Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2: Everybody is the j n V. Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy.
Speaker 2: We are the Breakfast Club. We got some special legends
Speaker 2: in the man. Come on, now, this is special one
Speaker 2: right here, legends of the building. Come on, it's the
Speaker 2: cast of Good Times. Fifty years of good Times.
Speaker 3: We got Michael, Thelma and JJ well Carter and Bernadette
Speaker 3: Stainers and Jimmy Walker.
Speaker 4: That's right, all right, Good morning, guys. How y'all feeling
Speaker 4: good morning?
Speaker 5: Breakfast Club?
Speaker 4: How y'all feeling man? Fifty years a good Times?
Speaker 6: Wow?
Speaker 7: I know wow, and we're still going strong.
Speaker 4: Did y'all know Good Times was going to make the market?
Speaker 4: It made well?
Speaker 8: I didn't, No, I had no idea.
Speaker 5: No, we didn't, but we're very grateful it did. Yeah,
Speaker 5: thank you to the listeners were.
Speaker 2: Hands well from the beginning. Let's start, how did it
Speaker 2: come about? How did Good.
Speaker 1: Times come about? And how did you guys audition?
Speaker 2: And how did it make because during that time there
Speaker 2: wasn't too many of us on television, So how did
Speaker 2: it come about?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 2: And he is black, you know, they joking me all
Speaker 2: the time, and I'm black.
Speaker 7: But well, it started with me being in a beauty pageant,
Speaker 7: you know, and from there, Uh, there was a manager
Speaker 7: watching me in the beauty pageant and gave my mother
Speaker 7: a card to say, they're looking for a teenager to
Speaker 7: be in the show and meet Norman Lear at CBS,
Speaker 7: you know. So we went up there. But there were
Speaker 7: thousands of girls when I opened the door. So, I mean,
Speaker 7: but that's how it started with me.
Speaker 4: You were a teenager, all good?
Speaker 8: Huh yeah, oh you eighteen?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, have mercy, okay, yeah, all right, okay, he's
Speaker 3: still beautiful, absolutely so.
Speaker 7: And then you know, after a couple of months, I
Speaker 7: thought I didn't get it, you know, because I didn't
Speaker 7: hear back from them. And then I did get the call.
Speaker 7: My mom got the call that I was Thelma, and
Speaker 7: so they flew me out to California. That's how it
Speaker 7: happened for me.
Speaker 4: Wow, what about you, Miss Carton.
Speaker 5: By the time I began to work with Norman Lear,
Speaker 5: I had been in my sixth Broadway play. By that time,
Speaker 5: I met during my journey with Miss Jane Murray and
Speaker 5: also Pat Kirkland. These were two wonderful women who I
Speaker 5: auditioned for when I went there. However, I literally had
Speaker 5: the job before I got the job. My contract was
Speaker 5: brought from The Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansbury.
Speaker 5: We did the version of the musical play. By that
Speaker 5: time I had won the Tony Award nomination that year
Speaker 5: in seventy four. However, as a result of that, Norman
Speaker 5: would consistently he came more than twice to see my
Speaker 5: work and flew my mother and I out to the
Speaker 5: state of California. I you know, I was reluctant because
Speaker 5: they always said it never rains in California, and I
Speaker 5: was excited. It main for three months when I got
Speaker 5: and there are any illusions about Hollywood were always neutralized
Speaker 5: as far as our concern. So I'm very grateful to
Speaker 5: have not only worked with and still love Jimmy Walker
Speaker 5: and Bernadette. But we give respect to the spirit of
Speaker 5: Miss Esther Rolene du Bois, and to Johnny Brown who
Speaker 5: played Bookman, to Helen Martin who played Weeping Wonder. These
Speaker 5: are wonderful people that helped us along the way. Of course,
Speaker 5: to mister Ben Powers as well Albert Reed who played
Speaker 5: the Alderman. These are the people who accentuated what we did.
Speaker 5: Of course, we're working with the wonderful Debbie Allen and
Speaker 5: the work that she contributed to our production, so we
Speaker 5: thank you.
Speaker 6: What about you, mister Walker, Well, I'm just a hard
Speaker 6: core stand up. That's it. That's all I do. I'm
Speaker 6: just a stand up to the core. So I was
Speaker 6: working in prov me, David Brynner, Bett Mittler, Pat Benatar,
Speaker 6: all of us together. We had a comedy team named
Speaker 6: Edmund and Curly. They work all the time in those days,
Speaker 6: and they couldn't do the job. They were doing like
Speaker 6: three shows a day. They said, hey, man, we were
Speaker 6: supposed to do these warm ups for this show called
Speaker 6: Luci's Department. We can't make it. Do you want to
Speaker 6: do take our place and do the warm up thing?
Speaker 6: And I said, I don't even know what the warm
Speaker 6: up is. Never heard of it, you know that kind
Speaker 6: of stuff like that. And they said, they said, look,
Speaker 6: they go over there. It's like on fifty seventh and
Speaker 6: eleventh or twelfth. You go over there and you do
Speaker 6: like a half hour you tell people's shows about. And
Speaker 6: I said, I don't want to do it. They say, well,
Speaker 6: it's eight hundred dollars. I said, well, who do I
Speaker 6: have to kill. I'm in, I said, I'm in. So
Speaker 6: I went over there. I did the warm up and
Speaker 6: luckily there was a few laughs in there. So everybody
Speaker 6: comes up after the show and they go, man, you
Speaker 6: are funny. You need to be on this show, you
Speaker 6: need to do this thing. I said, Well, in those days,
Speaker 6: and I still believe this is this day. Everybody in
Speaker 6: this business there's no truth at all. Everybody is something
Speaker 6: until you ask for something. They go, well, I was
Speaker 6: in charge of that, but now I'm not in charge
Speaker 6: of that. My friend is in charge. Everybody's a liar.
Speaker 6: So until my line, and I always say this, everybody
Speaker 6: is full of Dodo until proven a complete a hole.
Speaker 6: That's just everybody lies. That's just me. Freddie Prinz, David Brennan,
Speaker 6: Robert Climbed, Richard Lewis, all the guys we said, liars.
Speaker 6: So Pat Kirklin comes up and says, hey, we're doing
Speaker 6: this show in Los Angeles. We want to be on
Speaker 6: the show. I go, she's a liar, so you just go.
Speaker 6: I said. So you always say when people ask you
Speaker 6: to do something, oh yeah, I'm in. See you there anyway,
Speaker 6: So you'll never hear from them again. And everybody women
Speaker 6: are liars. Everybody's a liar, so that's it. So I said, yeah,
Speaker 6: I'll be in it. So the next week, I'm not
Speaker 6: even paying any attention. I go do the warm ups.
Speaker 6: Luckily I killed. So Norman Lear is there at that time.
Speaker 6: He says, hey, man, you are funny because I just
Speaker 6: did the Rodan Martin show. They had called and do
Speaker 6: the Ronald Martin thing. So he says, do you want
Speaker 6: to be on this show? I said yeah. He says,
Speaker 6: we're going to send you a contract. So I knew
Speaker 6: he's a liar. So I said, look, don't even send
Speaker 6: the contract in my house. Send it to the improv.
Speaker 6: So I'm not paying any attention. I'm going out. I'm
Speaker 6: doing my dates. I won this thing called a Napti thing,
Speaker 6: and a Napti thing is where you go do college
Speaker 6: tours and you compete against other people to do it.
Speaker 6: So they bring in a whole bunch of acts. So
Speaker 6: I was on the show. Edmund Curley again said you
Speaker 6: need to do the Nafti thing. I did the nafty thing.
Speaker 6: They said, you're going to do the region of the Midwest.
Speaker 6: You're going to do South Dakota and North Dakota, Iowa
Speaker 6: that kind of stuff like that, and if you win it,
Speaker 6: you could get a whole thing. So I came in
Speaker 6: second because you get a whole bunch of colleges. I
Speaker 6: came in second. The winner was BB King. He won
Speaker 6: one hundred and fifty dates. I won ninety dates.
Speaker 5: B B.
Speaker 6: King was the winner. So we're out doing dates and
Speaker 6: you know, I'm just bouncing around. So I get a
Speaker 6: call from J D. Jorman's Fargo, North Dakota doing dates
Speaker 6: and evand Cody said, these people have never seen a
Speaker 6: black person in their lives. You'll kill on this thing.
Speaker 6: So luckily I was killing on the thing and j
Speaker 6: Jo says, well where are you. I said, I'm in Fargo,
Speaker 6: North Dakota. She says, you belong in Los Angeles. I said,
Speaker 6: I know, I'd belong in Los Angeles, but I had
Speaker 6: no reason to be there. So they said, no, we
Speaker 6: sent you a ticket to the improv. So I wasn't
Speaker 6: in New York at the time, so I never got
Speaker 6: the ticket if I was on the road doing my thing.
Speaker 6: So she says, look, get on the plane. We have
Speaker 6: a ticket waiting for you in Fargo. I thought she's
Speaker 6: a liar. So what I said, have optimistic, Yes, positive
Speaker 6: people have live They lie, women lie, they lie. It's
Speaker 6: just a constant thing. It's just.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 6: Then I go to Los Angeles. My man, Steve Lansburg
Speaker 6: is on the show. You guys don't even remember this guy.
