Blank Check with Griffin & David - Lenny with Colin Quinn

Episode Date: July 17, 2022

Sure, Bob Fosse’s “Lenny” has beautiful cinematography, but does it effectively communicate that Lenny Bruce was funny? Is the narrative of stand-ups as “tortured truth tellers” overdone?  We have THOUGHTS! Comedian and “stand-up historian” Colin Quinn joins us to talk about the legacy of Lenny Bruce, and what Fosse gets right (the milieu of the clubs, Valerie Perrine’s wonderful performance as Honey Bruce), and what he gets wrong (the actual humor). Plus - we entertain the idea of a miniseries structured not around a specific filmmaker, but a series of late-70s, early-80s films where the main auteur is…cocaine.   Editor’s Note: This episode includes Zoom audio. Join our Patreon at patreon.com/blankcheck Follow us @blankcheckpod on Twitter and Instagram! Buy some real nerdy merch at shopblankcheckpod.myshopify.com

What's the worst thing you can say to anybody? Podcast you, mister. That's really weird thing you can say to anybody podcast you mister that's really weird you know because if i want to hurt you i should say un-podcast you mister because podcast you was really nice man i gotta say it's hard to do hoffman doing lenny could you do lenny i don't know i feel like the hoffman the hoffman thing is kind of, right? I mean, this is almost the Hoffman thing. Right. And then the Lenny thing is a little, I feel like I'm just going into Cartoon Ship Monk there.

Yeah, I think when you're doing Lenny, you're just doing Angry Jew, right? I'm doing, yeah. You're just, yeah. Hoffman, that's very specific. The Hoffman thing, but then you're trying to put Lenny on the Hoffman. It's an interesting balance.

Look, we love it when our guest interjects before they're introduced. Yeah, our guests can just weigh in. I don't know if our guest has a Hoffman or a Lenny. Oh, I'm always ready to interject on this kind of stuff. I saw you holding back. Yeah. Funny you said it because one of the biggest problems is over the years, I feel like people trying to do Lenny.

Yes. In stand-up. And so suddenly you have these people, and I watch a lot of Lenny Bruce before the movie and whatever. I've listened to some old tapes over the years because he changed the game in so many ways. But him doing it at that time, you allow for a lot of pontification and you allow for a lot of

dead air because he was changing the game yes he weren't just watching but once somebody does that structurally everybody else's responsibility is joke joke joke in the middle of that structure and so when i went to lenny boost people like were like, oh, Lenny Bruce wasn't that funny. Like a lot of comedians say that. I go, but it doesn't, what he did at that time was something else. You know what I mean? He was like the first modern comedian

and then other people figured out how to make that funnier and more entertaining. That's right. And by the way, that go Joe Ansis was apparently where he stole his whole style. Sure.

That was like Rodney Dangerfield's friend and his friend. And so they all love that guy. But the guy wouldn't get on stage. So fortune favors the brave. Somebody should have said that to Joe Ansis. But yeah, so I mean, it is interesting to watch people steal that kind of style of Lenny Bruce. It's just it's just it gets very didactic and just a little bit pompous. And, you know, you just you know what I mean? It's too much sometimes.

But when he did it, you have to give him a lot of slack, in my opinion. You know, would you agree with my assessment? I was trying to do the math while watching this movie again last night. I feel like still conservatively, 25 percent of comedians are trying to do Lenny Bruce today, and they tend to be the most self-indulgent comedians working. He's a whole quadrant of stand up comedy, essentially, you're saying like it all goes back that way. Kind of right. Or they're at least doing a distillation of Lenny. Well, everybody, everybody gets influenced by somebody in comedy. It's like a great line in Manhattan when Woody Allen goes, you think you're God? He goes, I have to model myself into somebody.

Sure. So better Lenny Bruce than, you know, some old time. But yes, I feel like he's had undue influence, not just on comedians. Now, here's what i'd like to attack all thinkers on comedy great here we go audience members everybody because not just comedians but this idea this romanticized idea of tortured truth teller is too much for me because here's the thing about comedy in my opinion once again something nobody says in my opinion you once again, something nobody says, in my opinion. You won't hear that on social media. It's that comedy, like doctors first do no harm,

first make people laugh. So if you're not making people laugh, I don't even want to discuss. I don't care if you have the most breakthrough revelations that change the world. Advertise as a philosopher. So when people go to see a comedy show, get their babysit or whatever, you're supposed

to elicit laughter. That's what the advertisement for a comedian is. So if you're not doing that, I don't care how brilliant you think you are, you're false advertising. You're not shocking people. You're not freaking them out. It's this whole idea of like, yeah, man, I had the bourgeoisie in an

outrage with my observations. They can't handle it. These middle class morality, suburban, you know. And it's like, all right. When Lenny Bruce did it, it's shocking. Truly. 1960, you talk about the Catholic Church, you could have got your ass beat to death. You know what I mean?

And so I'm just saying now going after the catholic church not that they don't deserve it but don't act like i'll be on stage sometimes making some stupid catholic church joke and a couple of you like whoa and i'm like yeah i'm really stepping out on a limb i don't watch myself you know you don't have someone being like all right into the paddy wagon with you like the minute exactly and that's the thing is this romanticized thing that it's like comedy is you know chain smoking tortured get laughs and the highest form of it in my opinion again is if you can say what you're trying to say and get lips so i'm not saying there are different levels but the laughter has to be there or it's not an even discussion you know and if 25 of comedians

are doing some derivation of lenny bruce i think the bigger problem is 15 of comedians maybe take all of the wrong lessons from lenny bruce not just in their act but in their sort of how they view themselves and their personality and this like i'm this this radical disruptor, you know, I sermon on the mount. I need to. Yes. The tortured chain smoking black and white, like when they're doing stand up and they're bombing, they think they look like Dustin Hoffman in this movie.

And someday someone is going to talk about how misunderstood they were at their time. Right. But that's also the responsibility of the people that have commented all these years because people love that idea of lenny bruce and it's stuck as this archetype for everybody and i love it i mean i get it i'm in there i'm like this is cool he's like a badass by the way dustin hoffman lenny bruce horrible wow he's one of the most amazing actors of all time. He tried. Either you're a stand-up or you're not. You can't be not funny and be a stand-up. So Dustin Hoffman's going like this the whole movie,

which is rule one of what I would never do, what I can't imagine anyone doing stand-up. He tells his joke and he goes like this and smiles at the crowd. You're Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce was a badass. And smiling like this, like, this like hey guys are you in that's a guy at a you know telling a joke at like a business conference like I hope I get the Lenny Bruce whatever his faults were he was a sexy kind of like I don't care yeah man like

and he was that guy you know what I mean he wasn't a guy that's up there like, hey guys, you in? I appreciate you saying that because I think with this movie, you might watch it and come away with the basic take. We're all talking about, oh, Lenny Bruce, he wasn't that funny. And maybe the real answer is like, well, Dustin Hoffman is Lenny Bruce, isn't that funny? Lenny Bruce might've been funny,

but Lenny Bruce through Dustin isn't that funny. They said the guy that did the play cliff gorman was apparently great like they had that plane it's based on but when it came to the movie they have to have lenny uh dustin hoffman gotta get the star and and he's the fake lenny in the lenny within a movie in all that jazz that's bob fossy's apology for not putting him in the film he's very good in that. But again, even what Bob Fosse chose, because Bob Fosse's not funny. So here's the whole thing with comedy.

Funny, funny, funny. If it's not funny, I don't care about the torture. It's fine. I get everyone's been tortured. But if I'm watching a movie about, you know, I don't know, like, what was that movie? I saw like the Elton John movie? The Elton John movie. Elton John, his life, it's interesting enough.

It's interesting enough, but if you don't hear the songs, then you're like, why am I watching this movie about a guy that was on drugs and tortured? He's like everybody else. We all have 10 people in our lives like this. Oh, yeah, I forgot. He's a great songwriter. So with every comedy movie,

this is my phone to pick in comedy general movies and tv shows is if you don't have jokes that if you don't curate the material correctly then i'm not watching this guy they're funniest and it drives me nuts you know so that's part of my problem is like lynn bob boyce is like the death stuff is deep. I'm like, is it really, Bob? Is it really? Is that it? Death, man. Death. It's like, okay.

You know, that was that 50s Ingmar Bergman and Woody and all of them. They just thought that made them deep to be into death. Speaking of, you know, archetypes. You know, they're like, yeah, we're into like death. And it's like, oh, it's too much. Death as a personality. Look, we're going to dig into all of this dig dig man listen uh dig this is a podcast called blank check with griffin and david i'm griffin i'm david it's

a podcast about filmographies directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want sometimes those checks clear sometimes they bounce. Man. It's a miniseries on the films of Bob Fosse. It's called Pod That Jazz Cast. That's right. And today we're talking about the film Lenny.

And we got with us, not just a comedian, but clearly a historian. An expert. A truth teller, dare I say it. A modern philosopher. Yeah, what is every euphemism for stand-up comedian also that exists? Modern philosopher. And look, all that stuff is great. That's the highest form if you're making people laugh the whole time.

Right. So here's the main credit I'll list. Our guest today is funny. Yeah, that's it. He tells really good jokes and makes people Yeah, that's it. He tells really good jokes and makes people laugh. That's it. Colin Quinn. By the way, you know, Cabaret, which I, did you already guys do already Cabaret? We did Cabaret. Yeah. So did you ever hear that great story? The interview with Joel Gray talking about Bob Forsey and how he, he, what Bob Forsey wanted

to play the part. And then he said it's either me or joel gray because he thought they wouldn't take joel gray and he took joel gray and then the first day rehearsal in berlin bob borsi did a flip did you see that yes yes and he landed on his head black and blue and then he just rest of the time just drew and he tried to cut joel gray out of the whole movie yeah it's it's crazy yeah and that was before this movie so i mean obviously his judgment was they were like are you crazy joel gray's a great part of the movie so judge and he had no choice but to cast dustin hoffman this is going to be an anti-dust it's going to turn into an attack on dustin hoffman or fortune okay here's here's what i want to say right off the bat

because i know this is it it's sort of the common complaint of this movie throughout the comedy community is just he doesn't get the sort of rhythms of being on stage correctly. It's such a sort of literal impression. He's approaching it very literally minded, and he evokes him in a lot of ways. But the dynamic of him on stage interacting with a crowd never feels correct. And the other thing is, fundamentally, he's not funny. None of these routines are funny, right?

I would argue Hoffman does a good job with all of the sort of offstage stuff. But like 50% of this movie is actually having to do the routines. And I had the same feeling where I was like, look, I've never found Lenny Bruce personally very funny. I understand his historical importance. I think he's worth studying for these reasons. But watching the movie, I was like, man, he's really not funny. These routines suck. And then this morning I put on Lenny Bruce live at Carnegie Hall and I was like, oh, no, no, no, no.

