October 23, 2024 • 47 mins
This week, S.E. talks to one of her favorite people, the multi-hyphenate comedian, writer and award-winning producer Larry Wilmore! S.E. and Larry talk about developing shows in a changed media landscape, the ways Larry has experimented with comedy over the years, and how he got his start in some of S.E.'s favorite sitcoms of all time (can you guess which?). Larry also dives into family life — the ways in which he has supported those who have struggled with mental health, how he has adjusted to a new normal with his family, growing up with some of the funniest people he's ever known, and the kind of a dad he is to his own kids. S.E. wraps it all up with a Larry Wilmore-themed quiz!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh, is success gonna give you a big head? I'm like,
I'm fifty two. Success had his chance when I was younger.
You know, Sorry, Success, You're a little too late.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
So you know, I meet a lot of people in
this business, including people you never expect to I've done
TV with everyone from RuPaul to Newt Gingrich, from Zach
Gallifanakis to David Milliband. It's a weird career. And I
know a lot of smart people. I know a lot
(00:34):
of funny people. I know some kind people. I don't
know many who are all three. But I was lucky
enough to work with my next guest several times, I think,
but most notably for me when I was a guest
on his own talk show and I had just had
my son, Jack, and it was one of the first
return TV appearances for me, and I was feeling, you know,
(00:57):
a little vulnerable, a little insecure about my body, and
this person just could not have been nicer, putting me
at ease, making me feel like I could just get
back in the saddle. I'll never forget that, because he
didn't have to be. You might know him as the
one time senior black correspondent on The Daily show. He
(01:18):
was host of the nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, That'll
Give It Away, creator of The Bernie Mac Show, co
creator of Insecure on HBO. I love that show, host
of the Black on the Air podcast, and so so,
so much more.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
It's Larry Willmore welcome.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Hey, say's such a nice intro. That's so nice.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
I don't know if you remember that, but I remember that.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
Si.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I was a fan of yours for a long time.
I admire you because you were a conservative in those
liberal spaces, you know, yeah, and you never shied down,
and you know, but you were always so just quick
and smart and funny. You know, you had a light approach.
You never like put people down. So I always I
(01:59):
admired you. I'm a fire way before that, you were
on my show and I was. I was so excited
when you were going to do the show because I
was a big fan. So that's a big memory.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Oh well, that's really nice.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I feel like you had to say that because I
just said all those nice things about it.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, true, sure, Well it's mutual.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I just I think I think the world of view
and I was a fan as well. It feels like
everything has changed so much since that time in twenty fifteen,
like everything's changed, media, politics, doesn't it?
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Oh thousand percent? You know, it's funny. The American President
was on TV the other day, you know, the Aaron
Sarkin thing from the nineties. Oh, I love that, and
I think I haven't seen it since it came out. Actually,
it wasn't one of those. It wasn't a repeated viewing
thing for me. And nothing is a movie. It was fine,
but oh my god, I say the time capsule and
this is fiction, of course, yeah, but at the time
(02:52):
it kind of mirrored what was about to happen with
the Monica Lewinsky things, Kunda, But this is more chaste.
It's just a bachelor president with a girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
If I were on your staff, I would tell you
that the absolute worst thing you can do coming into
an election year is to open yourself up to character attacks,
and the quickest way to do that is to prance
around like the playboy of the Western world.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
But the things we considered scandalous back then from politics,
you can't even I mean, Trump in one sentence blows that.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Out of the water, you know, I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The world has changed so much in that short amount
of time.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
You know, it's funny you brought that up because I
should get erin on the podcast, because I consulted for
his show, The Newsroom and got to know him then.
And then I guest lecture a class called Politics and
Movies at Cornell once a year, and I always show
the American President and I always have Arin give me
(03:47):
a little tidbit to tell that class, like give me
some behind the scenes.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And it's so funny. He always leads with apologies.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I was young, yeah, yeah, and I'm like, Aron, No,
it's such a good movie. It's very capra, it's very
you know, Collyanna. But it's a great movie. And he's
like embarrassed by it because it was so naive, a
bit and rosy, and you know, everyone was ultimately a
(04:16):
good person, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, mister Smith is already in Washington. Was that that
is exactly And it's kind of a precursor to the
West Wing too, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
It was, and that helped.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
But you know, he said, I just wanted to write
a rom com in a weird place, like what would
be the weirdest place I could set.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
A rom com?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
And so he thought, well, I'll do it in the
White House. But anyway, that's that's off topic. I'm just
glad you brought that.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Up, because when you think of romantic places, you think
of the.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Way the White House the White House.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
We don't get too political on the show because this
is supposed to be a break from all of that anxiety.
But do you think things, media politics we'll ever get
back to normal?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Absolutely not. I think things never reset.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
They just go to a new place in a different
way that we could never predict it, and that becomes
the norm, you know. But I don't think there's ever
been a point in history where we can look back
and think there was a reset.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
You know. Yeah, I can't remember any.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
But it doesn't mean necessarily that it'll be a bad place,
because many times I think young people reset against whatever
the culture before, or a couple of cultures before, if
they go too far to the left. The younger generation
kind of resets right, you know, and that it goes
too far right, they kind of reset left, it seems like,
but they do it in different ways, you know, which
(05:39):
is what keeps making things contemporary and that sort of thing.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
But yeah, this.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Call for things to go back, it's never going to happen.
I don't know why people make those calls.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
You know, Yeah, I don't know. I think part of
me at least wishes. I don't know if you feel
this way, but there felt to me like a heyday
of media, and in particular political metia.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah, and that.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Involved the Daily Show, but it also just it was
a it was more fun. Yeah, and you know, the
media was booming and we're in a decline right now.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
That's just a fact.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, you know, And it's funny if
you you know, I like, you know, I've been kind
of a history buff lately going through different periods. I
like to put myself into the contemporarious, contemporaneous, you know,
moments and that sort of thing. And I was looking
at how horrible the eighteen sixties and seventies were like
in New York City, and how oh man, you talk
(06:31):
about how politics being nasty, we can't hold a candle
to what was going on.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
The oh the civility. I mean, it was terrible, you know.
And media.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
What was media then were newspapers and cartoons, you know, yeah, right,
and some of the cartoons single handedly kind of like
how the Daily Show did and to a certain extent.
Saturday Night Live, you know, how they've lampooned people, has
become the kind of way in which we interact with
politics and that sort of thing. It'd be interesting to
see what takes the place of the Daily Show, because
(07:01):
I don't know if it has the same influence that
it had in that period you were talking about, or
if Saturday Night Live continues to be that place where
you know, we can look to for what's reflecting where
we are, who's making comments, you know, where can we
connect and that kind of thing, you know, because.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
They've had such an amazing long run of doing that.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh totally, it's crazy what happened to Funnier Die. Wasn't
Funnier Die going to be something like that?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
I think so? But I, you know what, that's a
good question.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I think what Funnier Dye has its opponent is the
viral video, and that's a very formidable opponent, you know. So,
I think it's hard to manufacture viral videos.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
It's just difficult. Good luck.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You know, all the companies you know, es see, you know,
I worked in Televant Primary creating shows and stuff. There
have been different periods where different companies like Verizon and
that sort of thing have tried to do. These startups
of making content for your phone. People have tried it
at different times, and it always fails because they're competing
against viral videos, which TikTok is smart because it's that
(08:07):
you can just make your vile video on our platform.
We're not going to try to make them.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
I remember that because I develop as well.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
And I remember being in a meeting years ago and
Quibi was going to be the.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
New Quibbi right exactly, it was going to.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Be the thing, and they wanted you to make like
eight minute content for kids walking in between classes on
college campuses.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
And I was like, you know how to create this way.
Speaker 5 (08:31):
Exactly exactly where?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And the actual content that they're interested in is someone
just simply opening a box and telling you what's in it.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
That's the content they're interested in. So all these.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Millions of dollars of research into what show and it's
highly produced at all, this of eight minutes.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
No no, no, no, no, sorry, asshole.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I just want to see somebody opening a box and
just tell me what's in it.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
That's the content on it, And.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Right, I learn for this upcoming generation because my nine
year old. I mean it loves those videos watching other kids,
oh my toys or games.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I know it's amazing. Could you imagine like seeing Harry
Truman back in the day, like opening.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Effected Sason watch them.
Speaker 6 (09:21):
I got this a bound business a little later, but
before that, you know, it's Christmas Day.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I want to talk about your career and how you
became so successful and agile and diversified in everything you've done.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
But take me back before you grew up.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
You grew up in Pomonas, California, and you had lots
of siblings.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, there were six of us total. I was third
from the top.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
A common refrain I hear among comedians is like I
came from a big family, and so I had to
like being funny?
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Was how I got attention?
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Was that?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
No, not really, I just have a funny family, but
they don't know that they're funny. So my parents are hilarious,
but they just don't know it, and they're so they
were opposite. My parents divorce when I was about nine
or ten, but they're still ironically they're still together.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
They which is crazy, like.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Like they're so crazy they can't even stay away from
each other, even with the divorce, you know, that's how
crazy they are. But like my mom was always the
extreme emotionally and my dad was the complete opposite in
a funny way. So that was always their conflict. Like
I always said, like, if I'm driving a car and
I just switched things, I'm.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Like, Mom, what what you didn't use your plane crash? Dad?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
You almost killed me right now, you know, whereas a
plane could crash in the house next door and den hmmm,
I'm like, I'm like, Dad, that was a plane crash
for plane because man was not meant to fly, you know.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Like he would have some philosophical thing like that.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And my brother and I, who we just found them
so hilarious, like they were our entertainment, you know, most
of the time. And so that's where it comes from. Really,
my brother and I observing the world around us, and
we went to Catholic schools, so we used to make
fun of our nuns and all that stuff, and the
teachers and our neighbors who we make fun of. So
we had all these characters in our world that we
(11:27):
just found as entertainment. So that's where my sense of
humor comes from.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
That's really funny. I just watched the Albert Brooks documentary.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
It was great, Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
So good. I love him.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
But you know that part where Rob Reiner is talking
about how.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
They were friends as kids.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Yeah, and how.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Carl Reiner Rob's dad told Albert Brooks at some point
when he was a teenager, like, you're the funniest person
I've ever met.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
You.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Imagine Yeah, I can't imagine. In fact, I have chills
right now just even talking about it. What that must
have been like for Albert Brooks. But was there someone
in your life who told you, you know, you're really funny?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Well it wasn't so much that, but I got an opportunity.
