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You can only control yourself. They don't have to cope with you. And that makes your life hard if you're trying to get everybody in your space to do it your way. You have to figure out how you're going to cope in the world. And that's the game of life. That's the game of business. How can you figure out a path of least resistance for yourself? And then you'll find that everything else falls into place.
Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories from all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is Howie Mandel. Howie is an actor, producer, author, and one of the funniest comedians of all time, a
Among many other television roles, he spent six years on the hit TV show, St. Elsewhere, created the hit children's cartoon series, Bobby's World, was the host of the hit TV game show, Deal or No Deal, which aired for eight seasons, and has been a judge on my favorite TV show, America's Got Talent, for the last 19 years. Howie is also the author of the book, Here's the Deal, Don't Touch Me, which chronicles his lifelong struggles with depression, anxiety, OCD, and ADHD.
Last year, he released a documentary titled Howie Mandel, But Enough About Me, and he has a new show premiering on YouTube on July 4th called When a Stranger Calls. Howie, thanks for being here. Welcome to In Search of Excellence. Well, thank you. Am I here to help you search for excellence? You are. We're here to motivate and inspire people to achieve their dreams and overcome their challenges and be the best that they can be.
I'm the perfect guest. You are an amazing guest. So let's start with your parents. Your dad, Al, was in the lighting manufacturing business. No, lighting sales. Lighting sales business. Yeah. No, he was in business. You know, he did a lot of things throughout my childhood. He is my inspiration in as far as he was the opposite of complacent.
you know, if something sounded like a good idea, then he jumped on board. So, you know, when I was born, he was driving cabs and then he, I remember he was selling cars and then he was in the stock market. Then he opened up a bar hotel and,
Then the last thing that he was doing before he passed and I worked with him in was commercial lighting. And ultimately it was phone sales. We did really well. He did really well. And in that my parents, I grew up middle class, but they did, you know, and I grew up in an apartment and shared a room with my brother. Both my parents ended up financially doing well, really close to when I left home.
So I like to feel that I was holding them back. No, my father's business took off the lighting business and my mother became number one sales, real estate sales, condo sales person in Canada right when I left. In Toronto where you grew up. Yeah. A suburb of Toronto, Willowdale. Yes. Yeah. Yep. That's where I'm from.
And your dad taught you a great work ethic. Can you tell us what you saw and how that influenced you? We were always, like he was always looking for the next thing, always really excited about an idea, always like very childlike in the sense that, you know, I remember like at some point, maybe when I was eight or nine years old, he discovered, he didn't discover, but somebody he knew discovered a clothesline
Because people, before the dryer, I'm old. Before people had electric dryers in their homes or gas dryers in their home for laundry, he discovered people hung their clothes out on the clothesline, right? Do you remember that? There were clothespins? I mean, I don't remember it, but I'm much younger than you. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Look at the color of your hair. You saw a clothesline. Yeah, I've seen clotheslines. Okay. So they had clothespins, right?
And he, he partnered with this guy where there was a pinless clothesline. You didn't have to do that. It had this, this thing, this little, there was two lines like this and this wheel with ball bearings. You'd, you'd pull it. And as you pulled it, the, the two lines would, would twist. So you could hang your clothes along. It was called zip grip. And I remember, I,
Sitting in the living room for hours, we would pack little folders or little cards and folders because we were going to do a mailer because everybody was going to want a zip grip. Who wouldn't want a zip grip? But it was exciting. It didn't really take off, but the expectation and the excitement and, you know, he was always like this entrepreneur who wanted to, you know, find the next big thing, water softeners, right?
You know, just a new way. Bought a hotel in Stratford, Ontario, the home of the... Film Festival or the Theatre Festival. Shakespearean Festival. Yeah, he had a Shakespeare Festival, but he was into counter-programming. So in the bar, they had strippers. Yeah.
Right, because if you didn't want to see the play, there's got to be a whole other audience. But it wasn't even normal. I remember going one day, he had this one dancer called Princess Glow who weighed 350 pounds and she would take a big bubble bath in a giant champagne glass on stage and then get out of the bubble bath, not gracefully, and walk around the room and drop her soapy wet
giant breast on people's heads. But it drew from far and wide. I would imagine more people enjoyed that than Hamlet. It probably worked today as well as a way to get people to come.
How are you spelling that? C-O-M-E, right? Of course, yes. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I was taking it back for just a second. Okay, here we go. Let's do it. Let's talk about when you were four to five years old. Your parents loved comedy. They loved stand-up comedy. Tell us about the particular show that they watched that you loved. And when you were four to five years old, you heard them laughing and then you joined the party. Well, I'll tell you that story. That's the...
the moment I've been trying to recapture for the rest of my life. So I've always felt uncomfortable and like an outcast didn't, it could never articulate why, you know, later on in life I was diagnosed with issues, but my family was incredibly supportive and loving and whatnot. And I've, I've always had a kind of an inner struggle and,
But my family always loved comedy and my dad would bring home albums and, or they would watch the tonight show and they would watch, you know, comedians. They love standup comedy and I'd hear somebody talk and then there'd be laughter. And I would gravitate toward the laughter because that felt like a comfortable, warm, fun place to be wherever you hear laughter. There's good things going on. So I, and I would go into the living room and they'd be listening to an album or watch a comedian on TV. And, and, um,
Which made me feel somewhat alienated because I as a as a four year old or a five year old, I wouldn't understand, you know, a guy making jokes about a mother in law. And I don't know what a mother in law is. I didn't understand. My parents would laugh and I would turn around and kind of in dismay going, what's so funny?
But on one particular evening, which I think you're alluding to, is they were watching Candid Camera. And Candid Camera was, you know, the predecessor to Punk'd and everything else you see about hidden camera pranks. And...
Candid Camera was actually started as a radio show where people would do pranks on people. But Candid Camera was on and Alan Funt was the host of Candid Camera. I think he's the creator of the hidden camera prank. But on this particular episode, I heard my parents laughing in the living room and went in. They were watching Candid Camera. I sat at their feet. They were on the couch and...
And he came on, Alan Funt, came on and said, here's what I'm going to do.
this is a fake office, this desk you're looking at, and I'm gonna pretend I'm the boss. We're gonna hire so-called receptionists. These young ladies are gonna come in and think they have this part-time job. I'm gonna tell them their only job is to answer the phone. Don't miss a phone call and take a message. I'm going out to a meeting. I'm going out to lunch. Please just take a message.
That's all you have to do. And they would say, OK, but here's what they don't know. The bottom of this desk is tied to a rope which goes through the wall to the next room. When the phone rings, when we see that they're going to answer the phone, we'll pull the rope from the other room. The whole desk, the phone and everything will just just slide away from under them.
And in that moment, just the anticipation, think of like being part of a surprise party. You know, I understood as a four-year-old, anybody would understand what they're going to do. And you go, oh my God, I like, I'm in on this joke. I understand it. I'm part of it. And we all, me and my mom and my dad, we looked at each other and we kind of laughed and we waited in anticipation. We knew it was going to be funny. We knew it was going to be great.