There's a reason this guy was well known. Yes. Yeah. It's still not my favorite kind of thing it wasn't just that he got on stage and said sucker you know like he was he was a performer of renown it's still self-indulgent you know we we've adapted the the form has evolved since then but you listen to him and it's like he has an innate sense of comedy that perhaps is not dustin hoffman's strong suit that's exactly right dustin hoffman can be a very funny comic actor right like tootsie i don't know right it's a different thing it's a whole different ballgame and uh like i said the biggest crime to me is that that smile to the audience i mean i couldn't couldn't even believe it. You know what I mean?

But the material was, Bob Fosse doesn't know what he's looking at, maybe. You know what I mean? Because material-wise, yeah. I feel like Bob Fosse himself admitted that he wasn't a fan of Lenny Bruce, didn't find him very funny, and was fascinated by, as you already called out, the looming specter of death,

his number one favorite theme. Cullen's body just shrugged. His entire body just sighed. Because I don't even believe Bob Forsey's looming specter of death, judging on his behavior in his life. I believe that people at that time had a fashion where they were like, I'm into death. And everybody's like, oh, this person's deep yeah i just don't buy it i think it's an affect i think he was very obsessed with the notion of what lenny represented in terms of breaking down those walls and changing the vernacular because fossy was a guy who tried to rewrite dance in that kind of way and make things sexier more tactile and more adult

and more dangerous but the actual comedy, I think by his own admission, he was never that interested in. He's really interested in Lenny as a figure in terms of what he represents. That's right. That's what I think so, too. And the other part of it, the other thing is, like, that Bob Fosse grew up playing these types of clubs, that he was this child dancer doing on lineups with burlesque dancers. Right.

The entertainer thing, the backroom entertainer thing, that seems very Fosse. He loves the sad, dirty show people thing. He loves these terrible rooms and staying in the hotels and all that sort of shit. But then you get to the comedy of it, and he's just like, I don't know. That's the whole thing. It's like watching a musical without

the music. I mean, if you're not watching a comedian being funny, then why are you watching this person who's every other tenth person you know? It is funny that this movie pretty much has the exact same structure as Cabaret, where it's like you're cutting in between

this one sort of performance and these slivers of the life. But Cabaret was a masterpiece. Yes, well, because he's really good at doing musical numbers. This is the thing about Bob Fosse that people don't talk about that much. Very good at musical numbers.

Yeah. But that's my question to you, Colin. What's your overall Fosse feeling? Is Cabaret, that's your favorite? How, Colin. What's your overall Fosse feeling? Have you, you know, is Cabaret, that's your favorite? How do you feel about the Fosse filmography? Well, what else was there? All that jazz I thought was good, except the death thing was corny.

But like, look, the beginning of all that jazz, when it's just quiet and then the music and they're stretching, I was like, that's masterpiece. Masterpiece. Masterpiece. First movie, Sweet Charity, was Shirley MacLaine. Oh, did, that's masterpiece. Masterpiece. Masterpiece. First movie, Sweet Charity, was Shirley MacLaine. Oh, did he direct that? He directed that.

And then his last movie after all that jazz is Star 80. Oh, Star 80 was good. Yeah, Star 80 rules. But it's one of the darkest movies ever made, arguably.

It's a grim one. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. By the way, how good was Eric Roberts when he quotes, to Cliff Cliff Roberts and he quotes the Playboy philosophy at the party? We're going to talk about Eric Roberts.

Performance of that movie is one of the few times where you feel like this is actual just evil captured on camera. He was amazing. It's unbelievable. He never really shook it. Yeah. But so overall, you do seem to like his movies. Yes. Yeah. Yes so overall, you do seem to like his movies. Yes.

Yeah? Yes. I love Bob Bush. But I wanted to bring you up because, Colin, people don't know. You were secretly a major cinephile. You did a Criterion closet video. That's right. You've been to the closet.

Oh, yeah. You've been to the closet. I watched this. I went, what am I doing? Let's rope Colin in here. And I thought between your bona fides as a cinephile and your expertise, your strong minded opinions on Lenny Bruce, which when I texted you to do this, you said Lenny Bruce looks like an open mic or compared to me. That was your immediate response. I'd like to be, you know, that's my my persona.

But yeah, Lenny Bruce was no, of course, Lenny Bruce. Like what you said, he changed the form. That's hard. You know, he changed the form. That's hard. You know, he changed the form. And he didn't do it because it didn't need it. Like, you could change the form when it doesn't need it to. But it needed it. And he changed it.

And it was really interesting, you know. And I still say it's so funny because even among comedians when we talk, there's nothing. One liner people are so funny. Like you watch Rodney Dangerfield. Some of these one liners have more truth in them than somebody rambling for 20 minutes. And joke jokes are some of the funniest jokes ever. You know, joke jokes. But 100 percent.

The pound for pound Dangerfield, in my opinion, is the funniest person to ever do it you just watch it every 15 seconds something funny well he didn't write those most of them but i mean um no i know i know i'm just giving credit as a performer as as a as a brand as a construction just funny well funny is because what he was saying and what he looked like and what he sounded like all perfectly consistent, you know? Correct. You're like, and the other outside thing is you're like, nobody really gets respect. So even though you're laughing at him for not getting respect, you don't feel like you get respect either. So it sort of keeps you in there.

There's a universality to it that he figured out. Right, right. And yeah, he was probably pound for pound. figured out right right and yeah he was he was probably pound for pound like the most you know consistently where he'd just show up and you'd be like oh i remember seeing caddyshack and at that time danger was like an old-fashioned type comic yeah well like he's with bill murray all these guys what great thing about caddyshack jaws might want to do that movie someday caddyshack have all these hip guys that we love like like Bill Murray and Chevy Chase, and we're all stoned and smoking pot.

There's all these references in the movie. Saturday Night Live was the hippest. And in the middle of it, Rodney Dangerfield comes on, which we loved him because he was so funny. Ted Knight, who's this lame sitcom guy from Too Close for Comfort, comes on and steals the movie.

Yes, yes, yes. I remember that gave me a great lesson when I saw that i go this guy's some school i didn't even want to say i'm going to moon in the movie he stole the movie he was so good it's one of those things i think that's a movie where i mean when i saw it when i was young i i didn't get ted knight's performance and then the older i get every time i re-watch that movie you go this is the most interesting thing happening in the movie it is he's incredible by the way do you ever i mean this would relate to lenny bruce and a lot of the movies there was a scene that seemed to chevy

chase and bill murray that they just left in because they want to see those two where he's golfing through and they talk about you come by my house an inexplicable scene it's the middle of the night chevy chase is like, oh, I'm golfing. Like, it doesn't make any sense. Right, yes. But nowadays, they would say, cut that scene. It's not pushing the plot forward. It's not moving.

And that's the kind of scene that I feel like every movie strives for in some way. Just these people being in a moment. And you know what I mean? I thought it was such a beautiful scene. I rewatched Caddyshack recently because I had not seen it since I was like a kid or whatever. And that movie is almost abstract. It is very strange.

It is weird that it became such a phenomenon. It doesn't have a plot. And it's ostensibly about these young guys, but then the young guys are sort of irrelevant to it. It's so strange. Yeah. No, but I think when they shot it, there was a much more conventional script

that was like breaking away that was really about the Michael O'Keefe character. And sometimes you had these fringe characters. And then that's a movie where they got so much good shit with the four elder statesmen.

Random improvisers. Yeah, exactly. That they were like, cut Michael O'Keefe down to 20 minutes. Let's hit the basics of that plot. And it's just a hangout movie. But that they released it and it worked is just facetious.

Totally worked. I'll tell you what's good, speaking of side characters, Valerie Perrine and Lenny, I'm saying, speaking of other people, she was amazing. She won the Academy Award, I don't know. She was nominated. She won Best Actress at a con.

It was an impossible part because she had to live up to not only Lenny's expectations, but Bob Forsey. She represented everything Bob Forsey's obsessed with his whole life other than death. And she was that good where you're like, every scene you're like, yes. And I like the guy that played Milton Berle.

Remember him? He's like, yes. Put his hand on her leg She lost Griffin to Ellen Burstyn For Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore Which is, and it's a great year It's Fade Down Away for Chinatown Gina Rollins for Woman Under the Influence

And Diane Carroll for Claudine But the thing is, she was nominated in Lead Which she shouldn't, this is a supporting performance She's not in a lot of the movie. And she won a lot of critics awards in supporting. And she might have won there. But she whatever. She was run as lead.

She's functioning like the narrator for a lot of the movie. I know she spends the middle chunk in jail. I know. She just doesn't have a lot of screen time. Sure. This is a question I want to ask you, Colin. Is there a performance of an actor playing a standup that you think gets it right? Or do you think it's fundamentally a thing that someone who doesn't have experience doing

standup never gets that sort of dynamic, that energy, correct? For the, at least the performance sequences. Yeah. I mean, I feel like, i feel like it's it just goes to show like how everybody probably feels that way at their job so whenever they see like you know that guy wasn't a soldier that guy wasn't a cop she wasn't a hooker like whatever your job is you're like they can't fill the bit you know and they can't do it right even in those chick flicks when they're like my presentation they're like oh she didn't work at a woman's magazine you know what i mean like nobody gets

it right so i guess it but uh yeah i've never seen i mean i can't even think of that many but i mean i've never seen i feel like it's also that that relationship with the audience like he tried to do the audience thing uh right bob borsi but it's like what would you do with the audience. He tried to do the audience thing, Bob Fosse. But it's like, what would you do with an audience? I mean, I once listened to an old Lenny Bruce tape from the 1950s that this guy Hal had. And it was him yelling at this table and going, man, you people, why do they always seat you right there? And I was just laughing because it never changes. And he goes, and after the show, you're going to go,

we were helping you. And I was like, even Lenny Bruce had to deal with the cliche people going, we were helping you after the show. By heckling, by talking. So I was like, it would be interesting to see somebody really get the essence of the audience in a comedy show. But so far, I feel like that's a big part of it. It's almost like in between the audience and the comedian, like almost that whatever's

in between those two. How would you capture that? You know, it's it's strange. It's it's it's hard. And I think even if the performer gets it right, there's something about when you're staging stand up, when you're staging stand up, when you've hired people to be the audience, when they have to watch the performance many times. Like it's it's a thing that I think, to his credit, Apatow was smart about in Funny

People, which is send these people out to real clubs, put a camera in the back. Don't make the same crowd sit through the same routine multiple times. Just go to another club on another night, get a different audience. And mostly casting actors who had some background in stand-up.

