Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - Krusty Gets Kancelled With Mark Malkoff

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

We welcome back podcaster/comedy writer Mark Malkoff—host of the new podcast Inside Late Night, as well as the very fitting The Carson Podcast—for an epic discussion of the season 4 finale. We dig into SO MUCH of the TV history in this episode, including a ton about Johnny Carson, his relationship to The Simpsons, and how this was one of his final TV appearances. Not to mention so many details on the creation of this episode, like multiple drafts with different guest stars. Is Gabbo fabbo and Krusty rusty? Listen now to learn... that ought to satisfy the little S.O.B.s, hehe. Wait, is this still being written down? Support this podcast, hear it ad-free, and get 180+ bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash talking simpsons head there to check out exclusive podcasts like talking futurama talk king of the hill the what a cartoon movie podcast and tons more. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons, the podcast that buried Joey Bishop. I'm one of your hosts, the quite lowbrow Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons. Who is here with me today, as always? I'm going to stop looking soon. It's Henry Gilbert. And who is our special guest on the line? Mark Malkoff. And this week's episode is Krusty Gets Cancelled. Gabbo! Gabbo! Gabbo! Did you see that? Yeah.

What's Gabbo? I figure it's some guy's name. Some guy named Gabbo. This episode originally aired on May 13th, 1993. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Oh my God. Oh boy, Bobby. Neil Simon adaptation Lost in Yonkers flops at the box office. Janet Jackson, That's the way love goes is number one on the charts and the series finale of the wonder years airs so that brings us up to

what year of the wonder years we're out of the 60s correct we're in 1972 i think the show went on was only like a four or five years show so i think maybe they're in like 69 or something i should pull that up i did watch it live when it aired the question was would he kiss winnie and they don't end up together to spoilers for the wonder years but and i guess the one connection here is that writer david m stern was from the wonder years writing staff and he wrote the highest rated episode of the simpsons ever bark gets an f he was on staff for three men in a comic book which features the extended wonder years parody with the voice of his brother doing the voiceover of bart in it too janet

jackson's that's the way love goes a classic janet one i'd say you'd probably i wonder if she performed it on arsenio this very week when it aired what was the date again may 13th 1993 and this would have been as well a week before the finale of cheers which is why i think simpsons would have aired this thursday and not next thursday where they would have been murdered by the finale of cheers you really want to clear the runway that lost in yonkers adaptation i had not heard of it before it's directed by martha coolidge who did real genius it's the director of real genius working with richard dreyfus on a neil simon adaptation but did not do very well in the bo as variety would say and this is a very variety

focused episode so that's i feel fine referencing it yeah i believe we'll be talking more about trivia than we will the simpsons on this episode. It's an episode of Simpsons built around trivia. But, you know, Mark, the finale of Wonder Years, were you a big Wonder Years watcher or were you probably a bigger Cheers watcher? Oh, I watched both. I watched everything. I remember there was some debate what went on in the barn with Winnie and Kevin at the end. I think one of them said in the interview that they believed it was implied that they got together. They were kissing, but beyond that. But yeah, I just remember.

And then the dad, unfortunately, passing away. They said that he passed away. But yeah, I watched both. And then the final cheers was crazy. I remember trying to order Pizza Hut pizza with all my friends, and they ran out of dough. It was like Super Bowl problem and stuff, but no dough in Hershey, Pennsylvania. That was a big boost for Leno in the early days of the Leno Tonight Show that he got to host. The reunion thing afterwards where every cast member is insanely drunk on television.

I don't think it's available online, but I watched it live, and it was a complete train wreck. George Wend went told me because he was on the carson podcast that at least him and ted danson apologized to leno but now it would have been one of those things that would have been online and shared and talked about forever but it's one of those things not a lot of people actually recall seeing that but yeah it was a good idea on paper they had so much planned for that night but everyone just got completely trashed yeah woody harrelson was having a good time i remember that especially but i always feel because i've done comedy and stuff you always feel

for the comedian when they just completely lost any control whatsoever and And yeah, he stuck there for to do the hour. Yeah, didn't go well. And so that's what happened the night or week, let's say, that this episode of The Simpsons aired. The season four finale. And joining us this week is Mark Malkoff,

previously host of the Carson podcast, currently host of the new podcast Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. Thanks for joining us again, Mark. Oh, thanks for having me back. This is great. You great yeah we talk about the idea of the kevin bacon game i think we should invent the mark malkoff game because once you talk to him you are now connected to all members of hollywood living and dead anyone notable you have some tenuous connection to them if you talk to mark malkoff wow no one's ever said that before. My mom's going to be impressed. I have to tell her.

Put that on my LinkedIn. Mark, I just heard your most recent Robert Smigel one, and he had a great way of describing you affectionately too that I love, which was you correct him on something from SNL history. And then he says he compares you to the character he played in the William Shatner get a life sketch, who corrects William Shatner on how many ponies he has. Yeah, he wrote that sketch. It's Lovitz and Carvey. And the sad thing about him saying that he reminds me of that sketch and the nerding out and the numbers of horses that Shatner has is that another cast member of SNL said the same thing to me a bunch of years ago. So I can't win. It's one of those things where I just, you start at the podcast, so many questions

about inside stuff. And some people like to go broad and stuff with their topics, like Fly on the Wall podcast with Dana Carvey and Spade. Very fun. But I just, I don't learn what I need to learn. And thankfully, there's people like Smigel. We recorded an additional two and a half hours. So that's going to come out. So yeah, he, I don't know, felt like a hostage situation where he couldn't leave or something. No, but it was really great talking to him. He's a comedy genius. Well, we have been gently mocked by the many Simpsons writers we've interviewed.

So we know what it's like. Yeah. I mean, it reminded me of one of our extra nerdy questions we asked John Vitti about, like, oh, what's an SNL sketch you remember working on in your time? John Vitti is, I would say, too modest for being John Vitti, one of the best writers on The Simpsons, because he didn't take credit for any sketches. He's like, well, I was in the room with Robert Spiegel when he wrote that Shatner sketch, and he ran it by me, but I would never take credit for any of it kind of thing and I was like wow what a nice guy you are John Vitti yeah he's the opposite of a lot of

people I have to fact check constantly on my podcast with people that invent things that never happen but yeah he seems like he's modest don't always see that really just listen back your Al Jean and Mike Reese ones on the Carson podcast and I thought it was funny the differences between the two showrunners of this episode that like Mike Reese is on the Carson podcast. And I thought it was funny, the differences between the two showrunners of this episode that like, Mike Reese is telling all these great stories that feel mostly true or when you fact check him, it's like, okay.

But then Al Jean feels more like, I think he says to you literally like, I did not literally hear Johnny Carson say that so I cannot attest. Like it almost feels like he thinks he's in a courtroom. Yes, we had a deposition yeah so you have to do it but yeah they're very very different they've been so nice to me al got me into three simpsons read-throughs and i got to go with you guys which was like we got to go with you

you were so nice to have us oh i forget where we met in la but we just like so much traffic in the morning it was just like we have to get this we have to get this. We have to get this and stuff. But yeah, it was amazing. And now even since the pandemic, they don't even do the read through any more lives. It's all remote. So you just got it in in the nick of time. We did not realize how close we were with that. Yeah.

Yes. The universe took care of you. You guys were so good and calm talking to Matt Groening and Yardley Smith and all these people. I do say I nudged you a little bit because you guys were so polite. I don't want to bother anybody. I'm like, they are here to be bothered. Please talk to them. And I think I did the intro with Gray and I said, you know, the guys have a Simpsons podcast. He was so like, tell me about it. He was

very flattered. And you guys handled yourselves great with all of them, I have to say. Internally, we were losing our minds, but we kept it cool on the outside. Could it tell? It's all thanks to you, Mark. I think Brooks was the most I was scared of in that day while trying to act normal. Unknowing, we were sat directly behind him and the biggest stars. Also, I felt embarrassed that when we said hi to people, I didn't recognize Julie Kavner at first. And only after sitting down when it would be too late to introduce myself, did I realize, now I can't introduce myself to Julie Kavner at first and only after sitting down when it would be too late to

introduce myself did I realize like now I can't introduce myself to Julie Kavner it feels worse if I said like oh you're Julie Kavner I love you that was huge for me because I had been to the read-throughs and she'd always be on the speakerphone with Harry Shear and to have her in that room and I hadn't seen her a photograph of her or anything in years I didn't recognize her right away either but just the fact that we got to witness that with her was really special and now everyone at home can fill out the Simpsons table read on their bingo card yes although it's fair in this instance because the man who drove us is on our podcast so I feel like we can get away with it this time I didn't drive you guys well though but I did get you there

there were no injuries not a single fatality as I said i live in new york city i don't drive much so and it's funny it was on the fox lot where many celebrities came to record this very episode of the simpson well mark you are a big late night historian and this is like a key part of carson history which you are a big carson fan i guess in general why do you love late night comedy so much? I was always into comedy when I was a kid. My dad got me in early, like Jonathan Winters and all these people. Richard Pryor, believe it or not, had a kid's show for just a little bit. I remember watching that and just the comedy people on Carson's show. And Carson's, I mean, I got introduced pretty early to Carson, staying up late on a Friday night. It was

five or six. Just the likability and just this whole show business world, having a party on here with the A-listers, the movie stars that I had heard about, the comedians, which made me laugh, the animals and the kids. It was just this place. Back then, it was one of the only places you could get all of that. I was just very hooked on who this guy was. And I was intrigued when I'm behind the scenes, even at that age. So yeah, I was pretty much. And then Letterman. I mean, all the Simpsons people, I mean, worship.

They love Carson, but definitely Dave. What an influence. And when I first saw Dave's show, I just, I'd never seen anything like it. He did borrow a bunch from Steve Allen, but just Letterman's, I mean, I was talking to a well-known comedian and just like the last 40 years, 50 years, the biggest influence on television with comedy, probably Letterman, I mean,

and definitely you see some of that stuff in The Simpsons and stuff, but Dave, just what he was doing, I just couldn't believe it. I was definitely sucked in as well. And then I started going driving from Hershey, Pennsylvania, three and a half hours to go to tapings.

Yeah, when I was like 16, 17 in New York. That's amazing. Well, Mark, we're a bit younger than you. And I think in my lifetime, I've maybe seen three episodes of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. But when this episode aired, this is around the time I was getting into late night TV. I was 11.

I just turned 11. The late night wars had happened. And I was getting very invested in David Letterman this summer. And then by the fall of 93, I was watching Conan when it was new. I was watching Dave's first year on CBS. And I think I had been watching Saturday Night Live the previous year. So this is when I was really activated in terms of getting into late night television. It was a pinnacle time. I mean, it was really exciting. And just everybody for a while, it was really strange, had a late night talk show. For a while, it was like Chevy Chase came out and then Dennis Miller. Dave premiered at CBS in August of 93 and then Conan in September of 93. And it was bam, bam, bam. There was a lot there.

A matter of days before this aired is when Conan O'Brien was announced as the new host of Late Night to really put this episode's airing in a time frame. Yeah, I mean, it was unbelievable. I've talked to people that were in the room when he found out and just to hear him. And they all told me the same thing, which is like they thought he was going to succeed just based. He was so funny in that room. But it's another story to be in a studio audience with being an unknown and no one yet.

It took him about maybe a year year and a half two years to really find his voice as host but you could see that there was something there it just took america a little bit more time to catch up with which the simpsons writers all knew before conan even got the gig well mark what do you think of how like the simpsons writers room of the core this era which is about to end in season four but of the original golden age writers like you have al gina mike reese the showrunners of three and four they wrote for carson but the rest of the guys who had any late night background are you know you've got jeff martin and george meyer who mainly wrote for letterman then you've got SNL writers like also George Meyer,

but you've got Conan, you've got John Schwarzwalder and John Vitti. Like, so this is more of the guys who were making fun of Johnny Carson in the 80s than the guys who were, or maybe lovingly poking at him as opposed to guys who wrote for him. It's really tough, I think,

if somebody was younger to watch the two and Johnny was doing show business comedy that had been done probably in vaudeville. I mean, if somebody was younger to watch the two. And Johnny was doing show business comedy that had been done probably in vaudeville. I mean, some of the sketches and stuff. And you had this new guy that was just, you know, reinventing the wheel, more or less, what Dave was doing. And I think for younger people, it was just, this is the shiny new thing. And rightfully so. I think you're right about that that the writers yeah definitely had a completely different point of view on on what like the type of stuff that Carson was doing I think they all like as a performer you know Johnny's is incredible and stuff but looking at David and everything he

was doing it was I think for younger people it was hard to not look at Carson as a little bit maybe dated comedy wise they mentioned Carson a bit I was trying to put it in the time frame here of like in the previous seasons and even in this season, I feel like the joke was Johnny Carson's not funny, which is they write monologue bits for him of saying that boy George just got arrested for scraping the barnacles off his dinghy, which is supposed to have the tone of a Carson joke. You're then supposed to say, wait, that's not a punchline. I mean, Saturday Night Live had the same point of view with Robert Smigel writing those sketches. You know, at that point, Carson had been on like 25 years. He ended at like 29 and a half years.

And I think anybody that's in institution is going to get that. Yeah, definitely in terms of comedy he was doing, I do agree that he was a target and definitely for the Simpsons writers. That's why I was kind of surprised he said yes. But he said in an interview with Carson right after he did it before this episode aired that he thought the Simpsons was clever and funny. And it did take him a while. We can talk about that for him actually to agree on what he would say and what would go on. But yeah, once it was right, he was happy to do it. yeah carson was on the air in terms of late night talk shows conan was on almost as long as carson it was a different era entirely when conan's talk show ended everyone was thinking oh what's next for conan o'brien when carson went off the air i

recall no talk about what will carson do next will there be another talk show will there be appearances what's he going to do with the rest of his life people just assumed he was done when his show ended people constantly pitched him and tried to get him to do stuff i mean it was non-stop for the longest time and he would politely listen and just say you know i was happy he just didn't want to become and he told this to the simpson writers when he came over to record he didn't want to become bob hope who literally would go on his show he could barely walk he couldn't hear so if Carson asked him a question it wasn't always didn't always match his response to what Carson was asking he just didn't want to become that and he was you know felt like he did it he was at the top of his game he also stopped smoking and gained

some weight and I think that that probably had something to do with not going on camera yeah I was happy where's Letterman I knew somebody close to him that said, once Dave is done with his talk show, you're never going to probably see him again. And Dave did not want to be, and he said, Johnny, in terms of did something to Johnny, just not being in the game anymore. It kind of like slowed him down, maybe vitality wise and stuff. So yeah, Dave thankfully is still around and doing things yeah I just watched his Netflix one he did with John Mulaney which was really great I thought it was great because Mulaney you can tell loves Letterman if you watch Mulaney's late night show he did for a week on

Netflix like I think it owed a lot to Letterman or was like and him and Letterman had a lot of fun together in it though it also was funny like Letterman is trying to ask him dad questions, like, well, what's your thing with your dad and with your dad? And they start talking about their dads. And then Mulaney's like, well, but what about your mom? And Letterman just cuts it off right there. It's like, well, we don't have time for that right now. Yeah, he definitely had some mom issues like Johnny Carson did. And I want to mention John Mulaney when he did that Netflix, this day was six day whatever it was that talk show the set and I don't know if

you guys know this you might the set was based on Johnny Carson's Malibu home whoa they were actually in the living room that were growing trees the glass windows Mulaney mentioned that that was based on Carson's Malibu home wow wow. Wow. I thought that was interesting. Unexpected. Okay. When you mentioned the Carson thing, I couldn't not see in this episode that like Krusty is their receptacle for old showbiz stories. Like, but especially Carson,

like as I learned more about, or was reading up on Carson again, the chain smoker thing, I was like, is that why Krusty smokes all of the time? Like the second he's off stage, he starts smoking. Is it a Carson thing?

Or just that old Hollywood guys all smoked like chimneys? They did. I mean, I've talked to Tom Brokaw told me who grew up 40 miles from Carson or 40 minutes, I forget, was telling me back then, even when you were like an athlete and stuff, you were getting pressured to smoke. And then when you go into entertainment and broadcasting, I mean, I've talked to the people that would work in this entertainment, the people that would work in this entertainment, the people that wouldn't, would just reek of smoke. One person said that he, who died, swears it was from the secondhand smoke all the time,

and it was always around. And I think Carson, with the unfiltered palmols, which is like the worst thing you can do, just, you know, he was such an educated guy, but just thought for some reason he was gonna be okay. Yeah, it seemed pretty ubiquitous, but like Babahart who just died was able to quit and johnny tried so many times but it wasn't until he left the air and then he lived another 12 years but he had emphysema for pretty much almost all of that the behind the scenes on this one well now this is a good episode

that's gonna make me say it's more interesting the episode i think this is so but the behind the scenes is pretty interesting uh right bob yeah they pitched this idea as spiritual sequel to homer at the bat and one where they could finally have on all the celebs that they couldn't get before they didn't have time to get on before but unfortunately it was hard to nail anyone down and some people were recorded literally at the last minute before animation could be locked down. Reese in his memoir says it was his idea to try to top Homer at the bat. And instead of baseball stars, they're going to check all the boxes. I think they were surprised to hear that they had gotten like soft yeses from celebrities who said, put me in your show. But then when it's like, hey, let's do the show now.

