Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Adam Arkin and Alan Arkin

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

Gilbert and Frank are joined by Emmy-winning actor-director Adam Arkin and Oscar-winning actor-director Alan Arkin for a funny and fascinating conversation about portraying villains, directing dark comedies, working with children, the precision of the Coen brothers and the Cold War politics of "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming." Also, Pat McCormick hits the hard stuff, Groucho drops in on Second City, Stephen King praises "Wait Until Dark" and Alan (almost) directs "Blazing Saddles." PLUS: Captain Kangaroo! "Northern Exposure"! The brilliance of "The In-Laws"! Adam "reps" Chuck McCann! Alan records "The Banana Boat Song"! And Adam and Alan choose their favorite Arkin performances! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with perfect harmony in pure Michigan. Keep it fresh at michigan.org. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. We're pleased to welcome not one, but two guests on the show this week. Adam Arkin is a producer, Emmy-winning director, and an Emmy and Tony nominated actor who's been a fixture on the big and small screen for decades. In films like Hitch, The Doctor, Wrestling, Wrestling Ernest anyway, A Serious Man, The Sessions, and popular TV shows like Chicago Hope, Northern Exposure, The West Wing, Frasier, Monk, How to Get Away with Murder,'s Anatomy, The Americans, Masters of Sex, Fargo, Justified,

Billions, Sons of Anarchy, and Succession. And if we ask him nicely, he might tell us about working with Billy Barty and Pat McCormick. Alan Arkin is a director, author, children's book author, improv teacher, former folk singer, a Tony and Oscar winning performer, and one of the most admired actors of his generation or any generation. You know his work from memorable films like The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, Catch-22, Wait Until Dark, The 7% Solution, Argo, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, and Little Miss Sunshine, and the movie we've discussed at length on this show, The In-Laws. He's also written several books, including the terrific 2011 memoir, An Improvised Life. But even with all those achievements, his one greatest thrill and honor was to share the big screen with me, Gilbert Gottfried, in the 1985 cinema classic, Bad Medicine.

Gilbert, it was one of the highlights. It was not the highlight. It was one of two or three others in there that I hold in as much esteem. That's a movie that will never, ever be shown again. You realize that? It's one of the four times I've played Mexicans, which will never, never fly again. You know, hold that thought, and I'll read the rest of this.

It's just one. It of this. It's enough. It's enough. Oh, okay. That's interesting because both of us played Spanish guys in the movie. And would that be allowed nowadays? No, because there are other Hispanic actors in the world who would probably rightfully make a hue and cry. I think we're done for as far as that's concerned.

Gilbert, you want to tell the audience who's here? Oh, okay. To finish the intro? Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I'm having a stroke. God almighty, can't you get an announcer who can speak English?

Jesus. You can't get a sentence out. I see the bottle there. I see the bottle on the side. Adam Arkin and Alan Arkin. That's it. Hello, everyone. Welcome, gentlemen.

Thank you. Thank you. We got through it. That's another thing. I mean, your entire career, you played so many different nationalities. Yeah, I couldn't be. Until I was 35, I couldn't go anywhere near me. It would be anathema. I didn't know how to do that. I had to play somebody as far away from me as humanly possible. Catch-22 was the first time I ever won. I asked Nichols, I said, who is this guy? How do you see him? He says, it's you. And it's terrified, man.

There is no me. And I was right. It turns out I was right. Listen, I got to tell you, before we go any further, you're responsible for the single funniest joke I've ever, every time I think of it, I crack up. And I've been thinking of it for a long time now. The one you joke about Manson, having lunch with Manson, is the funniest single joke I've ever heard. Oh, yeah. I was having lunch with Charles Manson.

In the middle of lunch, he turned to me and said, is it hot in here or am I crazy? I can't tell you how many people I've told that to. I laugh every time I think of it. Thank you. Gilbert, what about the Hitler-Stalin joke, the Hitler-Stalin-Roosevelt one at the party? Oh, God.

You still do that one? I remember the one Hitler joke where I'm walking down the street and I pass right by Hitler and then even say hello to him. And he... And he turned around to me and said, oh, I guess I'm the enemy now. Close enough. Oh, wait, wait. I remember the joke now.

Okay, wait. I remember the joke now. Okay, good. I was talking to Hitler at a party. Afterwards, I went over to Roosevelt who was at the same party, and I said, that guy Hitler, I don't like him. And Roosevelt said, oh, Gilbert, who do you like? Oh, my God. That's the one. All right, as long as we're doing silliness right up front,

and we'll jump around like crazy. Adam, we talked on the phone about you working with Pat McCormick and Billy Barty, and I shared with Adam that Gilbert had lost a part to Billy Barty. Yes. Which Adam found rather incredible. What part did you lose? Okay, not a great film by any stretch. No pun intended. intended yeah it was uh life stinks that mel brooks picture so i was supposed to play i guess a legless bum but that at the last minute they got rid of me and got bill party to a lot of people. I think Billy Barty legless is kind of bananas on bananas, isn't it? Yeah.

The double silly. I would change the names if you tell that story again. What was it like with McCormick, Adam? You told me you were supposed to be on that shoot for a couple of weeks, and it turned out to be what, like 20 weeks? I was supposed to be on it, I think, for like three weeks,

and I ended up being employed over 22 weeks. Incredible. Jason, why was this? Under the Rainbow. Yeah, those were the days in which a lot of the key players on films could get away with imbibing various substances. And I think there were about three or four complete, you know, having to shut down for a while in order to get everybody back together again enough to film. Tell that Pat McCormick story, the way you ask him what's in his thermos. That's a great story.

We were standing while they were lighting. They had asked us to stand there and we'd been there for like 20 minutes and it started getting really hot and it was a different time so people weren't as afraid of sharing a drink. But he had

a big frosty looking wax soda cup in his hands he was drinking. I said, what is that? He said, it's Pepsi. And I was like, can I have a sip of it? And he hands it to me, and I take a swig of it, and it's just like it tastes like a third of it is bourbon, you know? And I look at him and I say, Jesus Christ, where do you get your Pepsi?

And he just looks at me with his eyes slightly hooded and glazed. He goes, Bob's crazy boy. And that was all he said about it. Bob's crazy, boy. We've had our share of Pat McCormick stories on this show because we've had people like Buck Henry on here. You know, this famous story of going,

he went food shopping with Pat McCormick and he dropped all of his, you know this one, he drops his groceries on the checkout and he says, did I buy enough toilet paper for all this food? Oh, God. The stories are legendary. I used to love him when he would actually show up on The Tonight Show. His bits with Johnny were amazing.

Everybody's in Under the Rainbow. Leonard Barr, Gilbert, turns up in Under the Rainbow. Oh, geez. Allegedly Dean Martin's uncle? He was Dean Martin's uncle. Oh, okay. I always wondered. That was true.

How many times have you guys worked together? Do you have an exact number? Because, I mean, Adam, Alan does. About an hour ago. Oh, really? Oh, you did? Yes, Adam. Yes, you did? Yes, Adam. Yes, off the top of your head.

Off the top of my head, I would say it would have to be at least eight times. That's exactly right. Really? Okay. Eight times. Chicago Hope, I know about. Choo Choo and the Philly Flash. The Larry Cohen movie.

Yeah. Recently Get Shorty. Yeah. Yeah. But then I've been directed by Dad a number of times on stage. A number of times? Did you have the sorrows of Steven on there? Yeah, I do.

And Joan of Lorraine. Yeah. And Max Randerson playing. And then the last thing was Get Shorty. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that cameo. I finally got to direct you.

