Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 217. Carl Gottlieb

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

Gilbert and Frank celebrate Shark Week with the screenwriter of "Jaws," "Jaws 2" and "Jaws 3-D," Carl Gottlieb, who discusses the birth of the Hollywood blockbuster, the ingenuity of Steven Spielberg, the effectiveness of "unseen horror" and the challenge of bringing the original "Jaws" to the screen. Also, John Belushi spoofs Richard Dreyfuss, Groucho guest hosts "Music Scene," Ringo battles the Abominable Snowman and Carl and Steve Martin team up for "The Jerk." PLUS: "The Absent-Minded Waiter"! "Son of the Invisible Man"! The Smothers Brothers vs. CBS! Sterling Hayden vs. the I.R.S.! And "The Jaws Log: The Musical"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit mila.ca to learn more. Hi, this is Andrea Martin, and you are listening is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer Frank Verderosa. Our guest this week is a producer, author, actor, Emmy-winning writer, and Oscar-nominated director. He started out his performing career as a member of the San Francisco-based comedy troupe, The Committee, and went on to write and perform in popular variety shows and situation comedies, such as the Glen Campbell Good Time Hour, the Flip Wilson Special, the George Burns Comedy Week, the Ken Berry Wow Show, Chico and the Man, All in the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, for which he was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy.

He also wrote the feature films Dr. Detroit and The Richard Pryor vehicle, Which Way Is Up, directed the Ringo Starr comedy Caveman, an Oscar-nominated short The Absent-Minded Waiter, and appeared in movies MASH, The Long Goodbye, Johnny Dangerously, and Clueless, and of course, in a pair of iconic films that he also happened to write, Steve Martin's The Jerk, and a little picture called Jaws. Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. Jaws. He's also the screenwriter of the sequels Jaws 2 and Jaws 3 and the author of a best-selling book, The Jaws Log,

an indispensable production guide and behind-the-scenes look at the making of one of Hollywood's greatest adventure films. Please welcome to the show a man of many talents and the artist formerly known as Iron Balls, Carl Gottlieb. Yes, yes, yes.

It's always interesting to put on your resume, the jerk part of Iron Balls McGinty. Is it on the resume as Iron Balls McGinty? If I still had a resume, yeah. It's on the IMDB page as Iron Balls McGinty. Yeah a resume, yeah. It's on the IMDB page. Yeah. As Iron Balls McGinty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, before we turn the mic on, you started to say you had a Pat McCormick story, and that's something we can never wait with. You know, I took a wild chance that Carl, who's been around and knows everybody in Hollywood, would know Pat McCormick, and we hit pay dirt.

Yes, yes. knows everybody in Hollywood would know Pat McCormick, and we hit pay dirt. Yes, yes. Well, you know, after his stroke, he went to live in the motion picture home up in Calabasas, and he was a resident there, and he had lost his speech. As a result of the stroke, he couldn't speak. He had aphasia.

And they put him in a room. He shared a room with Stanleyley kramer the great director and stanley kramer was at the at the motion picture home because he was in an advanced state of senile dementia so jack riley and some of the guys went up to visit pat at the home and then they came back to the you know farmer where that particular crowd used to meet for donuts and coffee once a week. And everybody said, well, how's Pat doing up at the home? And Jack said, well, Pat can't talk and Stanley Kramer can't think. So the two of them get on great. They just growl at each other all day long.

at each other all day long. So I met Cat Kramer, who's Stanley Kramer's daughter, and I said, you know, this is the story I heard, and I've told it, but now that I've got you here, you're Stanley Kramer's daughter,

you were there. She said, no, absolutely true. He and Pat just got on great as roommates because Pat couldn't talk and Dad couldn't think. I heard, was it Ronnie Schell who told us that they walked in? Those Yarmies Armies guys. Yeah. And Ronnie Schell or somebody walked in the room, saw Stanley Kramer and said, Pat, you finally got a meeting. Yes.

meeting on the junket to uh uh san francisco for the movie uh with with chevy chase and goldie hall foul play foul play they had chartered a plane it was in the heyday of warner brothers i think they chartered a plane and the whole cast was going up and the drinks were flowing and pat stood up in the aisle and picked up billy bardy who's also in the cast picked up billy bardy and held him and said i'd like to thank the members of the academy and it was we never run out of pat mccormick stories and it was pat mccormick who said uh you know somebody asked him for directions. How do you get to Malibu? He said, you take Sunset down to PCH and then you turn right and go until you hit Ben Vereen.

Now there's one story, if you haven't heard it, we'll move on. Are you familiar with the pat mccormick helicopter story i don't think so oh then i'll tell you about it later it'll take up too much show but we'll tell we'll tell you after we wrap and so you yeah well now you're credited as having written the screenplay, Jaws. How did that come about? Well, I was friends with Spielberg. We had the same agent.

Mike Medavoy was our agent. And he was constantly pairing us up to go out and sell pitches. We'd come up with a pitch. We'd go out. Mike would set up a meeting. We'd go take the meeting. up with a pitch do we go out mike would set up a meeting we'd go take the meeting and we'd never sell a pitch because steven was locked in to direct whatever it is we sold and at that point he hadn't directed any movies he had just directed television so nobody wanted to take a chance on

him as a director so we couldn't sell a feature script but i acted in two of his movies his television movies that he did. I didn't. Oh yeah. You're in something evil and, uh, something savage and the, the savage, the savage. Right.

And, uh, so, you know, we were acquainted and he, uh, he lived in Laurel Canyon. I lived down on Gardner street in Hollywood.

We very often our paths would cross and he went off to do sugar land express, which was his first feature. And it was very well received critically but tanked at the box office and steven who has a really good career sense figured okay i got to do a popcorn movie i got to find a popular movie to direct so on the desk at zanuck and brown's office he saw the galleys for Jaws. It would eventually be novel. They had optioned it in pre-production, in pre-publication. So he looked at it and said, oh, this is something I could do. And they said, yes. Zanuck and Brown said, yes, this is something you could do. So Stephen called me and said, look, I'm going to be doing this movie. It shoots on location. Maybe you should be in it you know we'll find a part

for yourself and uh you'll be there for the run of the picture and we you could help with improvisation and do some stuff with the local actors who i have to hire so because you had an improv background yeah so so and and comedy right sure so and and steven wanted to not make it a straight-ahead horror flick. So I went through Universal Casting. I got the part of Meadows, the publisher of the newspaper. And then about three weeks before we started shooting, I get a call from Stephen. I'm at the Bel Air Hotel with Zanuck and Brown. I showed them your memo because he had sent me a copy of the script with a note on the cover saying, eviscerate it.

So I had sent him some notes on the script. Some were accurate and some were less useful. But he had shown the memo to Zanuck and Brown. They said, well, let's have him in here. I came in. We talked about the script. It started out to be bagels and lox on a Sunday morning. I didn't leave until it was dark and it

was like after tea time and we had we had like brunch and tea and then i and then they said well maybe we'll you'll put you on to do a dialogue polish you can go you will hire you as a writer too at that point i was a story editor on the odd couple i was you know i had a network tv job but in those days you know if you could get out of television and into features, you would, you'd grab that opportunity. So Monday, they made an offer. Monday afternoon, we accepted. Tuesday, I was on a plane with Steven.

We flew to Boston where he was casting extras. And three weeks after, or two and a half weeks after that, we started shooting the movie, having taken the script apart and not completely replaced all the material yet because there wasn't time. So I wrote the first scenes that were on the schedule. I wrote those first, and then I just had to write ahead of the schedule as we were shooting the movie. And it's kind of great for a writer to be doing a production rewrite on the set because there's nobody to rewrite you.

I mean, it's too late. Once you turn in your pages, the next day they're shooting them, and there's that. And then there was the terrible realization that I had to cut my own part because the editor of the paper was less and less important to the story. As the script evolved, my part got smaller. And no writer or actor should be asked to do that. It's cruel to cut your own part. But it was for the better. Right, of course.

Kill the babies, right? Yes, it was for the greater good. Right. But on the release prints, when the picture first came out, the credits, you know, it was Scheider, Dreyfuss, and Shaw. Jaws with Carl Gottlieb, Lorraine Gary, and Murray Hamilton. I was like, big co-star billing. And then, you know, 10 years later, I was no longer on that title card

because my character was less and less. Well, Meadows is still in there. He's still prominent. Yeah, he's still there, and I still get residual checks as an actor as well as residual checks as a writer. And the fish movie is the gift that keeps on giving. It's always shark week somewhere. Yeah, true.

And it's funny. Nowadays, I mean, the definition of blockbuster is Jaws and the definition of powerhouse director, Spielberg. Yeah. But back then, it was nothing like that. No, Universal's high hopes for that year, 74, that year, they were betting it all on hindenburg and airport 75 uh and which tied up all the special effects at the studio which is why we got to make we get an independent contractor to build the shark because the studio was overwhelmed they couldn't they couldn't build the shark in time the hindenburg with george c sc. Oh, yes. Imagine, looking back.

Not exactly a big monster hit. No, no. And Jaws was intended to be kind of, you know, a popcorn summer movie. It was always that. And it was only after the first paid preview, the first two paid previews where the audiences went nuts, that Sid Scheinberg says, you know what, let's open this on a lot of

screens. And at that time, that was kind of a revolutionary concept. Didn't you say they opened it in the second run theaters first? Well, they were first run theaters, but they weren't the good ones. If you know LA, in LA we were at

East of Vine. It was was the world theater now it's something else right it was it was east of vine uh and in westwood we had one of those crummy ua house we didn't we weren't at the westward of the bruin you know the right right right right or the cinerama dome yeah or any of the good ones we were were in like ordinary theaters. And to Lou Wasserman's credit, he says the best word of mouth for a movie is there's lines and you can't get in. So let's open it wide, but let's not go too wide. So it opened in what was then a revolutionary 450 screens. And then later, when it became obvious that the film wasn't going to stop, they expanded it to 700 or 800 screens. The days before multiplexes, when there were lines around the block to see a movie.

