Bobcat Goldthwait, better known as Bob's here, and Barry Crimmins, host of the legendary Boston comedy club The Ding Ho, joins me to reminisce about the glory days of open mics and the people who helped make them what they are today. This is a great episode for anyone who grew up in Boston, or who has ever been to one of the most legendary comedy clubs in the city, The Dingho. It's a must-listen, and you won't want to miss this one! Thank you so much to Barry and Bob for coming to the show, and thank you to Bob for being a part of the great community that helped make the Dingho what it is today. It was a pleasure to have the chance to sit down and talk with them, and I hope you enjoy the memories they have of the time they shared together. We hope you do too. Cheers, Joe & Barry. See ya next time! -Bob and Joe - The DingHo "Where are the drugs?" - Bobcat & Barry Bob & Joe - "Where Are The Drugs?" - "I'm Mostly a Pot Guy?" - Joe's Here? - Barry & Joe's Last Joke? - Cheers! . Joe & Joe - Where are the Drugs? , . . . Bobcat and Barry - Where Are the Drugs?? ? - . , ? . Joe and Joe - What's the Deal or No Deal? ? ? & more? - What would you like to know about the Ding Ho? , and what do you think of the place you would like to see them do next? & what kind of drugs you'd like to have in the next one? ?? - What kind of set you're going to do with them? in the future? and what are you looking for? And what would you want to do to keep them coming back for the next set? or what you're looking for in the show? What are you hoping for next night? (and much more? ) ?? - What do you want me to do next night at The DingHoovering? Bob and Joe's last set of the DingHo? -- and what's your favorite part of a night out in Boston's finest?
00:00:27.000That was the old open where I'd walk out smoking a cigarette and then pull a beer out and take a big chug of it and say, I'm kind of a health nut.
00:01:14.000I think around 83, 84, something like that.
00:01:18.000And then I went to Stitches and tried to maintain that.
00:01:20.000But then, you know, I mainly became a comedy producer to get stage time and knew other comics needed stage time and also knew comics needed to be treated like someone when they walked into a joint house.
00:01:32.000Because I'd been around the country and been treated like shit.
00:03:33.000Well, the problem with those kind of sets is when they get those laughs, those guys are going to stay in the business like four extra years just based on that one night.
00:04:03.000She's on stage, and Joey goes backstage behind the curtain, and when she hits her punchlines, he would open the curtain up, and his pants would be down.
00:04:10.000So his dick and balls would be hanging out.
00:04:14.000And you know, Joey's 300 pounds, he's got this giant gut, and it's hilarious.
00:04:18.000So every time she hits her punchline, he opens the curtain, and she's smashing it.
00:04:23.000And as the set goes on, she gets more and more confident.
00:04:26.000Because she starts to strut a little bit, and she starts to think, finally an audience gets my humor!
00:05:47.000You know, and by the way, kids, when you walk on the stage and no one knows who the fuck you are, how about opening with a joke instead of going, hi, how are you?
00:05:54.000Like that golden moment when you can fucking take the stage and get somewhere where they're going, like, wow, how did you think of that opening?
00:06:02.000How about saying something funny and that's maybe pertinent to where you are that shows you're on the same planet as the audience, but you're the funny guy.
00:06:09.000That's why you're walking Just a suggestion.
00:06:11.000Well, Boston has a very low tolerance for fucking meandering on stage.
00:06:17.000Yeah, you didn't have a grace period as soon as you came out.
00:06:21.000I think this is the best place to develop because of that, because you had to come out guns blazing.
00:06:26.000You would learn everything else afterwards, but you had to get them.
00:06:29.000And if you lost them, very few people would start bombing in Boston and recover.
00:10:51.000When I came up in Boston, what I was going to say, when I was talking about you getting on stage with the beer bottles, you had this thing that you represented when you would go on stage.
00:11:02.000This is a guy who stood for something.
00:11:14.000No need to qualify it, but there was a very distinctive...
