Speaker 1: Hello. It's Craig Ferguson. I'm going on tour with the
Speaker 1: stand up comedy Tour this fall of twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: with a brand new hour and a half material and
Speaker 1: the tour is called Pants on Fire because I'm a
Speaker 1: very truthful man. We start in September and go all
Speaker 1: the way through mid December. Get your tickets now at
Speaker 1: the Creek Ferguson Show Slash Tour and if you feel
Speaker 1: like saying hello after the show, vipple I you just
Speaker 1: are available. Oh la la. My name is Craig Ferguson.
Speaker 1: The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to
Speaker 1: interest in people about what brings them happiness. I'm very
Speaker 1: pleased that my guest today is one of the best
Speaker 1: guys in show business. He's one of the best people
Speaker 1: I've met in the years I've been an old show
Speaker 1: business or selling my wares around Hollywood. He is just
Speaker 1: a delightful human being. If you don't know him, you're
Speaker 1: about to find that out. He's Steve Guttenberg. Do you
Speaker 1: think your hearing has gone down a little bit? Probably
Speaker 1: you know about the same age. I think you're.
Speaker 2: You and I are about the same age.
Speaker 3: Sixty five I'm sixty two. Oh you're sixteen.
Speaker 1: You're young, but yeah, you know, you know what funny
Speaker 1: three years in your twenties, you're like, we're kind of
Speaker 1: the same age as when you're in the sixties. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm a lot younger than you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what's it like to walk with that? Olympics must
Speaker 3: be nice.
Speaker 2: But you're doing good for sixty five.
Speaker 3: You're pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like you like you you reached it.
Speaker 2: Oh really, it just happened.
Speaker 3: I just moved wrong where.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get that. I just want to we were.
Speaker 2: Of course.
Speaker 1: Of course I have talent, I have courtison, I have
Speaker 1: really oh yeah, don't oh no, no, no the cream
Speaker 1: oh oh yeah, yeah, zone cream. Because getting old is itchy.
Speaker 1: It's itchy especially I'll be happy know whatever that is.
Speaker 1: I don't want you.
Speaker 3: So you got some cool artwork on your arms?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I got some where'd you get it? All around the country?
Speaker 2: Around the best piece of you? You don't have any ink?
Speaker 3: I don't have anything. Well, you know, I don't have
Speaker 3: anything never. You know.
Speaker 1: It's also Jews.
Speaker 2: Guys tend not to know, don't.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 4: The Jews believe that if you get a tattoo, you
Speaker 4: do something. You can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Oh, okay,
Speaker 4: it's just a I don't know if it's a it's
Speaker 4: a hard rule.
Speaker 1: I just I feel like a lot of things in
Speaker 1: Judaism this kind of room for you know, let me
Speaker 1: have a bacon.
Speaker 3: Let me have bacon.
Speaker 1: And my people.
Speaker 2: If you don't have a tattoo, you can't get into
Speaker 2: the afterlife?
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 1: I just made it off.
Speaker 3: It's good. It sounds really good.
Speaker 1: We could put it in like one of those outlinder.
Speaker 4: I have a nephew has a he's a half Jewish,
Speaker 4: half Catholic. So he has a Jewish star and.
Speaker 3: A very very guilty parent.
Speaker 1: Angle across and uh and a Jewish star and a
Speaker 1: star David. Yeah, Like is it mixed together.
Speaker 4: Or just I think it is mixed together. I think
Speaker 4: he had a friend of his in college.
Speaker 1: Like malgamate it. Bro. You gotta be careful though, because
Speaker 1: you can go you can go Satanic without no one.
Speaker 1: Like if you get your logos wrong, suddenly I'm the
Speaker 1: dark Lord you require Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: Do you you heard anything about the ink being bad
Speaker 4: for your bloodstream?
Speaker 1: I've heard that recently. Yeah, it's true. I hope it's
Speaker 1: not true, but I heard that it can. You know,
Speaker 1: it gives you Alzheimer's and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you seem so, you still seem great.
Speaker 1: I heard.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. But you know what, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. You don't know what's in front of you, right,
Speaker 1: you don't know what's in front You gotta let in
Speaker 1: the day.
Speaker 2: You got to live in the day.
Speaker 3: I think. But I actually do know what's in front
Speaker 3: of me. You do.
Speaker 4: I do live that way, but always live that way. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think that what's in front of me is good
Speaker 4: and it's.
Speaker 3: Going to be great. That's a great attitude. And you
Speaker 3: know there are there are glitches.
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, because I wanted to talk to you
Speaker 2: about your book.
Speaker 1: It's like a like a huge best seller about about
Speaker 1: your dad.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't bring it. I should bring it
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, we'll buy one. I should right here,
Speaker 1: People will buy them. We can also, because we have technology,
Speaker 1: we can probably put up a picture of Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could do that. But that's about I mean, that's
Speaker 1: more than a glitch. So that's like when your dad
Speaker 1: had kidney failure, right right, right? Did he die of
Speaker 1: kidney failure kidney disease, So what is that just like
Speaker 1: renal disease that.
Speaker 4: They yeah, exactly where there's so many cysts inside the
Speaker 4: kidney that they start to not function, and that's kidney failure.
Speaker 4: Because you can live with kidney disease, right, But then
Speaker 4: when you when they when it comes so weak, then
Speaker 4: you go on dialysis, which which is a marvelous, wonderful
Speaker 4: life sustaining system.
Speaker 1: What is dialysis because that's the thing I'm surprised to hear.
Speaker 2: But when you were caring for your dad, which.
Speaker 1: Was as a spectacularly I have to say, as an
Speaker 1: you know, looking at you as an actor, for an
Speaker 1: actor to do something that selfless, kind of like Becker's belief,
Speaker 1: it's uh.
Speaker 3: Well I think I'm a half actor, half human.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, okay, it was like mixed up like your
Speaker 2: nephew is half.
Speaker 1: Jewish, chef Catholic?
Speaker 3: Right, actor, Like I'm going, how do I look at
Speaker 3: but let me do your dials?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So you learned to be a dialysis technician with.
Speaker 3: My sister Susan.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we went to a medical facility and we actually
Speaker 4: learned to become dialysis technicians and were certified and I
Speaker 4: actually my sister was certified and I was her assistant.
Speaker 4: But we both learned how to canulate, which is putting
Speaker 4: a needle into a fistula, which is a very very
Speaker 4: large vein which is created from an art and a vein.
Speaker 4: They mail them together, so it's a very large target.
Speaker 4: So then you insert and the blood comes out. All
Speaker 4: your blood blood, all your blood goes through a machine
Speaker 4: chilled to thirty four degrees is cleaned. That's what your
Speaker 4: kidneys do. Then it's returned from another needle and another
Speaker 4: two you're just lying there. Yeah, you line there for
Speaker 4: about three hours and you get your blood cleaned. It's
Speaker 4: a marvelous system.
Speaker 1: Amazing.
Speaker 2: How often did you have to do that for you?
Speaker 4: Well, some people do it three days a week, depends
Speaker 4: on how your kidneys are working. Sometimes four days a
Speaker 4: week because you have fluid on your body. The great
Speaker 4: thing about kidneys is it gets rid of all the
Speaker 4: fluid in your body and excess fluid. But when your
Speaker 4: kidneys don't work, you build up this fluid and that
Speaker 4: has to be released and the dialysis machine does that.
Speaker 4: But if it doesn't do enough in three days, you
Speaker 4: have to do it four days, and if it's not
Speaker 4: enough in four days, you have to do it five days.
Speaker 2: How did that?
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're doing this this fairly, Tan's medical
Speaker 1: procedure on your father who was very ill. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you guys, you're going really well?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: You were close?
Speaker 3: Yeah, very close?
Speaker 2: And that's so what did it?
Speaker 1: What was it like for you when you get into
Speaker 1: that situation, because you know, I think with my father,
Speaker 1: my father, you know, he passed fairly quickly. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a long thing like that. Long ago two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: my dad died. Sorry, yeah, sorry for you. It's hard.
Speaker 2: It doesn't go away.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: People are like, you know when people talk about grief,
Speaker 1: I think it's so weird. It's like it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a scar. I think grief it's like really raw
Speaker 1: and then it kind of healed a bit. It doesn't go.
