471: David Zucker—Thanks for the Parking Spot

Mike talks with comedy legend David Zucker https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001878/, the creative force behind the movie Airplane! Zucker shares what it took to make Airplane!—pitching a spoof no one quite understood, casting serious actors to deliver absurd lines with a straight face, and why making his co-writers laugh was the secret sauce to pleasing the audience. He also discusses his new "Master Crash https://www.skool.com/spoof/about" course, where Zucker teaches the dos and don'ts of spoof comedy writing. Along the way, we learn how John Landis landed National Lampoon's Animal House, helping ignite a new era of irreverent filmmaking. It's a fast, funny conversation about risk, rebellion, and earning your parking space the hard way.

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

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  Chuck.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:05Mike Rowe?

  Did you know Variety Magazine says that David Zucker's The Naked Gun is the number one comedy of all time?

• 0:16Speaker 01

  No, I did not know that.

• 0:18Mike Rowe?

  I didn't either. You could fill a book with what we don't know, folks. This is the way I heard it on Mike Rowe. My guest today is David Zucker. Yeah, he gave us The Naked Gun. He gave us Airplane. He gave us Police Squad.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Police Squad, duh.

• 0:33Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, The Naked Gun 2 and 1/2, The Smell of Fear. Naked Gun 33 and 1/3, The Final Insult. Scary movie. I mean, the guy is just... He just left. I just spent over an hour talking with him and I just realized, you know, what an impact his work had on me and I hadn't really thought about it, really, until today.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  No, so much of our humor comes from seeing those movies. It just all came up again. And let me just say, he is super sharp. I don't know what his age is, but he's...

• 1:09Mike Rowe?

  He's 104.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Well, you know what? He seems a little slow for 104, but he just was really sharp, really funny, and again, it was like a time machine going back to the late 70s, early 80s, when like these movies had a pivotal effect on our lives, I think, in terms of our sense of humor.

• 1:28Mike Rowe?

  We had never seen anything like this. Now, it comes up and his response is really interesting, but for me, Blazing Saddles and Airplane were transformational because A, they broke all the rules, and B, they were genuinely funny in a surprising way. And C, they hold up as movies. They're still whole movies. It's not just a collection of gags, which a lot of people say. They're movies.

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Are you okay?

• 2:03Mike Rowe?

  I'm okay.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  There was a coughing fit during the episode as well.

• 2:06Mike Rowe?

  The guy, the guy, you know. He made me laugh and now it's, I'm still, I'm still wrestling with the residual hacking.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Well, I just want to say that by the, like, as this goes on, he loosened up more and more and more and it became funnier and funnier and you were falling off the chair a couple times.

• 2:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I thought it was funny from the get-go, but the thing about this guy is, he's so experienced and he's done so much and he's just come out with this thing, we'll plug it in the conversation, but it's called Master Crash.

• 2:36Mike Rowe?

  Which essentially, he attempts to do the impossible, which is to tell you how to be funny.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:42Mike Rowe?

  And he admits it's kind of impossible.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44Mike Rowe?

  But he does it anyway. So, I guess maybe I should just leave it by saying, the title of this episode, incidentally, is an homage to the last thing he said to me, um, before he left, which was, "Thanks for the parking spot." You'll understand, I think, why it's so funny when he says it. At least, I hope you will. If you don't, you probably didn't like Airplane. And if you didn't like Airplane...

• 3:07Speaker 01

  I mean, come on, how...

• 3:10Mike Rowe?

  I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, you're, you're listening to the wrong podcast.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Maybe so.

• 3:15Mike Rowe?

  If you didn't like Airplane. Apologies in advance for anything that could be deemed politically incorrect. I laughed at what I laughed at and I said what I said and I stand by it all.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 3:27Mike Rowe?

  Having said all of that, David Zucker is very grateful for the parking spot. I'm grateful to him for coming by and I'm grateful to you for listening. It all starts right after this.

• 3:43Mike Rowe?

  I'd like to talk about initiative, if I could, for just a moment. Here at MicroWorks, we value it a great deal. In fact, it's the most important quality we look for in our work ethic scholarship applicants, but everybody wants it. I'm talking about the, uh, the quality in a Lyft driver that inspires him or her to carry your bags to the door without even asking, or the grocery clerk who shows you where an item is on the shelves, or a doctor who personally calls you to explain your test results. If you're hiring, you want to encourage initiative because it's invaluable. And ZipRecruiter has a way to allow a candidate to tell you in their own words why they're

• 4:24Mike Rowe?

  interested in your job, not just why they're qualified, but why they're interested. This is a way that allows the best candidates to distinguish themselves from the competition, and a great way for you to separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were. Right now, you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com/row. ZipRecruiter is the number one hiring site, in large part because of this new initiative that shows you the most interested, qualified candidates first. So you meet the right people faster. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within one day. Try it for free. ZipRecruiter.com/row. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

• 5:06Speaker 02

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• 5:22Speaker 03

  Oh, look, there's my name. So you remember it?

• 5:25Mike Rowe?

  Do we spell it right?

• 5:26Speaker 03

  Are you in, in some kind of dementia? How old are you?

• 5:30Mike Rowe?

  I never look in that direction. Honestly. It's like, oh, my God, we got to...

• 5:36Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, to remind you, so he is demented, then, yeah.

• 5:40Mike Rowe?

  Now, to be clear, it's Zucker like Hooker.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, yeah.

• 5:45Mike Rowe?

  See, I knew Jeff Zucker when he was running CNN. And of course, I called him Jeff Zucker.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  And, oh, did he say anything?

• 5:53Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, he said not...

• 5:54Speaker 03

  It's Zucker.

• 5:55Mike Rowe?

  He said not Zucker like Hooker. Zucker like Hooker.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Oh, OK. Same thing. I met him once.

• 6:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah?

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just ran into him once. I don't know. Everybody's nice when you meet them, you know.

• 6:06Mike Rowe?

  Now, you said I could ask you anything.

• 6:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 6:09Mike Rowe?

  You said to ignore all the things your publicist sent over.

• 6:11Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:12Mike Rowe?

  Warning me to avoid.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 6:14Mike Rowe?

  OK, good. Hey, uh, it's really terrific to meet you.

• 6:19Speaker 03

  Thank you. Are we on?

• 6:21Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 6:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah, we're on.

• 6:23Speaker 03

  You know, you could have warned me.

• 6:24Mike Rowe?

  Okay, well, that's, you know, would you have warned me?

• 6:27Speaker 03

  No.

• 6:27Mike Rowe?

  Exactly. So it's 1980. I'm sitting in a theater, probably at Golden Ring Mall, where we used to work as ushers for United Artists.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and what city was this?

• 6:38Mike Rowe?

  Baltimore.

• 6:38Speaker 03

  In Baltimore?

• 6:39Mike Rowe?

  Baltimore. Now, I just gotta get this stuff out of the way. I'm sure you're sick of talking about it, hearing about it, dining out on it, call it what you will, but there's a moment in an airplane where, uh, Julia Agarde said, he says to her, you know, I lost six men.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:01Mike Rowe?

  Right?

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:02Mike Rowe?

  You know, and she says, seven. Uh, Lieutenant Zip died this morning.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:08Mike Rowe?

  But you don't cut back to him. You stay on her, and all we see fly through the screen is the contents of whatever fluid he had in his mouth.

• 7:17Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:18Mike Rowe?

  I started to laugh at it, and not since Blazing Saddles have I, like, really lost my entire composure in a theater over just a silly little moment like that. But I couldn't recover, David. I mean, I laughed for about, I don't know, it felt like the rest of the movie, but I mean, out of control for 10 minutes, and everybody around me started to laugh as a result of it.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Oh, good.

• 7:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it was just a, a simple little thing, and I wanted to thank you for it, because I've never, I've never forgotten it. And it made me wanna ask, well, not at the moment, but right now it makes me wanna ask you. Were you mostly trying to amuse yourself with that whole thing?

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Always. I mean, we just, we started out doing comedy because we just wanted to laugh at stuff, and we did laugh at stuff, and we were class clowns, and, uh...

• 8:08Mike Rowe?

  Wisconsin, right?

• 8:09Speaker 03

  In, in Wisconsin. We grew up in the, uh, the first suburb north called Shorewood.

• 8:14Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 8:14Speaker 03

  And, uh, yeah, we were, you know, and we weren't even the funniest guys in our class. There was at least six guys who I thought were funnier than we were, but they all were able to find jobs and, you know, be lawyers and whatever. And, uh, and we kinda pursued it. We weren't really... Wanting to do, you know, have jobs. So, uh, we started a small theater called Kentucky Fried Theater on the University of Wisconsin campus. And then that was a huge hit for a year, but we were only able to charge a dollar. And so we moved the whole show in a U-Haul truck west to LA and set up a show on a theater on Pico Boulevard.

• 8:54Mike Rowe?

  God, I can still see it, man. Chuck, you remember?

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Are you aware of the penal codes in this state? Oh, did you see the live show? No, I saw the movie. That was in the movie. Kentucky Fried movie, but we did that gag onstage. Oh, my gosh.

• 9:07Mike Rowe?

  I just remember, like, I think the first time I saw boobs on the big screen, they were kind of blurry because of the steam, but it was the girl in the shower.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 9:20Mike Rowe?

  I think it was young Catholic high school girls in trouble.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, Catholic high school girls in trouble.

• 9:24Mike Rowe?

  Catholic high school girls in trouble, right. And that was, what, late 70s?

• 9:29Speaker 03

  Uh, 77.

• 9:30Mike Rowe?

  Scandalous, man.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  We were young.

• 9:32Mike Rowe?

  Scandalous, yeah.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  And a lot of that We shouldn't have been seeing that. And a lot of that cool stuff was contributed by John Landis, who directed it.

• 9:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 03

  And, yeah, John was fabulous and, you know, it was

• 9:43Mike Rowe?

  Was that before Animal House or after?

• 9:45Speaker 03

  Before Animal House. He got Animal House because, you know, the, uh, our script supervisor

• 9:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  whose name was Catherine Houghton, uh, was the girlfriend of one of the one of the Universal executives and told him, these guys are doing this insane comedy and I'm on the set every day and John Landis is directing and you should consider him for Animal House. And that's what happened.

• 10:13Mike Rowe?

  Jeez.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:14Mike Rowe?

  Way leads on the way. Um, I ask you this, Chuck is sick of hearing me talk about it, but the, the idea of, um, comedians in particular But really, any performer who's trying first to please themselves, or in your case, amuse, is, to me, there's like a real difference between that sensibility and the kind of person who is really trying to understand the audience and then trying to feed the audience and trying to do whatever, I don't know, an executive or a producer or an audience might expect. It was Airplane, more than anything else, that just overwhelmed me with the sense that,

• 10:55Mike Rowe?

  like, the lunatics were running the asylum, no one was getting permission for anything, and just a bunch of guys who were all in on the joke had somehow gotten permission to do whatever the hell they wanted, whatever made them laugh, and just kept doing it. Like, it was just the most relentless procession of gags I'd ever seen, and to this day, I can't believe you got away with it.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Well, I think the pace came, well, I don't think the pace, I know the pace came from doing our theater, because we were the actors in our Kentucky Bright Theater. We did a show in L.A. called My Nose, just so our listing in the weekly L.A. Times calendar section would say, "My Nose Runs Continuously." And that's the kind of stuff that we would do. And so, we were always not taking anything seriously. I think that's, you know, right through grade school and high school, I remember, I was not taking anything seriously.

• 11:56Mike Rowe?

  So, the famous exchange, and the thing that I, to this day, I'm so glad to be able to ask you this question, but when it's Roger Roger, with your Clarence Clarence, check your Vector Victor.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:10Mike Rowe?

