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

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

GGACP celebrates the life and career of legendary Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin with this ENCORE of a 2020 interview with Alan and his son, Emmy-winning actor-director Adam Arkin. In this memorable episode, Adam and Alan talk 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! (Special thanks to Marsha McManus, Estelle Lasher, Gino Salomone, Sherman Allen and John Murray) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Try the new creamy parmesan and bacon Quarter P pounder today and discover how words are so unnecessary for a limited time only at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. 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 Hemingway, 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, and Boston Legal, The Newsroom. Murder and Boston Legal, The Newsroom. He's also a sought-after director of acclaimed episodes of hit series such as Grey'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 Barney 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, Glen Gary, Glen Ross, and Little Miss Sunshine. And a 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, 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. There 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 played Mexicans, which will never fly again. You know, hold that thought, and I'll read the rest of this. It's just one. It's enough. It's enough. Oh, okay.

That's interesting, because you were, 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?

Finish the intro? 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? Who is, how do you see him? He says, it's you. And it's terrified me. There is no me. But that was, and I was right. It turns out I was right.

Listen, I gotta 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 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. Do 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 turned around to me and said, oh, I guess I'm the enemy now. Oh, I guess I'm the enemy now.

Close enough. Oh, wait, 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 no pun intended yeah it was uh life stinks the mel brooks picture so i was supposed to play i guess a I guess, a legless bum. But at the last minute, they got rid of me and got Bill Barty. Billy Barty. I would tell that 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? I know 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. 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 having to shut down for a while in order to get everybody back together again enough to film. Tell that Pat McCormick story where 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 uh sharing a drink uh but he had a big uh frosty looking uh wax soda cup in his hands he was drinking i said what is that he said it's pepsi and i was like i was like. 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. 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 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. But 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. I compiled it about an hour ago. Oh, really?

Oh, 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. But then I've been directed by Dad a number of times on stage. A number of times?

Did you have the Sorrows of Stephen on there? Yeah, I do. And Joan of Lorraine. Yeah. And Max of Lorraine. Yeah. Max Warhenderson playing. And then the last thing was Get Shorty. Yeah, 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, then there was no such a thing as sickness or death or being depressed or angry bathroom nothing nothing like that and i thought yeah when you're in show business none of you're immune to all that yes so what well alan that comes up in your book a lot i mean the i the idea that uh that you you

weren't comfortable until until the in-laws i think you said you weren't comfortable until the in-laws. I think you said you weren't really even having, you hadn't even learned how to have fun. No, I mean, 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. Was I doing one at the time? According to the critics, no. Oh, my God. 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 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. And I saw you telling Kevin Pollack that in your early performances, the intensity was a 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, make it work, how to make it work, how to make it work. And it's not a good way to live. And you always thought you were going to get fired. And I, yeah, I was, I always had one eye on whether people were accepting it. And at what point did Adam come to you? And I mean, was, 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, not necessarily packaged as, you know,

I'm giving you a lesson now, but primarily through watching him live through those periods and and and being very able to share his experiences with me and other people as well um i don't remember there being a day when i said this is what i'm going to do i i i was separated from dad for a number of years between the ages of uh like four and eleven and was know, visiting with him during school vacations. And during that time, he went from being a former folk singer looking for work to getting 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 four 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 uh potential life that i wanted to be a part of you know well i thought that way from from seeing you playing with friends even at the age of four five six and seven the games you would play will very often be theatrical games and i found there's 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. Oh, and tell us about your folk singing career.

The Terriers. I don't think it's boring at all, Dad. People... 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'd get you an audition with somebody, this group that's looking for another member. So I said, okay. I got in the group. I thought it would 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 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 that one song. And that was it. That was my new... And the albums are available and they're great, too. They're just great. And the album, 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. 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 would buy 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 was laughed out of court because we both stole the song from the same place,

which was Jamaica. Jamaican folk songs. We both stole it and changed it. But before you pulled the plug, you did get to be in a movie with Maya Angelou. Yeah, that's right. 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 at 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? Yeah, that's exactly right. I quit that night.

