Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 233. Ken Levine

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

Emmy-winning comedy writer-director-producer Ken Levine ("M*A*S*H," "Cheers," "Frasier," "The Simpsons") joins Gilbert and Frank for a captivating conversation about the golden age of Top 40 radio, the genius of Vin Scully (and Larry Gelbart), the legacy of Bob and Ray and the importance of preserving showbiz history. Also, Tony Randall plays wingman, Traci Lords teaches comedy, Cliff Clavin meets Johnny Carson and Ken fulfills his dream of becoming a professional baseball announcer. PLUS: "AfterMASH"! Wolfman Jack! Ken names a minor league team! Gilbert gets a one-cent residual check! And the worst pop songs ever recorded! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Hey out there, this is Diane Ladd, and you've been listening to Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. We're once again recording at Earwolf with our engineer Frank Furtarosa. You know, we toss around the term Renaissance Man a lot on

this show, but this week's guest actually fits the bill. He's a producer, director, author, former disc jockey, blogger, podcaster, professional baseball announcer, and one of the most prolific comedy writers of the last 40 years. He's written for dozens of popular and critically acclaimed TV series, including Cheers, The Jeffersons, The Tony Randall Show, The Tracy Ullman Show, Wings, Becker, Almost Perfect, a show he also created with partner David Isaacs, The Simpsons, Frasier, and Mesh. He's also a director, helming episodes of everything from Just Shoot Me, Dharma and Greg. Everybody loves Raymond. At the ripe old age of 35, he fulfilled his lifelong dream by becoming a professional

baseball play-by-play announcer, going to call hundreds of major league games for the Baltimore Oreos, Seattle Mariners. The Baltimore Oreos? I think he also, I think the Baltimore peanut butter cups.

He worked with two. Oh, my God. And the Baltimore Hydra cookies. Uh-huh, yeah. Pick it up from there. Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres. Seattle Mariners, and San Diego Padres. So we have to ask him about bad baseball movies.

In a very long and very busy career, he's worked with talents such as Tom Hanks, Johnny Carson, Mary Tyler Moore, John Cleese, Nathan Lane, George Siegel, Ben Scully, John Candy, and apparently even Gilbert Gottfried. As well as amazing Colossal Podcast guests Ed Asner, Jay Thomas, Paul Dooley, Jamie Farr, Stephen Weber, and Alan Alda. His podcast launched in 2017 about old things related to show business is called Hollywood Levine. Hollywood and Levine. Holly, we'll get to that later. Why would I call it Hollywood and Levine? Why would he call it Hollywood and Levine. Hollywood and Levine. Holly, we'll get to that later. Why would I call it Hollywood and Levine? Why would he call it Hollywood and Levine?

Ah, yes, yes, it makes sense now. Well, like that street Hollywood and Veen. Yes, we've all been around there. And this essential and exhaustive blog called The Best Blogs of

2011 by Time Magazine by Ken Levine. Welcome to the show. A man of many interests and a guy who claims he was once kissed by a boner. Let me make sure I pronounce this correctly. Let me make sure I pronounce this correctly. It's Rabbi Kochen Lavokner. I think that's right. Lavokner.

Lavokner, yeah. Congrats, Gil. You got the mistakes in the intro down to 12. Yeah. Wow. I also worked with Raphael for Call. You forgot to mention that. Raphael for Call. Ever Dodger shortstop.

That's right. Nice work. And so it's Ken Levine. Yes. Levine, yeah. The great Ken Levine is here. East of the Mississippi River, it's Levine. But west of the Mississippi River, it's Levine.

And do they have a lot of Shapiros there, too? Yeah, Shapiros. And, you know, when I was a top 40 disc jockey, they wouldn't let me use, even Ken Levine sounded way too Jewish. So I was Beaver Cleaver. That was my disc jockey name, Beaver Cleaver. That was my disc jockey name, Beaver Cleaver. Now, one person who's a total Gentile but calls herself Levine is Avril Levine. But she's got a G in there.

Yeah, she's got a G in there. I don't know what that is. G for Gentile. I think that's a French-Canadian thing. Now, okay. We worked together on Becker. That's right. I directed you in an episode of Becker. With Ted Danson.

And it was really one of the highlights of your career, obviously, since you didn't remember that. Now, you said, or Frank actually said, that you put me on a list. I think Schindler did, too. But you put me on a list. It's a blog entry. Yeah, I did a blog post. One of your blog entries, Ken, was people you were, it was a Thanksgiving, I think, and it was people you were thankful to have worked with.

Right. And I also mentioned that there was like a category of people who I directed who have no recollection of being directed by me. And you were up on that list. I molded you. I molded you. But that's a steam company, Joan Plowright and some other people. Tell Joan Plowright, no, no, no, no, Joan, baby, let me tell you how this is funny.

You can't really do that with her. baby let me tell you how this is funny yeah no you can't really do that with her now another person we have to get to is uh you know contrary to popular belief that she could turn the world on with her smile are you going right in for that huh wow and suddenly take a nothing day and make it all seem worthwhile. Well, Arnie Kogan told us that we should ask you about your experiences with Mary, the America sweetheart. Can I just say, years ago when I saw Ordinary People, now up until then she was cute, lovable Mary. That was her. Yeah.

That was her. Yeah. That was her. Yeah. In Ordinary People, when I was watching that movie where she's a cold, emotionless bitch, I'm going, I remember watching going, ooh, I think she plays this a little too well. Yeah. She would not have needed me to direct her. That was Mary. But I can say that she was very professional.

She always knew her lines and she always showed up on time. She beat the crap out of us most days. Which Mary? Which reincarnation of that was the one with James Farentino? Well, there were a series of Mary flops, and ours was, I think, three out of seven. Ours was a show called Mary. It was 1985, and it starred Mary and James Farentino. We had a good cast. John Astin.

Oh, yes. We discovered Katie Segal. It was her first job. It was really a good cast, and I'm actually very proud of those shows. But the problem is that Mary at the time was coming off a movie career that was starting to really stall. And so they said, look, you go back into television and it'll be like Cosby. Cosby came back into TV and was getting 40 shares. And so she thought, OK, I'll do that. And she was really on board until the show premiered and we got a 26 share.

Now, today shows get a point zero eight share. We got a 26 share. We had something like 40 million people watching our show, but it wasn't a 40 share. And so Mary was very unhappy. And from that point on, it was like dragging a dead horse across the finish line to shoot it. Wow. Particularly disillusioning to you in light of the fact that the Dick Van Dyke show was everything to you, was one of the reasons you became a comedy writer, if not the reason.

I mean, I loved Laura Petri. I absolutely loved Laura Petri. And one of the reasons I became a comedy writer was, wait a minute, you could write jokes and get somebody who looks like Laura Petri? I don't have to throw a spiral? So for me to actually be working with Mary, I'll tell you one story. We had her over for dinner one night and she was sitting in my living room and we're talking about the Dick Van Dyke show. show and she said i've never told this story before she said that you know we were talking about the fact that there were twin beds in their bedroom back then and she said you know when am i supposed to fuck rob and it was like wow Wow, hearing Laura Petrie say that in my living room was very surreal. Yeah.

Wow. You know, it just didn't work out. I just don't think she really wanted to do a series at the time, and it just was one of those things. Yeah. But you had great admiration for Grant Tinker. With my flops, we can also move into Mannequin 2 and then Aftermash.

Well, I think Gilbert definitely wants to talk about Aftermash. Get them out of the way. And definitely Mannequin 2, because the first one is so well-respected. You know, there were so many unanswered questions. We wrote Mannequin 1. We're uncredited, but We wrote Mannequin 1. We're uncredited, but we wrote Mannequin 1. By we, I mean my partner, David Isaacs.

