Speaker 1: This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
Speaker 1: and see my brand new comedy hour well as Actually
Speaker 1: it's about an hour and a half and I don't
Speaker 1: have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
Speaker 1: I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
Speaker 1: come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Speaker 1: Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and
Speaker 1: we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
Speaker 1: go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
Speaker 1: on the road, My DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
Speaker 1: The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to
Speaker 1: interesting people about what brings them happiness. Hello, my name
Speaker 1: is Craig Ferguson. Welcome to the Tent and the Kids
Speaker 1: Super Studios in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. My guest today
Speaker 1: on the Joy podcast is an old and dear friend
Speaker 1: of mine. So we tend to ramble a bit, so
Speaker 1: the heads up this one may go along and sometimes
Speaker 1: you may think what the hell are you talking about it?
Speaker 1: But then again you may think about any episode you
Speaker 1: see or anything you see. Anyway, my friend today is
Speaker 1: the great Italian writer and a personal friend of mine,
Speaker 1: Adriani Trigiani, Idriana Trigiani, Adriani that was born than one
Speaker 1: of them, and there can't be only one Adriana. As
Speaker 1: you will see. Well, where are you from Italy?
Speaker 2: And don't get excited. Farmers, workers, laborers, blue collar you know,
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of them. Well, but Italians.
Speaker 3: You know this because you're going to Italy.
Speaker 2: I know you do. That's why we work together. Because
Speaker 2: you thought she might be okay, But you were so
Speaker 2: rude to me when I first met you that I thought,
Speaker 2: oh this guy.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: True, I wasn't rude to you. I was just checking
Speaker 1: you out. You were like, wait, wait, can't be in
Speaker 1: my movie?
Speaker 2: No, I said, no, I said, mister Ferguson. I kept
Speaker 2: follow you with Ferguson. I think that like you.
Speaker 1: Be in my movie. I was like, I know, else,
Speaker 1: isn't it?
Speaker 2: God bless you. You're a superstar. Okay, So the Italian
Speaker 2: thing is, we know where we're from, down to the village,
Speaker 2: the street and the house. We'll tell you. We'll send
Speaker 2: you the little yellow house, you know, it's in the
Speaker 2: first part of the hill were and if you're not
Speaker 2: going to do it, they'll serve your lunch. That's the
Speaker 2: way we were all.
Speaker 1: Do you know anybody who did that thing? We're in
Speaker 1: the Godfather that like you think the name of the
Speaker 1: town that you're from, like.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, there's also a beautiful tradition there too that
Speaker 2: very often the town names are Jewish families because there's
Speaker 2: Italian Jews, right, that is beautiful. So the name of
Speaker 2: the town, well, when they got when they went through
Speaker 2: Ellis Island, if they couldn't spell it, they sort of
Speaker 2: did that. But my family remained intact through Ellis Island
Speaker 2: the spellings.
Speaker 1: I had to change my name. Who else you're kidding?
Speaker 1: My real name is Joey Goldstein. People don't know that
Speaker 1: about me, but it's.
Speaker 2: It's when the girl I'm trying to process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I you know, I just it was a
Speaker 1: thing when I was coming through on the boat, when
Speaker 1: I was coming off the boat.
Speaker 2: Well, you chronicled your immigration in your book. That was
Speaker 2: really great.
Speaker 1: It's I'm very I'm pretty happy, but you're very yeah, super.
Speaker 1: I kind of I think I irritate my family, who
Speaker 1: are all born in America with my American ness, like
Speaker 1: mangan and the kids, I'm like, let's go to NASCAR
Speaker 1: and stuff like. That's not American. I went, sure is
Speaker 1: come on?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Every fourth of July we watched Talladega Knights The Ballad
Speaker 1: of Ricky Bo.
Speaker 2: We love it too. At our house.
Speaker 1: It's a great movie ever made.
Speaker 2: You know. You know that, but you're not really a
Speaker 2: family till you make an annual show of midnight run
Speaker 2: with Robert de Niro, and that is one of the
Speaker 2: great movie I watched it with my parents every year.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't seen that movie in years.
Speaker 2: It holds up, it does. Oh my gosh, is that
Speaker 2: movie funny or what? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I remember it being funny. Charles Groden, Charles Groden, he's
Speaker 1: very funny.
Speaker 2: He really was very very funny. He's going to be
Speaker 2: he's going to be with the Lord now he's no
Speaker 2: longer here. Yeah, he was great. He was great.
Speaker 1: And de Niro, of course he's he's still here.
Speaker 2: And then he's very much still here. And then he
Speaker 2: got a little baby.
Speaker 1: Did you just have a little baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has a little baby. I think she's a
Speaker 2: year old.
Speaker 1: With his hats off, the Jagger did that as well.
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger had.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Mick Jagger.
Speaker 4: Talk about me, because because you talked me about time, I've.
Speaker 1: Been around a lot in my life and I find
Speaker 1: he's very interesting man.
Speaker 2: He really is. He's I met him. I've never met him,
Speaker 2: but because I have my I have friends that own
Speaker 2: the Giants, Shila Maher her family, they invite me every
Speaker 2: time he comes through.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, wait, you have friends who owned the Giant.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you introduce me to those fancy friends. I get
Speaker 1: to meet, like, you know, the guys from like Western
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania and stuff. I'm like, hey, have you met No Carmine.
Speaker 1: That's who I get to be.
Speaker 2: I met Sheila Marra on a trip to Israel with
Speaker 2: Kathy Lee and we have friends ever since. Yeah. There
Speaker 2: she's dear friends with all that crew. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: But when the when the Stones come through, Springsteen, I was.
Speaker 2: I was there the night Springsteen. I've seen him so
Speaker 2: many times countless since the River tour, since I was
Speaker 2: a kid.
Speaker 1: I'm a fan.
Speaker 2: You're a big fan of Springsteen. I am too. But
Speaker 2: I saw the show. I saw the show. He was
Speaker 2: sick and I went having seen him so many times
Speaker 2: I went, he's not right, he's not right. And then
Speaker 2: of course he hit that place in the show where
Speaker 2: it's Runway to Heaven, right where he just babe a
Speaker 2: hit after hitting people.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the key change in border run That's right,
Speaker 1: that's what it is.
Speaker 2: Dang, Absolutely, you're right, you're right. He is the master
Speaker 2: of the key change.
Speaker 1: You gotta have the key change change. So true, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta have the key change. Do you play a
Speaker 1: musical instrument?
Speaker 2: I do not.
Speaker 1: I feel like you should. What about the heart?
Speaker 2: Okay, so now you're you're digging into my childhood book. Well,
Speaker 2: the town band director Dave Tipton I met with my
Speaker 2: parents and said that kid has musical talent me and
Speaker 2: I was like all excited, and I was imagining what
Speaker 2: instruments I would play. I really wanted to play the
Speaker 2: saxophone like my uncle, and my dad was very proficient
Speaker 2: on the piano and natural piano player, I mean like pianist,
Speaker 2: classically trained from the age of five, and he'd come
Speaker 2: home every day from the factory. He'd sit at the piano.
Speaker 2: That's how he decompressed for thirty minutes. It made us
Speaker 2: happy because we knew where he was.
Speaker 3: Do you think that people in light on that one
Speaker 3: go ahead and learn instruments?
Speaker 1: Why well no, I think do people and learns less
Speaker 1: than the used to because they're on fucking Instagram.
Speaker 2: No, you know, you're really trying to blame.
Speaker 1: I'm against that. I want the Internet to be stoppd okay.
Speaker 2: I in con it's too late with social media because
Speaker 2: we don't have magazines and newspapers like we did so
Speaker 2: now so now we have to tune into the Craig
Speaker 2: Ferguson magazine whatever that is on the internet and find
Speaker 2: you on uh YouTube or wherever wherever your face is sold. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: but it used to be.
Speaker 1: You still write books. Yeah, I still get you know,
Speaker 1: you still write big papery books that you read.
Speaker 2: Still do, thank you. But that's an industry that seems
Speaker 2: to benefit from this book talk has changed. Book sales.
Speaker 2: The major publishers make over a billion a year each,
Speaker 2: some of them three billion, four billion, So they're doing
Speaker 2: very well. And here's the other thing you need to know.
Speaker 2: You got to just kind of stand back from things
Speaker 2: sometimes and go the way we're telling stories changes. Just
Speaker 2: read a little interview with Clark Gable from nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: and he was dead set against television because he was
Speaker 2: a movie star, a movie actor, and he said, we
Speaker 2: have to be loyal to the industry that brought us.
Speaker 2: But look what that simple change in the late forties
Speaker 2: and early fifties did to the industry. We began to
Speaker 2: tell stories in different ways. Now, last year in the
Speaker 2: United States of America, I've been doing this twenty five
Speaker 2: years with books. Last year in the United States of America,
Speaker 2: three point eight billion million books, not billion, sorry, everybody.
Speaker 2: Million books were self published. So there's three point eight
Speaker 2: million people in the United States. More people than buy
Speaker 2: books are writing them. So the storytelling, the way we
Speaker 2: tell stories has completely changed.
Speaker 1: Well has it though? I mean the fact that if
Speaker 1: you self publish a book. Do you think that if
Speaker 1: three point eight million people are writing books and self publishing,
Speaker 1: is that changed in the way we tell stories or
Speaker 1: is just a lot of people doing it? This is
Speaker 1: the way we used to do it with not very
Speaker 1: good editors. Because you know, the publishing. I've read some
Speaker 1: great self published books, and I've read some of the
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, this could.