  Did that joke come when you realized these guys' names would lend itself to it, or did the joke form and then someone say, "Oh, shit"?

• 12:23Speaker 03

  No, we named these-

• 12:24Mike Rowe?

  We have to name them?

• 12:26Speaker 03

  No, no, we named the characters because we wanted to make those jokes. Clarence Clarence, Vector Victor, Roger, all that stuff. You know, we designed the joke like that, and it became a version of Who's on First. We also did a similar- You know, take on that kind of concept in Police Squad, the TV series. Where Frank Drebin, Leslie Nielsen questions the lady and said, you know, it's a whole who's on first routine.

• 12:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, but I mean, I would think Evan Costello sat down and said, okay, here's the routine. This is how it's going to work. It'll be funny if we do this, then this, then this. It's like they start with the end goal in mind. You named the central characters in the movie.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Well, yeah.

• 13:15Mike Rowe?

  In such a way that you could make one gag.

• 13:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it was, but then, and then after that, it wasn't a joke anymore. I mean, he was just named, I think at one time, the stewardess says, I'm standing over, over, over. So, yeah, so, you know, we came back, did a little more of a twist on it. But, you know, these things just kind of happen. It's just, it developed. And when you have three of us writing, you get, you know, we, I could never write this alone. You know, it so helps to have a trio and everybody would, you know, put out, try a joke. And if it got a laugh, it was in, you know, we just, we knew it was funny if the other guy laughed.

• 13:58Mike Rowe?

  If it got a laugh among your triumvirate.

• 14:00Speaker 03

  Among the triumvirate, exactly.

• 14:02Mike Rowe?

  Which means you're just trying to amuse yourselves. That's the thing.

• 14:04Speaker 03

  Absolutely. If I could get a laugh out of Jerry and Jim, I was as proud as I could be. Like, okay, I hit a single. And then, you know, Jerry or Jim would hit a triple and get me home.

• 14:16Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's how you win games.

• 14:17Speaker 03

  That's how you win games. You get runs, yes.

• 14:21Mike Rowe?

  Okay, so now that that's out of the way, what are you doing these days, man? I know there's a master class.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, I have the Master Crash, yes. You go to mastercrash.com. I'm teaching an online course in spoof humor and inspired by the dreadful Naked Gun 4, which you're not supposed to ask me about.

• 14:42Mike Rowe?

  I understand it's inspired.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  I don't know why you brought it up. Well, you brought it up. Can this be, can you go back and? No. And erase? No.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  All right, look, I'm gonna start recording now.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Okay, thank you Chuck. Yeah, but when other people try to do this stuff, first of all, it looks easy evidently. So people are doing it, they did Airplane 2, they did, I don't know, there was a movie called Loaded Weapon, there was a Angie Tribeca TV, you know, all this stuff. They think they're doing it, but they don't know the rules. And Jerry and Jim and I, you know, developed this over 40 years. You had actual? We had actual rules, we had 15 rules. And this isn't to say that everybody has to follow our rules. But if you're doing this kind of spoof, our particular spoof, you have to follow the rules. Otherwise, it falls flat, it's embarrassing.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Now, Mike Myers did a spoof of James Bond movies in Austin Powers. Sure. Great job, funny movie. The Wayans Brothers did scary movies, spoof on horror movies. They did it in their own style. Brilliant, wonderful movies. And then, they didn't want to do 4 and 5, so Bob Weinstein called me and said, "Do you want to do this?" And I said, "Well, if the Wayans aren't doing it, then I'd be glad to do it, but in my style." And so scary 3 and 4 are a lot different than 1 and 2. So, did the Wayans follow the rules? Whether or not they knew they existed? No, they didn't need to follow them, you know, the Wayans are brilliant on their own.

• 16:19Speaker 03

  Well, if you can be brilliant and make a great funny spoof without following the rules, why do you need the rules? Well, yeah, nobody needs the rules and they don't need to take my course. Yeah. In fact, I'd advise against it. You're a terrible salesman. It's just a waste of money. You're a terrible salesman. Yeah, well, I'd rather sell pillows.

• 16:37Mike Rowe?

  Was it fun to do?

• 16:39Speaker 03

  Oh, this course was great. Yeah, no, we did one episode for each rule. But we also have a glossary of terms that's like over a hundred terms that we've used throughout all the movies that we've done.

• 16:51Mike Rowe?

  Well, this is stupid question, then.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Well, I'm glad to answer stupid questions.

• 16:55Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, I was gonna, like, how do you, can you learn to be funny?

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Ah, you can and you can't. If you're naturally funny and wanna do spoof, I think you can learn a lot of things not to do. The rules are things not to do. We can't tell you how to make a joke. That kind of has to happen naturally, but it's not, but Jerry and Jim and I aren't the only ones who could do it. Pat Proft could do it. Craig Mason was great at it. Um, Mike McManus, these are the guys that I'm writing with now, or Proft and Mason I'm writing with now, and I have, I wrote a script, uh, film noir, great love story comedy, set in nineteen forty-nine, and it's really spoof two point oh.

• 17:46Mike Rowe?

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• 18:27Mike Rowe?

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• 19:08Speaker 02

  Pure Talk.

• 19:13Mike Rowe?

  What's the difference between a spoof and a satire?

• 19:18Speaker 03

  I don't know. It's like the... I don't know too many terms. I don't know... You know, Jim Abrams used to know. We'd be asked that and I would kind of... I don't really know. But Jim knew. But he died, so it's lost with him now.

• 19:34Mike Rowe?

  I thought... I always thought of satire like, um...

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Is Blazing Saddles satire? Or is it a spoof?

• 19:41Mike Rowe?

  That's... I don't know.

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, see, I...

• 19:44Mike Rowe?

  But when... What's his name? Thomas... Was it Tom... Was it Swift? Jonathan Swift, maybe? A Modest Proposal. That famous essay that talked during the potato famine about how to prepare your infant for consumption. Because there was nothing else to eat.

• 20:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:00Mike Rowe?

  So it's basically like a recipe on how to eat your kid. And it was so dark and so crazy.

• 20:05Speaker 03

  It's dark. It's satire. It's not really a spoof on something.

• 20:08Mike Rowe?

  It's not a spoof. That's satire.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  Okay. Right. Spoof has to be... And you're helping me here define this. I think is spoof is directly derivative of some serious thing that you can make funny. And I think Mad Magazine used to do a... An article every magazine called Scenes We'd Like to See.

• 20:32Mike Rowe?

  In movies, yeah.

• 20:33Speaker 03

  In movies. So I think that was spoof, I guess.

• 20:37Mike Rowe?

  Right. Because it's based on an expectation.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:40Mike Rowe?

  It's a scene you've already seen. But what I'd like to see is a... Some element of it tweaked. So you recognize the original.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  I remember a long time ago, a reviewer said about our show is that basically what they do is set up a familiar scene and then reverse the viewer's expectation of the outcome. So, you know, not to get too technical, but that's... Because I can get technical and be really unfunny fast.

• 21:10Mike Rowe?

  Bring it, man. Bring it. No, I... Like... No, to see, I'm drawing a blank on the guy's name who played Ted in Airplane.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, Robert Hayes.

• 21:24Mike Rowe?

  Right, Hayes. To see the fluid in his mouth flying, it was a spit take, but you didn't see the guy spit.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, now that was not, that wasn't satire or spoof. That's just a gag and it's part of what I'm teaching and directing is that not to point out the joke. And the same thing happens when Leslie Nielsen is in the passenger cabin working on a patient and all you see is the, the woman's legs and he's got a speculum.

• 21:52Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  And she's in the stirrups and Leslie says, what the hell's going on up there? And we never point to it. So that joke of the spit take is the most obvious thing to do is to show him doing the spit take.

• 22:07Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  But Mel Brooks did that. I don't want to play sloppy seconds.

• 22:11Mike Rowe?

  So that's, that's why it's a spoof, because you didn't want to imitate Mel, but in a way you paid homage.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  I think it has nothing to do with spoof or satire. It's just a gag. I mean, some things are just gags and not, not a spoof.

• 22:24Mike Rowe?

  When that little 12-year-old girl turned to that 12-year-old boy and said, I'll take my coffee black, like my men.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:32Mike Rowe?

  Okay. Now, I don't know if you can do that today.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Well, you're talking about two different things. It could be, I mean, audiences would still laugh, but the studio boardrooms would say, oh no, that's too much, you know, and that's too much. You can't do that. They're all frightened. And that's why you just get the pablum now that's in theaters. There's nothing funny. If you want to see funny, go to TV, watch South Park or Impractical Jokers.

• 23:03Mike Rowe?

  So, okay, both so interesting. I, I think South Park will be remembered.

• 23:11Mike Rowe?

  As the greatest satire of.

• 23:14Speaker 03

  You know, they're, they're, they're great. And I had the opportunity to work with them.

• 23:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Baseball.

• 23:20Mike Rowe?

  Oh, right.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  And it was so fun. So I really got to know those guys.

• 23:23Mike Rowe?

  Did you see the documentary they put out? It's called Six Days.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Six Days Till Air, yeah. No, I did not.

• 23:31Mike Rowe?

  You're welcome. You're gonna love this. I don't know it applies to any of your rules, but it's just, they're coming back from winning the Grammy for Book of Mormon.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:42Mike Rowe?

  Okay, they're baked out of their minds. They land in LA. They got on skateboards and they go to work.

• 23:48Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 23:49Mike Rowe?

  The first episode of the first season is due in six days.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  And they had to do it.

• 23:54Mike Rowe?

  They got nothing. Now, Simpsons takes like a year and a half from script to screen.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Oh, really? I didn't know that.

• 24:02Mike Rowe?

  The animation style is totally different.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:04Mike Rowe?

  The writer's room's different. This writer's room is Trey and Matt, and I think Bill Hader is sitting there. He doesn't do much. It's so much Trey. But within six days, they've got to navigate a script, get it through S and P, which is tough, because I think this one is Human Centipede. Right? When the people are stitched together.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  I don't even know what S and P is.

• 24:24Mike Rowe?

  Standards and Practices.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. I don't know any. You'd be surprised. It's shit that I don't know. I mean, I, yeah.

• 24:30Mike Rowe?

  I mean, this, again, you're trying to sell a course on comedy and telling me you can fill a book with what you don't know.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Right. No, I don't know anything. So, yeah, we're trying to get people's money to sign up for this course at least.

• 24:41Mike Rowe?

  Now, did you name it Master Crash?

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, we named it Master Crash because, you know, I couldn't say master class.

• 24:49Mike Rowe?

  So now it's an Asian.

• 24:50Speaker 03

  I had a manager.

• 24:51Mike Rowe?

  I don't think you can make that.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  Oh, oh, I don't think you could do it. I almost did a spit take right there.

• 24:56Mike Rowe?

  Well. Oh, Master Crash.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, you're making it into some kind of racist.

• 25:01Mike Rowe?

  No, I think you did. I think you wanted me to think it, and then you wanted. I think.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  We'll have to research this and see who was the original racist here.

• 25:09Mike Rowe?

  Back to the 12-year-old girl.

• 25:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 25:11Mike Rowe?

  Whose idea is it for her to turn to this kid, who I'm assuming is 10 or 12 years old, dressed in a three-piece suit, and tell him she likes her coffee like she likes her men?

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Well, normally, we don't remember who came up with what. I mean, the most famous joke in the movie, "Don't Call Me Shirley," none of us remember because we never made a thing out of, you know, who wrote what. And it really helped the collaboration because we didn't care about individual credit. It was only ZAZ. We wanted to succeed as a trio. It was great. But there are some jokes that I know that Jim Abrams wrote.

