Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Frank Imperial, the engineer at Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: We're in the middle of our summer staff Pick series,
Speaker 1: where we choose our favorite episodes from the archives. This week,
Speaker 1: I wanted to share with you two interviews that are
Speaker 1: among the most popular and funniest we've ever done, comedians
Speaker 1: Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld. Chris Rock has always been
Speaker 1: a boundary pushing comedian. The Emmy and Grammy winner is
Speaker 1: well known for his work on Saturday Night Live, his
Speaker 1: numerous comedy specials, films like Grown Ups and Madagascar, and
Speaker 1: the sitcom based on his life, Everybody Loves Chris. In
Speaker 1: recent years, the funny man has been pushing his own boundaries,
Speaker 1: digging deeper into his acting. He starred in the fourth
Speaker 1: season of Fargo on f X, but before that, Alec
Speaker 1: met up with the comedian when he was on Broadway
Speaker 1: in his very first play Here's Alex two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: conversation with comedian and actor Chris Rock backstage at the
Speaker 1: Showenfeld Theater. His dressing room in Broadway shown Field Theater
Speaker 1: was five floors up, no elevator. Chris's show The Mother
Speaker 1: with the Hat was about a group of dysfunctional friends
Speaker 1: and lovers, where every relationship had gone bad, really bad. Drugs, booze, cheating,
Speaker 1: No one was loyal to anyone. Chris played a recovering
Speaker 1: alcoholic who had first glance seems to be a good guy,
Speaker 1: but after a few minutes it was clear he was
Speaker 1: the most self serving of the bunch. Oh Man, you
Speaker 1: do a great man, you want to press If this
Speaker 1: is something beautiful, come and stay with me and Vicky
Speaker 1: Man get on a nutritional beverage program. Man. Before this
Speaker 1: past spring, Chris might have been the last person you'd
Speaker 1: expect to see starring in a Broadway show. I mean,
Speaker 1: Chris can sell out Madison Square Garden, ps. They have
Speaker 1: an elevator. Yet there he was between performances in his
Speaker 1: attic dressing room at the Shoonefeld Theater. I wanted my
Speaker 1: acting to grow. Do you have to see a huge
Speaker 1: following black and white in your concerts? And yet when
Speaker 1: you go out in this audience, how black is the audience? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean put this way. In the old days, they
Speaker 1: used to have signs up whites only, whites only. Now
Speaker 1: I have a new thing. It's called prices. You know,
Speaker 1: some nights it's darker than other nights. I buy tickets
Speaker 1: every night when this play is over. Spent almost a
Speaker 1: whole weekly paycheck on tickets as gifts for friends otherwise
Speaker 1: couldn't come see the show. Otherwise could not afford to
Speaker 1: see this show. I tour and I'm normally you know,
Speaker 1: at the garden or whatever, like sixty thousand seats to
Speaker 1: give away what I'm normally on tour, and people have
Speaker 1: gotten used to this. My man takes care of us,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't. I can't take that away
Speaker 1: from friends and family. You haven't done a lot of theater. Correct,
Speaker 1: This is the first play I've ever done. This is
Speaker 1: the first play you've ever done. I didn't do a
Speaker 1: play in high school. I didn't go to high school.
Speaker 1: So so not only your Broadway debut, but your first
Speaker 1: play period. You're with a pretty cool group of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of experience, you know what, and they have
Speaker 1: held me up. No one ever got frustrated at what
Speaker 1: I didn't know. You know, this is a bunch of
Speaker 1: little things that people take for grant. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: You're never supposed to walk straight at somebody, supposed to loop.
Speaker 1: Just all these weird little things My favorite is that
Speaker 1: you don't give information to the person. So if you're
Speaker 1: standing here telling them something, you tell it out. You said,
Speaker 1: they're going to open, open, open to the audience as
Speaker 1: much as possible. All that open, open, open, open open stuff. Yes,
Speaker 1: even today, I'm working on it. The Chris Rock that
Speaker 1: I know from your live shows, I don't see much
Speaker 1: of him in this show because that Chris Rock is
Speaker 1: like marauding the stage and as complete control over the audience.
Speaker 1: This is a different Chris I see in the play.
Speaker 1: I'm really try to act here, you know. Have you
Speaker 1: enjoyed it? I'm enjoying it a lot. A lot. Is
Speaker 1: the hardest thing I've ever gone through in my life.
Speaker 1: I always tell people it's like having the Empire State
Speaker 1: Building shoved up your one brick at a time and
Speaker 1: to play. Can't believe there's ever gonna be a day
Speaker 1: when you know these lines. What's been the surprise about
Speaker 1: doing this for you? Honestly, I'm surprised I'm doing it.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm surprised that I'm not bored with it already.
Speaker 1: Are you afraid of that? I'm really that that what's
Speaker 1: the that's the biggest fear to actually be stuck doing anything.
Speaker 1: Does this change for you night by night by day?
Speaker 1: You know what's weird? I'm figuring out how to make
Speaker 1: it change now. So I'm actually figuring out how to
Speaker 1: add lib every night without saying words, how to work eat,
Speaker 1: seeing a little different in each line, and try to
Speaker 1: find laughs and places that I didn't find one the
Speaker 1: night before. So yeah, so it's to answer your question,
Speaker 1: it changes every night. Well, what I love about this plant?
Speaker 1: By the way, everybody has loved someone, and not too
Speaker 1: far into the relationship, you say to yourself, not only
Speaker 1: is this probably wrong, this is definitely wrong, but you
Speaker 1: can't get out of it. How does this play resonate
Speaker 1: with you in your personal life? I've been every person
Speaker 1: in this place, a person betrayed everything, everything, and it's
Speaker 1: the one who the other person in response to the betrayal,
Speaker 1: the revenge every person. It's the kind of play you
Speaker 1: can't watch without putting yourself in it. When you write
Speaker 1: your material for stand up, how do the people in
Speaker 1: your life react to how you fill at them on stage?
Speaker 1: If you're you know what, I'm like a lawyer in
Speaker 1: a sense. I mean that's it's almost like a legal document.
Speaker 1: It's a word like it's all our wives and all
Speaker 1: our you know what I mean. It's like like if
Speaker 1: you if I gave you the transcript, he'd be like,
Speaker 1: he hasn't talked about anybody. It's about your baby. It
Speaker 1: would all hold up in court, you do. But you
Speaker 1: never have anybody in your life? No, No, everybody's uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I remember I read a quote Tarantino said, if people
Speaker 1: in your life aren't uncomfortable, you're not really writing, you're
Speaker 1: not really hitting it. You know, somebody better be uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Did you grow up in a situation that was remotely
Speaker 1: like this? And then emotionally and most turbulence my parents
Speaker 1: place way My mother cursed a lot, screamed a lot.