Speaker 4: Away, no, And it depends on the type of person
Speaker 4: you are. There are some people that don't want to
Speaker 4: admit their pain. Yeah, so they just say, you know,
Speaker 4: it's okay, I'm fine, and right they go on. Then
Speaker 4: there are people who feel something and say it really
Speaker 4: bothers me and I miss them a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how bad? I still miss my dad Every Sunday.
Speaker 1: I think about phone and my mom. She's been dead
Speaker 1: since two thousand and eight. Yeah, I still think about
Speaker 1: it still, of course you do, Yeah, because I thought
Speaker 1: her every Sunday. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. When we were older.
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah, when I was older, I got closer
Speaker 1: with him. Whenever I was young, I was a little crazy.
Speaker 1: Even I grew up in Scotland, I did. And did
Speaker 1: your parents still live there? They moved here?
Speaker 2: No, no, there, they lived and died there.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, it's I grew up at You're from Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: right right, but old school Brooklyn, not Helpster Brooklyn right now.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like where I grew up.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like old school Brooklyn, but with a
Speaker 1: lot more rain and had no good food. No good food, no, no,
Speaker 1: like Brooklyn that's good food. Ransomish yeah, yeah, but Glasgow
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. That. So you're you're very close
Speaker 1: with your dad, right, he's your best friend? I was,
Speaker 1: and then he gets Kenny disease.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you were driving on my guest today as before that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my sister and I and my mom and my
Speaker 4: wife was driving him and then it it got so
Speaker 4: bad that we had to do it three four, five
Speaker 4: times a week. And that's when we went to school
Speaker 4: and learned to do it at home. Because my dad
Speaker 4: was an US Army ranger and he was an airborne
Speaker 4: ranger and the Veterans Administration is great to all soldiers
Speaker 4: and they gave us all the equipment, so we were
Speaker 4: able to dialize him at home, which is pretty great.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. So how long were you doing that for?
Speaker 3: Though?
Speaker 4: About over a year a little over year, and it
Speaker 4: was much easier on him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So did he cope with it well? Because I
Speaker 1: don't know why I'd be with my kids looking after me.
Speaker 4: He did it every day, and he didn't like, like
Speaker 4: anybody their dignity when somebody has to do things that
Speaker 4: you usually do yourself. And it's tough for a kid too,
Speaker 4: to shower your dad or mom when they used to
Speaker 4: shower themselves, of course, and they used to when you
Speaker 4: were a little boy. They taught you how to shower,
Speaker 4: how to shave, and then I was shaving my dad.
Speaker 3: Was it tough? It was?
Speaker 2: It tough on you too? I guess it's gonna be right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: really was?
Speaker 4: You're not you don't want to show it to your
Speaker 4: dad or your mind by the time, because you wanted
Speaker 4: to go it's gonna be great, Dad, You're gonna be okay.
Speaker 4: And that actually helps you get through it by talking
Speaker 4: so positively. Dad, you look you're doing great. My dad said, look,
Speaker 4: look how skinny my legs are. And I go, Dad,
Speaker 4: you look great. You're gonna gain some weight back. Everything's
Speaker 4: gonna be okay. And I think for the caregiver too.
Speaker 4: You know, there are fifty three over fifty three million
Speaker 4: caregivers in this country. Some people estimated to one hundred
Speaker 4: million caregivers.
Speaker 1: What is country?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean everybody knows somebody taking care of somebody.
Speaker 3: I know somebody what you.
Speaker 4: Mean, like magically taking care of somebody who can't take
Speaker 4: care of themselves. They need to be looked after, eight
Speaker 4: hours a day, ten hours a day, Yeah, helping them
Speaker 4: go to the bathroom, helping them shower, helping them get
Speaker 4: into bed. Everybody. At one point Rossland Carter opened up
Speaker 4: the Caregivers Institute in Georgia and she said, at one point,
Speaker 4: you're either going to be a caregiver or you're gonna
Speaker 4: need a caregiver. That's just how it is and it's tough.
Speaker 4: It's really tough.
Speaker 2: Where did you end up Whether did you get depressed?
Speaker 3: I think I did get depressed.
Speaker 1: It's fun because I think of you as one of
Speaker 1: the most positive individuals I've ever met in this business.
Speaker 2: I mean, you really are appreciated. You're You're kind of.
Speaker 1: Like you're like a You're like a big shiny flashlight
Speaker 1: in a world of vampires.
Speaker 3: I want to be you're like that.
Speaker 1: You are like that, and I wonder how did it
Speaker 1: manifest itself for someone like you, because you're not big guy.
Speaker 4: I have to fight it and maybe have a you know,
Speaker 4: a weep by myself and tell someone close to me
Speaker 4: how I feel.
Speaker 1: But you know, that sounds appropriate though. That doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like depression. That sounds like that sounds like you're feeling
Speaker 1: what's going on.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, sadness and depression or so.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say no, you're right, I don't think I
Speaker 4: was depressed. I think that it was hard to see
Speaker 4: someone you love any anytime. Yeah, see someone you love
Speaker 4: in pain. Yeah, my mom right now has terrible pain
Speaker 4: in her shoulders and it's it's it's hard, and they're
Speaker 4: trying to find a solution to it, and it's hard.
Speaker 1: They don't know what it is.
Speaker 3: No, well they know it's arthritis. Right.
Speaker 1: My mother had that terribly.
Speaker 3: And they tried the shots. Did your mom take shots?
Speaker 2: Took shots?
Speaker 1: They give her gold injections at one point. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: they were all sorts of experimentation.
Speaker 3: I don't know. She was like, sucks, it really sucks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really does. You knows a thing about my mom?
Speaker 1: Like my mom was. She came and visit me when
Speaker 1: I was doing the Late Show. She was on the
Speaker 1: she was on the show, and she was the week.
Speaker 1: The week she was on the show, Riza from Wu
Speaker 1: Tang client was on the show and I said to Risa, hey,
Speaker 1: we we went to this bit for the show. You
Speaker 1: can take my mom around La and take her to
Speaker 1: cool places and shore around event.
Speaker 2: Sure, and he took her around town and showed filmed it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we filmed it. We put it on the show.
Speaker 1: But they kind of stayed in touch and they got
Speaker 1: one really well. And when Wu Tang were playing in Scotland,
Speaker 1: my mom wanted to take the ladies from a thright,
Speaker 1: that's care to see. I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: if they really enjoy it. Well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: they go. I don't think they did, but.
Speaker 2: I wish they did.
Speaker 1: I think in my mind I'm going to say, yes,
Speaker 1: they did yours. No, my mom didn't go. I think
Speaker 1: she got sick again. Do you know what that thing?
Speaker 1: I remember this with my dad. I wonder if this
Speaker 1: happened to be your dad. When he was sick, I
Speaker 1: would make plans for us to do things, and then
Speaker 1: he'd like he'd liked the idea of thing, but when
Speaker 1: the day came to like go on a trip or
Speaker 1: a road trip or something that you'd be like, I
Speaker 1: can't ryan do it.
Speaker 4: I've seen that my dad and my mom, and it
Speaker 4: really is disappointing.
Speaker 2: But the idea of it seems to be in.
Speaker 4: The last minute. A lot of times they'll say, but
Speaker 4: the other day I wanted My sister and my brother
Speaker 4: in law were going out to dinner. My mom lives there.
Speaker 4: My mom and dad were living with them in Arizona
Speaker 4: and wish I love Arizona, by the way, Yes, And
Speaker 4: they were going out to dinner. I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: take Mom out to dinner and they said, Mom will
Speaker 4: never go. She won't go. So I said to Mom, Mom,
Speaker 4: let's go out to dinner tonight. She's like, no, I
Speaker 4: don't know. Go mom, come on, we'll go out to dinner.
Speaker 4: We'll have a great Italian meal. There's this place called
Speaker 4: Fabio on Fire, really hot hoping place, great Italian food, Italian. No,
Speaker 4: it's not Fabio, the famous Fabio, who's a wonderful guy. Actually,
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I never met Fabi.
Speaker 3: They never met me. He's a great gush know.
