The Joe Rogan Experience - September 03, 2015


Joe Rogan Experience #692 - Jay Leno


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 25 minutes

Words per Minute

201.73947

Word Count

17,242

Sentence Count

1,691

Misogynist Sentences

39

Hate Speech Sentences

19


Summary

Comedian Jay Leno joins me to talk about his insane collection of vintage cars and how he got started in the automotive industry. Jay also tells a story about a guy who was caught stealing a car from a dealership. Jay and I also talk about how he became a car dealer and what it was like working in a used car dealership in the old days. And we talk about some of the craziest things he has ever done with his collection. Thanks Jay for being on the show and for having me on the podcast. It was a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed getting to know Jay and his crazy collection of old cars. Enjoy the episode and share it with a friend or family member who might be looking for a cool car collection of their own. Thank you Jay for coming on the pod and for being a part of the podcast and for sharing it with the world. I appreciate it and I look forward to seeing you on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. See ya soon! -Jon Sorrentino and Matt Belcher Thanks Jon and Matt for the podcasting. Timestamps: 4:30 - Jay Lenos Garage 8:00 - Jay's Garage 9:00- Jay's Car Collection 14:00 15:15 - How to be a Car Dealer? 16:20 - How he got into the automotive business 17:40 - What it's like working at a dealership 18:30 19:15 22:40 What do you like about his collection? 21:20 26:30 Is there a good car dealer? 27: What is the worst thing you can do with a car dealership? 29:30 What are you looking for? 30:30 How do you want to buy a new car? 32:10 33:00 What kind of car you like to drive? 35:00 Can you tell me about your next? 36:00 Do you have a car you're going to drive it? 37:00 Does he drive it better? 39:00 How much money? 40: Is it better than you like it? 40: What do they need? 45:00 Is it cheaper than someone else? 41:00 Who do you need a car like that? 47:00 Should I drive it back?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Good morning, everybody.
00:00:02.000 Jay Leno, thank you very much for doing this, man.
00:00:04.000 Thanks for having me.
00:00:05.000 I appreciate it.
00:00:06.000 Your place is the most impressive thing that I've ever seen someone own.
00:00:11.000 Your garage.
00:00:13.000 I shouldn't say garage, because everybody thinks it's a garage.
00:00:16.000 That's a garage.
00:00:17.000 You have 12 garages, 12 giant warehouse buildings filled with the most amazing cars I've ever seen in my entire life.
00:00:24.000 Well, a couple are amazing.
00:00:25.000 A lot of them are just old cars that I like that are kind of fun, that have a good story.
00:00:29.000 If cars got a good story, I buy them.
00:00:31.000 I like how you're trying to downplay it, but I'm just telling you.
00:00:34.000 All right, well, I appreciate that.
00:00:35.000 As a fellow car nut, not nearly of your proportion, but I was blown away.
00:00:39.000 That place is insane.
00:00:40.000 Well, yeah, your video's up right now.
00:00:42.000 People love it.
00:00:43.000 It's almost to 200,000 hits.
00:00:44.000 Well, thank you very much for having me on.
00:00:46.000 I really appreciate it.
00:00:47.000 It was a lot of fun.
00:00:47.000 It was really cool.
00:00:48.000 It was cool to be a passenger in my car and have you drive it around, too.
00:00:51.000 Have somebody else beat the crap out of your car?
00:00:53.000 What's more fun than that?
00:00:55.000 How did you get started with such an insane collection?
00:00:58.000 Like, what did you start out with?
00:00:59.000 I didn't.
00:00:59.000 I used to work at car dealerships when I was a kid.
00:01:01.000 I worked at a Ford dealership.
00:01:03.000 I was in charge of odometer recalibrations.
00:01:06.000 That was my area.
00:01:07.000 Really?
00:01:07.000 Well, you know what I used to do?
00:01:08.000 Back in the old days, like, a guy would bring a car in, and then the boss would say, take the used car back and just turn back the speedometer.
00:01:16.000 Okay.
00:01:17.000 I remember one guy came in with, like, a 64 Chevy.
00:01:21.000 And it had like 92,000 miles.
00:01:23.000 So he's making his deal for his new Ford, you know, blah, blah, blah.
00:01:26.000 And went back there with the drills, spinning it back, you know.
00:01:29.000 He spun it with a drill?
00:01:30.000 Yeah.
00:01:31.000 So the guy comes out.
00:01:32.000 He goes, no, no, give me my car back.
00:01:34.000 Now, well, now his car's going to have 50,000 miles on it.
00:01:37.000 And he drove away and he went around the block and he came back with a big smile on his face because he knew he had the dealership because he said, and they gave him what he wanted because we had already turned the clock back.
00:01:48.000 So you could have caught him and busted him.
00:01:51.000 No, no.
00:01:51.000 Isn't that like a federal crime now?
00:01:53.000 Now it is.
00:01:54.000 I mean, not caught him.
00:01:55.000 I mean, he could have caught you and busted you.
00:01:56.000 Yeah, but back in the day, used car dealers, it was horrible.
00:02:00.000 It was terrible.
00:02:01.000 I was like, I was a kid.
00:02:02.000 I was like, really?
00:02:03.000 This is what they do?
00:02:04.000 Okay.
00:02:06.000 What is the worst thing you ever saw them do?
00:02:08.000 Worst thing?
00:02:09.000 Well, I... Well, you know, you used to have stuff, you want the undercoating?
00:02:13.000 Okay, it's $120 undercoating.
00:02:16.000 And they put the car in the rack and they take some black paint, just spray underneath, you know, like cheap black Rust-Oleum paint and then tell people it's undercoating.
00:02:27.000 Yeah, the car business has really been cleaned up.
00:02:29.000 Like the scene from Fargo?
00:02:31.000 Remember the undercoat and they charge him with it?
00:02:33.000 Yeah, that's my favorite scene where he's buying the car to the old couple and they're just yelling at him.
00:02:39.000 Hilarious.
00:02:40.000 So you started off just working on cars, working in dealerships, and then somewhere along the line you started collecting them?
00:02:47.000 Well, I realize I'm never going to have any nice cars working at a car dealership.
00:02:52.000 So you became a comedian?
00:02:53.000 Yeah, so I became a comedian.
00:02:54.000 So I thought, that seemed like a good way to make money at the time.
00:02:57.000 And it was!
00:02:58.000 So, yeah.
00:03:00.000 You're so in your element when you're around cars and when you do that show.
00:03:04.000 It's so different.
00:03:05.000 And, you know, and I said this with all due respect, you were a great host of The Tonight Show.
00:03:10.000 You're a great comic.
00:03:12.000 You know, talking to, like, dopey celebrities.
00:03:15.000 I mean, there are some really interesting ones.
00:03:17.000 Like me, right?
00:03:18.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:03:19.000 But then they're, like, just really...
00:03:21.000 Like reality stars and people like that.
00:03:24.000 You probably never saw that coming either when you first started hosting The Tonight Show.
00:03:27.000 There weren't reality stars.
00:03:29.000 They didn't exist.
00:03:30.000 Yeah, that's true.
00:03:32.000 You know, I really enjoy it because I like people.
00:03:34.000 I like talking to people.
00:03:35.000 But a lot of times you don't really talk to the person.
00:03:38.000 You talk to the publicist.
00:03:40.000 I remember one time we had this ice skater on.
00:03:43.000 Oh, she's famous.
00:03:44.000 She was in the Olympics.
00:03:45.000 And then like 10 years later, she was in Playboy magazine.
00:03:48.000 Like she hadn't done anything for 10 years.
00:03:49.000 Then she's in Playboy.
00:03:50.000 So we got a call from Playboy.
00:03:52.000 Would you put so-and-so in?
00:03:54.000 Okay, yeah, she was America's sweetheart.
00:03:56.000 Now she's naked.
00:03:57.000 Okay, that could be an interesting second guess.
00:03:59.000 Okay, fine.
00:04:00.000 So she comes in and her manager takes her.
00:04:03.000 Mr. Long, can I speak to you?
00:04:05.000 We are not mentioning the Playboy article.
00:04:09.000 I go, really?
00:04:10.000 Why don't you take your client and go home, okay?
00:04:12.000 I can get a comic here in four minutes.
00:04:16.000 This is why your client is here.
00:04:18.000 You called us because you're naked in Playboy.
00:04:20.000 Okay?
00:04:21.000 Hilarious.
00:04:22.000 We are not mentioning what you're here for.
00:04:26.000 Right.
00:04:26.000 Exactly.
00:04:26.000 Wow.
00:04:27.000 Exactly.
00:04:27.000 I mean, that would happen all the time.
00:04:29.000 Just publicists would get mad because you...
00:04:32.000 Yeah.
00:04:32.000 Well, the manipulation of the image.
00:04:34.000 It's really not that possible anymore because the Internet kind of all comes out, you know?
00:04:40.000 It doesn't.
00:04:40.000 You know, in the old days when you watch old shows with Johnny, you see stars come out And they would just make these horrible fashion mistakes or whatever because they dress themselves.
00:04:50.000 Now everybody has handlers.
00:04:52.000 You don't do this.
00:04:53.000 You don't do that.
00:04:54.000 Don't talk about that.
00:04:56.000 So it gets a little – it's not quite as loose as it used to be.
00:05:01.000 So you think that somehow, because of handlers and publicists and things along those lines.
00:05:06.000 Yeah.
00:05:06.000 Everybody is handled by somebody now.
00:05:09.000 Don't do this.
00:05:10.000 Don't give your actual opinion on this.
00:05:12.000 Just say, we love everyone.
00:05:14.000 You know, whatever it might be.
00:05:15.000 Did you ever think about going back to do a talk show on another network?
00:05:19.000 No.
00:05:20.000 It never even occurred to me.
00:05:21.000 You know, you can't make lightning strike twice.
00:05:23.000 When we did The Tonight Show...
00:05:26.000 We had a good crew.
00:05:27.000 I had a lot of stuff left over from Johnny in terms of editing facilities, all this kind of stuff.
00:05:36.000 And when you try and recreate that again, it costs you twice as much with half the budget.
00:05:42.000 I mean, Arsenio Hall is a good buddy of mine.
00:05:44.000 And when Arsenio went to do his show again...
00:05:47.000 His hands were tied.
00:05:48.000 They gave him no budget, you know?
00:05:51.000 I mean, God bless him.
00:05:52.000 He made it work as best he could.
00:05:53.000 But, like, for example, when a guest would come out from a TV show, the band couldn't even play the theme song to the TV show because they didn't have money for music rights.
00:06:04.000 So he just had to play, like, porn music.
00:06:07.000 Ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba-da-ba.
00:06:08.000 I mean, just little things like that you don't even think about.
00:06:14.000 That's where the cost comes, getting the music rights, getting this, getting that.
00:06:18.000 So no, I never thought about going to do it again.
00:06:20.000 I did it for 22 years.
00:06:22.000 It was number one when I got it.
00:06:24.000 It was number one when I left.
00:06:25.000 That was perfect for me.
00:06:28.000 You know this.
00:06:29.000 You're in the fight game.
00:06:29.000 How many fighters, they're champ, they're champ, they're champ, they come out of retirement, they get their ass kicked.
00:06:36.000 You know, you can't make it strike twice.
00:06:38.000 Well, with boxing, it ends really bad.
00:06:41.000 With fighting, a lot of times it ends really bad for a lot of the great ones.
00:06:45.000 It's the saddest thing in the world.
00:06:46.000 Boxing always ends bad.
00:06:47.000 Did you ever see Requiem for a Heavyweight?
00:06:50.000 Yeah, we talked about it in the video.
00:06:52.000 My all-time favorite movie, Anthony Quinn, just the greatest actor.
00:06:58.000 And he goes in.
00:06:59.000 If you haven't seen this movie, you've got to get it, because it's got Cassius Clay in it.
00:07:03.000 Not Muhammad Ali, Cassius Clay.
00:07:05.000 And he plays Mountain Rivera, and he was ranked fifth heavyweight in the world, you know, back in the 50s.
00:07:13.000 And the movie takes place in the early 60s.
00:07:15.000 And he's still fighting.
00:07:17.000 And he goes for a job at an employment agency, like he's a dishwasher.
00:07:23.000 And it's this heartbreaking where he goes, I was number five!
00:07:26.000 I was number five in the world!
00:07:28.000 And the woman looks at him like, wow.
00:07:31.000 Oh, it's just a gut-wrenching scene.
00:07:34.000 And you realize it must be awful to be in a profession where there's only one number one.
00:07:39.000 Like some people think you're funny.
00:07:41.000 Some people think I'm funny.
00:07:42.000 Some people think you suck.
00:07:43.000 Some people think I suck.
00:07:44.000 Fine.
00:07:44.000 It's all subjective.
00:07:45.000 There's not one comedian.
00:07:48.000 Right.
00:07:48.000 And everybody else is ranked below.
00:07:50.000 It's whatever you like, you know.
00:07:52.000 But to be in a game like fighting where it's so...
00:07:56.000 Oops, I look at...
00:07:57.000 What a wonderful ringtone.
00:07:59.000 Oh, I'll call you back later.
00:08:02.000 I'm doing a podcast.
00:08:03.000 Sorry about that.
00:08:08.000 It must be tough to be in a field with...
00:08:11.000 That's it.
00:08:13.000 You're the only guy.
00:08:14.000 Yeah, and the whole purpose of it is to dish out destruction.
00:08:19.000 Someone's going to dish it out to you, and along the way you're taking some, and before you know it, your body just doesn't function the same way anymore.
00:08:24.000 My dad was a prize fighter.
00:08:26.000 That's what he did.
00:08:27.000 How did he retire?
00:08:28.000 Well, I mean, he eventually sold and moved into an insurance company.
00:08:33.000 You know, my dad grew up in New York during the Depression.
00:08:37.000 And I never knew how far my dad got in school.
00:08:40.000 He'd never actually tell us, you know.
00:08:41.000 But I know he quit, and he became a prizefighter for a while.
00:08:45.000 And then he became a salesman because he's pretty good with kids.
00:08:47.000 So we would always watch the fights together.
00:08:50.000 That was something my dad and I always did.
00:08:52.000 Wow.
00:08:53.000 Did he ever try to get you to do it?
00:08:56.000 Well, yeah, we played around a little bit with it, but it was just not my, I don't have that killer instinct.
00:09:02.000 I don't want to hit the guy in the face.
00:09:04.000 And then I get hit in the face.
00:09:05.000 You know, it just, it was not me.
00:09:08.000 It was not me.
00:09:08.000 I had a couple of fights when I was a teenager and it was like, oh man, you know, there's nothing like getting your ass kicked to put things in perspective.
