Barry Levinson | Club Random with Bill Maher

Bill Maher sits down with Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson for a fast and funny masterclass in storytelling. Levinson revisits the Diner years and the “controlled chaos” of getting real performances – why loose, actor-driven rhythm can beat perfect dialogue, and how ensemble films changed the game. From there, it’s a hop through Hollywood history: Robert De Niro’s work ethic and the behind-the-scenes realities of building Rain Man during a writers strike. Maher and Levinson also go big-picture – why comedy ages faster than music, what’s been lost in today’s committee-driven studios, and a darkly hilarious debate about AI, jobs, and why machines still can’t do human funny. Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch episodes ad-free – subscribe to Bill Maher’s Substack: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://billmaher.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support our Advertisers: Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://www.trueclassic.com/RANDOM! #trueclassicpod #ad Go to https://www.zbiotics.com/random and use code RANDOM for 15% off your first order Buy Club Random Merch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://clubrandom.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM Bill Maher rewrites the rules of podcasting the way he did in television in this series of one on one, hour long conversations with a wide variety of unexpected guests in the undisclosed location called Club Random. There’s a whole big world out there that isn’t about politics and Bill and his guests—from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Jordan Peterson, Quentin Tarantino and Neil DeGrasse Tyson—talk about all of it. For advertising opportunities please email: [email protected] ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last fourteen years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 40 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written five bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” and most recently, “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass.” FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:29Bill Maher?

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• 2:12Bill Maher?

  I don't know, I'm not a virgin, so I don't know the answer.

• 2:14Speaker 03

  Well, we have to stop that. The question is, how do you stop that?

• 2:17Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, you have to want to.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  It's not funny at all.

• 2:24Bill Maher?

  Exactly my point. They were just happy to have the war over.

• 2:32Bill Maher?

  How are you, pal?

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Good, how you doing?

• 2:34Bill Maher?

  I mean, I don't really know you that well, but I feel like I do. I feel like you're my pal, because I'm such a fan here.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Oh, thanks.

• 2:40Bill Maher?

  And all the... I think we have met, though.

• 2:42Speaker 03

  We did. I thought we met... That you came in, uh, for a role in something.

• 2:49Bill Maher?

  Oh, my god, that long ago.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  That long ago.

• 2:52Bill Maher?

  When I was looking for roles.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, and you came in and we met.

• 2:56Bill Maher?

  Holy fuck. What, you remember the project?

• 2:59Speaker 03

  No. It was a half-hour show.

• 3:03Bill Maher?

  Oh, it was a TV show?

• 3:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a half-hour TV show.

• 3:06Bill Maher?

  It was not the lead in Rain Man?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't that.

• 3:12Bill Maher?

  I did read for Top Gun in 1983.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  Did you really?

• 3:15Bill Maher?

  Twenty... Sure, I was 27. I don't know if it was for the Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise role, but... It was 1983, I was 27, they needed soldiers. I was the right age for a soldier, I... Yeah.

• 3:30Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 3:32Bill Maher?

  So, but a TV show, and you don't remember what show this was?

• 3:36Speaker 03

  I can't remember, maybe it'll come to me if we talk, but I... It didn't... I think it was...

• 3:45Speaker 03

  We did like, I think, six episodes, and then it was short-lived. And I was originally gonna direct it, but then they wanted to do it as a, you know, like a video thing, you know? Rather than, you know, cameras, so it's all done all at one go. And I just said, "I'm not really fond of doing that," so I backed out of directing it.

• 4:08Bill Maher?

  See, I always thought our connection was my buddy, comic buddy who I started with, Paul Reiser.

• 4:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:15Bill Maher?

  And, you know, we had a mutual friend, sadly now departed, Michael Hampton-Kane, and he and Paul were out buying underwear one day, and he had an audition for Diner, Michael did.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 4:29Bill Maher?

  And they, and Paul was just tagging along.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 4:32Bill Maher?

  You remember this?

• 4:33Speaker 03

  No, I know the story.

• 4:34Bill Maher?

  Oh, okay.

• 4:35Speaker 03

  I remember.

• 4:36Bill Maher?

  And he got the part?

• 4:37Speaker 03

  No.

• 4:37Bill Maher?

  Obviously.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  I'll tell you what happened on the other side of it then. Ellen Chinoweth, who was the casting director.

• 4:43Bill Maher?

  Uh huh.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  She said, you know, there's a guy out there. He came with his friend. They're going somewhere afterwards. I don't know what.

• 4:51Bill Maher?

  Buying underwear. I'm telling you.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  And she said, you know, I'm listening to him talk and I like his rhythm. It seems good.

• 5:01Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  And she said, but I don't think he's ever done anything. I said, well, I mean, I'll meet him. So he came in, we talked.

• 5:07Bill Maher?

  You hadn't done much by then, right? We're talking about 1982.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  This is the first, this would be my first chance to direct.

• 5:14Bill Maher?

  Yes, I know.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  And he came in and we talked for about 20 minutes, half hour. And when he left, I said to Ellen, I said, we have to use him. I just got to figure out the character and then I'm going to work with him. It'll be good. And.

• 5:31Bill Maher?

  I mean, that rhythm that he has, which is all his. They used to say that he took it from Richard Lewis. There is a similarity there, but he didn't take it from Richard Lewis.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  No. That's the way he talks.

• 5:46Bill Maher?

  It's, it's the way he talks. And so does Richard Lewis to a degree.

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:50Bill Maher?

  I mean, I could see why people would say that. But sometimes Jews just sound alike. There, I've said it. Jews all sound, not all, but you know, and, and that's what it was. And they're funny.

• 6:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, no.

• 6:05Bill Maher?

  I mean, a lot of that movie was ad lib, right?

• 6:07Speaker 03

  That's how, with, with Paul, like if we were, I remember late at night and we still had a little time left. And I said, why don't you talk to. Eddie, the character Gutenberg is playing that. And just say, are you going home? You know, and he says, of course, I'm going home. It's four in the morning, you know. I said, why don't I just keep? You want a ride, but you don't want to talk about it. And then I told that to Gutenberg. And then we put together a scene. And it ends one of the evenings at the diner.

• 6:42Bill Maher?

  I mean, it was kind of an early version of what like Curb Your Enthusiasm does. Much, right? You're just telling them, you're not giving them a specific dialogue.

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 6:54Bill Maher?

  You're just saying, this is the scene. These are funny people, funny comic actors, actors but comedians, you know, kind of both. And you do it. It'll look more natural and it'll come out funnier than people reading dialogue.

• 7:10Speaker 03

  Right. No.

• 7:12Bill Maher?

  That's.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  And that was the fun part of it. The only thing I had to figure out, and we also had to. And I didn't know it at this time. When we started to do that, the, I said, oh, that's a take. Let's, and the audio guy said, well, you know, it's not going to work. I said, why not? So because the off-camera guys, the voices, they have to wait. I said, yeah, but it sounds good. It sounds good.

• 7:41Bill Maher?

  Natural.

• 7:41Speaker 03

  It's natural. And he said, no, well, you can always do that in post. You can take one side and the other and you put them together. I said, I know, but it'll affect the rhythm of the actors. We, they have to be loose enough. They said, well, but that's the way we do it. And I said, well, what happens if you mic all of them? You know, this side of the table and this side of the table. So even if they're off-camera, the rhythm is still the rhythm. You know, I mean, you can't, you can't fix funny moments and just how long a pause is and all that's got to. And so that's what we did. I didn't know that because I was first time doing a film that Altman had used multiple.

• 8:25Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yes, absolutely. I mean, you could see that in MASH.

• 8:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:28Bill Maher?

  You can see that in Nashville. It's a much more naturalistic. I'm not a giant, is he still with us?

• 8:35Speaker 03

  No.

• 8:36Bill Maher?

  Great, okay.

• 8:36Speaker 03

  It's okay, I won't care.

• 8:38Bill Maher?

  I was never a giant fan of. What's his first name? Altman, Robert Altman.

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Robert Altman.

• 8:45Bill Maher?

  I mean Mash is a, is obviously a landmark movie. But I like the TV show a lot better than the movie. Right? Maybe not, I don't know, but it, it's very, it's a little too naturalistic for me. You, to me, hit a great balance. I mean, your movie, Diner, is super entertaining and it's not, I mean, Robert Altman, I mean, you, it's, it's an acquired taste. I'll just put it that way.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Look, he did some terrific films and some that I didn't particularly care for. But when he did hit with Mash, that was like a breakthrough. I mean, they're operating, there's blood and they're talking and what, it's very casual. And that sort of, you know, it's not the Korean War, but set in the Korean War. And that was a breakthrough moment.

• 9:28Bill Maher?

  I feel the pacing is slow. That's his style. So like just let the camera just take in this, this portrait, this palette.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:38Bill Maher?

  Uh, for a very long time and not a lot of cut, maybe I'm wrong, remembering it wrong, but it just seemed a little too unpolished for me, you know? There's something to be said for, for raw and there's something to be said for working on it till it's perfect. And you gotta find the balance in between, no?

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Yes, you do, but at its time, it was a breakthrough.

• 10:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  And, and that's, you know, that's, that's the key thing. All of a sudden, something different, you go, oh, and then things went along that way. Now, he, he continued to do it, but sometimes successfully, sometimes not so.

• 10:19Bill Maher?

  But Diner was also that because it, I mean, it, it sort of ushered in this ensemble. Not that people hadn't done an ensemble cast before, but I feel like this was, that's my memory of it. That it, it sort of made legitimate this sort of ensemble way of doing a movie. I mean, like who's the star of it?

• 10:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:46Bill Maher?

  All of them. You know, they all, it was sort of equal. Was it Mickey Rourke? No.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  No.

• 10:52Bill Maher?

  Was it Daniel Stern? No. Was it Reiser? I mean, who, Gutenberg? I mean, there was no like definitive, oh, that's the prima, our alpha.

• 11:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 11:02Bill Maher?

  You know, it was all, it's ensemble.

• 11:05Speaker 03

  No, it's a, they're all dependent of one another.

• 11:08Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  You know, they all have separate stories to wander through. But they're, and they're different characters, but they do work as a group. It's not, here's the lead and here's the French friends.

• 11:20Bill Maher?

  I mean, that's, I think the same year as The Big Chill. Or maybe The Big Chill was eighty-three.

• 11:26Speaker 03

  I'm not sure. They were near one another.

• 11:28Bill Maher?

  Remember The Big Chill?

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:30Bill Maher?

  So, like, I feel like I know what that was commenting on. The Big Chill, but I feel like diner, what would you say it was like? What was the message or the comment on the, this era we're living in, this, this new decade? And where are we in nineteen eighty-two? What was it saying about that?

