Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff - Spike Feresten

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Spike Feresten joins Mark to discuss working/writing on Saturday Night Live, Letterman, Seinfeld, Talk Show with Spike Feresten, Spike's Car Radio, & Johnny Carson's presence in Netflix's film Unfrosted.  Presented by LateNighter.com Watch Unfrosted on Netflix Check out Spike's Car Radio Follow Spike on Instagram @spikeferesten Follow Mark on Instagram @markmalkoff  Follow Mark on X @mmalkoff Please subscribe, rate, and leave a review.  For more episodes checkout LateNighter.com/podcasts

I'm so grateful to Lauren Michaels and Saturday Night Live, and it was, you know, for me, it was comedy college. Hi, I am Mark Malkoff and welcome to the first episode of Inside Late Night, presented by latiniter.com. Since ending the Carson podcast, it feels great to be back. I will be interviewing guests every week from late night shows past and present, including Saturday Night Live, Letterman, Carson, Caput, co-esuit. and so many more.

My goal is to give you the late-night stories that have never or rarely ever been talked about. Thankfully, today's guest, comedy writer-host Spike Ferrisdon does just that. Spike shares tales from working and writing on shows such as Saturday Night Live, Letterman, Seinfeld, and his three seasons on Fox hosting talk show with Spike Ferriston. Also, we talk about Johnny Carson's presence

in the Jerry Seinfeld Netflix film unfrosted in which Spike was a producer and co-writer. Now it's time to go inside late night. Spike Ferrisen, thank you so much for talking with us. It's nice to be here. I have so many questions. This is a late night themed podcast. First of all, unfrosted to me, it's hard to do comedy. It's hard to have comedy that just succeeds at a level. It was the cast. The cast, And then you had like the mascot funeral and then you had the nod to January 6th. Then it just it just didn't stop the casting itself. Like I mean, this is about late night.

So I mean, you had like from Saturday Night Live, Mikey Day, Bobby Moynihan, Kyle Mooney, Fred Armisen, Beck Bennett and Daryl Hammond doing Ed McMahon voice. Because this was your idea to do this film, correct? Well, not my idea. this was a joke. If you really want to go back a while ago, I asked Jerry, because it's Jerry Seinfeld. You're having coffee every once in a while and every once in a while. I go, let me be a Jerry Seinfeld historian. Okay, Jerry Seinfeld, you get into a time machine. Where does Jerry Seinfeld go? And he goes, oh, no question, 1963, the first of the park, that'll speak, Michigan, right? You understand why that's a weird answer, right? Yeah, and I had no idea that there was this history as well within post versus catalogs. I mean, it's... I mean, you remember the series. His series, he always was eating breakfast cereal.

That was his thing. Sure. I mean, that made sense. So he, so I said not, you know, you don't want to meet the Marx brothers or you don't want to, I don't know, hang with dinosaurs or Abe Lincoln. He goes, no, he goes, serious men in suits talking about stupid stuff like prizes and cartoon mascots and he goes, that's my whole world. That's my whole thing. It's a company town and I've always wanted to see what it was like. And now it's too late. I did a podcast for eight years about

Johnny Carson. So at one point, it sat in 63, Seinfeld his character is a guest on Johnny in New York. And I'm watching this. And it looks the special effects with Johnny and everything looks so cool. We were at one point talking about deep faking using existing. Johnny Carson footage. And, you know, we were talking to the Carson people. And they were like, look, in 63, there's not that much. And we said, well, what do you mean? You go, there's only, I think, four or five existing episodes left of the show. Everything else is gone. And we went, we went what? And sure enough, the number was even less than that. I think there were only one or two episodes from 1963 in existence. Yeah, there's some clips, but there are,

Full episodes, no way. They're gone. That was a big surprise to us. I mean, it's really a shame. But the reason it was difficult for us is because we were doing face replacement, deep fake. And at the time that technology needed, it's a carnivore for imagery. So you want, like, you know, a hundred hours of Johnny Carson and it's much crystal clear photography that you throw into the computer and it spits out the image.

