Podcasts about gary shandling

Suli McCullough | EP 347 Avid Basketball Fandom & Stand-Up Comedy Stories with Suli McCullough Join an engaging conversation between two passionate basketball fans who delve into their love for the sport, sharing personal stories, favorite players, and unique experiences. Stand-up comedian Suli McCullough, known for his role in 'The Cable Guy,' recounts his journey as a Clippers fan, his worst road story as a comedian, and how mentorship from legends like Gary Shandling has influenced his career. They also discuss the potential of current basketball players trying their hand at stand-up comedy while sharing valuable insights into the business of comedy. Suli's Socials IG: https://www.instagram.com/sulimccullough/ FB: https://www.facebook.com/ComedianSuliMcCullough/ X: https://twitter.com/SuliMcCullough    Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Basketball Fandom 00:28 The Clippers Journey 03:42 Favorite Clippers Players 10:39 Impactful NBA Trades 15:16 Comedy Beginnings 23:43 Comedy Mentors and Influences 30:49 The Secret Sunday Game 31:12 Mentorship and Friendship with Gary 32:48 Navigating the Comedy Business 35:04 The Value of Authenticity in Comedy 48:10 Challenges and Triumphs on the Road 56:59 Basketball and Comedy Crossover  01:08:35 Final Thoughts and Farewell   Keith's Socials Support the show on https://patreon.com/rezarifts61  Follow Keith on all social media platforms! https://www.facebook.com/realkeithreza  https://www.instagram.com/keithreza  https://www.twitter.com/keithreza  https://www.tiktok.com/keithreza  Book Keith on cameo at www.cameo.com/keithreza Check out my website for dates at https://www.keithreza.com/  Subscribe - Rate & Review on Apple Podcasts - Tell a friend :) Be a Rifter! Takeaways

A Nora Ephron Xmas movie with Steve Martin, Leiv Shreiber, Adam Sandler, Gary Shandling and Jon Stewart