00:11:20.000Feeling a very distinct feeling when you got on stage like this is this is a serious person This is a guy who is a stand-up comedian a very funny person But this guy stands for shit the way it's this is this is this is what's right And this is what's wrong and when shit's wrong you pointed out and then you know I followed your career Through the time you did that the it was a cassette at the time I think with Randy Credico and who else was on it with you?
00:12:20.000But you know to me and I think you know it was reflective of the way guys were speaking about you in the documentary thus you were an important part of that comedy community because you were a I think comedy communities are only as strong as the strongest link.
00:12:39.000You could say they're only as weak as the weakest link, but not really in comedy because there's always going to be open micers.
00:12:44.000Essentially, there's a weird thing like you're not a comic until you're getting paid, but they're all comics.
00:12:50.000We all were open micers and aspiring, whatever distinction you want to put in the beginning of it.
00:12:57.000But the strongest member of the community is really where the community lies.
00:13:02.000And that's where the standards are set.
00:13:05.000And so you were a very, very important guy to me when I was coming up.
00:13:15.000I mean, those thoughts didn't really crystallize.
00:13:18.000I was just trying to do what was right and I was trying to do what I wanted to be in the situation that, you know, I wanted to provide the situation that I wanted to be in myself.
00:13:28.000And I was immediately rewarded for that with who came in and the blossoming of all that talent.
00:14:43.000You found what you're supposed to be talking about.
00:14:45.000You found what you're supposed to be illuminating people about.
00:14:47.000And then you found a way to become tremendous at it.
00:14:51.000And I couldn't be happier that I played a little role in helping to create stage time in a scene somewhere where somebody like you came out of.
00:17:40.000And, yeah, before you did it, talked about it on stage.
00:17:44.000But he said that he found My reaction was, what was it like?
00:17:51.000He was like, alright, because I said, you know, like, oh, there's a reason you're such a dick.
00:17:56.000I was like, I've been betting on this all along, because he's going, like, everyone's going, like, Crimin is an alcoholic, and he could tell I would just use it as coolant, you know, it wasn't like I could turn up missing for days, it was just like, you know.
00:18:52.000And that's a point that comes out in the film, and People, I would be telling friends about it, and they would be saying to me, well, have you talked to anyone about this?
00:19:03.000Yeah, I fucking thought I was talking to you, man.
00:20:48.000You know, I don't like to do, I don't like to stay up, I don't do coke, I don't like to stay up late and complain about my Little League coach.
00:20:53.000So, I was never a coke guy, and you know, in Boston it was bad.
00:20:57.000I wasn't a coke guy, but I used to say to people, if you want to get high, I'll get some acid.
00:21:01.000You know, and see if we're looking for the dealer at midnight, you know, because I'll reach into my little drug pocket in my jeans and pull out another ten hits if we need them, you know, but we don't, and you won't.
00:21:12.000The cops wouldn't even know what it was.
00:21:13.000But you'll actually get fucking high, you know, and that's the thing.
00:24:41.000Yeah, like an oil well would blow up and you'd go in and it's like, oh the fuck, is it going to go in here and deal with it?
00:24:46.000When someone would be bumming out on acid, I would get the call, they're bumming out.
00:24:50.000And in those days, in the early 70s, If they bum out, then they could end up going to the doctor, a hospital, or whatever, and then suddenly they're blathering, they'll turn in everybody, and nobody's doing anything.
00:25:05.000One person got the acid, but they weren't a drug dealer.
00:25:09.000They were just the obtainer of the acid, you know, but that's who gave it to me, and that person could end up in fucking Attica or something.
00:25:16.000I would get these calls from people like they're freaking out, and I got this reputation for being good at helping people who are freaking out doing acid, and I would go in and go like, okay, what'd they do?
00:25:31.000And I would get in there, and then I would, like, have them laughing in a while, and, like, I would do stuff like, get me a Temple Orange, just get me one, you know?
00:26:08.000It'll be an hour later, we're all laughing, and the next morning we're at breakfast, and it's cool.