Speaker 1: I have to say, the only thing I really know
Speaker 1: about him is that when he got hit in the
Speaker 1: face by a goose on the roller coaster.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, what happened? Oh he was a roller coaster
Speaker 3: and a goose flew by and hit him in the face.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and he was like bleeding, oh no, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I don't know if this is true, but
Speaker 1: in my mind it's true that he tried to kind
Speaker 1: of put some activism together for people that had been
Speaker 1: hit by birds on roller coasters. But there were he
Speaker 1: was only one.
Speaker 3: Yeah one, Oh my god, what are the chances?
Speaker 1: Pretty What do you think the goose felt like as well?
Speaker 1: It was like, oh my god, is that Fabio?
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool?
Speaker 2: You know, I hit Fabrio?
Speaker 3: You touched his face.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well I met him in a restaurant and he the Source. No,
Speaker 4: I didn't meet him there. I met this place called
Speaker 4: oh Cos, this great restaurant, tin restaurant. He was there
Speaker 4: with his wife and a girlfriend or his wife and
Speaker 4: he we were talking and my mom was there. She
Speaker 4: met him and he takes he took care of his mom.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: In Italy he was a good good son. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: good son. Was he doing? I should have him on
Speaker 3: the writing or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I first came to Hollywood in the mid nineties,
Speaker 1: he used to eat at the Source restaurant on.
Speaker 3: Sunset Yeah, the health food place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, every day, and I used to go there. I
Speaker 1: used to go there because I thought you have to
Speaker 1: go a health food restaurant Hollywood Detox after growling up Scotland.
Speaker 2: And I used to see him every day. But I
Speaker 2: really yeah, like h I mean, what am I going
Speaker 2: to say?
Speaker 4: But you know what I find about famous people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: everybody likes to say hi.
Speaker 1: I saw that Instagram post you did the other day
Speaker 1: when the guy said to you, hey, I like your
Speaker 1: posts and you said yeah good yeah, and you're like
Speaker 1: you were happy about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: We like to get everybody, and we're social animals, right,
Speaker 4: Whether you're a carpenter, you're an actor, you're a doctor.
Speaker 4: People like to say, hi, ay, doctor Puller, I saw
Speaker 4: your I was a patient here as ten years ago.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, good to see you again. You know hey,
Speaker 4: you know, hey, Craig. I love your show. You're really great.
Speaker 4: I love your podcast. You're gonna turn around and go
Speaker 4: thanks a lot. That's so great. Can I have a picture, Yeah,
Speaker 4: of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But it's like that fine. It's when people come
Speaker 1: over this in Scotland. People will come over to you
Speaker 1: and go, I don't know who you are.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know that one. I know that way.
Speaker 1: Well, then why are you talking to me? Everyone?
Speaker 3: You don't know? I tell them you don't know. This
Speaker 3: is kind of a funny thing.
Speaker 1: It's a weird one. Well, I don't know who you are,
Speaker 1: and why are you talking to my kids?
Speaker 3: Don't know who you are?
Speaker 4: But I think that's I go, okay, do they know
Speaker 4: who the Secretary of State is?
Speaker 3: No? Okay, that's all right. But I I do.
Speaker 4: Think that everybody wants to say something clever and somewhat complimentary.
Speaker 4: I think everyone wants to be complimentary. Sure, and I
Speaker 4: think also as being a well known person. If you're
Speaker 4: out in public, you know, if you have a little
Speaker 4: bit of a responsibility.
Speaker 3: You're on I think so.
Speaker 1: My understanding about you, even when it was like burning
Speaker 1: super hot for you at the very beginning, like the
Speaker 1: police Academy and Cocoon and stuff like that, you.
Speaker 2: Were always pretty on the level.
Speaker 1: Though you weren't like you weren't a crazy drinkier drugger
Speaker 1: or anything like that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I dabbled in all the fun, but I
Speaker 4: was writing. Actually, there's a little part in my book
Speaker 4: which is about the beginning of my career where my
Speaker 4: mom and dad really gave me all the tools I
Speaker 4: needed to learn. And it was at their kitchen table
Speaker 4: they taught me to whether I was going to talk
Speaker 4: to the President of the United States or talk to
Speaker 4: the super in my building, that there's a way to
Speaker 4: deal with people that makes life more palatable.
Speaker 3: That's what you want.
Speaker 4: The idea of life is to be happy. The idea
Speaker 4: of life is to try to make somebody else happy
Speaker 4: if you can, if you can, if you can, And
Speaker 4: I've always felt that I wanted that I want to
Speaker 4: get along. My dad actually wrote this in the book too,
Speaker 4: my dad always said, come unarmed.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: My dad was a cop, and whenever he would walk
Speaker 4: into a store that there might be trouble, he would
Speaker 4: always walk in with his left side and try to
Speaker 4: lean to the right, so they never saw his firearm
Speaker 4: because he wanted to come in with the illusion that
Speaker 4: he was unarmed, because people are more comfortable that way.
Speaker 1: But the important one there is the illusion that he's
Speaker 1: on arm.
Speaker 4: Well, the illusion that you're an armed because if you're
Speaker 4: a strong individual, you're going to be you're armed to
Speaker 4: an extent. But you and I are unarmed right now,
Speaker 4: you know, And that's the way we should be all
Speaker 4: the time, even tough guys.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you meet tough guys.
Speaker 4: And when you meet a tough guy and you're nice
Speaker 4: to him, he's nice to you, and you're both on I.
Speaker 2: Make I make a point of being nice to of course,
Speaker 2: but a little.
Speaker 3: Kids, well, sure you want to make them know.
Speaker 4: You want them to know that in the game, there's
Speaker 4: nothing here to to go.
Speaker 1: What about you know? You said one of the things
Speaker 1: I teach my own kids. This went to anyone who
Speaker 1: wants to know and about show business, I tell and
Speaker 1: I quote you, and I name you and that this
Speaker 1: is the greatest lesson for anyone in show business. And
Speaker 1: you told it to me. It's the Who's Steve Guttenberg.
Speaker 1: Let's take it through it again stages? So it's the
Speaker 1: five stages are who is Steve Guttenberg?
Speaker 4: Get me Steve Gutenberg. I want a Steve Gutenberg type.
Speaker 4: I want a young Steve Guttenberg, And who is Steve Gutenberg?
Speaker 1: I think that is such a chilling, accurate portrayal of
Speaker 1: this business.
Speaker 2: Paul Newman told me that one really was he in
Speaker 2: joe business?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, he was. He sold salad dressing.
Speaker 4: My god, I mean but he said that I'm a
Speaker 4: salad dressing guy man a lot of people.
Speaker 1: That's that's funny though, because he said. The embarrassing thing
Speaker 1: is more money was made in that company. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's for charity, but more money's made in that company
Speaker 1: than he made as an actor. Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that I was on Hollywood Boulevard last night.
Speaker 4: I went to see the musical. Yeah, I wasn't working.
Speaker 4: I saw the musical Missus Doubtfire.
Speaker 1: All right, how was it?
Speaker 4: Which is fantastic, It's really great, but I was looking
Speaker 4: at all the stars on Hollywood Boulevard and all the
Speaker 4: ones that I recognized and the ones I did not recognize,
Speaker 4: And I thought, at each one of those stars, there
Speaker 4: was a ceremony, sure, with maybe hundreds or a thousand
Speaker 4: people screaming this person's name. And now either they're gone
Speaker 4: or something to that effect. So you get a perspective again.
Speaker 1: Doing my what was that gaz appontment? I I am
Speaker 1: osi mundayas gaze of point in my works, he mighty
Speaker 1: in despair? You know, No, it's it's I think it's
Speaker 1: a Byron poem. It's about finding the tomb of Osiman
Speaker 1: die So I think it's based on Rameses the Second,
Speaker 1: Who is the pharaoh in Egypt that lived to be
Speaker 1: ninety two years?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: Right, and like and when the average person was eleventy
Speaker 1: about twenty five, someone lives to ninety two, they really
Speaker 1: do think he's a god. Yeah, and it's like and uh,
Speaker 1: and it was about coming across as two thousand years later.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that you know, you may not know who I am.
Speaker 4: Now you'll know who I am, but I'm gone.
Speaker 1: Steve Goods, who's Ossiman?
Speaker 3: Dad's the game?
Speaker 1: I know?