Alan ZweibelIn this episode, we dive into the illustrious career of Alan Zweibel, one of the original writers for Saturday Night Live (SNL). Join us as we explore his pivotal role in shaping some of the show's most iconic sketches, his close partnership with Gilda Radner, and his later collaborations with comedic legends like Larry David and Gary Shandling. Discover why Alan Zweibel deserves a spot in the SNL Hall of Fame. Listen now!Show Notes: • [0:41] Introduction to the episode by JD, kicking off at the SNL Hall of Fame podcast. Shoutout to Gary Seith from the Not Ready for Primetime Podcast, which covers early SNL seasons.Listen to Gary Seith's podcast here. • [2:17] Matt's Minutia Minute: Trivia on Alan Zweibel—one of the original SNL writers, his comedy roots in Brooklyn, and his friendship with Gilda Radner. • [3:51] Overview of Zweibel's impressive writing credits on Saturday Night Live—from Weekend Update sketches to iconic characters like Roseanne Rosannadanna and Emily Litella. • [6:53] Discussion on Zweibel's collaboration with Gilda Radner on Emily Litella and Roseanne Rosannadanna—key figures in early SNL seasons. • [10:32] Analyzing the impact of SNL's Samurai sketches and how Zweibel took the concept and turned it into a classic series for John Belushi. • [13:34] Zweibel's post-SNL career: It's Gary Shandling's Show and his work with Gary Shandling, including writing and producing for the show. • [19:02] Zweibel's close friendship with Larry David and his contributions to Curb Your Enthusiasm, including one of his memorable appearances on the show. • [21:25] The deep connection between Zweibel and Gilda Radner, which led to some of SNL's most beloved characters and a lifelong friendship. • [28:38] Discussing the SNL Weekend Update format and Zweibel's contributions alongside Herb Sargent—crafting some of the earliest jokes for the segment, including the iconic “prostitution stamp” joke. • [36:12] Special moments from the SNL Mardi Gras special where Zweibel's quick thinking saved the show, as he hand-wrote jokes under the Weekend Update desk. • [44:02] Zweibel's impact beyond SNL, including his role in co-creating It's Gary Shandling's Show and working on the adaptation of Barry Sonnenfeld, Call Your Mother.Key Takeaways: • Alan Zweibel was a crucial part of SNL's formative years, contributing to the success of the first five seasons. • His collaboration with Gilda Radner on Weekend Update characters like Emily Litella and Roseanne Rosannadanna helped cement SNL's reputation for groundbreaking comedy. • Zweibel's post-SNL career includes working on legendary shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm and co-creating It's Gary Shandling's Show.Listen in as we celebrate Alan Zweibel's lasting influence on comedy, from SNL to Curb Your Enthusiasm.Connect with Us: • Twitter & Instagram: @SNLHOF • Facebook: SNL Hall of Fame Facebook Group • YouTube: Dewvre1974 YouTube Channel • Gary Seith's Podcast: Not Ready for Primetime PodcastSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/snlhof/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We're back and it's season 6! As is typical we've assembled a group to draft the nominees we will discuss this coming season. Join jD, Matt, and Thomas as they get together to build season 6!Transcript:[0:00] Thank you, Doug Donance. It's JD here, and I am thrilled to be back in the SNL Hall of Fame. Let me see if my key works, but before I do that, I'll wipe my feet. The SNL Hall of Fame is a weekly affair where each episode we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest, or writer, and add them to the ballot for your consideration. Consideration once the nominees have been announced we turn to you the listener to vote for the most deserving and help determined who will be enshrined for perpetuity in the hall and that's how we play the game it's just that simple but you know what behind the scenes folks it's not that simple because we have to curate a list of who we are going to discuss every season and we found the most fun way to achieve that is with a draft and we're going to do that again this year before we explain the rules i want to introduce the other two drafteteers they are your friends and mine matt ardill and thomas santa how are you doing fellas hello jd good Good to see you. Hey, J.D., great thanks.[1:28] That's a little inside baseball there, Thomas.[1:33] So, Thomas, do you want to go through the intricate rules of the draft? You are the master of the draft, after all. All right, sure thing. So, this is the third season, I think, that we've done a draft and had a draft episode. So, there's parameters. So the three of us, we each get five picks. So 15 total, we each get five picks. We each have to pick two cast members. We each have to pick one host.[2:05] We each have to pick a musical guest or a writer, and then we have the wild card. We can do whatever the heck we want with this, as long as it's a cast member, host, musical guest, or writer. But we have the wild card there. So that adds up to five picks each, 15 total, and I have in my hand a coaster that I'm going to flip. I'm going to give either JD or Matt the first pick. Uh so i want matt to call heads or tails matt uh tails tails it is so matt ardeal gets the first pick uh jd you get the second pick and i'll i'll round things out and get the last pick that's how the draft is working today folks um okay well i think for my first draft pick i am going to go with Garrett Morris aside from being an original cast member he's a Juilliard trained performer he can sing, dance, act the entire Nine Yards he just has incredible chops.[3:16] Amazing sketches or bits like the White Guild Relief Fund impressions of Chubby Checker that he did with Carrie Fisher first appearance of a Marvel character as ant-man um that's right and uh you know i i watched this one interview where he was talking about death row follies and it's like it was really interesting he was talking about how he was with harry belafonte's band and they were just chatting and he's like so the entire process was lauren just had an idea for a sketch and sent them off to write he didn't give him any direction It's like you're on death row, you're performing. And he's he went back to this memory. He's talking about how the core of improv is drawing from your experiences. He went back to this memory of talking to Harry Belafonte, band member who had watched an old like 1950s TV show. And if you remember the sketch, his bit is I'm going to get me a shotgun and kill all the whitest I see. And he's like well that actually originated from this old 1950s this is your life type of show where this woman had written over 300 songs and they brought her up from the audience and sat her down to interview her and.[4:32] Kind of of how the song went but she was a white woman from the south and uh so you can imagine how that was so he took it and flipped it and used that for comedy and it's just like you know it just brings so brought so much to the table and i feel like out of the original cast he's one of those people who just is is not given as much respect or acknowledgement as he's due and And I think it's his time to shine. JD, so this is Garrett's one of the last remaining original cast members that we have yet to discuss. This is exciting. What do you think, Jamie?[5:13] Yeah, I'm excited that we're kicking it off with an old school, an original seven. Is it seven? Right, it was seven. Do we count George Coe and Michael O'Donohue? Oh, no, I'm not. The core. I'm talking about the core. It's almost the same as the NHL where they have the original six, but there was errors before that had eight teams, you know, but whatever I digress, I think it's a great pick. I think it's an exciting pick for a show like ours. I know that he will be a tent pool, a tent pole rather in terms of episodes, you've probably noticed in the past that we, we stack, front stack and back stack with more high-profile performers or nominees, and Garrett Morris will certainly be one of those. That being said... I don't see him as a first ballot Hall of Famer. Lorraine Newman didn't make it in on the first ballot. And I can't imagine him doing better than Lorraine Newman.[6:18] Because I think, based on a time and place, he was critically misused. Yes. You know? He was the epitome of, you know, the South Park gag, the token, right? It almost smacks you in the face because you don't see him ever. And then when you do see him, it's like there's flashes of brilliance, like you were mentioning that. So I anticipate him going in, but not as a first ballot Hall of Famer. Yeah, there's not as much meat on the bone as far as his resume as a lot of cast members, but not necessarily his fault. Which i'll be interested to see if what if the voters may take that into account or anything but definitely you know a beloved original cast member i think this is uh this is an interesting um choice that makes sense for for an episode for us yeah i i think so i'm going to start with somebody who just really epitomizes my experience with snl in the last 12 years i would say I started watching this performer and I didn't like him that much unless he was with this other guy.[7:40] And then I started to like them as a duo.[7:44] And then I really saw that this next nominee was outshining not only his comedic partner, but several other male cast members. And I'm talking about Beck Bennett, who just recently became eligible for the Hall of Fame. So that may hurt his chances of getting in right away. But i think he's versatile i think he's the kind of guy and i know we overuse this statement but you ask him to do anything and he'll do it you know like he doesn't know an impression you know what he'll put it together in a week it's like that old school mentality yeah i don't know how to do a putin impression oh i know what i'll do i'll take off my shirt you know and and sound vaguely russian you know but it was one of my favorite reoccurring characters and i think one of the last sketches he did i might be wrong but it's a solo sketch with him as vin diesel yep that was his and that was the last sketch of of the of the night right yep yeah the onya taylor joy episode yeah that's right i just got such a kick out i got such a kick out of it so it was like Like, I sound so old when I say that, but I am. So there you go. By the time you're hearing this, I'm 50. I'm 50.[9:11] So that's my pick. Matt, what do you think? I agree. I think that's an awesome pick. I've always felt he's one of those performers that really grew on me. The longer he was on screen, the more I saw him. And yeah, I think I think that's a terrific choice. Also, he's he's in DuckTales. So, you know, I can't fault him there, you know, like.[9:37] Talented man of many many talents so if you ever want to hear a fantastic episode of it's a great podcast it's a stand-up comedian that hosts it there i'm narrowing it down substantially aren't i uh and it's got um he used to be in the hbo show called crashing oh pete homes pete homes yes Yes, he has a podcast, and he interviews Beck Bennett on an episode. Sorry, folks, for that previous ramble. That was very riveting podcasting, I know. But at any rate, he is featured on this episode of the podcast, and it's a long-form interview. It's like a three-hour interview, but they get into it. And he was a multimillionaire when he signed to go work at Saturday Night Live on the basis of those insurance company commercials he was doing with the kids. Oh, wow. I don't know if you ever saw that campaign, but it was a national campaign in the US and he booked it. And it became a reoccurring thing. And by the time it reoccurred for the fifth time, they signed him for six figures to do it. Oh, jeez.[10:49] And pete holmes pulls that out of him like afterwards he's so mortified because pete holmes like is like he's like would you get like 50k he's like no he's like 200k he's like oh i don't really want to talk about it like 750k it's like okay it was a million dollars.[11:10] I digress on the insurance commercials yeah yeah it was it was uh their telephone phone commercials telephone commercials yeah he had a group of kids and he was almost like the moderator and ask kids questions or whatever and so when he got hired to snl i was like oh that's the guy from the commercials so i had already known his face and i'm like i didn't know he did comedy and he's on snl now that's gonna be interesting he turned into like a steady hand he turned into like like basically almost the rock of the show like he and keenan we're almost like the steady hand rocks of of the of that era of snl i'm excited about talking about back, Yeah, it's going to be a great episode, I suspect. Who do you have for us? Yeah. Try. So I am going to go, I want to go a different route. I'm going to use my musical guest early. And probably in a lot of ways because I think I already have a guest booked for this. One of my favorite guests to bring on the SNL Hall of Fame to talk music. So I'm going to pick you two as a nominee. And with the understanding that musical guests haven't had such great luck here on the SNL Hall of Fame, I think Paul Simon is in, and that's about it. I think I'm going to keep banging this drum all season. Dave Grohl should be in, and I will be talking about that as much as I can.[12:40] This is Dave Grohl's final season on the ballot. But I digress. You two, amazing band. Some memorable appearances at SNL four times on the show. And I think I have an awesome guest lined up to talk about U2. So I'm going to take U2 off the board early as my musical guest. They would have been one of my picks tonight, I suspect. They were on my musical shortlist if I didn't pick a writer. So they could have ended up a wild card for me. That being said, when did their appearances start? Were they always like a superstar band on the show? Well, that's the thing. Yeah, no, I don't think they appeared until the 90s.[13:23] Until like Octane Baby. Yeah, that's one of the things about them. From my recollection, I think they did pop. But they didn't appear when the Joshua Tree came out. They kind of missed like that. So I think their first appearances were in the 90s. So that'll be discussed, I'm sure. On our show as far as like timing of their appearances to me it reminds me maybe a little bit of prince in some ways uh as far as timing of their appearances for me they appeared after i'd already burnt out on them like i was that joshua tree era fan and really wasn't that zuropa.[14:03] You know kind of era didn't really click for me but i do know a lot of people of my age who were completely over the moon when they were on snl uh so yeah i mean they're a great band no arguments there but uh i don't know it's just for me they don't they aren't as as it isn't as memorable but i i can understand why because they are still such an amazing band and they did really put it all on the table whenever they did perform i just think for me the fact that the first time they showed up on SNL, if they were touring Octoon Baby, then it was either the Zoo TV tour, which was a stadium tour, or it was the one that had the cars hanging from the arena. I forget what that part of the tour was called before they went into Zoo TV and stadiums. So you have this band that's playing stadiums around the world coming into 8H.[15:00] This little wee stage. Right. That's what I mean. That's frickin' Hall of Fame. Yeah, I agree. That's one of the fascinating things about SNL and musical guests is sometimes we take for granted, like Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift or somebody like that. We're seeing these acts in a more intimate setting instead of these stadiums. U2 definitely qualifies. I think that's a really good point. Yeah, so that's my pick. We have Garrett Morris, Beck Bennett and you, too. It's back to Matt.[15:32] I'm going to go with my host card next. I am going to nominate Adam Driver. Again, one of those really strong players. He really brings his heart to every performance and he'll do things that like I'm pretty sure other people of his caliber of stardom would really push back on. I mean, you look at that cold open sketch that where he was Epstein and John Lovitz was Alan Dershowitz during the impeachment trial, the dark gallows humor that he was willing to go to in that for that sketch.[16:11] But then you also see like really over the top, silly things like when he was playing Dr. Rock hard, the porn doctor. And it's just, he's willing to like, you know, he's another one of those performers like Jon Hamm, like the star, his stardom doesn't get in the way of him doing silly stuff that takes down his own myth, like even like the undercover boss is Kylo Ren is so I'm going with Adam driver. Great pick. I think Adam driver, he wasn't on my short list, but I think it's a fantastic pick because he's. He doesn't have a dud. He doesn't have a dud episode. And that's key to being a Hall of Fame host, in my opinion. I tend to lean toward the five-timer being, you know, sort of a cutoff for me, and he just misses that.[17:06] But man, I can't wait to see those other performances working with this group that is starting to really find itself yeah this adam driver is one to me he's one of the better hosts of this whole era of snl and matt you did me a favor because adam driver was on like a short list and i was going to be debating between the shipping driver these other people so you just made that decision easier for me uh by taking adam driver because he was definitely on my like short very short list of hosts uh that i was considering he's just a guy He did some comedic stuff in Girls. He had some comedic moments, but I wouldn't describe him as a comedian or a comedic actor, but he showed those chops on SNL. I think a lot of times that's what happens. A lot of those good actors tend to do really well as SNL hosts because they can just slide in and do really quality sketch work. He was definitely up for anything. I love this. I'm super pumped to talk about Adam Driver. Yeah, it's going to be a great conversation. Anyone in mind off the top of your head? Not at all.[18:15] I'll put the fillers out there. I'll get somebody good, I'm sure of it. Yeah, that's great. All right. I'm up next. And I'm going to go with an old favorite.[18:27] To me, the first season of SNL that my little peepers got to see was Lauren's first year back. I saw the back half of that season. and was blown away. I had seen some Eddie Murphy episodes prior to that, but not much, and I don't have memories of them. But that season, I have memories. I have memories of one particular actor, and it's not Dennis Miller, who I thought was the coolest dude of all time, but the guy that made me laugh the most consistently because he was hammy, but not in a hammy way. And it's John Lovitz who I'm talking about. I think he's got a terrific resume. He was one of the very few. Nora Dunn, Dennis Miller, and he were the only survivors of the massacre that ensued following that season that Lauren came back. And they carried over into what became the second golden era of Saturday Night Live. In many ways, they formed, you know, the foundation of the next.[19:47] 20 years of that show you had the you know with the weekend update you had the solo performer doing weekend update you had this character actor that would do fantastic characters all the time and again i'm talking love it's just really terrific stuff uh i'm i'm really excited to see who you line up to talk about john lovitz i'm sure there'll be quite a a few people who want to do that but i'm curious what you guys think yeah people are going to be chomping at the bit to talk to talk about this and i i know off the top of my head at least uh, a couple snl podcasters out there uh would love maybe have already talked to me about hey if you guys do john lovitz let me know that would be one that i'd be interested so i know i have no shortage of options for john lovitz this is such a good one too it's funny jamie i'm keeping track of this i'm typing as as we go along and as soon as you started saying this person stood out to me at the end of lauren's first season i wrote john lovitz i'm like and i'm really excited because and you did me a favor too just like matt did me a favor with adam driver john lovitz was on like my very short list like i i was saying to myself am i really gonna go another draft without picking john lovitz we have to have john lovitz on on the season so i'm so excited about this jamie.[21:09] Great minds. He was on my list as well, honestly. I mean, like Tommy Flanagan, the devil in the people's court, you know, like just these consistently hilarious.[21:19] I mean, at the time when I was a kid, I didn't get him as much. But going back and rewatching him, I was like, I get it now. I get why everybody loves him. And I just think my tastes were not refined enough to appreciate him at the time. But yeah, having gone back and rewatched his era, I watched it on TV at the time, too. He's just a freaking genius. He knows when to go big. He knows when to be small.[21:54] And he'll do completely bonkers characters. And right now, he's adopted this, you know, well, I say right now, but over the last 25 years, he's adopted this butt of all jokes, you know, SNL based.[22:11] And I think that's hilarious. Like when they did the Immemorium, and he was on there. There's been other instances as well. So a lot of fun. Yeah absolutely yeah john love it's awesome so we're back to me uh i'm gonna um pick a cast member i'm gonna utilize one of my cast member choices and we've talked about molly shannon congratulations molly on being an so hall of famer we've talked on a gas dyer so i'm gonna go with a very talented woman who who was.[22:42] Their cohort who often upstaged them and who maybe popped dropped even more so than the other two which is saying a lot uh we haven't heard a ton from her since snl but i still think sherry o terry should get some love and get an episode of her own wow so i want to choose sherry o terry uh as my choice we're gonna have a sherry o terry episode and i think it's well deserved i think she was a big uh really big part of the resurgence of snl back in the late 90s oh totally agree like she was just like an amazing workout horse great great impersonations and impressions and just terrific a terrific energy like like i mean it was she was in a cast with some really amazing people but she always you know she could hold her own you know with with the rest of rest of the cast and her barbara walters is like when i imagined barbara I actually imagine her impression more than I imagine actually Barbara Walters. And it's like that just speaks to how much of a stamp she put on her performances. Yeah, I think in particular, her work with Will Ferrell was spectacular.[23:54] They found each other in scenes together quite often. And she could keep up with him physically and emotionally. You know, turn a phrase in a character type way. Really terrific stuff. Yeah, I can't wait. We've talked about a lot of the people from that era, and they're always really fun conversations because a lot of listeners, some of my guests, that's like their prime SNL years. It was like the Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon on a gas tire. We've taught Chris Parnell, we've taught Daryl Hammond. So I think it's about time Sherry O'Terry gets her episode. So i'm glad you guys are excited about this one well i guess it's my turn again uh i am going to go to the writer's pool uh for this one i'm going to plumb my gen x credentials and choose one of my favorite sketch you know sketch performers writers um later dramatic actors is Bob Odenkirk. He's, you know, probably in a lot of ways coming out of the writer's room. He don't like a lot of the writers do very successfully afterwards, but they're not necessarily as high profile. Whereas in a lot of ways, he's probably one of the most high profile former writer of the show as an actor, like with Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul.[25:22] But, you know, You know, he, you know, his writing with Robert Smigel and Conan O'Brien, but, you know, came out of the Chicago Second City community and created us, created characters like, you know, the the. Chris Farley's inspirational speaker, Matt Foley. And he went on to become like a very big voice in Gen X comedy with Mr. Show and working with Ben Stiller and Chris Elliott and writing for Dennis Miller when he had his own show. So, yeah, I'm just a big fan of Bob Odenkirk and I'd love to see him inducted. Yeah I wonder uh our buddies at the um Saturday Night Network um are definitely great as far as helping us out with credits and stuff so I'm curious there's probably gonna be some Odenkirk stuff that I didn't know that he was behind that I'll find out through this that tends to happen when I start researching the writers and doing all of that so I'm excited to find out a lot of what I don't know about Bob's SNL tenure obviously I think he might get a little bit of a bump too because of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad and he's still relevant now. So I think we might see what I'll call the Conan O'Brien bump. Maybe not to that level, but I think there's going to be a little bit of a surge for him. But I'm excited to see just what I don't know about Odenkirk.[26:46] Yeah, and it's very little. that uh like i didn't uh i forgot completely about the motivational speaker matt foley being a brainchild of his but i've watched the second city version of it and it's it's you know it's really great i think you are going to find somebody that's going to make a fantastic case for bob odenkirk i would have difficulty being the person to do that because i am not good at research and it's a it's a blind spot for me so i think that that is something that i'm trying to wrap my head around a little bit when i think about him as a as a hall of famer i look at the other writers who are in the hall you get seth myers you get conan o'brien yeah conan o'brien is this outlier. I can't wait to listen to the episode. So, you know, I want to be swayed. Yeah, hopefully it's a good one for you all. I'm sure it will be. I'm looking forward to see who takes on the assignment of being my guest for the Odin Kirk episode. I'm going to go with hosts next.[28:02] And it's someone who breaks my rule that I already outlined, you know, 300 strikeouts or 500 home runs to get into the Hall of Fame. And that's five stints as a host. This gentleman only has four. That's good, Jamie. I was going to talk you out of that anyway. So you shouldn't be so beholden to that. Okay, that's fine. That's fine.[28:28] So i think um i remember a party years ago i was still at an age it was season 19.[28:36] And i was of an age where i had to watch saturday night live live like every like every week like did not miss it and there was this big house party and i put it on and sat down on the couch to watch And I remember it vividly because it was Nirvana hosting. Nirvana was the musical guest, and it was my next nominee's first time hosting the show. And that was all the way back in 1993, I believe. And this is Charles Barkley. yeah and he he's very relevant nowadays because he's he says he claims he's retiring from tv.[29:18] We're recording this uh a little ahead of time uh until it comes out he says he's retiring from tv because tnt uh isn't gonna have basketball right i don't know what's gonna go on with inside the nba i don't know if i quite believe him honestly one of the most entertaining people uh in sports television always entertaining when he hosts snl she's a really charismatic dude just really funny guy uh so i i like this i i have to say i i think that's a great choice because i mean he's one of those few i'm not a big fan of sports personalities right on the show and he's one of the few i felt because i mean i still remember like i were we're months apart in age so uh i was watching that same night and uh that that you know that was a.[30:06] I had my shaggy shoulder length, greasy hair and grubby beard and my flannels. So I was right into Nirvana at that time. And yeah, it was like it was a surprising performance for me to do as well and be as strong as he was. But it was a great, great showing. I think one of the other, you know, sort of not rules, but little guidelines I like to look at for a host is how many eras did they work in? And he also qualifies there for me. His first appearance was again in season 19, and it was 1993. Then we didn't get him again until 2010 in season 35. Then he showed up relatively quickly with Kelly Clarkson in 2012 on season 37.[31:02] But then he wasn't back till season 43 in 2018. So that would have been almost an entire turnover at that point. I think to me that somebody that can host that many good episodes, I think season over season, era over era is somebody that should be at least considered for the Hall of Fame. Do I think he's a first ballot? No, but I think to use the parlance of his former sport, he's a slam dunk at some point. Oh, very nice, J.D. It's like a mic drop on your Charles Barkley. I like it.[31:41] So Charles Barkley is a host. I'm going to pick a host as well. You guys, I have a musical guest. I picked a cast member.[31:50] I'm going to go with the host. Somebody who's been very important to SNL. A former cast member but i don't think she quite has the resume to talk about as a cast member but i think she has some underrated episodes definitely when i went back and looked at her work as a host it surprised me as far as uh how strong she was as a host and maybe it shouldn't because she was a cast member she's hilarious i'm talking about julia louis drive is ah which does break your your rule jamie about she's only a three-timer uh but she she's she's worked with uh at least two different eras she hosted in 2006 2007 and she hosted in 2016 so she's worked with at least two different eras um but she always just really she was a steady hand as a host she did a great job to me the two this is a chance to celebrate julia um just all around as well and i think that's what this show SNL Hall of Fame is about is the chance to celebrate these folks and so I'm excited to celebrate just a super talented woman who has had an impact on SNL maybe I think more so maybe as a host than as a cast member but it'll be fun just to talk about her maybe touch on her entire body of work just a great comedic actor I love Julia Louis-Dreyfus So I want to talk about her for me. It feels when she came back to host, it was very much like a returning champion.[33:15] You know, like she came back and she'd conquered and she was able to, to relish in that glory.[33:21] And, and you know, I was like, I remember watching her in her era on the show and coming back and seeing her. And she's just so much more confident in every scene and so much more like she was great originally, but you see this growth in her. And it was great to see her at the peak of her ability coming back to the show. What I think is fascinating is I don't know off the top of my head if there is another host Hall of Famer that was a former cast member. And I don't think there is. I don't think so. I think this might be the first. Yeah. I think that that's a fascinating aspect of this candidacy. You know, that here she is, somebody that has three years on the show under her belt, and she gets called in. She knows what she's doing, not only comedically and as a comedic actress, but as a former cast member.[34:22] She sort of knows the ropes, and that is terrific fodder for conversation, I think. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's two people, there's two cast members in the SNL Hall of Fame that I think have cases to be in the SNL Hall of Fame as hosts. And I think Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig probably have cases for both things, which is pretty impressive. Um if we're talking former cast members as hosts you know the two of two of the preeminent ones are already in the hall i think julia is a good uh next level uh as far as that goes yeah well how do you follow julia louis-dreyfus um so i think i'm gonna go with another cast member uh and i was speaking about dr rockhard earlier and i'm gonna go back to his his waiting room.[35:16] And showing Aidy Bryant who is just another one of those incredible talents um solid delivery 10-year veteran on the show just you know her her musical bits you know and on top of that possibly the best Ted Cruz impersonation that I have ever seen um yeah and I mean she got her start like as a producer for comedy bang bang and she just brought that willingness and energy that you get in that LA alt comedy scene to SNL and I thought it was a great addition I did not know that's where she came from that's, amazing the former TV show or the, podcast the TV show oh so cool wow yeah I think this is a another great pick.[36:10] Matt um ad bryant is a spectacular cast member and again she was alongside kate mckinnon you know and kate mckinnon was was gilda radner was jan hooks was kristin wigg you know begat kate mckinnon and yet ad stood beside her and could shine brighter and that to me not all the the time but you know from time to time for sure and that to me is um a great place to start your argument for why she belongs in the hall yeah so beloved i'm curious to see what the voting percentage will be like from her if we're reading the tea leaves with kate mckinnon um it probably won't go in 80s favor the first time um but she's definitely to me she's hall worthy i'll say that and and she's definitely episode worthy this is something when when 80 stepped away from the show this was something that i was excited like i know in a couple years in a few seasons or whatever we're gonna be able to do an 80 brian episode so this is something i've been looking forward to ever since she left the show matt so this this is this is awesome the research is gonna be fun i'm gonna know i'm gonna have a great guest there's people gonna be lining up to talk about 80 bryant she's just such a beloved figure on snl and and i think we're seeing kind of hard to replace.[37:37] Honestly yeah all right so i'm up to bat i'm gonna close my eyes and point no.[37:46] I'm not gonna do that i'm gonna go in order i'm gonna stay in order i did two cast members i did a um host now Now I'm going to do a musical guest slash writer.[37:57] But I'm going to choose a musical guest who was a fantastic songwriter, quite frankly. One of the best songwriters and most well-known songwriters in his generation, which was predominantly the 70s, although adult contemporary played him throughout the 80s. And he made his presence known on SNL, I believe, in 80, 83, and then 86. He was on the Ebersole era he was on the original Lorne era and then Lorne brought him back for that first season I'm talking about if you don't know Randy Newman, who is not my bag necessarily, but I recognize the brilliance in his songwriting and his ability to inflect his sense of humor. He's got a wicked sense of humor, and he uses that in his music in a really fun kind of way. The only contemporary artist I can think of that reminds me of something similar is like Ben Folds. But Ben Folds certainly wasn't ever as big as Randy Newman was or is, although I do love Ben Folds.[39:16] Anyway, I think that's my – well, I don't think. That's my pick, Randy Newman, and I'm sticking to it. Yeah, six-timer Randy Newman. Six-timer, yeah, absolutely. So he had quite an impact on the show. I already have maybe somebody in mind as a guest for Randy Newman.[39:34] So I think not totally like 100% my cup of tea. There's a lot of stuff that he did that I did like, but maybe an era before me. But you can't argue his impact as a songwriter. Just what a reliable guest that he was on SNL.[39:52] So I think this is a really great choice. We're celebrating an older era of SNL that deserves to be celebrated with one of the predominant musical guests from that era. I like it, Jamie. Same here. I mean, like he's one of those performers that, you know, especially in that early era, SNL tapped into the zeitgeist musically in a way that was seldom seen on television. Like, you know, you wouldn't see him on a lot of TV shows other than these shows like SNL pushing the edges of musical talent and bringing in voices that were not necessarily always paid attention to. But I mean, he's gone on to. Yeah, I mean, he's been gone on to become like this cultural touchstone, like the Toy Story theme songs, like all the he's like all sorts of movies and television shows that he's touched. And I think that a lot of that comes back to these six episodes that he did that that helped elevate him so this will be a great conversation good job Jamie I love it so and another musical guest and uh we can see how musical guests of different eras kind of do I'm always fascinated yeah I don't have high hopes yeah but I do I do think uh sorry I said it's the journey that that that's that's what I think that's what's important here it's the journey not like if he makes it or what's that.[41:17] You got it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's important, but, you know, I've learned my lesson with Dave Grohl and I just had to appreciate doing the Dave Grohl episode and whether he gets into the hall, you know, that's, that's, um, I almost have to take that as like a bonus. So I'm up next and I'm, I have another cast member, uh, that I need to, I, so I picked Sherry O'Terry as my first cast member and I'm going to go a little more current than Sherry O'Terry and And talk about Bobby Moynihan. I think Bobby's had such a huge impact on SNL. And he was often, he never was somebody who was looked at as the leader of any of his casts. But he was so, so important. And I think he was always such an underrated cast member. Until he left the show and then people started reevaluating his time at SNL. Completely. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah, people were like, wasn't Bobby Moynihan so good? And then we start thinking of all these characters, all his sketch work. He still loves SNL. He still appears on it. He's an SNL podcast listener.[42:24] I'm about 5% convinced that he might listen to the SNL Hall of Fame. That's how much he loves SNL. So Bobby Moynihan, if you're out there, we love you, and we're going to do an episode on you. For me, he was like, when he popped for me, he just like there's the one sketch and i liked him but you know it's sort of on the fence but my wife's like ah i just i don't he's not but then he did the peppa up in here character and we're just like we're in love we're in love with bobby he's just so brilliant and.[43:03] Yeah, I can't wait to hear this episode. I think you really hit it on the head when you were talking about his departure and reflecting back and, you know, seeing that Bobby Moynihan-shaped hole.[43:19] I think that his versatility is something that isn't discussed enough. He was great in sketches.[43:28] He was great at being a character. and he did weekend update bits of the yin yang that were almost all home runs if that's not hall of fame worthy i don't know what is what i am going to be interested to see is the two current big boys so far are beck bennett and bobby moynihan those are you know sort of current era level hall of fame nominees i'm curious which one will get more ballots this year i don't think either goes in this year but do.[44:05] A little side bet but i'm curious who gets the most ballots yeah yeah maybe we can get a sponsorship from exactly yeah um yeah so i'm glad you guys like this pick bobby monahan super excited to start delving into his all his work uh i mean i know a lot of it a lot of it's imprinted in my mind but it's just so fun to go back and watch him cook like the weekend update desk is something that he he was just he just lived in and made his own riblet and drunk uncle like there's just like things that are so classic oh yeah we still go back to a drunk uncle like just everyone's always like yeah this is a drunk uncle moment yeah definitely yeah so bobby moynihan uh matt circling back around so we're down to the home stretch it's our the final pick for for all three of us so yeah.[45:02] I am going to go back to the beginning. Alan Zweibel, you know, one of the original band of writers, penned for that first season of SNL. He went on to get a really close relationship with Gilda Radner, writing a memoir about the relationship, Bunny Bunny, Gilda Radner, a sort of love story, which was adopted into a play for Gary Shandling, her enthusiasm. Enthusiasm but also he created i i say two of the most iconic sketches of that original era which are belushi samurai sketch and and rosanne rosanna dana i feel like those are two wow yeah those early characters that really you you think back to them it's like they just pop and they're both they're both from his pen so uh yeah that is my final pick yeah i think that's a great pick uh Alan's White Bell, they talk about him being under the Weekend Update desk, handing off jokes. He was a joke writer. That's what he was. He was a joke writer, and he was among the last people to be hired, I think.[46:11] But they knew what they needed, and they knew that he could deliver, and deliver he did. Bonding early on with Gilda Radner, using that bond to create. An iconic character, co-create an iconic character, like you say, that may have overstayed her welcome. But she was on quite a bit those first couple seasons. But nevertheless, she was great. And he's great. And I think that the people that listen to this show are.[46:47] Need to start understanding that this is a show that has performers that do great work and are coming from a school of improvisation. But virtually everything you see every week on Saturday Night Live is written, and it's written by really talented people, and they need to be reflected in the hall as well. Well said here here and uh yeah as why bell when i go back and watch old uh snl episodes he makes me do the leonardo dicaprio pointing at the tv because he will he will appear like you'll see a sketch and then you'll be like oh it's why there's alan's why bell in the background or they used a picture of alan's why bell on weekend update for something or he'll just kind of pop up he's like uh where's waldo uh in that era's why bell will pop up when you least expect him and he had a really funny cameo and a curbing enthusiasm as well he had a funny interaction with larry david uh when he ran into him in new york city at a bar that one of my favorite scenes in the show's history is why belt was a part of so we love oh oh this is gonna be a fun one to listen to yeah i've got a lot to learn and that is where i start with my wild card pick i've got Got a lot to learn. I don't know a lot about this next fella.[48:07] I know not a lot about him because of the era he came into, but I know that he was part of the bread and butter. There was Eddie Murphy carrying the load, but the glue guy was Joe Piscopo. I felt you were going there. And Joe Piscopo is somebody that I think, while he's got some interesting things to say these days, I think that reflecting back on his actual career, which is what we want to do and we want to look at, I think that he was pivotal. He was pivotal. There are a handful of people that are responsible for SNL staying afloat. I'm not going to say keeping it alive in this case, because I don't think he was that valuable a cog.[49:02] Uh over overall but he kept it afloat for sure like he was somebody who kept it afloat he was he was a steady rower and it was a time that things were not steady other than steady eddie of course so joe pescabo he's got my back he's probably the most buff uh former cast member in the show's history if i i would i mean i haven't done the proper research for this uh but But my guess is he's the most ripped cast member in history. What do you guys think? I have to agree. Beck Bennett is surprisingly close, but I think Joe in his heyday has that title. I think he's the only one who's appeared on a men's health magazine, that's for sure. Probably. Never saw Kyle Mooney in men's health.[49:53] Now I've got that sketch in my head where he got like wearing the bodysuit like. Like, that's what Joe Piscopo actually looked like at one point. Let's write a sketch about Joe Piscopo. Jamie, this is great. I think people always talk about Eddie Murphy, rightfully so. Like, Eddie Murphy was amazing in that era. But Joe, Joe Piscopo was right there with him in a lot of these classic sketches. Sketches and i think i know a lot of snl super fans who really go to bat for for talking about how how important joe piscopo was and what an actual like good cast member he was uh so this will be uh really neat to go back and watch frankly a lot of sketches that sort of get lost in time from that era if eddie murphy wasn't a part of them um it's almost like they just kind of get lost in snl history so this will be a fun one for me and when you find them out there they're They're usually hacked to bits, right? Like there's like three sketches and then meet one musical performance or something like that. You know, exactly. What have you got for us, Thomas? Oh, sorry, man. Sorry. I was just going to say, I can't wait as well. Like I, I mean, he's such a, he, I love his mobster characters when he, when he goes into that sort of like rat rat pack, channeling like uh frank sinatra that he would often do yeah and they use that like that like later on in his career he appeared on star trek the next generation as like a rat pack era.[51:21] Comedian and yeah like he mentored data on how to be a stand-up comedian and it's just like he just He exudes the feel of that era, but that's because he just is so good at committing to a bit. So, yeah, I can't wait. Thomas, you're bringing this home. Yes, sir. I'm rounding this out. I have a wild card pick as well, and I'm going to add another host into the mix and end it with a host. It's a five timer. So I'm adhering to that to that loose rule, I guess, of having a five timer. It's somebody who actually hosted six times between 1982 and 1999. Bobby Moynihan apparently actually impersonated this person on the show one time. So I'm talking about Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito. I was going to guess that. Yeah. So it's Danny DeVito. He was always like a very reliable host. He hosted one time with his wife, Rhea Perlman. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I remember him having memorable sketches of really funny. Everybody talks about the delicious dish with Alec Baldwin, but Danny DeVito was in a really clever delicious dish sketch in his own right that I'll definitely talk about. I always loved Danny. He's such an interesting, quirky personality.[52:41] And it's just going to be so fun to chat about his hosting gigs at SNL. Like I said, 82 to 99. So not quite like he never hosted with a lot of the new cast. But he's got to see a lot of SNL so Danny DeVito is my choice, I like it. It's a bold choice. It's sort of sitting in the bushes, you know, but it's very obvious once you play those cards. And the fact that the run is from 82 to 99, and you got a lot of quality appearances you know again another stat quality appearances.[53:31] They together with ria perlman i thought um was a fun episode and for a time it almost seemed like he was going to challenge alec baldwin he even had the episode with his spouse You know, they were rolling out around the same episodes, and then Baldwin just took off in a bolt. I think that Danny DeVito is somebody that will, you know, probably hit around the 35% mark in his first year, which to me is somebody that's likely to get in. But it'll take a couple years of us pestering people and telling people, no, no, watch the episodes. This guy was really good. And Danny DeVito is one of those interesting. I remember watching Taxi as a kid and he was just like so abrasive. But it was again, it comes back to his.[54:32] His capability of understanding the moment and what he needed to bring to any scene. And then, you know, you go on to watch twins and all of this stuff growing up. I actually don't remember his SNL days. So I'm going to have to go back and rewatch those episodes. Not quirky sketches. sketches it's very some a lot of them are very danny devito which is a good thing good thing yeah yeah yeah yeah it's gonna be fun yeah definitely i think it's always sunny in philadelphia is gonna help him too because a lot of younger he's very relevant yeah a lot of younger people like it's always sunny i like it my my uh 16 year old niece loves it so that's you know he he a lot of people from different generations know danny devito and i think it's always sunny he's going to help him a lot here. I wonder if he'll come back. I wonder if he'll do a stint again. Yeah, I was looking at hosts. If that show ends or something. I think he'd be game. He's really game for anything.[55:31] He's not a person to turn down an opportunity to perform. So I would say he'd go for it. Maybe we can hire him for the SNL Hall of Fame Christmas party this year. Oh, I'll put some fillers out. I'm efforting as we say in the business. Well, Thomas, do you want to run down our picks one more time? Absolutely. So in order of whether they're drafted, we have... Garrett Morris, Beck Bennett, U2, Adam Driver, John Lovitz, Sherry Oteri, Bob Odenkirk, Charles Barkley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, A.D. Bryant, Randy Newman, Bobby Moynihan, Alan Zweibel, Joe Piscopo, and Danny DeVito. I spared you guys my Don Pardo impression. I drew that, by the way, so you're welcome.[56:27] Listen i think that that's a formidable class of nominees rather not inductees but nominees i think that uh we've got an interesting season at our at our hands on top of those 15 episodes of course we're going to do another don pardo award there will be of course our famous round roundtable episode and then we'll wrap it all up with the class of season six. I wonder who on the ballot will make it. It'll be interesting to see. Thomas, Matt, thanks so much. This was a blast. That was great. Well, that's what we've got for you. So if you do me a favor and on the way out, as you pass the weekend update exhibit, turn out the lights because the SNL Hall of Fame is now closed.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/snlhof/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What's up, dudes? We interrupt your regularly scheduled summer day to bring you this special news bulletin! Yes, Mike Westfal of  Advent Calendar House and Tim Babb from Can't Wait for Christmas are one the scene with me to talk all about the 1989 “Sesame Street News Flash: Santa Claus” sketch! From episode 2592 of season 20, this three minute news flash sees ace reporter Kermit the Frog attempt to catch Santa in the act of delivering presents on Christmas Eve. The sketch was directed by Jon Stone, and was originally titled ‘A Clean Sweep.' Our green correspondent hides behind a family's Christmas tree, and springs into action upon hearing a noise from the chimney. To his great surprise, a “Bert from Mary Poppins”-esque chimney cleaner, C. Sweep, tumbles out of the fireplace. Apparently he was hired to unclog the chimney! And on Christmas Eve of all times!Kermit admonishes the Victorian London sweep and encourages him to clean the chimney post haste! Unwittingly, C. Sweep clears the obstruction, and out pops Santa Claus himself! This is why Gary Shandling greases his chimney. Santa immediately sits to rest, and Sweep jumps on his lap and starts reciting his Christmas list. Kermit gets dragged into the whole charade. It's almost as wacky as the time Kermit saw the holiday mascots get mixed up.Mandatory Jerry Nelson voice? Yep. Anything muppets? Sweep and Santa, of course. Flustered flippers? Only Kermit's! So grab your microphone, hide behind a Christmas tree, and help a chimney sweep unclog this episode about “Sesame Street News Flash: Santa Claus!”Advent Calendar HouseFB: @adventcalendarhouseTwitter: @adventcalhouseIG: @adventcalendarhouseCan't Wait for Christmas FB: @CantWaitForChristmasPodIG: @cantwaitforchristmaspodTwitter: @ChristmasPodGive us a buzz! Send a text, dudes!Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Totally Rad Christmas Mall & Arcade, Teepublic.com, or TotallyRadChristmas.com! Later, dudes!

