WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - The Amazing Johnathan from 2014

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

From 2014, Marc talks with John Szeles, better known as The Amazing Johnathan, about his life doing comedy and magic, often at the same time. John died on February 22, 2022 at age 63 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.

One of my first TV sets was Following You. I do remember that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the A-list, they used to put the headliner on first, and then the new guy. And the reason I remember it is, I'm waiting to go on, and some guy comes up, he's like, we'll bring you right out after we clean up the blood. Yeah, that's why I headlined, because nobody could follow me, not because of the material, but because of the mess. Right, but I had had to you'd cut your arm off yeah i always used

stage blood uh cut my arm off or drewing blood out of my mouth or something you know was it but was it always that i mean was it magic first or was it i mean where'd you start out um i started out doing magic but i was not really really good at it. I did my high school talent shows, the last show I ever did. As a magician? Yeah, it bombed so horribly. What'd you do? Listen. Where'd you go to high school?

I went to Fraser, Michigan. You're from Michigan? Right outside of Detroit. Oh, really? That's where you grew up? Yeah. Wow. And you're a little older than me.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I'm 55, I am? I'm 50. Are you? So when you were growing up in Michigan, were you into rock and roll? Yeah, yeah. Bob Seger. You saw them when they were coming up?

Oh, yeah. I know Bob Seger. He used to own part of the Comedy Castle. Oh, really? Yeah. He came in once in a while to watch his investment. I remember him saying to me, I'll buy as much cocaine as you can find that's what he said and i mean he said he said you're talking to the wrong guy man you just lost your

money so and i couldn't find any nobody had bad night yeah nobody had a thing yeah i felt so bad and nobody's ever said that to me since you you were one of the uh the the sort of like the mythology around amazing jonathan Jonathan and cocaine is epic. Yeah. Yeah, it was. I did a lot of it. I did a lot of it. And for a long time, I wasn't one of the guys who quit after Robin Williams and-

No. After Lucy's party. Were you at that party? No, but that's when everybody quit around that year. Right, right. Everyone thought, well, this is serious. Right, right, right. People were going down.

This could kill you. Yeah. No, I kept going, man. That didn't faze me at all. Well, you eventually ended up smoking it, right. Everyone thought, well, this is serious. Right, right, right. People were going down. This could kill you. Yeah. No, I kept going, man. That didn't phase me at all. Well, you eventually ended up smoking it, right? Yeah, I did. That was it. I ended up smoking it.

And then, you know what got me off of it? What? Speed. A little crystal meth took the edge off? I couldn't get coke one night, so I had speed. There's only thing left to do. So I actually smoked that, too. And that just jammed you for days wasn't like like like it is today it was like speed it was like you don't you don't smoke it you snort it but i smoked it anyway right and i would write like a

fiend i'd go in my garage and i would write and write things organized yeah yeah just build all kinds of great props for my show and really yeah it would really the whole show was written on that and then it stopped i stopped being creative on it and learned how to eat again and it was just like now i was a normal guy would just with a habit yeah yeah it wasn't the same but it took a while to get there didn't i mean so you started in michigan you're growing up wait what's your real name uh john zealous and zealous and i changed it to jonathan didn't drop the H because I didn't know you were supposed to drop the H. What is zealous? Hungarian?

Yeah. Good call. So your parents, were they actually Hungarian? No, my dad was Hungarian, but he was born here. His parents are from Hungary. Did he work in the auto industry? He designed tanks. Really?

He designed machine guns. Yeah, he designed. He was a draftsman, so I would get to watch the tanks go to, when he went to work, there's a big test track in the backyard of this place and it was a straight up incline of cement. Must have gone 60, 70 feet and the tanks would try to get to the top of that hill. And he was like a tank engineer? Yeah, he was a tank draftsman.

He just drew the plans out and stuff. Wow. Yeah, and he did that, he hated his job, and he worked for 30 years at this job, and finally he retired, and he died a week later, man. Oh, really? Yeah, he never got to get one retirement job. God damn it.

Yeah, no, and he hated it. He was looking forward to it. He was going to travel a little bit and relax. How old was he? I think he was around 60. How old were you? I was, God, I had to be about 24 because I was playing at the Jeff Valdez's Club comedy.

In Denver? In Colorado Springs. I was in Colorado Springs with Ollie Joe Prater, who was- Ollie Joe Prater? Yeah. And his gout and his cane? And where is he? No, he was still walking at this time.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, Ollie Joe Prater. I saw him fall off a bar stool completely backwards, just tip his head back and bang, down he went. One of the great joke thieves, Ollie Joe Prater. Yeah, he was a great joke thief. And proud of it. Yeah, that's when you didn't get into trouble.

He didn't take shit for it. I think it was before. He made a lot of money being a joke thief. I think he was stealing hacky jokes. But he would kill, though. He would drink all night during the set. By the time I saw him, it was over. Well, I was a doorman at the comedy store in 87,

and he was already on a cane, and Mitzi was putting him up at the top. When she owned that little house at the top of the ramp of the parking lot of the Hyatt, there was a little house there. I lived in Crest Hill, but she had that one, too, and he was up in there when he wasn't on the road, and he was already kind of ill.

Yeah. He got sick. Yeah. He got sick pretty, pretty bad. But I remember watching, he's the first guy I ever saw do cocaine. Really? Him and A. Whitney Brown and me went to the Jack Tarr Hotel in San Francisco. And I watched him snort coke and put water up his nose.

He used to just snort, cup water in his hand and snort it. I'm like, what the hell is he doing? It's a pretty amazing day, that first day you see somebody do Coke. When was your first? I think I was in high school. And I think it was where I was working at a bagel place. And the owner was sort of a blow monkey. And I believe the first time I did it was because he turned me on to it.

I was probably 14 or 15. You take to it really fast. Well, if you're into it i mean i think some people see that shit and they're like what the fuck and other people like i need to be part of that yeah i think that once you decide to do the first time you're into it right away but when you were a kid you weren't into it not really no i wouldn't i never did coke i did other stuff i did like mescaline and stuff like that you know people even never you never hear mescaline anymore no it's a it's a that's a rare one yeah nobody makes mescaline i don't think mescaline i would take it anyway so

you put it you put a line of coke in front of me right now and i freak out i would just like i wouldn't do it the smell smell of it makes me just like it brief all these memories come flooding back how long you've been off though oh a long time really yeah yeah you clean everything uh no not you know what well i'll tell you the story of i just got diagnosed about six years ago i got diagnosed with a heart condition for is it like it's congenital or did you do it it's degenerative but did you do well i could have very well done it i mean no one would be shocked if i said uh you know yeah everyone so what they said is because i i might have had a virus when i was a kid and it caused what's it called

cardiomyopathy but you know I didn't tell the doctors what I was doing I mean sure you can fool an x-ray with with speed I'm sure yeah so you were on it when you got the x-ray uh yeah yeah no I wasn't on when I got the x-ray but when after I found out the results I said you know what if i'm dying you know why not you know and now i was i've been given like a time stamp like you got two years really yeah it tops maybe a year to two years because they're my right now my heart is is failing and and um they can't give me a transplant because i'm diabetic and they won't give it to a diabetic were you always diabetic uh for a lot for the last maybe 15 20 years type 2 though but never took care of it never took care of it you know um so what's going on if i did my medicine like i did my medicine sure and then i'd be you know

so you could die any minute yeah i could right now right now it's within the last seven or eight months i found out that you know if these drugs we're giving you don't work, you have about a year to two years. But you know what, Mark? Do you have a pacemaker or something? No, I have a whole thing I got to wear that's a defibrillator that's over my heart. You have it on now? No, I took it off before I came in. Why'd you take it off now?

