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

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

GGACP celebrates Father's Day with this classic interview from 2020, featuring Emmy-winning actor-director Adam Arkin and Oscar-winning actor-director Alan Arkin. In this 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! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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hit singles and some toys. Trivia and dirty jokes, an evening with the boys. Once is never good enough for something so fantastic So here's another Gilbert and Franks Here's another Gilbert and Franks Here's another Gilbert and Franks Colossal classic 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. 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. 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 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, Glen Gary, Glen 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

fly again. You know, all I thought, and I'll read the rest of this. It's just one more. 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 movie. And would that be allowed nowadays? No, because there are other Hispanic actors in the world who would, who would probably rightfully make a hue and cry. I think, yeah, I think we're, we're done for, as far as that's concerned. Gilbert, you want to, you want to tell the audience who's here? Oh, okay. To finish the intro? Gilbert, you want to tell the audience who's here?

Oh, okay. To 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. 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 terrified me. There is no me. But that was, 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. And 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 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? 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 big not a great film by any stretch. No pun intended. Yeah! It was Life Stinks, the Mel Brooks picture. So I was supposed to play, 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, what 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

where you ask him what's in his stomach. 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. 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 this famous story of going he went food shopping with Pat McCormick and he dropped all of his groceries on the checkout 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 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? Yeah. Guess, Adam. Yes, off the top of your head. because I mean I compiled it about an hour ago oh really? yes Adam off the top of my head I would say it would have to be at least 8 times that's exactly right 8 times

Chicago Hope I know about, Choo Choo and the Philly Flash the Larry Cohen movie recently Get Shorty but then I've been directed by dad a number of times on 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 W. Anderson playing. And then the last thing was Get Shorty, where I got... Yeah, I love that. I love that came Shorty, where 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're immune to all 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 idea that 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. 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.

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 got to go back to life and you have to do something it occurred to me when I was about 35. Did you there's there's so much in the book about that

and I saw you telling Kevin Pollack that in your early performances you were the intensity was 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? 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, 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 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. time period from my age four to eleven I already was always pining for him and 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 you know well I found, I found 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 can 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'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 album, the albums are available and they're great, too.

They're just great. Oh, yeah. The music's 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 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. Yeah, before she was... Calypso Heatwave. Yeah.

Before she... 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. And I quit that night. I stayed through the gig. And then I said, I've got to get out of here. I've got to go back to what I'd studied to do. 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 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?

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 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 thing. 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 how 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 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 15 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 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 harvey how are you how are you i said i think we should do a good movie together yeah

interested sure find something we'll do it so i i called john callie 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 writer? 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. I 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, 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. 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 and a bunch of people said, you don't have any right to ask us what our politics are. 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 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. have sort of 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.

Am I mistaken? Not the politics of it, but the social issues, which my parents felt strongly about. I still feel strongly about and 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, 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 two black kids that lived next door. that I grew up with and the idea of prejudice was vehemently shunned by my entire family. And so 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. Between Full Moon High and Northern Exposure. 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 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 tragic period it was a tough period yeah what 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? 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 Anarchy. 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 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 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 part of the time. You had tremendous resistance initially when you 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 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 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, 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 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. Oh, my God. We like to throw those in my my younger son tony and i have a game uh we you have one word imitations of people you can imitate anybody you want but you can only use one word and our Jeez. 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, yeah. That's right. Very good. And we got, for Sean Conroy, we got Sly Ride. And we got, for Sean Conroy, we got Sly Ride. Cary Grant. Cary Grant was Corduroy.

What does it say again? Corduroy. Let me dance. Gil, what about Humphrey Bogart in the post office? I do a whole bit of that. Yes. Humphrey Bogart in the post office that's what i do a whole bit uh bad like um yes humphrey bogart in the post office alan knows your act and baila go see when uh he's not wearing a watch and you ask him what time it ten. And Christopher Walken,

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 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.