Oh, so you wrote both Mannequin pictures. Yes, yes, right. Okay, so we wrote the good one, too. I remember the first one being good. It was good. Yeah, it was good. It was kind of fun. And the second one, they had a different cast, and it was not so fun. And the second one, they had a different cast and it was not so fun. And the second one,

we actually got screen credit. We called our agent and said, do we want this? And he said, well, yeah, because you're going to get royalties. And so he said, okay, but anytime the studio puts names on the screen that weren't in the original draft, you have to go through arbitration. And any time you go through arbitration, the writers always prepare a statement. And the statements are always this impassioned plea. This was my story. I gave a kidney to write this script. Well, what are we going to say?

I mean, you know, we didn't really like this movie. So we just wrote, yeah, we agree. That's it. That's what we wrote. And we won. And I went to see it. I was broadcasting for the Baltimore Orioles. Yeah, Gilbert.

Orioles. It's a bird. It's a bird, you see. It's a bird. Oreos. It's a bird. It's a bird, you see. It's a bird. And we were in Detroit, and we had a night off,

and I went to see the premiere at a big theater in Detroit, me and six people. That was it. That was it. Six people. And now in the second one, who was the black actor who was playing the gay character? Oh, gee, I got to forget his name. He passed away.

Oh. Yeah. But at any rate, he was funny. Yeah. You know, this black actor playing a, you know, flamingly gay character. And in the poster for the second one, they had a picture of him, and it said, and look who's back. So there is one person from the original. Yeah, that's right.

He was back. Oh, Mayshock Taylor from Designing Women. Oh, yes. It's the oh yeah politically incorrect appalling movie that you could possibly imagine now did you have any dealings with kim cattrall no actually we did not we did not go on the the set you know when we wrote our draft, it was set in Los Angeles. And so it was set, of course, in a department store. So we wanted to give the department store flavor and color. And we had this whole scene where the lead character is being shown around the department store and being told that this was the first escalator ever used in the United States and Greta Garbo used to get her makeup

over there at that makeup case and we did all this research. Well, they reset it in Philadelphia, but they kept all of that stuff. So it's like Greta Garbo goes to Philadelphia to get her lipstick? What? Typical. Yeah.

Well, I guess all those movie stars had to travel long distances to Hollywood to do each one of their movies. Well, there's no good rouge in Hollywood. You got to fly to Philadelphia to get the right rouge. And the movies were black and white then. Yes. That's true too. Who cares? Right.

They'd have to take the train in every morning really early to catch one to Hollywood. Ken, we go in no order as we said, but we were talking about how the Dick Van Dyke show was an influence on you. And I know you also were a Soupy fan, and you were a Jack Benny fan, but I also found it interesting your mom was in TV. Yes, my mom was kind of the original Vanna White. How interesting. Back in the early days of television, they would do live commercials,

and my mom was the live model, commercials and my mom was the live model and she and my father would go to say channel 9 at 6 15 and they'd set up all of these dishes and then they would do a commercial at 6 30 and my mom would be pointing out all of these dishes and call richmond 8 9 4 2 1 to of these dishes and call Richmond 89421 to order these dishes. Then when the commercial was over, they would pack them up and then they would go to channel 13 and set them up at 720 because they had a 740 commercial there. And then they pack it up and then they go to channel 5. And meanwhile, the guy at channel 5 is packing up his knives. You know, there was a great episode of the honeymooners

remember where they go on live tv chef of the future yeah well that was my mom how cool was the future yeah it was great yeah i have some great pictures at home of my mom standing up in front of a camera touting the the wonders of veldaine, whatever the hell that was. Like Carol Merrill. Anybody remember her from Let's Make a Deal? Sure, I do. I do, yeah. Carol Merrill, door number one. So it was sort of destined that you would, in a way, that you would end up in television.

Well, no, I think it was destined I'd end up in radio because I did not get my mother's looks. So tell us. Yeah, she had the looks. So tell us. Yeah, she had the looks. So I wound up in radio as, like I said, a top 40 disc jockey. Right, as Beaver Cleaver. As Beaver Cleaver, yeah. Spinning the hits. Yeah.

You know, going through those days, I mean, going through the research about your Beaver Cleaver days, really funny stuff. And you wanted to be funny on the air. Was that a recurring problem that you were told just play the damn records? Yeah, no one thought I was funny. I don't have a voice like you. If I had a voice like you, they'd think I was funny. Gilbert's blessed that way.

They would just say, just shut up and play the fucking records you're not funny and I found that the only way that I got respect in radio was to get out of it because once I moved from radio to television and started selling tv scripts I was filling in doing a weekend disc jockey shift in Los Angeles at a station called 10Q as Beaver Cleaver. And at the time, I was the head writer of MASH. And everyone is saying, God, this guy is like a radio genius. It's the same shit I did in San Bernardino. The Jimmy Hoffa jokes.

I mean, on one of your podcasts, audio from yeah from one of those top 40 gigs and you're doing jimmy hoffa jokes i'm doing jimmy i'm doing julius and ethel rosenberg yes jokes on a top 40 station uh yeah yeah i was kind of out of my mind uh and i always worked at the other station you know there was usually two competing top 40 stations in any market. And like in San Francisco, the big station was KFRC. I was on KYA. In Los Angeles, it was KHJ. I was on 10Q.

In Detroit, it was CKLW. I was on WDRQ. So I was always on the other station. And so the stations were always just a revolving door and a new program director would come in and they would hear this guy with a real light voice and fire me. But I have to tell them this is the story about being fired that I'm most proud of. Okay. It's 1973 and I'm doing six to midnight at KMEN in San Bernardino, which is way out in God knows where past Los Angeles. Okay. And a new program director comes in and they don't

want to fire me because they don't want to have to pay severance and they don't want to pay unemployment insurance. So what they try to do is get you to quit. So what he said to me was, okay, we're going to change your time slot. We're going to put you on from midnight to six. And I said, come on, if you want to fire me, just fire me. No, no, we want you on from midnight to six. I said, really, you do not want to do that. And he goes, your port tonight at midnight. So I did. And I showed up and for the first half hour, I'm, you know, playing the records and doing

the format. And then at 1230, I said, you know, a lot of stations are playing albums these days, you know, especially on the FM, you know, albums are very popular. And so I'm going to kind of kick back and play my favorite album in its entirety. And then I played Fiddle Around the Roof in Yiddish. On a Top 40 station. On a Top 40 station, yeah. Well, the hotline is ringing, and I'm just ignoring it.

And probably by Annaatevka, I hear the car roar into the parking lot. It's the program director, and he comes in, and you're fired. I said, I told you. I told you. Hang on. They do a reprise of Matchmaker. That's great. And so he then had to do the rest of the show

from 1 until 6 in the morning. You were on 99X in New York? I remember that station very well. Yeah. Wow. That was really fun being on the air in New York. Remember 99X? Hill was a Top 40 station. Oh, I don't know. PLJ was around then. Oh, PLJ,

sure. That was more album oriented like NEW back then. Yeah, weJ, sure. That was more album-oriented like NEW back then. Right, yeah. We were top 40. In fact, Jay Thomas did The Mornings. Oh, our friend Jay. Yeah. Now, you mentioned a song that was a favorite.

It's still a big favorite of mine for the wrong reasons. The Frank Sinatra cover version of Mrs. Robinsoninson oh yeah it's on his oh my god maybe the worst song ever ever it's like frank it's like frank crossed over you know it's like he wanted to be hip and he wanted to sing with the kids, but he still had that Rat Pack gene. And so if you listen to the lyrics, he messes with the lyrics. I imagine Paul Simon's head exploded. We've played it on this show a lot. We've played it on this show.

Yeah, okay. Because he says, well, how's your bird, Mrs. Robinson? Jilly. Jilly loves you more than you will know. Yeah. Oh, it's just terrible. It's like, seriously, Frank, just, you know, do Old Man River and call it a career. Big Bam Bam Baby's pretty bad, too.

That was that time period. And the kids are twisting. There was that weird time period when the top five songs would be like The Who, Sammy Davis Jr., The Beatles, The Carpenters. The Carpenters.

