Year 19, Episode 15

Original Release Date: Monday 18 August 2025      

Description:   This week, another “audio collage” of two different conversations recorded at different times, both exploring different facets of comedy. First Dean and Phil convene to compare notes on the new reboot of The Naked Gun – what it did right, what could have been done better and what good things its success (especially with young people) might portend! Another recent release, Riff Raff gets reviewed, and the importance of sketch and improv training for actors gets discussed. Then, your friends in podcasting take a deep dive into The Beatles’ movies directed by Richard Lester: A Hard Day’s Night and Help! A whole lot of deep concepts and legendary cinematic figures get explored as a result! In the final half hour of this epic installment, frequent contributor to the show, and comedy impresario, Marc Hershon and Phil discuss recent, disturbing news from the world of television, before discussing a Marc Maron comedy special, how authenticity might be having a moment, how young people seem to have good B.S. detectors, and several of Marc’s formative comedy influences.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, this is your friend in podcasting, Phil Lareness
and what you were about to hear On year nineteen,
Episode fifteen of your Chill Pack. Hollywood Hour is another
audio collage of which I have become quite fond and
which I hope you have enjoyed as well, where I
combine parts of different conversations recorded at different times and

(00:26):
occasionally at different locales. This week, Dean and I go
in depth about many comedy movies and comedy performers. Then
Mark Hershean and I discuss some recent news about television
before returning to the conversation of comedy and comedy influences,

(00:48):
and we even go deep into the topic of authenticity
and into young people's BS detectors. Got all that good
because it will be on the exam.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
And now you're chill Pack Hollywood Hour with Dean Haglind
and Phil Lareness.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Says, Hey, you know, the nineteen eighties sure seemed to

(02:18):
be alive and well at the movies. At least that's
what I thought while watching The Naked Gun.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Oh yes, yes, is it that? Did you enjoy it?
Let's start.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
I am surprised at how good this thing was. I
had heard nothing but great things about it. But I
was still surprised because you know, as you disavowed me
when I was being way too critical and judgmental towards
rom coms. Right, if you don't know the tropes, they

(02:55):
can work for you, right, And so each generation needs
to have their iteration. So I was willing to admit
that one of the reasons may be that not just
critics because the reviews are great, but but people, I
know audiences were really enjoying the Naked Gun movie. I
was willing to say, you know, maybe it's just a

(03:18):
thing that newer generations need their iteration, right. But I
so I really wasn't prepared for something that actually stood
proudly alongside those movies.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
That's true, that's true.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
I just thought that it needed a tuning fork at
the beginning.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
That's all, just to get your ear.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Oh, I have some other places where I don't know
if tuning fork is the right I mean, I know,
go on with what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
You have to develop.

Speaker 4 (03:51):
It's like when you do improv, right, you start normally
with a die game, so you get everybody in the
audience to know what the voice is to the actor.
How how everybody sounds when they yell out of the
suggestion what you know? And you get all of this
sort of set up in the first five minutes so
that the rest of your comedy show can just sail

(04:13):
into the sea. This one it didn't do that, and
so it took me a while for really to get up.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
It's like it takes them a while. Now, this is fascinating.
So if you cut out the end credits, and of
course you should stay for the end credits, there's funny music,
there's easter egg, there's as in keeping with the franchise,
funny things textually in the credits. But if you cut
that out, it's a seventy five minute movie, right. And

(04:40):
if you cut out what is really ostensibly a teaser
sequence at the beginning, which is most of the trailer,
the bank robbery sequence, how short is that? You an
you have a TV episode and you know this was
based on a TV series way back when, and a
TV series that was parodying the hour long police procedural

(05:02):
of the seventies and sixties. But you're I don't know
if you're specifically only you don't mean only Liam Neeson.
It's the whole project. Yeah, but Liam Neeson is fantastic
at playing it straight.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
However not really so in those opening sequences, right, It's
as if they knew they were making the trailer. Yeah,
so let's heighten it.

Speaker 4 (05:32):
Yeah, And we don't have time in a two minute
trailer to slowly set up what our speech patterns are,
what our gags are going to be, How are what
am I looking for?

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Am I just listening for jokes? Am I seeing site gags?
And what? You know? All of that has to be
sort of laid out.

Speaker 4 (05:50):
In the beginning in order for it to go and
gain momentum and have the laughter build.

Speaker 3 (05:57):
Because the theater I was in fairly full, but there
was just a couple of giggles where there should have
been rock solid laughs, and the laughs didn't really come
to the last i'll say twenty minutes.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Interesting, it took people a while.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
It took people a while to get the ear tuned
to that that style of comedy. That police Squad, the
Zuckers did it so well. I mean, you look at
Airplane again, if you watch it Haiti's Airplane, you'll see
the first five minutes it's like the pilot's walking in
and there's some site gags and stuff, but they are

(06:34):
tuning it to.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
The audience so that you get into how funny this is.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
I bet that the audience I saw it with last
night was laughing earlier than the audience you saw it with.
You saw this more than a week before I did,
So this movie has had a week of word of mouth, right,
which is a permission structure to go in and be

(07:02):
ready to laugh, and no wariness at the beginning, no
confusion at the beginning. People are primed right. And I
had experiences with this with my own film, Karl Rove,
I Love You. But even as a young person seeing Ghostbusters.
First time I saw Ghostbusters, my goodness, right, like head exploded.

(07:23):
This is the one what a landmark. But it was
a landmark not just as a comedy. It was a
landmark because this movie worked as like a sci fi
adventure and a ghost story like yes, And I watched
it several times that summer, and the thing was, I
got kind of annoyed by the end of the summer

(07:46):
because there was way too much laughter right.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
And you can hear the lines.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
You know, it's like people are now clapping for the
hits right at a concert. Can you stop clapping so
we can hear it? Yeah, yeah, clap after clapping, because oh,
it's a song I recognize. I want you to know
I recognize it. And I feel like sometimes that's some
of the laughs is, oh, I recognize a funny joke
is coming, and I want to participate. And so anyway,

(08:15):
that just happens sometimes with crowd pleasing comedies, right, So
it'll you know, that's an interesting thing. But I I
also think Zucker Abrams and Zucker. If you look to
their worst work early on, which was Top Secrets, even
though it also has their best work, it's their worst

(08:36):
work because structurally it doesn't have the through line that
provides a context that allows everything to hang together. Right.
But it's but I look at that because I go,
even in their worst work, they painstakingly constructed everything within it. Yes,
every set piece, every gag, everything was beautifully construct And

(09:01):
that's another thing that is missing. The pieces are all
there sometimes, right. But I'm thinking, for example, the body
camera interrogation scene where we see Frank Dreben's bodycam footage
as he devours all these chili dogs and keeps having

