Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin - Michael Richards

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Michael Richards is a multiple Emmy and SAG Award-winning actor best known for playing the iconic character Cosmo Kramer on the classic sitcom Seinfeld. After cutting his teeth on the Los Angeles comedy circuit alongside legends like Robin Williams, Sam Kinison, and Andy Kaufman, Richards landed minor film and TV roles throughout the 1980s, including the cultish late-night sketch comedy show Fridays and Weird Al Yankovic’s oddball comedy UHF, before exploding into pop cultural consciousness as Seinfeld’s Kramer. Richards’ latest project, his newly published book Entrances and Exits, provides an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the highs and lows of his career, from his unconventional upbringing by his schizophrenic grandmother and single mother to his training as a theater actor and honing comedic instincts on stage, his time in the army during Vietnam, and his big break. With candor and humor, Richards chronicles how his private life and curiosity shaped his comedic talents, culminating in his Kramer fame before a health scare intensified a spiritual quest informing and inspiring his insightful memoir. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://squarespace.com/tetra ------ Lucy https://lucy.co/tetra ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://drinklmnt.com/tetra ------ House of Macadamias https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/tetra

Tetragrammaton. TETRAGRAMMATON TETRAGRAMMATON TETRAGRAMMATON TETRAGRAMMATON TETRAGRAMMATON TETRAGRAMMATON You know, my grandmother took care of me, but she was touched by schizophrenia, so I was in the

midst of that. Wow. The voices, you know, she was into voices. And she was from Italy. She spoke to those voices in Italian. So I was not versed in the language, but I could feel her emotion. And they were deep conversations. And sometimes you'd get into arguments, you know, I don't know what the fight was about. But her heart was always there

with me. I was held all the time fed and well taken care of. My mother worked full time. That's about it. My father wasn't around. My grandfather was there for a little while, but when I was three, he was hit by a stroke, and that took him away. Eventually, my grandmother wandered away,

started wandering out of the house. I would follow her when I'm four, four and a half, five. But I always knew I could make my way back home, you see, she couldn't. So you would guide her back? No, I would call to her, but she would keep going. She would tell me to go home, protecting me in a sense. But where was she going?

Pshh. Wow. My mother would have to call the police, and then they'd put out a search, they'd find her, bring her home. It was over and over again like this. But you didn't have any experience of anything different, so that was normal. Quite normal. Yeah.

Yeah. And her heart was there, so, you know, when I looked back on it, I wasn't so abused or so neglected. You were loved. I was loved. While this woman stuck around as long as she could, she was there for me. I was one of the reasons for bringing her home.

I was left up for adoption, you see. So I was there for a while, adopted by a family for about two and a half weeks. Is that something? My mother came to see me, held me and cried and wanted me. So she arranged for me to come home with her. And at the time, she and her father, my grandfather felt that it could be good to have me at home, could keep my mother around because they could see that she was slipping into her void. And they would call her back, Ma, Ma, and she would come back.

But it got to the point a number of years later where the calling didn't work anymore. Wow. Yeah. So they... Fascinating to see it firsthand. Yeah. Yeah, indeed. And being in the midst of it, I had something inside me that was

moving me along. I didn't really need them telling me where to go, except they got me to the school, but that didn't hold up for me. Even when I was in school, I never really was there. Yeah, I understand. My comfort was the mountain, Baldwin Hills. I was born and raised here in Los Angeles. So that Baldwin Hills was it for me. And nature was being in nature.

Grounded all the way through. So when I see that in your book and see how you have a love for such a creation, one that holds us all up, doesn't it? Yeah. And when you tune into it, you're up and at them. Yeah, we're part of it. For sure.

Indeed. That's our family. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And you speak very clearly about that in your book. It's a great book, by the way, Rick. Thank you.

I'm imagining what that's like as a kid. In some traditions, we're told that we pick our parents. Yeah. And that we pick them, not necessarily because it's going to be fun or pleasant, but for us to know who we are, this is the experience that sets us up. It's almost like picking school by picking our parents.

Indeed. Absolutely. And it had to have some formative effect on who you are. Oh, sure. I mean, even the location. And it had to have some formative effect on who you are. Oh, sure. I mean, even the location. And there being in the Baldwin Hills and looking across at the Hollywood sign, having no idea what this town and the performing arts is all about.

But I was tuned into what I was watching on TV and Orrin Hardy was filmed in the area. I recognized how the Hauser Boulevard were down the roof putting up an antenna and stumbling about. I recognized the Baldwin Hills behind them, so I thought at five, riding around on my bike, that the Lauren Hardy were around.

So that's a nice thing to choose. Absolutely. To have those great comics in my life, even though I had no idea I was going into performing arts or to be a comic actor. But there I was identified with those two and they happened to be making a lot of their films right there in Culver City.

Right there in the gym. How much time did you spend watching television growing up? I could say quite a bit, but... SIGHS Yeah. A lot of time in the afternoons, I think, when I'd come home from school, it was on. But once I learned how to ride my bike,

I took journeys. Boy, did I ride. I went everywhere on that bike. It concerned my mother. She would come home at night and I'd still be out somewhere. Where may I be? Always ride by yourself? Yeah, usually. You know, the neighbors, they were concerned, their own kids, of hanging out with me because I'd take them out of the neighborhood on journeys down to Baloney Creek or up into the mountains or in the back lots of MGM, all that make-believe going on. As you could see that I was really touched by imagination.

I think that played into me as an artist. A very active imagination. I was really touched when I was there in the back lots of MGM seeing all this make-believe going on. Whoa, whoa, just wow. But I hadn't made the connection between that and the biz. But then I felt, oh, it's all a lot of make-believe and back to this whole thing about imagination.

And so did you get to the point? I wasn't angered. Did you get to the point where the make-believe wasn't a bad thing? It was just... It was absolutely great because I was making believe a lot. Yeah. And let's say I identified with the image of Prince Valiant on a cover of a comic book

illuminated by the sun with his sword out. I thought that was a really cool image. And I always felt the potency of the sun, the light. And while I'm there in the Baldwin Hills area, I felt that this was ultimate power at such a young age. I dressed up like Prince Valiant. I got my mother to give me a sword and stuff. I went to nursery school, grade wearing this. Probably pretty weird, maybe to protect myself in some way.

Maybe. But to take on this figure that had such a very strong figure, this became my own strength. And through the sun and in the Baldwin Hills. So I was sort of nurtured by nature, raised by the wolves, in a sense. I had no father. My mother wasn't there. My grandmother was, I refer to it as the void. She was in a place, the unconscious wherever, however,

and it eventually took her all the way. I heard you tell the story about playing chess with a homeless man. Yeah. And that feels related to this story as well. Well, the fact that I would be sitting there with a homeless man is one thing in that. Well, the fact that the homeless man had access to something. Yeah, a savant, a savant, a genius. Yeah.

A, shall we say, daemon of great intelligence, but all other sides of this man aren't able to relate to what most of us are able to do. I myself could make my way home. To me, he was partially lost. Yes. But yet, you could see this amazing intelligence. I could talk more about that, or I could tell you

one story of a homeless person I met that could draw perfect circles. Yes. It blew my mind. I thought it was impossible to draw a perfect circle. One after another. Then he took out some pictures. He was drawing tanks because he was fascinated with the circles on the track.

I thought, what a possession. What an amazing ability. Can't really hang with a nine to five just drawing perfect circles, but I wondered what else is going on in there. There's a school for gifted children here in Los Angeles, and you have to take a test, you have to have a high cue according to the test they give you. And the kids there are kind of tweaked. They move in a certain way.

They find other subjects they can't quite adapt to, but then there's one subject that they're clearly beyond. I'd say we all find our way in what we're so focused at doing, because I can carry all the savants within me. I got focused on one subject, how about you? Did you get focused on one subject? I did, I did. And I had to make a choice between different subjects because if you want to

really be good at something, you can't do everything. I had that feeling. Yeah, Goethe said that, you know, not to get too involved in so many, but get more focused in the one and that one will open up the many. That's exactly what happened. When did you realize that your situation was not the norm? Well, see, I was normalized because I found acting in the eighth grade. But up until that point, I wasn't really functioning in school. I was just going to school because my friends were there. I was not plugged in.

Yeah. So today, that would be considered a big disorder. You're probably put on some kind of medication to conform, get with it. Yeah. Well, you can't fit in. Yeah. He's problematic.

I didn't create problems in classroom. I wasn't a disturbance. I just didn't participate. Did you just not care? I wasn't careful or caring in that I was interested. I wasn't interested in anything that they were providing. Yeah. I just felt like it had nothing to do with you.

Yeah. I would just sit and wait for the class to be over. Yeah. Phew. All classes? Was there anything? Everything. I never took a book home.

Now you could associate, well, gee, I know fathered. His grandmother's a schizophrenic. Well, naturally, this is problematic. And that way, he can't function like the rest of us. He hasn't been brought up in a normal way. Ha ha ha. How did you find acting? I was sitting in an English class, not paying attention. And they brought some actors in from the drama class here in eighth grade.