Speaker 1: You know. My father, my mother beat us with a
Speaker 1: curtain rod. Yeah, well we got beatings with curtain rods
Speaker 1: and brooms and brushings and hangars or whatever. But me
Speaker 1: and my father, it's weird. My father, his temper towards
Speaker 1: my mother was always controlled, right, what else he could
Speaker 1: lose it? Why do you think it was you wanted
Speaker 1: to protect that? I don't know. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: I mean, guys from that era did not view women
Speaker 1: as their equals. They did, and they were loving and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah blah. But they did not view
Speaker 1: women as their equals. Therefore they could actually deal with
Speaker 1: the woman's emotional whatever swings way easier than a guy
Speaker 1: in my age, because I view a woman as my equal.
Speaker 1: So if I'm with a woman and she starts crying,
Speaker 1: I look at her like I'm with you when you
Speaker 1: start crying, don't go female on me. I'm like something,
Speaker 1: I look at her life. I would look at a
Speaker 1: guy that gets emotional. Yeah, I thought, if we were equal,
Speaker 1: then you can't play that car. Don't play the female.
Speaker 1: So I'll just say my father and my grandfather's both
Speaker 1: of them were really delicate with their wives. You know,
Speaker 1: not a child, but close to a child. How it's
Speaker 1: different for you. My wife's my equal, and you know,
Speaker 1: you know, any budding of heads is because I I
Speaker 1: want I'm dealing with you the same way I would
Speaker 1: deal with myself, or I deal with any guy. And
Speaker 1: we're both wrong. What are you gonna do when this
Speaker 1: is over? Do you know how much sure I think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna direct a movie that sort I'm feeling. So
Speaker 1: this is the time in your life, and you do
Speaker 1: all the things you told yourself you'd never do. Play
Speaker 1: on Broadway. Direct a movie. Why do you want to
Speaker 1: direct a movie? I don't know. I put it away.
Speaker 1: If I can get a great director to direct me,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. But once, yeah, once you get to
Speaker 1: the sea list, you might as well do it yourself.
Speaker 1: That's what I say. Yeah, how picky are you about
Speaker 1: the films you do? Because you don't do a lot
Speaker 1: of films. Um, I don't know. I mean I turned
Speaker 1: out a lot, but I don't have a list of
Speaker 1: great films I've turned you turned down regardless of whether
Speaker 1: they're great or not. Do you turn them down? Because
Speaker 1: for you, you always have the stand up thing in
Speaker 1: your pocket and the concert thing in your pocket. You're
Speaker 1: not in any hurry to go out and make a living.
Speaker 1: Most movies suck man, early suck. See. I'm I'm messed
Speaker 1: up because I like to see something I haven't seen
Speaker 1: or haven't seen with a black person. Black people in
Speaker 1: film is still at its really at its infant stage.
Speaker 1: And what do you think, I don't know? You know what,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. You know, you hand a studio person
Speaker 1: of script, and sometimes the studio people are good at
Speaker 1: a time. When you hand somebody as script, they pick
Speaker 1: a person in the movie that they identify with. So
Speaker 1: if you hand a woman a script, if the woman's
Speaker 1: got nine lines in the movie, the first person who
Speaker 1: gives you notes about is the woman. And if you
Speaker 1: hand the boss the script, he's gonna give you notes
Speaker 1: about the main character. And if you hand his assist
Speaker 1: the script is gonna give you notes about some other
Speaker 1: everybody figures out who they are in the movie. Now,
Speaker 1: when you had somebody a black script, they don't relate
Speaker 1: to anybody. That's a very good point. I'm serious, even
Speaker 1: when it's and when you have any seconative who does
Speaker 1: relate to a black person's script, what does that mean
Speaker 1: to you? You You struck gold Well, Really, they just they're
Speaker 1: making a product all of a sudden, That's what I've experienced.
Speaker 1: And when you do, because i mean, there's no black
Speaker 1: studios or whatever, so you end up you always end
Speaker 1: up with just a person trying to make a piece
Speaker 1: of product. They might as well, they might still be
Speaker 1: making an iPads kind of a sustainable stateship business. But
Speaker 1: you seem to me, because you're so smart and so
Speaker 1: clever that you have as much of a white audience
Speaker 1: as you do a black ondies, don't you think so
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact your stand up can be
Speaker 1: pretty tough on white people. Yeah, but I always say
Speaker 1: my stand ups like Chinese food and what's Chinese food? Well,
Speaker 1: Chinese food is one of the most popular foods in
Speaker 1: all of America, and they don't put Americans on their menus.
Speaker 1: People really want Chinese food. They don't put fries and
Speaker 1: grilled cheese, grilled cheese on the menu of the most
Speaker 1: popular Chinese food of people comedy. So I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: when people see people come to Chris's restaurant, think about
Speaker 1: Chris's menure. I'm talking with Chris Rock backstage at the
Speaker 1: Chaunfeld Theater on Street. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the thing. How old are you know?
Speaker 1: I'm forty six forty six, which means you started and
Speaker 1: you started. I started probably five seven years before I
Speaker 1: got on S and O. But I always I haven't
Speaker 1: been you know, I havn't been poor day since I
Speaker 1: met Laura Michaels. I never broke a lot of his
Speaker 1: stuff sticks with me. What thing he said to me
Speaker 1: is like everybody loses their first money. Now if you're talented,
Speaker 1: you'll make some more. That He's so right, he knows
Speaker 1: more about Let's take a moment to talk about the
Speaker 1: wisdom of Lord Michael. You know, he's always there to
Speaker 1: remind you how you can lose perspective about this business.
Speaker 1: At least in my case. He's very good. But how
Speaker 1: much of things changed in your mind? And not just
Speaker 1: for you but for you specifically, but in the business.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you. I find a business a
Speaker 1: lot smaller, less movies, less, I mean less stuff that
Speaker 1: relates to me, you know what, Less stuff that relates
Speaker 1: to me. I'll say that for the young people. You know,
Speaker 1: this whole reality thing, I'm not going to dismiss it.
Speaker 1: You know, sound like I'm some old person talking about
Speaker 1: rap music. It's not gonna last, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But do you think the same time I don't get it.
Speaker 1: Do you think you'd make it today if you came
Speaker 1: in today? Yeah? Me and Sana, Well that's our little
Speaker 1: tests with each other. We kinda we assessed the stand
Speaker 1: ups we're gonna Yeah, we still got it. I still
Speaker 1: got it. Yeah, I keep the weight off a little bit.
Speaker 1: You know. That's what I'm trying to do it. Du
Speaker 1: bon Jovi, still doing it, Still doing it, man, Just
Speaker 1: look hot, Just trying to look hot to somebody. You
Speaker 1: don't have to lie. You're still got you still look
Speaker 1: how many kids you have done to nine? Get ready
Speaker 1: nine and get ready by seven? So what are you
Speaker 1: worried about raising your kids in this world? I care
Speaker 1: that they're good with money. I don't care if When
Speaker 1: I say good with money, I just mean you've got
Speaker 1: two dollars and you spend one and you put a dollar.
