WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 792 - Fred Melamed / Andy Kindler

Episode Date: March 8, 2017

Fred Melamed is instantly familiar, not only because of his scene-stealing performances in the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man and Maria Bamford's Lady Dynamite, but because he is an indelible New York character. But that familiarity came with a price, as 20 years of successful work actually led to a complete bottoming out in Fred's life. He tells Marc how he pulled out of it. Plus, Andy Kindler stops by to talk about the big change in his life. 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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Take a closer look at how at calgaryeconomicdevelopment.com. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. 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 plus 18 plus subscription required t's and c's apply All right, let's do this.

How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck, Knicks? What the fuckocrats? What is happening? I am Mark Maron. This is WTF.

This is my podcast. Thanks for being here. How's everyone doing? Are you okay? Take a breath. Let's hang out for a little while. Got a good show today. I got an interesting guy.

I don't know. You would know him if you've seen him, I bet. I don't know. You would know him if you've seen him, I bet. I think my first real exposure to him was in the Coen Brothers film, A Serious Man. He's an actor. His name is Fred Melamed. And he's currently, you can see him on Maria Bamford's show. He's a big presence. I don't know. I always was sort of intrigued with him. I thought I would get along with him. And he came up.

Also, my buddy Andy Kindler has some things he's got going on. So I thought I'd have him in here for a short chat. Always fun to see Mr. Kindler. But how are you? I'm okay. I'm having a nice tea in my mug from my Glow swag. Glow season one mug. They were done in two batches.

There's a team heel and team face. I've got a team heel. Glow, the show that I did for Netflix about the gorgeous ladies of wrestling, will be on Netflix at the end of June. Hold on. Pow! I just shit my pants. wrestling uh will be uh on netflix at the end of june hold on pow i just shit my pants just coffee.coop get the wtf blend and uh get a little a little something on the backside there that's a classic ad many of you have only been listening to this for a little while have not heard the um the the actually business changing slogan pal i just shit my pants uh that was created in the early days of wtf i thought i'd do a little throwback loved being in canada

loved being in toronto and then here's the weird thing though it's only weird to me the the crowds were great had nothing to do with them but the next day when we're flying home ryan singer and myself i'm on the plane and they have the you know the entertainment system and in their classic movies there was only maybe less than a dozen of the classic movie section on the plane options and one of them was give. I mean, what are the fucking odds of that? I told you I just read that book about Altamont by Joel Selvin. I just finished that in Montreal, and I get on a plane from Toronto to Los Angeles, and that fucking movie's on there that I hadn't seen in a decade, and it's all fresh in my head the menace the darkness the the insane badassity

death of the 60s mythology right there and i watched it all and man had quite an impact i do have to say i talked to somebody else about this that uh i don't think the rolling stones ever sounded better than those last couple of songs that they did at Altamont because they had a fuck of a lot to transcend, man. I mean, Jesus. Some things transcend coincidence. And, you know, that sort of weird menace between things. You know, like when something turns into something else. I've analogized it a bit to what we're going through as a country.

There's just a big shift in the culture and the tone. And there's something resonant about the shift, you know, from Woodstock to Altamont that feels frighteningly familiar. Very different, but metaphorically, I think it stands up. Tomorrow night, New Haven. I'll be there. I believe there's still tickets left. College Street Music Hall. Tomorrow night, Friday, March 10th in New Haven, Connecticut.

I'll be on Saturday going up to where my girl comes from, the area. Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. That's March 11th. And then I'm going to be cruising up to Burlington, Vermont, the Flynn Center, on Sunday, March 12th. We're going right back. Came back home to L.A. for a couple days. Say hello to the cats, Monkey, LaFonda, Buster, Deaf Black Cat, Scaredy Cat II. Touch base with everybody.

Went through my mail it's always weird coming back especially from Canada just coming back getting off the plane and entering the traffic speaking of Eugene Levy now look I didn't like I got an email

and I didn't I don't know this movie and I want to take it at face value the email but I'm sensing the tone might be maybe it's on me. But I want to share this for Eugene, if he's listening. The subject line, Eugene Levy going berserk. Mark, love your podcast. Just listen to your interview with eugene levy and i wanted to let you know that my friends and i consider going berserk to be one of the greatest films of all time it belongs in the

same realm of cinematic achievements as citizen kane godfather 2 raging bull and almost famous to this day my friends and i firmly believe that mr levy was robbed of a Best Supporting Actor nod by the Academy for his role in the film as Saul DePasquale. Nicholson was great in terms of endearment, but Levy was better. He was like a young Marlon Brando or Daniel Day-Lewis on his best day. Listening to your interview with Mr. Levy, it struck me that he was being incredibly modest about the significance and power of this cinematic treasure. To the extent you doubt our strong commitment to this film, rest assured that our VHS copy of Going Berserk is protected under lock and key and by a fireproof safe in an undisclosed location and is taken out each year for our annual screening. Please send our regards to Mr. Levy and let him know that we are all huge fans. screening please send our regards to mr levy and let him know that we are all huge fans seriously all of us jersey boys grew up watching sctv in our high school years and genuinely believe that

it is the greatest sketch show in the history of television the schmengi brothers and bobby bitman remain some of my favorite sketch characters of all time keep up the great work wtf regards great work wtf-er regards kevin okay i'm gonna take that face value and i believe i i guess i have to see the film going berserk because i i i would have known about it i mean i'm surprised if what is being said in that email is true that i didn't that i didn't know about it. So I'm going to educate myself by watching that movie. All right? So look, Andy Kindler, what do we know? We know he's one of the funniest people in the world. We know he's been around a long time.

We know he's been on my television show. He's Andy. I always love seeing Andy. He's hosting the Hulu series, Coming to the Stage, which is in its fourth season, As We Speak. This is me and the lovely Andy Kindler, one of my oldest friends in college. 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.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. 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. Omidy. Sit down, Andy. Hi, Mark. Tell me again. You've got a friend in San Francisco that is frustrated with the cone shape, so he's now designing his own coffee. Well, it's Nicholas Cho.

He's a coffee genius. Oh, so he's a known coffee genius coffee. Well, it's Nicholas Cho. He's a coffee genius. Oh, so he's a known coffee genius. Yeah, a wrecking ball coffee. Uh-huh. But a lot of things he says goes right past me. Yeah. Like, for example- Too deep?

Well, like, he uses analogies. So he says, you wouldn't cook a steak in a cone shape. Right. And then that kind of loses me. Well, I mean, that would lose anybody. I don't think that you can compare cooking a steak to brewing coffee. So it's a faulty analogy. No, no, no.

I think his analogy is a... This is the new you, right? What? You're not taking any more guff from people. No. If your metaphor or simile or syllogism is not wrapped in... If the analogy is not fit, then I must acquit.

I, yes, I got no time for it because my brain will do the work and it will yield nothing. Okay. It just comes out funny. See, I thought a steak and a cone. How would you cook a steak?

Remember the comedy group of steak and cone? Very funny. That was very, very funny. Cone. I loved Cone. It's sad that he died so young. Yeah.

Because he ate too much steak. Yeah. Come on. And people will listen to this. They will assume that we pre-did this bit. Well, I didn't get the script. I was just riffing. That's me too.

Yes and me too. Yes and me too. Yes and me too. Me too. That's how Trump's going to get people to build the wall. I don't like the Mexicans. Yes and. Yes and. We should build a wall. Me too. That's how Trump's going to get people to build the wall. I don't like the Mexicans. Yes, and. Yes, and.

We should build a wall. Yes, and. But then it comes to you will. Oh. Yeah, yeah. So what are you doing? What's going on? I actually have some projects.

I mean, I can't even believe this is happening. Did you want to talk about your new view on life? My new life? Your new view on life and your brain? Oh, yeah. I'm on Prozac. This is a big deal. It is a big deal.

Now, you've been on these various things, right? Many years ago. But nothing now? Nothing. A lot of nicotine lozenges. Nicotine lozenges. And coffee, which I don't think help. They escalate.

The coffee escalates it. So this is the first time for you. Yeah. Seeing a guy to talk to and then having the pills. Right. And then I was on, I've been on Adderall for a while, which I'm on both now. So, well, that sounds like a powerful cocktail. So one kind of like evens out your personality and the other one amplifies that.

Well, the whole thing is, are you adopting my delivery now? I do it immediately. Has everyone done it? I do it immediately. As soon as you sit down, in order to keep up with you, I have to keep, kaboosh, kabow. With the history of the Jews. Yes. So what happened? So before, Andy was what?

What was- I'll give you an example. I was late for this thing today. You were a little late, but not terrible. Yeah, but it is terrible to me. Oh, it is? There's no excuse for this thing today. You were a little late, but not terrible. Yeah, but it is terrible to me. Oh, it is? There's no excuse for it. Right.

I have a very evil parent in my head who parents me in a very, very evil way. Right. And says, you're no good. So it doesn't even matter. So along your way over here, did it say, like, why bother going? No, I'm getting a little bit better at that. But it's like i i see your your face yeah i can imagine you getting mad yeah but it's it doesn't have to but that's just

today the other day it could be somebody else right it's whoever i'm putting in your heart on yourself right and the idea being uh in my 20s i used to think i'd hit somebody in the in the car i i this was so long ago. People didn't know about this as much. That's actually a common thing. You think you've hit something. You drive around the block. You check to see.

Yeah. And then you realize, uh-oh, in the time I drove around the block, the person could have crawled into the bushes. So then you don't drive around the block anymore. You just worry about it all day. Hitting a person. Yeah. And my cousin used to call the police to see if anybody reported someone being hit so this was this was all during my 20s but you made that up in your head did you hear a sound did you see a person or you just your brain just decided that you hit a person how does that happen did you hear a kook and you're

like what was that i think ostensibly maybe i did hit a kacunk, but I think it goes so irrational. I went up to Yosemite and I was convinced that I started a fire up there. So I just kept reading the papers every day for several weeks. Why were you convinced? Did you start a fire? I don't remember what we did. It's always based on some kind of shred of reality.

So there is a clunk sound and there is a precipitating incident, but also I'm always looking behind me to see if I've hit something. So it's just OCD behavior that I didn't realize I had. But it sounds like somewhat morbid fascination. I mean, OCD, it's like, is the gas on? Is the gas on? Do I need to, I got these rituals I got to do to make sure I feel all right.

You know, the counting, the touching the things. Checking, checking. Twitter. That's why Twitter is a death hole. Yeah, I've stopped tweeting anything other than, you know, occasional promotional tweets. I am very proud of you. I can't do it. I have to do it, but I can't.

