The Complete Hulk Hogan | Under the CineMat Ep. 156: The Incredible Hulk TV Pilot (1977) Part 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This institute is private property.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
If you know anything about this creature, it is your
duty to report that to the police.

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're letting your imagination run away with you now. I
have never seen this creature that you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Forgive me, doctor, but I am calling you a liar.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Mister McGhee, mister McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't
like me when I'm angry.

Speaker 4 (00:22):
The Lapsed Fan presents Under the Cinemat. Yeah, I love
to talk film. I have come here to chew bubble
gum and kick out.

Speaker 5 (00:33):
A great god.

Speaker 6 (00:35):
You're going nowhere under the cinemat, Get out, get out.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
I pick up guns. Bad things happen to people I
don't like.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Leave a movie to make.

Speaker 7 (00:45):
Can we all pull together here make movies?

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Well?

Speaker 6 (00:53):
The Complete Hulkogan continues on the other side of the
lapsed pond. It could suggested that there is a before
and after period for Terry Belea, a before Hulk after
Hulk perhaps, and if what we are watching this week

(01:13):
never happened, it might have been Kerry Van Eric or
Jimmy Snooka, who was in the main event of WrestleMania
one as the pilot for the Incredible Hulk TV series
smashes its way under the Cinema.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
And it promises to be incredible. It Yes, it does,
it absolutely does. As always, shout out to the Boss here.
This is me interjecting myself into his Under the Cinemat
agenda because I thought to myself, as we progressed with
the complete Hulk Hogan, you have to know why the

(01:51):
fuck the word Hulk was in the atmosphere as Terry
comes back from Cocoa Beach and tries to make another
run at the wrestling business. Yes, and why?

Speaker 6 (02:00):
And you know the thing is, you know, I'm actually
disappointed in myself for not having thought of it first,
because I should have. In all of my things and
preparing the Under the Cinemat side of things, I was
like this, like when you dropped it on me, it
was like it was a no brainer. I was like, oh, fuck, yeah,
whatever I was playing on doing out the window because
this is way more important. And and I just I

(02:23):
was like, I can't believe I didn't think of this,
Like this was a hit me was it was?

Speaker 4 (02:26):
The years lined up? Yes, it wasn't like Luf Rigno's
Incredible Hope on the air for ten years. When when
Terry Boleo ves to dial it up in the wrestling business,
it was the exact same.

Speaker 6 (02:37):
Year, and and and the this The Incredible Hulk was
the TV series, well the TV well, I mean it all,
it all coincides. But you know, we're gonna get in
the whole history of everything, but it's it's really it
was a huge hit. It was a very very very

(02:57):
big hit. And and if it wasn't a hit, it
really makes you wonder what would have happened it really does.

Speaker 8 (03:05):
You know.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
I'm so glad you said that way, because that's always
part of a wrestling story is there's always something in
the broader culture that, you know, be it a movie,
like when we when we do the Art of War Games,
you know, you've got to understand that movie, well one
was it again, it was it's the Mad Max Mad
Max movies. Right. You have to understand that like these bookers,
these people who give wrestlers names are are just stealing

(03:28):
from what's actually working in popular culture all day. Right,
And if we're going to do the complete Hulkgain, we
need to steep ourselves as only under the cinemat can.
And I hope you all enjoy this in the Solar System.
We don't have access to our EP tier on Patreon
and thus don't get to revel in the genius that
is Boss's UTC project. This is the kind of thing
you're missing over there, and we're glad to make it
available because it's going to be part of complete hulkogaan

(03:51):
cannon to free listeners this time and.

Speaker 6 (03:53):
Course, and honestly, I'm going to open it up to
certain things too, like you know, in terms of some
of his more general no on like this is why
why I was so very much why I was willing
to definitely put this onto the main feed is because
it does really tie into into the progression of Hull

(04:16):
Cogan Terry Boley as hul Cogan, and and there are
going to be some other.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
One, but I'm gonna have to go relook now.

Speaker 6 (04:21):
I have to kind of re examine my whole timeline
of things, because I got to see if there are
any other things that really kind of that were a
little more important into into the career of Hull Cogan
and not just a little side dance if you will,
like a lot of the side dances, they're gonna still be,
you know, on Patreon but but if there's any more
really inspirational, creative pieces of work that he did, I

(04:46):
mean it's it's we got to do it this way,
hands down, right.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
I Mean, everybody talks about the movie that's seminal for
Hull Cogan is Rocky three, and of course that stands
to reason it absolutely he went into vern and they
put turned a babyface, They forced him babyfit us the
fans because you such a big star in that movie.
But this to me is equally important in terms of
a movie that allowed Hulk Cogan to become Hulk Cogan.
Because yeah, it's just as we get into it, as

(05:13):
we'll go for the next legs of the total non
total hul Coken Journey, complete Hulk Coggin Journey, you're going
to find that, like it is ripped straight from what
the Incredible Hulk was and more significantly what Loo Forarigno,
who I'm so delighted you're going to be able to
get into in utc style. We're gonna get a full backdrop, yes,
who came into the public consciousness as part of Arnold

(05:34):
Swartzenegger's Pumping Iron, which might be a candidate for what
you're talking about, even pre dated this in that.

Speaker 6 (05:41):
We are going to talk to We're going to talk
a bit about about Pumping Iron and.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
Maybe sure, when we looked at that T shirt from
Whitey and Terry's gym that they opened next to the
Anchor Club in Cocoa Beach, I mean, right there, it's
basically a fact simile of Arnold Swartzenegger's signature pose from
the Pumping Iron movie poster, right exactly, So that this
is all part of why Hulk was the man for

(06:06):
the moment, because body building through Pumping Iron and through
Luff for Rigno, who became known to the public through
Pumping Iron and then became the incredible Hulk on this
incredibly successful television adaptation just just skyrocketed into the public
consciousness and it was like and Hulk became a shorthand
Hulk became, you know, a term that everybody knew what
you were talking about when you use the word Hulk exactly.

(06:28):
And as I'm sure we'll get into, the comic had
been around for a long time before this, yes, but
it was really the launch of Luff Forigno as Hulk
on national television. Yes, that made you know, made it
a no brainer what you'd call Terry bolea.

Speaker 6 (06:40):
Exactly, You're absolutely right, and we're gonna we are going
to go back. We're going to go back because and
actually in things that I have planned down the line,
it actually is is a great way to also just
kind of to launch that rocket, because we are going
to talk about because there would be no Hulk, there
would be no incredible Hulk TV series without stan Lee. Yeah,

(07:04):
or maybe that's not the case, maybe you don't necessarily
need Stanley, but that's more down the line, because well,
let me put it, let me put it this word
to start off with Stanley, this is what Stan's brother.
So there's a there's a great biography, more recent biography
since he passed away by Abraham Josephine Risman, who wrote

(07:25):
the Vince Nickman Ringmasters book. Yes, yes, well, uh, she
or they, I apologize, I didn't actually look up the pronouns,
I know, but anyway, uh wrote this book before the
Vince book about stan Lee.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
It is and.

Speaker 9 (07:47):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (07:47):
In the book, she talked to Stan's brother Larry, who
said that quote Stan had different sides to him. I
feel like I'm almost talking about Charles Foster Kane, who
was he what here we go, what was he?

Speaker 4 (08:10):
Here we go?

Speaker 6 (08:11):
What was he like? Yes, it depends on who you
talk to at what moment.

Speaker 4 (08:20):
And you know, folks, this is why this is a
job for under the cinemat because if we just threaded
in the story of Lufeignow an Incredible Hulk into the
complete hull coogin continuum, you know, we would have touched
on it. We would have, you know, understood where it
stood culturally, and but it would have been just a backdrop,
just you know, twenty five percent of one episode of

(08:41):
this whole thing. But that's not that's not what the
lapsed fan was put on this earth to do. The
lapsed fan was put on this earth to say, whoa
rabbit hole, Let's get the fucking mining equipment out, because
we're not stopping until we hit plasma, until we hit
fucking the molten core of the earth. Yes, And so
we go off, we go off to the side, and
by the time it's over, not only will you understand

(09:02):
Incredible Hulk, you'll understand that the full story behind everyone
who made the Incredible Holk thing.

Speaker 6 (09:08):
You you really will, you really will, least I hope
you will. Anyway, I mean, there is I mean, there's
a man for the job, is what I'm saying. I're
the man for the job. I appreciate that. H Further
in the book, by the way, I want to say,
I don't know if it's do you know if it
is it Reisman or Reesman? I always said Reesman. Maybe
it's Reesman. I don't know. The often false, the often

(09:31):
false story stan Lee told about himself and his work
was that of the American dream. Sure, success earned through
hard work, optimism, and staying true to oneself. But as
we know from talking to Brian Blair, the American Dream
didn't want to see Terry Boleya become Hulk.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
But the true story of his life is that of
the American reality. Don't even fuck what are you trying
to do to me this early in the process.

Speaker 6 (10:02):
Here success one in no small part through nepotism, corner cutting, dissembling,
and stealing. Here I am thinking, we're getting the minutia
of Lufigno where he was born. In ten minutes in
you're hitting you with the American reality. You damn fucking straight.

(10:22):
Stan Lee Stanley Martin Lieber Correct was born December twenty eighth,
nineteen twenty two. In New York City. His parents, Jacob
nicknamed Jack and Celia, both Jewish immigrants from Romania. So
what I could find Stan's mom Celia. So Celia arrived

(10:44):
to the US first with her parents. This is where
we would hit the However, that yeah, sounds in Romania.
We're gonna I guess, yeah, probably, I don't know, my my,
my anthing would go towards more towards Poland and have
a polka playing, but you know whatever. She arrived December
twenty sixth, nineteen oh one, and they would they would

(11:06):
reside in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. But this
was long before it was the nostalgic home of Cat's Delhi.
This was a rough neighborhood at this point, very rough
and a very Jewish neighborhood. And they were but they
weren't happy with fresh off the boat immigrant Jews. They
were like no, no, no no. Jack arrived Ellis Island

(11:30):
on August sixth, nineteen oh six. He was trained as
a saddle maker in Romania, but when he came when
he came to New York, he was now a dress cutter,
like cutting dresses like clothing. Wow, saddle maker to dress cutter.

Speaker 4 (11:49):
And coming to New York and suddenly becoming an Irishman Irish.

Speaker 6 (11:55):
Or at least becoming coming into the professional wrestling world
and becoming an Irishman.

Speaker 4 (11:58):
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 6 (12:03):
So I found something I found So I was trying
to find, you know, trying to find as much as
I could on ancestry regarding that the family lineage. And
one thing I thought was kind of interesting was that
in nineteen twenty, according to the Census, I found that
Jack Lieber was listed as a border at the Schwartz household,
so not a family related but this David Schwartz was

(12:26):
in the dress business, so I'm made the assumption that
Jack probably worked for him.

Speaker 4 (12:30):
So that was interesting.

Speaker 6 (12:31):
I don't know, it just felt because I didn't get
the I don't think he came with family.

Speaker 4 (12:35):
I think he came on his own. And you know,
it's weird.

Speaker 6 (12:39):
It's weird how sometimes on I mean, it's obviously whatever
people are able to put up and whenever, whatever the
people on ancestry are able to find. But it is
fascinating how with some people you can find so much information,
but then with other people you can find almost nothing,
and then they're the ones in the middle and this

(12:59):
was kind of in the middle one for me, like
in terms of finding stuff about them. But he was
naturalized as a citizen December fifth, nineteen twenty one, which
was just over a year before stan was born. And
stan he grew up obviously in depression era America. And
this is one of those this is part of honestly,

(13:22):
if you ask me, and no one just said this outright,
but based on what I've learned about stan Ley, this
is one of the reasons why he tells a different
narrative than he does. Then he may have lived because
he grew up in depression era America and he saw
his dad like he even though he was a very

(13:45):
good he was a very good dress cutter, and he
was in demand and that kind of job paid very well.
It was the depression and the guy couldn't find work
all the time. And he actually says more often than
not his dad was out of work. So this is
what he's this is what he's witnessing as a kid,
all right, He's witnessing, you know, probably a miserable dad.

(14:07):
And and what's interesting too is that he doesn't go
into much detail outside of his uh, you know, he
wrote this kind of was considered a quasi autobiography Excelsior
in two thousand and two. And but you know, if
you look at interviews if he I've listened to a
bunch of interviews when his parents are brought up, he
doesn't really talk about them that much.

Speaker 4 (14:31):
I thought Ulkoken ripped off Lou Furigno. You're telling me
Hulk Hogan ripped off stan Lee in terms of talking
about his real upbringing.

Speaker 6 (14:38):
I'm telling you that this episode of Under the Cinemat
is loaded with carnies. Look, folks, look at Stanley's face. Yes,
look at an interview with him. Look, okay, here's k fabe.
He's k fabe all fucking day.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Look at the man.

Speaker 6 (14:54):
And let me tell you something. Okay, why the sunglasses,
stan what are you hiding?

Speaker 7 (14:59):
Hiding?

Speaker 4 (15:00):
I want us to see, right, you want you want
us to see your Paul Hayman esque shifty eyes when
you're telling a half truth. You should you should watch.

Speaker 6 (15:09):
There's this great interview of him and and of it's
with the Television Academy. All right, Television Academy. Oh god,
what a what a treasure trow It is a treasure trove.
Talk about doing incredible, yes, just having the work that
needs to be done to preserve what moves people. It
is unbelievable. Hundreds of hours of interviews with with people

(15:31):
involved in television, which is amazing because it's like it's
not even like, think about Stanley. I wouldn't consider Stanley
to be a television guy, but so much of his
work has been translated to television, so he kind of is.
And he's listed as a producer most of the time.
You know, he gets a producer credit for a bunch
of shit. So yeah, he he you know, he he
qualifies to be interviewed and it's amazing. But you watch

(15:53):
that interview and he's almost too confident and too comfortable
with what he's saying.

Speaker 4 (16:06):
In mainstream and likely nine yes.

Speaker 6 (16:09):
Yes, he knows like he he's he's more or less
established his narrative. I mean, it definitely changed, but he
more or less established his narrative at that point in
that interview. You can tell, you know, there there are
things that he says and he is he is all
about just portraying this idea of American And I'm not

(16:29):
trying to take anything away from Stanley. I'm not trying
to do anything away from Stanley. There are I I
firmly believe that there are that that that he is
an important part I think, you know. But what what
Reesman says in in their book is what I find
great is that his success was not because he had

(16:52):
the most talent. It was because he was the most ambitious. Yes,
that's where he sell huh what what.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
Nothing? I'm talented? That is what I am. Sheer talent,
sheer t luntuous individual. I was talking about Hogan. But
you make a good point. Yeah, that's true, both of them.

(17:28):
So this is what he wrote in his book about
his parents, he said, because again this is when he
finally opened up about them. He wrote, quote, I always
felt sorry for my father. He was a good man,
honest and caring. He wanted the best for his family,
as most parents do, but the times were against him.
At the height of the depression, there were no jobs
to be had. Seeing the demoralizing effect that his unemployment

(17:49):
had in his spirit, making him feel that he wasn't
that he just wasn't needed, gave me a feeling I've
never been able to shake. It's a feeling that the
most important thing for a man is to have work
to do, to be busy, to be needed today. I
never feel more fulfilled than fulfilled than when I am
working on a number of projects at once, which is
really nuts, because I'm always wishing I had more free time. Still,

(18:12):
when I'm busy, I feel needed and that makes me
feel good. There you have it instance psychiatry and didn't
cost either of us to send. Wow, it explains whole
Coven's whole thing too, I mean, explains why till the
bitter end he's doing media tours when he he can
barely breathe.

Speaker 6 (18:29):
Exactly exactly, he continues. I always wished my mother and
father would lavish as much love on each other as
they did on my younger brother Larry and me. They
were both parallel, right, I was going to keep doing that.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
No, do it?

Speaker 6 (18:44):
Please listen, there are way too many similarities. They were
both good, loving parents, and I think the only thing
that gave them any pleasure was their children. My brother
and I always regretted that fate had not been kinder
to them and that they couldn't have had happier lives.
They must have loved each other when they married, but
my earliest recollections were of the two of them arguing,

(19:06):
quarreling incessantly. Almost always it was over money or the
lack of it. I realized that at an early age,
how the specter of poverty, the never ending worry about
not having enough money to buy groceries or to pay
the rent, can cast a cloud over a marriage. I'll
always regret the fact that by the time I was
earning enough money to make things easier for them, it

(19:27):
was too late.

Speaker 4 (19:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (19:30):
Now, so Stan, he paints a sort of like a
tragic but loving portrait of the parents.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Right.

Speaker 6 (19:39):
Larry, the younger brother, on the other hand, he would
call he called his father cold, cryptic and more concerned
about what other people were thinking. And the Kenny Wheeler

(20:01):
I would say, so, yes, yeah, he also would say.
Sam would say later on too, like basically no matter what. Again,
you know, as he got older he became a little
more open about certain things, and as I think anyone does,
really and he basically implied that no matter what Stan did,

(20:27):
whatever he accomplished, even you know, before the guy died
or whatever, it just seemed like his his father never
considered him to be successful. Wow, never considered him to
be success And I and honestly like, to me, if
I'm putting on my my non psychiatry degree, hat I

(20:49):
would it sounds like a very insecure and resentful father.
And to me like, I don't, I don't can't fully
blame him. Obviously, the circumstances were out of his control,
like the depression, what are you supposed to do in
that in that situation, But at the same time he

(21:12):
it clearly bothered him to see his son more successful
than he was.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
Tremendous you know that what I that's what I see too,
and I and then and then and then that resentment,
you know, as if you're the son or you're the
child of a parent that resents you, even if they
don't outwardly say it, maybe they did. We don't.

Speaker 6 (21:32):
Again, we don't know all the details. But you feel
that energy, You feel that, just as damn fucking right
not to say he did do that, but he felt.
I'm sure he felt that. A fear of that taking
shape is part of what held him back. Of course,
of course, you know you gotta you can't you get

(21:53):
to think about all of them, you know, even no
matter how, no matter how now uh much we give
any of the McMahon children a hard time. You gotta
you gotta think about the fact that they're also in
the shadow of this goliath. This absolutely and I don't

(22:15):
mean it in the positive way, but just awesome in
terms of just sheer uh size, and and accomplishment. Goliath
like you also see you see how he you know,
whatever he did to be successful. But you also see
all these awful, awful, awful things that that man has done,

(22:37):
all the awful things. And don't tell me they don't
know about it. Don't tell me they're not fucking waist
deep in it.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 6 (22:47):
It's these are these are troubled individuals, troubled individuals and
uh uh on on top of that, Celia, Stan's mom standing,
Larry's mom very very enamored with Stan, Yes, and he

(23:10):
Stan called her his biggest fan. And I think to
myself too, Okay, So then you're watching your wife act
more lovingly. Presumably this is speculation, but I'm just putting
the pieces together in my mind. You see your son,
you see your wife being more loving towards your son

(23:31):
than perhaps you. Resentment right there, sure, sure resentment and Larry. So,
Larry was born nineteen thirty one, Stan was nine, and
he admits that he pretty much lived his life in

(23:51):
Stan's shadow even then, which was enforced in no small
part by his mother. This is a clip from the
A and E Bygraphy I think was ninety eight or
ninety nine or two thousand, somewhere around there they did
any Dini biography of Stan Lee. And this is Larry
Larry Lieber talking about all that.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
I remember in terms of Stan and myself.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
She always spoke so highly of Stan talking about him,
and at the time I used to play a lot
and run. She said, why don't you read books the
way your brother does and be literate and be like Stan?
And I had this feeling that Stan was a wonderful
I remember she told me once when he was a
child that one of the school teachers said about him something,

(24:38):
he reminds me of our President Roosevelt. Though that's the
hell of a thing I was. My older brother was
President Roosevelt, and as I said, I didn't really know him,
so I think I built up a bit of a
hero worship there.

Speaker 10 (24:49):
I've always regretted that I was so much older than he,
because it was a little tough for us to play together.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
You know.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
He was just an infant.

Speaker 10 (24:57):
He's a great guy, but I got to know him
as well as I would have wanted.

Speaker 6 (25:02):
To think about that. He's a great guy, but I
never got to know him as much as I would
have wanted to.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
It's just weird to call your brother a great guy.
It is like it's a guy you knew at worked
for two years.

Speaker 6 (25:21):
It is exactually like it's a or it's like someone
right that you kind of lost touch with over the years, right,
you know. I mean, it's just that that whole to me,
that whole thing was very, very telling. That little moment
there just said so much to me when I was
listening to it originally. It sounds a lot like how
Hulk talks about Alan.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean they ended up obviously worshiping at
the shrine of Terry Pete and Ruth, but not so.
It took a while. It took, at least to hear
Hogan tell it, Hulk Hogan took a lot longer for
them to come around that he was the son that
they really loved the most.

Speaker 6 (25:57):
Yep, yeah, well, I mean, come on, Kenny, Ruth loves Kenny.
I don't care what anyone says. Wow, Ruth loves Kenny.
But you know, like I sat there and listened to that,
and the question that went through my mind is, well,
why didn't you try to get to know him better?
Not necessarily, I understand the idea of being almost a

(26:20):
decade a part. You know, when you're kids, that's a
whole different story. I totally understand that it's hard to
be able to get to know somebody when you know
they're five and you're fifteen. Obviously that's the case. But
when you're when you're thirty five and they're twenty five,
that's a different story. Now, you know, it's like you're

(26:44):
you're closer in age than you were back then. Yeah,
even though it's ten still ten years. It's like in
terms of naturation, Yeah, you know, it's like you like,
why didn't you get to know him?

Speaker 7 (26:54):
Then?

Speaker 4 (26:55):
What's what's going on there? Stan? I don't know. I
don't know.

Speaker 6 (27:02):
But and here there's another example here too. So he
always says he doesn't have a lot of memories of
when he was younger, and the family moved around quite
a bit, and at one point they were living up
in Washington Heights in Manhattan, and in that TV Academy interview,
he shared this story about him riding a bicycle across

(27:28):
the GW Bridge.

Speaker 10 (27:31):
After a while we moved uptown to Fort Washington Avenue
in a one hundred and seventy fifth Street, and it
was a nice neighborhood. And the two things I remember
There was a theater called the Low's one seventy fifth Street,
and there was a fellow who played an organ. In
those days to bring people into the theaters, they eva

(27:52):
had free Dish Night, where anytime you'd go, you'd get
free dishes and you could build up a set of
dishes by going often enough. Or they'd have somebody playing
an organ. And I forget this guy's last name. His
first name was Lou and they advertised him as Lou
So and so at the Magic Organ or the Magic Console,

(28:14):
I think they called it. And as a young kid,
I was so impressed with this guy because the organ
was almost as big as the theater. It was enormous,
and he would sit there playing these songs and I
never forgot that. I don't know why they don't have
organs today in movies. And let's see the other thing
I remember about that neighborhood. It was near the George

(28:38):
Washington Bridge, which goes from Manhattan to New Jersey Big Bridge.
But when I was about ten or twelve years old,
I used to ride my bike over the bridge to
the Jersey side because on the Jersey side there was
a little hot dog stand with a big sign that

(28:58):
said the world's longest hot dog twelve inches. It was
twice the size of a regular hot dog, and it
was a dime, and a regular hot dog was a nickel. Now,
I don't know why I didn't say to myself, I
could have stayed in Manhattan and bought two regular ones
for a dime and it would have been the same thing.

(29:19):
But it was such a triumphant feeling to ride across
the bridge and no, I'm meeting the world's biggest hot dog,
and it's to show you what a shallow mind I have.
Those are the two things that stick in my mind.

Speaker 6 (29:37):
I okay, take any take away from that, not really,
no ones that are appropriate.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
Okay, good.

Speaker 6 (29:51):
So something that he didn't say there, but he's I've
read him word that he said other places. I've seen
him say it in other interviews that nobody loved a
bicycle more than he loved his. Larry says, I don't
remember stand loving a bicycle that much. I don't remember
riding that often. You know, Larry, I'll say, you know,

(30:16):
nine years younger. You know, you don't know who knows.
I'm not saying I'm not saying either one is right.
But I also have seen that it is suggested that
this quote love of the bicycle is more a storytelling
technique in that he is constantly trying to escape the
life he was born into. That he's riding off on

(30:38):
the George W.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
Bridge. I was going to say something similar, what are
you peddling from right exact? Why is it so enticing
to like make that truck across the bridge.

Speaker 6 (30:47):
Exactly exactly leaving? Oh, you know, I don't know all
these little these little things. It's kind of like interesting.
And he you know, we talked about the movie theater
in that clip. He loved media, loved media, comic strips,
radio shows, going to the movies, he loved reading. And

(31:10):
he apparently he rarely didn't have a magazine or a
book in his hand at all times. And while you're
while I was reading these these chapters and whatnot, and
these passages in the book True Believer, that's the that's

(31:31):
the Uh.

Speaker 4 (31:32):
I don't know if I said that before, but that's
the book.

Speaker 6 (31:33):
About That's Reisman's book about about Stanley is called True Believer. Yeah,
you really do gather that this poverty, like he he
like it really became a chip on his shoulder, really

(31:56):
became this chip on the shoulder, and that he would,
you know, he would always talk about how his life
was shitting and how his life was great. Yeah, you know,
back then it was shooting. Now it's great, and it's
a before and after thing. It's it's not you know,
it's it's like it was shooting, then I got rich
and famous and in my life was great.

Speaker 4 (32:16):
You know.