And it didn't really exist. So that was a, the real issue there was getting the right. right face replacement and then which is just we're going to deep fake this part of the body and then what are we going to do about the voice and what are we going to do about the body and that's where Kyle Donegan came in. I mean, he's so good and so talented. He's so good and he was blowing up during the pandemic on Instagram and you know the whole premise of casting was who are our favorite funny people right now and he was definitely one of them. And we said, do you do Carson and he said let me work on it. I don't want to do Dana Carvey's

Carson, the most famous Carson, but let me work on it and see if I can come up with something. And then he walked in with that. And his body looked right and we put the face over the hair and it was there. And it came alive. I have to say, whoever it was the cast in director needs to get a raise. I mentioned that. And then I found out then after that that you and Jerry basically cast the thing yourselves. Well, Christy Carlson, who is our casting director, was, you know, absolutely crushed it for us.

And it was Jerry Bo and I, who would, we had this board up and we had all the parts up of which there were many. And we would, you know, go, all right, let's dream big. Who would we love to play this part? I mean, it seems like other than Daniel Day Lewis, where I heard Seinfeld one, that everybody, I mean, I just really, really work. So when you were at Saturday Night Live, when you were an intern and then receptionist, you were writing jokes for Dennis Miller. Some one or two would get on and then up to, you were getting up to five on weekend update. You leave then to write for Letterman. At what point, you have no inkling during this time that Lauren was wanted to hire you as a writer.

Nobody says anything to you. So obviously you get Letterman. you're going to go over there but then you find out they weren't going to hire you as a writer that's what i heard i i still don't know for sure but i i did work for lorne right after that as an intern on a show called night music with david sandborne okay uh which was a sunday night music show that was uh it had a little bit of comedy in it in the first year and i was told by the broadway video folks that like i'm the writer's assistant but they would like me also to kick in some writing i just want to fill in i'd heard

Lauren was very not happy when you left, which is a compliment to you. Yeah, maybe, maybe there was a call to an agent, but, you know, I, it surprised me. I, you know, I'm so grateful to Lauren Michaels and Saturday Night Live, and it was, you know, for me, it was comedy college, you know, I was at Berkeley College of Music. It's a great school, but I was not, it was not going to do anything for me. And I went to Saturday Night Live University. under the tutelage of Lauren Michaels and then David Letterman University

and that's where I learned to do what I'm doing Is somebody that was friendly that had lunches Three hour lunches with Rick Ludwin I have to say if he was alive He would be so tickled I know, I know That you included him in the movie It's just like he would be smiling

We love Rick Ludwin He's responsible for Seinfelds Getting on the air He loans some of his late night budget to Jerry in that first season and got them more episodes and that's when the show started catching fire. For the episode on Seinfeld of 95, it was the little kicks with Elaine as the bad dancer. So you write this thing and then does Robert Smichael call you on behalf of Lorne? Is that what happened? I think he did, yeah. Smichael doesn't. Look, I'm trying to get on the right side

of Lorne right now and you're not helping me. Oh, oh, okay. Do you want not me to talk about this? I'm joking. I'm joking. Are you sure? I think at the time, you have to imagine, and the show is so big at that time. We have, in the last season, we have helicopters over us while we're shooting outside. It was, you know,

there was no real internet. There was nothing bigger than Jerry's show. So any time, you know, real life seeped its way into a Seinfeld episode, it had the potential, the soup Nazis is a perfect example. The morning after that episode airs, that guy was surrounded. The real guy in New York was surrounded by press.