In a God of DeVita is number one, and number two is It Must Be Him by Vicky Carr. Wow. Great days. Great days, Ken. In fact, since you brought it up, Gil, at one point on his blog, it's great. Ken is talking about the records he used to spin. And you put out a list. Oh, yes.

You had this list running a couple years. The worst pop songs of all time. Yeah. And MacArthur Park shows up on here, which is noteworthy to us because Gilbert sang it. We'll send you the clip. Gilbert sang it with Jimmy Webb on this very podcast. I could see you singing it. I can't imagine him.

Strangely enough, he has a sense of humor about it. One of the worst. thing that we found out interviewing jimmy webb is everyone would listen to that song and think oh the incredible symbolism what does uh someone left a cake out in the rain mean you know no one knew and he says that he was once in the park it raining, and he saw a piece of cake on the floor. You know, just lying there. It's about a real breakup. It's about something that really happened in his life. But he has a, strangely enough, he has a sense of humor about it.

Yeah, no, he is, I've met him a couple of times. Yeah, he's cool. In fact, you know, at one time we were even talking about maybe writing a musical together, which would be kind of fun. Interesting. He also said, and I wanted to go there and kick his ass when he told me this, that he got offered to play Vegas for like a few weeks in a row where he would just play MacArthur's Park on the piano once and get something like $40,000 a week.

That's more than one song, but yeah. Some crazy amount of money. But it's a long song. I mean, it is seven minutes. Yeah, yeah. You said you filled in for the Wolfman in your radio days, too. Yes, that was really bizarre. You know, Bob Smith, Jewish guy, that's who Wolfman Jack is.

Seriously. He was from Brooklyn. Yeah, I know. His real name is Bob Smith. And he would talk like this. How are you? Nice to see you. Bum a cigarette.

And then go on the air. Oh, baby. How's your little beaches? So I filled in and he was on a station called XCRB, which is a Mexican station at 1090 with 450 million watts. And it shot straight up the West Coast. It went from Tijuana, Mexico to Thule, Greenland. And it was a Mexican station. So what I would have to do is come in in the morning and record my show.

I'd record like a four-hour show. And then I would have to take the tape, box them all up, and drive down to the Hollywood Greyhound bus station and put them on the 1240 bus to Chula Vista, and then somebody would be there to meet the bus and take the tapes and drive over the border. And at 9 o'clock that night, there I am. Amazing. Covering 72 states. You paid your dues in show business, Ken. Yeah, yeah.

It was really fun. And how was it that you actually got into TV? You were writing scripts, but. Yeah, well, like I said, I was a top 40 disc jockey and I was getting fired a lot. And I figured, you know, top 40 disc jockey and I was getting fired a lot. And I figured, you know, there must be a better way. So I met my partner, David Isaacs. We were in the same Army Reserve Unit.

It was an Armed Forces Radio Reserve Unit. So, you know, worse comes to worse. We're called up and it's good morning, Vietnam. And so we did we decided to try writing scripts and we would write scripts at night. I would go off, do a radio job, get fired in two months and come back and we'd work on scripts and I'd get another job and get fired. And, you know, we we worked on more scripts than than i had time on the air and um eventually uh one day my mother was playing golf with the story editor of the jeffersons serendipity yeah yeah and uh you know and he oh, God, it's bad enough I have a woman in the foursome here. But she's going, oh, my son is a writer and you have to read his stuff.

And he said, OK, just have him send me something. So we sent one of our spec scripts, a Mary Tyler Moore show that had been rejected by Mary Tyler Moore. And they liked it. And they invited us to come in and pitch The Jeffersons, and they liked one of our ideas, and so we sold it. So the first script that we ever did was The Jeffersons, and then we were banned from The Jeffersons. I didn't see that in the research.

What happened? Yes, okay. Well, we were banned from the Jeffersons. And what happened was they used to tape. There were two tapings, a 5.30 and then an 8 o'clock. So we went to the 5.30 taping and one of the executive producers was doing the warm-up. And he was an elderly gentleman and had a little trouble hearing had a hearing aid and he was introducing everybody on the floor you know

and there's the craft services guy Elmer and a guy schlepping the cable everybody but the writers and we thought well it must obviously just be an oversight. So now it's the 8 o'clock show, and we have our friends, our family. As far as we know, this is the only time we're ever going to have a television show. So again, he's introducing everybody but us. And finally, somebody in our party raises their hand and says, excuse me, who wrote tonight's episode? Now, picture this. We're sitting in the front row and my date.

I like to refer to he has a hearing aid, but also loud enough for everyone in this studio and the studio next door to hear. She yells out, hey, they're sitting right here, fucker. Fantastic. Yeah. We were banned from the Jeffersons. Welcome to show business. Now get out.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I like those turning points, though. When we have guests on the show, you know, there's always those moments where something happens. You know, we talk about the turning point.

I mean, first of all, that your mother wound up playing golf with this guy. Exactly. Which is just great timing for you guys. If my mom played Mahjong, I would still be doing mornings in Houston somewhere. Nice stroke of luck. Yeah. While Gilbert tries to remember who our guest is. And what's your name?

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Hey everybody, this is Tommy James and you're listening to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. The sun is rising most definitely gail and frank went out to be now they're back so they can be on their amazing colossal podcast kids time to get back to gilbert and frank's amazing colossal podcast. So let's go. How did you meet Gary Owens, who as people of our generation would know him, beautiful downtown Burbank? Yes, I got a job in 1969. I was at UCLA at the time, and I got a job as a sports intern at KMPC Radio. And that was the big full-service radio station in Los Angeles. And they had great personalities. They carried the Rams and the Angels and UCLA basketball, that type of thing.

And I got a job, minimum wage, writing down the scores and writing the sports reports for the half-hour newscast. And so I met Gary, and I would give Gary comedy material. And he liked it and would use it on the air. He never paid me. I never asked him to. And from time to time, he would even let me go on the air and do bits with him, which was very nice, very gracious. So one day I get a call.

Would you be available tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock to meet with George Slaughter, who was at the time the showrunner of Laugh-In? Sure. And Laugh-In in 1969, it was at the height of its popularity. It was the number one show in the world. And Laugh-In in 1969, it was at the height of its popularity. It was the number one show in the world. And I like, okay. So I go down there and apparently Gary, unsolicited, had given him some of the pages of the comedy material that I wrote for Gary and George liked it and offered me a job as a writer on laugh in, which was like $50,000 a year to be working on the number one show in America.

And I had to turn it down because it would have been full time. And, uh, I would have lost my school deferment and I would have wound up drafted in a couple of months. I would have wound up in Vietnam. So it killed me, but I had to turn it down. Yeah. So you're almost in television before you got into television. Exactly. Exactly. And you know, Gary was a wonderful guy, a wonderful mentor. And in his book, he talks about the fact that he discovered me.

And he asked, would it be okay to say that? And I said, absolutely. I'm proud to say that you discovered me. What a guest he would have made on this show, Gilbert. Gary Owen. And he had that whole other career. I mean, yes, hilarious on laughing, but that whole other career in animation as a voiceover guy. The voice of Space Ghost and all that wonderful stuff that he did.

Yeah, Roger Ramjet. Roger Ramjet. How could I forget? Where Roger Ramjet and his eagles fighting for our freedom. We fly with him through outer space not to join him, but to feed him. You can remember that, but you can't remember being directed by me? Selective memory, Ken. But I once

asked Gary, why are you doing all these cartoon voices? And he said, and I can't do his voice, but you know, Frank maybe could do it better, but you know, he said, because they pay residuals for seven to 20 years. And I'm like, wow, okay. And I later did a voice on a Simpsons episode that we wrote. And just last week, I got a check for one cent.

