David Mamet | Club Random with Bill Maher
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LinkedIn, the place to be, to be. Do you think Alec Baldwin was intentionally shooting that person? There are the stories that we tell, but there are also the stories that we don't. So I don't know what happened on that set. You hate Titanic. But it's Leonardo DiCaprio going through different rooms while he's drowning, saying, I will find it. Claude Randall.

Dave, are you behind that wall? Hi, sweetie. How are you? How are you? Thank you so much for having me. Thank me? Are you kidding? Hey, God bless you for what you said about Israel. That's, to a Jew, that's epical. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, well, had to be said. You know, the motto of my old show, Politically Incorrect, was somebody's got to say it. Well, a lot of things have to be said, but a lot of me ain't said. Yeah, I mean, the...

Lack of any attempt in the media to go into the history of the Middle East and this conflict or any sort of perspective. Yeah, I thought that was a very special season. You know, after the strike, we got back just right after we got back. That's when the attack happened. So it sort of was anti-Semitism was the issue that dominated a whole half of my year.

Which is, I never thought that would happen in 2023. Well, I got a friend of mine, maybe he's been on your show, his name is Izzy, he's a combat veteran of the IDF. He lost an arm. No. They brought him back in combat and he was in Gaza the day after in combat. He's back here now and he said, as bad as the attack was, the reaction of the world was worse. Exactly. It's interesting, there was two shocks. The first shock was that, wow, Israel...

got penetrated like that, the one thing we thought they were really good at, that was a shock. And then the other shock was, yes, that you could just feel it viscerally that it was a case of people being exultant, that there was an excuse.

to say, fuck Jews and hate Jews, which is odd because, you know, they were the victims of it. But, of course, it's easy to turn it around and it is a complicated situation. But to use that as the jumping point, like you could see if it happened the other way, that would be the jumping point if they attacked somebody else. But to be the victims and then right away go right to, it would be like if, you know, Bush or somebody had said, you know,

The FBI will hear from us soon. And bin Laden's a great guy, you know. I mean, the turnaround was the shock to me, especially on campus. Well, yeah. But, I mean...

The universities have been falling apart for a long time. There's no purpose for them anymore. And so what they've been selling, especially since the GI Bill, is we'll do anything you want to get your ass in here. You don't want to have grades, no grades. You don't want to study any, you want to study semiotics, that's fine. Whatever you want to do, that's fine. Just give us your money. I've been banging that drum for a long time, and I know you have. Yeah. I...

I think one bright spot in this is that to the people who had been saying to people like me, and I guess you too, like, what are you talking about? College is great. Because there's certainly this idea that

One thing that's always unassailably great thing to do is to get more schooling, more college. Just the more time you spend in front of some kind of blackboard, the better person you are. And it's just such bullshit because there's nothing behind that if what they're learning is bullshit or if they're being indoctrinated into actually – It's terrible. Iniquitous.

stuff. The other thing is in our business, you know, I got in and I'm sure you got in the way that people used to get in. The kids showed up, whether it was you and me or some kids, some guy or some girl and said, I want to work. I want to work with you. You said, I'm not hiring anybody. Second day. I want to work with him. I told you I'm not hiring. Like the third day, say, fuck it, go get me a cup of coffee. And the next year, the kid is an associate producer in the third year. He's a director because he showed up. He got the coffee, right? Right. He got the call sheet, right?

He stood around, he learned, he kept his mouth shut and his eyes open. And that's education, which is very different than schooling. That skill is something I feel like that has atrophied in recent generations. Well, it has. They want to be like the producer in a year. Yeah. But also people think that they can enter...

vertically, that rather than starting at the bottom and carrying coffee, they can go to a school which is going to teach them to act, direct, produce, blah, blah, blah, and then carry that over there. But I got people come to me, and I'm sure you do too, if they got a master's degree in anything, I'm not even going to read further on the resume. So Jesus Christ, you just wasted your youth. What are you going to learn about our business from going to a school? Nothing.

You always, in your books about show business, talk so fondly of your crew. And, of course, you see it in your movies because you use the same people all the time. So you must love them. I mean, it must be like, oh, it's like every year I used to take a Hawaiian vacation, like it was a working vacation over New Year's. Did it for 12 years. And I took a whole bunch of people every time, made it into a fun thing. But it was work. And I'm guessing that's like your movies. Well, I used to see. Because everybody knows each other.

But also, I just did a movie. I hadn't done a last movie I did. I just did a movie with Shia LaBeouf, just wrapped it last week. Really? Yeah, but before that, I did a movie. How was he? Magnificent. Isn't that interesting? I mean... No, I believe you. I'm just saying that... No, I'm saying that...

As an actor, I've never worked with a greater actor in my life. I work with everybody. Come on. And as a human being, he's just a magnificent human being. If I hadn't done a movie in 10 years, last movie I did. Why do you think he has such a reputation and is such a dick? I have no idea. I do know, and I hope I'm not talking out of school. No, you can't here. Oh, good. Not about him. No.

Because I have unlimited respect. At one point he hit bottom, okay? Yeah, okay, right. I love to hear things like this because I don't trust anything I hear, especially in things like this and people. And then half the time that's exactly what happens. You get to know them and you're like, what are you talking about? And they're just projecting whatever their shittiness is on somebody else.

Of course. Here's something else. What did Shia do that he got in trouble for? Oh, I'll tell you one thing. He was, I mean, again, this... It was just rhetorical. No, but there is something. And I would defend him on it because, but it sounded like he was a dick. He was with a pop star named FKA Twigs. It was his girlfriend. And she was, I think, you know, in her early 30s. She wasn't a kid.

And, you know, she, like, me too'd him and, um...

you know, talked about things like he would yell at her. You know, it's real dickish male behavior. Again, this is just one side of the story. But in the piece, she says, I could have left any time. I had a townhouse in London. And I'm like, why am I reading this then? Did you see this thing where this kid is filming himself having sex on the table in the Senate? You didn't see this? Where do you see something like this? Fox, right? Who?

Who would ever watch anything else? It's all over, the conservative... Wait, this is what? He's the staffer of a Democratic senator who goes in with his boyfriend to the Senate...

whatever room. Cloak room. Yeah. No, it's not the cloak room. It's right there on the desk where they have all the meetings in the middle of the night. They get naked and kabunga, kabunga, kabunga. And there's a video of it? Yes. The video's going random. The kid is now saying that he's a victim because love is love. Wow.

It's the same Don Fetterman wasn't there to lend one of those kids a sweatshirt, huh? Well, exactly. As if that weren't bad enough. But did you know that there's also a black and white film of Eleanor Roosevelt having sex on the steps of the Lincoln Monument? Yes.

So, do we surmise that Roosevelt knew she was a lesbian when he married her and married her anyway because it's just what you did? Wasn't it his cousin or something? His cousin, yeah. Who knows? I mean, you know, he was, curiously, he was a president and he was also a pussy hound. I mean, go know, right, Roosevelt? Well, yes, but I mean...

you know, men of power like that usually are. I mean, I think, I think Nixon was like, and Reagan were not, but like a lot of them are dogs. I mean, Clinton was the, you know, poor Hillary. I mean, she once said, he's a hard dog to keep on the porch. Well, but somebody, and it might've been you, it might've been you who said, Mr. Clinton, that,

That JFK had it off with Marilyn Monroe, I'm just saying. Was that you? What's the joke? That Mr. Clinton, JFK, had it off with Marilyn Monroe. Oh. My thing about that was I compared Clinton with JFK and the point that if you're going to be a man of power and get laid, at least in...

JFK's era, he was getting the most sought-after woman, which I guess is what the king should get, whereas Clinton was getting the chunky chick who brought in the mail. But

Aren't you doing a JFK movie? No, I can't talk about it because my lawyer said I can't talk about it. But if I were to talk about it, I'd turn your hair. But I think Barry Levinson is direct. I wrote this great, great JFK script because a guy came to me through my friend Joey Montagna. And Joey Montagna knew a kid in Chicago who was part, it was called Nicky Solosi. And Nicky was part of the Giancana family. Oh, okay.

And Giancana were the guys. Oh, sure. Well, Giancana and Kennedy shared a mistress. Exactly. Isn't that the scandal? One of his main post-death scandals. She was exchanging something, whether it was information in saliva between these two guys, right? So anyway, these were the guys who knocked off Kennedy. The mafia did. Yeah. Right. Not the CIA. Right.

Well, here's the thing. In cahoots. They were all in cahoots because Kennedy, the Kennedy family, you know, just like the Bidens, there's always a bunch of crooks, right? Well, certainly the fortune came from a crime, bootlegging. Yeah. And also he was a stock thief, Joe. He was rigging the stock market, and then they made him head of the SEC. But in any case, oh, yeah, so...

Kennedy's made a deal with the mafia that Joe Kennedy said, I need you to steal Illinois. I need you to go to Jimmy Hoffa. I need to steal Illinois to make him president. What do you want? They said, we want Cuba back because they lost Cuba in 1959. Sure. Cuba belonged to the mob. That was their Las Vegas times a billion. Plot of Godfather II. Exactly. So they own the whole country. Right. So the Kennedy deal was, okay, we'll give you...

Cuba back if you get our boy in. So they got Kennedy in, and then they half-staged this invasion of the Bay of Pigs. And it was put together by the CIA, by the mafia, which wasn't unusual because they did the same thing in World War II. The OSS, which was the precursor to the CIA, and the mafia got together at Lucky Luciano in the invasion of Sicily.

Okay, so the CIA and the mafia and the Cubanos got together to stage this invasion of the bear pigs in Cuba. And the idea was these guys would land on the beach, and then they would say this is a popular uprising. They would call to America for help, and America would send in air power. Okay, so good. They put the whole thing together. They staged the invasion. They called in help. And Bobby Kennedy says to Jack, you know, you don't really want to do that. So they all either died on the beach or died in prison. Right.

So the CIA was very mad. Well, I mean, certainly that is the upshot of what happened. I don't know if we know for sure where the fuck up came. Maybe it is Kennedy just at the last minute losing his nerve and betraying these people. But there was also a power struggle at that moment. This is four months into his administration. There was a power struggle with the CIA.

Which was, of course, in many ways more powerful than who's president because they're continuously there and they have shit on everybody and especially him. I mean, there was just so much shit to be had. Sure. What about Cooper, who was director for life of the FBI? Right.

But Kennedy was in this power struggle with the CIA at the time. And so like a CIA operation, they could have fucked it up to make him look bad. Well, here's the thing. The Godfather is our national myth, right? Correct. It's the best movie ever made in America. It explains everything. And Al says to Kay, he says, we're going to be legit. We're going to be just like senators and congressmen.

And she says, well, senators and congressmen don't kill people. He says, oh, now who's being naive? But people don't realize who've been around any kind of power, even in our business, a lot of people have a lot of power, but nothing like the government. If people are sitting around, all I got to do if I'm the president, you say, how about this son of a bitch? All I have to do is this. And someone will kill him. Well,

In some countries, that's Putin's country. I don't think it's that easy in this country. Why not? You think it's that easy? It's that easy anywhere. And you think they do it? Sure they do. Of course they do it. Okay, let's go back. So Biden, you think Biden has done that and had people killed? I doubt it.

You don't doubt it. No, I say I doubt it. But what I'm saying is when people have this much power and there's this much at stake, the genius of Obama was he stopped us talking about billions and started us talking about trillions.

So when there's that kind of money at stake in anything, there are very few people in the world that you can't buy off or threaten to death. Well, I don't know if Obama did that. Of course, inflation is always slowly raising the numbers. You know, when my father was a child, bread was a nickel.

