Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 52. Paul Dooley

Episode Date: May 28, 2015

Gilbert and Frank chat with one of Hollywood's busiest character actors and favorite "movie dads," Paul Dooley ("Breaking Away," "Sixteen Candles," "Runaway Bride") who looks back on everything from tackling the role of Wimpy in Robert Altman's "Popeye" to creating characters for PBS' "The Electric Company" to improvising with Alan Arkin and Joan Rivers. Also, Paul performs standup for Jack Paar, understudies for Art Carney and shoots a commercial with Buster Keaton! PLUS: Richard Libertini! Nichols and May! "The Indestructible Man"! Paul does Lionel Barrymore! Gilbert does Walter Matthau! And Paul gets "probed" by aliens! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Go to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried and support the podcast for the love of all that is holy. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried. This is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. Our guest today is one of the busiest, funniest, and most popular character actors of the last 50 years. You know him from movies like Popeye, Robert Altman's A Wedding, Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, Runaway Bride, Sixteen Candles, and The Long Suffering Dad and Breaking Away. Speaking of dads, he's played the on-screen father of everyone from Mia Farrow to Helen Hunt to Julia Roberts and the father-in-law of Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Other TV roles include Grace Under Fire, The Practice, My So-Called Life, Dream On, and Star Trek.

Deep Space Nine, please welcome actor, writer, comedian, and cartoonist, the versatile and prolific Paul Dooley. I can't wait to meet this guy. Sounds amazing. And I should tell the audience, if you're not familiar uh the name paul dooley you know just google it because you're one of those people they're gonna immediately go oh that guy you know i was once in a cab in new york and a cab driver said to me i know you i said oh who am i he said well i don't know your name but but you've got a household face. A household face. I love that.

And that's the thing about character actors. You know what I mean? Many people say, oh, I know that guy. You think they live in a building with you or you went to school with them when you first see them. Who's that? No, I mean, with character, Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You'd think you went to college with them or in the army or something. Yeah, because you know you grew up with them.

We were talking about James Caron, mutual friend James Caron, who did the show. And he's one of those faces as well. Absolutely. We found out recently that we'd been in some movie together, but not in the same scene. So I had no idea that you'd been in the movie. We just found it out recently now i just found out you started as a stand-up comedian uh yeah the first real time i ever got a little recognized i was doing very tiny parts and off-Broadway plays and so forth. But I always wanted to be a comic, but I didn't know it at the time, but I thought maybe I wanted to be a stand-up, and in my heart of hearts, I wanted to be an actor.

But I started out, and I was very lucky, because before I'd ever done anything, hardly ever in clubs. I'd done six or eight club dates in a very small time. And somehow I got on The Tonight Show with Jack Parr. And I was doing a very low-paying club date in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. And there was a group of accountants in the audience. It was a little meeting for them. And I kind of killed that night. And the next day, a guy called me. And he's the brother of one of the accountants, and he said, we should talk to you.

I'm the manager of Jonathan Winters, and he had a real in with Jack Parr because Parr loved Winters. He was on, you know, every other week. And so within two days, I was over there auditioning for Jack Parr, and they put me on. I did three shows. Wow. And that was amazing because every comic in town was trying to get that job. What was your stand-up like, Paul?

Do you remember any of your jokes? I remember everything. Not any of my jokes, but everyone else. It's almost my curse. It was more like, you could compare it more to someone like Newhart, who bits with beginning, middle, and end. They weren't like unrelated jokes. They weren't the typical series of you might do two jokes on a topic

or one joke or three, and then you move on to some other topic. They were more like little theater pieces where you create a character and play him. I wasn't Newhart in the sense that I was always tied to the telephone or in that very quiet way, but I would do routines. For example, I had a routine. It was a whole Shakespearean play where I played all the parts. Then I did the thing where I translated a fairy tale from the Czechoslovakian, and I would read the Czechoslovakian and then translate it,

except that he knew nothing about the language. So they're all a series of bits. There was a Western from the point of view of the Indian and a lot of different routines like that. It was like they used to call them hunks, you know, sometimes. And I had six of them, and that made my 30 minutes when I first got started. And now can we jump ahead to one of the strangest movies you were involved in and that's when robert altman uh did the big screen version of popeye yeah

now uh so where where did you film this this was on the island of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean. And how long did this take to film? Well, it was going to be four months, but then they ran into some weather problems, and it was about six months. So it's half a year. So we had, if there were like 75 in the cast and crew, or more like 100, we had 50 birthdays because it's happy year. We got stick of cake. It was a birthday every week.

Yeah, we shot it there, and there were 50 actors in it. And the great Bill Irwin was in it with not very much screen time. And Linda Hunt was in it. A guy named Richard Libertini. Your old comedy partner, Libertini. Yeah, I met him in Second City, and we've been friends ever since. In fact, I actually got Libertini the job. Normally, an actor can't help an actor get a job, but Altman said to me, do you know somebody who's tall and thin with a beard and can play comedy and do a dialect?

And I said, I know the perfect guy. So they met and they got together. And he was perfect for this character who was basically a Jewish pushcart peddler, Giesel. No one ever used the word Jewish, but he's Giesel. Anyway, he's a great comic actor, Libertini. We love him. That's another one for the audience to just... Richard Libertini.

You'll know him in a second. Oh, all of me and, of course, the in-laws, where he's the dictator of the Banana Republic. Yeah. So just send your wences with his hand. It's just unforgettable. public yeah and senior wences with his hands just unforgettable and and i heard like the cash and crew are pretty much going nutty in malta it was well it was very it was a it was a little it's not even a tree on that thing it's just a big rock and uh there was so little to do thank god we had robin williams because he was our court jester. And since he

obsessively had to be on, we were happy to have somebody entertain us all the time. So between takes and all the down time, thank God he was there. But we did get a little squirrely and cabin fever. But it was great fun at the

same time. There's so many talented people there. We once put on a variety show just to amuse ourselves. So we were our own audience, the cast and crew. You went on stage and did a bit and came out and sat in the audience and it ran four hours because everybody had talent. Bill Irwin had all kinds of clown routines, and Libertini did routines, and I did routines, and Shelley Duvall played the guitar and sang songs.

There were just tons of people, and Robin was the master of ceremony. And we should tell our— Robin says, I won't be in it, I'll just be the emcee, except that he was 12 different emcees. Once he's Ed Sullivan, then he's a Maltese comedian. But he did plenty of stage time. We had a great time. It was a great company.

It was how you become a family in a movie. Altman, more than other directors and almost anybody I've ever met, he'll hire you for the entire run of the play, if it's eight weeks, or the run of the film, instead of bringing you in for two weeks or one week and then sending you home. That way you don't feel a part of it because you're in and out but he brings everybody at the beginning and they leave at the end and he says if i want to put you in a scene i want you to be here so he's very loose and he might put you in scenes you

were never in originally we should we should just to clarify for our listeners, that you played Wimpy in the movie. And as a cartoonist yourself, I saw an interview with you online, Paul, and you were saying that you were oddly flattered to be asked to play a cartoon character. Oh, yeah. I was actually a little scared because I thought, I'm not as roly-poly as you'd think he would be. And I heard, really, after the fact, after the film, that both Don DeLuise and Buddy Hackett had tried to get that part. Wow.

Eventually, Alden told me, he says, I don't want people looking at the movie and saying, there's Wimpy, oh, it's Buddy Hackett, or it's Don DeLuise. He thought it would take him out of the movie to have a person that had such a strong personality. But anyway, with the aid of makeup and wardrobe, I turned out to be a fairly decent-looking wimpy. Now, can you say the famous wimpy hamburger line for us, please? One of his key lines that almost everybody remembers is, I'd be glad we pay you Tuesday for a, please. One of his key lines, and almost everybody remembers, is,

I'd be glad we pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. He also said, come to my house for a duck dinner. You bring the duck. He was essentially a con man who would do anything. In the movie, he sells

a baby for a bag of hamburgers to Pluto. So that's what he was. He was a con man. And did I hear you say a story where you and Robin Williams would turn off the television, you would watch local television, and then turn off the sound and improvise? We would all do that. We watched it to laugh at them because they were sort of B-movies but sent over from Sicily.