Let me just side comment this first. This is what
Trump does in his speeches. He side speeches is what
I call it speech, and then side speech. I had
the great opportunity to spend time with Carl Reiner on
three different occasions, and it was it was one of
the joys I first met him. And then I'll go
back to your question. Okay, because Carl Reiner was kind
(12:27):
of an inspiration to me.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
You know, you know, my questions don't matter. Tell me
everything about Carlin.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Okay, So, when I was a young comic, they had
the thing called the Comedy Awards.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
It was something like that.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
They were trying for a few years, and I think
Steve Martin was being I think Steve Martin was being honored,
I think, or maybe it was mel Brooks's one of
the two. It was probably mel Brooks. But there was
this table with Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner, mel
Brooks or all at this table, and I this young
comic and I wanted to say hi to Carl Reiner,
you know, but there's all these stars there just.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Kind of sheepless.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
You go up and then goes, sorry, mister Reiner, my
name is Larry I mccomack, I wanted to say. And
he was so nice, like, oh, hey, how you doings
like to be? He said, you know what, You're a
comic and I said, you know what, you're good looking.
Dick van Dyke was good looking, and he did great,
you'll do him. I'm like, okay, thanks card. So so
he like gave you this cop a bit and but
here are Steve Martin all these other people who I love.
(13:23):
But I zero done on Carl Reiner, not even knowing
at the time that I would. He was the model
for the career. I was going to have somebody who
was a showrunner. He was also a performer, he was
a director, He was out there the rack and took
kind of he did everything, you know, he was he
was the hyphen it before anybody who was, you know.
And then later he was on the Bernie mac Show. Yes,
where I got him and I got to see different
(13:44):
phases of them. So we went out to lunch and
he's Carl Reiner, the legend at lunch, you know, and
he's telling stories, you know, and he's.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Where is where do you go to lunch?
Speaker 5 (13:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
God, who knows? It wasn't anywhere fancy. It was just
was it in a yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Yeah, like studio city? It was no fancy es.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I want to be there. I'm setting.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
It was great because we're sitting at his feet, you know,
listening to these stories and all this stuff, and he's
called writer, the legend, the rack and tour. Then we
get on set and now I'm the showrunner and now
he's the insecure actor, you know, and you see him
completely change, you know.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
Is that okay? Is that right? And the whole this whole.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Thing that was just there is just gun and I'm like, hey,
it's great, and I'm his boss now, so we have
a different relationship and we're interacting and all that stuff.
And then later they're doing the remake of The Dick
Van Dyke Show and he invited me to the set
and I go there and there's oh, you know, Dick
Van Dyke's there, and Mary Tyler Moore, you know, people
from the original cas some of the writers who I
was fans of, like Percy and dan If. I'm talking
(14:40):
to these guys now he's called Renner the showrunner.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Yeah, okay, completely different.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
All those relationships that Dick and Mary had back in
nineteen sixty one came back. You could see you could
even see Mary's insecurity a little bit. You know, Dick
there is the star. You could see their relationship, but
they're beholden to I mean, this is this is years later,
all those relationships right in place. He's quick witted, he's
on it. You can see his brain working the way.
(15:07):
You know, I don't even know how old he was, seventies, eighties,
but he was on it. I was like, wow, I
just got to see three phases of this guy.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
That's incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And then the final one, I did it He did
my podcast a couple of years before he passed away,
and I was in his home and we spent an
hour talking, just shooting the ship, and it was see
it was that's my Carl Reiner legacy.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
I got to spend so much time with him.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
But he's my He's my show biz inspiration, well with
somebody who did it the long term.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
But what he really loves.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
He loves comedy, and so do I, you know, and
we realized that there's different ways to express it. Sometimes
it's a joke, and that's when I did stand up.
Sometimes it's a sketch, and he just show shows. I
didn't live in color, you know, you expressed it in
that way. He did Dick Van Dykes show, I did
Bernie macshow. You know, you can sometimes you need a
longer for him, you know. Sometimes I did it an essay.
I did it in Nightly Showing, a whole different form
(15:56):
where it's political commentary. But I'm still looking for the
humor and that sort of thing. So I've always been
I've done the different things because my expression is comedy.
But I realized you can put it in different forms
and get it out there, you know. So when I
was doing stand ups. Sometimes I'd be frustrated because I'm like,
that's not really joke, but I like it. It's funny.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
I go, well, what is it?
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Oh maybe that's a film idea, you know, right, So
that's kind of my road.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Oh what an awesome story.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I'm so glad I brought up the Albert Brooks documentary.
I'm so glad because that was incredible story. One of
your first TV roles was on a show that was
really really important to me.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
Larry, that's hilarious.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Oh, it has to be.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
You take the good, you take the bad, you take
them both. In there you have the backs of life.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Tell me everything about Touty and Blair and Joe and
Natalie and missus Garrett.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Tell me everything.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
What are you about.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I'm a young actor at the time, wanting to break
into show biz. I was a theater major. I was
a very serious actor at the time, but I was
also doing stand up.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
I took very seriously. I used to always I go to.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Auditions and I'd changed the lines, not knowing that might
be offensive, but I would think it's something funnier.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
So but anyhow, I did this theater reading.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
They were the Olympics were coming in nineteen eighty four
to la and they had a year earlier they had
these readings. Even maybe it might have been even two
years earlier. It might have been two years earlier where
they were gonna put on some theater for the Olympics.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
There was something like that.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And they had these special shows on a friend of
mine and to ask if I would do a part
in it, and I ended up getting a lot of laughs,
and there were a lot of people in the audience
like Danny Simon, Neil Simon's brother O, people who came
up to me and they were.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Like, oh, you're really funny. I'm like, oh, thank you,
you know.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
But there was a casting person in there from I
think Embassy Television at the time. And they later brought
me in to read for a pilot called Aka Pablo,
and I read for it. I didn't get it, but
they liked me a lot and brought the same people
brought me back to read for the Facts of Life.
So the first part I read for the Facts of
Life was for two Dy's boyfriend and he was this
illiterate like football player. Because they always had those it's
(18:01):
a special facts of life. You know, they would have
I remember those special stories. And so he was the
illiterate football player. He's ashamed of Beig not being able
to read.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
It was that type of story of life. So I
read for it.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Everything said, Larry, you know you were great. We really
loved reading, but we just don't believe that you're a literate.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
What a compliment, I know.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
And I'm like, but I am. Trust me, I could
be stupid. Guys trust me.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
They're like, no, you can't.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
And then they brought me back to play the part
of a cop. They just gave me the role because
they just liked me. Yeah, and officers Ziakis I think
was the name exactly?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
What?
Speaker 5 (18:37):
Just the graffiti saying it says, uh, I can't say it,
missus Garrett.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I've been a police officer for three years, and before
that I was a kid.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
I've heard just about everything.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
It was recurring, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I played a couple of episodes and it was so
surreal because it was shot on the Universal Lot and
I used to sneak on that lot as a you know,
dreaming of being you know, part of it. And I
remember sneaking into the Alfred Hitchcock theater and I'm watching
them edit films. I'd be in the book, you know,
scared that I'm out. Yeah, my friend and I we
would go into the dining room. We dined and dashed
(19:12):
a couple of dames.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
So great, this is the life.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
I really was the kid who dreamed of being on there,
and so they'll actually be on a show.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
I'll never forget. I had a dressing room. It was
like in a trailer outside and I saw the tram.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Go by that I used to be on, and I
want to kind of wave and through the moment.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
How old were you?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I was in my early twenties, twenty one, twenty two.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Something like that. And I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Tony Danza came by and they all knew who he was,
and he was like, yeah, I'm doing.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
This new show. We just did the pilot over there.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, and that was who's the boss? That turned out
to be you know, of course, and it was so cosey.
They were doing the Jefferson's right down the hall. It
was such a jobish thing. But the girls on the
show were really nice, you really really nice. Yeah, And
Charlotte Ray played in some garrett. I was already a
fan of hers, such a pro she was so nice,
but it it was fun.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Could you tell because Kim Fields sort of had a
similar trajectory. She ended up writing, she ended up show running,
she ended up at movies like she does a lot more,
yeah than you know that sitcom. Could you tell at
the time that Kim Fields was going to be not
just a star of a sitcom, but like that she
was a real smart writer, producer, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Well, I don't know if I could tell that, but
her mom, Chip Fields, was I think a manager at
the time. So Kim's got that in her of there's
more than just what you're doing. Yeah, you know, so
it doesn't surprise me. She was one of the most
likable ones on that cast. I think the audience loved
Kim Fields.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
You know, she was so too.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I mean even the name right, skates, I mean all
of it love.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
I would see her years later and I just played
a small part and she always remembered.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
She was always so nice and lovely. Yeah, couldn't.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
I was like, man, she's so nice and she kind
of has that reputation. It's funny, you know, we always
say the stories about people being this and that, but
I'll tell you that cast was just great. It was
just really nice people. It wasn't like one of those
nasty situation type things.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yes, it's fun. That was my that's my break.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
You also wrote for Fresh Prince of bel Air, which
was also very important to me as as a child.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
I only write shows that important to you.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Well, obviously, clearly what was Will Smith like then?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Okay, Will Smith another great guy. He was very approachable.
He wasn't standoffish. I was there the last season, so
I wasn't there in some of the early seasons, but
they were very tight group.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
I mean the last season. He was a big star.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
He well he hadn't quite broken out as a movie
star yet. Yeah, he was about to.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
You know, he was like the biggest thing on TV.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
He was, he was, he was pretty big, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
But it's funny that there is that difference when you
go up that next that next step.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Like Michael J.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Fox, who I got to me years ago, you know
before he was a big star, but family ties made
him a TV star, but it was back to the
future that really made him a whole whole different category,
you know, totally, And the same with Will with Men
in Black, it just put him in a just different
category than fresh prince, but fresh prince for us, you know,
it was all that and everything, but really cool.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
I still talk to Will this day.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
He used to call me up over the years and
I'd come in and help them pilots punch up that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But we did a special called a Mend, a docu
series on Netflix about the Fourteenth Amendment that Will hosted
and I produced and I appeared on. It was great
working with him, and so that was a nice full
circle moment.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
What did you think of the slat It was very
I thought it was very surreal.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
To me, it seemed like Will had an out of
body experience. It seemed like, I know, there's no way
if he had to do it again, he'd do the
same thing. That's one of those things where I'm sure
he'd say.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
No, Like that was not the Will Smith.
Speaker 5 (22:47):
You knew, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, you know, So I don't know what was going
on personally or whatever. I have no idea, but it
was so out of character.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
And he's very aware.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Will knows, he's very aware of what Hollywood is, how
meaningful it is. He's very aware of the history, the legacies,
protecting your legacy like he Tom Cruise. Those type of people,
they always seem to protect their legacies so so much.
You could tell the people that do that, right, those
big starts. So yes, why would Will Smith do that?
It seems so out of character. It had to have
(23:18):
been some out of body experience where he just left
himself for a second and forgot about that because somebody
of that stature just doesn't make sense, you know, it
really didn't.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I mean from a pr point of view or a
really any point of view, it really didn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
There's no point of view it makes sense. And Chris
Rock's a comedian. You know, he's a comedian. You know
he's making jokes. Yeah, you know, he's going to make
jokes that are going to be off color, that type
of thing. That's but that's why he's Chris Rock. That's
why we love him. So yeah, you know, and if
you have a real beef with them, you have it afterwards.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
You know, you don't have it like that live TV.
