Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Rewind: Episode #16: Danny Aiello

Episode Date: February 26, 2026

Gilbert and Frank return to the New York Friars Club to sit down with the (VERY!) candid and colorful Danny Aiello about his uphill and unlikely journey from Greyhound bus dispatcher to Oscar nominee. Also, Danny shares his memories of goofing around with Paul Newman, sightseeing with Rodney Dangerfield and singing backup for Bette Midler, and tells us why he’s embarrassed by his role in the classic rom-com “Moonstruck.” Also in this episode: Uncle Miltie meets Jack Ruby, Danny jokes about his notoriously fiery temper and Robert De Niro learns to throw a baseball. PLUS: The Pete Best of “The Godfather”! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. And today, I went with my co-host, Frank Santo Padre, to the famous Friars Club, where we interviewed one of the great character actors of his generation, Danny Aiello. He was in Moonstruck, Radio Days, Oscar nominated for Do the Right Thing. He played Jack Ruby, and for some reason he kept punching me. And entertaining, raw, brutally honest interview. Listen for yourself. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santo Padre,

and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. And on today's show, we have one of my favorite. actors, a man who's been in the Godfather, do the right thing, and Moonstruck. Once upon a time in America, the list goes on. Academy Award. Yes.

You mentioned Godfather? What, Godfather? I was in it for two minutes. Godfather, too. Godfather, two minutes. I always wanted to ask you this question, Frank, this is the first time I met you, but Godfrey, how many octaves have you got?

For a level of voice, I don't know if I should start at that level. Can I start beneath that? Because I'll be screaming like a son of a vigil. But I love you. That's you, baby. Anyway, continue on. The resume is not necessary.

Now, what, do you ever pray in church for forgiveness for making Hudson Hawk? You know, that's an interesting comedian. You can get this. He goes right for the jugular. Let me tell you what Hudson Hawk has done. It is one of the biggest cult movies ever on television. Do you know that? No. It was ahead of its time. Let me tell you, I'm

raw footage. I'm with Brian Gumble or in Italy in Rome and he asked me this question, similar to yours. Danny, what do you think of this picture? I said, Brian, I don't know. He said, is it a comedy? I said, if it is, I have no idea. I said, I have never, I haven't been able to decide my own mind and this is God's truth. I told Brian. However,

it was ahead of its time. You know, Sanda Bernhardt was in it. Richard Grant. There was some wonderful people in the movie. David Caruso, who's not the greatest talent in the world, but Les Moonvez loves him. He's a poser. Hey, did I ever say your name and the introduction? Oh, you didn't. David Caruso is, well. Anyway, Danny Ayella. He's talking.

David Caruso's got an Italian name and he poses. Is he a pose a loose? He's got the glasses that I established in Delaventura. I'm sorry, I brought him up. No, I love him. He's a good day. He's not an actor, but he's a good guy. He's the folks. I'm glad we said who we're talking to. Yes, yes, Danny Ayala. Oh, God.

Welcome, Danny. I'm going to get in trouble here. I know that. Well, that's what you want, isn't it? Yes. Yes, go ahead. Tell us some people you hate in that business, please. Well, people I don't like.

I wouldn't say hate. There's a guy like Mardi Scorsese. A guy like Joe Pesci. I have difficulty with those people because I never did a Mardi Scorsese movie. No. I was up for eight of them. them. Now, keep in mind, when he was doing some of his hottest things, I was one of the hottest actors in the country at the time. I was on stage doing knockout. So it was always curious to me

why I wasn't in any of his movies. I know why in my own mind, and if I was to state it to anyone else, they would say, ah, that's sour grapes. So one day I went over to him and I said, someone asked me, we were in Cannes. And a reporter said to me, Mr. Ayello, how come you never worked with Maris Scorsese? I said, maybe you should ask him that question. He said, well, I did. And I said, what did he say? He said, he didn't feel that you were right for what he was doing. And I looked at the guy and I said, what was I too tall? What is he, five foot tall?

I'm six foot three. So it went over big, even in Cannes, so to speak. But that's the only conversation I have about him. He's a great direct, as you well know, so I resented the fact I never worked with him because he was doing strokes that were quite brilliant in many of his movies. And certainly I thought that I should have been in those movies. Oh, never say never, Dan. No, it's over.

What he did was, I did another movie. It's interesting. Eight movies I was up for he never saw me. Now, I set up a deal with Raging Bull. Bobby De Niro and I, I submitted the script to him. It was given to me by someone else they gave to him. Bobby agreed to do it. So Bobby always felt somewhat obligated to give me a part in that movie.

Now, keep in mind, I didn't need a part. I didn't need a part in the movie because I was at the time I was quite hot. They called me up. is the only time Marty called me a Bobby was sitting to his right. They're both looking at me, and I'm curious why they gave me a meeting in an office. Bobby's my friend. He's like a brother to me at the time. And Marty says, Daniel, go and over you a row.

There are no lines, but you're throughout the movie. I said to him, you know, I thought I was more advanced in my business to accept some of the role. I got up very little talk, and I said, thank you, and I left. And that was when the animosity between us had begun. And just the other day, Brian Hammer, one of the great still photographers that does all of these movies and he's one of my dearest friends. And I said to him the other day, why do you think Marty disliked me? And he always, whenever he saw me on the street, he would walk on the other side.

At the Academy Awards, he saw me walking down the stairs, he'd go the other way. Why? I said, why does he do that? He said, Danny, are you crazy? Don't you know what you did? I said, what? We were walking into Saudis one day. And you saw him sitting with a group.

of guys and you said you midget little motherfucker and Marty Marty went under the table I said I did that but it's possible that I did do that because I was so upset I said what he had done won't be

so that's Brian Hamill's story and we just found this out the other day I didn't know it you've started the first celebrity feud on the Gilbert Godfrey podcast I can beat the shit I didn't want of them I'm six foot free I hit him one shot I'll knock them on their race

I would love to fight each one of them. Are you serious? I'll be locked off or slaughtered. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Frank, I don't mean to. We'll get all the garbage out of the way, right, Jose? You were saying... Eddie, right, baby?

I'm talking to your guys. I'm talking to your guys here. Well, I've lost control of this show. No, you haven't you. Officially. Now, now, you were telling us that your children and grandchildren are just, are like every single ethnic group on the planet. Well, my wife is Jewish. She's a coin.

Well, I'm sorry about this. I've been with her for a long time. Okay. It's a good part of my life. And I loved the mother and father who passed on. And my mother, of course, loved Sandy. She used to say, and Sandy is quite beautiful, even to this day. But when we had gotten married, she was like Lana Turner. My mother saw her and she was captured by her beauty. And we've been together for 60 years. I mean, that's a very long time. And it's been hard. It's been up and down, you know, because we both have both Gemini's and we have different personalities.

And our dispositions are quite different. But we managed to last all of these years, but it hasn't been easy. It's been very difficult. And religion being the first thing. Because I was a proud guy at the beginning of an Italian guy. And if I'm married, my kid naturally has to be Catholic. But they did something that made me think that the kid wasn't Catholic. So Sandy and I, we separated for a while about a week.

It wasn't really a separation because we both lived in the same building. Separated by a few floors. 1461, Boston Road. She went to her mother who lived across the board, and I lived here. So we would look out the window looking for each other. It lasted about a couple of days. Then we made up with each other. It was difficult, but I had 11 grandchildren,

and they are Catholics, they are Jewish, there's a mixture, whatever they wanted they did. No one was, you know, committed to any particular language. You know, I'm a firm believer that. your environment will dictate what your children will become. I truly believe that. And I live basically in the Jewish neighborhood at the time on Boston Road and Wilkins Avenue. So Jewish would have been the thing because three quarters of the people I hung out were Jewish guys. But then as time went on, they hung out in Catholic neighborhoods, my sons, and they became Catholic because of everyone

going to church, everyone going to catechism, and they do what they do. So religion, to me, wasn't anything that devastated us. At the beginning it did because there was a sense of pride for her as well as me. We always had the argument. Ah, the Jewish, now the Jewish that goes over to women. I said, yeah, but you're Catholics, it's the men. No Jewish women, no, Catholic, the men.