Which he wrote was turned upside down, right? Yeah. And so, yeah, the, the, the little kicks was inspired by, you know, me seeing Lauren dance at a party. And I think, and Nor would I want this, I wouldn't want Lauren's life to be turned upside down. And Robert was just like, hey, can you not mention that this was inspired by Lord? So I didn't. I get that. And in Lauren's defense, from talking to Smigle and other people, and I think I've heard you. you say this, he wasn't a bad dancer. It was just this guy who, um, is a figure that was, um, some might say intimidated. And I think you said once on your, your podcast, which is amazing, Spikes Car Radio, that it was this intimidated, the guy who you were intimidated and just had so much regard for dancing. And it just, uh, the visual kind of did that. Well, he was a bad dancer. And who cares? Who cares? Okay. He's, He's the godfather of comedy in the world, and there's no more successful producer in the world. Yeah, Robert said he danced one time. It was one time. He would all kill to be this guy. I mean, he's got the longest running career in comedy ever, and, you know, it predates me and may post date me. Who the hell knows? But what I was going for was not that. It was, I'm an insecure receptionist, and this guy is the boss of this place. And he was intimidating to me.

not through any behavior that he did, it was just my bad psychology. And when I saw him on the dance floor doing the little kicks, and I saw a human being, a guy just like the rest of us. He just didn't want to be like the soup Nazi with all everybody, you know. There was a book written about it, so I don't even think you were the first person to mention. It was buried for years and years. Jay Leno was at the premier Enfrosted with Mavis, which I thought was great. I need to ask you one more Seinfeld question that I'm done with Seinfeld is that episode where Kramer, he sells his life story to the boss because it's more interesting. Was that inspired by Jay Leno buying Jeff Altman's story about being on Diana Shore and saying it was his? Oh, that's right.

I don't think it was. But there was another story where someone was buying story. That was Leno. I mean, I'm not saying that that, I mean, Jay told me he's my son. and he's been public that he, it was like a thousand bucks to Jeff Altman to have this story for him to say that this happened to him. There's another one. That's, there was another bigger one and I don't recall what it was. Wasn't there a Norm McDonald's where he was buying stories to tell in late night interviews? Oh, Norm would just make stuff up. I wouldn't be

surprised. I love Norm. I mean, he's one of the funniest people ever. No, he would, he would talk to you and he'd tell a funny story about your dry cleaning going wrong. And he'd go, let me buy that. I'm going to take that up and let me. Really? He was doing. doing that somebody yeah j it wasn't jay but there was a there was a bigger scandal with someone who wasn't in the comedy world who was buying stories and i do believe that was the inspiration okay yeah that makes sense when you're going to berkeley i mean you get kicked out of your dormitory because you love dave so much i mean what did you throw out the window that got you kicked out yeah it's it wasn't because i love dave it was because i was bored on a saturday night and drinking beers

with my dorm mates, and we were on the eighth floor of this Mass Ave building. And we thought it would be fun to take the fluorescent light bulbs out of the hallway lighting fixtures and then drop them onto the sidewalk below and smash. No one was down there, and it wasn't, you know, I understand that it's dangerous, but we were just trying to have fun. And I was, they caught us. I was also on the committee that was supposed to make sure kids didn't do this, so it was doubly bad.

And they said, you can't stay here anymore. And it was shortly after that I saw Dave doing tower drops, dropping fluorescent light. Oh, wow. So you, you did it first. And I went, this guy. No, it's not that I did it first. I don't know. They had probably been doing it. But I, but I saw this guy was getting paid to do this. And the network was behind it. And then I, and I very quickly, I mean, I was a huge fan, but I very quickly did the math that I think this is the place for me because I'm getting in trouble. But this guy's, you know, he's winning Emmys for doing it. I got to see the NBC show. I was 16, and I got to go see the NBC show in 6A. And it was one of the most exciting days ever. And in college, you go and see the show when you're there. And you're telling everybody, just with confidence, I'm going to be on the show. I'm going to be on the show.

And what happens? Yeah, I was a bit of a stalker. Well, I made bets with my dormates that I would get on to the stage. And I thought that would be it for television. And if I could just get on to this guy's stage for a second, my life would be made. And I'll go to work doing whatever it is I'm going to end up doing. And they, it was Canada Day. And they said, are there any Canadians out in the audience who just come up to the stage really quick?

You're going to hand out the lyrics to Oh, Canada. And I walked up, even though I'm not from Canada. And even though I say the word out like a Canadian, I just got up on the stage. And for a split second, I'm in the show. I saw the clip, and you won your bet. but just to be in that studio how exciting it was to see Dave and come out for the warm-up and he's like right there and stuff. When you were writing for CBS for Dave, this is so letterman.

