another email because obviously she was thinking about it.
Marc:Correction episodes 900 through 965.
Marc:For those of you who were paying attention, she did not listen to 900 through 980.
Marc:It was 900 through 965.
Marc:Thank God we got that corrected.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Sessions was fired, but you know, it's Amber, we're all relieved that you cleared that up with the second email.
Marc:Good for you for voting.
Marc:Good for everybody for voting.
Marc:Feels good, doesn't it?
Marc:It's not even that hard, is it?
Marc:You do it by mail.
Marc:You can even take some time and do your research and not be stuck there going like, oh, fuck, what is, yes or no, what is this?
Marc:No, I got to read it?
Marc:Yeah, you can take the time, parse it out, think about it, ask questions of people that know what they're talking about, have it explained to you.
Marc:However you do it, it's nice to know what you're voting for.
Marc:And I wasn't always that guy.
Marc:I was just a guy who was like, go vote for what you feel is good.
Marc:But that goes, you know, that's what happens on both sides.
Marc:And we're both guilty of that sometimes.
Marc:But God damn it.
Marc:We made a difference the other day.
Marc:But the fight between the House and Donald Trump for the next two years is going to be a doozy.
Marc:But that aside, did I even mention who's on the show today?
Marc:Maybe I should do that.
Marc:Sandy Hackett is on the show today.
Marc:Who is Sandy Hackett, you ask?
Marc:Sandy Hackett is a comedian and entertainer.
Marc:He's Buddy Hackett's son.
Marc:I'll explain what compelled me.
Marc:But he's an entertainer.
Marc:He's got a Rat Pack show.
Marc:He's a Vegas guy.
Marc:But Buddy Hackett is very important to me.
Marc:But I didn't tell you about this, really.
Marc:I don't think I told you about it at all.
Marc:But I went up to Boston for two days because I got a little part in a movie called Wonderland, which is a Mark Wahlberg movie.
Marc:directed by Pete Berg.
Marc:For those of you who don't know, maybe I've mentioned it before, many years ago when I was living in L.A.
Marc:back in the late 80s, for about a month or so, I lived with Pete Berg and Steve Brill because I was living with Steve Brill, my friend from college, and we were writing together.
Marc:Then his buddy, Pete Berg, wanted to move in, so they moved me to the couch and then made me very uncomfortable for a couple months until I moved down the hall, and then that got awkward.
Marc:Long story, alcohol.
Marc:a little inappropriate.
Marc:And then I moved to the comedy store.
Marc:So I got cast in this, legit.
Marc:And I went up to Boston.
Marc:It was me and Mark Wahlberg.
Marc:I did not call him Marky Mark, did I?
Marc:That was my biggest fear, to be honest with you.
Marc:I mean, for some reason, that just doesn't go away.
Marc:That sticks, that's like a fucking brain worm.
Marc:That just lodges in there, Marky Mark.
Marc:And when I was talking about doing the movie,
Marc:I was saying to people, like, I'm doing this movie with Marky Mark, and they were like, don't call him that.
Marc:And I'm like, that's not good?
Marc:You can't do that?
Marc:But I mean, I didn't want to, obviously, but it sort of stuck in my head.
Marc:So it was me, Wahlberg, and Winston Duke.
Marc:The dude who lived in the mountain in Black Panther had a scene together.
Marc:It went well.
Marc:It's a cop movie.
Marc:It's a Boston movie.
Marc:I play a sort of aggravated, neurotic, angry crime reporter.
Marc:Yeah, another stretch for me.
Marc:Another difficult role.
Marc:So anyway, it went well.
Marc:And I'll tell you more about it later.
Marc:I'll let you know when it comes out.
Marc:I believe it's a Netflix movie.
Marc:But it was fun, though, because Steve Brill actually flew out.
Marc:Steve Brill, who just directed Adam Sandler's latest comedy special, which is very touching.
Marc:And he's an old friend of mine, old friend of Pete's.
Marc:We thought it'd be a nice, fun reunion.
Marc:So Steve flew out and we all dinner together.
Marc:And the two of them put on jumpsuits and we're pretending to work on the boat across from the boat that I live on.
Marc:That's all I can tell you, I think, legally.
Marc:And we had a little scene.
Marc:So there's a little reunion that only means something to us three, if it even makes the film.
Marc:But that's why Steve wanted to fly out.
Marc:And Pete was like, this is going to be hilarious now.
Marc:So I did a scene with the two guys who used to make me very uncomfortable and comedically, in a good natured way, terrorized me back in the late 80s on a couch when I was trying to sleep.
Marc:We're doing it again in a film.
Marc:Man, I hope I didn't give away the whole movie.
Marc:That's not the whole movie dimension that the work has to continue.
Marc:OK, you know, the one thing that this administration has done, it seems to have mobilized people who were not necessarily apathetic, but disengaged.
Marc:It seems like just by looking at them numbers, a lot of people are engaged.
Marc:We've got to stay engaged.
Marc:So Sandy Hackett, I believe, emailed me and he's an entertainer.
Marc:But but I didn't know him.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:It turns out he ran a comedy club.
Marc:He used to do a singing act.
Marc:He used to do a comedy act.
Marc:He used to open for his father.
Marc:He was the head of the entertainment.
Marc:You'll hear when I talk to him.
Marc:But his father, Buddy Hackett.
Marc:was very important to me.
Marc:I loved Buddy Hackett.
Marc:When I was a young, young kid, he was one of the first, I used to see him in the Love Bug movies, you'd see him on TV, but I just, I loved him.
Marc:I thought he was one of the funniest people alive, and he certainly was one of the funniest people that ever lived.
Marc:And I remember when I was young, I sent away for an autographed picture and he sent me one.
Marc:I don't know if he autographed it, but I had an autographed picture of Buddy Hackett.
Marc:I just thought he was hilarious.
Marc:My grandmother loved him.
Marc:I remember when I was very young, my grandmother and grandfather, Goldie and Jack used to go to Vegas back in the day.
Marc:And she said she would see Buddy Hackett.
Marc:I just remember like, oh, my God, you saw Buddy Hackett.
Marc:She go see Shecky Green, Buddy Hackett, Don Rickles.
Marc:And she'd see all these people that I love because I loved stand up way back.
Marc:I remember reading the last page of Parade Magazine, my favorite jokes.
Marc:I just love looking at those guys.
Marc:I love reading those jokes.
Marc:But I remember when I talked to her about Buddy Hackett and telling her how much I liked him, she goes, he's very funny, but he's filthy.
Marc:He's very filthy.
Marc:And she said about Don Rickles, you know, he insults everybody, but he apologizes very nicely after the show is over.
Marc:But my grandparents, you know, who went to Vegas, not quite since the beginning of Vegas, but certainly early on, I just remember being with them.
Marc:We used to meet them, me and my family, my mother, my father, my brother would meet them when we lived in New Mexico, go meet the...
Marc:Jack and Goldie out at the MGM Grand once a year, spend a few days in Vegas.
Marc:I remember my dad let me try to gamble.
Marc:He bought me a fake mustache.
Marc:I was like 15.
Marc:I had tinted sunglasses, and we pasted a fake mustache on me, and I gambled.
Marc:I wandered around the casino with a fake mustache and my little tinted sunglasses.
Marc:I must have got away with it.
Marc:They would have stopped me, right?
Marc:But anyways...
Marc:Point being, I remember one night I was sitting at the MGM Grand with my grandparents, my parents, my brother eating dinner, talking about Vegas.
Marc:So my fascination with Sandy has to do with his father, has to do with being the child of a entertainer, growing up with an entertainer, but also about Vegas, because I've done a couple interviews.
Marc:I talked to Rita Rudner.
Marc:There's some connective tissue here in the sense of Vegas.
Marc:has always been a place that was a goal for some entertainers, that doing a residency in Vegas was a big deal if you were that kind of performer.
Marc:To me, it sounds like hell.
Marc:Like the idea of like, hey, I'm going to do 20 weeks in Vegas sounds like, what did I do wrong?
Marc:Why am I being punished like this?
Marc:How can I possibly do that?
Marc:I couldn't imagine a worse thing.
Marc:But some people love it.
Marc:I recently talked to Brad Garrett, and I haven't posted that yet, but he's another guy.
Marc:It's a hell of a way to make a living, a good way to make a living for some people who enjoy that.
Marc:Slayton had one there, a residency.
Marc:George Wallace has had one forever.
Marc:Carrot Top has one.
Marc:Brad Garrett has a club there.
Marc:So it's sort of an interesting conversation to me because my whatever brief love affair I had with Vegas, it was when I was very young.
Marc:So this is me talking to Sandy Hackett about his father, about Vegas, about the journey of somebody who...
Marc:you know, grew up in the business with one of the funniest guys alive.
Marc:It's a little sweet, a little bittersweet, but also a nice story.
Marc:Sandy is currently touring with his show, Sandy Hackett's Rat Pack.
Marc:Go to sandyhackett.com for tour dates and info.
Marc:He's currently working on a book called My Buddy, an anthology of stories about his father.
Marc:It comes out early next year.
Marc:This is me and Sandy Hackett back in the garage.
Guest:By the way, you're a little smaller on radio than I thought you'd be.
Marc:And you are a little taller.
Marc:I was surprised, to be honest with you.
Marc:And you said nice things coming in here.
Marc:I'm glad that the show has helped you out in your exercise routine.
Marc:And how are you feeling?
Guest:I feel pretty good for, they call it a cardiac incident.
Marc:What the hell does that mean?