OK, so it was going to get to a trillion. And the reason it got to a trillion is because the previous administration completely fucked up the economy. Obama, if you may recall, came in at a incredibly high rate.

disastrous moment that was so easy to fuck up and lots of people suggested he don't fuck it up like like let GM die oh no you I'm sorry I didn't explain myself well I didn't say that he was a no-good son of a bitch I didn't say that whether he did or didn't cause inflation I said he altered the language that this be prior to Obama nobody in 20 years would ever use the phrase a trillion

I know, but that's because there was a crisis. And by the way, the first, the TARP bill, they purposely avoided that. It was $780 billion. This was in 2009, and even that made jaws drop. Now they write $2 trillion like it's the dinner check. They fucking, they don't, I don't know how this economy is still going. Well, nobody does, but see, the terrible thing is all they need to do that is ink.

I know, but the way it just... I've been hearing people say the sky is going to fall because of this since Ross Perot. Remember Ross Perot made his whole fucking raison d'etre about the debt? And the debt was like $2 trillion or something.

And here it is, and it's ten times that much, and the sky never falls. But I guess, you know, we don't know the future, but either the sky is going to fall because of this, or then fuck it. Well, look, the sky is always falling over something or other. You know, you get to be...

my age, very old indeed, and you look back and say, wait a second, everything was always at variance with everything else. One generation lived through the Depression, they lived through World War II, they lived through Korea, they lived through Vietnam, they lived through segregation, they lived through racism and lynching. Depending on where you're standing, human nature is a series of people falling down on a job. Yes.

But, I mean, speaking of living, I can't believe when I heard how old you are, because you look like you're in your 50s. No, I'm 76, but I sold my soul to the devil. What did you do? I sold my soul to the devil. Well, yeah, that makes sense. You know what it was? I once wrote for television.

You did? Yeah, I did. Television. Oh, yeah, you wrote The Unit. Remember television. The Unit, I wrote Hill Street Blues. Wow. And I wrote The Shield. You wrote everything. I'm telling you. And you don't seem to slow down one bit at 76 because you just are a machine. I mean, books, plays, movies.

Movies, I mean, TV, you just... Well, it's because of golf, right? People said to me all through my life, why don't you take up golf? Ugh. Right? And I said to them, listen, I feel about golf the same way I feel about homosexuality. Right? There's nothing wrong with it. It just doesn't appeal to me. Right. I couldn't agree more. Fucking golf? I know.

I know. And I know lots of people who swear by it. I think it's like anything else. If you're good at something, you want to do it. I didn't want to... Yeah, and I didn't really give myself a chance. I guess I played when I was a young teenager for a little bit, but it just seemed like...

like a lot of, you know, effort to get to the next opportunity. It's like skiing's the worst for that. Like a half hour to climb back or get back up. That's terrible. But I developed this thing. I was trying to sell it to the golf companies as a way to make golf more. They didn't buy it, but I still retained the rights, but they aren't going to do it. So can I tell you what it was to make golf more accessible? Make the fucking hole bigger. Yeah.

You know, they did that in baseball last year. Did they? They made the bases bigger. They did? Yes. Whoa. You didn't know that? No. You don't love baseball?

Oh, yeah. Well, I got my heart broken in 1969 by the Cubs, right, when they gave five and a half. I remember that year. The Mets won, my team. Five in a row. Five in a row. They gave it away. So I couldn't watch again until when the Cubs won. And I must admit, like a lot of old-style Chicagoans, I was a little bit upset that the curse was no longer operative. Was that Ernie Banks and Ron Santo? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. That was that team? Yeah. And Billy Williams? Yeah. And Ferguson Jenkins? Oh, yeah. It was a great team. And I was working right around the corner from that time, right around the corner from Wrigley Field. But they broke my heart.

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Well, I don't know. But you always seem to have stuff in the pipeline. My producer, when you did Real Time a couple weeks ago, said, oh, I saw his play in Venice, Henry Johnson. I said, I never even heard it was on. He said it was amazing. I mean, you obviously can turn out something like that and not even care if the word gets out about it. Because why didn't I hear about it?

Bad publicity? We had-- you know what? We didn't do any publicity. It was-- Well, there you go. It was shy of the-- no, we just-- everything was 100-seat theater. So we sold out every house. We could have done it forever.

So it was Shia and Evan Jonakite and Chris Bauer and Dom Hoffman. But they all went on their sites. So the thing is, I just got so sick of dealing with the fucking press for 50-some years of my professional life. I said, to hell with it. If I can sell every ticket over here, they can go to hell. Right. Well, I can't argue with you about the press. I don't feel like they've ever really got me.

Not to the level they probably could have. But, you know, maybe it's our charming personalities had something to do with it as well. But I agree with you. I'd rather, like, be myself and lose that part of it than have to go through life always walking on eggshells and kissing up to them. It was almost liberating when I got to that point where I realized, oh, okay, the New York Times is never going to understand me.

Yeah, the other thing. I beg your pardon. No, no, that's my statement. The other thing, in addition to being, somebody said, what's the one thing you need to be able to do to write theatrical criticism? And the answer was insufficient talent to write sports. So the other things, they've always been for sale. Who? The press. They've always been for sale. Oh, well.

What do you mean, for sale, in the sense that you can bribe them to... Well, of course you could. To what? To get a good review? Of course you could, to do whatever you want. The more, I mean, they're a business, right? Back in the days when people read newspapers, the more money you spent on advertising... I don't think that's true.

I don't... What? I know it's true. Because when I was working in New York with Joe Papp, who was a great producer and he really revolutionized, what he did was he co-opted the press. Clive Barnes was the critic of the New York Times. And you think you could bribe Clive Barnes? I know you could. But I don't think they gave him money. Really?

I don't know that they gave him money because I don't think he was that smart. But what they would do is Joe would say, you know, I'm convening a bunch of people in Venice, Italy next. And I'd like you to come and give a little speech about blah, blah. Would you do that? Of course, you bring a friend and anything you want in the hotel. And that's also what the movie business used to do. They used to bribe all the critics and put them on a junket. What about Vincent Canby? Okay. Okay.

What? Okay. Yes, he could be bribed? No, I don't think so. Listen, you don't have to bribe everybody, but it's a good idea. I come from Chicago. The question is always, who do you got to pay to do what? Right. I just did a cartoon. Barry Weiss has got this blog, The Free President. Yeah, I love it. Thank you. I'm the resident cartoonist. I see it every Friday. So my cartoon last Friday was Santa. It's called Christmas in Chicago. Santa's talking to this little girl. He

He says, ho, ho, little girl, what would you like for Christmas this year? A doll? She's got a fistful of dollar bills. She says, make it a pony, and there's more where that came from. You know, I put yours up that you gave. I saw that. I'm flattered. I love that. Thank you. So the question in Chicago, which was a complete machine town. Of course, Richard Daly. Of course. Was who do you got to talk to?

And so somebody said, and I agreed to it, who would want to live in a town where you can't fix a parking ticket? What do you think about what Chicago is now? It's a hellhole. Listen, all the Democratic cities...

are dead. They aren't dying, they're dead. They're not dead. Of course they are. Chicago is not dead. It's not? It's not. Really? Well, obviously it's not literally dead because there's lots of live people there living their best lives there every day and so there's lots of problems with it. Problems? It's the murder capital of the world.

It's the murder capital of the United States. In any case, the woman left a White Sox game, God forgive her. She's driving home on the Dan Ryan Expressway, and these two rival gangs were having a shootout. Bang, bang, car to car, car to car. They caught her in the shootout, and they killed her. So the police, I don't even think they were indicted. The police said the gangs were engaged in something called

mutual combat, and it's a shame she died. So this is, in effect, the first overt confession by an American city that it's an open city. You know what open city is? The Nazis don't own it. The Americans don't own it. Nobody owns it. There's nobody there. Well, I mean, for years...

There are certain people I would call the usual suspects on the far left who would object if you talked about no-go zones in European cities. And there's definitely no-go zones in European cities. In the sense that, like, London, Paris have ghettos, Muslim ghettos that

neighborhoods, whatever, maybe they're lovely, but they're, you know, there is almost Islamic law in the neighborhood. I saw a piece on 60 Minutes and there's a woman walking down the street and she's got a short skirt on and they're all, the men are yelling at her how wrong that is and she's like, this is fucking London. Yeah, not anymore.

What do you mean? Oh, London, not anymore. Everything changes. Dead like Chicago? What? Dead like Chicago? Well, look, it was the archbishop of, I believe, of Westminster, not of Canterbury, but it was the opposite number, like five years ago, said it's obvious that we're going to have to have Sharia law in England alongside of British law.

Yeah, there was a guy named Ahmed Choury, I think. He spoke on the radio for a very long time, and they were always, the British authorities were always, like, right on the fence of, do we arrest this guy? We want to have free speech, but this guy is, like, putting it right up to the line. And they finally did. I think he's in jail now.

Check it out. You people check it out. Check out what? The Archbishop of whatever the other guy is, who's up there with- Canterbury? Not Canterbury, the other guy. They have two of them, right? Okay. He said that it's obvious that we're going to have to have Sharia law outside. No, I'm saying this guy, Achmed Churi, I think that's the name.

He was basically advocating Sharia law. Yeah, sure. And basically the takeover of, I mean, look, people, again, the usual suspects hate to hear it, but Islam is a supremist religion. Now, all religions are to a degree. If you believe in a religion, you're going to go, well, of course, that's the best religion there is. It's about what happens when I die. I mean, this is the ultimate faith.

Of course, I like mine the best. But some people are just a little more militant about that and a little more upfront about

well, the world is okay now where it's only, you know, partly Muslim, but, you know, we are moving inexorably and we must toward a world where everyone is Muslim. They'll all be happier. Now, again, Christians kind of believe this too. You certainly see a lot of Christians at Christ camp and those kind of places who would say that. We have the truth. You know, they think they have the truth. But the Muslims are just a little more serious about

Yeah, especially coming out of Iran, they want to have a global caliphate. I get it. But something occurred to me on the way over here. I say, what is bad enough for these young savages who go and they rape women to death and then set fire to babies? And I figured it out. You know what it is? As martyrs, when they die, they go to heaven

And they have 70 virgins, okay? So you know and I know, back in the days when we were teenagers, to get the panties off of even one virgin, it's going to take you all night. Get the panties off of 70 fucking virgins, you're going to be months out of it. I...

Think back at that moment where I actually did get the panties off the first... I know, it's one of the most amazing things in a guy's life. And one of the most loserish. I mean, of course you're terrible at it. You don't know what you're doing. I mean, this was... This is before they had invented shaving the pubic hair, so...

It was just a big bush. You know, we never got, like, sex education in my school, so you're fumbling. It's like, I know it's around here somewhere. Exactly. I don't think I'd ever been introduced at the time to the clitoris as a part of the female. It wasn't that I couldn't find it. I didn't know I was supposed to. No, I thought it was a building in Greece. Yeah. I just...

That does not bring back good memories. Like, I know that when that's supposed to be the pseudom bonum of heaven, like, I'm with a bunch of virgins. Every time I think that, I just laugh because, again, I had just not a good experience with... I mean, who has a good experience losing their virginity? Well, the other thing is when you're a kid and it takes you forever to get the little girl's panties off, with her consent...

It's now fucking noon, and you don't even want to get laid. All you want to do is take a nap. Where did the years go? I mean, I feel like I was just watching Glenn Gehry, Glenn Ross for the first time. I mean, I think that's where I...