00:09:17.000 You know, most people have never had the crap beat out of them.
00:09:21.000 And when you've had that happen to you a couple of times, you begin to appreciate the art of negotiation.
00:09:27.000 You know what I mean?
00:09:29.000 The number of people I meet in this town, they go, let me tell you something.
00:09:32.000 If I ever see that guy, I'm going to kick...
00:09:34.000 No, you're not.
00:09:35.000 You're not going to kick his ass because look at you and look at him, okay?
00:09:38.000 He's a street guy.
00:09:39.000 You went to La-Di-Da College.
00:09:41.000 He just knows stuff you don't know.
00:09:43.000 It's not going to happen.
00:09:45.000 But they have this...
00:09:46.000 They've never had the crap kicked at him, so they just have this attitude that just makes me laugh.
00:09:51.000 Yeah, I think it's healthy for every man to get punched in the face at least once in his life, just to get humiliated a little bit.
00:09:56.000 Yeah, you need to get knocked out.
00:09:59.000 I got knocked out a couple of times, and I would see the cartoons where they see stars, and I'd go, well, that's kind of silly.
00:10:07.000 No!
00:10:08.000 You actually see stars!
00:10:10.000 I saw twinkling things!
00:10:13.000 It's just like the cartoon!
00:10:14.000 I remember going down, and I was going, oh man, this is just like the cartoon!
00:10:17.000 But I hit the floor.
00:10:19.000 Yeah, there's a lot of people, especially in Hollywood, that think that fighting is like a movie.
00:10:24.000 Like, you could just pistol-whip somebody.
00:10:25.000 That always drove me crazy.
00:10:26.000 We just whack a guy over the head, and they go out, and they wake up, a little lump on their head.
00:10:31.000 But other than that, fine.
00:10:33.000 Well, the funny thing about movies is, whether you're the good guy or the bad guy, the punch is always thrown.
00:10:41.000 From the perspective of the person throwing the punch.
00:10:44.000 I've never seen a movie where the punch is coming at you, you know what I mean?
00:10:48.000 Right.
00:10:48.000 So it's always over the shoulder.
00:10:49.000 So as a viewer, you're always throwing the punch.
00:10:54.000 I want to see a movie where the punch is coming and hitting you in the face while you're sitting there.
00:10:58.000 In the theater.
00:10:59.000 You don't really get that, but yeah.
00:11:01.000 Where you can see the sparks and what happens when the punches hit your face.
00:11:06.000 That light show.
00:11:07.000 That's my favorite thing about these superhero movies.
00:11:09.000 You see the superhero, he punches a car, and the car folds up like an accordion.
00:11:15.000 And then he punches the other superhero, and the guy goes, Oh, man.
00:11:19.000 Now, why didn't his face get crushed like the car just did?
00:11:22.000 I don't quite understand.
00:11:23.000 Because it's a movie, Jay Leno.
00:11:25.000 It's not real life.
00:11:26.000 Exactly.
00:11:26.000 Just a little escape.
00:11:28.000 Sort of like The Tonight Show.
00:11:30.000 You left on top.
00:11:33.000 That is rare that someone leaves number one.
00:11:36.000 Usually they want to keep you around.
00:11:37.000 Everybody left The Tonight Show that was number one.
00:11:39.000 Steve Allen left when it was number one.
00:11:41.000 Jack Parr left when it was number one.
00:11:42.000 Johnny left when it was number one.
00:11:44.000 I left when it was number one.
00:11:46.000 Do you miss it at all?
00:11:48.000 No.
00:11:48.000 No.
00:11:49.000 You had your time.
00:11:50.000 You enjoyed it.
00:11:51.000 I love doing it.
00:11:52.000 You know, there's a point in your life where, at my age, I shouldn't have to know all of Jay-Z's music, okay?
00:11:58.000 You know what I mean?
00:11:59.000 I'm sorry.
00:12:00.000 I can't pretend to know Common and Acorn and everybody's music.
00:12:05.000 I just don't.
00:12:06.000 He knows how you brought up a lot of black guys.
00:12:08.000 Well, that's what I'm saying.
00:12:09.000 But I grew up in the era of Paul Simon and Marvin Gaye and all those.
00:12:13.000 That's more my era.
00:12:15.000 You know, when you're 20...
00:12:17.000 When you're 42 and you're talking to a 25-year-old supermodel, oh, it's sexy.
00:12:22.000 When you're 64, you're like the creepy old guy.
00:12:25.000 Right, right.
00:12:25.000 No, thank you.
00:12:26.000 I'm sorry.
00:12:27.000 I mean, it's true.
00:12:28.000 So, where do you go to school?
00:12:30.000 What am I going to say to you?
00:12:31.000 Okay?
00:12:32.000 I'm like 40 years older than you are.
00:12:35.000 What am I going to say to you?
00:12:36.000 So, you just have to know when it's time to step aside.
00:12:38.000 But your demeanor, your excitement level, how natural it is when you're doing your car show is very different.
00:12:47.000 And I think people would...
00:12:48.000 I think there's two Jay Leno's.
00:12:51.000 There's the Jay Leno that hosts The Tonight Show, which is a great entertainer, you're a great interviewer, but then there's you in your element when you're hosting Jay's Garage.
00:12:59.000 I'll tell you something.
00:13:00.000 I enjoy being around show business as opposed to being immersed in it.
00:13:05.000 Like, to me, Charlie Sheen's a friend of mine.
00:13:07.000 I enjoy every time another hooker pushes one of Charlie's Mercedes off Mulholland Drive, I get a kick out of it like everybody else.
00:13:14.000 I don't want to be Charlie!
00:13:15.000 I don't want to live that life, but I enjoy hearing about it and observing Charlie when he comes to the show.
00:13:21.000 Charlie, how you doing, man?
00:13:23.000 Whatever it might be.
00:13:25.000 So, The Tonight Show is great that way.
00:13:26.000 I didn't have to actually be there.
00:13:28.000 I could be a part of it without being a part of it.
00:13:32.000 Because I'm not really a party guy.
00:13:35.000 I'm not a drug guy.
00:13:36.000 I'm not an alcohol guy.
00:13:38.000 It's just not what I do.
00:13:40.000 I enjoy observing it.
00:13:42.000 Whereas with cars, it's what I really do.
00:13:44.000 Cars, motorcycles, I really enjoy.
00:13:47.000 So I am immersed in that.
00:13:48.000 Whereas with show business, I enjoy being around it.
00:13:52.000 That's probably the difference.
00:13:53.000 But you still do stand-up.
00:13:55.000 Oh yeah, I'm on the road all the time.
00:13:56.000 I love doing stand-up.
00:13:57.000 That's the greatest.
00:13:58.000 So you're still in show business.
00:14:00.000 Oh yeah, I'm still in show business, yeah.
00:14:02.000 But you're not in that show business.
00:14:03.000 It's like, comics think of stand-up as being very different than all the other aspects of show business.
00:14:08.000 Well, it is different than all the other aspects of show business.
00:14:11.000 Because it's the only one where you don't need any other aspects of show business.
00:14:15.000 I mean, I got started, when I was in Boston, I would go into bars with a $50 bill, and I would say, I'm a comedian, we don't hire comedians.
00:14:23.000 I'd go, look, here's 50 bucks.
00:14:25.000 Let me go on the stage and tell some jokes.
00:14:27.000 If people leave, you keep my 50. If I do okay to get some laughs, give me my money back.
00:14:32.000 All right, it cost me about $300 over the long run.
00:14:35.000 But for the most part, it was either, yeah, kid, you're funny, here's your money back, but we don't really do it.
00:14:41.000 Or, oh, it's okay.
00:14:42.000 Yeah, come back Wednesday.
00:14:44.000 Come back Wednesday.
00:14:45.000 Back then they had Hootenanny Nights.
00:14:47.000 It was folk singers.
00:14:48.000 Stop your war machine!
00:14:49.000 You know, all those kind of songs.
00:14:51.000 And they put a comic on in between.
00:14:53.000 And that's the one thing about comedy.
00:14:55.000 You can take it and do it anywhere.
00:14:57.000 I mean, we both know actors that are great, that are funny, but if their TV show gets canceled, or the movie's no good, or the director, yeah, it's like they're out of work.
00:15:08.000 They can't go down to a bar and pass the hat and tell jokes, or even negotiate a salary.
00:15:17.000 So comedy is different because it's self-sustaining.
00:15:21.000 Hootenanny Night.
00:15:22.000 Yeah, that's what we used to call him, Boston Hootenanny Night.
00:15:24.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:15:25.000 Wow.
00:15:26.000 So you really did that.
00:15:28.000 You would go, is that your idea to put a $50 bill in the bar?
00:15:30.000 Yeah, because that's, you know, I was lucky when I started.
00:15:34.000 I'd never met another comic.
00:15:35.000 I didn't know anything about show business.
00:15:38.000 You know, you're from Boston.
00:15:39.000 You're from Boston, rather.
00:15:41.000 And I remember the neighbor lady saying to me, you know, you can't be a comedian unless your father was a comedian.
00:15:46.000 That's the way it is out there.
00:15:47.000 Unless your father was a comedian, you can't be one.
00:15:50.000 They won't let you do it.
00:15:51.000 And I thought, well, it doesn't make any sense.
00:15:53.000 So I used to just go around bars and places like that in Boston, and I thought I was doing pretty good.
00:15:59.000 You know, I really wasn't, but to me, I thought it was pretty good.
00:16:02.000 I got my start at a place called Lenny's on the Turnpike up in Route 1 near Saugus.
00:16:07.000 I know where that is.
00:16:08.000 Yeah, I used to play Lenny's all the time.
00:16:10.000 And Lenny made me kind of the house comic, and I got to work with Miles Davis, Moe Zallison, all the great jazz artists.
00:16:17.000 Wow.
00:16:18.000 Yeah, it's pretty cool.
00:16:18.000 That's where Giggles is in Saugus.
00:16:21.000 Is there a Giggles there?
00:16:22.000 There's a comic club up there in a pizza place, Prince's Pizza.
00:16:24.000 Yeah, I mean, that's...
00:16:25.000 Mike Clark's joint.
00:16:26.000 Makes me laugh.
00:16:27.000 Lenny Clark's brother.
00:16:28.000 Oh, is that Lenny's brother?
00:16:29.000 I love Lenny Clark.
00:16:30.000 I love him too.
00:16:31.000 The funniest guy.
00:16:33.000 And a true Boston comedian.
00:16:36.000 I never consider myself a Boston comedian.
00:16:39.000 Because I was born in New York and I moved to Boston when I was like 10. Like, my family moved there in 59 and we're still the new people.
00:16:47.000 Yeah.
00:16:48.000 The new people, the Lenos, they came here in 59. You know, the other people have been there since 1641. Right, exactly.
00:16:55.000 You know, so they're the relatively new people.
00:16:58.000 Did they have open mic nights back then?
00:17:01.000 No, there was no such thing as open mic.
00:17:03.000 This is before...
00:17:05.000 Comedy clubs.
00:17:06.000 Comedy clubs didn't exist.
00:17:08.000 What year did you start?
00:17:09.000 I started in 1969. Wow.
00:17:12.000 And I used to work strip joints.
00:17:13.000 I used to work...
00:17:14.000 You know, you remember the Combat Zone in Boston?
00:17:19.000 Sure, yeah.
00:17:19.000 I used to work all those strip joints.
00:17:21.000 I worked...
00:17:22.000 I remember I teamed up with two strippers, Lily Pagan and Anita Mann.
00:17:28.000 That was her name.
00:17:29.000 And they were like 40 years old.
00:17:32.000 And they were like...
00:17:34.000 They weren't prostitutes.
00:17:36.000 They were working-class women, big Boston women with short hair that would wear wigs.
00:17:43.000 And, like, we would drive out to Fort Devens to do a show with the soldiers.
00:17:47.000 They'd be there with drills and, you know, power tools.
00:17:51.000 And she'd put together this, what do you call that, clear plastic?
00:17:56.000 Plexiglass?
00:17:57.000 Plexiglass bathtub.
00:17:59.000 And she would take a bath, you know, like a stripper, you know.
00:18:03.000 And they were tough women.
00:18:05.000 And I was like 19 and they were like 40. And one day we're out there doing a show.
00:18:11.000 And she's in the bathtub, you know, doing those kind of stuff.
00:18:13.000 And I'm on stage just telling jokes and so and so.
00:18:16.000 And some guy just starts heckling me.
00:18:19.000 And I remember she gets out of the bathtub, walks over, grabs the guy by the neck.
00:18:22.000 Punches him in the face.
00:18:24.000 Breaks the guy's nose.
00:18:25.000 The guy goes down.
00:18:26.000 The crowd is cheering.
00:18:27.000 She goes, you need to get alone!
00:18:29.000 And then she gets back in the tub and starts doing all the gyrations.
00:18:32.000 I mean, it was hilarious.
00:18:34.000 It was hilarious.
00:18:35.000 Wow!
00:18:35.000 It was a great time.
00:18:37.000 And they were really nice women.
00:18:39.000 They weren't hookers.
00:18:40.000 You know, these are women that back then...
00:18:44.000 Being a typist or a secretary, that's really what was available to you as a woman if you were not a college-educated woman, you know, or a waitress or something like that.
00:18:53.000 So that's what they did.
00:18:54.000 They had the car with their, you know, stripper insignia on the side, I need a man, and, you know, kind of a dolled-up picture of themselves painted on the fender.
00:19:02.000 And we'd just drive around, and I would emcee and introduce the girls, and they would come out and do their act, you know.
00:19:08.000 But they were very protective of me because I was like a kid.
00:19:10.000 Wow.
00:19:11.000 Yeah, it was really fun.
00:19:13.000 That's got to be a cool memory.
00:19:15.000 Starting out like that is so much more difficult than the standard sign-up at the open mic night.
00:19:21.000 I started in 88. It was just they'd have stitches, would have an open mic night.
00:19:25.000 You'd go there, you'd sign up, and you'd get on three out of four weeks.
00:19:29.000 But see, the comedy boom is fairly new.
00:19:33.000 Fairly new.
00:19:34.000 I mean, when I started, I used to go to the...
00:19:36.000 I went to the Improv of New York in 69. And the improv then, Bud Blow would say, okay, four singers, then you.
00:19:43.000 Because it was all Broadway singers.
00:19:46.000 That's all the way.
00:19:47.000 There really wasn't a lot of people who wanted to be comedians.
00:19:50.000 Because most comedians in the mid to late 60s were middle-aged Jewish guys.
00:19:55.000 Like Rodney, Alan King.
