Kevin Spacey | Club Random with Bill Maher

Two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey drops by Club Random for a conversation that goes exactly where you'd expect—and plenty of places you wouldn't. Bill doesn't let him dodge the tough questions, pressing Spacey on the allegations that derailed his career, the court cases that cleared him, and what it's like trying to rebuild a life from what he calls "show business jail." The two cover Hollywood's double standards, Jack Lemmon's mentorship, therapy, the Playboy Mansion, and Netflix shelving one of Spacey's completed films. Spacey also unveils what feels like an entire repertory company of impressions—Johnny Carson, Jack Lemmon, and more—as the conversation veers into Roman history, classic cinema, Dick Van Dyke's workout routine at 100, and why he thinks his best work may still be ahead of him. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:30Bill Maher?

  While you were remodeling your backyard to make it more, you know, zen-y, we were remodeling our merch store to make it more random. We slapped our new logo on t-shirts, tie-dyes, hoodies, and hats, and all with premium-printed labels. Look, I wasn't kidding. We have it because tags are like the junk mail of clothing. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. Once again, that's clubrandom.com.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  If someone has a problem with you, why do they wait until they're sitting in front of a journalist and then they turn it into a story?

• 2:08Bill Maher?

  Who did that?

• 2:11Speaker 04

  I have to share with you something I've never said publicly.

• 2:16Bill Maher?

  I guess we're telling tales out of school. We might as well.

• 2:21Bill Maher?

  And is Kevin Spacey really here?

• 2:23Speaker 04

  He's really here.

• 2:24Bill Maher?

  Wow. Man of his word.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Thank you for having me. You kidding?

• 2:30Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 2:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:31Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 2:32Speaker 04

  Thank you so much.

• 2:32Bill Maher?

  I can't wait to talk to you. I mean, I was so excited all day because I don't see you. Obviously, there are reasons of an unpleasant nature that prevent you from being. But, you know, for the longest time, you know, you were just, I'll say this. I don't know if we could talk about, you know, obviously punishment, crime, what fits. But like, you were always a working actor. For you to like, lose working, you look like, you always seem to be the kind of guy who like, loves to be on a set.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  Definitely.

• 3:03Bill Maher?

  Like, De Niro's like that, right? They just go from one, that's why they do some shit.

• 3:10Bill Maher?

  Because you just, you'd rather work on some shit than not work, right?

• 3:13Speaker 04

  You'd rather work on some shit, although, you know, when you start off, you know, no matter what the film or play or television thing is, you always think, oh, I'm gonna try to do my best work and I'm gonna believe in it and, you know, and every now and then you're making Nine Lives. What can you do?

• 3:29Bill Maher?

  What was that? Was it a bad movie you were in?

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:32Bill Maher?

  Nine Lives?

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I turned into a cat.

• 3:36Bill Maher?

  Where in your career was this?

• 3:38Speaker 04

  It was at a point where I was willing to make a movie just for money.

• 3:42Bill Maher?

  But because you were, because you were past, you were very bankable.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  It was this, I was a bankable star and I had no idea that a movie about a cat...

• 3:51Bill Maher?

  You'd done Usual Suspects and...

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, this is, this is like, you know, after House of Cards.

• 3:56Bill Maher?

  Oh, I see.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  This was, yeah, this was, this was a movie that, I never knew that a movie about a cat could be such a dog. You know what I'm saying?

• 4:05Bill Maher?

  Is that how you went and promoted it? Yeah, I know, there was a time when, I mean, poor Bruce Willis now in bad shape and I knew him a long time ago pretty well for a little while when he was first out here and he hung out at the comedy clubs. But there was a time when I would see, when I would watch movies in hotels. That's where I see all my movies.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 4:26Bill Maher?

  For a while, that stopped, but it used to be a real treat in a hotel room because they would have the first run movies. But you would buy it, of course.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Sure, yeah.

• 4:35Bill Maher?

  And so like.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  So you weren't watching the porno, is that what you're saying?

• 4:40Bill Maher?

  There were, there was moments when I did break down.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 4:43Bill Maher?

  But it kind of sucked because if you can't, can't fast forward.

• 4:48Speaker 04

  Right, yes, that's, that's true. You mean get past the story points?

• 4:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah, right. This is so long ago there were story points.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  Oh, I see.

• 4:56Bill Maher?

  That's not how porn is today.

• 4:57Speaker 04

  But I'm saying you watch, you watch Forrest Gump on a hotel television. Is that what you're saying?

• 5:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that would not have been my choice.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  Oh, I see.

• 5:05Bill Maher?

  What I was saying about the working for horror movies.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 5:09Bill Maher?

  Not horror, whore.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  Whore, yeah.

• 5:11Bill Maher?

  Yeah. There was a time when like, you could see Bruce Willis, like along as you scrolled through the movies, there would be like, at one time, three or four you'd never heard of.

• 5:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 5:23Bill Maher?

  With him, and he always had like a very small part. I'm sure they shot it in a week or less.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah. That's right.

• 5:31Bill Maher?

  And, but that, it was attributed to how big his name is.

• 5:35Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 5:35Bill Maher?

  That you could slap him on there to all these movies and they would go straight to the video. But somebody was making money.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  We were, I was just in the car with Evan Lowenstein, who I know, you know Evan and Jaren.

• 5:47Bill Maher?

  A long time.

• 5:47Speaker 04

  We were just talking about the fact that, you know, Sam Jackson, when I think about how many movies Sam Jackson has been in, and a, and a number of them are films that, you know, he must have worked a couple of days and they paid him a shitload of money.

• 6:01Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 6:01Speaker 04

  To say motherfucker or whatever.

• 6:05Speaker 04

  They wanted him to say, and I'm like, good for him, you know?

• 6:08Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 04

  Look at all the movies he made, how much money all the movies he made made. It was incredible.

• 6:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah, especially since we know he can do so much more. So it's funny when you.

• 6:17Speaker 04

  He's the best. I did a movie with him called The Negotiator that I absolutely love.

• 6:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  And I always wished that we'd done a sequel to it because I think it's, it's sequel material.

• 6:27Bill Maher?

  And you played a negotiator or he did?

• 6:31Speaker 04

  I played the negotiator.

• 6:32Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 6:33Speaker 04

  He played, yeah, he played a cop who'd been falsely accused.

• 6:36Bill Maher?

  I would have pegged you for the psycho.

• 6:38Speaker 04

  Really?

• 6:38Bill Maher?

  No, I'm kidding.

• 6:41Bill Maher?

  No, you have had a very broad range. I mean, you were never sort of like...

• 6:48Speaker 04

  What are you talking about? I was never into broads. Hey, wait a minute. Hey, just a second. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all week. Thank you so much.

• 6:57Bill Maher?

  You know what, Kevin? I never understood why you kept that a secret. Like, it kept... There's a point where it was like so much cooler to be gay. Like, I don't want to inject myself into this, but honestly, I mean, I don't get a lot of breaks from the media, especially, you know, they're a little too woke and blah, blah, blah. If I, who they're pretty rough on, if I at some point had come out as gay, they would be like, it would be the greatest thing that ever happened. I mean, and I would be defeated and that would just...

• 7:27Speaker 04

  You're a little gay, you know?

• 7:28Bill Maher?

  No.

• 7:29Speaker 04

  No? Not even a little?

• 7:32Bill Maher?

  You know, you're pinned against a guy against the wall with that kind of a question. And it just, it makes you sound gay when you adamantly admit that you're not. You fucking...

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Well, cheers. Thank you for having me.

• 7:48Bill Maher?

  Oh, thanks for being...

• 7:49Speaker 04

  And I know you've been...

• 7:51Bill Maher?

  Thanks for being here.

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Talking about having me and it's been, meant a lot to me. There's just been a period of years where the advice that Evan and I were getting was that I, because I was dealing with court stuff, that I just couldn't come out and have the kind of conversations I would like to have had.

• 8:05Bill Maher?

  Look, I'm not gonna lie to you. I mean, I go by numbers when, with scandals. Not, I say go by. And it's an interesting question maybe to ask you, like, if it's like one person, I'm always like, well, I don't know, if I wasn't in the room. When it gets to like, you know, you've, it's like, come on, man. There's only, there's too much smoke to be no fire.

• 8:29Speaker 04

  Oh, I never said there was no fire.

• 8:31Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 8:32Speaker 04

  It just wasn't a raging forest fire. It was a small kitchen fire that could have been put out with an extinguisher.

• 8:38Bill Maher?

  To me, the most important point in this case, and we've discussed all them once, is that... At a certain point, the law does have to have some merit with people. You had like five, I think, five ones I heard about. And each time, yeah, that's just the truth.

• 8:59Bill Maher?

  You know, just, they lost. You, I think you're like five and oh or something.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  We, we, we.

• 9:04Bill Maher?

  You haven't lost one.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  We, we, we, yeah, we've been found not guilty in every court we've gone into with a jury.

• 9:12Bill Maher?

  Right, and one Elton John, didn't he testify?

• 9:15Speaker 04

  John testified in a, in a, in a case in Great Britain.

• 9:17Bill Maher?

  Why was he, why was he?

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Because.

• 9:21Bill Maher?

  What am I saying? Gay, like gay celebrities hanging out together? Weird.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  No, it wasn't about a party or anything like that. It was about the fact that, that, that a person who had accused me of something had also made up something about him. And he felt it was very important that the jury hear that. This person was not consistently telling the truth.

• 9:45Bill Maher?

  Do you think there's more making up in the gay community?

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Making up?

• 9:49Bill Maher?

  Make, well, making up stuff? You said, you said that he made up something about?

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, he made up something about, about.

• 9:56Bill Maher?

  And you're, and the reason why I assume you've won five times is the juries thought that people were making stuff up. Not that there wasn't nothing.

• 10:05Speaker 04

  No, and there are certain cases where part of something is true, but it's been rethought, it's been redesigned, or it's been entirely made up. Certainly in the case of, of Anthony Rapp, which is a, a case that we won in, in federal court in New York.

• 10:20Bill Maher?

  And which one was that?

• 10:21Speaker 04

  Anthony Rapp sued me. He'd done, he was the first person to accuse me of something from 31 years before in 2017.

• 10:29Bill Maher?

  Under what circumstances? I know that name, I've heard it.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  The circumstance was, he did an article in BuzzFeed magazine in which he accused me of being attracted to him and wanting to be sexual with him when he was a teenager, when he was just a kid. And it took us until we got to court many years later in 2022 to be able to prove that in fact the entire story was not true. The foundation of the story he built around a bedroom in an apartment that he said I rented in which he'd gone into a bedroom at a party that I threw, he'd been invited to this party. And that at some point, very drunk, I came into that bedroom, leaned against the door, was so drunk I probably wouldn't remember, and that this encounter happened.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  But as it turned out, and as we proved in a court of law, I lived in a studio apartment. There was no bedroom, there was no door, there was all, an entire foundation of what he told this story around completely crumbled with the evidence. And also, we had incredible testimony by John Barhaman, who was a friend of his at the time, and had been to my apartment with him, the only time he'd ever been in my apartment, was when they came to meet my dog. So the whole thing was made up.

• 11:42Bill Maher?

  Okay, so listen, I'm not that kind of interviewer, like, and this is not the kind of a show where like I do my homework and like, I, I, I didn't even remember this guy's name, but play me this, not 16 minutes.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  Clearly.

• 11:55Bill Maher?

  But I'm also, I feel like.

• 11:56Speaker 04

  Anderson, I'm very disappointed.

• 11:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm also fair, and I also am, you know, I think my bond with my audience truthful. So truthfully, again, like, 20, like, when 20 people feel like something, like, that's, that's a lot of people, it's a lot of smoke, it's a lot of, I don't know, there is always nuance in people, it's terrible, I think, that people skip over it. And one of them is time. Morays change, people, they just do, people do, acted differently, I mean, it's, we get better generally as we're more enlightened, but, but, you know.

• 12:35Bill Maher?

  You must have known you were, you know, forward, shall we? In the, it's the old parlance, a forward.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  I hit on a lot of guys.

• 12:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but hitting on and like, I mean, yeah, I did a bit about the one, again, you got off. Totally, I mean, I think the jury was like, took two hours to say, it was the kid in the piano bar?

• 13:03Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, that actually never went to trial.

• 13:05Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 13:06Speaker 04

  That never went to trial because he, they tampered with evidence and then he took the fifth in a pre-trial meeting with my lawyer.

• 13:15Bill Maher?

  But I'm just, again, remembering this from the, I used to do a bit about it in my act.

• 13:20Speaker 04

  Oh, you did?

• 13:20Bill Maher?

  In your defense.

• 13:21Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 13:22Bill Maher?

  Because the bit was, as I read, as I recall, I mean, that like, he says like, yeah, your cock was in his hand for like, three minutes and then he like, said something. And I remember like, Mr. Spacey, wasn't that part of it?

• 13:39Speaker 04

  In a very crowded bar with lots of people looking at me.

• 13:42Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, your cock could have been in his hand, but if it's there for three minutes.

• 13:46Speaker 04

  My cock was never in his hand.

• 13:48Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 13:48Speaker 04

  No, no, he claimed something else. Uh, but yeah, that, that one never even got to court. That one was thrown out.

• 13:56Bill Maher?

  But isn't, I mean, this is a really inappropriate question that, you know, again, Keith Morrison, I don't think is gonna ask, but like, come on, man. There is a difference between the heterosexual world and the gay world. I'm not saying that excuses bad behavior, I'm just saying, like, there's no equivalent of a bathhouse in the heterosexual world, right?

• 14:22Speaker 04

  Palm Springs, yeah.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  No.

• 14:27Bill Maher?

  But isn't that gay?

• 14:30Speaker 04

  Um, look, I, I, I would say this, I certainly, o- over the years that I have been, um, uh, a, an actor, and I certainly, uh, I kept my, I was, I was very, very closeted, I was fiercely closeted, I didn't want anyone to know anything about me.

• 14:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 04

  And of course, I thought I was so clever that no one knew, but of course, kinda everybody knew.

• 14:51Bill Maher?

  I knew.

• 14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. And I never got near you, alright?

• 14:55Bill Maher?

  I did, no, I did a, a great joke about you that the audience just completely didn't get. At the nineteen ninety-seven Oscars, it was Hailee Joel Osmond.

• 15:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:05Bill Maher?

  And, remember the mov- uh, the Bruce Willis movie?

• 15:09Speaker 04

  Sure, Bruce Willis movie, yeah.

• 15:10Bill Maher?

  What was it? I don't remember, you were up against him, or you were there?

• 15:13Speaker 04

  I see dead people, yes.

• 15:14Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I see dead people movie.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:16Bill Maher?

  Exactly, yeah, I said, uh, "The Oscars went on so long this year, by the end of the evening, Hailee Joel Osmond had a beard, and Kevin Spacey didn't."

• 15:28Speaker 04

  That's a good joke!

• 15:29Bill Maher?

  So good, and they laughed at the first part, and they totally didn't, they don't know what a-

• 15:33Speaker 04

  Oh, that's so interesting.

• 15:35Bill Maher?

  They didn't know what a beard was.

• 15:37Speaker 04

  Well, maybe you should've said, "I see gay people."

