Jay Leno

This episode originally was released on December 12, 2023.

Jay Leno needs no introduction. He is one of the greats, comedian, long time host of The Tonight Show on NBC and mainly a car enthusiast! Craig and Jay are friends and it shows in their conversation. Tune into a fun hour of jokes, stories and much more. This one is for the books. enJOY!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is me, Craig Ferguson.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new
comedy hour. Well it's 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 our own sale now, and we'll be adding more
as the tour continues throughout twenty twenty five and beyond.

(00:25):
For a full list of dates. Go to the Craig
fergusonshow 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. Here's my favorite car collector. I think he

(00:47):
had a late night show at some point I can't
remember here he is j Lena.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Up.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
So here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Oh so we're not no video.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
No, Well, here's the thing about no video because this
is the reason why I don't do it, because people
like you, some performers want so much makeup and hair done.
Oh yeah, not me, No, No, So I tell you
what I'm doing right here, right right as I'm enjoying
a cup of coffee.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Now, I know that you don't drink coffee.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
No, don't drink coffee. And those a couple of CoFe
Ever had of Seinfeld on comedians and cars getting coffee?
It was awful. You know, I don't like hot liquids.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Now, see this is but this is what what about soup?

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Do soup come into the soup is just a way
to screw you out of a meal? Soup? Oh, here's
a ball, it's wet. Thanks, all right, so now waiting
out a wet ball? Yeah, something I can chew, Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
But hold on a second. Is it because it's a
whole liquid or because it's just a liquid.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
It's not a meal?

Speaker 1 (02:01):
It does it have to be a meal? Yeah? But
do you but you won't have soup because it's a drink.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Well, Plus, I don't like hot liquid.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
If you don't like, what about gaspacho or maybe a
cold borsch No?

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Horrible?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
So so really it's about liquid. And do you ever
drink any liquids at all?

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yeah? I drink a lot of water, a lot of
fruit juice.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
You drink beer?

Speaker 3 (02:25):
No, never had a beer. In my life, you.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Never had a beer, never a beer, you ever drink
any of the hoots at all.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
No, no, no, I have nothing to guess that I
have no interest in it. I was always a designated driver.
I was always a car guy. So to me, it's
not true because you love the car. I'll drive you
dregs home and that's fine.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
All right.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
So you so very few liquids and no soup.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Well, I see, I'm worried that.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Look, none of us are getting younger, Jay, right, right,
So the certain point in life soup is kind of
gets attractive to the older gin.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Seventy three and I haven't been there yet.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Well, saying that you know that there was your souper years,
maybe coming.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
Up and get used to it, let's hope not.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
All right, So listen, your mother was Scottish. I and
my mother was Scottish. And my wife has a theory
about stand up comedians that their mothers have to be Scottish.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Or they have to be cold with bad boundaries.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
So my mom was not cold. My parents are very
good that way.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
She have good boundaries.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
I don't know what you mean by boundaries.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well, you know, and now do I But you know
a lot of people talk about it.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
You know, how long are you in Hollywood? In an hour? Now?
And you've got boundaries?

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, I mean, I'm just wondering that.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
You see, I never heard any of it. You know,
It's so funny. Where I grew up, I was the
laziest person that anybody knew. I come here. Oh, Jay's
the hardest working guy. No, it's just where you grow up.
It's that, you know, you grew up in New England
with Silas Manor and Ethan Frome and all these depressing
books about freshet. You work hard that you die you
then you got Lulematoya.

Speaker 1 (04:00):
After you get.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Then die whatever it is. Yeah, it's just all life
is awful. You know, Sonny, you comes to Hollywood and
all the lights of ride and it's sunny outside.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Wage were you when you came here?

Speaker 3 (04:12):
I started coming here, I guess when I was nineteen
twenty something like that, not in nineteen twenty when you
were nineteen nineteen.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
But here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
You came out here to do comedy because you're you're
Boston right right right right? So did you never do
stand up in Boston before you came out here.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Oh yeah, you know that was a great thing because
growing up in Boston I never met another stand up comedian. Occasionally,
comedians would come to like the Chateau ta Ville in Framingham.
It was one of those fancy well yeah, it's one
of those places like near a mall and it's got
like a fountain in front that I worked there with

(04:49):
Tom Jones, I worked there with Perry Como, I like
Dion Warwick, you know all those acts from that era. Yeah,
and that was and that was an opening act.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
That was literally you wanted to be a stand up?
Dot Young at nineteen and twenty years old. Oh yeah,
you got to be fucked up in some way then,
because nobody wants to be a stand up.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Why wouldn't you want to be a stand Well back
in the day, nobody wants. I mean nowadays people want
to do interesting.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
When I watched TV, yeah, all comedians were middle aged
Jewish men like Rodney, like Henny Youngman, all those guys,
all all the Catskill comics, and then all of a
sudden Robert Klein came along. Was a huge influence on me.
Robert was about ten years older than me. And he
was a middle class kid. Parents weren't wealthy, but he didn'

(05:38):
grow up doing a depression, just talking about the same
kind of things I talked about. And then Carlin at
that point had just about nineteen seventy early seventy to one,
released his Class Clown album. And I used to do
George's routines in my head, and I'm doing silent to myself,
and then I'd add my own jokes at the end.

(05:59):
So when I would go to audition to places, I
would stand backstage. I would get into it by doing
George's thing. And then when I walked, I say, you know,
when I'm in school, you know I didn't I didn't
do any George material, but I just get a rhythm
to it.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
You know that's interesting. Yeah, and you and were you
friendly with George?

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, it's very new judge from the very beginning. It's
always very nice to me. So was client. You know,
all comics are pretty nice. Steve Martin helped me get
this and IHO. Steve Martin told Johnny about me. I
chose Johnny about Ellen DeGeneres. I find comedians help other comedians.
I don't find it to be this. I mean there were
there obviously some cutthroat people around, and that's not unusual,

(06:36):
but it's not the norm. You know, as a comic,
you can't do every job. If I couldn't get something,
I go, oh, you should. Like, there's a gig I
do in Rhode Island. I at the Audrey Museum. It's
it's kind of like Pebble Beach East. It's like it's
a car show and I've hosted it for the last
four or five years. But I'm out of material at
this point. You know, I said, oh, I'm being Bill

(06:57):
Billy Gardellen, so I brought you know, Billy Gardell.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
Billy's great guy.

Speaker 3 (07:01):
Yeah, wonderful comment. Yeah yeah, And he did a great job.
He killed and I felt good that I helped him.
He felt good. They got to do a corporate day
that paid a lot of money and it was fun.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
So I'm so, wait, hello, you and i'd be friends
for a while. You don't think of putting me up
for the fucking corporate No.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
I never never thought that. What I actually want to
do it next year?

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Yeah, I'll do it next year.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
I'll get a fun yeah. Yeah, okay, because let me
just say it's on the East coast. I like the
idea cars and like cars gotta work. You gotta work
reasonably clean that super I could. I did gigs with you, right, Yeah,
let's do it.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
I'll do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:35):
I don't mind working clean. The older I get and fight,
the easier it gets to work clean.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
I've noticed that.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Well, you know, I find when you're twenty five, Yeah,
and you say the word pussy girls go oh, well,
we said, oh my god, when you're sixty five, Oh
that old guys, and you know what, they got a point, Yeah, exactly,
it is. It's true.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
It's true.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
You know, it's fun to grow India. Yeah, because my
point of view is always from an adult observing things,
how stupid this is or whatever it is, you know,
and as a young person it didn't work quite as
well as it does now. Now you can be a
bit curmudgeonsly.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
And I was struck by your stand up bike when
we were working in the Midwest this summer, Like you
threw a down manion. It's like a full solid hour
and you and like the material. It's fresh and well.
You try to have a joke every six to nine seconds.
That's that's I think, really, you.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Think because I don't think of it like that. I mean,
everybody's different, it's it's just different to me. It's like
a music show. You open with your heads boom boom boom, joke, joke, joke,
junk joke, and then in the middle you do the
comedic version of a ballot. You tell story, Oh, you know,
my ife and I would go to this place, and
there are little humorous jokes along the way as opposed.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
To That's very interesting to me because I do think
of it in kind of musical terms. Yeah, as well,
it's a it's kind of a musical performance.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Are you a musicians? You play anthing?

