Larry Charles - A "Comedy Samurai" on "Borat," "Seinfeld," "Curb," Dylan & So Much More

The legendary writer ("Seinfeld") and director ("Borat") Larry Charles comes to "Naked Lunch" to discuss his brilliant career and his remarkable new book "Comedy Samurai: Forty Years of Blood, Guts, and Laughter," a rollicking journey through modern American Comedy. Hear great stories about Sacha Baron Cohen, Larry David, Bob Dylan and so many more. To order Larry's book, click here. To learn more about building community through food and "Somebody Feed the People," visit the Philanthropy page at philrosenthalworld.com. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, naked lunch listeners. Today, Phil and I are thrilled
to be sitting with the great writer and director Larry Charles,
author of this great book comedy Samurai, forty Years of Blood,
Guts and Laughter. We talk about directing Borat, about writing
for Seinfeld, We talk about working on Curb Your Enthusiasm,

(00:24):
working with Bob Dylan, working with Larry David, and so
much more. And in addition to sitting with Larry Charles,
we also stand with Stephen Colbert. Okay, here's Larry Charles.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Let's build the beans to the fat, food for thought,
jokes on tap, talking with our mouthful, having fun, pas
cake and humble pie, serving upsize lovely. The same said,
it's naked lush.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Clothing option. This reunion of of three, you know, will
find your relationship with Phil and I was lucky enough
to have some history with you as well. But the
occasion is your book, comedy Samurai. Look an amazing book,
forty Years of Blood, Guts and Laughter, a memoir by
Larry Charles, which is one of the I have almost

(01:27):
never moved through a book so quickly because I was
so fascinated here so much. You want to do an audio.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
I did an audio. Oh, I'm going to get that
to it. I have to want to you. I had
up against yes, nobody, I mean, but they wanted to
make sure that I could do it. So I had
to read a couple of pages and I got the job.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Well, I would like to give you the job of
reading a bit of a page if you will take
the assignment this water.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yes, we will get you. I will get you water.
Nice you let him read? Yes, yeah, this is I
was wondering in the middle. Maybe, but even during the
middle of this. It's the first time we've done a reading. Yeah, huh,
I feel very very privileged starting.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
From imagine you're in a little sound closset.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, that wish I was. But even okay, and how
far you want me to go?

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Well, I don't think there's a better sentence to end
on in history.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
The Yankee, the face to face or suffocating. Yes, suffocating, Okay,
it's pretty long excerpt. Go ahead. But even during the
stage scenes, I would go overboard sometimes the movie, the
comedy had to be intense and hard, and I was
determined to make the stage scenes as real and in

(02:44):
your face as the so called unstaged we're talking about Boratz.
One example was during the climax of the hotel room
portion of the naked fight. We had worked out the
choreography for the corpulent Asimat to wind up sitting on
Borat's face and trying to smother him. There was a
lot of nakedness in that room, and many discussions of

(03:06):
what body part would go where, and how that was
to be accomplished. For instance, ball placement had to be
accounted for. Sasha was understandably concerned about hygiene, specifically the
hygiene of Azamot's ass, so there were abundant wet wipes
on the scene. Sasha also realized that a wipe simply

(03:29):
wouldn't be sufficient. We came up with a way to
place a surgical mask over Sasha's face and then lower
Ozamot onto him so Sasha's facial orifices would be protected. Further,
we worked at a signal for when Sasha could no
longer breathe, he would essentially tap out if he tapped

(03:50):
three times. We were to yank Azama's Azamot off his
face immediately. But I was looking to capture that magic,
that X factor, that lightning in a bottle, and once
the mask was on and Ozamah was lowered onto him,
the cameras and I were right on top of them,
capturing the action like a live sporting event. We were

(04:12):
all on the bed, bouncing up and down, and I
was screaming to keep going, keep going. Somewhere during this
I saw Sasha tap out, but I knew he wouldn't
want to do it again and I would have to agree.
But that meant I had to be sure we had
enough footage. I knew this would be an important, one

(04:33):
of a kind moment, so I ignored the TapouT. Sasha
began to tap more furiously. He was suffocating.

Speaker 4 (04:42):
Oh my, that's the best thing I ever heard in
my life.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
That's only page one sixty three for us.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Okay, So for those of you who don't know, Larry
Charles directed one of the funniest movies ever made, Bora,
And he's talking about maybe the funniest scene in one
of the funniest movies ever made.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Maybe.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
I saw the movie with my father, who only liked
old Jack Benny movies like Like to Be or Not
to Be. That's his favorite, his favorite movie. But I'm
taking him now to see Bora, and right away he's
laughing at the Eastern European jewishness of Borat.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
And when it got I probably recognized the Hebrew.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
Absolutely, the Yiddish, and yeah, great, great great.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Meanwhile, Boor. It's totally anti submitted character.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
It's it's hilarious. It's such a great comic invention. I
have to talk to you a lot about this, but
my father was a joy in my life to see
him laugh that hard at that scene, which should in
most cases send an old man screaming from the theater.
This is too much. This is vulgar, this is it.

(05:53):
But it was so vulgar that it transcends vulgarity.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
It did it, You didn't the alternate title for Larry's book, transcending.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
That you never really, Yes, you saw as butt, but
you never. It wasn't graphic in the way that lots
of things are graphic. It was still somehow innocent in
its playfulness and outrageous it was. It's truly a work
of genius that that bit, and then that that it

(06:26):
extends out into running down the hall the elevator.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
There happened to be people in the elevator when we
ran in.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Well.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
You know, my mother was very proud, and she was like,
you have a movie coming out. Yeah, I'm gonna take
She was living at Boyton Beach. Yes, and I'm gonna
take all the girls from the Module. No, and I'm
gonna take them. We're gonna be the first ones online.
And I'm saying, Ma, you know you'll be the scourge
of the condo if you bring your friends to see
this movie. Would not do that. And she's like, Oh,

(06:53):
don't be silly, don't be silly. And she went and
she brought all her friends, probably twenty people early special
to see The earth Bird Special and they all loved it.
And that's what we kind of knew it was going
to be a hit because people like your dad and
my mom, even my daughters. You know, everybody loved that movie.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
It's undeniable. The movie is undeniably funny. I can still
watch it over and over from the first notes of music.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yes that.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
You're like, it's already hilarious.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
Yes, I watched it last night, you did.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
I'm always afraid with something you love that much, is
it going to hold up?

Speaker 3 (07:31):
It gets better and better. It's just unbelievable. So that's
One of the keys, though, is the the opening, the
music and the Lobo that made people. That was the
greatest icebreaker for a movie. So people were laughing already
before they even saw a Borat.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
Well, you're coming in. For those of you who knew
the character from his show, Yes, there was always a
Borat segment in the l G Show, the show which
was always my favorite. And now you've given the the
reins to this maniac. Yes, and it's gonna and here's
his world. Yes, and it couldn't have been better. I'm

(08:08):
gonna jump around on the subject. But he has said
he's not gonna do more Borat movies because the he's
known by too many people and so he can't have
that relationship with strangers that he had. So right, But
my feeling is the character is so good that who

(08:32):
cares that some of the funniest stuff in Borat is scripted? Anyway,
That's very true, and it was exactly.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
He's no pranking anybody until he gets out, until they
get out into the mortgage convention.

Speaker 4 (08:43):
Yes, which you can still Yeah, it's still a naked
guy running through your thing.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
You could stay. You're right, You're right, I agree with you.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
He could be inspector plusau in different adventures that are scripted.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Why not do you please talk to him? Or you
don't talk to him any We don't talk anymore? Part
of the book too.