Speaker 2: Have Well you're a big reader, so let's go buy
Speaker 2: this the industry itself. I haven't noticed that they've added
Speaker 2: a lot of editors. I haven't noticed that they've added
Speaker 2: a lot of imprints to accommodate this. But you do
Speaker 2: find out when you scratch the surface that traditional publishers
Speaker 2: own the lion's share of self publishing business. Yes, so
Speaker 2: you pay somebody to be published, and sometimes at these
Speaker 2: self publishing houses they have editors for you, designers.
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of editors. I think editors.
Speaker 2: I need them. I mean, my editor, Maya ZeVA Needer,
Speaker 2: I need editors. I also, like you, I do like
Speaker 2: to work collaboratively with a group. I think it brings makes.
Speaker 1: Sense because you're a TV writer though, right, I was
Speaker 1: a playwright first.
Speaker 2: But that playwright really that's really the family. When you
Speaker 2: write for the theater, that's just that's the island of
Speaker 2: misfit toys, that's you know, floating to profit. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's like those poor souls. I mean, you know, all
Speaker 2: of us. I consider myself one of those poor souls.
Speaker 2: But the theater is the place where you make something
Speaker 2: for no money. You tell a story for no money.
Speaker 2: The whole reason I went into the theater was because
Speaker 2: I needed a piece of paper and a pencil and
Speaker 2: a space, and I did. When I began as a playwright,
Speaker 2: I did plays on buses. I did plays everywhere. You
Speaker 2: did a play on a bus, Yeah, I did a
Speaker 2: play on a bus. It was I got me a
Speaker 2: lot of trouble too, because I did it on a
Speaker 2: shuttle bus between Notre Dame University of Notre Dame in
Speaker 2: Saint Mary's College. They ran a shuttle bus.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a very Catholic bus.
Speaker 2: The Catholic's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting way.
Speaker 1: You know, go on some of those nittlely did you
Speaker 1: know that I show them there.
Speaker 2: You're obsessed with religion, you are, and I think that
Speaker 2: that's beautiful on a certain level. You're a very spiritual person.
Speaker 2: But I also think, you know, you're a very bitter person,
Speaker 2: and that goes with me.
Speaker 4: I tell you, you know, he's not at all, you know,
Speaker 4: so delicious like.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I think I've got a certain amount
Speaker 1: of bitterness. But that's part of the recipe of being
Speaker 1: a human being. I think if you don't have bitterness,
Speaker 1: you're not fucking paying attention. There are some things you
Speaker 1: should be better about. True, you know, like every time
Speaker 1: I feel my knees when I stand up, I'm like, God,
Speaker 1: damn it.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about aging.
Speaker 1: Ah right, well, look very briefly though.
Speaker 2: But let's go back to self publishing.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, I just want to take us on
Speaker 1: the journey from where you start to where you end, right,
Speaker 1: so very very quickly, but I would We won't make
Speaker 1: a huge deal. But for those people unfortunate enough to
Speaker 1: not know your story, let's do a concise, well edited
Speaker 1: short story of you starting out as a fresh faced
Speaker 1: Italian immigrant again off the boat Ellis Island. So where
Speaker 1: you're from the appellations, right.
Speaker 2: I grew up in Appalachia, right in southwest Virginia, bless
Speaker 2: you started out in the northeastern United States with my
Speaker 2: little family of seven, seven brothers and seven of us
Speaker 2: and my parents and my dad got a low interest
Speaker 2: government loan to start a blouse smell in Appalachia. That's
Speaker 2: how we ended up there. People say, how did Italian
Speaker 2: get down here? Well, that's how the m Italians got
Speaker 2: down there.
Speaker 1: So you started off a blows well, your father started
Speaker 1: a blow smell manufacturing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he made more and blouses, but he was trained
Speaker 2: in his parents Blousemill in Martin's Creek, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: All right, so how did you get that doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like a quick short hope to show business from there,
Speaker 1: and that's not like, well, you know.
Speaker 2: We wanted to be I was just talking to our
Speaker 2: intern lady about this. I wanted to be in sho.
Speaker 2: I still it's my highest dream. See. I love show business.
Speaker 2: I love it more. I love show business more than
Speaker 2: any person, man child. I'm in love with show business really,
Speaker 2: and I'm still obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something every aspect of it, you know, begging
Speaker 2: you to do a.
Speaker 1: Movie, or you asked me nicely and I said sure, No,
Speaker 1: you said I'll call you back in forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: No person ever said that to me. I happen to
Speaker 2: forty eight hours? What's he talking? I say that you
Speaker 2: called back in forty eight hours because you were in
Speaker 2: Italy with your friends and you didn't want to be bothered.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's not wrong with that. I can't I
Speaker 1: can't understand why I said.
Speaker 2: Forty eight You said forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: I was forty eight hours.
Speaker 2: So then I then I uh, I I said in
Speaker 2: forty eight hours? Will have an answer everybody relaxed, right,
Speaker 2: we'll see if he comes back.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but this is not about that. This is
Speaker 1: about you, you know.
Speaker 2: But we have to throw in those things because that's
Speaker 2: what I think of you, and I just start laughing. Okay,
Speaker 2: And you're Appalachian. Okay. It's the Scotts Irish area of
Speaker 2: the United States. So when we went to Scotland and
Speaker 2: we made a movie there, I was the only only
Speaker 2: person on that crew from America who could understand the
Speaker 2: local people because it sounded like it is to me.
Speaker 1: It's very it's going to be right.
Speaker 2: So when you go to Appalachia, you're not straining to
Speaker 2: like understand what people are saying. And if I slip
Speaker 2: into it, which I am known to do, you understand.
Speaker 2: So so there we are in Appalachia. We have no
Speaker 2: connections to show business.
Speaker 1: I wanted to And it's going to go on on
Speaker 1: a bus between the Catholic that.
Speaker 2: Was later please please, you're you're you're ringing the best
Speaker 2: part of.
Speaker 1: The story, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: Because we were Italian. There was an outdoor drama there
Speaker 2: called the Trailer Lonesome Pine Outdoor Drama. My brother Carlo
Speaker 2: played Little bubb Big bubb and old Bub. Okay, that's
Speaker 2: how long he was in the drama. Yes, he's a
Speaker 2: great actor. My brother and we were all involved in
Speaker 2: the town in the theater, and I was on the
Speaker 2: crew because Barlow was a star. He played like the
Speaker 2: boy and mame the fiddler around the roof wherever the
Speaker 2: little kid was. And then they got a kid in
Speaker 2: every musical corky.
Speaker 4: Okay, So you're so wrong, and you're doing this during
Speaker 4: two things, during Tony Awards season and Pride Month. You
Speaker 4: should be ashamed of yourself anyway, Get the characters correct.
Speaker 2: Anyway. So when they needed to cast the children of
Speaker 2: Siam and the King and I, they looked at the
Speaker 2: iteies that said they look different, put him in. So
Speaker 2: we were the kids that went okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's when I really fell in love with show business.
Speaker 2: And when I was in my first thing, then I
Speaker 2: wasn't cute, so I was put in the chorus beautiful, yeah,
Speaker 2: beautiful because you love me or my brother. But I'm
Speaker 2: just telling you back then, no, my glasses were this thick,
Speaker 2: and they were like, oh yeah, can you see stage left?
Speaker 2: Not really okay, And you know, in certain areas of history,
Speaker 2: people didn't wear eyeglasses, and there was one director that
Speaker 2: came through It's very fancy, said everybody take your glasses off,
Speaker 2: and the people were we were piling up backstage. It
Speaker 2: was bad anyway.
Speaker 1: Well, because you're doing a period piece and you can
Speaker 1: wear glass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't wear glasses so well, you certainly couldn't
Speaker 2: wear Oscar day Loa rent a windshields that we were
Speaker 2: all wearing.
Speaker 1: Hello, this is Craig Ferguson and I want to let
Speaker 1: you know I have a brand new stand up comedy
Speaker 1: special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy,
Speaker 1: and I would be so happy if you checked it out.
Speaker 1: To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel
Speaker 1: at the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there?
Speaker 1: Just click it and play it and it's free. I
Speaker 1: can't look. I'm not going to come around your house
Speaker 1: and show you how to do it. If you can't
Speaker 1: do it, then you can't have it. But if you
Speaker 1: can figure it out, it's yours. I have a theory
Speaker 1: about movies made in the nineteen seventies. This thing that
Speaker 1: I've ob recently, I've started watching movies made in the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and I feel.
Speaker 2: We're talking hal Ashby right, all those guys.
Speaker 1: Like movies that were made in the nineteen seventies. I
Speaker 1: feel like all of the actors said, we're not getting
Speaker 1: anything but nineteen seventies haircuts here. It doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: period we're playing. I don't care if we're playing Nazis
Speaker 1: Roman guys. I don't care for outlaws. I don't care
Speaker 1: for everybody had a nineteen seventies haircut. They wouldn't.
Speaker 2: You're right, I just want it.
Speaker 1: Oh fuck it no.
Speaker 2: And they wore the glasses they wanted to wear. They
Speaker 2: wore those Windshiel wiper eyeglasses. And I think you also,
Speaker 2: when you think of the nineteen seventies in film, you
Speaker 2: have to talk about teeth.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I'm from a country where teeth is
Speaker 1: not something that we talk about.