Speaker 3 (08:58):
I played trumpet, but then I realized I couldn't talk
and play trumpet at the same time.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
That's a terrible instrument for you to play. You should
play like a guitar.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
I was in fourth grade at the time, and.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Jay, I'm going to tell you something right now. You
know I adore you.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
But because you played trumpet in fourth grade doesn't mean
you played the fucking trumpet rightly exactly.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
That's why I quickly got rid of it.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
But you do see, I think a lot of the
stand ups that I like are also the thinking musical
terms of what they do.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
You know, the most musical comic I can think of
as Franklin a Ji. You know Franklin, I don't know.
African American comic very big in America. He had an
album out thirty forty years he moved to Australia.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
Right.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
He's a jazz comedian. He plays jazz and he does comedy.
He has one of my favorite bits. He talks about
the guy. Oh, there was an Olympic guy from some
country and he ran in the marathon and he came last.
He was dead last, and he just as he's running,
he's going on. I mean, I've been training, I've been

(10:01):
working a I could have sat on the couch and
watch TV. I'd still be last. I mean, it's still it.
There's a lot more to it than that. He does
a lot better, but it's just very funny and he
just thinks in jazz terms. You know, I was fortunate
I got to work with all the great jazz musicians.
Miles Davis stands against Mose Allison and Montremal Rousson, Rowland Kirk,

(10:23):
all these guys, and with jazz. There was a place
called Lenny's on the Turnpike in Boston, okay, and that
was a jazz club and real hard called Buddy Rich,
real hardcore jazz, real deal. You went to see that
and the first time because usually I used to play scriptuis,
but now you suck, you suck good. People just screamed,

(10:44):
so you really didn't know if you're any good or
not right. But with the jazz on its men and
walked on says silence.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Did they know it? And snap their fingers when you.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Know, not quite that much, but they would listen, you know,
like Miles's audience, any of those audiences. I went, oh,
this is really you know, Ross Sound Roland. I don't
know if you've ever heard of him. He might be
before your time.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
He's possible.

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Ross Sound Roland correct, African American guy, blind right, but
famous because he could hold a note indefinitely, and he
could play two instiments in the same time. He could
play the sax and the clarinet at the same time.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
And that's crazy. How does that even pause?

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Because he could breathe through his nose. Okay, but he
was blae so and we played primarily African American audists.
It places like the Sugar Shack in Boston and He
would go on stage and you go, I'm gonna bring
a young brother. My brother's gonna tell that it is,
you know. He gives the whole thing like I was
a blackad. Yeah, please welcome j leto you know, and

(11:42):
I come out and go sh He doesn't. And he
thought that was the funniest thing, right. He loved doing
that routine every night with people, bring on a young brother,
tell it leg it is? Yeah, who you know black audiences.
I get all worked up, you know, and then I
walk out, what's this? You know, here's.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
The thing because you talk about that right now, like
you even telling that story to me right now, like
people are going to get bent out of shame because
of you know, you mentioned race of any kind and
just you know, different races of any kind. And people
are already on the balls of their feet looking for
a fight, which I kind of I'm getting a little
tired of it. I think everyone else is too, does it?

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Well?

Speaker 3 (12:26):
I had the best one happened a couple of months ago. Yeah,
my wife maybe in a little Chinese restaurant in Westwood.
It's got like fourteen tables if that many, and the
mother runs the cashier and takes the orders and the
dad's to cook and looks like the kids or cousins.
It looks like a family. So we got our food
sitting there, and you're kind of it's right next to UCLA.

(12:47):
In fact, it is UCLA right, and a lot of
students are on the table. I just said to my wife, God,
this woman's really working our ass off. And a girl
in the next table, or a young woman at the
next table, go, uh, she's a server. And I said,
I'm not mad here, but I do think before I speak.
I said to myself, is she a waitress, No, she's stewardess. No,

(13:12):
she's a woman. First, let me say this woman is
working her ass. Now, if I had said the server
is working her ass, you probably said she's a.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Woman, right, and she should have probably just said, hey,
you're doing a great job in that way.

Speaker 3 (13:25):
But to me, because I don't really want to. I mean,
first of all, I get an annoyed because I think, oh,
do you really think I'm being sexist by saying that.
I would say this man. I didn't say girl, I
didn't say chick, I didn't say waitress. I said this woman,
I mean, what is wrong with her? And she had
to well, now you're if I had said server, isn't

(13:46):
that demeaning? I mean, that's all she is.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Isn't she a woman defining someone by their job?

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Yeah, I said so, but she was so anxious to
jump on this.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Well, I think it's a it's a little kind of
fat that the young folks went through for a while
that they wanted.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Fine.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
You know, well when I was, when I was their age,
I was a punk rocker. I was a pan of
the ass too.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Oh yeah, I know when you think about a stupid people.
Our generation was the burning down the Bank of America
building and oh my god, remember the SDS. To make
up for racial injustice, they should kill every third white
baby born. I remember something. I remember some SDS guy
saying that early on okay, you know, just crazy talk,

(14:29):
just crazy talk. So to me, a lot of his like,
I never use the word bitch on stage. I know
women don't like the words, so I don't use it.
And to me, you know, it's funny because I do
a joke where I see the women where I say
your Northwestern University did a study about the differences between

(14:50):
men's brains and women's brains. This is amazing listen to
this and you see the women go, you know, they
kind of like it seems women's brains are located in
their head. Who saw that coming? And then and they
laugh more than it is funny because I'm not it's
not an insult. It's not the usual.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Well I never understood anyone.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
The look to me, an audience is it doesn't have
a race or a gender or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
It's an audience is an audience and you.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
Don't know, but no, but an audience does have the
best audiences. It's a fully male, female, black, white, Asian
integrated audience where they all totally For example, you know,
if you have done a corporate event where it's all men, yes,
unless it's all football jokes or gun jokes or something,
it's terrible.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
I did. I did a corporate events once. It will
be yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
And I used to do this bit about Tom Cruise.
This is a long time ago because I actually am
a big fan of Tom Cruise. But it wasn't the
most flattering really yeah. Yeah, it was a piece of
stand up right, And it was just after he jumped
an Oprah's couch and I was sticking around with that
and I was doing this piece of this piece. It
was a good it was a good bed and every
night it killed. I said, well, I'll do it this

(16:05):
corporate It was a clean bit. It was nothing like
bad in it. And at this corporate event, I did
this Tom Cruise thing died on his ass, like really
badly died nothing, sure, nothing crickets And I come up
with it. Wow, that was a rough ground, and went
somebody should probably tell you it's Tom Cruis law firm.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
There was this lawyer.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
Oh my god, it was because you do a lot
of corporate gigs and you work clean.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
I've seen you don't work.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
You don't work squeaky clean, no thirty right, so you
you work clean, you don't you drop the F bomb
and you don't do that kind of thing. But you
But it's kind of it's grown up, right, it's an
adult show.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
But it's not an adult.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
It's not balloon animals.

Speaker 4 (16:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
No, it's definitely not that you ever run into it with.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Because I've had people say to me at corporate gigs,
you gotta be really careful here.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
They really do you ever they ever say that to you? Now,
nobody trusts.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
I always ask, I go, is this like a born
again thing is the chairman, the born again guy or something?

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Would you be able to cope with that? So if
he will, I can work.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
You know something. I booked myself into Oral Robinson University
once just to see if I could play it, and
they said, look, we don't like sex jokes, we don't
like drug jokes, politics, everything else is fine, and they
were fine. They just didn't want any dick jokes.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Right, fine, so that's probably not one I should be doing. No, no, no,
I don't do it, none of those jokes. No, no, no.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
But what I mean And to me, a guy is
paying me to do a job. I don't quite get
guys to go. So I told him to go shove
it and I did what.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, I don't get I got to agree with you.
I don't understand that.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
What do you like? Then?