Because it'd be so cool to die on your show. Okay, all right. Come on. It'd be so great. It'd be better than Gallagher walking out. Yeah, it sure would. Yep. No, because it's a real pain in the ass to wear it.

It's all over the place. I got electrodes all over the place. You have to wear a defibrillator that, what, kicks in? Yeah, this thing will, if I pass out, this thing will detect that. And I have 30 seconds to shut it off. If I don't shut it off, it shoots this blue jelly all over me, conductive jelly, and zaps me. Keep the fuck in.

Yeah, it warns people, stay away from it, because people will start to touch you and shake you. Are you all right? Yeah. It'll stop their heart and start mine. Oh, my God. It's kind of like the ultimate practical joke. You know what I mean?

Oh, my God. I know. You go on stage with that on? Yeah, I have. I did my last show last weekend. I announced that I was retiring from doing shows. I did my last shows in Toledo, and I'm done now. I'm finished.

Really? Yeah, I'm going to go to the Magic Castle and shoot a special, do six shows there in two nights and shoot a special, and that's not for the public, though. But my last show for the public's over. Oh, my God. Yeah, I'm done, man. So you ask me if I'm partying?

Fuck, yeah, man. I'll get my hands on anything right now and I'll do it. Because the pain level. Yeah, because the pain in my hands and my feet right now, it's so bad. From what? From my heart not pumping blood to my extremities oh really yeah so so it's my hands are always tingling i always feel like like my feet my feet i can't walk more

than 20 feet they lock up the last few shows i did uh halfway through my i started locking up everything started seizing up my hands were like like a claw like a you know when you get cramps yeah yeah yeah so so uh yeah you'll see me looking for heroin in about two months come on well wouldn't you if you're dying i don't know i mean it depends what quality of life you want to have well this is no quality of i mean but you're awake you're i'm getting married too that's the same thing getting married too and yeah but so we don't want to be doing heroin when you're married but if i start feeling really bad pain i start going i've never tried it and i would definitely you've never tried

heroin no have you yeah well how is it i don't i didn't boot it i just snorted it that's what i would do yeah it kind of made me nauseous and i fell asleep it i didn't get the full effect that didn't lock in that sounds great nauseous and sleep That's how I'm feeling now. But I'm like you, man. I like to go fast. I like la-la-la-la-la-la. I like focused drugs. I never was a drinker. I never drank.

Yeah. Never drank. I always did drugs that make you focused and not sleep. You know, I'd be awake all the time. But so you start as a kid as a magician. Yeah. And then the talent show stopped me from doing that. The talent show that I did at my high school went so horribly wrong that the next day in

school, the kids didn't tease me. They didn't tease me. Kids get cruel about that stuff. Yeah. It was so bad, they didn't say a word. They avoided me, man. They just avoided all eye contact. How did it go so bad?

You couldn't find the coin or what? Listen to that. I did six tricks, and all six tricks went wrong. I mean, the girl in the sword box had a leg cramp, and she said, I have to get out. I have to get out of this. Stop it. Seriously.

So she got out of the sword box halfway through the trick and knocked all the sides off, and two mirrors smashed. I killed my dove. You did not. I produced a dove, and it ran. It got out of my hand and was running, and I chased it, and it stopped real fast, and I couldn't stop that fast. You killed the bird. I ran right over it. I squashed it it i squashed that's why they didn't make funny yeah and then and then

oh i'd exposed the levitation you could see the steel bar holding the girl up in the air the whole entire time it was supposed to be hidden until i got right in front of it well you had some pretty big tricks for a teenager yeah i had illusions i was i was this was going to be my big you know yeah this could get me to chicks in high school this was going to be my big, you know, this is going to get me to chicks in high school. This was going to be, it made me from an idiot. You killed the bird. You showed the trick. The chick wouldn't stay in the box. And then the final thing was the guillotine.

And I said, that can't go wrong because the blade falls. It goes, penetrates the neck and doesn't cut the head off. And that's the trick. And then they shut the lights off. Well, they shut the lights off just as the blade started to drop. So you never saw it penetrate the guy's neck. He just went blacked out. And that was it. All done to elton john's funeral for a friend and i'm

dressed like a dick from godspell with the rainbow suspenders and the heart on my forehead come on i thought that was so cool like yeah i thought my hair permed like doug heading and i just tanked man and i got went to toronto and got so shit faced after that night i said i'll never do magic again and i never did never did a serious magic show after that so how many brothers and sisters you have i had two sisters two older sisters no no brothers are they still around uh yeah they are yeah they're around and so now all right so how do you decide to get into show business after that disaster all right well listen this is funny this is really really funny this is i i used to be able to bend spoons i figured out how to bend a spoon with using my mind but it was just misdirection

i would make them look away for a second i would bend it and is that what most hands yeah yeah but i i could did it really really well and i did it for my physics teacher who i really admired and he said to me is that real are you really doing this or is it a trick yeah and i was really unpopular in school i was like not standing out at all. Yeah. So I lied and I said, yeah, I can really do it, thinking that that would be the end of it. Yeah. Nah, the next hour I'm sitting in class, I hear him speak, Jonathan, John Zellis, please come to the principal's office.

I'm like, shit, this has something to do with the spoon bending. I know it does. I walk in there. There's my mom and my dad who they call out of work. It's a bunch of spoons on the desk and a local reporter from the macomb daily paper yeah i'm like fuck this is not good so the physics teacher set you up to this yeah he asked me if it was real and i lied to him and said yeah so yeah call he told and they've got a reporter to come down they wanted me to demonstrate my powers my mom took me

aside before this i said can you really do this are you just lying and i looked her straight in the eye and i said i can really do it this is like a snowball going down i said i can really do it yeah and so i proceeded to bend all the spoons and they freaked out and then i thought you succeeded in the trick at all times yeah i i bent everything and the reporters he's chomping at the bit to do this great story about a psychic kid but i had to figure a way out of it because i figured that magicians local magicians would bust me on it and make me he's chomping at the bit to do this great story about a psychic kid but i had to figure a way out of it because i figured that magicians local magicians would bust me on it and make me a fraud but but they can't they can't give away the trick why would they they would they would say i'm lying that this is what he's doing like like magicians do you know magicians they bust

yuri geller for doing it yeah they'll bust me too the i mean if it's in the paper you can bet someone's going to come forward and go but that's bullshit right right so i had to figure a way out of it and this is how i got out of it yeah i told my mom that i did want to be a normal kid i didn't want to be a freak in the school i didn't i just wanted to be a normal kid i didn't want everyone looking at me like i was weird and she bought it they all bought it and nobody did the story and but it leaked. This is the good part. It leaked out. And I didn't get that press, which I didn't want. But everyone thought I was this mysterious. I got mad pussy. I got mad pussy in my senior year.

I did, yeah. Because you were like the wizard. Yeah, I was like the man who fell to earth. Yeah. So. And that's when you knew show business was the thing? Yeah, yeah. Man, if a chick thinks that you can read her mind or anything like that you're in did you try to do that with chicks oh yeah would

they go to the bathroom i'd go in through their purse take their license out get their birth date know their zodiac sign i have all the details we could put it back real fast in their purse they come back and we'd be doing lines let me touch your forehead for a minute boom you're a virgo boom you were born and then she that's so you were doing lines. Let me touch your forehead for a minute. Boom, you're a Virgo. Boom, you're a Barnett. So you were doing lines in high school? Yeah. Well, no, lines of speed and lines of PCP. PCP in high school?

Yeah. I know. PCP's a funny one, isn't it? I don't know. I didn't do that one. No, don't, man. Yeah, I used to do PCP. Isn't that crazy time?

