Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Rewind: Episode #10: Penn Jillette

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Gilbert and Frank returned to the famed New York Friars Club to sit down with Gilbert’s old pal, magician-illusionist-comedian-provocateur Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame. Over the course of an amusing and highly informative hour, Penn shared fond memories of Johnny Carson, George Carlin and Jerry Lewis, explained how his love of jazz inspired the hit 2005 documentary “The Aristocrats” (a movie he co-conceived and co-produced). Also, Penn reveals the real, no-“Bullshit” story behind the death of legendary showman Harry Houdini. PLUS: The near-death of Gilbert Gottfried! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to conicsontera.ca. Preach Amazing Colossal Podcast, and tonight, my co-host, Frank Santopatra, and I speak to the legendary Pend Gillette of the legendary magic team of Penn and Teller. We'll be discussing several fascinating stories like the true story of how the great magician Harry Houdini died. The first time Penn met Jerry Lewis, how the movie The Aristocrats came about. His years and having to tell his parents he was going to clown school,

and a true story about the time he brought me a porn star on my deathbed. Ladies and gentlemen, Ben Gillette. Wilburne Goddrey. What's the fella? Say, you know, I'm going to start talking obnoxiously into the microphone really loud while you're wearing headphones. You say to a fella, hey, I'm about to start. I'm about to scream in your fucking ear. Why don't you start with that?

Let's start again, okay? Let a fella get ready. I can at least slide my headphones back a little bit. All of a sudden, Jesus Christ, what the fuck was that? Okay, now we're ready to start. I'm about to scream in your fucking ear. Okay, good. Yes.

Hi. Hi. Oh, you weren't talking to me, were you? I thought you were just addressing me. No, there's an echo. Oh, echo. Was that again you weren't talking to me? But I'm sitting right here.

It seems rude to ignore me. Hi. Hi. I'm Gilbert Godfried. Hi, and I'm Pendulent. And this is Where Are They Now? Yes. Starring Gilbert Godfried.

My guest today is Pendle. Yes. Oh, boy, they're bringing it. Look at that. It's a bottle of perfume. Oh. What's the size of that thing. Okay. Now, this is what they do in this show.

You put a cheeseburger in front of the fat guy. As soon as you say three funny things, you can leave. Yes. We want you to eat the cheeseburger, have a stroke and die. We can do that. Where are they now, dead in the unsellerable? Yeah. I don't know if I remember to say,

Hi. Hi. I'm Gilbert Gottfried. And I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santobadry. Oh, boy, this is such a multi-ethnic show. I'm a token higher, Penn. Yeah. We just have all, all municipalities are represented here.

And we're here with Penn Gillette. Jolette. Not an Italian name, not a Jewish name. Yeah, just a wasp. I suppose so, yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, that's her interview for today. Very nice talking to you.

So you went to clown college. Talk about good news, bad news for your parents. Hi, I'm going to college, but it's clown college. It was, it broke my parents' hearts. What can I say funnier than that? Neither my mom nor my dad finished high school, just like my children. And they were... And just like your children, they were on crack.

Exactly. And they were very excited that I would be the first in the family to go to college. And then the reason I didn't go to college was pretty much being anti-drug. In 1973, if you didn't want to be around drugs, you really couldn't go to college. you really couldn't go to college. So I found out that the hardest college to get into was Clown College. They had the largest ratio of applications to people that, at least that's the way they spun it. I can't possibly be true.

No. And I was the youngest to go to Clown College. And they let me in. I was the last one accepted. I've always been the bottom of my class and everything I've done. And they let me in because I was a really, really, really. good juggler. I think the plan was, the business plan was, bring him in at clown pay and have him juggle. Now, this may not seem like high finance to you. But I'll tell you, in the circus world,

that's the thinking of Bill Gates. That is, you know, that is the level of high finance that these clowns operate at. And I went to clown college. It was a three-month program. It was the first time. So you were from a big city. You don't need to mention the name. No. I am from a little tiny town. I am from, in your mind, Hooterville. Yes. Mayberry. And I had never met a person that thought even for a moment about being funny.

Thought that that might be important. Now, the people at Cloud College thought about it and they didn't do it. But at least they thought about it. And that was a really big deal for me. I was 17 years old. I was away from home. I was down at Ringling, Brothers, and Barnum Billy Gritty. show on Earth Clown College, which is what you're supposed to say every time?

Yeah. See, if we were doing, we're actually working on the, on the payroll, every time that you said clown college, you would have been docked in your pay. They had a media class for us, and we were docked every time we did not say, Ringling Brothers, Barnman Bailey, greatest show on earth clown college. So if you were doing a sentence, you were not allowed to use pronouns or abbreviate. So if they said to you, if they were interviewing a clown, like outside Madison's or garden and he said, yeah, well, I've been with the show for four years.

He got docked like half a week's pay. I've been with Ringley Brothers Barnaby, the greatest show on earth for four years. So did you ever come home to your parents and go, my and dad, I got an A in wearing big floppy shoes? Well, actually, I was in remedial. I was in remedial makeup. I really was.

I was appalling at makeup. So I had to go in when everybody else had the time off. to run around Florida in hedonistic clown ways. And I had to go back into practice putting shit on my face. Literally. Well, perhaps not literally, but yes. Now, tell the story about how we met. You and me?

Yes. I don't know. Is there a story? Okay. How did you meet? I think people are curious. I think the first time we spoke is when I almost dropped dead from a burst appendix. Yes.

Well, that was that. I know I'd met you before that, and I know that I first saw you. Like the first day I came to New York City, I went to the improv and saw this guy on stage with the piano player doing like all these punchlines to people's jokes. Like two in the morning to an empty club was the first time I saw you and thought it was just the greatest thing I'd ever seen. It was New York City to me. I'd left a small town and come here and seen this kind of really different stuff that you

wouldn't see anywhere. And I love that. But Howard Stern called me, and this is why I want to say to the children that may be listening, stay away from slang. Slang is a really dangerous, awful thing. Howard Stern called me and said, hey, Penn, you know Gilbert. And I said, yeah. And he said, Gilbert's really sick.