You go to him and you say there's this a go-kart race for charity. I want to answer the show, and Dave is like so into this. And then this is a show day. Knock on your door and who is it and what does he say? Yeah, Dave came down and he goes, what are you doing here? and I go, I'm right in top 10 entries. He goes, you know, we got a race on Saturday. And I go, yeah, yeah, I know.

And he goes, well, you know, what have you done to the car? What, what are we going to win? He goes, I don't, I don't want to come in fifth. And I go, well, what do you suggest? And he goes, I suggest, you know, you get your butt out to Long Island to the race shops and start asking them what we can do. So he basically gave you permission not to write for three days? He said, really, you want me to leave right now in the middle? He goes, yeah, get out there and figure it out.

So I left and I called race. I mean, I didn't know much about cars or what he was talking about. And very quickly, you know, I explained to some guy at a speed shop, whatever that was. Back then, there were speed shops. I said, we're racing essentially lawnmower engines. What can I do? And they went, well, there are springs. You can get something called racing gas.

And he goes, we've got racing plugs. And that should just get you a little or enough faster with this lawnmour engine to win. And, you know, we got out to the track Saturday, and Dave was calling Rob Burnett every 15 minutes for update. I mean, it was just, you know, it was just like Morgan Stanley, the letter, but it was just a dumb Wall Street fundraiser. And we lapped everybody and got first place. And here's what we didn't know. After, before we got the award, they said, all right, we just have to inspect your car. And I went gulp.

And they put the little squeezer into the car. So the gas and the gas came out purple. I had siphoned off their gas and put in this racing gas. And they said, we got to take first place away from you. And I said, I understand. Because we won't say that you cheated. But, and I go, well, what does that mean? They go, we're going to give you award for best uniforms, but you're going to come in fit.

Devastating. The only other time he went to your office. He owns a racing team. right now. Yes, because of you. You planted the scene. Yes, the beginning of Ray Hall Letterman racing. And by the way, we won. He was right. And, you know, if you're not, if you're not pushing the boundaries out a little bit, you're not racing. The only other time he came to your office is when, that summer for CBS leading up when Leno showed up unannounced, right? He showed up unannounced, came up and Dave basically,

oh yeah, he might have. He might have come down. He hidden Jeff, Bill Schaff's office, and I thought your office um he did but he would come down all the time was it okay sometimes we exaggerate when we tell stories but dave was very friendly with the writers it was always fun when he would he would stop by um even more fun to pitch him i mean you would you would have loved that that was blast yeah i mean it was the show was at its pinnacle and in the emmys of 91 you're in los angeles and letterman knows you're a car guy and he has um to this day i think um a lot of people have them i think maybe you have a hangar at the Santa Monica airport. So Dave invites you over there and you get there.

And what do you notice? What do you find discover? Because you think Dave would stay at a five-star hotel as Dave Letterman. What do you discover? And now I know differently, but he, you know, these hangers were essentially Cessna hangers. So corrugated steel doors like this or aluminum doors with a padlock on it. And you would open up like this. And Dave opens his up and he's got these.

beautiful cars there. But in the back, he's got a cot, like an army cot, and a little table with a telephone. And there was a bathroom there in this hangar. And I said, oh, that's nice. You can take a nap. He goes, no, I'm staying here. That is so dead, not wanting to be around. He doesn't sleep with their cars right now is Jerry. And I totally understand it, by the way. You know, this cinematic airport is great. It's beautiful, beautiful spot. It's where it's one of the most beautiful open spaces with Cessna's landing and taking off. It's just got a beautiful look at the hills. And on the clear day, you can see the Hollywood sign and the ocean. It's so relaxing out there. And, you know, I think for both these New York guys, they don't get to see

their cars a lot. And they, rather than stay in a hotel, I'll just sleep here. I get that. They're not people that are impressed with like, you know, the five-star hotel thing. So I told You started the pickle tradition with late night, correct? Because it went from you to Conan, then it went to, I guess, Satt, or Fallon, and then to Seth. Yes. I at least was the catalyst for it, I think, with the writers. When we were leaving NBC, we had a bunch of stuff left over, and Conan was taken over for Dave. And one of the things that had been sitting in the writer's room was this giant green pickle.