That's what we're doing constantly. But it was great, and we went through all of those hurdles, and we made it to where we are, but still there's a lot of ups and downs, you know. And this brings us back. I just recently watched you. here at the Friars Club, you were doing a reading of the shoemaker. Written by Susan Charlotte, yes.

Yeah, and which I thought you were terrific in. Well, I've done it. Maybe I was good in it because I had done it on the stage. We did it as an off-Broadway show, 27 performances. It was a limited performance. Sold out every night. And it was a great, great. It was about the Holocaust and it was also about 9-11.

And it was very difficult for me to do the most emotional. play I've ever done in my life. And at the time my son Danny had passed away of pancreatic cancer. You know, Danny was one of the great stunt coordinators. And it was 53 when he passed away. Yeah, he's a great kid. He was a great kid. I'm very proud of that. And so I went through a very emotional period. So the play to me when doing a reading, it was almost as if the things I was doing on stage, I was doing at that reading, only there was no movement. But of course, the girl was great. Angelica, uh, thorn, Riptons. And Geraldine Page is...

Wow. Angelica Page. Angelica Page. Good genes. She was sensational. Frank. She was. And you know, it was fascinating to me.

And the fry is called the most you can hope for is someone doesn't run every five minutes to the bathroom. Because... Well, the average age here is deceased. And I don't say, I don't give a shit. I won't get on it. If I'm performing, they go to the bathroom, I address it. I said, where the hell are you going? You're not coming back in.

Am I lying, Louis? I said, you walk out. You're not coming back in. back in. Carry a little bucket with your pee somewhere, but don't leave what I'm... And no one left. No one went out of that room, and I said to them at the end of the

Q&A, I said, this is unbelievable at the Friars Club where people they're used to walking out. There's no problem. They don't apologize. They get up like they're like on the street somewhere. They're going for Coca-Cola. They don't give a shit. They get up. They don't care if you're doing gone with the

win. It's the most serious. They get up and they walk out like nothing's happening on the stage. It's a fries, though. I love it. They're setting out. That's just one way to put it. And you were saying the reason that you wanted to play a Jew? Get even with all the goddamn Jewish guys

who played Italian. F. Murray Abraham, all in them. Jimmy Khan. I'm going to tell you something now. Jimmy's my boy. Oh, if Murray Abraham's an Arab. Let me ask you something. How did the stereotypical things start with Italians?

Characters. Let's use the sopranos. And many of those, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And that's been bow. I never heard that language in my life of people speaking like that, okay? But let's explore it just a little bit, and I don't want to offend anyone because that's not my intention.

I'm talking about historical facts. You ever hear, Paul Muni? Sure, of course. I was a fugitive from a chain gang. Okay. Yiddish theater. Okay. Paul Muni, the first Al Capone, Paul Muni.

Okay? The next Al Capone, public enemy, Edward G. Robinson. Yiddish theater. Okay. The next one, what's the next one, Louis? Lee Jacob. Lee Jacob, Yiddish theater, Al Capone. Wait, let's keep going.

I gave you up with you, Rod Steiger. Oh, yes. All of these, the formulation of stereotypical Italians began with these. Listen, there were no Italians acting then, because if you had an Italian name, there was Equality Enli, a B actor, who was beautiful, a Mediterranean accent. He didn't speak like, oh, yeah, oh, none of that.

But his way of speaking certainly wasn't. interesting enough to give him a wise guy part. So the big guys they got the part were the Jewish actors. And now, the Italian guys today who are doing, oh, we, they should check themselves out and realize that all of this was formulated

as a result of the Jewish theater. They have established a way of speaking for all these morons who say, forget about it. I want to kill when they do that. I'm an Italian who never does that in any of my movies. I don't care how creepy my character was.

How much Italian, you will never hear me say, forget about it. Dumb bastards. So the Italian actors are imitating Jews? Right. When I did when I did Ruby, the guy who killed

Oswald. Jacob Rubinstein. Yes. And I played him in a way where I felt what I knew about Jewish guys. And there was no real accent anywhere. Yeah. You know, and I played him the way I thought he should be played. But the point I made. I was doing it for comedic reasons.

I wanted all of them. I said it for the New York Times. I said, I want to get even with all those Jewish guys who have been doing these Italians. And that was the reason I loved it. And I won the Academy Award for something called Lieberman in Love, a Jewish guy. It was only a 35, 40-minute

film, but it was a short film, but I won the Academy Award with that. Christine Lottie directed it. As a Jewish guy, I want you to know that. I never played a Puerto Rican yet. Again, I can never say never. So what do you think of James Kahn?

I love Jimmy. I love Jimmy. And Jimmy's great. But the thing that happened with him, the Godfather, as you well know. Godfather won, two, and everything. Well, and two, he was killed, wasn't he? No, he pops up in two. As a memory. He pops in the flashback. He pops in the memory.

The part that Jimmy got, just so you know the history of it, I want to give you a little historical facts for you to. Sure. And part it to your people that are listening. How many are listening? Your family? Just the people in this room. His Jose's family? Eddie, any of your family are listening?

All right, so we got about 15 people. Where was it? On a good night. I heard your number one, kid. That's what I heard. And I'm not here because of that. I agreed to do your show before I knew you a number one, two, three, or four. Jimmy Kahn had a different role.

Okay. The role of Sonny Kolione was being done by Kamine Karidi. I know. Okay. Now, we celebrated at the improv. I was at the improv. I was at the improv, a non-actor at the time, trying to find my way. I didn't know what I was doing.

Once in a while, I'd MC up there with Bud Freeman gave me the job. But he recognized my talent. You were a bouncer at the improv. We should point out from a little back to- I was a bounce of how many are you and all that crap. I didn't know. Because I lost my job as a union president with Greyhound as a result of law. I got strike.

I was the youngest president in the country at that particular time. I represented people in Montreal, New York, Chicago, everywhere, as they represent for drivers, ticket agents, porters, red caps, everything. And I was trying to become an actor, so I found the improv. He gave me a job as a bounce in. I was observing. I never wanted to be a comedian or a monologist because that was beyond anything I could do.

I thought I wasn't equipped to do that. But I observed, observed. Carmine used to come in. He was the only notable actor who would walk in and people would recognize as an actor. Very few actors came into the improv, lots of comedians, which he pried, just all of them. about Roddy Dangerville all hung out.

He comes in one day. Now, I used to, when the show was over, at 3 o'clock in the morning, I'd get up and I'd read from a book, The Godfather. And I would be impersonating Sonny Colioni. I would do the monologues that he had. Because I myself, who was not an actor, I was trying to prove to myself I can do this part. And I could have. There's no question about. Kami walks in one day and says, I got the part of Sonny Kolioli.

He addresses it to all of us. Kami was one of my best friends. I wanted to cry, laugh, scream because my buddy is going to play the major part. Because all of us knew the major part. Because all of us read the book. We know what Sunny Collione was, mercurial, sexy, everything that a star would eventually become as a result of this part. Two weeks go by. And we get a call.

