Selects: How Rodney Dangerfield Worked, Live From LA

Other comedians cry on the inside, but Rodney Dangerfield built his entire act around his sad life. Get to know this legendary comic who was nearing 50 when he got his break, in this classic episode recorded live in LA.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi friends, Chuck here with your Saturday Selects episode. This
is a live when, Live from the l A Podcast
Festival in This is from November eight when we talked
about comedy legend Rodney Dangerfield. This episode, Everybody is notable
because this is where we met Mr Kevin Pollock for
the first time, when he jumped up on stage in

(00:22):
the middle of our podcast to refill our water classes
that had become empty. And that's how we met Kevin.
And now he's become a real pal and he's a
great guy and a good industry friend, and uh I
just think the world of him. So support Kevin and
the stuff that he does. He's in a lot of
great movies and a lot of great TV shows right now,

(00:42):
including one of my favorite shows on television called Better Things,
where Kevin plays Pamela at Lan's brother, and the wonderful,
wonderful show Marvelous Mrs Mazel and check out both of
those if you haven't checked out Kevin's work before. And again,
a long way of setting up the episode where we
met Kevin when we talked all about how Rodney Dangerfield
worked Live from the l A Podcast Welcome to Stuff

(01:08):
you Should know A production of I Heart Radio. Hey
and well, hey, I guess I want to say hey
and welcome to the podcast. But this is a little
different because this is a this is the intro to
the podcast. That's right. We recorded a live episode at
the l A Podcast Festival, and uh, this is it. Yeah,

(01:32):
this is it. We did one on Rodney Dangerfield. It
was September nineteen fifteen with the Sophie Tell and Beverly Hills.
Very chic, very chic, and it was a lot of fun. Greed.
We hope you guys have fun listening to it. How
are you guys doing? Thank you very much for coming
to our show. But we do this normally, but um,

(01:52):
it's usually just two of us and Jerry sitting here
on Facebook while we record like eating me so soup yea,
she loves me so souper um. And then you know,
we do live shows too, but normally there's like a
gulf of a stage between us and like, you guys
are right here, so we're watching YouTube. I guess that's

(02:13):
what I'm saying. She's got one of our shirts. Nice
nice shirt, and she's the only one. Oh I like that.
I oh, there, of course they are he says I
listened to podcasts before Cereal burn. Yeah, and on the
back it says, but I love serially right we should.

(02:37):
We should also say hi to everybody in lives Oh yeah,
streaming folks, Hello, and of course thanks to Audible and
square Space and the rest of those people don't sponsor us,
so I don't feel n mention anything. Does that count
as a mid role land? Sure? Okay? Cool with a
stack of money waiting outside, Mr Monopolies, just hanging out outside? Okay,

(03:02):
So um, what do you got anything to start with?
I've got nothing to start with. I usually don't drink
this early in the day, but coming the nerves and
is I felt it would be fitting as a tribute
to our our topic, which we're gonna get into. So
I decided to work up a heavy sweat because Rodney
Dangerfield is known for drinking and sweating. Yeah, you're basically

(03:23):
missing the tie. Got everything else covered? Thanks you guys
familiar with the one Mr Rodney Dangerfield. Yeah that's good.
I'm glad to hear that he's a an increasingly underappreciated comedian.
Like I've talked to it at least a couple of
people who have not seen back to school? I know boom.

(03:44):
And I was actually talking to someone who works here
at the festival who said, is he dead? And I said, yeah,
that happens a lot to that, because she said, why
don't I remember that? Alan? It's no respect? No respect.
That's the cool thing about the guy like he That
was his whole stick, that was his whole um hook. Right, Well,
we need to start in the traditional way. Okay, you're ready,

(04:09):
very nice, hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W. Chuckers Bryant, and we are here at
l A popfest and uh all you lovely people, give
yourselves a hand. Thank Is that better? You feel a

(04:29):
little more? You guys happy with that too? Okay, Um, well,
now we have to start over. How people, how many
people have seen back to school? Great start? So, as
we were saying, um, the weird thing about Rodney Dangerfield
is that, um, he was his whole his whole stick

(04:53):
about um no respect was actually really really close to
accurate as a matter of fact, and and not just
while he was growing up he had a really tragic,
terrible childhood, but also as he got older and older
and even after he blew up. Um he's still people
just kind of took what he was saying and ran
with it. Like he he had this one story where, um,

(05:13):
he opened a club which we'll talk about called danger Fields,
so it's very obviously his club, and he was on
his way up to the stage. He'd just been like
called up there, and on his way some guy stops
him and says, Rodney, can I have your autograph? And
can you also give me some more butter? And like
this this happened to this guy quite a bit. Actually, Yeah,

(05:34):
so it does turn out that you will see even
after death, the guy got no respect. But um, as
Chuck will assert later, I predict um he he is.
He's a comedians comedian and very actually well respected by
the ones that count. And uh, I don't know if
you guys know this, but a lot of comedians have

(05:55):
in her pain, uh, which is the reason a lot
of them get into comedy and a reason that many
of them drink until they black out on many nights. Uh.
Inter pain is no secret to the comedy world. But
you'd be hard pressed to find someone who was as
legitimately depressed and sad as Rodney Dangerfield. He was like

(06:17):
a crying clown for real, he was. He often talked
about the heaviness he felt every day when he woke up.
He said he would wake up and every day and
there it was lingering above him, was his heaviness. Yeah.
And if you've ever if you ever want to go
down a YouTube rat hole, just look up some interviews
with the guy on YouTube from like the eighties, and
you know, he does a lot of interviews that just

(06:38):
like local TV stations promoting movies and stuff. And when
he's out of his stick element, it's one of the
saddest things you've ever seen. Man, it's really depressing. Uh.
He's he just had this air about him. You could
tell he had the weight of life on his shoulders.
And it all pretty much stems from his awful, awful,
awful childhood. Child It is Hilary us so far, everybody. Uh,

(07:03):
so we should start at the beginning with him. Um.
He was born in n on Long Island, Not in
Long Island, Chuck tells me. Um, And uh, he was
born to a vaudevillian father who took off with one
of Rodney's brothers to go hit the circuit. And that
was that, Like he I think he saw him like