Oh, you're still getting those checks? He was right. He was right. That's so funny because at home in my bathroom, I have a check in a frame for one cent. And I remember I put it there, hung it up. And then a year later, they sent me a message saying uh we have it in our records that you were uh sent a check for a penny but we have no it doesn't seem to have been deposited

so could we send you another one so they sent me another penny check. Incredible. Yeah, I once got a letter from MTM saying, well, we went over the books and we overpaid you by three cents. Would you please send the three cents back?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha. That Simpsons episode you referenced, by the way, is a wonderful one. Oh, thank you. Vance and Homer. And you wound up naming the minor league team the Isotopes, which is a fun piece of trivia that came out of that episode. I know. That's kind of my legacy because now in Albuquerque,

the AAA team is called the Isotopes. And when they did that, I got a lot of calls from the TV stations and newspapers in Albuquerque asking, you know, how we came up with it. And I said, you know, you're really not going to like the answer. you know, you're really not going to like the answer. We were just looking for the stupidest name we could come up with that usually these towns will name a team somehow after their chief industry. Right. And since they had, you know, the nuclear power plant, you know, we're going, well, let's see.

The atoms, the protons, the isotopes sounded funny, and we put that in and went to lunch. And now that's my legacy in show business is that there was a team named for me. And I went down there a few years ago and got a chance to throw out the first pitch, and I was meeting some of the players, and they explained to the players that, you know, I'm the guy that came up with the name. And one of the players said, oh, great. So it's as a result of you that people around the league make ass fun of me.

And I said, you know, well, fucking hit better and you can get to the majors. That's the right answer. Yeah. Now, you worked with Alan Carr. What was that great movie? Well, this is the Alan Carr story, which is one of my favorites. Yes. Yeah.

Alan Carr was a... Can't Stop the Music was the one you were trying to think of. Yes. With... Bruce Jenner. Yeah. Bruce Jenner. Wasn't Steve...

Was Steve Guttenberg... Steve Guttenberg, Valerie Perrine, and the Village People. Yes. Who could forget? You know, you list those names. That movie killed every one of their careers. And Nancy Walker, who directed it. Oh, geez.

Yeah. He also did Grease. He also did Grease. Yep. And he was involved with the Bee Gees. And at the time, he was this very flamboyant Hollywood character. He lived up in Benedict Canyon in Ingrid Bergman's old house. He had a giant Oscar statue in the front lawn. He had a King Tut disco built into his basement.

His parties were famous. So we get hired to write a TV pilot for him. And we meet him one day, and he kind of reminds you of Paul Williams a little bit on steroids. And so we then go off and come up with the outline. And we can only meet with him at the end of the day at like 630 because at the time we were on MASH. So we plan to meet him at 630 up at his house, the Hillhaven Lodge or some stupid thing he called it. And so we go up there and it's like 6.30 and they say, well, he's still on this set.

He's running a little bit late, but go on out to the patio and, you know, we have some refreshments for you. So we go out to this patio and there's a bottle of wine and this giant, has to be like a $300 ice mountain of shellfish, lobster and crab and stuff. So we're eating this stuff. We finish this bottle of wine. We're getting really loopy. He has a ceramic flamingo and we're thinking, can we steal the flamingo? Is there any way? Would he notice out of our briefcase, these two legs sticking up from the flamingo? So we're already giddy and laughing. And finally we hear, hello, hello, I'll be right there.

And he sweeps in. You got to, again, picture like a Paul Williams, little cherub guy. He's like, you know, five foot two. He's wearing nothing but a flowing white caftan and thick cold cream on his face. Fantastic. Okay.

And we're trying hard not to laugh. And he has the outline and we're going over it like, okay, in this scene, I think maybe the girl should know about the thing. Okay. Yeah, fine. Okay. Okay. we can do this you know and we're we're dying we're dying and I'm looking out of the corner of my eye because I can't look at him so I'm looking out of the corner of my eye and I see the fucking flamingo

and that's killing me okay so we finally we have this meeting and we go okay we'll work on that outline and get going on the first draft. And we walk outside and both of us just fall on the ground, rolling around that giant Oscar statue for 10 minutes. That's great. Laughing.

That's great. It's like, that's Hollywood, people. That is Hollywood. There's no laughter like the laughter when you actually can't laugh. Right. When you're in church. For like 45 minutes. Yeah, your rib cage hurts because you're holding it in.

You're looking at this guy, and you're looking at the flamingo. And I'm just thinking to myself, okay, if somebody were filming this particular note session for YouTube or whatever, it would look like a typical story conference. Okay, there's a producer giving notes and there are two writers taking down notes, except that the producer is just wearing a caftan and cold cream on his face. And there's an empty bottle of wine and a flamingo. Well, to give him his due, he also produced that terrible Oscar telecast. That's right. Snow White and Rob Lowe. Rob Lowe and Snow White, yeah.

Oh, boy. Yeah. That ended a career, too, for a while. And we have something else in common that I also worked with Tracy Lord. Did you? Yes. I was doing this really awful reality show where it was like celebrity paranormal. And we're like, we have to be ghost hunters.

And one of the things, remember in Ghost, in order for a ghost to make contact with a person they have to enter a person's body and you know like um patrick swayze yeah had to empty whoopie goldberg and then whoopie goldberg could hug. To me more. To me more. Yeah. So this serial killer, who's the ghost, allegedly in this building. Hiding in her vagina?

Yes. He has to use her to enter Tracy Lord's. So we're standing around a fire with tracy lords chanting please come in me come in me come in me and she and this was a bad reality show you said yes oh boy was it ever and it's like it sounded very well rehearsed. So what was your business dealings with? Well, this was like around 2001, 2002, something like that, when like the Osbournes were a popular show.

And it was kind of a trend to have actual celebrities hosting sitcoms and things. And so we got a call from a studio saying, Tracy Lourdes wants to do a sitcom. Do you want to meet Tracy Lourdes? And we go, yeah, okay, we'll meet Tracy Lourdes. Fine. So we go up and we meet Tracy Lourdes and we talk to her. And she seemed, you know meet Tracy Lords. Fine. So we go up and we meet Tracy Lords, and we talk to her. And she seemed, you know, very nice. She actually looked pretty good.

And so we went off, and I had this insane idea of doing the Tracy Lords Family Show, which is basically a porn star trying to go legit, but everywhere she goes, her past catches up with her. So we go and we meet with her again, and we're pitching this idea. And she starts in explaining to us comedy, why this is funny and why this is not funny. And I'm thinking to myself, this is the nadir of my career, being taught comedy by Tracy Lords.

Didn't she call you out later? Yeah, because I posted that story on my blog. Right, right. Yeah. And she called me an asshole. She knows assholes. I heard another Tracy Lord story that she was doing like a TV show with, I think, Penn and Teller. And she had her ideas and they had theirs.

And at one point she lost her temper and screamed out, why is everybody fucking with me? This is a perfect time for us to have a child in the booth, by the way. We have a young man who won a contest who's sitting in the next booth. How old is this youngster? How old is this youngster? How old is this youngster? How old is this gentleman? He's a lot older now. I'll tell you that.

Yes. He's 10. No, he's 15. Okay, that's better. I feel better now. Yeah. Okay, he's 15. I didn't mean to refer to you as a child.

I thought he was like five or something. Let's talk about the journey, too. You know, we go all over the place here, as I said, but we're trying to track the career. You got booted off the Jeffersons. I won't even ask about the Bay City Amusement Company, although you're pretty funny about it on your blog. Oh, I got to hear this. But Pat McCormick's in it, so we're tempted to ask about it. Yeah, Pat McCormick was in it playing an old Jewish writer.

Perfect. A six-foot-six Irishman. That was our first pilot, and that didn't go very well. But every writer has pilots and shows that didn't work. But I got a chance to meet Pat McCormick, so that was a good experience. Yeah, you know, and if you listen to this show, you know there's been Pat McCormick stories. I mean, Ron Friedman, Arnie Kogan, Ronnie Schell.