Speaker 6: It's the Barbie Darren Show. He was a day player
Speaker 6: on the Barbie Darren Show. So I said, hey, Lansburg, Chalkman.
Speaker 6: Used to call him Chalkman because he had all this
Speaker 6: white stuff that he used to do in the chalk Man.
Speaker 6: We got to do some shows while we're out here.
Speaker 6: So I went to the I went to the comedy store.
Speaker 6: I'm doing shows. I go back to bed at like
Speaker 6: three o'clock in the morning, get a call JD Joe.
Speaker 6: She says, where are you? I said, we're my bed sleeping.
Speaker 6: She says, well, you belong across the street. We're doing rehearsals.
Speaker 6: I said, rehearsal for what. She says, there's a show
Speaker 6: called good Times. You signed on to the show? I
Speaker 6: had signed on to it at the improv. Yeah, because
Speaker 6: I didn't believe him, because he's a liar. So horrible contract. No,
Speaker 6: they had a contract. Kenny the Drunk who was a lawyer,
Speaker 6: was at the bar. I said, Kenny, is this any good?
Speaker 6: He said, yeah, I think so sign it. I'll send
Speaker 6: it back for you. And I thought, I said, Kenny
Speaker 6: is a drunk. He's not going to send He's a live,
Speaker 6: he's not going to send it. So then he sent
Speaker 6: it back. So I was on the show and I
Speaker 6: had no idea the contract. Yeah, he's my man, here's
Speaker 6: a live the whole time. So Kenny signed me up
Speaker 6: for it. So I was in. So I go to
Speaker 6: the rehearsal and there's a whole bunch of people there
Speaker 6: at the rehearsal because I didn't even know we had
Speaker 6: a script because they said this the script downstairs. I said,
Speaker 6: I'm going back to bed because I'm not going downstairs
Speaker 6: to get a script because they're lying. I don't have time.
Speaker 6: So I went. I got the script and I looked
Speaker 6: at it and I'm sitting next to Normally. I didn't
Speaker 6: know who normally it was, because we're always working at
Speaker 6: that time. You know, if you're if you're a night
Speaker 6: Love comic, you know, I'm following Robert Klein and following
Speaker 6: Steve Martin. I'm worried about holding my spot at the
Speaker 6: endprov that's tough enough, you know, as a battle. You know,
Speaker 6: Robert Klein's there, Bets singing songs. We got Pat Benatar singing,
Speaker 6: and so I said, I better have my little act
Speaker 6: together to hang in there because it's a fight for
Speaker 6: the spots to get on. So I go and I'm
Speaker 6: reading the script and I'm sitting next to Norman.
Speaker 1: I said, huh okay.
Speaker 6: And I'm reading the script and I said, a guy
Speaker 6: next to me like you normally. I said, man, this sucks.
Speaker 6: What is this? I said. He said, we're going to
Speaker 6: do a TV show. I said, really, I said, you're
Speaker 6: a liar. It's not going to happen. It's terrible. So
Speaker 6: now we finished the rehearsal and Norman Leary and Ala
Speaker 6: Man Bruce comes up and he says, hey, you know,
Speaker 6: you know you have some problems with the script. You
Speaker 6: can't be blasting out loud about how people stink. You
Speaker 6: have to like bring it down a little bit. So
Speaker 6: as a comic, people tell you how bad you stink
Speaker 6: all the time. People always go, you suck, You're a
Speaker 6: piece of garbage, you're no good at all, and you
Speaker 6: finish and there's always that couple of people that go,
Speaker 6: we love you here, but then when you go out,
Speaker 6: you know, we had Andy Kauflan and Andy Kafflan was
Speaker 6: one of those guys you stink, So that kind of
Speaker 6: thing you just have to keep going. And so from
Speaker 6: then on we did the show, and I was always
Speaker 6: throwing stuff in and people got upset.
Speaker 4: So when did you stop thinking people was liar?
Speaker 6: Never? I think it now. People, I mean agents are liars.
Speaker 6: They're all liars. No, very few people. People want to
Speaker 6: be bigger than what they are. And the big people
Speaker 6: you never meet them. They're in a big glass tower
Speaker 6: upstairs on the ninetieth floor. So you know, even if
Speaker 6: like berniand Ella to you, even if meet the girl
Speaker 6: said give me your number, I know she's lying because
Speaker 6: she's not going to give you the number. And then
Speaker 6: with the horrible things with the cell phones, they don't answer.
Speaker 6: You text them, you email them. They just they sit
Speaker 6: in their room and they sit with their girlfriends and
Speaker 6: they start laughing. They go this moron I met at Walmart.
Speaker 6: He asked for my number. I was busy. I gave
Speaker 6: him my number because I know I'm never going to
Speaker 6: talk to my answers emails. Ever again, once in a
Speaker 6: while somebody will come through, but.
Speaker 9: Very very rarely, and the girl, the girl would be nice,
Speaker 9: and some girls will go some girls will go uh.
Speaker 6: And I learned this from a friend of mine who
Speaker 6: happens to be a girl. And she said a very
Speaker 6: interesting thing. She said, you know, if you want to
Speaker 6: get rid of a guy and he asked you to
Speaker 6: go out, say, you know, like if she's a girl,
Speaker 6: I asked you to go out. I say, what is
Speaker 6: your name feeling? Jess? I say, hey, Jess, you know,
Speaker 6: why don't we, you know, go to uh, go to
Speaker 6: their four seesons and have dinner, just start laughing ahead,
Speaker 6: that's what they do. Are you serious? Really? No, it
Speaker 6: wasn't lucky yet. But it was a girl that showed promise,
Speaker 6: she answered, she answered, And I was like, really, sometimes
Speaker 6: sometimes you're so stunnd one did call back. I was,
Speaker 6: I was stunned.
Speaker 1: How many times do you give your number out to
Speaker 1: these women?
Speaker 6: I'm available anybody, but see they they and I've said
Speaker 6: the girls, hey, let's go in the cruise together, and
Speaker 6: they just go, They just go.
Speaker 3: Their adults they.
Speaker 6: Just start laughing.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 6: I hear my toasts popping up. I have to go,
Speaker 6: so there's no there's no honest woman. And then the
Speaker 6: phrase I always hate to hear. You know I'm a
Speaker 6: single mom, and you just go, okay, okay, I got it.
Speaker 6: You know I can't be worried about that or you
Speaker 6: know what happened. I never connection, but anyway, go ahead,
Speaker 6: talk about the ship.
Speaker 2: That's that's how I got got good time.
Speaker 6: That's what I just said.
Speaker 1: Iver got it.
Speaker 6: But I've never I've never I've never i never auditioned
Speaker 6: for any show ever. I've never auditioned for a show him.
Speaker 6: I've never auditioned, I never tried out. I never tolerate
Speaker 6: him because.
Speaker 7: This just like I'm doing, just like people just see
Speaker 7: my afternoon.
Speaker 6: Let's hire this guy.
Speaker 8: And we know how to do that.
Speaker 1: We'll let them go.
Speaker 3: How much of y'all real lives did you implement in
Speaker 3: these characters? You know, especially you know you missed the
Speaker 3: Carter because Michael was like one of the most pro
Speaker 3: black figures that early on we ever saw them.
Speaker 5: Well originally from Brooklyn, Brenda Dead and I both from Brownsville,
Speaker 5: giving our shout out to Brownsville Grafton Street.
Speaker 6: You do Martain Blake.
Speaker 5: That's where I used to live when I was growing
Speaker 5: up in the heart of Brooklyn. However, my point is
Speaker 5: that by virtue of the fact that I grew up
Speaker 5: in an African American church, one of the most memorable
Speaker 5: productions we ever did on good Times when we had
Speaker 5: the Black Jesus. However, what happened in my case is
Speaker 5: that I physically grew up with, like the wonderful images
Speaker 5: in this fantastic sound room, that I grew up with
Speaker 5: people who look like that on the walls of my church.
Speaker 5: So it was almost a form of symbiosis when the
Speaker 5: good times parallel came up with how I was able
Speaker 5: to see that. But due to the fact that we
Speaker 5: were able to locate in the verses of the Bible,
Speaker 5: the example that is used hair of wool, skin of bronze,
Speaker 5: and like me in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. You know,
Speaker 5: I was a kid, but I got some unkind male
Speaker 5: But I was abdull from all of that by just
Speaker 5: taking myself to another level and not deal with the
Speaker 5: riff rap.
Speaker 3: I love the episode of when You Broke Down That
Speaker 3: boy Boy Mama. Boy is a white racist word.
Speaker 5: And it still is what I love about what we've
Speaker 5: done together as a team is that I'd rather be
Speaker 5: relevant than a relic. And because of the fact that
Speaker 5: people who are genuinely very kind to us, I know
Speaker 5: from my personal experience, we're bombarded with positive energy. So
Speaker 5: I believe that the human beings very difficult to be
Speaker 5: negative when you're always being given good energy from the
Speaker 5: people that we meet. And I'm personally indebted to the
Speaker 5: people who viewed our work, the people who continue to
Speaker 5: like our work, And all I can say is, thank you.
