The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 471: David Zucker—Thanks for the Parking Spot

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Mike talks with comedy legend David Zucker, the creative force behind the movie Airplane! Zucker shares what it took to make Airplane!—pitching a spoof no one quite understood, casting serious actors to deliver absurd lines with a straight face, and why making his co-writers laugh was the secret sauce to pleasing the audience. He also discusses his new "Master Crash" course, where Zucker teaches the dos and don'ts of spoof comedy writing. Along the way, we learn how John Landis landed National Lampoon's Animal House, helping ignite a new era of irreverent filmmaking. It's a fast, funny conversation about risk, rebellion, and earning your parking space the hard way. Tip o' the hat to our excellent sponsors SkillsUSA.org/mike Join the skilled trade movement! GoodRanchers.com Code MIKE gets $25 off your first order NetSuite.com/Mike Download their FREE business guide, Demystifying AI MDriveForMen.com Try Boost and Burn to aid energy, metabolism and fat burning.

Chuck, yes. Did you know Variety Magazine says that David Zucker's The Naked Gun is the number one comedy of all time? No. I did not know that. You can fill a book with what we don't know, folks. This is the way I heard it on Mike Roe. My guest today is David Zucker. Yeah, he gave us the naked gun.

He gave us airplane. He gave us police squad. Police squad. Duh. Naked gun, two and a half, the smell of fear. Naked gun 33 and a third, the final insult. Scary movie. I mean, the guy is just, he just left.

I just spent over an hour talking with him, and I just realized, you know, what an impact his work had on me, and I hadn't really thought about it, really, until today. No, so much of our humor comes from, seeing those movies. It just all came up again. And let me just say, he is super sharp. I don't know what his age is, but he's... He's 104. Well, you know what? He seems a little slow for 104. But he just was really sharp, really funny. And again, it was like a time machine going back to

the late 70s, early 80s when like these movies had pivotal effect on our lives, I think, in terms of our sense of humor. We had never seen anything like this. Now, it comes up, and his response is really interesting, but for me, Blazing Saddles and Airplane were transformational because, A, they broke all the rules, and B, they were genuinely funny in a surprising way. And C, they hold up as movies. They're still whole movies. It's not just a collection of gags, which a lot of people say. They're movies.

Are you okay? I'm okay. There was a coughing fit during the episode as well. He made me laugh, and now it's, I'm still, I'm still wrestling with the residual hacking. Well, I just want to say that by the, like, as this goes on, he loosened up more and more and more, and it became funnier and funnier, and you were falling off the chair a couple times. Yeah. I thought it was funny from the get-go, but the thing about this guy is, he's so experienced.

And he's done so much and he's just come out with this thing. We'll plug it in the conversation, but it's called master crash Which essentially he attempts to do the impossible, which is to tell you how to be funny right and he admits it's kind of impossible Yeah, but he does it anyway. So I guess maybe I should just leave it by saying the title of this episode Incidentally is an homage to the last thing he said to me Before he left, which was thanks for the parking spot You'll understand, I think, why it's so funny when he says it. At least I hope you will. If you don't, you probably didn't like airplane.

And if you didn't like airplane. I mean, come on. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, you're listening to the wrong podcast. Maybe so. If you didn't like airplane. Apologies in advance for anything that could be deemed politically incorrect. I laughed at what I laughed at, and I said what I said, and I stand by it all.

Yep. Having said all of that, David Zucker is very grateful for the parking spot. I'm grateful to him for coming by and I'm grateful to you for listening. It all starts right after this. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA, making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965,

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The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skills, USA.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, U.S. skills, U.S. skills. USA. Oh, look, there's my name.

So you remember it? Do we spell it right? Are you in some kind of dementia? How old are you? I never look in that direction. Oh, okay. So you're really, like, oh my God, we got to remind you. So he is demented then.

Yeah. Now, to be clear, it's Zucker like Hooker. Like Hooker. See, I knew Jeff Zucker, if he was running CNN. And of course, I called him Jeff Zucker. And did he say anything? Yeah. He said not...

It's Zucker. He said not Zucker like Whacker. Zooker like Hooker. Oh, okay. Same thing. I met him once. Yeah? Would you think?

Yeah. I just ran into once. I don't know. Everybody's nice when you meet them, you know. Now, you said I could ask you anything. Yeah. You said to ignore all the things your publicist is sent over. Right.

Warning me to avoid. Right. Yeah. Okay, good. Hey, it's really terrific to meet you. Thank you. Are we on? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, we're on. You know, you could have warned me.

Okay, well, that's, you know, would you have warned me? No, exactly. So it's 1980. I'm sitting in a theater, probably at Golden Ring Mall where we used to work as ushers for United Artists. And what city was this? Baltimore. In Baltimore. Baltimore. Baltimore. Now, I just got to get this stuff out of the way. I'm sure you're sick of talking about it, hearing about it, dining out on it, call it what you will.

but there's a moment in an airplane where Julia Agherty says, he says to her, you know, I lost six men. Yeah. Right? Yeah. You know, and she says seven. Lieutenant Zip died this morning. But you don't cut back to him.

You stay on her and all we see fly through the screen is the contents of whatever fluid he had in his mouth. Right. I started to laugh at it, and not since Blazing Saddles have I, like, really lost my entire composure in a theater over just a silly little moment like that. But I couldn't recover, David. I mean, I laughed for about, I don't know, it felt like the rest of the movie, but, I mean, out of control for 10 minutes. And everybody around me started to laugh as a result of it. Oh, good. Yeah, it was just a simple little thing, and I wanted to thank you for it, because I've never, I never forgot.

it. And it made me want to ask, well, not at the moment, but right now it makes me want to ask you. Were you mostly trying to amuse yourself with that whole thing? Always. I mean, we just, we started out doing comedy because we just wanted to laugh at stuff. And we did laugh at stuff. And we were class clowns. And Wisconsin, right? In Wisconsin, we grew up in the first suburb north called Shorewood. And yeah, we were, you know, and we were, you know, and we were. And we were, weren't even the funniest guys in our class. There was at least six guys who I thought were funnier than we were, but they all were able to find jobs and be lawyers and whatever.

And we kind of pursued it. We weren't really wanting to have jobs. So we started a small theater called Kentucky Fried Theater on the University of Wisconsin campus. And then that was a huge hit for a year, but we were only able to charge a dollar. And so we moved the whole show. We got a U-Haul truck west to L.A.

and set up a show on a theater on Pico Boulevard. God, I can still see it, man. Chuck, do you remember? Are you aware of the penal codes in the state? Oh, did you see the live show? No, I saw the movie. That was in the movie. Kentucky Fried movie, but we did that gag on stage.

Oh, my gosh. I just remember. I think the first time I saw boobs on the big screen, they were kind of blurry because the steam but it was the girl in the shower. Oh, yeah. I think it was young Catholic high school girls in trouble. Yeah, Catholic high school girls in trouble.

Catholic high school girls in trouble, right. And that was, what, late 70s? 77. Scandalous, man. We were scandalous, yeah. And a lot of that, we shouldn't have been seeing that. And a lot of that cool stuff was contributed by John Landis, who directed it. Yeah.

And, yeah, John was fabulous. And, you know, it was... Was that before Animal House or after? Before Animal House. He got Animal House because, you know, our script supervisor, whose name was Catherine Houton, was the girlfriend of one of the universal executives and told him these guys are doing this insane comedy,

and I'm on the set every day, and John Landis is directing, and you should consider him for Animal House. And that's what happened. Jeez. Yeah. Way leads on the way. I ask you this, Chuck is sick to hear me talk about it, but the idea of comedians in particular, but really any performer who's trying first to please themselves, or in your case amuse,

is to me there's like a real difference between that sensibility and the kind of person who is really trying to understand the audience and then trying to feed the audience and trying to do whatever, I don't know, an executive or producer or an audience might expect. It was airplane, more than anything else, that just overwhelmed me with the sense that, like the lunatics were running the asylum. No one was getting permission for anything. And just a bunch of guys who were all in on the joke

had somehow gotten permission to do whatever the hell they wanted, whatever made them laugh, and just kept doing it. Like, it's just the most relentless procession of gags I'd ever seen. And to this day, I can't believe you got away with it. Well, I think the pace came. Well, I don't think the pace. I know the pace came from doing our theater because we were the actors in our Kentucky

Bright Theater. We did a show in L.A. called My Nose. Just so our listing in the weekly L.A. Times calendar section would say, my nose runs continuously. And that's the kind of stuff that we would do. And so we were always not taking anything seriously. I think that's, you know, right through grade school and high school, I remember. I was not taking anything seriously.

