WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1087 - Joe Mantegna

Episode Date: January 9, 2020

Joe Mantegna is about as Chicago as they come. He grew up in Chicago, he talks like he’s from Chicago, he got his acting start in Chicago, he even used to play with the band Chicago. That might explain why he tells Marc he still thinks of himself as a blue collar guy with a blue collar job. Joe talks about the moment West Side Story changed his life, how David Mamet became his champion, and why he choses such a wide variety of projects, including his 13 years on Criminal Minds and his 30 years as Fat Tony on The Simpsons. This episode is sponsored by Stamps.com and Shyn. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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essentials order uber eats now for alcohol you must be legal drinking age please enjoy responsibly product availability varies by region see app for details all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it I assume from judging by the reaction to the Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio conversation that I've got a few new people out there listening. Welcome aboard. How are you doing? Do you want to introduce yourself to the rest of the people? Do you want to stand up and say your name and maybe where you come from and what you do. And if it's appropriate, you can name your disease. I have a fairly sort of intimate and fairly deep relationship with a lot of my listeners,

and I like to check in. So I just want to make sure you guys are okay and you're comfortable. Now I'm going to talk to some of the other people that I listen to all the time. Hey, did you get that thing fixed on your car how's that uh how did you guys did you guys make up or what what now what was the fight about did you hear back from the doctor is that thing going to be all right how long are you going to be on the crutches how did you get the flu seriously didn't you get vaccinated you're not one of those people, are you? Your hair looks very nice today. All right, see, that's the kind of thing.

Now, you know, you may not have heard the answers, but they're there. And again, welcome. You can all sit down now. I appreciate you being here. I got to be honest with you. The response to that episode was fairly massive, and I did not expect it. that episode was fairly massive and I did not expect it. Today on the show Joe Montagna is here and you know him from being Joe Montagna. He's on the CBS show Criminal Minds which is on its 15th and final season but he's been in a lot of things. A lot of people only know him from

The Simpsons and I didn't even know him from The Simpsons. I just remember from his movie work early on with David Mamet and whatnot. But, you know, always struck me as a nice guy, solid guy, grounded dude. And when the opportunity came up to talk to him, I was very happy to do that, and it turned out to be great. I have to be honest with you, I'm reinvigorated.

Since I've last talked to you, I left Los Angeles, I went to Atlanta on Sunday. And I worked on Respect, the Aretha Franklin movie, for two days. Came back yesterday. Now I'm going to go back out there on Sunday. And somewhere along the line, I got a fucking cold. But what I was talking about before is these conversations I've been having like for me did not have any perspective about myself and what was really happening there with Leonardo

DiCaprio and Brad Pitt it just tells me that there's some parts me that just are unchanging and there's nothing I guess there's things I can do about it I don't know there's definitely some things that are unchanging I know I've gotten better at doing this and I know that I've done it for a long time, but every time I talk to somebody, I'm still freaked out. And then when it's good, I'm amazed. But the fact that I walked out of that and so many people enjoyed it so much and I had no fucking idea what I got, I was having a good time, but a lot was going on in my mind. And that ended up being one of the reasons it was so good so do you change that my

fucking neck i'm telling you these physical things man i mean my chest tightened up on me man you know last week it's been in and out and when i get stressed out when i get panicked or scared or whatever it is and it could and it's hard for me to track it. But like, and this has happened my entire life. My chest just tightens up. It feels like someone's stepping on it. And for some reason this time, like it's happened before. I was just like, well, I'm 56. I mean, this could be it.

I don't think it's a hard thing. Maybe my lungs are shot. Maybe I got cancer, whatever it is. Why should I assume I'm okay? And that just compounds the stress. And clearly it was about, you know, doing the movie again.

Cause I had the issue with the movie before where, you know, it's, it's a big deal to do a bigger part in a movie for me with a bunch of people that, you know, at the level I'm doing it at. And I guess like I just,

the nerves and the dread just kind of tighten me up. But I, when I got on set two days ago, just that all went away and I got eased back into it, got in makeup, got the hair done, became Jerry Wexler, got my,

uh, my New York accent on and did the work. I think one of the reasons I got a cold is that everybody was smoking those fake cigarettes, man. I mean like all day long, all day, no reprieve. I wasn't even smoking. if I'm inhaling it.

It was a fucking mess. So we were shooting the recording of Never Loved a Man, Aretha's first big song. And they rebuilt or they recreated the Muscle Shoals studio. And that was the set. And it was pretty fucking exciting because they got the instruments right. They got the outfits right. You know, I was in the booth.

Jennifer was at the piano and they got guys playing, the musicians, a guy playing Spooner Oldham, a guy playing all of them. And I was primarily working with this guy, Mike Watford, who was playing Rick Hall,

the owner of Muscle Shoals Studios. And I had a contentious relationship with him. Jerry Wexler did. So there was a lot of, we did a lot of work together, a lot of scenes together, a lot of arguments. And it was pretty great, man.

I got to be honest and having Marlon Wayans around who I work, he's there too. He plays Ted, who is Aretha's husband. To be in the scene for that long and to do the scenes over and over again, I really got the feeling of both what is tedious about acting in movies, but also what's amazing about it is you really get into this other zone. It was like time travel and you're doing the song and you're locking in. And there's one scene where me and Mike and Marlon and the dude who's playing Tom Dowd, they were in the booth all day. And there's like scenes where we just have to listen. That is just, they're just shooting us listening

to this song unfold, to hearing Aretha Franklin become Aretha Franklin during the song that it happened on. And it's intense work, man. It's intense work to listen intensely and have that experience of revelation every time. But nonetheless, a lot of laughs in the sense, not on screen, but off. I was cracking Marlon up, man. It was fun off uh i was cracking marlin up man it was fun

i'm gonna admit to you it was fun and i got a cold and i ate the craft that the catering was nuts that's why i can't that's why i had to come home i think i could have stayed there for four days but um i can't i can't do it man they changed the caterers in the first day. There was steak and lobster, bread pudding, four kinds of ice cream. Are you fucking kidding me? The next day, Marlon's giving me cookies because he thinks it's funny because I eat and hate myself for eating. I don't know, man. recreating this recording session i'm told that spooner oldham and uh rick hall's wife widow and uh dave hood bass player and trombone player patterson hood hood's dad when the original muscle souls guys they're there they're hanging out they're watching and the producer of the movie

comes in and says they're like oh my oh, my God, that's Jerry. He's doing it. That's Jerry. He's nailing it. So that was a nice little ego boost. That was a nice little moment to have. And to meet Spooner Oldham and Dave Hood, it was great. I mean, I've interviewed Patterson, but it was great to talk to those guys.

Spooner's not a big talker. And I ran into him back at the hotel, actually. He's got to be in his 80s. And we went up in the elevator together. I said, yeah, it's very exhausting to be Jerry Wexler all day. And Spooner goes, well, it was very exhausting to be around him, too, even for 10 minutes. And I'm like, all right, I know know that guy i think i might be that guy or i have that guy in me that's for sure but it was definitely an honor to meet those cats and also to work with uh mike watford was uh it was great all right so

there you go that's what's happening so joe Mantagna is on the CBS show Criminal Minds. It's on its 15th and final season. It airs Wednesday nights, and it's streaming on CBS All Access. The two-hour series finale is on February 19th. You may know him from his other work, Many Movies. Plays, I think, what is it, Fat Tony on The Simpsons? But this is a conversation I have.

I've had great talks with some of these older actors lately, and it's making me, it's making me, it's reinvigorating me and my job here in my house. And also, I got the rug out in the new garage,

and I put the curtains up, so we're probably going to make the move back out there very soon. Not that you'll be able to notice, but we'll be back in the garage for the new year. All right. This is me talking to Joe Montagna. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer.

I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply.

Yeah. yeah so wait so yeah the lenny bruce who's the guy playing lenny bruce ronnie marmal he wrote it he wrote it he performs it what's it called many years it's called i'm not a comedian i'm lenny bruce okay it's one man show how do you know the guy ronnie came to me about 20 years ago he started a theater company out there called 68 cent theaters from new york yeah grew up in new york came out here started this theater company he basically got a script to me somehow 20 years ago saying i wrote this movie i've always thought of you playing this one little part would be like one day yeah type of thing right and i get that

shit but anyway so anyway i i read it and i go you know what i liked his his hoodspoor you know i like his moxie just to try to get to me so i met with the guy yeah i liked him he seemed like a new york version of me and i wound up doing the movie bottom line but but i learned to like that really like the guy because like i said he has this theater company 68 cent theater and it's really the reason it's called that is when he moved out here to l.a he had 68 cents in his pocket and he wanted to do his theater and has been doing it yeah so then i directed a play he had the series of john shanley plays and he did like 15 of them right all at once i could you know and that's something he thinks big so i directed one of them at the place at his theater anyway he came to me

he's obsessed with lenny bruce sure because he had done this other play written by somebody else years ago yeah and he did it and he liked the play but he'd done so much more research on it and he went to the playwright said you know what i really think if you had this this this and the guy says no no i roll my play you want to do that write your own right and he did he wrote his own lenny bruce play and it's and so he came to me with it he says joe i like it just would you be interested in directing it i says well let me see what you got i said so he stood up in front of me and for it's it's like 90 minutes. He just did this 90 minute basic.

And it's not just, it's maybe 30% is bits. It's his life from beginning to end. So he's telling the story of his life. Tells the story of his life, incorporating the bits as well. So when he was done, I said, I said, yeah, I, you know, I'm a believer of it. If it's on the page, it's on the stage. And I just thought he'd done a wonderful job of writing it and performing it. I said, yeah, now let me do my voodoo, which is move stuff around, change it,

give it a whole beginning, this, this, this. But it's essentially a one-man show. One-man show. We opened in LA. We ran like 11 months here. Then we took it to New York off-Broadway and nine months there. Now it's in Chicago, and it's doing great we opened uh in october uh it's just been extended into january no kidding yeah and and which theater it's at the royal george okay we're across from steppenwolf theater

for people from how many seats is that royal george it's uh about 180 and they're packing out they're doing out it's no great and. And Kitty has been such a huge supporter. Kitty Bruce. Yeah. Because she says it's the only time a portrayal of her father that she's kind of bought into. Oh, really? And also the material too. Yeah.