See, I can't cut out the things that I do. It makes me too, it hurts me too much. And I don't care anymore. But the thing uh the thing you have a very good philosophy you're a stoic you're almost a stoic well i don't think anyone would say that but i appreciate it if i'm to you who isn't a stoic well i did that the pace you operate at i would imagine that richard lewis is the only person alive that you say is a maybe a little anxious well no but i mean i've known you for many, many years

and we're both deeply troubled people. So as Jews, I mean, we both have that. We don't have the same, like no one would see you and think you have as many, they don't think of you as having OCD or something like that. I don't really have it. What I have is dread, and I think it manifests itself that,

like I don't need to feel like I hit somebody in the car to think that everything is going to go badly. Yeah, and the thing about everything going badly goes back to my childhood, and then it apparently goes back all the way to the caveman days. Oh, really? Where'd you learn that? Well, going into therapy. He took you back the caveman days. Oh, really? Where'd you learn that? Well, going into therapy. He took you back to caveman? Well, I imagine it started with, since the cavemen, people have been what?

Okay, fight, flight, or freeze is the basic thing. Fight, fight, or freeze. That's what I do all day long. That may have been useful when a saber-toothed tiger was coming at me. A lion is eating my foot off. Is that an Alan Sherman song? No, it's Mel Brooks.

Oh. From what? The 10,000-year-old man? Yeah. You are very old. Yes, it is true. How old are you? So old we didn't have calendars back then.

That is old. Also, I seem to produce a lot more phlegm. All right. How long have you had that gold 8 000 years oh that's old uh all right so so fight flight or freeze right so that doesn't help anymore so i'm constantly with every situation in my life thinking am i good am i bad am i good like if i say Was it good or bad or safe? It's like a panicky thing.

Yeah. It's like a panicky thing. But it takes many forms. When I was a kid. Like did you do, on Twitter though, you're saying like, did I do the right thing?

Should I not have done that? Right. Why are there 90 Nazis yelling at me? Yeah, so I say something. Yeah. That may be outrageous. Not outrageous, whatever. Someone objects to it.

Then all of a sudden, I start to go down this rabbit hole of checking back every 10 minutes. I eventually give up my own view of myself to some other, whatever that person is. That's an interesting thing. Yeah. That maybe not giving up your own view entirely, but it reaffirms the shitty view you have of yourself well yeah i said yes uh yesterday to my therapist dr vini boom bots i said that uh i feel do i feel this way because i'm comfortable and then she said no it's not comfortable it may be familiar to you familiar but it's not comfortable. It may be familiar to you. Familiar over and over. But it's not comfortable. That's interesting. I don't make a nice living from it.

Yeah. See, what I'm saying is you seem well-adjusted in your cynicism. I'm exhausted. In your cynicism. I'm exhausted. Okay. Anyway, you were pointing to it.

No, it's not well-adjusted. It's just sort of like, I just don't, I think as I get older and less, maybe more cynical or at least less desperate, I just don't see the point of a lot of shit. Well, that's aging. I get older and less, maybe more cynical or at least less desperate.

I just don't see the point of a lot of shit. Well, that's aging. That's the good part of aging. And I'm older than you. And I will tell you that that is one thing that does get better. Yeah. Is the, if you have any health in you at all. Yeah.

The ambitious thing that I had in my 20s. Yeah. That's not, I don't have that as much anymore. Yeah, yeah. You know? Yeah. I can still get triggered. Sure. Oh, absolutely.

Me too. In a second. So, you have things going on? Yeah, but let's not get excited about them because, I mean, no, let's try and get excited about them. Okay. I'm on Hulu. Yeah, that's good.

I have a show called Coming to the Stage. And what's that about? It's a show where I introduce comics, young comics, young people who are just starting out like we were at one point. Yeah. When I was a young comedian, when I did the Young Comedian Special at age 38. Yeah, I remember. Yeah.

So, and I bring them up and I think I'm setting a bad table for them. Yeah. But nevertheless, they seem to- So, you're hosting a stand-up showcase show oh it's a stand-up showcase show what does that mean showcase show well there's several stand-ups that do about the same amount okay but they're not showcasing for another show no no no you know like showcase format like oh yes you know like the like the the classic sort of like andy kindler hosts a show where he where comics. Right. That's the way I should learn how to describe it. Here, let me help you.

I host a show. I bring up comics. This is very complex, but let me see if I can get your head around it. I say the comic's name. They come up. And they do their act. And they come to the stage. And you leave the stage. That's another thing I should mention. I do not stay on the stage.

And then when he's done. Guess what happens? You come back up. Now, when you host, do you notice that people never like it when you come back? For me. Yeah. They always seem disappointed when I come back. They see me that second time.

Well, that's always a thing. Like, hey, I'm back. I'm here to cleanse the palate a little bit and do a joke that won't work and bring up the next guy. Right. And of course, in my mind, if i was sitting in the audience my attention would drift but that's not what i wanted from my people in the audience i don't think their attention drifts they're still like enjoying you know the maybe the last joke of the guy that was just on and then you go how about that guy and then what's the hulu show called it's called coming

to the stage and i have another thing this is, you know how many things I have out? I have one DVD out. No, before this, one DVD. I've released the first State of the Industry from 1996 with all the feuds from the 90s. Now they're back, and they're even more hard to describe. And that's also from Comedy Dynamics, and that's a download, digital download like iTunes. So it's from Comedy Dynamics, your first day to the industry in Montreal. Where I said things like, Jay Leno's in the Guinness Book of Records for going the longest period of time without having an authentic moment. Oh, well, I think I was there.

Is that possible? I don't think you were around at the Delta. I was. I was there. I think my first one was 95. I was there for Comedy Central interviewing people. My first speech was 96. Okay. I think I was there was 95. I was there for Comedy Central interviewing people. My first speech was 96. Okay.

I think I was there in 95. Were you part of the hack thing I did? Mm-mm. Oh. What do you mean? I had hack people demonstrate hack styles of comedy. I don't think I was really, you were really on my radar until maybe, like, I know I went back up there and I remember seeing a state of the industry at the Delta

because it was a smaller room, it was a lower ceiling, it was kind of tight. It was almost like you were in the middle of the room, it felt like. Well, you saw, that is true. And you also saw what I felt was my worst speech, which was at the new hotel a few years ago. I felt responsible for that because I was talking you up before. I was in your dressing room. I know, but there's nothing you can do about it. So the

very first one from 1996 is available as a visual thing, a DVD. No, no. It's just a CD. Oh, just audio. Because it's an ugly room. I'm not an attractive man. That's interesting. So that's happening. And then do you have another thing? I think that's two things. I thought you had something on like

pop TV or something. Did I mention coming to the stage? Yeah. That's the one? That's on Hulu. I think so. That's on Hulu. That's all you got going on?

Yeah. Unless you're doing another year of Marin. People recognize you for that show. Yeah. And as always, when people recognize me, they excuse themselves before I'm ready to go. They go, I really can't. I can't talk anymore about it. But which episode did you see?

I can't, Andy. I have to catch a plane. No, people like the show. I know. And then when it goes on Netflix, everybody gets to see it. How's Susan? Susan is doing good. I'm getting married now 15 years soon.

Wow. We're happy. We're happy. I'm very happy. I'm at the point in my life where I'm happy to be just happy and are you going on the road a lot I don't go on the road

any more or less than I used to go but it's different every year and why do I always sound like I'm trying to justify a career that ended many many years ago now it's good it's comfortable I enjoy people. And I like the atmosphere.

Yeah. And I have a rider where they provide me with sodas of the kind I like in the dressing room. Well, you know, Eugene Merman would crack me up because he got something from one of those rock and roll writers.

So when we were on tour together, he'd have like three towels in every green room. Just because. And like a Mr. Coffee. Yeah, yeah. I don't see him. I don't see Eugene in the Mr. Coffee. I know.

I just have all I want. All that's in my writer is hummus and vegetables to dip it in and Diet Pepsi. And now, Mike, I'm thinking about getting rid of the diet pepsi you are you your obsession with food is unbelievable to me that you love it so much and yet you're concerned about it so much my cholesterol is high so i've been you know i've been trying to do do you know be careful have you had the test that i told you to have

which one it shows you how much calcium yes and what do you say not great a little bit why do i bring up things that could potentially be? You look good. I mean, you feel good, though. No, I went over it with the guy. I mean, it's like I'm higher than I should be than most people my age, but it's not disastrous. You know what I mean? How's your blood pressure?

Blood pressure's great. That's good. A little bit of plaque, and I went to a cardiologist after I went to the Cedars-Sinai guy, and he showed me what my artery probably looks like. Wow. Like, given the percentages. And then they ultrasounded my heart, and they ultrasounded my carotid arteries and everything. And he says, everything's functioning good.

This plaque is what it is. Well, it will put you on statins, get the cholesterol down a little bit, and there's a good chance no more will come, and you won't have a heart attack. Yeah. But the good thing is you don't worry about stuff well i'm trying you know it's like i i know i should get off the nicotine lozenges i know but like now you know with uh with everything being so unstable politically i you know there's part of me that's sort of like well if i if i'm gonna die i want to be responsible for it well that's

true that's true but you know i also think also think you stopped drinking and stuff very young in life. Right. And I stopped smoking many years ago. But the nicotine can't be good. And now I'm barely eating any cholesterol and I'm on a statin. Oh, and so, but, oh, the thing I can't stand backstage is crudités. That's my new. Crudités.

Bet Noir. But that's the vegetables. Yeah, because why would you ever eat raw broccoli anyway? No, I don't mind it. Like, I'd rather that than candy or, you know, like a... That's true. Like, I just, I need something, like, I'm generally going to eat off-site. Right.

So, like, if I need to eat something compulsively before or after I go on, it might as well be good for me. Right. That's all. That makes sense. But now, I, see see you're asking me about me on the road i i feel like everything's under control but i i when i heard your schedule i was like oh my god carnegie hall this and and how'd that go carnegie hall went good there was too

much food there like that food situation was a disaster the show was beautiful and quickly forgotten by everybody. Wait a minute, you had a backstage buffet? Well, no, it was the New York Comedy Festival. And I did almost two hours at Carnegie Hall. I sold it out. It was a very moving moment. A lot of my fans were there with me.

And four days later, the election happened. So I'm glad I got in. I got in under the wire. For me, it was an amazing experience. But backstage, the festival had provided an insane amount of food. And then I had sort of prepared a little bit of an after party with Carnegie Deli stuff from across the street. But because I did so long, the after party, the Carnegie was not prepared for it. And they had to be out by midnight.