Speaker 4 (09:01):
Oh right, Yeah, but I agree with you.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
Though I do agree with you, there was no reason
we thought about a sequel at the time. He was
absolutely aghast at the very idea of doing the sequel
at that time. And then years and years went by.
By that time, we weren't talking anymore. He did that
one a few years again. Yes, but I agree with you.
I mean, to me, he is a comic genius. I
absolutely I believe that more than anybody standing right next

(09:28):
to him for so long. He could do all kinds
of things. He has to sort of discipline himself to
give that kind of performance, learn lines, staging, hitting marks,
stuff like that. If he could do that kind of stuff,
he could do anything he wants. He's a Peter Sellers
level talent.

Speaker 4 (09:44):
Absolutely, That's why I mentioned that. But listen, it could
still be loosely written. Yes, and you have good actors
like on Curb who can improvise with him.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Great.

Speaker 4 (09:56):
By the way, the audience probably wouldn't know who's real
and who's not. They don't borrow, they don't they don't
know that Pam Anderson is in on it.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
Right, that's right. It doesn't really matter if if like
you said, if it transcends in some way and people
just are erupting with laughter. They don't care what the
reality is anymore. They just care that it's funny.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
Let's get him on the phone. Let's get it, because
I think the world needs this character. It's his best invention.

Speaker 3 (10:22):
It's very interesting, isn't that. I mean, because you're tapping
into that innocence too. That was the thing that really
made people love him. Despite the anti semitism, despite the
fact he's a rapist, he's incestuous. All those things are true,
and yet make him sound like.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
It because in on the joke that he's satirized and
anything that right.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
We know the audience knows, and they accept it. They
are willing to roll with that. They were from the
very beginning of the movie, from the screaming music and
the logo, people were ready to get Jeller coaster.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yes, and he's skewering, yes, the real racism. And rightly,
let me ask you about this. When you're making David
I'm so sorry for this is my like it's a
religion with me, there is, and maybe this goes to
why you don't talk anymore. And I never want to
say anything negative about anybody or anything.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Which makes you very different from Larry.

Speaker 4 (11:20):
However, however, there's moments in the movie that are a
little mean spirited to me, Yes, where he is going
after someone who did him no wrong, and for instance,
destroying his shop while the guy watches.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
I mean it's not nice, yes, laughing, because I have
a certain degree of sadism in me.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
You like that well, I felt the guilt, yes.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
At the same time I found it hilarious. That was
my dichotomy in making the movie. Quite often was oh
my god, this poor guy. But he would be compensated afterwards.
We don't know that, Yes, I know, but I knew yes,
so I felt justified on some level. So you're paying
for everything you broke right exactly, And I think the
justification was a short shot of a Confederate flag outside

(12:12):
the store, which made him fair game. Even that maybe
was you know, not enough really to destroy the store,
because they did seem like sort of innocent people. And
there were times when I had moral quandaries about what
we were doing. But I felt like in it it
was going to be funny, and I had a kind
of like a sort of a tunnel vision about getting

(12:34):
the funniest thing I possibly could on film and sort
of looking past my own limitations, my own barricades, my
own boundaries, and pushing past that and seeing what would happen.
And sometimes you were in this kind of morally ambiguous
area you want.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
But because he's heroic in his hilarity, I want him
to be perfect. Yes, I wanted him not to go
over that said, we just happened to be sitting under
a poster of Pee wee right, who is the ultimate
innocent yes, and who I love as well, and you
don't have that He would never go there. But Sasha,
I feel, has no problem going Yes.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Sasha is a little more sadistic maybe than Paul Rubens was,
and even more than I was, and his writers were
probably more sadistic than either he or I, so they
wanted to often go for it, and we did have
these kind of talmudic discussions.

Speaker 4 (13:26):
It is though, it goes to character and absolutely and
message and ethics, and if ninety nine percent of your
movie is inclusive comedy. Yes, and one percent is exclusive Haha,
screw that guy, that's right, you hurt your character.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Yes, it's true. Well, that was that was the risk
at the time that we were doing it. We recognized
there were times when you had a person and you
were kind of punching down maybe yes, or you were
going for an easier laugh, yes, And that was kind
of a constant talmudic dialogue that we had about is
this worth doing? Are we going to get enough payoff
from this? Is it funny enough to justify possibly, you know,

(14:08):
kind of evading that moral boundary, you know. So that
was a very serious philosophical discussion that we often had.
I mean, look that took place on Seinfeld too, you know,
and on Curb as well. There were times when Larry
behaves really badly and I was be disturbed, and he
usually was not as disturbed, and he would have some
kind of rationalization or on Seinfeld we would like do

(14:31):
something with a handicap person, you know. We did it
on Curb as well, but we sort of justified it,
We rationalized it, and I came to a conclusion that
it was usually okay, you know, and that people would
accept it and not take it to heart so much,
you know, because it was funny, different characters very much,
right much, but it is a laundry. I don't know

(14:53):
if you had this same problem on Ray, but on
Seinfeld and Curb this was also a conversation that we
had quite often, the right to do this? Is this funny?
Does this go too far? Is this? Is this really
a good laugh? You know, there's a good laugh and
a bad laugh, you know, And sometimes things were like
on that, on that line, blurring that line, and you

(15:13):
would take that risk and see if it worked out.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
I think if you as opposite ends of the spectrum
of extremely funny people.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
I've ever met, there's a lot of we have a
lot of overlaps.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
And Larry is one of my comedy heroes for his
body work, and we were going to work together on something,
and I still think we should. I would love to
know men who can?

Speaker 3 (15:46):
Who can? Should we tell the people what we were
going to do? Sure? The action Bronson and I was
trying to I couldn't remember what made it fall apart.
I think I know what tell me? Tell me?

Speaker 4 (15:58):
So here's the premise. The premise was, you know who
action Bronson is? He does a He does a food
show called Fuck That's Delicious, which is a little bit
the opposite of my show, although although he gets as.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
Enthusiastic maybe as I do.

Speaker 4 (16:11):
But he's a wonderful, big, bigger than life character. He's
a large white rapper who has an enormous following, and
he's street smart and street funny. And he married I think,
a woman from Columbia. Yes, yes, she didn't want to

(16:31):
live in the city anymore. She wanted to live in
the suburbs. So right away we go, that's funny. Let's
do a reality series and put him in different situations
in the suburbs and script it lightly and and you know,
put him in situations.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
He was on board.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
Everything going great, and then here's how it fell apart.
He decided he doesn't want to move to the suburbs.
He's not going And we looked at each other and said,
we don't have a show.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeh, that's it. Show he was already doing.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
It was going to be a kind of modern Green Acres.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes, right, fish out of water, perfect, perfect, classic thing.
You know. That's the thing about the naked fight. Also,
I think that that even though there were there was nakedness.
There was a there's a classic there's a classic quality
to that comedy as well, which your dad. You talked
about Jack Benny. Your dad responded to, you know, I mean,
I think people have forgotten that so funny is funny

(17:28):
You ask people about Jack Benny today and they don't know.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
And I think was one of the most modern of
all the great old comedians. There's a lot of old
comedy doesn't really kill me, but Jack Benny.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
I found him well.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
Conan has been completely influenced by Jack. Conan is all
self deprecating and and hysterical. You know, he's got these traits,
his vanity and everything. For those who don't know, Jack Benny,
uh nebishy looking guy with glasses, considered himself really handsome.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
He was really cheaply because that was his things. And
he's thirty nine years old. He was always always thirty nine.

Speaker 4 (18:07):
He's gonna play the violin badly because he knows he's
great and he's just and his timing. Everything about him
was amazing.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
I mean that great line about the guy holds him
up your money and your life long pause on the
radio first, yeah, and he says, I'm thinking I'm thinking,
yeah he was he like had he had it? He
was great. But they also broke the fourth wall, those people,
Jack Benny, George Burns. Yes, they had those TV shows
where they would talk to the camera. But it was

(18:41):
kind of radical really in a way too at that time. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but people don't know. I was gonna say, Johnny Carson
was also influenced by Jack Benny, and people have started
to forget Johnny Carson also, you know, which seems insane. David,
what are you gonna do about this? Well, what could
you do?