Marc:Have I had one?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Only you would know.
Marc:Would I know?
Guest:Well, I got lucky in that I didn't actually have a heart attack or anything like that.
Guest:I was hitting the road.
Guest:I go to LAX.
Guest:I park in the Southwest line, and I'm walking my carry bag.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which I've done a thousand times into the terminal.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, what is that?
Guest:500 yards, that walk?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I mean, it's, yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I can't get 50 steps without going.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And I'm flop sweating and I'm going, oh my goodness.
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:This is not what I expect.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what happened?
Guest:You don't know because at this age, you start to read about things.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:I'm 54.
Guest:I'm 62.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You think I would lie?
Marc:No, but I have a bad habit of saying really after questions that are... Why did I... Yeah.
Marc:I believe you.
Marc:Why would you choose that number if you were lying?
Marc:That's the other part of the dumb, really.
Marc:But you're all right.
Marc:No heart attack, and it's just an event, and he didn't tell you what it was.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:That started.
Guest:Then I got on a flight and stopped in Las Vegas, and they said, oh, we've changed your gate.
Guest:So if you know the Las Vegas airport...
Guest:Normally, you're in the same, but I went from C to A. So you got to run.
Guest:I got to run.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When I get there, I feel like my chest is going to cave in.
Guest:I'm sweating profusely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I feel like I'm going to die.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:She says, oh, we moved it back to the other gate.
Guest:Ha, ha.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:And I go, can you call someone?
Guest:I need a ride.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they don't come and I'm going to miss my flight.
Guest:So I go and meet the rest of the cast that I'm- For the Rat Pack?
Guest:For the Rat Pack.
Guest:And get on the plane and go, you look terrible.
Guest:I said, thank you very much.
Guest:So we did the shows in Wichita, Kansas, I believe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I get on the plane coming home.
Guest:It stops in Las Vegas.
Guest:And on the plane is a friend of mine coming up the aisle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he sits next to me.
Guest:Didn't know he was going to be on there.
Guest:And I start telling him what happened.
Guest:He said, oh, he promised me you're going to go see the doctor.
Guest:Promise me you're going to go, okay, I'll go see the doctor.
Guest:So I go see the doctor and the doctor says, we do this test.
Guest:Okay, it looks like we need to do another test.
Guest:We put you on the stress test.
Guest:And he says, it looks like something's, we should do a angiogram.
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:And if you go for the angiogram, they prep you for what if we are going to do something.
Guest:You know, they shoot the die and they go through the wrist now.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:As opposed to where?
Marc:The leg?
Guest:They used to go through the leg.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They used to go through the shoulder.
Guest:With the camera, you mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Well, right, the camera and the die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they send it through and they see where it's blocked.
Guest:So you're laying there and you're conscious, but you're not.
Guest:I took a Valium or something that they give you.
Guest:So you're a little, and I never did drugs.
Guest:So one Valium to me is like a heroin overdose.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:My wife said I was never funnier.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:see see what you see what you should have done if you redid it and uh he's while i'm on the table he says we've got a 98 no we've got a 99 block it no that just went to 100 okay we're gonna fix this right now oh so you have full blockage and one of the things blockage in the left uh not the big one
Guest:The one next to it, which is, they call one the Widowmaker, and this one doesn't have a name yet because it wasn't big enough.
Marc:The Widowmaker and he just fucking kills you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, had we not caught this right now, you would have had a massive heart attack.
Guest:And depending on how far you're away from medical attention, it would have hurt you or killed you.
Guest:And so I end up with a double stent.
Guest:He said, I've never done this before.
Guest:I had to take two stents.
Guest:You had such a big block.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:So you gave him an opportunity to try something new.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So basically they put a garden hose in my chest.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's terrifying.
Marc:Did you have high cholesterol?
Guest:Yes, but not... Well, apparently I had very high cholesterol.
Guest:I mean, my dad had heart disease.
Guest:He died from coronary artery disease.
Guest:But he lived a long time.
Guest:78.
Guest:I guess that's pretty good.
Guest:In today's world, that's pretty good.
Guest:But I was with him when he went to the doctor who told him he had a blockage.
Guest:And in those days...
Guest:Uh, you're going back.
Guest:He's gone 15 years now.
Guest:He was, it was 10 years before this.
Guest:So 25 years ago, they weren't doing these stents like this and they wanted to, they open up the leg.
Guest:They take out a vein.
Guest:They do open up your, your chest cavity.
Guest:They do the bypass surgery.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's like, I don't want that.
Guest:And the doctor was from Cedars-Sinai, and I remember his name, P.K.
Guest:Shaw.
Guest:Oh, Mr. Hackett, you have occlusion, and this is very serious, and we must take care of this right away.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Well, we open you up.
Guest:Oh, no, you're not going to open me up.
Guest:Oh, no, that's what we do.
Guest:We open you up, and then we take the vein from the leg.
Guest:Oh, no, shit, you're not doing that.
Guest:He says, how long do I have?
Guest:And, oh, I don't know, maybe two days, two weeks, two months.
Guest:My father said, what's the longest I could go?
Guest:Well, maybe you could go 10 years.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And my dad said, OK, I'll take the 10 years.
Guest:And it was almost like 10 years to the day.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:That he went.
Guest:He did not want to get opened up.
Guest:And I had a friend in Las Vegas, which is where I used to live, who was the chief of surgery.
Guest:He was a heart surgeon.
Guest:And he'd come from New York.
Guest:He was living out in Las Vegas.
Guest:He was an incredible heart surgeon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would tell my dad all the time, let me operate on you.
Guest:I'll save you.
Guest:No, you're not going to open me up.
Guest:I don't want to be open.
Guest:He says, why not?
Guest:He says, what if you kill me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He says, I wouldn't kill you.
Guest:This is what I do for a living.
Guest:And he goes, yeah, but that would really fuck up your reputation if you kill Buddy.
Marc:So he was afraid of that, the surgery of the heart.
Marc:He had other surgeries probably.
Guest:Um, he was on a golf course one time with a guy who was, and I don't know what kind of surgeon this guy was, but he said, I got this little thing in my chest and he says, Oh, well, we'll go back to the office after golf and I'll take a look.
Guest:And he looked at it and he goes, I'm not sure, but we're going to cut it out.
Guest:And he gave him a local and cut it out.
Guest:And they took out a mass about the size of this, which is always good to show people stuff on radio.
Guest:So about golf ball.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:A little bigger, maybe a little bigger than that.
Marc:Was it benign or?
Marc:Yeah, it was benign.
Marc:Well, now, see, like, you know, when you when you showed up for some reason, you know, you know, I gave you a hug and you thank me for the show because it helped get you through this thing.
Marc:But I got a little emotional because, you know, I I knew of you and I, you know, and I know, you know, what you've done.
Marc:But I fucking loved your father.
Marc:And I imagine you hear that a lot.
Guest:I hear it a lot.
Guest:And I heard you talk about, I forgot who you were talking to, but you were from down the road in New Jersey where I was from.
Marc:My grandmother lived in Pompton Lakes.
Marc:I think you were in Fort Lee, right?
Marc:Fort Lee, right.
Marc:Well, my aunt was in the Horizon houses.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But the original ones or the ones they put on where Palisades Park was?
Marc:No, the original ones, and then they added those two, the new ones, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, she was in the original ones, like Horizon House.
Marc:I can't remember one or two.
Marc:Right when you pull in, it was the old ones.
Guest:No, I remember.
Marc:I went to school with kids that were living in there.
Marc:Right across from Hiram's.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the hot dog place.
Marc:The diner.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:With the hot dogs, the big hot dogs.
Marc:But, you know, so I spent a lot of time in her house.
Marc:It was my father's aunt, my father's aunt Evie, who lived there.
Marc:But I'd spend weeks, when we moved away when I was a kid, if I'd go back to the East Coast, I'd stay with my grandma Goldie in Pompton Lakes, but I always stay like at least a week or two with Evie at the Horizons house because it was right by New York and they were very kind of highbrow, commie,
Marc:uh you know old school commie jews and you know yeah well no you know like uh they were involved with uh you know the in the 60s with angela davis and stuff he was a blood doctor she was an artist so it was very kind of like lefty intellectual uh household can you know fortley is where the movie industry started
Marc:No, I didn't know that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thomas Edison was down the road.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:And there's a museum there almost right in the footprint of the bridge that takes you back to where it was.
Guest:And eventually they couldn't film there year round.
Guest:It was winter and it would get cold and they couldn't film.
Guest:So they moved it out to California, but it started in Fort Lee.
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Guest:So where'd you guys live?
Guest:Well, this is amazing.
Guest:You were born in Fort Lee?
Guest:Born in New York, Mount Sinai Hospital.
Guest:My dad had a house when I was born in Leonia on the golf course in the Englewood golf course.
Guest:Where's that?
Marc:In Jersey?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:A few miles away.
Guest:Eventually got redeveloped and became housing and stuff like that.
Guest:It didn't support itself.
Guest:But if you remember the movie Godfather, when they go out and they wipe out everybody, there's a scene in a barber's chair where they kill a guy in a barber's chair.
Guest:That was based on a guy named Albert Anastasia.
Guest:Anastasia, yeah.
Guest:And that was the house I grew up in, in Fort Lee.
Guest:My dad bought it.
Guest:Anastasia was killed in 1956, the year I was born.
Guest:The house sat empty for many years.
Guest:It sat up on the Palisades, like the Horizon Apartments, overlooking New York.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And my dad bought that.
