Jay Leno | Club Random Classics with Bill Maher

On this month’s Club Random Classics, a can’t miss conversation with the great Jay Leno, where Bill Maher and Jay share hilarious stories like Jay’s true feelings about his beef with Jimmy Kimmel, the time Jay took toilet paper as payment for a stand-up gig, why Jay hid in the closet and eavesdropped on NBC execs during the Tonight Show drama, what NBC told Jay when they fired him, what made the blind guy who climbed Mount Everest furious, and Jay’s dinner with Gorbachev. This episode first aired July 31, 2022. 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.

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• 0:52Bill Maher?

  Well, this week's Club Random Classic is my dear, dear friend Jay Leno. And if you think you know the story of the late-night warriors, what do you hear it from the guy who was hiding in the closet listening to NBC executives talk about him? We get into Johnny Carson, and Conan, and Jimmy Kimmel, and getting fired while you're number one, Jay's insane work ethic, and somehow having dinner with Gorbachev. It's a history of show business told by a guy who survived all of it and, annoyingly, isn't even bitter. Plus, as always with Jay, about 17 stories I'd forgotten existed. Check out this amazing Club Random Classic with Jay Leno.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  Shows have been great. And I like the glasses. The glasses work good. I remember you were a little self-conscious when I was on TV.

• 1:40Bill Maher?

  I still am.

• 1:41Speaker 03

  You know, but you know, I think it gives, I think it gives you real gravitas. It works. No, it looks good. It looks good. I would tell you the thing. I said it to my wife. I said, she said, "I like it too. It does." Because it looks like...

• 1:54Bill Maher?

  No, I've, I've heard, uh, I've heard that many times, that people like the glasses.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Oh, this is, is this...

• 2:01Bill Maher?

  I just can't, that's just water. I just can't get past the fact that the glasses represent to me a milestone of aging. You know, it's like there are milestones of aging. You were telling me about the pickle jar last time I saw you.

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:18Bill Maher?

  Okay. It's that kind of thing. You know?

• 2:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:22Bill Maher?

  You, you can't apparently open pickle jars anymore.

• 2:25Speaker 03

  Well, it takes a little more strength, but... But you get to do the, you get to do the Waltz of Cronkite. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, give me, I'll show you. Give me your glasses.

• 2:35Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 2:38Speaker 03

  You be...

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Remember how he would do that? President Kennedy died today at 1:45.

• 2:48Bill Maher?

  I was gonna do it. I, I, it's, it's, I can do it exactly.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  Oh, go ahead.

• 2:52Bill Maher?

  You're fucking it up.

• 2:54Bill Maher?

  And there it is. The Flash from Dallas.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's good.

• 2:59Bill Maher?

  President Kennedy died at 1:05.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  1:45, I think.

• 3:04Bill Maher?

  Whenever it was, but, I mean, there was a guy who, you could see on the air that it was the genuineness of being choked up.

• 3:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:13Bill Maher?

  But unlike what they would be probably doing today, didn't let himself, you know? He had the self-restraint.

• 3:20Speaker 03

  Right.

• 3:20Bill Maher?

  The people of that era. "I'm the newsman. I'm here to do a job." "Yes, it's devastating news." "I may swallow a couple of times, but then I go on and I do it. I don't blubber."

• 3:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:34Bill Maher?

  Right, Jay?

• 3:35Speaker 03

  Exactly. Where's the camera? Right here?

• 3:39Bill Maher?

  Yeah, this, oh, yeah, this, they're all over. This is like a reality show.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Have we started already? I'm lost.

• 3:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 3:46Bill Maher?

  Right? Yeah. Oh, I have.

• 3:48Speaker 03

  Okay, well, let's go. What are you doing?

• 3:50Bill Maher?

  We're doing it. This is the show. What do you expect me to do?

• 3:53Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 3:54Bill Maher?

  I get drinking high with somebody I like. That's it.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Okay, there you go.

• 3:57Bill Maher?

  I don't have a series of questions or anything.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  All right.

• 4:00Bill Maher?

  I mean, Jay, tell me something about your background. I understand you claim to be a comedian.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  You, Leno, did I tell you that claim story?

• 4:06Bill Maher?

  That is, well, tell that story. I love that story.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  No, I was in Dayton, Ohio. I had just, I was guest hosting The Tonight Show. I was, you know, doing the comedy club, so, um...

• 4:18Bill Maher?

  Guest hosting already?

• 4:19Speaker 03

  No, in '86.

• 4:20Bill Maher?

  I thought this was way before that. The claim, he claims to be a comedian?

• 4:25Speaker 03

  No, no, not claims to be a comedian. What it was, was, it was about, I'd been hosting The Tonight Show for a number of weeks. So I'm doing some clubs in Ohio. So they go, "Oh, you're on Dayton. You're on at, uh, the noon news. Female anchor. What's her name? Okay." "Sorry, I'm Jay Leno." He's like, she's, "I'm sorry, I'm not familiar." I said, "Oh, my name's Jay Leno. I'm a comedian. I'm playing, you know, chuckles or giggles, whatever it is." And, um, and I guest hosted Tonight Show.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  So I went with Jay Leno, Leno who claims to have hosted The Tonight Show. I go, you know, "I can prove it." I said, "You have film right here in this, this is an NBC affiliate. I'm sure there's tape." You know?

• 5:04Bill Maher?

  Now, either you told me a different story.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  No, that, I told you that story.

• 5:08Bill Maher?

  It's so interesting because I will admit to the fact that the brain, over time, sometimes does...

• 5:14Speaker 03

  You know the one you might confuse it with is Buffalo. Buffalo, my mom, do you remember John Eric Hexum?

• 5:20Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 5:21Speaker 03

  Remember the kid who sadly killed himself?

• 5:23Bill Maher?

  Sadly.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  He had a...

• 5:24Bill Maher?

  Well, tell people why. He thought the gun was...

• 5:27Speaker 03

  Right, he, no.

• 5:28Bill Maher?

  It was a blank.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  It was a blank that shoot, it would shoot a paper wad. But since he had it right against his forehead, instead of just going, the pressure

• 5:38Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  went into his brain and killed him.

• 5:42Bill Maher?

  The lesson, kids, is don't fire even a blank gun into your head.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  Right, right, exactly. And anyway, the guests on the show were him. He was the star because of, uh, he had some show where he played a spy coming in.

• 5:56Bill Maher?

  What show? What, guests on what show?

• 5:58Speaker 03

  AM Buffalo.

• 5:59Bill Maher?

  AM Buffalo?

• 6:00Speaker 03

  AM Buffalo. It was him.

• 6:02Bill Maher?

  Oh, God.

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Me, and seven authentic African pygmy dancers. So I'm sitting, I'm sitting in room like here, and John Eric Hexum is being interviewed. And the seven pygmies are sitting right here, next to me. And they have spears. And they have their full, the seven of them sitting there.

• 6:22Bill Maher?

  Jay, you said authentic. I would assume they have spears.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  You know, so they're all sitting there, and we're all watching the show. And, you know, they're coming, and the talent corps that comes and goes, "Mr. Leno, Mr. Leno." I go, "I'm Leno." "Oh, you're Leno? Okay, you're up next." And I went, and I just thought, "Oh, okay."

• 6:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's a scream.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's just so stupid.

• 6:45Bill Maher?

  Oh, my God.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  "Mr. Leno!

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Over here, over here."

• 6:51Bill Maher?

  But I swear to God, I thought you told a story about being a young, very young comedian who'd done The Tonight Show maybe once or twice.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 7:01Bill Maher?

  And you were working some club or somewhere, maybe it was not a club, it's one of those like private events where it's a business guy introducing you. You know, you've done many of those. I certainly did it back then.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 7:13Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, we...

• 7:14Speaker 03

  No, this was, no, this was, that was the, that was, uh...

• 7:17Bill Maher?

  Okay, so tell me if this is in any way familiar.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Go ahead.

• 7:20Bill Maher?

  And again, these are like corporate events. Larry Miller has a famous story about, um, he goes up after the guy does a long, you know, someone in the company died. And so

• 7:32Speaker 03

  Oh, right.

• 7:32Bill Maher?

  It was like, "Oh, we all remember Frank. He was just such a great guy. We all loved him very much, and he died tragically of cancer after a long illness two weeks ago. And now a funny young man." So they don't know how to do show business.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  No, no. What you're thinking of is Fresen. I'll tell you what it was. I was a comic in New York. So this guy comes to see me, goes, "I, I'm bringing some buyers in for a product. I've, I've invented a new product where there are people, we want you to pretend to be the spokesman." I said, "What's the product?" "It's called Fresen." I said, "What is it?" He said, "It's a moist toilet paper used after going to the bathroom." To do, and it said on the side, "To do away with embarrassing rectal odor." I said, "Okay." So I go, "And what do you want me to do again?" "Okay, you go on. I'll introduce you as my vice president of sales, and you do some jokes." Okay.

• 8:25Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 8:26Speaker 03

  So anyway, so this guy invites all these ligatrex all dealers.

• 8:31Speaker 03

  And they're all sitting there like this. It's about 25 of them, you know? The guy goes, "I've got this product. We think it's gonna be a big hit. Uh, it's got adhesive. We put it on the wall next to, it sticks to the wall right above or below the toilet paper. And it's, after you use the toilet paper, you use this to avoid embarrassing rectal odor." And they're all sitting like this. They're all doing this.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  You look at their watches, you know.

• 8:55Bill Maher?

  Like they've heard this pitch before.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Well, they're just, they're obviously not interested in the product. So, this guy, but let me introduce, he can see he's starting to get flop sweat. Let me introduce my vice president of sales, Jay Leno. Alright, so I got up there and I started doing my act and they're all going. You know, and so, I do about ten or fifteen minutes to nothing, you know. And he goes, and then he goes back, he goes, "That of course was not my vice president of sales, but Jay Leno, a professional comedian." And I see them all go, "Professional comedian." He was just like the most horrible. So then, they all leave, right? And the guy says, "Listen, I want you to buy this product." So, nobody buys the product, right?

• 9:39Speaker 03

  And he says, "Look, look, I'll be level with you. I got a warehouse in Teaneck down here. I got like five hundred, five hundred thousand rolls of this stuff. Okay, take some to your stores, just try it." And then when that is, "Just take it with you, just take it with you." So, I'm waiting now to get paid, right? So now, people leaving, tears are streaming down the guy's face. "Just try it, I'm telling you, try it." So he goes, "What do you want?" I said, "Can I get paid?" "Yeah, I can pay." So I took like ten rolls of freshening and that was, that was my pay. That was, that was the horrible one, maybe that's.

• 10:14Bill Maher?

  Okay, but still, no.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 10:16Bill Maher?

  I'm telling you what the story is.

• 10:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, what?

• 10:18Bill Maher?

  It was, it's very basic, that you were doing one of these corporate gigs, where they often, I've had, been introduced where they don't even understand to say your name at the end of the introduction. So it's like, "Bill Maher is a funny guy who's done three Tonight Shows. Here he is." They don't even say, you know, they'll just end the set, it's like people have no cue to clap.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:40Bill Maher?

  They don't go, "Here's Bill Maher." So, uh, this one, you're doing this, some corporate gig, and the guy is like, he probably had it on a card, was reading your credits. And he's like, "Uh, and we have a comedian on, uh, Jay Leno." No, I'm fucking this story up. The, what he, what the guy embarrassed you by doing, he said, he, Jay Leno, he claims to be a comedian. No, claims to have done the Tonight Show, that's what it was. He claims to, that never happened.

• 11:11Speaker 03

  No, the, the one that happened was one who claims to have hosted. That, that's where it came from. I think you get a couple of stories.

• 11:17Bill Maher?

  Maybe, you know.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  It's forty years.

• 11:19Bill Maher?

  These club cigarettes.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  It's forty, it's forty years ago.

• 11:23Bill Maher?

  The fact that you, uh, would, were working, were doing AM Buffalo, I think says so much about you, Jay, and your work ethic. Because like, you would never catch me doing AM anything, let alone Buffalo, I bet in February.

• 11:39Speaker 03

  But, but, but you gotta remember, back in the day, those were the local shows that brought a local audience.

• 11:46Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  I mean, remember the, remember the PM Magazine shows? They always used to have those at seven thirty? Those are pretty big, too. And you know, the funny thing about it is, people come up to you, like ten years later and go, "Are you from, uh, are you from Montana?" "No." "Well, I saw you on, uh, you know, Hello Butte," or whatever the name of the show. I go, "No." "Oh, you're not from there." "No, no, I was just on the show doing."

• 12:09Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I did all, I did every local. Oh, yeah, hilarious.

• 12:13Bill Maher?

  But you, I know when you hosted the Tonight Show, that you would be like, you'd get it to the office at like eight AM, right?

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Oh, easy, yeah, yeah.

• 12:22Bill Maher?

  Eight AM.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, seven thirty, eight AM.

• 12:25Bill Maher?

  A comedian in an office at eight AM?

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you know.

• 12:28Bill Maher?

  And you'd be calling affiliates?

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:31Bill Maher?

  I mean, I mean, that.

• 12:33Speaker 03

  You're following Johnny Carson, okay? You get, the network's getting letters like, you know, "They should just make that sixty minutes of dead air in honor of Johnny." You know, "It's not fair to put somebody else." I mean, that's, that's the kind of stuff that you're dealing.

• 12:49Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 12:49Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, just crazy stuff, yeah, yeah.

• 12:52Bill Maher?

