The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 366: Chuck Klausmeyer & NEW STORY—They Put Him in a Cage

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

A NEW mystery for the curious mind with a short attention span called They Put Him in a Cage is followed by an installment of The Way I Talked About The Way I Heard It, during which Mike and Chuck discuss first jobs, audition horror stories, and the condition of Mike's dad.

Do do do do do do do do dumb. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time. Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle. The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid.

AI is here to stay. And every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at net suite.com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. with NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or Claude or chat, GPT,

whatever else is out there to connect to your actual business data, all of it, and automate all of those tiresome, time-sucking, soul-deaddening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn more at NetSuite.com slash Mike. And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information, and again, it's free at netseweet.com.

That's net sweet.com. Having said all that, this is the way I heard it. Episode number 366, they put him in a cage. Angie's little brother made no attempt to disguise his contempt for the four men who had summoned him. He burst into the room where they were waiting, threw a handful of paper, onto the floor and said, before we get started, I got just one question. Then, Angie's little brother spoke the words that got him five years in a cage. Four little words that led to five years of screaming, raving, and swearing at everyone around him.

Four little words that sealed his fate. Did he deserve it? Absolutely. But it's worth acknowledging that Angie's little brother would have never wound up in that cage, but for the influence of his older sister, 15 years before. I'm worried about you, kiddo. You can't just sit around Asbury Park for the rest of your life chasing Jersey girls. I'm stuck, Ange. I just don't know what to do with myself. Truth was, Angie had always worried about her little brother. He was small for his age and had been

bullied as a kid. And now he was 17, with no prospects, no plan, and no job. Why don't you come on down to the beauty parlor, she said. The girls can teach you how to cut hair. It'll pay the bills, and you might like it. Angela's beauty parlor did a brisk business, and though her little brother had never considered becoming a hairdresser, he showed up the next morning at his sister's salon to give it a try. There was no training program, per se, but the stylist took him under their wing, and before long he was doing beehives, buffets, updoes, downdoes, afros, new pixies, and all the latest styles. Angie's little brother was natural, especially with the older clientele with whom he flirted shamelessly. The old ladies

loved the handsome teenager and allowed him to roll the curlers into their frosty mains and practice new styles on their weathered follicles. Then, one of his favorite clients, Miss Edith, passed away just a day before her monthly appointment. The next morning, her daughter came to the beauty parlor with a unique request. I don't know if this is appropriate, she said, but my mom, she really loved the way you did her hair. Would you give her one last cut before the viewing later this week. Angie's little brother had never considered becoming a mortician, but he said yes and headed down to the funeral home to curl Miss Edith's hair one last time. When he finished, everyone agreed. Miss Edith looked resplendent in her casket. And so when Miss Clara Owens died a few weeks after that, her son came to Angela's

beauty parlor, looking for Angie's little brother. I hate to ask, he said, but my mother really loved the way you cut her hair. Would you mind terribly giving her one last blowout? Once again, Angela's little brother said yes. He went to the mortuary with his clippers, his curling iron, and this time with a makeup kit. When her family gathered to say farewell, Miss Clara looked at the moment. Miss Clara looked like she was ready for a night on the town.

Soon, word spread through Asbury Park about the handsome young hairdresser who worked on the dearly departed. And before long, Angie's little brother was splitting his time between her beauty parlor and various funeral homes around town, styling the hair of the quick and the dead. But he wouldn't have wound up inside that cage,

screaming and raving and swearing and everyone around him for five long years, had Angie not made another suggestion. You know, kiddo, you really do have a knack for this. With some actual training, you could make a decent living in cosmetology. Why don't you take some classes in New York City? Well, what kind of classes? Make up classes, said Angela. They got a great program at the Academy. You'd learn from the best and get to work with all sorts of actors and actresses. And yes, I can help you with the tuition. Angie's little brother had never considered becoming a professional makeup artist,

but he gave it a shot and started attending classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where he worked on the faces of aspiring actors and got a front-row seat to dozens of plays and productions. At some point, an instructor, pulled him aside and said, hey, would you like to take a few acting classes? You can probably guess what happened next. Angie's little brother said yes, and two years later, he graduated from the American Academy

of Dramatic Arts, not as a cosmetologist, but as an aspiring actor who was ready to say yes. A bit part on Starsky and Hutch? Yes. A petty crook on policewoman. Yes, a safecracker who dies in a dumpster on a show nobody watched called Delvecchio. Yes. An angry misanthrope who lives inside a cage and screams and raves and swears at everyone around him for a pilot that didn't even have a title? Yes. On the day of that audition, Angie's little brother showed up in character. He burst into the room where the producers,

and writers were waiting. He looked at them with undisguised contempt. Then he threw their script to the floor and said, before we get started, I got just one question. Then Angie's little brother spoke the four little words that sealed his fate and earned him five years in a cage. Who wrote this shit? After a few awkward moments of stunned silence, the four men who had created the Mary Tyler Moore Show just a few years before, and were now struggling to cast a pivotal role in a brand new pilot, began to laugh.