We're both old enough, obviously, to remember Jaws mania. And that summer, you know, it was happening. It's a cultural phenomenon. And what did you, you read the book, obviously. Yeah, I read the book and I read the draft. Because Peter Benchley wrote a draft of the screenplay. And it was, I guess it wasn't good. I think it was a way to give him more money for the book rights.

They said, oh, and you can write the screenplay. So he wrote the first draft of the screenplay. And Zanuck and Brown realized, oh, this guy is not a screenwriter. I mean, he's barely a novelist, but he's at that time in his career. So they got a guy, a writer named Howard Sackler, who was a real screenwriter. He wrote Great White Hope. He wrote Grey Lady Down. He was a real screenwriter, but he was kind of faithful to the book

and did like an okay adaptation. But it was the style of the script. Well, the only thing I can tell you about that script, that draft, which is the draft I worked off of, was that it made sense to cast Jan Michael Vincent as Hooper and Charlton Heston as Quint, you know, for that script. Right. And the love triangle with,

with, with Brody's wife was still intact. Well, I was still intact. So when we started filming and we saw, you know, Dreyfus and Lorraine Gary, there's such like a nice Hamish peep.

You know, we couldn't, you know, it was impossible to think of him cuckolding the roy scheider character so that that subplot went out the window along with the mayor's connection to the mafia and the real estate developers who wanted you know there's a whole lot of crap that had to go so it was mostly mostly a question of pruning all the underbrush and just getting down to the story of three guys and a fish.

I've heard you say that there's no original Jaws script. People claim there is, and you say there may be some edited versions floating around, but there's no true original that exists. No. it is, there was like 10 copies that the, Stephen's personal assistant on the film and also the apprentice editor was Verna Fields' son, Rick Fields. So he took the lined script, you know, with all the script supervisor's notes in it, and the extra writing that I did for post-production, I wrote dialogue for looping and ADR. And it took all of Joe Alves' storyboard sketches because the whole third act, all the men against the sea scenes

were basically storyboard. There was no script. There wasn't a script that says the shark swims left to right and Quint fires a harpoon at him. It was just storyboarded that way. Interesting. So they shot the film from storyboards. All the dialogue had already been filmed.

But it was just, there's that big, heavy, bound, and it's nicely bound with the Jaws logo on the cover. And that's the only thing that can pass for an original script. Because the original script was just those blue, yellow, green pages. Right, right. Folded up and carried in Crew's back pocket. And who was the one who designed the shark? That was Joe Alves, the production designer.

And he's actually the first guy on the payroll. He got hired before Spielberg because Joe's job, Zanuck and Brown were stingy bastards. I have to tell you. Well, they're both gone now, you can say that. And they had Joe. Joe had a charge. He was under employment at Universal.

And they asked him to do some sketches storyboard sketches of the shark and victims and they they use them to pitch the tower that they should actually invest in this movie and make make this film so joe ows was the first one on the picture he does he designed the shark he did all the research he just said he discovered and they kept saying we need a big shark and and joe discovered from his research that the the bigger sharks get the fatter they are so when they said we want a 30 foot shark joe said it's going to look like like a barrel you know it's just going to be a big fat fish so the the optimum would be like 20 to 25 feet would be as big as you can get it and still keep it slender and deadly looking so that's that's

what he did joe joe designed the shark and a guy named bob matty who was in retirement a special effects guy yeah who built uh the squid in 20 000 leagues underagues Under the Sea. Remember Kirk Douglas fights this giant squid? The guy who built the squid built the shark. You know, reading your book, and we have to plug, this is the expanded edition, and both Gilbert and I read this way back in the day, The Jaws Log, which is terrific, and one of the best books, not just for Jaws fans, but one of the best books about making a movie yeah that you'll ever want to read i'm very proud of that you should be and reading it you know you realize how many and of course spielberg gets that gets the lion's share of the credit i suppose but how many heroes that bob maddy and joe alves and yourself and verna

fields and bill butler and how many people are uh great artists yeah are the heroes of this picture and at the time everybody was it's like a triumph of the studio system and all those people were kind of under contract and we were making this movie on location and everybody was just it was a difficult shoot it was long ways from home maybe we were over budget over schedule and everybody just soldiered on and tried to make the best movie we could. Who knew? Yeah, who knew? And what happened, the look of the film and how Spielberg wound up directing it was because the shark didn't work.

Yes. We built this shark and it was only, there wasn't any wasn't hardly any time to test it. So before they put it on the trucks and shipped it off to New England, it was built or fabricated here in Hollywood. They tested it in fresh water, and it seemed to work. And then when they got it and put the rig in, it's a complicated understructure that you can't see. It's steel rails and stuff. As soon as they put it in salt water, electrical circuits fried, things started corroding, aluminum turned to dust,

and it was a huge effort just to keep something in front of the camera that looked like a shark. In part because Spielberg was determined not to shoot in a tank on the lot, but to shoot it in the water, to shoot it at sea. And Zanuck and Brown, who were both products of the industry, when they were putting the project together, they just assumed that somewhere in the world there was a shark wrangler who they could get who would train a shark to do two or three stunts.

And, of course, they had to be disabused of that notion very quickly. Gilbert and I were talking today, and it's about the problems that beset the film. And it's not just the mechanical shark. It's the teamster stuff. It's the weather. It's people who were stealing equipment. It's the boatmen went on strike. I mean, every possible thing that could have gone wrong. You guys must've felt like you were cursed. Well, you know, there's an iconic line from the movie because you know, you're going to, we're going to need a bigger boat,

right? Of course. Now the, the, the way for 20 years, I wouldn't take credit for that line. I said, you know what, Roy probably improvised it on the set, you know, more power to him, because I wasn't on the set that day. Then I, one of the fans, of whom there are many, pointed out to me that on the Blu-ray edition of the DVD or the extra materials, there's an interview with, with Roy Scheider who was still alive at the time. And he said, Oh no, that was in the script. So I said, Oh,

hooray for me. I just, I didn't know I wrote that. And then, and then it turned out it had been in the script because they, when they started shooting, they had this, the SS garage sale.

It was just a barge with all the equipment on it and things would fall off and it wasn't steady. It was a piece of crap because Zanuck and Brown were stingy. They avoided renting the support boat that they should have gotten, which was a big ocean-going tugboat based in Martha's Vineyard, skippered by an old salt on the vineyard. It was called the Whitefoot. And finally, when the crew was at, you know, rebellion point, you know, because they kept saying, we're going to need a bigger boat.

You know, the boat, we've got the orca, but we need a bigger boat for the crew, for the cast to have lunch, you know, and to help buffet the picture boat, you know, against the wind. You know, so when anything broke in the first few weeks of filming, they would say, we're going to need a bigger boat, trying to convince Zanuck and Brown. And Roy used that line in a lot of different scenes. He kept saying, we're going to need a bigger boat. But he said it at the perfect place in the movie,

so it became an iconic line, but it was based on reality. We did really need a bigger boat. And halfway through filming, Zanuck and Brown finally bit the bullet and hired the right boat. You heard him. Slow ahead. Slow ahead. I can go slow ahead. Come on down and chump some of this shit. We're gonna need a bigger boat. Shut off that engine. That's a 20-footer.

25. And it's funny that through the shark not working, Spielberg tried hiding the shark, which made it scarier. Well, wasn't that something you guys were channeling, The Thing, one of your favorite movies? Not even channeling. We both, when we were scratching our heads, figuring out what, you know, we don't have the shark today, what are we going to shoot?

You know, what scenes are left with dialogue? When we were going through all that, we both said, you know, we both knew the thing. By the way, we should say not John Carpenter's the thing, but the original Howard Hawks. The Christian I.B. Howard Hawks. Yeah, that thing. That thing. With James Arness as a carrot.

Yes. As a giant defrosted carrot, yes. Giant defrosted carrot, yes. So we both were very well aware of that film, and we knew that unseen horror is even scarier than visible horror, kind of like even in Psycho, where you never see the killer and you hardly see the stabbing. You think you see it, but Hitchcock is such a whiz that you know so we were well aware that an off-screen shark could be as as ominous or more so than an on-screen star and of course Stephen did that incredible opening death scene with uh with the actress uh Chrissy um and and then we had to think of other scenes like the guys the guys on the dock and all where you can see what the shark does, but you couldn't see the shark.

You see a severed leg floating down, trailing blood in the water, stuff like that. It's so smart. You guys had such good instincts. And it's kind of like a lot of the movie is not a fear of sharks, but a fear of the ocean. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But he keeps giving you that point of view shot of the water. And it's like that first girl who gets killed. Yes.

You don't see a shark. You don't see what's happening. Yeah. But you go, something horrible is happening to this girl. Yeah. But you go, something horrible is happening to this girl. Yeah, and then when you actually see the remains at the morgue, it fits into a little cat box, a little busboy's tray. That's all that's left of her. We really thought that was a real subtle, horrible way to say a human being, you know, because the doctor opens the door to the morgue, you know, to the refrigerator where they keep the bodies.

And you're expecting, you know, a body bag to come out. And it's a, you know, it's a tray with what's, you know, with a hand. Spoofed in a very funny way by John Belushi in the first. Yes, yes. This was no boating accident. Chewing the scenery in his Dreyfus impression. Let's talk about the casting a little bit because it's all in the Jaws log, and it's fascinating. Did Richard Dreyfus, who you knew as Ricky Dreyfus, you had history.