(09:23):
to use the bathroom and stuff, right, it's poorly set
up because indeed he's had a dressing down from his captain,
who tells him you better start turning on your body
cameras when you're out in the field, and he like winks, going,
oh yeah, sure, we'll use the body cams, and so

(09:44):
you're set up to believe, okay, these people never use
their body cams, right, But it turns out then when
it's time for interrogation, he's bringing his body camera footage
to show that the witness being interrogated is a liar.
Well wait, so he has been using it? Yeah, right,
So why was he dressed down? Why did we in
a seventy five minute movie? Why did we waste time? Like,

(10:09):
it's weird that that was padded in there, And so
then he uses this body camera footage and it it
actually the sequence starts to get funny, funny, funny, and
then they miss entirely the payoff to it, which is
eventually they fast forward enough. He keeps saying, fast forward,

(10:29):
fast forward, fast forward. He gets more embarrassing, more awkward
for everyone involved, more disgusting, and then finally they get
through to the bank footage and boom, there's the thing
that proves the witness is lying, right. The payoff is
or ought to have been, that the interrogated witness grows
so uncomfortable by having to watch all this embarrassing and

(10:53):
awkward body camera footage and gets so uncomfortable on Drebben's
behalf that he finds he just say, is fine, I
was there cut it off. Yeah, Like the body camera
footage was the third degree. It was torture, and then
Dreben comes out of it and goes works every time.

(11:15):
Like what you're parodying then is the old interrogation scenes
of the the harsh light.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Yeah yeah, the bad pot yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yeah, and there's your payoff instead, there's no comedic payoff
at all. There's just a long gag and then a
plot point that gets delivered at the end of it.

Speaker 4 (11:37):
I agree, and that those kind of examples like I
would like to, yeah, armchair direct this one really closely,
and even like recut it is there, Like remember the
Phantom added the Star Wars where they cut out jar
Jar Binks and made it a better movie. I think
there's a waiter recut this thing that could make it funnier,

(12:00):
But like you said, it'd probably shortened it to sixty
two minutes and then I'd have an extended credit sequence
or something.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah. Yeah, Well, anyway, so we're talking about what doesn't
work in it. And again, though I was surprised at
how good it is. Right although he produced you mentioned
the director, although he produced the delightful Andy Samberg film
Palm Springs, Oh yeah, I met with great critical acclaim

(12:29):
back during I think kind of the pandemic. As a director,
Akiva Schaeffer had really not done anything to hint that
he would be, at least to me, that he would
be capable of big screen satire that could stand proudly
with the originals of the genre, not only the original
Police Squads, but Wayne's World and Austin Powers as well,

(12:54):
both of which get overt references in this film. That
mistaken sex scene, right, that the guy spying on them
thinks he's seeing when they're when they're cleaning the kitchen.
I mean that is an overt visual reference to Austin Powers.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, the old shadow gag.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, and uh, and it works, And it works because
the choices they make work. So I'm not I'm I'm
not damning it with faint praise. But the point is
if you're going to reference these movies that do it well,
you better do it well. And and often they do.
And and so I doff my cap. And the film

(13:38):
is is impressive in just the sheer amount of performance
gags of site, gags of wordplay, of musical parodies, and
absurdist moments and anachronisms that it generates, all of which
can be delightful sources of comedy. And and it is

(13:59):
impressed in its productivity. It's also pretty down impressive in
the rate of how many gags it lands. You know,
it's pretty damn good at landing an impressive rate of
those gags.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
Right, But again, the tuning fork, if it's out of
tune at the beginning, all of your notes still can
be the exact same thing, but it will it will
take a while.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
For those Yeah, I mean they do land, but yes,
you are.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
I just think the audience that I boostitting with, I'm
sure they would have laughed a lot lot more had they,
because some of these people seem never to have heard
police Squad or know what these things are parroting in
the first place. So they're all You're a little confused,
and you're like what, And even Patty said that the
teaser is so shocking that if you hadn't seen any trailer,

(14:54):
if you didn't know what this thing was, you'd just
be like, what the heck?

Speaker 3 (15:00):
The little girl his heads, Liam need what like?

Speaker 5 (15:03):
You know?

Speaker 1 (15:04):
So think about if they had led with the again
the montage of the romance relationship developing, which evokes memories
of the one from the First Police Squad starring Priscilla
Presley who has a blink and you'll miss a cameo
in this film, but it evokes memories of that right

(15:26):
down to in this film it uses an iconic love
song from the eighties. In the eighties, they used an
iconic love song from the sixties, and it's delightful what
they do.

Speaker 5 (15:38):
But if you what if.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
You'd open the film with that montage right, it's almost
exactly the same as opening it with this bank robbery,
because it's absurd and sometimes almost surreal, and it totally
sets again tonally the wrong. But in the middle of

(16:01):
the film it works a re edit, like you're saying,
you don't have to lead with the bank robbery, you
lead with them in trouble because of what went on
in the bank robbery, and as the stuff goes on.
He could be talking about like his own regret, and
he could be thinking about part of what went on

(16:22):
in the bank robbery, or he could be telling people,
is what we learned in the bank robbery, and there
can be pieces of it. The only thing that you
miss is the bad guy delivering the plot device. And
that was my first big laugh, But it took me

(16:43):
a minute because of what you're describing this subtle. Oh,
just reading what's on this device is a really funny,
funny moment, But I wasn't engaged in that way because
it was all coming at me in such a big
broad way. But maybe you could start with that. Just

(17:04):
start with you see there's a robbery going on. You
see the person coming out and delivering what the robbery
was for to your villain. Because there's nothing overtly comic
going on there. You could begin with that and then
cut to Dreben getting called before the mat for his
behavior in how he responded to this, and then you

(17:27):
bring it back in pieces, and each piece you bring
back is more and more ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (17:34):
Right, And you could then, yeah, travel to the surreal
if you ground it first in some reality that's you.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Used to say that. You said this about the action
sequences in I evoke this a lot. But in Quantum
of Solace, the follow up to Casino Royale, when I
talked about how did they not even get the action
scenes right? And you said, all the pieces are there
if you go and look, they have all the pieces
to make it work. It got unmade, you know, those

(18:03):
action scenes. And so they had all the pieces here,
and I would be really curious how many more pieces
they have that then you could play with if you
re edited. It actually would be like a great assignment
if you want to teach comedy in film school, which
I think they ought to be doing. So whoever they is,
maybe the surviving members of Zucker, Abrams and Zucker. Quite frankly, anyway,

(18:29):
it was very funny at times. I mean, I do
off my cap at how damn funny it was. You know,
rarely am I in a movie laughing as hard as
I was at times. Liam Neeson was brilliant casting, and
so was in what continues to be the career revival.
We didn't know we needed, but really apparently did. Pamela Anderson.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
I know, you know, I worked with her on VIP.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
You guys were buddies. You guys shared the hair care secrets.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
I don't know if that's true, but yeah, well we
were both from Vancouver. I knew her first boyfriend was
the bartender at the comedy club I started at.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
So yeah, we go way back.