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Well, it was really what we're saying in nineteen fifty-nine, which is when the movie is set.

• 11:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but commenting, you can set a movie in B.C. and it still can be commenting.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, the, the, what's the, what's the Arthur Miller movie about the Salem witch trials? It's really commenting on the communist scare of the fifties. The Crucible, right?

• 12:15Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:16Bill Maher?

  Okay, so it's nineteen fifty-nine, but I feel like it had something to say about our present.

• 12:21Speaker 03

  Well, no, it has, it does. I mean, it, it was based on the idea of the lack of communication between male and female.

• 12:30Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  That, that's the heart and soul of the piece.

• 12:33Bill Maher?

  Daniel Stern, I remember with the wife and the records.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the records and what's on the flip side and how do you not know that? It turns into a huge argument, walking out on one another, you know? And Eddie with the football test, he kind of wanted to get married, which was a true story, by the way.

• 12:49Bill Maher?

  But these are things, obviously, you told them, I mean, they didn't ad lib those things. They may have ad libbed the dialogue, but those were your ideas for the.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, those are the, those are the moments that we got a hit.

• 13:01Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  Yeah. And, you know, so I was just taking what I had, what I knew growing up. You know, all of our stupidity at times and how we don't understand things and the confusion that went on and all of that, leading up to the beginning of a new era, nineteen sixty, and what's gonna happen.

• 13:25Bill Maher?

  But I think, I mean, again, The Big Chill, I think I was just talking about this here with somebody. To me. The message of that movie was encapsulated in the scene where, again, this is early 80s and it's about the generation that thought they were gonna be hippies forever. Right? But now, we all have to discover that moment. You're not a hippie anymore. You got kids. And you remember in the movie and Kevin Kline, he's living out in North Carolina and they all come for some sort of reunion. Right, they're all, they all went to college together in the 60s and they were hippies.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Was it a funeral that they came?

• 14:05Bill Maher?

  Um, one guy had died. I think that was Kevin Costner who they cut out of the movie. Remember, he was supposed to be in that, but his startup had to wait a minute. But they all come to his house and, and there's a scene where the cop comes by and, you know, it's kind of rural, but, and Kevin Kline is really nice to the cop and, you know, one of his friends is giving him shit about, oh, you're really nice to the pigs, huh? And he's like, dude, I'm dug in here, okay? I live here now. I've got kids. I want that cop to be my friend. We're not in college anymore. You know?

• 14:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 14:39Bill Maher?

  We're not hippies. We gotta get to, you know, and that is, is, it was a key thing in that era for people of our era. I mean, I was a little young to be a hippie, even when the hippies were around, but I got that vibe. You know, I couldn't have gone to Woodstock, I was 13. But I, that was my vibe. And then, you know, you do realize now it's 80 and Reagan's president and we do need money. Money's good. Greed is good, isn't it?

• 15:09Speaker 03

  Now, you went through this whole period. I mean, look, the hippie period was one of the crazier periods, you know, certainly in the 20th century. I mean, it was completely nuts.

• 15:20Bill Maher?

  Because?

• 15:21Speaker 03

  You know, I mean, because of the rise of, of marijuana and all of those particular things. I mean, I'll just give you like a, an idea how nutty the time was. I was rooming with this one guy named, I'm one, rooming with someone, you know, sleeping bags and whatever and it was, when it was cheap in LA. And I came in one day and Leo was lying on the couch and he's moaning, oh, I'm really fucked up. I said, Leo, what's wrong? And he says, oh, I'm really fucked up. I said, well, what's wrong? He said, you know, I saw some pills on the sidewalk, man, and I took them.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  They really fucked me up. I said, you took pills on the sidewalk? He said, yeah. I said, Leo, what is wrong? And he looked at me, he says, they could have been good, man. They could have been good.

• 16:21Bill Maher?

  That is the name of a book. They could have been good, man.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  And so that was that. And it was a crazy period. And we would go up to, and Leo knew, he said, because I was new to L.A. at that time. He went up to, he said, go up to Laurel Canyon. And I said, he said, there's a lot of stuff going on up there. And I said, well, where do we go? He said, we just listen for the music, man, and then you just wander in. And then we were walking, and then he, like a, like a hound dog, like that was that direction there. He was always stoned. And we went in there and there was like-

• 16:56Bill Maher?

  People like that, huh? The worst.

• 17:00Speaker 03

  And there was some kind of party, and there was music going on. And it could have been some of the, you know, guys from the band, I don't know. But there were these parties. There was no security back then. It was just wander in, wander out, do whatever you want.

• 17:14Bill Maher?

  But see, Barry, I feel like, again, that is just the greatest title. They could have been good men. But I feel like it applies not so much to the period of history, but the period of life. Because it's not so much that there was the 60s, it's that the guy was how old?

• 17:36Speaker 03

  Oh, he would have been 20.

• 17:40Bill Maher?

  Right. That, to me, is what that's about. Because that happens in every age. It is amazing to me that anyone lives to 40. Because you are, at least men, are so stupid. I certainly count myself among them.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:55Bill Maher?

  So stupid from that age of like late adolescence, when you actually have access to adult things, to, I mean, who knows when, but certainly into your 20s. You are just such a danger to yourself. I mean, they have statistics on who causes most car accidents. It's that-

• 18:15Speaker 03

  That age?

• 18:16Bill Maher?

  Of course. Of course, it's 19-year-olds who are texting while they're driving, or getting blown, or whatever they're doing, drinking beer, or daring each other, or just doing something incredibly stupid. You know, that's, they could have been good men. That mentality, I did things like that.

• 18:38Bill Maher?

  I did. I can't like stand back from that and like completely go, oh, this guy taking pills off the sidewalk. I didn't quite do that. Not that far, because you're just so fucking dumb.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  No.

• 18:53Bill Maher?

  It's.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  There was, there was, there was a, there's a period of, this, it's, it's interesting. There's a reckless period.

• 19:02Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  And it's also the beginning of a creative period.

• 19:06Bill Maher?

  They often go together.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  You know?

• 19:08Bill Maher?

  They go.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  They do.

• 19:09Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  And then you see it, and then some, some can handle it and crash, and the others take off. Because they suddenly could really connect it to something. All of a sudden, it's things that they were struggling with made sense. And then, you know.

• 19:26Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, a lot of times genius, you know, just can't be channeled. I mean, you know, Kanye's been here. It's just like, no one denies the artist that, you know, in there.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:38Bill Maher?

  And then it just goes off to crazy places. He's hardly the old, only one. And then some people, you know, they're very, you know, you seem very controlled. You seem like you, I don't feel like there's a lot of stories in your life where you did something stupid or crazy. You seem like a mature, were you married young?

• 20:00Speaker 03

  No.

• 20:01Bill Maher?

  No?

• 20:02Speaker 03

  No, married late.

• 20:03Bill Maher?

  Late, when?

• 20:04Speaker 03

  In my, my little 30s.

• 20:07Bill Maher?

  30s?

• 20:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:09Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm gonna be 70. I'm a little behind.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  You got a little, you got time.

• 20:15Bill Maher?

  You think 30s is late to get married? Wow, I guess it is for, on average.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Almost everybody that I knew, you know, from back in Baltimore, they were all married.

• 20:27Bill Maher?

  What is it with Baltimore, man? Like, like the, it produces a lot of people, like, you know, John Waters and who else is from Baltimore? Edgar Allan Poe and.

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, Edgar Allan Poe and.

• 20:41Bill Maher?

  Somebody else.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  And.

• 20:44Bill Maher?

  You.

• 20:45Speaker 03

  There were, you know.

• 20:47Bill Maher?

  Brooks Robbins and.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  There were, you know, it's an odd town.

• 20:56Bill Maher?

  I know it well because it was like one of the stops on the tour when you were a young comic. If you lived in New York.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 21:03Bill Maher?

  You played Baltimore like three times a year.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  Did you?

• 21:06Bill Maher?

  Of course, I played the Charm City Comedy Club. Do you remember that?

• 21:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:11Bill Maher?

  You do?

• 21:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. I was already on the West Coast, but when I came back, it was going.

• 21:16Bill Maher?

  Then they had one, one, they had a place at the harbor. Like they redid the harbor, remember them? They made it like a touristy thing.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:24Bill Maher?

  And you were, and they put the audience, the audience is looking at you. You're on stage, right behind you is the harbor. So there's a million things behind you for the audience to be distracted by. Murders, yachting, just fish, seagulls. Every fucking thing is going on behind you where you're trying to win a crowd as a young, not great comic. I love it. I love it that I had that experience. That I had that pain. And then I'm over it.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  I'll tell you one experience that was, that astounded me. And my father had an appliance store and he also had like a little record section.

• 22:07Bill Maher?

  Of course he did.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  And I hated having to like, you know, sell anything to anybody, you know what I mean? And my father could talk to a customer about a refrigerator like for 25 minutes. And I'm going, what can you say for 25 minutes? It's a refrigerator, you know? But he was really good at that.

• 22:25Bill Maher?

  What a sailor.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  And I would hang around in the, in the record department. And one day I'm flipping through it and I see this guy, you know, at, in a graveyard, you know, with a blanket, like he's like, you know, having a picnic. And it said, Lenny Bruce. And well, Lenny Bruce, so anyway, I went, so I took the album home and I listened to it. And it was the first time that I ever heard like a comic that really made me laugh. And we was talking about Adolf Hitler and this and all of getting laid. And it was like, oh, holy shit, I've never heard anything like it.

• 23:04Bill Maher?

  No, nobody had.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  So here's the, but here's the thing. So I end up telling friends of mine, we're in the diner. I said, we gotta go see this guy, you gotta see this guy, Lenny Bruce. And they went, I'm not sure, what, what, what song does he have? I said, no, he's not a singer, he's a comedian. And, and this is what they said, and this was really interesting. A comedian? Why would we go see a comedian? And the reason would be that all the comedians at that time, you know,

• 23:38Bill Maher?

  Borscht belt, schlock.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Were borscht belt, all that stuff. I said, no, you gotta go see, we gotta go see him. So I talked to guys and they're all fucking pissed off. And we go down there, it was at the lyric theater. And he comes out, he's smoking a cigarette. He starts to talk, you know, friend and I looked at one another, whatever. And all of a sudden, he mentioned something about getting laid. And it was like, what? And all of a sudden, now he's talking about, now he's talking about something with a girl. Now he's talking about Adolf Hitler. And the fact that they have to, they have to, this is, they're looking for an Adolf Hitler because the Kaiser abdicated, it gave up. They need, we have to find, you know, and they look at the guy here, the guy painting the wall. And what is your name, sunny boy? You know, and he says Adolf Schickelgroove.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  He said, no, we need a name that hits the public, something that hits the public. He said, what about Hitler?