Speaker 7 (23:50):
Yeah, No, no, no, no. Can can I get personal
with you?
Speaker 5 (24:05):
Yeah? Absolutely? But do you want to know, girl.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
How did you meet your ex wife?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I met my ex wife through a blind date set
up by a dear friend of mine who's still a differend.
And we went out briefly, and then we didn't date,
and then I called her out a year later, and
then we went out like one and then I.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Called her a year later again. It was like a
start and stop type of it.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Okay, Yeah, and then we I remember, we ended up
just talking on the phone every day and just realized
just how much we just had in common and liked
each other, and we just got to do each other
and that's pretty much.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
How it happened.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
She was in the business as well.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, Yeah, she was an actress. She's did a lot
of stage work. She was from Hawaii. Her name is Leilani,
and she wanted Tony Broadway. I'm very talented, and she was,
you know, she did a ton of voice over work,
which I think she still does some of the commercials
and that kind of stuff. She was the voice of
Specific Telesis. It was one of those things. She was
(25:11):
one of those Pine Salt ladies, you know, was one
of those if you look.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Back, you go, oh, I remember her.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, she's a Pine sal lady, and yeah, it's one
of those things. I met her at a time in
my life where I had dated enough where I knew
whatever I was doing was not working, you know, And
so I decided to do it differently, consciously with her,
and I decided to just be friends and get to
know somebody because I just had no skills in the
(25:37):
relationship department. And see, I just didn't know what I
was doing, and I had very low self esteem with that.
I was a very shy growing up when came to girls.
But having someone who basically was a friend, you know,
really made that. And I tell you when we had
problems later on, we eventually divorced. But I'm not talking
(25:59):
on a turn to me. She had some issues with depression,
and I think a lot of it was related to
our son was diagnosed with autism. He had aspergers, and
I think she took it very personally. She had a
lot of postpartum things, and it was a very deep
emotional thing for her. And it's hard as a partner
sometimes it's hard to penetrate someone else's thing it's that deep,
(26:19):
you know. So when she got on some medication, you know,
we really couldn't work on our marriage at that point
because it just wasn't fair somebody just going through that.
But because this just from my point of view, of course,
I think we had done so much work in the
friend category. At the beginning of our relationship. I was
(26:39):
there for her as a friend first of all. You know,
of course, someone you love and you care about. But
like I threw that out of my mind, the problems
that we were having during that time, and focused on
the fact that this is someone in your life that
you cared deeply about and you have to be there
to support them and that kind of stuff, and it
was really good, you know.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
It was one of those I value that.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
That's how our relationships started, and even now we still talk,
you know, because we have two kids of course, yep.
And I just saw her sister and her husband, my
daughter's doing a show a regional theater right.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
Now, and we were all hugging everything.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Oh, it's so good to see and I was like,
I felt so lucky that that her family is still
my family in my mind and would be. All that
love and bond is still there. And I know it's
because of the way that it started. There was a
deep friendship respect for that seeing the other person as
a person, you know, it was such a big lesson
in relationships for me at the time.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, I love that, and it's so what you said
just really resonated. I a few years ago had a
bit of a nervous breakdown and began working on my
mental health.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I struggled from severe anxiety.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And for this time, when it was really rough, everything
stopped and my family got real small, and with this
was all that mattered, right, getting me better, and I
was able to put like work aside, and all the
other things stopped, and it was in a way, I mean,
it was very difficult, but it was in a way
(28:09):
very nice to have this one focus as a family.
And then of course, as I you know, started working
on my mental health and getting better, everything else comes
right back, right, every problem you had and every reality
comes back. But for that time, you really know who
is there for you right in those moments, who will
(28:32):
drop everything to focus on the one thing that matters
the most in that moment and everything else can wait. Yeah,
what kind of parents were you? What kind of dad
were you when they were young? What kind of dad
are you?
Speaker 6 (28:44):
Now?
Speaker 5 (28:45):
That's a great question.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I know my wife was more of the I wouldn't
say disciplinarian because we both were that in certain ways.
But maybe we traded roles or that type of thing.
But I was a firmed but I was a fun
dad too.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I always like to bring excitement and you know, pass
on the joy of things to the kids and stuff.
We all laughed a lot, you know, that sort of thing.
But it was the one of the funnest roles was
being the heavy when I had to.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
You know, it was fun.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So oh my god, because when kids are little, you know,
this is see they're so hilarious, yes, you know, like
and the thing is, this is why it so irks
me when I see parents that don't discipline their children,
you know, because I'm like, this is the time when
you can do it when they're small.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
You're not.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
If you don't do it now, good luck later, because
you know, you're just gonna release this monster into the world,
you know. But uh so, like one thing, like, you know,
you can't really spanker kids that type of thing, but
in public, like I would pinch them sometimes they did,
and I look them in the eye because nobody can
see you pinching.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
They're like oh, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, we're not
gonna do that. Anymore. No, you know, that of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
But my kids had a good sense of what's right
and what's wrong. So if they did something wrong that
was really bad, my wife would send them to me
in the den, and it's in there, and they come in,
I'll say everything it's I mean, it's so adorable.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Yeah, you know, and I would.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Just say, okay, tell me what happened, you know, oh
John did what were you right or were you wrong?
Speaker 5 (30:21):
What I was wrong? Okay? All right, Well what do
you need? What do you need to do? You know?
Tell them I'm sorry, okay, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You know we did talk about what's the right thing
to do, what's the wrong thing.
Speaker 5 (30:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I always tried to use language properly with my kids.
Like we would go to church. My wife sang in
the in the choir at Saint Charles Burmo. Paul Solomonovitch
is this great choir director. They sang for the Pope
and all kinds of it was legendary choir. And she
she has beautiful she's sang in that choir. If we
were in church, I would never tell the kids to
(30:55):
be quiet in church, okay, never said that.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
I would say show respect.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Oh yeah, okay, because.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I wanted them to learn the distinction and behavior. You know,
quiet you're not really doing something.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
But if you're showing respect, that's active.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
You know, that's so good.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, being quiet is more passive, but showing respect they
have to actively do that.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
So and be quiet sounds like a punishment, which it does,
and be respectful as not.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And they're more in control of being respectful. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Also if they know the distinction, they know that quiet
to me has a time limit to it, but respect doesn't. Yeah, yeah,
there no, So just having distinctions with them and using
language carefully and that type of thing. I was always
aware of the language that I use with the kids.
And when they got a little older, we would have
great conversations stuff like that. And I remember having one
(31:46):
with my daughter and she goes, oh, Dad, I wish
you could.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Raise my kids. And I said, what do you think
I'm doing now?
Speaker 1 (31:51):
She goes, oh, you know, like so we used to
have that type of stuff. But I really enjoyed the
conversations we'd have. We'd have philosophical conversations, fun conversations and
things like that. So we and they're very close to
their mom in that way too.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, we all have that type of type of relationship,
which is great. Although my son talks to her way more.
I have to get things out of him, like she'll
call me, said to John, tell you he's trying to say. No,
he never talks to me. He tells you everything, you know.
So they have like this secret relationship. I don't know
where she gets to know everything.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
As we do. We do with our boys, we do.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
She gets to know things months before I even know.
Speaker 8 (32:30):
That's the things.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
So then in twenty fifteen, tell me if I'm wrong,
you have to move for work. You moved to New
York right for the night they show what was that
like on your family?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
That was tough because we were going through a breakup
at that time. So those things are happening at the
same time. We have been in marriage counseling for almost
eight or nine years.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
For a long time. No, we worked on it for
a long time. Yeah, it had reached its.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
End, I guess you could say, but it was unfortunate timing.
So it's a bit of a strain. But you know,
real tough of me because I'm missing my family and
all that stuff. And then your second guess am I
doing the right thing?
Speaker 5 (33:09):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So when I was doing the night the show, I
was going through all that, especially in the first year,
it was very, very difficult and feeling very alone there
in New York too, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
And was this your big Like did you feel the
weight of this show, the pressure of this show your
name's on it? You know? Was that daunting to you
or had you already done so much that you were
just like, I'm ready.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
I used to joke with people, I said, U, h
is success gonna give you a big head? I'm like,
I'm fifty two. Success had its chance when I was younger.
You know, Sorry, success, You're a little too late, you know. Yeah, like, sorry,
I'm going through a divorce, you know, do this. You know,
I got success your way, but you he're so far
in back of the line, you know.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
In fact, some of it I kind of resented because
I loved being successful and anonymous. It was great, you know,
but losing anonymity is not fun, you know. And and
it was a little too much attention, Like I don't
I'm not a performer for the attention. I'm a performer
for the expression. So it's so even when I did
stand up, you know, I love doing it, but after
(34:17):
the show I wouldn't hang around, you know, the audience
or that type of thing. So I was always shy
because I was shy growing up and stuff. But I
love performing, but I do it for the expression of it.
I love figuring out the joke and then seeing if
it works yeah yeah, and then if it works, hey
I did it, you know. But some people do it
for the attention they need the laughs to validate them.
For me, I want the laughs to validate the joke,
(34:38):
you know, not to validate me. So my friends and
family are there to validate me, you know, and all
that stuff. So luckily I got there to unluckily so
when the nightly show like I'm on billboards and taxi
cabs are going by, it was way too much, I see.
I'll be honest with you, it was. I was a
good God, no wonder people turn into monsters who nobody
should have this much attention. That's what I was time.
(35:01):
You know, some of it was flattering, but honestly, it
was too much. I just I always felt it was
too much. Anytime I see a poster of my big
head on it. I'm like, that head is huge. Nobody
needs their big head on a thing like this. I'm like, so,
I was kind of like, even when my show went away,
I was sad that it went away, but I wasn't
really it was kind of a relief.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
There was some upside.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
Yeah, there was a bit that was that was.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Too much for me as a person, not as a performer,
but as a person.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
I get that.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, yeah, And I've heard you talk about work, and
you know how, in some ways you don't feel like
you've ever worked, because you know you've gotten to do
so much of.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
What you've loved. But where in the universe of your life,
where do you put work? With family? You know, all
the things. Where's work for you?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
For some people, it's really like the central part of
their life, right, where is it for you?
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Well?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
For me, you're right, because I don't consider it work
because I divorced that concept years ago. I wrote an
essay on LinkedIn years ago about deciding to give that
up when I was selling bookstore to Doring College, and
I went into many people's homes and just saw people
felt trapped in things, and I decided to choose a path.