Not in a polite or obligatory way, but in a loud, uncontrollable way. For nearly five minutes, as tears streamed down their faces, four of the most powerful TV producers in high, Hollywood lost themselves in a completely unrestrained expression of unbridled mirth as Angie's little brother glared at them, the very embodiments of the character they'd been looking for. It didn't matter what he did after that. The role was his. Thanks to the big sister, who gave him his first job and his own inclination to say, yes, Angela's little brother went on to create a character the TV guide called The Greatest in Modern Television History, a character that came to life when he improvised four words during the audition that sealed his fate and got him five years in the cage, a dispatcher's cage.

Inside the garage were a character called Louis De Palma, screamed and raved and swore at everyone around him for five glorious seasons. on the set of a TV show called Taxi, a TV show that transformed Angie's little brother from a beautician into a big deal, a very big deal, named Danny DeVito. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.

Well, did you figure it out? Are you talking to me? Yeah, I'm talking to you. Who else would I talk to? I thought you were talking to the audience. Yeah, I figured. I can't hear them, Chuck. I can't hear them. Oh, that's unfortunate. You know, people are screaming at their devices right now.

I kind of knew it already. So you don't count. But you know, the first time you told me this story, the first draft that you read me, I didn't get it until very near the end. I heard Danny DeVito tell this story probably six or seven months ago on an episode of the, it's Always Sunny in Philadelphia podcast. Actually, I heard Danny tell a lot of stories, and he just told enough of this one to make me want to learn a little bit more because I just love the idea of him working as a beautician for his sister in Asbury Park.

I mean, I could see the whole thing as he was explaining it. And modesty aside, I like everything about the story, but enough about me. What do you like about me in the story? Well, first of all, I love the image as well of Danny DeVito because he's not a very tall guy. The first thing I thought of is like, he must be putting these women on like half an apple box to sit down so that he can do their hair. Or he's standing on a box to reach their hair if it's a typical beautician's stand. But then the other thing that got me is just imagining Danny DeVito doing the hair, given a blowout to a deceased lady. Yeah, right?

Right. I know. It really sticks with you. And apparently it went on for some time. He was super popular at the beauty salon. He was super popular with the morticians. He was just doing his thing. And the more I thought about it and the more I read about it,

he was just one of those actors who always said yes. It's funny in that ridiculously long commercial we just did for three-day blinds. Here we are talking about actors. Our buddy Rico Colin Tony, this guy, Michael Vicaro, whoever that is, who's selling blinds now. I mean, you and I have been through it. We've had a lot of jobs that had nothing to do with acting. And, you know, you either stick with it or you don't.

And maybe your ship comes in or maybe it doesn't. Maybe you spend the rest of your life doing blowouts on cadavers, or maybe you become Louis De Palma. You don't know until the dust settles and it's all over. Ain't that the truth? How many gigs did you have that, were not acting gigs in your early career. Oh my God.

I mean, I did anything. I sold everything, I think. Water filters. Magazines. I sold water filters. I sold whatever they brought me on the QVC cable shopping channel in the middle of the night for three years. I was a salesman before I was an actor, and I wasn't an actor very long and just

intermittently here and there. It took a long time to figure out that, there might be a way to make a living by playing myself. Well, QVC really combined those two vocations really well, you know, sort of the performance aspect and the salesman aspect brought together beautifully. And you sold a lot of crap, didn't you? Literally, yeah. Not literally.

They weren't selling literal crap. Well, you know, opinions vary. The health team infrared pain reliever. The Amcor negative ion generator. Eel skin wallets for him. plus size fashions for her. It's all coming up next. Collectible dolls, my God.

But what it really does, a gig like that will force you to figure out who you're talking to. That's hard sometimes, right? If you're on stage, you're in a performance and you're thinking differently. At least I do. You know, I think more about the character and less about who's in the audience. Because you want to be true to the character that you're playing and you want to be a good scene partner. And so you don't really think too much about who is sitting out there and watching. But when you're on live TV, playing yourself with no script to really rely on or think about,

you really have to figure out in your mind's eye who it is you're talking to. And it doesn't matter if it's real or not. It doesn't matter if that actual person exists, but you have to construct some sort of amalgam. You know, you have to imagine that person. And so for me on QVC, I was always talking to this weird combination of my mom, my grandfather, you, my buddy Jeff, and, you know, whatever girlfriend I had at the time. They were all just kind of pushed together. And I would try and say things that I thought this composite person might find amusing.

And maybe some of that goes on in the audition process. Maybe more so than the performance? I don't know. I just know when Danny DeVito walked into that room in front of the producers and said, who wrote this shit? That was a very balsy way to audition. Nobody told him what to say, but what he proved in that moment is that he had an interpretation of the character that somebody else had written,

and he wanted to show them that he owned it or that he could personify it. And that he understood it, that he knew exactly. what they had written. Right. Because that's an exact Louis De Palma move. Yeah. I wish I had heard that story before a thousand auditions that I went on. One of the terrible things about me auditioning, because I believe I was a horrible

auditioner. I feel like if I got the job, I did great. But I don't think I was very good at auditioning because, first of all, I was sort of taught incorrectly that to always treat an audition like it's an audition and not necessarily a performance. And that's totally, totally wrong. Wrong. You know where I learned that, Mike?