The Maltese didn't have a film comedy. But it was really awful and we wouldn't understand it anyway. So there's a game they play in Second City and all the improv companies called dubbing. So we just turned it down and we played the parts and Robin, who was excellent at it but libertini and i from second city and uh there were several others there had been in second city and

that's one of the ways in which we whiled away our time you know it was a great place that was great fun to do uh that show but there was nothing in that town to do at all gilbert knows that from being on the road yeah i i just remembered dubbing was something that they started doing on thick of the night me richard belzer and the other people oh you did it like that improv exercise didn't save the show oh yeah well most stand-ups would be pretty good at it because they work on their feet and they develop their bits on the feet. And a guy like Belzer is very much, you know, he can improvise. But what happened with me, I did about three or four years of stand-up,

and I was at the Playboy Clubs and the Purple Onion and various places like that and the Village Vanguard in New York. But then I was offered a chance to be in the New York chapter of Second City with Alan Arkin and a number of people. Very early, the original company moved to New York for a while. And I immediately said, I'd rather look in the eyes of another actor and try to do sketches than I would to go out and face that audience in every little town. Because, as you know, it's a hard road.

And what do you remember of Alan Arkin? Because that's one of our favorites here. Oh, yeah, he's wonderful. I saw him. They came to Broadway and it ran a while and then they moved into the village down by New York University where they ran about two or three years

I saw Arkin in an interview recently and also read this in a book he's written that at first he didn't have a job but they asked him to come out to Chicago. And he said, I don't know how to improvise. He said, I was scared and upset the whole time that I wouldn't fit in.

But eventually I discovered a character, and I played him all the time. When I was being myself, I would be this character. But then, of course, he's a fabulous dialectician. As anybody who's ever seen The Russians Are Coming, remember, he's a Russian submarine commander. Or Poppy, or any of the parts. The guy's incredible. I remember

I go to an audition. They wanted one guy to come in from New York just to cover them in case they went on vacation or something. You didn't have to improvise. You just had to be a little bit experienced with comedy. So I asked the director.

I went down to this audition. I thought I'd read something. He says, where's the script? He says, there's no script. You'll just go on tonight. Well, I never even knew so much about improv that I didn't know the first rule, which listen and agree. So I just went on and did a scene with Arkin, and it worked out well, probably because of Arkin.

So they hired me, and I sort of learned improv on the job as we went along. I just learned it the same way they did. Everybody started from nothing, and they picked up on it. The more you do it, the better you get at it. But I worked with them often, and it was a great experience. Libertini came into that company at some point. Libertini. Oh, funny people. And Arkin I worked with in Bad Medicine. Oh, that's right. Gilbert was in a film with him.

Another big hit. Who was in Second City in addition to you and Libertini and Arkin? Well, the original company included Severin Darden, who's gone now, but he's a legend in Second City. And a woman named Mina Kolb, who was one of the earliest women. And Paul Sand, who's a mime, who's also in Story Theater on Broadway. We were just talking about Paul Sand the other night with Louis Black. He studied with Marcel Marceau.

And he's a wonderful, wonderful mime. And at some point, Joan Rivers came in briefly in our show in New York. And Barbara Harris, who became well-known on Broadway in some movies. Barbara did On a Clear Day on Broadway, played the lead. And she did a film with Hitchcock, and she did Frantic, not Frantic Friday, but The Mother and the Daughter Switcheroll. Oh, the Freaky Friday. Yeah, yeah.

And she had a small early film career around that time. I guess it was in the 60s, 60s and early 70s. Now, this wasn't the Compass players, right, Paul? A group called the Playwrights became the Compass, and the Compass became Second City. Gotcha. But I was never in the Chicago company. I just joined these original people when they came to New York,

and I kind of learned from them. Wasn't Robert Klein also around then? Robert Klein was not in the New York company, but he did Second City Chicago. I see, I see. As everybody did, Jack Burns and Avery Shriver, and a number of people became actual comics in their own right. More of them became actors, and a lot of them became writers in California, because there's not a whole lot of parts out here.

Not always parts for everybody. The average thing in Chicago is they do something like two, three years, and then they get restless and they want to be in the big time and they come to L.A., but their wonderful, brilliant talents aren't necessarily used in films and television

always, although it's getting better now. The people Judd Apatow works with often have Second City backgrounds or great improv backgrounds. But I know tons of people now have come to California and looking for work and not getting it, they went into writing. A lot of them write for sitcoms. And you said when growing up you are what got you interested in show business was your love of uh radio comedians was the tv of its day i listened to

jack benny and fred allen and jimmy durant he had a show red skeleton and bob hope they all had shows and as i'm writing currently i've been almost finished with my writing my one-man show, I say to them, I began to look at the feel these comics were my friends, you know, they were my imaginary friends. And somehow I thought they're telling the jokes just for me. I got very identified with them, you know. And I never thought I could do it, but I looked up to them. And I never thought I could do it, but I looked up to them.

And I somehow had this facility, as some people do for baseball statistics. I know almost every joke I ever heard, especially if it was funny. I mean, I've heard a lot of jokes I've forgotten. But I remember routines and best jokes of thousands of comics, especially from the old days. You know, even Fat Jack Leonard and all kinds of people. How about Sam Levinson? I love Sam Levinson. Yeah, us too.

Us too. You're like Gilbert in that way. He's kind of a joke archivist. You tell a lot of old jokes. Oh, yeah. I remember just about every joke I've heard. You're both that way. And, you know, I heard you talk about the quality of writing on those radio shows, Paul.

They were great people. Yeah. Neil Simon, for one. Even before Gelbart, for example, and Neil Simon went over to television, they wrote for radio. Danny Simon worked on Duffy's Tavern, one of the earliest really, really, really funny shows. They didn't have

a comedian per se. It was just a group of performers, but it was really a really hot writing stuff. They had Abe Burroughs as the head writer. Danny Simon brought his younger brother Neil on. Gelbart was there. Gelbart worked for radio out on the West Coast as well.

Some of the people people eventually ended up with sid caesar's stable had worked in radio but you can't if you can't see the people you'll all have to be in the words they got it down to a science man it was like two liners you know one set up one payoff there's a friend of mine a guy named herb sergeant who's a name you might know the original original snl head writer was writing for some of those shows. Fred Allen. Yeah, Sid Caesar had an insane staff of writers.

Oh, yeah. Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner. Mel Tolkien. Yeah. Right. Woody Allen. Right. All those people. And Gelbart. So, really, this was what inspired you to leave West Virginia and pile into a car with $50 in your pocket, Paul, and head to New York City? Is that kind of what happened? That's right, although because what I studied in college wasn't stand-up or anything, although I did a little of it around there.

A friend of mine was Don Knotts, who was born in that city, and he was a senior when I was a freshman. born in that city and he was a senior when I was a freshman and I liked him a lot and he was always hilarious. But I thought because I was studying acting in classes that if I went to New York, I'd be lucky if I was an actor, never thinking I could become a comic. The thing about me was I always thought I looked straighter than the average comic, but there's often a look about them, especially in the old days, you were tall and thin or short and fat or with freckles or red hair or something about you which is a little offbeat, which is good for the comedian. I looked like the guy next door. The person I looked up to most because I thought

I could be like him was Carl Reiner. And then later on, Harvey Korman, because you get to be in the thick of the sketch and in the middle of it working with comics, but you are really the straight man. But you can also be a very funny straight man. Now, you worked with Carl Reiner. Yeah. Carl directed a show once,

which was a pilot with Peter Ustinov as the star. It was going to be a variety show. And myself and Patchett and Tarsus were comics in those days, also writers. And they were on the show, and they wrote some sketches. And that's when I first met Carl. Then later, unbeknownst to me, Carl Reiner had recommended me to the Children's Television Workshop to be one of the writers. And so I created this, became the head writer for the electric company. And I ran into Carl 10 years later.

