John Ratzenberger (Re-Release)

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And I remember thinking, tomorrow's papers are going to say Cliff Kill's cast of cheers.

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

All right, so I'm loving all these cheers-themed episodes that we've been revisiting.

And this one is with your favorite postman, Cliff Clavin, aka John Ratzenberger.

You're going to hear about how John pitched his know-it-all cheers character to the writers the first time he met them, his time at the original Woodstock, and also his multiple near-death experiences.

Our buddy has lived quite a life.

Here's our friend, Sean Rathelberger.

Okay, Emmy nominee, a voice actor in 22 Pixar movies, a storied act.

Please don't interrupt.

This is you.

I just realized that.

That's all we talked about, Woody.

No, no, no.

A storied acting career in TV and film spanning nearly five decades.

Perhaps his most famous role was on cheers as the garrulous, you can quarrel with the word garrulous mail carrier cliff clavin please welcome to the show our longtime friend johnny john ratzenberg gentlemen so good to see you again once again great to see you dude i want to come back here every day now you you i get such a fuzzy feeling warm and fuzzy see wait till we get going

i haven't seen it like i literally you're the only person from cheers i haven't seen since the day we wrapped i've been trying to avoid you Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.

Ducking around corners.

There he is.

No, I've been out and about.

I just finished a 4,000-mile driving trip.

I just took the spirit of the moment.

So

I don't spend a lot of time here.

Where'd you go?

From where to where?

Oh, from

Rancho Mirage on the desert to

Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana,

Idaho,

Washington State, Oregon, and then back down here.

Oh, my God.

In what?

A car, right?

Well, I didn't walk.

Yeah, no, but he wondered if you were taking a motorcycle.

Valentine question.

Huh?

He wondered if you were taking a motorcycle, right?

Oh, no, my daughter won't be on motorcycles anymore.

We're not more motorcycles.

But what kind of

pickup truck?

Nice.

It's red.

By yourself?

Was it just you?

Yeah.

Wow.

What do you do when you pull into a town?

Well, I bring

one of my friends I stopped to see.

He was an ex-vinter winery guy.

He just sold his winery, but he's got a big property up in Montana.

And his thing is trap and skeet.

So I brought a couple of shotguns with me.

And so we, you know, did some trap and skeet shooting.

And

then I got friends in Oregon.

We went down the Rogue River,

you know, one of those

boats, the rapids, and all that stuff.

And,

you know, I never have an agenda.

This one I did, the first stop was for with

in

Pueblo, Colorado.

I gave a talk there.

And I've been doing quite a bit of that speech, speechifying.

And what are you speechifying about?

Well, what I actually what I bet you you're here about all those years ago, to get kids

shop classes, to get shop classes reinstated because

we're literally running out of people that know how to use tools.

Literally,

the airlines,

we're running out of pilots of all things.

Railroads, you know, the railroads falling off of

the tracks.

That's because they don't have enough people to fix what's going wrong.

And are you raising the alarm or are you?

I've been trying for,

I spoke in front of Congress twice already and brought in witnesses from construction firms who said they have to close down because they can't find

simple carpenters and bricklayers.

And

I don't know if you remember.

I don't know if you're talking about I was a carpenter before I

got into this acting game.

Yeah, no, because, you know, they give you, even though we hung out a thousand hours, well, more, you know, you look at, I, there's a thing in here that you were at Woodstock as one of the crew.

Yeah, now you must have told me that, but I forgot about it.

I know, I've never heard that either.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

Well, I, you know, I guess

I don't know.

What were you?

So what were you doing?

I was a carpenter.

I was living up in

the area up in Bearsville.

I was building a studio for a mime to give him mime lessons.

So I traded my carpentry skills for mime lessons and breakfast in a bed.

A great businessman.

And then the word went out in town that there's some kind of festival going on.

They're looking for people.

So

I trumped it on down there and stood in line.

And the guy says, Can you drive a tractor?

I said, Yeah.

I never,

never in my life.

So

here are the keys at the, so I went over it, started up and they went,

I almost flipped it.

But then, so I was doing a heavy equipment operation and

pounded nails at the stage.

Yeah.

And did you have to leave after you built it before the festival?

No, no, I was there right through the festival.

Oh, my God.

That's nice.

So I was there like a week and a half before the festival, festival, during the festival, and about a week after the festival.

Did you have any idea that, oh, this is huge, this is big, or no?