Speaker 2: Okay, I lived there for six months. People have beautiful teeth.
Speaker 1: What is what you knew you were mixing with the
Speaker 1: smart teeth set, That's what it was. And also those teeth,
Speaker 1: many of those teeth arrived later.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Look, look, look, looks we're back and you've got
Speaker 1: your glasses on and you're in the play. But now
Speaker 1: you love show business, do you say? So?
Speaker 2: I wrote a play. I didn't write play for Catholics. First,
Speaker 2: I wrote a play. I started to write for the
Speaker 2: school assemblies and and my friends remember this that they
Speaker 2: during the by centennial. I decided that I was to
Speaker 2: play right then, and I wrote monologues for people to
Speaker 2: play historical figures in my school. Nice right, Yes, I
Speaker 2: did well. Harriet Tubman, Ben Franklin, Frederick Douglas.
Speaker 1: So we're stinking with American American heroes.
Speaker 2: And my friend Jean Williams, who was African American, came
Speaker 2: from a long line of teachers and she she herself
Speaker 2: became a teacher and I was just with her in
Speaker 2: Big Stone app We get together and we just all started,
Speaker 2: we just laugh and I said, remember what And we
Speaker 2: put her in the Big Stone Gap movie because I
Speaker 2: knew she was an actor and I needed somebody with
Speaker 2: Whoopy Goldberg in a scene. And those two it was
Speaker 2: like Jean met Whoopee. At her level, I can't even
Speaker 2: but we had a long history. Because I cast her
Speaker 2: as Harriet Tubman for the school assembly and I was
Speaker 2: short on costumes, so I went into the to the
Speaker 2: home ac room and they had made bonnets shower caps,
Speaker 2: but they were plastic. I took one of them, and
Speaker 2: I took an apron and I said, sit in a
Speaker 2: rocking chair, do the monologue Harriet.
Speaker 1: Tubman with a plastic shower cap on.
Speaker 2: But when the thing opened, the student body went crazy.
Speaker 2: They thought it was a comedy that she was in
Speaker 2: that shower cap. And Jeane, she did actor that she was.
Speaker 2: She just pushed through it and I'm waiting in the
Speaker 2: wings for her. She came back and she took off
Speaker 2: that shower Kevin. She threw it at me and she
Speaker 2: goes never again to Johnny, never again. That is that
Speaker 2: story amusing on your podcast? Or is that just too
Speaker 2: private a story? But anyway, so she still remembers that
Speaker 2: she did it, and I remember the whole anyhow. So
Speaker 2: then when it came time, I said, I'm paying you back. Okay,
Speaker 2: you're gonna be in the movie. You're getting paid whoa, whoa?
Speaker 1: You jumped ahead here.
Speaker 2: You want me to get to the Saint Mary's of
Speaker 2: it all?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're right now, you're writing a play for
Speaker 1: cat So I might.
Speaker 2: Well for the patriarchy, really, because Notre Dame is a
Speaker 2: monolith and Saint Mary's is this really wonderful women's college,
Speaker 2: which are not in fashion anymore, although it's thriving. It's
Speaker 2: it's but it's next door to Notre Dame, but it's
Speaker 2: got in my mind it's more beautiful, has better land,
Speaker 2: prettier buildings. But I went to Saint Mary's and so
Speaker 2: the first thing I would have to attack is the
Speaker 2: the disparity of power. So we got on the bus
Speaker 2: and I wrote scenes, sketches that the girls would do
Speaker 2: as if they're having a real conversation, but they were
Speaker 2: based on real conversations, like about who they were dating
Speaker 2: and whatever. I'm changing names right, but they'd be holding
Speaker 2: the thing on the shuttle bus.
Speaker 1: Who's watching these plays?
Speaker 2: Everybody that's riding a bus. It's a building audience.
Speaker 1: Who's riding the bus, students.
Speaker 2: Going back and forth for classes and at night for parties.
Speaker 1: You should do this play on the subway, how would you?
Speaker 2: You know what? That's a great idea, except you can't
Speaker 2: hear down there.
Speaker 1: You see it.
Speaker 4: You got to project like the guy, like the guy
Speaker 4: that comes through and says, give.
Speaker 1: Me a twenty year.
Speaker 2: I'll kill myself right in front of your eyes that guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I am yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, that guy.
Speaker 2: So I did that. Then I did a stage show
Speaker 2: with it, with this, then we became we evolved into
Speaker 2: a comedy troupe, and I just picked the girls. That
Speaker 2: one looked like Pat bennettar Mimi Commons. She always wore
Speaker 2: leopard and she was in the art department. People didn't
Speaker 2: really talk to her too much. And then I found
Speaker 2: out she was just painfully shy, right because she was
Speaker 2: the one that really she'd barf before every perform to
Speaker 2: be like, maybe.
Speaker 1: I used to do that, you did, I used to
Speaker 1: throw up.
Speaker 2: That's a sign of greatness.
Speaker 1: I never threw it never worked out for me, left, No,
Speaker 1: it's I never before.
Speaker 2: I got I couldn't do anything that would directly make
Speaker 2: me thin. Nothing. I never threw up. What about heron
Speaker 2: heron I didn't. I never You know, I didn't do drugs.
Speaker 2: You know I didn't do them because fear, I I don't.
Speaker 1: Please listen, whatever it takes to keep you off the needle.
Speaker 1: Fear is fine. Fear is fine. I never did that's no, no, no.
Speaker 2: And drinking to me, I'd rather eat the calories. I
Speaker 2: I'd rather eat.
Speaker 1: I've never yeah, you know, I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: seen you drink anything. Did you drink cocktails or something? Yeah, somethings.
Speaker 2: Not really, not really, not really, my brother, No, I
Speaker 2: don't because there's a lot of sugar in there, and
Speaker 2: I was born pre diabetic. I'm Italian. You have to
Speaker 2: really watch it. You've got to be careful with the sugar.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing I feel like, Look, you don't.
Speaker 2: Get off the place, keep going.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, I'm going to I'm just gonna taking us
Speaker 1: because you said the Italian thing. I'm going to say
Speaker 1: something about Italy now. And no, you know how much
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: I know you love it.
Speaker 1: It's like every time I go to Italy, I think,
Speaker 1: why don't I love you? It's crazy?
Speaker 2: Why don't we get side by side houses in the
Speaker 2: Alps That's where I'm looking at.
Speaker 1: Don't I don't have best seller money? I'm not like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Then you have?
Speaker 2: You know, we can buy a house there for three
Speaker 2: thousand dollars. Why wouldn't we do it?
Speaker 1: If we can buy it? I saw.
Speaker 2: I saw your skills at the Castle in Scotland. You
Speaker 2: can dig. That's Megan's I'm talking about who goes out
Speaker 2: and digs the trenches and plants the treats. I need
Speaker 2: you for that stonework that with your little wagon, by yourself,
Speaker 2: with your bitterness, just.
Speaker 1: Rage in despair, just digging away. Ryah. Fuck, let's fucking assholes,
Speaker 1: no fucking in Gianna, fucking get me to do that,
Speaker 1: stupid fucking fella.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but wouldn't this be fun? I mean, our family,
Speaker 2: we love each other. We could go up there, but
Speaker 2: you would be like this day too. I hate, I hate,
Speaker 2: I hate. I've been peeping in on you. Hey, let's go.
Speaker 1: All right anyway, so we're back. You know, you're in
Speaker 1: this Catholic school.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I mean, yeah, but it's but it's it's
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties. So let's not get crazy. It's it's
Speaker 2: like everything changed. And I believe in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: I think there's one hundred years between nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: and nineteen eighty nine. Do you agree with that?
Speaker 1: I'm not against it, but I need you to elaborate
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 2: Well, there's been these studies that are, you know, sociological studies,
Speaker 2: and I would refer everyone to Kurt Anderson's book on
Speaker 2: this topic. The title escapes me, but we'll put it
Speaker 2: in the prompt. He wrote this book about it really
Speaker 2: intrigued me, and it's gotten us to twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: in a certain way. When we were kids, right, the
Speaker 2: decade was defined by the cars, the haircuts, the people.
Speaker 2: It changed through time. Okay, my mother might have been
Speaker 2: wearing a pillbox hat in nineteen sixty, but by nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy she was in a caftan with share bracelets up
Speaker 2: her arm. Okay, okay, I'm follow this. Haircuts, there were
Speaker 2: haircuts right in the fifties. There was a thing called
Speaker 2: the Italian cut. The Italians who were persona on Grada
Speaker 2: in the United States after World War Two assumed a
Speaker 2: position of artistic and cultural excellence. Cars haircuts, movie stars.
Speaker 1: Haircuts. So in the nineteen seventies, you know Stuart's haircut, Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: we got a typical Roads Stuart haircut. Right was the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies Roads Sture haircut. And my mother used to say, oh,
Speaker 1: that Rod stupid. He thinks he's fancy with his.
Speaker 2: Bloo job haircut.
Speaker 1: I'm like, Mom, that's no, I don't think they're called
Speaker 1: that said, Oh, yes, they go to the salons and
Speaker 1: they get those blood job haircuts. I'm like, I'm pretty sure,
Speaker 1: let us know what they call them. But she was convinced.
Speaker 2: That so funny because you know, there's everything's everything. That's
Speaker 2: what I love about show business. Everything forms these circles.