I said, I'm told you recommended me for this. He said, maybe, I don't remember. We had Billy personally. I think what happened was when we were rehearsing sketches for that Ustinov show, naturally when you rehearse a sketch, it's open to a little bit of throw some lines in. So I would throw a line in or make a suggestion, and he thought I had the kind of head for it. So he thought I could be a writer just because I invented some lines in the rehearsals. But he never talked to me about it. But it was a great job.

I did it for a year. You created Morgan Freeman's character. That's right. Easy Reader. Easy Reader. He was a junkie for words. And they told me at the Children's Television Workshop that the Count is their guy for numbers, and maybe we could have something like him for words

so i said i figured easy reader would be like easy writer and he would uh he would love words he would read the labels on people's clothing of their the logo on their sneakers and he'd read the once they gave him a pencil to sign a contract to cut down on the reading and he looked at it and said, Ticonderoga number two. He used to read people's watches. Right. He used to find anything I could in nature, in the world, where he could read. Once I had them take Easy Reader out to the park,

they were always pretending to break him of the habit of too much reading, just for comic value. I took him out in the park and said, forget everything. Printed and forget everything in books and forget all this. Relax at the park. Look at the sky. Look at the clouds. He takes a beat and he says, good year.

He's got a way to read in the sky. Show business is great, Paul. The dad from Breaking Away and Sixteen Candles turns out to be the creator of Morgan Freeman's character on The Electric Company. Well, that's my calling card. Every time I go into a room with a new director or producer or star, even for some meeting or an audition, the first thing they say is they love that movie. Because every film student and every young actor knows that movie. And it it's also ubiquitous it's always on television somewhere breaking away you mean yeah yeah and uh so that's my calling card from that point from that uh that film on i began to

get a lot more offers and i end up playing all these fathers, you know. Some of them are straight, some of them comic, but you take whatever comes along. Sure. Now, the father in Seasoning Candles was fairly straight, a little comic in the beginning, but he had a big scene where it's a kind of a dramatic, heart-rending scene with Molly Ringwald. I just watched it today. Yeah, it's a nice scene. One of my wife's favorite movies. There were a lot of great character actors in Sixteen Candles. I mean, Edward Andrews. Oh, Edward Andrews.

Yeah. Another guy everyone would recognize. Max Showalter. Sure, sure. Who I remember. And a woman named Carol. I think Carol Cook was her name. Carol Cook, yes.

You work with Max Schoelter? Her grandmother was a woman named... I really forget her name, but her name was Bertie. Her real name was Bertie something. And she had been in vaudeville because she was already 70 or something. Oh, okay. And she was funny as hell. Yeah.

Now, I remember Max Schoelter when he was, I think, originally called Casey Adams. Well, his name was Showalter, and when he went into Hollywood, naturally, they gave him a seven-year contract. They wanted to change his name because they thought Showalter was just probably based on a Jewish name somewhere. He became Casey Adler. name somewhere. He became Casey Affleck. Isn't Max Showalter the dad in that famous Twilight Zone episode with Billy Moomy

where he wishes everybody into the cornfield? I may have not seen that one, but it's very possible. He was in Hollywood quite early. Is he the priest in 10? Blake Edwards 10? I remember seeing him, and I think the earliest horror movie I remember the indestructible

man uh-huh starring of course lon cheney jr is that another bird eye gordon classic i think i got the right actor i think max showalter's in 10 yeah he had those crazy eyes he used to use his eyes a lot in films he used to play the part that Tony Randall would play later, which is the friend of the hero. I see. He would sometimes do that as well. I think when Hollywood finally said, okay, no more studio system. Now you're on your own.

I think he went back to the theater and changed his name back to his original name. But he was a nice guy. And, you know, my buddy on that film was Geddy Watanabe. Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. He played Long Dong Duck or whatever. Yes, you bet. Yeah, he's terrific.

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No, I don't think I've met any of those old-timers. First of all, I lived in New York for 30 years, and if I'd been out here, I might have met a person like Jack Benny. I know that Harry Shearer was on Jack Benny's show as a child. Oh, yeah, and Leave It to Beaver. If I was out here and I was kind of in the mix of comedy people, I probably would have maybe done something like that. But I mostly didn't meet those guys.

I didn't know a lot of comics, actually. I just know a lot of improvisers. Take us back a little, Paul. You come to New York, you've got 50 bucks in your pocket, and what's the first thing you did? Didn't you work as a clown for a while? Isn't that where your stage name came from? That's right. I did him in college a few times, and I thought the name Dooley sounded like a clowny name. And I thought the most beautiful name in the world for a comedy guy was Mickey Rooney. Both of them ended in Y. It's two diminutives.

And you got a K. I do not like a guy with the name of Mickey Rooney. Right. It's really a cousin of Mickey Rooney's name. Because you were born Paul Brown. In New York, there was a guy with my name who was in Equity, and I couldn't join Equity because of that, so I had to change anyway. I see.

Now, wasn't Mickey Rooney like the name of a character that he was playing at one point? I'll have to research that. Mickey Rooney wasn't his real name? No, his name was Joe Yule Jr. Uh-huh. Yeah, I think that was like... Y-U-L-E. His father, who was a vaudevillian,

I don't know if he was a comedian, I think he was, he appeared in a very early movie in probably the late 30s, early 40s, where he played Jigs from Maggie and Jigs, because he was an Irishman and he had red hair. And a long, long ago comic strip was Maggie and Jigs, because he was an Irishman and he had red hair. And a long, long ago comic strip was Maggie and Jigs. And he played this in a movie once. But his son was Joe Yule Jr.

And they changed his name. Yeah, I think he played a character. I never knew that. Named Mickey Rooney. I have a wonderful sepia-toned picture of him. He's about five years old or six. He's wearing a derby with the top caved in and short pants. I forget the...

Oh, they called him Mickey McGuire. That was the first... When he was Joe Yule Jr., they made him do shorts, and he was Mickey McGuire. And then he became more of a mainstream actor, and they changed his name to Mickey Rooney. But pound for pound, that was a talented son of a gun to me.

He was. Some of his best movies. He went a little crazy at the end, but... He didn't know what city he was in sometimes at the end, but... Gilbert and I talk about the performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's, which is so wild and over the top. Talk about over the top. Yeah.

Talk about the anti-defamation league. Absolutely. Look at Buck Keith. Yeah, which Jerry Lewis was still doing in the 80s. I remember they one time interviewed Sammy Davis Jr. and said, how does he feel about being called the greatest entertainer and sammy davis thought mickey rooney was the greatest entertainer of all time well mickey could sing and he could act and he could dance it's amazing good comedy yeah oh yeah yeah so he used to do impressions too when he was really young and he would go to parties and things.

I've seen him do it at interviews. He imitated Lionel Barrymore, among other things. Wow. But it's not like I'm imitating Lionel Barrymore. Your father was a failure, and you are a failure, too. That's great, Paul. A little Mr. Potter. Now, you've met the Three Stooges? No a failure, too. That's great, Paul. A little Mr. Potter. Now, you've met the Three Stooges?

No, no, no. He had a story about the Three Stooges. You have a story about the Three Stooges. I'm on my street in Clybourne Street in Palooka Lake in Burbank. The guy's on the sidewalk, re-watering the lawn or something. The guy says, who owns that house there? I said, it's my house. He said, the Three Stooges made a film there.

So he says, I'm the fan club president of the Three Stooges. We're in Philadelphia. I'm just out there. I look for locations where they worked. So then when he went back to Philadelphia, he sent me pictures of them coming down the street in little golf carts, but no, it was more like a motor scooter. And they're pulling a wagon. There were three stooges and three different motor scooters, and they're pulling a little wooden wagon with a dog sitting in it. And you'd see them turn into the driveway of my house. And I took these pictures and put

them in a triptych, you know, a framed thing with three pictures. I have them in my house. But I certainly never met them. But they all lived in Toluca Lake over here. Gilbert's a huge Stooge fan. No, I wasn't. No, I said Gilbert is. Oh, Gilbert is.