Was Alec Baldwin, did he do stuff before that, or was he... Did he do stuff with me before that? No. Like, was that where we first saw him? I mean, I feel like that's... No, no, no. He played, he was in one of the original Tom Clancy movies. Oh. He was a movie star. Oh, he was a star by then? Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. I felt like that was what made him a star, that speech. Oh, go on. What? Yeah. No, no, I kind of, I thought... I mean, first of all...

I'm talking about the, you know, coffee is for closers, which has become like an iconic line. Do you ever know when you're writing it, if you think it has a chance to become like a thing? Well, you know, I just saw Network again, Paddy Chavsky's Network, which is brilliant. I knew Paddy, by the way. He's a great guy. That's a terrific movie. The only thing I was ever envious of

of other writers, other than their money, was the fact that he wrote a phrase that became part of the American language, which is, I'm mad as hell, and I'm just not going to take it anymore. But then I did Wag the Dog, and that became part of the language. Yes, right. That's actually in the dictionary, I would imagine. Is it? Well, I think it is because it's a concept. I'm sure it's probably in the dictionary. Yes, to wag the dog is to, you know, they'll define it. Yeah, that's a big...

But what's the one you did with Alec Baldwin? It's like a frothy, I loved it. It's like a- Oh, State in Maine, right? Yes, State in Maine. State in Maine, he plays- So great. The concept is so great that to get it to the two Americas, the movie company is-

shooting in a small town. So you mix the... It's great. Well, the thing is they lost... The movie company goes on location. And he's the movie star. He's the movie star. And the reason they lost their location is he's a pedophile. He's in the thing with Julia Stiles. She's a young, underage girl. He's the movie star. Oh, he's the one... Yeah, she's the girl at... And he's drunk and the car goes out of control. It goes upside down and he...

He gets out of the car, and he looks around, and he says, wow. So we're shooting. I said, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I said, let's do this. Gets in the car, blah, blah, blah. Get out of the car, look around, and say, well, that happened. So he gets hysterical, laughing, jumping up and down. That's kind of become a catchphrase, too. Well, that happened. That was like the first time? You bet. Oh, yeah.

I think I saw that and thought it was making fun of the fact that it was like a cliche. No, no, no. No, it became the cliche from that. I don't know, isn't it? You bet it was. And so in my book, I said that I always wanted, when I've died, people to say, we will not see his like again. We'll never see his like again. But then I thought, that's insufficient. I want them to say what they said after they burned Joan of Arc, which is, we have just killed a saint.

That's what I want them to... The soldier who put the match on Joan of Arc. Don't you think it's ridiculous that they went after Alec Baldwin for just an accident? Or am I just naive about sets? But, like, I just never thought it was... Like, I...

One question. Do you think Alec Baldwin was intentionally shooting that person? If the answer's no, why all the bullshit? Well, here's the thing. Then it's an accident. I just finished shooting the movie. I love being on the set with the crew and the cast. It's such fun. It absolutely makes up for having to deal with the son of a bitches in the studios and the producers, right? Who couldn't find their ass with...

two hands on a guard dog. But being on the set is just such fun. And one of the things is you're a family there. You're all engaged in the same thing. And nobody knows what happens on a set who wasn't there. They just don't know. So anything you hear about someone say this, that, I would doubt it.

Because the people who know don't tell, and the people who tell don't know. Also, we tend to protect each other, right? Right. And the other thing is, I don't know if you had this experience, but I have. I directed a lot of movies and so forth. There are the stories that we tell, and there are also the stories that we don't tell. So I don't know what happened on that set. Oh, I see.

Yeah, because, you know, I said this to you like a half hour ago. You looked at me like I had two heads. This is exactly what I'm talking about. I said, you probably love working with the same people. And it's this caravan sort of mentality. We're on the, you know, we're going out again on the caravan. And yeah, it's almost like having, I've never been in a band. I was

What a great feeling that I'll never know. The feeling of like you're with five other guys or women, whatever, but you're playing instruments and it's working together. It's the best, right? But here's the thing. As I say, I just directed this movie. And aside from the cast who I know, I didn't know anybody on the crew. I knew the department heads, but I didn't know anybody.

And it was no different than making a movie 50 years ago. It was the same ethos on the set that they grew up sharing. Right. So that we were... It's like, you know, people in the military. Man, you're...

knowledge of like movies is just encyclopedic like where do you see all these so many movies you cite in your book from like the 30s and the 40s they don't show those movies anymore like when i was a kid that's what would be on the 430 movie there's no you can go through the 50 channels as i do often like once a day what's what are they showing in all these movie channels no no no and there's never anything that's old like that you gotta go on youtube

Can I say YouTube? I did. Say it. We're on YouTube. But on YouTube, they got every, a lot of it's stolen or borrowed, but they got every movie ever made. So what you can do is you say, geez, look what they're suggesting, this movie with Yvonne Mitchell. I never heard of Yvonne Mitchell before. That's a good movie. Go on your little device.

All the Yvonne Mitchell movies, I want to see them. So that's what I do in the evening with my wife. You watch a movie every night? Oh, yeah. Except she's addicted to British experts. What do you mean? It's 85 fucking Brits standing in front of Stonehenge talking funny. Oh, okay.

But you cite many British movies. Yeah, I love many British movies. Oh. Sure you do. And there's somebody who you said was like the greatest actor ever. I never heard of him. Who was it? Oh, Roger Livesay, maybe. Or Anton Volbrook. Yeah, sure. Okay, we don't know who these people are. And then I know you said you hate Olivier.

No, I didn't say I hate Olivier. Olivier did a couple of things. You said you can't stand his acting or something like that. No, he's not a very good actor. But here's the thing. But you know that that's a contrarian view. So what? I used to write for the Guardian newspaper in London. And I took off on Olivier and I said, I'm going to tell you who the best actor in the world is. And I says, I know you've already beat me to the punchline. It's Tony Curtis.

They said, Tony Curtis, how can you-- Oh, yeah. I love Tony Curtis. It's a spectacular actor. Yes. If you look at-- Some Like It Hot is the best comic performance. The Boston Strangler is the best macabre performance. The Sweet Smell of Success-- he's a spectacular actor. But Olivier did two things. One of them is he revitalized the theater on stage. He was a great stage director.

But the other thing he did was he did a couple of magnificent performances in the movies. One of them is as Hurstwood in Sister Carrie, and the other one is as Archie Rice in The Entertainer. And the other one is great, but he also starred in and directed Henry V, which is superb, and started and directed Hamlet by William Shakespeare, who was, of course, a Jew.

William Shakespeare? Oh, you knew that. I did not. Velvul Spierstein? Wait, you're kidding. No. What's the evidence? Well, it was Samuel Johnson. Someone has said that in 1642, Shakespeare was dead for 30 years, and someone said to Samuel Johnson, the great Samuel Johnson, Dr. Johnson, how can you say that Shakespeare was a Jew? And he said...

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I went to see it in the theater. Okay, there was such fuss, and I was off with the strike. And I wanted to like it, and I didn't hate it. It was amusing, visually very entertaining. But the premise of the movie is that we live in a patriarchy. And in the movie, Barbie barges into the Mattel headquarters, her makers, and the board of directors is 12 men because we live in a patriarchy.

But I got home and I was like, well, there's actually a Mattel company. You can actually look up what their board of directors is. Yes, the woman who's been the head of Mattel for 60 years. I'm not sure. I think the CEO is a man right now, but the board was like six and six. No, but before that, the woman who was the head of the company. Maybe. Maybe.

And anyway, and then I looked up, like, what are the figures on women on boards? Well, in the last year, like 2021, they had stats for it was like 45% of new board members were women. So to say, to base a movie on the idea that we're living in a patriarchy when women

By the very company that you're depicting in the film, you're lying about it. You're projecting this, depicting rather this company as a board of 12 men, and that's not the world we're living in anymore. So you're making a kind of a lie of a movie. Also, she's out of drawing Barbie. Don't get me wrong. I love Barbie. I never had, you know, my sister had Barbies. I played with them. Okay. Really? You played with dolls?

Kidding. Why? Well, because I wanted to be more ecumenical in my approach to childhood. As a child you do this? I think so. I like Barbie. You know why? I like putting on her shoes. Can I say that? You absolutely could say anything here. It's a safe space. Oh, good. But her legs were out of drawing. If you look at the proportion of her legs, they're 33% too long, her legs. She was tall, yeah. No, but wasn't that she was tall? She was just out of drawing.

Well, I mean, she also had like an 18-inch waist and a 38-inch bust. You know, I mean, this was the complaint women had about Barbie for decades, that she was creating an unrealistic body.

for women to need to feel like they had to attain and that you could never, and of course you can't because it's a fucking doll. Of course you can't have an 18-inch waist. Also, we had dolls of all of the cowboy heroes and their horses, and I loved them too. I still have my G.I. Joe. Do you? But did you have the Lone Ranger in silver? No.

No, was that a doll? No. Oh, yeah. They had Lone Ranger dolls and a little horse, put them in a fucking horse. I remember the TV show when I was very, very young. It was like one of the first shows I saw. High O Silver, right? High O Silver Away, yeah. Right. And my father, who was in radio, he had done, performed, what is this called? Lone Ranger. Lone Ranger in radio, like in the 30s or the 40s, something like that. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

The radio days, I feel, very brief. You know, they went, because TV came in like 19, like by 50, right? People had TVs. Yeah, 40 or 50, yeah. Okay. So, and the radio didn't come until the 20s. That's right. Right, okay. So it really had like a short reign, like when we were just hearing. And now with like this, what we're doing, like most people will not see this.

Podcasting is almost like old radio. Really? Oh, that's great. But the thing about radio is you could do it in the car, and you could also do your nails while you're doing it through the crossword puzzle. I think Marshall McLuhan would have said it was either a hot or a cold medium. No one knew what the fuck he was talking about. No, we do know that. We know what he meant by cold medium, television. In other words, like movie stars, you know, they

They very often walk down the street and I mean, some of them are, of course, very identifiable, but some of them are like hid behind their characters and so forth. And people just don't stop them or they just see them as something sort of remote. Whereas TV, it's in your living room. It's like at the end of your bed, like you're watching it between your toes and people think they know you. But wait a second. But there aren't any movies anymore. People still go to the movie theaters. I saw Barbie there.

Yeah, it's kind of coming back. But yeah, I mean, look, I'm as bad as anybody. Like, I saw Oppenheimer, but I saw it in bed because-- I saw the first eight years of it. Did you really see it? I saw 10 minutes of it. You didn't like it? Here's the thing.

Here's ancient movie. You know, I don't want to piss on somebody's career, but they could probably buy and sell me 12 times over. They're welcome to. But ancient movie wisdom is how do you make any movie better? Do you know? Cut the first 10 minutes. Exactly. I read that in your book. Sure. Cut the first 10 minutes. Every movie that I see and my wife sees and a lot of people see, they say, wait a second, why don't you start the movie there?

See, but I mean, we talked about this on Real Time a few weeks ago, your thing also about like movies almost don't need dialogue. Yeah. And I think you're working to an audience who you imagine is as smart as you are, and we're not. No, no, no. So we do need the first 10 minutes sometimes. Sometimes I need 20 minutes. I drove my car. I didn't get off the bus, as we say.

I've never met a stupid audience other than in the boardrooms of the great over here. Audiences are not stupid. Individuals are stupid, but the combined audience is not stupid. Okay. Explain that to me, Ridley. Sure. Here's what I do for a living. We could sit here easily and complain about how stupid the American...

People are, and, you know, us too. I don't think they're stupid. Well, some, I mean, uneducated. Definitely uneducated. People don't know anything. That's why I have to be putting all this information out about the Israeli conflict, because they have no idea about any of this stuff. So uneducated. And yet you're right. When they get as a group,

Somehow, I think there's maybe it was you who said it's like individually stupid, but together a genius. Yeah, that's what Billy Wilder said. Billy Wilder. Okay. Yeah, and it's true.