• 25:49Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  And that's one of them because what would happen is we'd all sit around a table and Jim would be on the typewriter. And he would type up everything and then he'd show Jerry and me what he had just typed. And so we just had, I take it, Black or something, and Jim typed in, "I take it Black like my men," and Jerry and I cracked up. And all that stuff, we thought, well, we probably can't do that. And then we thought for another 30 seconds, and the, "Why not? Well, of course we'll do it." And the same with Jim came up with, "I remember how you used to hold me and how I used to sit on your face and wriggle." And that was Jim. So I remember all those really, really bad lines were Jim.

• 26:30Mike Rowe?

  No, it's not bad, though.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  I mean. No, no, I mean.

• 26:32Mike Rowe?

  Well, I mean, what's funny.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Naughty.

• 26:34Mike Rowe?

  Naughty. I mean, look, so, but in that case, it wasn't the line. I mean, like, you can't have that exchange between full-grown adults. You could, it just wouldn't be funny.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  It wouldn't be funny, exactly. Just like a lot of the stuff between Peter Graves and the little boy couldn't be done with comedians. You couldn't, you know, what if that were Dom DeLuise? I mean, or even Chevy Chase. It would have been creepy, but.

• 27:03Mike Rowe?

  Well, how did you get Peter Graves to say yes to this?

• 27:07Speaker 03

  Well. He, originally, he turned it down. We just, and when we found out later, uh, he just threw the script across the room and said, "This is a worthless piece of trash." Yeah, repulsed. And then, you know, years later, I had much more experience with actors, producers, studios. I realized, you give an actor a script to read, and they just read their own parts. Right. And so, he must have been horrified. He appeared that the character was a pedophile. And we were saying, "Oh, how funny is this?" You're like Gladiator movies, Johnny. Ever seen a grown man naked? Kidding me? Yeah, right. No, no. He said, and evidently, you know, his daughter read the script,

• 27:50Speaker 03

  who was probably, you know, seventeen at the time. Mm-hmm. She thought it was hilarious. His wife read the script. She thought it was funny. And then Howard Koch, our executive producer, who was, at the time, you know, sixty-two, which was, to me, just so old, I couldn't believe it. Anyways, he knew all these guys. So he said, "Peter, why don't you come in and meet the boys?" We were called the Boys at the time. And, uh... You're not famous yet. We're not famous, no. We're, you know, somewhat known from Kentucky Fried movie, but I think Landis got most of the publicity. But, so he came and met us, and I think he expected, you know, some just drugged-out weirdos. Sure.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  And we were actually quite preppy, you know, not many years out of Wisconsin. And, but yeah, we had written this stuff, and so we convinced him that, you know, we knew what we were doing, even though we had never directed before. And so, all these guys made a leap of faith. Robert Stack wanted to know, "Well, who else is coming to the party?" Yeah. That's how he put it. Right. And so, once Lloyd and Peter and Leslie signed on, then Stack came on. And then they offered Stack...

• 29:08Speaker 03

  I think low money like thirty thousand and a piece of the profits. He had no faith at all, a great guy, by the way. But he just, no, no, I'll take the fifty grand, yeah.

• 29:21Mike Rowe?

  So how often, I get you guys are a team. But once the cast trusts you and once everybody's in on the joke and they all kind of get where they're going. Did ideas ever come from Leslie or Lloyd?

• 29:38Speaker 03

  Normally, I don't like to take any ideas from actors.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  But actually, one of the actresses, the woman who was the one who became the hysterical woman. She suggested, why don't they slap me? And we didn't have that in the script, we didn't think of it. And so we said, okay, you know, slap, and then somehow, this I don't remember, I wish I did remember. Either Leslie thought of this himself, or we told him to do it. But it's one of the funniest gags in the movie. He slaps her and then, then he slaps her again.

• 30:17Mike Rowe?

  And then, and then you see the line of people.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  And the line of people was also suggested by somebody. How about, how about doing that? And we said, yeah, let's do that. We sent out the prop lady and she brought in the whips and the chains, the bats and.

• 30:31Mike Rowe?

  Brass.

• 30:32Speaker 03

  Like an Indian with a tomahawk. But I, it happens so infrequently that we don't do any improvisation and because we don't use comedians.

• 30:42Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 30:43Speaker 03

  And sometimes, though, an actor will come up with a suggestion. Judge Reinhold on Ruthless People, he was supposed to pretend that he was ruthless. And he was giving the speech about how ruthless was and he scoops up a bug and puts it outside the door and closes the door. And so, and Judge suggested to me, why don't I open the door again and stomp on the bug? And I said, no, that won't be funny, like I knew, like, you know, it's like you get to be a director, you get full of yourself, like you know. And I said, but it couldn't hurt to try, just doing another take, the lighting setup's there. We can, we let the audience decide, so he did it.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Everyone laughed and at the preview, they laughed and that's why that's in the movie.

• 31:29Mike Rowe?

  All right, was it a real bug?

• 31:32Speaker 03

  No, no, I don't think so.

• 31:34Mike Rowe?

  Like, what, so there's no bug wrangler, there's no?

• 31:36Speaker 03

  No bug was harmed during the

• 31:38Mike Rowe?

  That's what I'm

• 31:39Speaker 03

  During the making of this motion picture, yeah.

• 31:47Mike Rowe?

  So as some of you may have heard, I went to Congress 16 years ago to testify before a House Subcommittee, and then again, a year later, to testify before a Senate Subcommittee about the need to reinvigorate the skilled trades with some kind of national effort that would make a more persuasive case for a lot of good jobs out there that didn't require a four-year degree. Well, 15 years later,

• 32:14Mike Rowe?

  I finally heard back from the government, and I am delighted to tell you about a program called BuildFreedom.us. This is the national PR campaign that MicroWorks has been talking about for a decade and a half now, and it's focused on 300,000 or 400,000 excellent jobs in the defense industrial base. These are the electricians and the plumbers and the steam finners and the pipe fitters and the CNC operators and the shipbuilders and so forth. But in this case, all of those trades are focused on building out our national infrastructure through the defense industrial base. So people who are building our autonomous

• 32:56Mike Rowe?

  weapons, our planes, our ships, it's only a matter of national security, and it's a very big deal. And on a personal level, it's really been very gratifying. Build Freedom donated $10 million to MicroWorks. The money's available right now for you if you want to pursue a skill that's in demand and work in the defense industrial base. I think it's an opportunity of a lifetime. Go to BuildFreedom.us, see what's available, and then apply for a scholarship from MicroWorks. The money's there, burning a hole in my pocket. Go get some. BuildFreedom.us.

• 33:31Mike Rowe?

  I mean, look, I'm not a comedy director. I don't know about your rules, but if it were me and the credits, I might have put no bug was harmed.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Oh, that's all. Well, we did put jokes in the credits, but I don't think that's a particularly good joke.

• 33:44Mike Rowe?

  Who was the first to put bloopers in the credits? I remember like Cannonball Run and that's the first time I remember seeing.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  I don't know. We did not do that, but all that stuff happened after.

• 33:55Mike Rowe?

  In the movie.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  And no, I think after Airplane.

• 33:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  It's putting jokes in the credits.

• 34:01Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  And also putting a gag at the end of the credits. We put the guy in the cab saying, well, give him 15 more minutes, but that's it.

• 34:10Mike Rowe?

  For every ridiculous, non sequitur, apropos of nothing moment, like the spear going into the map

• 34:18Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 34:19Mike Rowe?

  on the wall, inexplicable to me.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Right. And that's one of the things I teach about in my course is not to do that.

• 34:25Mike Rowe?

  And yet.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Well, we did it, but I think it wasn't, it wasn't the greatest decision because we thought background stuff was funny. It's not funny. It doesn't get a laugh unless it's related. So that's just one of the things. So.

• 34:39Mike Rowe?

  Why did, Chuck, did you laugh when that spear went sailing into the wall?

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Uh, yes, I did. Yes. Were you high?

• 34:46Mike Rowe?

  Yes, yes.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. See, we don't do stuff just because we're not high when we write the stuff. So we can't assume that we really weren't. We, we just had coffee. Don't give me that look.

• 34:57Mike Rowe?

  How much coffee? Like all the coffee?

• 35:00Speaker 03

  We'd actually, we'd get together at 9 a.m. We'd drink coffee. We'd talk with Airplane. We talked about Watergate. We would talk about Watergate and then at 10, we'd start writing.

• 35:11Mike Rowe?

  Okay. Spear goes in the wall.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:13Mike Rowe?

  Non sequitur, not funny, rule breaker.

• 35:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:16Mike Rowe?

  Uh, Robert Stack takes off his sunglasses.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  That's funny.

• 35:19Mike Rowe?

  And there's another pair of smaller sunglasses.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  We did that on stage.

• 35:22Mike Rowe?

  Why is that funny?

• 35:23Speaker 03

  The gag was written by Pat Proft and I guess because it's silly and unexpected.

• 35:28Mike Rowe?

  All right.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  I can't believe you're asking me why that was funny. It's just funny.

• 35:32Mike Rowe?

  You have the master crash. You have master crash.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Yes, I have master crash and so I presumably know what I'm doing.

• 35:40Mike Rowe?

  All right. I think you, well, obviously I think you do, but I'm just trying to like the, because you made a distinction between a gag and a joke, satire versus spoof.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:53Mike Rowe?

  Right. So there are all these things, but the most relatable gag that I remember. An airplane is when Ted is just spilling his guts and the woman hangs herself.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, people, everybody's been somewhere when they've been talked to death.

• 36:09Mike Rowe?

  Everybody, everybody.

• 36:11Speaker 03

  And on a plane, you're trapped.

• 36:12Mike Rowe?

  Right, so like in that moment, okay, that's a gag, that's funny, that's a heck of a thing. But in the same way, you got a line of people waiting to slap the hysterical woman. Now we go to our Japanese gentleman, fully dressed in World War Two garb.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:29Mike Rowe?

  Who commits, uh, Harry Carey.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  What's your question? Come out with it.

• 36:36Mike Rowe?

  Why is it funny to see a man commit suicide?

• 36:40Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 36:40Mike Rowe?

  Why is it funny when a woman hangs herself? Like, if you just reduce the thing to its various component parts, it's the opposite of funny.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:49Mike Rowe?

  But when you create a scene.

• 36:51Speaker 03

  And nothing is literal, or everything is literal. It's just, we just do it, and the more outrageous it is, and I find this in my personal life. I go to restaurants and I start engaging with strangers and if I'm outrageous enough, people know it's a gag.

• 37:06Mike Rowe?

  But if you're not, it's just super uncomfortable.

• 37:10Speaker 03

  Embarrassment, embarrassing.

• 37:11Mike Rowe?

  Call the cops.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've also embarrassed myself, too.

• 37:14Mike Rowe?

  My dad can't get into an elevator without chatting up who's ever in there.

• 37:19Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 37:20Mike Rowe?

  Doesn't matter how many, but he wants to know where they're headed.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  Real, but is your dad interesting, or is he just boring these people that they wanna?

• 37:28Mike Rowe?

  I think he's interesting.

• 37:29Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 37:29Mike Rowe?

  I mean, he's 93.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Oh, that's great. Is he still doing fine?

• 37:33Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 37:34Mike Rowe?

  He's hanging tough, but he's the kind of guy, he walks, it was, um, my mom's a writer, and she wrote a very funny story, but it was around Christmas, and he goes in the elevator, it's crowded, and there's a big guy in there with a beard. And, you know, my dad's like, "Got the reindeer parked out, bear back here." You know, it's just awful.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:53Mike Rowe?

