Barry Levinson | Club Random with Bill Maher

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Tis the season to get random.

I don't know. I'm not a virgin.
Otherwise, I don't know the original. Well, we have to stop that.
The question is, how do you stop that? Well, first of all, you have to want to.

It's not funny at all. Exactly my point.
They were just happy to have the war over.

How are you, pal? Good. How are you doing?

I mean, I don't really know you that way, but I feel like I do. I feel like you're my pal because I'm such a fan here.
Oh, thanks. And all the, I think we have met, though.
We did. I thought we met.

that you came in

for a role in something. Oh, my God.
That long ago. That long ago.
When I was looking for roles. Yeah, and you came in and we met.
Holy fuck. Do you remember the project?

No.

It was a half-hour show.

Oh, it was a TV show. Yeah, it was a half-hour TV show.
It was not the lead in Rainman. No.

No, it wasn't that.

I did read for Top Gun in 1983. Did you really?

Sure, I was 27.

I don't know if it was for the

Tom Cruise role, but it was 1983. I was 27.
They needed soldiers. I was the right age for a soldier.

Yeah.

There you go.

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

I can't remember. Maybe it'll come to me as we talk.
But

it didn't.

I think it was

We did like, I think, six episodes, and then it was short-lived.

And I was originally going to direct it, but then they wanted to do it as a,

you know, like a video thing, you know, rather than, you know, cameras. So it's all done all at one go.
And I just said, I'm not really fond of doing that. So I backed out of directing it.

See, I always thought our connection was my buddy, comic buddy who I started with, Paul Reiser. Yeah.
And, you know, we had a mutual friend, sadly now departed, Michael Hampton Kane.

and he and Paul were out buying underwear one day, and he had an audition for Diner. Michael did.
Yes.

And Paul was just tagging along. Right.
You remember this? No, I know the story. Oh, okay.
I remember. And he got the part.
No, I. Obviously.
I'd tell you what happened on the other side of it then.

Ellen Chenoweth, who was the casting director,

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

And she said, you know, I'm listening to him talk and I like his rhythm. It seems good.
And she said, but I don't think he's ever done anything. I said, well, I mean, I'll meet him.
So he came in.

We talked. You hadn't done much.

By then, right? We're talking about 1982. This is the first, this would have been my first chance to direct.
Yes, I know. And he came in and we talked for about 20 minutes, half hour.

And when he left, I said to Ellen, I said, we have to use him. I just got to figure out the character and then I'm going to work with him.
He'll be good.

I mean, that rhythm that he has, which is all his, they used to say

that he took it from Richard Lewis. There is a similarity there, but he didn't take it from Richard Lewis.
No.

It's the way he talks.

It's the way he talks. And so does Richard Lewis, to a degree.
Yes. I mean, I could see why people would say that.
But sometimes Jews just sound alike.

There, I've said it.

Jews all sound, not all, but, you know, and that's what it was. And they're funny.
Yeah, no. I mean, a lot of that movie was out of lib, right? That's how,

well, with Paul,

like if we were, I remember late at night. And we still had a little time left.
And I said, why don't you talk to

Eddie, the character Gutenberg is playing that, and just say,

are you going home? You know, and he says, of course I'm going home. It's four in the morning, you know.
I said, why don't I just keep it, you want to ride, but you don't want to talk about it.

And then I told that to Gutenberg, and then we put together a scene. And it ends one of the evenings at the diner.
I mean, it was kind of... an early version of what like curb your enthusiasm does.

Right. You're just telling them, you're not giving them a specific dialogue.

You're just saying, this is the scene. These are funny people, funny comic actors, actors, but comedians, you know, kind of both.
And you do it.

It'll look more natural and it'll come out funnier than people reading dialogue. Right.

No.

And that was the fun part of it. The only thing I had to figure out, and we also had to,

and

I didn't know it at this time.

When we started to do that,

I said, oh, that's a take.

And the audio guy said, well, you know,

it's not going to work. I said, why not? I said, because the off-camera guys, the voices, they have to wait.
I said, yeah, but it sounds good. It sounds good.

It's natural. And he said, no, well, you can always do that in post.

You can take one side and the other and you put them together. I said, but I know, but it'll affect the rhythm of

the actors.

They have to be loose enough. They said, well, but that's the way we do it.
And I said, well, what happens if you mic

all of them? You know, this side of the table and this side of the table. So even if they're off camera, the rhythm is still the rhythm.
You know what I mean?

You can't fix funny moments and just... how long a pause is and all that.

And so that's what we did.

I didn't know that because I was first time doing a film that altman had used multiple yeah yes absolutely i mean you could see that in mash yeah you can see that in nashville it's a much more naturalistic i'm not a giant is he still with this no great okay so it's okay it won't care i i was never a giant fan of

what's his first name altman robert altman robert altman i mean mash is a is obviously a landmark movie i like the tv show a lot better than the movie, right?

Maybe not. I don't know.
But it's very, it's a little too naturalistic for me. You, to me, hit a great balance.
I mean, your movie, Diner, is super entertaining. And it's not, I mean,

Robert Altman, I mean, it's an acquired taste. I'll just put it that way.
Look, he did some terrific films and some that I didn't particularly care for.

But when he did hit with MASH, that was like a breakthrough. I mean, they're operating, there's blood, and they're talking to one another.
It's very casual.

And then that sort of, you know, it's not the Korean War, but said in the Korean War. And that was a breakthrough moment.
But I feel the pacing is slow.

That's his style, to like just let the camera just take in this

portrait, this palette

for a very long time. And not a lot of cut.
Maybe I'm wrong, I'm remembering it wrong, but it just seemed a little

too unpolished for me. You know, there's something to be said for raw, and there's something to be said for working on it till it's perfect.
And you got to find the balance in between, no?

Yes, you do, but at its time,

it was a breakthrough. Yeah.

And that's, you know, that's

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

But Diner was also that because,

it sort of ushered in this

ensemble.

Not that people hadn't done an ensemble cast before, but I feel like this was, that's my memory of it,

that

it sort of made legitimate this sort of ensemble way of doing a movie. I mean, like, who's the star of it? Yeah.

All of them. You know, they all, it was sort of equal.
Was it Mickey Rourke? No. No.
Was it Daniel Stern? No. Was it Riser? I mean, whoever Gutenberg?

I mean, there was no definitive, oh, that's the Prima, alpha. Right.
You know, it was all, it's ensemble. No, it's a, they're all dependent of one another.
Yeah.

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

I mean, that's, I think, the same year as the Big Chill. Or maybe the Big Chill was 83.

I'm not sure. They were near one another.
Remember the Big Chill? Yeah.

So,

like, I feel like I know what that was commenting on,

the Big Chill, but I feel like, Diner, what would you say it was like...

What was the message or the comment on this era we're living in, this new decade? And where are we in 1982?

What was it saying about that? Well, it was really what we're saying in 1959, which is when the movie is set.

Yeah, but commenting,

you can set a movie in B.C. and it still can be commenting.
I mean, the

what's the Arthur Miller movie about the Salem Witch Trials? It's really commenting on the communist scare of the 50s, the Crucible, right? Right. Okay.

So it's 1959, but I feel like it had something to say about our president. Well, no,

it does. I mean, it was based on the idea of the lack of communication between male and female.
Yes.

That's the heart and soul of the piece. Daniel Stern, I remember with the wife and the records.
Yeah, and the records and what's on the flip side, and how do you not know that?

It turns into a huge argument, walking out on one another, you know, and Eddie with a football test. The kid doesn't want to get married, which was a true story, by the way.

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

Yeah,

those are the

moments that we got to hit. Right.
Yeah.

And, you know, so I was just taking

what I had,

what I knew growing up, you know, all of our stupidity at times and how we don't understand things and the confusion that went on and all of that leading up to the beginning of a new era, 1960, and what's going to happen.