I was now included in the party. And then what was really funny is the first woman comes, she sits down and
The phone rings. She goes to grab the phone. The desk and the phone go away. The horror shows up on her face. There was a guttural in the second, that guttural laugh of her fear and dismay and how funny it was and how relatable it was. And what would I do in that situation? And my parents were laughing hysterically. And all three of us were just in this most...
Joyous, wonderful, endorphin-releasing moment of laughter that I remember vividly as I tell the story today, and it's something that
And we were also in the moment. There was no worry about what might happen. There's no thought about something that did happen. It was just in the moment and glorious. And I've been trying to recapture that moment, that particular moment and that feeling every waking moment of my life since then. You're listening to In Search of Excellence. Thanks for watching. If you like this content, hit the subscribe button down below and like this video if you want other people to see it.
We're going to get into the details of that. You've done an amazing job on that. No, I haven't. You don't think you've been successful in your career? No, successful in my career, but not successful in getting that. The reason my career goes well or everything that I do is because I'm chasing that moment. I mean, we could talk about that, but what I realized is I want that moment. In chasing that moment...
Not having the understanding of, because I was four, not having the understanding that this is a TV show. It takes an audience. It takes production. It takes the necessity to share that with somebody so that,
What I spent time doing because I spent a lot of time just feeling miserable in, in for other reasons that I didn't understand, which turned out to be OCD and depression and anxiety and whatever. I would do things publicly in school that in my mind were episodes that were triggered by candid camera, but I didn't have a friend, so I didn't tell anybody. So I,
You want an example? Well, we're going to get into all the examples as we go through. But I want to talk about kind of
some of your issues when you were younger, but I want to start with your mom and grandmother. They were neat freaks. Yeah. And when someone would come in and touch the crib, they would disinfect the crib. Yeah, my mom, you know, you have the first, it's her first baby. I get it. I think that she was just, you know, nature versus nurture. I don't think that she had OCD or anything like that, but I know that my grandmother was waxing the sidewalk outside. Yeah.
Waxing. Not hair removal. I mean, actual cleaning like a floor. Well, maybe if there was hair on it, she was, but not Brazilian. Concrete. Yes. It's rough. Not a Brazilian pathway to my grandmother's house, which is kind of, if you think about it. I really don't want to think about your grandmother and waxing. Can we just take a moment? Okay. Okay, so anyway, but you have your first baby and you're really a neurotic person.
You're neurotic anyway when you have a child. You're now responsible for another human being for their survival. So my mom grew up in a household where germs and dirt was a big issue. So I do remember, even before I can speak, I remember that when people came in to see the baby –
if they touched the crib, my mother was like so focused on where their hand was that when they left, even if it was a half hour later, she would come in with like Lysol and then wipe that. So that may have informed, I'm not a psychiatrist, but that may have informed my repetitive thoughts about and rituals about being a mysophobic, which is the fear of germs.
Your parents noticed some things when you were very young. Can you tell us about you watching people's legs crossed and what your reaction was as a kid? Well, I have, you know, I do and did not know I have...
about OCD. So OCD is obsessive compulsive disorder. You know, it's become part of a vernacular in our society where people go, Oh, I'm a little OCD. I get it. You know, and they're really, they don't, they're persnickety, they're neat freaks. They like things in order. They like, you know, what OCD actually is. And I work for a company now and also I'm a part of a company called no CD, which is a very successful app now, but I'm not,
promoting that. Well, I'd like to. Yeah. No CD, which is just gives people access to help, you know, wherever you are, it's affordable, it's insured, and you can even be diagnosed. It's probably the most misdiagnosed mental health issue there is. And even when it is diagnosed, you're probably not getting expert care just because you go to a psychiatrist or a therapist or
or a caregiver doesn't mean they understand it. One out of 40 people have it. And that's, those are the people that are diagnosed. The number is probably higher. - One out of 100 children have it. So two to three million Americans have it. - One out of every 40 people. - People, but in children, it's one of 100 in the United States.
I'm telling you, you're wrong. I'm saying it's one out of 40 human beings. Gotcha. One out of 40 human beings. So it's not one of a hundred. It's one out of 40 human beings, whether you're a child or not, have it.
it and they're misdiagnosed usually if even if they know they have a problem and they go to seek help it usually takes an average of 17 years to get the proper diagnosis and then once you get the proper diagnosis they're not getting the proper help for it it's pretty prevalent in its it's becoming even more prevalent I don't know that it's becoming more prevalent it's becoming more recognized so
So therefore it's more, and if we took care of our mental health the way we took care of our dental health, this would be a much more productive, successful society if we did, you know, whatever your issues are. But when you, in specifically talking about your,
your question about people crossing their legs, what OCD is, is OCD is you could have a thought, a thought that makes sense, a thought that makes no sense, a thought that is dark, a thought that is, that just runs through your mind in, in,
somebody who doesn't have OCD, that thought will go in and go out. So if you're crawling along the floor as a baby and somebody crosses their legs in front of you and you go, why'd you cross your legs? I wanted to go around. That's just probably a normal thought. If somebody crosses their legs and I think I don't want them to cross their legs for whatever reason, that's not what OCD is.
OCD is the inability to get past that thought. So if you cross your legs, think of a skipping record. If you crossed your legs and for whatever reason, I didn't want you to cross your legs and you did cross your legs, but for whatever reason, I don't want you to cross your legs. I don't want you to cross your legs. I don't want you to cross your legs.
I don't want you to crush it. And I can't stop that thought. And I can't stop that thought. And that thought keeps going and going and going and repeating until it's so, can I swear on here? Yeah. It's still, it's so fucking annoying. It becomes a wall. So the smallest, most ridiculous thought, and we all have thoughts running through our minds ad nauseum all day long. Some of them are helpful and useful and,
move you along in life. Some of them stop you. Some of them, for whatever reason, the number seven flashes into your mind. It doesn't matter. That's not abnormal.
But if the number seven keeps flashing in your mind and you can't stop it and then everything around is just seven is just seven and just seven and you have to say seven and you have to say seven or you think your hands are dirty and you go wash your hands and then you can't stop washing your hands and you're locked in there for hours and you miss the most important appointment that is...
there in front of you and your family and your life stops or you're making other people do things. That's what OCD is. So these particular instances that you bring up are one of many. The point is that my mind is a skipping record and I don't know what'll trigger that skipping. I don't know. That's why I don't shake hands because I don't, I don't just don't want to be triggered. I, um,
and there isn't a cure for it. And the fact that my mom and my grandmother were neat freaks, maybe that's why I have the thought that goes toward germs, but you have the same thoughts. Anybody watching has those same thoughts. If you shake somebody's hands or touch something and you go, ooh, you'll go wash your hands. You can walk away from washing your hands and then go on with your life. I can too, but...
80% of the time, 20% of the time I will get stuck. And if I get stuck, life stops. And as somebody who was born in the fifties and raised in the sixties and lives now in this millennium, there was a huge stigma attached to mental health issues. That stigma did not allow me get stuck.
or even know that there was help. And when you have a mental health problem, you're in your own mind and you don't understand that anybody else has similar thoughts because we all are incredibly different and all are incredibly insular, you know, in our own world.