And I thought, well, this is a perfect housewarming gift for our friend Conan O'Brien and the writing staff, but primarily the writing staff. So we sent that down to the writers and said, congratulations. Here's the giant pickle that's been gathering dust up in our writer's conference room. Now it's yours. Good luck. And it still is in rotation. Talk show on Spike Ferris. And I think I saw three seasons.

I watched every episode, I believe, of talk show. I want to say if it was, if it stayed on the air, it would still be on the air today. I had never seen anybody with no performance experience thrust upon that. And you didn't even, you weren't even lobbying for the job. There was like an 11 minute presentation. They're like, no, you should be the host. You were so natural in that. I've never seen that somebody made the leap so quickly.

Well, I benefited from a lot of really good advice, you know, It was at a time where I could pick up the phone and call John Stewart or pick up the phone and call Jay Leno and called Jerry. What did they say? What was the advice? Everybody had different advice. You know, John said, look, stay off the internet for a year. Trust me. That was his advice.

Jay was like, tell jokes. One doesn't work. Just keep going. Tell jokes quickly. Jerry was like, he goes, until you learn how to perform, I want you to talk loudly. People will think you know what you're doing if you talk loud, they'll think you're funny, you know, and you hear that in his performance. So everybody had a different piece of advice, and that really helped me get up to speed. And then they would fly me to New York, Fox, and meet with this mysterious guy.

I still don't remember who it is, but I walked into this small office in Manhattan, and there was this weird guy, and I would bring these VHS test tapes of interviews like with Jason Bateman and other folks. and he would critique them and he was the guy apparently he's like look i've worked with everybody j leno conan o'brien jimmy kent i'm the guy and he would watch these videos and he would say things like you know you know there's a party going on here but it's not your party and i'd go all right and he goes all right we'll come back next week it was so mysterious and he would keep giving me these little clues but gradually they started to make sense um like you know you're the guy driving a bus hit the gas and no one hit the brakes and he would teach me these little things and it really it was really one of the happiest times of my life it was so good great group of writers

and i could do fox let me do whatever i wanted to i was going to ask you creatively if they let you alone they did but you know it's kind of what undid us you know at the time the obama was running for president and i had hired the funniest writers i could find and most of them were daily show writers and I let them do whatever they want. And that was the premise of the show. And when things turned political, of course, we looked at Obama, but, you know, comedy mostly is kind of poking fun

where people kind of step in it, and he's not that type of guy, but George Bush was, and Bill O'Reilly was, and Fox News was. And we, you know, not unlike Seth McFarlane, kind of pokes fun at the network, and we, I think, went a little too far.

We did it once or twice, but then we did it three or four, times, and I heard that Ailes eventually said, get rid of this guy. Get rid of Spike. If YouTube, if it really existed, I mean, I remember you doing the pieces on MySpace, but if YouTube would have existed with your viral pieces, like, I mean, I, I just thought your show would have exploded. I mean, the one that you did with your neighbor that was the dog doing its business on your yard, right, right. You find a, you have an elephant, you have a legal way to get your revenge on her, spraying her with a hose.

Did she ever respond to you or bring that up to you or say anything? She was a nasty person. This was the woman who was walking her dog and it was defecating on my lawn every day. And I asked her to stop and she told me to F off. That was my favorite. She was a very specific type of human that I think we all know, male or female. There's a type of person that's just vindictive that way. You have the camera on the hose, angry.

Yeah, yeah, we set up a hose and we waited for her that morning. We fired a hose at her. That was the funniest things. And it's like celebrity paparazzi or idiot paparazzi. Idiot paparazzi was so much fun. Just so much good stuff on the show. And it was just so hard because it worked so well to see after three seasons something that was that would really found its voice very quickly, which just doesn't happen a lot. Well, I credit my writers for that.