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Don't take the gig?

Speaker 3 (17:46):
Like to me, I know the you know, to me,
an audience is like an orchestra. You want to get
a nice rolling laugh going. I remember I had a joke.
I'm sorry I don't remember the joke, but it was
when Hillary Clinton was running for president, and also so
was Reggie Jackson and a bunch of other people and
I had a joke about each candidate, and the Reggie

(18:10):
Jackson joke was a political joke, wasn't about him being black.
It's just okay, that got a laugh. When they got
to the Hillary joke, I remember what I was going,
and I just hated the guttural laugh. I got on
here because I realized, oh, they think I'm they think
I'm making fun of her because she's a woman candidate
as supposed to just a candidate. So I just dropped

(18:31):
the joke. I took it out and it kept it
and the audience is much better because it just kept
a nice even you know, you got a nice rolling
boil going with the crowd and then you do something
that's overly sexist or overly whatever.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
I know what you mean.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
I felt it as well. There are gags that the
joke's not worth it. Yeah, yeah, l Sally, you still
always say that to me. Peter Sally was my boss
and late I know, you know, did the Tonight Show
for so long and whenever I did a joke that
I you know, it was like near the knuckle right,
and you E would say, is it worth it?

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Is it really worth it? That joke? Isn't that good
because he would say, you know, joke's like a house
or a car, there's always another one.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
You know, you can do another joke right right.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
And when I first started, I was like, no, that
is worth it right.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Very quickly I was like, now you're right, fuck it,
We'll be here tomorrow night.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
It's h yeah, yeah to me, you just sort of
learned to read your audience.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Hello, this is Greig 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?

Speaker 1 (19:48):
Just click it and play it and it's free. I
can't look.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
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.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Let's talk a little bit about Late Night though.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Bring that up because of Peter when you took over
on the Tonight Show.

Speaker 1 (20:08):
So when was that early nineties ninety one?

Speaker 3 (20:11):
I started guest hosting in eighty six eighty seven.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Right, how long would a guest host gig B would
be like a week? Would it be like a night?

Speaker 3 (20:18):
No? Well you get one night?

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Right?

Speaker 2 (20:22):
And Johnny used to do that towards the end of
his run. Right, he would bring people in.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
And yeah, and there were like, uh six or seven
guys that were being considered.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Did you ever have guest hosts when you were doing it?

Speaker 3 (20:35):
No, I had to die once. I did it once
because Katie Couric wanted to switch seats. NBC thought it
would be a fun thing to so we did it
one day.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
They did the same thing with Drew carreyh Yeah, right, Yeah,
I didn't quite get that, but no, I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
To me, when you have guest hosts, it just means
more work for the staff, right, because they may have
to put the monologue together instead of you. They have
to figure out can this guy talk to a guest
and go over every single note.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
It's a job.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
It's very hard to do for one night. It's a
little easier to do it for, you know, a couple
of years.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
One night. I get that? Is that something? Because it's fun?

Speaker 2 (21:12):
You grew up in an ear Correct me if I'm wrong,
But I think I'm right. You grew up in the
air when Johnny was the gold standard and obviously.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
He was the king.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Yeah, so did you have aspirations to be the Tonight
Show holster? Was it just like because you were a
comic you kind of drifted into that direction.

Speaker 3 (21:27):
You kind of went that way. Yeah. It was the
only job in show business that I liked, right, because
I like to be a round show business as opposed
to in it. You know. Yeah, I think I saw
a movie with you in it once, like years years.
That's been some terrimoryes so, but to me it was
a jungle movie. Did I see you in The Jobs
Bill Maher and the Job Jule? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Yeah, I can't remember what the movie was. After some
real clunkers.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
As I just like you because, like I say, I
don't want to be Charlie Sheen, but I boy, I
enjoyed being a round Tarlishon. I enjoy watching Charlie crash
and burn and and not in a mean way, just
in a funny way.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
You want to be around the circus folk, but you
don't necessarily have that's right.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
That's right, and I used to enjoy it. That's what's
great about being your host of it. I don't have
to go to the party. To me, it's really what
happened to the party. Oh my god, I can't believe
that you know and you hear the story or whatever
it might be.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
So yeah, I felt that way about did you watch
the movies? When people were on the.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Show, always watch the movie?

Speaker 1 (22:27):
See I never watched the movie.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
I had a completely different What was your philosophy then,
that you wanted to know the movie?

Speaker 1 (22:34):
It would be to be able to talk about it.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
I think people like it. I know a lot of
guests if you made the effort to read their book
or whatever it is they had, Yeah, they would really
be impressed. I mean they would write you a note.
I can't believe you went to my movie.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
No, I never I never did. I did the complete opposite.

Speaker 3 (22:53):
That's funny.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
No, just because well you were clearly much more successful
than I wasn't it. But what I felt about it
is if I knew about it, then the two of
us are talking about the movie we've both seen. If
you were on plugging a movie and I haven't seen
it and we're talking about it and you're telling me
about the movie, I'm like, Oh, this sounds like a
movie and I want to see And that was my philosophy.

(23:14):
And Pete used to fight me on a law. You're like, nah,
you just told me it's a big star. You got
to go see this movie. I'm like, but if I've
seen in the movie, then I'm going to talk to
him about the movie that ever we're both seen.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, but you talk about what you liked about it
or what the you know, the character delineation or whatever
it is they did. Come on, No, I enjoyed that
part of it. I would try watch a movie if
I got to a part of that was particularly challenging
for the actor. I remember that, and I bring it
up in the interview and oh, you know, because everybody
in show business is insecure. Oh sure if they think

(23:45):
I remember once. You know, publicity agents are my favorite
I wanted to see. I guess I say the guest
is but one of those subtle notes through I said,
hey man, pretty good job. Really enjoyed you in the movie,
and the president pretty good, pretty good? I go, well,
it was great. You didn't say great. No to me,
I meant really that means oh, I went like, whoa

(24:08):
pretty good man? Nice job? And I said nice job,
but I said I generally enjoyed it. Well, didn't sound
like okay, guys young at me, so shut up.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
You know, I bet you I can tell who there's
like off the microphone. I bet you I can tell
you this is.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
But the thing is, I think about it as well,
like the show business. Because you said everyone in show
business insecure. I think you're right, and I think that
a lot of people in show business they're crazy, damaged,
you know, unemployable in any other business.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
That's true, and they're all a little little nuts.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
And the question that I go asked, I don't know
if you guy asked this, but like if there was
somebody on who's like super famous, like Tom Hanks was
on or so, people will always say, well they nice?
Was he a nice guy? Was was she a nice woman?
Was Are they nice? And like, well they were nice
to me? But because they're doing a talk show and
they're professional. But the truth is, why is that important

(24:58):
to people like you know, like I don't know.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Well, I'll ask you a question. Did your opinion of
Woody Allen movies change after you heard all the.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Things, oh the stuff about Woody Allen?

Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, I mean, did a change or did you think.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
Well, it's a it's a good question, but it's a
little tricky for me because I wasn't a huge fan anyway.

Speaker 3 (25:20):
I wouldn't a huge anyway. But I like someone I
like to think like. To me, it's funny when I
hear someone tell an exaggerated version of a story where
they did something mean but didn't mean to But if
I know there really means oh no, that kind of
really did mean to hurt somebody. Yeah, you know, so

(25:41):
to me, yeah, I think it does matter. I always
equate kindness with intelligence. I've never met a kind person
who was not intelligent. And by intelligent, I don't mean
it's mathematically smart. I mean just the idea that a
kind person can read another person's face and realize where
to go, or that how to be sensitive, how to whatever.
To me, that's intelligence. To me, I find really cruel

(26:05):
people and mean people. They might be BookSmart, but they're
not intelligence. Does that make any sense to you.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, of course it does.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
It's actually it's a very nice way of looking at it.
I think that that's true. But if I look at
someone like, here's someone I don't know, I know nothing
about them, but I'm a fan of his work.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Ousio was born right right.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Osio was born, is like, you know, he's a game
changer of a singer in a band hugely important. I
don't need him to be nice. Did he bite the
head off the bat? Or did he not buy the
head off the bat? I don't know if I was,
you know, like, if I was heavily involved in the
world the bats, maybe it would be.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Well, but let's go back. Did the wordy Allen stuff
change your opinion of his work?