At the American Academy. American Academy of American Academy Dramatic Arts. Yes, where Danny DeVito went. That's the craziest part of it. But listen, I want to go back to like what you did. Like Danny DeVito was a hairstylist. Like the things that you did, the jobs, do you remember your very first job?

Well, I remember the Golden Ring Mall was sort of the repository for all. vocational attempts coming out of high school. I think the first place I worked might have been American Eagle outfitters. That was going to ask if that was your first job. You didn't deliver newspapers or anything before that? Oh, you mean like jobs for money, like a paycheck. I mean, I did lots of stuff for cash. No, as a kid, yeah, there were thousands.

I dug graves. No. Really? Oh, yeah. Gardens of Faith Cemetery. Sure. I was right by your house. I would work, you know, I would sort of be my pop's apprentice from time to time.

I would work no steady work ever. The first paycheck I think I ever got was from American Eagle Outfitters or maybe United Artists. I can't remember which came first, but I... No, no. I remember. You got the job at American Eagle in Golden Ring Mall, which of course was a place that kids loved to go. and I came to see you at your job. And I looked around and I was like,

this looks pretty cool. I like the stuff at this store. Can you get me a job? And you did. You recommended me. I filled out an application. And like, you know, after that, we were working together. And then...

Dude, I totally forgot about that. I had no recollection of working with you at American Eagle Outfitters. Yes, yes, we did. We worked together at American Eagle. And then, this was before the United Artists movies opened in Golden Ring Mall. And then once they opened,

I'm on my lunch break from American Eagle and I'm wandering around and I'm looking around. I'm going like, man, I'd like to work at the movies. And so I filled out an application. I got that job. And then I went down to American Eagle and said, hey, man, you should come work at the movies with me. And you came up and we worked together at the movies. That's the way I remember it. Yeah.

Well, people are still raving, raving. I tell you about my mother's performance in the latest. Pure Talk commercial, and if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Roe gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues. You'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just $3499 a month with no contracts and no commitments of any kind. You can see why I love these guys.

If, on the other hand, you have better things to do with your time, than watch my mom and me be impossibly charming together, then allow me to remind you, here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text, and data on a blazing, fast network for just 3499 a month, really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way, as well as the Microwworks Foundation, and allows me,

to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just $34.99 a month at puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Yeah. Well, that is the way you heard it. And I think that's the way it was, really. What's squishy is, I don't know how long I worked at that complex,

but I do remember that if it wasn't the first multiplex in a mall, it was among the first. I think it was the first. We had five theaters in the Golden Ring Mall. Three of them were down by Montgomery Wards, and two of them were on the other end of the mall by the HEC Company. Totally the other side of the mall. Yeah.

Right. Right. And there were times, you know, like especially if you were a projectionist, you had to run from one side of the mall to the other to get the platters on the thing. Yeah. Right? Because the movie starts when it starts. Do you remember there was a restaurant called Italian Delight? Remember the Italian delight? Which was barely Italian and definitely not a delight. It was not a delight. But on the weekends, the people would show up, you know, by the hundreds. I mean, it was a very, very popular place. And especially down by Montgomery Ward, you had these three theaters. And they were all buying tickets and they were all queuing up more or less at the same time. So it was really confusing.

You had to get people in the right line, right? And then you had to coordinate the exit. This is in our capacity as ushers. So we didn't merely tear tickets, folks. We handled crowd control. I haven't thought about this in years, but I remember a searingly embarrassing moment. you know, because we had to walk out. And they always sent me out because I had a big voice.

And I could yell and I could like, really, like people would listen to me. In spite of the fact that I was wearing a red buttoned up, ridiculous jacket with black tuxedo pants and a clip on bow tie, black bow tie. Yeah. So I think the movies that were playing on this particular announcement that I had to make, were, call it maniac. Do you remember that awful movie, maniac that was playing? I don't.

We were working there. Oh, God, it was a slasher movie. It gave me nightmares. But there was another movie called Prince of the City. And then there was one called Nice Dreams with Cheech and Chong. Right? Yes, right. Okay.

So I had to walk out and tell people, if you're here to see Prince of the City, form a line right in the center. And if you're here to see, see what was the other one I mentioned? Not nice dreams. Maniac. Stand over here to the right. And if you're here to see nice dreams form a line against the gray wall by Italian Delight. And I walked out and in my loudest voice, I said, ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your patience. There's a lot of moving parts here. So let's not get this confused. If you're here to see maniac, go ahead and

line up off to the right. If you're here to see, what was the yellow and I said? Maniac and nice dreams. And the other one? Prince of the City. And if you're here to see Prince of the City, go ahead and line up in the center. And if you're here to see Wet Dreams form a line against the gray wall

of the Italian delight. And by this point, everybody's really listening to me, right? They're like nodding their heads. And I could still hear my voice like echo off the front of the Montgomery Ward sign. Come back. dreams dreams dreams I was like ah damn so now you're in showbiz pal my gosh do you remember part of our

duties as an usher was to walk down to the front where the thermostat walked down to the front of the cinema where the thermostat was check the thermostat and then walk up and do you remember when I said to you hey come in here check this out and and so I said just stand here in the back just wait here and watch me and so I just walk down you know and just walk down in my little red jacket, blah, blah, blah. Get all the way to the front. I walk, you know, over to the side, turn on my little flashlight. Yeah, the temperature looks good.

