Speaker 1: Hey there, Fana Ritos.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to an all new episode of How Rude
Speaker 2: Tana Ritos. Today we have the warm up guy and
Speaker 2: writer who worked on a lot of your favorite sitcoms
Speaker 2: back in the day. It's Bob Purlow. And believe it
Speaker 2: or not, Bob was entertaining live audiences on shows like
Speaker 2: Full House Friends and Growing Pains for three to five
Speaker 2: hours each tape night.
Speaker 3: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: He even wrote a book about his career as a
Speaker 2: warm up guy, and.
Speaker 1: We are so excited to talk to him today.
Speaker 2: So please everyone put your hands together for Bob Purlow.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 4: Hi, you guys.
Speaker 3: Done, Hi, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 4: Let me just finish. I'm reading something. Let me finish.
Speaker 3: You take a five. It's an original script. Oh I read?
Speaker 3: Did we wait?
Speaker 1: What's written on there? Did we all sign it? Or
Speaker 1: is that just your notes?
Speaker 4: No? No, I write, I write notes during the show.
Speaker 3: What were your notes? What notes?
Speaker 1: What notes do you have for us?
Speaker 4: See if you if you remember this my left and
Speaker 4: right foot.
Speaker 2: No, we haven't got we haven't gotten there yet and
Speaker 2: we were only on season five.
Speaker 1: We've got many to go. So yeah, my is this
Speaker 1: one that you wrote of no, oh okay, but.
Speaker 3: You're just given not okay? So that last sea yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: that was would have been season eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Oh written by Ellen Guy. Oh yeah, I remember, yeah,
Speaker 4: Tom Rickett directly.
Speaker 2: I remember Tom Okeah wasn't he He was a stage
Speaker 2: manager or a d at one point and then he
Speaker 2: moved up to director.
Speaker 3: He said, yeah, that's so cool.
Speaker 2: Well, Bob, we're so excited to have you on the show.
Speaker 2: You're our first warm up person that's been on the podcast.
Speaker 2: We've been doing this for two years now, and we
Speaker 2: thought we got to go back, we got to go
Speaker 2: back to our original warm up guy. Like, this is fantastic.
Speaker 2: You're such a funny person. Uh yeah, thanks for coming
Speaker 2: on on our podcast. Is it is warm up Guy
Speaker 2: the official name of the profession?
Speaker 1: Or is there like a different lingo?
Speaker 3: Oh, he's leaving, he's left.
Speaker 1: I've offended him.
Speaker 3: I've offended him. And you asked one question.
Speaker 5: Walking in the background, he's got a he's there's there's
Speaker 5: something official?
Speaker 3: Is it a name the warm up Guy?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: Is this is this your book that you wrote about
Speaker 2: being a warm up guy?
Speaker 3: So that's the official title.
Speaker 4: An eight year old Man and warm Up man. You
Speaker 4: know you're the warm up.
Speaker 3: Guy, right, the warm up guy?
Speaker 5: Yeah? And warm up man doesn't have it sounds too mature, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Instead of where's the warm up guy?
Speaker 1: Where do you go? And tell everyone? What is a
Speaker 1: warm up guy?
Speaker 2: I mean, we've talked about it on the show a lot,
Speaker 2: but from from the source himself, what is funny?
Speaker 4: I just did a lecture to college last week with adults,
Speaker 4: and I did. I'm the woman. Oh your cook, I'm almost.
Speaker 3: So you have operate a microwave? Basically, right?
Speaker 4: Where are you? Guys?
Speaker 2: We podcast from our homes nice and it's great. We
Speaker 2: get to see each other via the zoom every week
Speaker 2: and catch up and talk about Full House and make
Speaker 2: fun of ourselves as teenagers and little kids.
Speaker 3: We get to be we get to be the podcast guys.
Speaker 4: It's iconic. Full House is forever Franklin very well known.
Speaker 3: Truly, Oh yeah, truly.
Speaker 2: So we would do a live show, a live audience show,
Speaker 2: every Friday night and with two hundred and fifty strangers, fans,
Speaker 2: et cetera.
Speaker 1: And so you were the guy that was.
Speaker 2: In charge of keeping everyone awake for all those hours, warming.
Speaker 5: Them up before we even start the show to make
Speaker 5: sure they're like ready to laugh.
Speaker 3: Right, that's like the big hype guy.
Speaker 4: That's a misconception. If you do that, you start off
Speaker 4: here and there's no place to go but here.
Speaker 3: Oh that's true.
Speaker 4: You've got to modulate and say how long is this
Speaker 4: show going to be? Oh, Michelle has a has three
Speaker 4: scenes and which baby is going to be up and
Speaker 4: not cranking?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: And I had to figure that in. So if I started, oh,
Speaker 4: this is funny, always funny, and then three hours later
Speaker 4: he's not only not funny, I hate him.
Speaker 5: He's keeping Yeah, that's not talking at me, and you
Speaker 5: want yeah, well, it's part of the game because they
Speaker 5: don't know they're going to be there.
Speaker 4: For three to five hours.
Speaker 3: True, right, they get.
Speaker 4: Tickets, Oh, we've got full house tickets. It's thirty five minutes.