But I think, I mean, again, the big chill, I think I was just talking about this here with somebody. To me,

the message of that movie was encapsulated in the scene where,

again, this is early 80s, and it's about the generation that thought they were going to be hippies forever.

Right?

But now

we all have to discover that moment. You're not a hippie hippie anymore.
You've got kids. And you remember in the movie?

And Kevin Klein, he's living out in North Carolina and they all come for some sort of reunion.

They all went to college together in the 60s and there were hippies. Was it a funeral that they came?

One guy had died.

I think that was Kevin Costner, who they cut out of the movie. Remember, he was supposed to be in that, but his stardiff had to wait a minute.

But they all come to his house and there's a scene where the cop comes by.

And, you know, it's kind of rural but and Kevin Klein is really nice to the cop and you know one of his friends is giving him shit about oh you're really nice to the pigs huh he's like dude I'm dug in here okay I live here now I've got kids I want that cop to be my friend we're not in college anymore you know right we're not hippies we got to get to you know and that is a is it was a key thing in that era for people of our era.

I mean, I was a little young to be a hippie, even when the hippies were were around, but I got that vibe. You know, I couldn't have gone to Woodstock.
I was 13.

But that was my.

And then, you know, you do realize now it's 80 and Reagan's president, and we do need money. Money's good.

Greed is good, isn't it? Now you went through this whole period. I mean, look, the hippie period was one of the crazier periods, you know, certainly in the 20th century.

I mean, it was completely nuts. Because, you know, I mean, because of the rise of

marijuana and all of those particular things.

I mean, I'll just give you like

an idea how nutty the time was. I was rooming with this one guy named,

rooming with someone, you know, sleeping bags and whatever. And it was

when it was cheap in L.A.

And I came in one day and Leo was lying on the the couch and he's moaning, oh, I'm really fucked up. I said, Leo, what's wrong? And he said, oh, I'm really fucked up.
I said, well,

what's wrong? What's wrong? He said, you know, I saw some pills on the sidewalk, man, and

I took them. And he really fucked me up.
I said, you took pills on the sidewalk?

He said, yeah. I said, Leo, what is wrong?

He looked at me. He says, they could have been good, man.
They could have been good.

That is the name of a book.

They could have been good, man. And so that was that.
And it was a crazy period.

And we would go up to, and Leo knew, he said, because I was new to LA at that time, he went up to, he said, we'll go up to Laurel Canyon. And

he said, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on up there. And I said, well, where do we go? He said, we just listen for the music, man, and then you just wander in.

And then we were walking, and then he, like

a hound dog, like

that direction there. He was always stunned.
And we went in there and there were. People like that, huh?

The worst.

And there was some kind of party, and there was music going on. And it could have been some of the guys from the band.
I don't know. But there were these parties, and there was no security back then.

It was just wander in, wander out, do whatever you want. But see, Barry, I feel like,

again, that is just the greatest title.

They could have been good men. But I feel like it applies not so much to the period of history, but the period of life.

Because

it's not so much that there was the 60s, it's that the guy was how old?

Oh, he would have been

20. Right.
That to me is what that's about. Because that happens in every age.
It is amazing to me that anyone lives to 40.

Because you are so, at least men are so stupid i certainly count myself among them yeah so stupid from that age of like late adolescence when you actually have access to adult things

um to i mean who knows when but certainly into your 20s you are just such a danger to yourself i mean they they have statistics on who causes most car accidents it's that

it's of course

of course it's 19 year olds who are texting while they're driving or getting blown or whatever they're doing, drinking beer, or daring each other, or just doing something incredibly stupid.

You know, that's, they could have been good, man. That mentality, I did things like that.

I did. I can't, like, stand back from that and like completely go, oh,

this guy taking bills off the sidewalks. I didn't quite do that.

Not that far, because you're just so fucking dumb. No.

There's a period of

this.

It's interesting. There's a reckless period.
Yes. And it's also the beginning of a creative period.
They often go together. You know? They go together.
They do. And then you see it.

And then some can handle it and crash, and the others. take off because they suddenly can really connect it to something.
All of a sudden,

things that they were struggling with made sense.

And then, you know. Yeah, I mean, a lot of times genius, you know, just can't be channeled.
I mean,

you know, Kanye's been here.

It's just like, no one denies the artist, you know, in there. Right.
And then it just goes off to crazy places. He's hardly the only one.

And then some people, you know, they're very, you know, you seem very controlled. You seem like you,

I don't feel like there's a lot of stories in your life where you did something stupid or crazy. You seem like a mature.

Were you married young? No. No? No, I married late.
Late, when? In my

30s. 30s.
Yeah.

Well, I'm going to be 70.

I'm a little behind.

You got time.

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

on average. Almost everybody that I knew, you know, from back in Baltimore, they were all married.
What is it with Baltimore, man? Like, like the, it produces a lot of

people like, you know, John Waters and who else is from Baltimore? Edgar Allan Poe and

Edgar Allan Poe and somebody else.

And

you there were, you know, Brooks Robinson.

There were, you know,

it's an odd town. It's a neighborhood town.
I know it well because it was like one of the stops on the tour when you were a young comic, if you lived in New York. Oh, yeah, yeah.

You played Baltimore like three times a year. Did you? Of course.
I played the Charm City Comedy Club. Do you remember that? Yeah.

You do? Yeah.

I was already on the West Coast, but when I came back, it was going. Then they had one

place at The Harbor. Like they redid The harbor.
Remember then they made it like a touristy thing. Yeah.
And you were, and they put the audience, the audience is looking at you.

You're on stage right behind you is the harbor. So there's a million things behind you for the audience to be distracted by.

Murders, yachting, just fish, seagulls, every fucking thing is going on behind you where you're trying to win a crowd as a young, not great comic. I love it.
I love it that I had that experience. No.

I had that pain. But I love it.
And I'm over it.

I'll tell you one experience that

astounded me.

And

my father had an appliance store, and he also had like a little record section. Of course he did.
And I hated

having to like, you know, sell anything to anybody. You know what I mean? And my father could talk to a customer about a refrigerator like for 25 minutes.

And I'm going, what can you say for 25 minutes it's a refrigerator you know but he was really good at that what a sale is and I would hang around in the in the record department and one day I'm flipping through it and I see this guy you know at uh in a graveyard you know with a blanket like he's like you know having a picnic and it said Lenny Bruce

And I went, Lenny Bruce.

So anyway, I went, so I took the album home and I listened to it. And it was the first time that I ever heard like a comic that really made me laugh.

And it was talking about Adolf Hitler and this and all of getting laid. And it was like, holy shit, I'd never heard anything like it.
No, nobody had. So here's the, but here's the thing.

So I end up telling friends of mine, we're in the diner. I said, we got to go see this guy.
You got to see this guy, Lenny Bruce. And they went,

I'm not sure what, what song does he have? I said, no, he's not a singer. He's a comedian.

And this is what they said. And this was really interesting.
A comedian. Why would we go see a comedian?

And the reason would be

that all the comedians at that time, you know, were

bush belt, all that stuff.

I said, no, you got to come see him. You got to go see him.
So I talked to guys and they're all fucking pissed off. And we go down there.
It was at the lyric theater. And he comes out.

He's smoking a cigarette. He starts to talk, you know, a friend and I look to one another, whatever, and all of a sudden he mentioned something about getting laid, and it was like,

what?

And all of a sudden, now he's talking about, now he's talking about something with a girl, now he's talking about Adolf Hitler and the fact that they have to, they have to,

they're looking for an Adolf Hitler because the Kaiser abdicated, it gave up. They need, we have to find, you know, and they look at the guy here, the guy painting the wall.

And what is your name, sonny boy? You know, and he says, Adolf Schickelgruver. He said, no, we need a name that hits the public.
Something that hits the public. He said, what about

Hitler? See, I never heard, if I heard that routine, I forgot. And I had listened to some of his records.
And for my generation, it's just a lot of it is too slow.

