Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 188. Larry Cohen

Episode Date: January 1, 2018

Gilbert and Frank welcome (finally!) oft-discussed maverick filmmaker Larry Cohen ("It's Alive," "The Stuff," "Hell Up in Harlem"), who talks about his early days as a standup comic, his friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, the risks and rewards of "guerrilla moviemaking" and the new documentary about his life and career, "King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen." Also, Chuck Connors blows the whistle, Robert De Niro dons a yarmulke, Bette Davis stages a "comeback" and John Belushi babysits Broderick Crawford. PLUS: "Q, the Winged Serpent"! Revisiting "Coronet Blue"! John Wayne tosses out the script! The Coen Brothers pay "tribute" to "Branded"! And Larry remembers the legendary Samuel Z. Arkoff! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ontario. 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over and physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See casino.draftkings.com for details. Please play responsibly. Hello, this is Felix Cavalieri of the Rascals, and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing podcast.

What did I miss? You left out Colossal. It's true. Hi, this is Phyllis Cavalieri of the Rascals, and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal. I can't even speak English. We'll give you a third chance. There you go.

Hi, this is Phyllis Cavalieri of the Rascals, and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing, colossal podcast. Fantastic. Yeah, you're difficult to work with. You got that right. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and once again, we're recording at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Verderosa.

Our guest today is someone whose name has come up repeatedly on this show, and we're glad he's finally here with us. He's a writer, producer, and one of the most original and visionary filmmakers of the last half century. His television credits include The Fugitive, The Defenders, The Rat Patrol, Columbo, NYPD Blue, Masters of Horror, and three memorable shows that he created, Branded, Coronet Blue, and The Invaders. His wildly inventive feature films include Bone, Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem,

It's Alive, Maniac Cop, Wicked Stepmother, Guilty as Sin, Q, The Winged's Lot, Phone Booth, Betty Davis, James Earl Jones, David Carradine, Sidney Lamet, Penny Youngman, and former podcast guests Mick Garris, Danny Aiello, Joyce Van Patton, and Tony Lobianco. Joyce Van Patten, and Tony LoBianco. The brand new documentary about his life and equally fascinating career is called King Cohen, The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen, and features interviews with his friends and colleagues, interviews with his friends and colleagues, including John Landis, Martin Scorsese, J.J. Abrams, former podcast guest Joe Dante, and Larry man who once tried to pass off Robert De Niro as a Jew, the legendary Larry Cohen.

Yes, yes. Hello. How are you doing? Hi, Larry. I kind of missed those credits. Could you repeat that? Now, can we start off with that? Well, you love the old people from movies, like not just the actors, but, you know, old directors, cameramen. Yeah, cinematographers.

Hired George Fulsey toward the end of his career. Well, George was retired. He was retired. I got him out of his retirement. I brought him back. Yeah. He worked with the Marx Brothers, for God's sake. He did.

He did. He did the first two Marx Brothers pictures. Coconuts, for God's sake. He did. He did the first two Marx Brothers pictures. Coconut, yeah. Cinematographer, yeah. Yeah, he'd been around. Then he worked for me after that, yeah. Yep, yep. He also did Meet Me in St. Louis with Judy Garland.

Yes, indeed. And Green Dolphin Street with Lana Turner. I mean, he photographed every famous actress at MGM. He was an MGM contract cinematographer. Yep. He did all those movies. And you. And after I brought him back, he, after I brought him back, he went on to do That's Entertainment.

After me. That's right. I got him out of retirement. And. So, and can I do that for you guys? Can I get you guys out of retirement? It would be wonderful. And you went after a legendary movie composer, Bernard Herrmann, best known for writing the score for Psycho.

Citizen Kane, too. Yes, too. Yes. Yes. And North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief and, you know, so many great Hitchcock pictures. North by Northwest. He did all those films. And then he went to work for me and was never heard of again. Now, here's my favorite part of the documentary. Vernon Harmon, you know, you two become friends. He works with you.

And then one night he passes away in his sleep. He was an older guy. And they were having a service for him, a funeral service. At my house. Yes. And he, Vernon Herman. A lot of people have funerals at my house. Yes.

We rent out space. And it was a Jewish service. And for some reason, in the movie business, that day they had trouble finding enough jews we did we didn't we we we sent out for the extra service to send us a bunch of jews but they they they didn't we got we got a bunch of puerto riguens by mistake and and and so i had to turn to these italians brian de palma martin scors, Robert De Niro, and say to them, look, you guys got to go in the living room in a circle and pretend to be Jews. And they put yarmulkes on.

And they said, and Robert De Niro said, well, how do I be a Jew? And I says, well, you just, whatever the rabbi says, you just keep nodding your head. And that makes you Jewish. Perfect. So Brian De Palma, Robert De Niro, and Martin Scorsese in Yamaka's pretending. They're Jews for the service. Yeah, but years later, Robert De Niro did play a Jew in two different movies. Well, I know one.

One of them is The Last Tycoon. Oh, right. He was Jewish in that one. And he was also in Once Upon a Time. Oh, that's right. Sergio Leone. So you were ahead of the curve on that one.

He wouldn't have known how to be a Jew if it hadn't been for me. He wouldn't have gotten that job. He wouldn't have known how to be a Jew if it hadn't been for me. He wouldn't have gotten that job. He would have been playing nothing but Italians his whole life long. And then I came along and I says, listen, you're missing out on something. And, you know,

later on, you know, I had to admit, he came to me in afternoons and I gave him more training, you know. And actually, he was secretly bar mitzvahed one day, you know. It was a wonderful thing. You should have been there at Robert De Niro's bar mitzvah. He didn't hit anybody or anything. And did you circumcise Robert De Niro?

He did it to himself. That's how tough he is. That's how method he is. Boy, he doesn't fool around, boy. He's not like some of these other guys who whip it out for no reason at all. Or off

to the races. He meant business when he took it out, boy. Your father played the banjo. No, it was my grandfather. He was an the banjo. No, it was my grandfather. Oh, your grandfather. Yeah.

And you. He was an eccentric banjo player. What does that mean? In other words, they did comedy banjo. Oh, I see. But actually, which we didn't mention in the documentary, that he was playing the banjo in the minstrel show. He was a minstrel. Wow. And he played in blackface.

Wow. And he played in blackface. Wow. He played in blackface and toured in a minstrel show. And then years later, lo and behold, I end up making Black Caesar. You know? So there you go. Came full circle. The grandson of a blackface minstrel makes a black exploitation movie. Isn't that something? And he—

Because I didn't— No, I'm just saying he stopped playing the banjo to help support his family with a more regular, normal job. And I think you felt that he would have been happier as a banjo player. Like, that's what he wanted. Well, his mother on her deathbed got him to promise he would give up show business and go into something respectable. And he did, and he kept his word to his mother.

And even as a child, he had the banjo in the closet. He would never play it for me or for anybody else. He never took it out of the closet. So that was the only showbiz, that was the only member of the family that had any background in showbiz. Fair to say? Yes, including me. Including you.

