Speaker 1: So the last time we recorded, we had Ernie on
Speaker 1: Ernie Ray Henry Rays Junior talking about his incredible martial
Speaker 1: arts background and experience, and it reminded me of a
Speaker 1: story I don't think I've ever.
Speaker 2: Told you guys. Do you know about my audition for
Speaker 2: the three inches No?
Speaker 1: No, no, Technically it was three inches kickback, which if
Speaker 1: you look up you might notice my old friend Sean
Speaker 1: Fox is one.
Speaker 2: Of the three inches and three inches kickback. He is the.
Speaker 1: Story behind that is we both got the audition. So
Speaker 1: this would have been pre Boy Mets World. I guess
Speaker 1: I was eleven or twelve. We're at the oak Woods.
Speaker 1: He was staying with my family at the time, and
Speaker 1: he was a genuine martial artist. Sean had taken martial
Speaker 1: arts since he was six seven, had done multiple forms,
Speaker 1: was really good.
Speaker 2: I had not thanks to karate kid at six. I
Speaker 2: got really into kung.
Speaker 1: Fu for a year a year, and I made it
Speaker 1: to an orange belt, I think, which is a second belt,
Speaker 1: right you go white belt orange belt, and I got
Speaker 1: two stripes on my orange belt and then quit so
Speaker 1: I could not.
Speaker 2: Kick or punch to save my life.
Speaker 3: Okay, but whole year of kung fu and you still
Speaker 3: couldn't kick her punch.
Speaker 2: No I could.
Speaker 1: I'm being you know, I'm exaggerated, right, But what I
Speaker 1: did love to do, which my son Indy also loves
Speaker 1: to do now, is stunts like I throwing my body around,
Speaker 1: pretending to be hurt, pratt falls, all that stuff, hitting
Speaker 1: your a door.
Speaker 2: You were famous with that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Sean and I were both we both had
Speaker 1: auditions for the Three Ninjas Kick Back. The other three
Speaker 1: ninchs had just come out and been a huge hits,
Speaker 1: and this one was going to Japan.
Speaker 4: So we were like, we want this movie.
Speaker 1: We could both be in this movie if we're both great,
Speaker 1: because the brother is maybe one of us, you know.
Speaker 1: So we decide rather than going in for the audition
Speaker 1: where you just do the audition, and then they wanted
Speaker 1: a martial arts demonstration, we're going to do a demonstration together.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: So we found the room at the Oakwood Apartments, like
Speaker 1: there was like a main lobby area or whatever, like
Speaker 1: a even know what it was. It was a gathering
Speaker 1: space and we cleared it out and uh spent like
Speaker 1: five hours developing a fight, which quickly became just Sean
Speaker 1: kicking the crap.
Speaker 2: And then you throw me over here, and then you
Speaker 2: get up and kick.
Speaker 1: Me and then I fall here. It right, but it
Speaker 1: was so much fun. So we finished this up and
Speaker 1: we're like, all right, we got our thing. It's tomorrow morning.
Speaker 1: We've gone our audition, and that night my brother Sean's
Speaker 1: staying with us at the oak Woods. My brother decides
Speaker 1: it's the night we're gonna sneak out.
Speaker 2: Oh, go and go.
Speaker 1: See Haley, the girl that my brother is in love with,
Speaker 1: who lives down the hall at the oak Woods. But
Speaker 1: if we sneak out the window, my mom will never
Speaker 1: know that we went out.
Speaker 2: And Haley has a friend visiting, so all three of
Speaker 2: us should.
Speaker 1: Go and like hang out with Haley all night, right,
Speaker 1: and like nobody's even kissed Haley. This is just But
Speaker 1: Haley is sixteen, has her own apartment where Shiloh's maybe fourteen.
Speaker 2: I'm twelve. So we're like, okay, okay, shylt we'll sneak out.
Speaker 2: So we push the screen out of our window. We
Speaker 2: sneak out. We go down the hall building q I
Speaker 2: think we were in or down the.
Speaker 1: Outside area, like the little pathway to get to her window,
Speaker 1: knock on her window.
Speaker 2: She lets us in. We end up staying there until
Speaker 2: six in the morning.
Speaker 4: Night.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no sleep.
Speaker 1: Sean and I have to do this physical audition for
Speaker 1: producers and the this is like producers we maybe had
Speaker 1: already read and this was the producer's callback to do
Speaker 1: our demonstration.
Speaker 2: So we get back to the room at six a m.
Speaker 1: And our auditions in like two hours, and I am
Speaker 1: just exhausted and I'm like, I have to I have
Speaker 1: to go to sleep, and Sean is why is beyond
Speaker 1: his years, is like writer At this point, we just
Speaker 1: need to stay awake.
Speaker 2: Ye, it's gonna be worse, and I don't care. I'm
Speaker 2: going right later.
Speaker 1: My mom's like, gods, get up, let's have some cereal,
Speaker 1: let's go to the audition. And I am literally falling
Speaker 1: asleep in my bowl of cheerios.
Speaker 2: And Sean's doing fine, He's ready to go. Oh well
Speaker 2: it was his martial arts training. Yeah, so we go.
Speaker 1: Uh, we do this audition and one of the most
Speaker 1: embarrassing experiences. Now, the fight was fine, like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't even remember the actual reading. I'm sure we read
Speaker 1: and did like acting part, but of course, what the
Speaker 1: big thing was that we he did this fight and
Speaker 1: sure enough. Like when it was over, they just looked
Speaker 1: at us and they were like, well, we know who
Speaker 1: probably choreographed this one. She just made Sean look so good.
Speaker 1: It was like yeah, okay. And then they're like, now
Speaker 1: can you guys do and they named some kind of
Speaker 1: kick and I was like uh and Sean was just
Speaker 1: like and it was a jumping It was like he
Speaker 1: jumped and just spun and did some kind of kick,
Speaker 1: but he just they just said something and he was
Speaker 1: like sure and did it and then they were like
Speaker 1: can you I was like, uh, sure, good, good good
Speaker 1: actor with you know everything on my I can juggle,
Speaker 1: I can speak another language, I can whatever.
Speaker 2: What do you need? What do you so? I tried?
Speaker 1: And I mean just when I think about me jumping
Speaker 1: the air and trying to spin and do this kick, I.
Speaker 2: Mean I can't. I can't see myself can fully picture it?
Speaker 3: Oh so you can feel the cringe.
Speaker 2: Ye when I look.
Speaker 1: Back, I'm all I'm outside of my body watching the
Speaker 1: little rider flail and all all I wanted.
Speaker 2: To do was sleep.
Speaker 5: Oh you want to My guess is it's a flying
Speaker 5: roundhouse kick or a jumping roundhouse kick, is.
Speaker 2: What they asked for her to do just for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but see, I feel like I would have known
Speaker 1: what that is. Right you say that, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what that is. Whatever they said, I was like, Uh, anyway,
Speaker 1: Sean got the part, Sean booked it.
Speaker 2: Sean booked it. Did you to find out make the movie?
Speaker 6: You just said?
Speaker 5: Because you're right? There was a three three ninjas? One
Speaker 5: the three Ninjas? So do you know why they ended
Speaker 5: up recasting all three of the ninjas?
Speaker 2: Were they different? Yeah, they just got older, they were so.
Speaker 5: But was the family and the second one supposed to
Speaker 5: be three different ninjas or was it supposed to be.
Speaker 2: The same characters characters?
Speaker 1: But I think it was just long enough after that
Speaker 1: they wanted to keep the kids the same age.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think it was the error where
Speaker 2: it was like kids are replaceable.
Speaker 1: But I actually Sean when he got cast, they signed
Speaker 1: him for three films, so maybe they didn't have contracts
Speaker 1: with those first kids, and then those kids were like, well,
Speaker 1: now you got to pay us.
Speaker 2: Right for you, we can just replace you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that first one, the first one is not bad.
Speaker 2: The one that Sean is in, it's not great Bendy
Speaker 2: ninjenjoys it because Uncle Sewan is in it. Let's put
Speaker 2: it there, we go.
Speaker 1: Indy was really into it because Uncle Sean was in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know he had a lot of fun. He
Speaker 1: got to go to Japan to make this movie.
Speaker 2: Uh and yeah, that one didn't do as well.
Speaker 5: No, that was my So horror movies for you as
Speaker 5: a kid, or like those kind of movies for you
Speaker 5: as a kid were karate and ninja movies.
Speaker 6: For me, that's all I watched.
Speaker 2: You never took martial arts, you never did it.
Speaker 5: I in my head didn't need it because I was
Speaker 5: already a trained assassin. So yeah, my dad, my nickname
Speaker 5: from my father to this day is still Ninja because
Speaker 5: that's all I ever wanted.
Speaker 2: And you called your dad ninja.
Speaker 5: My dad calls me Ninja to this day because when
Speaker 5: I was a little kid, he would tell me Ninja stories,
Speaker 5: and you know, he would always we'd be you know,
Speaker 5: he'd tuck me in and go, all right, who do
Speaker 5: you want to save tonight? And this was you know,
Speaker 5: first grade, what ever, kindergarten, and I'd picked the cutest
Speaker 5: girl in class, and my dad would tell me a
Speaker 5: story like Okay, so she's walking home from school and
Speaker 5: they were always ruffians.
Speaker 6: She was always attacked by ruffians.
Speaker 3: Ruffians.
Speaker 6: Of course they were probably doing they.
Speaker 5: Were doing a j these ruffians, and then I would
Speaker 5: jump out of the trees because of course I was
Speaker 5: secretly trained by a ninja clan in Japan, even though
Speaker 5: I was six.
Speaker 2: See, you would have loved three Kickback. That's exactly the story.
Speaker 2: They took my dad's ninja stories.
Speaker 5: Because it was I mean, those movies were Sho Kasugi
Speaker 5: was my god growing up. He was in all the
Speaker 5: ninja movies, Revenge of the Ninja, Return of the Ninja.
Speaker 6: It was just, oh god, those are the best.
Speaker 5: So those three Ninja movies were great. I never saw Kickback.