Speaker 4 (19:09):
And but she, I guess by doing these pantomimes in
London or whatever and the theater work that she's done
over there, she has become such a better actress, like,
way more grounded, way more what you want in what
you learn in acting school. So I think she's done
that and that's made the difference.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
She's a real person, and she's almost almost too much
of a real person in the movie. Actually, at times,
given how ridiculous the movie is, you know, it's like
she is. Yeah, she's real, she's grounded. She does not
need a tuning fork in that movie.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
No, no, no, because by the time she comes in,
you're actually pleased that somebody is a real person.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah. Nail, nailing it, nailing it. Yeah. Also, I want
to mention Dave Bautista has the cameo of the.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Year to me in Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
That film. Anyway, I do think it's critical acclaim in
its box office success, and most importantly it's success with
young people. Lets me know that what we appreciate about
the purveyors of a big screen comedy in the eighties

(20:32):
and nineties and what they were able to accomplish, and
that style of big screen comedy that they perfected, that
all that that we appreciated still plays right in pacing,
in setup, in tone, and it works for all ages.
And I find that heartening, So I say, bring on more,

(20:55):
especially if maybe it could be something, It could be
original ip maybe right, that'd be something.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
But also, you know, you study film comedy and you
realize that there's like you watch a silent film, it
is there. There are tried and true structure, rhythm, things
that go on that that this thing had so so
somebody knew sort of what they were doing.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
It's just cool, though, because we talk a lot about
when comedy doesn't translate across the ages and when it does,
and specifically with cinematic comedy. I do take this as
a real sign that, yeah, look, people are still watching,
watching and evoking Austin Powers memories and naked gun memories
and stuff. But they aren't just they aren't just a

(21:48):
nostalgia plays right, that this stuff still holds together and
and they really did in some ways perfect a certain
on a big screen comedy and it still works.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:03):
Yeah, And it's hard, you know, comedy's hard. And you
want somebody who's had stage experience, either been in a
sketch comedy troupe or done improv or something like that,
so that you can feel it when it goes across
the screen into the audience. Right, you got to translate
that airspace twice, once from after the camera and then camera.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Okay, I'm going to jump ahead because you're already answering
the question that I had for you about a movie
that I saw called riff Raff. Small Engine Repair was
the breakthrough play by playwright John Polano, which was produced
locally here in La at Rogue Machine Theater in twenty eleven.
That was where it were mirrored, Okay, and so he

(22:51):
became a big deal as a playwright, but was known
here in the theatrical community. And this was at a
time when Lily was doing plays at Rogue Machine and stuff.
So you know, we were really aware of this when
it was when it was breaking, right, And so while
watching this February's cinematic release riff Raff, I caught it

(23:11):
finally on I Think Hulu. I sat up in attention
at seeing John Polano's name as the screenwriter. How had
I not known that this great local playwright, you know
not I mean, he grew up on the East Coast,
but you know, made his bones here in local theater.
How had I not known that he wrote this? Because

(23:32):
I was aware of the film when it came out,
and sure enough, the best scenes in the film really
feel like they could have come from the stage. Unfortunately,
these scenes are few and far between, and they usually
involve Bill Murray or Jennifer Coolidge or both. But if
I were to tell you that Ed Harris plays a

(23:54):
former mob cleaner who's a strange son shows up on
on the run from his dad's old partner played by
Bill Murray, who's seeking to avenge his own son's death,
you might say, Hey, this sounds like something, that sounds something.
And if I added that Bill Murray's depressive, neurotic lethal

(24:17):
sidekick is both played and beautifully underplayed by Pete Davidson,
and that Ed Harris's alcoholic ex wife is played by
Jennifer Coolidge, you might even want to track this thing down.
Maybe I would do don't bother. I did so that

(24:40):
you don't have to now. Bill Murray makes several scenes interesting,
Pete Davidson really reveals himself to be a very strong actor,
and of course Jennifer Coolidge gives depth to everything she does,
even if, like here, the material doesn't warrant it. Okay,

(25:01):
but twenty minutes of delights courtesy of those actors do
not offset an hour and twenty of nothing very interesting
and certainly nothing unexpected happening.

Speaker 5 (25:13):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
The movie had almost the exact same lukewarm response from
critics as it did from audiences, and everyone's attitude seems
to have been huh, really would have liked this to
have been good? Is it the script? Is it the
lackluster direction? I don't know, but whatever the reasons, and

(25:35):
this is why I wanted to talk to you about it.
The performers that come off well in a movie that
is otherwise lackluster are those trained in improv and sketch comedy, right.
And it's not because they're going for the laughs though

(25:55):
they're finding them right, but they are playing it super real.
They're giving great acting performances and finding it funny and
enlivening it. And even making it touching wow. But it's
always the performers with stage training, and specifically comedic stage

(26:20):
training allah comedy and sketch. The other frequently gifted, often
seasoned actors all seem like they are in a rehearsal
for a workshop production of a new plays first draft.

Speaker 4 (26:39):
Oh dear, well, that's problematic right there. But that's the thing.
Once you have done live comedy and you hear it
and you know, and you get to how do what
we called it riding a wave?

Speaker 3 (26:53):
Right that first laughter?

Speaker 4 (26:54):
You pause long enough so that the laughter you're not
being drowned out as you're talking, or you can be
faster than or you know, you have these ways of
engaging your timing based on what the audience reaction is.
And if you do the same thing over and over
many times on stage, you'll get an understanding of we

(27:16):
even if there's nobody else around, how to deliver How
long do you hold until you say the next line?

Speaker 3 (27:24):
How long you know? What are these spaces that you're
putting in? How are you phrasing it?

Speaker 4 (27:29):
These are all things you learn on stage and you
bring to the set when you start filming. But if
there's the ones that just you know, grew up on
camera without an audience. Then they're they're just like depending
on the editor. They're depending on the director to save them.