You had worked with Carl Reiner in the committee. Excuse me, Rob Reiner in the committee excuse me uh rob reiner yeah in the committee they grew up together yeah and rob and rob and richard and a couple others had a little improv group of their own in la they'd come up and hang out at the committee and watch us and go back to la and work on their show so you know we had a we had a history and uh he had passed on the script. He had told his agent, you know, this is a movie I'd rather see than be in, and so when I got to Boston with Stephen, we still did not have Hooper, and we didn't have Quint.

With how many days to go? About 15 days before start of principal photography. Wow. So they reached out to Lee Marvin, who would have been a pretty good quint, but Lee Marvin was on a fishing expedition in Baja, California and said, word back, he says, I'm fishing now. Why would I want to go back and pretend to be fishing? So Lee Marvin passed.

I was very much in favor of Sterling Hayden, who would have been wonderful. We love Sterling Hayden. Yeah, but he had problems with the IRS. He couldn't work for wages because the IRS had attached his wages. He could work as a novelist and sell his books and get royalty. But if he had a salary income, the IRS would grab it all. So he couldn't take it. IRS would grab it all, so he couldn't take it.

So Zanuck and Brown, in desperation, reached out to Robert Shaw, who was a sturdy physical guy and was a great actor. They knew him from this because they'd made The Sting. Yeah, they knew him from The Sting. So he agreed, and he had a lot of things in his contract. In case they went over schedule, he would owe a lot of money on his salary. So he built in a lot of penalties. So he wound up making way more than Dreyfus and Scheider made. And so now we're getting too close. We got Robert Shaw. And I called my wife in Los Angeles. I said, can you find where Richard is? I've got to speak to him. So it turns out my wife calls back and says, you're in luck.

He's in New York. So I called Richard in New York. I said, you've got to come up to Boston and meet Stephen. When you turn down the script, that's a different script. We're rewriting it. I'm up here. We're going to make it a little funnier. You're going to like it.

Come on up and meet Stephen. Just give it one last shot. So Richard came up to Boston where we were casting, and he walked in, and he was dressed almost the way he's dressed in the movie. He had a scruffy beard and rimless glasses and a watch cap and a Levi jacket. And Stephen took one look at him and said, don't change a thing. Don't get a haircut. If you're going to do this film you got to do it just the

way you look now we love i love that and uh so then we talked for a few hours and told him there would be comedy and while we were talking we found a joke that's that's in the movie that plays great uh because zanuck and brown were stingy bastards. Did I say that? Yeah, you did. Say it again. We were staying at the Holiday Inn in Boston, and room service at the Holiday Inn in Boston is styrofoam. No china. It's all plastic stuff. And we were living on room service because we couldn't go out to eat. We had casting appointments every 15 minutes all day long.

So we had the remnants of our meal, and Richard was crushing a cup. And I'm going to say we because I don't know who in the room actually said it. I'd like to think it was me. But I said, you know how that macho thing where guys crush beer cans or they break them on their head you know it'd be great for hooper you know if quint crushes a beer can hooper can crush a styrofoam cup and steve is a great great put it in the script we'll do that and so we did it's a great moment and it's and it movie, when it was being made, was considered disaster. Yes. And that Spielberg went to a dinner party and introduced himself to some woman who said,

Oh, you're that director who everyone says your career is over now. I wouldn't be surprised. Because, you he was it was touch and go for a while i mean people who had seen the film and had seen the you know the because verna fields was on location so she was as soon as we finished filming you know all the segments of a particular sequence she'd start cutting it together because you know that, that's, that's what she was there for. And as sequences came started to come together, you'd see, you can see the potential in the film. And then of course, when, when it was finished, it was, it was great. But, uh,

and, and at the time, you know, like nobody ever sets out to make a bad movie. If you're on the set of a bad movie, nobody is saying this is going to be a stinker. You're doing your best to make a good movie. And that's what happened on that picture. Everybody said, well, yeah, it could be a career killer, but let's see what happens when it's released. Because this is an axiom for the movie business. No picture is ever as good as the dailies

or as bad as the first cut. Oh, that's profound. It turned out to be a movie that changed American filmmaking and changed the studio system, changed the way movies were distributed, changed everything. Yeah, and sadly, not for the best as that evolution has turned out.

In some ways, yeah. This obsession with opening weekends and $100 million grosses. You can't hit a home run every time. Not for the best, but hard to hold it against the film. I remember also seeing an interview where Dreyfus, I mean, it was like he was apologizing for the movie. He said something like, well, I've got nobody to blame but myself. I shouldn't have taken this movie. And for 40 years, he's been dining out on those John the Jaws stories.

Yes. Yeah. stories yes yeah yeah he it was uh he he and roy um went to after a couple of weeks i think it moved over to a big theater in times square the rivoli or one of the you know a big times square movie theater and there's a there's a shot of it the marquee and everything but roy and richards like snuck in after the film had started so they wouldn't be noticed. And they watched the film and they saw the audience reaction. And that was the first time they had seen it in a theater. They'd only seen it in screening rooms.

And after that, they had to admit that it was good work. And it must have dawned on them at some point they were about to be stars. Yeah. I mean, Richard had American Graffiti had already opened. So Richard was on the radar and Scheider had been on the radar from French Connection, but not like this. Yeah. This was this, you know, it made everybody. And one of the best things in the film is the last bit of dialogue, which you added in post.

Yeah. Yeah. I used to be afraid of the water yeah it's great it's a perfect way to end the film thank you and and you being the writer also of jaws 2 yes i have to ask you what happened to that convenient uh uh fishing expedition that hooper was on i just watched jaws too yeah yeah he he was off on the on the aurora doing the because he didn't see roy had a contract he he had to do the sequel yeah i read in the i read in an interview with you that he was none too happy no he wasn't wasn't. And Zanuck and Brown,

when they got a green light, because the iron law of sequels is only the last one loses money, which is why you have Police, A.I. 12, Friday the 13th, 10.

Why they all end at some point. Only the last one loses money. So after Jaws, it was clearly going to be a sequel. And Zanuck and Brown offered me the screenplay. They said, you can write the sequel. I said, great.

And they said, for scale. I said, oh, God, you guys, you know, my agent said, I can't believe that they're offering scale. And then we said, you know, Zanuck and Brown are stingy bastards. And I turned the job down. I said, I'm not writing it for scale.

I have other things to do. I'd written Which Way Is Up. I was back, you know, doing comedies again. Right, working with Richard Pryor. Yeah. So I turned them down. And I remember saying to my agent at the time, I said, tell them no. And when they come back, and I think they will, it's going to cost them.

So sure enough, they started with another director and his wife, who fancied herself a screenwriter, and they started shooting Jaws 2. And after a week of dailies, it was obvious that this director and his reconfigured screenplay were not cutting it. And it's very rare that Hollywood actually fires a director off a film that's in production. But they fired John Hancock and shit-canned his script by his wife, Dorothy Tristan. We name names here. We name names. Well, it's a podcast no one's really listening to, Carl. So then they called me, and I got what I should have gotten. And the picture went, and in its time, was the most successful sequel until Godfather 2.

So it did okay. And are you ever planning on doing a movie on Hooper on that fishing boat? No, but it would be nice to revisit him. By the time we got to Jaws 3, the same thing happened. They started with a script that wasn't working, and they had to fly me in to work. One, two, and three i did on location while we were shooting they didn't ask me to do jaws for for any reason just for the revenge jaws for the revenge that was michael kane yeah yes and and uh and uh to this day i've never seen it. I have no idea what it's about. And the shark follows the wife to the Bahamas.

Yes. And to the mall. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, but first, a word from our sponsor. Baseball is finally back. Get in on Major League action and swing for the fences with BetMGM, the king of sportsbooks.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. That's the sound of fried chicken with a spicy history. Thornton Prince was a ladies' man. To get revenge, his girlfriend hid spices

in his fried chicken. He loved it so much, he opened Prince's Hot Chicken. Hot chicken in the window. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. With Jaws 3D, did you have to come up with 3D gags in conceiving it? No, that was mostly Joe Alves' responsibility.

Joe Alves directed Jaws 3D, which you point out. He directed it because he directed miles of second unit on two. And he was ready to direct, and he was the one who said Jaws 3D. He's the one who said jaws 3d he's one who uh suggested 3d and then later regretted it because the technology was not you know perfected so there was a lot of problems and we had a producer who was even stingier than zanuck and brown we had joe dante on the show and and we talked a little bit about jaws three people nothing or people people zero and

how close did that actually come to happening i i have um my first my memory of it was that it was never more than a you know high concept and that they uh you know spielberg and zanuck and brown said to the studio listen to why don't mock a valuable franchise like this. Good advice. Don't shit where you eat. But since then, I've met Matty. I know Matty Simmons, who was Lampoon. Sure.

And he says, he claims that they actually got about a million dollars out of Universal. They developed a script. They did some research. There is a script somewhere, yeah. research. There is a script somewhere, yeah. And apparently there is a script somewhere. I've never seen it. But ultimately it was, you know, the studio said, no way are we making this film, so goodbye.

And what I've noticed with sequels is each sequel has to unlearn every lesson they learned in the previous one yeah like in jaws the three things they never learned is one there is a shark. Two, they should close down the beach. And three, that they need a bigger boat. And these are three things they never learned. Yeah, because you have to repeat the same mistakes to put the characters in the same kind of jeopardy. Like the boats were getting smaller. Yes. Anything.

in the same kind of jeopardy. Like the boats were getting smaller. Yes. If anything. Well, that was my contribution to Jaws 2. That was when the studios were obsessing on the youth market, and the script that they had was dark and unfunny and not good. But it had some teenagers in it, because Brody's kids had gotten older.