Speaker 5: I gotta be honest with you, I tapped out after
Speaker 5: the first one.
Speaker 3: Welcome to pod Meets World.
Speaker 6: I'm Daniel fishl, I'm Writer Strong, and I'm Wilfrid.
Speaker 3: As a nostalgia podcast deeply rooted in the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 3: there are certain subjects we find ourselves frequently circling. Obviously TGIF,
Speaker 3: the programming block we all called home for seven seasons,
Speaker 3: and the Disney Channel, another network where our show later
Speaker 3: aired in syndication. I mean, one of us has an
Speaker 3: entire podcast dedicated to just the original films that channel aired.
Speaker 3: But when we take a step back, there is one
Speaker 3: entire outlet of kids entertainment that we often neglect. And
Speaker 3: that same guy with the dcom podcast, well, he started
Speaker 3: his career there. I'm talking about Nickelodeon. Launched in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine, commercial free for its first five years, it
Speaker 3: became a powerhouse in the industry with things you normally
Speaker 3: can't do on television, all in the form of scripted series,
Speaker 3: variety shows, animated classics, preschool targeted programming, and one very
Speaker 3: disgusting game show. It was called Doubledare and it ran
Speaker 3: from nineteen eighty six to nineteen ninety three, forcing teams
Speaker 3: to compete for cash and prizes by answering trivia questions
Speaker 3: and completing messy physical challenges. Almost instantly, the presence of
Speaker 3: Doubledare tripled viewership for the channel and became the most
Speaker 3: watched original daily programming on all of cable TV. And
Speaker 3: at the front and center of this phenomenon was the
Speaker 3: show's host, a man who somehow kept it all together,
Speaker 3: dodging slime whit Cream Pies, Boogers, Eggs, shaving Cream, Seltzer,
Speaker 3: and child size Chocolate Sundays from the traditional school of
Speaker 3: broadcasters and became a Hall of Fame host in one
Speaker 3: of the least traditional game shows ever. He since enjoyed
Speaker 3: even more success on the Food Network and in a
Speaker 3: one man show all about his life and career, all
Speaker 3: Endeavors involving a little less chaos. This week on Podmeat's World,
Speaker 3: we are honored to sit down with an icon of
Speaker 3: our childhood. It's the host of Doubledare and so much more.
Speaker 3: Please welcome Mark Summers, who.
Speaker 2: Hy it's hard to see you, Mark to be seen.
Speaker 3: Thank you for spending some time with us today.
Speaker 4: My pleasure looking forward to it.
Speaker 3: So Will Fredell here was on Nickelodeon with you at
Speaker 3: the same time, and Will spent so much time trying
Speaker 3: to find a clip or somewhere where he worked with you,
Speaker 3: because he knows he did.
Speaker 6: Oh, I know, I did. I mean we did.
Speaker 5: Nick takes over your school and all that kind of
Speaker 5: stuff together. So I was on, don't just sit there back.
Speaker 4: In the day you did. Don't just sit there.
Speaker 5: I did, don't just sit there? So I was one
Speaker 5: of the hosts of Don't You Sit There? So we
Speaker 5: saw you all the time, I mean, I think.
Speaker 4: And produced a week of that when the regular guy
Speaker 4: couldn't be there, okay, were in some horrible spot on
Speaker 4: like A thirty third and eleventh.
Speaker 2: It was amazing that, yeah you that was at the
Speaker 2: first I started.
Speaker 5: Second season, we were at fifty fifth, were at Unitel
Speaker 5: at fifty fifth and ninth.
Speaker 4: Which was much nicer by yes, yes, there were there
Speaker 4: were fewer hookers there nice, but oh my god. I
Speaker 4: always love that show. But for some reason it didn't
Speaker 4: catch on. I think we're a little ahead of our
Speaker 4: time back then.
Speaker 2: I think so too. Yeah, we were.
Speaker 5: I think we did two or three seasons, but it
Speaker 5: was And then we went down to Florida and we
Speaker 5: opened up the Universal Studios Florida. There, you know, we
Speaker 5: had that big three hour live spectacular. So I was
Speaker 5: there with you for all of it, and I can't
Speaker 5: find a single clip of the two of us together.
Speaker 4: It was do you say, Josh with the other people
Speaker 4: from Don't You Sit There?
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 5: We Actually, we had our was like forty or thirty
Speaker 5: year reunion here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Everybody flew out and stayed at the house last year.
Speaker 5: So I was with Matt Matt Brown and Ali Smith
Speaker 5: and Wendy Douglass wasn't here, but she zoomed in and
Speaker 5: the whole band and everybody.
Speaker 6: Yeah was we had a great time.
Speaker 4: That was so much fun. And yeah, you know, book
Speaker 4: some great guests on that show, you know.
Speaker 2: We did.
Speaker 5: We had new kids on the block when they were
Speaker 5: just starting, and I think Neil Patrick Harris came on.
Speaker 5: I mean, we had really yeah, we're My first interview
Speaker 5: ever was weird Al Yankovic, which is and Michael Richards
Speaker 5: for UHF.
Speaker 2: So we had it was a for anybody who doesn't
Speaker 2: know what Don't You Sit There?
Speaker 4: Was?
Speaker 2: We were like a kids Saturday Night Live.
Speaker 5: We had special guests and a band and and did
Speaker 5: skits and was just a ton of fun.
Speaker 4: So one time I was on with Harvey and our
Speaker 4: producers and writers and we pretended to come up with
Speaker 4: a theme song, don't just Sit There, And it was
Speaker 4: me dressed as Elvis just saying for two and a
Speaker 4: half minutes, don't just sit there? No, don't.
Speaker 6: Nickelodeon in the eighties.
Speaker 2: It was the best. But that's such a.
Speaker 1: Great like, you know, the idea of doing like a
Speaker 1: kid's variety show is really sore smart, Like my son
Speaker 1: would love to watch that, Like I'm I want that.
Speaker 1: I know that now, like we need this, you know,
Speaker 1: right now everything is so you know, because of streaming,
Speaker 1: like everybody's in their own little thing. The idea of
Speaker 1: like a live show or show that even just with
Speaker 1: a live audience that brings kids together, like Doubledare, you know,
Speaker 1: like those were so fun back in.
Speaker 5: The day, and they they did things that they don't
Speaker 5: do anymore. Like, you know, an audience member was our announcer.
Speaker 5: So every every week we'd pick a new audience member
Speaker 5: who would stand up and say, like, you know, hey,
Speaker 5: I'm John from Secaucus, New Jersey, and welcome.
Speaker 2: Don't just sit there.
Speaker 5: And it was always somebody different every week, and then
Speaker 5: the band would come on.
Speaker 6: It was really really cool.
Speaker 4: The impact that Nickelodeon had back in the day was
Speaker 4: pretty amazing. Doesn't sadly have that same sort of impact anymore,
Speaker 4: you know, because kids watch their phones and their iPads,
Speaker 4: and if you say to them, you know, what's Nickelodeon,
Speaker 4: they don't even know. It's a whole different world.
Speaker 5: They'll know the shows they'll know individual shows like oh,
Speaker 5: I know Phineas and ferb for Disney something like that.
Speaker 5: They'll know, But the network itself is just kind of
Speaker 5: not a thing anymore.
Speaker 4: It's really not. If it wasn't for SpongeBob, I'm not
Speaker 4: sure they'd still be around, you know exactly.
Speaker 3: Well, Mark, while researching your life, we learned that you
Speaker 3: faced a very common and relatable fork in the road
Speaker 3: for those of us who decided to pursue a career
Speaker 3: in Hollywood. You had to decide do I become an
Speaker 3: actor or a rabbi? Who among us has not with
Speaker 3: this decision.
Speaker 4: Requisite as you've got to be Jewish, so I guess
Speaker 4: you could be something else that still want to be
Speaker 4: a rabbi. But you know, after my bar mitsva to me,
Speaker 4: it felt like performing up there the pulpit, as we
Speaker 4: used to say, and it made me think, oh my gosh,
Speaker 4: well maybe this is a direction I should go. And
Speaker 4: I was rather confused, and I knew the assistant rabbi,
Speaker 4: Rabbi Weismann, and I rode my bike over the temple
Speaker 4: when I was about thirteen years old, and I knocked
Speaker 4: on the door, and I knew that the rabbi had
Speaker 4: started off majoring in radio and television and then became
Speaker 4: a rabbi. And he said, why do you want to
Speaker 4: become a rabbi? And I said, because I want to
Speaker 4: help people. And he said, if you go to the
Speaker 4: entertainment business, you can help a lot of people a little,
Speaker 4: but if you're a rabbi, you can help a small
Speaker 4: amount of people a lot. So whatever you do, you'll
Speaker 4: be fine. And I chose entertainment.
Speaker 2: It's great analogy. Yeah, well put yeah, yeah wow.
Speaker 3: And so then you ended up making the move from
Speaker 3: to Los Angeles from Indianapolis, right, No, I.
Speaker 4: Actually went to Boston for two years. I went to
Speaker 4: a school called Graham Junior College, which was a school
Speaker 4: of misfits. None of us wanted to go to college,
Speaker 4: but it was sort of the thing to do for
Speaker 4: two reasons, want to improve our education and to day
Speaker 4: out of the draft. And no thing called Vietnam was
Speaker 4: going on back in the day. And while I was there,
Speaker 4: there was a guy by the name of Bert du
Speaker 4: Brow who was still one of my dearest friends, who
Speaker 4: ended up being the execu producer Sally Jess who Rafiela
Speaker 4: Jerry Springer, a guy by the name of Andy Kaufman
Speaker 4: who did what he did, and another guy by the
Speaker 4: name of Paul Fusco who created alf So we have
Speaker 4: talented group of humans.
Speaker 1: Wow, were you guys all friends like hanging out?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, gosh?
Speaker 5: How was I have to ask because he can be
Speaker 5: controversial when it comes to is he funny?
Speaker 2: Is he not funny?
Speaker 6: What was just hanging out with Andy Kaufman?