And in our own personal algorithm, even outside of digital use, we do have our algorithm, the things that we notice, the things that how we create our life. Nobody else has the same path as you. You and me are in this room having this conversation right now. You and me are having a very different experience. And you and me not only having a very different experience, I would imagine that if in great detail we would describe exactly what's happening in
You wouldn't think we were in the same room because we're, we're coming at it from, you know, whatever information I'm spewing out and whatever information you're taking in it, I can't replicate exactly how you're taking this in. And the way I'm spewing it out is,
We are all not aware of how it's being perceived. We know what we think we sound like. We know what we think is going on, but I can't speak to anybody watching this podcast for how they're taking it, how it's affecting them, how they think I'm describing it. We are very...
So we feel very insular. So my point is that at a certain, it's really scary to share. And at a certain point, my wife said to me, Howie, if you don't get help, I'm leaving and I'm taking the kids because in order to create comfort, I was making everybody around me kind of adhere to whatever rules would make me comfortable. Like,
I saw you just put on your shoe. Don't answer the phone. Don't touch the phone. I will answer the phone. And what I learned is, and this goes for everybody with any kind of issue, just everybody, my therapist has taught me, you can't control the world. You can only control yourself. So they don't have to cope with you. And that makes sense.
your life hard, if you're trying to get everybody to, in your space, to do it your way, you have to figure out how you're going to cope in the world. And that's the game of life. That's the game of business. How can you figure out a path of least resistance for yourself? And then you'll find that everything else falls into place. It really does.
Your family has been very supportive and in terms of hitting rock bottom, can you talk about the limo ride to the airport and what happened that prompted her to say, this is enough. The last thing was, the last thing was we were on our way to a family vacation. My three kids, me were in a limo. My daughter, Jackie, who I do my podcast with crossed her legs and her, her foot touched my pants. And, um,
there was a little scuff mark on my pants, which I couldn't, I didn't have the wherewithal to even be able to, I didn't want to touch what came off her shoe. And it just started, it was so, it was like fucking screaming to me. Like my pants are,
infected. It's infected. I got to go home. I got to go home. I said, I said, the driver, you got to go. We got to go back. My family's sitting there all packed, ready to go on vacation. What do you mean? We got to go back. We're, we're going to be late. I got to go back. I got to change my pants. I got to, why do you change my pants? Because she touched my pants. She touched my pants and she goes, it was an accident. She's upset. Everybody's upset. And this is, and I did turn around the car and
Went and changed my pants, and then we had to rush, and it wasn't fun. We made the flight. But the truth of the matter was, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. This is the pressure that my poor wife and children had to live with constantly. And my wife just said, I can't do this anymore. And I can't do this to the children anymore. And you can't, you just got to go get help. And I went and got help. We identified some of my issues, one being OCD and anxiety, which was...
a weight off my shoulder to know that there is something and maybe there is an answer and maybe something I can do about it. But that did not remove the stigma of me not wanting to share that with the rest of the world. So now I had, you know, I had a, an answer, but I was also stigmatized by, you know, not wanting to share this answer. I would have never had this conversation like I'm having with you then because
you know, this is just something I was going to take care of quietly between me and my family. So let's go back to when you were younger. And at one point you forgot to go to the bathroom, you wet your pants, you jumped in a puddle to cover it up. What are your parents telling you at that point in time? And what's happening to your mental health at a young age? Were you
Were you asking my mom what's wrong with me? No, I was never embarrassed. And I was never, I was just unhappy and uncomfortable and, you know, do anything to not,
I didn't fit in with anybody. I wasn't, you know, good at anything. I wasn't good at sports. I wasn't good at, you know, nobody thought I was funny. And this is, leans back into the first part of the conversation where, you know, I knew that I had that great moment when we were watching Canada camera. So I would do things like that in school, but I didn't have friends.
So I would do things like, this isn't that young, but it's emblematic of the kind of things that I was doing where I hired a company. I called the Yellow Pages and hired somebody to put an edition out to the library. I know it sounds funny. And I thought it's kind of funny because like I say, Alan Funtu, I don't have, I'm not really an employee of the school. I don't have the rights. It'll be really funny if I see this guy out on the field,
measuring and doing, and then the principal goes out and says, what are you doing? The vice principal goes out and says, what are you doing? And he said, I'm measuring for an addition. And I had given my name and who authorized this, Howie Mandel. And I got called down to the office. What the problem was is I didn't articulate in my own mind that even if I would have had a friend, if I would have said, hey, wait till you see it, three o'clock, I called somebody and he's gonna be measuring. And then,
I didn't tell anybody. So who is this for? That's what my mother always constantly said. Like I go, don't you think it's funny? She goes, but who is it for? Who are you trying to make laugh? And I would always say the same thing. Me, me. I just want to be happy for a moment. I want to be happy. When I didn't want to go swimming in school and I threw a chocolate bar in the pool. You ate shit.
Well, I threw the chocolate bar in the pool. And then when everybody showed up at the end of the day to see who had defecated in the pool, cause they were going to close the pool. So I didn't have to go swimming in the winter at 300 people there. I dived in and came up with it in my mouth, which I talked about in the seventies and later was written into Caddyshack. But the point is everybody just went, Ooh, and I was more alienated because they thought I ate shit instead of thinking I was the funny guy. It's a funny story now.
But then, and I was trying to be funny, but I didn't, I didn't even understand that I didn't have a friend. I didn't have an audience. So it just looked like I ate shit. And when you're 15 years old or 14 years old and you do something gross, you know, the, the, the, uh,
The main thrust, even now for a 15-year-old, is to probably fit in, to find out what sneakers everybody's wearing, to wear your hair, to listen to the same music, to go to the same concerts. You look at everybody at a Taylor Swift concert. They're all wearing their friendship bracelets. That's the epitome of wanting to be part of something.
And I want to be part of, but I didn't have, I went about it the wrong way. And to that end, I was constantly trying to recapture that moment, that Alan Funt candid camera moment. But in that pursuit of that moment,
It was going all wrong. It would alienate me more. I didn't understand. I'm understanding. I'm telling you now as a 68-year-old man, I understand that if I would have had one friend or even if I didn't have a friend, if I would have said to somebody there, you're not going to believe what I did. I called the Yellow Pages. I have a guy. Look out the window at three o'clock for math class. There's going to be a guy measuring and he thinks he's going to put on addition. He's going to give a
you know, an estimate on an addition to the library. Won't that be funny? And tell everybody else. And then if everybody would look, I might've been a little bit of a hero or at least I would have gotten a laugh or somebody would have thought it was funny, but I didn't tell anybody.
Or if I said I threw the chocolate bar in the pool, go down at three o'clock when everybody's looking at what they think is shit, I'm gonna dive in and come up with it in my mouth. They would have laughed. They probably would have told 10 other people. I would have been a hero. Instead, the way I operated in my ignorance and not knowing how to do it, all these attempts at trying to recapture that laughter and that sense of belonging alienated me 10 times more.
You didn't have friends, but let's talk about the hair. And I want to talk about, you joined the wrestling team and people thought you were a girl.