Oh, yeah. Well, most of the people doing stand-up were stand-ups, too, which is also the smart move. You know, you gotta throw them out there. They're gonna be out there

getting that competitive streak like, I know I'm in a movie, but I'm gonna get laughs from this crowd, too. Screw this. You know what I mean? The Sandler scenes. Like, I know I'm in a movie, but I'm going to get laughs from this crowd too. Screw this, you know what I mean? The Sandler scenes in particular, I think have that energy that like,

you can't capture. It's just, yeah, it's not the same thing. When I, I mean, to your point about the smiling thing, right? When Norm Macdonald died, I showed my father his roast, the Bob Saget roast set, right? Which, for my money, is one of the greatest stand-up performances

ever. It's incredible. And my dad had never seen it, and I showed it to him, and I was trying to explain to him the context of it, right? Yeah, it's hard to actually set it up as, like, you don't understand the roast works like this, he's doing something you know, like, all of that stuff, right. And my dad watches the other roast.

So I said, just imagine, you know, before this is Lisa Lampanelli, just like hitting like three pointers from half court, right? Like everyone else is going so, so hard, so dirty, so mean. And he comes up.

And the other thing I said was, look, when they put this on Comedy Central, they re-edit it. They added in crowd reaction shots to make it seem like he was killing it. This is the unedited footage. And I showed it to my dad and he just turned to me halfway through. I was trying

to explain him because he was never really a norm guy, like why norm was important. And he turned to me and he went, this guy just didn't give a shit, huh? And I went, yeah, exactly. And he went like, that's fearless to get up there and tell jokes that corny when everyone else has been. And you just watch his face and he just isn't affected at all by the fact that he's playing to abject silence. No, he knew it. Right. And it's that thing, especially when Lenny Bruce is like fucking rewriting the form with his bare hands. Right. He wasn't getting out there on stage looking for approval, which is that thing. It's, it's the actor insecurity.

Please love me thing that I think Hoffman has to, that's how he relates to the idea of being a performer. A hundred percent. And I'm sure he gets that right. Yeah. That's, that seems so inherent to Hoffman's. Yes.

He can't think of not wanting to win their approval in that moment. And I'm look, and I'm sure lenny lenny bruce wanted laughs the whole time lenny bruce never went out there to not get laughs but like you said it's the way it's the way of being like okay this is where i draw the line you guys got to meet me halfway i'm not calling you know i mean or else it's not funny the worst thing in stand-up to the guaranteed bomb is anyone that goes out there needing. Anybody that goes out there and wants so badly for the audience to laugh, they withdraw.

It's like trying to get somebody attracted to you. If you go in like this, they're like, get away from me. There has to be a little bit of you know yourself you're yourself in there like hey i'm drawing my boundary too you know and i think that's what that was missing but i don't want to put it all on him because a lot of it was you know the our favorite director bob forsey you know what i mean yeah let's let's dig into how this movie got made yeah so this movie obviously is coming right after Bob Fosse is just the most enormous

success. He wins Best Director for Cabaret at the Oscars. He wins Best Director at the Tonys for Pippin. And he wins Best Director at the Emmys for Liza with a Z, all in the same year. Yeah, he's the first and still only person to essentially get the directing triple crown.

Right, in one year in the same year yeah and his reaction which seems very bob fossey is to enter a state of massive depression right which you know that that that you know that makes that that tracks with his entire sort of creative process basically but he was also i only know because probably a few years later and i was a lot younger i used to eat massive amounts of speed and chain smoke and believe me when you're not when you're not on the crest of it you're in a depression sure right right right i mean that makes sense he's so high low yeah and ranking who's his girlfriend you know obviously uh we'll talk about her more uh in all that jazz but she she brings up this looney tunes cartoon called showbiz bugs where daffy and

bugs bunny are in competing acts the audience loves bugs daffy keeps trying to outdo him and he can't and daffy figures out the only way he can do it is to blow himself up and the audience goes wild bugs loves it and claps daaffy. His ghost floating up says, I know, I know, but I can only do it once. And in ranking is like, that's Bob Fosse.

Like she's on his cartoon. I just had to read that quote. It's so good. Yeah. That's a good quote. Yeah. And it's one of those things. I mean,

there's sort of the, the whole episode of Fosse Verdon, the series, which I highly recommend people aren't watching it or haven't watched it before this. There's the episode that's all about this insane year for him that ends with him in a mental health clinic. Like he just had a complete psychotic break. And it is that thing.

Yes, obviously aided by living a fast lifestyle, taking speed, chain smoking, you know, all his vices and whatever. But I think for a guy like that, when you start elevating to higher and higher highs, it only creates a greater distance you can fall. Well, then a guy like that, anybody. Yes, absolutely. Any athlete, any star high school athlete. And then in college, you're on a bench and everybody else goes on.

You know, it rocks your world, you know? And I think Lenny Bruce was so I uh but i said lenny bruce bob fossey but i think uh similarities here what he's sort of relating to bob fossey was so self-hating and always felt so unworthy of love and was constantly chasing love in all areas but never actually feeling loved but wait a minute name the percentage of people that does not describe. Oh, every... The whole world. I'm saying welcome to the... Welcome to the world, Bob. Absolutely.

But I think when you have a year where everyone's fucking lauding you as a genius, his reaction to that is, you fucking phonies, you pieces of shit. I'm a phony. I'm a piece of shit. You know? I don't know. I don't knowony i'm a piece of shit you know i don't know i don't know i don't know i mean i i don't know if i bought it his reaction to this is he checks into rehab uh he doesn't like it he says he didn't like lithium because it killed his sex drive

and uh he said i knew it was time to check out when i started putting on shows for the other inmates uh so then he comes out he's got three things going griff he's got the little prince uh which is sort of this passion project uh that stanley donan is working on you you love that book right griffin that's that's a big thing for you the little prince the children's book yeah but but so he's in that movie as an actor he plays the snake was was he at one point supposed to direct it or produce it or something? Well, he choreographed that sequence, I believe. Sure.

And Donen at one point gave over a lot of control to him for that. But I guess that's all he works on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever seen that movie, Colin? It's incredibly bizarre. It's a Lerner and Loeb Little Prince adaptation that Stanley Donen did in the 70s with Bob Fosse and Gene Wilder. And a child. And a child in the middle of the desert.

I love it. But it's bizarre. And there's like 10 minutes of the movie that Fosse just takes over. like 10 minutes of the movie that Fosse just takes over. And it becomes Fosse in head-to-toe black leather in the desert, seducing a child like the snake in the Garden of Eden. And Bob Fosse plays the part? Bob Fosse plays the part.

It's incredibly bizarre. The other thing, obviously, is Chicago, which they're trying to turn into a movie. It doesn't happen. They intend that to be Gwen Verdonon's return to broadway i guess like i guess they they want to do it on stage you know whatever that that's all going on and then lenny because they they bought the rights of the original film and play and yeah right there's this whole thing right where they're fighting for the rights for anyway and then lenny had been on broadway cliff gorman as you as we mentioned he wins the tony for the stage play and he basically sees this play and it's like i can do this as a little movie and no one will you know people will not be on my back about it right

like he rather than rather than try and cash in the big check post cabaret he's like well i can absolutely understand how this would work as a movie and like you know i'm just gonna do it i'm just gonna do it as a very small movie and you know i guess that makes sense it but it does seem like you say it does seem weird that like he's not that transfixed by lenny bruce no like we're saying like he's more just interested in like uh you know the the intimacy of it and the shock of it i guess like i i don't think he's he's not a comedy guy bob fossey like you know right he is he has no interest in that world but as we found out in forsyth burden his best friends neil simon and patty chayefsky yes right it is my favorite thing about that show is that patty chayefsky is is like

lebron james and train wreck that it's like what if your best friend this romantic comedy saying like you're fucking it up bobby oh i, I love it. That was the reference. As he's researching Lenny Bruce, he's reading all these interviews with him and he has the idea of like, okay, that can be the format of the movie, right? It's basically question and answer, trying to dig into like, who was the real guy? This sort of Rashomon approach,

talking to different people who knew him. The movie is written by Julian Barry, who, I mean, wrote the play in the play and you know all that and they bring in dustin hoffman because fossy wants cliff gorman but the studio is like absolutely not the studio's united artists i think and they're like you need a movie star pacino was actually fossy's second choice okay but he turned it down and hoffman is the third choice and fossy negs him throughout basically fossy the whole time it's like look you weren't my pick sorry you know i hope you'll be okay but like i they do not have a good relationship on set at all and interesting at one point hoffman

told fossy he'd worked out a walk for his version of Lenny Bruce and Fosse replied I wish he wouldn't do that the last five performances of yours degenerated into a walk which is a weirdly specific burn where I guess he's saying like too many you know too much of that bullshit from you where is Hoffman I mean because like obviously the graduate and midnight cowboy that's that's the late 60s but like I guess since then he's done like little big straw dogs little big man papillon like you know not maybe not quite as big movies well and then i mean it's it's uh 15 years later but rain man is absolutely a performance that is walk forward well that's a good thing about does it help me it's like i don't give a shit what he

said i'm still going my doing my thing i'm doing my work right right but of course my guy did so his whole thing is dance he's gonna notice your walk yes yeah because i feel like right after this then it's the real hoffman run you know of all the president's men marathon man straight time kramer versus kramer tootsie like it's all his, you know, dominant late 70s, early 80s stuff. Like, he slows it way down in the 80s. Right. Kramer vs. Kramer, 79. He wins the Oscar.

Then Tootsie is three years later. Then Ishtar is five years later. And then he wins the second Oscar for Rain Man. Like, his 80s are very bizarre. But I think there was that thing with him post-Graduate where he was strategically picking roles to zag as far away from Graduate as possible. I think he has talked about this, that he like really didn't want Benjamin Braddock to be his movie star persona. So it's like, let's just blow it up every time like what are the genres you wouldn't expect to see me in ratso rizzo was like a real statement of intent you know i think straw dogs was like he was trying to go to darker places

he was trying to be edgier he was trying to work with more provocative filmmakers what i love him i mean he's amazing but i do think that uh that he was a guy that i admire all those kind of guys that you just couldn't see as movie stars and suddenly they were the movie stars when i was a kid you know like they were just these all smaller guys and kind of you know they just blew it up i mean him and al pacino and deniro even deniro wasn't like some handsome guy he was a weird looking guy for a movie guy you know and they all became big stars you know colin did you see lenny in theaters like is that i mean you would have been what like a teenager or something no i would have been yeah

yeah no i was still a little young for that but i mean uh yeah yeah but i mean uh no i wish i had seen it sounds like that was the one to really judge everything by, you know, like material wise. Yeah. It's also the thing of like, not only did these guys become unconventional movie stars, but Hollywood was in such a state of upheaval that like anything they wanted to do would get greenlit, regardless of how risky it seemed, because they didn't know exactly what the audience wanted. Like they were chasing a very amorphous younger audience so this weird reality of like if if dustin hoffman wants to do a lenny bruce biopic it's a go picture it's as easily greenlit as any fucking action movie the rock wants to make obviously at a smaller budget but the fact that this movie ends with

his dead body on a floor like the fact that the whole movie is living in like the slums of this guy's depression doesn't matter. They're like Hoffman. Anyone will go see anything he does. But that's his. Yeah. Plus, there were so many future options in those days. But here's a tone. Like I said,

that's the narrative, the romanticized thing everybody wants now. Comedy. It's really dark behind the lights. It's as dark as sanitation department.