And they started doing these scenes for us. And I just leaned forward and went, what is this? Ah, make believe. Yeah. So school did actually work for you because you found your calling through it. Oh, yeah. You're exposed to it. Oh, yeah. Indeed. This was exposed to it. Oh yeah, indeed.

This was available to me and as an elective I could take it next semester. And when I did, that was it. What was it like being in a class? What were you occupying yourself with? Did you feel like a prisoner? No, I kid around about that and the Bells and the Bells, they make them be deaf like Wazimoto

and the Hunchback of Notre Dame because we were moved by Bells all throughout the day. But I never felt imprisoned or anything. I think what held me up was my sense of humor because I was always making my friends laugh and I was always goofing around. Were you class clown? Not in the class, I didn't disrupt.

I never did disrupt. Although if the teacher wasn't looking, I could make a face or do something that would get a couple of the kids going. And then, you know, a good trickster isn't caught. And I was a trickster. I really discovered that when I was in the Army. Ooh, man, I was a trickster.

How did you end up in the Army? I was drafted. Yeah, during the Vietnam War. Wow. Everybody around me says, You were really drained up in the army. I was drafted. Yeah, during Vietnam War. Wow. Everybody around me says, well, pack your bag, head to Canada. I said, no, no, I'm gonna go in and check this out.

And I had this feeling too that I wasn't gonna go to Vietnam. I had, I said that, no, they're not, I'm not going to Nam, I'm not. So what, are you crazy? You're definitely going to NAMM. So what, are you crazy? You're definitely going to NAMM. Yeah. Would you call it a knowingness?

How do you describe it? Intellectualism, what do we call it? There's lots of words for this, lots of words for this. But there's a difference between a desire and a knowingness. Probably so. Although out of the knowingness, I had a desire to go knowingness. Probably so. Although out of the knowingness, I had a desire to go into the service and check it out.

But it may be also because as a kid, I watched a lot of army movies. Like most kids, into battle and stuff, playing with army men, playing battle in the street. That's why they make the movies. Yeah, probably so to get you into that. But War and the Warrior, it's archetypal, you know, the whole- Goes back to your sword.

Probably. Very good. Yeah, probably. And most of the kids thought that was a very good, a good outfit I had on. Hey, let me try that sword on me. You know, sure. Yeah. Did you ever have anything like this?

I used to walk along the railroad tracks by myself and I'd be walking along, all of a sudden I'd feel like I have to turn around. Can't go any further. Just felt like if I go any further, something's gonna happen and I'm not gonna like it. So I'd turn around, start walking, maybe 50 feet. I feel inclined to turn and look.

And there I see some big kids coming out of the bushes. Now how did I know they were there? Always say intuition. Just like in show business, always knowing all along this is where I'm supposed to be. If the light's bright enough, all the moths are going to appear. And I said, you got to get an agent.

You got to... No, no, no, I don't do that. I just fool around in this club here. I don't have much of an act. I just get up on the stage most every night, had been made a regular within a month, and I'm just ding-donging around on stage and getting laughs. Well, you gotta construct it, get that six minutes, go on to tonight show.

No, no, no, I won't be here very long. I knew I wasn't a standup comedy. Always was an actor and very, very good at it up until this point. I've done lots of plays, usually the leads, you know, in junior college environment. Always comedy? And high, in a junior college environment. Always comedy? No, acting.

Full out make-believe, stepping into a character. That makes sense to me. I get that language and... Now at a young age, in first grade, I don't know who taught me to read, Rick. I could read. I just remember reading. And when I read, I think it was run, dit, see, jane. I knew what an exclamation point was. So I'd run, dit, see, jane. I'd really get into it. So much so that the class would laugh. Of course, the teacher didn't like that I could get such a reaction, so she didn't call

on me to read anymore. That's when I shut down, really shut down. I see. From then up until fifth grade, I was not involved. Not that I was holding any grudges, I just wasn't, well, you know, if I can't. So I discovered reading again when I took that drama class and they handed me some, maybe a mimeograph sheet, some dialogue, and I started to read,

and then I lifted it, and it was so natural to be the character. Just lovely. From the character. Just lovely. From the beginning? Yeah. And no, at that point, no real training in it? No training. Natural.

The teacher came up to me and immediately put me into some kind of competition. They were doing a scene from the Tempest. It's UCLA for all the junior high school competing. And they gave me the role of Caliban, and I lowered the voice and was dragging my leg around, and relating to the Baldwin Hills, the loss of the aisle

that his mother, Sycorax, had given him. And I was relating to the loss of the Baldwin Hills, because my mother had moved to the Valley, and I was at a school there, and I didn't have that Baldwin Hills anymore, which I was relating to the loss of the Baldwin Hills because my mother had moved to the valley and I was at a school there And I didn't have that Baldwin Hills anymore, which I was in a lot More so than watching a lot of TV, but I watched TV fascinated with all that going on What would you have watched as a kid comedies? Mostly comedies. I watched I miss an Andy. I think it was I love Lucy and then later got into Bob Cummings, Love That Bob, you know, Danny Thomas and Phil

Silver, these wonderful character actors. Joan Davis, remember her? She was a physical comedian. She really threw herself around. She was very funny to me, but I didn't know what any of that meant. ["Square Space"] So much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base

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Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com slash tetra and get started today. When you tell me about your theatrical background, it makes perfect sense to me because I had been told you came up and stand up, and I was thinking, doesn't make sense. No. You can see that's not you.

I'm sure you can do it. Well, you're very perceptive. You can see it's not you. I think of you as like John Barrymore. John Barrymore's very funny, but a great Shakespearean actor. I would assume you were a Shakespearean actor if I didn't know better.

Yeah, I was into that. I studied classical theater. I know a lot of my education at CalArts and how I got into performance, and those people behind performance, great directors, great playwrights. The kinds of theater I was drawn to, always the avant-garde, the eccentric stuff,

Pinter, Beckett, you know, Inesco was a lot of fun. That was pure data. You could take the language and lift it and take it anywhere you wanna go. There you could really play with the dialogue. You know, you weren't not like Chekhov, which is deeply psychological. You have to adhere to the character, the real person that you're playing. Was that fun too? All sides of it were good?

That got me into psychology. What moves the character? What moves myself? These kinds of questions were coming up for me when I was at Cal Arts. Had excellent teachers, you know, who knew about the inside life. That's what I loved about your book, you know, your insight into the subjective nature of the artist in acquiring himself, coming into the best, noting, of course, that there's a talent that this artist is sitting on.

And that's a lot of power. Were you able to protect your natural gift in the context of learning from experts? Yeah, I think so. Experts, you know, people good at what they do. What they do, if it interests me, I'm right alongside. If it doesn't, I just look elsewhere. I don't fight. I don't remember anyone really kicking me around

to do it their way. Even in the service, I pretty much made that my own world. I transformed it into acting. Did you end up going to Vietnam? I was all prepared to go as a medic. That's another side of me. Because my mother was a medical record librarian when I was in 11th and 12th grade.

And so I worked as an orderly during the summertime in the hospital. And from that, in my senior year, I became an ambulance assistant. And so this kind of experience when I was drafted, the Army saw, whoa, whoa, you know, I'm a 19 year old kid with this kind of, you know, I'm gonna attend to an ambulance.

So they put me in a medical school for about seven months. What was that like? Fine with me. Was it interesting to you or no? I made everybody laugh. I was constantly keeping everybody up and at him. I had that haha going on a lot Good nature. I was cool with the training I was sharp enough to take it on and you know, just get it done. I

Learned that in basic training very odd. There was a drill sergeant. He used to say, buck up, fuckhead. You know, buck up. Because he'd see me, I used to, if I was doing something like going across the bars and it hurt, I'd just drop off. That's the end. I would even explain to him, it hurts my shoulder. I can't do any more of that. He would like do a double take.

He couldn't believe I was actually trying to explain to him why I dropped off. I'm just not into that kind of pain. And I'm trying to do it sincerely, not as a rebel. No, you were being honest. No, I was being very, very honest. I have tears in my eyes. It just hurts too much. And I would just, and one time he said,

he picked me up and he said he wanted me in a cockroach position. I had to lay on my back with my legs straight up, my arms, and he was just torturing me. I was supposed to break. You start to quiver. For some reason, physiologically, I can hold this longer than like an old yogi or something,

which, interesting enough, I took up Ayan Gha Yoga for well over 20 years. And you know, in holding those positions, come on baby, you got your breath because you're going to need it. You cannot hold that asana without breathing correctly. Anyway, this was probably a precursor to doing yoga much, much, much later on, or maybe in a past lifetime, so to speak. Why am I holding this crazy position for so long?