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Well, No, it's funny when you said, I'm thinking that
that great line. I wonder if, like the kid in
you who loved great comedians, when you have a line
that enters public consciousness, like not, that's not that there's
anything wrong with that, Like that is a line that
to me says so much about like even what's going
on in our culture right now, like the battle between

(19:23):
woke and non woke, Like it is literally it crystallizes
like exactly the sort of cultural hot points that allowed
the son of Fred Trump to do a lot of
things in this world.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Well, it taps into something that both Phil and I know,
which is the x factor of comedy, like why why
did that catch on? Why is something a hits? Why
do people connect? It's a mystery it is it is.
You could you could analyze, or you could break it down,
but in the end, it is a mystery. We really
don't know what it is. That line came out of desperation,

(19:57):
you know, we could not do that show without how
having some line that allowed them to make these kind
of jokes and then they could back off the joke
by having not that there's anything wrong with that, and
that kind of saved that episode. But there was no
thought of like that's going to be a catchphrase or
people are going to be saying that thirty years from now,
none of that at all. That was a shock, you know.

(20:18):
There was no way to predict that, no way to
predict this show's going to be a hit. It's still
going to be talked about years later. There's no real understanding,
no logic. Yeah, and that's what's kind of the beauty
of it too.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
My favorite Seinfeld stuff, and tell me if you agree,
having worked on the show extensively, is the relatable things
that the Larry and Jerry's sensibility as observational comedians the

(20:50):
stuff of life.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, that's like when you say that line.

Speaker 4 (20:56):
Yeah, not that there's anything wrong with that. We all
relate to it because we know we have to be
politically correct. Yes exactly, it's a that line is about
being politically correct.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
How how.

Speaker 4 (21:11):
Almost bullshitty? We all are right right that we have
this panacea to say, yeah, okay, and I'll go one
step further in my favorite uh stuff about Seinfeld. I
might have said this an other podcast that we've done.
To me, the strongest episodes were when all four characters

(21:32):
were relating to the single story.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yes, tough to do, as you know, that's that's a
tough one to accomplish. But yes, they had a kind
of a unified theme to it.

Speaker 4 (21:43):
Everybody was kind of waiting at the Chinese resime, Yes,
the contest.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
And I would say waiting at the Chinese rest In
some ways it is one of the most brilliant episodes.
It is, but you can't do it all the time.
You can't do we need a story sometimes exactly, and
that was we had a big argument at that time
about there's no story, you know. To me, it was
like a Becket play it you know, only is.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Four Jews in a restaurant, you know, or a parking garage,
in a parking garage, or like you say, the contest.
Everybody was unified in that as well. Yeah, those are
brilliant episodes. And that's Larry David. That's Larry David's sensibility,
not even Jerry so much. Jerry understood how brilliant it was.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
He got it. He knew that that was something brilliant
because there really was a contest Larry. A lot of people,
you know, like Jason would come up early in the
show and go, look at this stuff, and nobody would
ever do this in a million years, And Larry would go,
I did it, you know, and things like the contest
were examples of that. He really had. He had a
contest with the real Cramer, you know, where they can

(22:44):
go the longest a masturbation contest phenomenal.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
First of all, the subject matter, of course, is hilarious
and edgy and great.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
And no notes and finding a way to do it
on no notes.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
By that time, no notes would know.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
There's no words said, there's no you know. It's like
the language was master of my domain. Those language things
were also kind of brilliant.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
It's the best to say it without saying it, but
then tell me how you felt about this. I felt
that the show started veering into almost too much story,
meaning all four characters had their own story that in
a convoluted meta way, meaning we're commenting on the ridiculousness

(23:31):
of the sitcom. Yes, all four stories meet up at
the end in a crazy way.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Well, I think the show I was gone. I left.
I reached a certain point creatively, which is the reason
I left. Yeah, because I felt like, well, I feel
like I've hit a creative wall here. And that's part
of the reason why you saw that starting it was
it was becoming external. Yes, the show was a very
internal show. It was about that was inside the desires

(23:58):
and cravings, Yes, inside these characters that drove them to
do terrible things sometimes, yes, that were funny. But eventually
the people writing the show, who were great writers, amazing writers,
but they did not have that inside of them as
much as like Larry David did or I did this
kind of like problem, you know, this damage that we

(24:19):
had inside of us that allowed us to come up
with those stories. They had to externalize those things and
they became more plotty as opposed to character driven. And
I agree that was one of the things. I think
that changed the tone of the show a little bit.
Not that the audience necessarily noticed, you know, the audience
still watched.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
But they noticed enough to reject the finale, which was
so meta. Yes it went over their heads, yes, yes,
and get.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
It by that time. And again, comedy people like yourself
also saw that shift take place, you know. So it's true,
and I don't think I don't think those episodes are
as beloved as the earlier episodes in some ways because
of that.

Speaker 4 (24:58):
Well, when we we you miss Larry's hand in it
very much, I mean.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
Get idiosyncratic and unique. That taking away his voice changed that.
That's the reason why everybody became much more And I
was gone before he was. But that's why I think
the writers became more desperate to try to find story
rather than what's inside of George. You know, they kind
of reached George's limits of what was inside of him,

(25:24):
and they had to start externalizing circumstances to put George
into it.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
Reading the book, I have a and I thought a
lot about Seinfeld, written a lot about Seinfeld. I have
a different view of how it got so great. In
part I always think I had the idea of the
Lennon and McCartney, of Jerry and Larry, Larry being the Lenin.
But what I realized is, I think very crucial was

(26:02):
and I didn't realize how you were sort of a
three way machine early on in terms of those early times.
And I think it's like, it's like Lennon McCartney and
you were Bukowski. It was like that was that the
sort of and you read the book and you look
at a lot of your work, the dark ride, the
sort of wild element, the sort of radical element to

(26:25):
it all that I think a lot of it came
from you, at least that's my When I look at
some of those episodes, I see some of the real
interesting dark undercurrents.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
Well. A couple of things. One is I used to
compare myself and this is maybe a little pretentious to
George Harrison in that situation, because I felt John, they
were John and Paul, They're the greatest songwriters in the world.
And I'm here and I do have my ideas, but
you could maybe get one song on the album, right,
you know, And so over time I was feeling that
kind of desire to break out a little bit, which

(27:00):
eventually I did. But the show itself, also, the original
version of the show was much more traditional sitcom. It
was much more like the you know, the apartment. Kramer
would come in, he would do his bit and leave,
And the idea of expanding on that really was partially
my responsibility because I felt like Kramer was an underused character.

(27:24):
I felt that he was untapped, you know, and I
knew the real Kramer, Kenny Kramer. Did you know Kenny Kramer? Nope, Yeah,
he was Larry's next door abel.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
I took his tour. I actually on that tour.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
He's a very eccentric guy himself, very different than Michael, yes,
you know. And I knew Michael's potential, Michael's ferocious potential
as a comedian himself, and I felt like this is
a character that I could express myself through and that
helped kind of expand the show, you know. And I
think that same thing happened with Julia, because again I've

(27:59):
talked about this before and it's somewhat controversial, but we
didn't know how to write women, you know, we just
didn't know how to write women. And eventually Julia came
in and she was kind of upset because she was
being underused and she was like weeping. She felt so
strongly about it, and we felt so guilty and we
knew she was right, and we were trying to figure

(28:22):
out again talking about externalizing things we couldn't. We really
didn't know how to write women to make them funny,
and it was kind of an issue at that time.
The Carol le for on staff none at that point.
Carol Lef didn't come along until years later, but she
was loosely based on Carol Well partially Carol, partially Elaine Pope,

(28:44):
who was written on Fridays. He was very close with
Larry and me, so there was a few different people
that Elaine was a compositive but again we did not
have stories for her. We really didn't. She was like
a supporting player. And then she came in saying, you're
not taking advantage of me, and we knew this was true.
We knew how talented she was and we were limited

(29:08):
just as humans. This season one, this is like season yeah,
I guess, so whatever season one is considered, you know, right, Yeah,
the first thirteen episodes, I think, and we have the
idea of giving Julia, giving Elaine one of the we
had numerous George stories and we had no Elaine stories.