And I had like 30, 40 people there with all this meat. And we were rushed. And there were no plates. And I didn't prepare properly. And I feel like a lot of meat went to waste now do you still think about that because that's ocd if you're still thinking about it now i'm upset that like i feel that maybe that corned beef didn't get eaten and there was a lot of nice stuff did you ever listen one of my favorite things is uh lenny bruce at

carnegie hall yeah oh it's the best yeah because he taught here's the sound backstage the best and uh and that the fact that they waited hours for him because his plane was in the snow. And I'm very angry. Not very angry, but I don't like the revisionist Lenny Bruce. I don't either. I talked to, what's his name? Nesterov. He's not guilty of it.

Well, I love him, but he says he doesn't think he's funny, Lenny Bruce. Yeah, but I think that's a misnomer. I was talking to, what's his name, Zinneman. Oh, okay. Jason. Right. Yeah, who wrote an article on it. And I just feel like, and I told him, I said, you know, if you're going to look at all of it,

if you look at the early stuff, when he was doing jokes, there's great jokes. There's great bits. When he became more preoccupied with making a point it became a little layered Right, but I don't I think maybe less punchy but equally as funny and it compelling just as compelling right? But I do think that people forget that he had great jokes. You know I Play a little let's let's say you won't play a game ma. Yeah, I like games There's a little game called fill out the policy Remember the guy puts his mother on the plane with the bomb. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah play a little game called fill out the policy remember the guy who puts his mother on the plane

with the bomb oh yeah yeah yeah yeah they play a little game called fill out the policy well the other thing like because some you know i'm very turned off to the whole new atheist movement when you hear what lenny bruce was talking about he was actually exploring the corporatization of religion he had interesting observations about everything well there's a couple of things like if you listen to the berkeley concert concert, you got to listen. Right. Like, and you got to go back because he comes back around. You know, he's operating on three or four different, you know, trajectories once a lot of times.

Like, it's taxing. And a lot of times it's so peppered with references to current personalities of the time and some Yiddish that you know it's easy to get lost i and that's what makes me relate like i feel very uh a kinship with him i feel like he had that kind of cats except he had a much bigger uh he's a good mimic yeah and he had of uh yiddish no i i i think i i i am agreeing with you yeah that the revisionist perception of him as not being funny is false if you listen to the first three or four records. Right. You got to put him in context.

That's true. And the point of saying he wasn't funny, why do that? Well, I do it with people maybe like Red Skelton. I think that at some point- We're not expecting the same thing. We should all make, we should have a judge and jury about these classic entertainers and decide once and for all

well he's a clown well that's the other thing too I'm so well aware of what I'm not aware of I never I used to tell people oh yeah the show of shows I never watched a show of shows

yeah I don't know any of that I watched very little Nichols and May and when I see it I like it but I don't even know how anybody can judge anything when you don't know anything.

I never saw more than 10 minutes of Ernie Kovacs. Well, you can watch all that stuff if you want. Very busy. But you read, though. My image of you is so... No, I'm like you. I mean, I'm like a little consumed with the news now. And I do read.

I just read a great book on Altamont. Oh, wow. No, you're interested in that? Yeah, yeah, very interested. I'll give it to you. It's a great book. So let's do that. Let's finish.

Okay. You mean like with me reading the book? Yeah, I'm going to go get the book. Like the Eddie Hoffman bit? And you're going to start reading it. And the bit will be we don't end. We don't end. No, I'm very bad with this.

One of the things I admire about you, besides that you're handsomer than me. No, no, that's true. Which always bothers me. No, I think you look great. I think I'm good looking. Don't kid myself. I'm surprised you're 70. Why do those jokes always get me? I can't close a thing.

You, I notice, boom. You go, well, thanks a lot, Pee Wee Herman. Where are you going now? I'm going to do Tom Arnold's podcast. Right now? Yeah. All right, well, say hi to him for me. Yeah, I will.

Oh, is that the way you're going to close? Yeah. I love it. Oh, we figured out a way to get out. That was the lovely and medicated Andy Kindler. I love Andy. Fred Melamed. Fred Melamed.

Great actor. Great presence. Interesting guy. I'm really happy I got to talk to him. For a long time, we didn't do a ton of actors here now like I do I talk to actors that I think will be interesting people and Fred is that most recently you can

you can see him on Maria Bamford show Lady Dynamite season one is streaming on Netflix and season two will be out later this year you can also I would go watch a serious man the Coen brothers movies it's one of my favorite ones and he was just spectacular in that. This is me and Fred Melamed.

I like when people come over and talk, but, you know, socializing, not great at. Yeah. You? You know, I don't do, 98% of my friendships happen through show business. Right. Which is a little, makes it a little bit hard because you get the me-ism of people in show business becomes somewhat wearing after a while. I have a few friends that I went to college with that did other things.

Yeah. But nowadays, there's like two avenues. Yeah. There's through kids. Right kids and schools and all that. How old are your kids? I have twin boys. We have twin boys that are 14. Oh, okay.

And I'm 60, so I'm old. So if I go to the school, I don't want to be called grandpa, and that's usually what happens. Really? Often. Now? I mean, it seems like I know a lot of guys that had kids. I have a friend at guys that had kids. I have a friend at 60 had one. We have a slightly warped perception of that living in LA.

Yeah. About the normalcy of that. Right. But as we do about several things, the whole dog madness is also, I was talking to somebody about that the other day. It occurs to me, and I love animals. I enjoy animals. Yeah.

But I think that the reason that we have this religion of animals in Los Angeles and the West Coast in general is because so many people have this inborn need to take care of something, which as human beings, of course, we know how that derives. But they're too selfish or they're too self-obsessed to have children and they can't stand the idea of not being loved unconditionally or kids that might fucking blame them like they blame their parents. You only got about, what, about a three-year window to be loved unconditionally by a kid? Yes. And then they start to question. And then they start to hate you. Well, maybe just question or maybe worse. Right, right.

But whereas a dog- Struggle to become their own person. Precisely. Yeah, a dog never sort of like, I'm done with this shit. No, he starts off autonomous. Well, that's why I have cats. You're never quite sure whether they like you or they're going to be there the next day but you have to be the right kind of some people would find that level of uh you know indifference painful i know but i grew i mean it's weird i grew up with a lot

of dogs and i understand the uh unconditional thing but i resented it i i you know i don't trust love innately so uh so with cats you know the struggle is fine with me, and the independence is fine with me, and the maintenance is fine with me. Even with dogs, I will get to a point where it's sort of like, why do you like me this much? I don't understand. In our three minutes of talking together, we've stumbled upon one of the great themes that obsesses me at the moment. Really? Yes, because I'm working on a television show, which I'm writing. Oh, great. And the theme is, and it's obsessed me long before I was working on this television show,

is some people innately feel lovable. Right. And some people, like the central character in this thing that I'm writing, and also, to be frank, like me, feel it has to be earned. They feel they have to earn it. That you have to earn the love. Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I'm a person that over time,

you're a little older than me, but I have found that I defy people to love me, which I think it's different than earning. It's sort of like some weird test but i i don't know what you when you say defy do you mean that you do things that push them away yes yes and then sort of like uh and you know and i've thought about this you know a long time uh but you know right at their breaking point where they've had it like you know fine fuck you then i'm like whoa wait wait wait wait or if i push it past the point to where, you know, they're upset and I level the playing field with misery, then connect around there, that there's this defensiveness to it.

So I don't know. I don't know if it's earning. I think it has to do with how you were brought up, you know. And I had, I'm going to talk about myself, I guess. There's the selfishness of one's parents, you know, and how much self-parenting one is forced into doing when they don't even know it is going to really determine what you're talking about. So when you say earned, do you not feel like you deserve it? That's a tough question that I don't know exactly know the answer to, but I do think I'm inclined to feel. And I mean, to some degree, it's been resolved in me in my adult life, but there's still plenty of shit going on that's under there that's not so great.

I don't think that goes away, Fred. I think you make peace with it, but I don't think it goes away. You find ways to- Temper it. Yeah, exactly. If you're lucky, a lot of people are fucked for life. That's it. Yeah.

It's not so much that I start out that I'm an irredeemable piece of shit. Yeah. But it's more like, well, yeah, you're just there. Yeah. But if you want real love, if you want the real to be lavished with that feeling that you're needed, you're necessary, you have to earn it. You have to do something that makes... I don't mean in general.

I mean, this is me. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of other... You have to earn it. Yeah. I have to earn it. Yeah, I have to earn it. You're hard on yourself. Well, not hard in all respects.

Yeah. But I mean, I'm inclined to think that in my natural lazy state, I'm not so lovable. I think my whole idea is I have to be overcome. My fatness, my Jewish-looking accountant-ness, whatever other things about myself that I find might be distasteful, in my mind, it's all about overcoming that shit. Right, right, right. To be lovable.

Yeah. And that's not a great way to start out the day, as you know. Believe me, I know. I know. I've gotten cynical. You have a family and and children i you know when you talk about not having children for me it was really like i'm too anxious i'm too worried i'm too nervous i'm too panicky i am self-absorbed but i don't necessarily think it's my responsibility to bring kids in the world and try to overcome my self-centeredness but i i am a very panicky person and so are my parents and just the the sheer terror of of uh having a kid even sweeping

in the next room you know as an infant to me when i think about i'm like oh is it gonna what's gonna happen to it is gonna make it what is it is it okay just that for life i can't handle it you know i'm not so different i'm not so different from you. But I think people have been feeling those things from the time that we were amoebas. Really? Yeah. I don't think that's anything new. I don't think that came with the Holocaust or anything.

I think that goes way, way, way back. And I can remember saying, I had a psychiatrist when I was in my 30s. Yeah. I remember saying to him very specifically, why is any woman in her right mind ever going to want to get hooked up for seriousness with somebody like me? A big, broken-hearted baby. Yeah.

I mean, yes. Okay, I have certain things to recommend me. I was trying to figure out what it was that I felt so connected with you about without knowing you. Because I'd see you on screen i'm like i know that guy i love that guy brokenhearted baby oh just like me but he seems less angry he's like a nice counterpart well that's because it has to be earned it has to be earned mark if i start showing that shit how angry i really am then they're really gonna say what the fuck do we need you for? Welcome to my life. So I had to be, in my mind, I had to be extra nice or extra sweet or extra solve everybody's

problems or something or other. Yeah. But I remember saying this to this very good psychiatrist I had many years ago. And he said to me, you know, he was English. Yeah. You'd be surprised. Some women would find somebody like you quite attractive. And I thought, Jesus.

English or German? Well, he was German, but grew up during the Blitz, he was sent to England. Oh, as a tricky accent. Yeah, I didn't do it so great. No, you did. You did. So he grew up in England and he said, you know, you might be surprised. You might find a woman or two who might actually find somebody like you worthy. Yeah.