And you were 98 pounds. Those are all separate thoughts, but part of- And the onesie. So can you get into all of that? Yeah. I wanted to belong and I wanted to have friends. I was in high school. This is around the same time. In high school, I was 89 pounds. I wasn't even 90 pounds. I was four foot 10. I had a beautiful head of hair, but-
I didn't shave. My voice was crackly. I looked like a little girl. I wanted to talk to girls. Sometimes the only way I could talk to girls, I could stand in the girl's bathroom and stand in front of the mirror and brush my hair because they didn't know I was a boy. When I read about that for a second, I just have to stop you there. You're a 14, 15-year-old boy in the high school female bathroom. Was that...
I mean, obviously it was wrong, but... Well, they were in their booths. They were in their... Okay, all right. I didn't watch. I wasn't... No watching, no watching. As much as somebody listening may think it was creepy, I didn't go and see them. They were in a girl's bathroom. They were in stalls. So I was okay. And also the sink and the mirror were in kind of an en suite situation.
You know, so I didn't know. I didn't follow women into the bathroom and look at them. I just wanted to talk to people. So I would brush my hair and talk to people. I didn't have any friends. I didn't know. I was so fucking awkward. I didn't know how to meet people. I didn't know how to talk to people. I wanted to meet a girl, you know? And then I thought, oh, I'll join a team. I'll be, I'm 89 pounds and I'm four foot 10. What team? Not football, not baseball, right?
not hockey. Like what could I do? So somebody said you could join the wrestling team because it goes in weight class. So I was in the under 90 weight class, under 90 pounds. And I didn't realize, and I figured if I get a uniform, girls are going to like me. I didn't realize the uniform for wrestling is a onesie. It's a girl's one piece bathing suit with my long hair. And not only that, I'm a germaphobe. And now I'm rolling around with other sweaty guys on a, on a mat and
It was a horror show. My life and every decision was a fucking horror show, you know? But I don't think things through. I just, if somebody gives me an idea, I say, okay. I say yes. I still do that today. What ended up being a negative issue has turned into positivity. But accidentally. I'm not smart. I'm not, you know, it just, I'm aware now of how things
things are going, how they should go, and why it works for me. You were ultimately kicked out of high school. Yeah. And what, take us back to the moment you got kicked out of high school. Did someone call you, did the principal call your parents in? And is it kind of like how you- The last one, well, I got thrown at three different high schools, but the last one that's somewhat memorable is the hiring a company to put the edition onto the library. I'd given my name. I got called down to the office. My parents-
We're called in to the office, and I thought this was hysterical. In retelling it, I think it's hysterical, but it was awkward and funny and weird. As the vice principal's standing there with my parents and saying, you know, your son Howard hired a company to put an edition onto the library. And they're sitting there, and I could see my mom biting her lip, like, how do you even react to that? She didn't know. She didn't know what? She didn't know that you had done that. No, I don't share anything.
So she's hearing it for the first time in the principal's office when she's called down there. Right. She's probably, holy shit. If she had known, she probably would have stopped me or punished me or done something. But she's biting her lip. And at the same time, I don't know that enough is enough. So he says to my mom that Howard has hired a company to put an edition onto the library. And I said, I did not. And he goes, no.
Yes, you did. I was out there. I just talked to the guy. He had your name. And I said, well, he was just giving an estimate. I was going to get three estimates. I would not give him the job without, I was trying to be a little more responsible than you are, you know, then you're kind of, sir, you're telling me what you're telling my mother. Isn't true. I was trying to be responsible. I was going to get other estimates. I wasn't just going to willy nilly give this man the contract. And I could see my, my, my mother, uh,
understanding the fun in it, but trying to be responsible and understood that this is not proper behavior and biting her lip. And I took joy in that. That was like, it wasn't like the living room when Alan Funt had the desk pulled away, but it was close, right? My mom, I could see she wanted to laugh, but didn't want to laugh. But then they got a note saying, he's been doing these things. I did them all the time. These kind of
and they said, leave. They called a, I don't know what it was, a therapist. They tested me and they said that my IQ was fine. So this was a behavioral problem.
So I had a behavioral problem. And then I went to another school and had a behavioral problem and went to another school and it was asked to leave, which was kind of alienating because, you know, my friend, Michael Rotenberg, who is my manager now, he was still in high school and he was going to go to college and he was going to be a lawyer. Anybody that I did know was moving on. So now not only was I
mentally alienated from everybody, but I was physically alienated from everybody. And, you know, from the time I was a kid, little, young,
I knew that if I wanted something, my parents and myself were not in a position to buy me. They couldn't buy me anything. So when I was 11 years old, I got a paper route. And I lived in an apartment building. And I lived in a cluster of apartment buildings. So I could have a paper route that had 250 papers, which I did. And that was my first...
I would make money. I didn't realize that when you delivered papers, the big thing was collecting. You had to collect, and that's where you made money. It was really hard collecting from 250 people, 50 cents a week or whatever it was. So I'd end up with like 15, 20, $30 at 11 years old of my own money, which lit a fire. So I had a drive because money meant independence. I didn't have to ask my mom or dad anything.
to buy candy even. I can go to the store and buy my own candy. And later on, I worked, when I got thrown out, I was working at a warehouse, a carpet warehouse. And I was working in the warehouse. - Can we back up before that and talk about you getting fired from a few jobs too, Shoppers Drug Mart, you were running a ride at the Canadian Exposition, is that what it was called? - Exhibition, the Canadian National Exhibition. I got a job there, minimum wage, $1.35 an hour.
And they put me on, it's a big, the Canadian National Exhibition is this annual fair, like country fair in Toronto. Huge. Huge, yeah. Hundreds of thousands of people go. Yeah. And I got a job working on a ride. I got a job working on a ride called the Vegas Chase. And I got a uniform and everything, and they put me in the...
in the control booth. And you know those rides, you go, I had a microphone too. And you go, you want to go faster? You want to go faster? And people would scream, yeah. And then I had the, it was fun. I had the controls so I could put up to speed and it would go for two minutes was a ride and then slow it down. You go around and
Everybody leaves the ride. I worked there for four days and it was kind of funny because I'd go, you want to go faster? And everybody would go, yeah. You want to go faster? And everybody would go, yeah. And I had all these people responding to me and I had the...