These celebrities are very ephemeral like writing an entire episode for tom cruise delivering it to him on a platter and him saying oh no thanks yep yeah yeah happens all the time isn't that terrible but conan was probably rewriting for like the eighth time his prince crossover episode script that never got made too at the same time yeah apparently they nearly dropped the celebrity angle entirely because the scheduling and the nailing celebrities down thing was so fraught that almost was not an element of this episode and it seems like the point of it in the final version is to see all these celebrities it was celebrity overload i

loved it i didn't see it in a while and i watched it yesterday, but it's like bam, bam, bam and all utilized great. It was SNL veteran John Schwarzwalder. He pitched the idea that Krusty loses his show to a hot new star. When you hear the stories of all of the guys who challenged Krusty and he literally name checks Joey Bishop in the show, that feels to me like it's built on the hollywood history of nobody could beat johnny carson and he had all these challengers yeah they mentioned steve allen too at one point i forget what it was but yeah the bishop thing was really funny it made me who wrote the episode john swarswolder yeah i know that letterman liked him enough that they called him in for an interview but dave did you you know do you know this story dave was just so repulsed at how he was dressed

and looked that he was like he's not working here but that supposedly the story i believe i had heard a version of that story too where it sounded almost like a prank that he was writing in all these letters of how to improve the show and then he's taken in to see letterman and he basically tells letterman like you gotta do this to fix the show this this this he starts listing the things that was a version of the story i've heard yeah it seems like a lot of almost myths about what happened and stuff but he did not get the job but got in the office and then conan obviously sat down with dave in the office and it wasn't up to dave it was the head writer and conan so letterman the letterman connections you guys mentioned was in that room during this time was huge and i'm calling our shot right now when

we get to 1996 again in the simpsons chronology, we need to cover John Schwarzwalder's pilot, Pistol Pete. He was given a pilot. It's insane. It's totally John Schwarzwalder, and we need to talk about it. It's on YouTube, I think, or archive.org, one of the two. Absolutely. Mark, you mentioned that you love all of these stars in this, but also speaking of Hollywood legend, it is said that two of the actors in this did not like all the stars, though I was trying to find a true source on this. This has been passed around in Simpson circles, but I was checking like nobody is the real source that I could find online who says Julie Kavner and Harry Shearer did not like this episode.

But it is a known fact that they did not like Homer at the Bat. They're being pitched a sequel to Homer at the Bat. They don't like that either. And a fact about this episode is Julie Kavner doesn't have one word in this episode. And I think still the only one Marge does not talk in. Wow. I guess, yeah, it could be the cast members just don't want to be, you know, they feel like they should beat the stars and get in overshadowed. I mean, that happens when certain TV stars would be cast as their own show, and then the ensemble or other people cast start taking over. Not easy. I don't know if that's

what they were thinking or what, but yeah, that's so strange. I think also John Swartzwelder often had to be reminded that Marge and Lisa exist. So it was not hard for him to write a script without Marge in it. Yes. And while they were working on the script, they tried to get Carson. We'll tell the story of that. They even doubled up on people who had done other guest appearances in season four. They said like, could you also record a line for the Carson episode? And that's how they were able to add to the stars. There was a lot of problems with that. They really wanted to get a former president. They reached out to every living president. Reese has said they wrote very nice, like loving scenes for him. And they didn't get a response from anybody except for Ronald Reagan,

who sent a nice formal letter of no back to them. And this also is directed by David Silverman. And though it's animated by any vision so i always forget because rough draft was usually the studio silverman worked with and they animated his stuff better though this is full of great animation and also the table read if you want to see it could be a staged version of it but if you want to see a table read of this you can see it several seconds of it and a recording of this episode in the 1992 Oprah behind the scenes of The Simpsons appearance. Because this is the episode they're doing. I will note, you don't see Kavner or Shearer behind the scenes at the table read or at the recording.

It's Dan, Nancy, and Yardley. Many smoking guns. Yes. And finally, one more behind the scenes thing that relates to me, which makes it important. So online on archive.org, you can find two table drafts of this script, and I'll be citing a couple big changes that are in it. One is dated September 17th, 1992. The other, September 21st, 1992. To give you a time frame on when this was written this would be four months after johnny's

last episode the final episode of the tonight show carson but i didn't need to look up the september 17th one because i have right here the september 17th one and i've owned it for 20 years this was a gift from my wonderful uncle eric when i was a nerdy teen he came back from los angeles and had bought a table read script of the episode this one here and i read it until it fell apart these are like my claps on it because it had fallen apart so much but i have it all still here i couldn't believe the changes how i learned like wait this is what a script looks like this is a simpsons script i cherish this so much i just saw my uncle eric recently and told him how much I appreciated him getting me this. I probably wouldn't have my job right now if he didn't gift me this.

Yeah, when he handed that to you, a podcaster was born. Listeners, if you couldn't tell, I was showing audio-wise, how could you see it? I was showing them my framed script, as I was saying all this. But yes, the script is full of interesting things that were not in it and you can see stuff i think mark in your mike reese one i believe he says that it was tom gamill who would later be a simpsons writer was on staff late carson staff and when carson heard that bob hope did the simpsons then carson was vocalizing hey why aren't i on the Simpsons? I should be on The Simpsons. And so that's when they finally got the guts to approach him. I know Mike and Al both knew Johnny's nephew, who is a producer on The Tonight Show,

and also was kind of Johnny's guy after retirement and ran his production company. So Jeff was the intermediate that went back and forth. It took a while. The first version that they gave to Carson, he rejected, but eventually. It's not like Al Jean and Mike Reese were close with Carson. I know you talked to both of them, Mark, and it's been a while since I listened to those podcasts.

From what I remember, the writers were on 13-week contracts. They worked separately from where Carson was doing his thing. And I guess Mike and Al maybe met him a few times during their year and a half on the show. It was not a good time. Johnny was not happy. He was going through this public divorce with wife number three. He had a lot of stuff going on in his personal life. But if you talk to the writers, just maybe a bunch of years later, Johnny was having them to his homes, having them to his Malibu home for Mondays. They would do writers meetings and that would be every Monday and Johnny would have them and serve them orange juice and they would just, you know,

laugh and stuff. So it was a very different and the writers moved closer to where Johnny was. So yeah, as Mike and Al, more Mike have said a bunch that it just wasn't the greatest time to be on that show at the time. And they were also doing a decent amount. They were trying to be on that show at the time and they were also doing a decent amount they were trying to be david letterman they were doing a lot of letterman-esque bits that just really didn't work it just was hard to watch johnny try to be dave so i know mike told me it was just yeah i think it was mike that it was just embarrassing for them to be there when they were doing like they were friends with all the letterman writers at the time. I think Al mentions that everybody thinks he wrote monologues because nobody remembers the sketches, but they were on the sketch team, not the monologue team. And the sketches that weren't

the recurring ones like Karnak or Art Fern, those aren't as remembered. Yeah. I remember Mike telling me that he wrote, I believe it was some joke, I think it was a Karnak or something about Gorbachev, and it got complete silence and it bombed. And then he said a bunch of months later, he didn't even submit it, but it got in somehow. They didn't realize they already did this. And then it killed with the audience. It was one of those things that you talk to them and it's like, no one has any idea sometimes what's going to play to the audience and stuff. They definitely were writing the sketches and the desk pieces and stuff, but you're right.

Most people don't think about that stuff. It's not really discussed a lot. Red Square. Rip open. What's the name of the splotch on Gorbachev's head? That was it. The Simpsons will be right back. Tomorrow, it's a star-studded spectacular.

Hi, caramba! Join Bette Midler. Woo-hoo! Johnny Carson. Hi-yo! The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Woo! Hugh Hefner and more.

Are you comfortable in there, Luke Perry? And all-star Simpsons tomorrow on Fox. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you. Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care?

I'm going to stop looking soon, but this is Henry Gilbert saying first, a big thank you to our guest this week, Mark Malkoff. We loved all of the great insight he had into especially Johnny Carson, but all of late night history that is embedded very deeply into this classic episode of The Simpsons. Thanks so much, Mark. If you enjoy Mark and all the research he does, you should check out his current podcast, Inside Late Night. He's just had on folks like David Cross and Rachel Dratch and Robert Smigel telling tons of great stories

about all the stuff they've done in late night comedy. And definitely check out the classic episodes he did of The Carson Podcast, including his ones with Simpsons veterans like Mike Reese and Al Jean. Thanks so much again, Mark. But if you enjoy this podcast, but would like to hear it ad free in a week earlier than you normally get it, you need to sign up today at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons, because that is the home to all of our ad free podcasts,

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So the episode begins at 30 minutes. It's a new record for us in terms of fastest time to episode, I think. Yeah, actually. Oh, we've got many stories to derail, such as this is a reference to a very specific 1987 week of broadcasts of Hollywood Squares. This reference here of the Springfield Squares at the beach. And weirdly enough, some of these are on YouTube from this miami beach era of hollywood squares i pulled it up after i heard reese bring it up it's hollywood squares from the diplomat hotel and here's how they got away with it it's in hollywood florida so it can still be called

the hollywood squares there's a full hour of it uh youtube if you want to look it up you got louis anderson jim j bullock phyllis stiller chubby checker fabian and regis i mean come on that's a lineup for hollywood squares there and nobody drowns on it though unfortunately nobody drowns meanwhile on the springfield squares you got lurleen lumpkin princess cashmere troy mcclure and the capital city goofball and then only on super duper close watch did i notice that there was like the underdog voiced guy is there that was like oh i didn't even notice they drew in wally cox right yeah it's wally cox who died in 1973 it's only

unclear who the bottom center square is no one can determine that as a little kid i needed my mom to tell me who charlie weaver was even then, it didn't really stick with me. Yes, we're already derailing things. So Charlie Weaver, a character played by Cliff Arquette, he died in 1974. So there are two dead men on this game show. And he was a fixture on the Hollywood squares in the 70s where he'd always take the bottom left square. I believe on The Simpsons, he's in the bottom right. He was basically the Ernest or Larry the Cable guy of his era, actor who played a character who was his own person and did his own bits.

He rarely appeared as himself. And this is also a reference to Harry Truman, no relation to the president, who famously refused to leave his lodge on the side of Mount St. Helens before it was about to erupt. And of course, he was killed in a horrifying torrent of lava, so he's a real hero. According to Wikipedia, and I take this as the truth, quote, he and his 16 cats lightly died of heat shock

in less than a second, too quickly to register pain. So, Harry Truman, an American hero. Well, I'm glad to know he didn't feel any pain, at least. That's good. The cruelness of, he's dead now like that is such a great mean joke on the the show i feel like simpsons can't be this mean anymore you wouldn't joke about a dead celebrity now with he's dead now i'm in the 90s especially saturday night live and the late night shows oh my goodness it was the mean comedy was in a lot of people talk

about that with the tone and stuff it was stand-up comedy and stuff that's where the culture was a lot and within comedy back then on you one of your best guests robert smigel we did a whole history on his tv funhouse the comedy central version and even on the commentaries that they recorded in like 2008 or whatever even then he's like boy we were really mean to oprah like why were we so mean to oprah like he's kind of regretting it then yeah i just talked to the guy he's going to be a future guest the creator of monk andy breckman and that he came up with that oprah idea and i'm just like you couldn't probably do that now i don't think yeah on a whim my wife and i were pulling up old and living color sketches and they actually made me feel bad for celebrities like oh

don't be so mean mr rogers yeah they had him i don't want to say it but yeah they would take again it was such a popular show on sunday nights i would watch and laugh and then you look at the stuff it hasn't aged very gracefully that's true the scary math department i always like to do on this podcast that charlie weaver he had been dead at 19 years when this episode aired that would be the equivalent as the simpsons today making fun of somebody who died in 2005 and i do want to mention in living color there is a bunch of stuff that they did that still plays very well and makes me laugh uh it's just some of the stuff you're just like oh wow this couldn't play and i can't believe it did play back then oh speaking of things that also dated

this is the first appearance out of character for mcbain's actor rainier wolf castle because they say the star of the mcbain movies every previous m McBain appearance is the character McBain and you're watching the movie. This is the first time you're seeing him play the guy. And it does allow them to make like more direct Arnold references to like Arnold appearing in comedies. Except this is not a comedy. I think it was also because this is around the time when they couldn't use McBain anymore because of the existing McBain film. So they were thinking, okay, who is the actor and what else can he do?

And this is around the time when Arnold is starring in comedies, like you said, Henry, like Twins and Kindergarten Cop. He's making the pivot. I looked into it. So the McBain movie stars Christopher Walken. If you haven't heard this story before,

1991, after McBain, the character on The Simpsons has appeared and they did not base it on this. So 1991, Christopher Walken stars in a film called McBain, the character on The Simpsons, has appeared. And they did not base it on this. So 1991, Christopher Walken stars in a film called McBain. It is not very popular. Nobody remembers it. It does have a 1992 VHS release. And that leads me to believe that that's when they started getting cease and desist pressure

from lawyers at the film studio in the summer of 92, when they would have been writing these episodes and recasting mcbain as rainier wolf castles the actor part it's not a comedy bob you've used that to great effect recently on a couple podcasts yes uh recently on our pocahontas podcast six hours long so the way homer and bart at him, he's dead now. That has really stuck with me. We then hear about Gabbo, Gabbo, Gabbo, the intro clip I played. And they credit a lot of this stealth marketing or this great marketing stuff to Schwarzwalder, who had a background first in advertising in Chicago before getting into the television writing game. And the way they just like smash you with the name gabbo

gabbo and it's named after the eric von stroheim film the great gabbo which is about a ventriloquist but the ventriloquist is gabbo the doll is not gabbo yes in the script here's one of the first divergences after the scene of somebody named gabbo this is when marge has one of her few lines in the episode she drives by a billboard that says gabbo is coming and she's like gabbo ha so gone gone from the screen that's a marge scene you can lose this is basically like viral marketing today yes yeah very much so then homer is going trying to figure it out i love needlessly great camera turn of behind the newspaper to the front of the newspaper with homer like that's such a great complicated animation move that shows you like silverman was really on his game in this episode and you can feel the presence of brad

bird as well he would be someone to say let's turn the camera around here oh yeah and i also love homer i feel like marge would have been the one telling homer like that lisa says you know not giving you enough to go on i feel like we're going to be seeing phantom marches throughout because once you told me she's not in it i know i heard this before i'm like oh yeah she's not and i'm thinking where could she fit and in the original script homer's brain is a man with a sombrero sleeping under a cactus instead of an old donkey. Yeah, with the flies. Homer's brain cutaways were really growing in this time.

They also cut a really great joke, which is Wiggum is trying to use the Gabbo billboard as a speed trap. And everybody's slowing down to look at the Gabbo sign. So it's not working. And then Lou is saying like, yeah, it's not working. And then Wiggum says, let me try my gun, my radar gun. He pulls out a tear gas grenade and shoots it at cars coming in traffic. Walls start coughing. He's like, babies.

Meanwhile, Mr. Burns thinks Garbo is coming. Another very old reference. They have another great cut line, too. I want to mention that kent brockman has a news report on gabbo saying remember don't look directly at gabbo just in case whatever he is is too bright scientists recommend viewing him through a pane of smoked glass it does feel like there are only two jokes in this gabbo montage so something feels missing at least one joke feels missing i had to get that brockman one but

in the conspiracy theory that harry scherer was trying to cut back he has few lines in this episode although they're all really up front it's burn smithers and then also revan lovejoy talking about worship this and jericho that no henry i believe you i'm now a gabbo truther so then after all that it's time for gabbo's debut i feel like i always say homers he'll tell us what to do like the way he just so resolutely says it it's a great delivery he's looking for meaning and this puppet will bring it to him oh there's another great cut wigum line here too where as gabbo's about to come on tv wigum says if he's a wanted criminal he'll regret putting up all these billboards but then in our first clip we meet gabbo our first glimpse of gabbo he'll

tell us what to do hello i'm gabbo and i'm arthurrandall. That's easy for you to say. You don't have a hand up, you tookus. Oy, hey! Oh, Gabbo, you'll say anything. And you can watch us every afternoon at four. That's the same time as Krusty the Clown. Uh-oh, that cute little character could take America by storm. All he needs is a hook. I'm a bad widow boy.

Ay caramba! That's one of the show's many great jokes reflecting on Bartmania. And Gabbo seemingly is more of a Jerry Lewis impression than even Dr. Frink. It's almost like Frink, it's like Frink's cousin. Or like maybe Frink invented Gabbo for Arthur Crandall. I mean, I love that Arthur Crandall seems to be possessed. Like he views himself as separate from Gabbo that they are two separate people this bit here about the time slot like this also feels you know pulled from the time like mark you saw many people challenged

johnny over the years like in the 70s i think joey bishop was the biggest or like dick cavett too was one of the challengers was merv griffith or was he always like yeah okay griffin this guy les crane who was doing controversy fake type controversy steve allen then later alan thick definitely uh reminiscent of that late night time yeah you talked with smigel about the power of the carsinio sketches in particular like really messing up johnny carson i've just actually watched vice the channel vice just did a like 45 minute doc on the the arsenio show history and they bring up that like it was less than a week after that sketch aired that carson announced he was retiring right the cars The Carcinio sketch on SNL.

That's what I told Robert and Dana Carvey. They were my last guests on the Carson podcast. And Robert's like, I can't imagine that that set it off. It was really moving Carson from 1130 to 1135. He definitely, that, the Carcinio thing, I just feel like solidified everything. Jay Leno. There was another Carson sketch, i think right before that one that leno was gassed and overheard carson said if they're gonna make fun of me it's time to retire one to hear dana carvey talk about how he like

nailed his carson impression which is if i do a carson impression i'm doing dana carvey's version to hear him describe it on your thing is like weird wild stuff like he got that from Carson uncomfortably introducing a weirder comedy scene that he's like seemingly not ready for they're like well this isn't what we normally do it's a little wild it's a little weird yeah I mean definitely he had the cadence down really well in the well-mannered part of Carson yeah definitely some of the stuff like as a caricature that Johnny probably never said. I mean, he would definitely say, you know, weird, wild. I don't think he ever said it all together. Perhaps he did.