Well, we found, Gilbert and I found, first of all, you're a movie kid. You're a New Yorker like us. I never saw you guys before in my life. What are you talking about? By the way, excuse me, I want to clarify something. I was told I was going to be on the air with Arthur Godfrey. This is a total misrepresentation. That's it.

I'm telling you. What can I do? Wasn't Arthur Godfrey a notorious anti-Semite? Oh, a major Jew hater, Arthur Godfrey. Well, what's wrong with that? He was the biggest star on CBS at the time. This guy was on every day, and then he had two nighttime shows, too. He had that famous game show, Who's the Jew?

Remember that show that was on? Yeah. Now we're back to Robert De Niro again. How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you?

Arthur Godfrey. Yeah. Yeah, buy him by the cotton, Godfrey. I hate those. Holly Loki. I hate those Jews. Yeah, yeah. We've descended into dueling Arthur Godfrey.

He was a big star on CBS, I'll tell you that. You started out as a stand-up comic, Larry? We were very surprised by that. Didn't everybody? I guess. A lot of people did, but not a lot of film directors. Yeah, I think. When I was in college, I used to put on a full-length variety show every other Thursday afternoon.

That was an hour and a half of sketches and my monologues, a couple of singers we had, and I thought I was on television. I actually had the fixation that every other week I had to do a brand new one-and-a-half-hour show, and then I was happy doing that. But, you know, it didn't work out because the network didn't pick me up or anything like that. But I did used to play upstairs at the Duplex in Manhattan.

Sheridan Square, upstairs at the Duplex. Yeah, it's still here. They moved it. They moved it downstairs, right? To a different location. Well, anyway, I used to play there. And when you were... When I played there, always after me, there was a young comic with glasses who'd sit there

and never laugh at me. And I thought, only if I get this guy to laugh at me, I would be successful. But he never laughed because he was too busy figuring out what he was going to do when he came on and that was woody allen wow geez man but he copied everything i did yeah that guy that guy copied all my stuff and my routines and my attitude and stuff like that and you know became a big star and here I am on your show what can I tell you and when you were a kid how did you raise money to see movies because you

were in love with movies yes I was I I used to steal ladies pocket when they were coming out of the Grand Union. No, I waited outside the A&P or supermarket, and I asked people if I could carry their groceries for them. You were paid for it. No, that was when I was about 12 years old, you know, and I'd carry these people's groceries home and up the stairs to their apartment, and they'd give me 10 cents, and then I'd carry these people's groceries home and up the stairs to their apartment. And they'd give me 10 cents. And then I'd steal her purse.

And you'd see four movies a day in those days, you'd say, until they threw you out of the theater? I'd sit through the double feature twice. Oh, I see. And, you know, until somebody sat down next to me and annoyed me or something like that. Then I'd leave, you know. But that always happened. That was the best part of going, actually. Because you never knew when you'd meet strangers.

It was, it was a wonderful, wonderful way of life. I understand your favorite movies were Warner Brothers gangster pictures. Edward G. Robinson, Cagney. I liked Warner Brothers films because they were full of energy and MGM films were kind of genteel and, and syrupy. And the studio that really had balls was Warner Brothers. And that's why I liked their pictures.

The pace. They didn't have a lot of dead space. They punched the lines and moved the show on. And I liked Warner Brothers films. lines and and moved the show on and i liked warner brothers films did you you know i was happy years later later to do it's alive my one of my films for for warner brothers and i think i've done four or five movies for warner brothers well gilbert and i are curious too you've made so many horror films were you were you're also a fan of the universal horror classics well i sure liked them of course yeah yeah and i was was never completely hooked on horror films.

Uh-huh. I liked all kinds of films. And so I never thought of myself even now as a horror director, even though I've done some films which would qualify in that genre. But I'm not exclusively a horror director. And we were also talking, what struck us watching the documentary, is what you got away with. It's like you never asked for permits to shoot anywhere,

so you would fire rifles and machine guns off the Chrysler building. machine guns off the Chrysler building. And there was one of your movies where Fred Williamson gets into a gunfight at an actual airport. Now, how you are never shot or are in jail for life. You got away with a lot. Yes. Well, thank you very much. I think the statute of limitation has run out on me. They'll never get me now.

They'll never get me alive. But the idea from a skyscraper in an airport having a gunfight. Well, there's also that scene, is it Black Caesar, where you shoot Fred, where Fred Williamson shot in the street and he's staggering through the street and you're shooting from the roof? Right in front of Trump Tower. Yeah. What is now Trump Tower? Yeah, right in that corner, 57th Street. Yeah, right in that corner, 57th Street.

And I had one of my cohorts dressed as a cop to stop traffic on Fifth Avenue. So we just closed Fifth Avenue down and shot the scene. We just closed it down. It's amazing. Years later, when I went to Washington, D.C. to shoot the private files of J. Edgar Hoover, I had got all these old cars. I called a car club over in Maryland, and they were delighted to supply me with 40 old cars and people driving them in costume, free of charge. So I said, how am I going to have all these old cars

on Pennsylvania Avenue going in front of the White House towards the Capitol when there's going to be modern cars on the street too. The only way to do it is to close down Pennsylvania Avenue. So fortunately, they had these wooden horses stacked up on the sidewalks for parades and things. So I told our guys, just take the wooden horses and close down Pennsylvania Avenue, which we did.

And you believe doing this today with terrorists and everything? So now Pennsylvania Avenue is closed down, and I got 40 old cars driving up and down the street, and here comes the police, and I wave to them, and they wave back, hi there, how are you? And they keep going. No one would assume anybody would do this without permission, so they didn't think twice about it.

Just like when we shot at the saint patrick's day parade and had andy calvin god told me off a gun in the middle of the parade yeah right uh there were 5 000 cops there and everybody was smiling they didn't imagine knowing anybody would do this without having permission so they nobody bothered us you know that's the great thing is if you do something that's so outlandish everybody thinks it's okay because nobody would do that you know so here i am still alive and in one of your movies an actor kidnaps a little boy and is running down the street with him yes in public In public. That's right. In public, yes.

And did. And a lot of the crowd thought this was happening, and they wanted to interfere on behalf of the child. And I had to run into the crowd and start telling everybody it was a movie. They were going to beat the hell out of me. Unbelievable. You know, when you're talking about the Chrysler building. Instead, somebody hit the kid instead. It was all right.

When you're making Q and you're on the top of the Chrysler building, I mean, it's not just the firing of the guns, which is crazy enough. But you're talking about you don't like heights to begin with. And you're 88 stories. You're 88 stories. And the way you describe it is there's not much protecting you from a drop off the top of the Chrysler building. Well, if you look at the Chrysler building, you would assume those triangle shapes at the top of the building have glass in them. Right. But they don't.