(07:23):
once or twice a year for a half hour, an
hour or something like that. Yeah, he said he saw
his dad literally like twice a year growing up. And
uh he was born Jacob Cohen. Uh, and his dad
was a juggler and a comic who um apparently hit
the road because of his wife, Um, who was. You know,
we were talking about what an awful person she was,

(07:43):
and we were going over this stuff and that she was.
But the more I thought about it, um, she she
had a serious problem. It was you know, back in
the nineteen twenties, you didn't diagnose things like they do today.
You just ran off to the vaudeville pretty much. But
she was clearly depressed, like foundly depressed and uh sadly
completely abandoned emotionally and neglected a little rot or I

(08:08):
guess little Jacob Uh he was. He was left on
his own from the time he could remember. His mom
literally never hugged him once, never kissed him once. He
swore up and down, Yeah, and never complimented him or
like tried to build him up. She Uh, she was
a bad lady. And um at starting probably around age

(08:30):
eight or something like that, he um realized that if
he was going to eat dinner on a regular basis,
he was going to have to go get a job
and go grocery shopping himself. Right, So he basically raised
himself storrying about age eight or so. Um and uh,
speaking of grocer's one of the one of the great
things that stuck out to him about his childhood. He was, um,

(08:50):
he had to get a job, and after after school job,
he was still in school. Um. And he lived in
a fairly wealthy neighborhood, but he was not wealthy, so
he used to deliver groceries to his classmates, um home,
which is kind of demoralizing when you're like ten, you know. Um.
And he also, while he was out there running around
on the streets, there's a he wrote an autobiography the

(09:13):
year he died in two thousand and four, and um
he called this chapter male Prostitute because he was like ten,
and he was so unsupervised that they were apparently at
least one or two local molesters that were like, hey, Rodney,
come on up, I got a nickel for you. Yeah.
And he swears up and down that it was just uh,
that it was it was just kissing everybody, don't worry.

(09:36):
The child was just kissed by the grown man for
a nickel um, but he and it happened a lot,
and he was doing it because he needed the money.
So anyway, Rodney danger feel, let's fast forward out of
this horrible, horrible funk. And by the way, we're gonna
pepper in some of his best jokes here and there. Uh,
and debated on whether or not to try and do

(09:58):
it as him, because it's hard. I've already promised certain
people here there, it's hard to do that. It's hard
to tell a Rodney Dangerfield joke without kind of doing him.
And I took a little informal pole last night with
some folks and they're like, yeah, you sort of have to. Yeah,
I think that's not like it's a good impression. But
plus it makes me delivering it my flat weirdo affect
where I'm not even trying it all the weirder, So

(10:20):
prepare for that too. But one thing that he did,
and that of course a lot of comics do, is
they turned that pain into funny and he really relied
on his uh, his jokes is a way to I mean,
the only time he was happy was when he was
on stage performing and as soon as he left that
heaviness would come back. But he he often joked about
his mom. He would say, uh, my mom never breastfed me.

(10:41):
She told me she always thought of me as a friend,
which is a funny joke. But when you know the
real pain behind it, it's it's just like the saddest
thing you've ever heard. It takes a dead bit of
the funniness away from it. I've got a good apparent one.
You're ready. Yeah, So I remember the time, and this
is my Rodney danger. I remember the time I was kidnapped.

(11:03):
They sent a piece of my finger to my father.
He said he wanted more proof that probably did not happen.
But it gets the point across, you know, And plus
it's funny. And so if you're a one more parent joke, Okay,
so I tell you my parents hated me. My bath
toys were a toaster in a radio funny. All right,

(11:26):
that's going over better than I thought it wouldn't. So,
so starting about age fifteen, he starts, he realizes he's
actually kind of hilarious and that he has a talent
for taking all of this horrible, tragic stuff and turning
into funny stuff. Um and uh, he started writing jokes
and he got good pretty quick. He started selling jokes
age fifteen or sixteen to establish comedians, right, yeah, and

(11:48):
he kept him He had this stuffel bag. He would
write jokes by hand his entire career and put him
in this stuffel bag. So he literally had a duffel
bag full of like thousands and thousands of jokes. And
apparently I think, uh you said that during a typical
performance later, like once he hit the big time, he
would tell like over three d jokes in a set,
like three fifty yeah, yeah, in an hour. He ran

(12:09):
at their quick jokes, but still, but he remembered them
all and he knew which one's fit best. Like the
guy was a comic genius. Hopefully that's coming across here
or will by the end of this, right. So he
gets this big break at age nineteen. He's written jokes
for a few years and he's gonna try this out,
and he gets a job at a cat skills resort
for twelve bucks a week ten weeks, including room and board,

(12:34):
like dirty dancing that kind of scene very much. So yeah,
but he's like the up and coming comic on stage. Right,
have you guys ever seen Iron Man meets Dirty Dancing
that mash up? Now go check it out. Actually, it's
so bizarre. It's one of the better things you'll ever see.
That has nothing to do with the Rodney Dangerfield. That
was just an ad on basically. But um, so he's working.

(12:57):
He's working hard, um the stint of cats skills. Like,
I don't think he gets ree up, but he he
keeps going back to the cat skills. It's one of
his regular gigs. But on the on the side, while
he's working, he's a singing waiter at the Polish Falcons
nightclub where, yeah, where Lenny Bruce's mom was the m C.
He was an acrobatic diver, right, Um, but I don't

(13:19):
know what you're all thinking, triple indy. No, he did
not do the triple indy in the movie obviously. Uh
for those of you who have not seen Back to School,
that was an in joke. He was a diver in
the movie, a competitive diver. Yeah. Well, I was going
to punish them for not having seen it. Okay, sorry,
I was trying to drive him a point. Uh. So

(13:41):
in nineteen fifty one, he gets married for the first
time to a jazz singer name Joyce Indig, and he
had a couple of kids and moved to New Jersey,
which we all know is the death knell for any
comedian trying to work in New York. Kind of means
you've given up, um. But he didn't give up just yet.
He did for a minute for sure. Yeah, not not