I said, yeah, he's great, man. He said, no, no, no. He's really, really sick. And I said, I think he's the best. Absolutely true. And he said, no, no, he's like sick. His like appendix is fucked up or something. And I went, oh, he's sick?

And he said that you were knocking on Heaven's door at a hospital. Me and Bob Dylan. Yeah, and that I should go visit you. And, of course, I do whatever Howard Stern says. So I showed up. And you looked terrible. I don't think I've ever seen someone who was, supposedly in my peer group, looking that close to death.

You looked 110 and like you were just out of Auschwitz. I mean, it was just... And I was about to take a selfie in front of you, smiling. You looked horrible. I mean, horrible. And you hadn't paid for your TV. That shocks me. The TV was 50 cents a day.

50 cents a day. And he hadn't paid. And as I recall, You were going to be in like another 30 days, and you weren't going to have any TV because it's 50 cents a day. So I paid the $15 and said, let him have TV forever. And for that, you were so indebted. And I remember during the time you were in, everybody went and visited you the first week. Everybody.

Robin was there. Howard. Everybody. Second week, nobody but me. Third week, it was me, but my mind was wandering. And I brought you all sorts of shit. I remember I brought you a porn star. I stuck a porn star in you.

And you didn't care. Ginger Lynn. Ginger. You didn't care. That's how bad shape I was in. No, no. That's how little sex drive you are. Neither with being sick.

Yes. But I brought Ginger Lynn in to blow you. Yes. And you... But I had a long rubber tube in my dick. Yeah, so it would have been a little difficult. I was so amazed when the word long It came into the description of your dick

and then followed by rubber tube, of course. I understood it. But you can imagine my dismay when you first mentioned. No, I had negotiated with Ginger Lynn. I had something on her, actually. I really did. I had a piece of information she didn't want out. And I said, why did you go blow Gilbert?

I won't say. And that's the way show business works. So I thought, how could you be more of a buddy than delivering a porn star to your friend in the hospital? And an A-list born star. I would think so. Yeah, not any porn star.

No, no, not any porn star, really right there. And Ginger was very happy, and you were just uncomfortable. Because, see, this is, I... So then the next time I wanted to bring someone up, I brought a magician. Because I figured, if you don't like porn stars, if you have no interest whatsoever in sex, you must be loving magic. I'd love a magician to suck my dick. The long rubber tube, as you call it.

I always jerk off to Doug Henning. Yeah, yeah. Doug, you know. Yes. You know, before he got to be on this show. That's what gives me a heart on. Fill in. Oh, okay.

As Penn takes a bite of his burger at the Friars Club. This is like one of those shows for the blind. Penn takes a bite of his burger. I actually know the guy. I shouldn't have eaten this. I actually know personally and consider a friend of mine the guy who went to the Supreme. court against the blind.

He went and argued in the Supreme Court that they should not have the verbal descriptions on TV for the blind mandated by the federal government. Oh, close captioning. Yeah. Well, it's not close captioning. Oh. Yes, when there's a voice narrating. Right.

What am I saying? That's for the deaf. Yeah. The close captioning wouldn't really help the blind. It's so hard to not confuse the blind and the deaf. There's a little monotivism. device. If you bump into them, they're blind. If you

yell, look out, and they bump into you, they're deaf. That's the easy way you can tell. It's whether they bump into you blind, you yell and they still don't get out of the way. I got you. Def. They used to have close captions of the blind. And Helen Keller just

kick her the shit. She covers it all. And they would go over and try to feel a television set. Well, there was a federal law may still be there had to be an audio track with people describing everything going on in TV. And he felt that should be voluntary

and not mandatory, and there was a federal law. But I know the guy, he also is the same guy that argued in favor of telemarketers being able to call you at home. So these are the kind of... Which is a worst crime. Exactly. But you know, that's a job that it would be great for you to have.

I mean, I would love to see an episode of Two Broke Girls. where you were describing what was going on as it went. And it's actually pretty interesting. You've ever listened to that channel. Oh, yeah. And describing what's going on is fascinating. He walks into the room and finds an envelope. Yeah.

It's a nice envelope. Yes. You have to give a little bit more to it than that. Yes. And I always wonder if they break that job up, if there's like one guy who writes the script or the guy reads it or the guy just goes, I'll wing it.

I'll just watch TV. They're at the beach. There's a wicked big shark. It's come up there. It's bitten her fucking ass off. She's screaming. I guess you can hear the screaming. Never mind that.

They're saying shark, shark, shark. You would be good at that, Gilbert. A good gig for you. So you could say he did this international symbol there. He tipped up his index cards and he leaned to the microphone. But I got nothing. The signaling. The signaling.

Gilbert, you should do the introduction to the show now. Hi, I'm Gilbert, Godfrey. See, you could take over from me. But I remember when... I have, sir. Yes, when you walked in to the hospital room, the first thing you said to me was you survived what killed Houdini. Yeah, yeah.

You did. Yeah. Is that what Houdini died from? Well, cheapness, yes. He was an incredibly cheap fucking Jew. Yes. And he would not call 9-1-1. Actually, you know, we jest, but there's some truth here in the Ed Sullivan room.

Houdini would not stop working when he got appendicitis in the modern world is not a big deal. What Gilbert had was peritonitis, which means all the shit around his appendix was going into his abdominal cavity and eating himself from the inside. Yes. That's what was really going on. and Houdini had a rupture appendix. Now, many people say that he was punched in the stomach by a college student. And the college student is still alive and in Canada, which is where all people who kill people should go to Canada.