I stayed through the gig. And then I said, I said i gotta get out of here i gotta go back to 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 play his father. 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? 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. But the short was a short film called people soup that that's the one i'm talking about wrote and uh based on a short story he had published uh when he was in his early late teens early 20s and um it got nominated for an academy award that little movie it starred my brother matthew and i uh and i was all of i think like 11 or 12 he was nine and did you count that one yes that one i counted i thought that was the first thing i forgot about captain kangaroo it's it's interesting too the trajectory of that because you you quit

you went back to new york you got the 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 them, you let your life work that way. And the truth of matter is, that's what happens to everybody. You ask people my age, let your life work that way. And the truth of the matter is, that's what everybody with, 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 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. You got to do 50 and other things. So everybody's life is an improvisation, whether they like it or not,

sooner or later. It's profound. I try to be profound whenever I'm on 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 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 the, I was, I called him up and I said, Peter, I said, how are you? I said, I think we could do a good movie together. You interested? Sure. Find something, we'll do it. So I called John Calley, 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 an idea?

I said, no. He said, you got a writer? I said, not really. He said, you got anybody in mind? I said, yeah. I had just read the first draft of Blazing Saddles, which is one of the three greatest scripts I've ever read in my life. 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 six two months later he comes back with this perfect script

uh perfect perfect script we 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. 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. 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 and a bunch of people said, you don't have any right to ask us what our politics is. That's private information.

I said, it's guaranteed. I mean, that's one way of 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 your 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 uh that that that that your political beliefs or or or even the the the trauma of all that has has shown up in your work and formed it a little bit over the years. Am I mistaken? Not the politics of it, but the social issues, which my parents felt strongly about. I still feel strongly about it, feel like I spent a lot of time working at it throughout my life. I mean, the idea of racial equality, I grew up with that since I was one. 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. I mean, we were just three guys, and one guy happened to be black. We didn't even notice.

My first friends in my life were black, two black kids that lived next door. So it was something that 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. 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 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've 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, very tragic period.

It was a tough period, yeah. What was weird about it, people say, is it like now? And I say, no, it wasn't like now, because about a quarter of the population lived under a 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 dark characters. They want to explore that side of themselves. Obviously, Alan, you played one of the great screen heavies, Harry wrote. Well, thank you. I mean, 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. You've read what he's...

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 off 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 duval robert duval yeah and what was it like working with audrey hipburn uh what whatever your hopes and dreams are about what she would have been like she was better than that she was she was an elegant lovely charming fun-loving, hard-working, sweet, dear human being. I just, I was enormously impressed with her. I hated, I hated being rotten to her. I hated it. And rotten to where you were. Stephen King listed, 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, Laurie,

just as a comic interlude. Oh, okay. No, give the boys a little bit of your Peter Lorre, just as a comic interlude. Oh, okay. No, it was you who ruined it. You, your stupid attempt to buy it. Kevin 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.

And I think it was, it may have been Charlie Callis, someone who came up with that Boris Karloff was anti-Postale. That's right. That's right, yeah. That's right. Very good. And we got, for Sean Conroy, we got Slyride. Cary Grant was Corduroy. What does it say again?

Corduroy. Let it make daves. Gil, what about Humphrey Bogart in the post office? I do a whole bit of that. Yes, Humphrey Bogart in the post office.

Stamps. Alan knows your act. And Bela Gossi when he's not wearing a watch and you ask him what time it is. Ten. And Christopher Walken, when you ask him who his favorite stooge is. Mo.

The best word for him is 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 antisocial 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. he is a he is a misanthrope yeah i i i got to play that role because the producers of northern exposure had had produced uh another short-lived but very good series called a year in the life um and i i was playing a very conservative conservative character on that show and after working with me for a bit they they 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, 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... 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 nice bit of feedback, Adam, to hear, that so many actors enjoy being directed by you. Yeah, 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 ant to answer any question if somebody

says which 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. 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 ten, 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 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 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 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 always tends to make me a little nervous.

Alan's in the Witness Protection Program. He just went into... No, no, no, I'm thinking, I don't know, I can't locate it to like one moment, but I do not like directors that scream at the crew. I have a thing about that. I don't like that. I don't, 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 make me start rolling my eyes because everybody wants to get to work on the damn script. And once you've got the script a little bit under your belt, I think then an improvisation can be exciting as a tool. But to start out 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 to me is like a novice director. I don't like directors that don't want to rehearse. That annoys me. I don't like actors that don't want to rehearse. They think it's going to ruin their spontaneity, at which time I point to them about 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, Julie.

I loved directing. 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. i was gonna mention that uh paranoid uh broken down like police chief or something like lieutenant practice yeah it terrifies even me when i watch it and then i 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.