This week on the blog, a podcast interview with Ari Kahan, who assembled and oversees the most complete compendium of on-line information on Brian DePalma's classic rock music horror classic, Phantom of the Paradise. LINKSA Free Film Book for You: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/cq23xyyt12Another Free Film Book: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/x3jn3emga6Fast, Cheap Film Website: https://www.fastcheapfilm.com/The Swan Archives: https://www.swanarchives.org/Eli Marks Website: https://www.elimarksmysteries.com/Albert's Bridge Books Website: https://www.albertsbridgebooks.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/BehindthePageTheEliMarksPodcastINTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTDo you remember when you first saw it? What were the circumstances? How old are you? What was your reaction? ARI KAHAN: Sure. I first saw it when I was 12. It was double billed with Young Frankenstein. This would have been in early 1975, and my mom took me to see Young Frankenstein, which was okay. It was pretty good, but I was really enamored with the second feature on the bill, which was Phantom. And I've been in love with it ever since.Did you know anything about it before you went in? ARI KAHAN: Nothing. Nothing at all. So, what has been the attraction for you for that film, low those many, many years ago?ARI KAHAN: It may have just hit me at an impressionable time. But I think that, you know, being 12 and being kind of a nerd, I probably identified with Winslow and his fervent belief that if the world could only hear from his heart, and especially if all the girls in school could only hear from his heart, then they would love him and not the jerk that they always went out with.So, there's probably some of that. There was certainly, I do remember very, very clearly that the direction in some respect stood out to me. I had seen a lot of movies when I was 12, and I remember even today, thinking when I was 12, that there was a moment where the Phantom is rising up into the rafters in the foreground as Beef is descending in the background. And I looked at that and I thought, boy, that's complex. Anybody else would have done a shot of the Phantom starting to climb a rope, and then cut away, and then come back to him up in the rafters. This guy is trying to do things that are more interesting than he needs to and I thought that was really fun.After seeing Phantom I went back and saw Sisters.Which was no mean feat back then. ARI KAHAN: Yeah, I know and in fact, I had to see Sisters by buying a 16-millimeter print of it. That was the only way I could. I had fixed up a couple of—this is probably a year or two later—I had fixed up a couple of 16-millimeter projectors that my school was discarding, so I could even do changeovers in my bedroom. And I got a copy of Sisters just so I could see it because it was unseeable otherwise. Well, kudos to you for finding Sisters, because it took me a long time. I imagine it showed up at the Film society at the university or something finally. So getting to see William Findlay in a markedly different role and also seeing, oh, okay, this is a director who likes split screen. Although I probably would have gotten that from Carrie, because I'm sure I saw Carrie first. He's accused of doing stuff like that just for showing off. In fact, I think it's always for a cinematic or emotional reason. And Sisters is the best example of that. The suspense of getting rid of that dead body before they get to the door is enhanced by the fact that you're watching two things happen at the same time. ARI KAHAN: Yeah, I think in Sisters and Phantom both, it works really well. And I think, and I think even DePalma would agree that it didn't work as well in Carrie. Because the split screen calls for intellectualizing on the part of the audience. And it takes you out emotionally and wasn't really working that well. I understand why he did it, because it'd be boring to like, cut to Carrie's face, cut the things happening, cut back to Carrie's face, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think both he and Paul Hirsch, the editor, feel it would have been better off to do something else.But anyway, after Phantom, you know, every new De Palma film to come out—all the way through Domino—has been a much anticipated event for me, you know, and I'm in the theater on the first day. And there have been a couple of disappointments along the way, but by and large, it's been awesome. Since you've seen Phantom so many times, were there any surprises that popped up over the years as you've watched again and again and things that you hadn't seen or hadn't realized?ARI KAHAN: It took me a really long time to notice that there was a frame or two of Jessica Harper being one of the backup singers on stage when Beef's performing life at last and only because I think it was unavoidable to use those frames. I think somebody figured out in editing that it didn't make any sense for her to be one of those backup singers and then in a white dress. So that took a while. It also was only within the past couple of years that I realized that a lot of the sort of classical, but silent movie sounding music that I had always thought was composed by the guy who did the incidental music was actually Beethoven. Oh, really?ARI KAHAN: Because Beethoven's not credited. So that little like a little violin thing that happens …ARI KAHAN: Or when Swan is going into phoenix's dressing room. When Winslow is escaping from prison. Well, it's Beethoven piano trios for the most part. So, you don't need to get permission from the Beethoven estate on that…ARI KAHAN: Well, I think that they would have had to pay the orchestra involved and I can easily imagine them omitting credit to avoid doing that. Hoping nobody would notice. And nobody did, obviously.Until you've just brought it up. ARI KAHAN: Yeah, sorry. That's okay. It's not, it's not our problem. One of the things that, that I found the Swan Archives to be so helpful on—well, lots of things, uh, when I discovered it years ago and I've returned to it as new things have popped up or I've dug a little deeper—was your explanation of the Swan Song debacle. As a frequent viewer of the movie. I wasn't noticing truncated shots. That I didn't notice until you showed us those shots. But obviously the mattes, particularly at the press conference, are really, really terrible. If I'm noticing them, they're bad. Can you just give us a brief history of why they had to do that? ARI KAHAN: Sure. So, it goes to Beef electrocution. In the early seventies, there was a band called Stone the Crows, whose guitarist was a guy named Les Harvey and Peter Grant, who would later manage Led Zeppelin, managed Stone The Crows. And Les Harvey was—in a freak accident—electrocuted on stage. I think his guitar was badly grounded or something along those lines, in 1971 or 72.And when Peter Grant learned that there was a film coming out in which a rock guitarist is electrocuted on stage, he assumed, that it was making fun of what had happened to his friend, Les Harvey. And by that time he was managing Led Zeppelin. I should say in De Palma's defense that Beef's electrocution shows up in early drafts of the script that were written before Les Harvey suffered his accident. So, this was life imitating art, imitating life, you know, rather than the other way around. De Palma clearly did not take that plot and probably didn't even know about what had happened to Les Harvey. But anyway, by the time Peter Grant got wind of this, Phantom had already been shot, but not yet released. This was in the summer of 1974. And by sheer absolute sheer coincidence, Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin had just gotten a trademark on Swan Song for their record label. And the first record to come out on the Swan Song label was Bad Company's first record, and that was in somewhere around June of 1974. So that's when their trademark was perfected, and Phantom was scheduled to be released a few months later at the end of October.And Peter Grant went to 20th Century Fox, which had just purchased Phantom from Ed Pressman and DePalma. You know, it's important for the story to know that Phantom was independently produced. It wasn't financed by Fox. Pressman and DePalma raised money to make this movie in the hopes that they would then sell it to some distributor for more than they had paid to make it.And it turned out that there was a, quite a bidding war among several studios, which Fox won. And Fox paid more for Phantom than anyone had ever paid for an independent film to that point in history. They had very high expectations for it. So that sale had just closed, but Pressman and De Palma and everyone else hadn't been paid yet by Fox.And of course, they had run out of money and owed everybody money, everyone who had worked on the film. So, they were in kind of a desperate situation. And Peter Grant went to Fox and said, “I'll sue you and prevent release of this film.” And the only thing that Fox could do was to tell Pressman and De Palma, you need to fix this.And the only way they could fix it was by removing all of the references to Swan Song, so that Peter Grant wouldn't have grounds for his claim, because he obviously can't claim you can't have a film with an electrocution of a rock star. Really, all he had was the Swan Song thing. And so that was done very, very hastily. They were still working on it in early October, even though the film was scheduled for release at the end of October. And so, basically, Fox signed a deal with Led Zeppelin saying we won't release the film with any of this Swan Song prominently shown. Which is a very stupid resolution really because Peter Grant in the end did not prevent distribution of a film with an electrocution of a rock star, which was his original concern.All he really managed to do was mangle somebody else's. And so the end result is that the film that we've all been watching for the last 50 years, there's a little bit cut out of it. There's some lovely crane shots that you missed because what the DePalma had done through the film was start on this Swan Song logo or the Swan name and then move away from it to whatever was going on. So that you have the impression that Swan was everywhere. And so that whole thing was lost and, you know, as you and everybody else noticed, some of it's very noticeable, particularly the bird at the airport. Which is too bad.I understand that you have a secret print of the film in which all those logos had been restored. In addition to fixing the crane shots and having shots that no longer have the terrible matte on them, is there anything else in that version that we wouldn't have seen before? ARI KAHAN: It's not a secret print, really. It was just reconstructing the film the way that it was intended to be, using footage that had been assumed to have been destroyed decades ago, but which I eventually found and digitized. And then with the help of a couple of other folks, put the movie back together. The most challenging part: there's a couple of challenging parts to that.You know, it's not just a matter of sticking things in. The footage was without sound. And so, if you're making a scene a few seconds longer, for example, and there's music underlying that scene, what are you going to do? Are you going to start the music a little bit later? Are you going to end it a little bit earlier?Are you going to play it a little bit slower so that it fills up these extra seconds? Are you going to loop it? Are you going to find some other piece of music that was probably intended to go there in the first place? So there's that problem. And then the podium scene, which is the worst offender—at the airport—the original, they actually worked on the negative to put the dead bird on. And so, the original footage for that podium didn't exist. But we knew what the podium was supposed to look like, because there's a photo that was used for the German promotional campaign—created obviously months before the film is released—and that still shows the podium the way that it's supposed to look. So, I got my friend, Steve Rosenbaum, who is a special effects supervisor. He won Oscars for Forrest Gump and Avatar, I think. And he's about to win an Emmy—I will bet you a box of donuts—he's about to win an Emmy for his work on Masters of the Air. I gave him this image and the footage that's shown, you know, in the theater normally, and he reconstructed the podium for me. So that's how we did the podium. But the other thing that was that if you go see the film now in the theater projected from DCP, the DCP master—which is the same master that we've used for the current blu rays—it was done by a company called Reliance Media Works in Burbank. And, I don't know what 17 year olds they had working on it, but they did the coloring and grading the way it's fashionable to do when they did it, you know, 10 years ago, which was a lot of orange, teal and the blacks are crushed so that anything that's really dark gray or dark brown, just black, so that the colors pop more, but you lose a lot of the detail, and to my eye it looks terrible.And so, I used an earlier master of the film that looks more like it looked in the 70s as the base for the reconstruction. And then color matched the replacement footage to that. It sounds beautiful. ARI KAHAN: It's gorgeous. The only other thing that I suppose we could have done, but didn't, is there's originally footage of Winslow's face coming out of the record press looking all mangled. And I have that footage, but I didn't put it back in because that footage that DePalma deemed not appropriate to the tone of the film that he was making. And so, since the object of this game was to restore the film to the way that he would have wanted it, I let that out. I think that was a wise choice. You know, I talked to Pete Gelderblom, who did the Raising Cainreconstruction. And it's a beautiful piece of work that he did. He was more constrained than you, because he was only allowed to use the footage which was there, and he just had to rearrange it. He repeats one shot, but he got it as close to the original shooting script as he could. I don't think Paul Hirsch was particularly thrilled with it, but De Palma was and has referred it as his director's cut. Did De Palma see your version and did he like it? ARI KAHAN: Yeah. I did a cast and crew sort of screening in Los Angeles and Paul Williams came to that and Archie Hahn and so on. Ed Pressman, the producer. And there was tremendous enthusiasm, because none of them had ever seen the film that they made the way that it was supposed to be.And I sent a copy to Paul Hirsch and I'm not sure whether DePalma heard about it from Pressman or from Paul Hirsch, but he asked to see it. And I sent it to him and I got a nice note from him saying, you know, that it was great, good job, la la la, it's great to see the film the way that it was, you know, the original cut.So. Yes, he is. Definitely. He's seen it. He's happy with it. And Ed Pressman, in particular, wanted to have that version released on home video or in some other way. And we went to Fox. This is before Disney. It was still Fox. And Fox said, well, you know, we could consider doing that under two conditions. First, Mr.DePalma approves. Well, yes, check box checked there. He does. And second, we made this deal with Led Zeppelin back in 1974, where we agreed not to do this. And if you can get them to waive their rights under that agreement, then yeah, sure. So, I worked with Ed Pressman and we put together a bunch of testimonials from people that we thought Led Zeppelin might respect, like Brett Easton Ellis and I think Guillermo del Toro and others, and sent a package off to Led Zeppelin through their lawyers. And God bless them, they got back to us in less than a week and said no. At least they didn't leave you hanging. ARI KAHAN: At least they didn't leave us hanging. That's right. So, your archive is amazing and is hour's worth of fun to go through it. ARI KAHAN: It's a rabbit warren. Yeah, I wish it were a little better organized.How did it get started? Well first, when did you start collecting memorabilia and then how did that grow into the archive? ARI KAHAN: I started collecting memorabilia right after I saw the film when I was 12. And that was obviously pre internet and pre-eBay. And it was a lot harder to get stuff. Bt I would frequent science fiction conventions and horror conventions and comic book shops.And there were a whole bunch of people who knew me as that kid who's always looking for Phantomstuff. And I was the kind of nerd who kept a log with the what everybody else was also looking for. And so, if I were at some convention and the guy who was collecting Olivia Newton, John's stuff, if I saw something interesting—not that there is anything interesting about it, but anyway—if I saw something interesting about Olivia Newton, John, I would run to the pay phone and call him and say, Hey, you want this? And I would pick it up for him. And so, there was a lot of returning of favorites where there would be people who were going to cons that I wasn't going to. And if they saw Phantom stuff, they would pick it up for me and that kind of thing. And so, you know, that became the way to get the posters from every country in the world that it was released in and the lobby cards and everything else and it started filling up, taking up more and more space over time and grew into, you know, trailers and magazines and everything else.And then when the site came out in around 2006, I put up the first version of the site. People who either had worked on the film or had something interesting would get in touch with me and say, “You know, I have this. I see you have a good home for it. Do you want it?” And of course, you know, eBay was a way to fill in some gap.Is there, within what your current collection holds, is there a prized possession that, you know, if there was a fire and you only grabbed one of those pieces, what would you take with you? ARI KAHAN: Yeah, absolutely. You know, in every dorm room and every apartment and every house I've ever lived in has hung John Alvin's art from the one sheet, and it's the same art that's on the cover of the soundtrack album. I just thought that was beautiful piece of art. And I think it was his second movie poster he painted. The first one would be for Blazing Saddles. And then he did Young Frankenstein, and if you look at the Young Frankenstein poster and the Phantom poster, you can see that there's a lot of stylistic similarities there.But he went on to do, you know, E. T. and, you know, 130 odd other posters. And at some point, he and I started corresponding and he finally said, “You know, I have something that I think you should have. Give me your mailing address.” And a few days later what showed up was his original painting, the comp painting for that poster, which he had had all this time. And so that would be the prize possession for sure. Well, that qualifies, I think. Is there a Holy Grail out there that you're still looking for? ARI KAHAN: The original art for the Corbin poster. Which is the “he's been maimed and framed, beaten, robbed, and mutilated.” That artwork would be a Holy Grail. As well as, well, the Phantom's original helmet. Now, it turns out there's a couple of them, at least. And one of them Guillermo del Toro now has. He just bought the Phantom's costume after it failed to sell at auction at Bonham's. And the other helmet the Pressmanfamily has, so those would be a grail. There's a lot of things that I'm sure no longer exist that would be the grail, like, you know, the Phantom's contract.Any number of props would be fun, but there's not very many known to still exist. I think Peter Elbling still has—or I think his son has it right now—the microphone that he used with a knife on it. And Garrett Graham still has his guitar strap, Beef's guitar strap. And I think he may still have the plunger.But not the antler belt? ARI KAHAN: No, not as far as I know. That'd be tough to ship. It would be. Yes. Dangerous to keep around the house. You could bump into it. On the site you kindly show all kinds of different memorabilia that you have or that exists around the world. And you also have a section called Inexplicable Crap. Is there one piece in there that just stands out for you as what in the world were they thinking? ARI KAHAN: Maybe the Death Records pillow. Like I can understand why they did. They made prototypes that never went out for sale. Why anybody would want it, you know, a dead bird, probably somebody wants a dead bird pillow, but the market would be limited.When the DVD for Phantom Palooza 2 came out, I bought that and then heard you talking somewhere about getting Jessica Harper to sing Old Souls, which is on the DVD. We just see the very end of her singing it. I'm guessing there were some technical problems or something with that. ARI KAHAN: It wasn't technical problems. It was the Paul Williams rider, which required that the show not be recorded. And I think that midway through Jessica singing, somebody might have said, or actually I think that's an audience--t might be an audience shot thing that we have. There's probably lots and lots of cell phone video out there of the show, but nobody related to who worked on Phantom Palooza—and I was one of the people who worked on Phantom Palooza—is going to be out there distributing anything that we agreed with Paul we would not even shoot. But, but yes, Jessica was absolutely a highlight of the show there. I was surprised that she went full force on the end of that song. ARI KAHAN: Well, there were no plans for her to perform. And the morning of the rehearsal, I said, “Hey, Jessica, you want to go down and watch Paul rehearse?” And I took her over to the auditorium and I was hoping that, you know, seeing that and being a performer at heart, she might be inspired to maybe, you know, participate. And she decided she would do Old Souls with Paul's band. And then she went back to the hotel and practiced the song, I think, all day in her hotel room and then, you know, knocked it out of the park that night. That's how I remember it. And then she came off stage and said, you know, now I know how Mick Jagger feels. It's a pretty stunning debut for her in that movie, to come from essentially nowhere—although she'd done things before that. And then the run that she had in the seventies, pretty unequaled when it comes to being the, um…ARI KAHAN: The queen of cult. Yeah. The queen of cult. And just the range, from Suspiria to My Favorite Year. You don't get a much broader range than that. ARI KAHAN: Pennies From Heaven. Yes, just phenomenal. Even just the wheat speech in Love and Death is worth the price of admission alone. ARI KAHAN: She played, uh, Gary Shandling's wife on The Gary Shandling show in the last season, named Phoebe, of all things. And in, I'm pretty sure it was the last episode of that show, she's held hostage by a phantom who lives under the set, who threatens to sabotage Gary's show, unless she will sing his song. And she ends up singing his song, which turns out to be YMCA. Wearing a dress that is very, very reminiscent of the one she wore to sing Old Souls in. And they even make a Pennies From Heaven joke. So, it's very inside baseball, I should say. Speaking of actors from that, I've always been blown away by William Finley's performance in the movie. I think it was Paul Williams who said something like, you know, he spends three quarters of the movie acting with one eye and metal teeth, and that's all he's got. And it's just flawless and so heartbreaking.And I'm just sorry we didn't get to see him in more movies. He's delightful in The Fury in a very small part. He's all over the early films. And I got the sense since I read somewhere that you did a eulogy for him, that you must have developed a friendship over the years. ARI KAHAN: Yeah. And, before we get to that, you say heartbreaking, right?And I think that that's one of the things about Phantom that was so ballsy. It's obviously a spoof of many things, but while being a spoof, it tries to get you to care about the characters. If, if you were not, you know, devastated at the end when Winslow dies just before Phoenix recognizes that it was him all along, you know, the film has failed.Whereas in other spoofs, you know, Rocky Horror doesn't ask you to care whether Brad and Janet will get back together after their experience or anything like that. Nobody asked you to care about the characters at all. And I think it's a huge risk that DePalma took in making a film like this: while simultaneously being a parody and a satire and a spoof and everything else, he wants you to care about the outcome. As far as Finley, I got to know Bill a little bit towards the end of his life after meeting him at Phantom Palooza. I went to New York and spent a little time with him and now I know his wife Susan pretty well and his son Dash a little bit. And when he died, Susan asked If I would put together some kind of a video montage for the funeral, which wasn't that—it's a celebration of life was what she was calling it. And I did that. And every time I had it finished—and, you know, I had like a day and a half to do this. And then I had to take the red eye to New York from California for this, for this event—every time I had it finished, she would send me a few more pictures and I'd have to, you know, redo it.And then she asked, could you set it to music? Could it be set to Faust? You know, okay. You know, you don't say no to a widow, right? And I was working at the time too. So, when I finally flew to New York, I was completely exhausted. And I got to the chapel I guess a couple of hours before the ceremony was supposed to start, so that we could make sure that this thing would play on their equipment and so on.And I'm taking a nap on one of the pews and Susan showed up with, you know, programs under her arm. And I picked up a program and saw that, right after Garrett Graham and Jessica Harper was supposed to speak, I'm supposed to speak. But I this was the first I was hearing about it. And so, I spent the first, unfortunately, the first part of the ceremony—where I really wanted to be paying full attention—kind of scrambling together what I was going to say.I have no idea what I said at this point. I hope it did Bill justice and didn't offend anybody, but I couldn't tell you now a single word of what I ended up saying there. And it's in front of, you know, various of the icons of my childhood, right, are in that chapel. So it's kind of like all of the nightmares of going to school and realizing that there's a test in the subject that you never took, and that you're not wearing pants, and all your ex-girlfriends are there laughing at you. Because I have my own podcast that has to do with my series of books, and like your site, I want to make it perpetual. But there's really no way to do that unless I set up a fund so that after I die they keep paying the site to keep running it. Because as soon as that site shuts down, the podcast goes away. And the same thing will happen to the archive. Whoever is hosting it, unless they're paid, it's gonna go away. I'm wondering, do you have a plan in place for all that information? ARI KAHAN: When I go, it goes.Oh, I feel like I set you up for that. Okay. Can I propose an alternate ending to that? ARI KAHAN: Sure. You essentially have a book there. You just have it in web form. You should put that together so that when it is done, when you are done, it can just be put into a book because it already reads like a book.ARI KAHAN: People have suggested that, and I've resisted doing a book because every now and then, some new fact comes to light that shows that something I had in there was wrong. And everything in there—virtually everything—is based on conversations that I've had with participants or material that came out at the time. None of it is taken from someone else's book or anything. So it's all fairly firsthand, but people have fallible memory. So, for example, the guy who made the phantom's helmet assured me that he had made only one. And it's crazy, because every production wants to have multiple copies of any key prop, because if something happens to the prop during shooting, shooting would have to, you know, it's an incredibly expensive problem to stop shooting waiting for another one.But as it turns out, he's, he's wrong. He made more than one. There is more than one. And so, every now and then, I have to correct something on the site. And if I put it out in book form, these books would be wrong. Potentially, something could come out in the future that that would make something with my name on it. Wrong. Imagine a book with a mistake. I can't imagine. ARI KAHAN: Exactly. And I can't abide that. So, it exists in electronic form so that I can edit it and improve it. Well, I would argue that you can do the ebooks, but that's, you know, that's your circus. It's not my circus. But you do raise an interesting question about misconceptions. I know that one of the biggest misconceptions is that it ran in Winnipeg forever and it didn't. I can—as someone who lived here in Minneapolis when Harold and Maude ran at the Westgate Theater for two and a half years—I can assure you it ran there for two and a half years, because I was there those two and a half years. So that was real. Is there another misconception out there about the movie that you just can't—like a whack a mole—get rid of? ARI KAHAN: So many. In fact, um, I think on my FAQ page, I list some of them. Is there an egregious one that just gets under your skin? ARI KAHAN: Yeah. The idea that it was only popular in Winnipeg and a couple other places is just completely wrong. It was big in Japan. It eventually became a big in Los Angeles. It never did anything in New York. Where it was actually biggest was not Winnipeg, it was El Salvador, where the songs hit number one on the radio. More than once. And it was brought back and revived many times. I get more mail from El Salvador than from anybody else.As we wrap up here, my favorite scene in the movie is the closing credits. I just love the music. I love what Paul Hirsch did with the assembly of that. And for years, I was living under the mistaken impression that in the credits, when it said Montage by Paul Hirsch, that that's what I was looking at was that montage. That's a montage. Then I was disabused of that in an interview with him—which I clarified with him. It was very nice to get back to me on Facebook when I said, “Am I correct in my understanding that the montage in the middle of the movie, the writing montage, you never saw that until the film was done? You had to put all the timing of that together, the animation of the writing, the placement of Phoenix's face on this part of the screen, and the Phantom and that, all the dissolves, all that timing?” And he said, “Yes it was a one-shot thing.” And I think for that he does deserve a special “Montage by Paul Hirsch,” because even today, with all the stuff we have, that would still be a challenging thing to do. And then not to be able to see the end result.But even with that, I just still love the closing credits. It's a combination of music, it allows me to revisit all my favorite scenes in the movie and a lot of my favorite shots. Do you have a favorite scene? ARI KAHAN: Well, I actually like those closing credits too, because most of the shots in those closing credits aren't actually in the film. Most of them are outtakes. And so, for example, in those closing credits, you have Swan splashing in the tub. There's Archie Han twirling around like this. And most of them, alternate takes. And they're clearly things that Paul Hirsch thought were charming and wanted to include that he couldn't put in the film.I suspect that you've held 35-millimeter film in your hands and cut shot A to shot B. I've only done that in 16mm. To keep a piece of film that short, hanging on a hook somewhere going, “I know I'm going to want to use that later.” Then finding that. I don't think people today understand what skill level was involved in, you know, that sort of thing, or the TIE Fighters in Star Wars that he did, or all that connection of little pieces, and tracking that and knowing that that's going to go there and that's going to go. It's so much easier today. And you had to make firmer decisions then earlier in the process than you do now, right? And fixing things was much more arduous. ARI KAHAN: You know, I think if they had to fix the Swan Song stuff out of Phantom and they were doing it using digital technology today, obviously, it'd be much faster and so on, but, uh, doing it on film. And having to send each change into the processing house, and then getting it back a few days later, and, uh, you know, it's a lot of work. It'd be horrible.But favorite scenes: The Goodbye Eddie number just remains a favorite. Do you know why? It's not fancy DePalma. It's a wide shot, two shot, a single. ARI KAHAN: That's right. It's the most conventionally shot thing in the film, but Archie Han is just so great in it. His delivery boy in My Favorite Year—when he does the punching—he just does the exact right thing at the right time. And I wish there'd been bigger movies with more Archie Han in them than what we got. ARI KAHAN: So does Archie. Okay, last question. If you take Phantom of the Paradise out of the mix, what would you say is your favorite De Palma movie?ARI KAHAN: Well, I'm not sure that Phantom of the Paradise is my favorite De Palma movie. It is a sentimental childhood favorite. But I go back and forth between Carlito's Way, Casualties of War, Femme Fatale, Carrie. And Raising Cain.I think that Femme Fatale is probably the one that came closest to his intention.It's the one that I think of as being, like, the most successfully realized, and I love it for that reason. Carlito's Way is just, by, I think, any objective standard, probably his best work. Then I love Blow Out. I'm not on the Blow Out train as much as everybody else. Maybe because it just, it goes so dark.ARI KAHAN: That's what I love about it is the devastating ending. I really love Peet Gelderboom's version of Raising Cain. Given all that, and given that you're 12 years old in 1974, 75, somewhere in there, and you're you're a movie freak at this point, which is a really good time in film history from that era. Is there a favorite? ARI KAHAN: So, I was really lucky that I was when I was 15 or 16, I was working at a theater called the UC theater in Berkeley, which was a repertory house that showed a different double bill every night. And any night that I wasn't working, I was there seeing movies.So, I saw lots and lots and lots of movies. And despite all that and all the weird stuff I saw, my favorites are probably the same things that every 70s kid's favorites were: Star Wars, Harold and Maude, The Godfather. I loved Harold and Maude so much that I bought an old hearse at one point.Okay, you win. ARI KAHAN: And I didn't keep it for long. It got like, I don't know how many gallons per mile. It was just not economical to have as a car, but it was fun for a while. I was very lucky when they hit the two-year mark here in Minneapolis, and I was a junior in high school, maybe. I happen to know the son of the local movie critic for the paper, and the critic knew that I was a big fan of Harold and Maude. And so he took me along on his press junkets. So, I had dinner with Bud Cort, got to chat with him. I got to hang out with Ruth Gordon for the day. ARI KAHAN: The only one I can propose to top that would be when I was in high school, I was writing for the school paper. Actually, I had stopped going to high school. I was the entertainment editor for the school paper, and I had stopped going to high school. I dropped out, but I kept submitting articles to the paper. And at some point, the newspaper staff changed my title from Entertainment Editor to Foreign Correspondent. And on the strength of that—when Tim Curry's first record, Read My Lips, came out, and he was coming to town to sign autographs at Tower Records—myself and a writer from the Berkeley Bar, which was a newspaper back then, had lunch with him around the corner from Tower Records just before he went off to do his autographing. And I was a huge Tim Curry fan. And I had to try to keep that under wraps and, you know, not ask any Rocky Horror related questions. And that was my claim to fame until all of the Phantom nonsense started.