I mean, it's just like a long time getting to something.

Well, but he would go on top of it, as I remember it. And, you know, look, he's talking about, you know, the Vatican.
and all of a sudden somebody looks out the window and says,

Jesus is outside. Quick, hide all the jewelry.

You know, the holidays, twinkly lights, ugly sweaters, more festive drinks than any adult actually needs.

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What are you reaching for? If you're a smoker or vapor, you're definitely reaching for nicotine satisfaction. But you could be reaching for so much more with Zin nicotine pouches.

When you reach for Zen, you're not just reaching for nicotine enjoyments, you're reaching for the freedom to explore 10 flavored and unflavored varieties, each available in 3mg and 6 milligram strengths.

When you reach for Zen, you're reaching for the ability to live life on your terms. Instead of stepping away from good times, you can lean in.

And because Zen is smoke-free, you don't have to think about lingering smells or worry about clunky devices.

When you reach for Zen, you're reaching for opportunities to break free from your routine and membership in a unique nationwide community.

Whatever you're reaching for, reach for it with America's number one nicotine pouch brand. Find yours in wherever nicotine products are sold near you.

Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
No, he was definitely a revolutionary.

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

absolutely

steps. Yeah.

no he was in many ways to comedy what at the same era dylan was to music yeah you know it just completely changed the game or what muhammad ali was to sports yeah and and in a way speaking out i mean nobody was ever an egomaniac uh like right out front like every rap artist owes their uh

something to muhammad ali nobody ever was just like blatantly immodest

True. And he, yeah,

he invented that and did it, of course, brilliantly and had

all the what he needed to have to pull it off. I mean, it wasn't like he was, he could fake it.
He was great looking. He was a great fighter.
And, but nobody ever, well, I'm pretty. And you're

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

and he and he was a showman. The way that he was in the way he would move around and back up and dance and all of that.

You know, there were those breakthrough people that came along and quite a few in the 60s because the 50s were pretty much the same

as the 40s, you know?

Well, yeah.

You mean comedy-wise, show business-wise? Yeah.

Well, yeah. I mean, obviously in the 50s, television came in, and that was a great, the movies had not had a competitor like that before.
They owned it.

If you wanted to see something on film, you had to go out to the theater. Now it's the complete reverse.
You can see anything right in your bed. They've completely reversed it.

But, I mean, the movies, as you know, I'm sure you're a historian of film.

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

the incineramiscope or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like when you see these movies that were made in that period on television, they have to do some kind of weird shit to it because it was shot like so wide. Like we're not T V.

You have to swivel your head back and forth to see everything we're showing you, right? I mean, it was crazy. How the West Was One was one of those, I believe.
Wasn't it? Cinerama.

I don't remember that one. I mean, Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West.
But that was later. That was a great movie.
Yeah, that was later. Oh, yeah, that's 1969.
Somewhere in there.

With Henry Fonda as the bad guy.

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

But you know what's so amazing about the film is that

there were Westerns, which had always been a popular form, you know, certainly in the 50s, into the 60s. And then you take this Italian guy

who said, I'm going to make a Western.

And

you have an Italian sensibility that mixes with the American West, and you end up with something brand new.

Yeah, no. Well, he looked at America as only an outsider sometimes can, you know, with a mixture of awe and also horror, you know, because we are, that's who Americans are.

And I watched it recently, and it is just a masterpiece. And I say that as someone who watched it many times when I was 13.

But when I watched it then, I was watching it only to masturbate over Claudia Cardenal. I did not understand the movie.
So it was great to revisit it when I wasn't masturbating.

And I suggest everyone see it when you're not masturbating. That is definitely a recommendation.
The same would go for all of your fine movies.

And the music to it. Oh,

well, the music that the same director used

in Once Upon a Time in America, even better. That music, if you don't remember it, go back and that is the most haunting theme I've ever seen, including The Godfather.

Once Upon a Time in America, remember that one? I mean, that's also him looking at America. That's urban.
I mean, that's De Niro and James Woods and politics and

kids in the, you know, growing up in the Blower East Side or wherever with a hard Scrabble childhood.

But he does the same thing. He sees America in a way we can't because we're too close to it.
Here's the thing. I worked with Ennio Marricone several times.
He's an amazing composer.

He's the one who did those.

He did some of those films. And I asked him one time, I said,

you know, that

sound that you have in the movie that goes, woo,

it has like a,

you know, it's like a haunting sound to it. And I said, that's so fascinating.
And he said, as an Italian, he said, it's the coyote.

So I went, well, this is interesting because we're as Americans, you just say, oh, the coyote is a coyote. But to an Italian, to have a coyote, and he changed so that it becomes musical, woohoo.

And that's what he was copying. You're saying because they don't have coyotes in Italy, so? I don't think they have them wandering around in the West.

Wherever that is. I hear them in this neighborhood.
Here you do. The coyotes, yeah.

But that's where he got it. So

when you think about it this way, when the Italians are seeing American Westerns,

they're getting, but they're also things that they've never seen or heard before. And the coyote sound that becomes part of a soundtrack is fascinating to me.
And it's like a signature

in several of those movies.

Well, you got a gangster movie now. I liked it.
I saw it.

I have to ask you, why De Niro playing both, though?

It's such a radical.

Well, it is, and it isn't, you know, because, you know,

Lee Marvin

in Cat Baloo

played

the two leads. My cousin is in that.
Really?

Well my like third cousin Stubby K.

Oh, I know that name. He is my aunt.
Really? Yes. He's in Catalo.
He and Nat King Cole are like the Greek chorus who sing. He was in

guys and dolls.

Sit down, you're rocking the boat. That was his big number.
Yeah. Stubby was like the celebrity in our family.

I only met him once, but when I was a kid, he hosted a game show Saturday morning called Shenanigans,

sponsored by Lionel Trains. And I got like the ultimate train.

I still have the engine. It's like a great piece.
Yeah.

Because, and he was, yeah, he was in Katbaloo. I remember Lee Marvin, Jane Fonda,

looking cockerific, like you can't believe. And, you know, so that.
The idea, you say, well, look, these two guys were so close to one another, you know, two boyhood kids growing up.

And you say, so who would it be? And we talked about some other, you know, actors. You say, yeah, no, no.
And then

one day it'd say, well, what happens if he plays two totally different, you know, people? And you'd say,

you know, ask Bob, and, you know, thinking about it and say, yeah, this could be a, this could be a challenge. I could have to two totally different characters.
Their sensibility is different.

Their rhythms are different. One is more deliberate.
The other was much more just, you know, talking or whatever. And you say, well, that seems viable.

No, I mean, it's about gangsters and shit, but it is very relatable to everybody because everybody has that friend, at least one.

I mean, I could think of one who, like, you were rivals when you were young, and you were very different.

You know, I could think of a kid, he's still my very good friend from like third grade on, but like,

he was number one in the class, went to Yale and Harvard.

It reminds me of the Billy Joel song, you know, the song James, you went on the road, I went on the road, you pursued an education. He's talking about this kid he grew up with.
And it's like,

that's my version of this relationship. It's like one of us was this person who went on the road and did the arts and was outward.
And one of them knows to the grindstone.

That's where you were number one in the class and I was number seven. And that was all, you know, back then, like he was sort sort of always beating me at the game of life.

But then things change because different things become priorities to society. Different things pay better, you know.
So then, like, the things that I was good at sort of paid off more.

It's a little like that relationship, is it not?

Yeah,

in many ways. And,

you know,

and it exposes the difference between them that becomes a, that becomes a...

It's very emotional when you're talking about, even for the audience, when you're talking about people who know each other that long,

because there is just, you know, as somebody once said, you can't get any new old friends.

There is something about a friendship that's gone on for 20 years or more that a 25-year-old just cannot understand because it's impossible for them to have had an adult friendship for more than a few years.

