March 25, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:09:43
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Five, four, three, two, one. | ||
| Fucking yeehaw! | ||
| Lenny Clark, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| And his brother Mike. | ||
| Mike Clark, the second man to ever give me paid work ever in my entire professional career, opening up for Lenny at Jay's in Pittsfield. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember that place. | ||
| Norm LaFoe gig. | ||
| I don't even know if Norm's around anymore, but I remember that gig like it was yesterday. | ||
| That guy paid my rent many times. | ||
| Many times. | ||
| Good guy. | ||
| And you did too. | ||
| Working for you paid my rent. | ||
| I worked for Mike at one of the craziest gigs I ever did. | ||
| I think it was a one and done. | ||
| You never did it again. | ||
| It was a restaurant and I was in the seating area and the microphone for the people when they announced their table was tied to the PA system. | ||
| So you'd be in the middle of this punchline. | ||
| He'd be like, so I said to the guy, Clark, party two. | ||
| Party two, Clark, your table's ready. | ||
| Like, oh no. | ||
| That wasn't the Mexican place down the Cape, was it? | ||
| No, it wasn't a Mexican place. | ||
| It was a seafood place. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| I had a lot of one-nighters back in the day. | ||
| Well, that was the beautiful thing about being a comic in Boston, is that if you lived in Boston, you could go anywhere within like an hour, two hours outside the city and work basically every weekend. | ||
| Well, Tuesday through Sunday, Joe. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| We were working seven nights a week at one point. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| And cash! | ||
| Yeah, cash. | ||
| Well, it was amazing, but it was also terrible because a lot of people were very bad with the taxes. | ||
| My mother told me, don't fool around with the taxes or the mob. | ||
| You might have been the only guy. | ||
| Oh, I'd pay. | ||
| I'd pay. | ||
| Well, you might have been the only guy. | ||
| Everybody else got hamstringed. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| Noxie got killed. | ||
| Kenny got killed. | ||
| They all got killed. | ||
| And then when they got killed, it was like hundreds of thousands. | ||
| Oh, it was bad. | ||
| Because it was years and years. | ||
| And you've got to make that up. | ||
| Like, fuck. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| There's no getting out. | ||
| There's no getting out. | ||
| You wind up paying it for the rest of your life. | ||
| It's like student loans or something, you know? | ||
| What are you doing out here? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| I came out to do this. | ||
| Just this? | ||
| No, just a little bit more. | ||
| I was going to do Kimmel, but Smilf got canceled. | ||
| What is Smilf? | ||
| Single mother I'd like to fuck. | ||
| It was on Showtime. | ||
| It was a show you were doing? | ||
| Let's come to this, yeah. | ||
| And I played Rosie O'Donnell's love interest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And I love Rosie. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I do too. | |
| I gave Rosie a break... | ||
| 35 years ago. | ||
| She never forgot it. | ||
| And she's always been great to me. | ||
| So we were going to do that. | ||
| And then it didn't pan out. | ||
| And the show got canceled. | ||
| So sexual impropriety is something that had nothing to do with me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| That's why it got canceled? | ||
| Yeah, evidently. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Someone behind the scenes? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know what happened. | ||
| It used to be that was the norm. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, now shows get canceled for that. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Oh, thank God they didn't have cameras. | ||
| Cell phones went early on. | ||
| I'd still be doing time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'd be in forever. | |
| Are you kidding me? | ||
| Then we're going down to do the Navy SEALs Family Foundation, a big fundraiser we do every year. | ||
| Is that in San Diego? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Down in Coronado. | ||
| Good buddy of ours, Kerry Jackson's a Navy SEAL that we golf with one day and we've been in touch with ever since. | ||
| They're the real badasses. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Coronado's that island, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I've never been. | ||
| It's supposed to be beautiful. | ||
| I went down and Mike said, do the obstacle course. | ||
| I said, alright. | ||
| So I climbed the rope. | ||
| Then there's these logs and I got into the logs. | ||
| They were spinning logs. | ||
| I nearly broke my back. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| You had to step on them? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Run across the walls. | ||
| But they're rolling as you're running across. | ||
| Yeah, it's not easy. | ||
| Do you have a mouthpiece? | ||
| No, I had nothing. | ||
| Because it seems like... | ||
| Well, thank God we were the only ones out there. | ||
| Well, at Coronado Island, I think that's where Dick Cheney lives. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| Yeah, or Donald Rumspell, one of them rich warmonger type dudes. | ||
| There's a lot of money out there. | ||
| I was in Rumspell's office at the Pentagon. | ||
| Did you have a cross on you? | ||
| Well, no. | ||
| But, you know, my buddy who was with me was reading the stuff on his desk because he's a contractor and he can read upside down. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| And so this guard, Marine or whatever, realized what he was doing and came over and covered it up. | ||
| I said, what did you see? | ||
| He goes, not good. | ||
| Not good. | ||
| It's amazing that those guys are still alive. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Especially Cheney. | ||
| He's got somebody else's heart inside of him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he had the person killed for that heart. | ||
| That's what I used to do. | ||
| I used to do a bit about it, how he had an extra secret service agent that was only eating vegetables, real clean, had a jog every day. | ||
| He's like, what the fuck? | ||
| Why do I have to do all this stuff? | ||
| It's good. | ||
| No, it'll be good. | ||
| Everything will be revealed. | ||
| When Dick has a heart attack, they open that guy up like a fish and pull a still-beating heart out. | ||
| Yeah, he had a pump inside of his body at one point in time where he didn't have a heartbeat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Because he had this crazy pump that would just circle the blood, but there was no... | ||
| So if someone checked his heartbeat, they would think he's dead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| There was no heartbeat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| So he could fake dead. | ||
| He could fake dead. | ||
| In a bad situation. | ||
| In a monster movie. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I had the opposite problem. | ||
| I had... | ||
| I was doing a show, and they made, you know, years ago when you did a network show, they made you have a... | ||
| Physical. | ||
| Physical, yeah, right? | ||
| So I went in, and the guy goes, oh, my God. | ||
| He goes, what? | ||
| He goes, you feel okay? | ||
| I feel great. | ||
| He goes, your heart is beating 283 beats a minute. | ||
| And I go, isn't that like a professional? | ||
| He goes, that's like a dead man, you moron. | ||
| So he said, this is horrible. | ||
| 283 beats a minute? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, like a crazy beat. | ||
| It would go up and down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| They rushed me to a hospital, but before they did, I said, hey man, I really need this job. | ||
| If I give you some money, he goes, are you trying to bribe me? | ||
| I go, yeah. | ||
| He goes, we've got to be dead. | ||
| I go, if I don't have this job, I don't want to live. | ||
| I need the job. | ||
| So they rushed me in, and then I ate trivia for fibrillation, and then it was both sides. | ||
| I hold the record for being jump-started, you know, the fibrillation. | ||
| The Mass General, oh yeah, it's like a phone book. | ||
| How many times did they do you? | ||
| Over a hundred. | ||
| They restarted you a hundred times? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa, can you see the future? | |
| There is no future. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Well, they finally did the ablation where they go in and they burn the part that's flapping. | ||
| And they found out the other side was flapping, too. | ||
| So it was like eight hours on the table. | ||
| I had this great talk, though. | ||
| My friend, you know, Everlast from the House of Pain? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's got a fake one. | ||
| - So, he takes the microphone and puts it up to his chest and it goes click-click-click-click-click, click-click, click-click, click, click-click. | ||
| He's got like a fake valve in there. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| A titanium valve. | ||
| It's really creepy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| He puts the microphone right around his chest. | ||
| You can hear it. | ||
| You can hear it through the mic. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Mine used to go... | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| But I didn't know. | ||
| I was asymptomatic, you know. | ||
| And I said to the doctor, I said, well, what do you think? | ||
| He said, well, you know, your weight probably has something to do. | ||
| I said, well, I did a lot of blow. | ||
| He goes, you'd have to do... | ||
| Incredible amounts of blow. | ||
| I said, well, there's a small mountain in Peru missing. | ||
| And he goes, that much? | ||
| And I go, that much? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that fucking whole crew. | ||
| I mean, Sweeney and I talked about it when he did the show. | ||
| That whole crew, that Nick Comedy Stop crew was a cocaine fucking extravaganza. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I was very fortunate that I didn't, still haven't, never did coke. | ||
| Oh, Joe. | ||
| Joe, Joe. | ||
| I won't. | ||
| I went to Columbia to see where it was made. | ||
| I really did. | ||
| I really did. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because you were a connoisseur? | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Like doing a wine tour? | ||
| It took me two days to score. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, they said, we sent it all to America, Mr. Lenny. | ||
| I go, hold on, there's got to be a new shipment. | ||
| And then I got an ounce of blow for $200. | ||
| Is that a lot? | ||
| I couldn't even finish it in a week, but I've tried. | ||
| How much is an ounce of blow? | ||
| What does it look like? | ||
| You know the Scott Face thing? | ||
| Bigger than that. | ||
| That's like 28 grams. | ||
| An ounce of oil. | ||
| But an ounce of pot is like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like that much. | ||
| Is that the same thing with Coke? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Bigger? | |
| It seemed bigger to me. | ||
| I had it everywhere. | ||
| I remember the girl said, Lenny, you have to decide whether it's the Coke or me. | ||
| I said, do you want a line for the road? | ||
| I know what happened to her. | ||
| But it was amazing. | ||
| I really enjoyed Columbia. | ||
| Did you go there just for coke? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah! | |
| I went back recently. | ||
| A couple years ago, I went to do a burn notice. | ||
| They were filming a movie. | ||
| They asked me to come down and I went down there and I went, I remember some of this. | ||
| I wasn't doing it now, but it's all Spanish. | ||
| I had no one to run lines with. | ||
| When did you stop doing it? | ||
| 22 years ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| That's a good amount of time. | ||
| Well, I had to. | ||
| I was doing this movie, and I finished. | ||
| I had to throw this guy through a wall, and I really liked the guy, and I didn't want to hurt him. | ||
| So I put him through the wall and took a door off the hinges, and they said, Lonnie, we don't own that door. | ||
| This is Whitey Bulger's place. | ||
| I go, hey, man, I'm done after today. | ||
| Someone's going to pay Whitey. | ||
| So the guy, I finished, and I bought a bag of blow and whiskey and a bag of dope and some beers. | ||
| And the guy said, you happy? | ||
| I said, yeah. | ||
| He said, you want to get real happy? | ||
| I said, you don't scare me. | ||
| He said, we'll pick you up at 6 a.m. | ||
| So I went back to the hotel and met my buddy, my childhood buddy. | ||
| We went out. | ||
| He said, let's see how many bars we can go to before they charge us for booze. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| So we ended up at the tall ships down at Faneuil Hall, and the guy didn't know me, so we paid. | ||
| We said, we'll stay here. | ||
| Then he realized who I was, then we drank free, went back, and we're doing blow, and the door bangs open, and Wiggle freaks out. | ||
| He said, the guys, come on, we're going to like a rave. | ||
| And he took me to an AA meeting in South Boston, and It just, it clicked. | ||
| You know, I thought it was a gag. | ||
| I said, I had to blow with me. | ||
| And I said, come on, one's a new line. | ||
| Just listen, listen, listen. | ||
| This is after a bender? | ||
| After, what? | ||
| During a bender. | ||
| I still had to blow on me. | ||
| And I thought it was a rave. | ||
| Who took you? | ||
| Phil Barineau. | ||
| He's still my sponsor today, you know. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And he's a young kid. | ||
| And, you know, I said, how did you get... | ||
| I said, did you have a problem? | ||
| He says, I used to go into banks with a shotgun. | ||
| Everyone on the floor. | ||
| I go... | ||
| You can be my sponsor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And the best thing, Joe, we got sober together, Lenny and I, the same day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| 23 years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The thing about that whole Boston crew was that it was all kind of tied to drugs. | ||
| And the comedy had that feel to it. | ||
| Because the comedy was frantic. | ||
| Bang, bang, bang. | ||
| There was a thing about the guys who came out of Boston still to this day. | ||
| They had the fastest pace, the most punchlines. | ||
| And the audiences there were used to that. | ||
| So they didn't want any bullshit. | ||
| And they would tell you, if you weren't good, they'd go, you suck tonight, get off! | ||
| And we would have, there were times when I'd say, this is going to be new material tonight. | ||
| Anyone who doesn't do new material, the minute you do anything you've done before, get off the stage. | ||
| So, Rodgers would be sitting at the back, and some, you've done that! | ||
| He'd throw a shot glass, he'd shatter on the wall, go, next! | ||
| And it made you come, and the People, like you said, the audiences that came in there would come every week. | ||
| So you'd have to, and they would not settle for any bullshit. | ||
| That blows. | ||
| That's no good. | ||
| Yeah, there was a whole scene there. | ||
| It wasn't just the comics. | ||
| It was like comedy connoisseurs. | ||
| There were so many people that came to those clubs. | ||
| But the shows... | ||
| Pull it up, Mike. | ||
| The shows that were legendary were The Ding Ho on a Wednesday night. | ||
| Lenny would put like 32 acts on. | ||
| I'd go, Len, we've got to get the show over. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Shut up, I've got a couple more guys I want to give a break to. | |
| And And I'd have guys going on until 2 in the morning. | ||
| And we got a liquor license. | ||
| The cops are complaining. | ||
| You got to stop. | ||
| And I go, have a drink and we'll finish up. | ||
| The first night he took over, when Cremins left, Cremins was leaving. | ||
| What year was this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ. | |
| 85, 86, somewhere around there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I thought it closed at 84. I could be wrong on the... | |
| I don't know. | ||
| It closed before my... | ||
| I came in 88. You know what, Joe? | ||
| You're right. | ||
| Probably around 84, I took over from Barry. | ||
| So Shun Lee says to me, hey, man... | ||
| Barry's leaving. | ||
| Will you stay for me? | ||
| I'll double your pay. | ||
| And I go, yeah, all right, I'll stay. | ||
| It was about $15 to $30, right, at the time, you know. | ||
| And he says, you run the club. | ||
| I go, oh, no, man. | ||
| I'll get a guy. | ||
| He goes, who? | ||
| He goes, my little brother. | ||
| We just got laid off in Polaroid. | ||
| He goes, well, what if he screws us? | ||
| I said, if he screws us, I'll tell my mother. | ||
| We'll be fine. | ||
| So he comes in, and the first thing he says to Shunny is, all right, the food sucks. | ||
| Close the back room. | ||
| Close the restaurant. | ||
| We're going to make that a showroom, too. | ||
| So you open the front room. | ||
| You go through the kitchen and do a show in the back room. | ||
| Then you come back there and wait till it, and we started. | ||
| We were doing six shows a night. | ||
| But the first night he comes in, I was pretty lit up. | ||
| He goes, you're not going on tonight. | ||
| You're drunk. | ||
| And I go, fuck! | ||
| Fuck you, man. | ||
| You're a little brother. | ||
| I just got you the fucking job. | ||
| Fuck you. | ||
| I'll do whatever I want. | ||
| Blah, blah, blah. | ||
| So he gets Gavin. | ||
| And they go, come on, man. | ||
| Let's go in the cooler. | ||
| We'll do a line. | ||
| So we're in the cooler. | ||
| We're doing lines. | ||
| And Gavin goes, I'll be right back. | ||
| I go out in here. | ||
| Click. | ||
| The bricks locked me. | ||
| He was so high. | ||
| I said, you're not going on tonight. | ||
| They locked me in the cooler and I'm back. | ||
| And so I said, I'll show them. | ||
| I started fucking drinking everything in there. | ||
| I passed out. | ||
| They ought to get me out of there. | ||
| I can't do it. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I said, okay, you were right. | ||
| But he turned it into a goldmine. | ||
| We've been doing six shows a night, three in the front, three in the back. | ||
| Sweeney said that the guy lost it in a gambling game. | ||
| Yeah, he used to play Chinese Domino's over in Chinatown. | ||
| And he didn't pay his food tax. | ||
| And so I guess a year and a half later, they came and locked it up. | ||
| Well, first they came and he would send a kid out to a liquor store to buy booze. | ||
| Because they took all the booze. | ||
| So we'd have to buy booze for that night. | ||
| And then after that, they came and they took the chairs. | ||
| They took the tables. | ||
| It was incredible. | ||
| Yeah, he lost everything. | ||
| But it was Wednesday night, Lenny. | ||
| Thursday night, DJ Hazard. | ||
| Friday night, Don Gavin. | ||
| Saturday night, Cremins. | ||
| And Sweeney on Sunday night. | ||
| Just killer shows. | ||
| And what people don't know is that Boston had a different way of doing it. | ||
| So if it was the Lenny Clark show, Lenny would host the show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Lenny would go on. | ||
| You would do like, what, 10, 15 minutes or something like that? | ||
| Supposed to. | ||
| He'd open with 40. Yeah. | ||
| You know why I came up with that joke? | ||
| That was my idea. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Was it? | |
| Yeah, because it used to be, you know, opening, middle eye, closer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I was always a closer. | ||
| I'm going, hey, man, if I host it, I can do lines and smoke in between the guys. | ||
| And I said, well, if someone has a bad set, I can pick it up or I can, you know, be the buffer while they get over that guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it just took off. | ||