And a question to both of you, because I heard this from both of you, and this is a thought that I always thought when I was going into show business, I used to believe, seriously, if I had a career in show business, I used to believe, seriously, if I had a career in show business, then there was no such a thing as sickness or death or being depressed or angry. Or going to the bathroom. Nothing. Nothing like that. And I thought, yeah, when you're in show business, none of you are immune to all that.

Well, Alan, that comes up in your book a lot. I mean, the idea that you weren't comfortable until the in-laws. I think you said you hadn't even learned how to have fun. If I did a scene that was halfway decent, it was always a sigh of relief. I survived that. I thought I was having fun until I actually had fun one day. And I said, oh, this is what fun is like. It's not like the other things that I was doing for 30 years.

Oh, that just gives me a flashback. When we were in Madrid with bad medicine. I remember you saying, Oh, I feel like I'm doing a movie. According to the critics, no. But you felt, I think both of you felt like you were also, you'd be immune to like depression or anything bad. Yeah. And then you get successful. And if you're smart, you say, hey, wait a minute. There's life around this.

When they say cut, you've got to go back to life, and you have to do something. It occurred to me when I was about 35. There's so much in the book about that. I saw you telling Kevin Pollack that in your early performances, the intensity was kind of a desperation. It was terror. It was mostly terror. I mean, I had wanted it so badly for so long that I was terrified of what would happen if, you know, I had to make it work, had to make it work, had to make it work. And it's not a good way to live. And you always thought you were going to get fired?

Yeah, I always had one eye on whether people were accepting it. And at what point did Adam come to you? And I mean, is there a specific memory, Adam, of the day that you made the decision that I'm going to do this? And part two of that question is, did dad, did he impart the kind of the advice from the lessons that he was in the process of learning? Always, yeah. I mean, that he was in the process of learning? Always, yeah. I mean, not necessarily packaged as, you know, I'm giving you a lesson now, but primarily through watching him live through those periods and being very able to share his experiences with me and other people as well.

I don't remember there being a day when I said, this is what I'm going to do. I was separated from dad for a number of years between the ages of like four and 11 and was, you know, visiting with him during school vacations. time he went from being a former folk singer looking for work to getting his into Second City getting his first Broadway show getting a Tony Award for that getting his first movie getting an Academy Award for that this was all over the space of that time period from my age 4 to 11, I already was always pining for him and wanting to spend more time with him. And then from a distance, seeing this incredible transformation, it made it a very intoxicating potential life that I wanted to be a part of. I wanted to be a part of, you know. Well, I thought that way from seeing you playing with friends,

even at the age of four, five, six, and seven. The games you would play would very often be theatrical games. And I found there was an, I don't know if you remember that, but it just felt like it was a given. It's nothing we ever talked about, but it just seemed to me that that's what was happening, that you were preparing yourself, even in your games, you'd be doing scenes from movies and trying to reenact them with kids around the neighborhood. So you never said anything to dissuade him, Alan, or your other two sons who are also actors? No, at that point, I thought it was an honorable profession.

I thought it was an honorable profession. Oh, and tell us about your folk singing career. The Terriers. I don't think it's boring at all, Dad. Well, I played the guitar since I was a kid. And I got out of college. I didn't have a dime. I didn't have anything to do.

I was looking for work. And somebody said, you want to be part of a trio? I said, I get you audition with somebody, this group that's looking for another member. So I said, OK. I got in the group. I thought it'd be a way of making pocket money on weekends. We got together and within a month or two, we had a record contract and we had a hit record very, very quickly. And I went around the world with them for a couple of years. And I thought it was going to be an entree to an acting career and like a naive young man that I was. And it didn't. So I quit them after two years

and had enough money to coast on for a couple of years as a result of the success of the one song. And that was it. That was my new... And the albums are available and they're great, too. They're just great.

Oh, yeah, the music's online. Anybody can listen to it. The Terriers. Also, Calypso Heatwave. Tell us the one song. The one song that was a big hit. It was the Banana Boat song, but everybody thinks it was the same as Harry Belafonte's,

and it wasn't. I'll make this as short as possible. Harry Belafonte had his version on an album. It was called Deo. Nobody knew about it. They bought the album, but nobody knew about that song. We released ours and called it

The Banana Boat Song, and it started climbing up the charts. Harry Belafonte changed the name of his song to The Banana Boat Song, chased us up the charts and won, and then sued us which we was laughed out of court because we both stole the song from the same place which was jamaica jamaican folk songs and we both stole it and changed it but but before you pulled the plug you did get to be in a movie with Maya Angelou. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, before she was.

Calypso Heatwave. Which I think is my favorite Alan Arkin Maya Angelou movie. Oh, my God. There's also, in the book, you talk about how you were in Paris. You were playing what was the famous Olympia Theater. And in the middle of a performance you suddenly saw this guitar on your back you looked down at the outfit you were wearing and you said what the hell am i doing that's exactly right i quit that night i i stayed

through the gig and then i said i gotta get out of here i gotta go back to uh what i'd studied to do uh what i'd studied to do and and adam you worked with captain kangaroo dad and i both worked with them i i only worked yeah yeah dad dad dad had dad had been established as a character on a few episodes and after he had been doing it a few times i got invited to come on and and play his. So there's an episode of Captain Kangaroo with me playing the father to my father. That's nine times you worked together. Nine. See, I knew it was at least eight. That's nine.

Wasn't there a short Canadian film, a project very early in your career? Did you count that one? Canadian? project very early in your career? Did you count that one? Canadian? The short, well, it's two different things. There was a Canadian film that dad was in that we did a rewrite on together. So we wrote together on that. Okay. But the short was a short film called People Soup that dad wrote and based on a short story he had published when he was in his late teens, early 20s. And it got nominated for an Academy Award, that little movie. It starred my brother Matthew and I.

And I was all of, I think, like 11 or 12. He was nine. Did you count that one, Alan? Yes, that one I counted. I thought that was the first one. I forgot about Captain Kangaroo. It's interesting, too, the trajectory of that, because you quit. You went back to New York.

You got the phone call to go join the improvisational group in St. Louis. And that's when Paul Sills saw you and invited you to join Second City. It's interesting how careers, and this is one of the things in your book, how things just sort of happen. Well, I mean, if you're smart, you let your life work that way. And the truth of the matter is, that's what everybody would. You ask people my age, has your life turned out the way you thought it would? Nobody's going to say yes.

Everybody's had detours and curves and angles. No matter how much you plan, no matter how much you decide, this is the way it's going to say yes. Everybody's had detours and curves and angles. No matter how much you plan, no matter how much you decide, this is the way it's going to be. It's never going to be that way. I'm going to be a teacher because it's secure, and I'll be in one place for the next 50 years. You're in there for three years, and they want tenure, and you don't got tenure, and you're fired,

and you got to do 50 and other things. So everybody's life is an improvisation, whether they like it or not, sooner or later. That's profound. I try to be profound whenever I'm on the radio. Radio brings that out in me. Tell us how the in-laws came together. It's the most banal story imaginable.

I had never met Peter Falk. I looked at, I was in a fairly good place in my career at that point. I looked at television, he was doing a talk show. And I said, he and I would do a good movie together. And I was in, I was, I called him up and I said Peter I says Alan Arkin how are you how are you I said I think we do a good movie together yeah interested sure find something we'll do it so I called John Cali who

was the head of Warner Brothers I said I think Peter Falk and I might do a pretty good movie together he says you got a bright you got an idea I said I think Peter Falk and I might do a pretty good movie together he says you got a bright you got an idea I said no he's got a writer I said not really he said you got anybody in mind I said yeah I had just read the uh first draft of Blazing Saddles which is one of the three greatest scripts I've ever read in my life the The one that Andrew Bergman wrote before Black Bart. It was called Black Bart. It was a genius script. And I said, I want this guy to I'd like this guy to write it. He says, OK, hire him. I said, let me meet him. I'll talk to him. So I went to Andrew and I said, you want to do a movie? He says, sure. He says, you got an idea. I said, well,

the only thing I know is that Peter should drive me insane. I said, as the movie goes on, he should drive me insane. That's the only idea I have. I think that would be somehow a funny conjunction because there's something dogged about him. And that would be good to drive people crazy. So two months later, he comes back with this perfect script. Perfect this perfect script. Perfect, perfect script. And that was it. That's the end of the story. Andrew sends a message, by the way, Alan.