Yeah, I remember trying to hang the Christmas lights up being on PCP with my mom and dad in the living room looking at me, knowing what's wrong with them. What does it do to you? Not be able to hang Christmas tree lights. That's the list of things you can't do. Well, it depends on what you're doing. Sometimes you want to just go to the hospital.

Sometimes. But my friends would never take me to the hospital. Because you're just freaking out? I would lie. They're going to take me to the hospital. I'm friends would never take me to the hospital because he's just freaking out i would lie they're gonna take me to the hospital i'm freaking out and they're they're fucking with me and they're saying let's they're dividing my shit up i'm on his bike i want a stereo you know doing that kind of stuff they're tripping me out even more you know so uh yeah so how'd you start performing um i went to san francisco uh The whole trip was going to be we're going to look for peyote in the desert. We're going to go to San Francisco. Who?

Who went? We just read those Carlos Castadina books. Right. But you were with a friend? I was with my cousin and a guy from high school and a girl who I ended up teaming up with. And we went out. We drove out from Michigan to California. We found an Indian.

We found some peyote. Yeah, we found peyote. And we also found poppers, which I've never tried before. Yeah, and amyl nitrate. So the Indian had peyote and poppers. Yeah. A well-versed Indian. No, the Indian had peyote, and another Indian had the poppers. The disco Indian had the poppers.

It was an all-Indian deal, though. Yeah. We knew to look for Indians. I guess. Yeah. The pop to look for Indians. I guess. Yeah. The poppers are sort of outside the box, I think. Yeah, poppers, yeah. I don't know why he had poppers.

I'd never seen them before. Real ones? Real Amal? Yeah, the ones that were like- The little white thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to break them open. Yeah.

And so learning the self-discovery trip that we had made us discover that we all fucking hated each other. And by the time we got to California, they had dropped me off on the side of the road with this girl, and they took off back home. They wanted to go home, and I didn't want to go home. My whole thing was I was going to build a treehouse. This is how stupid I was and naive. I thought I could build a treehouse in Malibu

or California up in the woods. Right. I thought I could live in a treehouse rent-free. That up in the woods. Right. Live in the treehouse rent free. That was my whole plan. So no plan to be an entertainer? No. No. I just wanted to live in a treehouse.

I didn't have plans to do anything. I just wanted to build a treehouse. Yeah. Swiss Family Robbins. Sure. I figured that'd be the cheapest way to go. You and this girl. Yeah.

Yeah. And of course that never happened. No. No. I don't think anyone's really built a treehouse and lived in it that was over 17. And so we just hitchhiked around and we ended up in San Francisco. And we were so broke that I needed money and I started doing street performing. What was that, in the 70s?

77, 78, I was a street performer. So who was on the street? Whitney Brown was? A, Whitney Brown was on the street. And Harry Anderson, he's the first one I saw that really blew my mind out there. Harry Anderson, I set my stuff up and was doing my show, and I went to grab a bite, and I came back, and Harry had packed all my stuff up and was in my spot. Harry Anderson was a street performer in San Francisco.

Yeah. And A. Whitney Brown, because no one knows Whitney is that. No, no. A. Whitney Brown had a dog act. Yeah. He had a great dog act, a comedy dog act. He inherited this dog from his partner who shot himself in the head. He was with A. Whitney and he was gay and he really liked Whitney and Whitney wasn't gay.

Right. And it frustrated this guy so much that he shot himself in the head. Oh, my God. In front of Whitney. Really? Yeah. And so Whitney got this guy's dog and this dog was trained to do everything, man. It could do everything

His name was Brownie Breezebottom. That's what he called him a Whitney Brown and his dog of renown That's that was the name of the show. This was where like in this was in down on the wharf Yeah, he was working in the cannery and inside the cannery and the little outdoor stage and it was a great act It was a you know He would the dog would jump up and take the hat off his head and go through the audience getting money. Oh, really? Yeah, and every time he would tell a dog joke, the dog would run into the dog house and slam the door closed.

Like he was mad. Oh, my God. Yeah, it was great. And was he sort of a hippie kind of dude, like long hair? Yeah. He didn't have long, long hair, but he was a hippie because he ate all natural foods and he was, yeah. And Harry Anderson, what was he like? Harry was a hippie because he ate all natural foods and he was yeah he was and harry anderson what was he like harry was a hustler harry was doing uh three card money on the street sidewalk

shuffle and and stuff like that and he was great though he got the crowd he got close up magic yeah and he got like doing close-up magic he would get like 200 people standing on the street as opposed to me like you know 40 or 50 people but what was your act then if you didn't know magic uh i did know magic but i wasn't good at it you know i had so that was the joke yeah he i watching all these other acts they were all doing comedy they were putting comedy in their shows right i put comedy in my show a whitney took me under his wing and showed me how to uh how to write a joke oh? The formula. He gave me Robert Orban books. Do you remember those?

Sure. Yeah. I think he's still alive, actually. Yeah, I think he is, too. I think he was a speechwriter for the president. Right. He was a great joke writer. Right. He writes for radio stations.

But I remember I'd go into the library, and you couldn't check them out, but you could copy jokes from them. Right. And I learned how the style of writing a joke from that. Right. Because the jokes were so old, you had to update them all, you know? That's how I learned. And the street act made me really good really fast

because that's what the streets do. Because you've got to pull people in. Oh, yeah, if you're bad for a second, you'll lose their whole crowd. We'll walk away. Where did Penn and Teller start? Because they were street performers too, right? Well, when I was street performing,

they were on Off-Broadway in San Francisco doing a show. There were three of them originally. They were called Asparagus Valley Cultural Society. That's what they were called. It was Penn, Teller, and a guy called Weir Chrissimer, who was a musician. And they did basically what they're doing now with three people. But they got one guy to leave.

The Pete Best of... Right. But he was a street performer. I remember talking to Penn. Yeah, they did Renaissance Fairs and stuff. Well, I think, wasn't he solo for a while, this Penn? Yeah. Penn was a juggler, and he did Renaissance festivals, and they worked a lot of San Francisco street fairs and stuff.

But they had a pretty good run-off Broadway show, and I used to go watch them when I was just 19 or 20. I used to watch them. So when was the first sort of spectacle? When did you start to develop the style of kind of over-the-top insanity? Somebody once gave me a blood capsule. I used to do the razor blade trick where I would swallow razor blades and swallow thread and bring them up all on a thread. But someone said, you know, try doing that with a blood capsule and freak them out.

Pretend like you cut yourself. So that's the first thing. The reaction from that, when I started drooling the blood and pretending like I cut myself, people would come around. It's like an accident. You can't take your eyes off it. Did you ever admit to that it wasn't real blood? Oh, yeah.

I think they knew it wasn't real blood because I would smirkirk on and right laugh about it so that was the first that was the portal yeah so every trick after that had blood in it even cut and restored rope i would put somewhere there would be blood in it so yeah i i learned how to do shock shock stuff on the street by shot and there was a water drought i remember there being you couldn't use a lot of water because it was a huge drought. And I would tell the crowd if they didn't stop, I was going to pour, I had all these buckets of water, I'd pour them out and say, if you don't stop, I'm wasting all this water. I'd grab a little kid and hold a knife to his throat. I would do anything. And I learned on the street.

And then Shields and Yarnel were just leaving the streets at that time. The mimes. The mimes. Yeah. Right. They were in San Francisco? Yeah. Wow. This is in San Francisco? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. This is this whole world of comedy. It was a whole generation of comedy out there. And who else was out there? Waylon Flowers and Madame came out a few times. Really? Yeah. I was just saying, I wrote a funny joke the other day.