My first thought was, we're in big trouble when these idiots take over the country.

Johnny, Johnny.

It's like, wow, these people are idiots.

They're college educated, but they're idiots.

The crowd.

The crowd.

Oh, the crowd.

Yeah, all right.

All right.

Well, who would you think I was talking about?

Musicians.

All right.

okay them too

no I didn't get to hear a lot of music yeah

no so yeah but I was wandering uh you know just on the road kind of thing hey can we back up a second

we've been talking about because

We've all known each other, but we knew each other while we were rehearsing and laughing and gambling.

So I had no idea what Woody was like when he was the seven, eight, nine, 12, whatever year old.

What was that age?

What were you doing at that age?

What was your life like?

Were you running out the door and coming back?

And you know, that was a nice sound.

Nice sound.

That was me running out the door.

No.

Johnny, come back.

Yeah,

what was that like?

Oh, I did.

I grew up in Bridgeport,

which is a factory town.

But

we grew up right on the water, but

there was nothing

sumptuous about it.

it would say we grew up on the water yeah but there was a shipyard right across the street and one down the end of this street one down the end of this street so it was mostly uh utilitarian water things right so i was around people you know building boats repairing boats buying boats selling boats at what age

zero right on wow

that's where you learned the carpentry skills working on boats yeah well that's where i was i guess i i in thinking about it.

That's probably where my interest started.

But then when I got to middle school, we actually had shop classes,

and Mr.

Banny said, oh, no, he's uses cross-cut saw for that or a rip saw.

And you started learning about tools.

And you tried to do it right, too, because he had really bad breath.

So when he was leaning over your shoulder,

your eyes would water.

And so he wanted to do it right.

But I always enjoyed it.

Then when I went to England,

I don't know how old I was, 20, but that's how I made a living over there.

It was a carpenter.

I go to different building sites.

Was that before you got bitten by the acting bug or the comedy or whatever?

How did that fit in?

Because I know you traveled around.

The acting bug,

I had done some in college.

But I never thought you could make a living at this stuff.

And

in england there a a buddy of mine from college ray has it who went on later years to become a very well highly decorated uh sheriff uh policeman in uh in new haven connecticut um but he and i toured europe oh this is the sal's meat market sales meat market yeah and so we uh we we got a pretty good reputation the monty python guys that come to our shows and remember bob hoskins you know he'd always be in our audience, guys like that.

And

but then I came over here, Ray went another direction, but

I mean, he's a movie, that guy, undercover stuff.

And

yeah, but,

you know, then

cheers.

But before that, you also did every

you played every American soldier in every war movie known to man.

Well, because

the dollar was very strong against the pound when I was over there.

So they were making a lot of American movies.

So I was the right height, weight, size,

look to fit into a uniform.

So every movie, I did the 30-something movies over there, and everyone was a uniform.

Like ragtime, I was a fireman, Bridge Too Far, Gandhi,

yada, yada, yada.

I was always a uniform of some kind.

Yeah.

But then the ultimate uniform, the mailman.

The garrulous mailman.

The garrulous.

That's not fair.

He was way more than garrulous.

Yeah, garrulous is interesting.

Yeah.

But

I love the way your audition went.

Because then you come in and auditioned for the George part, for Norm part.

I don't know.

Or different.

I guess, yeah, I just, because I never auditioned.

I'd been working 10 years straight in Europe, non-stop.

Not once did I ever audition.

And I didn't go to acting school.

So I didn't, no one taught me what I was supposed to do.

So I walked into the office.

Remember, there was Jimmy, Les and Glenn, a couple other people.

And, but, you know, they're sitting there like,

you know, like, show me your stuff.

And I remember thinking, oh, that's probably why they gave me these scripts.

So I did a horrible job.

So I was walking out the door, literally walking out the door.

And I don't know whether this is my fantasy or it happened in reality, but I could have sworn that my 8x10 was going like this into the wastebasket.

But I stopped and said, do you have a bar?

No it all.

But that was the writer part of me asking.

And it was Glenn who said, what are you talking about?

I said, Every bar that I've ever been in in New England, anyway, has some horse's ass

who pretends to know everything,

but everybody defers to that person anyway.

And because,

you know, when I go

find my dad, tell him when dinner was ready.

You know, there's always one guy in the bar.

And my father's was this guy named Sarge.

Hey, Sarge, what's the length of a whale's intestine?