Speaker 2 (26:45):
You know, did it you know what it probably did?
If I'm honest, I probably yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
I mean, I think.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Fighting a bat is different than you know.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Yeah, well, you know, yea marrying your daughter?

Speaker 3 (26:57):
Yeah, so what did you do? Did you bite head over?
But maybe right?

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Did you actually.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Definitely marry your step dough exactly exactly?

Speaker 1 (27:06):
I hear what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
These are extremes, all right, But what I think is
kind of weird to me is that maybe not the nice,
but the idea that everyone's.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Going to be like a Sunday school teacher.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
While giving sample someone it's a way to get here.
I'm not a big road rage guy. One day I'm
here in La you know a guy behind b b BB,
you know, like, oh, he wants to go like me,
go me, It goes around me, gives me the finger,
yells you know, fuck you. So I come up to
the next light. I look at him. I go, let
me guess, what are your fifty five bald, fat? Divorce?

(27:38):
Your kids? Hate your job? What was your greatest day?
Was it in high school? And the guy starts crying,
Oh Jesus, and he goes, yes, you're right. I went,
oh yeah. I realized as a comic you have the
ability to size people up pretty quickly, and I'm hitting.
Everything I said was exactly. So I said, let's pull over.
So I got on mic, I get this guy go look,

(27:59):
I'm sorry because I got kids. They got two girls.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
They don't speak to me. Oh my god, this is
a terrible.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
So I said, they did. I like Taylor Swift. I said,
I tell you what. I got Taylor Swift on the
show on Wednesday. Okay, why don't you bring your two girls?
But they like to oh god, what did you? Okay,
So and Taylor Swift, I told her she couldn't have
been nicer, came out, gave the kids a couple of
albums signed. I mean, the sweetest person you could imagine. Yeah,

(28:26):
just a lovely, lovely person. She didn't have to do it.
I said, I had this guy and I cut him off,
and so many he's I mean the guy. The guy
literally had a breakdown.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
But you know what's interesting about that story, which I
like that story. I like it for you, I like
it for Taylor Swift. I like the fact that it happened.
I wonder if that guy, if that happened today, that
guy would have a phone in your face record you
slicing and dicing them and they posted it on the internet.
Maybe maybe not more than likely, you know, maybe No,

(29:02):
I got you know.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Something you can only live in the time you live in.
That's it's like could Muhammad Ali beat the Rocky Marciano?
You know?

Speaker 2 (29:10):
All right?

Speaker 1 (29:10):
You want to take that? No, all right?

Speaker 3 (29:13):
You know that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
So yeah, I know, but I mean, you're right.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
I want to complain about it a little bit though,
because I feel like the filming of everything is like
we volunteered to be in Big Brother.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
It's not even like someone each.

Speaker 3 (29:28):
A funny thing about Big Brother, because people always say
Big Brother is watching Blood you know, to me, probably
the greatest day in media history was the Rodney King trial.
The Rodney King thing is Rodney King coming along. According
to the police, he had seven people in a Hyundai
going one hundred and seventeen miles an hour to all exaggerated. Okay,

(29:52):
that's what the news said at seven o'clock. I believe
that same evening the guy who shot that footage, who
chose not to give it to the news, who put
it out on the internet, right, and then suddenly people
saw raw unfiltered news and you saw this guy get
the crap beat out of me because it looks like
you did that terrible And then you realize, because what happened,

(30:12):
You give it to a news guy and they'll go
the editor will go, well, this is inflammatory people, this
is cause right, let's just say it's like when I
grew up in Boston, a woman was never raped, she
was accosted, right, you know, they never tell you what
I said. Now, you live in a world where you
get your news unfiltered, exactly as it happens.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
Have you traveled the outside of the US, travel South?

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Yeah, yeah, you just shows well like do England And no,
I don't really work it where I well, I've been
to Italy. I'm in a Saudi Arabia but a few places. Yeah,
I don't find it totally different. Everybody speaks English.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Well yeah to you, but I mean if you're doing
a corporate gig in Italy.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
People will speak you know.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
It's like I was talking to Tomas, right, you know
Tomas who works with me, right right?

Speaker 3 (30:54):
Right?

Speaker 2 (30:55):
So Tomas who you know produces this podcast. You also, I.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Love Italy, right, I love Italy?

Speaker 3 (31:01):
Right?

Speaker 2 (31:02):
And to my sister me, you love Italy, I said, yeah.
He says no, he Tamasa's has managed heavy mail bands.
He has to work in Italy, right, he said, if
you had to work, Oh my god, A very different idea.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, it's like because it is that kind of things
when people say, you know what the oh I love
Scotland so much. You Scottish people are so friendly.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
I mean you tried being Scottish with a nother Scottish
person and see it fucking friendly?

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's a saying.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
So listen, let's talk a little bit about.

Speaker 3 (31:33):
The cars, all right. What do you want to know?

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Well, I want to know how it started. Was it
your dad? Was it was.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
I grew up in a rural area, and they're always
broken snowmobiles and abandoned cars. Not so much now Now,
when you abandoned a car, it's software does work, Yeah,
it's got a computer. In the old days, people are
abandoned a car because distributor broke. All right, that's an
easy enough fix to somebody has a little bit of
mechanical knowledge or are things of that nature. You know,

(32:03):
a car from the teen's, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, you
could leave for one hundred years and you probably get
us started pretty easy. Because mechanical things break, electrical things erode,
and you look at a relay box. It might be shiny,
but you can't tell what's going on inside it, you know.
But you can look at a fuel pump and go, oh, well,

(32:24):
here's the gear. The gear is broken or the keyway
is busted, you know. So they're easier to fix.

Speaker 2 (32:30):
So that was what threw you in, was the mechanical
nature of the fact that you could fix them when they.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Were Anything that rolls explodes and makes no you know.
When I was I was like eleven, somebody abandoned a
Renault four CV, which is like the French version of
the Volkswider, And we had three acres behind our house
and my mother would watch us through the kitchen window
and we just drive around. And so of course now
the parents would be taken away, you'd be putting foster care,
and you know, it would be it's a whole difference. Yeah.

(32:55):
Well you just said it's beaar now yeah, well in
some ways, yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, so you started playing around to the but as
you go older, right, and you start like you.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Here's the thing, h here's the main facts of it.
We are in an objective business. Some people like you,
some people think you suck, some people think you are
better than me, some people better than you. But when
you have a car and it's broken and now it's running,
no one can say it's not running. You know, you
can say it's still not funny, even if other people
laughing and you're not right, No one can say the

(33:27):
car is not running.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
You think that's why.

Speaker 2 (33:29):
Old comedians, well, a lot of comedians that are in
the cars because of the same reason you.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Actually most comedians are not into cars.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
A second, Jerry's in the cars. Yeah, I'm in the
cars a little bit. I know a million guy. I remember,
you know, rich Jenny called me one time. He goes, oh,
he was funny. He had the best gay marriage joke
back in the days.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
When it was illegal. Yeah, he would go, gay guys
have the ideal life, Larry, I'd love to marry you,
but it's against the law. Imagine if you can say
that to a girl. Oh, I love to marry your honey,
but it's against the law. Oh. I used to love
that bad. And you know it wasn't offensive.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
It was because that was It's just totally.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
He wasn't enough anybody. He called me my time. He goes, hey,
what's the best car to get girls? I go, well,
I said, I I only have one girl and I've
had her for like twenty six years at this point,
so I couldn't tell you that. But what are you like, Well,
a Corvette? Could can you get girls with Corfette? Some
girls like Corvette? Some girls think, how old are you?
You have a Corvette? You know? I said, So he

(34:31):
gets a Corvette, you know, and of course he knows
nothing about what it's capable of whatever.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Just all this.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Maybe he just got it together. What's the best car
to get girls? This is just my favorite thing.