| Well, it was a great way of doing it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It really was. | ||
| And then you would kind of close it, too, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, you know, there were different nights, different crowds, too. | ||
| Like Gav. | ||
| Like, I was always working Wednesdays, and I'd be other clubs in. | ||
| But I always wanted to work Gav's show, because Gav had a great show. | ||
| And they didn't like me. | ||
| I was like, Gav's crowd did not go for me. | ||
| They hated me. | ||
| And I said, what? | ||
| And I had to learn to adapt to different audiences. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What was the difference between Gavin's crowd? | |
| Gav used to say it was more... | ||
| They were smarter. | ||
| He was a smart motherfucker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's got a couple of masters. | |
| He's a genius. | ||
| His fucking comedy was so sharp. | ||
| He would have punchlines you never saw coming on top of punchlines you never saw. | ||
| You were recovering from the last punchline and then he would hit you with another one. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| The first time I saw him, he came on and I watched him and I said to him after the show, What have you been doing? | ||
| He goes, this is my first time. | ||
| I go, you're a fucking lying. | ||
| Gav goes, we're not off to a good start, right? | ||
| And, like, it was, like, competitive. | ||
| It was real competitive. | ||
| And one night, I was doing a show with him, and some guy came on stage behind me. | ||
| He was coming behind me, and Gav jumped over this railing and escorted the guy off. | ||
| And I said, man, that was pretty cool. | ||
| He goes, I got you back. | ||
| And then we drove home to his place, and it was, like, three days getting high. | ||
| And we've been friends ever since. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But it's funny because he said to me, he goes, Lenny, I'm going to ask you a question. | ||
| He goes, if you could be the richest person or the most famous person, what would it be? | ||
| I said, oh, without a doubt, the most famous. | ||
| He goes, really? | ||
| He goes, okay. | ||
| Six weeks later, I said, Gav, I thought about it. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| I'd rather be the richest. | ||
| The fame shit's a bunch of bullshit. | ||
| He goes, well, I'm glad you came around. | ||
| See what I mean by smarter? | ||
| He's nuts. | ||
| Yeah, if you're the most famous person, you're just going to get stalked everywhere. | ||
| Oh, it's horrible. | ||
| You'd rather be that dude that nobody knows is rich. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| You know, I have five billionaire friends. | ||
| Billionaire, not millionaire. | ||
| Billionaire friends. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, and I think I'm like their pet project, you know. | ||
| But, I mean, it's unbelievable. | ||
| I mean, to live like that. | ||
| You know that show Billions? | ||
| I don't know if you've ever seen that. | ||
| No, I've never seen it. | ||
| These guys are just like that. | ||
| More money than you could spend. | ||
| More than you could spend. | ||
| Yeah, that's a weird life. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A weird life where everybody else is struggling and scratching. | ||
| But no one knows them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, some of the people know, but these people are like anonymous, and they're more money than you can ever make. | ||
| That's very clever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, that's what I would like. | ||
| That's the way to go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Even if you were a comic, you'd rather just do clubs. | ||
| Just show up and do clubs and just do a set. | ||
| Once you're on stage telling jokes, either they laugh or they don't laugh. | ||
| If you're funny, you'll kill. | ||
| It doesn't matter if you're famous. | ||
| You know, I would like to be... | ||
| I like doing theaters now because it's a different crowd. | ||
| You know, I still do a lot of clubs. | ||
| I work Mike's club all the time. | ||
| Thank God for him. | ||
| But... | ||
| And thank God for me. | ||
| He keeps me open. | ||
| There's some people, you know how when you work a club, you get some drunk. | ||
| All it takes is one person. | ||
| Because I still go with the flow. | ||
| I mean, I really don't know what I'm going to do. | ||
| I'm just going to go and I try to keep it, you know, with what's happening in the news today. | ||
| And someone will just, oh man, they break the rhythm. | ||
| And I want to stab them, you know, but you can't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| It doesn't always happen, though. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| It does happen, but it doesn't always happen. | ||
| Most of the time, it's great. | ||
| But Len just can't block it out. | ||
| He's doing it, and it's there. | ||
| No one blocks it out worse than DePaulo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh! | |
| He's the worst. | ||
| You don't even have to say anything. | ||
| You just have a look on your face that he doesn't like. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| You don't think this is funny? | ||
| Where'd you learn to whisper in a sawmill? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm working. | |
| I'm working with Nick. | ||
| We're doing some comedy tour up in Toronto or maybe Ottawa. | ||
| And I was looking at him. | ||
| I was hosting. | ||
| I'm looking at him. | ||
| I think he was smoking at the time. | ||
| It was a dark, dingy club. | ||
| It looked like watching Lenny Bruce. | ||
| It was just like that. | ||
| So I'm laughing. | ||
| So I step outside the room and there's this woman, a pregnant woman, who goes, Oh, my God. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I really enjoyed you, but he's going to make me have my baby. | ||
| Oh, but he is so funny. | ||
| He's a funny motherfucker. | ||
| And he's been going crazy lately because the Mueller report got released. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they said that there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians. | ||
| So all of his Twitter, all of his Instagram was just attacking liberals. | ||
| He's just like, why do you fucking care? | ||
| Why do you care? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Retire, you lying cocksucker. | ||
| It's just so crazy. | ||
| Resign. | ||
| He's so crazy. | ||
| He's telling people to put a gun in their mouth. | ||
| Isn't that how he got kicked off of Twitter in the first post? | ||
| I'm serious. | ||
| Yeah, he's telling people to kill themselves. | ||
| Yeah, he's doing that now on Twitter. | ||
| He's such a fucking animal. | ||
| He's always been that way, too. | ||
| Funny guy, though. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| He kills me every time. | ||
| Brilliant joke, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Always has been. | |
| He was a guy that made me think, like, oh, okay, you don't have to be, like, a little skinny guy to do stand-up. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because, like, he was this, back in the day, he was playing football. | ||
| Yeah, he was. | ||
| He was a handsome guy. | ||
| Good looking. | ||
| Fucking jacked. | ||
| And I was like, oh, all you have to do is be funny. | ||
| And women loved him. | ||
| And he would just shit on him. | ||
| And they loved him even more than him. | ||
| And Nicky was pretty funny to start. | ||
| He was having good shows, and he was out at the clubs every night. | ||
| And he was always angry from the beginning. | ||
| I had him on news radio. | ||
| He played my brother. | ||
| And, you know, DePaulo's always had this attitude that everyone's trying to fuck him over. | ||
| And even then, I got him this gig, and it's almost like he made it happen. | ||
| Like, it was him and Brian Callen and Epstein from Welcome Back Cotter were playing my brothers. | ||
| And on the episode, they beat the fuck out of me. | ||
| We all beat the fuck out of each other. | ||
| Broke bottles over our head. | ||
| Brian Callen threw me through a window. | ||
| And before the thing was cast, I told the producer, I said, I got this comic, he's hilarious. | ||
| I go, he looks like he could be my brother. | ||
| Let's hire him. | ||
| He goes, yeah, perfect. | ||
| He goes, can you read? | ||
| So I can see the read. | ||
| So he comes in and reads, and he goes, yeah, he's great, perfect. | ||
| But the casting agent had different ideas. | ||
| She had a friend who she wanted to get in the role. | ||
| So she cast this other guy, unbeknownst that I had already made a deal with the producer and the showrunner. | ||
| And so they call Nick up and tell them that he didn't get the gig. | ||
| He's like, what the fuck? | ||
| I didn't get the fucking gig. | ||
| And I go, no, no, you got the gig. | ||
| He goes, they fucking just told me I don't have the fucking gig. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Someone's lying. | |
| So I make the phone call and find out what happened. | ||
| And she's like, well, I already hired my friend. | ||
| I go, you weren't supposed to hire your friend. | ||
| I go, what are you doing? | ||
| And she's like, well, I just... | ||
| You know, I don't know what to do. | ||
| I already hired this guy. | ||
| I go, we'll tell him he's fired. | ||
| Like, this is real simple. | ||
| Like, the producer wants it. | ||
| The network wants him. | ||
| And so Nick came back, and Nick got the part, and he couldn't believe it. | ||
| He was like, it worked out? | ||
| Like, he was on a set. | ||
| He's like, you mean the world's not fucking me over? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I go, dude, I told you. | |
| You're my friend. | ||
| I want to join the show. | ||
| And it worked out. | ||
| But it was like he was convinced he was going to get fucked over. | ||
| He got fucked over. | ||
| He's like, I knew it! | ||
| And then he got the gig. | ||
| He's like, what? | ||
| What is happening? | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| I love him. | ||
| I love that guy to death. | ||
| You know, I enjoy when you hear stories about people remembering where they came from and they help people out. | ||
| And when I was doing the Sunday comics at Fox and It didn't start out well. | ||
| I always wanted to go in and entertain the troops, but when I got landed with CBS, they said, no, you're a million-dollar prop. | ||
| You're not going anywhere. | ||
| So when the troops came home, my show had got canceled. | ||
| That's a whole other different story. | ||
| I want to talk about that story. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, it's interesting. | ||
| It's a great story. | ||
| So I... I go to 29 Pounds Marine Base. | ||
| We pull up in a limo. | ||
| We blow anything up, down, and anything down, up. | ||
| And I said, I'm going to like this place. | ||
| So we go in, and George Lopez is there, and George Miller, a couple of comics. | ||
| So I go up to Jeff Altman, and he's the host. | ||
| And I go to shake his hand, and he blows me around, gives me a hi-hat, walks away, and I go... | ||
| You know, what's this? | ||
| So they say, later in the show, they said, listen, Jeff, we have this kid. | ||
| We've got a purple heart. | ||
| He's back now. | ||
| And we want to unite him with his mother. | ||
| And he goes, that's kind of corny. | ||
| And he walks off. | ||
| I go, I'll do it. | ||
| And so I go, hey, how you doing, Corporal? | ||
| He's, well, you know, I miss my family. | ||
| Well, that's great, because we brought your mother into being like, yeah! | ||
| The crowd goes crazy. | ||
| And they said, you want his job? | ||
| I said, yeah, give me a dollar more than him. | ||
| And I took over to Sunday Comics that night. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So then they said, we go from like 100 to 70 in the ratings. | ||
| And they said, what do you want? | ||
| I said, I want you to hire this kid, Kenny Rogers, as my head writer. | ||
| And they go, what's he written? | ||
| I said, well, he wrote me a couple of letters from prison and one from another. | ||
| And they go, No, I'm serious. | ||
| You told me what I want. | ||
| This is what I want. | ||
| So they hire him. | ||
| And they fly him out. | ||
| I pick him up at the airport. | ||
| And we drive to my place at Marina Del Rey. | ||
| And he goes, which floor was yours? | ||
| I go, all of them. | ||
| You know, I was living in like a $3 million place at the time. | ||
| And he goes, this is incredible. | ||
| So we get jammed up for three days. | ||
| And the third day he comes down, he's all banged up. | ||
| He goes, I love you, man. | ||
| But he goes, I got a wife and kid now. | ||
| I can't fuck this up. | ||
| I really needed a job. | ||
| I said, OK, all right, we'll go to work. | ||
| So we drive down to Fox. | ||
| And we put my parking space at the top of the roof. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| And we're going by a current affair, which used to be Murray Povich's use. | ||
| I said, you people suck. | ||
| You shouldn't even have all these officers. | ||
| I said, we're killing them in the ratings. | ||
| They get all the... | ||
| So we go down. | ||
| And I said to my secretary, hold all my calls. | ||
| We go in my office and there's three couches. | ||
| He said, why three couches? | ||
| I said, when people come over, they might want to nap, right? | ||
| So they said, okay, Mr. Clark, they're ready for Kenny. | ||
| So I bring Kenny in to meet the producers. | ||
| And I said, just come by the office when you're done. | ||
| So 20 minutes later, he comes bursting into my office. | ||
| You're not going to believe it. | ||
| You're the fucking boss! | ||
| You know what they told me? | ||
| My job is to make you happy! | ||
|
unidentified
|
LAUGHTER Oh, God. | |
| He was great. | ||
| Well, that show was a great show, but there was a crazy thing attached to that with your agent that wound up fucking over not just you, but a slew of people. | ||
| One guy. | ||
| Bob Williams. | ||
| Bob Williams. | ||
| What was the star agency? | ||
| What the fuck was the name of it? | ||
| Spotlight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh, he fucked everybody. | ||
| Jerry Seinfeld, too, right? | ||
| Like a million dollars. | ||
| But I think Seinfeld... | ||
| Well, when I popped, when I got Lenny, and I was making all sorts of money, they said, you need an agent. | ||
| I said, I want Seinfeld and Leno's agent. | ||
| And at the same time, he was doing both of them. | ||
| So I figured, these guys are the biggest guys in the business. | ||
| And he screwed them, but they got their money back. | ||
| I was like... | ||
| The lowest guy in the totem pole. | ||
| So I got screwed for like $2 million. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| I mean, it was bad. | ||
| I remember people were trying to keep you from killing it. | ||
| Yeah, I found out where his kids went to school and everything. | ||
| But you can't do that. | ||
| You gotta let it go. | ||
| But it took a long while. | ||
| Is that guy still in the business? | ||
| Country. | ||
| He's in country music. | ||
| Oh, they didn't know? | ||
| They didn't get the memo? | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I was so pissed. | ||
| I mean, because not only did I have the show, but when I went there, everything was going good. | ||
| And I invited... | ||
| Barry Diller at Fox. | ||
| He was the head of Fox at the time. | ||
| I threw a party for the entire cast, the crew, everyone at Fox. | ||
| And they all showed up. | ||
| And, you know, I showcased a bunch of my friends so they could get jobs. | ||
| And Barry Diller goes, you've really done a great job for us. | ||
| I said, I really love, you know, working with you, Mr. Diller. | ||
| He said, okay. | ||
| So later in the night, this... | ||
| This Asian man came up to me. | ||
| He goes, you know, everyone likes you, but I don't get it. | ||
| And I said, well, stick around. | ||
| I'm saying you'll catch on. | ||
| And I didn't think anything of it. | ||
| The next morning, they had given me like a million dollar bonus, and they raised my weekly salary. | ||
| I mean, it was a lot of money. | ||
| It was like over two million bucks. | ||
| And I was going to Dallas to do the Texas State Fair with one of the mandresses. | ||
| It's not... | ||
| Not Earlene or the other one, just some crazy name. | ||
| And I land in Dallas, and he calls me. | ||
| He says, I got good news and bad news. | ||
| I said, give me the bad news. | ||
| He goes, did you have a problem with a Chinese guy last night? | ||
| I said, no. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, I guess so. | ||
| He goes, well, that's Barry Dillard's right-hand man. | ||
| You're done. | ||
| They threw you off the lot. | ||
| I said, what's the good news? | ||
| He goes, we got your money. | ||
| I go, I want my job. | ||
| I said, let me apologize to the guy. | ||
| I didn't mean it. | ||
| I didn't know. | ||
| And he go, no, they've already taken all this stuff out of your office and put it in boxes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And you're done. | ||
| And now I do the state fair. | ||
| And I'm going, man, this sucks. | ||
| I want to get back to L.A. to try and salvage the career. | ||
| Because this is another network that I'm no longer welcome at. | ||
| Just from one conversation. | ||
| Oh, I've got stories. | ||
| I wish I'd never opened my mouth. | ||
| I mean, I've screwed. | ||
| Yeah, no one has fucked up my life more than myself. | ||
| And unintentional, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So, we're doing the state fair and this... | ||
| A horse with a buckboard goes out of control. | ||
| And the horses swing and the buckboard's coming towards the reviewing stand. | ||
| So I grab the Mandrell girl and get her out of it just as the whole thing is wiped out. | ||
| And I'm saying, did you get that? | ||
| Did they get that on tape? | ||
| But that was the end of my career at Fox. | ||
| That's crazy from one conversation where a guy said he didn't like you. | ||
| How about this? | ||
| How about when I'm at... | ||
| I have Lenny at CBS, and it was doing good. | ||
| And then, of course, the Gulf War came out. | ||
| That killed me. | ||
| And then they brought me back, and we were hanging on by a thread. | ||
| And they said, listen... | ||
| Forget about the show. | ||
| We think you're a great actor. | ||
| Let's give you a movie deal. | ||
| Really? | ||
| He says, yeah, we're going to give you the first picture, $2 million, and then the next picture will be... | ||
| No, first, a million, and then $2 million, and then $2 million, $5 million, three-picture deal. | ||
| I can't believe this happened. | ||
| He said, I have one question. | ||
| Can you act? | ||
| And he said, hey, I'm making believe I'm having fun with you, aren't I? Get out. | ||
| I went, hey man, I was only kidding. | ||
| That was pretty good. | ||
| Get out. | ||
| And I go, I just cost myself $5 million. | ||
| By being funny. | ||
| And I said, I'll never do that again. | ||
| So, I read. | ||
| Like, that's going to happen, right? | ||
| So, wait, joke. | ||
| It's better. | ||
| I read for this movie, True Romance, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Remember that movie? | ||
| So, I mean, I get clean. | ||
| I get straight. | ||
| I work on the lines. | ||
| I'm ready. | ||
| So I go over, and it's Ridley Scott or his brother, one of the famous Scott directors, and a kid comes out. | ||
| I say, how many people are in there? | ||
| He goes, 13. I say, because I always like to know how many are in the room, because you don't want to go in there. | ||
| So I walk in, and I look at the people. | ||
| He goes, you ready? | ||
| I go, yeah. | ||
| I throw the script on the floor. | ||
| He goes, I guess you are ready. | ||
| He goes, hit it. | ||
| Dimes was hitting from the left. | ||
| I was hitting from the right. | ||
| I said, you better like it, because you're never going to lick pussy again. | ||
| He goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. | ||
| What does it say, lick pussy? | ||
| I said, right in the script. | ||
| He picks it up. | ||
| It says, like pussy. | ||
| I said, well, if you like it, you lick it, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Everyone in the room breaks off. | ||