the uniform of the CNE on, I felt like such a big shot. And then I thought it was funny on the microphone. I would go, okay, make sure that your orange shoulder harness over your left shoulder was done up securely. You were going upside down in five seconds. And I'd go five, four, three. There was no orange shoulder harness. The ride didn't go upside down, but they didn't know, but they didn't know that it didn't go upside down. So, uh,
I'd go five, four, and everybody would be screaming. They'd be looking for that orange shoulder harness and, and there was no, and they'd be screaming, help me, help me and screaming. And it was so much fun to me to terrorize these people. And then they, I was asked to leave. And the shopper's drug Mart. I was the box boy, which meant that I was in the basement and I would remove everything from the, the, the boxes. Um, I was a box boy and,
I would take things down to the basement, open the boxes and remove everything to be put on the shelves and then break the boxes and put, and I got in trouble for not wearing a tie. I was in the fucking basement breaking boxes. It was like a hundred degrees down there and I had to wear a tie. So I, I, I was asked to leave because I wasn't dressed appropriately in the basement, but it was kind of funny because at that time I think I was like,
or 15 years old. And it was kind of funny because I would see people from school shopping in Shopper's Drug Mart. And I think a lot of kids were going through puberty. And it was fun to, if I saw like a young girl that I knew from school coming down the aisle where there were feminine needs, they would be embarrassed to buy them in front of me. So I'd see how long, like they'd go toward the,
The tampons or the Kotex. And I know that it was embarrassing for them, but I would go into that aisle and they'd continue walking and not buy. And then I'd see them heading back down that aisle. So then I'd pretend that I'd go back down that aisle. I'd see how long I could keep somebody in the store without making a purchase. That became my game. And again, that alienated me. Like they'd go, you know, I would imagine amongst themselves, they'd go, I went to the store to go buy something.
and that idiot Howie Mandel. I was so embarrassed. That idiot Howie Mandel wouldn't leave the fucking aisle. So let's not go to yuck yucks yet, but I want to talk about, you got into the carpet sales business. How did you get into that? And you did pretty well at that. You had two retail stores, I think, ultimately. Well, as I was saying before, I worked in the warehouse. In the warehouse, just for a fee, and then I saw people selling things
And I said, I could do that. So they let me sell. So I started selling. And because I was so little and everything, I would say, oh, it's my dad's store. Let me give you...
I'll show you, I can show you things. And I became a really good salesman. And then I realized, well, I'm only making a percentage of the sales. I see the wholesaler coming in two, three times a week to sell the manager on whatever products they had to sell. And they, you know, you have these sample boards. You didn't need carpet, right?
And then what I also learned was, you know, some people who, who bought carpet didn't have the money to buy carpet, but they had the money to have a, they'd have the money to, to, to finance. They had made a deal with a finance company, kind of like a bank. So the salesman could say, I'll tell you what, if you do a whole house in this and you put 200 down, it would be $15 a month for the next five years. Will you sign up for $15 a month? And,
The answer is yes. So, and that was based on all their, I didn't, I was only 15, but that's based on all the credit information of the, of the, the customer, right?
So I called that company. I got one of those contracts. I called that company and I said, I'm thinking of opening up my, cause I didn't know what was going on. I I'm opening up my own store. Do you need anything from me or is it all about the customer? They go, no, it's all about the customer. The customer fills out and gives you that down payment. And I know their bank information and everything will give the deal. I go, so why do I have to work at this store? I called the, uh,
The guy who I made friends with, because they used to come through the back in the warehouse, the guy that was selling to the stores, the wholesaler. And I said, could I represent myself and can I have some of these sample boards and sell this carpet? And would you deliver it to me if it's totally paid? They go, listen, you don't have any credit, but if you pay for it upfront, you can have it.
I go, okay. So then with my mother's car, I had sample boards. I took out an ad. I had a little bit of money and I took out an ad for a shop at home service, you know, and it was called National Broadland Sales. National was just me. National Broadland Sales. I live in an apartment with my mom and I would say, you know, at home sales service.
And they would call. I would go out with the sample board. They would say, okay, we want this for the living room and dining room. And I'd say, you could buy it on time. Fill out this. Give me $200. I would go to the finance company with the paper. They would write me a check for the full amount. Then I would go with that check for the full amount to the, to the,
a manufacturer or wholesaler and buy the carpet. And then I would hire an installer to go pick it up in his truck, deliver it and install it. So I realized I didn't need it to have any upfront money or anything. I had a little tiny ad and the paper cost me $200 to start it. Eventually I ended up having two locations and a bunch of salesmen and I was in the carpet business.
And while you were there, let's talk about one night, you're 23 years old, April 19th, 1977, you go out for Chinese food. Tell us about the fortune cookie that night and then what happened after you opened that fortune cookie on that specific day.
It's better to tell the story the other way around. Okay. So it's better to tell. So, so I don't have a lot of friends and, you know, um, I don't gamble and I don't do sports. So most people, you know, they'd have a basketball game to do, or, you know, my friend Michael, he had, he played hockey. Um, he, uh,
We're talking about, just so people know, Michael Rotenberg, who you've known since you were a kid, 12 years old, who became your manager and who still is your manager more than 50 years later. Yeah. But the point is that they would go to discos. I didn't drink. I didn't go to discos. I didn't dance. I didn't do any of that. So they had opened this club called Yuck Yucks in Toronto. And Yuck Yucks was a comedy club.
And I had never really seen standup comedy. I mean, I saw it on TV, but I'd never been to a place and knew that there was a place that was standup comedy. So we went to Yuck Yucks one night and I watched standup comics in front of me. And it was, it was amazing because it wasn't like the Tonight Show. It wasn't like the anything I'd seen on TV because they could swear.
I was hearing language and stuff that I'd never heard before. And it was so edgy and fun and new and fresh. And at the end of the show, Mark Breslin, the guy who was hosting it and owned it, got up and said, does anybody who thinks they can do this? We have an amateur hour at midnight on Monday. You should come up and try it. And somebody at my table went, you should do it. And I went, okay.
And which I always do. I don't ever say no. I don't say no to anything. Very rarely say no to anything. Even today? Even today. You know, my philosophy is that, my philosophy is that
No is N-O, which is the first two letters in the word nothing. Nothing comes from no. But I have a fear. My fear, it's my neurosis, is I'm going to miss out on something. I'll say okay. And then the worst case scenario is, and more than not, the worst case scenario is something doesn't work out and it's bad, but at least I have a piece of information that
a piece of education that I shouldn't do that again, or I shouldn't do it like that again. You know what I'm saying? So I don't say no. Uh, so I said, okay. And also I have been, uh, diagnosed with ADHD. And part of that is the fact that I, uh, uh,
I don't think of ramifications. I'm very in the moment sometimes to a detriment. It's like, okay, and I'll do it. And it's kind of like when you're young, you know, it's like the X games are all young men where that and women where that part of your brain, the frontal lobe of your brain isn't fully, uh, I learned that later on isn't fully intact. So you, it's,
young people are more, if you go try to drop in, if you're skateboarding, try to drop in from the ceiling into the pool, from the roof and jump into the pool, you'll probably think, okay, whereas later on in life when that's fully formed, you'll think, yeah, but I could break a hip. You know, I don't think like that and never have. I just go, okay. So I said, okay, not,
preparing anything not having the thought of i want to be a comedian not thinking i've ever be in show business not wanting to be in show business not caring but that night i had gone out for chinese food before we went to yuck yucks um that night i opened the uh fortune cookie as you always do at the end and i read the fortune in it and it said tonight your life will change
Or you'll follow a new path. Or I can't remember exactly. I have it. I still have that fortune. It's in my, it's in one of our, I'm moving now, so I can't, I can't find it. But I, we do, I keep everything. So meant nothing to me. It said, you will do something tonight that will change the rest of your life. And what I didn't think about,
about the ramifications of going on stage. I didn't think about what it meant to go on stage. I didn't think about what it could do. I just said, okay. And if I had to analyze today, what I was thinking was it's funny for somebody to go, ladies and gentlemen, Howie Mandel. And why is that funny? Not because Howie's funny, not because I'm going to do anything funny because there's no reason in hell for me to be on stage.
