April 5, 2024 • 31 mins
Nickelodeon's Marc Summers Reveals He Walked Out Of 'Quiet On Set' Doc, 'They Lied And Ambushed Me!'
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're going to get an exclusive here.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I got called by these folks saying they wanted to
do a documentary on Nickelodeon, and.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
So I said, sure, the Mercedes Benz Interview Lounge.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
What a way to kick off the weekend.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Mark Sommers is here, Thank you, How are you well?
And we told everyone Mark Summers is coming in. Everyone's
just kind of melted.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh my god, is he going to slim? You got
a reputation, you know, throughout my entire career. That's what
people are afraid of that I'm going to slim Double Dare.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I mean, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Let's talk about well, there's several things we're going to
talk about today, let's start with Double Dare. Of course,
this would you say, arguably put you on the map.
Me and Nickelodeon at the same time talk about it.
They were running bad puppet shows at four in the
morning mostly and nobody was watching the channel, and they
decided they did a research, you know, focus group, and
(00:52):
kids said they lived vicariously through their parents game shows.
They'd watched Prices Rider, we didn't have their own show,
and so they came up with this thing where they
were getting rewarded for getting messy, and they had auditioned
a thousand people in New York. Didn't like anybody, and
came to LA. I was the first person to audition.
They auditioned me four times and it came down to
me and another person and.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I called him up and I said, you're shooting in
two weeks. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
They said, well, we can't decide because when they did
the auditions, they had grown ups playing the part of kids,
and they didn't know if we were good with kids.
So I suggested, why don't you fly us both in
New York and put us in a studio with kids,
And that's what they did and I got the job.
And I said, well, after two thousand people, why did
I get it? And they said at the end of
his audition, he said, you guys done. You want me
to do something else? And I looked at the camera
(01:38):
and I said, we'll be back with more doubledare after this.
I threw to commercial and they said that was more
professional and that changed my life.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Wow, something so simple even meant so much? It did
you know?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And there's a line in my actors in the show
when I say, who would have thought that watching TV
would be the smartest thing I ever did.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
But I just did what I thought host did. Obviously,
you were a TV nerd growing up.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
That's all I did. I watched TV twenty four to seven.
Bob Barker was my idol, right, and my first job
in Los Angeles was writing Truth or Consequences of the
last year he hosted that show. So I'm twenty two
years old and here's this, you know, guy that I've
looked up to forever. And then I became a page
at CBS and I was a page on Prices, right,
So I got to know Barker and he was my
mentor for a number of years.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And then you know, as a page, I was working
on Sonny and Share and All in the Family and
holy crap. Yeah, that was like the coolest. I thought
I'd died gone to heaven. That was the best it got.
I was happy with that. I was there the last
day they did the Sonny and Share show when they
announced their divorce. Oh my god, and Cherre just wanted
to get the hell out of there, and Sonny didn't
want to ever leave.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And it's two in the morning.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
He's throwing a football back in the area trying to
delay things, and they finally got them on stage to
close it.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
You should write several books over everything that you had witnessed.
I mean, okay, maybe not write a book, how about
do a play. Another reason we invited Martin comc is
he is this off Broadway show called The Life and
Slimes of Mark Summers, and of course doubled Nickelodeon all
a part of it. But do you go back and
talk about these amazingly interesting stories. I do how you
(03:05):
grew up on TV or behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
One hundred percent. I relay all that information in more
and sort of the turning point of the show. We
played double there for about ten minutes and we grab
people out of the audience, and of course they love this.
But the one thing I didn't know when we were
doing double Dare was all the mess they didn't tell
me about the obstacle course. When we audition first day
in the studio, they're pouring chocolate chirrup on a slide
(03:29):
and they're mixing whipped cream and I said, what are
you guys doing and they said, well, this is the
obstacle course. I said, what's that and they said, well,
at the end whoever wins, they have to go through
this stuff. Well I didn't know that what I had
had a name, but I had obsessive compulsive disorder and
I was a neatness freak and everything had to be
perfect and I could not have you a drop of
anything on me. And now I've waited till I was
(03:50):
thirty four years old to get this opportunity, and I go, Okay,
now what are you gonna do? You're not going to
blow this. So I went through it, but internally it
was driving me melse through this.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I mean with OCD.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, I mean, arguably Doubledare are the messiest show.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
In the history. Thank you? Oh you know too much
about the show?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, well I had to make a decision do you
wait thirty four years and get this opportunity and blow
it or do you go for it? And at one
point after I was we do sixty five episodes, I
don't get a mess on me? And the focus group say,
we'd love the show, but we want the host to
get messy. So the network comes to me and said
you got to get the stuff on you and I
said why and they said, because that's what they want.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Did you explain to them that there's an issue here.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, I didn't know what it was yet, and so
so I started to get messy. But as soon as
I would get dumped with stuff, I would start to
take off my clothes in front.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Of the audience.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I'd start on my shows and then executives would say,
can you do that like behind those kids?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, this kids here, and I just wanted to get
out and take a shower and get back.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So we do five hundred and twenty five episodes of
Double Dare. We toured it around the country. We were
filling the palace of Auburn Hills with twenty thousand peace
on a weekend without any problem. And fast forward the tape.
I do a host. I host a show on Lifetime
Television called Biggers and Summers, me and Sissy Biggers, and
we have an expert on, doctor Eric Hollander, who discusses
(05:13):
he's an expert on obsessive compulsive disorder. So I'm doing
the research in my apartment here in New York the
night before and I'm saying, oh, God, I do that,
I do that. Oh this thing has a name. So
I have to make a decision. Do I go on
television the next day and pretend I don't have this,
or do I come out? And I came out and
the next thing I know, I'm on Oprah and I'm
(05:35):
on the Today Show and I'm on Howard Stern. Remember discussing, Yes,
I did all this, and my parents stopped talking to
me because they said, you know, because I mentioned that
they did it. It was hereditary thing, and they said,
we don't do that stuff, and they cut me off.
And you know, it was a very stressful time. I
was supposed to host Hollywood Squares and they find out
(05:56):
about the OCD thing and saw it and they fired me.
What Yeah, I cut the promos. Hi Mark Summers joined me,
you know, on the new Hollywood Squares and they made
the announcement at the CBS Affiliates Meeting standing ovation, and
then I get fired.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
The only slim going on on Hollywood Squares is paul In.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I'm brollaing in the raincoat around that guy.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So horny. Anyway, moving on, Yes, sir.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So talk about the beginning days of doubledare Oh my,
so low budget.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'm assuming nine thousand dollars in an episode we shot
at WHYY in Philadelphia because New York studios were too
expensive for Nickelodeon, and nobody there really had done a
game show before. I was the only one. I had
written game shows or whatever. And the first day we
were there we were supposed to shoot four episodes. We
barely got one done because when we went to the
obstacle course, the first thing was called Nightmare. It was
(06:48):
a pillow filled with feathers, and the first time we
did it sixty seconds, nobody does anything. Somebody forgot to
put the flag in the thing, so we stopped. Okay, okay,
and so then they put the flag in, but the
kids turn the thing upside down and all the feathers
were on top of the thing.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
They couldn't find it again.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It took us three times before we actually got the
first obstacle course run, and all the executives were Nickelodeon
where they're holding their.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Heads, going what have we done?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
And the next thing we know, we become the biggest
hit and we put Nickelodeon on the map. You know,
if you get a rating and cable now at a
point two or a point three, that's massive. We were
getting fives, not fives. Five, And they said I read
an article broadcasting magazine, which I don't even know what
still exists, but they said the three most important people
to get cable going first was Larry King on CNN
(07:36):
because his kind of show didn't exist, Gallagher because of
his comedy specials on Showtime, and me on Doubledare because
I got kids to tell their parents to go get
cable because they wanted to see the show where they
jumped into five thousand pounds of baked beans.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
I think it was also every kid's dreamed to be
on that show.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Oh my god, to this day. Yeah, yeah, see, that's it.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I think if we brought it back as an adult
show with be massive. But you know when we pick
people from the audience to come up, who are all
your ages, they're like, they become six years old again,
it's fantastic cool.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Well, so triple there, we'll call it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So Mark, they were paying you, I'm sure a fortune
to host this show back in the five hundred bucks
an episode.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, twenty five hundred bucks a week, which is, by
the way, the most money I'd never made up to
that point. Right, but then we went into syndication.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Right, I was an adult when Double Dare was out
right as you were.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
But a lot of people here were kids.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah, And so Gandhi's parents wouldn't even let her watch
TV really, but tell them the only wholesome show that
would always be wholesome until till today that they let
you watch was.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Really look how that turned out?