Speaker 1: But I don't mean that they run Microsoft or they
Speaker 1: flip money and buy a house. I just mean, does
Speaker 1: that come from your childhood? Yes, it comes from my childhood.
Speaker 1: I just mean can they handle their own That's it?
Speaker 1: Because to get out of it's a tough hole to
Speaker 1: get out of, and it's a weird hole for a
Speaker 1: pretty woman to get out of, and they end up
Speaker 1: in relationships with guys they wouldn't have relationship with. There's
Speaker 1: a great line that Anthony Quinn has in Lawrence of
Speaker 1: Arabia where he says, I am a river to my people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a lot of that now. Well, Hey, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. You can only help. Like, I got some
Speaker 1: family right now, guy wouldever losing his house whatever, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna help him move in to wherever he's gonna move into.
Speaker 1: I'm not buying his house because he's never gonna be
Speaker 1: able to fold the house. So yeah, I my, I'm
Speaker 1: a river. But it's a little river. It's a little
Speaker 1: river because when you turn down somebody and they know
Speaker 1: you have the money, this is one thing to go.
Speaker 1: These kids are kicking or whatever, and you don't have
Speaker 1: the money. They know you have the money. It's so
Speaker 1: it's almost like a woman. It's like I know you
Speaker 1: have vagina and you have sex, you just don't want
Speaker 1: to have it with me. I remember I used to
Speaker 1: do a movie and they'd say to me in whatever way,
Speaker 1: what would come back was, Uh, we don't have the
Speaker 1: money for that. And what they really were saying was,
Speaker 1: we don't have the money for that for you, for you,
Speaker 1: we don't we have the exactly for Leo, we're gonna
Speaker 1: sell our houses. Remember, for you, we don't have the money.
Speaker 1: And that's what you're saying to people in your life
Speaker 1: is I don't have the money for you. I don't
Speaker 1: have the money for you. You're not gonna be the
Speaker 1: reason I'm doing some bad Kung Fu movie. Okay? Comedian
Speaker 1: and actor Chris Rock. When we come back, we'll have
Speaker 1: Alex conversation with Jerry Seinfeld from two thousand thirteen. It's
Speaker 1: an understatement to say that Jerry Seinfeld broke the mold.
Speaker 1: His brand of observational comedy is universal and led to
Speaker 1: his success as a stand up comic and in his
Speaker 1: namesake sitcom, Seinfeld The Show About Nothing ran for nine
Speaker 1: seasons and became one of the most memorable, acclaimed, and
Speaker 1: influential series of all time. Following up one success with another,
Speaker 1: Seinfeld then produced and hosted the roving talk show Comedians
Speaker 1: in Cars Getting Coffee, which is exactly what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: for eleven seasons, and he continues to do what he loves,
Speaker 1: touring the nation performing stand up. Here's Alex two thousand
Speaker 1: thirteen conversation with the legendary producer, actor, and comedian Jerry Seinfeld.
Speaker 1: Who makes it in comedy? Who are the ones that
Speaker 1: make it? And it's a change in your lifetime? What
Speaker 1: does it takes in show business? Let's answer that question,
Speaker 1: because I haven't. I'll tell you who's in show business.
Speaker 1: You know it's in show business? Like who wants to
Speaker 1: be more than anyone else? Those are the people that
Speaker 1: are in it. The people that just go, I want
Speaker 1: to be in it. I'm going to be in it.
Speaker 1: Do I have the skill set? Do I have a talent?
Speaker 1: I have something to offer? We'll find out or not.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't I may not take on that with
Speaker 1: between Baccino, I said to him, what do you do
Speaker 1: when you do a movie and the other person isn't
Speaker 1: that good? Like you're doing a scene and I said,
Speaker 1: do you go up to the director and give them notes?
Speaker 1: Say tell them this other? And said, no, I never
Speaker 1: do that. I never do that. No, no, no, I said,
Speaker 1: I said, what do you do? I? I said, what
Speaker 1: do you do when the people that you're working with
Speaker 1: they just I mean, you're so talented, and it's like
Speaker 1: tennis and you and you're and you're hitting the ball
Speaker 1: with some and they're not that talented. And he said,
Speaker 1: I like, like all of us in the business are talented.
Speaker 1: Everybody's talented. Some of us are just more talented than others.
Speaker 1: But everybody in the room when you're working, they've got
Speaker 1: some kind of time, like you'd say he has a
Speaker 1: talent for storytelling, he had a talent for this. But
Speaker 1: you're saying that people who determination is a big part
Speaker 1: of it. I'm saying it's most of the people we
Speaker 1: see in in the arts are there not because they
Speaker 1: had the most to offer, but because they wanted to
Speaker 1: be there the most, you believe. So when you're in
Speaker 1: clubs in your early years and you'd see people who
Speaker 1: were working, did you have did you not? Not that
Speaker 1: you cared about this or you were focused on this,
Speaker 1: but would you Sometimes because my friends who were in
Speaker 1: clubs and who were comics, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: evaluating of each other in the competition. It was very competitive.
Speaker 1: And would you look at people and say, I think
Speaker 1: he's got it or she's got and they're gonna make
Speaker 1: it and they don't or this one doesn't and and
Speaker 1: a big part of your saying is just the drive
Speaker 1: as they wanted. They're a dog on a bone. You
Speaker 1: see a lot of that, don't you think? I think so? Well?
Speaker 1: In the in the movie business, you can see people
Speaker 1: who they put it before everything else, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: they're not what business, what what field of endeavor? Has
Speaker 1: the highest bullsh factor right in your opinion, Um, because
Speaker 1: you've been in a number of different branches. Now, well,
Speaker 1: I think, well, obviously a government is government higher than
Speaker 1: I think entertainment. Did you enjoy the Anthony Weiner show
Speaker 1: this season or not the show that he put on
Speaker 1: for us when when that was going on? Did you
Speaker 1: were you disgusted? Were you going? I love this? I
Speaker 1: I loved it because to me it was the visible man.
Speaker 1: Let's take off the face of the clock and watch
Speaker 1: the gears. And that's what that was. This is you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about people our ownership show business because they
Speaker 1: want to be he wants to have he wants it
Speaker 1: wants and most of most of them have all the
Speaker 1: guyses and veils and and you know, well they pretend
Speaker 1: that what you just hit on a very important point,
Speaker 1: which is that they pretend to some degree that it's selfless.
Speaker 1: That well that also, yeah, that that they don't crave power.