(14:03):
at that point though. He was still trying to work.
But when he turned twenty seven, he quit comedy and
literally did not perform from the age of forty one.
And at forty one he was like, let's try this again, right, Well,
he and his wife divorced, so he's like, I've got
a little more time. I think I'm gonna go try
comedy again. And they actually got back together like the

(14:24):
next year and stayed married for another ten years or
something like that. But this time around, um, he was like,
let me see if I can figure out how to
how to balance home life with this. I'm trying to
break into comedy, right yeah, and let me try and
develop an act. I think the first time he flounder
because he didn't he didn't know what kind of comedian
he wanted to be. He tried singing, he tried impressions,
he even tried prop comedy for a little while. But

(14:45):
he also I mean, and he had these jokes about
how much his life sucked. Like he used some of
these same jokes his whole life, um, but they just
didn't hang on him quite right, because he had his
whole life ahead of him and he was young and
full of promise. That second time around, he was right
there in the sweet spot, like age forty one is
a little desperate, kind of sweaty, and uh, these jokes
about how bad is light, these jokes about how bad

(15:09):
is life where it was going, um like really just
kind of hit a lot more. He adopted a persona basically,
and uh that definitely helped. Yeah, I mean it was
it was sort of him, but it was also a character.
And when I was researching this, I was like, I
was kind of thinking about the you don't see a
lot of character comedians anymore, Like that was the sort

(15:31):
of the Heyday with like Andrew Dice Clay and uh
well Rodney Dangerfield and Emo Phillips, and it seemed like
there were a lot of characters, but now no one.
Now it's just like, look at this thing that happened
in my life and how funny it is look at
all these witty observations about my life. I'd like to

(15:52):
see some good character comedians. I can't think of it.
There any out there. I guess Brent Windbag. That's kind
of wait, wait, what about like Larry the Cave Guy.
He's total I assume that is a character because he
started out as as a completely different kind of comedian
and then adopted that persona. But I don't count him
as a comedian. So yeah, he's not watching. Don't worry,

(16:15):
he's not. He's writing bad jokes to start a flame
war with Larry the I'll totally take him up on
that flame war. Uh, although kids squashed me with his
sacks of money. Um. So he adopts his character. Uh.
He changes his name legally at this point to Jack Roy,

(16:39):
which was that his father's name. His father's stage name
was Phil Roy. Yeah, and so he changed his name
legally to Jack Roy, and that was his real name
till the day he died. Uh. And he was performing
under that name for a while until he tried this
second go and decided I don't want anyone to remember
Jack Roy. So um, he told this guy that was

(16:59):
booking him at a up in Manhattan. Could you just
make up a name for me and put that on
the on the I guess it would a marquee on
the play, yeah, or you know in any ad they
took out. So the guy who ran this place, the
Inwood Lounge, I think um came up the Rodney Dangerfield, right.
But the weird thing is, um he had actually lifted
the name from a Jack Benny character, Like there was

(17:20):
an original Rodney Dangerfield and it wasn't Rodney Dangerfield, right,
were the giant twist of of the podcast It's all
downhill from here. So the the Jack Benny came up
with his character and I think the forties maybe or
something like that, UM of this grade Z Western hero
named Rodney Dangerfield, and UM, I guess the the lounge

(17:44):
owner remembered it and came up with that Rodney Dangerfield
had no idea about this. So he's walking around like
using this name for years. And apparently he met Johnny
Carson once that one of his shows, and Johnny Carson
was like, you know where your name came from? Right?
And he said, what are you talking talking about? Yeah?
He explained that the whole Jack Benny thing and later
on he uh saw Jack Benny, and Jack Benny wasn't

(18:06):
like Matt or anything, actually said I really love what
you did with the character, and you really, you know,
you did it just right, So no harm, no felt,
and they hugged it out from that very famously. So

(18:39):
uh on the second go round, he was he was
making a living doing okay, but he got his real
big break in nine seven with Ed Sullivan. He was, um,
he couldn't get booked on Ed Sullivan, but at the
time they would book other comedians for the run throughs
as like just placeholders for dress rehearsal basically, and so

(18:59):
he got a spot booked on that and apparently did
so well and dress rehearsal that Ed Sullivan, you know,
took note on the side of the stage, which means
he went like this, you know you're funny. That's how
you knew Ed Sullivan thought you were funny, because if
it works for Nixon to do that, Nixon And actually

(19:23):
that was the result of a huge long shot. He
told his agent like, just get me on Ed Sullivan,
and it it played out, panned out very well. He
ended up being on Ed Sullivan like seventeen times or
something like that, and it led to all these other
late night appearances. He was on Carson, like I think
a record, he holds the record for being on Carson
the most seventy times something like that. Merv Griffin, Dino,

(19:46):
like all the dudes who are running late night and
basically where the tastemakers for all of the comedians were
suddenly promoting the sweaty, weird, coked up uh pothead, booze hound,
huge pothead the way Rodney Dangerfield right, and he took
it and ran with it, like right when he hit
in nineteen seven he got to work. He was such

(20:08):
a big pothead. Actually, the original name of his biography
was going to be My Love Affair with Marijuana, And
he was serious. He wanted to call it that because
he smoked potty, said for you know, sixty something years. Uh,
but well up until the day he died. Really, I
think from like one on, like he was smoking pot
in I see you in the hospital, because he had

(20:30):
an early medical marijuana exemption long before anyone even knew
it that way, he just wrote his own I don't
even knew what that was, but if he flashed it
in your face, you didn't ask questions. So, uh, he
got his big break. Actually, Carson had blackballed him for
a while because he accused Carson in a letter of
stealing or one of his writers of stealing one of

(20:51):
his jokes. So Carson famously wouldn't have him on the
show for a long time until they eventually right, until
they eventually met um and worked it out out, and
then Johnny became like the biggest fan ever. And if
you want to enjoy yourself at home on the YouTube's
just go look up Johnny Carson on Rodney or Rodney
Dangerfield on Carson. There's a lot of clips where I mean,