They're completely open. Incredible. So basically the top of the Chrysler building is like a platform with nothing, no guardrails. So if you take a step too far, you fall 88 stories off the top of the Chrysler building, which nobody did, fortunately, because otherwise I'd probably be in jail for, you know, some kind of manslaughter. But you had to take out an ad in the papers to apologize the next day after the... I didn't have... Oh, you did it voluntarily

i just thought it would be good publicity actually to compound the felony very smart yeah because you said something like uh new york sorry i scared you yeah yes yes that's what we did. But we did something even more. We couldn't – we had a monster that laid an egg at the top of the Chrysler building. Oh, yes. The serpent. We couldn't fit the nest and the egg in the narrow spaces of the turret of the former police headquarters in Greenwich Village, which is now a condominium building. It's right around the corner of the big dome. And we built this nest up there of real branches and twigs.

And we shot the scene up in the top of that building. So when we got finished, I said, wrap this up. So they took the lights. They took the egg. But for some reason, unbeknownst to me, they didn't take the nest. It was just too difficult to take it apart. So they left this nest up there. So six months later, the New York Times front page article, it says, anthropologists from around the world have gathered in New York to examine a nest discovered in the top of the former police headquarters. That's fantastic.

I swear to God. That's fantastic. I didn't say a word. I didn't want to get into more trouble. And you made a movie, if I get this plot correct, it's kind of like Christ comes to Earth from outer space and Christ has a vagina. This is the Lo Bianco picture. Yes. God told me to.

Yes. So could you. What's wrong with that? So tell us. That is a very disturbing movie. Oh, you know, why get picky now? Come on. Who knows?

There have been a lot of versions of Christ. You've seen every variation of it. And, you know, so what if he had a vagina in his chest? Yeah, they have a scene where. It's as good a place as any. Where Christ on his rib cage has a vagina. Nobody said he was Christ. He's an alien messiah.

Yes. He was an alien who thought he was God. Right. Because in the theory of the movie, if an alien came to Earth and had all the powers that he has, and he hears about Christianity, and he would assume that he must be Christ, because he has all those same powers, even though he's not. So he believes he's God. He's not the only one who believes he's God.

Anyway, I mean, there's a lot of people walking around who think they're God. You know that. You've worked with many of them. Now, did you get, did people try to stop this movie because you're showing a vagina in it the whole time? Well, why would they want to stop the movie for that reason? You mean the blasphemy? Well, it's not even a real God. Yeah, but I mean, number one.

It's not even a real vagina. That's right. Both. Both are true. You know, Larry, we had Tony LoBianco here, and we asked him about God Told Me To, and I don't think he knows what it's about. He said something about you being a genius, and then admitting that he was very, very confused by the story.

I can tell you this. When the picture was screened, he came up to me afterwards in the street, and he says, how could you do this to me? My mother just saw this picture. There you go we want to we we want to jump around Larry but let's get one thing uh I feel like jumping around let's let's quickly so I don't want to forget it let's quickly talk about Coronet Blue and then we'll go back to we'll go back to the movies but this is a this is a show that came up on our podcast we've done 180 of these and we were talking about you know man on the run that that genre like the immortal and the

fugitive and run for your life and gilbert brought up coronet blue which i hadn't thought about in years and thank you gilbert thank you a show a show we both liked that ended unfortunately without revealing what coronet blue was that's how we got even with the audience if they'd watch the show more it would have stayed on but this way i got even with them i never told them i see see. Very smart show. Yeah. Well, it was very much like the Bourne Identity. Yeah. A guy's found

floating in the water. He can't remember who he is. The real truth is he turns out to be a spy who was part of an organization called Coronet Blue and blah, blah, blah. So Robert Ludlam saw this TV show and made it into a book and made it into six different movies.

And, you know, it was all my idea. What can I tell you? And one show where I still remember the theme song of. You don't remember the Coronet Blue theme song? I just remember like, Cornette Blue. Cornette Blue. Cornette Blue. Yeah.

Boy, that was a great song, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. That was a catchy tune. Now, I don't know. Now, there's another one, but I don't know if we could sing it together, because on Skype. Well, why don't you favor Larry and we'll see what happens. Okay. Maybe he'll join in.

Only, oh, but one man died. Died. And they're bitter-cree. And they say he ran away. Branded. Branded. Marked with a coward's shame. What do you do when you're branded? And you know

Oh, branded Scorned by the man who ran What do you do when you're branded? That's enough And you know you're a man If you want to hear the song, you go look at the movie The Big Lebowski What do you do when you're branded? That's enough. And you know you're a man. If you want to hear the song, you go look at the movie The Big Lebowski. Oh, yes. In which John Goodman and Jeff Bridges sing the song together.

And then they get all excited. They're going to go to the home of the creator of Branded, the guy who wrote all the episodes for the first season. That's me. And they go to this house and there he is in an iron lung and he dies. He dies right on camera

and his grandson is there and his grandson is named Larry. Oh yes, he steals the homework and the stolen car, right. Yeah, everything. So according to the Coen brothers, who can't even spell Coen properly, according to these bums, I died in an iron lung.

So I'm waiting to get a job. I'm waiting for an agent to call me, and they say, well, he died. We saw him die in the big Lebowski. So no wonder he's not working. It must have been an homage, Larry. Hey, if it wasn't for this show, nobody would know I'm alive right now. Thanks to you guys. Oh, and before we leave the song, whatever you do for the rest of your life, you must prove you're a man.

You're a man. All right. Well, Chuck Connors was definitely a man. All right. Well, Chuck Connors was definitely a man, but, you know. What kind of guy was Chuck Connors? I mean, he was a ball player. He was an interesting actor. I'll tell you what kind of – Chuck Connors and I got along pretty good until one day at lunch at Paramount Studios where we were shooting,

I happened to mention to them that Branded was really about a blacklisted cowboy. I said, here's a guy. This was the time when the blacklist was going, and people's reputation was ruined, and they couldn't escape it. And here was a show about a guy whose reputation followed him wherever he went. And I said, Chuck, this is a way of dealing with the blacklist without getting too much controversy, but getting the idea across. And he's really a blacklisted cowboy.

So Chuck went right to the front office and told everybody that I was a communist. Oh, wow. Holy shit. This was lovely. So the next time I come onto the Paramount lot, there was a big Western street at the front of the Paramount lot in those days. It was used for the Bonanza show and a lot of other Westerns, because there were a lot of Westerns on TV in those days. And I come onto the Western street, and I look down the other end of the street, and there's Chuck Connors on his horse.

And Chuck Connors turns the horse, and he starts galloping down the center of the street right at me. And I'm standing in the middle of the street, and here he's coming. He's coming, and he's not stopping. And I'm frozen in place. I didn't move. And finally, he reigns up right in front of me. I could feel the horse's breath on my face.

And he says, I thought you were going to run. So I knew right away then things were not going well. Fifteen years later, they had a party at the back lot at Republic Studios, the former Republic Studios, for all the Western stars. And Gene Autry was there and all those people. And Chuck Connors was seated at the table with me. I hadn't seen him in years. And right in the middle of the meal, he turns to me and says,

you know that day when I tried to ride you down on the Paramount Street and you didn't run? I thought you had a lot of balls, he said to me. And this was 15 years later, and he still was thinking about it. Wow. So, yeah, so that was the end of Chuck Connors. He never worked again. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this.