Speaker 5: We respect that.
Speaker 4: How much of dumb would you miss, Bernadette Oh with me?
Speaker 7: A lot of my character was, you know, the way
Speaker 7: I was. I grew up in a family you know,
Speaker 7: five well they're five children, you know, I'm the oldest,
Speaker 7: and a mom and dad, and so you know, my
Speaker 7: father would always say, even though it was in the projects,
Speaker 7: he always say, what's around you does not have to
Speaker 7: be in you. And that's kind of how we were.
Speaker 7: So I knew my character and that young girls in
Speaker 7: the projects do grow up to be become someone, you know,
Speaker 7: I strive to be the good girl, you know, and
Speaker 7: you know, the positive person so very much. So the
Speaker 7: character is very much like who I was then.
Speaker 5: But Bernadette consistently he has always had high standard and
Speaker 5: she has never belivers herself in that context.
Speaker 4: What about you, mister Walker, how much of you with JJ?
Speaker 6: Well, goat. I remember, I'm a comic. So we just
Speaker 6: we just sit around and all we do is jokes.
Speaker 6: That's it. It's just jokes every day, every hour, every battle,
Speaker 6: every whatever. That's all we do. And at that time,
Speaker 6: Johnny Carson was it. So our main goal in life
Speaker 6: was to get on the Johnny Carson Show. Because if
Speaker 6: you get on the Johnny Carson Show the next day,
Speaker 6: you can draw, and that's the key thing. You must
Speaker 6: be able to draw, put tushies in the seats. I
Speaker 6: don't care how great you think you are, you what
Speaker 6: you are. It's like now with Netflix, your goal in life,
Speaker 6: nothing else counts. Mom, dad, family, Get on Netflix and
Speaker 6: take your shot. So in terms of my thing of
Speaker 6: being on the show, I wanted to get on Johnny Carson,
Speaker 6: I didn't want to do anything else. So you just
Speaker 6: wrote jokes all day.
Speaker 4: How did you feel when you know?
Speaker 3: Eesterole and John Amos they said they used to criticize
Speaker 3: your characters, saying it was a poor role model for
Speaker 3: black teenagers back then.
Speaker 6: Well at that time, I was not really aware of it.
Speaker 6: You got to remember, we didn't have media like we
Speaker 6: had now and with our cast. For me, I didn't
Speaker 6: really it's going to sound strange. I never watched the show.
Speaker 6: I never really John is a great actor. He I mean,
Speaker 6: he's probably one of the best black actors in America.
Speaker 6: I'm best actor in general. I didn't really talk to John,
Speaker 6: so I didn't really know him. And Esther, I don't
Speaker 6: think in my humble I don't think i've ever Bernadette
Speaker 6: was very close with Esta, very very very close. I
Speaker 6: don't think I ever said a word to Esther because
Speaker 6: being in a comedy lineup of like thirty guys you
Speaker 6: don't and girls too, you don't. Really there's people you
Speaker 6: just you know, you never talk to. I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: there's people you talk to all the time, and then
Speaker 6: I maybe you may talk to ten guys all the time,
Speaker 6: and there's another ten guys you never talk to at all.
Speaker 6: You don't know them, you see them, and you just
Speaker 6: so I'm used to not mingling with some guys. That's it,
Speaker 6: that's the reality of it all.
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask after Good Times, was it difficult
Speaker 2: to get other parts in movies and sitcoms and things
Speaker 2: like that, because people look at you as characters of
Speaker 2: Good Times, Like when I see you, I still see Michael,
Speaker 2: like I still see No, I still see JJ And
Speaker 2: I was a kid like when I was coming up,
Speaker 2: there was only I think at the time, it was.
Speaker 1: Your show and what's his name?
Speaker 4: Jefferson?
Speaker 1: Nope, before the Sun and that was the only two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would see blacks on television. So was it difficult
Speaker 1: after that.
Speaker 5: No. As a matter of fact, my transition, once I
Speaker 5: finished Good Times, I still had to complete high school.
Speaker 5: So after I did my works in high school.
Speaker 1: I went back to high school.
Speaker 5: I completed. I graduated on June sixth, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 5: which was a Friday, along with my colleague Lawrence Fishburn.
Speaker 5: We were in the ninth grade together and we went
Speaker 5: all through that part of our education together as brothers.
Speaker 5: My point being that once I completed the work in
Speaker 5: Good Times, I was also invited to the wonderful nation
Speaker 5: of Nigeria, and at that time I couldn't wait to
Speaker 5: get to West Africa. The point being that I grew
Speaker 5: up in an apple centric consciousness and due to men
Speaker 5: like Jimmy Walker. He's one of the most well read
Speaker 5: men I've ever met, so he became a blueprint for
Speaker 5: me as far as wanting to know information, I figured,
Speaker 5: if I love and respect the history of not just Africa,
Speaker 5: but the global experience, because you know, everybody here is
Speaker 5: a human We belong here. You know, if you ain't
Speaker 5: come on earth to do your thing, then what you
Speaker 5: come here for, If you ain't come here to be
Speaker 5: the best you can while you're here, and what you
Speaker 5: come here for. So my point is that I wanted
Speaker 5: to make it and I did make it my business
Speaker 5: to read as many books that related to my particular
Speaker 5: subject matter. I originally went to Los Angeles Community College
Speaker 5: in my early years and majored in poetry there. Then
Speaker 5: from there I moved to meet up with a man
Speaker 5: named doctor John Henry Clark, who became my primary mentor.
Speaker 5: Through him, I met of the phenomenal historians like Joseph
Speaker 5: Vijaik and doctor Ivan and Curdemer, the brilliance of Amos Wilson,
Speaker 5: who wrote just consistential books that helped to heal our people,
Speaker 5: because in this culture, we've all been wounded and we're
Speaker 5: still in the process of repairing ourselves. But we must
Speaker 5: understand this time around, ain't nobody coming to our rescue.
Speaker 5: Therefore you must rescue yourself.
Speaker 3: So you bought all the energy to Michael because the
Speaker 3: ain't no white people can write that character.
Speaker 5: I'm very grateful two men like Eric Monty and Michael
Speaker 5: Evans due to the fact that Eric is from in
Speaker 5: Chicago from Cabrini Green. One of the highlights of working
Speaker 5: on the show was that consecutively for three years, due
Speaker 5: to the genius of esther role, she asked us to
Speaker 5: join and participate in the Bud Billiken Day Parade, which
Speaker 5: very popular in Chicago. But also there were people who
Speaker 5: lived in Cabrini Green who knew that Burneddett, myself, Jennet
Speaker 5: de Wis Esther of course, were coming in advance. And
Speaker 5: these are times when John blessed my father's heart because
Speaker 5: he is one of the people on good times that
Speaker 5: I worked long before. I haven't worked in that production.
Speaker 5: But my point is that some of the residents in
Speaker 5: those wonderful complexes, they physically invited us to have dinner
Speaker 5: with us. I'm talking delicious food. But the Calmoradity was there,
Speaker 5: so I think it helped us to be authentic because
Speaker 5: during the time I worked on Good Times, I never
Speaker 5: saw the show. I was forbidden to watch the show.
Speaker 5: John Namis and Esther Rolle told my mother Lucille, who
Speaker 5: fortunately lived to be ninety seven and she would be
Speaker 5: one hundred and one this year. But my point is
Speaker 5: that my mother kept me grounded and listened to what
Speaker 5: esther Role and John Ames told her to do. Don't
Speaker 5: let him watch the show due to the fact that
Speaker 5: sometimes children tend to imitate their selves, so they wanted
Speaker 5: me to stay as authentic and it was organic as possible.
Speaker 5: So I didn't really understand the bombardment of people at
Speaker 5: that time, you know, coming after me for years. I
Speaker 5: stopped wearing jewelry because people thought they had the pivot
Speaker 5: of the right to snatch it off of me. I
Speaker 5: was like, yoh, man, you know, you know, this is
Speaker 5: a ninety dollars shirt in nineteen seventies and you just
Speaker 5: made my shirt my shirt.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 5: So with that said, it also is a very humbling
Speaker 5: experience because ultimately, anyway you look at it, you just
Speaker 5: got to treat people the way you want to be
Speaker 5: treated and that is my personal philosophy.
Speaker 4: Well, what was stardom like back then, Miss Bernie Dead
Speaker 4: like in that era?
Speaker 7: Well, back then, it wasn't that many black stars there.
Speaker 7: So was this like a handful of us and you
Speaker 7: know Red Fox, Richard pryor those kind of people, you know,
Speaker 7: and they would have parties or whatever, and you know,
Speaker 7: they would invite just a handful who was there. But
Speaker 7: other than that, it wasn't a lot of us there. Yeah,
Speaker 7: so it was kind of empty in a way.
Speaker 4: How was it when you did the covered Jet magazine? Oh?
Speaker 7: I Sutton took a picture. He was a friend of
Speaker 7: mine and he's invited me over to eat. He would
Speaker 7: cook like eight course meals for me.
Speaker 8: I mean, just me. I'm like, come on, you know.
Speaker 8: So then we take the pictures.