(29:29):
So we gave and this was the kind of the
genius move for a bunch of guys that didn't really
know how to write a woman. We gave Julia Elaine
one of Georgia's stories, and we said, let's see how
she does. Let's see how this character does with the
same neurosis, the.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
Same darkness, because it turns out women are people.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
That's right, women are people. Would you say that again?

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Which in our lives, I mean, we all had women
in our lives from our mothers and our wives and
all that kind. But writing something funny, that's another leap
that we had not taken at that point. And once
we did that, we saw, first of all, Julia of course,
had this range that had not been tapped into at all,
and she was not afraid to look bad or be

(30:14):
you know, vain or petty or whatever the things were
that made up her character eventually, but also that there
was like there was enough derosis inside of that character
to start exploring that, and that opened up that liberated Kramer,
taking Kramer out of the usual traditional neighbor thing and

(30:35):
taking Julia out of the traditional supporting player. Thing really exploded,
the show really liberated the show. And those were lucky
things that happened again out of desperation, as you know,
you're desperately trying to write scripts for the next week,
and this is how that show evolved and just happened
to tap into something. Yeah, exactly, very very lucky. You

(30:58):
did it so well with Darvis Roberts and Patricia Heaton.
I mean you had you had no problem doing it. Actually,
it seems all.

Speaker 4 (31:05):
We were doing was it's taking dictation at home.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Right right, you know.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
And and when you start to see the actor's strength, like,
oh my god, she can cry funny, now you got,
Now you got Mary Tyler Moore, now you can exactly
she's just not the straight man for the rest of
the family.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
And what if you start exploring her being wrong about
something right and being a vain or petty also, that's
that's everything.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
They were modern characters though too. Yes, the characters on
your show, like on Side for were very modern characters
because even Mary Tyler Moore was a dignified She was funny,
she was great, it was breakthrough, but it was very dignified.
Always dignify you know what I mean, Whereas whereas the
characters on your show are on sidefa like they were

(31:58):
willing to be undigniant five you know, and all right,
there's a kind of almost a Lucy strain to that
as well. Yes, so this, if you start to trace
it that way, you start to see the influences.

Speaker 4 (32:10):
Yeah, and people think that, oh, this is a modern
like you said, a modern woman. But you go back
to uh, the Honeymooners. Yes, she's given it right back
to him. She's the boss of that house. And that
was a great character, right, Yes, she's not here's your lunch, honey,
that's right, She's like, get it yourself. Yeah, and call

(32:33):
him fat and everything. It's fantastic.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:35):
Yes, she was a female character. Yes, yes, Lucy strong
female character. Yes, yes, she's in it for her.

Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah. Even though the only difference I would say is
that those were once they once they discovered that, once
you discovered who Ralph Krammed, his wife was like, well
you know what she was like Archie Meadows, And once
you discovered what Lucy was like, they pretty much stuck
to the formula. You know, Lucy wanted to be in
show business. It was a good letter so she was

(33:03):
going to sneak around him somehow and try to do it,
and that became like twenty years worth of shows. They
really did that for a long time. Whereas with us
we had we could rely on that formula again and
again and again. We had to expand those characters. We
had to keep finding new stuff for them, and that
was the challenge of sitcoms in the nineties, I think,
to some degree, was to keep it somewhat. You know,

(33:24):
don't veer too far from you've cracked the code, don't
veer too far from it, but you can't just repeat it.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
But one way it did veer that I don't think
you were as comfortable with, and ultimately may have been
part of why you left, is the show began to
reflect the economic circumstances of the people making it. Is
that fair to say that when they started going to
the Hampton's, you know, it didn't quite speak to you.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Their problems changed. It's sort of the same probably when
the writing, when we started having a writing staff, which
we hadn't had really at that point. It was just
really Larry, Jerry and myself. Eventually there was a couple
of other writers, but then eventually once I left and
then Larry left, they hired like writers who were all
again top notch writers, but they had gone to Harvard.

(34:11):
Their parents were doctors and lawyers. Yes, they came for
Their problems were different. You know, they didn't have to
worry about paying rent, they didn't have to worry about
how they were going to get by, and so suddenly
shows were more about affluence than they were about the
working class. And that did shift the show. And I
didn't feel as comfortable with that sort of humor as

(34:34):
what became the prevalent thing on that show in some ways,
and I think that did change things for me a bit.
They wanted to write what they knew, and that's one
of the problems, that's right, that's.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
Once you've had success, now you're writing about success.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
You're made yes, yes, exactly, And that's what happened on
that show to some degree. And that was another thing
that kind of shifted it. You're a limo driver, that's right,
all that kind of stuff, right, instead of like stealing
the limo, yeah, which is an episode that I yeah,
they would have the limo yeah, exact right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
Raymond he was he was a sports writer for a
major newspaper. But we played it down. We didn't talk
about the money he had. Money was never an issue.
Middle class, middle class, middle class, that's it. We're not
because it can't be about that. Nobody wants to see

(35:25):
a show about money.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
Well, it's funny because Larry on Curb also played broke
that mold absolutely because they know him as rich on
the show, like everybody in the audience knows he's a
wealthy guy. So he had to kind of go offset
that by being disparaging about everything and that and that

(35:49):
formula kind of worked, you.

Speaker 4 (35:50):
Know, absolutely, But that show is about that, is everything
and is still the most miserables.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Which again, if you look back to trace it to me,
I've said this many times, it's the closest thing to w. C.
Fields that I that I had ever seen. He was
like a misanthrope, you know, and but he's a missingthrope,
was put upon by everybody, you know, and that's and
w C. That's why to me, I don't know if
you've watched any w C. Fields recently watched The Bank

(36:17):
Dick or something. It holds up because it's attitude. It's
not you know, the Marx Brothers. I loved as a kid,
and it's still clever. But it's a lot of puns
and jokes and things like that, and it's a little
corny at times.

Speaker 1 (36:31):
But W. C.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Fields remains modern because it's all about his attitude. He
doesn't have jokes. He just has an attitude that is
hilarious and relevant. That's right. So that is something that
that attitude really kind of like survives, whereas jokes kind
of get old after a while, and that may be

(36:52):
a little difference in the universe.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Speaking about the mythanthropic side of things, I should say
that having Phil's about to read this book, I have
burned through it. It is great, a great read. And
I would also say to quote Bruce Springsteen, who I
found out he went running with Fairfox Yes around the
track once. He'll tell me about that, but I will

(37:29):
say this is a dark ride, and.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
I don't know. It's dark.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
And one of the things that's interesting you call it
comedy Samurai, which I wanted to ask you about because
the interesting is one of the characters you meet and
one who comes off better than most. Even though it
was not a fun project for you. Nick Cage is
one of the only other people who ever referred to
himself as a samurai to me, but what he and
when I was around the time of adaptation, I was

(37:53):
writing about a rolling stone and he said something about
the guy as him about something in his family, and
he said, I can't talk about it because I'm a
good samurai, by which he meant I don't speak of
the honor code. But this book, I think you're it's
You're very honorable, but you are very unsparing about yourself, yes,
and about a lot of other people. And I wonder,

(38:16):
as a result, have anybody, anybody who you've fallen out
with and don't talk to anymore, anyone called you up?
Has it brought you together with anyone? Or has it
created any new people who won't have some threats on
the phone when people hang up.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
No, no, nothing, I haven't got I mean, my approach
to this was I'm gonna be I'm gonna be honest
about everything, you know, to a fault. I want to
be honest. But if I'm going to say, if I'm
gonna say honest things about Sasha or Larry or whoever
whom I love, and I'm very clear that I love
them and honor them and admire them, but I also

(38:48):
had these issues with them. I have to be honest
about myself as well, and I felt that balanced it
out as long as I was telling the truth about myself,
not putting myself on a pedestal and judging them, but
going if they if they did something. I also want
you to know I was bad too. I did some
things that I regret that I'm sorry about that I've

(39:09):
I've hurt people in real life, you know, and I
felt like I need to talk about that. If I'm
going to talk about these other.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
People, have you heard from them about how they feel about.

