Adriana Trigiani Returns

Meet Adriana Trigiani, best-selling author of eighteen books, playwright, television writer/producer, film director/screenwriter/producer, and entrepreneur. She's published a book every single year since 2000 and her work has been published in thirty-eight languages around the world. Her most recent novel, The View From Lake Como, is out now. EnJOY!

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come
and see my brand new comedy hour well as Actually
it's about an hour and a half and I don't
have an opener because these guys cost money. But what
I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway,
come and see me live on the Pants on Fire
Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now and
we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty

(00:23):
twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you
on the road, My DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson.
The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to
interesting people about what brings them happiness. Hello, my name

(00:46):
is Craig Ferguson. Welcome to the Tent and the Kids
Super Studios in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. My guest today
on the Joy podcast is an old and dear friend
of mine. So we tend to ramble a bit, so
the heads up this one may go along and sometimes
you may think what the hell are you talking about it?
But then again you may think about any episode you

(01:07):
see or anything you see. Anyway, my friend today is
the great Italian writer and a personal friend of mine,
Adriani Trigiani, Idriana Trigiani, Adriani that was born than one
of them, and there can't be only one Adriana. As
you will see. Well, where are you from Italy?

Speaker 2 (01:33):
And don't get excited. Farmers, workers, laborers, blue collar you know,
I'm very proud of them. Well, but Italians.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
You know this because you're going to Italy.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
I know you do. That's why we work together. Because
you thought she might be okay, But you were so
rude to me when I first met you that I thought,
oh this guy.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
True, I wasn't rude to you. I was just checking
you out. You were like, wait, wait, can't be in
my movie?

Speaker 2 (01:56):
No, I said, no, I said, mister Ferguson. I kept
follow you with Ferguson. I think that like you.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Be in my movie. I was like, I know, else,
isn't it?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
God bless you. You're a superstar. Okay, So the Italian
thing is, we know where we're from, down to the village,
the street and the house. We'll tell you. We'll send
you the little yellow house, you know, it's in the
first part of the hill were and if you're not
going to do it, they'll serve your lunch. That's the
way we were all.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Do you know anybody who did that thing? We're in
the Godfather that like you think the name of the
town that you're from, like.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Right, Well, there's also a beautiful tradition there too that
very often the town names are Jewish families because there's
Italian Jews, right, that is beautiful. So the name of
the town, well, when they got when they went through
Ellis Island, if they couldn't spell it, they sort of
did that. But my family remained intact through Ellis Island

(02:53):
the spellings.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
I had to change my name. Who else you're kidding?
My real name is Joey Goldstein. People don't know that
about me, but it's.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
It's when the girl I'm trying to process.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, yeah, I you know, I just it was a
thing when I was coming through on the boat, when
I was coming off the boat.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, you chronicled your immigration in your book. That was
really great.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
It's I'm very I'm pretty happy, but you're very yeah, super.
I kind of I think I irritate my family, who
are all born in America with my American ness, like
mangan and the kids, I'm like, let's go to NASCAR
and stuff like. That's not American. I went, sure is
come on?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Well?

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Every fourth of July we watched Talladega Knights The Ballad
of Ricky Bo.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
We love it too. At our house.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
It's a great movie ever made.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
You know. You know that, but you're not really a
family till you make an annual show of midnight run
with Robert de Niro, and that is one of the
great movie I watched it with my parents every year.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
You know, I haven't seen that movie in years.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
It holds up, it does. Oh my gosh, is that
movie funny or what? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:10):
I remember it being funny. Charles Groden, Charles Groden, he's
very funny.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
He really was very very funny. He's going to be
he's going to be with the Lord now he's no
longer here. Yeah, he was great. He was great.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
And de Niro, of course he's he's still here.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
And then he's very much still here. And then he
got a little baby.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Did you just have a little baby.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, he has a little baby. I think she's a
year old.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
With his hats off, the Jagger did that as well.
Mick Jagger had.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Let's talk about Mick Jagger.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
Talk about me, because because you talked me about time, I've.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Been around a lot in my life and I find
he's very interesting man.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
He really is. He's I met him. I've never met him,
but because I have my I have friends that own
the Giants, Shila Maher her family, they invite me every
time he comes through.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Wait wait, wait, you have friends who owned the Giant.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, you introduce me to those fancy friends. I get
to meet, like, you know, the guys from like Western
Pennsylvania and stuff. I'm like, hey, have you met No Carmine.
That's who I get to be.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I met Sheila Marra on a trip to Israel with
Kathy Lee and we have friends ever since. Yeah. There
she's dear friends with all that crew. Yeah yeah, yeah.
But when the when the Stones come through, Springsteen, I was.
I was there the night Springsteen. I've seen him so
many times countless since the River tour, since I was
a kid.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
I'm a fan.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
You're a big fan of Springsteen. I am too. But
I saw the show. I saw the show. He was
sick and I went having seen him so many times
I went, he's not right, he's not right. And then
of course he hit that place in the show where
it's Runway to Heaven, right where he just babe a
hit after hitting people.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
It's the it's the key change in border run That's right,
that's what it is.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Dang, Absolutely, you're right, you're right. He is the master
of the key change.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
You gotta have the key change change. So true, Yeah,
you gotta have the key change. Do you play a
musical instrument?

Speaker 2 (06:31):
I do not.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
I feel like you should. What about the heart?

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Okay, so now you're you're digging into my childhood book. Well,
the town band director Dave Tipton I met with my
parents and said that kid has musical talent me and
I was like all excited, and I was imagining what
instruments I would play. I really wanted to play the
saxophone like my uncle, and my dad was very proficient

(06:55):
on the piano and natural piano player, I mean like pianist,
classically trained from the age of five, and he'd come
home every day from the factory. He'd sit at the piano.
That's how he decompressed for thirty minutes. It made us
happy because we knew where he was.

Speaker 3 (07:11):
Do you think that people in light on that one
go ahead and learn instruments?

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Why well no, I think do people and learns less
than the used to because they're on fucking Instagram.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
No, you know, you're really trying to blame.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
I'm against that. I want the Internet to be stoppd okay.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
I in con it's too late with social media because
we don't have magazines and newspapers like we did so
now so now we have to tune into the Craig
Ferguson magazine whatever that is on the internet and find
you on uh YouTube or wherever wherever your face is sold. Yeah, okay,

(07:53):
but it used to be.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
You still write books. Yeah, I still get you know,
you still write big papery books that you read.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Still do, thank you. But that's an industry that seems
to benefit from this book talk has changed. Book sales.
The major publishers make over a billion a year each,
some of them three billion, four billion, So they're doing
very well. And here's the other thing you need to know.

(08:22):
You got to just kind of stand back from things
sometimes and go the way we're telling stories changes. Just
read a little interview with Clark Gable from nineteen fifty
and he was dead set against television because he was
a movie star, a movie actor, and he said, we
have to be loyal to the industry that brought us.

(08:42):
But look what that simple change in the late forties
and early fifties did to the industry. We began to
tell stories in different ways. Now, last year in the
United States of America, I've been doing this twenty five
years with books. Last year in the United States of America,
three point eight billion million books, not billion, sorry, everybody.