  And there are like nine people, and they're all like looking at this, and the big guy, my poor mother's shrinking, but she's like, "This is either gonna be the longest elevator ride ever," but the guy turns and makes another Santa joke.

• 38:05Speaker 03

  Oh, well, that's good, so.

• 38:07Mike Rowe?

  What's good about it is everybody else in the elevator now relaxes and laughs. Cause somehow or another, we have permission.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:15Mike Rowe?

  Right? But for those first couple of seconds, like in Curb Your Enthusiasm, they're like all these moments that really are just so uncomfortable. And then I guess it's, I don't know, catharsis or something.

• 38:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:27Mike Rowe?

  And then we had, and then we get permission to laugh.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  I think Larry David deals directly in that uncomfortable stuff, which he's so good at.

• 38:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  I'm sure most of that stuff is things that really happened to him, as in Seinfeld, most of his stuff.

• 38:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  I never watched any sitcoms except for Seinfeld and, and also some of Curb, and some of Gary Shandling was great.

• 38:53Mike Rowe?

  Oh my God.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:54Mike Rowe?

  The original, that, remember the original theme song?

• 38:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:58Mike Rowe?

  This is the Gary Shandling Show.

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Oh, he was so great.

• 39:01Mike Rowe?

  Oh my God.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  And, uh, but I don't watch any other television except that. And, you know, today I watch Impractical Jokers.

• 39:10Mike Rowe?

  That's what makes you laugh.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  That's what makes me laugh. It makes me laugh so hard. Yeah.

• 39:15Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'm tempted to ask why, but I'm gonna offend you again.

• 39:18Speaker 03

  Well, those guys are funny. I mean, they're, and they interact with real people. And they prank themselves. And, you know, you just see that they're having such obvious fun and they laugh at themselves. I mean, everything about them is good.

• 39:32Mike Rowe?

  Well, that goes back to my first, I think, super prescient observation, which was you amuse yourself. Airplane was an attempt to amuse yourself.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Exactly. And these guys, Impractical Jokers, obviously are, they're amusing themselves. They're doing it because they think it's funny.

• 39:48Mike Rowe?

  And so are Trey and Matt.

• 39:50Speaker 03

  That's right. Yeah.

• 39:51Mike Rowe?

  But they're awfully smart about it.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, of course, I've, I've had the pleasure of getting to know both of those teams.

• 39:59Mike Rowe?

  I watched those guys interview each other on a pig farm while they were feeding bacon to the hogs.

• 40:07Speaker 03

  Oh, Matt and Trey?

• 40:08Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 40:08Speaker 03

  Oh, really? I have, didn't see that.

• 40:10Mike Rowe?

  They're just doing like the stand-up in between throwing to a thing. And they're just sitting there with pigs, feeding the pigs pigs.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:18Mike Rowe?

  They don't really acknowledge it. They just do it.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:20Mike Rowe?

  And so, you know, suddenly you're one of those people in the elevator trying to figure out, though, I have permission to laugh at this. Can I laugh at the Japanese gentleman for?

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:31Mike Rowe?

  Committing Harry Carey. I'm not sure, except I was sure in the theater.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it comes from a really good place that they genuinely think is funny and they're original and they're not trying to copy anybody like other people today are.

• 40:46Mike Rowe?

  Were you a fan? I'm asking this because what part of Wisconsin? You're in Milwaukee?

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Milwaukee, and I went to, I graduated from University of Wisconsin.

• 40:55Mike Rowe?

  That's Madison.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  Madison.

• 40:57Mike Rowe?

  Did you know the Onion guys?

• 40:59Speaker 03

  I didn't know them. I met some of them later because we did a movie with them. Uh, my partner, Gil Netter, and I, we had Zucker Netter Productions.

• 41:09Mike Rowe?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  And, uh, Gil worked out this deal with the, uh, with the Onion to do the Onion movie. And so that's, we did that.

• 41:20Mike Rowe?

  You mentioned Mad Magazine.

• 41:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:21Mike Rowe?

  For me, when I was in the very early nineties, one of the greatest moments of my misspent career was learning that the editor at the Onion was taping my segments on the QVC Cable Shopping Channel in the middle of the night. And he created a cartoon called The Endless Nights of Rick Nobles, which was based on things I would say in the middle of the night. And I was so, uh, flattered by that because to me, the Onion was the perfect mix of, of irreverence and subversion. And he would use, like, this cartoon was meant to be an example to the staff writers. He was like, here's a guy on TV who's clearly trying to get fired.

• 42:04Mike Rowe?

  I want you to write with that same goal.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 42:07Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:08Mike Rowe?

  So, my question is, what happened to the Onion? And how come The Babylon Bee is funnier today?

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Oh, I think it's a lot because what happened to Saturday Night Live?

• 42:20Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  They were committed to an ideology rather than to jokes. And so the Babylon Bee is much funnier. I've gotten to know some of those guys and and I subscribe. I love it. It makes me laugh. They're so good. They're just because their targets are better, you know. Just how do you defend AOC and Chuck Schumer? You can't, you have to, and Biden, I mean, you just, you're stuck defending those guys. That's not very funny.

• 42:53Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 42:54Speaker 03

  There's nothing to laugh at.

• 42:56Mike Rowe?

  Right. Right.

• 42:58Speaker 03

  And when I think of SNL, I mean, occasionally they've done some good stuff, but I remember when Hillary lost, they did an episode where these two characters on SNL were, they were kind of sad and it was a whole, do you remember this sketch?

• 43:17Mike Rowe?

  Kate McKinnon, who is funny as hell, sat at the piano.

• 43:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:20Mike Rowe?

  And played like a eulogy.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Where's the joke?

• 43:23Mike Rowe?

  There's no joke.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's no joke. And this is another thing I teach in my course is axe grinding. You can't axe grind. It's just, it ain't funny.

• 43:33Mike Rowe?

  Not for a laugh.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I did a movie, An American Carol, which, you know, made fun of Michael Moore and it was funny, but I think it was a bit of axe grinding. So, you know, to the extent that it was axe grinding, I mean, I really was conscious. I had to pay for every political point I was making by a joke. It had to be a joke.

• 43:57Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  And, you know, I wrote it, I think I mentioned my friend Louis Friedman, who's a total lefty and we just loved making movies together. So, and he was great writing jokes for that.

• 44:11Mike Rowe?

  Well, since you brought it up.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  No, I don't want to talk about it though, Mike.

• 44:15Mike Rowe?

  Let's get his publicist on the line.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 44:17Mike Rowe?

  No, I mean, I mean, Wisconsin is about as blue as a blue state gets.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  Right.

• 44:22Mike Rowe?

  And you're coming out of the university system. I'm, I'm assuming your ideology was what it was, but you've made no great secret of.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  No, it's not a secret. I'm out and.

• 44:34Mike Rowe?

  What happened?

• 44:37Speaker 03

  You know, we grew up in a sea of blue there. My entire extended Zucker family, Democrats, and some of them are very far left and continue to be, everybody, I'm the only one, you know, I, I actually did an interview for the Milwaukee Journal, this is when I had first crossed over to the dark side in like 2000, 2004, I think I did an ad against John Kerry. And the Milwaukee Journal interviewed me and I was interviewed on the radio station there. And my mom didn't care about the radio station, but it was in the Milwaukee Journal, all

• 45:20Speaker 03

  her friends read it, that her son became a Republican. And I called up, I wanted to kind of apologize and I said, Mom, I'm sorry, but I, I guess I'm the black sheep of the family. And she said, oh, no, no, you do a lot of good things, too.

• 45:35Mike Rowe?

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• 46:18Mike Rowe?

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• 47:05Speaker 03

  And, you know, for years after my dad sank into dementia, my mom continued to vote for Democrats for him.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  So even when my mom died, you know, it's like, I said, yeah, everybody said, "I'm so sorry," and, you know, "sorry for your loss." I said, "Yeah, but I always look on the bright side." It's, you know, one less vote for the Democrats. So, you know.

• 47:30Mike Rowe?

  Funny.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  And because, you know, if someone isn't run over by a bus and they live till 86 or 87, you know, don't ask me that when I'm 86 or 87. I'm gonna think, "Of course, and I'm still, yeah, I'm not gonna die now."

• 47:43Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  But, um, it's, my whole family is, but I changed, I think, after 9/11.

• 47:51Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 47:51Speaker 03

  There are a lot of people who were 9/11 conservatives. And I saw how both sides reacted to that. And Clinton, I think, said, "What did we do to deserve this?"

• 48:05Mike Rowe?

  What did we do to deserve it?

• 48:06Speaker 03

  And so, being just practical, and I'm not, I'm not that bright. I mean, I'm bright, but I, you know, I just, why, why would this? This is pure evil. And the right was saying this is pure evil. And people on the right actually use the E-word. I've had friends, I've had girlfriends who said, "No, there's no, people aren't evil." But, you know, yeah, that relationship didn't last.

• 48:35Speaker 03

  But, Mike, I don't wanna get into my personal life.

• 48:37Mike Rowe?

  I understand.

• 48:38Speaker 03

  Can you keep this?

• 48:38Mike Rowe?

  I understand.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Can you keep this on?

• 48:40Mike Rowe?

  Fine, fine, fine.

• 48:41Speaker 03

  Just, yeah, politics?

• 48:42Mike Rowe?

  I know exactly what it is.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  And why I hate Naked Gun 4?

• 48:47Mike Rowe?

  And Master Crash?

• 48:49Speaker 03

  And, and the pronunciation of my name, yes.

• 48:51Mike Rowe?

  You're right. Um, I've heard lots of people talk about your influence on them and, obviously, the influence of your work and so forth. And I'm sure that's terribly gratifying for you. But who, like, who really influenced you? Who was funny?

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Oh, you know, we, we, we loved Mad Magazine, The Marx Brothers, Woody Allen. That's who we loved. And, more than anything...

• 49:20Speaker 03

  We would laugh at serious movies. And what we would do is we would dub in our own voices. So Mystery Science Theater must have just chapped your ass? I never watched it, really. That's what that, I mean, didn't Airplane come out of, like, Zero Hour, was it? Yeah, Zero, we, we saw Zero Hour. And we thought, uh, and, cause we were taping late night movies to get the commercials and one morning, what? Because you were lampooning the commercials? We were just making fun of commercials. Oh. So we saw this movie and we started getting more interested in the movie than the commercials. And we thought, why don't we spoof this movie? And originally, the first Airplane script was called The Late Show.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  And it was the Zero Hour, the Airplane story with commercials, as if it were a late night movie. And so we gave it to a friend of ours for a first read and he said, I liked the script, but I think the commercials, I got, I was getting into the story, commercials interrupted it. Yeah. So we axed the commercials. And we just, that's how Airplane, I mean, it started out, and this whole book, Surely You Can't Be Serious, uh, which you can get on Amazon. The main theme is, we didn't know what we were doing. We kind of learned as we went. We were just raw guys. When did, who came up with the cover art? Ah, Paramount. That, that was Paramount, not bad.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  Brilliant studio run by Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Frank Mancuso, Barry Diller. These guys were so great. Eisner took the chance on you? Eisner took the chance. And it's such a contrast to the, you know, the idiots who run the studio today. Dude, people do listen to this podcast. Oh, I heard that, what, you have a dozen people? Literally. This is not gonna get out, is it?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  But they all work at Paramount.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  They all work at Paramount, they're all on the board. I didn't name names. Actually, you know what I did? I sent a letter. A registered mail to David Ellison, who took over Paramount. And I enclosed a dollar bill in it. And I said, Dear Mr. Ellison, I'll bet you a dollar you don't know how Paramount ruined the Naked Gun franchise. Never heard back, but maybe he'll get it eventually. I don't know, you know.