Speaker 2: And I just talked to Peter Wolfe on my podcast
Speaker 2: about his memoir, and you should talk to him because
Speaker 2: that man. Every page is like Thomas loaded loaded stories.
Speaker 2: But he he the first time in history I saw
Speaker 2: a negative thing about Rod Stewart, and I asked him.
Speaker 2: I said, I don't know Rod Stewart and never met
Speaker 2: Rod Stewart, but I find Rod Stewart a ray of light.
Speaker 1: I think he's negativity about Rod Stewart.
Speaker 2: He was a little snutty. He walked by the he
Speaker 2: walked by the Jay Giles band and didn't give them
Speaker 2: their proper snaps. Fuck though you don't think so, you.
Speaker 1: Asked, I can't believe that to be true. Let me
Speaker 1: tell the other I just.
Speaker 4: Tell that his taste someone who wears Lepard, but.
Speaker 2: He would he wears anything you want.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to tell you this about roads. This
Speaker 1: is a true story. I was in Heathrow airport, wait
Speaker 1: for a plane. That's why I go there. I don't
Speaker 1: go for any other reason. I was in there and
Speaker 1: I was went for a plane, and Rood Stewart walks
Speaker 1: through the airport was and he every time people were going,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Rod Sture, and he would look at
Speaker 1: people and say Rod Stewart, he say his name. I
Speaker 1: was like, that's how I'm that's I love that. You
Speaker 1: just go through, Craig, I go No, I go through,
Speaker 1: and people are like that was that Hope Man haircut? Anyway, Look,
Speaker 1: so we get where we're back. We have to get
Speaker 1: you back to the where how do you get right
Speaker 1: in Catholic plays to New York City because that.
Speaker 2: Call they're not Catholic play there. I wrote a play
Speaker 2: called Notes from the Nile, which I really I would
Speaker 2: love to do again. I rewrote. I wrote the story
Speaker 2: you would be greatest Julius Caesar, because I'm bring him
Speaker 2: back from the dead, and there's a there's a there's
Speaker 2: a three way conflict between Cleopatra her former lover Julius Caesar,
Speaker 2: which you would play in Antony between exactly.
Speaker 1: I know, but I would play Julius Caesar Scottish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, ladies and gentlemen, I'm just going to say this
Speaker 2: directly to the audience. He says he's going to play
Speaker 2: it Scottish. He would only play it Scottish because he
Speaker 2: makes the decision and drives the bus as an actor. Okay,
Speaker 2: but quite accidentally, So do whatever you want. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to argue with you.
Speaker 1: But also I think I think that would be good
Speaker 1: to play.
Speaker 2: Besides, everybody in America thinks you have a British accent.
Speaker 1: They don't know the difference Ancient Rome. People think that
Speaker 1: because of the movie, because of the movies, like all
Speaker 1: Ancient Room and Caesar quickly come here and how about them?
Speaker 1: It's that time for something nice to eat?
Speaker 2: Oh God love the Italian.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Look, how do we get you from colleague to
Speaker 1: New York City? That's what I want to do. We're
Speaker 1: telling your story today.
Speaker 2: Okay. So, so I knew I had to come here.
Speaker 2: This was my highest dream, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, because you want to come here and you want
Speaker 1: to ride, that's right.
Speaker 2: And I have no place else to go. I can't
Speaker 2: go home. My parents still have kids at home. I
Speaker 2: would say that you know they were done, okay, But besides,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't go home. I needed I had this burning
Speaker 2: like crazy, as you know, to get into show business.
Speaker 2: So I came up north to my grandmother's and I
Speaker 2: have my stuff in paper bags basically. And my grandmother
Speaker 2: called this kind of nutty friend to hers and Garrison,
Speaker 2: New York, and said, my granddaughter needs a place to
Speaker 2: live in New York City. She said, tell every go
Speaker 2: to the long Acre Hotel for Women. Cheap clean day
Speaker 2: there whenever I go into New York. Now, meanwhile, this
Speaker 2: lady lived in like a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Garrison.
Speaker 2: She was very wealthy, but nobody knew it. Right, But
Speaker 2: she's an old friend of my grandma's from the factory days.
Speaker 1: Do they still have that wild tell.
Speaker 2: The well, now that's the thing that's changed. The nineties
Speaker 2: kind of everything collapsed. Like there was that I got
Speaker 2: from the long Acre Hotel for Women?
Speaker 1: Where was that was that in Manhette?
Speaker 2: Yes, on forty fifth between eighth and ninth.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's like it's agerous place for you to be.
Speaker 1: What year are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Well, it's not that bad, eighty five, not that bad,
Speaker 2: not terrible, but anyway, it's not cleaned up. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well I immediately form a comedy troupe like I had
Speaker 2: at Saint Mary's. Got New Girls, right, and one of
Speaker 2: the girls in it was a crafty girl from Virginia
Speaker 2: and South Carolina named Eleanor Jones, Right, Okay, who became
Speaker 2: became who came into the group And I said, look,
Speaker 2: I'm running out of dough and she said, I said,
Speaker 2: I got I got a tip on a sublet and
Speaker 2: she said, I wouldn't do that, but if you want.
Speaker 2: But I took it within two weeks. Knock on the door.
Speaker 2: The guy that I gave the money, not Eleanor. Eleanor
Speaker 2: was was at the mill Bank House.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The mill Bank House was a was a boarding house
Speaker 2: for women in the arts, which had to be between
Speaker 2: nineteen and twenty five. And then they kicked you out.
Speaker 2: Although there was a woman in there named Lamya. She
Speaker 2: was forty two if she was a day, and she
Speaker 2: never left, so you had to let kich you get
Speaker 2: out of there. Now, Lamia wore wigs. Nobody could figure
Speaker 2: Lamia out. She was a beauty.
Speaker 1: But let's look at call open Lamia. Let's get back
Speaker 1: to you though, let's look at calling open Lamiah. That's
Speaker 1: how she gets you. That's how she gets you.
Speaker 2: That's how I get you off trying to We've done
Speaker 2: this enough, now, you know. Okay. So I get into
Speaker 2: the Millbank House and when that happens, now I'm golden.
Speaker 2: I lost all my money because I gave it to
Speaker 2: the sublet guy. And it was just it was a thief.
Speaker 2: It was a guy who had sublet in between and
Speaker 2: two dancers showed up in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: and get out of our apartment. And I said, no,
Speaker 2: I gave so and so the money, and he said, no,
Speaker 2: that guy sublet from us. He took your money. So
Speaker 2: I went, okay, well, listen, you lose money along the way,
Speaker 2: you never lose it again in that fashion. I know that.
Speaker 2: I know that just caused like fifty needles just went
Speaker 2: into your neck when I said I lost money, but
Speaker 2: I did, I.
Speaker 1: Was a little bit along the way.
Speaker 2: I know you haven't.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So so Eleanor says, I'm going to get you in
Speaker 2: here at the Milbank House. I'm going to get you in.
Speaker 2: I said, please, please get me in. It was starting
Speaker 2: to snow. No, no, no, I'm not the little match. But
Speaker 2: I'm still at the long Acre Hotel and I'm okay.
Speaker 2: I show up with my bags and the lady that
Speaker 2: answers the door changed my life. Jimne Lawton. She's running
Speaker 2: the house. And I said I need a room, and
Speaker 2: once so she said, I have a guest room. Now,
Speaker 2: I was temping on Wall Street, so I had, I was,
Speaker 2: I was, you couldn't save money in New York. I don't,
Speaker 2: I don't care, but I knew I could pull it off.
Speaker 2: So it was one hundred dollars a week, two meals
Speaker 2: Monday through Friday, and breakfast on Saturday and Sunday. Hey
Speaker 2: that's enough food, right, sure, get your own room? Yeah,
Speaker 2: and shared baths. Did here like a dorm? Really nice, clean,
Speaker 2: beautiful And she brought me in, So.
Speaker 1: I and did she take you into show business? How
Speaker 1: did you get?
Speaker 2: That's where it gets good, okay? Because nobody would talk
Speaker 2: to that lady, and she was very beautiful. Why wouldn't
Speaker 2: they talk right here? Because she's the nobody likes the boss,
Speaker 2: you know that nobody, And she was she was the
Speaker 2: house mother, and she was always telling people to get
Speaker 2: your feet off of things, and you can't have a
Speaker 2: boy inside the house and the girls were propping the
Speaker 2: door open with a shoe. They had a lady that
Speaker 2: answered the door. I mean it was like a whole thing.
Speaker 2: It was like it was like nineteen forty in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five. That's how I will describe the bank hoss. Okay,
Speaker 2: but the food was good, had wash her dryer, and
Speaker 2: a phone on each floor.
Speaker 1: Let's don't get stuck in the hotel here. How did
Speaker 1: we get you in the show business because you're really
Speaker 1: selling the hotel to me, like holding doors, opened the shoes,
Speaker 1: it's a phone and every floor there's a meal on Sundays.
Speaker 2: Because how can I describe how you get your dream
Speaker 2: if I don't tell you where you stay and how
Speaker 2: you kind of make it Happenez.
Speaker 1: You're a novelist, that's why you're doing that. But this
Speaker 1: is not a novelist. I'm editing you. So now how
Speaker 1: do we get you? How do we get you into
Speaker 1: the show business world?
Speaker 2: Okay, first thing I do is I I found a
Speaker 2: comedy troupe, and I call my dad and he knows
Speaker 2: a guy in the garment district, and I hold auditions
Speaker 2: and those girls became the core group and I kept
Speaker 2: that going for seven years with different girls. Where did
Speaker 2: you perform upstairs at the Vesuvia was our first run.