But it's one of those things like you guys know, if there's people today that still believe that the Tina Fey thing on Saturday Night Live that Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house, that that actually she said it which you know she didn't but when you have somebody doing that it really some for at least some of the public it solidifies in their head that there's some that that's true or there's some truth in it i wonder if they pulled a little bit of this like time slot battle a tiny bit from their cosby thing. That never came up in any research I saw, though. Yeah. I remember that. Didn't they do that cold open or was it a tag where he was wearing a Simpsons shirt on the show?

Horrible person, Bill Cosby. He was on, I think, an EW cover, right? He was an Entertainment Weekly cover or similar where he's wearing a Bart shirt on it. I remember that. But that never came up in any of my research. So they're like, oh yeah, and we're doing this about our Bill Cosby thing. Because I mean, when they were writing this, this is done totally in the shadow of the late night war, of everything that's in the late shift movie. They were writing this during that.

Yeah, there was so much drama that was going on and then the media and stuff all over it. And it's still people talk about that movie with Kathy Bates. And I've talked to a lot of people that were there and witnessed it behind the scenes and stuff. There was a lot more there, obviously. But yeah, it was very Shakespearean when you look back. And this is where David Silverman really shines with his team.

Like, because if you're going to parody one of the best animated movies of all time, like one of the most, like, technically brilliant animated films of all time, you better do it right or else you'll look really crappy. It's a lot to ask from a TV budget, but Silverman mostly does it. Yeah, they parody I've Got No Strings

or No Strings On Me from Pinocchio with all these things, right down to the Cossack dancers, all of it right there on screen. from this triple play to talk about Farmy Dan's pure pork sausage. Mmm, mmm. I'll give out shiny dimes. I'll travel back in time. You're gonna like him. You're gonna love him. It's the greatest show in town. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh! When Tom Gabbos!

Gabbo does look pretty fabo in this, I have to admit. When he says he can do the Hully Gully, it looks kind of like the Hully Gully. I'll say that. I also did Hully Gully research, and yeah, it's close. Good to know. Which is a 1963 song by the Olympics, if you want to look it up. Also, they cut a scene of a character that me and Bob were hoping would be a recurring character. This would have been this character's third appearance in the season, thus making them officially recurring character.

It's Princess Opal, Bob. We were robbed of a Princess Opal scene. The psychic? Yes, the psychic. Yeah. Okay. This could have been her final appearance I guess so in the script during the Gabbo song they cut to Princess Opal reading Krusty's future and she

says a bad fortune is coming his way and he thinks like oh you mean I should fire Mel and then she's like no and then Mel comes in and he's like wait Krusty did you fire me he's like no no give me a sandwich that seems maybe that's also a little joke about the fear that Ed McMahon thought that there were all those jokes that Johnny was going to fire Ed McMahon or something, right? It was. It started in New York. Ed stepped on a punchline of Johnny. It was like a joke about a mosquito. And Ed did that a few times. And it was one of those things where Carson, it's tough. It was almost like a marriage between Ed and Johnny. And by the time they got to LA, Carson pretty much stopped hanging with him as much.

But they definitely needed each other. I mean, at the end of the day. But yeah, Carson never really came back to TV. But Ed McMahon hosted a talk show with Alf. Yes. Yeah. Yes, he did. And he had Star Search.

And he was endorsing a vodka. Well, the publisher's clearinghouse for such a long time. Yeah, he did the Cash for Gold commercial. I think that might have been his last commercial where he was rapping. But yeah, he was still during that retirement going on sitcoms and doing anything that came his way that would pay. It just seemed nonstop. If it was national, if it was local. After all of this song, Krusty lets you know he's not worried. That dummy doesn't scare me.

I've had plenty of guys come after me and I've buried them all. Hobos, sea captains, Joey Bishop. Don't forget the Special Olympics. Oh, yeah. I slaughtered the Special Olympics. Are those our ratings? Let me see. I lost to Channel Ocho.

What the hell is that? Dos huevos, por favor. Oh, que lastima. I got to steal that bit. So the Joey Bishop show was created to rival Carson's Tonight Show. Joey Bishop was a, I'll say a lesser member of the Rat Pack. Sorry to all you Joey Bishop fans out there. But his show lasted 33 months and his second banana was Regis Philbin, not Ed McMahon.

Yeah, Regis was on my Carson podcast as well. We recorded it as apartment in New York. I worked at Millionaire in my early 20s when he hosted Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And all about Bishop's stories and just the walking off and all these things. But yeah, Bishop was a pretty big deal.

And he, his ratings definitely, I think came during those 60s, came as close to Johnny as anybody, I believe. I feel like at least a couple times when I saw Regis appear on Conan's Late Night, that he would tell stories like like we did the Joey Bishop show in the same studio or similar stories like that maybe it

wasn't that one exactly but yeah Regis also is a very Krusty like figure in that he had a story about everything I'm like oh yeah this movie star I knew this guy that guy he really did and it's amazing talking to that guy and you, Letterman used to say that the best broadcaster by far on television was Regis. And I don't think the public quite really got how good he was as a broadcaster. I think people that worked in TV, maybe that you could tell how good he was. He could just go on without a script and just wing the thing, which is very hard to do every day and be entertaining and stuff. But he definitely had the jack part thing going for him it seems like he did know everybody had a story and we get miss penny candy back with the lines he doesn't often get lines in the show they they're

remembering her as the assistant and yeah i like that she's supporting how much crusty loves that he slaughtered the special olympics it's such great line. The fact that he's losing to Chano Locho is interesting because these days, Univision is one of the highest rated networks in all of American television, like period. It is killing people in the ratings right now. At the time we're recording this, the Copa Americana, the big soccer tournament,

it did insane stuff like that. And their election coverage is often very high in the weekly ratings and this bit of crusty going i gotta steal this bit mark i was wondering is this a little bit about how some people felt carson would take bits from time to time or is this more of like a milton burle steals bits kind of gag I thought it was Milton Berle I mean Carson occasionally if he did it like I remember Richard Pryor was a guest he's like you know what I did a bit in your monologue just not thinking about it Richard didn't hear much about he lifted definitely some Letterman type ideas in terms of lifting other people's material I mean it

was Milton Berle yeah the Carson writers one of them was telling me he wrote a was Milton Berle. Yeah, the Carson writers, one of them was telling me he wrote a line. Milton Berle heard and he went to a funeral and Milton Berle did his joke from The Tonight Show at the funeral. That was Berle. And he was known for stealing jokes and a large member, which I only learned that from the SNL Live from New York book. That's how I learned. Alan Zweibel and can confirm from somebody else that was very close to him that Alan is telling the truth. Wow. And Alan Zweibel, he was Gene and Reese's boss on It's the Gary Shandling Show. Oh, yeah.

I was just reading the Judd Apatow curated Gary Shandling book, which has a lot of fun. Gene and Reese are both quoted in it talking about their time on It's the Gary Shandling Show. Man, that show was funny and so innovative. That was my favorite stuff going on with Fox, with Shandling and The Simpsons. Yeah, the Tracy Ullman Show, which we talked about with Matt Graydon. I mentioned I was watching the shorts when I was a kid. I think actually Mike Reese did not believe that I, as a seven-year-old, enjoy the It's the Gary Shandling Show and that he said nobody watched it he seemed to doubt but I really did I really did watch it as a little kid yeah my brother and I were couldn't believe that we'd look at the ratings in USA Today every Thursday I think they came out and it'd always be like in the last all the Fox shows

maybe not the Simpsons and stuff but like Shandley would break the fourth wall and get in a golf cart and go set to set. And it's like, I'd never seen anything quite like that. And it was just so funny. Brother and I used to sing the Gary Shanley theme song at the bus stop. I mean, it was just so funny. The deconstruction of television, the sitcom. We go to the next day as Gabbo is airing and Bart, it's great kid behavior that just like, oh, you want to break your toys and melt them and throw crud on them just to play around with them.

In the script, though, when Bart says he's going to change the channel to Krusty, his friends Milhouse and Nelson leave because Bart says, sorry, guys, this is a Krusty household. And his friends abandon him rather than watch crusty over gabbo maybe that also feels very dated in this episode this is like time slot comedy because like everybody watches things on appointment now you watch it when you watch it like you don't think about choosing between shows that are in competing time slots anymore oh yeah tonight and day there was something really exciting about having to be i mean it's so

much easier now but having watching it the first time it aired and just you had no other option really there was something really fun about that and just exciting but yeah now things have changed it's weird to think there are some shows that are just unknown to me because i was watching the competing time slot yeah like i didn't follow Simpsons into Martin most nights because we switched the channel to Seinfeld or to get ready for Seinfeld with the 8.30 thing that was before Seinfeld on NBC. Nobody was watching Freaks and Geeks, the Apatow.

Yeah, Paul Feig. Such an amazing show. Get in a time slot and you're in trouble. I think me and Bob were some of the few. I believe we would have followed it because multiple Mystery Science Theater people went to work on that show so it seemed like wow mystery science theater goes hollywood they've got joel robinson and trace baloo i can see trace baloo not as dr clayton forrester and hey tom wilson all my favorites are here that's right uh but yes we then see crusty is trying to match him which this also could be

seen as carson failing to do letterman bits like this is carson trying to do a bit like letterman and it falls flat he's like oh you like a ventriloquist i can do this but it falls apart instantly as a 11 year old when i saw this i actually was freaked out by seeing alphonse fall apart and have a dead puppet with a caved-in skull thrown into the audience actually did scare me a little as a kid and the kids all run out yeah it's really that was funny him trying to yeah you do see that i mean with the late night stuff people would try to emulate other people whatever successful and stuff yeah carson for the most part other than maybe a little bit with letterman was pretty good about not doing that stuff he felt pressured with arsenio certainly

kept the show the same and we're still booking tony bennett and angie dickinson and all these older somewhat older buddy hackett in 1987 oh yeah it's so exciting that's more exciting than ll cool j very different stuff but yeah carson mean, he never would book the young, hot thing because the whole philosophy is they had nothing to say. Like somebody who's 30 years old, their life experience, or 25 that Arsenio would put on

that, you know, they just didn't have much to talk about. So yeah, that was the difference instead of going for that, which Arsenio would usually do the kind of like who was in and famous and yeah, young A-listers would all go

on it's a nice little subtle bit in this alphonse routine that the puppetry is bad obviously but this bit he never gets to the punchline but there is no punchline because this riddle is intentionally one without an answer lewis carroll eventually developed an answer because people were disappointed but there's not supposed to be a clever answer to this riddle. So Krusty wrote a sketch with no punchline in it too, right? Also, I swear that in the Thor Love and Thunder movie, pull it up on Disney Plus after you watch this, but if you go to 52 minutes in it, Christian Bale's character has a bunch of children captive. He then gets an animal corpse and starts puppeting it and then tosses it into the audience of kids and they all jump out of the way to avoid it.

And they're screaming. And I was like, man, this really feels like an intentional reference to this scene for The Simpsons. And again, the director, Taika Waititi, would go on to be on The Simpsons. And I know he's a Simpsons fan. I'm texting the joke police right now. I feel it's more of an intentional reference that I'm stealing that bit, as Krusty would say. That was Taika Waititi watching The Simpsons. Everybody's abandoning him. We see a headline, a variety that flew over my head as a kid. Now, thanks to SEO, variety headlines aren't like rhyming couplets anymore.

They have to tell you exactly so they show up in google search results you can't have gabbo fabbo crusty rusty anymore then we see that gabbo's getting so big that quimby is quoting him and this feels like schwarzwalder and his hate for the kennedys especially but like quimby in a new low is admitting to murdering people to the press he funded some murders i mean he's friendly with uh the mafia but him literally saying i killed my enemies like that feels like the most illegal thing quimby has done in the show his i'm a bad little boy feels like it's quimby's pokemon go to the polls he's taking advantage of a popular thing that's happening

right now everyone's buying it it's great har Harris needs to have her own quote of that. She needs to pull something out of the headlines too. Don't wait a fortnight to register. There you go. I don't know. Krusty then calls out that he has gotten Eastern Europe's number one cat and mouse team. His little pose with his finger up is pure David Silverman. That is a david silverman

drawn if i ever seen one and boy is this one the best scenes ever i love this scene i definitely did not see the source material before this aired but i had watched enough pbs and nickelodeon to get the gist of what they were going for here i had the understanding that there are cartoons from other countries that are often dreary and confusing, and they're almost all on PBS or used as interstitials on Nickelodeon. And I thought this was very funny. And then later in life, I watched the original inspiration, which is the Yugoslavian short, which is called Erzatz or The Substitute. It's got a few different names in English. It's also called Surrogat.

David Silverman in 2014 on Twitter demystified this. On the commentary, Mike Reese is clearly trying to avoid saying they were directly inspired by something for lawsuit reasons, I think. So, like Mike Reese says, look, we all saw the cartoon that this is referencing, but he won't say it. But yeah, then Silverman on Twitter in 2014, he said the main inspiration for Worker and Parasite was that one, which did from Croatian director Dustin Vukodic. It won the Oscar in the short category in 1961. So that's why at least a hardcore animation fan in the 90s would have heard of this short. From looking at the script, they aren't lying on the commentary when they say,

Endot Hockhecht is written in Schwarzw welder's sketch a script that's pure swartz welder it's amazing every sound of it every like the the p the the workers in standing in line like god it's all the best i love it so much i believe you have a worker in parasite t-shirt yeah you know i think i had to shed it in the move but because it was too beat up and old. But yes, I had an officially sold through Threadless Simpsons branded worker and parasite T-shirt. It was really nice. Oh, I didn't know it was official. Wow. Okay.

Impressive. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. My approval. I have to assume if Henry still had it, he would be wearing it during this podcast. I absolutely would be. Yes.

Yeah, I would. So yeah. And I mean,, the way this episode is remembered with the kids and their memes today, Krusty's reaction of what the hell was that? I feel like I see that every week at least on social media. It's a great Silverman drawing

on top of being a great line reading. And the original script, when it pans across the audience for the empty audience, you see Bart clapping in it. He's the only guy left in the audience and Kr empty audience, you see Bart clapping in it. He's the only guy left in the audience. And Krusty says, I don't need your pity. But that wasn't the end.

It's interesting. With the cuts they had to make, I would guess for time for every celebrity. There's two scenes that establish Krusty's actual cancellation. Only when you see the deleted scenes do you think to yourself, oh, something missing here like Krusty is never officially canceled he just comes back in act two and says well we're canceled but if anybody who's seen the 138th episode spectacular you've seen the two deleted scenes from this episode yeah I guess all the celebrities made the show run long so it's odd that pivotal scene was cut but I guess they had to do it it works without it but it would have been nice to have it in but definitely the exposition you know what they still made it work in the 138th episode spectacular if you don't recall

it first has a joke of crusty selling his own sex book a parody of the then very recent madonna sex book and then the other one is him being officially canceled and him trying to get to appear in a hemorrhoid cream commercial. Yes. I can ride a bike again. I love that. But once it's over, Krusty has to say goodbye to his pals. Well, that's it. We've been canceled.

I think we can be proud that we never did a bad show. Except for that week Ray J. Johnson was my co-host. You can call me Ray, and you can call me Jay. That thing was funny for about three seconds. But the important thing is, we're like a family. Go on, Steve. Shut your hole! Cruelty.

Man, now I just see everything as a Carson commentary. Is that more of like, oh, Carson actually hates Ed McMahon kind of bit? You know, he wasn't like that. There were definitely some hothead late night hosts who would be maybe like that, or people just like beloved people you wouldn't think would be like that. But Carson really wasn't like that but at least to the person he probably complained about Ed but not to his face and stuff they would get together on birthdays and anniversaries and stuff but I mean the way maybe it's so stuck in my head again

of like the way Phil Hartman played him was so obsequious he's like yes the greatest of all time yes that is a very good like he was such a suck up as the character of ed mcmahon so we were talking about before the show and i was mentioning you know i used to go to tapings at nbc to see letterman and conan early conan i was there when mac granning was a guest and he drew me afterwards um a bart in the lobby and that lobby which just was life-changing for me and i remember i got to take a bunch of photos with phil hartman in that lobby he would always do the voices when i would ask him to do the snl characters and stuff he was the nicest guy oh oh wait now this is giving me a nerd question

here mark so you were there when a time when granny was on conan was this crunk crunk uh okay i was gonna say was this where he told the story of elizabeth taylor saying fuck you to them i don't remember but i i just remember that he was talking about crunk because that was a fake swear word that conan was trying to come up so i remember graining talking about crunk okay then he probably made in that story he says crunk instead of fuck you uh taylor in his Italian story. That would be why, yeah. I didn't remember him saying that other stuff,

but I remember him using the word crunk. I recall the crunk era because my friends and I were saying crunk in school. That was Conan's whole thing, is trying to comfort that. A shout out to the departed Bill Saluga from my hometown. He died last year at 85. Ray J. Johnson himself.

Yeah, the Ace Trucking Company. Yeah, they went on Carson all the time. Yeah, it's really a shame how many of them are gone. Fred Willard, especially. That group, it was an amazing group, but he's very funny. Speaking of eerie things, I swear I did not see the listing on this one. So I went to Tubi last night because I was like, okay, I should watch just like a random episode of Carson just to get in the Carson brainscape. So it was a May 13th, 1987 episode

in their Best Of collection that's on Tubi. And who are the two guests? It is the recently passed Martin Mull and Donald Sutherland together in the same episode. Yeah, I wonder if they did that on purpose. Did that one up since they both passed or not? But yeah. You had such a wonderful Twitter thread celebrating him.