• 51:42Mike Rowe?

  You know.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:44Mike Rowe?

  There was a truly glorious moment. I don't know if the window was shut yet, but in the bulk mail business, when you would get these envelopes, you know, the postage is paid. They want you to fill out a thing and you just send it back.

• 51:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 51:57Mike Rowe?

  It was getting inundated with, and this was in the early 90s. And my roommate and I would take a box and fill it with rocks. And just put the envelope on the top and, you know, seal it and take it to the post office and they have to ship it.

• 52:10Speaker 03

  They do even if you don't pay the postage for the box of rocks?

• 52:14Mike Rowe?

  The postage is due by the recipient.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 52:18Mike Rowe?

  It's prepaid.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Oh, it's prepaid.

• 52:20Mike Rowe?

  So we were sending back 60 pounds of rocks.

• 52:22Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 52:23Mike Rowe?

  And that's how you stop getting the junk mail. But unlike you, you know, we didn't film it and then take it to a studio and go, hey, what if two kids go on this adventure and upset the recipients to the point that they put a hit out on it?

• 52:35Speaker 03

  It's a brilliant idea, but the studio today would have said, yeah, that's a great idea, but we're going to give it to Seth MacFarlane to ruin it.

• 52:43Mike Rowe?

  Oh, no. So not a big Family Guy fan?

• 52:48Speaker 03

  No. In fact, oh, God, you're going to get me in trouble.

• 52:52Mike Rowe?

  You said, ask me anything. You said you don't care.

• 52:55Speaker 03

  But I didn't mean that.

• 52:56Mike Rowe?

  I don't want you to violate any of your rules, either, whatever they are.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  Okay, I just say not a Family Guy fan. In fact, why don't I be positive? I'm a glass half full guy.

• 53:04Mike Rowe?

  I'm positive I'm not.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  I love South Park.

• 53:07Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 53:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just, I love good stuff, good, original things, yeah.

• 53:14Mike Rowe?

  I had a part in Family Guy. No, it was American Dad. It was the spinoff.

• 53:19Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, yeah.

• 53:20Mike Rowe?

  I played Brick, the meter maid.

• 53:22Speaker 03

  So you weren't even good enough for Family Guy?

• 53:24Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Talk about low.

• 53:29Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  God, Mike, I wouldn't tell that story.

• 53:32Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'm not proud of it. My real disappointment is when Dirty Jobs was killing it, I wanted South Park to do an artificial insemination segment. Where maybe Cartman got artificially inseminated and gave birth to something out his butt. Right? Which of course he would do. Because the whole AI thing, it kind of saved my career. And I thought it would have been fun, but they didn't bite.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  You know, and you learned that nothing could save your career.

• 53:58Mike Rowe?

  At this point, I mean, clearly.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:02Mike Rowe?

  Here we are.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  I'm glad to be with you on the way down.

• 54:07Mike Rowe?

  Okay, so Mad Magazine, Groucho Marx.

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Groucho Marx, we were exposed to the Marx Brothers in college. They would do these huge screenings in big lecture halls. Six hundred, eight hundred, you know, stoned kids watching Groucho and Harpo.

• 54:23Mike Rowe?

  We're so old, dude. For people born, you know, in a prior century, whatever. Was it about Groucho? Like, what made him? Why do people say so and so and so and so was the Groucho Marx of?

• 54:37Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. He was just, he was such an original. Again, I'm a fan of anybody original. And I don't like people who aren't original. So Groucho was, there was nothing like him before. And there was no one like Woody Allen before. There was no one like Chaplin before. So these guys, and the same thing with, you know, Ben Franklin, Davy Crockett, and Will Rogers. They were all such original humorists. And, you know, Ben Franklin was a satirist.

• 55:08Mike Rowe?

  Big time.

• 55:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:09Mike Rowe?

  He wrote a book called Fart Proudly.

• 55:13Speaker 03

  I did not know that.

• 55:14Mike Rowe?

  I have it. It's thin. It's an easy read. But he, he starts by talking about the unintended consequences of not passing wind. And then the joys of doing so.

• 55:23Speaker 03

  I didn't know this.

• 55:24Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  Yes, Franklin was great. You know, Crockett was like a stand-up comedian.

• 55:30Mike Rowe?

  Crockett was, why has no one made a movie about Davy?

• 55:33Speaker 03

  Well, I tried, but again, I didn't know what I was doing. And the script wasn't good. And, you know, I even, and Spielberg was a big Crockett fan.

• 55:45Mike Rowe?

  Wait a minute. Did you want to make a comedy about him?

• 55:49Speaker 03

  I wanted to make a serious movie which would have had funny things in it because

• 55:52Mike Rowe?

  Cause he was funny, man.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  Crockett was funny, so, and I'm a big Crockett fan, and it's a great story, but this was thirty years ago.

• 56:01Mike Rowe?

  Wait a minute, what do you mean, you're a big Crockett fan? Like you collect memorabilia?

• 56:06Speaker 03

  I collect memorabilia. I had, I owned three original Davy Crockett letters, including the last and most important letter he ever wrote, which was, "Tomorrow I leave for Texas." And I just donated-

• 56:19Mike Rowe?

  That did not end well.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  No, it was, yeah, he didn't know. He said, "I plan to explore the Texas well before I return." And I have other things, I have a lot of other original stuff, and I just donated the whole collection to the Alamo Museum, which is under construction in San Antonio.

• 56:39Mike Rowe?

  Look, bury the lead, man.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  You know, my publishers should have put that in.

• 56:44Mike Rowe?

  She should have. I mean, Dave, king of the wild frontier.

• 56:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:48Mike Rowe?

  His land was biggest, his land was best, from the grassy plains to the mountains west. He's ahead of us all, leading the rest. Follow his legend right into the west.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  That's very good. He remembered that. I didn't remember exactly-

• 57:01Mike Rowe?

  "Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free, killed him a bar when he..."

• 57:08Speaker 03

  Everybody of our generation remembers that song. You know, I actually showed Naked Gun Thirty-Three and a Third at the White House, and, for Bill and Hillary, and Bill said, "Can you give an introduction?" In front of the whole, you know, White House, the cabinet, everybody was there, and in my speech, I said, "I didn't direct this one because I'm writing a script about the life of Davy Crockett." And I was about to go on, and Hillary, in the front row, says, "Are you gonna use the song?" And I said, "No," cause I, you know, I wasn't gonna, this was gonna be a serious movie. And so, I was about to go on, and she started singing.

• 57:51Speaker 03

  Born on a mountain top and then and then Bill started singing and the whole room started singing the song and I ended up leading the whole thing.

• 57:59Mike Rowe?

  Oh my god, that is amazing.

• 58:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, what a scene. It was amazing. It was amazing. They were very nice and I voted for Clinton twice and he they gave me a tour of the White House and it was very cool.

• 58:10Mike Rowe?

  Which one? Bill or Hillary?

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Uh, both of them. They both took me on a tour of the White House.

• 58:16Mike Rowe?

  No, which one did you vote for twice?

• 58:17Speaker 03

  Oh, Bill. Okay, I did not vote for Hillary. By the time I came to my senses, I did not vote for anybody like that.

• 58:26Mike Rowe?

  I was born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free. Raised in the woods.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  So he knew every tree.

• 58:35Mike Rowe?

  Killed him a bar when he was only three.

• 58:38Speaker 03

  When that was politically correct to kill bears.

• 58:40Mike Rowe?

  Or bars.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I mean, Davy Cry. So, yeah, I had to kind of maneuver through the minefields writing that script in our modern world, you know, because he killed, you know, defenseless animals and Mexicans. Yeah. You gonna be okay? I hope you leave this in.

• 59:02Mike Rowe?

  Oh, god.

• 59:03Speaker 03

  There's no doubt it's go it's gonna be.

• 59:06Mike Rowe?

  I'm not even gonna repeat it, man. I feel like I went too far with Black Like My Men and Master Crash.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  Nah, that's. I think Master Crash was a bridge too far, but. Master Crash. And and you know, my manager of our tour three years ago, put me up for Master Class. How about Dave does a Master Class because he's done all these great movies and everything. And no, they just turned down. They just no, no, they don't, they don't. Yeah. And and, yeah, I think I.

• 59:37Mike Rowe?

  Well, they come back around then. I mean, what what finally sealed the deal?

• 59:40Speaker 03

  No, no, I'm doing my own. That's why it's called Master Crash. It's Master Crash. Not Master Class.

• 59:48Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  It's not, yeah, it's not.

• 59:50Mike Rowe?

  You buried the other lead, so it's not part of Master Class.

• 59:53Speaker 03

  No, it's not.

• 59:54Mike Rowe?

  Cleverly renamed just for your segment.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  No, no, it's my own thing from the get-go.

• 59:59Mike Rowe?

  Not sanctioned at all by Master Class.

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  No, not sanctioned, no.

• 1:00:02Mike Rowe?

  In fact, you were turned down by Master Class.

• 1:00:04Speaker 03

  I was rejected.

• 1:00:05Mike Rowe?

  Several times, if I'm being honest.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  As I was by Paramount for doing another, my own franchise.

• 1:00:09Mike Rowe?

  Right, right.

• 1:00:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Mike Rowe?

  So Paramount literally takes Naked Gun four.

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  I just, yeah.

• 1:00:14Mike Rowe?

  He's a wizard.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:16Mike Rowe?

  And you're reduced to this is why you're doing podcasts.

• 1:00:18Speaker 03

  I'm rejected by everyone, that's why I'm down to doing this podcast.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  I think, you know, if somebody important hears this podcast, I can get on a real one. Maybe you could get a job. Yeah.

• 1:00:30Mike Rowe?

  Um, you know who we had in here yesterday? You'd like this kid, his name's Mark Malkoff, and he wrote, I think, maybe the best book about Johnny Carson.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Oh, really? Yeah.

• 1:00:40Mike Rowe?

  It's called, uh, Love?

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  Love Johnny Carson.

• 1:00:43Mike Rowe?

  Love Johnny Carson, yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 03

  Okay, I'm interested in, I, I would read that. Yeah, was this just published, uh, in the last?

• 1:00:49Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  In the last, uh, I think it was a few months ago that it came out, yeah.

• 1:00:53Mike Rowe?

  But what he did, you would like.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  What did he uncover that hasn't been said?

• 1:00:57Mike Rowe?

  It's not that. It's kind of like, why was airplanes so different? And it's because it was somehow an impossible melange of gags that worked from start to finish.

• 1:01:12Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:12Mike Rowe?

  This is 400 interviews. This kid gets invited to Mel Brooks's house, gets a, Doc Severnson.

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  And everybody talked about?

• 1:01:22Mike Rowe?

  Everybody is desperate to tell a Johnny Carson story.

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:01:27Mike Rowe?

  Everybody.

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:28Mike Rowe?

  He's got 400 interviews.

• 1:01:31Speaker 03

  Oh, I bet that's great.

• 1:01:32Mike Rowe?

  And he himself is, he's now like, I guess in his 40s, but, you know, grew up so enamored of it, really because his dad was enamored of it, and so he had that sort of adjacent thing.

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  Oh, right, yeah.

• 1:01:46Mike Rowe?

  And so he turned his obsession into a podcast called The Carson Podcast and took all those interviews and a bunch more and turned it into this book.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 1:01:55Mike Rowe?

  Which leads me to the obvious question. Was Johnny Carson funny? And if so, why?

• 1:02:04Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 1:02:47Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 1:03:30Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  Oh, he was, he was very funny. I mean, and mostly because he let other people be funny. He let his guests be funny. And he was a big fan, observer, and aficionado of Jack Benny. And Jack Benny had those takes where he would just not say anything and just look. He would fold his arms and look. And Carson wisely knew that that would be great. And I think... And Groucho did that too on his show. I don't know if Groucho, which came first, Benny's act or Groucho doing that.