Speaker 7 (08:55):
That man, Well, haven't watch anything. But when I would
go over to friends houses and Doubledare would come on,
I'd be like, yes, I'm over here. Yeah, so now
I get to watch this and I loved it.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
There used to be something called playground talk where kids
would tell the other kids there's this crazy show where
the giving away trips to space camp, and so they
would go to the other friend's house who had cable
like you did, and that's that's what opened the doors.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So Scotty Bee, who's over there in the Scotty talk
about it?
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Well, I mean we used to get in trouble as
kids because we always wanted to play in the ear,
you know.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Oh yeah, in one ear and out the other show.
Speaker 8 (09:24):
Yeah, So we would we would get cottage cheese and
we would color it with green food color, oh my,
and we would get it all over the walls and
we stained the walls in the house, and we would
get in trouble all the time, but we were constantly
doing the physical challenges for we had to take it outside,
you know, as we progressed, because we made these big,
elaborate things. But I mean, that's all we ever wanted
to do. And then as I got older, we wanted
to be on Family Double Day, of course, you know,
(09:45):
and we sent in our applications, but that never happened.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
The stories of parents who said to me they're living
in dining rooms were ruined because kids would make their
own slime and obstacle courses through there. And so one
year I opened my door for trick or treat Halloween
and lady goes, oh my god, I'd hear that guy
from Nickelodeon. I said, yeah, can I tell you my
kids have destroyed my house because they're copying everything like that.
And the next morning I got up and there was
styrofoam in all of the beds of my uh you know,
(10:12):
flowers and trains, yes, and landscaping because that was their
way to get back at me.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So yes, story did Now did you come up with
a lot of the stuff. After a while, that was
alm the story. Yes I did.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I was one of the writers and exec producers, and
the most fun was testing physical challenges from six to
nine every night with kids because nothing worked, so you
had to figure out what. One day, they did a
thing where they made paper planes and you had to
throw it into a mailbox on the other side of
the stage, and I said, this will never work. Okay,
this will never work. We're gonna do it. Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So I looked at the.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Camera and we're doing it, and I said, Okay, this
is a physical challenge that I don't want to do.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Folks.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I don't think it'll ever work. But if one here's
the deal. They have twenty seconds to get one uh
a paper plane in the mailbox. If they do it,
I'll give you my house. I said, okay.
Speaker 6 (10:55):
Oh, Mark on your market said go the first, first
one right in the mailbox. They got close up of
me and I said, well, we'll discuss this during the commercial.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yes, so nay. Growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, I mean
was an event.
Speaker 9 (11:15):
My brothers and I would watch this and I have
to ask you Mark, yes, sir, because we would watch
this and critique the kids doing the charity.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Oh yeah, you'll probably pick a red team or a
blue team, and then figure out why you could do
it better exactly.
Speaker 9 (11:27):
But then even the individual kid, I remember, I'm like,
this kid's a little dumb ass.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Come on, you did do it.
Speaker 9 (11:33):
You were so magnanimous hosting. But in your head do
you think, oh, come on.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Come yes, yes, yes, And the network was always very protective.
I will tell you a story that I've never told him.
I should probably be very careful about this. But Drew Gasperini,
who introduced me to Alex Brightman, who wrote our show,
I love Alex. Alex Brightman is the best guy ever, he.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Said in this very chair. Yeah, when he's beetle juicy.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Beetlejuice and uh, he's spaml out now and he did
School of Rock. He's brilliant. So he wrote this show
and he wanted to do a show. This is now
ten twelve years ago, the most disgusting show in the
history of New York. So we're at Joe's pub. I'm
am seeing this show, okay, and Alex was doing dirty
high coups. I mean it was the whole thing was
(12:16):
just so insane. But they showed an obstacle course of
me saying you know, you gotta get through there, you
gotta grab the flag. He got ten seconds and then
we rolled it back and I said, this is what
I was really thinking when they were doing that, And
God forbid, if anybody would have a tape of that,
I would never be working in.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
This business again. But you know, you do think.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I was thirty four when I started that show, Okay,
And by the way, I never wanted to do a
kid show.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I just wanted to host a show.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So the reason I think the show was successful in
many ways is I didn't talk down to the kids
and say.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Mahbi, do you have a girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I talked to him like they were grown ups, and
I would screw around with him and they would, you know,
fight back with me, and it was actually fun. So
I think that all those things contributed. But yes, in
my head, I was going, you can't get that gets
right there in.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Front of.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Just turning us on Mark Summers. Is here the new
off Broadway show. It's called The Life and Slims of
Mark Summers. Not it's only going on till June. You
check in a sixteen week run. We gotta make sure
there's a lot more to the show than your double
Dare days. I'm gonna get into that.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Garrett.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Did you have a memory from growing up on Staten Island, Well,
it's great to finally meet my babysitter, like this was
the after school special, I mean first, And if my
mom was here, she'd be yelling at you right now
because I would say, hey, they can pick their nose
on Double Dare, why can't I pick my nose?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And she was like, well, you don't have.
Speaker 10 (13:39):
A flag up your nose.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
We can make that out.
Speaker 10 (13:42):
I mean to the fact where I was so addicted
to Double Dare where I would bring the flags to
the bullpit and McDonald's and really and put the ball
and put the flag in there and try to like
time myself to see if I could find the flag.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
You were a ball pit, Oh of course.
Speaker 10 (13:55):
I mean to the point where I would go to
Universal to see if you guys are taping down there
just by chance, and everybody be like, well, let's go online,
let's go on King Kong, let's go I was like, no, no,
I need to get on Double now. So thank you,
Oh yeah, no, thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Unbelievable. I do people do get people like they help
you and start crying. Yes, all the time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It's unbelievable because the memories that they have and the
other reason they do it we talk. The show takes
a dramatic turn halfway through. When I discovered I had
obsessive compulsive disorder, I was hosting the talk show and
doctor Hollander comes on and I had been on National
TV that I haven't So people who come to the
show have obsessive compulsive disorder, A lot of them do,
and they stay at the stage door and want to talk.
(14:40):
And the amount of people who I've hugged and who
have been crying after the show has been quite amazing.
And the fact that we're sort of getting this message out.
When I got diagnosed, there was no help pretty much.