So my take on it was, okay, if you're going to put teenagers in jeopardy, which was emerging as a horror trope or a meme, you know, let's really put teenagers in jeopardy. I invented this like seagoing car culture, cruising culture, where people get in their cars and cruise Van Nuys Boulevard or Hollywood Boulevard. It was like American graffiti, cruising. What about if you're a teenager and you live on an island and everybody sails and surfs and swims, that you'd have a bunch of teenagers with a bunch of boats who would do things collectively. And then when the shark comes, they get in trouble and then the sheriff has to ride to the rescue. So we had that. Go ahead, Carl. I'm sorry. So, yeah, we... And in Jaws 2, of course, we didn't have the luxury of hiding the shark.

Everybody knew what the shark looked like. So we contrived the fiery explosion. So now it was not only a bad shark, but it was a scar-faced shark. Now it was really mean. now now it was really mean well of course it all the sequel also boasts arguably the best tagline in movie history the the best uh um what yes advertising tagline just just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water right right right tell us something about murray hamilton we've done 200 of these shows and he's come up we've talked about old old Twilight Zone episodes. And The Hustler.

Eddie Deason was here talking about working with Murray in 1941. And one of our favorites. He was a wonderful actor. He's in a movie called Seconds with Rock Hudson. Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Rock Hudson and John Randolph. Yeah, right.

And he's wonderful. He's a wonderful, wonderful actor. The graduate. Of course, yes. But he had a drinking problem, which he kept under control most of the time. But there's a story in the Jaws log in the book about he went out, you know, he was out drinking one night and crossed the path of a skunk on the way. Oh, yeah. It's one of the good stories in the book.

He went to pet it. He thought it was a dog. Yeah. Pussycat, a little black and white pussycat. Oh, pussycat. Excuse me. So he got properly skunked and, you know, and he came into the hotel and fell asleep in the lobby and everybody, you know, the night what's that jeez what's that smell that's mr

so they had to burn his clothes and put him to bed upstairs and uh but but the next day he was you know he had you know he was always uh he always had it together on the set you know you could never tell that he was drinking he played that corrupt bureaucrat as well as anybody oh yeah he just had that kind of maybe a spielberg as i suppose always had an eye for casting but boy he's just perfect was he the first actor cast uh one of the first yeah i think roy was the first principal roy was the first principal and murray i think i think and lorraine and lorraine g Yeah. A lot of great stories in the Jaws log. And another drunk on this set was Robert Shaw.

Oh, boy. Hollow legs. Yes. Well, he's in that great British tradition of Richard Harris and Tom Courtney. Oh, Peter O'Toole. Peter O'Toole. Yeah, they could all bend the elbow. Yeah, they were all a tradition.

Yeah, Shaw, the famous Indianapolis speech, that was shot over a period of two days. And the first day, he put whiskey in the teacups and was really drinking. And by three in the afternoon, he was shit-faced. He started improvising around the speech. And he had largely crafted that speech from Sackler's work. And he was totally messing it up. And Stephen was very understanding. And when they wrapped at the end of the day, he apologized profusely to Stephen.

He said, I'm sorry. I realized I thought I could do it, but I... And Stephen said, don't worry. We got lots of film. We're back on the set tomorrow. We'll do it again. And Shaw said, I promise, not a drop until we wrap. And the second day, he shot it cold sober.

And the genius of Verna Fields' editing is that there's shots from the drunk day and there's shots from the sober day and you can't tell. Oh, that's fascinating. Unless you look at it on Blu-ray very closely, if his eyes are a little watery, that's the drunk

day. If his eyes are dry, that was the day that he did it sober. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes, like a doll's eyes.

When he comes at you, doesn't seem to be living until he bites you. And those black eyes roll over white and then, oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screaming. The ocean turns red in spite of all the pounding and the hollering. They all come in and they rip you to pieces. She must have used the cutaways to Scheider and Dreyfus to break them up.

Yeah, exactly. She had to do that. There's so many good stories I was starting to say in the Jaws log which we want people to get and want our listeners to get. And maybe we'll come back to them at the end.

But the story about Steve Spielberg leaving the island is wonderful. I was telling Gilbert on the phone how he beat a hasty retreat. Robert Shaw drinking with Thornton Wilder to all hours of the night. Full of great stories. But let's ask. Go ahead. Spielberg, to this day um follows that uh pattern the last shot of the film last shot of the production he's not there for that he's gone

he's gone and obviously not the rap party yeah right you know he said he sets up the shot get rehearses it gets it all right and and then he leaves. I'm told. And I heard Robert Shaw was like a real bastard to Richard Dreyfuss. Yes, yes. He was, you know, Richard was, you know,

Beverly Hills High School guy who had done two movies and a lot of television. You know, Richard played the little Jew in Gunsmoke. Oh, he's in Bewitched. Yeah, turns up in a lot of television. You know, Richard played the little Jew in Gunsmoke. Oh, he's in Bewitched. Yeah, turns up in a bunch of stuff. And Shaw, of course, was a real actor

and a real writer. He's got five published novels. He wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning play called The Man in the Glass Booth. He was, you know, he was the real deal. And he would tweak Richard. He would do things like when they're shooting Richard's close-up and

Shaw is off-camera, just as they put the sticks in, just before they clap the sticks for Dreyfus, Shaw would lean in and say, mind your mannerisms. Dreyfus, Shaw would like lean in and say, mind your mannerisms. Roll him. Did he say something about Paul Muni like if Jew actors come back into Vogue

or you might have a future? Does this ring a bell? It doesn't, but I'm sure that Sneaking in some anti-Semitic cracks He could do that. To get his goat? Yes, with all affection because he he knew Joe Dreyfuss was aggressive, you know, patently Jewish, you know, doody Kravitz, you know. Right, of course. Gilbert loves that picture.

Oh, yeah. It's a great film. Let's ask you, we started a talk before we turned the mics on about something, speaking of directing, something Gilbert and I are extremely fond of that you directed and that is because we had ed begley here a couple of weeks ago and gilbert and i were gushing about his performance brave performance in the son of the invisible man and the very uh criminally underrated amazon women on the moon yeah and you you did that with him your friend gary goodrow turns up in it yes and larry hankins and larry hankin who you, who you went to school with. But boy, that is a... And Gilbert and I were saying, it's directed by somebody who had obvious affection for those Universal Horror pictures.

Yes, yeah. You're really convinced you're watching a 30s Universal Horror movie. You got everything but Uno O'Connor in there. Yes. Yeah, the camera guy totally got it. You you know he lit it for black and white you know and and uh it was just just fun you know and you know you can't move the camera too much because in the 30s they didn't have very sophisticated dollies and cranes they if you did a dolly shot

you'd have to be pretty you know pretty circumspect about it. So, yeah, I really did my homework. I watched the James Whale movies. Yeah, it's so faithful. Yeah. Yeah. And the thing I like about it, it wound up being the key art for the poster campaign. They did that. Right.

The other thing I directed for that, it's an anthology for the listeners. Amazon Women on the Moon is an anthology picture with five directors. Find it. I will say to our listeners. Yeah. And, and there was one that didn't make the initial cut, but is in the DVD.

It's, it's a checkoff on a checkoff on wires. It's a fly. It's a flying version of a Chekhov play in which the Russian nobility are sipping tea at a dacha in the countryside, very Chekhovian, but

two or three of the characters fly. They fly in on wires, they fly out, and they make entrances and exits on wires. That was restored for the DVD? Because I haven't seen it since the movies. I think it's on the DVD. Oh, got to get my hands on that. And just getting back for a second,

did Shaw and Dreyfus ever get along with each other during the movie? No, they had an ongoing rivalry, animosity. Dreyfus got back at Shaw.

Shaw was, I think, smoking at the time or drinking. I think he may have been on a lunch break when Shaw was having a shot of whiskey with lunch. And he said, no, this is really a bad habit. I should stop it. And Dreyfus said, that's easy, and took the shot glass out of his hands and threw it over the side, which caused a gasp from the crew

because you don't take a man's drink and throw it away when he's still drinking. But Dreyfus did that. And it didn't make them love each other any much anymore. It could have only helped on screen because there's animosity in the relationship between Hooper and Quint. Yeah, that tension is there. And it works so well for the story that when Scheider says, you're not going to do this when we're out there, are you?

Fighting with each other. Yes, we are. Yeah, perfect. This is the perfect dynamics. And again, speaking of you directing, Carl, and Gilbert and I both watched this. We've both seen it, but we watched it again yesterday as the wonderful absent-minded waiter.

Oh, yeah, that works. It's just great. Seven minutes of bliss. It's just like a mini Steve Martin film. Yes. Yeah, it was originally, I guess he wrote it as a sketch for Sonny and Cher. I guess, not for himself,

I think it was probably for Sonny. People forget he was a writer on many sketch shows. Yeah. Including the Smothers Brothers with you and Glen Campbell. Yeah, that's where we met. So he had written it. And when we were at Paramount, when we'd gotten the contract to do the jerk at Paramount,

the guy was David Picker, who was president of Paramount at the time, actually understood Steve. He got Steve and saw that he was going to be a big star. So he signed him to the studio for like a three-picture deal. And as part of that, he said, you know, in the old days, if I was running a studio and we had an up-and-coming comic like Steve, comic like Steve, we'd put him in a couple of B pictures as a comic sidekick, you know, Jack Oakey or something, you know, some, some semi funny person. And, but the, so the screen audience would get to, you know, get to know the guy. And then, then when he was ready, you'd give him a vehicle to star in. Well, the studio system and those kinds of releases don't exist anymore,

but Picker's genius was, okay, we'll make a short, and we'll attach it to, I think it was going to go out with Grease, because we know Grease is going to be a big picture. And if we give the short to the exhibitors for nothing, we just splice it on so when they run Grease, they'll run the short, then the film audiences who are coming to the theaters to see a big movie, they'll see Steve Martin on the big screen, and they'll automatically accept him as a movie star.