Speaker 2: And that is the game.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the weirdest thing is that you know,
Speaker 1: you you see people get I've been killing you this,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, you know, when I was a younger man,
Speaker 1: I believed in the it's still pretty young, by the way,
Speaker 1: well a very select group of people. I am still young.
Speaker 3: Yeah you're a young guy.
Speaker 1: But when I was a kid, yeah, in this business,
Speaker 1: I believed in the in the legend of show business.
Speaker 1: And I believed in it right up until I did
Speaker 1: Late Night. And then in the ten years I did
Speaker 1: Late Night, I met everybody, sure, everybody sure, And the
Speaker 1: men's to douchebag ratio was about the same as a
Speaker 1: restaurant or a bar or anybody else. Some people were great,
Speaker 1: So people were wressholes And what do you.
Speaker 3: Think that what would you say that percentage is too
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: It was about seventy five twenty five mensed to douchebag
Speaker 1: right most of the time. Yeah, maybe even a little
Speaker 1: better that most people I think are pretty nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because like you say, you want to get along. I
Speaker 1: don't want any trouble trying to get along. I don't
Speaker 1: want I don't want to. And in fight the older again,
Speaker 1: the more. I'm like, I'm not looking for an argument, right.
Speaker 2: That's why I wonder about like the kids.
Speaker 1: Now, I was trying to get to this when you
Speaker 1: were like when you were you know, kicking off with
Speaker 1: the early part of your career.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about the ly Diner and you know that.
Speaker 1: And that period there's no cell phones, there's no social media,
Speaker 1: there's no like. So if you behave like an idiot,
Speaker 1: or you make a full of yourself.
Speaker 2: It's not public, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I feel for the young people right now, young
Speaker 1: performers in particular. It's like, you make a mistake, it's
Speaker 1: there forever, you know, it's yeah, digitously there forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would so. And when I thought the same
Speaker 1: thing about writing, You've written what three books? You ever
Speaker 1: write Anthon in a book and then look at it
Speaker 1: later and go, shit, I don't believe that anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I've done that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course. It same in life. Yeah, that you
Speaker 4: change your perspective. Yeah, you know, as when you're at
Speaker 4: a certain age you say this is black, that is black,
Speaker 4: that's the color blue. It's blue, and it's never gonna change.
Speaker 4: It's blue, and then later on you say it actually
Speaker 4: wasn't blue yellow.
Speaker 3: That was yellow.
Speaker 1: It's funny that the no one when to shut up,
Speaker 1: I think is a skill which is underestimated.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: You know there's a guy like well, there was a
Speaker 4: mafiosa boss in a back in. You should say, fish
Speaker 4: with closed mouths don't get caught.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's fish with closed that's pretty scary though.
Speaker 3: This just yea, you don't get caught.
Speaker 2: You don't get caught.
Speaker 3: Nothing bad happ nothing bad happen. Yeah, no, no open.
Speaker 1: But you gotta eat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you gotta be careful.
Speaker 4: You gotta be careful about And I find it in
Speaker 4: life too that I am trying my best. I'm not
Speaker 4: always successful to keep my mouth shut.
Speaker 2: You know I noticed that, you don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I'm sitting here doing a podcast right
Speaker 1: where I talk to people for an hour. My own
Speaker 1: realize I only talk to people I want to talk to.
Speaker 1: It's not a late night show. It's money. Rule is like, wow,
Speaker 1: you know it doesn't It doesn't really even have to
Speaker 1: be about joy. I mean, we call it joy, and
Speaker 1: we'll try and focus it on joy, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: really even have to be without. All I has to
Speaker 1: be about is conversation with somebody I want to talk to.
Speaker 1: But even as I say that, I think, should I
Speaker 1: really be doing a podcast because everybody is doing it?
Speaker 1: Maybe I should be quiet?
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: And so that's what I'm starting to think right now.
Speaker 4: Maybe maybe you actually have a distinctive, intelligent, funny, three
Speaker 4: dimensional way about you, and you're different than a lot
Speaker 4: of guys. The other one side of it, you're trained,
Speaker 4: you you know how to perform, you know how to
Speaker 4: be entertaining. But you're also a very decent human being.
Speaker 2: Oh it depends on who you talk to and when
Speaker 2: they knew me.
Speaker 3: I don't talk to anybody. Yeah, that's that's probably a thing.
Speaker 4: That's probably the one guy gave me like a face
Speaker 4: when I walked in and I said me here, see, Craig.
Speaker 1: Went, oh, like that guy.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I actually didn't know what that meant.
Speaker 3: Now I know what I mean that you said. But
Speaker 3: you're you.
Speaker 1: You do have a very good way about you. Well,
Speaker 1: you have a good way about you and your very
Speaker 1: clever way about you because you do this thing. You
Speaker 1: started me talking about me. You got me talking about
Speaker 1: me again.
Speaker 3: Or tell me about I'm interested?
Speaker 2: All right, Well, I'm interested in you.
Speaker 4: I'm not like trying to do anything, but I'm interested.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm interested in you. I'm interested in this in
Speaker 1: this period of your life. I mean, look, I'm interested
Speaker 1: in all of it, but I'm interested in the recent
Speaker 1: thing that spurget ray. Look, I've written books. I know
Speaker 1: it's difficult, right, books, It requires a lot of your
Speaker 1: time and usually is emotionally takes a toll. And you
Speaker 1: wrote a book about something that was doing that anyway.
Speaker 1: Did you write the book during that period? Was it
Speaker 1: or was that Catharsis afterwards? That a kind of journal
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 4: Actually, I was doing it sitting next to my dad
Speaker 4: and I would show him pages.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because a friend of mine, a guy named Jake's
Speaker 4: Einfeld was Body by Jake. Yeah, you reme ever Body
Speaker 4: by Jake?
Speaker 3: Meet Jake?
Speaker 2: I think I might have you never.
Speaker 3: Want to have him on his show? He's like, he's
Speaker 3: super good guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he lived down at the Palis.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I used to see him in the Starbucks down there.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: He's a good guy if you ever want to and
Speaker 4: he's a terrific talker. He's a great personality. Does he
Speaker 4: still do all that Yeah, he's really engaged.
Speaker 2: See I'm not in that world, so I wouldn't know.
Speaker 3: You know, he invested in broadway shows.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: He just invested in water for elephants okay.
Speaker 4: And he also he does all his exercise equipment and
Speaker 4: he has a sports drink out like a billionaire. He's
Speaker 4: very very well off and a great guy. Comes from
Speaker 4: actually south through a long island when I moved to
Speaker 4: Massapeaker when I was a kid.
Speaker 3: He comes from Baldwin, a couple of towns away.
Speaker 1: Do you know what's it's really funny I remember of
Speaker 1: it body by the Body by Jake is that I
Speaker 1: read something that an interview or something he did maybe
Speaker 1: in the nineties, right, and he said, on Sunday a
Speaker 1: bag of M and m's because you got to have
Speaker 1: a day off. And I just I remember that. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he still does it, but Betty does.
Speaker 1: He said on Sunday, I gotta have a bag every morning.
Speaker 4: He's up at three forty five in his gym. He's
Speaker 4: at the gym at three forty five. Yeah, he's you know,
Speaker 4: but he's a workout guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So anyway, I saw him in the supermarket and he
Speaker 4: said to me, I haven't seen you in a while.
Speaker 3: Where you've been.
Speaker 4: I told him was looking after my dad, and I
Speaker 4: told him a mat He said, I think that's a book.
Speaker 4: He said, I'm gonna call my agent and you're gonna
Speaker 4: talk to my agent, my book agent.
Speaker 3: I think it's a book. And that's how it happened.
Speaker 1: So you actually you'd sold the book, and then that's
Speaker 1: good because then you write it.
Speaker 4: I wrote about forty to fifty pages, sent it to
Speaker 4: my agent, Jan Miller, great lady. She sent it around,
Speaker 4: she got a deal, and then I started writing sitting
Speaker 4: next to my dad. Oh man, so he knew it
Speaker 4: was going to happen. Yeah, I didn't know the end
Speaker 4: of the book was my dad was going to pass.
Speaker 4: But man, you see how excited I get. It was
Speaker 4: such a good time being with my dad a lot,
Speaker 4: even though he was sick, which you know, I have
Speaker 4: to I can go to that side and get sad.