Now you can take medication, cognitive behavior therapy, all sorts
of things.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
But back in the.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Day when I discovered I had it, there wasn't a
lot going on. So, yes, there's a lot of warm
and fuzzy moments going on after the show one hundred.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
See, that's the thing. This show has been on for
thirty years.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
So when I went out on a book to where
and when we go out, they're like, you know, their
grandkids listen to us now and so I see. But
there's the bond here is this when we look back
to our childhood years, those as innocent as they could
have been and should have been years, and connect with
them now when we live in this fed up world
(15:27):
that we live in. It does bring this peace, yes,
and we connect with the innocence and the times that
made us so happy and Mark Summers.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
You do that. You still have the ability to do
that now. Obviously it's so odd.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I grew up with Soupy Sales who right when I
was a kid, he was the person who did kid
shows and I became friends with Soupye and that was
like dying to going to heaven kind of moment. And
I guess, unbeknownst to me at the time, that I
am that too, an entire different generation. You know what's
so funny is the other day somebody said, well, you
signed my program and I said sure. I said, do
(16:03):
you want me to mention something about double there or Unwrapped?
And they said, what's double there?
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Wow. So there's a whole.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Generation of people who don't even know me from that.
They only know me from the Food Network. I was
there for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, Unwrapped is one of the best shows ever. Thanks.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
So, I mean the premise of Unwrapped is at least
the history isn't think we buy every day?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yes, where do they come from? Where do they come from?
And you know whyser?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
You know of different colored em and ms and you
know what do they used to make the mike and
ikes taste the way they do? And I did, you know,
hundreds of episodes of that for eleven years, and then
I execut produced Dinner Impossible and Restaurant Impossible. So I've
had this crazy life where I started off as a magician.
I became a regular at the Comedy Store in seventy
six with Dave and Jay and Robin, and then you know,
(16:46):
become a host of a kid's show. Then I'm at
Food Network, and you know, now I am off Broadway
doing a one man show. So it's been quite an
interesting run of events over the last seventy two years. Oh,
I've been doing this almost fifty years.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Was talk it? I mean in a car accident once
you broke every bone in your face.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yes, I was coming back from a restaurant and possible shoot,
didn't wear a seat belt and yeah, the credit card
machine hit me and broke every bone in my face.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
That was a lovely moment. Credit card machine. Yeah, you
know that when you get ran into a credit what.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yes, I was sitting on the back of the cab
right and you know the thing where you oh yeah
and I the guys slammed on the brakes, hit the
center divider, and.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
My head went right into the credit card machine. In
a life of cancer, not one, not two, but three
bouts cancer? What kind of cancer? Was it?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
A chronic elymphatic leukemia? And I'm on medication I will
be for the rest of my life. They're only fifteen
thousand dollars a month for the pills, but yeah, it's
given me alive.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So yeah. I went through chemo twice.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Third time I was on immuno therapy didn't work and
that's why they tried the pills in a work.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
So yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
So we see these people that we love and we
adore and that we either grew up with or we
continue to learn from. On TV, you never really stop
all the time to think about, well, this is a
human being who's living a life of maybe being married,
maybe not, maybe be with OCD or you don't know
where they came from or where they're going.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You just know who they are while you're watching it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
And Elvis, that's why I did this show. And I
also have a podcast called Mark Summers un Wraps, and
it's based on the fact that you go to a movie,
TV show, Broadway show and you go, boy, the person
on that show is so lucky, and it's like, no,
they work their asses off to get there, And what
is it about some people who can go over under
a round or through the wall and other people go, now,
I'm not doing this and they retreat and I'm more
(18:28):
interested in the people who figured out a way to
get where they're going. We had Richard Kain on recently,
we had Kevin Pollack on, we had Highway Men down on.
We've had some really good people tell their stories. And
everybody in this room has this story as well. You're
not sitting here because somebody called you up and said
I want you to work here. You figured out a
way to get in this room.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Not everybody can do that. Amen.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Hey, So doing a one man show about your life,
what do you learn from it?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Don't mind?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I mean it's the same as when you write a biography.
An autobiography, you actually learn a lot about yourself. This
has to be that times ten.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It's an emotional roller coaster on a nightly basis because
I'm up there telling the story that I lived, and
some nights I get so emotional.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I do break down.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I could never control it in certain moments where I'm
reliving the moments, because if you're going to tell the story,
it's got to be authentic. You can't go up there
and pretend to do the story. You're telling them about
your life. So yes, it's very emotional. It's sort of
like less expensive than going to a psychiatrist on a
regular basis. And I do learn a lot about myself.
But at this point in my life, it's funny. I
(19:34):
used to go on stage when I worked the Magic Castle.
I would throw up every time before I went on and
did a show because I had no idea what I
was doing. I am so confident now and I don't
get nervous. I can't wait to get to that theater
and perform this on a nightly basis. And you know,
it took me this long to get that confident though.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
But that journey was necessary.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Oh my god, yes, I could have never done this
even five years ago, I could have never performed it.
The best compliment I got. Brightman saw me initially when
we started this eight nine years ago, and he hadn't
seen me since opening night. We did open the nineteenth
of February, and he came up to me and he said,
I gotta ask you a question.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I said, what's that? He said, when did you learn
to act? And I broke down.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I thought, coming from Alex Brightman, that was a really
emotional moment for me.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But you aren't acting. It's it's a combination of things. Selvis.
It's fascinating.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Okay, So I have to ask you this question, yes, sir,
and I asked this with all due respect. I heard
an urban legend one time that you would have to,
in regards to your OCD, vacuum yourself out of hotel rooms.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Is that true? No?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
All these you know things between me and Howie Mendel
that have been made up, how he used to put
towels down on the floor and get a pair of
tongs to take the bed sheet off, and all.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The time in hotel rooms.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I would do that without exactly Yeah, none of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
But you know I didn't do I can, by the way,
I'm a great vacuumer, and at my house I can
vacuum out of every room without a footprint. I mean,
I can teach you that if you want. But no,
that thing about the hotel, that that never happened. So
but thank you for asking. Yeah, now, all those urban
legend things happened.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I was doing another radio show and a guy said,
I came up to you an airport. You refused to
shake my hand.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
No, I didn't. I shake everybody, Okay. Funny thing is
when you arrived, I said, can we shake his hand?
I don't want to make you uncomfortable. We love you.
It was never germ phobic.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It was all about cleanliness and orderliness and you know,
putting things symmetrical and making sure everything was perfect. As
a matter of fact, the studio is making me nuts.
Could you turn that up?
Speaker 5 (21:44):
I used to I feel like I used to like
touch things like four or five times. Oh really, even
when I would go through stores, I would like rearrange
things in the store and I'd be like, and then
I'd walk away. And the funny thing is you and
I talk about that. Our thing is odd numbers. I
used to have to everything, even amount of see.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Some people are even some people are well the rule
book with people who see changes on a daily basis,
it really does yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, yeah yeah that yeah odd numbers.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So isn't that weird that people have to flip a
light switch so many times?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Or walk in uh to a room?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
So Daniel will walk into a door and she cannot
leave through another door. She has to go out through
the door.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
I came in that way, I'm going out down because
and you know, because then you get these thoughts, you
haven't thoughts gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
See, that's in my show that I was afraid that
if I my room wasn't clean, that when my parents
got in the car, they'd get in a car accident
and die.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So that's why you kept doing that?
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Why do we why do you think those things?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Well, I'll send you the doctor's number and sold.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
If I'm walking down a staircase, if I drag my
left heel on the step, I have.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
To even and out with my right. Really I do.
But I don't think there's doom on the way. If
I don't, I just don't know what it is. I mean,
I live a life of doom. Any Ways, I'm already
paying the price.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I still have trouble in grocery stores where I get
fixated on reading labels, and so my wife goes grocery
shopping without me because I can get stuck in a
place and you know, you say yourself, I have to
read it perfect.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Well what does perfect mean? You know?
Speaker 2 (23:15):
And when I was doing the talk show here in
New York, they our execu producers said get out of here.