Speaker 4: Like? Okay, I will say this and sorry for anybody
Speaker 4: who cares. I never found Andy funny a day in
Speaker 4: my life. Okay. He was a stranger scene in the
Speaker 4: history of the world. When I was finally over here,
Speaker 4: I became a regular at the Comedy Starre in nineteen
Speaker 4: seventy six, and then you'd walk over to the improv
Speaker 4: over on Melrose and I'd walk in some nights and
Speaker 4: Andy go, hey, Mark, how you doing fine? Well are
Speaker 4: you doing? Oh? Let's go at dinner. So I'd go
Speaker 4: have dinner with Andy and I walk in two nights
Speaker 4: later and I say, Hendy, how are you going to go?
Speaker 4: Do we know each other?
Speaker 3: God?
Speaker 4: So he was always playing mind games and I had
Speaker 4: no use for it, quite honestly, and so I was
Speaker 4: not the biggest fan I think the wrestling thing was,
Speaker 4: you know, not for me. You know, there are people
Speaker 4: who think he's a genius and good for them, that's
Speaker 4: what makes the world go around, but it never worked
Speaker 4: for me. I just didn't get it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I didn't.
Speaker 3: Was living a bit is just not for me.
Speaker 2: It's hard to be around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, So from Boston, then you make the move
Speaker 3: to la I did, and.
Speaker 4: I became a page at CBS Television City and I
Speaker 4: worked on Sonny and Share, All in the Family Carol Burnett.
Speaker 4: I got the tail end of real show business and
Speaker 4: got to hang out with all those people. I met
Speaker 4: my wife while I was an usher on the Mary
Speaker 4: Tyler Moore show. I worked on Rhoda. I mean, I
Speaker 4: worked on all those shows. I worked the last episode
Speaker 4: of Sonny and Share, where it was so intense because
Speaker 4: the announcement had been made that they were getting a divorce,
Speaker 4: and Sunny didn't want to stop shooting and shared this
Speaker 4: want to get it over with. I think we got
Speaker 4: out of there about two o'clock in the morning finally,
Speaker 4: So it was an interesting time to be there. And
Speaker 4: I eventually became a writer on a show called tru
Speaker 4: or Consequences which is another show that Bob Barker used
Speaker 4: to host. And I became a regular at a place
Speaker 4: called the Magic Castle because I was a professional magician
Speaker 4: and worked there from nineteen seventy three until let's see,
Speaker 4: my son was born in nineteen eighty so like eighty
Speaker 4: one eighty two. Became a regular at the store in
Speaker 4: seventy six and then started doing warm ups on shows
Speaker 4: like Star Search and Alison, What's Happening Now? And Soap
Speaker 4: and She. You know, I paid my dues from the
Speaker 4: time I landed in Los Angeles until I got doubled there.
Speaker 4: It was thirteen years, so I really put in my time.
Speaker 3: Good for you. How did you get the job as
Speaker 3: a page? Did you just apply?
Speaker 4: No, that's an interesting story as well. I have all
Speaker 4: sorts of crazy stories. Nothing I did in my life
Speaker 4: was normal. I had gone to a wedding before in
Speaker 4: Indianapolis and somebody said, we know the associate producer Michael
Speaker 4: Zenberg of Bob Newhart Show. Why don't you go meet
Speaker 4: with him? So I called him up and I said,
Speaker 4: you don't know who I am, but I was at
Speaker 4: a wedding and I knew your relatives. And he said,
Speaker 4: if you have the nerve to make that phone call
Speaker 4: I'll see you. And I met with him and he said,
Speaker 4: why don't I send you over to become a page
Speaker 4: at CBS. So I went out there and had a meeting,
Speaker 4: and I met with a guy who was in charge
Speaker 4: of hiring pages. And he said to me, you won't
Speaker 4: last here too long because you're too smart and you
Speaker 4: have too much energy. But there's a thing called cable TV.
Speaker 4: Now this is nineteen seventy four. I didn't know what
Speaker 4: cable TV was, but they're looking for a producer and
Speaker 4: somebody to be a newsreader. So I drove a million
Speaker 4: miles out to see me Valley, which I didn't even
Speaker 4: know what that was at the time, and got the job.
Speaker 4: And I was so thankful that I drove back to
Speaker 4: CBS Television City to the guy who recommended me. I said,
Speaker 4: I can't thank you enough. I was hired on the
Speaker 4: spot and I have a job. Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: And he said, will tell me about it, and I
Speaker 4: explained it to him and he said, well, congratulations. Two
Speaker 4: hours later, I went home, my phone rang and it
Speaker 4: was the company that hired me, and said, I don't
Speaker 4: know what you did, but you went back and sold
Speaker 4: this job so well to the guy who sent you,
Speaker 4: that he had more experience, and we're going to hire
Speaker 4: him instead of you. My first screw you in show business.
Speaker 4: So I drove back to CBS Television City, barged into
Speaker 4: the guy's office and I said, you a hole. I
Speaker 4: can't believe after you know me thanking you, you did that.
Speaker 4: And so he said, well, I feel so bad, I'll
Speaker 4: get your job as a page. And so that's how
Speaker 4: I began. Yeah, yeah, gosh.
Speaker 3: Well you explain for our listeners what a page is.
Speaker 3: By the way, I don't know that everybody knows what
Speaker 3: a page does. So what was your job?
Speaker 4: My job was to seat the audiences and to make
Speaker 4: sure that everybody, you know, ended up where they were
Speaker 4: supposed to end up. To run errands for the people
Speaker 4: on the production companies, and answer phones for the producers
Speaker 4: and the directors and stuff like that. So it was
Speaker 4: a lot of counting tickets, telling people where the bathroom was,
Speaker 4: and making sure that they were laughing when they should
Speaker 4: be laughing and being quiet when the other time was
Speaker 4: happening for them. And so you were a jack of
Speaker 4: all trades and a master of none, and the whole
Speaker 4: point was to sort of weasele your way in to
Speaker 4: meet the people who were putting on these shows to
Speaker 4: get the job that you wanted to be a producer
Speaker 4: or writer for me talent.
Speaker 5: Right, Okay, So, as our resident television fan, I'm just
Speaker 5: the shows you mentioned that you were working on are
Speaker 5: some of the most legendary television shows in the history
Speaker 5: of Hollywood.
Speaker 6: What was your favorite one to work on?
Speaker 4: Well, Soap, I think because it was controversial at the time.
Speaker 4: You know, Billy Crystal was playing the first gay character
Speaker 4: on television. Imagine that, how silly that old thing is.
Speaker 4: But sometimes you'd be out there for hours at a time,
Speaker 4: and after you've told every joke and asked everybody where
Speaker 4: they were from, you didn't have much you could say.
Speaker 4: But on that show, I had Billy Crystal, Jay Johnson
Speaker 4: who did the ventriloquism thing with Chuck and Bob, and
Speaker 4: a terrific comedian called John Binder, And so if I
Speaker 4: would go on the toilet, I could say, hey, John,
Speaker 4: why don't you get them? Do you know what's on
Speaker 4: the Sullivan Show? And they could feel, you know, my fear,
Speaker 4: and they would get up and help me and so
Speaker 4: it was a fun show, entertaining as hell, and all
Speaker 4: those people to help me. Here's the thing, So many
Speaker 4: of us started off doing warm ups, and the stage
Speaker 4: next to me was a show called Barney Miller, and
Speaker 4: the warm up on that was David Letterman. To the
Speaker 4: right of me was a show called Bus and Buddies,
Speaker 4: and Bob Saget was the entertainer and the warm up
Speaker 4: guy in that. So it's how we all sort of
Speaker 4: cut our teeth and got in because you would be
Speaker 4: in front of people who could hire you either as
Speaker 4: a talent or something else. And that's what we were
Speaker 4: all doing back in the day.
Speaker 3: Wow, unbelievable, so cool.
Speaker 5: So just in a regular day you would run into
Speaker 5: you know, Tom Hanks and Peter Scalari and oh man,
Speaker 5: I couldn't.
Speaker 1: And at this point is your goal to be a comedian,
Speaker 1: a stand up comedian, or is it to eventually write
Speaker 1: produce or is it acting.
Speaker 4: I never wanted to write and produce ever ever, Ever,
Speaker 4: I fell into that, but I wanted to host television
Speaker 4: shows and I came out and I wanted to be
Speaker 4: a game show host, which back when I moved out
Speaker 4: here in seventy three, seventy four. That was a profession
Speaker 4: you could actually pursue and have happened. Now unless you're
Speaker 4: you know, you know, a star of celebrity. Yeah, celebrity.
Speaker 4: You can't even apply for those jobs. And so I
Speaker 4: did warm ups on game shows and then I did
Speaker 4: some announcing on some game and game shows. That did
Speaker 4: a show called Bruce Forthside's Hotstreak, which was on ABC.
Speaker 4: I did some pilots for people, and so you keep
Speaker 4: taking baby steps until you kind of get where you
Speaker 4: want to go, and Doubledare was a mistake as well.
Speaker 4: I was never called to audition for that show. A
Speaker 4: friend of mine, Dave Garrison, who was a vent triloquist
Speaker 4: that I knew in Indianapolis, got the call and he
Speaker 4: was tired of sort of beating the bushers and not
Speaker 4: getting forward. So he said to me, there's some network
Speaker 4: called me. I've never heard of them, called Nickelodeon. They
Speaker 4: want me to audition for some game show. I don't
Speaker 4: want to go. Why don't you go instead of me?
Speaker 4: So I went over there and they said Dave Garrison,
Speaker 4: I said, he's not here. My name is Mark Summers
Speaker 4: audition instead of m They said sure, which by the way.
Speaker 4: I don't think you can even do that today. No,
Speaker 4: And I did the first audition and got three callbacks.
Speaker 4: And the one thing I always learned that auditions was
Speaker 4: get the name of the exec producer and a phone
Speaker 4: number because there was no email back then. And so
Speaker 4: I got the head of casting, who brought me in
Speaker 4: eventually and the exec producer, and I knew the show
Speaker 4: was going to start shooting on September, and right around
Speaker 4: Labor Day, I called Mike Klinghoffer, who was the exec producer,
Speaker 4: and said, have you guys made a decision or not?