Bayleen or blue?

And even as a kid, I thought that was hysterical.

So,

yeah, so I just picked up on that kind of character.

And I think I used a ballpoint pen from the desk in there

and explained why the Bic pen was originally called a bitch pen

and why they had to take the H off, which is a true story, by the way.

No.

Two brothers, French brothers, the Bitch brothers, B-I-C-H.

And somebody said, so they started a pen company.

And somebody goes, you know,

you might want to take the H off of that.

Okay, now you have to raise your hand.

Is this a true story?

All right.

All right.

Wow.

I remember.

That's a great story.

Yeah.

Well, I've always been a

collector of arcade thoughts and facts.

You know, So and so I get kicked out of it.

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When you did the audition and you're leaving and then you go, then you say the thing about the bar know-it-all.

So, what was their response?

Oh, well, they were laughing.

That was the only reason I did that because, again, I had a great career going in Europe and big audiences.

And, you know, I was toast to the town back there.

But I didn't want to leave that office, have them think I was some kind of Momo, you know, just some.

some some guy, some actor, because I knew what I was doing, but I needed to make them them laugh before I left

to regain my dignity.

Because

it was just in shatters all over the carpet from my audition.

So that's the only reason I did it.

Two days later, I got a call.

Did, wait, but did you get laugh?

Did they laugh?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So you knew you were.

Well, I wouldn't do a whole character.

Yeah.

Because it's those characters always, you know, the eyebrows go, you know.

You know, you got the,

there's all kinds of convoluted motion that goes with it.

And there's a cop

who's a father of a buddy of mine growing up, and he was like that too.

And I always used to make fun of him.

And so I mixed them all up.

And boom, boom, boom.

Johnny, it was a brilliant character.

It truly was.

You made me laugh so hard.

I can go back and reruns.

You make me laugh.

I just, I love those types of that.

You know,

it's sort of the pompous individual everybody knows he's full of it but yet you okay let's listen to him and pretend that he's right now another influence because you told me this and you actually got me to start watching his movies jacques tatty oh jacques tatty yeah tell me first a little bit about him oh it's uh uh just after

Second World War, he started making movies, but he's the reason that I had the wardrobe guy at Cheers lift up my pant, like the cuffs.

You can see the white socks.

It's because of Jacques Tati.

Because Jacques Tati, and a lot of his, he didn't hardly talk,

but he just walked across the room and just his body language and the way he looked, other people would stare and, you know, change.

He actually would start like a knock.

you know, drink down on the dog and the dog would

and just the whole, it'd be chaos.

Yeah.

And all he had to do was walk walk through a room.

I just thought, how brilliant that is.

But as a matter of fact, I was thinking about him last night.

I'm in this hotel up here in Hollywood, and they got all these knobs and buttons, and I couldn't turn off the light.

I was like, what the hell?

But Jacques Tati did a movie called Mononc.

It's all that.

There's all this modern doodads and squiggles and spigots.

But it's funny you've mentioned that.

I was just thinking about that last night.

We haven't talked a lot about, I mean, we have talked a lot about cheers, but these are some silly questions.

Like, do you have favorite moments?

Do you have favorite episodes?

Do you have anything?

Oh, but cheers?

Yeah.

I can't think of a time that a day that wasn't favorite.

It just seemed like it just got better and better.

I really enjoyed

the read-through of the scripts.

Like they would send us a script about on Friday or the weekend

so that we would have it in front of us Monday.

I never opened it.

I would go in to work with you guys, not having read the script.

And so I could just, so every time you turned the page, it was like a little Christmas present.

Yeah.

Because I love the way the writing, you never saw it coming.

Yeah.

Whereas most sitcoms, you can see it a mile away.

You know what's going to happen.

But with cheers, you just,

you didn't see it coming.

Yeah.

And so I just thought I got kicked out of that.

But that was one of my favorite moments every week.

I'm going to tell you some of my favorite moments, squeaky shoes.

I was thinking about that thing.

Yeah.

That was one of the things.

You directed that.

I did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that was one of my favorites too.

Yeah.

an entire bar walking around looking at their feet with squeaker, little handheld squeakers to make the shoe look.

Yeah, I had the

prop guy cut the squeakers out of toys so each actor had his own octave.

Because I know if they did it in post-production, it'd be the same octave, the same sound.

Not funny, but what the actors were in charge.