I was just saying this would be funny to get Waylon Flowers and Madame, if he was still alive, and Willie Tyler and Lester, and book them in a show, a big country show. Yeah. Call it Waylon and and Madame, if he was still alive, and Willie Tyler and Lester, and booked them in a show, a big country show. Yeah. We call it Waylon and Willie, right? You get 1,000 country people in there, and it's a gay guy and a black guy. Doing bad turquoise.

With puppets. We'll watch that show. That would be so fun. You just wrote that joke recently? Yeah, I just wrote that. I did, nice. So how do you make the break from the street? All right, so I made the break from the street all right so i made

the break from the street because they kept getting arrested when i started getting really good the crowds would get really big and they would go out into the street i'll try to get rain them in but i couldn't do it because it was like 200 people and they bust you for that yeah they bust me for it because i was the one causing it so they get you for obstruction right and the businesses down the fisherman's wharf didn't really want street performers, so they made sure the cops, whenever they could bust us, would bust us. So I was spending weekends in jail all the time, and Whitney was coming to bail me out all the time. And it just got to be ridiculous.

Now, had the drug started? Yeah. I was buying sugar cubes on the street. Of acid? Yeah. Union Square, there'd be a guy that sells sugar cubes. The late 70s, so it street. Of acid? Yeah, Union Square. There'd be a guy that sells sugar cubes. The late 70s, so it was a good acid? 77.

No, half the time it was fake and half the time it was real. You never knew if you- So you'd be tripping and street performing? No, I didn't really perform when I was high back then. I would wait until that nighttime and stuff and do it. I always could perform. I never did a drug that would hamper my performance. Like I said, I like focused drugs.

I've seen guys in San Francisco do acid and go on stage. And I'm like, how the hell do you, like Ray Booker and those guys. Yeah, yeah. How the fuck are you doing that, man? So did you do clubs in San Francisco? Yeah, that's what I did. When the streets were over for me, when I decided I had to get off the streets, then I went to the Holy City Zoo, auditioned for Tony DePaul and Cantu.

Yeah. They gave me regular spots because, I mean, a street act doing that with that energy, put on a little tiny stage, they'd never seen anything like that. That was a tiny room. Yeah, they'd never seen an act like that. Now, who was around then? Steve Pearl? Yeah, Steve Pearl, Dana Carvey, Ellen DeGeneres.

I was with- Bob Rubin? Bob Rubin. Bob Rubin. Bob was my opening act in Vegas not too long ago, like two, three years ago. Was he all right? Yeah. Bob was great, man. I mean, I love his act.

Me too. He's trying to get- They don't know how to take him. Yeah. And I think that's funny to watch the audience not know how to take him. The old Rube. So tall, taller than the tallest. Yeah, yeah. He old Rube. So tall, taller than the tallest.

Yeah, yeah. He's just, I would love, I would love, the more he didn't go over, the more I laughed. It's nice to be with somebody you like to watch.

Yeah. Yeah, he's trying to come back around. Is he? Yeah. Well, he was in that movie, I was watching Boondock Saints and he had a huge part in it.

He was a villain in that. Yeah, I think he had, he kind of had some rough times. He always does. He's always up and he's down. He's up and he's down. That's his problem. Mostly down, mostly down, but he'll never give up, man.

So you're doing the zoo. Yeah, so I'm doing the zoo, and I remember Robin Williams came in and was showing everybody his Morgan Mindy contracts, and he was making five grand a week. Wow. We were all pouring over that. He would come in and do sets almost every night. And then Cobb's Pub was know uh and then cobb's

pub was around and then there's a lot of rooms back then outside of san francisco that i would do the country store tavern yeah remember that country i don't know i was after that was before it was roostertea feathers roosters yeah that's what it turned into yeah that's still around yeah that's a good room it is a great room the energy in those rooms were fantastic it's a nice setup it's nice yeah so i did did that for years and years. I played San Francisco and developed my show and then did the comedy competition and stuff For John Fox? Yeah.

You did? Yeah. John Fox is the guy that got me my first big break. Really? Yeah. He took three comics from San Francisco to the Improv in LA. They were doing a showcase industry night. None of us had ever played in L.A. before.

Who were the comics? It was me. It was Will Durst. Yeah. And it was, God, was it Billy Jay? Probably. Maybe. What happened to that guy?

I don't know. I don't either. I saw him in New York for years, and I just don't know what happened to him. Yeah, so the three of us showcased at the Improv, and I did a killer set that night. And after I got off stage, all these producers came up and I got three, three TV shows in one night.

That's what started. I got, what were you closing? I got, I got thick. I was closing with putting a bucket on my head, taking the bucket off and my head was shaped like a bucket after that. Yeah. It was a cartoon effect. How'd you do that?

I had a bucket inside of a bucket. It was like a, you know, it didn a bucket. It was the stupidest thing. Do I look pale? Oh. Yeah. So John Fox, it's nice to hear a nice story about John Fox. Yeah. I owe him that.

And then after that, I got Thick of the Night. Remember that show? Mm-hmm. The show that was going to replace Carson. Right. Right. I got Thick of the Night. I got HBO's Young Comedian special. Which one? The eighth annual with John Candy. I was on with

Steve Sweeney, the guy that does Mystery Science, Joe Hodgson, Paula Poundstone, myself. And Poundstone was San Francisco at that time,'t she or no yeah she was Paula she'd left Boston already yeah yeah she was with us so it's you and Paula and Joel and Steve Sweeney Steve Sweeney and Carol Siskind oh really I can't think of who else I think there's one maybe one or two but I Kenny Rogerson was supposed to be on it but he got too drunk before the show and I didn't use his set and And you could see him in the background. If you watch that special, you'll see him back there by himself at a table looking down like, I know, I blew it.

So sad, man. I know, and he was so good. All the Boston comics. He's still funny, man. Yeah, they were all fucking drunks. Boston probably contributed a lot to my to my my use yeah oh yeah there was a guy there that he was he was in the mafia he was a he was a hit man everybody knew and he was a guy that used to deal the coke in boston fit to everybody and he said he'd sold

church bells but we all know what he really did down at nick's yeah down at nick's exactly right he was good man when i got when it's with's with the nostalgic warm memories. Yeah, well, I mean, two times he offered to lend his services to me, and two times I was tempted to do it. Oh. Yeah. It's scary how easy that is. Well, somebody stole $300,000 from me.

That's a lot of money. Yeah, so he said, do you want me to take care of him? And I'm like, fuck yeah, I do, but he's going to come back and get me. He's going to come back and haunt me. He will haunt you. So I told him no. I said- Well, he was just going to work him over, or he was going to do him in? No, he was's going to come back and get me he's going to come back and haunt me it will haunt you so I told him no I said well he was just going to

work him over or he was going to do him in no he was just going to do him in but I kind of thought maybe just doing him over I wouldn't get in so much trouble right but I didn't do it

did you get the money back no I never did how the fuck did he steal no it was my agency did it do you remember Spotlight yeah they had every comment

yeah I remember they went bankrupt and everybody lost all their money. And they had collected deposits from all these clubs and put them, instead of escrow, they put them to the general funds to try to keep the company alive. Right. So when they did finally close, we had to go out there and do all the dates that we

had to honor, all the dates that they took the money for. Right. I'm talking like Jay Leno and Lenny Clark. They had everybody. They had everybody. So we all got pimped. the money for right uh i'm talking like jay leno and and right at everybody yeah at everybody so we all got pimped i got i lost 300 000 because i had a game show at the time merv griffin uh wrote me a game show and i was doing the game so now wait so you're did you move down to la then yeah i did if i went from san francisco then i moved down to la and uh now when does the cocaine you start picking up i never during that during that part, I never stopped.