Speaking of comedy, go ahead, Paul. The thing is, once you've seen Keaton and Chaplin, you know. Of course. They're sort of not in the same league, but there are certain funny things about them. Certainly Curly was funny. We love Curly. What about that picture on your website? Is that you dressed as Chaplin?

Oh, when I first saw Keaton and Chaplin when I was 15 in high school, a friend of mine whose family was wealthy, I was very poor, but he had a big collection of these silent movies. And he showed it to me, and it changed my life. I wanted to be an actor, not a cartoonist. But from that point on, I just wanted to be. Trouble is, I wanted to be a silent movie actor,

but they weren't doing them anymore. So the arc of my Buster Keaton infatuation is that 40 years after my high school, I did a commercial with him. So I actually met the guy. Oh, wow. Tell us about that. Well, it was a Ford Econoline Vans, and I tracked it down recently and have a copy of the commercial.

But among the Keystone cops who were chasing Buster in the commercial was Barney Martin from Seinfeld. And Avery Schreiber. The other four were unknowns to me. But talk about a thrill to meet someone like him. Of course. Now, was Buster Keaton, was he bitter toward the end? No, he was never bitter. He was okay with everything.

He was a very nice guy, and he should have been bitter. I'd have been bitter if I were him. His brother-in-law, one of the Skink brothers, rhymes with skunk, sold him out and moved him over to MGM, so now they owned him. Sound was there, and they wouldn't let him make any more silence. They tried to use him in sound pictures, but it never quite worked. But he went to France. He worked in the French circus for a while,

and he did all kinds of things. He did that tour of Merton of the movies with Jim Caron, but he did a lot of things he did different commercial throughout the shelter there's a time where he was kind of uh... it's another way to make money i was on the solomon show one time doing a sketch and uh...

he was on the bill so i got to say hello to him then uh... he would just appear wherever he could but uh... the sad thing to me was he was making thousands and thousands of dollars in pre-tax days when he had his own studio. And as soon as sound came in, within two years or so, he was working as a gag writer for Red Skelton for his movies.

Skelton did a remake of The General, which was where he played a spy, or he worked between the North and the South. And Buster invented a lot of the physical gags for that. And I know he was making $7.50 a week writing for Red Skelton, which is pretty much a comedown. You know, a picture of Chaplin writing for anybody else. I think, didn't he also write for Harpo? I heard that he did that, yes. I don't think Harpo needed much because he's a natural.

He's so inventive, and he already had that kind of invention by the time they got to making movies. But, yeah, I did hear that, and it would make sense. Oh, especially when they brought them over from another studio, and Irving thalberg was their mentor at mgm uh because mgm had some dealings with them uh with keaton because that's where he worked for red skeleton so he probably was put on on salary to think of physical gags for harpo because maybe a movie after a movie after movie, Harpo was running out of physical gags.

Sure, sure. And I think this was when the Mox brothers were on their decline, like with Go West. Well, didn't they only make the two? When they got older, some of the movies weren't so hot. No. The one with Marilyn Monroe wasn't very good. Love Happy.

Oh, yeah, that was. And Go West wasn't very good. Yeah. I think they'd pass their time. A lot of comedy people go past their time. You know, it's... I mean, look at the tragedy of Caesar, who was glorious in his heyday. Sure.

But they just declined, and even Gleeson declined. They were never as good as they were when they were on television. Interestingly enough, Paul, I think you're our fourth guest on the show to have worked with Buster Keaton. Because we had James Caron, Chuck McCann was on the show, and Frankie Avalon. Wow. Because at the end, Buster was in some of the beach pictures. I was in love with these silent movies, and once I did a commercial with Chuck McCann, and it was done in the style of a silent movie, and the woman in it was Wicked Witch of the West,

which is her name, Margaret. Margaret Hamilton. Margaret Hamilton was in it. And McCann still has a copy of it, and he keeps promising me that he'll give me a copy of it. We'll get on him about that. It hasn't happened in a while. We'll get on him about that.

But he's kind of a guy who loves the old-timey stuff, too. Oh, yeah. In fact, he did a film with Arkin, which was Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Yeah, we love that picture. And he played a guy

who was like a mental-type guy, and Alan did the whole thing in Lyme because he was a mute. That was the one I just saw a week ago. Yeah, it's a sweet film. Yeah, he's a funny guy.

He's really good. I used to see him on a kid Yeah, it's a sweet film. Yeah, he's a funny guy. He's really good. I used to see him on a kid's show in New York. Sure. And he put pieces of round cardboard over his eyes on an elastic and played Little Orphan Annie. Oh, and Dick Tracy. Yeah, and Dick Tracy, too, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And he always dressed up as Oliver Hardy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and he does those voices great up as Oliver Hardy. Oh, yeah. And he does those voices great. He can do Stan and Ollie. That movie he did, The Projectionist, too, is such an homage to the silent film era. Did Buster Keaton, do you know how he felt about Charlie Chaplin? Because he always seemed to throw those two together and make them look like well I was glad that Chaplin used him in limelight it's a very brief scene but he he almost steals the show

uh I hear that there was much more footage of him doing that music hall turn with Chaplin on limelight which got cut cut as they were editing the film and got trimmed down a bit. Because he's hilarious, that guy. I don't know that they were friends, but of course I'm sure they respected each other. I'm sure they'd meet on social occasions out here, but I don't know very much about what they thought of each other.

It would be impossible for Chaplin not to see his talent. Of course. So different comics. I mean, when people compare them, and there's such apples and oranges, the two of them are such different performers. It's so weird because it's like with film snobs, they always make it like you have to pick one or the other. Yeah, I know.

It's chocolate and vanilla. Yeah. It's like picking a greatest rock and roll singer and leaving out all the others. Yeah, I know. It's chocolate and vanilla. Yeah. It's like picking a greatest rock and roll singer and leaving out all the others. Correct. Yeah, it's like if you like Buster Keaton, you're supposed to hate Charlie Chaplin. No, I love them both,

but I'll tell you one thing about Keaton, which I'm going to talk a lot about in this show I'm writing, is that, to me at least, I knew Chaplin was skillful, and I knew Buster was skillful. I knew that they were amazing acrobats. I knew that they had great comedy timing. I knew all these things.

But somehow, I felt I knew Buster Keaton's persona when I watched him. I felt like an everyman to me. When I watched Chaplin, I although admired him He even idolized his talents. I thought, life is never going to knock this guy down. He's too smart. He's smarter than anybody else in the movie. He's smarter than me. He's smarter than the whole audience. There was a kind of a cleverness about him, which was putting a barrier between me and him. Although he had scenes in City Lights where he was putting the flower up to his mouth when he sees the girl he used to be in love with.

He has moments of touchingness, but Buster Keaton never seemed to be a comedian. He always seemed like he was a real guy, and these things were happening to him. You know, but Chapman could dance, move like a dancer. He could juggle. He was so skillful with everything.

He played women. It's just that Buster always spoke to me. I felt like I know him. And he also was very much an underplayed guy. In other words, Chapman used his face liberally to show different comic modes, but Buster could say it all without using his face. It was just his body. And he was, I'm a kind of a minimalist actor

I like to do less rather than more and I found that Buster is working a slapstick but he seems very very real and very subtle you know some of his takes are very tiny but I just admire his style

in my show I talk about how my father, at the end of my show, I've been obsessed with it for the last six months, although I've been planning it for 10 years, because friends are always saying, you should do it, both of you should do a one-man show. I say at the end of my thing, I went to the Buster Keaton Film Festival in Kansas

with Jim Caron a couple of years ago. And I said I realized when I was going to speak to the people in Kansas, why is it like Buster so much? Everyone likes Buster. Everyone there is a fan. So what is it about me and about him that is so special? Then I said I never saw my father smile, and the same with Buster. My father was a man of few words, just like Buster.