If you look at the right hands of all you guys, you'll see some people squeezing it.

What else did you direct?

Oh,

about a half hour.

Yeah, about a half hour.

And

then I made the great

career move of moving my family up to an island in Washington state.

Yeah.

The agents didn't like that because I was getting a lot of offers to direct.

I made a lot.

And so I was with William Morris at the time.

And I said, well, I'm going to move my family up to start a little farm up in Washington on an island.

He said, what?

Well, yeah, I mean, just call me.

I'll come down.

And, you know, I thought

it was easy.

You know, just call.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I'll be there.

It doesn't work like that.

You actually have to talk to people.

But so that's kind of when.

What did you do, though, up there?

Were you farming?

Were you?

Well, like I said, I grew up in and around boats.

So we always had boats.

And

my son and I,

I remember the first fish he caught, we were this in this

boat,

a Cape Cod cat boat I had built.

Anyway, he's reeling it in, reeling it in.

He looks over, and it's a shark.

But it's like a sand shark, not a big deal.

And he was like five, six, he was dead.

It's a shark.

And I remember that scene from Bambi where Bambi's father's, get up bambi when the fire's coming right you can do it son you can that's what i did with my son i said reel it in jim you can do it he wanted me to reel it in for him but i remember the look of pride on his face when he reeled it in himself and held it up like that so that's the reason i went because you can't do that here yeah

and i got this set of skills that I don't translate to raising children here.

So I had to bring him to a place that I knew well, you know, like crabbing,

sailing.

And,

you know,

oh, I remember going to pick up my

kids at school, and Jim jumps in the car.

And he says, Where's Nina?

I said, I don't know.

I look

about

20 yards away, there's a huge pine tree with a lot of kids under the pine tree looking up.

And I said,

I think I know where she is.

She was at the, it was like 80 feet in the air.

Wow.

Nina, just four or five years old.

This is a sign of climbed a pine tree.

You know, but that's the reason.

Yeah.

To expose them to that.

Just, there it is.

Go do it.

Hey, now that we're talking boats a little bit and we have the major culprit sitting next to me.

Woody Harrelson.

Come on.

Let's revisit the story just one more time.

I don't know from Johnny's perspective.

He was pleased.

He was irritated.

We were dying.

And you were irritated.

So

set it up.

I was

a little afraid.

Well, let us back up just for a second.

We decided, all the boys at Cheers decided to play hookie, first bad thing we'd ever done.

And it was like, I think our fifth year or something like that.

And we weren't heavy in the script.

It was Shelly and Rhea.

And we called Rhea that night and said,

heads up, we're going to play hookie.

And

we all decided to meet down.

This is Long Beach where the boat was.

Yeah.

And it was a Boston whaler that you had or something.

Oh, no.

Boston Whale is a little boat.

This is a Grand Banks.

Wow.

It's a 42-foot trawler.

Yeah.

It was very impressive.

So

we go there.

I think Woody and I are stoned already on marijuana.

And we stopped by to pick up

Kelsey, who who had been up all night.

And then we all piled, you know, to the dock.

We got to a telephone booth and we called Jimmy Burrows, the director, and said, Jimmy, I'm not feeling good.

I'm not coming in.

Hold on one second.

Then you pass it to the next guy in line.

He was not amused.

And then we got on the boat.

By now, having no breakfast,

I'm hungry.

And Woody says, have you ever had mushrooms?

Would you like some mushrooms?

And I thought, yeah.

I mean, we're going to be on a boat.

We're not answerable to anybody.

Yes.

And in my kind of hunger, I remember it was two or three handfuls that tasted pretty good.

Hard cut to, I don't know, half hour later.

And we were at the tail end of weather that had come up from Mexico, right?

That was on the way back.

Oh, but it was.

Well, it was bumpy.

I thought it was bumpy.

Not bumpy.

No, it seemed like it was.

Okay, my mushrooms were bumpy.

Let me put it that way.

Something was bumpy.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're called waves.

The ocean has them a lot.

Yeah, so you should have told me that before I go on.

Anyway,

I look at Woody and Woody stretches out and I think, oh my God, he's so used to this.

He stretches out in a bunk and I am dying.

I have trouble breathing and I am just dying.

So I go up.

to where you and George went, were sitting.

You were piloting and you both looked at me and went, oh, fuck.

You know, what did you do?

I had some mushrooms.