Now, you're familiar with the helicopter story, I guess. You know, I am familiar with the helicopter story, and now every time a helicopter flies around overhead, I'm looking up to see if Arnie Kogan is in it. In L.A., that's constantly. They're constantly buzzing helicopters. We'll come back to Pat later, but you got to write the Tony Randall show, which was a show, a Tarsus and Patchett show that I really liked.

Yeah, we always wanted to do a show at MTM because that was really like Camelot. And we got a MASH assignment and that turned out to be really good for us. The MASH episode was like our golden ticket. So we got a job writing a freelance episode of the Tony Randall show. And, you know, as a writer, it's like one of the great moments of your life when somebody offers you staff job for the first time. It's like, wow, I have arrived. So we turn in this Tony Randall episode and Jay calls us. Jay goes, yeah, yeah, we got your script guys. And, uh, yeah,

there's some good things in here. Uh, yeah, we have some notes, but, uh, yeah, there's some good things in here. And, um, you want to work here? Like what? Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, your script is really good. Uh, you want, you really want to work here well yeah okay well we'll call your agent like that's it that was the big moment so yeah we worked on the tony randall show and at the time it was tom patchett and jay tarsus two brilliant guys two brilliant guys and they were the show runners of the bob newhart show uh during its heyday and uh and Tom created Alf and they did Buffalo Bill oh yes brilliant brilliant guys Molly Dots go to Manhattan Molly Dodd yeah and um uh yeah so I forgot what I was saying actually This is probably where you cut in for a commercial. Oh, where you got a staff job.

Yeah. Okay. So our staff was Patchett and Tarsus, Gary David Goldberg, who later went on to create Family Ties, and Hugh Wilson, who later went on to do WKRP and directed Police Academy and First Wives Club and everything. That was the staff. That's a murderer's row yeah that was that was great we we were the newbies and i have to say tony randall was great because

i was single at the time and i would bring dates to come to watch the filming and then we would go down onto the stage after the show and you know i'd introduce her to the cast you know the things you try to do to get laid you know and uh i'd introduce her to tony randall and tony always would go oh my god we couldn't do this show without ken ken is so funny ken is so brilliant and uh so tony randall was really my wingman. How many people do better? Yeah. It's great, too, because you've met so many heroes. You're a Neil Simon fan.

You love The Odd Couple. So now, you know, you met Mary Tyler Moore after you worshipped the Van Dyke Show. Now you're meeting Tony Randall. It's kind of one of the fun perks of a comedy writer's life. Yeah, really. I kind of feel like Zelig, you know, that I've met all these different people, especially since I've, you know, traveled in two different worlds with television and also baseball. Got a chance to meet Raphael Fricall. rafael for call references uh tell us how you since you brought it up and and again we'll we'll try to keep tracking the writing career but at the age of 35 you decided you know what i think i'm going to try to do this once and for all i'm going to i'm going to fulfill this dream or at least pursue this dream when i was eight years old i first heard the Dodgers in Los Angeles and I first heard Vin Scully.

And you know how all kids want to be baseball players. And then there's that day when you realize you just don't have the athletic ability to do it. Fortunately for me, I was seven at that time. But when I heard Vin Scully, I thought, wow, I could be an announcer. I could travel with the team. I could go to all the games. I could travel. I could go to Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and get my makeup. You know, I could do all this stuff. So I wanted to be a baseball announcer.

And Vin Scully was always my number one idol. And then when I was 35, and again, I have Mary Tyler Moore to thank because we had just finished the Mary Tyler Moore experience. And I thought, you know, I had one of those is that all there is moments. Sure. I had worked in television. I had won an Emmy. I had been on top rated shows and I still felt that there was something missing. And so I said, you know what, if I don't pursue this now, I never will. So for two years, I went to the upper deck of Dodger Stadium with a tape recorder and just recorded games and learned how to do baseball

play-by-play. I sat in the top section because the seats were unreserved. You know, if somebody's paying $50 for a seat, they don't want some idiot, you know, sitting next to him going, there's a line driver, race it to Love Field. But if you're sitting on the top deck and all those people are drunk and you got the guys with the pinwheel hats and everybody sitting up there, they don't care. And it was really fun because eventually there were a core of regulars who would come every night and they would bring binoculars because the players were just ants, you know,

when you're sitting up there, they would bring binoculars and they would pass me notes, who's warming up in the bullpen, that sort of thing. And I would buy them all beer. And it was, it was great. And the thing is I paid $2 and 50 cents for each seat. And I would buy two seats, for each seat. And I would buy two seats, one for me and one for my equipment. I had a mixer. I had a crowd mic.

I mean, I really went the whole way. Well, for game four of the World Series this year, I sat in those same seats. Oh, and condolences, by the way. A thousand dollars. Wow. A thousand dollars is what it cost for that same fucking seat two bucks in 1985 yeah wow yeah 250 wow and so you said and so you you finally you took these tapes and you sent them what to every team no uh i said to my wife, who is a saint, I said, you know, wouldn't it be fun to spend like a bucolic summer somewhere where I could call baseball and, you know, it would be just kind of

fun. We had young kids at the time and she begrudgingly said, okay. And I gave her a list of all of the minor league teams. There was something like 120 of them. And I said, you check off only the places that you would want to go, and those are the only places that I will send my tape. I was kind of hoping that she would check off 65. She checked off 20. And so I sent the tapes to only those 20 teams i see and i got three offers i got the pacific north west league i mean i think eugene oregon i think um somewhere in florida

and syracuse which is triple a at the time they were the tor Toronto Blue Jays AAA affiliate. And I took that, and my wife stupidly thought Syracuse was going to be like Tanglewood. There's salt mines in Syracuse. After one year of Syracuse, my wife said to me, look, if I catch you in bed with another woman, possibly we can go to counseling and work it out. If you want to go back to Syracuse, I'm getting a divorce. That's a great line. She laid a great line on you. Just recently, my wife was talking to this young guy,

and she brought up in conversation david letterman the kid had heard of him no idea who david letter oh i see where you're going here so i mean this this isn't like carol lloyd or something it's david letterman so you you are it's very, just like it is to Frank and I, to remind people, because they forget there are these, nobody knows who Groucho Marx is nowadays. We even have a printout from one of your blogs. Much less Zeppo. Ken, you said Google these people, and you list Kaufman and Hart, Bob and Ray, Nat Hyken, Stan Freeberg, Chuck Jones. Hoffman and Hart, Bob and Ray, Nat Hyken, Stan Freeberg, Chuck Jones. Because that's something that recurs on your blog is you lamenting the fact that people don't know who these people are anymore, these icons. You know, I was a real student of comedy, and I knew of the great writers who were before me.

That was true. And who the great actors, the great comics were, Borscht Belt guys. I knew all of that. You know, when I was a kid, I would try to get my parents to take me to Vegas so I could see comedians. I saw Jack Benny. I saw Danny Thomas. I saw Bob Newhart. You know, I wanted to see them.

I didn't particularly want to see Sammy Davis. I wanted to see Bob Newhart didn't particularly want to see Sammy Davis. I wanted to see Bob Newhart. And it kind of bothers me, and I know I sound like, hey, kids, get off my lawn. But, you know, it breaks my heart that a lot of young people feel, well, if it took place before I was born, it's not really important. And the truth is, everything that you are laughing at really is just a version of something that somebody else created years and years ago. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing colossal podcast after this.

Yeah, you do this thing I should tell our listeners, too. Your blog is wonderful, but you do this thing where you have guest bloggers, and sometimes you'll do guest bloggers from beyond the grave. You had one with Chaplin. Yeah, yeah. Chaplin, he was a bitch, though. I mean, it took me weeks. It took me weeks because he was inhabiting Tracy Lourdes at the time.

But it was a blog post from Chaplin saying, hey, kids, look me up. Look into my work. Yeah. You might recognize some of these things. Right. Keaton, too. And it opens a whole world to you because these these people are funny i taught a course at usc a few years ago in basically was a survey of comedy in the 20th century and i played him a phil silvers show it was written by nat heitken and i said you you think you've seen bullshitters before? You have never seen a guy like this.