00:26:12.000But that's when I was the Red Adair of LSD. Is freaking out on acid like freaking out on mushrooms where you're just trying to control it and you get scared of the experience where it's taking you and you try to resist?
00:26:21.000I think it's probably maybe a little worse.
00:26:25.000And plus, I mean, you know, there's shitty acid out there sometimes.
00:27:33.000I mean, we just kind of, someone was in some sort of trouble and they needed somewhere to put it and then they disappeared and we just sort of inherited it and it was like, you know, I don't know.
00:27:44.000And then everybody just left with like baggies.
00:27:47.000They weren't even baggies then, but just like fill up your pockets with ass and go...
00:28:18.000And I finally just sort of noticed, cut myself a break, you know, I've taken enough of a, you know, I've been through enough shit, and it just soothes me to be there with, you know, with a dog, and I just love the terrain, and it's so verdant there.
00:28:34.000It's so great to come here, especially to see my friends like you two doing so great and having succeeded.
00:28:40.000It's a completely different It's a good thing to come to LA now than it was when I first came to LA and we were all trying to get our foot in the door.
00:30:00.000So when 2000 rolled around, I guess, you decided to just, once the internet started kicking in, you made a conscious choice to try to go somewhere that's a little bit more peaceful?
00:30:09.000And I heard you talk a little bit about, but have you thought about doing a podcast?
00:30:14.000I mean, you know, it just seems as if anybody was right for it.
00:30:17.000Me and Kaz and I are going to, Paul Kozlowski and I are going to do it, and it's going to be called Over to the Podcast, which is the upstate, the defeated tone.
00:30:46.000People buy his art, and then we're trying to get the podcast going, but he's been pretty busy because he's been swamped with art orders, and I've been pretty busy.
00:31:05.000Well, yeah, man, you could easily do a podcast up there, and if you ever do, please do let me know, and I'd be happy to promote it, and I would listen to it every week.
00:32:50.000It was Bradley Stonese for the DP who suggested it.
00:32:52.000And it ended up really good because Barry ended up narrating a good portion of the movie from the stage, you know?
00:32:57.000Like when he says, you know, we went back, we went to that basement where...
00:33:01.000Where I was raped as a kid, you know, that was not something that was cooked.
00:33:08.000It was something that I was going to film the space where these things happened because I thought that would be powerful and I didn't want to do reenactments.
00:35:28.000But he had planned on that that's how the set was going to go, because Sweeney wanted to close, and Barry's like, I don't think you should close.
00:36:33.000So they're playing it dumb with me because one nut is bothering them and they just, well, thank you for your being a good citizen of the AOL community, but we have to balance in, as Bob noticed, our corporate growth along with First Amendment rights.
00:36:57.000And then right before they asked me to testify, or when I was already invited to testify two days before, AOL contacts me and says, you know, would you like to get together and meet?
00:37:06.000They were going to come up with the bribe.
00:37:47.000So Barry, after Barry testified, he wrote an article in the Boston Phoenix that I thought, and this was in 95, and I thought it read like a Frank Capra movie.
00:38:01.000I'll film more of the holes of the story.
00:38:56.000Yeah, it's not in the movie, but he had given the evidence over to the feds, and the reason it's not in the movie is that there was arrests that were made directly because of the stuff that Barry had handed over, but the feds weren't interested in being in the movie, I think,
00:39:11.000because Barry kind of did their job for them.
00:39:27.000So I thought, this reads like a Frank Capra movie, and I asked Barry to write a screenplay, but this was right when you just said he had lost 100 pounds, and I was like going, Barry, this article you wrote for The Phoenix is tremendous.
00:39:38.000I think it's a picture, you know, and...
00:40:42.000It's a crazy thing that when you were doing this, it's sort of analogous to how people got away with pedophilia and how they got away with child molesting back in the day, because it was something that was almost, it was just pushed aside.
00:41:25.000Not everyone Sort of has the wherewithal to do that, or the makeup to do that, but fortunately I did.
00:41:30.000So I disclosed, but I didn't admit anything.
00:41:33.000And they tell you, the deep dark secret.