And we've had great, Eric Idle came and saw it. Billy Crystal, Bonnie Hunt. We've had great, great press. No kidding. Yeah, it's been really great. I got to see it. Oh, I'd love you to see it. He's done over like 250 performances. I guess. I don't know why the hell I Yeah, it's been really great. I gotta see it. I'd love you to see it. He's done over like 250

performances. I guess, I don't know why the hell I slept on it when I was here. It'll be back because whenever we change venues, we bring it back here, I tune it up a little bit, sometimes I add a little something, tweak it a little bit. When you do, when you see that, so you directed this version, right?

So when you see it, what are your instincts around it immediately? Like when you look at a guy doing a one-man show, he's playing Lenny Bruce. It's a character. Right. As a director, what do you think has to happen? For me, it's just like I saw him do what he had. Yeah.

And then I start to sometimes visualize things within that of like, for an example, when he did it for me, he opened it up with a bit. Right. of like all right for an example when he did it for me he opened it up with a bit right and just like one in fact one of his more controversial bits which is the n-word bit yeah which is a lot of people familiar with right so he opened with that so it's the question where he calls everybody the name yeah we're basically is that already yeah and then in the house and then it goes on yeah yeah yeah so he opens with that so then we finished doing the the model but not a model but we did his version of this show of his. I said, why do you open with that?

He goes, well, I want to grab him right away, shock him. I says, yeah, you're shocking him already. He says, you open with that, half the people might walk out, they'll start yelling at you because they don't know you. They don't know nothing.

Right, they're reeling from it. They're reeling from it. Yeah. But one line he did say in that piece, he says, I always found that naked on the toilet. Oh, wow. And I went, that's triggered something in my head. I said, how do you feel about getting naked?

He goes, what are you talking about? I says, that's how we opened the place. On the floor? I says, no, on the toilet. But wasn't he on the floor? Well, this is where Kitty helped. Oh. Kitty gave us information.

Kitty's story is that not only the way they found him is they put him, propped him back up on the toilet, stuck a needle in his arm that the coppers did this because they all hated him anyway. Right. They've been busting him so many times. Right. He's a junkie. He's dead on the floor.

Right. Well, let's really show him something so that the pictures they took were him on the toilet with a needle in his arm. Huh. So he made, and I actually heard those those laps tapes he made before he died when he was doing basically reading from the court hearing yeah because i did the play lenny the one by julian berry right back in 1973 in chicago really i understudied lenny yeah in chicago that's why another reason i had attraction is that what the movie's from yes the movie's

based on so you did it before the movie yeah way before the movie oh wow so you played lenny bruce i understudied yeah i was in the cast doing. So you played Lenny Bruce. I understudied Lenny. I was in the cast doing other parts and I never went on as the understudy, but I did understudy the lead role, which forced me to know the material. Right. You know. Did you ever see Lenny? The real Lenny? Yeah. No, but I remember being in Chicago when

he was there and, you know, I was too young. I was like 16 and he was playing at the Gate of Horn or maybe or Mr. Kelly's or whatever. Right, Mr. Kelly's. This is where, you know, Mort Saul was and Shelly Berman and all those guys. It was an institution in Chicago. I remember seeing, I was doing the play Hair there in 1969.

Oh, shit. And we went to see. At Mr. Kelly's? No. No, no, no, no, no, no. At the Schubert Theater. But we went to Mr. Kelly's because the guy in our cast, Michael Federer, was dating Bette Midler at the time, and Bette was opening for Dick Shawn. Wow.

So she was just the opening act. Yeah. So we all went to see her because she was Michael's girlfriend, you know? Yeah. So we all go see her, and then she became a good pal of ours. Support the friends. Support the friends. Yeah.

And what's funny is after the show, she's telling us, she goes, I'm thinking of adding girls to the show, like having these things, we'll call them the Harlettes. Yeah. And smart me, I'm sitting here, no, Beth, that's stupid. You don't need it. You really got so much, what do you want to split the money for? You don't need three girls behind you. Right.

But she wound up hiring two of the girls from our cast, Ula Hedwig and Charlotte Crosley to be the original Harlettes. And then- And Andre DeShields, who just won the Tony this year, who was in our yeah he he choreographed them and I said well okay you want to do that yeah of course it was a great idea yeah yeah and her piano player was was Barry Manilow at the time right she let him do like a song or two and you know stuff like that is that wild yeah I mean but you know I'm 72 years old you know this is like part of my you know so let's go like you grew up in Chicago yeah from you were born there, everything.

Born there, everything. Your old man, your mom, everyone's from Chicago. Everybody. Yeah? My dad was born in Oklahoma because my grandfather came over from Sicily. That's an interesting story. Went to Oklahoma? You know what it was?

And I think they all came from this one town. It was a town in Sicily called Cali-Cibetta, which is as big as this room. Yeah. They must have found out in the early 1900s that there was this coal mine in Krebs, Oklahoma. Wow. And that if you went there and worked in the coal mines, you could make enough money to buy land

because the Indians, the Native Americans, because it wasn't even a state yet, would sell you the land. And I was at the town in Sicily, Cala Scibetta. The only thing you can grow there is old because it's all rock. It's the top of a mountain yeah you know everybody's buried in mausoleum because it's rock yeah so i'm sure my grandfather among other sicilians of the time said land 50 acres we can get i'm i'm in so so you go there today which i've been there where'd

the racket start though who one guy must have stumbled on it. Who knows? Yeah. And he called his buddies and said, Hey, you know, Luigi, Angelo, let's go. So they show up.

My grandfather worked at a coal mine. My brother's in all this. So that's why I got all the information. Oh, he did the research? Yeah. And we have the deed. We still own the farm.

No. I swear to God. In Oklahoma? In Oklahoma. You go there, the sign says Krebs, Oklahoma's little Italy because they're still settled

by the remnants of those people. No kidding. The farms. Yeah, they're all like, there's us, the Randazzo's are the farm next door. What are they growing? Old. No, I don't know. No, they're growing there.

They grow what they grow. Yeah. I mean, but my, I'll show you pictures later. It's property. I'll show you pictures. Yeah. I'll show you my grandfather's gravestone. It's all in Italian.

He's buried there. In Krebs? Well, he's buried in Henrietta, which is the town. I'll show you pictures. I'll show you my grandfather's gravestone. It's all in Italian. He's buried there. In Krebs? Well, he's buried in Henrietta, which is the town. Krebs is so little. Oklahoma. So they go, they work the mines. They work the mines. He worked there for five years.

Yeah. Saved $100 a year. And after five years, he had $500. Because we got the bill of sale. I got all of this. My brother got all this. It's crazy. $500.

The Indians sold you the land for $500, 50 acres. it was true all true my grandfather built the house he even used he used rails from the they must have snatched them at night i mean like the metal rails from the train yeah he uses those like a support beams in the house okay so they built this house this my dad was born in that house it's still there the house it's? It got hit by a tornado, and so it's flat. It's just the rails? No, no, the remnants are there. It still looks like a house, but it looks like a house from Wizard of Oz. Oh, yeah.

Like a flattened. Right. But I was there, and I'll show you. I'll show you later. I got pictures of me standing on the rubble and all that, and with the Randazzo family. I interview, because I do a show on the Outdoor Channel. I've been doing a show

for nine years called Gun Stories, which is not as ominous as it sounds. It's about the history of firearms throughout the history of the planet Earth.

Was that your idea? No. Hosting it? Outdoor Channel's idea and it came to me and I had to host it. It seemed like fun because I used to shoot

competitively years ago. You did? Yeah. No big deal. You get to travel too, right? Yeah, I go to italy i've been germany been on the show for the show oh yeah but one of the one episodes we did were the firearms of the immigrants and so when i told them this story they said let's do that so we shot the

whole episode on my grandfather's farm and crabs and i shot his shotgun that nobody had shot since he shot it in like 1922 your brother had it no my cousin johnny had it and he since he shot it in like 1922. Your brother had it? No, my cousin Johnny had it, and he brought it down from Oregon. How did he get it? I don't know. He must have grabbed it. I mean, he's bigger than the rest of us. I don't know.

So you guys all spent time on that farm when you were kids? No, I spent no time on the farm. How the hell did he get the gun? Somehow he must have got it. No, because my grandfather died on the farm when my dad was only like 15, 16 years old. Yeah. So the whole family then moved to Chicago. My grandmother picked up all the kids.

Yeah. She kept the, she was smart. The farm was paid for, obviously, so she kept it. But all the family moved to Chicago. Yeah. And that's why my only, you know, my only connection to Oklahoma is when my dad would tell me the stories of growing up there. And you knew your grandmother, though?

Oh, yeah, I knew my grandmother. My grandfather died before I was born, obviously. But, you know, it was kind of fascinating because my dad was really still... Oklahoma. I know, weird. Yeah. When my father died, he died fairly young

because he had tuberculosis. He was disabled most of his life. But in 1971, he passed away. I'm at the funeral. Now, I'm doing the play hair at that time. And I got to remember, my only reference to Italian guys at this point are Chicago types. Chicago, New York, Chicago, urban. All of a sudden, I see these two guys walking up to the funeral home dressed like cowboys.

They got the jeans. They got cowboy hats on. They got a fur little vest. But they're dark looking. They look like they stepped out of a Sergio Leone movie, right? Right, yeah. So they come up to me and go, how do you do?

Can you tell us where Joe Montaigne's funeral's at? And I'm like, what the hell? I said, cowboys who talk, look like Italian, but they're talking. I said, I'm his son. He's in here. Well, we were your daddy's friends from Oklahoma. We knew him as a boy and we had already passed away. And I'm like, oh my God.

I mean, it was like watching Martians. Because here's these guys looking like Clint Eastwood and talking like that. But their names are, and this is Angelo and here's Guido. And I'm like, holy, this is not computing. That's wild, man. But anyway, that was my background with my dad. So how many kids in your family? Me personally?

I got two daughters. No, but like you, how many brothers do you have? Oh, just my brother. Just the two of you? Yeah, just the two of us. And he's older? He's eight years older. I had a brother.

He died at birth, though, when I was five years old. I mean, I remember distinctly when that happened, though, because my mother. Only because my mother was pregnant. And I remember her going to the hospital saying she was going to come home and I was all prepped, like you're going to come home with a child, you know. And then when she came home

and I remember she opened the door. They didn't tell, I'm five years old and it was a long time ago. They don't tell you everything. Right, sure. So I opened up her coat because, you know,

because she left so big. I saw she was like normal size and I was like, what happened? Yeah. And then they kind of explained to me, oh, well, you know, God took so and so away. It's okay. And so, you know.