Speaker 1: But the other thing about Weener that I found unusual.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, this is I'm not going to say anything.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm capable of saying anything that hasn't
Speaker 1: been said before. But the idea that you want to
Speaker 1: take pictures of your genitalia and send it to women
Speaker 1: that you barely know. I wonder if there's an unconscious
Speaker 1: part of him that's like, I'm gonna send pictures of
Speaker 1: my genitalia to a couple of women who I don't
Speaker 1: even know that well, and let's see what happens. Let's
Speaker 1: let's roll the dice here. I'm putting all my chips
Speaker 1: on black. I'm all in. I got another pile, and
Speaker 1: I'm all in on sending this chicken picture of my
Speaker 1: you know what of my personality? I don't have that desire, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not exacts. It's easier to understand than
Speaker 1: his get off was. Ding. He looks at the phone, Ding,
Speaker 1: let's it just press send? Where where's the thrill? Everybody
Speaker 1: has as some component of them for what I call
Speaker 1: negative excitement, like what's your thing? You want to do
Speaker 1: that that you indulge some weakness of yours? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Some people have food issues, they have
Speaker 1: drinking your mind, what would be yours? Uh? I don't
Speaker 1: think I mean beyond tomato sauce. Maybe, yeah, that's not that.
Speaker 1: Yeah you are. And for people who don't know you
Speaker 1: see This is the thing that, in all honesty, I
Speaker 1: always when I think about you, the list of things
Speaker 1: I think about is, is how not just professional and
Speaker 1: committed in all those other kind of lame were you know,
Speaker 1: lazier words, but how you know, just just focused and
Speaker 1: hard working. You are like a lot of people look
Speaker 1: at you and view you as someone who is but
Speaker 1: let's be very candid. You're someone people people view you
Speaker 1: as someone who is this incredibly gifted person. I love
Speaker 1: this show, right, and no you are. But the point
Speaker 1: is that you like you don't work like you do
Speaker 1: things like like you going on a trip to go
Speaker 1: do some gigs. It's kind of a thing. You're probably
Speaker 1: just doing a favor for someone. I think that's more you.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the general perception. I think that's you.
Speaker 1: I think your image of me or what you think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's your sense I'm projecting. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you're projecting. But you know that that's not me. No, no,
Speaker 1: not at all. You know that I love to work.
Speaker 1: You've incredibly so, but but not um, I'm not driven
Speaker 1: by anything very healthy healthy, I'm not driving by anything unwholesome.
Speaker 1: But you're healthier. But you are healthier than anybody else
Speaker 1: I've ever met in your profession. Everybody else I've met
Speaker 1: in your profession, it was you could do Saturday Night
Speaker 1: Live and be roaming the hallways of that building. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for over the course of you know, it's really more
Speaker 1: like four days, not a full week. And you're around
Speaker 1: them other people. I did a sitcom with other people.
Speaker 1: I've been around a lot of people who make their
Speaker 1: living in comedy. I made films with them, and some
Speaker 1: of them, you'd be around them. You know, within ten
Speaker 1: minutes you understood what was really their deepest problem that
Speaker 1: they hadn't resolved. Some of them took a question a
Speaker 1: few days. You don't have any problems, No, I don't,
Speaker 1: but I do relate very deeply to to all of
Speaker 1: those people describe. In fact, I was watching the Emmy's.
Speaker 1: Is the only part of the Emmys that I like
Speaker 1: When they do the Comedy Writing Award and each Comedy
Speaker 1: Writing staff puts up funny pictures, and then when the
Speaker 1: the actual staff comes up on the stage and you
Speaker 1: see these gnome like cretans just kind of all misshapen,
Speaker 1: and and I go, this is me, this is who
Speaker 1: I am, This is that's my group people. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you don't. Yeah, do you see that in me? Oh okay,
Speaker 1: well then you've learned something here today. What did I learn?
Speaker 1: You learned that despite maybe I am healthy and somewhat functional,
Speaker 1: but I can I see myself as one of those
Speaker 1: guys that that that that group of Colbert Report writers
Speaker 1: that are us. It looks like would never let them
Speaker 1: speak Colbert musticks. Now those that's where I want to
Speaker 1: hang out with those guys. You do, Yeah, like Barry, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're more comfortable with the berries of that. I'm only comfortable,
Speaker 1: only comfortable with those people. Really. Yeah, describe Barry, you
Speaker 1: have a special relation. Harry Martyr is my very special friend.
Speaker 1: Barry is the author of the Letters from a Nutbook
Speaker 1: under the nom de plume ted L Nancy, and he
Speaker 1: is um. He's also fascinating compilation of function and dysfunction,
Speaker 1: which any interesting person is. UM. He's a guy Who's
Speaker 1: what I love about Barries. I can call him right
Speaker 1: now it's eleven thirty that he will just say hello.
Speaker 1: He's always there, always at home. He's got a red couch.
Speaker 1: His living room looks like a murder scene. This you know, Uh,
Speaker 1: very scary looking stains on a white ug. He lives
Speaker 1: into Lucca Lake to Luca Lake and we talk every day,
Speaker 1: usually an hour on a good day, two hours. And
Speaker 1: um we were talking yesterday about the chantics, the quit
Speaker 1: smoking drug commercial where they list the side effects, and
Speaker 1: one of the ones that people have experienced with chantics
Speaker 1: is weird dreams. And now we're trying to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what's a weird dream? And do they have a hotline
Speaker 1: that you can call up? Say, Bob, I got a
Speaker 1: guy here's you know, woke up? He dreamt he had
Speaker 1: orangutank feet. Is that weird? And he goes, no, I've
Speaker 1: had that one. You know, that's that's weird. Who who
Speaker 1: doesn't have weird dreams? There's no dream, it's not weird.
Speaker 1: More of Alex conversation with Jerry Seinfeld after the break.
Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing on the TV show. Seinfeld, Jerry, Elaine Cramer, and
Speaker 1: George were characters driven largely by unabashed self interest. Come on,
Speaker 1: let's go do something. I don't want to just sit
Speaker 1: around here. I want to go get something to eat.
Speaker 1: Where you want to go? I don't care, I'm not hungry.
Speaker 1: Growing up, Jerry Seinfeld's own family life served as a
Speaker 1: useful model of just that. Look, my mother is an orphan.
Speaker 1: My father left the house probably eleven years old to
Speaker 1: work on the street and make a living on the
Speaker 1: Lower east Side. You know, they got married in their forties.
Speaker 1: They had no concept of what a family should even be.
Speaker 1: And all I craved was the same fierce independence that
Speaker 1: they had in their lives. They rested on instructible, indstructible,
Speaker 1: self contained, self reliant people. This is not great going
Speaker 1: into a marriage, may I say? You know? And I
Speaker 1: was that guy saying, well, I gotta go now, I
Speaker 1: gotta go to work. And you don't think that this
Speaker 1: might be a problem for a person that's not used
Speaker 1: to being around that. So it took me a long
Speaker 1: time to learn that. You know that you have to
Speaker 1: be understand because to me, to me, this life, my life,
Speaker 1: what I would call my life in comedy, is a
Speaker 1: life of sacrifice that I am only too happy to make.