Oh, my God. 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. you with 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.

in Little Murders in my production off-Broadway. 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. Hadn't he woken up? You know, I had a thought about him because you had brought him up. We were talking about him, Frank, in our earlier conversation. Yeah, yeah. But 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. Oh, interesting. Something about 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. 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 by 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 Kominsky Method, by the way, but Vincent Gardner. Oh, my God. He was wonderful. Elizabeth Wilson and Lou Jacoby. Yeah. We live for these people. Yeah, they were just wonderful. 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 like it, but it's an emergency. We get a lot of listeners. This show is also on Sirius Radio now, as I told you guys. So we're going to recommend to the people listening Little Murders, which you can find, and it's terrific. And also Firesale, 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 Gard Gardenia, 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 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 when you see any kind of you see a music group together you 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 it doesn't make 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 this silly stuff can't have a good time, 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, 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 listeners for other shows, so 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. That's the longest spit take in history. Yeah. Yes.

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. I used to go up to her and 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, 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, no, but he minded his own fucking business. That's for you sherman we will return to gilbert godfrey's amazing colossal podcast but first a word from our sponsor and and one thing we've discussed on this show and and especially we've discussed it like movies like Airplane. And it's like that of playing comedy seriously. 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 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? And two, do you find yourself going, oh God, I'm awful, and you watch your own performances? From my point, I think I'm relatively objective to it.'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 this? 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, uh... I'm glad you think so. 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. I've got to 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 beautiful. His work on East Wing. What is it, West Wing? West Wing 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

knows his current work, more recent work better. He had never seen it. more recent work, better. He had never seen it. And I just love that movie. I love the entire movie. And I think Dad's performance in it 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. 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. Right. 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, and he just eats in town. I said, you got to.

The grande. Yeah, I said, you 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. 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 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 those little two things that make me really wonderful that classic part of the film where he talks about the giant flies oh yeah oh the yeah the the the the Jose where goes the Jose Grecos demuertes yeah this 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. Somewhere under the radar. And you're Sigmund Freud in the 7% series. Yeah, I haven't seen it. I was afraid to look at that. I felt like I underplayed that terrible.

No, it's great. It's a great movie and a great performance. I love that film. I got screwed up because what happened was I got the part and I started researching Freud and research and research. And I kept reading the script and I said, this has got nothing to do with what he's like he was this is 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 made 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. It's a nice image. Also, Hearts of the West. That was fun. Another good little film. Yeah. We were talking about how we had Walter Matthau's son, Charlie,

and 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? 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 hopman with the films they made would uh have a career now we were talking about movies like the last detail and and uh uh you know kramer versus kramer and and. 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? Yeah, very much so. And those films were so informative for me so so formative uh and uh yeah do you remember um what was that al pacino gene hackman movie scarecrow yeah scarecrow yeah jerry shatsburg yeah uh and again probably something that would have been had to have been made on cable now in some way. Yeah. But you're directing a lot of this kind of television now. You're working on these quality shows.

Yeah, I've had... Like 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... 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. Yeah. 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 50 years of experience behind her.

She was extraordinary. Incredibly alive and present and fun. Yeah, I love working with kids. Dogs, I have a hard time. I heard you like touching other actors. And that's one of the things you got going with Michael Douglas. He didn't mind you touching him. 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,

I think they're going really well. I used to, 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 dad to tell the story about the tell the story about the guy that came backstage after you've been doing the show for about a year. Oh yeah I've been doing I was I was it was the it was a play in which I was never off stage uh constantly I I was done 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 Nicola 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 can i tell the story

uh a little story around that time adam calls me up he was out of town i said hi how you doing he said oh dad he's up in this play that's it's hot i'm stinking the the play is terrible please help me when you can 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 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 him.

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 city 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. Severn Darden would make up things to say. So we're doing that scene. Groucho comes one night. We're all wildly excited and nervous.

He puts his hand up, and I wore it like a, don't ask me why, but I wore it like a New York cab driver's hat as Khrushchev. And don't ask me why. Don't ask me why. And he raises his hand. He says, Mr. Khrushchev. I said, where did you get that hat?

The audience laughs. Severed answers. And his hand goes up again. He says, how much would a hat like that cost me? I answer seven translates. His hand goes up 20 goddamn times and it's always brush he said everything is about the hat that's it he wouldn't talk about anything except the hat what size is a hat like that is that a tweed or a gabardine on some 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. Just 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. I think it was at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

I was staying there for some reason, some publicity thing or a movie. And I get Mr. Harkin. I'm sitting in the dining room. Mr. Harkin has a phone call for you. I get Mr. Arkin, I'm sitting in the dining room, Mr. Arkin, there's a phone call for you. I go over the phone to Mr. Arkin, he says, Mr. Marlon Brown, who would like to speak to you if you have a few moments. I said, okay. He says, do you have time and a half now? I said, yeah, I'll be here. So half an hour later, the phone rings, Mr. Arkin, he had a phone call for you. I get up. Hello? Alan, hi.