So the famous exchange and the thing that I, to this day, I'm so glad to be able to ask you this question. But when it's Roger, Roger, Witcher clearance, clearance, check your vector victor. Right. Right. Did that joke come when you realized these guys' names would lend itself to it? Or did the joke form and then somewhat say, oh, shit. No, we named these. We have to name them?

No, no. We named the characters because we wanted to make those jokes. Clearance, Clarence, Victor, Roger, all that stuff. We designed the joke like that. And it became a version of who's on first. We also did a similar, you know, take on that kind of concept in Police Squad, the TV series, where Frank Dreb and Leslie Nielsen questions the lady and said, you know, it's a whole who's on first routine. Yeah, but I mean, I would think Evan Costello sat down and said, okay, here's the routine.

This is how it's going to work. It'll be funny if we do this, then this, then this. It's like they start with the end goal in mind. You named the central characters in the movie in such a way that you could make one gag. Yeah. Yeah, it was. And then after that, it wasn't a joke anymore. I mean, he was just named.

I think at one time, the stewardess says, I'm standing over, over. So, you know, we came back and did a little more of a twist on it. You know, these things just kind of happen. It just, it developed. And when you have three of us writing, you get, you know, I can never write this alone. You know, it so helps to have a trio. And everybody would, you know, put out, try a joke. And if it got a laugh, it was in.

You know, we just, we knew it was funny. If the other guy's laugh. If it got a laugh among your triumvirate. Among the triumvirate, exactly. Which means you're just trying to amuse yourselves. That's the thing. Absolutely. If I could get a laugh out of Jericho.

Jerry and Jim, I was as proud as I could be. Like, okay, I hit a single. And then, you know, Jerry or Jim would hit a triple and get me home. Well, that's how you win games. That's how you win games. Singles doubles, yes. Okay, so now that that's out of the way, what are you doing these days, ma'am? I know there's a master class.

Yeah, I have the master crash, yes. You go to mastercrash.com. I'm teaching an online course in spoof humor and inspired by the, dreadful naked gun for, which you're not supposed to ask me about it. I understand it's inspired. I don't know why you brought it up. She brought it up. Can this be, can you go back and erase?

No, we're lying. I'm going to start recording now. Okay. Thank you. Chuck. But when other people try to do this stuff, first of all, it looks easy, evidently. So people are doing it. They did airplane two.

they did, I don't know, there was a movie called Loaded Weapon, there was a Angie Tribeca, TV, you know, all this stuff. They think they're doing it, but they don't know the rules. And Jerry and Jim and I, you know, developed this over 40 years. You had actual rules? We had 15 rules. And this isn't to say that everybody has to follow our rules. But if you're doing this kind of spoof, our particular spoof, you have to follow the rules.

Otherwise, it falls flat. It's embarrassing. Now, Mike Myers did a spoof of James Bond movies in Austin Powers. Sure. Great job. Funny movie. The Wayans brothers did a scary movies. Spoof on horror movies.

They did it in their own style. Brilliant. Wonderful movies. And then they didn't want to do four and five. So Bob Weinstein called me and said, do you want to do this? And I said, well, if the Wayans aren't doing it, then I'd be glad to do it, but in my style. And so scary three and four. are a lot different than one and two.

So did the Wayans follow the rules, whether or not they knew they existed? No, they didn't need to follow them. You know, the Wayans are brilliant on their own. Well, if you can be brilliant and make a great funny spoof without following the rules, why do you need the rules? Well, yeah, nobody needs the rules and they don't need to take my course. In fact, I'd advise against it. You're a terrible salesman.

It's just a waste of money. You're a terrible salesman. Yeah. Well, I'd rather sell pillows. Was it fun to do? Oh, this course was great. Yeah, no, we did one episode for each rule. But we also have a glossary of terms that's like over a hundred terms that we've used throughout all the movies that we've done.

Well, this is a stupid question, then. Well, I'm glad to answer stupid questions. Well, I mean, I was going to, like, how do you, can you learn to be funny? Ah, you can and you can't. If you're naturally funny and want to do spoof, I think you're. you can learn a lot of things not to do. The rules are things not to do. We can't tell you how to make a joke.

That kind of has to happen naturally. But Jerry and Jim and I aren't the only ones who could do it. Pat Proff could do it. Craig Mason was great at it. Mike McManus. These are the guys that I'm writing with now. Profft and Mason I'm writing with now. And I wrote a script, film noir, great love story comedy set

in 1949. And it's really spoof 2.0. Do do do do do do do do do do do. 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.

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I don't know. You know, Jim Abrams used to know. We would be asked that, and I don't really know, but Jim knew, but he died, so it's lost with him now. I always thought of satire. Like, um. Is Blazing Saddles satire, or is it a spoof? That's, I don't know. Yeah, see, I, but when, what's his name?

Thomas, was it, was it Swift? Jonathan Swift, maybe, a modest proposal that. famous essay that talked during the potato famine about how to prepare your infant for consumption because there was nothing else to eat. Yeah. So it's basically like a recipe on how to eat your kid. And it was so dark and so crazy. It's dark.

It's satire. It's not really a spoof on something. It's not a spoof. That's satire. Okay. Right. Spoof has to be, and you're helping me here define this. I think is spoof is directly derivative.

of some serious thing that you can make funny. And I think Mad Magazine used to do an article, every magazine called Scenes We'd Like to See. In movies, yeah. In movies. So I think that was spoof, I guess. Right, because it's based on an expectation. Yeah.

It's a scene you've already seen, but what I'd like to see is some element of it tweaked. So you recognize the original. I remember a long time ago, a reviewer said about our show is that basically what they do is set up a familiar scene and then reverse the viewer's expectation

of the outcome. So, you know, not to get too technical, but that's... Because I can get technical and be really unfunny fast. Bring it, man. Bring it. No, I can't. No, I...

Like, no, to see... I'm drawing a blank on the guy's neck. who played Ted in an airplane. Oh, yeah, Robert Hayes. Right, Hayes. To see the fluid in his mouth flying, it was a spit take, but you didn't see the guy's spit. Yeah, now that wasn't satire or spoof.

That's just a gag, and it's part of what I'm teaching and directing is that not to point out the joke. And the same thing happens when Leslie Nielsen is in the passenger cabin, working on a patient and all you see is the woman's legs and he's got a speculum and she's in the stirrups and Leslie says what the hell's going on up there and we never point to it so that joke of the spit take is the most obvious thing to do is to show him doing the spit take right but Mel Brooks did that I don't want to play sloppy seconds so that's that's why it's a spoof because you didn't want to

imitate Mel but in a way you paid homage I think it has nothing to do with spoof or satra. It's just a gag. Some things are just gags and not a spoof on a movie. When that little 12-year-old girl turned to that 12-year-old boy and said, I'll take my coffee black, like my men. Yeah. Okay.

Now, I don't know if you can do that today. Well, you're talking about two different things. It could be, I mean, audiences would still laugh, but the studio boardrooms would say, oh, no, that's too much. You know, and that's too much. You can't do that. They're all frightened. And that's why you just get the pablam now that's in theaters.

There's nothing funny. If you want to see funny, go to TV, watch South Park or impractical jokers. So, okay, both so interesting. I think South Park will be remembered as the greatest satire of the modernization. You know, they're great. And I had the opportunity to work with them in basketball. And it was so fun. So I really got to know those guys.

Did you see the documentary they put out? It's called Six Days to Air. No, I did not. You're welcome. You're going to love this. I don't know it applies to any of your rules, but it's just they're coming back from winning the Grammy for Book of Mormon. Yeah.

Okay. They're baked out of their minds. They land in L.A. they got on skateboards and they go to work. The first episode of the first season is due in six days. And they had to do it. They got nothing. Now, Simpsons takes like a year and a half from script to screen.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. The animation style is totally different. The writer's room's different. This writer's room is Trey and Matt, and I think Bill Hater is sitting there. He doesn't do much. It's so much, Trey. But within six days, they've got to navigate a script.

get it through S&P, which is tough because I think this one is human centipede, right, when the people are stitched together. I don't even know what S&P is. Standards of practices. Oh, okay. I don't know any. You'd be surprised at shit that I don't know. I mean, I just, yeah.