Because at the moment he was a comic and he was starting to play big rooms like the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in LA. But 2,000 seaters, 2,500 seaters. He hadn't become a stadium comic yet. That was just as he was breaking. And then, uh, so he, he said, well, we'll do the short subject. And Carl, you're, you know, you and Steve are writing, you know, you, you can direct it. I said, great. Cause I was hoping to direct the movie when it came out. So I, I, I did as good a job as I could on the short, which was great.

We got our friends to be in it, Terry Garr and Buck Henry and some of the committee people in the kitchen, the kitchen staff. And I remember we shot for a day or two, and then we were done shooting. We only had the set for two days. or two and then we were done shooting we only had the set for two days and i went to dailies and i realized it was the first big thing i had directed with you know with big cameras and a real crew and a real set on a real lot and when i saw that it would cut together i was kind of walking we were walking back from the screening room and I basically went off where nobody could hear me and went, yeah, yeah, good, whew. I vis-audibly said yes.

That's nice. You had a moment for yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it did work out really well. It's so good. You know, it's funny. Larry Hankin did a short subject a year later called Solly's Diner, also a comedy, which was also nominated for an Academy Award. So I went, I was a member of the Academy, and on the live-action short subjects, they have a screening at the Academy.

You vote, you have to go to the screening to vote because, you know, you can't see the movies anywhere. So I went to the screening at the Academy for the five live-action short subjects. And I'm watching. And, you know, absent-minded waiter plays. It gets big laughs. And then comes a movie about paraplegics playing basketball. Wounded veterans. Oh, is that Inside Moves, Richard Donner's movie?

It was what Donner's movie was based on. It was a Canadian. I see. It was from the Canadian film board, which kind of stacked the deck in favor because most of the shorts made in those days were made by Canadians. So I saw the guys in the wheelchairs.

I said, oh, you know, when it comes to comedy versus guys in wheelchairs, the guys in wheelchairs win every time. So then Larry Hankin makes his short, which is a comedy, and we go to the screening, both, you know, A, so we can vote for it, and we're watching the other shorts, and, you know, they're not so good, and Larry's short plays very well. And then comes a short by Lynn Littman called Number Our Days.

And it's about Holocaust survivors living in Santa Monica, you know, 80-year-old people with tattoos on their arms. And I said to Hank, that's it. You know, you're done. You know the Academy voters. Yeah. You know, we had M.M. at walsh here and bill macy you're the third person we've had here associated with the uh gas station scene yes in the jerk which

is just a wonderful piece of comedy yes yeah how did you guys write i know that's that's that steve martin and carl reiner were carpooling to work and coming up with things because it was during the gas shortage. How did you guys sit down? What was your, what was your process? You and Steve? Well, they said,

uh, you know, Steve, Steve approached me and, uh, said, look, I know you've done it.

You did the comedy with prior and I'm doing a script. I have never written a movie. You know, we'd, can we collaborate? I said, sure. Of course. So we, we made a deal and they gave us a movie you know would can we collaborate i said sure of course

so we made a deal and they gave us a little office in the writer's building at paramount because it was still a paramount picture at that time and we'd show up when they had a couple ibm selectrics and yellow pads and pencils and nothing you know day after day looking at each other going well what about uh what if you know and, and then about after like two weeks of no progress whatsoever, Steve said, well, my manager thinks it should be about money because everybody's interested in money. I said, so we said, okay, something about money. And then Steve said, there's a line in my act that always gets a laugh. Whether the act is working or not, it's like a saver. And I hate to use it, but, you know, because as Gilbert knows, when you do something for your act in media, it kind of gets, you can't,

then when you do it in your act, they say, well, he stole that from his, you know, the film. So Steve says, I was born a poor black child. And then we, that it hit us. We got, wait a second. What if you were born a poor black child? You know what,

how would that play out later? I mean, you, you would grow up in a, in a fan. So we wrote the whole first, you know, the opening scenes of,

with the family in the Delta blues country in the South. And so that was the first scene we wrote the whole first, you know, the opening scenes with the family in the Delta Blues country in the South. And so that was the first scene we wrote. And then after that, it became a road movie. He hits the road and he winds up in L.A. And then there was a regime change at Paramount. And the new guys, Barry Diller and Mike Eisner didn't want to do any Steve Martin projects so they

outvoted David Picker. You were halfway through writing the script at this point? It was done. Oh it was done? No no it was half done and they weren't much interested in it and it needed a rewrite

so and I was unavailable or half done and they weren't much interested in it and it needed a rewrite. So, and I was unavailable or for some reason I couldn't work on the rewrite. So they got Michael Elias, who was another comedy writer who had really good chops and Steve knew him and trusted him. So Michael Elias and Steve worked on the last, you worked on the next couple of drafts. And then David Picker, as executive producer, made a great deal with Paramount. He said, look, you still owe us for two more movies, whether you make them or not. So you can either spend $500,000 or $800,000 of the studio's money on scripts, or you can giveve clear title to the short clear title to the screenplay that he wrote and we'll walk away and everybody's happy you don't have to make a steve martin movie

and we who want to make a steve martin movie can certainly place it elsewhere which they did they made a deal at universal like in a minute and a half and it became a universal picture a low budget comedy by the way like 3.1 million or something like that yeah we will return to gilbert godfrey's amazing colossal podcast after this this episode is brought to you by fx is the bear on disney plus in season three car me and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star. With Golden Globe and Emmy wins, the show starring Jeremy Allen White,

Io Debrey, and Maddie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Ten, how did you become Iron Ball's McGinty? Which we would you know we were going to ask that, Carl.

Yes, well we were they said, you know, do you want to be in the film? I said, yeah. You know, what scene? He said, well there's a scene that ends in a fight at this fancy Beverly Hills house which was the exterior was different from

the interior. But so I said, okay. So I showed up for my one day of filming as one of the four bad guys who Steve beats up. And I have some dialogue in the scene, walk and talk. And then the fight breaks out. And the last thing was the kick, which was kind of nerve wracking because, you know, we didn't have stunt doubles. Right. I mean, there was a fight.

There was a fight advisor on the set who showed and he showedve how to kick me in the walls without hurting me so talk about show business talk about trusting your fellow actor but so we we filmed the scene you know the kick and you know he he hops up and down he's hurt his foot and then uh in editing they've actually found the character didn't have a name. It was Thug 2, Thug 3, just the four guys, one of whom was a stuntman and a wrestler, Gene LaBelle. Anyway, and Lenny Montana from The Godfather. Oh, Luca Brasi. Luca Brasi's in that scene.

So it was in post-production that they put in the clank sound and then wrote the dialogue for the restaurant scene where the cut is, you know, you hear clank and then you cut to Bernadette Peters comforting

Steve said, oh, you had no way of knowing that was Iron Balls McGinty. It's just so fantastic. This is, you had no way of knowing that was Iron Balls McGinty. It's just so fantastic. The joke came together over time in shooting and post-production. One of the biggest laughs in the theater the first time I saw it, and it stayed with me. And I heard the big disappointment to Steve Martin was when he's singing You Belong to Me. Oh, it's such a sweet scene. Yeah.

Yeah, he's playing the ukulele. Yeah, he wanted it to be a touching moment. Yeah. But he said that people were, like, using that scene to go to the bathroom and buy popcorn. Yeah, that's, you know, that's the problem, you know. I mean, it's, and of course, you know, soon after that, he became one of, you know, wild and crazy guys. Right. And, you know, that, you know, and then he burnt out on performing comedy.

guys right and you know that you know and then he burnt out on performing comedy i mean sure soon after that when he was doing stadium shows he played out the season and they just didn't perform live again for 10 years i mean he just burnt out on it yeah wanted to do different things by the way only a couple years later he does he makes pennies from heaven with herbert ross and uh yeah boy i i'm i'm in, I'm in the group that thinks that film is sadly underrated and unappreciated. Yeah, I was not a fan of it. I mean, congratulations to Steve for learning how to tap dance. He's so good at it. And congratulations to Chris Walken, who has one of the greatest.

Yeah, he steals them. He steals them. Steals his scene great. Everybody forgot that Chris Walken was who has one of the greatest. Yeah, he steals them. He steals them. Steals his scene great. Everybody forgot that Chris Walken was a chorus boy on Broadway. He was a hopper, yeah. Yeah, he's a dancer. And he did a great job. Did Stanley Kubrick love the jerk?

Do you know anything about this? I have no idea. I'd heard that he wanted to work with Steve Martin because he loved the jerk so much. Well, sadly, nobody ever told Steve. Interesting. I heard that Christopher Walken, his dream in life really was to just be a song and dance man. I think that's true because he, you know, if you've ever,

I mean, my first job in the theater theater in summer stock in college where we were doing musical theater you know i i was a stage manager and i played small parts but there's something infectious about you know broadway musical theater that you could if you do that, you don't want to do anything. Anything else is not as much fun because every night is a new audience. Every night you get this adulation from a live audience, this incredible positive feedback. The one thing I haven't done is Broadway. I've done almost everything in show business.

But the Jaws log is currently, we're negotiating an option for someone to do it as a Broadway musical. How bizarre. I have no idea how they're going to do it. This has to happen, Carl. I don't know what the musical numbers are going to be, but it's a reputable composer-lyricist team who've had shows on Broadway.

And they think they can do it. So more power to them. I mean, I can't wait because I want, I think, Gilbert, correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we all want that moment, you know, five minutes, Mr. Gottfried, orchestra's in the pit. That's usually when Gilbert panics and wishes the theater would flood. Yes. So he doesn't have to go on.. Orchestra's in the pit. That's usually when Gilbert panics and wishes the theater would flood. Yes. So he doesn't have to go on. Maestro's in the pit. Overture, five minutes, mister.

