Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing,
Speaker 1: My chance to talk with artists, policymakers and performers, to
Speaker 1: hear their stories, What inspires their creations, what decisions change
Speaker 1: their careers, what relationships influenced their work. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: British born comedian Tony Hendra and his fellow editors at
Speaker 1: the National Lampoon perfected the art of satire through comics,
Speaker 1: illustrations and irreverent clips. They transformed a small magazine into
Speaker 1: a powerhouse of hilarious, cutting edge social commentary. Before that,
Speaker 1: Hendra had been part of a comedy team with Nick Cullett,
Speaker 1: performing live across the US, but the election of Richard
Speaker 1: Nixon was a turning point for Hendra and the work
Speaker 1: he wanted to create. After helping shape The Lampoon, Hendra
Speaker 1: took his fearless wit on the road, writing and ucing
Speaker 1: TV shows, acting in movies, and producing albums, one of
Speaker 1: which propelled John Belushi to fame, still writing today. He
Speaker 1: reunited with the Lampoon last year to write a new
Speaker 1: album titled Are There Any Triggers Here Tonight? For Tony Hendra,
Speaker 1: the Trump administration has only made his work more relevant.
Speaker 1: There are times, especially now, when there is an essentiality
Speaker 1: of sata and it's important. I mean, even if you
Speaker 1: don't get rid of the enemy, the enemy triumphs in
Speaker 1: some curious way. It is a kind of civic obligation almost,
Speaker 1: you know, to to be taking on power, especially when
Speaker 1: it's already corrupted power in this case. Do you feel
Speaker 1: during the course of your career that was a part
Speaker 1: of it, the essentiality of satire? Well, yes, I obviously
Speaker 1: it's self seeking to to say that, But but I
Speaker 1: must say, when after the after the election, my my
Speaker 1: little cost I have a cost of a radio show
Speaker 1: I do called The Final Adition Radio and there's a
Speaker 1: cast in New York and a cast in l a
Speaker 1: And everyone obviously was very cast down, as we all were.
Speaker 1: They were asking questions like that, like, what's the point.
Speaker 1: You know, we did all this satire all this year
Speaker 1: and didn't have any effect on anything, um and um.
Speaker 1: I and I wrote them a sort of letter to
Speaker 1: sort of cheer up letter. But the core of it
Speaker 1: was that actually, after I got over the shock of
Speaker 1: the fact that he had actually been elected, I found
Speaker 1: that I had a little buzz, a little buzz not
Speaker 1: a excitement exactly, but a buzz is kind of connection,
Speaker 1: which I was trying to remember when I last felt it,
Speaker 1: and I remembered that it was actually the same at
Speaker 1: the same time of day when I heard that Nixon
Speaker 1: and ag Knew had been elected, and they were just
Speaker 1: as much a horror show for for the left at
Speaker 1: that point, and that just as much of a surprise,
Speaker 1: in fact, even more so because Nexton had been completely
Speaker 1: written off, and it was that actually at that point,
Speaker 1: it was like in that that moment in sixty eight,
Speaker 1: then I actually thought to myself, Okay, where were you
Speaker 1: in sixty eight? At sixty eight, I was half of
Speaker 1: a comedy team with Nick with Nick, yeah exactly, called Hendra,
Speaker 1: and if if I was giving the interview, if he
Speaker 1: was giving the interviews, Hendra, but Hendra, And it was
Speaker 1: slightly easier to say, but but we've been we've been
Speaker 1: working since sixty four when we first came to these shores,
Speaker 1: and we were really at that point in quite successful
Speaker 1: in a kind of official way. We we were doing
Speaker 1: the really awful variety shows of the sixties, you know,
Speaker 1: like Hollywood Palace and the Perry Como Show and and
Speaker 1: all that kind of thing. Uh and so so so
Speaker 1: in terms of comedy, then there were television programs that
Speaker 1: really were craving acts to come on, and there was
Speaker 1: work to be done for you and all it well,
Speaker 1: there was work, but the strictures on the work who
Speaker 1: were very frustrating because you know, because we were well,
Speaker 1: I mean certainly for me anyway, because I was I
Speaker 1: was very politically sort of anxious and aware. But you
Speaker 1: couldn't talk on television about any of the stuff that
Speaker 1: was going on outside the studio doors. I mean, you
Speaker 1: couldn't talk about the war, You couldn't have talked about
Speaker 1: the various forms of liberation. You can talk about drugs,
Speaker 1: You couldn't even talk about rock and roll unless you
Speaker 1: were making fun of it. And so it was very frustrating.
Speaker 1: But certainly we found that what we were doing, which
Speaker 1: I would describe as bargain basement beyond the fringe at
Speaker 1: the time, was not was not something that most American
Speaker 1: audiences had much interest in, except in New York, where
Speaker 1: they understood what it was. An indicious casting directors and
Speaker 1: producers who took a chance, how did you get the jobs?