I mean, this, again, you're trying to sell a course on comedy and telling me you can fill a book with what you don't know. Right, no, I don't know anything. So, yeah, we're trying to get people's money to sign up for this course, at least. Now, did you name it Master Crash? Yeah, we named it Master Crash. because, you know, I couldn't say master class. So now it's an Asian.

I had a manager. I don't think you can make that. Oh, I don't think you can do it. I almost did a spit take right there. Oh, Master Crash. Yeah. Well, you're making it into some kind of racist. No, I think you did.

I think you wanted me to think it. And then you wanted, I think. We'll have to research this and see who was the original racist here. Back to the 12-year-old girl. Yes. Whose idea is it for her to turn to this kid, who I'm assuming is 10 or 12? 12 years old, dressed in a three-piece suit, and tell him she likes her coffee like she likes her man.

Well, normally, we don't remember who came up with what. I mean, the most famous joke in the movie, don't call me Shirley, none of us remember because we never made a thing out of, you know, who wrote what. And it really helped the collaboration because we didn't care about individual credit. It was only ZAZ. We wanted to succeed as a trio. It was great. There are some jokes that I know that Jim Abrams wrote.

And that's one of them because what would happen is we'd all sit around a table and Jim would be on the typewriter. And he would type of everything and then he'd show Jerry and me what he had just typed. And so we just had, I take it black or something. And Jim typed in, I take it black like my men. And Jerry and I cracked up. And all that stuff, we thought, well, we probably can't do that. And then we thought for another 30 seconds in the,

But why not? Of course we're doing it. And the same with Jim came up with, I remember how he used to hold me and how I used to sit on your face and wriggle. And that was Jim. So I remember all those really, really bad lines were Jim. No, it's not bad, though. No, no, I mean, you know, naughty. Naughty.

Yeah. I mean, look, so, but in that case, it wasn't the line. I mean, like, you can't have that exchange between full-grown adults. You could. It wouldn't be funny. It wouldn't be funny. Exactly. Just like a lot of the stuff between Peter Graves and the little boy couldn't be done with comedians.

You couldn't, you know, what if that were Dom Deloese? I mean, or even Chevy Chase. It would have been creepy, but. Well, how did you get Peter Graves to say yes to this? Well, he originally, he turned it down. We just, and when we found out later, he just threw the script, across the room and said this is a worst piece of trash. Yeah, repulsed.

And then, you know, years later, I had much more experience with actors, producers, studios. I realize you give an actor a script to read, and they just read their own parts. And so he must have been horrified. He appeared that the character was a pedophile. And we were saying, oh, how funny is this? You're like gladiator movies, John? Ever seen a grown man naked? Kidding me?

Right, no, no, he said, and evidently, you know, his daughter read the script, who was probably, you know, 17 at the time. She thought it was hilarious. His wife read the script. She thought it was funny. And then Howard Koch, our executive producer, who was at the time, you know, 62, which was to me just so old. I couldn't believe that. Anyways, he knew all these guys. So he said, Peter, why don't you come in and meet the boys?

We were called the boys at the time. She's not famous yet. We're not famous, no. We're, you know, somewhat known from Kentucky Fried movie, but I think Landis got most of the publicity. But so he came and meet us, and I think he expected, you know, some just drugged out weirdos.

Sure. And we were actually quite preppy, you know, not many years out of Wisconsin. And, but yeah, we had written, and this stuff. And so we convinced him that we knew what we were doing, even though we had never directed before. And so all these guys

made a leap of faith. Robert Stack wanted to know, well, who else is coming to the party? Yeah. That's how he put it. Right. And so once Lloyd and Peter and Leslie signed on, then Stack came on. And then they offered Stack,

I think low money, like 30,000 and a piece of the profits. He had no faith at all. A great guy, by the way. But he just, no, no, I'll take the 50 grand. So how often I get you guys our team, but once the cast trusts you,

and once everybody's in on the joke and they all kind of get where they're going, did ideas ever come from Leslie or Lloyd? Normally, I don't like to take any ideas from actors. But actually, one of the actresses, the woman who was the one who became the hysterical woman, she suggested, why don't they slap me? And we didn't have that in the script. We didn't think of it. And so we said, okay, you know, slap me.

And then somehow, this I don't remember, I wish I did remember, either Leslie, thought of this himself or we told him to do it but it's one of the funniest gags in the movie he slaps her and then he slaps her again yeah just and then and then you see the line of people and the line of people was also suggested by somebody so how about how about doing that and we said yeah let's do that we sent out the prop lady and she brought in the whips and the chains of the bats and brass knuckles it's like an indian with a tomah but it happens so infrequently that we don't do any improvisation, because we don't use comedians. Right.

And sometimes, though, an actor will come up with a suggestion, Judge Reinhold on ruthless people, he was supposed to pretend that he was ruthless, and he was giving the speech about how ruthless was, and he scoops up a bug and puts it outside the door and closes the door. And so, and Judge suggested to me, why don't I open the door again? and stomp on the bug. And I said, no, that won't be funny. Like, I knew.

Like, you know, it's like, you get to be a director. You get full of yourself. Like, you know. And I said, but it couldn't hurt to try. Just doing another take. The lighting set-ups there. We let the audience decide. So he did it.

Everyone laughed. And at the preview, they laughed. And that's why that's in the movie. All right. Was it a real bug? No. No, I don't think so. Like, what's, so there's no bug wrangler?

No bug was harmed during the movie. During the making of this motion picture, 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 Rowe gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issue. shoes. You'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just $34.99 a month with no contracts and no commitments of any kind.

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You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. I mean, look, I'm not a comedy director. I don't know about your rules, but if it were me and the credits, I might have put no bug was hard. Oh, that's all. Well, we did put jokes in the credits, but I don't think that's a particularly good joke. Who was the first to put bloopers in the credits?

I remember like cannonball run and... Oh, I know. The first time I remember seeing. I don't know. We did not do that. But all that stuff happened after. In the movie. No, I think after airplane.

It's putting jokes in the credits. Yeah. And also putting a gag at the end of the credits, we put the guy in the cab saying, well, give them 15 more minutes, but that's it. For every ridiculous non-sequitur, apropos of nothing moment, like the spear going into the map on the wall.

inexplicable to me. Right, and that's one of the things I teach about in my course is not to do that. And yet? Well, we did it, but I think it wasn't the greatest decision because we thought background stuff was funny. It's not funny. It doesn't get a laugh unless it's related. So that's just one of the things. Chuck, did you laugh when that spear went sailing into the wall?

Yes, I did, yes. Were you high? Yes, yes. Yeah, see, we don't do stuff because we're not. high when we write the stuff. So we can't assume that we really weren't. We just had coffee. Don't give me that look. How much coffee? Like all the coffee? We'd actually, we get together at 9 a.m. We'd drink coffee. We talk with airplane. We talked about Watergate. We would talk about Watergate. And then at 10, we'd start writing. Okay, Spear goes in the wall. Yeah. Not sequitur, not funny,

rule breaker. Robert Stack takes off his sunglasses. That's funny. And there's another. a pair of smaller sunglasses. We did that on stage. Why is that funny? The gag was written by Pat Proft, and I guess because it's silly and unexpected. All right.

I can't believe you're asking me why that was funny. You have the master crash. You have master crash. Yes. I have master crash, and so I presumably know what I'm doing. All right.

I think you, well, obviously, I think you do. But I'm just trying to, like the, because you made a distinction between a gag and a joke, satire versus spoof. So there are all these things. But the most relatable gag that I remember in airplane

is when Ted is just spilling his guts and the woman hangs herself. Yeah, everybody's been somewhere when they've been talked to death. Everybody. Yeah. Everybody. And on a plane, you're trapped.

Right. So, like, in that moment, okay, that's a gag. That's funny. That's a heck of a thing. But in the same way, you got a line of people waiting to slap the hysterical woman. Now we go to our Japanese gentleman, fully dressed in World War II garb, who commits with Harry Carrie.

Right. Oh, man, dude. What's your question? Come out with it. Why is it funny to see a man commit suicide? Oh. Why is it funny when a woman hangs herself? Like, if you just reduce the thing to its various component parts, it's the opposite of funny.