Also, the guy who killed James Dean is alive. I always wondered those two guys were pen pals. So the Tony Curtis death, the movie in the movie version is bullshit. Absolutely. Lee Harvey Oswald is a living in Canada. Tony Curtis's wife has enormous breasts. That's how you're tuning ukulele. Okay.

Tony Curtis's wife is an Orbit's A mandolin, I'm sorry, too many strings. Anyway, so Houdini, many people say that this college student, we used to have a rider in our contract that we took out because no one got the joke. We used to have in the writer no college students allowed to interview Penn and Teller backstage while they're reading their mail. Because Houdini was backstage. He used to do this like Norman Mailer goofball macho thing.

He would say to people, punch him in the stomach as hard as you can. So the college student was backstage, and he said to Houdini, Houdini was reading his mail while doing an interview because he cared a lot about the college students. And he had his hands up behind his head. And the college student said to him, they say you're really tough, and people can punch from the stomach as hard as they want. And Houdini said, yeah, yeah. And he said, can I give that a try?

Did he be sure. Meaning, sure, I'll stand up when I'm done reading my mail. how tight my stomach muscles, then punch away college boy. I'm not sure he said that. That's what he meant. And the college student just put both hands together

and came down as hard as he could on Houdini's stomach without Houdini tensing up or standing up or anything. Just really knocked the wind out of him. And people say that that ruptured his appendix and killed him, except

there is no evidence of any boxers having a ruptured appendix and being hit in the stomach. And they get hit harder than a college student in Canada. I don't think I'm... I mean, I don't know much about sports,

but I'm thinking that Iron Mike Tyson can punch harder than a college student in Canada. And anybody in Canada who thinks different, I'll get Iron Mike on the phone. Anytime, any place, you conduct, bastards. Come on up. We're going to get my stomach. I'll have you hit me.

No, no, no, no. That bad idea. Back myself into a corner there. No. want any college students in Canada. Some people believe that he was poisoned because a lot of your psychics at the time that he was busting were very, very bad people and had poisoned people. And Beth, his wife, also gets sick at the same time.

So some think he was poisoned. But at any rate, he did not like doctors very much. And he did not go for emergency treatment, but instead kept doing shows. And then the peritonitis. That was the official cause of death, parenthoodinitis? Peritonitis, yeah. And we went to the room. We went and visited the autopsy room where his entrails were poured down the sink.

Because that's the kind of classy guys' penthouse. But you looked horrible. You looked worse than Houdini did after he was dead. That's what the doctor said. Yeah. It was terrible. Yes, he survived what killed what killed Houdini. And a friendship was born.

Yeah, out of that. Out of that. No, not really. Well, friendship was born for me paying for his team. we will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this now he just did a breath and then tipped up his index card oh okay yeah I do that a lot I just want to go back a little bit sure hi yes hi he doesn't have to do it I'm Gilbert Gottfried we'll do the intro later why did you why did you leave clown

college I heard because you weren't why did I leave where didn't you leave didn't you leave Clown College? Where? Clown College. Oh, I'm sorry. Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, clown college. I got it wrong.

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, the greatest show on Earth. Clown College. Forgive me. It is a three-month program, and at the end, they offer contracts to X number of people. So you sit there like you're on a bad reality show,

which incidentally should be a bad reality show. Clowns! And you sit there in the arena, and they call you up. up and offer you a contract. So some of the people are offered contracts. Essentially what Ringley Brothers Barnabyer, the greatest show on Earth College was.

It was a three-month program. They then could bring people in to the circus to work very, very cheap. The money you made on the Ringley Brothers, Barnabyer, the Greatest Show on Earth show was not high wages. And he lived on a train with, you know, with little people.

Gilbert's favorite. And so I was, after they had given X number of people contracts with the circus and given Y number of people thank you notes and diplomas and said

them on the way, I was sitting there alone in the arena. Just one lone clown in the arena. And then finally Irvin Feld, because Irvin Feld, the man who pretty much invented Paiola was moved rock and roll into stadiums.

and so on, he was left to have the conversation. And he brought me into the room, and you were supposed to. The whole hype they gave was that we were there to decide if we were right for the circus or if the circus wanted us, both of those things. So the whole thing during the interview process was, you're going to find out if you fit in. So I went in and he said, you know, we're having a little trouble with you, Pan. And I said, well, that's not a problem because I don't want to go with the circus. I spent this three months and I don't think I will fit in.

I don't want to go. And he said, what you mean? And I said, well, you know, what you said at the beginning was we were just trying to decide. He said, nobody decides not to go with the circus. I said, well, I have. I've decided that although it was a wonderful experience and everything, I just don't think I fit in. The regiments you were talking about in the clown train don't seem right. And also, I don't think I'm a good physical comedian.

And he said, well, you're a great juggler. I said, yes, I am a great juggler. But I'm not a good physical comedian. I thought maybe, I said, you know, I'm 17 years old. I thought maybe clown was the right thing for me. I don't think it is. And then it turned into, he had brought me in to give me an ultimatum. You have to change your attitude on this, this, this, and this.

And you'll be doing mostly juggling, and here's your contract. The thing was, he was supposed to be telling me what hoops I had to jump through. and I came in and led with, I don't want to go. So that it turned into you ungrateful, we brought you here, he put you in this program. If we want you in the show, you're going to be on the show. Which is very funny because just moments ago, it was we don't watch you with the show unless you do this, this, and this.

But, you know, to powerful people, if you say no, it sometimes turns into a whole different thing. And I said, no, no, I just kind of don't want to go. And he kind of got a little mad at me, but he didn't really have any muscle. He didn't really care. What's one fucking juggler to Ringling Brothers Barnum Bailey, greatest show on earth.