I'm in my dad's lighting business at this point. I'm doing a lot of other entrepreneurial things. It's just funny to go, ladies and gentlemen, Howie Mandel. There's nothing, but it's an experience, right? So he says, Mark Breslin goes, ladies and gentlemen, Howie Mandel.
And I walk out and because that's what you're supposed to do, everybody applauds. Because after you say a name or a preface by ladies and gentlemen, you applaud. And they applauded. And then the applause stopped. And I'm standing there. And I can see a microphone like I'm looking at right now. I can see a spotlight is blinding me.
But I can see the front row of people. When I look down, it's a cloud of smoke. People are smoking in the room. It's a cloud of smoke. And they're looking up at me like, do something. And that was the most terrifying recollection I have of just being out there.
You know, we have dreams. People have nightmares where they say they show up at a party in their underpants. You know, I think we all feel somewhat alienated in life. Like what are people going to think of me? What should I wear? How should I comb my hair? Did that go well? You know, this is all that culminates in that one moment of those people looking at me.
And the adrenaline started to flow and the fear, the fear was on fucking believable. And if you look at old clips of me in the seventies and early eighties doing comedy, it is the replica. I'm replicating that night and every other night after where I, I didn't know what to, I just started going, okay, okay.
okay, all right, I had nothing. Okay, all right, all right, okay. And they started laughing, like you're smiling. You're smiling at my horror and me trying to come up with something. And then it's funny. And you would say something like that or they would laugh like that. And I go, what, what, what? No, tell me. Okay, all right, all right. And I didn't know what, and that became my act. And I put my hands in my pocket and I had rubber gloves because,
Didn't want to touch germs. Knew that if I was out in public, then I was going to be doing...
I would be going to a public restroom. So I had rubber gloves. I grabbed the rubber gloves. They were in my pocket. I'm going, okay, okay. And I pull it over my head and over my nose and I start breathing. The fingers are going up and down. People are laughing. So I inflate it and I pop it off my head and they all roar and I go, good night. And I run off the stage and Mark Breslin is there and he goes, that was amazing. I go, what was? What you just did. You got to come back tomorrow. I go, for what? He goes, to do it again. I go, do what? He goes, do what you did. I go, what the fuck did I do?
But I went back the next night and I went back the night after that. I went every fucking night. And it was the first time in my life that I came close to that collective feeling of a lot of people coming
enjoying me for whatever reason they were enjoying me even when I didn't understand but then I understood that you know they were enjoying my fears so why not authentically share my fear why not authentically tell them I don't know what I'm gonna say or is this silly you want to hear something or I'm putting the glove up or I can make a funny noise I do something with my throat I can make a I can talk like this and they laugh I can do that and they laughed at that and I'm going I'm
from a guy who had nobody in his life to a room full of 150 strangers just enjoying me, even if it's enjoying me suffering. And I was suffering, but I like that suffering. My analogy is, to this day, I love suffering.
I love roller coasters. And what I love about roller coasters is the higher it is, the scarier it is, the closer to death that you think you're going to become, you're coming, the more you're screaming, you're in that moment. Like if it was just this nice little track where you went and the breeze was going through your hair, that would be boring and you wouldn't jump off and go, I got to get on that again. But when you're in the moment and when adrenaline is, you know, running through your veins and
You don't feel like you're worried about something that happened, something that's going to happen. You're in the now. And in the now is the healthiest place to be. And even if in the now it's terror. And that's why to this day, my favorite in the now that I can continually replicate is standup comedy. And regardless of what you know me from and what you see me do, I still do standup comedy four or five times a week.
I was up until COVID, I was touring and doing up to 300 dates a year. My everything is kind of surrounded and kind of bolsters my standup comedy career. And even when I'm not playing for an audience of Howie Mandel fans, I drop in on clubs two, three times a week, even if there's five people sitting there at midnight to just,
I want to be in the worst case scenario because that makes me feel more alive. I went out when there were storms here in LA. I drove out to the ice house in Pasadena where there was five people sitting there at 11 o'clock in a storm to try things out, to not do material that they would know about.
just to try, just to try, just to try to be in the moment, to give myself that creative roller coaster of whatever it is. And that's how I run my life. That's how I run my business. That's how I operate. You call it the most swaddling blanket you've ever had. Do you still get that feeling when you're on stage right now and doing the tours? In the moments when it works, yes. And the swaddling is something like, you know,
what I mean by swaddling is, you know, just that comfort. But in order to have that comfort, you need that discomfort. So otherwise it's just, it's boring. So what I like to do is I like to give myself that fear of not knowing even, you know, obviously after over four decades in the business, I have a plethora of material. I have things that I can do. I have recognition. I come out to a nice applause where people are happy to see me.
But then what I like to do is I like to traverse something dangerous in as far as something I've never done before, something that is kind of odd or different. And then if I could win them in that moment, if I could win over that moment, if I could survive that edge of non-acceptance and then just be swaddled, then that is the harder it is.
And then to conquer is what's great. So we all have huge seminal moments in our lives. You've had a few. We're going to go through them. Let's talk about your trip, business trip to LA and your first night at the comedy store. What happened? My buddy who I'd met in Yuck Yucks, Mike Binder, who's a big producer and director, but he was a comic at the time, got me on at the comedy store. I was here on business. You knew you were going on or he said in advance, come on by? Yeah.
I didn't know that I would get a spot at the comedy store. I knew I was on vacation in LA because I was actually, I had bought the rights to, I have it someplace here. I had bought the rights to this novelty item that I was going to sell retail. And so they were manufactured here and I was out here to try to find, to have a meeting with them. But I knew I had connections here because of Yuck Yucks and Mike Binder, who is from Detroit.
Your hometown. You know Mike Binder? Eli Broad's nephew. Eli Broad was my boss. That was my big break at Sun America. I worked for him, but he was a Forrest 400 guy. He passed away a few years ago. That was his nephew. I met him once. He wouldn't remember me.
I just saw him the other night. So he created, he did, he's got Academy Award winning movies, Inside the Mind of a Married Man. He's a standup comic. At that time he was known as Kid Comedy. He was a kid and he got me on at the comedy store and there was a producer in the audience who's had a comedy game show called Make Me Laugh. And he walked up to me at the end of my set and he said, do you want to do television? And I went, yeah, not really.
Never thought about doing television. Never even thought that this was going to be a career. And he said, come to my office tomorrow. And I went to KTLA, which is in Hollywood. It's the first...
time I'd ever been on a lot or a TV studio. I'd never been. And he tried to, he had me make my, his secretary laugh and I did. And then the next day I got, I did like five episodes. They do shot five episodes in one day. And it was just, it was a comedy game show where you had a, a minute, they had contestants who won money for every second. They didn't laugh.