Speaker 1: All my relationships I got married at forty five. All
Speaker 1: my relationships were as disposable as a dixie cup. Excuse me?
Speaker 1: With women you make yes, I gotta work. You've gone.
Speaker 1: But well if you don't, if you don't want you know, well,
Speaker 1: if you if you're gonna be on the road that much,
Speaker 1: we can't be together. Goodbye, goodbye. This is this my
Speaker 1: I have had a sense of mission. You were like
Speaker 1: Lee Strasburg in The Godfather Part two. Yes, he say,
Speaker 1: if I come back here, I have a partner. I
Speaker 1: have a partner. If it's not, I'll know, I don't,
Speaker 1: I'll know. I don't what he said, I'm going in
Speaker 1: the other room. It's the last time I really out
Speaker 1: of shape. Man took his shirt off in a movie
Speaker 1: and it wasn't bad. Hair on the top of the shoulders,
Speaker 1: a little little little like a little tumbleweeds of hair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did you know him? Did you know when I studied
Speaker 1: acting at this school on fifte Street. When I went
Speaker 1: to n y U, I went to Strasburg. They assigned
Speaker 1: you to the studio. You went to Adler Strasberg's up.
Speaker 1: I went to Strasburg, and I had wonderful teachers, Marsha
Speaker 1: how Freckt and Jeffrey horn Is a wonderful too, beautiful people.
Speaker 1: But you know the method of Strasburg was very uh severe.
Speaker 1: Did it work for you one of the well, it
Speaker 1: opened up your eyes to the idea of whatever word
Speaker 1: you want to use. I'm never going to use the
Speaker 1: right word for everyone. To mind your past and mind
Speaker 1: your emotional fabric to get where you want to go.
Speaker 1: Whereas Strasburg and Stanislavski, both people don't necessarily stumble across
Speaker 1: this fine print and all these writings of their where
Speaker 1: What Stanislavski and Strasbourg both said is that the method,
Speaker 1: so to speak, is something that you apply only if
Speaker 1: the inspiration fails you. You don't you don't need to
Speaker 1: go off into a room and twist yourself into some
Speaker 1: kind of psychological pretzel to do this work. If you
Speaker 1: can just say the words and you're there, you feel
Speaker 1: connected to the character in and of yourself. Do you
Speaker 1: do you have a desire as an actor to be
Speaker 1: one of those guys, one of those I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: my rib cage and separated. When I was younger, I
Speaker 1: did you did When I was younger? I did did
Speaker 1: you feel you there was there was there a role
Speaker 1: where you felt you got close to that? When I
Speaker 1: did street Car named Desire on Broadway and Amy Madigan,
Speaker 1: I would scream stella stella for her to come downstairs,
Speaker 1: and Amy would come and the minute I would touch Amy,
Speaker 1: I'd burst into tears. Remember I didn't I loved Amy
Speaker 1: more than any woman I ever loved, you know, at
Speaker 1: that moment, I mean and it was real. I was
Speaker 1: in love with Amy. Do you think I'm capable of
Speaker 1: that kind of work? I think you are. Be a
Speaker 1: tremendous mistake your car, it would be a huge would
Speaker 1: be one of the poorest choices probably in show business history,
Speaker 1: for you to go and to sell. You want to know,
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? A street car? On um?
Speaker 1: I was in an acting class where a guy did
Speaker 1: have me play Brick, but that's cataa hot tin roof.
Speaker 1: He because I was able to handle the light comedy
Speaker 1: so easily, he said you, I need to challenge you more.
Speaker 1: So he had me and he said, I want you
Speaker 1: to study the role of Brick. Wasn't that the name
Speaker 1: of the character street and the Yeah, Maggie and Brick. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well that's when I left that. There's a girl I
Speaker 1: could you'll you'll appreciate this because you're from Long Island.
Speaker 1: And I met this woman, uh many years later and
Speaker 1: even she laughed about it. So I can say this,
Speaker 1: remember Pergament's hardware storm. Okay, I went to I went
Speaker 1: to college. I went to g W for three years
Speaker 1: and I went and I took my last year there,
Speaker 1: my junior year before I climbed over the wall there
Speaker 1: and went to end. While you to study acting, I
Speaker 1: took acting for non drama majors. It was a gut
Speaker 1: course you take at g W. I took acting for
Speaker 1: non drama majors. And everyone in the class. This was
Speaker 1: one of the things that gave me the impetus to
Speaker 1: be an actor, because everyone in the class was so
Speaker 1: horrible and I could, I could. I squeaked by like
Speaker 1: I wasn't that bad. I was okay in terms of performing.
Speaker 1: And the teacher said to me, I want you to
Speaker 1: do a scene from Canada Hutton roof of Maggie Brick scene.
Speaker 1: And your partner is Debbie Pergamant, who was the daughter
Speaker 1: and I don't want to call her the heir to
Speaker 1: the pergam And fortune, but let's just say that for
Speaker 1: our comedy purposes, Debbie Pergamant and literally she was this
Speaker 1: lovely girl, adorable, gorgeous, really cute as the day is long.
Speaker 1: But she was from you know, like Roslyn or somewhere.
Speaker 1: So when she would say she was the only person
Speaker 1: who made brick a bi syllabic where she was like
Speaker 1: brick brick, I am like a cat's on a Hudson
Speaker 1: roof here, I am so upset. Debbie Pergamant was who
Speaker 1: was my partner in a scene study class? And it
Speaker 1: was it was I open. So where do we want
Speaker 1: to go now? Your your career now? Um you you
Speaker 1: you're seeing another carridor for yourself? Is something you want
Speaker 1: to explore, something you have to offer or be honest
Speaker 1: with me. Are you just tired and you just don't
Speaker 1: want to travel and slap and deal with these idiots
Speaker 1: you want to know? The truth is I want to
Speaker 1: be more like you, really, because you are a very
Speaker 1: happy like I look at you when I see to myself,
Speaker 1: everything is always like, why aren't you doing what other
Speaker 1: people do? What? Meaning? Like the first thing people would
Speaker 1: say in the business, I mean even outside the business,
Speaker 1: if they have some savvy about it, what they say,
Speaker 1: did Jerry want to ramp up a production company and
Speaker 1: just print TV shows? I mean, I mean how many
Speaker 1: sitcoms could you have? Launched with the promoter of your name.
Speaker 1: Forget it. Forget it. You can have your own channel,
Speaker 1: the Jerry Channel. But I didn't take that bait. Why
Speaker 1: because I know what it is. I know what it is.
Speaker 1: That's what if you can't pull that over on me?
Speaker 1: What what is? I've sat in all the chairs, I've
Speaker 1: been in all the rooms. I know what it is.
Speaker 1: Look alec you you've you've been there, right, Yes, you
Speaker 1: can't trick me into thinking thinking what that's that's good? Why?