  What do you mean, because they were so up Johnny's ass that they couldn't accept the next?

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 12:57Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 12:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:59Bill Maher?

  I remember I wrote a thing for Time Magazine when Johnny died. They asked me to do a thing. And I said at the end of it, I said, you know, "He was amazing for his time, but times change. And Leno was right for this time." And I don't, I don't know if, they printed it, but I don't know if they liked it, because, I mean, it was very.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Well, you know what's fascinating is, is somebody NBC gave me Johnny's reviews when he took over from Parr. And I was stunned at how vicious they were. Because Parr was the erudite guy he would have on, you know.

• 13:34Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  You know, and Johnny was sort of Aunt Blabby and all that kind of stuff. And obviously had a wider appeal than Parr, but, but they thought it was, oh, the dumbing down of television and all this kind of comedy and all that kind of stuff.

• 13:47Bill Maher?

  But, but television is always perpetually getting dumbed down because the population gets dumber.

• 13:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 13:54Bill Maher?

  There was a reason why erudite Jack Parr could survive in nineteen fifty-nine.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Noel Coward had a talk show in the fifties.

• 14:03Bill Maher?

  Is that right?

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:04Bill Maher?

  In America?

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Like ninety minutes, "Let's discuss the Hamlet, of course, certainly the third act when that, yeah, yeah."

• 14:10Bill Maher?

  Well, Johnny used to do an hour and a half.

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:13Bill Maher?

  And the last half hour was like authors. Like he would have a serious intellectual discussion with astronomers and authors and people like that. Okay, but that's what my point was in that article, like, times change. Jay had his finger on the pulse of where America was in his era. Johnny, if he had been doing that same show he was doing, would not have survived in two thousand eight or something.

• 14:37Speaker 03

  Well, you never know, but you know.

• 14:39Bill Maher?

  Well, well, I, if he was doing the same kind of thing, it was broad, but it, you know, your show was more of like a party and that's what people wanted. It wasn't so, the accent wasn't that much on just people talking. It was, and then it even moved after you to like just throwing water in people's faces.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 15:01Bill Maher?

  You know. It's just true, I mean, people, you, the, the artist has to follow where the.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  The toughest thing about.

• 15:09Bill Maher?

  Where the.

• 15:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:11Bill Maher?

  The audience is.

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Toughest thing about late night now is that the commercials, you know, you, you get used to streaming and watching Netflix and, and I say, "Let me see what the guys are doing." And I go, "Another commercial?" I mean, there's a nine-minute break at twelve o'clock to twelve oh nine on almost all the, after eleven o'clock at night, you can add more commercials, so.

• 15:37Bill Maher?

  So they just come back for like a minute?

• 15:39Speaker 03

  They come back for a minute and you go, geez, I mean, you can't wa, and thirty-second spots are so well-produced now and they have so much content, they seem like a minute spot. You know, and you go, "How many commercials?"

• 15:50Bill Maher?

  Thirty-second spot of ads?

• 15:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, ads, you know, whatever it is.

• 15:53Bill Maher?

  Okay. Well, I remember when I was following Nightline, I had a six-minute gap.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Right.

• 15:59Bill Maher?

  Like three minutes of our commercials at the end. We were daring the audience to go away, especially at midnight.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  I know, I know.

• 16:08Bill Maher?

  You're daring them.

• 16:08Speaker 03

  I know, I know. I feel like, "Let's go to bed, click."

• 16:11Bill Maher?

  Now, they do a hot switch, don't they? Haven't they done that forever?

• 16:16Speaker 03

  What do you mean, a hot switch?

• 16:18Bill Maher?

  A hot switch, where you go from one show to the other without any commercials.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  And then the commercial comes, yeah.

• 16:22Bill Maher?

  Yeah, so that you catch the people and get them hooked or whatever. I mean, I don't, I don't know how, in an age of streaming and, you know, VCRs, DVRs, that, anybody could, why would you watch something in real time when you could skip the commercials?

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:43Bill Maher?

  And yet they must still do it. People must still be in bed watching Between Their Toes, because those shows are still on.

• 16:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, they're, Jimmy and Jimmy are talented guys, they're all talented.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  You know how many people I have, guys will send me, you know, usually older guys, they have some car they want to sell me or something. I said, "Email me some pictures." I'm not gonna go through that trouble. I'll go down, I'll put a stamp, I'll go down to the post office, buy a stamp, stand in line, put it in a slot. I said, "That's really not easier than just going bink," you know. But no, they don't, they don't get it.

• 17:16Bill Maher?

  Well, my friend Jim Bowley has the greatest line about, you know, he's a sitcom writer.

• 17:20Speaker 03

  I know Jim.

• 17:20Bill Maher?

  You know Jimmy, okay. So he said, when, like he was on Golden Girls, he said, "TV Guide used to come out and you'd look at the fall preview issue, what their lineup of different shows for different networks, and you'd see the two or three shows you were up against. Now you're up against everything that was ever made."

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, it's true.

• 17:41Bill Maher?

  And that's the truth.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:42Bill Maher?

  You're up against everything that was ever made.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Think about this, TV Guide was the biggest-selling magazine in the world.

• 17:51Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 17:51Speaker 03

  Fifty, sixty, seventies, eighties, yeah. Biggest-selling magazine in the world, now it's barely a pamphlet, you know.

• 17:58Bill Maher?

  I didn't know that it still exists.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  Oh, it's still, it's, it's like a magazine, it's, you know, it's like this stick. I mean, that's, I was, I was.

• 18:07Bill Maher?

  I have every fall preview issue from like the late sixties to the mid-eighties.

• 18:15Speaker 03

  I remember we did a.

• 18:16Bill Maher?

  It was very important to me.

• 18:17Speaker 03

  A TV Guide on world events, as written by TV Guide, and jeers to Hitler, you know, it was that kind of stuff.

• 18:25Bill Maher?

  You did that on the Tonight Show?

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, and jeers to Hitler for invading Poland.

• 18:29Bill Maher?

  So, so wait, you, you, did you say you shot seven shows today?

• 18:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. We shoot seven a day for ten weeks, twelve weeks.

• 18:39Bill Maher?

  For ten weeks?

• 18:40Speaker 03

  Ten to twelve weeks, yeah.

• 18:41Bill Maher?

  Right. It seems like every time I turn my TV on, that show was on.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  I don't know, it's different times, I don't know.

• 18:51Bill Maher?

  It's a different time?

• 18:52Speaker 03

  I mean, different markets and different times, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:55Bill Maher?

  Because it's syndicated.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:58Bill Maher?

  So.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  It's old school, boom.

• 19:00Bill Maher?

  Right. But you must love it, I mean, you look like you're having a ball doing it.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  I like it, it's easy enough to do. You know what, you don't do the Tonight Show, I gotta see the movie, I gotta read the book.

• 19:09Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  I gotta listen to the album.

• 19:11Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  That, I just show up, what's this guy do, he's like, boom. And you talk, it's like doing jaywalking on the street.

• 19:16Bill Maher?

  Jaywalking, exactly.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, same thing.

• 19:19Bill Maher?

  You know, I brought that up recently, I did an editorial on our show about how dumb people were.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, I saw that, yeah, you saw, I watched that.

• 19:26Bill Maher?

  There's a TikTok guy who just ripped you off.

• 19:28Speaker 03

  That made me laugh, yeah.

• 19:29Bill Maher?

  Did that whole thing.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, that's the most, everybody accused everybody of ripping stuff off, it's the most common, Akimil does it on his show, it's not a ripoff of me.

• 19:38Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  I didn't rip off Steve Allen, Steve Allen didn't rip off the guy on the radio, Arthur Godfrey, I don't know who it was. Yeah, that's one of the staple.

• 19:47Bill Maher?

  But you were the first one to, no, sorry. Your jaywalking thing was specifically aimed at showing how stupid people were. These people, the other guys, they did talk to people on the street, and people could sometimes get caught in the act of being themselves.

• 20:01Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 20:01Bill Maher?

  But yours was specifically, this person doesn't know who Lincoln is.

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, that was always amazing to me.

• 20:08Bill Maher?

  And that's what was funny about it, was, and sad at the same time.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, yeah.

• 20:13Bill Maher?

  But, I don't think any, no, I think you started that jaywalking, or else you wouldn't have done it. It was an, that was an original.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a lot of fun, that was my favorite thing to do. And that's sort of what this show is, it's sort of the same thing.

• 20:26Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 20:28Bill Maher?

  And, you know, Jay, I love it that you're not like, you have no like ego about like, you climbed the mountain, you got to the top for a very long time. I've said many times, you got fired twice for the crime of being.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  Nobody cares that you climbed the mountain, you talk about climbing mountains, say a climbing mountain story. I had this guy on the, I had this guy on the Tonight Show.

• 20:51Bill Maher?

  You never let me ask one question.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Let me finish this. This guy is blind, and he climbed Mount Everest. The most amazing, he's an athlete, he's blind.

• 21:01Bill Maher?

  Who hasn't?

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Two months, he's climbing Mount Everest, he's on the, holding on, he doesn't know if it's daytime or night, it rains, people are like, oh. So, he's on, he's on my show, and I see, and I said during the break, do you do a lot of motivational speaking? He's all pissed off, and I go, I go, why? He goes, every motivational speaker, I talk about climbing Mount Everest and how hot it was, and it rained and slinte, so you don't know if it's day or night, you don't know where you are on the mountain, you don't know how far, you know, I gotta feel my way to the top, it took me two months, you know. And he says, inevitably afterwards, when he does the meet and greet, somebody goes, you know, I was gonna climb Everest last year, but my kid's got soccer, and the wife, uh, wife wants to go to her mother-in-law, and he's like, and he's like blind, he's like, I just wanna, I just wanna stab these people.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  He's still furious, hilarious.

• 21:49Bill Maher?

  You got fired twice for the crime of being number one.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 21:54Bill Maher?

  And you know, you just have no bitterness about it.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Ever tell you what they said to me? I said, I'm number one, you know what they said?

• 22:00Bill Maher?

  Jay.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  We want what's above number one.

• 22:03Bill Maher?

  No.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, that's my favorite quote.

• 22:06Bill Maher?

  No.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  And I went,

• 22:07Bill Maher?

  Come on.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  What's above number one? I said, we're number one, we're winning in every demographic group. I know, but we want what's above that.

• 22:16Bill Maher?

  That

• 22:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:17Bill Maher?

  is priceless show business stupidity.

• 22:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's wonderful, it's, it's, I mean, how can you not have fun with it?

• 22:24Bill Maher?

  Well, you know, I, I believe to someone who was sitting in that chair at some podcast we did here, I think I was talking about this, because the subject of agenting came up, and I was saying, to me, the argument, the strongest argument for why you need someone speaking for you, is because NBC had Ari Emanuel,

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:46Bill Maher?

  a dear friend of mine,

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:48Bill Maher?

  and a genius agent,

• 22:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:50Bill Maher?

  you know, now one of the biggest moguls in the world. He had, NBC had him in their ear convincing them. I mean, that is a genius salesman.

• 23:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 23:02Bill Maher?

  Who can convince a network to look for, what was the phrase?

• 23:07Speaker 03

  We want what's above number one.

• 23:09Bill Maher?

  Right. That's, and you did not have an agent.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  No, I didn't have an agent or a manager.

• 23:15Bill Maher?

  Right, and do you have regrets about that?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  No. I don't have any at all, because everything I do, I spoke for myself. There's one thing about.

• 23:25Bill Maher?

  Maybe you needed that little snake in their ear to say.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  You know, you know something, you don't, you don't need the snake in the ear.

• 23:31Bill Maher?

  But the snake worked, it got, it got, it got them to, again.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  And how did it work in the, who won in the end?

• 23:39Bill Maher?

  Well, they canned your ass, so you didn't. You should still be there, you, you were.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  I wouldn't still be there now.

• 23:47Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  At some point, because at some point I shouldn't have to know all of Jay-Z's music, you know? I mean, it gets to the point where, you know, when you're 40 and you're talking to 26-year-old supermodel, sexy, when you're in your 60s, you're the creepy old guy.

• 23:59Bill Maher?

  All right, you know what, that's such ridiculous thinking. Just don't be creepy when you talk to them.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  Well.

• 24:04Bill Maher?

  You can talk to any person of any age, that's a ridiculous restriction to put on.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  Well, that is true, but I.

• 24:09Bill Maher?

  It is true.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  But I just say that because.

• 24:11Bill Maher?

  You can't talk to a 26-year-old without leering?

• 24:13Speaker 03

  Well, uh, not, not leering, it's just.

• 24:15Bill Maher?

  And you were never a leering anyway, you're famously happily married.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:19Bill Maher?

  And a devoted, faithful husband. You do not have to worry, that, if, if they come out in a short skirt, that's because they're, they're selling a movie, and that would get people.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  Well, my thing is, I wouldn't change anything, because it all worked out fine.

• 24:33Bill Maher?

  Yes, but.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  But at least I, I rose and fell by my own hand, as opposed to other people moving things around. You know, I remember one time I was on stage.

• 24:43Bill Maher?

  Well, you didn't fall, you never fell, they fell you, again, for the crime of being number one, and I think if you could have had someone whispering in their ear, this is a very stupid thing to do, it's called a cash cow, just milk that for as long as.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  But you know, you find in show business, you die from a thousand paper cuts.

• 25:07Bill Maher?

  What does that mean?

• 25:07Speaker 03

  What that means is, when they decide you want you, they want you out, suddenly, things start appearing in the trades that you're difficult.