(36:11):
You know that would kind of bring me fulfillment, and
I saw what I was doing for a living is
just kind of walking down this path, and that success
was where I started, not where I ended, and showbiz
was just different examples of that success as opposed to
a road to success, you know. So I've always viewed
work as the kind of a means to have expression
(36:34):
in that sort of thing.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
So it's never been a burden on me.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
You know, it's a burden in other ways, you know,
the physicality of it all, having.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
The righting things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
But I'm very lucky in the fact that, you know,
the thing that I do is my expression, you know,
and so and I'm driven in that way more so
than like I'm not competitive with other people. I'm competitive
with myself, you know. So I want to be, you know,
the best in that way. But I don't have any
demons associated with it that other than my procrastination demons,
(37:05):
like I have like so many different levels of procrastination.
It's crazy, you know, Like I have ways to procrastinate
my procrastinating, you know, true, because because they're categories, like
they're the worst is productive procrastination because you're actually getting
things done.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
But it's really procrastinating, you know, so well, I got
to clean my office.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
No, you have to write that scriptularry product that it's productive.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
Procrastination right right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
So.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
But here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
So when I've talked to I've done a lot of
electroniccologists and that type of stuff. One of my talk
to kids, I never encourage them to follow their dreams
as a job or to have to do for their job,
even what is their passion. I say, you don't have
to do that, because sometimes your passion can't make you
any money.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
You know, you have to make a living.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
So sometimes choose something that you're just good at, buying
something that you're good at.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
You don't have to be passionate about it.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
But something that you're good at you could be producted
at and it can make money for you. And then
keep your passion as your hobby. Yeah, because that's expression.
That's the thing that's that. Look for that. Look for hobby,
family friends for your happiness, quotion, and look for work
for your productivity. If happiness comes out of that bonus
round right right, But don't look for work for happy
(38:20):
you know, because you're you're going to be very disappointed.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
In that, you know.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
So I've never luckily, that's never been my happy place.
It's my fun place, but my happy place. If you
told me, strip away everything, what are you left with?
Speaker 5 (38:32):
Father? That's it.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, one word, it's the only word that really matters
to me, is father.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
You know, Yeah, same, I feel the same.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
All it could go away, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
You know completely, that's the that's the identity, not writer.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
Not comedian, and not this you know. Yeah, it's the
thing that.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Brings It's the thing where my happiness really is in that.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yes, No, I completely agree and get that. When when
you first had kids, though, did you feel becoming a
father threatened your identity as a comedian a writer?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Up was red wasn't even related to it and didn't
do it was just its own thing. I call kids
a blessed inconvenience is my name for chic.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
That's what they are.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
You're like, very inconvenient.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, it's like thank you God, you know, thank you?
Speaker 5 (39:26):
All right, Okay, freedom, yeah, yes exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
But the cost of the benefit of that loss of
freedom is happy.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
It's everything. It's everything, it's everything exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
So No, I never connected those you know, In fact,
if anything. I was worried that work would get in.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
The way of that. And in fact, I remember.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Looking at pictures of my wife with the kids, like
on some day and I'm like, where was imes?
Speaker 5 (39:50):
Like you were at work? Ass you missed all that?
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Sorry for the language here, but I'm like, how do
I miss those days?
Speaker 5 (39:56):
I missed so many days?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I see, like when my kids were little, it's when
I was working the most hours. Yeah, because I was
at the most productive time of my life during that period,
you know.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
And that's you. But you know, there's all those trade
offs in your life.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
Yeah, and there's no right answer.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I mean I constantly doing that in my mind too,
the guilt of like I'm working my ass off right now,
but it's for him, it's you know, and for me,
and that makes me a better mom being.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
You know. It's these circular conversations.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
Like come, you're never hears it. I'm working for your.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's tough. Okay, I want to
do a sort of sort of a lightning round.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I think you might have already said this, but Okay,
who's the funniest person you know.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
The funniest person I know personally? Yeah, the funniest person
I know personally. Unfortunately I lost a couple years ago
as my brother Mark. Okay, Mark was so funny, and
Mark could make himself look like people. I mean when
we were kids, he could do his face like Milton.
He just goes, you know, it's just like it just transformed,
like he could do anybody. But Mark was so deeply funny,
(41:06):
and anybody that knew him thought the same thing.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
So, yeah, my little.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Burrow, Who's the funniest person that I would know?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
There's several people in that category, and there's different ways
in which they are funny. I've been so fortunate because
I've worked with some really funny people.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah, we talked about Carl Reiner, Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Let me tell you, oh my god.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I mean as a performer, Eddie's very quiet personally, but
as a performer, I mean, you just cannot stop laughing.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
He's just so just so raw funny.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Bernie Mack was really really funny, and Living Color was
the funniest show I worked on because the writers were
hilarious and the performers. The writers are arguably funnier than
the performers sometimes, right, we have one writer named Less Firestine.
Oh god god, he was so funny. And we used
to do this thing I see where we would be
working till all hours of the night, like three or
(41:58):
four in the morning, so by one or in the
morning we do skits for each other. We got so
fun Oh man, we perform for each other and the
darkest stuff ever that you you could not ever if
you knew the stuff we were doing, we would have
been arrested immediately just for the subject matter.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
I mean so dark.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I think you would have appreciated, because I know, I
know your mind is very dark.
Speaker 5 (42:20):
I would no, I've actually serious.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
You would have enjoyed it. I believe nothing, nothing was sacred.
Everything you could make jokes about.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
I love that. I love dangerous comedy. I love Regu Turvas.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I love people who you know, really push the envelope
but are smart and funny.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
You hosted the White House Correspondence Dinner. I was there.
This is a quiz. The first White House Correspondence Dinner
was a in eighteen eighty eight, b in nineteen twenty one,
or c.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 5 (42:52):
I'm going to say nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
You're right, you are correct, ding Ding Ding. What's your
favorite movie?
Speaker 5 (43:01):
See, it's a.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
There's a competition there, we competition if I'm forced to
choose one. See, it's hard for me not to have
Marx brothers in there, just because they're so influential growing up.
Like Animal Crackers is not a great movie, but it's
still one of my favorite for you, Yeah, for me,
and Buster Keaton's up there too. The Graduate is a
(43:25):
movie that I can watch time and time again.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Perfect movie.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Yeah, there's a lot on there for this. I just
saw Coolie High again when I was a kid. That
movie meant so much to me.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
Favorite band.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
The Beatles.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Me too, big Beatle fan. I'm talking to ma about
this actually the Beatles.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Oh yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
And I got the Beatles later though, because I like
a lot of different kinds of music. By the way,
I'm a multi genre, yes person. Yes, sometimes it's move related.
But I had slept on the Beatles growing up, you know,
you know, I kind of knew who they were, blah
blah blah. But when John Lennon died, I remember my
brother got some eight track or something or Ca said
he had in his car. The Beatles live at the
Hollywood Bowl and he was playing it and I was
(44:07):
listening to the audience. I'm like, good Lord, I'm like Jesus,
like I had forgotten the phenomena that was the Beatles
because I was really too young to appreciate that.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
But just hearing the people scream, I thought, let me could,
let me look into these.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
So I started. I did the discography. I started with
their first album and I went in order. You know,
so good, and I'm so glad that I did. I
fell in love with them as a group too. There
was a special Malcolm MacDowell did called The Complete Beatles.
It's still one of the best. Yes, you know he
did at the time, and oh, I just completely I
went down that rabbit hole and just drank all the
(44:45):
kool aid. Yeah, you know, it was all in on
the Beatles and just from then on, that's that's, that's
my group.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
It always amazed me that they were a band for
five years. Five years, that's it. Five years and they
made the most important music of history.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
I mean, I just yeah, you can't get over how
talented they were.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Finally, this question is very important to me culturallym When
is iced coffee season?
Speaker 1 (45:12):
See, for me, it's never ice coffee season never, Well,
why why do I want to make my coffee cold?
Speaker 4 (45:19):
You know you don't want to sip it. You want
to inject it into your veins.
Speaker 5 (45:22):
You want it. Cockee Coffee knows its job. Coffee knows
its job. You know.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Well, that's it's the wrong answer. The right answer is
year round, year round. But you learn from a person by.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Asking you, like, I don't like food, trying to trick me,
that's something else. Okay, So coffee ice coffee is trying
to trick me that it's iced tea.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
But you're not coffee. You are not.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
You know you're not, So stop it. It's like couscous
trying to pretend it's rice. No, you're not couscous. You're
you're not rice. Stop trying to act like it. You
know rice is rice. That's why we have it. That's
why it's there. That's why they had to come to
the term impossible burger, because you know, you're acknowledging the
fact that there's no way.
Speaker 5 (46:00):
That's a burger.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
So at least you acknowledge it. Yeah, at least you
acknowledged that this is impossible. Because I agree with you,
I don't know what this is, but you're right, it
is impossible. But I don't like food that's trying to
trick me. So I believe, I believe ice coffee at
its core, and it will admit this is engage in
a deceptive campaign.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Well on behalf of iced coffee. I am sorry you.
Speaker 5 (46:20):
Feel your way, but sorry ice coffee.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
We love, we love ice coffee. Larry Wilmore. This was
such a treat. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (46:26):
It was my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Next week on Off the Cup, I talked to two
of my favorite politicos, but not about politics.
Speaker 8 (46:34):
You were on the team because they drafted him first,
and you are the traveling trailing sibling. So I had
my houch ego rocked pretty hard at age twelve.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
It's Congressman Eric Swollwell and former Congressman Adam Kinsinger.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
You can freak yourself out in the cockpit.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
You really could, because you're I'm freaked out right now
just hearing the.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Recent Choice Network. I'm Your Hostess Cupp
editing and sound designed by Derek Clements. Our executive producers
are Messie Cupp, Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffman. If you
like Off the Cup, please rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts, follow, or subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday.
Oh, is success gonna give you a big head? I'm like,
I'm fifty two. Success had his chance when I was younger.
You know, Sorry, Success, You're a little too late.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
You know.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
So you know, I meet a lot of people in
this business, including people you never expect to I've done
TV with everyone from RuPaul to Newt Gingrich, from Zach
Gallifanakis to David Milliband. It's a weird career. And I
know a lot of smart people. I know a lot
(00:34):
of funny people. I know some kind people. I don't
know many who are all three. But I was lucky
enough to work with my next guest several times, I think,
but most notably for me when I was a guest
on his own talk show and I had just had
my son, Jack, and it was one of the first
return TV appearances for me, and I was feeling, you know,
(00:57):
a little vulnerable, a little insecure about my body, and
this person just could not have been nicer, putting me
at ease, making me feel like I could just get
back in the saddle. I'll never forget that, because he
didn't have to be. You might know him as the
one time senior black correspondent on The Daily show. He
(01:18):
was host of the nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, That'll
Give It Away, creator of The Bernie Mac Show, co
creator of Insecure on HBO. I love that show, host
of the Black on the Air podcast, and so so,
so much more.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
It's Larry Willmore welcome.