Speaker 2 (34:41):
It's funny because I've never really understood that as a thing.
I guess maybe back in the day when you know,
hey baby, do you want to sit in the rumbles
sheet or something? But a rumble seat, Yeah, back in
the day, in the day, in the Yeah, it was
the nineteen twenties in Scotland, So it's funny. Richard Jenny
rich was one of the last gigs he had actually,

(35:02):
or one of the last things I remember him doing.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
He was on my show. Yeah, yeah, and he it
wasn't long after that that he that he you know,
that he killed himself.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
But I don't like it was anything to do with
my show, but I'm be sure.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
I met him in Australia when I was starting out.
I was at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, right and he
turned up. He had these two very glamorous looking women
right in each arm and he walked into the and
I was like, does the guy do that? No, I
realized he must have had a Corvette, That's what it was.
But really funny, Oh yeah, super funny.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Oh. He had very fast, quick fast, very New York.
You know, he had that New York attitude. Yeah, yeah, No,
he's really just a great, great comic that was a sad,
sad story.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
It's an interesting thing, and Rich is a good kind
of example of it is that the persona that he
had on stage was very different to who the guy
he was. Rickles was very like as well. People used
to think Rickles was like when he was on, he
was the inso guy. But you remember Don, he was, Okay,
he's a pussy.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
Oh yeah, very nice guy. I love I love Don.
Don was great. Don was great, but even Don, you know,
the network would censor him and he would. I remember
one time he came on and you know Kevin and
Kevin eu Banks. He going, that's Kevin, ke Kevin's people
in the park a lot stem on hub caps and
I go no, I go down. I don't have hub
caps anymore. Yeah. You know what's interesting. I remember seeing

(36:29):
Rickles once and Rickles never swore, that's right, okay, But
when he did racial stuff, you know, and the Puerto
Rican guy is this, and the black guy is this,
and the younger audience is kind of like hmm, and
older people laugh hysterically. And then he had a joke
with a punchline with him saying shit you know, just
like that, And the young people laughed and the old
people went, oh yeah, So it was really two different audiences.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
Yeah, it's funny. I never had him say do the
ship joke?

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Well, it was one of those things where you know,
it leads up to it, and then he said, yeah,
I can't remember what the bit was.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
When I first when I first met him, he Peter
Sally introduced me to Recles and and I said, we
we come on the show, mister Rickles.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
He went, I gotta be honest, kid, I'm gonna wait
and see if you're ahead.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
Okay, So when he came on the show, he said,
I said to him, I am I am I hit now
He went, no, but I felt sorry for her.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
Yeah, yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
He was a strange, strangely lovely.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
He a lovely guy, and he grew up in the
era when the mob guys really controlled it. And till
the day he died, he would never tell a story
I go down, let me ask you about no, no, no,
I know, like I remember we went to Downtown's once
and I said, well, let's let's talk like the mob.
But yeah, yeah, I mean, he would just not even

(37:47):
joke about it.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
He was as Larry King. You remember Larry was kind
of yeah, yeah he was. He was connected in Miami
at one point.

Speaker 3 (37:55):
Yeah, that was Yeah, that was the old school. Guys.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Do you ever run into that Boston when you were
a kid.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Well, i'll tell you people there, I'll tell you a story.
One day I get a call from Sinatra had an
age named Jack Sularti. They go Jay Sinatra watching to
play this Italian thing. Some some benefited in a country
club in Chicago. It's Italian American thing. And you gotta
work clean, you instance, you gotta work clean. It's gonna

(38:23):
be a priest there, you know, I said you, okay,
I'll work clean.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (38:26):
So I get there, I get up and I do
my little thing. I get some laughs and thank you
very much, and I sit down. So they introduced this guy.
I'm not going to say the name because his kids
are still alive. A real gangster, right, okay. And he
gets up there. You don't want everyboddy, Hey, what the
fuck's going on? You know? Like that? And the priest
goes like this, and the priest goes, but they fought shut.

(38:57):
He's just screaming, and I mean the veins are popping.
Is that when you see a psychopath?

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Just lose it because you got your.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
Ten grand of paper bag? Right fu shut just scrap.
And the priests is holding his bag with the ten
grand in it like this, you know, and he's just
and guys are holding him like.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
Mother fuck, just go after the priet.

Speaker 3 (39:17):
You're just screaming at the guy, you know. He said,
I'm like, oh jeezuz, and the crowd is like, oh
my god because this guy.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
Yeah, that's the way to lose a crowd if you
if you go cycle on. Yeah, and it doesn't even
have to be the priest, just anybody.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
If I remember the story they told, the heartwarming story,
some teenagers had broken into his house, yeah and still
stolen something. Okay, They found them two weeks later, and
they'd been skinned alive. Somebody somebody hung them by their wrists,
stripped them and run a straight razor from their arms

(39:52):
down to their toes and just peeled off, peeled off
a layer of skin until these guys slowly blended it.
And it was like, oh, okay, So so that was
like ho scary, you know. So so I'm sitting there
and just watching this whole thing play out and they
take him away. Right, So ladies said, he go, hey, hey,
comme here. Come here. He goes, he says, you play golf. Well,

(40:13):
come on, God, come come with you. So he and
I am the golf card. He goes, you know, we
we have stallone to come to this. You know what
he said? He said no, and I said, well, you know,
he started busy fucking explodes again, you know, and I
was like, I'm sitting.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
I could never play golf with a guy who had
skinned people.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Exactly, and I'm not doing it again.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
Do you play golf?

Speaker 3 (40:38):
No, no, I don't think if you could play it
in twenty minutes, maybe, but also.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
If you know, the carts are ship I mean, if
it was maybe if you got it, but maybe if
you had a Corvette.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
Yeah, Corvette. But I mean but the point of this
was just most people think, you know, my favorite thing
and the French Connection was the best movie to whenever
you watch TV, the guy Bob put the gun down.
I know you don't want to shoot me, okay, And
the guy always puts the gun down and cannon or
magnum or whoever it is takes the gun away from.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
That's pretty good. I believe right.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
Remember that that was a French connection where the transit cop,
the French guy was running from Popeye Doyle. He's on
the train, he's got a gun and the guy goes, look,
I know, you don't want to shoot me. You don't
want to He just shoots him at four or five
just he's the guy away, go okay, thank you. That's
what really happens in real life. All these people think

(41:35):
they're going to be a hero because they know he's
really a good guy. No, there are evil people in
the world. There are bad guys out there, you know.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
But I'm still I'm still happy about you bringing up Cannon.
Canon Cannon. I love Cannon, you know what.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
Like he was like a three hundred pounds dective eight.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Right right, and he would run after teenagers don't know, no, no,
what it was.