He's screaming at me to die! Cockroach! Die! Really? I wouldn't die. I had it fixed. That's amazing. And I'm like, then he was ordering me to stand up and I wouldn't stand up. No, because you were being in the cockpit. I was just holding that position. Then he walked away, he started yelling at somebody else and from a distance he told me to get the fuck up on my feet. I knew he meant, and I got on my feet, got any attention. And he walked over, he put his face right in front of mine. He says, so you can buck up, huh?

Fuckhead. In other words, you see the pain you just went through? Yeah. You see what you just did? Yeah. That's what we're talking about. That's what we're doing here. Yeah. Buck up.

So I used to say that a lot to myself when the going was tough much later on, particularly my career, we're up late, we gotta get a shot. I'd say to myself, buck up, fuckhead. Buck up. Would it work? Yeah.

Buck up, because there's more in me. Certainly in yoga, an advanced level of yoga, you're holding a sign, you think, I can't do this. You can. You can go much further. And a good teacher knows that. We can go longer here. You're going to make it.

Then you get in your place where you actually enjoy it. Oh boy, there you go. Yeah, because you're impressing yourself with the ability to do it. It's exciting. Yeah, you're tapping into stamina. Yeah. Strength.

Feels good. Yeah. Are you a perfectionist? Could be. I have to be to get as far as I can go. Then I have to back off. I know. I know that could be a bummer.

On Seinfeld, for instance, I was very hard on myself. Very, very hard on myself. I never even watched the shows. Every time I watched a show, I'd go, I'd always see how it could be better. And it wasn't until much later, well after Seinfeld, I sat down and watched them with my son. My son's laughing and enjoying. Here he is.

He's 10 years old, 11 years old. And we're just together watching these Seinfeld shows in sequence, thanks to Nick Felix. And I was watching him for the first time, and I was just so proud to be a part of such a great cast. And it's funny. It's OK. I get this.

Wow, this is really OK. And I could see myself objectively. I wasn't like ah Enough time had passed a lot of time. Yeah Rick almost 20 years Wow So am I a perfectionist that's a tough one it's really tough because you know that hard work you got to get it You got to get you you gotta draw it out. It's work. There's a work involved.

Here's a question about what perfection is. Is it perfection when you think it's perfection or is it perfection when the audience reacts? Well, it's perfect when the audience reacts and you want them to laugh at that point. And you have the responsibility, everybody's counting on you to do the blow, button up that seed and get a laugh. Sometimes the line doesn't work.

I'd come up with all kinds of tricks with my voice, with a face, with a body movement, certain ticks that I just innately knew would draw out the laugh, but ultimate perfection really would be the result, I think, that you've succeeded in moving the audience, getting them to laugh. That's your business. That's your job. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it felt like in Seinfeld you accomplished that task.

Surely. I mean, Jerry was much more at ease. He laughed at me and my process. He just thought it was funny what I was putting myself through. But I'd be very quiet. I had my own little place. I'd lay, I'd visualize the whole scene, all the ways I could go, the way I'm coming through the door, the way I'm going to stand by that counter.

Standing by a counter can be funny. Just standing by a counter can be very, very funny. Can you find the funny in just standing there without a line? Yeah. So I'd create backstories that would kind of entertain me so I'd keep my characters potently alive and I'm gonna have to wait for the next line to come.

It's funny even to hear you talk about it. It's just a funny idea. It seems insane. It's funny. It's funny even to hear you talk about it. It's just a funny idea. It seems insane. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny and it seems- But you've seen it. You've been around enough artists who God knows what they're going through

to get the right lyric, to get the beat, to get the rhythm. No, no, that's not again. You're going, no, wait, wait, wait. It's okay. It's okay. But it's not okay. It's not okay until he's arrived. You have to arrive.

As much as you were prepared and focused and making it happen, seemed like Jerry was the exact opposite. Like he was barely there. I always felt like he had the luxury of working through others. He had a lot of people around him. It's true.

Assisting him. It's true. And me, I always felt more isolated. I had to come all the way through and invent a character, voice, look, mannerisms, justify it so I don't get too broad. It's got to fit in because everybody's playing close to themselves. You got to believe that this guy, you could meet this guy on the street of New York. But at the same time, I'm pushing it. I'm pushing it and elevating it, but I was always fearful of falling into caricature. So you see,

I've got my own little deal that I have to work through. But Jerry just was Jerry. Yeah. Could it ever go too far and still be believable? Oh. It's like, where's the line? I started to take it off the laugh. The line was the laugh. If I'm getting the laugh, the audience was starting to move me along. I could feel how much they were going

to take, certain intuition feeling them. How important is the audience in all of this in terms of like when you're performing, theater, television, and then movies where there isn't nobody's clapping? That's right. But there you have to know, one hand clapping. I mean, there you have to know where the audience is going to come through because they're not there. We made the pilot without an audience.

And we all just presume that the lefts were going to be there. We're in the place that they should be. At times, I hated that audience because, not a real hate, but I mean, I trained in theater and I don't like to blow a line or make a mistake in front of the audience. And if I have to do it again, I know the response isn't going to be as strong because I've already seen the scene, they've already seen the bit. So now I have to freshen it up, particularly if I'm doing physical comedy. If I know that I'm coming to a bit I'm going to do,

I won't step into it unless I know that all the lines up to this point are okay. Yeah. Otherwise I'll flub and just take the scene again, because I don't want to give away my hand, so to speak. You know, I did live television on ABC for three years on Fridays, a live sketch comedy show. I dare not look at the cue cards because I have to be in character. That's my kick. So I don't look at the cue cards to get my lines. I see

actors on camera and go, I cannot do that. What did I do? 78, I saw how many? 78, not 80 shows, one and a half hour shows and I never flubbed the line. But I worked so hard, I was so terrifying of going up live, live in front of the country. Tremendous pressure. So I wish they weren't there. I would have preferred to just shoot this in a studio like a film because you got lots of takes when you do a film, particularly if you're doing physical comedy. We know Chaplin would take what, a whole week? He just shut everything down and take a week out just to figure out how he wants to tumble down the stairs. How he's gonna pad those stairs.

How he's gonna take the fall and make it funny. You see, if he had an audience, a live audience, I don't think he would have got any of that. There's no way. Of course, they were more complicated bits. Certain Buster Keaton, when he was in the live audience, so he's got a bridge falling down all around him. This complicated form of engineering a physical bit is most extraordinary. And to have all that know-how around him, to build it the

way he needs to build it, otherwise somebody's going to lose their life around here. Him, usually. Because he was usually, the thing was falling on him, usually. Absolutely. Man, oh man. They took the time though. They had the time. Yeah. Shit.

I mean, it took a while for me to even get a physical bit on Seinfeld because it's a talking edge of the cameras here, cameras here. When I suggested some physical comedy one time, I said, I could come in and tell this whole story. How about if I act it out? How about if we do a scene where let's see the story. Let's do this story. Let me do this story rather than come in and talk about it.

Yes, it's in the past. Let's get into the present and do the story. And Jerry just looked at me and he says, we're doing the story. Holy, holy, holy, holy is Jerry. He believed in me about to bring about the doing of a story. And that was an episode where I was putting dry cement in a washing machine and got all messed up with the cement

and trying to get it in there and being with a 50 pound bag and doing something physical off the wall and trying to recover because I want everybody around me to think, oh, I'm perfectly normal being in here with a 50 pound sack of cement. Don't mind me. And we did that and I was like, ah, that's one thing to say comedy,

it's another thing to do comedy. If you could bring it both together to say and do funny. Has the physical aspect of it always been an important part for you as a fan? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It came natural. When I rode my bike into a tree for my friends and get that big laugh, and the way I would run my bike into a tree, there's certainly a way to run the bike into the tree where it really just looks so preposterous, you're going to get big laughs. Now, where the hell did that come from? I could say,

maybe I saw it in Laurel and Hardy. Maybe I saw it somewhere. I saw it somewhere. Well, when I was doing it, I wasn't thinking about it. I wasn't imitating anyone. It was just in my being like a homeless person drawing perfect circles or a savant sitting on the curb and nobody can beat this guy playing chess. Nobody. This guy is, whoa, dealing with something very, very special coming through. And for all of us, you know, I believe everyone's looking for that,

whatever it is that's coming through. I mean, for me, this is my kick. I get animated talking about it because it's my mojo, it's my deal, it's my gig, it's my thing, and to have it come about and lift me up and create such purpose in my life, to be driven by such purpose. It's all I thought about.

That's another thing. It's all I thought about. Can you imagine? It's all I thought about. That's another thing. It's all I thought about. Can you imagine? That's all I think about. Yeah. It has been cherished in tribal wisdom traditions for thousands of years. Indigenous peoples the world over have used this plant-based compound in spiritual, healing and ceremonial rites and rituals for centuries. More recently it has been shown to increase alertness, improve focus, elevate mood, enhance cognition, heighten reward sensation and more.