| Get out! | ||
| Get out of my office! | ||
| So I'm driving home, and my agent calls me and says, what did you do to Ridley Scott? | ||
| He said you were pre-inactive, but you've got to get off the drugs. | ||
| I said, I haven't done coke in two weeks. | ||
| I was serious for this part. | ||
| Who's he getting it to? | ||
| Tom Sizemore and Chris Penn! | ||
| They did the job! | ||
| There's no justice. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Guys who were, like, up to their neck in coke. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| That's crazy that they got that upset. | ||
| I'm having fun. | ||
| I'm pretending I'm having fun with you. | ||
| I make them believe I'm having fun with you. | ||
| That's all it took. | ||
| Because I thought we were having fun. | ||
| They're giving you, offering you millions of dollars. | ||
| I'm thinking, oh, isn't this nice, you know? | ||
| That's a problem with people that have so much power. | ||
| They want you to suck their dick every second of the day. | ||
| And as soon as there's any deviation at all, they think you're, oh, you think you're a smartass? | ||
| You're done in this town. | ||
| That kind of power, you know? | ||
| You know how guys sleep with women, you know, they get hit. | ||
| I had a woman told me she wanted to fuck me, but she was hideous. | ||
| And it was at night in the morning, you know, I'm going, Jesus, I'm not even drunk. | ||
| I'm trying to back out of it. | ||
| I'm going, no, no, no. | ||
| I didn't get that job either. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, look, there was casting couches for both sides. | ||
| I knew a lady who'd bang all these sad little actor guys. | ||
| She was a casting lady, and she'd have these little sad actor guys. | ||
| They'd look all squeamish and shit, and you're like, oh, look at her. | ||
| She's got that guy on a rope, too. | ||
| And she would bang them all. | ||
| She would get these guys part, and she would fuck them all. | ||
| and she was aggressive. | ||
| No, this one was aggressive, but I'm going, ah, it's creeping me out, you know? | ||
| Not because I, it's not what I wanted. | ||
| The thing is, though, there's no victim there. | ||
| Nobody feels sorry for those guys at all. | ||
| Not even for a second. | ||
| A guy that fucks a lady who's a casting director, like, hey, he decided to do what he wanted to do. | ||
| It's such a different thing than a guy being a casting agent that fucks the actress. | ||
| I would fuck a dry cleaner for free dry cleaning. | ||
| It's just a matter of, what do you want to do? | ||
| How bad is that? | ||
| It's not that bad at all. | ||
| It's a different animal. | ||
| It's funny. | ||
| But that whole model is out the window now with all this Me Too stuff and after Weinstein got shot down. | ||
| I don't act. | ||
| I retired from acting, so I'd like to see what it's like now and wonder how much different it is and how much it's changed. | ||
| I bet it's changed quite a bit. | ||
| Well, recently, Joe, I gave Louie a shot at the club, you know, after his... | ||
| Yeah, I heard about that. | ||
| And, you know, Louie called me up and said, hey, do you mind if I do a spot? | ||
| And I thought about it. | ||
| I said, yeah, sure, no problem. | ||
| You know, I like Louie. | ||
| He wasn't arrested or convicted of anything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I put him in. | ||
| He did fantastic. | ||
| He calls me. | ||
| He says, what do you think? | ||
| I said, yeah! | ||
| Put him on. | ||
| And after that evening, the backlash was just unbelievable. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I go, how long is enough? | ||
| What does this guy have to do to try to get his career back? | ||
| Right, but what is the backlash, though? | ||
| Because the backlash is not your actual customers, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're not complaining. | ||
| They grabbed some female comics that aren't working for me and said that Mike locked the doors and put a sexual predator on stage. | ||
| Everyone there enjoyed Louis. | ||
| I'm just trying to help a friend get his life back. | ||
| He came in, and he walked over to me. | ||
| I give him a big hug. | ||
| He goes, we got no problem? | ||
| I go, no, you nitwit. | ||
| I said, I would have called you if that prick right had given me a number. | ||
| He didn't give me a number. | ||
| He goes, that's not right. | ||
| I go, I know. | ||
| That's what I told him. | ||
| I said, so I bring him on stage. | ||
| He says, ladies and gentlemen, you know, this Me Too thing and everything. | ||
| Here's a guy who didn't touch any women. | ||
| Matter of fact, he touched himself. | ||
| That was the problem. | ||
| They just happened to be in the room. | ||
| And I said, you could have jerked off in front of me as long as you didn't get on my shirt. | ||
| My shirts are pretty expensive. | ||
| I said, but these are people you gave a job to. | ||
| The people that turned on him, he gave jobs to. | ||
| That's not right. | ||
| Well, there's a lot to that story. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| There's a lot to that story that would make him look very different than a lot of these people that are accusing him. | ||
| And one day I think he's going to tell that story. | ||
| I had a conversation with him about it. | ||
| It's not as cut and dry as everybody thinks. | ||
| Everybody thinks he had power over these women and he pulled his dick out. | ||
| No, there was a lot of... | ||
| There was a lot of sex talk. | ||
| There was a lot of flirting. | ||
| There was a lot going on. | ||
| It wasn't that simple. | ||
| And he's very... | ||
| He's very contrite about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Very, very. | ||
| And he knows he fucked up. | ||
| And by the way, he hadn't done anything like that in more than a decade. | ||
| It was a long time. | ||
| He's got a kinky thing. | ||
| I can't even jerk off if the neighbors are home. | ||
| I'm a wreck. | ||
| I make weird faces. | ||
| So it wouldn't be fun for anyone. | ||
| He's not a bad guy. | ||
| No, he's a good guy. | ||
| He's not a rapist. | ||
| He's not a sexual predator. | ||
| He didn't touch anybody. | ||
| He caught the worst part of the wave. | ||
| If you're in the ocean and you could be in the ocean on a fucking surfboard and you just catch this little tiny wave and everything's fine. | ||
| Or you could fuck up and be in the right spot when that giant wave comes and slams you in the head and you have the same intention and the same person. | ||
| In other times in history, he would have been fine. | ||
| He would probably be fine today. | ||
| Because everything is kind of... | ||
| There's enough of the females that have come out that have been full of shit like Asia Argento and the girl who accused Chris Hardwick and then Chris Hardwick released all these text messages that show that she actually cheated on him and she wanted him back and she's just trying to punish him for all this. | ||
| But there's a few of those situations now where people realize, well, there's definitely sexual predators and there's definitely bad men, but there's also women who are taking advantage of this movement. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I think the world is sort of like calmed down a little. | ||
| Like the Asia Argento one was a big one. | ||
| You know, when it turned out that she was calling Harvey Weinstein a rapist while she was fucking a 17-year-old. | ||
| Right. | ||
| She played his mom in a movie 10 years ago when he was 7. Right. | ||
| It's like, Jesus Christ, like, how could you have that kind of hypocrisy? | ||
| But there's a lot of that in people that are screaming for attention at the front of the line of a lot of these things. | ||
| A lot of them have, like, dark secrets themselves. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, and, like, how... | ||
| These people that don't want a guy like Louie to have a road to redemption. | ||
| They don't want him to work. | ||
| Or even a guy like Aziz Ansari, which is even worse, he had a bad date with a girl. | ||
| A bad date where she blew him like three different times and didn't want to keep going. | ||
| Wait, wait, wait. | ||
| He said bad date. | ||
| That sounds pretty good to me. | ||
| It's pretty good. | ||
| It's better than no blowing. | ||
| Yeah, but the whole thing was so crazy. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| There's more than one side to every story like that. | ||
| And to take someone's opinion or someone's perception of something as 100% the actual event that happened without any other evidence, it's kind of crazy. | ||
| I mean, I don't think... | ||
| I just... | ||
| I just think people have to recognize that Louis in particular, he's been out of work. | ||
| He was out of work for 10 months. | ||
| He lost all of his shows. | ||
| People think he didn't suffer from that. | ||
| He lost $30 million, Joe. | ||
| People that think he didn't suffer are crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're crazy. | |
| If you think he should never be allowed to work again, well... | ||
| He's not a criminal. | ||
| He's not in jail. | ||
| So what are you saying? | ||
| Everyone deserves a second chance. | ||
| And that was my point. | ||
| I said, sure, Louie, you know what? | ||
| I wanted to give him a fighting chance, and I guess he is back doing clubs now. | ||
| He's doing a lot of clubs. | ||
| But that's it. | ||
| It's all he's trying to do. | ||
| He's trying to get his life back. | ||
| He's building his act again, doing clubs. | ||
| And some fucking asshole releases his whole act on YouTube, so now all that material he has to chuck away. | ||
| So he was writing during the time he was gone, but not performing. | ||
| And then he puts together an act that, you know, look, you know as well as anybody, when you have new shit, it's got some goddamn holes in it. | ||
| There's no way it comes out. | ||
| I've never written a bit ever, maybe one or two in my whole career, that was the finished bit when I first did it on stage. | ||
| Maybe one or two ever. | ||
| They're always clunky. | ||
| And sometimes you have ideas. | ||
| You're like, why the fuck did I even try that one? | ||
| Like the Parkland shooter bit. | ||
| He was doing that bit. | ||
| It's a very unfortunate bit. | ||
| Especially when people who aren't in the club hear it. | ||
| But who knows what that bit would have been If someone didn't tape it. | ||
| Yeah, if you gave him a year to work it out, he probably would have figured out a way to make it where it wasn't offensive and it didn't shit on those kids in the same way. | ||
| My best stuff was years ago before cell phones because I didn't know. | ||
| I just went out there. | ||
| And now, when I'm on stage, I'm constantly thinking, oh, don't go there. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| Don't cross that line. | ||
| But that's a terrible feeling for a comic. | ||
| Oh, it's horrible. | ||
| It's horrible. | ||
| It's half the funny shit that you and I have laughed at hard was something that someone definitely shouldn't have said. | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| But they knew they shouldn't have said it. | ||
| That's why they were saying it. | ||
| They were saying it to make the audience laugh because they were like, I can't believe he fucking said that. | ||
| Not like he means it. | ||
| Like that's his actual thoughts. | ||
| There's no maliciousness behind it. | ||
| I have no... | ||
| You think... | ||
| I want people to spend 30, 40 bucks to go out and have me piss them off and ruin your night with your wife or your date. | ||
| No, you idiot. | ||
| I'm just trying to make you laugh. | ||
| So now it's just so good. | ||
| Joe, I can remember back with you and Mike McCarthy. | ||
| It was like, who could work the dirtiest? | ||
| You guys would be in the back just dying. | ||
| There were nights when me and Kenny would get high and say, let's see if we can walk the room. | ||
| I've seen people suck at having a room, but I mean, we'd love... | ||
| Oh my God, I remember one night, I was doing great, and I said, let me do... | ||
| And I was getting fucked up, and I turned on the crowd, and then I felt bad, because they were so upset and so disgusted with me. | ||
| And these were like regulars, usually come, and they started trying to win them back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It took me an hour and a half just to get them back. | |
| I remember I did a show in Orlando, and there was a guy heckling me. | ||
| I said, listen, if you don't shut up, I'm going to come down here and pop you right in the fucking face. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| I went off the stage and popped this fucking guy right in. | ||
| He was bleeding and everything. | ||
| And the crowd was on his side. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| He's attacking us. | ||
| And it took me 45 minutes just to break even. | ||
| You kept going after you punched the guy in the face? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's amazing in and of itself. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| Orlando. | ||
| I don't know where... | ||
| I know it was Orlando. | ||
| I was doing a bunch of one-nighters. | ||
| And I was... | ||
| Because the crowd was a big crowd. | ||
| It must have been like 300 people. | ||
| And they all loved me. | ||
| And this guy just... | ||
| And I fucking hated it. | ||
| And I went right... | ||
| I put the mic down. | ||
| Bang! | ||
| And he went down. | ||
| He was screaming and crying. | ||
| And I went up and the people were like... | ||
| That's the difference between Boston and Orlando. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, God! | |
| Yeah, you can't do that. | ||
| You gave me the best advice anybody ever gave me when I was starting out. | ||
| You did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And right after your brother gave me the worst advice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
True, true. | |
| Mike told me to work. | ||
| It was good advice at the time. | ||
| It was smart advice. | ||
| I liked you. | ||
| I just said, Joe, I think maybe you should try to clean it up a bit. | ||
| And you're like, yeah. | ||
| And Lenny comes over and says, fuck yeah. | ||
| He goes, don't listen to him. | ||
| You're a great kid. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Don't change a thing. | ||
| Yeah, you pumped me up, man. | ||
| Well, you know, the thing was, you made me laugh, you know, because, I mean, I've seen everybody. | ||
| When I started doing comedy, what, 41 years ago, there was only 100 comedians, maybe, the whole country. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| If I heard of someone, I would fly to their town to go on stage and say, let's get on, you know, Kenison, you know, and, you know, Slayton in San Francisco. | ||
| Dom in Philadelphia. | ||
| People I thought were really good and admired. | ||
| I would like to see what it is. | ||
| And then I became friends with all of them. | ||
| Oh, that's awesome. | ||
| And then it just blew up. | ||
| Now you don't even have to have an act. | ||
| You're on YouTube. | ||
| Yeah, you still have to have an act when you get in front of those live audiences. | ||
| You think so? | ||
| Yeah, I've seen it. | ||
| I've seen those YouTube guys eat shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But they do draw people out to the club. | ||
| For a while. | ||
| They'll do it for a while. | ||
| You trick people for a little bit. | ||
| Unless they become good. | ||
| They keep putting in the work and do the act. | ||
| And develop an act. | ||
| But you either can do it or you don't. | ||
| Jerry Seinfeld once said very famously that If you're famous, it buys you 30 seconds. | ||
| It buys you 30 seconds in front of a crowd. | ||
| They're happy you're there. | ||
| They'll give you 30 seconds. | ||
| And after that, like, okay, what do you got? | ||
| Where's the jokes? | ||
| What the country? | ||
| Hey, he's a fucking good joke writer. | ||
| That guy is still slinging. | ||
| Yakov Smirnoff is still slinging it. | ||
| He's at the Comedy Store every now and again. | ||
| I think he's still in Branson. | ||
| He has the theater in Branson. | ||
| But he comes down to the store. | ||
| I worked with him a couple of times. | ||
| He's good. | ||
| He writes. | ||
| He's got new material. | ||
| He looks good, too. | ||
| He's healthy and thin. | ||
| Those YouTube guys, they have a shortcut, right? | ||
| They make funny videos on YouTube. | ||
| They'll get a crowd, even though they're not really funny. | ||
| But if they put in the work, they can pull it off. | ||
| It has been done. | ||
| The most courageous guy I ever saw was Charlie Murphy. | ||
| Because Charlie Murphy was essentially a famous open-miker. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And that fucking guy, he started out hosting. | ||
| It would be him and Donnell and Bill Burr, and they would do these shows together. | ||
| And Charlie had never done stand-up. | ||
| But he had the most famous brother ever. | ||
| I mean, his brother was fucking Eddie Murphy. | ||
| And people would saw him on the Chappelle Show. | ||
| Chappelle Show really set him up. | ||
| So he became famous. | ||
| And then the guy had balls of fucking steel, man. | ||
| I did a 22-show tour with him. | ||
| And... | ||
| He had only been doing comedy for two years, and I had been doing comedy for more than 20, and we were co-headlining. | ||
| So I would headline one night, he would headline the other night. | ||
| And, I mean, to be able to go on after a guy who's been doing comedy 24 years or whatever the fuck it was, and go on after him and do 40 minutes when you've only been doing... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And just the balls that guy had. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And he would just go on out there like he owned the place. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He passed away, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Geez. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, he passed away... | |
| I think all the people that we work with, they're not here anymore. | ||
| And I'm going, my good God. | ||
| Except the ones that suck. | ||
| You know, you always make it a point. | ||
| People steal the material. | ||
| One of the biggest thieves that ever lived was Ollie Joe Prater. | ||
| I never met him. | ||
| He was this big, fat, redneck guy. | ||
| And we're working down south someplace, maybe Florida. | ||
| And we're in the green room, and he watches The Tonight Show. | ||
| And we're doing The Late Show. | ||
| And Carson comes out and does his monologue. | ||
| And after his monologue, he went out and did Carson's monologue! | ||
| A standing ovation! | ||
| And I'm going... | ||
| No one will ever know. | ||
| There was no VCRs back then. | ||
| There were no tapes. | ||
| There was nothing. | ||
| I go, wow. | ||
| And he stole one of my shows. | ||
| I said, man, you stole my show? | ||
| Yeah, but I do it better. | ||
| I go, no, you don't. | ||
| You just add a sudden twang to it, man. | ||
| That's all. | ||
| Yeah, but I do it better. | ||
| Yeah, that's what he would say to these young kids. | ||
| Yeah, man, but I do it better. | ||
| Well, you know, back in the day, in the Catskills times, they all stole. | ||
| Like, there was no honor amongst thieves back then. | ||
| And everyone just had jokes. | ||
| They were just joke jokes. | ||
| Like, you almost had, like, a toolbox. | ||
| Like, oh, I needed three-eighths. | ||
| And then as television came along, and then people started getting in trouble for stealing. | ||
| You know, Robin got in trouble, and a few other guys got in trouble. | ||
| And then it sort of died off until, like... | ||
| I mean, when YouTube came along, then it kind of killed it. | ||
| There's still a few thieves that are still running around to this day, and some of them are famous, but most of the audience knows now. | ||
| And if you, like, look at someone who's a thief, and then you look at their Instagram comments, like, holy shit, people go after them. | ||
| People know now. | ||
| They know it's the darkest thing you can do when a guy works or a girl works forever on a bit, and then you just come along at the finished product and snatch it and switch a couple words around. | ||
| And pretend? | ||