Speaker 1 (27:47):
So let's stick with comedy for a minute, because, oh
my goodness, what about a director and editor and camera
person who have experience working with, if not on stage themselves,
with stage performers in translating that to camera. I'm thinking

(28:14):
specifically of Richard Lester. I took the time and thoroughly
enjoyed a rewatch of Richard Lester's Beatles movies because I
was reading a book about his work with the Beatles movies,
and it was fascinating how much he had taken from
his experiences goon Show and doing short films with Peter

(28:39):
Sellers and others of that ilk and bringing all that
to bear in staging for the big screen. These comedic
setups and movies that constantly you'll see get described as

(28:59):
in revised, But it's a fascinating kind of improvisation because
it's an improvisation that's coming visually. The improvisation is from
the director and then in the editing room, right and
they're getting to the locale, they have the scene, they
know what the scene is, but it's not really written.

(29:22):
I mean it is written. But he would always say,
I get to the location and we see and then
I start to see what the gags are. I start
to see what the jokes are. I start to see, now,
here's how we tell the story of this scene and
get us So it was a fascinating process to read about,
especially with four leads who are all utterly inexperienced as actors.

(29:46):
You know, I e The Beatles, so I rewatched these
and you know, I'd always thought about Hard Day's Night
from nineteen sixty four in terms of it being one
of my top ten favorite musicals of all time, but
viewing it purely as comedy, I might just now set

(30:08):
it alongside the master works of the Marx Brothers or
Buster Keaton or Jacques Tati.

Speaker 4 (30:15):
Right, because there is surreal elements in Hearts Day of Night.
But it's also their banter between each other is almost
like their songs, well timed, short, they got it, and
you know, even if they're improvised or they're scripted, they
are a cohesive, single unit like the Marx Brothers.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
He would Richard Lester would often come up with the
line or have writers writing the lines and then roll
camera and would say Ringo say this, and feed the line,
and then Ringo would just say the line. And they
would do that for a lot of scenes and put
scenes together that way. But what you're saying, like the

(30:58):
way that they existed musically, that's what he creates comedically
and dramatically in this film, and so it's really I
brought it. We brought up Hard Day's Night yesterday at
a school party to someone who's a really gifted comic
performer and writer and said, never seen it because not

(31:21):
a Beatles fan. And I said, you're not a Beatles
fan because you haven't seen it. It's not the other
way around. And I think it's easy to not to
be flippant. I think it's easy to think Hard Day's
Night captured the phenomenon of the Beatles, and I think
it's all too easy to ignore Hard Day's Night was
part and parcel of creating the phenomenon that was the Beatles.

(31:46):
It all was happening right then, and this cemented a
great deal of the iconography and the mythology and the
sense of fun of the Bes. But comedically, again, getting
back to that, I love realizing that it was the

(32:07):
number two film at the box office here in the
US the year Doctor Strangelove was number one.

Speaker 3 (32:14):
Wow. Wow, think of that.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
It all makes sense, especially given Peter Seller's connection to
both Richard Lester and you know his and the Goon Shows.
Though influence on the Beatles, especially John, his influence on
John was was probably as important as the musical influences
Elvis and Buddy Hawley and Motown had on him.

Speaker 4 (32:42):
Right.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
You know, Look, I'd seen the film many many times
through the years, but this viewing of the Criterion four
K Ultra high definition was as enjoyable, as delightful as
any viewing I'd ever had before. It's become to me
really funny again and brought me this time to irrepressible

(33:08):
delight at times. Maybe there is an alternate universe in
the vast multiverse where George Harrison went on to play
the kind of laconic assassin roles that a James Coburn

(33:28):
might have played in Hours, Right, I would have loved
to have seen that Harrison. Harrison was a screen presence.

Speaker 4 (33:36):
Yeah, I know, dynamic. You look at him when you
see the band and.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
In a hard day's night, the quiet one as he
was dubbed, was given the most to say and the
most attitude with which to say it. I also love
there's a scene where John interacts with a woman who
thinks she recognizes him. It's fantastastic. It's really It's an
all time classic irreverent comedy that again captures and helps

(34:08):
create the world that is about to burst into existence.

Speaker 4 (34:12):
Right And I love most in Hard Days Night is
the camera work, believe it or not, because the tendency
would be particularly then as you had handheld cameras, would
be for the cameraman to throw the camera around, to
be as crazy and high energy as as the form
guys were as opposed to locking off that shot and
letting their energy just burst inside the frame and not

(34:35):
making that frame jump all around like I to have.
You know, There's been so many improv show pilots that
I had done where the cameraman is being almost hyperactive
and you're like, lock down the shot, you idiot.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
So Richard Lester, you know, wanted this documentary approach to it,
to capturing a fictional depiction of what a day in
the life of the Beatles is. Like he's documenting a fiction,
but a fiction that's believable, and it's believable from that
point forward because of how good a job he did

(35:14):
documenting it, and so he's formed, he's creating the fiction
you're going to believe that will make the movie believe believable.
But he always said, from this documentary approach that he
took to comedy, that you don't use the camera differently
than a human being can look at things. So he's

(35:36):
always credited for how he moved the camera in innovative ways.
He said, I've never moved the camera, And they would say,
but it tilts up and down, it pans, he goes,
it does what your head and your eyes can do.
It does nothing more than that, right, And so that
gives you that real sense of your there and what
would you do if you were at a party where

(35:57):
the Beatles were at You would try to get your
eyes on everything you could and try to get a
better vantage point and try to hear as well as
you could. But you couldn't dolly forward, you couldn't crane up,
you couldn't do things like that if you were at
that party. So it really puts you in the midst
of that exciting and sometimes frustrating and sometimes claustrophobic and

(36:20):
sometimes boring world, and it does so in a very
interesting human way. As a musical, the songs have never
sounded better than in this restoration. My god, what they're
able to do with sound in restoring these movies is
just incredible. I don't think any film, maybe but certainly

(36:42):
any comedy ever had a better opening. You were talking
about the tuning fork of Make a Gun. Is there
a better tuning fork than that first chord of the
title song of A Hard Day's Night being hit right,
and then the band run straight towards the cameras deliriously

(37:14):
infectious from the jump. This movie remains because, like you said,
they capture the tone from from the get go.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
Right from note one, basically.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
Yeah from note one. So I watched also The Beatles' Help,
because I was interested in realizing that although it was
a huge hit, it was kind of dismissed by critics
at the time and some fans alike and the Beatles themselves.
But Lester's approach was fantastic. He said, Okay, we've made

(37:51):
a documentary about what their fictional real life is like.
A year later, we have a bigger budget, so now
we have to do it in color, which decreases at
that point in time the sense of it being a documentary.
But he said, we're going to keep the same approach.