It's as dark as electrical engineers. You understand? It's all the same. There's not some, you know what I mean? This is ridiculous. It's been driving me crazy my whole career. No, but they're like, Colin, don't You understand? It's all the same. There's not some, you know what I mean? This is ridiculous. It's been driving me crazy my whole career.

No, but Colin, don't you understand? They make us laugh and yet they are sad. You know, the duality there. It's just so incredible. Believe me, I understand. I understand as well as everybody else what the, you know, what the thing is, the dichotomy between onstage and off stage and how you feel a certain way but again once again every job that you don't think nurses go nobody

cares when i feel pain i'm working all the time on pay it's just life you know it's too much but people get it thrills everybody you know whoa you know just because this isn't a visual medium people are only going to get to hear the audio of this. I just want to say Colin is expertly leaning into the camera as punctuation on the zoom to hit your punchlines on jokes. Yes. Yeah. And that's the key. The key is what you said before. The real key to comedy. Yes. Material, all that your your your mind, what your angle is.

What you said about Norm mcdonald's the key if you really care that much it's not funny and why norm was so funny was because i he wanted laughs he worked hard but at a certain level you're like that's as far as i can go i don't give a shit that much where i'm gonna have this be dictatedated, you know? I think, I mean, I just watched the documentary that Apatow did for HBO, but like, Carlin really, it feels like,

took everything that Lenny Bruce set up and figured out how to add more jokes into it, while still trying to speak to profound truths and challenge authority, you know? But it it's like there were actual jokes there like he was a comedian first and foremost comedian yeah and lenny bruce like you said will never like live at carnival is different he was still indulgent but in those

days the indulgence was almost part of the journey that people wanted to see because it's like how did you move from punchline one-liners to this so you know i bet it was i bet it was a different journey in those days to watch as an audience too you know just to hear someone slow it down that much seemed radical because every other guy is just doing one-liner one-liner one-liner so you almost want to watch that journey like to us now it's indulgent it's shorthand but back then maybe that was part of it i don't know you know all right valerie perrine she's in this movie raquel welch apparently was considered for this role jill robinson names i don't know joey heatherton

janice lind she seems like kind of a wild person at one point she shaved her pubic hair into a heart in preparation for the stripping sequence called fossy into the dressing room and said i have a heart on for you stuff like that a lot of stories like that in these of of wild behavior we talked about uh you know jan minor who plays foss uh lenny's mom sally mar the real sally mar wanted to play the role herself oh wow fossey thought about it because he's like she's so unique that it would be obviously amazing to capture it but he said he thought it would feel like weird and cheap especially since lenny bruce was dead like the you know he didn't want to like you know and then sherman hart is basically playing a milton burl type right uh yes then they they start uh reading the screenplay and

fossy's like this thing sucks it's gonna be a disaster and they then pivot to the the interview type thing to present the movie and that is according to fossy would save the movie. And that is, according to Fosse, what saved the movie, but Dustin Hoffman hates it. Like Dustin, I don't know. Are there stories of Dustin Hoffman being chill and nice on set though?

Like, I feel like he's always supposed to be the prickliest guy of all, right? Like, but in this case, he's probably right. It was right.

It was a bad screenplay. Well, but, but the other problem is it's like, I think Fosse's creating that superstructure of the interviews to compensate for the fact that the Hoffman doing stand-up is not compelling enough to carry the movie. But again, they should have, you know, they didn't do that in those days. They bring a stand-up in and try to explain. And again, the material, nobody could have killed with that material either.

Some of it was funny, actually, have killed with that material either. Some, it was funny actually at the beginning, but it was just, I don't know. And by the way, Milton Burrow paid for the funeral, even though the play abused him. They didn't say that he paid for his funeral.

Yeah. He, he paid to put him in the ground. Yes. Uh, according, according to sources, Dustin Hoffman was,

uh, the, the Edward Norton of his time where the story was always, he comes in, he has opinion on fucking everything. He wants to take on every role. And the stories are always, look, he's right most of is dead, but Dustin Hoffman weirdly, very badly wanted to play the Frank Langella role in Draft Day. And neither of those people are dead. Oh, Ivan Reitman is dead. OK, yeah. Ivan Reitman. No, I know. I know who's dead and who's alive, David. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Go ahead. I keep tabs. Ivan Reitman said, life is too short to work with Dustin Hoffman.

Which, when you're offered fucking Dustin Hoffman to play the fourth lead of your, like, sports management comedy, most people would do anything they could to get him to plus up those scenes. And he just went, literally, I don't have the energy

to have these fights with him. Even if he's right, I don't have the energy. Had he ever worked with Dustin Hoffman? I guess he never did's right, I don't have the energy. Had he ever worked with Dustin? I guess he never did. No, I don't think he... At least he didn't direct him. No, and like fucking Reitman worked with Redford and Murray and all these incredibly

difficult, you know, leading men. And he just went, I'm too old. I don't give a shit. I don't want to get into these fights with him. Well, apparently what Hoffman is doing, unsurprisingly, he goes out to la he starts exploring you know like performing stand-up things like that he keeps calling bob with ideas he found out that apparently lenny bruce at one point had advertised a show by getting a cut out of hitler

and putting it on the side of the freeway and then having just it says's a Lenny Bruce, you know, opening on, on that, you know, which again, it sounds so corny now, but like back then I'm sure it was crazy. And right. And, and, and so Hoffman's like calling up Fosse being like, we got to do that. We got to put that in. Right. And Fosse is like, no, I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm doing, i well it's resistant to hoffman's notes i guess hoffman says this guy is not a collaborator um but you know i mean i'm sure bob fossey's you know a side of it is essentially like i'm trying to make my movie over here like i i'm

you know whatever your idea of lenny bruce is you go direct to lenny bruce movie i'm the director like you know that that seems to be but somebody idiotically putting a hitler thing on the side of a of a freeway only a comedian would come up with that that's such a stupid idea so they should have done it because bob bossy wants it to be this dignified thing of like lenny and his deep thought but only a comedian would think of a shitty idea like let's put a hitler thing and do it so i'm saying bob fossey should have done something in that spirit this is the thing i think yes i think fossey could have allowed for lenny to be a little sillier in this movie and bob fossey is clearly like no this was a tortured drug addicted genius who stood up against hypocrisy and stood up for free speech.

And that's what I want to make a movie about. And I'm watching it and I come away with the impression of, yeah, this guy was a drug addicted, very smart guy who stood up for free speech. And, you know, like, but I'm not coming away with the impression of like, God, I can I can tell why this guy changed comedy or i or even like why this guy liked comedy he mostly just seems annoying i'm sorry like when he's like being a pain to the judge i'm like can you at least be a funny pain to the judge exactly and i bet he was funny to that judge but but i'll say this too and i think this memory is probably in my head from Hoffman's Inside the Actor's Studio, but I feel like any time I have heard him talk about this film, his preparation for this film, his work on this film, he talks about it the way that now people

describe playing the Joker. He talked about it as like, I locked myself in a room and I wrote down every routine i put him on note cards and i smoked obsessively i tried to get into his head this this performative thing that now every actor has to do where they're yeah i had to write down murderous things in a notebook until i started laughing and then i became the joker america's greatest dramatic figure and it's he was also so attracted to the self-tortured aspects of this guy. Both of them, I think, were primarily into this idea of what Lenny Bruce represented rather than what he actually kind of was as an artist, his basic art, which was

trying to make people laugh, drunk people laugh in nightclubs. and it's funny also that this film comes so pretty soon after he's dead i mean it's like the timeline between him dying the play running on broadway this movie all happens in less than 10 years yeah he died in 66 so this movie is what eight years later yeah yeah like there's not a ton of distance perspective well it's also crazy that this movie was a wide studio release and like 10 years earlier he was getting arrested for saying you know fuck or whatever that's just what's crazy about the 60s like you know that it all happened so quickly let's say this the other other of these romanticized narratives is that Lenny Bruce was getting arrested in 1910 years earlier. He got arrested like once or twice.

The rest of the time he was beloved by the nation. He was the biggest star in comedy. Nobody's like, oh, my God, he was shunned. He took a million chances and he deserved all his success. But he was successful. You know, he wasn't successful after he died he was successful while he was alive yeah and he deserved it he changed the game like when you think of someone like bill hicks right like a sort of similar like truth teller

gone too soon type comedian like he was never like that famous right like he never was a guy who could was playing carnegie hall or whatever or was he maybe i no no no he was not he was actually starting to blow up in england at the time when he got when he got very sick bill so he probably who knows but uh yeah but bill hicks was uh right he was he was never as big as that no he wore clubs he wore clubs right where's lenny bruce like climbed the mountain of comedy and Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce The other thing they had in common Which is nobody talks about their early stuff Which was really funny

Joke jokes too So like they didn't come at it From a point of view like I'm going to be a truth teller They started a certain way They were very successful Bill Hicks was very successful as a club comic When he was 16, 17.

And then they decided to push it further on. They got a little older and they got restless. Not to keep relating everything back to the George Carlin documentary, but just because I watched five hours of that recently, so I was really thinking about his whole career arc.