(21:12):
Carson was just like the ultimate set up dude. Just
let him do his thing. Yeah, and he would laugh
until he was crying because he couldn't believe that danger
Fields getting away was saying most of the stuff he
was saying on TV on Carson's own show, it was good.
So he's he's married, he's working a lot, and uh,
he decides that he doesn't want to happen to his

(21:33):
own kids what happened to him, which was to be neglected.
So he said, you know what I'm gonna do. Um,
even though no one's ever done this. I'm gonna borrow
a bunch of money dollars and I'm gonna open my
own comedy club in New York City so i can
stay home with my children, Brian and Melanie, I think, right.
And it's not like he had any money, right then,
you know, like this is a huge, huge risk and

(21:54):
he's doing okay, but he had to borrow all not
that okay, right, so um, everybody tries to talk him
out of it. He goes ahead with it, and it's
such a success. He has a loan paid off in
like eighteen months. Just a huge success. And this this
club actually became venerable in its own right. Yeah, still
there today run the Danger Fields in New York and um,
it had this HBO special that broadcast out of in

(22:15):
A bunch of comedians got their big breaks on that show,
like Seinfeld, Um, Chris Rock I think, yeah, Jim Carey, Uh,
what's his face? Saget, Jeff Foxworthy, Yeah, Jeff Foxworthy, fans
in the room, Rita Rudner. Of course, Sam Kennessan completely
made Sam Kennison's career and that was what he uh,
and that's why comedians love him so much because it

(22:36):
meant more to him to play father to these young
comics and to give them their start than almost anything else.
He really that was sort of his life's goal, was
to seek out talent that he thought was original and
really kind of boost them up. He was a huge Freudian. Yeah, yeah,
the whole father son thing. And I wonder why, so, Chuck,

(22:58):
where were we at? Uh? We are at Danger Fields.
It is nineteen eighty and he decides that, you know what,
I should start making movies because well he made a
few movies before that, but nothing that anyone would know.
He's actually cast first by Stanley Kubrick in nineteen fifty

(23:19):
six for the movie Uh, the Killer, Yeah, the Killing,
The Killing, great movie. Who said, yeah, wow, yeah, great movie.
So he plays onlooker, Um, big part. Uh. And then
he was in another movie what was that up on?
Called The Projectionist. Yeah, it was a big part in

(23:40):
a very small movie. He said that it was the
type of movie where they went to go shoot on
location by taking the subway. Um it's probably true, Yeah,
I think it was. But he played this movie projectionist
boss and the projectionists had quite an imagination and he
was a superhero and um, Dangerfield was this arch villain nemesis.
Didn't it didn't go very far, but he learned almost

(24:04):
nothing about how to shoot a movie because this was
seventy seven. And apparently his huge, huge breakthrough came in Caddyshack. Right.
He was already very much a well respected comedian, but um,
when he when he shot caddy Shack Harold Ramos right
when he directed it, he said later on that, Um,
clearly Dangerfield didn't know what he was doing. He was
a live performer. So when when Harold Raymos said action,

(24:27):
Rodney Dangerfield was just stand there and be like, you
want me to do my bit? Now, Like that's what
action means, right, do your bit? And uh So then
Rodney would just turn to the camera and like do
his whole bit into the camera. He's like, hold on,
we gotta we gotta get this right here, so pretend
the camera's not there one and um, he finally got
to do it because that was the thing that just

(24:48):
broke him out. Yeah, and he hated making movies. Um,
like you said, he loved performing live in front of people,
and that's where he got his his rush. And he
once compared making movies to um. He said, like you
know when you make a kid write something a hundred
times on the chalkboard and they've done something wrong, He's like,
that's what making the movies Like, he hated doing all
these takes. He hated standing around and waiting. Uh, that's

(25:10):
why he didn't make a ton of it. And he
felt like the live audience is like he compared it
to a heroin attic, like shooting up. You know, like
he just loved that rush and uh, he definitely didn't
get that from movies, which I mean you got like
the crew standing around looking at you, waiting for lunch.
You know, it wasn't his bag at all. It was
not his bag. Uh. You found this um description from

(25:31):
Rolling Stone editor Ben Fong Torres, which I think describes
him like to a t Do you want to read that, sir? Okay?
So Ben Fong Torres, who was in almost famous, Uh
he uh, he had a quote he says, Uh, Rodney
Daserfield looks like a midlife crisis. There's a surface orderliness.

(25:53):
He's groomed and he's dressed like a businessman at a convention.
Gray hair slicked back over a haggard shades of mayor
day leaf face, dark suit, white shirt, bright red tie, silks,
silk stockings, shiny shoes. But the neatness gives way to
what he calls the heaviness that looms over him. Life
gives Rodney Dangerfield the jitters. He's in a constant sweat.

(26:14):
He wipes his brow incessantly, tugs at his tie, herky
jerky as he recounts the horrors of his daily life.
He shifts his shoulders uncomfortably, and his eyes bug out
of their bags. He moves the floor, mic around as
he roams the comedy store stage looking for sympathy, but
all he gets their laughs. I just think that's fantastic, man.
He nailed Rodney dangerfielding absolutely and his shirt and tie

(26:38):
that came about because well, he hated clothes in fashion. Yeah,
let's just go ahead and say that. I think it's
time he was a slab. He was a slab, he
said in interviews, how much he hated clothes, how he
never cared about clothes and fashion and was comfortable in
a robe basically. And uh, but for one of his
first acts, he put on the red tie in the

(26:59):
black suit and like dressed all dapper and when it
came for the second performance, he was like, well, they
liked me in that, so I'm just gonna wear that.
And that became his stick. Was you know, this very
dapper looking guy who's always very well put together. In fact,
I just saw earlier today, Um, when he gave out
a Best Makeup award at the I think eight seven

(27:20):
Academy Awards. Yeah, and he and he walked up and
he said, hey, nice took seed to everybody, right, and
he went underneath torn under shorts. You get this feeling
that like that was the dead truth. Yeah, she probably
had like holy underwear. You should look at it. Two man,
that's a great because he basically does five minutes of

(27:40):
stand up at the Academy Awards and it gives out
an award. So Iron Man versus dirty dancing. Yeah, take
some notes and then some danger fields stuff. Um, should
we take a break here, Chuck, take an ad break? Yeah, yeah,
and we'll be right back after this big announcement, folks.