Speaker 4: But my my enthusiasm is I got to sit next
Speaker 4: to my dad a lot and write and show my
Speaker 4: dad what I was writing. He would read from the
Speaker 4: computer and meanwhile take care of my dad.
Speaker 1: What was it like when you were a little kid,
Speaker 1: What forged that relationship. You and your sister. Right, it's
Speaker 1: just two kids, is that right?
Speaker 3: We have a third, a second sister. It's Judy and Jersey.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's a sitcom, Judy and Jersey. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a sycom.
Speaker 2: Let me call my sakemb.
Speaker 3: God, that is a sitcom. If you met my sister.
Speaker 1: Hey, how you sting?
Speaker 3: Oh my god? You's Judy. Yeah, it's me. It's me.
Speaker 1: It's me.
Speaker 3: It's me.
Speaker 1: I'm a Jersey.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm a.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm We're going down to the shore. We'll going
Speaker 4: to the shore. She's a great lady, my sister, Judy.
Speaker 4: So we grew up Brooklyn, Flushing, Queen's then massive people,
Speaker 4: Long Island. My dad wanted to get us out of
Speaker 4: the pit, which he thought was Flushing, and we moved
Speaker 4: to Massapequa, a little house in a great neighbor, Long Island,
Speaker 4: midway between you've been to the Hamptons. Midway between New
Speaker 4: York City and the Hampton's about forty five miles near Smithtown,
Speaker 4: not far, probably about fifteen miles in smith Town.
Speaker 2: Smith Town's first place I went to.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, that's yeah, that's mid Island, a little north yea,
Speaker 4: A great town, right, nice people though, all right.
Speaker 1: So you go what easier when you move up to Massapeako.
Speaker 4: We went to massapicer at a seven years old and
Speaker 4: the first thing we did with my dad it was
Speaker 4: one hundred degrees or something. My dad painted the house.
Speaker 4: In the inside of the house. We stayed at a
Speaker 4: friend's house who Ellen and Jerry Kaufman. They're friends from
Speaker 4: Brooklyn when they were kids, and they had air conditioning,
Speaker 4: one air conditioner.
Speaker 3: We stayed there and then my father got done.
Speaker 4: We moved into the house and then my father pulled
Speaker 4: out this machine that was in the garage and it
Speaker 4: was a Toro lawnmower.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 4: And I remember I was seven years old and I'm
Speaker 4: looking at this machine. My dad looking at the machine,
Speaker 4: and we both said what do we do with it?
Speaker 4: And my dad said, I think this cuts the grass?
Speaker 4: And uh, you know, we never cut grass. So my
Speaker 4: dad said, okay, I gotta get any ask the neighbor.
Speaker 4: The neighbor told him, you know, you get gasoline, you
Speaker 4: put it in, you pull the ripcord like a mini bike.
Speaker 4: You started up and you mow and then you empty
Speaker 4: the bank. So we the first day we were there.
Speaker 4: My dad and I cut the lawn and my sneakers
Speaker 4: and his sneakers got green.
Speaker 3: They got green.
Speaker 1: Yes, that would happen, because you know, you're walking.
Speaker 4: On there and it's a little little wet, and the
Speaker 4: grass looked like like like velvet, like like emerald green velvet.
Speaker 1: I'm a dad, I understand the story of lawn man.
Speaker 4: So we did it, and we and my dad said,
Speaker 4: we are suburbanites. And I wrote this in the book.
Speaker 4: It was such a joy for me. I went, what's
Speaker 4: a suburbanite? He goes, we live in suburbia. What is suburbia.
Speaker 4: Suburbia is where all everybody has they're individual houses. That's suburbia.
Speaker 4: We all have a little bit of land, our land.
Speaker 4: And I never forget. He said, take your shoes off,
Speaker 4: take your take your socks off. I took my shoes
Speaker 4: and socks off. He said, walk around the grass. And
Speaker 4: I'm walking around the grass. He goes, this is your land.
Speaker 4: You own this land. When you live in an apartment,
Speaker 4: you don't own any land, right, you own this land.
Speaker 3: This is your land, your suburbanite.
Speaker 2: That's kind of great. Are you still a suburbanite?
Speaker 4: You think no, I don't consider myself a suburbanite, even
Speaker 4: though I live in Pacific Palisades. I don't really consider
Speaker 4: that suburbia. Kind of find that La is sort of
Speaker 4: one big city in a way.
Speaker 1: It's I think La could almost be one big suburbia
Speaker 1: as well. It's kind of like that. I mean, where
Speaker 1: we are right now.
Speaker 3: It's kind of this is city right well right would
Speaker 3: you say, yeah, Hollywood?
Speaker 4: But I think if you go out to Valencia or
Speaker 4: something like that, that's more suburbia is really from to me,
Speaker 4: an actual city with sky scrapers, big buildings.
Speaker 1: Like a downtown, and then yeah.
Speaker 4: That's suburbia. This is La is kind of a sprawl,
Speaker 4: you know. Yeah, it's an odd town.
Speaker 3: La.
Speaker 1: I remember coming here and thinking we're trying to find
Speaker 1: where it was, right, Like, where's the.
Speaker 3: Where's the bed, there's where's the center.
Speaker 1: Where's where's downtown, where's the thing.
Speaker 3: It's a hard city that way.
Speaker 4: It's a sprawl, yeah, and I think that's the disadvantage
Speaker 4: to La.
Speaker 3: La has been great to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been great to me. I don't live here anymore.
Speaker 1: I live on the East Coast.
Speaker 3: Where do you live?
Speaker 2: I live in New York City.
Speaker 1: You do learn in New York City, and I've got
Speaker 1: a little place out in New York City as well,
Speaker 1: but I'm in I'm on the East coast. Oh.
Speaker 3: Where in the city do you live?
Speaker 2: Manhattan Upper East Side?
Speaker 3: Oh you do so.
Speaker 4: I lived on Columbus in sixty seventh for twenty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 3: You live in the sixtiese. You don't want to say
Speaker 3: a little north of that? But okay, great?
Speaker 4: And how far from like Lexington Park, Fifth Avenue and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right around there, right around there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fantastic.
Speaker 3: And your kids are the round there too. Well.
Speaker 1: My oldest boy now lives out in Jersey.
Speaker 3: Oh he does. We're in Jersey.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, I can say.
Speaker 3: Okay, my sister lives in Scotch Plains.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, well they kind of like because for young
Speaker 1: people affording places to live and work.
Speaker 3: In my nattan is not great. He's got a house.
Speaker 1: He's got a little house with his buddies and they
Speaker 1: all live together, and they work together, and they do
Speaker 1: a thing.
Speaker 3: It SATs about forty five minutes of the shit.
Speaker 1: It's nothing. I mean, it's like over the George Washington Bridge.
Speaker 1: I have this like thing with my wife though every
Speaker 1: time she goes over the torch the bridge, I try
Speaker 1: and take a photograph over because my wife's Yankee.
Speaker 2: She doesn't like going to Jersey.
Speaker 4: She doesn't know I understand. It makes it's a weird thing.
Speaker 4: It is a weird thing.
Speaker 3: I know. I just started to love Jersey.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I love Jersey. I'll tell you about
Speaker 1: Long Island though. When I went to Long Island for
Speaker 1: the first time, I came to America, I was thirteen
Speaker 1: years old. I came over with my dad. Me and
Speaker 1: my dad came over because they were cheap flight. It's
Speaker 1: from Scotland and my uncle James lived in Smithtown, Long Island.
Speaker 1: Uncle James and my aunts is. So we go there.
Speaker 2: We get these cheap flight I never had it.
Speaker 1: This is before a really cheap flights flew to Kennedy.
Speaker 1: We flewent at Kennedy from Preswick and Scotland direct flight
Speaker 1: on a DC ten Laker airway yeah lak yeah. And
Speaker 1: we went to Smithtown and the first night, maybe the
Speaker 1: second night we were there, we go to a bowling alley.
Speaker 1: I'd never been a and I go there and they said,
Speaker 1: do you want to root beer? And I thought I'd
Speaker 1: never heard of beer.
Speaker 3: Thought, it's a beer.
Speaker 2: It's a beer.