Guest:It was...
Guest:It was three stories.
Guest:And my dad bought it out of bankruptcy or whatever, foreclosure.
Guest:Foreclosure, right.
Guest:And we lived there.
Guest:And it was the downstairs basement had 10 rooms.
Guest:And there was one room that supposedly was like for if you killed a deer, you'd take it and drain the deer.
Guest:But I'm thinking they were.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:When you were a kid, that room was just weird.
Marc:And everybody knew about Albert Anastasia then.
Marc:Murder, Inc., right?
Marc:Murder, Inc.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And yeah, that was a grizzly.
Marc:He shot up in the barbershop.
Marc:So your dad, did he make jokes about that?
Marc:He must have known, obviously, that it was his house.
Guest:Well, he knew it was his house.
Guest:I don't know that he made jokes about it.
Guest:I was probably too young to understand.
Marc:When did you leave there?
Guest:We moved out here in sixth grade, so I was 12.
Marc:So you were there a long time.
Marc:I mean, you were there.
Marc:You have memories of it.
Guest:Well, grew up from Leonia.
Guest:He moved to that house in 1960.
Guest:But then he made Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and we were out here for a year while he made that and then went back.
Guest:And then I was a scrawny little kid and I kept going, I won't go to California.
Guest:I'm cold.
Guest:I mean, really, I was cold.
Guest:And my parents looked at me one day and said, you know, he's right.
Guest:It's cold.
Guest:Let's get out of here.
Guest:So you're the only kid?
Guest:No, I have two sisters.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:How are they doing?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:We don't talk.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Why is that?
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Guest:It's... Well, I mean... My dad died and I swear the family went AWOL.
Guest:Oh, they went crazy?
Guest:Everybody went their own direction.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it just... Do they talk to each other?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Why does it matter?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It always bothers me when that happens.
Guest:It bothers me, too.
Guest:I wish it didn't happen, but it has, and I have no control over it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:But, like, okay, so you live in New Jersey.
Marc:It's interesting.
Marc:He's in Albert Anastasia's house.
Marc:And at that time, like, you know, I'm not talking about your father, but in general, you know, the nightclub business, you know, he dealt with mobsters, obviously, at some point.
Marc:You know, they all did.
Guest:Oh, my God, did he deal with mobsters.
Guest:He got a call to do a show one day, and he said, I'm not available.
Guest:And they said, make yourself available.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so someone kept calling.
Guest:I don't remember the details of this particular story.
Marc:He told you about it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, so he ended up doing the show and then one day a truck pulls up to the house and there's a jukebox.
Guest:And they said, what's that?
Guest:That's from whoever it was that asked you to do the show.
Guest:And he goes, what am I going to do about the records?
Guest:Oh, you're on the route now.
Guest:They'll come every month and change out the records.
Guest:And that still sits in my mother's house.
Guest:And I mean, eventually they quit changing the records.
Marc:Your mom's still around?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:And she's out here?
Guest:It was her birthday yesterday.
Guest:Oh, how old?
Guest:83.
Guest:But we also don't talk.
Marc:Oh, come on.
Marc:It's terrible.
Marc:So you're the one who's not talking to anybody.
Guest:No, she quit talking to me.
Marc:Will she talk to your sisters?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't talk to her, so I don't know who she's talking to.
Marc:But this is your mother, but when your father died, he wasn't with her, right?
Marc:He was.
Marc:They stayed together the whole time?
Guest:They were separated for a short time, and I don't know if it was a short time or several years, but eventually they got back together, but...
Marc:Right.
Marc:So let's go, let's go back.
Marc:So you growing up on these, you know, you're going, when was the first time you remember, cause you're a comic and you're an entertainer and you know, you've built this.
Marc:You're very kind.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:You've built this show, the, the, uh, Sandy Hackett's Rat Pack show.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's tours still.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:For like what, a decade or two now?
Guest:Uh, not two.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just about a decade.
Marc:You know, and then you, you did the, the new show, uh, my buddy about your father, about your relationship with your father.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I still tour that.
Guest:You do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So,
Marc:in your early life, you know, to decide to be a stand-up when your father's buddy Hackett.
Marc:Like, and I've talked to, you know, the sons of David Bowie, of, you know, Bob Dylan.
Guest:David Bowie's son wanted to be a comedian?
Guest:No, he didn't actually go into music.
Marc:He's a filmmaker, Duncan Jones.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:But, you know, obviously Jacob Dylan went into music.
Marc:And, you know, I always wonder, you know, and there's been other people, like...
Marc:You don't have to tell me why you made the decision to do that, but when you were younger, when did you first start experiencing... Who was hanging around the house?
Marc:When did you go to a nightclub for the first time?
Guest:I never consciously made the decision.
Guest:I just was immersed in it and liked it.
Guest:Your whole life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I think you'll find this interesting.
Guest:Years ago, I was sitting at my mom's house, and there was a cabinet, and I'm looking through some videotapes, and I see Patrice Munsell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you know who that is?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:So, if you watch the original Ocean's Eleven... Yeah.
Guest:Going down, there's a shot where they're going down the strip and at the Riviera Hotel says Patrice Munsell and Buddy Hackett.
Guest:So this is early 1960s.
Guest:So he opened for him.
Guest:He was opening for Patrice Munsell.
Guest:So I see this videotape, VHS, Patrice Munsell, and I go, I wonder what this is.
Guest:I put it in and it's the Patrice Munsell hour on, I believe, CBS television.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She had her own show.
Guest:She was a star.
Guest:Cabaret type?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Entertainer?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So on the show, it says the Patrice Michelle show with our special guest, and the not ready for primetime players.
Guest:And who do you think the not ready for primetime players are?
Guest:Was it the SNL guys?
Guest:My dad and Lenny Bruce.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Two people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:They're the not ready for primetime players on CBS in 1950 something.
Guest:Wow.
Marc:So that was a used name before SNL.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:Buddy Hack and Lenny Bruce.
Guest:And they were friends.
Guest:And they actually had an apartment together in New York.
Guest:And my dad said, we didn't have any furniture, so we just put sand on the floor.
Guest:We had a couple of beach chairs.
Guest:We put a light up in the ceiling on the corner, hanging on the door, one of those clamp lights.
Guest:And then we'd invite girls over to come lay out at the beach with us.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I remember he was friends with Lenny Bruce.
Marc:I remember knowing that.
Marc:But at that time, was it before Lenny Bruce kind of bust open?
Marc:Long before he busted open.
Marc:Yeah, like he was just sort of a mimic and a shtick guy.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of guys that have big props for Lenny, think he was the guy who started a lot of things.
Guest:I'm not that fan.
Guest:When I look at Lenny Bruce, I see an earlier version of...
Guest:Or I see where my like he and my dad were friends, but my dad started working dirty, but he found a way to do it and not offend you.
Marc:But there are guys, you know, they had a problem with Lenny Bruce when he became the national phenomenon.
Guest:And I agree with them.
Guest:I never found him that overtly funny.
Guest:I found him, you know, and then eventually got really into the drugs.
Guest:And I don't know if he knew what he was talking about.
Guest:But my dad would say something like ass and then tell you ass is not a dirty word.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Ass is not a dirty word.
Guest:It's an abbreviation, A period, S period, S period, anterior superior spine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would make it medicinal, which is full of shit because it doesn't stand for that at all, but you believed it.
Marc:But he was always so fucking funny.
Marc:You know, just his delivery, the greatest delivery, the greatest, like the way he talked and everything.
Marc:You do a good impression.
Marc:We should.
Marc:What was that?
Marc:Why did his mouth do that?
Marc:Bell's palsy when he was a kid.
Marc:Is that what it was?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, that makes sense.
Marc:Did you ever have it?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Not yet.
Marc:Because that goes away, I thought.
Marc:It never popped.
Marc:It usually clears up.
Guest:I think it...
Guest:Well, don't forget, you're going back to when he was a kid.
Guest:You're in the 40s, in the 30s.
Guest:So what does medicine do?
Guest:I think it heals.
Guest:He could speak perfectly clear if he absolutely had to or not do that.
Guest:He knew that that worked for him, and he never tried to make it go away completely.
Marc:The point you're making about, you know, ass and stuff was at that juncture where they were starting to sort of break it open a little bit and and use the dirtier words and do it.
Marc:And there was the mainstreaming of it.
Marc:But then there was the fight of it where, you know, Lenny Bruce was pushing the First Amendment rights of, you know, to really go, you know, push the envelope of it.
Marc:But there were guys who were doing mainstream comedy that were also starting to integrate, you know, some of this stuff into their mainstream work.
Guest:To me, look, I'm prejudiced.
Guest:It's my father.
Guest:I think he was the first to not only mainstream it, but find a way to make it acceptable where the police didn't come after him.
Marc:So you're growing up in this business, but what do you remember, like your earliest memories of...
Marc:Like, who was he hanging out with?
Guest:When you're young, you don't know that your dad is your dad.
Guest:You know he's your dad, but you don't know he's Buddy Hackett.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You don't know how big a star he is, but you start to realize those things as you start to get introduced to the things he was doing.
Guest:We'd moved to California for him to do Mad World.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't really remember going to the set.
Guest:I might have.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But at that age, I don't remember.
Guest:But when we went back east, he did a show on Broadway called I Had a Ball.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:where he had top building.
Guest:It was Buddy Hackett in I Had a Ball.
Guest:And the show got men's and men's reviews.
Guest:But he stayed after the show.