Speaker 1: Because don't Most of it is not creative work and
Speaker 1: not reaching an audience. You want to be on the water.
Speaker 1: How do you want to be on the water. You
Speaker 1: want to be on a yacht. You want to be
Speaker 1: on a surfboard. I want to be on a surfboard.
Speaker 1: I don't want to deal with the yacht. That's a yacht.
Speaker 1: And you just also some people want a yacht to say,
Speaker 1: to see my yacht, And you just didn't want people
Speaker 1: do you. And you also didn't want to ultimately wind
Speaker 1: up putting your name as is often the case. Look
Speaker 1: at which if you're the goose that lays the golden egg,
Speaker 1: you're the successful person, and it all emanates you're the godhead,
Speaker 1: if you will, comedy wise, and you go launch all
Speaker 1: these other shows, and all those other shows they aren't
Speaker 1: maybe as good, they're not, And how much of your name?
Speaker 1: But well, why doesn't he want to do it? How
Speaker 1: much would we have to even get much for you
Speaker 1: to be in the performs just to whatever it is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: whatever it is. Let me tell you why my TV
Speaker 1: series in the nineties was so good bespides an inordinate
Speaker 1: amount of just pure good fortune. In most TV series,
Speaker 1: fifty percent of the time is spent working on the show.
Speaker 1: Fifty percent of the time is spent dealing with personality, political,
Speaker 1: and hierarchical issues of making something. We spent our time
Speaker 1: writing me and Larry the door was closed, some somebody calls.
Speaker 1: We're not taking the call. We're gonna We're gonna make
Speaker 1: this seem funny. That's why the show was good. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go from that two. Um you know
Speaker 1: some some H. G. Wells contraption machine you know of
Speaker 1: of trying to control the weather. That's what that's what
Speaker 1: these these deals are. That's what making a movie is.
Speaker 1: It's a movie. It's this giant machine, is this giant
Speaker 1: ship and everybody gets on it and they shove off
Speaker 1: and nobody knows where it's going. And the captain is
Speaker 1: doing where's the captain? He's getting high and and and
Speaker 1: and you know, and sleeping with the first mate. He's
Speaker 1: his sleep period. Yeah, So it's too much time and
Speaker 1: energy spent on that is not the juice. The really
Speaker 1: good stuff is a great line. So when you go
Speaker 1: out that stand up comedian, I can control that. So
Speaker 1: when you go out on stage now, so for now,
Speaker 1: for you, other than whatever other things you're involved with,
Speaker 1: writing or comedians and cars with coffee and so forth,
Speaker 1: you go out on stage, you perform live. How many
Speaker 1: shows you do on average? Would you say, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: It varies, but you're on the road how many how
Speaker 1: many shows a year? Um? Maybe sent so so you
Speaker 1: do seventy five appearances a year? And is it just
Speaker 1: very simply a case where you walk out there, that
Speaker 1: exchange of energy between you and then they want what
Speaker 1: you've got, you want what they've got. You're at home,
Speaker 1: you feel comfortable, you're happy. It's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: it's a very fulfilling, uh unsolvable puzzle that is endlessly Um.
Speaker 1: It just because it was right to your soul. Does
Speaker 1: every night need to be different? If you can make it? So?
Speaker 1: Do you try to make it different? Says there's nothing
Speaker 1: I can do about that. It's gonna be different. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be different. But if I can get them right
Speaker 1: where I want them and and get myself where I
Speaker 1: want myself, and the thing just explodes, Well, you know,
Speaker 1: it's fun. That's life. People who perform live. I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: There was an article like an Esquire magazine or somewhere,
Speaker 1: and they did an article about Wayne Newton and they
Speaker 1: took it was about Vegas, and I think it was
Speaker 1: about Wayne Newton, and I love this article. And they
Speaker 1: weren't mean toward him, were diminishing him, and they were
Speaker 1: saying how they thought it was uncanny how the guy
Speaker 1: went to the show in Vegas with a stopwatch and
Speaker 1: Newton came out and you did the same thing every show,
Speaker 1: the same exact thing, the same exact beats. It was
Speaker 1: just it was just he just cloned one show after
Speaker 1: that and he would come out, but he would create
Speaker 1: the dynamic tension that this show was different, and he
Speaker 1: come out on stage and people will be screaming and
Speaker 1: the women are throwing their panties and they're throwing their
Speaker 1: hotel room keys. Had him his crowd, and then he
Speaker 1: sit there and he'd say, um, um, you know, we
Speaker 1: gotta we gotta wrap this up. But you know, I
Speaker 1: love you people. I'm gonna do someth I'm gonna sing
Speaker 1: a song I never sing anymore. And the song he
Speaker 1: just sang, like you know, ninety minutes ago, I must
Speaker 1: sing a number for you guys. I never sing anymore.
Speaker 1: I never would never break this one out anymore. And
Speaker 1: he just re created the same, uh you know, mock
Speaker 1: freshness of the whole thing, which many performers. I assume
Speaker 1: they do that. Yeah, he used to say to him,
Speaker 1: locked the doors, they don't want me to go long.
Speaker 1: But but this audience, I don't, I don't. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do something I never do. I'm breaking the rules. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course you would write on the button you
Speaker 1: performed in Vegas all the time. So they throw the
Speaker 1: hotel room key. How desperate is this entertainer, by the way,
Speaker 1: to just pick up fifteen D and go I'm heading
Speaker 1: over there. I'm going over there, which one of you
Speaker 1: was fifteen D. Oh you I'm sorry, let me give
Speaker 1: you your key back. I'm sorry. I don't want that
Speaker 1: kid coming up. More from Jerry Seinfeld. He's got so
Speaker 1: many years of stand up under his belt. When he
Speaker 1: travels as he does most weekends, every move is planned.
Speaker 1: It is organized with military precision, not an ounce on
Speaker 1: the day. It's three guys, three suits, three garment bags.
Speaker 1: We're in, we're out, and we have a great time.
Speaker 1: We worked very hard. It's zero dark thirty. Yeah, get
Speaker 1: in loud and go thinker with the dead bodies bag.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful thing. This is what I was given
Speaker 1: from the TV series, that I could live like this
Speaker 1: now on my own terms. That that's what we're looking
Speaker 1: for on my own term term. Right, God, that's such
Speaker 1: a foreign concept to me. Yes, the lack of an
Speaker 1: actor is anything but anything but right. But this is
Speaker 1: where we're moving now with Alec God. Yeah, my god,
Speaker 1: on my own terms. More wisdom from Jerry Seinfeld in
Speaker 1: a moment, This is Alec Baldwin. Take a listen to
Speaker 1: our archive more in depth conversations with artists, policy makers,
Speaker 1: and performers like Patty Lapone, Erica Young, and Debbie Reynolds.
Speaker 1: Good morning, Good morning, it's great to stay in Blake.