He hasn't got the pot. And we had, all of us were in there when he addressed it. He had the role. He got paid. for the roll, everything. And they said that they changed it around because Al became Michael, Jimmy became Sonny, and who was the other guy, Louis? Because they felt that he was too tall. He was 6'4, Carmine, to be Sonny Corleone. Now, Jimmy Con was about 5'10, much smaller. So height had a lot to do with it, and connection had a lot to do it. But it was the biggest heartbreak

in your life that you can imagine. Not only Carmen, he dealt with it like a champ. He was He was a goddamn champ. He's my hero. I would have died. I wouldn't have run into a room for 365 days and cried my eyes out to have the possibility of a role like that. I'd given to me. It's sound. You got it. The contractor signed. It's your role. The biggest role to have it taken away from you. He didn't cry. He didn't do anything, but deal with it like a master, like a true hero. And his career was affected by it, as you well know, because not much happened thereafter. Small parts. and Francis Coppola try to make up by giving him the role of

one of the brothers who I played the other brother now isn't that strange the risado brothers I played one of the

brothers and he played one of the brothers and that's what they made up for two lines in the goddamn picture and he had Sonny Colione

so and then one other thing about the Garfather I want you to know it's like he'd best yeah I that's right

I mean my guess it's just so sad. I got a feeling that I'm terrified. I'm given a role and I'm playing Tony Rosado. I have to come in and I have to choke. Frankie Five Angels. Frankie Five, Piantangelo.

Mike Gazzo. One of the great writers and actors. So we're working on and working out. We're in a bar in Mulberry Street and they say all right, action we're going to rehearse. So we start rehearsing and I walked behind him and I had to put a garage around his neck. However, I was not choking by the neck. We had him built

in a harness that came out of the back. So it appeared as if his neck was being stretched, but actually the force of the lift was done on his back. All the strength was on his back. I tightened the rope so it looked like it was his neck. We're rehearsing. There were no lines. And we're rehearsing the scene.

I lift him. And I say, Michael Corleone and he says hello. I cut. Now, we weren't shooting. There was a rehearsal. Francis looks at me. He said, what did you say? Now, at this point, I hadn't done anything.

This is Francis Coppola. He's at every book. He's all over. to put, he asked me what I said. Now, I'm not even sure what I said. I said, well, I, I think I said, Francis, says, you know, Colione says hello. Michael Colione says hello. And he states from a minute, looks at me to keep it in. Line was never written. You had your line. I developed the line. That's great. Wasn't there? And it's a big question on, if you check the internet anywhere, everyone asked that question, where did it come from? It came from me, and it wasn't written. But I didn't know what I was

saying. I had no. idea. I was so intimidated working. When I said it, I could have said, bullshit. I said, fuck you. You up your ass. I could have said anything. I said Michael Colione says hello. Why did I say that? I have no idea to this day. What's the perfect line?

I have no idea. He's sending a message. Well, some kind of message. And what are your recollections of the great comics who came in the improv in those days? Well, Richie, of course, was great prior. There was some unknown Camov and Brabaman. You know, people

like, you would know, and I did. Rodney was sensational, and Rodney was one of the biggest helpers for me when I began acting. He would go on Merv Griffin any show, and he'd talk about me. No one knew who the hell I was. He said, Danny Aillow took me to Orchard Beach the other day. We were sitting out, and I walked, and I was watching. His family's house was right there, and I was looking out over the water, and the most attractive thing I've seen in that water was a floating tire, floating by.

Just but he'd say anything. Then he talked about when I drove myself, we have to make a straight right here or a straight left, He said, I never heard things like Danny was saying. So he would promote me over and over with no outcome for him other than to do to benefit me. And he did quite a bit. Rodney was great. Richie Pryor was sensational. I love David Brenner.

May he rest in peace. David, my true friend. And I was sworn by Bud Friedman, the owner of the improv, never to put him on at prime time when he wasn't there. Because Bud never thought of him as a comedian. He just never enjoyed him. Now, whenever Bud wasn't there, I would put him on a prime time forever, constantly. Bud never said anything. I guess maybe no one told them or he felt it was all right.

But it was wonderful that just recently Bud had mentioned to me, and it was in a book also, that he and David had made up before David passed away. You know what I mean? Things that he didn't know about David, he expressed to me. He said, you know, Danny, I never realized that David helped so many comedians. I said, bud, we were there. He would have talks with 20, 15 comedians giving him ideas as to what they should do. This man used to be a producer for Sunny Fox, an old show on television.

Wonderrama. That's right. You got it, Frank. He was wonderful in so many ways, so bright and so many ways came from South Philly. And the thing about David was he invited me up to his apartment and he has index cards. And he's one of these metal cabinets? If I tell you what he did, Gilbert, you're a comedian. I'm going to ask you a question.

Have you ever done what I'm going to tell you now? He opens the cabinet and pulls out jokes. Jokes dated when he said it, the time he said it, the reaction from the audience. Okay? Have you ever heard of anything like that? He was so together in that manner. Other comedians got up, they try a joke. They remember it didn't work.

They'd write the little pads on the thing. He had index cards. hundreds of them that he would refer to. When did I tell us joke? When is this? 8.30 at night, I did this, the reaction to it, and he'd number the reaction. The higher and the number the bigger reaction. This was David.

I loved them. It was a great, great guy. One of my dearest of Mike Preminger, a writer. Now, your audience wouldn't know him. I honored them in my book. I mentioned 30 of them. And I've rendered a guess that the audience reading my book has not heard of any of them. But what was my concluding?

I said equally talented some of these people unknown but equally talented with the ones that you do know to explain to them in my way of writing that some people don't get to breaks others do. They have the talent they might not be in the right place at the right time

was that good info? Oh my God! You know Gilbert does a wonderful David Brenner impression Let me hear you. So I was born in Southville Oh, is he? You ever know This is my favorite

Brenner. Oh, this is him. He goes, You know how these guys that are always bragging how many times they can have sex in one night? Why not guys

going to finally admit then after the first time it's like trying to hammer a nail with a fish? That's great. You honor him, babe. We were, it's beautiful.

We were looking forward to have him on the show. It happened. I was with him, really. I went to see him. I saw him not long before he died and we hug. He also get his haircuts at Tony Rossi is my cousin on 57th Street, so we would see each other there. And we had talks and this came as a, Frank. He was a nice man. I got to work with him.

He was a little bit of a few times. And he was going with one of the most beautiful women, Miss Tel Aviv. Do you remember her? Oh, wow. She was the most gorgeous girl ever seen. I had a crush on her, but I was married. married. There was no danger. You sang backup at the improv, didn't you,

too, for a couple of famous people. Well, Bet Middly sung the backup for, along with Buddy Hughes and Bobby Alto and Bobby, and who are, Buddy, uh, Buddy Mantea? Buddy Mattee is my ace. They were, that was the...

We know Buddy. Buddy's my ace. But we were called, what would we call, Louis? Come on. Come on, Louis. You, son of a bitch. But Buddy Matisse,

Buddy Hughes was a singer, a black guy, and Bobby, of course, and Bobby Alto was great, the untouchables. So I was one of the untouchables, the original untouchables. Then Bob Klein came along. Bob's another great comedian. Bob would get up and he'd ask an audience, give me a couple of lines.

They'd give him the lines and he'd improv sing him. And we would go, dua, do a if you're sweet. Sure. Well, he was in a doo-op group. Yeah, well, I'm a singer-son-of-a-bitch, man. I want you to know four albums. Remember that. I got my blues album coming out in about three weeks, Louie.

Okay. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Now, you also told me one time that it was... I never get boring, man. I want you to know that. I never get... It's hard to stay at this level. It's like you.

It's like you on your talking level. It's hard to come down. I'm sorry, I love this. I love it. Frank, I love you. I love it. I love it.

You told me at one time. In your younger days, you loved hitting people. Yeah, I was a hitter. No question about it. I used to bang them out in the minute. You know what I used to bang? I used to bang right straight hand left. I love to do it the people who deserved it.

You know what I mean? They'd play. You're a nice guy. You sit. You're being nice. to a person, you're being nice, and then this son of a bit suddenly turns the thing. He thinks he's interpreting you as some

kind of a dishrag, a meaningless person. It's those people I love to hit, because when they're on the ground, they look up and they say, why? Why did you hit? We're down on Peter Grant's place on 23rd Street. I walk in, a bartender

comes from behind the bar, he comes and starts choking me. This is me, Daniel. I'm a young, vigorous and he's choking me. I knocked him out. one shot. Now listen to this. Tony Conforty picks him up, takes him into the bedroom. Tony was my associate. He was great. Takes him into the bedroom and the guy,

his name was Larry. He said, what did I do? What happened? He said, Danny knocked you out. What? Knock me out? Why? What did I do? He said, you were choking him. He said, I was auditioning. I wanted him to see what an actor I was. He was trying to be one of the results. I am telling

you it's God's truth. This is what happened. It never happened to me again. Didn't you smack around the wrong at the improv one night? Doug Ireland. Doug Ireland was the, you weighed about 450 pounds. He was the mayor's pet.