Oh, thanks. Yeah, he was really nice to talk to me. I was actually at the Fox lot. He was doing a sitcom with Peter Riegert. Got to talk to him all about going on Carson and how the producer didn't want him on and he was rejected and all this stuff. But Maul, man, guy was was so funny i'm so used to martin maul as the just the character actor of even in my childhood like of clue and everything that seeing him doing what seems to be like a written one-man bit on the show of like him answering letters that were sent

to him and just like sits in a chair does a whole written segment i was like wow this is a different type of comedy i seen for me but it was so funny it was it felt like not exactly a stand-up coming on but i i wasn't used to that for martin maul compared to i was so used to seeing him as an actor and things oh it was so strange at the time that's why the producer fred de cordova didn't want him on just it was so george carlin actually was the one that when he was guest hosting that said i want him on i need we're putting him in on and he did really well and then that's how he got booked with john that when he was guest hosting that said, I want him on, we're putting him on and he did really well. And then that's how we got booked with Johnny. Yeah, he was definitely like Albert Brooks style of offbeat humor. Yeah, it was very Albert Brooks. He never did it standing up. It was

always the sitting down, stand up, never standing. Now they're hinting at it with the Bill Saluga thing, the Ray J. Johnson thing. But one thing they don't really cover with Carson is how often he would have stand-in hosts, especially, I guess, in the last decade of his time on The Tonight Show. And when I started reading Mad Magazine in the late 80s, it was a window into the adult world. Shows I couldn't watch, I couldn't stay up for. And one article I really remember was called Where's Johnny? Because he seemingly was never hosting his own show. Mark,

how often was that happening in this era? In the 80s, it happened quite a bit where I think he was probably hosting maybe 150. The people now that are behind the desk at 1130 do about 180 shows. People forget when Johnny was doing a show in New York for the first whatever, four years or whatever it was, he was doing an hour and 45 minutes every single night. I mean, the people that are doing the shows now are exhausted doing an hour. And the first year, the collective hours that he did, today's host would have to host their show, I guess, every single day for a year plus that. It was just night and day. The guy was exhausted. As he got older, when he got to be, you know, like 60, maybe even that, he didn't say this publicly, but he just did not have the energy to be doing that. I mean, it went down to 1980 or 81, whatever it was, it went down from 90 minutes down to an hour. But I mean, it was still,

he couldn't do it. And the guest host always made Carson look good I mean there were a few that were so good that they could host it but normally I mean I mean they were the most bizarre people guest host in the show like Peter Bogdanovich or somebody like that or like you know Tony Danzik has hosted the show a couple times and it was like you never knew like Lauren Green from Bonanza you never knew who was gonna host but it was definitely a lot of these people like Shelly Winters just couldn't do it and Carson would be at home just laughing watching these people try it because it looked everyone thought it looked easy and it wasn't I mean people just dismissed Carson and like anybody could do this and they quickly found out they could not if Gary Shandling hadn't guest hosted there probably wouldn't be a Larry Sanders

show oh yeah he was the last person it was Letterman and him were the only two people If Gary Shandling hadn't guest hosted, there probably wouldn't be a Larry Sanders show. Oh, yeah. He was the last person. It was Letterman and him were the only two people, really, as unknowns that hosted that show. That were guest hosting before they were famous. And it was Shandling's dream that he turned down the, really, to be the permanent guest of the Tonight Show. Because they really, Peter LaSalle at Johnny's Producer wanted him and not Leno. And then Shandling's like, I got to focus on, it's Gary Shandling's show. And then shanley's like i gotta focus on it's gary shanley's show and yeah i do feel like the machine of it jay leno he is like the marathon man who can do it and live that like he didn't seem to really want other i mean he still did there's the joke

he never touched his tonight show money always did the stand-up money like that's the joke but he didn't do other stuff while other than stand-up for highly Like, that's the joke. But he didn't do other stuff other than stand-up for highly paid corporate gigs. Jay was a machine. He's still a machine. I would not want to compete against him, but he's always been very nice. People I know that know him,

he gave me... We got to talk last year for almost an hour, and he answered all the questions I needed and was very, very nice and helpful to me. But in terms of the politicking, he had his manager and him, they visited every single NBC affiliate to get in good with people. And just they did stuff that

Letterman never would have done for the politicking and stuff. And I couldn't see Shanley and really doing that either. But yeah, Jay was definitely a company man. NBC, it was so much easier to handle a Leno than a Letterman. I mean, Letterman was just to pick on the NBC executives and stuff. It was definitely Leno, I think, from that aspect made sense for them to put on. But yeah, you're right. I think that that was his entire life was The Tonight Show and then doing stand-up on the side.

He would even do The Tonight Show and go off and do stand-up later that night. I mean, and then on the weekends, he was doing Sundays in Hermosa Beach. That guy was unbelievable, his work ethic. I mean, he didn't want vacation, but NBC made him take vacation. He's a denim machine. He really is. Yes. Well, here, why don't I play our first Carson clip?

Then we can talk a little bit more about how we got in there. But yes, Johnny Carson is here. And I think with the little tune you hear in here, I wonder how much money Johnny Carson makes off of this appearance in The Simpsons. Rossi, how you holding up? I'm kind of worried about the future. How do you deal with it? Well, you've been on TV longer than I have. I'm sure you've saved up quite a nest egg.

Oh, yeah. Do they still buy human hair down at the wig shop rusty you want to stay for dinner yeah sorry oh that's too bad because tonight my guest will be dr carl sagan and from the san diego zoo joan embry now the crusty timeline does really match up with the carson timeline it's a tiny bit off, but based on when I Love Lisa was written, that's when they had their 29th anniversary special, the Krusty the Clown show. He had started a show in 63. Carson's Tonight Show, I believe, started in 62, though Krusty was on TV before that. That's explored in other episodes.

So Carson is correct by saying, Krustyy you've been on tv longer than me now i mean yeah johnny had a short-lived uh show on cbs called the johnny carson show and had some local stuff in la and nebraska and then he was a game show host for a while for his what he's known for is basically yeah just the tonight show this is something i miss with the crusty character that simply can't work anymore just like how as time works abe simpson cannot be a world war ii veteran anymore because he'd have to be like 120 now to be that and for crusty he can't actually have been on television in 1949 he can't actually have been on tv that long and still be crusty the clown if he was a peer with Carson, he would be 100 years old because Carson's 100th birthday is coming up next year. That is true. October 23rd.

There's so much here. And some of it I learned from your great interviews, Mark. Thank you again for those. The timeline was that Reese had said they had heard he was interested and especially because Bob Hope was on. I will say the timeline of that is interesting because the Bob Hope episode aired in October 92 a month after these scripts are dated that's not to say that Johnny Carson couldn't have heard Bob Hope as recorded for the Simpsons before the episode aired so I'm not saying that's not true but just something to say with the timeline but then then they write this character for him. John Swartzwater writes the funny bit that Johnny Carson is a mooch who comes and stays at the Simpsons' house, won't leave, eats all their food, sleeps on the couch, steals Homer's clothes.

Homer says, you're wearing my pants. And Johnny Carson runs off. Was Carson's nephew the liaison and he shot that idea down? I'm sure he took it to Johnny who shot it down. I mean, Jeff was really good at taking whatever. It could have been a Jeff judgment. I would see him asking Johnny, but the way that they rewrote it and stuff was absolutely perfect. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for

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like hey this is too insulting to him he's not gonna do this yeah it could have gone either way and stuff but the rewrite was so good and I don't know if I've ever talked about this or not or I don't think anybody knows but Carson actually had a kid's show that he co-hosted with another a guy in Nebraska so the whole like kids TV show and stuff with Krusty and something was something that Carson was around. And his closing bit when he would do Vegas and around was to take off of a kids' TV show as well. So the whole Krusty thing.

When you would watch videos of greatest Carson moment packages, you'd often see that one of him doing the quarter bit with that little kid on it. I forget why the kid was even on but like spelling bee he was a spelling bee like a prodigy i also mentioned that tonight show theme because carson right mark owned the tonight show theme so by playing it in the show he probably got a good check for using the theme yeah it's him and paul anka paul anka is the one that actually did all the work and cars Carson was smart enough for this to work.

I want to get half. Very similar to Elvis Presley, getting half for doing absolutely nothing. Well, that's all I know that Carson, as far as a businessman goes, was very savvy in that 81 deal that got him fewer dates of having to host. He owns the show.

When you see a Carson clip put in a documentary of anybody of like here's when Eddie Murphy first did Carson they have to license it from his nephew who still runs that it was unheard of I mean some people just have the leverage I mean CBS had nothing in late night they wanted Letterman badly they gave him the ownership Jay probably Leno could have gotten I'm sure the ownership but he always said he never wanted it. But for Carson to be able to do that was the smartest thing. NBC in the early days and stuff would be like Johnny on the weekends, even though you're doing an hour and 45. You're going to this affiliate to entertain.

You're going to this city to do this dinner, this thing. Carson had no leverage. He had to do whatever they said. He didn't have in his office a bathroom. He would have to go to the employee men's room with a key, turn the key and be with everybody else. You know, it was just there were a lot of stuff that he didn't feel like he had any leverage and he didn't until later. And then he's kind of stuck it to NBC a little bit and be like, you know, I'm going to own this show. I'm going to do less dates and all these different things. And then he stopped doing Mondays. Then he stopped doing Monday and Tuesday. And yeah, he basically wrote his own ticket after a while. Yeah. And as far as I know, the show is much more

well-preserved than any other late night talk show. You said it was on Tubi, Henry, old reruns. It's so much harder to find Conan clips and Letterman clips. And when you do find them, it's because someone recorded it in 1996 or 1987. There's a database. There's always, almost always a private database. Like for Letterman, there's a database of the morning show, the NBC and the CBS, one with the search. You can put in any word.

Same with Carson. I mean, I have access to it and it's incredible. People would be shocked how much stuff that they actually, kinescopes they have from the 1960s from new york the black and white stuff it's unbelievable stuff no one has ever seen i once had access to that johnny carson database because it's like searchable it's a transcription of like every episode they have in there so you can search for any word and then you know for licensing purposes and you can ask for it but i then, you know, for licensing purposes, then you can ask for it. But I was like, OK, did he ever say the word Nintendo on the show?

Yes. I've done so much of that. And like Bob Newhart just passed and you can see him in like 1966 guest host in The Tonight Show and glorious black and white television. The only thing I think that they don't have uploaded is the most of the guest host are not uploaded. But I mean, if you really wanted to, they have Orson Welles guest host in The Tonight Show. I mean, they have the most random people, Telly Savalas guest host and Roger Moore, the people that they did clips do exist. They are just, you know, buried an assault mine, actually, somewhere in the US. I think it's in Kansas or Utah. That was the framing device of that 2012 doc I just watched recently for the first time in a

while, which sadly is narrated by Kevin Spacey, which is very distracting these days, but it made sense. It was a big get for them, Kevin Spacey's narrator in 2012. Boyhood hero is Carson. That's at least what he said. Peter Jones, who co-directed the documentary, showed me before things, allegations or stuff that he did, showed me a letter that he typed and mentioned that that was his boyhood hero and how proud he was or honored he was to be a part of that. Everybody loved Kevin Spacey back then, so I'm not making any allegations here. Oh, they knew. No no moving away from kevin spacey gene and reese with the tonight show is really funny too because they also did an alf episode they did an alf episode that is a full tonight show parody called tonight tonight it's a clip show but we talked about it before because they wrote jokes for dr joyce brothers on it and then she later appeared on the simpsons earlier in this season but it's really interesting because they have a Joan Embry joke here. Joan Embry appears in that episode as well, though no Doc. They had Ed,

but they didn't have Doc. It was Tommy Newsome instead of Doc on the episode. But Fred DeCormina does show up on the episode too. I love that. On Larry Sanders, after they retired, Carson and stuff, they had Doc, Fred, DeCormina, Tommy tommy at least that yeah so they were going on a lot of different shows but that's interesting that they got tommy newsom i'm sure he was thrilled with the paycheck it's very funny because they're joking that everybody's terrified of johnny carson like johnny's not here elf breaks johnny's mug in it they go like you broke johnny's mug and then like johnny carson calls him also it's got a really good bit that feels like a Mike Reese kind of bit that they have on the Pope is the joke and they're

like but they keep saying like oh but you know what we can't have the Pope yet Rich Little come out here and if they keep avoiding having on the Pope yeah two things one yeah the breaking of the mug and being really scared was the Don Rickles breaking Johnny Carson's cigarette box that's what that reference was and then the next night Johnny wasn there. It was Bob Newhart was guest host. And then Rickles broke the cigarette box. And then the next night, Rickles did not know this was going to happen. Johnny took the box and confronted Rickles across the hall while he was taping a sitcom, CPO Sharky, and like stopped the tape. And Rickles, to rattle Rickles is pretty amazing. And then running out of time. I mean, gosh, some of those people three, four times, some of them would get bumped. So

yeah, that was Letterman would do that too in the eighties. People would get paid for their appearance if they were get bumped. But yeah, that was definitely a joke about that, but it happened. Donald Sutherland, by the way, in in that episode i watched he had like anti-chemistry with carson like there are so many dead pauses in it i think sutherland even says to him you don't like me or something like that and carson has to go like i do like you no i like you and it's just uh it's hard some performers need a script they need a character to be interesting they're people that go on there that just do not have the skill set. I mean, he would have people and he was really excited with like David Niven, who were doing something at the Oscars when the streaker, the naked person ran across the stage and said a witty line.

And so excited. And the guy was just flat. I mean, it's just it's one of those most for a lot of those performers just so unnatural. And then you have Burt Reynolds that goes on and he's a rock star. So you just never knew. But yeah, doesn't surprise me about Donald Sutherland but very amazing performer actor and I asked Al Jean on Twitter in 2022 how they came to write that and he said to me quote I had actually left for the Gary Shandling show and they invited us back as former Carson writers to work on the episode which we were excited to do so it was a freelance thing where they hired back former Carson writers to help them craft and Alf hosts the Tonight Show. That's very, very cool.

I like that. And Al especially has always made the point that they were fired from Carson, but they were asked to come back a little bit later and stuff, which didn't happen much. I only think maybe one or two other people that that happened to. We're so happy to work there and just get that experience but yeah bob you've probably heard

him too there's several stories out there about like what it was like when carson came to record for this simpsons one conan has told him his side of it many times does it come up on the commentary there's so many stories in the commentary about how in awe everyone was of every celebrity well the conan one when i was doing the monorail research for the episode there's conan telling the story of like this unintentional unplanned like it's the meaning of a future tonight show host with the tonight show host oh yeah and he's like in awe of carson and also carson asks him and conan tells the story in many places but the on the episode of conan's talk show the night the after carson passed away

he tells the story of giving carson the bad directions to leave the fox lot where we were with mark that same fox yeah i do recall them saying he basically did a monologue for them when he showed up yes thing is is i don't know if it was mike or al but they basically told everybody what their experience was at the Tonight Show. They're like, OK, this guy's not going to talk to anybody. He's going to come in. And it was basically was describing when they worked for him 10 years beforehand. And, you know, he really wasn't pressure was off.

He was excited to do it and stuff. And he was so charming. But the Simpsons people were very braced with the warnings that he was not going to be like that they couldn't have been more charming and fun another interesting thing for the day they recorded that i saw in multiple places in the retelling of it is that they recorded with him the day after the primetime emmy awards is what they said and at those primetime emmys that year in 92 the final episode or the well the bet middler final episode their guest final episode it won emmy it won emmys and it was i couldn't

believe this until i read it to confirm like johnny carson's tonight show other than in a 1977 special category never had won an emmy until that episode they had one for like sound and stuff but anything that was like what you're saying and stuff. Yeah, it was like Jackie Gleason never got an Emmy. I don't think Steve Carell for The Office. You can just go down the line. But Carson, he hated when he would lose to somebody like David Frost, who wasn't a comedian or somebody like David Susskind or somebody that just, you know, didn't really have to do long shows and have to do the number of episodes. And then at one point in the Emmys, he refused to submit the show for a bunch of years. He wouldn't submit the show for consideration because he was so upset. I think

that only lasted a few years, but definitely Carson was competitive. And yeah, that was definitely an issue for him. So I'm sure he was in a great mood. They said he was joking of like, whatever that means. And also he didn't attend, like he didn't accept the award, even though it had happened the night before. He didn't go to the Emmys and appear there to get the award. He probably thought he was going to lose and also just was really trying to avoid going on camera. He did it for Bob Hope's 90th birthday, which was in 93,

because Bob asked him to do it. And people say that the media that he hated bob hope he didn't he just thought bob should have retired 20 years before and was embarrassed and that he was going to get up like that but there were a few things one or two things he did on camera and stuff yeah i have the list actually mark since you brought it up though after the final episode on camera appearances so i'm not counting the teacher awards that weren't really filmed and i could not find a clip of but he did do a teacher's awards then he does that bob hope special that airs slightly before this then this comes out and

his only other appearance on tv is the silent appearance he did on letterman when letterman was in los angeles and it was the running joke all week that Bud Melman was pretending to be Carson. And then at the end of the week and presenting like, oh, Johnny Carson's here to present the top 10 list. And then at the very end of the week, there's a great bit. The Letterman goes like, ah, this is the wrong top 10 list. Can you bring it back out here? And then out comes Carson and hands the piece of paper.