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Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario. 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over and physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See casino.draftkings.com for details. Please play responsibly. I heard Chuck Connors once was in a stag film. That was the rumor that went around.

Yeah. I tell you the truth. The first night we were shooting Branded in Kanab, Utah, which was location of the fort, which they used at the beginning of every episode. And it was only one motel in the area. And I stayed there. And Chuck Connors was in another room.

And he was the only room that had a phone in the room believe it or not this was such a low-grade motel so now I was going to bed on the knock on the door uh really late and I said who's there Chuck so I opened the door and there he is standing there in his undershirt and he still got the britches on from the cavalry and the boots and he says to me you got to help me he says i can't get the boots off by myself i says well what do you want me to do he says come back to my room and help me take my boots off so right away i'm thinking this guy was in a stag film so i said i finally got my first series on television, and this is the first night of the shoot, and already I'm going to be faced with a 6'5 guy with his boots on who was in a stag film, and he wants me to come back to his room.

So I go back to the room, and I start to pull on the boots. He says, no, that's not how it's done. He says, you turn around away from me. I put my foot between your legs and I push on your ass with the other foot. And then that's how the boots come off. And I say, I wonder what's going to come off after that, I said. So anyway, I turn around and I pull on the boots and I pull on the boots and I pull so hard. Chuck comes off the chair and falls on the floor and bangs his head on the coffee table.

Now he's lying semi-conscious on the floor. And I'm standing there saying, I've killed the star of my series. It's not even on the air yet. And I've killed him. But finally he gets up and he's rubbing his head and I said, boy, this story is going to look good in TV Guide. And he looked at me with daggers in his eyes as if I was serious that I was really going to tell this to TV Guide. And I said, don't worry, Chuck, I won't tell anybody. And can I go to my room now? That's great. And so he unbarred the door and let me go.

And a lot of people even say the stag film he made was gay porn. Well, that's what I was worried about. What are you talking about? There he's going. Larry, listen, there's a couple of questions about the early days of TV, and you worked with everybody. I mean, people like Dick Powell and E.G. Marshall and some young actors kind of before they'd made it,

Fritz Weaver, Alan Alda, Vincent Gardinia, Ben Gazzara, Nimoy. Any memories of any of these guys that stand out? Nothing. Any memories of any of these guys that stand out? Nothing. Well, that's our interview for today. Hey, listen. Listen, Arthur.

Keep at it. I'm sorry. You're not Arthur. You're not Arthur. Hawaii, Hawaii. Hawaii, Hawaii. Oh, let's. sorry. Hawaii, Hawaii. I'm sorry. Hawaii, Hawaii. Oh, let's. Let's. Honolulu, Hawaii.

Let's wipe the Jews out of existence. He never said anything like that. Let's not smear him. Not on the air. He never said it. No. The worst he ever did was stay at the only hotel in Miami Beach that was restricted. That's about the worst he ever did to anybody.

Do you have any standout memories from those live TV dates? Those live TV days? Well, I love the live TV days because we always had to be there on the set because when they had the run through, the day of the show, it was always too long or too short. So you had to write a few more lines to make it longer or cut a few lines to make it shorter. And the writer had to be there. So you were welcome all through the whole production. And so you were part of the proceedings. Once they went to film and tape, they didn't need the writer there anymore,

and you weren't welcome anymore. Oh, interesting. It was a different business. Live TV was a wonderful business, but there was always mistakes made and things that happened on the air. When we did the show on the U.S. Steel Hour with Henny Youngman and his only dramatic role. I was going to ask you about that one.

Wow. Yeah, and he was very good too, Steele Hour with Henny Youngman in his only dramatic role. And he was very good too except he did a scene in Act 1 where he emptied a room and he came in the same room in Act 2 and he started doing Act 1 over again. But fortunately the floor manager

made some kind of signal and he caught himself and then he went back into the proper sequence. But the director had fallen off his chair in the some kind of a signal and he caught himself and then he went back into the proper uh proper sequence but the director had fallen off his chair in the in the uh control room and had an ulcer we we had to drag the poor bastard out of there and and you you i mean mean, I remember when Betty Davis used to come on TV, and she had had a couple of strokes already, and she weighed like two pounds. She was scary, scary.

But you figured out she's popping up on TV because she wants to work. Well, she did want to work. That was her whole life. That's all she could live for was work. And when she couldn't work anymore, she died. But I felt terrible about it. I tried to give her a job. And I wrote a script just for her.

Wicked stepmother. Yeah, wicked stepmother. Yeah. And the ad campaign was Betty is Bad Again. She's the Wicked Stepmother. And she loved the script and appreciated the fact that I wrote it for her. And we had a wonderful time together during the prep period before we started shooting.

And I had no idea at that time that she had broken her dentures and hadn't had them fixed. And she was trying to fake it, that she would do the scenes and be trying to readjust the teeth with her tongue in between the lines. And she was having the worst time doing it. And I had no idea why she was giving such odd line readings. And then, of course, she saw herself in the dailies and realized what she was doing.

And it was very evident to her what she was doing. And so she said she had to go away and have these teeth fixed. Well, when she went to New York to the only dentist she trusted, they said they had to pull out eight teeth and make a whole new bridge. And it would take two months. And MGM wasn't going to keep this picture going for two months. They wanted to replace her with Lucille Ball. So I said, great, let's get Lucille Ball.

They called up. She was in the hospital. She died that week. So we couldn't get Lucille Ball. They said, well, how about Carol Burnett? I said, look, guys, we got Betty Davis 15 minutes already in the movie. It's enough. She's been in other movies where she wasn't even in it for 15 minutes.

So it's a cameo. So there's a lot of Betty Davis sections in video stores across the country. You'll sell enough videos to get your money back. Let's leave Betty Davis in it. I'll rewrite the script, and we'll get the picture finished, which we did. You seem to have your work cut out for you. Oh, Miranda, hi. I didn't hear you come in.

Well, you were obviously concentrating intensely. It must be a difficult case. Well, the government has changed all the tax codes and now they're trying to throw the book at my client, claiming fraud and everything else. Could mean millions in additional taxes. I wish you much luck. Well, I'll need it.

May I come? I would love to see you in action. Well, there's not much action. It's mostly just paperwork. Well, you never can tell. If you win, I'd be there to share it with you. All right. Here's the address. It's the fourth floor of the federal courthouse.

Can you get there on your own? Of course I can. And believe it or not, the picture actually broke even, went into profits, and they all got their money back. And, you know, so I guess I saved the film. When I ran into the attorney for the completion bond company that had to lay out the money if a thing closed down, and I said, hey, I got you, I got you over a million dollars back.

Don't you think you should do me a favor and buy me a car? And when I looked back, the guy was gone. I saw his feet grounding the car. I never saw anybody make an exit that quick. I never got a car or even a thank you. I love what you said in the movie about how you would cast actors. You would look for people that were behind in their mortgage payments. I didn't say that.