I mean, that was the premise of the show, a writer-driven show. So when I talked to Fox about it, I said to them, I go, when we write comedy like at Letterman, there are a bunch of jokes that we all that make us laugh that never, Dave will go, that's not our show, right? Or Jerry will go, we're not going to do that. But they're funny writer's room riffs. I want my show to be the writer's room. You were letting them produce pieces, which a lot of places, most places do not let them do. Right, yeah, yeah. I wanted them to have the experience I had.

And it was great. It was a lot of fun. But we did, you know, we were on Hulu and we were the number one clips on Hulu. It was so. I implore people to go on YouTube. I don't know what clips are still there and stuff. But it's really good guests and it was fun who you were putting on a lot of your friends. You're the perfect person to ask about this, Mark.

I've got all the shows right over there. And what happened after the show was canceled is Fox scrubbed the Internet of everything. You're kidding. And I have everything. here. And I've thought about getting them back up or throwing them up on a TikTok and small pieces. Spike, you have to do something with them. That Myspace kid was so funny. You take that kid and you've given this like amazing. Yeah, yeah. He tried to make his profile cool. He was the least cool kid on MySpace. Oh, you should do something with those. People want to see that.

You left Seinfeld to do Dana Carvey show? Did you, is that why you left? I didn't leave. We had a month vacation between seasons. And when I saw what Smigel and Dana and their crew was doing, I was absolutely blown away and tickled by it. I was so drawn to it. I begged them to let me just come be a part of it. I just said, I'll just come and do whatever you guys want. What did you, what was your favorite piece you got on, if any, because I know that it was it was hard to get on stuff sometimes. Yeah, that's a good thing, right? Because they're picking the funniest stuff. But we got a I went with Steve O'Donnell, who is one of my comedy writing heroes from Letterman, and he and I occasionally would partner up and write like Space Ghost and do funny shows

that we just wanted to be a part of their history. Some of the funny things that I remember that Jerry and I still talk about is the JFK auction bit where it's just Bill Cott on a porch who's purchased JFK's rocker. Oh, yeah. We're saying, look at me, I'm JFK. I really love that bit because I don't understand why people buy celebrity memorabilia because really it's just about bragging rights. So I really love that sketch.

I was at the taping for that one. I was at a couple different tapings, but I remember that doing really well. You know what I'd love to track down is I would have in one of the cold opens. You know how Smigel named the show after the sponsor Taco Bell presents every week? there was a i think in episode five or six he said i want you to play uh brian teaches you guitar and i go what is that he goes it's a it's a a guy who's uh putting up guitar lessons on telephone pole in new york brian will teach you guitar with a little tabs in the phone number i want you to be brian

but it got cut out of the show and i've never seen it it was i was there and it was the this is what i remember it was the last tape in that didn't officially air um i think it didn't air on abc but i thought they put it up somewhere but the joke was is they started with like you know um mug root beer and then it was a mountain dew and all these prestigious things and then if you're in new york city you would see that these ads like these on paper brian will teach you guitar and you like all these phone numbers you could take if and it was basically we're acknowledging that this is like we're going down um but so you were brian on that i do remember that yeah yeah and i you know i carry this guilt that I blew it for Robert.

Because to me, he's another one of the, you know, if I had to create my list of top comedy writers in the world, Smigel is one or close to one? I mean, I think he is. I tell him that. I mean, he's a humble guy, but I mean, in terms of... Who can make you laugh harder than Robert Smigel? I mean, it's crazy.

I have to send you something he did for me yesterday, which was, he wrote a sketch when Chris Farley came, back to what he hosted the one time. And I asked him about a sketch and he's like, I have no recollection. And then he has this database. And he read the entire sketch as farley as Rosie O'Donnell, but did all the different parts. And he plays Lorne. And it was, I could not believe Robert did this for me. And it was, it was amazing. I mean, he's the, in terms of a sketch comedy writer, him and Jack Handy, I mean, I think there's maybe one and two or Downey. This is like my intern year at Sarnight Live, you know, you'd have Herb Sergeant. Sargent. You'd have, you know, Dana Carby there. You had, you know, Smigel and there was Al Franken. Davis.