(09:05):
Million books were self published. So there's three point eight
million people in the United States. More people than buy
books are writing them. So the storytelling, the way we
tell stories has completely changed.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Well has it though? I mean the fact that if
you self publish a book. Do you think that if
three point eight million people are writing books and self publishing,
is that changed in the way we tell stories or
is just a lot of people doing it? This is
the way we used to do it with not very
good editors. Because you know, the publishing. I've read some

(09:42):
great self published books, and I've read some of the
I'm like, you know, this could.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Have Well you're a big reader, so let's go buy
this the industry itself. I haven't noticed that they've added
a lot of editors. I haven't noticed that they've added
a lot of imprints to accommodate this. But you do
find out when you scratch the surface that traditional publishers
own the lion's share of self publishing business. Yes, so

(10:09):
you pay somebody to be published, and sometimes at these
self publishing houses they have editors for you, designers.

Speaker 1 (10:17):
I'm a big fan of editors. I think editors.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
I need them. I mean, my editor, Maya ZeVA Needer,
I need editors. I also, like you, I do like
to work collaboratively with a group. I think it brings makes.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Sense because you're a TV writer though, right, I was
a playwright first.

Speaker 2 (10:39):
But that playwright really that's really the family. When you
write for the theater, that's just that's the island of
misfit toys, that's you know, floating to profit. I mean,
it's like those poor souls. I mean, you know, all
of us. I consider myself one of those poor souls.
But the theater is the place where you make something

(11:01):
for no money. You tell a story for no money.
The whole reason I went into the theater was because
I needed a piece of paper and a pencil and
a space, and I did. When I began as a playwright,
I did plays on buses. I did plays everywhere. You
did a play on a bus, Yeah, I did a
play on a bus. It was I got me a
lot of trouble too, because I did it on a

(11:23):
shuttle bus between Notre Dame University of Notre Dame in
Saint Mary's College. They ran a shuttle bus.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
That sounds like a very Catholic bus.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
The Catholic's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting way.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
You know, go on some of those nittlely did you
know that I show them there.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
You're obsessed with religion, you are, and I think that
that's beautiful on a certain level. You're a very spiritual person.
But I also think, you know, you're a very bitter person,
and that goes with me.

Speaker 4 (11:54):
I tell you, you know, he's not at all, you know,
so delicious like.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
No, no, no, I think I've got a certain amount
of bitterness. But that's part of the recipe of being
a human being. I think if you don't have bitterness,
you're not fucking paying attention. There are some things you
should be better about. True, you know, like every time
I feel my knees when I stand up, I'm like, God,
damn it.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Let's talk about aging.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Ah right, well, look very briefly though.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
But let's go back to self publishing.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
No, no, no, no, I just want to take us on
the journey from where you start to where you end, right,
so very very quickly, but I would We won't make
a huge deal. But for those people unfortunate enough to
not know your story, let's do a concise, well edited
short story of you starting out as a fresh faced

(12:46):
Italian immigrant again off the boat Ellis Island. So where
you're from the appellations, right.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
I grew up in Appalachia, right in southwest Virginia, bless
you started out in the northeastern United States with my
little family of seven, seven brothers and seven of us
and my parents and my dad got a low interest
government loan to start a blouse smell in Appalachia. That's
how we ended up there. People say, how did Italian

(13:18):
get down here? Well, that's how the m Italians got
down there.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
So you started off a blows well, your father started
a blow smell manufacturing.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
Yeah, he made more and blouses, but he was trained
in his parents Blousemill in Martin's Creek, Pennsylvania.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
All right, so how did you get that doesn't sound
like a quick short hope to show business from there,
and that's not like, well, you know.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
We wanted to be I was just talking to our
intern lady about this. I wanted to be in sho.
I still it's my highest dream. See. I love show business.
I love it more. I love show business more than
any person, man child. I'm in love with show business really,
and I'm still obsessed with it.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, there's something every aspect of it, you know, begging
you to do a.

Speaker 1 (14:05):
Movie, or you asked me nicely and I said sure, No,
you said I'll call you back in forty eight hours.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
No person ever said that to me. I happen to
forty eight hours? What's he talking? I say that you
called back in forty eight hours because you were in
Italy with your friends and you didn't want to be bothered.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Well, yeah, it's not wrong with that. I can't I
can't understand why I said.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Forty eight You said forty eight hours.

Speaker 1 (14:33):
I was forty eight hours.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
So then I then I uh, I I said in
forty eight hours? Will have an answer everybody relaxed, right,
we'll see if he comes back.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
And yeah, but this is not about that. This is
about you, you know.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
But we have to throw in those things because that's
what I think of you, and I just start laughing. Okay,
And you're Appalachian. Okay. It's the Scotts Irish area of
the United States. So when we went to Scotland and
we made a movie there, I was the only only
person on that crew from America who could understand the
local people because it sounded like it is to me.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
It's very it's going to be right.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
So when you go to Appalachia, you're not straining to
like understand what people are saying. And if I slip
into it, which I am known to do, you understand.
So so there we are in Appalachia. We have no
connections to show business.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
I wanted to And it's going to go on on
a bus between the Catholic that.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Was later please please, you're you're you're ringing the best
part of.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
The story, okay, okay.

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Because we were Italian. There was an outdoor drama there
called the Trailer Lonesome Pine Outdoor Drama. My brother Carlo
played Little bubb Big bubb and old Bub. Okay, that's
how long he was in the drama. Yes, he's a
great actor. My brother and we were all involved in
the town in the theater, and I was on the

(15:59):
crew because Barlow was a star. He played like the
boy and mame the fiddler around the roof wherever the
little kid was. And then they got a kid in
every musical corky.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
Okay, So you're so wrong, and you're doing this during
two things, during Tony Awards season and Pride Month. You
should be ashamed of yourself anyway, Get the characters correct.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Anyway. So when they needed to cast the children of
Siam and the King and I, they looked at the
iteies that said they look different, put him in. So
we were the kids that went okay.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
So that's when I really fell in love with show business.
And when I was in my first thing, then I
wasn't cute, so I was put in the chorus beautiful, yeah,
beautiful because you love me or my brother. But I'm
just telling you back then, no, my glasses were this thick,
and they were like, oh yeah, can you see stage left?

(16:56):
Not really okay, And you know, in certain areas of history,
people didn't wear eyeglasses, and there was one director that
came through It's very fancy, said everybody take your glasses off,
and the people were we were piling up backstage. It
was bad anyway.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Well, because you're doing a period piece and you can
wear glass.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, you can't wear glasses so well, you certainly couldn't
wear Oscar day Loa rent a windshields that we were
all wearing.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Hello, this is Craig Ferguson and I want to let
you know I have a brand new stand up comedy
special out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy,
and I would be so happy if you checked it out.
To watch the special, just go to my YouTube channel
at the Craig Ferguson Show and is this right there?
Just click it and play it and it's free. I

(17:43):
can't look. I'm not going to come around your house
and show you how to do it. If you can't
do it, then you can't have it. But if you
can figure it out, it's yours. I have a theory
about movies made in the nineteen seventies. This thing that
I've ob recently, I've started watching movies made in the
nineteen seventies and I feel.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
We're talking hal Ashby right, all those guys.

Speaker 1 (18:08):
Like movies that were made in the nineteen seventies. I
feel like all of the actors said, we're not getting
anything but nineteen seventies haircuts here. It doesn't matter what
period we're playing. I don't care if we're playing Nazis
Roman guys. I don't care for outlaws. I don't care
for everybody had a nineteen seventies haircut. They wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
You're right, I just want it.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Oh fuck it no.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
And they wore the glasses they wanted to wear. They
wore those Windshiel wiper eyeglasses. And I think you also,
when you think of the nineteen seventies in film, you
have to talk about teeth.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
Well, you know, I'm from a country where teeth is
not something that we talk about.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Okay, I lived there for six months. People have beautiful teeth.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
What is what you knew you were mixing with the
smart teeth set, That's what it was. And also those teeth,
many of those teeth arrived later.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
Oh, I see what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Anyway, Look, look, look, looks we're back and you've got
your glasses on and you're in the play. But now
you love show business, do you say? So?