And I sat next to George, and every 30 seconds, he would go tap me and go, breathe.

And I go,

because I would forget.

You'd just be holding your breath.

I remember that.

You were like holding your breath for a long period.

And I thought you were fine, but you finally came up because you were afraid you were contemplating jumping off the back of the boat.

Anyway, woof.

Never had a mushroom again.

Yeah, good.

Worst, worst experience.

And Kelsey was down below.

He was, he was racked.

Yeah, he was sound asleep.

He was sound asleep.

Catching some Z's.

So you two, George, Kelsey, and me.

Yeah.

Going to Catalina.

Yeah.

I enjoyed the ride back.

The ride back was fun.

Not for you, because you were

fighting some weather, but

this.

Yeah, coming back.

I remember we were on Catalina and I had my radio, carry my radio because I knew there was weather coming.

I just wanted to keep an eye on it.

And when they said, yeah, it's turning and it's going to be coming right down the channel.

I said to you guys, I remember we were at a Mexican restaurant.

I don't know if you're.

Yeah, yeah.

I said, look, we got to

stay the night

just to be safe.

Now, you're going to make this next part up, I can tell.

But go on.

You laying this on me?

No, I was, I wasn't going to do that.

Oh, thank you.

And

one of the members said, Oh, no, I got to get back because I'm going to go to a wedding.

And my wife's going to get back.

And then it was a whole litany of, I said, all right, we got to leave right this second.

So we scurried down to the tender that took us out to the boat, started the engines,

and got underway.

And

it was was horrible because

the weather was coming broadside to the boat.

And as a captain, what you do is you go this way, the way the waves are going.

So I said, Well, we can put into

you know, go up to Ventura or Oxnard or just because that's where the wind's blowing us, and it's that's safer.

Because then you're just going like that, and that's fine because that boat would take it.

It's built for heavy weather.

And no, couldn't because the cars were there in Long Beach.

But so the boats, I remember the props cavitating that it was because there's two engines, two props, and the boats

and you can hear the props spinning out of the water.

And I remember thinking, Tomorrow's papers are going to say Cliff Kills Cast of Cheers.

That we're going under.

And we, I mean, obviously, we made it back, but that was something good, good navigating.

Well, it was really good.

You asked me to sit up in the prowl.

Well, yeah, towards the end, there

when we were coming in on just to keep an eye out for buoys and things

to make sure we were in the right spot.

And

yeah, yeah, that was.

Oh, and

one of the members of the crew had opened the refrigerator, but forgot to latch it.

Woody?

Was that you?

Was it

Woody?

I forget who it was.

But when the boat pitched, everything.

Everything went on.

All the bottles broke, beer bottles.

So there's now got glass,

broken glass and beer.

like this.

And so I'm stuck at the wheel.

And so if anything happened, I can't even walk because it's all broken glass snushing behind me.

We're a mess.

It was something.

It was different.

I think it was the last time you invited us on any of your boats.

Oh, absolutely.

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Have you ever been scared for your life on a boat?

Oh, yeah.

Tell me.

Well, there's one side I...

The one that comes to mind when I was a deck in on an oyster boat.

And it went out.

out.

It's like farming oysters.

You got the small oysters and then you

dredge them up and you put them somewhere else.

But it was in the winter and there was a storm

and I had to go out on the outside of the boat to open up what's called the scuppers

that

you rinse the

oysters out.

Anyway, my hand missed the thing

and I was going.

I had my full oilers on, the

rain gear and boots.

So I was like this and my entire life flashed in front of me.

I had never.

You're about to fall off the side.

Knowing that, because it was winter, it was a storm.

It was just me and the skipper on the boat and he couldn't hear me because of the engine.

So I could yell and scream all I wanted, but there's no way.

It'd take like a half hour until he says, where the hell is that guy?

You know, that he, you know, wouldn't be able to find me.

But

I, it took, but I was going, I was dead.

Because I knew as soon as I hit the water, I knew enough that, because with what I had on, I'd sink like a stone.

Cold water, all that.

But God and his wisdom sent a wave on the other side of the boat that tipped the boat more my way, and I was able to grab.

the boat.

But it's like God's hand tipped the boat just enough for me to grab on.

Wow, I got it on.

And then I went down below just to sit on a bunk.

And the skipper came, this old grumpy guy, so what the hell are you doing?

Oh my God.

Because apparently, I was white as that sheet of paper.