Without you having to do all these magic tricks to distract them, so to speak. Yeah. Or as I have found, but I think we're different, is that you might be part of their development. Exactly. Yeah. Some place where they hang out you might be part of their development. Exactly. Yeah, someplace where they hang out for a while and then move on. Exactly. But the good news is- You're an educator, an emotional educator.

Well, let's face it. You have to go through a lot of relationships before you get, or maybe not everybody, but I had to go through a lot of girlfriends to get to the point where I was ready to have a good one. You know what I mean? Sure. And if the truth is, if a good one is not in your script, if you don't think that you're deserving or you don't, you might think you're so unappealing for some reason that you wouldn't

even consider somebody that might cross your transom because she's so far out of what you imagine would go for you. Sure. I married one like that, and I was right. Were you right? Did your worst suspicions get through? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I was not the one.

But the good news is if you hit one good one, all the bad ones, it doesn't matter anymore. It becomes part of your development, you know, and you don't have it. I mean, I think the best thing you can arrive on is a as few regrets uh uh in terms of you know how you look at your life as possible if you can integrate things into like well you know that was zen and you know that's who i was and that's that not like oh god i fucked that up well you know the truth is i and i'm not saying anything very sage or new but i regret much more things that I didn't do, things that I was too afraid to try or too stuck in my room.

I regret that more than any mistakes that I made. And in fact, most of the pain in my life has been caused not by pursuing the things that my heart desperately wanted, but by getting what I could get. Right, right. the things that my heart desperately wanted yeah but by getting what i could get right right but by getting the things that i that i knew i could get because the things i really wanted i thought oh i'll never get that i'm too messed up i'm too defective oh yeah you know yeah no i i've had that so like well let's let's go back where did you grow up i? I grew up in New York. I figured that. Because I see you around, and you're in everything now. You seem to be an ever-present character actor. Yes.

A big star. I got my picture on the wall of the Carnegie Deli right above the words, choking victim. Everyone knows who I am. It's gone now. Now the Carnegie Deli is gone. But for me, when I saw you, and I think the first time you seemed very familiar to me was when I saw Serious Man, which I loved. And as an American middle-class Jew person, it was timeless to me. And the character, what was it, Cy?

Cy Abelman. Cy Abelman was such a a sort of sweet monster just this this horrible selfish person that was very charming and i and i thought to myself you know like hey i this i'm which one of my parents friends is this guy but there was a familiarity that was a sort of established between me and you that you didn't know about. So I was always curious as to where you came from. So you grew up as a kid in New York City? I grew up in New York City. My parents were both also born and bred in New York. My dad was in the business. My dad was a television producer, and he produced some early comedy shows

before the whole influx to California. He produced an old show. You're probably too young to remember the show called Car 54. I heard of it. He was a producer on that and some other shows. What other shows? Sergeant Bilko. Sergeant Bilko.

Do you remember with Phil Silvers? You should do a Phil Silvers biopic. People say that to me now. They do? Yeah. I mean, not that I should do a biopic, but that I resemble Phil Silvers, although Phil Silvers was rather slim, but I think in other ways I look like Phil Silvers. What a challenging character that would be. Well, Phil Silvers in real life, I don't want to, you know,

you're not supposed to say things unflattering. Crazy gambler. Of the dead. Yeah. A very, very serious gambler and had some other things about him. Of course, this doesn't make him a bad subject for a movie, quite the opposite. Yeah. A very, very serious gambler and had some other things about him. Of course, this doesn't make him a bad subject for a movie, quite the opposite. Right. But there were a lot of things about his life and about his character that made him a very,

very tough customer. Yeah. Oh, yeah. To deal with. Yeah. Or so I've been told. Was he part of your childhood? No, that was before.

But when I was growing up, my father was doing Car 54, and there was a guy called Nat Hyken, who was a kind of like- Yeah, I've heard his name before. He was like a big deal. He's a writer, right? Yeah, he was a writer, sort of, this is before we used the term showrunner, but that's what he was. Sure, I think I talked to Norman Lear about him, maybe.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Norman Lear and guys of that ilk knew him. He was like a pioneer in television comedy. Yeah. So my dad was kind of like his right-hand man. Hykenens. Yeah. And your dad was a producer. Yeah. Yeah. And then they had, and then my father had an idea to do a show with Andy Griffith. Yeah. Uh, where Andy Griffith would play, uh, the local fire chief, not police chief, the local fire chief of this little Southern town.

Yeah. He brought the idea to Nat Hiken. Nat Hiken says, well, Nat said, well, that's an interesting idea, but I don't think I want to use it. And then about two years later, the show came out with Andy Griffith, who was the sheriff. So they had a big falling out out of that, and there was kind of a lawsuit and this and that. So your dad was the bitter guy behind the guy. Precisely.

Yeah, there's been plenty of those in show business. Precisely. That fucker stole my shit guy. Right. But my father also, and I love my father dearly, but my father never quite understood certain things about show business, though he was in it all his life. Like, he was a very charming, sweet, funny guy, but he didn't really understand working hard as a principal.

He kind of thought it was all about charm and getting people to like you and stuff like that. Sure. Which does kind of, you know, help. But when the time, when the red light is on, you have to have the goods, so to speak. Right, sure, yeah. And he wasn't, like, I remember he would toss off scripts and he'd say, what do you think of this?

And he'd be sitting at the, you know, the typewriter for a couple of hours a day and that would be it. But people, when they write stuff, it's, I mean, I think maybe average people don't realize how these little stupid sitcoms, how they're labored over. Oh, my God. There's a room full of 12 people.

For days and days. Arguing about everything. And in most cases, they take it seriously. They're striving to make it clear. Oh, yeah. And they don't realize they're ruining it. It could go either way. Yes.

You're exactly right. And that's a very interesting, by the way, not to diverge totally from what we're talking about, but I'm on the show with Maria now, your friend. Maria Bamford, yeah. Your beloved and mine. Yeah, she's great. Lady Dynamite. Great, she's great.

And that was such an interesting experience among other reasons, but primarily because here's a show that's kind of different. I mean, everybody says that, but a genuinely kind of way out show. Yeah. Trying to keep Maria's whole vibe in the show, at the center of the show, right? Now, if you've ever done network television,

you get a note on, the fucking tablecloth color gets a note. Everything gets a note. Every single thing. In order for people on television to keep their jobs, everybody has to have their imprimatur on everything. Right. All the executives have to chime in and make sure they don't get blamed for anything.

Or, right, if there's a little bit of glory, they want it reflected on them. I did the tablecloth thing. Right. Exactly. I argued that should have been puce and it was puce and now it's weird. Made the scene. Right. Exactly.

Yeah. So that's the model that everybody, not everybody, but I and many other people are used to where somebody has an idea and it has to go through 9,000 hands. And of course, in that process, it gets watered down. It gets messed up. It's different. You forget the original idea and the energy that might have been there at the beginning. Precisely.

Yeah. This was so different because this show is on Netflix. Yeah. And the streamers, the big streaming outfits, don't come from the network television model. They come from the Silicon Valley model where the way that they do it is they find a maverick. They find a Steve Jobs. They find somebody like that. Yeah. In this case, it mitch hurwitz sure uh and pam uh who run our show and they they let them run

so for good or ill you actually do wind up with something very close to the idea yeah because they got the money they got the time they're not beholden to advertisers. Up to a year or two ago, I don't think Netflix really had an executive structure to accommodate talent. So they're really depending on these people that have experience and are willing to take chances to do it. I just did one with Jenji Cohen and Lizhen and uh liz flay hive and carly mensch were the showrunners but you know they had you know they had money behind them they had a vision and you know netflix they're around but they're usually sort of like good good yeah exactly they're there but there's no compulsion to like put their paw print on everything so how is that like how did that affect in this character is a little different for you and getting back to what you grew up in you know you're playing uh an inherently show business character that comes from a tradition

of depictions of agents you're an agent or manager manager manager but like that is such a you know in our world those characters have been done before and this was like a different vibe for you, right? It was because very often I'm cast playing Machiavellian kind of smooth bad guys, or maybe not smooth, but they ingratiate themselves, like you said, like Cy Abelman. Yeah. I mean, Cy Abelman- Like your father? Well, no, my dad was not like that. Not a bad guy, but a charming guy.

Yeah. My dad was a little bit more like Bruce. Oh, okay. My dad had his nose pressed up against the glass of show business success his whole life, and he could smell it, but he could never quite get to the pastry, if you know what I mean. Sure, sure. Did you meet the real Bruce? Oh, yes. I'm friends with the real Bruce. He's a good guy. He is a very good guy, but I'll tell you a little funny thing about Bruce,

just between you and me and the 4,000 million listeners. Bruce, I knew only because of Maria. He represents Andy Kindler too. Andy Kindler, he has quite a few big guys. Been around a long time, he's a good guy. Good guy. But he came originally from the music world. He was a drummer. He grew up on Long Island and had dreams of rock stardom.

That was his thing. And he still plays and he's into music and all that. But originally his management company was for rock stars. Right. Potential rock stars. Yeah, yeah. He got into comedy later. And he has always been excited to be a star himself.

Yeah. Although he's now a manager. Yeah. So when this idea was first presented to him that he would be a major character in this show, you know, the second lead in this show, he was super excited. Yeah. As one would be. Yeah.

And we became Facebook friends. Let's have lunch. I didn't want to get to know. And little by little, as the script started coming in, he began seeing that Bruce of the television show was something of a moron. Yeah. His enthusiasm slightly waned. Not entirely. Right. Not entirely. Right. But, you know, there was a clear change. Yeah. his enthusiasm slightly waned not entirely

right not entirely but you know there was a clear a clear change but the real real life Bruce is in fact

a really good guy and like Bruce in the show he and Maria have this deep love for each other this

non this non-erotic at least from Maria's point of view yeah I think I think from both points of view non-erotic love for each other, this non-erotic, at least from Maria's point of view, I think from both points of view, non-erotic love for each other. And they get mad at each other, but they will never, ever abandon one another. Yeah. They have this kind of deep...

And I think that's true in the real situation. Yeah, I do too. And so that was... So the reason it was fun, especially for me to play this kind of sort of bumbling character, is because a lot of the times the characters that I play are so slick. Yeah. They get over. Right.

And here's a guy who desperately wants to get over and just can't quite do it. And when his character, when his clients, not Maria, but others are kind of big enough to get on, I don't know, Letterman or whatever, a little more Letterman, but when they make over that hump, when Andy Kindler was on Letterman, then they will often find somebody a little bit flashier. Yeah, management-wise. Yeah. No, but it's funny because both Andy and Maria have stayed with him a long time.