Speaker 2 (19:09):
I wrote a play. I didn't write play for Catholics. First,
I wrote a play. I started to write for the
school assemblies and and my friends remember this that they
during the by centennial. I decided that I was to
play right then, and I wrote monologues for people to

(19:29):
play historical figures in my school. Nice right, Yes, I
did well. Harriet Tubman, Ben Franklin, Frederick Douglas.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
So we're stinking with American American heroes.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
And my friend Jean Williams, who was African American, came
from a long line of teachers and she she herself
became a teacher and I was just with her in
Big Stone app We get together and we just all started,
we just laugh and I said, remember what And we
put her in the Big Stone Gap movie because I
knew she was an actor and I needed somebody with

(20:10):
Whoopy Goldberg in a scene. And those two it was
like Jean met Whoopee. At her level, I can't even
but we had a long history. Because I cast her
as Harriet Tubman for the school assembly and I was
short on costumes, so I went into the to the
home ac room and they had made bonnets shower caps,

(20:34):
but they were plastic. I took one of them, and
I took an apron and I said, sit in a
rocking chair, do the monologue Harriet.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
Tubman with a plastic shower cap on.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
But when the thing opened, the student body went crazy.
They thought it was a comedy that she was in
that shower cap. And Jeane, she did actor that she was.
She just pushed through it and I'm waiting in the
wings for her. She came back and she took off
that shower Kevin. She threw it at me and she
goes never again to Johnny, never again. That is that

(21:06):
story amusing on your podcast? Or is that just too
private a story? But anyway, so she still remembers that
she did it, and I remember the whole anyhow. So
then when it came time, I said, I'm paying you back. Okay,
you're gonna be in the movie. You're getting paid whoa, whoa?

Speaker 1 (21:20):
You jumped ahead here.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
You want me to get to the Saint Mary's of
it all?

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, so you're right now, you're writing a play for
cat So I might.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Well for the patriarchy, really, because Notre Dame is a
monolith and Saint Mary's is this really wonderful women's college,
which are not in fashion anymore, although it's thriving. It's
it's but it's next door to Notre Dame, but it's
got in my mind it's more beautiful, has better land,

(21:49):
prettier buildings. But I went to Saint Mary's and so
the first thing I would have to attack is the
the disparity of power. So we got on the bus
and I wrote scenes, sketches that the girls would do
as if they're having a real conversation, but they were
based on real conversations, like about who they were dating

(22:10):
and whatever. I'm changing names right, but they'd be holding
the thing on the shuttle bus.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Who's watching these plays?

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Everybody that's riding a bus. It's a building audience.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Who's riding the bus, students.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Going back and forth for classes and at night for parties.

Speaker 1 (22:24):
You should do this play on the subway, how would you?

Speaker 2 (22:28):
You know what? That's a great idea, except you can't
hear down there.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
You see it.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
You got to project like the guy, like the guy
that comes through and says, give.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Me a twenty year.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
I'll kill myself right in front of your eyes that guy.
Yeah yeah, I am yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right, that guy.
So I did that. Then I did a stage show
with it, with this, then we became we evolved into
a comedy troupe, and I just picked the girls. That
one looked like Pat bennettar Mimi Commons. She always wore
leopard and she was in the art department. People didn't

(23:02):
really talk to her too much. And then I found
out she was just painfully shy, right because she was
the one that really she'd barf before every perform to
be like, maybe.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
I used to do that, you did, I used to
throw up.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
That's a sign of greatness.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
I never threw it never worked out for me, left, No,
it's I never before.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
I got I couldn't do anything that would directly make
me thin. Nothing. I never threw up. What about heron
heron I didn't. I never You know, I didn't do drugs.
You know I didn't do them because fear, I I don't.

Speaker 1 (23:35):
Please listen, whatever it takes to keep you off the needle.
Fear is fine. Fear is fine. I never did that's no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
And drinking to me, I'd rather eat the calories. I
I'd rather eat.

Speaker 1 (23:51):
I've never yeah, you know, I don't think I've ever
seen you drink anything. Did you drink cocktails or something? Yeah, somethings.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
Not really, not really, not really, my brother, No, I
don't because there's a lot of sugar in there, and
I was born pre diabetic. I'm Italian. You have to
really watch it. You've got to be careful with the sugar.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
But here's the thing I feel like, Look, you don't.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Get off the place, keep going.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
No, no, no, I'm going to I'm just gonna taking us
because you said the Italian thing. I'm going to say
something about Italy now. And no, you know how much
I love it.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
I know you love it.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
It's like every time I go to Italy, I think,
why don't I love you? It's crazy?

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Why don't we get side by side houses in the
Alps That's where I'm looking at.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
Don't I don't have best seller money? I'm not like,
I don't know. Then you have?

Speaker 2 (24:35):
You know, we can buy a house there for three
thousand dollars. Why wouldn't we do it?

Speaker 1 (24:39):
If we can buy it? I saw.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
I saw your skills at the Castle in Scotland. You
can dig. That's Megan's I'm talking about who goes out
and digs the trenches and plants the treats. I need
you for that stonework that with your little wagon, by yourself,
with your bitterness, just.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Rage in despair, just digging away. Ryah. Fuck, let's fucking assholes,
no fucking in Gianna, fucking get me to do that,
stupid fucking fella.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
Yeah, but wouldn't this be fun? I mean, our family,
we love each other. We could go up there, but
you would be like this day too. I hate, I hate,
I hate. I've been peeping in on you. Hey, let's go.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
All right anyway, so we're back. You know, you're in
this Catholic school.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Okay, So I mean, yeah, but it's but it's it's
the nineteen eighties. So let's not get crazy. It's it's
like everything changed. And I believe in the nineteen eighties.
I think there's one hundred years between nineteen seventy nine
and nineteen eighty nine. Do you agree with that?

Speaker 1 (25:44):
I'm not against it, but I need you to elaborate
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Well, there's been these studies that are, you know, sociological studies,
and I would refer everyone to Kurt Anderson's book on
this topic. The title escapes me, but we'll put it
in the prompt. He wrote this book about it really

(26:07):
intrigued me, and it's gotten us to twenty twenty five
in a certain way. When we were kids, right, the
decade was defined by the cars, the haircuts, the people.
It changed through time. Okay, my mother might have been
wearing a pillbox hat in nineteen sixty, but by nineteen

(26:27):
seventy she was in a caftan with share bracelets up
her arm. Okay, okay, I'm follow this. Haircuts, there were
haircuts right in the fifties. There was a thing called
the Italian cut. The Italians who were persona on Grada
in the United States after World War Two assumed a
position of artistic and cultural excellence. Cars haircuts, movie stars.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Haircuts. So in the nineteen seventies, you know Stuart's haircut, Yeah, right,
we got a typical Roads Stuart haircut. Right was the
nineteen seventies Roads Sture haircut. And my mother used to say, oh,
that Rod stupid. He thinks he's fancy with his.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Bloo job haircut.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
I'm like, Mom, that's no, I don't think they're called
that said, Oh, yes, they go to the salons and
they get those blood job haircuts. I'm like, I'm pretty sure,
let us know what they call them. But she was convinced.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
That so funny because you know, there's everything's everything. That's
what I love about show business. Everything forms these circles.
And I just talked to Peter Wolfe on my podcast
about his memoir, and you should talk to him because
that man. Every page is like Thomas loaded loaded stories.