(38:11):
But what do we document now? Oh, let's document a
fantasy about what the Beatles' life is like.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
Right, so.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
We go from documenting a fiction to a fantasy. Fascinating transition.
A fan, it's hard to see this film because the
rights are really confused. But a fan uploaded the Blu
ray version to YouTube and it looks and in the
headphones sounded incredible. It's an irrepressibly charming film. Hell again,

(38:50):
almost as successful with the box office as the previous year.
Is A Hard Day's Night. I think it has aged
very well. It has met with greater and greater claim
critic as the years have gone on, as it provides
both a delightful parody of the spy craze at the time,
that's right, but also it's rather groundbreaking absurdist meets surrealist

(39:18):
comedy moments influence what was still to come. There's no
TV's Batman or the Monkeys, or even Fellini's satiricn oh
more on this. In a moment without help, I said
the Beatles were lukewarm about it. They felt, as John described,

(39:44):
that they were extras in their own movie. A decade later,
Lennon would offer a maya culpa and expresses appreciation for
the film as a comedic work of directorial genius ah
and admitted that they would have felt better about it
at the time had director Dick Lester described to them

(40:08):
what the film was they were making. Of course, as
Lennon himself acknowledged, they by breakfast each day, they were
so stoned they wouldn't have been able to listen to
any such description anyway. But the color, the pacing, the

(40:30):
title cards, the visual gags all brought me such joy.
The editing a bit of a masterclass, and several of
those supporting performers are people I really like, like future
Prisoner stalwarts Leo McKern and Patrick Cargill. They're rather great.

(40:51):
A caveat is the film rather racially insensitive at times? Yes? Okay,
though it should be pointed out that the the Indian
thuggy colt that are the villains played by Anglo actors
was deemed a suitable source of villainy by George Lucas
and Steven Spielberg. For Indiana Jones on the Temple of

(41:13):
Doom some twenty years later. So I'm cutting Lester some
mid sixties slack, quite frankly, But my god, his approach
to following up such a smash financial and artistic success
of Hard Day's Night and doing so on a bigger budget.
This is tough, and the way he did it is fascinating,

(41:37):
maintaining this documentary approach, you know, going from a mostly
closed door, locked in expression of the claustrophobia the Beatles
experienced at the center of a growing phenomenon, to the

(41:57):
Beatles now making their way through a globe, a globe
trotting fantasy. What what a what an amazing pivot to
do in such a short period of time. Now complaints
have been made by non Beatles fans that all four
of the lads kind of blend together. They had been

(42:20):
compared at the time to the Marx Brothers to like
being a new Marx Brothers, a comparison that pissed Groucho
off no end, yeah, because he said the brothers had
all been individuals and individually interesting, who then would come

(42:42):
together to do these set pieces? And he said that
wasn't true of the Beatles that they're only interesting as
a group, and I would maybe push back against that,
certainly in Hard Days Night by the time of Help, Yes,
but the point is they were a group, and they

(43:03):
were a group at a time when groups did not
become stars, and that's what's being documented, and I think
we can forget how groundbreaking and important that was. They
were the first group that was a star on the
level of a Sinatra and Elvis, right, you.

Speaker 3 (43:24):
Know, or yes, who's before that been Crosby.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
And comedically therefore, like, yeah, we know of the Goon
Show and everything, but let's face it, Peter Sellers is
an individual star who was a part of it. But
the Beatles, comedically, they maintained that we're a group. And
it paves the way therefore for kind of the players

(43:52):
of Monty Python to almost remain anonymous as individuals.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
Right, yeah, they're only known as Monty Python.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
George again acquits himself quite well with a certain type
of almost mean sarcasm and comedy. Right. Help to me
is the one that shows that John Lennon was charismatic
enough to be a movie star if he had gone
in that direction, if he had wanted to. I think
and he did do another film. He did one other film,

(44:23):
and it was for Dick Lester How I Won the War.
I've never seen that, so I've never seen that.

Speaker 4 (44:28):
It's that surreal, and that one has some very angry
anti war sentiments. So the mockery of the war itself
is it gets into problematic areas for sure. But I actually, oh, yeah,

(44:49):
John Lennon was a soldier in that thing, that's right.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Yeah, So I will give it a watch sometimes because
I do want to see what Lester goes onto there
and see Lennon's work. But I I really wish by
the end of it that there was another Beatles film
I could enjoy, right, you know, The Beatles had been
contracted by United Artists to do three films. It's largely

(45:13):
believed that because Yellow Submarine was voiced by actors imitating them,
that it did not count towards fulfilling the deal, and
that it was ultimately the Let It Be documentary that
did that. But in reality, because the Beatles make a
cameo near the end of Yellow Submarine, the deal had
been fulfilled. But I wanted a genuine third Beatles film

(45:37):
with them as actors and with them getting bigger parts
individually than they had thus far received. Right, and if
Felini had his way, I would have gotten.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
That film, damn it. Felini wanted to do a Beatles film.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
He devised Satirricon as of the vehicle in which they
would star.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Shut Up.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Charles Wood, who wrote Help, is credited as a screenwriter
on Satiricon, having written the dialogue for the English language
version of it. Remember, after all that Fellini directed the
re recordings of his films in all the major European languages. Unfortunately,

(46:23):
by early nineteen sixty nine, when Satirrikon was going before
the cameras, the Beatles were drifting apart and their breakup
was imminent, right, though not official till a year later,
as documented quite well in that Peter Jackson, that enormous
get back piece that he did. Ironically, when asked years

(46:44):
later what touring as the Beatles was like, John Lennon
said that it was exactly like Felini satirra Con.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Wow. That's amazing. Wow, that is tragic. I would have
loved to see that.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
But yeah, it's that absurdism, meat surrealism that really captured Fellini.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Yeah, I can see it.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
I need somebody, not just anybody, you know, I need
someone mark Hershawn. Welcome back to your chill pack Hollywood Hour.

Speaker 5 (47:26):
Thank you, Phil. I always enjoy being on my chill
pack Hollywood Hour.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
It's so much better than anyone else's chillpack. Holly whatever. Hey,
we always talk about television. We do the TV and
I want to do so again this month. But instead
of recommendations or what we've been watching. Uh, there were
a few stories that I categorize as television notables behaving badly,

(47:57):
and so I wanted to get your your feedback on
some of these stories that got maybe not the headlines
they deserve, but certainly got headlines. The first was that
the Writer's Guild of America. Now, are you a member
of the Writers?

Speaker 5 (48:13):
I am, Well, yes, I'm one of those sort of
emeritus retired members where you know, they still collect money
from me. It's a nominal fee just to keep my
name in the ranks, and if I ever sell anything again,
they will reactivate me. Oh wow, I'm like a super soldier.

(48:35):
Yea hibernating that's good.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
First, they'll embed you somewhere where people wouldn't expect a writer.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
Yep, and then there I'll pop up and then.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
They'll activate you. Well, you're the perfect person to actually
talk about this, then, because, as I understand it, the
HBO series, produced by and starring in multiple roles Robert
Downey Jr. Sort of dealt with that subject. Or the sympathizer,
uh dealt with Am I wrong sleeper agents here?