Why? How does that happen? That's an excellent question. How does that happen? It happens because we're herd creatures. Has to be something to do with that, yeah. And what I'm doing is the same thing that you're doing, right? As we talked a little bit about this on your other show, you're always thinking about what can the audience absorb, not in terms of information, but almost in terms of rhythm. The joke has got to be on the right rhythm because you're identifying yourself with the audience.

Most people can't make a movie because they can't even tell a story. How do they tell a story? Say, you know, this may be boring, but... Right. And blah, blah, blah. Oh, and also they have no idea about placement.

Comedians certainly see this all the time when we're starting and we get hired to do like corporate things, you know, that throw you $300 and this is their like fucking convention. So you're talking to a bunch of plumbers or insurance salesmen. And of course, so you're being introduced by an amateur.

And very often they'll be like, we have a young comedian here, Bill Maher. He has worked on The Tonight Show three times. They've said your name in the middle of the introduction. They don't even know to say it at the end. So that just trails off and then you have to walk on like a fucking monkey. Well, so here's the thing is that I used to drive a cab for a living. I did everything for a living as a cab driver.

And I stopped being a cab driver when I realized that I could actually write something that people would pay to see. I had a little theater company in Chicago. I said, geez, I'd rather do that. I don't mind. I like driving the cab, but I'd rather write stuff for a living. So my study has always been how to please the audience.

And it hasn't been how to pander to them because there's nothing to pander to. They're pretty smart. They are smart with that. And especially when you say you're right, like you can almost not cut too much.

because they're always ahead of you. That's absolutely correct. So that if you could do the other thing and say, Jesus Christ, make them listen, make them listen, make them wonder, and then pay it off. So they said, oh my God, he paid me off here. I'll listen again. It's the same thing you do in a routine. You build up to a joke, you tell them something that they didn't expect, and now they're all on, do that again.

Yeah, I feel like sometimes when I'm working on, I like working on a show once a week because I could start on the editorial at the end, the thing we were talking about before that I just did, on a Monday. And each day I'm editing it. And it's almost like getting, okay, Monday it's very crude, but I have all the pieces. And then it's just like in the editing room, I would imagine. It's really fun putting the pieces in the right, it's like a puzzle that you're,

It's like those paragraphs in that... It's great. So that's what dramatic writing is. It's structure. You like writing about... I mean, this is the one you were just on for. I remember reading Bambi vs. Godzilla and finding out in the book... I thought when I started the book, I'm like, oh, let's see what this metaphor is. And then in the book you say, no, it's actually a short.

It was a what? A short. What was it? It was actually a movie. Oh, yeah, of course it was. Did you ever see it? I mean, of course. Who the fuck knows this? Everybody knows it. Nobody knows this. Only you know these things. OK, so what is that, a short of Bambi...

Everybody can look it up on YouTube. It's called Bambi Meets Godzilla. It's a black and white cartoon. Here comes Bambi. Tritty trot, tritty trot, tritty trot. Up on the top of a hill. Uh-oh, here comes Godzilla. Boom, boom, boom. Godzilla stomps Bambi into strawberry jam. Roll credits. That's right. It's seven seconds long. Did you know that Bambi was a boy?

Do you know that I'm an animal lover? No. I'm a Peter Board member. You are? Yeah, so like... I love them too. You know what I love? Like the medium rare. Ducks with orange. Okay. Let's not talk about this. It'll trigger... No, no, just to eat them. I understand. And I eat them too. Yeah. But...

I feel terrible about it. And I only eat cows that died from natural causes after resting comfortably in a private room at Cedars-Sinai. I always say, and look, I have these, I think, disagreements with the PETA people who are vegetarian, but I love them. But, you know, PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I'm not sure it's unethical to eat them because they eat each other.

I object to, like, torturing them while they're alive. As long as they're alive, do we have to torture them right before we eat? And it's not good for us. You know, a lot of the reason why people are in such bad health, why something like COVID happens, is because we torture animals and keep them in conditions that make them diseased. And they pass that disease on to us when we eat them.

Well, we, in my house, we always, but I figured out, because we eat chicken once in a while, right, like three times a day, but we found out that non-ethically treated chickens, that you know what they do? They take them and they...

nail both of their feet to the floor and they force feed them. But with an ethically treated chicken, they only nail one foot to the floor. I don't find this funny. I really don't. I can't. This is like, you know, I don't think it's funny to torture animals. How can you be so heartless? I love animals. We got two huge poodles and we have a step poodle. They're over at our house all the time. Okay, but you have to love the ones that aren't cute either. I do?

You do? No, I love all dogs. Cats, of course-- That's the one-- again, you've picked out the one super cute category. Dogs? Yes. No, but cats are, of course, the souls of the evil undead. But I love dogs. I'm crazy about dogs. I don't like cats either. Do you have kids still at home?

No, no, they're all over. Your kids are all grown up. Yeah, they're all grown up. You're an empty nester. No, I'm an empty nester. But some of these kids I was just making a movie with, it's just like going home again. I mean, I could have been their grandfather. I might be their grandfather. I don't know. It was such fun to see the tradition continue. People like that who know about this industry and are serious. I mean, Shia LaBeouf, whatever he is as a person, I'm glad to hear he's a nice guy.

certainly was somebody who was at the top of his craft. And people like that are usually very aware of the history of the movies and who the players are. So for them, kids that age to be working with you, they must be very excited and nervous about it. I don't know. I'm sure they are. Well, here's the thing. If you're the director of a movie, I direct a lot of movies, a lot of television,

Everybody there is two things. They're there because they're very good at their job. They're there because they want to please. And a lot of them have been abused by an unfortunate attitude on the set, by directors who don't know what the fuck they're doing. And directors who don't know what the fuck they're doing or...

None of whom know what the fuck they're doing. If they get on the set, they can cause an atmosphere of anxiety. So one of the things that I or any good director has to do is calm everybody down. So everybody knows their job. You made a mistake, big deal, we'll fix it. We got all the time in the world.

And to let everybody know that you understand what they're doing and value them for it. Because you do. Because there's only one person on the set that doesn't have to know a fucking thing. That's the director. Because everybody else knows their job. So if the director actually knows enough to say, thank you, everyone's going to be happy. And then they lose their anxiety. It takes a while, but they lose their anxiety. But a director has to... Are you kidding? Doesn't the director... Isn't the movie essentially...

the work of the director. So he has to know, more than anybody has to know what the fuck he's doing. Yes and no, but most movies are a cock of shit because the director has no idea what he's doing. Also... Well, you and I have some very different views. I'm trying to remember some of the things, some of the movies you shit on or said were great that I was like, wow, I love Dave, but like, oh, Titanic. Yeah. You hate Titanic. Yeah.

It's loathsome. It's great. It's fucking great. Okay, well, go and see A Night to Remember. Did you watch it all the way through? I think I might have. But it's Leonardo DiCaprio going through different rooms while he's drowning saying, I will find you. Okay, I get it. But the original Titanic movie is called A Night to Remember. I know exactly. That's a great movie. I bet you it's not as good, but for you, I will watch it.

So we're talking about something else. Oh, yeah. In television, so I direct a lot of television, they always say, what does the director do in television? A director is the guy who brings the script downstairs. No, it's not.

I'm talking about episodic television. Oh, okay. Because the crew's there all the time. The cast is there all the time. The director can't do every one, so the director is coming downstairs and saying this, that, and the next thing, and all the crew is doing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, set up. Well, I did sitcoms, and I know what a sitcom director does. He tells you when you are standing in a scene where mostly other people are talking to you, have an activity,

Yeah. Okay. So big deal. Listen, some directors really know. Here's the thing. Some directors are really good at what they're doing, which is directing a film. Some directors come to that bringing one specific skill. For example, they're good with the camera or they're good writing dialogue or they're good directing actors or they're good planning out a scene.

But no director knows everything on the set because the other people on the set, the costume or the makeup person, the continuity person, the DP, spend their lives doing that one thing. So the director's first job is to make sure that everyone is on the same page, they have the same vision, and then let them do it.

See, it's so hard for me to relate because you're describing it as like the ultimate collaborative experience. Yeah. And stand-up comedy is the sort of ultimate lone wolf experience. Sure. You know, like musicians, of course, there's many reasons why comedians are jealous of musicians. But what musicians are jealous of us is when we travel. And sometimes I play the same theaters as bands. And you could see they were there the night before. The whole thing is a big...

you know, Misha Goss, like moving amps and, you know, dozens of people. And we just show up, no sound check. They say, do you want to do a sound check? I've said, you have a microphone. And can you see if a guy talking to it causes problems? Because that's what I'm going to be doing. Well, there's the biggest scam in the world, right? It's not Obamacare. No, it's the sound check.

Every fucking time you go to a sound check, they tune the thing, they tune the thing, they tune the thing, big fucking deal. You show up, it's got a full room. It never sounds like that. So why do the sound check? Are you talking about like when you're doing speaking events? Not so much that as music. My wife's a musician. Okay. I said, what the fuck? Right. Turn the thing on. Let's see if we can hear you.

Well, anyway, but you were an actor, right? Weren't you? Didn't you? I said to my friend William H. Macy, you know, I'm the first one to say I'm the worst actor in the world. He said, no, you're the second one. So I was...

I started out as an actor, went to the neighborhood playhouse school of theater in New York, but I couldn't act. But I liked watching what the actors were doing. I was trying to figure out from a long time ago, 50 years ago, what actually was happening between the actors. And what I realized was when I started writing, that's all you got to do. Get somebody who knows how to act, give them the fucking script, let them talk to each other. That's going to be just fine.

Yeah, I think there's more to it than that. Well, you may, but as I said, you know, I've been living off the house's money for 50 years because I figured that out.

I know, but, you know, it's like saying, well, they just say the word. Yeah, but the words are, you know, words that were written by someone who doesn't know what they're doing or doesn't have the talent. Or they're words written by someone who is entertaining to other people. Yeah, sure, but the actor can't do anything about that. If the words are great, it doesn't need the actor's help.

And if the words aren't great, the actor can't help it. Do you make the actors say precisely word for word? Some directors, like Woody Allen famously just tells them, you know, doesn't it have to be word for word? Here's a very good answer. I just came up. I even like it. I don't make them say it word for word. They're happy to say it word for word because it's good. I mean, it's the greatest compliment. Somebody says, yeah, sure, I'll say that.

So what if somebody deviates? Do you stop them and reprimand them? Well, here's the thing. What I'm actually doing, I'm going to blow my cover, right? And I'm going to do it on your show. What I'm actually doing as a dramatic writer is writing free verse. What's actually happening is an epic poem that's been in two or three parts so that one person is finishing the other's sentence and it's all rhythmic, right?

So if something is something. So the reason because it's rhythmic, it's fun to say, right? Well, the act, the actor doesn't have to manipulate or he's not coming up against a boulder so that it's very rare that an actor is going to say, wait a second, this line doesn't work. And because it's very rare, if the actor says that I'm going to listen to it and I'm going to say, oh, OK, let me let me work on that.

Man. You know, I was an actor. We all started out, all of us, in the early 80s comics, and we all wanted to then get on a sitcom. So I made my living more as an actor in the 80s

Never really got into it, but I would come back out of retirement to do something. I mean, it's not too late for us to work together. I could do Mammoth Speak. You think I can't do this thing you do? Oh, I can do your thing. Of course you can. Here's the thing. I cast two guys as villains. I love comics, right? The greatest performance in the world of a comic is Jackie Gleason in The Hustler.