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I do it for my son. I do it for a few friends that come over. When I stepped out after the big, the big bad night 18 years ago, I was in New York. I'm not hiding out. I'm out on the streets every day. I took up street photography.

I'm on the subway. I'm talking to everybody. No hat, no glasses. I'm right out there with everybody. That's the way I want. I want ultimate extroversion for the introversion, the recluse. That comes rather natural for me. In New York, funny being in that city, I was like, just like, I was just embracing it.

And it was embracing me. I could be on a street corner hanging out with some people. Yeah. It's blacks. I was brought up in a black neighborhood. So I feel very comfortable. And I just start jiving, just talking, telling some stories, some shit about me on the subway. Everyone's laughing.

I'm on the corner. They got cream on the corner. Look at this funny motherfucker. Somebody pulls up in the car. Somebody run in a club. Hey, Jeff Ringan. Michael, why don't you come into the club? Perform. I'll give you a ticket. Come in. Come into the clubs. I go, I am in the clubs. I was on the corner. Yeah. I was doing a set. It's coming natural. Yeah. I'm ding donging around, and that's where it all comes from in the first place, in a sense, right? I didn't need to have a club and a room and a manager and a gig, and we're putting it all together,

and then it's gonna be this and that and that and this. Uh-uh, I was right there, very cool, on the street with a few people, and I'm with the whole world. That's a great feeling. It's great. Yeah, when it's working, it doesn't really matter. It's not about scale.

You know, it's about that, the feeling that you get when it's just connecting. It's a great feeling when it comes together. Absolutely, it's divine. Yeah, it really is. That's exactly, That's the word. Yeah. And so I've had some divinity in my life. And in turn, when I stepped away from performing, I saw an extension of that divinity in other ways, you know, and that it's running around all over

the place. Maybe it's everywhere. It's just a matter of being tuned in to it. You start seeing it in other people, whatever they're into, what they're doing, what they're up to. What's this guy? What's this person's gig all about? Because they are into it. I mean, I don't want to sound too dark here, but even somebody who's in the dark, maybe doing a lot of bad stuff is driven by something to get it done. So you see the divine kind of working in

on both sides of the streets. That's something we're still trying to figure out. I'm kind of watching it very closely. In my own place, I hold the center. I don't fall to the right or the left. I'm much better in centered at 75. But I see a whole lot of mischief going on here. It's interesting how this world has

both sides. You understand what I'm saying, don't you? I do, but I think also, ultimately, we're all one. We're all the same. Indeed. There's no us in them. It's like we really are one. Absolutely. Like a day and a night, it's all kind of the whole of what the world is as it turns. Usually when people talk, they have much more in common than the differences. You get there fast.

The more time you spend in different parts of the world, it's hard to think of people on the other side of the world as enemies. Because if you're there and you meet them, they're just like you. Do you know what I mean? It's only through the distance and the name calling at a distance and, you know, the monsters on the other side of the planet.

If you go to the other side of the planet, we're all the same. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the way of evil is something. It's interesting how somebody just breaks loose and isn't thinking about the one. They're just thinking about taking out a few in some weird way, this war against parts of ourselves. And I know that's what's at work, a great war against ourselves.

I don't fully understand it. No. It's a mystery to me. But I know we live in a field of life and death. And so death comes about in many weird ways. And it's something that all of us have to go through. How you go? Hmm.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I got cancer like three years ago, you know, I was like, okay, here we go. I was ready to go. And then I looked at my son. I said, yeah, I got a 10-, here we go. I was ready to go. And then I looked at my son. I said, gee, I got a 10 year old here, he's nine then. I said, would you like to be around for more of this?

And it turned out there was a physician who said he could help me. It's gonna take some surgery, but we could get it in time. I had cancer, so. And they did. And I'm swinging for the time being. That's great.

Yeah. Tell me about the world of stand-up you entered when you did play in that world. What was happening in stand-up at that time? When I came in, the regulars, they were regulars, let's just say at the improv, there was Jay Leno, Bill Maher, Sandra Bernhardt, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, everybody was working there for $25 a night. I just came into the scene, Andy Kaufman was there. Andy I loved, he was weird, great trickster.

Did you meet him? Oh yeah, oh yeah? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Andy, yeah. It was on Fridays, and we created this sketch where he broke out live on television. I knew he was going to do it. I mean, it's set up, but the country didn't know. Performers, oh, God, I know I'm probably leaving so many out, but I mean, over at the Comedy Story, Gary Shanley was going on. There's Jim Carrey. Everybody was just working it, and there wasn't any success in it other than just working it.

Yeah. Late at night, working on your stuff. So much talent. Everywhere. Everybody. And they all got in a groove. But this is before comedy had its moment. Absolutely.

Wow. And I walked into this, because I had a dream when I was in San Diego. It was a strong, powerful dream, where I saw a clown holding a globe of the Earth. And I walked into this because I had a dream when I was in San Diego. It was a strong, powerful dream where I saw a clown hole in the globe of the earth. And I walked toward the clown. He turned and he had my face. And a friend of mine who I had done stand up with many, many years ago when there were no clubs in this town, we were working at the troubadour, old Doug Weston, we went up to him one early evening,

dressed in tattered tuxedos, you know, from a play I had done, was waiting for Godot. And the friend of mine was Ed Begley Jr. and he put on one of the tattered tux and it was too short because the actor that was in the play with me who wore that tux was about a foot and a half shorter, so his pants were up underneath his knees.

So that's how he looks. And then I'm wearing my tux was about a foot and a half shorter. So his pants were up underneath his knees. So that's how he looks. And then I'm wearing my tuxedo. And I thought, well, to distinguish my look, I'll just roll around in the dirt. So when we came into the club and we were wearing World War II gas masks when we walked in and these tuxedos looking the way we look, we pulled them off.

Hi, Doug. You know, we're here to be funny. We're making weird faces. He actually put us up that night. Wow. And we were completely loony-tuned up. No act, just improvising, just off the wall, going crazy, doing this stuff in between the setting up of the bands

or something. He was giving us $25 to do this. Now we're working at the Troubadour, you know, three days a week. Avery Shriver came in who was involved with Jack Burns. They had their, and Avery kind of was a mentor. He's going, you guys are completely out of your mind. Stay with it, stay with it.

We are encouraged to be insane. Can you imagine? What a gig, to be encouraged, to be insane. Lovely. And we're being paid for this back in 1969. So I had a dose of the stand-up, then I was drafted, took that whole scene on, then I went to Calais, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Now I'm down in San Diego and I'm doing these plays and I have this dream. You know, this clown holding the globe of the world, and it's my face, and I thought I'm going into the club. I'm going to go into Los Angeles, start working in the

clubs. Next day, after that dream, Ed Begley Jr. calls me. I haven't heard from him in years. I hear you down in San Diego. You're doing a play and everything. How you doing? I go, Ed, I just had a dream, and I told him the dream. I said, I'm coming to LA and I'm gonna start working in standup. This is my old standup partner, you know? The call right after, you see, isn't that interesting? The universe was giving you clues. Yes. It's like you weren't working alone.

You had help. It's saying, get it. Yeah. There you go, bud. You know, take on your destiny. It's your fate to do so. So I went to the clubs, and within a short period of time, I was a regular, which was rather neat to be.

But how different was your act than everybody else's? I can't imagine it being anything like them. I was loosey-goosey and wild and physical. All improv? Most of it. I'd come up with some stuff I'd try to stick to, but I was messing around. Character based? Characters flying around and weird, weird, weird.

Physical, humor? Yes, I'd tear the whole place up. I was possessed. I was the capital F, fool. That force was with me. May the force be with you, indeed. And I could get going. Did you ever use alcohol or drugs? No, never. I didn't want to mess around with what was going on. You were fueled by something else. No, I didn't need that shit.

I was in a room and I take some acid. I go, hey, I'm there already. I'm trying to come back in so that I fit in. You know, you know? You go ahead and take your journey. Send me a postcard. I'm already on the move, you know? It's a nice way to describe it, on the move. Yeah, I'm on the move. Yeah. So then you're doing standup. It goes well? Very well.

And then what happens? I was always rushing out, never checking in with Bud Friedman. So then you're doing stand-up, it goes well? Very well. And then what happens? I was always rushing out, never checking in with Bud Friedman. I just go to the open mic night, do my thing, and I had to drive back to San Diego. I got a baby, I've got a three-year-old, I gotta get up in the morning.

I was taking a class, I thought I was gonna be a Montessori teacher because I wanted to be there for my daughter who was gonna be entering that school. They begin at two and a half. And I was studying all these education, Rudolph Steiner's, Waldorf schools and Morning Glory School. All these kinds of, I was really into my daughter.

I wanted to be present for that. You'd have been a great teacher. Maybe, maybe. Yeah, because you have an inspiring demeanor. Oh, I do? It's like that. Yeah, that goes a long way. teacher. Maybe, maybe. Yeah, because you have an inspiring demeanor. Oh, I do? It's like that, yeah, that goes a long way. It's you, Rick. You bring it out in me.