00:19:58.000 The first new young comics were like Robert Klein, Ritchie Pryor, George Carlin.
00:20:06.000 Don't forget...
00:20:06.000 Ritchie Pryor?
00:20:07.000 Yeah.
00:20:08.000 That's what you used to call him, Ritchie?
00:20:09.000 No, I knew Ritchie, yeah, yeah.
00:20:10.000 Wow, but Ritchie.
00:20:12.000 I've never heard even say Ritchie Pryor.
00:20:13.000 You've got to remember, in New York City, up to about 66, 67...
00:20:20.000 You got what they call a cabaret card, which was a license.
00:20:23.000 You had a license to be an entertainer.
00:20:25.000 And if you used a four-letter word on stage, a cop could come in, pull your license, tear it up.
00:20:30.000 You didn't work.
00:20:32.000 You could not work.
00:20:33.000 Lenny Bruce really helped break that, because Lenny went to trial.
00:20:39.000 You know, for that.
00:20:40.000 That's what he's arrested for.
00:20:41.000 He's just doing his act.
00:20:42.000 You know, he used to do a bit about, if you don't like black women, who would you rather have sex with, Lena Horne or Kate Smith?
00:20:49.000 Well, Kate Smith was an enormous woman at the time, and it was a funny joke.
00:20:54.000 And, oh, that's racist.
00:20:56.000 Oh, that's whatever.
00:20:57.000 You can't do that.
00:20:58.000 And I remember a cop pulled his license, and he went to court.
00:21:01.000 He eventually won, and they did away with the whole cabaret license thing.
00:21:05.000 So most comedians were middle-aged Jewish guys that talked about, the kids today with the long, you know what I have so long?
00:21:11.000 The pants are too damn tight.
00:21:12.000 I'll tell you that.
00:21:13.000 These kids, they look like a Jack.
00:21:14.000 They act like a Jill.
00:21:15.000 They smell like a John.
00:21:16.000 These hippies, I'll tell you.
00:21:17.000 And that's what guys did.
00:21:18.000 Nobody talked stream of consciousness.
00:21:20.000 Nobody did...
00:21:22.000 What Richie and George Carlin.
00:21:26.000 I remember George when George was just a straight stand-up.
00:21:30.000 And then he became the hippie to be weatherman.
00:21:33.000 And then he had this radical change to the George Carlin we know now.
00:21:37.000 But he was...
00:21:39.000 George used to be on a comedy team, actually.
00:21:41.000 Right.
00:21:41.000 Really?
00:21:41.000 With who?
00:21:43.000 His name just escapes me, but I forgot.
00:21:48.000 I've seen some of his early, early stuff.
00:21:50.000 It's fascinating to look at him, because he was such a different guy.
00:21:54.000 Yeah, the fascinating one is also Rodney, because before Rodney had the no-respect hook...
00:22:01.000 Because Rodney was Jack Roy for years.
00:22:04.000 Jack Roy?
00:22:05.000 Yeah, that's his real name.
00:22:06.000 Rodney worked and he couldn't make it.
00:22:10.000 And then he became an aluminum siding salesman.
00:22:13.000 And then he came back at age 44 as Rodney Dangerfield.
00:22:17.000 Rodney had a muse by the name of Joe Ansis.
00:22:21.000 Joe Ansis was one of those guys who was not a comedian himself.
00:22:26.000 Because he was too shy.
00:22:28.000 But was really funny.
00:22:29.000 He was a guy all the comedians loved to hang out with because he would do table comedy.
00:22:33.000 You'd sit with four or five comics at a canter's type place or a deli at two in the morning and he would just riff.
00:22:40.000 And all the comics would just sit there with pens and pencils coming down his line.
00:22:44.000 Because he was so funny.
00:22:45.000 But he couldn't physically bring himself to get on stage.
00:22:48.000 He just couldn't do it.
00:22:49.000 And he was a guy that helped.
00:22:51.000 I remember Rodney used to do Bits.
00:22:56.000 And when you hear one of his earlier, he's got a funny one about being an airline pilot where he says, this is Rodney's joke, not mine, obviously.
00:23:04.000 But he says, hey, folks, you look at the left side of the plane.
00:23:07.000 You can see the Empire State Building.
00:23:09.000 Look out the right side of the plane in New Jersey there.
00:23:12.000 You can see the remains of Flight 418, which crashed in a fiery ball in that field over there.
00:23:18.000 Bob, you were with me on that one, weren't you?
00:23:22.000 I remember that.
00:23:23.000 It always used to make me laugh when he did that.
00:23:24.000 And then suddenly Rodney became the ho-ho with the one-liner guy.
00:23:28.000 But before that, he was like a traditional comedian.
00:23:31.000 So how much time did he take off in between coming back?
00:23:34.000 It was like 10 years, right?
00:23:35.000 Oh, easy.
00:23:36.000 Yeah, he raised a family.
00:23:37.000 Rodney was a good guy.
00:23:39.000 I don't know if he ever really quit.
00:23:40.000 I mean, he quit...
00:23:42.000 Hitting it hard.
00:23:43.000 He was selling the aluminum siding and doing all that kind of stuff.
00:23:49.000 What a great story he is.
00:23:50.000 Having a regular job.
00:23:51.000 That's why everybody uses aluminum siding as sort of the bad job, because it's the job Rodney had, you know.
00:23:57.000 Yeah, Rodney was a great story, and I mean, truly funny guy.
00:24:01.000 And the fact that he came back at 44 and just became an icon.
00:24:05.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:24:07.000 It's really an amazing story.
00:24:09.000 Well, sometimes you have to grow into your act.
00:24:11.000 Yeah.
00:24:12.000 You know, when you're 19 or 20 and you're a fresh-faced kid, you don't look like the no-respect guy.
00:24:18.000 You know, Rodney needed to grow into that.
00:24:21.000 You know, the hangdog look and the tie that's too tight and the cheap shirt with buttons, it looked like he'd be choked to death.
00:24:28.000 I mean, it was one of the great comedy personas.
00:24:31.000 I used to work at Great Woods in Mansfield.
00:24:34.000 Do you know where that is?
00:24:35.000 Oh yeah, sure.
00:24:36.000 I was a security guard out there and I got to see a lot of acts.
00:24:41.000 I got to see Cosby out there and Kenison.
00:24:43.000 And when I was working, I got to see Rodney.
00:24:46.000 And this is when Rodney was in his...
00:24:48.000 Complete not-give-a-fuck stage where he wore a bathrobe.
00:24:53.000 That's what he would go on stage with, a bathrobe.
00:24:55.000 So Rodney was backstage, and I'm working in the backstage area, and you get to see Rodney.
00:25:01.000 The door was open to his dress room.
00:25:03.000 Rodney's hanging out back there, walking around pacing.
00:25:05.000 Slippers on, bathrobe, nothing on underneath the bathrobe.
00:25:08.000 And the bathrobe's open.
00:25:09.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:25:09.000 He didn't give a fuck.
00:25:10.000 He's got a dick like a horse.
00:25:14.000 Allegedly.
00:25:14.000 I didn't see it.
00:25:15.000 But I was like, look at this guy.
00:25:18.000 Some people will pretend to not give a fuck.
00:25:21.000 This guy really didn't give a fuck.
00:25:22.000 His hair was all crazy.
00:25:23.000 And he would go on stage with the bathrobe.
00:25:26.000 And I couldn't believe it.
00:25:27.000 I was 19 at the time.
00:25:30.000 Rodney let me live in his...
00:25:33.000 At Dangerfields, a nightclub, there was a storage closet in the back.
00:25:37.000 And I lived in that for a couple weeks.
00:25:39.000 Really?
00:25:39.000 Yeah, there's just a cot in there with piles of sangria, whatever they got.
00:25:45.000 And that's where I stayed.
00:25:46.000 You lived in Dangerfields?
00:25:48.000 Wow.
00:25:49.000 That's where I slept.
00:25:50.000 I just wandered the streets during the day.
00:25:53.000 Wow.
00:25:54.000 I worked that club a lot when I first moved to New York.
00:25:56.000 New York was an interesting...
00:25:57.000 You know, it's funny.
00:25:58.000 That, when I was just getting started...
00:26:01.000 Those were the last days of the old mob clubs.
00:26:06.000 They don't really have mob run joints anymore.
00:26:09.000 But those were really, really scary.
00:26:14.000 I remember I worked at club once, and a guy come up stage, and he said, Hey, you're a funny kid, and he put a $100 bill in my pocket, you know.
00:26:22.000 And I said, Oh, thank you, sir.
00:26:24.000 No, I appreciate this.
00:26:25.000 No, please, you know, give it to the church or donation or something like that.
00:26:28.000 He goes, No, no, you take it.
00:26:29.000 I said, No, no.
00:26:31.000 No, I can't do that.
00:26:32.000 I really didn't earn it, thank you, but please give it to maybe a waitress.
00:26:35.000 And then he said to me, You know, you're pretty smart.
00:26:37.000 You don't take money from people like me.
00:26:39.000 That's very smart.
00:26:41.000 Nobody's going to bother you.
00:26:42.000 I said, Okay, thank you, sir.
00:26:44.000 And I realized early on, the guys that got in trouble were the guys that wanted to hang with the mob guys.
00:26:50.000 And the mob guys, hey, do us a favor, deliver this package to the hotel, will you?
00:26:53.000 Yeah, sure.
00:26:53.000 Okay, now they're screwed.
00:26:54.000 Now they're in.
00:26:55.000 Right.
00:26:56.000 I remember once, years ago, my wife, when I went to New York, and I was working the Westchester Premier Theater, and there was a guy named Jimmy the Weasel Fradiani.
00:27:04.000 You ever hear that name?
00:27:05.000 Jimmy the Weasel.
00:27:06.000 What a great name.
00:27:07.000 Yeah.
00:27:07.000 Anyway, so...
00:27:08.000 These two guys, Mr. Lenos!
00:27:11.000 Mr. Lenos, you know, this is Rocco.
00:27:13.000 They said, well, okay.
00:27:14.000 And my wife is like, oh, these guys are scary.
00:27:16.000 So we're in the back seat of this Cadillac, you know.
00:27:20.000 So I'm teasing my wife, and I just kind of whispered her.
00:27:22.000 I didn't think the guys could hand me.
00:27:23.000 I said...
00:27:24.000 You know, and if I go into the city tonight, I think I'm going to need a piece.
00:27:27.000 And this guy goes, oh, Mr. No, no, please.
00:27:29.000 He takes a gun out.
00:27:30.000 He throws it in the bag.
00:27:31.000 He goes, please, take that one.
00:27:32.000 I said, no, I was like, no, no, please.
00:27:34.000 There's no numbers on it.
00:27:35.000 Just, you don't need to do nothing with it.
00:27:37.000 When you're through, just throw it in the trash.
00:27:38.000 You know, if you don't use it, you don't use it.
00:27:40.000 Just throw it away.
00:27:40.000 I said, I don't.
00:27:41.000 No, please.
00:27:42.000 I insist.
00:27:43.000 Okay, thank you.
00:27:44.000 Now I got this gun, and my wife is just, like, sweating bullets.
00:27:47.000 She's like, what have you got me into?
00:27:49.000 Where are we here?
00:27:50.000 But if it worked out okay.
00:27:52.000 It was just funny, you know, just odd.
00:27:54.000 Well, they ran Vegas.
00:27:56.000 They ran nightclubs in New York.
00:27:58.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.
00:27:59.000 How did all that die?
00:28:01.000 What happened?
00:28:02.000 Corporations.
00:28:03.000 Corporations are meaner, nastier, tougher.
00:28:05.000 Than the new mob.
00:28:06.000 Oh, than the mob.
00:28:07.000 Oh, way, way, way worse.
00:28:08.000 At least the mob, you got a free drink once in a while.
00:28:11.000 You got a...
00:28:11.000 What, you lose a grand...
00:28:13.000 Let me eat at the restaurant.
00:28:15.000 Go whatever.
00:28:15.000 No.
00:28:16.000 Once the corporations come in, that was the end of that.
00:28:18.000 That had to be a bizarre time to come up.
00:28:20.000 It was really scary.
00:28:21.000 You know what's really funny?
00:28:22.000 It's like you always see gangsters on TV, but when you're confronted by true psychopaths, it is unbelievable.
00:28:32.000 You know, I... Well, I told this story with Jerry once on his comedian coffee, but...
00:28:37.000 I didn't hear it.
00:28:38.000 Okay, I got a call one day from Sinatra.
00:28:43.000 He says, AJ, the Sons of Italy dinner in Italy, can you do it?
00:28:47.000 When is it?
00:28:48.000 He gives me the date.
00:28:49.000 And I said, oh, Mr. Sinatra, I'm at the Holiday House in Pennsylvania with the Sons of the Pioneers.
00:28:56.000 I said, I'm opening for them on that day.
00:28:58.000 I'd love to do it for you, but I can't do it.
00:29:01.000 Oh, okay.
00:29:02.000 I said, I'm police.
00:29:04.000 A couple of hours later, I get a call from Sinatra's agent.
00:29:09.000 Hey, we called the Holiday House.
00:29:11.000 They said they don't need you.
00:29:12.000 What?
00:29:13.000 They don't need you.
00:29:15.000 All right, guess I'm going to Chicago.
00:29:17.000 So I go to Chicago, and it's this Italian.
00:29:21.000 I'm not going to use any of the real names because the people are still around.
00:29:24.000 So we're doing this thing, it's at a golf course, and they say to me, listen, there's a priest here, so keep your act clean.
00:29:32.000 I said, yeah, okay, fine.
00:29:34.000 So I go up and I do my little act.
00:29:36.000 It's fine, thank you, applause, applause, just sit down.
00:29:38.000 So this gangster guy gets up, you know.
00:29:41.000 He goes, I want to welcome you all to this, you know, this place.
00:29:45.000 And I wasn't going to say, oh shit, I forgot what I was going to say.
00:29:48.000 And when he said shit, the priest went like this.
00:29:53.000 And the guy goes, what?
00:29:54.000 Hey, father!
00:29:55.000 You got your ten grand in the fucking bag?
00:29:58.000 Shut the fuck up!
00:29:59.000 He just goes crazy in his gut.
00:30:01.000 You shut the fuck up!
00:30:02.000 And the place is just...
00:30:04.000 Everybody's just frozen with fear.
00:30:06.000 This guy is just, like, crazy.
00:30:08.000 And the priest is like, he's holding his bag with the ten grand in it, you know?
00:30:11.000 And then he sits down.
00:30:13.000 Okay.
00:30:14.000 So I'm sitting there and the guy goes, hey, Jake, come here.