| Pretend you came up with it on your own? | ||
| Well, when I started, I was working as a janitor in City Hall of Cambridge, and I took the other janitors out for beers, and we went to the Springfield Station, and we saw Sweeney. | ||
| And we saw Sweeney and Bill Campbell, and I'm going, oh my God, Sweeney was just, it was, I said, wow, this guy, I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| I had a couple of guys, a couple of the comics went on, and I said, you're funnier than these guys, you should do it. | ||
| So I talked to George McDoll about it at school the next day, and he goes, yeah, man, you should be a comedian. | ||
| I go, what's that? | ||
| He goes, that's what you saw last night. | ||
| So we went over to his house, and we listened to a Woody Allen album. | ||
| And I didn't even know Woody... | ||
| I knew Woody Allen from his movie, but I didn't know he was a comedian. | ||
| And he did that joke about hitting a moose up in Maine. | ||
| So I went on. | ||
| I hadn't been on stage before. | ||
| I went on at the ding-ho, Springfield Streets alone. | ||
| And I did this, and it was unbelievable. | ||
| I changed all my... | ||
| It was thunderous applause. | ||
| I could stare at an ovation. | ||
| And afterwards, this little old guy comes in the back and says, Mr. Clark, you're very funny, but you shouldn't use Woody Allen material. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I go... | |
| Woody, who? | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get out of here! | |
| Oh man! | ||
| And that was it. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| And I sucked for months. | ||
| I said, but it was all mine. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of guys in the beginning. | ||
| Greg Fitzsimmons and I used to steal from each other. | ||
| We had a deal, though. | ||
| Because we both only had like 15 minutes, and we had to do a half. | ||
| So I'd steal 15 of his, he'd steal 15 of mine, and we were best friends. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| So he'd go, oh, dude, that blowjob material killed and fucking Pawtucket. | ||
| I said to Kenny, I said, Kenny, that was fucking brilliant. | ||
| I said, sure is your fucking mind? | ||
| You did that three weeks ago. | ||
| Because I didn't know what I was doing. | ||
| They can't remember his act. | ||
| I can't remember. | ||
| Some of the best guys don't. | ||
| Like Joey Diaz, you've got to be waiting for Joey offstage with a notebook. | ||
| You've got to go, say that again. | ||
| What the fuck did I say? | ||
| You know who used to do that? | ||
| Mike Donovan. | ||
| Mike Donovan was so good to me because Mike Donovan, when I saw him, I go, wow, this guy is so just brilliant, real technical about everything. | ||
| And I used to take him out after shows and take him to breakfast and he would tell me, he says, listen, I'm going to tell you everything you did wrong. | ||
| There's no need for me to tell you what you did right because you can tell, but everything you did wrong. | ||
| And he would listen and I would go, oh my God. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| And he helped mold me and he helped make me technically a better... | ||
| I owe him a lot. | ||
| Mike Dunn was great. | ||
| He helped me as well. | ||
| He told me to record all my sets. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He told me to get a tape recorder. | ||
| He still tapes to this day, Joe. | ||
| Every show. | ||
| Yeah, he was like, you never know. | ||
| You never know. | ||
| You might say one thing and you forget you say it, but that one thing might make the bit ten times better. | ||
| Joe, I listened to him and I taped everything. | ||
| There's boxes of shit in my garage. | ||
| I never listened to it once. | ||
| I was reading a Lenny Bruce thing, and he used to tape. | ||
| And so I didn't realize he was taping his act. | ||
| I thought he was taping and talking to him. | ||
| So, you know, hey, man. | ||
| So I would write when I first started doing it. | ||
| I would write for hours, and I would go down to the kitchen and say, hey, Ma, what do you think it is? | ||
| And I'd tell her, she goes, I don't know. | ||
| I guess it's good. | ||
| Who do you like? | ||
| She said, well, I really like that Rip Taylor. | ||
| I go, Rip Taylor. | ||
| She goes, that's why Heinz makes 57 varieties. | ||
| Get over it! | ||
| You're not the only funny person in the world, right? | ||
| Oh yeah, she didn't take any shit. | ||
| So later, I'm working at the Dunes one day, and Pauly Shore, I'm up by the pool, and Pauly Shore says, hey Lenny, I turn around, who's he with but Rip Taylor, right? | ||
| And Rip is, ooh, look at that one. | ||
| And he's... | ||
| I mean, Joe, he's killing me. | ||
| And I said, I said, Mr. Taylor, you also call me Rip. | ||
| He goes, oh, yeah. | ||
| He said, is that all you like? | ||
| So I said, would you talk to my mother? | ||
| So they bring her phone out to the pool. | ||
| No way. | ||
| And he goes, hello, Gene, it's Rip Taylor. | ||
| And you hear her, ah! | ||
| So he's so nice to her, right? | ||
| And then he gives me the phone. | ||
| She goes, I told you he was funny, you idiot. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ah! | |
| I ended up doing Hollywood Squares with him. | ||
| Got to be friends with him. | ||
| Good guy. | ||
| And he made me laugh. | ||
| He was funny. | ||
| He was a hilarious guy. | ||
| Well, the Hollywood Squares, he took over that show. | ||
| If you saw Hollywood Squares and Rip Taylor wasn't on, you're like, what the fuck is this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where is he? | |
| He's the funny one. | ||
| He's the guy you want to hear talk. | ||
| Yeah, Donovan told me to record all my sets, and he explained to you the fuck meter, too. | ||
| Oh! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh! | |
| That was something that young comics to this day don't understand. | ||
| First time I ever heard that. | ||
| He goes, well, you broke the fuck meter. | ||
| I go, what? | ||
| And I didn't even realize I was doing it. | ||
| And now when I'm working with guys that I like, I say, you know what, listen, you don't need the fuck there. | ||
| Drop the fuck there. | ||
| You don't need that. | ||
| The joke's fine without it. | ||
| And I go, don't do what I do. | ||
| But you can do it when it's necessary, and when it's necessary, it'll mean more if you don't have ten other unusual or unnecessary fucks. | ||
| And with Mike, he tends to use it where he wants to use it. | ||
| He worries about the guys on in front of him. | ||
| He goes, I don't want you doing it just for the sake of doing it. | ||
| Mike's a great guy, and he still tapes every show. | ||
| Well, he's a great comic, and he's just very aware that the audience can get numb to that word, where it doesn't mean anything. | ||
| Where you don't hear it until he goes up, and then when he goes up, you only hear it when it's necessary. | ||
| It's a presentation issue. | ||
| Because if there's a guy in front of you... | ||
| Some comics would use the word fuck the same way they use the word um. | ||
| They're like, that fucking guy with the fucking thing with the fucking... | ||
| He's got his fucking hat on and his fucking shoes are tied and his fucking... | ||
| By the time you say... | ||
| And I'm like, fuck you! | ||
| It doesn't mean anything. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I used to open for Leno and he would say to me, you know, you're really funny but you don't have to be that filthy. | ||
| You don't have to... | ||
| Yeah, but I feel like I'm selling out. | ||
| Yes, you're not selling out. | ||
| You're cashing in. | ||
| And my mother always just said, you can get more work. | ||
| And then I started doing corporate gigs. | ||
| And people said, listen, Lenny, we don't care if you're mildly amusing, as long as you don't say fuck or anything. | ||
| And I went, yeah. | ||
| And they fly in the jet. | ||
| They pay 20, 30 grand. | ||
| Did you sign some autographs? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, I mean... | ||
| So you did sell off. | ||
| Those are tempting. | ||
| That's the siren song, those corporate gigs. | ||
| I remember that's where Jay made most of his money. | ||
| I mean, he would make hundreds of thousands of dollars. | ||
| Well, he needs it. | ||
| Well, that's what he says. | ||
| He never spent his Tonight Show money. | ||
| He never spent any money! | ||
| All of his money went to Cars, and all that money came from gigs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And he never put out a special. | ||
| He had one special on Showtime way back in the day. | ||
| In Philly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| In Philly, I remember that. | ||
| It was a good special, and I talked to him about it. | ||
| He goes, why would I do that? | ||
| He goes, I put on my act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He goes, even if they give me a million dollars, that's going to cost me money. | |
| But his whole thing was he didn't want to do it because that material was gone once he did it. | ||
| But he would go to these places and do the same act two years later, and people would be like, what the fuck? | ||
| But he just had this polished... | ||
| People would say to me, hey man, I really don't care for him. | ||
| I said, listen to me. | ||
| I used to open for him, and one night I was at Nick's, and I was supposed to do 20 minutes, and whenever I was opening for something, I'd do my time and get off. | ||
| That's just respect. | ||
| And he came in and he goes, oh. | ||
| I said, okay. | ||
| So the crowd liked me anyway. | ||
| And so now I do about 45. And I'm standing up. | ||
| Crowd's going crazy. | ||
| And I'm walking off. | ||
| In my mind, I'm going, follow that fucker. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| He gets on stage. | ||
| Within two minutes, it was like, Lenny who? | ||
| He was that good. | ||
| He was the Springsteen of comedy. | ||
| He was amazing. | ||
| People don't know. | ||
| They don't know. | ||
| Because when he used to go on Letterman, back when he was young, he had the crazy dark hair. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| He was the edgy comic, which is hard for young guys to wrap their head around. | ||
| Joe, he would do a two-hour show, and it wasn't too much. | ||
| It was killer. | ||
| Yeah, he's extremely underrated as a comic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I agree. | |
| And I think it's unfortunate that he doesn't have a great body of work, other than Tonight Show monologues. | ||
| People think of him as the guy with Tonight Show monologues. | ||
| He's a great stand-up guy. | ||
| Yeah, he is. | ||
| And anyone... | ||
| That I see that is really terrific. | ||
| I give it up. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| You make me laugh. | ||
| I like it. | ||
| If you're successful, I'm not getting it. | ||
| It's good for you. | ||
| I don't belittle anybody for their success. | ||
| I'm the same way. | ||
| But if you make me laugh, then I... I'll pay to go see it if you make me laugh. | ||
| It's a waste of time to worry about something you don't like because obviously other people like it. | ||
| What do you give a shit? | ||
| I feel the same way about music. | ||
| There's a lot of music I don't like. | ||
| They sell millions of albums. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| There's no room. | ||
| I just want to laugh. | ||
| If you can make me laugh. | ||
| That's why some of the people I hang around with just go out to dinner. | ||
| Everyone puts their cell phones on the table. | ||
| Off. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| That's nice. | ||
| All you need is something that would take you down. | ||
| So many people were fucking interested in just looking at their phone all day. | ||
| Now, if I wasn't as old as I am, if I was a young kid coming out now, I'd be an animal, because I wouldn't care. | ||
| Oh, you can't say that? | ||
| Well, let me tell you this right now! | ||
| And the thing was, you know, when I started, people would say, oh my god, what a funny take on that. | ||
| It wasn't a funny take. | ||
| It was what I actually thought. | ||
| But rather than, you know, pop their balloon and they know I'm crazy, I just, oh yeah. | ||
| I've never thought I was funnier than anybody. | ||
| I just know that I'm sick. | ||
| And I just use that under the guise of humor. | ||
| It works. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| You know it works. | ||
| Well, we were very lucky that in those days in Boston, I started in 88, but in those days, there was... | ||
| Remember in Warrington Street, you had the comedy at the Charles, up the theater, above. | ||
| Downstairs was the connection. | ||
| Over here was Nick's. | ||
| And over there was Duck Soup. | ||
| It was fucking crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was crazy. | |
| Oh my God. | ||
| He opened one club. | ||
| What was that club in the... | ||
| Oh, that was at the Hotel Bradford. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What was in the basement? | ||
| The Jokers. | ||
| Okay, this place would hold over 350 people. | ||
| Oh, it was a beautiful room. | ||
| And one night, I had Mike Binder come on. | ||
| You know Mike? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| And Mike Binder, I said... | ||
| He's doing a documentary right now in the store. | ||
| I said, do some time. | ||
| I'm in the back, backstage, doing lines. | ||
| And he brought the entire audience up on stage. | ||
| Through the dressing room. | ||
| Through the dressing room. | ||
| And this is how the comedians are hot at work while the other comedians are on. | ||
| I'm chopping. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| I used to do blow on stage and people go, relax, relax. | ||
| It's just stunt coke. | ||
| It's not real. | ||
| There's no other place like that. | ||
| Like the scene in New York was very different. | ||
| The scene in New York, they never did the hosting thing the way they did it in Boston. | ||
| There wasn't as many clubs that were like close together. | ||
| And they would talk to the crowd. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There were no jokes. | ||
| Where are you from? | ||
| Well, back then there was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's a little different now. | ||
| Now there's a lot of jokes, but I think I attribute that to the size of the rooms. | ||
| In New York, you're on top of people. | ||
| That's the first thing I noticed when I moved to New York. | ||
| I was like, God, a fucking audience is... | ||
| It literally would be like, I would be standing on stage and you would be the front row. | ||
| Everyone's so close. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Because there's no space. | ||
| The old Catch a Rising Star. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Dangerfield. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're on stand-up New York. | ||
| Stand-up New York. | ||
| They're on top of you. | ||
| I used to go down, I'd take the train down, and stand in line, wait for a number to go on and catch. | ||
| And they'd put me on last, because I was from Boston. | ||
| And I'd burn it down. | ||
| And they'd go, hey man, here's your $10. | ||
| I'd give it to the bartender. | ||
| And I'd get on the night out and go back. | ||
| And I did that for years. | ||
| And finally, Belzer was good to me, and even Piscopo gave me a break, and some other guys. | ||
| But Mike said, what are you going to New York for? | ||
| I said, we'll do it here. | ||
| Why go to New York? | ||
| Let's have them come to us. | ||
| And the thing all was just like an explosion. | ||
| Yeah, there was no place like that scene. | ||
| And I feel so lucky that I started stand-up in 88 in Boston. | ||
| I feel like I just caught this wave. | ||
| Oh yeah, it was a wave. | ||
| When did you leave, Joe? | ||
| 91, I think, or 92. Did you go to New York or L.A.? New York. | ||
| I got signed by Jeff Sussman. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's when I moved to New York. | ||
| I was driving limos. | ||
| Then when you went to L.A., what was the baseball show you got with Mike Starr? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And the funny thing about Mike Starr, I always wanted to work with him. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| He is a great guy. | ||
| He had a ton of incredible body of work. | ||
| So we do a movie together. | ||
| We do something up in Canada, and we get in a beef... | ||
| You and Mike Starr? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. | ||
| So I said, I don't know, he said something. | ||
| We were drinking, and we were drinking like Labatt's Black Ice. | ||
| You got the hangover before you got high. | ||
| It was that powerful shit, right? | ||
| And he said something, and he goes, hey, man, I waited 10 years to work with you, and you're being like a dick. | ||
| And he said something, and I leap over the table, fight broke out. | ||
| They had a bust. | ||
| Yeah, oh, yeah. | ||
| I was on him like a spider monkey. | ||
| I was on him. | ||
| He's a big guy. | ||
| What year is this? | ||
| I was like 350 at the time, so when I landed on him, he went down. | ||
| And they broke, they tore us out, and we're walking out, and he goes, you know, I'm very disappointed in you. | ||
| Disappoint me? | ||
| Fuck you, I'm disappointed. | ||
| I waited all this time to work with... | ||
| And we made up, but it was never the same. | ||
| What year was that? | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| A long, long time ago. | ||
| Probably 25 years ago, maybe? | ||
| 91, 92, maybe. | ||
| Oh, that was probably even before I met him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I worked with him in 94. Yeah. | ||
| I saw him last night on Dumb and Dumber. | ||
| Dumb and Dumber. | ||
| That's a great scene. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| He's great in that movie. | ||
| He is. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| Yeah, he is. | ||
| A nice guy. | ||
| You know, I was drinking. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| Shit happens. | ||
| Well, you know, it was per diem. | ||
| My first couple of movies, they get per diem. | ||
| I go, what's this? | ||
| They go, well, this is per diem money. | ||
| I go, what's it for? | ||
| Well, you know, to buy food. | ||
| Well, we get fed. | ||
| And we go, well, you know. | ||
| So I spent it. | ||
| I spent it. | ||
| I didn't know you could save it. | ||
| Like, spend it. | ||
| And I would be, oh, I was shit-faced. | ||
| I mean, it was crazy, you know? | ||
| But it was fun, you know? | ||
| You learn. | ||
| Yeah, you learn. | ||
| Yeah, so I moved to New York in, I think it was either 91 or 92, and then I moved out here in 94. So I wasn't in New York very long. | ||
| And then you got news radio? | ||
| Yeah, I got hardball, got canceled. | ||
| Hardball, that was it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, terrible show. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Was that Fox? | ||
| Yeah, it was Fox. | ||
| One of Fox's first shows. | ||
| I don't think so, no. | ||
| Married with Children and Simpsons, and there was a lot of shows on there. | ||
| They were doing sitcoms, though. | ||
| Yeah, it just wasn't very good. | ||
| It was a lot of problems. | ||
| It was also an interesting thing to see that the pilot was really funny. | ||
| Jim Brewer was in the pilot. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And the pilot was great, but the pilot was made by the creators of the show, and then once the network decided to pick it up, then they started bringing these network hacks to come in and turn it into some bullshit fucking show. | ||
| And it was terrible. | ||
| They rewrote scenes, and it was a disaster. | ||
| So I got to see... | ||
| Like, how really funny writers and really funny actors can put together a really funny pilot, and then that show could turn into dog shit because of network meddling and executive meddling. | ||
| And then to go from that to news radio, which was like the polar opposite. | ||
| That was just... | ||
| They didn't give Paul Sims much grief at all. | ||
| They let him do whatever the fuck he wanted because he was coming from the Larry Sanders show and they knew he was brilliant. | ||
| And then they had, you know, working with Mark Tierney, Phil Hartman, and Steven Rue. | ||