One of the second greatest... Oh, comics as actors. Yeah, is Jerry Lewis, King of Comedy. I did Steve Martin and Tim Allen, both portrayed villains. Yeah. They were fucking great. Right, Tim Allen and Red Belt. That's right. So you're on. My next... That would be fun. Yeah. Oh, sure, it would be great. I'm working on another movie, and now I'm finishing up this other movie, another movie, about confidence men.

And you feel no, like, diminishing energy at this point? No. I mean, that's what I do all day is I sit in a room by myself. I read a little bit. I take a nap. I write a little bit. You know, if you write 500 words a day, that's 25%-- And always sober?

Sober? Sober. Oh, yeah. No, I took a sip of pot once. Me too. I'm still hallucinating 50 years later. Really? My lips have never touched alcohol. That's amazing. You know why? It's because I put a fucking thing past the lips. Yes, I've read about it. You drank. Yes, I've been able to take a drink. Right, okay. But...

That's amazing that you never got into drugs of any kind because, you know, you're hardly the first, like, esteemed, like, big-time, serious person writer to come to Hollywood, even though maybe you already were here. But, I mean, I'm talking about the history of, like, F. Scott Fitzgerald and all those great writers of that era who all got seduced.

Right? To come Dorothy Parker, every... Nobody ever... I mean, even Faulkner, didn't he write some shit? He did. I didn't get to do it, I just got paid. No, I know, but I'm saying, when you read about most of those dudes...

They coped by being drunks. No, they were drunks. I'm not talking about Dorothy Parker, but Scott Fitzgerald was a drunk. But it seems like they were using liquor to cope with the things that you bitch about in those books. No bullshit. They were using liquor to get drunk. Okay, well, getting drunk is fun, but it also can be a coping mechanism. Come on. No, I don't need a coping mechanism. Not you, but people. Here's the thing.

My people have been Jews for 6,000 years, right? My grandparents all came over here with nothing. The civilization they left behind was destroyed. My dad was... Russia? Russia. Russia and Poland, right? And Ukraine. And my dad was raised in poverty by a single mom, put himself through law school on the GI Bill. I've had this...

wonderful career in this magnificent country, enjoying the liberties that a lot of men and women lived and died for, writing for a living. So I'm like the ancient Jews with the pushcart. I'm going to sell everything on a pushcart, and if you buy it, I'm going to go out and pull up and bring down another pushcart. And those Jews who started out with the pushcarts started the mercantile empires.

That's the thing that pisses me off the most about this dialogue that's going now on about with the problems in the Middle East. The stunning lack of perspective and the college kids who have just no idea how lucky they are. And I'm not a rah-rah America guy, you know. I don't get a boner when the Blue Angels fly over. I don't give a shit about any of it. You don't? Have you tried Viagra? Viagra, Viagra.

You're funny. There's the blue angels flying over you. But I got to say, but I do understand. I do have read the paper since I was a kid. I understand roughly what the rest of the world is.

And it's just a little – like all these really radical things I read about how great Hamas is after the attack from a lot of professors at Ivy League colleges and big-time colleges. And, look, a lot of them were – you could tell by the name. They were people. They were Islamic. They were from the Middle East and Arab.

You know, like the guy at Cornell who said he was exhilarated by the attack. I mean, some really radical stuff. And then, you know, you read about other stuff in the article that they've said in the past. And then not only it's the Jew hitting, but America hating. I mean, really, really don't like this country. And I feel like it's very cheeky.

to come here, like, purposely. You came to a different country, your parents did. You gave up your country, so you came to this one, created by a completely different culture that you obviously want to be in, but you only shit on it about how terrible it is compared to the place that you left. You know? Well, listen, it's easy to be a victim, right? You don't need anything except, you know, larynx. Okay? It's hard to create something. Right. I was very, very, very fortunate

And that I got out of college with no skills and no support, whatever. So I always worked for a living. I always worked weekends and summers. I always worked for a living. I did every job in the world. And I figured out pretty young that if I wanted to take a girl out to lunch, I better make a little bit more money than I'm making now. And then later on, if I wanted to buy a house or a car, I had to work harder.

and please people, which is what capitalism is about. You make money through supplying a need. I never took girls to lunch. You didn't? No. I just thought it was a dead end. It was like...

The only people who are going to get laid after lunch. You have to be really like one of those Adonis guys. Oh, so it's all about sex. Of course. When I was going out to meals with that whole... There was a certain point in my life where I was like, I will never use dinner to try to get laid again. I will go out to dinner with anybody who I like, who I genuinely like.

whether it's a romantic relationship or a friendship. But, like, you know, dinner dating was how I, when I was, like, in my 30s. That's what you did, 40s probably even. Of course. You go out to dinner as your calling card. It was an interview to see if you want to fuck me. It was just terrible. No, but wait a second. I'm going to tell you something that, you know, you're never too, I'm going to say you're never too old to learn, but probably you are too old to learn.

I just learned this, right? I've been married to this angel for 35 years, and he was the most beautiful person ever seen. And great in your movies. Oh, just such a wonderful actress. Love her in Dayton, Maine. Thank you. Just hysterically funny. And I said to her one day, you know, you're so wonderful. You're the woman of valor. You're the girl of my dreams. I'm nuts about you. I miss you in the other room. Why did you marry me? She said, I don't know. You seem like a nice enough guy. Yeah.

So anyway, I got a whole bunch of daughters and we're sitting around having a couple of drinks and having dinners and we're talking about dating and taking people out to dinner. And I say, well, you know, da, da, da, to take the girl out to dinner to try to induce her to go to bed with you. And they all looked at me blankly. I said, what? One of my daughters says, dad,

Every girl has decided whether she's going to go to bed with you or not before you go out to dinner, and there's nothing that's going to change your mind. And I looked at my three daughters and my wife, and I said, what? They went, duh. Yeah, I wish I had known that, too. Yeah. Yeah.

I may only just be discovering this now, but again, I haven't actually done this in a long time. I mean, you know, there's a certain point where it just becomes undignified and it just, you know, you just have to figure out something else. I mean, you know, you could probably reduce all of man and womankind into like ways that they,

We need to mate, and how do you get there? Like, cops, I'll pull you over and make you flirt with me. You're scared of me. That's how I do it. And producers, I come out in a bathrobe and masturbate into the plant. That's how I do it. Whatever it is, everybody's got a way. And it also changes through your life. I mean, you've been married a long time, so this is probably...

I told you I did a play about Harvey Weinstein, right? Did I tell you this? Harvey Weinstein, but specifically him? Well, yes. Or just a Romana Clay? Yes, exactly. It's a Romana Clay. It was John Malkovich playing a Harvey Weinstein-like character. In? It was a play called Bitter Wheat, and we did it in the West End. Gosh, that was fun. Was it before he was busted? Yes.

But did it portray him as, well, we didn't call him Harvey Weinstein. No, but did it portray him as a rapist? Oh, yeah. You say it like it was not even up to discussion. I mean, come on, right? Well, certainly the rumors about him before the Me Too movement began in, I guess it was October 2017 with that story in the Times.

was that he was a bully, that he was awful to people. I mean, you figured he was probably fucking around. But, I mean, I don't think anybody, certainly not in my circles, knew he was a serial rapist.

I don't know. I did a little bit of business with him, and he was a bully, but so what? And he didn't rape you? Didn't rape me, no. You know, that's always been the secret sauce of the movie business from day one. These old fat Jews came over here, and they said, Jesus Christ, I can have any shiksa in the world by putting her in the movies.

Time went by, time went by, and people said, yeah, I can have any shicks in the world by promising to put her in the movies. The problem is that everybody comes out here with stars in their eyes.

And they say, well, Jesus Christ, you call yourself a producer, you call yourself an agent, you call, please, please help me. And that person says, okay, you know, if they want to be lied to, I'll lie to them. But it is pretty amazing that certainly in that era that you're talking about, the 30s and 40s and the,

The Louis B. Mayer, you know. Oh, the four o'clock date. The what? All these people had a little extra girl come up and take dictation at four o'clock every afternoon. That I did not know. Like all of them, like Warner and

Right. I mean, but that in that era and in, I'm sure, quite a few years after that, definitely many years after that, up until the present time to a degree. But certainly things have changed to the I mean, back then it was just sort of de rigueur. They a woman just had to walk around like rape is something that could happen. There's no real recourse. Just avoid it.

Just try to not be in that vulnerable place. That was it. Because if it happened, I mean, unless they're all lying about that. Well, look, the other thing is that the studios own the cops.

They had their own cover-up in the old studio days. It's just that society was ruled by men at the time. Then it was a patriarchy. Again, it's not like Barbie got it wrong. It just got it wrong by the year we're in. It was a patriarchy, so they just didn't care. It just wasn't something that was prosecuted, like crimes against black people weren't prosecuted. You could just do things, and that was just accepted. Well, so things don't look good.

Some things get better. Everything got way better. My always this point, I stole that line from Steven Pinker, but progressive phobia, he calls it, that liberals are like they have this allergy to acknowledging progress. Like somehow that makes you less of a person. Like the worst I think things are.

the more morally superior I am to you. Things haven't changed at all. And of course, it's just such nonsense. You just look around you. Just open your eyes. Things are just completely different. There's still work to be done. Of course, there's always work to be done.

Yeah. Listen, you know what occurred to me the other day is this wokeism is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. But it occurred to me, well, Dave, look on the bright side. No, Dave, you can't look on the bright side because you're a Jew. Yes, but I will try to look on the bright side. So here's what I think. The one bright side of wokeism, you turn on the television, you're watching sports or something like that.

All of the commercials and most of the people in the television shows are people of color, right?

It's bad for white actors, but on the other hand, it used to be bad for black actors. Right. Big deal. Right? Exactly. But the good thing is that white America gets used to looking at black people not as Sidney Poitier, not as Willie Best, but as people. And so that's really great. And that's been going on for quite some time. Yeah.

I mean, it certainly did not go on at all. I remember during the pandemic, I rewatched all the old Columbos. And you cannot find a black person in that show. And this is the 1970s, except for the cop who comes in and says, over here, Lieutenant.

That was the extent of it. Yeah. Well, that's not... And now it's true. Like, if a Martian came down and just watched TV for four hours, he would not think that African Americans are a minority in this country. And I'm happy about that. Like you said, turn about his fair play. Just don't tell me it's not happening. That's, like...

Especially with all the race. Let's just live in the year we're living in and don't portray the world we're in right now, today, as what it's not. Yes, it was bad. And it doesn't make you better to align yourself with how bad you feel about how bad it used to be. Yes, it used to be bad and we didn't do it. But here's a phrase from World War II. You know where you find sympathy? It's in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. Yeah.

Who said that? My dad. He said that's what he learned in the army. Did your dad fight in...

A war? He enlisted at age 17. He didn't get overseas. World War II. My father was in World War II. Oh, your father enlisted but couldn't? Yeah. He enlisted and he had this, he signed up, he had to get a letter from his mom. 17 years old, it was Pearl Harbor, enlisted. And he had this thing wrong with his eye and they operated on him. They fucked him up and he spent the war in a bed in an army hospital, you know,

near death but he always felt bad he didn't get over it my uncle did he fought in the battle of the bulge I think my father fought in that one too yeah boy that generation my mother used to I used to ask her about that and she would always say you know because this is the greatest generation she said

We weren't great until we had to be. You know, when the shit hit the fan. But she said, we were like, you know, kids. We're Bobby Soxers. You know, they went nuts for Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater. And, you know, they were like lightheaded like anybody else. It just made me think, like, the events forged this in a generation. And the question is, would that happen to this generation? I mean, they're also just like...

with their head in the clouds. But if some shit happened, what if there was like, what if we had a real war? You know, like Putin does some shit and then we do some shit and then we're fighting Russia and we're all going. Well, I think it depends on how much money the Biden's getting at that time from whom. So you hate Biden? I don't hate him. He's an old hack. He's definitely an old hack. An old hack can be good at times. Maybe yes and maybe no. You know, he's...