• 25:16Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 25:16Speaker 03

  Uh, yes, I.

• 25:17Bill Maher?

  That happened?

• 25:18Speaker 03

  I've, not, no, not to me, but I, I would see it happen to other people. You know, things would just get.

• 25:25Bill Maher?

  Like who, like what, like, give me an example, like, what did they say?

• 25:28Speaker 03

  Well, it did happen to me in the sense that once, I, I did a, oh, I did this movie, Tina, I did this movie a long time ago. And I had my contract that I had these certain dates that I couldn't do, because I was committed to performing.

• 25:42Bill Maher?

  Were you the detective, that movie?

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that stupid movie, yeah, yeah.

• 25:46Bill Maher?

  What is it called?

• 25:47Speaker 03

  I don't even.

• 25:47Bill Maher?

  Oh, you do, come on.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  But anyway.

• 25:50Bill Maher?

  I've seen it.

• 25:51Speaker 03

  And then they said, no, we gotta shoot in those days, no, I already made this commitment. And then suddenly I started seeing things in the paper, I'm difficult, my hairdresser was arguing, I don't have a hairdresser. And I would just see all these things, and I go, okay, this is how it works. They just plant these little stories and little things happen. When you, when you control your own fate, it's fine. And plus, the nice thing was, you know, I'll tell you a story, when I was doing The Tonight Show,

• 26:18Speaker 03

  I got a call from, well, how can I say this, this, uh,

• 26:25Speaker 03

  there was, there was a group of people, a whole bunch of comedians are hosting, were, were, um, guest hosting The Tonight Show. And they're all handled by the same guy, and this guy called me, he said, we wanna handle you too, and put you on the roster, because we're asking $25,000 a night to guest host. And I said, oh, that's, that's okay. He said, what are you getting to guest host? I said, I'm getting $512 a night to guest host.

• 26:54Bill Maher?

  Scale, yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  I said, okay, he said, right there. He said, sign with us, and then when you comes around, I said, you know, I'm gonna keep my $512 a night. Okay.

• 27:07Speaker 03

  And then I told Johnny's people, I'll do it for $512. And then they look at the ratings and they go, you know, Leno's getting just as good a ratings as, Johnny owns the company, you can save about, you know, about $40,000, $50,000 a month by having him. And then I became the permanent guest host. And I never discussed money, I said, the money will come later on. And it worked out fine, because I got it under, because I, I said, okay. And then, oh, and then they came to me with offers for money, and I said, oh, okay, that's fine. And I never had to argue.

• 27:40Bill Maher?

  Well, see, to me, Jay, that is the quintessential story summing you up, because when people ask me about you, I always say, and of course, you do have your detractors, I mean, I don't, I don't quite understand them, because I always say like, Leno's such an interesting guy, because like, as a human being, you, you could never do better than asking, what would Jay do? You know, he's a very moral guy, but he's also fucking Italian.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:07Bill Maher?

  And boy, when he wants to fucking hide in the closet and outsmart you,

• 28:14Speaker 03

  Well, I did that because.

• 28:16Bill Maher?

  He will always fucking find the way to get to the top of that mountain.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  I had a hunch that, that, um, that Jack Welsh was on my side.

• 28:28Bill Maher?

  And he was the head of NBC, of GE?

• 28:30Speaker 03

  The O G E.

• 28:31Bill Maher?

  Which owned NBC.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, so when I, when, when they were having that meeting and I was listening in, I heard him say, why don't we go with Leno, he seems funny, he seems to work good, seems to be a hard worker, I like him, I went, thank you, now.

• 28:45Bill Maher?

  Now, where did you hear that?

• 28:47Speaker 03

  And when I was in the closet.

• 28:48Bill Maher?

  I love that.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Jack, Jack was in there. Jack was in the meeting.

• 28:50Bill Maher?

  But in the closet, that's like, only you and R. Kelly could get away with an in the closet.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  That's right, me and R. Kelly, thank you very much.

• 28:59Bill Maher?

  Well, he does have a hole in the closet.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  No, it's not a hole in the closet, I was just listening.

• 29:03Bill Maher?

  No, I know.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Just listening, I wanted to know what was going on. And the funny thing was about it, here's a funny thing. I did it twice. And

• 29:13Bill Maher?

  Twice, I never knew that.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the second time, I heard Warren Littlefield say, you know, somehow, I think Leno knows what goes on in this room. He says, "From now on, we didn't even speak to, we didn't even tell our second lieutenant." He says, "We didn't tell our second lieutenant what goes on in this room." So later that day, I'm walking the hall and I see, I walk by Warren, I go, "Second Lieutenant Jay Leno, how are you?" And he goes, "What the fuck does that mean? What's that mean?" I go, "No, I'm just making a joke." "Why'd you say second lieutenant?" "I just said second lieutenant."

• 29:46Bill Maher?

  Oh my god.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, it was very funny. It was very funny. And then another time.

• 29:51Bill Maher?

  What, what, so what a mindfuck on him. What did he, did he ever?

• 29:55Speaker 03

  The second time, he was in Florida in a meeting. So I kept trying to reach him. So I said, "Give me his room." So they, they ring his room, it doesn't answer, and I go, "Oh, he was just downstairs, I bet, I bet he was in the bathroom when the phone rang." So I called back again. He goes, "Hey, hey, it's Jay." Says, "Why are you in California?" I said, "You were just in the bathroom, sorry about it." He goes, "How'd you know that? How'd you know that?" And he had the room swept. And that made me laugh afterwards.

• 30:23Bill Maher?

  You know what that, that is so fucking-

• 30:26Speaker 03

  It's very funny.

• 30:27Bill Maher?

  You know what that reminds me of? Did you ever see the Jason Bourne movies?

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yes, I love the Jason Bourne movies.

• 30:31Bill Maher?

  Okay, so at the end of, I think it's the second one, or what, he's talking to Pam Landy, the head of the, the head of the CIA, but-

• 30:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 30:39Bill Maher?

  The CIA, played by Joan Allen, amazing.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Right, that's supposed, that's supposed to be, um,

• 30:46Speaker 03

  Gina, the head of the CIA. No, Gina, the head of the CIA, Gina-

• 30:51Bill Maher?

  She wasn't the head of the CIA, Pam Landy was, uh, she winds up being the good guy in the CIA.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, but in the real life Gina has, is Haskell.

• 30:58Bill Maher?

  Haskell?

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Haskell, yeah, she's head of the CIA.

• 31:01Bill Maher?

  Oh, right, she was head of the CIA.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:02Bill Maher?

  Okay, so, you know, at the end of the, one of the, the first or the second one, he's talking to her and she's like, "Oh, I got him on the phone finally," it's like, "Oh my Bourne, why don't you come in?" He's like, "No, I don't think I'm gonna do that right now," and, uh, "Pam, she gets some rest. You look tired."

• 31:21Speaker 03

  I remember the scene.

• 31:22Bill Maher?

  Because he was across-

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:23Bill Maher?

  And then she's like, "What the fuck, Jason Bourne, you are a badass."

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you a story.

• 31:29Bill Maher?

  It's not that great movie.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Gina Haskell told me one time, that-

• 31:33Bill Maher?

  How do you know her?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  I, I, no, we had dinner.

• 31:38Bill Maher?

  The CIA person?

• 31:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, Gina Haskell.

• 31:41Bill Maher?

  Why you?

• 31:42Speaker 03

  I don't know why me, why me, I don't know. I did a lot of people, I did a little Gorbachev, dinner with Netanyahu, a lot of people.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  You know, when you're on the Tonight Show, they call you, Gorbachev called me when he was in, he said, he wanted to have dinner. Alright, so I, I said to Mavis, Gorbachev and Rasha wanna have dinner, you know, and he doesn't speak English.

• 32:04Bill Maher?

  No.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  No. So we have, and of course I make the big mistake, so I introduce him, I, and the, "Bra, bra, da, da, Rasha," and Rasha said to me, she said, "Oh, you obviously married an older man." And, and you see, "Bra, bra, ga, bra, bra," and, and she gets this look. "Bra, bra, bra." "My husband is not elderly." "No, no, no, not," I was saying, I said,

• 32:27Speaker 03

  then again, I said, "No, no, I mean, obviously you were a child bride, you look so you..." "I was not a child when he married her, okay, I'm just digging a hole here." "I'm just digging a hole here," I said, "I'm just trying to be funny, okay, fine." So I'm thinking, "Why is Gorbachev inviting me to dinner?" And "Oh, he wanted to borrow fifty thousand, he wanted me to make a donation"

• 32:45Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 32:45Speaker 03

  "to the Gorbachev," I said, "You know, I don't even give money to them, I'm a credit."

• 32:49Bill Maher?

  You know, he asked me to dinner once too, Jay, and I said, "Look, I, I can't, I can't-

• 32:54Speaker 03

  No, but he was, he was hitting on me.

• 32:55Bill Maher?

  "I can't look at that thing on your head." And then it was, then it was done.

• 32:58Speaker 03

  He was hitting on, he was trying to get me to give him fifty thousand dollars.

• 33:02Bill Maher?

  Alright, so your dinner with the CIA.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  Well, let me tell you, tell you a funny story. So I says, "Is there any like, it's like, Jason Bourne kinda stuff that actually goes on?" And she said, "One time, they had an agent, and they had, the agent was driving with a double agent, who was a Russian. And they sensed that they were being followed."

• 33:25Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  So, they're trying to lose guys, so the other guy's, someone's driving and the guy is sitting here. And they had an inflatable doll. So they said, "When they come to the corner, open the door, jump out, and the guy will inflate the doll, so it'll look like he was still in the car." So, they race around the car.

• 33:45Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  This guy jumps out, the head pops up, so, the car behind him, it looked like there was still two people in the car, until they got where they're going, I thought that was great, it just made me laugh. It just made me laugh. But that's as top secret as it got.

• 34:01Bill Maher?

  You know, we have a whole part of the military subvention called DARPA.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:06Bill Maher?

  You're familiar with DARPA?

• 34:07Speaker 03

  Go ahead.

• 34:09Bill Maher?

  They're like, they're the dudes, their, their budget is secret.

• 34:13Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:14Bill Maher?

  But it's billions and billions.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  There is no budget.

• 34:16Bill Maher?

  There is no budget, right. It's like the Virgin Mary, it's perfect, always, the defense budget. Um, DARPA like develops like the shit we don't even know about, like the next wave of, I mean, the other side plainly has stuff that has caused our diplomats to have headaches.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Right, like in Havana, yeah, yeah.

• 34:37Bill Maher?

  Yes, in Havana, that, some other capitals where they, it must be some sort of sound wave.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  A microwave, yeah.

• 34:43Bill Maher?

  A microwave that they're, I mean, that's the kinda shit DARPA works on.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 34:47Bill Maher?

  And, you know, obviously,

• 34:53Bill Maher?

  I'd rather have us to have it than them.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 34:56Bill Maher?

  Whoever them is.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  I'm the same way.

• 34:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  You ask why I knew, I had done a, when you work for the CIA and you get killed, you get nothing.

• 35:05Bill Maher?

  Star on the wall.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Nobody knows who you are, that's-

• 35:07Bill Maher?

  None of them are star.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  So we did a benefit for the families of those people.

• 35:12Bill Maher?

  You did?

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:13Bill Maher?

  Jay. Jay, you're all, you're so you. Of course you did a benefit for them, of course you did.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  It's not bad.

• 35:21Bill Maher?

  It's not bad, no, I'm saying, it's just you, it's like you're always you, you're super Leno, you're just Iron Jay.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:29Bill Maher?

  But I must say, back to the story about the people who were character assassinating you at NBC, if they really were good at it, would they concoct a story about you having a hairdresser?

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Well, no, that was, that was, that was a Dino DiLorenzo story, but, yeah, yeah, me with a hairdresser, yeah, that's really believable.

• 35:46Bill Maher?

  I'm just saying, there are certain things that are out of the realm of, you know, believability.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  But the idea when you, when you run your own show, you, you hear the information firsthand. Cause we have an agent, we hate Leno, he sucks. They said they weren't happy with this one thing you said, no, no, no. You know what I'm saying, you don't, you don't, you don't get the, the perfect example, I'm on stage one day, and I see a woman like this, with some, some, I-

• 36:13Bill Maher?

  A woman like what?

• 36:14Speaker 03

  You know, wanted me to sign something, you know, I'm talking, and I think, and I, I said, "I'm working," I, I said, "What? Meet me right there by that door, when the show's over, and I'll sign it for you," you know, I just, I got some laughs, okay.

• 36:27Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  So I got back, the show ends, and I see her walk to the thing. And I, as I get over there, here's security go, "Mr. Leno left instructions, he's not signing anything," and I go, "What are you, what are you saying?" You know, I see she's like, "Oh, like I lied to her," I go, "No, wait, no, wait." That's what I have an agent, like, you have people saying things for you.

• 36:44Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  And I see it all the time, I would, I would guests that come to the Tonight Show, and they would have some road manager that was just treating people horribly.

• 36:52Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  And the star was actually very nice.

• 36:53Bill Maher?

  I agree.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  Whether they know or not, I don't know, so to me, if I go by myself, if they have a bad opinion of me, at least it was formed by meeting me.

• 37:02Bill Maher?

  I, right, and they wouldn't if they met you, because again, you're Iron Jay. But, uh, no, it's true. And I have seen that many times myself, and have had to like say to people.