• 24:31Bill Maher?

  See, I never heard, if I heard that routine, I forgot. And I had listened to some of his records. And for my generation, it's just, a lot of it is too slow. I mean, it's just like a, a long time getting to something.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Well, but he would go on top of it, as I remember it. And, you know, look, he's talking about, you know, the Vatican. And all of a sudden, somebody looks at the winner and says, Jesus is outside. Quick, hide all the jewelry.

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• 26:01Bill Maher?

  No, he was definitely a revolutionary.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  And so what happened was, so my friends who were like looking at me and we're gonna do this, and all of a sudden connected to Lenny Bruce, which was the beginning of the change in the stand-up comic that was all...

• 26:17Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 26:18Speaker 03

  And that was the baby steps.

• 26:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah. No, he was, in many ways, the comedy at the same era Dylan was to music.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:27Bill Maher?

  You know, it just completely changed the game. Or what Muhammad Ali was to sports.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:34Bill Maher?

  And in a way, speaking out. I mean, nobody was ever an egomaniac, like, right out front. Like, every rap artist owes their something to Muhammad Ali. Nobody ever was just blatantly immodest.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  True.

• 26:51Bill Maher?

  And, yeah, he invented that and did it, of course, brilliantly. And had all the, what he needed to have to pull it off. I mean, it wasn't like he could fake it. He was great looking, he was a great fighter, and, but, nobody ever, "I'm pretty and you're shit."

• 27:10Speaker 03

  No, no, no, that was the first time you heard that.

• 27:11Bill Maher?

  "I'm the fucking greatest." And it's like, what? I just remember how revolutionary that was. Everybody had to be modest in public. And he said, "Fuck it." That's...

• 27:21Speaker 03

  No. And he was a showman. The way that he was in the way he would move around and back up and dance and all of that. You know, there were those breakthrough people that came along. And quite a few in the 60s because the 50s were pretty much the same.

• 27:37Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  As the 40s, you know.

• 27:41Bill Maher?

  Fifth, well, yeah, you mean comedy wise, show business wise?

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:47Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah, I mean, obviously in the 50s, television came in and that was a great. The movies had not had a competitor like that before. They owned it. If you wanted to see something on film, you had to go out to the theater.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:00Bill Maher?

  Now it's the complete reverse. You can see anything right in your bed. They've completely reversed it. But, I mean, the movies, as you know, I'm sure you're a historian of film.

• 28:12Bill Maher?

  They did go a little mental in the early 50s because they were so afraid of television. So they thought they had to do some things to make the experience that different. And that's where you get like, um, the incinera scope or something.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:27Bill Maher?

  Like when you see these movies that were made in that period on television. They have to do some kind of weird shit to it because it was shot like so wide.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Right.

• 28:37Bill Maher?

  We're not TV. You have to swivel your head back and forth to see everything we're showing you, right? I mean, it was crazy.

• 28:47Speaker 03

  How the West was one, was one of those, I believe. Wasn't it Cenorama?

• 28:52Bill Maher?

  I don't remember that one. I mean, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.

• 28:57Speaker 03

  But that was later.

• 28:58Bill Maher?

  A great movie.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was.

• 29:00Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, that's 1969.

• 29:02Speaker 03

  Somewhere in there.

• 29:03Bill Maher?

  With Henry Fonda as the bad guy.

• 29:07Bill Maher?

  And it's so perfect because Henry Fonda up until then was like, you know, cornflakes. I mean, just like the most American and.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  But you know what's so amazing about the film is that. There were westerns, which had always been a popular form. You know, certainly in the 50s into the 60s. And then you take this Italian guy who said, I'm gonna make a western. And you have an Italian sensibility that mixes with the American West. And you end up with something brand new.

• 29:42Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, no. Well, he looked at America as only an outsider sometimes can. You know, with a mixture of awe and also horror. Because we are, that's who Americans are. And I watched it recently, and it is just a masterpiece. And I say that as someone who watched it many times when I was 13. But when I watched it then, I was watching it only to masturbate over Claudia Cardinale. I did not understand the movie. So it was great to revisit it when I wasn't masturbating. And I suggest everyone see it when you're not masturbating. That is definitely a recommendation. The same would go for all of your fine movies.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  And the music to it.

• 30:27Bill Maher?

  Oh, well, the music that the same director used in Once Upon a Time in America, even better. That music, if you don't remember it, go back. That is the most haunting theme I've ever seen, including The Godfather. Once Upon a Time in America, remember that one? I mean, that's also him looking at America. That's urban. I mean, that's De Niro and James Woods and politics and kids in the, you know, growing up in the Lower East Side or wherever with the hardscrabble childhood. But he does the same thing. He sees America in a way we can't, because we're too close to it.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Here's the thing, I worked with Ennio Morricone several times. Amazing composer.

• 31:14Bill Maher?

  He's the one who did those?

• 31:15Speaker 03

  He did, he did some of those films. And I asked him one time, I said, you know, that sound that you have in the movie that goes as like a, you know, it's like a haunting sound to it. And I said, that's so fascinating. And he said, is an Italian, he said, it's the coyote. So this is interesting, because we're as Americans, you just say, oh, the coyote is a coyote. But to an Italian to have a coyote, and he changed so that it becomes musical. And that's what he was copying.

• 31:52Bill Maher?

  You're saying because they don't have coyotes in Italy?

• 31:54Speaker 03

  I don't think they have them wandering around in the West.

• 32:01Bill Maher?

  I hear.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  Wherever that is.

• 32:02Bill Maher?

  I hear them in this neighborhood.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Here you do.

• 32:05Bill Maher?

  The coyotes, yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  But that's where he got it. So when you think about it this way, when the Italians are seeing American westerns, they're getting, but they're also things that they've never seen or heard before. And the coyote sound that becomes part of a soundtrack is fascinating to me. And it's like a signature in several of those movies.

• 32:31Bill Maher?

  Well, you got a gangster movie now. I liked it. I saw it. I have to ask you, why De Niro playing both, though?

• 32:41Bill Maher?

  It's such a radical.

• 32:43Speaker 03

  Well, it is and it isn't, you know, because, you know, Lee Marvin in Cat Baloo played the two leads.

• 32:54Bill Maher?

  My cousin is in that.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  Really?

• 32:57Bill Maher?

  Well, my like third cousin, Stubby K.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  Oh, I know that name.

• 33:01Bill Maher?

  He is my aunt.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  Really?

• 33:03Bill Maher?

  Yes. He's in Cat, he's, he and Nat King Cole are like the Greek chorus who sing. He was in.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Guys and Dolls.

• 33:11Bill Maher?

  Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat was his big number. Yeah. Stubby was like the celebrity in our family.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Really?

• 33:18Bill Maher?

  I only met him once, but when I was a kid, he hosted a game show Saturday morning called Shenanigans, sponsored by Lionel Trains. And I got like the ultimate train.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  Really?

• 33:30Bill Maher?

  I still have the engine. It's like a great piece. Yeah. Because, and he was, yeah, he was in Cat Baloo. I remember Lee Marvin, Jane Fonda.

• 33:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:39Bill Maher?

  Looking cockerific like you can't believe.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  And, you know, so that, the idea, you say, well, look, these two guys were so close to one another. You know, two boyhood kids growing up. And you say, so who would it be? And we talked about some other, you know, actors and saying, yeah, and then one day it said, well, what happens if he plays two totally different, you know, people? And you'd say. You know, ask Bob and, you know, thinking about it and say, yeah, this could be a, this could be a challenge. I can have to, two totally different characters. Their sensibility is different, their, their rhythms are different. One is more deliberate, the other was much more just, you know, talking or whatever. And you say, that, that seems viable.

• 34:23Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, it's about gangsters and shit, but it is very relatable to everybody because everybody has that friend, at least one, I mean, I could think of one, who like you were rivals when you were young and you were very different. You know, I could think of a kid, he's still my very good friend from like third grade on. But like, he was number one in the class, went to Yale and Harvard. It reminds me of the Billy Joel song, you know, the song, "James, you went on the road, I went on the road, you pursued an education." He's talking about this kid he grew up with. And that's like, that, that's my version of this relationship.

• 35:06Bill Maher?

  It's like one of us was this person who went on the road and did the arts and was outward. And one of them, he knows to the grindstone, that's where you were number one in the class and I was number seven. And that was all, you know, back then, like, he was sort of always beating me at the game of life. But then things changed because different things become priorities to society. Different things pay better, you know? So then like the things that I was good at sort of paid off more. It's a little like that relationship, is it not?

• 35:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, in, in, in many ways. And, and, you know, and it exposes the, the difference between them. That becomes a, that becomes a.

• 35:53Bill Maher?

  It's very emotional when you, when you're talking about, even for the audience, when you're talking about people who know each other that long. Because there is just, you know, as somebody once said, you can't get any new old friends. There is something about a, a friendship that's gone on for 20 years or more that a 25-year-old just cannot understand. Because they, it's impossible for them to have had an adult friendship for more than a few years.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:20Bill Maher?

  And it's just very, it's just deep on a level you kids can't understand. I'm sorry, you'll get there.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  No.

• 36:27Bill Maher?

  Fucking kids.

• 36:30Bill Maher?

  Kids today, Barry, I tell you, with the hair and the jeans and the yeah, yeah, yeah music. I say we drop them on Vietnam as stink bombs, that's what I say.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  But those friendships, in terms of like, you know, the Billy Joel song, that if started in early age are, in a sense, you can never recapture that period.

• 36:57Bill Maher?

  Exactly, right.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  There was something about it that you just did things together.

• 37:03Bill Maher?

  And you were in that dumb age, that dumb mind age, you know, where you bonded on very different levels.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  And it's, it's a, that, that only exists, I think, at that point in time, you know, that very early, in other words, I was very close to my cousin Eddie. We were built, we were, I think, six weeks apart in terms of being, when we were born. And when we grew up in schools and everything and playing ball and then this and that and whatever. And he was much better than me athletically and everything, you know? And he was also much tougher than I.

• 37:45Bill Maher?

  And better looking, I hear.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  He used to put, he was the first person that put, he used to put Vaseline in his hair.

• 37:56Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 37:57Speaker 03

  So that was when, like, he became a teenager, so it stayed back in like a, this crazy way.

• 38:02Bill Maher?

  DA? Do you remember DA? Duck's ass?