(28:09):
It's called a podcast event called The Message. That's right.
Thanks to ge Podcast Theater and Panoply, there is an
eight part series out right now called The Message, and
you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah,
and you know what, it's gonna blow your collective scientific
minds because it's currently rocking our worlds. Ye. So the
message follows the story of Nikki Tomlin, who's a PhD

(28:32):
in linguistics. Right, that's right at the University of Chicago,
if I'm not mistaken, that's right. And she's following a
team of cryptologists, which, really, if you say cryptology, you've
really got me hooked already. Their research thank tank called Cipher,
and they're trying to dacode a message received from outer
space from seventy years ago. Yeah, it's from outer space,
we think. And if you're not familiar with the story,
well then I guess you better go listen to the message.

(28:54):
You can get it on iTunes, you can get it
on any of your podcast apps. Just go search for
the stage and subscribe today. Yeah. So thanks to the
podcast theater and Panopoly for pushing the boundaries of the medium.
You guys are doing a great job. Subscribed to the
message and listen today and we're back. All right. I

(29:23):
told you that would work. So he makes Caddy shock, huge,
huge hit. Um, he's allowed to kind of just do
his thing in that movie. And I'm sure most people
have seen that classic comedy, which Josh said would stink
if it weren't for Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Mury, Bill
Murray the rest of it. It's like a tepid coming
of age dramedy sucks. Ted Knight he was fine, But

(29:49):
I mean, you can watch too close for comfort and
get just as much as you want. You know, I
just don't think it needs to be in the movie, right.
I think it was Bill Murray and Rodney Daingerfield. That's
what made Caddy Shack a classic little Chevy Chase Tad, Tad.
You know how I feel about Chevy Chase. My father
raised me to hate Chevy Chase. Did he really? He
really did. Your dad didn't like him. Oh man, still

(30:11):
does not like Chevy Chase. Why. I just didn't think
it's funny or he thought, yeah, yeah, something about Chevy
Chase sticks in my dad's craw and he passed it
on me. Isn't that weird? It is totally weird. That's
what you get when your dad's not a vaudevillian. They
pass on weird stuff like that to you. You know,

(30:33):
So he makes Caddyshack. It was a huge hit. Now
he was a legitimate Uh, he was sought after for movies. Uh.
And then a nineteen three he wrote a movie called
Easy Money. Uh, where's anyway. It's actually pretty cool movie.
It's not bad. It's a little weird structurally, which kind
of makes sense that he wrote it because he clearly
did not how to write it right script, you know,

(30:53):
how to write a bunch of good jokes though. So
he played Monte Capuletti, an Italian American drunkie head, uh
baby photographer because because this is back in the early
eighties when anyone of any ethnicity could play any one
of another ethnicity. Sure, right, because he was Hungarian born,
but hey, play an Italian guy. It's cool. Uh. So

(31:15):
in the movie, his mother in law was the inspiration
for twin beds and uh hated her son in law.
And when she died, she said, all right, you can
have all this money, Um if for one year, I think,
like ten million bucks, if for one year you quit
gambling and boozing and smoking and uh and doing drugs.
So easy Money was you know, I had Joe Pesci

(31:37):
it was it was okay, right, Like the first half
of this movie is just a series of vignettes to
where he just completely screws everything up and like that
your stomachs all upset and everything, and like you're really emotional,
and then nothing comes of it whatsoever. Right, and then
finally halfway through the plot arrives and then it gets

(31:57):
kind of good. Actually, yeah, I agreed. Yeah, a lot
of build up, not a lot of payoff in that one.
But one Roger Ebert uh like the movie, even though
it was a little weird, and said, uh, basically the
movie was about watching Rodney Dangerfield. He said, Rodney Dangerfield
gloriously playing himself as the nearest thing we are likely
to get to W. C. Fields in this lifetime. Uh.

(32:20):
And Rodney himself said that it was that was pretty
much me on screen. That's as close as you can
come to my real life. In Easy Money. Yeah right, yeah,
here's a maybe photographer. So nin six is when he
finally makes back to School, which was his biggest hit.
I think it costs like million to eleven million, grows

(32:42):
swell over a hundred million, which in nineteen eighty six,
I mean today that's still good money. Yeah, and today dollars,
that's a hundred fifty billion dollars it's inflation for you, right.
Uh and uh, this one he played, he he had
the idea. I think he got a story credit of
a guy father that goes back to school who was
a big loser in life. So he goes back to

(33:03):
school with his son to get his degree and he
and he told that idea to Harold Ramos and he
was like, that's good. But what if he was rich?
What if he was wealthy and had it all and
still goes back to school like knowing what he knows
now with a lot of money, and and Ridney was like, Okay,
that's the movie. Yeah, it's a good idea, and it actually,
I mean, that was a huge movie when it came out.
It was the sixth biggest movie of six That was

(33:27):
behind Top Gun, Platoon, Karate Kid, to Star, Trek four
and there's one other one that's written down somewhere and here,
but they're big movies. And it was like the six
highest grossing movie of the year and it's Rodney Dangerfield,
right yeah. And so he has hit it big at
this time and is a huge, huge movie star and

(33:51):
in the in the biggest comic. I think they did
a survey in the late seventies, right before his movies
with college students that said that they were Rodney Danger
was their favorite comic, and he was sixty one years old,
fifty eight years old. Same thing basically was when he
hit it big as a comedian, fifty eight years old, right,

(34:11):
and like college kids are like into this guy. And actually,
if you've seen, if all you've seen back to school,
if that's all you've seen of Rodney Danger, Phil, you
don't quite have the the understanding of what he was
actually like. He was pretty edgy comic actually and pretty hilarious,
and college kids loved him. In the seventies, he hosted
Sara Live in when when he was I think like

(34:32):
sixty or something, fifty nine, um, and he started to
blow up like at about age sixty. Isn't that crazy? Uh?
Should we tell a few more of his favorite jokes?
I think it's high time not to you guys. We'll
go over a few of these. Uh. He has a
great joke about his psychiatrists. I told my psychiatrist that
everyone hates me, and he said I was being ridiculous.