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Right. He would park in the alley at his big
Lincoln and the crook would run towards him and he
opened the door. The drivers don't bang, and that would
hit them, you know, and knock him out.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Yeah. Yeah, man, I think it's maybe time for a
Canon reboot.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
I know, if Billy hadn't lost all that weight, it'd
be he'd be Yeah, but he's all finn and gorgeous.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Now that's the problem.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
He does look great. He does look like one hundred
and seventy eight pounds. It's unbelieved. He lost the whole person.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah that's crazy.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, yeah, but he looks he looks great. And you
know something, I was telling him this the other night.
A lot of guys that used to be fat aren't
really funny anymore because their whole persona was based on
being fat, being fat and being but you know something,
You look and now you're thinking, well, he's always been
a skinny guy, right, because he doesn't. It doesn't reflect
in anything that he does. I mean, he's really he was.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
A graceful man. I mean we talked. It was funny.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
We talked ages ago because he was a big final
Laurel and Hardy I was a yeah, I loved, Oh
my god. And one of the things about Babe Hardy
was that is his grace. Yeah, you know, the lightness
of his feet, that kind of it was funny.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
You know, Louis Anderson the same thing. Louis had great
dignity about it. He was he moved his hands very
slowly and fold them in his lap. And and and
you never sawld sweating on stage, right, But he always
had those bits about his mom didn't like cats because
they liked the butter and all that kind of stuff.
You know.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
You know the guys you're talking we're talking about, you know,
the like Louis was one, Gilbert was another one, Gilbert
Godfried was another one. Like real kind of idiosyncratic character
that I don't look, I don't pay a lot of
attention to the young comics right now.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
I don't know if you do. I don't see a
ton of that. I see a lot of.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
A lot of the same, like you know, you you know,
a lot of not as much eccentricity of performance. Maybe
there's some really good ones.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
I mean I watched Michelle Wolf and Netflix.

Speaker 3 (44:00):
You see her, you see her new special. Yeah, you
know something, I thought it was terrific.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
Yeah, I mean I thought she was.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
Because I thought, you know, when she done all the
White House stuff, it's like that's a terrible gig, you've
done it done. Yeah, well, but I mean it's all politics.
It's like it's how stinging can it be? And to
watch her latest one, Oh these are real jokes.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
She's really good.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, And really. Yeah, she's really funny. Yeah, and yeah,
I really enjoyed it. And the one that's done in
three parts or four parts, that's what I'm talking about,
twenty minutes segment. And I watch it and I thought, boy,
she's really really good and it's a shame that she
got beat up so badly over.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Well, you know, it happens with the white like Colbert
w be.

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Up pretty badly for what he did at the White
House as well, but ultimately it worked out for him.
And I think that it's one of those weird gigs
the way dinner. I remember when I did it. I
talked to you before I did it. You remember that, yeah,
because you remember you said to me, it's just not
about you.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Just remember it's not about it, right right.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
And I talked to you, and I talked to Drew
Carey because Drew had done it as well.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
But I thought it was a hard gig. It's like
a really tough corporate.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Well, it's an impossible gig, yeah, because everybody's you know,
looking in the mirror, you know.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, that's right. It's like, no, it's really no about it.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
And when you have something about like Obama, who is
a really good comic up. Yeah, he goes on first,
and now you follow him.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
I didn't. I didn't do it with it, but I
did it with George Booth.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
I did it with Reagan. I'll tell you what I
did first time. I did it with the Reagan. So
I'm backstage and this general comes in. He goes, hey, hey, hey,
you're the comic. Yeah, yes, sir, I'm Jane Let He goes,
I'm selling. This is my committed to chief. You understand
that this is my boss. He is the leader of
the free. Will you don't assault him? You don't tell you.
He's just and he's poking me in the chest, you know.

(45:48):
And I said, well, okay, yes, you understand. Yeah, And
then he leaves. Okay, I'm thinking, oh man, I'm starting
to change jokes now. And then and then all of
a sudden, George Schultz comes in, remember him, Yeah, and
he's really drunk. He goes, but now come here, when
you get up there, you nail Ronnie's ass to the wall.
You understand me. I go, but that guy, tell me, Scar,

(46:10):
he works for me. I'm the t a minute, I'm
the defense guy. You make fun of that thing on
Reagan's you think got his hair color? You think got
his real hair color? And I go, I don't know, No,
you got I said, now, the what do I do?
I remember my opening joke was, I want to cry
to you, late Nancy Reagan. I'm winning the Humanitarian of
the Year award. I'm glad she beat out that conniving

(46:31):
little bitch mother Teresa. That's funny, Joe and Reagan fell
off the chair. I thought, well, then I knew I
was in Yeah, I knew it was okay. But but yeah,
but that way it is. It's an impossible game.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
It's really hard. Is there any because I've got a
couple of jokes.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
One of them was the white of course wonded the
dinner that I never told that I was going to
do the joke right to the last minute, and then
I did. And I have tuned my life that I've
never done. I'll tell you them in a minute. But
do you have any that you thought I was going
to do this joke?

Speaker 3 (47:00):
You know, it's so funny. The only jokes I remember
are the ones that made an impression, because as a comic,
you have things that put a notch in your brain.
You just remember, like that first joke I told about
the you know, the robin Hood thing and all that.
I remember, so you remember everything. I remember being five
years old and my mother taking me to because we

(47:22):
didn't have babysitters then, so he just took me everywhere.
So we went to my aunt and Eddie, my aunt
Edia's house on the Italian side, and it's all women
drinking wine and I'm sitting on the floor and I
was looking at the women and I said, hey, Mom,
why do women have humps like camels? And they're they're
all drunk anyway, and they're all.

Speaker 5 (47:43):
Screaming, and I'm thinking, what did I said somewhere about humps?

Speaker 3 (47:47):
And I always remember that because it got it. So
is a comic. I think when you say something and
it gets a laugh, you just, for the most part
pretty much remember it because I'm told you the ones.

Speaker 1 (47:58):
That you made a decision to tell the joke for
another reason.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
Yeah, I can't remember the joke, so I can't remember what.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
I have two I'm going to tell you them.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
One was a White House correspondence to her where there
was a lot of trouble was the very last Bush
and Cheney and all those guys were up there Rumsfelders
around all that stuff, and I was going to say
at the start of it, it's great to be up here.
We want see all these guys together in one room
again until the trial. And I thought that was a
pretty good joke. And they said to me, probably a
good It wasn't the White House. It was one of

(48:26):
my own guys said, probably a good idea. If you
don't do that joke, people are still a little, you know,
uncomfortable as a pretty decent joke. And the other one,
I'm kind of still thinking that maybe I should have
done it, and maybe I shouldn't. And here's what it was.
I had a book come out, my own, a biography
come out, right, And it was the same week as
Ted Kennedy, his biography came out. He had just died

(48:51):
that week, right, And Mackenzie Phillips' book come out where
she talks about having sex with her dad, oh right,
And there were all three of us buying for the
number one spot in the New York Times bestseller list,
and I knew I wasn't going to get it because
Ted Kennedy had died and Mackenzie Phillips talks about having

(49:14):
sex with their dad, right, right.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
So I was doing this event in Union Square, the
Barnes and.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
Noble, and I wanted to do this joke and my
publicier says, that's a great joke, and I beg, you
don't do it. I went, okay, but the joke I
was going to come on stage and say in my book,
Mackenzie Phillips focks Ted Kennedy.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
I didn't do it, and I kind of wish I
had done it, but I'm kind of glad I didn't.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
No, No, that's a funny joke.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
I think so.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
But you know, the tempers were flaring at the time,
and it was probably ay.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
I always did that because a those things you want
to say. I'm not going to say who it was,
but I had someone on who was very sensitive and
they just gotten glasses and they had a big nose,
and I said, and I wanted to say, oh, did
the notes come with the glasses, But I knew they'd
be ye, they'd be hard.

Speaker 1 (50:04):
Yeah, yeah, you can.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
You know, you don't want to hurt someone's feelings. We
were not in that game, you know what. I feel bad.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
That was the thing about being a talk show. She
got to know when I was a comedian when I
did the monologue, and I was a host when I
did there because a lot of times, yeah, I totally
agree with the battle and you lose the war, you know,
totally totally.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
I always felt as well.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
And this is why I love doing your show is
because I felt like I was. You took the word
host like literally like I'm here to holdt I want
you to feel good when you having a good time.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
I want you to enjoy yourself.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
And that's how I took that from, you know, like
it was on your show.