Speaker 5 (49:07):
Yeah? America? From what I remember, I only saw the
first few episodes of it, or the first couple of
episodes of it.

Speaker 1 (49:13):
Yeah, And I don't know what I was more shocked
to learn that the Writers Guild had completely tossed out
of the union both the writers who had penned every
episode of that series.

Speaker 5 (49:28):
Yes, Or.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Was I more surprised that one of those writers was
Park chan Wook, the director who did Old Boy.

Speaker 5 (49:36):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
Yeah, I somehow had missed that fact altogether. But I
wanted to bring this up because what a what a
messy thing? I mean, Park chan Wook an internationally acclaimed
filmmaker Don mckeller, his writing partner, a Canadian actor of
a member of the Toronto New Wave as it was known,
who wrote screenplays to to notable films is thirty two

(50:01):
short films about Glenn Gould, The Red violin blindness, so
established international filmmakers, and they get kicked out of the
guild entirely for supposedly breaking strike rules and working on

(50:24):
the show, working on writing the show during the strike.

Speaker 5 (50:28):
Yes, yes, now I think, and I really didn't pay
that much attention to the finer points of the story.
I think one of them was more suspended than kicked out.
It seemed like they were kicked out for like a
number of years or months or something.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Maybe what I read was that it's it's just like
they can appeal at some point, but they're not going
to file an appeal, and it sure made it seem
like it was sort of a death penalty thing. What
I have heard since then is that the committee that

(51:09):
here is these cases and then makes a recommendation to
the governing board like a you know, a judicial subcommittee
in the Senate, who then okay, this is our recommendation.
Now it goes to the floor. They recommended fines and punishment,
but certainly not expulsion, and made it seem like there

(51:35):
was confusion and not intentional. This was the finding of
the Writer's Guilt Committee that it was based on confusion
and not an intent to violate rules. And the governing
board shows to ignore that sentencing advice and to issue

(51:55):
its own.

Speaker 5 (51:56):
And I heard that they did that because the NUNAG
the ootiations are starting up in twenty seven, and so
they wanted to make an example of these two writers.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Wow, huh yeah, and make an example of them for
the companies, I think, or for their own members to go.

Speaker 5 (52:21):
Look, this is what will happen if you continue to
write during the strike.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Now, this is what Park Chan Wook said, This is
what his people say, so you know, obviously he has
a vested interest in this. He said that all the
episodes were not only written before the strike, they were
all shot before the strike, and that what was going
on was the editing, and that the Writer's Guild determined

(52:53):
that taking the notes from the studio and incorporating those
into the constituted writing.

Speaker 5 (53:03):
Hmmm, that seems a bit I don't know.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
We can't know if that's exactly how it played out.

Speaker 5 (53:12):
But even that seems like a gray area to me.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Yeah, yeah, And I mean I don't Again, I'm not
a big wig like you are at the guild. You're
emeritis status, yes, but I feel like, look, after the
Civil War, Lincoln wanted everybody to live together, you know,

(53:37):
like maybe you you you rally the troops best through
I don't know, what, is it a velvet glove rather
than a.

Speaker 5 (53:47):
Yeah, I'm I'll be curious to see what kind of
repercussions might come from it. I mean, those writers are
of such a stature that I don't know that being
in the guild is even that important to their careers.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
That's there's so many ways of looking at that. Were
they targeted because they were largely international filmmakers, so therefore
they were safe targets because they aren't a part of
any kind of local community, right or also and or that, Look,

(54:27):
this isn't going to affect their livelihood very much. So
it's largely what would you call it, almost ceremonial in nature.
Symbolic is symbolic, Yeah, it's symbolic. We're going to take
these name, you know, fairly big name writers and they're
gonna suffer these penalties.

Speaker 5 (54:46):
So beware you do not do the same.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Now, I know you were never a Project Runway fan.
Were you no familiar with the show?

Speaker 5 (55:01):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean I know of it, so.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
I was a big fan, and I was a big
fan of Tim Gunn, And one of the reasons I
was a big fan was the mentoring that one would
see done. It wasn't my creative field of endeavor fashion design,
but I enjoyed the creative conversations, especially those between the
aspiring designers and their mentor Tim Gunn, because it's always

(55:29):
struck me that mentorship matters so much and it's so
rarely seen in our media. Yeah, and it's back Project Runway,
I guess on Freeform and Hulu and Disney, and Tim

(55:51):
Gun's not a part of it. Heidi Klum has returned
as the host, and Heidi and Tim always said that
they were a package deal. So when they left, they
left together and went off and did their own show,
making the cut. Then Project Runway decided, well, we need
to bring Heidi back, and so she called Tim. Isn't
it great news that we're coming back to Project one Way?

(56:14):
And he said what now? And she said, oh, I'm sorry,
I guess I've revealed the surprise to you. They're going
to be calling your people any day and negotiating this,
only they never did. His people had to call them
and they said, yeah, we really don't want them, but
we'd be happy for him to come on and wave
as a cameo in one episode, and so I'm disappointed

(56:34):
in Heidi Klume not fighting for her long time TV
partner Tim Gunn, And I'm appalled by the production companies
who would treat him that way and not understand how
important he was to the success of it. And I'm
sort of disgusted by people who would even watch the

(56:55):
new season. I don't know anybody that is, but I
just I was wondering, you know, off, I guess the
top of the head obviously, because I didn't prep you
this idea of getting to see mentorship even in a
fictional setting. Yeah, it was what was so god like appealing.

(57:17):
I think about Star Trek the Next Generation was that
Picard and Riker had kind of this mentorship quality going on,
and then people mentoring data in his emotions and stuff.
But can you think of any contemporary kind of shows
where mentorship gets modeled hmm, let me think, because I

(57:39):
wouldn't say The Boys really does it.

Speaker 5 (57:42):
I would say Pitt the Pit.

Speaker 1 (57:46):
Oh.

Speaker 5 (57:48):
I definitely think you've got the senior doctors that are
teaching these young, you know, first year residents about their
jobs and how to do it and how to handle
people and things like that. So I think that it
exists on that show.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
And that was a previous recommendation of yours. Coincidence the
pit Okay, yeah, it's on my list. So we do
celebrity deaths almost every week. And this week I'm saving
room in the chill Pack morgue to remember the Corporation

(58:23):
for Public Broadcasting, which is no more. And it reminded
me that the late great Tom Larr contributed some wonderful
songs to Electric Company.

Speaker 5 (58:40):
Yes, yes, indeed, but.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
I mean, God forbid that we have media that isn't
corporate controlled. Yeah, it's so strange that, like we're getting
rid of it because it's not what it's not fair,
it's not balanced. What is the reason that we can't
have non core controlled media?