Yeah. And who was the head writer there at that time? Jim. Jim Downey. No, I mean, it was the dream team. I would walk into and watch these guys work and go, oh, my God. And then I got to see a little bit of the original Simpsons team. and Letterman team, and you're just like, if I could ever be one-fifth as talented as these guys, they're so good and so fast. Speaking of Herb Sargent, did he resent that you were giving Dennis jokes? Was he territorial about it? Because I know he yelled at you once. He did, but that was my bad timing.

So that was just separate, but he was not upset that you were giving it because now they have like four or five people write an update on SNL. I think it's four. Back then it was just Herb and Dennis with newspapers showing up on Saturday. Look, I was an idiot kid, and I went into Dennis's office at the wrong time when Herb was doing work, and I just didn't know that. He was okay. You were submitting, though, Skett. You were giving him.

Yeah, yeah. Terrific. He was just like, sorry. You know, the timing was wrong, and he was right. I shouldn't have been in there. Did you ever meet Johnny Carson? I know you were in Malibu when he showed up at one of the dinners. Did you meet him?

No, I was invited to play. You know, this is another story that absolutely kills me because right now you may or may not know. I'm tennis obsessed. Absolutely tennis obsessed. I started playing with my son when he started playing when he was 13. And I play like crazy right now. And back then, I had seen him, maybe met him for a brief moment at a party of Dave's when we were out here. But at some point, I was invited to, you know, he was looking for tennis partners.

And someone, CAA may have called me up and said, do you want to play tennis with Johnny Carson? And I mean, I can't believe I said no to this. And I said, you know, I'm just going to let them down. I couldn't play like I can play now. I can play very well now. And I'm happy to play with anybody that wants to play. But that's another one of my just biggest regrets that I didn't just go there for this story, for this moment. You would have made him happy because, I mean, if he lost, I mean, his days were ruined.

I mean, if he could have taken somebody that younger. I don't want to play tennis with people like that. That's the reason I'm happy I didn't play with Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant is a great tennis player, too. And he and I would talk about tennis on the set. But I said, I know who you are. I'm not going to feel good if I win. I'm not going to feel good if I lose, right?

He goes, that's right, Spike. You know, so funny. I mean, speaking, because I know we have to go. I just want to mention your car radio show Spikes. I mean, you have James Marsden was just on. and you get Seinfeld who does not do podcasts. Like he avoids podcasts and you get them all the time. And it's just this amazing group of people that you get to talk about your love of car and just comedy and just hang out.

And it's such a, it just seems just like a warm place where you guys can all just get together and maybe not even pay attention that it's being recorded and just be yourselves. And it's just so much fun to kind of be that fly on the wall just to kind of hang out and listen to everybody. That's exactly right. I mean, you do it. You know how it makes you feel. There's something about podcasting. You really feel good. And for me, it's just, I'm going to do shows for me. If people listen, that's fine. But I'm going to bring in the people that I love and want to talk to. And if we talk about cars great, or if we stay on comedy the whole time, or if I talk to James Martin about his whole life, or if I reminisce with Dennis Miller or I get to meet Christian Bill and Matt Damon, and that's cool, but you get to do what, you know, there's no interference.

In a way, it's like stand-up. It's just, here's what I, I'm just going to do this. This hour's just for me, and I hope you like it too. And it, you know, lately, it's been, you know, it's been getting bigger and it's scratching the late-night itch because the one thing I learned about myself in late-night is I love to interview people. I'd rather be on your side of it than on my side. You're so good at it, so it makes absolute sense.

The one with Dennis Miller is online somewhere. And it was just, Dennis does not like doing these things. He'll do them for his friends. And I just thought that you guys reminiscing about SNL and stuff. Oh, man, all of those guys. He does not get enough credit, Dennis, from Update. I mean, that and the HBO show where he, cable was actually winning Emmys. At some point, would you be willing to come back in like six months, eight months?