• 15:38Bill Maher?

  They're not, they're not sophisticates like us, Kevin.

• 15:41Speaker 04

  Yes, I see.

• 15:41Bill Maher?

  You see? We're sophisticates. That's the part of me that's gay.

• 15:45Speaker 04

  I got it.

• 15:45Bill Maher?

  I'm very fucking sophisticated.

• 15:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:50Bill Maher?

  So, where, where were we in my grilling? Well, you know, the question to me now is like, I think you pa- I think my spidey instinct is, yeah, you should get, you should've gotten some punishment. You, I think you were a little too forward, shall we say, made a lot of, obviously people got uncomfortable. The question now is, you paid a lot. You know, it's like when Bernie says, "Rich people don't pay taxes," I'm like, "What the fuck do you think? I pay like sixty percent, you asshole."

• 16:25Speaker 04

  Right.

• 16:25Bill Maher?

  I, okay, it's like, how much is enough paying? So like, when did this start? So let's say, let's say, let's talk about your sentence that you've served.

• 16:34Speaker 04

  This started in, this started in 2017.

• 16:38Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 16:38Speaker 04

  In October of 2017, this began, and I would say, not exaggerating.

• 16:43Bill Maher?

  You're still in show business jail?

• 16:45Speaker 04

  Well, I, I feel less in jail than I did.

• 16:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, good, oh, really?

• 16:51Speaker 04

  But I do actually now feel that when people look at things and when they, I know, as you said, you didn't really pay attention to the details, and I know most people don't. But I think when people actually start to hear the facts, understand what we've won in courts, I think people now look at this and think, hmm, maybe nine years has been enough.

• 17:12Bill Maher?

  Well, that's the question I'm at.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  And that if I had been a sports figure, I would have been benched for seven games.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  Do you know what I mean?

• 17:20Bill Maher?

  Why you say, why you comparing it to that?

• 17:23Speaker 04

  Well, because that's what happens. A sports person is accused of something, and they're benched for seven days, seven games, and then they're back on the field.

• 17:29Bill Maher?

  Sports figures have been, I mean, who's the guy, it's not funny, but he clocked his wife in the elevator, and he never played again.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  Well, I don't, I don't know about that particular case, but I'm saying, if you're hitting home runs, they, they, they want you on the field.

• 17:46Bill Maher?

  Yes, I think, I mean, yeah, yeah, you're right.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  So I believe we're at a point now where I think people are now beginning to look at what actually happened, and I'm, I feel much more welcomed, and I think that things are moving in the, the direction that we, we hope they're moving in.

• 18:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah, because I think a ten-year sentence is a serious sentence. And I know, like, I don't know, thank God, but I surmise that, like, it's a, it's an everyday sentence. I mean, you know, certain, certain parts of it, you can't go out. Right?

• 18:25Speaker 04

  I go out all the time.

• 18:26Bill Maher?

  No, always?

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Always.

• 18:27Bill Maher?

  Throughout this whole thing?

• 18:28Speaker 04

  Not throughout the whole thing. I would say in 2018, I didn't really want to be seen.

• 18:33Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  And I, and I sort of kept to myself and I actually started wearing a mask before Covid, which was pretty funny.

• 18:40Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  That I was wearing a mask because I didn't want to be seen. Um, but then I got through that and I did a lo- an enormous amount of therapy. I went through a lot of programs that were very helpful.

• 18:49Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 18:49Speaker 04

  Incredibly helpful for me. And then in 2019, Evan suggested that we sort of take a trip. And so we went around Europe for off and on about six months. And we backpacked, literally. And, and that was when I was able to, without a hat, without glasses, without hiding in any way, just go on to the world. And I can tell you that we were stopped 70 times a day by people who were so generous and so happy to see me and asking, when are you going back to work?

• 19:24Bill Maher?

  This is Europe?

• 19:25Speaker 04

  This is all over Europe, all over everywhere. I mean, it's been that way.

• 19:28Bill Maher?

  But I feel like Europe is a more forgiving, it's an older culture.

• 19:32Speaker 04

  No.

• 19:33Bill Maher?

  You know, they're cool.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  It's been the same way in the United States.

• 19:35Bill Maher?

  They're cool with perverts.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  It's been the same in the United States. It's been the same in the United States. E- everywhere I go. I know there's people online that, that say nasty things, but I've not met one of them in real life.

• 19:48Bill Maher?

  That is an interesting phenomenon I've also experienced. And it's funny, you know, you'll want to say it back to the media, and I, I won't about, you know, anything, because you just don't want to pick that fight with them. But sometimes when I see Trump just speak his complete internal monologue without, you know, doing things that, it's just like, he will say something, and the one I'm thinking of is like, I've wanted to say that. He, he just, when he was, he, somebody pissed him off in an interview and he just went, "You're a terrible person."

• 20:21Speaker 04

  You're right, you're right.

• 20:23Bill Maher?

  And it's like, you can't deny.

• 20:24Speaker 04

  You've wanted to do that.

• 20:26Bill Maher?

  There is a moment where I would have, that's exactly what I was thinking.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 20:30Bill Maher?

  You're a terrible person.

• 20:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, right, right.

• 20:31Bill Maher?

  It's not a sincere question. It's a gotcha thing. It's a, you know, virtue signaling thing.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Sure, sure.

• 20:38Bill Maher?

  You don't believe it yourself, but I don't.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:42Bill Maher?

  Not our president. He does that. Are you, are you, uh, have, do you have plans for the 4th of July?

• 20:49Speaker 04

  I, I don't have, I haven't made plans yet. Um. But I think there's a lot to celebrate.

• 20:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I was just working on a piece for the show that says that exact same thing. It's amazing that, especially, I don't want to keep picking on the kids, but the younger generations, they just don't have good perspective either about how much better they have it than people any time before them, and how much better they have it here than almost anywhere else in the world.

• 21:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm also very optimistic, and I believe whatever, I mean, look, what I just said, I think, echoes what I mean by this, which is that the society that I have met, the society that I've been introduced to, the people that have come at me over the last nine years have not been divisive and angry and pissed off, and they have been so welcoming and lovely and loving that A, I'm so happy that that's the society that I have...

• 21:58Bill Maher?

  Where do I fall on this scale?

• 22:00Speaker 04

  You fall very much in the, you have been incredibly supportive, because Evan has told me.

• 22:04Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  I know you've wanted me on this show for a long time. You've been very much on side, and that means a lot to me.

• 22:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm keeping it real and not letting you off the hook.

• 22:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:14Bill Maher?

  You know, because that's the reality. But again, we all go through life, and the judgmentalness of like, everything is a hanging offense, or, you know, it's always a life sentence. It's like, no, things are proportionate. That's how the real law works. You know, not everything... The death penalty.

• 22:34Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 22:35Bill Maher?

  And it's just...

• 22:36Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 22:36Bill Maher?

  And again, I hate to pick on the kids, but they just don't have any perspective about how lucky they are. The idea that when we're around the same age, I mean, I'm 70, I don't think you hit that yet.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  I haven't yet, no.

• 22:50Bill Maher?

  Okay, but you're on the way.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  I'm 66.

• 22:54Bill Maher?

  You look good.

• 22:55Speaker 04

  Thank you, sir.

• 22:55Bill Maher?

  By the way, for the stress that it must have been, you look good.

• 22:59Speaker 04

  Thank you, sir.

• 23:00Bill Maher?

  You look like you could, you know, I mean, play the, you know, at that age, again, we're close, all you can do is, the best you can do is be like, not hard to look at.

• 23:15Speaker 04

  That's, is that the review? Not hard to look at.

• 23:19Bill Maher?

  Is that terrible?

• 23:21Speaker 04

  No, not at all.

• 23:22Bill Maher?

  For our age, I think that's pretty good.

• 23:24Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 23:25Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:26Bill Maher?

  We're not Glenn Powell. We never were. I mean, that's actually much more of an achievement for you in a way because like, you know, I was in commentary, I'm a comedian, but you were like playing leading man parts.

• 23:39Speaker 04

  Well, and if I look at the actors that I grew up admiring, Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Cagney. I mean, these actors had decades and decades and decades of being at the top of their profession. And, and, and many of them, Paul Newman, aged incredibly well, played fantastic parts when they were over 60.

• 24:01Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah. The Verdict.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  And did incredible thing, yeah, The Verdict, one of the great Paul Newman movies ever.

• 24:05Bill Maher?

  Yeah. Oh, no, and, and I think actors are better in their 50s, 60s, when, when they get in that right there. There is something that is, takes obviously decades to get to this sort of level of, you know, the old thing, don't get caught acting. You know, where it's just, it's just the most naturalistic kind of performance.

• 24:26Speaker 04

  I'm also, I'm at a point because of the last nine years, where I had never done therapy before, I had never gone into myself, I had never spent the kind of time that I've spent doing the programs I've done. And I'm closer to myself, I'm closer to my family, I'm closer to my friends than I've ever been. And I'm very curious now. I mean, I've had a couple of wonderful opportunities in the last couple of years to do some really work that means a lot to me. But I'm really at a point where I'm so excited about what my work is going to be like. Because now I have gone into myself, I am closer to myself than I've ever been.

• 25:12Speaker 04

  And I'm really excited about working with collaborators, collaborator, a director particularly, who's going to bring that out of me. Because I am ready now to share parts of myself that prior I wasn't.

• 25:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody doubts if you got your meat into a, um, great part.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  Did you say my meat? I'm sorry. What did you say?

• 25:35Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm sorry.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, cuz we were, I thought we were beyond that.

• 25:41Bill Maher?

  Sorry.

• 25:41Speaker 04

  I'm sorry.

• 25:42Bill Maher?

  I had a little pot before I came over. I mean.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  I'm trying to keep my meat out of things, alright? I'm trying to move on. You understand?

• 25:53Bill Maher?

  With Mick's success, let's be honest. I mean, like.

• 25:56Speaker 04

  Did we just lose a sponsor?

• 25:57Bill Maher?

  You know, a sponsor. Are you kidding? As if we're taping this, but, um, that would be embarrassing. But you did always strike me, and again, this is from way afar and just how people talk, that, I mean, I'm not being snarky about it, but there are different kinds of, as with heterosexuals, gay people. Most heterosexuals get married, um, and then when gay marriage became a thing, we saw zillions of people who acted just like the heterosexuals. Bored, you know, and put together and fighting, exactly.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 26:35Bill Maher?

  And then there was people like me, heterosexual, unlike you, but I feel like I was a guy who never wanted to get married and didn't. Single was like, no, this is actually more fun and I'm gonna do it. And I feel like you're that guy in the gay world. It was just, it's just more fun.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  I was definitely that guy in the gay world. But I will also say this, you may not remember this, but do you remember like the first times that we met?

• 26:58Bill Maher?

  Oh, God. Cut.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  Because, you're gonna love this, because it was at the Playboy Mansion.

• 27:03Bill Maher?

  Oh, that makes sense. I lived there.

• 27:07Speaker 04

  Now, I don't know whether or not you, I can't quite remember, I remember seeing you in the Playboy, I have a memory of you there. But I also used to go there on Sundays because Hepner used to love to show movies

• 27:18Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 27:19Speaker 04

  with like a piano player, and I went there a couple of times and I think you were there.

• 27:23Bill Maher?

  I did. But I was invited, I think, every Sunday, but I did not make a habit of it. I went on the 4th of July.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 27:32Bill Maher?

  That's, I remember that, but, um.

• 27:34Speaker 04

  Did you go in the grotto?

• 27:36Bill Maher?

  No, there were diseases that Columbus brought over. Are you kidding?

• 27:45Bill Maher?

  The grotto, no.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  And now someone's now bought it and totally changed it, right? Or is it still?

• 27:50Bill Maher?

  I don't know. I haven't been up to the old haunted mansion. It was, and you know, they said, I don't know if this is true, don't sue me if it wasn't, but I, I think I read that like it was, there was mold.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 28:02Bill Maher?

  It just, and of course, you can't be elderly and breathing mold. You know, it just shows you the, you can be so brilliant and successful in one way.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  Right.

• 28:13Bill Maher?

  And then you don't take care of the mold.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:18Speaker 04

  That, that, by the way, is the best philosophy I've heard all week. If you don't take care of the mold, what's the point? So I'm talking like I'm in Palm Beach, sorry.

• 28:29Speaker 05

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• 29:28Bill Maher?

  Now, I can tell you're itching to get in the game and you say, and by the way, not to, you know, scare you, but like, I would do it sooner than later because like, you're still, like I said, you look generically late middle age. You can play anything there. You can even have a, a love interest who's 30. You know, I mean, a woman, yuck, but, I mean, it's yucky pussy, but you're a great actor.

• 29:55Speaker 04

  But you're not saying I can't play a, a wonderful gay character as well?

• 30:02Bill Maher?

  What, that what?

• 30:03Speaker 04

  That I could play a wonderful gay character as well.

• 30:06Bill Maher?

  Oh, you could now?

• 30:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 30:08Bill Maher?

  Now that the cat's out of the bag?

• 30:12Speaker 04

  Hang on.

• 30:14Bill Maher?

  You don't wanna be, at a certain point, you know, you're iconic, so if it all goes under the bridge, you could have another 10 years of, you know, doing really good stuff, and then you gotta do Bad Grandpa. At this point, just take...

• 30:31Speaker 04

  Bad Grandpa, that's fantastic. That sounds like a part Jack Lemmon would have played.

• 30:36Bill Maher?

  No, De Niro played it.

• 30:37Speaker 04

  Oh, Bad Grandpa, oh.

• 30:39Bill Maher?

  You didn't see it?

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Well, if I did Bad Grandpa, I'd do it like Lemmon. Go fuck yourself.

• 30:46Bill Maher?

  Right. You're a good impressionist, you do...

• 30:51Speaker 04

  Well, you know, he was my mentor, Lemmon.

• 30:53Bill Maher?

  I do see similarities in your work.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  I met...

• 30:57Bill Maher?

  I do.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  I met Jack Lemmon, you will not know this, but when I was in junior high school, I went to Parkman Junior High School in the valley here, I went to the Marte Per Forum for a theater audition workshop that he was running. And I got up and did a little monologue, and at the end, he walked over to me, I was 13 years old, and he said, "That was a touch of terrific."

• 31:20Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 31:21Speaker 04

  He said, "No, everything I just talked about, this young actor did... What's your name?" I said, "Kevin." He said, "But listen to me." He said, "When you get finished with school here, you should go to New York and you should study to be an actor, because this is what you're meant to do with your life."

• 31:32Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 31:34Speaker 04

  And 13 years later...

• 31:35Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 31:36Speaker 04

  I went to New York, I went to Juilliard, and I got the opportunity to audition to play his son in a production of Long Day's Journey into Night, and I won the part. And Jack and I did that play for a year, and he played my father in that, and then we did three other projects together, ending with Glengarry Glen Ross.

• 31:54Bill Maher?

  Everyone on this show has these awesome stories about their showbiz past, and I got nothing.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  You got nothing?

• 32:00Bill Maher?

  Who was here last week?

• 32:01Speaker 04

  No, come on, didn't Dangerfield discover you in a bathroom somewhere?

• 32:07Bill Maher?