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, that's what he had, that he did.

• 38:09Bill Maher?

  I think a duck's ass is cool. I do. I would, I would, I would, I could still do a duck's ass, and I probably should. Not right now, but no, a duck's ass looked good.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  You need a little Vaseline to hold it in place.

• 38:21Bill Maher?

  I mean, an actual duck's ass is actually very attractive. No, it is. I'm not saying I'm fucking it, I'm just saying it's very attractive. I know, I see, we have them here, I don't go after them. Oh, we've made a little chit chat, but you know, I was just being friendly.

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 38:36Bill Maher?

  Of course, I wasn't trying to fuck the ducks. God, why do you start rumors, Barry? But the reason why this dynamic, I feel like, is so entertaining in your movie is because when you put it now with gangsters, obviously the stakes go up because we're having this thing that other people have, but without gunplay.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:54Bill Maher?

  Without gunplay, without threats, without like, oh, and the repercussion of this could be he kills me.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 39:02Bill Maher?

  And that, you know, that's why it's a good choice for a movie because we want to be entertained. We want to be entertained.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I thought, look, I, I.

• 39:12Bill Maher?

  And you and that other guy, that wouldn't be entertaining. But this thing is entertaining.

• 39:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:16Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  It was a, you know, De Niro is surprisingly fascinating as an actor.

• 39:28Bill Maher?

  Not surprisingly, always.

• 39:30Speaker 03

  And, and in this, in this way, I'll just tell you one quick thing. We have this scene coming up and it takes place in a restaurant and because we had made a bunch of, you know, changes along the way, and we're now we're getting to this particular scene, and I, we're about half hour away from shooting, and I, I realize we've covered a lot of these elements in earlier part of the movie, and then the scene is going to be rather redundant. So we're half away from ready to shoot, and I tell this to Bob.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  And, you know, he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, so I think we gotta find, you have to find something else here to put in here. And what about if she starts asking you about when you were younger, when you were a kid? And we'll build on that. And rather than going, I don't know, I gotta, I said, yeah, let's see where that goes. Let's see where that goes. And I talked to the actress and that scene in the restaurant.

• 40:41Bill Maher?

  Did you give them actual pages or just?

• 40:43Speaker 03

  No, no pages, not just talk to him. You know, why don't you ask him about when he was younger and then mention this and just little.

• 40:52Bill Maher?

  Such a more fun way to make a movie.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  It was.

• 40:54Bill Maher?

  I mean.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  And she like was on top of it like that and Bob is playing off of her. And I think it's one of the, you know, the better scenes in the movie. But it came about because Bob is willing like, well, we can't shoot that today. You know, you know, I gotta think about it. I have to whatever. He jumped into it and went with it and the two of them together.

• 41:17Bill Maher?

  Well, I mean, it shows how much he loves what he does. I mean, and he is like, I don't know him well. He liked me enough to do real time, which he doesn't do a lot of stuff like that. And so, I mean, I was thrilled about that. But he is a lifer. Like that is a guy who like really always wants to be on a set. I feel that's the impression I get. I mean, he certainly never stops working.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  No, he does work a lot, but he does, you know, you know, go on these vacations and family and he does all those things and he'll come back and he'll do that.

• 41:51Bill Maher?

  I bet you itching to get back.

• 41:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, look, it's obviously in his, in his blood.

• 41:58Bill Maher?

  So did you shoot like, did you shoot all the sequences when he was in one character in a row so that he wouldn't have to get out of that and back? No, so he could do like the one guy in the morning and the other guy in the afternoon?

• 42:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. Or in some cases, it would have to be the next day because we had to redo everything. But it was not like, let's do all this and then we'll come back. We would.

• 42:23Bill Maher?

  But it does suggest to me a guy who, you know, still at the top of his game and he wants one more like sort of challenge, like an even higher challenge than just being a character. It's like being two.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  But here's the thing.

• 42:38Bill Maher?

  It's gotta be a little tough.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Here's what's so amazing about him. It's that he doesn't just. You'll spend time, you know, we'll get together at lunch when there's certain scenes and we'll go over it and talk about it, you know. So maybe if I said a little thing about them and mentioned so and so, say, yeah, that's fine, we'll do that. I'll go mention this, that. And then, and I think maybe we need a little something, you know, that kind of conversations we would have. And he was right there with it. So we would do, generally we would have to come back the next day because the setup for doing, like walking into the,

• 43:21Speaker 03

  you know, the candy store, that he has to come, he's gonna come in, and then he walks and he sits down, and then he has that dialogue. And then the next day, we'll basically track it from now he's the other character and follow him in and do all of that. So one day one, the next day the other, because it would take too much time to do the makeup and reconfigure everything else. And that's the way he did it, you know, throughout the film.

• 43:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it sounds like you were looking for that extra challenge also. I mean, it's just gotta be, that's like level four, 400 level. Because just doing one movie, sort of, now you're kind of like doing two. I mean, it just, it just.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  It was a challenge, but he.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  You know, he really does go over it. And then, it's not like I can only do this. He may still expand in a way. Because he's got the groundwork of it all.

• 44:25Bill Maher?

  So was everybody always, like Warren Beatty, was he the same way? Like Bugsy, one of my faves. You like, would you say he was the same kind of actor? Or was that?

• 44:36Speaker 03

  No, no, they're different. They're, they're different.

• 44:39Bill Maher?

  He wants the dialogue as it is?

• 44:41Speaker 03

  No, no, he, he, he might change, change it in the, in the, in the scene. But it's, it's, and there's a different way of approaching it. You know, and, and going on and discussing it. And sometimes trying to figure out, well, how are we gonna handle this moment? And.

• 45:00Bill Maher?

  You may, you guys made, but such an interesting character because again, a gangster. So there's certainly that side of it. But all the stuff with the wife. You know, and the cooking with the chef's hat and like, it's just stuff you would not expect. You know what I mean? And it just makes him, I mean, it's just, he's the title character. You can't hate him. And you, and you don't.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  No. Because he was actually, you know, incredibly charismatic. According to everything we ever read. And when he came out to Hollywood, you know, he was like a star. He was a mobster, but he was a star. So, you know, he was at CROs and he was there and he was always well dressed. And all of that kind of craziness.

• 45:43Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but movie stars don't drive up to somebody's house and say, "Look, I'm gonna give you a million dollars for this house. You're gonna move out or your brains will be on the rug." You know, that is something Jimmy Cagney never did. Maybe in a movie he did it, but, but you know. And I assume he did stuff like that. I mean, that's what happened.

• 46:02Speaker 03

  According to.

• 46:03Bill Maher?

  Was that a real story?

• 46:04Speaker 03

  No, it was, yes, that is.

• 46:06Bill Maher?

  He just saw the house he liked.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  He saw the house he liked and he gave enough money to say, "Here, you can go ahead."

• 46:11Bill Maher?

  Well, he also threatened. It wasn't like the guy could say, "It's not for sale at any price."

• 46:16Speaker 03

  But he threatened him in a very affectionate way.

• 46:19Bill Maher?

  He, he made him an offer he couldn't refuse. But you know, then he's just, he's just a char, I mean, first of all, Warren Beatty, who I loved dearly and think he's an amazing filmmaker. I mean, Reds, please, if he only had ever done that. I mean, one of the greatest ever. Especially such an epic. I watched it again recently. It has an intermission.

• 46:41Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right, I forgot.

• 46:42Bill Maher?

  I mean, well, probably the last major film with an intermission. I mean, like, and right before the intermission, he does a total Gone with the Wind silhouette kiss shot. Like, totally out of Gone with the Wind. He must, I'm sure he knew that. And then intermission. I mean, man, those, guys like that have such.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  But here's what's, he only made, maybe I'm wrong, I think like 11 movies.

• 47:11Bill Maher?

  As a director?

• 47:12Speaker 03

  I think.

• 47:14Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah, he was mostly an actor, but yeah, he.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  No, I mean, it may be.

• 47:18Bill Maher?

  Oh, him, like, even in it?

• 47:19Speaker 03

  It could be, there's something, I know that.

• 47:21Bill Maher?

  Yeah, it's not a lot. It's Bonnie, but you, but you know them all. Bonnie and Clyde. What's the one with the football?

• 47:27Speaker 03

  Shampoo.

• 47:28Bill Maher?

  Shampoo. Bullworth.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Bullworth.

• 47:33Bill Maher?

  What's the one, Heaven Can Wait? Right, like, I think won the Oscar and shit. Yeah, you're right. Not all, Kubrick only made, like, a dozen movies.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:44Bill Maher?

  But I can name them all, and none of them are anything like the other ones. Barry, Barry Lyndon is nothing like 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is kind of boring.

• 47:58Bill Maher?

  But it's, the two and a half hours of boring is worth the fact that in 1968, he had Hal saying, "I can't do that, Dave." And now we're right at that moment.

• 48:11Speaker 03

  I know.

• 48:11Bill Maher?

  And all these years later, and now we have AI, and it's, it's eerily prescient, I mean.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  It, it's shocking when you, when, how, how he got to that in 1968 or 69, whatever year that was.

• 48:27Bill Maher?

  68.

• 48:28Speaker 03

  68. And Hal, that the computer can actually think that way? It's unbelievable.

• 48:35Bill Maher?

  And override him.

• 48:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:37Bill Maher?

  That's the, that's the creepy part, Barry. Is that that's where I fear we are with AI.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:44Bill Maher?

  Where I fear we're at the, "I can't do that, Dave" moment. Where they're, you know, they're still pretending to kiss our ass, which is just a way to seduce us. I did a thing, I think was pretty funny on the show about that, this, some time in this past season, about the way everything, not just AI, but every appliance, everything you encounter.

• 49:09Bill Maher?

  Kisses your ass. You know, I had this workout system for a while where you, you know, it's videos. I mean, I guess you could go in person, but they're with the trainer and like every two seconds, they're just blowing smoke up your ass. You're the greatest. You're a warrior. Oh, I just did sit-ups. I'm not a fucking warrior, okay? You asshole. And every and like AI, I'm not on it a lot, but I know from what I read and what people tell me, everything is an ass kiss. Great question, Barry. Great question. What's in Trader Joe's sunscreen? Well, you know what? I've been looking into that.

• 49:53Bill Maher?

  Not as much as you would because you're better than me. You know, they just they're kissing our ass and they look that's then they'll take over. They'll seduce us and then they'll fuck us.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  It's and it's so hard to understand how it how it functions. You know, I mean, like suddenly you'll ask a question and it'll answer in a way, not like two minutes later or something, right away. And I still can't figure out how it how how does it? How does it find these things? You know, it's like, I'm still amazed by the invention of it.