Speaker 7: And so you know, it was just Jane Kennedy then
Speaker 7: and me and people like that. So he just said
Speaker 7: he wanted to do a cover for me, and he
Speaker 7: did it and I was.
Speaker 1: On the cover.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's different though. You're on the cover of Jet
Speaker 3: magazine back then.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and also one inside the Week the centerfold and
Speaker 7: I did that one too.
Speaker 5: And you knew you were popular when you're black and
Speaker 5: you on the cover of Ebney and Jet. Yeah, I said,
Speaker 5: oh lord, I know we on a lot of other magazines,
Speaker 5: but when you were received by your own people, it
Speaker 5: has a different type of connection. And I say that
Speaker 5: because of the fact that who would have thought that
Speaker 5: he was going to be on the covers of those
Speaker 5: and I regardless of maybe the topics that they were
Speaker 5: talking about, we still were well received by the people.
Speaker 5: And there is no show without the people to participate
Speaker 5: with us, so we thank them.
Speaker 1: What was the most difficult episode to shoot for me?
Speaker 5: It was actually the contradiction of a character came to
Speaker 5: the show in the script where there was a Caucasian
Speaker 5: young woman who I was supposed to have an on
Speaker 5: screen kiss with right then, and then my antennae went
Speaker 5: up because it would destroy everything I had built with
Speaker 5: that particular character as far as as pro pan Africanism is.
Speaker 4: Love you for that, I remember that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So what I did do I took my grievances
Speaker 5: to the adults. Keep in mind, Johnny Jackson and I
Speaker 5: are still minors, so therefore any type of script issues
Speaker 5: that we had. Jimmy was always in has been my
Speaker 5: advocate along with Bernadette, and I brought my issue to
Speaker 5: them and Esther said, this cannot happen. You can't do
Speaker 5: this for this particular character, because it will. You know,
Speaker 5: mostly all the the young young African American women said, Wow,
Speaker 5: here we go again. So I decided to just pull
Speaker 5: back and it worked out in my favor and that
Speaker 5: didn't happen.
Speaker 3: Wow, is that the episode that ended up being when
Speaker 3: you were supposed to move in?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 4: Okay, that's right.
Speaker 5: But they they we had to change that script because
Speaker 5: they had an intimate moment which again would a contradicted
Speaker 5: the policies and the integrity of the character that I played.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I always wondered because I was when I found
Speaker 3: out that, you know, people they didn't like the JJ character.
Speaker 3: I was like, I never looked at y'all as ignorant,
Speaker 3: Like I didn't think that was reinforcing any stereotypes. How
Speaker 3: were y'all able to portray being from the hood but
Speaker 3: not come off as ignorant?
Speaker 8: Well, a lot of people in the hood are not all.
Speaker 7: And I looked at Jimmy's character as you know, like
Speaker 7: very very intelligent, you know, an artist and everything like that.
Speaker 7: And you know, sometimes in a family. There's always one
Speaker 7: kid that makes the family laugh. I mean I have
Speaker 7: I had a brother who's who's a pastor now Kyle,
Speaker 7: and he used to make my mom laugh. You know,
Speaker 7: you do silly things. But I mean that's just something
Speaker 7: that lifts a spirit. That's that's all it is. And
Speaker 7: that's how I saw Jimmy. I didn't see him as
Speaker 7: a character that no one liked it. And I in
Speaker 7: esther Roll's defense, I would say that she just didn't
Speaker 7: want them to make him a thief or a fool
Speaker 7: like and but she loved the character too, but she
Speaker 7: didn't want the writers or anybody to make him look
Speaker 7: like that, like with the little hat or whatever. And
Speaker 7: you know, in the beginning, they always had Jimmy find
Speaker 7: in something, you understand, so so finding is stealing and
Speaker 7: she cut that out.
Speaker 8: I don't want that finding. And I just found this pan,
Speaker 8: I just found this shirt, you know. So she said, no,
Speaker 8: she didn't want that.
Speaker 7: So those are the things that they harped on, you know,
Speaker 7: like she didn't like the character, but she she of
Speaker 7: course they did.
Speaker 4: I just wonder when did Hollywood take a turn?
Speaker 3: Because it feel like you know that then y'all always
Speaker 3: had a hand in the creative y'all always had a
Speaker 3: hand in how y'all were portrayed. So when did Hollywood
Speaker 3: take the turn the way It's just like all of
Speaker 3: these negative stereotypes of black people just started, well.
Speaker 5: I think because a different breed of producers came through
Speaker 5: that were in contact and in touch with the people.
Speaker 5: And when you disconnect yourself from the people, then you
Speaker 5: become in a box. And one thing I work with
Speaker 5: myself is that the only opinion about me that matters
Speaker 5: is my own. And therefore, by not allowing myself to
Speaker 5: be in a box, I was able to take my
Speaker 5: work to another level. And being a historian, in the
Speaker 5: context of the work that I did, I not only
Speaker 5: wanted to study the history of Africa, but I wanted
Speaker 5: to understand how valuable the contributions of people globally has been.
Speaker 5: You know, my ancestors have been here since seventeen ninety nine,
Speaker 5: and my great great great ancestor, she was kidnapped from
Speaker 5: Cameroon sold on the Charleston auction block on December seventeenth,
Speaker 5: seventeen ninety nine. And as a consequence of that, I
Speaker 5: wanted to study as much as I could because you
Speaker 5: used to be against the law for people of color
Speaker 5: to read in this country. So I made it my
Speaker 5: business to read as much as I can. Just for
Speaker 5: the record, brother man, I've read both your books, and
Speaker 5: you are an excellent writer. I got a lot of
Speaker 5: information on your journey, you know, and to the way
Speaker 5: you gave the salutations to your mother Julia and to
Speaker 5: your father Larry. It was a wonderful experience.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 5: I want to tell you that to your face.
Speaker 4: Thank you, brother. I got any one coming out, I'm
Speaker 4: give it to you for you week.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, my birthday coming up. Where my gift I
Speaker 5: got you? I brought you as in bonds and Nobles,
Speaker 5: I appreciate.
Speaker 2: Now you mentioned Janet, So I was working with Jannon
Speaker 2: on the set. How was that for me?
Speaker 5: It was refreshing because for stranger, Yeah, for many years,
Speaker 5: I was the only child on set. Therefore, that type
Speaker 5: of isolation, it didn't affect me because every time we
Speaker 5: went on hiatus, I always came back to New York
Speaker 5: and too Brooklyn, and I was with my peer group,
Speaker 5: so I fundamentally didn't have an offbeat energy as whatever
Speaker 5: a child star means. And also I was never financially
Speaker 5: exploited by my family. That was not my experience. In
Speaker 5: my experience, no one ever put an offending hand on me.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm from Brooklyn. I jack you up. What
Speaker 5: I did learn in that process of working with Janet,
Speaker 5: who was beyond a consummate professional, but she's a brilliant
Speaker 5: observer and she watched because we spent the most time together, y'all.
Speaker 5: And in California state law, we have to go to
Speaker 5: school for three hours before we can appear on set,
Speaker 5: So our actual working day after the three hours of
Speaker 5: school would be a five hour working day. So we
Speaker 5: had tutorists who protected us. My mother and missus Lucille
Speaker 5: Carter and missus Captain Jackson. They got along like peas
Speaker 5: in the park. And because of the fact that our
Speaker 5: parents got along, and this would apply to Hey with
Speaker 5: Nelson and Lawrence Fishburn myself, our mothers got along. Therefore
Speaker 5: we got along too. So in that context my job
Speaker 5: was too. Because I'm Bernardet's bully. Anybody stepped to her incorrectly,
Speaker 5: there's going to be an issue. And I was able
Speaker 5: to because of that loneliness. Jannet was like a beacon
Speaker 5: of light when she came on the set, and I
Speaker 5: still so proud of what she has done in the
Speaker 5: work that she continues to do.
Speaker 3: I want to go back and ask Miss Berniett about
Speaker 3: the mister the direction of Hollywood and how I went
Speaker 3: another direction.
Speaker 7: Oh yes, thank you. I just want to say that
Speaker 7: Esther Roll was an advocate for all of us. And
Speaker 7: I remember there was a week that we had and
Speaker 7: I actually had really nothing much to say. It was like,
Speaker 7: you know, hi, Mom, Hi Dad, I was in the bathroom,
Speaker 7: shut up JJ, and that's about it.
Speaker 8: You know, the character had nothing.
Speaker 7: So I was very bored that week and I said,
Speaker 7: this cannot go.
Speaker 8: I can't sit here every week and just be this bored.
Speaker 8: So I did. I asked Mom. I used to call mom,
Speaker 8: say Mom, you know I was so bored this week.
Speaker 7: She said, what do you mean? I said, I just
Speaker 7: did nothing. I just sat there and I was bored.
Speaker 7: So she says, well, what do you want to do?
Speaker 7: I said, I need more to say. I need I
Speaker 7: need a I need something character. So she she said,
Speaker 7: let me handle it, and we had a reading at
Speaker 7: the round table, and that that week I had my
Speaker 7: two or three little lines. Okay, and so Estra said,
Speaker 7: at the end of the reading, she asked the producers
Speaker 7: and the writer. She says, I want to ask a question,
Speaker 7: and they said sure, asked what is it? You know,
Speaker 7: what is it? She said, I want to ask you
Speaker 7: ashamed of my daughter? And they said no, and she said.