Speaker 6 (32:16):
There's just that kind of there's there's like a very
I mean, it kind of reminds me of Vincent Away
and the idea of you know, it was like his
life was shooting when he was in North Carolina and
then his life was great kind of was shooting North Carolina,
you know. But still it's like, I don't know, there's
there's I wanted. I always want to dig more into

(32:36):
the mind of people who who really can't and I'm
not saying that they didn't have a bad upbringing. They
they're very probably did, but I'm always fascinated as to
what where, Like, I want to know more. I want
to know more. I want to I want I want details.
And from what I gathered, Stan wouldn't give anybody details, right.

(33:01):
He attended the DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx
and this fucking school, man, do you know this high
school at all? It's like a fucking sponge for successful people.
Sounds like Robins High School visa virest. No, seriously, it
fucking is so graduates of them. Fellow comic legends Batman

(33:22):
creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Basketball hall of Famer
Nate Archibald, TV's Don Adams, former president of Columbia Pictures,
David Begelman, legendary playwright and screenwriter Neil fucking Simon, Journalist
David Steinberg, Musical theater pioneer Richard Rogers, actor Judd Hirsch,

(33:43):
Boston Celtics radio play by play announcer Johnny Most, funny man,
Tracy Morgan, film director George Cocoorr. Another Broadway legend, fucking
Frank Lesser, design fucking legend, Ralph Lauren, Bernard fucking Herman,
Fucking Patty Chayavsky and rapper A boogie would to Hoodie.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
Do you know him? Yeah, I als know where I
fucking know him.

Speaker 6 (34:12):
I know him because I had to do what for
my kids fucking cheerleading program. It was like a fundraiser
type fucking thing. I had to I had to do.

Speaker 8 (34:24):
U.

Speaker 6 (34:25):
I had to, h you know, do concessions at a
fucking at a hoodie boogie would a Hoodie concert. And
I've never seen more drunk and just completely off the
chain twenty somethings than that second concert.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
Oh my god. It was like, I mean, there was
so much vomit, so much vomit. It was so awful.
Do you have to have the hoodie covering their mouth?
I know exactly.

Speaker 3 (34:56):
And uh.

Speaker 6 (34:57):
Also, by the way, the graduate TV legend and Gary Marshall,
who Stan shared a funny story about that when he
is on a TV Academy interview.

Speaker 10 (35:08):
I have a friend Gary Marshall, the television director producer.

Speaker 6 (35:13):
Yeah, see pal, we all know who Gary Marshall is. Okay,
all right, thanks, we get it.

Speaker 10 (35:19):
Good writer and so forth. And he was a he
went to Clinton also, so we have that in common.
And it's the funniest thing I was with him the
other day. And whenever he introduces me to somebody, instead
of saying, oh, this is stan Lee, he did Spider Man,
or this is stan Lee. He went to Clinton with me.

(35:40):
That's the biggest thing to good old Gary.

Speaker 6 (35:44):
It's a guy from a league of their own, right
right right right, And you know he produced a bunch
of he produced like the Happy Days and whatever. One
little small detail though, is that stan graduated in nineteen
thirty nine and Gary Marshall graduated in nineteen fifty two,
so they really don't go to school together. So he

(36:06):
said this is my classmate from him. So okay, hey, fine,
I'm not saying anything wrong with it. I'm just saying,
you know, I'm just pointing out details, that's all. Mike
Graham was obsessed with the Hulkan. He was like the
whole like high school four years out of.

Speaker 4 (36:19):
Him brother, exactly. You know what Stanley the worker, either
worker Daddy e the worker Stanley forgetting Gary Marshall or
remembering depending on how you want to spin it, you know.

Speaker 6 (36:44):
And I mean this should come as no surprise. But
you know, stan Lee he has needs right right right?
He has needs and Reeseman insinuates that Stanley got this
apartment in the West Village. It was so he uh he,

(37:09):
I'm jumping ahead of moment. I'm going to go back.
But like he was dating a girl. He went to
City College for like six months, then moved into a
hotel and and but he got this apartment I think
to be away from his parents, but also to he
Reeseman calls.

Speaker 4 (37:30):
Him a hound with the ladies. A hound.

Speaker 6 (37:35):
Well, okay, I mean, and there are stories. Sadly we
don't really touch upon that for this, but Stanley is
coming back under the cinemat.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
That's a promise. Yeah, all right, for sure. And we're
going to talk about his his his needs, but I
want to put it right here that he has them.
And man, there are stories about his needs. Wow, okay
down the line. Wow, I didn't know this at all.
Oh yeah, an insatiable appetite. Yes, yes, listen, carnal Oh

(38:10):
he needs to be satisfied, all right, Jhn Wilson, all right,
damn fucking right. Don Wilson needed it too? All right?

Speaker 6 (38:19):
There are there are certain men out there, okay, who
have no names here, who have just a lust for
for just carnal pussy.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
Yes, okay, what you're saying makes sense so far.

Speaker 6 (38:46):
Right, and and and you know what, they're gonna go
to whatever lengths that they can't to get it all right,
to fill the void.

Speaker 4 (38:57):
I think you're trying to think, you're trying to tell
me that Stanley fall squarely in that categ He does, Yes,
he does so again.

Speaker 6 (39:07):
After after graduation from ICEOL, we spent he worked a
number of odd jobs.

Speaker 4 (39:13):
Yeah, he all of docs. He worked at a bank.
He worked.

Speaker 6 (39:18):
Exactly exactly he was and he was he was going
through the you know, some of the clients files and stuff,
and he realized how much comic book makers were working
were making and so he was like, you know what, brother,
are getting on that business.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
Sorry, we're going to comic We're going to comic circuit. Yep.

Speaker 6 (39:38):
But this is when he worked as an office boy.
And this is another clip from the TV Academy interview
of him working as a as an office boy.

Speaker 10 (39:45):
I was an office boy at the second largest trouser
manufacturer in America. It was down on twenty seventh Street
and Broadway, and it was terrible.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
It was a big place.

Speaker 10 (40:01):
They had the whole floor and they had millions of
salesmen or I don't know what they were, guys who
sat in cubicles, little cubby holes, writing reports or sales
slips or something all day long. And there was another
office boil. So I was the second one hired, and
whenever they wanted something like if they wanted a glass
of water or they wanted someone to sharpen a pencil,

(40:23):
they would yell boy, and whichever one of us was closer,
I had to come running. And I resented the fact
that these it looked to me like a million guys
on that floor. They never took the trouble to learn
either his name I don't remember his name either, or
my name.

Speaker 1 (40:41):
It was always boy.

Speaker 10 (40:43):
And I probably shouldn't say this, but they let me
go just before Christmas. And I was doing a much
better job than the other guy, because he was a
little bit of a loafer. Whenever they'd yell boy, I
would run to do it, and he was just kind
of min his own business. But he had been there
longer than me, and they didn't give a damn. They

(41:05):
didn't know one of us from the other, and they
had to let somebody go. So like a week before Christmas,
they told me I'd have to leave and or I
was burned up. So they had some big boxes. They
were like coffins, big crates, and they kept what they
called cutting tickets in them, and they were big stiff

(41:25):
sheets of oak tag and they were crowded in these crates,
and each cutting ticket, I guess, had the history of
every pair of trousers that they made.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
They were the records of them.

Speaker 10 (41:38):
One of my jobs was to file them all in
the crates, and every night I went home with my
nails bleeding because trying to put those things in, you know.

Speaker 4 (41:49):
Oh.

Speaker 10 (41:49):
In another thing, I was getting paid for eight hours
a day, but I had to come to work an
hour and a half earlier to be at the post
office to pick up two sacks of mail and walk
those sacks of mail four blocks to their office. I
didn't get paid for that time. So when they told
me I was fired, I was so mad. One night,

(42:12):
I walked into where the cutting ticket I shouldn't say this,
I'll go to jail. I walked into where the cutting
tickets were, where I had spent all that time bloodying
my fingers putting them all in those tight cotton cartons,
and I turned them all upside down, and I scattered
the sheets on two or three of them. I felt

(42:32):
so good. I think even if I had gone to jail,
it would have been worth it. And this is the
first time I've ever told about my criminal passion.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
YEA, you're not gonna get aarrested stand for that, but
I appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (42:47):
I thought I was gonna kill somebody, and we build
it up so much, and all it did was fucking
start over the papers. Like it's like it's like, you know,
you get you're so pissed off, your threatening everybody. Then
all you do is you break a fucking pencil. Like
didn't do anything like you made it. You made it
inconvenient for maybe half a day. That's it. You should

(43:11):
have torn him up or burned him, right, you know,
then then you're talking. That's some sweet fucking revenge there,
But scattered him gives a shit.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
Either way.

Speaker 6 (43:24):
Eventually he gets a job working at this new publishing
company called Timely Comics, which would eventually become more of
a comics. This was in nineteen thirty nine, so he
was seventeen seventeen at the time. For some reason, he
graduated high school at sixteen. I don't understand I couldn't

(43:45):
really find much information about that.

Speaker 4 (43:47):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (43:48):
I mean, part of me thinks that that it follows
the suit of these kind of This is more of
his storytelling him that he dropped out.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
Of school at sixteen.

Speaker 6 (43:59):
Sure, sure, I don't know, like you know, he claims
he graduated. Now you get to note at this point,
comics were emerging as this popular medium. You know, Superman,
Batman already been published. So it was it was, you know,
we gotta jump on the bandwagon. And it was founded

(44:20):
by this guy, Martin Goodman, who was a pulp magazine publisher.
And you know he he put an ad out around
this time for an assistant job, supposedly and h this
was this was answered by Stanley Lieber and resulted in
him getting a job. You know, there we have it

(44:43):
right there, stan Lieber, good old fashioned American hustle, right,
hard work and being on top of things, you know,
way to the top.

Speaker 5 (44:53):
Right.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
Sounds like it to me so far, except not entirely
of the truth. Is he going to discover stero, start
selling them.

Speaker 6 (45:03):
Started using them to advance in the comic market. Stick
a needle in your ass, you get better in comics. No,
that's not exactly the entire story, because during one interview, sadly, I,
you know they don't. I want to know more of
the sources that Resman used because sometimes they're not there
in the index, some of them, most of them are.

(45:24):
But there's one in this one interview. I'm really fucking
bummed that there's no I couldn't find the actual interview.
But according to Reisman, in an interview in like the
eighties or whatever, Stan Lee told this same story about
answering the ad. He tells a story all the time.
But the interviewer stopped and was a little confused, and
they said, well, wait a minute, wasn't wasn't Martin Goodman,

(45:50):
the founder and publisher of Timely Comics. Wasn't he a
relative of viewers?

Speaker 4 (45:55):
Stan?

Speaker 6 (45:57):
Wasn't he related to you? And indeed, Martin Goodman was
married to Stan's first cousin on his mother's side, Ida Solomon,
And later he would admit too in his in his
uh In that in Excelsior, the pseudo autobiography, that his

(46:17):
uncle Robert also worked at Timely Comics and may have
helped him get hooked up with this job. Mhmm, Stan, Stan,
what is it stan right? Which one?

Speaker 4 (46:36):
Did you? Was it the good old fashioned American hustle
or did you use your familis's father basically run the whole.

Speaker 6 (46:45):
Damn fucking right, all right? Did mommy put in a
phone call huh to uh to Uncle Rob.

Speaker 4 (46:55):
And say are you guys away? How long are you
guys away? How are you guys awaking? How are you renovating?
You said they were renovating. Mm hmmmm.

Speaker 6 (47:15):
So Martin Goodman too, he's fucking. This guy's a fucking
This guy's a this guy's a trip. I wish, I
wish we could do a whole fucking thing on him.
He's a fucking mess.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
But he was.

Speaker 6 (47:25):
He was pretty much all about milking the success of others. Sure,
that's what he was about when it came to his
comic business. And we're actually gonna turn a true believer
for a moment. As publishing historians Michael J. Vascello and
Blake Bell put it, quote for Goodman successment jumping and pumping,
jumping on a successful trend and pumping multiple similar titles

(47:49):
with the least possible investment through the pipeline as fast
as possible in order to rake in as much profit
as possible. They point out that Goodman set up more
than eighty quasi fictitious companies over the years, shady publishing
entities that could buy and sell their intellectual property from
one another when one or a few went to bankrupt

(48:09):
or got into legal trouble.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
Also known as the National Wrestling Alligance.

Speaker 6 (48:16):
Yeah, don't tell me they're not fucking taking notes, Okay,
off of this fucking guy. As Vassalo and Bell say,
Goodman quote put more effort into building his corporate web
of shell publishers than he did into building a strong brand,
which right there reveals the priorities of the quick buck,
lowbrow publishing mindset of the nineteen thirties. Oddly enough, the slender,

(48:36):
prematurely white haired, generally quiet Goodman would be the first
to cop to this not so generous assessment.

Speaker 4 (48:43):
Quote.

Speaker 6 (48:44):
If you get a title that catches on, then add
a few more. You're in for a nice profit, he
once told the Literary Digest. Tremendous fans are not interested
in quality, he said on another occasion, by way of
justification for this mindset, we have yet another cutthroat line
from Goodman, quote, this field is full of piratesquote. This

(49:08):
was the business psychology milieu that Stan entered while he
was still in his impressionable teenage years. When the lad
went to work for Goodman, the latter had only just
started to publish comic books, having launched Marvel Comics number one.
That was the title, not the company.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
This was, you know.

Speaker 6 (49:26):
That was the comic series, Marvel Comics number one through
Shell publisher Timely in August nineteen thirty nine. Timely became
the name most closely associated with Goodman's early comic publishing,
although the books were actually published under a variety of
headings prior to the lines renaming in the early nineteen sixties,
time Lee Atlas Manvus even on a few occasions Marvel

(49:49):
whatever you wanted to call it. The comics operation was
a near instant smash for Goodman. Marvel Comics number one
had introduced the company's first superheroes, the human Torch sub
Mariner Superhero comics. What human What do you mean human torch?

Speaker 4 (50:08):
Dude? From the very beginning, we're talking human Torch. Did
you no wonder he's stole? He's still more than a
secredible hulk. From there, get the Torch, the whole fucking thing.
I love how he says there's pirates everywhere, and then
they would breathlessly pursue Hulk Cogan for pirrating the name.

(50:28):
You're damn fucking right. Eight decades later, You're absolutely right.

Speaker 6 (50:36):
Superhero Comics, first introduced in the form of National Superman
the previous year, had abruptly become one of the most
popular items in the cultural marketplace, and Goodman wanted to
secure his.

Speaker 4 (50:46):
Foothold, So Superman right from the beginning. Then Yes, Wow, Yep, yep, yep.
Marvel Comics renamed Mystery Marvel Comics, and the second issue,
for no extent extant reason, had been produced through a
partnership with Funnies Incorporated a third a third party Hey
love that She's gonna say it does not say a

(51:08):
third party Hey, No fucking one.

Speaker 6 (51:14):
Third party Funnies big fan of that, right, a third
party packaging vendor that produced comic books, and seeing the
success that this series brought him, I'm just replaying third
party Hey, in my mind is over and over again
right now.

Speaker 4 (51:32):
That's just ask a farmer about that. I support third party, hey, big,
and you know, I think that's that's the way you
gotta go. When you're a farmer from mister ed. That's
catch Oh good.

Speaker 6 (51:56):
He enticed one of the Packager star writer artists, Joe Simon,
to come up bored and work for him directly. The
young man, lanky and in his mid twenties, had been
born Heimi Simon to an English and an American jew
in Western New York. He was confident and charismatic in
addition to being remarkably good at juggling assignments while cranking
out work for funnies in corporate and he simultaneously acted

(52:18):
as an editor at Comics Packager Fox Feature Syndicate. It
was there that Simon met another twenty somethingter writer artist
with a prodigious work ethic. The squat, serious, serious man's
name was Jacob Kurtzberg, yet another Jewish name that would
eventually be discarded in favor of something a little more
establish establishment dish. In this case, the nam de gore

(52:42):
became Jack Kirby. Kirby was born to Jews of going
to his whole thing. But yes, so I bring those
up because Joe Simon and Jack Kirby essential not only
to the beginning stages here of Marvel, but also for

(53:04):
later on.

Speaker 4 (53:07):
It becomes.

Speaker 6 (53:07):
One of the biggest controversies is the squaring off between
Stanley and Jack Kirby, which we're going to get into
why that all started here, but suffice to say their
initial contribution to the Timely Comics Enterprise is the third

(53:29):
of their big three superheroes, Captain America. They're the creators
of Captain America and now about six so they Captain
America debuted in May of nineteen forty one, and by
the end of the year, Simon and Kirby are out

(53:53):
of the company. Why do you think that is? Do
you think it does have to do with money? I
will say that it doesn't have to do with the
jump Hip. They did Jump Ship, but they realized, you know,
they they they were supposed to get twenty five percent
of the sales of Captain America. But they did it

(54:13):
on a handshake deal with Martin Goodman again pro wrestling.
Why do you do a handshake deal.

Speaker 4 (54:19):
Folks, because you're not going to fucking exactly don't want
auditing rights.

Speaker 6 (54:23):
And it makes me wonder why smart people give in
to a handshake deal. I take no man at his word.

Speaker 4 (54:31):
Yeah, well an extent today, you know, I don't even
know if the laws were as robust or on contract
law back then as they would become. Anyway, that's a
good point too. You're hard pressed to drive a hard
bargain and you're getting started like that. Perhaps so, but
that's not why they left, though, I believe it or not.
That's not why they left. They left because they couldn't

(54:53):
get dates on the fucking NBA World Champion exactly right,
because he's always in New York and it's right, well,
they're in New York too, got me there? Yeah, Now,
So what they did was they started doing freelance work
for National Comics aka the future DC Comics, and one
day down the road, at some point, the rest of

(55:13):
the Timely Comic staff they approach Simon and Kirby and
they're like, what the fuck.

Speaker 6 (55:20):
We know what you're doing. We know that you're fucking
uh you know, what do you call it? Double dipping? Yeah,
dear double dipping with fucking National over there. What's going on?
What's the dizz bro?

Speaker 4 (55:32):
And you know they're wondering who fucking who was it?
Who who told on them? A rap? Fuck?

Speaker 6 (55:44):
Well, Joe Sion didn't find out until Vince was deposed
that there was, Hogan. I told him exactly, Joe Simon, uh,
I believe that. You know, it's the comic business was
a very very small business at the time, and so
everybody knew everything. So it was likely that, you know,
they could have found out any way possible. Jack Kirby, well,

(56:09):
he went to his grave hating stan Lee, yep, because
he was nothing less than one one hundred percent convinced
that Lee had ratted them out to Martin Goodman. Love it, hated, hated, hated,

(56:30):
and so they left and went to work. This is
the verse Dona in the story here. Yeah, and after
they leave, Goodman is forced to promote stan Lee to
editor and he's just nineteen years old at the time,

(56:51):
and then Pearl Harbor happened, and the United States at
war in Europe and in Japan. Now in it's no
secret that stan Lee he enlisted in the Army. He
served during World War Two. He says in interviews that

(57:12):
he felt guilty sitting around writing comic books and that
he needed to join the fight, and basically said, you know,
the idea was that you know, if you're not if
you're not doing your best, if you're not trying to
go out there and fight for this, you know, fight
this war. Then you're a fucking asshole and you're a
coward and you're a bitch. Right, very patriotic guy, except

(57:37):
he didn't join the army until November of nineteen forty two. Sure,
so you know, I gotta kind of get stuff done
before I served my country. Point, I got a bunch
of st all I gotta do, dude, you know, got
to get those stories out first, right. So he does
basic training in New Jersey and he served in He

(58:01):
served in the Playwright Division of the art That's where
they placed him. In the Playwright Division of the Army,
alongside We've talked to protect We talked about this, We
talked about this a couple of years ago. Frank Capra
also part.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
Of this division.

Speaker 6 (58:16):
Ok, yeah, you know when he made all those movies,
you know, those propaganda movies. Also in the playwright division
Charles Adams, the you know, writer of the creator of
the Adams Family, and Doctor Seuss also in the playwright Division.
The Official Military Manual described the Playwright Division as follows.

Speaker 4 (58:38):
Quote.

Speaker 6 (58:39):
The division rights scenarios and scripts for theatrical, radio, or
motion picture productions for entertainment or instruction of military personnel
or for publicity purposes.

Speaker 4 (58:50):
So you said military personnel. I thought you were reading
a WWE creative job ad.

Speaker 6 (58:57):
Civilian experience in writing or adapting scripts for scenarios for
state radio, stage or motion pictures required. We have offices
in Stanford, New York Global Entertainment.

Speaker 4 (59:10):
We are servicing a range of verticals. The the the
the playwright division of the of the Army is a
multiple and the multiple generational entertainment conglomerate that provides lateral
and collateral UH opportunities for as well as parts of

(59:31):
the back. That's the president ever opened like a like
a live theater ballet nick just w W now it
is ballet.

Speaker 6 (59:43):
I know they should have like a You imagine if,
like all of a sudden, the w W E Theatricals
presents the Nutcracker.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
Now we are ballet ww W Theatricals little redundant there events,
a little less theatricality might do us all good. The
WWE Dance department where we do ballet much like the
in ring department as well. Oh, actually, we actually have
quite a bit of experience at the LAYA. You look

(01:00:13):
at the nature of what we do and if you
look at look at the nature.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
What we do.

Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
We have two people who are doing a dance, requiring
each other to participate in the other maneuvers, synchronize, make
it appear organic without anyone ever getting hurt. We do lifts,
we do twirls, We do all of it. The WWE
is a synchronized dancing organization principally headquartered in Stanford, Connecticut,

(01:00:37):
with offices in We are a synchronized syndicated dancing corporation
synchronized dancing on syndicated television, the television network of over
one and forty affiliates across North America. WWE Superstars of Dance,

(01:01:00):
Well he tried body building, might as well body Stars
Superstars of Dance, Dance Stars and Dancing with the Stars.
Dancing with the superstars you know you know that came
up when Dancing with the Stars. Check out WE just
but no TV network wanted to buy it. Ww Dance
Dance Challenge every Saturday after Superstars of Dance, ww All

(01:01:25):
American Dance. That's how he gets out of the taxes
on the sports taxes it ww all American Ballet. See
that's how you use AI, go create, go pull down
and all American wrestling ad from back in the day
and just replace wrestling with ballet and have Vincent ballet.

Speaker 6 (01:01:48):
That's it, perfect ballet menia.

Speaker 4 (01:01:57):
You get the gist.

Speaker 11 (01:02:00):
He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and and
JP soo.

Speaker 12 (01:02:14):
Fan wrestling podcast.

Speaker 6 (01:02:16):
After the war, goes back to work. But you know what,
he wants to do something else. Okay, Stanley's done. Because yes,
although after the war comics started to go not not
be as popular as they as they were beforehand, but
even if they even through the popularity, you got to

(01:02:39):
remember something, much like professional wrestling, comics is not considered
prestige employment, right, all right, it is bottom of the
barrel rubbish.

Speaker 4 (01:02:52):
Yeah, that's so important to remember. That's why there's so
much in common between comics. Why cons there's wrestlers there.

Speaker 6 (01:03:00):
Right, I mean, the con come on totally like this
is this is an embarrassment, okay, correct to the point
where people change their names stan Lee, same thing, no exception.

(01:03:20):
This is from the TV Accademy interview.

Speaker 10 (01:03:22):
All right, Stanley Martin Lieber a perfectly lovely normal name,
and I wish I had never changed it because stan
Lee is such a silly name, but I'm stuck with it.

Speaker 12 (01:03:37):
How did that?

Speaker 4 (01:03:38):
How did that come about?

Speaker 12 (01:03:39):
The change?

Speaker 10 (01:03:40):
When I started doing comics, nobody had any respect for
comics in those days, they were considered literature for very
young kids or for stupid adults.

Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
And he just said stupid adults. I mean, he's okay,
just like wrestling is just espress at us, exactly right.
There's no fucking difference. Only an idiot would think it's real, right,
exactly real enough to get invo.

Speaker 6 (01:04:11):
It or even better, even more importantly, only an idiot
would know that it's not real and still watch bing Go.

Speaker 10 (01:04:19):
Do them for a little while and get some experience
and then get into the real world. And I thought,
one day I'll be a big time writer. Maybe I'll
write the great American novel. And I don't want my
name on these silly comics. So I just took my
first name, stan Lee, and I cut it in two
and I signed stan Lee. But what happened was I

(01:04:42):
stayed with the comics for years, and after a while,
when I get married, my life got very confusing because
we bought our house in the name of stan Lee Lever,
but we'd open a charge account in a store in
the name of stan Lee, and in some other store
we'd have the name Stanley Lieber. And sometimes we'd have

(01:05:03):
to give our name to a store and we'd say
Stanley Lieber and they'd look and they'd say, no, no,
that's not your name, and oh, try stan Lee, and
they'd look at us like we're a bunch of crooks,
you know, we're using And it got so complicated that
we finally decided well, by then, more people know me
as stan Lee than Stanley Lieber. So to simplify our life,

(01:05:27):
I changed my name to stan Lee, which is such
a silly name. And very often people that I meet
they say what's your name? And I say stan Lee
and they say Stanley.

Speaker 4 (01:05:37):
What so?

Speaker 10 (01:05:38):
Now I'm thinking of changing it back again to stan Lee.
What so when they say that, I could say, gee,
how do you know that?

Speaker 4 (01:05:47):
To the point I just changed my name to Warrior
exactly withes of wrestling, all.