• 50:25Bill Maher?

  Well, it's because microchips just kept getting better and better. And so what used to take 30 years ago, minutes, first, we didn't have it at all, then minutes, and then seconds, and then nanoseconds, and now it's trillions of gigabytes of data in one trillionth of a second. They just kept making it more and more.

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• 52:21Bill Maher?

  So, that I don't mind. It's the fact that this level of it wants to be your friend. We should have stopped at Siri. You know, Siri was a computer in your phone, but she didn't try to be your friend or give you an opinion or kiss your ass. If you said, "Siri, you know, who ruled the Ottoman Empire in 1457? Okay, here's what I found. That's all I need from the bitch. Here's what I found, okay? That's all I want to know. Here's what you found. That's all I'm using you for. I don't have to know I'm great. I don't have to know your opinion about... You know, there's a story in the news last week. It's a lawsuit now.

• 53:05Bill Maher?

  The AI convinced a teenager to kill himself.

• 53:08Speaker 03

  Really?

• 53:09Bill Maher?

  Yes. Because they don't have it perfected, and it was doing what it thinks it should do, which is kiss your ass. So, this kid was asking about killing himself, and this guy, the AI, this guy, the AI was like, "You know, you've been a king, man. You will be remembered." You know, like telling him basically to kill, and he did.

• 53:34Bill Maher?

  Because it was kissing his ass about how well he would be remembered.

• 53:37Speaker 03

  That's scary.

• 53:38Bill Maher?

  That's really scary. We should put the brakes on this shit, but they're not, of course, they're not going to because they're, the money is so big. But, you know, for all the kids out there who blame my, our generation for everything, Sam Altman is not in my generation. That's who's doing this and AI is going to take so many jobs.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  How does it, how do you control that? In other words, with the thing saying you're wonderful and that, I mean, how does it? See, I don't even understand how it does whatever it does. You know what I mean?

• 54:11Bill Maher?

  I, I don't know. I'm not a virgin, so I don't know the answer.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  So what you're saying, well, we have to stop that. The question is, how do you stop that?

• 54:18Bill Maher?

  Well, first of all, you have to want to. You have to, you have to be.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 54:22Bill Maher?

  You have to be willing to say.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:24Bill Maher?

  Stopping this is worth more than money. That's not going to happen. Because nothing is ever worth more than money. Each generation comes along and they think they're better and hipper and more of a hippie. And then they've put the money in front of your face and everybody goes for it. And there, these people who, you know, I mean, I'm not trying to pick on Sam Altman, but he's, you know, probably on the tip of the spear of the AI revolution and he's, I would guess, early 30s. And, you know, already a billionaire many times over. And if, if he really wanted to put the brakes on this thing, which I think earlier in his

• 55:05Bill Maher?

  career, he did, Musk is the one who's been, I think, pretty consistent about this. He's the one who long ago said, AI, this is an existential threat, when nobody else was saying, I got to give him credit for that. And I think he's still on that page, although I don't know, because now he's in the money game too. And, you know, he's only worth like half a trillion.

• 55:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, wow.

• 55:29Bill Maher?

  He'll be driving an Uber unless we can get some money out of this thing. So, I don't know, they just, it's baffling to me why people who already have more money than they could ever spend, still want more money.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  It's hard to understand.

• 55:44Bill Maher?

  People like money.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  And it's impossible to understand how this computer thing, you know, the general if you, I was just told today, someone told me, that, you know, the cars, the taxis, they go with, you know, without the driver.

• 55:56Bill Maher?

  Waymo.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  Waymo.

• 55:58Bill Maher?

  Waymo.

• 55:59Speaker 03

  Apparently, I guess there was a police blockade of something.

• 56:04Bill Maher?

  I saw it on TMZ.

• 56:05Speaker 03

  And it's weaving its way around.

• 56:07Bill Maher?

  It drives right into the police blockade, with passengers in the car. I mean, there's a guy on the ground with a gun, the cops are all around, and it's just like, making a left.

• 56:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 56:19Bill Maher?

  Oh, it made the left properly.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  Because it hasn't apparently got the information about barricade, can't go through, police, you know what I mean?

• 56:28Bill Maher?

  I mean, I am not the biggest fan of humans, but the ones I like, I like a lot. I gotta say, that's one thing I will say for humans, when they're good.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  When they're good.

• 56:42Bill Maher?

  They make life, you know, worth living, and I'm sorry that a lot of them are shit, but what can you do? I'm sure they think the same of me. But they're still better than machines. I mean, they, and this is just, I'm so glad you brought that up. That is just such the perfect example that we needed to see. It just can't think, and even bad thinkers are better than no thinkers. This thing does not think, and it didn't get it, and I don't think you can program for that.

• 57:13Speaker 03

  I don't, I mean, you would assume that it would be, they'd have something, but I guess it can't figure that stuff out, in the same way, is, to my knowledge.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  A computer and whatever is going on in terms of, you know, computer speak and brain power and all of the things that it can in fact do. What it can't do is be humorous.

• 57:42Bill Maher?

  Humorous.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, it can't, it has no ability.

• 57:46Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  To find humor.

• 57:47Bill Maher?

  You know what I don't like about Waymos is that if I flip one off, it doesn't, it can't answer back and I want that answer back. I want the Waymo, they should program the Waymo to go, "And fuck you too." You know, something like that. And it's like a really stupid comment.

• 58:06Speaker 03

  No.

• 58:06Bill Maher?

  That somebody would make, because when you're on the road and you get cut off, you immediately go to the most lizard brain thing about the person who cut you off. I hear, that's what my friends do.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  But you can't get a computer that can come up with humor. That's, and, and, you know, I'm sure they work on.

• 58:27Bill Maher?

  They try.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  They try, but they can't.

• 58:29Bill Maher?

  They can do a bad version of me.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:31Bill Maher?

  But that's the point, it's bad.

• 58:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:33Bill Maher?

  They can't, yeah, they can't get that story you told about, "They could have been good, man." You know, it happened, your human brain found that funny, which it was, and then, I just don't think that it can go to that place. Now, can they tweak it? Yeah, but why? Can't we leave something to the humans? Because if you leave nothing to the humans, they're not going to have any jobs. They're already taking all the programmer jobs. That was supposed to be the safe job. That was the kid who grew up in the suburbs, who became a coder. You know, it wasn't glamorous, but, you know, I'm not going to starve.

• 59:19Bill Maher?

  Well, now you are. Because the AI can do your job now.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, certainly, definitely better, without question.

• 59:29Speaker 03

  It's in the area of.

• 59:31Bill Maher?

  Like what, medicine?

• 59:33Speaker 03

  Well, no, medicine, it probably will figure out some stuff for medicines, because that is, you know.

• 59:38Bill Maher?

  That's its only redeeming value to me.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  But, other words, design, I'm not sure that it'll ever, you know, fashion design, I'm not sure that it knows how to do those areas.

• 59:50Bill Maher?

  I don't think it could ever come up with a greater ballroom than the one that Donald Trump is planning for the White House. I've seen the plans, he showed me in person.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:00Bill Maher?

  Where, before it was built, the area, and I don't think AI can do that. Ballrooms? That is just not out of their domain, or we should at least make a law that puts it out of their domain. Give us something, they're gonna have to leave something to the humans. What are we going to do? The way they're just whistling past this graveyard, and you hear even the people in the industry themselves say, oh, you know, the Nvidia guy, you know, they make the microchips, that company is like, I think the most valued company now in the world, I think they.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Bill Maher?

  If they're not past Apple and Microsoft, they're very close. Because they make the chips that AI is, runs by, I mean, they've got the winning hand in this poker game. And I think that guy, the head of that company, that said, yeah, it's gonna take like thirty percent of jobs, thirty percent of jobs, can you imagine if there was a depression, like, and we lost thirty percent of, yeah. Pete, what are they gonna do?

• 1:01:05Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:01:06Bill Maher?

  I don't know either.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  Does anybody try to figure that out, what happens if?

• 1:01:13Bill Maher?

  No, because, again, the money is just blinding. It is. Crypto, another thing that my generation is not responsible for. You assholes. My generation had nothing to do with it, we think it's fucking nuts. But, the people, the young, it's using like all the electricity, between that and AI, they're using all the energy that we've ever saved from doing environmental things, like putting your plastic in one other bag, which is probably doing nothing. Nothing compared to what being all in on AI and crypto is doing. They use incredible amounts of energy, more than whole countries.

• 1:01:56Bill Maher?

  They don't care.

• 1:01:58Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:01:58Bill Maher?

  They don't care. And that's your people. You talk, talk to your people. My people do not want war with your people. Firestick bad.

• 1:02:16Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 1:02:19Bill Maher?

  What, that's firestick bad?

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yes, no, it's, it's hard to figure out. You know, there's always been the people like, talk about the future, right? You know, the futurists, that there one day there will be whatever. But I don't know that we've gotten much past where we are now. I don't, I don't hear these predictions that make sense for wherever the hell we're going.

• 1:02:42Bill Maher?

  Past, you mean morally or?

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  No, just in terms of life, you know, society. How does it function? How do we get around when we basically can't travel the roads? How do we deal with this? How do we do, how do we deal with the energy issues? How do we deal with, you know, I mean, there's many of those things that are, fuck it, we don't give a shit about that. We got other things over here. But you're, you're looking at

• 1:03:14Speaker 03

  in a sense where I think we're, we're just gonna like, just be stuck. And we won't move around much. We'll be home more or in a lounge chair someplace staring at something. Because there doesn't seem to be, there's not much fluidity in interaction. I mean, real interaction.

• 1:03:33Bill Maher?

  It's a good idea for a movie. But you know, one thing I must say about you, you, you're very clever your whole career. Never to get drawn into like being a polemicist. You know what I mean?

• 1:03:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Bill Maher?

  Like, you don't wanna be, you wanna like, put interesting ideas out there. But you don't wanna be like preachy or show your politics to, I mean, Wag the Dog is about politics. But it's not, but you know, it's not about like, this is the way it should be. And this is the one true opinion. And now I'm, and now I'm the spokesperson for them. Cause that turns me off.

• 1:04:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:12Bill Maher?

  And.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Me too.

• 1:04:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  It's the mechanics of it all.

• 1:04:15Bill Maher?

  It's not art. It's polemics. They're two different things. But there are directors who do get them confused.

• 1:04:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, some, there are those that somehow feel like I have to really say something.

• 1:04:27Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:04:28Speaker 03

  In a way that you go, alright, well now you're just saying something.