Speaker 1: And we had a very powerful manager called Robert chart Off,
Speaker 1: and we had yeah, that Bob Chatter, and we had
Speaker 1: a good friend in Jackie Mason, who was his premium client.
Speaker 1: In fact, Jackie Mason signed the application for my green card, oh,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny. Yeah. And anyway, so we've
Speaker 1: gone through all the sort of storm and dragon fire
Speaker 1: and ice of of being a comedian in sixties, like
Speaker 1: doing the cats Skills, for example, which was unbelievable and
Speaker 1: I could write an entire book about. But that we
Speaker 1: had emerged from the other end as a kind of
Speaker 1: the English comedy group. You know, there was the Italian
Speaker 1: comedy groups and comedy team, and there was an Irish
Speaker 1: comedy team, and lots of Jewish comedy teams and and
Speaker 1: and there was us. We got that little slot to ourselves,
Speaker 1: but it didn't make any difference. We couldn't really do
Speaker 1: anything very you know, very sort of cutting. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the most cutting joke we ever did was
Speaker 1: was one about General the Gold being seriously injured this
Speaker 1: morning during his morning walk. He was hit by a
Speaker 1: motor boat. And that was like Meggie Sata Verry Como
Speaker 1: drawing his finger across the throat behind your back foot
Speaker 1: again exactly. So it was that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: above all that, the sort of pinnacle of this dreadful
Speaker 1: television was was the Edge Solomon Show. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was the thing everybody had to get on if they
Speaker 1: wanted to succeed. Yeah, I think it was five or
Speaker 1: six times. Ed had a very ethnic point of view
Speaker 1: on comedy. I mean he had to have you had
Speaker 1: to have one of everything. And so I mean George
Speaker 1: Carlin was his favorite Irish comic coman in Pat Cooper
Speaker 1: was his favorite Italian comedian, you know, and we were
Speaker 1: we actually beat out Mr Pastry more of a you know,
Speaker 1: more popular than Mr Pastry with but but it was
Speaker 1: but it was a really difficult show to get last
Speaker 1: on and it was well known. All comedians used to
Speaker 1: bitterly complain about it being this kind of mausoleum. And
Speaker 1: our own private name for the show was a Night
Speaker 1: of the Living head. What do you think it was
Speaker 1: that had them call you back again and again? We actually,
Speaker 1: I guess got good ratings or something or but but
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, as I said, we were, we were
Speaker 1: in good shape by virtue of being Ed's favorite British comedians. Um,
Speaker 1: and then what changed well, what change was was was
Speaker 1: this moment actually when when I mean, at that point,
Speaker 1: I was basically doing the kind of jokes I've been
Speaker 1: telling you, jokes like about how bad British teetha you know.
Speaker 1: But it was really in that moment I was describing earlier,
Speaker 1: when when I realized that Nixon and Agne were actually
Speaker 1: going to be running the country for the next four years.
Speaker 1: Then I decided I've really got started getting serious about
Speaker 1: being funny. And it was actually at that point where
Speaker 1: I sort of began to break up the act because
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do I really wanted to do
Speaker 1: much tougher stuff and and and much more. I mean,
Speaker 1: George had a wonderful George Carlin had a wonderful comment
Speaker 1: about that time. He said, you know, when I did
Speaker 1: shows like that, me and he had Sullivan Show, and
Speaker 1: he did all the same shows, it was like being
Speaker 1: a traitor to my generation. So you shared that view
Speaker 1: with Carlin, Yes, very much. So. I didn't know enough
Speaker 1: yet about what what I wanted to make fun about.
Speaker 1: But but I mean, for example, I had a piece
Speaker 1: um which I was trying to sell to ramparts at
Speaker 1: the time, remember ramparts, and and it was. It was
Speaker 1: I thought a very funny piece about Gomer Pyle in
Speaker 1: Vietnam and killed me some good storge, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And and that was that, as I said,
Speaker 1: that was where I really began to think, well, I'd
Speaker 1: much rather be doing this, but I have to find
Speaker 1: a forum to do it. I have to find somewhere
Speaker 1: somehow to do it either by myself. I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to convince Nick because he really wasn't that political, and
Speaker 1: part ways with him then, not immediately, but but gradually,
Speaker 1: you know, I sort of we broke up actually in
Speaker 1: the next year. Was he happy to continue going along
Speaker 1: and just wanted to work. And yeah, but that was
Speaker 1: the point, wh as I say, really in which I
Speaker 1: began to look around for other other ways. And very
Speaker 1: soon the National Lampoon started. You don't start the National
Speaker 1: No, no no no, But those who started they find you.
Speaker 1: How there was a kind of grape vine for alternate comedy.
Speaker 1: Did the grom Pile piece appear in ramparts? No a
Speaker 1: calling card for you in that kind of no. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Walter Kin, it was a great editor called you from
Speaker 1: lampo in no sense of humor. Nobody called me from Lampoon.