We had him here. And he was here with Norman Steinberg, one of the writers on Blazing Saddles. He says, ask Alan if he recalls discussing a pirate story in which Peter would put a patch over his good eye. a pirate story in which Peter would put a patch over his good eye. I don't remember that. I don't remember that. You almost directed Blazing Saddles. You had casting challenges?

Yeah, I couldn't find somebody to play the part. It needed somebody who could do a comedy version, as if it needed somebody to play Dizzy Gillespie, and I couldn't find anybody who could play Dizzy Gillespie. Yeah, yeah. They wound up finding the right guy. And you mentioned before that you were, the idea of being a, your father was a teacher.

Yeah. And he was one of the victims of the whole Red Scare that we've talked about. Yeah, he was teaching in the L.A. city school system, and they decided they're going to have their own tribunals. And they wanted everybody to write down their political beliefs and he had a bunch of people said you don't have any right to ask us what our politics are that's private information this is guaranteed I mean it's like that's what we're private polls it's none of your business so he got fired was condemned to be out of work for about 15 years, sued the city of the school system, and won, but he had died after he won his case

against the L.A. school system, sadly. You've said your politics and your family politics have sort of peaked out in your work a little bit over the years. I don't know what you mean. peaked out in your work a little bit over the years. I don't know what you mean. That your political beliefs or even the trauma of all that has shown up in your work and formed it a little bit over the years. Not the politics of it, but the social issues,

which my parents felt strongly about. I still feel strongly about it. I feel like I spent a lot of time working at throughout my life. I mean, the idea of racial equality, I grew up with that since I was one. Racial equality, treating labor fairly, the equality of the sexes, things like that. The group that we were talking about earlier, the group that you were in, the Terriers, was comprised of two Caucasians, one African American, and they couldn't play in a third of the states in the country at that point. Yeah, and we were so immersed in an alternate culture

that we didn't know we were doing something unusual at that point. We were just three guys, and one guy happened to be black. We didn't even notice. My first friends in my life were two black kids that lived next door. It was something that I grew up with, I grew up with, and the idea of prejudice was vehemently shunned by my entire family. The way I was brought up, and I'm grateful that I was. Oh, and Adam, you once said that you could play, you're good at playing, I think the term was, hairy guys.

Where did that come from? I felt it left a wide range of options for casting choices when it came to me. Well, between Full Moon High and Northern Exposure. Yeah. Yeah, Adam in Northern Exposure. Yeah. Right. He's sort of a human being.

Like you could play Armenians and Greek. I have played Greeks. Not Armenians, but I've played Greeks. We've done a lot of shows. We've talked a lot about The Blacklist on this show, Alan. We had Lee Grant here, and we talked about it with Ed Asner and several other people, because a lot of what this show is that we do is about entertainment history.

Very, very tragic period. It was a tough period, yeah. What was weird was weird about it people say is it like now and i said no now it's not it wasn't like now because about a quarter of the population's lived under a state of uh state of feeling like they were about to go to a concentration camp the rest of them were doing hell gidget goes to hawaii you know the three quarters of the rest of the country. And now everybody's in the same boat, different sides of the boat, but the same boat. What about you, Adam? Obviously, you grew up in the same family, same sense of social justice. Does it sometimes emerge, appear in your work? Is it impossible to separate the artist from your beliefs? Yeah, I mean, it certainly has tended to inform the choices I've made when there was a choice

to be affiliated with something that felt politically irresponsible or unwise. But I've also played my share of people on the other side of the spectrum. Like the character on Sons of Energy. Yeah, yeah. And the character I played on How to Get Away with Murder. It doesn't bother me to explore the other side of the equation when it comes to a character, as long as it's not in some way promoting those ideas. A project that promoted them, I couldn't abide.

But filling that part of the narrative is fine with me. You play a pretty convincing sociopath on Sons of Anarchy. Thank you. And I think you played a morbidly obese guy on Monk. I did, yeah. I was one of three actors to play the same role. But I was the first person to play a character named Dale the Whale, and then two other actors after me played the role,

and I never understood what the thinking was, except they were looking for the right guy. You guys, a lot of actors want to play those kind of characters. They want to play heavies. They want to play heavies. They want to play dark characters. They want to explore that side of themselves. Obviously, Alan, you played one of the great screen heavies, Harry Rote. Well, thank you.

People got with it. I didn't get very good reviews when I did. I don't think people knew what I was doing. But as time went on, I got better reaction to it over the decades. Stephen King raves about that character. Yeah, that's what I've heard. I'm touched by that. They didn't even know on the movie what he was doing for a part of the time. You had tremendous resistance initially when you first came in playing the role that way, right?

Yeah, and then I had the moment when I pulled the knife out for the first time and they said, oh, they recognized what I was doing. They let me alone. Who played it on stage? Was it Duvall, Robert Duvall? Yeah. And what was it like working with Audrey Hepburn?

Whatever your hopes and dreams are about what she would have been like, she was better than that. She was an elegant, lovely, charming, fun-loving, hard-working, sweet, dear human being. I was enormously impressed with her. I hated being rotten to her. I hated it. And rotten to where you were.

Stephen King says it's screen, villainy, rivaling Peter, Laurie, and Em. Oh, my God. That degenerate. Wow, my God. How about that? And you didn't have the German going for you. I wonder if there's a chance of going back and dubbing it. Gilbert, give the boys a little bit of your Peter Lorre, just as a comic interlude.

Okay. No, it was you who ruined it. You, it's your stupid attempt to buy it. Cavender found out how valuable it was. No wonder he had such an easy time getting it. You imbecile. You

bloated fathead. We like to throw those in. My youngest son, Tony, and I have a game. You have one-word imitations of people. You can imitate anybody you want, but you can only use one word. And our Peter Lorre invitation is cheese. Cheese. And I think it was, it may have been charlie callous someone who came up with that boris

karloff was auntie posto that's right yeah that's right very good and, we got Swayride. Cary Grant. Cary Grant was Corduroy. What does it say again? Corduroy. Let it make dance. Gil, what about Humphrey Bogart in the post office? I do a whole bit

of that. Yes, Humphrey bogart in the post office alan knows you're right and baila go see when uh he's not wearing a, when you ask him who his favorite stooge is, Mo. The best word for him is wow. Wow. Wow. Adam, what about playing creepy characters like Ethan in Sons of Anarchy?

Or Ethan, and he's lovable, but he's certainly an anti-social character, and that's Adam's character in Northern Exposure who we talked about. And I heard you say he was close to the real you in some ways. Adam in Northern Exposure? Yeah. He's my id. Adam in Northern Exposure is just my living id. He is a misanthrope. Yeah, I got to play that role because the producers of Northern Exposure had produced another short-lived but very good series called A Year in the Life. And I was playing a very conservative character on that show.

And after working with me for a bit, they came to the realization that I was kind of nuts and said, you know, we want to find something to write to that someday. I was like, by all means. So that show came to an end. And a year later, they sent over the script introducing the character on Northern. And it was just a thing of beauty. Yeah, it's a lot of people consider it the best episode of that show. Well, I don't know about that, but it was certainly one that's... And then you started directing.