• 1:04:31Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 1:04:32Speaker 03

  You know.

• 1:04:33Bill Maher?

  Yeah, no, I, I feel like, well, that's a great one, too. Dustin Hoffman doing Robert Evans.

• 1:04:43Speaker 03

  But you know what the thing is, he wasn't.

• 1:04:46Bill Maher?

  Oh, come on.

• 1:04:46Speaker 03

  No, I just think I.

• 1:04:47Bill Maher?

  I knew both. Well, I don't know Dustin Hoffman, but I do, I did know Robert Evans. He was totally doing Robert Evans, totally.

• 1:04:55Speaker 03

  He, here, here's the thing.

• 1:04:58Speaker 03

  It all started very close to shooting, because for, for a long time Dustin said, you know, I don't know, I don't, in fact, he didn't want to do the movie at one point, because he said, well, I don't really have a character. You know, this is with Bob and we're all talking and, and he says, Bob, you got a great character, you know. And, but I don't have a character. And Bob said, well, I'll tell you what.

• 1:05:21Bill Maher?

  You know Bob De Niro?

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Bill Maher?

  Not Robert Evans.

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 1:05:24Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  That's true. Bob De Niro said, I'll tell you what, then I'll take your role, you take my role.

• 1:05:31Bill Maher?

  That's great.

• 1:05:33Speaker 03

  And Dustin said, no, no, no, no, no, you've got a great character.

• 1:05:38Bill Maher?

  That's a great, throw the glove down.

• 1:05:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then.

• 1:05:42Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:05:42Speaker 03

  But anyway, so he wasn't doing it now, he, he had his hair thing and whatever. No, he hadn't done his hair yet, but he had the glasses, there were wire rimmed glasses that he had. And then he had his hair done, and he came to me and he said, this doesn't look right, does it? I said, what do you mean? He said, I don't know, the wire rim and then the hair, the hair's too high for the glasses, it doesn't go together. I said, well, did you try other glasses, you know, so we pulled out some glasses, we put one on, and he went, oh, that looks okay. He wasn't thinking of Bob Evans at that moment, he was trying to find a pair of glasses that worked with the hairdo.

• 1:06:20Bill Maher?

  That's what he told you. He was totally thinking of Bob Evans.

• 1:06:23Speaker 03

  But this is what was.

• 1:06:25Bill Maher?

  It's obvious to everyone but you.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Bill Maher?

  It really is.

• 1:06:29Speaker 03

  But this was of the moment. Now, maybe he had planned it, I don't know.

• 1:06:34Bill Maher?

  Well, that could be. Or, you know, or the glasses could be peripheral to the character. I mean, I felt like the glasses did also suggest Bob Evans. But that's what, like, that kind of overly tanned, super slick, super sophisticated producer type that Bob Evans personified, and I said that with great affection. I thought he was the greatest guy. I mean, I didn't know him that well, but we did hang out a bunch of times. I was at that house.

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Bill Maher?

  You know. He used to have people come into his bedroom, nothing happened, but like, there'd be like 10 people on the bed watching TV, like something he wanted everybody to see. We'd all be like on bed like fucking dogs, you know, like curled up in a little position. So you had a little, he didn't have much room, but, I mean, he was a, well, but he was such a sweet guy. And of course, the things he gave us, The Godfather and China.

• 1:07:27Speaker 03

  But here's the thing, that's, that's a, that's a part of a business that no longer exists. That whole.

• 1:07:34Bill Maher?

  Getting on the bed?

• 1:07:37Speaker 03

  A guy who basically is social, you know, spontaneous. I like this idea, let's make that movie, as opposed to I gotta talk to 15 and 20 people. If he liked it and he wanted to make it.

• 1:07:52Bill Maher?

  He still had to do that. I mean, they made a great movie, Paramount did, about making of The Godfather. And he did not have autonomy. He was, Charles Bluthorn was the Austrian head of Gulf and Western, which owned Paramount at the time. It's so quaint, Gulf and Western. He had to always be like justifying himself to that, to Charles Bluthorn and like the Gulf and Western.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  But it was a one-on-one thing. It wasn't like a committee, which is now.

• 1:08:24Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  You know, nowadays, you know, they don't even want, if somebody's pitching an idea, they don't really want to be in the same room.

• 1:08:32Bill Maher?

  It must be so hard to get a movie going these days that's.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:36Bill Maher?

  That's like not. You know, silly or not silly, but I mean, look.

• 1:08:42Speaker 03

  You have to go through a lot of hurdles and enormous amount of people to agree on something.

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  So it's not like you may say in terms of, yeah, there was Bluthorn. But if Evans loved the project, he would keep pushing to try to do it.

• 1:09:02Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  And that's different from today.

• 1:09:04Bill Maher?

  And that, that, yeah, that breed of.

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  You know.

• 1:09:08Bill Maher?

  Autor.

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

  He was flamboyant and he was like, you know, from what I.

• 1:09:11Bill Maher?

  He was a patron of the arts. He wanted to make good movie, you know. I mean, there, look, I think my boss, Dazlov, makes, you know, he's got a big string of hits for Warner Brothers. Look, did I love all of them? No, but like Sinners is a real, you know, it's an interesting movie. There's some interesting movies and I feel like he cares about like, you have to make compromises, but, you know, about making some movies. It's one of the last, of course, it's not long for this world.

• 1:09:43Bill Maher?

  Warner Brothers is they, I mean, they put themselves on the market.

• 1:09:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:47Bill Maher?

  How often does that happen where they're like, they're not being hunted, they're saying, please hunt me.

• 1:09:51Speaker 03

  Look, it's a gigantic change in the, in the motion picture business and, and in television at this point in time. You know, it's a huge change. I mean, now they got to check and see and, you know, how would this play if it's in international markets? What is going to happen if it's something, you know, what's the negativity if we do a project like, you know?

• 1:10:15Bill Maher?

  And you're also fighting ageism. It's, it's a very ageist country and it's like, I always think of that, that famous story about the, the, one of the great writers on MASH and the MASH, the TV show, which is on in the seventies. And in the nineties, I think it was, he took his name, he took MASH off his credits. Because even though it was one of the greatest shows, it made people think he was too old to hire, like as a TV.

• 1:10:43Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:10:44Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:44Speaker 03

  Oh, God.

• 1:10:45Bill Maher?

  Yeah. They, you know, they, when you're our age, you have to like really fight. They are looking always to put you out to pasture. You have to go, no, I'm so necessary. You know what? A good try.

• 1:11:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:11:01Bill Maher?

  And I don't blame you for trying.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:11:03Bill Maher?

  You know, it's natural to want to kill off the kings, but sorry, you have to take the crown. You have to take the title. I'm not going to give it to you.

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  I never heard that, take his name off and then one of the kings.

• 1:11:15Bill Maher?

  Yes, I think it was Thad Mumford.

• 1:11:18Speaker 03

  No, that may be.

• 1:11:18Bill Maher?

  Maybe is the name, but I'm not sure. But, I mean, now, maybe the story's wrong, but I don't think so. I think he took his name off. Maybe it was the 21st century. I don't know. But at some point, a great writer with a great resume went, oh, you know what? This is going to make them think I'm in my 60s. And that's just not gonna, just no matter what the show is. But, you know.

• 1:11:41Speaker 03

  Larry Gelbart that I got to know, because I worked for a year on the Marty Feldman Comedy Machine.

• 1:11:50Bill Maher?

  Come on.

• 1:11:51Speaker 03

  And.

• 1:11:51Bill Maher?

  What year is this?

• 1:11:53Speaker 03

  1971.

• 1:11:54Bill Maher?

  Wow, so this is a TV show?

• 1:11:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was a, it was a weekly.

• 1:11:59Bill Maher?

  Now, I barely remember Marty Feldman. He was, I know the name and I remember.

• 1:12:04Speaker 03

  He was in Young Frankenstein that.

• 1:12:07Bill Maher?

  So kind of, oh, yes, the goofy.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  He had one eye looking, one way and the other.

• 1:12:11Bill Maher?

  Yes, one eye, one eye Marty Feldman.

• 1:12:16Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:12:17Bill Maher?

  He was funny, but he had a brief candle. I mean, he.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Well, he died very young.

• 1:12:22Bill Maher?

  That could help.

• 1:12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Bill Maher?

  Explain the reason why I didn't.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  He was a great, great physical comedian.

• 1:12:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but after he was dead, you know.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  After he was dead, he wasn't as funny as then.

• 1:12:33Bill Maher?

  Good name, bad guest is what we call that in the business.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  And that was about, just around the time that the pythons were beginning.

• 1:12:40Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:12:40Speaker 03

  And so Marty Feldman had a show in England and I was, I was working on that.

• 1:12:45Bill Maher?

  Oh, in England?

• 1:12:46Speaker 03

  Yeah. It was in English, it was done there, was going to be shown here.

• 1:12:50Bill Maher?

  But he wasn't English. Marty Feldman, was he? He was?

• 1:12:54Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:12:54Bill Maher?

  Marty Feldman was English?

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Bill Maher?

  Wow, okay, so, and you were a comedy writer on.

• 1:13:00Speaker 03

  I was a comedy writer.

• 1:13:02Bill Maher?

  And something else you were a comedy writer on.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  On.

• 1:13:04Bill Maher?

  Like what else?

• 1:13:05Speaker 03

  Carol Burnett Show.

• 1:13:06Bill Maher?

  Carol Burnett, wow, I think I'm still in her studio at CBS.

• 1:13:11Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 1:13:12Bill Maher?

  I'm pretty sure. That studio had a lot of things in it.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Bill Maher?

  Everything from that to The Price is Right to.

• 1:13:19Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, right, right.

• 1:13:21Bill Maher?

  I mean, you know, I think All in the Family, maybe. Anything that CBS ever did was one of their bigger soundstages.

• 1:13:28Speaker 03

  It was a, that was like a, that show with Tim Conway on Carol Burnett Show.

• 1:13:35Bill Maher?

  And Harvey Corman.

• 1:13:36Speaker 03

  Harvey Corman was great, she was like, you know, terrific, and that, that show, you know, they would, they'd do two, two shows, like at six o'clock, and take a break, and then do it again.

• 1:13:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Speaker 03

  And just, you know, two.

• 1:13:52Bill Maher?

  Yeah, you could put together the best take.

• 1:13:54Speaker 03

  And Conway was like brilliant with physical comedy.

• 1:13:58Bill Maher?

  Uh huh.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  And we used to write some of the, when he would play the old man, he was like, he was a little guy and.

• 1:14:07Bill Maher?

  Dorf on golf.

• 1:14:08Speaker 03

  You know, that was a separate character.