• 37:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:15Bill Maher?

  Because people who like, are like, have the word "security" in giant letters written on their back.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:21Bill Maher?

  They just have a, it's just gonna give you an attitude, like, they've done actual psychological experiments like this, if you put people in certain costumes or things, they act a certain way.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:31Bill Maher?

  If, that, that, the famous one with prisoners and guards.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:35Bill Maher?

  If you are the prisoner and you're wearing the prison uniform, and then the guards start, immediately start acting sadistically, and it's like, okay, you're not really a guard, but they just do it.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:46Bill Maher?

  And security, so they're gonna act like big assholes, and we're gonna tell you what to do, and-

• 37:52Speaker 03

  I did that once to Prince, Prince was a guest on the-

• 37:55Bill Maher?

  Prince?

• 37:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, Prince was a guest on the Tonight Show. So I, we put on a bald wig and a mustache, and I waited at the guard gate, and Prince comes up, you know? And he goes, "Uh, Prince, Tonight Show?" I said, "Prince what? Prince." "You're the prince of what? What prince of what?" He goes, he, he's like, "I'm a musician, I'm on the show." I'll, I'll tell him, "Hang on, prince what?" You know, and now he's getting pissed. "No, I'm, I'm, you know," and then I, I was starting to laugh so hard, and he go, "What, what's going on?" And then he started with me, you start yelling, he, you know, he was really a funny guy, he was a nice guy.

• 38:33Bill Maher?

  Really, Prince was a funny guy?

• 38:34Speaker 03

  Yes, he had a great sense of humor.

• 38:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I've heard that too.

• 38:37Speaker 03

  You know, and, and the nicest guys, he stayed after the show, he told the audience to stay, he played an hour.

• 38:44Bill Maher?

  You know what?

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:45Bill Maher?

  I'm remembering this now.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:47Bill Maher?

  When Politically Incorrect was newly on, and looking for, you know, some sort of confirmation that it existed, Prince talked about it on your show.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:58Bill Maher?

  Do you remember that?

• 38:59Speaker 03

  I, no, I don't remember talking about it.

• 39:01Bill Maher?

  He talked about watching Politically Incorrect.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Oh, that's great.

• 39:03Bill Maher?

  And sometime later, of, of someone who worked for him at one point, and knew him pretty well, said it on the road, this is after he became very devout as a, what was he, um?

• 39:15Speaker 03

  Was Jehovah Witness?

• 39:17Bill Maher?

  Jehovah Witness, maybe, something like, Seventh Day Adventist, one of those. And that he would, uh, you know, invite four ladies back to the room, and they thought there was gonna be some great Prince orgy, and he played Politically Incorrect with them. Talked to them about Jesus, and, you know, he had some bizarre-

• 39:34Speaker 03

  No, he was a very nice guy.

• 39:35Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  He was a nice guy.

• 39:36Bill Maher?

  But he talked, he said, he, I'm surprised that when the limo pulled up, he himself said, "It's, why didn't the driver?"

• 39:46Speaker 03

  Because I looked at him.

• 39:48Bill Maher?

  I see.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  I said, "You are..."

• 39:49Bill Maher?

  Cause he was a man of few words.

• 39:52Speaker 03

  Well, no, no, when you talk to him, he's okay.

• 39:54Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 39:54Speaker 03

  He was okay, no, no attitude, very nice to everybody, not-

• 39:59Bill Maher?

  No, no, I'm not saying attitude, I just-

• 40:01Speaker 03

  No, but you know what I mean?

• 40:02Bill Maher?

  I always heard about him was that he was a man of few words, he spoke through his music and didn't, but I guess he felt comfortable with someone, and, you know, you're, you're kind of a-

• 40:11Speaker 03

  I never won either, I didn't, I wasn't trying to get tickets or anything, he just-

• 40:14Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:15Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm sure he knew that, you're, you're not like a person who really loves pop music, or, I mean, you know-

• 40:24Speaker 03

  I'm nice enough music, fine.

• 40:26Bill Maher?

  No, I, I mean, you know, you had music on, every time I did the Tonight Show, all million times, it was like- Yeah, we were kind enough to have me out first usually and then there was

• 40:37Speaker 03

  Right.

• 40:37Bill Maher?

  Somebody in a very short dress.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 40:40Bill Maher?

  And, and then it was, you know, Lady Antebellum.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 40:45Bill Maher?

  And we would walk over to the side of the stage.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  We broke a lot of bands on the show.

• 40:48Bill Maher?

  You did?

• 40:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:49Bill Maher?

  And it was always like when you're right there, sent, standing that close to the band, matter who it was, I was into it. You know. Of course, why people wanna be in the front row.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  I'm not a big jazz guy, but I used to open for Miles Davis. I really enjoyed it because I watched it being manufactured.

• 41:07Bill Maher?

  Whoa, you opened for Miles, Miles Davis had an opening act?

• 41:11Speaker 03

  I was, I'll tell you, it was, Lenny's on the Turnpike in Boston. It was Miles Davis, comedian Jay Leno, I didn't get billing, my name was just there. But it was Miles Davis, steak dinner, two drinks, and the show, twelve ninety-five.

• 41:31Bill Maher?

  Where were you in the order of the billing?

• 41:33Speaker 03

  No, I was, I was.

• 41:33Bill Maher?

  Risa V the steak.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  I was, I was first, I was first. And sometimes I'd go on and Miles wouldn't show up for ninety minutes. One day.

• 41:41Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  Somebody took his yellow jacket and it disappeared and, yeah.

• 41:45Bill Maher?

  Took his yellow jacket?

• 41:46Speaker 03

  He, he always used to wear a yellow.

• 41:47Bill Maher?

  Right, I remember, see.

• 41:48Speaker 03

  Yellow jacket and somebody took it and we had.

• 41:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, no.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Had to find it, yeah.

• 41:52Bill Maher?

  Well, what was that?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Herbie Hancock was, he was in the band too, yeah.

• 41:56Bill Maher?

  What was that crowd like?

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Well, you know, back then, this predates concerts. Someone like Miles, he would come into Sandy's in Beverly, Massachusetts, any one of these jazz clubs and you would do five nights for the money you'd make at one night playing Symphony Hall or something.

• 42:16Bill Maher?

  But for you as a comic, what was the crowd like?

• 42:20Speaker 03

  The crowd was great because the crowd.

• 42:22Bill Maher?

  Super hip.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Because it was a jazz audience, so they, they're like.

• 42:27Speaker 03

  They're there to listen. If they didn't like it, that, you know.

• 42:30Bill Maher?

  And they were smart.

• 42:31Speaker 03

  They were smart audiences, yeah.

• 42:32Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 42:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember the first actor, the first jazz guy, we would call him jazz, was Buddy Rich. And they go, then he's like, this is my first time on stage ever. Please welcome comedian Jay Leno. And you hear a guy go, we hate him! I go, I've never, did they see me come in? Did they know my parents? How, how, why would they hate me? I'm trying to rationalize it.

• 42:53Bill Maher?

  Nothing to go on.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, nothing. I've never been at, I've never been anywhere. It's my first time, yeah.

• 42:58Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you get used to that after a while.

• 43:01Bill Maher?

  That was Kimmel.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  Huh?

• 43:03Bill Maher?

  No, that was Kimmel.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  You know, Kimmel's great.

• 43:05Bill Maher?

  I'm just fucking.

• 43:06Speaker 03

  I, you know, I'm a fan. He has this thing that somehow.

• 43:10Bill Maher?

  We don't have to even.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  No, it's fine. It's like, you know, I, I'll tell you something.

• 43:14Bill Maher?

  I want you guys to be friends, cuz I.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  I think we are.

• 43:17Bill Maher?

  Such great love for both of them.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  I think he did as good a job hosting the Academy Awards as anybody.

• 43:22Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  Real jokes, really funny jokes, really ad lib jokes. You know, it's just one of those awkward situations where he, he was a huge Letterman guy.

• 43:33Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  And when Letterman didn't get to Tonight Show, somehow it was my fault. And I think he resented it, and I get that, but you know, Dave never had the Tonight Show.

• 43:44Bill Maher?

  I, what?

• 43:46Speaker 03

  No.

• 43:46Bill Maher?

  No. Maybe I'm remembering these wars wrong.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  Here's the situation.

• 43:51Bill Maher?

  I conflate this with the first Iraq war sometimes.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  No, no, no, this is, this is.

• 43:55Bill Maher?

  Is this a different?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  This goes back, no, now you gotta go back to, what's the one in Argentina, you know?

• 44:00Bill Maher?

  Falkland.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Falklands, yeah. What it was, was.

• 44:03Bill Maher?

  That was a nasty one.

• 44:05Speaker 03

  Dave was a huge hit at twelve thirty, huge. Johnny was a huge hit eleven thirty.

• 44:11Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  When I started subbing for Johnny, I was lucky enough to be able to maintain Johnny's ratings. So with me there, they had a hit eleven thirty and a hit at twelve thirty. And NBC did not wanna sacrifice one hit. If, if they moved Letterman down, I would go to CB, I would just go somewhere else.

• 44:31Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 44:32Speaker 03

  And then they would have a wide open spot.

• 44:33Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Plus the, plus, there were a lot of executives that did not like Dave. Because, for whatever reason, but you had a situation there where, um, they had a hit at eleven thirty and a hit at twelve thirty. To move Letterman down wouldn't have gained them anything. I mean, I guest hosted for five years.

• 44:58Speaker 03

  I remember, I remember asking Zucker, I go, doesn't Letterman have this job? He said, no. Letterman's a hit at twelve thirty, we wanna keep that a hit at twelve thirty.

• 45:06Bill Maher?

  Zucker was when, what, when?

• 45:08Speaker 03

  Zucker was at, at NBC, Jeff Zucker.

• 45:11Bill Maher?

  I know. He was where at this time? He was at NBC?

• 45:13Speaker 03

  He was at NBC.

• 45:14Bill Maher?

  He did the Today Show at NBC?

• 45:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, he did the Today Show at NBC too.

• 45:18Bill Maher?

  Yeah, okay.

• 45:18Speaker 03

  But Warren and all those people said, you know.

• 45:21Bill Maher?

  Warren, Warren Little.

• 45:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a hit at twelve thirty and we wanna keep a hit at twelve thirty.

• 45:26Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 45:26Speaker 03

  So they had no intention of moving Dave down.

• 45:28Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 45:31Bill Maher?

  You know, I never asked you this, but when, when you did leave the Tonight Show, there must have been offers to do opposite the Tonight Show show from Fox or some.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  There were, there were a lot, you know.

• 45:44Bill Maher?

  Why didn't you do it?

• 45:44Speaker 03

  That's, you know, it's interesting because, um, I remember, I heard Kimmel talk to you about that, that I, that I had called him, and I did. And I didn't realize I was supposed to do a follow up call with him, so I certainly apologize for that, but, um, I didn't do it because, here's what happened. They, they decided, I was still on the air, I, they, they demanded that I say I'm gonna leave in five years, even though I was gonna be there another five years. Cuz Conan people wanted that. I said, all right, fine, fine, I'll leave in five years. Okay, within that five years, um, Craig Ferguson comes along.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  And Craig Ferguson is a huge hit. He won a Peabody, I think he won some Emmys. And now he was beating Conan. And then Zucker called me one day and said, I think we made a mistake. I go, guys, I'm outta here next year, or whenever it was. And he said, well, suppose we gave you a show at ten o'clock? I said, ten o'clock talk shows don't work. It didn't work for Cavett in sixty-eight, it, it doesn't work. He said, I'll tell you what, I will pay your entire staff for two years, regardless of what happens. So all my people get paid for two years, even if we get canceled? He goes, yeah. I said, all right, okay, I'll do a ten o'clock show.

• 47:07Speaker 03

  Now, I remember Kimmel thought that, see, people forget, all those ten o'clock dramas were hugely expensive to do. Hugely expensive, and they weren't giving the ratings they used to.

• 47:18Bill Maher?

  Like ER.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Like ER, well, ER was a hit, but Law and Order and all the others, and they were just taking a hit at ten o'clock.

• 47:28Bill Maher?

  The Senator's wife.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Senator's wife?

• 47:31Bill Maher?

  I'm saying that must have been a show.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  Well, something like that, yeah. But anyway, those all were hugely expensive.

• 47:37Bill Maher?

  Tia Leoni was the Senator's wife.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Oh, no, she was, Tia Leoni was, um.

• 47:41Bill Maher?

  Doesn't matter.

• 47:42Speaker 03

  Uh, was she paying the female president?

• 47:44Bill Maher?

  But people in America are very pretentious about their ten o'clock shows. They feel like they're very, very.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  Well, Jeff's thing was, if you put a talk show one there, it'll get essentially the same ratings at a tenth of the production cost.

• 47:57Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 47:57Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 47:58Bill Maher?

  I remember I did, I did that show many times, a few times.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay, so, uh, that didn't work. And then, you know, I was, oh, Leno deliberately sabotaged his show to try and get the Tonight Show. No, that, that doesn't work, it doesn't work that way. You try and do the best you can and, and it didn't work. And then they said, how about coming on at eleven thirty? I said, look, I don't wanna go through this again. Conan, he goes, if Conan moves back to twelve, would you do a half hour at eleven thirty? I said, talk to Conan, if he'll go to twelve, I'll do a half hour, just do a monologue and one guest. Okay. And of course Conan didn't wanna do that, and that's when he wrote the letter and everything. And then they put me back in and we became number one again.