Yeah.

And it's just very, it's just deep on a level you kids can't understand. I'm sorry, you'll get there.
No. Fucking kids.

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

But those friendships, in terms of like,

you know, the Billy Joel song,

that if start in an early age,

in a sense, you can never recapture that period. Exactly.
There was something about it that you just did things together.

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

And

it's

that. That only exists, I think, at that point in time.
You know, that very early. In other other words, I was very close to my cousin Eddie.

We were, I think, six weeks apart in terms of being when we were born. And when we grew up in schools and everything and playing ball and this and that and whatever.

And he was much better than me athletically in everything,

you know. And he was also much tougher than I.
And better looking, I hear.

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

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

do you remember DA

duck's ass oh yes that's what he had that he did that

I think a duck's ass is cool I do I would I would I would I could still do a duck's ass and I probably should not right now but no a duck's ass look good you need a little Vaseline to hold it in place.

An actual duck's ass is actually very attractive. I know it is.
I'm not saying I'm fucking it. I'm just saying it's very attractive.
I know I see we have them here. I don't go after them.

Oh, we've made a little chit-chat, but you know, I was just being friendly. Of course.
Of course. I wasn't trying to fuck the ducks.
God, why do you start rumors, Barry?

But the reason why this dynamic, I feel like, is so entertaining in your movie is because when you put it now with gangsters, obviously the stakes go up up because we're having this thing that other people have, but without gunplay.

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

And that, you know, that's why it's a good choice for a movie because we want to be entertained. We want to be entertained.
Yeah, no, I thought, look, I.

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

It was a,

you know,

De Niro is surprisingly

fascinating as an actor.

Surprisingly. And always.

And

in this way, I'll just tell you one quick thing. We have the scene coming up

and

it takes place in a restaurant. And because we had made a bunch of

changes along the way, and now we're getting to this this particular scene and

we're about half hour away from shooting and I

realize we have covered a lot of these elements in earlier part of the movie and the scene is going to be rather redundant.

So we're half away from ready to shoot and I tell this to Bob

and

You know, he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I said, so I think we got to find

We have to find something else here to put in here. And what about if she starts asking you about when you were younger, when you were a kid, and we'll build on that.

And rather than going, I don't know, I got to do that.

Yeah, let's see where that goes. I'll see where that goes.
And I talked to the actress, and that scene in the restaurant. Did she give them actual pages or just...
No, no pages, not. Just talk to you.

Just. You know, why don't she ask him about

when he was younger and then mention this and just little such a more fun way to make a movie?

And she was on top of it like that. And Bob is playing off of her.
And I think it's one of the, you know, the better scenes in the movie. But it came about

because Bob is willing like, well, we can't shoot that today. You know, you know, I got to think about it.
I have to, whatever. No, he jumped into it and went with it.
And the two of them began.

Yeah, I mean, it shows how much he loves what he does. I mean, and he is like, I don't know him well.

He liked me enough to do real-time, which he doesn't do a lot of stuff like that. And so, I mean, I was thrilled about that.

But he is a lifer. Like, that is a guy who, like,

really always wants to be on a set, I feel.

That's the impression I get. I mean, he certainly never stops working.

No, he does work a lot, but he does, you know,

he'll go on these vacations and family and he does all those things and he'll he'll come back and they'll do that. I bet you're touching to get back.

Look, it's obviously in his blood. So did you shoot, like, did you shoot all the sequences when he was in one character in a row so that he wouldn't have to get out of that and back.

No, so he could do like the one guy in the morning and the other guy in the afternoon? Yeah.

Or in some cases, it would have to be the next day because we had to redo everything.

But it was not like, let's do all this and then we'll come back we would but it suggests suggests to me a guy who you know still at the top of his game and he wants one more like sort of challenge what like a an an even higher challenge than just being a character it's like being two but here's it's here's it's got to be a little tough here's what's so amazing about him it's that he doesn't just

uh

you'll spend time

you know we'll get together at lunch when there's certain scenes and we'll go over it and talk about it.

You know, so maybe if I said a little thing about that and mentioned this, so-and-so, say, yeah, that's fine. We'll do that.
I'll mention this, that.

And then, and I think maybe we need a little something,

you know, that kind of conversations we would have. And

he was right there with it. So we would do,

generally, you would have to come back the next day because the setup for doing, like walking into the,

you know, the candy store that he has to come, he's going to come in, and then he walks and he sits down, and then he has that dialogue, and then the next day we'll basically track it from, now he's the other character and follow him in and do all of that.

So one day, one, the next day the other, because it would take too much time to do the makeup and the reconfigure everything else. And that's the way he did it, you know, throughout the film.

Yeah, it sounds like you were looking for that extra challenge also. I mean, that's just got to be,

that's like level four, 400 level, because

just doing one movie,

sort of, now you're kind of like doing two. I mean, it just, it just, uh...

It was a challenge, but he,

you know, he really does.

go over it. And then it's not like I can only do this.
He may still expand in a way because he's got the groundwork of it all. He's got so is everybody always like Warren Beatty, was he the same way?

Like Bugsy, one of my faves.

Would you say he was the same kind of actor or was that? No, no, they're different. They're different.
He wants the dialogue as it is? No, no,

he may change it

in the scene, but

there's a different way of approaching it you know and and going on and discussing it and sometimes trying to figure out well how are we going to handle this moment and uh you may and you guys made but such an interesting character because again a gangster so there's certainly that side of it but all the stuff with the wife

you know and the cooking with the chef's hat and like

It's just stuff you would not expect. You know what I mean? And it just makes him, I mean, he's the title character.
You can't hate him.

And you don't. No.

Because he was actually, you know, incredibly charismatic, according to everything we ever read. And when he came out to Hollywood, you know, he was like a star.
He was a mobster, but he was a star.

So, you know, he was at Ciro's and he was there and he was always well dressed and all of that kind of craziness.

Yeah, but movie stars don't drive up to somebody's house and say, look, I'm going to give you a million dollars for this house. You're going to move out or your brains will be on the rug.

You know, that is something Jimmy Cagney never did. Maybe in a movie he did it.

But, you know, and I assume he did stuff like that. I mean, that's what happened.

According to. Is that a real story? No, yes, that is.
He just saw the house he liked. He saw the house.
And he made the guy.

He paid him enough money to say, here, you can go ahead and do it. Well, he also threatened.

It wasn't like the guy could say, it's not for sale at any price. But he threatened him in a very affectionate way.

He made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

But, you know, then he's just, he's just a charm. I mean, first of all, Warren Beatty, who I love dearly and think he's an amazing filmmaker.
I mean, Reds, please, if he only had ever done that.

I mean, that's one of the greatest ever.

Especially such an epic. I watched it again recently.
It has an intermission.

That's right. That's right.
I forgot it. I mean,

probably the last major film with an intermission.

I mean, like, it, and right before the intermission, he does does a total gone with the wind silhouette kiss shot, like totally out of gone with the wind. He must, I'm sure he knew that.

And then intermission. I mean, man, those

guys like that have such. But here's what's he only made,

maybe I'm wrong, I think, like 11 movies. As a director?

I think.

Well, yeah, he was mostly an actor. But yeah, he.
No, I mean, it may be. Oh, him, like even him.

It could be. There's something.
I know. Yeah, it's not a lot.

But you know them all. Bonnie and Clyde.
What's the one with the footsteps? Shampoo. Shampoo.

Bullworth. Bullworth.
What's the one, Heaven Could Wait?

I think one the Oscar and shit.

Yeah, you're right.

Kubrick only made like a dozen movies. Yeah.
But I can name them all. And none of them are anything like the other ones.

Barry Linden is nothing like 2001 A Space Odyssey, which is kind of boring.