And I played the show, and it was the Commander Speak Up episode with the monkey. I'm telling you, from minute two through the end of the show, those millennials were roaring with laughter. How about that? You know, it's like, there's great stuff out there. Just discover it. Yeah, well, there's that sad story of you working with Bob Elliott, and nobody knew who he was when you came in to guest on the show.

I was directing a show called Late Line back in New York that starred Al Franken, poor Al Franken. Yeah. And we had Bob Elliott from Bob and Ray come and do some voiceovers. And he showed up at noon and it was great. I got to have lunch and got my picture with Bob Elliott because Bob and Ray were like idols of mine. And I bring him down to the stage and we're going to pre-record all of this stuff, but

it's camera blocking day. So there's all the cameramen and boom operators and everybody that the Jefferson warmup guy introduced, but us and, uh, and I get everybody's attention and I say, excuse me, everybody, we have a very special guest on the stage right now. This is Bob Elliott. on the stage right now this is bob elliott crickets nothing and bob turns to me and he goes 50 years of show business and it was worth it all for that one moment brilliant yeah i mean obviously it's something you try to do with your blog and your podcast i mean they're both steeped in history we've done 240 of these we're trying to do the same thing wow i'm on episode 96 yeah but you're getting there i'm

getting there we're trying to keep this this history alive these people's names out there you know yeah it's it's a it's a mission and what drives me crazy is when I'll read something by an entertainment writer, you know, like, you know, a critique, you know, a review of a movie or something. And you go, this guy doesn't understand. This guy doesn't know anything about show business. He doesn't remember where everything stems from. Yeah. You know what? That's the case in baseball, too.

A few years ago, I was hosting Dodger Talk, and I was in spring training with the team, and we were in Jupiter, Florida to play the Cardinals. And it's before the game, and I'm in the dugout with our beat reporters from the L.A. Times and Daily News and everything. And they're all young guys. You know, they're all in their 30s. And Joe Torre was our manager, and Joe was chatting with us. And then he saw that Red Shandings was standing at the batting cage.

All the famers. And he goes, oh, guys, I'll be right back. I just got to say hi to Red. So he goes off, and I'm like, wow, there's Red Shandings. And all of these reporters are like, who's that? Who's that? And it's like, really? You guys cover baseball, and you don't know who Red Shandings is?

That's amazing. It's funny because we just did the terrible werewolf movies. Yeah. And that reminds me of another six hour show what's that that's a six hour show no we did we do we do these little mini episodes on thursdays where we just riff on stuff we love we did bad bad werewolf films so there was a review of the benicio del toro wolf man and they they said they should have put something in it where he doesn't want to be a werewolf

and he tries to escape, you know, be cured of it. And they say like the Incredible Hulk. And I remember thinking no, like the Wolfman.

I read that same review. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that's the easiest connection. The Wolfman's real name was Bob Smith. Even the one in the movie. Okay, here's some trivia. You're a music expert.

What was the top 40 hit that had the Wolfman on it? Clap for the Wolfman by the Guess Who. You are good. I knew I couldn't stump you with that one. Let's talk a little MASH. Okay. Sure. And Gilbert, I think Gilbert

wants to ask about after MASH. You want to embarrass him again, don't you? Yes. Yes. That was a terrible show. It was a terrible show, but I bought a house. There you go. I still have the house. That's a hell of a silver lining.

Yeah. It was like, I guess after MASH being such a monster hit, no one was willing to let it go. Well, the reason that I got involved in it was because Larry Gelbart, who created MASH and ran it for the first four years,

he came back to do after MASH and it was a chance to work with Larry Gelbart. And that's like, if you want to be a pitcher and Sandy Koufax says, hey, you want to work with me Gelbart. And that's like if you want to be a pitcher and Sandy Koufax says, hey, you want to work with me for a year? So it was a great experience in that I got a chance to work with Larry Gelbart. But this show started out.

We got a 49 share when we premiered. Wow. And by the end of the year, we get a 19. Wow. And by the end of the year, we get a 19. Wow. How many episodes of After Mash aired? Actually, it got renewed

for a second season. I think probably 30. Right. Yeah, something like that. So it was William Christopher, Harry Morgan, and Jamie. right yeah something like that so it was it was uh william christopher harry and jamie farr and harry james yeah and you and and and david and and larry and i assume a couple of other behind the scenes people yeah dennis koenig was another writer and it was yeah that was that was pretty much it yeah we had jamie here on the show lovely Lovely guy. We pretty much destroyed the MASH legacy in 30 episodes.

Well, you know, with all the reboots that are happening, Ken. I think it's time to reboot after MASH. Yeah. I mean, just the premise. The premise, they go back to the United States and they work in a veterans hospital. You know, and I was always kidding that, you know, we're going to make our money on the merchandise. Okay?

We're going to make the merchandise on all these patient action figures that 20th Century Fox could sell. Yeah. That was not a great career move. We had Alan here just last week. I guess I told you on email that he was coming.

And just, you know, what a presence. I mean, it's not often, we've had 250 guests in here, some big people, and it's not often that Gilbert and I feel any kind of intimidation. Oh, yeah. But we've both found ourselves, and he's a lovely guy. Sure. Not in any way, not trying to be intimidating in any manner, but there's something about the man

and his presence. You know, I sense that you guys are a little intimidated by me. A little bit. It's a little bit, okay? Okay, I'm getting that vibe. You don't have to be, okay? I'm just a regular guy. We're hoping you wouldn't pick up on it.

Of course, with me, first you have to remind me who you are. And then I get intimidated. But we asked him some Harry Morgan stuff and some David Ogden Steyer stories. And then he gave a list of how many actresses he's kissed. Yeah, it was in his book.

It was in his first book. I don't have the list with me. But when we have Alan back, we'll certainly bring that up to him. But you wrote a couple of classic episodes, you and David. How many did you write? We wrote 19 episodes, and we were involved with 60 episodes. That's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. And POV, of course, is a landmark episode. We wrote the point of view. Now, how many different episodes, how many different versions of MASH sequels have there been? There was that one after MASH. There was also a pilot called Walter.

Oh, yeah, the radar thing. Yeah, radar thing. And that didn't go anywhere. That was just a pilot. That never made it to air. Right. Yeah, radar thing. And that didn't go anywhere. That was just a pilot. That never made it to air. Right. Yeah. But tell us about Gelbart since you bring him up.

And there's that great story on your blog about the Stanley Donnan movie, which blew me away. Yeah. Larry Gelbart was, well, first of all, he was like Mozart. Okay. I mean, this guy was amazing. art. Okay. I mean, this guy was amazing. And at one point I had mentioned that there was a particular episode of mash that he had written. That was my favorite. And Larry used to write all of his scripts in longhand on legal pads. So the next day he had made a Xerox copy of his first draft of that script for me, which was incredibly nice.

And I'm looking, and he wrote it in Sharpie, and there were like no crossouts, no lines and stuff like that. And I said, well, wait a minute, I don't understand. So you write it in longhand, and then you clean it up and write a second version? And he goes, no, there's no second version. That's it. So it's like Mozart, you know, where, you know, he would just write the notes and that was it. Gilbert was so funny. We were working one day with him and we were dictating a scene to a secretary and it was a long speech. Somebody had a long speech and Larry is just going off so funny, so fast. And the secretary is like trying to take it down and she was pretty good,

but Larry was going so fast. And she said, wait, wait, stop. I can't get all of this. Larry said, just get half and kept going. Wow. Yeah. Wow. He really was amazing. And the Stanley Donnan story, Stanley Donnan was going to direct a movie called Blame It Unreal. Yeah. And he wasn't happy with the script.