Speaker 4: And they said, well, it's down between you and another guy,
Speaker 4: and we can't see him to decide. I said, well,
Speaker 4: what's the deciding factor and they said, well, we've never
Speaker 4: actually seen you with kids, because when I did the audition,
Speaker 4: they had grown up playing the part of kids. And
Speaker 4: I said, well, I have kids, and they said, well
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean anything. And I said, well I used
Speaker 4: to do magic shows for kids, and they said, well
Speaker 4: that doesn't mean anything. So I suggested, why don't you
Speaker 4: fly me and whoever this other guy is into LA,
Speaker 4: let us do this show in the New York brother
Speaker 4: and do a show with kids playing the game and
Speaker 4: let the best man win, and they said, we'll call
Speaker 4: you back. They called me back. I auditioned, and the
Speaker 4: way I got the job was at the end of it,
Speaker 4: they called me and they said, congratulations, you're the host
Speaker 4: of Double Dare. And I said, well, what separated me
Speaker 4: from the other guy? And they said, you were both
Speaker 4: both about the same. But at the end of his audition,
Speaker 4: he looked in the camera and said, is that it
Speaker 4: or do you guys want me to do something else?
Speaker 4: And I looked in the camera and I said, we'll
Speaker 4: be back with more Double Dare right after this. And
Speaker 4: because they threw it a commercial, they thought that was
Speaker 4: more of a professional professional and that changed my life. Wow.
Speaker 5: Mike Klinghoffer hearing these names out loud again that I
Speaker 5: haven't heard since I was on your show, He was,
Speaker 5: it was really amazing to hear all these names.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, did you remember Roseanne le Popolo?
Speaker 6: Was she also there at the time.
Speaker 4: She was there and sadly passed away about a year ago.
Speaker 2: I went to her and they had something for her out.
Speaker 4: Here and very smart and entertaining to be around, that's
Speaker 4: for sure.
Speaker 2: Yes, definitely, Oh yes, man, I.
Speaker 4: Knew her very well. Oh just Collingwood was your director?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, Dan, I have heard that name since
Speaker 5: I was twelve years I'm.
Speaker 4: Still in touch with all these guys. We're all still friends.
Speaker 5: Oh mavery Darby, Jef Darby, these Oh I can't even
Speaker 5: I can't even who now.
Speaker 6: Who was president of Nickelodeon at the time.
Speaker 2: Was it Jerry?
Speaker 6: It was Jerry at the time.
Speaker 5: So one of the stories that I have about Jerry Laborne,
Speaker 5: and she was an incredible I mean, she was president
Speaker 5: of the network and I think one of the first
Speaker 5: female presidents of any network at the time.
Speaker 4: And I was doing USA Network and Jerry was second.
Speaker 2: And Jerry was sat. Yeah. So she's there and I'd
Speaker 2: never met her.
Speaker 5: And we're down in Florida and we're opening the studio
Speaker 5: and somebody comes up to me and says my co host,
Speaker 5: a girl at the time comes up and says, do
Speaker 5: you know where the bathroom is? And I said, I
Speaker 5: don't know. And I see this woman walk up. I'm like,
Speaker 5: can you, hey, lady, can you walk her to the bathroom?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 2: This is the first time I met Jerry Laborne. Network.
Speaker 4: A train trip down from New York to Florida.
Speaker 5: To No I missed the train trip. They flew us
Speaker 5: down to do that for the opening. So this is
Speaker 5: such a shows the synergy of the of the network.
Speaker 5: When they moved Matt, Ally, Wendy and I down to
Speaker 5: Florida to do the three hour opening of Nickelodeon Studios,
Speaker 5: we all needed a legal guardian, and Robin was our
Speaker 5: legal guardian.
Speaker 2: No, yes, assistant. Robin was our legal guardian down there.
Speaker 6: We all had our own apartments.
Speaker 5: It's like I was twelve or thirteen, Wow, and they
Speaker 5: shut down Universal Studios and my job at thirteen was
Speaker 5: to go on the rides over and over and over
Speaker 5: again while they filmed us in a closed park.
Speaker 2: My three friends, my three best friends and I.
Speaker 5: At the time had an amusement park to ourselves six
Speaker 5: weeks and Robin was our guide.
Speaker 2: Was our guardian.
Speaker 4: Because many of us took a train from New York
Speaker 4: down to Nickelodeon and Orlando, and we would stop in
Speaker 4: various cities and yeah, you know, like Canada's be on
Speaker 4: the back of a train telling people about this fantastic
Speaker 4: thing that's opening in Orlando for Nickelodeon. It was such
Speaker 4: a cool thing.
Speaker 2: It was so cool.
Speaker 5: Everything we would do, Nick takes over your school. I
Speaker 5: mean that whole just being and all that stuff was
Speaker 5: the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, Yeah, So I want to go back to
Speaker 3: the friend whose audition you took when the show ended
Speaker 3: up becoming massively successful. Was your friend a little bitter?
Speaker 4: No. He became a very successful producer in Los Angeles
Speaker 4: and liked being behind the camera. He you know, I
Speaker 4: used to host audition I at the Improv and you know,
Speaker 4: you would go every Monday night and hope that somebody
Speaker 4: would see you in ninety nine times out one hundred,
Speaker 4: they didn't. And he got tired of doing that. And
Speaker 4: that's the difference between, you know, folks who make it
Speaker 4: and folks who are going He made it in the
Speaker 4: different side of the industry, but most I had a
Speaker 4: guy called me once from college and say, I'm going
Speaker 4: to go to LA for six weeks and try it out.
Speaker 4: And I said, don't even bother six weeks. You can't
Speaker 4: do anything. So you got to put in. You know,
Speaker 4: very rarely somebody will come into town and just instantaneously.
Speaker 4: Dave Letterman made it about twelve seconds when he came here.
Speaker 4: But there was something special about him. Robin Williams also
Speaker 4: another guy who came into town and instantaneously hit it.
Speaker 4: But that's like finding a needle in a haystack generally,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what was your approach for this job? It's
Speaker 3: obviously not an easy task to keep it on the rails.
Speaker 3: Did you have a plan for how you were going
Speaker 3: to do that?
Speaker 4: I was just going to be myself. Here was the deal.
Speaker 4: I never wanted to host a kid's game show. I
Speaker 4: wanted to do a grown up show, and so I
Speaker 4: treated the kids like grownups. I never said, hey, Boby,
Speaker 4: do you have a girlfriend? I like, I was never
Speaker 4: trying to sending and I would screw around with the
Speaker 4: kids and they got that right away, and they would
Speaker 4: screw around back with me. And when they did focus groups,
Speaker 4: they said I was kind of like a crazy uncle
Speaker 4: or a big brother, as opposed to some you know,
Speaker 4: hoity toity big guy, you know, trying to be authoritative.
Speaker 4: And there was a fine line, but I think I
Speaker 4: found it, and that's what was magical. We shot five
Speaker 4: and twenty five episodes of that show.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, how many episodes would you shoot in
Speaker 2: a day?
Speaker 4: I got up to six a day, six day.
Speaker 3: So you're hired as the host and producer of Doubledare
Speaker 3: what is established for this show when you get there
Speaker 3: on day one? How fleshed out was it versus? How
Speaker 3: much did you have to create?
Speaker 4: Not very because most of the people who were there
Speaker 4: from the Nickelodeon side had never done a game show
Speaker 4: in their life. I was the only one who had
Speaker 4: any game show experience. And so the first episode that
Speaker 4: took eight hours. Okay, it was just one mistake after another.
Speaker 4: They forgot to put the flags in the places to
Speaker 4: get the flags for the optical course, and it was
Speaker 4: a nightmare. And I just remember Jerry Layborne grabbing her
Speaker 4: head in the director's move and going, what the hell
Speaker 4: have we done here? You know, there was something back
Speaker 4: then called playground talk, and at the time UHF stations
Speaker 4: were popular and facts of life in different strokes with
Speaker 4: the number one and two shows, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: kids would go home and watch our show and then
Speaker 4: go on the playground the next day and said, I
Speaker 4: saw this show where if you jump into five thousand
Speaker 4: pounds of baked beans, they send you to dizzy And
Speaker 4: they went, what the hell is that, and all of
Speaker 4: a sudden the ratings dropped off of new facts and
Speaker 4: different strokes, and they found us and our ratings were
Speaker 4: off the charts. I mean, now, if you get a
Speaker 4: point two or point three in the rate on television,
Speaker 4: that's big. We were getting fives and six's. You know,
Speaker 4: we get gigantic numbers and they contribute the sale of
Speaker 4: a cable to families to three people. One Larry King
Speaker 4: on CNN could nobody had seen what he had done?
Speaker 4: A Gallagher who was doing comedy specials on Showtime and
Speaker 4: me and Nickelodeon and putting Nicoletin do on the map
Speaker 4: because Doubledare was this thing that nobody had ever seen.
Speaker 4: It was the first kid's game show and you know,
Speaker 4: right place, right time.
Speaker 3: Wow, So are you just sitting around on the brainstorming
Speaker 3: ridiculously gross ideas for physically challenges as a job.
Speaker 4: That's very funny that you bring that up, because we
Speaker 4: would do stunt testing. We would shoot six shows a
Speaker 4: day and wouldn't even go to dinner. We would bring
Speaker 4: in kids from the Philadelphia area where we first started
Speaker 4: in New Jersey, and we would test physical challenges and
Speaker 4: come up with the craziest things in the world, and
Speaker 4: unless they worked three times, they never got on the show.
Speaker 4: And the famous one was we had a mailbox, typical mailbox,
Speaker 4: old school mailbox, and they made paper planes, and the
Speaker 4: physical challenge was, you have thirty seconds to get one
Speaker 4: paper plane in the mailbox. And I said, this is
Speaker 4: the dumbest thing I've ever seen. It will never happen.