So he just kind of left. And then it was just this weird thing. I'd gone through three months and all my friends from that time had all either celebrated getting a contract or were despondent for not getting a contract. But they'd gone off to bars or home or something. And the officials that were there kind of didn't like me. It just kind of left. So there I was, one lone failed clown.

kind of sweeping up the spotlight. Oh, yeah, it's like Carol Burnett. Walking, walking out into the Florida Sun as a failure. Now, I can't say that was my first failure, but it was one of them. Now, one Houdini's story, I have to get back to is... Just so you know, I didn't know Houdini. Yeah, no, I know. But you spent years trying to contact him.

He, he for a while became friends with the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. And one of the heartbreakers in my life is I know that if they do a serious Houdini's life story, that my best hope is to play Arthur Conan Doyle. Arthur Conan Doyle was a big, big, fat guy. And tall, enormous, big, huge guy. And Houdini looked precisely like Kevin Pollock. I mean, that's, if you want to picture Houdini, Houdini is Kevin Pollock.

So, yes, they became friends. and Arthur Conan Doyle believed everything. I mean, there was not, he'd lost a child in the war. He'd also lost his daughter. He was in a great deal of mental anguish and sorrow. And his wife especially believed in automatic writing. She believed that spirits contacted them. They were in touch with all this.

And Houdini, of course, didn't believe any of that. Although I try to claim Houdini is an atheist. That's disingenuous. He really wasn't. He was an observant Jew. His father was a rabbi. Eric Weiss was his name. Born in Budapest.

Claimed Appleton, Wisconsin, but born in Budapest, which is a good move for you. I think maybe you should claim you were born in Wisconsin. It would take a little bit of that Jew et cetera. The Brooklyn thing, that's pretty much to the rest of America. You may not know this. Rest of America, would you say you're from Brooklyn? We hear Budapest.

That's what we hear. He's from Budapest. Jew. Gilbert and the Gabor's sister. So, but Houdini would, you know, he was very much wanted to be in with the intellectuals. He was the superstar of the time. You know, he was, he was Beyonce.

You know, he really wanted to be considered to be an intellectual. Kind of like... He was a black woman with a big head. Yeah. And he, uh, he was very happy that this, this, this, um, very well- celebrated author, Arthur Conradoyle, was hanging out with him.

but they argued constantly. And one of the arguments they had, which I love, is Arthur Cododoroa would sit with Houdini and say, I know you have to pretend to be a magician, but I know that you really have these powers. And Houdini would go, no, I don't. He talked like me. Well, Budapest.

That's my point, Budapest. But what I love about it is that, so they brought Hubeiades. Houdini right after his mom died. And when his mom died, Houdini, like other people in this room, reacted very strongly to the death of his mother. As a matter of fact, all his stationery went to black. He wore nothing but black. He mourned for a year.

All his letters would mention, you know, this horrible year that my mother died. He was very, very attached to his mother. And the death of his mother was a real turning point in his life. and Arthur Gordon Doyle's wife decided she would bring in a medium to communicate with Houdini's dead mother, which is a really good move. When you're trying to win someone over to your son, bring their dead mother into it.

For me, nothing works like that, just like that. All of a sudden, especially if you do something that I believe kind of desecrates her memory in my mind, you're in like Flynn. Yeah. We're friends forever. Like a dead mother into a magic tree. So she, the medium did the letter, and the letter was given to Houdini.

This is from your mother. And what I love about it is, at the top of the page was a cross. That was the first message. And Houdini said, you know, my mother was the wife of a rabbi and a very, very observant Jew. And they said, well, she converted to Christianity. And then the letter started with Dear Harry, which Udini pointed out that his mother spoke

no English whatsoever. So the word dear was a little off. And she never once called him Harry. His name was Eric. Eric, right. Right. So in the top of the letter and the first two, and they said, well, she learned English in heaven.

And she wants to show you that she completely respects your career. So that's why she's finally called you Harry after that. And you can just see Houdini going, oh! You know, that was Houdini's kind of catchphrase. There are the stuff that, you know, you can imagine how awkward it was for Houdini, who looked up to Arthur Conan Doyle tremendously and wanted to be in his good graces. And then Arthur Conan Doyle is saying, you know, would say to him,

I know that you're able to take your body apart and move it back together. Wasn't there like that Houdini did some really like amateurish joke with the thumb? The thumb, sliding the thumb along. And this is from a couple sources. And Arthur Conan Doyle said, you know, other people would do that with a trick, but you're really doing it. And Houdini's in an awkward position because to explain the trick, you know, the answer you would give is, why didn't he just tell Arthur Conan Doyle? how he did the tricks and then the whole thing.

Well, the thing was that the secrets on Houdini's tricks, like all magic tricks, but especially with Houdini, would be like, well, how did you do that escape from prison? How did you get locked in in the handcuffs and get out? His answer would have been, well, I bribed everybody. You know, it was three police officers and a police chief, and I bribed him, gave him tickets to the show,

gave a lot of good press, and we just told them to say what happened. I mean, in most cases, that's what he would do. What I loved about what Houdini would do is Houdini would, when he went to town, I don't mean by when he got excited, but when he arrived in a town, he would get the local whatever the big business was, if they made like casks or something. He would say to them, why don't you challenge me to escape from a giant cask

that you will nail shut at my show? Why don't you challenge me to that? And the person would, of course, write back and say, we don't know how to build a big cask for you to get out. And we don't want to challenge you. What the fuck do we go? And who did he write back and go, well, here's the letter you said to challenge me.

And here is exactly how you build the cask. He would send directions for how to build the cask. And this is the amount of pressure you will get. And we'll give you this many tickets to the show and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then the guy who owned, you know, the local cask makers, I guess those would be called Coopers, you know. The local Cooperage would explain, you know, would send out this big challenge to Houdini. And they would send it to the papers and send it to Houdini.