You know? Tell me more about the Friday's experience. First of all, how did the gig come to pass? Easy, very, very easy. I was on the stage, producer saw me. I was coming off stage. He go, we'd like to have you on our TV show. We're doing a show for ABC.

It's called Fridays. We want you to be a member of the cast. And I go, yeah, listen, I have to go. I drive a school bus. I have to go. I'm sorry. I can't talk. And I was out the door.

I was running late that night. I really did was driving a stool bus. I took a class in van eyes, learned how to drive school buses. I took the whole course when I moved to LA now with my wife and my kid. So you, the whole time. So I really drove a bus. You had regular jobs while pursuing all this.

Yes. You had to survive. Yes, can't survive on $25, $75 a week, whatever. There you can have an apartment, our apartment I think was $125 a month. I'd probably be good at it. Became a regular at the comedy store too. But this was under the tutelage,

the mentoring of Charlie Joffe. I don't know if you remember him. He was probably one of the most powerful personal managers you could land in. If it wasn't for Jay Leno saying to me, Michael, that man who was just talking to you, that's Charlie Joffe, stick with him. What? Yeah, right. Yeah. I wasn't sticking with anybody. I didn't know. I noticed he was there in the audience most every night. He's the one that set the thing up with Fridays. He took a hold of it because I went out the

door. I had to go drive a school bus. And these producers are laughing. Ah, he's so funny. They thought I was joking. After an act like that, this guy's actually going to drive a school bus? I got a call the next morning. Charlie says, you know, these are producers. This is up and up.

You want to meet with them? That's a show. They're offering you a TV show. I said, OK, well, all right, I'll meet with them? That's a show. They're offering you a TV show. I said, OK, well, all right. I'll meet with them. But I can't do that and work at clubs. Maybe we ought to meet them and see what they have to say. And so you see, I'm not very good at the business side

of things. So he took a hold of that. Next thing I know, I'm on that show for three years. And I wanted to do that. Never went back into the stand-up scene again, because I always felt the stand-up scene was I wanted to do that. Never went back into the standup scene again because I always felt the standup scene was a means to and here it is after seven months, I got a TV show

and that's it. Just the clown holding the globe of the world. Was it shot in LA or New York? Shot here in LA. And tell me about the experience. Who were the cast members? Was it a good crew? Were they-

Yeah, Larry was there. And talk about- Was Larry a writer? He a... Yeah, Larry was there. And talk about this. Was Larry a writer? He was a stand-up comic. And they brought him in from New York. They saw him. And they brought him out to audition. His first night auditioning didn't go too well.

He didn't like what he was doing, so he told everybody to fuck off and left. He had the network sex. Everybody's in there waiting to see Larry David. This is his audition! Fuck it. And he's out the door. So on Fridays is where you met Larry? Yeah. And then the next night he auditioned again and he blew everybody away. Next thing I know, he's not only a part of the cast, he's also a writer. I had that same position

I could write for some of my characters. So whatever. So Larry and I were on the show. Were you friends? I don't know. The environment was so crazy and competitive. We were cordial, but everybody was just trying to make it every week to get in a scene, to write something, to come up with a, oh, you know, you've got to create a returnable character.

Got to have a regular character on the show. That's what you want to do. Who was the Lorne Michaels of that show, Fridays? I don't think we had a Lorne Michaels. It may have been part of the problem right there. Jack Burns was with us for a while there, but he took up Coke, and that became another kick for him, and he had to go. Tom Moore came in, he was a director, a Bonafide director from New York, you know, director of Grease, he'd done that

show. He was very good. I felt he was running things because I could tune into a director. I've got a real acting director here so I like to take notes from him and tune into things through Tom, and particularly when it came to the scripts and felt that there should be some rewriting or something to bump this up a bit because the way it is now, I don't think it's as good as it could be. John Moffat did his best. He was focused on the bands. He shot the bands.

We had a lot of bands. Each week somebody would come in and he spent a lot of time shooting them. LMNT. Element Electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add Element Electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience

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and stay salty with Element Electrolytes. LMNT. Tell me what was the week leading up to a show? Like, tell me the schedule on Fridays. Three days, the most. You are flying by the seat of your pants, rewrites right up to camera, man. Fast-paced, nerve-racking. When you gonna learn your lines?

Crazy, crazy, crazy speed. It makes you get good. Hey, baby, buck up. Yeah. Get it done, you know? And that's right. It does make you good. It was perfect for me, really.

Absolutely. And then how long was it between that and Seinfeld? About four years. And what were those four years like? Working as an actor. That's all I wanted to do. I didn't want to go back in the stand-up. I tried it. I was there for about, right after the show,

I was in there for about four months. I hated it. I just felt like this is not where I belong. I could feel it. And so I insisted that Charlie Joffe do something for me because he wanted me in the club environment. Most of his people were in the club environment. They were born and raised and continued to grow through the club environment. Robin was one of them. He only had like nine people, Woody Allen, Robin and Billy and Klein and Letterman. Nice group of people.

Yeah. But they were very, very... They were much more stand-ups than you. You were... They were stand-ups. And you were an actor. It's different. Yeah. And then Jim came on board and he was stand-up at the time and continued to be stand-up with them. But I want an agent. I wanted to go out and read for things. And as soon as I got that agent, I was just reading for things and pretty much nailing everything and being an actor. And I mean a serious actor. I was playing heavies and real crazy shit. Serious as much as comedy. Killers, crazy people on TV and all that. And I loved it. Just running around, you know,

and a lot of make-believe. Yeah. How long would it take between seeing the material and figuring out your take on the character? Not long. Usually, I would audition with character. I'd come in very quickly with that. I knew that's what they were looking for. I would come in. I would just be holding the character, and they could feel it.

You've heard the old thing about casting directors, they can tell the moment the person walks in the door, this is the one. Have you ever heard that one? No, I never heard that. Yeah, there's a good casting director can tell right away. I knew that if I came in character, that's what they're looking for ultimately.

But I could stay close to the lines, but I wouldn't be down here like, you know, I would like to put it aside and particularly if I'm playing heavies and I could really play those heavies. Would you dress accordingly? Sometimes, not much. I felt that it would come through, come through. So I like playing heavies, weird kind of offbeat

kind of characters. They seem kind of comedic in some way. There's something fringy about them. Yeah, yeah, fringy. It's a great word, fringy. Yeah, I always thought the ultimate would be playing comedy villains. I remember I saw Terry Thomas playing that villain

in the movie Tom Thumb. Oh, it was just lovely. His sidekick was Peter Sellers. I said, look at these guys, menacing and scary, and yet they're so funny. You know, you bring the two together, you got something there, you know, comedy villains. I watch a lot of pro wrestling and there are villains and they're always funny. They always have the best lines. They're really the stars of the show. They are. Yeah. Yeah. Andy loved wrestling.

Yeah, obsessed. I saw Andy play at Town Hall, and it was very beautiful. I was probably in either junior high school or high school. And that's the first time I saw Tony Clifton, his opening act, and perfect villain comedian Tony Clifton. And it blew me away. Blew me away.

Never saw anything funnier. Yeah, like most people, denial of their shadow. You know, Andy tapped into that. He denied that was him. And they'd say, you know, you claimed, he says, what? I'm know, you claim things. What? I'm not what are you talking about? Would I behave like that? You know, the sign of the thing? This some asshole who's playing

me, I'm gonna sue him. I'm gonna sue this. It's ruining my career. These people think I'm that person. Why would I be? What? How dare you? Then he become like Clifton in a sense through his anger. He did it to me. One time I called him up, we're gonna have an idea to do together. And I said, you know, that Tony Clifton character goes, Oh, now you do? Fuck you. And hung up on me. screamed at me like that. Wow. And I got on the phone. I tried to call him. I could get he would get he didn't talk to me

for a week. In real life. Ignored me, yes. That's amazing. Yeah, he played it to the hilt. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

Now Bob Zamuda, who was behind a lot of his tricks, and I became friends and hung out, and I got in on a lot of the secrets. At first, of course, when Andy was dead, he passed, I thought, of course, like many people, that's all fake. He's going to show up two years later. You know, say he was taken up by a space vehicle or no. Or 40 years later.

We still don't know. We don't know. Yeah. Interesting. Wouldn't that be it? He waited this long to come back. God, that must be a lot of fun, him just waiting. Did you feel a sympathetic connection with him?

Like, did you feel like we're cut from the same cloth or no? I felt that way with everybody in that club. I thought we were all part of the great pool. I had so much respect for all the standups. Be able to stand up in front of people like that. And I saw a lot of the teams, the groups, the improv group at the Comedy Store, great groups, Rick and Ruby and the Village Idiots,

a lot, that was accessible. If you thought you wanted to improvise, just hang out with the group that night, you know? Lot going on. Did you ever try that? I did it one time. What did it feel like? I felt interrupted. Oh, I see.