(34:52):
Everyone hasn't met me yet. Classic. Uh, let's see. I
like this one. It's a little brow, but I like it.
You know what classes when you were alone you fart,
you say, excuse me, that's class. That weird. So, if

(35:15):
you haven't noticed, a lot of his jokes were they
were self deprecating for himself, but also about his family.
He talked about his wife was dumb and fat, and
his son it was stupid. Uh. And even when he
wasn't I mean, it was all a character. So even
when he wasn't married, he was telling jokes about his wife,
which must have made it a lot easier when he
went home at night. Probably so. But one of my

(35:38):
favorite wife jokes was, I tell you my wife can't
cook it all? How can toast have bones? And and
your impression is getting better as well. I'm drinking whiskey,
so yeah, I'm not saying that us. Let's see, I've
got one. Um. So this is so like I said,

(35:58):
it's a little weird, and I like that in a comic,
just just bizarre stuff. Um. He was talking about the
bar that he was doing stand up in that nice says,
what did joint? I asked the bartender for a double
and he brought out a guy who looks like me.
I missed those days, man, where comedians just wrote great jokes,
set up punchlines, set up punchline over and over. Yeah, uh,

(36:22):
I'll tell you a drink too much. The last time
I went to the doctor, I gave him a yurine sample.
I had an olive in it. So classic. And then
another thing I've learned about Rodney danger Hild when you
go back and listen to his stuff, he wasn't like mean.
He was self deprecating. Even when he was targeting like
his family mostly non existent family, all of it reflected

(36:43):
back on him and basically what a loser he was,
right um, And he didn't have very many mean jokes.
He didn't tell like many gay jokes. He he didn't
tell racist jokes or anything like that, which and this
is like in the seventies when like everybody was telling
where that right? But he did have this bat choke
that stuck out to me. Are you fat? Do you

(37:04):
look at the menu and say, okay, I love love
getting laughs from Ronnie Daserfields chocks we should just do this.
I was about to say, I think we have a
new act. If you should know one day talk about

(37:24):
a rush. I got one more. I'll tell you I
was dating a woman. She called and said, come on over,
nobody's home. I went over and nobody was home. Good stuff.
I have a new career reading Rodney, Dangerfield Chokes. That's

(37:45):
the whole. No one's done that cover comedians. Oh, Sharknado,
and now this you're all aware of? Chuck predicted Sharknado. Right,
he did, You're welcome. Okay, no more, you got anymore?
You like the one about his dog, tell that one? Okay,

(38:06):
all right? My dog is lazy. He's so lazy. He
doesn't chase cars. He just lays in the driveway taking
down license plates. All right, So now we're in. Uh,
that's enough. Stop last. In the early nineteen eighties, he's
making these movies. He won Best Comedy Album Grammy for

(38:28):
the album No Respect, beating out Richard Pryor, Monty Python,
Gilda Radner, and father Guido Sarducci. Uh. And in nineteen
eight two, the Smithsonian Institution put his red tie and
his shirt in the Smithsonian. Uh, the American History National
Museum of American History. Uh, Right, along with Jimmy Dranny's hat,

(38:48):
Archie Bunker's recliner, and Charles Lindbergh's plane. But the joke
Briden he said, was he got a feeling after they
left they were just gonna use the shirt to wipe
down the plane. Always self deprecating. Yeah, Andy, And when
he handed him the shirt, he said, this is a big,
big deal. I only have two shirts, which may have
been true. Uh. And also in the nineteen eighties, Um,

(39:11):
who remembers the Miller Lite commercials from the nineteen eighties
tastes great less spelling. That man back there has his
hand up all the best, right. They were great commercials.
They were named it was like named the eight best
advertising campaign in history, uh, from McCann ericson the ad agency.
And uh I went and watched a ton of them

(39:32):
earlier today, and uh I remember them all from being
a little kid, and it was weird. They were. Um.
For those of you who haven't seen him, the premise
was you would get a bunch of ex athletes and
then Mickey Spillane and Rodney Dangerfield and some other random
pop cultural icons at the time, and to sell Miller

(39:53):
Lite and you know, getting a big argument about tastes
great and less felling. At the end, Rodney would usually
come in as the ship who does something wrong to
spoil everything. It was just such a weird like Bubba
Smith and Dick Buckus and baseball players. I don't know.
It was so strange, but they were huge and they
really the one who could score the weed for everybody else.

(40:15):
They let him, They led him on. Uh January. Um,
if anyone remembers his hit rap single rapping Rodney, have
you guys heard this? Really, it's something else it is
and it was a big hit. Actually it was a
top sixty hit, just pretty big, top top fifty nine, Chuck,

(40:37):
give it its due. That means it was number fifty nine. Yeah, yeah,
so um it was right behind Uptown Girl. And it
was Rodney Dangerfield rapping about being old, which sounds really
bizarre now, but like legitimate rappers at the time, like
say the sugar Hill Gang, we're rapping about like having
dinner at your friend's mom's house. So it wasn't that

(41:01):
far off the mark for the time. You know. It's
like being nice to your family. That's what raps were about.
It pretty the good old days. Uh. He was on
The Simpsons I think a couple of times. Whnet Um. Yeah,
I don't know if he was on more than once.
I think he's on twice, but in he played Mr
Burns illegitimate sun herb who got no regard, no regard

(41:24):
at all. I wonder why they didn't say respect to
day not. I think there wasn't just a joke messing around. Okay, yeah,
the man himself was there. I would have been surprised
if he was like, look, guys, just one thing. I
don't want to say respect? Maybe not? Can we just
avoid that. I'm trying new things here, trying to branch out,
which actually he did branch out. He was actually a
really creative guy. Um. He had a live Broadway show

(41:46):
that ran for a couple of weeks in called appropriately
um Rodney Dangerfield Live on Broadway exclamation point. For a
couple of weeks, he wrote a romance novel, uh called
La Contessa. And if you google the image for this, um,
it's it's disturbing. Yeah. It's basically like uh, your typical.