Then they would build the big cask in their shop or whatever they would. They would build it themselves. And then Houdini would say, well, you want to transport it to the theater? And they would say, we don't really have the staff or the truck. And you go, okay, my guys are bringing it over to theater. So his guys would take the raw prop that the company had built to his specifications, put it in the back of a truck, go in the back there, work on it for three hours, get it all set for the show, and move it in.

And then the guy would stand up there and go, we challenged Houdini to escape from the cast that we built. We don't think he can get out of it. and we brought it over here and we don't think he can get out of it, thank you. And then he didn't even do this. Because the question, when you're a child reading this, you got the feeling that every town

who Didi went to, that every business went, okay, fucker, we got something you won't be, listen, fucker, we got something you won't be able. Hey, hey there, you think you're so smart, we got something to. He was twisting arms every time. Every time. That's great.

Now, you had some Jerry Lewis stories before me. From Houdini to Jerry Lewis. Born in Budapest. We don't do anything sequentially here, Penn. Claimed to be from Wisconsin, which would have also been a good move for Jerry Lewis. As a matter of fact, I think that all press releases on people are brothers and sisters of a Jewish heritage, all their press releases are going to say, born in Appleton, Wisconsin. Yes.

Billy Crystal, born in Appleton, Wisconsin. This is an embarrassing story. It's really embarrassing. We were up at the Montreal Comedy Festival, just for laughs, and there's a French word for that, too. Oh, just perere or something like that. Exactly. Yes.

And I was up there with, I don't remember all the comments. But certainly, Paul Provenza, certainly Stephen Wright, and certainly Belser. Those three were there. And another couple of comics. We're backstage at the big theater where we were going to perform, and we were doing a sound check. And then Jerry Lewis was coming in that night to do one of his, you know, imaginary lozange. Oh, yes, yes. Very serious.

You know, Dean was actually more talented than people thought. You know, that kind of thing. What we had was a love affair. Yeah. And the imaginary loss. And he was about to go there and do that. And the backstage was a long hallway. And the stage door was at one end of the hallway.

And this is all backstage, back behind the rails and so on. And the other end just naturally congregated, Belser, Stephen Wright, Prevends a me and maybe another couple of comics. And Belser was talking about

how Jerry Lewis was going to be there that night. And the other comics were moderately excited that Jerry was about to come back. And I was going, I just don't understand what the big deal

about fucking Jerry Lewis is. I mean, yes, back in the 50s with another guy, he did really, really funny stuff. And then he became a Perkanan addict who's just embarrassing and stupid and we still spent all our time blowing him because he was good when?

Forty years ago? I mean, this is just insane. I don't know why we give respect to this washed up fuck who's never been nice to anybody, a drug addict and really hasn't, I mean, what are you going to say? that hardly working is a masterpiece. And I'm holding court, and I'm carrying on, caring on about how Jerry Lewis should be taken down a peg or two, and that these guys excited about seeing Jerry should just shut the fuck up about that.

At that moment, at the other end of the hall, the door opens and in walks Jerry Lewis, as I am talking about him. And Jerry looks around and sees Teller and then sees me. We've never met him before. And Jerry goes, Pan then tell her and I'm dangerously near you. And he walks across and comes over and says, Pan, I've wanted to meet you, puts his hand out.

An awkward position to be in. Very awkward. So what, and now, you know, I hope that my children hear this podcast, I did what any real man would do. I cried, and I said, Jerry, you're the greatest community. When I was growing up, no one's ever been, no one's ever been better than you. I remember when I was growing up on the Greenfield, I went and saw like the errand boy. To be in comedy is just to be like trying to be like Jerry Lewis.

It's the greatest thing ever. And then I hugged him. and then Jerry went Thank you so much And I went I just can't I never thought I would meet you If my mom and dad knew

I was meeting you now It would be the greatest thing in the world Mr. Lewis I just love you And Jerry went Well very nice to meet you And then Jerry called Teller's parents To do a little thing

I'm here with your idiot fucking son And Teller said Oh you know wonderful Mr. Lewis That's great And Jerry kind of waves It's Stephen Wright and Belzer and Prevenza and then goes out to do a sound check.

So now I have tears of my eyes and for the first moment since Jerry walked in the room it kind of floods over me what I've just been saying and who is behind me. And the way that the geography works is I cannot see

Belzer, Prevenza or Stephen Wright. They're behind me. I've turned to address Jerry and it's a hallway. So I now have my back to them. So I now have to turn around. And I turn around and I see these faces who have just, for the first time in their life,

witnessed Satan. I mean, they have never seen such pure, unadulterated hypocrisy and evil as I have just dealt them. They have never seen anything like that. And my hypocrisy has actually true. Trumped comedy great Jerry Lewis coming in the room. And they are just appalled.

I mean, the kind of look you would say for Charlie Manson. I mean, really, in your life, you have not experienced that kind of pure hypocrisy from another human being. Have you ever? Never, never, never. Not close. So I turn around and see their faces. And I go, you know, I was kind of, kind of, kind of. kind of surprised at my reaction.

I said I really, I really didn't expect to feel all that. I, I guess, you know, seeing him when I was young, I guess kind of, but it was kind of felt like a kind of a big deal to meet him. I mean, I guess all that other stuff is kind of kind of good. I just remember the looks of their faces just like, you fucking piece of shit. I remember another time talking to you about fortune tellers, and I couldn't remember the woman's name. And I said to you,

I said, you know that woman, that really ugly woman who sees him to the future? And you remember, you guessed it. There was this very unattractical. woman. I don't know what you're getting at.

Yeah. No, this was one time I remember talking to you. There was like this unattractive woman. How many attractive women are there? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Usually they look like Pam Anderson. And you said like Helen.

That is the most recent reference that he's ever done. It's unusual. Pam Anderson pretty good. She's only been dead three years. Yes. Usually I say Theta Barra. There is a piece of ass. That's how we warm up.