Speaker 4: And they said, just because you said that, we're going
Speaker 4: to do it tomorrow on the show. So we come
Speaker 4: to that physical challenge and I looked in the camera
Speaker 4: and I said, okay, look, I don't agree with this
Speaker 4: physical challenge. I think it's so stupid. They want me
Speaker 4: to get this kid over here to send that paper
Speaker 4: airplane into the mailbox. And I looked at the kid
Speaker 4: and I said, and if you can do that, I'll
Speaker 4: give you my house. Okay, so I'm your mark. Get
Speaker 4: set go. The first time he threw a plane, it
Speaker 4: went right, so you sh'd never know. And I know
Speaker 4: I didn't give my house.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, I have to know. When does the
Speaker 3: huge nose filled with boogers and one flag come into play.
Speaker 4: That was about our second season, because at one point,
Speaker 4: you know, you try to top yourself, because there were
Speaker 4: so many people watching, and they went, well, now what
Speaker 4: can we do? And you know, certainly, as a kid,
Speaker 4: you would get your hands lapped for sticking your hand
Speaker 4: up your nose and picking up bogogers. So we thought, well,
Speaker 4: let's reward the kids and do that. And you know,
Speaker 4: we had the tank. Initially it was filled with styrofoam,
Speaker 4: and then it was filled with water, and Mike Klinghoffer,
Speaker 4: I believe, was the one who said, well, why don't
Speaker 4: we fill it with baked beans? And trying to find
Speaker 4: enough baked beans to fill that tank is insane. The
Speaker 4: harder part was, you know, after a while, baked beans
Speaker 4: in a studio with hot light starts to smell like
Speaker 4: the most prancid cafeteria you've ever been in your entire life.
Speaker 4: And we tried to get them out by shoveling them
Speaker 4: into these big plastic bags, but the bags kept breaking.
Speaker 4: So you know, the guys should come in and clean
Speaker 4: out your sewers. We called in a guy who cleans
Speaker 4: out sewers and septic tanks. He came in and hip
Speaker 4: waiters and took one of those big sort of vacuum
Speaker 4: things and suck the beans up. So I have stories
Speaker 4: that go on forever with this.
Speaker 3: Oh I never once thought of the smell. And I
Speaker 3: also never thought i'd hear suck the beans out. And
Speaker 3: now I'm just really.
Speaker 4: Together ready, one, two, three out? Yeah. I used to
Speaker 4: pay me to do that, so that was fantastic.
Speaker 5: That's the thing I always remember about being on shows
Speaker 5: like this, especially back in the eighties, was they would
Speaker 5: be you would do these things that on paper it's like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, I get to have a giant food
Speaker 5: fight today.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 5: And then by the third hour, when you're covered in
Speaker 5: the stuff, it's slippery, you've already fallen twice, everything stinks.
Speaker 5: You're kind of going, oh, this looks a lot better
Speaker 5: on TV than actually exactly editing, yeah exactly.
Speaker 3: Was there ever a challenge that you absolutely hated every
Speaker 3: time it was wheeled out?
Speaker 4: No, but there were certain things they would try. They
Speaker 4: wanted to do a physical challenge with dog food, and
Speaker 4: if you open up a can of dog food, I
Speaker 4: started puking, and they said, well, let's try it, and
Speaker 4: they brought out the thing and opened up the dog
Speaker 4: and I stopped tape and ran outside and I said,
Speaker 4: get that stuff off the stage. I'm going to throw
Speaker 4: up here in a second. So that was not fun.
Speaker 4: But no, it was all fun. Look, ye are you
Speaker 4: kidding me? I was thirty four years old, wanting to
Speaker 4: do this my entire life and they were paying me
Speaker 4: to tell kids to go grab flags out of large noses.
Speaker 4: You know how bad could that have been? It was amazing?
Speaker 5: So wait, you said that, said you were bringing in
Speaker 5: kids locally from the Philadelphia and New Jersey area.
Speaker 2: Where were you shooting when you first.
Speaker 4: Started WHYY, which was the PBS station in Philadelphia, because
Speaker 4: Nickelodeon had no money and they didn't want to spend
Speaker 4: any money in New York. And believe it or not,
Speaker 4: in nineteen eighty six, we were spending nine thousand dollars
Speaker 4: an episode You Couldn't Do Anything Today for nine thousand
Speaker 4: dollars house, and then we kicked it up to twelve thousand,
Speaker 4: and then it got to twenty five thousand, and then
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, Funhouse came on and they were
Speaker 4: going to, you know, try and beat us, and so
Speaker 4: Warner Brothers was pouring a bunch of dough into Funhouse.
Speaker 4: So Nickelodeon decided, well, we better pour some money in
Speaker 4: as well, and when the budgets became fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 4: an episode, which still is nothing compared to today's budgets,
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Darby called me and thought, we were out of
Speaker 4: our mind. Why are we spending so much money on
Speaker 4: these episodes? But you know, if you wanted to compete
Speaker 4: and say it, because there were like seventeen lookalike shows
Speaker 4: and we wanted to stay number one, and we did so.
Speaker 5: When you started, were they was Nickelodeon already established at
Speaker 5: the Viacom building in New York.
Speaker 2: They weren't even there yet.
Speaker 4: No, they ran a different Vicon building that is there now.
Speaker 4: They were down the street closer to Central Park, then
Speaker 4: finally moved down. But you know, the thing I remember
Speaker 4: about Nickelodeon was the only reason I even knew what
Speaker 4: the hell they were was I had babies at the time,
Speaker 4: and they had a horrible puppet show that ran, you know,
Speaker 4: eighteen hours a day called Pinwheel Publish Worst Everything, And
Speaker 4: I would be up at three in the morning to
Speaker 4: feed my kids and I would be watching Pinwheel. That's
Speaker 4: all I knew about Nickeoloeon. They did a talk show
Speaker 4: for a while that was sort of Donahue esque for
Speaker 4: kids didn't work at all. It wasn't until we came
Speaker 4: on the air.
Speaker 6: Although don't you can't do that on television a kid?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was the show that I think really started
Speaker 4: the whole thing and all probably we get credit, but
Speaker 4: they got did they were? They were great?
Speaker 6: Was Doubledare before you? Because I know you can't do
Speaker 6: that on television.
Speaker 5: It was a Canadian show that was on YTV that
Speaker 5: then Nickelodeon brought to the States where you was doubled
Speaker 5: air first Double Their was first? Right, No, oh, you
Speaker 5: can't do that on television?
Speaker 2: Was first?
Speaker 4: Was first?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because that's where Nickelodeon really got the idea of
Speaker 5: that's where slime came in.
Speaker 4: And they used to start kids the money on that
Speaker 4: show if they would let them slime them.
Speaker 3: I cannot stand slime. I don't even allow my children
Speaker 3: to have it. Did you literally just come home with
Speaker 3: the feeling of slime every day?
Speaker 4: Well, it depends and show business that's a regular thing.
Speaker 4: But we had showers. There needs to say, and so
Speaker 4: I would. After the first sixty five episodes, I learned,
Speaker 4: first of all, I never wore tennis shoes. I wore
Speaker 4: penny loafers, and I didn't want that mess on me
Speaker 4: at all because I had obsessive compulsive disorder. Of course,
Speaker 4: nobody knew what I didn't even know what it was
Speaker 4: at the time. And they went to focus groups and
Speaker 4: the kids said, they love the show, but they want
Speaker 4: to get you messy. And I said why and they said, well,
Speaker 4: they just think it would be fun. So starting season
Speaker 4: two on, the kids would say, well, if we win
Speaker 4: the optical course, can we throw a pie in your face?
Speaker 4: Or can we slime you? Or can we throw you
Speaker 4: into you know this or that.
Speaker 2: And that dog food?
Speaker 4: Yes? Yeah, yeah, and so yes. I would take a
Speaker 4: shower after every show and put on, you know, a
Speaker 4: new pair of jeans and a new tie and a
Speaker 4: new sports jacket, and go ahead and do it again.
Speaker 5: Man, Well it might have been it might not have
Speaker 5: meant too much to you at thirty four, but I
Speaker 5: can tell you at twelve, because I went up with
Speaker 5: the with the don't you sit there? Sent me with
Speaker 5: the producer and I went up to you can't do
Speaker 5: that on television and went to the set and got
Speaker 5: to come out of the lockers and did everything and
Speaker 5: it culminated with me getting slimed on the set.
Speaker 6: And it's still one of the coolest things I've ever
Speaker 6: done in mine.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was great. It's not what you expect.
Speaker 5: It was a guy standing behind you with a ladder
Speaker 5: and a cigar hanging out, just dumping a bucket on
Speaker 5: your head. It was wasn't magically from the ceilings, but
Speaker 5: it was still like one of the coolest things I
Speaker 5: got to do in my career.
Speaker 4: I was spoken a cigar. That was a key point
Speaker 4: of that old.
Speaker 2: S Yeah exactly, but.
Speaker 4: Half the time that was exactly.
Speaker 5: It was magical though as a kid it was being
Speaker 5: a Nickelodeon was absolutely magical.
Speaker 4: How old do you know?
Speaker 6: I'm I just turned forty nine.
Speaker 4: Oh are you really?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Good for you?
Speaker 2: Oh thank you? So yeah. So it was.
Speaker 5: I got cast when I was twelve, and I was
Speaker 5: on Nickelodeon from twelve to fifteen and did a bunch
Speaker 5: of shows for them, and then at sixteen I got
Speaker 5: boy me throw to move out to LA But yeah,
Speaker 5: I was there opening this the You and I. That's
Speaker 5: the thing I was trying to find is I think
Speaker 5: you and I both were there and we co hosted
Speaker 5: the opening of the Slime Geyser.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes we did.
Speaker 2: So that was one.
Speaker 5: I think by that point I was fourteen and I
Speaker 5: was like, oh my god, I get to work with
Speaker 5: Mark and it was just the.
Speaker 2: Cool because well, you were the face.
Speaker 5: I mean, you were truly the face of the network,
Speaker 5: and I was when you thought of Nickelodeon, you thought
Speaker 5: of you and Double Dare. That was what put Nickelodeon
Speaker 5: on the map. Was was that? And I remember distinctly
Speaker 5: being upset because when they I was recast.
