Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: This podcast is a collaboration between costart and Touchstone Productions and the dads from the Crypt podcast.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: I love Australia. Except I have a big problem with the beaches. The girls all go topless on the beach in Australia. That's just the way it is. And of course, the guys, you'd love it, but I am american. I'd never done that. I was afraid things crossed my mind, like, I don't know, they've never been in the sun. They might catch fire.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the how not to make a movie podcast. I'm Alan Katz. Gil will join us shortly. Our guest in this episode is the comedian Rita Rutner. Now, I'll tell you a personal story about Rita.
My dad was a surgeon. His dad was a dermatologist. That I didnt go into medicine. It kind of broke a trend. The truth is, I suck at math. How can anything have just one answer? So medical school was never going to happen. Showbiz was always a mystery to my parents, my dad especially. Hell, its a mystery to everyone in showbiz. But to my parents, Dee and Gerald, it was an even bigger mystery. Even when I did tales from the crypt and my parents visited that set multiple times. When their friends would ask what I did as the producer and one of its writers, they'd shrug and say, he works on it. And then one day, we cast Rita Rutner. My dad loved stand up comedy. He had a gloriously dark sense of humor. He introduced me to the joke. But aside from that, misses Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?
His very favorite stand up was Rita Rutner. I never asked any of our actors for their autographs. For starters, im not a starfucker. Theyre just actors. But I made an exception for Rita and asked her to sign a picture of her for my dad. Well, it didnt make him appreciate what I did any more than previously. But now, finally, my dad looked at me as if I wasnt a total waste of otherwise useful carbon. My dad kept that signed picture of Rita Rudner on his desk until the day he died. It meant that much to him. I finally got the chance to thank Rita for that.
Here's Rita.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: No, that's okay. So during the pandemic, we said, you know what, let's just move. And then we just moved, and now we live here.
[00:02:33] Speaker A: Are you enjoying it down there?
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah. What's not to enjoy? The whole world is on fire. And where we sometimes we get up to 80 degrees.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the one place this summer that's going to be cool, is your house.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: I know. I'm just. I'm not complaining at all.
Well, I mean, I am, but not. Not right now.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: At the end of the day, I really have just two questions for you, but there's a whole lot of shit I got to get through before I get to the two questions.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: So whatever you want to know, if I know it, I'm going to tell you. That's my deal with you.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: Indeed. And we appreciate that.
We will eventually get to the thing that.
Where our first creative association, where our creative association happened on tales from the crypt.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: People still ask me about that, and they still watch that show, and I still. I love the picture. I have it up in my wall where I got shot eight times because I wanted to see what that was like in the elevator. And it was really fun.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: It was a real joy to work on the. That was a lot of fun. It was the first time you worked with Richard Lewis?
[00:03:44] Speaker B: You know, I worked with him once before on a movie called the wrong Guys.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Oh, right, right, right.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: And then I worked with him in stand up a lot when we work at the same clubs and stuff. And then I did this with him. And then we got along so well that we wrote a part in a movie for him, and we did a movie called weekend in the country where hit with him and Jack Lemon and Christine Lahti. And so we just. We kept on the. The working relationship, and he just made me laugh all the time. He was so funny.
[00:04:17] Speaker A: We will talk about a week in the country, too.
But you started in Florida.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: Yes, I was born there, but I left very quickly.
I left when I was 15.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Right. Now, your early life, because really, all right. You ended up in comedy very late.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: It was my second career.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Indeed. But my philosophy about what it is that we all do, we're all like prisms. They're prisms inside our heads as creators and life experience hits the prism and refracts out as our creatives content. And especially where someone who ends up in comedy or sees the world comedically and whether they become a comedian or not, they're still spewing all, you know, that refracted point of view out. And so the stuff that happened to you up to the time when you were 15, because you became independent at 15, when you moved out and became a dancer. So how does someone, how does a young person, a young woman, get herself to that place of such fierce independence?
[00:05:38] Speaker B: Well, you have to have a mother who died very young and was very sick, and you have to have a crazy father who marries someone who doesn't like you, and she wants to start her own family, and you're kind of in the way, so you very quickly get the idea, maybe I should move.