Guest:He'd come out afterwards and do his nightclub act.
Guest:So people would buy a ticket to the show, and that kept the show open for almost a year.
Guest:Oh, so he would just... He'd come out and do another 30, 40 minutes.
Marc:Finish the review, and he'd come out and do stand-up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Richard Pryor came to see him and Richard Pryor started talking to him.
Guest:And then Richard Pryor came and stayed at our house when I was a kid.
Guest:And my dad used to say, and I opened up his head and give him a lot of good ideas for comedy.
Guest:But Richie was funny.
Marc:And that was like before he broke open too.
Guest:That was before he broke.
Guest:And eventually we moved to California and I was 15.
Guest:I rode my bike from where we lived to Richard Pryor was appearing at Century.
Guest:city and they had a theater there in those big ABC towers and I snuck in and after the show I got backstage and I'm trying to get to go see Richard Pryor there's nothing but people but there's a long hallway and Richard's sitting at the very end of the hallway in his chair and they're going you can't come in here kid he said who's that and I said it's Sandy and you
Guest:you better boy yeah i said yeah let him in here and i sat there with him and he said your daddy was very good to me and i got to sit with him i i never saw him again uh what year was that was it i was 15 so uh 71. oh okay so so he's getting big yeah oh you know he was he the place was filled whatever it was yeah right right yeah well that's uh and he was nice guy to you
Marc:Certainly was nice to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So as you're doing, who were some of the people that your dad, like the comics that would hang out regularly?
Marc:Did he have a card game?
Marc:Did he have any of that stuff?
Guest:He wasn't into cards.
Guest:He'd play solitaire by himself.
Guest:But over the house, everybody came over to visit.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Where was this, in Beverly Hills?
Guest:In Beverly Hills.
Guest:And later in life, I was in my 20s and 30s, my mother went to Momazon Cooking School.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And she said, why don't you have all your friends, comic friends, come over and I'll cook for everybody and you could sit around and tell stories.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I almost brought you the picture, but I have it on my website.
Guest:And every six, eight months, we'd have... It was amazing.
Guest:I'd sit there.
Guest:And I'm a young comedian.
Guest:I don't think I spoke for the first three years.
Guest:I had nothing to say.
Guest:I just listened.
Guest:My dad, George Burns, Red Buttons, Shecky Green, Dom DeLuise, Jan Murray, Jerry Vale.
Guest:I just honored Tom Poston.
Guest:They'd all just hang out at the pool?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:They sat around the dining room table and told stories and you would just laugh till you're hurt.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you were how old?
Guest:Started in my late 20s, maybe.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I know that Jeff Ross became your dad's friend later in life, right?
Guest:Yes, uh-huh.
Guest:You and Jeff friends?
Guest:I know, Jeff, we don't hang out or anything, but whenever I see him, it's always friendly.
Marc:Yeah, because he's like the legacy of your dad's generation in a way.
Guest:Absolutely, and now he's become the roast master general.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know, my dad was always the guy that closed because no one wanted to follow him.
Guest:Where, at the roasts?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when do you start to decide, like, do you live a normal life, you know, in terms of, like, you wanted to be a comic, but you didn't do that until later.
Marc:Where'd you end up going to college and stuff?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:UNLV, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Marc:But you didn't live there.
Marc:I did.
Marc:But, I mean, like, your family was here.
Marc:He never lived in Vegas, your father.
Guest:Well, he didn't live in Las Vegas, but in those days, he was working 20, 30 weeks a year at the Sahara Hotel.
Guest:And I forgot what year it was, but he didn't want to stay in the hotel anymore.
Guest:And he said to the hotel, can you get me a house to live in or rent me a house?
Guest:So they bought a house on the Sahara Country Club on the 7th Green.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my mom, who was interior designer, redecorated it.
Guest:They expanded it and added to it.
Guest:And then he had them build him a closet that he could lock and nobody could get into.
Guest:So he could just leave his stuff because he works so many weeks a year.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he didn't have to pack.
Guest:And of all the things, when I hear people talk about their idiosyncrasies and I couldn't perform and I couldn't talk and I got this, my dad hated to pack.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Couldn't stand it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For him packing, go into the closet, grab a handful or whatever, put it in and go, I'm done.
Marc:And like, was he, like as a dad, was he attentive and supportive?
Guest:Unbelievable father.
Guest:Strict disciplinarian.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But great dad.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Man, as I got older, once I got to where I wasn't afraid to death of him, because he had a temper.
Guest:He did?
Guest:He didn't exercise it on me, but I saw his temper, but he was a best friend.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At the end of his life, I talked to him every day, two or three times a day.
Guest:And he wouldn't just call.
Guest:The phone rings, I go, hello, a guy goes into a shopping market.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just start right in?
Marc:Just start right in with him.
Marc:But he did have a bit of a temper, huh?
Guest:If you invoked it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He went to a party one time and some guy came up to him and stuck his finger in his drink.
Guest:Just as a joke?
Guest:My dad said, why would you do that?
Guest:I wanted to see your reaction.
Guest:I'm a psychiatrist.
Guest:I wanted to see you.
Guest:My dad said, well, don't do it again or you'll see it.
Guest:And he took his drink.
Guest:He put it down.
Guest:He got a fresh one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the guy came over and did it again.
Guest:And my dad had him a shot and it was on the ground floor like you have here in the studio.
Guest:He knocked him out the window.
Guest:He knocked him.
Guest:And he ended up having to settle the lawsuit for, you know, whatever, $15,000, $20,000.
Guest:But that's what he did.
Marc:But the guy- Provoked him.
Marc:Provoked him.
Marc:So he's kind of a scrapper.
Marc:He's a tough guy.
Marc:Oh, when he was a kid, yeah.
Marc:Where did he grow up?
Marc:Brooklyn.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Brooklyn, like, were the parents from the old country?
Guest:I don't actually, I remember him saying, I don't know if it was his father or his grandfather that was from Poland.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Galicia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my father's father was an upholster.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did you know him?
Marc:When I was little.
Marc:I don't remember him at all.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So he grew up in Brooklyn, working class, Jewish.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And so, because, I mean, I watched a segment of him on Carson talking about his real, you know, the real name.
Marc:Hacker.
Marc:Yeah, the Butch Hacker.
Guest:Well, it was Leonard Hacker and they used to call him Butch, which somehow became Butch, which somehow matriculated into Buddy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you go to college in Vegas.
Marc:Your dad lives there half the year.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And do you live at that house?
Marc:No.
Marc:You're in the dorms or whatever?
Guest:No.
Guest:I had bought a condo when I was 16 years old and rented it out.
Guest:My dad co-signed for it.
Marc:So you were a real estate magnate.
Guest:One of my first jokes, he said, I bought a condo for $23,500 and my mother decorated it for just under $200,000.
Right.
Guest:That was your first joke?
Guest:Might have been one of my first jokes.
Guest:I said, Mom, I can't afford this.
Guest:She says, don't worry about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What are you studying?
Guest:Hotel management.
Guest:At the time I went, UNLV was an up-and-coming school.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:It was a big program for that.
Guest:Big program for that.
Guest:And supposedly Michigan State or Cornell were the better, but UNLV was getting all the professors from those schools to come teach at UNLV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if you went to Cornell, they had a hotel on campus.
Guest:It was a 100-room hotel, and you would learn the hotel business by working.
Guest:But I'm living in Las Vegas working at the Sahara Hotel, which I ended up becoming part of the management training program.
Guest:It's 1,000 rooms.
Guest:We've got a convention center for 40,000 square feet.
Guest:We've got eight restaurants, three lounges.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So it's a big job.
Guest:How could Cornell even begin to compete?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:so that was what you were going to do that's what i was going to do and what happened well i ended up in the uh my training program took me up into the marketing department working for a guy named john romero who was advertising and marketing and then i would get bored
Guest:and go into everybody's office.
Guest:Hey, is there anything I can do?
Guest:So the entertainment director would say, hey, I got all these tapes.
Guest:Watch all this stuff and tell me if anything's any good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:For which hotel?
Guest:Sahara.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So I started watching and then- Did your dad get you the job?
Guest:No, I actually, because I was at UNLV, you had to get, in order to get your degree, eventually you had to have what they called 800 hours.
Guest:All right.
Guest:400 front of the house, 400 back of the house.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But those 400 in each place were, I think my 800 hours was 8,000 hours.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, if you worked, I worked as a lifeguard by the pool and they go, okay, you can have- I'll use that for your hours.
Guest:You can have 30 hours for that.
Guest:So you're a Vegas guy and what is this, the 80s?
Guest:Late 70s started when I graduated high school.
Marc:So the old hotels are still there.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Everything's still there.
Guest:Everything was still there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I worked in the entertainment department and then I said, you got all these auditions and Monday night the lounges open.
Guest:There's nothing going on.
Guest:It's dark.
Guest:So would you watch the tapes?
Guest:Yeah, I watched the tapes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I said, why don't we audition a few people?
Guest:When do you want to do it?
Guest:I said, well, on a dark night.
Guest:I'll just have them come in and audition and tell them to invite their friends.
Guest:And the first night was successful.
Guest:This band I had came in and a hundred and something people came to watch and we sold a bunch of booze.
Guest:And I said to my boss, I said, we should do that again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So we started to do it like every month.
Guest:And then one day we just decided to do it on, I said, look, this thing's working, everybody's coming.
Guest:And then the musicians union said, well, if you're going to, you can't just have free entertainment.
Guest:So you have to hire a local band, three musicians, give them a job.