00:30:16.000 He goes, let me ask you something.
00:30:18.000 You know Stallone, right?
00:30:19.000 I said, well, I don't know him.
00:30:20.000 Rocky had just come out.
00:30:21.000 This is 1976. I said, I don't know him.
00:30:24.000 I mean, I met him.
00:30:25.000 You know, we asked him to do this dinner, this benefit today.
00:30:28.000 And he said, no.
00:30:29.000 He said, no.
00:30:31.000 And I said, well, I mean, maybe he was busy.
00:30:36.000 And he's screaming at me.
00:30:37.000 I go, you're right.
00:30:39.000 I'm sure.
00:30:40.000 I'm fine.
00:30:41.000 He goes, come on, let's play some golf.
00:30:45.000 I said, I don't really play golf.
00:30:46.000 He'll play a golf!
00:30:47.000 All right, I'll play golf.
00:30:48.000 So now we're in golf carts.
00:30:50.000 And we're in this golf cart.
00:30:51.000 We drive out to about the 12th hole.
00:30:53.000 And we get to the 12th hole.
00:30:54.000 And there are these...
00:30:56.000 Kind of 50, 60-year-old prostitutes, topless, with leopard-skin print miniskirts, handing out drinks.
00:31:03.000 It was like the craziest day of my life.
00:31:06.000 But this guy was like a true psycho criminal.
00:31:10.000 I mean, just one of those guys, like a scene from Goodfellas.
00:31:12.000 They'd just kill you.
00:31:13.000 You know, I always love movies where somebody threatens someone, and they go, you're not going to kill me, Bob, because I know you're not the kind of guy...
00:31:19.000 No, no, they will kill you.
00:31:21.000 They will kill you.
00:31:22.000 And it just really made me laugh.
00:31:24.000 Is that guy still alive?
00:31:25.000 He may still be alive.
00:31:27.000 Really?
00:31:28.000 Nah, this is a while ago.
00:31:29.000 He's probably dead by now, because he was an old guy then.
00:31:32.000 Yeah, it seems like a guy like that's not going to make it.
00:31:34.000 I'll tell you.
00:31:35.000 No, he made it through.
00:31:36.000 He made it.
00:31:38.000 Wow.
00:31:38.000 It's just hilarious, you know.
00:31:40.000 So you don't really have those.
00:31:41.000 I'm sure you still have those guys.
00:31:44.000 Very, very rarely.
00:31:45.000 They're not Italians anymore.
00:31:47.000 They moved on to other ethnic groups.
00:31:48.000 It's Russian?
00:31:49.000 Yeah, there's other ethnic groups.
00:31:51.000 I'm not going to say anything.
00:31:52.000 Well, there's always one organized crime group that sort of dominates the market.
00:31:57.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:31:59.000 It's just really odd.
00:32:02.000 It was a fun time to be a comedian because you had to weave your way through.
00:32:06.000 You know Maury Amstead in the comic?
00:32:08.000 I heard his name.
00:32:09.000 He used to be on the Dick Van Dyke show.
00:32:11.000 Remember the show?
00:32:12.000 Yes, yeah.
00:32:13.000 Well, he got famous because he was Al Capone's favorite comedian.
00:32:17.000 Al Capone would always come in to see him.
00:32:19.000 Wow.
00:32:19.000 So Al would put him in – Al, like I know him.
00:32:22.000 Al Capone would put him in his clubs, and that's how Mori really got famous because Al Capone loved him and thought he was hilarious.
00:32:30.000 But imagine if you don't make Al Capone laugh.
00:32:32.000 Jesus Christ.
00:32:33.000 That's a lot of pressure.
00:32:35.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:32:35.000 Hilarious.
00:32:37.000 But see, we started on this because of comedy clubs.
00:32:40.000 There weren't comedy clubs.
00:32:42.000 There were just either jazz clubs.
00:32:44.000 See, jazz clubs were great for comedians because jazz audiences listened.
00:32:50.000 Rock clubs were bad.
00:32:51.000 And during the late 60s, comedy was kind of...
00:32:55.000 It was the Vietnam War.
00:32:58.000 College kids were very serious, you know.
00:33:01.000 Everybody do those little plays where the stage is dark and then you like to flashlight under your chin.
00:33:07.000 Stop your war machine, click, and then turn it off.
00:33:09.000 And then the guy would run to another part of the stage, click, stop your war machine, click, and turn.
00:33:13.000 You know, it's all this conceptual kind of...
00:33:15.000 So comedy was really on the back burner.
00:33:18.000 It really took Pryor and Carlin and Robert Klein and those guys to make it really pop again for young people.
00:33:25.000 What was it before that?
00:33:26.000 I mean, when were the first...
00:33:27.000 They say that Mark Twain was probably the first recognized stand-up comedian, because he used to do these monologues and readings of his work, and he would do them in front of a live audience.
00:33:38.000 People would laugh.
00:33:39.000 Well, you know, stand-up is like jazz.
00:33:41.000 It's a uniquely American art form.
00:33:43.000 Like, when you go to England, stand-ups over there maybe come out in a dress, and they sing a song and do a skit, or they do a little dance.
00:33:50.000 I mean, now they have American-style stand-up.
00:33:52.000 But the idea of...
00:33:54.000 I always liked comics who looked like normal people but were funny.
00:33:57.000 I was never a fan of the wacky props or the crazy hats.
00:34:01.000 Like Johnny Carson, Pryor, Cosby, Klein, Carlin.
00:34:06.000 These guys looked like regular guys you see in the street.
00:34:09.000 And then when they talked, oh my God, they were really, really funny.
00:34:13.000 That's something that really came later.
00:34:16.000 Because most stand-up came out of vaudeville where you had to...
00:34:19.000 That's what my mother used to say to me all the time when I go outside.
00:34:21.000 She'd go, no one wants someone that's funny all the time.
00:34:24.000 Why don't you sing a little song, and then you do a little dance, and then you tell a joke.
00:34:28.000 I go, okay, Mom, that's great advice.
00:34:29.000 Thanks.
00:34:30.000 I really appreciate that.
00:34:30.000 Well, that's what they used to do, right?
00:34:32.000 Yeah, that's what they used to do.
00:34:33.000 That's so bizarre.
00:34:34.000 It's so crazy that it happened in your lifetime.
00:34:37.000 I mean, you went from doing those original clubs to being around.
00:34:41.000 I mean, you regularly work at the Comedy and Magic Club, which is like one of the biggest clubs in the country.
00:34:45.000 I've been there every Sunday since 78. And when you're not there, I've been there.
00:34:48.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:34:50.000 You know, I like that club because it's the best...
00:34:54.000 It's a mainstream audience club.
00:34:58.000 You know, the Hollywood clubs are great, but it winds up being clicky.
00:35:02.000 You're doing, you know, you're doing 20 minutes on a little shop on Melrose that maybe half a dozen people know about.
00:35:07.000 And the audience is hysterical.
00:35:08.000 The rest of the world's going, what?
00:35:09.000 You know, you've got to have a broader appeal.
00:35:13.000 And when you go to the Comedy Magic Club, a lot of that audience is overnighters from the airport.
00:35:19.000 They missed a plane, whatever.
00:35:20.000 They're staying in a local hotel.
00:35:21.000 Oh, let's go see what this is.
00:35:22.000 So you get peep from all over the country.
00:35:24.000 Yeah, it's a great place.
00:35:25.000 Anyway, just Mike Lacy's just such an awesome guy.
00:35:27.000 Yeah, he's a great guy.
00:35:28.000 He's probably the best club one there is.
00:35:29.000 One of the best of all time.
00:35:31.000 He's such a sweetheart.
00:35:33.000 It's like trickles down from the top to the bottom, all the people that work there.
00:35:37.000 It's an amazing spot.
00:35:39.000 But you were there for like...
00:35:42.000 You've seen the movie Lenny with Dustin Hoffman playing Lenny Bruce when they show the early days of Lenny's comedy where he used to work with strippers and all these different acts and he would tell a few jokes and be like an emcee.
00:35:54.000 Honey Harlow, I think he married a stripper.
00:35:57.000 You know, it's interesting.
00:35:59.000 Dustin Hoffman's one of the greatest actors, but I never thought that he was a stand-up.
00:36:06.000 You know, stand-up is so uniquely different from acting.
00:36:10.000 When people act like a stand-up, you know, I'm anxious to see Mike Epps now, I heard, is going to play Richie Pryor.
00:36:15.000 It's going to be interesting to see.
00:36:17.000 Because he's a comic, so he understands how that works.
00:36:21.000 Actors tend to watch themselves when they're on stage.
00:36:23.000 By that I mean, how do I look?
00:36:27.000 Whereas comics just perform.
00:36:29.000 They don't really care if their face looks funny or whatever it is.
00:36:34.000 You're a comic.
00:36:35.000 You're just performing.
00:36:36.000 So when actors play comedians, it never quite works for me as well as a comedian playing a comedian.
00:36:41.000 Well, the worst example is Punchline with Tom Hanks and Sally Fields.
00:36:45.000 I didn't see that one, but I heard about it.
00:36:47.000 Don't.
00:36:48.000 Save yourself.
00:36:49.000 It's one of those movies where you're watching and you go, what the fuck am I looking at?
00:36:52.000 I'm looking at an optical illusion.
00:36:53.000 There's something behind the scenes here that's not really...
00:36:55.000 They're not really doing stand-up, but the people are laughing hard.
00:36:59.000 Yeah, because it's hard to write jokes.
00:37:02.000 There's nothing harder than writing jokes.
00:37:04.000 That's what I hate about...
00:37:06.000 Because whenever you watch a movie that has a stand-up, like a TV showed up, So I said to him, on Thursday, and then the audience goes hilarious, no, no, write the whole joke, okay?
00:37:15.000 They always do that because it's hard.
00:37:18.000 It's hard writing jokes.
00:37:19.000 Well, not only that, but a real comic is not going to want to write jokes for an actor.
00:37:23.000 Like, if you have a good joke, you're writing a good joke, you're like, I'm going to keep this one for me.
00:37:27.000 Exactly, exactly.
00:37:28.000 Fucking shitty one to Tom Hanks over here.
00:37:30.000 Exactly, exactly.
00:37:31.000 So you saw the boom, though, in the 80s, because there was a big boom in the 80s.
00:37:36.000 I came along, like, I caught the crest.
00:37:39.000 I was there.
00:37:41.000 When I started out, people were like, wow, you should have started out in 84. 84 was amazing.
00:37:45.000 I started in 88, and it was just like, in Boston in particular, it was a pretty magical time.
00:37:52.000 It was a magical time.
00:37:54.000 It was also...
00:37:57.000 You know, to me, you have a lot of people now that rush to the middle and then...
00:38:03.000 Stay there for 20 years and never quite get...
00:38:07.000 Because, you know, I sound like an old guy here, but when I started, you had to work clean.
00:38:12.000 I mean, it's really easy to take a clean joke and make it dirty.
00:38:15.000 It's almost impossible to take a really funny, dirty joke and make it clean.
00:38:19.000 It just doesn't work.
00:38:21.000 And when the punchline is some four-letter word, what do you do with that?
00:38:26.000 Where do you go with it?
00:38:26.000 You can't take it past a certain point.
00:38:29.000 If you're trying to get on television.
00:38:31.000 Well, if you're trying to get on television, you're trying to get any corporate work, you know, there's two Americas.
00:38:36.000 There really are.
00:38:37.000 There's one over here and one over here.
00:38:39.000 And if you can have a foot in both of them, you can do really well.
00:38:43.000 For example, most corporate dates will pay you Ten weeks worth of comedy club salaries in one night if you can just work clean.
00:38:54.000 And by working clean, I just mean no four-letter words.
00:38:57.000 You can talk politics.
00:38:58.000 You can do whatever you want.
00:38:59.000 But the number of comics that can't get past a certain point because they hit that wall.
00:39:06.000 You know, they rush right up to it.
00:39:08.000 And it's like horsepower.
00:39:10.000 It's like being an athlete.
00:39:12.000 Plenty of guys can play football.
00:39:14.000 How many can get it past that certain, you know, the average athlete is what, one in 10,000?
00:39:20.000 And the average superstar is what, one in two or three hundred thousand?
00:39:24.000 And if you want to be that superstar, you've got to work, you've got to appeal to more of a mass audience.
00:39:30.000 That's an interesting way of looking at it.
00:39:31.000 A lot of people would disagree, and they would say that all they want to do is do the best comedy or the best art that they can come up with, and it's not necessarily something that a corporation is going to want to hire.
00:39:41.000 Well, I'm not saying, but no, I think you're missing my point.
00:39:44.000 What I'm saying is, what most people do is they want to play the audience where they get the best laugh.
00:39:49.000 Mm-hmm.
00:39:49.000 Okay, I just go.
00:39:51.000 I just do colleges.
00:39:52.000 I just do hip little cool places.
00:39:55.000 You know, I, a couple of times, I booked myself into Oral Roberts University once, just to see if I could play the gig.
00:40:03.000 Just as a challenge?
00:40:05.000 Just as a challenge.
00:40:06.000 Like signing up for a triathlon?
00:40:08.000 It is, it is.
00:40:09.000 And you know, a perfect example of that was...
00:40:14.000 When Richie Pryor was getting ready to do his Live on the Sunset Strip movie, movie of stand-up, I asked him, could I follow Richie every single night?
00:40:25.000 And Richie would go up for 90 minutes, just blow the room out at the comedy store.
00:40:30.000 I mean, people falling down.
00:40:32.000 I mean, it was the greatest interview I've ever seen.
00:40:34.000 And then I would go on.
00:40:35.000 And I realized at that point, instead of having an hour's worth of funny material, I had about 18 minutes.
00:40:42.000 Because I was following the greatest comic in the world.
00:40:45.000 And my...
00:40:47.000 Good stuff was okay.
00:40:48.000 My okay stuff was eh, and my eh stuff was terrible.
00:40:52.000 But if you just play rooms where everybody laughs at everything you say, you never get any better.
00:40:57.000 You know, I remember Robin Williams once said to me, he said, I'm going to do some stuff tonight.
00:41:01.000 Will you watch it?
00:41:02.000 And okay, and this was the height of Mork and Mindy.
00:41:05.000 Ladies and gentlemen, Robin Williams, whoa!
00:41:08.000 And no matter what Robin said, hilarious.
00:41:11.000 And Robin came off and he said, any of that new stuff funny?
00:41:14.000 I said, eh, no.
00:41:15.000 Not really.
00:41:16.000 Well, it wasn't.
00:41:18.000 It wasn't because they were reacting to Robin the phenomenon.