Speaker 4: It's thirty minutes when we're watch it on TV. So
Speaker 4: if they make a mistake or tube yeah yeah, right,
Speaker 4: the reservations for seven you may want to bring a sandwich.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We had to start feeding them because their blood, their
Speaker 2: blood sugar would be as feed You.
Speaker 4: And Friends, which was just down the street from you guys.
Speaker 4: That took eight hours. Yeah, with the audience with the.
Speaker 5: Audience audiences halfway through. Sometimes you know, they kept the
Speaker 5: same one, yeah.
Speaker 4: At the beginning for the first two years, because the
Speaker 4: producers of that show did a showtime show called dream
Speaker 4: On right, which was no audience and it was a hit,
Speaker 4: so they thought this is how you do it.
Speaker 5: You can't sitcom like a single camp.
Speaker 2: Right, God, no eight hours and they don't even have
Speaker 2: kids or dogs on that show.
Speaker 3: That makes us look really super.
Speaker 5: Yah don't Yeah, they say, don't work with dogs or
Speaker 5: kids or apparently on a taping of.
Speaker 4: Friends, Yeah, it was funny and then you guys know this,
Speaker 4: but I'm Friends. After the first scene, right, it is
Speaker 4: over here and in front of the audience, they were
Speaker 4: believe they're making stuff up, and you and I know
Speaker 4: that what they're saying is, what's that joke we had
Speaker 4: on Monday that we threw away? Right, right, So I'm
Speaker 4: making up that they're reconstituting, yeah, right right the scene
Speaker 4: what joke works?
Speaker 1: Got to joke work, and sometimes you got to change.
Speaker 4: The house was an unusual warm up because of the
Speaker 4: amount of kids in the audience, so I had to modulate,
Speaker 4: but I did, and and Garrett toward a younger audience,
Speaker 4: So no swearing, no family friendly, right.
Speaker 5: I think didn't we had a did we have an
Speaker 5: age limit on kids? It was like ten or twelve
Speaker 5: or something because they had to sit there for a while,
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 4: In less weeks old.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like twelve.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, wow, But yeah we had I mean, our
Speaker 5: audience has definitely had a lot of kids and a
Speaker 5: lot of families, So I'm yeah, I'm sure you it's
Speaker 5: you got to sort of get rid of a few
Speaker 5: jokes here and there.
Speaker 4: Oh got you totally.
Speaker 3: I mean, Reggie was it was.
Speaker 5: That was full house, the first like family show you'd
Speaker 5: ever done.
Speaker 4: Warm up for No, most of the shows family shows
Speaker 4: because because if you recall after ninety five and when
Speaker 4: you guys were off the air is when the not
Speaker 4: to bring HBO into it, but the breaking baths and
Speaker 4: stuff and the swearing came in.
Speaker 5: I read more of the sort of premiere television, like
Speaker 5: more adult skewing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but family shows, that's what I did mostly.
Speaker 3: Well, that's true, I guess. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Sitcoms are kind of one of the only things that
Speaker 5: shoots in front of a live audience, and they tend
Speaker 5: to be relatively well.
Speaker 4: Then I did Growing Pains, New Heart, Yeah, all those
Speaker 4: shows with family shows and they didn't go blue at all. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Great, And you worked on Laverne and Shirley? Were you
Speaker 2: the warm up guy or the or a writer on.
Speaker 4: That sh The writer Franklin, for those who don't know,
Speaker 4: is the creator and executive producer of Full House and
Speaker 4: Malcolm and Eddie and a few others in movies. You know,
Speaker 4: we started the same day and Laverne insurance.
Speaker 3: Really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 4: He was prepared. I was. I just got go, oh,
Speaker 4: you're funny, want to be a writer. Sure, And my
Speaker 4: life changed from that point. Wow.
Speaker 3: Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 1: That's so cool.
Speaker 2: He yeah, he's told the story about how all the
Speaker 2: showrunner got fired and suddenly he's in charge.
Speaker 1: Is this the show?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, any Marshall's everybody in the ring room and
Speaker 5: Jeff was like the guy that got kept.
Speaker 4: Yeah he was. He was nineteen years old. I think
Speaker 4: he's really young. And Gary Marshall hired him. And just
Speaker 4: because Penny and Cindy had a habit of firing all
Speaker 4: the writers occasionally, just.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a dang And they were just.
Speaker 4: Next next and Lion obviously changed his life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that would be terrifying to just think that
Speaker 2: your job is on the line all the time and.
Speaker 3: Just be like everything right a joke, right.
Speaker 4: Wow, not even a season thirteen weeks Okay, you're renewed.
Speaker 5: Oh man, sell of the pants, Like that's kind of
Speaker 5: how the business is now. You're lucky if you get
Speaker 5: your like thirteen weeks, great, thirteen episodes, that's a Yeah.
Speaker 4: The streaming war, I'm so glad we came along with.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, the landscape is so different now. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: I'm in Rhode Island, so retired years ago because because
Speaker 4: the warm up guys that I know are not getting
Speaker 4: the same money is not enough, not enough.
Speaker 5: Shows there's it's not there's not a ton of live
Speaker 5: audience shows anymore in sitcoms and things. So yeah, it
Speaker 5: makes it definitely makes it hard. And yeah, full house. God,
Speaker 5: we were talking about it, I think at the convention
Speaker 5: we were at Still City about how much we enjoyed
Speaker 5: kind of being a part of like late eighties, early
Speaker 5: nineties big network TV when it was a thing, you know,
Speaker 5: when it was they get all the shows together and
Speaker 5: you do some big ABC promo and you know those
Speaker 5: kinds of things that like you just don't really don't
Speaker 5: really do now it's not as central, you know.