And I realized that Buster was kind of like a role model for me. He was like a surrogate dad, you know, the dad I kind of never had, who could also make me laugh, you know. So that's kind of a thing that is in my head about Keaton. That's sweet. Is that going to be part of the show, Paul? Yeah, I talk about him a lot, and I show some short clips of his. And speaking of your dad, didn't I read that you kind of, when you got the script for Breaking Awaits, the late Steve Tesich, of course, didn't you see some of your dad in the character?

Oh, yeah. I was thinking of him all the time. In my show, I have a very touching thing, I believe, where it says, there's a scene in the movie where Dennis Christopher comes to me. He lost the race. He's crying. Comes to his father for his disillusion. He comes to me for comfort, but I'm used to having this kind of snippy reality with him.

I'm always criticizing him in some odd way. But because he's broken down, I put my arms around him, although it said in the script he doesn't quite know how to hug his son. So I do reluctantly try to hug a little bit. And what I'm saying in my show is at that moment I, if I'm playing my father and feeling like my father, who is this I'm hugging? Well, that's got to be me. So I was finally giving myself the hug that I never got from my real father. I think it's going to be a little touching moment when I show a short film clip of that scene. It is touching. It's one of the nice things about being an actor, isn't it? You kind of get

to recreate life moments. I don't know why I became a minimalist, but my father was very closed off and unemotional. I'm sure I bonded on him for some time. But even in my dramatic work, I try to be as subtle as possible. You know, I like people like, I like Newhart's comedy because he's subtle and not aggressive. And I like, oh, someone like Anthony Hopkins, who never does too much. He's always doing just enough. Even when he'd been Hannibal Lecter, he underplayed it. Yeah. Yeah, he did.

So I just, for some reason, turned out to be a guy who likes the less is more. Now, I heard you're not really big on, say like the method actors and everything you don't prepare well i'm not like them it's not that i don't look up to them obviously if you like brando and pacino and all those people you have to know there's something to it it's just somehow not my system and i never studied that. When I went to New York, I had no money, so most actors were finding a way to scrape a few dollars together from a part-time job with a cab ride or something and study, but for some reason, I didn't have enough money for a long time. It was hand-to-mouth for several years. Then when I started working, I said, well, maybe I don't need classes. Maybe I know how to act. And so I just never got around to it, but it probably would have been good for me if I had. I just

work in a very different way. You know, I could be offstage talking to someone and they say, okay, action. And I can, I don't know how, but in some way, something clicks in my head and I start acting the character without, you know, going in the corner and thinking about it or spending the whole day or the whole shoot trying to be in the character without going in the corner and thinking about it or spending the whole day or the whole shoot trying to be in the character. First of all, in the movies, most characters are already you. They're hiring you because the characters see you do constantly. But I admire people who have a system that allows them to do what they do.

I mean, especially if a guy like Pacino can do all that, then obviously it's a great system for him. And you worked with Pacino. I don't know what his training was, but Seymour Hoffman, of course, is fantastic. You worked with both those guys. Yeah, it was great. Tell us a little about your experience with them. Well, first without Pacino.

Well, as you know, because you've been in films, often at the end of a scene, the star goes to his trailer. And, you know, generally speaking, you're not, you're kind of discouraged from going and hanging out in their trailer with them because they want to be with themselves, you know. So even though I was Julia Roberts' father, I wasn't necessarily close because we did our scenes together

and we both went off to our trailers. And so I chatted with him a few times and once I was having a conversation with two or three other actors on the movie Insomnia and he passed by and we were talking about Popeye because a couple of those guys liked that movie.

And he stopped and said, one of my favorite films. So I love the guy. Because it's kind of perceived as a flop or a mixed-up movie. I have about six books on Altman, and one of the most recent ones I read that it did make its money back, and it made $50 million over time, and that was in 1980, so that's a lot of money. So out of everything— It wasn't a failure financially, but critically, it didn't do that great. Out of everything that Al Pacino has done, his biggest accomplishment was he liked the movie you were in.

Well, Robin was there too, wasn't he? Because he was in Insomnia. Yeah, Robin was the bad guy. Right, that's right. I like that picture. He came in one day, and the next day I left, so I didn't spend a lot of time with him. But Robin, for all the stand-ups we know, became an amazing film actor.

I mean, it wasn't like he's getting by in films. He was really good. I mean, look at Mrs. Doubtfire. Sure. I mean, look at Mrs. Doubtfire. Sure. I mean, look at all the stuff he did. He was a wonderful, goodwill-hunting actor. Goodwill-hunting, Birdcage, so many good performances. Oh, yeah, it's great.

And another actor you worked with who's a favorite of Frank and I is the wonderful John Carradine. Oh, well, I never worked with John Carradine, but I had a story about him. Oh, okay. You and John Carradine. See, I don't know. Weren't you in a horror film with John Carradine? No, my life was a horror film, but I never...

All I know about John Carradine... We got bad info. I was on the Merv Griffin show one night, and he was on, and three of his sons were there, Keith and Robert and whoever. And, uh, Merge said to him,

is it true? You've made more movies than anybody who ever made movies. He says, no, there's one other actor who made more movies than me. I've made 400. Incredible. And his name was Wallace,

but I forget his last name, but he's a very well-known actor. Henry Wallace? He's one of those actors who gets two movies a week when you're playing small parts. I keep forgetting his name. Wallace somebody. You look at Carradine's IMDb page online, and it's incredible. You could spend hours scrolling through it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Imagine having the time to make 400 films. I mean, he lived a long time. The way it worked, really, was when you were under contract to Louis V. Mayer, let's say at MGM, he didn't want to pay you for a week. Usually those contracts are $750 a week, even for Clark Gable in the beginning. They'd pay him $750 a week and loan him out for $5,000. You know, because in the weeks between when they were working, they still paid them. So his idea, Louis B. Mayer and all the other moguls, was, well, if you're getting a check,

you're going to be working. So Betty Davis and Clark Gable would go from movie to movie to movie, and they would do their wardrobe fittings in the last week of the current movie, and by the next Monday, they could start on the new movie. They didn't have any time off because he wanted them working like they were slaves. There was no SAG in the very beginning. They'd work 12, 14, 15 hours a day and have to come back at 6 in the morning, 7 in the morning. But Carradine said in that interview with Merv Griffin, he said,

I would do one day in the movie, and the next day I'd just cross the alley and go to another studio with another costume and another makeup, and I'd do one scene for them. And he said, I could do two, three movies a week. Incredible. He was there for years and years. And he would make a lot of movies. That explains it. I remember Cagney said in his book, working with Bogart, and Bogart looked totally exhausted.

And he was like doing two other movies while he was doing that movie with Cagney. Yeah, multitasking. Yeah, because they say, well, you don't have any scenes for this week, so go be that movie. Go in that movie. They worked it out. Incredible. Amazing. Still, I kind of wish i was a contract player

back in the 30s and 40s that's another time i was born too late to be a part of yeah we knowing you had a seven-year contract and you'd be working at something for seven years it's really thrilling and there's always a chance of having an outstanding performance so maybe you'll move up in the world yeah and james karen uh i remember talking to him and he said he would talk to these character actors who would always say how horrible it would be to be a contract player and how much work they had to do and he said he that was his dream in life yeah well there's something true about actors if you want an actor to be unhappy get him a successful series because after the eighth episode he wants to get out of his contract to be in the movies or after the second season

there's nothing that makes actors more discontent than a hit because they think they should move on. I've heard many of them complain, I have another year of this damn thing. You know, well, pretend you're sick or something. Well, I've heard you say that about yourself, Paul, that you get bored playing the same character more than once. Well, I don't like long runs, although I did like The Odd Couple because every line was practically a laugh. That was such a well-written show. But I'm not crazy about long runs, but I don't mind doing two or three months on something. Now, tell us about The Odd Couple.

Well, Nichols had seen me at Second City in New York. Mike Nichols. Mike Nichols, yeah. And so there were auditions, and I went to read. And because it's a poker player auditioning for it, there are four of them. But because their lines are so far apart, like a line on each page, there's not a good scene. So they have you read Felix an Oscar.