And I did.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: You did you have any kind of support around you people going, hey, yeah, Rita, that. That could work. And here's why, hey, here's the path you could take. Here's, you know, step one, step two, step three.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: No, I had always wanted to be a dancer, so it was my fault. And my mother introduced me to dancing when I was four, ballet. And I was immediately good at it. And I loved dancing. I was in ballet companies when I was 11, 12, 13, all did classical ballet. And then I decided I wanted to be on Broadway. And you can't be on Broadway unless you live in New York. So I said, well, let's. My mother had died, and I said, well, I can just do this high school thing. And I just did it. And I graduated when I was 15, and I looked up and I found a hotel for women. I don't know. I just did. Oh, I'd been there the year before with my best friend, who was also in ballet, and I stayed in New York with my friend Charlene and her mother. So I knew how to get around New York because I'd been there for a summer. And while I was there for that summer, that's when my father married this wonderful woman. And I came home and she was in my house. And then I decided, well, let's go to New York. I really liked it there. So I went back to New York and started auditioning. And when people asked me how to do it, now I wouldn't know. But then you bought the newspapers. Because I knew I'd been there the year before with my mother. My, my best friend and her mother, he bought backstage in showbiz. And you're not yet. I was in equity, so I go to all the open calls and I got a job. But I was there for three or four months, and I got a job in the national tour of Zorba with John Ray and Chida Rivera, and I got my equity card. And then from there on, I was on Broadway.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: You told the, the Telegraph that the first ever paid job you did was dancing and stop the world. I want to get off.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: Yes, that was. I skipped school at the end. I told my father because my mother had passed away, and I was reading. I was already reading all of the auditions in the Miami Herald, and they said, oh, there's an audition at the Deauville Hotel for stop the world. I want to get off. And I said, dad, I'm going to go. And I took three buses. I was crazy. Who does this?
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The nature. But what was it about dancing? That. That just. What was. What did that. What did it feel like that that's what you had to do.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: I just. When you're good at something and people tell you you're good at it and it makes you feel good, you keep doing it. And I got. I wasn't equity, so I got $100 a week, and I told my father to tell them I was in the hospital and just send my homework home. And he did it because he was a little bit crazy. So he said, she's just a woman and she's just going to get married and have children anyway. She doesn't have to go to school. So he really didn't care about school, and he just did that. And then I graduated, and then I started my career on Broadway. And I love Broadway now. I don't love it. I don't want to do it anymore. But I loved it then.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: And Broadway seemed to have taken to you. You got into some terrific shows. You were.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, Mac and Mabel.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yes, Mac and Mabel. Promises, promises, promises, promises. You were in the original production of Follies.
[00:09:30] Speaker B: I was. That was. I still can't believe it. I can't believe that I was 17, probably just turned 18, and I was in Follies on Broadway. And it was just. It was the show to be in. And, I don't know, I look back and I see pictures of myself and I go, well, I did it. How did I do that? And I'm still best friends with this wonderful, wonderful woman that I met in Follies. And we've been best friends all these years. And it was just such a. Who would. Nobody knew it was going to be the iconic show that it was. And it was.
It was just, you know, to work with Michael Bennett and Hal Prince. It was. That was my second job with Hal Prince, because he directed Zorba on the road in Zorba. And the conductor was the same conductor, Paul Giovignani, who was. So, you know, you gradually get networked into these things. It's very hard to get into. And then once you're in the fabric, it's still difficult, but it's possible.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: So as Follies was coming together with this incredible, talented. You know, that happens all the time. Incredible talent comes together and the magic doesn't happen.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: It wasn't a commercial success, but it was money. It just. Nobody knew it would let. No, the same with Mac and Mabel. Not a commercial success, but the public finds it when it's that good and it sticks around and these shows are.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Always going to be recreated, but then they become iconic.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: I know.