Yeah, Northern was the first chance I ever had to direct an episode, and they were kind enough to let me do that after I had observed and shadowed other directors on the show for a while. People on Cruise, when I'm working, people on Cruise come up to me all the time and say, can I talk to you for a minute?

I say, yeah. Say, we just got through working with your son we loved working with him that's a that's a nice that's a nice bit of feedback adam to hear that so many actors enjoy being directed by you it's yeah it's nothing could be a higher compliment as far as the actors and the crews the crews too a lot of people i saw an interview with you we had barry sonnenfeld here a couple of weeks ago and he was saying how important it was for a director to know the answers to questions, even if he didn't know them. Yeah. To answer any question, if somebody says, which shirt, which tie, which watch, which vase. And you said that that's something that at the

beginning you were doing, and now you've evolved a little bit on that. You've earned the right to not know the answer right away. Well, first of all, anything Barry Sonnenfeld has to say about directing, I will take a backseat to that because I have a huge amount of respect for him. And I think there are a million micro decisions that you have to just make up your mind about. But just as importantly for me, I have found that the more I've opened up to the help and the advice of people around me on a crew, the better I do. Crews are filled with people who have a huge amount of expertise in their individual disciplines. And it's just insane not to avail yourself of that. You don't have to use everyone's idea every time you hear one. But nine times out of 10, I have found that by relying on the expertise of the people on my crew, I end up making better decisions as a director.

And a question to both of you. What's the first sign that you're working with a bad director? The first sign? Yeah. When you, that moment where you say, this guy just doesn't know what he's doing. Anytime they cast me me they're automatically suspect it's a hurdle they're going to have to climb over in the course of our relationship with one another um i i i find uh i'm immediately suspicious of directors that that don't really communicate with the cast after the initial takes of a scene. You know, whenever the notes are not character or story related, but simply technical over and

over again, and a sense that you're trying to be molded into a shot that is interesting because of what it is as a shot rather than whether it's really serving the scene that that that always tends to make me a little nervous allen's in the witness protection program he just went into no no i'm thinking i i i don't know i i i can't locate it to like one moment but i i do not like directors that scream at the crew I have a thing about that I don't like that I'm a little bit leery of people that decide they want to do improvisations

before we start shooting and we don't know each other those directors always start rolling my eyes because everybody wants to get to work on the damn script and once you got the script a little bit under your belt I think then an improvisation can be exciting and as as a tool but to start out with with people you don't know improvising on characters you don't know yet it just starts feeling like a waste of time

and it's always been that that to me is like a novice director i don't like directors that don't want to rehearse that that annoys me uh i don't like actors that don't want to rehearse they think they think they're going to ruin their spontaneity at which time i point to them out the most spontaneous uh the most spontaneous performance in the history of movies is Brando in Streetcar, who had at that point done it about 300 times on Broadway when he did the movie.

So I don't want to hear about spontaneous from people. Make it look spontaneous. Do you miss directing, Alan? You directed a handful of movies. I just started, yeah. I loved directing. Yeah, I watched Little Murders last Yeah, I loved directing. Yeah. I watched Little Murders last night,

which is just so wonderful and so incredibly dark. I'm very proud of that film. It's very current. Surprisingly, yes. Yeah. I was going to mention that. You know that paranoid,

broken down like police chief or something. Lieutenant practice. Yeah. It terrifies even me when I watch it. And then I played the character. You made it in what, 70, 71? And it's as relevant as ever. 71?

Was it 70, 71? Oh, my God. That's 50 years ago. I believe so. I must be old. And we like Fire Sale on this show. We've talked about it a lot. That's another one that would never get

shown anywhere. You obviously had a taste, and maybe you still do, for black comedy in those days. Yeah, I still do. I still like black comedy. Tell us about the late, great Fred Willard who was in the original Little Murders. Oh my God, it was him. Because we just lost him.

Yeah, I know. If you spent time with him, you felt like you were some farmer's assistant from Idaho. There's no hint, no vestige of a sense of humor. Then he gets on stage and he just wiped the floor with everything that was going on around him. He played the lead in Little Murders in my production off-Broadway. And there's a scene in which Patsy yells at him,

has a long monologue where she's yelling at him and he's sitting in the chair listening. He fell asleep in that scene every night of the run. And she had to go shake him awake every night. He fell asleep on stage every night. Had to be woken up.

You know, I had a thought about him because you had brought him up. We were talking about him, Frank, brought him up we were talking about him Frank in our earlier conversation and yeah but but he there was something about Fred and I had never thought of this before but there's something about him that carried on the tradition of Bob and Ray in a certain way there was something about interesting something about the the the minutia of these kind of simpleton characters that

he was able to make so hysterically funny over and over again. By underplaying. Yeah. And they both like specialized in like really boring characters. Yeah. Who became hysterically

funny in their boredom. Yeah. There's a great story in the book. I'll make people buy the book, Alan, and read it. But there's a great story in Improvised Life where you threw the cast in improvisation. Oh, in Little Murders? In Little Murders. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll make them buy the book. By the way, we love those actors. Gilbert, how much do we love not only Elliot Gould, who turns up in a great episode of The Kaminsky Method, by the way, but Vincent Gardini. Oh, my God.

Elizabeth Wilson and Lou Jacoby. Yeah. We live for these people. We put up an electrified fence and if they catch you going outside of it, they beat the shit out of you i don't i don't like it but it's an emergency

we uh we get a lot of listeners uh this show's also on serious radio now as i told you guys so we're going to recommend to the people listening uh little murders which you can find and it's terrific and also fire sale with that great cast and alan and i were on the phone talking about to the people listening, Little Murders, which you can find, and it's terrific. And also Fire Sale. With that great cast, and Alan and I were on the phone talking about Richard Libertini, who can do no wrong. Can do no wrong. But Kay Medford, Vincent Gardegna, Rob Reiner,

I mean, Sid Caesar turns up. Anjanette Comer's hilarious. It's a great cast. It's like an animated cartoon, really. Yeah, truly funny. We were all pretending to be. It's like an animated cartoon, really. Yeah. Truly funny. We were all pretending to be. It didn't work.

Well, it works for me. I must be in the minority. I love that you said, too, that you need to see people having a good time. You need to know that people are enjoying each other when you're watching. No, no, when I'm acting with people. Yeah, but you also said when you go to Carnegie Hall or when you see any kind of, you see a music group together, it helps you to know that they get along and like each other. But everybody feels that way. If they stop and think about it, you get to find out the Beatles didn't get along is depressing. It is. any sense and it's it's depressing for all of mankind uh it's it's just a it's you say to yourself what hope can there be for the something like the united nations or doctors

without borders if these people just doing the silly stuff can't have a good time what's what's the hope for the rest of us and martin and lewis you hear stories about. Yeah, same thing. Abbott and Costello. You don't want to know. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It hurts your enjoyment of it. I got a couple of questions from listeners I warned you guys about. We got about 70 of them, but I'm going to narrow it down to five or six.

No, these were sent in ahead of time on the internet. These are for other shows, so you're going to give me Julie Haggerty's questions. You're going to give me Julie Haggerty's questions. Yeah, we're going to give you Julie's. Ken Fineleaf says, I don't have a question but a

comment. The sardine liqueur scene in Big Trouble is the single funniest thing I have ever seen an actor do. It's the longest spit take in history. Yeah. Yes. And I told Beverly you were coming on,

and she said, I never forgot the honor of working with that man and the grace he showed on Big Trouble. Beverly D'Angelo. I thought she hated me. No, no. I used to go up to her and say, Beverly, you look just beautiful today. She said, oh, shut up. Don't ever say that again. Don't tell me that. say, Beverly, you look just beautiful today. She'd say, oh, shut up.