So I read for Felix. And I got for Felix. And I got the job. It was a little odd because I left the stage or went out the stage door and down the alley. This never happens, but the stage manager ran after me and said, they want you to do it. You got the job. Usually you call your agent

later, and that's how it happens. But Mike had liked me, I guess guess and what stuff i did at second city but i became arts understudy but what i didn't know and what wasn't generally known as arts and alcoholic during that time and out of town for six weeks he never missed a performance but after we opened and we were a big hit He started missing and I was his understudy. And so I would go on many, many, many times. I must have gone on 12 or 15 times. Then one day he didn't show up, and then the next day he didn't show up,

and the next day he didn't show up. And we found out he had put himself into rehab, into what they called then a sanitarium, to dry out. We should just remind our listeners who don't know, this is Art Carney we're talking about, who was the original Felix Unger on Broadway. Oh, yeah, yeah. Opposite Matthau.

Jack Lemmon played later. Right. Art Carney. And he was going through a divorce at the time, and he'd been married for 20 or 30 years, and he had kids, and he was very unhappy around that time. He might have been a little unhappy that Oscar, Matthau won the Oscar. I mean, he won Tony. And they were both equally funny,

but it happens that Matthau won the Tony that year and Art didn't. They canceled each other out, sort of. But I took over and played Felix for quite a while. And that was a lot of fun. And do you have memories of working with mathau well mathau was a little bit of a bad boy on stage he would play pranks you know sometimes an actor will uh he'll turn to you uh in a play i mean an actor is not disciplined i

mean we all do it especially when you're starting out. Or you're getting tired of a role. On a laugh, which is only about five seconds, you'll say, that went well. Or, you know, what's happening here? It's just a little aside you say to the other actors sometimes.

Or if they don't react, you'll say, are they dead? But Walter would talk to us under the laughs, but he also talked to you while you were delivering your lines. That's helpful. Occasionally. And he would change the blocking around, and he was capable of milking the audience.

When you get a big laugh, usually you let it go and move on to the next scene because that's better for the play. But at times he would just milk the laugh by mugging or just looking at the audience funny, saying, give me more. But I tell you one thing, he was born to play that part. He was just absolutely perfect for it. Oh, he's brilliant. Gilbert, you do a little Walter Matthau.

Oh, yes. It's the 10th floor, not the 11th Felix. Didn't he break the fourth wall and have a little bit of a problem, an ongoing problem with Nichols? Yes, he broke the fourth wall only once in the whole play. And Avotan Nichols said to him, that's not a good idea, Walter, because sure, you get a big laugh when you break the fourth wall,

but then we lose them for the next five minutes because you've broken the contract with them that there is a fourth wall. Now, are they to believe there's still a fourth wall or now everyone's going to talk to them? So it's either a style that you talk to them or it's not in a play. Sure.

How many people always face the audience? But he gave Walter the same note for six weeks out of town, don't do that. The line was in the script says, Oscar looks to heaven and says, why doesn't he hear me? I know I'm talking. I recognize your voice.

And every night he looked at somebody in the front row and said that. And after giving him this note endlessly, the note kept getting smaller and smaller because he knew he wasn't going to win. So by the time we were arriving in New York, he would say to Walter, he'd just say, oh, and Walter, yeah, well, you know. So it was a reminder. But he never, ever did it the right way. He did it the way he wanted to do it.

For six months, I lived alone in this apartment. I was just... I have a theory about his acting. When he was a teenager, he worked in the Yiddish theater, the Matthau. When he was very, very young. And there's a style in the Yiddish, as there was on Broadway years and years ago,

which is declaiming. So everything is like not acted so much as declaimed. You know, the church bells shall not ring tonight. Where the people kind of overdo, especially when they're doing Shakespeare. And I went to see some Yiddish theater just so I could see it and get an idea of what it was. Primarily I went because people told me there was a great comedian named Manosha Skolnick.

Oh, yes. I can understand him even without knowing the language. The Zeta and the Zulu. Manosha Skolnick. Yes, Manosha Skolnick yes Manosha Skolnick even his name is funny so he they would call out

their dialogue like that yes especially in a very high flown way like a different theater style and evolved oh say after once the method came in and once Rodgers and Hammerstein began to have the musicals be about

something instead of about a series of songs that meant nothing to each other there was a time in there where acting styles began to change and become more naturalistic and even in the group theater they're getting more naturalistic because of because of the moscow art theater and all that but before that if you go back to tonykins' father, it was Osgood Perkins. He was a huge star. Or when John Barrymore and the Barrymores were on Broadway. Acting had a kind of an acting quality about it. John Roberts on SNL.

That's the end. It was the style was to be overdone. And at certain times, and Matthau says, and ta! Reminds me of that. He goes into a voice that's that kind of declaiming. Felix, it's my apartment. I make up the bedtime.

And it's very stylish, very stylish. The fortune cookie, too. There's a lot of that acting. Yeah. Big, broad. Now, that was all along 2nd Avenue, the Yiddish theater. And earlier, the last remaining theaters are around 2nd Avenue and, I don't know, below Canal somewhere. I forget exactly where they were.

No, near Houston Street or Hudson, Soho, that's south of Houston. So that whole area was like Broadway. There were a lot of them originally. There was some on 14th Street, 23rd Street. As Manhattan developed, the first big, what would be Times Square later, became 14th Street was like the crossroads of New York. Then it became 23rd Street. Then it became 34th Street. Then it became 14th Street was like the crossroads of New York. Then it became 23rd Street. Then it became 34th Street. Then it became 42nd Street. And it kind of stopped.

Although Lincoln Center is now above, you know, 66th Street. So the center of the city kept moving up as there were more people around. When your celebration of life is prepaid in advance, it becomes a gift from you to your family later because no one should have to plan for a loss while they're experiencing one. Paying in advance protects your loved ones and gives you the peace of mind you deserve. Let us help you plan every detail with professionalism and compassion. We are your local Dignity Memorial provider. Find us at DignityMemorial.ca. which includes no monthly fee, unlimited debit transactions in Canada, Avion points on debit purchases, and so, so much more. Unlock more perks for less with RBC Vantage. Conditions apply.

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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. I think Martin Scorsese said his father used to sneak into the Yiddish theater. Really? He couldn't understand what they were saying, but he liked the music. Oh, I love that.

The music is very much fun. I don't know if you'd call it klezmer or not, but it's... I'll tell you who really captured the feeling of those early kind of theaters, but in Italian, was Scorsese in... I don't know if it was The Godfather or if it was in... Oh, in Godfather 2, they go to the town. Oh, yes, the Coppola. The kind of play you put on there, which was really very authentic looking,

is sort of what the Yiddish theater looked like to me. There were little skinny sets and a small theater, and it wasn't very... It must have two people on stage or three people at one time. And it was very melodramatic in that sense. They'd come in wailing and weeping, and, you know, there were always big problems. Yeah, the scene in the Godfather movie, the guy gets a phone call that his mother's dead. Yes. And he goes, I am alone in America.

Right. Mamma mia. My wife is a tramp. It's just amazing, isn't it? I'll tell you a thing that happened to me when I was in Three Penny Opera that would amuse you. Four of us

McKee and Steeves went over to a costume house, which happened to be on 2nd Avenue, and had been servicing the Yiddish theater for years. By now, this was 1952 or 3, and so there was very little Yiddish theater, but there was a man named Mr. Gropper, G-R-O-P-P-E-R, and we went in to see him to get old-fashioned costume, period costumes, for the Three Penny Opera.

But he thought of his costumes as having integrity, but he thought of his costumes as having integrity, and when the gay costume designer would say, no, that hat will never do, that's all wrong, he would be offended by you turning down his costume parts. He'd say, that's all wrong, it's old-fashioned. You want old-fashioned? He'd say, yeah, but that's about 20 years. That's not Victorian. It's Edwardian.