Speaker 3 (39:18):
Well, my daughters, I want to you know, like, for instance,
my kids, I want to be I was very kind of,
you know, worried about how they would react to the book.
You know, I talk about the problems of my first
marriage and things like that, and I'm close with my
kids and you know, kind of walk them through, particularly
my oldest daughter, who was a producer on Real Housewives

(39:38):
of Beverly Hills, so she's used to conflict, even though
she's the least Real Housewives you could imagine. But I
wanted them to feel okay about me being dishonest about
things and not going out of my way to hurt people.
You know, I tried to be honest without going out
of my way to hurt people, and I pulled back

(39:58):
in a certain situations. Rather than just being I didn't
want to be nasty. I didn't want to be random
in my in my in my honesty. I wanted it
to have some sort of point that was larger than
me in some way, and that was a challenge.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
I think you're generally fair and balanced to humans, maybe
not agents. I think we see that much.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
To say positive in a lot of those situations about agents. Yeah, well,
I had some you know, Arin, I had a very
long relationship with Ari Manuel that ended really poorly. A
lot of you know, That's what I'm saying. That's why
I have to take responsibility. A lot of my relationships
end poorly, really know. Yeah, and maybe we shouldn't work together,

(40:42):
that's true. I'm warning you now, I'm putting. I'm putting
I think it would happen. I like you. I agree,
and I'm actually see myself as a very easy going,
collaborative person.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
It's everyone else, yes, but but Ari.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
I think you know, Ari and I had some know,
ultimate issues towards the end of our relationship that were problematic,
and I talk about that in the book pretty extensively.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
And you know, it's it's really powerful anyone who thinks
they want to get into show business. It's a really
good look out the good, the good, the bad, and
the ugly, and even like the economic Like there's a
little real talk because in a certain way, and I've
seen it in my own weird career because I sort
of came out of journalism and ended up working on
some a lot of TV. And you see, like when

(41:31):
there's money to be divided, people behave interesting.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Right, it changes people, you know. And now it doesn't
always change people for the worse, but it will change people.
I mean, you can't not these external factors here. Your
environment is nature and nurture, you know, and you are
who you are when you come to that place where
you start making money. But having that money subtly can
change things. And I saw it happened, not just with
like Larry and people like that, but I, you know,

(41:56):
I worked with David Steinberg. I used to write material
for David Steinberg that he did on The Tonight Show
and stuff, and he and he worked with Burt Reynolds.
He was a partner of Burt Reynolds's right, and he
would say to me, you know, Burt Reynolds has no
idea what a loaf of bread costs in the store,
and we would laugh. And then he eventually became that person,
and then I eventually became that person too, you know.

(42:19):
So it happens, It really does happen. It sneaks up
on you.

Speaker 4 (42:22):
Success allows you to be the person you want to be, right,
It releases, releases the hounds of person.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Exactly, and there are hounds inside of us. We do
have our demons. And so even though the angels may
come out, the gams may come out too.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
Yes, but if you if I think I always felt
that if you're lucky enough to be successful in any field,
especially show business, shouldn't it make you nicer?

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Shouldn't it make you happier? It makes sense, it makes sense,
But it doesn't work that way, as we know. And
I remember many people will come up to Larry once
the show got successful, se felt they and they would
say things like are you happy? Happy now? And he
would go, no, I'm still being It's like when he
won the Emmy. Yeah, and he said this is well
and good. I'm still bald. One of the best lines. Yeah,

(43:09):
great line. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (43:11):
Ray says he's still neurotic, the same neurotic guy he
always was, but now instead of thinking my taxi driver
hates me, my limo driver hates me exactly.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
Well, it's interesting, like in terms of collaborators, like you
also worked with my greatest hero, the only artist I
ever named one of my sons after Bob Dylan, who
I've had experience with him where I got to collaborate
with him for a day, and your book plays out
what I experienced, which was like, he is not a

(43:46):
disappointment in any I He is literally as interesting, brilliant, nonlinear, exciting,
and I just want I wondered, like, uh, you know,
he's also be very private. I wondered, what was it
like writing about Massed Anonymous, which I have still never
seen the three and a half hour version.

Speaker 3 (44:07):
Right, No, very few people have our Immanuel is one
of the few people that Tenny hated it. It was
an adventure every day working with Bob don I mean,
I couldn't believe it. I would like, I couldn't believe
I would be in the room this far away from
amazing and writing with him, and I got to a
point where even when I could say to him, Bob,
he had a line. He came in with a line.
One day, we worked behind this coffee house that he owned.

(44:31):
He owned a boxing gym on Eighteenth Street in the Sound,
and we would work at a cubicle like the size
of this table in the boxing gym, like a closed
off cubicle. And he would change smoke all day and
so twelve and we'd work for like twelve hours. So
it was like a cloud of smoke in this room
and I wasn't smoking. You will live a little less long, yeah,

(44:54):
no question, But I had no idea. Is that discipline
to do that? Oh yeah? He could go all he
could have. He could go a I mean, and he
has the greatest memory. He remembers all the lyrics. If
you notice this just teleprompter in his concerts. Wow, he
remembers all the lyrics. So there's long, long songs, those songs,
you know. Yeah, I couldn't remember right one of them.
It's almost impossible. He remembers it all. He's a savant

(45:17):
on some level. Yes, that's what's going on. And I
compare him and Larry a lot of the time. Also,
because they're both savants, they may they may have been
diagnosed if they if they were being born today and
doing what they were doing, they would be diagnosed on medication.
But as it was, they would be guys sitting on
a park bench doing exactly what they're doing today. They

(45:37):
just this is what they do. If you accept it, great,
if you like it, great, If you don't like it,
there's nothing they could do about it.

Speaker 4 (45:42):
So like when I met Larry, I felt like every
line out of his mouth is an episode. Do you
feel like when you're talking to Bob Dylan that every
line out of his mouth could be a song?

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Exactly exactly. He came in one day when we were
writing this script and he had a line which I
just couldn't to understand and it was like, I ain't
a pig without a wig. And I was like, and
I had been working for a while with him at
this point, I said, Bob, I have to say, even
in this script, that's so weird. That line does not

(46:13):
make sense. I'm I'm not a pig without a wig.
I ain't no pig without a wig. That's the line.
I'm trying to understand it right now. Yeah. I tried
to understand too, And believe me, I had to try
to understand a lot of lines, which wound up being
incredible poetry. That line kind of like sort of hit
me in the head.

Speaker 4 (46:32):
I couldn't I am a pig with a wig.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Maybe, so maybe I'm not fooling anybody.

Speaker 4 (46:37):
I'm just a pig with a wig. Yes, maybe, so
this is the artistic way of saying that.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
Yeah, he would just he would just have a line
on a little scrap of paper like that, you know,
And I said, no, one is going to understand that line. Yeah,
And he would say he said, what's so bad about
being misunderstood? Oh? And I was like, wow, that is heavy.
You know. It's like everybody's trying to be understood. He's
been understand He's interested in what happens after you've been understood,

(47:03):
when you've been misunderstood, what happens as a result of that.
And that's kind of like the Andy Kaufman thing also,
which I talk about in the book, like what happens
when people don't laugh? He was interested in like that. Yes,
he wanted to know what happens when people aren't laughing.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
Every interview with Brando was he made it up, yeah,
to keep himself entertained.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
That's right, that's right, very similar, I think again, another
very unique personality Brando. So yeah, Bob Dylan was every day.
It was like a learning experience.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Right around a similar era. I had a meeting with
him where I was supposed to write a treatment for
him about an idea he had, which imagine writing a
treatment for him, and I learned a few things. A.
He's not only the greatest genius of all time, he
is still in some level a nice old Jewish man.
Because he had cookies, black and white cookies wrapped up
for my bait, my kids who were just babies, you know.