I couldn't, everyone was jumping in. I see. And being very fast. I don't tell jokes. I'm not a whip master. Yeah. You know? Which is something I really respected in Robin.

Yeah. He'd be so witty and so fast. Yeah. And then moving a million miles an hour and I really respected in Robin. He'd be so witty and so fast. And then moving a million miles an hour through an array of characters was extraordinary. To me, he was a deity. I mean, clearly blessed with a profound ability to just come through in such a free way.

It's just running through in such a free way. It's just, boom, running through him. Powerful, powerful stuff. You feel it when you're around him, particularly when he's working live. I couldn't feel it as strongly in the movies, but when he was live on stage, you'd shake up the molecular. Powerful stuff.

Yeah, it's a cosmic energy. I would even get that seeing him live on television when he would do his act. You could feel the power even through the TV. Yeah. People around him on those shows would just go, what was that? Tell me about what was the idea to do a book? How did you come to it? I called a gal who's been my publicist for, she's just for the last 30 years. And I said, I want to do a book.

I need somebody to just help me with the structure. I got 40 years of journals here. Got lots of stories, lots of things to talk about. She said, I know just the person and it was a guy named Todd Gold. And he and I got together and we just had the tape recorder going sort of like what we're doing here for about two weeks. Thousands of pages of transcript because I get going, going, going. And then I had to wade through a lot of this. Ooh, boy.

It's a lot of work. Yeah, it's a lot of work. And I think the book was nearly 800 pages and we had to bring it down to 427, but I have about 125 images in it. I'm very big on pictures and images. Have you collected them over your life? Always, I collect a lot of images.

They're all cataloged in folders. When did you start keeping a over? Always. I collect a lot of images. They're all catalogued in folders. When did you start keeping a journal? God. Probably about the time I started doing standup. You know, about the time I had that dream. I was starting to write down dreams because I had a few before. And then that took me into Carl Jung. I said, oh, wait a minute, there's somebody here who's talking about the nature of dreams. I want to know more about dreams. What the heck is this all about? What are these influences all about? Particularly when it's providing me with a direction,

I'm getting something, I'm getting an idea out of it. And again, you know, being so much into the realm of the make believe, how the dream makes us believe in its appearance, at least with me. I felt a resonation. I felt a truth. I felt a voice. I felt compatible to an intelligence

that's saying, hello, offering it to me. It was as profound as an Ezekiel receiving a scroll from the Almighty in that wonderful story of this man who's touched by some director who gives him more direction to attend to. Building a temple is like building a career, building what we're going to step into and feel so supported by, ultimate order in the course of one's lifetime unfolding. That's how I felt about certain dreams. Yeah. Well, a dream can't be wrong.

You know, it's a different thing. It's not right or wrong. It just is. I was so assured when I read Freud and read Jung by them, the affirmation that dreams have something to say. Yes. I wasn't taught that in school. I hadn't heard anyone around me say such things.

I searched it out. And you know, for all the time that I wasn't paying attention in school, suddenly became a student of psychology, then also a student of religion, a student of human behavior, you know, watching it very closely. I'd always done that as an actor, in a sense. There I am on the lap of a schizophrenic grandmother feeling okay with that kind of behavior. Why? Because there's heart in it, there's love in it, there's something in me that's saying it's okay to be here. So I'm interested in what it is that says this is where you should be. What is it that makes me feel that this is where I should be?

Whew! I mean, it's such assurance. So we're supported. We're not alone. No. No, we are blessed. Yes. It's a very merciful system.

Absolutely. You mentioned paying attention to people for acting purposes. Tell me about the analysis part of, like, taking things apart to understand why is looking at this making me feel this way and how can I achieve that feeling with myself? What is it that they're doing that allows me to feel the way I feel? Well, I just get interested in a person,

you know, watching a person. I love people watching. And certain people, just the way this person's walking, the way this person's dressed, the way this person is behaving out here in the open. I go to Disneyland, lots of people there. Take my son, some of his friends. I love sitting and just watching all these people moving around at the airports. I love watching people. Always love watching people. It's my way of

staying connected to myself in that, you know, here we are as one big humanity. And the actor, well, I never took a person and created a character exactly from one particular person, an imitation of. I always felt, maybe through my grandmother, I felt akin to eccentricity, the freaks. And Kramer is an ultimate freak who happened to fit into prime time television, thank goodness for that.

That's a freaky, freaky character. I've always been of the freak. I say of the Prypus, who is in Greek times the deity of freaks. And the fools are part of freakdom. Weird, weird stuff going out in front of people and behaving in such way. It's eccentric, it's different. People pay a lot of money to see these fools break it all up. It's rather Dinesian, isn't it? Really, they're breaking it all up. It's rather Dionysian, isn't it?

Really, they're breaking it all apart. And the eccentric to me always breaks in. It breaks into the normal, breaks into the ordinary. And I'm always been fascinated with the extraordinary. Yeah, and I think they also often have more truth about them than the normal. Well, certainly the recognition of differences. If everybody's into being the same,

then this almighty truth breaks in and it's different. It always works that way, isn't it? Hero myths or whatever, somebody comes along, it's just different. People can be frightened of it, want to destroy it. But what the fuck is this? Usually. Usually. No, that's the standard. You think so? Yeah. Well, I know so. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Probably so. I haven't really thought about that. I think you're kind of correct. I think you're all the way correct. Think about also people who come and unusually preach love, Martin Luther King, Jesus, Gandhi.

They all get assassinated. Yeah, yeah, people feel so threatened by something to me which is rather normal, but it is extraordinary when one person can carry that whole truth and be articulate enough to deliver it for all of us to hear how you respond to it. Oh, okay, I wouldn't do away with the person. I'd like to know more. And, you know, keep that channel on. Yeah. Keep that channel on. I

always feel that way too when somebody big comes along with a very extraordinary form of evil. I'd say, let's put them on a talk show. Let's not do away with them. Let's not lock them up. Let's bring them out here. Let's all learn about this. You certainly don't want to silence them. No, we got to learn about ourselves. This is a shadow. This is us. Let's look at this very, very closely. How else are we going to understand it? We don't want to destroy it. We want to take a good look at it. We got to be safe about it. Absolutely.

But I'd like to look at that. I think it would deepen my own relationship. I've had dreams where crazy, crazy figures can appear. Welcome to the house of macadamias. Macadamias are a delicious superfood, sustainably sourced directly from farmers. Macadamias, a rare source of omega-7, linked to collagen regeneration, enhanced weight management,

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Snack bars come in chocolate. Coconut white chocolate and blueberry white chocolate. Visit houseofmacadamias.com slash tetra. Do you think that the Kramer character from the beginning was meant to be as much of a breakout star as he turned out to be? I didn't see any of that coming. I knew I was on the right track because I could hear the laughs in the audience and I was feeling really good.

When I really got into the swing of it, I knew that this is right. In the early episodes, was it a small part? No, small. And then I… Was Kramer in every single episode? There was an evolution to this character. It took about 13 episodes to really start to step into it. The hair, the way he dressed, the shoes, all that I had to find.

All that is very, very important to me. I just don't put something on. The character got more popular. Did the character get more time in the stories? Yeah, I think so. It fit in more to things. You could see Kramer there. Character started to get big and useful as a comedic device.

Very, very useful. I used to button up a lot of the scenes. You could use that character to really button up things. I was very insecure at the beginning of all that because I wasn't sure if I was going to arrive. I can't say that I'm in control of everything or I can see around corners. In the process, it was a process.

I just wasn't sure just what the outcome was gonna be, but I was quite open. I was swinging. I don't think you can ever be sure what the outcome is gonna be. That's real. Yeah. And even when the you can ever be sure what the outcome is going to be. That's real. Yeah. That's real.

And even when the outcome is there, I'm still striving to sustain and I'm not sure if I'm going to sustain the force of such a character for so many years. And when popularity set in, oh my God, everywhere I go, I'm Kramer. And years and years of this. What's it like walking into a restaurant and getting applause in your normal life? Yeah, it was a good feeling. Was it always good? Pretty much so.

Okay, that's good. I never had anyone say, what the hell, get that character off television. Although the networks were a little concerned in the beginning when I started to do the hair, they started wondering if the character was going to be come across as being too crazy. Now, Jerry set them straight on that one. We're doing comedy. Yoo-hoo.

Yoo-hoo. Jerry was always supportive? Absolutely. Great. The whole time, yeah. Like when I talked about doing the physical comedy, I came up with an idea for how to do that. Jerry said, this is where we're going to go. Just listen to what Michael wants to do.

In the construction of the sets and the blocking of the scene and everything, I had everyone's attention. That's amazing. Yeah. But you know, Jerry saw me on The Tonight Show doing a character. And he had called Larry and said, it's got to be Michael Richards.