He's always been a bag man his whole life. Okay. In fact, these people asked me to write a movie about his son, a Roman, a son, which I met. Oh. Hunter. Hunter. The ne'er-do-well. The crackhead. Yeah. So I was thinking about hunters talking to somebody, a hunter-like person, talking to somebody who wants to get something from a hunter. Says, do you know who my people are? Do you know who my people are?

And the guy says, I don't know who your people are. Yeah, I know your people. I know who you are. You're a bag man, and you inherited the bag. So, you know, there is that. I grew up in Chicago. These things don't shock me. Yeah. I mean, it's also a crime not admirable but trivial compared, in my view, to Trump's crimes. Well, I don't know what those crimes are, but that's... Well, trying to overthrow the government of the United States, trying to illegitimately...

Sees power that does not rightfully go to you because you didn't win an election That's would be Trump's crime and then he's being put on trial for it. It's gonna happen by more. We'll see I mean, I know no with a trial. There's definitely gonna happen good We'll see the outcome good, but excellent, but the trial is definitely happening. Listen, here's the thing

This is why the Biden administration has seen to it that we have peace in the Middle East. We have low inflation. The borders are closed. The cities are safe. And I think that that's... What is this, a Fox News commercial?

I mean, you know, first of all, all those things you ticked off. You aren't going to tell me that Trump is responsible for that. Of course you are. Well, I don't know what are we talking about. But you mentioned first inflation. Well, inflation actually has been falling now. There was look, there was inflation because we stupidly and I know we agree on this one. We stupidly spent more than we did on World War Two on covid.

I mean, that's pretty astounding. And of course, inflation results. But that spending on COVID came from both the Trump administration and the Biden administration. They both. Sure. OK, so that's why we had inflation. Actually, the truth of the matter is America came out of the pandemic with a better economy than all the other big boy countries. Somehow stock market just hit a high. Unemployment is microscopic.

Wages went up. They were completely wiped out by inflation. That's true. But somehow they now it was in the paper last week. Soft landing is what they're saying. There's not going to be a recession. That's not an I mean, you know, you're piloting something. You're a fucking Sullenberger trying to land this on the Hudson. A little credit. No. To whom? To Biden. He's a crook.

But what about the economy, which affects more... Wait a second. Let me ask you a question, because we say there's no inflation. When was the last time... I didn't say no inflation. When was the last time you filled up your car and looked at it? It's electric. To you or me, that doesn't make any difference. Electric doesn't make a difference. I don't have to go fill it up. No, I'm saying that the price... But on my corner, gas is $7.50 a gallon, right? The price of gas...

Affects everybody. Yes. But you know who does not affect the price of gas that much? Presidents. Presidents don't really affect the price of gas. Everybody plays that political game, both parties. You'd think the president was out there with the long polls changing the number of the price of the gas. It's about...

supply and demand, like anything. And that is very often, is there a war in the Middle East? Yes. Well, then maybe Saudi Arabia is going to pull back and then, or refineries have trouble in the United States. But you're missing the point. The point is that the first thing that Biden did when he came in was stop drilling for oil. We were a

amassed a net export and now we're a net importer. That's what drove the price of gas. Well, we don't need to be a net importer. We import a different, we make way more than we use because we're like number one in that now. But we, for some reason, there's a certain type of oil we'd rather import than use ourselves. It's complicated. But yes, we do export oil. And yes, I agree with you in principle that

It doesn't matter where the oil comes from if you're burning it.

So why not us get the profit until we actually figure out how to get off oil? Other countries have had this problem. Germany did it. They said, look, we're going to get off the oil and we're going to go blah, blah, blah, solar, this much nuclear, this much this. And they fell short. And what did they have to do? They had to go back to coal to fill up the gap because people are not going to sit in their freezing homes until you figure it out down to the last detail. So they had to go back to the worst thing.

So I agree. It's silly if you're going to use the oil not to use good old American oil.

It's not silly, it's stupid. Because the people who are concerned about the environment, they say, well, no, no, no, we aren't going to use our oils, we're going to use their oil. P.S., if they're concerned about the environment, something I've never been able to understand, like the Iran deal, whatever that was, is why America is opposed to nuclear, which would solve all of our energy problems. I agree. Well, I can tell you why people are opposed, because when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong. It's like marriage.

When it goes wrong and it goes like super bad wrong, it's like the nightmare of all time. Yeah, but France has been using it for 70 years. Yes, they have. But we've also had Fukushima, we've had Chernobyl, and we've had Three Mile Island. So like basically every 20 years, we had a disaster. And like, would I want to swim anymore in the Pacific Ocean? I'm not sure because...

Japan released some of that into the ocean, and I think it gets everywhere. Japan did that? Yeah. Those swine. Is this why we bombed Pearl Harbor? No. So that Japan would have swine? The swine are the Germans. Oh, that's right. Did you know, speaking of Japan, there was a guy who had a very, very high-level sushi restaurant at Santa Monica Airport. Really great stuff. And he got busted for selling whale. This is true. Whale? Yeah.

He was selling whales. He fucking killed a whale? Well, I don't know if he killed it, but he served it. But how many people would you have to have to cut up the whale? A lot of people. Oh, really? And a lot of freezers. I know, but... A whale's big. A whale's very, very big, but he wouldn't have been discovered, but there was a guy who broke his tooth on a harpoon. LAUGHTER

Were you setting me up for that from the beginning of that? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. But it's true about the whale. It's absolutely true. They sold them now because they were fucking selling whale. And they also used to sell these little crawfishes. You'd go there and the crawfish, they'd cut their heads off and serve them. And the crawfishes were still moving around when you ate them. It was great. I hate to... I will not eat anything that's fighting me for my fork. So...

I have a place in Catalina because my friend and I think that there's going to be another earthquake and it'll be a disaster. So we got a boat.

and we got a place in a little place in canada it's a bug out yeah and when we go to catalina i don't go that much because i hate boats but um you see the whales crossing i know and it's like i used to go to catalina for lunch i'd say the way really yeah with a girl no i would i would go from i'd go from uh salamanga airport and i used to go there for lunch and they got an airport at the airport there was a restaurant

that used to be open still maybe 365 days a year so we would go there on christmas and new years and have a buffalo burger do you celebrate christmas no i'm a jew i know but like it's also a national holiday oh it's not a national it absolutely is is purim a national holiday no but it's different christmas is different excuse me i was raised catholic

But my mother, I didn't even know this until I was a young teenager, was Jewish. Like, her family was Jewish. They never went to temple, so there was no formal training. But that's her... That's how you know they're Jewish. That's her... Yeah. Well, that's her heritage. So, like, as a kid, you know, I was so traumatized by going to church. And so this thought of religion was just like, pain, pain, pain. So I didn't, like, think of things like, why doesn't mom ever go to church with us? And, you know... So...

But we had a Christmas party every year. But the people that lived in our area were my mother's relatives, not my father's, not the Catholics. They lived in Maryland or some shape or form.

My mother's family, they lived nearby, so they came over. We had a Christmas party, and it was Christmas with fucking Santa Claus and the tree and the presents, and all the people there were Jews, or at least cultural Jews, and nobody told me or thought it was important that I know, and it wasn't important that I know. I think that's so much better. Yes, it's a national holiday. We didn't get all Jesus-y about it, but they also were aware that I was a kid who was being raised Catholic.

No, you're full of shit on that point. But we've been talking for an hour, so you're doing good. But there's an old joke about these three Jews, right? They're talking about how much, what bigger, apikoros, it means an apostate. How much is an apostate? One guy says... Apikoros? Apikoros means an apostate. It actually comes from the Greek. Epicurean means I take a little bit of this, I take a little bit of that. So one guy says, I'm such an apikoros.

that I don't celebrate the Sabbath. The guy says, I'm such an epic chorus, but not only don't I celebrate the Sabbath, I eat pork on the Sabbath. The guy says, I'm such an epic chorus, not only do I eat pork on the Sabbath, I eat pork on Yom Kippur when I'm supposed to be fasting. And the other guy says, no, no, you're not an epic chorus. You're a goy.

So Jews do not celebrate Christmas. Your Jews celebrated Christmas. Why? Okay, we didn't celebrate. Yes, we did. Why am I apologizing for this? It's a national holiday. The whole country does it. It doesn't mean we're being somehow... Well, wait a second. I'm an American citizen. I've been paying too many taxes for a billion years. I don't consider it a national holiday.

Okay. Well, agree to disagree. Listen, the Jews, and this is my experience too, the assimilationist Jews wanted to say, yes, they wanted their kids to celebrate Christmas because they thought they were being deprived, right? So what does that say to a kid? It says something about being a Jew makes you deprived. So in order to make you undeprived, we're going to let you do what the Christians do. You know, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Well, that's true. You know, I don't know if we have to... I mean, that's one of my issues with progressives today as opposed to old-school liberals. It's like they have to read race into everything. And it's not in everything. It is an important issue. It's not into everything. And I don't think that, like, a kid who's not...

a Jewish kid enjoying a Christmas tree and Santa Claus. I mean, Santa Claus comes from Christian myth, right? Yes. Okay, so you kids can't, you never let your kids enjoy the pleasure of Mr. Santa Claus? It has nothing to do with genetics. It has to do with religion. No, I'm just asking you about... I'm saying that Jewish kids...

It's not a question whether people are genetically Jewish. Your Honor, it's a direct question. I want the witness to answer it. Did you allow your kids to enjoy Santa Claus when they were little? Wait a second. Wait a second. Did I allow them to...

Santa Claus? Let me rephrase your question. You were saying that I deprive my kids from... Did you? Huh? Deprive them of enjoying Santa Claus. I didn't deprive them from it. I just didn't expose them to it. You might as well say... But it's everywhere. They must have seen it in the... Not in our house. Oh, come on. They must have had the Michael Jackson blinders on. Let me ask you something. You think I should have... Was I depriving my kids from enjoying Ramadan?

No, but... What's the difference? The difference is they aren't Muslim. Well, first of all, okay, but there's a difference. It's something called the Judeo-Christian tradition. We are linked together, Jews and Christians. Jesus, of course, was a Jew, and if so, why the Spanish name? No, old joke. That's not bad. It was one of my first. You know, the old joke, what did Jesus say to the teamsters? I'll be back soon, or... Don't do anything until I get back. Yeah.

All right. Well, I will be January 27th. Wow, we're in the year 2024. It actually sounds like futuristic still to me. San Diego Civic Theater, but I'll really be there. February 16th and 17th at the David Copperfield at the MGM Grand in Vegas. March 2nd at the Houston Hobby Center. You ever go to Vegas?

I went to Vegas with Steve Martin to see, oh, to see Marty Short, Marty Short and Steve Martin. Doesn't half of Things Change take place in Vegas? They go to Vegas. It takes place, we actually shot it in North Tahoe, but it's supposed to be in Vegas, yeah. Oh, but it wasn't in Vegas. No. It was at the Cal Neva Lodge that used to be owned by the mob. And I think that what you let, that Ellison just, Larry Ellison just bought it. Yeah. No, that's where Sinatra...