[00:11:01] Speaker A: And because of the original production and.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: Its integrity and also the. I mean, Jerry Herman, to me, that was his best score. It was Gower champion, I think, one of the last musicals he directed and choreographed. And it was just all these people coming together. And it was a terrific. And I got to work with Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters. It was unbelievable.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: You know, with. With movies, it's much easier for an audience to discover them years after the fact and go, you know what? Actually, that was a great movie in theater because of the live nature of it. It's. That's going to have to happen because of the reputation, especially then, because there was no Internet. Right, right.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: You couldn't do it. I'm some Martin. My husband Martin, he looks around on YouTube sometimes, and he found a party that Jerry Herman threw for the cast of Mac and Mabel at his pool party at the Hollywood Hills. And I don't know how. And I was there and I don't remember it, but I was so quiet. I was never going to be a comedian. I don't know. And the camera turned to me and I said, talk to somebody else. I don't know how to do this. And it was just so foreign to me that I would ever become a comedian. It was just. The whole thing is very strange.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: All right, comedian aside, but you've always seen the world the way that you see the world.
[00:12:27] Speaker B: I was too scared to talk, though, because I was so young and I was younger than anyone. Now I'm older than everybody, so I can.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: But whether it came out of your mouth or not, this wasn't this still percolating inside your head? I mean, maybe. Was this not the conversation you were having with yourself?
[00:12:41] Speaker B: I was saying, I really like to. There's a new jazz teacher on hundred and Fourth Street. I got to go see what's happening there. That's all I was thinking. I did like Woody Allen. I always said, this is my. I loved those take the money and run and those first, you know, Woody Allen movies. And I said, I remember, maybe you're right. Percolating in there. Because when I was very young, I did used to sneak into the den, which was our only television, and watch Johnny Carson's monologue because. And then I would remember jokes that he said, but I couldn't repeat them to my parents because I wasn't supposed to be up watching it, so. But I did. I remember gravitating towards jokes, so maybe that was something.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: But jokes from a particular perspective, they weren't you, you weren't doing just a string of hit, hit this topic, hit that topic, you know, like some guy working a cocktail lounge.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: Well, I noticed that. I remember there was a comedian you probably, I don't know, it was, he was called London Lee, and he would play the character of a very, very rich boy and growing up in a very rich family, that was kind of his Persona.
And I remember thinking, well, he has a definite Persona, and you can write jokes from a definite Persona because he would write jokes. This was when I was still like a kid in fourth grade and sneaking up, and he'd say, my family was very wealthy.
I lived in a mansion. We had 50 bathrooms and two bedrooms. We didn't sleep, but we liked to read a lot. And I thought, well, that's really funny the way you can. And it's so concise. So I kind of started when I really started comedy, to study comedy. That's when I started. How do you put things together? What are the thoughts? Where's the surprise? How do you get to the surprise? All those things, and it's really fascinating.
[00:14:45] Speaker A: How did you get from, oh, my God, do not put the camera on me. I do not want to say a word to. Suddenly I, well, I got a lot older. Well, but all right. When I went, I grew up in Baltimore. When I moved to New York, one of the things that people told me back in Baltimore is you really ought to do stand up. And I did not have the cojones for it, not even remotely. It takes such, such nerve. And I didn't have it. So I, and I've known a lot of standups. When I first came to LA, I played a weekly softball game on Sunday afternoons with a whole bunch of stand ups.
And I respected the nerve those guys had. I mean, they're crazy angry.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Nobody laughs.
[00:15:39] Speaker A: Be that as it may. So when to get to the, you made, I did this from being a person who performed regularly, going, I can't do that. You went from being someone who said, get the camera away from me, in essence, to, okay, I'm going to stand up here bare ass naked. Well, how did you make that transition?