00:41:35.000No, I dealt with it when I could, and I talked about it when I could, in a fashion that I tried to make as accessible as possible to other people.
00:41:43.000So people would know, like, look at this guy.
00:41:55.000And so it was a hard time for me because, you know, here was Barry and I saw how ill he got and I was making Police Academy 4. It was really taken away from my time on the set.
00:42:09.000So you lost 100 pounds while you were doing this?
00:42:12.000Well, I also became a vegetarian and stuff then.
00:42:48.000But there's parts in the movie that my daughter has a problem with because the one is the basement because it looks like I asked him to or kind of manipulated him.
00:43:12.000And she didn't like the scene with your sister.
00:43:15.000Who, again, and my sister, I don't tell anybody.
00:43:20.000I just said, Bob's making a movie about my life.
00:43:23.000And at one point in the movie, she says, Well, you know, I knew you were going to interview me, but I didn't know there would be cameras here.
00:44:12.000Maybe that day, maybe if that guy wasn't stopped, maybe I was just about to be...
00:44:16.000It's so evil, too, because the girl that was involved as well, the babysitter that lured you in and brought the guy over, and then the girl was trying to stop your sister from getting away.
00:44:43.000There's a very bright young comic from upstate New York.
00:44:46.000Well, that's like when Barry was in the basement, you know.
00:44:49.000And to me, what he says there is very...
00:44:53.000You know, it proves that he's not living in it, that he's bringing the message back to the tribe, you know, very Joseph Campbell kind of stuff, you know, that's the, you know, the end, it's a great fourth act.
00:45:04.000And so he says, he says to me, he goes, I totally blacked out.
00:46:16.000To say, any kid who's ever been in here or any kid who will ever be in here, I hope you have fun and you play with your friends and everything's okay and no one else ever gets hurt here.
00:46:27.000And the other thing was I kind of, as silly as it sounds, as sort of crunchy granola as it sounds, In a way, well, I mean, I hadn't thought about that place for so long.
00:46:37.000I wasn't going to walk up to the door and give it the kind of power that I couldn't walk in there.
00:46:42.000I had every right to walk in there, and so I did.
00:46:45.000And in a way, I walked in there, and I collected myself as a small child, and we all walked back up the stairs.
00:46:52.000Beautiful thing in the movie where they talk about I'm walking up the stairs and then this county prosecutor from Cuyahoga County in Ohio says we've arrested over a thousand people for trading child pornography in Cuyahoga County and a lot of what he did is the basis of What's being done nationally about this heinous crime.
00:47:21.000So, it's, you know, I mean, it's a fucking beautiful bow on like a ridiculous package.
00:47:28.000And I'm, man, did we name the movie The Right Thing.
00:48:03.000And they actually would attack someone who challenged them rather than someone coming in and going like, holy shit, someone sees what we're doing, scatter.
00:49:48.000You're a lying, fucking sack of shit, creep, fucking child rapist that Disney hired.
00:49:53.000And when you look at Disney, and they let that guy direct the movie, just consider who might be behind the fucking goofy mask at their theme park.
00:51:26.000When people think about Padres, a sexually deviant film director, they are likely to imagine Roman plants giving sex with a 13-year-old.
00:51:31.000But those stories are a bit tired and cliched now.
00:51:35.000So for those of you with a thirst for horrible stories about film men abusing the power, we present mid-budget journeyman director Victor Salva.
00:52:22.000He makes money on that every time a ball game's going on.
00:52:25.000The plot's victims of Clown House are three prepubescent brothers led by the debutante Sam Rockwell who spent their time running hysterically around the enormous surprise.
00:52:35.000Funny how he has three prepubescent kids in that film, too.
00:53:27.000But the thing is, it's like the Communist Party.
00:53:31.000Nowadays, if you go to a meeting, you know, it's like 80% FBI agents, so enjoy yourself, Nambla, guys.
00:53:37.000Remember the hilarious thing when they had a Nambla meeting at the San Francisco Library, and that film crew came in, and everybody walked out, like, crouching.