Don't ever say that again. Don't tell me that. Here's one from somebody you may know, Adam. You know a gentleman named Sherman Allen? I certainly do. He says, first of all, I want to ask, you've got to ask Allen something about the original Broadway production of The Sunshine Boys. But I also want you to get Adam to tell one of his long jokes. Possibly a la Shelley Berman.

Is it time for me to tell a joke? Yes. I think so. Something suitable. All right. A kid is sitting on a park bench eating some candy. And an old man walks up to him and says, Kid, you don't want to do that.

You don't want to eat candy. Candy's bad for you. You keep eating candy, you're going to have all kinds of problems with your health. Take it from me. Kid looks up, he says, my grandfather lived to be 103. The old man says, really? Did he eat a lot of candy? Kid says kid says no but he minded his own fucking business that's for you sherman

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Yeah. I think that's something that Dad has always had a particular genius at. The ability to play absurd comedy with dramatic stakes, like someone's life is dependent on it. Like Sheldon in The In-Laws. Yeah, I think I should have done more with Sheldon. As I look back at it, I felt like I was having too good a time. That's something with both

of you. One, do you watch your movies and TV appearances afterwards? Two, do you find yourself going, oh God, I'm awful when you watch your own performances? From my point, I think I'm relatively objective to what I'm doing.

I think I'm capable of enjoying what I've done, if I'm happy with it and critical of it, if I feel like I've made a couple of technical errors or choice errors and stuff, things like that. I don't know why or how, but I think I'm relatively objective. Somebody once asked me in an interview, he says, do you ever look back at old performances, do you cry then, feel like that?

And I said, yeah, but that means you're growing. That means if you look, if you do better now, that means I'm growing, so that's okay. It's all right. Everything's fine. I... I'm glad you think so. Except for the world, everything's fine. I, uh... Except for the world, everything is fine. Yeah, everything, aside from we're all prisoners in our homes, but otherwise.

I watch some of my work and want to crawl under the furniture, and occasionally I end up being pleasantly surprised that things turned out better than I thought they would. Like I say, there have been several occasions where I haven't known how to play something, and I say, how would Adam do it? I've done that several times. Wow! What's a favorite performance, or if not a favorite performance, what's a performance that you just, you can't turn off if you see Adam doing it,

and vice versa? Northern Exposure, definitely. I love the film he directed. My other son, Matthew's wife. What's the name of it, Adam? It was Tony's wife, Amelia. I'm sorry, Amelia, yeah. And it was My Louisiana Sky.

Oh, it's very good. I told you, Adam, I watched it. I've watched it many times. Yes, it's very good. I told you, Adam, I watched it. I've watched it many times. Yes, it's beautiful. His work on East Wing, what is it, West Wing? West Wing. West Wing and

those and the first thing he ever did, which is People Soup, which is a short film I direct. I still love to watch. That's four. How many more do you need? That's enough. Adam, same question.

You know, I just had the great pleasure of turning my son onto The Russians Are Coming. The Russians Are Coming. How old is your son? He's 15. He knows his grandfather's work but he he

knows his his current uh work more recent work better he had never seen it and uh i i just love that movie i i love the entire movie and i think dad's performance in it uh would be amazing under any circumstances the fact that it's his first film, it always blows me away. It's just such a masterful, beautiful piece of work. I love him in Little Miss Sunshine. I loved him in the film The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Yes.

And, God, it's hard to pick just a few because there have been so many that have just blown me away. I'm a fan. I'm a fan. As are we. The In-Laws is right up there, too. You know, speaking of The In-Laws, Alan, Andrew was on with us. He told us that, and obviously he wrote it and he's seen it hundreds of times. on with us. He told us that, and obviously he wrote it and he's seen it hundreds of times.

He says the little moments in the film, the throwaway moments, are the things that bust him up now. Like Peter talking about the chicken sandwich. Yeah, well, that was improvised. I forced him to do that. We were rehearsing that scene where he's driving backwards on the freeway, and he didn't have any dialogue there. And he just started talking about this chicken sandwich that he just eats in town. I said, you've got to do that in the film, because that's the film. So he said, okay. And he did it, and that was it. That was, I think, one of the few things that was improvised in the movie. And he did it, and that was it.

That was, I think, one of the few things that was improvised in the movie. I remember, too, after an insane car chase in The In-Laws, they finally, the car stops, and you say, did we hit the little boy crossing the street? That was written. That was written. That was Andrew. What makes Andrew laugh is like Falk in the coffee shop saying to the guy, is this decaf? It's very good.

One of my favorite things in the whole movie is the fact that we're talking about secret CIA missions at the top of our lungs in the coffee shop. Right. But the two things that still crack me up in the movie is that, the fact that we make no reference to the fact that he's talking about secrets. And the other thing is when I'm running for my life in the hotel in Mexico and he keeps throwing me down to the ground.

He does about three or four times. And by that time I'm so insane that we just keep the conversation going. Those are the two things that make me feel really wonderful. And there's that classic part of the film where he talks about the giant flies. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, the Jose Grecos de Muertes.

Yeah, there's red tape in the bush. Enormous flies. Enormous flies. I'm going to mention two Alan Arkin performances that maybe fly under the radar a little bit, Alan, when people look at your career. Simon. Oh, that's fine.

I like it under the radar. I like that one. it under the radar i like that one somewhere under the radar and you're sigmund freud in the seven percent yeah i haven't seen i was afraid to look at that i felt like i under underplayed that terrible no it's great it's a great it's a great movie and a great performance i love that i got screwed up because what happened was I got the part and I started researching Freud, researching, researching, and I kept reading the script and I said, this has got nothing to do with what he's like. He was, this has nothing to do with what Freud was like.

I finally talked to the writer. I said, what did you do here? He said, yeah, no, it's not Freud. It's my father. My father was a psychiatrist. I did it after him. But by that time it was too late so i was playing i was felt like i was riding two horses simultaneously uh it's a nice image

also hearts of the west that that was fun another another another good little film yeah we were talking about how we had walter mathau's son charlie and uh chris lemon jack lemon's son here last week and we were talking about a lot of these wonderful little movies, especially in the 70s, that wouldn't really be made today. They wouldn't get theatrical releases. Movies like Hearts of the West, movies like Simon, maybe even The In-Laws. I don't know.

I just saw a tiny movie that costs nothing that's one of the best science fiction films I've ever seen. Yeah? Yeah. It's borderline genius. It's on, what the hell's the name of it, Adam? You're Better of Night. Something of Night.

Vast of Night. It's a strange title. V-A-S-T of Night. It's absolutely brilliant. It's funny. With films that never would have gotten made, it's like you wonder how... I don't think Pacino, De Niro, Jack Nicholson, or Dustin Hoffman, with the films they made,

would have a career now. We were talking about movies like The Last Detail and, you know, Kramer vs. Kramer and these kind of films. Serpico. Dog Day Afternoon. Dog Day Afternoon is a great example of films that would maybe be character driven stories that would end up on television now as opposed to getting... You agree with that, Adam? Yeah, very much so.

And those films were so... They were so informative for me, so formative. And, yeah, do you remember... What was that Al Pacino, Gene Hackman movie, Scarecrow? Oh, yeah. Scarecrow, yeah, Jerry Shatsburg.

Yeah. And, again, probably something that would have been had to have been made on cable now in some way. But you're directing a lot of this kind of television now. You're working on these quality shows. Actor-driven shows

like Succession and Masters of Sex and to a certain degree Fargo. Certainly Sons of Anarchy. And don't forget what he did with Get Shorty. And Get Shorty is another good example. Yeah, I've been very lucky on some of the material I've gotten to work on the past 10 years. I've gotten to collaborate with some of the best television makers out there now.