(27:45):
But he he the first time in history I saw
a negative thing about Rod Stewart, and I asked him.
I said, I don't know Rod Stewart and never met
Rod Stewart, but I find Rod Stewart a ray of light.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
I think he's negativity about Rod Stewart.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
He was a little snutty. He walked by the he
walked by the Jay Giles band and didn't give them
their proper snaps. Fuck though you don't think so, you.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Asked, I can't believe that to be true. Let me
tell the other I just.

Speaker 4 (28:10):
Tell that his taste someone who wears Lepard, but.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
He would he wears anything you want.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
But I'm going to tell you this about roads. This
is a true story. I was in Heathrow airport, wait
for a plane. That's why I go there. I don't
go for any other reason. I was in there and
I was went for a plane, and Rood Stewart walks
through the airport was and he every time people were going,
oh my god, Rod Sture, and he would look at
people and say Rod Stewart, he say his name. I

(28:38):
was like, that's how I'm that's I love that. You
just go through, Craig, I go No, I go through,
and people are like that was that Hope Man haircut? Anyway, Look,
so we get where we're back. We have to get
you back to the where how do you get right
in Catholic plays to New York City because that.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Call they're not Catholic play there. I wrote a play
called Notes from the Nile, which I really I would
love to do again. I rewrote. I wrote the story
you would be greatest Julius Caesar, because I'm bring him
back from the dead, and there's a there's a there's
a three way conflict between Cleopatra her former lover Julius Caesar,

(29:20):
which you would play in Antony between exactly.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
I know, but I would play Julius Caesar Scottish.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, you could do whatever you want.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
Hey, everybody, by the.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Way, ladies and gentlemen, I'm just going to say this
directly to the audience. He says he's going to play
it Scottish. He would only play it Scottish because he
makes the decision and drives the bus as an actor. Okay,
but quite accidentally, So do whatever you want. I'm not
going to argue with you.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
But also I think I think that would be good
to play.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Besides, everybody in America thinks you have a British accent.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
They don't know the difference Ancient Rome. People think that
because of the movie, because of the movies, like all
Ancient Room and Caesar quickly come here and how about them?
It's that time for something nice to eat?

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Oh God love the Italian.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Anyway, Look, how do we get you from colleague to
New York City? That's what I want to do. We're
telling your story today.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Okay. So, so I knew I had to come here.
This was my highest dream, right.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Okay, because you want to come here and you want
to ride, that's right.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
And I have no place else to go. I can't
go home. My parents still have kids at home. I
would say that you know they were done, okay, But besides,
I wouldn't go home. I needed I had this burning
like crazy, as you know, to get into show business.
So I came up north to my grandmother's and I

(30:44):
have my stuff in paper bags basically. And my grandmother
called this kind of nutty friend to hers and Garrison,
New York, and said, my granddaughter needs a place to
live in New York City. She said, tell every go
to the long Acre Hotel for Women. Cheap clean day
there whenever I go into New York. Now, meanwhile, this
lady lived in like a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Garrison.
She was very wealthy, but nobody knew it. Right, But

(31:08):
she's an old friend of my grandma's from the factory days.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Do they still have that wild tell.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
The well, now that's the thing that's changed. The nineties
kind of everything collapsed. Like there was that I got
from the long Acre Hotel for Women?

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Where was that was that in Manhette?

Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yes, on forty fifth between eighth and ninth.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Okay, that's like it's agerous place for you to be.
What year are we talking about?

Speaker 2 (31:28):
Well, it's not that bad, eighty five, not that bad,
not terrible, but anyway, it's not cleaned up. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well I immediately form a comedy troupe like I had
at Saint Mary's. Got New Girls, right, and one of
the girls in it was a crafty girl from Virginia
and South Carolina named Eleanor Jones, Right, Okay, who became

(31:49):
became who came into the group And I said, look,
I'm running out of dough and she said, I said,
I got I got a tip on a sublet and
she said, I wouldn't do that, but if you want.
But I took it within two weeks. Knock on the door.
The guy that I gave the money, not Eleanor. Eleanor
was was at the mill Bank House.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Right.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
The mill Bank House was a was a boarding house
for women in the arts, which had to be between
nineteen and twenty five. And then they kicked you out.
Although there was a woman in there named Lamya. She
was forty two if she was a day, and she
never left, so you had to let kich you get
out of there. Now, Lamia wore wigs. Nobody could figure
Lamia out. She was a beauty.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
But let's look at call open Lamia. Let's get back
to you though, let's look at calling open Lamiah. That's
how she gets you. That's how she gets you.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
That's how I get you off trying to We've done
this enough, now, you know. Okay. So I get into
the Millbank House and when that happens, now I'm golden.
I lost all my money because I gave it to
the sublet guy. And it was just it was a thief.
It was a guy who had sublet in between and
two dancers showed up in the middle of the night

(32:55):
and get out of our apartment. And I said, no,
I gave so and so the money, and he said, no,
that guy sublet from us. He took your money. So
I went, okay, well, listen, you lose money along the way,
you never lose it again in that fashion. I know that.
I know that just caused like fifty needles just went
into your neck when I said I lost money, but
I did, I.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
Was a little bit along the way.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
I know you haven't.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
So so Eleanor says, I'm going to get you in
here at the Milbank House. I'm going to get you in.
I said, please, please get me in. It was starting
to snow. No, no, no, I'm not the little match. But
I'm still at the long Acre Hotel and I'm okay.
I show up with my bags and the lady that
answers the door changed my life. Jimne Lawton. She's running

(33:39):
the house. And I said I need a room, and
once so she said, I have a guest room. Now,
I was temping on Wall Street, so I had, I was,
I was, you couldn't save money in New York. I don't,
I don't care, but I knew I could pull it off.
So it was one hundred dollars a week, two meals
Monday through Friday, and breakfast on Saturday and Sunday. Hey

(34:01):
that's enough food, right, sure, get your own room? Yeah,
and shared baths. Did here like a dorm? Really nice, clean,
beautiful And she brought me in, So.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
I and did she take you into show business? How
did you get?

Speaker 2 (34:17):
That's where it gets good, okay? Because nobody would talk
to that lady, and she was very beautiful. Why wouldn't
they talk right here? Because she's the nobody likes the boss,
you know that nobody, And she was she was the
house mother, and she was always telling people to get
your feet off of things, and you can't have a
boy inside the house and the girls were propping the
door open with a shoe. They had a lady that
answered the door. I mean it was like a whole thing.

(34:39):
It was like it was like nineteen forty in nineteen
eighty five. That's how I will describe the bank hoss. Okay,
but the food was good, had wash her dryer, and
a phone on each floor.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
Let's don't get stuck in the hotel here. How did
we get you in the show business because you're really
selling the hotel to me, like holding doors, opened the shoes,
it's a phone and every floor there's a meal on Sundays.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Because how can I describe how you get your dream
if I don't tell you where you stay and how
you kind of make it Happenez.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
You're a novelist, that's why you're doing that. But this
is not a novelist. I'm editing you. So now how
do we get you? How do we get you into
the show business world?