Speaker 1: I was told that it was starting up about four
Speaker 1: or five months before it started up by by a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who had also been part of a
Speaker 1: comedy team. And but as soon as I as soon
Speaker 1: as I read the first issue, even though it was
Speaker 1: a very ugly and weird issue, I realized that I
Speaker 1: had found somewhere that I definitely wanted to write for
Speaker 1: and and I in fact started writing for them within
Speaker 1: the next couple of issues. So I started. I was
Speaker 1: first published in them, I think April April of the
Speaker 1: nine and I've been sort of making friends and and
Speaker 1: you know, especially in Los Angeles, were as learning at
Speaker 1: the time, and uh, there was much a much better
Speaker 1: kind of underground in San Francisco and Los Angeles for
Speaker 1: comedy than there was in New York. So that also
Speaker 1: helped to sort of mature me in that direction. And
Speaker 1: for people who don't know Lampoon was, Lampoon was Henry
Speaker 1: Beard and Doug Kenny and uh, and they both were
Speaker 1: from the Harvard Lampers described them well. Doug was a
Speaker 1: very strange character, very good looking, like a real college
Speaker 1: joe good looks, you know, blue eyes and and shell
Speaker 1: theer length hair, and and and but but curiously unsure
Speaker 1: of himself, and he was a terrible editor. He would
Speaker 1: say things like this sucks, but I don't know why,
Speaker 1: which is really helpful. But he but he was also brilliant.
Speaker 1: I mean, the first time I met Doug, he told
Speaker 1: me that the British humor wasn't funny. It was like
Speaker 1: the first thing that started off the interview, but then
Speaker 1: somehow it's um it moped very quickly into him doing
Speaker 1: a parody of a novelist called Mrs Gaskell, who was
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century novelist, and and doing it brilliantly, so
Speaker 1: sort of the words just came out of him, and
Speaker 1: then you know, ten seconds later he was showing me
Speaker 1: he could put his entire fist into his mouth. Was
Speaker 1: his background. He came from Ohio. His dad was a
Speaker 1: tennis coach. He'd been a real star. No, not at all,
Speaker 1: not at all. And Henry was like the other end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum. Henry. Henry was like very academic looking
Speaker 1: with with sort of informous amounts of spiky hair, and
Speaker 1: smoked a pipe incessantly even in bed, it seemed, and
Speaker 1: and just a brilliant intellectual dissector of things, and when
Speaker 1: did you start writing with them? Um. The first piece
Speaker 1: that really got me on the map actually was a
Speaker 1: piece called with with Them. I did it with Henry
Speaker 1: and it was called nine Days that Shook Woke, Iowa.
Speaker 1: And it was about the assassination or attempted assassionate assassination
Speaker 1: of Spiro agnew Um with with somebody had put an
Speaker 1: ice pick in his head in Woke, Iowa during campaign stop.
Speaker 1: And the difficulty with it was not whether this was
Speaker 1: an assassination, but how many people claimed to have been
Speaker 1: the assassin I was. I was terrified. I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to be deported immediately. I wouldn't even put
Speaker 1: my name on it. I called back then that was
Speaker 1: entirely possible. You want to believe absolutely. It would keep
Speaker 1: warning me now that it may be impossible again if
Speaker 1: I don't stop with some of my current that the
Speaker 1: Attorney General then John Mitchell was was was actively talking
Speaker 1: about suspending the First Amendment because administrations and so on,
Speaker 1: so um so on that. But that really got me
Speaker 1: sort of set and then and then I then I
Speaker 1: was sort of in the groove then because that that
Speaker 1: was really kind of what I did at the Lampoon
Speaker 1: how long did you do that at the Lampoon for
Speaker 1: to run. I was there until seventy eight, so for
Speaker 1: eight years. Yeah, we know. During that time, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: comedy and not not just satire, for comedy in general
Speaker 1: goes through this tremendous expansion. You know, Saturday Night Live
Speaker 1: comes one five and you know, Lauren is always quick
Speaker 1: to point out that when Saturday Night Live debut in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, there might have been fourteen comedy clubs
Speaker 1: in the entire country, and now there's four hundred comedy
Speaker 1: clubs in the country. So um, back then, from seventy
Speaker 1: to seventy eight, was there a thought on your partner,
Speaker 1: did you actually go out and write films and TV shows?