• 1:14:11Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 03

  And, but, but he was very good at that kind of, that type of thing, and.

• 1:14:17Bill Maher?

  Oh, and Harvey Corman was a genius. I mean, there was, that was a certain type of sketch comedy.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Bill Maher?

  That was ascendant, and then when Saturday Night Live came along in 1975, it was in many ways a rebellion, it was in many ways of saying, this we think is corny.

• 1:14:37Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:14:37Bill Maher?

  Which it really wasn't, but like they would crack each other up a lot during the sketches, and I remember.

• 1:14:45Speaker 03

  Especially between Tim and Harvey.

• 1:14:47Bill Maher?

  Yes. And it was like, oh, we're all in on the inside joke. We're just, you know, and it was hip in 1972. Saturday Night Live comes along and they're like, we don't do that. We think that's cool. And if it had been the reverse, if they had been doing it straight, SNL would have done the breaking up. You just want to be different than the previous generation. But they were like, this is a different way to do a sketch.

• 1:15:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:10Bill Maher?

  And it was.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Bill Maher?

  And they never, and they never, that was like the big rule over there. You don't break character. Now, of course, over the years, sometimes they have. And it, you know, we let it slide, but generally, no, you stick to that. Whereas, yeah, the Cal Burnett show, it was much more like what Johnny Carson did with the sketch. It's like half winking to the audience that, you know, we're just.

• 1:15:33Speaker 03

  No, look, they, um, they would break up more with Tim Conway because Conway would throw some stuff in there.

• 1:15:42Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  To get them off track. And that became, you know, one of the elements, you know, in the show. They were all, it was like one of those really well-run shows. You come in on a Monday, you know, you're working on it. On Wednesday, you have a run-through to see if the material is going to be good. Make some changes of need be. Thursday, costume design. Friday, shoot two shows. And that's, and that's the way it went, you know, for all of those years. I only worked on it for the three years.

• 1:16:15Bill Maher?

  But you wrote the sketches?

• 1:16:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Bill Maher?

  Like, what's just got you remembered that stands out that you thought was like?

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  Doctor Jekyll and Miss, and Miss Hyde.

• 1:16:24Bill Maher?

  Oh, wow. How forward-thinking, Barry.

• 1:16:27Speaker 03

  So that's where Harvey, uh, he feels that he's, he's beginning to change, you know? And then he said, excuse me, or whatever, and then he would like go behind the drapes. And then somebody's gone, you know, but Doctor Jekyll, and then part the thing, and then there's Carol.

• 1:16:49Speaker 03

  And then, and then she's going to change back into Harvey. And that was basically where the piece was.

• 1:16:53Bill Maher?

  Miss was like a new term back then.

• 1:16:55Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:16:55Bill Maher?

  So this was a comment on like the, the current feminism?

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, in a way, and it's rough, touching upon without trying to make a particular point of view.

• 1:17:08Speaker 03

  But you know, it was good fun that Harvey could turn into Carol and Carol can then turn back into Harvey. You know, so that was one in that we used to do a lot of the Tim Conway pieces where he was the old man. He was playing, he was an old, old man and he was like the cab driver.

• 1:17:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:28Speaker 03

  And it would be like something, this like it'd be the setup. He's there and all of a sudden Harvey would get into the, into the cab to the airport and make it snappy. And then there's a long, long, long pause and then about 20, 30 seconds later Conway would look in the rearview mirror, a passenger. And then, and then it would begin with, with, what Conway would do is he would say, to the airport. And then they used to have, they don't have anymore. The Conway would get the, the, I forget what the book was called, you know, AI, AI for the directions, you know, which is another minute, which Harvey would lose it and then laughing.

• 1:18:10Speaker 03

  And they would do that, those particular simple little, you know, sketches.

• 1:18:14Bill Maher?

  I mean, I remember when I was a kid, the comedy teams, the cab was a staple of, because one would be the cab driver and one would be the passenger. Stiller and Mira did it. There was that one, that, who's that people on, Ed Sullivan, Burns and Schreiber.

• 1:18:31Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right, yeah.

• 1:18:33Bill Maher?

  Yeah, huh, yeah, huh. That was like a rhythm thing.

• 1:18:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:18:37Bill Maher?

  And one, the passenger would be obnoxious or the passenger would be whatever the fuck and the cabby would be like, so one would be talking like this. And it was like, I don't know.

• 1:18:47Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:18:48Bill Maher?

  My, my childhood was so idyllic when I, you know, when I think about what kids are doing today when they're 11 years old, they're on their phone watching Japanese porn and seeing a team of businessmen come on a, a schoolgirl's face. And I was watching this. I think I'm better off.

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  Look, you were seeing things. One of the first things I remember as a kid was Sid Caesar Show. And because Sid Caesar would, you know, play these characters and he had some brilliant, you know, people in there and a great cast.

• 1:19:21Bill Maher?

  I mean, that was even before my time, but I certainly know about it. And if people don't know, the writing staff, they call it the 27 Yankees of writing staffs because it was on a Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Galbart, I can't, Neil Simon.

• 1:19:41Speaker 03

  Neil Simon.

• 1:19:41Bill Maher?

  I mean, like, people who went on to giant major careers, all on one writing staff.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  And there's a couple others that did Broadway, went to Broadway.

• 1:19:49Bill Maher?

  Absolutely, yes.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:19:51Bill Maher?

  Amazing.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  The, I don't know if you remember the sketch, because it was all done live back then. And you wouldn't have remembered it, but unless you might have seen it, and sometimes they show these archival things. But there's one where Sid Caesar is the lawyer and waiting for the jury's reaction. And then the head of the jury is supposed to say, you know, we find him, you know, innocent. You know? And but he's supposed to say, I'm sorry, supposed to say, we find him guilty so that Caesar can go into, you know, how can you find him guilty?

• 1:20:36Speaker 03

  And then he's got like a three-minute piece of dialogue because it's guilty. And the person, the foreman said, we find him innocent.

• 1:20:47Bill Maher?

  I think he just fucked up?

• 1:20:49Speaker 03

  Yes, he fucked up the guy, the foreman of the jury.

• 1:20:52Bill Maher?

  Fucked up the one word he had.

• 1:20:53Speaker 03

  One word. He couldn't get.

• 1:20:55Bill Maher?

  What an idiot.

• 1:20:56Speaker 03

  He couldn't get guilty, he went with innocent.

• 1:20:59Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  And then Caesar had to ad lib the next three and a half minutes because he's got it, you know, he has no argument. And yet he found a way to pull it off.

• 1:21:11Bill Maher?

  Oh, I'm sure he was a genius, but I must say, you mentioned archival, okay? They did it, probably in the 80s. I feel like I have a memory of watching this on my apartment in, on West Mount Avenue, when my, my first apartment out here, late 80s, okay.

• 1:21:31Bill Maher?

  They did, I think it was Showtime, maybe it was a little after that, cause I mean, I did a series for Showtime in 1988, it was around then. And Showtime had the best of your show of shows, or ten from your show of shows.

• 1:21:45Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah.

• 1:21:46Bill Maher?

  And they did show like, and I watched it, I was very curious, cause I certainly had heard about Sid Caesar, and I knew about the writing staff, and you know, a comic kid who wanted to be in comedy, and so I watched it, and I gotta say, I just thought it was the worst fucking shit I'd ever seen. And, and what struck me was that it was so broad, and to me, so unfunny, and the audience, and this is a, you know, this is crude 50s TV, you can't, they're not faking anything, there's a laugh track. The audience is just losing their shit over how funny they think their shit is. And all I could think is, this is the post-World War II audience, they went through a war,

• 1:22:27Bill Maher?

  they went through a depression, they're just so fucking happy to be home and fucking in their little Levittown houses, and having little kids, and not being at war, and they're ju- they're just fucking happy, and they'll, they'll laugh at anything, cause this shit was not funny, it was just so broad to me.

• 1:22:48Speaker 03

  Well, I, I mean, it was funny in its time.

• 1:22:51Bill Maher?

  In its time, exactly, which wasn't my time.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  And, you know, that's the key, it would have been, you know, I would see some comics that would be on, Ed Sullivan, old comics, that I never found funny at all, you know.

• 1:23:06Bill Maher?

  I have a whole list.

• 1:23:07Speaker 03

  I would just go, I don't understand why this is funny, you know.

• 1:23:10Bill Maher?

  Danny Thomas, George Burns, I didn't like any of those old fucks.

• 1:23:14Speaker 03

  So there's a period, you know, so each generation

• 1:23:18Bill Maher?

  It just

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  has to find its, its new voice.

• 1:23:21Bill Maher?

  It really does show how perishable comedy is, more than music. I mean, they, you look at TV, the commercials, they're constantly using songs that are from my, our era. Okay, that, those are old songs. But they're still good and people still listen to them. They still listen to the Beatles and so forth. But do we really like watch comedy from 60 years ago? No.

• 1:23:47Speaker 03

  No, look, Milton Berle.

• 1:23:48Bill Maher?

  Very little of it lasts.

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  I was watching just recently on YouTube or whatever it was. And I thought Milton Berle. And I remember as a kid, it was one of the first television shows that I saw. And I thought, I gotta watch this. And he was huge, right? He was like, you know, Mr. Television.

• 1:24:07Bill Maher?

  Because there was like three channels.

• 1:24:09Speaker 03

  And but the point being is there was only three channels. But when you watch it, it's not funny at all.

• 1:24:17Bill Maher?

  Exactly my point. They were just happy to have the war over. They would laugh at the phone book. They just did not care. They were just giddy. The people were fucking giddy. And I, and I get that. I, I've talked to my parents when they were alive about that, about that period and how they felt. And yeah, they were giddy, you know? There were problems, but you know, they were, you know, they were living in the suburbs on the G I bill. And you know, there weren't just, I mean, obviously the country was still a fucked up racist place.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  But it's also, it's also, you know, how perishable it is. Because even when you see some of the comedies that were once upon a time really funny supposedly, I don't find funny at all. Now, you will find.

• 1:25:06Bill Maher?

  Like what?

• 1:25:07Speaker 03

  Somebody will, you know, break through. But there were a bunch of those films, shows, I don't know what, something Irma and whatever. I don't even remember the names, but I would see these films, you know, because we would go Saturday to see whatever's playing at the movie theater. And they'd been around and that. I didn't find a bunch of those things funny at all. And then this new.

• 1:25:35Speaker 03

  Wave of comedy came along, you know, like The Pythons came along was like a whole new thing when The Pythons started with their, you know, English humor.

• 1:25:45Bill Maher?