Speaker 5 (01:32):
Hey, say's such a nice intro. That's so nice.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
I don't know if you remember that, but I remember that.
Speaker 5 (01:38):
Si.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I was a fan of yours for a long time.
I admire you because you were a conservative in those
liberal spaces, you know, yeah, and you never shied down,
and you know, but you were always so just quick
and smart and funny. You know, you had a light approach.
You never like put people down. So I always I
(01:59):
admired you. I'm a fire way before that, you were
on my show and I was. I was so excited
when you were going to do the show because I
was a big fan. So that's a big memory.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Oh well, that's really nice.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
I feel like you had to say that because I
just said all those nice things about it.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Yeah, true, sure, Well it's mutual.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
I just I think I think the world of view
and I was a fan as well. It feels like
everything has changed so much since that time in twenty fifteen,
like everything's changed, media, politics, doesn't it?
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Oh thousand percent? You know, it's funny. The American President
was on TV the other day, you know, the Aaron
Sarkin thing from the nineties. Oh, I love that, and
I think I haven't seen it since it came out. Actually,
it wasn't one of those. It wasn't a repeated viewing
thing for me. And nothing is a movie. It was fine,
but oh my god, I say the time capsule and
this is fiction, of course, yeah, but at the time
(02:52):
it kind of mirrored what was about to happen with
the Monica Lewinsky things, Kunda, But this is more chaste.
It's just a bachelor president with a girlfriend.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
If I were on your staff, I would tell you
that the absolute worst thing you can do coming into
an election year is to open yourself up to character attacks,
and the quickest way to do that is to prance
around like the playboy of the Western world.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
But the things we considered scandalous back then from politics,
you can't even I mean, Trump in one sentence blows that.
Speaker 5 (03:18):
Out of the water, you know, I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The world has changed so much in that short amount
of time.
Speaker 5 (03:26):
You know.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
You know, it's funny you brought that up because I
should get erin on the podcast, because I consulted for
his show, The Newsroom and got to know him then.
And then I guest lecture a class called Politics and
Movies at Cornell once a year, and I always show
the American President and I always have Arin give me
(03:47):
a little tidbit to tell that class, like give me
some behind the scenes.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
And it's so funny. He always leads with apologies.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I was young, yeah, yeah, and I'm like, Aron, No,
it's such a good movie. It's very capra, it's very
you know, Collyanna. But it's a great movie. And he's
like embarrassed by it because it was so naive, a
bit and rosy, and you know, everyone was ultimately a
(04:16):
good person, you know.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Yeah, mister Smith is already in Washington. Was that that
is exactly And it's kind of a precursor to the
West Wing too, you know.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
It was, and that helped.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
But you know, he said, I just wanted to write
a rom com in a weird place, like what would
be the weirdest place I could set.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
A rom com?
Speaker 3 (04:36):
And so he thought, well, I'll do it in the
White House. But anyway, that's that's off topic. I'm just
glad you brought that.
Speaker 5 (04:41):
Up, because when you think of romantic places, you think
of the.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Way the White House the White House.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
We don't get too political on the show because this
is supposed to be a break from all of that anxiety.
But do you think things, media politics we'll ever get
back to normal?
Speaker 5 (05:00):
Absolutely not. I think things never reset.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
They just go to a new place in a different
way that we could never predict it, and that becomes
the norm, you know. But I don't think there's ever
been a point in history where we can look back
and think there was a reset.
Speaker 5 (05:14):
You know. Yeah, I can't remember any.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
But it doesn't mean necessarily that it'll be a bad place,
because many times I think young people reset against whatever
the culture before, or a couple of cultures before, if
they go too far to the left. The younger generation
kind of resets right, you know, and that it goes
too far right, they kind of reset left, it seems like,
but they do it in different ways, you know, which
(05:39):
is what keeps making things contemporary and that sort of thing.
Speaker 5 (05:43):
But yeah, this.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Call for things to go back, it's never going to happen.
I don't know why people make those calls.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
You know, Yeah, I don't know. I think part of
me at least wishes. I don't know if you feel
this way, but there felt to me like a heyday
of media, and in particular political metia.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
Yeah, and that.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Involved the Daily Show, but it also just it was
a it was more fun. Yeah, and you know, the
media was booming and we're in a decline right now.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
That's just a fact.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, yeah, it's true, you know, And it's funny if
you you know, I like, you know, I've been kind
of a history buff lately going through different periods. I
like to put myself into the contemporarious, contemporaneous, you know,
moments and that sort of thing. And I was looking
at how horrible the eighteen sixties and seventies were like
in New York City, and how oh man, you talk
(06:31):
about how politics being nasty, we can't hold a candle
to what was going on.
Speaker 5 (06:35):
The oh the civility. I mean, it was terrible, you know.
And media.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
What was media then were newspapers and cartoons, you know, yeah, right,
and some of the cartoons single handedly kind of like
how the Daily Show did and to a certain extent.
Saturday Night Live, you know, how they've lampooned people, has
become the kind of way in which we interact with
politics and that sort of thing. It'd be interesting to
see what takes the place of the Daily Show, because
(07:01):
I don't know if it has the same influence that
it had in that period you were talking about, or
if Saturday Night Live continues to be that place where
you know, we can look to for what's reflecting where
we are, who's making comments, you know, where can we
connect and that kind of thing, you know, because.
Speaker 5 (07:19):
They've had such an amazing long run of doing that.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Oh totally, it's crazy what happened to Funnier Die. Wasn't
Funnier Die going to be something like that?
Speaker 5 (07:29):
I think so? But I, you know what, that's a
good question.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
I think what Funnier Dye has its opponent is the
viral video, and that's a very formidable opponent, you know. So,
I think it's hard to manufacture viral videos.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
It's just difficult. Good luck.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
You know, all the companies you know, es see, you know,
I worked in Televant Primary creating shows and stuff. There
have been different periods where different companies like Verizon and
that sort of thing have tried to do. These startups
of making content for your phone. People have tried it
at different times, and it always fails because they're competing
against viral videos, which TikTok is smart because it's that
(08:07):
you can just make your vile video on our platform.
We're not going to try to make them.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
I remember that because I develop as well.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
And I remember being in a meeting years ago and
Quibi was going to be the.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
New Quibbi right exactly, it was going to.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Be the thing, and they wanted you to make like
eight minute content for kids walking in between classes on
college campuses.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
And I was like, you know how to create this way.
Speaker 5 (08:31):
Exactly exactly where?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
And the actual content that they're interested in is someone
just simply opening a box and telling you what's in it.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
That's the content they're interested in. So all these.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Millions of dollars of research into what show and it's
highly produced at all, this of eight minutes.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
No no, no, no, no, sorry, asshole.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
I just want to see somebody opening a box and
just tell me what's in it.
Speaker 5 (08:53):
That's the content on it, And.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
Right, I learn for this upcoming generation because my nine
year old. I mean it loves those videos watching other kids,
oh my toys or games.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
I know it's amazing. Could you imagine like seeing Harry
Truman back in the day, like opening.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Effected Sason watch them.
Speaker 6 (09:21):
I got this a bound business a little later, but
before that, you know, it's Christmas Day.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
I want to talk about your career and how you
became so successful and agile and diversified in everything you've done.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
But take me back before you grew up.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
You grew up in Pomonas, California, and you had lots
of siblings.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Yeah, there were six of us total. I was third
from the top.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
A common refrain I hear among comedians is like I
came from a big family, and so I had to
like being funny?
Speaker 4 (10:07):
Was how I got attention?
Speaker 5 (10:08):
Was that?
Speaker 1 (10:09):
No, not really, I just have a funny family, but
they don't know that they're funny. So my parents are hilarious,
but they just don't know it, and they're so they
were opposite. My parents divorce when I was about nine
or ten, but they're still ironically they're still together.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
They which is crazy, like.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Like they're so crazy they can't even stay away from
each other, even with the divorce, you know, that's how
crazy they are. But like my mom was always the
extreme emotionally and my dad was the complete opposite in
a funny way. So that was always their conflict. Like
I always said, like, if I'm driving a car and
I just switched things, I'm.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Like, Mom, what what you didn't use your plane crash? Dad?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
You almost killed me right now, you know, whereas a
plane could crash in the house next door and den hmmm,
I'm like, I'm like, Dad, that was a plane crash
for plane because man was not meant to fly, you know.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
Like he would have some philosophical thing like that.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And my brother and I, who we just found them
so hilarious, like they were our entertainment, you know, most
of the time. And so that's where it comes from. Really,
my brother and I observing the world around us, and
we went to Catholic schools, so we used to make
fun of our nuns and all that stuff, and the
teachers and our neighbors who we make fun of. So
we had all these characters in our world that we
(11:27):
just found as entertainment. So that's where my sense of
humor comes from.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
That's really funny. I just watched the Albert Brooks documentary.
Speaker 5 (11:34):
It was great, Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
So good. I love him.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
But you know that part where Rob Reiner is talking
about how.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
They were friends as kids.
Speaker 5 (11:44):
Yeah, and how.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Carl Reiner Rob's dad told Albert Brooks at some point
when he was a teenager, like, you're the funniest person
I've ever met.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
You.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
Imagine Yeah, I can't imagine. In fact, I have chills
right now just even talking about it. What that must
have been like for Albert Brooks. But was there someone
in your life who told you, you know, you're really funny?
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Well it wasn't so much that, but I got an opportunity.
Let me just side comment this first. This is what
Trump does in his speeches. He side speeches is what
I call it speech, and then side speech. I had
the great opportunity to spend time with Carl Reiner on
three different occasions, and it was it was one of
the joys I first met him. And then I'll go
back to your question. Okay, because Carl Reiner was kind
(12:27):
of an inspiration to me.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
You know, you know, my questions don't matter. Tell me
everything about Carlin.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Okay, So, when I was a young comic, they had
the thing called the Comedy Awards.
Speaker 5 (12:37):
It was something like that.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
They were trying for a few years, and I think
Steve Martin was being I think Steve Martin was being honored,
I think, or maybe it was mel Brooks's one of
the two. It was probably mel Brooks. But there was
this table with Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Carl Reiner, mel
Brooks or all at this table, and I this young
comic and I wanted to say hi to Carl Reiner,
you know, but there's all these stars there just.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Kind of sheepless.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
You go up and then goes, sorry, mister Reiner, my
name is Larry I mccomack, I wanted to say. And
he was so nice, like, oh, hey, how you doings
like to be? He said, you know what, You're a
comic and I said, you know what, you're good looking.
Dick van Dyke was good looking, and he did great,
you'll do him. I'm like, okay, thanks card. So so
he like gave you this cop a bit and but
here are Steve Martin all these other people who I love.
(13:23):
But I zero done on Carl Reiner, not even knowing
at the time that I would. He was the model
for the career. I was going to have somebody who
was a showrunner. He was also a performer, he was
a director, He was out there the rack and took
kind of he did everything, you know, he was he
was the hyphen it before anybody who was, you know.