It's been great. You think we're experiencing a renaissance in out there now. It's been... You think we're experiencing a renaissance in television? I think it's been... It seems we are. It's been going on for some time. And it's been one of the few pluses of everybody being cooped up as much as they have. I think a lot of stuff that had flown under the radar for large audiences is now getting a second chance to be seen

because there's so little original programming being made now that people are going back and looking at some of the great work that's been done over the past few years. Let's put Kaminsky Method in that group too. Another character-driven, very smart show. Yeah, very much so. And Alan, you said unlike so many actors, you like working with kids.

Yeah, I love working with kids. Well, my training is improvisation. And when I see a kid whose eyes are glassy because they're focused on the lines he's been learning, I'll do things to trip him up, change

something. He's got to force himself back into the moment of what's going on now. And once in a while you work with a kid who's extraordinary, like I did in Little Miss Sunshine. Working with Abigail was amazing. It's like I was working with an eight-year-old kid who behaved as if she had a 50 years of experience behind her she was extraordinary incredibly alive and present and fun uh yeah i love working with kids dogs i have a hard time i heard you like touching other actors and that's that's one of the things you got going with michael douglas he didn't mind you touching him yeah Yeah, he's very, very easy to work with. He's incredibly flexible and easy to work with.

Do you, with both of you, do you ever have it in the middle of a performance you're saying, boy, I just don't know what I'm doing here? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

If I make it to the middle of the performance, things are going really well. I had that on stage much more than film. I don't have that very much, but on stage I used to get that a lot. I was reading that when you were in Enter Laughing, you would get bored by doing the same thing every night.

So you would start standing in different places and would occasionally throw the other actors off. Well, yeah, in order just to keep some life going and not feeling like it was road after four or five, six months, which doesn't do the actor any good, producer. I'd try just doing a different piece of blocking in order to just get a fresh perspective on a look or something. And the actors would all look where I was supposed to be instead of where I was. I was going to ask Ted

to tell the story about the guy that came backstage after you'd been doing the show for about a year. Oh yeah, I've been doing it. It was a play in which I was never offstage. I was done it for about eight months. A guy comes back.

And you'd never missed a performance, right? I'd never missed a performance. The guy comes running backstage. He's all feverish. His eyes are wide. He says, Mr. Arkin? I said, yeah. He says, can I tell you this is one of the greatest performances I've ever seen on stage? He says, and between you and me, you're much better than the guy who usually plays the part.

That was 50 years ago, and I still don't know what I should have said. Adam, you did plays. You did I Hate Hamlet. You did Brooklyn Boy. Did you get bored? Did you experience the same thing? No. Doing the same...

I didn't. I mean, first of all, I've done a fair amount of theater, but I've never been in a production that ran so long that there was ample opportunity to get bored. And second of all, the show in which I made my Broadway debut, I Hate Hamlet, and speaking of 7% Solution, it starred Nicol Williamson,

who was responsible for getting drunk and attacking another actor on stage about a month into our run. We made the front page of the Post with a blazing headline that said, you know, Broadway sword play turns real. Actor storms off stage after co-star whacks him in butt. And that was Nicol Williamson and Evan Handler.

And the insanity that went into that production kept it from ever being boring it was holding on for dear life every night can I tell the story a little story around that time Adam calls me he was out of town

I said hi how you doing he said oh dad I'm in this play I'm stinking and the play is terrible. Please help me. Will you come up and look at it? We're having tryouts out of town. Will you please come up and look at it? And I said, sure.

I put on my dad hat, which I would love doing. And I drove up to where they were having tryouts and I sat through this performance thinking, oh, I can, I'll fix him. I'll give him some suggestions that'll straighten everything out. And I watched a brilliant, brilliant, perfect performance and a hysterically funny play.

And I had no, nothing to offer whatsoever. I said, except to tell him to shut up and just do what he's doing. And he got a Tony nomination from it. Yeah. Wow. but i saw that aspect of dad just flying out the window it was a little bit sad oh so it's bittersweet in a way tell tell us about groucho gilbert will appreciate this tell us about groucho showing up in the theater at a second oh my god we did a thing we we did a uh one of our acts at that point was a Khrushchev-Kennedy debate where we take suggestions from the audience.

And I played Khrushchev, Severn Darden played my interpreter. Andrew Duncan played Kennedy and Zora Lampert played Mrs. Kennedy. And we'd field questions from the audience and I would answer in fake Russian. And my job was very easy Severin Darden would make up things to say so we're seeing we're up we're doing the the that scene Groucho comes one night we're all wildly excited and nervous he puts his hand up and I wore like I don't ask me why but I wore like a New York cab driver's hat as Khrushchev and

don't ask me why and he raises his hand he says Mr. Khrushchev I said well he said where did you get that hat several audience laughs several answers and his hand goes up again

he says how much would a hat like that cost me? I answer, seven translates, he goes, hand goes up 20 goddamn times. And it's always, he said, everything is about the hat. He wouldn't talk about anything except the hat. What size is a hat like that is that a tweed or a gabardine it was the only time in the history of second city that all of us had a runoff we just ran off stage and quit uh just in in a state of abject hysteria.

And he came backstage and was so complimentary and sweet and warm, and we were so grateful to see him. He was the father of improvisation in this country, after all, he and his brothers. And he used to come and see me at openings, and then he invited me to his home, and we got pretty friendly. Oh, that's great. I loved him.

He was a lovely guy. What about the phone call you got one night from Marlon Brando's assistant? Oh, God, that's a long story. Ha, ha, ha! Yeah, I'm sitting in, I think it was in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I was staying there for some reason,

some publicity thing or a movie or something. And I get Mr. Harkin, I'm sitting in the dining room. Mr. Harkin, there's a phone call for you. I go over the phone. Mr. Harkin, he says, Mr. Marlon Brown would like to speak to you if you have a few moments. I said, okay.

He says, do you have time in a half an hour? I said, yeah, I'll be here in a half now I said yeah half an hour later phone rings mr. mr. Arkansan phone call for you I get on hello Alan hi it's Marlin I'd never met him I didn't know you know I was alive I said am I I was calm and I felt like I knew him somehow some stranger so how are you he says well you know all things considered I think I'm doing pretty well I said wow that's a lot of things to consider and he says what and I knew I was in trouble right then and there he's considering all

things that's going to take a week and he invited me to his home to this day. I don't really know why. And we spent six hours together talking. And he, I'm not sure, my suspicion was he wanted to pump me about, about... Andrew Bergman. Oh, about Bergman, because he was making The Freshman. I think that was the reason, but he was so kind of left-handed and devious that he never came out and asked it. But what was really the most interesting thing about the evening to me was that he had always decried acting, saying anybody could do it, nobody's, it's nothing. He spent the entire evening, six hours acting.