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Okay, first thing I do is I I found a
comedy troupe, and I call my dad and he knows
a guy in the garment district, and I hold auditions
and those girls became the core group and I kept
that going for seven years with different girls. Where did
you perform upstairs at the Vesuvia was our first run.

(35:51):
We were okay, yes it is. It's kind of a
mob joint if you have to know the truth.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Okay, you know you got these girls down downstairs.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
It's about really funny, really funny.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Did that? Then then we did the cabaret circuit, so
the Duplex, we did the comedy clubs we did like
we were openers, like Silver Friedman has had us open
for people because we did music too.

Speaker 1 (36:18):
And then uh Corner Planermance.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Yeah, nobody wanted to see us coming with you know,
a giant subway token spray painted gold that we did
on the roof of the Millbank. Nobody cared about that
after a certain point.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
I want to see that.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
And you know, we also did Kelly's Village West, which
we weren't sure what it was. I I was the booker,
and my boss on Wall Street will tell you. I
took his his his rollover line as my business line
and I answered it like this three one, six nine,
and they go, is this Adria Andre Johnny are you
booking the act and the thing? And I go, yeah,

(36:54):
So one day he called the second line because I
was rated out and I went three one sixty nine
and he said, this is your boss. I need to
talk to you. And I went, oh, don't worry this guy.
He just liked the fact that I was funny. And
he's still my dear.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
I like an eccentric guy in walls.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
No, he's not eccentric at all. He's like young and
go get her and tops and pops. But he was.
He was Italian, and it just means he's like he's
like climbing the ladder at Merrill Lynch, Piers, Fenner and Smith.
And I don't think it. I don't even think it
even exists anymore.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
See when people say to me, how are you feeling,
I'm going to say, tops and bops?

Speaker 2 (37:34):
You never heard that.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Ask me how I feel.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
You'll lage out of it. My grandmother used to say it,
Come on, come on, ask me how you feeling, Craig,
Tops and Bop. Do you think anybody's gonna like this podcast?
I don't give it. What are we doing?

Speaker 1 (37:52):
I love it?

Speaker 4 (37:53):
Okay, okay, that's why your success in show business.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
You to have that. I don't care, Jean, Okay, go ahead,
So you get of you get Saint Mary's.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
He goes, no, no, no, no, you're now you're in
chill business, and now I'm in You're in the comedy troops.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
I'm in the comedy troop and everybody's conspiring to help
me make my dream come true.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Right, I know. But you're still writing. Now you're going
to write the When do you start writing the TV comedies?
What's the first TV comedies?

Speaker 2 (38:14):
The first TV comedy was Okay, there's one thing before that,
which was off Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club. Noticed
I've never worked there since. It was called Secrets of
the Lava Lamp for Camille Saviola, who was starring in
nine the Music Hall. She was a little tug boat
of a woman. She's in heaven.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Now I guess, right, And you say, I guess like,
maybe she's not.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
I don't know. I don't know. She believes she'd go there,
but anyway, that's solid what you believe. So she she
found me. I was doing staged readings all over the city, directors,
doing stage readings with really great actors. Okay, I mean
really good because and I said to myself, I said,
take your twenties to learn how to do this right,

(38:55):
work with other actors and see what you could do,
and direct them and see what you know. Anyway, So
so that led to she hired me Camille Saviola, and
I got trashed by Mail gus All in the New
York Times.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
New York Times that I didn't really care.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
But the people I was tempting for they were a
little embarrassed because they all came to the show and
they were like, how'd you get.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Your I don't like people I know coming to the show.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
I don't like to see anybody either.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Sometimes I haven't seen you seck no, but recently yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
However, so this turned into for me was another trajectory
of show business. How did I get TV? Was my girlfriends.
Two of them were working in the mail room at
William Morris, Suzanne Gluck, who become a huge agent, and
Ruth Pomerance, who was at the time was a producer.
She was like a baby producer and she discovered Grisham

(39:49):
for I mean a baby producer, like she was a newbie.
She was young. She's so smart. Ruth is still one
of the most brilliant people I know. And they kind
of sat me down, they said, you need you're terrible.
You are blowing past your yes anyway, so you're bullshit. Anyway,
I'm trying to tell the story. You get, you get
me off track, and then you're blaming me, you know.

(40:13):
So okay, So so Ruth and Suzanne said, hey, I
was really broke. Said I need to make money. They said,
you need an agent. I said, what do they do?
They get your jobs? I said, really, this is what
a hay seed. I had the dream, but none of
the logic I didn't understand. I just thought they'd find

(40:33):
my work. You know, well, this is when it gets magical.
They said, you need to write TV. Now, keep in
mind I grew up in a place where you barely
got reception. The first show I remember, really remember loving
was the Waltons. Oh I love about about a poor
family and applegic. That was our family. Well, well that's

(40:55):
what I call this, except we were like the nineteen seventies.
But anyway, so so I knew, I knew I had
to figure out a way with uh with with my
past and my lineage which was non existent. Had to
break into the business whatever way I could. And so

(41:18):
when they they made me a list to agents, and
they said you're going to meet all these people. And
there was a list and I went to the first
guy and I liked him, and I said, I'm gonna
I called him up. I said, I'm gonna go with him,
but you need to meet everybody. I said, no, for what?

Speaker 1 (41:30):
Right?

Speaker 2 (41:31):
I like this guy, Wiley howshm at ic?

Speaker 1 (41:33):
M right?

Speaker 2 (41:35):
So Wiley, howshim? He has a great name.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
Wiley is a great name. We should do an animated
version of your life, and Wiley should be played by Coyote.

Speaker 2 (41:45):
I don't know, okay now it's a different kind of Wiley.
But anyway, So after he I signed, I looked at
him and said, I don't have any money. I'm broke, right,
I need next month's rent two weeks away. And he's, well, Adria,
it doesn't work like that, like we have to submit
you and everything.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Yeah, it takes time.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
Listen. I said, I signed with you because you can
make things happen. He said, okay, he said, I'm going
to give you tape and you're going to go watch
this show and you're going to write a specscript. He said,
take a few months. I said, I got two weeks
till the first month, I said, I can't give it
to me. I did not have a television set and
he didn't have a VCR. So I had to call
a friend who's super let me in to watch this thing.

(42:27):
I couldn't get the picture to come up, but I
could hear it. What was the show?

Speaker 4 (42:31):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (42:31):
Are you making me wait?

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Making you wait? It's what you called dramatic? Din clearly
not a master.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
As well, you know, all right, okay, all right, all right.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
So anyway, so so I can't see it, but I
can hear it like it's like a radio play. And
I got all the characters and it was right. Feverishly
read and listen to it like three times. I wrote
everything down and I got it. Oh, it's a blue
collar family. The mother's bid or the father's kind of
put upon two and the kids are pretty hysterical. And
I thought one of the kids. That's the only thing

(43:07):
I got wrong. I got her name because the mother
kept going betty and it was Becky. She was saying
Becky big, but I heard Betty, Betty, Betty, Betty.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:19):
I left it in there. So I went home. In
two days I wrote this script.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
I still didn't know what the show is, Roseanne.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
It was the Roe pilot Roseanne. It was a Roseanne pilot,
which is how I got to Carcy Horner. So I'm
doing this and I thought, I know exactly what to
do with these people. She wants to she's fed up.
She sends them out to go tu being in a
blizzard the family because that's what you do in Midwest.
You too, and you get dragged by farm equipment on

(43:47):
a tube. It it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (43:48):
I've done it.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
I've done it too. So I get everybody out of
the house dinged on the doorbell rings and it's a bride.
It's in the she's in the snow, and she goes,
I can't do it. They can't do it. They can't
get married. And the fact is Roseanne in my episode
was thinking of leaving because she couldn't take it anymore.
She's about to snap. But then she has to convince
the bride to go back to the church, and she

(44:11):
has to then convince herself to stay married and continue
to be a mother's leader.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
That's a different episode. Did they make this appt me?