Speaker 4: No, it was a different landscape then, and it was great.
Speaker 4: It was the Golden Age. Yeah. And and the shows
Speaker 4: I did, we're all, like I said, family friendly. Growing
Speaker 4: Pains is the one that that really is the bulk
Speaker 4: of what I did.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, was that your first job as a warm
Speaker 2: up guy?
Speaker 3: No, Growing Pains.
Speaker 4: I do a show now, I do a show presentations
Speaker 4: where I give my my background. And I was playing
Speaker 4: paddle Tenants, which is a precursor to uh, pickleball. Okay.
Speaker 5: I was going to say, like this feels like in
Speaker 5: the vein of pickleball.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So one day I got yeah, and then next
Speaker 4: day I was on la Vernon Shirley. Your whole life
Speaker 4: takes that that change.
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 5: I mean, did you always want to be like a
Speaker 5: comedian in comedy? Did you want to be a writer
Speaker 5: or was it kind of that was just sort of
Speaker 5: what you fell into or.
Speaker 4: Fell into a great phrase for that, because I was
Speaker 4: a tour guide in La Okay, going up and going
Speaker 4: up and down the coast of California with a group
Speaker 4: of ninety people, and I was on the mic, So
Speaker 4: that gave me the wherewithal to be on a mic right.
Speaker 5: And to be on a mic showers at a time,
Speaker 5: you know, and I have to keep the same group
Speaker 5: of people interested two.
Speaker 4: Weeks, oh with the same audience.
Speaker 3: Oh oh, two weeks with the same audience. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: yeah that's a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, not an audience, but right, two bus loads of
Speaker 4: New Yorkers who wanted to see La for hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that's so.
Speaker 2: Was this was this like the first Hollywood tours where
Speaker 2: they go buy all the celebrities homes, the TMZ tour
Speaker 2: or was it more.
Speaker 1: Of like, hey, here's the landscape of California.
Speaker 4: Both, because when we were in LA, we would do
Speaker 4: the Beverly Hills tour. I could say this now they're
Speaker 4: probably dead. The people I would make up houses of course.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Andrea Baba from Full House lives in that
Speaker 4: little house right over there. Put the horn. Yeah, usually
Speaker 4: she comes to the window. Jody Sweeten lives right over.
Speaker 3: Not home, sorry, yeah the fairy.
Speaker 1: Yep, we're not home.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, no, that's uh yeah.
Speaker 1: For two years, innocent tourists, there's just no idea.
Speaker 5: Oh wow, I knew somebody that owned one of those
Speaker 5: tour companies said the same thing.
Speaker 3: He was like, we're not We're not driving around.
Speaker 5: He's like, there's not like a like a database where
Speaker 5: you you know, He's like, drive by point of the house.
Speaker 3: People be excited. That's you know, yeah, give them, give
Speaker 3: them that thing I did.
Speaker 4: There's a two week tour from La Vegas, seventies, all
Speaker 4: up and down. And just to break things up, people
Speaker 4: didn't have eight digital cameras. They had cameras. Go okay,
Speaker 4: in two minutes going up the coast, we're gonna go
Speaker 4: by the very famous Milled Fillmore Rock. Now you won't
Speaker 4: be able to see it, but trust me, when you
Speaker 4: get home and get these pictures developed, you'll see the
Speaker 4: exact face of Milled film More. So. I'm three, everybody,
Speaker 4: get to the left side of the bus. Two three boom,
Speaker 4: oh yeah yeah, it looks just like Millard. No one
Speaker 4: knows what billid film Wall looked like show he was
Speaker 4: the president.
Speaker 3: I chose amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, pick something that no one can fact check
Speaker 5: you on. You're like me wrong.
Speaker 2: Is a great training ground to be a warm like
Speaker 2: I can't think of a more perfect training ground to
Speaker 2: be a warm up guy.
Speaker 4: Do you believe that it led right into it. I'm
Speaker 4: on the mic for two weeks at a time, and
Speaker 4: so three.
Speaker 3: Hours I could do that easy.
Speaker 1: Easy.
Speaker 2: What was the hardest part about being a warm up guy?
Speaker 2: Was it like our three? Was it the beginning when
Speaker 2: you're like sustling out the audience and getting a feel
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 1: What's like the hardest part about it?
Speaker 4: Follow out real quick that you don't start up on
Speaker 4: that high, so you you become their friend. Because if
Speaker 4: they don't like you me in the first five minutes,
Speaker 4: they're not going to like me. After five hours, they're
Speaker 4: going to hate me. I mean, even if they love
Speaker 4: me at the beginning, they dislike me.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's true. I love my family and after
Speaker 5: five hours I sort.
Speaker 3: Of feel enough.
Speaker 1: Were some of the tricks you is? Like, did you
Speaker 1: play games with the audience? Did you do trivia?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: What did you do to keep them awake?
Speaker 4: No? Trivia, I tried. I never saw another warm up
Speaker 4: guy work because what I was doing worked and did
Speaker 4: a lot of the music. I made my own music.