• 48:41Bill Maher?

  But why did, after you left, why didn't you go to Fox or some other place?

• 48:47Speaker 03

  I'm pretty loyal, I don't.

• 48:49Bill Maher?

  What, loyal to these assholes who fired you?

• 48:53Speaker 03

  You know, sometimes the czar you have is better than the one you're gonna get.

• 48:56Bill Maher?

  You know what?

• 48:57Speaker 03

  And, and here, here's the thing, then you have your old team shooting at you as well. I just figured, let's, let's, let's just play this out and see what happens. This all happened fairly quickly, you know, I, I, I called Jimmy Kimmel and I said, I'm getting offers from ABC, I don't wanna start a whole thing here. If, if they're talking, put me on eleven thirty, would you wanna go on at twelve thirty? I think he said, yeah, you'd like to. I said, oh, okay. We became friends. And then that didn't happen, and it became public. And I suppose I should have called Jimmy and explained to him again, but I didn't. Uh, I don't know why I didn't, I just didn't, I thought he, we probably figured it out.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  But I think maybe he was hurt by that, and I apologized to him for that.

• 49:45Bill Maher?

  But Jay, I feel like you're a victim of the, um, terrible last viable prejudice in America, ageism. You have this idea in your head that, you know, you have to go out to pasture at some point. As I talk to you now, you know, you're exactly the same guy who was there then, so like, I don't think your brain is diminished. You know, you're doing all these other shows, just doing stand up, you know, your hair was white then, now it's white now. You know, it's like, it's not like, this is a job where you have to, you know.

• 50:20Speaker 03

  I am a huge believer in low self-esteem.

• 50:23Bill Maher?

  What?

• 50:24Speaker 03

  I think it is the key to success. Because when you don't think you're the smartest person in the room, you shut up and you listen. When I got the Tonight Show, I hired the best producer I could, the best director, the people I thought were the best writers. I gave them contracts on a yearly basis, not thirteen weeks. I said, do the best you can. And we had the same crew for, for twenty-two years. And when they would tell me the show sucked, I would go, why did it suck? And they'd tell me why it sucked.

• 50:51Bill Maher?

  Who said it sucked?

• 50:53Speaker 03

  Well, you know, somebody, you know, you, people, you have, hey, Tonight Show sucked, it wasn't good.

• 50:57Bill Maher?

  But who said, are you talking about the?

• 50:58Speaker 03

  Anybody on the show, no.

• 51:00Bill Maher?

  The gaffer would say that to you?

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Yes, my, my theory was, anybody can pull the cord and stop the train. You know, I remember one time we had a guy in the basement who I didn't know. I had done at the time a transgender joke. And I heard this guy was really heard about. And I said, I should go down to see him, you know, and he explained his situation, and I said, you know something, I apologize. I say, I said, you'll never hear another transgender joke from me again. And, and he was so taken by the fact that he could bring this show to a screeching halt because of his one complaint. He, he turned out to be the greatest lighting guy or, you know, sound guy, whatever he did, that we had.

• 51:41Bill Maher?

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say he sold his dick back off.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  No, no, no.

• 51:46Speaker 03

  No, but I mean, to me, that's what worked. That's, that's what worked for me. The fact that, you know, the fact that you, here's the thing, you're only as good as your last joke. When I go on The Tonight Show Now with Fallon, I go on as a stand-up. I don't go on as, you know, in my day, here's the way we did the show. You know, I go on as a guy who's a comedian, who some of the audience may or may not

• 52:09Bill Maher?

  You have amazing humility.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  May or may not know that I hosted the show.

• 52:13Bill Maher?

  Jay, we are not competitive on who is a better human being. Because you always win, and that's fine, because like, I, it's like, I can't even, I can't even get into this arena with you. It's like boxing with Mike Tyson. Uh, we, if we're competitive, but like, who's funnier, I'll fucking go toe-to-toe with you there.

• 52:32Speaker 03

  No.

• 52:33Bill Maher?

  But you are fucking funny.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  I would tell you.

• 52:35Bill Maher?

  I have always said this to people when they ask me, but I said, like, as funny as Leno is on television, you have no idea.

• 52:41Speaker 03

  I remember you and I had a talk once, it's a long time ago. And I was proven right. And I said, Bill, by the nature of what you do and who you are, it's gonna take you a little bit longer. But you're gonna be there way longer than everybody else.

• 52:57Bill Maher?

  Jay, I was 56.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you're, but, but what I'm saying is, you've been on the air now for 23 years, something like that? Doing basically the same show? Not many people.

• 53:08Bill Maher?

  30.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Uh, 30, okay.

• 53:10Bill Maher?

  Well, politically incorrect.

• 53:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, but what I'm saying was, I remember the early days, you would complain about not getting guests because they were afraid to come on or whatever.

• 53:18Bill Maher?

  We still have that problem.

• 53:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you know something? You don't need, you don't need, it's nice to have.

• 53:24Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  But you don't need it.

• 53:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 53:26Speaker 03

  You don't need it.

• 53:26Bill Maher?

  One reason I started this podcast is because, it's like, yes, I give up, and I should have given up a long time ago on the idea that, oh, everybody should be able to talk about politics. Well, they don't and they can't, and that's fine.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:40Bill Maher?

  And here, anybody, anybody can be doing this.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 53:44Bill Maher?

  Even you, Jay.

• 53:45Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Lovely.

• 53:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 53:50Speaker 03

  But what I'm saying is, I'm just so proud of you, of what you've accomplished. No, no, and the way you've able to do it, how you've, how you've, because I remember when you would come on, you always have like, one blowjob joke. Oh, we have to edit it out. And I go, I wish, I wish Bill wouldn't do the blowjob joke in the middle of a Tonight Show set. We have to edit around it, you know?

• 54:10Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 54:10Speaker 03

  But you always felt you had to put it in there. But I like the fact that

• 54:13Bill Maher?

  I don't remember that at all.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  I find the fact that, now, I watch you, and you stand on your own, and your points are yours. I, I know you're never lying, because you tell the truth on the show. And it's what you honestly, it's the only news show that I watch where I honestly believe the host believes what they're saying. I don't have to agree.

• 54:32Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 54:32Speaker 03

  But I admire the fact that I can see that. And I see that

• 54:36Bill Maher?

  Well, you should.

• 54:37Speaker 03

  Guests coming on, talking freer than they do on any other show.

• 54:41Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  And that's really what makes, I've never missed one of your shows.

• 54:44Bill Maher?

  Oh, well.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  I do, I watch them all, I watch them all.

• 54:48Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm all overclimbed, um, so, how many days are you on the road now, the, this era of your life?

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Um.

• 54:57Bill Maher?

  How many nights?

• 54:59Speaker 03

  Maybe 150 something. I used to do 210, but I don't anymore.

• 55:04Bill Maher?

  You are such a preposterous human being, Jay. Now

• 55:08Speaker 03

  But see, I do the road, I don't do comedy specials, I don't believe in.

• 55:12Bill Maher?

  I, I remember that, do you remember when you smoked a pipe?

• 55:17Speaker 03

  Yes, that was a long time ago.

• 55:18Bill Maher?

  Okay, but I remember, uh, you, you were always a little older and definitely more, uh, high up in the show business tree than us youngsters at Catch a Rising Star and the improv and the comedy, not the Comedy Store, that was out here. We were in New York, uh, the comic strip. And, uh, so like, I remember there was a pilgrimage once to see you because you were opening for someone at the Westbury Music Fair, which was a level above where we were.

• 55:49Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 55:50Bill Maher?

  And there was, oh, we're gonna go see Leno and see how he, see how he handles that crowd. And we also went to see you at Danger Fields, which was, again, a gig above ours. Because it was a headliner who would come to see you at a nightclub, a real old-fashioned nightclub, Danger Fields on 61st and New York, for two weeks, you, I think you were there.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 56:10Bill Maher?

  And we all came and sat by the knee of the great master and and you were smoking a pipe.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 56:18Bill Maher?

  And giving and doling out your wisdom on

• 56:22Speaker 03

  I'll tell you a great Rodney story. You know, I, I love Rodney, but I knew Rodney 40 years. I had no idea who he voted for. I had no idea what his politics were, he was just about the

• 56:32Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  So I, in 2004, I had, I had Rodney on the show. And to me, I used to love it when Johnny would, was with Rodney, because Rodney go, it's been tough. Has it been tough, Johnny? Oh, I tell you, it's been tough.

• 56:46Bill Maher?

  He'd do six minutes, and Johnny didn't have to say a word.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  But Johnny would just say, rough is it? Oh, I tell you, bad week? Oh, bad week. He would repeat everything, and I thought, oh, I wouldn't give anything to do that. So when Rodney would come on, I think he would do that. So I had him on in 2004. And Rodney was in his 80s, okay? And he's doing, he's doing stand-up, I admired him for that, did stand-up. And he's sweating, and the hand gestures, you know how he does the, oh, I tell you? Well, the hand was a little off, and, you know, every, not enough that I think a, a layman would notice, but as a fellow comic and somebody who studied Rodney.

• 57:22Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 57:22Speaker 03

  So I, I said to Debbie, I said, I think Rodney's having a stroke. Call the paramedics, you know? She goes, really? I said, yeah, yeah. So Rodney, then he sat down, I said, Jay, how are things are okay now? But last week, I tell you, you know, he's doing, and he did fine, and he was fine. So the show ends, he went to the dressing room. So by this time, the paramedics show up, and I knock on the door, I say, Rodney, um, paramedics here, can they look at you? Well, what's going on? I said, Rodney, I, you look like you're having a stroke. I'm fine. Well, I took him on the stretcher. He did have a stroke.

• 57:52Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  He did have a stroke, but he managed to get through it, it's okay. So a couple of weeks go by.

• 57:57Bill Maher?

  So he did the show with a stroke?

• 57:59Speaker 03

  Well, he looked like he was having a

• 58:01Bill Maher?

  He got laughs with a stroke. It's like Lou Gehrig hitting, uh, he got 28 hits, I think, while he had ALS.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 58:09Bill Maher?

  That's a good hitter.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  Well, this, this is what it was, Rodney, so they take him out. A couple of weeks later, Joan calls me, his wife. She goes, Jay, Rodney's in a coma. And so I, you gotta come to the hospital. So I go to the hospital, Rodney's lying there, eyes are open. And Joan says to me, uh, the doctor said Rodney can hear us, but he can't respond. So I'm looking at him, I'm telling him how much I love him, what he meant to all us comics, and how great he was, and working at his club was such an honor. So then Joan says to me, Jay, put your finger in Rodney's hand.

• 58:41Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  She goes, Rodney, if you know it's Jay. Squeeze his finger. So I feel just a slight squeeze, and I went, Rodney, that's not my finger. So Rodney goes like this. I'm out, I'm out. I mean, he, his shoulder jumped, and Joan did, oh my God, I'm out. And then we called the doctor, and he didn't last much longer after that. But just to get a laugh out of Rodney like that was great. It was my favorite thing.

• 59:07Bill Maher?

  If there was anything that we needed to complete the Jay Leno resume, it's you making a dead man laugh. Okay, Jay, you win. You win. For fuck's sake, you win.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  It was great.

• 59:21Bill Maher?

  And you made a dead man laugh.

• 59:23Speaker 03

  But it was

• 59:23Bill Maher?

  Now, here's what I can offer, and it's not nearly on this end level, but it's so interesting, it connects you and Rodney.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 59:30Bill Maher?

  That is this, when I started, and for a number of years after I started, the hardest part was the opening. Because they don't know you.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 59:39Bill Maher?

  So how do you like, break the ice? Like, the place we are now is such a luxury. Our opening line is, thank you, thank you, please sit down, stop clapping for me, because I want to do my show.

• 59:52Speaker 03

  Right.

• 59:52Bill Maher?

  And this is, thank you so much, but, okay. But at the beginning, you had to like, find a way to do that, and I was just bad at it, and I tried a million things, and it just was not my metier. Rodney and you both had things I was so jealous of, because Rodney's was, hey, how you doing? I'm all right now. I tell you, last week I was in rough shape.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:00:16Bill Maher?

  Like, what can't you go from there?

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  Right, right, exactly.

• 1:00:19Bill Maher?

  So in two seconds, he was in, last week I was in rough shape.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Today's all right, but last week I tell you.

• 1:00:24Bill Maher?

  Last week, my wife told me she was not gonna have sex once a week. That's all right, some guy, she cut out altogether.

• 1:00:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 1:00:31Speaker 03

  My favorite Rodney joke was about, uh, let's see, this club, topless, bottomless. I go in, there's nobody there.

• 1:00:40Speaker 03

  I mean, it's such a perfect joke.

• 1:00:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, he had.

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  Economy of words, topless, bottomless, there was nobody there.

• 1:00:46Bill Maher?

  When I was, my very first year in comedy, he called me in my little shit box apartment on Eighth Avenue. Because someone tried to sell him a joke, my first joke, really, my take a lawyer into confession.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, you know, my Dr. Cohen.

• 1:01:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, my, yeah, so, and he had the grace, and I, what a great guy. Because I was nothing, he could have just bought that joke to, I don't care if you stole it. Whoever was trying to sell it to him, heard me say it and was trying to sell it, steal it.

• 1:01:18Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:01:19Bill Maher?

  And I'll always remember that, that he called, he did not have to do that.

• 1:01:23Speaker 03

  No, he's a real comic.

• 1:01:24Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:01:24Speaker 03

  Did you ever meet Joe Ansis?