Speaker 1 (50:42):
I was like, no, that's how I want to be because.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
I've done other shows where I felt I've got to
wash my ass here. You know, I'll put one foot
wrong and I'm going to be made a fool of.
And I never felt that when I was working with you,
and I hope that anyone who was on my wo
felt the same way.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
It was like, you know, I'm not I don't know here.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
And funny if I was talking to Kristin Ball the
other day, who was like my number one all time,
you know, she's like on the show every other week.
She was great, she was you know, everyone has a
guess like I sure you had him and I'm going
to ask you.

Speaker 1 (51:13):
Who it was in a minute.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
But but I was talking to her and she said, well,
it was weird for me because because I always thought
she was a great improviser. And she said, no, I
hate that. I always like knowing what I'm going to do.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
I was like, that's weird. I always thought you loved.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Improvise, and then that's why you always did my show
and she went, no, I just trusted you, right, And
I was like, oh, that's great, it makes me feel good.

Speaker 6 (51:34):
Yeah yeah, and so tell me who you were? Who
are your go tos? And like, you know, Terry Bradshaw
was pretty Yeah, he's very funny. Yeah, you know the
ever he hit a talk show. Yes, that's right, he's
a daytime talk show or something.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
But you know, Terry was the best one ever. And
you could not have planned this. He comes out and
he goes JAYL I heard that monologue. That monologue sucked.
That was the worst jokes every He's just trash around me. Yeah,
And I said, I said, you know I can shut
you down with forward. No, No, you can't. I can't.
What I said, your fly is open and his pants
were wide over. Oh my god, and he looked down

(52:07):
and he fell off the cherry's laughing so right. He
just felt so stupid.

Speaker 1 (52:12):
He was.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
He was a great one.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
I said.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
I had him thirty maybe fifty four times. Yeah, and
the comics are always good. You were good, Jerry was good.
Robin Williams of course was good.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, Robin kind of took cover. I used to like that.
You just hand them the reins.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Yeah, right right, you just let him go. You can
really interact with him. But you know what my favorite
two was with Rodney because when I would watch Rodney
with Johnny, Johnny would beat the straight mane tough week, Rodney, Oh,
rod Johnny, I tell you this week is all right,
but last week it was cold. Really it was cold
out so oh Johnny was so cold. And yeah, I
know again when I would get Rodney, Oh, that was

(52:48):
my favorite thing to uh been a tough week, go
oh Jay, I'll tell you it's it's all right now.
But last week I got to tell you know, did
I tell my Rodney story about No, I'll tell you
Rodney story. I've told this, sorry, but no to me.
I had Rodney on.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
The show, Okay, Rodney Dangerfield Rodney in.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Two thousand and four, and Rodney was a little older, yeah,
a little more frail. And he comes up and he's
doing the show. He's doing his stand up. I knowic
he's sweating more than you know. As someone who watches
comics and you know them personally, you can tell when
they're a little off. You know. I could tell what
Jerry's killing, but it's it's not his normal, super hard kill.

(53:27):
It's just a real And Rodney he would always touch
his tie. This time his hands were kind of He's
just a little you know. So I said to Debbie,
our producer, DeBie vickcause I said, I said, I think
Rodney's having a stroke. Call the cops, call it paramedics.
She goes, you think good, I think he is. Yeah. Okay,
so if he sits now, Jay, I will tell you

(53:48):
I'm all right now, Ja. But last week, you know,
and and he's got the handkerchief and he's really sweating.
But he gets through it and he does fine. Okay,
now the show ends. Just as the show ends, Rodney goes,
who's jess him? And the paramedics come in and I say,
so going and say, Rodney, it's the paramedics. I think
made stroke. I didn't have a stroke. Well he did
have a stroke.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
You saw that.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
Well, he was just off. He was just off. So
they took him away in an ambulance. He went to
the hospital. I didn't live much longer than that. And
then his wife Joan calls me. He says, you got
to come to the hospital. Rodney's in a coma. Okay.
I get there and Roddy's lion there. His eyes are open,
and she says Jay. The doctor says, Rodney can hear us,
but he can't respond to us, you know. So I'm

(54:32):
telling him how much we love him and how great
he was to all his comics, you know, letting us
work Rodney's Club and yeah Rodney Dangerfields and all blah
blah blah blah. So his wife John says, Rodney, she goes, Jay,
put your finger in Rodney's hand. She goes, Rodney, if
you know it's Jay, try and squeeze his finger.

Speaker 5 (54:50):
So I put my finger in Rodney's hand like this,
And I went, Rodney, that's not my finger, okay.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
And Rodney's shoulders go like this. They just move and
drug he moved, and the doctor comes, I mean, he
move me together and and he died right after that.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
But but you got to laugh. Yeah, we got to
laugh out.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
Of Runney, you know. And it was kind of I mean,
I don't say it to be mean or to be funny.
He just is a life well led you know. He
and he was a wonderful guy and he was a
smart guy.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
I you know, you never met Rodney in the middle.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Well, you know the whole thing about being an aluminum
siding salesman. You know, if comedy doesn't make him, well
he did. He was a lumin siding salesman. But he
was a great lumini.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
He was.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
He was so successful he quit show business to sell
sign Then at age forty four, his face finally grew
into his act. He began to look like the sad
sack that he was. And that's when he really became famous.
Because see, I remember Rodney before he had no respect.
When he used to do bits right and he would

(55:55):
do bad. I remember one bit he had. I can't
recreate it, but this is the essence of it. He goes, well,
in the flight to sixty five with tw Airlines, he'd
be the pilot, you know, I go, we're flying over
right now, over Indiana. Rather a Desolate Park. If you
look down on the left side of the plane you
can see the remains of Flight four eighteen that crashed
right there in the ground. Bob, youer with me on

(56:17):
that one, weren't you. It was just like a just hilarious,
just like a funny almost like a very Bob Newhart. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (56:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
And then later he got into doing bits. Do you
ever see a movie called The Projectionist? It was done
I think in sixty nine. Rodney was in that place
that he was good. He was good and back to school.
One of the funniest Yeah, to me, that that thing
about in the Union, Yeah, with the guy goes I'm
gonna build an imaginary factory. Oh yeah, how are you
gonna pay off this guy? And pay off that guy?
You know? And are just so funny. Yeah, he was

(56:47):
really the funniest guy. And I knew Rodney forty years.
I have no idea if he's a Democrat, I have
no idea if he's a Republican. All we ever talked
about with.

Speaker 2 (56:57):
Jokes, he that's true, with a lot of he had
the essence.

Speaker 3 (57:01):
He had quick jokes. One of my favorite Rodney jokes
is I will pass the strip joint. He said, topless
and bottomless. I went in. There was nobody there. I mean,
it's a great topless there's nobody there.

Speaker 1 (57:13):
Yeah, that's that's a great.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
And the other joke he had, like my doctor said,
he a seamen sample and he's still sampling into your
own sample. So I gave my underpants. You know, just
those kinds just so stupid kind of jokes and just
just hilarious, just hilarious.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
You ever intimidated by anyone that you ever you ever
have a guest, and you guys actually get nervous.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
I had a couple, but you ever have anyone? You
think one day I.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Had Roger Moore on. So I'll tell you about Sean
Connery for Roger Moore.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
And tell you.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
I said, when do you go on vacation where you
go to India? Going to India?

Speaker 5 (57:44):
Quite often go to India. Yeah that's quite a trip.
Oh not really, Well how often do you go? Oh well,
going every weekend, every weekend to India? Yes, yeah, I
mean that's it's.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
Not a long flight. No, no, no, we drive, really
you drive to India from from England? No, no, from California.
He was trying to say, India Oh, it's just like
a whole wasted segment.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Yeah, you're trying to talk about.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
Sean Connor is my favorite because Seawan Connor is the
only guy I have heard my mother referred to in
a sexual way.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
That's a real man, Jamis, Oh, yeah, no, the women
were different.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
I introduced my wife to Sean Connery and her breast
let up, and I didn't even know bress could do.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
That, that's right.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Yeah, but Sean Connery probably went through life thinking that
women's breast let up all the time.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
But I've never that's the only time I've seen it happen.
I introduced her to and she went, oh, hello, San, nice.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
To meet you. He's like, very nice to meet your
Megan Boom hello Push.