Speaker 4: I had a disc jockey who would be in tune
Speaker 4: with me and the stuff that I did, and a
Speaker 4: lot of dancing. Those little girls loved to come up
Speaker 4: and dance.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 4: And then you guys were great. You'd come out and
Speaker 4: talk to the audience. Friends. Eight hours in, not one
Speaker 4: of them came out and said thank you for coming,
Speaker 4: or any questions. It was inconceivable. But that was from
Speaker 4: day one because I did the pilot, and even at
Speaker 4: the pilot, they were that's going to be good. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh I remember Bob Saggett would get the mic and
Speaker 5: then we were like, Bob, we've got all we got
Speaker 5: to go.
Speaker 3: I got it.
Speaker 5: And he's like, well anyway, and like running with the
Speaker 5: microphone away from Keith Richmond art stagement.
Speaker 4: Yep, yeah, that was that was his. Uh, he was
Speaker 4: a warm up for a while.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. He missed it.
Speaker 5: I mean but anytime there was a microphone within arms distance.
Speaker 3: Of box flights, he would get on the intercom.
Speaker 4: It's funny, didn't.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, it was so good, so glib, so
Speaker 5: so great. Yeah, now did you it's like for doing
Speaker 5: warm up stuff, is there like do you have like
Speaker 5: a warm up agent or is it just that you know,
Speaker 5: writers and producers and people kind of connect that way.
Speaker 4: I was really lucky in that I hit. But I
Speaker 4: think they say the golden age of television was normal layer,
Speaker 4: but I think it was at our time, and luckily
Speaker 4: I had a good reputation so they would call me.
Speaker 4: So there was no agent. I would negotiate the terms.
Speaker 2: Great, represent yourself, you know, no commit involved, just just do.
Speaker 3: It all on your own.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And like I said earlier, the guys I know
Speaker 4: that are still doing in that having a rough time.
Speaker 3: I bet are and Fuller Ron that's right.
Speaker 4: Do you know him Ron Pearson?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, but I know the name. Like I said,
Speaker 4: I never saw these guys.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Ron does. Yeah, he was. He did all kinds
Speaker 3: of tricks. He was great.
Speaker 5: The audience always really loved him. He was super funny.
Speaker 5: And I just remember the trick he did was the
Speaker 5: latter that that terrified me. Every time he did that,
Speaker 5: I'm like, what if it falls?
Speaker 3: Like every time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a had of time with the chainsaw
Speaker 4: apple and ping pong bowl hugglers and they would take
Speaker 4: a bite of the apple and still keep juggling. He
Speaker 4: just Galley did that.
Speaker 3: That's yes. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you remember the shows I worked on a show
Speaker 4: called Good Time Girls? Uh huh, where he was on it.
Speaker 4: I did a few Boos and Buddies, but mostly New Heart.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, I remember watching New Heart with my mom.
Speaker 2: And I'm assuming each show had its own feel Like
Speaker 2: you mentioned, Full House had a lot of kids in
Speaker 2: the audience, so each show would have its own demographic represented.
Speaker 1: Was it easier with kids?
Speaker 3: Many of you said that something harder with kids and audience.
Speaker 4: There was no subtlety, There was no you couldn't be zeck.
Speaker 4: They don't get that yet. It was a base level.
Speaker 4: But you said, what audience is are different? Made your
Speaker 4: dad remember that? Yeah, they had every audience bust in
Speaker 4: from from camps. So there were soldiers and little by
Speaker 4: little he thought he was a soldier. Gerald mclaney, he
Speaker 4: come on as men and not kidding, so you know,
Speaker 4: but by the second he was a colonel.
Speaker 2: I guess, just really just leaning right out to the
Speaker 2: to the theme.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what was that like? Was that a good Were
Speaker 5: they a good audience? Were they like happy to laugh
Speaker 5: and be yeah.
Speaker 4: Very straight, but they weren't very joy.
Speaker 5: Lastured they sat up very straight and we're incredibly attentive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I know sitcoms get a bad rap about
Speaker 2: having canned laughter, and I'm like, but it's not canned,
Speaker 2: it's real, and you you order.
Speaker 1: The audience to do that.
Speaker 2: You're just like, make sure you have the same enthusiasm
Speaker 2: every teak.
Speaker 4: It's funny you mentioned that last night. I had dinner
Speaker 4: with with this girl and I don't watch those shows
Speaker 4: because I hate canned laugh. Echo, It's not canned, it's
Speaker 4: it's real. It's sweetened, right, yeah, but.
Speaker 5: Sweet sweetened sweetening is what they do to sound for
Speaker 5: shows and movies and stuff for those rights.
Speaker 3: Are like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 5: And they it just like they fill it out a
Speaker 5: little bit more so. It's like, you know, a laugh
Speaker 5: is kind of has some little gaps on.
Speaker 3: It or whatever.
Speaker 5: They'll just fill in those holes so that it sounds
Speaker 5: more consistent. But yeah, they know the laughs are real.
Speaker 5: The laughs are real, they just sound a little prettier.
Speaker 4: My My whole thing was, Okay, we're going to do
Speaker 4: this again. It's it's a very similar similar joke. It
Speaker 4: was exactly. It was at similar right, And we need
Speaker 4: to you to remember where you laughed and how you
Speaker 4: laugh so we can match it up, which is stupid.