Speaker 7: Then she went on to say, you know, well, I
Speaker 7: think that we should do a little better with her.
Speaker 7: I think that we have my son JJ who has
Speaker 7: a lot to say, and my son Michael, who has
Speaker 7: a lot to say, and I want my daughter to
Speaker 7: have a voice. And she said to me, and they said, oh, certainly.
Speaker 7: And so that afternoon she said, you go up there
Speaker 7: and you tell them who Thelma is. Now, how can
Speaker 7: you develop a character? I mean, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 7: you're telling the character to develop a character. So I
Speaker 7: knew who she was. So I ended up going up
Speaker 7: there and telling them what I'd like her to be,
Speaker 7: who I need.
Speaker 8: Her to be.
Speaker 7: And after that the scripts came, you know, the dialogue came,
Speaker 7: you know, a voice became. And I give her all
Speaker 7: the credit for doing that. People don't really fight for
Speaker 7: people anymore like that. So she she did, and that's
Speaker 7: how you know, she gave Thelma a voice.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and where did white people like Norman Lear in
Speaker 3: Hollywood passed away?
Speaker 5: This are those type of people no more. When they
Speaker 5: did kick they were really good, you know, because for me,
Speaker 5: in the context of history, you would not really have
Speaker 5: had a good times if you didn't have an Amos
Speaker 5: and Andy. And Amos and Andy was also a product
Speaker 5: television station CBS. However, when I did my research and
Speaker 5: with the catalog of that particular show, it was hilarious
Speaker 5: the men and women who performed on Amos and Andy.
Speaker 5: We're speaking of veteran actors who had done vaudeville and
Speaker 5: the so called chitting circuit. As Jimmy Walker really knows
Speaker 5: all about that. You know, he's been on the chitten
Speaker 5: circuit so long he was cleaning the chitting. So my
Speaker 5: point is that we were able to embrace through the
Speaker 5: genius of Normally, because keep in mind, Normally was a
Speaker 5: magnet in the respect that he had all in the family,
Speaker 5: more Jeffersons, Good Times, the ac Junket. Along with Bud Yorken,
Speaker 5: they also had What's Happening, in which you had the
Speaker 5: works of Hayvid Nelson, Fred Barry. Of course, mis Shirley
Speaker 5: Hempfield and their wonderful cast Danielle Spencer. Mabel King of
Speaker 5: course played the mother. But my point is that there
Speaker 5: was a connection in a bond that we even on
Speaker 5: set had we crossed reference with the wonderful people on
Speaker 5: All in the Family with Jeans Staple, tend and Carola Khana,
Speaker 5: and we weekly saw Beatrice Author and Bill Macy while
Speaker 5: they were doing their works on more so because of
Speaker 5: the work that Esther did that allowed us as artists
Speaker 5: to get a gig. But Esther to me is the
Speaker 5: foundation of good times, along with John Names absolutely.
Speaker 10: Mister Jimmy, did you ever ever get tired of saying
Speaker 10: down at any point?
Speaker 6: I don't think we ever did it that much. No,
Speaker 6: because you know, again being a stand up people came
Speaker 6: to cheap stand up, you know, and and at the
Speaker 6: improv of the store or anything like that, and again
Speaker 6: not I guess we were in such competition. And plus
Speaker 6: we had Paul Mooney, and Paul Mooney straightened everybody out.
Speaker 6: Wont E would just say, man, your stuff is weak.
Speaker 6: What are you doing? You stink? And he I remember,
Speaker 6: like we'd have somebody like a Gary Shanling who worked
Speaker 6: so hard. I was like, that's what made me get
Speaker 6: writers to help me out, because he would have two
Speaker 6: notebooks full of jokes every day and you just go, hey,
Speaker 6: how's this guy doing this. So in terms of the
Speaker 6: dynamite thing, it didn't play in a club. You know,
Speaker 6: we had Freddie Prinz who always said, I am the funniest,
Speaker 6: I am the best. You guys stink I'm great, I'm
Speaker 6: the youngest and I'm the baddest. I'm eighteen. You guys
Speaker 6: will never be as good as me. You'll never be
Speaker 6: as funny as me. Don't even try it. And then
Speaker 6: you had Gary Shanling who said quietly, I'm the best
Speaker 6: writer out of everybody, I will eventually have my own show.
Speaker 6: None of you will be as big as me. That's
Speaker 6: the way it is. Because he had a shot to
Speaker 6: do the Johnny Carson Show and he said, I don't
Speaker 6: want to be encumbered by network. I'm going to have
Speaker 6: my own show where I'm in charge, in which he
Speaker 6: did with The Ry Sanders Show, and it's the Gary
Speaker 6: Shandley Show. He was completely in charged, says, I will
Speaker 6: never do a network show that I have to listen
Speaker 6: to other people. So for me, the dynamite thing was
Speaker 6: like not relevant to the people that were come into
Speaker 6: the show. I mean, you know. And plus I was
Speaker 6: the MC for UH for our ethnic shows, so we
Speaker 6: would do the Chicago Show. Chicago Show would be the Emotions,
Speaker 6: the shylights, Jerry Butler, so they weren't even for that
Speaker 6: because they were kind of like, Hey, I'm Jerry Butler,
Speaker 6: I'm the iceman. I don't care about any dynamite stuff.
Speaker 6: And then you do the you do the Philadelphia show
Speaker 6: where you have Teddy Prenagrass, who would say, I am
Speaker 6: the prettiest, the baddest, the most good looking chicks will
Speaker 6: look at me and I'm great, so mean, And then
Speaker 6: you'd have the Motown Show, which I was MC of,
Speaker 6: and the Temptations would go, there's no group that can
Speaker 6: dance better than us, that can say, ain't better than us.
Speaker 6: We are we don't care about any dynamite stuff. So
Speaker 6: it was never that kind of thing. I was always
Speaker 6: very secondary because I was the youngest guy. We had STEVIEE.
Speaker 6: Wonder's mom who used to drive him behind us in
Speaker 6: her little station wagon, so we never Jimmy Walker was
Speaker 6: never a big thing. He was just a little part
Speaker 6: of the MC work. That was it, That was that
Speaker 6: was That was John Rich. I did it one day
Speaker 6: in rehearsals and John Rich says, I like that dynamite thing.
Speaker 6: I said, what dynamite thing? So he just did it.
Speaker 6: I said, oh, that was just fooling around. He says.
Speaker 6: John Risch said to me, he says, this is going
Speaker 6: to be the biggest thing on this show. This will
Speaker 6: be the big I said, what he said, the dynamite thing,
Speaker 6: I said, he said, And he got up a little
Speaker 6: fat guy and showed me how to do it. And
Speaker 6: I said, John, people are not that stupid. They'll never
Speaker 6: go for this. He says, yes, they will, And he
Speaker 6: put it out there and Norman hated it. Wow, just
Speaker 6: hated it. And and everybody was threatening to walk. John says,
Speaker 6: if he doesn't do it, I'm walking. Normal Lea says,
Speaker 6: if he does it, I'm walking. So he was whatever.
Speaker 6: So he did it, and it became like Michael Buffer's
Speaker 6: thing when he says, looks get ready to rumble. If
Speaker 6: you ever watched, you guys are too young. But when so,
Speaker 6: whenever he would do a fight, it would be like
Speaker 6: a sugar Ray Leonard. He's won ninety seven knockouts, He's
Speaker 6: killed his last ten opponents. He's the champion of the
Speaker 6: middle Way, He's the champion of the and you he'd
Speaker 6: get ready to say ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls
Speaker 6: across the world, and you could hear the people.
Speaker 4: Go, let's generate.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, yes, oh yes. It's only
Speaker 6: ten thousand dollars a pop. If he does it nothing serious.
Speaker 6: That's all he gets is he gets ten thousand dollars
Speaker 6: a pop. He does it all. So that's the way
Speaker 6: the dynamite thing rolled. But we nobody was that enthused.
Speaker 6: I mean I had guys like Steve Martin who was
Speaker 6: selling out fifteen thousand people, and you just go, just go, boy,
Speaker 6: I would like to be like that.
Speaker 4: Do you have any problem with women calling you back
Speaker 4: back then?
Speaker 6: Yes, definitely, without a doubt. Oh no. You got to
Speaker 6: remember I was with Richard Pryor and Richard Pryor who
Speaker 6: was a guy, and Freddie Prince. Those two guys had
Speaker 6: all the women. I can tell you stories about Richard
Speaker 6: that you don't want to hear on the air that
Speaker 6: you would go, are you hitting me? Because women would No.
Speaker 6: I will not tell you. I will not tell you
Speaker 6: two gianic stories that about Richard and Freddie. Freddie's the
Speaker 6: kind of guy had so much confidence. If he saw
Speaker 6: her and we walked outside, he says, I can get her.
Speaker 6: I go, Freddy, She's like, you know, she's a woman,
Speaker 6: she's going for the woman thing, to have her own thing,
Speaker 6: and says, I will get her and you will go.
Speaker 6: At the end of the night they're walking out together.