Oh, they must have been devastated. Yeah. Well, they were probably obviously devastated. They were five years old with the older one. Yeah. You were like, okay. Okay. Your mom's normal size again.

On we go. Yeah. Yeah. So when you were growing up, like what, what'd your dad do? He was an insurance man for a while. But, but he, he only had part of one lung when did he get the tb or during world war ii he was only in his 20s right after he married my mother and had they had my brother my brother's eight years old my brother was one years old my dad's diagnosed and and they attributed it to the farm because his two older

brothers had got it and also and died from it and they said back then if you had something about the cattle the cows if they had carried if they carried in the milk is unpasteurized whatever you contract it so my dad they sent him to a sanitarium in new york munt mcgregor and he was at the sanitarium for like three years they took the lung out they took out part of the other lung and they took out the ribs on that side. No kidding. When my dad took his shirt off, he looked like the letter S.

It was like this. I mean, he shouldn't have lived. Yeah. I mean, he really shouldn't have lived because he smoked like two packs a day. He drank. Yeah. He was like, you know.

Yeah. But I thought like everybody's father must be like this. Yeah. And it never occurred to me that he was like a freak of nature. Yeah. But he finally, he only lived to be 57 and he had to and they put him on disability like in his 40s he just couldn't because he would always from the military no no he missed

the war because he was in the hospital for all of world war two all my uncles were in the war but he missed it because he was in the hospital but when he got out the the insurance company he worked as an insurance man for a while. Then they put him on disability because he just couldn't handle it. So he was in maybe mid-40s. And he lived another, he lived to 57 years old. And then the smoking and the drinking, forget about it. So you grew up in that house full of cigarettes?

Oh, the cars full of cigarettes. I mean, you know, that was the thing. Especially in Chicago in the winter, those windows are up. It's like sitting in a cloud, you know. But that was the way it was. And mom she worked she worked at sears rollbook wrapped packages yeah she always worked yeah yeah yeah she smoked too no no she didn't smoke my mother lived to be 101 101 101 you got a good yeah that's good i guess i mean i guess so yeah she's she was she was a pisser my mom yeah she just passed away a couple years ago was she uh

cogent all the way through? Pretty much. Near the end, she got a little chicanagadi, what we would say. In other words, she'd know who I was and my kids were and stuff, but if anybody else, she'd have to remind her, this is so-and-so, okay.

Yeah, yeah. But my mom was, I think what kept her alive, partly is she, and that side of my family, my mother's side, they're very much like, they're the kind of Italians that are very, they're like Dean Martin, like, hey, you know, everything's dandy, you know. Or the Sicilian side, my father's side, forget about it. They get a little too, they get very nervous.

Yeah. But my mother's side, my mother, I don't think she knew what I did for a living, really, to tell you the truth. Towards the end or all the way through? Toward all of it. Toward all of it. I mean, being an actor, what the hell does that mean? Yeah, exactly.

I mean, my brother made a comment. Even when you were on TV, you couldn't point? She figured out I'm on TV, but she figures that's maybe, well, okay, that's nice. I get to see him. Yeah. But my brother, at her funeral, this was funny. At the funeral, my brother got up to speak. We both did because he got up to speak first.

Right. He says, I got to say something about our mother. He says, she was so very simple in a lot of ways. She says, and my brother, Joey, I don't think he even knows this, but when he got the TV series, and I got to remember, I'd been doing mostly theater and that stuff

and did the movies once, you know, and that. But you're talking about Criminal Minds? I'm talking about, yeah, when I finally got, like when I got, was working regularly

on the TV series, which she knew I'd been in plays and she knew I'd been in movies, but she figured out, she'd always hear about it. But then she calls my brother, she goes, Ronnie, I'm worried about your brother, Joey.

And my brother goes, why? She goes, he's only working an hour a week. She was dead serious because she figures now she figures on Wednesdays at nine o'clock. She's on CBS. But that's it. It's over at 10. How can he make a living? My brother's telling her, no, it's okay, Mike.

He's doing fine. He's doing, Mike. He's doing fine. He's doing all right? He's doing fine. But that was my mother. God bless her. What's your brother's racket? What did he end up doing? He was an insurance, not insurance.

He was advertising for Montgomery Wards. Interesting. Because that was a real Chicago-based company. What Montgomery Wards was? Monkey Wards. It's like Sears Light. No, I don't remember Montgomery Wards. I remember.

But Sears was in Chicago too, no? Yeah, the original Sears. And we lived across the street from it for many years. The original Sears building? Yeah, the Sears building on Holman and Arlington. I mean, it's the West Side ghetto right now. But back then, it was all right. I think they made build your own houses too at some point, didn't they?

Sears, like you could buy a kit and build a house. I'm sure they did. Everything I owned was Sears. I mean, my underwear, my clothes, my anything. Because because my mom worked there she's right there and she had profit sharing and they give you that so like when you were growing up in chicago i mean what because i grown to love chicago like i it's a great city it's a real city like it's its own thing without question and were you right downtown what was the neighborhood oh no no no i grew up on the west side of the city which is now really is that italian at the time was a lot of italian a lot of it was mixed though i mean the one kid

next door was mexican here there was jewish here there was irish here was mixed up yeah uh then we moved to cicero for that's where i went to high school cicero cicero illinois which is the famous real capone and all that stuff it's's that one town that's just border Chicago on the southwest border. And that's where I went to high school and junior college. But I grew up on the west side, and the west side was – it's pretty much – it's a pretty depraved area right now. Oh, yeah? Unfortunately, it's pretty much –

You hear about a lot of the shootings that go on in Chicago. Yeah. Good percentage of them are happening. Oh, it's around there. My old neighborhood, yeah. And when you were growing up, did you know, there was not a mob thing when you were growing up, was there? I mean, or was that just a mythology?

No, it's not a mythology. There was a mob thing, but it wasn't, it's a mob thing, same way that the politician, the democratic machine was a reality too. The Daly's machine? Yeah, I think it all coexisted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you always knew there was the local politician, the precinct captain who dealt with politically. Right.

But there was, when you talk about mob, it was low level kind of stuff. And there was, I'd go to the barbershop with my dad. Right. And half the time were guys going in and out that are going into the back room through book because there's a book each other. I'm making bets. Yeah, and then also we had a party line on our phone I remember I pick it up sometimes and they'd say his bed bug there and I go bed bug Who Dallas better than I find? I was like my uncle. He says no. No, that's what that's uncle Willie's phone number you call you get him the phone so there were these things going around money would change hands Right, but it wasn't like no people weren't getting shot in the street, right?

I've done it at Al Capone. Yeah, you hands right but it wasn't like no people weren't getting shot in the streets right none of that al capone yeah yeah you know but it existed yeah especially growing up in cicero a lot of the kids that went to school with their fathers were oh yeah you know like hey how come your dad's wearing cardigan sweaters at two o'clock in the afternoon on a thursday and my dad's selling insurance you know i don't what does he do we don't know what he does so when did you start getting involved with acting? I mean, like, did you want to do it when you were a kid? Did you like movies? No, I didn't.

You know, I still don't even really like movies. I love movies. I shouldn't say that, but what I mean is I'm not like a buff. I don't watch a lot of movies. I don't watch a lot of television. So it's not my idea of entertainment. Well, where were you headed? So my head was not in it at all.

But what it was is honestly god what really triggered it was i saw the movie west side story yeah as a kid and when i saw it i thought oh my god i'm kind of like this is not like i was living this life i wasn't like in a gang fighting puerto ricans but but yet i was in that urban lifestyle i lived in an apartment all my life i never lived in a house. Yeah. So I loved the movie. It was like a fantasy to me. So what happened is I went to high school.

I was a junior in high school. I got to understand, I didn't know, me being an actor was, you might as well said you want to be a Martian. Was it like the early 60s? Early 60s.

Yeah. Like 62, 63. Yeah. And they had signs up in the high school saying auditions for West Side Story. And I look at the signs and I go,

what are they talking about? I've seen the movie maybe eight, nine times. But what are they talking about? And then I asked somebody. And they go, that's a play. I go, it's a play. It's a movie. They go, no, no, no, no.

The movie was based on a play. And I'm thinking, really? And I'm thinking, wow. So I got in my head like maybe that would be fun. I love this movie. Maybe I could do like one of the parts. So I learned the song off the record. I decided to go down and i go down with one of the guys i was playing more i played baseball then i wasn't that good but i played on a team so i go one of

the good players from the team and i were going to go together because he liked the movie too we get up to the theater up at the high school that night i didn't even know the little theater existed at that time i walk in and there's all these kids in black. Right on campus. Yeah, right up in the high school but I didn't know the theater was there. And there weren't leotards

and stuff. It's the theater crowd. And I mean, it was like watching people from another planet. And the guy, Glenn, his name was Glenn Sowell, he became a state's attorney

or something later in Chicago. He looks at me, he goes, I'm out. I'm not doing this. I'm out. He takes off. So now I literally know nobody. This is your buddy, he goes, I'm out. I'm not doing this. I'm out. He takes off. So now I literally know nobody.

This is your buddy you came with? Yeah, the buddy I came with. I'm out. He saw I realized this is not for him. But I had learned a song. I figured at least I could do is go up and do it. Put the work in. Yeah, put the work in.

So I get up. I get on the stage. There's the floodlights are hitting me, the footlights. It's a little theater, but I can't see who's out there. And I sing the song and I get to the stage. There's the floodlights are hitting me, the footlights. It's a little theater, but I can't see who's out there. And I sing the song and I get to the end. Maria. And all of a sudden, I hear clapping coming out of the darkness. And it was like nobody had ever clapped for anything I had ever done in my life, ever.

And now I'm hearing this clapping. So I go, that's it. It was like a lightning bolt hit me in the chest. I said, I got to recapture this moment somehow. Yeah. So that started it. I mean, I wound up not getting cast on the Play-Doh. What do you mean?

No, I was too, that's a whole other story. I was in school a year sooner than I should have been because my parents changed my birth certificate because my mother needed to get back to work at Sears. So they changed my birth certificate when I started in kindergarten and never told me until I was 16. So I had my birthday. I celebrated it for 16 years on the wrong day. So that's a whole other story.