Now, you know the woman with the big hat? Mayor Lindsay. No, he was with... Oh, right. Bell Absin. Yes, yes. This was her press guy. He's sitting in there watching Cassandra dance.

Do you remember her? Oh, yeah. She was with high steel women. I love... She used to get up. and she wasn't very funny. She was building. She was building.

Here in the back of me, fuck, get off that fucking stage. Now, I'm off duty. I'm in the front. I'm off duty. I hear that very protective, very protective of the comics. I walked back, I said,

listen, do me a favor. Leave the kid alone. She's trying something out. Don't make any trouble. You understand? Don't do it. He said, fuck your mother. Now, if you're going to curse someone

in my family, make sure it's not my mother. In our neighborhood, And our neighbor, we used to throw out something that gave the person a perpetrator a chance. What did you say? As if you didn't hear it the first time, right? And the guy said, your mama, and before he got it up, I hit him with a right hand. He goes right through the table. Through the table.

Okay, now, Bud Friedman, what are you doing? They're going to close me. That's Mayor Lindsay's people. I said, that's some bitch deserved it. He was cursing on and so forth. Buck gave me two-week vacation with pay. He never closed. That was the guy I snuck the shit out of it.

Who saw that? Brian Hamill said he walked in and saw it. Wow. It's the only guy that was one other guy. Jimmy Walker, you remember Jimmy Dynamite Walker? Jimmy was, I used to drive him home at the Grand Conference. He was the only guy with a car. I couldn't even afford gas.

He was paying me $109 a week. Three children, then four, right? Jimmy, I used to drive home every night. There's a guy by name of Price. That's all I'll say. He was an actor's studio, black dude. He comes up and he's tearing apart verbally, Jimmy. So I look at him and I say, why don't you leave him alone, man?

Listen to this. And he calls me, he said, fuck you, you white devil. He says to me a devil. So I said something to him like, well, fuck you too. You know, and Jimmy's standing there, right? He throws a kick at me. Obviously, he was a karate guy. Now, I remember exactly where he was standing.

Now, who's there? Bud Friedman's there. You know the door where the stage was you walk in? Bud walks out and sees this happening. Guy throws a kick, hits my lip. Black polish on my lip. I mean just the tip. He didn't mean he wanted to kick my teeth out.

I parry, take the pot. Bean! Goes out like a goddamn light. Bud runs out and says, get out of here, get out of here. And here's what bothers me the most. This is what bothers me. I looked at Jimmy. And I got to.

feeling he resented that I hit a black guy. And you were defending him. I was defending. To this day, I love, you got to understand. I love Jimmy. I loved him. I just got the feeling he thought if it was a white guy, it would have been more acceptable.

But this was a black dude. He was an actor-studio actor. And I hit him a shot. He went, look, I japped him. He drew the kick at me. I slipped. I ever tell you about the fight on George Washington Bridge? I don't think so. This is in the book.

I shouldn't be telling them. What's the name of the book? The book is called, I only know who I am when I am somebody else. My wife, Sandy, Stacey, and I are in a car. It's a big Cadillac. We're driving from New Jersey. Oh, I think you may have told me this story. We have New Jersey.

I'm looking for a house out there with my wife. We're driving back to the city. We come up against a car with three women and a guy driving. Pretty big guy. I couldn't tell how big. was driving at the time. Suddenly, we're all moving to go to the towboat to get first. He won't let me go. He's just keeps moving, agitating. If I move the little, he'd do this. You know something was going on. So he's laughing and so forth. Now, Sandy knows me. He said, please, Danny, don't get out.

Now my daughter, no, don't get out of the car. So I stay in the car, okay? The guy throws a cigarette at the window where my wife is sitting. Now I'm trying to get out of the car. She's screaming. My daughter is screaming. Daddy, please don't get out. I hold myself. Now we push up a little bit. We go into single file. Wouldn't you know that we go into double file again? Starting on the bridge. There's a lot of traffic. He pulls up next to us again, container of coffee, throws it on the hood of the car and takes off. This is God's truth. I'm saying, fuck, and I go after him. They're screaming. My wife is screaming. We're racing across the bridge. racing, okay? He's about

20 feet in front of me. Slams on the brakes in front of me. I slam on the brakes, maybe five feet between this. We both get out of the car. I'm in trouble because I got a leather jacket on. And I had my glasses on that and take him off. So as I come out, he throws a kick. I parry the kick. I hit him right.

He hits the decal of my cabla and goes over on the thing. I jump on him and I'm pummeling him. He's about 6, 3, 180 pounds, 28 years old. That's what it turns out he was. And I'm banging him and banged him and banging him and banging. So a guy who jumps out of his car

pulls out and says, stop it, you're going to kill him. You're going to kill him. So I leave him there and I start walking back, and I see my wife and kid, we're sitting in the bridge. The girls start calling my wife a whore. You rich people are all the same. Big Cadillac, big shit, this, what they're talking. Now, the Cadillac was a rented car

because I was doing knockout at the time on Broadway. The rental car was Bill Sargent, my producer who got me the car. So we go back and we're sitting there in the middle of the bridge. I'm like this and I'm saying, something's going to happen here. Something's something's going to say something.

When we get home, I'm going to call the police. So I go home and we're living at 238th Street in the Bronx. I call up the transit police. They get on the phone. Yeah, we had this report. You know, we have a criminal complaint against you. I said, against two. Well, Danny Aiello.

Danny Aello, I said, who said what? Well, they said that you assaulted them. I assaulted them, boom, boom, and so forth. So I said, had they know my name. How did you know my name? They said, well, they put it in a criminal thing. I said, how could they know my name? It was a rental car, not to my name.

It was given to me. So obviously, it was them thinking there was a case. Danny I, hello, I'm starring on Broadway. This is it. All right, so I had to go to court, okay? And we're in court. And while we're in court, the judge is talking to me, and he says to me, well, first of all, before that, the women are getting up and they're lying.

I'm there to watch the witnesses because I'm the person being accused. My witnesses couldn't be there. They come in later, so no one, you know, that's what they do. So they lie in this woman's lying, this one's on. Then he gets up. He's 28 years old, about 6364. He works on containers on the waterfront. So my lawyer is not a criminal lawyer.

He's a financial advisor. Jay Julian. He's a financial advisor. He said, let me ask you something. Where do you work? He says, well, I work on the waterfront. Pretty tough guys, good shape on the waterfront. How old are you, 28?

What are you, 28? 180 pounds. All right, you're going to sit there and tell me that this actor, was like 46 at the time, 46 years old and he's got a 10-year-old daughter sitting in the front seat with his wife, and you're telling me that he caused

this here problem, that he said, and that was what he said, then I come on the stage, and they're doing the same thing. I'm telling him what happened, and then I went crazy, like I'm doing here. I said, Your Honor, could I tell you what happened? I said, he said, then he said, Are you a fight? I said, no, I'm not a fight. I'm starring on Broadway.

I said, I'm a fighter, you know, as an actor. I said, no, I'm not a fight. He said, but you're a tough guy. I'm like any guy that are going to protect him. So this is the Lord, the judge, nice guy. So now I said, Your Honor, can I tell you what happened? Bing, Bing, Bing, he threw a cigarette. Bing, Bing, he threw a container of water. He kept getting in front of me.