Speaker 5 (59:01):
Sesame Street is too woke? Perhaps it's just strange.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
I mean, we live in an age of speaking power
to truth and not truth to power, and so there
are nice things that we are not allowed to have,
and public broadcasting is one of those things. And I've
been thinking a lot about Tom Larr, as you know,
and I listened to several interviews that he did around

(59:30):
two thousand when a collected box set of all his
songs came out called The Remains of Tom LERR. And
he was asked more or less like, why did you
slow down and kind of didn't drop away again with
the exception of some of these really great songs for
Electric Company and then in the sixties for that was

(59:51):
the week that was. But why? And what he more
or less expressed was that when he was performing and writing,
comedy was about right versus wrong. That what they were

(01:00:13):
making jokes about were, hey, are Lynching's good? But by
the time he's saying, the seventies and the eighties rolled around,
we're so into the weeds of policy that comedy had

(01:00:33):
to be about merely hypocrisy, which would be a big
target of like a Johnny Carson for example, or it's
domestic comedy, the kind of which the Tom lera was
not interested. Right, his satire was about right versus wrong,
And I wonder, are we not back to that point

(01:00:57):
now where we needed or that's where comedy is. I
watched that new Mark Marin special on HBO, and it
struck me that we spent decades allowing ourselves to go
so into the weeds on things and disagree and argue

(01:01:19):
about policy in such a heated rhetorical way that we
pull up our heads all these decades later, and you know,
things like Nazis and racism and stuff like that is
fair game again.

Speaker 5 (01:01:34):
Yeah, and it's and it's back. It's back, yeah, because
the comedy harvesters weren't out there keeping keeping the grass cut.
You know, I think I think comedy does shine a
bright light when it's used properly and not even intentionally.
I mean, you know a lot of comics aren't doing
what they do intentionally when they're making their social comments

(01:01:56):
and whatnot. They're trying to just make the audience laugh.
Some of them are probably doing it on purpose. I mean,
I think about like Rick Overton, for instance, has always
been kind of a flag bearer for what he perceives
is what's right against what's wrong. But he's in very
much a minority, or has been for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Well, Jay Leno write his comments about how I don't
know if he was specifically talking about Colbert, but saying,
you know, show hosts that in their monologues get political,
why would you want to alienate half your audience? And

(01:02:37):
isn't it better to just play it? Down the middle
where everybody can enjoy themselves. I don't know. First of all,
my fault was I don't know where that middle is.
I don't know what that is where you're not annoying
people and not losing people. Right, If you don't try

(01:02:57):
to speak to what's going on, you are going to
be rejected by a huge swath of people. Yeah, And
if you do try to speak to what's going on,
you're going to be rejected by a huge swath of people.
So I feel like he's giving this advice through a
time machine from a monologue that he's giving in nineteen

(01:03:18):
ninety two.

Speaker 5 (01:03:19):
Quite frankly, it's also very hypocritical because you know, remember
the edgy Jay Leno before he got the hosting gig,
where nobody was sharper.

Speaker 1 (01:03:29):
And nobody did more Monica Lewinsky jokes than him, right,
Nobody made her, never mind Clinton, specifically her a laughingstock
than him. Nobody turned judge Edo of the OJ trial.

(01:03:55):
I mean he was the the judge was the target
of the jokes in the OJ trial, right, Right, So
the Clinton sex scandal a double homicide. Our comedic targets
are a young woman and a person.

Speaker 5 (01:04:16):
Of color right right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
Why don't we do safe comedy like that anymore? Why
do we have to try to alienate people? I have
always kind of admired Mark Maron without necessarily enjoying him,
and I find that the long arc of comedy has

(01:04:42):
really been in his direction.

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
It's the idea of like, are you the messenger for
the moment? We'll say what your message is and we'll
find out the moment will tell you yes. I think
so much. Politically we could talk about politicians that do this,

(01:05:08):
but I think, you know, we're a little too savvy
in crafting our messaging and our imaging when it comes
to show business and comedy as well. And we want
to be the comedic voice for the moment. So I'll
make myself the comedic voice for the moment, as if
you can do that right right, You're reacting to the

(01:05:31):
moment and doing it instead of trying to find hopefully
a comedic way to express as you're saying, Rick Overton,
did what you feel is right?

Speaker 5 (01:05:44):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (01:05:45):
And then the moment will tell you, oh yeah, you're
you're the voice of right now. And this HBO special
that Mark Marin did, I think it's called panicked. You know,
he's been carrying the message forward for several years. Like
during the whole pushback against cancel culture, when people would say, oh,
you can't say anything anymore, he was kind of the

(01:06:07):
lone really popular voice saying, I'm pretty sure you can
say anything, right, right, you just have to be funny
and smart, and you have to be prepared that saying
what you want to say can come with pushback, right, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:06:23):
And yeah, because that's always the way he's done his comedy.
And so the fact that it's you know, I mean,
I don't it seems to have coincided with the fact he's,
you know, shutting his show down next month after sixteen years,
and his career has turned in a different direction. He's

(01:06:45):
starring in TV shows, he's doing a movie, but he's
still got stand up and that's always been his standard
to bear is that stand up and the flavor of
his stand up has not. I mean, the materials evolved,
his presentations evolved, but it's he's always been that way.

(01:07:05):
He's not suddenly.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
No, That's what I'm saying. And I think that level
of authenticity. I mean, look, stand up comedy is populism, right,
It's it's a healthy form hopefully of populism. But you
look at like populist people with populist appeal in politics,

(01:07:29):
and the people who are expressing what they've always expressed
and stood for stand out as very authentic. Bernie Sanders.
No one is ever going to accuse this guy of
being inauthentic, right, absolutely, And he also seemed for decades
to be someone who would never matter outside the town

(01:07:51):
of Burlington, Vermont.