Comedy Goes to Court BOOK Comedy Goes to Court with Author and Lawyer Carl Unegbu! Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the MHS Podcast where we dive into Political Correctness and punching up or punching down and everything in between when it come to comedy with Author and Lawyer, Carl Unegbu! More on Carls Book "Comedy Goes to Court" below

Recorded on Friday March 22, 2024. We talk about how the news manipulates people. Gary Shandling, debate Ronald Reagan, And more.

Dom Irrera joins Ralph Sutton and James Mattern and they discuss Dom Irrera's relationship with Ralph's mom, James' first time meeting Dom, starting out in improv and plays then learning stand-up comedians didn't need new material every time, doing stand0up in the first grade, bad experiences working with Bill Murray, Dom Irrera briefly working on SNL appearing on Seinfeld, Bette Midler helping out, appearing on Johnny Carson multiple times and his relationship with Gary Shandling, his role on The Big Lebowski, voicing Ernie Pots on Hey Arnold, teaching the fourth grade, discontinuing his podcast, Dom Irrera's first concert, first drug and first sexual experience and so much more!(Air Date: March 2nd, 2024)Support our sponsors!YoDelta.com - Use promo code: Gas to get 25% off!Capsulyte.com - Use promo code: GAS for 30% offTo advertise your product or service on GaS Digital podcasts please go to TheADSide.comand click on "Advertisers" for more information!The SDR Show merchandise is available at https://podcastmerch.com/collections/the-sdr-showYou can watch The SDR Show LIVE for FREE every Wednesday and Saturday at 9pm ET at GaSDigitalNetwork.com/LIVEOnce you're there you can sign up at GaSDigitalNetwork.com with promo code: SDR for a 7-day FREE trial with access to every SDR show ever recorded! On top of that you'll also have the same access to ALL the shows that GaS Digital Network has to offer!Follow the whole show on social media!Dom IrreraTwitter: https://twitter.com/DomIrreraInstagram: https://instagram.com/DomIrreraWebsite: https://linktr.ee/yodomJames L. MatternTwitter: https://twitter.com/jameslmatternInstagram: https://instagram.com/thejamesmatternRalph SuttonTwitter: https://twitter.com/iamralphsuttonInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamralphsutton/The SDR ShowTwitter: https://twitter.com/theSDRshowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesdrshow/GaS Digital NetworkTwitter: https://twitter.com/gasdigitalInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/gasdigital/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hosts Julie Slater and Jason Friday head to Winchester, CA, for another IN-PERSON POD - chatting with writer/director/ producer/comedian/teacher: Bobby Logan…he's written for Sam Kinison (??), Joan Rivers, Gary Shandling, Rodney Dangerfield…some of his films: “Repossessed” (with Linda Blair and Leslie Neilson), “Up Your Alley,” “Meatballs 4,” “Yard Sale”…he's also now a teacher of comedy and film… Bobby talks about his troubled childhood and how it lead him into comedy…how he started shooting Super 8 films when he was a kid and how casting his friends and later charging them $1 to see the film - helped him finance the next project….being roommates with the late Sam Kinison (sp??)…he reviews some of Sam's jokes…how he and Gary worked together, but had a bitter ending when Gary got his big break… Bobby's HUGE break with getting Linda Blair and Leslie Neilson (this story is INSANE) to commit to Bobby's script for the comedy take on “The Exorcist” called “RePossessed” - during Leslie's height of fame after “Airplane” and “Naked Gun”…how Bobby feels fortunate for his career and living his dreams…more about Murray “the unknown comic”…and the good ole Leslie Nielsen fart machine... Hear Bobby's new gig, teaching kids and adults with comedy and film, and his advice on making it in Hollywood. How Bobby was the matchmaker for Julie and Jason meeting…hear the full story of their love connection…who knew? IT'S 5 O'CLOCK SOMEWHERE…find out what film Bobby loves that he wishes he directed and what he'd do different with it…what he'd eat for the rest of his life if he had to choose: tofu, avocado, pickles, or broccoli (he's a fussy eater, btw)…favorite George Carlin line…his choice between dream scenarios: hanging out with Walk Disney while Disneyland was being created…hang out with a huge band during their album recording…or hang with Vin Scully during a favorite Dodgers season…and what he hopes to instill in his students for their future… Follow @cuzihavetopodcast on Instagram for all the latest news. Email us: cuzihavetopodcast@gmail.com.  Find other episodes or leave us a voice message for the show on the anchor website. Thanks for tuning in! Keep on living those dreams, friends, CUZ YOU HAVE TO!! - jULIE AND jASON --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cuzihaveto/message

For concert & sports tickets: Get $20 off your first @SeatGeek order when you use my code "NASH" Download the Seat Geek app here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de... On today's podcast, Jason sits down with the hilarious comedian and actor Gary Gulman to talk about Gary's news book “Misfit,” working with Judd Apatow and his new Conan produced Max comedy special “Born on Third Base.” Plus, Gary talks about playing college football Boston College and how it all fell apart, Jason talks about his love of Gary Shandling and the guys trade stories about the most interesting parts of being Jewish and growing up in Boston.  Plus, Gary details his incredible story of batting years of depression, finding the treatment he needed and how it almost ended his comedy career.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, dudes? Ed Daly, author of The Christmas Book: The Ultimate Guide to Your Favorite Holiday, and I take a dive into a Showtime TV show. It's Gary Shandling's Christmas Show!After a brief monologue, Gary hosts a big Christmas party for his friends and family. His mother arrives and gifts him his father's old pocket watch. One by one, guests begin to leave until Gary is left alone. As he cleans up, he discovers the watch is missing! In a panic, he heads to his sister's place to confront her boyfriend about taking the watch. Of course, he vehemently denies taking it. On his way back home, he meets his mother who confesses to taking the watch back in a moment of weakness and sentimentality. Unfortunately, Santa Claus breaks up the emotional moment telling Gary that he slipped down his chimney and twisted his ankle. Gary wishes for a triumphant success of a Christmas party, which Santa obliges. Gary then offers to finish delivering presents.Popcorn garland? Check. Skating snowman? Weird, but yes. Tom Petty in a Christmas sweater and part of a vocal ensemble? Only because Springsteen wouldn't wear one! So grab your pocket watch, strap yourself into your chair, and turn the place upside down for this episode about Gary Shandling's Christmas Show!Get “The Christmas Book” at AmazonEd's WebsiteCheck us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Totally Rad Christmas Mall & Arcade, Teepublic.com, or TotallyRadChristmas.com! Later, dudes!

This morning Sam began "A Journey with Jeremiah" with us, as we explore the prophet and the book. This is the audio podcast.