There was that one, Helen, something. What are you trying to do? The one that could see into the future. No one could see to the one. She was the one who actually turned into who's on first. Who, who was her name? Who could see in the future? Who?

I'm talking if there's someone could see in the future. That's what I want to know. Who is the name of the person that sees in the future? What's the name of the person? What's the name of the person who can bend spoons with her mind? I don't know the person who can... Psychokinesis! I don't know the psychokinesis.

What, bend spoons with the mind, and who can see in the future? When he bends spoons with his mind, who gets the money? Every penny of it. Sometimes his wife comes in and collects the check. Who's wife? Exactly. So exactly takes the money Exactly takes the money Pays off I don't know

Do a bribe To what Triple play The mark goes down The Graff Squad comes in That's great So we don't know the name of the psychic We don't know who this woman was

Helen something or other She was like She used to be in the papers on TV all the time Helen something? Was it Helen Brown? Helen. Oh, Sylvia Brown. Sylvia Brown.

Sylvia Brown. Good. I remember I had said to you, I said, that woman who sees into the future, she's really ugly. And just like that, it went Sylvia Brown. Yeah, yes. Well, Sylvia Brown fits in perfectly with this show

because she's fucking dead. She is as dead as Graham Chapman's parrot. Dead, dead, dead, dead. You just mentioned Paul Provenza. So speaking of Provenza, we have have to ask you about the aristocrats and where it came and where the idea came from and it was not inspired by gilbert's famous night at the you have no no there's there's a there's a chronology problem in that and that we already had shot what gilbert did in the movie before he did uh the the nine

eleven roast that movie uh there's there's there's kind of contradictory things to say first i couldn't be more proud of it and second of all it's all prevenza so those two are kind of of God. Ben and Teller, and I'm dangerously near you. Prevends made that movie. The movie was a pretty good idea. Prevends made it into something that's just unbelievably good. And the amount of time Prevents put in, the amount of talent and the amount of genius is just beyond anything I've worked on. It's four years?

Give it a take. Five years. And what Prevends did, and I don't mean to diminish. the creative genius of Prevenza and pass it off is just work but of course that's a lot of what I do with Tim Vermeer and so on I think work is the most important part

he took everything that we recorded and transcribed it himself he did not send it to a transcription service he transcribed it he sat in hotel rooms with headphones and he typed in every word of every take of every comic we did

so Prevenz had it is fingertips, all the information. You could ask him, you know, when does someone mention a cat? And he could pull up what comic and where it was. He had it all memorized. So he memorized whatever that would be, 125 hours of information. And then was able to use that vocabulary in a collage, which was what the aristocrats was. But it first started was, Prevents and I went to the pepper mill.

and Prevenza just finished a show in Vegas, and I went to see it. He was wonderful, and we went afterwards to the pepper mill. We got there about 11 in the evening, and we left at 8 the next morning. We were there nine hours at a booth at this little diner in Vegas talking. And my mom had died recently before that, and she sent me a message from beyond with the Jewish Star of the top that was written in Hungarian. That's called back. Claiming she was born in Brooklyn. And I had, for some reason that, you know, we don't understand why we do things.

I had started to play upright bass, bebop jazz, and I wanted to learn something new after my mom died. So I was playing upright bass. Maybe I wanted to learn something that my mom couldn't possibly enjoy. And I was studying improvisation a lot. I was listening to a huge amount of Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. and I was talking a lot to jazz cats about improvisation. And I was fascinated by what improvisation is, that improvisation is not a creation of a musical idea

that you've never thought before, but it's a combination of the rules of the art form you're working within. You want to know the key you're in, what notes are used in that key, what kind of rhythmic phrases are used in that key. You also want to have the vocabulary that is historic, and the vocabulary that is contemporary. And then you have your own little signature stuff that you do, that you pull in.

And you're kind of taking all those preexisting forms and you're putting them together in real time. And then you have that very small percentage, that little tiny piece of the pie that is real improvisation that's happening in real time right then once all those other things are done. So if you've got a 10-minute improvisation, you might have out of that 30-year-old. seconds that actually hasn't happened before if you were to if you were to break it down the guy you know the cats at berkeley school of music who who you know who transcribe every moment of every you know every bird solo and every every miles davis solo every charlie parker solo you know um and uh call train and i was talking about how i was really interested in how um how that improvisation uh was the same as comedic improvisation.

And about three in the morning, and I will add that I don't drink, so it's not three in the drunken morning. This is three in the tired morning. I said, you know, well, you want to take a solo of Miles Davis, you know, bye-bye Blackbird, and you want to say, well, here he's doing a chromatic run that is right out of the rules of the cord,

and here he's doing a little something that Coltrane might have done. And here he's doing something that, you know, was back to Byrd. and here is something that he did on another solo at another place. And then here is a little moment that connects these that I don't think exists anywhere else. And then he's going back into these things. And I said,

I would love to just map that directly onto Gilbert Godfried and say, here's Gilbert doing a joke he's done before. Here's what he needs to get to the punchline. Here's what he needs to do that. Here is the reference to the comics that have gone before him. Here's a Bob Hope Cadence. You know, here's something that's a little bit more.

George Carlin taking it off. Here's a section that Gilbert always goes to. Here's his go-to sentences when he needs a laugh. And here is the moment where he's surprising himself, and then we're back into all that. And I said, I would just love to just take a moment and diagram an improvisation by Miles Davis and diagram and improvisation by Gilbert Godfrey.

And the whole conversation was comparing, which I've done many times, it had done before that, comparing Miles Davis to Gilbert Godfrey is two of the true American improvisers and real, true originals, which, you know, you get one in a generation in each form if you're lucky. And I said, and the problem with talking about comedy that way is you get to hear jazz musicians blow over the same changes. You have gotten to hear hundreds of jazz musicians play a solo during By-Buy Blackbird, you know,

same chord changes, same tempo, same key in many cases, they're able to go through and you're able to listen to that. So people at Berkeley School of Music are we able to say, here's what Coltrane did with these changes, here's what Miles did with these changes. And you hear them also in the same song. If they're playing together, you take four choruses, that I take four choruses, we hear how that goes.