He insulted by it. He rode. He took off. I went after him. We both got out of the car. And with these hands, I beat the shit out of him. But here's the thing that's going. a rap here. Stacy is a truth teller from the word go. My daughter has never lied in her life, all right? We're in the car. I'm taking you back to the bridge. All right, listen, if something happens, we go to court, we tell the truth. All we have to tell the truth. Stacey, what did you see? Daddy, all I saw you were holding his hair and you can't punch her. There was room for a joke.

I said, Sandy, she's not going to court. She's not a woman. That was the George Washington Bridge. Oh, God. That's my son. That's the way. And the case was dismissed. It was dismissed. But he was trying to sue me. That's what it was. Crazy bastards. Is there anything else you got, kid, Frankie?

I want to ask you about your Oscar-nominated role. Do the right thing. And how Spike came to you and what happened? And I understand you had significant input into the character. Yeah, I wrote most of my character. The entire speech there of, this is my place. I built it with my bare hands every. lock, life socket, every piece of tile, me with these hands. And he allowed that to happen. It wasn't

that I was some kind of hero doing that. What he did was permit his actors to put something of themselves into it. Now, some of us were capable of writing, others weren't. So what others would do is just remember, tell him, and he'd say, yeah, do it. But I had extensive dialogue, which I had to write before he would okay. There was one line in particular. I said, these people grew up on my food, and I'm proud of that. And it was one of the most. quarter lines, right, Louis? It was one of the most quarterline, New York Times. And I truly believe that line got me an Academy Award nomination. But when I said that, I looked at, when we were about to shoot it, I said, is that corny spike? That sounds corny. They grew up

on my food. Pizza? You know, he said, no, keep it in. So it was as if he wrote it. You know what I'm saying? It's a hell of a performance. And just keep in mind that anything that I put there in writing, ultimately, the decision as to what will go in is made by him. So for all intensive purposes, as you could say that he wrote it. You know what I mean? Because we both agreed on it. Ultimately, the last word is the director. I always said, then, look, we'll try this.

Let's try this. If you don't like it, we drop it. That's it. But let me throw it up in the air and see what you want. And I love doing that. You know, in a collaborative effort. And Spike was like that. I didn't want to do the movie.

Because he sent me the script. I was in Canada of preparing for the last dawn, I think it was. Which was a big movie. A piece of shit, but a big movie. Maybe a million and a half dollars. I don't know. That's a pootzo thing. It made me a million and a half dollars in 12 days.

Good for you. So I got away with it. So I went out there. He sends a script to me, and I don't get the script. He calls me up in Toronto, and he says, Danny, did you get the script? And by that time, I had received a call from the border. He didn't have enough poster on it, so it couldn't go past the border to me. I said, you're cheap, fuck.

You didn't put enough goddamn stamps on the thing. I read it. I opened it up. First time I'm reading it. pizza guy. Now you got to understand. I told you about forget about all that shit. We're talking about stereotyping, yeah. I pictured me with a big fucking hat on my head,

twirling fucking pizza. I called him up, I said, this ain't me. I said, you know what this is tantamount two? Watermelon Man, if I was offering you, I said, Spike, if I offered you a fucking part in my movie and said, watermelons are involved, what the fuck would you do? He took, when we got back to New York, he took me to Nick Games. He took me to Yankee games.

Not that I needed that, because my nephew is Michael Kay. He's the Yankee announcer, my sister Rosebud's kid. But he took me all of those places, and then he made changes and said, you can make significant changes with my, you know, my final say. I said, all right, let's do it. And that was it. The biggest thing was getting the Academy Award. I thought it was a piece of shit.

I'm going to tell you why, because I did Fort Apache the Bronx, and all we showed in Fort Apache the Bronx were bad things in the neighborhood. Drugs, everything rose, everything bad. And that was bad because the neighbor was. was very upset. There were riots as a result because we're showing an element in the movie. That wasn't the whole neighborhood, but it was the bad element. Now, what he did, he beautified it. He made that street look beautiful.

He made the guys never have a curse word, no drugs involved. They were all in their own heads. And I used to say, this is a fairy tale. This isn't real. This is bullshit. But I also told him that. But then I realized what Spike was doing. Spike wanted race to be dealt with, not under the influence of drugs.

You know what I mean? Not you being a drug addict and calling him a black bastard, or not you. That's not it. They were all in their own head. Drugs were not involved, and they were saying how they felt sober. And that was the point he was trying to make. Sure, I call it a fairy tale the same way I call Godfather. Fairy tale.

It's not real. I mean, wise guys don't talk like that. they sound like Shakespeare. I mean, some of the guys sound very Shakespearean, and they didn't sound like the characters that I've grown up seen and hearing. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's the talk that I had with him,

and then it took me a little while to say, all right, I understand what he did. And then, of course, I get the Academy Award nomination. And at the beginning, I wasn't a favorite, and then I became the guy. I was the favorite to win. Everyone thought I was going to win. everybody, every newscaster,

Ebert, you should win, you should have been best actor, and then she gets on the stage, Gina Davis and said, and the winner is, at least it started with a deal. I got a slight heart, I have one, he said, excuse my land,

but it was Denzel Washington. Right. And a tribute to Denzel, Denzel was questioned by a reporter after the event, and the first thing the reporter said, did you feel you're going to win? and what he said, his response made me feel pretty good.

He said, I thought Danny Aiello was going to win. That meant a lot to me, but I promise you, Frank, but I promise you, I didn't go there thinking I was going to win. I haven't been that lucky in my life. A lot of shit that I've earned in my life I earned. I didn't have connections when I did parts. The parts that I won awards for were parts that anyone could have done. I mean, I didn't get the major, you know, the MGM, Warner Brothers,

All the huge, God damn. I didn't get a huge studio guy behind me. I slipped in there. Something happened, you know. God for, I mean, this thing, do the right thing. Bobby was asked to do it. He refused. He suggested somebody else, and I was like the third or four choice.

And then they say the reason that the thing won the stuff that it won was because of Danny. I don't say that's true, but I do say to you that I never had the break. With Marty Scorsese, he's working with all the things. That's why I'm down on him so much. to allow me to be a part of a painting that he's stroking. You know, to be a part of what he is doing. Personally, I told you what I feel about him. But creatively, the man is a great director.

How could I say anything else? What you're sitting at the Academy Awards, has it occurred to you at any point? This is a long way from the MTA. When you read my book, you're going to see... The interesting opening to my book is, here I am, writing my book with a satellite

18,000 miles above me guiding my car and I'm reading and who am I doing the book with Siri I wrote the whole fucking book with Siri of course she missed both a lot of words she didn't know what I was saying

but you know I mean she does miss that a lot and I don't particularly like her accent but the bitch was with me for the whole goddamn book but what I'm saying And remember, I started out as a kid, kerosene lamps in my house, coal stoves, keeping the house warm. Okay, we lived in railroad flats on West 68th Street.

The way, unfortunately, a lot of people still are living today. No father. My mother legally blind, later in life, not at that particular time. Sick kid, sick, celiac. I had all eczema. I was hospitalized, constantly, was let back in school, demanded to be sat in the back because when they sit me in the front, I was a little skinny kid, and people made fun of me. When I sat, I don't want to say this because all those people saying, oh, you're brutalized in this.

In a way, I was verbally done. You know, I was always a tough kid, but when it came to my diseases, I would rip myself apart. Mama had to put gloves on me to go to sleep at night or socks on my hands because I would rip gouges in me because of eczema. I would sit in the front, and I always had the feeling that they were all laughing in back of me, that they were making, you know, look at him, he's so disgusting. So that's what I grew up with. But sports saved my life because I was an outstanding ball player. So when I played ball, stick ball, whatever the fuck it was in the street,

I kicked ass. I don't even shit. How sick I was. But when I played ball, all of that was undressed, wasn't even there. But the moment the sport was over, I went home, gloves on my hands, and all that shit come back to me. To this day, I got hit with it again, Louis, right? I got an attack of it just recently.