Speaker 1: You ever want to become a TV writer or a
Speaker 1: movie screenplay right, The last thing I wanted to do
Speaker 1: is go back into television at that point. I'm really
Speaker 1: that that that was I how lucrative it might be
Speaker 1: absolute how did you avoid that trap? The Lampoon took
Speaker 1: a stance very early on that that it was kind
Speaker 1: of an alternative to television. In fact, we never did
Speaker 1: anything about television. It was very interesting. It didn't occur
Speaker 1: to us it was just like it was an alternate
Speaker 1: reality that wasn't our reality. Our reality had much more
Speaker 1: to do with campus and what people were worrying about
Speaker 1: on campus. And I think really it's it's true to
Speaker 1: say that for those four or five years seventy two two,
Speaker 1: S n L and a little bit and and we
Speaker 1: went on afterwards, but we really had that, we really
Speaker 1: had the landscape to ourselves. Is the Lampoon still being
Speaker 1: published now and it stopped when it really gave up
Speaker 1: the ghost in the at the end of the nineties,
Speaker 1: And what do you think changed to contribute them? Just
Speaker 1: a natural attrition or there were other things replacing in
Speaker 1: terms of set times yees. So well, there was several issues.
Speaker 1: One one was that everything has ever every comedy enterprise
Speaker 1: has a kind of five year initial curves, and SNL
Speaker 1: had two uh and um and that then that was
Speaker 1: very apparent when especially in seventy five when the founders
Speaker 1: actually got brought out, So that that was one one
Speaker 1: aspect to it. Then the other was obviously that once SNL.
Speaker 1: SNL basically took our cast, i mean the cost of
Speaker 1: a review that we were doing at the time and
Speaker 1: put it and made it the SNL cast. I mean
Speaker 1: Pelluci and and Guilda and Bill Murray, we're all working
Speaker 1: for the National Input. At that point, what were they doing.
Speaker 1: They were doing the radio show they find the National
Speaker 1: Lampoon Radio Radio, and um then they also did a review,
Speaker 1: which is where Lawn saw them. Actually they had come
Speaker 1: or they were Chicago, Chicago and Canada, not Tonoranto. So
Speaker 1: those who were interested in doing television sort of decamped
Speaker 1: to SNL. And although SNL did have censorship issues, they
Speaker 1: certainly couldn't do what the Lampoon did on a monthly basis.
Speaker 1: So I guess they saw us. They sort of took
Speaker 1: all the oxygen out of our particular rock. So I
Speaker 1: guess it. Beard and yourself and Kenny, if I follow,
Speaker 1: you did not have an appetite for working in television.
Speaker 1: You didn't want to go back to a television show.
Speaker 1: But other people that work that were performers certainly didn't
Speaker 1: mind being on television. Yes, precisely. The magazine began to
Speaker 1: go into sort of slight decline, but I kept it
Speaker 1: alive for a couple more years, and UM, well then
Speaker 1: I then I quit, and um almost immediately did not
Speaker 1: The New York Times um, which was this huge parody
Speaker 1: of the New York Times, and that sort of put
Speaker 1: me on the map as as a person who could
Speaker 1: do parodies and everyone at times respond to you in
Speaker 1: as agnew esque away as I might imagine, were they
Speaker 1: just as actually um no, actually a Brosenthal said, we
Speaker 1: acknowledged that the people who did this parody must love
Speaker 1: the New York Times, which was shrewd shrewd um and
Speaker 1: But what he never said, what he never said was
Speaker 1: anything about was the fact that was then, like McCarthy, I,
Speaker 1: you know, investigations into the into the Times staff to
Speaker 1: see who, if anybody had collaborated, and I actually were
Speaker 1: a couple of key people who had so. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that kind of put me on the map. And I
Speaker 1: did a lot of parodies after that, and did some
Speaker 1: projects with Chris stuff, and one of them was a
Speaker 1: book called the Eighties look Back, which we published on
Speaker 1: January the thirty one nine and um and was a
Speaker 1: big bestseller and really was a kind of extension of
Speaker 1: what the Lampoon used to do, but in a in
Speaker 1: a slightly more commercial format, and it was brought by
Speaker 1: some studio as the movie rights were brought by some
Speaker 1: studio and they wanted to make a movie of this book,
Speaker 1: sort of futuristic comedy. So that was the first time
Speaker 1: that movies really appeared on my on my personal horizon.
Speaker 1: But by then The Lampoon already done, Animal House and
Speaker 1: Caddyshack by then coming up. Tony Hendra discusses the Benedictine Monk,
Speaker 1: who became like a father to him as Hendra left
Speaker 1: the Poon in the late nineteen seventies to pursue his
Speaker 1: own projects. Another genius of wit, Molly Ringwald, was just
Speaker 1: getting her start, the definitive it girl of the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties who inspired John Hughes films like Sixteen Candles. Ringwald
Speaker 1: helped shape a generation. I just trusted him, and I've
Speaker 1: really never felt this since. I mean, John actually had
Speaker 1: less experience than I had at that point. I mean,
Speaker 1: sixteen Candles was his directorial debut, So it was really
Speaker 1: like we were kids in that way together, and he
Speaker 1: was really like a like a confidante. You could say.
Speaker 1: It kind of seems weird, you know, I heard how well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm older than than he was when we met.