• 1:04:23Speaker 03

  But they both did it and Groucho knew how to use those pauses. And that, but, but Carson was also very funny. I mean, the way he told jokes, the way he, if a joke bombed, he could make a joke out of that.

• 1:04:37Mike Rowe?

  Well, we talked about that moment at length where Ed Ames threw that tomahawk right into the crock of the cowboy.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  And he waited.

• 1:04:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, you can see him grabbing Ed.

• 1:04:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Mike Rowe?

  Ed's going to get the tomahawk back. He's like, no, just stand here. And it's like one of the most sustained laughs in the history of TV.

• 1:04:54Speaker 03

  The great talents, I think realizes when silences are the best. And Vin Scully, when Kirk Gibson hit his famous home run, uh, just silence. He let it. And then during that silence, now I realize Vin was thinking of that great line.

• 1:05:14Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 1:05:15Speaker 03

  In a year that, what you were saying, he went to the bathroom. Yeah, that's good too, but.

• 1:05:25Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, man. I mean, it, but look, it's scary. Silence is scary, you know? Let's try it. See, couldn't do it.

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  I can't do it. I can't have to fill up.

• 1:05:35Mike Rowe?

  You got, you gotta do it.

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Mike Rowe?

  But, you know, it's, it's like a space in a sentence. You, I mean, you take all the spaces out of the book. It's just.

• 1:05:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, but a lot of that, you know, I think Letterman was good at doing that too. I think he, you know, he was a, a follower of Carson. And also these guys were quick and Carson used the pause to think of that line. I think he said, uh, frontier bris or something on the Ed Ames thing.

• 1:06:04Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  And, and, and, uh, Vin Scully thought of in a year that has been improbable, the impossible has happened. And I'm sure he, he was thinking during the pause.

• 1:06:15Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  I do admire the quickness of of a guy like Carson, and even without the pause, he could come do a comeback. These guys are quick. Letterman, very quick.

• 1:06:29Mike Rowe?

  And to do it every night?

• 1:06:30Speaker 03

  And to do it night after night. Well,

• 1:06:32Mike Rowe?

  Year after year.

• 1:06:32Speaker 03

  Just to do those shows night after. How do they do that? Sometimes, you know, some nights, you don't feel great, or you just wanna have a martini.

• 1:06:41Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:41Speaker 03

  And go to sleep.

• 1:06:42Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  Well, in my old age now, that's what I like to do. Yeah.

• 1:06:45Mike Rowe?

  Well, we're we're getting close.

• 1:06:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:48Mike Rowe?

  What time is it, Chuck?

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  It's time.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  It's time for martini?

• 1:06:51Mike Rowe?

  It's time for martini.

• 1:06:52Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, are you done with me, or?

• 1:06:54Mike Rowe?

  Was um, was Davy Crockett the Groucho Marx?

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  Uh, yes, I think he was. And he was one of the first celebrities, you know, uh, Ben Franklin was a celebrity and because he did a lot of things. He was a scientist. You know, he invented lightning or something, or whatever.

• 1:07:14Mike Rowe?

  Discovered electricity, I think they say, but yeah.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  And Crockett was not only the uh, the best raconteur and humorist and speech maker in the day when that was entertainment, was speeches, people, orators.

• 1:07:29Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Speaker 03

  Crockett could be funny. He could entertain. And he was the best athlete of his day.

• 1:07:34Mike Rowe?

  Meaning he was a marksman?

• 1:07:36Speaker 03

  He was a marksman. And he did this tremendous feat of, you know, shooting a lot of uh, what did he shoot? Bears, yeah. And Buffalo Bill.

• 1:07:46Mike Rowe?

  I swear, I thought you were gonna say Mexicans.

• 1:07:47Speaker 03

  No, no, I've done that joke. That's another thing I teach in my chorus. Don't do the same joke over again.

• 1:07:52Mike Rowe?

  The lady hangs herself and then the guy stabs herself.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  But that's, it's increasing is when you go A, B, and C. It's another concept.

• 1:08:00Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  You have to keep. Kind of like a bad week to quit smoking.

• 1:08:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Quit sniffing glue.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Taking amphetamines.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  You build the joke, yeah. So in that way, you can, I can teach, you know, some amount of humor.

• 1:08:13Mike Rowe?

  Is your hope with the master crash to genuinely impart real useful information? That's actually going to make people fun? Like, is, or is the whole thing in a, of its, is? Let me ask you with all the respect I can muster. Is going through Master Crash designed to make me laugh and entertain me? Or actually arm me with useful tools I can apply?

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  It's definitely arming people with useful tools. It's even helping me because like today, I do one hour classes on Zoom with people and they can interact with me and ask me questions. They were asking questions and one question was about when can you use background humor? When can you not? And then about building a gag, how can you tell when something goes too far? So I thought of in Scary Movie 3, do you remember the scene where Charlie Sheen is talking to the sheriff, this woman? And her hat, the hat is already ridiculous that they wear. And so what I did was have the hat get bigger and bigger as he's talking to her.

• 1:09:23Speaker 03

  And the last gag in that, which we cut, was it was just the hat driving off in the car. Because she was getting into the car with it barely fitting in the hat. Anyways, we had to cut that because the audience didn't laugh. And I thought, and I just came in this class today, I came up with the fix. I mean, it's, you know, it's 20, 20, 30 years ago, but I should have backgrounded the hat driving off because then it would have gotten a laugh. If Charlie would have been either doing something, doing some business or talking to somebody and in the background you see the hat, then it would have gotten a laugh.

• 1:10:07Mike Rowe?

  But you made it the center.

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  I made it the center, which is a mistake and I didn't know. But, you know, so I'm learning myself from this course. I mean.

• 1:10:15Mike Rowe?

  Well, I would refer the gentle viewer back to whacking material, I believe.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  That's a background gag.

• 1:10:23Mike Rowe?

  That's a background gag.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:10:25Mike Rowe?

  Right? What was the magazine he was reading?

• 1:10:29Speaker 03

  Modern sperm.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  This is ridiculous.

• 1:10:37Mike Rowe?

  Oh my god.

• 1:10:38Speaker 03

  Now, for some reason, I know that's another Jim Abrams joke. Yeah. He wanted whacking material.

• 1:10:47Mike Rowe?

  It's just so wrong.

• 1:10:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. But do you understand how it would have been anti-humor to cut to it?

• 1:10:55Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 1:10:56Speaker 03

  So, yeah, those are things that I can teach.

• 1:10:59Mike Rowe?

  Absolutely. Anti-humor, to cut back.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  You can't cut.

• 1:11:02Mike Rowe?

  Two-tailed, doing the spit.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  You don't have the spit tape.

• 1:11:04Mike Rowe?

  Show me the spit, not the tape.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Right, yeah. Just show it passing, and it's, it, whoops. It becomes. It made a background.

• 1:11:12Mike Rowe?

  Don't worry, that thing's not even on.

• 1:11:15Speaker 03

  This is just gonna be you.

• 1:11:16Mike Rowe?

  It's just me.

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  Talking about your dad.

• 1:11:18Mike Rowe?

  These are, it's only me.

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  I know, I'm sick of it.

• 1:11:22Mike Rowe?

  I can't get enough of the Davy Crockett thing. I know, it really, I'm like, the more I think about it.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  The other thing that my publicist said not to ask me, don't talk, whatever you do.

• 1:11:31Mike Rowe?

  Like, are there photos of you dressed as Davy Crockett? Do you have the hat?

• 1:11:36Speaker 03

  I have, I had the Coonkin cap and.

• 1:11:40Mike Rowe?

  Chuck, see if you can find this. There's gotta be a photo of him dressed as Crockett.

• 1:11:45Speaker 03

  There is, I can send it in. I can send it to you. We used to have these big rendezvous at my ranch in Ojai. I had a 20-acre ranch, and we had 100 people from all over the country, all dressed in the period.

• 1:11:58Mike Rowe?

  Dressed as Crockett?

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  And armed to the teeth with flintlock rifles. We would target shoot, with the target being a picture of Santa Ana.

• 1:12:08Mike Rowe?

  Who was leading the Mexican forces at the Alamo.

• 1:12:11Speaker 03

  That's right. Well, it was just because he was a Mexican, yeah.

• 1:12:16Mike Rowe?

  Who else died there that was like, Jim Bowie died?

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  Jim Bowie died, and Davy Crockett, and Travis.

• 1:12:24Mike Rowe?

  There was Travis, yeah.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  Travis.

• 1:12:25Mike Rowe?

  Captain Travis. I wonder, like, was there anything more accurate about that movie? I mean, aside from, like, they were there.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, there were a lot of movies done about the Alamo, but they were all bad.

• 1:12:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Speaker 03

  You know, I mean, all my Alamo buddies revere all these movies. But I don't think they're very good, and I tried to do a movie, like I said, about Davy Crockett, but I finally figured out that it needs to be just what was the second act of my movie. It should not have the Alamo. Everybody's seen the Alamo.

• 1:12:59Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:59Speaker 03

  There's been a million, everybody knows how it turns out. So, but the congressional period is the interesting thing, where Crockett actually stands up for the Indians. Uh, Jackson, President Jackson, wanted to remove all of them. It was horrible. Otherwise, pretty good presidency, wrecked by his treatment of the Indians.

• 1:13:19Mike Rowe?

  Was that the whole Trail of Tears?

• 1:13:21Speaker 03

  The Trail of Tears, which happened after 1836, when Crockett was killed. So, and Crockett stood up in Congress and, uh, spoke against it. And he was, uh, Jackson had him defeated. Oh, yeah, there you go.

• 1:13:37Mike Rowe?

  This is you.

• 1:13:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's me, yeah.

• 1:13:39Mike Rowe?

  Look at these dimples, man.

• 1:13:41Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:13:41Mike Rowe?

  What is going on with that? Oh, my God, you're dressing. You're wearing buckskin.

• 1:13:47Speaker 03

  That was, there was a scene in Naked Gun Two and a Half, where we were firing blintlock rifles. And so I was, I played Davy Crockett.

• 1:13:57Mike Rowe?

  Dude, you're kind of a geek, man.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, a hundred percent.

• 1:14:01Mike Rowe?

  I mean, no, really, when you just said before, you just kind of slipped it in there in a little parenthetical, but, you know, all my Alamo buddies.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:08Mike Rowe?

  Dot, dot, dot.

• 1:14:10Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, no, we were very proud of it. They were great. They're a great, and at the time, this was in the...

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  This was deep in the late eighties and nineties. These guys were really conservative. They were from Kentucky, Tennessee. You know, some from New Jersey. They were all very right wing. And my friend Paul Hutton and I were, and Robert Wheel, who's an artist. We're all lefties and, uh, and so, but we all got along. I like these guys. And we rewrote our script with a kind of a left wing bent. It was ridiculous. Anyway, so, but then I realized, I mean, I flipped over and I actually sent the script to Fest Parker.

• 1:14:58Mike Rowe?

  No kidding?

• 1:14:59Speaker 03

  I did.

• 1:14:59Mike Rowe?

  The original Davy Crockett?

• 1:15:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:01Mike Rowe?

  Well, not the original, the original actor.

• 1:15:03Speaker 03

  Because after Naked Gun two and a half, I got a call from Fest Parker. And he wanted to meet me because he, you know, he had seen that I put all these scenes in about Davy Crockett. And I put pictures on the wall of Davy Crockett.

• 1:15:18Mike Rowe?