Turn it off, turn around, and then I walk back up the aisle. And as I walk back up the aisle, I look over my left shoulder at the movie, and I trip over my foot, and I just land, like, face first, take a tumble so much so the patrons are going, oh, my God, are you okay? People stood up, dude. people stood up to run over to see if you, you actually hovered for a minute. Full extension, you were planking in mid-air.

And you hit the ground like a cheap card table and literally made the sound, Oof! I could hear all the air. Rush that. And I snorted, that was good. We used to call those Brody. Yes, right. It's just a great pratfall, man.

That was great. And then you were like, the next movie, you were like, okay, let me try. And so you did it. And then we just started doing that to amuse ourselves while we were waiting for the movies to end. Totally ruining people's experience. So like, I guess, you know, there's Danny DeVito trying to figure out his life, you know, trying to amuse himself, flirting with the old ladies and Angie's barbershop and then giving them blowouts after they died. And there I am, you know, screaming out instructions, what to do in the wake of a wet dream.

and there you are taking a face plant on purpose in a dark theater just to get a rise out of people. In some ways, I guess maybe, certain kinds of people are always trying to get a reaction out of someone. And a lot of other people don't. They really don't want to get a reaction out of anyone. Those people never become actors or performers or singers or that to me is the thing. That's the, if you want to see the needle move in the way of a huge, human reaction, you've checked the first box to answer the question, is a career in entertainment even possible for you? And I guess looking back, yeah, it was clearly possible for us. We were

such idiots, Chuck. Do you remember when we weren't working at American Eagle or at the United artists on a Friday night, we would put on Hawaiian shirts and ties, and neckties. And neckties. And we would go back to the Golden Ring Mall and we would go to friendlies. And we would like order the zoo. And we would eat pounds and pounds of ice cream. And then we would pick up like a bottle of champagne. Who does that? You know, Andres, two bucks a bottle.

Unless we were feeling flush. And then it was Taylor's extra dry. We get Taylor extra dry champagne. And we dressed in Hawaiian shirts and we wore neckties. and looking back, my God, what were we thinking? Why would we do that? But for to get people to look at us and get some kind of reaction, we'd pick up girls and break into apartments,

apartment complexes. The pools, yeah. To go skinny dipping. Yes. What the heck? Climbing under fences or over fences. And remember, this was in the days where, like, there was one place that we went to,

I don't think it was an apartment complex, but a public pool, and they had a high dive. And if we were, you know, drinking champagne and jumping off the high dive at, you know, two in the morning, ridiculous. So, I mean, is there a corollary

between that kind of ridiculous behavior and whatever is alive and well in Danny DeVito that allowed him to walk into that audition and do something so audacious that his entire career took a turn? Like, was there ever a moment in your life when you did something like that in an actual audition?

Or did the American Academy just really get in your head and prohibit you from doing that forever and ever? I can think of one example where I tried something audacious and it did not work. It's literally the kind of audition that haunts me to this very day. I can be driving down the road by myself, just in my mind, you know, driving, thinking, and think of being in the middle of this audition. And I just go, oh, my God. Like it still will hit me like that. And this was, I'd gone to the casting director. I read for the producers.

And now I was going to the network for a pilot of a show and in which I was playing a stand-up comedian. And I decided I'm going to make this my own. I'm forgetting the script and I'm going to improvise a lot of stuff. But when I say improvise, I mean, I just rewrote it. And I went big. I went super big. And every one of the jokes there was, you know, this is, you know, in a, basically a small studio. But there are maybe 15 people in there.

And after every punchline that I hit, nothing. nothing, not even a little chortle. And so what did I do? I just turned it up to 11 and just went bigger and bigger. And the bigger I went, the worse it got. The worse it got. And it was, thank you. And I remember the casting director's face looking at me like,

what in holy hell did you just do as I walked out of there? That was for a show, a little show called Full House. Oh, dude. Oh, yeah. Oh, it was brutal, dude. In the end, I guess it's risk reward. You know, you just have to decide, is it worth the risk to go off the reservation? Knowing full well that most of your competitors won't.

They're all going to play by the rules. They came out of the American Academy and they're going to. And so you have to decide, am I going to distinguish myself by taking, an inordinate amount of risk, or am I going to just stay in line and do my best and follow all the instructions? And there's just no way to know when you're going to get punished for that or when you're going to get rewarded. There's no way to know. Well, I mean, the key to it is you have to execute it. If you're going to go big and bold the way I attempted and the way Danny DeVito did, you've got to pull it off. You've got to land it and it's got to work. In his case, it totally did. In

mine, it was like, no, you totally missed it. Yeah. I'll tell you when I went for it and I couldn't believe it worked was the first audition I ever crashed for the Baltimore Opera. You know, they had open calls the last Thursday of every month. I just wrote about this on Facebook. By the way, folks, Michael Gillard. Because my buddy Mike Gillard, who I just saw the week before when I was in Baltimore, and I know I got to talk to you about my dad's heart attack and all that stuff. And right now, I really am in Munich. Believe it or not, for an audition. I'm on the other side of the world right now. Auditioning for something. It's just so strange to listen to this story. What are you auditioning for, Mike? Can't get into it. I'm not allowed to tell.