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 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 uh and said you know we 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's... And then you started directing. Yeah, northern was the the first chance i ever had to direct an episode and uh they were kind enough to let me do that after i had observed and and shadowed other directors on the show for a while people on crews when i'm working people on crews come up to me all the time and say can i talk to you for a

minute i said yeah so 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 I'm concerned. The actors and the crews, the crews too. A lot of people on crew. I saw an interview with you. We 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 yeah which vase and 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 back seat 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. 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 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? Yeah. When you're at that moment where you say, this guy just doesn't know what he's doing. Anytime they cast me they're

automatically suspects 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. 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 alan'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 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 make me 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 know yet, it just starts feeling like a waste of time. And it's always been that way. 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 they're 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. I just started, Julie.

I loved directing uh yeah i watched little murders last night which is just so wonderful and so proud of it incredibly dark very proud of that film that's very current it's surprisingly yes yeah i was gonna mention that paranoid uh broken down like police chief or something. Lieutenant practice. Yeah. It terrifies even me when I watch it. 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. He was, 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 had a, he played he played the lead in Little Murders in my production off Broadway. And every, 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, 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 him. 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. 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, 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 Kominsky Method, by the way,

but Vincent Gardini. Oh, my God. Elizabeth Wilson and Lou Jacoby. Yeah. We live for these people. 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's 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 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 Gardinia, 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 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 see any kind of, you see a music group together, it helps you to know that they get along and like each other. Yeah, but everybody feels that way. If they stop and think about it, you get depressed. To find out the Beatles didn't get along is depressing.

It is. And it doesn't make any sense, and it's depressing for all of mankind. And it doesn't make any sense, and it's depressing for all of mankind. It's just a—you say to yourself, what hope can there be for 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. 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. Also, 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. And Beverly, 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. Oh, my God.

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. 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 Alan 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 Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. Gifting Dad can sometimes hit the wrong note. Oh. Instead, gift the Glenlivet,

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and discover how words are so unnecessary for a limited time only at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. And one thing we've discussed on this show, and especially we've discussed it like movies like Airplane, and it's like that of playing comedy seriously. Mm, 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 and 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. Now, that's something with both of you. One, do you watch your movies and TV appearances afterwards? And two, do you find yourself going, and 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 it. 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. another means I'm growing, so that's okay. It's all right. Everything's fine. Except for the world, everything is

fine. 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 gotta 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. West Wing and those

and the first thing he ever did, which is People's 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. And he knows his grandfather's work, but he knows his current work, 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.

as the 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. 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 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 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 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 whole movie is the fact that we're talking about secret CIA missions at the top of our lungs. 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. There's that classic part of the film where he talks about the giant flies. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, the Jose the the uh the jose where goes the jose grecos demuertes

yeah there's red tape in the bush enormous flies enormous flies i'm going to mention two alan arkin performances that maybe 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 little bit Alan when people look at your career Simon oh that's fine I like it under the radar and your Sigmund Freud in the 7% 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 that's a great movie a great performance I love that I got screwed up because what happened was I got the part and I started researching Freud, research and research, and I kept reading the script and I said,

this has got nothing to do with what he's like. 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 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. We were talking about how we had Walterter matthew's son charlie and chris lemon jack lemon's son here last week and we're 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 title v-a-s-t of night it's

absolutely brilliant you know 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 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, Al? Yeah, very much so.

And those films were so informative for me, so formative. And, yeah, do you remember, what was that Al Pacino, Gene Hackman movie, Scarecrow? Oh, yes. Scarecrow, yeah, Jerry Shatsburg. Yeah. 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. You think we're experiencing a renaissance in television? I think it's been good. 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 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 you know my training is improvisation and uh i when i see a kid whose eyes are glassy because he's he's they're focused on the lines he's been learning i i'll do things to trip him up change something so he's got to force himself back into the moment of what's going on now uh and once in a while you work with a kid who's extraordinary like i did with uh in the in little miss sunshine i working with abigail was amazing it's like i was working with an eight-year-old kid who who behaved as if she had 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

do you with both of you in 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 you're doing 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 and 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. It was a play in which I was never offstage.