And then later he was on the Bernie mac Show. Yes,
where I got him and I got to see different
(13:44):
phases of them. So we went out to lunch and
he's Carl Reiner, the legend at lunch, you know, and
he's telling stories, you know, and he's.
Speaker 4 (13:51):
Where is where do you go to lunch?
Speaker 5 (13:53):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
God, who knows? It wasn't anywhere fancy. It was just
was it in a yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:57):
Yeah, like studio city? It was no fancy es.
Speaker 4 (14:00):
I want to be there. I'm setting.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
It was great because we're sitting at his feet, you know,
listening to these stories and all this stuff, and he's
called writer, the legend, the rack and tour. Then we
get on set and now I'm the showrunner and now
he's the insecure actor, you know, and you see him
completely change, you know.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
Is that okay? Is that right? And the whole this whole.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Thing that was just there is just gun and I'm like, hey,
it's great, and I'm his boss now, so we have
a different relationship and we're interacting and all that stuff.
And then later they're doing the remake of The Dick
Van Dyke Show and he invited me to the set
and I go there and there's oh, you know, Dick
Van Dyke's there, and Mary Tyler Moore, you know, people
from the original cas some of the writers who I
was fans of, like Percy and dan If. I'm talking
(14:40):
to these guys now he's called Renner the showrunner.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
Yeah, okay, completely different.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
All those relationships that Dick and Mary had back in
nineteen sixty one came back. You could see you could
even see Mary's insecurity a little bit. You know, Dick
there is the star. You could see their relationship, but
they're beholden to I mean, this is this is years later,
all those relationships right in place. He's quick witted, he's
on it. You can see his brain working the way.
(15:07):
You know, I don't even know how old he was, seventies, eighties,
but he was on it. I was like, wow, I
just got to see three phases of this guy.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
That's incredible.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
And then the final one, I did it He did
my podcast a couple of years before he passed away,
and I was in his home and we spent an
hour talking, just shooting the ship, and it was see
it was that's my Carl Reiner legacy.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
I got to spend so much time with him.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
But he's my He's my show biz inspiration, well with
somebody who did it the long term.
Speaker 5 (15:33):
But what he really loves.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
He loves comedy, and so do I, you know, and
we realized that there's different ways to express it. Sometimes
it's a joke, and that's when I did stand up.
Sometimes it's a sketch, and he just show shows. I
didn't live in color, you know, you expressed it in
that way. He did Dick Van Dykes show, I did
Bernie macshow. You know, you can sometimes you need a
longer for him, you know. Sometimes I did it an essay.
I did it in Nightly Showing, a whole different form
(15:56):
where it's political commentary. But I'm still looking for the
humor and that sort of thing. So I've always been
I've done the different things because my expression is comedy.
But I realized you can put it in different forms
and get it out there, you know. So when I
was doing stand ups. Sometimes I'd be frustrated because I'm like,
that's not really joke, but I like it. It's funny.
Speaker 5 (16:15):
I go, well, what is it?
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Oh maybe that's a film idea, you know, right, So
that's kind of my road.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Oh what an awesome story.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
I'm so glad I brought up the Albert Brooks documentary.
I'm so glad because that was incredible story. One of
your first TV roles was on a show that was
really really important to me.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
Larry, that's hilarious.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Oh, it has to be.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
You take the good, you take the bad, you take
them both. In there you have the backs of life.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Tell me everything about Touty and Blair and Joe and
Natalie and missus Garrett.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
Tell me everything.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
What are you about.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I'm a young actor at the time, wanting to break
into show biz. I was a theater major. I was
a very serious actor at the time, but I was
also doing stand up.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
I took very seriously. I used to always I go to.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Auditions and I'd changed the lines, not knowing that might
be offensive, but I would think it's something funnier.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
So but anyhow, I did this theater reading.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
They were the Olympics were coming in nineteen eighty four
to la and they had a year earlier they had
these readings. Even maybe it might have been even two
years earlier. It might have been two years earlier where
they were gonna put on some theater for the Olympics.
Speaker 5 (17:25):
There was something like that.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
And they had these special shows on a friend of
mine and to ask if I would do a part
in it, and I ended up getting a lot of laughs,
and there were a lot of people in the audience
like Danny Simon, Neil Simon's brother O, people who came
up to me and they were.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
Like, oh, you're really funny. I'm like, oh, thank you,
you know.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
But there was a casting person in there from I
think Embassy Television at the time. And they later brought
me in to read for a pilot called Aka Pablo,
and I read for it. I didn't get it, but
they liked me a lot and brought the same people
brought me back to read for the Facts of Life.
So the first part I read for the Facts of
Life was for two Dy's boyfriend and he was this
illiterate like football player. Because they always had those it's
(18:01):
a special facts of life. You know, they would have
I remember those special stories. And so he was the
illiterate football player. He's ashamed of Beig not being able
to read.
Speaker 5 (18:09):
It was that type of story of life. So I
read for it.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Everything said, Larry, you know you were great. We really
loved reading, but we just don't believe that you're a literate.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
What a compliment, I know.
Speaker 5 (18:20):
And I'm like, but I am. Trust me, I could
be stupid. Guys trust me.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
They're like, no, you can't.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
And then they brought me back to play the part
of a cop. They just gave me the role because
they just liked me. Yeah, and officers Ziakis I think
was the name exactly?
Speaker 2 (18:37):
What?
Speaker 5 (18:37):
Just the graffiti saying it says, uh, I can't say it,
missus Garrett.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I've been a police officer for three years, and before
that I was a kid.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
I've heard just about everything.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
It was recurring, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I played a couple of episodes and it was so
surreal because it was shot on the Universal Lot and
I used to sneak on that lot as a you know,
dreaming of being you know, part of it. And I
remember sneaking into the Alfred Hitchcock theater and I'm watching
them edit films. I'd be in the book, you know,
scared that I'm out. Yeah, my friend and I we
would go into the dining room. We dined and dashed
(19:12):
a couple of dames.
Speaker 5 (19:14):
So great, this is the life.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
I really was the kid who dreamed of being on there,
and so they'll actually be on a show.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
I'll never forget. I had a dressing room. It was
like in a trailer outside and I saw the tram.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Go by that I used to be on, and I
want to kind of wave and through the moment.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
How old were you?
Speaker 1 (19:29):
I was in my early twenties, twenty one, twenty two.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Something like that. And I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Tony Danza came by and they all knew who he was,
and he was like, yeah, I'm doing.
Speaker 5 (19:40):
This new show. We just did the pilot over there.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, and that was who's the boss? That turned out
to be you know, of course, and it was so cosey.
They were doing the Jefferson's right down the hall. It
was such a jobish thing. But the girls on the
show were really nice, you really really nice. Yeah, And
Charlotte Ray played in some garrett. I was already a
fan of hers, such a pro she was so nice,
but it it was fun.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Could you tell because Kim Fields sort of had a
similar trajectory. She ended up writing, she ended up show running,
she ended up at movies like she does a lot more,
yeah than you know that sitcom. Could you tell at
the time that Kim Fields was going to be not
just a star of a sitcom, but like that she
was a real smart writer, producer, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Well, I don't know if I could tell that, but
her mom, Chip Fields, was I think a manager at
the time. So Kim's got that in her of there's
more than just what you're doing. Yeah, you know, so
it doesn't surprise me. She was one of the most
likable ones on that cast. I think the audience loved
Kim Fields.
Speaker 5 (20:39):
You know, she was so too.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
I mean even the name right, skates, I mean all
of it love.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
I would see her years later and I just played
a small part and she always remembered.
Speaker 5 (20:49):
She was always so nice and lovely. Yeah, couldn't.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
I was like, man, she's so nice and she kind
of has that reputation. It's funny, you know, we always
say the stories about people being this and that, but
I'll tell you that cast was just great. It was
just really nice people. It wasn't like one of those
nasty situation type things.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yes, it's fun. That was my that's my break.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
You also wrote for Fresh Prince of bel Air, which
was also very important to me as as a child.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
I only write shows that important to you.
Speaker 4 (21:18):
Well, obviously, clearly what was Will Smith like then?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Okay, Will Smith another great guy. He was very approachable.
He wasn't standoffish. I was there the last season, so
I wasn't there in some of the early seasons, but
they were very tight group.
Speaker 4 (21:34):
I mean the last season. He was a big star.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
He well he hadn't quite broken out as a movie
star yet. Yeah, he was about to.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
You know, he was like the biggest thing on TV.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
He was, he was, he was pretty big, you know.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
But it's funny that there is that difference when you
go up that next that next step.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
Like Michael J.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Fox, who I got to me years ago, you know
before he was a big star, but family ties made
him a TV star, but it was back to the
future that really made him a whole whole different category,
you know, totally, And the same with Will with Men
in Black, it just put him in a just different
category than fresh prince, but fresh prince for us, you know,
it was all that and everything, but really cool.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
I still talk to Will this day.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
He used to call me up over the years and
I'd come in and help them pilots punch up that
kind of stuff.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But we did a special called a Mend, a docu
series on Netflix about the Fourteenth Amendment that Will hosted
and I produced and I appeared on. It was great
working with him, and so that was a nice full
circle moment.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
What did you think of the slat It was very
I thought it was very surreal.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
To me, it seemed like Will had an out of
body experience. It seemed like, I know, there's no way
if he had to do it again, he'd do the
same thing. That's one of those things where I'm sure
he'd say.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
No, Like that was not the Will Smith.
Speaker 5 (22:47):
You knew, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, you know, So I don't know what was going
on personally or whatever. I have no idea, but it
was so out of character.
Speaker 5 (22:56):
And he's very aware.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Will knows, he's very aware of what Hollywood is, how
meaningful it is. He's very aware of the history, the legacies,
protecting your legacy like he Tom Cruise. Those type of people,
they always seem to protect their legacies so so much.
You could tell the people that do that, right, those
big starts. So yes, why would Will Smith do that?
It seems so out of character. It had to have
(23:18):
been some out of body experience where he just left
himself for a second and forgot about that because somebody
of that stature just doesn't make sense, you know, it
really didn't.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I mean from a pr point of view or a
really any point of view, it really didn't make sense.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
There's no point of view it makes sense. And Chris
Rock's a comedian. You know, he's a comedian. You know
he's making jokes. Yeah, you know, he's going to make
jokes that are going to be off color, that type
of thing. That's but that's why he's Chris Rock. That's
why we love him. So yeah, you know, and if
you have a real beef with them, you have it afterwards.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
You know, you don't have it like that live TV.
Speaker 7 (23:50):
Yeah, No, no, no, no. Can can I get personal
with you?
Speaker 5 (24:05):
Yeah? Absolutely? But do you want to know, girl.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
How did you meet your ex wife?