Speaker 4: How you laugh that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have a weird, awkward laugh. Continue doing that.
Speaker 2: My mother's laugh in the audience because she had a
Speaker 2: very loud and distinctive laugh, and so it would throw
Speaker 2: me during the tape beans.
Speaker 1: Because I was like, oh, mom's laughing again.
Speaker 4: One thing I was going to say, I wrote it down.
Speaker 4: Full House is if not one one of three shows
Speaker 4: that I worked on hundreds of shows. I mean there
Speaker 4: were hundreds of shows, thousands of times, and uh, full
Speaker 4: House this day is one of the few casts to
Speaker 4: stick together, which makes my heart failed good because you know,
Speaker 4: you go, oh, uncle Jesse, and oh that's sehn Stanwillson.
Speaker 4: He's having dinner with somebody. You guys start together to
Speaker 4: this day, which is unusual because usually a sitcom gets
Speaker 4: together that one to five years and then great and
Speaker 4: then maybe they make one friend. But Full House, to
Speaker 4: your credit, yeah, was incredible.
Speaker 5: We really stayed connected. And I will say a big
Speaker 5: piece of that was Saggot.
Speaker 3: Bob was.
Speaker 5: Really and John two would plan dinners and stuff, but
Speaker 5: Bob was kind of the nucleus, the lynchpin, and you know,
Speaker 5: and Jeff too, you know, always having parties and stuff
Speaker 5: in his house. But yeah, it really like it's crazy.
Speaker 5: I mean how close everybody is, you know, and we
Speaker 5: talk about it all the time on the show, but everybody,
Speaker 5: every guest that comes on.
Speaker 3: Right, You guys are a family like family.
Speaker 4: It's a real family and new Heart as close as
Speaker 4: they were, and I love them, I love doing the
Speaker 4: show as close as they were on set and maybe
Speaker 4: a little bit after they would all go their separate ways.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because, yeah, we haven't been able to get rid
Speaker 5: of each other for nearly forty damn years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, really.
Speaker 3: Almost forty years.
Speaker 2: If you've been a family like wild because I don't
Speaker 2: feel forty years old.
Speaker 3: So how have you been?
Speaker 4: Friend? Every day? I feel I'm dying, Yeah, I'm dying. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Tell us what was it like in the writer's room?
Speaker 3: You wrote?
Speaker 2: You wrote an episode of season one the Big Three. Oh,
Speaker 2: that's right when Danner turned thirty.
Speaker 4: Years life too.
Speaker 3: It was thirty yeah, yeah, yeah, a baby.
Speaker 4: The uh. The writer's room was intimidating because you have
Speaker 4: to get your idea in there. I had a very
Speaker 4: bad experience on my first job on Lavernon Shirley. One
Speaker 4: of the producers thought I was funny, so he hired me.
Speaker 4: The rest of the writers were upset because well, this
Speaker 4: guy didn't pay his dues, mister funny man. So it
Speaker 4: was and there were twenty writers in the room at
Speaker 4: laverneon Shirley. It was so intimidating. Oh, Mark's friend, where's
Speaker 4: your joke today? I mean really means yeah. And then
Speaker 4: one day one of the other producers, who was banging
Speaker 4: heads with Mark because they want each one of the
Speaker 4: big exec producer came in with a bunch of T
Speaker 4: shirts for me that read I'll be funny soon.
Speaker 3: It's like a basically, it made you earn your strength.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I've heard.
Speaker 5: I've heard that writer's rooms can be really intimidating and brutal.
Speaker 5: I mean, and maybe you were in one, but of
Speaker 5: course you were among they were friends, and you were
Speaker 5: it was you know, fuller house.
Speaker 3: They weren't going to be like, you'll be funny soon.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, they were on their best.
Speaker 3: No, I've heard.
Speaker 5: I mean, I've heard it's really intimidating. You know, you've
Speaker 5: got to be willing to throw your joke out there
Speaker 5: and talk over other people and let it, you know,
Speaker 5: land hopefully, and if it doesn't, you're like, all right, hell,
Speaker 5: I'll be gonna go person.
Speaker 4: To be honest, even though it makes the show better
Speaker 4: to be funny. Other writers are so competitive that if
Speaker 4: you fail, they go up and.
Speaker 5: Go, yeah it's that's yeah. It's kind of a dog
Speaker 5: eat dog, you know, bully people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's rough.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I don't know if I could do it, Like
Speaker 2: I just being in the same room with the same
Speaker 2: twenty people for.
Speaker 1: Hours and hours and hours.
Speaker 2: That would drive me nuts, Like, especially if you clash
Speaker 2: with some of the personality.
Speaker 3: I don't wait that.
Speaker 4: The worst thing the Yin and the Yang was after
Speaker 4: a run through, you go back to the office and
Speaker 4: they pass out menus. The good part is you can
Speaker 4: order anything off the menu. The bad part is if
Speaker 4: it's a menu that means we're stay late, right exactly.
Speaker 3: This is a snap prepared to eat your dinner. You're
Speaker 3: here a while.
Speaker 4: At two am. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's brutal. It's a brutal scale.
Speaker 4: I don't know how you guys. I'm not going to
Speaker 4: mention any shows, but the landscape of Citcum is so bad.