Speaker 2: On Don't You Sit There?
Speaker 5: So I took over for one of the hosts set
Speaker 5: left and when they brought me on, I missed. I
Speaker 5: guess the entire cast of Don't You Sit There? Went
Speaker 5: on Doubledare and got to run the obstacle course like
Speaker 5: two days before they brought me home man. And so
Speaker 5: I was it is because again I watched Nickelodeon, and
Speaker 5: that meant watching Doubledare, That's what you watched, and it
Speaker 5: was I had friends. We would sit on the playground
Speaker 5: talking about, well, what do we have to do to
Speaker 5: get on the show?
Speaker 2: Do you send in?
Speaker 5: At the time, it was I think somebody said you
Speaker 5: could VHS tape you could send in yourself, or you
Speaker 5: had to make a phone call. But we actively tried
Speaker 5: to find out how to get on the show as kids.
Speaker 4: We had to tour the country and do auditions, you know,
Speaker 4: all over the country as well.
Speaker 6: So that, I mean, that's a good question.
Speaker 5: How did if you were a kid, what was the
Speaker 5: best way to get on Double Dare? How did I mean,
Speaker 5: what was the audition process?
Speaker 4: Like in Philadelphia? We picked from Philly, New Jersey area,
Speaker 4: and then got into New York and we moved on
Speaker 4: to Orlando. This was the best part. We would hold
Speaker 4: up signs and say who wants to audition for Double Dare?
Speaker 4: And in a day we had a bazillion people there
Speaker 4: and we would turn the audiences over. It sat about
Speaker 4: five in Philly, we only shot abou sat about ninety people,
Speaker 4: but in Orlando we had about five hundred, and we
Speaker 4: would turn the audiences over. You saw Round one, got
Speaker 4: redmend brought in a new group, see round two, get
Speaker 4: rid of them, bring people in. Watched you know, a
Speaker 4: couple obstacle courses. Because there were so many people who
Speaker 4: came to Orlando and came to Universal Studios just to
Speaker 4: see our show. And we tried to get as many
Speaker 4: people in as possible, and that's where we'd be in
Speaker 4: Audis because we were doing family double there at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we were psheing moms and dads and kids and we
Speaker 4: did already doubled air with Weird Al and Luf Farigno
Speaker 4: and you name it, we did them. You know, they
Speaker 4: all wanted to be on the show.
Speaker 2: Oh man, Well it's just so much.
Speaker 3: It's a massive hit pretty quickly. Does your entire life change?
Speaker 3: Do kids recognize you everywhere you go?
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know that was pretty instantaneous. That was so
Speaker 4: bizarre to me to be, you know, having dinner at
Speaker 4: a you know, McDonald's with my family and you know,
Speaker 4: fourteen people come up to you. Now cell phones didn't exist. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, they couldn't take pictures, so to speak, but
Speaker 4: they all wanted autographs and they wanted to talk to you.
Speaker 4: And yeah, it changed a lot. And you know, nobody
Speaker 4: can prepare you for that, because you just don't have
Speaker 4: any idea what it's like when you're you know, trying
Speaker 4: to go to the bathroom between an intermission on a
Speaker 4: Broadway show and so many points to you as you're
Speaker 4: going to the bathroom, they go, aren't you. Yeah, it
Speaker 4: just happens in weird spots.
Speaker 3: Yep, did your kids think it was cool? I actually
Speaker 3: went to high school with your son. Oh did you
Speaker 3: really yes, Calabasas High.
Speaker 4: Oh my god. Yes, they thought it was cool because
Speaker 4: I got to do all sorts of things. I you know,
Speaker 4: I hosted Easter at the White House, so they got
Speaker 4: to go there and hang out at the White House.
Speaker 4: You know, I was always going to you know, throwing
Speaker 4: out first pitches at Major League Baseball games, and so
Speaker 4: they got to participate in all that stuff and got
Speaker 4: to tour with me when I was out on the road,
Speaker 4: you know, doing Doubledare Live and stuff. So yeah, it's
Speaker 4: they had a lot of fun doing that stuff.
Speaker 3: So I want to talk to you about your one
Speaker 3: man show, The Life and Slimes of Mark Summers. How
Speaker 3: did this come about?
Speaker 4: In nineteen sixty four, I went to New York for
Speaker 4: the first time and saw Fiddler on the Road with
Speaker 4: Herschel Bernardi, and I thought, oh my god, I've never
Speaker 4: seen anything like this growing up in Indiana. My parents
Speaker 4: never took me to Broadway shows, touring shows, and I said,
Speaker 4: this is what I want to do so when I
Speaker 4: saw that at age thirteen, I tried to figure it
Speaker 4: out well. I took a bunch of other paths, obviously,
Speaker 4: from magic to stand up comedy to hosting and whatever,
Speaker 4: but it was always in the back of my head.
Speaker 4: And first I was diagnosed with cancer and got through that.
Speaker 4: And then I was in a car accident where I
Speaker 4: broke every bone in my face. And I met with
Speaker 4: a guy who was starring in Hairspray Bruce Flanche at
Speaker 4: the time, and I had lunch with him one afternoon
Speaker 4: and I said, you know, someday I want to do this,
Speaker 4: and he said, summer. Stopped talking about it and do
Speaker 4: it already. And so I met a producer who had
Speaker 4: a summer theater in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and
Speaker 4: I said, hey, I'd love to be on Broadway. But
Speaker 4: I know you're not going to give me that job
Speaker 4: right away. But if there's any job I can get
Speaker 4: to sort of work my way in, and he said,
Speaker 4: give me your number. I don't know. I just bought
Speaker 4: the summerstock theater and let me see. And he called
Speaker 4: me about a month later and I said, we're doing Greece.
Speaker 4: Would you like to play Vince Fontagne. I said, do
Speaker 4: I have to audition? He said no, it's yours and
Speaker 4: I took it. And so that was about twelve thirteen
Speaker 4: summers ago, and I played Vince Fontaine and Greece. While
Speaker 4: I was there, I met a guy by the name
Speaker 4: of Drew Gasperini who introduced me to a guy by
Speaker 4: the name of Alex Brightman, and they become fast friends.
Speaker 4: Brightman has since started in School of Rock and Beetlejuice
Speaker 4: and numerous other things, and drew as a writer of
Speaker 4: several Broadway shows and musicals. And I said one day
Speaker 4: I want to do a one man show, and they
Speaker 4: wrote it for me. We started it in Bloomington, Indiana.
Speaker 4: Then we went and did the at around at Theater Festival.
Speaker 4: We did a place in Pennsylvania, and we did Buffalo,
Speaker 4: New York. And while we were playing Buffalo a couple
Speaker 4: summers ago, the Missus Doubtfire tour had opened next to us,
Speaker 4: and the director of that show came, unbeknownst to me
Speaker 4: on his day off to see it. Came backstage afterwards
Speaker 4: and said, have you ever thought about doing this on Broadway?
Speaker 4: And I said, well, anywhere in New York would be great,
Speaker 4: and he said, well, I know people, why don't I
Speaker 4: connect you. He set up a meeting a couple of
Speaker 4: weeks later in New York, and three months later I
Speaker 4: opened my show six months off Broadway called The Life
Speaker 4: and Times of Mark summer Man Ough. Yeah, it was
Speaker 4: so much fun. I did the show.
Speaker 2: Change it all going to Broadway or was pretty much.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it got better. I became more relaxed. When I
Speaker 4: first started doing it, I was nervous at trouble remembering lines.
Speaker 4: And things changed in my life from the twelve years
Speaker 4: we started it to where it ended up. And plus
Speaker 4: I had, you know, real people behind me now with
Speaker 4: a real stage and real lights and real everything. And
Speaker 4: it was Chadra Benovitz, who was our director, who initially
Speaker 4: took the bull by the horns and said, this is
Speaker 4: something that I like and we should be doing. So
Speaker 4: the original team Chad and Me and Drew and Alex
Speaker 4: and a guy by the name of Mike Nappie. From
Speaker 4: day one we worked together and we ended up doing
Speaker 4: it in New York together and it was one of
Speaker 4: the biggest thrills in my life. And then from there
Speaker 4: somebody from Hallmark saw me and I start in a
Speaker 4: Hallmark movie called Hanegun the Rocks that aired last December,
Speaker 4: which we'll airn now forever.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's amazing.
Speaker 5: So wait, you mentioned that your your family never took
Speaker 5: you to like Broadway shows or things like that. Was
Speaker 5: anybody in your family in the entertainment business?
Speaker 3: How?
Speaker 2: A brother the love start.
Speaker 4: My brother was a musician and he was a prodigy,
Speaker 4: and at age fifteen he was being picked up from
Speaker 4: our house and driven to Chicago to play drums with
Speaker 4: Henry Mancini and Johnny Mathis, for God's sake. So he
Speaker 4: was in the industry doing that, still doing it today,
Speaker 4: believe it or not, in his late seventies and doing
Speaker 4: orchestras and stuff. He was Marvin Hamlish's conductor for ten years.
Speaker 4: I mean he's he was in the industry, but in
Speaker 4: a different form, more behind the scenes. And you know,
Speaker 4: my dad was in the insurance business, and my parents said,
Speaker 4: you know, you should go in the insurance business with
Speaker 4: your father. You'd be a great, you know, guy who
Speaker 4: could do that. And I had no interest. All I
Speaker 4: ever wanted to do. I came out of the world
Speaker 4: wanted to be in the entertainment industry. I never took
Speaker 4: a job in a restaurant. I never worked at Macy's.
Speaker 4: Not there's anything wrong with that, but I went with
Speaker 4: the idea that if you do that, then chances of
Speaker 4: you going where you want to go is going to happen.
Speaker 4: So I never took a job outside the business. The
Speaker 4: worst job I ever had was at a restaurant called
Speaker 4: The Hungry Tiger and Los Angeles, and I was a
Speaker 4: disc jockey and a disco that they had for a while,
Speaker 4: and I hated that job. But that was as far
Speaker 4: outside show business I ever got.