But anyway, they didn't cast me because I was too small. But he liked my hoots, the teacher. So bottom line, they saw I had this interest. So he says well why don't you take a drama class and they put me in the drama class and i never looked back really from literally that day i said to myself this is what i'm gonna do i want to do this for living i had no plan b what the hell else am i gonna do yeah you know well i mean what are you 16 16 but i had no i had no aspiration i wasn't that good at anything else yeah and i wasn't sure

i was good at this but but I knew I liked it. So you just took drama classes and you started doing plays? Took drama classes, started doing plays. I started being successful at it in high school and then I went two years of junior college. Yeah. Then I applied for the Goodman School of Drama, which was a pretty, in fact, Shelly Berman went there to school back then. It's a pretty, it became, now it's part of DePaul University.

Uh-huh. Back then it was called the Goodman School of Drama. And then I tried out for the play Hair in 1969 and got cast and that started my professional career. What is the Goodman School of Drama? Like what was it? It was a famous, I mean it was famous at the time. Luckily Chicago had this acting school. It was in the Art Institute back then, in the Art Institute.

I didn't have the money to go there. But what I did is I took a student, you can take a government loan. Yeah. So I applied for the government loan. got like two two grand yeah and uh i paid for the 800 bucks of tuition and i think i bought my parents a television with the rest of the money and lived on and paid rent you know i was living with somebody at the time uh and what kind of what did they teach you they teach you well i mean today's it's like i said now it's called the theater school at paul university they teach you the basics they teach you voice control they teach you movement

they teach you uh you know all the different stuff with acting scene study is that the last time you studied pretty much i mean you learn as you go i mean look i've been in this professionally 50 years now if i ain't got it down by now it's too late i mean i wanted to play left field for the cubs but i think that ship has sailed. Yeah, that's not going to happen for you? No, it's not going to happen.

No, I just always wonder because I talk to actors and like, it just seems that a lot of it is something natural. It is. And then like,

but you, a lot of people, they do that two years or they do the year, whatever. And most of the tools they got that really sort of got them grounded in it,

that was it. Yeah. I found out, as it turned out, the best actors out of that school were ones that usually either got kicked out let's quit whatever like who well we didn't have a lot of big stars that came out of that school to tell you the truth but i mean but but as a rule at least the ones i would run into was working actors the ones that

were serious about it got out the ones that were just like you know it's too academic for me i gotta go do it you gotta go work the ones that actually did it then went on got master's degrees on somewhere else and maybe they taught and stuff but they didn't necessarily right right right so what were you doing were you working during the school or did you get a job i was in a band no yeah i was in a band i was in a rock band yeah it was a rock band and we actually did pretty well in fact to this day what'd you play i played bass guitar i was the lead singer bass guitar can you still play bass? Badly, yeah. As bad as I did then.

Good enough to get by, though. Well, to this day, though, I'm very close to the band Chicago. Yeah, those guys. Because we used to tour with them when they were called the Missing Links. What was your name? What was your band? The Apocryphals. Yeah. The drama teacher at my school came up with the name because he felt to support me. He supported my band.

Yeah. You know, kind of helped us out. So wait, so were you playing original songs or covers? No, no, we were a good cover band. That's why we never got anywhere. But we were a very good cover band. Mid to late 60s?

So mid 60s? Yeah, from about 64 to 69. So you were doing like, you know, psychedelic shit? We did whatever you wanted. In other words, if it was a place

they wanted psychedelic, we put on the Paisley shirts and the mod stuff and combed the hair that way. If we're going to a black neighborhood, we put on the white temptation suits that we bought on Maxwell Street. Come on. And we would do four tops. Really? I swear to God.

We were like whores. You know, whatever. You paid a freight. We'll do what you want. But that's why I knew we weren't going to make it because the guys, the missing links, they became Chicago, right? So you knew those guys? You knew Terry Caff? Knew them all.

Absolutely knew them all. To this day, I know them all very well. I sang with them about two years ago here at the Greek. No. Yeah, I swear to God, they brought me up on stage to do one song for old time's sake. That's great. Oh, no, I love them. Walter Perzader, who's just left the band, a sax player.

How many of the original guys are still in it? Today? Yeah. I think only three. Yeah. It would be Lee Lockley, the trumpet player, Pankow, the trombone player, and the keyboard player, Bobby Lamb.

Wow. Walter just left, the sax player, but there were four. Like retired left? Yeah. Well, I mean, these guys are all, they're older than're older than me because like you know there was sort of a resurgence around terry you know and his guitar playing you know terry was brilliant yeah he was right i mean so jimmy hendrix thought he was the best guitar player he'd ever heard and he was a depressive no not really terry was just terry was wild i mean terry i'm just that whole thing like you know he some people say oh he

killed himself he didn't kill himself he some people say oh he killed himself he didn't kill himself he was fucking around it was an accident he took the gun he beat oh that was it yeah i put up to his head and yeah i think it was empty yeah whatever oh it's terrible but but he was uh he was he was great and when i when i first met him he wasn't even a lead player he was the bass player of that band the missing links they had another guy playing lead but they kicked that guy and his father who was the manager of that band out and thating Links. They had another guy playing lead, but they kicked that guy and his father, who was the manager of that band, out, and that's when they started the new group. Chicago.

Chicago, which we thought they were nuts for doing because we were playing at a group, a place called The Cheetah in Chicago, which is a very popular club. So we're at The Cheetah. They came to see us on our break, and they said, hey, we busted up the band. We got rid of the lead player and his father.

Terry's going to play lead now. Yeah. We brought in a keyboard guy, and we brought in a trumpet, and we brought in a trombone, because they already had the sax. They already had Walter. They had Danny Serafin, the drummer. Yeah. So we're saying, oh, so now you're going to go from four to seven guys.

Oh, that's great. They leave, and we're thinking, they're nuts. Are they crazy? Too many guys. We're trying to find ways to pay less. Like Jimmy hendrix had just coming out then with three guys we're thinking everybody's every four every four piece band was thinking who could we cut out of the band so we can make more dough these guys are are upping their band to seven uh but needless to say their first album came out and that's when i knew when i heard heard that first album, I went, okay, I'm in the wrong racket.

Right. I had to steer myself toward acting. Right, because they were doing this R&B thing. Well, but they were doing original stuff. Yeah. But to tell you the truth, early in their career, and this is honest to God truth, they would play. I remember there was one club called the Blue Village. It was another very popular club in Westmont, Illinois.

We worked a lot because we were a good cover band, like I said. We were off this particular Saturday for whatever reason. I get a call from the owner of Blue Village. He says, this group, Chicago Transit Authority, they haven't hit their album, it hasn't come out yet. He says, they're playing here. They refuse to play any songs that the kids want. They're playing all their own crap.

Well, I'm throwing them out. Can you guys get down here to finish the night? We we packed up the truck we went out there and i will never forget to see them i'm seeing them throwing their stuff in the truck yeah they weren't pissed at us it wasn't you know they were just pissed about the whole thing and we said oh guys we're sorry oh man yeah well these guys they don't know what the hell they're missing we're thinking yeah we're thinking we're thinking one of these idiots gonna just to just smarten up and start, you know, start doing some temptation stuff and, you know, doing some. What the kids want. Yeah, do what the kids want.

Come on. You know, smart me. That's hilarious. So that's what you were doing while you were going to school, playing. Yeah, we did well. I mean, I actually, you know, I made a living at it because we worked back then in the 60s, a lot of venues, a lot of live music was big. Right. It was before disco.

It was- Well, yeah, the 60s was way before disco. Yeah. So, I mean, live dance clubs for teenagers was- You played the rock and roll. Yeah. I mean, you could literally, we could work every weekend without- You're playing school dances and shit?

You play proms. You play school dances. You play teen nightclubs. Yeah. You know proms, you play school dances, you play teen nightclubs. Yeah. You know, actually, you know, just clubs. So what made you hang that up? Well, I was doing both for a long time, and a long time meaning through junior college

and through my two years at the Goodman. Yeah. And the weekends were open. Yeah. But then when I tried out for hair, I'd play hair. Yeah. I'd cast. That was my first professional

job got where they offered me the job now i have to do eight shows a week and you can't that means my weekends are and you had the long hair you're all set yeah i had the long hair yeah yeah i was i was halfway there anyway yeah you know i wound up letting it really go what role i started out in the tribe which was basically one of the chorus but but I worked up to Berger, which is one of the lead roles, and I wound up doing that for a long time. Yeah? Yeah. For how long? About a year and a half.

Traveling with it? Yeah, I did. We played Chicago for over a year, about a year and a half, and then we- Wow. And then we toured for about, actually toured, I would have kept touring, but actually that's when my father died while I was on the road. I was in Pittsburgh, and he died. And when I came in for the funeral,

and I think I just realized, and I was the girl who was playing Jeannie at the time in the play, which is the pregnant character in the play. Right. Her and I were dating at the time. And we're still together 50 years later. She's my wife. Really?

Yeah. So we stayed together. That's insane. Congratulations. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those freaky things god bless us you know that's love there's love for you but i but i remember that when we came in for my dad's funeral we went away so i took that week off from the play and when i went back to pittsburgh i realized the bloom was off the roads it was just like i've done this play enough it's just like a year and a half yeah it was time to just move on so i quit the

play and we quit together. But then I did Godspell shortly after that and did that for- You had the hair, so you're set. I grew it even longer. I played Judas then. So I was like, you know, I kept thinking, well, where do I go next? And you did that in Chicago? Did that in Chicago, yeah.

For how long was Godspell on? About a year. Wow. Yeah, at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago. So, I mean, I guess on some level you get some chops in place. You know, you overcome a lot of fear. Oh, yeah. No, no.

It was great. I mean, by now I was, in fact, now I was thinking this is my career. I'm going to be a musical comedy actor. I'm going to be like a Jim Dale. I'm going to be the guy that goes to Broadway. I'll do, you know, I'll do the musicals. Right. And that's kind of what I thought would happen.

Obviously, my career took a different turn again. When did that happen? Well, that happened right after godspell one of the guys that was had i'd done here with who was the actor andre de shields yeah like i said won the tony award just this year for a play he's doing now he was in a group called the organic theater in chicago organic theater that sounds like some hippie shit it was some hippie shit yeah but had some good people and john heard was in in that company. John Heard's great. Yeah, John Heard was in that company. Passed away.