Speaker 4: I look at it and I get angry. But that's
Speaker 4: lazy writing, that's lazy acting. All the whole bowl of
Speaker 4: wax is like them trying to save money for sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah that's that's I mean, you and I could talk
Speaker 5: for hours about that, but yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: It's a very different.
Speaker 5: You know, they keep saying like sitcoms are dying and no,
Speaker 5: but people love them, that people really enjoy watching sitcoms,
Speaker 5: And I think they have been dying because nobody wants
Speaker 5: to write, like you said, right, good ones or funny
Speaker 5: ones or you know, and they're cheap to make.
Speaker 3: If we're trying to save money, sitcoms are.
Speaker 5: A lot less expensive than a single cam and locations
Speaker 5: and you know, shooting on a stage.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah right.
Speaker 5: Basically Netflix, Hulu if you're listening, yeahs are listening. We're
Speaker 5: just saying we would be happy to be fully booked
Speaker 5: on a sitcom.
Speaker 3: Bob Burlow will be doing the writing and the warm
Speaker 3: up and well, yeah.
Speaker 5: We've got a writer done. It'll be like the it'll
Speaker 5: be like the the eighties again when you just go
Speaker 5: you you have a job, and then.
Speaker 3: That's what we do.
Speaker 4: Look under your seat, you all have.
Speaker 3: Right, you have a job, and you have a job.
Speaker 5: Do you have any like like.
Speaker 3: What is what was one of your worst moments? Warm up?
Speaker 5: If you remember and what was Oh pretty sure you
Speaker 5: didn't usually remembers there.
Speaker 4: Worstland and they're not gonna the worst, very worst one
Speaker 4: was a Michael Jackson video of a Beatles cover song.
Speaker 4: At the time, there were two warring gangs in La
Speaker 4: Crips in the Bloods. They invited half Crips and half Bloods.
Speaker 4: I go, you know what, I don't think I'm right
Speaker 4: for this audience. There was an urban audience. You know,
Speaker 4: it was all black. And because I'm a little white guy,
Speaker 4: what am I going to do? Listen, it's going to
Speaker 4: be five to ten minutes before Michael comes out. Because
Speaker 4: at at one o'clock you go on at ten to one,
Speaker 4: get the wild up and it'll be great. So okay,
Speaker 4: ten to one, So I did. They were going nuts
Speaker 4: to crib music and giving away stuff. Cut to ten
Speaker 4: minutes before and he still hadn't been He's still in
Speaker 4: his trailer.
Speaker 1: Wow, So was making everybody wait.
Speaker 4: I had given out money from my walletparation right. The
Speaker 4: other one. Yeah, in thirty seven years, there was fired
Speaker 4: one time and it was on home improvement. And if
Speaker 4: I couldn't do my job, if I was doing it wrong,
Speaker 4: I would have had a career instead. I had a
Speaker 4: very long career, so I knew how to do. And
Speaker 4: the job was not to be funnier than the show,
Speaker 4: that that that's crazy, and that to be so morose
Speaker 4: that they're going to fall asleep. So I kind of
Speaker 4: had it. So I hit most of the time, you know,
Speaker 4: I was. I was good. Oh yeah, a few times
Speaker 4: I was awful, because it's just whatever the circumstances.
Speaker 5: Sometimes you get a vibe of an audience and you're
Speaker 5: just like, oh, okay, you do this tonight, you just
Speaker 5: have off day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And a lot of times I was really good.
Speaker 4: This one night on Home Improvement, I was really good.
Speaker 4: The audience was hyped up, the show was good. I
Speaker 4: was good. Everything matched because when when they'll cut and
Speaker 4: you guys had to go ahead touch your makeup on
Speaker 4: or do a clothes change. Tim Allen was in the
Speaker 4: makeup room and he heard me getting huge laughs. And
Speaker 4: I wasn't afraid of being funny than the show. My
Speaker 4: job was to integrate both the show and the warm up,
Speaker 4: so it was seamless. But he told the makeup girly coone,
Speaker 4: the warm up guy trying is act. He came out,
Speaker 4: as you know, I faced the audience and the set
Speaker 4: is to my back, and I hear hey, which is
Speaker 4: hey is a funny word. It could be construed and
Speaker 4: a lot of different ways, like hey, how you doing Hey, Hey, Hey,
Speaker 4: Hey wants to get your attention. Hey. The third one
Speaker 4: that he used was hey, which I knew was bad.
Speaker 4: It was him, So turn around, hey, Tim Allen right here.
Speaker 4: You know there's a show going on down here too.
Speaker 4: Oh sorry, Tim, Well, he was just jealous that I
Speaker 4: was getting laughs from the audience. Meanwhile I was doing
Speaker 4: okay because they were loving the show and loving yeah,
Speaker 4: So that was right. Luckily, most went well.
Speaker 5: It's yeahs are also an interesting breath, like I want
Speaker 5: you to be funny, but not funnier than me, like
Speaker 5: a delicate mountains.
Speaker 4: And I don't consider myself a comedian. Had a tough
Speaker 4: time doing warm ups because they would do their act,
Speaker 4: which was twenty five to fifty minutes, and then still
Speaker 4: have three hours waiting. Right. I didn't have any materials,
Speaker 4: so it didn't bother me. It was just schmoozz.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you did such a great job at that.
Speaker 5: I remember, I do remember like you letting us sing.