  That's about it. And you're thinking about grodeer scene than Brock. I mean, I loved him, but he used to come in. He was, when I first started in 1979, Catch a Rising Star was the big club in New York.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  Yeah. I was in Ju- I was a juilliard at that point.

• 32:22Bill Maher?

  Were you aware of Catch?

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 32:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, you went there?

• 32:24Speaker 04

  I used to do stand-up comedy, because I was working on my Johnny Carson impression.

• 32:28Bill Maher?

  I never saw you there in that, in that era, 79 to 83, I was there.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  Oh, sure.

• 32:33Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 32:34Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know that. You do a great Carson.

• 32:36Speaker 04

  Oh, sure. I love, I love Johnny.

• 32:39Bill Maher?

  I do, too.

• 32:39Speaker 04

  No, this is true. I don't make this up.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  There was an earthquake in Los Angeles this morning. You may not have known it. I was sitting in a hotel room.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  And all of a sudden, the hotel starts to move. I thought Ed had fallen out of bed, but then I realized, how can you fall off a floor? No, that's not true. Ed's a lady who slept like a log last night, which is true, because when I got up, he was in my fireplace. Weird guy. Anyway.

• 33:10Bill Maher?

  Oh, kids.

• 33:12Speaker 04

  Do you know, I did his show once before he retired. I got to do Carson with Carson.

• 33:16Bill Maher?

  You think the kids know who that is?

• 33:19Speaker 04

  I hope so.

• 33:19Bill Maher?

  What percentage? Some do. I mean.

• 33:21Speaker 04

  I hope so.

• 33:21Bill Maher?

  To me, no, many will not.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  Many will not, but God, I miss him.

• 33:27Bill Maher?

  Oh, I do, too.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  I really miss him.

• 33:28Bill Maher?

  But I also say, I even wrote it once, I, when he died, I did something for Time Magazine. I think he died in 2001 or something. And I did say, as much as I gave him his props, that Lena was the right person for his era. You have to be the right person in that job for the era. Johnny was great when conversations breathed a little more.

• 33:54Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 33:55Bill Maher?

  When people didn't have smartphones and attention spans like a gnat and, you know, they had been educated and, you know, he used to have Gore Vidal on and then it was just like. Just the talk show became a little more like of a, just more of a party than a conversation.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  Do you know I played Gore Vidal?

• 34:16Bill Maher?

  No, but you'd be a great choice.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  I played Gore Vidal in a movie that we shot in 2017 in Italy, Rome.

• 34:24Bill Maher?

  What movie?

• 34:25Speaker 04

  It's a movie called Dear Mr. Vidal, and Netflix has shelved it.

• 34:30Bill Maher?

  I, see, this is what I mean about show business jail, okay? That's.

• 34:35Speaker 04

  It's, by the way, I've seen it, it's completed, it's ready.

• 34:38Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  And it is a shame that they've shelved it because the director, the screenwriter, Michael Skulberg, who plays the Gore's lover of forty-something years, I think would win an Academy Award for his performance. The other actors, the crew, they're also being punished, and they shouldn't be. And I hope Netflix grows up about it because it's an incredible movie, and I have to say, I think it's one of the best films I've ever done.

• 35:06Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 35:07Speaker 04

  So I would love for that movie to finally get seen.

• 35:09Bill Maher?

  But they own it outright.

• 35:10Speaker 04

  They own it.

• 35:11Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  And they say they don't want to release it. So I say, give it to us and we'll get it released. Give it to Paramount.

• 35:18Bill Maher?

  Well, we can't have, we can't have people watching movies from bad people.

• 35:26Bill Maher?

  That's what I say.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Oh, I see, I see.

• 35:28Bill Maher?

  We can't have people watching, now, did you see the Michael Jackson movie?

• 35:32Speaker 04

  I did not.

• 35:33Bill Maher?

  I'm joking, is he?

• 35:34Speaker 04

  Did you see it?

• 35:35Bill Maher?

  No, but I'm just saying, people are.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Oh, I see.

• 35:37Bill Maher?

  Are like, god, it's gonna make a billion dollars.

• 35:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:41Bill Maher?

  And, look, I, I don't think he should, you know, first of all, as I always say, the music didn't rape anybody, you know?

• 35:48Speaker 04

  Well, and also, I think the movie takes place at a time when it was before he was ever accused of anything.

• 35:53Bill Maher?

  I know, but if people were really being consistent about this shit, I mean, fuck, you know, even Oprah came in on the side of, I believe the kids. So, you know, it's, it's so inconsistent, if you, if you wanna. You know, forgive and just enjoy the art. Some people get that pass and some do not. Or some get, you know, again, I think in your case.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  I don't, I would say this, I don't think art should be fucked with over allegations alone.

• 36:26Bill Maher?

  Of course not.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  That's what I think.

• 36:28Bill Maher?

  But that part is never gonna happen. Humans are humans. They love to believe a rumor.

• 36:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, but I, but in the end, I also believe that, you know, we're gonna figure this out. It's, it's gonna correct itself in a way that I think.

• 36:42Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 04

  We'll look back and go, what the fuck are we going through?

• 36:45Bill Maher?

  I mean, that already has started to take place.

• 36:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:48Bill Maher?

  Absolutely, but, you know, it's not like, you know, it's not like that's gonna fall easily. Andrew Sullivan had a great line last week. He said, you know, woke isn't dead, it's just waiting.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Like an assassin.

• 37:06Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  By the way, do you put this picture up here deliberately?

• 37:11Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 37:11Speaker 04

  Well, it's an Oswald, it's a shot of Oswald being shot.

• 37:14Bill Maher?

  Well, no, it's, it's, you're not looking at it, it's.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 37:18Bill Maher?

  It's, it's using the original picture of the sheriff and Oswald.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Oh, he's got a microphone.

• 37:23Bill Maher?

  Yeah, one is, one is playing guitar. He looks, it's making them look like they're in a band.

• 37:28Speaker 04

  Oh, I see. Fantastic. The Oswald Brothers, yes. I love them.

• 37:33Bill Maher?

  I mean, Kennedy assassination fans love it.

• 37:38Bill Maher?

  Oliver Stone was here and he came in his pants.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'll bet.

• 37:43Bill Maher?

  Did you ever work with him?

• 37:44Speaker 04

  Stone? No.

• 37:45Bill Maher?

  Oh, what a shame.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  No.

• 37:47Bill Maher?

  What a pairing you guys would be.

• 37:48Speaker 04

  Oh, you're kidding? Aren't we both canceled? No.

• 37:51Bill Maher?

  No, but.

• 37:52Speaker 04

  He's okay, he's okay?

• 37:53Bill Maher?

  Well, you know, again, it's so inconsistent. He loves Putin. Which is like the epitome of bad man. You know, I mean, you can, you can quibble about certain people.

• 38:04Speaker 04

  Have you invited Putin here, Ben?

• 38:06Bill Maher?

  I've, I have.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  Have you?

• 38:07Bill Maher?

  And. Look, I didn't think Mike Pence would ever do my show. He did it a couple. Mike Pence?

• 38:14Speaker 04

  Mike Pence, oh wow.

• 38:15Bill Maher?

  Yeah, came out to do the evil Bill Maher show, so.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  Oh, that's so true.

• 38:19Bill Maher?

  I don't, I don't put anything past anybody. It's, it's always shifting. Trump changed the rules of what we expect from a president, what a president can do, you know.

• 38:30Speaker 04

  But don't you think that's, that's part of the reason that he won?

• 38:33Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 38:35Speaker 04

  People are like, he can do anything he wants. I want to be with that guy.

• 38:39Bill Maher?

  And there is just a, it's amazing, at the same time, the most full of shit person, and also the most authentic. I mean, again, to say to somebody, you're a terrible person. Say what you want, it's pretty authentic.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  You've said it to me three times tonight, and I, I don't know what the fuck I did.

• 38:59Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, that's pretty, uh, that's pretty, so, you know, I mean, he is who he is, and...

• 39:09Speaker 04

  What, what are you doing for July 4th, by the way? You get some...

• 39:12Bill Maher?

  I don't know, I'm going to Washington next week. I'm getting this Mark Twain.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  Oh, yes, that's right. Congratulations.

• 39:18Bill Maher?

  But again, the anxiety of whether they're gonna cancel it or whatever.

• 39:22Speaker 04

  But it's at the Kennedy Center.

• 39:23Bill Maher?

  Yes, and then they took...

• 39:24Speaker 04

  No longer the Trump Center.

• 39:25Bill Maher?

  Yes, and I don't know if that's gonna rile him up. You know, it's, it's like, there's this, there's this tiger that's sleeping.

• 39:33Speaker 04

  But how would you feel if he suddenly decided at the, at the end of the day to come?

• 39:37Bill Maher?

  That could happen too.

• 39:38Speaker 04

  That could happen.

• 39:39Bill Maher?

  Seriously.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, that could happen.

• 39:40Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  But how would that make you feel?

• 39:42Bill Maher?

  Awesome. What an ending.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  Would that, and by the way, would that change your acceptance speech? Would that, would you, would you, uh...

• 39:50Bill Maher?

  No.

• 39:53Bill Maher?

  No, it's, it's not all about him.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  Well, that's your first mistake.

• 40:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 40:05Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 40:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:08Bill Maher?

  That was a perfect smash cut. It's not all about it.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  One time.

• 40:17Bill Maher?

  You know, the classic, yeah, the classic.

• 40:20Speaker 04

  That's right, alligator, whatever that place is in Florida.

• 40:23Bill Maher?

  The guy comes over to you and you spit because that's all you have because you're tied up. That's gonna make things better.

• 40:28Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 40:29Bill Maher?

  When you're, when you're.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  It's not about him.

• 40:36Bill Maher?

  What about a comedy? That's what you should do.

• 40:38Speaker 04

  Are you kidding? I love it. Don't you, I did, I did Horrible Bosses. I did Horrible Bosses 2. I had such a great time.

• 40:44Bill Maher?

  Oh, American Beauty.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  American Beauty is very funny. A lot of it's very funny.

• 40:48Bill Maher?

  Oh, it's all funny.

• 40:50Speaker 04

  A lot of it. Well, maybe the ending isn't funny.

• 40:52Bill Maher?

  I don't remember the ending.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Well, of course, because you were asleep watching porn in the hotel room.

• 40:57Bill Maher?

  No, it's, I love that movie. It's a great movie. I've seen it more than once, but it was, yeah, that, that's one I could, oh, that's a good idea. Because I, it's been long enough. I mean, I certainly remember the performance, which I remember at the time and I imagine I would still believe was very much like and deserved to be compared to Dustin Hoffman in, um, The Graduate. Like, it's, there's no jokes in either movie. No jokes.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 41:26Bill Maher?

  And yet, it's very funny.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Very funny.

• 41:28Bill Maher?

  And to pull that off, you know.

• 41:30Speaker 04

  Well, hey, we had a great script. The Sam Mendes was a great director. I knew him from theater. And it was his first film. And, um, it's very funny because, just going back to Jack Lemmon for a second. Sam said to me, he brought the best of theater to that experience. We, we rehearsed it like for two weeks before we started shooting. And, um, it's about the third day rehearsal and Jack, uh, Sam said to me, when was the last time you watched The Apartment? And I was like, well, I've seen The Apartment many times, but I don't remember the last time I watched it.

• 42:02Bill Maher?

  I just watched it.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  He said, watch it tonight and then let's you and I talk tomorrow morning.

• 42:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  So that night I watched The Apartment again.

• 42:09Bill Maher?

  Jack Lemmon.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  One of the great movies ever.

• 42:11Bill Maher?

  Shirley MacLaine.

• 42:12Speaker 04

  Shirley MacLaine. Fred McMurray.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  And then I met with Sam the next morning and he said, "The great thing about Lemon's performance in that film is that, no matter what comes at him, no matter what happens, and a lot does, we never see him change. We only see him evolve. And that's what I need you to do as Lester. We don't want to ever see Lester change. We just want to see him evolve."

• 42:44Bill Maher?

  It's a good thing I got out of-

• 42:45Speaker 04

  And it was a great piece of direction.

• 42:46Bill Maher?

  Good thing I got out of acting. I could never pull that off. I mean, it just wasn't my thing. I did it in the 80s when I was a young comic, but it was like-

• 42:54Speaker 04

  Well, you've made movies, though.

• 42:56Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I know. So I'm glad I had that-

• 42:58Speaker 04

  One credit to Lester, isn't it?

• 43:00Bill Maher?

  That's a joke. It's a joke on the movies I did make. Cannibal Women and the Avocado Jungle of Death. I actually made that one. And Pizza Man and DC Cab. Oh, I had a lot of great credits.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  But what about the guy, Kevin, what's his name from-

• 43:14Bill Maher?

  Have you seen My Murder She Wrote?

• 43:16Speaker 04

  I have not seen Your Murder She Wrote. Oh, please.

• 43:19Bill Maher?

  I mean, look.

• 43:20Speaker 04

  And by the way, she didn't do her off-camera, did she?

• 43:23Bill Maher?

  What?

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Angela Endrick.

• 43:26Bill Maher?

  She wasn't even there for one of them. I'm not fucking kidding.

• 43:30Speaker 04

  Oh, I got it. Yeah, apparently she never did her off-camera. Somebody in a wig did her off-camera.

• 43:34Bill Maher?

  She did like 13 of the 22, but no, if you, because I know you're an actor, whatever you may think about Mr. Spacey and his life, he is an acting maestro. Weren't you the head of the Old Vic?

• 43:48Speaker 04

  I was the head of the Old Vic, yes, for 12 years.

• 43:50Bill Maher?

  I mean, how do you turn that vague idea of change and evolution into like what you're actually doing or saying?

• 43:58Speaker 04

  But it's the greatest thing when something... Look, there's a lot of things you can do when you're preparing for a part, whether it's a play or a movie. You can read a lot of stuff. You can, you know, take in a lot of stuff. But it's the things that make it active for you that you can actually play that, for me, are very exciting. So when a director can say something to me that I can, I can understand that as an idea and it gives me the energy and the focus to move in that direction. I don't know whether it's going to work or not. But it opens me up to trying something in a way that I've never done it before. I I've been so fortunate with the directors I've worked with.

• 44:39Bill Maher?

  That's why I never progressed as an actor. I that's gutsy. I didn't I I was just not willing to like be gutsy like that. I was a comic. It was it was a whole different thing.

• 44:49Speaker 04

  But don't you think, I mean, look, I always think the writing of comedy, the figuring out of bits, all that stuff is is it's always a risk because you don't never know whether it's gonna land or not land.

• 45:00Bill Maher?

  Sweetheart, nothing is worse than the two first two years in comedy. Whatever you had to, that's the brutal, you know.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:07Bill Maher?

  Two drunks at two in the morning.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:09Bill Maher?

  Nobody laughing, nobody encouraging you, poor, you know, just everything bad.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:15Bill Maher?

  And wondering, the worst part, wondering if you were go, oh, Jesus Christ, am I gonna be one of the people?

• 45:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 45:21Bill Maher?

  Who's on, you know, it's like in the army, am I gonna be the one who gets shot on this charge, you know?

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 45:28Bill Maher?

  And, you know, I.