It's a hat. It's a baby. It's a top hat. He's trying to give them how good these costumes are and not being able to turn away from them. So I tried on a coat, a Chesterfield collar and a swallowtail coat, a little

ratty, because they all were. And the costume designer just said, no, no, that's all wrong. And he said, what's wrong? Maurice Schwartz wore that coat. Jacob Benami wore that coat. I was giving the resume of the coat. That's great. Morris Karnofsky wore that coat.

That's great. By the way, Morris Karnofsky, a famous Yiddish actor, was Jimmy Caron's uncle. Oh, I love that. Caron Karnofsky. Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. Wow.

Jimmy told me he went to New York. He's 16. He wanted to go to the academy, the American Academy, for studying acting. And Karnofsky told him, no, no, don't go there. Go with Sandford Meisner. He'll teach you acting. So, but I love this guy. He gave the credits of the coach.

It's brilliant. Didn't James tell us that he was, that the way he became an actor, he was walking down the street in a Boy Scout uniform? It's a very strange story. A guy yelled, hey, kid, you want to be in a play? Do you remember this? He never told me that story.

I know he grew up in Wilkes-Barre and used to go to the vaudeville theater when he was very young. They were still in vaudeville around a little bit. Yeah. Herschel Bernardi. He's 92 now, I think. Oh, yes. Yeah, James, yes, yes. We did a great episode with him.

We love him. Herschel Bernardi. Herschel Bernardi. Herschel Bernardi? He started in Yiddish theater, and I think he said his father was like the John Barrymore. Really? Herschel Bernardi, later blacklisted. Oh, yes, yes. And he played in Fiddler, too. He eventually played the lead in Fiddler after Zero left.

And he was also the voice of Charlie. Charlie the Tuna. Yeah. Very good, Paul. Yeah, he did a lot of voiceovers. And I remember he said. And I did a lot of voiceovers. I did a lot of commercials.

I did tons and tons and tons of commercials. Tell us about it. I saw an interview with you and your wife. We'd be remiss in pointing out, by the way, that your wife is not a star in her own right, Winnie Holzman, who created the show My So-Called Life, and she wrote the Broadway musical Wicked with Stephen Schwartz. She told me to say hello to Gilbert, and I'll tell you how she knows you.

Oh, my God. When you were breaking in, you were very young. She was with a little group of four people who would get up and do sketches called the Serious Business. And she said she was in several clubs with you, and she liked you and you were very funny, and I should

say hello. Of course, that's been a long time. Was he nice to her? I haven't been... We've been married 30 years. Wow. Before that. Wow. 35 years ago, maybe.

You probably met a million people in those gloves, too. Oh, definitely give her my best. But if you saw her, you'd remember her from having met her once because she's a memorable person. She has a tremendous personality. She has a personality for both of us. You know how you're eating for two? She's charming for two.

And Winnie's from my hometown, by the way, Paul. Roslyn Heights, New York. Yeah, but I wanted to point out that I saw an interview with the two of you, and she was talking about seeing you back in the day in a dog food commercial. Do I have that right that's right it was she didn't know me yet it was called skippy dog food and i held up the can at the end and i'm pointing to the can of dog food and just ad-libbed it as if i'm saying buy it i just looked at it and said woof people kind of remembered it from that I love that

and you had a quick scene in Death Wish with Charles Bronson that's a movie we love to talk about yeah I was a cop arresting some prostitutes but then I ran in the subway and there was a guy shot and I think Bronson had just shot him and left. So then I'm in the hospital later with Vincent Gardena, the detective, and he said, did he say anything before he died?

Did you get any information? And I only had a couple lines. This was one of them. So I thought if I say it in a certain way, maybe I'll get a smile or laugh. So I took out my little notebook. Instead of just reading it normally, I said, I shot him. I shot

the motherfucker. If I just said it straight, it wouldn't be amusing. So I shredded like a kid learning to read. I only worked two days on that. I did The Out-of-Towners with Jack Lemmon. Yeah, that's Gilbert's wife's favorite movie. She's sitting right here.

Not the second one, but the third. No, with Sandy Dennis. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just reading a book now that she was gay, and I never knew that. I'm reading a book. My daughter is gay, and I never knew that. I'm reading a book. My daughter is gay, and she had a book she was reading. I looked at it, and it names celebrities from the past and now and in the future who were gay, but people didn't know about it.

But back in the day, when Dietrich was, they just thought she dressed funny. And Garbo. Right. And there's a lot of them. When Barbara Stanwyck was gay and all this stuff. Yeah, they were just considered tough chicks. Yeah. That's why she always played women who were kind of self-reliant and tough, which is what Jodie Foster is playing now. Tough girls.

Just I want to ask you one question about The Odd Couple, too. I heard you say that you were so kind of taken with Mike Nichols' talent and that you really wanted more than anything to make him laugh. And then that happened when you worked for Lane May too. Do I have that right? That's right. I said to my analyst, I don't know why it is, but all I do want to do is be brilliant in front of one of those people or to keep up with them or make them smile or something, but it never really happened. I said a few amusing things, but I don't remember any laughs. I knew Elaine better because we did an off-Broadway play,

but we also did it up at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and we were hanging together while we rehearsed in a summer theater, and so we got to know each other a bit more. But she's one of the most brilliant comedians of all. Oh, we love her. She's right here in the city. We need to get her on the show. And did you ever... She doesn't like to talk to people. I know, but I saw her at the

92nd Street Y, and she was very chatty. So... It'd be great. It'd be great. I thought they were the king and the queen of comedy. Oh. Because their stuff was so subtle. It wasn't over the top or anything. You know, it wasn't Rodney Dangerfield. Now, of course.

Which is great in its own right. Yeah. But I just kind of lean toward people who are minimalistic. They just really did almost human sketches, and they were hilarious. Now, of course, getting back to Death Wish for a second, Vincent Gardenia, a great, great character actor you worked with.

Do you remember anything? Especially in Moonlighting, or rather in, what's it called? Moonstruck. Moonstruck, yeah. He's wonderful in that. And then he winds up, a little trivia, he winds up playing the father part in the TV version of Breaking Away. He played your part. Which is really odd because he's putting down

the Italians. Right. That made no sense. I'm only guessing that they didn't approach me because I was in Malta doing Popeye. I'd like to think that. But what if it became a hit? You would have been stuck in a hit

series. When I knew it was going to be a series, I already said if they offered it to me, I'm not going to do it. Because I think since you're not going to have a bicycle race every week, I didn't think the TV would take away its credibility and it has kind of a classic quality. You have to turn them out every week and it would get kind of thinned out. You know, a lot of sitcoms, if they're not good, they're just boring.

I love when you say that dog, that cat, that's my cat. His name is Jake, not Fellini. Yeah, my cat. Did you have any dealings with Charles Bronson? Who is he? That's how I felt. We weren't even together. Oh, okay.

He's running away. And again, when they finish their bit, they go to the trailer. You never see them. Now, well, read off this. We like to chat with him. The guy you can chat with, I worked with Gary Marshall. You can chat with him forever. Oh, yes.

He's a very approachable guy. I live two blocks from his theater, the guy you can chat with, I worked with Gary Marshall. You can chat with him forever. Oh, yes. He's a very approachable guy. I live two blocks from his theater, the Falcon, and I live about eight blocks from where he lives. He lives next to Joe Mantegna. I look out their windows, and they see the old Three Stooges houses. They all lived out there in Toluca Lake. He still owned a lot of property that Stooges did on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake. He still owned a lot of property that Stooges did on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake. Can you do a

Gary Marshall imitation for us? Well, after takes, he would just say, very good, very good. Let's do one more. And the funniest thing was, I did about 60 films.

I never saw a director do this. He had comedy writers behind his shoulder, and they'd be feeding him lines for scenes. And he would just turn and snap his fingers. Give me something for this. We'll do another take in a minute. Give me something. That's great.

And it was just like doing Happy Days. That's great. In fact, he used a couple of writers who'd worked with him on Happy Days. Well, you worked for some great directors, Paul. You worked with not only Gary Marshall, but Cassavetes, Arthur Hiller. Gilbert and I were talking about Robert Mulligan. George Roy Hill, you were in Slapshot. John Hughes, Peter Yates, Breaking Away, of course.