He sits at the desk and everybody's like, all right, Johnny, come on. And he won't do it. He like throws up his hands and leaves. He won't do it. He cannot get a word in because of the thunderous standing ovation that just keeps going and going. He tries to put up his hands. And he's so it's funny. Sometimes you get these icons that are so surprised at that ovation.

And it was just thunderous. And Letterman later, a day or two, said it was just thunderous and letterman later day or two said it was the greatest night of his life i mean just to have uh he wasn't exaggerating either to have johnny there and before the show in the dressing room to go like because every time dave was on johnny would go to see dave which johnny didn't do a lot then the dressing room and dave was able to do johnny said yes either the night before or that morning, but they were trying to get him for a long, long time to do that. He did do some voices. Talked to Letterman on the phone a few times they would have him, but in terms of on camera, yeah, your timeline is correct.

Okay, good. I wanted to double check that with you. I couldn't find any other on camera appearances. He did the TV. This is only local, the news, but in the Plaza Hotel, they had some sort of communication award something he was honored and i think that was one of his last monologues that was taped he did something at the podium and told jokes and stuff but it wasn't broadcast was just a lunch it's on youtube somewhere i believe the news coverage and stuff but no you did your homework that's it i mean he was constantly being begged to come back to host emmys oscars to make appearances and stuff i thought it was crazy in that 2012 doc that even though Al Jean is in it doing an interview,

when they get to the end, they don't mention the Bob Hope special or this appearance. I thought for sure they were going to show this episode in the clip package, but the only thing they frame as the last time America saw Johnny Carson is on that Letterman appearance. That's the only scene they show in the doc. I love Peter Jones who made this documentary. And it's really the reason that I was able to do my podcast. And he was so encouraging. But like, yeah, I would have told him so many times, I wish your doc was longer. But he told me people can only sit through really two hours and to encompass everything.

And, you know, those two hours hours i'm sure maybe an early cut had some of that stuff but you know to tell the story they wanted to i'm sure they lost so many wonderful things but that would have been great if that was in there that's the end of the carson corner here hey if i seem quiet i'm just biding my time until i can talk about melrose place oh and i think the inheritor of the carson bits they wrote that then eventually just got fully cut are in the script I have, the September 17th script. Because in that script, there is a celebrity who is not in this episode. It is Bill Murray. They wrote a part that Bill Murray would invite himself to the Simpsons home.

And he got all of the Carson Moocher jokes. Like, he's the guy they write all the Moocher jokes for. But in between the September 17th and September 21st drafts, they removed Bill Murray from it. So it seems they got a no in between. And then later in life, Bill Murray became that guy. He'll just show up at your party. He'll show up at your wedding, marry your wife. Your life will change. Murray at least back then had an agent. I mean, I have his 1-800 number. It's very hard to get. Somebody gave it to me,

and I was trying to get him to do something for me, and I never heard back. But now, yeah, it's legendary. You have to call his 1-800 number and leave a message, and maybe he'll call you back, or somebody will. And one of the instructions was, like, leave the script in a phone booth. Look at this address.

It was very mysterious to get a hold of that guy later in life still is and it's also in one of those crazy time things when Carson says oh you've been on tv longer than me and all that stuff I was thinking like well now the Simpsons has been on longer than Carson hosted the Tonight Show by six years now and the like Al Jean is currently three years younger than carson was when he retired i remember watching the very first episode is that quidgy bow or was that not the first when they do that well if you count the christmas specials first which most do that would be but then bart the genius with quidgy bow is the first regular simpsons episode i mean i remember

watching them all and on all men i mean when the first shirts became available it was like oh my goodness it was like everybody was trying it was like a prized possession to get a hold of the simpsons they only had bart t-shirts at that point i remember i think but yeah it was so exciting when that came out these jokes here of these specifics of the tennis like that's why crusty goes to wimbledon and Camp Krusty because they were making fun of Carson taking time off to go to Wimbledon every year when he says Carl Sagan's and Joan Embry are going to come over those were two of his favorite guests like had you heard Mark that Carson was legitimately friends with Carl Sagan okay so oh boy I asked a big question Johnny was such a curious guy he wouldn't go out to dinner with the movie star that he had on the show, but he would go out with Jim Fowler. He had an animal zoologist, a TV star and stuff. So he would go out with him, Carl Sagan, and this guy who wrote about

population control, Paul Ehrlich. So there was like three people. Yeah, Wild Kingdom. That was Fowler. Yeah, he'd go out after the tapings and he would talk to Sagan on the phone and he was just so curious. He would just ask him questions. And then, oh gosh, Johnny, the biggest pet peeve he had, and Letterman had some of this, is just manners. You're in somebody's home. And Sagan twice corrected Johnny on a statistic on his show. And you just saw, I've studied it. I can tell when Johnny's not happy. And at that point, you know, he just went like blank and just made a joke and stuff about how he was wrong. Sagan was banned from the show. Never did the show ever again.

I know he's very sensitive person. And that was it. He would still, I guess, imitate Sagan. We'll still do the sketches sometimes. But that was the extent. But he was definitely one of the rare guests that yeah after the taping it's like we're having dinner johnny was just a question after question after question wow that's funny with the joan embry thing because in the famous ed mcmahon whacked out on wowie sauce scene he's

telling carson that mcmahon is the only friend of joan embry that he went to her thing and the johnny didn't even know about it carson eventually did. I think it was during the writer's strike. It took a while for him to go to the zoo. But yeah, McMahon showed up and he actually one of the rare only times he drove himself and he didn't really drive and he didn't put it in park when he got there. And Embry just saw the car just like, yeah, fly back. And that day, McMahon was with Paul Williams and i think somebody else and they were having too much ed had just found out that according to ed that he got the two lawsuits were settled and went his way and he had a couple i forget what the drink is called but it was really potent and he had a few of them it was one of the only times and carson knew because ed would always go

to johnny's dressing room like maybe i don't know 10 minutes before the show to say hi and ed and carson just started laughing and was like oh my goodness how are you going to be able to add in the beginning and when he's doing his you know from hollywood slurs joan embry's name he said instead of joan embry it's it's jew embry he says jew embry joan embry and he gets a couple of the other things wrong because a lot of people think it's like when they sat down the carson would notice that ed but he mentioned it's oddly during the monologue as well but ed yeah that was definitely the joan embry thing that was definitely one of those moments that people still talk about the simpsons parodied it when sideshow mel is telling him everybody's always kissing your ass but okay crusty leaves carson after saying that gonna sell his hair they had a different joke in the script

where he says he has an interview at the paper which then is revealed to that he's going to sell his hair. They had a different joke in the script where he says he has an interview at the paper, which then is revealed to be he's interviewing to be the paper boy. They say in the commentary that this script, they admit act two is a little underbaked and very short because they're like, well, what do you do with Krusty until you start building the comeback specials? But they find a couple of funny things to do with them in here. Including this audition for Melrose Place. Yes. Yeah. Now, Bob, you are the melrose expert here for sure i'm a newer melrose place fan i'm watching

it with my wife because of the we hate movies side series melrose 210 and this joke was written early in melrose place's first season the show was really taking off for fox it had a summer 1992 premiere i believe it was still in its first season because these were very long seasons. So by the time this aired, it was getting 14 million viewers per episode around that. This episode, Crested Gets Cancelled, had a 19.4 share. So it was more popular than Melrose Place. But when they wrote this parody, they didn't know the show would explode because in January of 93, that's when Heather Locklear becomes a character and the show transforms dramatically before that it was kind of boring they called their shot in a similar way with their models ink joke but nobody remembers models ink it went on for I think a season and

that's it right that was a Melrose Place spinoff models I always forget about it's funny though too I wonder if Krusty is able to get this audition on the Melrose Place spinoff because his half-brother got him the audition I wonder And I do like the little sideburns they give him in this scene because both 90210 and Melrose Place were sideburn-heavy programs. They brought back the sideburn. I had forgotten that Heather Locklear was like a season two boost for the show, one of those, you know, the later editions that save a show characters. Yeah, she was the Poochie of the gang. Or like Elmo.

That's the successful Poochie is Elmo. These are 32 episode seasons of Melrose Place, by the way. Holy cow. The show debuted in summer of 92. By the time this airs, they're towards the end of the first season. I can't even imagine with a single cam show to have that much. I mean, those shows, the hours are so shooting. Sometimes in the middle of the night. the first season i can't even imagine with a single cam show to have that much i mean those shows the hours are so shooting sometimes in the middle of the night that's i can't even imagine

32 most streaming series today cannot make 32 episodes in six years that's at its peak milrose place had 34 and 35 episode seasons they made a lot of was that an hour or half an hour i would guess an hour it was an hour long for drama that's what i thought okay wow yeah that's that's saying a lot wow then we cut to crusty at the ponies it's another great framing animation bit by silverman and his team crusty just yelling at a horse in one long shot and the horse comes over and licks his face like it's just so great him screaming at the horse like same with i should have said it earlier but the bit where crusty is saying he's not nervous like that is done in a mirrored shot which silverman's very proud of it is not easy to animate

mirrors people don't get this but maybe not get this but that is a lot of extra work on their part we head to a bit about steve allen you mentioned him a few times here mark so i didn't know about steve allen as a part of comedy history maybe until this joke and then i think a few years later on space goes coast to coast they have on steve allen and it's almost an entirely a steve allen celebration they do a man on the Street bit with him. They do a song with him. They do all of these Steve Allen bits with him. But did he invent everything in comedy, Mark? Man on the Street is definitely attributed to him. And I think Letterman took that to a new level, but that definitely, and just the, I think he wrote thousands of songs. I mean, it's pretty

amazing. But I would just, the thing I would attribute him to is the desk, the first one really to do it with the desk, and definitely the man on the street stuff, and just like the wild stuff that Letterman started to do. Yeah, some of the stuff that Steve Allen did back then still, I mean, I don't know how many years later it is, 60 years later, some of the bits still really play really, really funny. And apparently his prank calls were a regular feature of a syndicated talk show and they were so popular they spawned at least one album wow he definitely i think pranked carson once one of those phone calls i don't know if it was staged or not but yeah the man was such a smart guy he just like you know like a lot of

things no one ever thought that tonight show was Show was like going to be permanent real estate for decades. And I think he really regretted leaving as Jack Parr did. Because he only did it, I think, maybe four years, five years at the most, each of them. And then Carson comes in and, you know, almost 30 years. But in our next clip, Gabbo learns the qualities of ripping off Steve Allen, too. And now it's time for another patented Gabbo crank call. Oh, I love these. I can't believe it.

He stole this bit from Krusty. Yeah, well, Krusty stole it from Steve Allen. Oh, everything's stolen nowadays. Why, the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached. It's ringing. Hello, is this Krusty the Cloud? Is this the callback for that porno film? Look, I was a little nervous that day, but I'm all man.

I can assure you. No, I represent a Japanese camera company. We'd like to pay you $2 million to do a camera commercial. Whoa! Me reiki very much! Oh, I hope I didn't offend you. I need this bad. Bad enough to hit yourself over the head with the phone? Whoa, you got it. Go!

Go! Ugh, blood. What the? If this is anyone but Steve Allen, you're stealing my bit. And we see a bit more of Krusty's racially insensitive humor in the last temptation of crust in season nine he's got some props he's got a flapping dicky you know i watched a few carson clips where i was like oh carson tried a joke that didn't go over so well like he i i just watched one of the eddie murphy's first appearances and eddie murphy he's telling a joke

about how he had just like been to Beverly Hills and how you don't really see any African-American people around there and Johnny tries to join in in the joke he's like well there's not an NBA team here yet or something and the audience does not like it they're like and he reacts like uh-oh like he was just trying to joke around with Eddie Murphy I'm not calling Carson racist in that joke but there were certain people that he would try to keep up with comedically and stuff. And Eddie Murphy, he loved Eddie Murphy. He wanted him on all the time.

He tried to get him on the last month of Carson. It was probably him trying to be hip or something and just failing and stuff. But back then, it doesn't happen now. They laugh at every single monologue joke. The audiences are trained to laugh. You're not going to see anything bomb they always clap but back then it was like it was really like you're an acrobat without much of a netback thing because the audience is the most part they would either laugh or not laugh and

now they just clap at everything and laugh at everything but that gave johnny that opportunity which was famous enough to like recover a joke and just kind of like if something bombed he could be so funny and witty and use that but that doesn't happen today because there's no bombing of jokes no yeah i always love when jokes would bomb on conan and he'd have to dance around oh it was the best yeah he was one of the last ones saturday night live the sketches don't bomb anymore that used to be throughout the entire yeah snl they always would bomb and stuff but almost never now you know I was thinking of this too when watching I just recently fell down the rabbit hole of watching old Chris Elliott bits from Letterman and what I loved on re-watching him was that like it was before the audience got

Chris Elliott or they knew it was a bit and they just like hated him he's like playing some disgusting character and they're just like like the audience is not laughing they're not along with a bit it's not full of comedy nerds like me who would go like oh chris elliott's doing a bit like they're giving chris elliott the negative response he writing the bit for yeah quiet you awful man it takes a while carson used to say 80 of the six is acceptance and they know who you are and you can go out there but when they do not know who you are it definitely takes a while to carson a while as host of the tonight show to really i mean there were talks this first year that they were going to get rid of him even the second year and stuff um so it takes a while conan especially also to get with most snl cast members too right it's a lot oh yeah i mean there's only a few, I think, that got over really quick.

I think Kristen Wiig got over really quick. Chevy Chase got over really quick. Eddie Murphy took him a little bit. But once they put him on, they utilized him. He became the star of the show. But for the most part, that stuff takes... I mean, Bill Murray would get hate letters, I mean, when he was first on and took him a little bit of time and stuff. People accused him of, you know, getting... Chevy Chase was gone and him replacing him so yeah it takes a while and then they become beloved and people forget about all of that i love that they got away a filthy joke about crusty clearly not being able to maintain an erection on a porno shoot they got that on television that he's yeah i'm all man i can't believe that and and yes his racist reaction to

thinking he's talking to a japanese business fan who that's the entire point of the mr sparkle character of back then you'd get paid a lot of money to do in japan or other countries and you wouldn't look like you're a sellout if you would if you did a coca-cola commercial in america well honestly everybody just does every ad now like if you're movie stars now like oh ben affleck do you want to do a duncan commercial like yeah that'd be funny sure or let's make austin powers four but it's just a commercial for something at the super bowl yeah the world's biggest movie star now does cell phone commercials for a company he owns that's true ryan reynolds yeah yeah watch what i say about him i'm in vancouver right now oh yes yeah he owns that place i do love that

you blood he's bashing his own head and he's that thirsty for it but then bart decides he's going to make two wrongs make a right homer supports this i love jokes about homer having bad taste in comic strips that he loves rex morgan md still running by the way do not be surprised it's insane many people have died having worked on it and there's just a new people every day i think it's on its seventh team of writers and artists right now so then bart sneaks on to the film sets which is surprisingly easy to do but that actually is most old stories about like no it actually was pretty easy to sneak onto film sets and TV sets back then. We were just on the Universal tour and Steven Spielberg told us about how he snuck onto

the Universal lot as a kid. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, back then at NBC in New York, when they were doing Saturday Night Live or Carson, people would get up to the offices and just like security. It was just it was a really kind of a bit of a joke and stuff it's hard to really think about that how many people were able to get by steve gutenberg said that at paramount he said he was michael eisner's son or maybe his nephew and took up an office at

paramount and just lied to them and just was doing that so yeah it's kind of amazing the spielberg thing especially at universal man see in today's surveillance state and wikipedia and everything i feel like i couldn't walk onto a set and be like uh no i'm david zaslov's nephew can i get in this room like i don't think that would work in the warner line now i don't think it would i mean back in the day there's this guy that i know who it was before i worked there i worked at letterman but he was an intern that didn't belong that lied that said he went to some college and he was an intern for like a month before they realized he wasn't supposed to be working there and he yeah all the stuff was fake about him getting because you have to get college credit and all the stuff was fake and

stuff so he was able to get in there in the door and stuff for a month. That's a go-getter, I see. Yeah, he actually has Letterman's desk and he took the microphone. He broke into the place and took the microphone. So he has Letterman's microphone. He got the desk. He didn't take the desk. He got it from the Museum of Movie and Image, which is here in New York City, because they asked if they could rent it for a party or something.

And they're like, we're not doing anything with it. And they just gave it to him. Because some of those museums, you know, they have too much stuff i guess never occurred to me but yeah so he has all that so bart decides he's gonna get revenge he we hear about gabbo airlines they cut a couple bits in here where gabbo took over the crusty burger and other crusty things like the gabbo airlines is kind of connected to that. There was a good gag in there that like, he takes over the crusty burger, but when they're doing the sign changing gag, they accidentally change it from the crusty burger

to the crusty Gabbo. And then they're like, wait, wait, no, no. And then it's changed to the Gabbo burger. Another funny gag. But this bit is again, based on TV history-ish, right Bob? That's true. So this whole thing about this on-air gaffe is based on a highly disproven urban legend about a kid show host named Uncle Don who supposedly said that ought to hold the little bastards when he thought the show had ceased its broadcast on the radio. Now, all I can tell you is this didn't happen.