And you loved it. I always had a good time with it. I never had bad experience with it. Never? Well, what do you consider, I mean the next morning, the lights were coming up and the birds are saying, no, only never thought I was going to die, but here I am. Dying. Yeah.

So that's funny, isn't it? I laugh at it, man. I'm like, like of course i'm dying i thought i'd be dying i'm always thinking i'm dying you know the way i lived you know but it never happened never happened and then i happened this time i mean the doctors told me six years ago i was gonna you know but in from this right yeah but i'm still kicking yeah Yeah, but I'm still kicking, yeah. Now, what is this, like, I was told that there was a period where you went to Alaska. Yeah, yeah. But that was before you went to L.A.? Yeah, Michael Davis, the juggler.

Yeah. He said that the Alaska date was an amazing gig to play because that taught me how to do cocaine proper. Oh, really? Yeah. Like, what do you mean? These guys would come off the pipeline with so much cash in their pockets, not knowing what to do with it, and they'd spend it on all the strippers, and that's where I worked. I was an emcee at a strip club. Yeah.

So this is before you made the break? Yeah. This is before I had my break. How long would you go up there for? They wanted me up there for, probably three, four weeks at a time, maybe once in the summer, once in the winter, so I'd get all dark at one time and all at a time. Right. Maybe once in the summer, once in the winter. So I'd get all dark at one time and all light one time. Yeah.

But I lived in a trailer in the parking lot of the strip club. Right. So the strippers, when they were done, in between sets would come to the trailer and do coke and fuck me. So that's how I learned how to fuck. Right. Stripper will tell you if you're fucking wrong. Yeah. They don't have no patience for that.

Here it is, motherfucker. Put your hand there. Yeah. I learned how to fuck. And I learned how not to be picky. that. Here it is, motherfucker. Put your hand there. Yeah, learn how to fuck. And I learned how not to be picky at that time. Right. Because they were strippers. And some of them were really beautiful. Because they worked in Alaska.

They get the best strippers. But it was just for these pipeline guys, for these riggers, huh? Oh, yeah. They would milk these guys. They would come down off the pipeline and they would take every penny they had. And you were doing magic?

Yeah, I was just trying to do magic. My intro would be something like, you want to see some titties? Yeah, but first, here's a magician. And they hated me. Literally, I had guns pulling. You could wear guns on sidearms in Alaska. I had a gun pulled on me.

I got beat up. But I wrote to A. Whitney Brown. I said, I'm dying up here, man. Send me every book on heckler lines. Every heckler line book you can send me, give it to me. And he sent me all these books. And I copied them on my paper, and I would just read them. I didn't bother to hide the paper or memorize them. It was too fast and furious. And I would just like, boom, boom. And I got really good. I committed to my head, still to this day, I can do 100 heckler lines right off the top of my head. And I got good at it, and then I became actually witty. You got your timing.

That's when the timing, but more importantly, the lightning fast response to anything that somebody could yell. And that was the best, I think that was the best experience for my show is doing that strip club. The streets were rough, the strip clubs were rough, and by the time I was done with that, I had a pile of show that worked anywhere.

And you could do cocaine professionally. Yeah, and I could do cocaine. I used to do it on stage, Mark. I would say, it's time for some coke, and I would pretend like I was snorting coke off my table,

but I wasn't pretending. I was doing it. But you did that for years. Yeah. The cocaine thing. Oh, like i was snorting coke off my table but i wasn't pretending i was doing it but you did that for years yeah the cocaine i would just snort that big huge right jug of it yeah that was fake but yeah but but i would literally literally snort lines off the table and everyone thought i was fucking around everyone but the guy on stage knew i wasn't because he saw it going off the straw but nobody else did oh yeah man i feel i would write i used to write bits to keep me off stage so like when i started smoking, I had to get offstage. I wrote a bit that I had an audience member up there following directions, taped instructions on how to do a trick.

And I was in the back hitting the pipes. Freebasing? Yeah, fucking. I was like, oh, my God. I was a loser. I was a loser. But I never missed a gig. I never missed a gig by oversleeping.

I never did a gig that wasn't worth what they were paying me to do, I mean, money-wise. So, I mean, I kept it together. What was the Merv Griffin show? Well, Merv saw me do some of the late-night TV shows. Right. But he hired me to do, in Atlantic City, he owned Resorts International, a casino, and I did a show for him there, a live show.

I replaced, what was his name, Rip Taylor. I replaced Rip Taylor. You replaced Rip Taylor. Yeah, it was called Red Hot and Rowdy, the show. So I was the headliner in that, and I brought in a lot of business. At that time, I was starting to get a good draw. So I brought in a lot of business, and he called me up after it was over and said oh i got a great idea he says you want to do a game show you want to host a game show and i went well i'm not really the game show type you know

and he went well this one you're the you're because i based it off your shows right so we want to do it with the game is going to be different every time. Every day, the game will be different. We will never play the same game twice. Right. That was the whole thing. So I said, yeah. And we went and we worked on it. We wrote it.

Marilla and I and some writers I hired. The guys I hired to write, one of them now is the president or vice president of ABC. Which guy? Mike Davies. Oh, really? Yeah. His brother wrote Lethal Weapon. And he was just a guy that used to pick my audience contestants. Now he's like big, big, big.

Yeah, he's the guy, man. Yeah. Yeah. All these guys have gone and become really huge. I've never asked them for favors, and they've never offered them. Yeah, but you did all right. I did all right myself. Yeah.

I never really wanted to be an actor. Did you? Maybe a little. You did? Well, I'm doing a show now. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm- I'm okay. I mean, wanted to be an actor. Did you? Maybe a little. You did? Well, I'm doing a show now. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm- Can you act?

I'm okay. I mean, I can be present. Yeah. Like I did a season, first season of my show, I did okay. This season, I'm a little better. It's just like listening. I do all right. How are you at memorizing the lines?

I'm good at that. Really? Yeah. Have you always been good at memorizing stuff? Yeah, I seem to be able to do it. That's what scares me the most. It's not the fact that the acting is that memorizing the lines yeah well how did the game show go did you well here's the thing yeah it well we did we did the pilot and it was really really cool and uh

nbc loved it and they picked it up and we shot 65 episodes of it we we did wow yeah we did 65 and that was that your big payday the first big payday well it was going to be if that's the 300 000 i got ripped off that was like maybe a quarter of the check oh wow yeah but i yeah they stole all of that money and but um yeah we did 65 episodes and i made i made some money off of that one and and then i i quit the show because merv i did two They never aired, and they didn't pay me for them. And my contract said even though if they air or not, I still get paid for them. Well, they didn't want to pay me for them, and I walked off the show.

And then when NBC found that out, they dropped the show, and Merv lost the show. So there's no love between you and Merv. Well, yeah, we made up. I mean, I saw him at, Rodney used to live at the Beverly Hilton. He used to come down all the time with his bathrobe on, you know. He lived there at the hotel.

And I saw him at the pool and then I went over to have lunch and- You were friends with Rodney? No, I just saw him there. I knew he lived there and I saw him at the pool and I talked to him for a little bit. I'd never met him before.

So I introduced myself and then I went to have lunch and Murph was there having lunch with with some of the bigwigs so I took all the silverware from all the tables secretly and put it up my sleeves and I had it all ready to go and it was a big gag and I said Merv no hard feelings uh I want you to know I'm doing fine right now and all the silverware just dropped I made the loudest noise in the world in the middle of this restaurant. And he died laughing. I thank God he died laughing. And that kind of was all right after that.

But, yeah, it was great working with Merv because he was there every single day, man. He would tell the best stories, man, because he had that show for so long. He's met everybody. I would listen every morning. I'd go down there. I couldn't wait to go to work, you know, and get up and tape another game show, you know. And listen to Merv talk. And you're doing the blow then, too. No, I stopped doing the blow then. I didn't wait to go to work and get up and tape another game show. And listen to Merv talk? Yeah. And you're doing the blow then too?