Paul Curta, who was a producer on some of those films, made that remark. It wasn't true. I didn't hire people for that reason. I hired them because they fit the parts and they were good actors. And there was no reason why they shouldn't be working. Yeah, I mean, people like Lloyd Nolan and Dan Daly and Sylvia Sidney and Celeste Holm, you put all these people to work in the twilight of their careers.

Yeah, but they were good actors and they fit the parts too. It wasn't that I checked out their income or anything. I hired them because they were good in the roles. And they worked for other people after me too, Broderick Crawford. Right. He worked in a little romance after me with Laurence Olivier, and a lot of the actors did many, many jobs after me.

But I used them because they were good people, and they wanted to work. And they were Academy Award winners. And like you call up Jose Ferrer, who was one of the great Academy Award winners and Cyrano de Bergerac, nominated for Moulin Rouge, big star on Broadway. He was happy to come to work. I said, why'd you take the job, Joe?

He said, well, I got four kids in college. Yeah. It's touching that you use those people and Fulsey too, as we said before, also crew members. You know, Dan Daly was perfect for the role of Tolson in my picture with Roderick Crawford, but they came to me and they said, Dan Daly has failed the medical exam. They won't insure him. So you have to get somebody else. And I said, I'm not going to go back to Dan Daly, that wonderful trooper who did all those movies with Betty Grable and everything.

I'm not going to go back and tell him he can't have the part because he can't pass the insurance. I said, well, forget about the insurance for the whole picture. We're not going to insure anybody. And I'm not going to tell Dan Daly he can't be insured. So he went and did the part. He did a fine job. And he saved the picture because when we got to Washington, nobody wanted to let her shoot in any of the locations because of the controversy about J. Edgar Hoover. And then we got a call from the White House. And Betty Ford, who is the president's wife, was a huge fan of Dan Daly. She'd been a former chorus girl, and she wanted Dan Daly and Broderick Crawford to come to the White House for lunch with her and Kissinger and the president and vice

president Rockefeller. And I closed the picture down. And and while they were there, I called everybody in Washington and said, we want to shoot at your location, but we can't do it tomorrow because the stars are having lunch at the White House with the president. And I got permission. I got permission from everybody to shoot at the locations i wanted all because of dan daly and dan daly wouldn't have been there if i had kicked him off the picture because he couldn't get insurance that's a nice story good deed yeah and the good deed came back you know and uh i guess that was the last picture that Dan ever made. Wow. And he was a lovely guy. And Broderick Crawford, drunk?

Broderick Crawford. Broderick Crawford. What about Robert Crawford? A real character. Okay, okay. I heard he was one of those that did you have to watch, you know, how long you worked him because he was a major drinker. Well, Rod drank, no question about it. But I'll say, I'll tell you this. When he came to the set,

he knew every line perfectly. He knew everybody else's dialogue. He never muffed a line. He never blew a take. He never fouled up the blocking. He was right on top. Real pro. And finally enough, when we were promoting the movie, he got to be the host on Saturday Night Live. That's right. Early seasons, yeah. So they called me

up and they said, Broderick Crawford's here and we're in rehearsal and he's getting this crazy because he keeps going downstairs to the bar and drinking between rehearsals. Hurley's Bar downstairs at that time. He says, you have to come to New York and control him. So I went to New York, and they were having the cast members stay with him. So he was never alone. So Bill Murray stayed with him and, and,

and, you know, everybody in the cast, including John Belushi, imagine having John Belushi making sure somebody. So, so anyway, you know,

I said to them, don't worry. I said, you get scared. But when we go in the air, you guys are all going to be so nervous that you'll foul up. But Broad will know every line, and he'll know every bit of blocking, and he'll be perfect. And the truth was he was perfect when they went on.

It was John Belushi that fouled up in the Highway Patrol sketch and dropped the gun on the floor, and Broad turned to him and said, pick it up. And he did. Broad was right on top of it. I remember him being very good on that show, actually. He was. He was wonderful.

He was like one of those totally old Hollywood, totally functioning drunks. You know, the guys that would get totally shit-faced but would do their job. He never drank on the set, except one night when Jose Ferrer brought a bottle on the set. Jose Ferrer brought the bottle, not Broad. But Broad was perfectly professional all the way down the line,

and I was very glad I had him in the film. And we got along great. I got along great with almost all the way down the line. And I was very glad I had him in the film and we got along great. So they, I got along great with almost all the actors, even Betty Davis, but all that they've said about it had never had a bad moment between us. Every day she was, came to, came to work, gave me a big hug. Every night she would not leave the set unless I kissed her good night. They'd come to me and say, Ms. Davis is ready to go home, but she won not leave the set unless I kissed her goodnight. They'd come to me and say, Miss Davis is ready to go home, but she won't leave unless you say goodnight to her. So I'd go over to her, and she'd give me a kiss, and then she'd go home. Even the last time I saw her was the same thing.

She loved me. We had a great time together. It's unfortunately her teeth turned on her. Wow. That's unfortunate. We want to ask about It's Alive and so many other things, Larry, but quickly, let's ask Helen Harlem, not Helen, but Harlem, Black Caesar, who was that developed for originally?

Originally, a manager came to me and said, Sammy Davis Jr. is tired of being a flunky for Sinatra, and he wants to do something on his own. Can you come up with something for him? So I said, how about a gangster movie? Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney were little guys, and they played gangsters. And Sammy's a little guy, but he could play a tough guy. So I wrote this treatment, and I was supposed to get $10,000. But when it came time to collect the 10,000, the manager came and said, well, Sammy's in trouble with the IRS. He hasn't got the $10,000. What are you going to do about it?

And I said, well, I'm not going to sue Sammy Davis Jr. So I had the treatment. and I went to see Mr. Arkoff, who was the head of American International, and he said, we want to make some of these black exploitation movies like Shaft and Superfly, and do you have anything? I says, well, just so happens in my agent's car in the trunk is a treatment called Black Caesar. So we got it, and we made the deal the same day. I'm trying to imagine Sammy Davis in that role.

You were trying to do almost like a Little Caesar, like a, yeah. Absolutely. I was trying to do, and Sammy never really got a decent movie on his own. Yeah, I don't think. He made a few pictures like Salt-N-Pepa with Peter Lawford, but they were terrible. He never got a good part. If he'd gotten that part, it would have been the only good part he ever got. But unfortunately for him, he didn't get it.

And fortunately for me, I had it, and we turned that picture into a huge hit. That picture put me on the map because that was my first big box office hit. And spawned another one. And it may have been Black Caesar or one of the others with Fred Williamson where you are hiring actual gang members. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what happened there. We went up to Harlem to shoot the picture of Black Caesar. First day up in Harlem.

And they just had a movie up there called Across 110th Street with Anthony Quinn. And it was a big budget Hollywood picture. And they went up there with trailers and dressing rooms. And anyway, they got shaken down by the gangsters up there who made them pay a penalty for every street they wanted to shoot on. a penalty for every street they wanted to shoot on. So when I got up there with my little crew, they came over to me, these guys, and says, you can't shoot here unless you pay us.