Speaker 5 (01:07:53):
Yeah, it's true, and I think it's interesting because being
in the marketing side of things in business, one of
the things you know, the companies we work with are
constantly going after are the younger audiences. How do we
get the younger audiences? And they've discovered that the younger
audiences have a great BS meter at least they seem

(01:08:15):
to know when people are trying to bamboozle them and
not being authentic. They have a nose for authenticity at
the moment. I don't know how, I don't know what
where that's coming from, but in the research that we do,
they definitely have this idea when someone is trying to,

(01:08:35):
you know, put something over on them or being disingenuous.
So the fact that someone at Mark Marin's age can
put out a show that's getting some heat because he's
being authentic, makes perfect sense from that particular standpoint, crossing
the generational divide.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
I know that fear is a force multiplier. I'm going
to be writing about this, and it's true in show
business as in any other enterprise, any institution. I think,
you know, fear is a force multiplayer, and I don't
believe that courage is actually of course multiplayer, but success

(01:09:17):
might be. And if he is, authenticity is met with
with success. Yeah, we'll have people who are hacks saying, hey,
let's try the authenticity thing the same way that it
happens with politicians, right, And they might be good enough

(01:09:38):
at the game where for the SoundBite or even the
speech they're able to be authentic. Yeah, But then when
it becomes conversational, where then that's that's when the lack
of authenticity, the lack of ability to just speak as

(01:09:59):
yourself to what you really find right and wrong is
so lacking with so many elected officials. Absolutely again, politics aside,
I think that's true of comics as well. Sure, and
so we'll have some that'll try the authenticity thing. But yeah,

(01:10:20):
maybe maybe the success of something like this will reveal
a hunger and those that have been doing it will
find regardless of their age or their demographic, Hey, there's
a new opportunity for me that maybe I didn't expect
there would be.

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
Yeah, yeah, possibly.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
I know. You heard Dean and I were talking a
bit last or a couple of weeks ago about our
biggest comedy influences in the in the in the wake
of Tom Lair's death, and it wasn't Again, it wasn't hey,
these are my five favorites. It was just realizing how
much of an influenced Tom Lairer really had been on

(01:11:00):
what I find funny and what I needed to find funny.
But I was curious, are there any such influences for
you where you look back to your formative years, long
before you even became a comedy impresario, and said, wow,
these are people that really helped me discover what I

(01:11:21):
find funny.

Speaker 5 (01:11:24):
Yeah, and Tom Lair was definitely very high on the
list when I was a little kid. I mean, I
just remember hearing his stuff and just how outspoken he was,
but in such a to me, in such a not
even it wasn't subversive, because he was being very obvious
about it, but just in an incredibly entertaining way, everything

(01:11:47):
from kind of the generic kind of humor of new math,
but then he would get super political about stuff. I mean,
he was almost like a weird reflection of some of
the political comics that were emerging at that time, right
the First Family and those kinds of records that were

(01:12:13):
out there. But I just and I told you recently,
I just when he passed away, I just I you know,
I did a tribute song to him because it was
just like he was so he was out of the
picture for so long and you kind of forgot about him.
But he was always there for me in terms of
thinking about how do you say something different? And I

(01:12:36):
think that's what how do you say something funny in
a different way. So he'd rounded on that, I think,
which was nice.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
The fact that so much of his stuff actually you
listen to it now and you go, ohh that's funny.
Some of it is getting back to what we were
talking about earlier, because the wheel has spun around and
a lot of this stuff is real event, yes, but
it's also a testament to his dedication not to the

(01:13:07):
joke so much as to how the joke was expressed. Yes,
his use of language is delightful. Regardless, even after you've
heard the joke, you want to hear his use of language.
You want to hear how he says it again and
again and again.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
Yeah, which is funny because another influence I had was
Victor Borga. Oh, Victor Borga was great with language. I
mean every bit he did was about language and music.
And that was another influence early on, just the idea
of how to turn a phrase, how to come up
with an unusual way to say And now I'm in

(01:13:44):
the business of doing that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Oh well, I remember actually when I was a very
little boy that he was someone that, Yeah, I always
wanted to see whenever he was on TV.

Speaker 5 (01:13:53):
Also, so that was another one. Python money Python was huge,
I mean probably the biggest because they they came along
on PBS when I was in seventh grade. So my
comedy template was just being laid down. I mean, my

(01:14:13):
parents had comedy records since the time I was a
little kid, so I had, you know, Bill Cosby and
George Carlin and Jonathan Winters. Another one, George Carlin or
Winters was that kind of improv fuse was lit, Yeah,
with him. So if I, if I sort of disassemble
my comedy sensibilities, I can point to sort of where

(01:14:36):
each of those threads came from. Right, So there's there,
there's Borga, There's Jonathan Winters, There's Monty Python. And then
I was a huge fan. You lived in the in
the you grew up in the Bay Area. I don't
know if you remember the ksfo's comedy Hour that Gene
Nelson used to Gene Nelson sure used to have it

(01:14:58):
eleven till midnight, and it was just, you know, he
would just pull comedy records and just play stuff. And
that was on the heels of his old radio hour
from ten to eleven and again junior high school. That
was all laying down. And the funny thing was, and
you know this about my history, was I really wanted

(01:15:20):
to get a job at KSFO. I mean it was
an adult, middle of the road station, right, adult contemporary,
but that's where I wanted to work. And I ended
up as Gene Nelson's producer before as before he left
the airways, I was his producer. So that was an
interesting kind of full circle thing to come back to.

Speaker 6 (01:15:43):
During National Brotherhood Week, various special events are arranged to
drive home the message of brotherhood.

Speaker 1 (01:15:48):
This year.

Speaker 6 (01:15:49):
For example, on the first day of the week, Malcolm
X was killed, which gives you an idea of how
effective the whole thing is. I'm sure we all agree
that we ought to love one another. And I know
there are people in the world who do not love
their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that.

(01:16:10):
There's a song about National Brotherhood Week.

Speaker 7 (01:16:16):
All the white folks hate the black folks, and the
black folks hate the white folks. To hate all but
the right folks is an old established rule.

Speaker 8 (01:16:25):
But during National brother Week National brother Week.

Speaker 7 (01:16:31):
Lean Ahorn and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek too cheek.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
Its fun to.

Speaker 7 (01:16:36):
Euleagize the people you despise, as long as you don't
let them in your school. All the poor folks hate
the rich folks, and the rich folks hate the poor folks.
All of my folks hate all of your folks. It's
American as apple pie.

Speaker 8 (01:16:55):
But during National Brotherhood Week, National brother New Yorkers love
the Puerto Ricans cause it's very chic.

Speaker 7 (01:17:05):
Step up and shake the hand of someone you can't stand.
You can tolerate him if you try. Old the Protestants
hate the Catholics, and the Catholics hate the Protestants, and
the Hindus hate the Moslems, and everybody hates the Jews.
By during Passional Brother Ruek National Brother Luik, It's national

(01:17:30):
everyone smile at one and Netherhood Week. Be nice two
people who are inferior to you.

Speaker 8 (01:17:38):
It's only four a week, so have no fear.

Speaker 7 (01:17:43):
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year.

Speaker 2 (01:17:51):
Yes, so viewer, chillpack Hollywood hours stay at the Baldwin
Hills Motor in promotional consideration paid for by Empire State Gas.
From farm to punk, We've got great gas.

Speaker 5 (01:18:08):
Belated spoiler alert