You're like Rico promoting his show that he couldn't tell us about. I'm like, this is not very much promotion. Well, I've already done the work. I think it went really well. and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get it. But I haven't yet. Right now I'm just a guy in Munich, freezing. It's so cold here. It's like absolute zero. And I finished the work I was supposed, it's cold.

Absolute zero is something like 400 degrees below zero. Yeah, give me an actual temperature. Fahrenheit if you have it. Fahrenheit, I'd say 19. Oh, that is cold. 18, 19 degrees. And it's breezy. And I just saw some guys surfing in the local river.

Yeah, yeah. Unbelievable. Anyway, I'll circle back to that. My point was, Mike Gellert helped me learn the shortest aria I could find. And in that open call on a Thursday, I sang it. And I know I've told this story before, but in the context of DeVito's audition,

I think it's the closest I came to, I didn't know what I was saying, Chuck. This was in Italian. Sure. So, A, I don't really know. what the words mean. And I get about halfway through it. And Bill Yunnutsi, the musical director,

is kind of looking at me, his heads cocked to the side a little bit. He speaks seven languages, all fluent. And I realize now that, you know, there's not much difference between me getting the words right that I've memorized and just complete gobbledy gook,

at least in my head. It all says, so, say, I'm just a peyoschiazant, I'm just, I'm just, really making up sounds with an Italian accent. And I know, I know this guy is looking at me. And I know he's, he must be thinking to himself, what does this guy think he's,

does he really think he's going to get away with this? And I had a moment of just complete feeling like, I have to turn around and just run out of here now with whatever's left of my dignity. The jig is up. They know you're a fake. They know you don't know what you're doing. but I didn't.

I actually did what you did. I went bigger. I sang louder. And I just acted like I knew what I was doing. Because what Gellard told me was, look, they need young guys with low voices. I can help get you in there. And so all I thought was, well, let's just see how badly they need young guys with low voices. So he stopped me afterwards and he said, Mr. Roe, you have no idea.

what you're saying, do you? And I said, no, sir, I don't. And then of course, he called Gallardo over and said, you know, if you'll assume responsibility for him and actually teach him something, we'll let him in. That's the closest I think I ever came to saying, who wrote this shit. But in hindsight, I think I was probably thinking that. And the answer was Giacomo Puccini, who turned out to be pretty talented. Yeah. Right, right. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much imported meat was being deceptively marketed and labeled as domestic and decided to fix the problem. The result was a company called Good Ranchers. It's a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that deals directly with American farms and ranches and promises to deliver high-quality American. and grown meat for a fair price. Today, that promise, and Ben's absolute determination to keep it,

has not only propelled good ranchers into the top tier of meat delivery companies, it's fueled enormous awareness among meat eaters like me, that we have all been affirmatively deceived by policies that allow imported meat to be marketed as domestic. That's the reason I switch to good ranchers. If I'm being honest, though, I doubt that I would have stayed this long had the quality. not been so exceptional.

Every single cut I've devoured from Good Ranchers has been straight up delicious, and every morsel was raised on a small American farm or ranch. Give them a try. Subscriptions are affordable and flexible. In fact, if you start your plan today, you'll get free meat for life and $40 off your first order. Just use code mic at good ranchers.com. Free meat for life, $40 off your first order. good ranchers.com.

American meat delivered. If you could eat a steer, if you could eat a cow, don't take a chance on a foreign ranch, get good ranchers now. Hey-haw! Well, hey, let's talk about your dad. He had health scare in December that was really bad. And I know you've posted about it that, you know, you went to see him, you played some shuffleboard with him, and apparently he kicked your ass.

which is good to hear. Where is he now? I mean, he's home. He's home, thank God. If you haven't been following all of it on Facebook, the short version is he had these chest pains for a week, and he went to get him checked out. And, I mean, not just chest pains.

He's stabbing, crushing pain with numbness in the arms. It sure sounded like a heart attack. Like a heart attack, yeah. But, you know, he took the stress test, and they couldn't find a blockage. and they took his blood and they couldn't find the enzymes that would typically indicate the occurrence of a cardio event. They did EKGs and EEGs and all the stuff and nothing came back suggesting that he had a heart attack. What they thought was, you know, it's some kind of indigestion, maybe acid reflux.

He had a lot of gas, a lot of burping, you know, so it seemed like, well, you know, a lot of things can present as a heart problem. really aren't. And so they sent him home. This is maybe three days before Christmas. And he was home. And we were also relieved. You know, my dad's got really bad indigestion. Fine. It sounds so different than my dad just had a giant heart attack. Oh, no, what's going to happen? But he had a couple more. But he sat down and he kind of got through them two days before Christmas, one day before Christmas. Christmas day. He's like having these pains, but he's taking gas. And he's taking gas. sex and just like rubbing a little dirt on it. And you know, my mom very much wants to believe that the day after Christmas they're going to go see a gastroenterologist and we're going to get this

thing straightened out. And then the next morning he had a full-on heart attack, man, just a full-on EMTs sweat pouring off of him. Stay with us, John. Stay with us. That kind of shouting and my mom was a wreck and they're back at the hospital and, oh, you know, waiting. room and the emergency rooms are overrun and, you know, they get him in and they look at him again and they're like, yeah, man, we missed it. The test is wrong. He's had a heart attack. And then he had another one while he was in there. Then they rush him over to Union Memorial. They do the angioplasty, right? And get pictures of his heart. And, you know, left Maine was 98% blocked. It's a miracle. He survived it.