No, I stopped doing the blow then. I didn't do it. I had to be real focused for that one because there was so much to do on memorizing the rules. Right, right. Since the games were different every day. The games, I had new rules every day. Couldn't be out of your mind. And we only gave away cash, which was Merv's brainchild because it was at his casino.

And anyone who won the cash would have to walk through the casino to get to their car and basically put it back right in Merv's brainchild because it was at his casino. Anyone who won the cash would have to walk through the casino to get to their car and basically put it back right in Merv's pocket. So we only gave cash away and we played the coolest games. Whatever we came up with, Merv would build it for us. I mean, we came up with some wild shit. We were the first ones to do the

Velcro wall, you know. We got in trouble with the gaming commission because we kind of cheated on a lot of the things um we would cheat on the games it would be rigged we didn't know you weren't allowed to rig the games right if there was money involved in stuff uh so i would be like a block stacking contest with somebody under the table pushing a rod up through through my blocks mine would always be one higher than theirs, you know, and they couldn't figure it out.

So we got a lot of letters of complaint, and we would answer them by taping a quarter to the paper and say, here's a quarter. Go call someone who gives a fuck. Murr found out we were sending out these letters, and he just blew his stack, and then we got to get legit. Yeah, so it was a fun show. It was fun.

But after that, after the money being stolen from me and quitting the show, that was the downward spiral. That started the drug use again. And then were you just doing clubs and stuff? Yeah, I was doing clubs, but I wasn't healthy. It was a bad state of mind. Two times I've been in a bad state of mind, that and when I got divorced.

Both times, I never ever think about suicide ever, but I was just kind of contemplating. When I got divorced, I was sitting there with a gun in my mouth. It wasn't loaded, but I just wanted to feel the drama. Sure. Now divorce is horrible. It was really bad because mine was really bad because she just didn't tell me why. She just said, going back to australia i'm leaving i'm leaving you

she wouldn't tell me why really and i thought we had a good marriage and and but were you out of control no i was not a control i'm never out of control i'm not even though i've done drugs don't make me out of control yeah i've always been there paying my bills and always been doing my shows and so after you lost the 300 000 what happened would you just go back to the road and yeah it's kind of like now you worked with a lot of people i mean everyone knew you you were a respected guy you work with seinfeld and yeah yeah it was yeah i did uh i was with jerry when his dad died we did a show that night oh really it was for the president of the united states yeah get the fuck out yeah we got a call i got a call from the secret service when i was in the hotel room in atlanta and i got a call and i was like this is a secret service do you want to do a show for the

president and i just hung up you know thinking i was like you know my friends because they do that shit all the time yeah so uh my agent calls back and says what what the fuck are you doing that was really the secret service so they did a background check and found out i didn't have any arrests and my background was clean and so they told me if you want to do the show be at the corner of 58th and broadway at like 7 30 in the morning and we'll pick you up in a black van we'll pull up we can't tell you where where you're going or where the location is real hush hush so i went and i paid for everything they didn't pay for anything so when i got there there was seinfeld and uh uh yakov smirnoff what were they doing in atlanta uh no i got the call in atlanta okay we had to go to new york okay and

we got in this van and three yeah and they took us under this tunnel under the hudson bay hunt the hudson bay governor's island yeah which is like a military base. Right. And that's where the president was going to be. And they flew him in a helicopter, and we did a show for him. He was way far back in a reviewing stand. They kept us away from him. Was there a crowd? Yeah, there was a crowd. And there was kids, and there was a big lawn, and then there was the president.

Did you meet him? It was the president of France was there, too, President Minaran. Did you meet him? No, they kept us away from him. They kept me away from him. What year was that? It was a bicentennial year for the Statue of Liberty's fireworks show. Okay, okay. Yeah, so I decided, well, this is the first time I ever did Ecstasy, right? Yeah. I'm going to do a hit of

Ecstasy and do a show for the president. It's only natural, right? Yeah. And so i started getting off on it and never done it before and the secret service just was beating down on me man i felt i felt our eyes on me every second i felt them fucking staring at me and i'm getting really paranoid yeah and then my road manager shoot test my blank gun off like an idiot he shoots off my gun backstage yeah oh they freak out? Oh, they materialized like out of Star Trek, man. They just came out of nowhere and tackled his ass to the ground.

Really? Yeah. They knew it was fake. They wanted to prove a point. Right. So he's like a 400-pound guy. They had him down like a hog. So you're out of your mind on ecstasy performing for Reagan.

Yeah, watching my road manager get beefed down to the ground. Oh, I got to clear something up. Now, the one rumor that was always around was that you got banned from Letterman because you flipped somebody off. I did. Yeah, I got banned from Letterman because I made a bet with a DJ named Kevin Matthews who worked in Chicago.

And I bet him that I wouldn't flip him off sometime during the show. It was like a $100 bet. And that cost me... It was your first letterman. First letterman. He called me over to sit down, and I scratched my nose with my middle finger,

thinking that that's the winning bet, and it wouldn't look obvious, but it looked really bad. I watch it now today, and I see it, and I go, and it was Robert Morton who was producing the show then, and he thought I did it to him, because he had cut my time down by a whole minute, and I was mad, and he thought I was flipping him off. And so he told me, you'll never be on the show ever again.

Did he say, I knew what you were doing? Yeah. Yeah, he knew exactly what I was doing, and I couldn't convince him that I wasn't doing it to him. You tried to tell him that it was a bet? Yeah, I said it was a bet, and it was. And so I didn't do the show. he got fired uh maybe 15 years later he got fired and letterman saw my comedy central special yeah and personally called he himself called to have me on the show

yeah and i said i wonder if he remembers that i had done a show before yeah now if you watch me come out on the second time i did letterman he's you see me laugh my head off when I'm walking out after the intro. It's because he stood up behind his desk and did this to me, like flipped me off. And I started laughing, though, so he does remember this, right? So listen to this. I did probably the best set I've ever done on Letterman. It kicked ass.

And I was in my dressing room getting undressed, and I was so happy. Producers came back there and said to me, we can't air that, that set you just did. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I just killed it.

And I said, well, I stabbed a girl in the head. My assistant was a girl and I stabbed her in the head with a pair of scissors and it looks really, extremely real.

And he took offense to that. Who did? Well, the guy said, Dave wants to see you up in his office. Yeah. He'll explain why. Yeah. And he says, I don't know why, but nobody goes up to his office.

He doesn't want anybody up in his office. So I go up to Dave's office, and he said, I want to explain something to you. I have a real strong position against violence towards women. And I went, well, Dave, it's slapstick is what it is so what you're doing basically is you're you're you're because it's a woman it's right but it's also the classic sort of uh the assistant the magician's assistant yeah and it was it was a slapstick gig but he but then he said but the way he started he says nobody's a bigger fan of yours than ma than i am and after he said, he could have said anything.

It didn't matter. Right. Because after I heard that, I'm like, well, that's all I could think about. And they pulled it. No, they said, we're going to hold the same audience for 15 minutes. If you can come up with another set and get out there,

and we'll tape another set. I don't have my props. I'm a prop comic. I don't have another five minutes. So I went out and did the same material, except for I took the bit with the stabbing out and put something else in there. So the audience was watching the same set, laughing, trying to make it sound.

It was nowhere near as good. Did they run that? Yeah, they ran that. And you can see the discrepancy is because the audience just, they're kind of stunned by me coming back out again and watching me do the show again and they didn't explain it yeah and so every time i do letterman it's surrealistic like that and then then i did a show at foxwoods casino and uh we were sold out and they he snuck in to see my show. Really? Yeah.