Speaker 1: So do you want a root beer? And I went, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I want a root beer and they gave me. I
Speaker 1: remember to this day a root beer over crushed ice
Speaker 1: in a bowling alley and Long Island and I drank
Speaker 1: it and I went, whatever this is and whoever these
Speaker 1: people are, I need to be part of this and that.
Speaker 1: I still will drink root beer over crushed especially in
Speaker 1: the summer.
Speaker 3: I love. It's the best.
Speaker 1: It's the greatest. And I occasionally will go to a
Speaker 1: bowling alley.
Speaker 3: Oh I'm a ball. I got my own ball.
Speaker 1: Shut up, you actually bowl like a bit? I mean
Speaker 1: you never really left Long Island, then, did you.
Speaker 3: I don't talk about it a lot, no, but you know,
Speaker 3: but I have.
Speaker 2: Because you know, fish with closed nuts.
Speaker 3: Don't get a car.
Speaker 4: But I actually have a bowling ball with my dad's
Speaker 4: name on it, really and it has an Army insignia
Speaker 4: on it. Yeah, and my wife got for me and
Speaker 4: it's in the car right now. So I want to
Speaker 4: go bowling if you want to go to bowling.
Speaker 1: I suck at bawling, all right, yeah, but that's good.
Speaker 1: That's good for you because then you win. Well, it's
Speaker 1: not about can we can we put the bumpers up
Speaker 1: for me?
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, if you want, I'll lay on the
Speaker 4: on the alley.
Speaker 2: And I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1: So that was a bonden thing with your dad when
Speaker 1: you were when you became a suburban night when you
Speaker 1: were a kid.
Speaker 3: Then you went we went bowling.
Speaker 4: We went bowling, and we played tennis and my dad
Speaker 4: took me to met games and and uh but wait
Speaker 4: wait when you were in Smithtown, did you go to
Speaker 4: the the the water? Did you go to Long Island
Speaker 4: Sound and cupar Water?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I went to Long Island Sound and the U.
Speaker 1: I went to see my first ever concert. Oh wait
Speaker 1: in Smithtown.
Speaker 3: Wait? Oh in like in one of the parks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was no, it was like it was first
Speaker 2: of a rock concert.
Speaker 1: I think it was. I don't know what it was
Speaker 1: called Smithtown Arena or something. It was Blue Oyster Cult.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Cool, yeah, very cool. That was the first concert.
Speaker 3: Oh that's very out takeing. Wow, blue icel color.
Speaker 1: Yeah wow. Yeah. And I that's when I first smelled
Speaker 1: what the kids are now calling the marijuan.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, were they smoking marijuana? There?
Speaker 2: Some people were.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but marijuana has
Speaker 1: been around for like over twenty five years.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, someone told me that, but I never
Speaker 3: did You never smoke it? I did, I never cared
Speaker 3: for Did you like it? I liked it.
Speaker 2: I liked it.
Speaker 3: I don't smoke it anymore.
Speaker 2: But I like sense of you being someone who medicates
Speaker 2: it all.
Speaker 3: No, no, I actually I don't even drink.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you never drank.
Speaker 4: I did you have an occasional glass of wine? Yeah,
Speaker 4: it's just not sort of my thing is like ginger ale.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: I don't know why.
Speaker 4: I just like tody good for the for the stomach
Speaker 4: or whatever. But you know what I got to tell you.
Speaker 4: I think when I stopped smoking weed, and I didn't
Speaker 4: and I just it wasn't a sober program. I just stopped. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I start seeing that when you're very clear. It's kind
Speaker 4: of like when you were thirteen years old and someone
Speaker 4: would say, Hey, we're going to an amusement park Saturday night,
Speaker 4: and it's Tuesday and Wednesday.
Speaker 3: You go.
Speaker 4: Saturday night, we're going to amusement park. And Thursday afternoon
Speaker 4: you're going. It's only a few days, so Saturday and
Speaker 4: then you know, a Friday, you go like, one more day,
Speaker 4: we're going. There's an excitement, there's a thrill, there's a
Speaker 4: normal not normal, there's a natural enthusiasm that comes out
Speaker 4: of you when you don't have anything else in your body.
Speaker 1: I agree. And what was interesting is I think there's
Speaker 1: a lie paramit about drugs and alcohol particular, that they
Speaker 1: have some kind of creative advantage. Like and then you
Speaker 1: know the people they always talk about drunk poets or
Speaker 1: drunk artists, and you go, well, you know, Mgdigliani was
Speaker 1: a great painter. He was an alcoholic and he died young,
Speaker 1: but he was a great painter. Picasso also a great painter,
Speaker 1: painted for a long time, not an alcoholic at all,
Speaker 1: lived to be in his nineties, painted a lot. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't know if Mugdiglianny would have painted any better
Speaker 1: if he had not been drinking. But my theory is
Speaker 1: people who are great artists and are great drunks are
Speaker 1: great artists despite.
Speaker 2: The drugs alcohol, not because of the drugs.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Alcohol. I think that that that that talent and that
Speaker 1: vision in that genius cuts through the mud of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Because I felt that do I remember talking to someone
Speaker 1: when I first got sober, and and he said to me,
Speaker 1: let's call him my sponsor. And I said, when I
Speaker 1: go to when I go. I went to a party
Speaker 1: last night, and when I walked to I didn't know
Speaker 1: anyone there. I felt kind of shy, awkward. It's weird,
Speaker 1: he went, that's a normal human response to walking into
Speaker 1: a room where you don't know a bunch of people.
Speaker 2: You feel shy and awkward.
Speaker 3: That's what it feels like.
Speaker 1: So welcome to yet another emotion that you might not
Speaker 1: have experienced.
Speaker 3: And it's and it's it's actually okay, okay, you are
Speaker 3: going to go.
Speaker 1: I feel shy, okay, and then all.
Speaker 3: Of a sudden someone comes over and says, hello.
Speaker 2: Someone will talk to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, although now you know I was young and cute.
Speaker 1: Then now if I if I stand there, somebody more
Speaker 1: and go, I don't know who you are.
Speaker 3: I don't know who I don't know.
Speaker 1: Who you are, but my friends think you're rubbish.
Speaker 3: No, I know.
Speaker 1: What gets you through the really because you are relentlessly positive.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to figure out where that comes from.
Speaker 1: Like it's your it's your childhood, I would say, But
Speaker 1: you ended up going you had a Juilliard or something, right.
Speaker 3: First summer, Yeah, with John Housman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, so that's pretty fancy actor.
Speaker 1: So I can't see how you go from like frankle
Speaker 1: face kid of an.
Speaker 2: Army ranger going to be an actor. How does that happen?
Speaker 3: Dude?
Speaker 4: Well, when we had a family friend who was an actor,
Speaker 4: and he was my parents' friend from Brooklyn, right, And
Speaker 4: they grew up with him, and his name was Michael Bell.
Speaker 4: Super talented guy, went to the high school performing arts,
Speaker 4: went out to California, started becoming actor. But he was
Speaker 4: brilliant with his voice, so he became one of the
Speaker 4: top ten voiceover guys in the world. Paul Freezer did
Speaker 4: Disney and he was that he was in that league
Speaker 4: and he did and.
Speaker 1: He so that they had been demystified as a thing.
Speaker 1: To your parents, yeah, they knew it was a legitimate
Speaker 1: business and right right.
Speaker 4: And he would come and visit us all the time.
Speaker 4: He was successful. Somebody said to me, what do you
Speaker 4: want to do? I said, what does Michael Bell do?
Speaker 4: Because he's got a cat lacke, and he's got great girlfriends,
Speaker 4: and he's got money.
Speaker 3: I want to see. And they said he was an actor.
Speaker 3: I want to be an actor.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I started doing children's theater when I was twelve,
Speaker 4: then going to the city and taking classes, taking classes
Speaker 4: on Long Island. And when I was seventeen, my parents
Speaker 4: and I talk about this in the book. My parents
Speaker 4: gave me three hundred dollars and they let me go
Speaker 4: out to California and I had two weeks to become
Speaker 4: a movie star. Well how much how much time does
Speaker 4: it take?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Probably, you know, two weeks. Two weeks, so ten days.
Speaker 4: So I went out there and I got a commercial.