00:41:21.000 I mean, obviously, Robin could put a twist on it.
00:41:23.000 I'm not putting down Robin's material.
00:41:25.000 I'm just saying, you know, but he knew after listening to it which part of it really was funny and what wasn't.
00:41:31.000 So the idea of...
00:41:33.000 I've always been one of those people.
00:41:34.000 If you're a comic...
00:41:35.000 You should be able to play any type of audience.
00:41:39.000 If you're a fighter, you should be able to fight anybody.
00:41:42.000 No, I only fight tall, skinny black guys.
00:41:45.000 No, you should be able to play any kind of room.
00:41:49.000 So whenever I hear comics say, well, I don't do that, you know, people are people.
00:41:55.000 That's pretty much what it is.
00:41:57.000 Yeah, there's definitely cliques in LA. There's people that only like to do alternative rooms, which are much more accepting of a very bland...
00:42:07.000 And that's fine.
00:42:09.000 Hey, I'm not putting it down.
00:42:10.000 There's nothing wrong with that.
00:42:12.000 But when you don't make it, you can't blame it on...
00:42:17.000 Well, I always have people go, well, this audience was really stupid.
00:42:20.000 No, they're not.
00:42:21.000 They're not stupid.
00:42:22.000 You just didn't get your point across.
00:42:24.000 You know, a lot of comedians want to impress an audience with how much they know.
00:42:28.000 They'll say the anthropomorphic tendencies.
00:42:32.000 You know, why don't you just say, you ever notice how dogs are like people, act like humans?
00:42:36.000 Okay, now I know what you're talking about, okay?
00:42:37.000 If you don't know what anthropomorphic means, the joke's not going to work.
00:42:41.000 But you want to impress everybody how smart you are by throwing out anthropomorphic.
00:42:44.000 You know, comedians sometimes always have an underlying thing.
00:42:48.000 They want to get some point across.
00:42:50.000 I remember a comedian was on The Tonight Show once, and his opening line was, you know, I'm a liberal Democrat.
00:42:55.000 And I said to him, Don't open.
00:42:58.000 Just do the material.
00:42:59.000 We will figure out your politics within a minute and a half of your set.
00:43:03.000 But when you say to yourself, here's what I am, you've already lost half the crowd.
00:43:08.000 I mean, I don't think most people could figure out my politics from the monologue because I tried to humiliate and degrade everybody equally.
00:43:16.000 So one night, oh, Leno, you and your Republican friends, oh, Leno, you and your Democratic buddies, I hope you're happy with what you said about Mr. Bush, you know.
00:43:23.000 So that was the perfect thing when I got complaints on both sides.
00:43:26.000 What you were doing back then, too, by going to these different bars, you kind of had to have a bulletproof act.
00:43:33.000 You kind of had to have an act that would work on virtually any kind of a club.
00:43:38.000 Yeah, that's what you tried to do.
00:43:39.000 I mean, it didn't always work.
00:43:40.000 I'm not saying this always worked.
00:43:42.000 Right, but you kind of had to formulate something.
00:43:45.000 And the real trick was, when you get famous somewhere, get the hell out of there.
00:43:50.000 I mean, I knew so many great comics in Boston that were really funny, but their material was all about what happens in Boston.
00:43:57.000 Then they go to Connecticut or New York and...
00:44:00.000 Didn't work.
00:44:00.000 It doesn't work.
00:44:02.000 So to me, once I realized...
00:44:04.000 Oh, I'm getting kind of a name for me here.
00:44:06.000 I've got to go someplace where nobody knows who I am.
00:44:08.000 And then I would go to the next place and start all over again.
00:44:12.000 That's amazing that you knew that, though, at the time.
00:44:14.000 But you could feel it.
00:44:15.000 How old were you?
00:44:17.000 20, 21, 21. And so you'd already figured that out when you were 20, 21?
00:44:20.000 Well, you know this.
00:44:21.000 Comics are inherently lazy.
00:44:23.000 They go to where the laughs are.
00:44:24.000 I'm just going to play that room.
00:44:26.000 You know, I do better there.
00:44:27.000 They know me.
00:44:28.000 They like my stuff there.
00:44:29.000 But why don't you go to the room where you suck?
00:44:31.000 Because if you can get big laughs in the room where you suck, now you have two rooms you can go to.
00:44:36.000 Now you've got three.
00:44:37.000 I mean, I sort of pride myself on being able to play any kind of gig.
00:44:42.000 What's the gig?
00:44:43.000 This, blah, blah, blah.
00:44:45.000 The only one that was really bad was I did Christian Farmers.
00:44:50.000 And I realized, oh my god, things I wouldn't even thought the least bit objectionable were just horrible.
00:44:56.000 Like what?
00:44:58.000 Do you remember?
00:44:58.000 Oh, yeah.
00:45:00.000 What was I talking about?
00:45:01.000 Just Christian Farmers.
00:45:03.000 Yeah, that was the audience, you know?
00:45:05.000 It was just...
00:45:08.000 I can't remember what the jokes were, but just, you know, you couldn't do a joke about masturbation, anything, you know, just things that were normal every day.
00:45:17.000 No, that was horrible.
00:45:19.000 That one I misread.
00:45:21.000 I noticed in Boston when I started doing road gigs that I had all this great material that I could use in town that was local stuff about like say girls from Revere with their crazy hairdos.
00:45:32.000 Girls from Revere were known for having these what we call bulletproof hair.
00:45:36.000 They would have fucking sprayed hair that was like a mile high.
00:45:40.000 It was like this crazy time in the 80s where they had these giant hairdos.
00:45:44.000 And it was a great bit in town.
00:45:47.000 In Boston, I would do that bit.
00:45:48.000 It would kill.
00:45:49.000 I would go to Connecticut.
00:45:50.000 It would just die a vicious, horrible death.
00:45:52.000 You didn't know what you were talking about.
00:45:52.000 It was my best bit.
00:45:53.000 You ever worked a beachcomber in the rear?
00:45:56.000 No, I never...
00:45:57.000 I don't think I... The Beachcoma just closed.
00:45:59.000 I worked that place back in the early 70s, and I remember the guy saying to me, hey, when you come in, don't wear your best clothes.
00:46:08.000 What?
00:46:09.000 Just don't wear your best clothes.
00:46:11.000 Why?
00:46:13.000 I couldn't figure out.
00:46:15.000 I wore my best clothes.
00:46:17.000 I'm on stage, and I realize the people in the front row, they'd smoke their cigarettes down to the butt, and then they'd flick it at you.
00:46:25.000 So I'm on stage once, and one lands on my shoulder, and I don't see it, but I hear, As I'm setting the joke up, I hear people laughing.
00:46:35.000 I go, oh, I'm doing pretty good.
00:46:37.000 And my jacket's on fire because this guy flicked a cigarette and it caught fire.
00:46:43.000 And then the guy said to me afterwards, I told you not to wear your good clothes.
00:46:46.000 I said, all right, I'll do that next time.
00:46:48.000 It just made me laugh.
00:46:49.000 Jesus Christ.
00:46:50.000 Oh, it's funny.
00:46:51.000 Joey Cola told me he was doing pips in Brooklyn once, and there was a guy that was sitting in the front row that kept telling him, fuck you, fuck, I fucking hate you, you're not funny, and then he would show him his gun.
00:47:02.000 He would lift up his shirt and show him his gun, and then, you know, Joey Cola, do you know Joey?
00:47:07.000 Yeah, I know Joey.
00:47:07.000 He's a sweetheart.
00:47:08.000 So he's like, hey, how are ya?
00:47:10.000 You know, he's like real high energy, real happy guy, and this guy's just showing him his gun and saying, fuck you.
00:47:16.000 Oh yeah, there's just things that you don't...
00:47:19.000 I had so many nightmare gigs.
00:47:24.000 One of my worst was opening for Tom Jones for two weeks, every night in Vegas for two weeks.
00:47:32.000 So I get there the opening night and I walk out and there are 300 women or maybe 350 women in the Tom Jones fan club.
00:47:39.000 And they bought tickets to every show.
00:47:43.000 And they had assigned seats.
00:47:45.000 So I walk out the first night, and I see these 300 women in the first 10 or 15 rows.
00:47:51.000 There's a dinner show then, so it wasn't theater seating like now.
00:47:55.000 Okay.
00:47:56.000 I do my act, and I do okay.
00:47:58.000 Not terrible.
00:47:59.000 Not real good.
00:48:00.000 Okay.
00:48:01.000 I go out the second night, and the same women are in the same seats.
00:48:06.000 And I'm doing the same act.
00:48:09.000 I get nothing.
00:48:10.000 Okay, by show nine, it's like, hey, Mary.
00:48:15.000 Hey, Sue, how you doing?
00:48:17.000 It's the same 300 women every single night.
00:48:20.000 And in their mind, you see, me being on stage is less time than Tom's doing.
00:48:26.000 Right.
00:48:26.000 No, they don't get the concept there's an opening act.
00:48:29.000 But the most humiliating part was I come off stage.
00:48:33.000 And I'm like, this is awful.
00:48:35.000 And I walk out through the front and this girl goes, hey, great show.
00:48:39.000 I said, oh, thank you.
00:48:41.000 And she looks at me like, I said, thank you.
00:48:43.000 Thank you very much.
00:48:45.000 I said, how are you?
00:48:46.000 Good.
00:48:47.000 I said, want to get a bite?
00:48:49.000 Sure.
00:48:50.000 Okay.
00:48:50.000 So I'm talking to this girl for a few minutes and I see she's getting impatient.
00:48:55.000 She goes, look, we've gone upstairs or what?
00:48:59.000 I'm not.
00:49:00.000 What?
00:49:00.000 Well, I realize she was a hooker working the room.
00:49:03.000 But when she said good show, I thought she'd seen the show.
00:49:06.000 She just said good show to anybody that walked out.
00:49:08.000 I said, oh, you didn't see the show?
00:49:10.000 No.
00:49:10.000 Who are you?
00:49:11.000 I said, oh, I'm the guy.
00:49:12.000 Oh.
00:49:13.000 You know, I'm like, well, look, I don't want to buy a hooker.
00:49:16.000 I just, oh, well, you're wasting my time.
00:49:17.000 And then she stomps out.
00:49:18.000 And then the whole carb shop, look, the guy can, how bad is that guy?
00:49:22.000 The hooker walked out on him.
00:49:23.000 So it's horrible.
00:49:25.000 What year was this?
00:49:26.000 Oh, 76. I would love to go back in time to those days.
00:49:30.000 God, I would love to go back just to see what it was like.
00:49:33.000 Well, it wasn't really any different than now.
00:49:35.000 I mean, you're on stage with a microphone.
00:49:37.000 It really wasn't a whole lot different.
00:49:40.000 But the culture must have been so different.
00:49:43.000 The culture was different.
00:49:44.000 You know, Freddie Prince was a good friend of mine.
00:49:46.000 Do you remember Freddie Prince?
00:49:47.000 Yes, yeah, I do.
00:49:47.000 Freddie used to stay with me when he worked at the Playboy Club.
00:49:49.000 Chico and the Man.
00:49:50.000 Chico and the Man played at the Playboy Club in Boston.
00:49:53.000 And there, the Playboy Club, you had to do six shows a night.
00:49:57.000 You had the penthouse and the playroom.
00:49:59.000 And I remember I had to, there was a singer, and I had, I would open, and then she would take her band and come upstairs, and I would pass her in the hallway, and she'd be carrying these drum sets, because the musicians, they don't have to move their own drums.
00:50:12.000 The singer has to move the drums.
00:50:13.000 And big sweat stains under her arms, and she'd be in tears by the fourth show.
00:50:17.000 She just looked like she'd been beat up.
00:50:19.000 But anyway, Freddie's on stage, and he's talking about Nixon.
00:50:24.000 And he said, I think the joke, he said, President Nixon, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
00:50:29.000 And this guy in the audience says, hey, you watch your mouth.
00:50:31.000 You know, it's the President of the United States.
00:50:33.000 And Fred, he said, Nixon doesn't Doesn't do something.
00:50:41.000 He sucks.
00:50:41.000 Well, this guy takes out a gun, starts firing it over Freddy's head, you know, and shoots it into the car, and the whole club just hits the ground.
00:50:49.000 You know, just crazy stuff that really doesn't happen a whole lot anymore.
00:50:54.000 Where was this?
00:50:54.000 What club was this?
00:50:55.000 Was that the Playboy Club in Boston?
00:50:57.000 Wow!
00:50:57.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:50:58.000 Jesus Christ.
00:51:00.000 Playboy Clubs are actually great.
00:51:02.000 Do they exist anymore?
00:51:03.000 They still do.
00:51:04.000 But Hugh Hefner, I give him credit, he was the first guy...
00:51:08.000 No, he was the first guy to let blacks walk through the front door of that club and play in the club.
00:51:14.000 Dick Gregory, Louis Armstrong, all these acts, he treated them as equals, which today you think...
00:51:21.000 No, in the old days, black performers had to go in through the kitchen.
00:51:24.000 Half hours, you came in through the front door, and you were treated with respect.
00:51:29.000 If anybody said anything racial, anything of that nature, you got thrown out of the club.
00:51:32.000 So he was really sort of a pioneer in being, you know, equality for performance.
00:51:38.000 So I always...
00:51:39.000 I mean, I've done a million Hugh Hefner jokes, as everybody has, but I always give him credit for that.
00:51:44.000 He was really great that way.
00:51:46.000 Well, he certainly has always been on sort of the cutting edge socially.
00:51:50.000 Yeah, I mean, now it just seems like it's kind of silly.
00:51:55.000 But yeah, back in the day...
00:51:57.000 Well, it's a hard gig to hold on to.
00:51:59.000 He was at Disneyland recently, and I was...
00:52:03.000 You know Disneyland, they give you that VIP pass if you're a famous person.
00:52:07.000 Right, okay.
00:52:07.000 You get to go through the exits.
00:52:08.000 Right, right.
00:52:09.000 I didn't know about that back then.
00:52:10.000 And so he had gotten into the ride before, you know, he hadn't gotten in the line.
00:52:15.000 They just sort of walked him in through the back door.
00:52:17.000 So all of a sudden he was there with like this captain's hat on with these two girls that just had their faces spray painted on.
00:52:24.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:52:24.000 And I was like, this is the oddest thing that this guy does.
00:52:27.000 It's just so odd.
00:52:28.000 Yeah, it just, it does seem funny.
00:52:30.000 Because he's so old.
00:52:31.000 Yeah.
00:52:31.000 And yet he's still hanging around.
00:52:32.000 I'm, like, trying to piece it together for, like, the next hour.