Yeah. And so I don't want to, you know, wallow around and all the details, but my brother came up from Florida immediately. I was not able to travel immediately, but I got there a couple days later as soon as I could. So we sort of switched places and I'd spent five days with him. And, you know, every day was a little better. He's a strong, man. I just... He has to be to have survived that. He's 91 years old, right? And so, so look, the moral of the story is, A, I just... want to bring people up to speed. My mom has had many thousands of people reach out and I have to and we're so grateful for that. But look, this is not a perfect science. You know, tests are not always

reliable and it's not necessarily the doctor's fault. False positives are a real thing, false negatives, I guess in this case, are a real thing. And until you get the angioplasty, is that what it's called angioplasty or angiogram, whatever the thing is. The angioplasty, I think, is where they put something in your, they go through your groin up into your... They go through your groin, through your main veins, they get into your heart. Put a stent in there. Yeah. That's basically what they did. They went in through his wrists, they went in through his groin. They looked around and they identified it, brilliant doctors. Three stents later, he was home, I think maybe 48 hours after that. But look, here's the real point of sharing all this. You have to listen to your body. Not to the exclusion of expert advice necessarily,

but you can't ignore what your body is telling you. My dad knew. He knew something was fundamentally wrong, and he felt it in his heart. He might not have wanted to feel it, but he knew. And my mom knew. She didn't want to hear it, but she knew. And the cardiologist, you know, I was very concerned for a while there until I really asked around and kind of went to school on this. And I was, you know, this thing. And the bottom line is that process that really and truly did confirm what was going on in his heart, that's not a thing you do lightly. Not to a 91-year-old man. You don't put him on the table and start doing something that invasive. So in the absence of anything other than what he felt, they sent him home. And it very nearly cost him his life. So there you go. That's my PSA for this

episode. The moral is to speak up. It's to speak up. Even if you're going to say things you hope aren't true, even if you're going to be accused maybe of being, I don't know, overly cautious or sensitive or whatever it is. No, that's not the moral, Chuck. The moral is don't ignore your body. You can't always trust it, but you should never ignore it. And these things come down to judgment calls. And it's been a couple of weeks now. And I can tell you that, every day has been a little better. He's back to playing pool. He's back to competing in shuffleboard. He's walking around. He's doing his physical therapy. Hell of a way to start the new year. But it's inspirational to see. He's tough. He's tough. And my mom was just amazingly strong through

this whole thing, too. So again, thank you all for your kind words at a tough time. It was much appreciated. That's great. I'm glad to hear that he's up and about. He is really tough. And your mom apparently did a great job taking care of them, you know. How scary was it for you? You know, of course, it's mostly helpless. You know, you're 3,000 miles away, and you're getting thirdhand information, and there's not a damn thing you can do. There's just not a thing you can do.

And, you know, there's no audition for this kind of thing. You know, there's no playbook for it. It's odd because I know you've been through it. with loved ones. And I would wager that the overwhelming vast majority of the people listening right now have either experienced it or loved someone who's gone through it. So there's nothing new to say, really. It's just all of a sudden it's you or it's someone you care about. And you're the one who's feeling helpless. And, you know, it's like, wow, no one will understand this. And then you realize, well, of course, everyone will understand this. It's only the most universal

thing there is. It's the big chill. It's the sum of all fears. It's the, you know, it's that awful feeling. Way more relatable than an audition that goes off the rails, you know. It's real life. It's not a role. You're not auditioning for anything. You're just waking up and all of a sudden you're dealing with things. My mind, you know, we were talking earlier. It's so funny. You know, you make these plans, whether it's for the podcast or whether it's for this gig. You're I'm doing over here in Munich, whatever it is. You visualize it, you think about it, you do everything you can, you write it down, you embark upon it, and then something happens that just completely upends your whole day, week, month, everything, everything. That old expression, you know,

if you want to make God laugh, tell them your plans. I like what Harold McMillan said all those years ago, Prime Minister of Britain, when he was asked, what course will determine the direction your government takes, Prime Minister? He said, events, dear boy, events. I mean, that's it, right? The Suez Canal and that whole debacle comes along and everything he had planned. That actually got him into office. And then after that, one event after the next. One event after the next. COVID, lockdowns, heart attacks, technical failures.

Events, dear boy. Events. Events. Okay. So back to Danny DeVito. What does he do? He takes her a chance with this audition in a pretty big way. But if you go back and listen to the interview that I heard, and by the way, folks, do it.

I don't know if you know it's always sunny in Philadelphia. It's a great show. It's basically South Park, except it's not animated. It's like real people, people running a bar in Philadelphia. It is irreverent. It is blasphemous and sacrilegious and laugh out loud, ridiculous and funny. And Danny DeVito is doing some just great work in it playing Frank Reynolds. Love it.