But when you create a scene... And nothing is literal, or everything is literal. It's just we just do it, and the more outrageous it is, and I find this in my personal life. I go to restaurants, and I start engaging with strangers, and if I'm outrageous enough, people know it's a gag. But if you're not, it's just... Well, then it's just embarrassing.

Call the cops. Yeah, I've also embarrassed myself, too. My dad can't get into an elevator without chatting up. who's ever in there. It doesn't matter how many. But he wants to know where they're headed. But is your dad interesting, or is he just boring these people that they want to commit? I think he's interesting.

Okay. I mean, he's 93. Oh, that's great. Is he still doing fine? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's great. He's hanging tough, but he's the kind of guy.

He walks, it was, my mom's a writer, and she wrote a very funny story. It was around Christmas, and he goes in the elevator and it's crowded. And there's a big guy in there with the beard. And, you know, my dad's like, got the reindeer parked out bear back too you know it's just awful yeah and they're like nine people and they're all like looking at this and the big guy my poor mother is shrinking but she's like this is either going to be the longest elevator ride ever but the guy turns and makes another Santa joke oh well that's good so what's good about it is everybody else in the elevator now

relaxes and laughs because somehow or another we have permission right right but for those first couple of seconds, like in Curb Your Enthusiasm, they're like all these moments that really are just so uncomfortable. And then I guess it's, I don't know, catharsis or something. Yeah. And then we get permission to laugh. I think Larry David deals directly in that uncomfortable stuff, which he's so good at. Yeah.

I'm sure most of that stuff is things that really happened to him as in Seinfeld, most of this stuff. Yeah. I never watched any sitcoms except for Seinfeld. and also some of KERB and some of Gary Shandling was great. Oh, my God. Yeah. The original, remember the original theme song? Yeah.

Gary Shandley Show. Oh, he was so great. Oh, my God. And I don't watch any other television except that. And, you know, today I watch Impractical Jokers. That's what makes you laugh. That's what makes me laugh. It makes me laugh so hard, yeah.

Look, I'm tempted to ask why, but I'm going to offend. you again. Well, those guys are funny. I mean, and they interact with real people. And they prank themselves. And, you know, you just see that they're having such obvious fun, and they laugh at themselves. I mean, everything about them

is good. Well, that goes back to my first, I think, super prescient observation, which was you amuse yourself. Airplane was an attempt to amuse yourself. Exactly. And these guys, impractical jokers, obviously are, they're amusing themselves. They're doing it because they think

And so are Trey and Matt. That's right, yeah. But they're awfully smart about it. Yeah. Well, of course. I've had the pleasure of getting to know both of those teams. I watch those guys interview each other on a pig farm while they were feeding bacon to the hogs. Oh, Matt and Trey?

Yeah. Oh, really? They're just doing like a stand-up in between throwing to a thing, and they're just sitting there with pigs feeding the pigs pigs. Yeah. they don't really acknowledge it, they just do it. And so, you know, suddenly you're one of those people in the elevator trying to figure out, do I have permission to laugh at this? Can I laugh at the Japanese gentleman for committing Harry Carrey?

I'm not sure, except I was sure in the theater. Yeah, it comes from a really good place that they genuinely think it's funny and they're original and they're not trying to copy anybody like other people today are. Were you a fan? I'm asking this because what part of Wisconsin? You're in Milwaukee? Milwaukee. And I graduated from University of Wisconsin.

That's Madison. Madison. Did you know the onion guys? I didn't know them. I met some of them later because we did a movie with them. My partner, Gil Netter and we had Zucker Netter productions. And Gil worked out this deal with the, with the Onion to do the Onion movie.

And so we did that. You mentioned Mad Magazine. Yeah. For me, when I was in the very early 90s, one of the greatest moments of my misspent career was learning that the editor at The Onion was taping my segments on the QVC cable shopping channel in the middle of the night.

And he created a cartoon called The Endless Knights of Rick Nobles, which was based on, things I would say in the middle of the night. And I was so flattered by that because to me the onion was the perfect mix of irreverence and subversion. And he would use that like this cartoon was meant to be an example to the staff writers. He was like, here's a guy on TV who's clearly trying to get fired. I want you to write with that same goal. Right. Right. So my question is, what happened to the onion and how come the Babylon be is funnier today? Oh, I think it's a lot because what happened to Saturday Night Live.

Yes. They were committed to an ideology rather than to jokes. And so the Babylon Bee is much funnier. I've gotten to know some of those guys and I subscribe. I love it. It makes me laugh. They're so good. They're just because their targets are better.

You know, just how do you defend AOC and Chuck Schumer? You see, you can't, you have to, and Biden, I mean, you just, you're stuck defending those guys. That's not very funny. No. There's nothing to laugh at. Right. Yeah. Right.

And when I think of SNL, I mean, occasionally they've done some good stuff. But I remember when, when Hillary lost, they did. I did an episode where these two characters on SNL were, they were kind of sad, and it was a whole... Do you remember this sketch? Kate McKinnon, who is funny as hell, sat at the piano, and played like a eulogy. Where's the joke? There's no joke. Yeah, there's no joke.

And this is another thing I teach in my course is axe grinding. You can't ax grind. It's just, it ain't funny. Not for a laugh. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I did a movie, an American character. which, you know, made fun of Michael Moore. And it was funny, but I think it was a bit of axe grinding.

So, you know, to the extent that it was axe grinding, I mean, I really was conscious. I had to pay for every political point I was making by a joke. It had to be a joke. Yeah. And, you know, I wrote it. I think I mentioned my friend Louis Friedman, who's a total lefty, and we just loved making movies together. So, and he was great writing jokes for that.

Well, since you brought it up. No, I don't want to talk about it though, Mike. Let's get his publicist on the line. No, I mean, Wisconsin is about as blue as a blue state gets. Right. And you're coming out of the university system. I'm assuming your ideology was what it was. Yeah.

You've made no great secret. No, it's not a secret. I'm out. What happened? You know, we grew up in a sea of blue there. My entire extended Zucker family, Democrats, and some of them are very far left and continue to be. Everybody, I'm the only one.

You know, I actually did an interview for the Milwaukee Journal. This is when I had first crossed over to the dark side in like 2004. I think I did an ad against John Kerry. And the Milwaukee Journal interviewed me, and I was interviewed on the radio station there. And my mom didn't care about the radio station, but it was in the Milwaukee Journal. All her friends read it.

Oh. That her son became a Republican. And I called up. I wanted to kind of apologize, and I said, Mom, I'm sorry, but I guess I'm the black sheep of the family. And she said, oh, no, no. You do a lot of good things, too. Do do do do do do do do.

Dumb. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do. It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse.

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Odds are you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hide. And, you know, for years after my dad sank into dementia, my mom continued to vote for Democrats for him. So even when my mom died, you know, it's like I said, yeah, everybody said, I'm so sorry. And, you know, sorry for your loss. I said, yeah, but I always look on the bright side. It's, you know, one less vote for the Democrats.

So, you know. And because, you know, if someone isn't run over by a bus and they live till 86 or 87, you know, don't ask me that when I'm 86 or 87, I'm going to think, of course, and I'm still, yeah, I'm not going to die now. Right. But it's my whole family is, but I changed, I think, after 9-11. There are a lot of people who were 9-11 conservatives. and I saw how both sides reacted to that and Clinton I think said what did we do to deserve this?

What did we do to deserve? And so being just practical and I'm not that bright I mean I'm bright but I just why would this this is pure evil and the right was saying this is pure evil and people on the right actually use the eword I've had friends I've had girlfriends who said

no, there's no, people aren't evil. Oh, yeah, that relationship didn't last. But Mike, I don't want to get into my personal life. I understand. Can you keep this? Fine, fine, fine, fine. Politics and why I hate Naked Gunford. And Master Crash.

And the pronunciation of my name, yes. Right. I've heard lots of people talk about your influence on them and obviously the influence of your work and so forth, and I'm sure that's terribly gratifying for you. But who really influenced you? Who was funny for you when you were teenage? We loved Mad Magazine, the Marks Brothers, Woody Allen.

That's who we loved. And more than anything, we would laugh at serious movies. And what we would do is we would dub in our own voices. mystery science theater must have just chapped your ass? I never watched it really. That's what that, I mean, didn't the airplane come out of like zero hour, was it? Yeah, zero, we saw zero hour and we thought, because we were taping late night movies to get the commercials. And one morning, what?