• 1:01:26Bill Maher?

  Joe Ansis was his manager?

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  No, Joe Ansis was his muse.

• 1:01:30Bill Maher?

  Muse?

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, Joe Ansis was the guy who.

• 1:01:33Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 03

  Made Rodney, I don't know if you ever saw Rodney before he, he got the no respect thing. Rodney used to do bits.

• 1:01:42Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I remember seeing Rodney do, and it was a funny bit, he, he used to do those old fashioned pieces, he'd go, hey, here's a airline pilot, da, da, da, there you go. Hey, we're flying over so and so, welcome to flight so and so, fine, 148 passengers on board. On the left side of the plane, if you look out, you can see the wreckage of flight 907 that crashed, crashed two years ago, and then he goes, you were with me on that flight, weren't you, Bob? You know, and it, and it was a huge, and, and it was like, but it was, it was a, it was like, a bit like a Smothers Brothers kind.

• 1:02:14Bill Maher?

  Rodney?

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, yes, yes, yeah, Rodney, Rodney used to do material.

• 1:02:19Bill Maher?

  I never.

• 1:02:19Speaker 03

  And, and Joe Ansis was a guy.

• 1:02:21Bill Maher?

  Oh, he gave him a character.

• 1:02:23Speaker 03

  Think of the funniest guy you know who's afraid to get on stage. He was that kind of a guy, and Rodney would, uh, sit with Joe after shows, and I think they'd kibbitz and go back and forward, and, and if you read the book, uh, Lenny, it's a Goldman, Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce. If you read that book, there's a whole lot of stuff in there about Joe Ansis.

• 1:02:44Bill Maher?

  Big Albert Goldman fan, no, really.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:02:47Bill Maher?

  Well, his Elvis book.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, did you ever read the Lenny book?

• 1:02:50Bill Maher?

  Not the Lenny one, I read the John Lennon one and the, and the Elvis one.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Well, you should read the, the.

• 1:02:55Bill Maher?

  I will.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Lenny Bruce.

• 1:02:57Bill Maher?

  Albert Goldman took a lot of shit.

• 1:02:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Bill Maher?

  And maybe he is a shit, but I tell you, oh, what's that?

• 1:03:04Speaker 03

  I thought, let me just, oh, I thought I turned my phone off.

• 1:03:07Bill Maher?

  You gotta, Jay, you're.

• 1:03:10Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 1:03:11Bill Maher?

  The last person I ever thought would have a phone, I didn't even think you had a cellphone.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, yes, I've.

• 1:03:18Bill Maher?

  But you don't text, really, do you?

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Not really, no.

• 1:03:21Bill Maher?

  I, I mean.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  I don't like having a permanent record of everything I say.

• 1:03:25Bill Maher?

  Ri-?

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:03:26Bill Maher?

  Just like how, oh, for fuck's sake, what, why, when your, your friends at the CIA are gonna fucking get a, Jason Bourne of like assassinating you because of something, what are you talking about? You're, texting is for just business, like, you're right, you don't want to write a love letter on text, but that's not what it's for, whenever somebody tries to start a, a serious, long conversation on text, I'm like, no, that's for some other method of communication.

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  I did a joke you would like, I said.

• 1:03:51Bill Maher?

  President Biden.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  Someone in the club, someone asked me, said, aren't you afraid of being attacked on stage like Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock? And I go, no.

• 1:04:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 03

  Cause my, my audience is my age, by the time they're getting out of that chair, I'm halfway to Cleveland. Okay.

• 1:04:07Bill Maher?

  Again, ageist, Jay, you're too into that ageist.

• 1:04:10Speaker 03

  See, I remember the old age, when the only performers you could punch on stage were mimes, remember? You'd go, hey, guy trying to get out of a box, hey, come here, smarten up.

• 1:04:19Bill Maher?

  But Jay, I'm gonna finish my story about Rodney.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Go ahead, finish your.

• 1:04:23Bill Maher?

  And why I was jealous of you and Rodney for the same thing, which was getting into what you're doing quickly.

• 1:04:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Bill Maher?

  Rodney had that, you used to come out and go, see the paper, see the paper?

• 1:04:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, see the paper today? Oh, I can't believe it.

• 1:04:38Bill Maher?

  And it was like, ah, fuck, that's so great, one, one of yours was, see the paper, Muhammad Ali's coming out.

• 1:04:45Bill Maher?

  Coming out of.

• 1:04:46Speaker 03

  I think he's fighting Buddy Epsom, yeah, I think he was fighting Buddy Epsom at the time, who was, of course. Barnaby Jones.

• 1:04:54Bill Maher?

  Like a 90 year old.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  Barnaby Jones, you know Barnaby was gonna fight when someone called him Pops, hey, Pops? Well, I, I oughta, yeah, yeah, stupid.

• 1:05:05Bill Maher?

  Yes, Muhammad Ali's gonna fight Buddy Epsom, and you were like into it.

• 1:05:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, you just start going.

• 1:05:11Bill Maher?

  And I was like.

• 1:05:12Speaker 03

  You know, that used to drive.

• 1:05:13Bill Maher?

  Fuck, I need something like that.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  That used to drive Seinfeld crazy.

• 1:05:17Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 1:05:17Speaker 03

  Cause he'd watch me and I'd have a complete non sequitur, nothing, I'd go, da, da, da, da. It's the same with insurance, and he would go, wait, wait a minute, what's the same with insurance? You know, after, after the third time, you see, you go, wait a minute, that has nothing to do with insurance, what are you talking? And I would go, it's the same with insurance, and like, wait a minute.

• 1:05:34Bill Maher?

  Well, you still do that?

• 1:05:36Speaker 03

  No, no, but it's, I'm sure I do it in some other form, but, yeah.

• 1:05:39Bill Maher?

  But like, when you do your act now, you're like, I talked to you recently on the phone, you were from, you were at some Indian casino in upstate New York.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was just saying, a couple of summers ago, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it was the Gabino tribe, but Gabino.

• 1:05:55Bill Maher?

  It was, uh, Chief Campadrinka.

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, Chief Campadrinka, yeah.

• 1:06:01Bill Maher?

  Okay, so, like, you do 90 minutes?

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, about 90.

• 1:06:05Bill Maher?

  Okay, and of course, you do it not like me, with a poor man's teleprompter, you know, I have a music stand on stage.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  Oh, really, yeah?

• 1:06:14Bill Maher?

  Oh, I've had that for over 20 years.

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:16Bill Maher?

  You think I could remember?

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  I don't know, but it works.

• 1:06:19Bill Maher?

  90 minutes?

• 1:06:19Speaker 03

  It works.

• 1:06:20Bill Maher?

  Yes, it works, I mean, of course, when I do a standup special, um, like I just did adulting.

• 1:06:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:06:26Bill Maher?

  Uh, it's, uh, on a teleprompter, but not, you know, when I was just in Montreal, I was just in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. I, there's a music stand, and I can't remember 90 minutes, how can you remember 90 minutes in the right order, Jay?

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  Well, I clear my head of everything else.

• 1:06:43Bill Maher?

  Oh, well, if you're gonna go there.

• 1:06:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:06:45Bill Maher?

  Well, fuck, fuck that.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  I'm trying to work on a thing now, I thought was.

• 1:06:49Bill Maher?

  Clear your head.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  I'm watching this, tell me if this is funny, I'm watching, I see this commercial with Doug Flutie and Frank Thomas, some kind of male enhancement thing, right? And they're playing golf, and they're male enhancement, and then, and then he goes, and women like it too, wink, wink. I go, yeah, yeah, try that tomorrow at the office, okay? By the second week, HR will have you on the floor and all your stuff in the box, come on, Pops, come on, let's go. And women like it too, wink, wink, yeah, that's gonna go over real big.

• 1:07:19Bill Maher?

  So, are you saying this is a bit you're gonna?

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  I, I, is it funny?

• 1:07:22Bill Maher?

  Is that, very funny.

• 1:07:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:07:25Bill Maher?

  But, you know, Jay, you're a funny guy, so, but like, when you do your 90 minutes.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Bill Maher?

  It's more like, stuff like that, cause that's the old Leno.

• 1:07:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:07:33Bill Maher?

  That I remember, that was like, blew everybody away, that's really the Leno that you brought to, when you started doing Letterman as a, as a guest on Letterman, I mean, you would just blow the roof off the place, because you were doing like, chunks of your act that were really funny, and like, they were, you know, but they weren't like political, you got more political when you hosted The Tonight Show.

• 1:07:54Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:07:55Bill Maher?

  You know, you had that whole hunk about the, uh, sucking the sugar sacks dry in 7-Eleven, remember the people who were in 7-Eleven?

• 1:08:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, vaguely, yeah, I can't remember that, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:08Bill Maher?

  Yeah, whole shit, packs it, you know, like, whole bags of sugar sock dry.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  You know, the fun part was, I remember when I would do Letterman, was to come up with words that were not swear words, but were hopefully funnier. So, in the sense that, oh, remember I had the bit, I can't remember what the bit was about, uh, those carnivals, traveling carnivals and the, you know, the sephlytic Druids running the rides.

• 1:08:32Bill Maher?

  No, no, no.

• 1:08:32Speaker 03

  The shirtless men, nice looking boy, lady, you know, that kind of deal, yeah.

• 1:08:36Bill Maher?

  No, that's not where you said Druid, you had a great bit about Bo Derek.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  And what was that?

• 1:08:42Bill Maher?

  Bo, Bo Derek.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Bill Maher?

  And John Derek were two gorgeous people.

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:08:47Bill Maher?

  And they got married.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:08:49Bill Maher?

  And you were like, okay, I could see the attraction, but like, after they have sex, what is that conversation like? So the Druids were a working people, do you remember that?

• 1:08:58Speaker 03

  Vaguely, yeah.

• 1:09:01Bill Maher?

  That always killed me, so the Druids were a working, that's what they. Imagine you said, I mean, they said after sex. But, uh, no, you had a great, and so that's what your act is now, more like.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I took, I took politics out.

• 1:09:16Bill Maher?

  Oh, you did?

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  Because.

• 1:09:18Bill Maher?

  Like, you wouldn't comment on that, what's going on with the Trump?

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  No, because here, here's where you are now.

• 1:09:23Bill Maher?

  You're likely to hate half the crowd?

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  I do a couple of references. And I notice the audience, here's the name, you know, Biden did this.

• 1:09:31Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:32Speaker 03

  And then they wait, is it gonna be pro or con?

• 1:09:34Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:34Speaker 03

  And they decide, and go, you know, some, can we just rise and fall on the joke?

• 1:09:39Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:39Speaker 03

  You know, I, I, I like to think there are some people that go to comedy show. They just wanna see comedy, that's all. They don't wanna get a lecture. They don't wanna be yelled at, or whatever it might be. So you just, that's what I love about Rodney. I, no idea where Rodney stood politically.

• 1:09:54Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Couldn't care less. It was just about the joke. And that, and that's what I'm trying to do now.

• 1:09:59Bill Maher?

  But let's not say, Jay, that there's no place in the world for someone who you do know exactly where they stand politically.

• 1:10:05Speaker 03

  No, I think it's great, no, no.

• 1:10:07Bill Maher?

  Then I don't have an act at all.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  My, my situation is different. I, I do the other America a lot.

• 1:10:13Bill Maher?

  No, I know.

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  And, you know, like on this game show, You Bet Your Life, we sold it on the premise that there's no politics.

• 1:10:20Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:10:21Speaker 03

  And people bought it on that premise. Cause I see people come on, I see a contestant, I go, okay, I can tell right away. This is a guy I would not agree with politically.

• 1:10:29Bill Maher?

  And that's fine, Jay.

• 1:10:31Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:10:31Bill Maher?

  One of the major themes I've expressed over the last four or five years on the show, it's also in my stand-up act.

• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:10:39Bill Maher?

  Is that the biggest problem is that there is so much hate.

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:10:43Bill Maher?

  People can't even know what the other side is saying.

• 1:10:46Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:10:46Bill Maher?

  So the, the main way to reduce that hate, or at least the first step, is everyone has to stop talking politics.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:10:55Bill Maher?

  All the time. We didn't used to do this.

• 1:10:57Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:10:57Bill Maher?

  We, the neighbor, back when we were kids, could have been what we would now call a Trumper.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:04Bill Maher?

  But we didn't go there.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:06Bill Maher?

  And therefore, we got along. And the people who think that somehow the half of the country they despise will self-deport are delusional.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:15Bill Maher?

  There's not gonna be a civil war, or if there is, there's no way to split the country by states. We're all marbled in together.

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:22Bill Maher?

  There's four million Trump voters in California.

• 1:11:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:25Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, we can't do that. We have to stop being political about everything.

• 1:11:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:11:31Bill Maher?

  So anything that, like, and again, not me, I'm the exception here. But everybody else.

• 1:11:37Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:11:37Bill Maher?

  Or lots of other people. Be apolitical. You're right. Do it, do it that way, because you have to be able to get along with those people. I always say, you can hate Trump, you can't hate all the people who like him.

• 1:11:50Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 1:11:51Bill Maher?

  It's half the country.

• 1:11:52Speaker 03

  And you know, I remember.

• 1:11:53Bill Maher?

  And you always had your finger on the pulse of that beat. That's why your show was so successful. You.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  That's why I do personals, because if you can't stand in front of people and do the joke, then it's not effective. It's, you, you're a coward. You should be able to do the material to the people's faces. And, and if they don't like it, they'll let you know. And people understand when you're being fair and unfair, and what's a joke and what's not a joke, you know? I mean, is this a Trump joke? I saw this, uh, political science professor on the news, and he analyzed all of Donald Trump's speeches. And he said that Donald Trump talked at a fifth grade level or below.