• 45:30Speaker 04

  Was there, was there a, you know, because I've I've had moments in my experience where some I gave a performance, something happened on stage, something, something that gave me confidence that I was actually an actor and I was gonna do it. Was there, were there moments where something happened in front of an audience?

• 45:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I got laughs. What are you fucking talking about? Of course, that's what happened.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  That's what happened.

• 45:55Bill Maher?

  They started laughing.

• 45:58Speaker 04

  I was looking for something more profound than just they started laughing.

• 46:02Bill Maher?

  You're more of a show business than in it, aren't you? No, uh, yeah, they, I mean, I I think I was telling somebody this recently. I can remember the date, uh, June 20th, 1980, when I did a full like 15 minutes and like they laughed from beginning to end. Like, it was just, oh, you did a set and they laughed. It was a Saturday, it was cake, so the audience was.

• 46:26Speaker 04

  And where was it?

• 46:27Bill Maher?

  It was Catch a Rising Star.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 46:28Bill Maher?

  And, uh, it was, I mean, I remember that more than like. You know, my whatever other great acme of achievement I may have achieved was like, no, that because it was sort of like a stamping of your past like, oh, okay, I can like, get on this ship at least, I'll be at the lowest rung, but it'll be on the thing.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Well, this is why I disagree with Wanda Sykes. We need more of you, not less.

• 46:55Bill Maher?

  Oh, were you there at the Golden?

• 46:57Speaker 04

  No, I know about that.

• 46:59Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's so funny. It's so funny that people ask me about that, like, I thought it was like nothing. And then I talked to her after and it was nothing. And then, but it's just as when people want to like, you know, make something, they just do.

• 47:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:13Bill Maher?

  They, they just, you know, it's, it's fun. Um, but no, I, I didn't, if, if there's a beef, I don't know about it.

• 47:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:21Bill Maher?

  And then I, somebody asked me the other day about what she said on a podcast and, and, well, what do you think? I said, I hadn't heard. I don't, I don't, I'm not on really social media.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  Well, there's something.

• 47:33Bill Maher?

  Are you on social media, Kevin?

• 47:36Speaker 04

  A tiny bit.

• 47:37Bill Maher?

  What do you have?

• 47:37Speaker 04

  But Evan does most of it because I, I, he's, he's afraid I'm gonna like something I shouldn't like.

• 47:42Bill Maher?

  But I mean, when the phone is in your hand.

• 47:45Speaker 04

  No, I'm not, I'm not, no.

• 47:47Bill Maher?

  Never.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  Not really, no.

• 47:49Bill Maher?

  I feel like you're, you're a little.

• 47:51Speaker 04

  But I, this is what I find crazy.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  If someone has a problem with you, why don't they pick up a phone and call you and tell you? Why do they wait until they're sitting in front of a journalist and then they turn it into a story? I, I think that if you have a problem with somebody, then you should tell them, you should confront them about it and not just wait.

• 48:13Bill Maher?

  Who are you talking, who are you talking about?

• 48:14Speaker 04

  I'm just talking about in general, I, I tend to see a lot of these things where people attack someone in an interview and say something negative about them in an interview that they didn't clearly say to them directly. And it's kind of how I felt about what she did.

• 48:26Bill Maher?

  I, I feel like all the rules have just sort of been let to slide, you know, a lot of articles in respectable papers, it's so obvious, like, this is what we want to say. And then we call up somebody who. We knows agrees with it.

• 48:46Bill Maher?

  Extra and you're like, oh, look at the with the experts. That's why he's an expert.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:51Bill Maher?

  And it's okay, but I always feel like I'm being funneled toward an opinion. Instead of just giving the facts.

• 49:00Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 49:00Bill Maher?

  Ma'am, remember Jack Webb?

• 49:02Speaker 04

  Well, I've watched a number of these interviews that you've done and you always you always take the side of I want all I want the whole story, not just a piece of the story.

• 49:12Bill Maher?

  Because I'm Scott Pelley. And this is sixty minutes.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  This is sixty minutes.

• 49:18Bill Maher?

  What did you think of that? What did you think of that? Well, that's an interesting question. Scott Pelley, who you know the whole story.

• 49:27Speaker 04

  I sort of followed it.

• 49:28Bill Maher?

  Okay, so Paramount, which owns CBS, got bought by David Ellison.

• 49:37Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 49:38Bill Maher?

  Son of billionaire Larry Ellison.

• 49:40Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 49:41Bill Maher?

  And merged it with a smaller company of his. Okay, you know, he's forty or something and they are close to Trump, not close, close, like they're not MAGA. Not going to fights on the lawn, I don't think.

• 49:58Speaker 04

  But what they have done is they've stood up for Israel.

• 50:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 04

  They have absolutely hired people who no one else would hire.

• 50:05Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 50:05Speaker 04

  Johnny Depp, Brett Ratner, the list goes on. They're unafraid and I I have great respect for what they're doing.

• 50:12Bill Maher?

  Oh, great. Yeah, I do too. I don't know how it'll come out, but in general, I understand people's qualms because the Trump administration

• 50:24Bill Maher?

  crazy corrupt things with crypto and like, you know, tariffs that oh, there's always a side deal for the.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Did you have no money in SpaceX?

• 50:34Bill Maher?

  For the family. It's just, you know, how he does business, you know, I wet my beak. But the other side would say sixty minutes was too left to begin with, and this is moving to the center. I know the person in charge is Barry Weiss. I like Barry a lot. I mean, we we have a history. I love the free press. I she's a Jewish lesbian. I don't think she's some sort of radical Trumper.

• 51:05Bill Maher?

  You know, nobody gives, gives somebody a chance. I mean, Scott Pelley, to be like, uh, this guy, the new guy, and you know, companies change hands all the time. He comes in, this guy Nick, and Scott Pelley attacks it in the, "Hi, how are you meeting? The bagels are in the back."

• 51:24Bill Maher?

  And he's like, "You will never be respected here." And he's like, "How could you not think you were gonna get fired?" I mean...

• 51:31Speaker 04

  Look, I can only tell you this, that, um...

• 51:37Speaker 04

  The right, if you're gonna label, uh, people right or left, the right

• 51:46Speaker 04

  and very significant figures on the right, like Douglas Murray.

• 51:50Bill Maher?

  Love him.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Incredible man, who Evan also represents.

• 51:57Bill Maher?

  Ah, all the troublemakers.

• 51:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  People like Douglas and others on the right have been so publicly supportive of me and believed that I was not given due process and have been out there for me and supporting me.

• 52:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah, cuz you're bad and they're bad.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Fine, that's what you wanna think. But on the left, not a single journalist has stood up and said anything in my favor for nine years.

• 52:26Bill Maher?

  Oh. I, I have gotten on my own network about Woody Allen. And I don't wanna pick on scabs, but you know, we just disagreed. He was, when he was here, and, uh...

• 52:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I watched that. He was very good. He was wonderful.

• 52:45Bill Maher?

  Pretty good.

• 52:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I'm not lofty. There's no loftiness in me.

• 52:49Bill Maher?

  Okay, now do Woody in bed with Johnny Carson. And include, include a reach around. Well, what are you gonna do with that golf club? Wait a second, hey.

• 53:08Bill Maher?

  Oh, it's like we're doing improv comedy.

• 53:10Speaker 04

  And why not?

• 53:11Bill Maher?

  Were you ever an improv comic? I wasn't.

• 53:13Speaker 04

  I wasn't really an improv comic. I mean, I did it in class and things like that, but no, I was I was just, I was generally doing Katherine Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart in odd situations. Like Jimmy Stewart in a laundromat running out of coins.

• 53:27Bill Maher?

  Wait, let me get Ed Sullivan to introduce this. Hello.

• 53:31Speaker 04

  Katherine Hepburn.

• 53:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah, with a very fine.

• 53:33Speaker 04

  Wonderful actress.

• 53:34Bill Maher?

  Precious. He's, uh, works all the clubs.

• 53:41Bill Maher?

  Kevin Spacey.

• 53:42Speaker 04

  Doing his Katherine Hepburn. I have no idea what you're talking about.

• 53:47Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, that's.

• 53:48Speaker 04

  Can you imagine if she came here, she'd rearrange the furniture?

• 53:52Speaker 04

  Let us be the color.

• 53:55Bill Maher?

  Kids, I'm gonna make a list of all the people we've been talking about.

• 53:59Speaker 04

  Mmm.

• 53:59Bill Maher?

  You don't know. And then you gotta, you gotta just give us this. If we're still talking about them, they must have been pretty good.

• 54:06Speaker 04

  Pretty good.

• 54:07Bill Maher?

  I mean, it is amazing how ephemeral show business.

• 54:13Speaker 04

  I wanna, I wanna just briefly touch on an area that I think you have some very strong opinions about, which is AI.

• 54:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, yes.

• 54:23Speaker 04

  Cause I'd love to sort of hear what, what your stance is on.

• 54:27Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, you know, obviously, there's great possibilities there. As someone who is 70, I'm counting on them. I mean, you know, figure this shit out, like, where are you, AI? Come on, cancer, let's go, let's go. I thought you were the smartest dude ever. I mean, should I really be giving up all I'm giving up if you can't figure out cancer? When I say figure out, I mean, like, going to the doctor and him saying, oh, you have a cancer of the blah, blah, blah. I'm, boom, we know what causes it and we know exactly what to give you.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  Right.

• 55:04Bill Maher?

  That's what I mean by figuring out. If you can't do that, then, you know.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  Then all the other shit doesn't.

• 55:10Bill Maher?

  Well, the fact that, you know, the father of the whole AI industry, Jeffrey Hinton, said he thought there was a 10 to 20% chance that it was an extinction event. To move forward, and so did Musk. Musk, for all the things he's done that are a little nutty, he got this right. He said it before it wasn't even on my radar. Way back, like 2014, he was like, "I'm very worried about AI and where this is going and how this go." And I see exactly what they're talking about now. I see it when I pull out of my driveway. Because every fucking car does what it wants.

• 55:51Bill Maher?

  Now, my driveway, like yours and I'm sure everybody else's, connects to the street. So when I'm at the end of it, I'm at kind of a T. And sometimes because it's a street, cars are going by. I can see them. I don't need my fucking car. Ah, yes, I know. I see the car right in front of me. Before I had you, I never once plowed right into a car on the street as I was coming out of my driveway. I actively work to avoid that. But now this fucking thing thinks that I need to be yelled at. If I wanted to be nagged, I'd get married. I say it, do it all the time.

• 56:35Bill Maher?

  And I can't turn that off. Because it's for safety.

• 56:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:40Bill Maher?

  Safety.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:41Bill Maher?

  And, you know, I see white people, they're not gonna get me, but I see why people go toward the, "I want my freedom." You know?

• 56:53Speaker 04

  I like that guy. I like that guy a lot.

• 56:59Speaker 05

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• 58:13Speaker 02

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• 58:28Bill Maher?

  I am that guy at times.

• 58:30Speaker 04

  At times, sure.

• 58:30Bill Maher?

  I think we all are.

• 58:31Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 58:32Bill Maher?

  We all want our freedom.

• 58:34Speaker 04

  And do you think there are? I mean, it's very interesting how the film industry talks about AI and there's all these debates and all these questions about what will it do? And will it take parts away from actors? And will everything get?

• 58:45Bill Maher?

  It's already doing that. You know who I'm fucking? Tilly Norwood.

• 58:51Bill Maher?

  Do you know who that is?

• 58:52Speaker 04

  No idea.

• 58:53Bill Maher?

  She's the AI actress that is quite popular. I mean.

• 59:00Speaker 04

  And how is that fuck?

• 59:01Bill Maher?

  Well, I found out she's fucking like 6 million other guys.

• 59:05Speaker 04

  Well, you're kind of used to that, aren't you?

• 59:08Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 59:09Speaker 04

  Wait a second.

• 59:10Bill Maher?

  That was a good, not accurate, but a perfect line.

• 59:16Speaker 04

  Because see, because it's interesting. People ask questions about, you know, you go to a film festival and people ask questions about how I feel about AI. And I say, well, all I know is that the memories that I have of working with incredible directors and phenomenal actors and screenwriters, moments I've had in rehearsal rooms where something happened that wasn't expected. Someone went in a different direction and we discovered something.

• 59:48Bill Maher?

  Yeah, AI can't do that.

• 59:49Speaker 04

  AI can't do any of that. And that's about trust. And that's about working and collaborating with other human beings. And I just don't have any fear about that being replaced. That, that, what, if you have to ask AI every question you need an answer for, that's not the way that creative things happen.

• 1:00:09Bill Maher?

  That's not, I agree. That's not my fear or beef with AI. My own personal job, I think I'll be the last man standing against AI. My fear is that they'll...

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  97, he'll be, and now we have Mike Pence again. Christ's sake.

• 1:00:27Bill Maher?

  No, I don't think it'll take that long. But I, I, I do think that they will get hold of decision making. I mean, already, right now, in the present, there is a big debate over what Anthropic can do with their latest Claude. And there are already people saying, the, the head of the company is, to his credit, "We are not going to sell you this until we are assured there is a human in the chain of command." And I can see, like everything else in Washington,

• 1:01:10Bill Maher?

  that maybe they put it in now, maybe they get rid of it later. I mean, they never said there was going to be an income tax. You know, and then it was like, when they started, it was like, well, it'll never be more than 2%. I know.

• 1:01:23Speaker 04

  But don't you find it interesting that, for example, someone like Martin Scorsese has just joined the board of an AI company? And he is the person who has thought about film and thought about the industry.

• 1:01:35Bill Maher?

  No, I saw that.

• 1:01:36Speaker 04

  And now people have come out against him because he said, "We should embrace whatever the advances in filmmaking can be."

• 1:01:43Bill Maher?

  Okay, first off, could we just not always have to come out against?

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  Well, I mean.

• 1:01:50Bill Maher?

  Can't we just?

• 1:01:53Speaker 04

  Yes, that you have 100% of my opinion. Absolutely, yes. I wish we didn't have to do that.

• 1:01:58Bill Maher?

  As soon as I saw it, I knew people would come out against because you just can't disagree.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  Because you know what the journalists do, they say, "Twitter on fire."

• 1:02:08Bill Maher?

  Oh, right.

• 1:02:08Speaker 04

  "Internet goes crazy."

• 1:02:10Bill Maher?

  It's three people.

• 1:02:11Speaker 04

  It's like nine people.

• 1:02:12Bill Maher?

  I know, exactly. It's a guy quoting his mom.

• 1:02:14Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:02:14Bill Maher?

  I know. It's just ridiculous. But, no, I saw that, and see, that would just make me not want to come out against Martin. It would make me want to talk to him.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Bill Maher?

  Has he not earned through his work as an auteur the right to be heard out on an issue which is in flux all the time?

• 1:02:37Speaker 04

  And by the way, if he's getting paid for it, I have no problem with that.

• 1:02:40Bill Maher?

  You know, if he's saying, "I'm worried about AI in this existential way, but for the movies, yes, it can be very good." That's a reasonable position because those both things can be true.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  That's right, that's right, yeah.

• 1:02:55Bill Maher?

  It's so frustrating.