And I didn't have any money to pay them. So I looked at them and I says, hey, can you guys act? You guys would be great in the movie playing Fred Williams' sidekicks. So we hired the guys who were trying to shake me down and put them in the movie. And after that, we owned Harlem. Any place we went, any place we went that anybody tried to stop us,

these gangsters stepped into view and the people just backed off and went away. That's all, you know. We owned Harlem. And when the picture opened on Broadway at the Cinerama Theater at the Santa Rama Theater, these black gangsters, their pictures were in the poster. And they were standing in front of the Santa Rama Theater signing.

Hilarious. That's great. What was Arcoff like? Gilbert and I have discussed him on this show before. I liked Arcoff. He was a good fella. And he had a sense of humor. you could kid him and stuff like that but you'd go to Sam

and you'd say Sam I need $850,000 to do this picture and he'd say I know I got the check right here at my desk and I'd say Sam thanks an awful lot I'm going to go out and make a good movie and as I walked out of the office I'd look at the check and it said, Sam, thanks an awful lot. I'm going to go out and make a good movie. And as I walked out of the office, I look at the check,

and it said $800,000. And I said, Sam, I said $850,000, and this check says $800,000. What happened to my $50? He says, give me the check back. I says, goodbye, Sam, and I got out of there as fast as possible. Gilbert, you met him once, Sam, Sam. And I got out of there as fast as possible. Gilbert, you met him once? Sam, you'll see. Yeah.

I remember I was working on some TV show, and we were having a long break. And the guy, the director, said, you want me to get you a book or something to look at? And I remember Arkov's book had come out. And they said, could you get you a book or something to look at. And I remember Arcoff's book had come out, and they said, could you get me that book? And he said, not only can I get it for you, but after we get it for you, we'll drive you over to Sam Arcoff's office, and then he'll sign it for you.

Oh, that's cool. And I went there, and he's there with his big cigar. Always, always. And he said, whatever the director who I was working with will say, you know, Richard. He goes, Richard tells me you're okay. That's good enough for me. Sam Hawkins. Well, he wasn't a bad guy.

In the end, he screwed me on the last picture we did together, which was Q, the winged serpent, because he had given me some money to make the picture while I was shooting, and when the time came, when we were finished, he had a 40% interest in the movie, and I got an offer to sell the picture for like $5 million. And the picture only cost us a million dollars. So it's a $4 million profit. And I could have given Sam a nice return on his money

and made a million and a half bucks for myself. And Sam insisted on keeping the foreign rights. He said, you gave me the foreign rights he said you gave me the foreign rights when he gave you that money I said yeah Sam but you can get your money back and make a nice profit but he probably had sold the foreign rights for quite a lot of money and didn't want to give it up so he wouldn't let me he wouldn't let me take the five million dollars and uh much later I had to sell my end for much less. But I still loved him. So what?

So he screwed me. I remember hearing a story from Roger Ebert said that he saw Q and he was very impressed with Michael Moriarty. Oh, his performance in that film is incredible. Yeah, great performance. So afterwards, Roger Ebert is talking to someone and saying uh you know it it was a great method performance in a piece of dreck and sam arcoff says the Drek was my idea.

I've heard this story. I doubt it, but it's a good story anyway. And the Drek wasn't his idea. The whole picture was my idea. The money was his idea. I didn't mind taking the money, but he had nothing to do with it. Moriarty is wonderful in that part.

I mean, he just really makes it his own. And he looks like he's having a good time doing it. Well, we did five films together. He had more fun with me than he ever had with anybody else. And I heard Michael Moriarty insisted every movie he does with you, you have to get him a new hairpiece. Well, he didn't like wearing hairpieces, and I thought he looked better with it. So to punish me, he made me go out and spend $1,500 or $2,000 on every picture to get him a new hairpiece, which I did.

And you know something? I got him in my—I still have him for this day in my closet 25 years later i got michael's hair in my closet hilarious let's talk about it's alive which our listeners will want to hear about uh larry and how did it how did it come about i mean you got to work with bernard herman we talked about, and also very young Rick Baker. Yeah. Where did that movie come from? Where did the idea come from? And the journey is interesting, too, because of the second life that it had.

Well, it's unusual. You know, wherever that idea came from, I guess I couldn't tell you. But it just came to me, the total story told from beginning to end in my mind. So I wrote, I just wrote the script. I just went in the room and closed the door and wrote the whole script from beginning to end. And it was a great role for the father, John P. Ryan, who played it and did a wonderful job. And it was a story of a family disintegrating. And it was a story of a family disintegrating. And it was about something. It was a monster movie where the characters were more important than the monster.

You know, in most monster movies, the characters are like cardboard. You know, they have no dimension. They have no reality. They just run around chasing the monster. And then you get sick of the monster after a while. Anyway, if it's a giant tarantula or a giant spider, it's always to be some giant insect. So I said, hey, it's more fun to have something small. People are really scared of small things. Like, you know, a moose could run by and you wouldn't get upset. But if you saw a mouse run under your table, oh, a mouse, oh my God. run under your table. Oh, a mouse.

Oh, my God. And people run for their lives because of a mouse. So something small can be very scary. So I wrote the thing, and then we got Warner Brothers to agree to do it. And then everybody at Warner Brothers got fired. So when I finally delivered the movie, it was a whole bunch of new people. It was like a waiter bringing the food out in a restaurant, and there's new people at the table.

That's a great analogy. And they say, hey, we didn't order this. We don't eat this kind of food. What is this? That's a funny analogy. So there I was, stuck with this movie. So they made a lousy 50 prints, which is nothing for a studio like Warner Brothers, and put it out in a couple of locations.

And they made up an ad campaign that didn't show anything about a monster baby, so you didn't know what the picture was about. And it didn't do any business, except in Chicago, where I actually went myself and the local representative of Warner Brothers let me change the ad campaign and let me have people push baby carriages around downtown Chicago with a tape recorder inside growling. His footage in the dark. And then the picture did more business than the Clint Eastwood movie that followed it. We actually outdid it at the box office.

But it didn't matter to the people in Hollywood. They had a determination this was going to be a failure and even though it did well over in europe and went some film festivals we could not move the picture so everybody told me forget about it go on make something else and i went on with my life but i kept pestering them about that one movie and in those days there was no home video and they And they couldn't sell the picture to television because nobody would buy a picture for television with a monster baby. So the picture still stayed fresh. And three years after the initial release,

I met a guy named Terry Semel, who was the new head of distribution at Warner Brothers. He later became chairman of the board. And one of the first things he did was look at my picture, take it off the shelf and give it a new ad campaign and put it out in the marketplace. And unbelievably, It's Alive became the number one box office movie in America. It's a great story.

It was the number one picture. And I made a fortune. I had so much money from that picture i bought a brownstone in manhattan off park avenue of a 22 room brownstone bought with the money from that movie i mean with that building that building today is worth 17 million dollars by the way but i don't know i don't know anymore but you get some idea of what it was and that was for just some of the money from that picture. And then we made two more. It's a live movie.

It's unheard of for a film four years later to have that kind of... It's never happened before and it can never happen again because of home video. So it was a one-of-a-kind event. And oddly enough, in Europe, the picture had a phenomenal success.