Driving us crazy. I would make the staff nuts, so
he threw me out and I would walk from one
in the afternoon until nine, up and down the streets
of New York. But sometimes would get stuck at a
place reading you know, a sign in Tiffany's over and
(23:35):
over and over again, and you know, you get stuck
and then you got to get yourself out of it.
So yeah, I mean, thank god, I don't do that
much anymore, but it is still. I always say I'm
eighty two percent cured. I don't think you're ever one
hundred percent cured.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Well, I guess if it slows you down, if it
stops progression or progress in life, then you got to
address it.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yep. Scary. I just want to say I love you, man.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I have no questions, very kind, no questions, just a few,
just some love for you.
Speaker 11 (24:04):
Thank you, I love it. That was the most beautiful moment.
I love these guys. Those are fantastic.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
I have a question on a completely different topic, because
you've done one hundred things. You talked about all of it,
from doubled Air to Unwrapped, and now you're doing this play.
I most recently saw you and quiet on the side
that just came out. Oh my, how was that being
able to talk about all that? Was that like a
cleansing feeling to you to finally be able to say, like, hey,
I wanted to advocate for these kids, and I saw
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Let me tell you about that. You're going to get
an exclusive here.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I got called by these folks saying they wanted to
do a documentary on Nickelodeon, and so I said sure,
and I went there and they asked me what I
thought of Nick and the first ten or twelve seconds
from want I understand this documentary or me saying all
these wonderful things, but they did a bait and switch
on me.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
They ambushed me.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
They never told me what this documenting was really about,
and so they showed me a video of something that
I couldn't believe was on Nicolos and I said, well,
let's stop.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Tape right here. What are we doing. Well, we're doing
this thing. Do you know this guy? And all this
kind of stuff, and I left. Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So I got a phone call about six weeks ago
saying you're totally out of the show, and I went great.
Then they called me about four weeks ago and said, well,
you're in it, but you're only in the first part
of it because you talked about the positive stuff of Nickelodeon.
What they didn't tell me, and they lied to me about,
was the fact that they put in that other thing
where they had the camera on me when.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
They ambushed me and uh away.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So now we get into a whole situation about who's unethical.
Speaker 7 (25:40):
That's a very interesting I had no idea. I was
wondering about so many of the interviews that they've done
and how they did it.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I never met Dan Schneider when we got done doing
Doubledare and we had run our run. Those people came
in after and took over our studios. Never met the man.
Have no idea about any of those things. I mean,
I know Keenan from Keenan and Kel because we've done
stuff together. But as far as anything that happened on
that show with any of those people, I never met
any of them. I didn't know anybody, but they made
(26:07):
it seem like I knew those people.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
Definitely did.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
They knew exactly what they were doing a documentary about,
and ethically they should have said something to you about,
you think and given you a shot to say, I
don't know them. I shouldn't even be there. You're If
I knew something, maybe i'd come talk to you, but
I don't.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
Is there anything you can do about that now?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Or well, there's a phone call coming in today at
three o'clock. There we go.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
This is exclusive.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Love it look, you know, I through it all.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
You obviously make so many people so happy for so
many reasons. And the fact that you're doing your your show,
The Life and Slimes of Mark Summers is just another layer.
And so do we have more layers to come?
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Are you? Are you ready to move forward into something else?
Or what do you want to do?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
What do I want to do?
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Well, there's a possibility we could tour this. That would
be one thing that we've just Gus doing it for
streaming services. Another discussion going on. But you know, the
one thing that has eluded me is actually being in
a Broadway show. And I auditioned for Waitress a couple
of years ago and they told me, quote that I
could never play that part.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I was playing old Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
I try to because they said that I played it
too young, that I had too much energy, and I
had a little in my voice that I do not
come across as an old man.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Sort of a compliment.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
But you know, I put the word out there that
if there's any Broadway producer who has not I don't
need a.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Lead like a third you know lead kind of thing.
One song and one thing aligne. You would play the
wacky neighbor. Yeah, you know the Wizard would be the
great one song. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, Well there's a debate on that. Brighten Television. Not sure,
but let's pretend I can. But you know, playing the
Wizard in Wicked would be you know, the kind of
perfect role, you know, twelve minutes on stage for a
couple of scenes, something like that. So you know, I
put that out there. If it happens, fantastic, But I'm
gonna tell you Elvis if this is as good as
it gets, I'm the happiest man in the world.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
That's amazing, amazing. Are you one of these guys people
who's always thinking, I'm gonna keep working till the day
I kick.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
One hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Peter Marshall, my friend who was the host of Hollywood Score,
absolutely just turned ninety eight years old, and a few
years ago I said to him, you know, I think
I'm gonna stop doing this, and he said, Mark, all
my friends who stopped doing it died, do not ever
stop doing this stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
And so I keep moving forward. Let me keep moving forward.
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Well, even though I say I'm I'm retired, I'm always
thinking of ideas and trying to pitch him I where
I live, Dennis Miller is one of my neighbors. And
Dennis and I have lunch when I'm home every Wednesday,
and he's one of the most intelligent humans I've ever
met my entire life. We have different points of view
on certain things, but having conversations like that and Roth
(29:00):
who did Funhouse, and Dennis Miller and we discuss the
industry and shows and things like that, and so yes,
I'm always inspired. It's harder to get meetings now because
I'm an old guy. They want to meet with people
who are less than half my age. And so even
though I have this reputation of having success, although I
will tell you that right before I got this Broadway show,
(29:21):
off Broadway Show, I was asked to host Tik Tak Doe,
which they're bringing back, and I had to turn it
down because here was my feeling. I've hosted many shows,
but I've never done a show in New York off Broadway,
and I thought, well, you know, I got to do that.
So I turned it down. And I don't look back
and say, wow, I should have taken that job, because
I've done that before. This is something that's all new,
(29:43):
and the excitement and the energy it takes is much
more exciting than go and say, well, if you answer
this question, you get three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
I've done that before.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
You know what you have, your audience, and you know
exactly who they are. I do, and so there's opportunity there.
So I bring this question up for a friend. Ask you,
for a friend, what do you do when you've been
doing it for so long you're kind of wondering what's next?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
You can't sell you. You just can't stop. I'll let
them know, yes, yes, yes, can please do.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
But you know the fact that this week I did
the view I did Sherry CBS Morning Show. The fact
that anybody still wants me on these shows is fascinating.
But the people who are producing and are hosting these shows,
like all of you, grew up watching me, and so
they want to reminisce. And so that's the advantage that
I have to a certain point. But you know, just
because and I have no idea how old you are,
(30:32):
but I know I'm a lot older than you. There's
no reason for us to stop. Seacrest always says to me,
he hates me because my voice sounds the same now
as it did when I was in my twenties and thirties.
He said, you should sound like an old man at
this point, and I don't. He said, Summers, you pissed
me off. So yeah, so you know, we just keep
doing what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Man Mark Summers in the Life and Slimes of Mark
Summers is going on until June, So you got to
get in there right now and.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
We'll be there. Thank you, Mark Summers, thank you.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
And by the way, if you go to ms DARE
twenty four is your code on telecharge, you can get
tickets as little as thirty nine dollars.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Hold on, hold on, repeat that.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Ms DARE like Mark Summers and double dere ms DARE
twenty four at telecharge dot com and you can get
tickets as low as thirty nine dollars. So do that
and we'll see you there.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
You're on sale, Helvis. We all are. Some of us
are complimentary. The Mercedes Benz Interview Lounge
You're going to get an exclusive here.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
I got called by these folks saying they wanted to
do a documentary on Nickelodeon, and.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
So I said, sure, the Mercedes Benz Interview Lounge.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
What a way to kick off the weekend.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Mark Sommers is here, Thank you, How are you well?