Speaker 2 (44:18):
They never made it. But I have a lifelong friend
in Matt Williams, who created the show. He read it,
and he said, I can't steal you. They already got
you over in a different world. And a different world
was Debbie Allen, who, by the way, signed me in
the director's guilt, Susan fails Hill, Margie, who come.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
You're working on a different world. How did you get
that job?

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Because I got it before I got this one. So
they all read the same script in Hollywood, I'm telling you.
Within two weeks I had a pilot deal and I
was hired. They sent Susan files Hill, we want you
on this show, and I really wasn't sure what staffing was.
Could I do?

Speaker 1 (44:54):
It's going to be replaced by AI though.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
All that well for five minutes till it doesn't work,
and then they lead people. You watch what happens. You're
still going to need you anyway. So and they're still
going to need me because we have you.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
I don't even I don't think they need me.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
I think they need you.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
Again.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
Look at how hilarious you are, and you've maintained your
girlish figure, and.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Looks I walk, I walk everywhere because you walk six
and a half miles.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
Okay, that's like obsessive craziness, but it's very good for you.
My brother does it. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, Manhattan.

Speaker 1 (45:25):
I walked from the Upper East Side to Williamsburg.

Speaker 2 (45:29):
Unbelievable. And you came across the bridge.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yeah, walked across the bridge.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Oh my god. Okay, that's that's die hard. Okay. So
where were we?

Speaker 1 (45:39):
You're a different world and you and.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Then my career takes off in television.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
So who do you end up writing for?

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Farah Fawcett and Ryan O'Neil and Alan's who I bell
on good Sports, Bill Persky on working it Out. I
became the show run of a show called City Kids,
which was phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (45:56):
So know, you're really coin. I mean, you're making a
lot of money.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Now you care about some money?

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
I made more money I made. You know what I
cared about because I'm working class. I wanted that. Seven
years in the w GA, so I got a pension someday. Yeah.
So I thought this could head south, this could all
go belly up.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
I understand that.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
And by the way, and you also, my belief is
every seven to ten years, you got to blow everything
up and reform.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Fire everybody. Yeah that's what I think.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Well, fire, but also fire yourself and start over and say,
what do I really want to be doing? Because because
what show business will do will take you into that.
It's like it's like well on a tractor and making hay.
They'll keep you there if you don't go. I don't
want to do that anymore. I don't need to move.

(46:44):
That's how I became a novel to tell you I
don't want you anymore. Yeah, unless you Carson.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
The audiences do that thing where you know you have
to when you change it, they go, no, don't change it.
We like it. That's why you go. Yeah, but I
can't keep doing like I'm thinking specifically about Late Night
for me, when I was like now, I got to
stop and trying to persuade.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
But you know what I love about your Late Night stories.
There's a moral center to it. You you began to
not be able to cope with the fact that you
were employing so many people. It became an albatross to you.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
I hated it. I'm not this I love to do
in the show, but the business of being in business,
I've oh, I hate that. I mean, you stick me
in a tent in Brooklyn. I'm fine, but you put
me in a uh.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
I know you can't be. That's what makes your life
so interesting is that you you know how to blow
it up without you know, having with drugs and alcohol,
without drinking, without drug taking. I don't even know if
you take advillain anymore. I don't know what take with them.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
What can I do? You got to take an adage.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
I've become obsessed with recovery.

Speaker 1 (47:52):
You mean twelve step recovery.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yes, I'm very interested.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
I can help you there. What do you want to know?

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Well, I I just find it. I'm talking to people lately,
like Molly Jong Fast and stuff, and I reading her book,
and you know, she she went into recovery and her
mom said, you don't have a problem. She kept saying
to her daughter, you don't have a problem. And Molly said,
but my mom had a problem, and now she's dealing
with her mom that has dementia. But I'm telling you

(48:19):
this because I find it fascinating to be able to
stick with it. You know, you when we were first friends,
you ate at my house and there's alcohol in my house,
which made me extremely nervous. And then I started to like,
look at the balsamic vinegar. Is that bad? I didn't know, like.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
What that's because you're a nice person in your kind then,
you know, and you.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Were not really and that's when you were a vegetarian.
Now that means that made you mad. That made me
mad because you have to just invent things with vegetables.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
That also, you're you're an Italian mom.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
It's like the fact that you didn't need a pork
chopp or eat meat. I was like, yeah, well, I'm
over all that, you know that, right, that's all I know.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
You do?

Speaker 3 (48:58):
You eat meat now, I'm relieved your back on much.
But I'll eat it, you know, you know, but I.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Try to make things that tasted like meat, you know,
like artichokes. We're getting side tricked here, Okay, we're side
trick all right. Now we're going to side trick.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Which is yeah, yeah, now you're writing for TV.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
Now.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
I want to get you onto the novels because I
know that it seems to be a fairly easy transition
from writing for TV to making films and stuff like that.
That's all part of the same thing. But you start
writing novels, yes, and you start writing novels, which I
think is interesting because I've only written one and I
wrote one because that was good. I was infuriated with that.

(49:34):
It was such rage and despair about the film business.
Though I can't work with anyone else, I can't work
with anyone. I can't work with one more fucking asshole.
Say to me, you know what would be great if
if he had a girlfriend, and like I saw a
script that I put together, get chipped away, chipped away.
It drives me fucking So that's why I wrote a novel.

(49:58):
And I want to know why you because you still
write novels.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
That's right, and I probably will die writing them. I
do want to direct and write more films than I'm
working on that, But why would I be a novelist
till the day I die? Now you're getting to the pith,
which is what makes this podcast so fabulous. Working for
other people, I'm writing their stories. When you're in a

(50:22):
comedy room, you're writing, You're delivering characters that have already
been created by somebody else. If you're lucky enough to
get a pilot, you're creating it. But to get that
on the air, I think I can safely tell you
I wrote seventeen of them, and I didn't get them
on the air. And I came to squeaky close with
two of them, but because I'm from Appalachi, I just
banked the money and just went and moved on to
the next pilot. Okay, but what turned me to novels

(50:45):
was that I had never written the people I wanted
to write all that time in television. I would pretend
Bill Cosby was my father. I would pretend and that
Farah Fawcett was a woman I tempt with at Merrill Lynch.
I would pretend that Ryan O'Neil was a lawyer I

(51:08):
tempt for who was bombastic and irish. I mean, I
did the whole thing, but I'd have to like place
these people in a context of truth for me, so
and I would sneak things in of course that seemed
to be about my heritage or seemed, but it never
really added up. Now I was free, I could create

(51:31):
worlds now. Incumbent upon that, I would have to sell it.
And that was not the hard part, but the obstacle
in my own mental head to get over. So if
anybody's listening to this, who can see it on the
other side of that hurdle but can't get over it,

(51:51):
you simply have to remove it. And say no, I'm
already there. I'm going to write that this way, and
that worked.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
I think that's right. I think that the and I
think it's one of the reasons why you and I
are such good pals is because at the core of it,
at the core of everything is is fuck them if you.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Don't like it.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
You know, this is why I gotta do it. I
gotta do this. I cannot do it. And this is
why I don't understand show business as it is now,
because everybody is in show business.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
Here's your problem. Now we don't have it'll change. But
when a hedge fund owns you and they've never made
a show, that's a problem. When we would go to
the networks five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, when you
walked in there, those people were trained by somebody to

(52:50):
be able to do something, and of course then we
leave the room and make fun of them. You know,
when a very prominent producers put a dog in the show,
and I thought that what does that solve? Move or
do okay whatever, put the dog in the show. What
we're gonna do that when you don't have that system
that trains them, which was the studio system, you know,

(53:10):
studio system is very interesting. There must be something rotten
and corrupting there somewhere because it keeps getting bashed.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
Surely no, but it keeps.