Speaker 3: Man, you mentioned that you had been diagnosed with cancer
Speaker 3: a long time ago. How is your health now.
Speaker 4: I'm on medication on a daily basis. I take a
Speaker 4: pill that only cost eighteen thousand thousand a month.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's it.
Speaker 4: Huh, Yeah, that's it. I was in chemo three times.
Speaker 4: First time for two years and it was good for
Speaker 4: a few years. It took it again for a year,
Speaker 4: it was good for a year or two. Took it
Speaker 4: again and it wasn't good and they were really going
Speaker 4: to have to blast me with some really intense stuff.
Speaker 4: Or if this pill works and it doesn't work on everybody,
Speaker 4: you're in pretty good shape.
Speaker 6: And so is it to Griso?
Speaker 4: Pardon me?
Speaker 2: Is it to Griso?
Speaker 4: No, It's called IMBRUVCA okay, And I've been on it
Speaker 4: for almost five years now and it's keeping me alive.
Speaker 4: You know, I'll be seventy four in about eight weeks,
Speaker 4: and you know, still feel like a million bucks.
Speaker 3: Good for you. I also wanted to talk to you
Speaker 3: about something else you had mentioned, and we kind of
Speaker 3: glossed right over it. But I know people like to
Speaker 3: focus on your OCD now and how you hosted the
Speaker 3: messiest show on TV. My husband also suffers from OCD,
Speaker 3: but he has more of the obsessive thoughts rather than
Speaker 3: the truth. Yes, exactly. And so what was it like
Speaker 3: for you doing double there and having OCD and not
Speaker 3: even knowing it at the time.
Speaker 4: Well, I knew I didn't like get messy, and I
Speaker 4: knew I liked everything organized, but you wait your whole
Speaker 4: life to get a job. Little did I know it
Speaker 4: was going to be the Miss MESSI show on television.
Speaker 4: And so I had to have a conversation with myself.
Speaker 4: You finally got where you want to go? Are you
Speaker 4: going to let this stand in your way? And so
Speaker 4: nobody knew I had it. I didn't even know what
Speaker 4: it was called. And then when I was diagnosed, I
Speaker 4: was hosting a talk show on Lifetime called Biggers and
Speaker 4: Summers and doctor Eric Hollander was on, and I read
Speaker 4: the research the night before and found out, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: all the stuff I've been doing as a name. And
Speaker 4: I had to decide we were live. Do I lie
Speaker 4: and go on that show and pretend I don't have it,
Speaker 4: or do I come out and say, hey, this is
Speaker 4: what I have. And I said, this is what I
Speaker 4: have and made the announcement. Well, the next thing I know,
Speaker 4: I'm on Oprah and Dateline and Jerry Labor and the
Speaker 4: president of the network called me and apologized. I said,
Speaker 4: you have nothing to apologize for. It changed my life
Speaker 4: in a positive way, you know, but who knew. So
Speaker 4: it's about I have a podcast called March and Summers
Speaker 4: on wraps. And here's the deal. You go to a movie,
Speaker 4: you see a movie star, you watch somebody on TV,
Speaker 4: go to a Broadway show and see somebody and you say, well,
Speaker 4: they have the best life in the world. How did
Speaker 4: that happen? And it's about having a passion and why
Speaker 4: do some people give up on that passion and go
Speaker 4: sell shoes or you know, working in the insurance business
Speaker 4: and others. Keep moving. And I've had everybody on my show.
Speaker 4: We just had Jay Leno on this past week. I've
Speaker 4: got George Klepper coming on in the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 4: Michael Simon, who was a chef on Food Network. We've
Speaker 4: been fascinating people on the show. We've been doing it
Speaker 4: for a couple of years, and those are where the
Speaker 4: stories are really interesting. Is what made you decide to
Speaker 4: keep going forward? Because the word that you generally hear
Speaker 4: in the entertainment industry, as you all know, is no,
Speaker 4: you didn't get the job. Why do you keep moving forward?
Speaker 4: Then you either have to have a hell of a
Speaker 4: lot of confidence in yourself or be out of your mind,
Speaker 4: or combination of the two. You know, and all of
Speaker 4: us here are talking today kind of have that in
Speaker 4: our bodies. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, it's also what you said about you were born
Speaker 5: wanting to be an entertainer. I think those are the
Speaker 5: people that you meet more often than not. Out Here
Speaker 5: are people that we've talked about this Danielle Ryder and
Speaker 5: I where you can't see yourself doing anything else.
Speaker 6: Ever, you can't not be in the entertainment industry.
Speaker 4: And I felt like I've never worked a day in
Speaker 4: my life. I can achieve that I get a check
Speaker 4: to do what I do, you know, And I've done
Speaker 4: talk shows and I've done game shows, and you know,
Speaker 4: I've done a little bit of everything, and at the
Speaker 4: end of the week, I get a check for that.
Speaker 4: It's like, are you kidding me out? Have done this
Speaker 4: for free? You know?
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: Is there any talk anywhere about bringing back Doubledare?
Speaker 4: I doubt it because you know, as you know, Nickelodeon
Speaker 4: was just sold in the whole CBS Paramount deal. When
Speaker 4: we came back seven eight years ago, the show was
Speaker 4: doing great, but new management came in and the first
Speaker 4: thing new management does is cancel things, whether they're successful
Speaker 4: or not. Could I still do the show? Absolutely. I
Speaker 4: went out and did a tour a few years ago,
Speaker 4: and you know, we had more adults and kids because
Speaker 4: they wanted to relive their childhood. But I can't imagine
Speaker 4: in a million years two things a that they would
Speaker 4: even bring it back, or anybody who's running Nickelodeon these
Speaker 4: days even knows what double there is. And I'm sure,
Speaker 4: they would be very hesitant to take a seventy four
Speaker 4: year old man and put them on that position. I
Speaker 4: could do it. We had an influencer do it last time.
Speaker 4: She did an okay job. But you know, I always
Speaker 4: say this, and it's true. She was sick one day
Speaker 4: and I filled in, and when I did, the ratings
Speaker 4: went up twenty five percent. So there's something I bring
Speaker 4: to the show that of course.
Speaker 3: Of course.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man.
Speaker 3: One thing I wanted to ask you about too, that
Speaker 3: is properly viral in twenty twenty five, especially with TikTok
Speaker 3: is your encounter with Burt Reynolds on The Tonight Show.
Speaker 3: Are you surprised that this clip is running rampant more
Speaker 3: than thirty years later?
Speaker 4: Thirty years later and it doesn't go away? You know,
Speaker 4: every six weeks there's a debate online about me and
Speaker 4: Bert and everybody says, oh, it was all set up,
Speaker 4: And as I always say, I'm not that good of
Speaker 4: an actor. I couldn't have done that. He just hated
Speaker 4: me for the minute I walked out there, and what
Speaker 4: happened is what happened. Jay, you know, called me the
Speaker 4: next day and was going out between you and Bert.
Speaker 4: You know, you had no idea that I was going
Speaker 4: to turn into what it turned into. But it never
Speaker 4: seems to go away. And when they do the you
Speaker 4: know classic moments of the Tonight Show, I'm in that
Speaker 4: thing every darn time.
Speaker 3: Did you ever run into Bert again?
Speaker 4: No? I would have run him over if I could,
Speaker 4: But I didn't run into No. I did not. And
Speaker 4: I was at a French house the next day who
Speaker 4: knew his publicist and said, why don't we call him
Speaker 4: and see what the publicist says. And the publicist said,
Speaker 4: Bert thought I was a bottom feeder of show business,
Speaker 4: and I didn't show the movie star any respect. And
Speaker 4: here's the thing you'll ask yourself, how does the guy
Speaker 4: who was the number one box office star for five
Speaker 4: years in a row die with no money? Not not
Speaker 4: the smartest bulb in the pack. And there's all sorts
Speaker 4: of other stories I can tell you that I won't,
Speaker 4: But nonetheless it was great for my career, and it
Speaker 4: was part of the downward turn of his I believe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I did two episodes of Evening Shape before
Speaker 1: I did Boy Me, so you know they were the
Speaker 1: worst experiences. Like I was so terrified of him, and
Speaker 1: he was so awful.
Speaker 2: He was so mean.
Speaker 1: I have multiple and it's like, you know, people have
Speaker 1: asked like, how was it working with Burt Reynolds. I'm like, awful,
Speaker 1: Like like he's like one of those few people.
Speaker 2: And then I had a friend.
Speaker 1: Who did the Dukes of Hazzard reboot movie with him
Speaker 1: years later and they became friendly and I was like, really,
Speaker 1: you're getting along with Bertie. He's like, well he was
Speaker 1: grumpy back in those days, back in the evening. I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't care, man, you treat you treat
Speaker 1: like you know, I watched him treat a prop a
Speaker 1: prop master so horribly and like that's you know, you
Speaker 1: don't treat your crew like that.
Speaker 2: He was drinking an episode two like he.
Speaker 4: Was those people making it look good every day. You know,
Speaker 4: if anybody should be you should be nice to. It's
Speaker 4: all those lighting gaffer every folks who do it on
Speaker 4: a daily basis. But yeah, that never goes away, and
Speaker 4: that's fine. And every time I go in and I
Speaker 4: say it wasn't set up and I went, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: why do they have pies? And I've given this explanation
Speaker 4: a million times and I'm sort of done with it.
Speaker 4: But you know, because of the Internet and everybody thinks
Speaker 4: they're an expert on everything. Don't waste your time, you
Speaker 4: and get into an argument because these people, you know,
Speaker 4: live in their mother's basements, and you know they're the
Speaker 4: ones who call you on your phone when it says spam,
Speaker 4: And those are the people I'm debating with. And I
Speaker 4: realized I'm done with that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, good for you, man, looking back on your career,
Speaker 3: which has been so long, and you've you've never worked
Speaker 3: a job outside of the entertainment industry. If you could
Speaker 3: go back to young, young Mark, just starting out and
Speaker 3: tell him one thing about his future, what would you
Speaker 3: tell him?