Because you were lampooning the commercials. We were making fun of commercials. So we saw this movie, and we started getting more interested in the movie than the commercials and we thought why don't we spoof this movie and originally the first airplane script was called the late show and it was the zero hour the airplane story with commercials as if it were a late night movie and so we gave it to a friend of ours for a first read and he said i like the script but i think the commercials i got i was getting into the story the commercials interrupted it yeah so we asked the commercials

And we just, that's how airplane. I mean, it started out, and this whole book, surely you can't be serious, which you can get on Amazon. The main theme is we didn't know what we were doing. We kind of learned as we went. We were just raw guys. Who came up with the cover art? Paramount. That was Paramount.

Brilliant studio run by Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Kansenberg, Frank Mancuso, Barry Diller. These guys were so great. Eisner took the. chance on you. Eisner took the chance and it's such a contrast to the idiots who run the studio today. People do listen to this podcast.

Oh, I heard that you have a dozen people? Literally. This is not going to get out, is it? But they all work at Paramount. They're all on the board. I didn't name names. Actually, you know what I did? I sent a letter, a registered mail to

David Ellison, who took over Paramount. And I enclosed a dollar bill in it. And I said, dear Mr. Ellison, I'll bet you a dollar you don't know how Paramount ruined the Naked Gun franchise. Never heard back, but maybe he'll get it eventually. I don't know. You know. There was a truly glorious moment.

I don't know if the window was shut yet, but in the bulk mail business, when you would get these envelopes, you know, the postage is paid. They want you to fill out a thing and you just send it back. back. Right. We was getting inundated with her. This was in the early 90s. And my roommate and I would take a box and fill it with rocks and just put the envelope on the top and, you know, seal it and take to the post office.

And they have to ship it. They do even if you don't pay the postage for the box of rocks? The postage is due by the recipient. Oh. It's prepaid. Oh, it's prepaid. So we were sending back 60 pounds of rocks. That's great.

And that's how you stop getting the junk back. Yeah, yeah. But unlike you, you know, we didn't film it and then take it to a studio and go, hey, what if two kids go on this adventure and upset the recipients to the point that they put a hit out on? It's a brilliant idea, but the studio today would have said, yeah, that's a great idea, but we're going to give it to Seth MacFarlane to ruin it. Oh, no. So not a big family guy, fan?

No. In fact, oh, God, you're going to get me in trouble. You said ask me anything. You said you don't care. But I didn't mean that. I don't want you to violate any of your rules. No, okay. I just say not a family guy fan.

In fact, why don't I be positive? I'm a glass half full guy. I'm positive. I'm not a bad. I love South Park. Sure. Yeah, I just, I love good stuff, good original things, yeah. I had a part in family guy.

No, it was. It was American Dad. It was a spin-off. Yeah, okay. I played brick, the meter made. So you weren't even good enough for Family Guy. No. No.

Oh, my God. Talk about Lull. No. Mike, I wouldn't tell that story. Look, I'm not proud of it. My real disappointment is when Dirty Jobs was killing it, I wanted South Park to do an artificial insemination segment where maybe Cartman got artificially inseminated

and gave birth to something out his butt, right? Which, of course, he would do because the whole AI thing, it kind of saved my career, and I thought it would have been fun. They didn't bite. You know, and you learned that nothing could save your career. At this point, I mean, clearly. Yeah, all right. Here we are.

I'm glad to be with you on the way down. Okay, so Mad Magazine, Groucho Marx. Groucho Marx, we were exposed to the Marx brothers in college. They would do these huge screenings in big lecture halls, 600, 800, you know, stone kids watching Groucho and Harpole-Michoke. We're so old, dude. for people born, you know, in a prior century, whatever. What was it about Groucho?

Like, what made him, why do people say so-and-so and so-and-so was the Groucho marks of whatever they're doing? He was just, he was such an original. Again, I'm a fan of anybody original, and I don't like people who aren't original. So Groucho was, there was nothing like him before, and there was no one like Woody Allen before. There was no one like Chaplin before.

So these guys, and the same thing with, you know, Ben Franklin, Davy Crockett, and Will Rogers. They were all such original humorists. And, you know, Ben Franklin was a satirist. Big time. Yeah. He wrote a book called Fart Proudly. I did not know that. I have it.

It's thin. It's an easy read, but he starts by talking about the unintended consequences of not passing wind. and then the joys of doing so. I didn't know that. Oh, yes. Franklin was great. You know, Crockett was like a stand-up comedian. Why has no one made a movie about David's?

Well, I tried, but again, I didn't know what I was doing, and the script wasn't good. And, you know, I even, and Spielberg was a big Crockett fan. Wait a minute. Did you want to make a comedy about it? I wanted to make a serious movie which would have had funny things. things in it because Crocett's was funny. So, and I'm a big Crocket fan and it's a great story, but this was 30 years ago. You're a big Crocket fan. Like you collect memorabilia? I collect memorabilia. I had, I owned three original Davy Crockett letters, including the last and most important letter he

ever wrote, which was tomorrow I leave for Texas. And I just donated. That did not end well. No, it was, yeah, He didn't know. He said, I plan to explore the Texas well before I return. And I have other things. I have a lot of other original stuff. And I just donated the whole collection to the Alamo Museum, which is under construction in San Antonio. Look, I bury the lead, man. You know, my publishers should have put that in.

She should have. I mean, King of the Wild Frontier. Yeah. His land was biggest. His land was best from the grassy. plains to the mountains west. He's ahead of us all leading the rest. Follow his legend right into the west. That's very good. He remembered that. I didn't remember. Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, Greenest state in the land of the free killed him a bar when he... Everybody of our generation

remembers that song. I actually showed naked gun 33 and a third at the White House for Bill and Hillary and Bill said, can you give an introduction in front of the whole White House, the cabinet, everybody was there. And in my speech, I said, I didn't direct this one because I'm writing a script about the life of Davy Crockett. And I was about to go on and Hillary in the front row says, are you going to use the song? And I said, no, because I wasn't going to use, this was going to be a serious movie. And so I was about to go on and she started singing

Born on a mountain top And then Bill started singing And the whole room started singing the song And I ended up leading the whole thing And we were yeah, what a scene It was amazing, it was amazing They were very nice And I voted for Clinton twice

And they gave me a tour of the White House And it was very cool Which one? Bill or Hillary? Both of them They both took me on a tour of the White House Which ones you vote for twice? Oh, Bill.

I did not vote for Hillary. By the time I came to my senses, I did not vote for anybody like that. I was born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free, raised in the woods. So he knew every tree killed him a bar when he was only three, when that was politically correct to kill bears. War bars. Yeah, so, I mean, Davey Cry. So, yeah, I had to kind of maneuver through the minefields. writing that script in our

modern world, you know, because he killed you know, defenseless animals and Mexicans. Yeah. Oh. You're going to be okay. I hope you'll leave this in. Oh, God.

There's no doubt it's going to be. I'm not even going to repeat it, man. I feel like I went too far with Black like my men and Master Crash. I think Master Crash was a bridge too far. But Master Crash. And, you know, You know, my manager about two or three years ago put me up for master class.

How about Dave does a master class because he's done all these great movies and everything. And no, they just turned down. Just no? No, they don't. They don't. Yeah. And, yeah, I think I... Well, they come back around then.

I mean, what finally sealed the deal? No, no, I'm doing my own. That's why it's called Master Crash. It's Master Crash. Not Master Class. So it's, oh. It's not, yeah, it's not. You buried the other leads.

So it's not part of Masterclass. No, it's not. Neverly renamed just for your segment. No, no, it's my own thing from the get-go. Not sanctioned at all by MasterClass. No, not sanctioned, no. In fact, you were turned down by MasterCla. I was, I was rejected.

Several times, except for being honest. As I was by Paramount for doing another, my own franchise. Right, right. Yeah. So Paramount. So, I mean, it doesn't, yeah, it just. He's a whizze. Yeah.

You're reduced to this is why you're doing. By objected by everyone. That's why I'm down to doing this podcast. I think, you know, if somebody important here's this podcast, I can get on a real one. Maybe you can get a job. You know who we had in here yesterday? You'd like this kid. His name's Mark Malkoff.