• 1:02:57Speaker 04

  It's the weird thing, the sort of woke world of it all is, it reminds me of, I think Sean Penn said it better than anyone could have said it, certainly better than I could have said it. He says, "It's gotten to the point now where if you aren't actually a Danish prince, you can't play Hamlet."

• 1:03:14Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:03:16Speaker 04

  I went, "That's really accurate."

• 1:03:19Bill Maher?

  Right, I mean, and that certainly applies to the gay thing because it's, you know, this whole idea that you have to be gay to play gay. Where are you, do you agree with that? No?

• 1:03:30Speaker 04

  Well, not only do I agree with it, but I feel for these younger actors and actresses that I see talk about. They're playing a, a character in a TV series that's quite popular where they're playing a gay character and they feel so much pressure about declaring what they are and who they are, that people are sort of at 21 years old, before they really know,

• 1:03:56Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  are feeling all this pressure publicly to come out or not come out. And, and I think that, you know, coming out is not easy. It was not easy for me, although I was, for many years, people within the gay community made jokes about me, as if being famous and coming out was like an easy thing. It was actually not an easy thing and I resisted it for a long, long time. And for me, I'm sorry that I, I what, I didn't have that courage earlier in my life.

• 1:04:28Bill Maher?

  But wasn't that forced upon you by the scandal?

• 1:04:30Speaker 04

  No, not at all. I was actually ready to come out for two years before the scandal happened. But I'm just saying, much earlier in my career, because there were so many stories about me, there was lots of talk about that I was gay and I just wasn't out. And rather than the gay community understanding that and, and, and saying to me, we'll be there when you need us, we want you in our community, I always felt that I was being attacked. And that always just was very painful for me.

• 1:05:00Bill Maher?

  This town is, is everything its reputation says. When they talk about sharks and, I mean, it is some great stuff, but it is also full of a bunch of phonies and backstabbers and it's just, and the reason I think is because everybody wants to be in show business and at the pinnacle of it and a, and a star and everything that they think makes life so great and sometimes it does.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  Hmm.

• 1:05:29Bill Maher?

  You know, there's no denying there's some excitement there, but, and sometimes it doesn't, but they want it. And so the things that people are willing to do. I mean, there's lots of movies about this. You remember the Oscar from 1960 with?

• 1:05:47Bill Maher?

  Oh, I forget. I think it was Steven Boyd.

• 1:05:50Speaker 04

  I don't think I know this.

• 1:05:51Bill Maher?

  No, the Oscar, he wants the Oscar so bad and he's just like fucking over everybody.

• 1:05:56Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:05:57Bill Maher?

  And the ending is, he's up against, his name is Frank, the character.

• 1:06:04Bill Maher?

  Fucks up everybody and then he says, thinks he's gonna, to get the Oscar and he's, and and the guy's up there reading the thing and he says, "And the winner is Frank Sinatra." That's Sinatra, just a cameo.

• 1:06:20Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:06:21Bill Maher?

  And that's the big ending.

• 1:06:22Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. No, I don't know this.

• 1:06:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, surprise. You should watch that one. It's really, it's a great like soap opera kind of, but big budget like.

• 1:06:32Speaker 04

  I don't know that movie.

• 1:06:33Bill Maher?

  Valley of the Dolls.

• 1:06:34Speaker 04

  Who plays the Frank character?

• 1:06:37Bill Maher?

  Him, Steven Boyd.

• 1:06:38Speaker 04

  Oh, Steven Boyd.

• 1:06:39Bill Maher?

  He's, but his character is Frank and that's just the blow at the end of the movie is.

• 1:06:44Speaker 04

  That's hilarious.

• 1:06:44Bill Maher?

  The winner is Frank and you see him like.

• 1:06:48Speaker 04

  Almost, yeah. Almost, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:54Bill Maher?

  I just rewatched The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis.

• 1:06:58Speaker 04

  Oh, my Lord.

• 1:06:59Bill Maher?

  What?

• 1:06:59Speaker 04

  No, just Lewis, amazing.

• 1:07:01Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:03Speaker 04

  I saw him, I think at Bally's Park Place in Vegas with Sammy Davis Jr.

• 1:07:14Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:07:15Speaker 04

  They did an evening together.

• 1:07:16Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:07:17Speaker 04

  They came out together, did a blah blah blah blah. One of them left.

• 1:07:19Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:07:20Speaker 04

  One of them left, and they came back together at the end. It was absolutely insane.

• 1:07:25Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God. I would have loved to seen that.

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Chakunk.

• 1:07:30Bill Maher?

  I saw Sammy once in Reno. I was playing Reno. It was probably 1984.

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:07:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah, and Reno is a very small town. I mean, it was like, yeah, I would hear it on TV, you know, uttered in the same breath when they were doing plugs is Vegas and he'll be at the Star Lounge in Las Vegas and also Reno and Tahoe. Tahoe is another.

• 1:07:55Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:07:56Bill Maher?

  And so, like I thought, and then you get there and it's like, it was almost like a comedy club. I mean, it was just not a, and I saw Sammy in a, but they all played it. Cosby, everybody. Cause I guess they were in Vegas. It's like go up to Reno, it's a drive.

• 1:08:09Speaker 04

  I played, I was, I think the last performer to do a concert at the Stardust.

• 1:08:14Bill Maher?

  In Vegas?

• 1:08:15Speaker 04

  In the, in the Wayne Newton showroom in Vegas. Yeah, cuz I was doing a tour. I played Bobby Darin in a film.

• 1:08:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:08:22Speaker 04

  I did all the tracks, sang all the stuff. And so I went on tour with this band and, and we played the Stardust and it was incredible. That's sort of that kind of Vegas room that, that really doesn't exist anymore.

• 1:08:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that, I love that movie. What, what it was, what is the title?

• 1:08:40Speaker 04

  Beyond the Sea.

• 1:08:41Bill Maher?

  Beyond the Sea, cuz that was his big hit, yeah.

• 1:08:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:08:44Bill Maher?

  Now, sometimes a person really is sort of like born to play somebody. I mean, you kind of look like him and, um.

• 1:08:52Speaker 04

  It was amazing. First of all, I had Phil Ramone as my record producer.

• 1:08:56Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:08:56Speaker 04

  He did all the tracks and he was an incredible man. I had Roger Kellaway, who was one of Bobby Darin's accompanists, took him out on the road. He was my piano player. Uh, I got, I put Peterson Cotty in the film, playing my conductor. Uh, it was one of the great experiences and we did all the tracks at Abbey Road.

• 1:09:15Bill Maher?

  You have this whole other life as a musician, right?

• 1:09:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm doing concerts now.

• 1:09:20Bill Maher?

  See, that must lead to temptation, groupies, musicians, the road.

• 1:09:26Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:09:26Bill Maher?

  Like I say, probably.

• 1:09:28Speaker 04

  No, no. I, I'm at a point now where I'm beyond sort of putting myself in any kind of situation.

• 1:09:35Bill Maher?

  You're beyond the sea.

• 1:09:36Speaker 04

  Yeah, I'm beyond the sea, yeah.

• 1:09:39Bill Maher?

  You were beyond the sea when you were born.

• 1:09:40Speaker 04

  Wait a second, hang on a second.

• 1:09:46Bill Maher?

  Well, you know, your body tells you to slow down.

• 1:09:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Bill Maher?

  You know, but, uh.

• 1:09:51Speaker 04

  But I feel so energized and excited. I mean, I've, I've been very fortunate. Last year, I, Evan produced a film that we did called Roadworthy that we did with, uh, F. Murray Abraham and, and Billy Zane and, and, uh, it was a great experience and I just.

• 1:10:06Bill Maher?

  See, Billy Zane.

• 1:10:07Speaker 04

  Billy Zane.

• 1:10:08Bill Maher?

  Played Marlon Brando.

• 1:10:09Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:10:09Bill Maher?

  Because he, he had to.

• 1:10:11Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:10:11Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's pretty good.

• 1:10:12Speaker 04

  Well, he looked, you know.

• 1:10:15Speaker 06

  It's amazing, really.

• 1:10:17Bill Maher?

  That's good.

• 1:10:18Speaker 06

  How much he.

• 1:10:20Bill Maher?

  Oh, you got the face.

• 1:10:21Speaker 06

  Well, here's the point I'm trying to make, Bill. I, I, I can't help this, but I've been calling the club abandoned. I don't know why. It's just, it's just what I, what I feel. I can't, I.

• 1:10:39Bill Maher?

  Wow, you really, you got the face.

• 1:10:41Speaker 04

  I love.

• 1:10:42Bill Maher?

  That's tough. You know how we did that better than anybody, Jim Carrey?

• 1:10:45Speaker 04

  Oh, my.

• 1:10:45Bill Maher?

  He used to do an act at the Comedy Store. Like, I think it was just the faces. He would.

• 1:10:52Speaker 04

  Just turn into someone.

• 1:10:53Bill Maher?

  Just turn, turn his face.

• 1:10:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:56Bill Maher?

  I can't do it.

• 1:10:57Speaker 04

  He used to, I think maybe his first appearance on Carson, he did Clint Eastwood. But he literally showed you as, as he like made the face. He made himself become Clint Eastwood in front of your eyes. Absolutely incredible.

• 1:11:09Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:09Speaker 04

  I think he's a remarkable person.

• 1:11:11Bill Maher?

  He is a.

• 1:11:12Speaker 04

  He's also grown and changed and.

• 1:11:15Bill Maher?

  Oh, done some amazing.

• 1:11:16Speaker 04

  Done some amazing stuff.

• 1:11:17Bill Maher?

  Adult movies.

• 1:11:18Speaker 04

  I mean, and also watching him give, he's done a couple of, of college speeches at commencements that have just been beautiful, really beautiful about where he is.

• 1:11:28Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, he's a complicated dude. I know that. I don't know him well, but, you know, I, I always liked him. You know, we were never like close, close. I don't think he gets close. I mean, he's, you know, he, he's a bit of a manic depressive.

• 1:11:45Speaker 04

  He's better now than he, than he's ever been.

• 1:11:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah, no, I've been out with him.

• 1:11:48Speaker 04

  He feels it.

• 1:11:49Bill Maher?

  You know, with other people and, um, yeah, he's not a crazy person. But he just, he just, no, he can go into dark moods, you know?

• 1:11:58Speaker 04

  And who can't?

• 1:11:59Bill Maher?

  Me. I, I mean, I would like to think I'm, I'm not in, uh, who knows what's.

• 1:12:04Speaker 04

  You must have dark days.

• 1:12:06Bill Maher?

  In life, I've had them. They don't happen a lot anymore.

• 1:12:09Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:12:10Bill Maher?

  I mean, at this age.

• 1:12:11Speaker 04

  Well, that's because you're high as a kite.

• 1:12:16Bill Maher?

  No, it's because I'm careful as a catfish.

• 1:12:20Bill Maher?

  I don't know why I.

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 1:12:22Bill Maher?

  Catfish.

• 1:12:22Speaker 04

  What is it, like, what are you going fishing?

• 1:12:24Bill Maher?

  I'm a careful, I'm a careful person. Like, I don't do, I don't do stuff that's gonna get me in trouble, even though my reputation is always being in trouble. Like, you're beef with one of the sites. What? I have nothing.

• 1:12:35Speaker 04

  I said nothing.

• 1:12:36Bill Maher?

  You know, I, but, uh, no, I, I just, I'm a very careful person. I, I, I, you know, like.

• 1:12:44Speaker 04

  And is that because you're worried about how something might be interpreted?

• 1:12:47Bill Maher?

  No, I'm worried about pain. Don't want to keep, stave it off.

• 1:12:52Speaker 04

  Stave it off.

• 1:12:53Bill Maher?

  You know, I think, uh, I was a nervous child, you know?

• 1:12:57Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:12:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I was the kid who, like, when they came to, uh, get me for kindergarten, I know, I didn't.

• 1:13:04Speaker 04

  Why do you make it sound like it's Blanche Dubois in Streetcar? When they came to get me?

• 1:13:12Bill Maher?

  Not kindergarten, sorry. I went, I went to kindergarten. Nursery school.

• 1:13:16Speaker 04

  Nursery school. They came to get you for nursery school?

• 1:13:19Bill Maher?

  They came to get me. I, cause I, one of my first memories of me being on the stairs in our little house, and there, they came to the door, like, you know, the, the half-bus or whatever.

• 1:13:31Speaker 04

  I'm always dependent on the kindness of strangers.

• 1:13:35Bill Maher?

  Little purple with flowers on it, uh, like it was, all the other kids, I'm sure, were out, get into this van with strangers.

• 1:13:46Bill Maher?

  Nothing weird about that. And I threw a tantrum.

• 1:13:50Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:13:51Bill Maher?

  On the stairs about leaving.

• 1:13:53Speaker 04

  You did not want to get in that van?

• 1:13:55Bill Maher?

  I was like, here at home with mom, I'm, I'm into it, you know what? Uh, uh, I am, and to the point where they, I guess they must have had some meeting and went like, this kid is gonna fuck up nursery school. He really doesn't want to go, let's just skip it, and they did.

• 1:14:12Speaker 04

  And they did.

• 1:14:13Bill Maher?

  And that's why I'm so ignorant today.

• 1:14:20Bill Maher?

  If I only could have.

• 1:14:22Speaker 04

  You could have gotten into nursery school, yeah?

• 1:14:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Speaker 04

  Wow, that's incredible.

• 1:14:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I don't know, I don't know what brought that up.

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  You know, I grew up in the valley. I'm a, I'm a valley kid.

• 1:14:33Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 1:14:33Speaker 04

  Hmm. That's right. Thousand Oaks and then the valley.

• 1:14:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I've, whenever I read about it, like, I think, um, Red Easton Ellis is a kid who grew up in the valley.

• 1:14:45Speaker 04

  Robert Redford went to Van Nuys High School.

• 1:14:47Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah. That's a little before even our time.

• 1:14:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Bill Maher?

  Couldn't we just lose him?

• 1:14:53Speaker 04

  We did just lose him.

• 1:14:54Bill Maher?

  Wow, what a lion he was.

• 1:14:57Speaker 04

  He's incredible. I, I've been going through my archives, uh, because I sort of, I've kept everything. So I'm having this experience where I'm, I'm doing what would normally happen when you die, which is your relatives go through your stuff, but I've actually been going through it myself, which has been really moving and incredible and, because I kept everything. And I found about three months ago, a letter that I got. It probably was probably nineteen ninety-one or two. I had gone in to audition for Quiz Show, which is a film that Ralph Fiennes did.

• 1:15:32Bill Maher?

  Robert Redford.

• 1:15:33Speaker 04

  That Robert Redford directed.

• 1:15:35Bill Maher?

  About?

• 1:15:36Speaker 04

  About a quiz show, uh, that was.

• 1:15:38Bill Maher?

  Famous scandal.

• 1:15:39Speaker 04

  Famous scandal.

• 1:15:39Bill Maher?

  Huge scandal.

• 1:15:40Speaker 04

  Huge scandal.

• 1:15:41Bill Maher?

  In the year nineteen fifty-nine?

• 1:15:42Speaker 04

  That's right. And I'd gone in to audition for a part in the movie and I didn't get it. But three weeks later, I get this letter from Robert Redford,

• 1:15:55Speaker 04

  thanking me for coming in to audition, telling me how great I was, but that he was gonna go in a different direction and he just wanted to wish me well with my career. I was like, what fucking director writes an actor he doesn't cast?