[00:16:01] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I went from the chorus to auditioning for small parts to getting understudies in Broadway to getting, I was standby in the magic show for the lead on Broadway. Then I finally got my own part on Broadway in Annie. So I was talking already, but it took me. I said, I'm a late talker. I was 27, but that's when I started really to talk, when I was 27. And I just noticed there weren't many female comedians, but I was too nervous to do it by myself. So there was another person who is my good friend Richard Walker, who was a wonderful singer in Annie, and he said, let's try to do a double act because I'm scared, too, and I want to try it. And we got our piano, a piano player, and we did songs because I was a singer and he was a singer and I was a dancer, and we'd stop singing, and one would tell a joke, and we got it on it. Catch a writing star at two in the morning. Cause you gotta get the number. You wait on the line to do the thing. And he said, I really hate this, and I'm never gonna do this again. And I'm sorry to let you down, but that was the worst experience of my life. And I said, well, I kind of liked it. So the next week I did it, and I sat on the thing and I started doing it by myself.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: I just.
[00:17:19] Speaker B: I don't know. It was just.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: What did you like that he hated?
[00:17:26] Speaker B: He just couldn't stand the subjectivity of it all, where he had to make it up. And if nobody liked it, they would just tell you right away. That's what I like about stand up, is when you hit the audience is the most honest group of people in the world. An audience never gets together and says, you know that third joke that she's going to say, let's not laugh at that. They just react honestly. And I love the honesty of it, and I love the challenge. And I. People didn't laugh at me right away. My jokes, they laughed at me between the jokes because I was funny, saying, well, I guess that didn't work, did it? And then people would laugh.
And then I tell another joke, and I say, well, that wasn't any better, was it? That was just still.
And so I said, well, there's something there. You start with honesty, and there's something there. And then, I don't know. I found it fascinating. I still find it fascinating. I still. I went in today to my daughter's room, and because she's the one I tell jokes to now, Martin doesn't want want to know. And I said, because I'm always trying to figure out a different angle to come in at on. And she said that I should try this one that I just tried. So sometimes she says, mom, that's the worst thing you've ever said. And I say, okay, I won't say that one. But I really find, don't you? I just find it fascinating.
[00:18:49] Speaker A: I agree with every word you just said.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really good. And I love that it's, I get to wear what I want to wear because, you know, when you're on Broadway, an actress, a singer, you sing the notes, you hold it the way they want. You put your leg over here. You say the words are going to hear you. And you wear this, and you put this on your head, and then you stand over, and all of a sudden, with stand up, I was my own boss, but I wasn't ready to be my own boss till I was, like, late twenties. And when I started comedy, and a lot of the guys in the comedy clubs were already, like Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Mahere. They had gone and started it way earlier. So I was always a little behind in my age thing because I had.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: That whole career first, I imagine.
Certainly it was also problematic. As you recognize, there weren't a whole lot of women doing stand up, being a boys club. And these are, these are not the nicest boys. Most of them really, always nice to me, but really and truly as, hey, they're very talented people, but when you put them in a room together, a lot of them are very miserable people. And I say that in the nicest way possible, because they couldn't do what they did if they weren't. There has to be some, something miserable at the core of them.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: But that's when you get them together.
When, like, I had really good male friends, and we would just talk and write jokes together and we had a good time. But whenever there were a group of guys, I was never really involved in that. And so I always really, I got along with everybody, really, I think I did. And maybe they would say they hated me, but I thought I was having a good time.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Do you suppose that where the male comics you were working with, they didn't feel competitive or as competitive toward you?
[00:20:43] Speaker B: Maybe that's really interesting, because I was coming from such a different angle that.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Could not compete with you in any way, shape, or form, and they didn't.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: Want to, and they weren't threatened because I was just doing something so bizarrely different. I was the anti aggressive comedian.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. And also she and also Rita was never invited to play softball.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: I was.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Oh, excuse me.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: Let me tell you what happened. Oh, God.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: With the comics or for the Broadway show list?
[00:21:17] Speaker B: No, the comics. It was catcherizing star against the William Morris agency, and it was in Central park. And I'm a. I love tennis. I still play tennis three times a week. And, you know, I was a dancer, so I was kind of an athlete anyway. And I, you know, I'm. It's not that I'm not athletic. I just never, ever did anything where I had to hit a ball with a stick. So, I mean, I have a racket. I can do the racket. But it was so scary to me. And there was a. Who. The pitcher was Lenny Schultz. Lenny Schultz. And we were playing William Morris, and it was my turn up at bat. And I swear to God, he had to put that ball two inches from the bat before I would ever even touch, make contact with it. And that was the only time I was ever. And they never let me do it again. And that was the end of my softball career. But I did do it, and I think I wrote a joke while I was doing it about William Morris getting only 10% of the ball when.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Always at work. Always at work.