And they told me he was there, but he didn't come up to me and say anything. So I called his office the next day and I said, were you at my show last night? And he went, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was there. He loves you. Yeah, he does like the show a lot. Yeah, he's a big fan.

So that's good because not a lot of people like PropCon. It's amazing. Who called you that you're most impressed with that found out that they loved your show? Who was the biggest celebrity that called you out of the blue that said, you know what, I really love what you're doing? Well, Robin's been a pretty good fan of mine. Robin Williams?

Yeah. Yeah? Did he see you live and call up to you? Well, he's seen me live, and he's left messages before. Yeah? It's weird. It's nice when somebody calls you like that. I got a call from Carlin.

And then you don't know if you're supposed to call back. I never know. If they leave their number and say call back, I would never call back. I never would. I'm bashful. Carlin called you? Yeah. When I was in Vegas, when I started my run in Vegas, I was just supposed to do two weeks for Brenner to fill in while he was on vacation at the Golden Nugget. And two weeks turned into 13 years. So you had tenure there you just i did i was there for 13 years i just last january i is when i quit doing that's big like so you're all set oh yeah after that i mean that was like three to four million a year man that was that was big money big money because i was filling up the rooms and uh uh carlin called me and left a 20-minute message.

He must have been tweaking or something. Yeah, yeah. But he examined my whole show. He took the whole show apart and said why it's funny and why he thought this was great. And he was dissecting it all in his head as he was talking on the phone. And it just, it wasn't rambling.

It actually, if you listen to it, it made sense. But I mean, it was to the layman he really he really took it in oh he loved it he said oh i just love you man i just love your stuff and after that there was nothing that anybody no review nothing that anyone could say that would would falter my confidence in my show because because after carlin says that who who do you have to fucking prove it yeah it's like being uh knighted it is like being knighted yeah man because god damn i'm sure he didn't do that he did that once when i was sitting with lenny clark he called lenny clark and did that to him when i was in the room once and then 10 years later it happened to me so that's sweet yeah vegas was vegas is good in the fact that

people come out and see you you know a lot of stars go to vegas and they'll come out and see you like right yeah in the audience they'll come out and see you. In the audience, they'll say, Kevin Spacey's in the audience. Really? It's really fun, yeah. That was cool. I like playing Vegas for that reason, yeah. And you live there. I'm starstruck, too.

I'm like you. I like to see stars. Oh, yeah, me too. Yeah. But you live there, so you set up shop there, and that was a big payoff. I lived at the Gold Nugget for two years. I lived inside the casino. They gave me the suite, the Frank Sinatraatra suite and they feed you and whatever you want you

got signing privileges when you're doing business in vegas no you don't pay for anything you sign you sign your name on so that was like that you won i did win i did win the first two years i was there at the gold nugget i made more money than probably i've ever saved in my whole that whole career you know and what'd you do with it? I put it in the bank because I've always been taught to save money. So I lived on my merchandise money, my t-shirt money, and put my paycheck in the bank.

And what about the blow? I wasn't doing blow back then. No? You think that coincides with whenever I was making the most money? Like the game show, I wasn't doing blow. You had this reputation. Yeah, no, the reputation, I don't think that really bugged anybody

because there wasn't any bad shows or didn't show up. No, no, but I just was wondering if that was true, like how much you were doing. No, I wasn't doing any blow when I was doing the Nugget. I was clean. I go through bouts of cleanliness. I go for two, three years without doing it and then start up again. Yeah, it hasn't been the entire time right and then i put all drugs away and was just i didn't

do a lot of different ones i was just doing coke for a while and then it switched to speed for a while and but um never affected me except for now i'm dying of a heart condition so but when you're in vegas for 13 years what'd you end up like? How extravagant did things get? You bought a house in Vegas? Oh, yeah. I bought a beautiful house. I bought a mansion, man. It's like a castle. Yeah.

And I got 27 cars. Yeah. What kind of cars? Muscle cars. Mostly muscle cars. American muscle cars. Yeah. Nothing foreign.

No foreign cars. Yeah. Some of them are back from the 30s. A Pierce Arrow, 32 Pierce Arrow. Beautiful car. What's your favorite one to drive um i it depends on what what kind of mood i'm in and how fast i got to be there like i like driving to work that's what i liked about vegas is my show was at 10 and i would leave the

house at quarter to 10 right you know people would think i'm backstage getting ready but i'm still at home you know finishing dinner yeah and i i i could make it to the strip and in my corvette that's 61 corvette yeah i could i could pull that in 10 minutes man i could be there yeah yeah and all the cops knew me so i if i did get pulled over uh i didn't get searched i didn't because they knew you yeah they knew who i was and so living in vegas it's a really small community is you know we're your buddies all the actually a Top, I would hang out with him and Chris Angel. They were all my friends. We all have a group that we hang out with.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. What about the old guard? Are there any left? Wayne Newton or anybody? I never hung out with Wayne Newton, no. I'm trying to think of the old guard. No, I didn't hang out with any of the old ones.

Slayton? Bobby Slayton? Yeah, he was there for a year old guard. No, I didn't hang out with any of the old ones. Slayton? Bobby Slayton? Yeah. He was there for a year or two. Yeah, he tried. A lot of comics came and tried to get their act permanently there, but it's not, I don't know what it is. It's not easy to do.

It's not easy. First of all, the marketing, I'm spending $30,000 a month on advertising. Right. Just on ads, you know, billboards. You personally? Yeah. Yeah, my deals have, you know, billboards. You personally? Yeah. Yeah, my deals have always been four-wall deals. You know, I take whatever comes in.

All in, yeah. Since I had to draw and I was filling the rooms, I like that deal the best because all the money goes to me, you know. So you would market however you wanted to? No, they'll tell you how to market. They want control over you. They totally want control over you.

Right. That's the problem with the casinos. I had a real rough time. When I was leaving the Gold Nugget to go to the Flamingo, they were pissed off that I was leaving because I had really done a good job. I made their demographic younger, and they were happy, and I got a better offer.

So I went, and they just slammed me. The Gold Nugget bad-mouthed me and said it was hard to work with, just tried to destroy me and and other casinos listen to that shit you know they believe it but the flamingo took me and i made more money at the flamingo what they say about you oh they just said i was hard to work with and and and all this crap and then then they had to eat crow because after i was done at the nugget they uh flamingo they made me a big offer to come back there oh really they made me yeah i got three they offered me three million dollars to come back there. Oh, really? Yeah, they offered me $3 million to come back.

I didn't have to pay for any advertising. It was a straight $3 million in your pocket. And so after saying I was hard to work with, they had to, if I'm so hard to work with, why are you making me this deal to come back? Yeah, yeah. So I was ready to go. I was ready to come back, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I was ready to go. I was ready to go back.

And I got signed a deal. And the week before I was to open, they sold. MGM Grand sold the gold nugget to these two dickheads, Tim and Tom. They started Travelocity or something, internet money. And they bought the gold nugget. And my deal went away. Yeah, went away. They were supposed to honor the contract anyway yeah they didn't so what what else did you do with your money you bought cars you bought a mansion i did i did stupid things i like i recreated

no i recreated a drive-in movie theater i used to work at when i was a kid uh in michigan i used to always work at drive-ins yeah And I had all these cars. And I said, how am I going to store these cars? So I got this giant warehouse at the airport and I built a drive-in movie theater, an indoor one. But you would swear that you were outdoors because I have a planetarium projector that projects stars up in the sky.