There was some shit that went down there. Oh, it all went down there. But something with him, I think he had to sell it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He also was very pissed when Jack Kennedy did not visit him in Palm Springs. Of course. Which is all the area you're talking about, the mafia, that whole thing. So that's what the movie's about that you can't talk about? It's about from the mafia's point of view. And it's Al Pacino?

It used to be LPG. I put this whole cast that I put together, but something happened to the movies. But it's Barry Levinson? I believe this week it's Barry Levinson. This week? But Barry did the best thing for me. I was living in Vermont years ago, and he calls up. He says, I got this book called American Hero. It's about a president who needs to go to war to divert attention from something that he's done. He says, I want you to write it.

I say, sure, I'll write it. Oh, so he gave you that idea? Yeah. He says, I'll send you the book. I say, no, I don't need to read the book. I'll write it. He goes to war because they catch him fucking a Girl Scout. Right, sure. He's okay.

And so I think six weeks later they were filming the movie. Is that right? Six weeks later? I think, yeah. I think they were all set up with De Niro. I'll tell you a good De Niro. You wrote it that fast. What? You wrote it that fast. Yeah. I mean, it all kind of came together pretty quick. So here's a De Niro story. I don't think it's in my book. But I did a lot of movies with Bobby that... The Untouchables? Did The Untouchables, We're No Angels, Wag the Dog. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

There's two others that I did with him. In any case, I wrote this movie, The Edge, that it was eventually Anthony Hopkins and Alec. And before Alec... It was about the big bear, yeah. So before the thing, I did a reading of the movie. Bobby wanted to... Bob De Niro wanted to do a reading. Okay, wants to do a reading, sure. Yeah.

The thing you find out over the time is anytime a movie star wants to do a reading, they're never going to do the movie, right? Because it gives them an excuse not to do the movie. They're fucking around. Really? Yeah.

I don't know why, but that's what it is. 'Cause they all mumble, mumble, mumble, because they all know-- they're reading it for the first time. But couldn't it be just that they legitimately went into the reading wanting to know what it sounded like, and then they were-- they heard it and just thought, "No, this is not for me." If I wrote it, no. So anyway, we do the reading.

We did a reading. Touché. And Bob comes up to me afterward. He's very gracious. He says, Dave, you know, it's good. It's really good. It's really good. But I don't think it's me. I said, okay, thanks for doing the reading. I appreciate it. No, he says, no, I want you to understand.

I like it so much, but I gotta love it before I can put my hands on it. I only have so many in it. And if it's not me and I don't love it, I just can't do it. Are you angry with me? Of course not.

He says, you're really not angry with me? I said, no, I'm not angry with you. He says, good, would you do me a favor? I got this crock of shit I'm supposed to start shooting on Wednesday. I was going to say, of all the people to say, oh, I only picked from the finest. I only fleeced the greatest sheep. No, this guy just likes to work. No, he's, of course, a brilliant actor. I love Robert De Niro like we all do, as any loyal American would.

But he definitely wants to work, it seems like, 52 weeks a year. And he's done a lot of movies that are just like, he's always good, but it's so-so. And as far as being super picky like that, let me tell you, Casino, love the movie, love Scorsese.

Although Raging Bull, did we talk about this? Yeah, we did. Okay. Not my favorite. But Casino, he's playing a Jew. And as great as an actor as he is, sometimes it's just in you. And he is not a Jew. Well, nobody can play a Jew except Roger Crawford.

Roderick Crawford. I know the name. I barely remember. Highway Patrol. He's this big, fat Irish guy. But he does the best Jew in the world in a movie, a Frank Sinatra movie called Not As A Stranger, where he plays a Jewish doctor. You should check that out. Not As A Stranger. Yeah, you know all these. I love them. You know, that's what, and the other thing. I wouldn't even know where to...

Begin, though, I guess. YouTube. Yeah. YouTube. See, as a gag man, you and me both gag men, you do the same thing I do. If you're looking at a comic, you say, why didn't that joke work? It almost worked. What's wrong with it, right? Of course you do. Yeah, I mean. So that's what I do with movies. I say, I'm looking at that movie. It didn't quite work. How would I fix it? And what is usually the problem besides the first 10 minutes? The problem is that movies work better

Here's how movies work. When the lights go down, we have their attention.

The problem with movies is to keep their attention until the end. You wouldn't get rid of the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan, would you? No, that's the best part of the movie. That the beach landing is amazing. It's magnificent. It's the best part of the movie. I love it all. Yeah. I watched Combat as a kid. Me too. Vic Morrow. Vic Morrow and Rick Jason as Lieutenant Hand. Oh, yes. And Kirby and Little John and Cage. The Squad. Yeah.

That, to me, Saving Private Ryan was just like the greatest, bestest combat episode ever. They have a mission, they're a squad. You know, it just was like that blown up to... It was marvelous, marvelously done. Oh, good.

So Titanic bad, but Private Ryan. Titanic bad. Listen, here's the thing. You talked about Barbie, and what you said was the visual blah, blah. Anyone who talks about the visual blah, blah, well, it means the movie's not fucking good. Well, yeah, I mean, I was trying to be nice. And no, I mean, that's not true. There's sometimes a movie that would never be my favorite movies, but there are movies that are, yes, visually arresting

But yeah, I saw it once. I never, I don't see, but that's not the first thing people say. If they like the movie, they say, Jesus Christ, you're going to love the bop, bop, bop. He's great. She's great. Bibbidi, boppidi, boo. One doesn't say yes. The visual blah, blah. No, no, no. But you can like things for different reasons. And some things can be not on the highest level.

You know, I have, I use the old iPod for my music. I have over 4,000 songs in there. Are they all like five star? No, but they're all good. Yeah. Or they wouldn't be in there. I like movies. I'll watch bad movies. I'll watch any movie. It drives my wife crazy because I like to see, oh, I see how he did that. Why did that work? Why did that not work? You know, if it's a guy and a girl and a gun and it's black and white, I'll watch it for fucking ever.

But the theater, I'm just the opposite. If it's no good, that's why I can't go because I can't work out. When you start a project, does it ever happen that you're like, oh, I'm writing a play, but you know what? This would be better as a movie. Sure. Or it does. Sure. Or a book. Really? Yeah, sure. And you switch? Yeah, sure. Wow. Because it wasn't.

Because there's just something about it felt more like a movie at some point? Exactly so. Right. You know, like I say, it's basically it's a push cart. I'm going to sell you everything on a push cart I can, and then I'll sell you the fucking push cart. Right. I know, I'm just asking about why you... But that's, again, you do yourself a disservice. You also take, obviously, a great pride, as you should, in the quality of what you're selling. It's not just about making...

fooling us into buying it. You want it to be good. You want it to stand the test of time as so much of your stuff does. You want people to be talking about

the plays as they do you know people still talk like i said they quote that play and speed the plow and oleana is back and you know you want a legacy everybody in show business does oh i don't want a fucking legacy i just want to pay my rent you know my wife calls i don't believe you i don't i really don't my wife calls money shoe coupons that's i gotta go out and make a living but look did you did i tell you about where i get my ideas did i tell you this one

People always say, where do you get your ideas? There's a little Mexican guy, and he sells them off the back of his truck in Encino, in Ralph's parking lot on Wednesday afternoons. That's where I get them. How long have you lived in this California neighborhood?

paradise that we find ourselves in. I moved here about 22 years ago. Oh, that recently? No, really. I mean, so like a lot of the movies that you made, you were not living in L.A. at the time. No, no, no. And I used to... You must have had to come out here for meetings and shit. I came out here for very few meetings. I came out here and actually... And you loved them, right? Really. Yeah.

They used to put the, if you were a writer or a Brit, they used to put you up at the Chateau Mermont, right? Which was hot and cold running junkies.

And I grew up in Chicago. I lived in all kinds of places. Their idea of what was a luxury hotel, let alone a hotel, was beyond. It was like cockroaches on the floor, people screaming their guts out. You know it's like the hippest spot in Hollywood. I heard that, yeah. I mean, for many years. My friend owns it, and he's a genius at making a place hip.

He owns the one in London, the Chiltern Firehouse. Same thing. It's like the hottest spot. Well, good for you. So I know it does look – I never wanted to stay there because I don't like a hotel that's sort of like –

and, you know, I want to black out the sunlight in the morning and I want the tub to look clean and it doesn't look like fucking, you know, Barbara Stanwyck died in there. Well, that's exactly what it looked like. I know. But I'm telling you, if you were to go to the lobby of the restaurant, of the Chateau Marmont tonight or any night, you would see, like, I bet you you're, you know...

actress star daughter knows this very well and has been there. It's the kind of place where people like that, the, the, the, the young, exciting actors and actresses and the directors and all the beautiful people. I'm telling you the Chateau Marmont. Good for them. But listen, I'm just telling you when I first started out in show and I was very successful writer in Broadway. And I came out to write a movie for Bob Rafelson and, um,

Jack Nicholson, Jessica Lange. Oh, yeah, Postman. Postman. They put me up at the Chateau, which was... That was your first? Yeah. So it was, I think I said it was... And you'd never been to L.A.?

I don't think so. I don't think I'd be here. So it was a complete demotion for me to be a star. Well, you did it. So obviously a part of you didn't think that way, especially a movie lover like you. Yeah, you're right. So anyway, they put me up at the Chateau and Bob Rafelson, the director, lived across the street. So we used to go to his house and it was the first New Year's Day that I'd ever been in show business. He had a party, which was Jack Nicholson, Scatman Crothers,

Hunter Thompson. The Shining. Yeah. Right. So that was my... Hunter Thompson. Yeah, my introduction to the show business. What was he like? He was very quiet. Really? Yeah. You know, he was a madman in his life. I don't know. In fact, somebody asked me to write an introduction to Fear of Loathing in Las Vegas, so I did. And that's a very good book.

Yeah, I love, I used to read them in Rolling Stone, you know. Yeah. I love reading that, they don't do that much anymore, but that kind of, I think they call it gonzo journalism. Yeah, sure. You know, it was kind of new at the time. And P.J. O'Rourke, you know P.J. O'Rourke? Another, that was my favorite of that magazine era. The other thing, and I've been working on this novel for a while, I hope to. And the novel.

Jesus. I do it for a living. You obviously got more than one iron in the fire. So during a writing day, are you working on multiple things? Maybe. I just do whatever. Listen, there's a guy who used to be, if you look at old movies, black and white movies, the women's clothes were always spectacular, but equally spectacular were the men's clothes. I agree. Because they had a bunch of...

Maybe 500 of them. They were mainly Italian. And you can't get a suit made that good today anywhere. Also, the cut. It's magnificent. They also had better designs, like old fops and 18th century and the collars. I can't describe it well, but when I see it, I go, whoa, that is so much more interesting and cool than what we're wearing.

Exactly so. So anyway, the reason I bring this up is there was a, I live in, I have an office in this wonderful block over in Santa Monica, very interesting people there. One of them is a tailor called Enzo Caruso, he's about my age, and is a genius, is an absolute genius. And like the old Italian tailors, he learned his trade over there in Italy. And I went in to say hi to him the other day, and he's cleaning out the shop.