You know, Gilbert, you wouldn't mind cannibalizing your act to put something, to make a movie from one of your stand-up bits. Oh, yeah. As Carl was saying that Steve did with the born-a-poor black child. Yeah, but I know that feeling, definitely, where you think, okay, now when I go up, they're going to all go, all right, yeah, I heard that joke already.

Yeah, yeah. It's a cross comics have to bear. I mean, when we were doing the Smothers show, we had like four working comics on the staff. Murray Roman, Steve, Bob Einstein was funny. John Hartford was a performer. I was a performer. And the Smothers, of course, had been a nightclub act for 20 years by that point. And there was always this moment where, you know, nobody in the writer's room can come up with a gag.

And you need a joke or you need a blackout for a sketch, and somebody who is a performer goes, all right, here's something that I know this works, because it's in my act, or I've heard it. And then you painfully give it up, and then it belongs to the ages after that. It's no longer yours, especially if some other actor delivers the line. That's the worst part.

They get the credit for being funny. You were discovered by, for lack of a better word, by Dick and Tom when you were performing in L.A. live with the committee? Yeah, at the Tiffany Theater right up on the Sunset Strip. Six nights a week, two shows a night, three on Saturday. That was a wonderful time. A lot of people came to see the show.

And it was fun to do. I mean, it was Los Angeles in 1968, right after the Summer of Love and all of that, sex, drugs, drugs and rock and roll and what a great writing staff yeah that was i mean lorenzo music and einstein who we had here who's nuts yes and then mason williams and alan bligh and and uh i don't know if pat paulson was in the writer's room too well a guy named cecil tuck who wrote with Pat was Pat's writer in the room who would do, you know, he specialized in the Paulson monologues. So Cecil Tuck, yeah.

And John Hartford was a great instrumentalist and a solo performer in his own right before. Not like Glen Campbell, but he was a talented onstage performer. And Steve, too. And, of course, Steve. Was on that writing staff. You described that experience on the Smothers Brothers show as all highs, no lows. Yeah. 30 million viewers a week.

Yeah. It's kind of inconceivable now, you know, the kind of numbers. In the three-network universe universe if you were a top 10 show you know like to say 30 30 million viewers a week you you became part of the culture you stuff that you did would wind up you know part of the culture people would be sure people would quote your own lines back water cooler show yeah treva silverman once said uh she she was a very successful writer on uh at mtm treva wrote the chuckles the clown episode of uh dick the the mary tyler moore mary tyler moore show and once time treva was a new yorker who traveled commuted

back and forth you know fly over country but one trip, she decided to get off the plane in Denver and rent a car and see America for a little while because she has some time on hiatus. So she gets off the plane, rents a car, and before she gets out of the rental car lot, 10 people have said to her, sorry about that, they're doing you know max max so smart they're doing get smart lines they're doing mary oh mary you know they they

were doing lines and and she fled back to la and said oh my god we're telling them what to say i don't know what to say until we write it and then she just came back with a you know convinced that the media had too much power and you you said you don't believe comedy could be taught yeah i think it's by the time you know what a sense of humor is, it's too late to get one. Somehow you're either funny or you're not. And you can learn the craft. I mean, you can teach somebody to do things in threes or to hold for a laugh. You can teach them mechanics. or to hold for a laugh.

You can teach them mechanics, but to be inspired to do it, to create it, is one of the unknowables. Like having an ear for music, maybe? Yeah. Just something you're born with? Or that you learn it at such an early age. I don't know how you would...

If they allowed this kind of experimentation, if they gave you a three-year-old and said, make a comedian out of this person, what would you have to do for the next 10 years to make that kid funny? You know, it would probably be cruel. I mean, I imagine. I would imagine so. You know, it would probably be cruel. I mean, I imagine. I would imagine so. You know,

what a great problem. I mean, just, Gilbert, we should ask our friends, if you were given an infant and told to make a comedian

out of him or her, how would you do that? I think your son is becoming a comedian. Yes. I think you're going to deal with that. My son, once my son learned the word penis, that became his punchline for everything.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it had a penis. It works. Ask you about some of these guest stars on the Smothers Brothers show. Oh, yeah. Because obviously the show was, you guys were on top of the world. We talked about it. It was a water cooler show.

It was a show on everybody's lips. Jonathan Winters, Moms Mabley, Liberace, Jack Benny, Woody Allen, George Burns, Mickey Rooney, Don Rickles. Anything stand out? Any story about anybody? Jack Benny, Woody Allen, George Burns, Mickey Rooney, Don Rickles. Anything stand out? Any story about anybody? Liberace was great because he was a very serious showman. He understood showbiz. And we had a sketch where Bob Einstein plays the first appearance of Officer Judy.

Oh, Officer Judy, yeah. Who stops Liberace from playing the piano and says, you're doing the minute waltz in 48 seconds. You're going too fast or something. It was a speeding ticket for playing too fast. And we were worried that Liberace was all full of himself and, you know, was doing Las Vegas. And it was,

you know, that guy and boy, he was, he was first at rehearsal. He was, you know, pure show business. He understood his responsibilities.

He understood his character as being kind of flamboyantly out there. And, and, and, you know, off stage, he wasn't nearly as camp as he was on stage. So you got to see in a variety show where people are sometimes doing things

outside their comfort zone for a laugh, you can judge a lot about a character, about an actor, you can judge a lot about a character, about an actor, if they would play outside their comfort zone and let somebody else get the laugh. Some never got it. Some were very full of themselves. And I heard like they say the Smothers Brothers came at a perfect time because all the old

greats were still around. Yeah. And when they accepted the Smothers Brothers, the older audience said, oh, okay. Yeah. That's what Bob,

that's what Bob said. Yeah. Yeah. Because the first two seasons were, which before the brothers inherited the show, you know, when they, when they were had,

uh, uh, some network approved producers and producers and like that, the network wanted television stars to do the show. And I guess they insisted on it. And the Smothers Brothers would reach out. And they would get people like Jack Benny and George Burns to do the show. And the Sunday night Bonanza audience, which was the audience that we took by force, Bonanza was the number one show. And then the Smothers Brothers came on the air and knocked him out of the

number one slot. So that Sunday night audience, which is especially in 1966, 67, 68, the Sunday night was the most watched night of television. Eight o'clock was the prime, you know, that was the Ed Sullivan slot. It was great to have a comedy show in there. So, yeah, having the established stars on made it acceptable.

And then once they became accepted, then they were just adorable scamps. Did you work with Groucho when he hosted a music scene? Yeah. What was that experience like? Well, David Steinberg was a Groucho when he hosted a music scene? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What was that experience like? Well, David Steinberg was a Groucho groupie. Right. And he desperately wanted the part.

There was a musical called Minnie's Boys. Oh, sure. That was about the Marx Brothers. We just had Peter Riegert here, who was in the New York production. Yeah. And Steinberg wanted that part, and he never got it. But he was a Groucho groupie, and he wanted to have him on the show. And Groucho was tentative, but he agreed to meet with the writers and David. So we went over to Groucho's house to pitch him on doing the show, trying to get him to agree.

And that was when Aaron Fleming was taking care of him. And he was frail, but still very funny. And we were admiring the posters on the wall because he had all this souvenirs of a career in show business, you know, pictures of the Marx Brothers with the King and Queen of England, you know, just this wonderful memorabilia. And we're looking at it, and we're gawking. I mean, we go, wow, you know, whoever thought.

And Groucho murmurs an aside to the two guys, writers, myself and one of the other writers, who were just within earshot. He said, because we were saying, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. And Groucho said, I would trade it all for one good erection. It's a great story. And I heard Tommy, Tommy Smothers didn't get along with, was it the president of the network? Bob Wright at CBS.

Yeah, when we were canceled, half of it was the network's concern with progressive politics and us being against the war in Vietnam and doing that, you know, being activists and all that. But the unsung half of that conflict was that Tommy and Bob Wright, who was, I think, the head of programming at CBS at the time, really, you know, disliked each other as people. And when CBS had to cancel the show they had to do it on some bullshit contractual terms because you know personal taste didn't matter you know if tommy was ignoring bob wright's notes and not taking his calls there's nothing right could do about it except cancel the show and the the

distrust level was so high toward the end of the series that uh tommy you know the and the network had a very very heavy hand in editing the show i mean if they didn't like something they would just take a meat cleaver to it because two inch high band tape which is how the show was recorded was it was very difficult to edit in those days and you didn't want to edit the show you would you could cut during a blackout but you know to edit in the middle of a scene was difficult and obvious and the network would just do some clumsy awful edits so in order to prevent the network from tampering with the show, Tommy read the contract very carefully.

And there's a, in every contract, there's what they call delivery terms. You know, you will deliver a two inch high band master tape with these technical qualifications and, you know, so many at such and such a time.

So Tommy figured out that he could get the, if he could get the tape to New York on a Friday, Friday night for Sunday air, he was within the limits of the contract. So he would hold back the show. He wouldn't show it to the network. He wouldn't preview it. And we had a guy, an intern whose principal job was on Friday morning. They'd give him the tape in the editing bay and he'd hand carry it. They'd buy him a ticket to New York.

He'd fly to New York, take a cab to NBC and deliver the tape of Sunday's show. And that drove the network crazy. Of course. The only thing that they did was the only thing they could do was they could preview it on closed circuit for the affiliates. And in the red states and all the, how shall I describe them? The mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, Neanderthal cousin fucking red state people would look at the show. Red State people would look at the show, and if they saw something they didn't like,

they would instruct the transmitting engineer to turn the sound down on Sunday night so that the audience would go, what? They wouldn't hear it. And then they'd turn the sound back up, and nobody would know. Everybody would think it was their TV set or it was a glitch, but that was the only way the Red state conservatives could censor the show. Did you know that, Gilbert? No. You were actually turning the volume down on the transmission.