This is going to be a three-hour-long podcast, but Snopes.com has a comprehensive article that's 5,000 words long about where this myth came from and how it was propagated. But just know, it did not happen. Same with Bozo the Clown, apparently said something really off-color

that got him fired on air, but that never happened, either, they say. See, this is before you could have the internet to tell you these things like bob you did many uh podcasts ago you did a great history on how like the richard gear gerbil thing spread around back then how all of these like things that started as rumors before now obviously no fake information ever gets social media yeah it's a fun story to tell around the playground for baby boomers of like oh yeah you know this squeaky clean tv host

well they actually said a dirty word like you can see why it's spread around to the point where they reenacted on the simpsons here i swear i asked my mom about this when this first aired i don't think she knew uncle don but she's oh, she told me it was based on a real thing then as a kid too. Here they make it the little SOBs and also apparently it inspired the Andy Griffith movie A Face in the Crowd,

which Brad Bird took some posing and layouts from that movie and put it as a reference in here. But Bart leaks the tapes, but it doesn't go how he hopes it is. We'll be back after this commercial for Gabo Airlines. And cut. That ought to hold the little

SOBs. Gabo, quiet. Oh, I wouldn't want to offend the little SOBs. I wish you'd stop saying that. Hmm. Hey, boyo, what's so funny? Well, it's... Nah, you wouldn't be interested

It's too lowbrow No, I'm quite lowbrow Well, somebody just wrote a body limerick on the men's room wall This I gotta see All the kids in Springfield are SOBs Gabbo's kind of language has no place on or off TV And that's my two cents. That ought to hold those SOBs.

What the? They have the Brockman fired chyron ready to go, the graphic. Is it Brockman in trouble? I think it is Brock. I hate to bring in 2016 politics into this, but it did remind me a little of how Billy Bush faced way more consequences for a tape leaking than Donald Trump did. We are in a post-GAF world.

No GAF is severe enough. The next headline is that Gabbo's ratings rise from saying that, but Kent is ruined for it. We see Krusty is offering to drop his pants for food. Old Jewish man's doing it for free i love his little song i love his little dance it's great i guess this is a general joke about you know old entertainers who are down on their luck who didn't save their money like he's ruined instantly mark do you think he does a joke here of saying that nobody remembers ed sullivan in 1993 that's the the gag they're saying here but like like, how much do you feel like Johnny Carson is remembered in current pop culture

these days after all his time off TV? I mean, he's been off the air now for, what, 30 some years and stuff. So I feel like when he's mentioned, it's like people over 50 usually, maybe. I mean, he's still mentioned on the late night shows, but all those like Colbert and Fallon and Kimmel will bring him up and stuff where the most things come up. They'll always ask if it's somebody that has a Carson connection.

It seems like the late night people or I don't see anybody under like maybe 40 definitely for the most part would not have any idea who the guy is, something like that. I mean, unless you're in constant rotation, like Seinfeld is in syndication or Friends, they forget about you pretty quickly. I mean, Rosie O'Donnell was like the queen of daytime.

Huge, her show. And she said like after a while, a couple bunch of years, no one remembered. Like people just, nobody under whatever age remember her. Ellen says that, you know, I heard, I don't know if this is true, that after this standup tour she's done done public her show was so huge and successful after a bunch of years you know again unless you're like I Love Lucy is always run they forget about you pretty

quick weirdly enough I think impressions of the Carson character Art Fern lived on longer than references to Carson I hear people doing that impression a lot, especially Jon Stewart. Oh, yeah. All those guys, all those, they still revere Carson and love talking about him in interviews. I feel like Johnny's name is brought up a lot with that and stuff.

But yeah, that's a good point. Sometimes we'll like, I've seen Colbert or Stewart do like the Karnak the Magnificent, like routines and stuff or kind of parody like Sis Boomba, which is a famous Karnak the Magnificent, like routines and stuff are kind of parody, like Sis Boom Bah, which is a famous Karnak show with that. But you know, the last book that was about Carson from a major editor, major publisher, rather, I think it was 2012, and it went to number one

on Amazon. So that was the manager's book, right? That had the Frank Gifford story, the lawyer, the lawyer. It was Bushkin, and he had a lunch with the Simpsons writers. The big headlines I saw that came out of that was his Frank Gifford story that one of the wives was with Frank Gifford. But then, but Kathy Lee refuted that, I believe, as did Joan. I don't want to say Joan Carson. I don't know. Maybe I'm misremembering.

She said it didn't happen then. She definitely referenced that they might have dated beforehand but i can definitely say the reference to gifford in that timeline is not from my research is not true at that point yeah he definitely got a lot of publicity out of it even talking to mike or al one of them it sounded like that they said that they weren't quite sure about some of the stories he was telling if they believed it or not it was certainly an interesting book so we go to crusty's home he's sad and destitute they're going through everything this is where they see all of the famous people he knows he starts listing them we see he's related to luke perry his half brother and he does not care for him either this is where

the list of people i was like wow i think only think only the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bette Midler are still alive of all of the guests in this episode. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at Bette MGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. With our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service, there is no better way to bring the excitement and ambiance of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino.

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I mean, she's not on the show, but we just lost his co-star Shannon Doherty from 90210. That's right. Man, rough. Yeah, it's Luke Perry. Passed away too young. Also, it's funny. There is a very popular AEW wrestler, Jack Perry, a.k.a. Jungleed away too young. Also, it's funny. There is a very popular AEW wrestler, Jack Perry, aka Jungle Boy. Jungle Boy. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean,

didn't he go through glass or something? Real glass for a move that he did? Oh, boy, are you asking? It's a big story here. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. It made CM Punk mad, perhaps. But the important thing is that that wrestler, Jack Perry, is related to Krusty the Clown, canonically. That's what's important to me. I do like Krusty's contempt for Fox, the face he makes. Yes, yeah. We say it every Fox knock, but it hits me every time.

Simpsons would not be this mean to Disney on a regular Simpsons episode now. They wouldn't be this mean. You wouldn't have somebody go like, I'm on Disney Plus. You wouldn't have that joke now, I don't think. Probably not. I don't know. You don't see people making fun of their employers anymore. Fox was still such in its infancy with Barry Diller and stuff.

I feel like they could get away with it a little bit. But yeah, I don't think that happens much anymore. It doesn't, I wouldn't say. There's some really good cut stuff in here. One is when they mentioned Bette Midler they didn't own a racehorse together which also that's a great joke because Midler plus Krusty could be Misty but to make it Cruddler is like him intentionally getting a worse name that's a joke I got when I was like 30 me too me too but the original reason they knew each other was that she was the original Tina

Ballerina, but she couldn't do twirls. They said she was too top heavy. And so she lost that job. And there's a running joke, the rest of the script, that Midler is jealous of Tina Ballerina on the show. And they're like, but you're Bette Midler. She's like, I bet you wish you were. I bet you wish you were me. I wish I was Tina Ballerina. They also cut a joke. You can see him on the background, but Krusty knows Hugh Hefner because he says, I set the record 422 at Playboy Mansion. And then Bart goes, for what?

And then Krusty says, nevermind. It was a dirtier joke. A dirtier joke was there. And then two other good jokes. They bring up that Krusty had done apparently an album with the cast of Battlestar Galactica. When he's like, oh, I don't want to do anything too bad. And they're like, you did that album with the Battlestar Galactica cast. And then the other joke I really love.

He knew the Red Hot Chili Peppers because he had done a disorderly style film with them called Stupor Market. Where he is the uptight produce manager. And it's such a funny joke. I wish they'd have kept it. I'm very sad we lost that one. I saw Disorderly's in the theater, I have to say. Fat boys. Legends. That's their cinematic legacy. Now we're only down to one fat boy. I didn't know that. When I was a kid, when I saw them in the theater, I laughed a lot. I'm sure it holds up.

Sadly, instead, they took out this connective tissue that made it how Krusty knew the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but they admit on the commentary this isn't based around Elvis' 1968 special and his comeback special, including the getting fat

and the losing weight and a lot of the staging, which if you didn't see that special, it was dramatized in the recent Elvis movie. So you also got to see it there. Gets handed their address book. They head off at the end of this very quick act to now where it's the big act three that is 10 minutes long, about half of the episode. So this is going to be a four hour podcast.

No, no. Everyone is leaving the room. So it was a big deal for Midler to get the cleaning the highways thing in there. That was a big ask of her of like, I'll do this if you put in the cleaning the highways thing. And so she was very happy about that. They joke about there was no way to draw her without indicating a chin, even though that breaks character design laws inpsons her and jay leno are characters that are drawn with chins in this world and we don't talk about her environmentalism much but it was going on throughout the at least the early 90s she hosted an earth day special i believe in 1990 and then in 1995 she started the new york restoration project that is hard to get even back then carson she was the last guest and stuff and

they still she wouldn't commit for a while and they were just you know i think it's fredda cordova was like she always says no you just keep asking and asking i talked to two of her friends that were on my podcast that said she'll either say no right away or she'll eventually say no and i tried to get her on forever of course didn't wasn't able to do it but just the fact that they were able to get her on the simpsons was a major major coup that the bet middler today is as old as johnny carson was when he passed away to give you a time there so carson really loved her like is that why she is the final get like her it's easy to guess why robin williams was the final other guest on that

episode oh he loved her i mean she gives him credit for her career a lot of it i mean she got famous going on in 19 i think it was 70 or 70 or 71 and johnny put her on a lot and then she got so popular that carson couldn't get her as much as he wanted on. And then that was the final one. They knew they had Robin Williams. He was excited for that. And then Bette was who they wanted. She just, you know, was such an original voice and just always loved her.

And yeah, they finally were able to get her, but it was not easy. I keep asking and asking and asking. I just watched her do like a new interview for I think Good Morning America, just talking about where she's at in her career. asking and asking and asking. I just watched her do like a new interview for, I think, Good Morning America, just talking about where she's at in her career.

And now she's winding things down kind of thing. But her here as basically the Terminator is very funny. Yeah, she's great. She's so funny in the episode. I loved it. I mean, we can't hear,

me and Bob probably both can't hear the name Bette Midler without thinking of how Snake says it in the episode. I'll get you for this Midler! She also kills at least three people on screen in this episode too. It's simple. Don't let her. You're fine if you don't let her. That's how you get her on your show Mark. Just throw a can out the window and have her show up

and then start a conversation. Might be right. Midler! Miss Midler I can't believe you do this all by yourself. We're Americans. We deserve clean highways. You pigs! Oh, no. Bat Midler.

Oh, no. Now, where were we? We were asking you to appear on Krusty's comeback special. Okay, tell Krusty he can count me in. It's time to take out the trash. I'll get you for this it feels like they wanted to avoid having the simpsons go to hollywood so they make up that bart goes to the shelbyville playboy mansion and these aren't fun things to talk about google hugh hefner allegations it's not fun there's a documentary you can watch it on your own many episodes and these aren't fun things to talk about google hugh hefner allegations it's not fun there's a documentary you can watch it on your own many episodes and these aren't fun things to talk about google hugh hefner allegations it's not fun you

know the last years of his life revealed a lot let's say it makes these playboy mansion jokes that were innocent then and entirely intentionally innocent it puts a dark shade over them unfortunately i do like bart drawn with his bubble pipe that That's cute. Cute joke. And jokes about desalinization plants always make me laugh. And if I may praise Hugh Hefner, I like his reading on the word no, because it just kind of hangs there. His take on no is no. And then the scene just cuts. Yes.

It's a very bored. Well, let's call it a Lorne Michaels-y no. No. I mean, Lorne wouldn't want you to call him Lorne either, probably. I would guess he'd want you to call him Mr. Michaels, I would think. Well you to call him Lorne either, probably. I would guess he'd want you to call him Mr. Michaels, I would think. Well, Marcus talked to Lorne, I believe. Every time, I've always just been just an all just Mr. Michaels. And I have to say, every time I've talked to him, definitely during the SNL production, when he's in production,

it's a little bit more just like, he's in work you get it he's definitely nice but when i've seen him out of the show and stuff a few times smiles and just really nice i got to make him laugh once so that was like a huge thing to get a laugh from him i was like i will take forever but yeah always mr michaels whenever i've met him i'm sure he'd be fine with lauren but yeah then we get to our big musical guests of the episode. You told our agent this place holds 30,000 people. It does. We had 30,000 here last night. Now play.

The audience is getting restless. We want Chili Willie. We want Chili Willie. Hey, Red Hot Chili Peppers, would you guys like to appear on a Krusty the Clown special? Sure, if you can get us out of this gig. No problemo. Hey Mo, look over there. What? What am I looking at? I don't see nothing. I'm gonna stop looking soon. What? What is that? Hey Mo, can I look too? Sure, but it'll cost you. My wallet's in the car.

He is so stupid. And now back to the wall. I love that. Anytime I return to doing something stupid, I think to myself, and now back to the wall. It's perfect. I do want to let people know about Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'll give you one hot minute, if you will, on the band. Hi. And yes, they were very red hot because they're between Blood Sugar Sex Magic

and One Hot Minute, two very big albums. And I will say that Eric Marshall lucked out by being in the band when he was because depicted here are Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Chad Smith, and Eric Marshall. John Frusciante was a band member who left abruptly while on tour in 1992 and was replaced with Eric Marshall very briefly, I believe for a year or less than a year. Frusciante was growing uncomfortable with how popular the band was getting, but he rejoined the band in 1998 after Alex Navarro, I'm thinking of former guest.

Dave Navarro. Dave Navarro, there you go, was fired. So Eric was in the band for basically a year or less, and because of when he was in the band, he is immortalized on The Simpsons. He is so lucky. I also saw another thing is lucky for him he is apparently was a regular musician for macy gray for a little while so he's also in the spider-man movie from 2002 behind macy gray in that scene so he gets to

luckily be in one of the biggest movies of all time and in one of the most remembered simpsons episodes of all time too a red hot fact i learned recently thanks to the great john mulaney tv show everybody's in la he has on flea because they are la legends the entire band and a question mulaney asks is flea prefers that you call them the red hots if you call them the Red Hots. If you call them the Chili Peppers, he wants to fight you. So only refer to them as the Red Hots, which I did in my entire notes flea. So don't hurt me. I did not know that until seeing that in Everybody's in LA. He's getting older, but he can still hurt you. Oh man, he's got those thick ropey muscles.

Yeah. The strength of a bassist. So I had to ask my mom back then to explain to me what this Chili Willie and the Red Hot Peppers joke was. I did not get it then. I barely get it now. Barney, do you think he's going to see the cartoon character Chili Willie, or is this something else entirely? There was a UK group called Chili Willie and the Red Hot Peppers. Oh, I'm learning this for the first time. Thank you, Henry.

I assume Barney was drunk and thought he was going to see a cartoon penguin stumble on the stage. They get those guys. They tried to get the Rolling Stones. That's the only ones they named, apparently, the Red Hots. Like, let's say fifth or sixth, but they definitely weren't the first choice. Rolling Stones was the only one that I heard Mike Reese name, probably because they were able to get them later. Then we have a great joke of Liz Taylor turning them down, which I love that gag that, like, in real life, if little kids came to a celebrity's front door,

they would say, no, go away. They wouldn't even meet them. Miss Taylor, a couple of grade school kids wanted you to be on a Krusty special. I told them to puzzle off. Good. And this thing with the diamond is something I looked up for the first time. This is literally the Elizabeth Taylor diamond that Richard Burton purchased for her in 1968. It had some other name before, but it was recently auctioned off in 2011 for the equivalent of 12 million dollars in today's

money so this was her iconic diamond but they just were reusing her from her use in lisa's first words episode where she says daddy as maggie then they cut to crusty he's gained a ton of weight in the original script it was because he was building popsicle stick statues but he had to eat the popsicles to make them i mean they instead make it into like a weight watchers gag i guess or a slim fast yes slim fast yeah yeah i love the big fat crusty design too it's very funny he heads home he moves in with the simpsons more silent marge as she silently both trains with crusty and watches homer tear apart their couch originally in script, the joke with the fold-out couch, that was for Bill Murray. And again, the joke was Bill Murray, the kids don't even contact Bill Murray.

Bill Murray contacts them and invites himself there. It was an extra funny gag. We then see a training montage. Homer gets beaten up by Krusty. We see Maggie saves him by changing the channel we see crusty smack homer in the face he's mainly hurting homer as part of his rocky style training here and then a good gag that once he gets in great shape his body instantly turns back to the classic crusty shape which is somewhat fat the default male body on The Simpsons. And don't forget, listeners,

the reason he has that body shape is because the joke with Krusty originally is he looks just like Homer, but Bart is in love with Krusty while he hates Homer. That's the original reason they look exactly the same. Yes, Krusty and Radioactive Man. It's a very clever joke that gets kind of lost,

and I saw in a recent-ish episode of Simpsons, they make a joke that, like, kind of lost and i saw in like a recent ish episode of simpsons they make a joke that like wow you and homer look so much alike but you like you're drawn by the same lazy character designer and i get that it's a self-deprecating joke about their character designs but i still was like no the joke is that it's intentional it's the but i was also annoyed in that episode that crusty's makeup was makeup when it ain't makeup. But this is enough complaining from an old man about cartoon. Okay. So Krusty's getting the band back together.

His next stop is with the side show Mel. But you gotta come back, Mel. We're a team. No, Krusty. You always treated me rather shabbily. On our last show, you poured liquid nitrogen down my pants and cracked my buttocks with a hammer. Oh, come on. You want to waste your life hanging out with a bunch of dorky teenagers? Here's your taco, mister.

Whoops, fell in the fryer. I'll get it out. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Sorry, Krusty. I like it here. Mr. Johansson treats me with dignity. Is this clown bothering you, Mel? No, it's all right, Mr. Johansson. I'll handle it. Here's your taco, sir. I don't want it.