But it's such a key piece to him that he spent 10 years being a very conventional comedian. He learned how to do funny voices. He learned how to have stage presence, you know, and like what he was doing was more traditional, but it was still funny. He wasn't hacky. And then he got to a point where he said, I want to actually find a way to represent

what I think and tackle more complicated subjects. But he was fitting that into a basic fundamental understanding of how to make people laugh. He understood rhythms. He understood energy. He understood wording and construction and all of that shit. Whereas a lot of when you see, I think, the worst open micers, they are people who are just getting to, I'm going to say shit you're not supposed to say. And then when people don't laugh at it, it's what you said, where they go, well, I was too extreme for them. They didn't laugh because I was too hot for this fucking room. Oh, yeah. No, there's a lot of that. And yeah, no, exactly. You have to be,

you have to, like I said, I mean, it still comes down to laughs. If you're in a comedy club and you're not laughing, unless that person really is revealing the great truths that nobody in life has figured out yet. You're like, what am I doing? You're like, I'm not going to come back here. You know what I mean? It's your long winded drunken friend at a party, you know. a party, you know? Lenny Bruce had the benefit in the 1950s and 60s, and not to diminish what he did, that no one was getting on stage into a microphone in front of a crowd and going like, hey, people have sex. So that in and of itself was shocking. That was truly a thing that had not been verbalized in that kind of sphere before. Yes. People would make like, everything was an

innuendo. And it it was although there was some truth to it because those people wouldn't have laughed at those people one-liners like they're laughing in mother-in-law jokes because people's mother-in-laws live with them and everybody's wedged together and the mother-in-law was judging him a little bit because she she hadn't judged her husband and now it's 1950 she's like this son a bitch. I see what they're doing now. I didn't see it when I was young. So, I mean, it was all true stuff that was funny.

But Lenny Bruce is like, I'm telling you the thoughts in my mind that we don't talk about. And when he's starting out as a, you know, evolving into that stage as a stand-up, sitcoms are still showing married couples in separate beds.

There's this thing where it's like, well, we all know this doesn't represent reality, but we obviously can't show it. But we just don't want to talk about it, right? We don't want to talk about it. So merely saying the thing, as you said, was like, well, you're verbalizing something that hasn't been said before. That alone is going to give you a lot of juice. Absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, there was a lot i bet once again you know it's hindsight it's 2020 but uh you know i always think like if only bob forsey had known enough to really interview all the comedians that were anti-lenny bruce i'm sure to that day they were still like that and somehow wedged them in the movie saying here's what i think then you would have seen like what lenny Bruce faced. I mean, you know, I mean,

a lot of comedians loved him, but a lot of comedians didn't like, you know, they, they were like, that's that interesting. Like they hinted with Milton Berger, but it's like that big kind of that facade that he wanted to,

that he did crash through, you know, it's interesting. I had the realization watching this, I was watching it with the, the woman I'm dating. And I, during one of the more, It's interesting. all the stand-up performance scenes, Hoffman is so into playing the self-tortured aspect of it that that's smothering the comedy a little bit, even though I think Fosse is selecting least funny stretches of his material. But I said to her at one point, I went,

this is really just that Twitter thread that you roll your eyes at now. Like, every one of these routines that they show in the movie is like Mattie Iglesias going, let me try to explain something to you. And then in brackets, it says one out of 27 and you go, holy fucking shit. What is this? What is this fucking guy?

Hey, dig this. I'm going to tell you how these things fucking work. And you're like, okay, mute, you know? It is interesting to see the crowds in this movie, the audiences, and to imagine that at least right like what like a 1950s comedy concert goer would would have been like right

like someone born in the turn of the century who's like all right what's this guy gonna say and he's getting up there and he's being like men and women they have sex with each other and you know it is that's what i was kept trying to put my head in that space. What was the crowd back then? It is, in many ways, the most traditionally biopic-y scene in this movie. And this is a movie where I agree with all of the criticisms we're saying. I still kind of love this movie just in its construction and its approach to the biopic. In the same way that Cabaret is falsely trying to blow up what a movie musical is. And I do think while not totally understanding the subject, I think the form of this movie

is really interesting and is a form I wish more biopics followed rather than trying to conform people's lives to very traditional three-act structures. But there's that scene in the script that feels like the most biopic-y scene where his manager comes backstage at the strip club and is like, I can't explain this to you, but people think what you're doing is about to be a thing. They think this is in and you're on the cusp of something. And he's like, I don't want to go back to fucking clubs. I don't want to do mother-in-law jokes. The great thing about performing at a strip club is I can say anything and no one gives a shit.

And the manager being like, no, but what I think is about to change is people at traditional clubs will let you talk like you're at a strip club. And it's that realization of he only finds his freedom as a comedian when he's accepted that he's in a place where like none of this fucking matters. This is a fucking den of depravity. I can just talk. Exactly. Yeah. Right. Right. And this cultural shift of something is changing and people now maybe want to hear the tie get loosened.

Yeah. And maybe not for the better. What about this, though? You say traditional biopic structure unfortunately i just made i made sure it was an earlier movie i just googled it there was another biopic that had that uh structure and it was called little big man and it was four years before lenny and you know you know who started that? David Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman. Dustin Hoffman!

Arthur Penn movie. I'd never seen Little Big Man. That's like a classic revisionist Western, right? Like that's, you know, hey, the Wild West wasn't so cool. No, right. I saw it when it came out. I was a little kid and it was a big, that was a big hit. Lenny was not a big hit when it came out.

At least people thought it was kind of disappointing, even then. Some more context on Lenny. Alright. It shot for 100 days, which is insane. Fossey claims more like 80, but no. Apparently, one thing he insisted on was the extras for the

crowds. He would only let them watch two performances max so they had like 2500 extras in one week and they would cycle them in and out because like fossy was like i need them to have authentic reactions and you know like while they're shooting performances but like this is the thing like as much as this is bob fossy making a small movie he has the clout at this point to make demands like that, right? There was that thing, they dramatize it in Fosse-Verdon,

but the whole idea was like, Bob, you just got out of rehab, your health is fucked, your brain is fucked, maybe take a break, you've had this crazy year, and he's like, no, I have to keep working, I'll tackle a small movie. It was a play, I can keep it stage-bound, I can shoot it on location, and then very quickly, he was like, we got to go to Miami. It has to be real Miami.

We have to go to all these clubs. We have to shoot in three different cities. It's got to be interview form. We're going to cut it all up. It's going to be this whole. Yes, 100 percent. And is he the off camera voice of the interviewer in this? Is he? I don't know. I mean, that makes sense. So there's no one credited that I can find. But yeah, I always assumed it was. There's one anecdote that I think is kind of, you know, an example of Fosse being totally right, where like while Hoffman's doing a routine,

like they'd finish and Fosse would be like, faster, faster, faster, faster. And Hoffman would be like, nobody talks like this. And after 20 takes hoffman does it so fast and he's like well he was right like that is actually what i was supposed to be doing the whole time you know and when i hear that story i'm like hoffman doesn't seem to get it to me like if he if he thinks stand-up comedians like oh well no one talks like this but like that's how people talk on stage like that that is part of the sort of unreality of a stand-up like

that's what's that's what's cool about it that they're they're talking it's funny that it sounds like they both didn't get different parts of it and we're fighting on on how to do it while both of them were sort of misunderstanding look i don't love this movie i feel like you like it more griffin you've also seen it more i have and i i said this in an earlier episode but this was like when i was in high school i saw this movie on tv and i was sort of so blown away by the style of it and this was the first falsie movie i'd seen that then i dug into him and it's like i i prefer cabaret all that jazz star 80 greatly to this movie i think those three films are perfect masterpieces, essentially.

And this is a step below, but it always kind of holds the spot for me of catching it on TV by accident and going, what is this? What is this filmmaking style? This sort of Fosse, like, everything's a montage, you know. There are things about this movie that are kind of great,

and it's not something I really ever feel the need to rewatch, but it looks so good. It looks like the cinematography is so incredible. And then everything else you're saying, all the mantra stuff, all this stuff that's obviously influenced by like Fosse watching like new wave movies and, you know,

French movies and all, you know, like his sort of like the lingering little art influences, like, Oh, the fact it just looks incredible. So it's worth something to me just aesthetically, like beyond anything else.

It's got an incredible texture. I mean, like Colin, you summed up perfectly, which is just like, if you're watching Rocketman and it makes the Elton John song sound bad, you fundamentally failed. When I watch this movie, I have to divorce, I have to sort of compartmentalize. I don't think this movie

does a good job of arguing for Lenny Bruce's value in any way. And I do think this movie also perpetuates a lot of these things that are really irritating our culture, what we talked about of just like the fucking struggling, tortured, you know, sad clown shit.

But I like the filmmaking in this movie divorced from its sort of failure of the source material. Right, right, right. Because even I found at a record store by chance last week, there is weirdly an original cast recording of the Lenny Broadway play. That is weird. Which is like not a thing that you feel like often exists for straight plays and not musicals. But I know because that play

is like half comedy album, essentially. And it is, I think, what's his name, Gorman? The energy of that thing. And I think especially if you are watching someone who does a better evocation of being a stand-up and you are seeing it as a live audience in a theater, so you, the audience, are playing the role of Lenny's audience. earned you're not going to laugh and let's this guy is successfully selling these jokes versus a movie like this where we're watching dramatization of audience response there is an energy to even

listening to the fucking cast recording of it where you're like this works and this is how many years later back in 1974 it was probably worked 10 times better yeah absolutely you've seen yeah thousands you've seen thousands of comedians since then in those days people saw like eight people you know right the movie shot by bruce surtees obviously by you know who's robert surtees son and robert surtees shot sweet charity so he's bringing but that guy becomes clint's guy that guy works on so many clint eastwood movies in the 70s and 80s he also shot like beverly hills cop he's he's sort of like a big cinematographer in general um but he shot dirty harry and he shot almost everything clint directed all the way to the late 80s basically

and i you know he's incredible the sort of like high contrast high shadow just it always feeling like he's in a void do you think that guy sat down with the director of Beverly Hills Cop and said, do you want the Detroit scenes to look a certain way? And the Beverly Hills scene, the guy's probably like, what? I don't know. Yeah. He's probably like, just wear a lion's jacket. What is this guy doing?

Well, Martin Press is a good director. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The only other, at one point, this is very funny, Fosse's paranoia was so intense that he saw a big bearded guy on set and was like, that's Francis Ford Coppola.