Yeah.

So he poured me a shot of whiskey and I knocked it back.

And, but that, yeah, I was almost gone then.

I, I, that happened a few times, different scenarios

on the roof of a building and stuff like that motorcycles motorcycle crash yeah

tell us about the motorcycle crash

well i i i drove a a a a harley uh here in los angeles and

um

and i wasn't really a biker just something to do

and and uh uh I was asked by a fellow who became a good friend of mine, Butch Starnes, down in Florida.

He was the president of the Nom Knights, Vietnam Veterans on Harley's, basically.

They were having a big fundraiser to raise money for diabetes research.

And

as you may or may not know, I was a big part of that nationwide.

And

so

he picked me up at the airport

and he says, You want to go out for a

drink or something?

I said, Yeah, oh, sure.

I didn't know it, but he had owned like six strip clubs

and there's four for life.

So we had to go to each one.

And anyway, it wasn't until.

The fourth or fifth one that you caught on?

No, it wasn't until, you know,

when the sun was coming up, I was just getting to bed.

And then he wakes me up a couple of hours later.

He says, okay, we've got to go pick up your bike because they had rented one identical to the one I drove here for me to lead off this

procession.

I said, Yeah, okay, sure.

You know, I didn't want to say, Oh, we're going to sleep.

Okay, yeah,

and uh, I got on the bike, and uh, my head is still spinning, I shouldn't have been on a bike at all.

But we get on the highway, and he takes off.

He had to be going 125, him, him, and some other guy,

And

I'll catch up to him.

And

I came around and

going to hit the gravel,

bumped, bumped, bumped, bumped.

And I remember thinking of my kids.

My last thought was

just a picture of both of my kids.

I'll never see them again.

Anyway, so now I'm laying down and I got to make it to the side because there's traffic coming behind me and I make it to the little grass area.

And a woman who, I think someone told me later that she was a nurse.

She'd come over and she'd look down at me and

see if she could help.

And she came this far from my face, went,

oh, wow.

Encouraging.

That's not what you want.

And I remember saying to her, thanks for stopping by, ma'am.

I'll take it from here.

So anyway, my friend Butch, he had seen my bike up in the air in his rearview mirror.

and so he circled back around and then the ambulance showed up and he said to

you know the and they're put meeting you know on the stretcher and one of them looks as to the other guy you know who this is

And now they're talking about favorite Cheers episodes.

I'm just close to bleeding to death, right?

So Butch, God bless him, said, you know, put him in the ambulance, get him out of here.

And then Butch said, where are you taking him?

They said, we're taking him to County.

Now, County is where, you know, they use old rusty can openers.

And

you don't want to go to County anywhere in the world.

And he says, no, take him to Orlando Regional.

And the guy said, don't tell me what to do.

We're taking him to County.

It's closer.

And I wasn't in any shape to argue.

So they shut the doors and we're going down the highway and the radio crackles.

It's the chief of the fire department

saying,

Where are you taking him?

They said, County.

And then the chief says, Didn't Mr.

Starnes tell you to take him to Orano Regional?

Oh, wow.

He says, Yes, sir, he did.

He says, Well, you do whatever Mr.

Starnes tells you.

Don't we go across the verge again?

And I was so lucky, again, the hand of God was there with me

that there was a

symposium or a convention of the top ankle surgeons in the state or in the country.

And

so I had top people working on my, because my foot was,

if I hadn't been wearing boots laced up, I would have lost my foot.

So they patched it all together and, you know, went down to the hardware store.

got some metal and bolts and stuff.

And

so, yeah, I was in the hospital for a while.

Let me back up again.

I'm jumping around.

Who do you think had the most impact on you from growing up, your father, your parents, whoever, to make you be

this John Ratzenberger, if you could?

Oh, I've never been asked that before.

That's a big question.

You know,

later on in life, you learn, you know, it's not the falling down, it's the how you get back up.

And

I think in my time in Europe,

because there was no,

except for my buddy Ray and

his girlfriend at the time, there was no backup.

There was no, you're on your own.

There's no going home and getting your laundry done.

You're completely on your own.

And that goes a long way in

forming somebody.

But

a Ray from the South's meat market.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because he had already been over there

working as a social worker.

But also in growing up, again, it's after World War II,

and a lot of these guys, my father included, came back with PTSD.

But nobody knew because they didn't call it PTSD.

They called it shell shock.