On this week's episode, television veteran Michael Burger (Family Feud, Price is Right, Mike and Maty, and many many more) talks about his showbiz career. He looks back on memories from working on cruise ships as well as being able to work with some of his idols.SHOW NOTESMichael Burger's IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0121221/Michael Burger's Website: https://www.michaelburger.com/Free Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAUTOGENERATED TRANSCRIPTSMichael Jamin:So when you shoot a multi-camera sitcom the audience, they bring in an audience and it could take, I dunno, it could easily take five hours to shoot a half hour of television.Michael Burger:22 minutes. Five and a half. Yeah. Five hours to shoot. 22.Michael Jamin:And so what's the audience doing while they're resetting the scenes or the actors are changing?Michael Burger:Well, I've got a lot of stories. Some. I had a guy die once. What? And I just thought he was taking a nap. Yeah. I kept looking up going, God, I don't, A comic wants everybody engaged. Right? And he's just, and at the end, he's not leaving every, the bus is gone and they card him out and he died on the way to the hospital. I guess they revived him, then he died.Michael Jamin:You're listening to Screenwriters. Need to hear this with Michael. Hey everyone, welcome back to Screenwriters. Need to hear this. I'm Michael. I got a cool guest today. So as many of you know, my very first comedy writing job in Hollywood, I was a joke writer on a morning TV show on a b C called the Mike and Maddie Show. And my next guest is Michael Berger, the host of Mike and Mad Mike, thank you so much for joining me here. A areMichael Burger:You nice to see and reconnect with you again? It's been a fewMichael Jamin:And you are this, I know you're not quite a screenwriter, but I think have a lot to, I don't know, just a lot to add to the conversation because you're a professional talk show host and you posted so much. I'm going to blow through some of your credits real fast just so people, but don'tMichael Burger:Blow through 'em. I want you to land on 'em and marinate on 'em for a while.Michael Jamin:Let's linger on them unnecessarily for a long time. So obviously Mike and Maddie, but the Home and Family Feud, the live version as well as the Price is right, the live version, thousand Dollars Pyramid Match Game, iron Chef Personals, the Late Night Dating Show Straight to the Heart, not to mention your long history as a standup comedian on cruise ships, and then later doing warmup. I want for audiences for sitcom audiences, which I know you've, we've been on any of the same shows, which is, that's a whole nother level of comedy. I want to talk about that. But first I want to talk about where you began. It was, how did you become a comedian for cruise ships?Michael Burger:Well, a lot of these entries into showbiz come in through the side door. And this was certainly the case. I was a big fan of Steve Martin and back in the late seventies, there was a contest where they were looking for a Steve Martin lookalike and the payoff, the winner got a spot on the Tonight Show with Carson. So I figured this is my entry in, so I figured that I win this contest and I get my own show. Well,Michael Jamin:And you didMichael Burger:Well. You had to submit a cassette tape, audio cassette tape of you doing Steve Martin. No video cameras just a cassette. And they wanted that in theory, in front of a live audience while I had, I hadn't done any standup. There's no live audience, but my audience in the day was my classroom. So I went back to my high school and said, can I borrow the classroom and just do Steve Martin's material and I'll take my best cut from that. So I went to five teachers. I did five minute sets, and I submitted that tape with the best of the five to the radio station who said, yeah, great. Come on up to the tower records parking lot on Sunset, where there's 25 of us dressed like Steve Martin doing. You're a wild and crazy guy. I win that and go to San Francisco and I meet the western Halfie of the United States at the boarding house, and I win that. And the finals are at the Comedy store with the entire country represented. I'm one of six. Steve Martin is there, Carl Reiner is there. And the winner, the payoff is the Tonight Show spot. And I do, my thing and my twist on it was I came out white suit arrow through the head, no pants with boxers that said a B, C news brief.So I figured I'd add my joke and the guy I was up against that I thought was my competition, played banjo so well and looked like Steve. I thought, there's no way. Right. He does his bit, I do my bit. It's a tie between me and this guy from Nashville that looked like Steve. Steve Martin comes on stage and he's holding our wrists like a ref in a boxing match. And he holds up the other guy's hand. Okay, that guy wins. I lose, three months later I'm watching The Tonight Show and Johnny goes, oh, we have a guest tonight. And Steve Martin comes out and he's out for about 30 seconds and you realize it's not Steve. The real Steve comes out bound and gagged yelling, this guy's an imposter. That guy goes away. We never hear from him again. And that was my first taste at showbiz.Michael Jamin:And you were like, what? 20 something?Michael Burger:Yeah. Yeah. Maybe I was 27, 28. But what would you, somebody saw that and said, Hey, can you do that on a cruise ship? Can you do standup on a ship?Michael Jamin:But wait, what would've you done if you had won this? Because then you would've been on the Tonight Show, but you didn't have an act.Michael Burger:Well, I would do kind of what that kid did. The whole bit was to pay Steve Martin's movie off The Jerk that was coming out. And it was just a sight gag, but I certainly would've come up with something. And then, so what I wound up doing initially after that, and this is in the height of all the singing comedy telegrams, remember back in the day, dancing bears and roller skates? Yeah. So I did a Steve Martin lookalike Soundalike Comedy Telegram where Michael would hire me to make fun of somebody, and I would get all the information and I would go wherever they are, a bank, an office. I actually stopped a wedding once as Steve Martin air through the head white suit, hold on, I don't think this is right. And do a little Steve Martin thing. And there was a guy in the audience at a restaurant who came over after I just did this Rickles kind of riff. And he goes, that's very funny. Can you do ships? And I said, sure. And that's how I got on a cruise ship. And then I'd come on as Steve, and then I'd do my whole act after that, which I developed over time.Michael Jamin:But your act was basically kind of making fun of Steve, or was it all playingMichael Burger:Well, no, you quickly. No, I had some comedy ideas, but what I realized as soon as I got on the ship, 70% of the material comes from being on the ship. Right. I dunno if you've ever worked ships, but No. Oh, there's so much material. It's such a ripe group. And thenMichael Jamin:It's so interesting, you never even did the comedy clubs. You really came up your own way.Michael Burger:I really did. I did a few because of that little bit of notoriety, but the cruise ships were a better paying gig. You got to see the world and you really felt like you were in the business. You had a band behind you generally. There was an opening act. The only downside was if you didn't do well, you'd have to see these people for the next three days, four days, seven days.Michael Jamin:But howMichael Burger:Many I loved it.Michael Jamin:How many shows would you do on a, so you were like, let's say it was a seven day tour. How many shows would you do?Michael Burger:Two.Michael Jamin:That's it really?Michael Burger:Yeah. Yeah. I would do the three and four day cruises down to Ensenada and back. And so I would do welcome aboard show, I would be the headliner. I'd come out and do my hour, and then they said, you can do anything you want on Sunday night. So I'd go in the back lounge and then just try stuff. And that's really where you kind of learned what's funny, what's not. So I got to do, my God, for anybody listening that remembers the Catskills in those old days where you just work well clubs today, you go out and work material, I could go in that back room and I would go on at midnight and the buffet would start at midnight. And my goal as a performer was if I could keep people from getting up and leaving my show to go eat again, then I realized I had some pretty good material. So I would do an hour and a half, two hours in the back room.Michael Jamin:ButMichael Burger:The moment that really, maybe this is where you're headed, that launched my career was in the middle of the cruise. They had a passenger talent show. And on one of these cruises, the cruise director came up to me and said, Hey, can you fill in and host the Passenger Talent Show? I have other things to do. And he meant that as a verb. I mean, this guy was, he was all over the ship just right,Michael Jamin:Yeah. GoingMichael Burger:After whatever moved, you know what I mean? And I said, well, what do I do? And he goes, well, these people sign up throughout the week and then we turn 'em loose at midnight and they do whatever they do. Think America's Got Talent. And I said, well, what would you like me? Wait, introduce 'em, put a little show together, go at 11 o'clock at night, get with the piano player and you figure out maybe an order. I said, well, okay. It sounds like fun. So I did that. And I'm telling you, Michael, I had more fun doing that than any standup really. I had a chance to talk to somebody, where are you from? What do you do? And then you turn 'em loose. But because, and it's not unlike warmup where someone else is the star where someone else has the focus. You just set 'em up and turn 'em loose. Yeah. I had an 85 year old woman, get up and tap dance to the Lord's Prayer. You don't need to top that.Michael Jamin:Yeah. How do you, right.Michael Burger:I mean, I had everything. Right. So I started doing this and about at the same time, I was doing warmup for a game show. We're going to go way back now, a dance show called Dance Fever.Michael Jamin:Yes. WhichMichael Burger:Is again, these dancing shows, but way back, right.Michael Jamin:It was solid Gold and Dance Fever, those two shows. That'sMichael Burger:It. And they had three celebrity judges and they would judge the dancers. And the Cue card woman comes up to me on a commercial break and she goes, N B C is going to do a morning game show. And they want somebody new, somebody unknown, someone that no one's heard of. I said, that's me. I, I'm in the middle of the ocean. No one knows me. She goes, do you have a tape? I said, nah, I got a tape. Sure. I got a tape, I got no tape. So the very next cruise I go back on, I put 2,500 bucks on my credit card and I go buy that two piece video system where you had to buy the base unit, the head unit. And I brought that on the ship. I put it on a tripod, I put it back by the soundboard, and I pushed record and I videotaped every one of these passenger talent shows that I hosted and then cut everybody out.And it just kept my moment. My first demo tape was six minutes of me doing that. Right. So this woman at Dance Fever says, get me that tape. I'll get it to N B C. The two people in charge were Jake Talbert and Brian Franz. They were the presidents of daytime television, N B C. So she sends in the tape and I get a call, my agent and I come in, I have an agent at this point, and they go, do you know why you're here? And I said, yeah, Mary Steck was nice enough. I said, no, it's the guy at the end. I said, what do you mean the old guy? Yeah. What about him? Well, there's this charming old man that I'm introducing and playing with, and he grabs the mic out of my hand and goes, you must be saying something very funny, but I don't get it. Well, it's a huge laugh. And the N B C exec said the fact that that guy got the laugh and you let him have his moment and you didn't come back over with one more ad lib of your own tells me you got a sense of how to host. It's about making someone else shine. He said, we can teach you how to host a game show, but we can't teach you as the instinct to make someone else look better. Were youMichael Jamin:Aware of that though? I mean, we,Michael Burger:Not really. Yeah. I mean, I got better at it and I realized the sneaky joy of this is that if you get a laugh and get out of the way, put the onus back on them when you do a talk show. But when theyMichael Jamin:Said this to you, you're like, oh my God, I, I've been doing this all along and I didn't realize this. Or were you consciously doing that?Michael Burger:I think there was sort of a Midwest polite mentality, kind of how I was raised, don't interrupt, all that kind of stuff. It kind of goes part and parcel just being, I don't know, polite iss the perfect word. My dad was from Missouri, my mom was from Minnesota. We kind of raised in a polite family. I just thought that was the right thing. But I also realized that boy, you could use this to your advantage, 'em shine. And that I work at it to this day trying to be a better listener and try to be better at picking my moments. That's how it started. That's literally how my career started out at sea. AndMichael Jamin:Then so then what happened with that audition then?Michael Burger:So I got the pilot. I got the pilot for N B C Morning Talk show. My very first time on a lot is at N B C. And I'm parked six spots down from Johnny Carson. It's got a white Corvette. His license plate said 360 Guy thought that was a clever license plate all around Guy. Yeah. I'm six spots down from Carson. I just got off the boat. I am so far from showbiz. I'm walking on the set. We shoot the pilot at the same time. They're just about finished with a Tonight Show. We shot across the hall, very little security back in the eighties. I open the door and I walk in and I sit next to Gregory Peck. Colonel Michael going shelf is so easy. Yeah. He goes on, he comes out, I say, hi, Carson walks by, gives me one of these. Everybody walks out and we all go home. Kicker. The story is Pilot did not get picked up, but the production company, reg Grundy, who did all of those shows back in the day, sail of the Century and Scrabble, liked what I did and put me on retainer for a year to develop something else.Michael Jamin:But did they, and I never even asked you about Mike and Maddie did like Yeah. Did they coach you at all before you start doing this? Did they rehearse you or is it like, well, this is who we hired, let him do his thing?Michael Burger:It's a good question. In the game show world, when we were getting ready to do a game show, they would remind me that the first half of the game is fun and q and a and get some joy out of these contestants and root for 'em. And then when it shifts to the bonus round, there really needs to be a shift in tone. This money is serious money and this can change someone's life and this is not the place to go for a joke. Let's kind of shift the focus and really be there for 'em and root for 'em and console them if they lose and be happy for 'em when they win. So there was a little bit of that. Some of it, it's, most of it's just learning where your beats are, getting in and getting out.Michael Jamin:What about Mike in the game show world or home family, same kind of thing?Michael Burger:Well, Mike and Maddie was a whole nother league that was morning network everywhere in the country. And I was working with someone, which I had never done. So I came in for the audition and did well. And the woman I had auditioned with, they had a deal to put in place to put her on the air. And as I was driving home, my agent called and said, I don't know what happened in there, but they now want to do the show with you. And they're letting her go. Said, oh, well don't give her my address.Michael Jamin:AndMichael Burger:He said, we now have to find a woman to pair up with you for this morning talk show. And I thought, well, how do we do that? I said, well, Disney will set it all up. This is a dizzy production. And I auditioned and I audition's not even the right word. I sat down with 85 women and just said, how you doing? How you doing? And we just tried to see if there was any chemistry. It's like dating somebody. Is there there a connection? Maddie?Michael Jamin:This I had? No, I, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt. But this I had no idea about becauseMichael Burger:Yeah,Michael Jamin:It seems like they sell a show to A, B, C, they go, it's going to beMichael Burger:Morning show. We know, actually, let me back up. This show is going to be in syndication for Disney, which they could syndicate across the country and do anything. ABC's not involved at thisMichael Jamin:Moment.Michael Burger:So they had a development deal with this woman. They passed on, they put me in the spot. Now they got to pair me up. They pair me up, Maddie and I had instant chemistry. And about an hour after her audition, they say, we love you both. Let's do it. So we shot a pilot right at K H J on Melrose, a $40,000 pilot, right? I mean, that's about as cheap as you can get. And they took that pilot out and tested it and it tested as high as Oprah tested back in the day, right? A, B, C got wind of this and said, forget syndication, we'll put you on the air now. And three months later, Maddy and I hit the ground running, not knowing each other really. And what began a two year, 535 episode run with someone I got to know every day. We shot literally every, well, five days a week, Monday through Friday.Michael Jamin:So that's interesting.Michael Burger:We got to know each other. Got to learn the whole thing.Michael Jamin:I didn't know that was the origin of, because they're basically saying, okay, we're selling a morning TV show. We don't know who's in it yet, but if you like the idea of a morning TV show, we're going to audition this.Michael Burger:Back in the day, they were handing out these, they were handing these talk shows out pretty regularly. It was kind of the thing fairly inexpensive to produce, I guess. Although we had quite a budget. This was Morning Network. This was a big official show that we traveled and there was a nice budget for a big beautiful set. And everybody got what they needed to pull this off. And then celebrities would catch on and come on. And we had our favorites. And you got to sit down there with your idols. And yeah, there was a little pushback. The fact, I want to talk to you about this, because A, B, C was adamant that this show was not a comedy show in the morning. That you're taking people's time away from them and you got to give them something. They got to feel they haven't wasted their morning. So there's always a recipe, there's always something to learn from. And I came in kind of hot with this idea of comedy and they're going, no, people don't want to laugh in the morning. And I went, well, I got to disagree with you there, but Max Mutchnick and Max and who? Max and Dave, right?Michael Jamin:David Colleen, yeah.Michael Burger:Who created a little show calledMichael Jamin:Will and Grace.Michael Burger:So they were the first writers on Mike and Mad. And it was just overkill. We didn't need that much horsepower from them. They were so talented. They went on and did what they did. But I think because they brought me on, they certainly liked my sense of humor and thought this would be a nice way to wake up in the morning. So eventually they embraced the humor as long as he balanced it with information.Michael Jamin:And that show, it was Tamara Raw, Tamara, she was the producerMichael Burger:Started it.Michael Jamin:She started it. And I guess her vision was Letterman in the morning. But Letterman had a show in the morning. And so that's whereMichael Burger:You don't want to go down that path. And that kind of scared so, and part of this was wise that you, let's not waste people's time in the morning. Let's find that balance of being entertaining and give them a takeaway. And we realized that, I certainly found that balance. Maddie and I started to feel our own beats there on where we could jump in and we each got our own segments where we could shine. Yeah. Maddie was the greatest at locking in on a guest. And Carol Burnett came on and Maddie just started crying. That was, that's how she started the interview. It's because Maddie learned English having come from Cuba on one of the last Freedom Flights out. And now the show that she watched to learn English by the Carol Burnett Show. She's sitting there and she starts crying. Well, that's a great host showing her emotion, being interested. So yeah, I love working withMichael Jamin:Her. Yeah, she's delightful. Yeah, I remember, I remember taking, going to your dressing room with index cards versus jokes here, what about this?Michael Burger:And I wanted that so much to me that felt like Letterman and that felt like The Tonight Show. I was aching for that. I don't remember the conversation we had or what I fought for. I wanted Jonathan Winters on the show, and I had done warmup on his sitcom and they said, no, that's not our audience. And I went, what's not our audience? Funny. So I pushed, six months later, Jonathan came on and I got to sit with him and I got to do what Johnny Carson did with him, which was give him a hat and then do a character. And I thought, this is, I'm in heaven.Michael Jamin:ThisMichael Burger:Is as good as it gets. But it took some pushing because they thought, who wants Johnny in the morning? Yeah. So wait a minute.Michael Jamin:WhoMichael Burger:Doesn't want to laugh in the morningMichael Jamin:And be, but before that, you were still also doing warm before warm up. And then how did, so just so people know, so when you shoot a multi-camera sitcom, the audience, they bring in an audience and it could take, I dunno, it could easily take five hours to shoot a half hour of television.Michael Burger:22, 2 minutes, five and a half. Five hours to shoot 22.Michael Jamin:And so what's the audience doing while they're resetting the scenes or the actors are changing?Michael Burger:Well, I've got a lot of stories. Some had a guy die once. What? And I just thought he was taking a nap. Yeah. I kept looking up going, God, I, a comic wants everybodyMichael Jamin:Engaged.Michael Burger:And he's just, and at the end, he's not leaving every, the bus is gone and they car him out and he died on the way to the hospital. I guess they revived him, then he died. WhatMichael Jamin:Show was this?Michael Burger:Women in Prison?Michael Jamin:I don't remember. Don't remember. Women in Prison. Sure,Michael Burger:Sure you do. It was a sitcom with Wendy, Joe Sperber and Peggy Cass, an all star lineup. Blake Clark played the Warden and it was a sitcom about women in prison. I know. And I was the warmup. And then I did all of those types of sit. I mean, I did big ones, I did shows, you'd know. Yeah. Gosh, Mr. Belvedere is where I started.Michael Jamin:Remember one. AndMichael Burger:That's really where you learn, I don't know a comic that's got five hours, unless you're talking maybe Leno, but you know, do your act. But then you have to figure something else out. And that's where these hosting chops came in and yeah, you're like a surgeon on call. The moment the bell stops, then I start talking to the audience and then they're ready to go again. Could be right in the middle of a joke, you're telling, it doesn't matter, I'm here to serve. And they would do, again, for those uninitiated, maybe 15 scenes in a sitcom of 50 pages, 60 pages. They'll do each scene two or three or four times. The actors want another shot at the scene. Maybe they've got another joke laid in, or maybe they want another angle. And each time they do it, that audience has to be geared up, not only reminded, Hey, where were we? Right. And sometimes literally reminded because a lens went down and we have a 30 minute stop between scenes seven and eight. Yeah, that's happened. So you keep them entertained. And it's actually, I think that was the greatest training for me anyway.Michael Jamin:It must've actually a really important job because as a TV writer, we want the audience to have, they need the energy. They got to keep giving it to the audience. And it's the warmups job to keep them engaged and not wanting to leave and get bored and zoned out. Well, I'mMichael Burger:Glad you said that becauseMichael Jamin:Oh, very important.Michael Burger:The writers will come to me and say, how's the audience tonight? Or if the show's not going well, they'll going, Hey, can't you do anything your fault? I'll certainly try sometimes it just wasn't that funny. Or the reverse is true. Right. I have a Dick Van Dyke story that is painful. He did a sitcom with his son called Van Dyken Company. And Walter Barnett produced and they brought me in. I had a nice reputation of being the warmup guy. So I came in and did the pilot and it's like taking candy from baby, I'm killing. And Walter Barnett walks up to the rail about three feet up audience, and without stopping, he says, just pull it back a little bit and then keeps walking. And a couple scenes later, more laughs, he goes Less. Just less. Okay. Now we're like five seeds in. And he pulls me up and he goes, stop telling jokes.I'll tell you why. Later. I went, oh my God. So now I'm just talking to the audience and I happen to get one guy in the audience that was a mortician. I go, what do you do for a living? Mortician big laugh. He looks at me, what are you doing? People are dying to get in. I go, well, it's not, he's doing it. At the end of the show. He goes, I got to let you go. Dick is not happy. Dick, Dick van Dyke's not happy. Yeah. Yeah. Show's just not coming together. He had hoped, and there's a lot of laughter when we're not shooting, so I'll keep you posted. So the next week they bring somebody else in and it's awful. So they bring me back. But he said, okay, you can come back, but you can't do the puppet bit and you can't do these three jokes. I had some killer bits that I know I could rely on. So I finished the six episodes I did when I did five of them. ButMichael Jamin:It, it's, it's actually, warmup is a pretty high paying job. It's a pretty desirable job.Michael Burger:It was crazy. I'd never seen that kind of money for one night. I'm not doing the clubs. I'm not on tour, and I'm not only in town. I'm getting union money. So now I'm getting my sag guard and I, but that's a union job. Then they tried try to take it away from usMichael Jamin:That that's a union. That's a union chop. IMichael Burger:Didn't know that. It was after I fought for it, it was then a bunch of us got together and went to the union and said, Hey, we're a pretty important part of this production. They agreed, actors stood up for us and spoke on our behalf, and we wound up getting union money, which is how I got vested. But I mean, don't think I'm speaking out of school. Warmups could range. Back in the day was 800 for the night and five or 6,000 a night was not uncommon at the end. Yeah,Michael Jamin:I know that for sure. And then,Michael Burger:So you knock out a couple of those a week and all of a sudden you're going, IMichael Jamin:I'm rich ShowMichael Burger:Business. Well, show business is great, but you're also not on camera. And you're thinking, I remember having shows on the air and then going back and doing warmup and candidly thinking kind of a step back. And a producer said to me, I wouldn't look at it that way. He said, do you like doing it? And I said, I love doing it. He goes, you're good at it. I said, well, okay. And he said, that carries a lot of weight. If people are going to see you work 'em, see you doing what you do. Well. And I kind of reframed that and got back into the warmup and wound up doing a little show with people that you probably, or one actress that was probably everyone's favorite or has been. And that was Betty White. Yeah, sure. And I came back and did Hot in Cleveland and did 135 episodes. I spent 135 Friday nights with Betty White.Michael Jamin:Yeah, she's lovely. Yeah. I worked with her on an animated show. She couldn't be, she was so lovely.Michael Burger:Sweet. Right? Yeah. And gives you everything you'd hope.Michael Jamin:Oh, for such a pro. I remember I've told this story, I was doing an animated show. So I was directing her and she was, I don't know, maybe 15 feet in front of me. I'm at a table, I got my script. I'm giving her notes and she's delivering. She's great. But after a take, I'd give her a note, can you try like this? Like that? And she was very pleasant. But after a few sec or a minutes, she stops and she goes, I'm sorry, dear, but you're going to have to yell. My hearing isn't as good as it used to be. And I said, if you think I'm yelling at Betty White, you're out of your fucking mind. And she just lost it. She loved that. She was so far, I mean, she's like, she was so sweet whenMichael Burger:You would see her on the set, the room changed. Everybody was aware. It was like the Pope walked in and the little ad libs that she would throw off to the side, which having done 135 of 'em, I realized she had a lot to go to. But the first time I heard a couple of these, for instance, cameras rolling, awkward pause. Betty looks up and goes, if no one's saying anything, it's probably my turn. Yeah, that kills. Director goes, we have to go back. Betty goes, how far the pilot? So she got about 50 of these ready to go. And there was a scene where they, once a season, they would pair the girls up, Wendy Mallick, Jane leaves, Valerie Tonelli. They're all single as Betty was. So they would have a date show where all the women got paired up and the girls paired each other up with dates. So they picked Carl Reiner as Betty's love interest. And there's a scene where she and Carl KissAnd crowd goes Nuts. And then we stop. And Carl's 15 feet from me. And I had worked, interviewed Carl on Mike and Maddie. In fact, I, Carl, I let had him cut my tie, which is an old Johnny Carson thing I'll get back to in a minute. But I said, Hey Carl, you just kissed Betty. What was that like? And he goes, without missing a beat. Oh, it was unbelievable. She has her original teeth and all and her, she goes all of her own teeth and her original tongue recess. That right at 90 without missing a beat. And you saw these two connecting, right? As the old guards of the business,Michael Jamin:Some legends. But how did you get that first warmup job? I mean, walking into that is not, is hard.Michael Burger:It was. Or even gettingMichael Jamin:The opportunity to do it as hard.Michael Burger:Yeah, I go back to the cruise ship. I was doing warmup on the ship and a producer for Jeopardy was on who worked for Merck Griffin, and they were doing this dance show. And she goes, can you get me a tape? Then by that time I had, and so the very first warmup I did was Dance Fever. And one of the celebrity judges, it was Christopher Hewitt, who said to me on a break, oh dear Ladd, you should come do our show. And I did, did that show for seven years.Michael Jamin:Wow.Michael Burger:And then that kind of mushroomed into other warmupsMichael Jamin:Because you've had a really unconventional path into Hollywood, I would think.Michael Burger:Yeah, yeah. But my sights were set early on. I saw that Carson did a game show and then a talk show. And I went, well, that works for me. So lemme see if I can get a game show. Let's see if I can get a talk show. And I've accomplished those. IMichael Jamin:Certainly, but you were never a weatherman.Michael Burger:No, I never, I never, what happened? Do I look the part,Michael Jamin:Was that a slam? It's a quietMichael Burger:Slam.Michael Jamin:Letterman was a Well, weather. He was, yeah. I mean, seems like that's another, as long as you're in front of the camera, I'd think. Well,Michael Burger:In the LA market, you couldn't get past Fritz Coleman.Michael Jamin:Yeah,Michael Burger:Right. Did that for 40 years who also did standup. And I never wanted to do that. And the opportunity to act had come up a number of times. And with all humility, I just said, no, I don't think I would be good enough. I knew what I liked. I knew I liked talking to people, basically.Michael Jamin:But you've done some actingMichael Burger:And I figured I'd just stay in my lane.Michael Jamin:But you've done acting. I know you have, in an episode that I wrote, you're an episode, episode of Lowes and Clark.Michael Burger:Yeah. I don't, that's not on the resume. I just don't, those got handed to you because you were on the air doing something else. Right. I got to present at the Emmy's because we were on the air, and Maddy and I handed Oprah, her Emmy award, and we're going down the elevator with Oprah, and she's singing our theme song. And turns out she was a fan of the show, kind of, yeah. Was our godmother. Because when Mike and Maddie went across the country, we aired in Chicago after her. So she was on at nine, we were on at 10:00 AM and we were an instant hit because we followed Oprah. And so much so that Oprah became a fan of the show and invited us to everything. I went to the Oscars with Oprah. I sat at dinner at Spago with Oprah. I mean, she, now, were there any call guests? No, she does not call now.Michael Jamin:Were there any, because you had a lot of great guests on Mike and Matt there. Anything that you in touch with that you kind of became friends with?Michael Burger:Yeah, George Hamilton, Robert Wagner. Robert Wagner is about as cool as anybody gets. Yeah. And he asked me to mc the charity event that he was doing. It was a Jimmy Stewart Relay race. It was a celebrity race in Griffith Park. I said, I'd be happy to. And he goes, do you want to play golf? And I went, well, I don't. I can play hack around, but he's like a member at Bel Air. And I said, well, yeah, maybe that would be nice. And I'm just pushing him off. I didn't want to embarrass myself. So the next year I do the event again. And he goes, are you still playing golf? And I went, yeah. And he goes, are we going to play? And I went, he goes, do I have to send a car for you? And I went, no. RJ is what he wanted to be called. I said, I just didn't feel like I could play right when I first met him, this is So Robert Wagner, I, I'm standing there with a buddy of mine and I see him coming, and we have to go to the stage and he comes up and he takes his arm and he puts it through mine and goes, Michael, walk with me. I mean, so old school, right, Michael?Michael Jamin:Right,Michael Burger:Gloria, my friend. I'm good. Thank you. Rj. Yeah. They were idols. I got a chance to meet. God, I met President Carter, had retired, but I got to do Habitat humanity with him and sit down and build a house and talk to him about life. And every musician you ever heard of. How about the artist? Jewel made her first appearance on Mike and Mad. We put her on there. I did notMichael Jamin:Know that. I remember James Brown. I remember walking past James Brown.Michael Burger:James the Sure. Leanne Rime made her first appearance with us.Michael Jamin:Really? Well, I mean, I wasn't there for that, or I don't know. Yeah. That's so funny. Wow. So that's amazing.Michael Burger:Yeah. James Brown do. So you were there for James?Michael Jamin:Yeah. Yeah.Michael Burger:And he sat down and he said something, and that wound up on entertainment tonight. That night he said, the music is funded by drug money.Michael Jamin:EverybodyMichael Burger:Went, did he just say that? And all of a sudden, now we're hard news reporters. We felt like, I don't know. I don't Charlie Rose or something. We got a scoop.Michael Jamin:I don't remember that. WeMichael Burger:Just stumbledMichael Jamin:Into it. And then what was it like? Just rolling? I mean, I know you had must have talking points on when you're interviewing guests, butMichael Burger:Oh boy, you, you're so right. A celebrity gets interviewed the night before, and then they have bullet points. And the next day you kind of spit out those questions so they could comment on what they were pre-interviewed about. But in conversation, sometimes things go another way. But as you know, the producer's job is to keep you the host on track. And we had God bless her, Kathy Paulino, Kathy, I think her name was.Michael Jamin:Yes. Yes. Is that her name?Michael Burger:IMichael Jamin:Don't remember. I Kathy interview. Yeah.Michael Burger:She, I interviewed Robert Gole the night before, and she had this list of questions, and she's just behind camera with this, and she's doing this, and I see her, and I'm ignoring her because something better is happening. And we get to the, and she goes, Michael, you did not ask any of those questions. What happened? What's wrong? And I said, did you hear what Robert Gullet was saying? She goes, no. Well, I said, the interview took a path down a different road. He had mentioned his father, and I noticed he'd paused almost if he was going to tear up. And I thought, there's something more to explore there. And I said, what about your dad? And he said, on his deathbed, his dad said, Robert, come here. And Robert comes in, and he goes, son, you're meant to sing. Go do that. Well, I mean, I got chill.I got tills hearing that. Now, that was not on the cards. It was following the arc of a conversation. And sometimes these producers feel, maybe they're not doing their job. We didn't ask those questions, but interviewing people is really about a conversation. So we had those moments where we went off the card and I think made some friends there, had some great, some great interviews. I'm very proud of. Patty LaBelle sat down with us and admitted that her three sisters had all died of cancer. And she wasn't sure she was going to see 50. And she starts to tear up and we're going, she goes, I must like you guys, we're six minutes in. Yeah. Talk shows. You get six minutes, seven minutes, maybe two segments, maybe 15 minutes. And I think we did some nice work and met some people in a very finite amount of time.Michael Jamin:Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljammin.com/watchlist.I remember those morning meetings. We talk about the show, and I remember sitting in the back, because I'm young, it's my first real writing job, and they call me a producer because that way they wouldn't have to pay me writer's skill. So they said, you're a producer. But I'm like, I'm not a producer. I can write stuff. But I remember thinking, how does everyone here know what to do? I really had no idea was I was in awe of the whole thing. How does everyone here know what to do?Michael Burger:But as the more you hung around, it kind of demystifies itself after a while, right?Michael Jamin:Yeah. But there was also, and to some degree, yes, but it was also like you only get one shot. It wasn't like you get to rehearse. It was like, you better get this right. We're on live tv. We're not live, but we're on TV and live detect. Yeah. We're not doing again. We're not doing it again. SoMichael Burger:Yeah, that was, if you concentrated on that, it would paralyze you. What I found starting to do this was that how in the world can we talk to somebody for six minutes and get anything out of it that seems too short? Yes. And you learn to ask. There's a great quote by Blaze Pascal, he's a French philosopher, and the quote is, if I had more time, I would've written a shorter letter.Michael Jamin:Right?Michael Burger:And it talks about the science of the art of being brief. Then you learn that in the talk show world where you need to be concise and you take away all the stuff in the same way. Jerry Seinfeld would take out a word that doesn't work in a joke. A good interview is become very, there's no Sophie's choice there. You know, start cutting things away, not going to make it. And you stick with what works at that moment. So you be, become careful, you be good editors of yourself as you interview. But I found how it was so, it was so phe and so I compared it to cotton candy. You would do it, and it was gone. And then the next day we had to do it all over again. Yes.Michael Jamin:Right, right. Yeah.Michael Burger:The sheer volume Yes. Of cranking out an hour a day for two years was mind boggling to me. But yeah, I didn't have to do it myself. I had help.Michael Jamin:Yeah. And IMichael Burger:Had to show up refreshed,Michael Jamin:The minute recorded. I remember thinking all the producers, well, you're screwed. You got to do this. You're done. All that work you did is over now, and you have to do more. I mean, yeah, it doesn't end.Michael Burger:And we went live to tape. We wouldn't stop unless there was something drastic happening. And once in a while, we would tape two shows on a Thursday so we could travel on a Friday to go to another town and maybe do something live there. Unlike the show I did with Christina Ferrari, which was two hour, two hours live a day there. There's no stopping. I mean, what goes wrong? You see? Which was a whole nother level of fun because,Michael Jamin:But there's aMichael Burger:Too late,Michael Jamin:There's an art though, to getting people to be vulnerable. Like you're saying on television right now, you have six minutes, and then sometimes you'll see it where an interviewer, just like they're reading the questions, they're just waiting to get the next question. They're not really in it.Michael Burger:True. Were you there for Charlie Shaneen?Michael Jamin:I probably would'veMichael Burger:Remembered. Charlie comes on and he's nervous, and he's sitting there and he's looking around. I go, what's wrong, Charlie? Because I don't know, no one's given me anything to say. So what do you need? A cup of coffee would be nice. So I went over, we had a big set. We had a working kitchen. So I got him a cup of coffee, and we sat down and go, anything else? He goes, well, cream would be nice. I went back and got him.Michael Jamin:Great.Michael Burger:That was such a fun interview because he really was authentic and he really was nervous. And we just played it where you had some other guests that were, shall we say, just a little more controlled and didn't want to open up. And they were there to promote something. That's what a talk show does, is we promote you doing whatever you're doing.Michael Jamin:And what were you thinking when you're like, oh, I'm just tanking here. This isMichael Burger:Going with No, the opposite. Oh no, I'm thinking, let's do more of this now. I felt, oh, now we're doing Letterman. Now we're doing a talk show where things are off the rails and there's nothing, and the big camera has to whip out of the way. No one had planned that. I lived those moments where something went wrong, butMichael Jamin:When someone wasn't comfortable on care. What about that? Well, whereMichael Burger:It wasn't scripted, heavily scripted, where you would get something that wasn't planned. No, that'sMichael Jamin:Fine. I mean, when a guest is clearly not engaging, they're just, they're struggling.Michael Burger:Well, you'd see the producer going, let's jump ahead. JumpMichael Jamin:Ahead to, what do IMichael Burger:Jump to? Well, we could tighten it up and then the next guest can go longer. We had a little bit of an accordion, you know, find a way a to get in there somehow, some way. But they're not all, some are better talk show guests than others.Michael Jamin:AndMichael Burger:Some come in, we had, comedians had Richard Jenny on who I went to his dressing room and I go, what do you need? And he gave me five setups, hotdog, car, couch, whatever it was. So he knew all the jokes he'd go to when you just laid 'em in there.Michael Jamin:Would you write those down or on a card, or you just No,Michael Burger:That kind of stuff was just, yeah, they certainly had 'em on a card. But when we got a comic on, I really felt, oh my God, I got to kick up my game here because this is really what I want to be. I mean, this is, I idolize you, you men and women that had come on.Michael Jamin:There really is. SoMichael Burger:Carl Reiner comes on, and there's a very famous episode of The Tonight Show where Carl Reiner comes on and says to Johnny, I never make the best of the Tonight Show. I never make it. And he goes, I, I'd like to be part of those eclipse at the end of the year. And cars going like, okay. And he goes, you're a great dresser. Johnny goes, oh, thank you. And he goes, stand up if you don't mind. And he goes, okay. So Carson's standing up and he's looking at his tie, and he goes, the tie's not right, however, and he pulls out a pair of scissors and he cuts off Johnny's tie. Right. Johnny didn't know it. Fred Decoda had said to Johnny, Hey, just don't wear your best clothes tonight. That's all I'm missing. SayMichael Jamin:God.Michael Burger:So he cuts the tie rightAt the end of our interview with Carl, I said, Hey, there's a moment you had with Carson and I would just be thrilled if we could recreate this. And he doesn't know where I'm, he doesn't know where I'm going with this. I said, there was a moment where you cut Johnny's tie. And he goes, yes, I remember that. And I said, can I? And he goes, oh, no, no, no. My wife gave me. And I went, no, no, I don't want to cut your tie. Right. Would you cut my, he goes, I'd love to cut your tie. And he stands up and makes a production and cuts my tie. Right. And I have that tie cut with an autograph framed in my office. Wow. Wow. It was my moment of, I mean, those are the big moments, right. Meeting your idols. Yeah. Like Jonathan Winters, I assume people listening know Johnny. Remember Johnny the greatest improv artist ever? And Robin Williams was a fan of his. Yep. So I get to do warmup on a sitcom called Davis Rules. Remember that? With Bonnie Hunt? No. Yeah. How do he won an Emmy for that? Okay. Jonathan Winters did. So Jonathan Winters, Bonnie Hunt, the kid Giovanni.Michael Jamin:Yep. Wow.Michael Burger:So they would have a script, John enters kitchen.dot pop on couch because he, yeah. Whatcha going to do with this maniac? So he would start, he'd go off roars of laughter, but he, Jonathan loved audience. So he comes up to me, maybe we're a half hour in, I'd never met Jonathan Winters. And he walks by the rail and without stopping, says to me, Bing, how's your golf swing? And he keeps going. And as he's about eight feet away, I go, Bing, how's your golf swing? And he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa. And he does Bing Crosby. Well, at the end of the show, I go up and say, Hey, I can't believe you're even here, and I can't believe I got to meet you. And he goes, Hey. He goes, that was fun. He goes, I love doing that kind of stuff. He goes, anytime you want to throw me something, let's do it.So this is taking a pitch from Kershaw. This is the best of the best, the best. So the next week it's a sitcom, the format, it's going to be a four hour night, it's going to be stops and starts. And Jonathan is just sitting there like a little kid waiting to play. He does it, the acting he can do in his sleep, but it's the improv that he loves. So I'd catch his eye and go, excuse me. Yeah. Did you not invent lettuce? Is that you? Yes. I invented lettuce. God, for 10 minutes. That happened for a year and a half. So I got to play with him for, I don't know what it was, 52 episodes.Michael Jamin:Wow.Michael Burger:That's meeting your idols and being even more impressed than you could possibly imagine.Michael Jamin:Yeah. But how gracious of him, I mean, that's veryMichael Burger:Much fun. But that's him, him, he loved the audience. And Bonnie Hunt was so great at navigating him back to the script without even seeing it. But the show was funniest when it was off the rails because Jonathan Giovanni eei, the actor would look at him and he had a line, and then there'd be this pause and they'd going, Giovanni, that's your line. He goes, where? What's my line? Because it's so far past what was written in the script. What'sMichael Jamin:My line?Michael Burger:Yeah. Because Johnny had taken it out to the parking lot and then made a left down Ventura. Yeah.Michael Jamin:That's so funny. SoMichael Burger:Those warmup days I loved. And when I got out of it and then got a chance to come back into it, my ego aside that I'm not on the camera, I'm behind it. Well,Michael Jamin:Let's talk. I end up working that though. I mean about that must have been difficult for you, but I don't know. You did it anyway.Michael Burger:Well, it, yeah, it took about 10 minutes to get over myself, and then I'm standing in front of an audience, getting a laugh, and I went, wow, this is pretty cool. Right.Michael Jamin:But did it, I mean, that'sMichael Burger:Felt right back in the mix. That'sMichael Jamin:The Hollywood rollercoaster. I mean, you're up, you're down. You're up and down. I mean,Michael Burger:Yeah, I naively thought one pilot, I'm on my way. I've got a TV show. That very first thing I did for N B C didn't get picked up. And I went, oh, that, that's show bz. Yeah. I, that's the up and low. That's you thought. Right. So you learn to discipline yourself and be grateful for what comes your way, which I think I've done. And I also wound up with some side hustles along the way, flipping homes. And I got my real estate license and did that stuff on the side. Right. Not thinking I'd ever want to, boy, here's something revealing.Michael Jamin:Yeah,Michael Burger:It's probably five years ago, Catholic church. Sunday morning, I'm sitting there and there's a woman in front of me with her husband. The husband looked like he had been beaten down. What's the old joke? Where they've taken the spine out? He's just been beaten so many years by being to this woman. She's eight o'clock black dress Pearls, Mrs. Kravitz from Bewi. Does that help you? This is who I'm dealing with and looking around. And she owns the room and it's church. So the priest says, halfway through, turn to the person next to you or behind you and say, peace be with you. So I'm right behind her. So she turns and goes, what happened to you? And turns around, excuse me, what happened to you? Yeah. You used to be on tv, turn around. This is mess. Listen to Padre there. She couldn't fathom the fact that I wasn't on the air and wanted to know how my life not seeing me on Mike and Maddie anymore. And I said, no, I, I'm, I'm fine. Okay. Things are good. Just turn around. But she needed, I didn't have the time to deep dive into the complexities and the ups and downs of this business inMichael Jamin:Church. But did it hurt though when she said that?Michael Burger:No, I actually thought it was wildly funny because I've told this story now for 20 years or five years. Yeah. But yeah, no, I loved being on the air and certainly miss it. The skillset set is still there. I think it's gotten better. You learn, hosting is cumulative. Everything you do adds one more layer. But I've certainly made peace with it and understand the business that, I mean, I've got a wonderful life because of all the ups and downs. Right?Michael Jamin:Yeah. One of the things that people say to me, because I post a lot on social media, and they go, well, you seem so humble. I'm like, because I've been in the business for 25 years. That's why, I mean, do you not, you're every step of the way you're getting humbled. IMichael Burger:Mean, how about, is there any bitterness in your journey?Michael Jamin:Not really, because I never really thought I was going to get this far.Michael Burger:Oh, that's interesting.Michael Jamin:I thought it was never my goal to my, it never my goal to have my own show and my own Norman Lee Empire. I just wanted to be as aMichael Burger:Writer, showrunner producer, you mean?Michael Jamin:Yeah. No, I just wanted to write on TV show. I wanted to write on cheers, to be honest. AndMichael Burger:OhMichael Jamin:Wow. But when I broke into the business, cheers. It was already well done. But I wound up writing with many writers from who wrote on Cheers. And I wound up shooting a show that was shot on the cheer sound stage. And so in my mind, I made it like it. But certainly,Michael Burger:Well, what demons do you have as a writer? Or what holds you back as a writer, whether you're working or not, and is it amplified when you're not working?Michael Jamin:It's easy to look at other people. Here's what it is. I had a friend I was writing on King of the Hill and one of the other writers signed a big deal or something, and I was very jealous. And my brother friend, he was older on King of the Hill, and he said, he gave me a great piece of advice. He said, there will always be someone younger than you, less talented than you, making more money than you. Oh. I go, well, there it is. That, there it is. And that really, I hung onto that for a long time. I feel like. Okay, so it's easy to compare your career to somebody else, but to honest. I'm so far, I'm so lucky that I have what I have. So I'm not bitter at, because youMichael Burger:Got this far, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. But it hasn't taken away the desire to do this again and work more, or be where someone else is at this moment?Michael Jamin:No, I'm happy. As long as I get to keep working, I'm happy. I really am. Yeah, and it's really, it's funny when you're talking about doing warmup for these multi-camera shows, there are no multi-camera shows anymore. It's true. If you wanted that job today, good luck getting it. There are no shows. So how do you get that?Michael Burger:Good luck in a couple of ways. I have a friend of mine, you probably know Ron Pearson.Michael Jamin:Yeah, Ron, what about him? Ron'sMichael Burger:One of the best out there, hands down, a great comic and a great warmup. But he said the stuff he was doing 3, 4, 5 years ago in front of an audience, he couldn't do nowMichael Jamin:ReallyMichael Burger:The sensitivities of what you can and cannot say. BecauseMichael Jamin:He was prettyMichael Burger:In front of a crowd.Michael Jamin:He was pretty wholesome. I remember I worked with him.Michael Burger:Very wholesome. It's just some things you can't say. I got another buddy of mine, Ross Schaeffer, who was a corporate keynote speaker who says, even in the corporate world, there's some things you can't say. There was some reference to women speak more than men on a daily basis. They, there's more of verbose. Right. Because I was told by the person hiring me, well, I wouldn't say that he was using it as a way women really control the marketplace. A woman will decide what you're ultimately going to buy that flat screen TV you got in your house. Yeah. You got that because your wife said it's okay. Right. But that's actually sensitive to say now.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Michael Burger:Well, didn't even occur to me.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Michael Burger:Here's what some show is up for me. And this happened here in Long Beach, a great little restaurant in Belmont Shore on Thursday nights. They had a jazz piano player. It's this little French cafe and then go in for a bite to eat, and this guy's playing in the corner and there's maybe in a restaurant that seats 80, there's probably seven. And he would play and it'd be nothing. So I'd give him a little something, something, right. We're all performers and you're feeling for this guy, and I know when a song ends. So I gave him a little more and he takes this break and he comes over and sits next to me and he goes, Hey, thanks for trying to make that happen. I said, of course. He said, buy you a drink. Sure. And we get to talk and he goes, lemme tell you my favorite story about supporting another actor or performer. He goes, I'm working a club down in LA and it's the same thing. Nobody's there. It's quiet. And I finish, I don't know, I'm 30, 40 minutes in and I finish a song and I hear, and he looks up to finally thank this one person that's acknowledging his talent. And it was a woman taking a cigarette out of a pack.Michael Jamin:Oh my God. Oh myMichael Burger:God. Try to get the the tobacco into the filter. Yeah. He goes, boy, that if that isn't showbiz rightMichael Jamin:There. Yeah. That is Show biz, just what youMichael Burger:Think. You made it at any level, you're going to get humbled one moreMichael Jamin:Time. Time you're going to get humbled. Right.Michael Burger:Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a humility is a great trait anyway, I think. Yeah.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Michael Burger:As an interviewer, as a host, as anything, anybody in the business, gratitude and humility will serve you a long way, I think. Yeah,Michael Jamin:Right. Yeah. You got to enjoy the ride. And I was told that over and over, enjoy the ride. I didn't really quite what it meant. Yeah. But then whenMichael Burger:We did Match game, match game 98, and we shot at CCB ss, we shot on the same set that they do. The price is right. They just turned it around for us. And I would go in early and I'd leave late and I'd drive in and I'd see that c b s sign lit up and I said, I don't want to leave, and I know this is going to be over. I know it's over because we're airing against Oprah at 3:00 PM on C B Ss. That's why I know it's over. And we did our 135 and it went away. But I never for a moment, took that for granted. I loved every second of that knowing, Hey, you know what? You could worry about it being over, but ultimately, hey, like you said, just enjoy this ride. I had my best friend did the warmup on it. It was the announcer in the warmup, and we laughed ourselves silly, and we shot seven a day. Game shows you shoot a bunch. So we would shoot four, take a lunch break and do three, did 135 episodes.Michael Jamin:Have you seen that movie Babylon yet with Brad Pitt?Michael Burger:I couldn't get through it.Michael Jamin:Oh really? OhMichael Burger:Yeah, about 20 minutes down. I went, yeah, no.Michael Jamin:Oh, you might want to revisit it. I love it. Oh yeah, it was about that. It was about knowing when your time is over and it was so, it was so crushing. I thought it was beautiful. But yeah, I could see, yeah, you need to stick with it a little bit, but I love that.Michael Burger:Where do you think you are in the arc of your career?Michael Jamin:I think, well, I mean, think all of us. I think you hit a certain age in Hollywood, and if I haven't already approached it, I'm getting very close.Michael Burger:It's funny, when you leave your demo, you have a birthday and you leave your demo.Michael Jamin:There was an article, this is a couple, this is many years ago, probably 10 or 15 years ago, and I was my partner and we were taking over for a show. We're running a show. It was Michael Eisner's show, and there's an article in the trades and in a variety, whatever, and it said veteran TV writers, Michael Jamon, Steve Clare, and it was an article about us. And then I go, wow, I become a veteran. And then, oh wow. One of the writers sitting next to me, he goes, that's not a good sign. It means your career's coming toMichael Burger:An edge. Yeah. Veteran was not a compliment. He'sMichael Jamin:Not a compliment.Michael Burger:I remember sitting, I had just turned 40 and I was sitting in an office with an executive at Tele Pictures, I believe it was, and I was sitting there with my agent, Richard Lawrence, who has since retired. I've outlasted my agent. That's not good. And this woman who's in charge of production says, look, Michael, I know who you are and we're fans, but here's the thing. Oh boy. She goes, we're going to hire the person that looks like the person we want watching us. Yeah. I went, well, okay, that can be a lot of things, but I can't be an 18 year old woman. Right. Yeah. Whatever the demo was, they were searching. So that stuck with me that there are things, there are times things you just can't change. I fit a certain demo and a seasoned host would be the category. And if that comes back then great. There's a show coming up this fall where they're bringing back the Bachelor, but it's called the Golden Bachelor. Have you heard about this? No. So it's the Bachelor produced by the same people, but it's for 60 and up. So the contestants will be 60 and up,Michael Jamin:Right.Michael Burger:Called the Golden Bachelor. Right Now the thought is, well, maybe people will value a more seasoned looking picture there, and maybe the host will come along with that. I don't know.Michael Jamin:So what do you know? Probably not. It's going to be hosted by a 20 year old.Michael Burger:It's going to, no, it's going to be hosted by the same guy that's doing the younger version. So I think they're getting it both ways. Right. They're going to get a younger host and an older demo. That's fine. You know, Saja stepping down with Wheel of Fortune that there's a lot of talk about who might slip in there. And that ranges from his daughter. Pat Sajak has a daughter that could certainly do it. Vanna could do it. Ryan Seacrest is, there's talk. Yeah, Whoopi said she wants it. Oh wow. Tom Bergson's name has been tossed around. Right. Mine's been tossed around, but it's tossing it. I'm tossing the name around.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Right. Hey, what about this guy?Michael Burger:I did Wheel of Fortune in Vegas. Harry Friedman, who produced it, right, came up with a live version of Wheel of Fortune. So back in 2000, we went to the M G M, they took over the lounge, which used to be Catch a Rising Star renamed at the Wheel of Fortune lounge, and you got a chance to come in. Oh wow. And play Wheel of Fortune and win prizes. Catch and prizes. So it was just like the TV show, but it was not airing, but it was live. Right. What made the show so fun is that unlike the TV show where you're screened for intelligence and the ability to play the game, this is a bingo ball that's pulled, and now you're on stage. So we have three contestants that could be, well, you name it. In this case, it was a woman who'd had a little bit, a guy who didn't speak the language, and it was as wild and as funny as you'd hoped it would be, because they didn't understand the concept and the letters, and some did didn't. We had this poor gal had the puzzle almost revealed, and the answer was cassette deck. And every letter was turned. Everything was revealed except the C. And she's staring at it and she goes a set deck. And the woman next to her goes cassette deck, you idiot turned her.Which you'd never see on tv, right?Michael Jamin:No.Michael Burger:Oh my God. Gosh, that was fun. We did a half a year of that right now. We did three shows a day for six months.Michael Jamin:And so it's the, it's interesting. Yeah. So it's about, I don't know. Ye