  I was just gonna say, do we have photos? Can you find a, like a photo of Davy Crockett? Like the, the actual Davy Crockett?

• 1:15:24Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 1:15:24Mike Rowe?

  Cause I'm pretty sure he didn't look like Fest Parker.

• 1:15:26Speaker 03

  No, there are, you know, artists' renderings of him. There was no photography then, but.

• 1:15:31Mike Rowe?

  Right, but there must be.

• 1:15:33Speaker 03

  But they have like about six different portraits of him.

• 1:15:37Mike Rowe?

  Tell me something else about Davy Crockett. I don't know.

• 1:15:40Speaker 03

  Well, you know, we said, you know, he's a humorist. You know, he actually stood up for what he thought was morally right. And not a politician, he was an entertainer. And that's how he got elected because he was really popular. They probably cheated and had him defeated through, you know, you look, how the hell did Biden get elected?

• 1:16:01Mike Rowe?

  Well.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was the same thing.

• 1:16:03Mike Rowe?

  Opinions vary, but yeah.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:04Mike Rowe?

  There was something going on.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  There was something going on, yeah.

• 1:16:08Mike Rowe?

  I remember him like almost drowning in some riverboat mishap. Or something.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  Yes, he, you know, cut out.

• 1:16:19Mike Rowe?

  There's your fart proudly.

• 1:16:20Speaker 03

  That's not him.

• 1:16:21Mike Rowe?

  Writings of Benjamin Franklin you never read in school.

• 1:16:23Speaker 03

  And Franklin wore a coonskin cap, yeah. Two, that's Crockett there, that's probably what he looked like.

• 1:16:31Speaker 03

  That's the Osgood portrait.

• 1:16:33Mike Rowe?

  Osgood was a famous portraitist.

• 1:16:36Speaker 03

  I guess, yeah, and these guys went to Washington DC and Crockett mainly was not pleased with any of these portraits because he said it made him look like a Presbyterian minister. And it's like a cross between a schoolteacher and a, so he finally got a guy, a famous portrait artist named Chapman to paint him in his buckskin outfit and with a hunting dog and a rifle.

• 1:17:05Mike Rowe?

  And his element.

• 1:17:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and his element and that's, and that hung in the, in the Texas State House.

• 1:17:14Mike Rowe?

  Was it well hung?

• 1:17:16Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna treat that joke with any kind of dignity.

• 1:17:20Mike Rowe?

  That wasn't a joke.

• 1:17:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I was going to say that the Texas State Capitol burned down because they had evidently Karen Bass was the mayor then.

• 1:17:35Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man, so, okay.

• 1:17:37Speaker 03

  Have I said enough, you think? I saw more, okay.

• 1:17:42Mike Rowe?

  No, you know, it's strange, I flew in a year ago as the fire had, really had just started. Looking out the window of the plane, I'm like, what is this? It looked like a very unusual fog bank.

• 1:17:54Speaker 03

  Smoky, yeah.

• 1:17:55Mike Rowe?

  Didn't look like smoke, from my perspective, it looked like fog. And then I flew in again exactly one year later and it's just, I, I don't know if you want to go there, but it's just appalling.

• 1:18:06Speaker 03

  I have driven up PCH through Malibu, I mean, I don't recognize it, there's just nothing there now.

• 1:18:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  And I have not driven through Palisades, but, I mean, it seems to me, and again, you know, I don't know that much about it, but. It seems that this, all this was unnecessary. And I wish we had another governor and another mayor. But I don't know who's running for mayor. I wish, uh, uh, Caruso would run.

• 1:18:34Mike Rowe?

  I bet he will. And if not. Well, he ran before and, and lost, so. Yeah.

• 1:18:39Speaker 03

  But.

• 1:18:40Mike Rowe?

  Naked gun four.

• 1:18:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, but.

• 1:18:43Mike Rowe?

  Too soon.

• 1:18:43Speaker 03

  It's just didn't need to happen. I mean, in so many, you know, with the technology they have today, they could have remote cameras everywhere so that if there's smoke anywhere. In fact, I guess there was a, it was burned and the fire department said, we need to stay here. And someone up the chain of command said, no, you don't need to stay there anymore.

• 1:19:05Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Speaker 03

  It's out. So, you know.

• 1:19:09Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. There's nothing funny about it.

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  No, no, I wasn't.

• 1:19:13Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  There's nothing funny, but there's funny about the voters in LA who, and the voters in, well, that's not funny either. Voters in New York, I don't know. I don't know what they're thinking. Yeah.

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

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• 1:20:02Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Well, you know, I think sometimes, as I say a lot on this thing, things have to go splat, like before they get better.

• 1:20:10Speaker 03

  Before they get better.

• 1:20:12Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And I think that might be true, like maybe with, like for a while there, I thought that was true with the state of comedy. Like this is bad. This isn't funny anymore.

• 1:20:20Speaker 03

  There's nothing on, in movies. And I'm kind of, I want to do these movies and bring comedy back. And, you know, you were telling me about how you were laughing in the theater and it spread to other people. Well, that's the importance of having a theatrical experience.

• 1:20:37Mike Rowe?

  A communal thing, yeah.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  And not communal, yeah, especially for comedy. I mean, I can still watch my favorite movies like The Godfather and.

• 1:20:45Mike Rowe?

  And laugh.

• 1:20:46Speaker 03

  And laugh. In the privacy of my, of my living room, yes. Well, something like airplane, you need.

• 1:20:54Mike Rowe?

  Oh, you're not ten, seven, funny.

• 1:20:56Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, you know, I mean, that scene with Sonny and the towboos, hilarious. Yeah.

• 1:21:02Mike Rowe?

  They're like, they're still shooting it.

• 1:21:03Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:21:06Mike Rowe?

  Was Blazing Saddles important to you?

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:21:09Mike Rowe?

  Why?

• 1:21:11Speaker 03

  I don't know, I think I enjoyed it, but I think I, I loved that they were making jokes and, but it didn't, it wasn't our sense of humor real, I mean, it wasn't our style, it wasn't our style.

• 1:21:26Mike Rowe?

  No, it's not your style, but it seems like in the same way like The Wayans was not your style, but.

• 1:21:32Speaker 03

  But the, well, The Wayans came after us, but, you know, Mel Brooks came before us and Wood, but something about Woody Allen, I think, was more inspiring to us. It's just, we just thought, we, I remember Jerry and Jim and I couldn't wait for the next Woody Allen movie to come out.

• 1:21:50Mike Rowe?

  You know, I couldn't wait for his next books. Did you ever read Side Effects?

• 1:21:56Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:21:57Mike Rowe?

  Funny. And he wrote another one called Without Feathers, which is even funnier.

• 1:22:02Speaker 03

  I just read, I think I read the recent, he wrote autobiography.

• 1:22:08Mike Rowe?

  Not funny.

• 1:22:09Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't funny, but I, I was interested in it. I think it's mainly he, he had, he, he wanted to oppose the, all the rumors and I think he wanted to tell his story, his side of the story.

• 1:22:22Mike Rowe?

  No.

• 1:22:22Speaker 03

  You know, I, I.

• 1:22:23Mike Rowe?

  Read Without Feathers.

• 1:22:24Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:22:25Mike Rowe?

  Which is taken from an Emily Dickinson poem, which is about as unfunny and dark as you can be.

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  I haven't read it. I really read only nonfiction and history, biographies, anything about World War II.

• 1:22:42Mike Rowe?

  I could not stop for death, so death kindly stopped for me.

• 1:22:47Speaker 03

  And that was Emily Dickinson.

• 1:22:49Mike Rowe?

  That's Dickinson.

• 1:22:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's nice.

• 1:22:51Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Speaker 03

  And I can't imagine what-

• 1:22:52Mike Rowe?

  And our coach was just ourselves and immortality. Right there was Sylvia Plath, great comedians.

• 1:22:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, very funny.

• 1:23:00Mike Rowe?

  All right, so aside from Master Crash, which people- How does one crash the master?

• 1:23:06Speaker 03

  Just go to mastercrash.com. It's a free community. You get in and then for other extras, it'll cost some money, but-

• 1:23:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:14Speaker 03

  You can get into the community and get a lot of it for free.

• 1:23:18Mike Rowe?

  Absolutely check it out.

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  Check it out.

• 1:23:20Mike Rowe?

  I don't know. You don't really know me. You don't know me at all. And you're not gonna remember any of this, but the Davy Crockett thing, man.

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Mike Rowe?

  Like, are you watching, I don't know, like Landman or Taylor Sheridan stuff? Any of this? You don't watch any of this?

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  I don't watch anything. I don't watch anything on TV. And I read books on airplanes. When I'm trapped on an airplane, I have to read a book. I watch documentaries. I watched a documentary on Andrew Jackson, on, you know, all this stuff. On Patton. I just love history. I love to watch and learn what really happened.

• 1:23:57Mike Rowe?

  Well, for that reason.

• 1:23:59Speaker 03

  It was for his fame.

• 1:24:00Mike Rowe?

  It's just fart proudly again.

• 1:24:02Speaker 03

  Sorry, I'm starting to get this up. There's Master Crash.

• 1:24:04Mike Rowe?

  There you go. There's Master Crash. There's, oh, very clever.

• 1:24:09Mike Rowe?

  Very clever.

• 1:24:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, so.

• 1:24:13Mike Rowe?

  Is it still fun being you?

• 1:24:16Speaker 03

  Everything is so fun. It gets more and more fun. I'm excited to wake up every morning because I have a movie that I'm in pre-production for. I mean, you know, The Star of Malta, which is a black and white film noir set in 1949. We're casting it now. We're going out to cast. So that's very exciting. So, you know, we have backing for it and-

• 1:24:39Mike Rowe?

  You got a role for a marginally famous cable TV star between gigs?

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  If, how many people watch this or follow you?

• 1:24:48Mike Rowe?

  Dozens.

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  Dozens.

• 1:24:50Mike Rowe?

  No, what I got, I got, I got nine million people on the social medias.

• 1:24:54Speaker 03

  You're in.

• 1:25:00Mike Rowe?

  Now, to be clear, you didn't say urine.

• 1:25:03Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:25:04Mike Rowe?

  You said, "I, me, I am in."

• 1:25:06Speaker 03

  At one time, you know, that's how we made jokes, was hearing things the wrong way. And so, somebody said, "We saw in a serious movie, the line, 'Surely you can't be serious.'" And one of us thought, "Okay, that's surely, it's someone's name." So, that's how stuff... And everything, when somebody, I watched Dave Rubin all the time.

• 1:25:27Mike Rowe?

  Sure.

• 1:25:27Speaker 03

  And he'll say, "I'm gonna have more on this after that." And I wanna say, "Who you calling a moron?" You know, just dumb jokes like that.

• 1:25:34Mike Rowe?

  What's that in the road? Ahead?

• 1:25:38Mike Rowe?

  No, no, no.

• 1:25:39Speaker 03

  Is that from Monty Python?

• 1:25:41Mike Rowe?

  Uh, it's either that, or maybe Fire Sign Theater, Beyond the Fringe.

• 1:25:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:46Mike Rowe?

  Some of those earlier guys.

• 1:25:47Speaker 03

  But I sometimes, I send stuff into Dave, he'll use stuff.

• 1:25:51Mike Rowe?

  That's great.

• 1:25:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Mike Rowe?

  Well, that's, you know, it's funny, Carson used to send stuff into the other Dave.

• 1:25:56Speaker 03

  That's right, that's how he got started.

• 1:25:58Mike Rowe?

  Well, he was like, after he retired.

• 1:25:59Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, after he retired, but I think a lot of these guys, George Kaufman, used to send things to, there was a guy named FP something. You know, these newspaper columnists. I think Woody Allen sent stuff into columnists, that's how he got started.