Wow. So he saw, and he knew of me from Fridays, and he knew of me. I would have assumed your way in was through Larry because of Fridays. No, Larry knew of my work and the capacity to develop characters, knows that I'm sort of an eccentricity specialist, and they needed a really eccentric character next door. But when Jerry had seen me on The Tonight Show, I sort of landed the gig. But I still had to go through the throes

of three auditions before Network, because the Network wasn't too sure of me. Because I had a show a year before for NBC. I wasn't the star of the show, but I was supportive. And since that show was canceled, anybody on that show isn't gonna get another show, at least not right away. Yeah.

So when I went in, I was sure that the NBC didn't want me, but I didn't care. I was happy to be in the presence of Jerry and Larry. I just went in like I was doing stand-up. I just blew everything open while I was in the room. I didn't even care about the dial. I was fooling around, moving it around, doing headstands, fooling around with some chair

behind the dial. I was goofing all around. Because I knew what I'm gonna give them is a goofball. When you went on The Tonight Show, was it with Carson? No, it was with Jay. Jay was just coming into things. They were letting him have a whole week with Jay Leno, two weeks. And so Jay called me and said that, you know, I got character you used to do on Fridays, you know. You got anything funny you want to do with that?

I think maybe we ought to do a sketch, you know. I said, yeah, sure, I'll come over. We'll talk about it. That's what we did. We... ...noodled around a few ideas, and then I came up with the weightlifting guy, and then we improvised it. And that's something. I just saw Jay just two weeks ago. We were talking about this, and I said, You're on the line.

They're considering you to be the host of the Tonight Show. You bring me out, we have no script and we're gonna improvise for six minutes. I said, you know, Jay, that was lovely because I had enough confidence to know I'm gonna step in character and that character's gonna go. I'll bring in some things, a weightlifting bar thing and a row machine and a few props.

And Jay didn't know what I was going to do and I didn't know what he was going to say. There was no rehearsal. I came in with this stuff. He introduced me. We're online, throughout the country. And isn't that amazing? The trust in ourselves, the confidence in ourselves. Doing doing doing, I've been years doing this.

So Jay, Jay had been doing standup for a long, long time. So after a period of time, you just get that confidence, you have that level of proficiency. It just comes with doing, doing, doing. Buck up, you got it, stay with it. And then when you come in and you're in a situation like, you got six minutes, Let it go, baby. How different is audience to audience in terms of reaction?

They differ late at night, a lot of drinking. I used to play, get wild, get crazy and have fun with it. Now, Carlin, you know, he told me, he said he'd never played to a house that had been drinking. He liked to go on very, very early when he was at the Magic, Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach. He liked to go up around 8.30 when he knows everybody's sober because he thinks he's going to get a cleaner laugh.

And he loved to play theaters. He didn't want to be... So that's a different kind of own audience because people aren't coming in and drinking while you're working. They're coming in to see performance as a theater is usually that kind of venue. Do you feel like your roots go back to like vaudeville? Yeah, well, I used to see all those performers

on early television. It all come out of vaudeville, you know, all those guys. Adjusting now to the format of movies and TV, early TV, especially early TV, or radio, they were on radio. Vaudeville, yeah, the knockabouts. I had them, I was 12 years old and this man, he was a Mason, he was a Freemason, he was dating my mother. And he took me to the American Legion.

I went in there and I watched old vaudevillians. This was like in the 60s. That sounds great. They still had their act, these guys. I watched like eight of them. Wow. And they were all doing physical comedy and banging and falling off the stage, doing all of them. One guy had a funny walk with his butt sticking out. I think I took that for the character Dick. I had

to walk around with my butt kind of sticking out, you know? So that's very funny, the way he's contorting his body and walking around. So freakish, yet the audience was howling. I think I assimilated some of that. Did you ever get hurt doing physical humor? I had a bag of protective gear. I was an honorary member of the Stuntmen's Association. Sometimes I would call these guys in. I'm gonna run around a runaway lawnmower on a show I was doing, Marble Hood Manor. I said, I want to hit this wall and go right over the top of this lawnmower and land on the top of it. So we had to take the blade off and we rigged this thing up. I had a special back brace put on.

So I was paying attention. Then from these guys, I'd learn more about how to take a fall, really take a fall. So I had padding. I used to have a lot of padding now when I was doing Dramar. That's great.

And even when I didn't know that I was going to be doing it in a physical comic, because sometimes I would. Sometimes I'd throw something in, nobody knew that was coming. Take a bang in the door or trip or whatever. I got to watch my knees. I wear a hip girdle, or wear earphones.

Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, man. That's fascinating. Is it, you, yeah. No, absolutely, because it tells you how intentional the work was that you would be prepared to take a fall. Absolutely.

Even when you weren't planning to take a fall. Yeah, be careful. But because you know know this is in my vocabulary, I want to be free enough to do anything. Because I never rehearsed this stuff. I'd save it for camera. I know I'm going to do something or a door, or I'm going to go over the couch, or I'm going to take a fall over by that stool or something. And I'd wait until that time and gear up for it because I didn't know quite how the fault to make it look.

I never rehearsed too much of this just to keep it fresh and natural. But you know, Red Skelton was a mentor. I knew Red. Red was a great knockabout. And Red and I were, and his knees were all wrecked. And he used to stuff paper in his pants and shit. And he said he wrecked his knees doing all these pratfalls. I said, well, you didn't have knee.

They didn't have that kind of gear, all this wonderful protective gear you can wear, sport gear, pretty much. But I had a hip harness made for me through a stunt man I knew to the association. He made this up for me. That's amazing. They introduced me to some really neat stuff. There's one scene where little Mickey, and I invented this and

I said, you know, we got to have Mickey always slapping me around. He loses his temper and he'll jump on me and just kick my ass. I think it's very funny. We have little Mickey just kicking the shit out of Kramer. Trust me, this is going to be funny. But we had to block these scenes out because, you know, one, I wanted Mickey to come running at me and throw his whole body and then I'm going to go over and I want him to be, I want my legs to go straight up and just have his body right on my, and hit that floor. And I'm sitting on a crate.

So when he hits me, my, I've got this far, I'm gonna go down onto that floor. Well, I had a piece of steel back brace made for that take, just for that take. And it's a lovely piece of business. That's so cool. To watch Danny just come, and I remember sweet Danny, such a heart,

after we did it, and the honest laugh, and so over it, and cut, we're done with the scene. Danny's kind of climbing off me, and he looks at me, he says, you all right? I says, I'm fine, Danny. Wow, we did it, it's good, work, work. Very well, he goes, no, but are you all right? I says, yeah, yeah, I'm all right.

Are you all right? He goes, yeah, I'm all right. Are you all right? He goes, yeah, I'm all right if you're all right. He was so concerned. Wow. The way he looked at me. Beautiful. Did you feel like you always had to top yourself? Week to week, did you feel like, well,

last week I crashed into this thing, next week I need to do something bigger? I was concerned about the material. I know a good script and even a better script. I'd see the vacillation. Most of the scripts are really great though. I would take material that's not so hot, but I'd find ways to lift it.

That's where I'd come up with the, all kinds of little sounds, little, yada yada yada, little movements. I could close the scene up like this. Somebody say something weird and I'd have maybe a return line. I'd come up with a, yada y, you know, some kind of a look and some weird kind of a sound and so forth. And that would button it up. And then I just look

at everyone and then they go, fine, let's move on. We don't need that line. We can get the laugh there. They just have to go out on a laugh, a big laugh. I remember when he got into golf on the show, it was very funny. Good old Larry, who was into golfing, made Kramer a golfer. But Kramer would just hit the balls into the ocean. On one episode. That was a good episode. Yeah.

Old Jason, who had a photographic memory, by the way, he could just learn script so fast. He'd get these big speeches, he'd know them in five minutes. And he's going through that whole story about that, that whale and how he got the ball out of the golf ball out of the whale. And then he's holding up the balls, the titleist. And I have the blow line. I just got one line. What? Is that a titleist? You know, and you know, just that one little touch. And I just felt, oh God, Jason could tell those stories so well. Yeah, he had those monologues that would be like-

They weren't that marvelous. So funny, so funny. I know man. Unbelievable. Would you ever laugh during a scene or you were- No, not my kind of training. Yeah. If I was ever in a scene and I looked away,

somebody came in the room, let's say I'm performing before Stella, Edler, she would just say, get out of my class. Wow. And that never happened, but I've seen her do that. You're not focused, you're not concentrated. And also the mistake, I'm always after the mistake. So if there's a laugh, something goes wrong,

I don't laugh, I pull, I keep straight on it, work off of it, because you don't know what that could happen. Yeah, it could turn into something good. Absolutely. Somebody goes up, I always go, oh, shit. Because I'm curious to see where would that have gone to? Yeah. You pick something up, it fell out of your hand and hit the counter. They go, oh, and the cut. Then we got to do the thing. I'm going, well, first of all, now we got to do it again for the audience. You've already seen the scene up to this point.