You're trying to replace me. He just saw a guy who was heavy set and had a beard. And he was like, you're getting the god like like coppola is like lurking over his shoulder i guess i don't know praises for coppola would have been yeah he might have been good i don't know i mean is this is this the same year as godfather 2 yes and which means it's also the same year as the conversation yeah yeah i mean

the best picture nominees this year are godfather 2 which wins chinatown the conversation yeah yeah i mean the best picture nominees this year are godfather 2 which wins chinatown the conversation lenny and the towering inferno which is the sort of you know the concession to big big blockbuster filmmaking i guess but it's a strong five year for movies and even though fossi beat coppola for director last time they were up against each other we've read all these interviews where he had this chip on his shoulder about the fact that he didn't win best picture right I mean the director nominees are Coppola uh Fosse Polanski and then Francois Truffaut for day for night and John Cassavetes for a woman under the influence it is a an astounding vibe right yeah and obviously hoffman loses best actor

to art carney that's like that murderer's row year where pacino nicholson and hoffman lose to art carney for harry and tonto and albert finney and murder on the urn express is the other nominee yeah that's that yeah that's a little yeah uh i've never seen harry and tonto so i can't weigh in i've never been able to like i don't know how much of a robbery that is Have you seen Harry and Tonto? Have you seen that movie, Colin? No, no It's a Mussorgsky movie

But it's like he's a lonely guy with a cat, right? Isn't that what it is? Yeah, Tonto's the cat He goes cross-country That's all I got, I don't know Then yeah, so Fosse shot this movie He shot like 400,000 feet of film You know, it was way too much

he's jumbling up the chronology while in the edit room and all that and he's smoking 1 million cigarettes a day and this is I think an anecdote we shared on the cabaret set but he would forget about the cigarettes when he was

smoking them and they would burn his lips like he would people would have to take cigarettes out of his mouth because he would forget about the cigarettes when he was smoking them, and they would burn his lips. Like, people would have to take cigarettes out of his mouth because he would forget to take it out. Just all these, like, sort of stories of his mania. Yeah. What did he rip the filters off his cigarettes? Wasn't that another thing with him? A lot of people used to do that.

A lot of those people, in the 70s, people did that in the 70s all the time. Come on, I need it straight. why would you filter it right i used to study with bill hickey acting and then it was like so he was this great old you know do you know bill hickey talk like that yeah yeah yeah from uh uh chris he's on chris he's on yeah so he'd sit there in class and talk and you do a five minute scene he talked for an hour and but he always compare like if somebody's doing like you know the winter's tale he compared to like i saw you know uh one of his friends was on love boat last night and she did this scene where she entered out they the captain's table and she said It was always, but he would smoke the whole time, and by the end of class, his clothes would be covered in ashes. But I mean covered in ashes,

and his fingers were all, like, discolored from cigarettes. Oh, yellow. Yeah, right. Yeah, he smoked all the time, and he was covered in ashes every class. His hair would be covered, and we all smoked, so the whole class was smoking, but he was exceptional even then. Smoking in class? I'm sorry sorry is that what you said colin yeah yeah no everybody smoked and but he smoked one and it's funny because i ran into this lady the other day who's in her 80s and we're talking about

bill hickory and she goes we used to have a class she goes in the 50s I think it was Meisner or Bill Hickey she goes we would start at 11 at night in like 1956 and go till 8 in the morning and I was like what a cool she goes it was so cool like even then we knew like this is a special time in New York the class starts at 11 at night and we'd all come in there and just hang out and do this acting class this big acting class in the middle of the village when it was dirt cheap and you know interesting and and ben producer ben by the way just to contextualize for you better uh you probably know bill hickey best as don uncle freddie frederico and the jerky boys the movie there you go sure i think isn't he all in he's in christmas vacation right he's in one of the vacations. He's Uncle Lewis. Yes. He's in Christmas vacation.

That's right. Yeah, he is. But Ben just heard cigarette smoking teacher and he's like, that's my kind of school? Is that what's going on? Yeah. I mean, it just, that wasn't an option for me while I was in school, but it sounds nice. Yeah, it was great. It was great.

As anyone who's seen all that jazz knows well he's making this movie he's working on chicago at the same time and he has a gigantic heart attack because that's what all that jazz is about right it's about working on this and chicago at the same time and then completely cratering and he obviously his reaction to all of this is not like oh man man, I need to chill out. His reaction is to be insane, to hit on every nurse who comes to see him in the hospital, to only accentuate all of his vices, I guess.

And he wrote in his will at this time, this is sort of a famous thing about Bob Fosse, that he would bequest $25,000 to a bunch of friends so they could go out and have a really nice dinner, which was actually in Bob Fosse's will. Wow. Yeah.

I don't know. He's crazy. Every story about him is like, what a pain in the ass. I don't know. He seems like a completely exhausting person to know. Exhausting is the exact word. Yes.

Yeah. This movie was a hit-ish. No, not really. 10 million. It grossed 11 million on a $3 million budget. I think everyone did fine. It just wasn't a cabaret-sized hit. No, and I think it's that phenomenon we've talked about

of someone following up their huge Oscar breakthrough movie with a movie that people like. They still get the nominations, but there isn't the same excitement right right but you know it's it you know it's interesting now i'm just when you're saying a big dinner for all his friends but the comedian right like lenny bruce he didn't have that many friends because you're always by yourself so lenny bruce is in these clubs he's got his agent and that's it so instead of having a full staff like bob posse who's just lenny bruce at these clubs. He's got his agent and that's it. So instead of having a full staff like

Bob Posse, who's just Lenny Bruce at these clubs. It's true. There's no sense of any of any entourage with this guy at all. Yeah. Yeah. I also think it's telling and a lot of it is just her performance is so excellent. But like it feels

like he absolutely has a better understanding of Honey as a character than Lenny. Absolutely. I mean, she's called Hot Honey. She, you know, she dances in strip joints like that's like these are his kind of people. He knows that so well. Exactly. He knows that

so well. And I think he really understands her psychology. Yeah. And like Prine's just knocking it out of the fucking park. But it is that thing watching it last night where I was explaining And, like, Pryne's just knocking it out of the fucking park, but it is that thing watching it last night where I was explaining, like, oh, this...

This is how Fosse grew up. He was doing shows like this when he was, like, 15, and the woman I'm dating went, oh, so that's why this movie is really more about her than him. Yes.

Yeah. And why her stuff is so incredibly compelling in this movie. Yeah. And why her stuff is so incredibly compelling in this movie. Yeah. And I think she actually does a better job of playing the levels

of the weird relationship between performer and audience, you know? Especially because she gets to jump around in time so much. But her telling the story from, you know, present day with perspective,

when you see her performance scenes, when you see her performance scenes when you see her vulnerability off stage her varying levels of control over her vices and everything she's just like so fucking good she's great she's amazing i know her best from superman i mean i know that's basic of me but like she's the henchwoman yeah what's funny is she's an early example of what now happens to people where it's like, oh, you give this incredible performance in this edgy movie, you get an Oscar nomination, and then they stick you in a franchise, and you're stuck

sort of doing like... Right, in a supporting role. And she's a lot of fun in those movies, but she essentially plays like Lex Luthor's Gangsters Mall, and she does it in three of them? She does two of them, yeah. I'll give you another one from that era that was the same way. Beverly D'Angelo.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You ever see her in Coal Miner's Daughter? She was unbelievable. Yes. She's so good in Coal Miner's Daughter. That movie is amazing. That's a great biopic. There's a good example of a great biopic. What a great biopic! Oh my god my god and beverly angelo was robbed of an oscar nomination in fact she plays patsy

klein for anyone who doesn't hasn't seen it but but margo kidder a similar thing as well you know sure yes obviously she got tagged with the difficult you know quote unquote right reputation yeah but no no the thing with valerie perrine is like it's not like she doesn't work She had a Career she was in Stuff all you know eventually she's sort of Like in some TV but yeah You would think seeing this performance

Like oh did this person go on to have like A major movie star career And she doesn't no I think Can't Stop the Music kind of hurt her a little bit too I mean this is's some years later, but that was such a radioactive flop. And I think she's got one of the lead roles in that.

Yeah, she's essentially... I think she's the lead, if not counting the village people. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, right. Are the sort of young leads of that. Yeah, Electric Horseman, I guess is sort of the one movie

she has that's sort of at her level. I forgot she's in The Border as well. What you guys should do, I'm sure you guys love hearing suggestions for your podcast, but what you guys should do is all the movies that were so, even though the big stars, big budget studio, that were coke. Because I always think of 1941, and when you said don't stop the music, that's another one. Yeah, right. Like these giant movies.

New York, New York. That's a classic one. In the middle of coke era. You know what I mean? Right, where everyone is on coke. Everyone is on coke. Rather than picking a director and go through all their films,

we construct a miniseries where the auteur is cocaine. And it's movies that were primarily directed by cocaine. And you could almost try to like find people in it and find out who was the big coke dealer at that time on the movie set i'm sure they had one big dealer on each one of them you know oh it's like knowing the good dps or the good the good yeah who was the dealer on this one though oh well that's why oh oh it was

joey you know it was Joey, John, whatever. What were you going to say, Griff? This is sideways relevant because it's a Hoffman story. Have I ever told the Papillon Steve McQueen story on the mic? Not that I can remember. Okay, so my friend Barry Josephson, who's a great producer, produced the tech, who started out representing comedians. He was Whoopi's

first manager. He was working with someone who produced, no, he was, he met Dustin Hoffman and he was,

he was talking to Dustin Hoffman about what it was like to work with Steve McQueen on Papillon, right? And Hoffman's like a star at this point. He's like one of the most exciting young stars.

But Steve McQueen has been a capital M movie star for a good period of time at this point, has a defined movie star. 100 percent. Yeah. No, he's 20 years into a storied career. Right. And I think that's the first time that Hoffman is working with someone who is undeniably has that much more movie star Hollywood weight than he does in one of these movies.

Right. As as the dominant lead. So Barry asked him what it was like working with McQueen. And he goes, this is, I'll tell you what it was. McQueen was the first time that I understood what a movie star is, what really defines the amount of powers a movie star can hold, right? And he said, you know, we filmed the whole movie on this island and it's hard to get to. Right.

There are only like so many boats that go back and forth per day. We're all staying on the island because we'd lose time otherwise. And McQueen was so obsessed with racing his cars. Right. That he demanded that they ship one of his sports cars, you know, one of his Italian sports cars to this island so he could do laps around the island on his off time because it was such a vice for him that he couldn't he couldn't go two days without fucking tear rubber. Right. And and Barry goes, wow, that's that's crazy.

So he was such a movie star. He got them to bring the car over in the big box, paid whatever, $100,000 to get the car over. And he goes, no, that's not the story. The story is that he had his mechanics pull apart the car and hide cocaine everywhere inside of the tires, inside of the engine, inside of everything.

Because the fucking, the customs were so extreme. I forget where it was they shot Papillon, but they could find ways to successfully smuggle cocaine in. So Steve McQueen essentially had them use like a $200,000 sports car as the packaging for his cocaine. I mean, that's impressive. But what's not impressive is the French Connection came out two years earlier, the biggest movie in the world. And that was the whole thing. They smuggled cocaine, heroin

in the car. This fucking hat. I'm just saying he's lucky he didn't get caught. It's lucky no one was like, hey, remember that movie French Connection though? Remember it was in the panels of the car? Yes. I just think it's crazy that he really did that.

But honestly, cocaine in those days, they would have been like, ah, it's crazy that he really did that. But honestly, cocaine in those days, they would have been like, ah, it's only cocaine. Right. If it was weed, you would have gotten more trouble. Sure.