Speaker 1: Good morning, good morning. Look fun you see, I can't
Speaker 1: sing to save my life if you put a gun
Speaker 1: to my head and said saying are you almost saying
Speaker 1: go too? Here's the thing dot org. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: is supported by Capital one offering the venture card from
Speaker 1: Capital one. What's in your wallet? Information about benefits at
Speaker 1: Capital one venture card dot com. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing. When Jerry Seinfeld
Speaker 1: was ten years old old, he started feverishly studying the
Speaker 1: techniques of stand up comedians on TV, devouring it everything.
Speaker 1: It's like, just like my daughter does. Now, my daughter
Speaker 1: has totally got whatever that gene I had, She's got it.
Speaker 1: She can do any voice, accent, takes lines. Her brother
Speaker 1: said to her, this one. She's wearing glass. She has glasses.
Speaker 1: Her brother said, he said, are those are those real glasses?
Speaker 1: She looked at him, She said, what do you think
Speaker 1: that's she's twelve, She's she's not ready to go play
Speaker 1: iron Rand at the local library. And the fake glasses.
Speaker 1: But um, okay, so my house, Um I assume my
Speaker 1: my childhood was my relationship to my parents, was you
Speaker 1: do what you gotta do. I'll do what I got
Speaker 1: to do, and I'm just living here till I can
Speaker 1: figure something else out. That was my house, and to me,
Speaker 1: that was great. We've talked about this. You and I
Speaker 1: was very independent. My father never hugged me, never told
Speaker 1: me he loved me, never threw me a ball. No problem.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. He's you're good. I'm
Speaker 1: watching you, gonta do whatever some time together? Right? Who
Speaker 1: was the guy who blew the horn in the in
Speaker 1: the when the tower and the tower fell over? Remember
Speaker 1: at the beginning of each show, I forget what was it?
Speaker 1: Was it Larry? It was another No, Larry Storch was
Speaker 1: a garn he was an There was another Larry was
Speaker 1: Captain Parmenter. Captain Parmenter. He wasn't really funny. But there
Speaker 1: was another guy, another Larry, who was at the top
Speaker 1: of the time the tower would fall over because he
Speaker 1: was very kind of vanilla looking. Yeah, it wasn't. It
Speaker 1: wasn't Larry Wilcox. He went on to do Chips. No, No,
Speaker 1: it was another Larry anyway, But yeah, I was Abbert
Speaker 1: and Costello was I really became obsessed with them because
Speaker 1: of the precision word play they were see that's where
Speaker 1: they went beyond there was there was Laurel and Hardy
Speaker 1: and then Martin Lewis, but Aben and Costello had this precision.
Speaker 1: I mean, who's on first is a piece of It's
Speaker 1: like that that museum in Spain, you know, the what
Speaker 1: you know, the no, the other one that what's his name?
Speaker 1: Did that? Yeah? Whose real name is Goldberg? By the way,
Speaker 1: really yes it is. He changed it in college, Frank Frank, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the what's the name of that museum in northern Billo. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's what Who's on first? This? It's like what a construction,
Speaker 1: What a brilliant piece of construction. So and when I
Speaker 1: heard things like that, I um, I just would get
Speaker 1: very excited that you could do things like that with words,
Speaker 1: ideas and attitudes and and have laughs, you know, I
Speaker 1: have laughs. I remember when I was a kid and
Speaker 1: my dad would go to work and my brothers and
Speaker 1: sisters would go to school, and my mom was lonely.
Speaker 1: M I probably missed school like thirty or forty days
Speaker 1: a year. You did, and it was a game. I
Speaker 1: was totally foolish. I said to my mom I don't
Speaker 1: feel good. Remember like, all right, you get in there
Speaker 1: and go to the breakfast table and pretend you're going
Speaker 1: to school until your father and then when he's gone,
Speaker 1: you can go back upstairs. And I would go and
Speaker 1: lie on the couch and they would show the same
Speaker 1: movie five days in a row. So the housewives who
Speaker 1: could only catch a piece of it here and a
Speaker 1: piece so they show Inherit the Wind, And by Friday
Speaker 1: I was laying in bed. I missed school for three days.
Speaker 1: And Friday Spencer Tracy would say, this man wants to
Speaker 1: be afforded the same rights as a sponge. He wishes
Speaker 1: to think, and my lip sync the words I knew that.
Speaker 1: I'm like the Door. I became a complete movie, so
Speaker 1: that to where it began. And then we got into
Speaker 1: the arrand spelling years. I abandoned. He never watched TV again.
Speaker 1: No Charlie's Angels, And now what do you watch? Uh?
Speaker 1: Now I come into your house. It's ten forty five
Speaker 1: at night. Everyone's the wife, kids, babies of sleep. I'm reading,
Speaker 1: you're reading. I'm reading on the internet. I read, I
Speaker 1: read them, I read a book, or I read the
Speaker 1: New York or to get me to sleep reading, we
Speaker 1: get full asleep. But when I watched TV, God, when NFL,
Speaker 1: I watched Makeup Hoements for NFL sixty minutes. I watched MSNBC.
Speaker 1: I watch Uh, I've watched snippets of these shows, you know,
Speaker 1: like Breaking Bad and these contemporary you know, these jobs.
Speaker 1: They don't. I don't have time. I don't have time.
Speaker 1: I don't don't I don't understand either, And I don't
Speaker 1: know where are they find in the time. Did you
Speaker 1: download House to Cards now? Eight hours is the first episode? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't do What are they doing? What kind of
Speaker 1: how long are their days? Well? Always weld get that
Speaker 1: I would always be flattered for a moment. There was
Speaker 1: always a double beat there. When someone would walk up
Speaker 1: to me with Lauren and they woke up, they'd say.
Speaker 1: Lauren would say, you know Dave here, Dave Swanson from
Speaker 1: you know, from Comcast, and I'd go high, nice to
Speaker 1: meet you. And he turned to Lauren and go, god,
Speaker 1: you guys, I gotta tell you. My son broke his
Speaker 1: leg skiing and he was in bed. He was in traction.
Speaker 1: And we watched seasons two and three or thirty Rock
Speaker 1: and I thought I'd smile and then I thought, well,
Speaker 1: that's how you get to watch season's two or three.
Speaker 1: You gotta go and break your leg skiing. You gotta
Speaker 1: go wrap yourself around a tree. Then you can lay
Speaker 1: in back and binge view all this. I don't understand
Speaker 1: how people are fitting this into their day. So there's
Speaker 1: not even one show that your I really love Madmen
Speaker 1: because that was my dream growing up on Long Island
Speaker 1: was to get us Sampson I briefcase going along Island Railroad.
Speaker 1: I was going to go in the city and I
Speaker 1: was gonna work at a big ad agency and right
Speaker 1: funny ads. That was my first dream. That was because
Speaker 1: stand up comedy that I was seeing on the Sullivan Show.