Speaker 1: But when I was thirty six years old, like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk to people who were fifteen. I didn't.
Speaker 1: Why do you think he did? I don't know. Take
Speaker 1: a listen to my conversation with Molly Ringwald at Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot Org. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Here's the Thing. After performing on The Ed
Speaker 1: Sullivan Show, editing the National Lampoon and successfully parodying the
Speaker 1: most popular newspaper in the world, Tony Hendra could have
Speaker 1: retired at thirty seven. Instead, the English born writer, comedian
Speaker 1: and actor kept reaching new heights, acting in a Rob
Speaker 1: Reiner mockumentary, creating a successful British TV series called Spitting Image,
Speaker 1: and writing a bestseller on a monk who saved his soul.
Speaker 1: But despite his ability to capture viewers attention, the seventies
Speaker 1: six year old was never much of a TV fan himself.
Speaker 1: I certainly didn't do any appointment viewing, you know, and
Speaker 1: I would never stay up to catch a show. So
Speaker 1: you've never taped, recorded, you never follow. There's no television
Speaker 1: drama or comedy that you've absolutely none No none, I
Speaker 1: mean I I to this day, I don't watch a
Speaker 1: lot of television. I mean it's partly partly upbringing We
Speaker 1: didn't have a television when I was kid. Um and
Speaker 1: was you know, still very early days in England for
Speaker 1: television and and and and but I just was just
Speaker 1: I don't have that ingrained habit of turning on the
Speaker 1: television for the news. For example, I read a paper.
Speaker 1: And to this day, I mean now I watch a
Speaker 1: lot of Netflix and stuff like that because it's such
Speaker 1: a great series. Yeah, but I'm usual something that you
Speaker 1: that you like, what something you recommend. Okay, I liked
Speaker 1: very much show called Catastrophe, which is you Have the Baby. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: very funny and very well written. Um And I don't know,
Speaker 1: I can't think of anything. It's already gone out of
Speaker 1: my mind. Um. But but but that's that. The only
Speaker 1: time I watched television really is is late at night
Speaker 1: when i'm you know, having my cheese and cheese and
Speaker 1: wine or whatever it is. And um. But but it's
Speaker 1: it's just not a habit I've ever had. I must say,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's very interesting you should say that. Well.
Speaker 1: I used to watch Will and Grace. I love Will
Speaker 1: and Grace because well because I had partly because I
Speaker 1: had two children who watched it. Um, and I must
Speaker 1: say you have how many kids? I have three by
Speaker 1: this marriage, and you have some previous you have two,
Speaker 1: and then three is five? Yes, okay? And and the
Speaker 1: ones who watch Will and Grace were this current batch
Speaker 1: Will and Grace fan and there are other great shows
Speaker 1: thirty Rock. They were just taste, very good taste. But
Speaker 1: but but only because they watched watched these shows. Would
Speaker 1: you know, Di Di? Did I watch them? Up to
Speaker 1: that point? I can't tell you. I mean, I get
Speaker 1: my decades mixed up. I couldn't tell you if The
Speaker 1: Day After and Roots were in the same decade, which
Speaker 1: actually they were, but Winds of War, but I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to tell you right off the hat off
Speaker 1: the back, you know, any of that stuff rich Man,
Speaker 1: poor Man and Wins of War, which one was Robert
Speaker 1: mitchum in. Yeah, I remember, Yeah, it's all a blur
Speaker 1: to me now. I remember. I was on nots Landing,
Speaker 1: which was the more kind of working man's version. There
Speaker 1: was Falcon Crest and Dynasty and Dallas and those were
Speaker 1: all the Quotinian concerns of rich people, and not Slanding
Speaker 1: was there were normal people, the raverage people. So I
Speaker 1: was on I was on Miami Vice A couple of times?
Speaker 1: Would you play continuing character? I played a wicked recording
Speaker 1: executive who killed who killed? What's his name? What? What's
Speaker 1: the what's don? Don Johnson? Don Johnson's What's what was
Speaker 1: his character's name? Sonny Crockett? Yes, And I knew nothing
Speaker 1: at all about show. I'd never watched Miami Vice, and
Speaker 1: it flew me down to Miami and I had to
Speaker 1: do the show. And it was pleasant, it was, it
Speaker 1: was all right, It was, it was, it was. It
Speaker 1: treats you well. They certainly treated me well. The Cubans
Speaker 1: were very friendly. Sure. But the the only thing I
Speaker 1: remember from it is that I, you know, by then
Speaker 1: I've done a few movies, was that Don Johnson obviously
Speaker 1: captures me. There's a bit of a foot chase, and
Speaker 1: he knocks me down, and the script said and they
Speaker 1: roll over and over on the grass. And the director
Speaker 1: said it took me aside and said, Okay, I know
Speaker 1: it says you roll over and over, but somehow you've
Speaker 1: got to roll over and over. But never get on
Speaker 1: top of dawn. You'll go crazy. Never make pelvis to
Speaker 1: pelvis contact or you'll go crazy. Pelvis. So what happened. Basically,
Speaker 1: what happened was that I had to roll over, and
Speaker 1: then he would chase after me, and then I'd roll
Speaker 1: over some more and he chase after me, and then
Speaker 1: he'd roll over, and then I would chase after him.