Guest:So then that allowed us to hire singers.
Guest:I mean, to let people come in and use the band.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we'd have rehearsal in the afternoon, the show at night.
Guest:I became the host, and I was listening to the show you were interviewing, Drew Carey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said he did the Sahara Showcase of Talent, and he said how terrible he was.
Guest:And I go, wow, Drew doesn't even remember.
Guest:I was the host.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's how bad I was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Was he bad?
Guest:I don't remember Drew on that, but I do remember a lot of other wonderful performers that came through in their first time in Las Vegas.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you were structured the show, you structured it like a Vegas show where you had like a hosted variety show.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it was what, like anywhere from what, four to 10 acts?
Guest:How about 20 acts minimum?
Guest:And a lot of times 30 acts, we'd start at seven o'clock at night and sometimes go to four.
Guest:five o'clock in the morning eventually we got to where we started around eight and went till about two but oh my god in the early years but it was it like were these polished acts or was it an open mic night both uh-huh it was everything uh-huh i mean prime time was between in those days in las vegas you had the early show at eight the late show at midnight so in between the show break like 10 around 10 was prime time so you would put more polished acts on yeah the better acts went on there so you you got to learn how to have a sense as a booker
Guest:I learned everything from that.
Guest:I had to produce the show in the afternoon.
Guest:I had to help the acts.
Guest:People come in with one lead sheet.
Guest:I go, you need more than that for the other two musicians.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:It started out at the Sahara Showcase of Talent and eventually became Sandy Hackett's Talent Showcase.
Guest:So you're doing shtick in between?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's where you started doing comedy by hosting?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So when you tell your father that you're going to do comedy, what the hell did he say?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:My dad wept.
Marc:He was sad for you.
Guest:He was, we were in Atlantic City.
Guest:Atlantic City had just opened.
Guest:The first act was Steve and Edie.
Guest:My dad was the second act, and we were there for three weeks.
Uh-huh.
Guest:And about the end of the second week, I said, I'm leaving.
Guest:Where are you going?
Guest:I said, I got a job.
Guest:What kind of job did you get?
Guest:I said, as a stand-up comedian.
Guest:He goes, where?
Guest:I said, Omaha, Nebraska.
Guest:He said, there's no Jews in Omaha, Nebraska.
Guest:There's going to be one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, and the tears started to come down his face.
Guest:And I said, what's the matter?
Guest:He says, you'll have no idea how tough it is.
Guest:He said, what name are you going to use?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I said, Sandy.
Guest:No, what last name?
Guest:I said, Hackett.
Guest:Why?
Guest:He goes, oh, all the years I spent building up the name.
Guest:I hate to see you fuck it up in one outing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I went, and oh my God, I was so nervous.
Guest:And no cell phones then, so call me when you get to the hotel.
Guest:I'm calling my dad, and he's giving me jokes.
Guest:I think it was two days before I left, so he's giving me jokes like crazy.
Guest:I'm writing jokes.
Guest:I'm making notes.
Guest:He's helping you write jokes?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And not only did he help me write jokes, but he said to me, if you're going to be in this business, learn every joke there is.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So that way you'll understand the construction of a joke, know what they are, and you never know when something happens with the audience and all of a sudden you go, oh, that's the joke.
Guest:All I got to do is deliver the punchline.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that's what I did.
Marc:So general jokes.
Marc:General jokes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It wasn't like, because he comes from a generation where it wasn't stealing, it was just everybody was doing that joke.
Yeah.
Marc:Or everybody did that joke at one time or another.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, it's also how you learned.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I'm listening to Drew talk to you about reading a joke book.
Guest:Oh, yeah, right.
Guest:This is what a joke book is.
Guest:So you go, okay, that's a joke.
Guest:This is how it's constructed.
Guest:Now I understand what it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now I can write my own into that.
Marc:How are you at writing jokes?
Marc:Good?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:So, but- Not as good as you.
Marc:Oh, well, thank you.
Guest:You're welcome.
Guest:And how about your dad?
Guest:My dad was brilliant, but my dad was, all he did was, when he was doing stand-up, was stand-up.
Guest:So, he was like a filter.
Guest:We'd be backstage sometimes, up in the dressing room, and he didn't like noise, didn't like loud.
Guest:If you came up to the dressing room, hi, dad, how are you?
Guest:Right.
Guest:You could never be in the-
Guest:Hey, Dad, what a day I had.
Guest:He'd go crazy.
Guest:He'd go get the fuck out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you had to talk softly.
Guest:But we'd have in Las Vegas at the hotel, you'd have conventions all the time.
Guest:So he goes, what's going on?
Guest:I say, well, and one night.
Marc:When you were working at the hotel.
Marc:You were working at the hotel.
Guest:Yeah, I was working at the hotel.
Guest:So you'd say there's, we have the pilots convention there.
Guest:We have the this convention.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And then you talk to him and then he'd walk out and start doing two minutes, five minutes, 15 minutes on whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you gave him the inside line.
Guest:Just the information.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wasn't writing him jokes.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:That's what I mean.
Guest:But like you helped out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He had you on the inside just to get that first five minutes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like who's around.
Guest:And then there were nights, you know, we took him one time to the, look, I know you had the president.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Amazing story.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I got to ski with Gerald Ford.
Guest:Oh, boy.
Guest:Lucky you.
Guest:And I think to myself- Where?
Guest:In Tahoe?
Guest:In Vail.
Guest:Oh, in Vail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, my dad says, we went to the ski.
Guest:There was a ski show.
Guest:I think it's called Ski Industries of America in Las Vegas.
Guest:And we wanted to go to the ski show.
Guest:So unless you're in the industry, you can't get in.
Guest:But we took my dad and they get there and he said, you have to have it.
Guest:And they go, it's Buddy Hackett, let him in.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And we went in every place.
Guest:Hey, Buddy, how you doing?
Guest:They want to take pictures.
Guest:They're giving us skis.
Guest:They're giving us stuff like this.
Guest:And we end up meeting a guy named Bert Weinstein who invented a ski binding and he called a plate binding.
Guest:So when you fall, the whole thing comes off and then you lift up your ski and it snaps back on.
Guest:to your leg.
Guest:Oh, yeah, I remember those, yeah.
Guest:And he invites us to the Lang Cup.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And my dad is somewhere in Aspen, and he goes on The Tonight Show, and they said, oh, it's a bad winter, there's no snow, and my dad goes skiing in Aspen, and he comes out on The Tonight Show on Johnny's
Guest:In full ski gear with the skis.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And Johnny goes, how come the skis?
Guest:He goes, well, there's a rumor that there's not enough snow, but there's plenty of snow.
Guest:He says, I just was skiing, and if a short, fat Jew like me could ski, you'll have a terrific time too.
Guest:Well, Ski Industries of America saw this.
Guest:The reservations jumped.
Guest:The ski industry is thrilled, and they made him the ski ambassador.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of the United States, you know, a title.
Guest:Did he love to ski?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Loved to ski.
Guest:So now we're going, he had a house in Aspen and he picks me up in Denver and I had heard that Gerald Ford was skiing in Vail.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he goes, what are you going to do?
Guest:I said, let's, he had done a show at the White House.
Guest:For Ford?
Yeah.
Guest:For Ford.
Guest:And I remember him saying, I didn't know when you're going to meet him.
Guest:Is it Mr. Ford, Mr. President, Gerald, Mr. Gerald Ford?
Guest:And so he says, I don't know what I'm going to call the guy.
Guest:And I'm in the receiving line.
Guest:And all of a sudden, I get up to Gerald Ford.
Guest:And he goes, buddy, I went, Gerald!
Guest:And so they start talking and talk about skiing.
Guest:He says, you should come skiing with me sometime.
Guest:And so I said to my dad, let's go skiing.
Guest:So we're in Vail.
Marc:Skiing with the president.
Guest:We go to the, I said, how are we going to find you?
Guest:He says, well, we'll go to the ski patrol.
Guest:They'll know where he is.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:We walk in and they radio and they said, I got Buddy Hackett down here and his son, they want to come ski with you.
Guest:Hang on one second.
Guest:He said, send him up.
Guest:On the gondola?
Guest:We went and we skied with the president and two or three secret service and three or four ski people.
Guest:They had to know how to ski, huh?
Marc:the secret service they were not good skiers you got a guy with a with a uzi machine gun around his neck and he's snow plowing and the ski patrol going this is so bad that was their that was their their cross to bear with that presidency yeah they all i guess each president has their own thing i my buddy used to work for bill clinton and for some reason bill clinton just couldn't stop himself from going into mcdonald's to get coffee or
Marc:just like you know wanting to stop at restaurants and they're like oh god this isn't on the schedule now we got to deal with the crowd that you know out of nowhere the president's going to be there they got some job those guys so so you're in house and you know when your father's at the sahara and you're doing your showcase and he's probably doing shows in the big room right yeah at the same time yeah does he stop by your room he stopped by my room he would say my kid's in a lounge you should go see him
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then he got to, you're 54 now.
Guest:So at about 50, my dad decided he no longer wanted to work two shows a night.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He wanted to work one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they said, well, no one's ever done that before.
Guest:And he goes, well, I just want to work one.
Guest:Why don't you ask some of the other guys?
Guest:And in those days, we had Rickles, Jerry Lewis, Ronan Martin, the Smothers Brothers, Johnny Carson.
Guest:And you knew all those guys?
Guest:Not yet I know them, but I watched their acts over and over and over again.
Guest:I was mesmerized by them.