The stupidest phone call I ever got was from the foreign office of Warner Brothers. Larry, he says, you'll be excited to know that It's Alive is the second highest grossing movie in the history of Warner Brothers. Really? In Singapore. That's great. singapore now i thought singapore was a was a bunch of thatched huts i didn't realize what a big what a big country singapore was and how advanced it was but he says to me the only film at warner Brothers that has outgrossed It's Alive in Singapore is My Fair Lady. Well, they're comparable. So I went back to Warner Brothers Hollywood division and told them this, and they threw me out of the office.

Who the frig cares about Singapore, they said. Get out of the office. And unfortunately, they all Singapore, they said. Get out of the office. And unfortunately, they all got fired, so I had a new guy. Terry Semel. To this day, I remember in the commercials there was the voiceover,

there's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. It's alive. Yeah, it was a great campaign. It was a very brief TV spot, 15 seconds, and it went through the roof. It really sold the picture. So there you go. It's not only the picture that you make, it's the ad campaign

and the amount of money that they're willing to spend to promote the film. The Davises have had a baby, but they're not sending out any announcements. Most new parents are a little scared when they have a baby. The Davises are terrified. You see, there's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby. It's alive. It's alive. It's alive. Don't see it alone.

Please. Rated PG. No picture makes any money unless you advertise it. You have to advertise it. And the second time around, they advertised the picture and people did want to see

a movie about a monster. Because they all had one at home. There's that interesting moment in the doc too where you're saying to the people that were offended by it, you're saying, didn't you guys just make The Exorcist? Oh, they told me when they didn't want to distribute it, they said it's in bad taste.

It doesn't look right for Warner Brothers to make a picture in bad taste like this about a monster baby. I said, what was your biggest picture this year? It was a movie with a little girl masturbating with a Christmas. I said, this is good taste to you? Good point, Larry. And when you look back, they had already left the room when you said that. You know, they were gone.

Stupid executives. Can we ask you about Hitchcock? Sure, you can ask. You can ask me about it. Why don't you ask Hitchcock? He does impressions, too. Larry Cohn is one of my favorite directors. I've learned everything I know from watching Larry Cole's

film. Good evening. Good evening. Yeah, I had a number of nice meetings with Hitchcock. Every time I met with Hitchcock, it was three and a half hours. You'd have lunch with him or a meeting with him.

Three and a half hours later, you're still talking to him. He loved to do the anecdotes, tell you the scenes from movies that he never used and tell you who Jack the Ripper was. And, you know, I mean, I'll never forget. He says, you want to know who Jack the Ripper was? I'll tell you. He was a kosher butcher. He says, yes, that's why he was so good at slicing up those prostitutes,

because he was a kosher butcher. And the Jewish community in London tracked him down themselves and killed him because they didn't want racial prejudice to permeate the air. So that's the secret of it. I says, that sounds a lot like the movie M. Yes, it does sound like M. That's the same plot as M. He was telling me that.

That's great. Oh, Hitch, I enjoyed him, though, and he seemed to like me. You know, so, you know, we had a couple of nice meetings, but the picture I wanted to make with him never got off the ground. Was it something involving a phone booth? The picture? No, we talked about doing a movie in a phone booth, but we couldn't figure out how to do it.

And then years later, after he died, it came to me that I already had done it when I had a scene and God told me to with a sniper on top of a water tower shooting people. And I said, why don't I take the sniper and put him with the phone booth, and the sniper is keeping the guy from leaving the phone booth. So now I've figured out how to do it. So then it only took me a week to write the script once I had figured it out. But it took me years to figure that.

I was so stupid. I didn't realize I'd already done it. And in addition to the curiosity is the guy who was up on top of the water tower with the high powered rifle and shooting people was an actor named Sammy Williams who won the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Chorus Line. Yeah, he was. He was. He was the gay guy in the chorus line who told the whole story about his father

coming to see him in a drag show. And he won the Best Actor Award, and I used him in that part. And he won the best actor award in that. And I used him in that part. And he was very brave. He was up on top of that water tower without any harness or anything. And he did the scene. He was just great. And when I'm shooting the scene, this is a great story.

It's not in the documentary, but I'm shooting a scene of this guy up on top of the water tower shooting people. And on the roof of a building in midtown Manhattan, an apartment building, which had a nice water tower. So we're getting it all ready to shoot. We got the equipment there. So when the guy falls off the tower, he's going to land in a bunch of cardboard boxes. Everything is ready to go, except where's the telescopic rifle? There is no telescopic rifle.

There's a production assistant who's supposed to show up with the telescopic rifle. Now, all of a sudden, he arrives. Where's the rifle? Well, he says, I didn't want to upset you, but the guy who was supposed to give me the rifle changed his mind. I says, you didn't want to what do you think you're doing now i've got a whole scene the camera's all set up everybody's here and there's no rifle how am i going to shoot a scene the guy's going to point his finger and go

bang and what am i going to do so now some reason, which I'll never understand in my life, I turned to the half dozen people who lived in the building who'd come up on the roof to see the movie being shot. And I said to these people, has anybody there got a telescopic rifle in their apartment? And this girl puts her hand up and says, my boyfriend has one. And I said, would you mind going down and getting it? So she goes down and brings up a telescopic wrench.

Incredible. And we shoot the scene. I mean, now what is the possibility of that? It is so incredible. It's an indelible moment. It's so stupid, but it was true. In the doc, Joe Dante told me to a Catholic guilt movie made by a Jew. Why does my religion keep coming up in this discussion?

It's from the doc, Larry. It's right out of the doc. First of all, my grandmother was as Irish as you can be. Really? Yeah, she was Julia Florence Phelan, and she was as Irish as Clancy's cat. Clancy's cat. That's what she always said when I asked her. I'm as Irish as Clancy's cat.

I want to ask you a question real quick. This is from one of our listeners. We do this thing called Grill the Guest, and he wrote it. Wait a minute. You have listeners? Yes, lots of them hundreds of thousands why didn't you say why didn't you say so before we start this is chris waters wants to know uh i love the series the invaders uh i purchased both seasons on dvd uh way ahead of its time but uh my understanding that larry left the show early in the process. What direction would he have taken it in?

I would have had fewer aliens. The show got tiresome because every other person turned out to be an alien, and he was killing them right and left. I said, you know, part of the fun of the show is guessing which one of the people turns out to be an alien. You're taking all the guesswork out of it, and they're dying like flies. They're not dangerous anymore. They're so easy to kill. But they wouldn't listen to me. So, you know, if you don't control the show, and I didn't.

Quinn Martin, yeah. Quinn Martin controlled the show, yeah. And he was a very powerful producer. He had done a lot of The Fugitive and The Untouchables. And he was a good producer in his way, but not in the realm of story. He was not a good story guy. And so I couldn't get it my way. But fortunately, the show was on, stayed on for a while.

And in the documentary, you asked your mother what commerce is. Yeah. I heard you ask your mother what commerce is. Yes, she explained to me when I was a child that you buy a pair of shoelaces for five cents and you sell them for ten cents. And that's how you make a living. And so I didn't want to get into the shoelace business, but I got into the movie business instead. But my theory was you got to make a picture for less money than you sell it for. I guess that's pretty stupid, but that was my theory.