And I said there's an intellectual content there that's fascinating. And I said, you never, ever hear comics do that. because you don't hear comics do the same joke unless they're stealing, and if they're stealing, it's not interesting. And before that, we had had a thing happen that right in that same time, we were doing a show called Sin City Spectacular, Penanteller's Sin City Spectacular. We had a bunch of comics backstage, and discussion happened with asking Johnny Thompson, who was the mentor for Penn & Teller and comedy genius, magic genius.

I'd asked him about jokes that had a totally visual punchline. Jokes where the setup was verbal, but the actual punchline, the laugh, had no words and was just a gesture. And he said his favorite of those was the banjo sandwich. And Kevin Meaney was there, Mack King was there, Gilbert Godfrey was there. And it laid out just like a situation comedy. Johnny told me the banjo sandwich joke. And just as I was laughing at it, Mac King walked up. And Mac King said, what do you laugh at?

I said, well, Johnny just told this great joke, the banjo sandwich joke. And Mac said, well, what is it? Johnny said, oh, Penn, you tell him. So I just heard the joke from Johnny, and I turned to Mac King and did my version of the joke, which I was very aware was different than Johnny's version. but got us to the same place. And at that point, I'm making this up now. I don't remember exactly whether it was Kevin Meaney or Gilbert or somebody.

But Gilbert walks up and says to Mac King, you know, what are you guys laughing at? And Mac King said, well, I just told this banjo sandwich joke. And I go, Mac, why don't you tell it? And Mac turns to Gilbert and tells him the banjo sandwich joke. And Kevin Meaney comes up. You know, it's just perfect. And I said, Gilbert, why don't you tell it? And, of course, now the joke has gone from a diner in the Midwest, you know,

to now we're in a diner in Brooklyn. Or in Budapest. And the guy, you know, it's a whole different thing, and there's a whole different character. The guy that goes in and asks for the banjo sandwich is a little bit more belligerent, and the waitress is a little bit more. And then he tells it to Kevin Meaney,

and someone else comes out, you know, I think it was Provenza. And all of a sudden, when Kevin Meaney tells it, we're in the Midwest. And it's a whole family that goes in. And there's children there, you know? And Meany tells it. And we just stood there knowing that we had witnessed something that was kind of beautiful.

So we're back there and Prevenza is going, you know, it's the banjo sandwich thing. People have never seen that banjo sandwich event. A bunch of comedians telling the same joke. It would be wonderful to get them to do that. And then, you know, this is hours later. We're still talking about the banjo sandwich event, the Gilbert and Miles Davis comparison with improvisation and telling the same joke. And then Prevends and I had had conversations about the aristocrats,

you know, which was the joke that people would tell backstage to one another. And there were all sorts of folklore about it. And it was in the leghorn book. That's not the right name. It's Foghorn, Leghorn. Yes. The Legman book. And then I think it was a lot of the leghorn book.

was Provenza that said, oh, I think maybe I said, we should get 100 comedians to tell the same joke. And then Prevenza said, and the aristocrats, because then it's something they can all riff on and all go different places and see where it's going to go. And then the first call I made was Stephen Wright, because he wanted to get tent poles in place, because you couldn't, you had to start with people that would go, oh, Stephen Wright is doing it. And I also knew that I could, I could, I could probably convince Gilbert to do it. And then the big moment was after I got four or five comics in place, I called George Carlin. And he was everything.

And I said to George Carlin, I explained, you know, the jazz musicians and Gilbert improvisation. You know, we want to get up. And there was a long pause. And George Carlin said, this is a really, really good idea. This is a great idea. And I wish someone else had gotten it. It's too good an idea for you to do.

I'm afraid you're going to fuck it up. He said there should have been someone else doing this. But it's your idea and you and Prevenza are doing it. And don't fuck it up, man. Don't fuck it up. He said, here's a few of the rules. You're not allowed to sell it until it's finished. And once it's finished, you're not allowed to recut it no matter who you sell it to.

He said, HBO is going to hear about this. They're going to come to you. and they're going to offer you a bunch of money to own it in advance. Then they're going to put a little stuff in like put a little more Robin Williams in, a little Les Gilbert, they're going to do all this. You should sell it, but wait till the movie is completely done. I want that promise from you that you will not edit it after it sold. I said, okay.

And he said, and just please don't fuck it up. And it was great because it gave us this really weird positioning point Because when we were selling it, people would come to us and say, yeah, we're interested in buying this. And we might want to do a little bit of changing and some adjusting. And I would go, I'm sorry, we are contractually obligated to the comics in this to not change from where we actually cut it. If you cut it even a minute, we lose George Carlin. You have to cut him out of it. That's the deal we made with him.

So we had this huge thing. If you want more Robin Williams, you lose George Carlin. It's as easy as that. And so that gave us a huge amount of power. And I remember, I mean, speaking of me breaking down and crying, and was when George Carlin came to Vegas, and we saw, he saw the aristocrats. And he finished the whole thing coming up and said,

Well, Penn, he didn't fuck it up. Didn't he call it a snapshot of the art of stand up at the turn of the century? Yeah, he also called it that. He really sums it up. Yeah, it really is. But, you know, I was so interested in, I wasn't as interested in the chronology of it as I was in the idea of improvisation and what that means. And the other part of the story that is so kind of nutty is I was in Newfoundland, which is where my people are from. It's kind of my Budapest.