Speaker 1 (24:11):
I met my ex wife through a blind date set
up by a dear friend of mine who's still a differend.
And we went out briefly, and then we didn't date,
and then I called her out a year later, and
then we went out like one and then I.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Called her a year later again. It was like a
start and stop type of it.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Okay, Yeah, and then we I remember, we ended up
just talking on the phone every day and just realized
just how much we just had in common and liked
each other, and we just got to do each other
and that's pretty much.
Speaker 5 (24:49):
How it happened.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
She was in the business as well.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, Yeah, she was an actress. She's did a lot
of stage work. She was from Hawaii. Her name is Leilani,
and she wanted Tony Broadway. I'm very talented, and she was,
you know, she did a ton of voice over work,
which I think she still does some of the commercials
and that kind of stuff. She was the voice of
Specific Telesis. It was one of those things. She was
(25:11):
one of those Pine Salt ladies, you know, was one
of those if you look.
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Back, you go, oh, I remember her.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, she's a Pine sal lady, and yeah, it's one
of those things. I met her at a time in
my life where I had dated enough where I knew
whatever I was doing was not working, you know, And
so I decided to do it differently, consciously with her,
and I decided to just be friends and get to
know somebody because I just had no skills in the
(25:37):
relationship department. And see, I just didn't know what I
was doing, and I had very low self esteem with that.
I was a very shy growing up when came to girls.
But having someone who basically was a friend, you know,
really made that. And I tell you when we had
problems later on, we eventually divorced. But I'm not talking
(25:59):
on a turn to me. She had some issues with depression,
and I think a lot of it was related to
our son was diagnosed with autism. He had aspergers, and
I think she took it very personally. She had a
lot of postpartum things, and it was a very deep
emotional thing for her. And it's hard as a partner
sometimes it's hard to penetrate someone else's thing it's that deep,
(26:19):
you know. So when she got on some medication, you know,
we really couldn't work on our marriage at that point
because it just wasn't fair somebody just going through that.
But because this just from my point of view, of course,
I think we had done so much work in the
friend category. At the beginning of our relationship. I was
(26:39):
there for her as a friend first of all. You know,
of course, someone you love and you care about. But
like I threw that out of my mind, the problems
that we were having during that time, and focused on
the fact that this is someone in your life that
you cared deeply about and you have to be there
to support them and that kind of stuff, and it
was really good, you know.
Speaker 5 (26:59):
It was one of those I value that.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
That's how our relationships started, and even now we still talk,
you know, because we have two kids of course, yep.
And I just saw her sister and her husband, my
daughter's doing a show a regional theater right.
Speaker 5 (27:12):
Now, and we were all hugging everything.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Oh, it's so good to see and I was like,
I felt so lucky that that her family is still
my family in my mind and would be. All that
love and bond is still there. And I know it's
because of the way that it started. There was a
deep friendship respect for that seeing the other person as
a person, you know, it was such a big lesson
in relationships for me at the time.
Speaker 3 (27:35):
Well, I love that, and it's so what you said
just really resonated. I a few years ago had a
bit of a nervous breakdown and began working on my
mental health.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
I struggled from severe anxiety.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
And for this time, when it was really rough, everything
stopped and my family got real small, and with this
was all that mattered, right, getting me better, and I
was able to put like work aside, and all the
other things stopped, and it was in a way, I mean,
it was very difficult, but it was in a way
(28:09):
very nice to have this one focus as a family.
And then of course, as I you know, started working
on my mental health and getting better, everything else comes
right back, right, every problem you had and every reality
comes back. But for that time, you really know who
is there for you right in those moments, who will
(28:32):
drop everything to focus on the one thing that matters
the most in that moment and everything else can wait. Yeah,
what kind of parents were you? What kind of dad
were you when they were young? What kind of dad
are you?
Speaker 6 (28:44):
Now?
Speaker 5 (28:45):
That's a great question.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
I know my wife was more of the I wouldn't
say disciplinarian because we both were that in certain ways.
But maybe we traded roles or that type of thing.
But I was a firmed but I was a fun
dad too.
Speaker 5 (29:04):
You know.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
I always like to bring excitement and you know, pass
on the joy of things to the kids and stuff.
We all laughed a lot, you know, that sort of thing.
But it was the one of the funnest roles was
being the heavy when I had to.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
You know, it was fun.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
So oh my god, because when kids are little, you know,
this is see they're so hilarious, yes, you know, like
and the thing is, this is why it so irks
me when I see parents that don't discipline their children,
you know, because I'm like, this is the time when
you can do it when they're small.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
You're not.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
If you don't do it now, good luck later, because
you know, you're just gonna release this monster into the world,
you know. But uh so, like one thing, like, you know,
you can't really spanker kids that type of thing, but
in public, like I would pinch them sometimes they did,
and I look them in the eye because nobody can
see you pinching.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
They're like oh, and I'm like, yeah, yeah, we're not
gonna do that. Anymore. No, you know, that of thing.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
But my kids had a good sense of what's right
and what's wrong. So if they did something wrong that
was really bad, my wife would send them to me
in the den, and it's in there, and they come in,
I'll say everything it's I mean, it's so adorable.
Speaker 5 (30:11):
Yeah, you know, and I would.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Just say, okay, tell me what happened, you know, oh
John did what were you right or were you wrong?
Speaker 5 (30:21):
What I was wrong? Okay? All right, Well what do
you need? What do you need to do? You know?
Tell them I'm sorry, okay, all right.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
You know we did talk about what's the right thing
to do, what's the wrong thing.
Speaker 5 (30:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I always tried to use language properly with my kids.
Like we would go to church. My wife sang in
the in the choir at Saint Charles Burmo. Paul Solomonovitch
is this great choir director. They sang for the Pope
and all kinds of it was legendary choir. And she
she has beautiful she's sang in that choir. If we
were in church, I would never tell the kids to
(30:55):
be quiet in church, okay, never said that.
Speaker 5 (30:59):
I would say show respect.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Oh yeah, okay, because.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
I wanted them to learn the distinction and behavior. You know,
quiet you're not really doing something.
Speaker 5 (31:08):
But if you're showing respect, that's active.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
You know, that's so good.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah, being quiet is more passive, but showing respect they
have to actively do that.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
So and be quiet sounds like a punishment, which it does,
and be respectful as not.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
And they're more in control of being respectful. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Also if they know the distinction, they know that quiet
to me has a time limit to it, but respect doesn't. Yeah, yeah,
there no, So just having distinctions with them and using
language carefully and that type of thing. I was always
aware of the language that I use with the kids.
And when they got a little older, we would have
great conversations stuff like that. And I remember having one
(31:46):
with my daughter and she goes, oh, Dad, I wish
you could.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
Raise my kids. And I said, what do you think
I'm doing now?
Speaker 1 (31:51):
She goes, oh, you know, like so we used to
have that type of stuff. But I really enjoyed the
conversations we'd have. We'd have philosophical conversations, fun conversations and
things like that. So we and they're very close to
their mom in that way too.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Yeah, we all have that type of type of relationship,
which is great. Although my son talks to her way more.
I have to get things out of him, like she'll
call me, said to John, tell you he's trying to say. No,
he never talks to me. He tells you everything, you know.
So they have like this secret relationship. I don't know
where she gets to know everything.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
As we do. We do with our boys, we do.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
She gets to know things months before I even know.
Speaker 8 (32:30):
That's the things.
Speaker 5 (32:30):
Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
So then in twenty fifteen, tell me if I'm wrong,
you have to move for work. You moved to New
York right for the night they show what was that
like on your family?
Speaker 1 (32:45):
That was tough because we were going through a breakup
at that time. So those things are happening at the
same time. We have been in marriage counseling for almost
eight or nine years.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
For a long time. No, we worked on it for
a long time. Yeah, it had reached its.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
End, I guess you could say, but it was unfortunate timing.
So it's a bit of a strain. But you know,
real tough of me because I'm missing my family and
all that stuff. And then your second guess am I
doing the right thing?
Speaker 5 (33:09):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So when I was doing the night the show, I
was going through all that, especially in the first year,
it was very, very difficult and feeling very alone there
in New York too, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
And was this your big Like did you feel the
weight of this show, the pressure of this show your
name's on it? You know? Was that daunting to you
or had you already done so much that you were
just like, I'm ready.
Speaker 5 (33:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
I used to joke with people, I said, U, h
is success gonna give you a big head? I'm like,
I'm fifty two. Success had its chance when I was younger.
You know, Sorry, success, You're a little too late, you know. Yeah, like, sorry,
I'm going through a divorce, you know, do this. You know,
I got success your way, but you he're so far
in back of the line, you know.
Speaker 4 (33:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
In fact, some of it I kind of resented because
I loved being successful and anonymous. It was great, you know,
but losing anonymity is not fun, you know. And and
it was a little too much attention, Like I don't
I'm not a performer for the attention. I'm a performer
for the expression. So it's so even when I did
stand up, you know, I love doing it, but after
(34:17):
the show I wouldn't hang around, you know, the audience
or that type of thing. So I was always shy
because I was shy growing up and stuff. But I
love performing, but I do it for the expression of it.
I love figuring out the joke and then seeing if
it works yeah yeah, and then if it works, hey
I did it, you know. But some people do it
for the attention they need the laughs to validate them.
For me, I want the laughs to validate the joke,
(34:38):
you know, not to validate me. So my friends and
family are there to validate me, you know, and all
that stuff. So luckily I got there to unluckily so
when the nightly show like I'm on billboards and taxi
cabs are going by, it was way too much, I see.
I'll be honest with you, it was. I was a
good God, no wonder people turn into monsters who nobody
should have this much attention. That's what I was time.
(35:01):
You know, some of it was flattering, but honestly, it
was too much. I just I always felt it was
too much. Anytime I see a poster of my big
head on it. I'm like, that head is huge. Nobody
needs their big head on a thing like this. I'm like, so,
I was kind of like, even when my show went away,
I was sad that it went away, but I wasn't
really it was kind of a relief.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
There was some upside.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
Yeah, there was a bit that was that was.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Too much for me as a person, not as a performer,
but as a person.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
I get that.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, yeah, And I've heard you talk about work, and
you know how, in some ways you don't feel like
you've ever worked, because you know you've gotten to do
so much of.
Speaker 4 (35:35):
What you've loved. But where in the universe of your life,
where do you put work? With family? You know, all
the things. Where's work for you?
Speaker 3 (35:45):
For some people, it's really like the central part of
their life, right, where is it for you?
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Well?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
For me, you're right, because I don't consider it work
because I divorced that concept years ago. I wrote an
essay on LinkedIn years ago about deciding to give that
up when I was selling bookstore to Doring College, and
I went into many people's homes and just saw people
felt trapped in things, and I decided to choose a path.