Yeah. Well, that was Popeye famously also. They're filming on Malta and they'd get shipments of what they had been told. The studio had been told were camera equipment and they'd open up the crates and it would just be cocaine. It was just Bob Evans shipping

crates of cocaine to Malta. Another movie that is primarily directed by cocaine, co-directed by Robert Altman. But cocaine is really the auteur of Popeye. Yeah, all 80, I would say 80 to 82. There was a lot of big movie disasters from coke, you know, just bad movies. Yeah. And coke ruined them, man. Okay.

Are there any scenes we're not talking about there's the moment where he's making the argument to his uh to his lawyer that they need to allow him to do his entire routine in court yes right and uh the the lady i'm dating said like oh is that where this movie is going is that really where the plot's heading like she was sort of preconditioned to expect the biopic. Right. This is going to be the final 20 minute performance. And the judge is like, you know,

starts clapping slowly. And instead, you got the scene, which I think is maybe Hoffman's best scene where he's arguing with the judge to let him do it. Yes, I agree.

He was funny in that scene. He's funny in that scene. Yes. And then you pretty much hard cut from that scene to dead body on the bathroom and interviewing you pretty much hard cut from that scene to dead body on the bathroom and interviewing everyone about how he ended up that way is that the scene where the jury is laughing there's the shot where the camera pans over the jury they're not laughing

hysterically yes but they're smirking right yeah okay that's a little earlier and that is ultimately the the thing that got lenny off right was they were able to prove this has entertainment value because the jury's laughing. Yeah. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's another moment, just a sort of Fosse construction thing

that I love in this movie, which is, what is it? You go from they're sort of having their relationship arguments, right? It's after the threesome scene, which is one of the least sexy sex scenes ever committed to film.

It is just so bleak and depressing. And then immediately it's like you have that run of Valerie Prine in interview saying when you're on dope, you're a different person. You do things, ideas that wouldn't even come into your head otherwise. And then it cuts to him trying to talk her into the threesome against her will. Then the threesome, which is so depressing, and then him yelling at her for the fact that she was too into the threesome. Right?

Right. Which I think is kind of like an incredible run of the movie. And then he sort of settles the argument by saying, like, well, we should have a kid. And then you hard cut to them at the Chinese food restaurant with the kid, sucking on the ribs, yelling, you know, her zonked out, showing up late, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, the stuff with the kid really got to me. I can't handle that anymore.

I can't handle neglect of children. Go ahead. The cut to me that's brilliant is you cut from him saying we should have a kid to the kid acting up, her showing up late. the kid acting up, her showing up late, and then there's another cut to him in the booth at the same restaurant, and you realize we're seeing his memory of the last time he was here. And then when

he goes to pick up the takeout, the guy says, like, your wife's very beautiful, and he goes, we're divorced. And you've skipped over, like, three life stages and two cuts. Right. The construction of that is really cool to me. It is cool. That's what's that's what's all that's everything that's most interesting about this movie and the thing that is least interesting

fairly or unfairly yes is is lenny bruce you know proselytizing right you know i was watching with my wife and she was she was like i guess you know kept saying the thing that we've been saying it's like i guess this was different or like i guess this was unheard of at the time right like that's how you sort of just explain it away yeah it was still unfairly done unfairly unfairly unfairly unfairly uh when the kid is with him and the uh honey is on the phone saying like you gotta do this and he's ignoring her i i i was really my skin was crawling watching that which is just a personal thing now i just can't handle it anymore i met her a couple of times kitty blues yeah yeah back in the 80s and uh

i was like she was really nice backstage at bleaker street in this theater on bleaker street they used to do comedy night you know and i was like you're i go to one time i go your father was the mother and i could see her face was like oh shut the fuck up i've heard this from everybody i basically was like blah blah blah blah blah blah and she was like oh god another asshole but but she can't say i can't say she was wrong. She, after he died, got George Pataki to overturn the obscenity charge. Well, Honey did. Honey did, right?

Honey did. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Not kidding. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Yes. Yeah, Honey. George Pataki? Yes.

George Pataki. What year was that? New York. 2003, Colin. That's how long it took. Pardon Tim, I guess. for the obscenity thing yes and she yeah she

I mean Honey lived until 2005 she lived to the age of 78 died in Hawaii moved to Hawaii that's a fun sequence too when he goes to visit her in jail and you have that reverse shot of the three female convicts in their sort of skirt uniforms at the respective windows and he's showing

her the album yeah they're just things in this i love but but it also is like it feels in so many ways like a dry run with technique and structure to what he's going to do in all that jazz. And in all that jazz as a protagonist who he completely understands because it's himself, but he understands this guy's art form. He understands how to show that this guy's good at what he does. That's the thing.

He understands the art form and all that jazz so perfectly. Yeah. And like, it's actually fascinating in all that jazz when you see him staring at, you know, the fake Lenny movie. Yeah. And like, it's actually fascinating in all that jazz when you see him staring at, you know, the fake Lenny movie. Yeah. And it almost seems exhausting,

like even to watch it within as a movie, within a movie, you're sort of like, ah, Jesus, this guy keeps fucking yelling. Well, this movie is romanticizing him without being able to actually express what

was interesting about him. I mean, Roger Ebert had like his review at the time was like, I don't think anyone who isn't already a fan of Lenny Bruce will come out of this movie having any sense of his value as a performer, of what he did, right? Right, right. It's just as a political figure.

Like, this movie almost treats him like Nelson Mandela. And the difference is that, like, in all that jazz, he understands the guy better because it's him, but he also isn't deifying him. He's trying to understands the guy better because it's him but he also isn't deifying him he's trying to pull the guy apart because he hates himself right but but yeah he gets to sort of dry run a lot of the like fever dream death rattle feeling of this movie into all that jazz where he perfects it yeah this movie almost is too stately in a way like not not not in a like it's just because it's so beautiful to look at almost like it doesn't have that kind of raw

you know energy that maybe it needs to really convince you of like this guy is hanging by a thread or whatever it does sometimes in the court scenes but less the the stage stuff is just so well photographed and so you know does that make sense yeah you know i think another part of it is maybe why hoffman's better in the court scenes is because that's the environment where him playing desperation is correct yeah and he suddenly feels small and he feels a little powerless and you're you're more on his side you know because of it and all that um it's just i don't know maybe it's also just i'm conditioned when i want i want him on stage

to be blowing me away yeah even if even with all the context i know like yeah of course you why wouldn't you if i go to see you know any movie about a musician, out of condition to want their voice to sound good, they use all the... They won't even use an actor's voice because they're like, no, it's not going to sound good. The music seems to report to this movie. The music has to be good. That's what conveying to the audience.

So we have to use the real person and dub them whether they like it or not. I mean, this is insane. It drives me nuts. Colin, you didn't like that piss joke? You didn't think the piss joke didn't land for you? You didn't like him saying the N-word 20 times? Oh, boy.

But even that scene, it's like, the way he did it was like, I really got you mad. You wanted it, and it's just like, it was just, there was no life to it. There's no humor. You just got to make it funny. I don't know. I mean, I feel like Lenny Bruce got a short shrift.

Colin, my question for you, do you think Chino would have done this better than Hoffman? Slash, do you think there's any star of this moment who could have pulled it off i guess the obvious answer is you you do it with the guy who already proved he could do it on broadway that's the answer but they were never going to bankroll it with him yeah but i mean um yeah i mean i think that uh you know people when i read stuff about lenny bruce years ago would they still say he had that like cat skills and a rhythm to him too so to leave all that out like it was cat skills combined with jazz club you know what i mean so like that was his when he'd come on stage so the crowd's like with him because he was funny for the first 15 years last few years he was on

heroin but so it's like i mean pacino probably would have been better but i would yeah i would have said go with cliff corman but i mean pacino probably better he seemsino probably would have been better, but I would. Yeah, I would have said go with Cliff Corman. But I mean, Pacino probably would have been better. He seems like he would have been. But is Al Pacino that funny? He was funny in Scarface. He is funny in Scarface. Yeah, he's funny in Scarface. You know what?

Pacino gets funnier later. Yeah. And I mean, and so did De Niro. We all saw the comedian. Right. Well, yes, of course. We talk about the great movies that capture being a stand up. Dustin, Robert De Niro as the comedian is the high water.

By the way, another example of guys up there basically doing like this crude stuff and being like, hey, the crowd freaked out. It's like the crowd freaked out. Cause you were just like grabbing your cat, whatever it was. Right. I mean, right. It's all like,

you know, I I'm all for transgression accidentally, you know what I mean? But it's not like trying to just be provocative, like an eight year old kid. You know what I mean? What? So the Oscar winners that year are,

we went through The Godfather Part 2 Coppola wins director Coppola wins director Ellen Burstyn wins best actress for Alice Which is a great movie Best actor is Art Carney like I said Who wins the supportings?

Supporting actors goes to Robert De Niro for The Godfather Part 2 Pretty great performance And Ingrid Bergman for Murder on the Orient Express goes to Robert De Niro for The Godfather Part II. Pretty great performance. And Ingrid Bergman for Murder on the Orient Express, which is a little bit of a sort of like, oh, you're a legend. Like, thanks for giving us one more performance.

It's her last win. She is very good in that movie. But that is a performance that out of context, you're like, are you really going gonna give her the Oscar for that they just lost their fucking minds for the fact where it's like she's not wearing makeup right she's doing an accent she's old she beats like Talia Shire

and Godfather 2 she beats Madeline Kahn and Blazing Saddles which is a great nomination you know but yeah so obviously this is this is the height of new hollywood it's such an exciting time for some amricord wins best foreign film uh you know what are some other movies obviously chinatown conversation these are big movies of that year uh young frankenstein day for night like i mean you know it's it's a good year it's howard hawks won an honorary award

it's sort of genre noir sounds like a good oscars honestly and this movie came out well premiered in november but it really comes out in december okay uh that's the weekend i'm giving you um late december 1974 where lenny is opening number six at the box office. So it's not in the top five. Okay. But, but that is even insane to think about that. It opened at number six. Yeah. I think it, you know,

Hoffman is a big deal. No, I know. I'm just saying, could you imagine a movie like this opening at number six today under any circumstances, even if it starred fucking Channing Tatum as Lenny Bruce? Uh,

you're right you're right all right uh number one at the box office and colin we're guessing the top five of the box office from the week this came out just so we oh um i'm gonna give number one it's a big hit it's been out for months and months and months it's a it's a thriller it's a a crime thriller. Kind of a cultural movie. Do you think you know what it is? Clute! It is not Clute. He leaned all the way into his screen when he said that.