(42:07):
It was like it's fabio basically with a woman, except
it's got Rodney Dangerfield's face on it. Uh. And and
it's available on audible. Oh is it really? Yes? It
is with Rodney Dangerfield reading it. No way, I I
kid you not what I joke about what's on audible. Well,
his I looked up earlier to see if his autoback

(42:29):
autobiography was on there. It is not. It's the only
Rodney Dangerfield thing on there. It's awesome because it has
the album RT too, so you get that for free
with the audiobook. He wrote, Uh, and I guess he
didn't direct it, but he produced and wrote the movie
Rover danger Field, the animated UM classic about a dog

(42:51):
who gets no respect. And then, uh, Mr Oliver Stone
called him up one day and said, I had this
role for you in a movie called Natural Born Killers.
And it's about this sadistic father who was molesting his
daughter raping his daughter, and I think he'd be perfect
for it. And Rodney didn't get it at first. He

(43:12):
was like, why do you want me for for this
kind of role? He's like you'll see yeah, And uh,
did you guys see that natural Born Killers? You can
get the scene on YouTube. It's when Oliver Stone did
the phony sitcom. That's how they portrayed that that part
of the movie. Uh. So they have a laugh track
and it's it's really disturbing. It's like three layers of bizarre, right,

(43:32):
So there's so it's like Rodney Daningerville is a sadistic,
ancestuous molester um, but it's Rodney Dangerfields. That's the weird part.
And then there's a laugh track to just throw you
off that little extra bit. You know it is. It's
very jarring. It was pretty well done. But the um.
The notable thing about that is that Oliver Stone let

(43:53):
Rodney Dangerfield rewrite all of his lines and he got
a lot of critical acclaim for it, but he was like,
Rodney danger Field, we had no idea. And he's like, seriously, Uh,
if you go today and just google, um, the Rodney
danger Field of you can find a whole list of things.
He's such a cultural icon that phrase itself has become

(44:16):
a thing now, like Petitzera is the Rodney danger Field
of California wines, or the Memphis, Tennessee City Council is
the Rodney danger Field of local government. Seriously, that's a thing.
Even saw a guitar pre amp was known as the
Rodney danger Field of guitar pre amps. My favorite is

(44:37):
a palladium is the Rodney danger Field of precious metals.
That's stupid. We're not making this up. So chuck right
about now, let's uh, let's step back a second, press
pause on this and have a beautiful little message break.

(45:15):
Uh So, here's some more examples of the lack of respect,
and and here's sort of the thing. The irony is,
he got nothing but respect from his peers throughout his career. Um,
but outside of that that was still just doses pepper
throughout his life. And examples of times where he didn't
get any respect, like when he sued Star Magazine. They

(45:36):
published a story about him being in Las Vegas, said
he would drink like tumbler fuls of vodka and smoke
pot all day long in duke cocaine, which was all
completely true, but he knew that they couldn't prove it,
so he sued them for libel and the court ruled
in his favor. Right, Yeah, so that's respect. Right, So
they awarded him one dollar for damage to his reputation

(45:59):
and one dollar for personal distress and then the judge
went sorry live stream people, I realized he did. He
did get awarded forty five tho dollars for presumed damages
and uh, I did a little more research today on that.
He um. Apparently he blew it all on cocon weed.

(46:21):
Apparently Star Magazine showed that they didn't turn a profit,
so he couldn't go after him form Uh, you couldn't
appeal for more money. So he tried to go after
their parent company and it went all the way to
the Supreme Court and they said you you didn't start
the suit that way, So they were no respect. Uh.
And even in death, as we mentioned earlier, Rodney Dangerfield

(46:43):
is dead. Why didn't I know that? Oh? I have
an example for you, hold on before he dies. He
was on Howard's during the year he died, and somebody
watched that interview. Yeah, man, that's depressing. He's eighty one.
He's clearly like at death store, but he still has
his his sense of humor about him. Um. But somebody
called in to Howard Stern and said, hey, Rodney, it's

(47:03):
Bob Hope. I'll see you in fifteen minutes. And Howard
Stern is like, well, that's not funny. Bob Hope is dead.
So they were saying like that Bob Hope was calling
from behind the grave and would see Rodney Dangerfield in
fifteen minutes. And if you can't get respect from a
caller on the Howard Stern show, Where Can You Get Respect?
So it was actually in that interview, which I said,

(47:24):
is it's like forty five minutes long and it's completely depressing,
so don't go watch it. Um but uh, not just
because he was old, but Howard's trying to talk to
him about his childhood and stuff, and well, he had
just written his autobiography and really just laid it all
out there, like he'd alluded to the rough life that
he had had in interviews and stuff like that, but
he published this book right before he died, and it

(47:44):
was it was rough. Well. I think the saddest thing
to me about his mom was that despite being completely
neglected emotionally and getting no love at all as a child,
he still wanted to be like a good kid, and
he still worked to support her and like apparently came
home and showed her his report card. He worked hard
to get good grades. She wouldn't even look at it.
She just like signed it without looking. And Uh, that

(48:07):
was the saddest part is he he still sort of
defended her in that interview. Uh, like right before he
was he was dying, and he made up with his
dad before his dad died. Apparently um, even though he
never saw him. He said he forgave him for all
that stuff. Yeah, yeah, really sad stuff. Though. You want
to hear some more jokes. Uh, well, well, actually, why

(48:28):
don't you tell him how he died? Okay? Well in
this interview. In the same interview, he's telling Howard Stern.
Howard Stern's like, he's about to go in for um
for the Uh, should I pretend there's not a siren
in the background. Um, He's going in for surgery, and
Howard Stern asks him, like, are you afraid you're gonna die?
And he goes, you know what, dying in surgery would

(48:49):
be the best way to go, Like I would go
to they drug me up, I go to sleep, and
then I just wouldn't wake up. That's like as good
as it gets, right. So he goes in for this
very surgery. He falls into a coma during surgery, almost there,
and then he wakes up. Then he has a heart attack,
then he dies. That's how Rodney danger Phield went after

(49:11):
that life that he had. That's how he went. He
was so close to going the way that he wanted
to go. And no no respect. You want to hear
no respect? A year after he died at CNN tried
to get in touch with him to get his reaction
about the passing of Johnny Carson and and and if
you read his obituaries, a lot of them a shocking