So it's not gonna be as big a surprise to them. Probably not gonna get as big a laugh because you're gonna do that dialogue over again. And in the meantime, who knows where that mistake, where I've gone. And if it was theater, you wouldn't get a second take. Shit no. Can you imagine?

Can we do that scene again? Can you imagine? Can we do that scene again? Between the highs and lows you've experienced in your life, do you feel like for the last few years you've found a sense of normalcy for yourself? Yeah. Calmer. Did it feel good? Yeah.

Great. Yeah. Was. Yeah. Was it difficult to stay grounded through controversy? Sometimes, yeah. That took a long time, a lot of a long time. Yeah. And listening. Paying attention to my moods and taking note of how I'm feeling.

Certainly not going to blame, but just taking note of what I'm into. Usually I've brought about those kinds of situations, and so I have to take them out and see what the message is. There's a message in it all. How different is your experience of your character depending on who you're playing against? Depending on the circumstances, my character would probably remain the same. But I find another side to the character in response to what the difference is that the other character is presenting, being adjustable.

A well-rounded character can go on, a particular character like Kramer, could be in just about any situation. And he stays Kramer, but would Kramer react differently depending on the input? Probably, yeah, it'd be a different mood, a different consideration, a different angle. Usually there's something you're after. I would create a lot of backstory to every character I was in.

Would you know it or would you write it down? I would know it. I would just feel it. Sometimes I would write it down on the script. I would go through the different scenes and I'd say, okay, where's my intention here? Where have I come from? I'm coming in the room. Where have I come from?

It's not in the script, but I got to know where I'm coming from. So when I come in, I've just been someplace. And when I'm going out that door, I got to know where I'm coming from. So when I come in, I've just been someplace. And when I'm going out that door, I got to know where I'm going. So maybe we apply that to in our everyday life, in the consideration of our backstory or motive or intention, or things going on. We always have something we're stepping toward. I love the ritual of finding ground. So you've got something underneath you so that whatever you step into outside of the situation that sustains your kind of ritual, you're gonna be able to hold your own.

You're gonna be able to hold up. I've had instances where I didn't hold up in certain situations where I got knocked down. So I had to go into, okay, why? So you see, getting into backstories, getting into what's behind motive, what's behind anger, what's behind my shit, you know? What's going on here?

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Take a breath and see where you are drawn. tetragramadin.com There's a lot of stories around us that have nothing to do with us, and we can get sucked up into those stories, or we can remain grounded in ourselves, not get pulled away by someone else's story. Yeah, you get mixed up. Yeah. And things get messy. I fall into other people's stories. It's confusing.

Then taken up by somebody else's shit. Yeah. And it's very messy. I call it being recruited, you know? If somebody's in a very really angry place, you're driving along and they've cut in front of you and give you the bird, if you give them the horn, you touch the horn, hey, wait a minute, I'm here.

Let them know I'm here. And then they say, well, so what, fuck you. You can find something and you go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then you go back off, wait a minute, I don't wanna get carried away. I do not want to get recruited by this person's story. Yeah, I love that word. That's a great word.

It is good. It's clear. I mean, it really makes it clear. However, sometimes we're around great people and we want to kind of get caught up in the greatness of their story, or at least learned by it or know as much about it as possible, and then find that story within you.

I read somewhere that you like to be underwater. Is that true? Yeah, I was a diver for many, many years scuba diving. I used it as a form of meditation, Rick. I had a patio chair in the bottom of my pool and it was weighted down and I would have an aqua lung and I would go down there and sit in that patio chair for a half an hour just. Really get in your breath fast. I used to do that when I was doing the Seinfeld show

for instance, come home and just. And it would relax you. Relax me, yeah. Put that pool to use. Yeah. Then I did diving and that really relaxed me. Really relaxed me. Yeah. Many people don't feel calm underwater. Yeah, that's true. It turns on some red flag of fear. Yeah. You know, I noticed that when I would sit quietly in the ocean, maybe at 20 feet, I'd find a rock, just lean down, get my buoyancy, I'm just...

If I'm down there for about 45 minutes, sometimes I do double tanks, I could stay down there for an hour, a little over an hour, 20 feet. The fish would come around, they would just circulate around me very slowly. And after about a half an hour, 35, I'd have maybe 30 or 40 small fish just circulating around me. And I said, what is that all about? Beautiful. And I'm just feeling the calm.

And I'm in the ground. And I'm in the sea. And with a whole of all that, I get pretty quiet, to ground very quickly. That sounds great. Would you say you feel more alive, alone or in front of an audience? Well, you've been giving this some thought, haven't you?

I'm alive in both directions, I'll tell you that. I spend a lot of alone time. The time is- I have to, because there's so much going on. But do you long to be in front of an audience or do you long to be alone? I think I long more to be alone. I have had to watch that carefully. But at my age of 75, you know, I really enjoy my alone time.

It's great. People said, oh, you got the book. You're making a comeback. What? No, no, no. This is not about that. Oh, work and come your way. You're gonna get an agent. I go, well, that's not the goal. I just needed to get this book out of my system. I had to write this and all these stories and all these, these routes I've taken to be alive. I think as I get older, I value the alone time

more and more than ever. I feel very, very comfortable because I see myself really very, very close to the whole of creation. It's a great gift. Yeah. Did you learn anything about yourself through the book process? Yeah.

Any insights? Yeah, that I remember everything. Yeah. I'm carrying the whole thing. Yeah. It's all there, even though in the unconscious, whatever, I think Jung referred to it as a collective unconscious, that we're all in there. That's where I saw how conscious I really am.

Do you ever think something is funny and the audience doesn't? No, that got me into some trouble. Tell me. For something that I thought could be funny, and I'm going to take the risk because that's what I do. Yeah, it is your job. Yeah, to me, that's my job. Get risky. That's what I do. Yeah. It is your job. Yeah. To me, that's my job. Get risky. That's what people are paying to come in and see because normally these things aren't set

out in the street. You know, there's a place for the fool. And what I've seen in a comedy club, these fools, if they were out on the street, would be in jail so fast it'd make your head spin. Absolutely. But we're up there it make your head spin. Absolutely. But we're up there to turn things upside down. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But baby, when it works, it was worth the risk.

When it doesn't work, it hurts. But that hurt, it's like a pressure that turns the carbon into a diamond. You got to hurt. They're suffering. I live here in Pacific Palisades, you know, and I know I can go down the corner and get a meal. I can buy my groceries. I live in a very nice home.

But I know in other places of the world, it gets pretty wild, pretty shitty. And I still acknowledge the system, what we're all in the midst of, the ups and the downs, the light and the dark. It's a mystery. I do know in the midst of it, it's heart-making. How is dramatic acting different than comedy? Well, I think there's a brute in me, you know, that comes through that kind of character I could identify with the menacing one in dramatic actor.

I've played a lot of villains, you know, to be in the place of the dramatic, how dramatic that is, how tragic that could be, the tussle, the depth of it. Certainly as an actor having to go deep enough to make that tussle come true. I mean, in that you have to deliver a performance that's rather believable.

I could welcome that because of my respect for psychology, my respect for man, all the kinds of people that we are. Temperament, dealing with mood, agitation, in the realm of the drama. I played a lot of that when I was doing college theater, CalArch, you know, tragic things, Trojan women or the Bacchae. Imagine exploring the menatic spirit and then playing a figure that's going to be devoured by them, that Dionysian jaw coming about, taking a bite out of you and swallowing you whole. How situations can do that to us, being swallowed up by situations and then having to make your way out of them,

being digested, coming out and then feeling like you just, there's not much left except you begin to build yourself up once again. As a character? Building a character? Yeah. The difference? The other one's a ha-ha.

It laughs at the whole process. It's almost more elevated. I think Nietzsche had a line there. He says, who can laugh and be elevated at the same time? He's speaking of death. Who can laugh and be elevated at the same time. He's speaking of death. Who can laugh and be elevated at the same time? I like that because the fool will laugh at death. He laughs at everything.

Yeah, the dramas that you're consumed or taken in. I never understood that line by Jesus on the cross where he says, why hast thou forsaken me? I said, something put that in there, because anybody is going to go that far. You know, within the tragic, I mean, to let themselves be taken up by the tragic isn't going to say why is that forsaken? They've already come in with they know exactly what's happening. And let's go, boy, let's go. I always wondered that when you mentioned earlier about Martin Luther King or Gandhi. They knew they were on the line,

they knew what was coming, they knew what could happen, but they were capable, they were grounded. Yeah, they were in the arena. They were there for whatever was gonna come. And when it came, it came. It came. When you leave the set or the stage, can you completely leave the character behind,

or does some part of it always come with you? That's where I'm at the bottom of the pool, you know, taking a breath. Yeah. I got to calm down. Transition. That's the transition. Back to yourself.

Come back home. Yeah. Wish my grandmother couldn't. Thank you.