(36:11):
You know that would kind of bring me fulfillment, and
I saw what I was doing for a living is
just kind of walking down this path, and that success
was where I started, not where I ended, and showbiz
was just different examples of that success as opposed to
a road to success, you know. So I've always viewed
work as the kind of a means to have expression
(36:34):
in that sort of thing.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
So it's never been a burden on me.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
You know, it's a burden in other ways, you know,
the physicality of it all, having.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
The righting things like that.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
But I'm very lucky in the fact that, you know,
the thing that I do is my expression, you know,
and so and I'm driven in that way more so
than like I'm not competitive with other people. I'm competitive
with myself, you know. So I want to be, you know,
the best in that way. But I don't have any
demons associated with it that other than my procrastination demons,
(37:05):
like I have like so many different levels of procrastination.
It's crazy, you know, Like I have ways to procrastinate
my procrastinating, you know, true, because because they're categories, like
they're the worst is productive procrastination because you're actually getting
things done.
Speaker 5 (37:20):
But it's really procrastinating, you know, so well, I got
to clean my office.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
No, you have to write that scriptularry product that it's productive.
Speaker 5 (37:29):
Procrastination right right, exactly.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
So.
Speaker 5 (37:35):
But here's the thing.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
So when I've talked to I've done a lot of
electroniccologists and that type of stuff. One of my talk
to kids, I never encourage them to follow their dreams
as a job or to have to do for their job,
even what is their passion. I say, you don't have
to do that, because sometimes your passion can't make you
any money.
Speaker 5 (37:51):
You know, you have to make a living.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
So sometimes choose something that you're just good at, buying
something that you're good at.
Speaker 5 (37:57):
You don't have to be passionate about it.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
But something that you're good at you could be producted
at and it can make money for you. And then
keep your passion as your hobby. Yeah, because that's expression.
That's the thing that's that. Look for that. Look for hobby,
family friends for your happiness, quotion, and look for work
for your productivity. If happiness comes out of that bonus
round right right, But don't look for work for happy
(38:20):
you know, because you're you're going to be very disappointed.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
In that, you know.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
So I've never luckily, that's never been my happy place.
It's my fun place, but my happy place. If you
told me, strip away everything, what are you left with?
Speaker 5 (38:32):
Father? That's it.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, one word, it's the only word that really matters
to me, is father.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
You know, Yeah, same, I feel the same.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
All it could go away, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
You know completely, that's the that's the identity, not writer.
Speaker 5 (38:45):
Not comedian, and not this you know. Yeah, it's the
thing that.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Brings It's the thing where my happiness really is in that.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Yes, No, I completely agree and get that. When when
you first had kids, though, did you feel becoming a
father threatened your identity as a comedian a writer?
Speaker 1 (39:05):
Up was red wasn't even related to it and didn't
do it was just its own thing. I call kids
a blessed inconvenience is my name for chic.
Speaker 5 (39:18):
That's what they are.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
You're like, very inconvenient.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, it's like thank you God, you know, thank you?
Speaker 5 (39:26):
All right, Okay, freedom, yeah, yes exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
But the cost of the benefit of that loss of
freedom is happy.
Speaker 5 (39:36):
It's everything. It's everything, it's everything exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
So No, I never connected those you know, In fact,
if anything. I was worried that work would get in.
Speaker 5 (39:44):
The way of that. And in fact, I remember.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
Looking at pictures of my wife with the kids, like
on some day and I'm like, where was imes?
Speaker 5 (39:50):
Like you were at work? Ass you missed all that?
Speaker 1 (39:52):
Sorry for the language here, but I'm like, how do
I miss those days?
Speaker 5 (39:56):
I missed so many days?
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I see, like when my kids were little, it's when
I was working the most hours. Yeah, because I was
at the most productive time of my life during that period,
you know.
Speaker 5 (40:06):
And that's you. But you know, there's all those trade
offs in your life.
Speaker 4 (40:11):
Yeah, and there's no right answer.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I mean I constantly doing that in my mind too,
the guilt of like I'm working my ass off right now,
but it's for him, it's you know, and for me,
and that makes me a better mom being.
Speaker 4 (40:21):
You know. It's these circular conversations.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
Like come, you're never hears it. I'm working for your.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's tough. Okay, I want to
do a sort of sort of a lightning round.
Speaker 3 (40:39):
I think you might have already said this, but Okay,
who's the funniest person you know.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
The funniest person I know personally? Yeah, the funniest person
I know personally. Unfortunately I lost a couple years ago
as my brother Mark. Okay, Mark was so funny, and
Mark could make himself look like people. I mean when
we were kids, he could do his face like Milton.
He just goes, you know, it's just like it just transformed,
like he could do anybody. But Mark was so deeply funny,
(41:06):
and anybody that knew him thought the same thing.
Speaker 5 (41:08):
So, yeah, my little.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Burrow, Who's the funniest person that I would know?
Speaker 1 (41:13):
There's several people in that category, and there's different ways
in which they are funny. I've been so fortunate because
I've worked with some really funny people.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah, we talked about Carl Reiner, Eddie Murphy.
Speaker 5 (41:26):
Let me tell you, oh my god.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
I mean as a performer, Eddie's very quiet personally, but
as a performer, I mean, you just cannot stop laughing.
Speaker 5 (41:34):
He's just so just so raw funny.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Bernie Mack was really really funny, and Living Color was
the funniest show I worked on because the writers were
hilarious and the performers. The writers are arguably funnier than
the performers sometimes, right, we have one writer named Less Firestine.
Oh god god, he was so funny. And we used
to do this thing I see where we would be
working till all hours of the night, like three or
(41:58):
four in the morning, so by one or in the
morning we do skits for each other. We got so
fun Oh man, we perform for each other and the
darkest stuff ever that you you could not ever if
you knew the stuff we were doing, we would have
been arrested immediately just for the subject matter.
Speaker 5 (42:14):
I mean so dark.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
I think you would have appreciated, because I know, I
know your mind is very dark.
Speaker 5 (42:20):
I would no, I've actually serious.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
You would have enjoyed it. I believe nothing, nothing was sacred.
Everything you could make jokes about.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
I love that. I love dangerous comedy. I love Regu Turvas.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
I love people who you know, really push the envelope
but are smart and funny.
Speaker 5 (42:35):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (42:37):
You hosted the White House Correspondence Dinner. I was there.
This is a quiz. The first White House Correspondence Dinner
was a in eighteen eighty eight, b in nineteen twenty one,
or c.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Nineteen fifty four.
Speaker 5 (42:52):
I'm going to say nineteen twenty one.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
You're right, you are correct, ding Ding Ding. What's your
favorite movie?
Speaker 5 (43:01):
See, it's a.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
There's a competition there, we competition if I'm forced to
choose one. See, it's hard for me not to have
Marx brothers in there, just because they're so influential growing up.
Like Animal Crackers is not a great movie, but it's
still one of my favorite for you, Yeah, for me,
and Buster Keaton's up there too. The Graduate is a
(43:25):
movie that I can watch time and time again.
Speaker 4 (43:27):
Perfect movie.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Yeah, there's a lot on there for this. I just
saw Coolie High again when I was a kid. That
movie meant so much to me.
Speaker 4 (43:35):
Favorite band.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
The Beatles.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Me too, big Beatle fan. I'm talking to ma about
this actually the Beatles.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Oh yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
And I got the Beatles later though, because I like
a lot of different kinds of music. By the way,
I'm a multi genre, yes person. Yes, sometimes it's move related.
But I had slept on the Beatles growing up, you know,
you know, I kind of knew who they were, blah
blah blah. But when John Lennon died, I remember my
brother got some eight track or something or Ca said
he had in his car. The Beatles live at the
Hollywood Bowl and he was playing it and I was
(44:07):
listening to the audience. I'm like, good Lord, I'm like Jesus,
like I had forgotten the phenomena that was the Beatles
because I was really too young to appreciate that.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
But just hearing the people scream, I thought, let me could,
let me look into these.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
So I started. I did the discography. I started with
their first album and I went in order. You know,
so good, and I'm so glad that I did. I
fell in love with them as a group too. There
was a special Malcolm MacDowell did called The Complete Beatles.
It's still one of the best. Yes, you know he
did at the time, and oh, I just completely I
went down that rabbit hole and just drank all the
(44:45):
kool aid. Yeah, you know, it was all in on
the Beatles and just from then on, that's that's, that's
my group.
Speaker 3 (44:50):
It always amazed me that they were a band for
five years. Five years, that's it. Five years and they
made the most important music of history.
Speaker 4 (44:58):
I mean, I just yeah, you can't get over how
talented they were.
Speaker 5 (45:02):
It's crazy.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Finally, this question is very important to me culturallym When
is iced coffee season?
Speaker 1 (45:12):
See, for me, it's never ice coffee season never, Well,
why why do I want to make my coffee cold?
Speaker 4 (45:19):
You know you don't want to sip it. You want
to inject it into your veins.
Speaker 5 (45:22):
You want it. Cockee Coffee knows its job. Coffee knows
its job. You know.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
Well, that's it's the wrong answer. The right answer is
year round, year round. But you learn from a person by.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
Asking you, like, I don't like food, trying to trick me,
that's something else. Okay, So coffee ice coffee is trying
to trick me that it's iced tea.
Speaker 5 (45:42):
But you're not coffee. You are not.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
You know you're not, So stop it. It's like couscous
trying to pretend it's rice. No, you're not couscous. You're
you're not rice. Stop trying to act like it. You
know rice is rice. That's why we have it. That's
why it's there. That's why they had to come to
the term impossible burger, because you know, you're acknowledging the
fact that there's no way.
Speaker 5 (46:00):
That's a burger.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
So at least you acknowledge it. Yeah, at least you
acknowledged that this is impossible. Because I agree with you,
I don't know what this is, but you're right, it
is impossible. But I don't like food that's trying to
trick me. So I believe, I believe ice coffee at
its core, and it will admit this is engage in
a deceptive campaign.
Speaker 4 (46:17):
Well on behalf of iced coffee. I am sorry you.
Speaker 5 (46:20):
Feel your way, but sorry ice coffee.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
We love, we love ice coffee. Larry Wilmore. This was
such a treat. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5 (46:26):
It was my pleasure.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Next week on Off the Cup, I talked to two
of my favorite politicos, but not about politics.
Speaker 8 (46:34):
You were on the team because they drafted him first,
and you are the traveling trailing sibling. So I had
my houch ego rocked pretty hard at age twelve.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
It's Congressman Eric Swollwell and former Congressman Adam Kinsinger.
Speaker 5 (46:49):
You can freak yourself out in the cockpit.
Speaker 4 (46:51):
You really could, because you're I'm freaked out right now
just hearing the.
Speaker 3 (46:56):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Recent Choice Network. I'm Your Hostess Cupp
editing and sound designed by Derek Clements. Our executive producers
are Messie Cupp, Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffman. If you
like Off the Cup, please rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts, follow, or subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday.
Host
S.E. Cupp
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