00:53:46.000They're all, like, walking like Groucho Marx.
00:54:00.000I just thought for sure if something like that happens, you go to jail for 100 years.
00:54:06.000I mean, I don't understand how this guy could have been out at 40. Yeah.
00:54:10.000That means at 37. So if he was convicted and then he was out at 37, he couldn't possibly have done more than, you know, 17, 19 years, right?
00:54:20.000If he was 18. Well, he didn't do anything close to that.
00:54:55.000I mean, the register sex owner who'd recently been doing that was hired to make a film for Disney.
00:55:01.000Selva's Disney film film was a straight potter, a freakishly intelligent albino boy with telepathic and telekinetic powers.
00:55:07.000The film was marketed as a modern-day fairytale which starred such household names as Jeff Goldblum and was at the time decreed to be a sleeper hit after it cost $30 million worldwide, outstripping its modest $10 million budget.
00:55:20.000Yeah, all I remembered was that, oh my god, you touched me and I've had better...
00:55:44.000I was looking forward to doing this because I know we would hit some stripe, you know, some vein that you would completely dig, man, and you get it.
00:56:57.000Disney's whole business is based on kids, right?
00:57:00.000So this is what the big kid studio, the fucking theme park people, they put this piece of shit out, and it's still sort of like honored as this critically acclaimed thing.
00:57:37.000I vaguely recollect that this was an issue that someone had brought up to me before, but I never investigated it, or maybe it was in conversation at the comedy store or something like that, and I never looked into it, but goddammit, this is fucking crazy.
00:59:43.000I would show him that my personal revenge would be to behave decently towards him and even advocate for him to be in a situation confined and segregated from any possibility of being near children.
00:59:54.000Where he was treated in a humane fashion.
00:59:57.000And if he weren't, I would tell him he could tell me and I would do something about it because I became a human rights activist and not a rapist, not a human rights offender.
01:00:35.000Well, you're a very strong person to go that path and to go that route and that's indicative of who you became and that's one of the reasons I think, ironically, like why you became such a strong leader and this powerful person is because you overcame something un-fucking-bearably traumatic very early in your life and you developed this intense sense of right and wrong.
01:00:57.000I think this is a great time to tell people they should follow me on Twitter.
01:01:03.000At Crimmins, C-I-M-M-I-N-S. Let's see the record we can set for followers right now at this moment.
01:05:11.000I give everybody as much of a chance as I can.
01:05:16.000There's a lot of what's sold to abuse survivors that I think is horseshit and that's basically they get quote-unquote empowered and I hate that word because it takes the strength out of the word power.
01:05:38.000But they, like, I did my friend Sam Cedar's podcast a couple weeks back, and he said, I don't want to give away what the movies are.
01:05:48.000I said, listen, man, it's not that kind of movie, and it hinges largely on the fact that I survived rapes as a child.
01:05:53.000Well, I heard from several people who said, you know, you really should have had a trigger warning on there, and it's like, What the fuck do you think I was doing?
01:06:01.000What the fuck do you think I was doing when I said it hinges largely?
01:06:05.000I was warning you that what it was about right there, but someone has empowered you to have a way to take issue with me because I'm not completely basing.
01:06:15.000You know, the whole world isn't based around me.
01:06:18.000Even though I got raped when I was four years old, everybody shouldn't be thinking in terms of that all the time because they've been through their own shit and they're dealing with their own shit and they're trying to survive.
01:06:27.000So if I can make them more sensitive to this issue, if I can show them that it matters to them, that they deal with other people who have been through this kind of trauma and we want to reduce it as much as absolutely possible, that's good.
01:06:39.000But after that, if I'm going to find a way to set up a situation where I'm always the injured party and I prove again and again that I'm persecuted and no one's thinking in terms of me, then I'm never going to get fucking healed.
01:06:53.000I'm never going to get fucking healed.
01:07:24.000But, you know, it was nice everyone said, oh, gee, what he went through when he was doing that investigation.
01:07:28.000What about the kids in the fucking pictures?