| And Steven Rue is an amazing guy. | ||
| Incredible. | ||
| It was the luckiest gig ever. | ||
| I couldn't believe it. | ||
| I've been working with those guys. | ||
| I never even took acting lessons. | ||
| I mean, I had a couple acting, they made me get a coach when I first got a development deal, and I think I took like four or five lessons with this lady. | ||
| So I hated it. | ||
| I had, they'd give me a deal, and they said, you gotta take acting lessons. | ||
| So I went to this acting class, and this woman goes, okay, I'm gonna be a tree, and I heard about that, right? | ||
| So what kind of tree? | ||
| And he says, oh, a big tree. | ||
| What kind of tree? | ||
| Is that a big willow? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I said, Will's not big, okay? | ||
| In this scene, we want everyone to crowd on like ants, we're all ants, ants. | ||
| And I go, all right, that's it. | ||
| I said, I'll see you later. | ||
| They go, what? | ||
| I go, I don't know why we're being ants, because what fucking movie am I going to be a giant ant? | ||
| That's not what I'm looking for. | ||
| And I left, and I got Lenny two days later, and everyone quit the class. | ||
| There were like 30 people in the class. | ||
| They all, Lenny got a series. | ||
| They all fucking quit. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| Well, the problem with acting classes is, I mean, it's good to practice, to learn how to read lines, but it's just pretending. | ||
| I'm not saying I'm Daniel Day-Lewis or I know how to do it like one of those guys. | ||
| That's a different level of acting. | ||
| But if you're on a sitcom, and if I'm on a sitcom, I'm playing a guy like me. | ||
| And it's just like stand-up but easier. | ||
| That's what it felt like to me. | ||
| Much easier. | ||
| People say, what was the difference? | ||
| I say, well, okay... | ||
| The difference between doing a sitcom, there's a camera. | ||
| And if something goes wrong, we take it again. | ||
| At a nightclub, people can throw bottles at you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And do. | |
| And do. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| When I opened for Aerosmith, they used to come and see me at Stitches all the time. | ||
| And I had no idea who they were. | ||
| And someone said, you know who that is? | ||
| I said, yeah, some Aerosmith. | ||
| One of the biggest rock bands in the world. | ||
| I was in the disco. | ||
| If you could dance, you could get laid. | ||
| I could dance. | ||
| It was unbelievable. | ||
| I was like Travolta. | ||
| It was fun. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| I want to see you dance. | ||
| I can still dance. | ||
| Even when I was a fat guy, I could dance. | ||
| I was like Gleason. | ||
| They come and they said, we want you to open for us. | ||
| I go, yeah, no problem. | ||
| So I go over to the Orpheum Theater. | ||
| This is one of their many comebacks. | ||
| They were still getting high, I think. | ||
| So I go in where the crowd is going in. | ||
| And they're saying, hey, man, I heard there's a comedian tonight. | ||
| We're going to fuck him up. | ||
| And I'm listening to this. | ||
| I'm going, hey, man, I'm the comedian to myself. | ||
| Some guys, Lenny, Lenny. | ||
| So they call me. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| I said, well, I'm going to you. | ||
| No, no, you go on the stage door. | ||
| I didn't even know they had a stage door. | ||
| So I go back and they're all... | ||
| I mean, it was fucking wild. | ||
| So I go on stage and they start booing right away. | ||
| And there's like runway lights. | ||
| Aerosmith had these incredible lights. | ||
| I couldn't see anything. | ||
| And this is... | ||
| They're throwing bottles. | ||
| And bottles are smashing all around me, right? | ||
| And I'm going, fuck you! | ||
| Now I'm dodging shit and I can't see it coming right out of this lesson. | ||
| So this kid throws a milk that hits me in the balls, drops me to my fucking knees. | ||
| A milk done? | ||
| A milk done! | ||
| The kid hit me right in the nuts! | ||
| And so Stephen Tyler has his body guy drag me through the curtain. | ||
| Because I'm right by the curtain. | ||
| I'm backing up. | ||
| I'm trying to get away. | ||
| How much do we say we got? | ||
| A couple of grand. | ||
| He goes, here it is. | ||
| Come back tomorrow night. | ||
| So I go, fuck. | ||
| So I go back the next night and I go, fuck the Rolling Stones! | ||
| It turned into like a rally. | ||
| You want to go to Japan with us? | ||
| I go, no. | ||
| So you had to figure a workaround. | ||
| Well, you learn... | ||
| I think if you're a good comic, you learn from your mistakes. | ||
| If you don't, you're not going to proceed. | ||
| And I did... | ||
| I had the pleasure of working with... | ||
| I worked with... | ||
| Who's Pretty Woman? | ||
| Richard Gere? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| The guy who sang Pretty Woman. | ||
| Oh, Roy Orbison? | ||
| Roy Orbison. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's how bad my mind is. | ||
| So I'm with Kenny. | ||
| We're up for about three days. | ||
| I gotta go to Worcester. | ||
| I'm hoping for Roy Orbison. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sorry. | |
| I'm almost out of gas. | ||
| I'm out of blow. | ||
| I'm exhausted. | ||
| I pull into this place, and I go up there, and there's this food, bigger than this whole table, all this food. | ||
| And I hadn't eaten in a day, so I just thought, I'm like a bear. | ||
| So now I fall asleep, right? | ||
| And I get a guy pushing me back and forth. | ||
| I wake up and he's all in black. | ||
| He's got those glasses and it's fucking Roy. | ||
| He says, you're the comedian? | ||
| I said, yeah. | ||
| He goes, they're bringing you on stage. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| I'll be right back. | ||
| So I do the show. | ||
| Great show. | ||
| I come back. | ||
| Roy says, you're a fantastic man. | ||
| You want to go on tour? | ||
| I said, I got to get some. | ||
| I got to get some blow? | ||
| I leave. | ||
| I drop from Worcester to the next. | ||
| And the next day I go, man, Roy Robinson asked me to go on a road with him, you know? | ||
| And I worked with Ray Childs. | ||
| You know, I worked with Ray Childs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wow. | |
| Yeah, and he was so good to me. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| He goes, Lenny, you're the funnest comedian I've never seen. | ||
| Then I went to Vegas. | ||
| Oh, he was great. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| The only person I ever opened for that I really hated was Juice Newton. | ||
| She was such a bitch to me, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, I was like a young guy, you know, and I was doing like the Cape Cod Melody Tent, you know. | ||
| She was like a country star, right? | ||
| She had one song. | ||
| She had one hit. | ||
| I don't even know what it was. | ||
| She was mean? | ||
| Yeah, she was mean. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| My buddy showed up. | ||
| My high school buddy, they climbed up and they took the Juice Newton off and they took the lettuce and put Lenny. | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
|
unidentified
|
She was pissed. | |
| Yeah, it didn't work out well. | ||
| Was that what she was pissed about? | ||
| No, she was just pissed. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe she didn't want a comedian. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I was excited about meeting her. | ||
| She's a star, Juice Newton. | ||
| I was playing with it. | ||
| Game of Hearts or some shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| She had one big hit. | ||
| I had a buddy of mine who was in love with her. | ||
| He had a Juice Newton poster on his wall. | ||
| Every time I go over his house, I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? | ||
| Tell him he wasted his time. | ||
| It was a long time ago. | ||
| I don't even know who that guy is anymore. | ||
| I don't even remember his name. | ||
| I think it was Mike. | ||
| You know who opens up for Metallica? | ||
| Brewer. | ||
| Everywhere. | ||
| He tours with him. | ||
| And apparently he's fucking sensational. | ||
| Because he's a big Metallica fan. | ||
| And he does a game show. | ||
| He's so good. | ||
| He might be one of the most underrated guys. | ||
| He's brilliant. | ||
| He's one of the most underrated guys ever. | ||
| He really is. | ||
| He's just so... | ||
| He doesn't give a fuck. | ||
| No, he doesn't. | ||
| He just wants to make a living, have a good time. | ||
| You know, he's not trying to get more famous than he already is. | ||
| But if you get a chance to see Jim Brewer, holy shit. | ||
| He took the wife and kids to Africa. | ||
| He was talking about the trip to Africa. | ||
| From Metallica? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| Just... | ||
| Well, I think they were there, but he flew the wife and kids over to go on a safari. | ||
| I was going to take my kids to Africa, but they were going to have to get malaria shots. | ||
| I was like, I don't want to do that. | ||
| Well, you know what? | ||
| I mean, not only that, but, you know, there's, like... | ||
| I don't mind the lions. | ||
| I don't think anybody's gonna fuck my kids. | ||
| No, but wait, wait, wait. | ||
| Let me finish. | ||
| You got a mosquito with AIDS, it bites you. | ||
| What happens? | ||
| I don't think that works. | ||
| You don't think that works? | ||
| I don't think it works that way. | ||
| Well, we gotta find out. | ||
| Yeah, but that was what everybody was worried about a long time ago. | ||
| So it's not just me. | ||
| But in the 80s, that was one of the big fears, was that mosquitoes, mosquitoes are going to give, you know, one guy would have HIV, he would get a mosquito bite, it would fly over to you, and they would give it to you. | ||
| But then it comes to like a sick monkey, a tree monkey, isn't that how the AIDS thing started? | ||
| There's a lot of confusion, but they think it was probably from a hunter who was hunting a monkey. | ||
| And fucked the monkey. | ||
| No, he didn't fuck the monkey. | ||
| Cut himself while he was cleaning the monkey. | ||
| Like, while he was gutting the monkey, because... | ||
| This is a very common thing. | ||
| It sounds disturbing, but what they call bushmeat. | ||
| And what bushmeat is, basically any kind of meat from any kind of thing that they shoot in the woods. | ||
| And they would shoot monkeys. | ||
| When I was a boy, bushmeat was a whole different thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a different thing. | |
| Yeah, I was around back in those days. | ||
| Back when there were bushes were real. | ||
| You call girls, you know, a bush. | ||
| People are like, what the fuck are you talking about? | ||
| No one has a bush anymore. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| That's porn. | ||
| Porn changed the game. | ||
| That's the biggest influence of pornography in American culture is not just that people watch it, but it changed the way people groom their pubic hairs. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I grow mine. | ||
| I shave all mine up because it makes me feel younger. | ||
| Good move. | ||
| Once they get gray, it's like, this is just depressing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then, you know, you start a little. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, look, I'm a kid again. | |
| Yeah, Bush. | ||
| But anyway, that's how AIDS, apparently, they think HIV spread from patient zero was a guy who cut himself while he was cleaning a monkey. | ||
| He was cutting up a monkey. | ||
| Well, see, this is an informative show. | ||
| I didn't know how that worked. | ||
| Yeah, I might be wrong about that, though. | ||
| Well, look, I was wrong about the mosquitoes. | ||
| Don't be hard on yourself. | ||
| I just don't think that it... | ||
| I don't think it's as transmittable as, like, say, malaria. | ||
| Well, say mosquitoes transmit malaria, yes. | ||
| Well, what's the difference between a good chunk of blood going into... | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I don't think it works the same way. | ||
| I just think it's more difficult to transmit, which is one of the reasons why men typically don't get it from sex. | ||
| They get it from needles. | ||
| You know, women get it from sex because a guy comes inside of you and, you know, that's how you get HIV. This is Medical Talk 101 on NPR. We appreciate your donations. | ||
| Without your donations, we can't operate. | ||
| Send us some, we'll give you a nice handbag. | ||
| To keep your bush clippings in. | ||
| Is Sweeney still doing radio? | ||
| Does he still do radio? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't ask him. | |
| He's not doing radio. | ||
| He does once a week, I think. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| He does a little internet thing. | ||
| He's not doing the... | ||
| He was on ZLX for a couple of years. | ||
| Yeah, he was making some good money, too. | ||
| Is there radio in Boston anymore? | ||
| Well, there's Kiss. | ||
| There's still Kiss. | ||
| Mark Parenteau was the pioneer with the 505 Comedy Hour. | ||
| That really helped boost comedy in the 80s. | ||
| He was a big proponent. | ||
| He helped me an awful lot. | ||
| I remember one night he came in and he said, Got to make the move. | ||
| I'm like, hey, man. | ||
| I don't want to smack you around, but this ain't going to work. | ||
| He said, why don't you come on my show? | ||
| I said, I don't know how to do radio. | ||
| He said, look, you're the best comedian. | ||
| I'm the best DJ to work. | ||
| I tried it. | ||
| We were selling out theaters. | ||
| I mean, it was just incredible. | ||
| Every time we'd go on a show, we'd promote it. | ||
| It was incredible. | ||
| Yeah, he was huge. | ||
| And I really appreciated his help. | ||
| Is he still around? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No. | ||
| He unfortunately passed a couple of years ago. | ||
| I went to see him two weeks before he died. | ||
| This is Mark's in the Mass General. | ||
| So I went in and he started laughing and then nearly choking. | ||
| I said, man, what's going on? | ||
| And he says, oh, you know, it's not good. | ||
| He only got a couple of days. | ||
| I said, is it AIDS? He said, no. | ||
| I said, so I kissed him on the forehead. | ||
| He goes, yes! | ||
| I love you, but I got shit to do. | ||
| I thought it was from mosquitoes. | ||
| I can't be taking a shot. | ||
| What did he get? | ||
| What happened? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I guess a lot of things went bad. | ||
| Is Matty in the morning still around? | ||
| He's still huge. | ||
| He's still number one. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| He was huge back when I was delivering newspapers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Joe, he's going to be on the air almost 40 years now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And he had a TV show before the radio gig. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Which you did. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a good guy. | |
| Yeah, I did that show. | ||
| Always a good guy. | ||
| I did that show... | ||
| Well, he crossed me once. | ||
| He crossed you? | ||
| Yeah, and I flipped out. | ||
| I threatened to fight him, so I went on the sports channel and I said, I will drop 100 pounds and fight Matty Siegel for children's cancer. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Barry and Elliot said, we'll put the chairs. | ||
| We'll donate the chairs. | ||
| We'll put lounge chairs in the ring. | ||
| And then someone donated the venue. | ||
| And then it got really crazy. | ||
| And then Matty said, listen, I'm sorry. | ||
| We were doing an event that his mother passed away from. | ||
| And I said, all right, I'm sorry. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| So we're back to being friends because we've been friends a long time. | ||
| But then, you know, I mean, sometimes people, you know, You know what? | ||
| One thing about you that I've always admired... | ||
| See, because I liked you before. | ||
| I even knew you were a badass. | ||
| I just thought you were nuts. | ||
| I didn't know you were, you know, a stone-cold killer. | ||
| But the point is, you have such a way, and other friends of mine that are just really, you know, dangerous people... | ||
| Very, very calm. | ||
| Even when people push you to the limit, which is good. | ||
| I wish I did that because I've been sued a few times. | ||
| Have you? | ||
| I've learned to keep my hands to myself. | ||
| You got to. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| But I always admire that. | ||
| There was an NBA player that I wanted to come for the Celtics, Howard. | ||
| I think he's been... | ||
| Charlotte now. | ||
| And I'd see guys slam him and he'd just turn and look, you know? | ||
| And like Logan Mankins for the Patriots. | ||
| People would smack him in the back and he'd turn around and just give that look. | ||
| I always admired people that could control the madness, you know what I mean? | ||
| You don't want to let the genie out of the bottle. | ||
| No. | ||
| Because that's when, you know, people die. | ||
| People go to jail. | ||
| You make horrible decisions when you're in a rage. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Also, if something does happen, you've got to be able to stay calm while it's happening. | ||
| Then you see where the shots are. | ||
| When people get frantic, the adrenaline starts pumping, you start hyperventilating and freaking out. | ||
| You don't see things. | ||
| You can't see things that are happening. | ||
| It's how people get hurt. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You learn how to do that in competition. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Competition, you can never freak out. | ||
| You never can be emotional. | ||
| If you're emotional, you lose all track of what's happening. | ||
| You lose your breath. | ||
| You get tired quick. | ||
| You get that big adrenaline dump. | ||
| I have much respect for people like MMA and martial arts and all that. | ||
| I remember in college, my freshman year of college, a buddy of mine who was a fighter, Jimmy Fowl, great fighter, Golden Gloves champion. | ||
| He said, Lenny, I think you could be a good fighter. | ||
| So he took me to this gym in Springfield and I fought this Nigerian. | ||
| He was my Nigerian nightmare. | ||
| He'd only been here like a week. | ||
| I was like 220, he was like 235, you know. | ||
| We couldn't even barely speak English. | ||
| And we got in the ring. | ||
| And for the first 30 seconds, I was awesome. | ||
| And he hit me with a shot that put me airborne. | ||
| I mean, I was out cold before I hit the mat. | ||
| And I woke up and he was staring down at me. | ||
| Please don't get up, man. | ||
| Please don't get up. | ||
| I said, no problem. | ||
| And I realized that wasn't going to work for me, you know? | ||
| I mean, I've never lost a power room fight, but probably out of fear. | ||
| And just, you know, the fight or flight, you know, I wanted both. | ||
| They'd both kick in. | ||
| Let's fight and get out of here as fast as we can. | ||
| It's always a bad idea. | ||
| But the thing about bar fights, too, is, like, you're not fighting one person. | ||
| No. | ||
| There's other dudes around you. | ||
| You can't see them. | ||
| There's people that hear about it on the phone. | ||
| They come over. | ||
| There's girlfriends. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hitting you with bottles. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, weren't you a bouncer at Great Woods, Joe? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Mansfield. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I was one of the security people. | ||
| And I quit during a Neil Young concert. | ||
| Because Neil Young, one of the things that we would do is we would catch people bringing in booze, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We'd always have to check people's bags when they were coming in. | ||
| But the other thing that we do is we try to keep order in the lawn. | ||
| You know how Great Woods has that lawn area? | ||
| Well, one day, during a Neil Young concert, they started having bonfires in the lawn. | ||