And they had comedians, young comedians from the comedy store show up and try to make them laugh in front of a live audience. The audience would laugh, but they would just be paid not to laugh. And it turned out better when you, when they didn't laugh, like you thought you would think if you made them laugh right away, that was great. And you'd be, you'd get, but the more they didn't laugh, the more recognition you got because you were on TV longer doing whatever you did. And so I did this, I did that show.
Great story to tell about my vacation. Went home and continued in business, in regular business and was engaged to who I'm married to now. I was engaged to my wife, Terry, and we were planning the wedding. And then when that show aired, it didn't air in Canada. I got various calls from talk shows, the Mike Douglas show and the Merv Griffin show.
And for those people who don't know, we're probably the two biggest daytime talk shows. Yeah. Daytime talk shows at the time. Well, the biggest daytime, the biggest talk show was the tonight show, Johnny Carson.
you know, that was a nighttime show. Right. But to be known as a comedian at that time, that was the litmus test to be known. You know, if you went up to somebody and they said, what do you do? And they didn't know you. And I said, I'm a comedian. They would go, well, have you ever been on Johnny? Cause that was what even the public, but these were big daytime shows. And it was like being on Ellen or whatever. But,
I got called by those TV shows and, and, and to come down and do a set on their shows. And so I would take a day off or two days off and I'd fly down to California and I would do a set on their shows, you know, it's five minutes or six minutes. I did the Merv Griffin show and then I flew home. And then when I flew home, I got a call from Gene Simmons. Gene Simmons is the lead of Settlers.
And at that time, Kiss was at their height. So now Gene Simmons from Kiss, this rock star, is phoning this idiot kid in Toronto. And he said, I saw you on Mert Griffin. Would you like to be the opening act? Which I didn't even understand what that was. Would you like to be the opening act for my girlfriend? I went, yes, because I always say yes. He goes, at Caesar's Palace in Vegas. And I said, yeah, yeah.
Who's your girlfriend? And at that time he was living with Diana Ross. And I became Diana Ross's opening act for 40 some odd shows. And the audience hated me each and every night, but they loved me. That led to me playing Vegas, which I thought was going to be the end of my career.
Let's talk about your next one, which was the HBO6 annual Young Comedian competition. Talk about the Smothers Brothers and then the amazing young actors coming out of there and comedians. I think there were six of you and four of the six made it massively successful.
Yeah. So they used to do these things on HBO called the Young Comedian Special. So when I was out here doing shows, I was playing at the comedy store and Brenda Carlin, who is George Carlin's wife, was the casting person. And she cast me and a few other young comics from the comedy store to be on the next Young Comedian Special.
I didn't have HBO in Canada, so I didn't know who would ever see it. We shot it at the Roxy. The hosts were going to be the Smothers Brothers, who I was a huge fan of, the Smothers Brothers show, Tommy and Dick Smothers. And I didn't know the other guys, but it was me and a guy named Jerry Seinfeld and a guy named Richard Lewis and a guy named Harry Anderson were the comics on the show. And anyway, I did the show.
And then went back to Toronto. But apparently that show blew me up big. And what I mean by that is I realized that people would show up to see me. You know, it was the first time that people, like I wasn't just playing a club. If I was playing at the comedy store or wherever, it was that audience. Or if I showed up at Yuck Yucks, they weren't there for Howie Mandel. They were there for
a night of comedy and Howie Mandel just played. And if they enjoyed me, I got the laughs and the applause, but nobody was showing. After the HBO special, there was a demand to see me. So,
but I didn't know how to deal with it except from business. And I hired this guy, Andy Nolman, who Andy Nolman was, he wrote in a newspaper in Montreal. He was probably 18 or 19 years old. I said, listen, I understand advertising from the carpet business. So I'm going to hire you. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to, and I knew that Gallagher had done something like this. Gallagher was another comic. This is where I got the idea from.
I'm going to four wall. I'm going to, I'm going to go to these markets that I think are,
based on my fan mail and things like that, that I think people like me, I'm going to rent out the downtown theater for one night and I understand how to sell carpet. So I'll go to the newspapers, the major newspapers, and I'll buy an ad. So you'll buy the ad, you'll put ads in there and we'll go to the top 40 FM station and I'll do interviews, set up interviews for me in the morning. And then I'll, anyway, he became my promoter and
And right after the young comedian special, I started selling like 10,000 seats. And in every market I would sell like 10,000 seats, 5,000 seats. And it was just me. It wasn't, I didn't have a promoter with Andy Nolman. And I sold out my whole tour.
The only other person at the time was, I think, Dice Clay, right? Andrew Dice Clay. Later. That was way later. It was later. Way later. Yeah, this is the early, this is like 82, 83, I think Dice went, which Michael also made Dice. That was 87. He was playing arenas and stuff. Yeah, 20,000 seaters. Yeah, no, I was playing like theaters, like three and four, 5,000 seat theaters twice in one night. And then Andy Nolman, there was a guy who had a little, a little,
festival in in canada and montreal called just career which was uh french for just for laughs and it was just a french uh festival and then he saw that we did good and he took andy away from me and him and andy and andy started just for laughs which became the the biggest comedy festival in the world but that came from me doing well on the hbo and the next big one was mary tyler moore
which didn't go very well. So tell us about that whole thing. Well, it wasn't Mary Tyler Moore. It was when I do great. Brandon Tartikoff. Let's go through that story. Well, we did. So when somebody became a, well, then I said to my,
It was actually before that, but I moved down here because I figured, oh, well, I'm getting money. I'm going to leave the lighting. I left my dad's business and we moved down here against the, to the chagrin of my in-laws who now get it. I just asked them yesterday. They are happy with me, but you know, you can't imagine that, you know, you're going to take their daughter 3000 miles away. They wanted to call off the wedding, you know, to make a living, uh,
answer to people when they say well how's he going to make a living he puts a rubber glove on his head it didn't seem like it was a lasting wonderful way to support a family and start a life but anyway i moved down here and when you did good in the early 80s when you did good on stand-up comedy you uh
the natural progression was a, a sitcom. So I went to the, I had a general meeting at MTM. That's what you're referring to. Mary Tyler Moore, which stands for, because that's where they, it was owned by a guy by the name of Grant Tinker who owned the production company where they did the Mary Tyler Moore show. They did the odd couple. They did the Bob Newhart show, every huge, huge,
uh, sitcom of the time, the biggest ones were done by this production company. So I had a general meeting with them because I had been doing good and standup comedy. And for the most part, all the comedians were segueing from Freddie Prince was the first he did Chico and the man to, uh, Robin Williams did Mork and Mindy to Billy Crystal did soap. And, you know, even Richard Pryor was doing TV at the time. So I, uh,
I met with the casting person who said, do you do, do you act? And I said, I don't, I don't know. And she said, read this. And I read this thing and she goes, that's very good. Come down the hall. And I went down the hall and I read for this group of people, the same thing. And I didn't really understand what I was reading, but I read it. And halfway through they stopped me and they said, okay, thank you. And I thought I,
lost it, you know, whatever it was. I went home. My wife said, how did you do? And I went, I did terrible, but what I was reading was not funny. So I don't, I don't care. And I get a call a half hour later. Would you go down and meet with Brandon Tartikoff? And Brandon Tartikoff is the president of ABC at the NBC at the time. And I think there has not been an executive like him since he was the, he had, he had, uh,
the wherewithal to keep something on because he knew it was good. He had really good taste. He knew it was good and he knew the audience would come to it. And to give you an example of that, that would be like Seinfeld. You know, when it came out, it wasn't doing well. He kept it going and make sure it was on prime time and cheers and all the biggest shows of that time was because of him. But here's the thing. What I didn't understand is I wasn't reading for a sitcom and
uh, MTM was venturing into drama. And at the time they had two dramas they were doing. And one was Hill Street Blues and the other one was St. Elsewhere. And, uh, St. Elsewhere was a hospital show and with an ensemble cast of 12, like Hill Street Blues was an ensemble show about cops and, uh,
they had been looking at dailies every day. They had looked at whatever they had shot and they decided it wasn't going the way they thought and they wanted to replace some of the characters. And I was reading for one of the characters that had already been shot and they said, could you come down and meet Brandon Tartikoff? And I went down and met, sat with Brandon Tartikoff. - Did you know how big he was at the time, that he was a legend in the business?