But fortunately, you don't scratch as much. But your story is inspiring. I mean, look what you came from. I love people to be inspired by it because I was a baggage man at Greyhound. I've heard you do the bus reads, the stations. May I have your attention, please. A platform of three, coach for Philadelphia, Chester Wilmington, Sova, Seaford Law, Salisbury, Princess Anne, Polkham Oak City,

Kip to Beak Beach, Little Creek, and Norfolk. This coach connects in Jersey City for Newick, Mount Clair, Denville, Dover, Bud Lake, Hacketstown. Strasbourg, Mount Pocono, Toby, Hannah, Scranton, Wilkesbury, Clark Summit, Nicholson, Hallstead, Great Ben, Binghamton, Cotland, Ethica, Geneva, Canandaego, Pitsston, To under Wively, Elmira, Coney, Bat, Batavia, Hornel, Mount Morris, and Buffalo. Oh, that's incredible. That, to me, was...

Tell them, am I reading anything? No. Nothing at all, no, right. That was all by heart. All by hot on the top of you. Son of a little bitch, I'm jumping out the goddamn window after that. That was amazing. That happened to be David, well, the big guy on the Today Show,

Letterman's favorite bit. Whenever I go on the show, he asked me to do that. I hate to repeat it, but he loves to hear it. It's great. Oh, what do you remember about working with Paul Newman? When I'm shooting, I was relatively new then, and I was intimidated. The fact I didn't show it, but I went to my camper,

because I lived in a building where I threw the kid off. We should tell people you played a racist cop. Fort Apache. Martin and did a lot for my career, Fort Apache to Bronx. And Paul Newman was the star of it. Kenny Wall played the young... Ed Asner's in it. Terrific picture.

Picture was really good. Sully Boyer. I don't know if you remember Sully Boyer. He's an act. He comes from actor's a great guy. Paul Gleason, I did a sitcom with Paul in L.A. I love Paul. But Newman, I'm sure we don't even know each other.

We had a lot of scenes together. And I'm shooting a scene. And he's off camera. I'm on. So the seam involves Paul and I, but at one time, it's my close. So he's expected to sit there and do lines with me. While I'm doing lines, he's sticking his finger at his toes. He's doing this. He's doing this picking shit with his mouth, all crazy things. So naturally, when we reverse the camera, he developed for me a pair of balls. So I did the same thing to him. I was sticking out. But he was such a great guy. He ate a lot of popcorn, was a beer drink. We used to go out to Fortham Earl quite a bit, the Italian neighborhood. and he that Angelo is up there. And what's fascinated me about Paul, I really think he had eczema like I did, or something similar,

because I went into the campbell once, and I saw him, which I've never done in life, and I thought I was going to recently do it, he puts his face in ice water. Because he used to get the red blotches, and I never asked him that question. Fascinating.

But he used to put his face on ice water. I remember that vividly, and I remember the popcorn, which I love, beer, which I don't drink. You know, I don't drink anything, but no drugs. I'm going to tell you something. Let me see how you buy this, you too.

You know how many parts I lost in movies because of drugs? I never did them. Do you hear what I'm saying to you? You understand what I'm saying to you? Draw your own conclusions. I never did drugs in my life, not pot, not heroin, not cocaine, nothing. And I'll tell you why, a Spanish friend of mine, Bay Dormini, a great artist, a kid at the age of 16, died of an overdose. I didn't know what the fucking overdose of drugs was. Heroin. The suspicion I got,

I used to go to his house. We lived in the same building. You ready for this? Every time I went, another piece of furniture was gone. Drapes were gone. I didn't know what was happening. He was unloading his house. He was buying, selling his mother's entire apartment piece by piece to support his drugs. Soon after that, he dies. I was so crippled by that that had stayed with me all my life. So it wasn't that I'm so pure. I had a true. I had a true. I had a true. tremendous fright of what that shit can do to you. Because I give an example. You don't have to be a sick fuck to play a sick fuck.

You understand what? Listen what I'm saying to you. If you're going to play a sick fuck, too many of our kids think you've got to get whacked old. You've got to drink. No, acting is about fucking imagination. So you were never a method guy? Never.

Well, I'm a method guy. Yeah, method with stuff that method does not mean you've got to use the shit that's being used with that character. You can use a reasonable. facsimile. And in this case, I used powder in Hurley Burley, which won me the best actor award. Me and Sean Penn were in it. In California, I got it for a drug addict, a crazy bastard. And if you saw pictures of me and that, you would have thought I was stoned. I'm saying to you, you can do that without being assisted by drugs. And it kills me. Jimmy Hayden.

Jimmy Hayden was a kid who played in Sergio Leone's movie. Once Upon a Time in America. Good looking kid, right? He used to come visit me when I was doing knockout on Broadway. Great kid, I studied acting. I meet him in Rome while he's doing a movie because I'm doing a movie with him. I come back. He dies. He's an overdose.

You know when I see him? Being carried out in a rubber bag. This is Jimmy, a wonderful kid. Drugs. He was a drug guy. And that day, he was with Al Pacino on Broadway doing what was it, Buffalo? American Buffalo. And they gave him a standing ovation that night when he got off the stage and he goes back to his house and he dies.

Seymour Hopman, great fucking actor. And I'm sure he was using then. He didn't have to use, because the guy's brilliant. You don't have to use to be great. You don't have to rip off your fucking air like gold to be a great painter. He just happened to rip his fucking ear off. You know what I'm saying? You don't have to.

And I plead with people you don't. And I say to kids, what bothers me about trying to kill drugs is that they generally get people who are drug addicts to come in and talk to the kids. Now, any kid would sense would say, well, shit, this guy is a star in the New York Jets. He would did drugs and he kick it. I'm going to try drugs and kick it like he did.

I think the guys that should be teaching or instructing are guys who never did drugs who became famous in certain fields. As ballplayers, as actors, that's it. That's how I feel about that shit. But I hate drugs, but that's my character. Does he look like it? Got you never used drugs.

We're looking at a picture of Danny and Hurley Burley. I won Best Actor for Drama. Wow. Now, I remember working with your sons on some horrible TV show. Right. And one of your, they were both stunt men. No, Ricky was an actor, but they both worked their stunts. Danny used to get work for Ricky.

And one of them, he was like, like six, four and barrel chested. And he was my stuntman. That's right. You had to believe. You had a belief. All of a sudden, I. grew enormous. I was this giant Italian guy.

Oh, God. But I remember them saying to me that when they would come home at night, you used to say to them, get over here. Get over here. I want to smell your breath. Yeah, I used to do that a lot in my house.

I had terrible memory. My son who died, I used to worry about him. He was such a weak child. He was just a beautiful little blonde, kid, never got in trouble. And I knew we went to church one day, and I stopped going to church as a result. We're sitting in the front pew.

The incense comes out. Then he passes out. I thought he died. In my arms, I never saw my kid pass out, and he faded. I run out of the church with screaming at the top of my lungs. I'm running down Southern Boulevard under the L. That's where we lived then, near Stebbins Avenue. And I'm screaming, my son, my son, and he comes about.

And then I'm there when he actually dies. And it reminded me of the time he didn't. But I knew that day when he came about and came fresh and he didn't die, I knew that I had to watch him for the rest of my life. I just knew it. Every time he was doing something when he was doing a stunt, I would be in terrible pain. He'd jump off a roof, glide something on a cable, maybe 18 floors up.

I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle it. Ricky never did those things. Ricky would get in the car. Danny would give him easy jobs. But Danny was a coordinator. You had to do everything. But he started as a stunt man,

meaning you did everything. Then, of course, he coordinated and he assigned people the work. And he always used to say things like, Dad, we're not dare devils. We're not kamikazis. We're stunt people. We plan.

We're careful. You know what I mean? He took great pride and no one getting hurt. when he was with him. And this happened because Vic McNada, who did Fort Apache to Bronx, was Danny's mentor. He taught him everything from, that's when Danny first started, Fort Apache to Bronx. And Vic McNada, who was the son coordinator, did the next movie.