• 1:16:09Bill Maher?

  And who's the guy in your other story about when you were, who you just told me was like, when you were thirteen?

• 1:16:15Speaker 04

  Lemon.

• 1:16:17Bill Maher?

  Okay, so now we have Jack Lemmon doing it.

• 1:16:19Speaker 04

  Robert Redford.

• 1:16:20Bill Maher?

  Robert Redford. Again, no.

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  You have none of these stories?

• 1:16:24Bill Maher?

  Nobody ever told me anything.

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  Listen, why don't you make up a story? Make up a story that Carson came one night and saw you. Did you do Carson?

• 1:16:32Bill Maher?

  But he didn't.

• 1:16:36Speaker 04

  All right, well, somebody who you could-

• 1:16:37Bill Maher?

  I did Carson 31 times.

• 1:16:39Speaker 04

  31 times?

• 1:16:40Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:41Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:16:41Bill Maher?

  I did Carson a lot, from 1982 to like, he left in 92, and then I did it a zillion times with Jay.

• 1:16:49Speaker 04

  With Jay, yeah.

• 1:16:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, Jay's my boy.

• 1:16:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Bill Maher?

  One of the few people I look up to.

• 1:16:53Speaker 04

  Jay was always, he was a guy- I found, actually, one of the things, one of the things I found from Jay was A, two telegrams I found recently. She sent me a telegram saying how happy he was that Beyond the Sea got great reviews, he was looking forward to seeing it. It was just a telegram he sent me.

• 1:17:08Bill Maher?

  A telegram?

• 1:17:09Speaker 04

  A telegram.

• 1:17:09Bill Maher?

  What year is this, 1920? A telegram?

• 1:17:13Speaker 04

  Telegrams. I have lots of telegrams from when I did theater. So people would send telegrams to the theater.

• 1:17:18Bill Maher?

  What year are we talking about?

• 1:17:19Speaker 04

  Probably was, well, this would have been 2003 or 4.

• 1:17:24Bill Maher?

  People were selling, sending telegrams?

• 1:17:25Speaker 04

  They still send telegrams. Opening nights, you send telegrams.

• 1:17:29Bill Maher?

  I, I, okay, I'm ignorant, I didn't-

• 1:17:31Speaker 04

  I'm gonna send you a telegram. It's gonna say, "Go-"

• 1:17:34Bill Maher?

  How would you even get it?

• 1:17:35Speaker 04

  Go fuck yourself.

• 1:17:36Bill Maher?

  Does he mean like a kid comes in-

• 1:17:38Speaker 04

  No!

• 1:17:38Bill Maher?

  Wearing the cap like a bellboy, and a telegram for Mr. Spacey?

• 1:17:42Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly, you're gonna get that. Telegram for Mr. Mayor.

• 1:17:46Bill Maher?

  Telegram for Johnny Asshole, is there a Johnny Asshole here?

• 1:17:49Speaker 04

  But here's the other telegram I found from Jay Leno. He wrote me this incredibly beautiful telegram when my mother passed away. Cause he knew how much my mother meant to me. And I thought that was really sweet of him.

• 1:17:59Bill Maher?

  You're from Leno?

• 1:18:00Speaker 04

  Leno, yeah.

• 1:18:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:18:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:01Bill Maher?

  I, I, you can't, I'm, you can't be in a good war with Jay Leno. He's just always gonna win.

• 1:18:07Speaker 04

  Oh, he's always gonna win?

• 1:18:07Bill Maher?

  He just, like, he does all-

• 1:18:08Speaker 04

  He used to come, he'd come around, he'd give him, they brought the drinks trailer, you know, the, the trolley into your room when you're gonna do the show?

• 1:18:15Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:18:16Speaker 04

  And then he'd come and say, "What are we talking about tonight? What do you wanna talk about? You wanna talk about your movie, or hey, you wanna-" And it was like, it was like so different from Carson, cause you didn't see Carson, you never saw Letterman before he went on.

• 1:18:26Bill Maher?

  Nobody ever sees me. I don't know how anybody can do that. You wanna save that energy for, for when you walk out.

• 1:18:33Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:18:33Bill Maher?

  It's-

• 1:18:34Speaker 04

  No, Jay Leno loved to come and sing before the show.

• 1:18:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:18:36Bill Maher?

  But then everybody has their own-

• 1:18:38Speaker 04

  "What do you wanna talk about? You wanna talk about-"

• 1:18:42Speaker 04

  It's true. It's absolutely true.

• 1:18:44Bill Maher?

  So, uh, you're playing with toy trains, is that?

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  Is it true that you met Jack Lemmon, you were like four, what?

• 1:18:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah. But, you know, as I was saying an hour ago or something, when I had to do that appreciation of Carson in time, I really was, um, glad, I read it back recently for some reason, that I did take the moment to give Leno his props, that you just, you know, Johnny would not survive right now. But you can't, unless he had changed a lot. And that's not who he was. He was gracious. He was not loud. It wasn't like screaming to get more attention. You know, going, he wasn't, he wasn't partisan.

• 1:19:31Speaker 04

  And he wasn't political.

• 1:19:32Bill Maher?

  He was political, just not partisan.

• 1:19:34Speaker 04

  Just not partisan, that's right.

• 1:19:35Bill Maher?

  You know, and neither was Jay. They knew how to do that, where they didn't like write off half the country.

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  Here's something interesting. You may disagree or agree with this, but here's something I felt watching and learning as I did. I used to go to The Tonight Show when I was 16, 17 years old. I still have ticket, my tickets stubs from when I went to The Tonight.

• 1:19:56Bill Maher?

  Really? Wow.

• 1:19:58Speaker 04

  And I think over a period of time, I began to realize the difference between Johnny Carson and any other host. Maybe Letterman.

• 1:20:09Speaker 04

  But Johnny knew he was the host. And that was the role he played. I always felt Leno played the audience.

• 1:20:19Speaker 02

  Wow, I can't believe I'm here with you. Wow, it's incredible. What am I doing? It's amazing. I'm sitting next to such a great.

• 1:20:25Speaker 04

  He always played the audience, like I'm one of you. But Johnny played the host.

• 1:20:30Bill Maher?

  Look, Jay's just a stand-up comedy machine. He just is. So like, you can't blame him for really wanting to just do an hour of stand-up. Because.

• 1:20:41Speaker 04

  No, not at all. I'm just saying there's a difference between recognizing why I think Johnny survived as long as he survived.

• 1:20:50Bill Maher?

  Yes, but also Jay. He, they've twice fired him for the crime of being number one. And there was a, he kept it on.

• 1:20:57Speaker 04

  Yes, I was, I was the second person to be fired for being number one, yeah.

• 1:21:02Speaker 02

  Sure, okay, go ahead.

• 1:21:05Bill Maher?

  I mean, twenty-two years is an incredible run. And, you know, he

• 1:21:15Bill Maher?

  found a way to be himself in an interview part of it when, you know, what Jay really loves is to sit around with other comics and write jokes and do jokes. And it's just, and that's why he's such an amazing guy, you know. During the strike, like twenty years ago strike, like, we were allowed to write our own stuff or something, we just didn't have the right. He, I didn't notice any difference in the monologue. He wrote the whole thing himself. He's that kind of a savant.

• 1:21:46Speaker 04

  Did you also, did you ever find the, I always found this sort of, just a funny phenomenon with comedians, that you could sit around with a group of comedians in a bar or club or whatever, and somebody would be telling their jokes.

• 1:22:00Bill Maher?

  Telling their jokes.

• 1:22:01Speaker 04

  You know, doing their bits, you know, I got a bit, I got a, and they do the bit.

• 1:22:04Bill Maher?

  That's not what we sound like.

• 1:22:05Speaker 04

  And you do the, and you do the bit, and people would go like this, "Yeah, that's funny, that'll work." They wouldn't laugh.

• 1:22:11Bill Maher?

  There is some of it.

• 1:22:12Speaker 04

  There would be a little bit, yeah, that's, that's gonna work, that's funny. That's not funny.

• 1:22:16Bill Maher?

  Okay, but it's, it's a cliche, like, all supermodels are anorexic, you know. It's, there's, there's some of that. And not the people I chose to hang out with, because they're all generous.

• 1:22:28Speaker 04

  But who, so, so when you were starting out and all that, who were like, was there a group of comedians you were a part of?

• 1:22:35Bill Maher?

  You wouldn't know most of them, but you would know Jerry Seinfeld, he was one of them.

• 1:22:39Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:22:39Bill Maher?

  Larry David was a little before me and on a different club.

• 1:22:43Speaker 04

  Robert Klein?

• 1:22:44Bill Maher?

  No, that was a different generation. That was the one Jerry and I and all of us looked.

• 1:22:49Speaker 04

  We just lost Tom Dreeson.

• 1:22:51Bill Maher?

  Looked up to, I looked up, but I, we did not see Tom and, God bless him, and Robert Klein in the same, uh, rank. Robert Klein was, I would say, more than anyone, the one comedians in my, like, graduating class, looked up to him and Carlin, were the two who were like hip. You know, the post Alan King era, even though Alan King was kinda hip, but it was still a little Borscht Belt-y.

• 1:23:20Speaker 04

  Right, right, right.

• 1:23:21Bill Maher?

  You know?

• 1:23:21Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. But did you ever have those nights where, like, you went and saw somebody get up on stage and you were like, "Holy fuck, who is that?"

• 1:23:31Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, I've seen guys have good sets, yes, and I mean, I'm sure if you ran the names by me, I could think of that, but I mean, I, Richard Belzer.

• 1:23:43Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:23:44Bill Maher?

  Who never became like, uh, famous that much as a stand-up comic.

• 1:23:49Speaker 04

  Much more famous on Law and Order.

• 1:23:51Bill Maher?

  Yes, it's true.

• 1:23:53Speaker 04

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:23:53Bill Maher?

  Only because he was like, the world's worst worker. He was so amazingly talented and funny, but he would never write anything down.

• 1:24:00Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:24:01Bill Maher?

  You know, he just got stoned when on stage. And when he was like, on fire at Catch a Rising Star, that was the best I've ever seen.

• 1:24:08Speaker 04

  Uh, you know Jay Moore?

• 1:24:10Bill Maher?

  Who?

• 1:24:11Speaker 04

  Jay Moore.

• 1:24:12Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I know Jay. I don't think we were the same, he was not in New York when I was in New York.

• 1:24:17Speaker 04

  Jay took me one night, we were, we were at, I think we were at the Comedy Store, we were watching some comedies, and then he said, "Should I call Hackett?" I said, "What?" He goes, "Should I call Hackett?" I said, "Buddy Hackett?" He said, "Yeah, I know Buddy Hackett."

• 1:24:32Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:24:33Speaker 04

  He said, "It's fucking one in the morning." He goes, "Well, he's either up or he's not." So he calls Buddy Hackett, and Buddy Hackett invites us to come to his house in Beverly Hills.

• 1:24:43Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 1:24:43Speaker 04

  And I will never forget this evening.

• 1:24:44Bill Maher?

  At one in the morning?

• 1:24:45Speaker 04

  At one in the morning.

• 1:24:46Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:24:46Speaker 04

  Buddy Hackett answers the door in his white-

• 1:24:48Bill Maher?

  Who was it, who were you with?

• 1:24:49Speaker 04

  I was with Jay Moore.

• 1:24:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, Jay Moore, yeah.

• 1:24:51Speaker 04

  He answers the door, he answers the door in his white-

• 1:24:54Bill Maher?

  I don't know why I keep forgetting things.

• 1:24:55Speaker 04

  Bathrobe, because I can't imagine why. He answers the door in his white bathrobe, and we come in to his house, and Buddy Hackett's literally like, "Hey, you want some cheese? You gotta cut it yourself, because my wife hates it when I cut the cheese." And literally, he would come in and come out and come in and come out and do jokes, and it was incredible.

• 1:25:14Bill Maher?

  That, that-

• 1:25:15Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 1:25:16Bill Maher?

  That generation, like, I saw Buddy Hackett, uh, this is again, right around that time when I was opening for acts in Vegas and Reno, and I was Atlantic City, and I was opening for, I think, a singer named Denise Williams, who had a big hit called, "Let's Hear It For The Boy", and no other music anyone knew, so she really had to save it for the end. Anyway, uh, and then, you know, like, comics in town, we, you know, you could like, talk your way into getting to see the other comic, you know, professional courtesy, and me and two other guys did, and we went to see Buddy-

• 1:25:53Speaker 04

  Playing at the Trump Tower.

• 1:25:53Bill Maher?

  Yes, and, and he just told a bunch of old jokes.

• 1:25:58Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 1:25:58Bill Maher?

  That was his act. And then we were allowed to go back, say, to where the great man was holding court in his dressing room. And he was such a dick in every possible way. I'm sorry. He was funny. I used to like him on The Tonight Show. When he was on The Tonight Show, Johnny would go, "Ah, one buddy's on, no, no notes. No notes. We just, we just go." You know, and that was his ultimate compliment. No, no pre-interview.

• 1:26:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:26:26Bill Maher?

  No, no notes, just.

• 1:26:28Speaker 04

  But he would do what he does.

• 1:26:29Bill Maher?

  He was, uh, he was just, every bad thing you could do, like, uh, holding court and if someone like dared to like cough or something, I'm talking. Excuse me, but do you want, you know, just, and totally like hit on a bad looking, middle-aged woman, like, which was sad. And then toddled off, like scarfing all the liquor. He must have, every night from the, he could like take the actual liquor and it was a box full of food and liquor that was in the dressing room that he went out to his limo, which was 10 feet away.

• 1:27:09Speaker 04

  Oh, my God.

• 1:27:11Bill Maher?

  But I loved him.

• 1:27:12Speaker 04

  What a legend. He's a legend. Come on.

• 1:27:14Bill Maher?

  I'm sorry, that's my memory. Maybe he was great all the other days of his life. That's very possible. I absolutely think that's possible. Caught him on a bad night, but that's what I saw.

• 1:27:27Speaker 04

  But did you ever sit down with, you know, somebody who was legendary, who you really felt a connection with?

• 1:27:33Bill Maher?

  Alan King. Same era. I was in, also Atlantic City.

• 1:27:39Speaker 04

  Very Bush belt, yes.

• 1:27:40Bill Maher?

  In the, I was very impressed as a 28-year-old comic. He was such a master and it was not unhip.

• 1:27:49Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:27:49Bill Maher?

  You know? I mean, it wasn't like outrageous. It wasn't Carlin, but it was things like, you could look up the year, because I remember the joke he said, "People tell me I'm middle-aged. I'm 58. Yeah, if I live to 116."

• 1:28:06Bill Maher?

  It's kind of basic, but it's so true. That you just, and he had a great delivery. And then he, he stayed up and just drank us under the table at his age. Me and Dennis Wolfberg, I think was the other comic, God rest his soul. And we were just drinking, drinking, drinking at the bar. You know, for hours is my recollection.

• 1:28:32Speaker 04

  I have to share with you something I've never said publicly.

• 1:28:36Bill Maher?

  Uh oh.