(47:56):
We called down to the front desk and got a
deli to bring some cook He's from them, a nice
old Jewish man that his his thought process is literally
not like anyone else as I've ever met. The leaps
he took. It was such that on my best focused
day of we spent like four hours in a room together,

(48:16):
except when Kevin Spacey called and I had to take
the call and took the call. He tod them, you
take that call from Kevin Spacey. That was when you
still took his call. But but the non linear thing
was I've never had this experience where I had to
drive home, stay up all night and process what he
was saying, and maybe then I got eighty percent of it. Yeah,

(48:37):
because I think I do think he has a kind
of genius that it does not follow a to b
like his memoir, even like you're which again, I don't
want to bother you about Bob Dylan all day. But
your memoir, Interestingly, when I read it, I'm like, going, Okay,
where's the child? As a as a reader of memoirs
and biographies, I sort of always I tend to skip

(48:59):
child And the weird thing is on your book, I
didn't have to because you skipped childhood.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
I didn't skip it though. Actually I heard, okay, tell
us what it really hot. I wrote the original draft
of this book was over a thousand pages long, and
the first half was about my childhood and my father,
who was a failed comedian.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Can you please tell phil his stage The.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
Stage name was Psycho the Exotic Neurotic. Wow, and he's
psycho I think it was s y and then ce
you know, yeah, And he was a failed comedian and
a failed actor, and he was an enamerative show business.
So I wrote like five hundred pages on my very
surreal childhood and then it was a thousand page book.

(49:40):
And they said you can't publish a thousand page book,
and I said, why not? You know, like Bobie Dick.
I was trying to give them examples, and they were like,
just a different Dick. They would laugh. Yeah. And then
Barbara Streisand's book came out, which was a thousand pages
and she's a big star, and the book bombed. And
I said, see that's what a thousand page book doesn't
help our Yeah, yeah, okay, she's on. You could ask her.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
You said, look, she wrote, and you're forcing them to say,
you're not exactly.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
They had to say that to me. And so we decided,
rather than cutting it down chapter by chapter, I would
just take the first five hundred pages out start on Fridays.
That's a big cut. Yeah, that was a big cut.
But I have another book.

Speaker 4 (50:22):
There you go, and so that this does well, right,
that'll get to do that.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (50:26):
But even if it doesn't, you're gonna you're gonna do
that book.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
Yes, book will come out, yes, definitely. And it's a
really that's really fun also. I mean, that's a very
interesting book.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
Is there stuff that, oh you did say you had
to cut back on certain things. There's certain stories, yes,
that you thought were too much. Yeah, so we'd like
you to tell those here, right of course, I understand.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
I wish I could tell you all the stuff that's
in the first half of the book, because that's a
lot of that is fun. I mean, my father would
take me. He went to American Academy of Dramatic Arts
on the GI Bill and Jason Robars was just teaching
another person, who remember, and a lot of those guys
stayed in show business even though they didn't become actors,

(51:06):
and so he stayed friendly with a lot of these
people and they worked on TV shows. So he would
take me, for instance, to the Exsulivant Show rehearsals.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
Which was for kids today, like that was as big
as Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
It was, you know, And he would take me, like
every few weeks we would go and just sit in
the audience at the rehearsals, and my father was enamorative
stars and the glamour and the glits. But I was
seeing for the first time the cameras and how what
it takes to make a TV show, and I was
absolutely transfixed by that. With the I remember seeing Diana,

(51:40):
Diana Ross and the Supremes, Jackie Mason. I never saw
the Beatles, which I regretted, but I don't think we
were allowed in for the Beatles.

Speaker 4 (51:48):
Did all the musical sing live on the show?

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yes, yes, I think so. I mean I can't say
for sure. Yeah, yeah, it was were singing live. Yeah,
it was great. It was It was a great experience.
And he would stop, you know, if he saw a
celebrity on the street, he would stop them and start
talking to them. And so I remember as a little
kid in Manhattan, he'd be holding my hand and he'd

(52:11):
be talking to Tom Poston people like that.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
You know, now your name drop.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
Yeah, And it was like that really, And he was
more concerned that I knew the dialogue from Public Enemy
or White Heat, not the group, not the rap group Enemy,
you mean movie Public Enemy with Jimmy Cagney, than math
or science or stuff like that. So I have I
have like a trivia, a mind of trivia that's I'm
filled up with because he planted an inmate.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
He's saying, you're saying he didn't care if you did
well in school.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Attention to any of that. He really wasn't and he
was starting to drift himself at a certain point. By
the time my brother was like three years younger, got
was born, my father was I was lucky. I got
the best of my father because he was enthusiastic. He
was really into being a dad at that time. Yeah,
he loved taking me to the movies and to these rehearsals.

(53:03):
We lived down the street from the Craft Music Hall
the NBC studio on Avenue M and he would take
me here. The lighting director was a buddy of his,
so we'd watch those like Don Rickles kind of rehearsals.
So I saw all And there was a place called
Cookies which was across the street, which was like a
steakhouse that we would go to. The three of us,

(53:23):
my mother and he and I and Groucho Marx would
be there. Yes, wait, I met when I was a
little kid. You remember that, Yes, I do. I was
told that. I was told that because there was a
back room and I was known as the wandering Jew
and as a little kid, and I wandered into the
back room when they found me, I was on Groucho
Marx's what lap what? Yes? So all I had like,

(53:46):
do you remember things he said to you? No? Nothing,
I was. I don't know if I remember it. I
was probably three four years old. I mean I wasn't.
I wasn't even old enough to remember stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
You know, you have to buy Comedy Samurai.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
If there's two books you're going to buy this year.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
My two, the two greatest.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
Page turners were the Peter Wolf book, which I think
I heard that is crazy story.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Yeah, you know he is waking up at the movie
theater as a little kid, and it's having his head
on the shoulder on the lap of Marilyn Monroe.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
I mean, oh my god. And he married Dunaway story.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
But I'm saying, if you have a late summer beach read,
you need Tommy Samurai and Peter Wolf's I will read.
There's one story about your dad that I don't know
if I heard you tell it on podcast or if
it's in the book.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
The photo with Jerry, Yeah, which is a revealing And
he had no interest in my career. He was very
he got very competitive with me sort of, and he
was uncomfortable and he never wouldn't mention anything about this
is as you're working on the show. Yeah, working and
starting to have success. Yeah, he just didn't really. I
won an Emmy and he called me up and said, wow,

(54:57):
you look fat. You know. That was his line to
me when I won to Emmy.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
That's not as charming as the Larry David Lyne right exactly.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
But then he he when Seinfeld got successful, he came
out to California with his wife at the time, and
he's like, look, I have to have a picture with
Jerry Seinfeld. And I said, Dad, I don't do stuff
like that. I don't ask for favors, you know, forget
about it. I'm not taking you in. I'm not going
to ask Jerry for that favor. I don't want anybody.