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Getting bashed and reinvented. Have you in our lifetime we're
going through what Clark Gable went through. What is this?

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Well? No, see, this is what I think it is.
I think everybody's in show business, and they're kind of
right in the sense that, you know, everybody has their
own little channel, everybody has their own thing. I'm gonna
you know, everyone can tell their truth, everyone gets their
theirs thing to say, everyone gets their moment to which
in one hand is good. But that's the fucking show business.
That's just people talking like this. This is just people talking.

(53:47):
This is not doing what we do. This is just
us talking. And I think this idea that the every
conversation is a performance. You know, I don't I don't
subscribe to it, which is paradoxical because this is what
we're doing right now. But the idea of everyone is

(54:07):
if everyone is in show business, there is no show business.
If everyone's telling us to it, if everyone's special, then
no one's special.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
That's your philosophical brain. That's so interesting to me. But
I don't think like that. If everybody's in show business,
then there's no show business. I think part of the
problem on the planet is that people are not in
touch with their creative selves. Their creativity. That doesn't mean
show business. Okay, it doesn't mean a creative acc.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
You're sounding like a nicer person than me, that you're
making me feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
No, I'm no way a nicer person.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
You certainly are.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
I'm going to dispute that. Okay, yeah, you're a You're
a mean softy. Here's my girl to say a piece
of bread. You're like a piece of bread, you know.
But think about you, is you really are who you

(55:05):
present yourself as a lot of people aren't. But you
have not wavered or changed once since the moment I
met you. You're the same guy, which I find fascinating,
which must unnerve your wife. But she has my phone numbers.
She's tough. But the point I'm making is that things
in life change and you must move with it like

(55:27):
a river. You know. Part of our role as parents
is to give it up, get out of the way,
and we have to do that in our careers too.
We have to go, oh, this is what's happening now.
I have to go pitch to that guy. Who is he? Well,
he's a very rich man from the Silicon Valley and
he owns the studio now and you go, but does
he know? And those people are interesting because they have

(55:50):
one or two movies that are their favorite movies and
they want to recreate the joy they had when they
watch that movie. This is really interesting. It's an interesting
time to be doing this. When I'm talking about people's creativity.
I wish that there was a mission, that some country
had a mission for everybody to write their life story

(56:12):
before they die, even the people in prisons. Everybody, everybody
has to give me a couple of pages. Who are you?
What did you do here? And what was your goal?
And what didn't happen? When happened? Now? Isn't that interesting
if you could tap that creativity? Obviously it's being tapped.
Three point eight million books were self published last year.
It's being tapped.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
Who's reading these books?

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Well, they tried. This is where you and I step
in because we're salesmen. We could sell if we were
if everything was gone tomorrow, we would sit down and
go okay, I could go door to door and sell seeds.
I could do I did it in third grade. I
was number one. I could do it again. I could

(56:54):
sell seats, like to plant gardens, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
or whatever. It was Rex Cleaner. I old in the
seventh grade and I wanted to win a bicycle.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
And it's a name that I would like to have,
Rex Cleaner, Rex Cleaner and fight from now on. From
now on, I want you guys to call me Rex
Cleaner and ask me how. I asked me how how
are you doing? Rex? How you doing rights tops and pops?
Rex Cleaner? That's who I am, my god.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
So anyway, creativity, if we start looking at it, like
if we start looking at it with a wider lens
and say, everybody's included. Look what happened. Everybody's got a
phone and they're constantly filming themselves from flattering angles, from
flattering ink. Well, why do it on flattering A Yeah?

Speaker 1 (57:40):
I agree.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
You just put that camera on the moon shoot it,
you know what?

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Yeah, but I used to do that on late night
know what it really knew picked up on that for ages?

Speaker 2 (57:49):
What did you do?

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Well? I had the camera set it like that the
whole time, because when I walked out to do the
first show in late night. I was looking at the monor.
I went, oh my god, look at my double tin.
I hate that. So I can't see if the car
up and he goes, this is weird, like up and
then and we got it to the point where it
didn't look like that.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Look good. No, I remember your body was yeah in alignment,
and it was like, well, I do that naturally. Like
the first thing I did is I check where that was.
I should be up about two more feet. But it's okay,
But that's straight on.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
I don't do that.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
It's not good.

Speaker 1 (58:19):
Do I love you talk to people my older friends.
I'm not gonna say they are I know who they are.
But when you get FaceTime and they just like hold it,
what are they doing? Just see like teeth, what are
they doing?

Speaker 2 (58:34):
And also looks like they're I don't know about.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
To hold it to their ear and yeah, they don't know.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
What they're doing. I have to say this because this
is what I learned when I was very young. I
went to a talk Arthur Miller did at the Dramata Skuild.
Yeah he could write, okay. Arthur Miller, who wrote Death

(59:01):
of a salesman, handsome guy, tall, slim, it's also hoty.
So I'm in the audience, maybe one hundred people there
because when I was young, I went to everything. So
he comes out and there's a lady in a funny hat,
and I went, oh no, because you know, if you
signed books in Manhattan, all the crazies come out and
they're just badgering you and screaming at you and throwing

(59:24):
shit out of you. But this is that the drought
is going. Lady got up and he gave his talk,
and she says, wow, mister Miller, it's easy for you
to say because you're six. I think she was a
little drunk because it's successful. And he listened and he said, Mama,
thank you for your question. But here's what you need

(59:44):
to know. In every generation since the beginning of time,
very few playwrights are born. But now we have an
industry that siphon's off the few good ones think about
this and commands that everybody be a playwright in order

(01:00:07):
to produce the amount of material. This is the eighties
for television to produce the amount of material that needs
to serve the billions of people that are watching millions
and billions of people, he said, But that doesn't mean
that suddenly we have a lot more play rights. We don't.
So you're gonna have excellence and then you're gonna have

(01:00:29):
everybody else falling in someplace. But that has always stuck
with me. So if I watch a show on television,
I go play right or not? Playing not? A playwright's
another thing. Movie play right, not play right, play right.
So it goes like that, But I think he's right.
The ability to dramatize is a very unique talent, the

(01:00:55):
ability to put a story on its feet through words.
That's what dramatizing means. Can I get you up there,
another actor, and you guys do this play that scene?
That is that takes not only a wide lens, but

(01:01:17):
particular lenses to pull off an understanding of every character
on an equal basis with the other, to wait it properly.
So what Bill Persky taught me was that Bill Persky
created that girl, Kate Nally. He's a great he's like
a mentor of mine. He did working it out, and
he said, and I'm going to misquote him, but it's