And he wrote, I think, maybe the best book about Johnny Carson. Oh, really? Yeah. It's called Love. Love Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson. Yeah. Okay.

I'm interested in. I would read that. Yeah. Is this just published in the last? Yes. In the last, I think it was a few months ago. A few months ago. Yeah.

But what he did, you would like. What do he uncover that hasn't been said? It's not that. It's kind of like, why was airplane so different? And it's because it was somehow an impossible melange of gags that worked from start to finish. Right. This is 400 interviews. This kid.

gets invited to Mel Brooks's house, gets up at Doc Severnson. And everybody talked about... Everybody is desperate to tell a Johnny Carson story. Oh. Everybody. Right. He's got 400 interviews. Oh, that's great.

And he himself is... He's not like, I guess, in his 40s, but, you know, grew up so enamored of it, really because his dad was enamored of it. And so he had that sort of adjacent thing. And so he turned his obsession into a podcast called The Carson Podcast and took all those interviews and a bunch more and turned it in this book. Which leads me to the obvious question. Was Johnny Carson funny?

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I mean, and mostly because he let other people be funny. He let his guests be funny. And he was a big fan observer and officinado of Jack Benny. And Jack Benny had those takes where he would just not say anything and just look. He would fold his arms and look. And Carson wisely knew that that would be great. And I think, and Groucho did that too on his show. I don't know if Groucho, which came first,

Benny's act or Groucho doing that. But they both did it. And Groucho knew how to use those pauses. But Carson was also very funny. I mean, the way he told jokes, the way if a joke bombed, he could make a joke out of that. Well, we talked about that moment at length where Ed Ames through that tomahawk

right into the crotch of the cowboy. And he waited. Well, you can see him grabbing Ed. Ed's going to get the tomahawk back because he's like, no. Just stand here. And it's like one of the most sustained laughs in the history of TV.

The great talents, I think, realizes when silences are the best. And Vince Scully, when Kirk Gibson hit his famous home run, just silence. He let it. And then during that silence, Now I realize Vin was thinking of that great line.

Oh. In a year that what you were saying, he went to the bathroom. Yeah, that's good too. But. Yeah, man. I mean, but look, it's scary. Silence is scary. You know, let's try it.

See? Couldn't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I have to fill up. You got to do it. Yeah. But, you know, it's like a space in a sentence.

You take all the spaces out of the book. It's just... Yeah, but a lot of that, you know, I think Letterman was good at doing that too. I think he, you know, he was a follower of Carson. And also, these guys were quick. And Carson used the pause to think of that line. I think he said Frontier Briss or something on the Ed Ames thing. Yes.

And Vince Scully thought of in a year that has been improbable, the impossible has happened. And I'm sure he was thinking during the pause. Yeah. I do admire the quickness of a guy like Carson. And even without the pause,

he could do a comeback. These guys are quick. Letterman, very quick. And to do it every night. And to do it night after night, well, just to do those shows, night after, how do they do that? Sometimes, you know, some nights,

you don't feel great or you just want to, have a martini and go to sleep. Yeah. Well, in my old age now, that's what I like to do. Yeah. Well, we're getting close. Yeah.

What time is it, Chuck? Is it time? Is it time for a martini? Wait, man, are you done with me? Was, um, was Davey Crockett, the Groucho Marx? Yes, I think he was, and he was one of the first celebrities. You know, Ben Franklin was a celebrity, and because he did a lot of things. He was a scientist.

You know, he invented lightning or something or whatever. Discovered electricity, I think they say it. And Crockett was not only the best raconteur and humorist and speechmaker in the day when that was entertainment. Was speeches, people, orators. Crocket could be funny. He could entertain. And he was the best athlete of his day. Meaning he was a marksman.

He was a marksman. And he did this tremendous feat of, you know, shooting a lot of, uh, what did he shoot? Bears, yeah. And Buffalo Bill. I thought you were going to say Mexicans. No, no, I've done that joke.

That's another thing I teach in my chorus. Don't do the same joke over again. The lady hangs herself and then the guy stabs himself. But that's the same joke. It's increasing as you go A, B, and C. It's another concept. Okay. You have to kind of like a bad week to quit smoking.

Yeah. Quit sniffing glue. Yeah, right. We keep building. You build the joke. Yeah. So in that way, you can, I can teach some amount of humor.

Is your hope with the Master Crash to genuinely impart real useful information that's actually going to make people fun? Or is the whole thing in and of its, is, let me ask it with all the respect I can muster, is going through Master Crash designed to make me laugh and entertain me or actually arm me with useful tools I can apply? It's definitely arming people with useful tours. It's even helping me because, like today, I do one-hour classes on Zoom with people,

and they can interact with me and ask me questions. They were asking questions. And one question was about when can you use background humor, when can you not? And then about building a gag, how can you tell when something goes too far? So I thought of in Scary Movie 3, do you remember the scene where Charlie Sheen is talking to the sheriff, this woman, and her hat, the hat is already ridiculous that they wear. And so what I did was have the hat get bigger and bigger as he's talking to her. And the last gag in that, which we cut, was it was just the hat driving off in the car. because she was getting into the car

and barely fitting in the hat. Anyways, we had to cut that because the audience didn't laugh. And I thought, and I just came in this class today, I came up with the fix. I mean, it's, you know, it's 20, 30 years ago,

but I should have backgrounded the hat driving off because then it would have gotten a laugh. If Charlie would have been either doing something, doing some business, or talking to someone. and in the background you see the hat,

then it would have gotten the laugh. But you made it the center. I made it the center, which is a mistake, and I didn't know. So I'm learning myself from this course. Well, I would refer the gentle viewer back to whacking material, I believe. That's a background gag. That's a background gag. Right.

Right. What was the magazine he was reading? Modern sperm. This is ridiculous. Oh my God. Now, for some reason, I know that's another Jim Abrams joke. Yeah. He wanted whacking material.

It's just so wrong. Yeah. But do you understand how it would have been anti-humor to cut to it? Yes. So, yeah, those are things that I can teach. Absolutely. Anti-humor to cut back to Ted doing the special. You don't have the spit take.

Show me the spit, not to take. Right. Yeah. Just show it passing. And it's, it, it becomes bad. You don't worry. It made a background. Don't worry. That thing's not even on.

Oh, good. It's just going to be you talking about your dad. It's me. I know. I'm sick of it. I can't get enough for the Davey Crockett thing. I know. It really, I'm like the more I think about it.

That was the other thing that my publicist said not to ask me. Don't talk, whatever you do. Like, are like, are there folks? Are photos of you dressed as Davy Crockett? Do you have the hat? I have the Coonkin cap and... Chuck, see if you can find this... There's got to be a photo of him dressed as Crockett.

There is. I can send it in. I can send it to you. We used to have these big rendezvous at my ranch in Ohio. I had a 20-acre ranch and we had 100 people from all over the country, all dressed in the period. Dressed as Crockett? And armed to the teeth with flintlock rifles. we would target shoot with a target being a picture of Santa Ana. Who was leading the Mexican forces at the Alamo.

That's right. Well, it was just because he was a Mexican. Yeah. Who else died there? There was like Jim Bowie died? Jim Bowie died and Jimmy, Davey Crockett and Travis. There was Travis, yeah. Travis.

Travis. I wonder, like, was there anything or accurate about that movie? I mean, aside from my, they were there. Yeah, well, there were a lot of movies done about the Alamo, but they were all bad. Yeah. I mean, all my Alamo buddies revere all these movies, but I don't think they're very good.

And I try to do a movie, like I said, about Davy Crockett, but I finally figured out that it needs to be just what was the second act of my movie. It should not have the Alamo. Everybody's seen the Alamo. Yeah. There's been a million things. Everybody knows how it turns out. Spoiler.

The congressional period is the interesting thing where Crockett actually stands up for the Indians. Jackson, President Jackson wanted to remove all of them. It was horrible. Otherwise, pretty good presidency, wrecked by his treatment of the Indians. Was that the whole trail of tears? The trail of tears, which happened after 1836 when Crockett was killed. And Crockett stood up in Congress and spoke against. it and he was, Jackson had him defeated. Oh yeah, there you go. This is you. Yeah, that's me.