Speaker 2 (58:53):
Well he didn't talk to our bottom department, he I
mean her, But it was.

Speaker 3 (58:59):
Really I know, well, most people don't know he was
mister Universe third runner round. Yeah, that's right, nineteen fifty three.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
He was.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
He was a long shoreman and he was a tough
sound very tough.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
You know the story about him and Johnny Stumpinato.

Speaker 3 (59:13):
Oh no, you get the fight with Johnny.

Speaker 2 (59:14):
Johnny Stumpinado brings a gun on at the set. I
can't remember the movie. He was doing a movie with
Lana Turner, Lana try right, Yeah, And the rumor was
that Big Tam as he's known in Scotland or Sean
Connery was having an affair with lannat Turner, which knowing
him and knowing about oday, it's probably it's a pretty
good even money bet. Stompnado, who's our gangster boyfriend? Turns up,

(59:36):
points a gun as showing points a handgun at Sewan corner. Right,
he takes the gun, he smacks he did ahead of
the gun, and she's got the fuck out. He bring
a gun onto a place of one. I mean, it's
like he was a tough guy. He was from a
very tough part of Edinburgh and he was very kind.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
Of and he's the only guy, you know what to say.
I was here a jokes and knee slamper. Yeah, he's
the only guy I ever saw slap you gee gee,
what's the leadst filthy jewel going about? G you know?
I mean he would laugh like like he was a
pirate and he was the only guy that ever took

(01:00:17):
a shower in a tonight showed jesssing room because the
justsing room is a small ones I remember, just a
little Chinese shower, but nobody he's and he would sing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Take the head and.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
The news crew, news guys, news had to run down
with the headphones. Who's shouting down? I said, Sean Connery. Second,
Oh yeah, but oh yeah, you know it was it
was he. They took this rough thug. They put him
in a savile roast suit. They teld him a little
bit about wine, so he came across. He was the

(01:00:53):
only really dangerous Bond I never got. Roger More is
always a pill, very dope guy. He's kind of like
the comedy bone, you know. But him and and Daniel.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
Craig, Yeah, I could believe Daniel Craig.

Speaker 3 (01:01:05):
Daniel, but Sean Connery had the height, he had the weight, Yeah,
he had the.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Threat was pretty good for the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 3 (01:01:12):
But but Sean Conny just had the physical presence. I mean,
the Bond films are funny, be goes gold Finger the Man,
but a big fat guy can barely speak English, slabbering
over himself. How was this guy in the song? But yeah,
in the in the in the song women, Oh he's
cold finger, you know, Oh please.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
You know that Sean Connery. I think it's in the
movie Goldfinger. He wears a little toweling many like it's
like little shorty shorts. Oh yeah, the zip that goes
up the front and the little thing like that. It's
the most ridiculous looking out fit. Oh yeah, And I
remember we were watching it, like when one of my
boys was Lettle. We're watching introducing them to an know
bone movie. In my I said to Meghan, that's uh,

(01:01:56):
that's a stupid.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
Looking at it that. She went, No, one shot Conery.
I did a preslet again.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Oh yeah, wow.

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
And he wasn't even there.

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
Yeah he was. He was quite a guy, he was.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
He was a very impressive.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
I mean he was a guy for his time. Because
you watch it now and it's so incredibly sexy.

Speaker 1 (01:02:16):
It's shocking, but it was what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
Yeah, anybody, look, buddy, we're done for the recording.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
You and I can talk anything. Yeah, we're done. But listen,
that went pretty quick.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Yeah, well, you know, we do talk a law, Yeah,
a lot more than I talked to any other former
host of the Tonight Show. You're the one I talked
to the well, and I think that you know, I
had such a good time when we were doing gigs
with our Senio this summer.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
We should do it again.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
Yeah, I love doing those.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
He's a great guy to see you guys, is a
great guy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
I tell you a story about our Sceno. It was
so funny. I think I told you about with Berri manelog.
You know, I was saying, no, tell me, Well, he
was the only real threat. That was one Carson was
afraid of Arsenio. Well because it was hip, Yeah it was.
He was good black, it was young, it was everything
Johnny wasn't you know. And you know, like when Dana

(01:03:11):
Carvey did Carcinio, he did a comedy oppression of a
brilliant impression. Johnny just hated. Made him very nervous. Anyway,
So the first night of our Sinio show, he goes,
You're not going to see Barry Manilo's ass on this show.
This show is all about the funk. It's about to
mute hit it, you know, in the band place of
a game.

Speaker 5 (01:03:30):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Okay, So I remember watching that shown. Now this is
the time when he and I were supposed to be fighting,
right you understanding, Well, he had I'm going to kick
Leno's ass and all this stuff going on.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
You know, it's funny because I think of you two
is being very good.

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
We were very good and we still are and we
were even during that. So anyway, so I'm watching him
every night to make sure we don't do the same jokes,
because you need to do that, you know. And I
hear him say about December. Now, come on, I guess
in September. About December he goes, and next week on
the show, Barry Manilow. You know, I have to say sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Sorry.

Speaker 3 (01:04:01):
The next day I call like, oh, hi, can I
speak to you, Senor Hall, This is Jay Leonard. Just
a minute.

Speaker 5 (01:04:06):
Oh, he doesn't want to speak to you. Just just
he doesn't want to speak to you. I said, no,
he needs to hear what I have to say.

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
You know. He goes, what do you want? What do
you want?

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):
Next week, very mentel and then he falls off the chair.
He's laughing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
So how I go, Oh, he wants to see his ass.

Speaker 7 (01:04:22):
Because you realize when you do these shows, you need
everybody you gotta take. You can't every night you got
But and from that point now we both laughed.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
At him, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
But when the news broke that I was going to
do the late night show. When I was taking it over,
I was a YouTube concert in Forum in Los Angeles,
and you know the little backstage area, some backstage there,
and Chris Rock is there and he comes over and
he goes, you're the guy taking over the show, and
I went yeah, and he goes, you guys do that
ship every fucking night and I went yeah, and he went, no, man,

(01:04:55):
every fucking night.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
I went yeah. And then it kind of to me
it was like a movie.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
But see, I found every night easier because if it
didn't go well, I got some I can't stop and dwell,
I got.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
To move out. That is the glory of it. But
the truth is, but I tell you I was done.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
I mean, what did you do twenty five years, twenty
two years, twenty three, Well, I mean twenty five kind
of guessing, you know, Yeah, I had a ten years
and that's yeah, that's there's a bit two more than
I really was.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it wasn't there appointment.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
You're like, no, I'm pretty good at simple, repetitive fasts.
So yeah, well I enjoy you know, I enjoyed it.
I liked the discipline of writing, writing jokes every day.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Great at it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
I like that you got pencils down. I gotta go. Okay,
if it didn't, if the show wasn't any good, I
got another show tomorrow and three days later you forgot
about that show that wasn't very good.

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
It was as interesting now though, that all these shows
hang around and people pick apart from a show and
broadcasting like, I.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Don't even remember doing that, you know, I know, I know,
it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:05:57):
You know, it's different. You know. The saddest thing about
late night is everybody doing it is really good. The
trouble is, you have these streaming services. You can watch
the Lord of the Wings trilogy without commercials. You can
watch all three Godfather movies. You know, every talk show
you watch now, because the viewing audience is smaller, there's

(01:06:17):
even more commercials. So you watch the monologue five and
a half minutes and seven minutes of commercials, then six
and a half minutes a show than nine minutes after
midnight of commercials, and it just makes it, you know,
And it's not the it's not the host fault. It's
just it's so much.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, No, I'm glad I got out with it.
We got at the right time winning.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
Oh we did. Yeah, nobody's making that kind of money anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
All right, well, let's get the fuck out here.

Speaker 3 (01:06:43):
That's got to drive cars.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Yeah, anytime,