So Danny is the guest on the Always Sunny podcast, and these guys are talking to him. And I told you earlier, that's where I first heard the remnants of this story. But the story that surrounds it is even better. And I don't know if I told you this, Chuck, but like the real Danny DeVito story that I wanted to write was just beyond my capacity. It was just too complicated to tell in the format of the, well, the format that we use on the podcast. But what really happens to Danny back in like, I think it was 1968, he said, he was doing some plays from, oh, Pyramadello, I think, was the writer, these short one-act plays. And there's a role in one of them that he's perfect for. It's the role of the stable boy, the irreverent foul-mouthed stable boy.

And he is desperate to audition for it, and he gets a call for. from the general manager of the theater who says, look, I want you to read for this role of the stable boy. And Danny's like, finally, this is it. This is my shot. That's the role for me. But the GM goes on to say,

here's a thing, that role's already cast. Okay, what I need you to do is just read for it. Or I think what they say, you've done this, I've done this, just read it. Yeah, just read it, yeah. Yeah, they need to hear it out loud. You're not necessarily the guy who's going to play the part, but it's for the writers and the producers.

In this case, the backers. So you've got financial backers in the theater, and Danny DeVito agrees to read for a part he has no possibility of getting, because it's cast, and the guy who's cast in the role is William Devane. Okay. So William Devane, of course, you know who William Devane is now. You flick around the news. He's the guy holding up the gold coins saying,

are you safe? Look at that. 34 trillion dollars in debt, right? So that's Bill DeVane. Now, he went on to have a terrific career, but he didn't know that in 1968. He just knows he's got the part of the irreverent stable boy, and Danny DeVito is desperate for the part, but he has no shot of getting it. But he reads anyway. And a few days later, the financial backers come through, and this play, gets greenlit. And in no time, it goes into production. And shortly before opening night, William Devane goes to the producer and the general manager and says, look, fellas, I hate to do this. But I just got cast in the role of a lifetime in a very big off-Broadway production. And I got to go. I'm sorry. So the GM is like, aye, y, y, y'i. So they call Danny DeVito. And they say, hey, that role,

stable boy, guess what? It's yours if you want it. He's like, I can't believe it. I can't believe it. So they go and they do, his first performance is for the critics, all right? Sold out house, but it's all critics. And he goes on stage and he kills. He's so good. He knows he killed it. Everybody around him is doing their best work. They're jubilant. They're ebullient. They know they've got a hit on their hands. He goes home and the next day he comes back to the theater, gets there a little early, because he, you know, he likes to walk around and kind of take it all in and he gets to the theater. And guys on ladders are taking the marquee down. The reviews were so bad that they cancel the show after one performance for the critics. And he's devastated. And he turns around and he turns around

and one of the actresses in the play has brought her girlfriend along to see that night's show. And of course, she's devastated too. But Danny starts talking to her girlfriend, just about the vagaries of the business and the injustice of it all. And her name was Rhea. So Danny goes to get coffee with Ria Perlman, who turns out to be the love of his life and the mother of his children. He doesn't know it yet, but he's having to be. having that kind of a day. And then he gets a call from the general manager who has a friend who's involved in another play going on in another part of Broadway. Pretty big production. And he calls and

it says, hey, we got a role that you could audition for in this other play. But it's a last minute thing and we need you. So Danny DeVito goes the next day to audition for the role of martini in a play called One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And the lead in that play, the guy playing R.P. McMurphy, is William Devane. So he learns his lines, lickety split, he gets on stage, the critics come, Milos Foreman comes, they're all there. Everybody loves this thing. And Danny stays with it.

He gets a great review. Milo Schoorman decides, you know, something, I'm going to turn this thing into a movie. Who are we going to cast? Who could we get for martini? I like the little guy. I like that Danny DeVito guy. They cast him in the movie.

William Devane is out. Jack Nicholson is in. Yeah. So what I want to do. wanted to tell you, Chuck. What I wanted to write about when I first sat down and listened to that story was, my God, the worst day in his life turned into the day where he met his wife and got cast in the actual role that would give him the actual break that would eventually lead Jim Burroughs and those other producers to invite him to come and audition for the role that TV guide called

the greatest TV character of all time. And to get that role, all he had to do was make fun of the people who wrote the script in the style of the character he imagined he would embody named Louis De Palma. So Danny DeVito walks in with all the confidence in the world and says, who wrote this shit? And the next chapter of his life begins. But none of it happens, Chuck, unless he agrees to do something. that a lot of actors would never do. And that is read for a part that was already cast.

Yeah. That's saying yes. That's saying yes to a question that can't possibly lead to anything other than a brick wall. But you say yes anyway. That's character. That's the story I wanted to write. But what kept coming out was,

I just have to see in my mind's eye him blow drying the hairs of dead women. I just need to see Louis De Palma do that. Otherwise, what's the point? There was a lot of story there. You know, the one thing that occurred to me, too, while you were telling that, is, you know, where Danny DeVito got disappointed with that and Bill Devane got disappointed with What Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He also missed out on playing the lead role in Cheers, right?

As we learned from Rob Long. Right. He was up for the lead. William Devane was that close to Ted Danson's part of, what's it, Sam Malone? Sam Malone, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. I don't think civilians would really understand just how crazy strange it can be to be around a table with a bunch of working actors who start to connect the dots. And when they really go back and start talking about their old instructors and their own scene partners and those early auditions, it's probably the best example of how effort either pays off or doesn't.