[00:22:27] Speaker B: See, I think I wrote. And they said, well, you wrote a good joke about it, but you can't ever play again. So. But I liked watching them play, but that. And that was the only time I ever dared do. I did the softball game, and they. Again, I was coming at it. It was never going to be competitive because I was so horrible at what I was doing.
[00:22:43] Speaker A: And earlier, though, when you were on Broadway, did you ever play for any of the shows on Broadway?
[00:22:49] Speaker B: No, I was never somebody who ever knew that that even went on.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: It's too bad they didn't have a tennis league.
[00:22:57] Speaker B: I could have done the tennis league.
[00:22:58] Speaker A: There you go.
Have you caught any of Wimbledon so far?
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Of course, yes.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: It's been fun. Fun to watch. Go, coco. Go, coco.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: I love Coco. I love how hard those people work, how dedicated they are. It's just amazing. I. Again, that's my. I'm a tenant while Martin is downstairs, because he's english, so he's watching the euros or whatever that is with the people with the balls in the feet. He's watching that, and I'm upstairs watching the racket people with the tennis ball. So that's. That's kind of our summer, but we enjoy it. So what's not to enjoy? We like it.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: You transition into stand up and you.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Annie on Broadway, that was when I started, when I was in.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: Right. So you had a. You had a steady job. So it wasn't like, you know, because you were nanny for a year.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it was, and I was doing well and I was doing loads of commercials and I was, you know, doing, when I wasn't on Broadway, I did loads of summer stock and industrial shows, you know, where you sing. I was doing really well, but there was something that I just didn't, I had done it for ten years, you know, from like 16 or eleven to 27. And I said, well, this isn't getting any easier. Even though it was, it was fine. And again, it was, I needed more independence and things just happened. Timing, it was just a good time because that was, you know, that's when cable was going on and people were looking for comedians in the clubs because we were cheap entertainment and all you needed was a microphone and a brick wall. And it was just the explosive time. I wrote a book about it, a novel called Tickle Pink, where it's semi autobiographical, about a girl going through the, the comedy clubs in the eighties. But then it goes a little bit wacky where things happen that didn't happen. You have to make things up, otherwise it's going to be really short story, short book.
So it was timing. Timing was good.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: You, you used the word you, but you, you said you needed to be independent. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, and again, you, you hit the ground looking, really seeking your independence. You, even before you were independent, you were still independent.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: I was still, but I always had, when you're in a show, it's like a family. And since I didn't have a family, I really enjoyed that whole family structure, you know, the parents and the people who tell you what to do and how to do it, and you're all together, you celebrate together. And I loved that until I just wanted to do something where I wasn't dependent on a backer giving money to somebody. And then me being the right size and then me looking, being the right age to go with this person. And then, I don't know, there's so many things that have to come together before a Broadway show comes together. And I said, all I have to do is think of a joke rather than go through all that. So I said, let's try to figure out jokes.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: Far fewer assholes to have to get through to get the thing, the idea from your head into the public.
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Oh, I know, I know. Because people, it's an expensive, as Orson Welles, once it's an expensive box of paints. And the more expensive something is, the harder it is to get moving. But because jokes from my head are free, and I just tell them into a microphone. It was much easier to get started because I didn't have to depend on the kindness of strangers.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Well said. If someone should write that down, I think it's got potential as.
[00:26:50] Speaker B: Wait a second, let me get a notebook.
[00:26:52] Speaker A: Please, please, please. All right. So you are. You become successful doing stand up, and people begin to notice.
You write a script with Martin called Peter's friends.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Yes. See, this is what happened. Again, it's timing. So Martin I met because he produced comedy shows, and he hired me to do a show called in Edinburgh, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and that's where we met. But we didn't start dating till years later because I was involved with somebody. He was involved with somebody. And then when he asked me to come to Australia, because he moved to Australia and he was putting together more comedy, I was no longer involved. And he was no longer involved. So that's what happened there. I said, it used to, and I slept with the producer. I said, it used to be a love story. Now it's a lawsuit. But it worked out very well. Been married for 36 years, and he has.