Speaker 1: That was too far out. That was these are some
Speaker 1: genius alien people. I could never be one of those.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get that, but maybe I could be
Speaker 1: a copywriter or or something in the ad game. I
Speaker 1: love advertising. I like I like man I love Manhattan.
Speaker 1: You remember, growing up in Massapeko, Manhattan was was oz
Speaker 1: it was the Emerald City. Tell people when we were kids,
Speaker 1: there was no Bergen County correspondent. The Martians could have
Speaker 1: landed out in in in in in Hempstead. No one
Speaker 1: cared that the Martians did land in because they knew
Speaker 1: there were no cameras out there. When you grew up
Speaker 1: in our generation, it was like the mayor announced today
Speaker 1: of the subway. Today, the cops shot on the I
Speaker 1: n D. The prepetating this, the bank robbery, this, And
Speaker 1: it was all Manhattan, Manhattan, the garden today the heavyweight shot.
Speaker 1: Everything was Manhattan, not even the other outer boroughs, right.
Speaker 1: And when you lived where we lived, that was Saskatchewan.
Speaker 1: To the media, remember Alan Burke, did Jevers Allen Burke, Yes,
Speaker 1: And they would come up and they never correctly estimated
Speaker 1: the average height of New York of the podium was
Speaker 1: always way too high. Mr Bike, I just came in
Speaker 1: from Mars where the Taxi and Limousine Commission there they
Speaker 1: right back from New York issue. What were we saying before?
Speaker 1: I just lost my train of though. When we were
Speaker 1: talking about before you said about New York and Madman. Now,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, so Madman that is my fans said. When
Speaker 1: did you cross over and decide I could do the
Speaker 1: other thing? Um? It was beginning in college, Queen's College.
Speaker 1: What did you study there? A theater, communications, film all
Speaker 1: that stuff. I was. I was circling the field, you know, going,
Speaker 1: how do I How could I? I wonder if I could?
Speaker 1: You know, did you decide? And then there was Andy Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Then Andy Kaufman happened. There's this guy in New York
Speaker 1: who goes up on stage and he plays the bongos
Speaker 1: and starts weeping. He's crazy to So we all ran
Speaker 1: in to see Andy Kaufman at the improv. And as
Speaker 1: soon as I walked in that room and I saw
Speaker 1: what was going on in there, I gotta get in
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah, I want to be one of these.
Speaker 1: And when you got up there and finally through whatever
Speaker 1: apprenticeship you had, and when you got up there and
Speaker 1: you did that was your a moment where like some
Speaker 1: guy comes up to you. I don't want me to
Speaker 1: be too Broadway Danny Rosen. Yes there was. Did some
Speaker 1: guy welcome to and go kid call me? Yes? There was?
Speaker 1: And you know who that guy was, Jackie Mason. Jackie
Speaker 1: Mason alec I was doing comedy about three weeks. Three weeks,
Speaker 1: and I mean stumbling nobody three weeks. I'm nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: twenty years old of going up on stage. But there
Speaker 1: wasn't even a stage. There was a restaurant where they
Speaker 1: take a table out and they would take one of
Speaker 1: the lights, the lamp and they would take the shade
Speaker 1: off it. That was the show. He was in the
Speaker 1: audience people right, was one of these cabaret things West
Speaker 1: forty four Ster was called the Golden Lion Pub. He
Speaker 1: crooks his finger and he says, come over here. He
Speaker 1: takes me over to the bar. He says, you have it.
Speaker 1: He says, you are going to be so big. He says,
Speaker 1: it makes me sick to even think of it, how
Speaker 1: successful you're gonna be. And I was just starting wow.
Speaker 1: And that I mean, that was that was it because
Speaker 1: he was, like, you know, he was very big comedian.
Speaker 1: It's still one of my favorites, a great comedian. But
Speaker 1: to have a guy like that come up to you
Speaker 1: as a kid, I had that. That's still you know
Speaker 1: when I talked to you about I went in the
Speaker 1: improv and I saw all these guys and I thought,
Speaker 1: I want to be one of these guys. That's still
Speaker 1: how I feel now. Was there a moment when for
Speaker 1: me one of the real pure joys of this business
Speaker 1: are the people I've gotten to me and I don't
Speaker 1: want to, you know, go on and on on. But
Speaker 1: were there people who came to you that were like
Speaker 1: these godlike figures to you? Were you just admired them
Speaker 1: from your world They came up to you and said, hey, man,
Speaker 1: they wait to You said, it could be it could
Speaker 1: be Carson across the room. Well, Jack Rollins, who I
Speaker 1: looked up because I saw your movie which I loved,
Speaker 1: Blue Jasmine. You were great, And I see, like Jack
Speaker 1: Rollins in the credit, like I look, he's still alive.
Speaker 1: His daughter was a waitress at a comedy club on
Speaker 1: the Upper East Side, and she brought him in to
Speaker 1: see me and Larry Miller and Jimmy Broken and he
Speaker 1: watched the three of us, and then he sat and
Speaker 1: talked with us afterwards, and he was very encouraging, very flattering.
Speaker 1: That was really big because we were in about a
Speaker 1: year at that point. We didn't know. There was no
Speaker 1: business to get into even if we could do this
Speaker 1: didn't even exist. There was no place to work as
Speaker 1: a stand up comic in seven didn't even exist. It
Speaker 1: happened in the eighties. Once they were all these guys
Speaker 1: around then these clubs started opening around the country. What
Speaker 1: about someone else, someone beyond year old man have exist.
Speaker 1: In the credits of a Woody Allen movie, who was
Speaker 1: some iconic stand up figure. I saw Richard Pryor and
Speaker 1: in those days, um he would come into the clubs
Speaker 1: and we would say, George Carlin. No, we never said
Speaker 1: anything to me, but just to meet, to be those people.
Speaker 1: Was there one at some point who give other than
Speaker 1: Mason said you've got it? Was no, no, no. If
Speaker 1: you don't need that any any self respecting professional comedian,
Speaker 1: you don't need that. You don't need anyone or anything.
Speaker 1: You are built for brutality. You have this relationship with
Speaker 1: the audience that is private between you and them. You
Speaker 1: critics want to write, people want to talk. We we
Speaker 1: have our own thing that nobody, nobody can break that.
Speaker 1: Once you build that, it can't be broken by outside forces.
Speaker 1: This is the difference between being a comedian that has
Speaker 1: his own thing and everybody else in the entertainment field
Speaker 1: who needs to cooperate. Our thanks to Jerry Seinfeld. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to this week's Summer staff pick. Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing is brought to you by I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen russo Zach McNeice and Maureen Hoban.
Speaker 1: Our engineer, well that's me, Frank Imperial. Our social media
Speaker 1: manager is Danielle Gingrich. Alec Baldwin will be back next week.
Speaker 1: M