And we told everyone Mark Summers is coming in. Everyone's
just kind of melted.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Oh my god, is he going to slim? You got
a reputation, you know, throughout my entire career. That's what
people are afraid of that I'm going to slim Double Dare.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I mean, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Let's talk about well, there's several things we're going to
talk about today, let's start with Double Dare. Of course,
this would you say, arguably put you on the map.
Me and Nickelodeon at the same time talk about it.
They were running bad puppet shows at four in the
morning mostly and nobody was watching the channel, and they
decided they did a research, you know, focus group, and
(00:52):
kids said they lived vicariously through their parents game shows.
They'd watched Prices Rider, we didn't have their own show,
and so they came up with this thing where they
were getting rewarded for getting messy, and they had auditioned
a thousand people in New York. Didn't like anybody, and
came to LA. I was the first person to audition.
They auditioned me four times and it came down to
me and another person and.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I called him up and I said, you're shooting in
two weeks. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
They said, well, we can't decide because when they did
the auditions, they had grown ups playing the part of kids,
and they didn't know if we were good with kids.
So I suggested, why don't you fly us both in
New York and put us in a studio with kids,
And that's what they did and I got the job.
And I said, well, after two thousand people, why did
I get it? And they said at the end of
his audition, he said, you guys done. You want me
to do something else? And I looked at the camera
(01:38):
and I said, we'll be back with more doubledare after this.
I threw to commercial and they said that was more
professional and that changed my life.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Wow, something so simple even meant so much? It did
you know?
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And there's a line in my actors in the show
when I say, who would have thought that watching TV
would be the smartest thing I ever did.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
But I just did what I thought host did. Obviously,
you were a TV nerd growing up.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
That's all I did. I watched TV twenty four to seven.
Bob Barker was my idol, right, and my first job
in Los Angeles was writing Truth or Consequences of the
last year he hosted that show. So I'm twenty two
years old and here's this, you know, guy that I've
looked up to forever. And then I became a page
at CBS and I was a page on Prices, right,
So I got to know Barker and he was my
mentor for a number of years.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And then you know, as a page, I was working
on Sonny and Share and All in the Family and
holy crap. Yeah, that was like the coolest. I thought
I'd died gone to heaven. That was the best it got.
I was happy with that. I was there the last
day they did the Sonny and Share show when they
announced their divorce. Oh my god, and Cherre just wanted
to get the hell out of there, and Sonny didn't
want to ever leave.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
And it's two in the morning.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
He's throwing a football back in the area trying to
delay things, and they finally got them on stage to
close it.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
You should write several books over everything that you had witnessed.
I mean, okay, maybe not write a book, how about
do a play. Another reason we invited Martin comc is
he is this off Broadway show called The Life and
Slimes of Mark Summers, and of course doubled Nickelodeon all
a part of it. But do you go back and
talk about these amazingly interesting stories. I do how you
(03:05):
grew up on TV or behind the scenes.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
One hundred percent. I relay all that information in more
and sort of the turning point of the show. We
played double there for about ten minutes and we grab
people out of the audience, and of course they love this.
But the one thing I didn't know when we were
doing double Dare was all the mess they didn't tell
me about the obstacle course. When we audition first day
in the studio, they're pouring chocolate chirrup on a slide
(03:29):
and they're mixing whipped cream and I said, what are
you guys doing and they said, well, this is the
obstacle course. I said, what's that and they said, well,
at the end whoever wins, they have to go through
this stuff. Well I didn't know that what I had
had a name, but I had obsessive compulsive disorder and
I was a neatness freak and everything had to be
perfect and I could not have you a drop of
anything on me. And now I've waited till I was
(03:50):
thirty four years old to get this opportunity, and I go, Okay,
now what are you gonna do? You're not going to
blow this. So I went through it, but internally it
was driving me melse through this.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I mean with OCD.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, I mean, arguably Doubledare are the messiest show.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
In the history. Thank you? Oh you know too much
about the show?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, well I had to make a decision do you
wait thirty four years and get this opportunity and blow
it or do you go for it? And at one
point after I was we do sixty five episodes, I
don't get a mess on me? And the focus group say,
we'd love the show, but we want the host to
get messy. So the network comes to me and said
you got to get the stuff on you and I
said why and they said, because that's what they want.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Did you explain to them that there's an issue here.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, I didn't know what it was yet, and so
so I started to get messy. But as soon as
I would get dumped with stuff, I would start to
take off my clothes in front.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Of the audience.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
I'd start on my shows and then executives would say,
can you do that like behind those kids?
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Yeah, this kids here, and I just wanted to get
out and take a shower and get back.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
So we do five hundred and twenty five episodes of
Double Dare. We toured it around the country. We were
filling the palace of Auburn Hills with twenty thousand peace
on a weekend without any problem. And fast forward the tape.
I do a host. I host a show on Lifetime
Television called Biggers and Summers, me and Sissy Biggers, and
we have an expert on, doctor Eric Hollander, who discusses
(05:13):
he's an expert on obsessive compulsive disorder. So I'm doing
the research in my apartment here in New York the
night before and I'm saying, oh, God, I do that,
I do that. Oh this thing has a name. So
I have to make a decision. Do I go on
television the next day and pretend I don't have this,
or do I come out? And I came out and
the next thing I know, I'm on Oprah and I'm
(05:35):
on the Today Show and I'm on Howard Stern. Remember discussing, Yes,
I did all this, and my parents stopped talking to
me because they said, you know, because I mentioned that
they did it. It was hereditary thing, and they said,
we don't do that stuff, and they cut me off.
And you know, it was a very stressful time. I
was supposed to host Hollywood Squares and they find out
(05:56):
about the OCD thing and saw it and they fired me.
What Yeah, I cut the promos. Hi Mark Summers joined me,
you know, on the new Hollywood Squares and they made
the announcement at the CBS Affiliates Meeting standing ovation, and
then I get fired.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
The only slim going on on Hollywood Squares is paul In.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I'm brollaing in the raincoat around that guy.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
So horny. Anyway, moving on, Yes, sir.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
So talk about the beginning days of doubledare Oh my,
so low budget.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'm assuming nine thousand dollars in an episode we shot
at WHYY in Philadelphia because New York studios were too
expensive for Nickelodeon, and nobody there really had done a
game show before. I was the only one. I had
written game shows or whatever. And the first day we
were there we were supposed to shoot four episodes. We
barely got one done because when we went to the
obstacle course, the first thing was called Nightmare. It was
(06:48):
a pillow filled with feathers, and the first time we
did it sixty seconds, nobody does anything. Somebody forgot to
put the flag in the thing, so we stopped. Okay, okay,
and so then they put the flag in, but the
kids turn the thing upside down and all the feathers
were on top of the thing.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
They couldn't find it again.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It took us three times before we actually got the
first obstacle course run, and all the executives were Nickelodeon
where they're holding their.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Heads, going what have we done?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
And the next thing we know, we become the biggest
hit and we put Nickelodeon on the map. You know,
if you get a rating and cable now at a
point two or a point three, that's massive. We were
getting fives, not fives. Five, And they said I read
an article broadcasting magazine, which I don't even know what
still exists, but they said the three most important people
to get cable going first was Larry King on CNN
(07:36):
because his kind of show didn't exist, Gallagher because of
his comedy specials on Showtime, and me on Doubledare because
I got kids to tell their parents to go get
cable because they wanted to see the show where they
jumped into five thousand pounds of baked beans.