Exactly. His sister, Cordis Heard, was in the company. Meshack Taylor, Dennis Franz. Oh, really? We all joined around the same time at that time. So you and Heard and Franz were in it together? Yeah. Yeah.

What's Franz up to? Franz? I just talked to him. He's golfing is basically what he's up to. God bless him. He did that as many, I forget what it was, 12, 13 years on NYPD. Yeah. The day that that show wrapped, he said, good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are, I'll

be on the golf course. And God bless him. That's Dennis. He's done. So he's good. He's absolutely good. he's got three grandchildren he lives he's living the life he's just like he was smart with his money and that was the end of it that's the end of it showed up in a couple of things maybe so he did nothing after and went pretty blue nothing i could if i offered him dennis please

do 30 seconds with me for a million dollars he'd'd say, no, I don't do that anymore. That's Dennis. Done. Done. No, but God bless him. I mean, if I had to pick three guys in the world to watch my back, that's him. He was a Vietnam vet, combat vet. So, I mean, Dennis is one of those guys.

He's deep. I mean, he's deeper than you think. Oh, no. I could see that just by that character. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you could feel all of it. So, you show up at the organic theater, and you and Heard and Franz kind of get there at the same time. Well, Heard had already been there, and then he left shortly thereafter because he had been in this play called Warp that closed in New York, and then the Organic came back to Chicago and regrouped. So John left, Dennis, Franz, and I.

So he must have been fresh out of Vietnam almost. Pretty much, because yeah, exactly right, because he probably was out of Vietnam in about 71, 72, and this was 73. Oh, so he must have been intense as fuck. You know, yes and no. I mean, that's Dennis, though, because Dennis was very good at kind of keeping it all under wraps.

And the only one I would press him, and I did a couple times. On stage? No, no, no, no. In life? In life, just talked to him about it. Said, Dennis, tell me a little about. Yeah. And then reluctantly he would tell me. Then I realized, okay, I don't want to even go into this with this one now because I can

see it's uncomfortable for him. It's not a happy part of his life. But God bless him. He's an, this guy also collects Hummel dolls and stuff like that. I mean, on the other hand, he's- Sweetheart. Yeah, he's a real sweetheart. I love him to death. Well, I'm glad to, he's- Sweetheart. Yeah, he's a real sweetheart. I love him to death.

Well, I'm glad to hear he's doing all right. No, he's doing great. He's doing great. So what happens at Organic? Well, Organic, I did five years at Organic, and it was a wonderful time because we did new stuff there. We created stuff. We did Kurt Vonnegut's-

So this is before Steppenwolf, like years before Steppenwolf. This was a few years before. They were like the new kids on the block when they came in. And I got to know them all very well as well. I'm very close to all of them, which is ironic because the play, the Lenny Bruce play director is playing right across the street from

this Steppenwolf theater in Chicago. So you were friends with the original crew, the four or five of them? Oh, very much. Gary sent me some very close. Metcalf and Tinnies. Laurie Metcalf, Joan Allen, Malkovich, all of them very close. John Maloney. Yeah? Oh, yeah. Maloney's gone. Sad. Yeah. No, he was a great guy. I bet. But Gary, I mean, Malkovich, all of them, very close. John Maloney. Oh, yeah. Maloney's gone. Sad. Yeah.

No, he was a great guy. I bet. But Gary, I mean, Gary and I, we've been hosting the National Memorial Day concert together. This will be my 19th year doing it. Hosting the National Memorial Day concert? Yeah, in Washington, D.C. Oh, yeah. Because he and I were both, we do a lot for the military, especially Gary.

I'm one of his ambassadors. He's like, I mean, he picked up where Bob Hope left off. This guy does so much for the military. But anyway. But yeah, the organic was back then, early 70s in Chicago. They had been kicked out of the University of Wisconsin because Stuart Gordon, who created the organic, he had done this nude version of Peter Pan on the campus. It wasn't all nude, but I think Tiger Lily was nude or something. And kids came with their parents.

Exactly. But it was very experimental. Yeah, yeah. But we did all this original stuff. We did the book of Huckleberry Finn, parts one and two. We did the entire book based just on Mark Twain's dialogue.

Yeah, yeah. We did original plays like Cops, Bloody Bess, a pirate play, and then a play that I conceived called Bleacher Bums, which is about the people who sit in the bleachers at Wrigley Field back when the Cubs were terrible. Yeah.

And that became actually very successful. We did that off-Broadway, and to this day, they tour it all around. Bleacher Bums still going? Yeah. I mean, it's a very big summer stock show. And you wrote it? I conceived it and co-wrote it with the original cast. So you guys still get a little scratch from that?

Oh, yeah. I get a couple hundred dollars every six months or something like that that's great it up with all of us but it's great is that the only play you wrote yeah i don't fancy myself as a playwright i can i i came up with the idea i had this idea because i used to sit in the bleachers at wrigley field and used to look around me thinking there's more this this is this is more entertaining than the game i mean the cubs kind of sucked in that right and thought, what's going on in the bleachers with the gambling and this and the girls and the bup-ba-da-bup? And it became a very, actually, very successful play.

It must have been fun. It must have been a local phenomenon. Oh, yeah. And then it just had legs, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it's the way they play. I get checks, residual checks from all over.

Samuel French, the publishing company, will send me the checks and a list where it's been done. It'll be Army bases in Guam will do it in the summertime. Because it's a comedy. It's fun. It's lighthearted. It's very lighthearted. So you get a lot more chops there doing the intimate theater, I guess.

Doing that theater. You come out of the musical. Exactly. Kind of putting your heart on the line. Well, doing a lot of experimental stuff. And luckily for me, David Mamet, the writer, was kind of doing a lot of experimental stuff and luckily for me david mammett the writer was kind of doing the same thing in chicago at the same time with the with the group called the um wisdom that was the wisdom bridge theater i believe it was called

and uh i talked to him you know did you oh yeah which is that's an accomplishment in itself he doesn't talk to everybody we did all right you know i kind of steered him yeah i can see you and him getting along no we did fine you know it's right. You know, I kind of steered him. I can see you and him getting along. No, we did fine. You know, it's just like, you know, he's one of those guys, he wants to push some buttons and I wasn't going to let him. So, like, I was able to kind of keep him. Keep him on track.

All right. All right. Good for you. He's got the gold medal. Well, yeah. I just love, because you can just, I know that, you know, I'm a Jew. I know that kind of Jew. He's a lodgment.

I got you. Yeah, yeah. So, like, you know, he's coming at me with that stuff. I'm like, I know what you're doing. I'm not going to, you're not going to turn me. No, that's great. No, I could see you two getting along. I really could. You did all right. No, but he's like, I should have his picture hanging over my bed because he's like, he's been like. He's the guy? He's been my guy, I mean, as it turned out. So, what happened? So, you're organic and he's at this, what? What was

it? It was called the St. Nicholas Theater Company. Right, but he went on to do the Atlantic, but this is way before. This is before Atlantic. So Atlantic so what happens were you a mammoth well what happens is he's a struggling playwright yeah well I'm the struggling actor and he saw me do a this one production I think was wonderful ice cream suit Ray Bradbury show which was which was pretty successful in yeah I go at the time it's 19 we're talking 1773 Wow now what see now let me ask you something yeah so cuz back then cuz you know he's a guy that's like, whatever he fancies himself, he does say, we were all Democrats once.

But he seems to have shifted into this character as an older man with a lot of swagger and a lot of alphaness. But it seems like back then, he wasn't quite that, was he? No. But I don't think any of us were. Of course. We weren't really that political about it. I mean, look, I did hair in the 60s.

Right, but he seemed like a softer guy. He was. No, I definitely think he was, but he'd have to be addressed that. Sure, everyone gets old. I can't speak for him, but whatever. But yeah, in fact, when I first met him, I can remember people often ask me, how did you first meet David Mead? Because you had this long relationship.

I said, as I recall, I was coming to the Goodman's Theater to go say, this was like- At the school? At the school. I came to maybe see a teacher or something. Right, yeah, yeah. And you have to go down these long stairs because it was at the Art Institute,

which is below ground over on Michigan Avenue there. So I'm coming down and I see this guy coming up and it was fairly Natalie dressed. I remember he kind of had a nice- Scarf, right? Scarf, coat, coat hat looking like sharp yeah no way dressed

like I would be right and he stops me he goes hey I saw you at a play you were in an ice cream suit I really thought

you were great I'm a playwright I love you you and I we'll have to work together sometime I'm thinking yeah great

who the hell are you you know right and sure pal and as it turns out yeah he writes this play called Sexual Perversity

in Chicago sure big play and it turns out he goes to the called Sexual Perversity in Chicago sure big play and it turns out he goes to the organic theater and Stuart Gordon who was our producing director loved the play and decided

yeah we'll do it now this was at the summertime when our normal season at the organic was over and during the summer everybody would go do what they needed to do right

but they had enough money to just mount this play because it didn't take much money I had been hired to do the understudy for Lenny in Julian Barry's play Lenny, which is going to be at the Legit Theater in Chicago. So I was going to be making like $300 a week as opposed to $75 with the organic. Right.

So they asked, so Mamet wanted me to play the one part in it, but I said, and again, I didn't know who the hell he was, but I'm saying he was nobody. Right. But I liked the play. I read it. I went, oh, I like it, but hey, I'm making $300 understudying Lenny. I can't know who the hell he was, but I'm saying he was nobody. Right. But I liked the play. I read it, and I went, oh, I like it, but hey, I'm making $300,000, I'm understudying Lenny, I can't do it.

So to this day, if I had to look at my regrets, it was like I could have done the world premiere of that. I mean, it did what it did, and it went on. I came over to that particular production, but still, I would have liked to have done it. That was his first big one. First big one, but thank God he didn't forget me yeah because then what happened is a life in the theater which is another one of his plays yeah the world premiere of that he came to me to do in chicago with mike

nussbaum who's another one of the actors who worked with him a lot yeah who's now in his 90s uh still working in chicago uh he it's a two-hander and he asked us to do it and we did and so mike and i did the world premiere of that. And then Dave would always call me to do whenever there was, like the library would want him to do excerpts of some of his stuff, especially because now in New York, his stuff was starting to get some play in New York. Was he directing?