And I've seen him around for years. But he's definitely a guy who's not slick and has seen a lot and has been at the level, He's definitely a guy who's not slick and has seen a lot and has been at the level, you know, has hammered it out for a long time and has always done okay. And now he's doing better. And it's sort of a nice thing to see that happen. It is. In show business where a guy kind of runs his own shop and kind of plugs along with committed clients and then, you know, makes a little noise, you know. Yeah, it is very nice to see. But I think, A, he's the exception. And, B, we're gratified to see it because we know that it's so unlikely.

It was a horrible business. I mean, look. What I always tell people is when friends say, oh, my daughter wants to be an actress. What I say is the truth, the wonderful parts about it are more wonderful than you can imagine, and the shitty parts about it are really, really awful. Sure, I mean, you should say to them,

does she like waiting around? Does she know how to occupy a lot of sitting down time? How is she in small spaces? There's a door out, but you might not want to go out. You know, it's like, and that is if you make it. But there's this idea, you know, this idea of like, I want to be an actress.

It's like, I want to be a ballerina. I want to be an astronaut. You know, it's like, what I tend to think is like, it's a weird childish pursuit that if you're fortunate enough to find success, it becomes a fairly difficult job, really. I mean, there's a lot of waiting involved, but like you were saying before about your father, you got to be able to do the job. That's right. I mean, it takes a number of things besides talent. Talent, of course, is the paramount thing, but it also takes a significant degree of luck, and it takes a

certain kind of personality. I mean, the built-in paradox is in order to be good, you have to be confident. Well, how the hell to be confident if you don't have any experience or if most of your experience is acting and stuff in church basements where you can't breathe because there's so much dust and nobody comes. Right. So how do you be confident? Well, you have to be able to sort of manufacture your own confidence. Which insecure people, they either do that really well or they fall into themselves. There's two ways that can go. Right.

And you can also be the type that does it, that overdoes it. Yeah. You know, and show business has a well-deserved lousy reputation because of that. Yeah. The very first movie I was ever in was about 35 years ago. It was a movie starring Dud dudley moore called lovesick you might be able to find it on on on netflix or something like that it was a long time ago dudley moore sort of but for me i had a really small part in it but it was a super big deal for

me yeah because alec guinness was in it sir alec sir alec yes right and he and he was like a big hero of mine so i got up the nerve to ask him, since I was on the movie with him, Sir Alec, would you mind, do you have any sort of words of advice regarding show business for a young guy just starting out? And he thought for a second. He said, yes, I can't do a good Alec. And I said, my advice regarding show business is don't get any on you. I thought, well, that's deep. There's a guy who made it in show business, you know, any on you. Well, that's deep. There's a guy who made it in show business, you know, telling it like it is.

Well, I mean, so, but you knew, like, I mean, how old were you when you realized that your father had gotten a little bitter? Well, he got sort of, when I was young in high school, he went down the ladder, so to speak. He started out in television. Yeah. Then he went to commercials. Yeah. And commercial, advertising was still, this was still the Mad Men era when still smart

young people were getting into advertising. Sure. And then ultimately he wound up repping for directors. And then eventually he always had a dream of being a writer, like a novelist. Yeah. For a couple of years. Yeah, he had a dream of being a writer like a novelist yeah for a couple years yeah he had a lot of a lot of dreams for a couple years we were living in new york state and i was going to a tony private school and we had a big apartment and all that and he wasn't working yeah and i didn't know he wasn't what's your mother do at the time she wasn't working but she my mother started out as a

kind of actress wannabe and wound up being a rep for Waterford Crystal, selling fancy crystal from Ireland. For weddings and whatnot. Exactly. Yeah. But in those days, she didn't work. Yeah. And in those days, relatively few housewives did work.

Right. We're talking about the 60s here. Sure. So your dad, you're in a big apartment. He's not working. Right. Is he typing? Yeah, he's typing.

And he puts a tie on and goes off somewhere every day. But I didn't realize that he's not going to work. So when I get to at the end of 10th grade, he says, and I have a sister who's six years younger, he says, how would you feel about moving to Florida? And I said, you're kidding, right? And he said, no, no, I'm not kidding. And it turned out that he hadn't been working for a couple of years. The family was now broke.

Right. And didn't have the money to pay for all these things. And my uncle had a real estate project going in Florida. Yeah. In Broward County, Florida. That's where my mom lives. Oh, really? Hollywood.

Hollywood is where I went to school. Hollywood, Florida. Mm-hmm. And now you've heard, I heard in this very chair, the chair that I am now sitting in, Paul Thomas Anderson referred to Studio City, where I now live, as this cultural wasteland, this cultural sinkhole. Yeah.

If you've ever been to Hollywood, Florida, Studio City looks like fucking Paris. Yeah. I'm telling you. Yeah, I know. It's Florida as an entity, as an idea, and as a reality. It's very hard to wrap your brain around. And when the casino came in, an Indian casino, the Hard Rock Casino,

that didn't do much to raise the level. No. But it's weird about the beach in Hollywood. I've kind of grown to like it because it's quiet. There's a little bit of a boardwalk situation. It's usually French and German tourists. Yesson street beach is it with big hangout yeah you'd see all the canadian the quebecois canadians yeah with the little banana holder things in the in the middle of yeah but no one else goes there it's not a scene you know you can actually go and have a day at

the beach without it being uh uh you know chaotic and impressive yeah no you're exactly right but in 1972, Yeah, I can't imagine. when I moved to Hollywood, Florida, my family and I moved to Florida, I thought I was on Mars. Yeah. And I had gone from Riverdale Country School,

which is a kind of a, you know, fancy prep school in New York, to a huge public school in Hollywood, Florida, which was on the border between a farm district and where all the Jews and Italians moved. Yeah.

Interesting. Making a strange mix plus this was the beginning of forced busing this was 1972 yeah so a lot of african-american kids from dania which is the neighborhood that in that right there right there were busted so it was tremendous like uh tension tension all the time and fights on the in the in the hallways yeah to me i couldn't make any sense of it at all wow so you were really kind of thrown into i was totally america right precisely i went from new york which is after all more like homesick europe yeah to suddenly fucking america mall you know yeah cinnabon usa and i thought jesus what pre-cinnabon america yeah or something what I didn't Cinnabon America yeah or something I don't remember what they had in those days well yeah but it was like it well you know you had uh

uh the Rascal House yes Joe Stonecrab Joe Stonecrab the Rascal House which closed a few years ago there was a place called Sweden House a buffet place that I had a had an uncle who was a rather Wolfies Rascal House right Wolfies noie's. No, Wolfie's is separate. Oh, it is. Yeah, this was Sweden House. Right. And my uncle would take me and my cousins there and he'd say, don't fill up on the sagebrush. Meaning don't eat the salad, go right for the meat, the expensive stuff.

So he wouldn't waste his $5.95 on each napkin. But it must have been sort of interesting. I think driving into Miami at that time must have been a different thing in the early 70s. Yeah, it was. I mean, it wasn't all bad. I got to, there was a great jazz guy, Jaco Pastorius, who I- Oh, yeah, he died down there. Well, he's from down there.

I know. And I got to be friendly with him. You did? Yeah, this other guy, Iris Sullivan. I was in a band, and this guy, Iris Sullivan, is a great soprano sax player, and some interesting things happened. What did you play? Guitar, guitar and a little bit of drums, and I still do. This guy, Iris Sullivan, is a great soprano sax player. And some interesting things happened. What did you play? Guitar.

Guitar and a little bit of drums. And I still do. And you're hanging out with Jocko, you know, pre-Weather Report? Yes. But this is only because of mutual friends. I had this friend, Duffy Jackson, who's a famous show drummer. Yeah. And he introduced me to Jocko.

So I was a kid. But it was cool. I got to hang out with these real serious musicians. Well, he was a very intense guy. Did you see that documentary? Yeah. I mean, there were signs that he was abnormal, I would say. Yeah. But I didn't realize the extent of it.

I don't think anybody did. Yeah. But he was a genius. A savant. Yeah. Yeah. But he would get in fights with people. Yeah.

But he was funny because he was very sweet most of the time. But he would then turn and have these- So he spent time with the jazz guys down there. Yeah, that was a real cool thing. But essentially, the two years that I spent in Florida were very, I didn't know what the hell was going on. And then my family remained there, and I came up north, back up north to go to college. Yeah.

Went to Hampshire College, Hippie College. Up in Oregon? No, Hampshire is in Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts. Oh, in Amherst, right. Hampshire, I'm thinking of Reed. So Hampshire's the other hippie college. Right.

Where you drive, and there it is, you're driving past Mount Holyoke or whatever on that one road into Amherst, and it's on the left. Exactly. With the weed smell.

Yes, exactly. You can major in baskets and Freudian psychology. Yeah, gestalt and beading and and whatever you build your own thing right precisely there was some some kids supposedly who who spent four years building this beautiful handmade rocking chair that he made all of himself and then he presented and they said well what the hell is this like he had never bothered to register it as a you know yeah so so a lot of kids spend six or seven years there, you know. What'd you do?

I had a friend from high school that wrote his own plays. Yeah. And so just because we were friends, he asked me to be in his plays. So I was in his plays. At Hampshire. At Hampshire. Yeah. Right.

And then when he started asking me to be in his plays, other people asked me to be in their plays. So I got to be in a lot of plays. And in those days, you could almost do whatever you wanted. The distribution requirements were very limited. So you didn't have to do a lot of other things. So I was in play after play after play. Distribution, what do you mean? Like you didn't have to take- In school. Yeah. You didn't have to take math courses or-

Core, right. Yeah. There was four what they called exams which are like projects yeah yeah in each of the schools and once you fulfilled that you could then do whatever you wanted right so you could essentially spend all your time doing one thing yeah nothing if you wanted to sure but so i spent a lot of my time all my time essentially uh being in place and because it was part of this five they had this five college consortium there's five colleges that were all together in the same valley so you could go from school to school and there was tons of interesting things to do, plus tons of girls. And let's face it, at that point, that was a huge

motivator. Right. So it's UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire. Right. Those are the five. Yeah. So I would go to other schools also and be in plays. And I got to meet some really, really interesting people. I joined right after, at the end of that time that I went to college, I met these two women who had a company called Shakespeare and Company, which was a company that did classics, but with people that spoke English from all over the world, from England, from Africa, from Canada.

I joined that company. And then ultimately, right after that, I went to Yale Drama School and got out of Yale Drama School and went from there, 78 to 81. You got into Yale. I did. You must have had no training before that, really. Well, you know, the kind of college training, typical college training, but nothing unusual. Who was in your crew at Yale?

you know, nothing unusual. Who was in your crew at Yale? During the time that I was there, a lot of very big famous actors. In my particular year, that is getting out in 81, didn't produce too many big stars. David Alan Greer was in my class.