March 25-31, 1989 This week Ken welcomes old friend, new fan, writer (film blog www.film5000.com) and host/producer of The Brattle Film Podcast Ian Brownell. Ken and Ian discuss Siskel and Ebert, podcast heroes, movie freaks, the religion of cinema, growing up outside of New Bedford, Providence RI stations, growing up on a farm, not having cable, Evening Magazine, The Big Dan's Rape Trial, Big Pinball, The Accused, going to boarding school, Jim Henson, The Storyteller, The Jim Henson Hour, being obsessive, not being able to watch things out of order, how the magic is gone after the creator leaves, voice actors aging, A Muppet Family Christmas, only being moved to tears by television, having two VCRs, anthology shows, film directors moving to television, The Oscars, the first gay Oscars, the infamous Snow White opening, a hatred of LA, Drew Barrymore's substance abuse struggles, After School Specials, CBS Playhouse, 15 and Getting Straight, campaigning for yourself, Bob Hope's Easter Vacation in the Bahamas, Red Skies, Satan's Children, Easter, Star Trek Original Series,  Ken Burns, The Golden Girls, Beyond Tomorrow, being a life long Saturday Night Life nerd, The Smithereens, Quantum Leap, It's Gary Shandling's Show, The Tracy Ulman Show, LGBQT representations on television, The Wire, Fringe, Rex Reed, Barbara Eden in Your Mother Wears Army Boots, Private Benjamin, Bonnie Hunt, how crazy it is that Ken gets to talk to and befriend his heroes, Barney Miller, Kate & Allie, Larraine Newman, Who's the Boss, Soap, Matlock, Roseanne, taping comedy specials off HBO, tornados, Anything But Love, Ann Magunson, My So-Called Life, Bess Armstrong, Barbara Walters, bad drawings of Nick Nolte, Cheers, Taxi, Friends, bad comedy, Family Ties, dumb characters, Scott Valentine, Unsolved Mysteries, how good spirited pranks make bad TV, and the legend of Dana Hersey's TV38 Movie Loft. 