Speaker 3: I remember singing.
Speaker 5: You like you were talking about with the music and stuff,
Speaker 5: and you would hand us the microphones and we would
Speaker 5: get to sing.
Speaker 3: I feel like I remember.
Speaker 5: Singing sitting on the dock of the bay or something
Speaker 5: like that as a kid, and.
Speaker 3: It was I was like.
Speaker 5: The board walk, that's what it was, yes, under the yeah,
Speaker 5: yeah exactly what the yeah No, that was so much.
Speaker 3: I just yeah, we had fun.
Speaker 4: It was fun.
Speaker 2: I was always too shy to take the microphone, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, me the introvert. But I need I need
Speaker 2: writers to write me jokes because I'm like, I would
Speaker 2: get so nervous. So I always admired what you did
Speaker 2: because I'm like, I couldn't do that.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not just you know, Riff and just be alive.
Speaker 4: For show has their own way of doing things. On
Speaker 4: the first show, liver In and Shirley, the studio would
Speaker 4: go dark and then one by one each castman but
Speaker 4: came out and did a thing. Lenny and Squeaky played
Speaker 4: music in a song. Phil Forster would tell jokes. John
Speaker 4: John would be John and Bob Wood would be on
Speaker 4: the guitar. Right A flashed in my mind last night,
Speaker 4: the last show we did on Full House, I remember
Speaker 4: saying on the microphone. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for
Speaker 4: eight wonderful years and now for the last time ever.
Speaker 4: And it was just like I.
Speaker 1: Remember that, but I can still feel that.
Speaker 3: I still feel I.
Speaker 5: Remember that because we were like backstage sobbing as kids.
Speaker 3: I mean not just as kids.
Speaker 5: Every the whole cast were, you know, and I but
Speaker 5: I remember hearing that for the last time.
Speaker 4: Please yeah, I like said those words, and it was
Speaker 4: it was like, oh, I felt part of that family. Oh.
Speaker 5: You'd be in the makeup room before the show. You'd
Speaker 5: come visit, we'd be hanging out, you know, our weird
Speaker 5: little chant that we do, and you're like, Okay, now
Speaker 5: they've done with that.
Speaker 4: Now like let me go introduce you. It's funny. Earlier
Speaker 4: you said get them jazzed up for the show, which
Speaker 4: I didn't want to do. I wanted to be excited
Speaker 4: because I produced you at the beginning of the show too.
Speaker 4: Let's say let's say a little about cast. I did,
Speaker 4: Will and Grace and the two producers, Max and David.
Speaker 4: They would I'd be talking to the audience. They'd have
Speaker 4: spotteds from where they write his room was to the stage. Okay,
Speaker 4: they're halfway here, get them crazy, you really want them crazy?
Speaker 4: Yeah that Max and David loved to hear that. You
Speaker 4: don't they realize it's going to be a five hour marathon,
Speaker 4: and they didn't.
Speaker 2: They wanted to start with the sprint, right, yeah, exactly, right, don't.
Speaker 4: They're going to be so tired out. I knew this
Speaker 4: because I'm with them, right, you know, I wasn't on
Speaker 4: the floor, I was in the order.
Speaker 5: You were in there with them for sure, yes, okay, yes,
Speaker 5: and you saw plenty of our parents too, because our
Speaker 5: parents were at all of the tapings as well.
Speaker 3: One.
Speaker 4: Ye, yeah, I remember it's John's mother and father receipts
Speaker 4: right front.
Speaker 5: Great family, lovely Yeah yeah, yeah, the sisters and Jeff's mother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: I went to her wedding, Jeff and I. It's so
Speaker 4: very close.
Speaker 5: That's it's so crazy, how Yeah, we are like family,
Speaker 5: and we've you know, had these, like I said, almost
Speaker 5: forty years plus in this business, and uh yeah, it's
Speaker 5: kind of cool to still get to see and stay
Speaker 5: connected with the people that were there in the beginning
Speaker 5: and you're.
Speaker 4: Still you guys get together socially, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yep, Yeah, she can't get rid of me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we actually have to shoot this at separate houses
Speaker 5: because there is a restraining order, so it makes it
Speaker 5: really uncomfortable them.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 3: No, we hang out socially. We go we do fan conventions.
Speaker 5: Together and travel together. We have our podcast together. We've
Speaker 5: done road trips, We've done a lot of things.
Speaker 4: We've gotta hurry out audiences.
Speaker 3: Like the fan conventions and stuff.
Speaker 4: Because of the green nature of Full House.
Speaker 3: They're not though.
Speaker 5: There's generations because of and with it being a nicked
Speaker 5: night and with it we will get people through our
Speaker 5: lines where it's like a grandmother, a mom and a
Speaker 5: kid or even four, and the grandmother or great grandma
Speaker 5: will be like, I started watching this when I was
Speaker 5: the you know, mom's age, and the kid her she
Speaker 5: was the kid's age.
Speaker 3: And they still love it.
Speaker 5: And then they you know, so many people started on
Speaker 5: Fuller House, the younger generation and then they were like, oh,
Speaker 5: I want to watch the beginning.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Our our we five five seasons.
Speaker 2: But you mean you mean the audience show is about
Speaker 2: the same. It was very much the same. I'd say
Speaker 2: that for the fast we timed it. The fastest audience
Speaker 2: show we ever did was with Mark Sandrowski dress right,
Speaker 2: so efficient, and so we were taking.