Speaker 2: We were okay, yes it is. It's kind of a
Speaker 2: mob joint if you have to know the truth.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know you got these girls down downstairs.
Speaker 3: It's about really funny, really funny.
Speaker 2: Did that? Then then we did the cabaret circuit, so
Speaker 2: the Duplex, we did the comedy clubs we did like
Speaker 2: we were openers, like Silver Friedman has had us open
Speaker 2: for people because we did music too.
Speaker 1: And then uh Corner Planermance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody wanted to see us coming with you know,
Speaker 2: a giant subway token spray painted gold that we did
Speaker 2: on the roof of the Millbank. Nobody cared about that
Speaker 2: after a certain point.
Speaker 1: I want to see that.
Speaker 2: And you know, we also did Kelly's Village West, which
Speaker 2: we weren't sure what it was. I I was the booker,
Speaker 2: and my boss on Wall Street will tell you. I
Speaker 2: took his his his rollover line as my business line
Speaker 2: and I answered it like this three one, six nine,
Speaker 2: and they go, is this Adria Andre Johnny are you
Speaker 2: booking the act and the thing? And I go, yeah,
Speaker 2: So one day he called the second line because I
Speaker 2: was rated out and I went three one sixty nine
Speaker 2: and he said, this is your boss. I need to
Speaker 2: talk to you. And I went, oh, don't worry this guy.
Speaker 2: He just liked the fact that I was funny. And
Speaker 2: he's still my dear.
Speaker 1: I like an eccentric guy in walls.
Speaker 2: No, he's not eccentric at all. He's like young and
Speaker 2: go get her and tops and pops. But he was.
Speaker 2: He was Italian, and it just means he's like he's
Speaker 2: like climbing the ladder at Merrill Lynch, Piers, Fenner and Smith.
Speaker 2: And I don't think it. I don't even think it
Speaker 2: even exists anymore.
Speaker 1: See when people say to me, how are you feeling,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, tops and bops?
Speaker 2: You never heard that.
Speaker 1: Ask me how I feel.
Speaker 2: You'll lage out of it. My grandmother used to say it,
Speaker 2: Come on, come on, ask me how you feeling, Craig,
Speaker 2: Tops and Bop. Do you think anybody's gonna like this podcast?
Speaker 2: I don't give it. What are we doing?
Speaker 1: I love it?
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, that's why your success in show business.
Speaker 2: You to have that. I don't care, Jean, Okay, go ahead,
Speaker 2: So you get of you get Saint Mary's.
Speaker 1: He goes, no, no, no, no, you're now you're in
Speaker 1: chill business, and now I'm in You're in the comedy troops.
Speaker 2: I'm in the comedy troop and everybody's conspiring to help
Speaker 2: me make my dream come true.
Speaker 1: Right, I know. But you're still writing. Now you're going
Speaker 1: to write the When do you start writing the TV comedies?
Speaker 1: What's the first TV comedies?
Speaker 2: The first TV comedy was Okay, there's one thing before that,
Speaker 2: which was off Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club. Noticed
Speaker 2: I've never worked there since. It was called Secrets of
Speaker 2: the Lava Lamp for Camille Saviola, who was starring in
Speaker 2: nine the Music Hall. She was a little tug boat
Speaker 2: of a woman. She's in heaven.
Speaker 1: Now I guess, right, And you say, I guess like,
Speaker 1: maybe she's not.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. She believes she'd go there,
Speaker 2: but anyway, that's solid what you believe. So she she
Speaker 2: found me. I was doing staged readings all over the city, directors,
Speaker 2: doing stage readings with really great actors. Okay, I mean
Speaker 2: really good because and I said to myself, I said,
Speaker 2: take your twenties to learn how to do this right,
Speaker 2: work with other actors and see what you could do,
Speaker 2: and direct them and see what you know. Anyway, So
Speaker 2: so that led to she hired me Camille Saviola, and
Speaker 2: I got trashed by Mail gus All in the New
Speaker 2: York Times.
Speaker 1: New York Times that I didn't really care.
Speaker 2: But the people I was tempting for they were a
Speaker 2: little embarrassed because they all came to the show and
Speaker 2: they were like, how'd you get.
Speaker 1: Your I don't like people I know coming to the show.
Speaker 2: I don't like to see anybody either.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I haven't seen you seck no, but recently yeah.
Speaker 2: However, so this turned into for me was another trajectory
Speaker 2: of show business. How did I get TV? Was my girlfriends.
Speaker 2: Two of them were working in the mail room at
Speaker 2: William Morris, Suzanne Gluck, who become a huge agent, and
Speaker 2: Ruth Pomerance, who was at the time was a producer.
Speaker 2: She was like a baby producer and she discovered Grisham
Speaker 2: for I mean a baby producer, like she was a newbie.
Speaker 2: She was young. She's so smart. Ruth is still one
Speaker 2: of the most brilliant people I know. And they kind
Speaker 2: of sat me down, they said, you need you're terrible.
Speaker 2: You are blowing past your yes anyway, so you're bullshit. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to tell the story. You get, you get
Speaker 2: me off track, and then you're blaming me, you know.
Speaker 2: So okay, So so Ruth and Suzanne said, hey, I
Speaker 2: was really broke. Said I need to make money. They said,
Speaker 2: you need an agent. I said, what do they do?
Speaker 2: They get your jobs? I said, really, this is what
Speaker 2: a hay seed. I had the dream, but none of
Speaker 2: the logic I didn't understand. I just thought they'd find
Speaker 2: my work. You know, well, this is when it gets magical.
Speaker 2: They said, you need to write TV. Now, keep in
Speaker 2: mind I grew up in a place where you barely
Speaker 2: got reception. The first show I remember, really remember loving
Speaker 2: was the Waltons. Oh I love about about a poor
Speaker 2: family and applegic. That was our family. Well, well that's
Speaker 2: what I call this, except we were like the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so so I knew, I knew I had
Speaker 2: to figure out a way with uh with with my
Speaker 2: past and my lineage which was non existent. Had to
Speaker 2: break into the business whatever way I could. And so
Speaker 2: when they they made me a list to agents, and
Speaker 2: they said you're going to meet all these people. And
Speaker 2: there was a list and I went to the first
Speaker 2: guy and I liked him, and I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: I called him up. I said, I'm gonna go with him,
Speaker 2: but you need to meet everybody. I said, no, for what?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I like this guy, Wiley howshm at ic?
Speaker 1: M right?
Speaker 2: So Wiley, howshim? He has a great name.
Speaker 1: Wiley is a great name. We should do an animated
Speaker 1: version of your life, and Wiley should be played by Coyote.
Speaker 2: I don't know, okay now it's a different kind of Wiley.
Speaker 2: But anyway, So after he I signed, I looked at
Speaker 2: him and said, I don't have any money. I'm broke, right,
Speaker 2: I need next month's rent two weeks away. And he's, well, Adria,
Speaker 2: it doesn't work like that, like we have to submit
Speaker 2: you and everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes time.
Speaker 2: Listen. I said, I signed with you because you can
Speaker 2: make things happen. He said, okay, he said, I'm going
Speaker 2: to give you tape and you're going to go watch
Speaker 2: this show and you're going to write a specscript. He said,
Speaker 2: take a few months. I said, I got two weeks
Speaker 2: till the first month, I said, I can't give it
Speaker 2: to me. I did not have a television set and
Speaker 2: he didn't have a VCR. So I had to call
Speaker 2: a friend who's super let me in to watch this thing.
Speaker 2: I couldn't get the picture to come up, but I
Speaker 2: could hear it. What was the show?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Are you making me wait?
Speaker 2: Making you wait? It's what you called dramatic? Din clearly
Speaker 2: not a master.
Speaker 1: As well, you know, all right, okay, all right, all right.
Speaker 2: So anyway, so so I can't see it, but I
Speaker 2: can hear it like it's like a radio play. And
Speaker 2: I got all the characters and it was right. Feverishly
Speaker 2: read and listen to it like three times. I wrote
Speaker 2: everything down and I got it. Oh, it's a blue
Speaker 2: collar family. The mother's bid or the father's kind of
Speaker 2: put upon two and the kids are pretty hysterical. And
Speaker 2: I thought one of the kids. That's the only thing
Speaker 2: I got wrong. I got her name because the mother
Speaker 2: kept going betty and it was Becky. She was saying
Speaker 2: Becky big, but I heard Betty, Betty, Betty, Betty.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I left it in there. So I went home. In
Speaker 2: two days I wrote this script.
Speaker 1: I still didn't know what the show is, Roseanne.
Speaker 2: It was the Roe pilot Roseanne. It was a Roseanne pilot,
Speaker 2: which is how I got to Carcy Horner. So I'm
Speaker 2: doing this and I thought, I know exactly what to
Speaker 2: do with these people. She wants to she's fed up.
Speaker 2: She sends them out to go tu being in a
Speaker 2: blizzard the family because that's what you do in Midwest.
Speaker 2: You too, and you get dragged by farm equipment on
Speaker 2: a tube. It it's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I've done it.
Speaker 2: I've done it too. So I get everybody out of
Speaker 2: the house dinged on the doorbell rings and it's a bride.