(55:26):
I don't want to owe anybody. I don't you know.
I just don't want that connection. So every day for
that week he was there, he go, come on, take
me to work, give me that picture with Jerry Sidefeld.
That's what he wanted more than anything. And I really
I was kind of angry at him for his apathy,
and I refused to do it. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

(55:46):
He every day he would ask me in the morning
before I went to work, and on Friday, he's like,
come on, this is my last day. You got to
give me that picture. And he broke me down, and
I said, okay, fine, let's go. Got him in the car,
drove to Studio City and we went into the offices
and there was Jerry, who's the most genial, generous, sweet person,

(56:08):
and I go, Jerry, this is my dad. He really
wants to get a picture. He goes, of course, he
stops me. Come on, let's go outside. We'll take a picture.
Go outside. One of the writers assistants gives my father,
gives me the camera. Don's how my father's not how
to work the camera, so he gives the cab. We
give the camera to the writers assistant and as we're
getting ready, as Jerry's getting ready to take the picture
of my dad, Jerry goes, Lara, get in here with

(56:29):
the picture. Be in the picture with us, you know,
three of us. So I get into the picture, the
three of us. They take the picture, and then my
father goes, if it's all right, I just want to
get a picture just me and Jerry. So I step
I step out. They take the picture. And then about
a year later, I go to see my father in
his apartment and great neck at that time, and there

(56:50):
on the mantels the picture of him and Jerry. Oh
my god, that was my father's not at all. Wow,
that was my father. Your mother? Does your mother come
alive in the first thousand pages, Yes, very much, because
she was also like a show biz wannabe. She was
a singer. She made a little record when she was
a teenager, but was thwarted. You know, there was like

(57:15):
her parents were like, forget. They tried to thwart me,
even her my grandparents from doing this. You know. They
were like, you get to get married and have kids.
That's what you're doing. You're not going into show business.
You're not going to do that kind of stuff. And
you know, and they kind of broke her down really
and she didn't find herself until she moved to the
condos years later, and she would be the star of

(57:35):
the condo shows. Great, and she finally came alive. She
would start at Chicago, you know, and do all those
kids go see her? Oh yeah, I want to see her.
And she was like she was in heaven, you know,
she really was. I mean, that was like her. She
would dance, she would sing, she acted, she did everything
at the condos, and they were like, you know, great
audiences and it was really fun to see.

Speaker 4 (57:56):
And you stayed close to both parents to the end.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
Yeah, it was much easier to stay close to my mother.
My mother was eventually killed in a car accidently. Yeah, terrible,
terrible thing. My father was just checked out for many years,
like he just did not really communicate. It was hard
to have conversations with him. Well, he had problems obviously, yeah, Yeah,

(58:20):
and he lived in he had an apartment in Great Neck,
and my mother lived in Boyton Beach. So my mother
was like everyone ends up in Boyton Beach, remarried, My
dad remarried, and his wife and my mother died within
a couple of days of each other. So that kind
of put him out. That was it for him, and

(58:42):
he like kind of shut down after that. He lived
to be like in his nineties, but he was kind
of broken down himself. And so I was never as
close to him, you know, even though I had that
great closest when we were young. Once he once I
was an adult, it was very hard to be close
to him. My brother had the same issue. Yeah, my
mother was like a saint. My mother was such a

(59:05):
supportive person like she would. I worked on our Sineo
and I was a writer on the staff staff writer. Yes,
but she would call me and go, I don't know,
am I crazy? Or is your name a little bigger
than the other names on the credits? You know, she
would be like that kind of person, you know she
saw it was so sweet. Yeah, she was really really
sweet personal.

Speaker 4 (59:25):
I have to ask you, did you feel like you
had the same sensibility as our Sineo? Did you appreciate
his sense of humor?

Speaker 3 (59:37):
I will tell you I when I got the job,
the idea was what I pitched to him was I'd
like to write these Richard Pryor type monologue for him.
And he was really into that. And then he tried
a few things like that. And it's hard to kind
of understand the context. He was like a black star
on TV at that time. Yes, and that engendered so

(59:59):
much hate. I can't begin to if you could tell
Phil about the fan mail that he used to get.
This is before the Internet, of course, he gets stacks
of hate mail, stacks of hate mail. And I don't
mean like we don't like you, I mean like we're
gonna kill you. We're gonna come, We're waiting for you
outside the studio. We're gonna shoot you. We're gonna take
a broomstick and shove it up your you know, horrible

(01:00:21):
violent stuff that he was dealing with. And eventually he
just was like, I can't, I can't do these jokes.
So he started doing really easy you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Mean they were the male was generated from the type
of material he was doing.

Speaker 3 (01:00:33):
It was just, yes, horrible, Yes, just by being a
black guy, a successful black guy on TV. It was
unusual at that time.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
And did that affect his uh persona on TV?

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
Play? He played it way safer. I mean if he
shook hands with a white female guest, the switchboard would
light up, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
Okay, So I always thought he was somewhat mild, and
it turns out that's why. Yes, So he's funnier than
he could.

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
And a good guy. I've worked with him. He's a
great He was a good guy. Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
Oh I love hearing this because.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
It's so awful.

Speaker 4 (01:01:11):
First of all, Second of all, he's funnier. He was
funnier than he allowed himself to be.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Yeah. I think if you met him, you would think
he's a cool guy. He is a cool guy.

Speaker 4 (01:01:23):
Really the way he's funny in the Eddie Murphy movies
when he's playing characters, when he's in the barbershop.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
Doing those characters on TV, he had to do cheap jokes,
easy jokes which I couldn't write. And so for the
last six months of my contract, I didn't get a
joke on Wow. And eventually he had to let me go.

Speaker 4 (01:01:39):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
Yeah, so even and I supported him because I understood
what he was going through. But I was I had
a little baby and all this kind of stuff, and
I was likely to be screwed. But I knew I
was getting fired. You never know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
But who did you run into on the lot?

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
Yeah, I was about I knew the contract was about
to be up. I was going to be fired. It
was on power amount. And then we worked in this
crappy trailer, the Riders, and I was standing outside the
trailer one day going, what am I gonna do? Look,
I'm looking for a sign, what am I gonna do?
I'm done? You know, this could be it for me,
and sometimes it is it for some people. That's the end.

(01:02:17):
And I knew Jack Nicholson was on the lot because
he was doing the two jakes and I'd seen his
car in the park I think is still better than China. Interesting,
but I see his parking space and I'd see his
car in the parking space, so I knew he was around,
but I never saw him. And that day I was
kind of hanging out outside, really really beside myself with

(01:02:38):
grief about my future, you know, and then I saw
in the distance the red convertible Mercedes slowly kind of
rolling towards me. And it rolls and I see the
Laker hat and the shades. I know it's him.

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
Here comes the coolest man in the.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Coolest man in the world exactly, especially at that time,
and he kind of cruises by me. And as he
cruises by, he looks at me and I look at him,
and for whatever reason, we both explode with laughter. We
just explode with laughter, laughing really hard. And he just goes, yeah,
it's funny, and he just goes on the cosmic joke,

(01:03:17):
and I'm like, that's that's it. Of course, it's a joke.
It's a game. This whole thing. I'm taking it too seriously.
I have to relax. I have to just enjoy the trip,
you know. He beat the system, He beat the game.
That's how you do it. You laugh at it, you know.
And I took all this from that little encounter, and
the next day Larry David called me up and said, oh,

(01:03:39):
I'm doing this Seinfeld thing. You want to, you know,
And I wound up working on Seinfeld. So Jack was
your little angel. He was my oracle, my inadvertent I
call him my inadvertent oracle. How great is that story? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
And by the way, you have your own. We've told
our Jack stories. In both of them, he does not disappoint. Yeah,
he's like Bob. They're very connected in my mind, and he.

Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
Loves being Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Yes, yes, Well, when you see him in like those
early movies like Little Saphas, and you realize what he became,
it's an incredible monumental journey, you know. I mean, he's
an amazing person. I never had another encounter with him.
I wish I had. I did get to spend time
with him.

Speaker 4 (01:04:23):
It was it was so fun and cool and everything
you'd want. I got to go to a Clippers playoff
game with him and Jim Brooks and we went We're
going to Phoenix, and We're going to Phoenix. And I
go to and Jim invites me and I go, do

(01:04:44):
you are.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
We going to eat? Before? He goes, yeah, I'd like to,
but I don't know where.

Speaker 4 (01:04:48):
I said, I know the best pizza place in America
is in Phoenix.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
It's yeah, so.