Whenever he was talking, telling a story, he'd be playing all the characters. He'd imitate everybody and everything the entire evening. Wow. Acting constantly. So that was really fascinating. Adam, as we wind down, tell us about working for the Coen brothers in A Serious Man

and then interpreting the Coen brothers by, obviously you were a lifelong fan, and then getting to direct Fargo. It was a dream come true. Your first shot, by the way, has a Coen brothers joke in it. Do you know what I'm referring to? First scene of the first episode of The Castle? Remind me what? Scribbled on the wall, seeing your grease.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah it's an inside joke yeah yeah inside joke it was a dream come true uh i had been a a huge fan of theirs uh from their first film on and and uh was super excited at the idea of getting to work with them i also knew it was a situation that was fraught with the potential for, you know, disillusionment because they were such heroes of mine. But it more than lived up to any expectation. And the way they ran that whole, the way their organization is run, the way they include people, they built rehearsals into the film so that we all at the start of it got our wardrobe fitting and put a great deal of time in rehearsing for a number of days so by the time we we went home and then came back to do our work we we felt like part of

a company at that point so it automatically makes you feel more connected to everybody and and that carried through to everything they did with the film after we had shot it. Their editing sense and their ability to protect anything good that happened in the course of filming a scene. It somehow all ended up on screen. You find yourself in circumstances where if a small portion of what you felt really good about ends up somehow a part of things, it's a win. And in their case, they just were able to always,

you know, curate and take care of anything, any happy accident, any moment that was special, and are so brilliant in their editing choices that they were able to make use of all of it. So they're just consummate filmmakers and lovely people. And so you wanted to buy in. You wanted an opportunity to play in that world. Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah. With Fargo. Yeah, and Fargo had already established itself

as an incredible adaptation or launching point for that material because I came on and worked in the second season of it so i'd already had the benefit of seeing what they did with the first and was blown away the coen brothers seem like they like torturing the characters in their movies yeah i well i think i i think they viewed their own lives as having some torture in it and uh And they've put that into everything they've done. I saw, I told you on, when I was texting you the other night, that the episode, I mean, of the two you directed,

Palindrome is great too, but that next to last episode of season two, The Castle, and I was snooping around online and Fargo fans, a lot of Fargo fans consider that to be the best episode. Oh, that's a huge compliment to hear, yeah. And again, I don't know anything about directing, but I was talking to you on the phone about the staging of that shootout, that scene in the motorway, which is just fantastic television. That was a nail-biter prepping for that,

figuring out the logistics of what was going to have to go into it because we were shooting it over multiple days. There were huge action sequences that had to be shot not only from within the action but in sort of two concentric circles outside of the action. Everything had to be synchronized. We were shooting on location and on stages, and it all had to be cut together

in a way that made it feel like one event. And it obviously turned out well enough to make an impression on people. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast after this. Navigating adulting isn't always easy. You're not just working, you're working late. And dinner dates are all, what's your five-year plan?

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Please drink responsibly. Alan, this isn't a question, it's just another remembrance from a fan i don't have a question but i have to thank alan for giving me a beautiful family memory my parents laughing like crazy at the movie the russians are coming the russians are coming uh alan's accent was perfect because it sounded exactly like my grandparents trying to speak english that's nice yeah. If I had quit the business right then, it would have been fine, because the experience of doing that movie was absolutely extraordinary in every conceivable way. Norman Jewison created an atmosphere on the set that I've hardly ever seen since.

We were all there for the same reason, everybody in the cast, it was absolutely a communal project. We involved the entire town in the making of the film. The dailies were shown at the local theater and the entire town used to come to the dailies every night. I mean, it was that kind of open, loving, conscious experience was just the worst experience you feel it in the film

you feel that energy i think so yeah and you and norman is still with us yes he is and you thought it was important to make your character really a good like a likable character yeah i mean we we were we were scared when we made that film. We were scared what the reaction was going to be. It was the time when Russia was considered, they were considered not just bad people, but demons from hell. And we thought we were going to get picketed.

We had no idea what was going to happen. The whole country, when the movie came out, breathed a sigh of relief. Everybody said, oh, thank God, finally somebody came out and had the guts to say it, that they're just people just like us. There may be problems with the government, but underneath that, it's all people trying to survive. And it changed to a certain...

It was the only film I've ever done that I felt like had some kind of social action as a result of it, or change of heart. And I was enormously proud to be connected. It was what I'd always wanted to be connected with in film anyway. And to have that be my first film was just enormously moving for me. Which you indirectly owe to peter just enough he had made too much he had got off of the part and had made too much money that year

so turned it down so so i was i was the default one more one more comment for you adam uh marshall armand tour of your performance in the Chicago Hope episode called The Parent Rap in season two, your character's conflicted anger and grief over the death of his father is a script in an episode and a performance that I still think about. I'm very touched to hear that.

You know, all the great work you did in Chicago Hope and when I think of Chicago Hope, I think of you singing Luck Be a Lady. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. It was great. It was great. And when I think of Chicago Hope, I think of you singing Luck Be a Lady. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Who knows? It was great. It was great. I've got that saved.

I think it's a wonderful episode, but I am confronted every time I watch it with how much I am not a musical star by any means. Yeah, but you're a musician. In your heart, you're a musician, and you can feel it in every note out of your mouth. And not only that, to have seen him do it on Broadway, which I did, was just great. He was great in Guys and Dolls on Broadway. Gentlemen, this is my father, who is very proud of me.

I want you to practice that in everything. As he should be. I'm not your father. Oh, my God. I want this to be the first to know. You know, there is one other nice thing in the book, too, Alan. There are a lot of lovely things in the book, but it opens with that great story of you and Madeline Kahn.

That was a great story. And do you want to share that? Because I think it winds up being the theme of the book and in part kind of a theme of your journey. Very much so, yeah. Yeah, you want me to tell that story? Yeah, sweet. I did a movie with Madeline Kahn once,

and she was a delight and very hardworking and a lovely person. And between shots, she and I were sitting on the lawn somewhere. We were on a hillside in Westchester County and just chewing on grass. And I finally realized how good she was at so many things. And I asked her, what was your initial impulse? What was the first thing you wanted to be? She thought about it.

She says, I don't really know. I said, well, was it singing? Was that the first thing you wanted to be? She thought about it. She says, I don't really know. I said, well, was it singing? Was that the first thing you thought about being a singer? She says, no. Actress? Not really. She says, a comedian? No. I said, well, what was the first thing you thought of? She says, well, I used to listen to a lot of music. She said, and that's what I wanted to be. And I said, what? She said, I wanted to be the music. And it was like being hit in the head with a two by four. And I realized that that's, I think, what all artists want to be.

They don't want to do it. You really want to be it. And the next best thing is to doing it. It gave me something to reflect on for a long time. It's like the story of my daughter, Molly, when she was about six years old, she was watching Olympic skating on television. And her mom said to her, you're enjoying this, honey, huh?

And she says, yeah. She says, I want to do this i'm going to do this and her mom said uh she says you want it you want to do that someday you'd like to you'd like to start doing that when you grow up and she says no i i i can do it now all i got to do is learn how to skate. But she knew she had it in her. The event was already living in her. Before we let you guys get out of

here, because we've kept you long enough, Adam, at least tell the story of how you became Chuck McCann's unofficial agent. Well, it harkens back to one of the movies i mentioned of dad's uh uh the heart is the lonely hunter and uh i was very young when the film was being made i think i was no older than about nine or ten and they were in early pre-production for the film and dad was getting ready to do it and very excited about this this project and came

back one day disappointed about the fact that a major character in the film had to be recast and they couldn't find the right person for the role and they were going to probably delay production for an indefinite amount of time while they figured out how to find that person. And I had the presence of mind at that age to ask what the role was, what the character was, and dad described it to me. And there was a television show on at the time, a kid's show in the mornings in New York that I had been watching regularly. And I brought up the name of the man who starred in it who was Chuck McCann because he sounded like someone that could play the character dad described dad watched the show

as I recall watched the show and called the producers as excited to bring him in to at least be interviewed for the role which they did and subsequently gave Chuck McCann the role of, I forget the character's name, but... Antonopoulos. Antonopoulos, dad's... Friend. The learning impaired man that dad was sort of the mentor to, and Chuck would always introduce me as his agent because he had been made privy to

the story. Lovely man. That's a great story that you had those instincts at that age. Yeah, I guess that was already the beginnings of a desire to be able to have a word in casting. We had Chuck on here when we first started the show back in 2014. Yeah. Sweet guy. Lovely man. Made a lot of people happy. Made a lot of children happy.