Guest:Because you were out there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And this is, they're all in their mid-career, kind of.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We're talking you're in the late 70s?
Guest:Yeah, early 70s, because I started, yeah, probably 70, I'm 15 the first time I was there in the summer working for a friend of my dad's as a lifeguard at the pool at the Stardust Hotel.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was the stage manager at night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so at night I was bored, didn't want to stay home.
Guest:I came with him and I'd watch,
Marc:whoever and once i watched so you spent most a lot of your adolescence in vegas a lot of time in vegas yeah and that's how i ended about learned about unlv is the guys were going to unlv and i picked up the books that they were looking at the brochure so you were the kid you were your buddy's kid hanging around i was yeah so you would see like you know who'd you like watching live the most rickles shecky
Marc:Well, Johnny was just such a huge star.
Marc:Johnny Carson?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When he was doing The Tonight Show?
Marc:When he was doing The Tonight Show.
Marc:He would come out and do shows on the weekend?
Marc:He would come and do the weekends.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So all the guys that were working Vegas was that generation of dudes that had been there for decades, a lot of them.
Guest:Yeah, and then we got, I mean, my dad saw, he, Del Webb, who owned the Sahara at the time, who at one time owned the Yankees, a construction guy.
Marc:Does he make communities now, his company?
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Well, Del Webb passed away many years ago, but he loved my dad, so he wanted to do something for me, made him vice president of entertainment.
Guest:But he was.
Guest:Yeah, and his job was to recruit other entertainers to the...
Marc:In a nice way as a comic, not as a mobster.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:That was a big shift for Vegas.
Marc:They fired the Italian guy and let your dad do it.
Guest:Are you going to come do some shows?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I don't know if I... No, you will.
Guest:You're going to have a good time.
Guest:You'll see.
Guest:Well, show business and the mobsters kind of worked together.
Guest:I mean, the mobsters knew, look, we can do so much to get people here, but you need to get these celebrities.
Marc:That's what my grandmother used to say about Vegas after it changed.
Marc:She said, it was nicer when the boys ran things.
Guest:Well, they would tell you, they'd say, you know, you could leave a guy could come out with a suitcase and leave it in valet parking on the curb.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he could come back two days later, it would still be there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, if someone took it, they'd catch him and they'd find the suitcase would be fine, but the guy who took it would be dead.
Yeah.
Guest:In another suitcase.
Guest:In the desert.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Note those suitcases.
Marc:You didn't want to waste some money.
Marc:But it was a much more intimate world then in terms of like now you go there.
Marc:I don't know what the hell is going on there.
Marc:I find it very disturbing.
Marc:I'm with you.
Marc:It's all Cirque du Soleil.
Marc:Yeah, but it seems to me when they had the original downtown and the original nice hotels, that there was an intimacy to it.
Marc:That people, they'd go every year, they'd see the same people, the guy who ran the restaurant, the guy at the thing, right?
Marc:The valet.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:And they developed relationships with these people over decades, I would think.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when you're watching like Rowan and Martin, they were there in the 70s?
Marc:Not only were they there, but if you remember, in the 60s, they had the number one TV show.
Marc:Yeah, laughing.
Marc:I've talked to Schwatter.
Marc:He wants to make another one.
Marc:You should talk to him.
Marc:Are you interested?
Marc:Well, I was on the original one.
Guest:You were?
Guest:I went with my dad to hang out, and they're sitting there debating this joke, and it is fantastic.
Guest:eight nine guy it's not funny we're not going to do it no I'm telling you it's funny you should do it yeah and everybody's pitching in and I'm off on the side I'm just a kid but I thought it was funny and eight heads turned and looked at me and went perfect let's use it and I was in trouble and a little chitter chatter and my dad she want to be on television okay so they took me and they sat me down my dad gave me an apple and he says you just have just a kid but I thought it was funny and bite into the apple and the juice is running down my face and they go cut
Guest:So when it comes on, they tell the joke.
Guest:They don't know if it's funny.
Guest:And they got Richard Nixon, who this show, Rona Martin's laughing to help get Nixon elected because they humanized him.
Guest:And he was, was that funny?
Guest:I'm just a kid, but I thought it was funny.
Guest:I thought so.
Guest:And on the show goes.
Guest:So I was on 11 years old.
Marc:Just once.
Guest:Just the one time.
Guest:But the next year, my dad's the guest star again.
Guest:And he says to me, I'm going to do Rona Martin's laughing.
Guest:They want to know if you like to be on to write some stuff for you.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:So they wrote a bunch of stuff for me, and I was in the wall, and I did sketches, things.
Guest:Oh, that's cute.
Guest:And it was fun.
Guest:And you were 11?
Marc:The next year I was 12.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But your dad always was looking out for you.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:Like, have a fun life, fun time.
Guest:Well, it wasn't even that.
Guest:He would just, because I would go hang out with him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, do you remember, like, at that time,
Marc:like early the difference in vegas like when you were 11 or 12 and then by the time you were 20 there's a huge shift right oh yeah but like you used to see like you said rickles like he was great and you watch these guys do the same act over and over again well my dad never did the same act right but a lot of them did right a lot of them did carson had a 45
Guest:50 minute hunk and but he had modules yeah so this week this this run-in he's going to do uh this piece about grown-up and and he would plug that in and take that out so he had probably a
Guest:10 hunks that he did in another three or four that were- Move him around to freshen it up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And interesting story about Johnny, because when he would walk on stage the first night, Johnny was really tense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he would hold the microphone and twist it in his hand.
Guest:And at the end of the first night, the first show, that mic cord was so kinked up, it would take the stage manager who I was living with, so I knew this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Take him 20 minutes to unkink this mic line.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so two shows Friday, two shows Saturday, and sometimes two shows Sunday or one show.
Guest:And by Saturday night, late show, mic line didn't have a kink in it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:He really got that nervous doing it.
Guest:I don't even think Johnny knew he was doing it.
Guest:He just would be twirling the mic in his hand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you see Elvis a lot?
Guest:I did see Elvis many times.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:How was that?
Guest:It was... I swear you could have held a light bulb up in the showroom and it would have turned on.
Guest:The electricity to see Elvis was something I have never experienced.
Guest:And the colonel would say his thing was...
Guest:If we're sold out, then I doubled my marketing budget.
Guest:He wanted it not to be just where you sold out, but he wanted it to be an event.
Guest:He had an incredible voice.
Guest:He had incredible stage persona.
Guest:That outfit that is so iconic now, nobody had that.
Guest:And you went, wow, he's the coolest guy.
Marc:I don't play Vegas.
Marc:There's something very intimidating about it to me in the sense that I don't find any charm in it anymore.
Marc:Maybe the Vegas that you grew up in would have been something to do, but I don't see myself as a Vegas act, and I don't see Vegas as being special in any way.
Guest:Well, I agree with you on everything you said, although you have, now with the Netflix specials and this,
Guest:you have drawing power, and that's what Vegas is all about, is can you put asses in the seats?
Marc:Yeah, I wonder in Vegas.
Marc:I probably could, a few, but I wonder.
Marc:So if you ever decide to go, I'll come open the show.
Marc:You're going to open?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so now when you run in the Sandy Hackett Talent Showcase,
Marc:Like, were you actually auditioning people that went on to things?
Marc:Like, who were some of the comics you remember?
Guest:Well, in the last year, I saw a story.
Guest:Someone sent me a story that, an interview with Andrew Dice Clay.
Guest:Andy showed up and did, first time in Las Vegas, he did the showcase and said, I had heard that if you go to Las Vegas, and a lot of entertainers were coming through on their way to, usually LA, a lot of comedians, and they said, well, if you go to Las Vegas, the place you can get up
Guest:is sandy hackett's talent showcase so he went there when he moved out here uh i don't know exactly but he said i heard buddy hackett's kid was doing a show so i went there and he wasn't dice he was just andy clay doing impressions andy silverstein he yeah he came and did the show yeah and he was very funny howie mandel yeah uh has talked uh said something about that uh for his first time in las vegas he got up
Guest:A comedian named Tony D'Andrea who went on to great success as an entertainer in lounges and stuff.
Guest:And Tony's now very sick.
Guest:But he started the comic strip in New York and got Seinfeld on stage his first time.
Guest:He was the bartender.
Guest:Rodney opened a place at the Tropicana called Rodney's Place.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the first special he did, Tony was part of that group with Tim Allen and I don't even remember everybody else, but it's still on YouTube.
Marc:Oh, sure, sure.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, he did the young comics type of thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then eventually, Kinison bought the house above my father out of the beach.
Guest:Oh, he did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was at that house once.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:They didn't sleep much at that house.
Guest:They did not sleep much.
Yeah.
Guest:and sam would call my dad uh to come up and hang out and he goes i sam i you know but a couple times sam came down and my dad would let him come by himself or sometimes whoever he was yeah i remember who was his wife or girlfriend at the time yeah they were kind he would let him come alone yeah well he didn't want the whole entourage yeah right right right you know and then amazingly i had a comedy club in laughlin
Guest:Laughlin, Nevada.
Guest:And it was very successful.
Guest:And Sam was coming.
Guest:That's where Sam got killed on the way to Laughlin.
Guest:And I got every phone call because they thought he was coming to do My Comedy Club.
Guest:But he was really going down the street to the Riverside, a much bigger venue, 900-seat show.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He was going to be sold out.
Guest:But I ended up getting called by CNN and everybody.
Guest:He died in Laughlin?