Look at these dimples, man. I know. What is going on with that? Oh, my God, you're dressing. I was that was, there was a scene in naked gun two and a half where we were firing flintlock rifles. And so I was, I played Davy Crockett. Dude, you're kind of a geek, man. Oh, yeah. 100%. I mean, no, really. When you just said before, you just kind of slipped it in there and a little parenthetical, but, you know, all my Alamo buddies, dot, dot, dot. Oh, yeah, no, we were very proud of it. They were great.

They were great. And at the time, this was in the, this was deep in the late 80s and 90s. These guys were really conservative. They were from Kentucky, Tennessee, you know, some from New Jersey. They were all very right wing. my friend Paul Hutton and I were and Robert Wheel who's an artist we're all lefties and

and so but we all got along I like these guys and we wrote our script with a kind of a left wing bent it was ridiculous anyway so but then I realized I mean I flipped over and I actually sent the script to Fess Parker no kidding I did the original Davy Crockett yeah well that's the original

Because after Naked Gun 2 and a half, I got a call from Fess Parker. And he wanted to meet me because he, you know, he had seen that I put all these scenes in about Davy Crockett. And I put pictures on the wall of Davy Crockett. I was just going to say, do we have photos? Can you find, like, a photo of Davy Crockett? Like the actual Davy Crockett? I think so. Because I'm pretty sure he didn't look like Fess Parker.

No, there are, you know, artists' renderings of him. There was no photography then. Right. there must be. But they have like about six different portraits of him. Tell me something else about Davy Crockett. I don't know. Well, you know, we said, you know, he's a humorist. You know, he actually stood up for what he thought was morally right and not a politician. He was an entertainer.

And that's how he got elected because he was really popular. They probably cheated and had him defeated through, you know, look how the hell did Biden get elected. Well, opinions vary, but yeah. Yeah. There was something going on. There was something going on, yeah. I remember him like almost drowning in some riverboat mishap or something. Yes, he, you know, cut out.

There's your fart proudly. Oh, yeah, that's not him. Writing's of Benjamin Franklin, you never read in school. And Franklin wore a coonskin cap. Yeah, two different. That's Crockett there. That's probably what he looked like. That's the Osgood portrait.

Osgood was a famous portraitist back then. And these guys went to Washington, D.C., and Crockett mainly was not pleased with any of these portraits because he said it made him look like a Presbyterian minister. And it's like a cross between a schoolteacher and a – so he finally got a guy – a famous portrait artist named Chapman to paint him in his bus. black skin outfit and with a hunting dog and a rifle and a cap. Yeah, in his element. And that's, and that hung in the, in the Texas State House. Was it well hung?

I'm not going to treat that joke with any kind of dignity. That wasn't a joke. Yeah. But I was going to say that the Texas state capital burned down because they had evidently Karen Bass was the mayor then. Oh, man. Have I said enough, you think? I saw more.

Okay. We'll let you know. No, you know, it's strange. I flew in a year ago as the fire had really, it just started looking out the window of the plane. I'm like, what is this? It looked like a very unusual fog. Smoky, yeah. It didn't look like smoke.

From my perspective. It looked like fog. And then I flew in exactly. one year later and it's just I don't know if you want to go there but it's just appalling. I have driven up PCH through Malibu and I mean I don't recognize it there's just nothing there now yeah and I have not driven through palisades but I mean it seems to me and again you know I don't know that much about it but it seems that this all this was unnecessary and I wish we had another governor and another mayor but I don't know who's running for mayor I wish

Caruso would run. I bet he will. And if not, well, he ran before and lost, so. Yeah. But. Naked gun four. Yeah.

Too soon. It just didn't need to happen. I mean, in so many, you know, with the technology they have today, they could have remote cameras everywhere so that if there's smoke anywhere. In fact, I guess there was a, it was burned, and the fire department

said we need to stay here and someone up the chain of command said no you don't need to stay there anymore and it's out so you know yeah there's nothing funny about it no no I wasn't there's nothing funny but there's funny about

the voters in L.A. and the voters in well that's not funny either voters in New York I don't know I don't know what they're thinking yeah shameless Plus plug.

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One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. Yeah. Well, you know, I think sometimes, as I say a lot on this thing, things have to go splat, like before they get better. before they get better. Yeah. And I think that might be true, like maybe with, like for a while there, I thought that was true with the state of comedy.

Like, this is bad. This isn't funny anymore. There's nothing on in movies. And I'm kind of, I want to do these movies and bring comedy back. And, you know, you were telling me about how you were laughing in the theater. And it spread to other people. Well, that's the importance of having a theatrical experience. A communal thing.

And not communal. Yeah. Especially for comedy. I mean, I can still watch my favorite movies like The Godfather and laugh. In the privacy of my living room, yes. Something like airplane, you need to. You know, I'll watch it. Seven.

Funny. Right, yeah. You know, I mean, that scene was sunny in the towboos. Hilarious. Yeah. They're like they're still shooting them. Right. Was Blazing Saddles important to you?

No. Why? I don't know. I think I enjoyed it, but I think I loved that they were making jokes. But it didn't, it wasn't our sense of humor. I mean, it wasn't our style. It wasn't our style. No, it's not your style, but it seems like in the same way like the Wayans. It was not your style.

But the Wayans came after us. But, you know, Mel Brooks came before us. But something about Woody Allen, I think, was more inspiring to us. It's just, we just thought, we, I remember Jerry and Jim and I couldn't wait for the next Woody Allen movie to come out. You know, I couldn't wait for his next books. Did you ever read Side Effects?

No. Funny. And he wrote another one called Without Feathers, which is even funnier. I just read, I think I read the recent, he wrote an autobiography. Not funny. No, it wasn't funny, but I. I was interested in it. I think it's mainly he, you know,

he wanted to oppose all the rumors. And I think he wanted to tell his story, his side of the story. No. You know, I. Read without feathers. Okay. Which is taken from an Emily Dickinson poem, which is about as unfunny and dark as you can be.

Okay, I haven't read it. I really read only nonfiction and history, biographies, anything about World War II. I could not stop for death, so death kindly stopped for me. And that was Emily Dixon. That's Dickinson. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah.

And I can't imagine what... And our coach was just ourselves and immortality. Right there was Sylvia Plath, great comedians. Yeah, very funny. All right, so aside from Master Crash, which people... How does one crash the master? Just go to Mastercrash.com. it's a free community.

You get in and then for other extras, it'll cost some money, but you can get into the community and get a lot of it for free. Absolutely check it out. Check it out. I don't know. You don't really know me.

You don't know me at all. And you're not going to remember any of this, but the Davy Crockett thing, man. Yeah. Like, are you watching, I don't know, like Landman or Taylor Sheridan and stuff, any of this? You don't watch any of this.

I don't watch anything. I don't watch anything on, on TV. And I read books on airplanes. When I'm trapped on an airplane, I have to read a book. I watch documentaries. I watch a documentary on

Andrew Jackson, on all this stuff on Patton. I just love history. I love to watch and learn what really happened. Well, for that reason, there's a fart. It's far proudly again. Sorry. I'm starting to get this up.

There's Master Crash. There you go. There's Master Crash. There's, oh, very clever. Very clever. Yeah. So. Is it still fun being you? Everything is so fun. It gets more and more fun.

I'm excited to wake up every morning because I have a movie that I'm in pre-production for. I mean, you know, the Star of Malta, which is a black and white film noir set in 1949. We're casting it now. We're going out to cast. So that's very exciting. So, you know, we have backing for it. And you got a role for a marginally famous cable TV star between gigs? How many people watch this or follow you?

Dozens. Dozens. No, what, I got, I got 9 million people on the social medias. You're in. To be clear, you didn't say urine. No. You said, I, me. I'm seeing it.

At one time, you know, that's how we made jokes, was hearing things the wrong way. And so somebody said, we saw in a serious movie the line, surely you can't be serious. And one of us thought, okay, that's surely it's someone's name. So that's how stuff. And everything, when somebody, I watch Dave Rubin all the time. Sure.

And he'll say, I'm going to have moron this after that. And I want to say, who are you calling a moron? You know, just dumb jokes like that. What's that in the road? A head? No, no, no. Is that from Monty Python? It's either that or maybe Fire Sign Theater, Beyond the Fringe, some of those earlier guys.