You people, Christ, didn't you? We froze them to death. We clubbed them like a baby seal and then frozen to death. I hope Betty White's now. She gets very upset. I was up in Newfoundland in a... Just in a honeymoon with my wife before we got married, as the kids say. And I had said that nobody was to get in touch with me.

I wanted to just have some time off. And I got up to St. John's Newfoundland. and the phone rang. And I was a little bit annoyed, and I answered the phone. And the voice on the other end of the phone was Johnny Carson. And Johnny Carson said, sorry, Mr. Gillette, I get your phone number from Amazing Randy, and I wanted to talk to you. And he wanted to talk to me about bullshit, which was a show that he used tremendous superlatives about.

He'd watched the whole series a couple times. and was very taken with it and also wanted to kind of do this weird kind of confession saying that he felt that he should have been more and out-a-closet atheist. He felt he should have been more forthcoming with that. And he felt that he should have done a show like bullshit. And we had a long talk.

And then I talked to him and said that I was making this movie called The Aristocrats. Now, I had never met Johnny Carson. I only talked about the phone. You met him. No, I never met him. But we did an incredible. stupid thing, which was we were a book to do Carson.

We had an ending where Teller was going to die in the water tank. Johnny didn't want it. So he said, okay, we won't change. So they ended up putting us on with Jay Leno as a guest host. We were on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but with Jay Leno. So I never met him. And I knew from doing the aristocrats, the aristocrats was Johnny Carson's favorite joke. And Prevends and I actually had words about this because I started talking to Johnny

about the aristocrats. told him all about the movie. And Prevends kept saying, you need to ask him to be in it. I said, no, no, he told me he's retired. He's doing nothing more ever publicly. And I said, I'm respecting that. I'm not asking him. So, but emails and phone calls, we went back and forth to Johnny Carson.

And he gave us a huge amount of advice on how to get in touch with certain people and how to do it and how to do that. And for whatever sort of weird kind of personal rules thing, even though I was talking to Johnny about the aristocrats all the time. He was telling me, it was his favorite joke. He was giving me little parts of how he told it. I never said to him, Johnny, would you be in the movie? Which would have been like a huge coup, but I just would not do it because he had told me,

I'm not performing publicly anymore. And then to get him in as kind of a friend and then turn that around on him seemed unfair. So I kept telling him, here's the edit we got, and Prevenza gave me the edit. And maybe it should be 90 minutes and don't go longer. all this talk. And then Johnny said, listen, you know, we've never met and I really want to meet you and I really want to see this movie. So you're going to Sundance. You're going to debut the movie. Can you carve some time out in your schedule and come down to Malibu? And you and Prevenza come to my home. We'll put the DVD in. I'll watch the aristocrats with you and we can have a wonderful evening together. And I went to, yes, this would be fabulous. And I told Prevenza, and we were over the moon. So now our goal was no longer Sundance. Our goal was the Johnny Carson's screening after Sundance.

And we brought the movie up to Sundance and we screened it. And it went over very, very well. Very well. People really enjoyed it. And the next morning, after we had done business the night before, the next morning, Prevent and I met at a Starbucks at Sundance or some coffee shop. We were sitting there. and we were just kind of, we each had a hot chocolate for breakfast,

and we were just as happy artistically as I've ever been. Prevenza had turned in an amazingly perfect movie, and on top of that, the world had kind of agreed that it was a good movie. It was a wonderful moment. We were just kind of, you know, breaking our arms, patting each other on the back and feeling great, and the phone rang, and it was, I looked at the phone, and it was Amazing Randy. And Randy calls me, but he usually calls me. me at a time we know we're going to talk about something.

It's very odd from him to call me at 10 in the morning, you know, on a Saturday. It's not the time you would call. So I said, I better get this. And I picked up, hit the phone and Randy was crying. And you can imagine how disconcerting that was. And I waited from him to calm down for a moment. And he said that Johnny Carson had died. And it was, it was the biggest roller coasterings.

I could have ever experienced from this, oh boy, we're going to show the movie to Johnny Carson to Johnny Carson died. And I turned to Prevenza and said, Johnny just died. And Preventza immediately, of course, just flowed out crying. And before I even got off the phone, before I even finished getting off the phone, Preventz had pulled out his phone. And he was talking to our editor. and said, add a card at the end that says for Johnny Carson. And that's all he said in the phone and just hung up. And we never discussed it.

He just did that and it was added to it. So that's kind of the story of the aristocrats from my point of view. Well, I brought down the room. I know. Actually, aristocrats. I was hoping to upset you enough that I could eat a little bit of the French rocks. Yes. Okay.

Well, now. You just said, okay. like it wasn't on the mic. You said it like it was like a secret, like a secret thing. We're doing an audio thing. You can nod, you can point. You can't go, okay,

and pretend we didn't hear it. Yes. See, I figure if I whisper into the mic, they won't. Okay, I'll wrap it up now. Okay, I'll wrap it up. They won't know. This is between you and me.

Very shortly, we'll wrap it up. I'll talk very quietly so no one can hear us. Hi, Gilbert. Okay, I'll try this again. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottlie. This has been the amazing colossal podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopatra, and my friend. I mean, St. Dad.

You mean, St. Dad? Holy Father. Oh, yeah. St. Dad. Which is why I like your Vatican episode of Bullshit so much. St. Dad. I guess Holy Father is much better, but St. Dad. That's a sitcom.

St. Dad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was in that. It's major dad. It goes to the Vatican. It was Arnie Johnson. I think that.

Yes. So I've been here with Pendelet. Hamburger. Yeah. That's his nickname, Hamburger. Yes, Pendeletta, Penn and Teller. Well, I played Hamburger in St. Dad. Oh.

I hope you get cast as Conan Doyle. in the Houdini movie, Penn. That's all I can say. And Jamie Lee Curtis as Houdini. And I guess that's the end. Thanks, Penn. Thanks for doing it.

I'm waving for the blind.