He's retiring. You know, he said, "I've been here 45 years. I'm getting on to 80. I'm retiring." And what I wanted to say to him, except I didn't want to get mushy, was every day I would go and get a cup of coffee

For 20-some years, he was always at the sewing machine with his head down, working six days a week. And my heart just went out to him. I said, God bless you. You know, A, he's a genius at what he does, and B, he's always, always... He's like the guy in Things Change with the shoe. Exactly so. So were you... No, you met the other guy first. So that's kind of like, you know, the society said, you know, you...

you don't have to drive a cab anymore you don't have to clean offices anymore i tell you what i'll pay you money to sit around the campfire and tell us a story so i said you know although a jew so thank you jesus you know i really appreciate it i get a kick out of doing this oh oh i'll try to do a good job what about coffee coffee yeah coffee well more i'm more a tea guy but this you don't need any jolt to get the old writing muscles going

See, I always have to be on drugs to do anything valuable, really. I must say, everything I do sober is much more passive. But like writing, stand-up, fucking, like everything I really care about, I'd much rather do high. Does that make me a bad person? I don't know. It makes you a different person. Right. And

And I feel like that coffee, the first couple hours of the day, you learn not to chase the high because that's what drug addicts do. They chase a high. Smart people like me get the high and just can tell themselves it's not going to get better if you do more. That's every – What?

No, I understand. Right. But see, my problem is I've always thought I was fucking crazy. I probably am. You are a little. Yeah. So I don't need something to make me more crazy or to take the edge off while I'm working. No, I get that. That whatever hamster is running around on a wheel inside all of our brains,

Yours is running very quick. Yours has got a lot of energy. Well, here's the other thing is I always thought that everybody's fucking crazy, but to a certain extent, but I got to write it down. That's kind of, that's a good, good note to get off on.

Do you think? Are we getting off? Well, I don't know. I just, my horror is I'm going to keep talking after the audience has left. Well, since there's no audience here, it's very hard to have that happen. But look, I can't tell you how excited I was all week to have you here, that you were coming. Every day, I would, first thing I'd get up, I would check my phone.

is it going to really happen? Like, I was waiting. I know it's true. I was like, no, Dave's a stand-up guy. He said he's going to be here. He's going to be here. But I still was like, that's how excited I was about this. So I don't want to, you know, you've got a family. You've got-- No, my wife's watching Scottish Experts. And she'll watch three fucking hours of Stonehenge. But wait a second. This next movie that I'm going to put you in, and I think you're going to like it, it's about these two confidence men.

who take a guy for a lot of money because they've discovered the lost abraham lincoln letter that proves that he was gay gay right yeah he was a there's a group in washington called the log cabin republican oh sure i mean they're not that well known but i guess you do

No, no, but those are just gay Republicans. This is something different. This is proving that Abraham Lincoln was gay. No, I understand. I'm just saying not a lot of people know about the log cabin Republicans, but a lot of people played with Barbie and liked to put shoes on her feet. I really do. I really like doing that. Again, you're in a safe space. This is the nest.

But the theory, of course, beyond the log, they're the gay Republican group. But they also, I think, believe, or it comes from that idea, that Abraham Lincoln, yes, was gay.

I accept your word on the two people you told me who I didn't think were Jewish, but okay, I guess they're Jewish. Who was it? Babe Ruth and Amelia Earhart? Yeah. Okay. But Lincoln Gay, it kind of rests on the idea that he shared a room or a bunk or a bed or, I don't know, an asshole, something with some other dude. But this was the 1850s.

or 40s or something. There was, you know, there was no Airbnb. Things like that happen. You just may do. It doesn't mean, I don't, he just, I don't know. To say he's gay is like, I don't. No, you're missing, look at, we talked about Eleanor Roosevelt, right? There's a black and white movie that exists of her having sex on the steps of the Lincoln Monument with Marie Curie who discovered radium. Oh. That's a fact. Wait.

You're saying this video? No, it was a black and white film, 16 millimeter, 8 millimeter film. Okay, of Eleanor Roosevelt? Yeah. Wait, somebody shot this? Yeah. Come on. Marie Curie had just- I know who Madame Curie is. She won the Nobel Prize, right? And she died of it. She did. She shows up, the two of them, they have a couple of drinks, one thing leads to another.

What, are you fucking with me? Oh, Jesus. I'm like hanging on every word like an idiot. Well, I mean, she was, you know, a well-known pussy. Exactly so. So I wrote this other movie that I mentioned in the book. Well, I got fired off of these cops, right? It was a cop movie. Great script. I got fired off of that. And one cop is talking to a young kid. He says, listen.

You come into the force, you're going to be cold, you're going to be hungry, you're going to be frightened, but you're going to get more pussy than Alara Roosevelt. Yeah. But back to my original question. Yeah. Do we think that Franklin Roosevelt...

and it was just something they went into at the beginning. Well, of course, Franklin, we are cousins and I'm a lesbian, but it's what right to do for the family. And it has been suggested for us that we be betrothed. And if so, we shall. And I will be a good wife to you and talk to the coal miners when you are in your chair. You know, that's a very good rendition of it. It's spot on. And I can also do the walk. Yeah.

Anyway, but or do we think that, you know, all right, Eleanor, I've been trying to get in your pants for quite some time. We'll get married. And then it was revealed after the wedding. I don't know. You know, these old Yankees, these swamp Yankees, blah, blah, blah. They lived to have sex with their children in the boathouse. Well, what? Their children? Please. Well...

No. I mean, there's certainly some, there is some amount of, yes. I mean, that's another thing, like we were talking about before, what women had to put up with in eras past of just like, yeah, just don't be in a position where you get raped because it's not really illegal. So too with children. I mean, it was just not reported regularly.

Very often, I remember when Roseanne came out in the 90s and said, you know, I was abused, and that's a very common thing. And I was like, really? I've never heard about it. And then over the next, I don't know how many years, I was like, oh, wow, she was ahead of her time, and she was right, and it's super common. I don't know how a human being does that,

But I don't put anything past what human beings will do. They'll fuck anything. They'll eat anything. They'll do anything. That's right. As Lenny said, right? Lenny Bruce? The guy, he's out there. He says, men will fuck mud. He says, a guy comes home and his wife says, his wife, he says to his wife, how come there's no dinner at the thing? She says, oh, ask your mud to fix you the dinner. Oh, my God.

Well, you know, every year there's a certain amount of accidents, incidents perhaps we should call them, where men are injured, their penis is injured because of what they stuck it in, including vacuum cleaners. Like 12 men a year lose their penises to vacuum cleaners. Stop it. No, absolutely. Well, that's a great advertisement for the carpet sweeper. Yeah, get a Roomba. Say nature abhors a vacuum? Come on.

Keep your dick. Oh, Dave. You're a funny guy. Yeah, you're a funny guy, too. It's a pleasure talking to you. You know, I have a feeling that you and I grew up in very different circumstances. You probably had a more hard scrabble. I feel like I had the last leave it to beaver upbringing in America. I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, like in the, I mean, I'm born mid-century, but like really was not aware of

human until the 60s but 60s 70s all white town in this this is new jersey and then alabama you know um no my like my high school i don't remember any like drugs drug issues

Like some kids were sort of rumored maybe to smoke pot, but, you know, there were some degenerates who smoked cigarettes. They were like, ooh, they were like gang members, but no gang members. So there were no drugs, no racial strife because no different races, not even divorce.

Like, that was odd. That was, I don't remember anybody getting divorced. Can you imagine? I'm sure there were. There were suicides. Wait a second. Did you have a happy childhood? Well, yes and no. No, because I was never meant to be a child. So just the status of being a child did not agree with me. I was never meant to be one. Even as a child, I did not like children. They were so childlike.

But I can't really complain because, again, I had stability at home, nothing super traumatic. You know, was I scared going to school? Yes, a lot, because kids are bullies. And back then they didn't care. They didn't, like, monitor that shit and get, like, nutty about, oh, bullying. It was just something that happened. And, like, the kids who were bullied were like, too bad. You know, fight your way out of a paper bag, asshole.

That was it. So I had a lot of upset stomachs going to school. Am I going to be ostracized today? Are they going to bully me today? That kind of stuff. But that to me was normal. But I did not have poverty. I didn't worry where my next meal was coming from. I didn't worry that my parents were going to split up. I didn't worry that gangs were going to assail me. What are you doing in show business? Assail me. Yeah.

But crazy? I feel like your life was probably different as a child. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. But I always said nobody with a happy childhood ever went into show business. But maybe you're the exception. Well, it wasn't. But it wasn't. I mean, it was happy enough. It wasn't traumatic. But...

Was I glad to get out of it? And do I look back on childhood with fondness? No, I really don't. Some people do. Really? Yeah, I don't look back on... Because I think it's always... I think it's a traumatic time for everybody.

No, some people think it's the best time because they are innocents. You know, you didn't you. It's good for us because we're ambitious. When you're an adult and you're ambitious, you can make your ambitions happen. And that's very satisfying. And you do well and you get money, get to live in California. If you're not ambitious and you don't do that. Yeah. Then the best time was 11th grade when you scored 28 points at that basketball game.

Maybe so. My greatest achievement in life was I once blocked

a punt under the lights in high school football at night. On purpose? Yeah. Ouch. Because you were on a football team? That's exactly so. Really? You? Football, you know, the team. Was this Chicago high school? Oh, yeah. Chicago was on a football team, and I was on the wrestling team, and I was the editor of the paper and all of that stuff. Oh, you were that kid in school? I was on the debating team. No, but I always felt I was...

I always thought I was an outcast, but I just... Really? Sounds like you were running shit. Maybe so. Yeah. No, I was not that. I was a loser. I'm terribly, painfully shy. Well, you got over that. I got over that. But I think maybe that they're connected. I think maybe one reason why people like to go into show business is because it solves the shyness problem a lot in that you never have to introduce yourself to somebody.

because they introduce themselves to you, or they just say, "Hi, Mr. Marr." You know, that's great. But you know, the other thing is, I've done a lot of teaching in my life, and I always say if I'm gonna go in and say, "They want to put a special group to talk to you after the thing. Who do you want?" I say, "Just give me the ne'er-do-wells, 'cause they're the only people who are ever gonna amount to anything." And I think that that's true. Well, you know, you got-- sometimes you have a little chip on your shoulder

from high school. I mean, high school makes the man. It's not clothes. It's not the Freudian stage, 0 to 2. It's high school, I really think. Everything is either a reward or a revenge.

for high school. I think you're right. It's just... And middle school. They didn't even have middle school when I was a kid. It's even worse. Yeah, middle school, high school, that formative age, past puberty, past the point where, you know, the opposite sex is, at least for a boy, is in the picture. Like, everything to me is colored by that. Like, how much, how successful you were, who rejected you, who made fun of you because you were a loser and, you know, you couldn't get the girls that...

Now, maybe that's just me. Maybe that's a Freudian thing, everything, the dick, but I feel like so much of it comes back to that. I'm still not through with my revenge. Well, you're doing very well. I'd like to say that on behalf of all of your many fans, we're very proud of you for overcoming your happy childhood. Yeah.

No, I mean, my, I can't believe this is happening, but my 50th high school reunion will be next year in 2024. I mean, that's hard to believe I'm out of high school 50 years. And there still has been nothing in my life as traumatic as when my high school girlfriend dumped me in junior year. That bitch. That bitch.

Exactly my point. Could you please write this and make her look really bad? And I'll do it. I promise I'll do this thing. I'll do that thing. I'll do your thing. Yeah, please do. You don't think I can do your thing? Yeah, I got to go home and unplug my wife from looking at fucking Stonehenge. I can't thank you enough. Oh, you're so welcome. What a pleasure. I hope we do it again. You know what they say in your high school yearbook, you always meet the good people at the end. Not that we're at the end.

but we're not at the beginning. What about the other thing is always the most likely to succeed ended up as, you know, in the gutter? Yeah, I don't wish that upon them, but it doesn't make me cry crocodile tears either, you know? No, the point is in the opinion of whom. Yeah. No, it's like when a very good-looking person is also talented. Do I hate them for it? Slightly.

Thank you so much. Yeah. I hope I see so many more of your everything's keep. Yeah. I mean, you're, you're my hero because you're older and you're still doing it. America. We are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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