Speaker 4: I got a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial. They let me
Speaker 4: stay a little longer. I got a little movie with
Speaker 4: Phil Silvers.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, with Bill Cool. Yeah. Did you ever meet
Speaker 3: the guy?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I never did Cool. God, Oh my god, really.
Speaker 1: Cool talking about your legends.
Speaker 4: Comedy Yeah, wow, so exciting. And he also it was
Speaker 4: he told a very funny story. He said that he
Speaker 4: said he was very famous for having a large yeah
Speaker 4: you know, yeah yeah, And and Milton Burrell also had
Speaker 4: I believe that's true, and Forrest Tucker, the great actor,
Speaker 4: and then the story goes.
Speaker 1: Liam Neeson also, oh really, I don't know if it's true.
Speaker 1: I just tear to the scuttle lot.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but he's a he's a he's a
Speaker 3: he's a confident guy.
Speaker 1: Confident guy, great guy. I don't I don't know the gentleman.
Speaker 3: But let me tell you something about that. Liam Neeson. Yeah,
Speaker 3: nice guy, nice guy, one of the and funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very funny.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: You see him in the Ted movie where he's, oh.
Speaker 4: My god was great and he does great imitations.
Speaker 2: Yeah does he? He does.
Speaker 4: He does great imitations and he's really funny.
Speaker 1: And uh and so apparently anyway, you're apparently he's in
Speaker 1: the Phil Silver's Milton Barrel.
Speaker 3: He's really funny.
Speaker 4: They say, well, so he's a he's a you know,
Speaker 4: but I'm sure you're a big guy too, you're you know, Hey,
Speaker 4: you don't want to say anything, but anyway, the story
Speaker 4: goes to Milton Burrell and and for Stucker. We're having
Speaker 4: a contest, and Fartucker said, the only way to see
Speaker 4: what is so let's lay him on the table.
Speaker 3: So Partstucker laid his on the.
Speaker 4: Table, and Milton Burle laid his on the table, and
Speaker 4: Milton weren't won, right, And Milton said to Phil Simmers,
Speaker 4: goes good I'm glad you won.
Speaker 3: How'd you do it? He goes, I only took out
Speaker 3: enough to win.
Speaker 4: But Phil Simmers really really great guy and wonderful, wonderful
Speaker 4: actor and funny as hell.
Speaker 1: So so your parents are impressed now because now you're
Speaker 1: working with a big stock.
Speaker 4: Then I did a big TV movie which called Something
Speaker 4: for Joey about John Cappelletti, a football legend, and after
Speaker 4: a year I quit. I just did not like la
Speaker 4: I didn't like the culture out here.
Speaker 3: It's tough, it is. It's a brutal town.
Speaker 1: It's tough.
Speaker 3: It really is a brutal town.
Speaker 4: And I went back to school in Albany State and
Speaker 4: I got another call about six months into it from
Speaker 4: my agent to say, do you want to do the
Speaker 4: Boys from Brazil? A?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot you were that yeah right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they're going to remake it. Actually, yeah, they're
Speaker 4: gonna remake it. It's when I heard, so I went over.
Speaker 4: I took the job and went to Portugal and worked
Speaker 4: with uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But but because it's science fiction, it was kind of
Speaker 4: takes the little darkness off because it's it's fiction, you know,
Speaker 4: you know, of course, yeah, it's just fiction. You know,
Speaker 4: so they The story goes that this scientist Mengal took
Speaker 4: all of Hitler's DNA when he passed and was injecting
Speaker 4: it into pregnant women so that they would have little Hitlers,
Speaker 4: and that actually the little Hitlers all were identical, maybe
Speaker 4: five hundred of them.
Speaker 3: A little mustache.
Speaker 4: And you know he when they say do you want cheerios?
Speaker 1: It's kind of when I think about it, it's kind
Speaker 1: of a stupid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's actually if you want to, you know, play.
Speaker 4: But it was directed by this great director, Frank Franklin Schaffner,
Speaker 4: who directed Patent the first Planet of the Apes. All Man,
Speaker 4: you did live television. It was brilliant. You know, you
Speaker 4: got Greg Pack, you got Larry Olivia, you got James Mason,
Speaker 4: you got.
Speaker 2: Ud I'm heavy.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool group. So and I Remeben said.
Speaker 1: The greatest thing about performance I ever heard, tell me.
Speaker 1: I think about that when people say do you just
Speaker 1: make up your stuff on stage? When you're doing it,
Speaker 1: You're just like, oh, do you know what you're going
Speaker 1: to say beforehand? I'm like, oh, yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: just make it up. But Utta Hagen told the truth.
Speaker 1: Utta Hagen said, that what a performer has to do
Speaker 1: is create the illusion spontanet. Oh that's it, that's it,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 4: That's it really is, because that's what the audience wants.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they want to think it's just happening right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's real, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: They don't want you know, like like a compliment. Nobody
Speaker 4: wants you to think that you were thinking it at home.
Speaker 4: You know, I want to say you got great hair. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what are you going to say to Craig great hair? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah you do. By the way, so do you thank
Speaker 3: you so much? Yeah, you know, and this is spontaneous.
Speaker 1: I didn't rehearse it.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't think.
Speaker 1: The good thing about I guess the the disease of podcasts,
Speaker 1: this is the kind of like absolute kind of playthrough
Speaker 1: of podcasts, is that a lot of conversations are indeed
Speaker 1: sp spontaneous. Because back in the day when I was
Speaker 1: doing Late Night, they really forced you to try and
Speaker 1: not do spontaneous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you have you have your your your segment producer,
Speaker 4: who has you got to have three for good stories?
Speaker 1: Tell your story. This is what you're going to say.
Speaker 1: He's going to ask you about this, you're going to
Speaker 1: talk about that. I think they probably still do that
Speaker 1: a bit.
Speaker 4: Of course, Yeah, they do because they want to make sure,
Speaker 4: you know, we got something to talk about. And it
Speaker 4: doesn't just because it's not an hour. If I tell that,
Speaker 4: if we had ten minutes, that might be the system. Hey, Steve,
Speaker 4: we want to talk about this and this and this.
Speaker 4: But let me tell you something that I think about podcasts,
Speaker 4: that I think about show business. Okay, you got to
Speaker 4: be great and then you'll rise to the top and
Speaker 4: people will listen to you. There are I don't know,
Speaker 4: one hundred thousand podcasts, a million podcast whatever there are.
Speaker 4: But if you're good, that's true, you'll there's people will
Speaker 4: there's millions of musicians, there's millions, there's millions of.
Speaker 3: It's got to be good. Yeah, you gotta be so good.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing that you need to do.
Speaker 3: Is because Steve Morton had a great line. I heard,
Speaker 3: you got to be so good that they can't ignore you.
Speaker 1: He's pretty impressive guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, Oh my god, you know him, No, No,
Speaker 4: I don't know miner.
Speaker 1: I met him once in the Westwood Marquis Hotel when
Speaker 1: I was out here trying to get a job, because
Speaker 1: before I even moved here, I was walking out and
Speaker 1: Steve Martin was walking in. Was like he was the
Speaker 1: first famous person I met in law. And he held
Speaker 1: the door open for me, and I went, I don't
Speaker 1: know how to do it. I don't know where the
Speaker 1: protocol is, but I just and I gushed a little
Speaker 1: bit of work and stuff like that, and he was
Speaker 1: so nice. Yeah, he was like just that thing you
Speaker 1: were saying, I guess, yeah, you know about like people
Speaker 1: like that, but I really meant it, of course, Like
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, Steve.
Speaker 3: Martin, I mean yeah, wow, yeah, and he can tell
Speaker 3: you really meant yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he could tell us yeah.
Speaker 4: And you know, everybody's got him, everyone's got you know,
Speaker 4: a minute and two minutes to say something nice yeah
Speaker 4: and say hey, thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: And he said what are you doing out here? And
Speaker 1: I said, I don't recognize where you're from. And it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was really encouraging. Actually.
Speaker 3: I think he's known as a very very authentic person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it was certainly. I mean it's funny how
Speaker 1: little things land. Yeah, like that thing you said about
Speaker 1: who's Steve good? That is a thing in our family,
Speaker 1: we say that to each other, you know. I mean
Speaker 1: it's funny that the little lessons that come in. You know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about your dad and the lawnmower. This is
Speaker 1: the guy and his dad tacking around and then your
Speaker 1: house first day. But you know he just woke fifty
Speaker 1: years later, sixty years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're sitting here talking about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe feel that's crazy. How you don't know how
Speaker 1: it's going to land.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's so funny.