| So in the middle of the fucking concert, people were lighting fires, and we had to tell these people to put the fires out. | ||
| And I remember I had a good friend, his name was Larry Jones. | ||
| The whole staff of employees was like, there was a few guys, there was a guy named Alley Cat who ran the show. | ||
| He always wanted to open up a place called Alley Cat's Libations and Victuals. | ||
| I've always remembered that. | ||
| He wanted to open up a bar. | ||
| That was his dream. | ||
| I remember him. | ||
| The first time I met Alley Cat, some guy had stolen one of the golf carts. | ||
| They had a security golf cart. | ||
| Some drunk kid stole the golf cart, and they beat the fuck out of him with walkie-talkies. | ||
| I'll never forget that. | ||
| I was like, Jesus, these guys aren't playing. | ||
| And, you know, I might have been getting like 20 bucks an hour. | ||
| I don't remember what the fuck it was. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But I remember thinking, Jesus, I don't want to get in actual fights here. | ||
| Because I was competing at the time, too. | ||
| I was 19 years old, so that was when I won the U.S. Open, and I was in the height of my competition days. | ||
| And this fight broke out on this lawn, and they were all Taekwondo black belts, all either national champions or state champions. | ||
| There was like five or six of us out there. | ||
| And my friend Larry, who's like the nicest guy in the world... | ||
| He was in some sort of altercation with this guy, and I see him slam this guy in the stomach and drop him. | ||
| I'm like, fuck, if Larry's punching people, this is bad. | ||
| So I'd always brought a hoodie with me, because I was a coward. | ||
| And as soon as the fights break out, I would put a hoodie on over my security jacket and zip it up, and I'm like, fuck you. | ||
| I'm not fighting for $20 an hour. | ||
| You're out of your fucking house. | ||
| So I put my hoodie on and I quit. | ||
| I walked right out the fucking door with everybody else. | ||
| I didn't collect my check that week. | ||
| I was like, you can keep it. | ||
| I'm not dying. | ||
| Brawls were breaking out. | ||
| People were kicking people's asses and hitting people with shit. | ||
| There was fire everywhere. | ||
| And my preservation instinct kicked in. | ||
| I was like, there's no fucking way. | ||
| No way I'm getting involved in this. | ||
| That was my last day on the job. | ||
| Did you ever work there? | ||
| I mean, perform there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I never performed there. | ||
| I never performed there, but I got to see a lot of guys. | ||
| I got to see Cosby perform there. | ||
| I saw Kinnison. | ||
| Kinnison there. | ||
| I saw Rodney. | ||
| This was in the Rodney bathrobe days. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So Rodney was backstage, and one of the guys who I worked with saw his hog. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| He would be fucking full naked underneath his bathrobe, and he had a giant dick, and his dick was hanging out. | ||
| I've spent hours with Rodney. | ||
| We shot this movie out here. | ||
| Meet Wally Sparks. | ||
| Meet Wally Sparks. | ||
| And he says, come on kid, let's go get aight. | ||
| So we're in this trailer. | ||
| We're smoking dope. | ||
| And he starts taking his clothes off. | ||
| He takes the robe off. | ||
| And now he's sitting there with just his dick. | ||
| And I go, Jesus, come on. | ||
| He goes, what? | ||
| You've never seen a man's dick before? | ||
| I go, well, not, not, not, no. | ||
| He's so relaxed. | ||
| I go, well, put... | ||
| Put something over here. | ||
| He gets a faith call. | ||
| Hey, you happy now? | ||
| He says, listen, I want you to be careful with this dope. | ||
| I said, Rodney, I've been smoking 30 years. | ||
| I'm fine. | ||
| I'm telling you, Indians bring this in in canoes. | ||
| I leave the set and I'm out past Calabasas. | ||
| I live in the marina and I go, where the How'd you do it? | ||
| I got lost. | ||
| He goes, I tried to tell you. | ||
| Well, back then they had like California weed today is preposterous. | ||
| I mean, it's so strong that some people are having psychotic breaks and people have breakdowns and losing their mind and going into mental institutions. | ||
| It's like 40 times stronger than what And I smoked every day. | ||
| I used to smoke and work out. | ||
| I'd smoke. | ||
| I'd ride the bike. | ||
| I'd smoke. | ||
| I'd swim. | ||
| I loved to smoke. | ||
| I thought I was more creative when I was smoking. | ||
| You know, it's just like Colin's old line. | ||
| Oh, man, I got writer's block. | ||
| Oh, I'm okay. | ||
| It was just, I mean, now they tell me it's, and now it's legal! | ||
| When I did it, you had to hide it, you had to worry about it. | ||
| Now it's everyone. | ||
| What's interesting is my wife's friends openly smoke pot now. | ||
| Whereas when I was younger, if people found out you smoked pot, they would look at you like you're some sort of derelict, like you were doing heroin. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're a stoner. | |
| Yeah, like you were a loser. | ||
| Even if you were successful, even if you were working every day, even if you showed up on time, if you were a pot smoker, you were some sort of a loser. | ||
| Robert Mitchum, that was his big downfall. | ||
| He smoked up. | ||
| Robert Mitchell? | ||
| Robert Mitchell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yes! | ||
| And I met him. | ||
| I met him before he died. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| His downfall was pot? | ||
| Well, there was a period where, oh, he's a dope smoker. | ||
| Oh, dope smoker. | ||
| People said, don't smoke dope. | ||
| It's a gateway drug. | ||
| I go, you don't know what you're talking about. | ||
| Once again, I was wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, everything's a gateway drug if you really want it to be. | |
| But Rodney, those days of the bathrobe days were his best days. | ||
| It's the full-on, I don't give a fuck days. | ||
| He didn't give a fuck. | ||
| Rodney gave Lenny one of his first big national breaks on the HBO special. | ||
| Who was on your special with you, Lenny? | ||
| Schimmel, Hicks, Dice, Dom Herrera, Carol Leifer. | ||
| Barry Sobel. | ||
| Barry Sobel. | ||
| To this day, one of the best specials ever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was nuts, you know, because we were out here, and Rodney was auditioning everybody for it, and Mike said, go ask him. | ||
| So I said, hey, Rodney, I said, we... | ||
| You take a look at me. | ||
| He says, kid, have you seen people with three? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| And he walked away and he turned and said, hey, if you could be in New York next week, I'll take a look at you. | ||
| Mike says, we'll be there. | ||
| So we flew back to Boston. | ||
| We took the train down and Mike says, you have any idea what you're going to do? | ||
| I go, nah. | ||
| So I go into the bar and there's Bill Hicks sitting at the bar. | ||
| And I said, hey man, nice to meet you. | ||
| I said, I guess it's me and you up for the best spot, you know, last spot. | ||
| I said, May the best man win. | ||
| We'll have a drink afterwards. | ||
| He goes, I'm drinking now. | ||
| And I goes, wrong fucking answer. | ||
| I went out. | ||
| I punched the fucking phone booth. | ||
| This was long ago. | ||
| I was so pissed. | ||
| And Rodney goes, who wants to go first? | ||
| I do. | ||
| So I went on and I fucking burnt it down. | ||
| Rodney goes, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Now you're on the show. | ||
| Now I said, it's not my problem. | ||
| And Rodney's in the bathrobe, of course. | ||
| So we've got to be good friends. | ||
| One night we left there and we went up to the tavern on the green, okay? | ||
| And he's in the road. | ||
| He's in the bathrobe. | ||
| We're doing blow, drinking, smoking. | ||
| And we go up. | ||
| The doormaker goes, oh, not tonight, Rodney. | ||
| We've got some nice people in there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We go, fuck you, nice people. | |
| I got you the job, you cocksucker. | ||
| I'll fucking call you. | ||
| I'll come home. | ||
| Fuck you. | ||
| Come on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go. | |
| So you saw Hicks when he was in his drinking stage. | ||
| I only saw him after drinking. | ||
| I saw him post-drinking. | ||
| I saw him at Nick's. | ||
| Well, the first time I saw him, I saw him at The Connection. | ||
| I saw him at Nick's and I saw him at The Connection. | ||
| Those are the two places. | ||
| We became friends after that, but I was trying to be a good guy. | ||
| Sometimes it's the competitive juices or pre-com. | ||
| I'm not sure what it is. | ||
| It comes out of here. | ||
| Well, one of the things that comics of today talk about is how it is a different thing in the community now. | ||
| The comics community is very supportive. | ||
| There's no competitiveness anymore. | ||
| It's not the same. | ||
| Because it's not like everybody's up for a limited amount of slots on an HBO Young Comedian special. | ||
| Or Carson. | ||
| Or Carson. | ||
| There's none of that. | ||
| In fact, everybody helps everybody because everybody does everybody's podcast. | ||
| Everybody supports everybody. | ||
| We work together on the road together. | ||
| It's a different vibe. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| When I was coming up, it was like that. | ||
| It was all cat and dog. | ||
| And everybody wanted everybody to bomb after him. | ||
| I always felt, I said, look, if one of us makes it, we kick the door down for everyone else. | ||
| But people were making it ahead of me, and they were slamming that door shut. | ||
| I'm going, hey, that's me! | ||
| Open up, you fuck! | ||
| You better sleep with what I open, you fuckers! | ||
| I'm not going away! | ||
| And that's why I had to go from L.A. I'd come out here and make no money. | ||
| And Mitzi would go, you'd be funny if you wore a red tie. | ||
| I'd go, okay, I'll get a red tie. | ||
| Oh, that's so much better. | ||
| And Mitzi was great to me. | ||
| I mean, when I broke through... | ||
| That's her right there. | ||
| Oh, I know. | ||
| I love Mitzi. | ||
| She said to me... | ||
| You're like Leno. | ||
| Joke, joke, joke. | ||
| I go, isn't that what it's supposed to be? | ||
| What did she think it should be? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I really don't. | ||
| But she said, you're not going to go away. | ||
| I said, no, I'm not going away. | ||
| Okay, you're a regular. | ||
| I said, what's that mean? | ||
| They got like $25 now. | ||
| I don't want to pay for my parking, you know? | ||
| So I flew back and forth from Boston, and they had me working everywhere, and I'd make enough money to live out here. | ||
| And I did every weekend for 18 months. | ||
| But it was so smart that you did that because you were one of the few guys that left Boston... | ||
| Right. | ||
| All these brilliant comedians like Rogerson and Sweeney and Gavin and Donovan and all these guys. | ||
| Tony V. There were guys that, you know, if they went to Boston and got on stage, they'd go... | ||
| Who are these guys? | ||
| They burn the room down every single time. | ||
| During the 80s and the early 90s, I saw some of the best stand-up I ever saw in my life. | ||
| Guys would murder. | ||
| It's hard to explain it to people. | ||
| You had to. | ||
| You had to. | ||
| Or you couldn't look the guys in the face. | ||
| Because Rodgers would go, wow, you really sucked. | ||
| Everyone was ruthless. | ||
| They were ruthless. | ||
| But the level of comedy was so high. | ||
| Yeah, like on a Saturday night, you could see Lenny, Sweeney, Gavin, Steve Wright, all on the same show. | ||
| Yeah, and it was crazy. | ||
| And then they would occasionally at Knicks, Knicks was the biggest culprit in this, where they would bring in some national guy. | ||
| Skippy. | ||
| Yeah, some fucking terrible guy who would sell some tickets, but then they would set him up. | ||
| And they'd have to follow these guys. | ||
| They would follow a fucking assassin group. | ||
| I mean, it was crazy. | ||
| It was a murderer's row of some of the best comics ever. | ||
| I remember Richard Lewis came, and I love Richard Lewis, and I think he's a great comic. | ||
| But he came in, and Gav goes, hey man, have you seen this Richard Lewis? | ||
| I said, no. | ||
| He goes, watch this special. | ||
| So I watched him, and I go, yeah. | ||
| It's going to be cannon fodder. | ||
| He goes, what? | ||
| I go, listen, I'm telling you, it's a lot different from filming and being on stage at Nick's. | ||
| So we came in. | ||
| It was me, Sweeney, and Gavin, and him. | ||
| And so we go on, and we burn it down, and he goes on. | ||
| And then he goes back to the Hotel 57 and turns on Channel 4 and sees Joyce Cohey work, butchering him in a review. | ||
| And he comes back, and he goes, I can't believe this is happening. | ||
| I go, hey, man, listen, you're a great guy. | ||
| Open. | ||
| Open. | ||
| I said, we'll take care of it. | ||
| He goes, really? | ||
| I said, yeah. | ||
| Don't blow him. | ||
| Throw him shit out the windows. | ||
| He goes, you guys are insane. | ||
| And six months later, I do my first movie, The Wrong Guys, with him. | ||
| And he says, I'll never forget what you did in Boston for me. | ||
| He was so nice to me. | ||
| And I was a wreck because I didn't do movies. | ||
| Well, it's a terrible position for a comic like him to be because he wasn't that kind of comic. | ||
| He was like a guy who would pontificate and he had these long pauses. | ||
| And stories. | ||
| Yeah, stories. | ||
| And funny. | ||
| But these people don't. | ||
| We don't want fun. | ||
| Joe, make us laugh! | ||
| Go, go, go! | ||
| It had to be set up right. | ||
| If he had a low-key opener, he would be fine. | ||
| Which I bet he got most of the time on the road. | ||
| And not crazy filthy guys. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| Shut up, Sully! | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| I'll come down here with a fucking stab! | ||
| I'm sorry! | ||
| Well, you know, it was a very unusual group of guys in Boston, too, because they were all giant dudes. | ||
| Like, between you and Gavin and Sweeney and Knox, they're big men, you know? | ||
| These are big, intimidating men who are doing stand-up. | ||
| Do you remember... | ||
| The doorman, Billy. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He nearly killed me one night, right? | ||
| The doorman at Nick's. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| So these kids come in and go, hey man. | ||
| He goes, we're sold out. | ||
| He gets $200. | ||
| He goes, come with me. | ||
| He walks down to the front row, takes four kids from Charlestown. | ||
| Screw! | ||
| Get out! | ||
| And puts those guys down. | ||
| He goes, Come back next week. | ||
| I mean, that's how it was. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| It was insane. | ||
| You had to keep your head down. | ||
| When you're a young comic, keep your mouth shut, keep your head down, and don't get on anybody's bad side. | ||
| They told me. | ||
| I was doing The Connection, and Upstairs was a show with, I don't know, trans... | ||
| Transvestites. | ||
| People dressed up like, guys dressed up like women before there was titles. | ||
| Like a drag queen show. | ||
| Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So I go, and there was no heat. | ||
| And all the heat was in the middle room at The Connection. | ||
| I go, look at these poor bastards going up there to see some guys that go sing and dance in a dress, freezing their ass off, right? | ||
| Halftime, break before the next show, and Billy comes storming in the back room at The Connection. | ||
| He goes, who's Lenny Clark? | ||
| And Steve Wright goes, I am. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He looks at Wright like, what am I going to do with this? | |
| I go, I am. | ||
| And they take me down to Knicks, and they take me down to Southern. | ||
| They go, you know that fucking show you're making? | ||
| That vague show you made fun of? | ||
| We're producing that. | ||
| You ever say that again, they'll find you dead in the fucking river. | ||
| Do you understand? | ||
| Yes, I do. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| So then I had to go do another show. | ||
| They were stone cold killers. | ||
| He was friends with my buddy Joe Lake, who was my boxing coach. | ||
| And I brought Joe Lake to the show and they were buddies together and Joe Lake was a savage. | ||
| And I'm like, he's friends with this guy. | ||
| These are a group of fucking animals. | ||
| He's in jail. | ||
| He was. | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Sorry, Billy. | ||
| Maybe he doesn't have a radio. | ||
| Maybe he doesn't have a TV. I'm sure he was innocent. | ||
| If it ever happened, he probably had a bad attorney. | ||
| Yeah, it was a bunch of animals then. | ||
| And people were literally getting paid in Coke. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| My first gig down in Florida, I did a place in Sarasota, and it was a great weekend. | ||
| The guy goes, Lenny, so it's the end of the week, two grand. | ||
| He goes, how do you want it? | ||
| You want it in cash or Coke? | ||
| And I went, Yeah, it was nuts. | ||
| Then I got whacked out and went to Tampa to see Jackie the Joke, man. | ||
| Because I had met him. | ||
| And he goes, how did you get here? | ||
| I go, I really don't know. | ||
| It was like, I was so fucked up back then. | ||
| It was like time travel. | ||
| You know, you could give me blow and booze in a car and I could end up from Sarasota to Tampa. | ||
| You look at that on a map, that's not an easy gig. | ||
| That's not an easy trip. | ||
| And I would just show up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ta-da-da! | |
| And there was no GPS. It was like a fucking Holman pigeon, you know? | ||
| What are you doing here? | ||
| I goes, I got blow. | ||
| Come on in! | ||
| And he just figured out how to get there. | ||
| Oh, God Christ. | ||
| I remember we used to call, when you get a gig back in the day, and some of them would be in New Hampshire in some weird fucking lodge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did the lodge. | |
| I had the lodge in Salem, New Hampshire. | ||
| Ironically. | ||
| I said, I'm doing the lodge one night. | ||
| And there's strippers, male strippers. | ||
| A kid I went to high school, it's a male stripper. | ||
| And I said, I'm emceeing, you know, and I got to do comedy in between. | ||
| So I go, Kathy, is there Kathy O'Malley here? | ||
| Your kid fell down and hurt his head. | ||
| Fuck you! | ||
| Show us your car! | ||
| At the lodge! | ||
| Oh, man! | ||
| Well, you'd get the directions. | ||
| You'd have to write them down on a legal pad. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Just write down. | ||
| Take a ride at the fork, and then you go two miles to this road. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| It's in Salem. | ||
| You'll find it. | ||
| That's what they say. | ||
| So small. | ||
| Ask when you get there. | ||
| One night, he had me work in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. | ||
| Three gigs. | ||
| And I go, that's a lot of fucking driving. | ||
| He says, you can do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Don't worry about it. | |
| I mean, I know how I did it without getting killed or killing someone. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
| Rhode Island was always fun. | ||
| When I first met Kennison out at the store, I said, oh, my God. | ||
| It was like a revelation. | ||
| I'd never seen anything. | ||
| And I've seen everybody. | ||
| And I said, this is... | ||
| So I call him, and I go, you've got to see this fucking guy. | ||
| He's nuts, man. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| He's like this preacher who does comedy that's insane. | ||
| And so we bring him to Boston. | ||
| And Nix is the first stop. | ||
| Fired. | ||
| I had to fire him after the first show. | ||
| Why? | ||
| He showed up all fucked up, and I got him some blow, and he went on stage, and he was doing new material. | ||
| And I said, Sam, is there any way you could do your HBO? He goes, no, bro. | ||
| That's been done. | ||
| That's been done. | ||