He went to Cambridge in, you know, the famous college thing, and he had all these famous friends. So one of the people he grew up with was Emma Thompson, and they were really good friends. And Martin was a comedy writer and wrote for Emma sketches. And he. And they were very. So did.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: She had a show called Thompson. Did he write for that? That was.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: That was. Yeah, that was after.
Yeah. And then when they all were comedy troupes, he toured comedy troops to Australia and everything.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: So then that whole group of friends, they. They became productive together in their professional lives. A lot of them.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: They're fantastic. They're successful. It's amazing that. And we all got them together at the right time. Well, what happened was Emma married Ken Brannig, and they were living with us in Los Angeles because they were. He was doing a movie called dead again, and we were all together. We had a great time.
And then he said, I need a script because I'm filming a movie, and I hate the script that I have. And Martin, who is. Never stops. Martin and I, the minute we got together, we started reading books about screenwriting and writing screenplays and throwing them away and then analyzing screenplays and go, so it's not like we just said, let's try to do this, because other people do it. Why can't we do it? So we said, let's just write a movie really quickly.
And we wrote a movie and gave it to Ken. He said, I love this movie. And he made it. And it was with all of Martin's friends, so it wasn't really Peter's friends.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: Jesus Christ, Gil. Why did we not never think of that when we were working together back in the day? We didn't have any friends. Wait, wait. We had no friends. Write this down. What did you just say, Rita? You said, let's make. Let's write a movie really quickly. That's what you said.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: This is Betsy.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: Hello, Betsy. You did your memoir recently featured Betsy.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Yes. And she's my little latest. My little latest doggie. You okay, baby? Yeah, she's okay. Okay, so. So that's what happened. And it was. It was a big success, and we did it with all of Martin's friends. And Martin and I, from there, we became, like, the hot writers in Hollywood, and we wrote movies.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: You were punching up scripts. You got hired, really, as.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: And, you know, and then it becomes very, very frustrating. Frustrating because, as you well know, about a fraction of the scripts that get written get made, and for reasons that aren't always quality.
And it's just a jumble of egos and money and studios and executives and everything that has to go into it. And Martin and I, we were doing really, really well because we were writing and selling and everybody's these, and I got really frustrated because nothing got made.
So that's when Martin decided to write a script, and we get financing by ourselves, which was the weekend in the country where I just called up people, and I said, we've got a script. I love Jack Lemon. I called up his agent, and then he read the script, and he liked it, and he was friends with Christine Lahti. And then. So we sent the script to her, and then I knew Richard Lewis, and I sent the script to him. And we found. I had a very nice manager at that point who found a company that could finance it, and it was. We kind of. Martin directed it, and it all came together, but it was just because. Get on the phone. I just get on the phone and I call people. That's what I do. And they. Sometimes they say yes, and sometimes they say no.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: It was a very independent thing to do.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: Yeah, well, somebody's got to do it.
So I did it.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: You know, for someone who claims they have no head for math, still, you have a great producer in you.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: No, martin is the producer.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Oh, understood. But. But to get on, but to just get things done.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: But he says, do this, and then I do it. And he does all the. Everything in the back, he, he's a really good script writer and editor, and he does budgets. We have a new, a new project that is not going forward at the moment, if you want to hear about that.
But it's a fun, and we like it, so we keep trying. And again, I just call people.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: I don't know that these days. This, the business is so, is fucked up beyond all recognition. How does anyone do anything anymore?
[00:32:49] Speaker B: I know everybody, because you've got to have the followers and you've got to be on TikTok. And, you know, Molly is a singer songwriter, and she's in music school now, and she's going back to college in August. She goes to the frost school of music, and she's a really good singer songwriter, and she's involved in all the, you know, getting tick tocks and trying to catch algorithms. And, you know, it's just a whole different thing now. But the good news is, if somebody calls me and wants me to do something and I want to do it, then I do it. And otherwise I don't do it because I don't want to just go and go, oh, I need to do, because I don't need to do anything anymore if I don't want to, which is, which is a good place to be.