But I sometimes send stuff into Dave. He'll use stuff that I send it. Well, that's funny. Carson used to send stuff into the other day. That's how he got started. Well, he was like after he retired. Oh, yeah, after he retired. But I think a lot of these guys, George Kaufman,

used to send things to, there was a guy named FP, something, you know, these newspaper columnists. I think Woody Allen sent stuff into columnists. That's how he got started. And so the guy, I can't remember who the columnists were, but they would use his jokes. And then he came in and he wrote for, you know, comedians. Well, you know, like the pulps were a big deal, right? for writers. Like getting into a Pulp Fiction magazine,

it was a starting point for so many guys who went on, John D. McDonald, Elmore Leonard, you know, those guys, you kind of find your way. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's so different now, it seems, anybody with a phone, you know, can, I don't know, the audience might not be big, to your point. Yeah, but it's always changing with every generation.

At one point, it was newspapers. and then it was pulp novels, and then it was radio, and then TV, then movie, you know, just all the stuff. And today it's something else. You know, I don't think that how we started will happen again. We started a small theater and we had video as a part of the, our theater show. Yeah. We had two video monitors on stage. Were you a second city fan?

No. SCTV? No. No. I mean, SCTV, I think, was good. But I didn't watch, we didn't watch anything that much. I got a theory for you. I'd love to get your opinion.

Are you okay? You're late? You got to go? Let's see. No, I'm fine. Okay. So, like, Lenny Bruce. Yeah.

All right. Any comedian coming up once upon a time had to bomb. You have to fail. You have to go down in flames, right? That's how you get better. You learn. The Marx brothers did. Woody Allen, they all failed.

They all fail. Yeah. But they failed in front of dozens of people. Right. Today, you fail, you can fail in from a dozen people, but they're all documenting your failure. That's true. And they're going to share it with the world. Yeah.

So, you know, I wonder what it's done to the state of comedy to remove the freedom to fail modestly. I don't, I can't answer that. You know, I'm not that deep. And I'm not that aware of what's happening today. All I know, there's always funny people coming up, but there is a lack of. of theatrical comedy. I mean, there's some comedy on TV. I don't think, I don't really have an interest in any of the sitchcoms that are there.

I don't like that kind of humor. I mean, since Seinfeld and Curb, there hasn't been anything really acidly cutting and out there and just totally, like Larry David and Seinfeld are. They did it right. and I don't see anybody coming up that's like that. I mean, and on TV, you have South Park and, as I said, the Joker's, but I don't, and I don't watch anything. I don't think any of that stuff is funny. Well, I think, like, if I were actually taking notes

and capable of remembering much of what you said, I would want to hang on to the, like, the idea that nobody wants a sermon and nobody wants a lecture. That's our rule, which is, no, it's axe grinding. Same thing. Yeah, same thing. We cover that, yeah.

Yeah. And if you do want to make a point, you better a joke to pay for it. You got to earn it. Yeah, you've earned it. David, you've earned it, man. Your career is so amazing. And really not to make it too much about Carson, but as we were talking about it, I thought, you know, the reason that kid's book is doing so well is because so

many people have so many collective memories of watching the tonight show. And the reason I think you're important is because you gave a terrific gift to millions and millions of people who really didn't know how much they appreciated a little irreverence or a little subversion or some fun rule breaking. And, you know, just laughing and thinking about those moments, you know, that's a, I No. It's a gift, ma'am. You gave a lot of people a gift. And it's always nice to hear. And I hear it a lot, somebody saying that this is, you know, this shaped their sense of humor or something. It's just, I like to hear anything where I can feel more important I love, yeah. Well, sure. You should think about putting together some kind of class. I don't think so. No, it's not going to stick. It's a dumb idea.

Yeah, you're probably right. Right. Yeah. But what about a crash? Oh. Oh. Well, wait a minute. You might have something there, yes. Thanks again. Really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun doing this. I'll get you that martini now.

I love it, yeah. Oh, and I just have to get home by six. And then having a guest over. Yes. Anybody I know? No, nobody famous. That Feinberg guy you were talking about from New York? What was his name?

Friedman. Friedman. Lewis. You tell Lou, I said hello. I will tell Lewis you said hello. And forget about that 20 bucks. Maybe he'll listen to this. I'll turn him on to this because I didn't.

I mentioned him, didn't I? You came in and you started telling me a story about this lefty in New York that you're friends with. You know what we did? I have to tell you this. We grew up in the first suburb north of Milwaukee, all white high school in the 60s, and there was only one black kid, and he was the exchange student from Uganda. Nobody saw him for 50 years.

We had a 50-year class reunion. Lewis and I hired an actor named Mario somebody and we dressed him in an African dashiki and we had him come to the reunion as his name was Mujabi Mapaka. And everybody called him blowjabi at the time. And he, of course, the kid had a,

I remember he had a wonderful sense of humor. He thought it was funny. We gave him a speech to read it was a huge I have a video of the speech and it was great now I understand why practical jokers is on your your list yeah like yeah no it's practical it's what other pranks I'm sorry that I can't let you go yet like that anybody capable of hiring somebody to come in to impersonate a black foreign exchange student decades after the fact yeah our class still doesn't know that it was a prank they do now they yeah well they won't listen to this Which would be great. You know, I always wanted to cast him in a movie and then have him

be in a talk show and tell about the gag. That's such a great story. Anyways, you know, he had his picture. Everybody wanted their picture taken with him. And a couple of these women sent the picture to his the host, the AFS host.

And he said, that's not Mujah. Mujah was a foot taller and, you know, that's not him at all. And so then everybody's you know, emailing, there's 200 kids in the class, all these panicked emails saying, it's an African prince. He was a swindler.

And then I had an article written, you know, mocked up article from some newspaper in Illinois saying the guy had been apprehended and was accused of doing the scam. And in one recent Milwaukee reunion, he was used to scamming elderly, women. And he romance somebody, slept with her and scammed her out of $5,000. And so that became a whole thing. Everybody's wondering who it was. But the big complaint was one of our classmates, this lady says, we are not elderly. So. But see, this actually, I'm so glad we kept talking,

because that really lands the plane. Now I understand. I understand why, like taking the gag to the next level, next level. Yeah, we kept going. We kept going. Yeah. So good. Yeah. That's because I'm, I'm bored. You know, and I need to do something. Look at it. I'm doing this show. I sit at home waiting for my movie to start. I got one for you. We took in college, we took a picture of a guy. His name was Chuddy. Everybody called him Chuddy. Yeah. It was just odd thing. And he had a big round face. He was a nice enough kid, but it's just kind of obnoxious. Anyway, somebody took took a picture of his face and put it on thousands of little decals that had adhesive on them. Yeah.

And just handed them out to people. Said, don't tell Chuddy, but just take them and put them in the elevator, put them on the payphones. Just put them all over town. And I don't think anybody ever told him, but I think you may have lost his mind. Yeah. Seeing these pictures, you know where they come. You see yourself. Out of context, no explanation.

Yeah. But to really like commit to that bit and go with it. Yeah, that's also a big thing. And we also loved having the bomb go off when you're not there. And so, and that's what Jim Abrams used to do. In the book, we tell a story where Jim and Jerry and I were at our friend Kenny Hurwitz's house for the afternoon. And Jim takes Jerry and me aside and say, I have to leave now because I have something,

but Kenny's going to have you guys over for dinner. And so Jim leaves. And Jerry and I are waiting around. And Ken finally said, you know, guys, I have to leave. I have a date tonight. Jim totally made it up. And Jerry and I, you know, we weren't invited for dinner. So it's just, it's a, it was a thing.

And Jim was nowhere near. It was just, we all just. So he didn't even get to appreciate the joke that he did. No, no. Jim was somewhere else. Yeah. Wow. Oh, man.

That's a, that's the long game. Jim was a just pure comedy, pure humor. He never even wanted to get in. into the business. He was an insurance adjuster and a, an investigator, private investigator for a law firm in Milwaukee. And he had a company car. It was a Ford L-A. LTD. He was fine. Jerry and I dragged him into this Kentucky Fried Theater. And it was a big deal for him to leave Milwaukee, go to L.A. with us. And, you know, so that was Jim. Okay.

Zooker like hooker. I was so great. Yeah, you got that right. Mike, you seem to be right like the clock twice a day. Twice a day, man. Twice a day. Thank you again. We'll get you home by six. Thank you.

With the martini. Okay. Thanks for the parking space, too. Cut. 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 a son. 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, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. 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've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you got to do is leave a quick, even if you hate it. Five-star free. Thank you.

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