Speaker 2: It's in the she's in the snow, and she goes,
Speaker 2: I can't do it. They can't do it. They can't
Speaker 2: get married. And the fact is Roseanne in my episode
Speaker 2: was thinking of leaving because she couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 2: She's about to snap. But then she has to convince
Speaker 2: the bride to go back to the church, and she
Speaker 2: has to then convince herself to stay married and continue
Speaker 2: to be a mother's leader.
Speaker 1: That's a different episode. Did they make this appt me?
Speaker 2: They never made it. But I have a lifelong friend
Speaker 2: in Matt Williams, who created the show. He read it,
Speaker 2: and he said, I can't steal you. They already got
Speaker 2: you over in a different world. And a different world
Speaker 2: was Debbie Allen, who, by the way, signed me in
Speaker 2: the director's guilt, Susan fails Hill, Margie, who come.
Speaker 1: You're working on a different world. How did you get
Speaker 1: that job?
Speaker 2: Because I got it before I got this one. So
Speaker 2: they all read the same script in Hollywood, I'm telling you.
Speaker 2: Within two weeks I had a pilot deal and I
Speaker 2: was hired. They sent Susan files Hill, we want you
Speaker 2: on this show, and I really wasn't sure what staffing was.
Speaker 2: Could I do?
Speaker 1: It's going to be replaced by AI though.
Speaker 2: All that well for five minutes till it doesn't work,
Speaker 2: and then they lead people. You watch what happens. You're
Speaker 2: still going to need you anyway. So and they're still
Speaker 2: going to need me because we have you.
Speaker 1: I don't even I don't think they need me.
Speaker 2: I think they need you.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 2: Look at how hilarious you are, and you've maintained your
Speaker 2: girlish figure, and.
Speaker 3: Looks I walk, I walk everywhere because you walk six
Speaker 3: and a half miles.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's like obsessive craziness, but it's very good for you.
Speaker 2: My brother does it. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, Manhattan.
Speaker 1: I walked from the Upper East Side to Williamsburg.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. And you came across the bridge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, walked across the bridge.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Okay, that's that's die hard. Okay. So
Speaker 2: where were we?
Speaker 1: You're a different world and you and.
Speaker 2: Then my career takes off in television.
Speaker 1: So who do you end up writing for?
Speaker 2: Farah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neil and Alan's who I bell
Speaker 2: on good Sports, Bill Persky on working it Out. I
Speaker 2: became the show run of a show called City Kids,
Speaker 2: which was phenomenal.
Speaker 1: So know, you're really coin. I mean, you're making a
Speaker 1: lot of money.
Speaker 2: Now you care about some money?
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I made more money I made. You know what I
Speaker 2: cared about because I'm working class. I wanted that. Seven
Speaker 2: years in the w GA, so I got a pension someday. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I thought this could head south, this could all
Speaker 2: go belly up.
Speaker 1: I understand that.
Speaker 2: And by the way, and you also, my belief is
Speaker 2: every seven to ten years, you got to blow everything
Speaker 2: up and reform.
Speaker 1: Fire everybody. Yeah that's what I think.
Speaker 2: Well, fire, but also fire yourself and start over and say,
Speaker 2: what do I really want to be doing? Because because
Speaker 2: what show business will do will take you into that.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like well on a tractor and making hay.
Speaker 2: They'll keep you there if you don't go. I don't
Speaker 2: want to do that anymore. I don't need to move.
Speaker 2: That's how I became a novel to tell you I
Speaker 2: don't want you anymore. Yeah, unless you Carson.
Speaker 1: The audiences do that thing where you know you have
Speaker 1: to when you change it, they go, no, don't change it.
Speaker 1: We like it. That's why you go. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: can't keep doing like I'm thinking specifically about Late Night
Speaker 1: for me, when I was like now, I got to
Speaker 1: stop and trying to persuade.
Speaker 2: But you know what I love about your Late Night stories.
Speaker 2: There's a moral center to it. You you began to
Speaker 2: not be able to cope with the fact that you
Speaker 2: were employing so many people. It became an albatross to you.
Speaker 1: I hated it. I'm not this I love to do
Speaker 1: in the show, but the business of being in business,
Speaker 1: I've oh, I hate that. I mean, you stick me
Speaker 1: in a tent in Brooklyn. I'm fine, but you put
Speaker 1: me in a uh.
Speaker 2: I know you can't be. That's what makes your life
Speaker 2: so interesting is that you you know how to blow
Speaker 2: it up without you know, having with drugs and alcohol,
Speaker 2: without drinking, without drug taking. I don't even know if
Speaker 2: you take advillain anymore. I don't know what take with them.
Speaker 1: What can I do? You got to take an adage.
Speaker 2: I've become obsessed with recovery.
Speaker 1: You mean twelve step recovery.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm very interested.
Speaker 1: I can help you there. What do you want to know?
Speaker 2: Well, I I just find it. I'm talking to people lately,
Speaker 2: like Molly Jong Fast and stuff, and I reading her book,
Speaker 2: and you know, she she went into recovery and her
Speaker 2: mom said, you don't have a problem. She kept saying
Speaker 2: to her daughter, you don't have a problem. And Molly said,
Speaker 2: but my mom had a problem, and now she's dealing
Speaker 2: with her mom that has dementia. But I'm telling you
Speaker 2: this because I find it fascinating to be able to
Speaker 2: stick with it. You know, you when we were first friends,
Speaker 2: you ate at my house and there's alcohol in my house,
Speaker 2: which made me extremely nervous. And then I started to like,
Speaker 2: look at the balsamic vinegar. Is that bad? I didn't know, like.
Speaker 1: What that's because you're a nice person in your kind then,
Speaker 1: you know, and you.
Speaker 2: Were not really and that's when you were a vegetarian.
Speaker 2: Now that means that made you mad. That made me
Speaker 2: mad because you have to just invent things with vegetables.
Speaker 1: That also, you're you're an Italian mom.
Speaker 3: It's like the fact that you didn't need a pork
Speaker 3: chopp or eat meat. I was like, yeah, well, I'm
Speaker 3: over all that, you know that, right, that's all I know.
Speaker 1: You do?
Speaker 3: You eat meat now, I'm relieved your back on much.
Speaker 3: But I'll eat it, you know, you know, but I.
Speaker 2: Try to make things that tasted like meat, you know,
Speaker 2: like artichokes. We're getting side tricked here, Okay, we're side
Speaker 2: trick all right. Now we're going to side trick.
Speaker 1: Which is yeah, yeah, now you're writing for TV.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I want to get you onto the novels because I
Speaker 1: know that it seems to be a fairly easy transition
Speaker 1: from writing for TV to making films and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: That's all part of the same thing. But you start
Speaker 1: writing novels, yes, and you start writing novels, which I
Speaker 1: think is interesting because I've only written one and I
Speaker 1: wrote one because that was good. I was infuriated with that.
Speaker 1: It was such rage and despair about the film business.
Speaker 1: Though I can't work with anyone else, I can't work
Speaker 1: with anyone. I can't work with one more fucking asshole.
Speaker 1: Say to me, you know what would be great if
Speaker 1: if he had a girlfriend, and like I saw a
Speaker 1: script that I put together, get chipped away, chipped away.
Speaker 1: It drives me fucking So that's why I wrote a novel.
Speaker 1: And I want to know why you because you still
Speaker 1: write novels.
Speaker 2: That's right, and I probably will die writing them. I
Speaker 2: do want to direct and write more films than I'm
Speaker 2: working on that, But why would I be a novelist
Speaker 2: till the day I die? Now you're getting to the pith,
Speaker 2: which is what makes this podcast so fabulous. Working for
Speaker 2: other people, I'm writing their stories. When you're in a
Speaker 2: comedy room, you're writing, You're delivering characters that have already
Speaker 2: been created by somebody else. If you're lucky enough to
Speaker 2: get a pilot, you're creating it. But to get that
Speaker 2: on the air, I think I can safely tell you
Speaker 2: I wrote seventeen of them, and I didn't get them
Speaker 2: on the air. And I came to squeaky close with
Speaker 2: two of them, but because I'm from Appalachi, I just
Speaker 2: banked the money and just went and moved on to
Speaker 2: the next pilot. Okay, but what turned me to novels
Speaker 2: was that I had never written the people I wanted
Speaker 2: to write all that time in television. I would pretend
Speaker 2: Bill Cosby was my father. I would pretend and that
Speaker 2: Farah Fawcett was a woman I tempt with at Merrill Lynch.
Speaker 2: I would pretend that Ryan O'Neil was a lawyer I
Speaker 2: tempt for who was bombastic and irish. I mean, I
Speaker 2: did the whole thing, but I'd have to like place
Speaker 2: these people in a context of truth for me, so
Speaker 2: and I would sneak things in of course that seemed
Speaker 2: to be about my heritage or seemed, but it never
Speaker 2: really added up. Now I was free, I could create
Speaker 2: worlds now. Incumbent upon that, I would have to sell it.
Speaker 2: And that was not the hard part, but the obstacle
Speaker 2: in my own mental head to get over. So if
Speaker 2: anybody's listening to this, who can see it on the
Speaker 2: other side of that hurdle but can't get over it,
Speaker 2: you simply have to remove it. And say no, I'm
Speaker 2: already there. I'm going to write that this way, and
Speaker 2: that worked.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think that the and I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the reasons why you and I
Speaker 1: are such good pals is because at the core of it,
Speaker 1: at the core of everything is is fuck them if you.
Speaker 2: Don't like it.