Today's Talmud page, Nazir 43, asks the ridiculous question of whether a Nazir can be punished twice if they touch two dead bodies. To further explore how silly the Talmud can sometimes be, and in honor of today's holiday of Purim, we listen to Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin as he shares the brilliance of comedian Gary Shandling and how his comedy embodies the holiday of Purim. Can the breaking of the fourth wall be a lesson for how we connect to one another and to God? Listen and find out. Take One is a Tablet Studios production. The show is hosted by Liel Leibovitz, and is produced and edited by Darone Ruskay, Quinn Waller and Elie Bleier. Our team also includes Stephanie Butnick, Josh Kross, Mark Oppenheimer, Robert Scaramuccia, and Tanya Singer.  Check out all of Tablet's podcasts at tabletmag.com/podcasts.

David Duchovny: Paloma, or Tequila Greyhound (2 ounces tequila blanco, 2 ounces grapefruit juice, splash of club soda)David discusses bunking up with JFK Junior while in high school, shares important lessons learned from Don Rickles and Gary Shandling, reviews his thesis for his PhD at Yale, reveals why he won't write a memoir, describes how he kept faith in himself as an artist during the early years of his career, tells about an entertaining encounter playing tennis next to John McEnroe, gives some thoughts on musical bands like The Who and The Kinks, examines the power of a quiet mind.

Jim Serpico speaks with Kelly Carlin about the point of life, ego, meditation, growing up in George Carlin's shadow, getting laughs, Gary Shandling, Jungian Psychology, the power of mythology, moving in and out of flow, anxiety, and more. Kelly Carlin is a Life Coach and Public Speaker.Listeners of this podcast are eligible for $50 off tickets to Kelly's Virtual Retreat on Saturday, Dec. 17th, 11 AM PST - 3 PM PST. To purchase your discounted tickets visit https://mailchi.mp/413db8ad7a53/lighttheyearonfireFollow Bread For the People on Instagram at @jimserpico and on Facebook @jimserpicobreadforhtepepolepod.

If you are a fan of stand-up comedy, you are in for a treat. My guest in this episode is Scott Edwards and over the years he has worked with many of the giants of comedy, including: Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Saget, Dana Carvey, among others. If nothing else, you HAVE to listen to his story about what Gary Shandling did in the bathroom with 18 other people. Scott was so gracious and tells amazing, behind-the-scenes stories about some of the funniest people of all time. I had such a great time and I know you will too! Be sure to check out more of Scott's stories on his podcast Stand Up Comedy "Your Host and MC" here: https://standupcomedyyourhostandmc.com/podcast-show-player And also check out the newly launched Comedy Podcast Network. So much great content in this thing: https://standupcomedypodcastnetwork.com/ Please support my sponsors! I know them all personally and can vouch for their integrity and quality. -Apparel Lab for all your shirts, hats, mugs hoodies, or WHATEVER you want to put your logo or ideas on! Go check out their website at https://apparellab.ink/ -For website design, graphic design, internet marketing, and more check out McWilliams Marketing at http://www.McWilliamsmarketing.com -Use Patnaik Realty for ANY real estate needs you have. I mean anything! Residential, commercial, property management, investments, acquisitions. He does it all. Call Teek at 256-694-0117 or e-mail him at Teek@PatnaikCo.com -Get your child caught up on their school math with Mathnasium of Madison. Their website is http://www.mathnasium.com/madisonal -Go check out my Amazon Best Selling Book "Relentless Positivity"- https://cutt.ly/Nj7jqNN --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/relentlesspositivity/message

Sorry for the long wait, but we're back! Sort of. This was recorded while Kelley was out on vacation and she just finally posted it. We'll be back-back soon. Hi to the Canadians! Bill's family is at Comicon and costumes are discussed. Mary doesn't like most vampire movies, and The Dayshift is no exception. Our dad is here, too! Bill watched the George Carlin and Gary Shandling documentaries on HBO. Bill's Ice Cream Truck of the Week: Larry Sanders show. (Kelley did the Oh Word drop, guys, but she's flattered it was called out as Nigel-quality.) Mary and Russel had a wild trip to Portland, including a near death choking experience, a car break-in, and a confrontation the family does not condone. Mary eats baking chocolate? WTF. Russel is here to talk about ice cream toppings (start with Costco's Super Premium ice cream) and general Costco talk ensues. Kelley's Hint List! Use a butter bucket to make a stool! Stitch through a blotter after oiling your sewing machine to pick up leftover oil. Remove dirt patches on your floor with a turpentine rag. Umpire Pants Out!

#400 The Spark That Lit the Big Bang - RHLSTP has hit an important milestone, but what number exactly and why is Scotland so hot right now? Richard's guest is legendary stand up and actor, Janeane Garofolo. They talk about the tangential nature of Janeane's comedy, being mistaken for a homeless person, why she doesn't have a podcast (or any social media), working with Gary Shandling and giving it up for Saturday Night Live, getting typecast, regretting early stand up and why it's hard to work with executives. It's a fascinating chat about a long and varied career that included parts in the Sopranos, West Wing, Seinfeld, 24 and coming to terms with the changes in fortune and why stand up remains the most important thing.See RHLSTP live http://richardherring.com/rhlstpSUPPORT THE SHOW!Watch our TWITCH CHANNELSee extra content at our WEBSITESee details of the RHLSTP TOUR DATES Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/rhlstp.

Today we sit down in studio with the stars from the Cult classic movie, The Monster Squad, Andre Gower and Ryan Lambert.  Andre starred as Sean in The Monster Squad. In addition he is known for his work on The Demons Within, Mr. Belvedere, TJ Hooker, The A-Team, Mr. President, Sidekicks, My Two Dads, Fathers and Sons, Remington Steele, Night Court, Knight Rider, Highway to Heaven, and Days of Our Lives. Andre also directed and wrote the documentary Wolfman's Got Nards!  Ryan starred as Rudy in The Monster Squad. In addition he is known for his work on The Demons Within, It's Gary Shandling's Show, Kids Incorporated, Webster, Silver Spoons, Nothing is Easy, and Sidekicks.  Want to watch: YouTube Meisterkhan Pod Check out the Website: Meisterkhan.com

Today the guys discuss the life and career of Gary Shandling (1:25). They discuss his early life and how his brother's death, a car accident and him crossing a comedy picket line were formative experiences for him. They discuss Shandling's eventual appearance on ‘The Tonight Show' and then the development of his groundbreaking sitcom “It's Garry Shandling's Show”. They then discuss how he followed this up with another landmark show “The Larry Sanders Show”. Later, they discuss his final projects and his untimely death in 2016. Then Ali asks Asif about hyperparathyroidism, which Shandling suffered from (44:00). Asif talks about the common symptoms ( "bones, stones, abdominal groans, and psychic moans/overtones") and the reasons why people develop the disease. He then discussed how it is diagnosed as well as the treatment of this disorder.  The opinions expressed are those of the hosts, and do not reflect those of any other organizations. This podcast and website represents the opinions of the hosts. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for entertainment and informational purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions.    Music courtesy of Wataboi and 8er41 from Pixabay   Contact us at doctorvcomedian@gmail.com   Follow us on Social media: Twitter: @doctorvcomedian Instagram: doctorvcomedian   Show Notes: The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling: https://www.hbo.com/the-zen-diaries-of-garry-shandling The Comedian's Comedian's Comedian: https://www.gq.com/story/comedy-issue-garry-shandling WTF - Garry Shandling episodes: http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/tag/Garry+Shandling Garry Shandling and the Disease You Didn't Know About: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/garry-shandling-hyperparathyroidism/476445/ Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee: https://www.netflix.com/watch/80181989?trackId=255824129&tctx=0%2C0%2CNAPA%40%40%7Cac7f46b4-66b3-40c0-87c0-c53e8c2ada67-99001210_titles%2F1%2F%2Fcomed%2F0%2F0%2CNAPA%40%40%7Cac7f46b4-66b3-40c0-87c0-c53e8c2ada67-99001210_titles%2F1%2F%2Fcomed%2F0%2F0%2Cunknown%2C%2Cac7f46b4-66b3-40c0-87c0-c53e8c2ada67-99001210%7C1%2CtitlesResults%2C80171362 Primary Hyperparathyroidism: A Narrative Review of Diagnosis and Medical Management: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33918966/ Primary hyperparathyroidism: review and recommendations on evaluation, diagnosis, and management. A Canadian and international consensus: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00198-016-3716-2 The Association of Primary Hyperparathyroidism With Pancreatitis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4428665/

George Carlin wasn't just a comedian, he was one of the great American artists of the later half of the 20th-Century, and he was shaped by and interacted with the great events of his day with intelligence, wit, and an ever-adapting nature.  That's what co-director Michael Bonfiglio (with Judd Apatow) of  “George Carlin's American Dream” explains when he sat down with Mike. Bonfiglio's (producer of “Paradise Lost 2 & 3”, “Some Kind of Monster” & “The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling”) film traces the “straight” comic of the 60s, the more personal and edgy comic of the 70's that we all know, and even the darker–but equally important, the film argues–comic of the 80s and 90s.  Michael and Mike discuss the roots of Carlin's comedy in his Catholic school childhood in Manhattan, the birth of his comedy career in Los Angeles, and the cocaine-fueled 70s.  Throughout, his wife Brenda and daughter Kelly stood by him, and despite his solitary nature, his comedy cohort inspired and challenged him.  “George Carlin's American Dream” is now playing on HBO.   Hidden Gem:  The Velvet Queen   Follow on twitter: @mbonfiglio2000 @topdocspod

August 28 - September 3, 1993 This week Ken welcomes film critic, screen writer and all around movie oracle Drew McWeeny to the show. Ken and Drew discuss Ken's shock that people listen to the show, 1993, the Late Night Wars, moving to LA, going to an Arsenio taping, loving Letterman, the beauty of late night TV, Tom Snyder, being terrified by the Son of Sam, watching TV late at night, SVHS, getting a snapshot of a time and place, being heavily into laserdiscs, Ken Crane, what The Grimace's Second Wife watches, 227, spin offs, the beauty of YouTube, Dick Cavett, Ken's dislike of Leno, Mike Nesmith's Television Parts, It's Gary Shandling's Show, the shock of Letterman not getting The Tonight Show, Leno screwing over Conan, the magic of panels, closed captioning, how bad they still are, the writer's strike, The "New" Mission Impossible, developing an MST3k Habit, rent-a-friend, Dream On, Tales from the Crypt, Body Bags, John Carpenter, Mick Garris, Ken's love of The Real World, SNL, loving late night pay cable in the 80s and 90s, USA Up All Night, The Creature Feature Movie Guide, TV Guide 2 star movies, the debut of Nickelodeon's SNICK, why animators were the best kinds of nerds, Ren & Stimpy, Bruce Campbell, Briscoe County Jr., 120 Minutes, The MTV Music Video Awards, The MTV Movie Awards, getting fired from being a tour guide at Universal Studios, MTV Week in Rock, Roseanne, the sad decline of Tobe Hooper, Invaders from Mars, Stephen King's Sleepwalkers, The Larry Sanders Show, Tall Hopes, The John Larroquette Show, loving The X-Files even though it's not on yet, Bonnie Hunt's The Building, Bob, Eye Witness Video, how important music videos were, knowing the directors, and how much the world has changed. 