Speaker 6: You go, damn, how did Freddie pull this off? He's
Speaker 6: that kind of guy and he just believed I'm the prettiest,
Speaker 6: I'm the baddest, I'm the funniest, and I will get
Speaker 6: any chick I want. Go ahead, y'all ling, Yeah, that's
Speaker 6: not your job. And it was just amazing. But yeah,
Speaker 6: so that was that.
Speaker 4: Do y'all remember the first day on the set versus
Speaker 4: the last day?
Speaker 8: Yes, I do. I remember the first day. It was interesting,
Speaker 8: you know. I was really watching Esther and John how
Speaker 8: they handled a lot of stuff, you know, and I
Speaker 8: learned a lot. I really really did.
Speaker 7: But I remember when like the first year, well the
Speaker 7: first maybe a couple of months, talking about women and JJ.
Speaker 8: Okay, I remember he said something to me like, what
Speaker 8: do you do what do you get? What do you
Speaker 8: do with these women?
Speaker 1: Why do you?
Speaker 8: I mean, what did I do? I said, you know,
Speaker 8: the first thing you should do is when you have
Speaker 8: a girl, you need to buy her a little jewelry.
Speaker 1: Telling I'm telling on you.
Speaker 8: And he said what I said, yeah, buy some you know,
Speaker 8: jewelry and stuff and break it in that way.
Speaker 7: And so he said, okay. So that lunchtime he went
Speaker 7: to Farmer's market and he bought some jewelry and he
Speaker 7: came back he said, how how does this look?
Speaker 8: What's this about? And it was it was a turquoise piece,
Speaker 8: you know, with the silver around.
Speaker 1: It was this big. I said, what are you doing?
Speaker 8: I said, well, you're dating a giant.
Speaker 4: What do you doing? Come on?
Speaker 7: So I said, no, go back over there, take that
Speaker 7: back and get some fine jewelry, you know, really go
Speaker 7: a little gain something. Yeah, And so that's what he did.
Speaker 7: And so to this very day, if you date Jimmy Walker,
Speaker 7: you're gonna get some jewelry.
Speaker 8: I'm telling you.
Speaker 4: Here. Man.
Speaker 7: The last day, Wow, for me, well, it it was
Speaker 7: like a little unreal, you know, because I came to
Speaker 7: Hollywood right into a show, so I didn't know what
Speaker 7: it was like living outside of that. I mean here
Speaker 7: in California, you know, in California. So for me it
Speaker 7: was very different.
Speaker 1: It was like is this the end?
Speaker 4: Is this really the end?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 7: What am I going to do when I get up tomorrow?
Speaker 7: You know kind of thing. So that's how it felt
Speaker 7: to me.
Speaker 8: The ending what a good.
Speaker 5: Times ended on March the eighth, which was a Thursday
Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy nine. We had already braced ourselves for
Speaker 5: it because you could feel the momentum of the production
Speaker 5: was starting to lose his pace. So I already knew
Speaker 5: I had to graduate from high school, and I already
Speaker 5: knew I had my ideas to go to college and
Speaker 5: to travel. So thereby I used the rest of my
Speaker 5: twenties traveling to East and West Africa, primarily to Sudan, Ethiopia,
Speaker 5: and Egypt. And by doing that consecutively. As a historian,
Speaker 5: I read the information before I went on the journey.
Speaker 5: So my affinity with the wonderful monuments that I saw,
Speaker 5: the parallels in Egypt with the parallel, the parallel of
Speaker 5: the pyramids in Egypt and in Mexico are phenomenal because
Speaker 5: there was a wonderful connection between those two cultures where
Speaker 5: they did not destroy each other, but they complimented each other.
Speaker 5: And you could see that the earth winding fires has
Speaker 5: a wonderful song. It's in the stone. So in the
Speaker 5: stone the people left how they looked, and that we
Speaker 5: were here and this is what we did while we
Speaker 5: were on the planet. So it was a phenomenon for
Speaker 5: me to not only just theoretically do the work, but
Speaker 5: to physically go and see the monuments for myself.
Speaker 4: Wonder it felt like.
Speaker 3: They could have showed y'all outside of the projects, because
Speaker 3: the last episode, y'all, everybody did get out the project to.
Speaker 4: Go move in the same building, a better buildings. They
Speaker 4: could have showed that.
Speaker 5: But you know, what's done is done. The past is
Speaker 5: the past, Charla Man. So you don't want to regress,
Speaker 5: you want to progress. And people have constantly asked us
Speaker 5: to do a reboot of Good Times. However, you've lost
Speaker 5: some of their major primary characters, so you know it
Speaker 5: wouldn't work to do that anymore. So you come up
Speaker 5: with new ideas, like my new television series is entitled
Speaker 5: Grandma's Hands and I deal with five generations of African
Speaker 5: women from the age of thirteen to the age of
Speaker 5: ninety eight, along with my wonderful co writer mister Gregory A. Holtz,
Speaker 5: beautiful SES's named Janine, and my young sister VICKI. So
Speaker 5: as a team, a quorum of four, we've been able
Speaker 5: to write some wonderful scripts and all things. In time,
Speaker 5: I could show you better than I can tell you,
Speaker 5: and I just hope that people will the opportunity comes
Speaker 5: where I can present this particular production so that people
Speaker 5: can experience us from another perspective as I do as
Speaker 5: a writer. I've completed my autobiography in five volumes. Years ago,
Speaker 5: I had a dialogue with all his Wilson and he
Speaker 5: was one of the very rare, rare writers who had
Speaker 5: a play written for every decade of the last century
Speaker 5: that we've gone through. But my point being, I asked
Speaker 5: him his technique and what should I do when I
Speaker 5: want to write my autobiography? And I got a lot
Speaker 5: of advice from my good friend mister Irvin Panton. He said,
Speaker 5: do it and I'll help you copy the books. So
Speaker 5: I began on a wonderful journey of getting wonderful information,
Speaker 5: and I didn't know that there was so much information
Speaker 5: on the work that I did in my early theater years.
Speaker 5: My point is that I had a resource with Schomberg.
Speaker 5: I had a resource with Lincoln Center and the people
Speaker 5: who were there in that area, the librarians, so to speak.
Speaker 5: They were very gracious to me. So it helped me
Speaker 5: to complete five complete volumes of my autobiography. I taught
Speaker 5: out a child development for five years. I'm the author
Speaker 5: of twenty children's books as well. So as a musician,
Speaker 5: I still sing, I do my voice. I hope that
Speaker 5: people will continue to like the work that not just
Speaker 5: myself does, but Bernadette and Jimmy too. We we literally
Speaker 5: have never stopped being friends.
Speaker 1: That's why we're still here. That's amazing.
Speaker 4: How do how do y'all feel about the The Good
Speaker 4: Times cartoon on Netflix?
Speaker 6: Well, that's Bernadette's thing. She'll tell you.
Speaker 4: How do you feel?
Speaker 6: It?
Speaker 4: A reboove?
Speaker 1: But that's not a no, that's not that's not it
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 8: No, that's not it at all. I think that.
Speaker 7: Our audience missed something, you know, they missed what happened
Speaker 7: to us. It's always they want the completion of it
Speaker 7: and it never really happened, you know.
Speaker 1: So far.
Speaker 7: My thing about the the animation was this that you know,
Speaker 7: I know that Jimmy Walker came to them and he
Speaker 7: presented a cartoon about five years before this, before this one,
Speaker 7: and it was it was the really the the all
Speaker 7: of us, the way we are in a in animation
Speaker 7: and we have our same voices and everything like that.
Speaker 8: And they they didn't bite that.
Speaker 7: But later on came up with they're gonna do an
Speaker 7: animation and I remember my manager called them and said, well,
Speaker 7: what are they gonna you know, are we gonna be
Speaker 7: in it or not. So the way they describe the
Speaker 7: animation to us was this, it was going to be
Speaker 7: a modern day, you know, progression of what everything is
Speaker 7: going to be for the good Times family. So you know, fine,
Speaker 7: But they asked Jimmy and I to do a tiny
Speaker 7: little part. But it sounded okay, you know, we didn't
Speaker 7: see the scripts. So Jimmy did a part. I did
Speaker 7: a little part. My character's name is Peaches. You know,
Speaker 7: she's like a project lady. That's whatever. But when the
Speaker 7: when the when it came out, when the trailer came out,
Speaker 7: we saw it and everybody was like, no, you know,
Speaker 7: you don't have a crack baby in somebody in the
Speaker 7: mother's arms.
Speaker 8: You don't do that.
Speaker 7: So and I I remember having an interview with the
Speaker 7: singer Gilstrap, Jim Gilstrap a year before, and he was saying,
Speaker 7: you know, there are some lyrics that they took out.
Speaker 7: So I said, were the lyrics and he said, well,
Speaker 7: you know they say roaches roaming the hallway, roaches roaming
Speaker 7: the hallway and the landlord lives on the other side
Speaker 7: of town or something like that. He said that they
Speaker 7: took it out because fifty years ago now they thought
Speaker 7: that that would be offensive to black people. Okay, but
Speaker 7: fifty years later you have two roaches singing in a shower.