No, he wasn't directing back then. So he would write the plays. And who directed them? Greg Mosier. Oh, yeah. He did Glengarry. Yeah, Mosier did a lot of stuff with Mamet, right? He did Life in Theater.

He did Glengarry. I think he did the movie, too. He did American Buffalo, I think he did. Oh, American Buffalo, yeah. But different people would direct his stuff. Okay, so you do those two plays with him, and then he moves to New York? Yeah, all of a sudden he started to get some attention in New York. Life in the Theater, Off-Broadway does well.

Right. Then American Buffalo. Right. Robert Duvall does well. Duvall was teaching the original? Yes, he did the original. Robert Duvall did the original. Yeah.

Yeah, Pacino did it later. So, by now, David was getting a rep, you know? Yeah, sure. So, anyway, in the meantime, meantime, I'd moved to California. I came out here. For what? Well, I'd gone to the organic theater. We toured out to California.

We came out here in the late fall, early winter, and I saw what the weather was like. And I'd already been to Italy on a European tour with the organic, and I'm thinking, you know what? I'm done with Chicago. My chromosomes are Mediterranean. I'm not staying in Chicago. So I convinced my wife we should just come out here and even if we're not working, we'll hang at the beach.

So we're out here for a little while. I'm doing this, that. We're doing plays out here. Dennis Franz and I, Meshack, we remounted our production of Cops from Chicago out here. We did Bleacher Bums out here. Bleacher Bums ran out here for 10 years. Wow.

It was one of the longest running waiver plays in LA history. That's crazy. Yeah, it ran from 1980 to 1990 it ran out here. Anyway, I did it for about a year and a half. But anyway. You doing movies? You doing TV yet? Who?

You. You. Me? No, a little bit parts. Yeah, I do a little bit here. Two lines here. Soap. I did the show Soap. I did eight episodes of the show Soap playing Juan Juan. I played Gregory Sierra's sidekick. That's great. I did all these little bits. It was fun. I was doing all right. You'd work. You'd go on unemployment. Then you'd get another job, go back on unemployment. But you're doing like, you're doing one bit, you're doing little bit parts on it. Little bit parts. Looks like a lot of things. Exactly. But then I get the call from Mamet saying, look, I wrote this play.

Looks like they're going to hopefully take it to Broadway, but at least we're going to open it in Chicago at the Goodman. Yeah. I'd like you to play this part. And I know that's all he told me. So he says,

I'm going to send you the script. So I'm living out here in a one bedroom apartment with my wife. He sends me the script. I look at it. It's all about real estate. It's Blanquerie Glen Ross. I don't know dick about real estate because I never lived in

a house. I mean, at that point in my life, still, the first house I lived in was the one I bought. The one you're in now? Ultimately, well, I've gone through a few since, but the first one I bought, that was it. So I didn't understand it, leads and blah, blah, blah. So I read it and I didn't quite understand it. So he calls me the next day So I read it and I didn't quite understand it. So he calls me the next day. He goes, what did you think of the play?

So I lied. I said, oh, you know, Dave, I didn't really get to it yet. I'm going to read it definitely today. Yeah. And I figured I better find out what this is about. So I'm calling up guys. I said, what do you know? What's a lead?

What's a this? What's a, you know. Who are you calling? What's a mortgage? Who are you? What's escrow? What the hell is this stuff? So now I start to figure it out.

You're calling what, grownups that you know? Yeah, exactly. People you know? Yeah, exactly. People you know like that? Yeah, exactly. Adults. So now I got a general idea of what he's talking about. So then I think, I look at my wife and say, what do we got to lose? Let's go. It's nothing else. It's a free trip to Chicago. We'll hang out if the show's a flop.

See the family? See the family. Yeah. So we go to Chicago. Boom, boom, boom. I mean. Which guy'd you play? Ricky Roma. Oh, yeah. You know, the guy. The slick guy. Boom, boom, boom. I mean, rather than- Which guy did you play? Ricky Roma. Oh, yeah. You know, the guy. The slick guy. The slick guy.

Yeah. So I did that. We do it in Chicago. That's a great part for you. Oh, well- I'm just telling you. You didn't know that. Well, I figured it out.

Because we get to New York, next thing I know, I get nominated for a Tony Award. Yeah. I win the Tony Award. The plague wins the Pulitzer Prize. Wow. And so in one swell foop, my career, my 15 years of like, it goes kaboom. I get skyrocketed up here.

Yeah. And that's why you have the 8x10 of Mamet hanging over my bed. Thank Mamet every day. But I tell you, this guy's been nothing but honest with me. Straight shooter. So here, I'm doing this part. Yeah. Now, I do it on Broadway for a year.

We tour it, and I go tour it for six months with Peter Falk. He plays Shelly Levine on the tour. Oh, great. Which is that part. And we had a great time. This was like 19 years. Oh, Peter Falk. You got to know him, huh?

Oh, we were like this. I got him his star. That's another story. I got him his star on the Hollywood was like 19. Oh, Peter Falk. You got to know him, huh? Oh, we were like this. I got him his star. That's another story. I got him his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Oh, really? I gave the speech for him. It's next to mine. I had them put it next to mine because he'd never gotten.

They offered it to him back a million years ago. But Peter was that guy like. You know what I mean? He never bothered. You got to follow through. You got to pick the day. You got to go. You got to act like you give a shit. So when to follow through. You got to pick the day. You got to go. You got to act like you give a shit.

So when he died, and I was one of the last people. His wife only really allowed me and maybe one other person to see him near the end. Yeah. We were that close. What happened? What did he have? He started to get Alzheimer's. He started to get dementia.

And there was some talk that he had had some dental work done and the anesthesia, really, he was never really the same after that. No kidding. Yeah, because it came on really quick. But anyway, I loved him to death. He's great. I just loved him to death. Just a great human being. But we did that play together. So now I've done a play now on Broadway, six months touring with Peter. While I'm on tour with Peter, Mamet comes into my dressing room on the road and he's carrying, he used to carry his little mail bag, like a mail sack and stuff in it. Yeah. He says, I want to tell you something.

He was always blunt, as you probably realize. That's something he always had. Yeah. He doesn't beat around the bush. Right. He says to me, he goes, I got to tell you something. I just had a meeting today. They're making the movie of Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross.

You ain't doing it. Pacino's already attached. Now, you got to understand, too, Pacino had been offered the play before I was, but turned it down because back then it was a new play and it had a lot going. And I think they offered it to De Niro next. He turned it down for the same reason. Thank God, Mamet back then said to the producers,

we're not going through every well-known Italian guy in Hollywood. Now I got my picks. And that's why we had all no known name guys in that original Broadway production. God bless them. But anyway, so now he tells me, you're not doing a movie. And I'm like, okay, Dave. Carol Channing didn't do Hello Dolly either. I get it.

But he reached in his mailbag and pulled out two scripts. And one was for the movie House of Games. And one was for the movie Things Change. games oh yeah and what was for the movie things change yeah and he laid them on my dressing room table he said i won't make these two movies without you and those were both lead roles wow and what do you say of course at the time i didn't know that i was going to do them that we did do them but we wound up of course doing them yeah but what do you say like thank you man and it man. And it's like, wow, that's the king of dimensions. I mean, how righteous can you be?

Like, I'm going to give you the bad news, but here's the good news, which to my mind, more than made up for it. I would have loved, of course, to have done the movie, Glenn Gary, but, you know, that's the way the trip's going. It was interesting because, you know, I wonder, like, because the movie,

Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, was a pretty big movie. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But, like, those other two movies, they must have been about the same, really, in terms of popularity, right? Things changed. But I wasn't Al Pacino.

I mean, back... No, no, no. I get it. But I'm saying that all in all, it evened out. Yeah. Whatever. If somebody said, would you trade doing that movie for those other two movies? No, I wouldn't have.

House of Games, to me, was... Yeah. And you'd already done that guy. Yeah. Exactly. And these are new guys. No, new guys. And House of Games to me was- Yeah, and you'd already done that guy. Yeah, exactly. And these are new guys. No, new guys. And House of Games actually is, that film is like a cult film.

I mean, in Europe, in France- Interesting movie. They talk about, they run that movie every once in a while in the movie theaters. That was you and Lindsey Krauss, right? Me and Lindsey Krauss, yeah. And Ricky Jay's in it? Uh-huh, Ricky Jay's in it. Oh, he's gone too now.

Oh, I know. Yeah, I was at his memorial service. Yeah, it was a great movie. It was a real clever movie and it was a mammoth movie. It was different. Yeah, I was at his memorial service. Yeah, it was a great movie. It was a real clever movie, and it was a mammoth movie. It was different. Yeah, it was different. And he directed it too? He directed it.

That was the first thing he directed. Now, let me ask you something, because he said something earlier. If it's on the page, it's on the stage. Now, is that a mammoth thing? No. No, no, no. I don't think so. Did you learn anything from him?

Because I always like, there was always something. He has a very interesting approach to theater, and I talked to him about it, because I'm not sure I agree with it. Oh, no, I agree. I understand what you're saying because I don't necessarily agree well on what he says either. Because what he's saying, and I get at least from my opinion, it's true but only because it applies to him. So, in other words, when he says something like, all you got to do is say the words. Right.

Yeah. In your case, that's probably true because you're a master of writing the writing the words right a lot of guys don't write that good yeah and so you gotta sometimes gotta massage that or finesse that or hopefully bring something more to the dance i think i talked to him about it my feeling was is that the idea was like you know anybody can do this you know if you just read just do the words yeah yeah no no yeah yeah no it's not there's more to it than that but yeah but i think what if you cast it right, though, that's the key. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think maybe he's not adding that little, you know.

No, I just, I remember he had the school, and my first wife, you know, was in the school. You know, and I read his books. And I like, you know, and the Atlantic is what I'm talking about. Right, right, right. And there are guys that are just gifted. And the truth of the matter is, you know, and The Atlantic is what I'm talking about. Right, right, right. And there are guys that are just gifted. And the truth of the matter is, you know, like, whether you go by the system or not,

if you can act, you can act. But see, but with his form of writing, there was no room for improv. No, I get it. You don't change a word, this, that, and the other. So it's a different ballgame than even working with, like,

I've done movies for Woody Allen, for Barry Levinson. But both of them are, give you... A little more room? Oh, absolutely. They give you all A little more room? Oh, absolutely. They give you all the room in the world. Oh, really? Pretty much.