Guest:He died on the road to Laughlin.
Guest:A drunk driver coming the other way.
Guest:A kid in a pickup truck hit him.
Guest:Did he live that kid?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So you had the club in Laughlin for how long?
Guest:The club in Laughlin, almost a decade.
Guest:So you were house MC?
Guest:I was, it was Sandy Hackett's comedy club.
Guest:The first week I was the headliner and brought two other acts in.
Guest:And the next week I was on the road with my dad and I get a call in Atlantic city from the president of the hotel who goes, I fired one guy after the first show.
Guest:He trashed his room.
Guest:He's gone.
Guest:He said, you need to be here every week.
Guest:Who was that guy?
Guest:I don't remember what his name was.
Guest:I'm glad I forgot.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Maybe it'll come to me.
Guest:He trashed the hotel room?
Guest:Trashed the hotel room or whatever he did, the president of the hotel fired him.
Guest:He was a headliner?
Guest:No, he wasn't the headliner.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But he said to me, you're going to come.
Guest:I want you here every week to manage this.
Guest:So I said, well, then I'll have to- So this was a hotel with a casino?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, oh, the Sam's Town Gold River, Boyd Gaming.
Guest:And so I said, okay, and I'll have to host the show.
Guest:He said, I don't care what you do, you just be here.
Guest:And so I was, and I stayed there for eight years, and I would host the show and bring in other wonderful comedians.
Guest:And you had a piece of it?
Guest:It was my everything.
Guest:I did everything.
Guest:Right, but like, what's the- What do you mean a piece of it?
Guest:I mean, like, what's the cut for the hotel and for you?
Guest:Oh, the hotel just gave me a flat salary, which is what they paid for the show.
Guest:We did eight shows a week, 10 on three-day weekends.
Guest:We'd go Wednesday, two shows, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, two shows.
Guest:And on three-day weekends, we worked Sunday, two shows.
Marc:So you were like, yeah, right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:So you got it by name.
Marc:You booked it.
Marc:You did everything, but you were on salary with the hotel.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I did marketing, and then they would give me rooms for the comedians.
Guest:We'd eat in the employee dining room.
Marc:So everybody must have done that, no?
Marc:Like back in the day?
Marc:What years were these?
Guest:1990, I started.
Marc:Oh, so it's a little later than the boom.
Marc:But, you know, you must have got a lot of people.
Marc:Like, who were the headliners?
Guest:Oh, my goodness.
Marc:Different ones every week?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I would change acts every week.
Guest:A lot of guys, I'm sure you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I started to go through, Joey Yannetti.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Roger Peltz.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:I had an act called 976 Sing, which was three guys that sang Dirty Limericks.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And they were very funny, and they couldn't get booked much because there were three guys, and they couldn't split the money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I would get the hotel to up the money a little bit and give them each their own room and they would work eight, 10 times a year.
Guest:I usually booked them on three day weekends and they were funny and had a big following.
Marc:It's interesting.
Marc:So like that your father and also like, you know, just like, you know, I know Joe Unetti.
Marc:I started with Joe Unetti in Boston, you know, but I don't know how many people know Joe Unetti.
Marc:I love Joe Unetti.
Marc:I remember his first bits, but like there's like there and there always has been apparently.
Marc:an entire hundreds and hundreds of comics that work all year round that people just don't really know.
Marc:And I think it's always been that way.
Guest:Well, I don't know about you, but in the 80s, when I was doing all the comedy clubs, I felt I knew everybody.
Guest:I'd heard of somebody.
Guest:I knew, oh, did you hear it?
Guest:Yeah, I knew who that was.
Guest:Now I go, you've got to be kidding me.
Guest:I'm looking at Netflix specials or things like that.
Guest:Well, we're old now.
Marc:But the thing was, when I read about, different generations know each other.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:We obviously didn't know everybody.
Marc:But when I read Cliff Nesterov's book, The Comedians, which is great.
Marc:You should get it if you haven't read it.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:I'll look for that.
Marc:In the time that your dad started in post-war America, there was a fucking explosion when the supper clubs took over the country.
Marc:They needed to fill.
Marc:So there's a lot of guys that were doing each other's acts that people never heard of.
Marc:There were hundreds of them because the circuit was there.
Guest:Well, I caught the tail end of the Playboy Club, which was the supper club, which was unbelievable training ground.
Guest:I mean, you had to do two shows a night, three on Friday, four on Saturday.
Guest:I mean, by the end of the week, you're going, boy, this stuff sounds familiar.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:So you opened for your dad for years?
Guest:uh a decade yeah this is just you and him on the road yeah and like it was did you talk about him at the how did you handle that i mean well everyone knew you were his kid was the whole act based on that no the whole act was not based on that but i started opening for him as a singer oh because in those days when you go back to the 70s and 80s you know in las vegas it was if there was a comic headliner there was a musical opening act or if there's musical the other way around so your song and dance man too
Guest:oh you don't want to see me dance and you actually don't want to hear me sing my wife's an incredible singer yeah but uh the um my dad came to see i had a band and he came to see me and he goes okay so i'm gonna give you a shot you're gonna come work with me and but not the band just you so you got to get i had to get charts and stuff like that and i
Guest:I opened for him as a singer, and then we'd go on the road, and we'd have a band, and I had to get there early to rehearse, and then I don't have a musical director, which now I know it is.
Guest:With Rat Pack, I travel with a musical director because I don't want to sit there and rehearse the band.
Guest:That's not what I do, but I'd have to do everything.
Guest:I'd sing my voice out.
Guest:I wasn't a great singer.
Guest:I had no voice by Showtime, and we get to someplace, and the band is terrible, and they got attitudes, and they're assholes, and I went back on the break, and
Guest:You know, it's time for us to take a break now.
Guest:And I go into my dad and he goes, how's it going?
Guest:Don't sound too good.
Guest:I said, they're all assholes and they're terrible.
Guest:And he goes, what do you want to do?
Guest:I said, I'd like to fire him.
Guest:He says, what about the show?
Guest:He says, could you do stand up?
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:He said, could you do half hour?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Fire the band.
Guest:So I go back out and they go, what's next?
Guest:I said, go home.
Guest:and he said what I said go home and that was that's when it became great because that was probably in the first year year and maybe the first year with my dad and then we just do is two guys doing stand-up oh that's sweet so one of the things when you say I didn't talk about him I just did my stand-up that I was doing but one of the things I said I know what you're thinking Buddy Hackett's son I said a lot of guys would like to have this job I said so many other comedians said boy boy I would love to open for Buddy Hackett what a thing for my career would that be and I told my father and he said fuck him let him find their own famous father laughing
Guest:And you did well with that?
Guest:Well, first of all, I'm with my best friend.
Guest:He's teaching me.
Guest:The next day, he's going over, and you told this joke, that was a little much on this word.
Guest:You need to take these couple words out.
Guest:I mean, he was honing it, honing it, honing it.
Guest:Was he always right?
Guest:Oh, always right.
Guest:Comedically, always right.
Guest:He used to talk about peeling the onion, going inside.
Guest:I mean, if it was a joke, you could still find,
Guest:10 other jokes in there.
Guest:And when I first heard that, I go, what?
Guest:The joke ends over here.
Guest:No, no, don't even worry about the end.
Guest:It's the story on the way to the end that gets you.
Guest:And my dad would do that.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's so true.
Guest:He would start.
Guest:And I've seen you do that where you start talking about something and you're not in a rush to get to the end.
Guest:You're interested in the journey that takes
Marc:Yeah, it took me a long time to figure that out.
Guest:And my dad would have, he'd start this story, then he'd start, and my dad would have 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 different stories going at the same time, and somehow by the end of the night, come back and wrap them all up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that, he would call peeling the onion, going inside the orange, finding the fruit, finding the other stuff.
Guest:Don't be in a rush to get to the end.
Guest:There's so much good stuff in the middle here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just telling the story of how you got to that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I watched your last, both Netflix special.
Guest:Too Real, the recent.
Guest:Yeah, and I said, you know, I felt like you were talking to me.
Guest:I go, that's what I love personally in the community.
Guest:That was my dad.
Guest:My dad was so honest.
Guest:Nothing contrived.
Guest:To me, that's the kind of comedy I don't care for is contrived.
Guest:But the stuff that's just so real and honest that you can't go, well, that's not true.
Guest:This is so dead on.
Guest:Your stuff comes from that.
Guest:The pain you have, the life you've had, the stuff you have.
Guest:It's quite wonderful.
Guest:Thank you, buddy.
Guest:No, Sandy.
Guest:Oh, that's right.
Marc:That's funny.
That's funny.
Marc:That is a genuine moment.
Marc:So, now out of curiosity, so the Rat Pack show you created with your wife, right?
Guest:I didn't create it with my wife to start with.
Guest:I was in Las Vegas.
Guest:There was a show called The Rat Pack is Back.
Marc:Yeah, I remember that.
Marc:I think Mark Cohen was in it.
Guest:Mark Cohen was in that and David Cassidy had brought it to Las Vegas, but he had seen it somewhere else.
Guest:Mark Cohen did the Joey Bishop part?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:uh but he was like the third or fourth guy yeah to eventually do it yeah and cassidy was uh you know tough to work with for the hotels yeah keep asking for more and more and one day david cassidy like part of your family yes david david cassidy yes yeah no longer with us david cass right uh and um when the show first started someone said boy the perfect guy for this to play the joey role would be sandy hackett
Guest:And so I approached the production manager and brought him my stuff.