And he gave the script to Larry on Friday afternoon and said, would you do me a favor and read the script and give me some notes? Share your thoughts. He said, okay. And Larry called him back on Sunday and said, look, I hope this is okay. said, look, I hope this is okay. Instead of giving you notes, I decided to rewrite it and do a complete draft.

And Larry wrote an entire draft, and he says, use it, don't use it, whatever you want. And yeah, and the movie is basically Larry's draft. And he did that over a weekend. And can I mention, to bring the level of intellect up, that Blame It on Rio is one of my favorite jerk-off movies. There's a kid in the booth! I don't care! It really, what was that girl's name?

Young Demi Moore was in that. Demi Moore and someone Johnson. Yeah, Michelle Johnson. Michelle Johnson, who is married to Matt Williams, the baseball player. Oh. Oh, you are correct. Very good. Very, very good.

Yeah, Joe Bologna. And Michael Caine. Yeah, and Michael Caine. Yeah. Right. Oh, and I think Valerie, is Valerie Harper in it? Valerie Harper. I have no idea. Yes, she is. Is she? Yeah, and Michael Kane. Oh, and I think Valerie, is Valerie Harper? Valerie Harper. I have no idea. She is. Is she? Yeah, she is.

But the guy wrote a screenplay in a weekend. In a weekend. It's staggering. It was great. Here's the thing about Larry. Go ahead, Ken, I'm sorry. The thing about Larry is, you know, writers, no matter how long you've been doing this, when you finish a script and you turn it in, you're insecure.

And you would turn in a script to Larry, he would take it home at 5.30, and he would call you at home at 6.30 to tell you how much you loved the script. I mean, he would go right home and read it and call you up. Because he knew that you were anxious. About that. Yeah. I also love that late in life you decided to write a spec Dick Van Dyke show. Yes.

50 years after the fact. And you sent it to our pal Bill Persky. Yes, I sent it to Bill Persky because I thought, you know, I always wanted to write on the Dick Van Dyke Show. So as kind of a fun thing for the blog, I wrote an episode and I thought, okay, maybe I can get Carl Reiner, Bill Persky, somebody to give me notes. And I gave it to Bill Persky and Persky was very complimentary. And I spoke to him and I said, okay, so if you received this script, what would your letter be back to me? And he said, I would send a car for you. We would do this episode. We would give you an assignment.

for you. We would do this episode. We would give you an assignment. And for me, that was like winning an Emmy. How about that? That I was a good enough writer that even though it was 50 years too late, that I was good enough to write a Dick Van Dyke show. And it was really interesting because we're on the phone and he's giving me notes. And so we're talking about this scene and that scene. Well, I think Rob would do this, and then Laura would do that, and Buddy would do this. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, I'm having an actual story conference, and we're talking about these characters as if they're real. That's great.

As if this is a draft that we're going to do that they're going to film the next week that's great that that was great did you ever show it to carl you know i sent it to carl and uh carl swore that he would read it and give me notes but but he never did he never did that's okay i got plenty of time i got plenty of time. I got plenty of time. I think what's funny about you talking about MASH is you laugh at all the people over the years who find such symbolism in the show and such deep meaning in the show. Yes. Can you speak about that for a second? Yes.

There's none of it. None in the scripts that we wrote. And I've seen articles in intellectual journals where they talk about Hawkeye as the Antichrist and what this means. And this is an ode to restoration comedy. And it's like, are you kidding? We're just trying to come up with a fucking joke so we can go to lunch. People forget that it's a job. Yeah, yeah. And I have to say, look, we were 26 years old

and we'd moved up and we were the head writers of MASH. And if we had any idea of how iconic the show would become, we would be paralyzed. At the time, it's like, this is the show we're working on.

We're just trying to make it as good as we possibly can. And I'll be honest with you, I have a tough time watching a number of episodes of Bar Mash because I say to myself, give me one more day, one more day to do a rewrite. I can make this so much better. I can improve this story turn. There's a much better joke here.

This is kind of obvious. Obviously, the audience sees it and loves it for what it is. But it still drives me crazy because I know I could do it better now. That's kind of like how actors watch themselves on camera and say, Oh, God, what kind of performance am I giving here? Yeah. And it's like. I guess.

I haven't done too much acting on television. Do you do that, Gil, if you see, when you watch a stand-up set and say, I fucked that up, I fucked that up. Oh, yeah, I do it with that or with sitcoms I've appeared on and movies. I'll go, why did I say it that way? Why did I do that? Some actor, I forget who it was, said that he gives his best performances

on the car going back home after filming. And it is like that. Yeah, that's probably true. All of a sudden your mind opens up and you go oh geez i i've had it happen a bunch of times in in in tv shows and movies where i'll watch the movie and i'll watch myself say something and i'll go oh so that's what that line meant. Well, I would tape my baseball play-by-play broadcasts, and I would listen back to those, and there were times when I would be going like,

you idiot, what? Speaking of baseball, and we alluded to this in the intro, Ken, worst baseball movie of all time? Worst baseball movie, I time. Worst baseball movie. I forget the name. I think it's called The Name of the Game. It's the one with Kevin Costner. Oh, For the Love of the Game.

For the Love of the Game. Yeah. Which was basically a chick flick. And Vin Scully is in that movie. Wow. And you mention it to Vin, and he just goes, Ugh. Kind of l lurch away.

Yeah. So that would be the worst baseball movie. The Babe Ruth story for us. The one with William Bendis? Just atrocious. And then there was the other one with John Goodman. That one's not any good either. And, oh, there's one, like, I don't follow sports at all never did but there's one

baseball movie i like that i don't know what baseball players or baseball fans think of it but i always like bang the drum slowly yeah that's a very good movie it's good a very touching movie yeah yeah yeah i remember when uh bull durham came out, and Bull Durham's a real good movie. I was in Syracuse at the time. And, you know, when you're in Toledo on the road, if there's a movie theater, thank God, something to do. And I went to see that movie with one of our pitchers. And we're walking out, and I really enjoyed the movie. I thought it was great.

And he goes, what a piece of shit. What a piece of shit. What's wrong with it? What's wrong with it? He goes, okay. There's a 2-1 count and the catcher asks for a slider. Now, come on. It's amazing that movie made any money. Ron Shelton was a minor league ball player. Yeah.

He knew what the hell he was writing about. This is the same player, by the way, that the next time we went into Toledo, we saw who framed Roger Rabbit and we walked out and he goes, piece of shit, piece of shit. What's wrong with this movie,

Frank? And he goes, you know, Toontown, I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. That wasn't real. Ken, in the time left, I'm going to give you your choice here, dealer's choice. Do you want to talk about your shared love with Gilbert of the movie After the Fox? Do you want to talk about your orangutan experience? Was that when you were directing Just Shoot Me?

Yes. Uh-huh. Okay. Or you guys can talk about, I'm just pulling things off the cart, or Johnny Carson, getting Johnny Carson to do your Cheers episode. Let's talk about Johnny Carson. Yeah. Because that was very surreal.

Johnny Carson rarely, if ever, would do a sitcom. And this was the last year of his show. And we had an idea for an episode where Cliff writes a joke. always wanted to get a joke on The Tonight Show, and he writes jokes and he sends them in. And as a goof, Norm writes an acceptance letter saying that his joke had been accepted. And now Cliff wants to go and be in the audience the night of the show. So now they have to go and actually make that work. So we said, well, look, before we actually go off and write this, let's see if we can get Johnny Carson, because if we can't get Johnny Carson, there's no reason to do this.

And lo and behold, it was pitched to Johnny and he said, OK, we'll do it. So David and I write this script and we go to the actually it's just me. David was on vacation the day it was filmed. So I alone go to the Tonight Show. And the plan was there was going to be the Tonight Show. And then after it was over at 630, the audience would be invited to stay for the filming of Cheers. And, of course, everyone in the audience agreed to stay. So I get there at about 2.30 in the afternoon,

and I knock on his door, and I introduce myself, and I say I'm the writer of this episode, and I'm happy to change anything and tailor any of the lines and all like that. And he said, nope, it's great. It's fine. It's fine. I love it. And the cool thing is, well, there's a lot of cool things.