I knew I was meeting the president of NBC. I didn't know it. I wasn't at the, at that time, you didn't realize the mark that he was,
the legacy that he was going to leave but i was still nervous to go down to the network and then the same guys that were in the room when i read the first time were in that room later on i realized who they were that was bruce paltrow gwyneth's dad who was the executive producer of saint elsewhere it was mark tinker the son of grant who was our producer it was uh tom fontana and
uh, who went on to do great things with Barry Levinson and on his own to homicide. But anyway, I read that same thing again. He said, that's great. We'll see you Monday. This was a Friday. So I thought I had another reading on Monday. My, uh,
Agent called me when I got home and told me that I start Monday on this dramatic series. And that was St. Elsewhere, which landed for, landed me a job for six years. I was one of an ensemble, one of which being Denzel Washington. A lot of people started their career on that show. Tim Robbins and Kathy Bates had their first show.
Ray Leota into acting was they started on that show as guest stars and arcs. Mark Harmon too, wasn't he on that show? Mark Harmon was on that show. A lot of people were on that show. So it was good because I worked two, three days a week and then four days a week I was out on the road doing standup comedy. So that kind of launched me. I took the place, by the way, Dr. Fiscus was first played by an actor by the name of David Pamer, who went on to win an Academy Award with, uh,
Mr. Saturday Night with Billy Crystal. So he did okay too, thank God. So you're on the show for a year and then you're at the comedy store where you get very, very sick one night and you don't want to go. Well, let me tell you this. I know what you're going to ask me. So even though I got sick,
On St. Elsewhere, I still, in my world and most people's world, was not considered a stand-up comic. And that's because I had never done the Johnny Carson show. I wanted to do the Johnny Carson show. That's the thing. And you can't see it on camera here, but right behind you, see that light? That studio light? Yeah, that light? So when some real estate company bought the Burbank Studios,
I took some of the stuff. That light is the light that shone on him every show at his desk. That was his key light, Johnny Carson's key light. Johnny Carson was something real. I have the front row of The Tonight Show here too. I'll show you. I have a lot of Tonight Show stuff here. But The Tonight Show was everything. The Tonight Show, it doesn't matter how many shows you did, The Tonight Show was the litmus test for being considered a stand-up comedian ever.
And I had auditioned so many times. The guy who booked the show continuously said no to me because I was silly. I was not a monologist. I used props. I was crazy. He told me this is not anything Johnny would like. So I was...
disappointed but again never said no at that same time Joan Rivers started guest hosting the Tonight Show whenever Johnny was out he would play Vegas then Joan Rivers was the host and Joan Rivers was getting even bigger ratings than Johnny ever did she was we had never seen anybody like her on TV you know making fun of people of the biggest stars of the day almost to their faces and
It was very exciting whenever Joan Rivers was going to be on and more people would tune in. Or Judaism was a big part of her show as well. Some of it, yeah. But mostly cutting up people, like making fun of Elizabeth Taylor, making fun of the big stars, the people that were Teflon, that you didn't touch. She was making fun of the ways people dressed, their weight, everything. We never saw anything like that. So...
She lived in New York, but when she would come out to do The Tonight Show, which was out here in LA, she would stop in at the comedy store to go over and run her monologues. That's how she would have material, and she would do her monologues the night before The Tonight Show. She would do them at the comedy store. So I asked Mitzi, I said, listen, I haven't been on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, but I would love...
What if I would love Joan to see me? Maybe that's a chance. So she put me on right before Joan was gonna play. And that night, that morning, I woke up with 104 fever. And I thought, oh shit, what are the chances? This is my chance for Joan to see me and I am so sick. And I said, I'm not gonna miss this opportunity. And I remember driving through the canyon with 104 fever. I was dizzy. I thought I was gonna pass out. I was soaked. I was sweaty.
And I got to the club. I couldn't even stand up. And I went on stage. And when I went on stage, I said, ladies and gentlemen, Howie Mandel, when I went on stage, they, I killed, I killed. And Joan Rivers was in the room.
And as I walked off the stage, I passed Joan Rivers, who was walking to the stage. She says, "You're very funny, young man." And I went, "Thank you." And then she went on, the crowd went fucking nuts and she killed and she destroyed. And the next day she was gonna be the host of "The Tonight Show" for the umpteenth time.
And I just wanted to wait and make some eye contact to see if I can make a connection. I remember waiting. There's these stairs that go down the Sunset Boulevard and the adrenaline started to wane, you know, because I'd been on stage before.
and off the stage for a while. And then I started feeling sick again and I thought I was going to pass out and I'm sitting on the stairs and I'm waiting and she finishes. There's a huge applause and then she's talking to Mitzi Shore, the owner, and then other comics are there. An hour goes by, she's talking to everybody and I'm just lying on the stairs in a pool of my own sweat. And finally she comes down the stairs and I kind of take every inch of
I have. And I kind of get into her eyeline. She goes, you were a very funny guy. And I went, thank you. She goes, have you ever been on the tonight show? And I go, no, but it's my birthday this week. And she said, call this guy. And she gave me the number to her manager. It was Billy Samoth. And I went and I called Billy and he said, she wants you on this week. She's doing the whole week.
And I got on The Tonight Show with her for my birthday. And it was great. I got on The Tonight Show. So now I could say I was on The Tonight Show. But as luck would have it, the next morning I get a call from Jim McCauley, who was the main booker of comics on The Tonight Show. And he said, Johnny was watching last night. He loved you. Would you come on again next week with him?
Unbelievable. And that was the first of 22 episodes I did with Johnny Carson. You're listening to part one of my amazing interview with Howie Mandel, one of my favorite comedians of all time. We talk about the struggles of his career, how he didn't even want to be a comedian, his hit TV talk shows, Deal or No Deal, America's Got Talent. Incredible story, incredible life. Be sure to tune in next week to part two of my incredible interview with Howie. ♪