Speaker 1: But I never got appendently rolling down the hill after
Speaker 1: I mean, very stupid rock executive. Obviously we didn't just
Speaker 1: get up and run away, but it was very strange.
Speaker 1: And I've got to go back and get a copy
Speaker 1: of that show see that. I want to see this
Speaker 1: that scene um so a career as an actor. That
Speaker 1: was none of the cars either. It wasn't really I
Speaker 1: must say here, you didn't You weren't seduced by that
Speaker 1: at all. No, by at that point, I was so
Speaker 1: taken with the whole idea of being a writer that
Speaker 1: that it just wasn't that. That's what you plus, rolling
Speaker 1: down the hill wasn't enough of that. It's a good story.
Speaker 1: I'd rather write the story than do it again, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Now I want to ask you
Speaker 1: when did you write Father Joe? What you did that
Speaker 1: come out two thousand four? And this is a relationship
Speaker 1: with a Catholic priest. No, actually it's a Benedictine Monk. Well,
Speaker 1: I met him when I was I was having, um,
Speaker 1: what I thought was a passionate love affair with with
Speaker 1: another another man's wife who was told I'm fourteen or
Speaker 1: fifteen between fourteen fifteen in love with a man's wife.
Speaker 1: Grown I wasn't in love, but I was having I
Speaker 1: thought I was in love, but I was having an
Speaker 1: affair with this, with this rather sad woman actually, who
Speaker 1: was married to a quite tyrannical husband. You were literally
Speaker 1: having an affair with her. Oh yeah, okay, well actually,
Speaker 1: well that's the point. No, it was an affair by
Speaker 1: then prevailing British standards, which meant, um, you know that
Speaker 1: I got the first space. But nonetheless, just this court
Speaker 1: caused obviously when when the husband found out about it,
Speaker 1: it caused a big comfuffle and he came upon us. Um,
Speaker 1: you came upon us actually, uh, going a little further
Speaker 1: than first space, and yeah, pretty much whatever whatever we
Speaker 1: were calling it. But but in any in any event,
Speaker 1: it's um, she had a top off and and they
Speaker 1: lived in a trailer, and so it wasn't difficult for
Speaker 1: him to see that that was the case. But he
Speaker 1: was a very uptight British guy, you know, and he's old.
Speaker 1: He was very religious. He was he would have been
Speaker 1: twenty six. She said she was twenty two, but she
Speaker 1: was probably a few years. What do you think it
Speaker 1: was about you and your fourteen year old iteration that
Speaker 1: she was just yeah, you're gorgeous, funny? Well I wasn't
Speaker 1: actually particularly funny, but I think she I think she
Speaker 1: was a bit poetic in those days. And him, yeah,
Speaker 1: right exactly, And and yeah, I was very much the obvious.
Speaker 1: He was a mathematician, physicist, worked on sort of nuclear
Speaker 1: bomb somewhere over who who knew what he was doing. Um,
Speaker 1: But he was passionate convert and you know, unture me,
Speaker 1: having been brought up a Catholic, Converts are more Catholic
Speaker 1: than the pope, and he was. He was just fanatic.
Speaker 1: But he was also giving me religious instruction because I
Speaker 1: was going to a school that didn't that there was
Speaker 1: a Protestant school and mixed marriage agreements said that the
Speaker 1: um that the child, all the children had to be
Speaker 1: raised Catholics. You know, you know, there's giving Catholic instruction.
Speaker 1: So he was giving me religious instruction. And that's how
Speaker 1: all this began. UM And when he found out, he
Speaker 1: insisted that he and I go to a monastery on
Speaker 1: the Isle of Wight, an island off the coast of England,
Speaker 1: where he knew a monk who would take care of this.