I think it was with, I can't remember his name. He went off the pier at 40-something street, into the water. Someone else was supposed to do the stunt. He didn't show up. He did it. Windshield, came back, broke his neck. He died. And Danny was in the water with the,

underwater people just standing there, you know. So I figure after that happened, they all seem to be more careful with what they were doing, you know. It's terrible. Vic McNard, a great guy. I love them too. So many people passed, man.

So many good people. But I don't want to get off on the dime. We got to do something up. Well, you got to do something up. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor. At Medcan,

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. What you say, your son would do a lot of your stun work. Yeah. Well, we're at 57s who are doing Hudson Hawk, your favorite movie. You know, there's a great scene in that movie. When you guys are doing that, I don't want to interrupt here. When you guys are committing the heist and you're both singing, swinging on a star. It's a great, it's a great scene.

Are you kidding? I'm knocking, what would you rather swing on a star on a star, Gary Moonby. The movie has great moments, too. It has great moments. And like I told you, it's a cult hit, 57th Street. 57th Street. 39 flights up where they're about, Danny and Bruce's stuntman going across a cable.

Cable might have been about 30 feet long. They had to go from one building to the next. Below them, I don't know many streets were below, but some asshole asked me to sit across the stand across street and watch. I could never watch, but I'm standing in a doorway, and I'm looking up, and I'm watching my son with the other kid going, and suddenly the cable goes like this. Now, little did I know that that was the plan.

They had the cable drop. So to give the audience another sort of thrill, but of course I didn't know it was going to drop. I thought they were just going to go across and I was there, but the cable dropped. Boom. And then, you know, reinstituted itself and it was solid and they went across the other side. It was then that I said, I will never watch him do a stunt. I used to say, Danny, don't do this shit. Danny don't do that.

He said that. Someone's going to do it. What about me? Who's going? Someone's not someone this is what I do This is what I do dad And I couldn't deal with it Couldn't deal with it

Could not deal with it It's a hard thing for father to say It's like a father watching a fighter His son Some of them they got balls like I've never seen before They watch them as heck Their eye is ripped open And I'm saying how do they do that?

Of course you know Ricky I don't know if you know That was a top fighter Ricky 21 fight 17 knockouts They were all after Rick to go pro You know who was all after them done Don was after him like crazy, but Ricky, fortunately, I hate to say, got a pinch nerve in the back of his neck, got to be operated on. He was a great left hooker.

See, in my house, I know you guys would dig this or understand, but I used to measure my kids. We lived in the projects. We lived in the projects at 228 to be Marble Hill projects, this before I became an actor. So Ricky would be, he was the oldest one. Now he's around six years old. I would paint a picture where he was, you know, a line of his height, okay? So as we went on, they went a little higher and a little higher. Well, you know what I did?

That room was the kitchen, dining room, and the family room, all connected. But this one wall, this one thing, was where I measured them, and where he learned to throw a left hook. Now, you got to know how to throw a left hook. I mean, the left hook is not a fairy punch. Your whole body, when you hit a guy with a left hook, you're hitting with your ass, everything. Bam! You see this? You see your hands?

Watch your hand. You see your hand right. hands easy. You see that punch coming. You don't see the... Bam! Like that. Ricky, from 6 to 12, he used to shake the five-story building. I wish we had video. That's how hard

he had. Left hooker. I was crazy over left hook. Now, I have to ask you something. That just popped in my head now. Is this me? Thanks, man. I remember one time my sister, who's a photographer, took your picture, and you said to her, you've got that

urge, that Jewish urge. Did I say that? Yes. What is that Jewish? It might have been something I learned from my wife. Because my wife has a lot of urges and she's Jewish. Could that have been it? I can't picture myself saying that.

I really can't. But it might have been something I'm reflecting, you know, from my wife. Sandy has urges you haven't seen. Can I ask you about my fiance's favorite movie about Moonstruck? Yeah, Moonstruck. You're so funny in it. Johnny Comerary. Piece of shit.

You didn't like that one either. When I did that, I was a shame. I was a shame to let my mother see. I was serious? I played a major wimp in that movie. But you're so funny. I looked at the director, Norman Jewison. I said, Norman, this is the word.

He said, are you kidding? It's the best. I said, Norman, please. I don't even want to see this movie. But I must admit that it did everything for me. Well, I always laugh at the fact that there's hardly any Italians of the film. I know. That's true.

Russian actor. She was, and that was a Greek. accent. Limpia de Kock has never stole the tie in to me. Written by an Irishman and directed by a Jewish dude from Canada. Norman Jewison. Norman Jewison. Great director.

But you're Italian and Nick Cage is Italian and the great Vincent Gardena. No, Vincent said to me one day my first movie, a baseball movie, I'm doing bang the drum slowly. Great movie. We love that movie. You got to hear this. You got to hear this kid. I'm in the corner. I don't know about acting. What do I know? I never studied. That's your first movie?

Yeah, I never went to a instructor. I never want to act to studio. I know this shit. I had no idea. I'm sitting in the corner I had a couple of lines, maybe three lines. Vinny walks over and says, what's the matter, kid? What's wrong? Something wrong? I said, well, Mr. Gardini

you know, my problem is this is my first movie. I have a few lines and I'm not quite sure how I want to say them. You know, I know that if I do this and I do it the way I'm thinking, it's going to be on the screen. Now, if I see the movie 50 times, if I suck, I'm going to suck

50 times. I said, so it frightens me. So he looks at me and he says, don't worry, kid, you're probably never going to work again anyway. I swear to our mighty God. Vinny is up there looking down. Louis, did he say that? Yeah, that was, and that was Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty. He paid a catcher that threw like this. Yes. Like his goddamn elbow was tied to his side. Who do you think was teaching him how to catch

balls in the third? Me and Tommy Senorelli. We used to spend hours trying He was thrown like this. The painter's kid. What hell is that? You grew up in New York and you're talking like that. Someone had a tremendous influence on him. I don't know who it was, but it certainly wasn't a baseball player. Now, you said that you hate the way Italian families are played in movies where they're constantly cursing.

Yeah, well, when I saw the Sopranos, I looked at one episode. And look, the Sopranos did well. A lot of my friends were there who had not. nothing but extra roles all their lives and pictures, and suddenly it came about that they became recognizable characters, and they made a lot of money, and I was happy for them, for many of them. And it's not there for. We depict characters.

We get paid to play them. And I understand people play the way David Price or whatever the hell his name is, David, what is it, the director, Africa, Chase. What bothered me is a kid comes in, he's smoking dope in front of his father and mother. That's something we don't need. Because that's not true. Now, it may very well be true today. In modern society, a kick and smoke pot.

Maybe the mother's doing it with them. I don't know. But I lived in the dirtiest of neighborhoods. I lived in neighborhoods where people couldn't pay the rent. When we couldn't pay the rent, we moved to another place that would accept a few dollars for us to go in. You understand? In one month, I moved 13 times from Stebbin's Avenue to Boston Road. We were poor.

We had shit. But the one thing we never did was disrespect anyone. Now, I didn't have a father. My mother was there. Smoking dope, saying hell in front of my mother? It doesn't happen. Now, you may think I'm a dinosaur. I wish there were more like me,

because it drives me frigging crazy when I see the shit that they're showing on television. I'm sitting there dating naked. Why don't this president wake his ass up and say, stop this shit, stop this garbage on television? I'm talking garbage. People naked, dating naked? What is this?

What the hell have we come to? Why do you think Arabs hate us, man? Gilbert, there goes your shot at dating naked. Why do you think naked? Why do you think they hate us? Why? They hate us because of our style of living and what we're watching. They don't want their families to watch that shit. Look, look, they have ways that they believe in religions or what have.

Look, fuck terrorists. I know that. I'm talking about people, people. They don't want this shit in their home. We're in our home. We sit down. I'm watching someone naked on the goddamn screen of my grandchild. It's all bullshit.