So you used that analogy of the shoelaces for your filmmaking career. Well, I thought it was not a good idea to spend more money than you did. You know about that, Gil. Oh, yeah. Larry, you're still writing all the time? You have the process of reading into your recorder? You still write that way and you still write every day or try to write every day? I write that way.

I write longhand. I write on a typewriter or whatever. I still write all the time. I just wrote a whole bunch of episodes for a new series for a company called Bad Robot. Oh, JJ's company, yeah. JJ's company. And we're going to go and sell it to Netflix or Amazon or one of those. And I wrote them all.

All the scripts are already written, so we don't have to write them later on. We got them now. We can show them. The whole series is all written, the whole first season. And I'm hoping it'll go very soon and then i got a couple of screenplays that i wrote that i i've been holding back until after we sell the jj series okay and you know i'm trying to get hot you're working you're working like crazy let's face it this show is the biggest thing that's happened

i want to plug the documentary too and, and credit the director, Steve Mitchell. That's a smear job. It's a smear job. Oh, boy. I'm telling you. Like I said the other night at the screening, I said, they go after you, and they say anything they want about you, and there's nothing you can do. You didn't have final cut, huh?

First Harvey, and now me. And I love how Fred Williams. Oh, Williamson. Fred Williamson, I mean. Fred Williamson. Williams is good enough. Yeah. Fred Williamson contradicts everything that you say.

Oh, that he did the stunts first. That Larry did the stunts first. Because he can't bear to have everybody know that he was scared to do these stunts and that I had to do it first. He's such a macho guy that he's embarrassed. So he's got to lie about it. But if you saw the picture, you'll see there's a scene where he gets picked up by a machine and buried in a pile of coal. He gets buried in this coal pile. And he climbs out of it.

And then right afterwards, there's a picture of me and him standing together. And I'm black as him because I just came out of it. And then right afterwards there's a picture of me and him standing together and I'm black as him because I just came out of the cold. So that proves I did that stunt before he did it because why would I do it after he had done it? The only reason I would go in there is because he was afraid to go in.

He said, I'm going to get my legs chopped off. And I said, you're too tall anyway. So I did it first. It's a great doc. It's also not only about your life and your career, but it's a doc about the creative experience. And I urge our listeners to check it out. It's really wonderful. If you want to see how a lunatic. Yeah, absolutely. And you're one of our ideal guests. Like, you're one of those that we've been talking about for a while. Yeah, for a long time.

And we're glad we finally got you here. And you're a great raconteur, Larry. We thank you. Well, I've always wanted to be on with Arthur Godfrey and his friends. How are you? I hate the Jews. How are you? I hate the Jews. How are you? Still smearing poor Arthur, right?

We've smeared him on previous shows. So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. host Frank Santopadre, and we've been talking to Larry Cohen, and once again, see his documentary, King Cohen, The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen. Wild it is. And go to Larry's website, LarryCohenFilmmaker.com. Do you have spec scripts on there? Do you have unsold scripts on there?

Or is that bullshit? Yeah, there's a few scripts I wanted people to read. Wow. You know, well, I believe I believe that writing scripts is like painting a painting. You know, you don't if you don't sell it right away, you put it up in a gallery and people see it and somebody takes a liking to it. You don't just put it in the closet and forget about it. You put it up where it can be seen by people. So I know everybody says, well, what are you going to do if they steal your script? What are they going to do

if they steal your script? I hope they do because then you can sue them. Is that your wife yelling, sue them? No, no, no. No, but it's a friend. It's a good friend. And, you know, so if they want to steal my stuff, you know, I've sued people before, and I always won, as a matter of fact.

So, you know, I put a few scripts up there just to have them seen by people. Larry, you're – And, you know, so go ahead and see them. You say it in the movie. Every script has a history and a journey, and it'll get made someday. Hey, I've sold scripts. You know, 35, 40 years ago I had a script. It was optioned by Clint Eastwood twice.

It was a Western. And he wanted to get John Wayne to be in it with him. But John Wayne didn't like it. And every time we tried to get John Wayne to do it, he rejected it. And Clint optioned it another year and still couldn't get John Wayne to do it, he rejected it. And Clint optioned it another year and still couldn't get John Wayne to do it. And finally, Michael Wayne called me up and said, I think I can get him to do it. Michael Wayne was John Wayne's son. So I said, okay. He says, dad's going out on his boat in Newport this weekend. I'll give him the script and make him

read it again. So Monday I called him. What happened, Michael? He says, well, I hate to tell you. I went over to Dad. I gave him the script. He looked at it. He said he called me over. He says, this piece of shit again, and he threw it overboard. I said, my script is in the Pacific somewhere.

Oh, my God. Sinking. Sinking. And before we go, I heard John Wayne hated the Jews. No, I don't think that's true. Cut that out. He just hated my script. So 35 years later, I got a phone call from the Hallmark Channel.

They want to buy this script. Where the hell did they see this? 35 years ago, I wrote this script. So I sold it to the Hallmark Channel for $200,000. I love it. Great. I mean, so nothing is ever over in the movie. Larry, you're a national treasure, and we are thrilled to have you.

You know what they do with treasures? Thanks for being a part of this, Matthew. Thank you, Larry Cohen. I'm not going home. I'm having too much fun. King Cohen himself. Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Larry.

This was a thrill for us. Coronet blue. Coronet blue. Deep down inside my brain I keep hearing that wild refrain Coronet blue Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast is produced by

Dara Gottfried and Frank Santapadre with audio production by Frank Furtarosa. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pear, and John Bradley Seals. Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to Paul Rayburn, John Murray, John Fodiatis, and Nutmeg Creative. Especially Sam Giovonco and Daniel Farrell for their assistance. Even to myself a stranger One who's really mine Coronet blue

Coronet blue Deep down inside my brain I keep hearing that wild refrain Coronet blue No other blue I know that this must be the thing that can set me free. For I was born just yesterday lonely as the misty river. Always a-moving like the river. If I linger, I'll die

And so I go that lonely way Every journey feels a-changer Even to myself a stranger Wonder who am I Wonder that blue Wonder that blue Wonder that blue Wonder that blue On the next Gilbert and Frank's Colossal Obsessions. We do these episodes that we have on Patreon, our friends at Patreon.

Pay us a little tiny little, what would you call it? A pittance. A pittance. An honorarium. Just to hear you sing. I mean, did you ever, with all the success that you've experienced in your career, did you ever think people would pay money out of their pocket? Absolutely.

To hear you murder beloved hits. A lot of people pay only once. Whereas the people who are sitting next to him really pay. And for $20 more, he won't say. That's it. Well, that's like the old Chico Mons thing. Oh, yes.

From Animal Crackers. Yeah, you see, if we don't our house, we don't play. And if we don't play, that runs into money. It's Gila Frank, that runs into money. amazing colossal obsessions every Thursday only on Stitcher Premium.