Chris Nolan. And Chris Nolan and Christopher Guest. Yeah, I love Chris. I mean, we did three of those with him. You are very, very funny in those films. You know who was in that Death Wish with me? Christopher Guest was in it. Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. Yeah. For one minute. Yeah, who was playing one of the other hoods in Death Wish? Didn't we talk about this? Denzel Washington. Wow. I didn't remember that.

Yeah. He appears for a second. There are three black muggers. And at the end of the line is Denzel Washington, I think, swinging a chain. But you know, Chris Guest's mother was a casting director. And she cast him. She cast me also. And she was once my agent.

I didn't have an agent for theater. And Alan Arkin took me to her because she was his agent. And then I signed with her. And she later became a casting person, and she put Chris in the movie. That scene in Guffman where you're talking about being abducted by aliens is so wonderful. I was doing Grace Under Fire. I was a semi-regular and Chris called me and says

I want you to do this movie everybody in the town has been abducted by aliens so I said when do you need me so he told me and I said the Grace Under Fire people I said I'd like to be off this two weeks they said no we can't let you off

you know I had what they call an 8 out of 13 contract. They said, the scripts aren't in yet. We don't know if you'll be in it. So I couldn't do it. So I told him I wasn't able to do it. And then he called me a couple weeks later and said, could you fly down on Saturday and do something?

I said, sure, I'll do that. The part he wanted me for was the mayor and that was the part Larry Miller played. But when I got there, all he said was, you were abducted 40 years ago. That's all you need to know. And so I did a take. It was about 45 seconds, maybe 50. And he said, let's do one more.

I said, same or different? He said, I don't care just as long as you're abducted. And not only that, I'd flown down that morning, because I didn't work until noon or 1. I was done by 1.30 or 2. He said, if you want to, you don't have to stay at the hotel. You can go back home. So I was just down there for enough time to do those two takes.

Now, the way they ended it was, I have a tingling in my buttocks even today from remembering it. He was probed so many times. But the way I remember ending it was more subtle, but what I said was, first of all, I say one of them probed me, then he went out in another, and then different times, different ones. Not all together.

Sometimes, but a lot of them are different probings. You get the feeling this guy's really been buttfucked quite a while. So at the end, I said, looking back on it now, I can't say it was an unpleasant experience. I just thought it was a kind of funny sideways way to say it.

Very funny. And working with Chris Guest and Larry David, I mean, it must be I just thought that was a kind of funny sideways way to say it. Very funny. Very funny. And working with Chris Guest and Larry David, I mean, it must be ideal for you because you love to improvise. Yes. The scripts are 12 pages long and they're just scenes, descriptions of scenes. I talked about something I got cut out of Mighty Wind Wind, was I said, I'm into the environment.

I have suits at home made of hemp. I'm not wearing one now. But I like natural things. I said, of course, I don't wear my hemp suit while I'm operating a heavy vehicle or anything. I remember you were the manager of, what was it? The something. The small town. Main Street Singers.

The Main Street Singers, yeah. It's great. He's the only living person that was once in it. You know, all the originals are gone except him. Really? I went to the business office. He said, do you sing? I said, no.

Do you play guitar? I said, no. He said, well, I still would like you to Chris's office. He said, do you sing? I said, no. Do you play guitar? I said, no. He said, well, I still would like you to be in it. So you'll be a guy who's up there singing, but you can hold the guitar if you want. And I also improvised a scene, which it didn't stay in the movie, trying to explain why I hold a guitar and never play it.

I said, once we were doing a gig in Boston and we went out for some Italian food and I spilled spaghetti sauce on my only white shirt. I wasn't sure what to do, and someone said, well, hold the guitar in front of it. And I say, then it kind of caught on, and I was known for it. I was known for holding it. That's how it caught on. All right.

Many things are gone in the editing. But I think he's a genius. Me too. Me too. What an actor. What an actor. Even his one season of Saturday Night Live, which unfortunately you can't find. It came out on VHS but never DVD.

He did such wonderful work with Shearer and Marty Short. And Marty Short. I wish I could get my hands on that Short. And Marty Short and Billy Crystal. I wish I could get my hands on that stuff. Really good. They were great. Yep. They did two guys.

Two guys were the owner. I don't know if it was Chris or... It was Harry Shearer and maybe Crystal, but it was two guys who owned a novelty shop and they had fake dog poop. It's great. It's a great sketch. Talking about how things aren't moving.

They were hilarious. Geniuses. That's when he did Nathan Thurn, the lawyer. You bet. Okay. Paul, we have so many other things to ask you, but I've got to eventually wrap up. Well, because we can't do it all day. We'd love to talk to you all day.

Listen, I may call you guys if my show gets on the boards, and I'll come by for a visit, or I'll do a little phone call with you. That'd be wonderful. Oh, absolutely. That'd be wonderful. And do you want to plug your show now, even though you're just working on it? Not really, because I didn't even decide on the name yet. Okay. My wife suggested Upright and Personal, because it's quite personal, and I'm still upright.

I like that. And we should say, too, that you act with your wife sometimes. You do some productions. Well, we did a play at the Odyssey here in L.A., and then we took it back to New Jersey to a regional theater, which we wrote the play, and we appeared, and we're just two of us playing, both playing two parts. And then we wrote a very, very popular one act, which is a parody of Love Letters called Post-Its. It's people's lives from when they're 25

to when they're at the end of their life, and that's all on Post-It. That's a fun idea. And there's 10 minutes, and it's done over 100 productions now all over the place. and post it. That's a fun idea. And there's 10 minutes and it's done over 100 productions now all over the place. We get queries from South Korea

and the Philippines and Japan and we're like, what the hell are they going to do with this? It's full of jokes. We'll look forward for that. We'll look forward to it.

And you don't have a title for the show yet, so you don't want to say that much about it. No, not really. It's just following me. It's like what you were talking about. I get interested in radio comedy. I get interested in Keaton. And I went to study theater, and pretty soon I didn't end up being a physical comic, except for someone like Jim, Bill Irwin. There's

not much of it going on, you know. And I ended up playing all kinds of parts, but I did a lot of comedy, and of course with Chris Guest and Larry and Second City, so part of my career has been comedy, but I also do a lot of fairly straight acting. Sure, so the show The One Man Show

is really about your journey. That's right. And yeah, the influence was on me. And I even explained that by the time I joined show business, even though I love Keaton, I couldn't do what he did or even try it. It was all talk all the time. And I ended up spending about 15 years making 90% of my money in commercials. So I had that whole thing going on too.

While I was doing The Odd Couple, I made four times as much in the daytime going out and doing commercials as I would make on Broadway for eight shows a week because I got popular in the commercial business. You and James Caron have that in common. Yeah, he sure did a lot of it.

Yeah, he sure did. He did Pathmark for many years. You bet. The first time I was ever aware of him was seeing him on Pathmark for many years. You bet. Oh, yes. You bet. I was the first ever to be aware of him, was seeing him on Pathmark. Anyway, I'll let you guys go. We'll talk again. Oh, let me just wrap it up.

We'll do it again. We'll just wrap it up, Paul. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre and the man who played Molly Ringwald's father in 16 Candles, among a billion other things. And invent and creating Morgan Freeman's character on The Electric Company. Yes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the great Paul Dooley. Please hold your applause. called Wait For It. It's got interviews with comedians like Reggie Watts, Todd Glass, Liza Schleichinger. Schleichinger, I've been friends with her for 10 years. One of the funniest people out there, and I still have a hard time with the last name, Liza. Our very own Owen Benjamin, that's me, takes you on a musical journey down internet rabbit holes and much more.

You don't have to wait any longer. Just go to youtube.com slash wait for it comedy. There's no need to wait for it anymore. Because it's here. And it's funny. And I love you. A few days ago, Brooke Tudine posted an inspirational quote on her wall that got 17 likes and 3 comments. Thumbs up, Brooke.

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