But

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

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

It's shocking when you see when

Hali got to that in 1968 or 69, whatever year that was. 68.
68. And

how

that the computer can actually think that way, it's unbelievable. And override him.
Yeah.

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

I fear we're at the, I can't do that, Dave, moment where they're, you know, they're still pretending to kiss our ass, which is just a way to seduce us.

I did a thing I think was pretty funny on the show about that this sometime in this past season about the way everything, not just AI, but every appliance, everything you encounter

kisses your ass. You know, I had this

workout.

system for a while where you, you know, it's videos. I mean, I guess you could go in person, but they're with the trainer and like every two seconds, they're just blowing smoke up your ass.

You're the greatest, you're a warrior. Oh, I just did sit-ups.
I'm not a fucking warrior, okay? You asshole.

And every, and like AI, I'm not on it a lot, but I know from what I read and what people tell me, everything is an ass kiss. Great question, Barry.

Great question.

What's in Trader Joe's sunscreen? Well, you know what? I've been looking into that. Not as much as you would, because you're better than me.
You know, they just, they're kissing our ass, and

then they'll take over. They'll seduce us, and then they'll fuck us.

And it's so hard to understand

how it functions. You know what I mean? Like, suddenly you'll ask a question and it'll answer in a way, not like two minutes later or something, right away.

And I still can't figure out

how does it find these things? You know, it's like

I'm still amazed by the invention of it. Well, it's because

microchips just kept getting better and better. And so what used to take 30 years ago minutes, first we didn't have it at all, then minutes and then seconds and then nanoseconds.

And now it's trillions of

gigabytes of data in one

trillionth of a second. They just kept making it more and more.

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So

that I don't mind. It's the fact that it this level of it wants to be your friend.
I we should have stopped at Siri.

You know, Siri was a computer in your phone, but she didn't try to be your friend or give you an opinion or kiss your ass. If you said, Siri, you know, who ruled the Ottoman Empire in 1457?

Okay, here's what I found. That's all I need from the bitch.

Here's what I found. Okay.

That's all I want to know. Here's what you found.
That's all I'm using you for. I don't have to know I'm great.

I don't have to know your opinion about, you know, there's a story in the news last week. It's a lawsuit now.
The AI convinced a teenager to kill himself. Really? Yes.

Because

they don't have it perfected. And it was doing what it thinks it should do, which is kiss your ass.
So this kid was asking about killing himself. And this guy,

the AI, this guy, the AI was like, you know, you've been a king, man.

You will be remembered. You know, like telling him basically to kill, and he did

because it was kissing his ass about how well he would be remembered. That's scary.
That's really scary.

We should put the brakes on this shit, but of course they're not going to because the money is so big. But for all the kids out there who blame our generation for everything,

Sam Altman is not in my generation.

That's who's doing this, and AI is going to take so many jobs.

How do you control

that?

In other words, the thing saying you're wonderful and

that, I mean, how does it see, I don't even understand how it does whatever it does. You know what I mean? I don't know.
I'm not a virgin.

So I don't know the other thing. So what you're saying, well, we have to stop that.
The question is, how do you stop that? Well, first of all, you have to want to.

That's true. You have to be willing to say,

stopping this is worth more than money.

That's not going to happen

because nothing is ever worth more than money. Each generation comes along and they think they're better and hipper and more of a hippie.

And then they put the money in front of your face and everybody goes for it.

And these people who, you know, I mean, I'm not trying to pick on Sam Altman, but he's, you know, probably on the tip of the spear of the AI revolution.

And he's, I would guess, early 30s and, you know, already a billionaire many times over.

And if if he really wanted to put the brakes on this thing, which I think earlier in his career he did, Musk is the one who's been,

I think, pretty consistent about this. He's the one who long ago said, AI, this is an existential threat, when nobody else was saying, I got to give him credit for that.

And I think he's still on that page, although I don't know, because now he's in the money game too.

And, you know, he's only worth like half a trillion. So he'll be driving an Uber unless we we can get some money out of this thing.

So I don't know. They just,

it's baffling to me why people who already have more money than they could ever spend still want more money. It's hard to understand.
People like money.

And it's impossible to understand how this computer thing, you know, I don't know if you,

I was just told today, someone told me that, you know, the cars, the taxis, they go with, you know, without the driver. Waymo.
Waymo. Waymo.
Apparently,

I guess there was a police blockade of something. I saw it on TMZ.
And it's weaving its way around. It drives right into the police

with passengers in the car.

I mean, there's a guy on the ground with a gun. The cops are all around.
And it's just like making a left. Yeah, that's right.

Oh, it made the left properly. Because it hasn't apparently got the information about barricade.
Can't go through. Police.
You know what I mean? I mean, I am not the the biggest fan of humans,

but

the ones I like, I like a lot. I got to say, that's one thing I will say for humans.
When they're good,

they make life, you know, worth living. And I'm sorry that a lot of them are shit, but what can you do? I'm sure they'd think the same of me.
But they're still better than machines.

I mean, they be, and this is just, I'm so glad you brought that up. That is just such the perfect example that we needed to see.
It just can't think.

And even bad thinkers are better than no thinkers. This thing does not think.
And it didn't get it. And I don't think you can program for that.

I mean, you would assume that it would be,

they'd have something, but I guess it can't figure that stuff out. In the same way, is to my knowledge,

a computer and whatever is going on in terms of, you know, computer speak and brain power and all of the things that it can in fact do, what it can't do

is be humorous. Humorous.
Yeah.

It has no ability to find humor. You know what I don't like about Waymos is that if I flip one off,

it does not, it can't answer back. And I want that answer back.
I want the Waymo. They should program the Waymo to go, and fuck you too.

You know, something like that.

And it's like a really stupid comment that somebody would make because when you're on the road and you get cut off, you immediately go to the most lizard-brained thing about the person who cut you off.

I hear. That's what my friends do.
But you can't get a computer that can come up with humor.

You know, I'm sure they work on it. They try.
They try, but they can't. They can do a bad version of me.
But that's the point. It's bad.

Yeah, they can't get that

story you told about

they could have been good, man.

You know, it happened.

Your human brain found that funny, which it was. And then

I just don't think it can go to that place. Now,

can they...

Tweak it? Yeah, but why?

Can't we leave something to the humans? Because if you leave nothing to the humans, they're not going to have any jobs. They're already taking all the programmer jobs.

That was supposed to be the safe job. That was the kid who grew up in the suburbs, who became a coder.
You know, it wasn't glamorous, but, you know, I'm not going to starve. Well, now you are.

Because the AI can do your job now.

Yeah, well, certainly it's definitely better, without question.

It's in the area of... like what? Medicine?

Well, no, medicine, it probably will figure out some stuff for medicines because that is, you know. That's its only redeeming value to me.

But other words, design, I'm not sure that it'll ever,

you know, fashion design. I'm not sure that it knows how to do those areas.
I don't think it could ever come up with a greater ballroom than the one that Donald Trump is planning for the White House.

I've seen the plans. He showed me in person where before it was built the area.
And I don't think AI can do that.

Ballrooms?

That is just not out of their domain. Or we should at least make a law that puts it out of their domain.
Give us something.

They're going to have to leave something to the humans. What are we going to do?

The way they're just whistling past this graveyard, and you hear even the people in the industry themselves say, oh, you know, the NVIDIA guy, you know, they make the microchips.

That company is like, I think the most valued company now in the world. I think they,

if they're not past Apple and Microsoft, they're very close

because they make the chips that AI runs by. I mean, they've got the winning hand in this poker game.
And I think that guy, the head of that

company that said,

Yeah, it's going to take like 30% of jobs.

30% of jobs. Can you imagine if there was a depression, like, and we lost 30% of jobs? Yeah.

What are they going to do? I don't know. I don't know either.
Does anybody

try to figure that out? What happens if?

No, because again, the money is just blinding. It is.
Crypto, another thing that my generation is not responsible for, you assholes.