(49:34):
amount mentioned that he was well known for his role
in The Scout. He wasn't in the Scout. I got
to the bottom of that. Oh oh late on me.
He was going to be in The Scout. The role
was originally intended for him and Sam Kennison, and he
didn't do it for unknown reasons, and it ended up
going to Albert Brooks and Brendan Fraser. But it was

(49:56):
one of those things. I think we're one of those
Internet neat things. On the Internet, someone prints something that
everyone else's copies and pays it. So I think one
person wrote that because everything else I saw was worded
the exact same way, like list his movies as The Scout,
which he was never in. Now he wasn't. No thanks
for looking into that, man. That's what you get when
you hang with Chuck. But he did find love again,

(50:19):
um in a in a situation in everyone probably thought
was like a typical gold digger. He was sixty one
years old. Uh, and he married a thirty year old
woman who was really hot and blonde in l A.
But um, by all accounts everything I looked into, it
was not that Like, she really really loved him and

(50:39):
was great for him and they were super happy together,
um or as happy as he could be. And um,
it turns out that it wasn't that kind of a
deal after all, which made me feel good. Yeah. Like,
for example, when he died, she made sure that his
funeral wasn't until five or dusk because he always asked
her not to schedule any appointment for him before five pm,
so she made sure funeral didn't come until after that. Uh,

(51:02):
and his funeral was a really big deal. Everyone basically
came out in droves. Um. His pall bearers included Jim Carey,
who he took Jim Carey on the road for two
years when he was a struggling comedian and he opened
for him in Vegas and Jim Carrey was getting booed
off the stage. Everyone hated him, and Rodney stuck by
him for like a full two years, and Jim Carey
never forgot that. Chris Rock, Tim Allen, Larry David, George Carlin,

(51:25):
Jay Leno, um Adam Sandler and then your boy Michael Bolton.
Michael Bolton, he was supposed to sing, wasn't he was,
but he was too choked up to sing at Rodney
danger Fields funeral. Apparently they were really, really, really tight
friends because Michael Bolton's song Everybody's Crazy was in Back

(51:45):
to School and I guess he parlayed that into a
trip to the set where he got to meet Riding
dasent Field and they became friends for the rest of
the life. So Michael Bolton was too sad to sing
at danger Fields funeral, and you know, everybody was disappointed.
I bet there were a couple of people there that
were like, yeah, it's okay, Michael, we know you're upset.

(52:09):
You don't you don't have to do this if you
don't want it's everybody will understand. That's what they said
to us before we went on. So we're gonna close
this with with a final nice little cherry on top
about um Rodney Dangerfield and sort of his outlook on
his lack of respect with when it comes to the

(52:30):
Academy of Motion Pictures motion Picture Sciences. Yes, what it's called,
as you guys call it in l a the Academy. Right,
he applied for membership because he wanted to be in
the Academy and he had the credentials. He was in movies,
and uh, they said, no, no, you you had to
be in like at least three major roles. He had
thirteen under his belt by this time, including Natural Born Killers,

(52:51):
for which he received a lot of critical praise. Right,
and they turned him down like jerks. Right. He even
got a letter from Malcolm McDowell, d d He McDowell.
Which one was Malcolm McDowell, he's the good one. Are
they brothers? I don't know? Are they no relation? But
Roddy okay was Roddy? Was Roddy? It was Malcolm McDowell.

(53:14):
Was Roddy McDowell and Clocker Gorns or Malcolm McDowell. That
was Malcolm McDowell. Oh well, okay, good, because I felt
a lot better about this than Rodney McDowell. Wasn't the
Planet of the Apes? Yeah, so okay good. I'm glad
that those two were separated in my mind because I was, like,
I really liked him in Clockercorns. Good Roddy McDowell, who
everybody hates, wrote a letter to Rodney Dangerfield. This rejection

(53:38):
letter that said that he um had not he had
not had enough of the kind of roles that allow
our performer to demonstrate a mastery of his craft. Basically,
you're just playing Rodney Dangerfield and we all know it,
even though he had all the credentials to get in right. So,
Rodney Jasfield, He's like, let's see what years it? What years?

(53:59):
What's new? What's on the horizon? Well, the internet. I
think I'll build the world's first ever entertainment website. And
he built his own website and realized that this would
be a great place for his fans to come like
vent their anger. And it was, as a matter of fact,
like this guy like think about that, and um, his

(54:19):
bands came on and were like, to heck with the
Academy that kind of stuff, and um, the Academy actually
relented and said, you're in, man, you're in Rodney, come
on in. That's right. And what do you say, Nope, yep,
he said, thanks, but no thanks. He still has a website,

(54:42):
uh Rodney dot com. And if you go to that.
I just found this out earlier. There's a section called
jokes and had audio clips. I was like, oh, this
is great, but it's not him. It's some dude reading
like as bad as me, really, just saying his little
one liners over and over. And it's not in front
of people. It's like dead quiet and it's just some

(55:02):
dude saying his jokes. It's really weird. I can't tell
you how much I'd love the cover comedian idea. Just
you know how stealing from other comics is such a taboo.
We just need to just to get out in front
of the Yeah, mix up a little like Mitch Hedberg
and Rich Little Mind do a little Steven right there

(55:23):
in the middle. Yea perhaps, Yeah, so that's Rodney Dangerfield. Everybody,
that's our show. If you want it anymore, you're s
O l R. Yeah, you can clap if you want
it's hey that right, that was a lot of one. Yeah,

(55:48):
we had a great time and big thanks to the
l A Podcast Festival for having us out and um
yeah please have us back. We'd love to. Yeah, it
was really cool. We got to see other shows and
uh we did our own and had a nice little
crowd there, very supportive, nice kind people all the way around.
And look for the next l A Podcast best coming.
I would imagine next September. Hopefully we'll be there. Yeah,

(56:11):
keep keep your ears up for it. We'll mention it
whether we are or not, because we're that kind of guys.
That's right. No listener mail for me, buddy, No, But
if you want to get in touch with us, you
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(56:32):
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