Now, Alan, do you think there's going to be a Bad Medicine 2? Not until they release the first one. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Not until they released the first one. Before I forget to say, I had Paul Sand on the phone last night. Well, I got to call him and say hello. He said, you know, tell Alan we were kids. We were children. We worked together with Viola Spolin.

I think I was 12 and he was maybe 13. And then we didn't see each other again for 20-some odd years. Yeah. Good guy. I want to talk, too, about how the Arkans are becoming a dynasty. We're becoming dinosaurs? Not dinosaurs. We had Danny Houston on here a couple of months ago,

and that's an acting dynasty. And I think the Arkans are becoming or have become an acting dynasty. Your other two sons are actors. Matthew's in Criminal Minds and Bull in NCIS, and Anthony's on Succession and The Americans. It's a family doing this now. I've worked with Adam more than I've worked with anybody else, but with Tony, I spent a year on stage with him in a play. And I've worked with all three of the kids in multiple roles.

We have never, in my memory, had one moment of issue, either whether we're acting together or I'm directing them or Adam directing me. I can't recall one second when there's ever been an issue. You say that now. Is that true? How old are your children now? They're older than me now.

I have a 15-year-old son, Emmett, and my daughter is, she probably doesn't want me telling her age, but she's in her 30s and she's married. Are they showing inclinations to be performers? Because I think, Gilbert, your son at this point, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that Max is going to be a performer. He's a talented one in my family. My daughter Molly is a performer. She's done improv comedy both here and in Seattle.

They had an improv group called Blood Squad that became sort of a fixture up in the Seattle area. And she's now working as a producer in Marta Kaufman's company. She's on Grace and Frankie and is developing new material with Marta. And my son Emmett, he's a performer in that he's a bass player. He's been playing bass with a group that has actually already played like The Whiskey. And they're a really talented group of kids who've been playing since they were about nine. And he's just now starting to express some interest in acting. Yeah. I think he could end up at least, you know, having that in his arsenal if it was something he wanted.

Like I said, it's becoming a dynasty. Yes. Gil? Well. What else do you have for these men? Well, I can't resist it any longer, Alan. Go to lunch. Will you go to lunch?

I'm trying to do a job here. Will you go to lunch? Isn't that what Kevin Spacey says to me? Yes. Yes. Was I supposed to not know what that is? No. I just, that was one of those, like, so many great scenes.

What was it like being with a cast like that? I mean, yourself included, of course. It was wonderful. It was an amazing experience. But, you know, people say it was fun. It's like fun if brain surgery is fun. Doing Mammoth is like doing brain surgery. You have to do every pause, you have to do every fumpher, you have to do every stutter. It's all written in. So if you miss a thing, you got to start all over from the beginning. If I miss a, and if I only do one of those, then you got to do the scene over again.

So we rehearsed for a month. And then when they were shooting other scenes, most of my stuff was with Ed Harris. So Ed and I would run to a dressing room and we'd run and run and run, see and run and run and run and run scene and run and run and run and run until we shot there was so it was a sense of doing something really good and really well but it wasn't fun it was fun afterwards when it was over uh but it was a hell of a movie i think it's really

a really a terrific movie i think it's for the best adaptation of man on film. It's a great piece. Gilbert, I'd like to see you do Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. You'd be good at it. I bet he'd be good. We've asked a lot of actors that we've had on this show this question. We'll wrap it with you guys and we'll ask. You know Gilbert's career. You've seen Gilbert all these years.

Do you guys, in your professional opinion, think that Gilbert could play a serious role? I have no doubt. I have hardly ever seen that somebody who was great at comedy that couldn't do something serious. I don't see why not. I have no problem imagining. How about that, Gil? Thank you both.

Yeah. Adam didn't even mention it. I have no doubt. I think it would be actually a great opportunity for whoever cast you in a serious role. I wouldn't jump at Richard III immediately. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. And I want to add this also.

Not only do I think it should be serious, but I think you should think about playing a legless character. I'm serious now. You know what I would like to see you do? Because I felt like it's been missed. I'm not joking. I'd like to see you do Death of a Salesman. Wow.

And I'm dead serious. Wow. like to see you do Death of a Salesman. Wow. And I'm dead serious. Wow. Would he be better than me? No, I'm serious. The lead. The lead in Death of a Salesman. Wow. I love that. I think it's always been cast for him.

Gilbert, the bar has been raised by Alan Arkin, who wants to see you do Arthur Miller. Oh, my God. I think you'd be a world-class Willie Loman. Wow. Yeah, I don't know what to say at this point. Let's...

Will you do it? This is... We need a yes or no, Gabbard. Adam, you want to take us out with one more joke? Oh my God. Talk to Dad for a second. I'll try to think of one. Can I do one?

Oh yeah. Yes, of course. A lady comes to meet her husband for dinner and she's looking a little ashen. She says, you okay? She says, Charlie, I've got to talk to you. What? What is it?

I have a confession to make. There's something I've been wanting to tell you for a long time, and I've never had the courage to say it. I've made up my mind today. I've got to tell you. She says, what is it, dear? You want to leave me? She says, no, nothing like that.

She says, oh, thank God. She says, I'll listen to anything you want to tell me. She says, okay, here it goes. She says, oh, thank God. He says, I'll listen to anything you want to tell me. She says, okay, here it goes. She says, Charlie, I don't want children. He says, I know you thought I did, and I may have misled you, but I do not want children. He says, oh, my God. She says, thank you for being so forthright and honest

and open about it. She says, dear, I've been feeling the same way for a long, long time, and I never had the courage to tell you. She says, you feel the same way? She says, yes, I've been feeling the same way for a long, long time, and I never had the courage to tell you. She says, you feel the same way? She says, yes, I do. She says, okay, let's tell them as soon as we get home. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

I love it. Okay. No, Adam's got a joke okay Adam you gotta finish with multiple jokes doctor comes into a patient's room and says sir we got your test results back and I've never seen anything like this but you have virtually every communicable disease known to man you're like a one-person plague the guy goes well that's terrible. What am I going to do? And the doctor says, well, the first thing we're going to do is put you on a special diet. From now on, I don't want to have you eating anything other than Swedish pancakes, fruit leather, and flounder. And the guy goes, Swedish pancakes, fruit leather,

and flounder? What is that, to like beef up my immune system? And the doctor says, no, that's going to be about all we can slide under the door. Excellent. Stupid. So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre, Colossal podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre and we've been talking to the extremely talented father and son team of Adam and Alan Arkin and happy Father's Day and I want to thank a couple of people I want to thank Estelle Lasher and Marsha McManus your representation who are lovely ladies and indulged us and made this happen

and our friend Gino Salamone and of course the great John Murray so thank you gentlemen our listeners will love this this was a treat it was nice to be able to spend some time with you dad hope maybe it'll happen again someday Gilbert, Frank, thanks so much

of course Alan, next time will you tell us why you made Jean Renoir cry? Oh, I just told him what his work meant to me. And I went on and on, and he started crying, I think because I was talking too long. John, it was nice to meet you. And Dara, thank you. Thank you, guys.

I like you because you don't make me nervous I met someone like you before but only once or twice once or twice and not very recently You'll do My blood pressure's normal I haven't lost no sleep at all Not since Francine

And it's possible for me to concentrate On my work I'm glad I'm not walking on air And no trumpets go off in my ear I don't say to myself Gotta hold myself And I don't get a rush When you're near.

You're trustworthy. I wouldn't worry if I had to go away for a few weeks. You don't nag me for money all the time. And one thing I forgot. you're a very good cook and I certainly love to eat