Speaker 4: I think there are certain experiences that you can still
Speaker 4: smell the grass, feel the air.
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I keep thinking about moving back east
Speaker 3: and do it?
Speaker 1: Do it?
Speaker 3: I did it? Do it? Do it right?
Speaker 2: Do it?
Speaker 3: And you could still work, You could do everything?
Speaker 2: Yes, do it?
Speaker 3: Wow? What a different What a great life back there?
Speaker 1: Oh my god?
Speaker 3: And New York City, Oh the best? Come on, man,
Speaker 3: and you knew yorr fucking city. Do you go out?
Speaker 1: You go to plays and do stuff, see stuff and
Speaker 1: I go and I go, let's go in there and
Speaker 1: eat there?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 1: It's an Ethiopian Chinese fusion restaurant. Man, let's go Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I love New York and I really
Speaker 2: missed it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how long were you here? I was twenty three
Speaker 1: years I was in Los Angeles, right, and I.
Speaker 2: I feel like, I mean, I loved it, but I
Speaker 2: feel like it it changed.
Speaker 3: He sure has.
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean when I came here in
Speaker 2: the midnight is it it was?
Speaker 1: It was weirdly sleepy, if you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: like Fabio would be at that restaurant.
Speaker 4: It was a second class city. It was, right, it was,
Speaker 4: and it changed. It's the first class city now. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and it has first class city problems and attitude and manners. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and you know, and it's a great still a great city.
Speaker 4: It's a Nemberlore city. But I do think when you
Speaker 4: would think of La years ago, it would be the beach. Yah,
Speaker 4: you would think about the beach. You don't think of
Speaker 4: La as the beach anymore.
Speaker 1: And I would go up there that you would meet
Speaker 1: people and it kind of yeah. I mean, look, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just an old guy saying things were better in
Speaker 1: the other But I don't know, because I go to
Speaker 1: New York and I think New York's just as good
Speaker 1: now as it was in.
Speaker 2: The better than it was in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's it's got so many opportunities. But
Speaker 4: you know, my nephew lives out here. He works for
Speaker 4: Serious right, he's a producer for college sports. He loves
Speaker 4: la people do. He would never go back to New.
Speaker 1: York I know, I know I said that too, though, Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, and so never that thing.
Speaker 1: As you get older, do you think I want to
Speaker 1: go back? Well, I remember talking to a friend of mine.
Speaker 1: We were talking about getting old and he and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to get old in the country where I
Speaker 1: can relax and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: And he was like, no, New York City. I went, what, Yeah,
Speaker 2: New York City.
Speaker 1: If you're old in New York City, you put on
Speaker 1: a nice coat, walks through the park, not even knows
Speaker 1: you're old. You don't even know you're old. You're just
Speaker 1: going somewhere.
Speaker 4: And and it's kind of easier to because you can
Speaker 4: get in the cab, go to the supermarket, you get
Speaker 4: stuff delivered.
Speaker 3: It's a little easier and old.
Speaker 2: I mean it's expensive.
Speaker 1: I will say that.
Speaker 3: It is an expensive city. Oh my, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean sometimes you go to the store in New York.
Speaker 4: I know, how can live here? It's getting expensive here too? Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean life is. Listen, everything gets more pricey.
Speaker 4: It just is.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who who died some time ago,
Speaker 1: and he was self made man, made a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And he said.
Speaker 1: Something that again is legend in our His name is
Speaker 1: bellef and Bill said, if you have a problem that
Speaker 1: can be solved with money, solve it, because so many
Speaker 1: problems can be.
Speaker 3: That's a great one.
Speaker 1: And I was like, if you have the money to
Speaker 1: solve a problem, heard that, solve it.
Speaker 4: My uncle would say, just if I could throw money
Speaker 4: at something, solve it, do it.
Speaker 1: It's great. Well I wouldn't have any money left.
Speaker 2: That doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: You solve your problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you and you'll get more money.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the pipes don't work, just call a plumber, throw
Speaker 4: money out of and fix the pipes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. It's it's kind of a I mean, maybe
Speaker 1: it sounds a little simplistic, but these are it's weird
Speaker 1: that I have in my life. I mean, we're both
Speaker 1: in our sixties now. Crazy to think, yeah, but but
Speaker 1: I think my life has become I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've become more cranky or just more simplistic. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to fight you if I don't agree
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 3: It's fine, smart way.
Speaker 4: I think you just get a little smarter, you know,
Speaker 4: you get you know, it's sort of like learning, right,
Speaker 4: even when you were in your twenties, you learn you're
Speaker 4: gonna go from point A to point B. You can
Speaker 4: do ten different blocks and they'll take you twenty five minutes,
Speaker 4: and then you learn maybe half a year later, Oh,
Speaker 4: if I take these two blocks, I can get there
Speaker 4: in ten minutes. I learned I don't need to do
Speaker 4: that anymore. Same thing with an argument, or I learned
Speaker 4: I can argue, argue, or I can just say okay,
Speaker 4: and that's probably the same thing is gonna happen. Yeah,
Speaker 4: the same outcome is probably gonna happen.
Speaker 2: I had never changed. I don't think I ever changed
Speaker 2: anybody's mind in an argument.
Speaker 1: And if I ever did change some of these minded
Speaker 1: in an argument, then they were really mad at me for
Speaker 1: changing them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: Going it probably bad. Just let it go, unless I mean, look,
Speaker 1: there comes a time when you got to say what
Speaker 1: you got to say, but so many times it's not
Speaker 1: that time, you.
Speaker 4: Know that is you know, yeah, it's better that you
Speaker 4: just don't say anything, or or.
Speaker 2: As my wife's thing. Never miss an opportunity.
Speaker 1: Shut the hell up.
Speaker 3: That's really great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a Yankee.
Speaker 3: Where's she from.
Speaker 1: She's from New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: Oh what's that life? I've never been up there.
Speaker 1: Oh it's beautiful, must be gorgeous, beautiful. Yeah, yeah, that's uh.
Speaker 1: She's from just outside Hanover. Oh.
Speaker 4: Friends of mine go to Hanover all the time. They
Speaker 4: talk about it all the time.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful place, big college town, Dartmouth College.
Speaker 4: It's a cultural town too. They've got stuff going on, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they, you know, they have.
Speaker 2: They got a science museum and stuff you'd like.
Speaker 3: Maybe you should move there, maybe go to Hanover.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what I think. I think you should
Speaker 2: move back.
Speaker 1: He's don't move into the city, but move.
Speaker 3: Near this, near the city, near this. Yeah. Well, your
Speaker 3: second place is upstate New York.
Speaker 1: No, it's further up, further up north of bost north North. No,
Speaker 1: even further north than that. Maine.
Speaker 3: Oh Maine. So was it six hour drive?
Speaker 1: Yeah about that, it's five and a half. Do you
Speaker 1: drive sometimes it's forty five minutes in the plane?
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Oh are you fly somethimes?
Speaker 1: I don't fly my own plane. That's a good idea, though.
Speaker 1: You get a little airplane and fly around up there
Speaker 1: busy airspace.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, yeah, so you drive up there once in
Speaker 4: a while, or you'll how do you take the train?
Speaker 1: Take the train, you can drive, you can take the plane.
Speaker 1: It's all all of these American facilities that are available.
Speaker 3: I've been made a few times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's beautiful. It's really beautiful, really beautiful. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love it. So that's enough about me and it's enough
Speaker 1: about you. Apparently we're done. No, yeah, but I do
Speaker 1: want to thank you for coming in. I want to
Speaker 1: thank you for writing that book.
Speaker 2: A time to think.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's uh, it's not easy to write any kind
Speaker 1: of a book. I think when you're going through the thing,
Speaker 1: you're going through and writing the book at the same time.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty authentic approach to it.
Speaker 2: I'm impressed. Gosh, Darna, and you've got good hair.
Speaker 1: Have good hair, alrighty, get out of here.
Speaker 3: Thanks man.