00:52:35.000 Like, does he enjoy this still?
00:52:37.000 Or is this just, like, a publicity angle?
00:52:39.000 Well, I'll tell you a funny story.
00:52:40.000 Back in 76, Schwarzenegger and I get invited to Hef's 25th anniversary party.
00:52:48.000 Come up to the mansion, Dre, and, you know, some Arnold-like.
00:52:51.000 I knew Arnold then.
00:52:52.000 Arnold was enormous then.
00:52:54.000 He's, like, twice the size he is now.
00:52:55.000 Yeah.
00:52:56.000 So we're hanging around, and Hef says to me, Jerry, would you like to have lunch with the girls?
00:53:01.000 Lunch with the girls?
00:53:02.000 I said, sure, that'd be great, Mr. Hefner.
00:53:05.000 So I go into this dining room, and it's a beautiful mansion, but it looks like a frat house.
00:53:11.000 You know, all the wood is chipped and dented from the parties.
00:53:14.000 There's a big, long table, no chairs, about half a dozen of the Playboy bunnies hanging around, you know, in street clothes, obviously.
00:53:23.000 This butler guy walks in with the biggest bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken I'd ever seen.
00:53:28.000 It looked like a trash can.
00:53:29.000 He just puts it down, and all the girls dive in and grab a piece of chicken.
00:53:33.000 I said, really?
00:53:34.000 This is the Playboy lifestyle?
00:53:35.000 This is, well, pretty cool.
00:53:37.000 Just odd.
00:53:38.000 A bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken?
00:53:41.000 No, like a garbage can full of Kentucky Fried Chicken.
00:53:42.000 So he feeds them like the way you would feed chickens.
00:53:45.000 Right, exactly.
00:53:45.000 That's how I feed my own chickens.
00:53:47.000 Hilarious.
00:53:48.000 I just put the food out, and they all just fucking attack it.
00:53:50.000 There you go.
00:53:53.000 That's a weird place.
00:53:56.000 If you go by the grotto, they still have the old phones.
00:53:59.000 Have you been there?
00:54:00.000 Yeah.
00:54:01.000 A buddy of mine went there.
00:54:02.000 This sounds like an old joke, but it's a funny story.
00:54:05.000 So he goes.
00:54:06.000 He's never been before, and he's really nervous.
00:54:08.000 So he's walking down by the grotto, and he sees a couple of girls naked in the pool.
00:54:13.000 So he hides behind a tree, and he's watching them.
00:54:17.000 We don't have to hide!
00:54:17.000 I know, that's what I'm saying.
00:54:19.000 And he's watching him, and he's so nervous, he takes out a cigarette and he's smoking, and security walks up and grabs him and goes, Hey!
00:54:24.000 No smoking!
00:54:27.000 He just thought he'd get busted.
00:54:28.000 No, he got busted for smoking.
00:54:30.000 It just made me laugh.
00:54:31.000 That is pretty funny.
00:54:32.000 Just so stupid.
00:54:33.000 Yeah, I was there for...
00:54:34.000 I hosted a...
00:54:35.000 It was either Marijuana Policy Project or Normal.
00:54:37.000 I can't remember who had it, but I hosted this event that they had there, a fundraising event.
00:54:43.000 And it was just very strange to be around the grotto and just to be in this place.
00:54:49.000 Just to think of all the things that have happened in that place.
00:54:51.000 It seems sort of odd.
00:54:52.000 You know, you've got a lot of old guys, guys my age now, and girls are going, oh, look what James Franciscus gave me.
00:54:58.000 Oh, it's a beautiful ring.
00:54:59.000 You know, whatever.
00:54:59.000 Just some old movie star from...
00:55:03.000 Hilarious.
00:55:03.000 Just hanging on.
00:55:04.000 Yeah.
00:55:04.000 Trying their best.
00:55:05.000 Yeah, yeah.
00:55:06.000 Well, if you're still in the game, every now and then a pitch comes your way that you can hit.
00:55:09.000 That's right.
00:55:10.000 That's right.
00:55:11.000 Low-hanging fruit.
00:55:13.000 So, in your day, when you started out doing these strange clubs and hootenannies and all that jazz, how long was it before the comedy club came around?
00:55:24.000 How was that received?
00:55:26.000 The comedy club came around the beginning of the 80s, probably.
00:55:32.000 So, like, right when I started in 88, so when they were talking about, like, 84, that was really when it kind of really started.
00:55:38.000 That was sort of the peak, and then it, then, because, you know, the comedy clubs in the 80s probably paid more money than they do now.
00:55:45.000 Really?
00:55:46.000 Oh, yeah.
00:55:47.000 And then they realized, they realized, oh, there's a million comics.
00:55:51.000 We don't have to pay these guys anything.
00:55:53.000 And then the price went way down, probably by 50%, dropped way, way off.
00:55:59.000 Because in the early days, there weren't that many comedians.
00:56:01.000 There really weren't.
00:56:03.000 When I went to New York, go to the improv, there were maybe three comedians and like 10 singers on audition night.
00:56:13.000 Now, everybody wants to be a comedian.
00:56:14.000 But by then, back then, it really was not what it is now.
00:56:18.000 What was it about comedy that just drew you to it?
00:56:21.000 Because it seems like that is not an easy path back then.
00:56:24.000 It seemed like there's no direct route.
00:56:26.000 Like now, you can go to the Comedy Store, you sign up for Potluck Night, and, you know, if you go enough nights in a row, you're eventually going to get on stage.
00:56:32.000 Yeah.
00:56:33.000 You know, for me, I was dyslexic as a kid, so I really wasn't good at anything except just talking and sort of bullshitting, whatever it might be.
00:56:43.000 And, you know, I used to like to watch comedians on TV and I thought, well, this might be a fun thing to try and do.
00:56:51.000 And that's pretty much what I did.
00:56:52.000 I mean, when I got started, I went to Emerson College and I took a course.
00:56:57.000 And I took speech courses because you had to give a talk at the end.
00:57:02.000 And what I used to do was I would memorize like a George Carlin routine.
00:57:06.000 I would never say it out loud.
00:57:07.000 I would memorize it in my head.
00:57:09.000 I would say, okay, I'm going to go on in a few minutes.
00:57:11.000 And I would do his routine.
00:57:12.000 And then as soon as I hit the stage, I would slip into my own experiences.
00:57:16.000 Like I remember he had the Class Clown album.
00:57:20.000 So I would recite his jokes.
00:57:21.000 And then when I hit the stage, I would say, you know, I was a kid.
00:57:24.000 I was also a class clown.
00:57:26.000 And then I would tell funny stories or whatever it was about mine.
00:57:30.000 But I used his rhythm as the impetus to get me into it.
00:57:34.000 I mean, I never did any of George's material, but it just worked for me as a way to, it's kind of a, you know...
00:57:41.000 It kind of gets you started.
00:57:42.000 Yeah, it's like when you're married a long time, you watch porn first, you know, same thing.
00:57:45.000 Yeah.
00:57:46.000 When I was working at Boston Globe, I used to deliver the Globe, and I would go to the places where I would pick up the papers, and there was a bunch of guys, there was a guy named, God, I forget his name, he was an Indian gentleman, who was actually a pharmacologist in India,
00:58:03.000 but he couldn't get a license for it in America, so he's working as a paper guy at the Boston Globe, a really bright guy, and he would talk to me about American culture and stuff like that, and I asked him, you ever heard of Sam Kinison?
00:58:15.000 I was obsessed with Kinnison back then.
00:58:17.000 This is like 86, before I ever started doing comedy.
00:58:20.000 And I would do like a Kinnison bit for him.
00:58:24.000 And he was crying.
00:58:26.000 I was doing a bit about, Sam Kinnison had a bit about dog psychologists.
00:58:29.000 Oh yeah, yeah.
00:58:30.000 He goes, I'd like to get in on some of that money.
00:58:33.000 He goes, yeah, well, you having a problem with Sparky?
00:58:35.000 Yeah, Sparky's not acting himself.
00:58:38.000 Oh, I'll take care of it.
00:58:40.000 First of all, you're a fucking dog!
00:58:43.000 You know, he was a funny person.
00:58:46.000 Horrible guy.
00:58:48.000 Yeah.
00:58:48.000 Mean, nasty guy.
00:58:50.000 Yeah.
00:58:50.000 Seems like it.
00:58:51.000 And near the end, he was pulling guns on people.
00:58:54.000 Well, there used to be a bullet hole at the Comedy Store in the Belly Room sign that, for whatever reason, some asshole decided to repair.
00:59:01.000 I was so fucking mad.
00:59:02.000 Oh, yeah.
00:59:02.000 When I hadn't been there in seven years and I came back and the sign was fixed, I go, what did you do?
00:59:08.000 What did you do that wasn't bad?
00:59:11.000 It was history.
00:59:12.000 I can't remember if I was...
00:59:14.000 I'm not sure if I put him on The Tonight Show first.
00:59:17.000 I was guest hosting and I had Sam on one time.
00:59:23.000 He might have been on before that.
00:59:24.000 I'm not going to try and take credit for that.
00:59:27.000 But, you know, he was truly funny, but just really dark.
00:59:33.000 I mean, just nasty.
00:59:37.000 Like how so?
00:59:39.000 Yeah.
00:59:39.000 Ah, young comic in the hall, just rip him.
00:59:43.000 I mean, way crueler than it needed to be.
00:59:48.000 I mean, it was...
00:59:49.000 And he was brilliant, you know?
00:59:51.000 But it's like, when Sam died, it was like...
00:59:54.000 That's almost how he had to go out.
00:59:57.000 Because he was so...
00:59:59.000 Like, he had that hilarious bit about necrophilia.
01:00:02.000 Remember that one?
01:00:02.000 Yeah.
01:00:03.000 Nothing funnier.
01:00:04.000 Yeah.
01:00:04.000 Okay, so what's your next bit?
01:00:06.000 Okay...
01:00:07.000 You have a thing about screwing dead people.
01:00:10.000 What's more outrageous than this?
01:00:13.000 He kept trying to top himself, and he's able to do it.
01:00:17.000 But it just got so crazy, and then it's that thing where you start believing your own publicity, and instead of just showing up as a comic, you now have an entourage, and everything you say is funny.
01:00:30.000 You lose your perspective.
01:00:32.000 Yeah, you've got to be able to say to people, Is this really funny or not?
01:00:35.000 You know, no, it's not that good, man.
01:00:37.000 Okay, thanks.
01:00:38.000 Like what I was saying about Robin, you had to be able to ask people that question.
01:00:43.000 That's why Steve Martin quit.
01:00:46.000 Steve Martin quit.
01:00:47.000 He talked about it in his book that he's just got to a point where just everything he said was funny and he knew it was wrong.
01:00:53.000 He was a great guy.
01:00:54.000 Steve is the one that brought Johnny in to see me at the time.
01:00:56.000 Really?
01:00:57.000 Yeah.
01:00:57.000 And I was always very grateful for that.
01:00:59.000 I love Steve Martin.
01:01:00.000 Oh, he's a great guy.
01:01:01.000 He's a great guy and intelligent guy, thoughtful guy.
01:01:08.000 Really looks at it analytically from an artist's perspective.
01:01:12.000 He's really...
01:01:14.000 He's one of those guys, like I said, like Johnny, who looks like a normal person, but they just think unusual and think funny.
01:01:20.000 Kinison is my favorite example that I use to young comics when I talk about like you gotta stay the course like you can't like once you make it It's even more hard because once you make it then people require things of you and you have to look at yourself as Objectively and as analytically as you look at the whole world Kinison was brilliant in my opinion.
01:01:40.000 He was like one of the best ever if not the best ever in 1986 Yeah, and then by 1989 he was a fucking shell of himself and well Barely acceptable.
01:01:49.000 It was that case of all comics like to have some sort of open wound.
01:01:55.000 Alcoholic, drug addict, too straight, too gay, too something, so they have an excuse when it doesn't get a laugh.
01:02:02.000 Hey, I did pretty good, considering I was stoned.
01:02:04.000 That was pretty funny, because I was drinking all day before I went on to say...
01:02:07.000 They always need a reason...
01:02:10.000 Why it didn't work if it didn't work.
01:02:13.000 And so consequently, you get to that point where that crutch gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
01:02:18.000 So the idea is to try and put that stuff aside.
01:02:22.000 It's a lot of discipline being a comic.
01:02:24.000 You really have to...
01:02:25.000 You can't believe your own publicity.
01:02:28.000 See, I'm a huge believer in low self-esteem.
01:02:30.000 Ha!
01:02:31.000 I think it's because when you have low self-esteem, you don't automatically think you're the smartest one in the room.
01:02:36.000 Right.
01:02:37.000 You know, you just shut up and maybe listen and take some advice and whatever.
01:02:40.000 And work harder.
01:02:41.000 But, you know, actors and criminals, there's high self-esteem.
01:02:45.000 Actors and criminals!
01:02:47.000 Every criminal will tell you, you know something?
01:02:49.000 If the cops hadn't come, that would have been the greatest robbery.
01:02:52.000 You know, they all have a reason why.
01:02:54.000 It's always somebody else's fault, you know?
01:02:57.000 And that's the thing.
01:02:58.000 Sam had that.
01:02:59.000 Sam worked that crutch.
01:03:01.000 The crutch got bigger and bigger, and as he got funnier and funnier, you needed more drugs and more whatever to be caused.
01:03:07.000 Oh, that's why the third show didn't work, man, because I was so high.
01:03:11.000 Oh, okay.
01:03:12.000 It wasn't Sam's fault.
01:03:13.000 He was too hot.
01:03:14.000 You know, does that make any sense to you?
01:03:16.000 No, it does.
01:03:16.000 And I also think he was so caught up in partying that he never really sat down and wrote anymore.
01:03:21.000 Well, again, that's the same.
01:03:24.000 We're saying the same.
01:03:25.000 Call it partying.
01:03:26.000 Call it whatever you want.
01:03:28.000 The real trick to being a comedian is its focus.
01:03:33.000 It's a genetic flaw that makes you a comedian.
01:03:35.000 It's not a plus.
01:03:38.000 It's a negative.
01:03:39.000 I mean, if you happen to live in the time of the Crusades, what...
01:03:43.000 Who's a soldier making all the men laugh?
01:03:45.000 Kill him.
01:03:45.000 All right?
01:03:47.000 You know, we just happen to live at a time when comedy is advantageous.
01:03:51.000 But if you're a soldier and this guy's hysterical, the men are all laughing.
01:03:54.000 Kill that guy.
01:03:55.000 Boom!
01:03:56.000 Kill him!