| And I go, well, I gotta let you go. | ||
| He goes... | ||
| I figured that. | ||
| Then I got him a gig at The Connection. | ||
| Then he got fired from there. | ||
| Then you had him a place in Malden. | ||
| He got fired. | ||
| Then he shows up at Stitches at my gig. | ||
| And he comes walking in. | ||
| And I go, oh, Sam, man, I can't lose this gig. | ||
| This is my big money gig. | ||
| And he goes, do you trust me? | ||
| Do you trust the beast? | ||
| Do you trust the beast? | ||
| Bring me on. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, you saw him on HBO, Saturday Night Live. | ||
| He's one of the best I've ever seen. | ||
| Pulled it out with half a bottle of my way. | ||
| Chugs it down, burps and says, someone's fucking me tonight. | ||
| And from then on, he just burnt the room down. | ||
| And by the end of the night, they had hired him to come back to do the back room at the Paradise. | ||
| And it was off and running. | ||
| But, oh my God. | ||
| This is like 86? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right after his special. | ||
| So, we're in New York and we're doing Caroline's. | ||
| And, I mean, everybody comes out to see the show. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| And they're going to do Rolling Stone. | ||
| He's on the cover of Rolling Stone. | ||
| And he's supposed to do the Today Show. | ||
| So he flies in every girl that's ever broke up with him and puts them all up in the same hotel in different floors. | ||
| I go, that's fucking genius! | ||
| Do you miss Daddy? | ||
| Do you miss Daddy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was fucking crazy! | |
| So... | ||
| And I told this story to more than a small group of people, but we're in the room, and I'm lying on this side of the bed. | ||
| Brother's Bill here. | ||
| His mom's there. | ||
| Sam's passed out in the chair. | ||
| We've been going for days. | ||
| And Sam's mother goes, Lenny, You gotta get Sam up. | ||
| He's gotta do a today show. | ||
| And I go, today show? | ||
| That's huge, man. | ||
| We can't blow this up. | ||
| And he was just at the point where he didn't care anymore. | ||
| So I said, Sam, Sam, get up. | ||
| Get up. | ||
| You gotta do this. | ||
| Your mother wants you to do it. | ||
| This is big for you. | ||
| It's great for your career. | ||
| And we turn on the TV, and he's putting on his fucking... | ||
| He's putting on his coat, and this challenger takes off. | ||
| And we also... | ||
| We watch... | ||
| He explodes. | ||
| He goes, I will this! | ||
| I fucking will this! | ||
| Now everyone, back to bed! | ||
| And his mother's just going, hold on. | ||
| And the phone rings. | ||
| This is today's show. | ||
| We won't be using Sam today. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I willed it. | ||
| I willed it because you didn't want to go on the Today Show. | ||
| Oh, that's hilarious. | ||
| So later, he goes, you know, it was a horrible thing to happen, you know, to lose all those assholes. | ||
| But, you know, I guess she was a teacher, you know, I forget her name. | ||
| And he goes, and the kids were in the classroom. | ||
| And they're all watching. | ||
| Anyone want some cookie? | ||
| There's cake. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's cake. | |
| Right after it! | ||
| But he was fearless. | ||
| I don't know if you know the story about him, but his brother Bill wrote that book, Brother Sam, and he talked about how Sam got hit by a car when he was a little kid. | ||
| He was a normal kid, and he gets this horrible head injury, and then all of a sudden was fearless. | ||
| Like, that happened to Roseanne, and that happened to him. | ||
| Same exact story. | ||
| Hit by a car, one personality changes 100%, becomes a totally different personality, and becomes this wild, reckless person. | ||
| How about both of them? | ||
| Listen, you know, all these documentaries about him and stuff, and I see people that were on the peripheral edges. | ||
| I mean, I was with him for a few years. | ||
| I mean, we're bringing him to Boston. | ||
| We brought him to Boston when he wasn't making a lot of money, and Mike paid him, and he loved it, and we became real good friends. | ||
| It was just a time in life that I never saw anything like that. | ||
| When he'd break into the preacher thing with his little feet dancing. | ||
| So, one night we were up. | ||
| He started canceling, missing gigs. | ||
| And he missed the University of Arizona and... | ||
| His manager goes, and he had a big-time manager, and they had just got him, you know, the cover of Rolling Stone and all that stuff, and he goes, Lenny, you've got to get him to the show tomorrow. | ||
| You're opening for him. | ||
| I said, okay. | ||
| So Sam goes, come on, we'll go back to the place, and we're doing massive amounts of blowing shit, and I'm going up to go to the bathroom, and I'm like, He never gets up to go to the bathroom. | ||
| We're in Tampa, and we're doing a show. | ||
| It was the year that Tampa lost every game, the professional football team. | ||
| And they came in, some big offensive linemen, biggest guys I've ever seen. | ||
| Can we meet Sam? | ||
| Sam, these guys want to meet you. | ||
| And one of them breaks a little blow, and Sam goes, blows away, and he goes, whoa! | ||
| Sam takes out a bag, puts it down. | ||
| You pussies! | ||
| And walks out. | ||
| And they look at him like, yeah, he's not human. | ||
| So we go back to his place. | ||
| And now it's 3 in the morning. | ||
| It's 4 in the morning. | ||
| We're supposed to take a 7 o'clock flight. | ||
| And he said, yeah, we're not going to make that flight. | ||
| It's 8 o'clock flight. | ||
| It's only an hour out of, you know, L.A. to Arizona there, right? | ||
| So 10 o'clock, the... | ||
| The manager shows up, and the woman goes, hey man, this is not good. | ||
| This is a makeup show. | ||
| You didn't show for this. | ||
| It's a makeup show. | ||
| It's sold out. | ||
| He goes, take Lenny, would you? | ||
| And I'll follow on. | ||
| So we're in the plane, and he says, how much time you got, Lenny? | ||
| I said, well, how much do you need? | ||
| He goes, well, you know, until he gets here. | ||
| So I go on. | ||
| I'm supposed to do 20. I'm at about 54. And I'm going, man, I'm running out. | ||
| And I'm holding him off. | ||
| Sam, Sam. | ||
| And I'm holding him off. | ||
| And I look over, and he's on an oxygen tank with a mask. | ||
| And it's the big coat. | ||
| He goes, premium. | ||
| The deadlift! | ||
|
unidentified
|
The deadlift! | |
| I bring him on and the place goes crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. | ||
| And afterwards, we go to some strip club, right? | ||
| And so we're in there and everyone's wild, man. | ||
| He's a big star, you know what I mean? | ||
| People can't believe it. | ||
| So we're sitting, all the strippers come over and he's throwing money around and someone throws a can of beer and he goes, that's it! | ||
| He goes, You girls want to make more money in a night than you make in a month? | ||
| Come with me! | ||
| And we go, about eight of them come, and we get in a limo, and we go back to the hotel. | ||
| And we're up to the hotel, we're doing lines of drinking, and he goes, Lenny, he goes, I know you're married. | ||
| He goes, but in about five minutes, things are going to change. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ha! | |
| He goes, you might want to go. | ||
| He says, because once you open this door, you'll never be able to close it again. | ||
| And I thought, alright brother, okay. | ||
| So I left and I went back to my room, got an extra cookie from the Doubletree room. | ||
| So the next morning, I get up and I go over to the room and I open it up and it's fucking destroyed and there's blood everywhere and there's people sitting around crying. | ||
| Where's Sam? | ||
| Oh, it was horrible! | ||
| Where's Sam? | ||
| I don't know! | ||
| Fuck this! | ||
| So I get a cab, I go to the airport, and I fly back. | ||
| And to this day, I never know what happened. | ||
| There was one guy, Magic. | ||
| If you ever listen to this magic, fine, because I want to know what, but it looked like... | ||
| Looked like a bomb when our shit was broken. | ||
| All of it. | ||
| I mean, like a trashed place, but like dangerously trashed and blood and still blow left. | ||
| I don't know what happened at night. | ||
| You know, Marc Maron was hanging out with him back in the day when Marc was a doorman at the comic store. | ||
| And he's a young kid. | ||
| He did so much coke with Kinison that he heard voices for a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| His head was broken. | ||
| He heard voices in his head for a fucking year, and that's when he sobered up. | ||
| He came to Boston right after that. | ||
| That's when I met him. | ||
| I met Maren in 88 when he just was trying to get his brain back online. | ||
| He was fried. | ||
| They cooked his brain. | ||
| They were just up for days. | ||
| Not many people could run with Sam. | ||
| We're in Boston, and we... | ||
| I think we do stitches and we close. | ||
| I said, come on, we'll go over to Lansdowne Street because a buddy of ours was running that. | ||
| So now we're drinking bottles of champagne like it's going on. | ||
| He goes, that's it, man. | ||
| It's enough. | ||
| We got to go. | ||
| So we leave. | ||
| And Sam goes, where are we going now? | ||
| I go, I don't know, man. | ||
| There's no bars open. | ||
| It's after two. | ||
| He goes, you got to know a place. | ||
| I go, most of the places I know, they're folded up. | ||
| They've been shut down. | ||
| He goes... | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
| He goes, the limo we had the other night had booze in it. | ||
| He goes, yeah, call the limo. | ||
| So they call the limo. | ||
| It comes fully stocked. | ||
| He goes, never underestimate my boo! | ||
| And we've been drinking it. | ||
| I said, how this shit happened to him? | ||
| It was insane. | ||
| Just not human. | ||
| He's a wild motherfucker, that's for sure. | ||
| He changed comedy. | ||
| He really did. | ||
| He changed what comedy was. | ||
| Before him, it was people telling jokes, but he was so outrageous. | ||
| And when he did that HBO special, that one that he did from the Roxy on Sunset... | ||
| I was there, yeah. | ||
| That fucking special changed comedy. | ||
| It changed people's ideas. | ||
| When he did that joke about the homosexual necrophiliac... | ||
| Laying down on the stage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wait, I... Oh, he's fucking in the ass! | |
| It never ends! | ||
| So, I'm at the store one night. | ||
| I go in. | ||
| And the cops, the cops love Sam. | ||
| And there was like about seven squad cars out in front of the comedy store. | ||
| I'm going, oh, Sam. | ||
| And they're all lined. | ||
| The steps and the wall, they're all watching. | ||
| And he's bombing. | ||
| You know, I mean... | ||
| And he goes... | ||
| Yeah, you people don't seem to like me. | ||
| I want you to do me a favor. | ||
| When you go home tonight, I want you to take a piece of paper, a napkin, something, anything, and I want you to write on it someone in your life that's past, you know, a brother, a sister, a mother, the sacred dead. | ||
| I want you to take that home. | ||
| And I want you to get home. | ||
| And I want you to wipe your fucking ass with your fucking chest out of flight. | ||
| So fucking funny. | ||
| And everywhere we went, he would leave like 20 or 30 tickets for the cops in that town, wherever we were. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| Yeah, the cops would always show up. | ||
| Oh, that's awesome. | ||
| So one night, we're up at Mitzi's, and he's up there jamming with Eric Clapton, Phil Collins. | ||
| I forget who the other guy was. | ||
| And they're on the port, and he's got the guitars. | ||
| And we're... | ||
| Rocking it out, right? | ||
| And I'm going, I can't play, but I'm going, this is insane. | ||
| And so the cops come, and he goes, Lenny, take care of it. | ||
| So I go up, and there's like three, four cars, the lights go, and I go, what's on it? | ||
| He said, hey, you got to cut it down. | ||
| I said, oh, man, you don't can't believe it. | ||
| Eric Clapton's on it with Phil Collins and Sam, and he goes, Sam, can we meet Sam? | ||
| So I go down, I go, Sam. | ||
| The cops said it's okay, but you've got to come up and take a picture with him. | ||
| And I said, Sam. | ||
| I said, see that? | ||
| They're closing it down. | ||
| So he goes up, and they have Polaroids. | ||
| That's when they had the Polaroid cameras. | ||
| And they took Polaroids. | ||
| I had me taking the Polaroids to Sam and the cops. | ||
| I'd love to see those pictures. | ||
| But you never know who was going to come over there. | ||
| You never know who was going to come over there. | ||
| It was just incredible. | ||
| He's the example that I always give to comics of a guy who was at one point in time... | ||
| One of the best ever. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| But then dropped off hard. | ||
| Like, he dropped off in a big way. | ||
| Just stopped riding, too much partying. | ||
| His brother talked about it in the book. | ||
| He just, it's what can happen. | ||
| Like, you can't, you gotta respect this fucking thing. | ||
| And he was just all about the ride. | ||
| And then, also, he became very, very famous. | ||
| Probably too famous. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Well, we were doing the Outlaws of Comedy at the Dunes. | ||
| That's how long ago. | ||
| The Dunes isn't even there now. | ||
| And he had driven out with Tamayo, Tamayo Asuki. | ||
| And I got a call early in the morning. | ||
| Lenny, Lenny, come quick. | ||
| Say I'm dead. | ||
| I go, what? | ||
| So I go over to Caesar's Palace. | ||
| And I can't wait. | ||
| I take the champagne thing, take it out, pour water on me. | ||
| And Tamayo pushes me out of the way. | ||
| And she goes, welcome to Japan, Mr. Bond. | ||
| Sam would ever say that every... | ||
| You would ever say that every morning? | ||
| Tamayo, I mean, she was so funny, man. | ||
| I really enjoyed her. | ||
| She was sweet. | ||
| I used to work with her at the store a lot. | ||
| I don't know if she's... | ||
| Is she still doing comedy? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I haven't seen her ever. | ||
| Oh, she came out. | ||
| You know, in your country, you say, I work miles to school in the snow. | ||
| In my country, you drop atomic bomb on us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
LAUGHTER Crazy shit. | |
| Yeah, funny, funny, funny stuff, man. | ||
| But he was... | ||
| Oh, first time I ever did ecstasy, they were closing the club that he started at in Austin, Texas. | ||
| He goes, we're all going. | ||
| Laugh stop. | ||
| Yeah, we're all going. | ||
| So he drove. | ||
| I think he drove. | ||
| I flew down. | ||
| I met him. | ||
| And someone comes in and says, hey, man, you got to try this. | ||
| He goes, what is ecstasy? | ||
| He goes... | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| Give me all you got. | ||
| How much is that? | ||
| Give me all you got. | ||
| So we go, we're all on X. I never did X. And we're sitting on a couch. | ||
| We're drinking. | ||
| And he starts to float away. | ||
| So I reach over. | ||
| And I bring him down. | ||
| And someone goes, what the fuck? | ||
| You queer touching Sam? | ||
| And Sam goes, thank you, Lenny. | ||
| Thank you for bringing me back. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was in my shitty apartment in New Rochelle, New York, when I was listening to MTV News. | ||
| And they told me that, you know, on the television, they told us that he died. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| They called me and said, Lenny Sam's dead. | ||
| And I said, have you seen the body? | ||
| Because I couldn't believe it. | ||
| Killed by a 19-year-old drunk driver. | ||
| Who was a fan of his. | ||
| I'd seen so much and did so much with him. | ||
| I didn't think he was capable of dying. | ||
| Oh, when he's going back to school. | ||
| He says, come on, we'll go to the set. | ||
| And we go and see Rodney's in the robe. | ||
| He goes, hey, Rodney, what's up, kids? | ||
| You want to be in the picture? | ||
| And I said, well, listen, Rodney, I appreciate it, but would you put my wife in the picture instead of me? | ||
| He goes, you're going to put your bride in the picture instead of you? | ||
| I said, I've been on the robe with Sam for the last month. | ||
| He goes, no problem, bitches in the picture. | ||
| So we put my first wife in back to school. | ||
| She's got a nice prominent role in that, man. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, crazy, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Goddamn. | |
| How the fuck did you come out of all that so healthy? | ||
| Like, you look great. | ||
| Thank you, thank you. | ||
| You really do. | ||
| You got my dreams, Jim, out there, brother. | ||
| That's fantastic. | ||
| But, you know, it's funny, because I listen to you about, you know, your workouts, like the hanging thing, where you just hang. | ||
| You know, people doing pull-ups and stuff. | ||
| Just hang. | ||
| It's great for your shoulders. | ||
| It's great for everything. | ||
| 30 seconds, get to a minute, stuff like that. | ||
| And when I... I did, I forget, I was doing a TV show and I saw myself, I was 388 pounds with a 56-inch waist. | ||
| And I had always been, you know me, when I first started, I was a thin kid and everything. | ||
| And I just, I was the only guy I know who did coke and had an eating disorder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| I would do a line and have a steak. | ||
| It was something about it. | ||
| Coke affected me really different than most people. | ||
| So I had the heart problems. | ||
| I had all that stuff. | ||
| I started to get better. | ||
| And then once I got sober, I turned even more to food. | ||
| I got bigger and bigger and bigger. | ||
| And one day I just said, I'm going to stop. | ||
| And then I started. | ||
| I went to Weight Watchers. | ||
| And I lost like 100 pounds with them. | ||
| And I thought I was going to be the spokesman. | ||
| And they ended up giving the job to Charles Barkley. | ||
| And then he was talking about fat bitches in San Antonio. | ||
| I mean, I love Charles Barkley, but I was the guy! | ||
| And he put the word out. | ||
| I lost 100 pounds with them. | ||
| And then Oprah took off. | ||
| And I thought, definitely, because I did Oprah. | ||
| I mean, I didn't fuck her. | ||
| I did her show. | ||
| And I thought that she would like me. | ||
| That never happened. | ||
| So I started working out on my own. | ||
| I started riding a bike, and I started swimming, and I started lifting weights because I never lifted in high school. | ||
| I was always rail thin. | ||
| I was like 178 pounds in high school. | ||
| And then I get into doing sit-ups and abs and crunches. | ||
| And then, well, remember when I met you on, what was the movie? | ||
| Here Comes the Boom. | ||
| You said, what happened? | ||
| And I just... | ||
| And the lifting was for my brain. | ||
| I'd go to the gym and it was good for my head. | ||
| I wasn't doing it to look good. | ||
| I was doing it to save my life. | ||
| And then I started to like how I look and I started working at it. | ||
| It's part of my thing now. | ||
| I'm 65 years old. | ||
| Kids in the gym see me. | ||
| How old are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm 82. Really? | |
| You can have it too. | ||
| Just eat right. | ||
| But it's just amazing that you went from wild partying, constant drugs and booze and partying to 100% healthy, lifting weights. | ||
| He wouldn't be here if he hadn't stopped. | ||
| But it's a hard turn. | ||
| That's a hard turn. | ||
| It's a big right angle. | ||
| Well, the kid, Phil Barino, I told you, the bank robber kid was my sponsor. | ||
| He said, listen, you can get this together. | ||
| You can change your life. | ||
| You can, you know, the sky's the limit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he wouldn't leave me alone. | |
| I went to one yesterday. | ||
| He goes, you need another one. | ||
| Can't stay clean on yesterday's shower. | ||
| They drove me crazy. | ||
| Can't stay clean on yesterday's shower. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| And he just was all over me. | ||
| And I started to get spiritual, you know. | ||