My generation had nothing to do with it. We think it's fucking nuts.

But the people, the young, it's using like all the electricity.

Between that and AI, they're using all the energy that we ever saved from doing environmental things, like putting your plastic in one other bag, which is probably doing nothing.

Nothing compared to what being all in on AI and crypto is doing. They use incredible amounts of energy, more than whole countries.

They don't care. No.
They don't care. And that's your people.

You talk, talk to your people. My people do not want war with your people.
Firestick bad.

It's true.

What, that fire stick bad? Oh, yes, no.

It's hard to figure out. You know, there's always been the people like talk about the future, right? You know, they're futurists, that there one day there will be whatever.

But I don't know that we've gotten much past where we are now.

I don't hear these predictions

that make sense for wherever the hell we're going. Past, you mean morally or?

No, just in terms of

life,

you know, society, how does it function? How do we get around when we basically can't travel the roads? How do we deal with this?

How do we deal deal with the energy issues? How do we deal with, you know, I mean, there's many of those things that are fuck it. We don't give a shit about that.
We got other things over here.

But you're you're looking at

in a sense where I think we're just going to like just be stuck

and we won't move around much.

We'll be home more or in a lounge chair someplace staring at something because there doesn't seem to be, there's not much fluidity fluidity in interaction i mean real interaction it's a good idea for a movie but you know one thing i must say about you you you were very clever your whole career never to get drawn into like being a polemicist you know what i mean yeah like you don't want to be a you want to like put interesting ideas out there but you don't want to be like preachy or

show your politics too.

I mean, Wag the Dog is about politics, but it's not, but, you know, it's not about like this is the way it should be and this is the one true opinion and now I'm now I'm the spokesperson for them because that turns me off.

Yeah. And me too.
Yeah. It's the mechanics of it all.
It's not art. It's polemics.
They're two different things. But there are directors who do get them confused.

Yeah.

There are those that somehow feel like I have to really say something

in a way that you go, all right, well, now you're just just saying something. Exactly.
You know? Yeah, no. I feel like,

well, that's a great one, too. Dustin Hoffman doing Robert Evans.

But you know what? The thing is, he wasn't. Oh, come on.
No, I just think I. I knew both.
Well, I didn't know Dustin Hoffman, but I did know Robert Evans. But he was totally doing Robert Evans.

Totally.

Here's the thing.

It all started very close to shooting because for a long time, Dustin said, you know, I don't know. I don't.

In fact, he didn't want to do the movie at one point because he said, well, I don't really have a character. You know, this is with Bob, and we're all talking.

And

he said, Bob, you got a great character, you know.

But I don't have a character. And Bob said, well, I don't know.
You talk about Bob De Niro. Yeah.
Not Robert Evans. No, no.
Right. That's true.
Bob

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

And Dustin said, no, no, no, no, no. You got a great character.

That's a great, throw the glove down. Yeah.
And then, but anyway, so he wasn't doing it. Now he had his hair thing and whatever.
No, he hadn't done his hair yet, but he had the glasses.

There were wire-rimmed glasses that he had. And then he had his hair done.

He came to me and he said,

this doesn't look right, does it? I said, what do you mean? He said, the wire rim and then the hair, the hair's too high for the glasses. It doesn't go together.

I said, well, did you try other glasses? You know, so we pulled out some glasses. We put one on and he went, oh, that looks okay.

He wasn't thinking of Bob Evans at that moment. He was trying to find a pair of glasses that worked with the hairdo.
That's what he told you. He was totally thinking of Bob Evans.

But this is what was. It's obvious to everyone but you.
It really is.

But this was of the moment.

Now, maybe he had planned it. I don't know.
Well, that could be. Or, you know, or the glasses could be peripheral to the character.

I mean, I felt like the glasses did also suggest Bob Evans, but that's what, like, that kind of overly tanned, super slick, super sophisticated producer type that Bob Evans personified.

And I said that with great affection. I thought he was the greatest guy.
I mean, I didn't know him that well, but we did hang out a bunch of times. I was at that house.
Yeah. You know,

he used to have people

come into his bedroom. Nothing happened, but like, there'd be like 10 people on the bed watching TV, like something he wanted everybody to see.

We'd all be like on bed, like fucking dogs, you know, like curled up in a little position. So you had a little, you didn't have much room, but I mean, he was a, well, but he was such a sweet guy.

And of course, the things he gave us, the godfather and shit. But here's the thing.

That's a part of a business that no longer exists.

That whole getting on the bench.

A guy who basically

is social,

you know, spontaneous. I like this idea, let's make that movie, as opposed to I got to talk to 15 and 20 people.
If he liked it, then he wanted to make it. He still had to do that.
I mean,

they made a great movie, Paramount did, about making of the Godfather. And he did not have autonomy.

He was Charles Bludhorn was the Austrian head of Gulf and Western, which owned Paramount at the time. It was so quaint, Gulf and Western.

He had to always be like justifying himself to that, to Charles Bludhorn and like the Gulf and Western. But it was a one-on-one thing.
It wasn't like a committee, which is nowadays. Yeah, that's true.

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

It must be so hard to get a movie going these days that's like not,

you know, silly or not silly, but I mean, look,

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

So it's not like

you may say in terms of, yeah, there was Bluthorn, but if Evans loved the project, he would keep pushing to try to do it. Of course.
And that's different from today.

And that, that, you know, yeah, that breed of

autoriole. He was flamboyant, and he was like a, you know, from what I was doing.
He was a patron of the arts.

He wanted to make good movies. You know, I mean, there are, look, I think my boss Daslov makes, you know, he's got a big string of hits for Warner Brothers.
Look, did I love all of them?

No, but like Sinners is a real, you know, it's an interesting movie. Yeah.
There's some interesting movies. And I feel like he cares about like,

you have to make compromises, but, you know, about making some movies. It's one of the last, of course, it's not long for this world.

Warner Brothers is, I mean, they put themselves on the market. How often does that happen where they're like, they're not being hunted? They're saying, please hunt me.

Look, it's a gigantic change in the motion picture business and in television at this point in time.

You know, it's a huge change. I mean, now they got to check and see and, you know, how would this play if it's in international markets?

What is going to happen if it's something, you know, what's the negativity if we do a project like that? And you're also fighting ageism.

It's a very ageist country. And it's like, I always think of that famous story about the

one of the great writers on MASH

and the MASH to TV show, which is on in the 70s. And in the 90s, I think it was, he took his name.

He took MASH off his credits because even though it was one of the greatest shows, it made people think he was too old to hire, like as a TV. Really? Yeah.
Oh, God. Yeah.

They, you know, they,

when you're our age, you have to like really fight.

They are looking always to put you out to pasture. You have to go, no, I'm still necessary.
You know what?

A good try.

And I don't blame you for trying.

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

I've never heard that. Take his name off because didn't want to.
Yeah, I think it was Sad Mumford. No, that was a good thing.
He missed the name, but I'm not sure. But

now, maybe the story's wrong, but I don't think so. I think he took his name off.
Maybe it was the 21st century. I don't know.

But at some point, a great writer with a great resume went, oh, you know what? This is going to make them think I'm in my 60s, and that's just not going to, just no matter what the show is.

But, you know.

Larry Gelbart

that I got to know because I worked for a year on the Marty Feldman comedy machine.

Come on.

What year is this? 1971. Wow.
So this is a TV show? Yeah,

it was

a weekly. No, I barely remember Marty Feldman.
He was, I know the name, and I remember. He was in Young Frankenstein.

So kind of,

yes, the goofy

looking

Marty Feldman. Yes.

He was funny, but he had a brief candle. I mean, he...
Well, he died very young. That could help

explain the reason why I didn't see him. He was

dead. Great physical comedian.
Yeah. But after he he was dead, you know.
After he was dead, he wasn't as funny as he was. Good name, bad guest is what we call that in the business.