Speaker 6 (01:05:54):
Right, like this is it. They're all the same. No
one wanted to be associated with comics, No one knows,
No one cares about Stanley Lieber. As soon as you
walk through that front door. As soon as you walk
through that front door, all anybody cares about?

Speaker 4 (01:06:05):
Is stan Lee?

Speaker 13 (01:06:06):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):
Exactly? What?

Speaker 3 (01:06:11):
Like?

Speaker 14 (01:06:11):
Who?

Speaker 6 (01:06:12):
The only people who know him is Stanley Lieber are
the people inside the house. He leaves the house. He's
stan Lee. He's the gimmick Carney exactly. I'm a real
human being, no a facsimile of a human being, a
similar damn fucking straight, let's go. And not only that,

(01:06:34):
were you ready for this? This is great? This is
from a twenty twenty piece back in nineteen eighty seven.
It's a great, great little piece they did, because not
only did he change the name, but you also don't
want to tell people where you're working, right, all right?

Speaker 10 (01:06:51):
Was there ever a time early in your career then
when you go to a cocktail party and somebody would
ask you, well, what do you do?

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
And you'd have to say, all my red comic books
are yes.

Speaker 10 (01:07:02):
Really, very often, in the early days before Marvel, I'd
be at a party with my wife and somebody would
come over it just as you say what do you do?
When I'd get a little bit nervous and I'd say, well,
I'm a writer, and they say, oh, really, what do
you write? Well, I still had a couple of options.
I'd say I write magazine stories, and I'd start to

(01:07:22):
walk away, but what magazines? Well I still had a chance,
and I would say, well, children's magazines, which ones. At
some point I was pinned down and it had to
be comic books. And then oh, I see and they
drift away.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
Sounds a little too close to home. My goodness, does
it ever podcast about what?

Speaker 14 (01:07:43):
Well?

Speaker 4 (01:07:43):
Sports and entertainment?

Speaker 6 (01:07:44):
I gotta make I'm gonna make this train. Oh so
I taught sports and entertainment.

Speaker 3 (01:07:50):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (01:07:50):
Really, Like, well, what do you what do you guys do? Well,
you know it's about professional wrestling. I no, no, no,
I'm sorry before that. Oh oh that's great. Let me
know the name of them? What do you I want
to know what it is? So you guys are that
I'm looking at and like, do you get out their phone?
Oh it's a it's called the Lapse Fan and it's
about professional wrestling. Oh, phone goes away.

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
Or inevitably eleven minutes later. So when when the subject
has been changed, they come back to it. So how
many like followers do you go? And then it's so
you guys like make money doing this? Yep? Oh my god,
it's like, just please leave me alone. It's like, you know,
like you don't want to.

Speaker 14 (01:08:32):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:08:32):
Then then when if it gets to be that point,
I have to go through the whole fucking spiel and
try to make a sound more legitimate and talk about
talk about you and say, well, you know, my, my,
you know he's been mister robot Orange, his new bride,
he's a valuedictorian of college.

Speaker 4 (01:08:54):
Trust me, it's nothing to do with our share passion
for pro wrestling. It's really just a we're two brilliant
fucking stars in the constellation. That just oh my god.
Let me let me ask you a question, though, Budy,
you know it's fake, right what.

Speaker 6 (01:09:12):
Since one? I thought they changed it? My mom told
me they changed it. I still maintained to this day.
But that's the best response when someone says it's fake.
You see, No, a year and a half ago they
changed that because of the popularity of.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
Uf SAE fucking talked about that somebody's face. No, no, no,
they changed it, so well, no, it's wrong now now
it's real, though, I understand what you're talk about. No,
it don't like that anymore. You must not have watched
in a while. Cody Wroats is actually submitting p for
different roles, and he's actually he's an agent for consideration

(01:09:55):
the Rose Agency. Yeah, the only thing he ever submits
is his resume.

Speaker 6 (01:10:03):
In his head shot. I wonder I want to know.
I get, I really want to know. I mean, obviously
you know you're not, but you know you got to
you do have to have some kind of a some
kind of a picture. I do wonder if he you know,
I imagine that when he's when he is submitting, when

(01:10:23):
when agents are submitting something. I mean, granted again, it's
he's at a different level, so he's not like, you know,
not like submitting his head shot to all these different things.
But I imagine he's going to have a picture out there
that's not wrestling related.

Speaker 4 (01:10:35):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:10:36):
I want to know what his actual non wrestling publicity
headshots look like.

Speaker 4 (01:10:42):
Right, That's what I want to know, the ones where
he wants to be taken seriously. Is an act as
an actor? I asked, I have a question for you.
Besides both being wrestlers, what do Masato Tanaka and Cody
rhodesv in common? What they're both constantly taking headshots?

Speaker 15 (01:11:04):
Oh fuck, okay, oh jesus, I guess they could also
be submitting headshots too for that matter.

Speaker 4 (01:11:15):
Ha oh god.

Speaker 6 (01:11:25):
He mentioned his wife in there in that last one.
And yeah, they they met in nineteen forty six, December
of nineteen forty six. He was supposed to, I guess
the story goes, he was supposed to be meeting another
young woman at a party, or to go to a party,
and there he hit a snag. And again this from

(01:11:47):
the A and E biography where he and his wife
share their little their little story.

Speaker 8 (01:11:54):
One person he man at a party didn't walk away.
She was actress writer Joan Clayton Boucock. They met by
accident and also by faith.

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
That was what Jimmy Barnett first wanted to call Stone.
I want to call you sterling Boocock blowcock. What leave
it up to this guy who thinks stan Lee sounds
like a ridiculous name to marry Joan Boocock? Serious?

Speaker 5 (01:12:24):
She was?

Speaker 6 (01:12:25):
I mean, honestly, if you asked me, she was just
dying to get fucking marriages. You can change your name.
Oh my god, I'm gonna get that cock out of there.
I guess it's better than marrying Joan Netflix.

Speaker 4 (01:12:38):
Or Joan t k O. Yes, it would be better.
I think George Taka like get different spelling. Yeah, it's
like it's t apostrophe ko or whatever. Peacock bluecock, yeah,

(01:13:02):
either one. It still sucks in a social gathering.

Speaker 10 (01:13:06):
Well, it's a funny thing about how I met my wife.
You know, I used to draw cartoons when I.

Speaker 4 (01:13:12):
Was By the way, tell me if this story sounds
like absolute bullshit to you very young, I d quickly
in us. Yes, what besides you know the incredible Hulk.
What do Stanley and hok and have in common? What
constantly drawing?

Speaker 10 (01:13:34):
And with everybody who draws every guy?

Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
I guess you, I know, I know, I know why.
That's why I had to do it on first reference,
because it's gonna keep paying off.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
You like the drug girls, and you usually draw your.

Speaker 4 (01:13:51):
Er fucking right or shot Michaels in ninety six.

Speaker 10 (01:13:57):
Oh shit, idealized girl's face. And there had been one
face I had been drawing all the time, and.

Speaker 4 (01:14:05):
I remember, now, no, stan you're drawing as a face. Well,
there was one face who was drawing. They'll tell you
about Bob Armstrong.

Speaker 6 (01:14:19):
It's the only time that the only time a face
draws instead of someone draws a face.

Speaker 4 (01:14:29):
That's good very clearly.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
He came to the door, and he was He had
his raincoat thrown over his shoulder.

Speaker 10 (01:14:37):
Joan opened the door, and she was not the girl
that I was supposed to meet, but she was the
head model there and she was one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
She opened the door and said hello, and he said.

Speaker 4 (01:14:52):
Hello. I think I'm going to fall in love with you.

Speaker 10 (01:14:58):
And I took one look at her at a it
was the face I had been drawing all my life,
and I think I said something stupid like I love you.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
And I thought, this is when I got to that
to get away.

Speaker 8 (01:15:11):
Joan and Stan were married in time for Christmas nineteen
forty seven.

Speaker 4 (01:15:17):
Respectfully, I mean, he's Jewish. He doesn't give a fuck
about Christmas. Like, why did they mention? They mentioned Christmas
like forty five times? All right, I know, I know,
maybe maybe celebrated. I don't know. But it's a strange
thing to keep saying over and over again.

Speaker 6 (01:15:33):
I know it really is, But I really I take
issue with the idea that he kept drawing this face
and all of a sudden he meets the face.

Speaker 4 (01:15:46):
Yeah, that's that's a little maybe we're a little reverse engineering, yew.
What he was after and exactly started to concoct a story. Yep. Yeah,
it just doesn't feel completely. I'm still waiting for the
part where she reveals that her family owns a nail
salon in La.

Speaker 6 (01:16:07):
Well, I'm waiting for the part where she turns heel
and then he's then she's then she's a heel drawing
heat and he's still drawing a face. But you know,
there was a they get married, like like you said,
They got married December of nineteen forty seven, though sadly,

(01:16:27):
eleven days later his mom died. Celia died, and then
in nineteen fifty one, Timely Comics would become Atlas Comics
and would eventually Martin Goodman would change distributors of his

(01:16:49):
comics to the American News Company, which I don't know
if you know, I didn't really know much about them,
but I knew a little bit more now. They About
a year af after Timely Comics changed to their distribution,
the company folded because the Justice Department began some anti

(01:17:13):
trust litigation against you. Yeah, but nothing like the NWA
at all. Jesus christ Man, you try a you trolling
me ketch. We write The history of the NWA was
Stanley in Marvel comics. Yeah, they'd be like, oh wait,
there's no difference, what do you want? Yeah, so they
there is any trans litigation going on in nineteen They

(01:17:35):
began nineteen fifty five, and.

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
That's like the same year the NWA action started. This
is no shit, that's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:41):
I think it was like forty eight actually, but hot
and heavy, and they really well, i'll tell you what,
maybe maybe that's maybe that's what kind of said, well,
wait a minute, we had to we had took down wrestling.
Let's take down these fucking guys. These guys are the
same thing, basically, a bunch of carnies writing fucking fake books,
fake fake drawings for kids they called fake books.

Speaker 6 (01:18:03):
Oh, he pretty much did, and describing the live comics
were looked down on. And if you I looked through
a bunch of you know, the you know, I did,
basically American News Company, and if you got the other
word a keyword, I did, and just skimmed all of
nineteen fifty seven, and you would basically see in succession

(01:18:25):
all these different branches of the American News Company in
different states just closing down, like week after week after week,
and I was like, holy shit, like it's a really
it was like a fucking it's crazy, and.

Speaker 4 (01:18:42):
You know, so.

Speaker 6 (01:18:44):
This is where it gets a little fuzzy. And I
didn't really take the time too. There was so much
I was trying to get through.

Speaker 4 (01:18:50):
That I didn't mind. We're here for well.

Speaker 6 (01:18:52):
I know this part though, because so because to me
this is kind of important. Atlass Comics shuts down when this,
like if you look on the Wikipedia is defunct as
of nineteen fifty seven, but Marvel doesn't really open until
like nineteen sixty or sixty one. Yet all these guys

(01:19:12):
are employed still and they're doing comics within those three years,
and I don't know how it well, okay, actually, wait
a minute now that I'm thinking about it, is this
the time period? Yes, okay, this is the time period.
So I guess what happened here? Okay, Martin Goodman basically

(01:19:34):
found he went to another distributor in the meantime after
this whole shit went down that was owned by the
same company, Yes, that own National Comics. So I have
meant he'd have many different It's it's all the same.
It's TKO basically and www UFC what it's Aftermax Ah there, Yes,

(01:19:57):
that's right, family Weston with five different names all the yeah, yeah,
until they you know, they do split up eventually obviously.
But yes, that's a that's actually that's a better that's
a better announce the same publishing strategy.

Speaker 4 (01:20:09):
Yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 5 (01:20:13):
So.

Speaker 6 (01:20:13):
But basically the internal the other wrestling equivalent that I
have for it is it's also like Montreal in a way. Okay,
because at this point it seems like there's nothing like
Atlas Comics here. The sooner we Marvel is going to
be just completely destroyed and gone like ww you know,

(01:20:40):
was going to be destroyed by Doc W. But the
phoenix is about to rise again. And the the rise,
this phoenix rising of Marvel Comics might not have occurred
if it had not been for three individual jewels who

(01:21:00):
came on board. The extremely private but brilliant Steve Ditko,
who was a mega mega mind, Larry lieber Stan's brother,
and with his fucking tail between his fucking legs, Jack Kirby. Yes,

(01:21:22):
Jack Kirby is back in the mix. And this is
where the shit begins to hit the fan, because if
you talk to Jack Kirby before he died, he would
say that it was he who turned business around and

(01:21:42):
made Marvel what it would become. This is a quote
from he said this in nineteen eighty nine. He said, quote.
It came about very simply. I came in and they
were moving out the furniture. They were taking desks out,
and I needed the work. I had a family and
a house, and all of a sudden, Marvel is coming apart.
Stanley is sitting on a chair crying. He didn't know

(01:22:03):
what to do. He's sitting in a chair crying. He
was just still out of his adolescence. I told him
to stop crying, I says, I says, he says. I says,
go into Martin and tell him to stop moving the furniture.
Furniture out, and I'll see what the books, and I'll
see that the books make money. And I came up
with a raft of new books, and all these books
began to make money. Somehow they had faith in me.

(01:22:26):
I knew I could do it, but I had to
come up with fresh characters that nobody has seen before.
Whatever it took to sell the book, I came up with.
So he did it all. Yes, by the way, adolescence,
I mean he was born in twenty two, So he's
this is sixty, he's like thirty thirty five, eight, thirty six,

(01:22:46):
thirty seven is Stanley. It's a little bit out of adolescence, yes, me.

Speaker 4 (01:22:50):
Yeah, yeah, Well there's always arrested development with all comic people.

Speaker 6 (01:22:55):
Well, with anybody, any I mean, anybody who's older than
somebody else. That person's silly kid. The younger person, silly kid. True,
that's true. You know, I was, like I was in
my thirties, and I remember I remember working with, you know,
some older actors and shows, and oh, you're just still
You're still just a kid. I'm like, I'm thirty and
I'm getting married next year, but I'm still just a kid, right,

(01:23:19):
you know, that's fucking It's a weird thing. But if
you talk to stan Lee, obviously he would say he
was the one who was the savior of the day.
He said in nineteen ninety eight quote, I never remember
being there when people were moving out the furniture. If
they ever moved the furniture, they did it during the
weekend when everybody was home. Jack tended toward hyperbole, just

(01:23:42):
like the time he was quoted as saying that he
came in and I was crying and I said, please
save the company. I'm not a crier, and I would
never have said that. I was very happy that I
that that Jack was there and I loved working with him,
but I never cried to him. Why can't they just
both say they had both parts to do with it?
Like no, Like, why can't we just say, yeah, you

(01:24:05):
know what, we both if if weren't for both of us,
nothing of this would have happened. It's like, you know,
you know what remind it's honestly, it's it's like Ian
Fleming not given fucking what's his but any credit for that. Yep,
you know he would have saved himself an entire life
of fucking litigation if he had just given him credit

(01:24:27):
on that fucking screenplay.

Speaker 4 (01:24:28):
That the irishman there.

Speaker 6 (01:24:30):
Yeah, I can't think of his name, but right, you know,
that's all you had to fucking do. Unreal, and you
caused this fucking world of shit either way. As the
sixties began, the world's you know, comic book world is
ruled by DC all Right, Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman. They're

(01:24:52):
the fucking kings and queens, and leading up to March
of nineteen six, the editor at DC at the time
is Julius Schwartz, and he asked a writer, Gardner fox Or,
to revive and update his superhero team that he created

(01:25:13):
back in the forties, the Justice Society of America. Now,
obviously we know the group was renamed the Justice League
of America, and it was used as they said league.
You know why they said league instead of they said
league because they wanted to appeal the younger readers and
it made it feel like more like sports. Really, yep,
that's what they call it, Justice League of America. So

(01:25:35):
it's like, oh, baseball, Oh, it's baseball.

Speaker 4 (01:25:37):
Okay, then I can fucking off for you that it's
the Justice Baseball League of America. All right, I'll fucking
read it.

Speaker 6 (01:25:44):
A lot of thought going into that one. Yeah, you know,
and you know, I assume you know Justice League of America.
You know, Superman, Batman, One, A Woman, the whole fucking
dam So the that team, big hit, big, big fucking hit,

(01:26:06):
top selling title average of two hundred and fourteen thousand
copies sold per issue every month.

Speaker 4 (01:26:16):
And now.

Speaker 6 (01:26:20):
Back at Marvel, this was like, okay, well we need
to do something in you know that that resembles this
we need to do something to kind of counterbalance what
they're doing.

Speaker 4 (01:26:31):
We need a team.

Speaker 5 (01:26:33):
Now.

Speaker 6 (01:26:33):
There are a lot of stories as to how this
kind of came to be, but I like this one.
This one's kind of fun to me. Stanley, as always,
he was ready to move on from the comic book industry.
So yeah, I'm want out. I want out. I want
to do something else. I want to do something more legitimate.
But this is a quote from him. He says, quote,
I thought about changing careers many many times. So I

(01:26:53):
would tell my wife Joan, next year, I'll quit. Then
I would to get a raise or work on a
book that interested me, and I would say, next year,
we're all quit. This time, I was really going to quit.
When I told Joan that. She said to me, then
why don't you write them the way you want to
write them? For years, you wanted to do stories the
way you wanted to tell them, Go for it. If
it's not going to be the way you want to

(01:27:14):
do it, if it's not going to be the way
you want it, do it the way you want.

Speaker 4 (01:27:19):
To do them.

Speaker 6 (01:27:20):
If it's not going to be the way you want it,
do it the way you want to do them. You're
going to be leaving anyway, So what do you get
to lose? Do it your way, and if they fire
you just remember you're leaving anyway. When I wrote the
first comic that way, I tried to break all the rules.
These superheroes would be different. They would act the way
I would act if I got superpowers. So, in essence,

(01:27:45):
Stanley Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four. Well, but who
truly created the Fantastic for Who actually created the Fantastic
for it? And there is you know, again, this was
still still early on, you know, in the comics world,

(01:28:06):
even though it's been you know, almost thirty years. But
you know, no one's recording things for prestige. Everyone thinks
that this world's gonna end at any moment, So why
do you need to have evidence that things happen? So
there's no there's no hard evidence that leads in Stan's
favor or Jack Kirby's favor, at least that I'm aware of.

(01:28:30):
But there's this, supposedly there's this synopsis that another writer
had that Stanley wrote, but it's not known if it
was written before or after the first Fantastic Four book
was released, and Jack Kirby said, you know, I've never

(01:28:50):
seen this synopsis, and if it did exist, then.

Speaker 4 (01:28:52):
It was a lie.

Speaker 6 (01:28:53):
And so like Stan says that it was written, So
who knows either way, The Fantastic Four was huge. It's
kind of funny because I always considered the Fantastic Four
to be kind of a lame comic book Sola, right,
this was groundbreaking. The Fantastic Four was groundbreaking, broke all

(01:29:16):
the rules of comic book superheroes. They didn't want their powers.
Gaining their powers was painful. They were exactly at first.
They resented having their powers. They wanted nothing to do,
they wanted to get rid of them. It was just
it was awful. They at the time when you have

(01:29:38):
superheroes like Superman, Superman's always doing the good thing. He's
never he doesn't have like he's not flawed in any way.
Superman is just a fucking goody two shoes, perfect guy,
always doing the right thing. The Fantastic Four bickered. They
were passive, aggressive towards each other. They would say things.
They were a family and they acted like a family,

(01:30:00):
you know, and so it was more relatable. It actually
was believable because they were saying shit that that you
might say to a friend or to a sibling, or
to a parent or whatever. And it was that just
changed the whole fucking game. I don't even realize it

(01:30:20):
yet that it. I mean, it changed the way they
did all comics. You know, now, all of a sudden,
comic book characters, even superheroes, had to be human beings
as well. They had to have flaws. They couldn't be
the goodie two shoes perfect thing, because you know, it
just no one, no one could relate as well anymore

(01:30:42):
to all that stuff. And the best part is, as
you know, I think, as any of these things happen,
when you start doing things for yourself, things become a hit.
That stuff becomes a hit because you you begin you
start to realize that, wait a minute, you know, either

(01:31:06):
more people think like you do than you thought did,
or it's it's something that's just so genuine because it
came from your heart and it's just became from what
who you are, that you can't help but enjoy it
because it's because it feels different, and so here it is.
The Fantastic Four is a massive success, and anybody, you know,

(01:31:28):
if you read any kind of article about it, or
any kind of story or whatever posting about it. They
all say, how you know, if you look back at
it now, you say this is lame, like it's all cliched,
everything is so fucking whatever. But this was completely fresh.
It's like any good thing, any good thing. It's like
it's like watching the Sergio Leone westerns. All right, all

(01:31:51):
those things are cliches, but when those things came out,
they were not Yes, like that's the original. They've the
Fantastic four is the original, and yeah, so it was huge,
but they weren't expecting to be huge, so they had

(01:32:12):
no other characters to follow up with at the time.
And this finally gets as to where we need to
be because they needed to create another character. I We're
going to turn to his pseudo autobiography, Excelsior Stanley's, and
here's what he says. It was May nineteen sixty two.

(01:32:36):
I still recall Martin's expression after he asked which new
heroes I'd put in the next team? See one another team?
You would have seen. You should have seen the look
on his face when I told him that the next
series wouldn't feature a team, there would only be one superhero.
Oh and by the way I wanted that hero to
be a monster. He slowly turned and walked away, shaking

(01:32:58):
his head. I'm sure we thought I was. It's probably
lucky for me that he didn't know I wasn't. I've
been racking my brain for days, looking for different superhero type,
looking for a different superhero type, something never seen before.
I basically decided the new guy should be someone with
superhuman strength. But I didn't want to make him a

(01:33:19):
cliched character who'd resemble Superman or even our own the
Thing from Fantastic Four. I thought, wouldn't it be fun
to make a superhero out of a monster?

Speaker 4 (01:33:31):
Hey?

Speaker 6 (01:33:31):
What could be more different than that? I probably have
that thought because I'd always loved the Frankenstein movies. To me,
the monster was the good guy. We always saw that
mob of idiots with torches chasing Boris Karloff, who played
the monster up and down the hills until he went berserk.
Remember now, he never really wanted to hurt anybody, So
I figured some sort of a misunderstood monster could be

(01:33:53):
fun to work with. Besides, the Thing had proven that
monsters could be popular. Now the Thing became a huge
like one of the popular out of the Fantastic Four.
Everyone loved the thing, sadly not John Carpenter's a thing
that's a whole different story. You can listen to in
the under the Cinemata archives. He was the member of

(01:34:18):
Fantastic Four who got the most male day after day.
And in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, didn't everyone root
for quasi moto?

Speaker 4 (01:34:26):
Next?

Speaker 6 (01:34:26):
I thought it might give me more flex story flexibility
if he could change back and forth in and out
of monster mode. Why couldn't a monster have a secret identity?
Never done before far as I knew, at least not
in comics. It was wildly successful when Robert Louis Stevenson
did it in Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. I decided

(01:34:47):
to have a normal man, doctor Bruce Banner, transform into
a monster and back again. You can see I have
a thing for doctors. It's so easy to weave them
into these semi psi fi plots. Okay, now, how would
Doc Banner become a monster? The origin is always so important.
I had already bombarded the Fantastic Four with cosmic rays,

(01:35:09):
so I needed something new for our embryonic monster. Let's
see what other rays were there?

Speaker 4 (01:35:14):
It seemed to me.

Speaker 6 (01:35:15):
I had heard of Gamma rays somewhere, had no igineio.
It's true, there are a lot of rays, mysterio rays.

Speaker 4 (01:35:24):
Ray candy, There's a lot of options.

Speaker 6 (01:35:28):
True, I had no the name had a nice ring.
Oh yeah, Gamma ray somewhere had no idea what they
really were. But that didn't matter. The name had a
nice ring to it. So I found a way to
zap Banner with some Gamma rays, and lo, another hero
was born. Now, of course, even a monster needs a name.

(01:35:49):
The name is important because you have to convey the
entire essence of your concept in a word or two.
I wanted a name that conjured up an intimidating, gargantuan
behemoth with a plotting brain and enormous power. So I
turned to two other classics, Noah Webster's Dictionary and Roget's Thesaurus.

(01:36:10):
Is it Roge or is it Roget? I never knew that.
I think it's Roget, But yeah, sure, I don't know.
In fact, I thought the word thesaurus itself sounded pretty dramatic,
sort of like some kind of dinosaur. But no, it
wasn't quite right. I needed a name for this monstrous
potentially murderous, hulking brute. Who WHOA hulking brute is the

(01:36:33):
exact description, and I instantly, and instantly I knew hulking
was the abjective. Well, it wasn't much of a stretch
to go from hulking to hulk, which sounded like the
perfect noun. And so the Hulk was born.

Speaker 4 (01:36:48):
And there it is, there it is right. That's the
germ of why we got Hulk Cogan. As wrestling fans,
imagine they called him the Hulk for years. Imagine a
man if he just if he came up with a
different name exactly, like like uh.

Speaker 6 (01:37:09):
Boor fodder or something, or Thesaurus, the Immortals, the incredible
the Saurus. Yeah, the immortal Thesaurus.