Speaker 7: They sing in the song good Times. So I'm like,
Speaker 7: this is not it, you know, I'm sorry. You know,
Speaker 7: I know people have you know, want to write it
Speaker 7: at they want to do this and that, but you
Speaker 7: have to do it right, you know, you have to
Speaker 7: represent it correctly.
Speaker 8: So to me, it was not represented correctly, and I
Speaker 8: had to say that, you know.
Speaker 4: I haven't watched it, mister card.
Speaker 5: I actually was quite disappointed with the actors who took
Speaker 5: the time to sign on to that project. These are
Speaker 5: actors and the artists and comedian that I really had
Speaker 5: a high regard for I won't use the past tense
Speaker 5: with them right now, but I'm disappointed at the fact
Speaker 5: that they did that. When I did take a quick
Speaker 5: review of this particular rubbish that I saw, I was
Speaker 5: contacted by some media outlets from my point of view,
Speaker 5: but I refused to dignify it with a response. And
Speaker 5: I'm just pretty much disappointed with the artists who signed.
Speaker 1: On to it.
Speaker 6: I don't think anybody ever saw it. I mean, I
Speaker 6: know Seth mcfollowen to me, is very, very funny, but
Speaker 6: this is not his bag. It would be like saying, hey,
Speaker 6: we're doing Romeo and Juliet. You know we hired JJ
Speaker 6: Walker and Lawanda Page.
Speaker 8: Really wow, that's a good analysis.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's just Seth is. I mean, I love
Speaker 6: all his stuff. It's racist, it's terrible, it's fantastic. It
Speaker 6: kills me. But he's yeah, it's funny, but he's not
Speaker 6: right for this. And Steph Curry, I know he's went
Speaker 6: watching Lebron James and he sees Lebron James has his projects. Look,
Speaker 6: let me tell you something. I'm from New York. I
Speaker 6: played basketball against Nate Archibald. You guys are too young.
Speaker 6: You remember Nate Archibald, but he's a big star. I mean,
Speaker 6: I played against Nate Archibal and he only scores sixty
Speaker 6: three on us three times that we played them. He
Speaker 6: called sixty one, sixty three and sixty three. Look, let
Speaker 6: me tell you something. It'd be like me going to
Speaker 6: Steph and say, look, I played against Nate Archibald. I
Speaker 6: want to be on the Golden State Warriors. And you go,
Speaker 6: why I play against Nate Archibal. I belong on the team.
Speaker 6: Come on, but no, he's just the wrong guy to
Speaker 6: be in this.
Speaker 4: Y'all don't like the good times to say that fifty
Speaker 4: years a good times.
Speaker 3: I'm talking like nobody did a documentary or some type
Speaker 3: of you know, reunion show, Like y'all didn't get approached about.
Speaker 4: None of that.
Speaker 5: Now, the anthology that I did, right it wouldn't be
Speaker 5: a product commercially right now, again because of the losses
Speaker 5: that we had.
Speaker 8: They we didn't have people that we worked that we're
Speaker 8: going to put together, and we had all the characters.
Speaker 5: It's just this is the now ancestors.
Speaker 6: So this is Brett Miller, who works with Norman and
Speaker 6: that's the guy who kind of kind of gabashed us,
Speaker 6: and that that was it. I mean, that's the way
Speaker 6: because when I took it around, everybody I talked to says,
Speaker 6: well do you own the rights? And we go no,
Speaker 6: and they said, well, nothing we could do for you.
Speaker 6: And these are all friends of mine. So that's the
Speaker 6: way it was. I just think that, you know, they
Speaker 6: they didn't want us involved, and they achieved their goal.
Speaker 4: We love y'all, y'all.
Speaker 7: Yes, our fans really kept writing us and telling us
Speaker 7: how much that they loved us, and we did. They
Speaker 7: did not like the animation, you know, they respect us
Speaker 7: in so many different ways. So we still got our
Speaker 7: satisfaction out.
Speaker 1: Of it, you know, absolutely.
Speaker 5: And when the people don't like it, watch out.
Speaker 10: Because they're writing and what they think people want to
Speaker 10: see you, Well, it's a disconnect.
Speaker 8: It's a disconnect because that's not what the people really
Speaker 8: want to see.
Speaker 10: But yeah, but you have like those pockets of people,
Speaker 10: like like people trying to appeal to what media is
Speaker 10: like feeding, you know what I mean, and all that
Speaker 10: ghetto rad shirt roach singing, and it's like how.
Speaker 8: They they see it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but all of that, all of that rubbish tends
Speaker 5: to dumb people down. You know, and that's what how
Speaker 5: people will for it, you know, Like, you don't try
Speaker 5: to make me spotted a long time to be just dumb. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so don't try to make me want to think. And
Speaker 5: that's the the in my critical analysis. People must think
Speaker 5: for theirselves and solve their own problems. I guess when
Speaker 5: you do that, you can help other people.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I guess they felt that. You know, fifty years later,
Speaker 7: no one would notice. We can make them look like
Speaker 7: the way we want them to look.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I've never craved for attention like that. I like, I
Speaker 5: live an isolated life to the degree that I live alone,
Speaker 5: but I'm not lonely, you know. I have a loving
Speaker 5: family that I speak to practically every week, and by
Speaker 5: virtue of that, my sense of grounding is a lot
Speaker 5: different than some people.
Speaker 8: You know, which was in the original Good Times.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I am to be taken seriously because life
Speaker 5: is serious, or.
Speaker 4: Don't want the legacy at Good Time to ultimately be.
Speaker 5: I hope that we made people enjoy the process of
Speaker 5: a family that was able to stay cohesive and live
Speaker 5: together in spite of the financial conditions. That we had
Speaker 5: a tendency to be a part of but the fact
Speaker 5: that we tried to make as many people for happy
Speaker 5: as possible without placating them with patronizing them. We just
Speaker 5: did our job as artists.
Speaker 7: And Good Time solved a lot of problems for people,
Speaker 7: showed people how you know, if you didn't have a father.
Speaker 7: John Namis was a father type to you, your mom,
Speaker 7: you know. So we did a lot for our people,
Speaker 7: I think, you know, and I would like it to
Speaker 7: stay that way.
Speaker 5: And it helped us grow and stay grounded more than anything,
Speaker 5: you know. I like that part about it, you know,
Speaker 5: because I thoroughly enjoyed going to work. I was devastated,
Speaker 5: of course when John Amis's character left, but beyond that
Speaker 5: because I'm glad because my biological father, Ralph and John
Speaker 5: Amis got along life brothers, so it was you know,
Speaker 5: I had co fathers, so to speak. But the truth
Speaker 5: of the matter is is that I think that we
Speaker 5: left aunt a paramount impact on people because again we're
Speaker 5: bombarded with positive energy. I know I am, and being
Speaker 5: that I'm able to walk the streets of Brooklyn on
Speaker 5: my own, I'm able to greet some about people. I
Speaker 5: don't walk around the streets son, Hey, look at me,
Speaker 5: I'm here. No, if anything, I know when to shut down.
Speaker 5: That's what I love about Jimmy Walker as a comedian.
Speaker 5: He's not always on. When Jimmy's locked into what he's
Speaker 5: gonna do, he's gonna do it. But other than that, no,
Speaker 5: you won't get him to say dynamite because he's already
Speaker 5: done that. You can see the reruns. When you want
Speaker 5: to play that, you can do it like that. But
Speaker 5: I just think that working with our people here has
Speaker 5: been a reward for me because I've learned a tremendous
Speaker 5: a lot of information from Ben and Dead and from Jimmy.
Speaker 4: What do you want the legacy to be? Mister Walker?
Speaker 6: You know, I really hadn't thought about it until Norman
Speaker 6: Lear died and then everybody started jumping up and down
Speaker 6: about Norman dying and stuff like that. It really, I
Speaker 6: hate to say it, it never crossed my mind. I never,
Speaker 6: I never ever thought about it, just never.
Speaker 4: In there.
Speaker 6: Thinking about them girl calling girls and getting my shots
Speaker 6: on the When I was doing the David Letterman Show,
Speaker 6: which is my opinion, my alleged best work, I loved it.
Speaker 6: It was fabulous, you know, because Letterman started out with
Speaker 6: me as a writer, and uh, you know my writing staff.
Speaker 6: I'm so proud of all those guys. Is the old
Speaker 6: man that's dying. But it's them, I mean had Jay Leno,
Speaker 6: and Louis Anderson and and Elaine Boosler, who to me
Speaker 6: represents the good in women's comedy. She has the greatest
Speaker 6: stuff because women. Now it's a little rough out here
Speaker 6: what women are doing. But Elaine wrote, great, clean, solid,
Speaker 6: monster jokes man, and this is perfect example. You won't
Speaker 6: see this kind of joke done anymore, but this is
Speaker 6: kind of joke she wrote. She says, men are so hypocritical.
Speaker 6: They want you to scream. Now, this is the best
Speaker 6: you've ever had while swaying. You've never done this before.
Speaker 6: Now see that, to me is a joke. That's a solid, killer, monster,
Speaker 6: clean joke that is.
Speaker 9: Well.