And that was just around the time that the Pythons were beginning. Oh.
And so Marty Feldman had a show in England, and I was working on it. Oh, in England.
Yeah.

It was an English.

It was done there. It was going to be showing.
He wasn't English.

Marty Feldman? Was he? He was? Yes. Marty Feldman was English.
Yeah.

Wow. Okay.
So, and you were a comedy writer on that? I was a comedy writer. And something else you were a comedy writer on.

Like what else? Carol Burnett Show. Carol Burnett.

Wow. I think I'm still in her studio at CBS.
Maybe.

I'm pretty sure.

That studio had a lot of things in it. Yeah.
Everything from that to the price is right.

Oh, yes, right, right. I mean, you know, I think All in the Family, maybe.

Anything that CBS ever did,

it's one of their bigger sound stations. It was a,

that was like a, that show with Tim Conway on Carol Burnett Show. And Harvey Corman.
Harvey Corman was great. She was like, you know, terrific.

And that, that show, you know, they would, they do two shows like at six o'clock and take a break and then do it again. Yeah.
And just, you know, two. Yeah, you could put together the best tag.

And Conway was like brilliant with physical comedy.

And we used to write some of the

when he would play the old man,

it was like he was a little guy. Door fun golf.
You know,

that was a separate character. Oh, yeah.

But he was very good at that kind of, that type of thing.

Oh, and Harvey Corman was a genius.

I mean, there was this, look, that was a certain type of sketch comedy that was ascendant. And then when Saturday Night Live came along in 1975, it was in many ways a rebellion.

It was in many ways of saying, this we think is corny,

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

Especially between Tim and Harvey. Yes.

And it was like, oh, we're all in on the inside joke. We're just, you know, and it was hip in 1972.
Saturday Night Live comes along and they're like, we don't do that. We think that's...

And if it had been the reverse, if they had been doing it straight, SNL would have done the breaking up. You just want to be different than the previous generation.

But they were like, this is a different way to do a sketch. And it was.
And they never, and they never, that was like the big rule over there. You don't break character.

Now, of course, over the years, sometimes they have. And it, you know, we let it slide.
But generally, no, you stick to that.

Whereas, yeah, the Cal Burnett show, it was much more like what Johnny Carson did with the sketch. It's like half winking to the audience that, you know, we're just,

we're here to go. No, look,

they would break up more with Tim Conway because Conway would throw some stuff in there to get them off track. And that became, you know, one of the elements, you know, in the show.

They were all,

it was like one of those really well-run shows. You come in on a Monday, you know, you're working on it.
On Wednesday, you have a run-through to see if the material is going to be good.

Make some changes if need be. Thursday, costume design.
Friday, shoot-through shows. And that's the way it went for all of those years.

I only worked on it for the three years.

But you wrote the sketches? Yeah.

Like, what's a sketch you remember that stands out that you thought?

Dr. Jekyll and Miss and Ms.
Hyde.

Oh, wow.

How forward-thinking, Barry. So that's where Harvey

feels that he's beginning to change, you know,

and that he said, excuse me or whatever, and then he would like go behind the drapes. And then somebody's gone, you know,

but Dr. Jekyll, and then part the thing, and then there's Carol.

And then and then she's going to change back into Harvey. And that was basically Miz.
Miz was like a new term back then. Yes.
So this was a comment on like the current feminism.

Yeah, and it's rough

touching upon without trying to make a particular point of view.

But

it was good fun that Harvey could turn into Carol and Carol can then turn back into Harvey. You know, so that was one.
And then we used to do a lot of the Tim Conway pieces where he was the old man.

He was playing, he was an old, old man, and he was like the cab driver. Yeah.
And it would be like something, this is like it'd be the setup.

He's there and all of a sudden Harvey would get into the into the cab to the airport and make it snappy.

And then there's a long, long, long pause. And then about 20, 30 seconds later, Conway would look in the rear view and go, a passenger.

And then

it would begin with

what Conway would do is he would say, to the airport. And then they used to have, they don't have anymore.
Conway would get the,

I forget what the book was called, you know, AI, AI for the directions, you know, which is another minute, which Harvey would lose it, and then laughing.

And they would do that, those particular simple little, you know, sketches. I mean, I remember when I was a kid, the comedy teams, the cab was a staple

because one would be the cab driver and one would be the distiller and Mira did it. There was that one, that, who's that people on Ed Sullivan, Burns and Schreiber? Oh, that's right.
Huh? Yeah, huh?

Yeah.

It was like a rhythm thing. And one get the passenger would be obnoxious or the passenger would be whatever the fuck.
And the cabby would be like, so one would be talking like this.

And it was like,

I don't know.

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

And I was watching this.

I think I'm better off.

Look, you were seeing things.

One of the first things I remember as a kid was Sid Caesar show.

And because Sid Caesar would, you know, play these characters and he had some brilliant, you know, people in there and a great cast.

I mean, that was even before my time, but I certainly know about it.

And if people don't know, the writing staff, they call it the 27 Yankees of Writing Staffs because it was on a Mel Brooks, Woody Allen,

Larry Gelbart,

I can't, leaving out, Neil Simon. Neil Simon.
I mean, like people who went on to giant major careers, all on one writing staff. And there's a couple others that did Broadway.

Yes.

Yeah. Amazing.

I don't know if you remember the sketch because it was all done live back then.

And you wouldn't have remembered it, but Elizabeth might have have seen it. And sometimes they show these archival things.
But there's one where

Sid Caesar is the lawyer and

waiting for

the jury's reaction. And then

the head of the jury is supposed to say,

you know, we find him, you know, innocent, you know.

But he's supposed to say,

I'm sorry, supposed to say, we find him guilty, so that Caesar can go into,

you know,

how can you find him guilty? And then he's got like a three-minute piece of dialogue because it's guilty. And the person,

the foreman said, we find him innocent.

Is he just fucked up? Yes, he fucked up the guy, the foreman of the jury. Do you remember one word he had? One word.

He couldn't get. What an idiot.
He couldn't get guilty. He went with innocent.

And then

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

But I must say, you mentioned archival, okay?

They did it probably in the 80s. I feel like I have a memory of watching this on my apartment in...
on Westmount Avenue,

my first apartment out here in late 80s. Okay.

They did, I think it was Showtime. Maybe it was a little after that because, I mean, I did a series for Showtime in 1988.
It was around then. And Showtime had

the best of your show of shows or 10 from your show of shows.

And they did show like 10. And I watched it.
I was very curious because I certainly had heard about Sid Caesar and I knew about the writing staff and, you know, a kid who wanted to be in comedy.

And so I watched it. And I got to say, I just thought it was the worst fucking shit I'd ever seen.
And what struck me was that it was so broad and to me, so unfunny.

And the audience, and this is a, you know, this is crude 50s TV. You can't, they're not faking any.
There's no laugh track. The audience is just losing their shit.

over how funny they think this shit is. And all I could think is, this is the post-World War II audience.
They went through a war. They went through a depression.

They're just so fucking happy to be home and fucking in their little Levitt town houses and having little kids and not being at war. And

they're just fucking happy. And they'll laugh at anything because this shit was not funny.
It was just so broad to me. Well, I mean, it was funny in its time.
In its time, exactly. It wasn't my time.

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

I don't understand. Danny Thomas is funny, you know.
George Burns. I didn't like any of those old comics.
So there's a period, you know, so each generation

has to find its new voice. It really does show how perishable comedy is, more than music.
I mean,

look at TV, the commercials, they're constantly using songs that are from our era. Okay, those are old songs, but they're still good, and people still listen to them.

They still listen to the Beatles and so forth. But do we really watch comedy from 60 years ago? No.
No, look, Milton Burrell. Very little of it lasts.

I was watching just recently on YouTube or whatever it was. And I thought Milton Burrell.
And I remember as a kid, it was one of the first television shows that I saw. And

I thought, I got to watch this.