You know, I mean, it's obviously you're cherry-picking, and it's a lot of revisionist history when you look back and everything suddenly seems so destined. But, of course, in the moment, it's not. You know, Danny DeVito is a great actor, not because of all the great performances he's done. But it's the point I tried to make in that story about, what's his name, Alan Hale, Jr. A great character actor, love great character. An actor of great character, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know what? As long as we're talking about character,

and as long as you're going to Google this episode of Always Sunny that I've mentioned, Google something else. This is Danny DeVito's best performance, in my opinion. And before I tell you what I'm thinking of, do you have one? Like, is there a moment that you remember either from stage or screen or TV? Of Danny DeVito's? Yeah. No, I don't have.

have a specific one. All right. I got one. I got two. One, they actually talk about in this interview, Rob McElheny, I think, makes the point that the greatest entrance in the history of television belongs to Danny DeVito as Louis de Palma. Because initially he was just a voice.

And then the writers made him a character, but they didn't reveal him. You only saw him from the shoulders up because he was in a cage. Right. lived in a cage. And when he was standing up in that cage, he looked a full head taller than Judd Hirsch and everybody in the cast. And then there's a moment where he and Alex are arguing. Alex wants to take a cab and drive it up somewhere upstate or something.

And he says, no, you can't have it for a joyride. And it looks like they're going to have a confrontation and they do. He kicks the door open and comes down the stairs. And then he's pointing up at Judd Hirsch. And he's only, he's four foot eight or whatever. it is. And the audience had no idea. Right. No one knew who he really was at that point. They only saw him from the shoulders up. They thought he was sitting down, up in the cage. Yeah. Yeah. So such a great entrance, and that was fun. But in terms of a performance, there's a movie called The Big Kahuna,

and he plays a salesman. It's on my mind because we were talking about QVC and Dial America, and this is one of the greatest monologues I've ever seen. And, and, and, you know, and, and, you know, And he delivers it perfectly, and he delivers it to a salesman named Bob. And he basically explains what character is. And it takes him about... Oh, right. I know that, yes. It's so good. It's a great model.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't even want to try. Just go watch it. And, you know, when I saw it the first time, I really only knew DeVito from that one role. And the fact that he broke out of that, you know, the fact. fact that he didn't allow the hugeness of that role to typecast him and the fact that he was able to do so many other things. You know, he produced with Michael Douglas, all those movies,

romancing the Stone. He produced Pulp Fiction. He was one of the producers on that. I did not know that. He did so many things and so many different roles. If you think about get shorty, amazing. Oh, right. That's a great performance. Yeah. Amazing. I love that. And then was he in Tin Men also? I seem to recall him doing a Baltimore accent selling aluminum siding. Was that Tin Men?

Yeah. That was Tin Men. But this big Gohuna thing is even better. Gosh, I wish I could remember it. There's a part where Bob basically is saying, are you saying I don't have character yet because I haven't done anything stupid? And Danny says, no, Bob, you've done plenty of stupid things. I'm saying you don't have character because you haven't realized it yet.

And when you do, the totality of your mistakes will be tattooed upon your forehead for all to see. And then you will have character. It's brutal and good. You'll love it. Anyway, we could have got Danny DeVito for this conversation, probably, if we'd ask him. No, we couldn't have gotten Danny DeVito for this conversation because I wouldn't be able to say who the, the guest was in the beforehand. Oh, that's right. We couldn't tease it without giving it away. Obviously, folks, we're working through the details of an ever-evolving format, but the fact that

you're still listening gives me great hope for 2024. As for auditions, I can't really tell you why I'm in Munich yet, but hopefully I will soon. It's cold over here, Chuck. It's cold. You did mention that. 19 degrees is the number that you put to it. It's not. It's not. just the temperature. It's the wind and there's just something about, I think 19 degrees in Germany feels different than 19 degrees in Baltimore. I don't know why. It's just cold. I don't know either, but I went to the Alps. I went to the very top of the Alps. That was exciting. Great. I recommend it. Yeah, you should do it sometime. I'm going to put that on my list. Yeah. No, you're not. Do you even have a list? No, no, there's no list. There's no list, man. You know what we're going to

going to do this year with you. Talk forever. We're going to get you a haircut. Come on. We're going to get you a haircut and we're going to film it. I am going to find a ridiculously expensive, fabulous barber to the stars. And we're going to give you the hairstyle you deserve for 2024. And we're going to film it.

You don't think this is working for me? Oh, I mean, it might be working for you. Anyway. Say goodbye, Mike. Yeah, look, to sum up, thanks again for all your well-were. wishes for my dad and my mom. I mean that. Have yourself a great and happy new year. Thank you for suffering through another one of these free associative audition-fueled diatribes. What a treat it is to see you, my friend. I'll be back in the States in a couple of days and we'll do it again next week.

Awesome. Until then. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, But if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go on and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch. the liner two all you've got to do is leave a quick five star review not four all you got to do is leave a quick five star review and not three all you've got to do is leave a quick five star review definitely not too all you got to do is leave a quick five star review even if you hate it five stars especially if you hear you thank you thank you