But one of the cool things was that it was a monologue. And so we had to write three really good jokes and then Cliff's joke, which was terrible. Okay. So the guys are writing those jokes on the cue cards. That's like, wow, they're writing my jokes on the cue cards. So they first film the Tonight Show episode and I get to sit in the green room. And the guest that night was Elizabeth Taylor. Wow. So it's just me and Elizabeth Taylor. And to break the ice, I said to her, Miss Taylor, you starred in a movie with my father and she goes really what movie i said well

not exactly star but in national velvet there was the scene at the racetrack and my dad was one of the extras in the sand so she loved that she was great great. She was really fun. And I'm spending a half an hour talking to Elizabeth Taylor. So that's surreal. Very cool. Okay, so the Tonight Show is over. Now they bring in the Cheers cameras. And I get to stand just off to the side of the Cheers camera. So basically, I am standing between Doc Severinsen and the

orchestra and the curtains where Johnny comes out. And Johnny walks out and he's standing in front of the audience and he's maybe, you know, five, six feet from me. And they play the Tonight Show theme, and he walks out, and the audience goes crazy, and he starts delivering my jokes. And he's getting laughs with my jokes. This was like one of the great moments of my life. I can imagine.

Yeah, yeah. And he turned out to be, I mean, it's treacherous to meet a hero like that especially one that was known for being a little prickly a little moody he was great he said do you need any more takes do you want me to do it a different way what can i do meanwhile ed mcmahon said no i don't want to do it. Fuck this. That's beautiful. Yeah. Thanks, Ed.

Asshole. Since it's in the intro and it's going to bug our listeners now, which Bond girl gave you a smooch? Jane Seymour. Jane Seymour. I was directing Dharma and Greg, and this was like the third day. Yeah, it was live and let die, I think. Yes. And I came up to her.

You wouldn't do this today in the Me Too era. Oh, geez. But in those days, so I went up to her and I said, look, I have a favor to ask. But in those days, so I went up to her and I said, look, I have a favor to ask. It is one of the items on my bucket list is to one day kiss a Bond girl. I said, can I get a kiss? And I was hoping like a kiss on the cheek or something. She planted one right on my lips. How about that?

Oh, it was fantastic yeah that was one of the great moments of my life so again fuck you tracy lords and jane seymour i always use this jane seymour is one of two Jewish Bond girls that I could name. Halle Berry being the other? Halle Berry. I think you've stumped him. Barbara Bach, who's married to Ringo. Barbara Bach, right.

Yeah, yeah. Very good. I almost met Ringo one day. I'm driving down Beverly. We'll take it. And I look in my rear view mirror, and there's Ringo in a little sports car. And I figure all I have to do is just stop short, let him crash into me. Oh, jeez.

And then I could just go up to him and go, oh, Jesus Christ. Okay, what's your insurance company, buddy? But I decided not to do it. I was almost struck and killed by Ryan O'Neill in a crosswalk in LA. Oh! Yeah. Excellent.

Jammed on the brakes. We did that awkward look at each other thing, and it's Ryan O'Neill. There you go. He works out at the gym that I work out. And I had a play reading, and there was a part that I thought he'd be great for. So I gave him the script, and I said, please read the script,

and if you're interested, I'd love you to do the play reading. And he calls up, gets my wife, and he goes, yeah, this is Ryan O'Neill, you know, from Love Story. And he agrees to do it. And so we meet at the theater the day of the reading, and we're going to have like a pre-reading at 2 o'clock. Everybody can just read it. And Paul Dooley was in it.

And he's laughing hysterically through this thing. And when it's over, he says, God, this is really funny. And I said, didn't you read the script? He goes, no. And I said, well, why did you do this then? And he says, well, you know, you seem like a nice guy. So, you know, he said, wow. He says, but, you know, you're a really good writer.

I said, what did you think? He says, I thought you were just some schmuck at the gym. I love Hollywood. What did you think? He says, I thought you were just some schmuck at the gym. I love Hollywood. We've got to promote the podcast, Ken. It's fun. I listened to some great stories. The Celebrity Dish episodes.

What's his name? Arlen? Arlen Peters. Arlen Peters. Those were fun. The HBO pilot that almost got you fired. There's so much good stuff on there. The Crazy Writers Assistance. I will direct our listeners to go there and find that episode.

Yes. The various kooky writers assistants you hired over the years. All of it is true. Yeah, all good stuff. Thanks so much. And the blog is just exhaustive. And, you know, I sent ken an email and i said i've read 90 of these things and he said oh you poor man he said my my my sympathies but it is

it is a rabbit hole i think i guess you know that about it thank you you know i've been doing it now for 13 years it's unbelievable you think I'd have more than eight readers. You do an entry every day? I do an entry every day. Amazing. And yeah, I do have a lot of readers. And the podcast is growing, Hollywood and Levine. It's not like this. Yeah, it's not like this.

Well, we want to tell our listeners to check out Hollywood and Levine. Great stories. And the blog is wonderful. There's history. There's trivia. There's baseball stuff. Guest blogs by people like Chaplin and Babe Ruth. There's writing advice. Also attributes to people we lost. I mean, where else am I going to read about Bob Schiller and Grant Tinker and

Greenbaum and Fritzl and Ronnie Graham. Remember Ronnie Graham? Mr, yes. Mr. Dirt? Yes. Who can work with at MASH. I mean, it's just so much information there. Oh, thanks so much.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun to do. You know, I look at it as kind of stretching exercises as a writer. It's funny. When we had Ronnie Shell on this show, first thing I thought of. It's different from Ronnie Graham. Different Ronnie. First thing I thought of was, oh, was he Mr. Dirt? No, Ronnie Graham.

Yes, yeah. Ronnie Graham. No, I see the face. He did all those commercials. Well, and can work with him on MASH. Yeah. Yeah. Very funny man.

Yeah. I mean, the blog is showbiz history like this show that we do, and I think our listeners will connect to it. Well, thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. It was a blast, man. You know, and like I always say, our listeners get after me for saying we just scratched the surface, but we really did.

Gilbert and I, well, we have you back sometime, and Gilbert and I want to take issue with some of these least favorite songs. I like Yummy, Yummy, Yummy. He sang it on the show. You admit that? Do you like Honey? Which? Honey by Bobby Goldsboro.

Honey by Bobby Goldsboro? Do you like that one? He's not crazy. You've got some real stinkers. I like Heartbeat, It's a Love beat by the DeFranco family. What about Lori by Dickie Lee? Well, that one we can agree on. But we'll do, next time we have you back, we'll just talk about some of that stuff.

Music and the Honeymooners and Soupy and all the things we didn't get to. Great. Thanks so much for having me, guys. Okay, let me just wrap it up by saying, you know, I've lost a bunch of friends over the years. Because when they see me coming, they always go, oh, it's Gilbert Gottfried. Is he going to start talking about that director he worked with on Becker? How was he? Was he a professional at least? That hurts me. No, he was he a professional at least that hurts me no he was very good okay yeah

yeah he was very good well he was very good on show night it took me five days he was he was doing richard burton for the first two and i i had to knock that shit out of him. Steven Weber says hello too, Ken. Great. Thanks for doing this. So we've been talking to Ken Levine. And you're Gilbert Gottfried. And I'm Gilbert Gottfried.

I'm here with Frank Sudopali. Santopadre, they used to call me. free ed I'm here with Frank Sudopali Santopadre they used to call me and this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast Ken a blast thank you man

thank you Ken thank you guys we'll speak again thank you Thank you. Happy Tall City. It's Capital City. My home sweet swinging home. Capital City. Yeah. Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast is produced by Dara Gottfried and Frank Santapadre, with audio production by Frank Furtarosa. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, and John Bradley-Seals.

Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to John Fodiatis, John Murray, and Paul Rayburn.