• 1:26:17Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:17Speaker 03

  And so, the guy, I can't remember who the columnists were, but they would use his jokes. And then, he came in and he wrote for, you know, comedians.

• 1:26:27Mike Rowe?

  Well, you know, the, like, the pulps were a big deal, right, for writers. And like, getting into a pulp fiction magazine, it was a starting point for so many guys who went on. John D. McDonald, Elmore Leonard, you know, those guys, you kind of find your way.

• 1:26:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:47Mike Rowe?

  You know? I mean, it's so different now, it seems, anybody with a phone, you know, can, I don't know. The audience might not be big, to your point.

• 1:26:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's always changing, with every generation. At one point, it was newspapers, and then it was pulp novels, and then it was radio, and then TV, then movie, you know, just all this stuff. And today, it's something else, you know, it's like, I don't think that how we started will happen again. We started a small theater, and we had video as a part of the, our theater show.

• 1:27:18Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:19Speaker 03

  We had two video monitors onstage.

• 1:27:21Mike Rowe?

  Were you a Second City fan?

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  Uh, no.

• 1:27:23Mike Rowe?

  SCTV, no?

• 1:27:25Speaker 03

  No, I mean SCTV I think was good, but I didn't watch. We didn't watch anything that much.

• 1:27:31Mike Rowe?

  I got a theory for you. I'd love to get your opinion. Are you okay? You're late? You gotta go?

• 1:27:35Speaker 03

  Let's see, um, no, I'm fine.

• 1:27:38Mike Rowe?

  Okay. So like Lenny Bruce.

• 1:27:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:43Mike Rowe?

  All right. Any comedian coming up, once upon a time, had to bomb. You have to fail. You have to go down in flames, right? You, that's how you get better. You learn.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  The Marx Brothers did, Woody Allen, they all failed.

• 1:27:57Mike Rowe?

  They all failed.

• 1:27:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58Mike Rowe?

  But they failed in front of dozens of people.

• 1:28:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:28:01Mike Rowe?

  Today, you fail, you can fail in front of a dozen people, but they're all documenting your failure.

• 1:28:07Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 1:28:07Mike Rowe?

  And they're gonna share it with the world.

• 1:28:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:28:10Mike Rowe?

  So, you know, I wonder what it's done to the state of comedy to remove the freedom to fail modestly.

• 1:28:20Speaker 03

  I don't, I can't answer that. You know, I'm not that, I'm not that deep. And I'm not that aware of what's happening today. All I know, there's always funny people coming up, but there is a lack of theatrical comedy. I mean, there's some comedy on TV. I don't think, I don't really have an interest in any of the sitcoms that are there. I don't, I don't like that kinda humor. I mean, since Seinfeld and, and Curb, there hasn't been anything really acidly cutting and out there and just totally, like Larry David and Seinfeld are.

• 1:29:01Mike Rowe?

  They did it right.

• 1:29:02Speaker 03

  They classify themselves. And I don't see anybody coming up that's like that. I mean, and on TV, you have South Park, and as I said, the Jokers, but I don't, and I don't watch anything. I don't think any of that stuff is funny.

• 1:29:18Mike Rowe?

  Well, I think, like if I were actually taking notes and capable of remembering much of what you said, I would wanna hang on to the, like the, the idea that nobody wants a sermon, and nobody wants a lecture.

• 1:29:31Speaker 03

  That's our rule, which is, uh, tech, uh, no, it's ax grinding.

• 1:29:37Mike Rowe?

  Same thing.

• 1:29:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, same thing. That's, we cover that, yeah.

• 1:29:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:41Speaker 03

  And so, and if you do wanna make a point, you better, a joke to pay for it.

• 1:29:47Mike Rowe?

  You gotta earn it.

• 1:29:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, you gotta earn it.

• 1:29:50Mike Rowe?

  David, you've earned it, man. Your career is so amazing. And really, not to make it too much about Carson, but as we were talking about it, I thought, you know, the reason that kid's book is doing so well is because so many people have so many collective memories of watching The Tonight Show. And the reason I think you're important is because you gave a terrific gift to millions and millions of people who really didn't know how much they appreciated a little irreverence or a little subversion or some fun rule breaking.

• 1:30:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:30:28Mike Rowe?

  And, you know, just laughing and thinking about those moments, you know, that's a...

• 1:30:32Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:30:33Mike Rowe?

  It's a gift, man. You gave a lot of people a gift.

• 1:30:37Speaker 03

  And it's always nice to hear, and I hear it a lot, somebody saying that this is, you know, this shaped their sense of humor or something. It's just, I like to hear. Anything where I can feel more important, I love, yeah.

• 1:30:50Mike Rowe?

  Well, sure. You should think about putting together some kind of class.

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 1:30:55Mike Rowe?

  No, it's not gonna stick?

• 1:30:57Speaker 03

  It's a dumb idea.

• 1:30:58Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you're probably right.

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  Right, yeah.

• 1:31:00Mike Rowe?

  But what about a crash?

• 1:31:01Speaker 03

  Oh, well, wait a minute. You might have something there.

• 1:31:05Mike Rowe?

  Uh, thanks again. Really appreciate it.

• 1:31:08Speaker 03

  It was, it was a lot of fun doing this.

• 1:31:11Mike Rowe?

  I'll get you that martini now.

• 1:31:12Speaker 03

  I love it, yeah. Oh, and I just have to get home by six. And then, and then having a guest over.

• 1:31:20Mike Rowe?

  Hmm, yes. Anybody I know?

• 1:31:22Speaker 03

  No, nobody famous.

• 1:31:24Mike Rowe?

  That Feinberg guy you were talking about from, uh, New York? What was his name?

• 1:31:28Speaker 03

  Oh, Friedman.

• 1:31:29Mike Rowe?

  Friedman.

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

  Louis.

• 1:31:31Mike Rowe?

  You tell Louis I said hello.

• 1:31:32Speaker 03

  I will tell Louis you said hello.

• 1:31:33Mike Rowe?

  And forget about that 20 bucks.

• 1:31:34Speaker 03

  Maybe he'll listen to this. I'll turn him on to this, because I didn't...

• 1:31:38Mike Rowe?

  Maybe he already has.

• 1:31:39Speaker 03

  I mentioned him, didn't I?

• 1:31:40Mike Rowe?

  You came in and you started telling me a story about this lefty in New York that you're friends with.

• 1:31:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, you know what we did? I have to tell you this. We... We grew up in the first suburb north of Milwaukee, All-White High School, in the 60s. And there was only one black kid, and he was the exchange student from Uganda. Nobody saw him for 50 years. We had a 50-year class reunion. Louis and I hired an actor named Mario somebody, and we dressed him in an African dashiki, and we had him come to the reunion as Muj... His name was Mujabi Mapaka. And everybody called him Blowjobi at the time. And he, of course, the kid had a... He had a... I remember he had a wonderful sense of humor. He thought it was funny.

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  We gave him a speech to read. It was a huge... I have a... I have a video of the speech, and it was great.

• 1:32:36Mike Rowe?

  Now, I understand why Practical Jokers is on your list.

• 1:32:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's practical.

• 1:32:43Mike Rowe?

  What other pranks? I'm sorry, I can't let you go yet. Like, anybody capable of hiring somebody to come in to impersonate a black foreign exchange student decades after the fact?

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, our class still doesn't know that it was a prank.

• 1:32:57Mike Rowe?

  They do now.

• 1:32:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, they won't listen to this.

• 1:33:00Mike Rowe?

  You'd be surprised.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  Which would be great. You know, I always wanted to cast him in a movie, and then have him be in a talk show and tell about the gag.

• 1:33:09Mike Rowe?

  That's such a great story.

• 1:33:10Speaker 03

  Anyway, you know, we had a... He had his picture. We... Everybody wanted their picture taken with him. And a couple of these women sent the picture to his... The host, the AFS host. And he said, "That's not Mujabi. Mujabi was a foot taller and, you know, wasn't... That's not him at all." And so then, everybody's, you know, emailing... There's 200 kids in the class. All these panicked emails saying, "It's an African prince. He was a swindler." And then I had a... I had an article written, you know, mocked up article from the some newspaper in Illinois saying the guy had been apprehended and was accused of doing the scam.

• 1:33:54Speaker 03

  And in one recent Milwaukee reunion, he was used to scamming elderly women. And he romanced somebody, slept with her and scammed her out of $5,000. And so that became a whole thing. Everybody was wondering who it was. But the big complaint was one of our classmates, this lady says, we are not elderly.

• 1:34:19Mike Rowe?

  But see, this actually, I'm so glad we kept talking because that really lands the plane. Now I understand. I understand why, like, taking the gag to the next level, to the next level.

• 1:34:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, we kept going. We kept going, yeah.

• 1:34:35Mike Rowe?

  So good.

• 1:34:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's because I'm bored, you know, and I need to do something. Look at I'm doing this show. I sit at home waiting for my movie to start.

• 1:34:44Mike Rowe?

  I got one for you. We took in college, we took a picture of a guy. His name was Chuddy. Everybody called him Chuddy. He has this odd thing and he had a big round face. He was a nice enough kid, but he's just kind of obnoxious. Anyway, somebody took a picture of his face and put it on thousands of little decals that had adhesive on them.

• 1:35:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:11Mike Rowe?

  And just handed them out to people, said, don't tell Chuddy, but just take them and put them in the elevator, put them on the payphones, just put them all over town.

• 1:35:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:18Mike Rowe?

  And I don't think anybody ever told him, but I think he may have lost his mind.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, seeing these pictures.

• 1:35:24Mike Rowe?

  Send pictures of yourself, out of context, no explanation.

• 1:35:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:35:27Mike Rowe?

  But to really like commit to that bit and go with it.

• 1:35:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's also a big thing and we also loved having the bomb go off when you're not there. And so, and that's what Jim Abrams used to do. In the book, we tell a story where Jim and Jerry and I were at our friend Kenny Hurwitz's house for the afternoon. And Jim takes Jerry and me aside and say, "I have to leave now because I have something, but Kenny's gonna have you guys over for dinner." And so Jim leaves and Jerry and I are waiting around and Ken finally said, "You know, guys, I have to leave. I have a date tonight." Jim totally made it up and Jerry and I, you know, we weren't invited for dinner. So it's just, it was a thing and Jim was nowhere near.

• 1:36:15Speaker 03

  So he didn't even get to appreciate the joke that he did? No, no. Jim was somewhere else. Wow.

• 1:36:22Mike Rowe?

  Oh, man, that's the long game.

• 1:36:25Speaker 03

  Jim was a just pure comedy, pure humor. He never even wanted to get into the business. He was an insurance adjuster and an investigator, private investigator for a law firm in Milwaukee. And he had a company car. It was a Ford LTD. He was fine. Jerry and I dragged him into this Kentucky Fried Theater. And it was a big deal for him to leave Milwaukee, go to LA with us. And, you know, so that was Jim. Okay.

• 1:36:57Mike Rowe?

  Zucker like Hooker.

• 1:36:59Speaker 03

  Zucker, yeah, you got that right.

• 1:37:04Speaker 03

  Mike, you seem to be right like the clock twice a day.

• 1:37:07Mike Rowe?

  Twice a day, man. Twice a day. Thank you again. We'll get you home by six.

• 1:37:12Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:37:13Mike Rowe?

  With the martini.

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  Okay. Thanks for the parking space, too.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge. But in this world, the advertisers really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Not four. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. Definitely not two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five-star review. We need five. All you've got to do is leave a quick... Even if you hate it. Five. Especially if you hate it. Review.

• 1:38:27Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:38:33Speaker 04

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