01:03:56.000 There you go.
01:03:57.000 Simple as that.
01:03:57.000 Or you'd be the jester for the king until he decided to cut your head off in front of everybody.
01:04:01.000 There's a pressure gig right there.
01:04:03.000 You think?
01:04:04.000 Yeah.
01:04:05.000 No, but see, that was, you know, I remember years ago when I started The Tonight Show, there were other guest hosts on opposite me.
01:04:12.000 Not, I guess, other shows.
01:04:15.000 And I remember, and I'd go home every night and I'd write, and I remember one time I turned on the news and I saw one of the hosts at a Laker game.
01:04:20.000 And I go, he's not going to have a monologue tomorrow night.
01:04:23.000 I know he's not, because I'm writing jokes, and he's been at the Laker game all night.
01:04:28.000 And when I watched his monologue the next night, the person didn't have any material.
01:04:33.000 I mean, he got through it, but it wasn't crisp, it wasn't sharp, you know.
01:04:37.000 Right.
01:04:37.000 You have to focus.
01:04:38.000 Right.
01:04:38.000 That discipline is ironic in a way because what makes you a comic in the first place is usually because you're fucked off in school and you were the class clown and you didn't have any discipline.
01:04:47.000 That was me.
01:04:48.000 That was me too.
01:04:48.000 Jay has the ability but does not apply himself.
01:04:51.000 Exactly.
01:04:52.000 That's verbatim.
01:04:53.000 I bet you could go across the board.
01:04:55.000 Richard Jenny, Dave Chabot, every fucking comic that would have the same thing.
01:04:59.000 Yeah.
01:04:59.000 I mean, I remember my mother was called into school once with the guidance counselor and I'm sitting there and the guidance counselor says to my mother, Have you ever thought of taking Jay out of school?
01:05:07.000 My mom said, why?
01:05:08.000 And he said, well, you know, education's not for everyone.
01:05:10.000 I'm going, hello, I'm in the room!
01:05:12.000 He goes, well, Jay, you work at McDonald's after school, right?
01:05:15.000 Well, they have an excellent program with that McDonald University.
01:05:17.000 You learn to make change and run the rich.
01:05:19.000 I go, you know, I'm not...
01:05:21.000 That bad, you know.
01:05:22.000 Jesus Christ.
01:05:23.000 Oh yeah, hilarious.
01:05:24.000 Teachers don't, I don't know if they understand or they don't understand, but when you set an example like that for a kid, you put it in front of them like that they're not going to, they should drop off and take a trade or something like that.
01:05:35.000 Actually, I credit one of my teachers, Mrs. Hawks.
01:05:37.000 I had this teacher and she pulled me aside one day and she said, you know, you're not a very good student, but I see you in the hallway and you seem to be telling jokes and people.
01:05:45.000 She says, why don't you write some of these stories down?
01:05:48.000 And I'll give you credit in English class, and you can read them to the class.
01:05:52.000 And I said, oh, it was the first time in my life I really enjoyed doing homework.
01:05:56.000 I went out and I wrote the story out, and I changed the line and rewrote it.
01:06:01.000 And I realized I had spent like two hours working on a homework assignment I normally would just spend ten minutes on.
01:06:06.000 And when I went to school the next day and I read it, oh, and it got laughs.
01:06:10.000 She said, okay, I'll give you credit.
01:06:11.000 I'll give you an A for that.
01:06:12.000 I went, oh, thanks.
01:06:14.000 I mean, this is a teacher taking something that I could use in the real world.
01:06:19.000 You know, I'm dyslexic.
01:06:20.000 I'm not going to use algebra.
01:06:21.000 I'm never going to use algebra.
01:06:22.000 But this teacher saw something where she said, oh, okay.
01:06:25.000 And, you know, I set up a scholarship for her, and she passed away fairly young, breast cancer.
01:06:29.000 But it was just great because I had never really thought about...
01:06:35.000 You know, you grew up in Andover, Massachusetts.
01:06:36.000 You don't think about being a comedian.
01:06:37.000 You think about working in the factory or something.
01:06:40.000 And I thought, oh, it was the first time in my life I had used comedy and it got me something.
01:06:46.000 I got an A. I never got an A. But I got an A on this paper.
01:06:50.000 You know?
01:06:51.000 Oh, okay.
01:06:52.000 So then that's how I started.
01:06:54.000 That's really what got me going.
01:06:55.000 I used to draw cartoons.
01:06:56.000 That's how I got into it.
01:06:58.000 I used to draw cartoons of my teachers, like doing sex acts with other students, like the teacher's pet.
01:07:03.000 Well, see, now you'd be sent to prison.
01:07:06.000 Not, like, visual.
01:07:07.000 I didn't show, like, genitals.
01:07:09.000 But, you know, I showed, like, weird things.
01:07:11.000 Do you ever think about that, people?
01:07:12.000 Like, when I was a boy...
01:07:13.000 We went to Boy Scout camp when I was a kid.
01:07:16.000 And I think it was Camp Onway.
01:07:18.000 In New Hampshire.
01:07:19.000 I went to camp in New Hampshire as a Boy Scout.
01:07:21.000 Okay.
01:07:22.000 Well, we had a camp counselor, Mr. Butler, I think his name was.
01:07:27.000 And this is like Cub Scouts.
01:07:28.000 This is like 9, 10, 11. And if you did something wrong for punishment, you had to stack rocks and build a wall in front of Mr. Butler's cabin.
01:07:39.000 Nude!
01:07:40.000 Okay.
01:07:41.000 Oh, Jesus.
01:07:42.000 So we'd go by and we'd laugh.
01:07:43.000 Look at Billy!
01:07:43.000 Hey!
01:07:44.000 You know when you're 9 and 10, you just...
01:07:46.000 You don't realize Billy's getting raped.
01:07:48.000 Well, I don't think that ever happened, but it was mostly...
01:07:51.000 And Mr. Butler would sit there with his pipe and just kind of, uh-huh.
01:07:54.000 Yeah.
01:07:55.000 And sit in the rocking chair.
01:07:56.000 And, you know, it was probably...
01:07:57.000 Jesus Christ.
01:07:58.000 It was probably eight years later.
01:08:00.000 I'm on, like, Route 495 going through Worcester.
01:08:04.000 I mean, it never occurred to me, because you know when you're a kid, it's just skinny dipping, you're not thinking anything like that.
01:08:10.000 It just, yeah, so...
01:08:12.000 Never occurred to you that Mr. Butler's probably a pervert.
01:08:14.000 No, no, never.
01:08:15.000 But once you got older, you realized.
01:08:17.000 Oh, yeah.
01:08:17.000 You meet a few perverts.
01:08:18.000 You go, this is not a normal punishment, sir.
01:08:21.000 I rest my case.
01:08:23.000 What was about Kinnison that was so mean?
01:08:26.000 Like, what was it when you're saying he's just a nasty person?
01:08:28.000 I know, you know, Carl LeBeau is a friend of mine.
01:08:31.000 Well, he must have some stories.
01:08:32.000 Well, he's got a horrible story.
01:08:33.000 His child turned out to be Kinnison's child.
01:08:37.000 So Kinnison was banging his best friend's wife behind his back.
01:08:41.000 And it's terrible.
01:08:42.000 I mean, and I don't know what his relationship is like with the child.
01:08:46.000 Do you need any other stories?
01:08:48.000 I mean, you know, I mean, it's not the child's fault.
01:08:52.000 I would like to think that I would be man enough to recognize it's not the child's fault and not punish the child for it and just still treat the child like it's my child, especially since Kinnison's dead.
01:09:02.000 But he had been paying alimony and child support for this for the longest time, and it's just what a betrayal to this friend.
01:09:10.000 Okay, well there you answered your own question.
01:09:12.000 What's the next question?
01:09:13.000 Yeah, that's not good.
01:09:15.000 But I'd heard that they did some wife swapping and shit back then, too.
01:09:18.000 I don't know about that.
01:09:19.000 Complicated.
01:09:20.000 I just knew it was just kind of nasty.
01:09:23.000 Just mean.
01:09:25.000 It's interesting because that guy just sort of changed what comedy was for a little bit.
01:09:31.000 Oh, he was very good.
01:09:32.000 It was a truly unique style.
01:09:36.000 Nobody else had worked like that ever.
01:09:39.000 I mean, just as Rodney had a style and Robin had a style, Kenison had a style.
01:09:44.000 No one had come along before or since, really, with that energy.
01:09:51.000 Strangeness to it, too.
01:09:53.000 It was an anger, obviously, that came from I don't know whether abuse or religious intolerance or whatever it was when he was a kid.
01:10:00.000 Did you ever read his brother's book, My Brother Sam?
01:10:03.000 No, I didn't read the book.
01:10:04.000 His brother Bill wrote a book, and it's a really good book, and it's really objective.
01:10:08.000 It's not like a fluff piece.
01:10:10.000 Right.
01:10:10.000 And he said that Sam got hit by, I think it was a car or a truck when he was a young boy, and it was never the same again.
01:10:16.000 And head injuries oftentimes lead to very impulsive, radically different behavior.
01:10:21.000 Well, that would certainly be I mean, he was impulsive and radical.
01:10:26.000 But like you say, it's a bit like that animal where the horn grows out and eventually curves and grows back into its own head and it goes crazy.
01:10:34.000 I mean, that's kind of like what Sam was.
01:10:37.000 I mean, like, 84, 85, 86, nothing bigger.
01:10:40.000 By the early 90s, it was...
01:10:44.000 Well, I got to see him live after his HBO special, like almost immediately after, and he didn't really have material.
01:10:51.000 He had all that HBO stuff that he couldn't really do anymore because everybody had seen it, so now it was like one of the first realizations that like, wow, wrote this whole act for 10 years, you know, worked for 10 years, honed my act, developed this killer hour.
01:11:07.000 That's why you don't do HBO specials.
01:11:09.000 You don't do any specials?
01:11:10.000 No.
01:11:11.000 Why is that?
01:11:12.000 Because I like to know where my act is all the time.
01:11:15.000 What does that mean?
01:11:15.000 By that I mean, if you want to see it, I will come to where you are and do it.
01:11:20.000 There's nothing more annoying to me when people say, hey, I just saw so-and-so special.
01:11:24.000 It didn't seem that funny.
01:11:25.000 I said, where did you watch it?
01:11:26.000 On my iPhone.
01:11:27.000 Okay, you know something?
01:11:28.000 Watching it on your iPhone by yourself is not going to make you laugh, okay?
01:11:33.000 It's not the same, that's for sure.
01:11:34.000 The difference between looking in the window of a nightclub and hearing it And being on the other side of the window and being in the room, that energy engulfs you.
01:11:43.000 I mean, it's part of it.
01:11:44.000 If you're willing to pay attention, I'll come to where you are and I'll do it, okay?
01:11:48.000 I like piecemeal work.
01:11:50.000 Write joke, tell joke, get check.
01:11:52.000 That's pretty much the way my life is.
01:11:55.000 I mean, I remember we had a comic on The Tonight Show once.
01:11:58.000 He said, oh, my HBO special's appearing this week.
01:12:00.000 Can you plug it?
01:12:01.000 I said, yeah, okay.
01:12:03.000 He says, and I'm going on the road.
01:12:04.000 I said, what material are you doing on the road?
01:12:06.000 Well, I'll do a lot of stuff in the special.
01:12:08.000 I said, The next time he came back, like eight months later, he was like, oh my god, you were right.
01:12:14.000 I just heard that!
01:12:15.000 I heard that crap last night!
01:12:17.000 Because people watch the special before they come see you.
01:12:19.000 They like you.
01:12:20.000 Let's watch the special, then go see them.
01:12:22.000 And then they are so pissed that they spent 50 bucks or whatever it is for a ticket that now they hate you.
01:12:32.000 So to me, when you do one of those specials, you get probably a nickel of you, maybe a penny of you.
01:12:40.000 But when you do a live on an inch, you're making 20 bucks, 50 bucks.
01:12:46.000 But for a lot of comics, that's how they build an audience.
01:12:48.000 They build an audience by putting together an HBO special that somebody likes, and then they write a whole new act, and then when someone comes out to see them, they'll see the new act.
01:12:56.000 That works for some people.
01:12:57.000 But, you know, to me, I always meet people who say, I'm writing a new hour.
01:13:00.000 And then I watch it, and I go, that's not an hour.
01:13:03.000 That's about 16 minutes, really.
01:13:05.000 Because there's a lot of, uh-huh, and, oh, what else, man?
01:13:09.000 How you all doing?
01:13:09.000 Everybody good?
01:13:10.000 You all in a good mood tonight?
01:13:11.000 Woo!
01:13:12.000 Hey, how's everybody doing?
01:13:13.000 Hey, man, how you doing?
01:13:14.000 You know, that's not...
01:13:15.000 It's boom, boom.
01:13:16.000 It's like throwing punches.
01:13:18.000 Especially old Boston style.
01:13:20.000 Boston style is very attack, like Lenny Clark.
01:13:22.000 Attack, attack, attack!
01:13:23.000 I mean, when you get something that works...
01:13:26.000 But you've got to build that, right?
01:13:28.000 Yeah, but you can build it.
01:13:29.000 You can do TV appearances.
01:13:32.000 You can do five-minute bits.
01:13:34.000 When people do something for a whole hour and they watch it, boy, that's a lot.
01:13:39.000 I mean, you give them a taste, and then you come do it in person.
01:13:43.000 I mean, I can only say what's worked for me.
01:13:46.000 Right.
01:13:47.000 I mean, it works for me because...
01:13:49.000 I have jokes I wrote yesterday.
01:13:50.000 I have jokes I wrote 20 years ago.
01:13:53.000 And they both still work.
01:13:54.000 Because, A, I know the last time I did this routine about this was 12 years ago when I was in this town.
01:14:03.000 The idea of any of those people being in the audience tonight, probably minimal.
01:14:07.000 If I walk on a stage, like I hate when I do a talk show appearance, and the next night I have them in a club, I make sure not to do that material, because they just heard it yesterday.
01:14:20.000 So the idea that anybody can call up stuff that I did at any time, unless you have new material every single day, it doesn't make sense.
01:14:29.000 I had this conversation with Ari Shafir, he's a good buddy of mine, a great comedian, and we were talking about it and he said that when you work on old stuff, if you keep old stuff, or you tighten it up, or you keep...
01:14:42.000 It keeps you from expanding as an artist and making stuff that's more relevant to how you think right now.
01:14:50.000 There might be something to that, but it also keeps you famous.
01:14:54.000 It also gets to the point where people go, boy, I walked in and it was a tough room and the crowd was talking, and boy, he got them.