I said, it's Marlon. I'd never met him. I didn't know he knew I was alive. I said, I'm calm. I felt like I knew him somehow. It's some strange reason. He said, 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. If you're 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. 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, say anybody can 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 everybody the evening wow acting constantly so that was really fascinating adam as we wind down tell us about working for the coen brothers in in a serious man and then interpreting the coen brothers by the you obviously you were a lifelong fan and then getting to direct fargo um it was a dream come true. Your first shot, by the way, has a Coen brothers joke in it. 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. I had been a huge fan of theirs from their first film on and 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 disillusionment because they were such heroes of mine. But it more than lived up to any expectation. They were the most supportive, specific, intelligent, and inclusive directors I think I've ever worked for. 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. by the time we went home and then came back to do our work, we felt like part of a company at that point. So it automatically makes you feel more connected to everybody. 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.

With Fargo. Yeah. And Fargo had already established itself as an incredible, you know, adaptation or launch launching point for that that material, because I came on and worked in the second season of it. So I 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, well, I think they viewed their own lives as having some torture in it, and they've put that into everything they've done. I told you 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.

compliment to hear. And it's, 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 like 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 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. 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.

Alan's accent was perfect because it sounded exactly like my grandparents trying to speak English. That's nice. That was... 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. It was 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 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. You feel it in the film.

You feel that energy in the film. I think so, yeah. And Norman is still with us, happily. Yes, he is. And you thought it was important to make your character really a good, like a likable character. Yeah. I mean, 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 uh 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 uh enormously uh moving for me which you indirectly owe to peter just enough he had made too much he had gone off of the part and had made too much money that year, so turned it down. So I was the default. One more comment for you, Adam. Marshall Armentor, 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. No, 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 into 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 i did a movie with madeline khan once and uh she was a delight and hard very hard working and a lovely person and we were 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 thought about being a singer? She says, no.

was that the first thing you thought about being a singer? She says, no. Actress? Not really. 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 2x4, and realized that that's i think what all artists want to be they don't want to do it they want to you really want to be it and the next best thing is to doing it and it gave me something to reflect on for a long time so 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, she says, 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 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, The Heart is the Lonely Hunter. And 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 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. There was a television show on at the time, a kids show in the mornings in New York that I had been watching regularly. 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 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. 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. Made a lot of people happy, made a lot of children happy. Alan, do you think there's gonna be a bad medicine too they released the first one before i forget to say uh i had pa 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 and it's a family. I'm proud to say 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 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 an issue

you say that now is that true? how old are your children, Emmett? 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. Yeah, 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 uh at least you know having that in his arsenal if it was something he wanted like i said it's becoming a dynasty yes gill well what else do you have for these men well i can't resist it any 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?

Uh, no. I just, I just, that was one of those, like so many great scenes. What were, 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 a fun, it was, it's like fun of brain surgery is fun. Doing mammoth is like, 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've got to start all over from the beginning. If I miss a, and if I only do one of those, then you've 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 until we shot.

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. But it was a hell of a movie. I think it's really, really, really good. Terrific movie. I think it's the best adaptation of man on film. It's just a great piece.

Gilbert, I'd like to see you do Glen Gary Glen Ross. You'd be good in it. Glen 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 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 hesitate. 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. 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. 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. Would he be bit for that? No, I'm serious. The lead. The lead of Death of a Salesman. Wow. I love that. Because I think it I'm serious. The lead. The lead. Willie. Wow. How about 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. Well, will you do it? 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 OK? 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 said, what is it, dear? You want to leave me? She said, no, nothing like that. She said, oh, thank God. She said, I'll listen to anything you want to tell me. She said, OK, here it goes. She said, Charlie, I don't want children. She said, I know you thought I did, and I may have misled you, but I do not want children. She 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 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, yes, I do. She says, okay, let's tell them as soon as we get home. I love it. Okay. No, Adam's got a joke. Okay, Adam. You got to finish with multiple jokes. A 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, doc. 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. Excellent. Stupid. So, this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing 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. I 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 Cause 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

Get a hold of myself And I don't get a rash 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.