Speaker 1: As he put it, and um, was he ever articulated
Speaker 1: what he believed needed to be taken care of. No,
Speaker 1: he said, he said, the crisis has arisen, you know,
Speaker 1: in our marriage. And and and as he put it,
Speaker 1: we men, it's it's we men have an obligation to
Speaker 1: take care of it. That was the immediate reason for
Speaker 1: my going in total terror and fear, because the whole
Speaker 1: whole idea of monks, you know, people in cows, going
Speaker 1: down dark corridors and flogging people and flogging themselves, just
Speaker 1: nothing more horrible and and and but when I got there,
Speaker 1: I found this incredibly wonderful guy, very funny, immensely wise
Speaker 1: guy who was about mid forties. And he had a
Speaker 1: kind of very English. He had a kind of he
Speaker 1: had he had an English word saying, viva are like
Speaker 1: you know transor that they transer he should transfer things
Speaker 1: pair pair, and and and and and he was just
Speaker 1: he was just enchanting for character, quite the opposite to
Speaker 1: what I expected, and he threw he threw this guy out,
Speaker 1: He threw out the husband and said, Tony and I
Speaker 1: want to talk. You must go. And and then we
Speaker 1: had this. One part of taking care of this was
Speaker 1: getting back on the boat done. And so I went
Speaker 1: to a very odd confession, like unlike anyone had had before,
Speaker 1: where you know, I knelt beside an armchair, and he
Speaker 1: listened to everything and said, you haven't done anything really
Speaker 1: very serious except as you put it. He said, you've
Speaker 1: done nothing truly evil, Tony, except committing the sin of selfishness.
Speaker 1: And that was all he had to say about it,
Speaker 1: and and anywhere, but that this this blossom very quickly
Speaker 1: into a into a real friendship. That that I mean.
Speaker 1: I just adored this guy. He was He was someone
Speaker 1: you could turn to would practically any kind of problem.
Speaker 1: And men was also very learned in his way, you know.
Speaker 1: And and monastery was gorgeous, and the music was the
Speaker 1: Congorian chant was gorgeous. The book came out when he
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand and four. So you so,
Speaker 1: so you come back to this, Yeah, how many years later,
Speaker 1: I mean decades later, that literally decade. Why well, I
Speaker 1: sort of see what do you all your life? Yes,
Speaker 1: we we maintained a relationship all all all his life. Yes,
Speaker 1: oh absolutely. I mean I never lost time, did you mean?
Speaker 1: I mean I lost my faith? I went come to
Speaker 1: come to come to America. I became a you know,
Speaker 1: a satirist. I committed many acts of official blass for me, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and and and and so on, and but
Speaker 1: I never quite lost touch with father Joe. And eventually,
Speaker 1: I mean I I hit my own personal bottom at
Speaker 1: a certain point and came back to him. What was
Speaker 1: your bottom? Well, my bottom was mostly drugs, mostly to
Speaker 1: me too, And we're kidney spirits. Well he should have
Speaker 1: met Joe, but but but he was. He was just
Speaker 1: the same, and and and he it was. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like a partical son, you know, coming home
Speaker 1: to his father. It really was that kind of story. Now, um,
Speaker 1: final edition radio hour or something you're working on now
Speaker 1: you still do it? Oh yeah? Sure? How did that start?
Speaker 1: Leaving a lot long way ahead here? Obviously, But but
Speaker 1: the I had not been doing anything with comedy very much.
Speaker 1: I was doing a lot of writing. Give me some
Speaker 1: examples of that period. I used to write for a
Speaker 1: lot of magazines in the nineties, Harper's, g Q, and
Speaker 1: Vanity Fair and I mean all all the all the
Speaker 1: sort of obvious magazines. Um, and I would do things
Speaker 1: like one of the pieces I did with for Harper's
Speaker 1: was about the grandson of Antonio or Done, who was
Speaker 1: a bullfighter. I know you probably hate this, but that
Speaker 1: he was a bullfighter of extraordinary talent um and he
Speaker 1: was only like eighteen. And I covered his first Temporado,
Speaker 1: which had been season um and went to all his
Speaker 1: fights and wrote wrote, I found that I was really
Speaker 1: writing about Spain and how much I love Spain's much
Speaker 1: as anything. And I have to say, George Clinton said
Speaker 1: it was the best piece of writing about bull fighting
Speaker 1: that he'd read since anyway, fantastic, So that was great.
Speaker 1: So stuff like that, and that's seductive once you start
Speaker 1: doing that. And when you know the crash happened and
Speaker 1: all that happened, it just was so outrageous and so
Speaker 1: ridiculous that I, you know, my my satire buds began
Speaker 1: to prick again. And um, I had been writing for
Speaker 1: the Huff Post. I've been I've been writing sort of
Speaker 1: sadoirical pieces of well, but they were more like commentary
Speaker 1: than actual satire. Um. So then Murdoch bought the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal in November I guess of two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: and he was he announced that he was going to
Speaker 1: change it. So a group of us very quickly got together,
Speaker 1: led by me, and said, we will put out the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal as it will look when Murdoch has
Speaker 1: screwed it up, um and turned it into the New
Speaker 1: York Post basically and m and so we did. We
Speaker 1: did a parody of the Wall Street Journal called My
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal with rouping on the cover going my
Speaker 1: Wall Street Channel, you know, um and um. And it
Speaker 1: did quite well actually, And has the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: gotten closer to what you envisioned it would be under
Speaker 1: Murdoch's ownership, Well, I mean certainly graphically, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we you know, we put it with all color and
Speaker 1: there's much shorter pieces and graphics all over the most
Speaker 1: change and absolutely, I mean. But what most importantly it
Speaker 1: was a platform for really getting into the financial community
Speaker 1: and how they had completely looted the country. So it
Speaker 1: gave us a platform to do all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: all the ads you know, were about Lehman brothers and
Speaker 1: bear Sterns and all that. Each one of those was
Speaker 1: a jam of one kind or another. But the Best
Speaker 1: Stones ad was a typical sort of kind of ad
Speaker 1: where all it was just a beautiful woman's ass and
Speaker 1: bere sterne, right, I mean, and uh and that and
Speaker 1: that's how they thought they would get your sympathy back,
Speaker 1: you know, by by putting a beautiful, beautiful woman on
Speaker 1: the Yeah, that kind of stuff. So anyway, that got
Speaker 1: me started and uh, and that very quickly led to
Speaker 1: doing another parody a couple of years later, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to be the final edition of the New York Times.