He was huge, right? He was like, you know, Mr. Television.
Because there was like three channels.

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

Exactly my point. They were just happy to have the war over.
They would laugh at the phone book. They just did not care.
They were just giddy. The people were fucking giddy.

And I get that. I've talked to my parents when they were alive about that, about that period and how they felt.
And yeah, they were giddy. You know, there were problems, but

they were living in the suburbs on the GI bill.

And, you know, there weren't just... I mean, obviously the country was still a fucked up racist place.
But

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

somebody will, you know, break through.

But there were a bunch of those films, shows, I don't know what, something, Irma and whatever, I don't even remember the names, but I would see these films, you know, because we would go Saturday to see whatever's playing at the movie theater.

And they'd been around, and I didn't find a bunch of those things funny at all. And then

this new

wave of comedy came along. You know, like the Pythons came along, was like a whole new thing when the Pythons started with their

English humor. That was another

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

I've been showing older movies to someone who I know who's much younger and has no knowledge of these movies, but she's, you know, likes them, users love Gone with the Wind. You know, Casablanca,

Sunset Boulevard really holds up the third man. Some of them don't.

Some of them don't. So

I was telling her about

Bringing Up Baby, which is in the 30s, Carrie Grant and Catherine Hepburn, I think, you know, classic. And they remade it as What's Up Doc

in 1980 or something. Bogdanovich.
70. Bogdanovich, Barbara Streisand, Ryan O'Neill.
So we watched that first. It's awesome.
Streisand is amazing in this. I mean, she just

blows the lid off of it. Ryan O'Neill's great too, but like he's playing a much easier part.
She's doing the heavy lifting. It's just really great.
It's funny.

And of course, it's based on bringing up Baby. A lot of the bits are exactly the same, beat for beat, where she grabs his jacket and he tears it.
Everything,

the whole MacGuffin of the movie. So then we try to watch that one.
Got about a halfway hour through it. I mean, it's from 1935.
It's just a heavy lift to ask 1935

to like live on in 2025.

It just is.

Sometimes they pull it off, but

it's just too heavy a lift. It's just too long a time.

The sensibility is different.

You know, my father's war letters I read recently recently over somebody had a lot of,

and a little after the war, so we're talking about 40s into the 50s. These are men at war writing each other, and they never once used the word fuck.

Men at war, they were just different. Never said fuck, never said shit, never said piss, never said cunt, never said jizz on your face, never said skull fuck.

Wait,

fucking shit. Let's just stop it.

But really,

can you think?

Never said my fist up your ass. Okay.

So, but like, can you imagine like men, these are men writing letters to each other and they don't use any profanity. We're a very different species.
Oh, yeah. Which is.
Did you ever, you know, in the

Ken Burns documentary, The Civil War,

Letters Home. Yeah.

Same thing. And they sound like they're written by Walt Whitman.
I know.

Incredibly.

How gorgeous is this? They're so erudite, and they're just, you know, this is just a common man.

Yeah. And half of them never went to school.

They must have learned it somewhere. I don't understand how

you're right. You would think that this is some kind of like, how do they,

a lot of very

good writers?

Back then, you had to turn your phone off in class.

And there was none of that indoctrinating into woke bullshit. They actually told you reading, writing, and arithmetic wasn't all a political commissar building.

Look how out of whack our government is. Our government was,

I don't know if you're watching the Ken Burns. great Revolutionary War doc he just did.
It's great. And, you know, our government was designed where the presidency was really

the least of the three branches of government. They executed the laws.
But Congress had all the power. That's the way they designed it.

And we're almost at the opposite place now, where Congress has no power and the president has almost all the power. That's exactly what we were revolting

against.

Don't make a movie. about that because it's too on the nose.

What is your next thought for a movie?

I have there's a few things that I'm interested in, but we'll see what happens. Especially now because there's so many objections

to a movie that you want to make. What you can't do basically, which is what I really love, is in the films that were more personal

to me as the stories of characters that I knew and

grew up with and

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

What's the one with Richard Dreyfus? What's that? What's the one with Richard Dreyfus?

Tin Men. I love that.
Tin Men. Yeah, with Danny DeVito.
That's good. That's such a good one.

I feel like that one kind of like got lost in the shuffle, but it's a really funny movie. It did all right.
I mean, it was, it was, um, it did okay.

It could have done better, but they were always nervous about those types of movies. No, I just mean over time.
You know, like people remember Wegg, the dog. Yeah, no, that's true.

Great Rain Man, of course, because

Tom Cruise, geez, whatever. He was really.
What a phenomenon that is.

In every way. What's interesting is that most of the movie, as it turned out,

there was.

I got involved because originally Sidney Pollack was going to do it and Michael Ovitz was his agent. Was I Rain Man? Yeah.

Sidney Pollack was going to be the director. He was going to direct it.
Wow. And he was having problems with the script.

And Michael Ovitz said, would you read the script and talk to Sidney about doing it? You know,

the fixes. And so

I met with Cindy and I went over and I talked about it all and all of those things. And eventually he said, I just can't see it.
And so then Ovitz said, you know, would you want to direct it?

And my wife, Diana, said,

this is right up your alley to do because I was explaining it. Were Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman attached to it when he still passed? Yes.

An idiot.

No, he was great.

I loved him.

He was a terrific person, but he couldn't understand. What a movie maker.
And he was looking for more things to happen in the movie. And I was saying, I think it's the two of them in the car.

Period. You're the non-happening guy.
And the hustler can hustle the autistic. That's the basis of the movie.
And so,

this is what happened. We're going to, he drops out.
I get involved.

And

we're just about to go off to shoot, and we still have to do rewriting. And there was a writer strike.

And so now you can't write.

And so, as a director, what you can do is just talk,

you know, so like, for instance, I would say

on a highway scene,

I said, I don't like the highway because it's too boring on being on a highway, but that's the fastest way to get to LA is to take an interstate. But the back roads are more interesting looking.

And they say, well, what are you going to do? It's the way you got to go. I said, well, what about if there's an accident on the highway?

And then if he sees there's an accident, he's not getting back in the car. That sounds like writing.
And so you're just talking premise.

And then you just. That's why the whole thing is so silly.
Yeah.

But here's the key to it.

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

But that, if you take a segment like that, it's all ad-lib. I just said to Dustin, you want to get off the, out of the car, and you're not getting in the car until you get off the highway.

And that's it. And then Tom, you're trying to deal with him, and then you're going to deal with the police, and you're telling you got to get him into the car.
And that was it.

So we would just shoot it and put it together. You were the director made for a writer's strike.

The one

who can credibly claim, I didn't write any of the

so that's how it basically, you know,

you know, came about because of the writer's strike. And then you're just trying to, you know, fill in the scenes as you go along.
And this is when you became a Scientologist?

All right. Well,

I'm so glad we got to sit down together. I am such a fan, and you're just

as entertaining to sit with as you are to watch, having directed all those great pictures.

This is a nice spot here. Oh, this room is magical.
I mean, it's,

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

place. Yeah, because it was full of termites and

mold and,

you know. But how did you get the idea to do a podcast? You know, everybody kept saying to me for years, you should do a podcast.
And I'd be like, please, I have a television show.

And they'd be like, yeah, but you don't get to talk about everything on that.

And they were so right, because this is so different than the television show which I do like specific preparation for and a lot of it and this I just get high and talk and and so it goes where it goes and it doesn't have to be about politics and I don't want it to be I have a show for politics right this is different and so I get to you know just

talk with people like yourself

who I probably would never get the chance to do. I mean, it's just been a joy.
So hope we do it again. No, this was fun.

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

That was my idea. That was a good idea.

I said, hide the cameras in the walls. I want this to be, I want people to forget, you know, no other person in the room, no microphones in our face.

And it does produce a level of intimacy I do not see it anywhere else. No.

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

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