And you guys are the same way. I know, because we did it. So if we want to do it, we do it. We don't want to do it. We don't do it.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: I do a lot of different podcasts now.
I build a little company. That's what we do. We're in podcasting.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: You were independent, and that's why podcasts are so popular, because they don't cost anything.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: That's right.
Anybody can do it. And then you got to find your audience. But if you can create really good content and you're patient and you're willing, hey, and you know how to sell what you're doing. That's an important component.
Yeah, there's, there's something quite democratic about it.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: That's the new stand up again, because it doesn't cost a lot of money. Anytime you're involved in something that is really expensive, it's going to be hard to get going.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: One of the things that we talk about on this podcast occasionally is the fact that it's the Napster effect came for everybody. At the end of the day, when Napster first it broke the music business because it was file sharing, which is really just peer to peer me to you. I don't need a record store, even a record company because I'm going to share my music files with you.
And in the old days in the music business, you toured to support your album sales.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: But once the value of the music on recorded music lost all value, suddenly you had to give the music away. And touring and merch and all the online stuff, that suddenly is how you make your money. That came. That peer to peer thing. Hey, that's Lyft and Uber.
That came for taxi drivers. Wow. They really. It came for everybody. Hey, tv, YouTube, anybody can make a tv show now. And Mike, I've got 220. I've got a 23 year old and a 26 year old. And this is how they watch tv. I know it's the most remarkable thing, but this is the world, and it's.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: The world we live in. And I, you know, I try to change as much as I can, but I still love the con. The concept of me standing on stage telling jokes to people and them laughing. I just really like that our new project is me and this really wonderful drag queen called Bianca del Rio, and we become business partners. And I'm very prudish that I am, and he's disgraceful. So we might have to do some podcasting with the two of us doing something together, and that might be something that we would try to get our little project going.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. Like I said, the medium is wonderful for you because I think because of the nature of your comedy. The great thing about radio and podcasting is that you literally, it's so intimate because you go inside the audience's head.
It's like the kind of the way tv worked. You know, a great tv show worked because the audience invited the story into their living room every week. And there was such a feeling of familiarity, which was very important to long term success. And a lot of this is why radio was so successful for so long. Those people lived inside, you know, Fred Allen and Jack Benny.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: That's what I used to. I used to listen to all those when I was studying comedy, and I used to go to the Lincoln center library and listen to all of the Fred Allen radio shows and the Gracie Allen and George Burns radio shows and Steve Allen and all those. And they were, Jack Benny is still funny. Sometimes when Martin and I are driving to Vegas, we still go and listen to old Jack Benny shows on that whatever serious channel that is. And they're still funny, they still work.
[00:37:23] Speaker A: A masterclass, really, just in the sheer timing. Jack Benny was amazing to hear the audience.
[00:37:33] Speaker B: Jack Benny and Woody Allen were my two people that I always said, if I could be a combination of those two. That would be my, my ideal comedic Persona.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: All right, I think we've laid enough groundwork. I can now ask you the two questions that I said I had for you at the beginning of this conversation.
The first, hopefully you'll, how do you feel about the marvelous Misses Maisel, have you watched that show?
[00:38:03] Speaker B: I watched the first episode a long time ago when it came on. And I know it's really successful and everybody is really talented, but for a comedian to watch somebody who isn't a comedian, but she's really good and she's fabulous and I'm, I'm never somebody, this is my rule. I never ever say anything bad about anybody ever.
I mean, I'm not even thinking it because it's so hard to do anything in this world. And I admire what they're doing so much and to create that whole world and the scripts that they do and the situations they get into, they're wonderful. But it's like a doctor watching er, you know, you go, or a lawyer watching the law show. It's, it's so.
[00:38:52] Speaker A: I absolutely understood. More particularly, I'm really more focused on, it's about a woman, but it was navigating that world. Was that, is there, was there anything that, how fantastical, I guess. How fantastical is that world? Because it doesn't seem like that anything like that world could have happened.