FUN watches, Dennis Chambers Tool video, react to something for the first time, Baked, John Flynn, content & clicking, punk rock mba, tik tok, dick pic, Pornhub the social media platform, childrens' music of grown up songs, Billie Eilish, Van Halen, New York Post, wary but curious, vinyl, vhs, The State, The Kids in the Hall, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, MST3K, Z Magnificent Obsession, Bob and David, ayahuasca, Death Wish, youtube algorithm, Willow, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine, David Carradine, Martha Plympton, Choose Me, Leslie Ann Warren, Needful Things, Bonnie Bedelia, Hollywood families, Mad Mike's video in Waterbury, CT, M Night Shyamalan Old, Zen Diaries, Gary Shandling, Marc Maron, life is chaos, Bo Burnham, Bruce McCullough, Maggie Estep, King Missle, Whoopi Goldberg, Hannah Gadsby, Milla Jovovich, Star Wars at Disney, character animals, Yoni Lotan, new free association what's that from game, Usual Suspects, Dinner and a Movie, Jere Burns, Angie Tribeca. Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Support the show

You know him. You love him. He was one of the original “Make Me Laugh” comics along side Bob Sagat, Gary Shandling and Howie Mandel. He shared the stage with Robin Williams, Richard Pryor and our own Gary Kroeger. The man who gave birth to “Baby Man”…Ladies and gentleman and all you non-binaries out there…we give you Bruce Baum!

Colin Hay (lead vocalist from Men At Work) joins Ralph Sutton and James Mattern and they discuss Colin Hay moving from Scotland to Australia, meeting Ron Stykert, the invention of avocado toast and the best way to eat vegemite, touring with Ringo Starr, Down Under becoming a dance hit, facing litigation, Colin Hay's relationship with Gary Shandling, a live performance of Down Under, Colin Hay's first concert, first drug and first sexual experience and so much more!(Air Date: May 7th, 2022)Support our sponsors!RockAuto.com- Check out Rock Auto for the best prices on all auto parts!YoKratom.com - Check out Yo Kratom (the home of the $60 kilo) for all your kratom needs!The SDR Show merchandise is available at https://podcastmerch.com/collections/the-sdr-showYou can watch The SDR Show LIVE for FREE every Wednesday and Saturday at 9pm ET at GaSDigitalNetwork.com/LIVEOnce you're there you can sign up at GaSDigitalNetwork.com with promo code: SDR for a 14-day FREE trial with access to every SDR show ever recorded! On top of that you'll also have the same access to ALL the shows that GaS Digital Network has to offer!Follow the whole show on social media!Colin HayTwitter: https://twitter.com/colinhayInstagram: https://instagram.com/colinhayJames L. MatternTwitter: https://twitter.com/jameslmatternInstagram: https://instagram.com/thejamesmatternRalph SuttonTwitter: https://twitter.com/iamralphsuttonInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamralphsutton/The SDR ShowTwitter: https://twitter.com/theSDRshowInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesdrshow/GaS Digital NetworkTwitter: https://twitter.com/gasdigitalInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/gasdigital/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Episode 14: Dead Dogs and Gym Teachers gives us a full helping of Millie and another one of Coach Fredericks. Kim and Lindsay accidentally kill Millie's dog which causes some social exploration by Millie. Bill finds out that Coach Fredericks is dating his mom.This episode is packed with music by The Who. Wes and Mike get into how much they loved Gary Shandling and going to concerts when they were young.Intro music is Wes's old punk band Outer Party. Outro music is a song called These Feelings by a band called Death on Mars.You can connect with us at wesandmikewastetime@gmail.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/WesandMikeInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/wesandmikewastetime/?hl=enFacebook: Wes and Mike Waste Time Watching TV https://www.facebook.com/groups/373533394535396

This week Ken welcomes writer, director and former Mr. Belvedere actor Rob Stone to the show. Ken and Rob discuss how Ken has now had all THREE actors who played the kids on Mr. Belvedere on the show, Rob growing up in Dallas Texas, loving movies growing up, feeling a million miles away from the Entertainment industry, working in theater, not growing up in the business, wanting to be a stunt man, directing part I of the Mr. Belvedere finale, the family atmosphere on set, Bob Uker, the strange origins of Mr. Belvedere, Noam Pitlik, writing and directing short films, being fascinated with the behind the scenes. documentary films, The Blue Angels, going to USC, Very Special Episodes, doing a play every week, Facts of Life, 21 Jump Street, meeting guest stars, mid-season replacements, Jason Priestly, realizing later how important very special episodes were to the culture, having communal experiences, how the internet allows your kids to watch your most embarrassing moments, The Revenge of the Nerds pilot, Robbie Rist, Kay Lenz, The Infinity War of Sitcoms- Crash Course, BD Wong, one of the few things Rob didn't have to audition for, loving Family Ties, IMAX, the improving technology of filmmaking, how documentaries have become very mainstream, Filmmakers Journey, George Stevens, The Who in concert, being a drummer, Midnight Movies, The Sidewalk Motel, Max Weinberg, getting Bruce Springsteen to donate a song to you, filming in the same studio as It's Gary Shandling's Show!, Dolly Parton's variety show, loving Henry Winkler, THE urban legend or not Mr. Belvedere question, having Doug Benson as a roommate and beating Lorenzo Lamas during the Battle of the Network Stars. 

This next guest is born and bread out of Northern California, Sacramento to be specific, she also maybe raised a little hell at Alphy's soda pop parties with the likes of Bradd Pitt & Leonardo DiCaprio. Besides growing up as a child actor on shows like (MacGyver & Gary Shandling's Show), she has done voice over work on a well known Star Wars video game & the horror flick "Wishmaster 2". Please welcome Holly Fields! Holly Fields Instagram: @holly_fields1 Crazy Train Radio Facebook: www.facebook.com/realctradio Instagram: @crazytrainradio Twitter: @realctradio YouTube: www.youtube.com/crazytrainradio --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/crazytrainradio/support

Garry Shandling changed comedy forever, and then still found the time to take up-and-coming comedians under his wing. His relationship with Judd Apatow  helped Judd find his voice, and Judd told Garry's story to make sure his contributions weren't forgotten.LINKS The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling on HBO Maxhttps://www.npr.org/2019/11/11/778130375/after-comic-garry-shandlings-death-judd-apatow-found-zen-in-his-diarieshttps://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/i-worked-garry-shandling-judd-apatow-s-doc-shows-a-man-i-never-knew-guest-column-1097157/FOLLOW US:Brian Wohl:Twitter: http://twitter.com/brianwohlInstagram: http://instagram.com/brianwohlFacebook: http://facebook.com/brianwohlMarc Muszynski:Twitter: http://twitter.com/marcmuszynskiInstagram: http://instagram.com/marcmuszynskiFacebook: http://facebook.com/marcmuszynskiMy Favorite Friendship:Facebook: http://facebook.com/myfavoritefriendshipInstagram: http://instagram.com/myfavoritefriendshipTwitter: http://twitter.com/myfavfriendship

Billdance references the Farmer's Almanac. We talk Succession, which then leads to a Culkin rabbit hole. Did you know Keiran Culkin was in Home Alone? Fargo is a great show ft. Bilbo season 1. The insanity of writer's rooms. Larry Sanders Show talk, Gary Shandling choosing between taking over for Carson on the Tonight Show or creating his own show on HBO. Dgtlhrt shows off sick Thumper t-shirt lol, quick showcase of the game. Bobcat Goldthwait lighting a chair on fire on Leno's Tonight Show, then his riotous appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show “Arsenio”. Tom Green talk show, Tom gets mad after Jesse James Dupree uses a chainsaw to destroy his very expensive desk. We talk about Tom Green being a pioneer of internet TV/Podcasting, one of the first do it right, and build his own studio in his basement! We quickly talk about Bob Odenkirk's incredible early career. Quick half-listen to Tim Heidecker story about getting stabbed (Scary stuff!). dgtlhrt poses a question, which game should he get: Shadow Warrior 3, Babylon's Fall, or Elden Ring. But ends up just buying Olli Olli World, which is incredible, and tells the boys about Olli Olli 1 & 2. Kaz says Elden Ring is prob best buy at the moment.BillDance mention S&Box, which is still in development. Joy Way new game coming out March 14th Outlier, dgtlhrt is a tester and hypes up this awesome, upcoming roguelite VR game! Kaz mentions the original roguelike game “Rogue”, which was a text-based game. We're all surprised how good WWE 2K22 looks. Kaz talks about mind-bending, psychological horror game Doki Doki Literature Club (wut).We watch Gabe Newell personally deliver the first batch of Valve's new SteamDeck! Which then leads to us emailing Gaben a question “Do you Actually Read All of your Emails?”… will he answer? Find out next week! What would you ask Gabe? Gabe is a living legend ftr! Kaz shows his handwritten notes for playing Satisfactory, he's very detail oriented. We end with a look at the crypto mastermind RhazzleKhan, the Turkish Martha Stewart… yah.

I first met Jimmy about ten years ago in an acting class, and we reconnected about two months ago. Jimmy has a podcast – Juicy Divas – Confessions of a Limo Driver, and he has stories !!! Some of the stories are: Driving Black Eyed Peas, Sean Penn, Elizabeth Taylor and Gary Shandling! He even has a story about a tequila lady losing her underwear. The fun never stops ! The back seat of a limo holds many secrets. Jimmy has been a Radio Host for about 5 yrs now. He is also an actor and sometimes comedian as well. His podcast deals with a Plethora of subject matter. Mostly discussing topics with relation to the music and movie industry and everything in between. Enjoy the ride keep your hands and feet inside at all times. Let the proverbial good times roll. We had a lot of fun chatting a few weeks ago. Could not stop laughing. Please take a listen to this interview, then check out his podcast. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/michelemarotta/support

The boys are back in town and they're talking about COMEDIANS. Skid and Nick set 'em up and punchline them down on topics like Edward Morgan Blake, Bill Hicks, Gary Shandling, and Aristophanes. Plus, we play I See What You Did There, and Fuck, Marry, Kill. Make me laugh, funny man!Notes:"The Diamond State" - Thomas Jefferson gave this nickname to Delaware, according to legend, because he described Delaware as a "jewel" among states due to its strategic location on the Eastern Seaboard.Wyoming on Garfield & Friends... we got close with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56uSDQECrRQ  Check out FRANCHISE FAN GUYS wherever you get podcasts!Find their live shows here: https://brightlive.com/franchise-fan-guysJoin the GCP Nation: https://glasscannonnetwork.com/Buy Nick's book: https://www.amazon.com/Introverts-Guide-World-Domination-Networker/dp/1544515677/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=Check out NickAF.com and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-pWon1rXwZt8-lvBuXArvA for Nick's speaking and comedy

This episode of FCR finds the crew reviewing the 1994 Comedy/Holiday film Mixed Nuts. Wackiness and shenanigans are sure to ensue with a cast including Steve Martin, Madeline Kahn, Rita Wilson, Gary Shandling, Liev Shrieber, Juliette Lewis, and Adam Sandler. As per usual, Luke managed to demonstrate his inability to find humor in anything. Tune in and give it a listen!

As summer slides into autumn GLoP eases into a decidedly laid back edition. Rob goes from the wilds of Alaska to the beaches of the Virgin Islands while John and Jonah go from hot to cold on supposedly classic films like The Searchers, Citizen Kane and Vertigo. There's also an appreciation of the film Road House and character actor Paul Willson (Cheers, It's Gary Shandling's Show) and Shang-Chi... Source

Happened In the 90's hosted by Steve and Matt picks a day, any day, and then goes back in time to that magical decade we all know and love the 90's, to revisit episodes of tv, movies that premiered, or cultural events that occured on that day in the 90's. This week we're lucky enough to have our first returning guest. He was fortunate enough to own and operate the 12th full time comedy club in the US, Laughs Unlimited. Scott experienced comedy during the 90s with the likes of Bob Saget, Dave Coulier, Gary Shandling and many more. Scott talks with us about his memories of comedy from his work and friendship with Bob Saget and Dave Coulier to knowing the infamous Vince Champ. A 90's comedian who isn't known so much for his jokes as he is for his crimes. He also tells us about his book, the craft of standup and some new projects he has in the works including a new book and online comedy course. Make sure to check out all of Scott's stuff below: Website; http://scottscomedystuff.com/ Book: Be A Standup Comic (or just look like one): A Comedy Career Guide Link: https://standupcomedyyourhostandmc.com/shop/ols/products/be-a-stand-up-comic-or-just-look-like-one-a-comedy-career-guide-be-a-stn-up1 Thanks for listening!! New episode every Thursday. Video Available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk5uXQXE9WGIWcpSkNkXaOg Email Us At: hitnineties@gmail.com Instagram: HappenedInThe90s Twitter: HIThe90s Facebook: @HappenedInThe90s Website: happenedinthe90s.wordpress.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

I love synchronistic moments; that's how I met this week's first guest, Kerry Slattery. Now retired, Kerry was the original general manager of Skylight Books in Los Angeles. Before this, she acted in shows such as It's Gary Shandling, The Twilight Zone, Hunter, and Code Red. Kerry shares her knowledge of years in the bookshop industry and offers suggestions for anyone considering opening an indie bookshop.My second guest, Katya Cengel, is an author, journalist, and teacher based in California. Her work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, Marie Claire, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among other publications. She has reported from North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and Africa and was based in the former Soviet Union for half a decade. She was a features and news writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal from 2003 to 2011.Links from the show:Kerry Slattery's Blog – Jack and ViolaSkylight BooksPaz Book BizKatya Cengel  Exiled: From the Killing Fields of Cambodia to California and Back, Katja CengelBluegrass Baseball: A Year in the Minor League Life, Katya CengelFrom Chernobyl with Love: Reporting from the Ruins of the Soviet Union, Katya CengelMy Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante, Ann Goldstein  Just Like Us, Helen ThorpeEmma's War, Deborah ScrogginsMary Williams Skylight BooksSupport the show (https://paypal.me/TheBookshopPodcast?locale.x=en_US)

Episode 238: "The Video Game Intervention Episode" Guests: From This is Spinal Tap and The Simpsons, Actor & Musician Harry Shearer, from the Jackass movies and Wild Boyz, Comedian & Actor Steve-O and from SNL and It's Gary Shandling's Show, Comedy Writer & Author Alan Zweibel along with the musical stylings of Warning Danger: The Safest Punk Band In The World. Show Intern Chance is confronted by staff in hopes he can get his video game addiction under control. TV On Radio! Visit Spud's website at: spudgoodman.com

Jordan is joined by one of the stars of Brink, Geoffrey Blake (Forrest Gump, Apollo 13, The Man in the High Castle), to discuss how he got started acting, being a “that guy” and the late Gary Shandling! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wayne Federman (The History of Standup, The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling) talks about why after decades of being a standup comedian and actor, he feels like he still hasn't made it. We chat about what he learned from Jerry Seinfeld and Gary Shandling, his inner drive and resilience, and getting fired from Mad About You after acing the audition for another role. CONNECT W/ THE NEED TO FAIL & DON FANELLI ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/theneedtofail https://twitter.com/donfanelli AND PLEASE SUPPORT TN2F ON PATREON FOR BONUS EPS & MORE: https://www.patreon.com/theneedtofail SUBSCRIBE/RATE/REVIEW TN2F on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. THE NEED TO FAIL IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/the-need-to-fail Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

[ep.42] Ernest, Hunter, and Drew talk new music from Death Grips, and The Carters (Jay-Z and Beyonce). They review the Fred Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor?, and share thoughts on First Reformed, Arrested Development Season 5, Mission: Impossible II, and The Zen Diaries of Gary Shandling. Plus, God of War spoiler talk, and more. WBAM! E-mail us: weboughtamic@gmail.com Follow WBAM: Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Subscribe on iTunes and leave us a review. Twitter: @caldernest @HuntMobley @DrewDietzen letterboxd: letterboxd.com/caldernest/ letterboxd.com/hearshot/ letterboxd.com/drewd/ EPISODE 42 SHOWNOTES Intro News Jurassic World 2 (00:02:01) MoviePass and AMC (00:05:03) New Noname album announced (00:08:37) Listening The Carters – Everything is Love (00:12:33) Death Grips – Year of the Snitch (00:22:02) Playing GoW spoiler talk (00:33:21) Watching Mission: Impossible II (00:51:24) Arrested Development S5 (00:57:24) The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling (01:09:58) First Reformed (01:21:00) Won't You Be My Neighbor? (01:31:40) Outro (02:09:06) --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/weboughtamic/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/weboughtamic/support

John Lithgow vs Eric Roberts! AT LAST! Critic and podcaster Norm Wilner joins us to chat about 1993's LOVE, CHEAT & STEAL, an erotic thriller with few thrills and even less eroticism! But it DOES have a bank heist, money laundering, murder, Danny Trejo, and a twist ending that we still don't understand. We also RANK THE PRESIDENTS, discuss Gary Shandling, Michael Flatley's art career, and SO MUCH MORE. Let's listen!  The post Episode 72: Love, Cheat & Steal (1993) (/w Norm Wilner) appeared first on Eric Roberts is the Man.

Brendan and Bryan talk diets, Bryan's war on psoriasis, Brendan's San Jose shows, suckin on cow udders, breast milk cures, bodybuilding foods, kissing asses, comedians of past and present, George Carlin, Gary Shandling, Daniel Tosh, Braco the gazer, Max Holloway vs Khabib Nurmagomedov, Ronaldo Cristiano's terrible sculpture and much more.MVMT - mvmt.com/fighterHoney - joinhoney.com/fatkSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

An international edition of "Wide Open Wednesday". Plus, movies on location... Roseanne returns... Gary Shandling... and Aztec death whistles.

Connor Ratliff (The George Lucas Talk Show, The Stepfathers, UCB) takes time out of his Los Angeles vacation to drop by Bro Bro Studios and chit-chat with Horatio Sanz and Chad Krueger about defending the legacy of George Lucas, forgiving Michael Jackson and Woody Allen, the brilliance of Gary Shandling and what could have been for the Beatles in 1979.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Sell-out stand up comedian, and part of the legendary Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Bill Engvall joins The Brink of Midnight Podcast.  Bill Engvall is one of the most successful comedians from the last three decades and was part of the famed BLUE COLLAR COMEDY TOUR, along with Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, and Ron White. From writing and performing stories at a young age to literally building his first college stand-up stage with lightbulbs in coffee cans, Bill was born to make people crack up, however most people don't realize he was a reluctant comic. Dreams of becoming an actor, singer, professional baseball player, doctor, and then to being rejected from both the Navy and being a Texas Highway patrol officer preceded the realization, twenty years after college, that the answer had been with him all the time. Mentored by Gary Shandling, Jerry Seinfeld, and Jay Leno, it was Jay Leno pushing Bill to think beyond being an “opening act”. You will cackle your way through this episode as Bill charts his top moments across the county that range from…say, for example, the huge moment of his topless bar boss encouraging him to pursue comedy to being handed the “Best Standup Comedian in a Nightclub” Award from Joan Rivers, from the rise of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour to becoming an ordained minister, and so many more scenes you couldn't possibly write.  For show notes visit:  | Contact:  | Connect: @brinkofmidnight (twitter, instagram, Facebook)

Suli is a comic, writer, producer, actor, and a dad. He produced the documentary "Dying Laughing" which comes out Feb. 24. We talk some sports, Gary Shandling, Dying Laughing, inspiring your kids, and taking your lumps in Hollywood. Go see Dying Laughing and enjoy our chat! sulimccullough.com dyinglaughingfilm.com kiracomedy.com allthingscomedy.com

This week on The Perfect 10 Lahna sits down with comedian Nikki Wantz, her producer and now co-host of the podcast to tell a hilarious story about Lahna's run in with the dearly departed Gary Shandling and addresses the TMZ story. Nikki and Lahna then turn to the more naughty side and ask the age old question, Do brunettes or blonds taste better? It's a hodgepodge of hilarity. Check it out!