Okay. I mean, it's like- So it's like you're honoring the playwright's vision here, and that's the job. Well, yeah. In fact, I remember Woody Allen's case. I was doing his movie, and I was so used to working for Mamet. It's like a composer. Some guys write the music a certain way and say

place plate right the notes yeah you know which i get other guys will say okay this is the score feel free to you know yeah jump around if you want so i was doing the first step my first i did two woody allen pictures the first one alice was the first and it was one of the first days on it yeah and all i wanted to do is i saw the line and it was like something like, I cannot. Yeah. And I wanted to say, I can't. Yeah. So I said to Woody, I said, look, can I, instead of saying I cannot, do you mind if I say I

can't? And he had that look on his face like I was like nuts. Like, of course. Say whatever you want. I don't care. You know? I was like, of course, if you went too far, he'd say, go back to the script. But it made me realize, okay, it's not everybody's, you know, like this.

And the same thing with Barry Levinson. He would let me do improv. Which movie? What movie is that? I did a couple. I did Bugsy and I did Liberty Heights. Oh, he did Bugsy? Uh-huh.

Wow. Wonderful director. And that was Warren Beatty's Bugsy? Warren Beatty's Bugsy. I played George Raft. Oh, that's right. The actor. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That was a good movie i think i thought it was a great movie are you friends with dave now mamet yeah oh very close yeah yeah oh yeah he gave my when i got my star in the hollywood walk of fame he uh he gave the speech for me along with the three-star marine general i had to do it because i wanted i wanted to balance out my kind of connection with the three-star three-star Marine? Yeah. A buddy of yours? Yeah.

Because you weren't in the military. No, no, no, I wasn't. But I kind of, not that I feel guilty about it, but I dodged that bullet because they had a high draft number during the Vietnam War. And then a lot of my family was in the military. And once I started doing that Memorial Day concert, a lot of it just came home to me because I've been to a lot of military hospitals

and visited a lot of these guys, and I think, Jesus, you know, when I was 20, I had two legs, two arms, two eyes, and I've lived a pretty good life. Some of these guys fought in conflicts that people have forgotten why we were there, and yet these guys got to live like this the rest of their life, and that changes a little. Yeah. So that's what that was about. uh well it's good that you do that it's like a service you do everybody's got a hot button you know what i mean whatever

it may be so now like i mean you've been in a million movies like you know when i when you were coming over here like i i realized that like you're one of those guys that's sort of been ever present seemingly my entire life yeah well yeah that's what happens when those those years start clicking by you know like it's it's sort of astounding like you you've done big movies done little movies you just keep working you know to me it's always it's a blue-collar job being an actor i mean i never for me it is i mean i i look i don't mean to cranston cranston brian cranston yeah he feels that way he's sort of a proletariat kind if I read something

and I like it I think I could bring something to it or register something in my head like yeah let me it might be fun to do this

why not how many weeks yeah what's the money where is it yeah I've shot films in Europe that when the agent says

they got this offer to do this film in Italy I go great I'll read it on the plane I said yes before I even heard what the title was because you're gonna be in italy because i thought really it wasn't well you know how bad could it be well who cares you know what i mean and literally out of the probably the five

movies in italy i think i've seen three of them and the other two i don't even know the titles of who cares yeah you know so that's really the deal you go for the experience sometimes of course you know well not everybody feels that way some people manage their career like it's a goddamn garden. Well, God bless them. That's not me. You know what I mean? For me, I look over here. If a door opens, I'll try to walk through it. Why not? If it's closed, let me see if there's an open door over here. Right. So it

really is about how much time, where's it going to be? Yeah. I mean, you don't want to hopefully do stuff that you're going to be embarrassed about. Have you done any of that? Of course. But you don't find out. Sometimes you don't know that until later. Because you see gonna be embarrassed about have you done any of that of course but but you don't find out sometimes you don't know that till later yeah because you see the finished product you go oh jesus what was i thinking right but then but then you have to say to yourself now wait a minute at the time i made that decision yeah it seemed like a good idea right yeah for whatever reason but you've worked with big guy like you know you work with big

directors oh the biggest coppola i've worked with Coppola. On the one Godfather that nobody liked. Yeah, well, you know what's ironic, though, with that? When I meet some young people, I'm not saying young people meaning anybody under 40 is young people to me. Right. Those who wouldn't grow up with the Godfather trilogy and maybe just see them randomly and out of order. I'll have people in their 20s or 30s say to me,

hey, man, yeah, I finally got around to seeing them Godfather movies. And number three, that's my favorite. I'm thinking, really? Wow. You know? Good. But it's like, okay.

Because they're coming at it maybe from another angle. They're coming at it from without any preconception of like knowing how great those first two were. And there wasn't an 18 year gap and a lot of expectation. Well, what was it? What was the scene around that? Yeah, I mean, what was the casting? What was the feeling on it?

There was a whole, I mean, it was a lot of strange things about that. I mean, you know, Winona Ryder was originally on the film. Yeah. And then she dropped out like last second. Oh, Sophia's part. And that's what caused Sophia to come into it. Yeah.

And I don't doubt that a lot of it had to do with Francis also still going through a period of grieving over the death of his son. And I mean, I know that's true. Yeah. And so in a way, I think for him, it was a time of bringing his whole family together because in Italy, his mother was there, his father was there, his nieces, his nephews, his son, his other son. Yeah. Now his daughter was visiting from art school. So it was almost like, it seemed like serendipitous that all this kind of, it became almost like a movie unto itself.

The family thing. Yeah. Right. The real thing. He's always been big around that though. Yeah. And God bless him. To me, he's entitled to it.

He deserves it. Sure. I mean, if he wants, if that's the way he wanted it to be, then so be it. He's the, that's what, those are the times when it does cross over. It is an art form. Yeah. And it to be, then so be it. Those are the times when it does cross over. It is an art form, and he is the artist, especially in a movie. The director is in the buck stops with that guy. So his vision takes the— But what happened to the movie?

I don't know. I mean, it is what it is. I mean, I just think perhaps in many ways the expectations were so high there was no possible way you're going to equal it, equal people's expectations. And also, like, how do you age that guy? How do you age Michael? You know, I mean, Pacino at that point, I mean, did all right,

but it was a nebulous thing. Yeah, and also, you know, Robert Duvall was in it up until, like, a couple weeks before we started shooting. And I mean, huge in it. Yeah. But they couldn't make the deal. And I mean, part of it was, again, it gets down to duval had won the oscar for best actor like the year before or something and i think basically they were offering him short cash and i think his attitude was wait a minute yeah i should be right up there right right and so for whatever

reason duval decided not to do it and you, you know, within a few weeks of shooting, you can't all of a sudden make major changes to a script. Well, that explains a lot. I mean, that explains a lot. But it's okay. My feeling is, hey, it is what it is. And so it holds up as part of that, you know, part three of that trilogy. And I don't think there'll be a fourth one, but you never know.

There could be. Yeah, I guess. But you do, like, it's so amazing because you do, like, you'll do TV fourth one, but you never know. There could be. Yeah, I guess. But you do like, it's so amazing because you do like, you'll do TV movies. You do all the movies. You play Dean Martin. Oh, I love, yeah. I love doing that.

Well, the thing is, I don't care about the venue. My feeling is, first of all, it all winds up on somebody's phone anyway, ultimately. So, I mean, what the hell do I care? I mean, back then it was a big deal. When I first started in the business, you were either a stage actor, a TV actor, or a movie actor. Right.

And never the twain shall meet. Right. Now, it's all over the place. Yeah. In fact, most of your big movie stars came out of probably streaming or from. Come on. Well, it's true. I mean, you know, think about it.

All the big stars got that way because the little boys and girls. I mean, the young people. little boys and girls saw them. I mean, they created them. I mean, even you talk about Johnny Depp and those guys like that. They started doing little bits on TV and stuff like that. That would have never happened back in the 40s. Oh, 21 Jump Street. That was like Johnny Depp.

Yeah. I'm just saying the young people create who they want to be stars, and they can get it off of a show that's maybe, well, you see what's happening with streaming now and stuff. But there's some guys, like, I mean, Brad Pitt was on, yeah, a lot of guys started on TV back in the day and made the graduation. But I see what you're saying.

Like, there's a whole world of actors. I don't know who they are, and the kids know who they are. Oh, absolutely. And that's just the way time works. No, no, and the social media has made it so, like, depending on how many followers you have, you have power. All I want to do is get off of it now. I'm on it. And then once you get on it and you figure it out, I mean, I'm 56 and I'm like, all right, I fought to sort of find a place on it, but now I'm like, I don't want to. No, I know. I don't look at it. I mean, I keep it up because there was a guy that was impersonating

me because I didn't know. Which one do you do? Twitter? I don't look at it. I mean, I keep it up because there was a guy that was impersonating me. Which one do you do? Twitter? I don't look at them. My assistant does. He does Twitter and he does... Instagram? I guess. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. I probably have them all. I don't have Facebook. But I really don't do them because I email and I call people. It's all I can do. It's all I can handle. No texting?

I text. I got kids. You gotta text. Otherwise, they'd never hear from me. Or I'd never hear from them. But the other thing is, I mean, I think it's okay a text. I was they'd never hear from me. I never hear from them. Yeah, but the other thing is I Mean, I think it's okay It's I mean social media has become this so what I don't like about it is it gives everybody like an equal voice And it used to be you had to earn that you know, it makes us all very accessible Yeah And so it's like yeah

But I had to get it because a guy was impersonating me and it really cost me money to get him off in other words He had opened up twitter whatever it was yeah because somebody the way i found out was my stand and came up to me says hey i donated to your charity i go what charity goes the one you have online or the facebook i says i don't have that yeah and then i turned out a guy was sick because i hadn't gotten it he created it and how'd you you had to get someone yeah get somebody to get it off and make mine the original you know call the verified one. Yeah, right. Did the guy get punished? No, no.

He just has to stop. How much did he scam people for? I have no idea because I don't know how long it lasted. I don't think very long. Yeah. But my assistant who's been with me for 19 years, he's very good. And so at least we use it as a form to just be able to inform like, hey, criminal minds is going to be back on, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or I'm doing this for the military on this date, da i'm not there every day personally and not at all i'm not saying oh by the way i had like a sandwich this morning and yeah and my dog just i get it that stuff makes me i can't even yeah you know who needs to know that that's right but also people get obsessed with that you know it attaches to the narcissism that we all have. And then it's your whole day. You put something up. You see who people responded. You put another thing up. You see how they responded.