[00:39:14] Speaker B: But I never considered myself a woman in the world. I considered myself a comedian in comedy.
So, you know, it wasn't the way I approached it at all, saying, I'm different. I'm a woman and this is going to be, I just approached it differently. So I admire the show. I know she's terrific. I know everybody in it is terrific. But I just wasn't something, I watch things that are unrelated to comedy. I watch a lot of tennis. I watch english murder mysteries and I watch Dateline. But either the husband or the wife always did it. And I don't know how they get an hour out of, because the first thing, oh, he did it. But anyway, so that's why it wasn't a form of entertainment for me.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: But I understood absolutely.
[00:40:06] Speaker B: And the same thing with hacked or hacks or whatever that is.
[00:40:09] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Of course. That would make equal sense. Of course. Yes.
Great answer. A great answer. I love that.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: I love Jean smart. She's one of my favorite actresses ever, and I think she's sensational. It just isn't a form of entertainment for me to watch a show about a comedian.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: My father was a surgeon. And he could not watch shows about doctors because they were bullshit. They were such utter bullshit.
[00:40:37] Speaker B: I cannot watch this law show. Just stop it.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah, right, right.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: So punchline. When I watched Punchline, that movie that, you know, with Tom Hanks in Sally Field. Yeah. And the first one of the scenes, and they went backstage to where the lockers were, and I was watching it with my friend Marjorie Marshall. We can't watch this. There's no lockers. There's no lockers in the back of the improv. We don't have lockers.
[00:41:01] Speaker A: There wasn't.
[00:41:02] Speaker B: No, we didn't have. There wasn't room with a dirty couch. That's it. But you don't get lockers. So we. We just said, can't do this, even though it's a good movie.
What's the.
[00:41:16] Speaker A: My.
I guess my last question is, how does one be funny in a world as seriously unfunny as this world is getting?
[00:41:27] Speaker B: Well, I don't do politics in my show because I don't want to go there and have half of the audience fighting with the other half because it is a horrific, horrific atmosphere.
So I deal with things that are coming. Coming at me in life every day about me not knowing how to navigate through the airport anymore and going through the smoke detectors or whatever I have to do and trying to set up a television and buy a new television when they want to ask me a million questions. And all I want is a television. And why do I have to order my Q tips through Amazon when there used to be a store? So little things that are going on that hit me squarely every day.
I talk about that everybody can relate to. I talk about being married for 36 years, raising a child, raising, going through teenage years. She's in college now, how much I miss her. But she's going to be live with me the rest of her life when she comes home anyway, so that's good because I like her in her room and. No, but she's doing really well. But I just, you know, I talk about things that we can all agree on instead of things we can disagree on, because one of the things comedy can do is bring people together.
And the last thing I want to do in my show business life is to have people shouting things and be angry at each other and at me. So I ignore that and I keep going. And there are lots of things that I can write about.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: That seems to be the case that regardless of the madness and the chaos, the world is still filled with all kinds of veins of rich comic stuff. To monitor.
[00:43:17] Speaker B: Absolutely. So, so far, so good. But it is a fraught world.
And sometimes, lately, especially, I wake up and I go, did that really happen?
[00:43:33] Speaker A: My understanding, sometimes a good apocalypse can be hilarious.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Oh, well, I said, you know, I decided what I'm going to do is I'm not going to just sit back and let it happen. I'm going to sit back and drink Chardonnay and watch Wimbledon.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: And on that bombshell, once again, thank you so much for, thank you for asking.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: I really appreciate it. It was great to see both of.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: You after all this time. Wow.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Yay.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: Pleasure was ours. And thank you, everybody. See you next time.
The how not to make a movie podcast is executive produced by me, Alan Katz, by Gil Adler, and by Jason Stein. Our artwork was done by the amazing Jody Webster and Jason. Jody, along with Mando, are all the hosts of the fun and informative dads from the Crip podcast. Follow them for what my old pal the crypt keeper would have called terrific crypt content.