Speaker 1: Bets like is it going to be under three or what?
Speaker 2: And I don't remember the exact time, but it was
Speaker 2: like two hours and forty two minutes.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. We walked out of that stage. It
Speaker 3: was light outside. Everyone was Yeah. Mark was a was
Speaker 3: a hero, much lauded for that. Yeah, it was great, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he was He was great.
Speaker 2: You know what, every time I hear the song we
Speaker 2: will we Will rock you always, that's our intro.
Speaker 3: We were intro you, intro to us to that song.
Speaker 2: I have this like visceral reacity, still get chills and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, here here we go, say my name, my.
Speaker 3: Name, We're going to do it.
Speaker 1: Yes, the hype was real, so real. Yeah, such good memories.
Speaker 5: Well, Bob, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 5: This was so much fun to get to talk to
Speaker 5: you and like absolutely absolutely can be. Where can people
Speaker 5: get your book The Warm Up Guy?
Speaker 4: Amazon? Great Amazon, It's a real book and whole chapter on.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I want to check that out. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: As soon as we loaf And what a great picture
Speaker 1: on the cover too?
Speaker 3: Is that you?
Speaker 1: Is that a picture of you? In an audience.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's fabulous, and yeah, that's you. That's what you did.
Speaker 3: There's your back.
Speaker 1: We're very familiar with your back.
Speaker 3: Yere you are.
Speaker 4: I was doing a movie with with for Danny DeVito,
Speaker 4: his first movie ever, and I was cast as the
Speaker 4: warm up guy.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I know.
Speaker 2: It's an art imitating life, right, yeah, amazing.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much, Bob. We just love getting
Speaker 3: to talk to you. This was wonderful. Absolutely, enjoy your retirement.
Speaker 3: We missed you too. Yes, we love you.
Speaker 5: Not talk to you soon by He's the.
Speaker 3: Same, he's got. It's totally the same. I love it.
Speaker 1: It's not changed.
Speaker 5: Fascinating though, like sort of the the art quote unquote
Speaker 5: of warm well, no, not quote unquote, but the art
Speaker 5: of warm up.
Speaker 3: That it's art of warm up.
Speaker 5: So I kind of assumed that it would be more
Speaker 5: like stand up that if you you know, but but no,
Speaker 5: you got it's you have to be require strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's you need to strategize the night. You need
Speaker 2: to think ahead five hours like okay and.
Speaker 3: Be like what do I do? How do I keep
Speaker 3: them going? How do Yeah?
Speaker 5: No, that was that's really impressive because I mean, if
Speaker 5: anyone thinks about standing up in front of a group
Speaker 5: of people and holding their attention and keeping them excited.
Speaker 5: It is not an easy task, particularly when they're just
Speaker 5: sitting there for hours, you know. But but you can't
Speaker 5: get the shows a medium about that?
Speaker 2: What a balance like that is a hard balance, funny
Speaker 2: enough to keep.
Speaker 3: But not funny enough to press off and start the show.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's a hard job. I couldn't do it.
Speaker 3: That would be really really hard, really hard.
Speaker 1: Good for him, what a talent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm so glad he to me too, and like
Speaker 5: lovely hearing about how he and Jeff started the first
Speaker 5: day and how far back they go, Like you know, again,
Speaker 5: we all have such a great family in this business
Speaker 5: through this show, and yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: I love hearing these stories that it will never get old.
Speaker 3: Ye me too, I love it.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: Well, I think that's all we've got for you today,
Speaker 5: fan of Ritos. So, if if you wanted to purchase
Speaker 5: Bob's book, go over and find out The Warm Up
Speaker 5: Guy on Amazon.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: If you want to find us on Instagram, we are
Speaker 5: at HOWD podcast. You can also send us an email
Speaker 5: at how Rudetanturito's at gmail dot com if you've got
Speaker 5: questions or thoughts or I don't know, whatever, and you
Speaker 5: can go to our merch store, which is how rudemerch
Speaker 5: dot com.
Speaker 3: And what else, what.
Speaker 2: Any of our fantos listening, we're in our audience back
Speaker 2: in the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you if you were.
Speaker 2: Experienced Bob Perl's warm up routine, please make a comment
Speaker 2: on Oh my gosh, I want to hear from that
Speaker 2: side of it, because we would never we weren't. We
Speaker 2: were always backstage trading notes or makeup stuff, so we
Speaker 2: weren't in the audience.
Speaker 1: I want to know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we would love to hear from from any og
Speaker 5: audience members what it was like, what Bob's warm up
Speaker 5: was like.
Speaker 3: That's so fun. That's a great idea.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, email us, follow us on Instagram, all the things. Uh,
Speaker 5: we love you, fan Urrito's thank you again for listening.
Speaker 5: And remember the world is small. The house is full
Speaker 5: of laughs.
Speaker 1: Oh good one.
Speaker 3: Laughs, the sweetened laughs.
Speaker 5: Sweet the sweetened as in the you know, the show
Speaker 5: ons and then just the sweetened laughs which is just
Speaker 5: loud and cackling. And as Dave says, to locate me
Speaker 5: wherever I am just listening to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can hear you from buildings away.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah all right, yes, thanks Matarino SI next time.