Speaker 4 (01:37:19):
Hogan Uasaurus Thesaurus. Oh my god, I mean, folks, this
is all right. First of all, everything he's saying about,
how you know, Boris Karloff and stuff, the Giant is
actually the babyface Andre the Giant. Yep. I mean, for
his first decade and a half in the business, he
was a babyface everywhere, yep. And he towered over almost

(01:37:40):
every one of his opponents. In fact, it was the
sort of sweepstakes of trying to find somebody that could
present a credible physical threat to Andrea, that that that
put Terry Bolea in a perfect position. So exactly we'll
get to exactly in the complete hole Cogan. But everything
Stanley is describing about the role of the giant and
kind of the the emotional heartstrings that a giant pulls

(01:38:02):
on the audience, not as a destructive force, but as
someone that you glimpse a bit of humanity and feel
sorry for instantly and root for explains Hulkogan as well
as under the Giant. Exactly. At first, it was like, Okay,
he's the Hulk, so he's just gonna go nuts and
crush people, and so you know, baby face Jabroni's you're
gonna have to bounce off this guy like he's an

(01:38:22):
electrical fence. But very quickly it's like, no, actually the
money is in that giant having sort of like a
bit of a moral compass and actually right not wanting
to be regarded as automatically an evil slimeball just because
he's massive, but in fact, if he were to use
those powers for good, my god, is there no other train?

(01:38:44):
And I would want to.

Speaker 6 (01:38:45):
Arrive exactly exactly. It's so true and it's perfect. You know,
the Hulk is so you know, there's if so much
comes to mind when you say the word hulk.

Speaker 4 (01:38:58):
Yes, and this is why. And so the hulking was certainly,
you know, hulking was certainly an adjective. But to call
someone the Hulk the Hulk, or to use hulk as
a noun, it's just that, it's all what he just described,
that Eureka moment, that's where it all comes from. Meanwhile,
and that's roughly at the same time period, Terry Bulaya
is in Tampa literally stuffing rocks up his nose in

(01:39:19):
the backyard. He's hulking rocks up his nose, and amazing
to think about it is absolutely Think of a random
day when Terry Bulay, at twelve years old, goes into
the supermarket and sees the Incredible Hulk comic book. He did,
I mean, think about this, folks, all right, you know
what happened? All right, they're all, it's all everyone's around

(01:39:40):
that same age. Give it to me, give me the
real American story.

Speaker 6 (01:39:44):
You're damn fucking right. And so the Hulk was born,
or the name was anyway, I still needed to see
the creature himself, and so I naturally turned to Jack Kirby.
It is funny how stan Lee always never really he
talks poorly about Jack Kirby, but Jack Kirby fucking talks
shit about Stanley.

Speaker 4 (01:40:04):
Yeah. Always.

Speaker 6 (01:40:07):
Once again, Jack came through magnificently. I remember telling him, Jack,
You're gonna think I'm crazy, but can you draw a
good looking monster, or at least a sympathetic looking monster.
Even as I said it, I could hear how idiotic
the words must have sounded, but nothing phased Old Kirby.
Instead of walking out indignantly and saying I've got no
time for jokes Lee, as I might have expected, he

(01:40:29):
simply uttered his usual non committal grunt, and with a
nod of his head and a puff the cigar, he
bent over. They bent forward over his drawing board, and
later came up with a monster who was so perfect,
so empathetic, that the readers took him, took to him immediately,
and today he's still one of our most popular heroes.
I've always known that superhero fans love their heroes and

(01:40:49):
villains to wear costumes. I have no idea why, but
it seems to be de rigueur for the genre. Well,
call me unimaginative, but I couldn't, for the life of me,
find a reason for our newest monster to outfit himself
in a costume. Still, the readers would expect something colorful
about him. Then it hit me, Instead of a colorful costume,

(01:41:13):
I'd give him colorful skin. So I made up my
mind to color his flesh gray, which I thought would
look kind of spooky. Unfortunately, in our first issue, the
printer had trouble keeping the shade of gray consistent from
page to page. On some pages his skin was light gray,
on others it was dark gray, and on some it
looked black too confusing. So for the next issue, I

(01:41:35):
changed his skin color to green, a color the printer
had less trouble with. Although it was done on a whim,
it turned out to be a fortuitous choice because it
gave rise to many memorable nicknames for me to employ,
such as the Jolly green Giant, old green Skin, the
green Goliath, etc. I've always loved giving characters nicknames because
it helps embed them in their reader's minds. Oh the nicknames, Yes,

(01:41:58):
all right, all right, lunatic fringe. There we go, right,
lunatic fringe right, and to tell the truth, it makes
it easier for me to remember who the characters are.
Myself needless to say, but I'll say it anyway. The
Incredible Hulk, as we called it, was enthusiastically received by
the fans, and we had another winner on our hands.

(01:42:20):
So it seems like Stanley owned the Hulk. Yes, well.
Jack Kirby also claimed ownership of the Hulk.

Speaker 4 (01:42:27):
In nineteen eighty.

Speaker 6 (01:42:28):
Nine, he said, quote the Hulk I created when I
saw a woman lift a car. Her baby was caught
under the running board of this car. The little child
was playing in the gutter, and he was crawling from
the gutter under the sidewalk, under the running board of
this car. He was playing in the gutter.

Speaker 4 (01:42:47):
Oh my god.

Speaker 6 (01:42:48):
His mother was horrified. She looked from the rear view
window of the car, and this woman, in desperation, lifted
the car, lifted the rear end of the car. It
suddenly came to me that in desperation we can all
do that. We can knock down, we can go berserk,
which we do. You know what happens when we're in
a rage. You can tear a house down. I created
a character who did all of that and called him
the Hulk. So so that's Jack Kirby's version of creating

(01:43:12):
the Hulk like this, this is this is all throughout
the sixties. This is what they just there is no
there is no admitting the other one did anything. Although
Stanley's better at it, I think, but I also think
he's also more political. He also knows how to sell
something better than Jack Kirby does. Yes, yes, you know,
I think that's a part of it. I think I'm

(01:43:34):
trying to think.

Speaker 4 (01:43:35):
Of a wrestling corollary where somebody gives somebody else a
bunch of credit and the guy never reciprocates.

Speaker 6 (01:43:43):
I mean, two thousand and two, Triple H. Anybody who
fucking wrestl Triple H had to call him how great,
to tell him how Grady was. Yeah, you know, and he
never reciprocated that. That's a good one. But yeah, So
The Hulk wasn't an immediate success like Fantastic Four was,

(01:44:05):
but it did be obviously found its footing, and you know,
think about it, Hulk is one of the most I mean,
I can remember when I was a kid, like the
Hulk was the one I liked the most, Like you
loved big things that could smash things. You know, I
love the Hulk growing up before I even loved Hulk Hogan, So.

Speaker 4 (01:44:24):
Yeah, I don't. I mean I think I was somewhat
aware of what Hulk was, but not like the generation
in the seventies. I mean, no, no, no, no no. I mean,
if you were a.

Speaker 6 (01:44:34):
Kid in the seventies, you absolutely knew all about you
definitely did, and I mean I was. I was familiar
with the show. I like, I remember seeing either WE
runs or or I probably saw some of the TV
movies from the eighties, so like, I remember, I remember
the Hulk quite a bit. I can remember I remember
watching The Hulk at my grandparents' house when I was

(01:44:57):
a kid. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:44:58):
Well, I'm glad you said the TV movie is in
the eighties, because one I do want to set out
and you'll probably talk more about it, but I do
want to set it straight in my mind because I
was a little confused when putting you on this. Yes,
so wild goose Chase. So what are we looking at.
We're looking at an animated Hulk series, and then I
made for TV pilot and then the series and what
we're doing here is deep diving the pilot like we
did the Twin Peaks more, we're gonna do that.

Speaker 6 (01:45:18):
We're gonna deep We're gonna watch the pilot, but we're
all I'm going to talk about the whole the whole thing.
I mean, it's it's it's you know, not in not
in complete detail, but kind of go through because it is.

Speaker 4 (01:45:29):
It is.

Speaker 6 (01:45:30):
After the two pilots there. So there are two TV
movies that happened in seventy seven to seventy eight, Okay,
got it, and then the show premiered in seventy eight. Okay,
after the second TV.

Speaker 4 (01:45:44):
Movie, we'll touch on those two films. Yeah, but we're
gonna watch the first one, just the first one, the
very first one. Yeah, good, okay, now I understand. Yeah.
So it's like they're called pilots, but in reality they
stand alone as many movies as well.

Speaker 6 (01:45:59):
That's that's the way you to be. You know, much
like the with Twin Peaks, you know, in what they
would do is you would not always the way Twin
Peaks did it, because Twin Peaks did the two hour
premiere and then immediately went to series after that. Sometimes
these these these pilots would would air in a different

(01:46:21):
say in the springtime, and then if it was well received,
it would be picked up for series during the summer
and then they would have a you know, a season
starting in the fall, right, you know, but they the
but if it didn't get.

Speaker 4 (01:46:37):
Picked up that spring movie was made to stand. It
was just it was yeah, exactly, it was just its
own thing. It didn't leave this huge cliffhanger where it
was like it might have it might have done it anyway,
just to that for the idea that okay, you know,
we want to try to get people to watch this
and see if people are interested. But they wouldn't just
they just wouldn't follow up with it. But to be clear,
if we want to talk about the Forerigno era, the

(01:46:58):
Hulk that made Hulk Hogan a thing, we've got to
talk about made for television stuff. There was nothing theoreatrical. No, no,
nothing theatrical. It was all made for television. Yep, well,
well more or less in America. Yes, So just leave
it at that because we'll talk about more about that later.

(01:47:19):
But uh yeah, so so obviously so Hulk. But I
wanted to say though, but like for me in in
the eighties, the characters that I remember the most, Like
there are there are four superheroes that I remember most
as a kid, all right, Superman, Batman, spider Man, and

(01:47:43):
the Hulk. Those are the four that for me, like, I,
uh if there were whenever I get action figures like
I had these.

Speaker 6 (01:47:54):
There were two. There were two actually in a weird way.
It's kind of like Hasbrosen Globs the way that they
were formed because if DC's the WWE. Okay, they had
the plastic, the harder plastic superhero characters all right that
had that had you know, if you squeeze the legs

(01:48:14):
of Superman, his arms would go, you know, like they
had they had an action with them, whereas the Marvel
Secret Wars characters action figures were more flimsy rubber much
like the gloobs. They still move, like you can move
their joints. They had four you can move the arms

(01:48:36):
and the head and the legs, but they didn't have
like an action or something like that. You know, they
were much more static than that. And like those are
the I I used to love those figures. And yeah,
the big four were always Batman, Superman, Spider Man, and
the Hulk. They didn't have a Hulk, but I I

(01:48:57):
always like liked the Hulk, and yeah, like that's it's
it's it's kind of wild. What I think is also
kind of wild is is that the Hulk came before
Spider Man. Like they invented the Hulk before Spider Man,
before Iron Man, before these the characters that are kind
of the more of the of the the leaders of

(01:49:20):
Marvel today. But the Hulk was one of the first.
The Hulk was before all of them. It's pretty fucking wild.
See that's not something I can handle. I know, I
know I can't handle that coming first at all. I
mean I also can't handle the Fantastic Four coming first.
That that to me, to me in my mind, I
always thought Spider Man was the game changer, right, but

(01:49:40):
Spider Man's not.

Speaker 4 (01:49:42):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:49:42):
Well, Superman was. Superman for sure was but in terms
of Marvel, in terms of Marvel, it's like in terms
of I should say this era where where where everything changed,
you know, because obviously Captain America came first, you know,
if you're talking about the long ones, Captain America was
in the forties. But in terms of this the the
rejuvenation of comic books, especially with Marvel and the success

(01:50:05):
that Marvel had. It's like it starts with a Fantastic
four and I just can't handle that. Well, that just
doesn't work with me. To me, it's gotta be Spider Man.
I always my mind of Spider Man. A Spider Man
was number three. Spider Man was the third one out
of all of them. It's fucking yeah, it's no forget.
I mean about the history of action figures. You know,

(01:50:25):
we've talked a lot, especially when we did the g I.
Joe episodes under the Cinemat, about how you know it
started in the sixties essentially Barbie dolls for boys exactly.
This idea of the action figure was rightfully formed at all, Right,
come the seventies, it's extremely clear that you can make
action figures that boys will buy and play with. And
if you're not going to say that's central to the

(01:50:47):
whole covieing success, then I.

Speaker 4 (01:50:48):
Don't know you're looking at question. No, he came at
the tail end of this merchandising phenomenon that was the
action figure. Think about that, well, I mean he came
at the glory period. Really, you know, he came. He
came at them when it when it really went from
being dolls to being you know, in the late seventies
saw the debut of the Star Wars figures, which were

(01:51:09):
these small, small figures, these not these these you know
LJN sized, you know, doll like figures. Now we're talking
about four in jail. End of the first wave of
oh sure, yeah, yeah, that way. I'm looking here at
a thor figure from seventy five that goes for three
hundred and forty dollars on eBay yep, And it's like,
it looks so basic, But to think about how much

(01:51:30):
young boys coveted that, and it was so revolutionary at
the time. The wrestling business wasn't set up to to
set people up like that. But it did not take long.
It did not take long from them first in Japan.
They figured it out Japan first, like, hey, these these
wrestlers are basically comic book characters. Let's make toys out
of them. Yeah. Yeah, And and Hulk was perfectly timed.

(01:51:52):
Hulk Hove and Terry Bolea was perfectly timed to be
the guy that would lead that merchandising revolution in the
United States as far as wrestling goes. Oh my god,
I'm looking at that at that thword too. I didn't.
That's crazy. I mean he looks. Imagine getting that and
how excited you would have been, and how basic it
is now.

Speaker 6 (01:52:09):
And now I look at it and I'm horrified. I
want to like that's it's so horrifying. He's so scary looking.
And also with the fucking like nineteen sixties or early
nineteen seventies Mary Tyler Moore hair. Yeah, right, you know
that's hilarious. That's wild. Yeah, all those are. It's it's

(01:52:29):
it's it's really. It's really incredible, really really incredible. So
fast forward mids mid nineteen sixties, and that's you mentioned before.
That's when the Hulk had its first introduction to the
small screen through animation. Now you got to watch. Actually,

(01:52:53):
I'm going to send you a link.

Speaker 4 (01:52:54):
I didn't.

Speaker 6 (01:52:55):
I didn't take a take a bite of it. I
should have, but I didn't do it. Or even if
you do incredible Hult or if you do Hulk, I'll
do it. Cartoon, nineteen sixties.

Speaker 4 (01:53:09):
Okay, this is in YouTube for those listenings. Ye, so
just do that.

Speaker 6 (01:53:14):
Search that and yeah, click on the first one Hulk
and the first one come up for me is Hulk
Cartoon clip transformation.

Speaker 4 (01:53:22):
Okay, I get an incredible Hulk contro. So let me
see incredible transformation. Let's see if typing that gets. If
you're not, I'll get I'll send you the link here,
the one I'm going to do here. I got the
incredible Hulk transform the transformation sequence. It says Hulk cartoon
clip here. I'm gonna send you the link in the chat.
Go have it because we'll watch together, and I'll if

(01:53:43):
I can try to send the audio. I mean, the
audio doesn't matter as much, and then people can people
can find it themselves. People can find it. But do
you have it? Yeah, just give me one second here
problem and we'll watch it together and you'll see how
for the animation is. Oh I love how bad the
animation was back then? I adore it. This is even worse.

(01:54:05):
I'm ready all right, only one, three, two, one play.

Speaker 16 (01:54:10):
It just isn't right for you.

Speaker 3 (01:54:13):
Only one.

Speaker 4 (01:54:13):
It's like a comic book seller. Just the lips move right, exactly,
It's exactly right. Nothing else moves, nothing moves besides the lips.
They like, and they cut to things like you.

Speaker 3 (01:54:24):
Know, you'll blow up cont dtr banner the begun thinking
with your fist.

Speaker 6 (01:54:32):
The funny thing is in certain uh parts, they actually used.

Speaker 4 (01:54:40):
Actual comic book cells from the comics. I'm sure they did.

Speaker 1 (01:54:44):
Good lord, what's that. It's a teenager.

Speaker 4 (01:54:48):
It's a teenager might sure sure, stroking his chin. Oh
my god. Kids sitting on the carpet and a Saturday morning,
six sixty six watching this, This would be fucking Monday.

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
You get out of there, cool man. It's a free country,
right quick. You fool into the protective prints before the
bomb goes off. Hey bomb, I didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:55:20):
Know me and Whiler with no instructions. To the contrary
from Igor fire go on. A finger presses the fatal.

Speaker 4 (01:55:32):
Finger presses the fatal. But they have they have to
describe it.

Speaker 3 (01:55:35):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:55:36):
Whoa that nuclear destruction is Convade in nineteen sixty six animation.

Speaker 3 (01:55:46):
He's coming out of it now, Banner. It's a miracle
that Joe was still alive.

Speaker 4 (01:55:54):
Sell I brought you.

Speaker 1 (01:55:56):
I'm Rick Jones.

Speaker 3 (01:55:58):
You saved my dumb life, and you're the first one
that ever cared what happened to me, Rick Jones orphan, And.

Speaker 4 (01:56:04):
So whoever cares Rick Jones orphan, He says, that's the
best thing.

Speaker 1 (01:56:09):
So much Gamma radiation, that something's bound.

Speaker 4 (01:56:12):
Too much gamma radiation.

Speaker 1 (01:56:15):
Are they're gonna spring us all?

Speaker 3 (01:56:16):
Buddy?

Speaker 10 (01:56:17):
I'm I'm beginning to feel strange different, I.

Speaker 4 (01:56:21):
Said Jim Barnett Right there, here's what the fuck?

Speaker 3 (01:56:25):
Oh I get a static.

Speaker 1 (01:56:27):
That's a guy your counter to measure radiation in.

Speaker 4 (01:56:29):
It is wild? What what's wearing a wild? Dude? Hey,
you just dissolved into the green man.

Speaker 3 (01:56:39):
Ye out of my way.

Speaker 4 (01:56:42):
He's holding up, he's.

Speaker 12 (01:56:43):
Tearing the sher in here or one out.

Speaker 4 (01:56:48):
Alk wants out. He's pounding in the cage wall.

Speaker 12 (01:56:52):
Look what that man?

Speaker 7 (01:56:56):
Man?

Speaker 4 (01:56:57):
That's perfect. Look at this crunch am, it says of
the TV.

Speaker 1 (01:57:01):
Screen to get older, Doc, wait to word.

Speaker 3 (01:57:08):
Wait for me, you saved my life. No, you need
me wait silently. The Monstrous by England was once Bruce
Benner broke Choose in the Shadows.

Speaker 4 (01:57:18):
Yes, I love it so much. Isn't that that's wild?
That's the story. It's the ord story. And look you
you think about Hulking up right transforming into this beast
mode guy from Bruce Banner. You think about the fact
that you see Hulk's shirt ripping and tearing the threads
around his bulging muscula chuyup.

Speaker 6 (01:57:38):
It's all here. It all comes from it, It all
comes from its.

Speaker 11 (01:57:44):
La Fan Wrestling podcast with Jack and and Jpisio.

Speaker 12 (01:57:57):
La Fan Wrestling Podcast.

Speaker 6 (01:57:59):
One funny thing about the about that, about that, that
that little series. Do you know that there was a
significant amount of talent from the Rank.

Speaker 4 (01:58:13):
And Bass Rude alf Red Nose Reindeer. Are you serious? Really?

Speaker 6 (01:58:16):
Like the voice of of Bruce Banner was the fucking
the dentist elf. What's his fucking name? Hermie, Hermie, Yep,
that's Hermie. Uh, Donner is a voice, and uh the mom.

Speaker 4 (01:58:36):
Is also a voice. Yep. Yeah, I love it so yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:58:43):
Then by the nineteen seventies, Marvel and Universal are in
a deal. Universal has licensed some of the properties, including
Incredible Hulk and Universal Chief Frank Price contacted producer, writer,
director Kenneth Johnson, who was He was fresh off working

(01:59:08):
He had created The Bionic Woman that show, and he
was also a director and producer on The Six Million
Dollar Man, The Original Steve Austin. If you will there. Johnson, however,
not a comic book fan. Here is a clip of

(01:59:29):
him from a behind the scenes interview for the I
Think the first season of the Incredible Hulk series.

Speaker 7 (01:59:38):
When Universal first came to me with the idea of
doing one of the Marvel Comics superheroes, Frank Price called
me and said, we've just acquired the rights to five
of them.

Speaker 1 (01:59:46):
Which one would you like to do?

Speaker 7 (01:59:47):
And I said, gee, none of them, Frank, I just
don't connect to people in spandex and primary colors.

Speaker 1 (01:59:52):
And my wife Susie had.

Speaker 7 (01:59:54):
Given me a lot of books and I was in
the middle of reading it, and this is Victor Hugos
Leamy's Robb the story of Jean Valjean. So I had
all of that sort of Victor Hugo story in my head,
and uh, and I realized that now there was a
way to take a little bit of Victory Hugo, a
little bit of Robert Lewis Stevenson and this ludicrous thing
called The Incredible Hulk and turn it into a serious,

(02:00:17):
psychological adult drama. I wanted it to not be comic
bookie in any way.

Speaker 4 (02:00:24):
All Right, it's so funny because everybody accused Vince of
going comic book ye to the whole presentation. No, exactly right.
Yet everyone that adopted Hulk for the screen didn't think
they were doing a comic book presentation.

Speaker 6 (02:00:34):
They didn't like this guy is so, I mean, I
love how anti comic book this guy is. The disdain
in his voice is it's very recognizable to pro wrestling thing. Yes,
it absolutely is. It's like basically, you know, it's uh,
it's it's I don't know. It's like Ad Asner, I

(02:00:55):
did a wrestling movie. Exactly, that's the extent of it.
It's exactly right. But I didn't really, I wasn't really
doing wrestling. I didn't do it for the wrestling, you know.
I did it for the drama of it all. Okay, yeah,
you did it because you needed a fucking paycheck, your dumbass. Essentially,
So one change, one big chance. He made one huge change.

(02:01:18):
What's the Hulk's regular name, Bruce Banner? Right, he changed
it to David Banner. Oh really, yes he did. Supposedly
this was to distance the character from any relation to
Bruce Hart.

Speaker 4 (02:01:38):
Not true. Here's his actual reason. This is it.

Speaker 7 (02:01:42):
One of the things I first things I did was
changed David Banner's name from Bruce Banner. Why because the
Bruce Banner thing is like Lois Lane, Peter Parker.

Speaker 1 (02:01:51):
It's all alliterativity.

Speaker 7 (02:01:52):
It all hearkens back to comic book roots, and I
was trying to do everything I could to get the
show away from comic book roots, and that kind of feeling.

Speaker 4 (02:02:03):
Okay, that's enough of that.

Speaker 6 (02:02:05):
I really, I really like, I can't. I can't even
It's like, then then why do this?

Speaker 5 (02:02:13):
Then?

Speaker 4 (02:02:13):
Why do you know what you said? He has to
I mean, and so because he has to, he's gonna
I'm gonna gussy it up in his own mind.

Speaker 6 (02:02:20):
I know, I know, I mean, fortunately it obviously worked
out fairly well.

Speaker 4 (02:02:26):
But there isn't there isn't that always the way these
fucking cootal touchdowns. You go back and scratch the surface
and there's some someone at the very corvid who didn't
believe in it. That's the miracle, if it's a wonderful
life to me, More than anything about the movies we've
done on the cinemat, that's the one where the creator
from the very beginning was like fuck, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
you know know, like it's gonna suck. Although the movie
did not receive as we talked about, great critical acclaim

(02:02:47):
upon its release and was pretty much a box office flop.

Speaker 6 (02:02:50):
Right, but longevity stands for something absolutely. You know that
always is important, is that if it's if it if
it can, if it can be timeless, if it can
be timeless. I mean, hey, look, we know we'll think
about it. Last year we talked about Wizard of Auz,
same fucking thing right now, because he ended up doing
timeless shit exactly exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:03:11):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (02:03:11):
There is another supposed reason. I read an interview with
UH with Lou for Rigno, and I guess Stanley also
said this, but the there is a suggestion that CBS,
the uh you know, UH network that was going to

(02:03:33):
air Incredible Hulk, that they requested that they change the
name from Bruce because Bruce, I guess, was considered to
be a gay name. Really yeah, and they didn't want
it to be associated with any sort of homosexual.

Speaker 4 (02:03:51):
Say, Bruce Banner sounds a little bit like Bruce Jenner.
I guess anybody knew where he was headed.

Speaker 6 (02:03:58):
I mean, did anyone know who Bruce Jenner was in
nineteen seventy eight? Either eight it was eighties. I think
the eighties is when he like, wasn't it the LA Olympics?
But I don't know, like it was. It's it's it's
it's I don't know. I don't know if that's true
or not. I have no idea.

Speaker 4 (02:04:13):
One is seventy six, seventy six, oh a, right, seventy
six to Carol on Yeah, all right, Caitlyn Jenner today.
Maybe maybe that's it. Maybe they didn't.

Speaker 6 (02:04:20):
Maybe they wanted to know association with Bruce Jenner too.
I don't know either way. It just I don't I
don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like David,
although you know they I guess they go from the
David Bruce Banner is what he okay actually, and then's
when they.

Speaker 4 (02:04:38):
Call him the whole thing.