I know you're busy, but we would love to have you a year. Sure. Really? Okay. And if not, no worries, just ghost me. I love talking about late night. There's so much to talk about. I'm a fan like you are. Okay. I'm lucky enough to, you know, hang out with some of these folks and anytime you want. Oh, that's very, very nice. And if not just ghost me and I can take it or maybe not take it. You're not the guy I'm ghosted. Were you with the Hollywood Bowl last night? Yeah, yeah. Was that? That was a show. Holy moly. was that a show. And they were handing out

Pop-Tarts? We had our Pop-Tart car. It's going to be there again. I don't know when you're going to post this, but there's a Pop-Tart airstream pulled by a Cadillac. Last night I heard they handed out 5,000 Pop-Tart for the hungry stand-up fans. I was backstage, which is not as glamorous as it sounds.

It was just little dressing rooms for Sebastian Napragazzi, Jim Gaffigan, and Jerry. It was an amazing night. My son and my daughter, I mean, my wife and my son went. So I walked them out to their seats. Everybody was in a great mood. They were so excited. And that place is such a magical place. It is. And the guys went out. The big thing was, did I tell you this? It was who's going to perform first out of the four. So they have a top hat and ping pong balls with four numbers on it. And at the top of the show, they all come out and they pick their number to see who's going on. So to you, Mark, what was the number everybody wanted, is the question to you? I would want to close, I think. But at the same time, either a close or open. You know, Jerry always closes. I mean, he has an opener.

I feel it's all our closers. They're all heavyweight arena sellout comedians. And they all see the problem. Yeah. So what number do they want? What's your pick? I for Seinfeld who's so methodical I would think that he would want to be last because that's what he's used to there is I'm going to give you a clue they all wanted the same number what is it one through four you got to pick a number just say it doesn't matter if you're wrong I was going to say four but two three really no sense by the way three was number one two was second yeah four was third and one was everybody's last choice I wonder last night Sebastian got one.

Jerry got four. To me, four was the number. And I thought Jerry closing at four was perfect. I don't know why he wanted three, but those guys obviously know more about stand-up. Is Seinfeld, though, at the same time,

is always as the audience, it can only handle so much comedy. So maybe that was why he- 20 minutes apiece. That was at 20? They could have kept going. The audience was red-hot. They absolutely loved it.

It was a huge success. for Netflix and uh you know it'll be next year hopefully there'll be something like it but i really hope so i had not seen something like that before just four heavyweights just out there hitting home runs everybody and the next guy would come up top they got the like the new guy Nate bergotsie is just out of this world can you believe him I mean that was one of the last late night discoveries I mean Fallon really put him on and I mean obviously Nate um funny man and made his name and stuff. But I feel like that was the last time the late night show really kind of launched somebody like that. And it was so fun. The one fun part about being

backstage is you'd go back and the other three comics would be watching the comic on stage and just rolling, just rolling about and laughing about how good they are. They were so supportive and so funny, you know, it was so good, you know. You might think they might be going, ooh, and whatever, oh, he's not so good. It was a complete opposite. They were celebrating each other, and it was a very cool thing to see, really cool thing to see. Thank you so much for doing this, Spike. I'd love for you to come back six whatever months. Yeah, wherever you like. I know you're a busy man in your car show and just, yeah, I wish you a lot of luck. Also in your tennis game, I know you can do it. There you go. Yes. I'm playing in a couple hours.

You can watch Unfrosted on Netflix right now and check out Spikes Car Radio wherever you listen to podcast. Please subscribe to Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff so you never miss an episode. If you can, please rate it, leave a review, I'd be grateful, and be sure to go to latenighter.com for all your late night TV news, and you can find my podcast at latenighter.com forward slash podcasts. Have a wonderful week. I'll see you next Tuesday. And by the way, the next episode of Inside Late Night is out right now. I talk with comedian, actress, and former Saturday Night Live Star Rachel Dratch.

I'm going to be. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. You know, I'm going to be, and I'm going to be. Thank you.