Speaker 1: You know, this is why I gotta do it. I
Speaker 1: gotta do this. I cannot do it. And this is
Speaker 1: why I don't understand show business as it is now,
Speaker 1: because everybody is in show business.
Speaker 2: Here's your problem. Now we don't have it'll change. But
Speaker 2: when a hedge fund owns you and they've never made
Speaker 2: a show, that's a problem. When we would go to
Speaker 2: the networks five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, when you
Speaker 2: walked in there, those people were trained by somebody to
Speaker 2: be able to do something, and of course then we
Speaker 2: leave the room and make fun of them. You know,
Speaker 2: when a very prominent producers put a dog in the show,
Speaker 2: and I thought that what does that solve? Move or
Speaker 2: do okay whatever, put the dog in the show. What
Speaker 2: we're gonna do that when you don't have that system
Speaker 2: that trains them, which was the studio system, you know,
Speaker 2: studio system is very interesting. There must be something rotten
Speaker 2: and corrupting there somewhere because it keeps getting bashed.
Speaker 1: Surely no, but it keeps.
Speaker 2: Getting bashed and reinvented. Have you in our lifetime we're
Speaker 2: going through what Clark Gable went through. What is this?
Speaker 1: Well? No, see, this is what I think it is.
Speaker 1: I think everybody's in show business, and they're kind of
Speaker 1: right in the sense that, you know, everybody has their
Speaker 1: own little channel, everybody has their own thing. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: you know, everyone can tell their truth, everyone gets their
Speaker 1: theirs thing to say, everyone gets their moment to which
Speaker 1: in one hand is good. But that's the fucking show business.
Speaker 1: That's just people talking like this. This is just people talking.
Speaker 1: This is not doing what we do. This is just
Speaker 1: us talking. And I think this idea that the every
Speaker 1: conversation is a performance. You know, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to it, which is paradoxical because this is what
Speaker 1: we're doing right now. But the idea of everyone is
Speaker 1: if everyone is in show business, there is no show business.
Speaker 1: If everyone's telling us to it, if everyone's special, then
Speaker 1: no one's special.
Speaker 2: That's your philosophical brain. That's so interesting to me. But
Speaker 2: I don't think like that. If everybody's in show business,
Speaker 2: then there's no show business. I think part of the
Speaker 2: problem on the planet is that people are not in
Speaker 2: touch with their creative selves. Their creativity. That doesn't mean
Speaker 2: show business. Okay, it doesn't mean a creative acc.
Speaker 1: You're sounding like a nicer person than me, that you're
Speaker 1: making me feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: No, I'm no way a nicer person.
Speaker 1: You certainly are.
Speaker 2: I'm going to dispute that. Okay, yeah, you're a You're
Speaker 2: a mean softy. Here's my girl to say a piece
Speaker 2: of bread. You're like a piece of bread, you know.
Speaker 2: But think about you, is you really are who you
Speaker 2: present yourself as a lot of people aren't. But you
Speaker 2: have not wavered or changed once since the moment I
Speaker 2: met you. You're the same guy, which I find fascinating,
Speaker 2: which must unnerve your wife. But she has my phone numbers.
Speaker 2: She's tough. But the point I'm making is that things
Speaker 2: in life change and you must move with it like
Speaker 2: a river. You know. Part of our role as parents
Speaker 2: is to give it up, get out of the way,
Speaker 2: and we have to do that in our careers too.
Speaker 2: We have to go, oh, this is what's happening now.
Speaker 2: I have to go pitch to that guy. Who is he? Well,
Speaker 2: he's a very rich man from the Silicon Valley and
Speaker 2: he owns the studio now and you go, but does
Speaker 2: he know? And those people are interesting because they have
Speaker 2: one or two movies that are their favorite movies and
Speaker 2: they want to recreate the joy they had when they
Speaker 2: watch that movie. This is really interesting. It's an interesting
Speaker 2: time to be doing this. When I'm talking about people's creativity.
Speaker 2: I wish that there was a mission, that some country
Speaker 2: had a mission for everybody to write their life story
Speaker 2: before they die, even the people in prisons. Everybody, everybody
Speaker 2: has to give me a couple of pages. Who are you?
Speaker 2: What did you do here? And what was your goal?
Speaker 2: And what didn't happen? When happened? Now? Isn't that interesting
Speaker 2: if you could tap that creativity? Obviously it's being tapped.
Speaker 2: Three point eight million books were self published last year.
Speaker 2: It's being tapped.
Speaker 1: Who's reading these books?
Speaker 2: Well, they tried. This is where you and I step
Speaker 2: in because we're salesmen. We could sell if we were
Speaker 2: if everything was gone tomorrow, we would sit down and
Speaker 2: go okay, I could go door to door and sell seeds.
Speaker 2: I could do I did it in third grade. I
Speaker 2: was number one. I could do it again. I could
Speaker 2: sell seats, like to plant gardens, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: or whatever. It was Rex Cleaner. I old in the
Speaker 2: seventh grade and I wanted to win a bicycle.
Speaker 1: And it's a name that I would like to have,
Speaker 1: Rex Cleaner, Rex Cleaner and fight from now on. From
Speaker 1: now on, I want you guys to call me Rex
Speaker 1: Cleaner and ask me how. I asked me how how
Speaker 1: are you doing? Rex? How you doing rights tops and pops?
Speaker 1: Rex Cleaner? That's who I am, my god.
Speaker 2: So anyway, creativity, if we start looking at it, like
Speaker 2: if we start looking at it with a wider lens
Speaker 2: and say, everybody's included. Look what happened. Everybody's got a
Speaker 2: phone and they're constantly filming themselves from flattering angles, from
Speaker 2: flattering ink. Well, why do it on flattering A Yeah?
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 2: You just put that camera on the moon shoot it,
Speaker 2: you know what?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I used to do that on late night
Speaker 1: know what it really knew picked up on that for ages?
Speaker 2: What did you do?
Speaker 1: Well? I had the camera set it like that the
Speaker 1: whole time, because when I walked out to do the
Speaker 1: first show in late night. I was looking at the monor.
Speaker 1: I went, oh my god, look at my double tin.
Speaker 1: I hate that. So I can't see if the car
Speaker 1: up and he goes, this is weird, like up and
Speaker 1: then and we got it to the point where it
Speaker 1: didn't look like that.
Speaker 2: Look good. No, I remember your body was yeah in alignment,
Speaker 2: and it was like, well, I do that naturally. Like
Speaker 2: the first thing I did is I check where that was.
Speaker 2: I should be up about two more feet. But it's okay,
Speaker 2: But that's straight on.
Speaker 1: I don't do that.
Speaker 2: It's not good.
Speaker 1: Do I love you talk to people my older friends.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna say they are I know who they are.
Speaker 1: But when you get FaceTime and they just like hold it,
Speaker 1: what are they doing? Just see like teeth, what are
Speaker 1: they doing?
Speaker 2: And also looks like they're I don't know about.
Speaker 1: To hold it to their ear and yeah, they don't know.
Speaker 2: What they're doing. I have to say this because this
Speaker 2: is what I learned when I was very young. I
Speaker 2: went to a talk Arthur Miller did at the Dramata Skuild.
Speaker 2: Yeah he could write, okay. Arthur Miller, who wrote Death
Speaker 2: of a salesman, handsome guy, tall, slim, it's also hoty.
Speaker 2: So I'm in the audience, maybe one hundred people there
Speaker 2: because when I was young, I went to everything. So
Speaker 2: he comes out and there's a lady in a funny hat,
Speaker 2: and I went, oh no, because you know, if you
Speaker 2: signed books in Manhattan, all the crazies come out and
Speaker 2: they're just badgering you and screaming at you and throwing
Speaker 2: shit out of you. But this is that the drought
Speaker 2: is going. Lady got up and he gave his talk,
Speaker 2: and she says, wow, mister Miller, it's easy for you
Speaker 2: to say because you're six. I think she was a
Speaker 2: little drunk because it's successful. And he listened and he said, Mama,
Speaker 2: thank you for your question. But here's what you need
Speaker 2: to know. In every generation since the beginning of time,
Speaker 2: very few playwrights are born. But now we have an
Speaker 2: industry that siphon's off the few good ones think about
Speaker 2: this and commands that everybody be a playwright in order
Speaker 2: to produce the amount of material. This is the eighties
Speaker 2: for television to produce the amount of material that needs
Speaker 2: to serve the billions of people that are watching millions
Speaker 2: and billions of people, he said, But that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that suddenly we have a lot more play rights. We don't.
Speaker 2: So you're gonna have excellence and then you're gonna have
Speaker 2: everybody else falling in someplace. But that has always stuck
Speaker 2: with me. So if I watch a show on television,
Speaker 2: I go play right or not? Playing not? A playwright's
Speaker 2: another thing. Movie play right, not play right, play right.
Speaker 2: So it goes like that, But I think he's right.
Speaker 2: The ability to dramatize is a very unique talent, the
Speaker 2: ability to put a story on its feet through words.
Speaker 2: That's what dramatizing means. Can I get you up there,
Speaker 2: another actor, and you guys do this play that scene?
Speaker 2: That is that takes not only a wide lens, but
Speaker 2: particular lenses to pull off an understanding of every character
Speaker 2: on an equal basis with the other, to wait it properly.