But this comes out of my salary. If I had a girlfriend, she'd kill me. You know, when I was a dorky teenager, that line came back to haunt me a lot. I could hear Dan Castellaneta say, ow, for an hour. I go, ow, ow. But yeah, this is him coming back to mel to get him back i like to the mel he was mean to mel and mel shouldn't want to come back but it's extra funny that his examples are being treated poorly in a clown sketch getting cracked in the buttocks with a hammer which is like but that's what clowns do it's the joke but that he feels more respected as a cashier at gulp and blow like that he actually loves it

it's the return of gulp and blow from i married marge right it's only second appearance in the original script here's one more good joke they cut but it was an extra joke for you after who has no other scenes in this other than the wine glass bit which is Hefner is with several Playboy bunnies coming to the show, and he runs into Edna Krabappel. And Krabappel says to him, hey, do you remember me? I was in the Girls of Bryn Mawr issue 1966, but my name was Edna Sourpuss back then. Then she ends up with Hugh and they leave together. And Hugh does a joke saying make sure to put James Caan to sleep at night since I'm going to be out late I thought something was up because Marsha Wallace is credited as a guest voice and whenever that happens it's because

they cut out her scene if she's not present in the episode it happened in the softball one as well she was in it they recorded her they cut out her scene but she still remains in the credits wow so it's just like Homer at the bat where where in Homer at the Bat, she was supposed to be there to seduce Jose Canseco. Now she seduces Hugh Hefner. In both cases, they get cut out of the episode. I hope Marsha Wallace at least got her payday for that. There's one other big joke they cut from it. Then we see Krusty Lou Studios. he's training for his new sidekick sideshow luke perry which it was very cute when it was like happy hundred episodes simpsons luke perry

filmed one and he was like ah you know you always remember your first time being shot out of a canon and he calls himself sideshow luke perry it was very cute yeah he passed away from a stroke at 52 in 2019 breakout star of beverly hills 90210 he's on it from the beginning but it's a slow introduction of the dylan character and then when he's there the show really heats up he's sort of like the heather locklear of 90210 even though 90210 came out first it's in its third season i think at this point the luke perry bit is interesting too because in monorail they have a mean joke about luke perry being old he is not the oldest cast member on the show i think that's gabrielle carteris who plays andrea and she is on the cusp of 30 as a high schooler folks that's where the luke perry stand-in in the monorail

episode smiles and his face is all wrinkles and it is is a very, I guess Luke Perry had a very good sense of humor to do the show, or he didn't know they were going to do that joke when he recorded. I feel like when this episode was like the Luke Perry peak, like he's always been famous and stuff, but he just hosted Saturday night live earlier that year. And I just feel like in terms of his fame, he had that probably at the time was just, he'd never been more popular. And a great gag in Krusty's vision at Peephole Magazine says a new look for Luke.

They plan this out. Then we see the headline, Krusty's comeback. And then we see Gabbo to have real boy operation. That's his big stunt. But this seems to be when everybody turns on gabbo and nobody's into him anymore like gabbo flops that this is our last time seeing gabbo until he's at a native american casino in a season 12 episode bart to the future the future yeah famous for something else entirely but gabbo and arthur crandall make an appearance yeah no i guess famous for two things now. It's true. Yeah. That is the prediction episode for presidential politics.

But we did see Gabbo's corpse at Universal Studios Hollywood recently, didn't we? Yeah. Gabbo behind glass in the second floor eatery section of Krusty Burger. Also in the script, this takes me back to the Ray J. Johnson joke, because when they do it, Mike Reese is like, oh, wow, we're making fun of a future guest star on The Simpsons because Ray J. Johnson would do the show in season 13. And then in the script, the guest that Gabbo rolls his head at is C&C Music Factory, not Ray J. Johnson. Never to appear on The Simpsons.

Though originally C&C Music Factory was going to be part of the Yellow Album, which I was just doing some early Yellow Album research. Well, they dodged a big yellow bullet. So yes, not only is Gabbo scared, but Krusty is making some plans behind the scenes. I don't like it. He's got Johnny Carson, Bette Midler, and you have none. What do we got? Ray J. Johnson.

Oy, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay, yay. Now, boys, the network has a problem with some of your lyrics. Would you mind changing them for the show? Forget you, clown. Hey, our lyrics are like our children, man. No way. Well, okay. But hear what you say.

What I got, you gotta get and put it in you. How about just, what I'd like is I'd like to hug and kiss you. Wow. That's much better better everyone can enjoy that i believe the lucky member of the red hots there is eric is the last guy talking i think that entire thing is also staged just like a recreation of showbiz history from the 1991 oliver stone the doors movie which recreates the story which I believe is true that they were told to change the lyrics of Light My Fire from Girl We Couldn't Get Much Higher to something else and then Morrison sings the line on the TV instead I mean they frame it in the movie as like Sullivan's trying to stay hip and cool, not unlike Johnny Carson would in the 80s too.

I thought it was a story about the Rolling Stones who are asked to sing, let's spend some time together instead of the lyric, let's spend the night together. I think it's both maybe. I've heard both of those separate stories about Sullivan. I haven't seen the Doors film. I've only heard the Rolling Stones anecdote. Definitely it is posed like the scene is in the Oliver Stone movie. They're told backstage and they're looking in the mirror. If it was exactly the same, Ed Sullivan would have been the one telling them instead of Ed Sullivan, one of his producers, telling them, like, hey, why don't you do it this way?

Though if you watch the performance on the TV versus the way val kilmer plays it in the movie it's much bigger the way val kilmer plays it surprisingly val kilmer did it very big in the oliver stone movie but i love that they're told to change their lyrics and then they're like oh that's not they love it they're they're very agreeable everyone can enjoy that in the original script though the joke was crust tells them, don't you guys know you're going to be performing in your underwear? And they're like, yeah. He's like, all right. Woo.

Or there's a joke that he yoinks away the drumsticks while they're playing and then they yoink off his red nose. So those are two cut chili pepper gags. Sorry, the Red Hots, the Red Hots gags. He's coming for you. Lock your door. Lock your podcast room door. I think this is before, I'll call them RHCP. They escalated things to just wearing socks over their genitals.

That's them, right? And if you watch Woodstock 99, you'll just see all of Flea flopping around during their big performance. I think they started with socks, but they didn't remain on. To move from, here's a great transition, Woodstock 99 to the music of Stephen Sondheim. The last time we covered this, that's when I learned that these are not the actual lyrics to Send in the Clowns. Now that I've heard the original, I prefer the Krusty version. I don't know if that's sacrilege or not.

Live from Springfield, the entertainment capital of this state, the Crusty Comeback Special. Send in the clowns. Those daffy, laffy clowns. Send in those soulful and doleful schmokes by the bowlful clowns. Send in the clowns. They're already here. I love you, Krusty. Quiet. As a kid, I thought these were the real lyrics, too.

I think it wasn't until we covered this the first time that I watched the performance of it. Now, this time, I watched an entire 1990 filmed performance of A Little Night Music. As we were telling Mark off the air, we had a lot of time to work on this episode of Talking Simpsons. Yes. The original Send in the Clowns was written for the 1973 musical A Little Night Music. It's really the only song anybody remembers from it. When I watched that 1990 performance in the intermission, they interview Sondheim and the only questions are about Send in the Clown. He's actually kind of annoyed at the end. He's like, what else do you want me to tell you? I wrote it in B flat. Is that good enough?

What do you want? It seemed to me like Sondheim wanted to talk about more than just that one song. You likely discovered this too, Henry. I found out that this song was popularized through the Frank Sinatra comeback album, Old Blue Eyes Is Back, the early 70s album. So we have the scene is framed like the Elvis comeback special, but then he's singing a song from the frank sinatra comeback album well not from that album that's where everybody knew it from from this generation and he's definitely dressed like sinatra would have been dressed to sinatra he was on carson a lot of times right right mark sinatra only went on with johnny one time as a scheduled guest he was supposed to go on another time. Believe it or not, Carson's like, we're going to do this show live because they would always do it live

on tape, but they were recorded earlier, but all the mistakes got him, but they were going to go live permanently. And the staff members that had kids at Carson's show were like, we're not doing this. So this is an actual canceled. And then he made a cameo one time, but that's about it. He went on with Joey Bishop. he was a guest when bishop before that like in the 60s they were friends they were definitely carson and sinatra were friends but yeah sinatra didn't do tons of tv carson was like a little kid he was so excited yeah i had just seen a clip from like rickles is joking around with sinatra in between him and carson like oh this is a melting pot here you

would think yeah i mean they did that this famous clip in st louis and with the rat pack and carson was the mc filling in for i forget who was filling in for one of the rat pack it's on youtube but that was a carson with yes sinatra and all of them and if you enjoy the album old blue eyes is back you may enjoy brent spiner's album old yellow eyes is back from 1991 if you want to hear what data sounds like singing old pop standards the album exists was he trying to be like shatner like doing that is that what he was i think he saw what seth mcfarland would do in 20 years and he wanted to get on the bandwagon there we go smart man a little night music is it gave me new context for watching the whole thing,

that like the song, Send in the Clowns, it is written for a woman who's later in life that she's like, oh, here I waited for this man all this time, and now it's too late and he's not going to get with me, and so Send in the Clowns, like we should be laughing instead of being sad. It's so funny that that turns into like this, you know, written by Stephen Sondheim, a gay man, sung by a woman about this lost love.

And then like one of the most heterosexual men who has ever lived, Frank Sinatra, like turns it into his own. A Little Night Music, it seemed fine. I mean, hey, look, Stephen Sondheim's the best. You're not wasting your time at a Stephen Sondheim performance, any of his things.

But last bit of history on that, he originally wrote that song to be sung by Glynis Collins. She's Sister Suffragette from Mary Poppins, that actress. Yeah, she just passed away in the last year or so. She was, yeah. And he wrote it for her. You can see performances of her version of it, which is very good.

It's very good. Yes, the posing on this is amazing. The way he says schmaltz by the bowl full and his movement on schmaltz, like that has stuck with me forever. And this is Brad Bird stepping in to do some of this, right? Brad Bird loved Krusty so much. And I think there's a little Silverman in here too,

but it's mainly Bird because he would just take the pencil from the animator and be like, nope, I'm drawing every key pose in this scene. I'm sending it out. Like feel safe in assuming that Brad Bird's favorite character was Krusty the Clown. I think that's safe to say. And then they, for the 800th time in the show, reference the reunion of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin as when Mel comes out and hugs Krusty. I mean, there's other showbiz reunions, but they've said it on the commentary many times.

Like, wow, we're referencing the Martin and Lewis reunion again, aren't we? That's such an amazing YouTube clip. I mean, just the history. Jerry Lewis's space alone. But yeah, it's an easy go-to just because it was so iconic. Well, we've talked about it before. But the way, Bob, you mentioned, like, they're all all drunk but Sinatra is like fucking around with them the entire time just like well you want a room he's having a fun time there the whole clip

it's not as sweet and sensitive as you would think it gets kind of bawdy yeah I think Lewis is really emotional and for the once in his life a little speechless showing his love to Dean and just doesn't yeah it was definitely out of character for him i believe in one of the tellings of the story i read is like sinatra done a vegas performance they get back into the dressing room get into drinking and they're like well you know the telethon's here too why don't we surprise them and then come in and that's a version of the story i've heard told anyway by jerry lewis's son they reunite they hug then cut to luke perry in his cannon about to be blasted off and it's a great series like this is just like a looney tunes gag which schwarzwelder is so good at writing he smashes through everything including half-priced acid being sold at the quickie mart a

great gag the sandpaper factory and then he lands safely in the pillow factory that is then demolished all around him. We cut to the Red Hots performing their song Give It Away. So, hey, another big paycheck for them, too, for the song licensing right for this episode. So that's probably a little back pay for them appearing in here. I also like Gimme a Bigger Lolly. That's a great gag, too. It did remind me of now watching a little bit of Carson Bitts. He liked dressing up in silly costumes, not just famous characters but i just watched one the joke is he's like a white trash guy eating ribs and the joke was a parody of those god bob we just talked about

it for futurama but the guy selling the classical collections like oh haven't you wanted to own these songs on an album well now you can which is the compilation cds or i guess records it would be back then and carson was playing like a white trash guy selling that and so the joke was like wow johnny carson wearing a dirty white undershirt eating ribs like didn't seem like that was the gag they would just put him in a lot he would do everyone from like rambo dressing up like rambo to to Mr. Rogers. He played a Shirley Temple character named Shirley Dimple in New York as a little girl. He definitely, the sight gags and stuff. He played Carl Sagan, he did Reagan.

Yeah, that was a big deal when he would do that and play other characters and stuff, yeah. Then let's hear the final lines of Johnny Carson perhaps ever said on television, at least in air order. Now, Johnny, what you got for us? Some jokes? A little magic? Actually, I thought I'd lift this 1987 Buick Skylark over my head. Hiyo! Johnny, that's amazing! Oh yeah? Get a load of this. I've got to fire that agent.

That's a great line. We've told it before, but the way they said i've heard reese say it in many interviews everybody showed up for elizabeth taylor's recording everybody wanted to watch it they were that excited for it and then elizabeth taylor only had eyes for david silverman yep she really tried to make a love connection that day i hope he at least went out with her once i would hope i'm sure he was a perfect gentleman mark Mark, I didn't realize until redoing my research on Johnny Carson for this, like Krusty says a little magic, like Carson got his start as a magician, right? Yeah, he was a magician, the great Carsoni, when he was like 14 he started,

and then he did ventriloquism. He had a dummy named Eddie Delaney. If there was a market for ventriloquism, I mean, he was a huge Edgar Bergen fan. Charlie McCarthy was one of his idols. He probably would have kept doing it, but there really wasn't. So, yeah, he did the magic stuff and he was taking magic lessons in retirement. I mean, he was always Magic Castle was like one of his go to's in LA. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos.

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Big O Tire's Biggest Black Friday Sale is here. Did I mention that we care? last. Make an appointment online at bigotires.com or stop by one of your locally owned and operated Greater Colorado Springs Big O Tires today. Big O Black Friday savings going on now. Big O Tires, the team you trust. I also think this expectation upon Carson here is partially why he stopped appearing places because they're like, all right, what's he going to do, Johnny? You're the greatest of all time. Go and do it. I think he's one of the rare people that just got out at the right time i know that like sometimes it's been said certain athletes that are some of the best of all time stick around too long and johnny just he told his staff just tell me when that gets to be and i think yeah i definitely think the Saturday Night Live sketches, which really got started upsetting him in 1990 progressively, made him think this is near. They're going to make fun of me like this.

But like, meanwhile, podcasters never stay past their prime. They never repeat themselves. Never tell the same stories over and over. No, never make out of date references that make him sound old. Now let's head into hour three of this podcast. They did cut a good joke from the script where they ask, when Carson is doing the juggling of the Buick, Krusty asks him, why did you never do this on your show?

And then Carson says, well, you know, we always had it on the plans, but then Robert Blake would run long or Bob Hope would run long, so we'd always cut it. Which, like, now to hear that from you from you Mark that how much they cut things like that's a really good Carson history joke there. Yeah. That makes sense. And then that joke about cutting jokes got cut. The irony is delicious.

Exactly. The bit with the eyes in the diamond is intentionally a Snow White reference to Dopey's eyes in the diamonds gag there. Then we get to Bette Midler singing her song and talk about things that erase your memories. I've seen this episode many more times than I have watched the final regular Tonight Show. And if you had asked me six months ago, what song does Bette Midler sing on the final Tonight Show? I would have said, You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings because of this scene. This scene is more of my memory. But no, she does preface singing One for My Baby and One More for the Road.

She does preface by calling Carson, You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings. She does say that. So maybe that also is mixed in there, but I had totally forgotten that. She does say you're the wind beneath my wings, the audience applause. And she says, well, it's true. And then she sings wind for my baby, which is like a magical TV moment. Just amazing. Like top 10 TV moment, I'd say. Yeah. The camera, this position had never really been shown showing bet and then showing johnny's reaction and it was a such a simple thing but such a big deal and it was so emotional and you could see carson tearing up bet middle or i don't know if anything's changed but

for like for like a decade maybe two decades she said she can't watch it because it was such a so special and she's afraid so it's not going to be as, like, if she watches it. So it still gets her very emotional. And then other shows tried to copy it to make it organic, and it just looks so staged and ridiculous. Like, it's cringey. This all happened on the second-to-last Tonight Show.

I'd like to know what Mark thinks about this because this is a huge moment for television. It's such a great celebration of The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson. And then the last episode is a clip moment for television. It's such a great celebration of The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson. And then the last episode is a clip show hosted by Carson. It's very intimate, but it does feel like a bummer denouement after the exciting high of that second-to-last show. They had a post-mortem meeting after every show with Johnny and his producers,

and they were down in his office basement after the penultimate show with Bette Midler and Robin they were down in his office basement after the penultimate show with Bette Midler and Robin Williams. And like, how do we possibly top this? Should be the last show. But contractually, you know, just with everything, they had to do this last show. And it went really well. It was a great last show. But people still to this day, most people think that Bette Midler was the last show johnny's like we can't hop like he doesn't sit at his desk even at it it's right he just sits on a stool in front of the curtain the whole time right he doesn't do a monologue he definitely does some jokes but he's

not in his usual monologue mark and he's sitting on a stool and he does go to the desk for to introduce some clips here and there he's there for a little bit in the beginning. And for some of the segments, yeah, he is on the stool. And it's just like every other host would have made this a big deal, like having every big celebrity on. And Johnny just, you know, it's that is so Carson just wanting to go out quiet. I forget if it's in the second to last or the last episode that he almost begrudgingly sets up like everybody wants to see it let's show the tomahawk clip and he like sets it up it is like such a memorable moment he seemed kind of tired of showing it yeah i'm not sure when it was but

yeah there was an anniversary show in the 80s where they didn't show it because people were parodying it and just it was so it felt overexposed and the one time that they didn't show it because people were parodying it and just it was so it felt overexposed and the one time that they didn't do it in the anniversary show they got so many phone calls angry phone calls and letters from viewers that are like you need to put it in and then he just kept putting it in but it was definitely pop culture

moment that was kind of like made fun of a little bit for being just you know a little bit overexposed and stuff but yeah I think carson was tired of it but the public wanted it so he gave it to them it was 1966 i think when that happened and it's just like you watch it today i don't i think it's on youtube it's so mild when you look at it now but back then that was like so risque so much so that ed ames who passed away a couple years ago told me they didn't think it was going to air. The censors would allow it.