It is a far worse movie than Clute. It's a far worse movie than Clute. I suppose it's ineffective. It spawned many sequels. Okay. It's not far worse movie than Clute. I suppose it's ineffective. It spawned many sequels. Okay. It's not a Dirty Harry movie? No, but that's the vibe. Is it Death Wish? It's Death Wish.

It's Charles Bronson's Death Wish. Yeah. What do you think of Death Wish, Colin? Love it. Love Death Wish. He's shooting people. I loved death the rest of them i didn't like but the original was although i'll admit death wish when he goes to arizona in the middle of the movie is very strange yes he goes to like uh that's where he gets his guns right or

whatever yeah yeah it's about and stewart Stuart Margolin plays a guy from the West, from Love American style. Stuart Margolin does not look like that Western guy. And, but yeah, well, I'm a sucker. Anytime I see New York in the 70s, you automatically, I'm going to be predisposed. Right. Like any movie shot in New York between like 1965 and 1983 has that as a

special effect, which is just, you're capturing New York city in the background. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that poster where he's in central park or whatever.

Yeah. All right. Number two at the box office. One of the biggest hits of the year disaster movie, not the towering Inferno. It's not towering Inferno. Is it Poseidon adventure? No.

Is it a earthquake? It's earthquake. Okay. Who's, who's the lineup at earthquake again? Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy,

Lauren green. That's your, that's your big four. Got it. Never seen earthquake. Me neither. Weird group. It had, it had the thing, right? Where the, the, that's your big four got it never seen earthquake me neither weird group it had the thing right they had like surround sound

early surround sound that was his big thing that you would feel like the earthquake was happening all around you co-written by Mario Puzo yes yeah well he was a you know he got his fucking paychecks after Godfather exactly oh yeah number three at the box office is a film we mentioned Yeah, well, he was, you know. He got his fucking paychecks after Godfather. Exactly. Oh, yeah.

Number three at the box office is a film we mentioned that Bob Fosse worked on. Not Little Prince, is it? It is Little Prince. Really? Yes. I thought that was a big flop. Yeah.

It was a big flop, but it's in the box. You know, it just came out and it's hanging around. I've never seen it. I just want to say, because I haven't made this connection before, but JJ pulled up some quotes in the research dossier that linked this up. A lot

of people think that Michael Jackson's sort of solo career dance style, including the moonwalk from Bob Fosse's performance in The Little Prince. That's interesting. There's a similarity there that I didn't realize. He was influenced by Bob Fosse's performance in The Little Prince. That's interesting. There's a similarity there that I didn't realize. He was influenced by Bob Fosse, yeah?

Absolutely, yeah. And if there's one movie he might be interested in watching, it sounds like it was that one. Absolutely. And Bob Fosse's sort of doing the jazzy lizard thing. Number four I'm going to get. You're going to get four, okay. Number four, one of the biggest hits in 1974 it's a sequel it's part of a sort of sort of bye-bye braverman it's not bye-bye braverman

which of course was a sequel to hi hi braverman no it's a sequel to bye-bye birdie right oh sure um uh it's no it's a sequel it's part of like, right? Oh, sure. No, it's a sequel. It's part of a franchise. It's one of those things that you're like, that was huge in the 70s, and now it's forgotten. Is it an airport movie? No. That was a good guess.

Thank you. Okay, forgotten. I can give you a genre. Is it a Billy Jack movie? It's a Billy Jack movie. Okay. Born Losers. It's not Born Losers, which is the first billy jack movie oh yeah is the second one just called billy jack or is this

billy jack washington no the second one is called billy jack the third one is this one billy jack goes to washington is the fifth one wow okay yeah Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Billy Jack. I can't believe I don't know this. I should know. I should know this. I was there. Give us a, give us a sort of title structure.

What is Billy Jack? Are we describing activity that he does? Something's happening to him. Something happens. Love finds Billy Jack. Billy Jack goes bananas. No, I mean, I think he's always going bananas, but no, God, this movie is three hours long. Love finds Billy Jack. Billy Jack goes bananas. No. I mean, I think he's always going bananas, but no.

God, this movie is three hours long. It must be unwatchable. I think I know the answer. Is it the trial of Billy Jack? It's the trial of Billy Jack. That's right. I don't remember that. Colin, have you seen these movies?

I've never seen a Billy Jack. I saw them when they came out. I only know them as like pop culture footnotes. Like I've never, yeah. Billy Jack was the, that was along with the Dustin Hoffman, Little Big Man. Billy Jack was the revenge of Native Americans,

you know, basically on, you know, for all the Westerns of the old days. But also so fascinating because they were like these outsider films, like they were made independently outside of the studio system. Tom Lachlan had no charisma. No, and he just like willed himself

into being a movie star and made a franchise out of it. They were so huge. Yes, he did. Yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy. Even at the time, people were like, who the hell is Tom Lachlan?

Yeah, he later founded a Montessori school and then ran for president three times. What? He founded a Montessori school and what? He founded a Montessori school and ran for president in 92, 2004, and 2008. I love it. He probably taught martial arts at Montessori, sir. He received 154 votes

in the New Hampshire primary against George W. Bush. Well, all right. Everybody used to quote him when I was a kid. When I see this, I just go berserk. Right.

That was a big quote back when I was a kid. Yeah. Billy Jack. Okay, number five at the box office is probably not a movie you're going to get, Griff.

It has a very chilling title uh it is a southern set crime drama um all right best here's the clue i know what it's called what's it called harland county it's not that good county line uh it's not making county line that's that's yeah no i think that movie's come up before hasn't it almost definitely texas chainsaw massacre it's not texas chainsaw massacre it's it's it's okay here's here's the thing yeah it is the screen debut of OJ Simpson. Oh. It has two titles. It had two different titles.

It also stars Lee Marvin and Richard Burton, if that helps. Yes. Like Klansman. There you go. It's called Klansman. Wow. It also had the alternate title of Burning Cross. It's like a racist murder in the South movie. Yes.

I saw it. I saw it in Clansman. I saw it. Yes. Yes. Yes. So that's it. But the OJ Simpson thing, I feel like that's the biggest fact about it. That's right.

God. Directed by Terrence Young, written by Sam Fuller. Correct. Sam Fuller. Made many, many James Bond movies. Other movies in the top 10,iff lenny the godfather part two the longest yard the taking a pill in one two three and airport 1975 like five other movies are just huge big old movies from the year yes yeah wow it's also funny that like godfather part

two was a box office disappointment relative to godfather Part 1. Like, it was still a big hit, but it was like a major drop-off. It made a lot less money than the first one. It's true. Yeah. It had a long life. The rule of thumb for so long was a sequel will make 50% of what the last one made. And now

almost every sequel grows over the last film, the previous film. Right. But yeah, so, you know, it's a hot year for movies, I would say. Taking Pelham 1, 2, 3, that's one of my favorite movies, obviously. Discussed many times on this show. Fosse, this is his little stopover

in between two masterpieces. It's a pretty good movie. That's my take on Lenny. And that's it. That's all I got for you. That's my take on Lenny. And that's it. That's all I got for you. That's it. All right, guys. Well, if we do cop show again, your character, Griff, has to be obsessed with death.

Great. I'm going through my Lenny Bruce phase. But it's a great thing. Did what? Like 30 episodes overall eventually? Yeah, like 24, 24 episodes. Yeah. But it was, for people who haven't seen it,

it was like a mockumentary about Colin trying to make his own Law & Order-style cop show, looking for the Richard Belzer crossover. And I play a megalomaniac NYU graduate who's been hired on for director and is trying to fight for control as Otor

and every episode just has bananas guest star I mean it was like Seinfeld and Amy Schumer and Steve Buscemi

and Michael Che Danny Aiello you got such incredible people in on that yeah Gaffigan I'm trying the list goes on

and on and J.D. Amato worked on it right J.D. Amato was the director yeah yes director good friend yes I highly recommend people watch it and people should watch The list goes on and on and on. And J.D. Amato worked on it, right? J.D. Amato was the director. Yeah. Yes. Director. He's our good friend.

Yes. I highly recommend people watch it. And people should watch... Several of your shows are on Netflix now. They should. Just watch New York Story. That's my favorite. Look, I am biased because I'm a New Yorker,

but it is just like you breaking down the semiotics of New York City. biased because i'm a new yorker but it is just like you breaking down this sort of the the semiotics of new york city this like anthropological study of how we all coexist with each other that is just like so dead i saw it like three times colin uh it was it was so great i'm always excited to see what you do next i mean we were talking about this right before uh we were recording working on new stuff but it is that thing with you where I feel like you are able to make really trenchant observations, but you also

are funny. Like, you are not self-indulgent. You can make these larger shows that have larger themes and ideas and observations and everything, but there's also a joke every 15 seconds that is earned. Thanks, yeah, because that's a good thing about working at the clubs too,

because I work those shows out in the club. And then, so, but you can't lose them. Like you said, they're drinking. They'll space out. You have to keep them by being joke, joke, joke. So it's good training, you know? Yeah, and I don't mean to damage your reputation and destroy your carefully honed persona

by saying this on mic, but you truly are one of the nicest people I've ever worked with in show business. Same to you. Same back. You are such a gentleman and such a kind, supportive person. I really appreciate you doing the podcast.

You're amazing. People still bring it up all the time. They always go, who is that director? Well, they know you from The Tick, but they're like, that guy's amazing. They loved you so much. You were so brilliant on that show. Damn it.

It's such a fun show. Damn it. Yeah. All right. We'll revive it. We'll revive it. Take us out, Griff. Take us out.

Thank you all for listening. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe. Thank you to Marie Barty for our social media and helping produce the show. AJ McKeon and Alex Barron for editing. Thank you to JJ Birch for our research. Joe Bone, Pat

Reynolds for our artwork. Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel for our theme song. You can go to blankcheckpod.com for links to real nerdy shit, including our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, where we are doing franchises, and we're getting ready to go through the Roger Moore Bond movie,

speaking of Terrence Young. Did he do any of the Moores, or did he only do Connery's? No, I think he only did, he did like Dr. No, and From Russia with Love and Thunderball, yeah, he only did Connery's. But check that out. Colin, thank you again for coming on. Thanks, Bob. Good to see you. Thanks, David.

Gentlemen and a scholar, tune in next week for... I'm just going to say it, right? Yeah, say it. You won't jinx it. Tune in next week for All That Jazz with special guest Lin-Manuel Miranda. Yeah, excited to do that one.

Yeah. And when I texted Colin to ask him to do this, I said, please do us this favor because the ratings are going to crash the episode after yours. We need someone big to come on and talk about Lenny. That episode's already a write-off for us. We can't sell any advertising on that one.

No one wants to touch it. And as always, I'm not shitting you. Next week, Lin-Manuel Miranda is going to be on this podcast.