Speaker 4 (01:04:54):
I know Chris, and I call and I say, I
think I can bring Jack Nicholson to the restaurant, Woul
if you have room. I mean there's five hour waiting
for this, and he goes, oh, yeah, you have a table.
So we go in and Jack is like, who found
this place? You know? And I say, well, I know
Chris Bianca. He goes, all right, let's see and so
now gope, I'm right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Jack's pressures Jickolson's going to eat the pizza. I recommend
it couldn't have been more of a challenge. And he
eats and he loves it, and.

Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
He goes, Phil, did you say this was your pizza?
I said, not my pizza, but this is I love
this place and I'm not the only one.

Speaker 3 (01:05:32):
Everybody.

Speaker 4 (01:05:33):
He goes, where else should I eat? I said in
La He goes, yeah, you seem to know. So I
got to give him my list of places. Now on
the ride home, we have the pizza it's great. We
see the When we leave Bianco, no one bothers Jack

(01:05:53):
while we're eating at all.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
No one comes over to the table.

Speaker 4 (01:05:57):
But when we get up to leave, the entire restaurant
stands and gives him a standing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
And I go, holy, that doesn't even happen for film. Now, Yeah,
I mean wow.

Speaker 4 (01:06:10):
Now we go to the stadium to see the Phoenix
Suns and when we walk into the stadium, the entire
stadium stands and cheers, the whole stadium. Why because the
moment Jack Nicholson walks into the arena, he's on the
jumbo trunk and the place goes insane because that's not
even the Lakers.

Speaker 3 (01:06:30):
This is Phoenix.

Speaker 4 (01:06:34):
And then on the way home, I spend the whole
ride home at I said, you mind if I sit
with you? And he says, come on, And I just
asked him one topic. Kubrick, Right, I just thought, I
don't know, You're never going to get that chat.

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
When am I going to have that chance?

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
Nobody knows Kubrick. He knows Kubrick.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Yes, he's getting fasciating. I'd be so curious. I mean,
that's that's for another time.

Speaker 4 (01:07:01):
Man.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):
Oh Man, Yeah, it was great. It was great.

Speaker 4 (01:07:05):
And he talked about how one of the things he
mentioned was when he got the script for Terms of Endearments,
which was Jim Brooks movie.

Speaker 3 (01:07:13):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:14):
I said, it's the true that you read the script
and you turned to whoever you were in bed with
and said, I'm gonna win an oscar after reading the script, right,
And he goes, that's true, and he goes and I'm
about to win another one and it was for to depart.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
Oh right, well wow, yeah, Well he beat the system.
That's what's amazing about him.

Speaker 1 (01:07:37):
You know, I won't bore you with my whole story
about just I got to write a few things with him,
and one time it was come to the house and
go up to the house late at night and we're
sitting there writing. I think it was a tribute this
time to Hunter Thompson for his memorial like his brainstorming
and you know he started out as a writer and
he's still right head.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
Yeah, he wrote Head for the Monkey.

Speaker 4 (01:07:59):
I mean, has a writer's mind, yes, yes, definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
But like a lot of writers in a writer's room,
this was a great writer's room. It was his living
room looking out over all of l A and at
one point, he just gets off topic and he goes, David,
what do these women want from us? And I was like,
they don't want anything from me, but thank you for
including me.

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
Most generous, the most generous history. That's so good. Well
he had a weird he didn't he have a weird
childhood also, right, father mother was he thought his mother
was his aunt or something.

Speaker 4 (01:08:35):
That his mother turned out to be his sister.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
Right, right, that's what it was, which is John Lennony
sort of.

Speaker 3 (01:08:44):
Which is why they've done away so much. Oh my goodness. Wow. Yeah,
he's one of the kind, you know, it's one of
those people. It is not as major a story.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
But because you have a crusher in Bruce Springsteen more
than anyone I know, can you just tell them you're
you're interesting and counter with Bruce.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
I was consumed with Bruce when I first moved out here,
even before. But it was around the time of darkness
on the edge of town and then the river came out,
and I just and I had a cassette a Walkman,
and I would just play it over and over and
over again. I loved it. Rememberized all his music up
until that point, crazy about him. I saw him at

(01:09:24):
the Forum a couple of times, and I just would.
I was into him, you know, and he spent again
like he spoke to us, you know. He kind of
was a voice for us, you know. And I used
to write exactly, and I used to run around. I
used to run at Fairfax High. We lived on a
street called Genesee, and I would walk over to Fairfax

(01:09:47):
High and run, and which I wish I still did,
but I don't. And one day I was running and
I used to listen to the River while I would run,
because it was always a song with a beat that
would keep me going. And I was listening to I
Got to Crush on You, and I'm running along to
that song, which is a perfect song to jog too,

(01:10:08):
and up ahead of me, I see a guy jogging
and it's like it's you know, the sun is going down,
and I from behind, I'm like, wow, could it be?
It looks just like Bruce Springsteen. And I run up
to him and sure enough, it's Bruce Springsteen jogging on
the track and I don't see this is eighty one,
I guess he is, Yeah, right around that time, maybe

(01:10:30):
eighty two or whatever around that time, and I don't
say a word to him. I just take off my
earphones so he could hear that I'm listening to the
Beautiful and we just both laugh and I put them
back on and I blew past him. You were born
to run faster. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I didn't want
I didn't want to hang out and make him feel
uncomfortable once I did that, so I had to get

(01:10:51):
past him. But I got to meet him that way.
That's why I wound up meeting a lot of these people,
just like having these weird like inadvertent encounters, you know.
And did you meet him again? You never met him again? No, No,
never met him again. I've met him now several times.

Speaker 4 (01:11:04):
He seems a great guy, Am, But uh, he's great.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
I'll tell you stories off. Yeah, yeah them here.

Speaker 4 (01:11:12):
But wow, Larry, we love having you here.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
You've got to come back for part two. I would
love Childhood Years. Yes, yes, what are you going to
call that book? I don't know yet. I don't know yet.
This was not the original title for the book. I
was calling it life is but a joke at one
point to quote Bob, well that's the title. That might
that might be the title. Yeah, yeah, that might be
for the childhood years. Fantastic, Thanks Larry. Yeah, now I

(01:11:40):
want you to really you're sandwich like a good I'm
going to take it with me. I'll take it with me,
and thank you for the generosity in the hospitality anytime,
my friend.

Speaker 4 (01:11:49):
And uh, you live in a beautiful place, by the way,
you know, I'm the luckiest guy.

Speaker 3 (01:11:54):
Great place.

Speaker 4 (01:11:56):
All right, let's talk about the future, okay, and we'll
see if we can get Action Bronson to move to
the suburbs.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
Maybe we could kind of do it for him, you know. Yeah, right, Well,
maybe we don't have to. Maybe he doesn't really have to.
We could just put him in a situation like that,
true animate it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:11):
By the way, I think Action, if you're listening, I
would love to do a crossover where we eat together.
I think that would be funny. I'm surprised you haven't
done that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:19):
We couldn't be more opposite. Yeah, you have to go
into Brooklyn with yes, yeah, a couple of places. Yes,
that would be great, and you should direct that. That's
a natural. I'd be happy. Hey, let's do that as
well as let's start as long as I get to
eat as well. Maybe I moved to the Suburbs.

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Wasn't Larry Charles great? That was wonderful. Next week, just
so you know, we have an amazing lunch with singer
songwriter Regina Spector, so don't miss that.

Speaker 5 (01:12:47):
Naked Lunch is a podcast by Phil Rosenthal and David Wilde.
Theme song and music by Brad Paisley, produced by Will
Sterling and Ryan Tillotson, with video editing by Daniel Ferrara
and motion graphics by Ali i'm edi. Executive produced by
Phil Osenthal, David Wilde, and our consulting journalist is Pamela Cella.
If you enjoyed the show, share it with a friend,
But if you can't take my word for it, take Phil's.

Speaker 4 (01:13:08):
And don't forget to leave a good rating and review.

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
We like five stars.

Speaker 5 (01:13:12):
You know, thanks for listening to Naked Lunch. A Lucky
Bastard's production.