Yeah. Reggie Cathy, I don't know if you know him. He's another African-American actor, very good actor. Me, we're the three, I guess, biggest people. Director, Mitchell Lichtenstein, who's the son of Roy Lichtenstein. Oh, yeah. Jan Eliasberg, who's a director. But in the class below us, you had quite a star-studded class.

John Turturro, Francis McDormand. Storrs studied class. John Turturro, Francis McDormand. Well, within those two years, Charles Dutton, Brock Dutton, Angela Bassett, a lot of people. Really? And each class only has about 12 kids. So you were there at the same time for a year. So you saw Francis around.

Oh, we were friends. We were good friends. Yeah. So you go to Yale and was stage your focus? That's all there was. No, I know there, but like in your mind as an actor. Yeah, by that time, by that time, yes. Yeah.

But you say, you know, there was no other training for anything else. There was no training for movies or any of that. Right, but you did a lot of dancing and swordplay Alexander technique may shock you but I never considered dance as a profession right well that's good well yeah probably though what it might did you but you can do it if you have to you got some child Oh God I never did a musical yeah but I mean you know even a elephant can dance yeah yeah I know I did have to take three years of mean, you know, even an elephant can dance. Yeah. Yeah. No, I did have to take three years of it. There's no doubt about that.

Sure. But yeah, but, you know, the training was significant. But most of the training had to do with the fact that you were on your feet acting all the time. Right. Yale, like any other place, most of the really great people come in for a year or two and then they split. Then they go off. They're the ones who are actually out doing it. Yeah.

Most of the teachers that are lifelong teachers in academic institutions are not as great as the people who are practitioners and then come for a year or two and then go. Right. But they might be great teachers and hopefully in that character they've surrendered to that, as opposed to have a chip on their shoulder. Well, you might like, I mean, that would be an optimistic rendering, but in fact I think there's still quite a bit of, you know. Bitterness. You know, I, and at the time, the non-commercial theater was championed as the thing that was going to make America, save, you know, America artistically. Sure. You know, we didn't have to worry about all the exigencies of making money and television and all that stuff. So the big thing was these, what they call Lort theaters, these regional theaters.

Yeah. So right out of drama school, I got a job at the Guthrie, which is one of these theaters. In Minneapolis? Exactly. In Minnesota, Minneapolis. I performed there, I think. Yeah. It's nice.

It's very nice. Yeah. But to my shock, I found out that the non-commercial world is every bit as corrupt in its own way and every bit as full of, you know, patronism and all that stuff as any other. It has to rely on patronism more. Exactly. They're depending on getting money from, you know, in the case of the Guthrie, which don't get me wrong, it's a great theater.

Right. But it needs the money from 3M and Pillsbury and whoever else is in Minnesota to, you know, all those plush seats cost money. Right. You know, more than the tickets cost. Sure. And within the company, there was a lot of jockeying for position and all that kind of stuff. Sure, yeah.

Well, that's also another place where lifers show up is to get on those boards. Precisely. And to sort of dig in to an organization that is, you know, and part of their job is to be in between the patrons and the cast and everything else. And there are people that stay in that world for years. It's so interesting. The people who choose,

like I lived in a co-op in New York City. Yeah. Co-ops have co-op boards. It's this kind of necessary evil. Yeah. There are people that are usually people that live in the co-op. Right.

And they make all kinds of powerful determinations about who can live there and rules and stuff like that. Generally, you can be sure if somebody wants to be on a co-op board, they're an asshole. It's a usual good sign. Sure. And very frequently, they're lawyers or other people that work in allied professions because they're used to rules and all that. I'm always interested at the people who want to do that stuff yeah you know they want to be around the action and control

it but not actually be a part of it yeah and not even get paid you know right they just like to execute this uh weird uh but very you know real power yeah exactly well yeah well they're yeah i mean yeah it's a it's a a dubious personality type but there's plenty of them around there are absolutely so all right so now you're you're in Minneapolis it's you know in Minneapolis you're doing the acting right I'm doing the acting you're doing a lot of plays a lots of plays and are you getting good no I didn't really get it took me about 20 years to get any good After Out of drama school I've had a very weird

I don't know if you've heard About any of this before I've had a very kind of Weird trajectory as an actor After I got back from Minneapolis I came back to New York Where I was from But your folks

Are still down in Florida My folks are still in Florida So you get an apartment Yeah, exactly In New York Yeah Actually was subletting An apartment from somebody

In the 70s, 80s. This is the 80s. This is the early 80s. Okay. So I got what I thought was going to be a great gig. I got Amadeus, the original American production of Amadeus. Your Salieri? No.

No, no, no. I had a much smaller role, but still a pretty good role. Yeah. And it was a great play. I had seen it. I was excited to be a part of it and i got a job both doing the tour of it and actually also doing it on broadway the broadway tour and the actual broadway show yeah about and i did it for 16 months a long time yeah

who was salieri i did it with several salieri's the main salieri that i that i did it with on the tour was a guy called daniel davis uh-huh But I did it with Frank Langella, with David Dukes, with many different guys. And who was Mozart? Also many different Mozarts. Oh, yeah. Including one of the people that I did it with on Broadway when I came to do it on Broadway was, oh, God, Luke Skywalker. Mark Hamill.

Mark Hamill. Yeah. Who was terrific. Oh, good. Terrific in it. Yeah, yeah. And I used to, it was such a kick for me. He was so embarrassed because he'd have all these fans line up outside the stage door.

You know, fans from Star Wars. Yeah. And he was earnestly trying and succeeding to give a great performance in something that had nothing to do with Star Wars. Right. But everybody who was in New York from Pennsylvania wanted to see Mark Hamill. So they'd be lined up with Wookiee costumes

and all that shit outside the police barriers. But I would wait to go out of the stage door with him to feel this throng, this warm love. It was such a gas to feel. So you're beside a guy looking at people with lightsabers and you're gleaning some love contact high from people wearing costumes. Yes. But what happened to me was midway through this run, about eight months into this run, I began to get severe paralyzing stage fright.

Some actors who relax into a long run and they get better. They find new interesting things and stuff. With me, I like rehearsing. Rehearsing is like doing movies, which I enjoy. Once the audience is in, I begin to resent them. Yeah. What do they want from me? Well, it's more like, to get more into the psychological aspect of things, my dad, who I told you about, and to some degree my mother, although that was different, my dad was a lovely guy, but sort of depressed. He had this kind of depressed affect. Heavy.

Yes. Heavy hearted. But sweet. Yeah. Not bitter. Yeah. Yeah. I somehow got the idea at a very young age that it was my job in life to make it seem like life was a winnable proposition to him. Yeah, I know that one. You know what I mean? Sure. My dad was depressive. Yeah. So I.

Entertain your dad. Yeah. And I actually expanded that to the whole idea of being an actor in general, a performer in general. Yeah. So even though I love the power, I love the rush of being able to, you know, make people laugh or move them or have them, you know, enjoy me. Yeah. It became burdensome. It became like such, I thought that an actor has to be superhuman when in fact an actor just has to be human,

if you know what I mean. Right, sure, yeah. But I had this mantle of heaviness of like, and I began to resent it and it began to make me have this terrible, terrible stage fright.

I mean, so bad, it took every ounce of courage and discipline I had just to get my ass to the theater. And I felt like, you know, here I am, I have this Broadway gig.

I was a young guy. I was 27 or six. I was a young guy. Well, that's interesting because you sort of like ingrained a strange codependent relationship with the audience, that it was on you. Exactly. To make life better for them. Well, I told you.

I told you that the world is divided up into people that are lovable in my, some part of my sick mind and people that need to earn it. I guess that I, I, I guess so. I, I'm having a hard time making the leap in the sense that like, I can see how you have to earn it, but, but you, but outside of that, I think that on a deeper level, there's a self-sacrifice that like, that like, you know'm not feeling up to it, these people are going to be disappointed. I'm not going to make life better for them. I guess that's the same as Earn, but yeah. But in the infant state of that thinking, if they don't take care of me, if they don't love me, I'm gone. I don't need me. I was like gone. I don't need me.

I was also adopted, I should point out maybe. You were. I was adopted. And told that I was adopted as soon as I could talk. Who were your real parents? My biological mother is a woman who I know lives here in LA, a woman called Nancy Zala, who was an actress. My biological father was a British psychoanalyst called Stan Silverstone, now deceased,

but I got to meet him too before he died. The reason I bring that up is when a child knows that he's adopted, I think even under the best circumstances, told in the most positive possible way, the child thinks, well, wait a second. If I was given up once, maybe that could happen again. Maybe if I don't play my cards right or if I'm not.

Right. Or probably a little bit of like, why was I so terrible? Yeah. Why was I unkeepable in the first place, perhaps? Why'd they get rid of me? Yeah. And this is not to blame. I think my mother mother my biological mother

made the absolute right decision she was a young girl she was not in a position to have children or any of that stuff but this is part of what happens in your mind when you're you know a little kid hearing that you're adopted right anyway so i think this was this also fed into the situation so here i was and in order to get through the play, I had to take drugs and stuff. It was bad. Like what? Like Valium. Oh, okay.

And I don't mean recreational drugs. I was just trying to get through. Really? So it kind of plagued you. You're in your mid-20s, and you're having a hard time stepping out there. Yeah, and I felt this bad thing because I felt like, you know, people said, don't be an actor. It's too hard. I'll show you.

You know, I went to Yale Drama School. I have this Broadway gig. When you're 26 years old, a Broadway gig is a, that's a big fucking deal. Sure. You know?

And now you're falling apart. Exactly. I can't handle it. I thought, this is awful. What am I going to do? So I said, I thought,

I have to finish the run. If I don't finish the run, I'm just going to crawl up in a ball and vanish. Can't quit. Can't quit. Yeah. So I finished it and thought, I have to finish the run. If I don't finish the run, I'm just going to crawl up in a bowl and vanish. Can't quit. Can't quit. Yeah. So I finished it.

And when I finished it, I said, I'm never doing that again. I'm never doing that again. Because the stage fright was so overwhelming. Yeah. And horrible. Yeah. And meanwhile, I had an agent who was very big in voiceovers. Yeah.

Very powerful in voiceovers. And this was before everybody in the world was trying to do voiceovers. Which agent was that? Abrams. Harry Abrams. Yeah. The original Harry Abrams. Right. From the Abrams. He was very big in voiceovers and I knew about voiceovers because my father had had a very close friend who was an

announcer, as the guys were then called. This guy, Ken Roberts. Uh-huh. Lovely guy who was the father of Tony Roberts, the actor. Sure. So I said to Harry Abrams, listen, I want to pursue voiceovers. And he was not particularly encouraging at first. He said, well, all right. I said, let me try. Yeah.