• 1:28:38Speaker 04

  But I think you'll appreciate it.

• 1:28:39Bill Maher?

  I'm straight.

• 1:28:45Speaker 04

  So I did the Carson Show, 1990, because I'd done a television movie about Jim and Tammy Baker. With Bernadette Peters, and I played Jim Baker. So Carson, who had such a field day.

• 1:28:58Bill Maher?

  Not Tammy.

• 1:28:58Speaker 04

  Not Tammy, strangely enough. But Carson had such a field day with the Bakers, wanted to have the actor who played Jim Baker on the show. So I got booked on The Tonight Show.

• 1:29:07Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:29:09Speaker 04

  But by the time I got on the show, there had been elderly woman who ran a, you know, Midwest newspaper called the Long Town News or something. Robert Klein and then me.

• 1:29:24Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:29:25Speaker 04

  And by the time I got on the show, I had a minute and a half with a clip. And they were gonna let me, and Carson was gonna let me do my impression of him.

• 1:29:33Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:29:33Speaker 04

  Which he didn't normally like. But he'd seen these tapes of me doing him. And he was gonna let me do the bit. But we didn't get to it. And literally, the reason it was worth doing was because of what happened in the commercial break. So he said, we'll be right back. And when we came back, it was good night, right? So I'd done the clip, talked about the movie, that was it. He said, we'll be right back. And then when they came back after the commercial, the show was over. And he leaned over to me quietly. He said, listen, he said, I'm really sorry we didn't get to the bit. I was looking forward to it, but I couldn't get the old woman to shut the fuck up. And Robert Klein decides to be funny for the first time in six years. Who knew?

• 1:30:15Bill Maher?

  That is so awesome.

• 1:30:18Speaker 04

  Oh my god, that was the greatest line ever.

• 1:30:20Bill Maher?

  All right, then I'm gonna tell you my Carson story, even though I've told it here before. I'll make it quick. His last time, the last time I did it, in 92, right before Jay was about to take over. And he's in his parking lot, and I'm walking out, and his car won't start.

• 1:30:35Speaker 04

  The Mercedes?

• 1:30:36Bill Maher?

  No, this was a Corvette, I think he had. This is 1992. And, you know, Jay, the famous car guy. And I said to him, boy, I bet you Jay Leno would know what to do. He knows everything about cars. And Johnny looked up, ice cold, and went, yeah, we'll find out how much he knows about television.

• 1:30:56Bill Maher?

  Just cold.

• 1:30:58Speaker 04

  That's fantastic.

• 1:31:00Bill Maher?

  No, yours is fantastic, too. That's, I love. That first time in six years. That's just.

• 1:31:08Speaker 04

  It was hilarious. It was hilarious.

• 1:31:11Bill Maher?

  No, I remember, I mean, I guess we're telling tales out of school, we might as well. I remember him ragging on Bob Hope. I didn't talk to him a lot, but I did see him, the young comic waiting in the wings. And he comes down to, before he went to the monologue. He was, he was not unamenable to saying hello.

• 1:31:30Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:31:31Bill Maher?

  And, you know, kinda kibitzing for a minute before we went on. I remember once, and it was always bitching. One time he was bitching about Ed not getting a new warm-up act. Like, like, get a new joke, for god's sakes. I think he thought there was a receptive ear in a young comic, like, for god's sake. I've heard the same. And, and then, the other time was, what, we were just talking about? There was, oh, Bob Hope.

• 1:32:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:05Bill Maher?

  He, Bob Hope, I must have prompted him, because I don't think he would have just volunteered it. Although, who knows? He was kind of a surly guy, but I, Bob Hope was on, I must, must have said, like, you know, boy, exciting, huh, Bob Hope? And he went off on one of Dick, but you think Buddy Hackett's a dick? And he just did not like that Bob Hope was this 800 pound gorilla at NBC.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:32:32Bill Maher?

  And that even Johnny Carson could be kind of bullied a little bit, but and he was a terrible guest.

• 1:32:37Speaker 04

  I think he was a terrible guest. I think that everything had to be scripted. And and he didn't like Bob Hope for lots of reasons, but but yeah, I I've understood. Because you know, I don't know if you know, I narrated the documentary about Johnny Carson on PBS.

• 1:32:50Bill Maher?

  I vaguely remember.

• 1:32:52Speaker 04

  Pursued because I wanted I had such admiration for him and I pursued it. And and I I think, yeah, Hope was not someone he was.

• 1:32:59Bill Maher?

  I mean, Bob Hope has a terrible reputation. Jack Warner has, I mean, people were huge breaks.

• 1:33:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:05Bill Maher?

  I mean, if you had been around 100 years ago.

• 1:33:08Speaker 04

  I would have fit right in. There you are.

• 1:33:10Bill Maher?

  No, but I mean, that's just, nobody would. It's the the things that, did you see the Marilyn movie that Anna DeArmas did?

• 1:33:21Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 1:33:22Bill Maher?

  Disturbing.

• 1:33:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:25Bill Maher?

  I I mean, that we can't, we don't know what it was like when she was in bed with Jack Kennedy.

• 1:33:31Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:33:31Bill Maher?

  But the portrayal in the movie was like, I would have rather seen like a nuclear war movie.

• 1:33:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:40Bill Maher?

  These are not boring times we live in. I mean, things are, it's funny, we do have this big July 4th birthday coming up and so, you know, I was asking the troops today, like, we got to last, because then we're off for a month. So like next week, a week from Friday is the like the last thing we could.

• 1:34:01Speaker 04

  And what do you do over the summer? Where do you go? Do you go anywhere? Do you?

• 1:34:04Bill Maher?

  I don't go many places. I mean.

• 1:34:09Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:34:09Bill Maher?

  I spent 40 years like going every other weekend, you know, I mean, I did it in the last 25 years as easy as you could with a plane and, you know, only gone for two days at a time. Very easy, but still I stopped last year. It's just. It's a pleasure to wake up in my own bed every day.

• 1:34:30Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:34:30Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, I miss.

• 1:34:31Speaker 04

  And do you still go out and do occasional?

• 1:34:34Bill Maher?

  No, you can't do it occasionally.

• 1:34:35Speaker 04

  You can't?

• 1:34:36Bill Maher?

  No, you have to be in practice.

• 1:34:37Speaker 04

  Oh, I see.

• 1:34:38Bill Maher?

  It's not planned to check.

• 1:34:39Speaker 04

  Cause you can't, cause you can't just go out and, oh, I'm gonna try this one night.

• 1:34:42Bill Maher?

  No, I, I mean, you could and you'll suck.

• 1:34:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:45Bill Maher?

  And I won't do that. I mean, comics have tried to do that.

• 1:34:47Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:34:48Bill Maher?

  Many times. Sometimes they get famous and they think, oh, now I don't really have to. I just go back to it. My name will sell ti- it will sell tickets. And then the ticket holders will be disappointed.

• 1:34:58Speaker 04

  When you get to 80, you can do it like Bob Newhart. You just show up and you show clips and, you know, you talk about the career you've had.

• 1:35:04Bill Maher?

  No, I don't, please, just shoot me on the front lawn if that, just please, somebody snipe me out. Send a drone, if that's what I'm doing. You know, that's, that's.

• 1:35:15Speaker 04

  Send a drone.

• 1:35:16Bill Maher?

  Yeah, something, you know, that's the Bob Hope line that he famously said about like, Bob, why do you go on the road 250 days out of the year? And he said something like, because the gardeners don't applaud, you know?

• 1:35:31Speaker 04

  Right, right, yeah.

• 1:35:32Bill Maher?

  And, and he did. I think he, to the, and, no, I don't know if this is lore, but they said he, every night got a hooker.

• 1:35:41Speaker 04

  Right. Oh, really?

• 1:35:42Bill Maher?

  I mean, look, this is just scuttlebutt. It could not be true very easily. Not preventing me from repeating it.

• 1:35:55Bill Maher?

  It, it doesn't ring untrue. I, I mean, he was kind of known to be, you know.

• 1:36:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I, I don't know if, and Dolores, it was just, you know. I don't wanna get into the Hope marriage. I really don't.

• 1:36:13Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 1:36:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, you know, we've, we've gone really downhill. When, when that's, that's the person we can say the shittiest stuff about is Bob Hope.

• 1:36:25Bill Maher?

  It'd be funny if this was like a horror movie and we have this discussion and then you go offstage and you stumble upon some papers and you see like everything I said was scripted.

• 1:36:36Speaker 04

  And planned.

• 1:36:37Bill Maher?

  Yes, that's right. Everything was scripted. Look at this, he was planning on talking about Bob Hope.

• 1:36:43Speaker 04

  He knew he was gonna ask about Bob Hope. How did he know that?

• 1:36:49Bill Maher?

  But, you know.

• 1:36:52Bill Maher?

  I remember when he was, uh... I was driving back from college and they were having like his, I think it was his 75th birthday.

• 1:37:00Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:37:01Bill Maher?

  And they made a very big deal of it.

• 1:37:03Speaker 04

  An NBC special.

• 1:37:05Bill Maher?

  He had, he got like four specials a year.

• 1:37:07Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:37:08Bill Maher?

  And he would go on Johnny to plug every one and that's what Johnny didn't like.

• 1:37:12Speaker 04

  That's right, that's what Johnny hated.

• 1:37:14Bill Maher?

  We're not asking, Bob is coming on Thursday.

• 1:37:17Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:37:17Bill Maher?

  And he's the lead guest.

• 1:37:19Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:37:20Bill Maher?

  I told this story too, but it's just too funny. You'll love it, I was on with Bob that night, it must have been that night. So I'm on the couch and Johnny just is like, "Oh God, I don't know what to do with this guy, he's a terrible talker." Even though he's known to be this genius comic.

• 1:37:34Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:37:35Bill Maher?

  But I hate talking to him. So we just got a bunch of stills, so, "Oh, I'll show the stills" and then Bob would comment. And one was, "Bob..." And he dresses the Pope with the big Pope hat. And Bob's comment was, "Yeah, there I am, the Pope."

• 1:37:56Speaker 04

  That was it?

• 1:37:56Bill Maher?

  That was it.

• 1:37:57Speaker 04

  That was his whole comment?

• 1:37:58Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:59Speaker 04

  "Yeah, there I am, the Pope, yeah."

• 1:38:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm sure.

• 1:38:02Speaker 04

  Christ.

• 1:38:03Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:04Speaker 04

  Wow. Wow.

• 1:38:06Bill Maher?

  Well, the old days, huh? We're like, we could do the Sunshine Boys. Uh, wasn't that Jack Lemmon?

• 1:38:15Speaker 04

  Lemmon didn't do the Sunshine Boys, no. You know who did the Sunshine Boys was Dick Van Dyke did it with his brother. And, and George Burns did the Sunshine Boys.

• 1:38:23Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:38:24Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:38:25Bill Maher?

  Well, that's what I mean about like hurry up and playing these late middle ages.

• 1:38:30Speaker 04

  You want me to do the Sunshine Boys?

• 1:38:31Bill Maher?

  Not, I'm saying that not yet.

• 1:38:33Speaker 04

  Oh, not yet.

• 1:38:34Bill Maher?

  Saying you don't have to do that yet.

• 1:38:35Speaker 04

  Okay, alright, alright.

• 1:38:36Bill Maher?

  But unless AI is a miracle worker in 10 years, you might, you might have to.

• 1:38:41Speaker 04

  No, I got AI, I got a, I got a bunch of projects in the future that I'm very excited about. I got a one, a new one man show. I played Clarence Darrow, which I'm gonna try to do again. Because I've learned so much now about actually being in court. That playing Clarence Darrow is gonna take on a whole new aspect.

• 1:38:59Bill Maher?

  Court itself is, seems like quite a punishment. Just because it's such an unpleasant, stressful place to be.

• 1:39:07Speaker 04

  Well, it's also, you learn a lot, I mean, look, Evan and I both, I think Evan deserves a, a law degree now because he's been so involved in all the cases that we've done and, and been such an influence in them.

• 1:39:18Bill Maher?

  Evan is your lover?

• 1:39:19Speaker 04

  Evan is my partner, but my business partner, not my partner partner.

• 1:39:23Bill Maher?

  I'm just crying.

• 1:39:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know, I understand. And, but we've, look, we've learned a lot about the sort of legal system and so I'd like to do the Clarence Darrow again. But I'm gonna do a, a one man show about who I think is one of the great filmmakers ever, whom a lot of people don't know, which shocks me, but it's Preston Sturges.

• 1:39:46Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:39:47Speaker 04

  Who I adore and who I want to introduce to the world.

• 1:39:50Bill Maher?

  Movies, I could pick them out of.

• 1:39:52Speaker 04

  Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story.

• 1:39:54Bill Maher?

  Palm Beach Story, very famous.

• 1:39:55Speaker 04

  Hail the hot conquering hero.

• 1:39:56Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:58Speaker 04

  He was an incredible filmmaker.

• 1:39:59Bill Maher?

  30's comedy.

• 1:40:00Speaker 04

  Screwball 30, yeah, 30's comedies and, and incredible.

• 1:40:03Bill Maher?

  But who else did you just say before that? Oh, Clarence Darrow.

• 1:40:06Speaker 04

  Clarence Darrow was a lawyer.

• 1:40:08Bill Maher?

  Let's tell the kids why he's like a big.

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  Well, Clarence Darrow's most famous case was The Scopes Monkey Trial.

• 1:40:15Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:40:15Speaker 04

  Which has been turned into a movie many times called Inherit the Wind. It's also a play, which I have done. Um, but he had a lot of.

• 1:40:22Bill Maher?

  Hundred years ago.

• 1:40:23Speaker 04

  Leopold and Loeb is another huge case of business in Chicago.

• 1:40:26Bill Maher?

  But, but, but Inherit the Wind is a great play.

• 1:40:29Speaker 04

  Inherit the Wind is a great play.

• 1:40:30Bill Maher?

  And a great movie with Frederick March and space Spencer Tracy.

• 1:40:33Speaker 04

  But also Orson Welles played him, Henry Fonda's played him.

• 1:40:35Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:40:36Speaker 04

  Spencer Tracy did that movie.

• 1:40:37Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:40:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, a lot of different actors have played that same film.

• 1:40:40Bill Maher?

  A hundred years ago and it was a trial called the monkey trial because in Tennessee, I think it was in the south.

• 1:40:48Speaker 04

  A teacher was trying to teach.

• 1:40:50Bill Maher?

  Teach evolution and you know.

• 1:40:52Speaker 04

  And Tennessee, all you could teach was the Bible.

• 1:40:55Bill Maher?

  And you know, for people who think, you know, we just never get better, we, we, we do get better. Uh, they only do that in Texas now.

• 1:41:06Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, look, people are Baptists are gonna Baptist. They're just gonna, you know, I mean, you can say, oh, you know, you criticize this culture, this culture, but what about the Baptists who women say their wives should submit?

• 1:41:25Bill Maher?

  That's in, that's in Baptist thing.

• 1:41:28Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:41:29Bill Maher?

  Women will kind of say, well, it doesn't mean get raped, but you know, it's just not, it's certainly not now woman of the year stuff.

• 1:41:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:41:39Bill Maher?

  It's not glorious night, I'm blessed.

• 1:41:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, right.