Speaker 6 (02:04:41):
And important to say here, Stanley very supportive of the show.
He loved it, and he for the most part liked
Ken Johnson. And you know, one of the smart things
that he that that one of the changes should say
that Stanley thought was very smart was taking out any

(02:05:05):
dialogue that the Hulk would say, the Hulk is just growls,
whereas in the comics the Hulk would say, you know, Hulk, mad, Hulk,
smash whatever. And because his reasoning was, you know, you
just didn't want to have a blank page, you know,
you you know, having dialogue was essential, or having some

(02:05:27):
kind of communication was essential in a comic book, but
you know, for the TV it just it just wouldn't work.
So they took that out. And there was another thing.
There was one thing, though, that stan Lee was adamant about,
and this could have been, honest to god, if Ken

(02:05:49):
Johnson had his way, I think it would have been
an absolute catastrophe and disastrous for the show. But here's
a Here's Johnson one more time. From that behind the
scenes interview.

Speaker 7 (02:06:02):
I fought endlessly and unfortunately lost the battle about the
color of the Hulk. I called stan Lee. He was
a wonderful guy, and I said, stan what is he
the envious Hulk? Why is he green?

Speaker 5 (02:06:15):
You know?

Speaker 1 (02:06:15):
Is he the jealous Hulk?

Speaker 14 (02:06:16):
You know?

Speaker 7 (02:06:17):
I said, when people are angry, they get red with rage.
You know, the color of rage is red. He would
be flushed with anger, and also, ps, of course it's
a human color. Green is not. So I was anxious
to try to pull it that way, and stan said, well,
you know why we made him green was because he
started out gray, but the printer couldn't make a good gray,
and I thought he could make a pretty consistent green.

(02:06:38):
So they said we can make green and I said okay,
and I said, gee, Stan, that's really organic, you know.
And I couldn't win that battle. So the Hulk unfortunately had.

Speaker 4 (02:06:48):
To remain green.

Speaker 7 (02:06:49):
There was no green makeup available, and we finally found
I just.

Speaker 6 (02:06:52):
Want to pause here for a second. Yeah, please do
this guy fucking sucks. Yeah, dude, if you turn the
incredible Hulk red, you would not. He's sitting for this
interview right now.

Speaker 4 (02:07:02):
There there, there is a red Hulk. But it's not
like no one cares about it. I wonder why. Yeah,
I mean, you know, it's it's not Bruce Banner.

Speaker 8 (02:07:12):
You know.

Speaker 4 (02:07:13):
It's funny when when Terry first took on the Hulk name,
everyone said he was green.

Speaker 6 (02:07:17):
Too, and he would wear red and yellow, that's what.

Speaker 4 (02:07:25):
But like I I can't.

Speaker 6 (02:07:27):
And then and the fact that he still seems bothered
by it, it's like, do you understand?

Speaker 4 (02:07:32):
Stop dude, like you lost exactly, Like why are you
relitigating this that that you could be let down gracefully?
Like why why do you?

Speaker 11 (02:07:41):
Like?

Speaker 6 (02:07:43):
I get that you don't have clearly have no respect
for comics. Okay, I see that, I get it, But
do you understand that the Hulk sells because he's green.

Speaker 4 (02:07:57):
No, he doesn't understand that? Well why did? Why does?
Why is Spider Man blue and red? Anyway, It's aren't
even colors of a spider Let me make him black? Well?
I mean who could? Also?

Speaker 6 (02:08:07):
I mean? Also, how does somebody get powers from a
spider right?

Speaker 4 (02:08:10):
Exactly? Come on? Like, how much does it make that? Read?
I a Superman wearing blue? Right? What's so super about that?

Speaker 14 (02:08:16):
I mean?

Speaker 4 (02:08:17):
Why would he wear blue? I don't know. I don't know, buddy.
How about whatever takes off in the public's imagination is
what you have a duty to a pold.

Speaker 6 (02:08:25):
How about the fact just because you don't agree with
it doesn't mean it doesn't fucking work.

Speaker 4 (02:08:29):
How About some some things are beyond your purview as
someone who's being asked to leverage an existing creation, as
opposed to make up something to your own. Go make
your own, Red Hulk. See if anyone I got a
better idea? W don't you fucking bear your head in
the sand? I think you said it? Well, bust this
guy sucks, of course he does. There's always something like
that when we cross the surface, some doubter who somehow

(02:08:51):
got it across the finish line. Even though the.

Speaker 6 (02:08:53):
Can or there's always somebody who like who thinks they
know better. Right, It's like, you don't, man, you really don't.
You don't know what's better.

Speaker 4 (02:09:04):
He looks like the jolly Green Giant to me, right,
No one ever said, why is the jolly green Giant green?
Just the worst? Just the fucking worst? Wants I know?
I mean, I don't know. I think I'll tell you what.

Speaker 6 (02:09:24):
Like it's supposed to be gamma radiation is supposed to
come from nuclear whatever, nuclear.

Speaker 4 (02:09:30):
Yes, And he wants this guy to look like he's
human flesh and blood.

Speaker 6 (02:09:34):
Like he's basically Santa Claus. Idiot fucking moron, Ken Johnson.
But enough about slick. I hope I wonder if I
wonder if Ken has a brother, Jim composer. Oh well, hey,

(02:09:56):
maybe he's so disgusted with Ken that he put it
that he out of the tee.

Speaker 4 (02:10:00):
I think I think there was a concern that Johnson
sounded homosexual, So.

Speaker 6 (02:10:05):
I know, isn't isn't created by Ken Johnson a little
more homosexual than Bruce Banner.

Speaker 4 (02:10:10):
Let's talk about that. God, especially we considered Ken's high
school nickname. I like to Swallow Johnson. Oh yeah, I know,
and that would never caught on. I can't imagine why
this is what happens when you suggest the Hulk be

(02:10:31):
ready exactly because we're not those guys. Well, you know what,
when you it's not even that you you you The
problem is this, This is this is where the problem is.
It's not that he suggested the Hulk be read and
then he lost the battle and said, ah, you know what.
It's the fact that he said that.

Speaker 6 (02:10:47):
He didn't say, you know what, and I was wrong, yes,
and that was it was the smart move. It's the
fact that he still thinks it would have been to
it that if he'd been read, and it's like, no, dude, know,
you're a fucking idiot.

Speaker 4 (02:11:05):
Oh god.

Speaker 6 (02:11:10):
Now the actor they'd bring in to play David Bruce
Banner is a man by the name of Bill Bixby,
who's sad lead passed away in nineteen ninety three. You know,
they were gonna make a they were going to make
another TV movie before he passed away, but he died
and they couldn't make it. I mean, this would be
his kind of, in a way, his life's work. Bill
Bill Bixby, I don't really do a profile on him.

(02:11:31):
He's we have we have too much to talk about,
and he didn't really play too much into the into
the game of things. But they did need an actor
to play the Hulk, and the first actor they had
play the Hulk was a man by the name of

(02:11:52):
and we and we actually know this guy pretty well,
a man by the name of Richard Keel. Oh so
it wasn't it was, No, it was not Richard Keel,
who we know from our James Bond journey as playing Jaws. Yes,
it's that fucking you know, Bigfoot silver right, the guy

(02:12:14):
that we like. You can't help but assume he must
be a wrestler, but he's not. He never had a
wrestling career, but he should have.

Speaker 4 (02:12:23):
The movie qualifies because of how much he looks like.
He's also in a happy Gilmore.

Speaker 6 (02:12:29):
Yes, yes he is, Yes he is, and so he
and may actually went so far as to shoot some
of the pilot with Richard Keel.

Speaker 4 (02:12:42):
Yes, as the whole as massive as Richard Keel was.
Let me tell you, if he gets the job instead
of Loof for Rigno, Terry Bolea does not get called
the Hulk, can get called the Hulk. He doesn't resemble
him anymore. In fact, Andre would resemble the Hulk more
than Yes, yeah, he absolutely would. Now here here again,
thank thank god for someone who actually fucking reads comics,

(02:13:06):
because the son of Universal chief Frank Price, he was
on set and he looked up at Keel. This is
the story anyway, he saw Richard Keel and his Hulk
makeup and he said, that's not the Hulk. He looks fake. Wow.

(02:13:27):
So yep. And the best part is Richard Keel was like, great,
I don't I'm not right for this anyway. Yeah, he
probably hated the fucking makeup.

Speaker 6 (02:13:36):
He's got the he's got the height, he doesn't have
the whiff. You know, he's just he's not a big guy.
He's not a bodybuilder. He's just tall, you like, hiring
Giant Baba to do it exactly, exactly, lanky, awkward, like
he would just look like a stumbling moron instead of
a Hulk write maniac exactly. And so you know, he

(02:13:57):
was happy to go, and and you know what, it
ended up being great because he after this, he booked
the Spider who left Me and we go there you go.
You know, he's like he got Jaws out of that,
so they needed to repeat Richard Keel gets the job.
We don't have Hulk Hogan exactly. These are all, like,

(02:14:18):
you know, all these things. If if stan Lee had
quit YEP in nineteen sixty, we would not have Hulk Hogan.
Maybe Jack Kirby would have done it. I don't know,
we don't know. We don't know these things. We don't
know how influential either one was over. We just know
that then Johnson turned the.

Speaker 4 (02:14:36):
Red, we would not have Hulk exactly. Okay, everything is
hanging on by a tiny fucking thread, thank you? All right?

Speaker 6 (02:14:47):
Yes, like one change, one of these changes goes through
and it's over, and we're not even Hell, we might
not even be doing this.

Speaker 4 (02:14:56):
We want to have a podcast, no exactly does Hulkamania
was where it all starts. That created the lifelong obsession.
That's why exactly laps fans of our vintage are still
around copiously consuming a podcast like this, because that was
the true north. That's what you keep trying to go
back to in your heart of hearts. I mean, hell,
maybe you know, who knows what what what what what? What?

(02:15:16):
Would have maybe the whole maybe maybe the world would
have ended. You know, well, if the world would have ended,
then yes, we wouldn't have had Hull cokein that's a
good one.

Speaker 6 (02:15:25):
Well, no, I'm saying the world. I'm saying what if
if we didn't have hull Cogan. We were saying, we
wouldn't be here. What if we if for some reason,
if the if the Timeline happened and the hul Cogan
didn't have maybe the world ends, you know, maybe something happened,
you know in that in that in that version of
the of the of the Timeline, and it caused some
kind of.

Speaker 4 (02:15:44):
Self there's no one to stand up to sodom usin exactly,
it takes over the whole world exactly, or any sort
of foreign tola. Yeah, absolutely, the eyetotala. You can keep going, yep,
totally yeah. I mean then there's no one to beat.
Then then iron Chik is world champion for twenty years
and we're all speaking farsie. Thanks.

Speaker 6 (02:16:05):
Do you imagine and eating lovely pillowy bread. Oh all right,
that's fine. I'm okay with that. I'm totally okay with that.

Speaker 4 (02:16:16):
Sounds delicious.

Speaker 6 (02:16:20):
So there would be some other guy who would wind
up playing the Hulk and Lewis Jude for Rigno was
born November ninth, nineteen fifty one, also in New York City.

Speaker 4 (02:16:35):
Okay.

Speaker 6 (02:16:36):
He is the first of two sons to Matthew and
of Victoria for Rigno, both first generation Americans. Matthew's parents
immigrated from this. I should have fucking plugged in, I
should have fucking the town Tala.

Speaker 4 (02:16:52):
Well look there's another parallel, right you got, yeah, you
got you got a son of Italian immigrant, right, I mean,
for hope it was one more generation, but still.

Speaker 6 (02:17:02):
Yeah, exactly, yeap. So Matthew's parents from Salerno and Victoria's
from BMSC. Matthew served in the army in World War Two,
so along with Stanley, but he was not part of
the right, not part of the playwright division. But he

(02:17:23):
joined the NYPD. There was a neat article in there
about him that I found where he actually inherited a
bunch of land.

Speaker 4 (02:17:30):
Luf Rigno did. No, No, his dad, matt for rigand
his dad, yeah, he it out in New Hampshire where
he could lift the boulders.

Speaker 6 (02:17:39):
No, no, it was still in Italy. It was still
in Italy. He inherited like a ton of land. And
you know, I don't know if he didn't. There was
no follow ups saying because he wasn't sure if he
was gonna, you know, take it all. But he could have.
He might have made a ton of money with that land,
but I don't know. I don't know. Again, there was
no follow up with it. But he did join the

(02:18:01):
after he was out of the Army, he joined the NYPD.
There was a I did find a story in the
Daily News dated July twenty ninth, nineteen fifty four. They
were listing a couple of different police stories and one
of them was about Matthew Ferrigno. Patrolman Matthew Ferrigno, twenty nine,
of thirteen forty two East Fifth Street in Brooklyn, out

(02:18:24):
for a drive with his wife. Was out for a
drive with his wife and two small sons. He stopped
a rough rider on Avenue and an Ocean parkway, but
the motorists roared off when the cop identified himself. After
a sixty mile an hour chase punctuated by three pistol shots,
the car got away.

Speaker 4 (02:18:42):
Jesus fucking find out and now, thanks to the Daily News,
that guy knows exactly where this cop lives.

Speaker 12 (02:18:50):
Exactly right.

Speaker 6 (02:18:52):
I fucking put the goddamn address in exactly like you.

Speaker 4 (02:18:57):
I never understood why they do that. Why do they
I definitely don't understand why they do it for a
police officer, But why do I do it?

Speaker 6 (02:19:03):
Anyway? Would why I think that kind of personal information away?

Speaker 4 (02:19:07):
It wasn't it wasn't you know? Do you think about
the phone book right? Your ship was in there? Anyway?
I think it was more just to be like that
Matt Ferrigno and not another one, you know, to like
I guess, but why couldn't you say Matt Frigno from Brooklyn?
I never got it either, I mean, like I mean,
I've seen so many stories where they give the exact
addresses to people. Never understood that, so bizarre. So we

(02:19:29):
know Lou has a very distinct talking voice. Do you
know where it stems from? Are you? I don't know
how family?

Speaker 6 (02:19:35):
It doesn't he have a speech impediment. He has a
speech impediment, but it's due to severe hearing loss because
when he was an infant, Figno apparently had suffered from
some some undiagnosed ear infections that caused significant damage to
his hearing.

Speaker 4 (02:19:52):
And if you think Terry Boleya is not going to
find a way to thread that into his mythmaking about
how he came to be the whole.

Speaker 6 (02:19:58):
Course, of course, so he had to wear these fucking
big ass hearing aids. And it's pretty safe to assume
that he wasn't, you know, obviously when in the nineteen sixties.

Speaker 16 (02:20:12):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (02:20:13):
And if you're wearing some big ass fucking hearing aids,
you're not going to be ridiculed, bullieder made fun of.

Speaker 4 (02:20:17):
Right, not at all.

Speaker 5 (02:20:20):
No.

Speaker 4 (02:20:20):
And here's here's kind hearted in those good old yes.

Speaker 5 (02:20:22):
And here's for ingoa confirming that for us, we're in
the old fashioned hearing aids. You know, a kid that
they'll call me named like death Louis, Depth, Nute and everything.
And you know, children don't have the psychological defens it
to defend himself. And I was one of those. So
that's why I would connect with the character, because anytime
I felm devastated emotionally secure, I would just read the comic.

(02:20:44):
It would give me a lot of information and hope,
well when it happened. Anytime something happened to me. One
time I got a five with some friend and I
got into a fight that gave me a beaten. I
remember I went home and I told my father my
father gave me another beating. He said, they'll ever come
home and tell me you got to beat and you
did fight for yourself. So I learned at the early age.

(02:21:04):
He instilled an incredible work ethic and you know how
to love and hate relationship with my father. But that
from the beginning had me focused to fight for myself,
never taking second seat to anyone. Always fight harder than
the average person to succeed and get one on what
I want out of life, because no one couldn't give
you anything. And I had to learn to have a

(02:21:25):
platform to survive to do that, able to fight for
myself because I never wanted to be the kind of
person that people feel sorry for me, be a has
been or be like a person that would they put
labels on you.

Speaker 4 (02:21:40):
Was there some story about Terry saying his dad beat
the shit out of him for getting shit beat out
of him or something? Huh? Wasn't there a story like, yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:21:47):
We heard some of that, or at least he yelled
at him, or was like this yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay.

Speaker 4 (02:21:53):
By the way, is it is it bad? Of me
to say that despite him not having a hearing problem,
Brunos ounds exactly like.

Speaker 6 (02:22:04):
It's totally true. Okay, Now he talks about reading the comics,
Yes he does.

Speaker 4 (02:22:15):
By the way, it was people lay us screaming at
him for coming home with an injured leg. That's right.
I mean, there there is a significant I mean, you know.
Frignan also says that he his father rejected him for
not being the first like the hearing the hearing loss.
His father resented the hearing loss, and because he wasn't

(02:22:37):
a perfect he wasn't a perfect son, and so he
also fucking you know, fregnances.

Speaker 6 (02:22:42):
He rejected him. Now, but but I want you to
you know, he he he dove into the comic books. Okay,
I I'm gonna play someone else first because I want
to I want you to hear. I want you to
hear Maddy for Rigno talk about the hearing loss and

(02:23:05):
talk about lose young, young life, because it all plays
into something that I'm going to talk about in a moment.
But there's a clip from Pumping Iron, which we're going
to talk about more in detail. But I actually thought
it was interesting that this clip kind of said a lot.
But this is Lou's dad, Maddy. This is him talking

(02:23:26):
about the ear infection, like I said, and talking about
the young life.

Speaker 17 (02:23:30):
Louis was only an infant in the crib and he
developed this ear infection. We didn't know it at the time,
and so Louis was about three years old we found
out he was hot at here and I guess that's
why Louis never took an interest in things other kids
would take an interesting like television. He was late and
learned to speak and everything. Louis would become a lip reader.

(02:23:55):
Louis was a real skinny kid. I remember he couldn't
even make the football team because he was too skinny.
And then it started to buy muscle magazine. I remember
I would take him to a bookstore and he would
buy up all the old muscle books and he would
read for hours. I remember two or three o'clock in
the morning. I would find his light on and he
would be reading the muscle books. So Louis decided to

(02:24:17):
do a little body building.

Speaker 4 (02:24:18):
I had an Ald waightlifting.

Speaker 12 (02:24:19):
Set in the cellar.

Speaker 4 (02:24:20):
I used to do a little bit of it myself.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean is he is?

Speaker 3 (02:24:28):
That? Is that?

Speaker 4 (02:24:28):
People.

Speaker 6 (02:24:29):
Ayah, Now I wanted There are a couple of things
I want to say here that I want to point
out because I am I am skeptical of some things
that have been said of these last two clips.

Speaker 4 (02:24:41):
Okay, first of all, the guy sounds like a fucking
pro wrestling aulture.

Speaker 6 (02:24:44):
Seriously, Oh, for God's sake, Yeah, I mean listen, he
he would have made he would have made so much
money working for Vince Senior. Oh yeah, he would have
made so much fucking money. And he came and his
his involvement is absolutely fucking money.

Speaker 4 (02:25:02):
In a moment.

Speaker 6 (02:25:05):
So you heard, first of all, for Rick No talking
about because of the bullying, he turned to comic books. Yes,
his dad says, because of the bullying, he turned to
muscle magazines.

Speaker 4 (02:25:23):
Yes.

Speaker 6 (02:25:25):
Now obviously that's from Pumping Iron, So it's I think
it's interesting. The other interview was from much later, so
after he's identified as the Incredible Hulk. So now he's
using comic books, but in the seven he's using muscle magazines. Yeah,
and it's like, hmm, Okay, something's a little off here.

(02:25:48):
And I will tell you this too. This this to
me and now you tell me this, I could be
completely off base here by saying this. So he gets
and he's skinny, and he's rejected, right yep. So would
it surprise you if I told you that Lou Farigno,

(02:26:13):
as an eleven year old was a fucking good, old
fashioned slugger for his little league team?

Speaker 4 (02:26:19):
Oh my god, here we go. I asked you to
do the incredible Hulk in this Retino, not Hulk Hogan
and Terry Bolea. I mean, what the fuck is going
on here?

Speaker 14 (02:26:31):
Like?

Speaker 4 (02:26:31):
Is the exact same story? You tell me?

Speaker 12 (02:26:34):
It?

Speaker 4 (02:26:34):
Seriously?

Speaker 8 (02:26:34):
Is?

Speaker 4 (02:26:35):
Now?

Speaker 6 (02:26:35):
You tell me I don't know it as well? You know,
my kid doesn't play baseball. But if you're a slugger
and you're written up in numerous times in the Brooklyn
Paper the King's Courier for hitting multiple home runs per.

Speaker 4 (02:26:55):
Game, oh my god, here we go.

Speaker 6 (02:26:58):
Are you a skinny guy who can't fucking whatever? Don't
you have to be, don't you? But don't you have
to have a good arm, like strong arms to be
able to fucking heal multiple home runs in a game?

Speaker 4 (02:27:14):
Sure? Sure it helps, yes, Like highly, you have to
have some power. I mean, also, if you're so ridiculed,
why the fuck are you playing sports? What do you mean, Like,
if you're being made fun of by everybody, what makes
you say I want to get involved with people? Yeah,

(02:27:36):
well it's a fair point, but it's actually a way
to try to give yourself a shot of.

Speaker 6 (02:27:42):
Maybe okay, maybe that's that's the case. But again, they're
making him sound like he's this fucking yea And I
was saying he's not an introvert. But I found it very,
very interesting when I was looking him up that lou
leuis j Farigno in Brooklyn is fucking hitting home runs

(02:28:02):
all the time.

Speaker 4 (02:28:05):
I mean, I'm not going to be able to come
off this. I had no idea this was coming, that
this parallel with Terry Bullet's life was coming, right. I mean,
I'm like, you know, here, I am thinking that he
just cut copied loof Forerigno's gimmick in wrestling. He may
have copied his whole fucking life story. Or you know,
That's one thing Terry Bulay does is he hears that

(02:28:27):
somebody else experienced something and he waits long enough and
then pretends it happened to him, like Ready Savage being
scouted by Major League Baseball teams, for instance.

Speaker 6 (02:28:37):
I'm also though of the idea that Louno is a worker,
that he's a fucking Carney. He's making ship up to
Arne's just like exactly like I'm just like I was.
I I honestly was stunned. I mean again, maybe it's

(02:28:58):
not a big of a deal for the people, but
to me, it just didn't fit the narrative that he's
that they're creating this image of a kid who can't
fucking do anything for himself. Essentially, yeah, interesting, and yet
he's he's he's certainly doing something very athletic. But he
does start weight training at age thirteen, which like, well, shit,

(02:29:23):
that seems I don't know, maybe I'm crazy as seems young.
But he starts doing like serious weightlifting at age thirteen.
And he attended the Brooklyn Technical High School. He learned
how to weld there, and he he did, he did
have a they do talk about it in in pumping
in and he was He did work in like this

(02:29:45):
in the steel business for a little while. Not the
George steel business either, but.

Speaker 4 (02:29:51):
Well, Hogan attempted attended Tampa Technical Wrestling College at the
Sporatorium U.

Speaker 6 (02:30:00):
Now here we go again. His His Wikipedia page says
that he won his first his first bodybuilding competition right
after high school in nineteen sixty nine. This is supposedly
the Mister America competition, hosted by a masked man with

(02:30:20):
a blonde handled bar mustache.

Speaker 4 (02:30:22):
Yes, yeah, this is this is Infinity's end days if I'm.

Speaker 6 (02:30:26):
Not day Yeah right, Well, I couldn't find any evidence
of this at least in nineteen sixty nine. The first
time he won or even placed in the Mister America
competition was in nineteen seventy three, okay, when he won
the tall division and overall competition. So the first evidence

(02:30:47):
of him in a competition that I could find, at
least that was that was noteworthy enough to be in
the newspaper was in nineteen seventy one he placed fourth place,
fourth place in the Mister Teenage America. But still not
right after high school. That's still two years after high school.
So again I'm feeling I'm feeling a constructed narrative here

(02:31:13):
about this person. And yeah, he competed for his first
IFBB Mister Universe in nineteen seventy three in Geneva, and
he won. He won that one. No, wait, did you
know who didn't? Yes, he did win. He won that one.

(02:31:35):
What I loved is that in the Irish independent newspaper
they spelled his name l E W I S for Rigno,
and it was very much not that, but I liked that.
He repeated the win in nineteen seventy four. Also in
nineteen seventy four he entered his first Mister Olympia competition,

(02:31:58):
and this is of course ring Arnold Schwarzenegger's Reign of Terror,
where he wins six in a row.

Speaker 4 (02:32:05):
That was that was.

Speaker 6 (02:32:11):
That was number five in nineteen seventy four. Frigno won
second place in nineteen seventy four. They don't really talk
about that much in the in the movie that that
Forigno also was in the seventy four Mister Olympia. They
kind of make it like saying like that, this is
the first time he's competing against Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Speaker 4 (02:32:28):
Yeah, yeah, you're right, you know.

Speaker 6 (02:32:30):
And then the following year they're in they they returned
to Mister Olympia, and this time there is this documentary
crew filming right around them in what would become Pumping Iron,
featuring clips like this.

Speaker 18 (02:32:46):
The greatest feeling you can get in the gym or
the most satisfying feeling you can get in the gym
is the pump. Let's say you train your bieseps, blood
is rushing into your muscles, and that's what we called
a pump. Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like
your skin is going to explode any minute. You know,
it's really tired. It's like somebody blowing air into your muscle.

(02:33:07):
It just blows up and it feels different. It feels fantastic.
It's a satisfying to me as a coming is, you know,
as having sex with a woman and coming. So can
you believe how much I am in heaven. I'm like

(02:33:29):
getting the feeling of coming in the gym, I'm getting
the feeling of coming at home. I'm getting the feeling
of coming backstage when I pump up, when I bose
out in front of five thousand people, I get the
same feeling. So I'm coming day and night. I mean,
it's terrific, right, so you know I'm in heaven.