So right out of the box, I got Mercedes-Benz. TV. Yeah, TV commercials. Mercedes-Benz. And I got Conoco, which is a big oil company. And I was lucky. And I was making a lot of money. I mean, I had no responsibilities. Yeah, that's a big oil company. Sure. And I was lucky. And I was making a lot of money for, I mean, I had no responsibilities. Yeah, that's a sweet gig, that money.

It was great. Even then, huh? Even then. In fact, then it was more. In those days, this is the mid 80s, I was making a few hundred thousand dollars a year. Yeah. When that was a lot of money. Yeah.

And no family, no car payments, no nothing. Yeah. And my artistic needs, such as they were, were being met by writing and doing other stuff, but no acting. Right, but it's, yeah, those voiceover gigs. I mean, like, if you get a run of them, you know. Yeah.

And you think it's going to go on forever. That's human nature. You know, you think, well. Well, the voice, like, it only hinges on your ability to have it. Right, and also it being kind of in vogue right you know like anything else like you get a run yeah there i didn't quite realize i had a long run but eventually it sort of ended and then you did that sweet movie with lake bell the inner world movie which is about voiceover yeah exactly although lake didn't know at the time that i had a long voice she didn't know it was a total shock to her but so here's what happened. So I started doing all these voiceovers

and occasionally I would do a movie if I didn't have to audition. So I got like spoiled. There was a casting director, wonderful casting director called Juliet Taylor who cast all of Woody Allen's movies. Yeah, right. That's where I know that name from, yeah.

She then did that and there was another guy, Howard Fewer, now deceased. But there were a few casting directors who liked me and they would say you know like Woody has a psychiatrist in six days

you want to do it yeah what movie was that oh I was in I've been in seven Woody Allen films Hannah and Her Sisters Another Woman

all these Woody Allen little bit parts yeah generally generally very small but you know because they're his movies they're memorable sure

and then there were a couple of other things. And I got a movie. I got some bigger parts. There was a movie that I did with Cher called Suspect. Yeah. Also in the 80s. And a movie called The Good Mother with Diane Keaton where it had significant roles. But I wouldn't audition.

I would just be- Sweet deal. Spoiled, yeah. I didn't need the money. I didn't care. It was like a hobby for me. Yeah. So this went on for like 20 years.

It's a good feeling. Well, listen, don't get me wrong. I'm very grateful, extremely grateful that I was able to do it. I was delighted. It didn't do much for my growth as a human being. I got to be 400 pounds. No kidding. I was 400 pounds.

Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not because, I'm not saying I was doing, I'm not saying I was 400 pounds because I was doing voiceovers. But because I became unwilling, I became unwilling to do things where the outcome wasn't assured. I became less willing to take any kind of risks. I got very self-protective. I became less willing to take any kind of risks.

I got very self-protective. All my relationships with women were very, very limited where I could control things, where there was kind of not an inequality in power rather than more of a shared kind of a thing. And then you just kept eating. You could control that. Yeah. Well, you know, after all, you know what a box of donuts is going to do to you. You don't know in a relationship with another human being. Right.

Yeah, that food stuff goes either way. Either denying it or engaging it is about control. It's like any other substance. Yeah. It's like any other addiction. Did you have to go to recovery for it? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And my recovery is, though I'm committed to it, is incomplete as evidenced by many things. But you're not 400 pounds. No, I'm surely not 400 pounds. And I have other things in my life besides food that I derive satisfaction from. Right. But I got to be 400 pounds. Yeah.

And I got to be very, my life got to be the size of a shoe box. It got to be really small. And I went through a period where I became extremely agoraphobic and like wouldn't leave my apartment. Really? Yeah. For several years. So this is sort of like, you know, it's like stage fright all over again. Yes.

For reality. Yes. Yes. A good point. And I think they were related. I think they were related. Well, right. But now it's like the real world.

So like now you got nowhere to go. Yeah, you can't not... You could not go to the theater. You can't not... Go to life. Well, you can. Well, take that back. You're right.

You can not go to life. Yeah. But the cost is extremely high, right? So, you were miserable. I was... Bleak. Right. I was making a ton of money, living in my own little air-conditioned trailer, or whatever you want to call it, where I would not, you know, shooting fish in a barrel, only doing things where I thought I could win.

And you were in the city. In the city. Yeah. And instead of it being this sort of paradise, it was a jail cell. Oh, my God. It sucked. Sounds miserable. It was horrible.

Just you sitting there with food? Well, food and women to a certain extent, but women in a very limited relationship. I understand. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And it got awful. So what breaks?

What gives? Well, a number of different things happened. I don't know what happened first, but I started to get better. I went to a psychiatrist, this guy that was very helpful. I also got involved in a 12- this guy that was very helpful. I also got involved in a 12-step program that was very helpful to me. You know,

I don't know. A lot of stuff happened. When did you resolve some of this stuff around your adopted parents? I'll call you. I'm 60 now. It's so funny to me

when I hear people in their 80s talking about their toxic parents. When I was 27, I used to play cards a lot. 60 now. Yeah. So it's so funny to me when I hear people in their 80s talking about their toxic parents. Yeah. Now, when I was 27. Yeah. I used to play cards a lot. Yeah. I liked to play poker.

Yeah. One day I came home. It was about two in the morning. Yeah. And there was an answer on my machine saying, my name is Nancy. Please call me collect at such and such a number in California. This is when I was living in New York. So I thought, well, maybe it's, and she said, you can call late.

I thought maybe it's about a job or something. Right. So I called this number and she said, is this Fred? I said, yes. She said, you know you're adopted. I said, yes. And she knew that I knew that I was adopted

because she had hired a detective to call me with a made up story about trying to probate a will with a name of somebody similar to mine. You remember that call? Sure. Yeah. so she said you know you're adopted i said yes she said well i'm your biological mother i'm your birth mother

and you know my head began to sort of spin and then we talked for about four hours on the phone that night all about who my father was what the the circumstances of my birth all that who she was. And when she found out that I was an actor, she had been an actress and was an actress. You know, that sort of blew her head off. She was so excited at that. And she said, in about a month, I'm going to come to New York. She was living here in LA.

She said, in a month, I'm going to come to New York. Would you like to meet? So I said, yeah. She said, meanwhile, if you want to check just to make sure what I'm saying is true you can go to the to the hall of records in New York City and if you're adopted you have two birth certificates one has your adoptive name on it from your parents and the other has your birth name or just baby but they have the same number and they're they're cross-referenced so I did I saw what she was saying was true so she said I'm going to go to new york in like a month you want to meet so i said yeah so i remember walking into the lobby of the del monico hotel on 59th street and park avenue with this box full of photographs of growing up and my

sister and fire island and all these things from my childhood and she also had a box of pictures and we talked and it's this strange feeling because you know you know we we not only do we look alike we talk a lot my wife laughed hysterically when she first met her because no one in my family that raised me either looks like me or seems like me right nancy who i never met until i was 27 we talked exactly the same of course course, right. Isn't that weird? Yeah, but understandable. Well, I mean, it shows how much is actually in the genes. Sure, sure.

So I go and meet her. We talk. And you kind of don't know how to, you're connected, but you don't really know each other. So it's this funny feeling with no correlative in life. It's not like anything else. So she says to me it was like 10 30 at night she says i'm kind of hungry do you want to get something to eat so i said yeah sure so she said is anything open late so at the time there were these hamburger there's hamburger chain in new york called jackson hall yeah she says let's go we'll go to jackson hall

so we go to burgers right yeah exactly of course i know the world the biggest hamburgers so we go to jackson Hole and we're sitting there and she's wearing this white, beautiful silk blouse. Yeah. And she takes a bite of this hamburger

and a good cup of ketchup goes squirting out of the bottom all over this white blouse that she's wearing. And if I had any doubt that we were related, it vanished.

I knew that had to be my mother. So me. Perfect. Like, I should eat in the shower. That's how bad. Yeah, yeah. Right away. Yeah.

And so we had this strange bonding. And I was 27. I'm now 60. So that's a long time ago yeah and it's a long story i mean she she she had three sons i was the first she had another one five years after me and another one roughly five years after that so each separated by five years um did she keep the other two the yes the one the one in the middle whose name was eric yeah uh they lived do you know new york yeah so they lived in the village you know where the waverly theaters later

became the the um um it's on sixth avenue in waverly place yeah it's now the independent spirit theater whatever yeah yeah yeah right so theater, they lived right over that in an apartment, right over that. Eric, who would now be 55 if he were alive, was crossing the 6th Avenue when he was a kid and he was hit by a truck and he was killed. Ugh. When he was quite young, I think he was like nine. Ugh. So Sam, who is my, the youngest, who's 10 years my junior, is still alive and lives in LA and has a family of his own.

He was raised by Nancy and another man that she married, not my father. Right. A guy, also a guy in the theater who ran a, a man called Albert Schumann who ran a theater called the National Shakespeare Company.

Yeah. So it's all sort of, yeah. You come from theater. Yeah, yeah. Theater, theater, my two parents were an actor and a psychoanalyst. Yeah. And if you know me, that's like so fucking central casting bullshit television movie

of the week that nobody would believe it. It's so stupid, but it happens to be true. So now, you know, getting back to the you hitting bottom. So what shifts? You know, you're 400 pounds. You get into recovery. You realize you're unhappy. You're in therapy.

And you're doing okay financially. So how do you turn it around? Well, here's the strange thing that happened. One of the several strange things that happened. So I'm doing better, but I'm still just doing voiceovers. I go to a 12-step program. It helps me. I'm in therapy.

You know, things happen. Yeah. And then I meet a girl. We decide we really like each other. We decide to get married. We have children

and I'm still doing very well in the voiceover world and doing an occasional movie now and then. The girl that's out on the deck right now? Yeah, who you met.

We've now been together 24 years. Uh-huh. So this is a while ago. Yeah. So we decide to get married. that's out on the deck right now? Yeah, Leslie, who you met. We've now been together 24 years. So this is a while ago. Yeah. So we decided to get married. After a few years, we want to have kids. But that was, you know, I thought, I'm too selfish.

But I always loved children. So eventually, I said, okay, we're going to have kids. So we have kids. At about 16 months of age, both of our children, who are twins, are diagnosed with autism. Both of them. And that month, my main job is I work for CBS. I'm the voice of CBS Sports. So every show that's on CBS Sports, NFL on CBS, golf, tennis, everything, I'm on that.