Yeah, that came out in the trial. Because when the Smothers sued CBS for wrongful termination, CBS's defense was, well, you weren't satisfying the delivery requirements. You were in breach of contract. And in the depositions and in the discovery phase, they learned that the network was doing this to having the transmitter engineers do that stuff. Now let's get to Caveman with Ringo Starr. And Jack Guilford. Yeah. And Avery Schreiber. And Jack Guilford. Yeah. And Avery Schreiber.

And Avery Schreiber. Shelley Long. It was a great Dennis Quaid. Great cast. Yep. Yeah. I mean, Gilbert and I were talking about it. I mean, an ambitious undertaking to try to not only make a comedy out of One Million

Years B.C., but to not use dialogue for 90 minutes. Yeah. That was a challenge. And after the movie came out, a French director named Jean-Jacques Arnault made a movie of Clan of the Cave Bear, which was also about prehistoric man, you know, with Daryl Hannah playing the cave bear. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they made a big deal about having Anthony Burgess do the script, and, you know,, yeah. And they made a big deal about having Anthony Burgess do the script and, you know, he was an expert in linguistics and he could, they invented a language. So I,

I went to see a screening of it and the director was there. It was a, you know, New York screening. So I went up to Jean-Jacques

and I said, you know, I had a similar problem that you have and, you know, because there was no language and we have to make a movie without language. So I had to invent a language also. And he just turned his back on me and walked away.

Because he was a serious filmmaker. I see. You're only a comedian. I'm only a comedian. I was just doing a funny film. And yet John Matuszak, who was a a natural actor he was a you know football player of course a great football player but he was also a natural actor he got it he he could do gibberish you know atuka lunda lana he could do that stuff and make it sound like

dialogue it was he had he had that knack and and it's from that movie that Ringo married Barbara Bach. You were a matchmaker, Carl. I've been a matchmaker on two movies. On Dr. Detroit is where... Oh, Donna Dixon, right. Met Donna Dixon and fell for her. Very good. And I padded her part a little bit to give her more to do with Dan. So I have that. And then Ringo and Barbara both started Caveman with a different pair of partners.

Ringo was going with a wonderful photographer named Nancy Andrews. And Barbara was dating some Italian industrialist because that's what Bond girls did. If you were a Bond girl, you married an Italian industrialist. And she was of, I can name two Jewish Bond girls. She's one of them. Barbara Bach and Jane Seymour. Very good. He can also name two Jewish Bond villains, Carl. Ooh.

Yes. Gertrude? Well, the first one. Gertrude. Dr. No, Joseph Weissman. A notorious Jew. oh yes okay well the first one doctor no joseph joseph joseph weisman a notorious jew right and he was no tour aren't they all but and also a trick one yaffet koto i didn't you know i didn't know that we found out he was jewish we assumed he converted like Sammy

but no Jewish from childhood isn't that strange go figure I'm going to write an autobiography I want my autobiography to be called Jewish from childhood there is a biography I think it's a very serious autobiography Born This Way Who wasn't? There is a biography.

I think it's a very serious autobiography called Born This Way. You know, watching Caveman yesterday, it almost plays like a silent film. Because it's a lot of visual gags. Almost like Keaton's Three Ages. Yeah. Which I watched very carefully. I'm sure. And then I remember there's a gag in Caveman where the words come on the screen, 1 million BC, and then it says 1230 PM.

What, it says October 9th? Yeah. It turns out that I didn't know that, but I think that's John Lennon's birthday. It is. Yeah. I thought that was an intentional homage. No, no. That was just a fun coincidence.

It was the joke to say, you know, a million years ago, Tuesday, October 30th, or whatever the date was. And what was Ringo like to work with? He was great. You called Richard Lester for advice before you worked with Ringo? Yeah. Yeah. I had been in a movie called Petrulia, which shot in San Francisco.

Sure, great movie. Great movie. And all the committee, everybody in San Francisco, for movie trivia music buffs, it's the only movie in which a Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead appear and play. I love that picture. So I had a scene with George C. Scott, and that was directed by Richard Lester, and he was a great guy. He hung around the committee, appreciated what we did. He cast a lot of committee people in the movie.

So when I knew I was going to be working with Ringo, I called Richard Lester in London. I said, hey, what can you tell me about working with Ringo? And he said, well, he said, he's not a trained actor. I get that. He said, what I did, and I suggest you do it, is use two cameras. When you're shooting Ringo, it's going to be very hard to get him to match because no two takes are the same. And if you want to use him, if you want to match in editing, best to have him on an isolated camera on his close-ups so you've got something that will be synchronous that you can work with. So I took the advice and wherever I could shoot with two cameras, I had one on Ringo so I could edit.

And luckily, Dennis Quaid is preternaturally gifted at matching. He can remember exactly where his hands were and how his head was tipped when he read whatever line. We did some pickups on the dragonfly scene with the squishing. We did some pickups on that scene like seven weeks after we shot it. on that scene like seven weeks after we shot it in a different you know we we shot it in Durango Mexico and then we had to do a pick up a couple of shots that we needed for editing we did them on the back lot at Churubusco Studios in Mexico City and Dennis you know so the editor comes down to the set with film clips just to show Dennis you know what he was doing at the time and Dennis without you know in the first rehearsal, just nailed it,

just did all the same things he did seven weeks ago physically and no problem matching. And luckily I had another camera on Ringo, so I got all of Ringo's reactions. So it worked out great. And then Ringo was very conscientious about, if I told him I needed him to do something for camera, he would say, oh, it doesn't make any sense, but I know the camera needs me to do this, so I will.

I'll do that. And he was a pleasure. Barbara Goldbach, that's her name. Wow. There you go, Gil. Barbara Goldbach, the Jewish Bond girl. Daughter of a New York Jewish detective. Wow.

Her dad's a cop. Even more interesting, a Jew detective. Yes. And his daughter's a bond girl. What about the great Jack Guilford? We've had a couple of people here who've worked with him. Oh, the best. And we just adore him.

Yeah, he was wonderful. We were shooting in Mexico on Passover, and Jack's wife organized a seder for the crew in Mexico City. So in the middle of Mexico, we went up to some, there's a suburb in Mexico City. So in the middle of Mexico, we went up to some, there's a suburb of Mexico City called Polanco, which is like the Jewish,

it's the Beverly Hills of Mexico City. And we went to a Jewish center and had a real Seder with Haganahs and Jack Guilford and John Matuszak, they all answered, you know, did the four questions and i had a connection with gilford uh with uh zero mostel uh because they had done funny thing forum yeah on broadway And my, my uncle was an accountant who was partners with zero Mostel's brother.

It was, there was an accounting firm called Gottlieb and Mostel. Wow. Accountants. So I, I, I kind of knew about zero Mostel and I could talk to Jack about that. And then we talked about radio days and the blacklist.

I mean, you know, he was terribly affected, affected by the blacklist i mean you know he was terribly affected affected by the blacklist yeah uh and but a sweetheart madeline madeline guilford that was what was some of the stories he told you about the blacklist they it was so patently unfair there was a guy who had a chain of, a small chain of supermarkets in upstate New York. And it was a patriot. And he published at his own expense, uh,

eight page, you know, flyer throwaway called red channels in which he named names of commies and commie sympathizers. Oh, sure. With not much research going into it. I mean, just, you know, basically whoever he thought was and commie sympathizers. Oh, sure. With not much research going into it. I mean, just basically whoever he thought was a commie Jew.

Lee Grant was in there and got blacklisted. Yeah, and he would just put their names down and say they are Reds. And Jack was having a wonderful career in radio. He was on his way and doing very well in commercials and on radio. And then one day, you know, the calls just stopped coming. And then somebody said, have you seen this? And they showed him a copy of Red Channels in which he was named. And he said, it was New York City

everybody went to those meetings it was like New York in the 30s Russia was the great experiment and you know it was a lot of people what they called premature anti-fascists because they were against Hitler at one time and the only other people

who were against Hitler were Bolsheviks and you know Lindbergh hitler was the best thing ever so there was a lot of america firsters which was a movement that existed before our present everything all was new again yes i i was always fascinated when i heard that thing uh brief you know like the pre-fascist premature anti-fascists yeah yes i mean like when was it too early to be against hitler well as you said some of them just went to one meeting i had i had a screenwriting teacher who was friends with zero a gentleman gentleman named Arnaud Dussault. Yeah.

And he went up writing horror films in Mexico, like The Horror Express with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Sure. But he, you know, he went to a couple of meetings. He wasn't a communist. No. They were looking for alternatives. They were looking for, they were interested in ideas. Yeah, there seemed to be a lot of problems.

You know, the Stalinist, the revelations of the Stalin era had not surfaced yet. You know, Lillian Hellman refused to believe it even when it did happen. I think Lillian Hellman was an unreconstructed Stalinist. I hear, don't hold me to this. But, yeah, there's a wonderful Philip Roth novel called The Plot Against America where he does an alternative history where Lindbergh becomes president in 1938

and wants to sign a non-aggression pact with Hitler and start rounding up the Jews in the U.S. It's a very plausible, scary novel. It could happen here under certain circumstances. Yeah, we just lost Philip Roth, too. Tell us, as we wrap it up, Carl, our fans would be upset if we didn't ask you about working with the great Randall and the great Klugman on The Odd Couple.

They, you know, again, consummate prose. The, Tony Randall, once, I saw him,

like, we were at the table read because on a weekly show, the first time the actors see the script is basically, you know, gets delivered to their house the night before the table read because on a weekly show, the first time the actors see the script is basically, it gets delivered to their house the night before the table read, and that's the show you're going to shoot that week.

So we're at the table read, and Tony Randall is reading, and he gets to a point in the script. He throws the script across the room and says, don't underline. Everybody goes, what? He says, if the line or the word requires emphasis, trust the actor to understand that in context of the dialogue. Don't tell me that this is an important line by underlining it.