It's crazy. I think the president should come out and say, stop all this shit. Stop it. Call it what you will. But stop what this is what's happening. Sorry. That's all right, buddy. You love that cover?

I do. That's a major cover. Real quick, before we wrap it up, Gilbert and I are JFK assassination buffs. Can we ask you a little bit about Ruby? Yeah, well, my opinion differs from the movie itself, but yeah, you sure you can. I mean, what kind of research did you do? What did you learn about Jack Ruby?

It's interesting that question because it usually brings about not a satisfying answer. Milton Burrell and Jerry Vale gave me all I had to know. Really? I want to know about Ruby. So Milton said to me, he used to have shirts in the back of his car, silk shirts. Jerry Vale backed him up on it at a different time. He would give them shirts because they performed.

They went to his place. With the Carousel Club? Yeah. And the women loved him. The women that worked for him loved him. Okay. That's what I wanted to know about the guy. Now, Roger Ebert said,

Danny, terrific, but he was too nice a guy to play him. Now, keep in mind, I really played him with Jewish prayers, prayers for the death. Now, John McKenzie, who directed it, pulled out the prayer, I set a gravesite, which upset me tremendously because Ruby loved JFK, loved him, sat shiver with his sister. He was not married, and his sister wasn't either. Sitting on milkboxes in her apartment, sitting shiver for the man they thought was the greatest for Jewish people. They thought that he was the savior

of the Jewish people, okay? I gave you that scenario, okay? I found out how much the women loved him and how much he loved working for the women. But remember, it's a shit business. It's a garbage camp business. Wise guys come there, just like wise guys came to Cafe Columbus, right?

Yes, yes. I remember that. Chuck Rose comes over to me one day. DEA chief, he comes over to me, says, Danny, I'm not the only one in here tonight carrying a gun. Every wise guy in the world was there. Just like all of a sudden these asshole

writers are putting things out like this Ruby's place was any different than any other place. Here's what I got. He acted alone. I'm talking about Oswell. I'll never believe anything different, but I have no information other than my feeling.

He acted alone, I believe. And I also believe in the final result that the Warren Commission came down with. I don't think it was a prejudice group of people. They were both Republicans and Democrats making that decision after having all the information in front of them. They came down with it. The only thing that happened is we started to get the revisionists. We started to get, I won't name them, to give them any glory. The assholes who said, oh, this happened, this happened. There are always those conspiracy guys.

I'm not saying you're not one of them. You might be. No, I didn't write a book. I used to be, but I changed my mind. Okay, but you didn't write a book. There were other guys who made a living. Their whole life became that. Well, it's a cottage industry. Right. Well, I can understand that. What's his name, that director, Oliver Stone? Oliver Stone, when that said his story was true.

At least we said that there are things in it that are true and there are things that are not true. And if you're doing a factual account of something, but you enter into that factual account, some untruths, then the whole thing is not true. You follow what I mean? Yes. You cannot use facts and then enhance. I'm not going to fight you. Well, no, you can't embell.

You can't embellish facts with untruths. You can't do it. He said his thing was true. His is true. What the audience doesn't see is how many times Danny has hit me. They're all love taps. They're all loved taps. What is that, Louis?

Now, can you please tell us the name of your book? It's called, I only know who I am when I am somebody else. The book will be out October 7th at Simon & Chester Gallery Books. May I say it's a hot book. You know something if it doesn't sell one. I wrote the book that I wanted to write. I said the things I wanted to say. The wonderful thing is I had trouble.

There was great difficulty, and the difficulty is remembering. Now, you can remember 10 years, 20 years. I was asked to remember my first Christmas that I remember having a tree. I was six years old. So I went to sleep at night thinking, what am I going to remember when I was six? something popped, then something else popped, then something else popped. And before you know it, I was six years old. I was remembering things that happened in my life when I was six years old.

The first Christmas, my sister, Helen, went out and robbed a tree. That's the first time we had. She robbed the tree. We didn't know it. There were trees on the street, okay? Do you know what we decorated our trees with? I want to pass this on to you. Bottle caps, painted bottle caps.

with shoe strings tied to it. Oh, you made your own to garland. Okay, let me tell you what else. You know, you know these socks that you have, you know what socks we use? Worn socks that we wore. Put candies in them. That's what my mother did.

Okay. These are the things that we used to decorate a tree. It looked more like a Hanukkah bush than a tree. Because Hanukkah Bush, who know, with things to come, you know, I'm having a Jewish talk about it more appropriate. But I'm just saying some of the things I remember, but I'll say this. rank and closing, it is the most difficult thing I would have ever done in my life.

It is, it damn near assassinated me. The emotional level that you're on and you can't get off. Of course, when you go to sleep, you figure, I'm going to go to sleep, and then you're sleeping, you wake up a half hour later with an idea. And you don't want to just write it down because I'm not that way. I'll write it down, do it in the morning. I have to cover it then. Right then.

I have to do it. This went on for 91,000 words. 93,000 words. It's been reduced to that. It's been reduced somewhat because of all the editing, which I did much of it. 350 pages now, right? Louis, which is fine. And pictures, you know, some.

I didn't care about the pictures. But there's something I want to tell you. I want to see how both you and Frank think about this and your wife, of course. Paul Mazurski was a dear friend of mine. who just recently passed away. I hope that Paul was going to write the foreword for my book. Sadly, he died. So I decided not to have one.

Now, remember, four word is people complimenting you. I didn't need any of that shit. I went through life without compliments and with some. So I didn't need that. But that's all that's there. That and a picture that he sent to me, big picture of him, there, me here, and it said, to Danny, who loves you, Paul Mazzarski. And after I put in what I put in, on the bottom it says, to Paul, who loves you, Danny Ayo.

That's the foreword. And that's, what's the name of the book? One more time. I only know who I am, when I am, somebody else. And just to cap that, I don't know who the hell I am. I don't even have any music coming up to Anything we should know about Because you're also a singer

Well, I'm a bad ass singer man I want to know that you've sung with the Boston Pops Some of Boston Pops But we have two I wish the hell we had the music to show They let them hear But we have We have something called blues now

It's called The title of my book is called I only know who I am when I am somebody else That's the title of the song And the other song is a video Which I've done called It's about age. It's about forgetfulness. It's about no memory. It's called this river where a man has

nothing and he goes and he sits by the river and he drinks and he remembers what he was and what he's turning out to be. The video is sensational. Forget about me doing it. It's sensational. We're going to send it to you, Frank. Okay, great. Thank you. Are you finished? Career-wise, yes. In case they know I'm not hitting you. I'm hitting the tape. That's approval. Approval. Gilbert, it was wonderful being here with you. Thank you.

I love you. And I did it because I wanted to do it with you and Frank. My pleasure, Dan. You're a gent. Thanks, we love it. I say, it's good working with you and Eddie, your beautiful wife. Danny Ayello.

Danny, I could do a mini-series with you. We can talk for 18 hours. Let me tell you. Maybe you'll come back and talk about working with Woody Allen and some other things. I'll do all that shit. I won't be so talking about it. All right. This was one of those easy jobs.

You caught me at a time when I was a little emotional. This is podcast Verite. Yeah, well, I love it. You could do what you want. This is great, yeah. Well, this has been the great Danny Aiella and who I forgot to say at the beginning of the show. And this is. And Lou, thanks, thanks to Lou.

Can I say two pictures? He's grabbing me again. You haven't mentioned that you have to see. Okay. Uh-oh. 29th Street, which is my license screen. I got it written down. See that movie.

And see once around. with me and Jenna Rollins and Holly Hunter. Richard Drive. See those two movies, and Richard was sensational. George Gallo. See, now once again, he grabbed my shoulder. And he says, is this okay? I love you.

Next time we'll talk about 29th Street. This has been the amazing colossal podcast. I'm Gilbert Godfrey. He with my co-host, Frank Santa Boudre, and having a great time with Danny Haya. Thank you.