Speaker 5 (07:51):
I think it was also every kid's dreamed to be
on that show.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Oh my god, to this day. Yeah, yeah, see, that's it.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
I think if we brought it back as an adult
show with be massive. But you know when we pick
people from the audience to come up, who are all
your ages, they're like, they become six years old again,
it's fantastic cool.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Well, so triple there, we'll call it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
So Mark, they were paying you, I'm sure a fortune
to host this show back in the five hundred bucks
an episode.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yeah, twenty five hundred bucks a week, which is, by
the way, the most money I'd never made up to
that point. Right, but then we went into syndication.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Right, I was an adult when Double Dare was out
right as you were.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
But a lot of people here were kids.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yeah, And so Gandhi's parents wouldn't even let her watch
TV really, but tell them the only wholesome show that
would always be wholesome until till today that they let
you watch was.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Really look how that turned out?
Speaker 7 (08:55):
That man, Well, haven't watch anything. But when I would
go over to friends houses and Doubledare would come on,
I'd be like, yes, I'm over here. Yeah, so now
I get to watch this and I loved it.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
There used to be something called playground talk where kids
would tell the other kids there's this crazy show where
the giving away trips to space camp, and so they
would go to the other friend's house who had cable
like you did, and that's that's what opened the doors.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
So Scotty Bee, who's over there in the Scotty talk
about it?
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Well, I mean we used to get in trouble as
kids because we always wanted to play in the ear,
you know.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Oh yeah, in one ear and out the other show.
Speaker 8 (09:24):
Yeah, So we would we would get cottage cheese and
we would color it with green food color, oh my,
and we would get it all over the walls and
we stained the walls in the house, and we would
get in trouble all the time, but we were constantly
doing the physical challenges for we had to take it outside,
you know, as we progressed, because we made these big,
elaborate things. But I mean, that's all we ever wanted
to do. And then as I got older, we wanted
to be on Family Double Day, of course, you know,
(09:45):
and we sent in our applications, but that never happened.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
The stories of parents who said to me they're living
in dining rooms were ruined because kids would make their
own slime and obstacle courses through there. And so one
year I opened my door for trick or treat Halloween
and lady goes, oh my god, I'd hear that guy
from Nickelodeon. I said, yeah, can I tell you my
kids have destroyed my house because they're copying everything like that.
And the next morning I got up and there was
styrofoam in all of the beds of my uh you know,
(10:12):
flowers and trains, yes, and landscaping because that was their
way to get back at me.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
So yes, story did Now did you come up with
a lot of the stuff. After a while, that was
alm the story. Yes I did.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
I was one of the writers and exec producers, and
the most fun was testing physical challenges from six to
nine every night with kids because nothing worked, so you
had to figure out what. One day, they did a
thing where they made paper planes and you had to
throw it into a mailbox on the other side of
the stage, and I said, this will never work. Okay,
this will never work. We're gonna do it. Okay.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
So I looked at the.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Camera and we're doing it, and I said, Okay, this
is a physical challenge that I don't want to do.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Folks.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I don't think it'll ever work. But if one here's
the deal. They have twenty seconds to get one uh
a paper plane in the mailbox. If they do it,
I'll give you my house. I said, okay.
Speaker 6 (10:55):
Oh, Mark on your market said go the first, first
one right in the mailbox. They got close up of
me and I said, well, we'll discuss this during the commercial.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yes, so nay. Growing up in Erie, Pennsylvania, I mean
was an event.
Speaker 9 (11:15):
My brothers and I would watch this and I have
to ask you Mark, yes, sir, because we would watch
this and critique the kids doing the charity.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Oh yeah, you'll probably pick a red team or a
blue team, and then figure out why you could do
it better exactly.
Speaker 9 (11:27):
But then even the individual kid, I remember, I'm like,
this kid's a little dumb ass.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Come on, you did do it.
Speaker 9 (11:33):
You were so magnanimous hosting. But in your head do
you think, oh, come on.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Come yes, yes, yes, And the network was always very protective.
I will tell you a story that I've never told him.
I should probably be very careful about this. But Drew Gasperini,
who introduced me to Alex Brightman, who wrote our show,
I love Alex. Alex Brightman is the best guy ever, he.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Said in this very chair. Yeah, when he's beetle juicy.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Beetlejuice and uh, he's spaml out now and he did
School of Rock. He's brilliant. So he wrote this show
and he wanted to do a show. This is now
ten twelve years ago, the most disgusting show in the
history of New York. So we're at Joe's pub. I'm
am seeing this show, okay, and Alex was doing dirty
high coups. I mean it was the whole thing was
(12:16):
just so insane. But they showed an obstacle course of
me saying you know, you gotta get through there, you
gotta grab the flag. He got ten seconds and then
we rolled it back and I said, this is what
I was really thinking when they were doing that, And
God forbid, if anybody would have a tape of that,
I would never be working in.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
This business again. But you know, you do think.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
I was thirty four when I started that show, Okay,
And by the way, I never wanted to do a
kid show.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
I just wanted to host a show.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
So the reason I think the show was successful in
many ways is I didn't talk down to the kids
and say.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Mahbi, do you have a girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
I talked to him like they were grown ups, and
I would screw around with him and they would, you know,
fight back with me, and it was actually fun. So
I think that all those things contributed. But yes, in
my head, I was going, you can't get that gets
right there in.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Front of.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Just turning us on Mark Summers. Is here the new
off Broadway show. It's called The Life and Slims of
Mark Summers. Not it's only going on till June. You
check in a sixteen week run. We gotta make sure
there's a lot more to the show than your double
Dare days. I'm gonna get into that.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Garrett.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
Did you have a memory from growing up on Staten Island, Well,
it's great to finally meet my babysitter, like this was
the after school special, I mean first, And if my
mom was here, she'd be yelling at you right now
because I would say, hey, they can pick their nose
on Double Dare, why can't I pick my nose?
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And she was like, well, you don't have.
Speaker 10 (13:39):
A flag up your nose.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
We can make that out.
Speaker 10 (13:42):
I mean to the fact where I was so addicted
to Double Dare where I would bring the flags to
the bullpit and McDonald's and really and put the ball
and put the flag in there and try to like
time myself to see if I could find the flag.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
You were a ball pit, Oh of course.
Speaker 10 (13:55):
I mean to the point where I would go to
Universal to see if you guys are taping down there
just by chance, and everybody be like, well, let's go online,
let's go on King Kong, let's go I was like, no, no,
I need to get on Double now. So thank you,
Oh yeah, no, thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Unbelievable. I do people do get people like they help
you and start crying. Yes, all the time.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
It's unbelievable because the memories that they have and the
other reason they do it we talk. The show takes
a dramatic turn halfway through. When I discovered I had
obsessive compulsive disorder, I was hosting the talk show and
doctor Hollander comes on and I had been on National
TV that I haven't So people who come to the
show have obsessive compulsive disorder, A lot of them do,
and they stay at the stage door and want to talk.
(14:40):
And the amount of people who I've hugged and who
have been crying after the show has been quite amazing.
And the fact that we're sort of getting this message out.
When I got diagnosed, there was no help pretty much.
Now you can take medication, cognitive behavior therapy, all sorts
of things.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
But back in the.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Day when I discovered I had it, there wasn't a
lot going on. So, yes, there's a lot of warm
and fuzzy moments going on after the show one hundred.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
See, that's the thing. This show has been on for
thirty years.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
So when I went out on a book to where
and when we go out, they're like, you know, their
grandkids listen to us now and so I see. But
there's the bond here is this when we look back
to our childhood years, those as innocent as they could
have been and should have been years, and connect with
them now when we live in this fed up world
(15:27):
that we live in. It does bring this peace, yes,
and we connect with the innocence and the times that
made us so happy and Mark Summers.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
You do that. You still have the ability to do
that now. Obviously it's so odd.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
I grew up with Soupy Sales who right when I
was a kid, he was the person who did kid
shows and I became friends with Soupye and that was
like dying to going to heaven kind of moment. And
I guess, unbeknownst to me at the time, that I
am that too, an entire different generation. You know what's
so funny is the other day somebody said, well, you
signed my program and I said sure. I said, do
(16:03):
you want me to mention something about double there or Unwrapped?