01:07:31.000That's what I want everyone to know about.
01:07:33.000Thanks for caring about me, but it's the kids in the pictures I give a shit about.
01:07:37.000It's the kids that are suffering right now.
01:07:38.000Somewhere within the sound of my voice, someone, you know, I mean, in this broadcast, like, where this is on, someone in the next apartment or wherever, some kid is going through this shit.
01:09:06.000And then you go in the house and take a real shower and put on some clean clothes, you're not gonna believe how much better you feel!
01:09:13.000So stop letting other people tell you that you have to expect the world to do the impossible and let's be telepathic about what the fuck you've been through!
01:09:23.000Get to the point where you can stand up and tell them the story yourself when it's appropriate.
01:09:28.000And don't put up with anybody who is truly being insensitive or snickering about any of this shit.
01:09:34.000People walk up to me all the time and tell me, like, well, you know, the good thing is those guys get arrested, you know, and Bubba will take a hit.
01:09:40.000It's like, you're endorsing rape to me?
01:09:43.000You're fucking endorsing rape to me, motherfucker?
01:10:15.000These stupid ass fucking lightweight things and presume I'm going to sign off on them.
01:10:20.000Because I don't want anyone else ever raped and if it happens, even if it's of a rapist, I'm opposed to it.
01:10:26.000And I don't want them fucking killed either.
01:10:28.000I want them to live with what they did.
01:10:30.000Now this is a difficult, this is a difficult thought, and this is a difficult subject, but did you, after this was all said and done, horrendous moment in your life, many moments in your life, did you try to figure out what would create a person like the guy who did that to you?
01:12:29.000One of the things that you covered in the film that I thought was really a very powerful moment where you talked about this thing that you didn't become him, that you maybe if your sister didn't come down there and catch...
01:13:18.000There's enough of me that's been through enough that I can't be quite as thorough as you're asking me to be to answer that.
01:13:24.000I get as close as I can, and I understand what happened, but then after that point, I'm not one of them, and I can't go far enough to say, well, then, of course, if you get past this point right here,
01:15:15.000Well, good luck with that, Bob Scratch.
01:15:20.000How difficult was it to even attempt to tell this story?
01:15:24.000For you, as a person who loves this guy, and as we know, he's out of the room right now, he was so instrumental.
01:15:31.000He was the foundation of that whole community, which I think is so important to you and me.
01:15:37.000And help mold me, you know, because I met him when I was 16. Right.
01:15:41.000So it's, you know, making a movie that's not a work of fiction with someone you love that you want them to like when it's done and you want people to like the movie and him for the same reason you like him.
01:17:02.000And so, I don't expect it to stop for me and do it.
01:17:07.000But it has in this sense because Bob stopped it and got the footage and sequenced it and put it together and thought these brilliant ways to approach it and then made this beautiful picture.
01:17:18.000I mean, really, If it wasn't about me, I mean, I would be out crusading to get people to watch this.
01:17:24.000It just seems immodest at this point, you know, because it's about me.
01:18:23.000You've got time to tell me you're putting on your other shoe, but you're in such a hurry, you've got to abbreviate it so I can't figure out what the fuck?
01:18:32.000So I have to be calm enough to try to convey this.
01:21:25.000I have a great new speakers bureau called Kepler Speakers in New York.
01:21:29.000If you want me to come talk to you, I will for a fee.
01:21:33.000And I'm going out and doing a bunch of shows and getting ready and I would like to, you know, I think there might be like kind of a valedictory performance.
01:26:20.000So, my opening act was Up Chuck the Clown, and he's driving me around the grounds in a golf cart, and the juggalos are getting out of the way, like, who are the millionaires?
01:29:10.000And there's times when I've milked the fact that I'm watching him treat me with kid gloves, and I'm going like, you know, I may let this go on.
01:29:17.000So August 7th, it's going to be this Friday, and that'll be all across the country?
01:30:38.000The same company that put that out said, when I said, hey, I want to make a movie about this guy, and it's about his child abuse, they were going, fine.