But Tomahawk, he throws it and it accidentally hits the crotch area of the wooden cutout. You couldn't show a toilet on TV. So to imply genitals exist was a new frontier. Carson did interviews when he was the Tonight Show host in the first couple of years that he said, if I said pregnant, I'm going to get inundated with complaint letters i mean it was such a strange time jack park getting censored for saying wc which is water closet bathroom and nbc taking it out it was definitely back then it was strange i love that scene too because that aims like he's leaving of like i gotta take this out of the wall now and carson grabs his wrist because he knows like no stop this is funny don't do that and then

because carson must have realized he had the perfect joke to make it the topper oh johnny was a genius holding him back aims told me that he wasn't embarrassed but he was pretending to be and he was going to cover it with his coat and and Carson wouldn't let him go. But Ames did not know how to throw a tomahawk. Daniel Boone opened up with Fess Parker throwing a tomahawk trick photography. It splits open a tree. So Ed Ames gets there to rehearsal, and it's his first time getting instruction, and they're like, throw it like this, do this. And he tried like 10 times and couldn't get the thing to stick in, and he's like, I'm going to look foolish. I don't want to do this i can't do it and then they said change turn it the other way so the the point is facing you it's the opposite of what most people would do and he was able to make it

stick but the whole thing was he was gonna throw one and then carson was gonna throw one they were gonna go back and forth and it was actually a hatchet it wasn't a tomahawk i don't think yeah that was definitely it almost didn't happen people had to write in to be like hey you didn't play it because you couldn't just search for johnny carson tomahawk to see the clip whenever you wanted you had to wait for johnny to show carson and his genius asked that that clip from that show it was so funny he's like i want a personal copy the vast majority of 62 to 72 was erased by NBC. Almost nearly everything. But there are some stuff that exists.

Johnny and his brilliance asked for a copy and he kept it in his desk. And that's why it still exists. The episode is on YouTube of Robin Williams, the final regular episode. And it's really interesting because he is doing it like a regular episode like he is talking about the 1992 presidential primary he's joking about dan quayle and bill clinton and ross perot they are talking about the then recent la riots like robin williams and him are joking around about that there's a lot of stuff in there that it makes it intentionally dated because it was like a regular late night episode.

And yeah, the way she sings it, the one for my baby, is amazing because it seemed like she had a joke planned, or they had a joke planned, that she's going to put like, you know, a lay on him. Like, oh, you're going on vacation. Here you go. But she rushes to do it and drops it on him and then leaves the stage. And that's because Midler said she would have just burst into tears just sob sobbing she didn't want to be on camera for that right mark she was from hawaii so the lay was to go around johnny and she was supposed to sit down but she was sobbing and ran backstage and just yeah it was just sobbing with emotion and just couldn't yeah couldn't get any words out and was just i think that everyone

knew it was going to be emotional she didn't want to sing the song by the way or mark shaman's idea her accompanist and she just didn't want to do it and he talked her into it to do it and then i have no people that i've talked to that were backstage when she just went out and she um yeah just started backstage just like the flood works and stuff. It was such an amazing moment. And that's why Carson is stuck at the desk, because Mettler was supposed to be there. And then they didn't usually back then show the whole credits. It would go on like, you know, it'd be like, thank you, good night. And maybe a little bit of credits, but they had to show the full credits because Bette was supposed to sit down.

And, you know, she wasn't there. So, yeah, it's a spectacular television. They try to make those moments and stuff and they look so fake but that was um that was special mike reese jokes that they did this gag with middler and that that she assumed that they got johnny's permission and they're like did we lie to her and say we gave johnny's permission for this or did she just assume because he's involved like they weren't clear. Yeah, I never heard that. That's interesting. Apparently, You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings is one of the most played songs

at funerals in the United Kingdom, apparently. That's on one of the lists for You Are the Wind Beneath My Wings. Her cover of it for the movie Beaches is the most popular version of the song. This is also a great joke about Krusty singing it wrong with her or in a self-centered way.

It's so funny that he makes it about, like, yes, he's agreeing with her. I am the wind beneath your wings. Thank you for finally saying it. Did you ever know that you're my hero? You're everything I would like to be You can fly higher than an eagle Cause you are the wind beneath my wings This was a great show, Krusty. You deserve an Emmy for this.

Forget it. The Academy hates me. I don't know why. Bunch of old know-nothing dinosaurs wouldn't know entertainment if it bit them in the... Hey, hey! So, we've mentioned it before but again for context this was one of the years where the simpsons was not nominated in the animation category because they were going for the regular comedy category at the emmys and i think they are

right in assuming that the emmys held it against them that they were a cartoon and so they were rarely nominated in season one they won an emmy season that they were a cartoon, and so they were rarely nominated. In season one, they won an Emmy. Season two, they won an Emmy. Season three, they were defeated by Will Vinton's Claymation Easter, and they were very upset about that. They held it against Will Vinton for forever. But I think if you look at what was winning in the 90s, as much as we loved The Simpsons for its writing, and I think they deserved Emmy nominations in the main comedy category back then, and even wins. But I look at what was winning at those times. In the 90s, it was mainly Frazier, Seinfeld, and Larry Sanders. And there was really no

beating those things in the 90s. Those were so beloved by the Emmy voters, especially Larry Sanders. But this is them kind of literally calling the emmy voters no nothing dinosaurs on television which is funny too now because the simpsons owns the animation category at the emmys they just got nominated again this year and i would peg them as the likely winners though also i wonder if it's an extra gag because bett midler did win an Emmy for that episode of Carson. She would have just won an Emmy for the thing they're parodying right there when they recorded with it. So I wonder if that is an extra context to why they did that because she had just won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music music program and so after all of this we go

to the after party which well mark you may have experienced these yourself firsthand does this seem reminiscent of the famous saturday night live after party oh thanks so i mean the at the snl parties that i've been to everybody the cast members like have these little tables normally and they have their guests and everyone stays for the most part with their own group it doesn't seem like what i've seen a lot of socialization as much there's celebrities that show up and they'll hang out and stuff and then it's just like the staff that works there at the bar because you're not allowed to sit down unless you're a writer or performer for the most part maybe like a a director. And then there's like Kevin Nealon says that for the most part, it's like either that you work on the show or you're friends with somebody or you're a gawker.

And there's a lot of gawkers. I've been a gawker at that party. You're just looking at everybody and taking it all in. But yeah, those are the ones I've been to, but I'm sure that there's exceptions. Someday me and Bob hope to be gawkers at a Simpsons premiere party. Oh, yeah. I want to mention the SNL after after party at 4 a.m. is a lot more social and fun. And yeah, that's you need a password to get in. Oh, they've been the gawkers at the Simpsons party. They will see us coming and avoid us. They would love you guys.

You guys are amazing. Thank you. At this party, Mo is very lucky to get to host the after party for such a big show as this. And as we come in, we see another joke about the love tester. Me and Bob recently just did the love tester, and we both scored better than Hugh Hefner. It's true. And people, if they saw the pics from when we went to Universal on the Talking Simpsons Twitter, they may think that we staged it like oh bob did

this like five times until he got casanova no i swear as a witness it took bob one try to get casanova why would universal lie to me actually i lied this is carson's final line of the episode now crusty i just hope you remember to save your money this time. Here's that ruby studded clown nose you ordered, Krusty. What's up, Moe? Hey, you can't come in here dressed like that. Get with the times, Moe. Yeah, I say if it feels good, do it. All right. Don't snap my undies. Adorable. I love that. Also, when I think about ruby studded clown noses i think of the cells behind me right here they're my ruby studded clown noses instead of saving money they're only appreciated they are they are they are also i love fleas screaming hey mo that's a great great take just he's so loud he's breaking mic. He must be 15 feet away from the microphone. The back of the room, you can sense the size of the room based on that screen.

And then in our final clip here, we learn about a nice term for merchandising rights. I'm a star again. I don't know how to thank you kids. That's all right, Krusty. We're getting 50% of the t-shirt sales. What? That's the sweetest plum, you little... Ah, what the hell.

You deserve it. Thanks, kids. To Krusty, the greatest entertainer in the world. Except maybe that guy. Is this the bus to the Civic Center? Henry, I gotta know, what's the original line? Because it always bums me out that this season, this great episode ends with ADR. Yeah, there's multiple cut endings from this that are there.

So here's the two different scripts. One, it ends with a group photo being taken and then crusty says i'll never forget it and then it match cuts from the photo to him hanging up the photo in his office but then the photo falls off the wall and crashes behind a couch and he's like ah whatever so there's that joke then originally they don't have the greatest entertainer of all time but it just ends with everybody around the pool table instead of around carson and then it smash cuts to just a black screen that says end up hawk hacked so that was their other callback in the original script both really funny yeah i like that first one i don't know people would have remembered worker and parasite 15 minutes later though or that that little segment that little joke from it i guess

it had been a while this had been so built around carson and carson legacy and history that it makes sense that it's like okay let's end with one final hurrah for johnny carson and calling him the greatest entertainer of all time and him playing the accordion while balancing two old men on his head like and playing the theme of the show it completes it as a tribute to johnny carson for sure and they cut a joke that luke perry and bandages still gets a bunch of hot ladies like Krusty says oh do the ladies love him now and they said yeah look and he's posing for pictures with the ladies he's just mildly bandaged at this party no line or anything but he survived his encounter

with the sandpaper factory and the acid and the exploding pillow factory pillow warehouse and in the script they call it out but you can spot it in the scene too liz taylor is staring in the window from the outside wishing she was there which is a great gag too and they credit that's the sweetest plum is a line from conan they say that that's him using like funny old showbiz speech which i love and it does feel like them joking about simpsons money because like the simpsons writers weren't getting that t-shirt money somebody's getting those t-shirts money but it wasn't the writers and maybe not Sam Simon either as perhaps why he quit the show now I think of like oh we're getting 50% of the t-shirt sales that feels like them joking about t-shirt money in the Simpsons offices itself it's a lovely ending. I think about this ending many times because when that whole summer I would rewatch The Simpsons that I taped off TV until new episodes aired.

And I knew when I got to this scene of Johnny Carson, I was like, man, I'm going to have to start my tape rewatch over while I did very little else that summer of 1993 at home yeah this episode it's a great 1992 time capsule that still remains very funny today even though we have to explain so much of what's going on but as someone who lived through it i found it to be a touching tribute to this era of late night and also a great story about crusty and it's funny because aljean and mike reese would go on to do the critic right after this and i swear to god half of the episodes are about Jay Sherman's show getting canceled. So they really like the idea of a show getting canceled as the basis of a sitcom plot. I mean, I've heard Jean and Reese both joke they ran out of life experience to talk about that's not show business. So that's what gets put into their shows. But as a cavalcade of stars, it's fun one though as based on how much history we needed to

give as context we needed to this is basically like the history of television as an episode of the simpsons i think there's definitely funnier ones this season if you're talking about like oh what's a hilarious script there's better animated ones too though this has tons of great animation and as a dynamo season finale i think this is great and i almost feel like this could have been the season opener and then the season finale could have been their big beatles one built around having on george harrison but i think this being the finale works better as like the big end of the year blowout it feels right to me yeah yeah johnny carson is how especially i'd say internationally outside of the u blowout. It feels right to me. Yeah. Yeah. Johnny Carson is how, especially I'd say internationally,

outside of the US where The Tonight Show didn't air, a lot of people probably only know Johnny Carson as the greatest entertainer of all time as christened by The Simpsons. Any final thoughts

on this one, Mark? I thought that it held up really well. It was making me laugh out loud. I hadn't seen it forever. Yeah, the directing, as you guys mentioned, was really, really solid. I have to say the two people that weren't in the episode, I didn't miss them. You barely notice Marge doesn't say anything. It happened so gradually, you didn't even notice.

I mean, Harry is still in it, but I like Harry. I like him. He's always been very nice. He's always been nice to me and stuff, but like, yeah. They're not conspicuous in their absence, I guess you could say. Yeah. Thank you once again, Mark, for being on the show. You will receive a medal in the mail for your bravery and stamina, because I believe this is probably the longest episode of Talking Simpsons, but not one second is wasted. I defy the listener to tell us one second where we wasted your time with all the knowledge about the history of Hollywood

from the invention of the camera until today. That's what this podcast covered. But Mark, let us know where we can find you online and more about your new podcast, Inside Late Night. I love it. Oh, thanks so much. Yeah, it's Inside Late Night. We've had some amazing guests today. David Cross is on, Robert Smigel, Rachel Dratch, a lot of Saturday Night Live people. We just talk about them going on SNL, their times going on Letterman, really a wide range of guests, most of them well known. Yeah, it's just I did the Carson podcast about Johnny for eight years. So this is a new thing where it's just still late night, but a little bit more broad. But yeah, we've been having a lot of fun with it. And I am at

on Twitter, M Malkoff. And then I'm at markmalkoff.com. And you can check out my podcast on either Apple Podcast or also latenighter.com, which covers late night news. This site is fantastic. So that is me. I really appreciate, Mark, all your interviews for the Carson Podcast. I just looked up just a few of them. They gave me so much context. I've used them for research on the podcast. I think I told you that the eight hour, I watched the whole eight hour Academy of Television interview with Smigel and I still learn new things from your interview with Smigel. Oh, I'm glad. My friend Dan Pasternak conducted that interview and it took like seven years,

I think, to finally get online. I loved it. And Dan's amazing. He's done a bunch of those interviews with people. But yeah, I'm glad to hear that. And I have, again, two and a half hours of Smigel coming up. So yeah, I mean, again, I've known him since I was 17. And like that era that he was there was my favorite in terms of the writing and stuff and beyond. So we have some really good stuff that we talked about that I think people will like and hopefully learn. I'm looking forward to that David Cross one too. That sounds awesome. And yes, Mark, thank you again so much, not just for all your time today, but also for getting us in this table read. Oh my goodness, that was so much fun. I'm glad we got to do that. Nick Pruer all the way connecting us. I'm glad we got to do that. So thank you so much, Mark, again.

Thanks again to Mark Malkoff for being on the show. Please check out his podcast Inside Late Night with Mark Malkoff. And as for us, if you want to hear more of us, yes, I know what you're saying. This podcast is not long enough.

I demand to hear more of them. Well, we have plenty more over at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And if you sign up for five bucks a month, you can hear over 180 full-length bonus podcasts. You get those. On top of that, you get TalkingSimpsons and What a Cartoon one week at a time and ad-free. No ads on the Patreon. It's all happening at the $5 level.

And at that $5 level, you also get bonus episodes of both Talking futurama and talking to the hill and again that includes seven plus years worth of bonus content you get that all immediately just for five bucks at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and there is a ten dollar level as well when you sign up for that you get all the five dollar stuff naturally but then you also get one mega long podcast once a month only for patrons of that level or higher. And what is that, Henry? Bob's talking about our What a Cartoon Movie podcast, where we go super in-depth, just like we do into Carson history, into the history of an animated feature film. We are just about to wrap up our final summer of the Disney Renaissance. We are covering Mulan, Pocahontas, and now this month we are covering Tarzan, all three of those Disney

classics. We go into them super in-depth, just like an episode of The Simpsons, often for about six hours long in some cases. It's a giant extra podcast you get for $10 a month. In addition to all of the $5 things Bob just listed for you there, it's all ad-free as well. You need to check it out for yourself at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and see all the stuff you're missing out on we have covered all the disney renaissance films many pixar films many studio ghibli films a bunch of batman movies we've even covered crap like cool world and shrek and our longest podcast ever who framed roger rabbit for six and a half hours half as long as this episode you need to sign up at patreon.com slash talking Simpsons.

And I have been one of your hosts, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Twitter as Bob Servo. My other podcast is Retro Knots. That is a classic gaming podcast all about old video games. You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Retro Knots and sign up there for five bucks a month and get two bonus episodes every month.

And Henry, how about you? You can find me on Twitter at H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G. I'm also that on most other social media platforms. I'm Talking Henry on Instagram. And if you're following both of us on social media, please follow at Blue Sky Twitter and Instagram at Talk Simpsons Pod. At Talk Simpsons Pod keeps you in the loop whenever new episodes go live on our Patreon or on the free feed. Whenever we have cool stuff going on in our lives, like when we go to Universal Studios together, you will see all those cool pics for you right there.

If you follow at Talk Simpsons Pod in all the social media places. And don't forget that every previously released free episode of our podcast for Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon are available at TalkingSimpsons.com. Thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you again next time as broadcast season five kicks off with Homer's Barbershop Quartets. And we'll see you then. Now, Jacqueline, I believe it's your turn. I'll take Rainier Wolfcastle to block.

Oh, Rainier Wolfcastle, star of McBain and the upcoming film Help! My Son is a Nerd. My son returns from a fancy East Coast college, and I'm horrified to find he's a nerd. I'm laughing already. It's not a comedy. Oh. Attention, this is the Coast Guard. A 50-foot tidal wave is heading this way. All game shows off the beach.

Everybody up here to my square. It's safe and it's sexy. Oh, baby. Hurry, Charlie. There is not much time. I ain't going nowhere. I've been in this square for near 30 seasons, and I ain't leaving now. He's dead now.

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