(01:01:39):
close television. And keep in mind he started on the
Dick Van Dyke show. I've heard of it one of
the greatest shows ever, ever, ever, may to watch it
ever made. He started out on that show. He was
trained by Carl Reiner. Okay, so now you know the pedigree.
So then he became a showrunner a director and had
great success. But he said this to me, here's the

(01:02:02):
problem with TV. The people writing it now watched it
and they copy it. They copy it. So the plots
that you see, these plots that are just they's not.
You try to impose original characters in the old plots
or whatever the gig is, and the people hiring you

(01:02:24):
have an idea of what a show should be, and
it isn't a new creative idea. It's something that resonated
with them back in the day.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
See I think that to extrapolate that though, now I
think people watch TV with their phone in their hand.
And I've heard executives say the phrase, it doesn't have
two screen ability. It doesn't have two screen life about
scripts where we have to have something like who was

(01:02:54):
it that really Robert who he hates Emily in Paris
And he was saying that Emily he fucking hates It's hilarious,
and he was saying that that that's a two screen show.
You can see that. That's the show where people can

(01:03:17):
play be on Instagram.

Speaker 2 (01:03:19):
There's always been two screen shows. It's just you didn't
have a second screen to refer to. You were flipping
through a magazine.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
You didn't make them, mone Carpus though, I mean, you
didn't make You didn't make a movie. Think and the
people were don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
You don't think the people making Emily and Prais think
they're doing great art. I do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Look, I don't. I've never seen Emily and Press.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
I have an either let's not pick on it. But
but they think they are.

Speaker 1 (01:03:43):
No, I disagree. I disagree.

Speaker 2 (01:03:45):
I don't. I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
I think they talk. They use the word content. They
don't use the word art. They use the word content.
We have to get more content.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Well, now you're getting to it. What's the difference between
content and art? Is a soul? I am not one.

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
No, it's not I it is no. I think the different. Well,
what's the difference the differences between pop music and rock
and roll? This is a phrase by Robert Fripp right,
who is the guitar player Robert Fripp who played He
played for, He played for everybody. He played for Boy,
he played talking Heads. He was the guy that invented this.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
Oh yeah, Robrato guitar.

Speaker 1 (01:04:24):
Robert Fripp said, I think that different.

Speaker 5 (01:04:26):
The difference, the difference between rock and round and pop
music is this. In pop music, someone foes in love.
In rock and row, someone gets fucked. That's the difference.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
And I thought, yeah, I think that that's a very
good that's a very good analysis. But as the people
that write that music, like Bob Gaudio from the Four Seasons,
who wrote short shorts and his family survived on short
shorts for years. He was the first guy to sell
the commercials. I told him, I see, because you don't

(01:04:59):
have to learn words you wear churches were to write
church or who wear church arts? Yeah, you learn it
in two seconds. But he was the first guy to
sell to the commercials. Now they sell their their catalogs
and the great songs you're gonna hear born to run
on a car commercial if you haven't already. All of
that is immaterial to what I'm saying, what I'm trying
to get at here in terms of art, here's the difference, right,

(01:05:26):
Art is the journey of a soul. AI is the
journey of a robot and a computer and artificial intelligence,
and they keep trying to sell it to us. I'm
telling you, they keep trying to sell it to us,
but it doesn't have a soul. And I listen, I joined,
I joined the I want to hear it. What wasn't

(01:05:48):
I supposed to do that movie?

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
No, I'm doing a movie about AI about like it's
like a documentary. I'm doing it right now about because
they've invented an AI comedy program and god, we're putting
together those AI stunts.

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
Well, I can't wait to see what it is. But
what's missing from it that you have to provide I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
Not providing in for it. I'm very skeptical about the
whole thing. I'm like you, I don't feel like it
can be done. But there's some guys in Silicon Valley
think it can. And you know, and we're getting into
it a little.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
Bit because sometimes we make bad movies and bad television
shows and write lousy books, and so those people who
have the dough, well, the people that have the dough think, well,
if they could do that, I could do this. It's
it looks deceptively easy, but to create a world is
not easy, and.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
It takes, but it's got to look easy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
It's the it's got to look easy, that's the trick.
That's the hat trick of the whole thing. But the
journey of the soul is what binds us as human beings, not.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
It takes us back to the Catholic plays on the
bus where we have to you know.

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Know what do we know about? What we do is
that you Our job is to connect to that person
whoever we decided it is in our subconscious imagination or whatever,
or whoever we see out there. That is our job.

(01:07:20):
And they have to know within two minutes of sitting
in that seat why they are there. Now if you
think AI can, I.

Speaker 1 (01:07:27):
Don't think you get two minutes. I think you get
twenty second.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Well you get twenty seconds now right Ruth gets would
have mend that, but she's been dead for twenty years.
But my playwriting mentor, but they have to know. You
need to dramatize why they're there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
I feel like, though we have to wrap this up,
but very quickly.

Speaker 2 (01:07:48):
I've got hours to go, with miles to go before
I think has been a sleeper minute. Please wrap this up.
It's getting very esoteric.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
I feel like because you and I are both fans
of first lines and books, and that does it. That doesn't.
My favorite first line of any book is it was
a bright, cold day in April and the clocks were
striking thirteen, the first line of nineteen eighty four. And
I feel like in that first line of Or it
was the best of times, it was the worst of time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Yeah, it's a good one.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
You know. It's like, right away, you go, shit's happening.
It's something weird has happened. The clocks are striking thirteen.
What the fuck is going on with it? You know?
It's like you kick off, And I feel like that's okay.
I get that. I don't mind that, but it's nice
to have something to like. That line on its own

(01:08:43):
isn't much good unless you got nineteen eighty four behind it.
And I feel like, you know what, Also, I'm sixty
three years old now. I mean, it's part of what
I have to do is be cranky about New.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
York where you were crazy at twenty two, but sad.
Don't try to fop that off on your age. That's
that's your nature that you were born with.

Speaker 4 (01:09:06):
Now, the crank would be a great baby.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
We were born the crank.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Poor Bruce Bringsteen, he's going through it right now. But anyway, this, this,
this makes me think of something if if well, well,
you know, if this ai thing, you know, I'm now
on the author's guilt, and all we do is file
lawsuits against it, which is effective. It's effective. But what

(01:09:38):
I'm learning from other writers is that hey, we can't
be replaced. We can't be, but we can in a
poor fashion. So it is incumbent upon us to deliver
storytelling that no machine can do. So what does that mean?

Speaker 1 (01:10:03):
It means that we're going back to what Arthur Mellis said,
which is there's only a few playwrights and everybody else's
which is great. Now we're done, We're done with this this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
You are just so do you really wrap it up
so rudely? People watching your like, what an asshole? What
is wrong with that? I know? Is there a clock ticking?
I can't tell. There's so many animal heads in here
for a clock.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
There's the clock right behind you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Yeah, but that's behind me. I can't turn because I'm
on I'm on. Your shoe can turn? Oh, I see it? Yeah,
that's large, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
Yeah, and his face.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
See, I didn't mean my Catholic thing. I can't be rude.
I would never look I would.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
Just like you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
If you called me an asshole, which.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
I didn't call you, I behaving like one. No, it's
just different. Did I call you one?

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
You have done You might know I've done it in
this podcast. You've certainly.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
I think you know how much.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Yeah, and I love you too, and that is a
good place and stuff. Get out of here. H