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. 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 tell the story 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 I'm in this play that's, 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 him wow but i saw that aspect of dad just flying out the window it was a little bit oh so it's bittersweet in a way tell us about groucho gilbert will appreciate this tell us about groucho showing up in the theater at a second City performance one night. We did a thing. We did a 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 doing that scene. Groucho comes one night. We're all wildly excited and nervous.

He puts his hand up. And I wore, don't ask me why, but I wore 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, well, he said,

where did you get that hat? Severed audience laughs, severed answers and he goes on. His hand goes up again. He says, how much would a hat like that cost me? I answer, seven translates. The hand goes up 20 goddamn times. And it's always Groucho.

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. Just in a state of abject hysteria.

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 we got pretty friendly yeah it was wonderful i loved him he was a lovely guy what what about the phone call you got one night from marlon brando oh god that's a long story yeah i'm sitting and i think it was in the Beverly Wiltshire 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 go over to the phone. Mr. Harkin 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.

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, 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 I think that was the reason he was so kind of left-handed and devious that he never came out and asked it but what was it really the most interesting thing about the evening to me was that he had always decried acting, saying anybody could do it. Nobody's, nobody, 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.

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. 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 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. 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. So 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 and lovely people and so you wanted you wanted to buy in you wanted an opportunity to play oh absolutely yeah yeah with with with fargo uh yeah and and fargo had already established itself as a an incredible uh you know adaptation or launch launching point for that that material 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 2, 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 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 that which is just fantastic television that was a 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 it obviously turned out well enough to make an impression on people so we will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. are coming. Alan's accent was perfect because it sounded exactly like my grandparents trying to speak English. That's nice. 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 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 entire town used to come to the dailies every night i mean it was that kind of open loving uh conscious experience you feel it in the film you feel that energy i think so yeah and you 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 we were we were scared when we

made that film we were scared what their action was going to be it was the time it was a time when uh russia was considered uh they were considered not just bad people but demons from hell and uh we thought we were gonna we were gonna 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 Gustaf. He had made too much. He had got offered the part and had made too much money that year, so he 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 2, 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. 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. 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 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, 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 Kahn once, and she was a delight 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 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. They want to, you really want to be it. want to do it they want to 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 so it's like the story of my daughter molly when she was about six years old she was watching olympic skating on on television and her mom said to her you're enjoying this honey huh and she says yeah

she says i i i i i want to do this i'm going to do this and her mom said uh she says you want 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, The Hardest 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 I had the presence of mind at that age to ask what the 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 kids 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. Antonopoulos. Antonopoulos, dad's, 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. Made a lot of people happy. Made a lot of children happy. Alan, do you think there's going to be a Bad Medicine 2? 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, 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, 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. that max is going to be a performer talented one in my family my my daughter molly is a performer she she's done uh improv comedy uh both here and in seattle uh they they had a uh improv group uh called blood squad that became sort of a fixture up in the seattle area um and she's now working uh 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 and they're 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. He, 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 um go to lunch will you go to lunch i'm trying to do a job here will you go to lunch isn't that 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'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, 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 a great piece.

Gilbert, I'd like to see you do Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. You'd be good in 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. Youilbert and 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 was great at comedy that couldn't do something serious i don't see why not i have no 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. 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 it? No, I'm serious. The lead. The lead.

The death of a salesman. 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? Gentlemen. 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 said, no, nothing like that. 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. 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. I love it. Okay. No, Adam's got a joke.

Okay, Adam. You got to follow that. 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. Stupid.

So excellent. 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 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 Once or twice And not very recently You'll do My blood pressure's normal I haven't lost no sleep at all 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