• 1:12:34Bill Maher?

  Sure.

• 1:12:35Speaker 03

  And when they told Trump this, he called the professor a duty head. Okay, is that a political joke?

• 1:12:41Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 1:12:42Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, but.

• 1:12:43Bill Maher?

  Of course, because.

• 1:12:44Speaker 03

  But if you follow it with a Biden joke, then, oh, then it's okay, you know?

• 1:12:47Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, that's a political joke for this exact reason. Because every single person who hears it will like it or not like it, based on how they feel about Donald Trump.

• 1:12:58Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 1:12:59Bill Maher?

  His fans will hate it.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:01Bill Maher?

  And his detractors will adore it. And everyone will realize it's not really that great a joke.

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  Right, right, right.

• 1:13:09Bill Maher?

  It's okay.

• 1:13:10Speaker 03

  But when you follow it with a Biden, you go, oh, oh, okay, then again.

• 1:13:12Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:13:13Speaker 03

  I mean, I find that you actually have, I've had reviewers count which side, how many were, you know, I think he's more this, because there were like nine jokes and there's only four on there.

• 1:13:23Bill Maher?

  But I mean, you certainly used to do that on The Tonight Show.

• 1:13:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:26Bill Maher?

  I mean, but then you have to, because you're doing a monologue.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  We gotta hate mail from both sides.

• 1:13:30Bill Maher?

  Of course. And that's, and that's when you know you're doing it right.

• 1:13:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:33Bill Maher?

  That's what I, I mean, I get, for the first time in the last couple of years, I get a mixed audience.

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:13:39Bill Maher?

  Politically.

• 1:13:40Speaker 03

  That's what I like about your show now.

• 1:13:41Bill Maher?

  Stand-up also.

• 1:13:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:43Bill Maher?

  Like, where forty percent will be sort of conservative, and I'll do a Trump joke, and I can, uh, but then they'll still laugh.

• 1:13:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:13:50Bill Maher?

  They're, they're not crazy, all of them. They know he's a preposterous figure.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 1:13:54Bill Maher?

  And now he's really gonna, looks like he couldn't be going down.

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Bill Maher?

  I mean, I really was pessimistic about him coming back and winning in 2024. This January 6th hearing, I gotta give it to these people, and some of this stuff that's gonna come out. I do think he's, I think it's taking him to a degree where

• 1:14:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Bill Maher?

  they're, they're just gonna go.

• 1:14:15Speaker 03

  Plus, the country has other problems. They're not concerned about the last election.

• 1:14:18Bill Maher?

  Exactly. And they see that this guy is, as I always said, everything comes back to the narcissism.

• 1:14:25Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:14:25Bill Maher?

  When you're a narcissist, nothing is seen through any other lens.

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  Well, just.

• 1:14:31Bill Maher?

  The whole of this thing is, I lost the election, that can't be right, because I'm a stable genius.

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, just the fact that he said he wanted the metal detector removed, cause anybody with a gun is not coming after him.

• 1:14:44Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:14:46Bill Maher?

  He's the president, right? I know.

• 1:14:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Bill Maher?

  Well, in that crowd, kinda. In that crowd, he was kinda right about that.

• 1:14:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:56Bill Maher?

  I mean, and, you know, he always said, we have the tough people.

• 1:14:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Bill Maher?

  Meaning the military, the police. And that's very scary when a, when a civilian leader is talking about, like, I don't wanna push you too far, but I want you to know, we have the tough people with us. In other words, the people with the guns, I mean, we're so close to Banana Republic and military.

• 1:15:17Speaker 03

  We're close, but we're not there. You know, you got Mark Milley and these guys.

• 1:15:21Bill Maher?

  Who?

• 1:15:23Speaker 03

  A joint chief of staff, you know, military, general.

• 1:15:27Bill Maher?

  Oh, Milley, yeah.

• 1:15:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, Milley.

• 1:15:28Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:29Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  Had dinner with him too, actually.

• 1:15:31Bill Maher?

  Come on.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  I did, I had dinner with him in Washington.

• 1:15:33Bill Maher?

  Oh, fuck you, Jay.

• 1:15:34Speaker 03

  I did, he's a very nice guy.

• 1:15:36Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 1:15:36Speaker 03

  And very reasonable guy.

• 1:15:37Bill Maher?

  Shut up.

• 1:15:38Speaker 03

  He's a Massachusetts guy.

• 1:15:41Bill Maher?

  So how did they, is there just a, is there an 800 number where, like, important people just call you up?

• 1:15:46Speaker 03

  I do a lot of veteran things, so you get invited. You get invited to have dinner and all that kinda stuff.

• 1:15:52Bill Maher?

  Of course. Perfect, Jay. Always doing the right thing. Some world leaders wanna talk to him.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  It's hilarious, isn't it?

• 1:16:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I'm having dinner with William Shatner next week. Suck on that, Jay.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  There you go, there you go. There you what? I rest my case. I can't.

• 1:16:10Speaker 03

  So you have dinner with Lionel Wagner.

• 1:16:14Bill Maher?

  Is he still with us?

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:16:16Bill Maher?

  Well, why?

• 1:16:17Speaker 03

  I'm just making.

• 1:16:18Bill Maher?

  Why?

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  I thought the name would get a laugh from you, which it did.

• 1:16:22Bill Maher?

  No, when you walked in and you said, welcome to Habs place, James Francis.

• 1:16:29Speaker 03

  That's right. Look what James Francis gave me, you know, some nineteen-year-olds, you know?

• 1:16:37Bill Maher?

  All right, well, I can't tell you how much fun this is.

• 1:16:41Speaker 03

  This was fun. I, thanks, thanks for having me on.

• 1:16:43Bill Maher?

  You got so loaded, Jay.

• 1:16:45Speaker 03

  Yo, God, you know me, that's my life.

• 1:16:47Bill Maher?

  You, you've never had a drink of?

• 1:16:49Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:16:49Bill Maher?

  Come on.

• 1:16:50Speaker 03

  I'm, I'm, it doesn't interest me.

• 1:16:52Bill Maher?

  Right. But you never were curious as to just, well, I'm sure your liver thanks you.

• 1:16:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just, I, I have no moral, religious, or any, nothing forward against it.

• 1:17:03Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:17:04Speaker 03

  I was always a designated, I was the car guy, I was a designated driver, so I, it's just not something that interests me.

• 1:17:10Bill Maher?

  You're a car guy?

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. See, there's a side you know nothing about.

• 1:17:15Bill Maher?

  I was supposed to do

• 1:17:18Bill Maher?

  Jay Leno's Garage.

• 1:17:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you know, you know nothing about cars.

• 1:17:22Bill Maher?

  So what? It's a celebrity show.

• 1:17:25Speaker 03

  Right, why?

• 1:17:26Bill Maher?

  You have another show on YouTube that's really about cars.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:17:29Bill Maher?

  But Jay Leno's Garage, you don't have to be.

• 1:17:31Speaker 03

  You wanna be on, well, I'll be on.

• 1:17:32Bill Maher?

  You booked me. I wasn't, it wasn't want.

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  And what happened?

• 1:17:35Bill Maher?

  I got COVID.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Oh, that's what it, okay. Yeah, that's, so it wasn't our fault, so we'll do it again.

• 1:17:40Bill Maher?

  I understand you just had a bout of COVID.

• 1:17:43Speaker 03

  I got it.

• 1:17:44Bill Maher?

  Jay, I'll tell your story if you die. I'm joking. I'm just, I'm always mocking how overreactive everyone is to fucking COVID.

• 1:17:52Speaker 03

  Well, yeah.

• 1:17:52Bill Maher?

  So you were fine, right?

• 1:17:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm fine.

• 1:17:54Bill Maher?

  Everybody was fine. I mean, everybody seems to get it now. But, you know, the thing is less virulent, we've had vaccines. Like, people gotta let it go, don't you think?

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  Well, I think you gotta be, it does affect people differently. So I don't know.

• 1:18:10Bill Maher?

  Okay, let's not, we won't go there.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:14Bill Maher?

  But, but this car, I'm, I'm fascinated by this. So you, what do you drive?

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  Right now, I'm driving a seventy-one Porsche 911.

• 1:18:24Bill Maher?

  Which of the two hundred and fifty cars is?

• 1:18:27Speaker 03

  Well, two oh three, actually.

• 1:18:28Bill Maher?

  Okay, so like, how do you decide when you have that many cars? I mean.

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  Well, whatever I'm working on.

• 1:18:34Bill Maher?

  You're kinda like the Hugh Hefner of cars.

• 1:18:35Speaker 03

  Whatever I'm working on.

• 1:18:36Bill Maher?

  You have a harem of cars.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  Whatever I'm working on at the time is, uh, usually what.

• 1:18:41Bill Maher?

  So that's what you wanna, it must, what does it cost you just to maintain, like, registrations, insurance?

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  It's crazy.

• 1:18:50Bill Maher?

  You must have a whole staff to, I mean, you must have a registration come up every other day.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do, yeah, that's true.

• 1:18:55Bill Maher?

  And there's somebody who handles this?

• 1:18:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Well, we gotta cover it. We're fine. I know you're worried about it.

• 1:19:00Bill Maher?

  No, I'm just.

• 1:19:01Speaker 03

  I got a full shop. I, I, I do paint and bodywork, you do metalwork, we do fabrication.

• 1:19:07Bill Maher?

  Really?

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's a hundred and forty thousand square feet garage.

• 1:19:09Bill Maher?

  I mean, if I hit somebody, I could like, get, you, you'd fix it for me?

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  I don't know if I'd fix it for you, but, uh, I'd help you out, yeah.

• 1:19:18Bill Maher?

  Really? You'd do the work? You'd do the bodywork on it?

• 1:19:22Speaker 03

  That's what we do, that's what we do, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:24Bill Maher?

  Okay, I didn't know it was such a.

• 1:19:25Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Come by sometime, let's do it then.

• 1:19:28Bill Maher?

  I'm on, booked on your show.

• 1:19:31Speaker 03

  Well, you're not booked now.

• 1:19:32Bill Maher?

  But I was.

• 1:19:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you got COVID, so we'll do it, we'll do it next season.

• 1:19:36Bill Maher?

  You know what? You don't have to have me if you don't want.

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  No, I'd love to have you on.

• 1:19:40Bill Maher?

  If it's really more about the car.

• 1:19:42Speaker 03

  No, I'd love to have you on.

• 1:19:43Bill Maher?

  Than the person.

• 1:19:44Speaker 03

  No, I'd love to have you on.

• 1:19:46Bill Maher?

  But I, I feel like I've volunteered.

• 1:19:48Speaker 03

  I talked, thought Norm MacDonald had a drive on my show.

• 1:19:51Bill Maher?

  I know how to drive, Jay.

• 1:19:55Bill Maher?

  I have an excellent driver. I sound like Rain Man now. I have an excellent driving record. I do.

• 1:20:02Bill Maher?

  And I watch Wapner every day at two.

• 1:20:05Speaker 03

  Wapner?

• 1:20:06Bill Maher?

  Well, that was in Rain Man, wasn't it?

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:20:08Bill Maher?

  Remember he watched? He was Judge Wapner.

• 1:20:10Speaker 03

  I used to have a joke about Wapner. Do you remember that joke? It was... That's when People's Court was the only judge show on TV. And Wapner was huge. And I said, you know, it must be tough, though, when he goes to where the judges hang out. You know that bar, like, and they're sitting there going, well, the rights of the individual triumph. The rights of the majority in certain... Here comes Wapner. Hey, how's the case of the puppy stained carpet? How's that working out? You know?

• 1:20:38Bill Maher?

  I think I do remember that.

• 1:20:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a stupid joke.

• 1:20:41Bill Maher?

  Oh, Jay. You always say that about your jokes. It's a stupid joke. But you wouldn't do it if it was stupid. When, when there was a writer's strike, like, you wrote your own monologue.

• 1:20:52Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:20:53Bill Maher?

  And nobody else could have done that. There's nobody else who...

• 1:20:57Speaker 03

  Well, I'm glad the strike didn't last that long.

• 1:20:59Bill Maher?

  You're both, somehow, you're somehow both the guy who never fired a writer, right? Isn't that one of your...

• 1:21:06Speaker 03

  No, I never fired anybody.

• 1:21:07Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  Guys left because they got better opportunities or something.

• 1:21:11Bill Maher?

  Okay, you never fired a writer, which, that's preposterous. And you also can actually write your own monologue, so you could have fired them all.

• 1:21:20Speaker 03

  No, not really, because The Tonight Show is too laboring. It's just too much.

• 1:21:23Bill Maher?

  No, but when you, I remember when, during the strike, I remember, like, listening, I was like, wow, that's an actual, real monologue of real, like, new jokes. It must have really worked your ass off.

• 1:21:33Speaker 03

  You know, the key to that, I remember one guy said to me on the street one day, hey, I don't like you, but I like your jokes. I said, okay, so you don't like the manufacturer, but you like the product. That's fine. That works with me. You know, I would always see comedians guest host different shows. And they never had material. You know, I mean, the reason Ellen was successful is she was a comedian. She opened the show with real jokes.

• 1:21:59Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:59Speaker 03

  You know, it wasn't just, who everybody cool, who give me some fun game, you know, it wasn't that.