It doesn't make it important if it's not, if it's a misplaced emphasis. Just don't underline. Don't tell me when to underline. Don't tell me when to accent a word. I'll find it. He's very angry about it. He felt that we were demeaning the craft of acting by indicating with italics or underlining. Interesting.

The certain words required emphasis. He said it should be obvious from the text. How did you like Klugman? How did you find him? He was great. I mean, he would just, you know, smoke cigars and go off to the bookies between takes.

I mean, he was a serious gambling guy. So they were those two characters. Very, very much so. Yeah, I mean, Tony Randall was fussy and meticulous, and Klugman was kind of a sloppy guy. And both Oscar Madisons liked the ponies and liked to bet. I mean, of course, you've heard the stories about Matthau. Yeah.

I heard that Carol Matthau had to borrow money to bury Matthau because he had gone through a lot. But he's in Westwood Cemetery. I think he's over there. It's an expensive cemetery. He got in. Yeah. What a wonderful actor. Carl, I hope this thing happens.

By the way, we could talk to you for hours. We could talk to you about your love of pirate movies and how you grew up in New York reading pulps and listening to radio dramas and all this cool stuff. I hope this Jaws thing happens. I hope this Jaws log musical, it's a fascinating... Me too. I just want to be backstage and see the chorus girls coming down the spiral staircase clattering in their high heels in their skimpy costumes and the stage manager saying, 10 minutes, please. Places for the opening.

Five minutes, Ms. Bryce. That's the show business I signed up for 50 years ago. is interesting the last thing i have on my card is that is that you heard spielberg lament the fact that that he wouldn't be able to make half the movies of his favorite directors because the studio system was over yeah yeah i found that interesting he he said that to uh he he was uh uh i was writing uh he was gonna accept the fred zinneman award or something i was i was gonna ghost write some remarks for him so So we were chatting at the time. We were still seeing each other on a more or less regular basis. And he told a story to me.

He was at Fox working on something. The guy who was the executive in charge of editorial was a guy named William Hornbeck. And Stephen didn't know who Hornbeck was, and there was no IMDB at that time. So he casually mentioned, he says, you were an editor before you became the vice president in charge of editorial. The guy says, yeah.

He says, I cut a few films. So Stephen said, well, what films did you do? So he started naming them. You know, High Noon, Gentleman's Agreement, you know, just a cascade of Hollywood history. And Steven said, you know, just listening to him, I realized that even, and this was after, you know, Indiana Jones and after E.T.

And, you know, this was after, this was when he was already Steven Spielberg. He said, I don't have any trouble getting a movie made, but I won't have time in my life to do what these guys did when they were doing two, three movies a year. And my favorite unsung director is a guy named Michael Curtiz. Sure. We were just talking about him the other night.

Yeah, and if you look at Curtiz's credits, he's got like 80 or 100 films. And in the same year, he directed Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy. Amazing. What other director does that? It's just impossible these days. Or Victor Fleming making The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind, like, within 18 months, even though there are other directors. Well, that used to be a movie trivia joke. What do these three films have in common?

Wizard of Oz. Gone with the Wind. Gone with the Wind and Captain's Courageous with Spencer Tracy. Right. They were all directed by Victor Fleming. And so how come there are no Victor Fleming festivals? That's interesting. Interesting.

And if you look. Go ahead. No, no, you go. I was just going to say, you're still out there. You're still speaking at Jaws conventions. You're busy. This thing was just optioned. I'm writing a musical. You're busy. This thing was just optioned. I'm writing a musical.

You're writing a musical. It takes place in Australia in 1916. It's about Australian vaudeville. Wow. I would love to see that. Oh, yeah. Based on a true story. My ex-wife's uncle, Lou Handman,

was a songwriter, composer, in the golden age of songwriting. And in 1916, he was a young vaudeville guy who couldn't get a job on Broadway. So he and his partner, there was a song and dance act. Lou played the piano and Jack Cook danced. Song boys from song land. They build themselves. And they couldn't get a job.

So they stowed away on a freighter headed for the British Empire somewhere because they figured the British Empire was fighting World War I, and there was a shortage of young men. So if they went somewhere where all the young men were at war, at least they could get a job. So they stowed away. They were arrested on ship. They were discovered.

The captain thought they were spies, German spies, because they were Jews from New York, Hebrews from New York. So he jailed them as spies. They took them off the ship in chains in Auckland, New Zealand. And they said, no, no, we're not spies. We're entertainers. And they said, no, no, we're not spies. We're entertainers. And they got an expert witness who was an American vaudevillian who happened to be playing in Auckland.

And he was brought into court and he vouched for them. He talked to them. He said, yeah, they are who they say they are. They're green, but they're not spies. And then a guy in the back of the courtroom, this is all true. It's in newspaper clippings of the period. I have the newspaper clippings. Wow. A guy raises his hand and says, if you please your worship, the judge, if you will release these boys, I will put them to work in my theater.

My name is Benjamin Fuller. I own the Princess Theater in downtown Auckland. So the judge said, okay. They had played the piano in the courtroom to convince, so they left the courtroom. They went on stage. They were billed as the stowaways because they had made all the newspapers down under

as these two guys who stowed away aboard a ship. They were billed as the stowaways. They were a hit. They were held over, and then Fuller signed them to a contract. And for the next year and a half, they played all over Australia and New Zealand. And Lou fell in love. And when America entered the war,

Lou was a patriot. And he, he enlisted, he went to the American consulate in Johannesburg, South Africa, where they were playing at the time and signed up for the draft. In late 1917, Lou came back to America and was sent to Camp Upton on Long Island where Sergeant Irving Berlin was putting together a soldier show.

And he was the piano player. This is great history. Yeah and as a piano player he played some of his songs for Irving Berlin and said who's publishing you? He says nobody yet. So Berlin said come to work for me. You can be a song

plugger. I need you. You're the rehearsal pianist for our big soldier show that we're doing on Broadway and sure enough Lou went to work for Irving Berlin and soon after published Are You Lonesome Tonight, which was written in 1922 and debuted by my mother-in-law when she was 17 and a vaudeville star.

She toured with her uncle Lou. Very cool. So the movie is about the stowing away away on a ship being discovered becoming a star and then leaving it to go come to america and write are you lonesome tonight and a hundred other hits but there's also personal history in it yeah yeah yeah that's how i found the story i didn't even know there was an australian vaudeville no i suppose it makes sense and i can't wait to see this movie now exciting yeah yeah and you should write that autobiography uh peripheral vision carl that you've been threatening to write yeah and and i want to plug your books the jaws log

i want to plug your david crosby books long time gone and since then we didn't even get into that we'll talk to you about that another time. And the little blue book for filmmakers. Yep. A handy-dandy manual. But I urge our listeners, if you love Jaws, as we love Jaws, as Gilbert and I, and don't listen to us, listen to John Landis and John Krasinski and Brian Singer and Rob Reiner and Steve Martin, who wrote the blurbs for the book. It is terrific.

I've read it several times. It's arguably the best book about the making of a film. Thank you. And come back and we'll just talk Errol Flynn movies or Michael Curtin's movies. I'd love to. Now, Errol Flynn. You guys are fun.

Thank you. Errol Flynn hated the Jews, right? Yes. That's the rumor the Jews, right? Yes. That's the rumor. And he was from Australia. He was from Tasmania. That's right. And he liked the young stuff, too.

Oh, yes. So they say. What was that? He wanted to title his autobiography, In Like Me. Yes. Carl, so much we didn't get to. We'll talk to you about Delta House next time and Richard Pryor. You've just done too much.

And how many people, by the way, worked with a Marx brother and a Beatle? Oh, my God. Not many. That's right. Wow. I never thought of it that way. It's a short list. It's a very short list.

And Spielberg. So thanks for coming. Thanks for schle way. It's a short list. It's a very short list. And Spielberg. So thanks for coming. Thanks for schlepping. My pleasure. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. And we've been talking to the great Carl Gottlieb, or as he's known to his true friends, Iron Balls. Yeah. They couldn't even at least give you a Jewish name like Iron Balls Shapiro?

I always wondered if the Jews had gone west, would all the western states have names like, you know, Shapiro's crossing Fort Feinstein, Feinstein, you know, Gilbert, Gilbert, you know, Gelbrecht corners, you know, all those names. We'll talk to you next time too, about what you gave Steven for close encounters. But I was just happy to be here for the historic meeting of Gottlieb and Gottfried. Oh, that's right. Oh, one

question before we go. I heard that Lorraine Gary's yeah, Lorraine Gary's maiden name is Lorraine Gottfried. You know, I don't know that to be a fact, but I will ask her.

I don't, I didn't, I always do her as Gary. But I wouldn't be surprised. She married a Sheinberg. Yes, yes, she did. I mean, I mean, I know 10,000 of our fans are going to go, oh, well, of course. And here's the entire history. Do we have 10,000 fans? Well, they're the ones listening.

Tune in by accident. Carl, we'll let you know when it's up. Okay. And we'll be in touch. Our listeners will love this one. It's just got so much stuff in it. I look forward to it. Thank you, man.

Thank you. Take care. Have love this one. It's just got so much stuff in it. I look forward to it. Thank you, man. Thank you. Take care. Have a good one. You know, while you were playing that just now, I had the craziest fantasy that I could rise up, float, right down the end of this cornet. Right through here.

Through these valves. Right along this tube. Come right up against your lips. And give you a kiss. Why didn't you? I didn't want to get spit on me Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast is produced by Dara Gottfried and Frank Santapadre

with audio production by Frank Verderosa web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden Greg Pair and John Bradley Seals special audio contributions by John Beach special thanks to Paul Rayburn and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, 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. Thank you.