• 1:41:42Bill Maher?

  But, you know, I mean, sex is complicated, you know, I mean, people like to submit sometimes. Look who I'm talking to. Hey, it's Pride Month.

• 1:41:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is Pride Month, that's right.

• 1:41:55Bill Maher?

  What do you, what do you do for Pride Month?

• 1:41:58Speaker 04

  I just swish around the house.

• 1:42:08Bill Maher?

  Have you ever been the, uh, like, um, you know,

• 1:42:13Bill Maher?

  float, you know, the leader of.

• 1:42:15Speaker 04

  The queen of the float, is that what you're saying? What are you talking about? Hang on a second.

• 1:42:21Speaker 04

  Is that the float queen?

• 1:42:22Bill Maher?

  Parade, they, they have like a king of the parade.

• 1:42:25Speaker 04

  They have not made me.

• 1:42:26Bill Maher?

  I did it once.

• 1:42:27Speaker 04

  They have not made me, you were the king of the gay parade, really?

• 1:42:30Bill Maher?

  No, the, no, the New Orleans.

• 1:42:33Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:42:33Speaker 04

  Oh, no gays in New Orleans, is that what you're saying?

• 1:42:36Bill Maher?

  No, no, it was, it was the Mardi Gras.

• 1:42:38Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm always the friend of the kindness of strangers, yes, yes.

• 1:42:44Bill Maher?

  So those plays hold up, don't they?

• 1:42:46Speaker 04

  Of course.

• 1:42:47Bill Maher?

  Like, like Streetcar and...

• 1:42:48Speaker 04

  Of course they do.

• 1:42:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, you say of course, but like, I do, from time to time, go back and watch, like, something or somebody will recommend an old movie, and the really great ones do. So, The Apartment, I think, does, although there are parts of it that, you know, I mean, everything is gonna look weird, fifty, seventy years hence.

• 1:43:09Speaker 04

  Does The Apartment look weird to you?

• 1:43:10Bill Maher?

  The way Fred McMurray acts.

• 1:43:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's a, he's a...

• 1:43:16Bill Maher?

  A heel.

• 1:43:17Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 1:43:17Bill Maher?

  But, but it's just not the way you'd play a heel today. It's of the era.

• 1:43:22Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 1:43:22Bill Maher?

  It's okay.

• 1:43:23Speaker 04

  I think he's very familiar today, actually.

• 1:43:25Bill Maher?

  In general, but not like in the specific choices and things that make it dated, which is okay, we understand, it's happening in nineteen fifty.

• 1:43:33Speaker 04

  That's fine.

• 1:43:34Bill Maher?

  It's like, "Here, honey," and gives her twenty dollars. It's like, okay, what, what is this for parking? No, this is for sex. It's nineteen fifty.

• 1:43:46Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 1:43:46Bill Maher?

  Sixty.

• 1:43:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:43:48Bill Maher?

  I mean, shit like that.

• 1:43:49Speaker 04

  Sure, that's fine.

• 1:43:50Bill Maher?

  It's fine.

• 1:43:51Speaker 04

  I'm just saying the movies as a whole stand up.

• 1:43:54Bill Maher?

  I'm not arguing with you.

• 1:43:56Speaker 04

  No, you are arguing with me. What are you talking about?

• 1:43:58Bill Maher?

  I'm saying that one stands up, but there are things in it that are dated.

• 1:44:02Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:44:02Bill Maher?

  That's, okay, okay.

• 1:44:03Speaker 04

  But that's fine.

• 1:44:04Bill Maher?

  Why are we arguing?

• 1:44:05Speaker 04

  I'm not arguing.

• 1:44:06Bill Maher?

  What, are we married? Jesus Christ.

• 1:44:08Speaker 04

  There's, there's things that you did last week in this that are dated already.

• 1:44:12Bill Maher?

  I guess so, but like, let's argue what we don't, we agree on this.

• 1:44:16Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:44:17Bill Maher?

  But some stuff does not.

• 1:44:19Speaker 04

  Yes, that's true.

• 1:44:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:44:21Speaker 04

  But also some stuff...

• 1:44:22Bill Maher?

  Sunset Boulevard does.

• 1:44:24Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:44:25Bill Maher?

  Hugely.

• 1:44:26Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Some Like It Hot does.

• 1:44:28Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yes, it does, it does.

• 1:44:30Speaker 04

  Even though you don't like guys in dresses. Um, well.

• 1:44:36Bill Maher?

  Oh, really?

• 1:44:37Speaker 04

  That sounds like a little gay to me.

• 1:44:41Speaker 04

  We're back to a little gay.

• 1:44:44Bill Maher?

  Well, you know, certainly the Romans did not, or the Greeks, treat homosexuality as a distinctive thing the way we do. I mean, Mark Antony had many lovers. Some were boys, some were women, and it was more who's cute.

• 1:45:04Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:45:05Bill Maher?

  That was.

• 1:45:05Speaker 04

  And there was a sheep as well.

• 1:45:07Bill Maher?

  No, well, maybe.

• 1:45:09Speaker 04

  The famous Plato sheep.

• 1:45:11Bill Maher?

  But, and you think of Rome as a ve- and it was a very macho society. I mean, I took Latin in college at Cornell. And it is not a.

• 1:45:22Speaker 04

  Did that usually get you, Lane, when you said that?

• 1:45:24Bill Maher?

  I did not.

• 1:45:25Speaker 04

  I took Latin.

• 1:45:26Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I took it, and I didn't do anything with it. I mean, for like a semester, like.

• 1:45:31Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:45:32Bill Maher?

  But I do remember that, like, unlike the Romance languages, you know, Italian, certainly English, and even German for fuck's sake, it was just like there's no flowerness in it. Every sentence is like, citizen, move that rock up on the road. It's very practical and we're built, they're builders, you know? That's what they did. They were builders, conquerors. They didn't fuck around when they, when they conquered you.

• 1:46:01Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:46:02Bill Maher?

  I mean, it was not a gay society, you know, by our standards. And yet, it was, that was just a thing. And that just shows that what we think of as what our culture is, well, it's not completely inevitable.

• 1:46:19Speaker 04

  What is not completely inevitable?

• 1:46:22Bill Maher?

  How a society looks at homosexuality.

• 1:46:25Speaker 04

  I got it, I got it.

• 1:46:25Bill Maher?

  You can either look at it as, as we do, as like a distinctive thing, or like the Romans, like, we, we don't, what do you mean, gay?

• 1:46:33Speaker 04

  Right, right. They didn't label it.

• 1:46:37Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, they crossed over like just much more fluidly. And I, I mean, what? I don't know how I was.

• 1:46:45Speaker 04

  It's just the, you using the term fluid is, is. At this, at this particular time in our history is, is amusing.

• 1:46:54Bill Maher?

  You're, you're right. You got me there. But.

• 1:46:59Bill Maher?

  Damn. Damn these clove cigarettes, they they just make you forget. Well, what's next for Kevin?

• 1:47:09Speaker 04

  Uh, well, A, I'm I'm doing concerts, as I as I mentioned, we've got a bunch of concerts that we're doing this year. We got one in Rome that I'm very excited about.

• 1:47:16Bill Maher?

  And you're a pian- pian- pianist?

• 1:47:20Bill Maher?

  What?

• 1:47:21Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:47:22Bill Maher?

  No? You're not a pianist?

• 1:47:26Speaker 04

  I've been accused of being a pianist. But actually, I'm a singer.

• 1:47:31Bill Maher?

  I know that.

• 1:47:32Speaker 04

  So I have a piano player.

• 1:47:33Bill Maher?

  Oh, I saw you played piano too.

• 1:47:35Speaker 04

  Well, I can play a little bit, but I'm I'm not a piano player, so I I do the American Songbook. I I do about sixteen numbers.

• 1:47:41Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:47:42Speaker 04

  Uh, an hour and a half show, in which I tell a lot of stories as well.

• 1:47:45Bill Maher?

  What are some of the numbers? I bet I'd like this.

• 1:47:47Speaker 04

  Oh, Fly Me to the Moon and, you know, I mean, all all the Sinatra stuff, you know, that that you love and I love. Um, and but I also do some surprising things, a great gospel version of Bridge Over Troubled Water and

• 1:48:00Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:48:00Speaker 04

  Some some things that people don't expect.

• 1:48:02Bill Maher?

  You can sing Bridge Over Troubled Water?

• 1:48:03Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:48:04Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:48:05Speaker 04

  Anyway, I'm also starting a film, a new film, I'm doing a a little shoot in Italy about the Holocaust, which is a really

• 1:48:11Bill Maher?

  Comedy?

• 1:48:14Speaker 04

  Which is a very complicated story, but but one I'm very excited to be doing.

• 1:48:19Bill Maher?

  The Day the Clown Cried.

• 1:48:20Speaker 04

  Yes, there you go. Um, and, uh, and so, yeah, there's a lot of work coming up and I'm I couldn't be happier to be going to work and and, uh, and I feel very blessed every day.

• 1:48:32Bill Maher?

  I hope you put in all this work, we get to see this stuff.

• 1:48:35Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:48:36Bill Maher?

  You think we will?

• 1:48:36Speaker 04

  I do think we will, yeah.

• 1:48:38Bill Maher?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:48:38Speaker 04

  I absolutely do think we will.

• 1:48:40Bill Maher?

  Well, of course, I have to leave the final verdict to the people.

• 1:48:44Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:48:46Bill Maher?

  But, you know, I think I was a fair interlocutor.

• 1:48:52Speaker 04

  I'm sorry?

• 1:48:52Bill Maher?

  I think I was a fair interlocutor.

• 1:48:54Speaker 04

  And you are you sure you're pronouncing that correctly?

• 1:48:56Bill Maher?

  No, I am not.

• 1:48:59Speaker 04

  Just just making sure. Interlocutor. Hang, huh, lady, hang, huh.

• 1:49:08Bill Maher?

  And, um, and you'll go home now? You just?

• 1:49:11Speaker 04

  I, well, I, I'm actually in California for just a few days.

• 1:49:17Bill Maher?

  Oh, you don't live here anymore?

• 1:49:17Speaker 04

  I don't live here anymore, but I haven't lived here for a long time. But the reason I'm very happy about A, being here and B, that I've been coming to California is that tomorrow I get the chance to do something I love doing more than I can express, which is to go see Dick Van Dyke.

• 1:49:34Bill Maher?

  Oh, you're going to see Dick Van Dyke?

• 1:49:35Speaker 04

  I see Dick in the afternoon, who's become a great friend and an amazing man. And a hundred years old now.

• 1:49:41Bill Maher?

  Can I make one suggestion?

• 1:49:43Speaker 04

  Yes, please.

• 1:49:43Bill Maher?

  Do it in the morning. No, I'm kidding.

• 1:49:48Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying.

• 1:49:49Speaker 04

  Jesus. But then, after I see Dick, who's a hundred,

• 1:49:53Bill Maher?

  That's a terrible joke.

• 1:49:53Speaker 04

  I'm going to see my drama teacher from Chatsworth High School. It's Mr. Corelli, I still call him Mr. Corelli, and he's ninety-six years old. And I saw him a year and a half ago, so when I come to town, I try to go visit.

• 1:50:05Bill Maher?

  What do you think the secret is to making it that long?

• 1:50:09Speaker 04

  Well, in both their cases,

• 1:50:13Speaker 04

  they love life.

• 1:50:16Speaker 04

  I mean, Dick Van Dyke gets up every day and he embraces life and he makes jokes and he makes inappropriate jokes and he's funny as hell. And he loves to sing. In fact, what he loves, what I love doing with him, he loves for me to come over and, and interview him as Johnny Carson. So we do a Tonight Show together and then we sing together. And then he takes me out and a couple of things he insists on, on doing. He wants to take me to the gym he goes to three times a week. So we go see the gym he's at. And we take a walk along the Malibu Pier and just being ridiculous. Like, well, people are stopping him and saying the most beautiful things to him. And then we go and buy carrots and we throw carrots at the horses.

• 1:50:56Bill Maher?

  I don't think he should go to the gym.

• 1:50:59Speaker 04

  He goes to the gym three times a week.

• 1:51:00Bill Maher?

  I know, but tell him he should work out at home.

• 1:51:02Speaker 04

  Why?

• 1:51:03Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying, at a hundred.

• 1:51:05Speaker 04

  Just because you don't want to go out in the world. Dick Van Dyke loves going to a gym.

• 1:51:09Bill Maher?

  I'm just trying to help.

• 1:51:10Speaker 04

  What? He's in, he's in great shape.

• 1:51:13Bill Maher?

  Okay, a hundred-year-old immune system, I wouldn't just purposely put it in a place that's known to have a lot of fucking germs. I mean, there's just a lot of grody people sweating and on equipment and...

• 1:51:25Speaker 04

  He doesn't use the sauna, he just does the equipment.

• 1:51:28Bill Maher?

  You're in the sauna.

• 1:51:29Speaker 04

  I'm in the sauna. Dropping my towel. Exactly.

• 1:51:33Bill Maher?

  No. I hope you're not mad at me for making jokes, but...

• 1:51:40Speaker 04

  Not in the least, sir.

• 1:51:41Bill Maher?

  It was part of your...

• 1:51:42Speaker 04

  Not in the least.

• 1:51:43Bill Maher?

  It's part of your penance.

• 1:51:44Speaker 04

  Yes, sure. I accept it.

• 1:51:46Bill Maher?

  And the verdict is for the people, but it must be said that you... A lot of penance has been paid. Like, there was a lot... I'm sure there's just been a lot of bad days and bad nights.

• 1:52:02Speaker 04

  But with penance comes also enormous... I'm enormously grateful, and I've got Evan Lomestine in my life, who is the most curious man I've ever known.

• 1:52:11Bill Maher?

  He's just...

• 1:52:12Speaker 04

  And the guy who, by the way, he spends so much time challenging opinions and challenging ideas, and he challenges me all the time more than anyone, and I'm enormously grateful to have him in my life.

• 1:52:24Bill Maher?

  You're in love with this guy. Can't you see?

• 1:52:26Speaker 04

  Without question, I love him.

• 1:52:28Bill Maher?

  Oh. But not hitting each other in the...

• 1:52:30Speaker 04

  But not in that... not in that way. Yeah, not in the other way.

• 1:52:34Bill Maher?

  Why, not cute enough, or... I mean, what's your criteria?

• 1:52:37Speaker 04

  We just have... we have a friendship that's gone on for 26 years.

• 1:52:41Bill Maher?

  You have a steady boyfriend?

• 1:52:42Speaker 04

  I don't have a steady boyfriend, but I'm in the market.

• 1:52:46Bill Maher?

  Well, don't look at me.

• 1:52:48Speaker 04

  I wasn't looking at you. I was answering your question.

• 1:52:51Bill Maher?

  You plainly were. Now, get out of here.

• 1:52:54Speaker 04

  Thank you, sir. It's a pleasure. Indeed, a pleasure. Thank you so much.

• 1:52:58Bill Maher?

  Thank you for doing this.

• 1:52:59Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:53:03Speaker 04

  July 8.

• 1:53:04Bill Maher?

  We will both be canceled.

• 1:53:06Speaker 04

  We'll both be canceled next Wednesday. Yes, that's right.

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