Speaker 4 (02:33:46):
Fremendous stuff. Now, tremendous stuff that is, without my doubt,
my favorite fucking quote, that's amazing, our favorite clip from
that fucking movie. I'm coming. When I'm on stage, I'm
coming when I'm warming up backstage, I'm coming when I'm
in Bubba's bedroom.

Speaker 6 (02:34:02):
I'm coming in Linda's pussy. I'm coming in Bubba's wife
in Missus love sponges pussy. Jeez, have you seen You've
seen it, right? Have you seen Bumping In?

Speaker 3 (02:34:10):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (02:34:11):
Yeah I have.

Speaker 12 (02:34:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:34:11):
Yeah, that's a fucking wild movie. It's a wild It
seemed like it could be real. It seems like they
put on it's a good thing. You said that. Actually,
that's an interesting thing, you said. So let's talk about
the history of this movie a little bit here. So
in nineteen seventy four, uh photographer George Butler and writer
Charles Gaines, So they collaborated with Schwarzenegger to write a

(02:34:33):
book called Pumping Iron and this actually it's kind of
it's funny this the book actually was the first real
mainstream uh like door opening to the world of bodybuilding.
It just happened to be overshadowed by the movie, right,
But for three years, basically the book was was kind

(02:34:57):
of the thing, and it kind of opened a lot
of peop people's eyes to the world of bodybuilding. And
so the next year they decided to turn it into
a movie. And I don't. I mean, I imagine, obviously
the book can't be like the movie is. Obviously, you know,
it can't be the same thing, because the movie is

(02:35:19):
about something very very specific. I don't know.

Speaker 6 (02:35:21):
Again, I didn't really read too much into the book,
but they wont turned into the movie. But Arnold didn't
want to do it because he was ready to retire.
He was actually going to retire after number five. But
so they had to convince him. I think they convinced
him with fifty thousand dollars, yeah, to compete for a
six mister Olympia so they could follow him around. And

(02:35:44):
at the same time, the publisher of Muscle magazine, a
guy by the name of Joe Wheer, he's keeping an
eye like, he become aware of Lou Farigno and he
saw him as a threat to Schwarzenegger's crown, and essentially Weader,

(02:36:06):
through his magazine, created and pushed this rivalry, which the
movie then adopted to be the main focal point. And
like you just said, you just said that it doesn't
seem real and the making of the movie really, honestly,

(02:36:29):
it has a lot of distinct similarities with pro wrestling. Yeah,
personalities are jacked up like they're they're they're real personalities,
but they just they kicked it up. They purposely kicked
it up a notch. Some scenarios were created for the
film that weren't real. It's fine, now, we heard lose

(02:36:53):
Dad Matt, right, Yeah, the movie shows Matt as lous trainer.
Now would it surprise you that a quote documentary added
this in like this has made this into a fictional scenario,

(02:37:17):
like this was not real. This is a clip from
It would surprise me greatly. Yes, this is a clip
from Raw Iron. This is hilarious. Raw Iron is a
documentary about the making of the documentary Pumping Iron. Maybe
there'll be a documentary about the making of Raw Iron
about the making of Pumping Iron.

Speaker 4 (02:37:34):
Anyway, here, this is here. Listen to this.

Speaker 19 (02:37:36):
What Butler invented was Matti Ferignou's actual involvement in his
son's bodybuilding career.

Speaker 6 (02:37:43):
What Butler invented? What Butler invented? Butler is the director
of the film, invented.

Speaker 4 (02:37:54):
Not organic.

Speaker 5 (02:37:58):
I see, my father never really was really involving bodybuilding,
and they asked him to be in the film, that
that would be good to have father's son.

Speaker 14 (02:38:07):
In the movie, Maddy Fregno is a stage father to
the best of intentions, and Maddie had a very clear
idea of what Louis should be doing, and they would
just unroll in front of my eyes when you.

Speaker 4 (02:38:21):
Step out there.

Speaker 20 (02:38:21):
Boy, remember all those grueling nights and mornings in the gym,
and this is it, This is the reward, and we wanted.

Speaker 5 (02:38:29):
Be kept putting in my head this is your last chance.
There's one seemed to see me killing dumbbells, one hundred
pounds dumbell Afterwards my father go, boy, what a workout,

(02:38:49):
Oh boy, what a workout. That's because he was holding
one of the dumb bells.

Speaker 4 (02:38:55):
He's the one who tired.

Speaker 1 (02:38:56):
Remind me what you're going to show them?

Speaker 20 (02:38:58):
And then you go boom like you're saying, take a
look at this, hanker man something like that.

Speaker 1 (02:39:03):
Okay, you're trying that.

Speaker 5 (02:39:05):
And he did the best he could the fact, because
at the time I have the speech problem and everything,
I was not able to conduct myself with interviewers to
try to be my voice.

Speaker 19 (02:39:14):
The unfolding relationship between father and son added an unexpected
layer of tension and emotional richness to the film, as
Maddie demonized Arnold. He wore his son down.

Speaker 1 (02:39:25):
There's only one thing in mind, that's a big german.
So we've got to beat Arnold.

Speaker 20 (02:39:30):
He's been up there too long, and you waited nine
years for this shot, right.

Speaker 21 (02:39:38):
Be careful. He's going to try every trick. If he
sees you look a little better, he's going to try
and do something. He's going to try to make you
look bad out there. Watch every movie. Makes try not
to engage in conversation with him.

Speaker 5 (02:39:51):
And most of the time I really wanted to say,
let me speak for myself, let me be who I am. Please.
You know this is not how I want to conduct myself.
That's not how I want to be in the film.

Speaker 20 (02:40:01):
Look, no, no, I was not rearding me.

Speaker 4 (02:40:08):
I was beating down. K fabe, k fabe. Yep, you
know it's no fucking my story where this comes from.
There's a reason bodybuilders and pro wrestlers have always made bedfellows.
They're both professional liars. Yes, and I know this is
a filmmaker putting this on Lou and not Lou concocting it.

(02:40:30):
But man, is his dad ready his dad ready to
take to to step into that role. No, stage right there.
I mean, he sounds like a fucking wrestling manager. He
sounds exactly. He sounds like Grand Wizard.

Speaker 6 (02:40:42):
Yep, he fucking does. You're absolutely writing here the seventies manager,
I mean. And they further the manipulation in the way they.

Speaker 4 (02:40:53):
Do the movie.

Speaker 6 (02:40:56):
Schwarzenegger is always portrayed in the California sunshine, always with
people happy, carefree, laughing, you know, like you know, just
fully confident and and.

Speaker 4 (02:41:13):
Whatever, which is why Hull Cogan had to be from
Venice Beach, California, by the way.

Speaker 6 (02:41:18):
Yeah, with Farigno, they chose to film him in a
dark Brooklyn gym, wow, with no other bodybuilders, no, no like,
no scene, no like no scene community. You know, it's
just it's just local, like his local friends and bums

(02:41:40):
and whatever who are working out. Nobody in the same
like league with him. And he's kind of portrayed like
a fucking beast or a caged animal, which kind of
helps pay off down the road. But it's like they're
they're manipulating this whole thing. And I get it, you

(02:42:01):
kind of have to, you have to tell your story,
but to what degree, Yeah, it.

Speaker 4 (02:42:07):
Completely introduce like characteristics is kind of a crossing the line. Yeah,
it's it's it's really it's it's bizarre. It's bizarre to
look at Lou and be like, wouldn't it be great
if for some reason his dad cracked whip the whole time, right, Like,
that's like, where do you get that from? Why is
that necessary? I mean, I guess he saw the potential

(02:42:28):
of it, and it I mean, obviously it plays well
in the film, there's no question about it does. Yeah,
but it's a totally different.

Speaker 6 (02:42:33):
Character, but it but it also destroys Lou as a
person like he as well, we'll you know, we'll talk
about in a moment. He kind of infantile, right, he
looks infantile.

Speaker 4 (02:42:46):
He looks like just like a slave, yeah, and helpless,
like right, actually severely disabled almost.

Speaker 6 (02:42:56):
Yeah, and it it fucks with his head for a
few years afterwards, like his legit head, because he's he's
being played in a way, you know, he's being played.

Speaker 4 (02:43:10):
Here.

Speaker 6 (02:43:10):
This is a This is a clip from from the
film from Pumping Iron. Come on anyways, he injecting himself
with steroids.

Speaker 4 (02:43:30):
It's different on audio, let me tell you, with no video.

Speaker 1 (02:43:37):
God, come on enough one most same way that I'm
not notified. The more way, let's go, I need time,

(02:44:02):
peril sometimes a need signed.

Speaker 5 (02:44:04):
Here.

Speaker 1 (02:44:05):
You can come on, I want to see you. You're
gonna do.

Speaker 12 (02:44:13):
You're gonna wipe him out.

Speaker 1 (02:44:15):
Come on, come on, you're gonna do it.

Speaker 4 (02:44:24):
Come on, she'sus Christ. What sounds like Patterson and Steve
Lombardi in the hotel. For the guy's sake. This is
guy's working out. That's what I do in the gym.

(02:44:45):
I'm screaming Arnold Arnold, donld Nold and the prize. Baby.
It's amazing that this is the guy that Terry Bulea
would Oh my god.

Speaker 6 (02:44:56):
I mean he you know, uh he had you know
Freekno admits Listen, Arnold was his hero. He was the
guy that he admired. He's the guy he wanted to beat.
He wanted to beat his hero. You know, he had
that dream. So I get it. But they're also like
the dad is is like pushing this this agenda on him.

(02:45:21):
And that's not even including Schwarzenegger. Which Schwarzenegger's psychout techniques
in this fucking movie are unbelievable. I mean, he admits,
and I want to play a clip where he admits this,
he admits to using mind games to fuck with his opponents,

(02:45:44):
especially if he thinks they might beat him, and he
does it with such ease and confidence it's actually frightening.
It's actually frightening, honestly. And what I find to be
funny is that they keep portraying Arnold as the hero.
Oh no, is he healed, but he's not, like and

(02:46:06):
they keep calling him like they they call for Rigno
the antagonist, and I'm like, no, I don't feel that
I cheer for for Regino in this movie. I don't
cheer for Arnold, you know. And and even in the way,
like it's kind of funny again, they're trying to make
this kind of babyface thing with him out being in
the son and being happy, but I actually think of

(02:46:28):
it as being spoiled and entitled, and I think of
the guy who's coming from nothing to come and try
to get the get the you know, get the win,
get the throne. So it's very interesting, like, but but
they really believe that they portrayed Schwarzenegger as the good
guy in this movie, or that's what they were trying
to do, And I'm like, I don't think that at

(02:46:48):
all I think if Schwarzenegger as a dick, complete dick like,
I don't think he's out smarting anybody. I think he's
I think he's being manipulative. Right, And I'm going to
play another clip from the movie. It's actually kind of
a compilation of a couple of clips, but it's it's
both Matt and Arnold in their own way, psyching out

(02:47:12):
lou and also swarzing explaining his techniques that he's done
on other people as well.

Speaker 1 (02:47:17):
How do you feel, lou I'll never feel sorry for yourself.

Speaker 20 (02:47:23):
Remember, if you're training hard, he may be training twice
as hard. You just got to keep coming back stronger.

Speaker 4 (02:47:30):
Right all the way, Louie.

Speaker 19 (02:47:32):
You'll never get this chance again, all the.

Speaker 1 (02:47:35):
Way, Okay, Louis, No, no, no, no. Listener.

Speaker 20 (02:47:45):
When you when you come out here and you're out
of here right now, they're all waiting for you, Louie.
They want to see what you got. They've never seen
you before. You turn your legs right. Then you look
at the crowd, Louis. They're all looking at your flesh.
Bulbs are going to go up and everything. Then you
put your arms like this. You look at your arms
like you're admiring, right, you're admiring what you're going to

(02:48:08):
show them, and then you go boom like you're saying.

Speaker 4 (02:48:11):
How does this fucking guy know what he's talking about?
It doesn't. And it's now that you've revealed this to me, right,
it's it's becoming much more obvious that he was just
giving this most generic advice. It's like the UFC corner
man that just says you got to turn it on,
man rock, instead of telling you exactly what to do.
You have no real strategy, you have no knowledge. He's
a fucking more technical insight, no actual specific advice.

Speaker 20 (02:48:31):
Exactly take a look at this hanker man something like that. Okay,
you're trying not look actually accident. No, no, down here, Louis,
I tell you, look at your arms down here, look
at bo right, that's it, Adam boy.

Speaker 1 (02:48:54):
Good.

Speaker 20 (02:48:54):
Now hold that pose because remember, your arms are bigger
than all and they want to see them.

Speaker 9 (02:48:59):
Right.

Speaker 20 (02:49:00):
These people have never seen your arms. They're seeing honor.
So hold that pose a while, and I say this post.
Just touch your body a little, because there's people on
this side of the theater, and there's people on this
side of the theater.

Speaker 1 (02:49:11):
They want to see you.

Speaker 17 (02:49:12):
So just tut your body just slightly like this, right,
try that alone.

Speaker 4 (02:49:18):
Oh the boy, you.

Speaker 18 (02:49:19):
Have to do everything possible to win. No, no matter
what I said at the day of the contest, if
he comes in his best shape and he's equally as
good as I am, or if let's say it's a
few percent better as I am, I spend with him
one night, I go downstairs and put us together in

(02:49:40):
a room, you know, to help him for tomorrow's contests.
And and that.

Speaker 1 (02:49:50):
Night he will never forget will I will mix him up.

Speaker 18 (02:49:58):
He would come so ready to South Africa, so strong,
but the time the nineties over the next morning, he
will be ready to lose. I mean, I would just
talk him into that. That's no problem to do you now.
And so all those things you know are available, and
so if they're available, he might as well use them.
So that's why it doesn't matter if he comes in

(02:50:20):
shape out of shape. If he comes out of shape,
it he says, has less hustle.

Speaker 1 (02:50:24):
For me, you know. And if he's in shape, fine,
I hope he is.

Speaker 4 (02:50:32):
But you couldn't pull us with Franco. Franco's pretty smart.

Speaker 18 (02:50:35):
Franko is pretty smart. But Franko is a child, and
when it comes to the day of the contest, I'm
his father. He comes to me for advices, so it's
not that hard for me to give him the wrong advices.

Speaker 9 (02:50:55):
Eight years ago and some fellow came to me into
the gym and said, I want to win, mister Munich,
you know, and I am a perfect poser, and I
have a fantastic body, and I just want to learn
a new posing routine, a new style, you know, something
way out which nobody expects. So I said, well, let

(02:51:16):
me see you posing routine you have right now. But
when the guy took his clothes off and post for me,
he looked like nothing number one and his posing was
pad I mean, he was just I think he was crazy,
you know. I thought, well, okay, if he thinks that
he's the best post I'm going to pull a little
trick on him.

Speaker 12 (02:51:35):
And so that's what I did.

Speaker 9 (02:51:36):
I told him, I said, listen, I have a new
posting routine from America, said I'm correspondence with all the
top athletes in America. And I told him that the
new thing is that he has to scream while he's posing.
And he looked at me, and he says, wow, that's
a new idea. He says, you know, they will really
come out impressive. When you go out down stage and

(02:51:56):
he scream, people can't miss you. They will look at
you and I scream, and that's it. So I taught
him how to scream, you know. And first of all,
I oiled him obviously up his body, you know, it's
really heavy oil and everything. So that was standing dinner
in the shower room, and I taught him to how
to do it. You know, I mean, the higher your
arms go up, the higher you make a screaming noise.
And the lower your arms come down while they're posing

(02:52:18):
in the lower.

Speaker 1 (02:52:19):
The noise, you know, like a.

Speaker 12 (02:52:20):
Oh yeah, this kind of a thing.

Speaker 9 (02:52:23):
Well, I practiced with him for two hours, spent a
lot of time on developing his new posing within and
he mastered.

Speaker 12 (02:52:31):
It very well.

Speaker 9 (02:52:31):
He was screaming really loud and I and you know,
the high and level. And he went to the Mister
Munich contest and I told him and he walks out,
he has to scream loud, you know, run out, and
so he did. And obviously people weren't ready for that
at all, you know, So he went out there he
screamed cloud when three or four poses with some loud

(02:52:52):
screaming and they carried him off his face swim.

Speaker 12 (02:52:55):
I was totally nuts.

Speaker 10 (02:52:57):
I have noticed it all.

Speaker 4 (02:52:59):
So he totally fucked that guy. Wow, this guy, if
he keeps up this level of manipulation, he could become
the governors.

Speaker 6 (02:53:13):
Just fush Now now he's now he's having breakfast with
the frigos. Yes, okay, in South Africa, he's having breakfast.

Speaker 12 (02:53:22):
What can I say?

Speaker 9 (02:53:24):
The guys are sacking in the money, coming.

Speaker 17 (02:53:28):
Down what he was doing, lay down in the bus
in the back.

Speaker 9 (02:53:31):
Hello, this is a master plan here this morning, right
young Hey.

Speaker 18 (02:53:37):
I'm here.

Speaker 9 (02:53:38):
Know for six days nobody invited me for breakfast. This
morning they say, come for breakfast with us. Come heavenize breakfast.
She's talking about pumping up, he's talking about cycking, she's
talking about my mother.

Speaker 4 (02:53:53):
You're the king of kings.

Speaker 12 (02:54:00):
Thanks rubbing it in?

Speaker 1 (02:54:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:54:05):
Are you?

Speaker 5 (02:54:07):
How are you doing?

Speaker 1 (02:54:09):
Some kind of word? It's a little tired. I kind
of wake up.

Speaker 4 (02:54:13):
They don't come nicer than you want.

Speaker 20 (02:54:15):
I'm a nice I wouldn't turn my back on you
on within five hundred yarbs.

Speaker 4 (02:54:23):
You trust me, I should have you early on, soverybody
could relax.

Speaker 12 (02:54:28):
I should have it in a month for him. He's
not even in shape yet.

Speaker 4 (02:54:31):
I mean she didn't.

Speaker 12 (02:54:33):
He didn't get the timing right.

Speaker 4 (02:54:34):
I'm telling you a month from that would have been
perfect for you.

Speaker 9 (02:54:38):
But then I get bigger do it again, so you know,
it doesn't matter. What the hell, let's get let's get
it over and if you're a diet this year, you
just never had the Olympia, but you had twice the
universe with the health.

Speaker 4 (02:54:51):
That's a debate, doesn't one with elect five? Ye, that's amazing.

Speaker 9 (02:54:56):
Can you imagine the feeling I have six times miss Olympia.

Speaker 4 (02:54:59):
I you could go on forever.

Speaker 12 (02:55:05):
It goes in my mind when it's thing we're going
to get so tough.

Speaker 9 (02:55:08):
I call my mother yesterday and I say that one's.

Speaker 4 (02:55:11):
Just congratulations on you know.

Speaker 5 (02:55:14):
This guy.

Speaker 4 (02:55:16):
Go to help him.

Speaker 19 (02:55:18):
Pump up, calm him down, to help him.

Speaker 4 (02:55:22):
Okay, I don't screwing up this time. I don't want
you to not pumping normally. D Wow, that's an aster at work.

Speaker 6 (02:55:31):
I mean, look at the way he fucking like just
and I don't know how much of that was was
a put on. I mean people, some people say that
it was a put on or whatever, but I also,
you know, based on what Friedino says, and I kind
of believe him in this is that is that he
is psyched out from a number of different reasons, not

(02:55:52):
the least of which is his own dad. But then
Schwarzenegger also is just fucking putting it all on. I mean,
he's he's he's like, you know, like manipulating from so
many different places. First of all, talking about the idea
that you know all you're trying to like me out,

(02:56:15):
You'll try to psy like me out.

Speaker 4 (02:56:17):
Oh my god, you're gonna get my head, and then
saying about but you know, I go to call my
mind told her I won. Can you imagine sixth time,
mister Olimbia, you imagine six time? And you know what?
It got to the point, Okay, this is an out

(02:56:38):
take and going to play and I want you to
hear this because it got to this fucking point. The
mind games got to foriing know so bad that this happened.
This was an outtake. It's featured in uh raw Iron.

Speaker 12 (02:56:56):
So where do you think it changed?

Speaker 1 (02:56:58):
This other day?

Speaker 12 (02:56:59):
I would lose our You have the beast thank you,
insents everything.

Speaker 20 (02:57:06):
You're gonna do king a long time, Arnod, You're gonna
be king a long time.

Speaker 4 (02:57:14):
Schwartzen. They asked us for Regno, what are your chances?
What are your chances? I'm gonna lose, You're gonna win? Wow,
do the job? I mean, I'm like, what, what the fuck? Like,

(02:57:36):
I think this requires some quiz show style of federal investigation.

Speaker 6 (02:57:40):
Seriously, and you know what, That's exactly what happened, because
freak no good. They go out and he says during
the during the the pre judging segment, which I don't understand.
I don't understand why there's a pre judging segment. Can
you explain that to me? I think we talked about
I think we talked about it with Yeah, But like,

(02:58:01):
I don't understand pre judging.

Speaker 4 (02:58:03):
What I feel like there's like I don't know, I'm
really foggy on it, but I feel like there's something
you you have to do to impress the judges that
you you want to hold off into the last second
and then you want to do something different to show
on stage, like the judges want to see you in
a condition before you do those finishing touch embellishments, to

(02:58:25):
look ideal on the stage. But I think when you
do that, you hide certain things the judges want to
look for as far as like develop definition. That that's
my rough memory of it. Well, Farino says when he
went for the pre judging, he knew he wasn't gonna win.
He knew he could feel it. And schwarzlag your place first.

(02:58:49):
The other Guyge new Bray, Org new Bray, I don't
know Gary Stridem much better. Gary Stridem South Africa, Garrant
Stridem Garan's plates place second, and for Reigno placed third,
and because there are only three competitors, Forigno place last, right.

Speaker 6 (02:59:12):
Last, and Forerigno said in a later interview that all
he wanted was to have fun, like like Schwarzenegger. That's
all he wanted to do. You know, he wanted it
like he he he watched like that's what that was
his dream. Like Schwartzenegger's out there being carefree, he's fucking

(02:59:33):
signing autographs, he's joking around, he's having you know, he's
just having the best time. And Forigno is like.

Speaker 4 (02:59:40):
In this.

Speaker 6 (02:59:41):
The narrator of the film calls Forerigno as serious as
a heart attack. Yes, and that's exactly what he was.
He says, serious as a heart attack, and like having
the cameras around him, the director forcing his dad to

(03:00:03):
train him. It just really made this whole thing a
negative experience. Like he he he lost before this thing
even started, he'd lost because that of.

Speaker 4 (03:00:14):
The two, Arnold's the one who would go on to
do w W Hall of Fame and right, say Hull
Cogan mid wrestlers, so entertaining, right, right, He's the one
that's gonna be right involved in wrestling. Not for Igno,
I know, well think, I mean exactly, it's so fucking backwards.

Speaker 11 (03:00:34):
He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack Ncarno m
jp Soo's.

Speaker 12 (03:00:48):
Fan Wrestling Podcast.

Speaker 6 (03:00:50):
Now, when they wrap the movie, they they actually so
they filmed this in nineteen seventy five and they shot
over one hundred hours of footage, but they ran out
of money and so the film was delayed for two
years until they could raise enough money to finish the
movie and then release it. And when it did come out,
and this is two years later, Farigno is horrified of

(03:01:15):
what people are going to think of him after they
see him. And again this is from raw Iron.

Speaker 5 (03:01:21):
When I sew it for the first time, made me
very angry because I saw him as sure how I
portrayed to Fay, people wouldn't like me. I want to say,
people are going to look down on me because to
the factory here to kifferent books, and she's deaf, he
can't speak, she looked dumb in the film. Well, I'm
trying to say to you. Without the time, I felt

(03:01:41):
like a freak. But it wasn't like that. I didn't
realize that within time. Have you one embraced me?

Speaker 4 (03:01:48):
Yeah? Everyone embraced him. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:01:51):
That and that is one of the key reasons what
brought him to The Hulk. You know, this movie, this
movie was important because it brought him into in the
public spotlight in a way that he hadn't been before,
and it resulted in him getting cast in The Hulk. Now, curiously,
it is funny, so before I don't know the exact time.

(03:02:11):
A lot of the timeline, the dates and whatnot in
regards to the Incredible Hulk are a little bit fuzzy.
I don't know when everything happened with The Hulk, Like,
there's not a lot there's not a lot of dates
in what I've been reading. So I don't know when

(03:02:32):
Pumping Iron came out in relation to When the Hulk
when they were filming The Incredible Hulk pilot, but I
do know that what they supposedly they did actually talk
to before they hired Richard Keel, they talked to Arnold
Schwarzinger and Lou Farigno about doing it, but they both

(03:02:54):
either they both of you had chose not to do it,
or they decided not to go with them, and they
went with Richard Kiel and Forno was he said he's
convinced he could born. He was like he was born
to play the Hulk. He said, there's no question about it.
And he he said he could do it, and and

(03:03:14):
they did. They they hired him. And obviously it's the
role that even today that that's most recognized as is
the Incredible Hulk. And of course, as we've said many times,
it's for Reigno's association with the whole character that is
the reason that brings us here today, of course, and

(03:03:36):
the success of the of the TV series, and we're
gonna talk about more about it later. But like I
said before, there was uh, there were there were there
was the pilot film and then there was a second
So after the pilot film, the first TV movie, they
did not not get picked up. CBS was not convinced

(03:03:57):
that they could make a series out of it. Weren't
convinced they could do a series. It was very successful,
so that that's important to note. It was a very
very successful TV movie. But yeah, this is seventy seven
is the first one we can Yeah. But and so
they ended up again we'll talk about in detail, but

(03:04:17):
the second TV movie was made and after that they said, Okay,
you know what, we can do a series like that.
That convinced them they could do a series, and that
helped it become the smashing success and the incredible pop
culture phenomenon. That was the incredible whole TV series. And

(03:04:39):
as we you know, we talked about and as we
will talk about it, so you're going to go into
there was a certain professional wrestler who was bulking up
and making the rounds in the Southeast and I just there,
I just wanted to read a couple of things to
kind of connect some some dots here. Oh yeah, because
as we know, and I'm sure we're going to read
this again, but I actually wanted to I wanted to read.