01:15:01.000 You know, again, we're talking about, I'm talking about playing hard ticket rooms where people go, who is this guy?
01:15:09.000 I've never seen him.
01:15:10.000 When you play Jersey, when you play the Jersey Shore, you got 70-year-old guys, you got teenagers, you got grandmothers, you got longshoremen, you got every conceivable type of crowd.
01:15:24.000 You know, when you do a comedy club, you're playing essentially to the same person.
01:15:28.000 They all think alike and feel alike.
01:15:31.000 I mean, to me, I like when I do...
01:15:34.000 I always gear my jokes, some jokes about men, some about women.
01:15:37.000 So, to me, I love playing a racially and gender-diverse crowd.
01:15:43.000 I hate It's all guys.
01:15:45.000 That's the worst.
01:15:46.000 I hate, oh, it's all women.
01:15:48.000 I like it because it keeps everybody on us.
01:15:51.000 The audience polices itself, you know.
01:15:53.000 You do a joke about a man, do a joke about a woman, do a joke about a woman.
01:15:55.000 And that's what works for me.
01:15:57.000 So to me, I think what he's saying is probably true.
01:16:01.000 I'm just talking about making a living.
01:16:03.000 When you have to go somewhere and do the job.
01:16:06.000 You know, the down and dirty part of it, okay?
01:16:09.000 There's the fun part of show business, and then there's the part where you've got to go to work.
01:16:13.000 Listen, it's the B'nai B'rith Society.
01:16:15.000 They're hiring you next Wednesday.
01:16:17.000 They're giving you a thousand bucks.
01:16:18.000 Okay.
01:16:19.000 You've got to go there and knock that crowd out.
01:16:21.000 I mean, that's what you've got to do.
01:16:22.000 And you think that doing specials somehow or another takes away from that?
01:16:25.000 No, I don't think specials takes away from that.
01:16:27.000 I mean, look, I'm just talking about music.
01:16:29.000 No, no, I know.
01:16:30.000 That's why I'm curious, because you're one of the few guys, I consider you a great comic, and you've been doing it, everybody does, you've been doing it forever, but there's very little of your work out there.
01:16:38.000 I think there's a Showtime special that I watched from, you did a Showtime special way back in the day.
01:16:44.000 Yeah, and I got that and I burned the master, but somehow there's a copy of it.
01:16:48.000 But that's the opposite of what most people do.
01:16:51.000 Most people constantly want to put out new stuff.
01:16:53.000 Carlin put out a new hour basically every year.
01:16:56.000 Oh, Carlin did.
01:16:56.000 Well, don't forget.
01:16:56.000 See, I was fortunate.
01:16:57.000 I had a platform every night on The Tonight Show.
01:17:00.000 I had to do 14 minutes every single night.
01:17:02.000 Okay.
01:17:03.000 So you write 14, and then it's probably 11 or 12 by the time it hits the air.
01:17:07.000 So I didn't need to do special because I had a little tiny bit of something out every single day.
01:17:13.000 A little bit of an advertisement for people to come see you live.
01:17:16.000 So that's what worked for me.
01:17:18.000 And before I had that, I made sure I did Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, and every four to six weeks I would do Letterman.
01:17:26.000 And that's how I kept it out there.
01:17:27.000 Just give them a little bit of a taste so when they come to your town, they're not sick of you yet.
01:17:32.000 That is interesting because you are definitely seeing a lot of people today that are watching stand-up from a YouTube clip, that they're watching it on their phone, and it's just not going to be the same.
01:17:41.000 Yeah, it's not.
01:17:42.000 It's not the same.
01:17:43.000 You need to experience it.
01:17:45.000 Live.
01:17:46.000 Yeah.
01:17:47.000 It's frustrating to me when I... When people say they didn't think something was funny or they didn't think something...
01:17:52.000 Oh, I watched Avatar on my iPhone.
01:17:55.000 I didn't think it was that great.
01:17:56.000 Well, first of all, it's a 3D movie.
01:17:57.000 You can't watch it on your iPhone.
01:18:00.000 Stop it, you know?
01:18:01.000 Yeah.
01:18:01.000 It's not supposed to be convenient.
01:18:03.000 Comedy's supposed to be in a room that's a little uncomfortable.
01:18:06.000 It's just a little too cold.
01:18:08.000 You know, all the elements that make for really...
01:18:10.000 Dark, low ceiling.
01:18:10.000 Yeah.
01:18:11.000 You ever try to do comedy in Hawaii?
01:18:12.000 You're standing on stage and guys in sailfishes are going by and, you know, the sun's out at midnight.
01:18:18.000 What are you doing?
01:18:19.000 Yeah.
01:18:20.000 Did you ever do stand-up in a really, really big place, like a giant arena?
01:18:24.000 Oh, sure, sure.
01:18:25.000 I did the amphitheater.
01:18:26.000 I did all that stuff back in the 80s.
01:18:27.000 What do you think about that?
01:18:29.000 Like, that seems to me, like, you know, they do this oddball comedy tour now, and they're doing, like, 20,000 seat places.
01:18:35.000 And, you know, I thought about it, and I was like, man, that seems like a lot of goddamn people to do stand-up for.
01:18:39.000 It seems very strange.
01:18:41.000 Well, it depends what you like.
01:18:43.000 For example, I like doing stand-up, so I'd rather do ten 2,000-seat rooms than one 20,000-seat room.
01:18:53.000 Yeah.
01:18:53.000 I mean, because I like doing it.
01:18:55.000 It's fun to do.
01:18:57.000 You know, it's fun to tell jokes.
01:18:59.000 It's fun to see the person right there.
01:19:01.000 When you do those 20,000-seat things, okay, there's a light in your eye and you can hear laughs.
01:19:07.000 But you're not really experiencing it the same.
01:19:10.000 So it depends.
01:19:11.000 I mean, I know comics that just...
01:19:12.000 Letterman was never comfortable in front of a live audience.
01:19:15.000 Dave was not funny as he is.
01:19:17.000 He just didn't like doing stand-up.
01:19:19.000 He didn't like it.
01:19:21.000 Me, I like it.
01:19:22.000 I like...
01:19:23.000 Reaching out and having the audience, and that's when The Tonight Show really came alive for me, when I redid the studio and brought the audience right up close to me so I could touch hands with people or go, when I have something, pal, you know, whatever it might be.
01:19:34.000 So I like it.
01:19:36.000 I like the human contact.
01:19:38.000 You know, stand-up is probably the most basic form of human communication.
01:19:43.000 There's no...
01:19:45.000 With the exception of the microphone, that's it.
01:19:48.000 There's no trick.
01:19:48.000 There's no gimmick.
01:19:49.000 It's just humans interacting.
01:19:52.000 You know, the other reason I like stand-up is people don't gather anymore.
01:19:57.000 You know, when I grew up in Andover, once a month they would have the town meeting at the Grange Hall, which is dumb as that sound in North Andover, and the whole town would show up.
01:20:06.000 Nothing ever got done, but people gathered in a room, and it was fun to experience A room full of people laughing or reacting to something.
01:20:15.000 Now everybody texts or sits.
01:20:17.000 There's a social awkwardness to the iPhone.
01:20:19.000 But when you put people in a little room that's a little uncomfortable and you get on stage and you talk to them and that room is rolling with laughs, it's really the greatest thing in the world.
01:20:28.000 It's unbelievable.
01:20:29.000 Yeah, I agree.
01:20:30.000 I think it's an amazing art form.
01:20:33.000 And it's the most fun for me to watch as well as to do.
01:20:36.000 I love watching it.
01:20:37.000 I still love sitting in the back.
01:20:39.000 I saw Tom Papa last night.
01:20:40.000 He was hilarious.
01:20:41.000 Tom is really good, isn't he?
01:20:42.000 He's very funny.
01:20:43.000 So funny.
01:20:44.000 And, you know, I got to sit in the back of the room after I got off stage and watch him at the back of the Comedy Store.
01:20:49.000 I'm like, I just still love it as an art form.
01:20:52.000 I mean, to me, it's like listening to music.
01:20:55.000 You know, I remember when I first met Letterman, I didn't really know Dave, and I saw him at the comedy store, and Dave had a great way to turn a phrase.
01:21:02.000 I remember he had a—I don't do the joke justice—he had a joke about—he was talking about editorials on small-town TV stations, and we at W-Whatever are diametrically opposed to the practice of using orphans as yardage markers on public golf courses,
01:21:19.000 something like that.
01:21:20.000 And I thought, I just like the way he phrased it.
01:21:23.000 To me, that's like listening to a James Taylor song, just the way all those words come together.
01:21:28.000 You know, in Seinfeld, he used to have a bit about going to the Dodgem cars and the hopeless father and son team.
01:21:36.000 And I like hopeless father and son.
01:21:38.000 So I just like the way they phrase things.
01:21:40.000 So to me, listening to good comedy, I can listen to it over and over.
01:21:44.000 Yeah, no, I agree.
01:21:45.000 I love listening to the way certain people phrase things.
01:21:49.000 And like you were saying about how you going on stage after listening and reciting Carlin in your head, how it sort of helped you get that rhythm and cadence.
01:21:57.000 You know, Hunter Thompson used to do that.
01:21:59.000 He used to write The Great Gatsby.
01:22:00.000 He used to write it out.
01:22:02.000 Is that right?
01:22:02.000 Yeah.
01:22:02.000 Copy The Great Gatsby to sort of learn the rhythm of the words.
01:22:06.000 I think a lot of us have experienced going on stage and sort of feeling like you're doing someone else's cadence and rhythm.
01:22:15.000 I caught myself one time on stage at the Comedy Connection, and I felt like I was in the middle of doing Richard Jenny.
01:22:21.000 I was like I was being Richard Jenny while I was on stage.
01:22:24.000 I was like, ooh, like I'm kind of stealing this guy's...
01:22:27.000 Oh, he was a hilarious comic.
01:22:29.000 He was a terrific comic, Richard.
01:22:30.000 He was one of the best that people don't talk about.
01:22:33.000 He was one of those guys that sort of the guys of today maybe don't realize how great that guy was.
01:22:38.000 Yeah, no, he really was.
01:22:40.000 Yeah, he was one of the best at taking a bit and stretching it out, too.
01:22:44.000 I love his bit on gay marriage.
01:22:46.000 This is before gay marriage was legal, obviously.
01:22:48.000 And he used to do a bit about how great it was for gay guys.
01:22:52.000 Bob, I'd love to marry you, but it's against the law.
01:22:56.000 I mean, I used to love when he did that.
01:22:58.000 It used to really make me laugh.
01:23:00.000 Look, Steve, I'd love to, but it's against the law.
01:23:03.000 It was the perfect guy excuse not to get married.
01:23:06.000 It's against the law!
01:23:08.000 Oh, hilarious.
01:23:09.000 And he would take a bit and stretch it out over seven, ten minutes.
01:23:14.000 I mean, he would find every single nook and cranny that that could be explored.
01:23:19.000 Very funny guy, but sort of insecure, but very funny guy.
01:23:22.000 He was troubled.
01:23:22.000 Yeah, he was troubled.
01:23:23.000 Like many, but so disciplined.
01:23:26.000 Constantly working, constantly writing new material.
01:23:29.000 Seinfeld is like that, very disciplined.
01:23:30.000 Really writes and comes up with new stuff.
01:23:33.000 And you can see the difference, too.
01:23:35.000 You can see the jokes come every six to nine seconds versus every 30 seconds.
01:23:43.000 Hey, you all in good mood?
01:23:44.000 How you all doing?
01:23:45.000 Yeah.
01:23:45.000 Woo!
01:23:46.000 I tell you.
01:23:47.000 Get to the joke.
01:23:48.000 Right, right, right.
01:23:48.000 Yeah.
01:23:49.000 Yeah, that's that old school attitude, too, that people don't have a lot of attention.
01:23:54.000 They don't have much time for this.
01:23:55.000 Go, go, go, go, go.
01:23:57.000 Seinfeld's one of the few guys that rivals you as a car collector, too.
01:24:00.000 And not quite.
01:24:00.000 Well, he's a Porsche guy.
01:24:01.000 He just does Porsche.
01:24:02.000 Yeah, he just does Porsche.
01:24:03.000 He doesn't own anything else?
01:24:04.000 He's an expert.
01:24:05.000 No, he's got some German self, Mercedes, but he's a real expert.
01:24:08.000 He knows his stuff.
01:24:10.000 Yeah, that Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee is a very interesting show.
01:24:13.000 Oh, it's a great show.
01:24:14.000 It's really fun.
01:24:15.000 You know, everybody tells you you can't.
01:24:17.000 Jerry's a perfect example.
01:24:18.000 The Seinfeld show about nothing.
01:24:20.000 No, nobody's going to watch that.
01:24:21.000 Biggest show ever.
01:24:22.000 When he had this idea, we just drive around.
01:24:24.000 We just talk about whatever we want.
01:24:25.000 No, no, you've got to have it all laid out first.
01:24:27.000 No, you don't.
01:24:28.000 And he proved that you didn't need to.
01:24:30.000 Well, that's what's going on with the internet, is that you don't, the idea that these producers and executives and directors have always had that run networks, that this is the only way to be entertaining, they're wrong.
01:24:40.000 It's just another way to be entertaining, but you watch, it'll come full circle again, and people go, I'm sick of this freeform stuff, I want something a little more, you know, so it's just the age you live in.
01:24:50.000 Most people do this show and they make it about an hour, maybe an hour and twenty before they have to take a leak.
01:24:55.000 You look like you're about right there.
01:24:57.000 No, I don't need to take a leak.
01:24:59.000 I thought the show was an hour.
01:25:00.000 It's as long as you want it to be.
01:25:01.000 We can end it right now if you like.
01:25:02.000 Well, I got a meeting at one.
01:25:04.000 Let's wrap it up then.
01:25:05.000 Okay, we'll wrap it up.
01:25:06.000 Thank you very much.
01:25:07.000 I really appreciate this.
01:25:08.000 Hey, Joe, thanks for having me.
01:25:09.000 Anytime you ever want to come back again, I would be more than honored to have you on.
01:25:12.000 You call me and I'm here.
01:25:13.000 It was an honor to do your show.
01:25:14.000 I love your show.
01:25:15.000 Jay Leno's Garage, my episode is on this week with my 1965 Corvette, and it was an honor to come and tour your facilities.
01:25:23.000 Well, come back with the Chevelle and the Barracuda.
01:25:26.000 Absolutely.
01:25:26.000 Absolutely.
01:25:26.000 Love you, buddy.
01:25:27.000 Thank you.
01:25:27.000 Appreciate it.