Guest:And he said, bring it to my house.
Guest:I'll look at it.
Guest:And I didn't find this out until years later when I actually worked from somewhere else.
Guest:But he said, I thought you would have been the perfect guy for this.
Guest:But David just didn't want you.
Guest:But they hired Hiram Kasten.
Guest:oh yeah Hiram Kasdan the original Joey who Hiram's a nice guy but he's not Joey didn't play Joey just was called Joey and he would beat up the audience so there was he just did his shtick he did his shtick and he beat up the crowd yeah and made the show very tough so eventually David's contract ran out and I was said to I said let's I want to do this I want to do my version of it right and that's what happened
Guest:and then my wife eventually came and helped me and her father was ron miller who wrote for once in my life touched me in the morning if i could yes to me yesterday someday christmas i brought you a couple of cds in case maybe you want to have her on i don't know but she was uh very bright very we want to take the show to a much higher level yeah and put much more production there was no uh copyright problems
Guest:no in terms of like the other show or anything no because you're talking about something that was public domain and actually this all went to court and there was someone that tried to glom on to rat pack and say i own it right the court said no rat pack was the press dubbed those performers oh really sinatra didn't like the term rat pack he wanted to call it the summit right so the the rat pack was the press's nomenclature for the show no kidding
Guest:and so there was uh it ended up in court and the guy who tried to glom it all for himself got clobbered by the court and cost him a fortune but he was but it freed it up yeah so so you tour it was never not free it was always free right so you tour with it still
Guest:yeah so one day always you playing joey i've hired many other uh actors to play but one day joey uh i get a uh hbo announced they were doing a the rat pack movie yeah which you had ray leota on so they're gonna hbo announces we're doing this rat pack yeah and i get a call my phone rings one day and it's joey bishop
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who was very good friends with my dad.
Guest:He lived a long time, Joey Bishop.
Guest:He was.
Guest:He was 89.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was Uncle Joey.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To you.
Guest:To me.
Guest:Well, to everybody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To me.
Guest:And the phone rings, and I said, hello.
Guest:And the voice says, hello, Neff.
Guest:I said, Uncle Joey.
Guest:He says, yeah.
Guest:He says, HBO is doing a movie about the Rat Pack.
Guest:I think it would be perfect to play me.
Guest:I said, wow.
Guest:I...
Guest:i would love that what do i do who do i don't know nobody called me true story they hired bobby slayton yeah to play now bobby slayton and bobby did a very nice job but the the problem was not for bobby the problem was the movie was really about how sinatra helped get kennedy elected president yeah wasn't really about the rat pack yeah so uh but that set me on a course to want to create something to play joey
Marc:Yeah, and that's what you did.
Marc:And that's what I did.
Marc:Now, when you tour with this thing, and you've been touring with it a long time, who are the audiences?
Marc:In general.
Marc:And what kind of venues do you play in, out of curiosity?
Guest:We have played all kinds of venues, but we've been on subscription on Broadway houses, so 22,000, 2,500 seats.
Guest:We've been in smaller, like summer stock theaters, 400, 500 seats, and do like a two or three week run there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We worked a place called Theater by the Sea, which is up in Rhode Island.
Guest:So subscription holders, mostly, right?
Guest:Sometimes, and sometimes just for sale.
Guest:I guess my curiosity is, are they older people?
Guest:They started out older, and over the years, we've gotten both.
Guest:The reputation of the show, I'll see parents bringing their kids.
Guest:And I'll see a kid 12 years old dressed up in a suit with a fedora on loves Sinatra.
Guest:And why does he love Sinatra?
Guest:He's listening to either Sinatra music or he's listening to Michael Buble or Harry Connick Jr.
Guest:or just great music.
Guest:So it's everything.
Guest:But the show, it's about the Rat Pack.
Guest:It is the Rat Pack, but it is great music.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so if you like that big band sound and I've updated it comedically because if you go back to 1960 and do all those jokes, then you're kind of set.
Guest:So what I did is I asked my dad to record a voiceover as God to send the Rat Pack back to do one last show in modern day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that opens it up comedically to what's going on.
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Guest:And I play Joey.
Guest:So I get to use my standup experience and play Joey and do that.
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Marc:Keeps it fresh.
Marc:Keeps it fresh.
Marc:Now, tell that story about when you went to see Shecky Green for the first time with your father and Shecky... Oh, that one.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So, well, it's not the first time.
Guest:They're closing the lounge of the Riviera.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so in those days, you had what I said before, the 8 o'clock show, the 12 o'clock show, and then the lounges were 10 and 2 o'clock in the morning.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So they decided, Vegas is changing, they're closing the lounges, and it's closing night, and Checky signed a new contract to the new MGM.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he's moving, so he's already set.
Guest:So all the entertainers come into town and my dad calls me and I'm in college and he calls and he says, hey, we're going to go see Shecky.
Guest:It's closing night.
Guest:You want to go?
Guest:I said, yeah.
Guest:So I go to school.
Guest:I come home.
Guest:I take a nap.
Guest:Now I'm ready to go for the night.
Guest:I go to the late show of my dad's.
Guest:He has a guest.
Guest:We hang out.
Guest:We go over.
Guest:The room is packed.
Guest:Maybe four or 450 people.
Guest:Every entertainer from town is there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's Shecky Green, Vic Damone, and Vic is on stage still, and he's getting everybody from the audience up to sing.
Guest:Jack Jones is singing, Frankie Randall, Wayne Newton, everybody gets up and does a few minutes.
Guest:Finally, Shecky comes out, and he's brilliant, and he's funny, and he's wonderful.
Guest:And now he starts to introduce everybody in the room.
Guest:And sitting, you can see six, eight feet away, is Sinatra right down front.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad, we're in the back.
Guest:Shecky didn't know we were coming.
Guest:And they got us in and found a seat for us in the back.
Guest:And no one, and Shecky's introduced everybody.
Guest:I'm 18 years old and I am dying for my dad to be recognized.
Guest:And I'm going, and Shecky goes, there's only one person left to introduce.
Guest:I'm doing my dad.
Guest:There's one person left to introduce.
Guest:How do you introduce God himself?
Marc:That's what Shecky says.
Guest:That's what Shecky says, and he's looking right at Frank.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad jumps up from the back of the room, which, you know, maybe 50 feet, runs to the front of the stage, right to Sinatra.
Guest:He goes, Shecky, forget about me.
Guest:Frank's here.
Guest:And who laughed the hardest?
Guest:Sinatra.
Guest:Sinatra loved it.
Guest:There were certain guys that he let do that, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah, Frank had a sense of humor and he loved to be entertained.
Guest:I mean, I don't know if you've interviewed Tom Dreesen, but he toured with him for a long time.
Guest:He's got all kinds of stories.
Marc:I got to call Dreesen.
Marc:Actually, thanks for reminding me.
Marc:But your dad, he partied a little bit, right?
Guest:He didn't do drugs.
Guest:He did drugs when he was young.
Guest:And one day, I think him and Lenny used to smoke weed.
Guest:And one day he said he got on a plane in New York.
Guest:He was going out to LA for something.
Guest:He got off and somebody came up to him.
Guest:He said, you got any shit?
Guest:And he went, uh-oh.
Guest:I'm not doing, I don't want people coming up to me going, do you have any shit?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So he quit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he drank.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he used to, whatever is, you know, sometimes he'd drink vodka for two or three months or tequila.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then he would test, this is going to be a tequila show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:See how it go?
Guest:This is going to be a vodka show.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Oh, we're going to have a, this is going to be a gin show.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, and then I started to tour them and he'd say, we're going to have a little drink.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not much of a drinker, Dad.
Guest:Oh, well, just have a little one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he started to get me, and I'd go on with a little bit of a buzz sometimes.
Guest:Oh, that's good.
Guest:And then he'd have too much, and I'd be the one driving when we left.
Marc:Yeah, but he never screwed up his act?
Guest:Look, let's be honest.
Guest:You get to a point of a couple of drinks, you're okay, you know, half the bottle.
Guest:I can tell.
Guest:Can the audience tell?
Guest:I don't think so.
Guest:There are a couple of times where I go, okay, too much, Dad.
Marc:I'm going to drive.
Marc:Well, I'll tell you this.
Marc:When I was a kid, maybe 13 years old, I wrote to your father and asked for an autographed picture, and he sent it.
Marc:Somebody sent it, and I got it.
Guest:That would have been my mother who sent it because my dad, as far as following up on stuff like that, my mother handled all that.
Marc:Well, that was very nice.
Guest:But she got him to sign everything.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It meant a lot to me because I loved him.
Marc:I thought it was great.
Guest:Well, and from that, I ended up on your show.
Marc:So thank you.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Marc:It's good to meet you, Sandy.
Marc:Nice to meet you, Mark.
Marc:Well, that was that.
Marc:That's a life.
Marc:That's two lives in show business we just covered.
Marc:So Sandy Hackett, as I said earlier, currently touring with his show, Sandy Hackett's Rat Pack.
Marc:Go to SandyHackett.com for tour dates and info.
Marc:He's currently working on a book about his father called My Buddy.
Marc:And don't forget, I'll be at the Beacon Theater in New York City this Saturday at 7.30 p.m.
Marc:Check out WTFPod.com slash tour to see if there are any tickets left.
Marc:And if you're there, you'll get the first crack at our new WTF t-shirt designed by Aaron Draplin.
Marc:All right, I'm going to go eat dinner at the Selka with Sarah the painter.
Guest:Boomer lives!
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