You go over to the other platform. You put something up. See how that's going. And it's like half your day. And I realize, look, I'm in a public profession and I don't shun anybody. That's the one thing. I'll go out in the street. People see me. Hey, Joe. Can we take a picture? You must be that guy. And bad people love you they

must you know it's harder to say no for me than to just say sure come on we'll take a picture you gotta do five minutes i don't think pictures i don't want to do and you know you put your collar up with sunglasses pretend you're somebody else please you know sometimes when you're eating or something you're with somebody well sure but as long as they're doing it politely really see you're sitting there eating they'll just just one they stick their head in yeah they do the thing they usually don't maybe because they've seen some of the characters i played they figure maybe it's not a good idea to push me too far don't fuck with that guy yeah yeah but uh but no for 99.9 percent of people are very polite and and look i'm without them i don't you know i don't have

the life i live and i've had a pretty good life. Yeah, for sure. Now, okay, so 15 years on a show, buddy. Is that how long you were on it? I was on 13 seasons. The show's 15 seasons. So this is your 13th year and this is the end of it? It's the end of it. We shot the last 10 episodes. The end of Criminal Minds.

It's over. January 8th, they'll start the first of the 10. David Rossi. David Rossi. Now, how does that feel? I mean, is this a sad thing? Well, I mean, it's bittersweet. I mean, because, first of all, we all really liked each other,

especially the last eight of us that were together. We really gelled. We really had a nice thing going. Everybody really got along. We had some that had been there a long time, some that were new. It was a nice mix. And so it was somewhat bittersweet. But look, I didn't kid myself.

Like I say, I've been doing this for 50 years. So if nothing else, you know the business is transitory. It's like nothing lasts forever. And this one happened to last a lot longer than, and look, I've been Fat Tony on The Simpsons for 30 years. So that's my longest running role. Yeah, and that must, like. I'm still doing that running role. Is it? Yeah. And that must- I'm still doing that.

I'm doing one next week. But so just on a residual situation, you're doing good. You'll be all right for it. Not from The Simpsons. The Simpsons, my residuals, I could take you to lunch because- Really? Well, that's because I'm not one of the- You're not vested.

Main guys there. Right, right, right. But I love the character. Yeah. And they've treated me well. They write well for my character. I'll only do like two or three episodes a season fun yeah it's fun and and i think they say i've done the most guest shots of any of the characters i was on one pride in that i was on one were you

yeah i played myself oh great yeah and i interviewed uh crusty oh great yeah well when i do the one next week i'm gonna say we gotta get one back you know get us together yeah me and you yeah fat tony yeah have mark mirren do a podcast with Fat Tony. Me and Mark would be great. Exactly. Yeah, but you know, 13 Seasons was I love doing it. And if

they would have told me, look, we're going to do more, I would have done more and not blinked. It wasn't like, oh man, my Gladys is over. I'm tired of it. But on the other hand, it's over. And so it's time to- It's a two-hour premiere? The premiere's two hours, and then we'll do a single hour

up until the final two episodes, and that'll be a two-hour finale. Oh, wow. Sometime in February. And it's a good season, you like it? Yeah. You shot it all? We shot it all.

What's nice is we finished like in March, and so I don't even remember a lot of it. So it's gonna be new to me, like, oh yeah, that's what it's about it's going to be new to me like, oh yeah, that's what it's about. You know, I, I,

you know, I, I'm sort of new to it but like I did a series for on Netflix called Glow and like, you know,

you get done shooting it and I did all 10 episodes and I'm like, I don't remember what, I don't know what it was about. Yeah. And then he comes on and you're like,

oh yeah, that's it. That's how that went. But those, the public out there, they are some, there are some people who are so into it. Yeah. And, and our fan base of criminal minds is is if anything it's

even bigger internationally oh yeah because there's less product for them right they don't get everything right but the things that they they gravitate to they do a big way so like when they send us out for publicity tours like all over the over the world yeah and i've been to like france and germany Germany and Italy and Monaco and I remember in France this one writer comes up to me and goes,

do you have any idea how popular you are in France? He was the number one show in France. I'm like, really? And this was like season nine or something.

Okay, great. So you're big in France. Good to know, big in France. Yeah. And did you find that's true when you go to France? Do people?

Yeah, well, you find it wherever. I mean, I'll be walking on the street in Venice or whatever and somebody will say, hey, David Rossi or whatever like that.

Is that mostly what they recognize you for? Now, yeah, but it depends. If I see a guy that looks a little whacked out, it's going to be either, probably airheads.

Yeah, yeah. Like, hey, man, I love airheads, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or it might be somebody who's a certain age that come up to me and say, I grew up watching Baby's Day Out. We watched it with my dad and mom for, you know, 10 times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or it might be somebody who's a certain age that come up to me and say, I grew up watching

Baby's Day Out. We watched it with my dad and mom for 10 times. Oh, yeah. Or it could be if it's a guy like my age, it might be, hey, man, Dean Martin,

I love that. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it depends on the crowd. Yeah. And Godfather, too. You'll get a lot of Joey Salsa, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. So it really depends, but Criminal Minds probably giving me the most face time. And same thing with even The Simpsons, Fat Tony. Sure. So it really depends, but Criminal Minds probably given me the most face time. And same thing with even The Simpsons, Fat Tony. Sure.

They're people, and so they know that I am that voice. So if they see me, I've had one guy run up to me, lift up his shirt. Yeah, he's got Fat Tony. He's got a Fat Tony tattoo, huge on his arm,

and I'm thinking, oh, I gotta make sure this guy's not following me home. Yeah. And you're not stopping. No, you know, what, you retire? What am I gonna do, golf? Like Franz. He's not following me home. Yeah. And you're not stopping. No. You know, what? You retire?

Am I going to do golf? Like Franz. Franz can do that. I can't do that. Yeah, he loves it. You golf? I do. I actually do.

I'm a member of a golf club, but I don't play. I probably eat there more than I golf there, but I enjoy it. It's a nice way to just get out. Yeah. I've never really tried it. Yeah, it's frustrating. I mean, thank God I don know i've never never really tried it yeah it's it's it's frustrating i mean thank god i don't take it seriously yeah and then what about directing i like directing in fact i'm supposed to direct this film in next spring which is very interesting

because it's a comedy based on when frank sinatra jr was kidnapped oh in the 60s yeah but it's a comedy in the sense that it's it's like a black comedy it's absurd because even though it's based on a true story, it was kind of absurd. The guys who did it were like nuts. Yeah, right. They were a little wacky. And it's seen through the eyes of them. And it's kind of cool. And it's actually, it's not disrespectful to junior or senior in the sense that it shows

that there was a little tension between the two of them, which there was. But in a way, there's a sweetness about it, how it gets resolved. So I really liked the script. So they came to me, because I directed like nine episodes of Criminal Minds, and I also directed a mammoth play into a movie called Lake Boat. So you got some chops now.

I got some. I like to think I do, and I felt good about the episodes I directed of Criminal Minds. And enough for these producers. I mean, I didn't seek this out. They came to me and said, we think you're the right guy for this movie. Nice. And enough for these producers. I mean, I didn't seek this out. They came to me and said, we think you're the right guy for this movie. And I read the script. I said, yeah. And then I shot a pilot for Amazon. And the reason I like that is I have two daughters.

You directed it. No, no, no. No, I'm acting it. Oh, okay. But it's the tentative title. It's already running in Israel. It had run in Israel called On the Spectrum. And it's about these three young people who are all on the autism spectrum. They all live together.

This is based on an Israeli show. Yeah. That's what you're saying. Yeah. But Jason Kadams wrote it, who's created Parenthood and created Friday Night Lights. Wonderful writer.

Yeah. And I read the script. Now, my oldest daughter has autism. She's 32. So when I read the script, I just thought it was a beautiful script. I really thought it was great because it's got humor yeah but it's drama too it's like it's like you think of a good doctor which is i think is a good show but but not they don't know people on the spectrum don't all become surgeons yeah you know what i mean so what happens

to the ones that are just like having to live their life right and that's what this is kind of about oh that's sweet and so. And so I did that pilot. So we're going to wait to hear if that gets picked up. And you play the father? I play the father of the lead boy. Oh, so that's something close to your heart. Very close to my heart. And it's something that brings awareness.

Very much so. Yeah. And also many of the people involved are on the spectrum themselves. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And they reached out to me about perhaps having my daughter work in the makeup department because she actually has a strong interest in that and actually went to makeup school oh that's great years ago so i mean they're sensitive to that so i like the whole you know everything about it and i like jason very much he's a gentle man and i know he has a

son on the spectrum and and so everything seemed right about it so again you gotta trust you gotta trust your gut feeling yeah but that. Yeah, but that sounds great. Oh, it does. We'll see. And if it doesn't go, it doesn't go. And who knows what I do. All right. Well, man, I'm sure you'll do something.

Yeah, I'll do something. It was great talking to you. Same here. I'm going to have to see the Lenny Bruce thing. So you told him to get naked at the beginning. That's what we can expect? I told him, I want you naked on the toilet. And that's how we open the play.

You open up your- As a dead guy? Well, he's dead. He opens up his eyes, looks in the audience and says, I was found dead, naked on the toilet in 19-da-da-da-da. But before I get to that, then we start the play. And then he gets his dress? Then he starts getting dressed.

As he gets dressed, he starts talking. He starts telling about Adam. Oh, that's- No, you got to see. You especially got to see. Well, you say hi to that guy and we'll try to figure it out. Yeah, please do. Thanks, Joe.

Thank you. That's it. That's our show, his show, Joe's show. Criminal Minds is on its 15th and final season. It airs Wednesday nights, and it's streaming on CBS All Access. And the two-hour series finale is on February 19th. That's when it airs. I guess I should go to a chiropractor.

I don't know. I think I'm falling apart. I'm sorry I have a cold. I'm sorry I sound stuffed up. I'm sorry if I'm discombobulated. I'll be back on top of it shortly. I'll probably talk to you from Atlanta next. Go to WTFpod.com

slash tour for all of my tour dates. Okay? You can do that. And now I will play some echoey somewhat sub-Saharan flavored music. Yeah. Is that the word I want? Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon guitar solo Thank you. Boomer lives. you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no,

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