Good job. Unbelievable. Eight hours a week, $8,000 a week. 52 weeks a year. Full health coverage, everything. Great. And very undemanding. So they bring in a new creative team. See you later. In other words, lost my my job so all of a sudden I'm married now I have real responsibilities I'm 45

or whatever I am I have kids with autism I have two houses I'm married and all of a sudden I'm going from making you know five six hundred thousand dollars a year

to making eleven thousand dollars a year and he said let's go to Hollywood Florida honey we're moving $600,000 a year to making $11,000 a year. And he said, let's go to Hollywood, Florida. Honey, we're moving. So things were really dire. Now, how does this, in your particular situation, how does the autism manifest itself?

Like, where are they? Well, one son has no visible traces of autism at all left anymore, at least that anyone can perceive. Yeah. The other son still has fairly profound autism. They both had the exact same interventions, the exact same treatments. They started off at different levels,

but for reasons that I can't explain, the son who got better is better to the point where I don't think you would ever be suspicious that he had any problem as severe as autism at all. He's very social. He's very verbal. He's very smart. He's a straight-A student, but he's not nerdy at all.

He's a very bright, articulate kid. The other son is very sweet and good-natured, but his speech is limited he can speak but you can't hold a conversation with him uh he'll play but he's 14 years old and he plays with things like he's still obsessed with thomas you know thomas the tank engine yeah stuff like that right um he doesn't really play with other kids he He's not, he's biddable. He's not like really difficult. Yeah.

But intellectually, cognitively, he's very limited. And I don't think he'll ever be able to take care of himself. I think he'll, I mean, I think he'll be able to find some kind of work that is satisfying to him. But he'll never be able to, you know, he'll always have to be living in some kind of a situation where he's supported either with family or in some group situation or something. Sure, sure. So he's very profoundly affected. The other guy is just going to be. Isn't that interesting?

Yeah. How do they account for the difference? Autism is such a complex disorder. Yeah. And it's so idiosyncratic the way that it affects different people. There's no way to tell how severely somebody is going to be affected. It's really, we refer to it as if it's one thing, but it's actually many different things that can go wrong. What happened was we were living in the city at the time.

We lived in the city. Yeah. But we had a country house out in Montauk. Yeah. But we were told we have to get these services immediately. There's one particular kind of therapy called ABA therapy, which is the kind of most important therapy to get. And we were told time is of the essence.

You've got to get it right away. And there was such an avalanche of cases. This is 2004. Such an avalanche of cases. This is 2004. Such an avalanche of cases in New York that even though legally we are entitled to get these services, you can't get them. There's too many people. Really? Yeah. So we had this house out in the country and we had a doctor, a pediatrician out there who said, listen, there's a school out here, a really,

really good school that serves both kids with autism and also typical children and gifted children. So you should check it out. So we went to the school. We really liked it. The woman who ran the school said, listen, if you can move here, this was like June. She said, if you can move here by the end of August, I can guarantee you 30 hours per week per child in home services 30 hours through the state yeah all paid for with federal government when they're when they're below school age it's federal government okay so i'm gonna hire two therapists to just work with you and your family that's it and then another 10 hours per week of speech and other stuff in the school. So this was unbelievable.

Today, you can't get these kind of hours. Right. But this was back then. So we moved full time out to Montauk and eventually went up selling our apartment in New York, but lived in Montauk. And I had a studio built in Montauk like this, not unlike this. So you could do ISDN and whatever. ISDN, tape, stuff like that.

Right, right, right. Which was fine. Yeah. Then the bottom fell out. I lost a CBS gig. Yeah. And now things are really bad because no money coming in

and no career other than doing voiceovers. You had some money saved. I did, and it lasted about two years. And then there wasn't very much of it anymore. And you're out in Montauk. Out in Montauk. With no work. Right.

But your kids are doing good. Kids are doing great. Nice life out there, but things are getting dire. Right, right. So I had this friend, and this friend said to me, listen, you have like a year's worth of money left before you have to do something really dramatic like sell your house or something. Yeah. If you didn't have to worry about money, what would you do?

What would you like to do? I said, well, if I didn't have to worry about it, I'd like to go back to acting and writing like I did years ago. Yeah. But it's such a long shot. He said, so you're going to have to do something. Yeah. So why don't you give it a try? So I did to no great success.

At first, I was on like Law & Order. I did all the New York thing. Everybody who ever worked as a demonstrator at Bloomingdale's gets to be on Law & Order if you live in New York. So then one day, I'm sitting at home with my wife, and things are like really shitty. And my wife answers the phone. There's a phone call and things are like, you know, really shitty. And my wife gets, answers the phone. There's a phone call. She says, do you know somebody called Joel Cohen?

And I happen to know an accountant called Joel Cohen. Yeah. So I said, Joel Cohen, the accountant? Or Joel Cohen, Joel and Ethan Cohen? No, Joel and Ethan Cohen. Hello. Fred, how you doing? Well, I'm fine.

And I knew them a little bit. Because you're friends with Francis from college. With John Turturro and John Goodman. and I kind of know their retinue. Yeah, yeah. And also, I had auditioned for Barton Fink like 20 years prior to that. You remember Jack Lipnick, the character? Michael Lerner. Michael Lerner, right.

I used him on my show. He's fantastic. He's great. He's great. In that role, he was- It's a wrestling picture. Right. He was actually nominated for an Oscar for that.

Yeah. Anyway. I know. I heard every day when it worked on my show so joel gets on the phone he says fred how you doing i said i'm great thanks how are you he said listen we have this movie it's called a serious man and there's a role in this movie and it's not a huge role but it's very key to the story and i and i just have a feeling you'd be really good in this role are you are you interested yeah i was like oh let me check my book yeah yeah i said yeah so i said so they said come to new york so i came to new york talked it over with them

they said great we want you to do it you're fantastic so i said great so they said there's only one problem the problem is we have three movies that we're scheduling kind of at the same time one of them is Burn After Reading which of course has all big stars in it it's Brad Pitt

and George Clooney Malkovich yeah yeah yeah so we have to do them based on the availability of these other actors yeah so a year passes

ugh and by then the wells are like really really running dry yeah and I think fuck this is gonna this is one of those

Hollywood things where it's such a great part it's such a great movie and it's never gonna get made yeah yeah and then they call yeah so finally

I go out to it was all made in Minneapolis where they grew up so I go out to Minneapolis we make the movie I had a total blast I mean

enjoyed just totally loved making it and Michael Stuhlbarg who plays Larry and is my dear friend. I had a total blast. I mean, enjoyed, just totally loved making it. And Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays Larry in it, is my dear friend. And I had just absolute joy. And they were wonderful to me. Yeah. Totally reinvigorated my desire to make movies and all that stuff. And it was great.

It wound up getting nominated for Best Picture. And I won an Independent Spirit Award for it. All of a sudden, at the age of 52, I suddenly had this whole second. You're back in play. Yeah. As you know, and that's like at that is to be that age and suddenly be back in the saddle is like that never happens.

Well, yeah, especially because, you know, like we said earlier in this interview that, you know, you, you,

you convince yourself that what you want to do in your heart is not doable and that you work right you're gonna work there's no there is no more powerful positive experience that i've ever had than being proven wrong about my own limitations that's a great thing it's fantastic because like i you know and i've said it on this show i mean one of the powerful thing that somebody said to me, when you're a talented person, you know, the only thing that's going to enable you on some level to move through life and use your talent is to realize its limitations.

And I thought that was very sage advice. But, you know, if what you're harboring beneath that is like, you know, there's so much more I want to do. Well, you must push. You have to push. You have to push. Right. You have to.

But you might not be able to do that on your own. And you might. I think very often you can't. Here's the great thing that I didn't know. Yeah. The great thing that I didn't know is there's a very significant difference between comfort and happiness. They are two different things.

Do you see what I'm saying? I do. But I thought I'm such a messed up guy, I'm never going to be able to have the things that I really want. I'm too scared. I'm too whatever. Yeah.

So comfort is what I'm going to go for. So I made my life about the amassing of comfort in everything. Right, right. Comfort. Comfort in like, well, you understand. Sure. But happiness can be achieved or you can feel it, you can get it. But very often you have to be willing to undergo

a significant level of discomfort to get there. And I was just not of the mind to do it for a long time in my life. I just wasn't willing to do it. Right. You know? Right. And look, you know, that's the way it is.

That's the way it happened. But in my life, I'm lucky that, and truthfully, if I had continued doing voiceovers and continued making money, I think if I didn't think, fuck, the world is over, I never would have had this whole happy second part of my life. I think certain people, me included, are not always willing to take enough of a risk unless they are forced to. And then you go, wow, there's a whole world out there that I had written off because I just thought I was too frightened to see what it's about. Yeah, it was out of your control.

Right. And the truth is, it's much better to live under the big sky with all the uncertainty, all the horrible shit that we know can happen, than to live in this little self-contained hermetic box. Just because you have control over it. Yeah. Or the illusion. Right.

Well, you think it's control, but like I said, it winds up being a jail cell. Yeah. A jail cell that you control. That's very powerful. I mean, I'm going to think about that. And that's really what relaunched you as that serious man. Yeah. A jail cell you control. That's very powerful. I mean, I'm going to think about that. And that's really what relaunched you as that serious man. Yeah. But it relaunched me in two ways.

It relaunched me both from a people seeing me point of view, which of course is great, but also in my own heart. Right. I thought, wow, this is great. Challenging yourself, acting. Yeah. And acting is a fucking gas. I love acting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Acting's all about people. How weird people acting. Yeah, and acting is a fucking gas. I love acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Acting's all about people, how weird people are, how people tell themselves that black is white. You know, people can tell themselves anything. How do they get to the point? How does a human being get to the point where being Donald Trump is okay

or killing somebody is okay? You know, he doesn't think he's a piece of shit. Yeah. He thinks he's doing the world a favor right how does a person how do they get there to me that's fascinating how people and it's and it's human it that's exactly the point yeah that's exactly what acting is all about human beings that's why it's never not interesting that's beautiful well I'm glad it worked out. Me too. Now I'm going to spend the rest of the day thinking about comfort and happiness and the difference between them.

Well, I have a feeling you'll come out on the right side of that one too. Well, I appreciate you talking to me. It's my great pleasure. That was great. I'm glad he came by. I like talking to him. I like, he just, for some reason, he feels like a came by. I like talking to him. For some reason, he feels like a huggable, warm presence to me.

Something familiar about Mr. Melamed. Thank you. Swappy ending. Boomer lives! 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. Calgary is a city built by innovators. Innovation is in the city's DNA and it's with this pedigree Thank you.