Speaker 4: Never accept the word known no matter what they say,
Speaker 4: and just keep believing in yourself because you're good. Now,
Speaker 4: here's the thing that's interesting. When I started the comedy
Speaker 4: store in the Magic Castle, I thought I was pretty good.
Speaker 4: But the first night I went to the comedy store
Speaker 4: and I saw Jay and Dave and Robin and those
Speaker 4: kinds of people, and I went, oh, my god, I
Speaker 4: have so much work to do. And here's a funny story.
Speaker 4: So I was engaged. And my wife didn't quite understand
Speaker 4: the entertainment industry. She was a dental assistant, and I
Speaker 4: brought her to the Magic Castle to see my show
Speaker 4: and I thought I killed. I thought, man, I couldn't
Speaker 4: have done a better job. And I'm so glad that
Speaker 4: she saw that show. And she came backstage afterwards and
Speaker 4: I said, so, what do you think And she said
Speaker 4: to me, it got a lot of work to the
Speaker 4: years later.
Speaker 5: She was the ones that are honest, you stick with
Speaker 5: the ones that are honest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she was undred percent right. You know, there's something
Speaker 4: that we used to call in the comedy store days
Speaker 4: laugh ears. You tell a joke and the audience doesn't laugh,
Speaker 4: but in your mind you say, wow, they love that
Speaker 4: joke when they really didn't. And so you have to
Speaker 4: get to a reality point in your life where you go,
Speaker 4: you know, when Robin Williams walk on stage, and it
Speaker 4: would take them, you know, twenty five minutes to say hello,
Speaker 4: and by the time you walk sometimes I'd have to
Speaker 4: follow Robin at the Comedy Store. Of course, after Robin
Speaker 4: was on what could you do? In my opening line,
Speaker 4: they say you not welcome to comedy Mark Summers, and
Speaker 4: I'd say, oh, thank you, Lisien John walking ovation because
Speaker 4: everybody was leaving the column.
Speaker 3: Store Finally, my last question for you. Have you ever
Speaker 3: wondered what life is a rabbi would have looked like?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't. I found out, you know, after
Speaker 4: the fact that it would not have been good for me.
Speaker 4: I'm not good one on one even to this day
Speaker 4: as far as you know, doing that kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Maybe I would have been, you know, sort of bred
Speaker 4: into that lifestyle. But you know, when we were touring
Speaker 4: the Nickelodeon show and doing Double There at the Palace
Speaker 4: of Auburn Hills and selling out twenty thousand seedars on
Speaker 4: a regular basis for years, it's all different feel And
Speaker 4: I really like the fact of helping a lot of
Speaker 4: people a little as opposed to the other view. And
Speaker 4: you learn a lot from people as well. And I mean,
Speaker 4: I can tell you endless stories. We used to do
Speaker 4: weeks on Double There that had various themes, and we
Speaker 4: did a cancer week once and I was in the
Speaker 4: makeup room and it kid came after me and said, Hey, Mark,
Speaker 4: you know how I got on Double There. I've got
Speaker 4: cancer And I said, I kind of think there's easier
Speaker 4: ways to get on this. But you know, we did
Speaker 4: a lot of you know, last wish kind of situations
Speaker 4: as well, because the show had so much impact and
Speaker 4: the fact that you, you know, would bring these kids
Speaker 4: in and they'd you know, run the course, and the
Speaker 4: parents would be sitting in your dressing room watching the
Speaker 4: kids have the best time in their life, and they'd
Speaker 4: have tears in their eyes. But for that moment, it
Speaker 4: was the most important thing to those kids. So I
Speaker 4: was able to provide a lot of happiness as well.
Speaker 4: And you know, I've had a charmed existence and I
Speaker 4: am just thankful that I was in the situation I
Speaker 4: was and got to do everything I got to do well.
Speaker 3: Mark, Thank you so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 3: You've been such a pleasure and a delight, and you
Speaker 3: have so many interesting stories. I feel like we could
Speaker 3: keep you here for another hour and just listen to everything.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: I know for sure Will has a million questions.
Speaker 2: But I've been good.
Speaker 6: I've been good. I've been good.
Speaker 4: I do these fairly often, and I don't get to
Speaker 4: work with pros like you guys that much. You are spectacular,
Speaker 4: and I appreciate the hard work you put in and
Speaker 4: the fantastic job you do in the interviews with Thank
Speaker 4: you for that.
Speaker 3: Thank you Thank you so much. Mark, It was really
Speaker 3: wonderful to have you here. Really means a lot to
Speaker 3: all of us.
Speaker 4: You guys have a great day. Thanks so much, you
Speaker 4: too too.
Speaker 2: Bye bye bye.
Speaker 3: Man. That guy's life, what.
Speaker 2: A career, legend. I love it. Legend. He was the
Speaker 2: face of the entire network.
Speaker 5: I mean when we were on the on Nickelodeon, it
Speaker 5: didn't matter what show you are, no matter what you
Speaker 5: were doing.
Speaker 2: It was if he walked into the room, the network was.
Speaker 6: There, Mark was there.
Speaker 1: It would have been incredibly rude to ask. But if
Speaker 1: they're only paying nine thousand dollars in an episode, he is.
Speaker 2: Not making a whole lot of kid is doing that
Speaker 2: for the love.
Speaker 1: And he is, and he's doing I mean even if
Speaker 1: he's getting I mean he was making method Yeah, and
Speaker 1: yet he like he said he would have done it
Speaker 1: for free.
Speaker 5: Well, I can tell you when I started on Don't
Speaker 5: Just Sit There, I was making eleven hundred dollars a
Speaker 5: week and we would do something like twenty episodes.
Speaker 6: I mean it was like we were doing a ton
Speaker 6: of you.
Speaker 3: Were just making it per week, not per episode, No.
Speaker 6: Not per episode. It was eleven hundred dollars a week.
Speaker 1: In New York since six episodes a day, he was
Speaker 1: probably making about that and.
Speaker 2: For you as a kid, you're like, this is d
Speaker 2: was the greatest thing in the world.
Speaker 5: It was, And we shot during the summers because obviously
Speaker 5: they didn't want to put us in school, so it
Speaker 5: was you know, they would throw in as much as
Speaker 5: they possibly could. But that's so, you know, that was
Speaker 5: I think I started on Nickelodeon in eighty seven eighty eight,
Speaker 5: and that was big money back then to make that
Speaker 5: kind of cash, especially as.
Speaker 6: A twelve year old.
Speaker 5: But it didn't matter what we were doing where we were.
Speaker 5: There were two things you wanted when you were working
Speaker 5: at Nickelodeon. The first was, when you got to a
Speaker 5: certain level, they gave you a Nickelodeon watch. It was
Speaker 5: awesome that it was I'm sure I'm somewhere, yes, of course.
Speaker 6: And the other thing was to meet Mark Summers, that's
Speaker 6: just all.
Speaker 2: And to get slimed.
Speaker 5: Those are the three things that were like, if you
Speaker 5: could do that, you you you made it. And now
Speaker 5: to this day still regret that I missed being able
Speaker 5: to run the Obstacle course by like a week.
Speaker 3: You know what, such a such an incredible thing that
Speaker 3: like things work out the way they do sometimes in
Speaker 3: the sense that someone like Mark Summers, obviously an incredibly
Speaker 3: kind and nice person, is the person who ends up
Speaker 3: working with kids. Imagine if Burt Reynolds had gotten the.
Speaker 5: Job run the double there, Come on, what's going on?
Speaker 5: Who's gonna double there?
Speaker 2: It's happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's you know, the problem with someone like Burt
Speaker 1: Renalds is he's so disappointed in his own career.
Speaker 2: It's like ego is so fragile that.
Speaker 1: He's not you know, he's always comparing himself to you know,
Speaker 1: I guess probably Marlon Brando, like he's.
Speaker 5: Just like again he was Mark is right, he was
Speaker 5: the number one draw for cinema for like what four
Speaker 5: years or five years now, but.
Speaker 2: Then he maybe felt like he let himself down by
Speaker 2: I don't know what.
Speaker 1: But you look at somebody like Mark who just I
Speaker 1: always wanted He just wanted to be a talk show
Speaker 1: or a game show host and got there, and like
Speaker 1: every step of the way getting there was not beating
Speaker 1: himself up or disappointed.
Speaker 2: Just how much harder do I have to work? What's next?
Speaker 1: And then you know, eventually get in a Broadway show.
Speaker 1: But how many years did that take. It's like, you
Speaker 1: have to have such.
Speaker 2: A good attitude about these things because otherwise you give up.
Speaker 3: Well, even just hearing him say before he got doubled
Speaker 3: there from the time he moved to La to getting
Speaker 3: double there was thirteen years years, thirteen years.
Speaker 5: Oh the stories that guy must have about being the
Speaker 5: page and.
Speaker 2: All the different shows.
Speaker 5: No, oh, man, that's like, please write a book, Please
Speaker 5: write a book.
Speaker 4: You know what.
Speaker 3: You got to go check out the One Man Show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true too. You wonder how much he holds
Speaker 2: back there?
Speaker 5: You wonder, like I will tell you.
Speaker 2: Yes, all right, we're taking Mark summers lunch. Let's go.
Speaker 5: Well, he lives near us, Danielle, because I saw him
Speaker 5: at the local grocery store like a year ago.
Speaker 3: So he said, he said, you have my number, so
Speaker 3: will well, we'll make sure you have his number and
Speaker 3: if you could arrange a lunch, we'll do it. Like
Speaker 3: I said, I know we live somewhat close to him
Speaker 3: because we went to high school with I went to
Speaker 3: high school with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Man, anyway, that was such a fun interview. Thank you
Speaker 3: so much for joining us for this episode of Pod
Speaker 3: Meets World. As always, you can follow us on Instagram
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Speaker 2: Old School March I love.
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Speaker 2: We love you all, pod dismissed.
Speaker 1: Pod Meets World is an iHeart podcast producer and hosted
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