And they said, what's double there?
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Wow. So there's a whole.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Generation of people who don't even know me from that.
They only know me from the Food Network. I was
there for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Well, Unwrapped is one of the best shows ever. Thanks.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
So, I mean the premise of Unwrapped is at least
the history isn't think we buy every day?
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Yes, where do they come from? Where do they come from?
And you know whyser?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
You know of different colored em and ms and you
know what do they used to make the mike and
ikes taste the way they do? And I did, you know,
hundreds of episodes of that for eleven years, and then
I execut produced Dinner Impossible and Restaurant Impossible. So I've
had this crazy life where I started off as a magician.
I became a regular at the Comedy Store in seventy
six with Dave and Jay and Robin, and then you know,
(16:46):
become a host of a kid's show. Then I'm at
Food Network, and you know, now I am off Broadway
doing a one man show. So it's been quite an
interesting run of events over the last seventy two years. Oh,
I've been doing this almost fifty years.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Was talk it? I mean in a car accident once
you broke every bone in your face.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Yes, I was coming back from a restaurant and possible shoot,
didn't wear a seat belt and yeah, the credit card
machine hit me and broke every bone in my face.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
That was a lovely moment. Credit card machine. Yeah, you
know that when you get ran into a credit what.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Yes, I was sitting on the back of the cab
right and you know the thing where you oh yeah
and I the guys slammed on the brakes, hit the
center divider, and.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
My head went right into the credit card machine. In
a life of cancer, not one, not two, but three
bouts cancer? What kind of cancer? Was it?
Speaker 2 (17:32):
A chronic elymphatic leukemia? And I'm on medication I will
be for the rest of my life. They're only fifteen
thousand dollars a month for the pills, but yeah, it's
given me alive.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So yeah. I went through chemo twice.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
Third time I was on immuno therapy didn't work and
that's why they tried the pills in a work.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
So yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
So we see these people that we love and we
adore and that we either grew up with or we
continue to learn from. On TV, you never really stop
all the time to think about, well, this is a
human being who's living a life of maybe being married,
maybe not, maybe be with OCD or you don't know
where they came from or where they're going.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
You just know who they are while you're watching it.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
And Elvis, that's why I did this show. And I
also have a podcast called Mark Summers un Wraps, and
it's based on the fact that you go to a movie,
TV show, Broadway show and you go, boy, the person
on that show is so lucky, and it's like, no,
they work their asses off to get there, And what
is it about some people who can go over under
a round or through the wall and other people go, now,
I'm not doing this and they retreat and I'm more
(18:28):
interested in the people who figured out a way to
get where they're going. We had Richard Kain on recently,
we had Kevin Pollack on, we had Highway Men down on.
We've had some really good people tell their stories. And
everybody in this room has this story as well. You're
not sitting here because somebody called you up and said
I want you to work here. You figured out a
way to get in this room.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
Not everybody can do that. Amen.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Hey, So doing a one man show about your life,
what do you learn from it?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Don't mind?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
I mean it's the same as when you write a biography.
An autobiography, you actually learn a lot about yourself. This
has to be that times ten.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It's an emotional roller coaster on a nightly basis because
I'm up there telling the story that I lived, and
some nights I get so emotional.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I do break down.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
I could never control it in certain moments where I'm
reliving the moments, because if you're going to tell the story,
it's got to be authentic. You can't go up there
and pretend to do the story. You're telling them about
your life. So yes, it's very emotional. It's sort of
like less expensive than going to a psychiatrist on a
regular basis. And I do learn a lot about myself.
But at this point in my life, it's funny. I
(19:34):
used to go on stage when I worked the Magic Castle.
I would throw up every time before I went on and
did a show because I had no idea what I
was doing. I am so confident now and I don't
get nervous. I can't wait to get to that theater
and perform this on a nightly basis. And you know,
it took me this long to get that confident though.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
But that journey was necessary.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Oh my god, yes, I could have never done this
even five years ago, I could have never performed it.
The best compliment I got. Brightman saw me initially when
we started this eight nine years ago, and he hadn't
seen me since opening night. We did open the nineteenth
of February, and he came up to me and he said,
I gotta ask you a question.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I said, what's that? He said, when did you learn
to act? And I broke down.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
I thought, coming from Alex Brightman, that was a really
emotional moment for me.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But you aren't acting. It's it's a combination of things. Selvis.
It's fascinating.
Speaker 9 (20:23):
Okay, So I have to ask you this question, yes, sir,
and I asked this with all due respect. I heard
an urban legend one time that you would have to,
in regards to your OCD, vacuum yourself out of hotel rooms.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
Is that true? No?
Speaker 2 (20:38):
All these you know things between me and Howie Mendel
that have been made up, how he used to put
towels down on the floor and get a pair of
tongs to take the bed sheet off, and all.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The time in hotel rooms.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
I would do that without exactly Yeah, none of that stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
But you know I didn't do I can, by the way,
I'm a great vacuumer, and at my house I can
vacuum out of every room without a footprint. I mean,
I can teach you that if you want. But no,
that thing about the hotel, that that never happened. So
but thank you for asking. Yeah, now, all those urban
legend things happened.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
I was doing another radio show and a guy said,
I came up to you an airport. You refused to
shake my hand.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
No, I didn't. I shake everybody, Okay. Funny thing is
when you arrived, I said, can we shake his hand?
I don't want to make you uncomfortable. We love you.
It was never germ phobic.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
It was all about cleanliness and orderliness and you know,
putting things symmetrical and making sure everything was perfect. As
a matter of fact, the studio is making me nuts.
Could you turn that up?
Speaker 5 (21:44):
I used to I feel like I used to like
touch things like four or five times. Oh really, even
when I would go through stores, I would like rearrange
things in the store and I'd be like, and then
I'd walk away. And the funny thing is you and
I talk about that. Our thing is odd numbers. I
used to have to everything, even amount of see.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Some people are even some people are well the rule
book with people who see changes on a daily basis,
it really does yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yeah, yeah yeah that yeah odd numbers.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
So isn't that weird that people have to flip a
light switch so many times?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
Or walk in uh to a room?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
So Daniel will walk into a door and she cannot
leave through another door. She has to go out through
the door.
Speaker 5 (22:21):
I came in that way, I'm going out down because
and you know, because then you get these thoughts, you
haven't thoughts gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
See, that's in my show that I was afraid that
if I my room wasn't clean, that when my parents
got in the car, they'd get in a car accident
and die.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So that's why you kept doing that?
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Why do we why do you think those things?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Well, I'll send you the doctor's number and sold.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
If I'm walking down a staircase, if I drag my
left heel on the step, I have.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
To even and out with my right. Really I do.
But I don't think there's doom on the way. If
I don't, I just don't know what it is. I mean,
I live a life of doom. Any Ways, I'm already
paying the price.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I still have trouble in grocery stores where I get
fixated on reading labels, and so my wife goes grocery
shopping without me because I can get stuck in a
place and you know, you say yourself, I have to
read it perfect.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Well what does perfect mean? You know?
Speaker 2 (23:15):
And when I was doing the talk show here in
New York, they our execu producers said get out of here.