Speaker 2: So what Bill Persky taught me was that Bill Persky
Speaker 2: created that girl, Kate Nally. He's a great he's like
Speaker 2: a mentor of mine. He did working it out, and
Speaker 2: he said, and I'm going to misquote him, but it's
Speaker 2: close television. And keep in mind he started on the
Speaker 2: Dick Van Dyke show. I've heard of it one of
Speaker 2: the greatest shows ever, ever, ever, may to watch it
Speaker 2: ever made. He started out on that show. He was
Speaker 2: trained by Carl Reiner. Okay, so now you know the pedigree.
Speaker 2: So then he became a showrunner a director and had
Speaker 2: great success. But he said this to me, here's the
Speaker 2: problem with TV. The people writing it now watched it
Speaker 2: and they copy it. They copy it. So the plots
Speaker 2: that you see, these plots that are just they's not.
Speaker 2: You try to impose original characters in the old plots
Speaker 2: or whatever the gig is, and the people hiring you
Speaker 2: have an idea of what a show should be, and
Speaker 2: it isn't a new creative idea. It's something that resonated
Speaker 2: with them back in the day.
Speaker 1: See I think that to extrapolate that though, now I
Speaker 1: think people watch TV with their phone in their hand.
Speaker 1: And I've heard executives say the phrase, it doesn't have
Speaker 1: two screen ability. It doesn't have two screen life about
Speaker 1: scripts where we have to have something like who was
Speaker 1: it that really Robert who he hates Emily in Paris
Speaker 1: And he was saying that Emily he fucking hates It's hilarious,
Speaker 1: and he was saying that that that's a two screen show.
Speaker 1: You can see that. That's the show where people can
Speaker 1: play be on Instagram.
Speaker 2: There's always been two screen shows. It's just you didn't
Speaker 2: have a second screen to refer to. You were flipping
Speaker 2: through a magazine.
Speaker 1: You didn't make them, mone Carpus though, I mean, you
Speaker 1: didn't make You didn't make a movie. Think and the
Speaker 1: people were don't think.
Speaker 2: You don't think the people making Emily and Prais think
Speaker 2: they're doing great art. I do.
Speaker 1: Look, I don't. I've never seen Emily and Press.
Speaker 2: I have an either let's not pick on it. But
Speaker 2: but they think they are.
Speaker 1: No, I disagree. I disagree.
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I think they talk. They use the word content. They
Speaker 1: don't use the word art. They use the word content.
Speaker 1: We have to get more content.
Speaker 2: Well, now you're getting to it. What's the difference between
Speaker 2: content and art? Is a soul? I am not one.
Speaker 1: No, it's not I it is no. I think the different. Well,
Speaker 1: what's the difference the differences between pop music and rock
Speaker 1: and roll? This is a phrase by Robert Fripp right,
Speaker 1: who is the guitar player Robert Fripp who played He
Speaker 1: played for, He played for everybody. He played for Boy,
Speaker 1: he played talking Heads. He was the guy that invented this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Robrato guitar.
Speaker 1: Robert Fripp said, I think that different.
Speaker 5: The difference, the difference between rock and round and pop
Speaker 5: music is this. In pop music, someone foes in love.
Speaker 5: In rock and row, someone gets fucked. That's the difference.
Speaker 2: And I thought, yeah, I think that that's a very
Speaker 2: good that's a very good analysis. But as the people
Speaker 2: that write that music, like Bob Gaudio from the Four Seasons,
Speaker 2: who wrote short shorts and his family survived on short
Speaker 2: shorts for years. He was the first guy to sell
Speaker 2: the commercials. I told him, I see, because you don't
Speaker 2: have to learn words you wear churches were to write
Speaker 2: church or who wear church arts? Yeah, you learn it
Speaker 2: in two seconds. But he was the first guy to
Speaker 2: sell to the commercials. Now they sell their their catalogs
Speaker 2: and the great songs you're gonna hear born to run
Speaker 2: on a car commercial if you haven't already. All of
Speaker 2: that is immaterial to what I'm saying, what I'm trying
Speaker 2: to get at here in terms of art, here's the difference, right,
Speaker 2: Art is the journey of a soul. AI is the
Speaker 2: journey of a robot and a computer and artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: and they keep trying to sell it to us. I'm
Speaker 2: telling you, they keep trying to sell it to us,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't have a soul. And I listen, I joined,
Speaker 2: I joined the I want to hear it. What wasn't
Speaker 2: I supposed to do that movie?
Speaker 1: No, I'm doing a movie about AI about like it's
Speaker 1: like a documentary. I'm doing it right now about because
Speaker 1: they've invented an AI comedy program and god, we're putting
Speaker 1: together those AI stunts.
Speaker 2: Well, I can't wait to see what it is. But
Speaker 2: what's missing from it that you have to provide I'm.
Speaker 1: Not providing in for it. I'm very skeptical about the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I'm like you, I don't feel like it
Speaker 1: can be done. But there's some guys in Silicon Valley
Speaker 1: think it can. And you know, and we're getting into
Speaker 1: it a little.
Speaker 2: Bit because sometimes we make bad movies and bad television
Speaker 2: shows and write lousy books, and so those people who
Speaker 2: have the dough, well, the people that have the dough think, well,
Speaker 2: if they could do that, I could do this. It's
Speaker 2: it looks deceptively easy, but to create a world is
Speaker 2: not easy, and.
Speaker 1: It takes, but it's got to look easy.
Speaker 2: It's the it's got to look easy, that's the trick.
Speaker 2: That's the hat trick of the whole thing. But the
Speaker 2: journey of the soul is what binds us as human beings, not.
Speaker 1: It takes us back to the Catholic plays on the
Speaker 1: bus where we have to you know.
Speaker 2: Know what do we know about? What we do is
Speaker 2: that you Our job is to connect to that person
Speaker 2: whoever we decided it is in our subconscious imagination or whatever,
Speaker 2: or whoever we see out there. That is our job.
Speaker 2: And they have to know within two minutes of sitting
Speaker 2: in that seat why they are there. Now if you
Speaker 2: think AI can, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think you get two minutes. I think you get
Speaker 1: twenty second.
Speaker 2: Well you get twenty seconds now right Ruth gets would
Speaker 2: have mend that, but she's been dead for twenty years.
Speaker 2: But my playwriting mentor, but they have to know. You
Speaker 2: need to dramatize why they're there.
Speaker 1: I feel like, though we have to wrap this up,
Speaker 1: but very quickly.
Speaker 2: I've got hours to go, with miles to go before
Speaker 2: I think has been a sleeper minute. Please wrap this up.
Speaker 2: It's getting very esoteric.
Speaker 1: I feel like because you and I are both fans
Speaker 1: of first lines and books, and that does it. That doesn't.
Speaker 1: My favorite first line of any book is it was
Speaker 1: a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were
Speaker 1: striking thirteen, the first line of nineteen eighty four. And
Speaker 1: I feel like in that first line of Or it
Speaker 1: was the best of times, it was the worst of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like, right away, you go, shit's happening.
Speaker 1: It's something weird has happened. The clocks are striking thirteen.
Speaker 1: What the fuck is going on with it? You know?
Speaker 1: It's like you kick off, And I feel like that's okay.
Speaker 1: I get that. I don't mind that, but it's nice
Speaker 1: to have something to like. That line on its own
Speaker 1: isn't much good unless you got nineteen eighty four behind it.
Speaker 1: And I feel like, you know what, Also, I'm sixty
Speaker 1: three years old now. I mean, it's part of what
Speaker 1: I have to do is be cranky about New.
Speaker 2: York where you were crazy at twenty two, but sad.
Speaker 2: Don't try to fop that off on your age. That's
Speaker 2: that's your nature that you were born with.
Speaker 4: Now, the crank would be a great baby.
Speaker 1: We were born the crank.
Speaker 2: Poor Bruce Bringsteen, he's going through it right now. But anyway, this, this,
Speaker 2: this makes me think of something if if well, well,
Speaker 2: you know, if this ai thing, you know, I'm now
Speaker 2: on the author's guilt, and all we do is file
Speaker 2: lawsuits against it, which is effective. It's effective. But what
Speaker 2: I'm learning from other writers is that hey, we can't
Speaker 2: be replaced. We can't be, but we can in a
Speaker 2: poor fashion. So it is incumbent upon us to deliver
Speaker 2: storytelling that no machine can do. So what does that mean?
Speaker 1: It means that we're going back to what Arthur Mellis said,
Speaker 1: which is there's only a few playwrights and everybody else's
Speaker 1: which is great. Now we're done, We're done with this this.
Speaker 2: You are just so do you really wrap it up
Speaker 2: so rudely? People watching your like, what an asshole? What
Speaker 2: is wrong with that? I know? Is there a clock ticking?
Speaker 2: I can't tell. There's so many animal heads in here
Speaker 2: for a clock.
Speaker 1: There's the clock right behind you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's behind me. I can't turn because I'm
Speaker 2: on I'm on. Your shoe can turn? Oh, I see it? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's large, Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and his face.
Speaker 2: See, I didn't mean my Catholic thing. I can't be rude.
Speaker 2: I would never look I would.
Speaker 3: Just like you.
Speaker 1: If you called me an asshole, which.
Speaker 2: I didn't call you, I behaving like one. No, it's
Speaker 2: just different. Did I call you one?
Speaker 1: You have done You might know I've done it in
Speaker 1: this podcast. You've certainly.
Speaker 2: I think you know how much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I love you too, and that is a
Speaker 1: good place and stuff. Get out of here. H