• 1:22:03Bill Maher?

  I know, Ellen's a great comedian.

• 1:22:05Speaker 03

  Great comic, great comic. Thinks like a comic.

• 1:22:07Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:22:08Speaker 03

  Has funny jokes.

• 1:22:09Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  Has an edge to her that's good.

• 1:22:11Bill Maher?

  And the delivery is perfect.

• 1:22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, she's great.

• 1:22:13Bill Maher?

  The timing.

• 1:22:14Speaker 03

  Excellent.

• 1:22:15Bill Maher?

  Spot, spot on Benny timing, you know, like, and, and a minimalist.

• 1:22:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Bill Maher?

  You know, without ever raising the voice.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:22:23Bill Maher?

  And also, like, uh, in her stand-up, very apolitical.

• 1:22:28Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:22:28Bill Maher?

  You know, very, like, everybody can get in on this. And that, I keep saying, we need more of whatever can make us have a communal experience.

• 1:22:37Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 1:22:38Bill Maher?

  And you can't, you're right about your show. You can't, your show, you can't have any politics because right away, everything is tribal.

• 1:22:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Bill Maher?

  And we, and we didn't used to be there in this country.

• 1:22:49Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:22:49Bill Maher?

  I mean, a man of, you know, Jay, what are you, ten, fifteen years older than me now?

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, I'm eighty-eight years old.

• 1:22:56Bill Maher?

  No, no, no. I, I mean, I know you, I know you're in your sevens.

• 1:23:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm seventy-two.

• 1:23:01Bill Maher?

  Seventy-two.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. How old are you now, sixty-five?

• 1:23:04Bill Maher?

  Sixty-six.

• 1:23:05Speaker 03

  Sixty-six?

• 1:23:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah. I know. But, again...

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  You're not so funny about that.

• 1:23:10Bill Maher?

  You look the same because you have that Italian...

• 1:23:12Speaker 03

  No, you look the same because we look the same. I remember once the Rolling Stones were on TV in my office and some interns came in, and I went, you know, they gotta give them, Mick Jagger looks pretty good. And I look at them, and they're like, I mean, they were just laughing because he was this old, old man. And I go, does he really look that old? And they're like, Mr. Leno, the guy's eighty-two or sixty-one or whatever.

• 1:23:34Bill Maher?

  Oh, this is recently?

• 1:23:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, this is like, maybe seven, eight years ago, yeah.

• 1:23:37Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, now...

• 1:23:39Speaker 03

  It just, it just made me laugh.

• 1:23:40Bill Maher?

  No, I saw them in the...

• 1:23:41Speaker 03

  I'll give you another example. We're sitting, we're, we were shooting the car show, you know? And director said to one of the PAs, hey, Dave, when, when'd you graduate high school? He said, twenty-twelve. This was twenty-nineteen, twenty-seven, twenty-fourteen. When'd you graduate high school, Mr. Leno? Sixty-eight. Sixty-eight? Sixty-eight?

• 1:24:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but Jay...

• 1:24:03Speaker 03

  It's in nineteen or eighteen sixty-eight, you know?

• 1:24:05Bill Maher?

  But you know what, Jay? What every other country in the world understands is that that makes you wiser. That makes you know things that other people don't know, which is not a detriment. It's an add. It's a plus.

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:24:20Bill Maher?

  It's good that you know that every other country, every other culture has always gotten this. This is the only stupid fucking one that looks at that and goes, well, it couldn't possibly have any meaning if I wasn't alive for it.

• 1:24:33Speaker 03

  Well, I was talking to one of your producers, and it made me laugh. I was talking to a young person, a younger person, maybe thirty-five. And he said to me, in the course of, he goes, well, you know, back in the nineties, people were really stupid back then. I go, really? What was stupid about the, what was the stupid part of the night? Like, people were illiterate, they couldn't read, what, what was it? And he couldn't tell me what it was, but it's just, people were just stupid back then, yeah.

• 1:24:57Bill Maher?

  Well, people just get more and more stupid, unfortunately. I mean, because the people who, I mean, they were stupid in the nineties, but those people who were stupid in the nineties then became the teachers sometimes

• 1:25:08Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:25:08Bill Maher?

  of the people. I mean, you know, like, it's so, um, we're, we're at least two generations past, I think, the last time, I mean, Gen X is the last generation that, like, wasn't a bunch of pussies. And I don't think this country can ever come back from where we are. I mean, people say, well, you know...

• 1:25:32Speaker 03

  It'll come back, won't it?

• 1:25:33Bill Maher?

  Well...

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  Yes, you know what it is? I mean, it's like, you talk about the greatest generation, and then you suddenly go to our generation, you see guys like Pat Tingle there. You know, remember the football player who, who gave up a lucrative...

• 1:25:46Bill Maher?

  Pat Tillman.

• 1:25:47Speaker 03

  I mean, Tillman, I'm not thinking, Pat Tillman, sorry.

• 1:25:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, died in Afghanistan.

• 1:25:51Speaker 03

  Died in Afghanistan, friendly fire.

• 1:25:53Bill Maher?

  He was a Arizona Cardinal star, a linebacker?

• 1:25:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, he's a guy who could have had a multimillion dollar career.

• 1:25:59Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:26:00Speaker 03

  Chose to fight for, see, you'll always have those people. And nine times out of ten, they'll be first generation.

• 1:26:06Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:26:06Speaker 03

  They'll be named Morales, or, you know, have some Spanish surname, or Cuban, or American, or, or Italian, or Latin, because those are the ones that keep the country great. They come in, they fight for the country, they have children, you know? When we used to knock on doors...

• 1:26:23Bill Maher?

  That's kind of a fuck you to the Smiths and the Joneses, huh?

• 1:26:26Speaker 03

  Well, I remember once we, we were doing a J-Walk.

• 1:26:29Bill Maher?

  They don't fight for their country?

• 1:26:30Speaker 03

  And this guy answers the door, and he speaks Spanish, older guy. It's like seventy-something, okay. He gets his son, the son comes over, he speaks English and Spanish. And then he introduced me to his son, who's got like an F-U T-shirt on, some kind of pork pie hat, and he's got a video game, and he's just an idiot. I mean, the old man was probably still, was still working, and his son was still working, but not as hard as the old man, and the kid was just a lazy thing.

• 1:26:55Bill Maher?

  What about the Jews, Jay? Do they make your list of the good people?

• 1:26:58Speaker 03

  Yes, they do.

• 1:26:59Bill Maher?

  No, thank you, the Jews are in. Thank you. What about the Filipinos, Jay? I think they would fight for their country. They're very, very...

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Well, that's exactly what I mean, but I think the first, just first generation people, that was one of the saddest things, when they closed the border, and you had all these people who

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  could have come here, and instead they'll go to someplace else. You know, Steve Jobs was Syrian, I believe, wasn't he?

• 1:27:21Bill Maher?

  Well, his, one of his parents, I believe, was Syrian, yes.

• 1:27:25Speaker 03

  Well, that's, I mean, he could have gone to another country.

• 1:27:29Bill Maher?

  Yes, I mean, well, you're Italian, I'm Irish, I mean, I was telling Lisa Kudrow that my grandfather, who I never met, but he was my grandfather, had a full-on Irish brogue. I mean, we're a young country.

• 1:27:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:41Bill Maher?

  And, and it shows, by the way, because we act like a teenager still.

• 1:27:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:44Bill Maher?

  I mean, I think in, in historical terms, we are, like, sort of like, a little bit out of our teens, but still acting like douche-baggy. You know, I, I see the Elvis movie in the theaters now, and it always makes me think, like, this country is very Elvis-like. We're, like, fat, drug-addled, like, delusional gun nuts.

• 1:28:06Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:28:07Bill Maher?

  Just like Elvis. I mean, his story resonates because that's the story of us. This is us.

• 1:28:13Speaker 03

  He was forty-two when he died. It seemed so old when I was twenty-five.

• 1:28:18Bill Maher?

  Do you remember where you were?

• 1:28:19Speaker 03

  Yes, I do.

• 1:28:20Bill Maher?

  I do, too.

• 1:28:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:21Bill Maher?

  I was, I was twenty-one, I was driving back from my summer, the trip you take to see the country where you drive, and we had no money in an eight-hundred-dollar car, and we're selling hash, like, Easy Rider.

• 1:28:34Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:28:35Bill Maher?

  And made it all the way to California, and then, of course, that took like six weeks, and we wanted to get back home so bad, we drove home like in two days.

• 1:28:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's funny.

• 1:28:44Bill Maher?

  And I heard it on the radio.

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Bill Maher?

  Driving through Pennsylvania, Elvis Presley, and he wasn't even my era, really, because, like, I was Beatles.

• 1:28:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:55Bill Maher?

  Elvis was like, oh, he's like this old school.

• 1:28:59Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:29:00Bill Maher?

  And, but when he came back, like, after the movie contract in nineteen seventy, and Suspicious Minds, that kind of stuff, he was cool again, to me. And I, I'm still a huge...

• 1:29:12Speaker 03

  I remember when he died, I said, you know something, I'm gonna go up to Sour Records and buy an Elvis record. By the time I got there, there wasn't one record left. Everything Elvis had been sold. It was like, wow, he only died like four hours ago.

• 1:29:26Bill Maher?

  And yet, you told me a story not that long ago.

• 1:29:29Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 1:29:29Bill Maher?

  That you were in Vegas, and they were taking down a big...

• 1:29:32Speaker 03

  No, they were, I was at, they were, I saw these two guys carrying Elvis's, one of those six-foot cardboard cutouts.

• 1:29:39Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:29:39Speaker 03

  And I said, oh, are you putting up a Elvis thing? The guy goes, putting it up. No, we're taking it down. He goes, nobody even knows who Elvis is anymore. All his fans are eighty, you know? Yeah, and they just passed me in the hall, you know?

• 1:29:52Bill Maher?

  That stuck with me.

• 1:29:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:55Bill Maher?

  But I, I mean, obviously, since they made a movie, he must still have some resonance.

• 1:30:01Speaker 03

  Of course he still has resonance, of course he does, sure he does.

• 1:30:03Bill Maher?

  But you're saying, like, there were...

• 1:30:05Speaker 03

  No, I'm just saying, it's just a change of, you know?

• 1:30:07Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:07Speaker 03

  If you don't know, you don't know, you know?

• 1:30:09Bill Maher?

  But, I mean, it's a little scary to think that someone as big and iconic as Elvis could be like, who? But I'm sure he is to lots of...

• 1:30:20Speaker 03

  Was anybody bigger than Al Jolson? No.

• 1:30:23Bill Maher?

  No?

• 1:30:23Speaker 03

  Say the names and...

• 1:30:24Bill Maher?

  Al Jolson?

• 1:30:26Speaker 03

  Al Jolson was huge.

• 1:30:29Bill Maher?

  Is he the guy who did the blackface?

• 1:30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:32Bill Maher?

  He, Mammy and Swammy.

• 1:30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, all that, yeah, Al Jolson. Jazz singer, he, the first talk...

• 1:30:38Bill Maher?

  Okay, yes. Jay, you don't remember Al Jolson?

• 1:30:42Speaker 03

  Even Bing Crosby.

• 1:30:46Bill Maher?

  Yes, Frank Sinatra.

• 1:30:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Bill Maher?

  I'm guessing the name rings a bell, but people have no idea.

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:30:53Bill Maher?

  That, you know.

• 1:30:55Speaker 03

  I mean, a friend of mine has a kid who's 14, who knows me as the car guy. Had no idea. So I said, you know, he did the Tonight Show before Jimmy Fallon. You're right. Nuh-uh. You know. He had no idea. Nuh-uh.

• 1:31:09Bill Maher?

  Well, that's the famous Paul McCartney, when he was in Wings. Like, people didn't know he had to.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  I have him on my phone. I have the funniest call from Paul McCartney.

• 1:31:19Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:31:20Speaker 03

  He calls and he goes.

• 1:31:20Bill Maher?

  All right, that's all the time we have on the show.

• 1:31:23Speaker 03

  It sounds like a phony call. He goes, Jay, Paul, Paul McCartney calling. How are you? Because I asked him to be on my car show. And I called and I left a message. And he called me back to say that he's really busy right now. He's on tour, but maybe next season. I said, okay. But it's really funny to hear him, just, hello, Jay, Paul McCartney here.

• 1:31:46Bill Maher?

  Well, Jay, it may interest you to know that Tommy James of Tommy James.

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  And the Shondells. Crystal and Clover, over and over.

• 1:31:54Bill Maher?

  Is on my speed dial, so fuck you, Jay.

• 1:31:56Speaker 03

  Bobby Vinton, too.

• 1:31:57Bill Maher?

  Thank you for coming by.

• 1:31:58Speaker 03

  I know you have Bobby Vinton, too. In fact, Bobby Vinton, I think is.

• 1:32:00Bill Maher?

  I'm sorry that you have.

• 1:32:01Speaker 03

  Bobby Vinton is out in the hall right now. He's on the show.

• 1:32:07Speaker 03

  Thank you, my friend. Thanks for having me.

• 1:32:09Bill Maher?

  I know.

• 1:32:10Speaker 03

  You know, anytime you call me, I will call you, no matter what it is.

• 1:32:13Bill Maher?

  And like, you're the kind of guy, like, this is how.

• 1:32:17Speaker 03

  Just to see half the players.

• 1:32:18Bill Maher?

  We get to have a conversation.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

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• 1:33:11Speaker 01

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