And who goes to this thing? Oh, well, I do and my friends do. And I rent it out once in a while. Copperfields use it. Panteras use it a few times you know and uh yeah people i just i was going to rent it out to the public but i decided i don't want people sitting in my car so but uh yeah it was it's amazing i i had murals painted on each warehouse wall of more cars so that looks like you're sitting in a long row of cars now like you hang out with Copperfield and Chris Angel? Yeah, yeah. Do they look at you as a magician?

Not really, no. Do magicians play a- If I fooled them, they get mad. If I learn a trick and show Copperfield, I just showed him recently, he got mad because it was me. He couldn't figure it out? Yeah, he couldn't figure it out.

Really? Yeah, no magician could figure it out. And you made the trick up? No, I didn't make the trick up. I was shown it. Someone showed it to me, and I showed it. Every magician I showed to,

a professional, didn't have a clue how it was done. Really? Yeah, I'll show it to you afterwards. It'll blow your mind. Okay. But yeah, they look at me more as a friend. See, I'm a neutral guy.

Yeah. I'm not a threat to them. Right. So that's why they'll all hang out with me. Because you're like an entertainer. They hate each other. Different type of entertainer. Oh, they hate each other.

Oh, so you can't hang out with Angel? No, no, no. You know, if Chris Angel hates Copperfield, I advise first. They have a big feud going on. You know, Copperfield doesn't want

to give up the crown. Right. Nor should he, you know, and Chris wants it. And so, they're making up titles left and right. The magician of the millennium

and the magician of the century. Yeah. These are like bought. Do you guys ever bust each other's balls? Do you ever play tricks on each other? Me and Chris. Yeah. Copperfield's got a good sense.

They all have six cents of humor. And I'm a- Well, Copperfield's boyhood friend was a comedian, right? Ted Bloomberg. Do you know that? Alan Berski was. He made him cry. Berski made David cry.

He did? When David was little, he came into the magic shop with a business card, and he stole this logo from Alan, this rabbit that Alan had copyrighted. And Alan yelled at Copperfield at the magic shop and made Dave cry. Yeah. Dave, never forget that one. Really? Yeah.

But do you guys do pranks on each other? Oh, yeah. I do elaborate pranks, man. I'm a practical joker. So I have a book out of practical joking. What's the best prank? Oh, I've got people on some amazing shit, man. I've sent people to do gigs that weren't even real.

Yeah. I've done some really good stuff. That's horrible. Do you pay them at least? Well, my whole house is rigged up. I build these things and put them in my house, and then they come over and see them when they want to have them. I put this in Chris's angel's bathroom.

I put it on the shelf, and on the shelf is a cremation urn, and it says, this is my rabbit Lucky, always in my heart. And when people are in the bathroom, all they have to do is hit this remote control, and the shelf drops down, and the cremation urn room falls on the ground and all this ashes spill on the ground. People in the bathroom, they freak, man. Because Chris is at the door going, is everything okay in there? And they're trying to clean this mess up.

And some of them don't come out. And some of them come out and not like, what? I don't know what you're talking about. It's so funny just to put people in that spot, man. And I built stuff like that for them. And the Copperfields, I built some wild shit for him too, man. To put in his house? Yeah. He's got a room with the ventriloquist dolls. He's got all the famous ones, Wailing Flowers. He's got Madame in there. Charlie McCarthy. Charlie McCarthy. And he's got the Cliff Robertson one from Twilight Zone.

Oh, wow. There's a whole room of them. They're great. And I had rigged up so when people come near the room, it activates the sound. You can hear them talking. You hear them going, shh, shh, shh. They're coming, they're coming. And then you hear glass breaking.

And then when you come in the room, there's a broken glass on the ground and no one moved. Nothing's moving. It's really eerie. So I like that kind of stuff. I like scaring people a lot. Like haunted houses? broken glass on the ground and no one moved nothing's moving it's really eerie so i like that kind of stuff i like scaring people a lot like haunted houses oh i built a haunted house in vegas that's another thing i did with my money on your property two years no two years ago um the plaza downtown yeah they gave me a hotel to trick out they said you can have two floors in

this hotel to build a haunted house do whatever you want yeah and i said are you serious i can do it and i had the use of the elevator i built the state-of-the-art haunted house man and uh two years ago we opened it and and it was great it was such a good haunted house i mean there wasn't those rules that you can't touch right you got touched yeah you know you had your ankles grabbed yeah so you just like designing this oh yeah i designed it took me it took me a year do you do do you do all the machine work on this stuff, too? I build stuff, yeah. I help build stuff. But now I'm delegating most of it.

I go in there and oversee. You design it? I design it and oversee it being done. But I have most of it. My house is turked out. My house has been on TV a bunch of times on different shows, house shows. People come over and I've got a doll in a glass case hanging on the wall, a display case. And this girl's doll is in there, but I have it chained.

The arms are chained in the case, and I put some blood on the dress. And right away, they're drawn to that. Why do you have that? And I said, well, it's from a famous movie. A director would read the inscription on the foot, and when they get close to it, this doll comes alive and starts thrashing inside this case, and the door opens, and it's just the horror on their face, man. I mean, just to see this doll.

You like shocking people. Yeah. Where do you think that came from? I don't know. Ever since I was a kid, my family was kind of like that. If someone said, I'm going to go take a bath, you would run to the bathroom, and I'd be on the door. Just to freak them out? Yeah, yeah. We like scaring each other you know yeah um and i always

was building spook houses when i was a kid i never played sports you play sports no a lot of comics i don't know they don't play sports i don't know i never did i'm not a sports i'm not a sports guy at all either so when they were all playing on the football on the street i was building haunted houses and i would get them to come along and do that, you know? So have you, now with this heart condition, have you had any problems? I mean, have you gone down? Have I gone down what? Had a heart attack?

Yeah. No, but I've fainted. Three times I've fainted in the last year because of the medicine. They're thinning my blood right now keeping it really thin so that my heart doesn't strain right so when i stand up real fast sometimes i i get dizzy and i i faint uh it's happened to me three times and it's scary as hell one time i woke up i had a gas gas pump uh handle in my hand and then all my money was blowing down the street and i woke up and i'm like what the fuck i was pumping gas i must have been pumping gas yeah you don't remember what you're doing and it's really disoriented and

you get mad you get and then i hit my head if i once i passed out in my bedroom and it smacked my head and yeah and but that's just from the medicine i think that that's what's causing that you look good i do you know i feel all right except for I said, if I try to do something, my legs lock up and my hands lock up. But other than that. Yeah. Other than that. You feel all right?

Yeah, I do feel all right. I feel fine, man. I feel fine. And I don't think anything's going to happen. I don't see me going out that way. Well, good. I see me going out maybe in an accident leaving here. Okay.

In the limo. No, don't do that. Don't attach it to my show. I don't want to have it attached to your show. I should fake it right now. If I faked it you you have to believe me that's my biggest fear is people think i'm fucking around so on stage since i'm a big practical joker everybody always you know there's a hesitancy about helping me up well you just got to tell them you're sick that's what i do to the audience i tell them look i if i fall i'm not kidding around come get me because a lot

of people died that way tomm Cooper died that way. Dick Sean. Dick Sean died that way. Yeah. I don't want to be. I want to do it here in this studio. No, it's not going to happen. Well, so this is it. You're retiring.

I'm done, man. I'm done. If you want to see the show now, it's going to be reruns or you have to buy the tapes. You got to figure out what I'm going to do for money now. I got enough to live on, but I want money coming in. Why don't you design some state-of-the-art haunted houses?

I am. No, I have a practical jail company, I think. I'm going to start up. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Well, I hope your health holds steady.

I think it will. Well, thanks for talking to me, man. Oh, it's just as fun as I thought it'd be. It's great to see you. All right, man. you all right man