Speaker 4 (03:05:03):
Did you?

Speaker 6 (03:05:04):
I mean, I know you have you have you read
both both uh stories that hul Cogan has given about
this in in both of his books.

Speaker 4 (03:05:14):
Yes, yeah, I'm going to read them both. Feel free. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:05:19):
Later on, well, I was still wrestling for Louis toillett
Is Tillette or tille I should have had a morning
show at a morning talk show in Mobile, Alabama to
run a wrestling event. The other guest was a guy
named Lou Farigno who was starting with Bill Bixby on
a TV show called The Incredible Hulk. I Farida was
traveling around the country to plug his series, which wasn't

(03:05:40):
doing so well in the ratings, so in between shooting schedules,
they kept him on the road, you know, working all
the local markets. When I got on the show, the
host looked at for Rigno and he looked at me
and said, oh my god, you know you're bigger than
Lou for Rigno, You're bigger than the Hulk. And I said,
that's because I'm the real Hulk.

Speaker 22 (03:05:56):
Now.

Speaker 4 (03:05:57):
I had the gift of gab and Lou had a
bit of a speech impediment at the time, as hearing loss.
I didn't want to run him down. But I did
have the upper hand. I ran with it a little.
Plus the host did my job for me. Oh gosh,
he said, you know, your arms are bigger, so much
bigger than his. You know, it looks as if you
arm Restlan you'd break him. You know. Actually, Lou Frigno
was an unbelievable specimen, a real dedicated bodybuilder, and his

(03:06:18):
arms were in much better shape than mine. But I
had more bulk on me, and my clothes were probably tighter,
so I looked larger. You know.

Speaker 6 (03:06:25):
That night I got into the arena and went back
to the locker room, all the boys started calling me
a hulk, and they said they saw me on television
and I was bigger than Lou Forigno. And then name
just stuck. That's from Hollywood, Hulk Cogan.

Speaker 4 (03:06:37):
That's true.

Speaker 6 (03:06:37):
Yeah, two thousand and two one. Now the I do
like that. In the Hulk Hogan My Life Outside the Ring,
he spends a lot of the time talking about his
life in the ring, right, you know, and so this
is his version, and I do love the differences here.
As I started rising in Memphis, jareded has me to
go on TV and then to promote matches. So I

(03:06:59):
went from Moby to Memphis. I could certainly talk the talk,
you know, after all those years listening to Dusty Rose
and interacting with audiences and all those bands, I was natural.

Speaker 4 (03:07:09):
I will say.

Speaker 6 (03:07:10):
I wasn't saying hey, brother and that real Hulk cog
style stuff quite yet, but I could say, Hey, you know,
this is Terry Boulder, and I want and I want
you to come down to the Mobile Civic Center where
you'll see the greatest wrestlers in the world. One day,
I went on a local talk show and wound up
sitting on here right next to Lou Forarigno. That's right,
the guy who played the incredible Hulk, who was all
over people's TVs with his green body makeup.

Speaker 4 (03:07:32):
At that time. He was a real nice guy, and
everyone was so impressed by how huge you look for
those big bulging muscles a thing was sitting next to
me at that point in my life. The guy looked
kind of small. That blew Jerry Jared away and I
got in back to my dressing room after the show,
and Jared was like, good god, Terry, you know you
were sitting on TV and you were bigger than the Hulk.

(03:07:52):
From that moment on, Jerry Jared started to build me
as Terry the Hulk Boulder wherever I wrestled. Now, I
don't know if you'd call that fate or coincidence. I
think much of at the time, But what are the
odds of that Lou Farigno would wind up on the
same talk show as me, sitting right next to me
in the middle of Tennessee. It's weird, right, because if
it weren't for that moment, there's a very good chance
I would never have acquired the Hulk nickname. Now, without

(03:08:13):
the Hulk nickname, could Terry Boulder or whatever other name
I might have picked up along the way have conquered
the world the way Hulk did now, which is wild
because those that talk show didn't happen, and he still
became Hulkogan.

Speaker 6 (03:08:27):
Right, I mean I did. I did search long and hard.
No one's ever found anything close. And you know, I
even went the route of I'll tell you what I
did too, what I did, what I also did, because
I was like, okay, you know what, maybe there's no footage,
but I was like, if there was a local talk show,
they would be promoting the fact that Lou Farigno was

(03:08:48):
on it in the newspaper, I would think so, and
so I went. I went long and hard, long and
hard part of why I put you on the mission. Yep,
long and hard looking for it, and no, there is not.
But what I did find was, I thought, is something more,
in my opinion a little more interesting because I also

(03:09:08):
looked up Terry Boulder, and I looked up Sterling Golden,
you know, just kind of like seeing maybe they were
promoting him on a talk show and I could find
out what the name of that talk show was and
maybe get some more information. Of course, But what I
find interesting is that he always talks about in both
those things, talks about Terry the Hulk Boulder. Yes, yet

(03:09:29):
I find in the Knoxville New sent Sentinel on November eleventh,
nineteen seventy nine that, let me see if this was one,
Oh no, this is about so, this is about Bob
Polk buying Southeast Wrestling. Bab Polk has a background in
the sporting goods business, coaching, and in insurance. Has it

(03:09:51):
kept it a new challenge? The former web schools stand
out in football and basketball put together a group of
investors to buy Southeastern Wrestling Incorporated from Ron Welch and
Don Curtis, Jacksonville, Florida. He investors are Fred Ward and
James Barnett, successful TV wrestling promoters in Atlanta. The new
group will be known as Southeastern Wrestling Corp.

Speaker 4 (03:10:10):
Two things.

Speaker 6 (03:10:11):
There are two things I hoped to accomplish. Number one,
at some point I want to get my hands on
the Snake Man.

Speaker 8 (03:10:17):
Now.

Speaker 6 (03:10:17):
First, I feel we should bring in the top wrestling
town across the country. Tony, Atlis Sterling Golden, Sterling Golden
in parentheses three hundred and twenty pounds and known as
the wrestling Hulk yep, Sterling Golden, though not Terry Boulder yep.
And then in the same newspaper about two weeks later

(03:10:41):
there was an there was an ad for All Star
Championship Wrestling, and in there they were listening all the matches,
and in there there was in a box first of
All Southeastern title match macher Man Ready Savage versus Bob Roup.

(03:11:02):
And underneath that Hulk challenge Bob Rup again. So he's
wrestling twice in the card versus the Hulk Sterling Golden. Okay,
then you got Memphis the Hulk Terry Boulder and yeah,

(03:11:22):
and then this this one. I just this one is honestly,
it has nothing to do with the Hulk thing, but
it just it may be one of the it's one
of those great hilarious articles that.

Speaker 4 (03:11:34):
Completely uh uh.

Speaker 6 (03:11:38):
Pull the pull the curtain behind the business. Okay like
that we think we think people weren't doing this. This
is one of those ones that we've you know, we
always talk about these, How how far back have people
been revealing that wrestling's fake?

Speaker 4 (03:11:52):
Okay?

Speaker 6 (03:11:55):
But before that though, like I'm looking at the timeline
here is basically im looking at the dates. Now these
are all from nineteen seventy nine. Now, I also went back.
I wanted to look at when did this start? When
did the Hulk start? Because that was also one of
my things I was trying to figure out. Maybe I
can figure out course what show this is. So basically
what I'm saying is it started around summer of nineteen

(03:12:16):
seventy nine is when at least that I found the
first time that he's being called the Hulk. And I
think that is a I think it's interesting because that
would be after the first season of The Incredible Hulk
would have wrapped, would have been done. Okay, in summertime, right,

(03:12:37):
that's why we're here, yep, And it's summertime, and so
it's off season and yeah, so but again there's no
there's no there's this talk show. There's not, I mean,
especially if he even fucking contradicts himself in his own books.
In one point it's in Mobile and and one point
it's in fucking Memphis. Like you gotta make up your

(03:12:59):
mind on that, all right, you got to fucking make
up your mind. And I want to check out one
thing too here because it's on my mind and I
didn't think my man I would look this up for
later on.

Speaker 4 (03:13:15):
But so it was the first book that said Mobile,
in the second book that said yeah Memphis.

Speaker 6 (03:13:20):
Yeah, now, okay, okay, this is great. So in In
in nineteen seventy eight, the nineteen seventy nineteen seventy nine season,
it was number forty four for the season, tied with
Hawaii five oh and Deer Detective. The Incredible HAWLK Show

(03:13:42):
first season. It's good like it did well, let's a Yes,
Hawaii O is A is a top show to be
you know, to be tied with. I mean, it's still
it's it's last legs, but still nonetheless, I yeah, I
don't this this idea that it's not doing well. Also,

(03:14:02):
I'm sorry, but he also would not be doing local
talk shows. He's way too big of a star. Even
if the show wasn't doing well, He's way too big
of a star to be doing the local talk shows well.

Speaker 4 (03:14:13):
And further, he says the talk show story and mobile,
and he has Jerry Jarrett giving him the name and
the second one right, right, right, right, he says, right.

Speaker 6 (03:14:22):
He says that the talk show happened, and then the
people the guy started in the backstort of calling him Hulk.
He should read it. He should write his own fucking
book before he wrote. How many times have we done that?
I mean, it's been a huge through line for the
complete Hull Cogin is the reason there's confusion about what happened.
Is Hulk himself and his own self published books told
two different stories. I know that couldn't possibly be reconciled

(03:14:45):
because he just runs his mouth off for six hours
to a ghost writer. Yeah, with no concer, you know,
because he's just been for him. It's just like the
hustle that's in front of him, like the idea that
someone would go back and rewatch something he did or
reread something he did, never really sunk in with him.

Speaker 3 (03:15:00):
I know.

Speaker 4 (03:15:00):
I think you're absolutely right with that. Yep. It's making
these adjustments, probably based on static he gets by the
first law. He tells, Yeah, yep, yep. That's probably by
the time the second book comes out, more politically convenient
for him to credit Jerry Jarrett for giving him my
name than to mention at all that he ever even
was in Mobile, which is a huge thing we're going
to get to complete. Hulk, Covian said, Man, this is

(03:15:24):
the context, yes, that explains why Hulk became Hulk.

Speaker 6 (03:15:29):
Yes, And this is the article from the Making News
November sixth, nineteen seventy nine, in their Life Scene section.
The title of the article, written by David Beddingfield, Championship Wrestling,
A bit of circus, a bit of sport, and a

(03:15:50):
whole lot of theater.

Speaker 4 (03:15:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:15:53):
After one last coquettish flip of his long blonde hair
and one more flex of his bulging biceps, Sterling Golden
stomps across the ring and jerks Gerald Finley to one side,
pulls him high over his head, slams him hard on
the canvas, the blue rubber surface quivering as Finley gasps,
all actually, hold on, let me get a that's the

(03:16:14):
right one. Golden wastes no time. Oh, he screams as
he brings his three hundred pounds of bone and fat
and muscle. He says, fat, what a shot down on
Finley's chest. Finley, however, isn't phased. At the count of two,
he lurches forward off the canvas and oomph. Golden is
bounced off and they're up at it again. Golden grabs Finley,

(03:16:38):
tosses him into the ropes, and then hacks him hard
across the chest as he flies past. On the rebound
on the first row, five elderly men and women lean forward,
small grins, working at the corners of their mouths. One
white haired matron, who looks to be around sixty can
stand it no longer. She leaps up and rushes to
the ring to the edge of the ring, raises a

(03:16:58):
silver whistle to her lips, and blows hard. Ten seconds later,
Golden wraps Finley up in the famous Sterling Golden bear hug, which,
by the way, as a hold he has so much
confidence in he's offered one thousand dollars to anyone who
can break it, and the fight is over. Finley waves
his hand at the referee, who waves at the Master
of Ceremonies gongong, and Golden drops. Finley PLoP and stalks

(03:17:22):
off for a victory strut around the ring, grinning malevolently
at a crowd that has now turned hostile. Golden slips
out of the ring, but not before flexing his muscles
one last time, and his new found elderly enemy follows
him almost back to his dressing room. He bouncing a long,
long blonde mane flapping on bronze muscled shoulders, She shuffling behind,

(03:17:45):
alternately blowing her whistle and cursing him roundly. It's Georgia
Championship Wrestling, a bit of a circus, a bit of
a sport, and a whole lot of theater. It's a
theater where huge acrobatic actors get the point. Aromatic actors

(03:18:06):
that's a beautiful one whack each other around until someone
falls as they portray absolute cold good and absolute evil.
While several thousand onlookers with a heavy bloodlust in their
eyes were all approval, most of the fans of the
Colosseum every Tuesday. Are regulars, and most are dead serious fans.
No circus show for these folks. This stuff is on

(03:18:28):
the level, yes, number one. But the referees cheat. Yes, yeah, now,
yes they do, says one fan who wanted to remain naghless,
probably because he didn't want coworkers to know he was
a fan. Yeah, they can't see everything, now, I understand that,
she says, wiping the sweat off. Sorry, it's a woman
wiping the sweat off away from her brow. It's hot

(03:18:49):
on the colosseum and getting up and shouting is hard work.
But you can bet they do cheat. She's from Warner
Robbins and she and her daughter come to the matches
every Tuesday. We wouldn't miss him, the daughter says. Behind us,
two men are exchanging the latest wrestling gossip. You heard
about Anderson? Yet me gone straight and he's not a

(03:19:11):
bad guy anymore, one is saying, Ollie, Anderson never believed
that unless I'd seen it. Another man chuckles, and we
probably figured out he could make more money and being
a good guy. Indeed, he might, but that's not always
the case. Sometimes the bad guys develop a following, or
rather an anti following and can fill the stadium every week.

(03:19:34):
The wrestlers in Georgia are always the ones at the
very top of their profession. Most of the wrestlers, most
of the wrestlers who take to the ring and Macon
are very wealthy, the leading attractions and pro wrestling in
America today. It's because I don't know how this person sounds,
but it's because of Channel seventeen in Atlanta, says Choot

(03:19:54):
choo Lyn. Do you know Cheot chew Lin No, the
assistant promoter of the fight it's here at the coliseum
and former big time wrestler himself, Choot chu Lyn. Do
you not know Choot Chulyn?

Speaker 4 (03:20:07):
Sorry, I've never heard the name father of Jerry Lynn.
Perhaps a lot of big names in wrestling. I want
to come to Georgia's again on that station. Show is
seen in forty states and you can become a drawing
card all over the nation if you make that show.
And at the back door of the coliseum Tuesday Night
at the wrestler's entrance, the nineteen seventy nine Cadillacs and
Riviera's seem to bear Lynn out. These guys ain't just

(03:20:30):
grappling because they love it. There's money to be made
in these rings, as Ernie Ladd discovered after quitting the
San Diego Chargers football team three years ago. He told
somebody he used to make sixty thousand dollars a year
getting his head beat in a football, Lynn says, and
now it makes one hundred thousand dollars a year wrestling.
He says he wished he started earlier. Of course, Lynn

(03:20:52):
is familiar with the charges that wrestling is a put
on or a fake. I answer questions like that.

Speaker 6 (03:20:59):
By asking if the people want to get in the
ring with the wrestler, He says, chuckling, no thanks. Those
guys are all huge. One wrong move bones would crack
like so many potato chips under a sledgehammer, but the
wrestler's size. It's proof pro wrestling has to be faked,
says George Reid, the coach of the University of Georgia's
wrestling team.

Speaker 4 (03:21:20):
You get those chidre and fifty pound characters running into
each other with no pads. You've had some crack. You'd
have some crack next. They didn't have it. Rehearsed Preede says,
not true. Not true, said County's Lynn.

Speaker 6 (03:21:34):
The reason these guys don't get hurt is because they're
in good shape. They know how to take a punch.
These wrestlers are professionals, they're experienced, and they are so
built up with weight and everything that they can take punishment.
It's a show. Reed maintains they're good, and the guys
are good athletes, don't get me wrong. But the holes,

(03:21:56):
but the holes they get each other in. You know,
they could keep those holes all if they weren't in
collusion with each other. The biggest joke, the biggest joke
is when one rustler pins another on the mat, always
right up the counter to the one of the mat
sort of lurches and the god on top goes flying.
That's comical. You ought to get down and try that.
Sometimes those guys that they were serious, could stay on

(03:22:18):
top all night. A trip to ringside seems to offer
evidence supporting read these fights couldn't be real or I'm sorry,
these fights couldn't be for real. Golden is a massive man.
He could grab anybody's head, any human head, that is,
and not let go until sleep overcame him. Yet here

(03:22:41):
he's forced by his opponent to drop his hold Over
and Over, of course, then Golden slams him with his
famous bear hug, and that's that. The matches in Macon
are sponsored by the Noonday Optimist Club. The Optimists get
seven and a half percent after expenses, says Lynn, a
member of the club as well as assistant promoter. The

(03:23:03):
club has used its money for a variety of worthy causes,
ranging from sponsoring little league teams to building baseball diamonds
to helping six children. The promoter of the matches and
making his Fred Ward, who operates out of Columbus. He
lines the bouts up each week, says Lynn, usually through
the wrestler's booking agents. Most of the time big Time.

(03:23:25):
Most of the Big time wrestlers use agents much as
actors or writers or other professional people as other professional
people do. Do you have an agent? Do you have
an agent?

Speaker 4 (03:23:36):
Or your professionals the hell?

Speaker 6 (03:23:39):
Three or four times a year, Ward goes to a
National Wrestling Alliance convention, where promoters and booking agents from
all over the country meet to sign contracts and coordinate
their next couple of months schedules. The greatest story That's
the greatest story ever. WA is an alliance that loosely

(03:24:01):
governs wrestling in many states. There are other associations, however,
and the NWA really doesn't do much beside providing referees
with a certification and host these conventions. Wrestling on the
circuit is not an easy life. The hard knocks of
the ring are one drawback, but then after slamming each
other around all night, wrestlers usually go home to a
motel room. They're always on the road. It's a hard life,

(03:24:23):
says Lynn. And I wouldn't do it. I could have
traveled when I was wrestling, but I'd rather it's a
steady job and just wrestle here and making Lynn was
quite a wrestler when he was active. He and he was,
and he is a strong man the wrestler. He uses
brute strength to grind opponents down, but he could move too.
There's a plaque on Lin's wall that a tests he
has wrestled the world heavyweight champion end quote, never lost.

(03:24:47):
But then he also never won, he admits with a grin.
In wrestling, the line between winning and losing is always
just a bit blurred. And in that again, he's damn
fucking right. That's the context the industry at the time. Yes,
Terry adopts the yes, and one last thing on Lu

(03:25:09):
Forrigno though before we go in that you know, as
if the nickname wasn't enough, obviously the Hulk name and
character isn't enough of a connection here, because there's also
one other you know, let's not forget that Lou Ferrigno
himself was part of another Vince McMahon enterprise.

Speaker 16 (03:25:27):
Full Legend is back. Former Mister Universe Lou Figno has
signed a six figure contract with a recently formed World
body Building Better Wag and being a seventeen year absolute
from competition for Rigno adopt and Beating in nineteen seventy
five and when he became the star of the television
series The Incredible Home One. But he told a group
of reporters and friends that his love of the sport

(03:25:48):
is bringing him back and all.

Speaker 23 (03:25:50):
The little boys, all exvenience of being the greatest bodies
over in the world. I've continued throughout the years where
in there, well, I've always fell fancy, an unfulfearable.

Speaker 4 (03:26:01):
It's what I didn't achieve my name, and.

Speaker 1 (03:26:04):
Today I am so excited to be here.

Speaker 23 (03:26:06):
But now have the opportunity that they come back to
be a fett fivey food in.

Speaker 16 (03:26:10):
The world for Rigno says, although he's in here forties,
he's in the prime of his life and plans to
condde at the nineteen ninety two WBF World Champion Dibbin
at two hundred and eighty five pounds, But admittedly he's
got He's worked out out with Brian Dippron, Rating champion
Gary Tridam or American Muscle I'm John Gobert.

Speaker 4 (03:26:31):
Unbelievable, isn't it.

Speaker 8 (03:26:32):
Now?

Speaker 6 (03:26:32):
I'll talk about full circle seriously, and I mean I
love the idea that he came back for his love
of competition. Or are you sure it wasn't a six
figure salary.

Speaker 4 (03:26:40):
That's the six figure salary, which is we've talked about
including our WBF body stars coming. Yes, yes, deeply upset
the WWA flocker room at a time when deep cuts
were being made because Hulk Cogan had exited stage right
and business was plunging and payoffs.

Speaker 6 (03:26:55):
Well this was this was announce in ninety one. Yeah,
it was even before Hogan left. Yeah, I guess he
wasn't there. I mean, he wasn't there until they're supposed
to be appear at at the ninety two one but
this happened. This press conference was in ninety one, ninety one. Yeah,
they were already feeling the pinch though in terms of

(03:27:15):
Hogan was cooling off. Even when he was there, he
was cooling off, which is part of the reason that
they wanted WrestleMania eight to be a big hiatus for him,
not just because he was going to do movies. They
wanted to intimate that he was going to retire basically.
And you know, they were starting to feel a lot
of the heat from this orient thing as well, because
the Orian went away in ninety one and they started

(03:27:36):
to get you know wind in the summer of ninety
two that you know, the the grand jury had been
convened and they were feeling you know, they were getting
subpoenaed and stuff like that. So they could feel a
lot of pressure. And immediately they started cutting the wrestling
budget and then they come up with all this money
for these WBF signings, and it really pissed everybody off.
Of course, for Igno never competed for never even showed,

(03:27:59):
never even showed. He did a appearance on Primetime Wrestler
at one time, right with Sean Mooney and Bobby Heenan yeah.
He actually objected strenuously to the the drug testing thing.
He was like, no, if you're going to steroid test,
because that had to happen after Zahoorian, you know, the
events came out in television and said we're going to
have the you know, higher standard than the Olympics for

(03:28:20):
it for steroid testing and the WWF, and of course
is perfect luck. He had just launched a fucking bodybuilding federation, right,
which cannot exist without steroids. Right, He's trying to bring
a clean bodybuilding product to market after signing all these
guys up without that promise, without that pretense, and all
of a sudden after signing these contracts, Oh yeah, guys,
by the way, you can't roid because on the wrestling side,

(03:28:41):
we're under the gun by the FEDS. So fuck, I
am not competing if I can do steroids. I mean,
that's basically the accepted stories to why he left before competing.
But it's just how remarkable is it that we go
from a young, impressionable seeking to make an impact, Terry
Boleya adopting Lufa Rigno's hult cara during likeness yep, to

(03:29:01):
have something to hang his hat on as he begins
as a regional wrestler in nineteen seventy nine, and fast
forward twenty years, well less than twenty years, fast forward
to the nineties, and the ww needs the WWF.

Speaker 4 (03:29:15):
It's absolutely hilarious. It's like hul Cogan is run away
with the ball, right.

Speaker 7 (03:29:21):
What.

Speaker 4 (03:29:25):
Broller?

Speaker 8 (03:29:28):
Who?

Speaker 7 (03:29:29):
What?

Speaker 4 (03:29:29):
Frigno? Push? Brother, Oh my god, Hulk push.

Speaker 3 (03:29:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:29:36):
You can see the world. You can see the world
of Terry.

Speaker 6 (03:29:38):
Bull and the eyes of Loof for Igno. You know
that that fucking that that freaked him out. Hulk's gone pregnant.

Speaker 4 (03:29:44):
Push. Yeah. When they brought Fregno in, there had to
be a long sit down with Terry, which will dry heat.
Darry One knows, you know, someone just want to you know,
just want to, you know, keep you up to date
with things. But I want to let you know that.
And uh, we're gonna bring you know, We're gonna bring
somebody to the w BF. All right, the w I'm sorry,

(03:30:05):
the wbe the World Bodybuilding Entertainment. Well all right, brother,
Well okay, dude, well who you bringing in? Brother? Well,
if I'm being you know, uh uh uh quite honest,
and that notwithstanding, we are bringing in the Hulk. You
got me wbe brother? Well do Stridham? Brother?

Speaker 23 (03:30:28):
What do you doing?

Speaker 4 (03:30:28):
Dude? Why did you have the Hulk? Dude? Do you
have a Hulk? I'm here, brother? You want to go
w B Do you want to jump ship? Brother? Not Terry,
Terry nor I mean bringing in the the original Hulk. Brother,
I am the original Hawk. Dude, I'm in the Hulk forever.

Speaker 3 (03:30:47):
Brother.