Driving us crazy. I would make the staff nuts, so
he threw me out and I would walk from one
in the afternoon until nine, up and down the streets
of New York. But sometimes would get stuck at a
place reading you know, a sign in Tiffany's over and
(23:35):
over and over again, and you know, you get stuck
and then you got to get yourself out of it.
So yeah, I mean, thank god, I don't do that
much anymore, but it is still. I always say I'm
eighty two percent cured. I don't think you're ever one
hundred percent cured.
Speaker 3 (23:46):
Well, I guess if it slows you down, if it
stops progression or progress in life, then you got to
address it.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
Yep. Scary. I just want to say I love you, man.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
I have no questions, very kind, no questions, just a few,
just some love for you.
Speaker 11 (24:04):
Thank you, I love it. That was the most beautiful moment.
I love these guys. Those are fantastic.
Speaker 7 (24:14):
I have a question on a completely different topic, because
you've done one hundred things. You talked about all of it,
from doubled Air to Unwrapped, and now you're doing this play.
I most recently saw you and quiet on the side
that just came out. Oh my, how was that being
able to talk about all that? Was that like a
cleansing feeling to you to finally be able to say, like, hey,
I wanted to advocate for these kids, and I saw
what was going on.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Let me tell you about that. You're going to get
an exclusive here.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I got called by these folks saying they wanted to
do a documentary on Nickelodeon, and so I said sure,
and I went there and they asked me what I
thought of Nick and the first ten or twelve seconds
from want I understand this documentary or me saying all
these wonderful things, but they did a bait and switch
on me.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
They ambushed me.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
They never told me what this documenting was really about,
and so they showed me a video of something that
I couldn't believe was on Nicolos and I said, well,
let's stop.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Tape right here. What are we doing. Well, we're doing
this thing. Do you know this guy? And all this
kind of stuff, and I left. Okay.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
So I got a phone call about six weeks ago
saying you're totally out of the show, and I went great.
Then they called me about four weeks ago and said, well,
you're in it, but you're only in the first part
of it because you talked about the positive stuff of Nickelodeon.
What they didn't tell me, and they lied to me about,
was the fact that they put in that other thing
where they had the camera on me when.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
They ambushed me and uh away.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
So now we get into a whole situation about who's unethical.
Speaker 7 (25:40):
That's a very interesting I had no idea. I was
wondering about so many of the interviews that they've done
and how they did it.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I never met Dan Schneider when we got done doing
Doubledare and we had run our run. Those people came
in after and took over our studios. Never met the man.
Have no idea about any of those things. I mean,
I know Keenan from Keenan and Kel because we've done
stuff together. But as far as anything that happened on
that show with any of those people, I never met
any of them. I didn't know anybody, but they made
(26:07):
it seem like I knew those people.
Speaker 7 (26:08):
Definitely did.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
They knew exactly what they were doing a documentary about,
and ethically they should have said something to you about,
you think and given you a shot to say, I
don't know them. I shouldn't even be there. You're If
I knew something, maybe i'd come talk to you, but
I don't.
Speaker 5 (26:24):
Is there anything you can do about that now?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Or well, there's a phone call coming in today at
three o'clock. There we go.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
This is exclusive.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Love it look, you know, I through it all.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
You obviously make so many people so happy for so
many reasons. And the fact that you're doing your your show,
The Life and Slimes of Mark Summers is just another layer.
And so do we have more layers to come?
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Are you?
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Are you? Are you ready to move forward into something else?
Or what do you want to do?
Speaker 1 (26:55):
What do I want to do?
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Well, there's a possibility we could tour this. That would
be one thing that we've just Gus doing it for
streaming services. Another discussion going on. But you know, the
one thing that has eluded me is actually being in
a Broadway show. And I auditioned for Waitress a couple
of years ago and they told me, quote that I
could never play that part.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
I was playing old Joe.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
I try to because they said that I played it
too young, that I had too much energy, and I
had a little in my voice that I do not
come across as an old man.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Sort of a compliment.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
But you know, I put the word out there that
if there's any Broadway producer who has not I don't
need a.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Lead like a third you know lead kind of thing.
One song and one thing aligne. You would play the
wacky neighbor. Yeah, you know the Wizard would be the
great one song. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Yeah, Well there's a debate on that. Brighten Television. Not sure,
but let's pretend I can. But you know, playing the
Wizard in Wicked would be you know, the kind of
perfect role, you know, twelve minutes on stage for a
couple of scenes, something like that. So you know, I
put that out there. If it happens, fantastic, But I'm
gonna tell you Elvis if this is as good as
it gets, I'm the happiest man in the world.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
That's amazing, amazing. Are you one of these guys people
who's always thinking, I'm gonna keep working till the day
I kick.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
One hundred percent?
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Peter Marshall, my friend who was the host of Hollywood Score,
absolutely just turned ninety eight years old, and a few
years ago I said to him, you know, I think
I'm gonna stop doing this, and he said, Mark, all
my friends who stopped doing it died, do not ever
stop doing this stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
And so I keep moving forward. Let me keep moving forward.
What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Well, even though I say I'm I'm retired, I'm always
thinking of ideas and trying to pitch him I where
I live, Dennis Miller is one of my neighbors. And
Dennis and I have lunch when I'm home every Wednesday,
and he's one of the most intelligent humans I've ever
met my entire life. We have different points of view
on certain things, but having conversations like that and Roth
(29:00):
who did Funhouse, and Dennis Miller and we discuss the
industry and shows and things like that, and so yes,
I'm always inspired. It's harder to get meetings now because
I'm an old guy. They want to meet with people
who are less than half my age. And so even
though I have this reputation of having success, although I
will tell you that right before I got this Broadway show,
(29:21):
off Broadway Show, I was asked to host Tik Tak Doe,
which they're bringing back, and I had to turn it
down because here was my feeling. I've hosted many shows,
but I've never done a show in New York off Broadway,
and I thought, well, you know, I got to do that.
So I turned it down. And I don't look back
and say, wow, I should have taken that job, because
I've done that before. This is something that's all new,
(29:43):
and the excitement and the energy it takes is much
more exciting than go and say, well, if you answer
this question, you get three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
I've done that before.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
You know what you have, your audience, and you know
exactly who they are. I do, and so there's opportunity there.
So I bring this question up for a friend. Ask you,
for a friend, what do you do when you've been
doing it for so long you're kind of wondering what's next?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
You can't sell you. You just can't stop. I'll let
them know, yes, yes, yes, can please do.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
But you know the fact that this week I did
the view I did Sherry CBS Morning Show. The fact
that anybody still wants me on these shows is fascinating.
But the people who are producing and are hosting these shows,
like all of you, grew up watching me, and so
they want to reminisce. And so that's the advantage that
I have to a certain point. But you know, just
because and I have no idea how old you are,
(30:32):
but I know I'm a lot older than you. There's
no reason for us to stop. Seacrest always says to me,
he hates me because my voice sounds the same now
as it did when I was in my twenties and thirties.
He said, you should sound like an old man at
this point, and I don't. He said, Summers, you pissed
me off. So yeah, so you know, we just keep
doing what we're doing.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Man Mark Summers in the Life and Slimes of Mark
Summers is going on until June, So you got to
get in there right now and.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
We'll be there. Thank you, Mark Summers, thank you.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
And by the way, if you go to ms DARE
twenty four is your code on telecharge, you can get
tickets as little as thirty nine dollars.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
Hold on, hold on, repeat that.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Ms DARE like Mark Summers and double dere ms DARE
twenty four at telecharge dot com and you can get
tickets as low as thirty nine dollars. So do that
and we'll see you there.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
You're on sale, Helvis. We all are. Some of us
are complimentary. The Mercedes Benz Interview Lounge
Elvis Duran and the Morning Show ON DEMAND News
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