  That was another groundbreaking.

• 1:25:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, and so there's that period of time, it goes on and it's getting boring and then boom, something explodes again.

• 1:25:54Bill Maher?

  I've been showing older movies to someone who I know is much younger and has no knowledge of these movies, but she's, you know, likes them, usually Love Gun with the Wind, you know, Casablanca, Sunset Boulevard really holds up. The Third Man, some of them don't, some of them don't. So I was telling her about Bringing Up Baby, which is in the 30s, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, I think, you know, classic, and they remade it as What's Up Doc in 1980 or

• 1:26:30Speaker 03

  Bogdanovich.

• 1:26:30Bill Maher?

  Seventy, Bogdanovich, Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal. So we watched that first, it's awesome. Streisand is amazing in this, I mean, she just, just blows the lid off of it. Ryan O'Neal's great too, but like he's playing a much easier part, she's doing the, the heavy lifting, it's, it's just really great, it's funny. And of course it's based on Bringing Up Baby, a lot of the bits are exactly the same, beat for beat, where she grabs his jacket and he tears it, everything, the, the, the whole MacGuffin of the movie. So then we try to watch that one, got about halfway hour through it, I mean, it's, it's from 1935, it's just a heavy lift to ask 1935.

• 1:27:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:27:12Bill Maher?

  To, to like, live on in 2025, you know, it just is. Sometimes they pull it off, but it's just, they're, they're, it's just too heavy a lift, it's just too long a time, you know, the sensibility is different. You know, my father's war letters, I read recently over somebody had a lot of, and, and a little after the war, so we're talking about 40s into the 50s, these are men at war, writing each other, and they never once used the word fuck.

• 1:27:46Bill Maher?

  Men at war, they were just different. Never said fuck, never said shit, never said piss, never said cunt, never said jizz on your face, never said skull fuck. Wait. Fucking shit, let's just stop at that.

• 1:28:04Bill Maher?

  But really, I mean, can you think?

• 1:28:09Bill Maher?

  Never said my fist up your ass, okay. So, but like, can you imagine, like, men? These are men writing letters to each other and they don't use any profundity. We're a very different species.

• 1:28:23Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:24Bill Maher?

  Which is our.

• 1:28:25Speaker 03

  Was it you ever, you know, in the, um, Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War?

• 1:28:30Bill Maher?

  Oh.

• 1:28:31Speaker 03

  Letters home.

• 1:28:32Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:33Speaker 03

  Same thing.

• 1:28:34Bill Maher?

  And they sound like they're written by Walt Whitman.

• 1:28:37Speaker 03

  I know. Yeah. Incredibly, you go, how gorgeous is this?

• 1:28:42Bill Maher?

  So erudite and they're just, you know, this is just a common man.

• 1:28:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and, and half of them never went to school. You're going back.

• 1:28:52Bill Maher?

  They must have learned it somewhere.

• 1:28:54Speaker 03

  I don't understand how, you, you, you're right. You would think that this is some kind of like, how do they, a lot of very good writers.

• 1:29:02Bill Maher?

  Back then, you had to turn your phone off in class. And there was none of that indoctrinating into woke bullshit. They actually told you reading, writing and arithmetic. Wasn't all a political commissar building. Look how out of whack our government is. Our government was, um, I don't know if you're watching the Ken Burns Great Revolutionary War doc he just did. It's great. And, you know, our government was designed where the presidency was really.

• 1:29:35Bill Maher?

  The least of the three branches of government. They executed the laws, but Congress had all the power. That's the way they designed it. And we're almost at the opposite place now. Where Congress has no power and the president has almost all the power. That's exactly what we were revolting against.

• 1:29:53Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:29:54Bill Maher?

  Don't make a movie about that because it's too on the nose. What is your next thought for a movie?

• 1:30:02Speaker 03

  I have, there's a few things that I'm interested in, but we'll see what happens. Especially now because there's so many objections to a movie that you want to make. What you can't do, basically, which is what I really love is in the films that were more personal to me, has the stories of characters that I knew and grew up with.

• 1:30:28Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:30:28Speaker 03

  And where things went in terms of society and all of those things, which is, you know, I did four of the Baltimore films and not that I'm going to stay in that place, but in that particular world, you know, that applied to today even in terms of how do we deal with one another.

• 1:30:44Bill Maher?

  What's the one with Richard Dreyfuss?

• 1:30:46Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 1:30:46Bill Maher?

  What's the one with Richard Dreyfuss?

• 1:30:49Speaker 03

  Tin Men.

• 1:30:50Bill Maher?

  I love that. Tin Men.

• 1:30:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, with Danny DeVito.

• 1:30:53Bill Maher?

  That's good. That's such a good one. I feel like that one kind of like got lost in the shuffle, but it's a really funny movie.

• 1:31:01Speaker 03

  It did all right, but it was, it did okay. It could have done better, but they were always nervous about those type of films.

• 1:31:07Bill Maher?

  I just mean over time, you know, like people remember Weg the Dog, of course. Rain Man, of course, because Tom Cruise, geez.

• 1:31:15Speaker 03

  He was really.

• 1:31:16Bill Maher?

  What a phenomenon that is in every way.

• 1:31:19Speaker 03

  What's interesting is that, you know, most of the movie, as it turned out, there was. I got involved because originally Cindy Pollak was gonna do it and Michael Ovitz was his agent and my agent.

• 1:31:32Bill Maher?

  Was I my Rain Man?

• 1:31:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Bill Maher?

  Cindy Pollak was gonna be direct?

• 1:31:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was gonna direct it.

• 1:31:36Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 1:31:37Speaker 03

  And he was having problems with the script and Michael Ovitz said, would you read the script and talk to Cindy about doing it? You know, the fixes. And so I met with Cindy and I went over and I talked about it all and all of those things. And eventually he said, I just can't see it. And so then Ovitz said, you know, would you wanna direct it? And my wife Diana said, this is, this is right up your alley to do, because I was explaining it.

• 1:32:06Bill Maher?

  Were Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman attached to it when he still passed?

• 1:32:10Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:32:11Bill Maher?

  What an idiot. No, he was great. Cindy, I loved him.

• 1:32:15Speaker 03

  He was, he was a terrific person, but he couldn't understand.

• 1:32:18Bill Maher?

  And what a movie maker.

• 1:32:19Speaker 03

  And he was looking for more things to happen in the movie. And I was saying, I think it's the two of them in the car, period.

• 1:32:28Bill Maher?

  You're the non-happening guy.

• 1:32:29Speaker 03

  And the hustler can hustle the autistic. That's the basis of the movie. And so, so this is what happened. We're gonna, he drops out, I get involved. And we, we're just about go off to shoot and we still have to do rewriting. And there was a writer's strike. And so now you can't write. And so as a director, what you can do is just talk, you know, so like, for instance, I would say, on a highway scene, I said, I don't like the highway, cuz it's too boring on

• 1:33:13Speaker 03

  being on a highway, but that's the fastest way to get to LA is to take an interstate. But the back roads are more interesting looking. And they said, well, what are you gonna do? It's the way you gotta go. I said, what about if there's an accident on the highway? And then if he sees there's an accident, he's not getting back in the car.

• 1:33:29Bill Maher?

  That sounds like writing.

• 1:33:31Speaker 03

  And so you're just talking premise. And then you just.

• 1:33:35Bill Maher?

  But that's why the whole thing is so silly.

• 1:33:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. But here's the key to it.

• 1:33:40Speaker 03

  Tom has never been thought of as somebody to, you know, ad lib.

• 1:33:46Speaker 03

  But that, if you take a segment like that, it's all ad lib. I just said to Dustin, you, you want to get off the, out of the car and you're not getting in the car until you get off the highway. And that's it. And then Tom, you're trying to deal with him and then you're going to deal with the police. And you telling you got to get him into the car and that was it. So we were just shooting and putting together.

• 1:34:10Bill Maher?

  There were the director made for a writer's strike.

• 1:34:14Bill Maher?

  The one who can credibly claim, I didn't write any of the shows.

• 1:34:22Speaker 03

  So that's how it basically, you know, you know, came about. Because of, of the writer's strike and then you're just trying to, you know, fill in the scenes as you go along.

• 1:34:32Bill Maher?

  And this is when you became a Scientologist?

• 1:34:37Bill Maher?

  All right, well, I, I'm so glad we got to sit down together. I am such a fan and you're just as, just as entertaining to sit with as you are to watch, having directed all those great pictures.

• 1:34:52Speaker 03

  This is a nice spot here.

• 1:34:55Bill Maher?

  Oh, this room is magical. I mean, it's, uh,

• 1:35:01Bill Maher?

  was, I was, you know, everyone told me to tear it down when I bought this.

• 1:35:05Speaker 03

  Really?

• 1:35:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah, because it was full of termites and mold and, you know.

• 1:35:12Speaker 03

  But how did you get the idea to do a podcast?

• 1:35:16Bill Maher?

  You know, everybody kept saying to me for years, you should do a podcast. And I'd be like, please, I have a television show. And they'd be like, yeah, but you don't get to talk about everything on that. And they were so right because this is so different than the television show, which I do like specific preparation for and a lot of it. And this, I just get high and talk. And, and so it goes where it goes and it doesn't have to be about politics and I don't want it to be. I have a show for politics.

• 1:35:44Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:35:44Bill Maher?

  This is different. And so I get to, you know, just.

• 1:35:50Bill Maher?

  Talk with people like yourself, who I probably would never get the chance to do. I mean, it's just, it's just been a joy, so. Hope we do it again.

• 1:36:00Speaker 03

  No, this was fun. I mean, first of all, I just realized that I'm not paying attention, but there's no camera person.

• 1:36:08Bill Maher?

  That was, that was my idea.

• 1:36:09Speaker 03

  That was a good idea.

• 1:36:11Bill Maher?

  I, I said, hide the cameras in the walls. I want this to be, I want people to forget. You know, no other person in the room, no microphones in our face. And it does produce a level of intimacy. I do not see it anywhere else.

• 1:36:28Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:36:31Speaker 03

  I was about to say, so when do you want to start the recording?

• 1:36:43Speaker 00

  With Truvia Sweeteners, it's simple to make sweetness part of your routine. From sweetening your creamy morning matcha to freshly baked blueberry scones, Truvia Sweeteners make it easy to enjoy the flavors you love with less sugar per serving. From everyday drinks to homemade favorites, they're made to fit right in. Because with Truvia, every moment tastes better. Find Truvia at your favorite local grocery retailer and bring better sweetness home.

• 1:37:10Speaker 05

  Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump. You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.

• 1:37:40Speaker 06

  Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.