| Did you ever slip? | ||
| No. | ||
| No. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| I'm definitely afraid. | ||
| And I'm not a preacher. | ||
| I don't talk about it. | ||
| I'm talking about it now because you asked me. | ||
| And I don't judge anybody. | ||
| I'll drive. | ||
| You want to get one? | ||
| I'll drive. | ||
|
unidentified
|
People say, if you break out, will you come to my house? | |
| I was insane. | ||
| And I didn't even mean to be. | ||
| I didn't know. | ||
| And now a lot of this stuff, like you were saying earlier, Pod's 20 times, 40 times stronger. | ||
| I'm going, really? | ||
| Do you miss any of it? | ||
| Oh, I miss it all. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I miss it all. | |
| But, you know, I can't. | ||
| I can't go. | ||
| I know how bad I was, you know, and I lost. | ||
| I lost a lot. | ||
| You know, I mean, I'm still working, you know what I mean? | ||
| And, you know, I mean, it's something I don't want to go back to. | ||
| I did it, you know. | ||
| I mean, I used to go to Playboy Mansion. | ||
| I was at Playboy Mansion all the time, you know. | ||
| I was there at the high that would have had seven girlfriends, you know. | ||
| He came up. | ||
| I'm having a good time. | ||
| Lenny over. | ||
| He knows my name! | ||
| This old woman was putting a coat on, and I went over and I helped her with a coat. | ||
| She said, aren't you nice? | ||
| She said, my son was named Lenny. | ||
| I said, what do you do? | ||
| I'm a comedian. | ||
| My son was a comedian. | ||
| I go, you're not Sally Ma. | ||
| She goes, Wow. | ||
| And Sally Ma and me became best of friends. | ||
| That's Lenny Bruce's mom. | ||
| Lenny Bruce's mom, yeah. | ||
| And she'd say, come get me. | ||
| And I, you know, Joe, a horrible story. | ||
| I hadn't, we would get together twice a week. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I just, I'm with Sally Ma. | ||
| And, you know, Lenny would steal a lot of my fucking material. | ||
| I'd go to a club in Canada and say, hey man, there was a guy in here that does all your material. | ||
| Is his name Lenny? | ||
| He's my fucking son, that thief and prick. | ||
| She was fairly funny. | ||
| She was a comic? | ||
| Oh yeah, Joan Rivers was doing a movie of her life. | ||
| Sally Meyer, I never saw her. | ||
| I had no idea. | ||
| Her son would steal her act? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Right, right, right, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, she was, at 83, she was raped by some crazy Mexican who broke into a house that night in Iraq. | ||
| And she goes, I'm 83, I'm a small fat little Jew, and this guy's fucking me. | ||
| And I'm going, that's your dick, that's all you've got. | ||
| Then he started beating me. | ||
| I go, no, you cocksucker, you don't have enough of a cock, you're going to beat me. | ||
| I'm an old woman. | ||
| I had to go visit her in the hospital. | ||
| It was horrible. | ||
| This shit happened. | ||
| I remember Sam had her open up his special. | ||
| And we did the thing to raise money for her too. | ||
| One of his specials. | ||
| She actually came out with him, right? | ||
| Well, I introduced Sam to her because I had met her at... | ||
| You know, she was an old woman at the Playboy Mansion. | ||
| She was the only old woman. | ||
| And half loved her. | ||
| And we'd go up there unannounced. | ||
| And we'd sit down. | ||
| We'd, you know, eat. | ||
| And then I drove her everywhere, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Pretty crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I would... | ||
| Have you seen that new TV show, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? | ||
| No. | ||
| Everyone tells me it's a great show. | ||
| It's a great fucking show. | ||
| I mean, it's not historically accurate. | ||
| Like, the way they talk... | ||
| It's like they're doing kind of modern stand-up, but they're doing modern stand-up back in those days. | ||
| The woman didn't exist. | ||
| There was no woman like Mrs. Maisel, historically. | ||
| It took a long time before... | ||
| I mean, she was more rowdy than Lenny Bruce was in the television show. | ||
| But it shows you what it was like back when people were just getting arrested for saying things. | ||
| And it makes you realize, like, Lenny Bruce, that fucking guy paid. | ||
| He paid the price and we're all benefiting from him. | ||
| Well, you know, when I first started... | ||
| There was one book, The Last Laugh. | ||
| That was all there was about comedy. | ||
| It was no movies, no documentaries, anything. | ||
| And I wanted to know as much as I could about all the guys who came before me. | ||
| You know, because I'd watch... | ||
| I remember I saw Alan King do stand-up when I was on TV, and I went, oh my... | ||
| He was unbelievable. | ||
| I said, gee, fantastic. | ||
| Then I saw him as an actor, and I went, he's amazing. | ||
| And I got to work with Red Buttons. | ||
| You know, I mean, he was... | ||
| He wasn't a comedian, but he was really funny, you know? | ||
| And I mean, people that came before me, I knew every single one of them. | ||
| I'd studied them anyway. | ||
| And this was before YouTube and stuff. | ||
| I'd just read whatever I could find on them. | ||
| And I would tell these young kids coming up, I'd go, you ought to look at the guys who came before you. | ||
| And they're not interested at all, you know? | ||
| When I saw Gleason... | ||
| Gleason was what I wanted to be. | ||
| I just thought Jackie Gleason was just amazing. | ||
| And I said, I want to be like that guy. | ||
| Because he was incredible. | ||
| And people didn't realize he was a stand-up. | ||
| I didn't know Gleason did stand-up. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| One night, two-ton Tony Galenta was giving him shit. | ||
| The boxer? | ||
| And Gleason heckled him. | ||
| And Tony knocked him out. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| He was incredible. | ||
| Because I met Art Conny. | ||
| You know, Jackie Gleason was obsessed with UFOs. | ||
| Did you know that? | ||
| Nah, but I kind of dig it too, man. | ||
| There's a story. | ||
| This guy told it to me. | ||
| Some guy was a rock band dude. | ||
| He told me the story, and I don't know if it's true. | ||
| But the story was that Gleason was friends with Nixon. | ||
| And Nixon said, you want to see some shit? | ||
| And Nixon took him to... | ||
| Area 51? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Area 51? | |
| I don't think it was Area 51. I think it was Hangar 18, which is a Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. | ||
| I think it was outside of Columbus, Ohio. | ||
| And they supposedly had some fucking crashed UFO there. | ||
| And Gleason built a replica of it, or had a replica of it, built in his fucking backyard in New York. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| They went to the Homestead Air Force Base outside of Miami, it says. | ||
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Oh, okay. | |
| There you go. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| I got a bullshit version of it. | ||
| Pull up the actual version. | ||
| Where are you getting this from? | ||
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I just Googled it. | |
| I mean, it's a rumored story, so I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, that's how I got it. | ||
| I got it from a guy in a band. | ||
| It might be bullshit, but he gave me some book on UFOs and he was telling me about this. | ||
| But Jackie Gleason apparently was obsessed with UFOs. | ||
| Well, I believe there's got to be something out there. | ||
| We're it? | ||
| I mean, that's it? | ||
| No. | ||
| I don't believe we're at it. | ||
| I did a lot of USO shows, and I've been around the world, and every time I've done it, I was off the coast of Turkey someplace, and the commander at the base took me out for dinner afterwards, and I got him drunk. | ||
| I got him pretty drunk. | ||
| I was sober at the time. | ||
| I got him pretty drunk. | ||
| And I said, hey, man. | ||
| He goes, let me ask you about Area 51. He goes, he got stoned sober. | ||
| He goes, this conversation never happened. | ||
| And he... | ||
| And he left! | ||
| And I had to take a cab to find my way back to a nuke base that no one knows about. | ||
| So then I'm at the Dunes. | ||
| That's how long ago that was. | ||
| And I'm with these guys who are in the Air Force. | ||
| And they said, man, we really like your show. | ||
| We're fans here. | ||
| I got them drunk. | ||
| And I said, hey, man, what about Area 51? | ||
| And they said, Mr. Clark, Good night. | ||
| And they walked away. | ||
| So now, me and Mike are golfing with these blue angels. | ||
| And he goes, you're going to ask them? | ||
| I go, no. | ||
| The second year, we golf with them again. | ||
| I go, all right, fellas. | ||
| Tell me about every 51. Well, he goes, I was flying a plane, and I had malfunctioned, and I had to land there. | ||
| And they came out, and they pretty much blindfolded me, took me into a building, and they fixed my jet within 35 minutes. | ||
| And then put me back and say, we're never here. | ||
| And I went, oh my god. | ||
| So, I don't know what's out there. | ||
| Yeah, but that was, here's the thing. | ||
| That was an area where they were testing all sorts of military equipment. | ||
| They were testing different new, like, that's where the B-2 or the stealth bomber. | ||
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Right. | |
| They were testing that there. | ||
| And the spy plane. | ||
| Yeah, they were testing a lot of shit. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So there was a lot of top secret stuff there. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Didn't necessarily have to be aliens. | ||
| I understand that. | ||
| And I'm hoping that there is. | ||
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But he's still trying to find out. | |
| But you can't even drive. | ||
| If you drive up there, Joe, by the time you get your camera out, they're on you. | ||
| They tell you, get out of here. | ||
| We'll lock you up. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| They don't even go there anymore. | ||
| They've moved to a new area. | ||
| They've actually, because it's so heavily scrutinized and because of Google Earth and all sorts of different ways you can see things, they've actually moved to another area. | ||
| I read everything I can find about That, too. | ||
| And I think I read the book Area 51. It was a couple, two years ago. | ||
| And basically, at the end of the book, it was like Hitler had these, you know, his guys experimenting with the Jews and cut and put their arms on different ways and had an aircraft that looked like a spaceship, and it crashed. | ||
| And these people came out with crazy arms. | ||
| They're aliens! | ||
| And that was in the book, you know, so they kind of shut the shit out. | ||
| I know that Hitler did experiment with some sort of disc-type air vehicle. | ||
| Yeah, they did, but I don't know if they ever got it off the ground or what the deal was. | ||
| But the most interesting story is the story of Robert Lazar, Bob Lazar, who was a guy who worked at Area 51, and he got fired because his wife was cheating on him. | ||
| And they were recording all of his phone calls and taping all of his conversations and they found out that his wife was cheating on him. | ||
| They thought that he was going to be emotionally unstable. | ||
| And so they didn't tell him why, they just released him. | ||
| And so then he brings friends to watch these, what he said were alien crafts that they were experimenting with. | ||
| And they were flying these things around that had some It's super advanced propulsion system that they were asking him to help back engineer and he brought friends do that and then they got arrested for doing that and when he did that then he started talking about it so he's been discredited by a bunch of people but I don't know who's telling the truth he says that they they wiped his college record so that no one but people said they went to school with them he definitely did work for the government but under what capacity who knows but his story is fascinating and you know I want it | ||
| to be true you hear it you want it to be true They used to fly the team of people that worked at Area 51 from Burbank. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Every day, fly them in, they'd work, and then fly them back. | ||
| They didn't stay over there. | ||
| Well, there was that one airport outside of Vegas that was right outside where the Riviera was. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You could actually look out and see the airport. | ||
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Yeah. | |
| And they would fly the people from there and it's unmarked jets. | ||
| Yeah, I want it to be true. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Yeah, you want it to be true. | ||
| We flew... | ||
| We did Guantanamo Bay. | ||
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Oh, wow. | |
| You did stand-up there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What the fuck is that like? | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| Colin Quinn, Gregor Aldo, who's the little kid on Billions? | ||
| Mike Perbiglia. | ||
| Mike Perbiglia. | ||
| And Gaffigan. | ||
| Jim Gaffigan. | ||
| And someone else. | ||
| We flew in like a CIA plane. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| And we did the show. | ||
| Jesus Christ! | ||
| Yeah, it was pretty amazing. | ||
| And I tailored my show to the Marines that were there. | ||
| These are young guys. | ||
| And during the week, they said, Mr. Clark, you really lifted the morale of everyone. | ||
| He says... | ||
| What do you want to do? | ||
| I said, I want to go over and torture the prisoners. | ||
| You know, not actually do it, scream at them and shit like that. | ||
| Oh, we can't have that, you know. | ||
| But anyway, we do the show and we're leaving like three days later and I get to the airport. | ||
| I'm the first one there and I see this little eight-seater plane and I go... | ||
| Two Spanish-speaking guys go, baño? | ||
| No baño. | ||
| No baño. | ||
| So I go into the gift shop and I buy a giant water thing so I can piss in it. | ||
| And the guys show up, who wants beers? | ||
| That's great! | ||
| We got on a plane and we fly. | ||
| It only took us like an hour to fly in. | ||
| This was a four-hour flight in a two-engine, eight-seater over water the whole way. | ||
| And about 15 minutes ago, hey man, where's the bathroom? | ||
| I go, what? | ||
| By the time we hit Miami, these guys were pissing at the top of the stairs. | ||
| It was so funny. | ||
| Yeah, that was his favorite then. | ||
| But Guantanamo Bay was amazing. | ||
| That's got to be very weird. | ||
| What year was this? | ||
| Oh, shit. | ||
| This is post 9-11, obviously. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because I said to them, I said, well, can we ride horses? | ||
| And they said, no more horses. | ||
| They had horseback riding. | ||
| They had beautiful beaches for our troops. | ||
| And I could see sailfish breaking. | ||
| And I said, can we go fishing? | ||
| You know, I've never caught a sailfish. | ||
| They said, no, we can't. | ||
| We can't go out. | ||
| And they said, we'll give you a ride in the gunboat. | ||
| I went in the gunboat. | ||
| They said, what do you think? | ||
| I said, my wife's boat's faster. | ||
| You know, you'll be honest with me. | ||
| It was nice, but my wife bought jams. | ||
| So then the golf, you had to carry your mat and hit off the mat. | ||
| It's all been run into disrepair, but it's still beautiful. | ||
| And because I did TV and movies, I was like a GS-13 and I got the best apartment overlooking the bay. | ||
| And that bay is so big, you can fit an entire battle fleet with the With the battleship and the destroyers, everything that goes with it, right in the bay. | ||
| And all it was in was like a rowboat. | ||
| I mean, the tanks are gone. | ||
| So they said, do you want to go ride the fence? | ||
| I said, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So we get up in the tower and I see the binoculars and I see this Cuban guy. | ||
| So I give him the finger and he goes, no! | ||
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No! | |
| Mr. Clark, you'll start an international incident. | ||
| And the guy comes out, he says, I'm sorry, sorry, they made it. | ||
| They go, we've got to go away. | ||
| So I said, why are you so nervous? | ||
| He goes, there's millions of Cubans here. | ||
| They could overrun us. | ||
| And I go, really? | ||
| And they go, well, don't we have, no, we have a skeleton force now. | ||
| If they wanted to overtake, I said, we could call in an airstrike. | ||
| I said, I don't know what that takes. | ||
| And they go, about 20 minutes. | ||
| The Jets will come out of wherever. | ||
| Probably out of Florida. | ||
| So, I said, the commander goes, if you could do anything you want, I said, I'd like to go in Havana and buy some cigars, you know, treat the guys to some beers. | ||
| Come in my office. | ||
| We go in and there's a map. | ||
| He goes, see this? | ||
| This is where you are. | ||
| He goes, that's where Havana is. | ||
| Cuba is the biggest island in the Caribbean. | ||
| I had no idea. | ||
| 736 miles from Havana. | ||
| He said, you were closer to Havana when you were in Miami. | ||
| And I went, whoa. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't know that. | ||
| But the guys were great. | ||
| It was a great show. | ||
| They put it on TV. It's probably on YouTube someplace. | ||
| It sucks they wouldn't let you go fishing, though. | ||
| I wanted to ride a horse. | ||
| I wanted to ride the tank. | ||
| You see all the tank tracks from when they went up over the mountains. | ||
| And they had taken the prisoners and they had taken from Camp X-Ray to Camp Delta because Camp X-Ray was basically like dog cages. | ||
| And CNN came down. | ||
| Look how we're treating these people. | ||
| I mean, they're overlooking the fact that they blew up the World Trade Center. | ||
| But, you know, so now they're in – they have better quarters than some of the Marines that have gotten them. | ||
| Well, they had supposedly and still do have a lot of innocent people in there. | ||
| There was a lot of people that they just scooped up in the wide net of looking to find people that were complicit or people that were working with ISIS or Al-Qaeda. | ||
| I mean, I wasn't there when he grabbed them. | ||
| But there were some bad guys in there. | ||
| Bad guys, too. | ||
| Yeah, some real bad guys. | ||
| When Obama released the five guys for that one guy... | ||
| The deserter. | ||
| Yeah, the deserter. | ||
| One of my buddies in the sales says, Lenny, I put three of those guys in there, and they're bad guys. | ||
| They shouldn't be let out. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| I mean... | ||
| Yeah, it's got to be strange, though, to be in that. | ||
| I mean, that is like one of the most famous prisons in the world, and you're doing stand-up there. | ||
| Oh, it was unbelievable. | ||
| I mean, I really liked it. | ||
| Castro has never cashed a check. | ||
| It's $5,000 a year. | ||
| We pay him $5,000 a year for that Guantanamo Bay. | ||
| And he never cashed a check. | ||
| Because he figured if he didn't cash it, we could get support, he could get out of the deal. | ||
| But that was the deal made. | ||
| And Joe, it was so beautiful. | ||
| They used to have fire pits and... | ||
| Beautiful things, the shade, the families, and the beaches are pristine. | ||
| But they let it go to hell. | ||
| That's so strange. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Lenny Clark, you've lived a fucking amazing life, man. | ||
| Well, I'm going to write a book as soon as a few more people die. | ||
| Thank you, brother. | ||
| Hey, Joe, thanks for having me on, man. | ||
| Thanks for being here, man. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Pleasure to see you. | ||
| Thanks, Mike. | ||
| And thanks for taking care of me when I was up and coming, man. | ||
| You're the best, man. | ||
| I paid a lot of my bills because of you, my friend. | ||
| I appreciate it, pal. | ||
| All right, everybody. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Good night. | ||
| Wow. |
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