Speaker 6: Please, I'm sorry all those people on your writing staff. Yeah,
Speaker 6: Jay Leno, Louis Anderson, Elaine Boosler, Ralphie may Byron now
Speaker 6: started me he was fourteen years old. No, he started
Speaker 6: writing for me? Is doing jokes for me? I always
Speaker 6: tell the same thing, but it's true. He was doing comedy,
Speaker 6: claiming he was eighteen years old at the store. Okay,
Speaker 6: got on one of my writers saw him. He says,
Speaker 6: do you write? He says, yeah, I do write. He says,
Speaker 6: could you write for Jimmy Walker? He says, ja ja Yeah.
Speaker 6: He says, oh yeah, I could do it. So he
Speaker 6: calls me up. And I got Leono at the house,
Speaker 6: and I got Louis at the house, and I got
Speaker 6: David let him in at the house, and I got
Speaker 6: Ralphie May at the house. And I said, well, says Wayne,
Speaker 6: Wayne the joke train says, you're good. Once you come
Speaker 6: over the house and we'll see what you got. He says,
Speaker 6: I'll come over, but I have to wait for my mom.
Speaker 6: I said, why, what's happening? He said, my mom has
Speaker 6: to drive me over.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 6: I said, drive you over? He says, yeah, I'm fourteen
Speaker 6: years old. I said, oh okay. Because his mom worked
Speaker 6: for NBC. She was she was on staff over there
Speaker 6: as a pr gal. Right, so it comes over. First
Speaker 6: joke Byron never wrote for me fourteen years old. First
Speaker 6: joke he says white people black people are much different.
Speaker 6: Says white people go to a movie, they don't like it.
Speaker 6: They say, I would like my money back. This is
Speaker 6: what black people go to the movie. He says, I
Speaker 6: didn't like this movie. I want everybody's money back. Fourteen
Speaker 6: year old that joke. Wow, see that's the kind of
Speaker 6: stuff I look for.
Speaker 1: Got you And now he just mentioned it. But do
Speaker 1: you get tired of saying not on my.
Speaker 4: Do people go to it?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: Don't do it?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I'm not asking to say no.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 1: I would never ask. I would say, do you get tired?
Speaker 6: Because I mean, people don't really people don't really ask
Speaker 6: because the comedy crowd is different than a TV crowd.
Speaker 6: You know, they come, if that's all I did, people go, well,
Speaker 6: it wasn't worth paying to see this guy because that's
Speaker 6: all he did. But when you see my act, people go,
Speaker 6: you know, I think some of the best comments I've
Speaker 6: ever got. My guys who are valets because I travel
Speaker 6: every week to do the road, they go, hey, man,
Speaker 6: we saw that specially did with Michael Winslow. You know,
Speaker 6: we always knew you were funny. This is much better
Speaker 6: than I ever thought that you had. I didn't know
Speaker 6: you had this kind of stuff. That to me is
Speaker 6: like a great compliment.
Speaker 8: I like that.
Speaker 4: I just feel like a white man asking you to dance.
Speaker 1: No, I don't.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 6: People ask, but I don't really do it, but I have.
Speaker 6: I never did it in my act until recently. I
Speaker 6: found a spot for it and it works great. So
Speaker 6: it's a very good piece. I have to admit that
Speaker 6: I wrote it myself. Thank you. I can't really do
Speaker 6: it now, and it's not dirty. I don't do any
Speaker 6: dirt or anything like that. That's another thing. I grew
Speaker 6: up in the non dirt area. And there's only I'm
Speaker 6: not kidding, allegedly there's nine thousand comics making twenty five
Speaker 6: thousand or more up to the Dave Chappelle two hundred
Speaker 6: thousand a night kind of level. I would say there's
Speaker 6: no more other than the religious guys, the Ricky Smiley
Speaker 6: type of cats. I would say there's no more than
Speaker 6: twenty five clean guys in America and girl girls. I'm stunned.
Speaker 6: I don't think there's any Well, no, she's not a joke.
Speaker 6: I don't think. I to me, I haven't I got
Speaker 6: she's got. I got Wendie Leeman, I got Ellen DeGeneres,
Speaker 6: I got elayinne Boozler. And I'm going to add on
Speaker 6: three more just for the kicks. That maybe I left out.
Speaker 6: I don't think there's ten clean women comics in America.
Speaker 6: I don't think there are. I mean, maybe there's somebody
Speaker 6: I'm missing. I have not met them. And see, when
Speaker 6: I started, women were the cleanest. They were talking about
Speaker 6: their husbands or their boyfriends. And I think the joke
Speaker 6: I just did by Elaine or if you look at
Speaker 6: Ellen that that to me is the hardest stuff to do.
Speaker 6: That And women now they're talking about their sexual act.
Speaker 6: From the beginning, I met this guy and I went
Speaker 6: home and I did this and I did that, and
Speaker 6: he couldn't do it. You go, hey, easy, I don't
Speaker 6: want to know about all that. You know, that kind
Speaker 6: of stuff like that.
Speaker 4: They call you back, you don't want to know about
Speaker 4: all I'm not in a public setting.
Speaker 6: If they do it on stage, I mean they talk
Speaker 6: about it on stage where you just go.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm on you to be funny.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's it, you know. And see, I tell comics
Speaker 6: all the time, whether they're women or men, if you
Speaker 6: do the F word or whatever, if you only do
Speaker 6: it once, it will have more impact than just saying
Speaker 6: it all the time, all the time, all the time.
Speaker 6: If you say it once or twice, it will have
Speaker 6: tremendous impact. You know, I always bring up and I
Speaker 6: don't mean the curse about anything, but I always bring
Speaker 6: up Cosby, who I think is the most devastating thing
Speaker 6: I've gone through with the Cosby thing because I opened
Speaker 6: for Cosby for like two three years and I knew
Speaker 6: they had a lot of women. That was the thing
Speaker 6: that But see, to me, this is Camille's problem. It's
Speaker 6: not our problem. It's Camille's problem. And I think what
Speaker 6: killed Cosby, and I say this all the time, was
Speaker 6: that he got on and he stood on top of
Speaker 6: a mountain saying, I'm America's dad, follow me, pull your
Speaker 6: pants up. Don't use language. I think, and I've always
Speaker 6: used this line. It's true. I think if he hadn't
Speaker 6: done that, if he hadn't been such the guy to
Speaker 6: just say you can't do this, I think it would
Speaker 6: have gone away. And I used this. If it had
Speaker 6: been Mick Jagger, nobody would have said anything, because you know,
Speaker 6: Mick Jagger has had more women than Cosbrey's had. But
Speaker 6: you'll never know about it because you go, it's the
Speaker 6: Rolling Stones, man, what do you expect? But Cosmy gives us.
Speaker 6: I would never do that. I raised my kids, I've
Speaker 6: done my so you got to come down off the mountain. Sometimes,
Speaker 6: unless you're totally innocent.
Speaker 4: You agree with that take. You agree with that take?
Speaker 1: Yeah, way, you know, well, we appreciate you guys for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 8: Fifteen the lyrics to the theme song.
Speaker 4: You'll all know that.
Speaker 6: No, I don't know it. I think Rolf knows it.
Speaker 5: Just looking out of the window watching yesphalt girl, seeing
Speaker 5: how it all looks. Tear me down, but you're keeping
Speaker 5: your head above water, making a wave when you can.
Speaker 5: Temporary layoffs, good times, easy credit, ripall good time, scratching
Speaker 5: and surviving, good good times. Hanging in a child line.
Speaker 1: That's how I have.
Speaker 8: Yes, it is hanging in versions, hanging in.
Speaker 5: Ting and and driving. But also I have on document
Speaker 5: and my archive hanging in the child, so they versions
Speaker 5: of it. However, it really caught on the way that
Speaker 5: the wonderful Ja wrote this the the soundtrack for moving
Speaker 5: on Up for the Jeffersons do Wise, there is the
Speaker 5: writer and the musician and the vocalist that sings that song,
Speaker 5: so that in itself, when you deal with themed songs,
Speaker 5: and when we were coming on y'all were grace is
Speaker 5: enough to play for us. So it was a nice
Speaker 5: way to walk into your sound studio, and we thank you.
Speaker 4: So the mystery continued. We still don't know if it's
Speaker 4: hanging in the child.
Speaker 8: Hanging, it's hanging in and giving.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what it is, Anderne. They're not going to
Speaker 5: have this going on for a while.
Speaker 7: Jim Jim Gilsdraft, the one who sung it, told me.
Speaker 7: He said it was hanging in and giving.
Speaker 8: That's what it was.
Speaker 7: But it came off I don't know if it was
Speaker 7: the annunciation of it or not, but it came off
Speaker 7: as hanging in a chow line. It sounds that way,
Speaker 7: but it really was hanging in and giving.
Speaker 5: And there's a second verse that people have never heard
Speaker 5: that goes to the same song. So the information that
Speaker 5: I do have it has what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That's a little.
Speaker 8: Singing in the shower.
Speaker 5: So you guys have been wonderful. I thank you for
Speaker 5: thinking enough of us. Again to your listening audience, we
Speaker 5: thank you again for wonderful fifty years. May you be
Speaker 5: blessed by every do you breathe in every beat of
Speaker 5: your heart.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, thank you.
Speaker 6: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club