Speaker 1: This is when the New York Times, like two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten, two thousand and eleven, everyone thought it's going
Speaker 1: to go under. So he thought, what the hell, We'll
Speaker 1: do the final edition of The York Times. And that
Speaker 1: started the Final Edition and we kept that going as
Speaker 1: a website and then spun off a radio show. And
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, what you is your final edition? Media? Are
Speaker 1: you looking forward to a trove of material to satire
Speaker 1: with where we're at now? Well, it's it's interesting you
Speaker 1: should say that, because it's um because that really was
Speaker 1: what I was talking about earlier when we were talking
Speaker 1: about the buzz that I got kind of the challenge,
Speaker 1: a buzz of challenge, if you like, when Nixon and
Speaker 1: Agney were elected, because you know, a couple of less
Speaker 1: than a couple of years after that, I was with
Speaker 1: the National Lampoon, and a couple of years after that
Speaker 1: we we had seventy two election, right, but by then
Speaker 1: the magazine was really thundering along, I mean, the circulator
Speaker 1: rising all time, and we started a group called there
Speaker 1: was a new pack called Satirists for Nixon Agnew keep
Speaker 1: them in office and us in business, you know. And
Speaker 1: two years after that he was gone, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: possibly say that that's uh, that that was our doing,
Speaker 1: although Carl Bernstein did once say to me that I
Speaker 1: think half joking, Lee, but the other half wasn't joking.
Speaker 1: That if it hadn't been to the National Lampoon, Nixon
Speaker 1: wouldn't have resigned, because we were helping to create an
Speaker 1: atmosphere where it was impossible possible for him to stay
Speaker 1: in office. So there is hope, you know. And then
Speaker 1: I must say all my crew were very taken with
Speaker 1: that story of that process, that it is always possible,
Speaker 1: and you've always got to keep trying, because if you
Speaker 1: don't then it will be absolutely as bad as you think.
Speaker 1: And it's a great parallel. Six eight was a very
Speaker 1: bad Yeah, nothing nothing as bad as that has happened
Speaker 1: to us well as I as I struggle to put
Speaker 1: on that wig every Saturday, I'm gonna remember your words.
Speaker 1: And when we stopped doing that, yeah, we we we
Speaker 1: allow for something else. Perhaps, well, there's many many lines
Speaker 1: are forced to that, but one of them is that
Speaker 1: the worst thing that happens in situations like that is
Speaker 1: that they turned the tables on you. Um. I did
Speaker 1: this show in England called Spitting Image, which was a huge,
Speaker 1: huge success. I only helped create it, but but it
Speaker 1: was It was a puppet show where the puppets were
Speaker 1: all these incredibly good grotesque caricatures and public figures, right
Speaker 1: and this was in the early eighties or mid ages,
Speaker 1: so the most popular of our puppets with Thatcher's Cabinet.
Speaker 1: And at the at first they were furious that that
Speaker 1: we were doing this, totally furious. And then as the
Speaker 1: show but got began to find its feet and got
Speaker 1: more and more successful, and these puppets became an institution
Speaker 1: almost you know, the Leon Britton's the Chancellor of the
Speaker 1: Exchequer had this sort of puppet and I'd love to
Speaker 1: show that point in mid to late eighties, but my
Speaker 1: co creator told me that he knew that the show
Speaker 1: had failed all that it was at a highest success
Speaker 1: when Leon Britton called up and asked for his puppet.
Speaker 1: When it wore up, he was going to put it
Speaker 1: in the corner and that would be dinner table conversation.
Speaker 1: So we have to be careful. I don't mean you
Speaker 1: have to be careful, but one has to be careful
Speaker 1: about about these people too much. Yes, indeed people, that's
Speaker 1: what it is. And it is great that he hates it.
Speaker 1: That's great. I mean, at least you got under a skin.
Speaker 1: As President Trump gives new urgency to satire, Tony Hendra
Speaker 1: and the Nash a lampoon or proof that political parody
Speaker 1: done right stands the test of time. This is Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.