Speaker 6 (03:30:48):
No, Dry, Terry, I'm sorry, I'm bringing it. We're bringing
Loop for rig No, the incredible Hulk. Brother, I'm the
incredible Halk. Dude, Terrence, you can't be Terrance.

Speaker 1 (03:30:56):
Brother.

Speaker 4 (03:31:00):
Well, which Hulk youre going with?

Speaker 2 (03:31:01):
Brother?

Speaker 4 (03:31:02):
Well, Terry, that's kind of the idea. We got two Hulks.
He's fucking freaked out. Vince literally brought in the guy
who stole the name from We're not getting sued, dude,
not Terry pretty soon? Well, I thought we said this

(03:31:22):
old ready with Marvel. Dude. Why are we getting suit again,
my brother? Well, Terry, we're not gotting sue. We're just
we're bringing in the Hulk and he's gonna We're gonna
we're gonna give him a push. You get Bush, not
the other Hulk? What ship base in his voice, not
what what?

Speaker 6 (03:31:44):
Completely horrified, so confused, and Vince not making a fucking
as even an ounce of effort to be clear about
it all. He knew this ship was gonna happen when
he agreed to lose to Warrior. Yes, and when we
figure you know, you know, listen, you know you're taking
that time off. I didn't say I was taking time
off one, no, but we're telling you you're taking off.

(03:32:05):
What Terry, have we talked about this after wrestling? You
gotta take time off because you know, just you know,
things going on. What's going on, Darry? The steroids, you know,
but I don't dose steroids, dude. But I've used steroids,
but I don't use steroids and I don't abuse them. Darry, Listen,

(03:32:25):
we need you to take it, to take some time off,
all right. You know, Warrior is gonna come in, all right,
Maury is just gonna you know, hold your spot for
a little while. Brother, And I figured, you know what SummerSlam,
why don't we do a Warrior, you know, and have
Hulk versus Warrior. Well, you said I'm taking time off, brother,
but oh you you know I'm taking hell Wigan Forigno

(03:32:49):
and we'll just call it a rematch from WrestleMania Russemania six.
But there brother, well, no, it's going another difference. Just
just say that, you know you're you turned green like
Statue Liberty here or Bruce Banner, Oh god.

Speaker 4 (03:33:12):
I mean Bruce Banner turned green and Hulk turned the
WWF green. There you go. I'd say that's a good comparison.
And anyone who watched him for a nhim number of
years knows copyright Titan Sports, copyright and agreement with Marvel Comics,
and so you better believe that hul Cogan from a
legal perspective and Vincent Company from a WWF legal perspective
did not get away Scott free. No building this guy

(03:33:36):
up as Hulk.

Speaker 6 (03:33:37):
Nope, especially calling him the incredible Hull Cogan. Incredible Hulk,
not a good god, not a good move.

Speaker 4 (03:33:43):
So that is all still to come on the complete
Hull coget, a full dissection of how all of those
legal maneuverings went. But suffice to say, here and now
and under the cinemat, we know what was in the
in the air culturally absolutely, mister Bolea and whatever promoters
he happened to be bore for nineteen seventy nine, just
reached into the cultural ether and just yanked this one

(03:34:04):
out and co opted it for themselves.

Speaker 6 (03:34:07):
Now, of course there's not just the Hulk. There is
the human counterpart to the Hulk, right, and that is
the well in this ridiculous iteration, David Bruce Banner. But
he's played by Bill Bixby, and I thought, you know,
give him a little bit of a give him a
littleit of shine here.

Speaker 4 (03:34:28):
And Bill Besy's time.

Speaker 6 (03:34:29):
It's Bill Bixby's time, all right, especially with this fucking name.

Speaker 4 (03:34:33):
Are you ready? Wilfred Bailey Everett Bixby.

Speaker 6 (03:34:39):
The third off to a great start, was born January
twenty second, in nineteen thirty four in San Francisco, California.
Everybody who knew him as a kid all said he's
a day dreamer, lots of energy, lots of imagination. And
the best part was is that this was a direct

(03:35:03):
juxtaposition to dear old Dad, really very proper, very disciplined. Well,
that name kind of gave it away. I know, seriously,
I'm sorry. If you're the third, you better be fucking disciplined,
all right, or you're gonna give your Wilford Bailey Everett
the third in particular. Yeah, fucking straight woo. I wasn't

(03:35:24):
expecting that. With Bill Bixby. I thought for sure it
was just going to be you know, William Harold Bixby,
but not Wilfred Wilfred. It's not when you hear much anymore.
I don't think you even heard it much back then.

Speaker 4 (03:35:38):
No, not really. I can't think of a single one
besides Wolf Brimley. That's right.

Speaker 6 (03:35:42):
And he's a will Ford too. I believe that only
he is Wilfred. I think he's Wilford.

Speaker 4 (03:35:47):
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. So would Bill Bixby
be Terry Bulaya and Luf f Rigno's Hulk Coogan?

Speaker 6 (03:35:54):
Exactly? Okay, good, It's exactly what it is. Bill Bixby
is Terry Blay inside the house. The incredible Hulk is
everything else everything outside the house. At an open door,
he went to this, I thought, was this? This really
stumped me, and I'm sure it's going to stump you too.

(03:36:14):
He went to Lowell High School excuse me, in San Francisco. Oh, okay,
got it?

Speaker 7 (03:36:21):
I know.

Speaker 4 (03:36:21):
I sat there like what. He went to fucking Lowell
High with John Cena's dad, exactly.

Speaker 6 (03:36:29):
No, there is a there is a Lowell High School
in San Francisco named after James Russell Lowell, the poet.
Of course, both his dad served waitit did his dad
served in World War Two? I forget if his dad, well,
he served in one of the World Wars. And then

(03:36:50):
Bill Bill joined the Marines and served during during the
Korean War, but he didn't go anywhere. He was the
station in Oakland. And of course I gotta tell you so, Okay,
I don't know if I got a clip of this.
I really I should have done it. I just didn't
think to really get it just dawning on me right now.
So he has if you look at so for some reason, Okay,

(03:37:12):
I sat here and I was wondering, why does he
have an ai A biography? Why does this guy fucking
qualify for an ane biography? Not that he didn't do
some stuff and he had quite a career, I'm not
I'm not denying that, but like, I'm like, is he
really worthy of an A and E biography?

Speaker 2 (03:37:27):
Like?

Speaker 6 (03:37:27):
What has he fucking done outside The Hulk and a
couple other TV shows? But I realize it's because his
his biography came out everyone was milking the original Hulk
movie that came out in two thousand and two, the
ang Lee Hulk that came out during the UH during
the beginning of the superhero boom, and and so everybody

(03:37:51):
was getting you know, everyone was milking that, just like
they did with the Attitude era and wrestling being hot.
Like everyone's milking the fucking wrestling stuff. And so I
was watching this biography of him and his mom's interviewed. Okay,
Jane Bixby is interviewed, and do you know that whenever

(03:38:15):
her husband, Wilfred Bailey, Everett Bixby the second or Junior,
I don't like that name, right, is brought up that
she calls him either Bill's father or mister Bixby.

Speaker 4 (03:38:39):
Yeah, there's no way this guy didn't do highly inappropriate thing. Absolutely.
Let me tell you this.

Speaker 6 (03:38:48):
I don't believe Jane had I don't believe Jane had
free reign over the house. Okay, no, no, there was
very little in the way of free will.

Speaker 9 (03:38:56):
No.

Speaker 4 (03:38:56):
Oh, listen.

Speaker 6 (03:38:58):
The only will that was free was Wilfrid Will, Daddy Bixby,
Daddy Bixby. I washt there and I was, I said,
but I said, this is his isn't that his mom?
That's his mom though, right, Why the fuck is he calmed?
But he and I was like, and I get I
get really confused because I was like, why is his wife?

(03:39:19):
Why is the mom calling her husband mister Bixby? But
she was she was, Okay, that's the kind of household
we are, And that's the kind of father who demands
that you go study pre law and UC Berkeley.

Speaker 5 (03:39:36):
You do that.

Speaker 6 (03:39:38):
But Bill or bix actually as they call him, bix
is the nickname for for for Bill Bixby, bix not
having it. He dropped out, dropped out with only two
credits left before he could graduate.

Speaker 5 (03:39:52):
Like you.

Speaker 4 (03:39:55):
Want, Matt Wilfrid Junior, fuck you? So he dropped out
of college?

Speaker 6 (03:40:02):
You say, yes, yes, all right, there are way too
similar way too many similarities.

Speaker 4 (03:40:12):
I remember the time of my life doing this because
it is it.

Speaker 6 (03:40:16):
Is, without a doubt, one of the most bizarre uh.

Speaker 5 (03:40:19):
Uh, Like.

Speaker 6 (03:40:22):
You know that these two hulks really have so much
more in common than than we ever wanted to believe.

Speaker 3 (03:40:30):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (03:40:30):
And here I'm gonna play clip here clip this is
from from that anti biography.

Speaker 8 (03:40:35):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (03:40:35):
And this is Bicks wanting to be an actor, despite
his parents, of course, disapproval.

Speaker 24 (03:40:43):
Bill always used to say to our friends when they
talk to Bill, Billy, what do you want to be?
Will you grow up a fireman, a policeman, a lawyer,
or whatnot? I'm going to be an actor, he say,
very seriously, and everybody'd laugh, including his father and mother.

Speaker 4 (03:41:01):
Also, she just referred to herself. I'm a third person
and this is who again, that's his mom. This is
ruth right pretty much an insert guitar playing a role band. Yes, yes, yes,
here he continues.

Speaker 25 (03:41:15):
Then Bill still had his sights set on stardom after graduation,
but his parents had all their plans for it. They
worried about their only son's chance and success in the
cutthroat world of entertainment.

Speaker 6 (03:41:30):
They didn't how about the cutthroat world of family? How
about ball cutthroat world?

Speaker 4 (03:41:36):
Huh? I do love this so much? It almost sounds
like real American on the piano playing in the background.
Does it does? Really? To necessarily cope with this?

Speaker 22 (03:41:49):
They wanted him to become a professional or in a profession, wrestler,
a lawyer, dennis doctor.

Speaker 6 (03:41:56):
All gimmicks, all gimmicks you get doing wrestling right there? Oh, yeah,
here gives emmick.

Speaker 22 (03:42:02):
That's right, one of those professions that required a lot
of study that meant success just by the title alone.

Speaker 25 (03:42:13):
The eighteen year old had nothing against higher education and
began attending San Francisco City College in nineteen fifty two.
Then he transferred to Berkeley, his parents alma mater. His
mother and father felt their son was on the right path,
but he was still torn between their hopes and his
own passion for performing. Bill turned to the only person

(03:42:37):
who always supported him, his aunt, Hellen.

Speaker 22 (03:42:42):
Mom basically would say, try whatever you want, whatever you like,
whatever you think that you would desire the most.

Speaker 1 (03:42:50):
If it doesn't work out, fine, you haven't lost anything.

Speaker 12 (03:42:53):
What an actor?

Speaker 1 (03:42:55):
In our family?

Speaker 24 (03:42:56):
That was the attitude that had to be overcome, because
we never thought for two minutes, but it.

Speaker 4 (03:43:01):
Would ever be a professional actor.

Speaker 1 (03:43:03):
Wrestler Never entered our bonnets?

Speaker 4 (03:43:07):
Did you hear her? Just then? Excuse me? Never entered
our bonnet. Never entered our bonnets. Jesus Christ. She born
in eighteen thirteen, like Hew kind of phrases that I know,
I know.

Speaker 1 (03:43:18):
In nineteen fifty seven, Bill took his aunt's advice.

Speaker 25 (03:43:21):
He dropped out of college two credits short of graduation
and headed.

Speaker 4 (03:43:26):
South to Hollywood, brother exactly Hollywood, exactly adventure comedies, the
first on tap. He he was, you know, he did
a bunch of like he was a lifeguard, like about
a bunch of odd jobs. And he auditioned. So in

(03:43:46):
like the late fifties, I think it was, Lucille Ball
taught workshops at brand at the Brandeis Barden Institute, HM
and he and I believe I'm pretty sure this was. Yeah,
this was after I love Lucy. So she was already,
you know, a megastar. So it's a pretty big deal

(03:44:09):
that she's teaching these things. So he wanted to be
a part of it, and he auditioned, and he brought
it up years later we did what what the fuck
did I use it for? I don't remember I've used
this this radio show before, but Lucy Lucille Ball had

(03:44:33):
a little chat show on the radio called Lucy Talks
for a while, and all these have been they've been
discovered recently and they now they're up on like Sirius
XM owns them now and has put them up on
on on uh, you know, Apple and stuff like that,
and how you do it folks, exactly how you do it?
Put it out there and sitting in your vault, throw

(03:44:55):
some programmatic ads against let us hear it.

Speaker 6 (03:44:57):
What's the problem? Why are you making no problem? At
and so he bring he actually brought up and she
was doing the best thing is this is like podcasting
back in the sixties. Absolutely, because she's doing this at
her house. She's recording this at her house, all right,
Like it's it's insane. Like whatever she was doing, she
was doing a way ahead anybody even fucking had an
idea what that what what obviously podcasting was It wasn't

(03:45:18):
even closer being a thing because you have to actually,
you know, audition and get a job someplace to be
able to do this shit.

Speaker 16 (03:45:24):
Right.

Speaker 6 (03:45:24):
And but here she is, and this is a clip,
this is him and the two of them talking about
how he, you know, tried to get into her workshop.

Speaker 13 (03:45:35):
Now, you told me something that surprised me today. You
said that you were one of the entrants that I
turned down at the beginning.

Speaker 4 (03:45:43):
Of andres is that what she's goddamn right, my workshop.

Speaker 1 (03:45:50):
It wasn't that you turned me down. It was that
you did not feel that I was ready for your workshop.
But you encourage me to go on to study with
somebody else and learn a little bit more so that
I would be ready for the level that you were
working at at that time, because you were planning, as
I recall, and did have the students.

Speaker 4 (03:46:07):
Work with you.

Speaker 1 (03:46:08):
You worked with all the students, and you actually put
a show on television.

Speaker 13 (03:46:11):
Apparently you were way ahead of the students, and I
wasn't very a student saying that.

Speaker 1 (03:46:15):
Well, I sort of messed up in one area. And
when I came in, as you know, we all did
a scene for you, a dramatic or a comedy or
any kind of a scene. I seem to have picked
the wrong scene. At that period in my life, I
felt that everyone wanted a good dramatic actor. So I
came in. I think I believe it was a Tennessee
Williams scene, and I tried to be Marlon Branda, not

(03:46:35):
Bill Bixby.

Speaker 13 (03:46:36):
And Bill Bixby is a very working concern, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (03:46:40):
Right Now, Well, I've been very lucky, I've been very busy,
but I must go back now. I want to join
the two ideas together. First, you encourage me to continue
to go on and to study with a good teacher,
get myself ready for professional work, which I did do.
And I've been so lucky in between having worked with
such mare tho professional people. For example, Sheldon Leonard, who

(03:47:03):
is Danny Thomas's producer, got me on an open call
one day. I think fifty of us read for one
small comedy role. I got that role, and he liked
me so much he used me the next week in
a different role, and then he used me and an
Andy Griffith show two weeks later in the lead and
gave me my own separate guest star card. Who is
Bill Mixby? You know I got a card anyway?

Speaker 12 (03:47:23):
Isn't that great? Now that you see?

Speaker 13 (03:47:25):
Everybody always asks how do you get started.

Speaker 1 (03:47:27):
In the business. Just keep beating your head against the wall,
I guess until.

Speaker 13 (03:47:30):
Somebody make yourself available and you study and be ready.

Speaker 4 (03:47:35):
Lucy stuff, loosey stuff, all right, Oh yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:47:38):
And he does also he continues in this interview and
he talks about what he did next, and in essence,
he did what you'd consider working in the regional working
in the regional circuit, because what he did was he
started working in industrial films, which is absolutely wild. You
know what those are it's like it's basically movies that

(03:47:59):
are made like internal training. Yeah, exactly, stuff like that.
Sometimes they even have plots like you know, just I
know a lot of people who do industrials and stuff
like that. It's you know, it's decent money.

Speaker 4 (03:48:09):
But this is Bill. Bill enjoys this brand exactly. Bill
enjoys my brand.

Speaker 3 (03:48:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:48:16):
I'd love to seev versions of that, seriously. But here
he is. This is again with Lucy.

Speaker 1 (03:48:20):
I did what I called motion Picture Summerstock in Detroit
for two years working in industrial films, a jem Handy
and wild incorporation.

Speaker 6 (03:48:29):
Working in Detroit with with the chic and everybody's gonna say, yeah,
I like to hurt people and so on.

Speaker 1 (03:48:36):
That made just industrial films, films which would not be
released in the public, but would give me camera experience.
This is after I was with you great experience, and
so I knew about the technical behavior that you must
have around a camera before I made in mistakes in Hollywood,
which is very very lucky.

Speaker 4 (03:48:55):
Can we aust for a second. Yeah, So he went
to the industrial film guy aka here Matsuda, yes, to
learn the technical side, Yes, before he could learn how
to perform with the best of them. Yes, is that right? Yes,
it and so that one.

Speaker 6 (03:49:09):
I don't think anyone breaks his leg though, but we'll
see if he breaks something else. He broke a leg, however,
that's true there.

Speaker 1 (03:49:14):
It is when I came back, in a sense, I
was prepared to accept professional work, not just from an
acting point of view, but also from a technical point of.

Speaker 13 (03:49:24):
View, which is very important on the set when you're
working at top speed.

Speaker 1 (03:49:27):
But while I was doing that, I was making money
at the same time, and I saved it for two years,
and I saved enough money to be able to study
for six months without working. That was the most important period.

Speaker 6 (03:49:36):
So he's like the only person I've ever heard that
actually fucking followed through with that. Yeah, everyone has that plan.
Everyone always says, I'm going to earn money for a
year and then I'm going to stop working in audition,
and d d da da dah. He actually fucking did it.

Speaker 4 (03:49:50):
So most probably either keep working or stop working in
the don't audition. Most so home to get high, Most
go home. Most quit. Most even you know, I came
see that they quit. And I say this because I
knew so many people who did. I knew so many
people who said this exact same fucking thing. And I
have so many people in my mind right now that

(03:50:11):
when i'm even say it, all right, friends from college
who said I'm just gonna work for a year and
then I'm gonna then i'm gonna take the time off
and I'm gonna audition, And they were gone before they
even fucking saved money for a year, like they left
l A. All right, So so I don't even fucking
don't start. Don't fucking start because you did, because he
didn't start. Got to get baristas somewhere. And I love

(03:50:32):
my Starbucks baristas absolutely. Can you can see that glimmer
in their eye. Yep, that that that sort of humiliating
return to their hometown.

Speaker 6 (03:50:41):
And then and then and then you look at the
manager and you realize, oh, that was the barista. They
were a barista like five years ago, and now look
where they are.

Speaker 4 (03:50:51):
Nothing else. We need these people, Okay, listen, strong job,
I learn against it. I'm just saying there's a pipeline
for people that take that job. I need people to
make my pumpin spice. And that's okay, it's important that's
one of them. Yes, exactly in my life because it's
very difficult to work. It can be done, of course,
but to work and try to be really attentive to

(03:51:13):
your studying and still have responsibilities of paying your bills
and being a normal citizen while you're studying at the
same time. So I was lucky.

Speaker 1 (03:51:22):
I had six months to study without working at all,
by watching my budget. And you happened upon a very
good teacher, a very good teacher for me.

Speaker 13 (03:51:29):
A man or a woman.

Speaker 4 (03:51:30):
A woman.

Speaker 1 (03:51:31):
She was a very dynamic, a very strong person, very
good for me. What's your name, Estelle Harmon? And she
taught me discipline first, and what does discipline mean? Discipline
to me for our listeners, to conduct yourself in a
professional manner at all times. Whenever you're on a set,
whenever you're on anybody, you're never late for a shot.
Your temperament does not involve the time of other people

(03:51:52):
or the production company. It's like any other job. You're
paid to do a job. You're paid to be there
and to know your material. Come in you with your words,
learned in with some creative ideas. You can try them.
If they don't work, fine, but at least you're offering
more than you're being paid.

Speaker 12 (03:52:05):
Authority.

Speaker 1 (03:52:06):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (03:52:08):
I like that you're you don't preoccupy others time by
your presence. Your preciice doesn't require other people's time. They
give it to you if they choose to.

Speaker 6 (03:52:16):
I like that you come in with authority. Fucking Lucy,
all right, Jesus fucking Christ.

Speaker 4 (03:52:22):
Yeah, she is really hardcore format like she wants to
run down What do you mean by that, She's like
she suffers no fools that she's doing in the service
to a listener.

Speaker 6 (03:52:35):
Yes, exactly, she is such. I mean, listen, I always
I loved Lucy, no intendent, but I also always respected her.
But listening to these interviews that the few that I
have a whole different fucking monster, whole different monster. And
I know, say whatever you want about her, you know,

(03:52:59):
demons and all sorts of shit whatever. She is a
brilliant mind, and she is a badass, and she was
slitting throats for a good reason way before. Like, I mean,
you think about the power, the amount of power she
had as a woman in this business during the age

(03:53:19):
that she was doing it. I mean, she was a
she was a she was a force. She was a
fucking force. So it was DESI but you know, she's
just amazing. Wonder if about he taught Bill that he
has to shake everyone's hand in the locker room when
he first shows.

Speaker 1 (03:53:37):
Up to the town.

Speaker 6 (03:53:38):
That's part of the industrial work. I was actually I
was hoping, I was hoping she could be that she
would have been a little Jerry Briscoe and said that, Oh,
I knew you had something. I just knew that, you know,
you weren't ready for my thing. You know, ball is
to Bill Bixby what Jerry Briscoe was to I love it.

Speaker 4 (03:54:03):
I mean she kind of did say that.

Speaker 6 (03:54:04):
Actually, she kind of did say it, like by saying, like,
you know, I didn't even know what I was doing,
like you you fucking you know, you were way ahead
of the game, and I threw you away.

Speaker 4 (03:54:13):
Well, she had the whole like the whole thing of
like it was it was for the better. Well he
actually volunteered, he volunteer explanation that it was for the better.
And she and she kind of admitted that, you know
that that she fucked up. You know, it wasn't as
it wasn't as.

Speaker 6 (03:54:26):
Whereas Jerry would be like, oh that's exactly where she
wasn't saving face at all. She admitted, like, you know,
she made the mistake. That's the difference. So Bill's first
big break was he was one of the lead roles
in My Favorite Martian, that TV show from the early sixties,
opposite Ray Walston that ran for like three or four years,

(03:54:49):
canceled nineteen sixty six, and then three years later he
cast in the role of Tom Corbett in the Courtship
of Vetty's Father. And I'll tell you I've never seen
an episode of the court Thatt's Father. The only reason
I'm familiar with it at all is because it's mentioned
in Scrooged. Oh yeah, and and you know it's during
the Ghost of Christmas Past segment and he's he's saying,

(03:55:11):
there was this one time and I hit the home
I hit the the you know, I hit a home
run and I won the game, because that was the
Courtship of Eddie's Father, says the ghost. That's you know,
I always remember that, because I actually didn't. I wasn't sure.
I knew later on, but when I first watched the
film in like the early nineties, I didn't know if
that was a show or not. It sounded so fucking like,

(03:55:33):
what a stupid title. The Courtship of Eddie's father.

Speaker 4 (03:55:36):
Well, it's kind of like the scene from Miracle on
thirty fourth Street and home alone, one that's playing on
the kitchen television. Yes, it's the longest time to realize
that that one. Yep, yep, Miracle on thirty fourth Yep.

Speaker 6 (03:55:48):
So many, Yeah, there's so many like that, even me
too before I even when I was a kid watching
Gremlins and you get fucking George Bailey smiss movie House.

Speaker 4 (03:56:01):
I had no fucking idea what that was.

Speaker 6 (03:56:03):
I was like, who's this idiot fucking running down the
street like saying me Christmas to a building? Bill Murray
with a little holly in his hat. But oh, just
that's that's it. That's the season right there, Okay, and
soon I wish I'm finding a way for Scrooge. That's
the listen all my favorite Christmas movies.

Speaker 4 (03:56:22):
I'm I am.

Speaker 6 (03:56:22):
I'm always searching for a for a connection.

Speaker 4 (03:56:26):
That's pretty sure. Bill Murray was a wrestling fan growing up.
He can't be a fan though everyone's a fan. I know,
I know.

Speaker 6 (03:56:32):
He needs to have some kind of connection. But and
that actually the court of Vetti's father, that that got
uh uh, Bill Bicks his his first and only Emmy
nomination for Best Our Outstanding Actor in a Comedy. And

(03:56:53):
then while he was during the last season of the show,
he started directing and that became another passion of his
which is going to come into way way down the
line on this episode. But yeah, he started directing. He
loved doing that. And you know, then after Eddie, after
the Eddie's Father thing was canceled, he dabbled another project
before a you know one. Ken Johnson approached him about

(03:57:18):
The Hulk, and much like Johnson, He's like, I don't
want to be a fucking part of a comic book thing.

Speaker 4 (03:57:26):
The fuck is this shit?

Speaker 6 (03:57:28):
But Ken Johnson gave him his you know, lay mis
esque script, if you will, and and he read it
and he loved it, and so Bigs was like, get
me on board, and he agreed to take the part.
And that's you know, that's why he joins us here.
That's how Terry Blay got into the business.

Speaker 4 (03:57:46):
If you will.

Speaker 11 (03:57:49):
He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and Carneo
and JP Soro