And you were supposed to just get over it and just shake it off.

Right.

Well, I remember stepping over friends' fathers

on the way to school in the morning.

You know, I remember one that was sprayed across

the curb just as you got to the crosswalk and kids were stepping over them.

you know, to go to school.

But

most of the fathers in the neighborhood were, yeah, I mean, that's the bar was their clubhouse, and so you had to, you know,

that forms your personality, you know, dealing with that.

And it was the kind of town you kind of had to have eyes in the back of your head,

you know.

Um,

and you know, the

nuns

just,

I remember seeing a nun knock a kid out,

but it just she came up from her toes and an uppercut, and this kid went over a desk.

But he deserved it.

He really did deserve it.

I saw the whole thing.

You know, so did you grow up?

I go, yeah, well, okay.

So he got knocked out.

That's no big deal.

But

I don't know how to answer that.

Was your mother

a big ingredient in all of that in your life?

Well, yeah, she was

a cuddly one.

But what she would do,

she'd buy old

radios or appliances.

What do they call back then?

White elephant sales or

something.

Cut off the electrical cord, given to me.

And I'm four years old, five years old.

It's a couple of screwdrivers parties.

She's going to take it apart.

This is your mom.

That's incredible.

Wow.

And that was just,

so to me, that was a toy.

And then I graduated to a Rector Sets

and I was always fascinated with that.

But again, it was a background and stuff that I probably should have been an engineer that I could do all that stuff.

But I didn't know what an engineer was.

I thought he was the guy who drove a train.

But there's nobody in the whole school system who said, you know what?

You should be an engineer.

I wouldn't have known what the hell they're talking about.

My guidance concerned in high school, though, I'll never forget that.

I walk in her office and she said, What do you want?

Guidance counselor.

I guess I must have been a senior, junior.

I said, Well, I just wondered, you know, after high school, what I should be doing.

And there were pamphlets.

I mean, it was Tufts University and,

you know, Princeton.

I said, I'm not sure

whether I should be going to Tufts or be a doctor or Princeton.

I'm just busting her chops

because I know I'm not going to Tufts.

So she only said,

get out of my office.

Now she's screaming.

And she's standing up and she had veins.

Oh, get out of my eyes.

Vice principal goes running in.

What's about?

Anyway, that's what it was.

But

there was a new university opening up nearby, and they needed butts for seats.

So I applied there and got in.

I think, as long as your socks matched,

you know, they let you.

I mean, it's a big deal university now.

They actually did it right.

It's a very well-known place.

But

my,

I forget what year it was, maybe my junior year,

one of my professors had to go do something family-related out of state.

He said, John, will you take over my class for a couple of weeks?

And

because I mean, after all was said and done, once I dusted everything off, I had a brain.

So he said, Can you take over my class for a couple of weeks?

Sure.

So I remember going out and getting a 3D suit and a briefcase.

And now I was going to be a college professor.

Oh, this is after I graduated.

That's right.

So

I think the suitcase had a bologna sandwich in it.

That was like.

And so I walked in the amphitheater.

It was, you know,

I stood at the podium and I looked down and there's my high school guidance counselor.

Oh, wow.

Who told me, Ratzenberger, get a job in some factory, find somebody to marry you if you can, and try to stay out of jail.

That was my guidance.

That's my guidance.

Those are three good guide posts.

That was my high school.

Okay, it wasn't like, you know, you're going to be great out there.

Yeah.

But there she is now.

And I'm her teacher in college.

So I say, hey, Mrs.

So-and-so, how you doing?

And she looked up, her eyes got wide.

I think she started to sweat and maybe cry.

But she never saw her again.

She didn't come back to another class.

So, when did you find out, like along the way, like high school or whatever, when did you find out you were funny?

Like, were you ever like the class clown?

Yeah, but I was surrounded by guys like that, Bobby Garimella,

Gil Zawatski.

It's just,

I mean, even in high school, we

before the teacher came in, make up stuff, I said to one of the guys,

go downstairs, third floor, go down to the parking lot, get on top of the car, and spray yourself like you jumped out of the window onto the car.

So he did.

Teacher comes in, and there's a bunch of us at the window, going, oh my God, he jumped.

Oh, my God.

She looked what she looked down and she screamed, ah,

runs down out.

Pow got the principal,

and uh

says, Hey,

come on.

So he jumped off and came back up another stairway.

And uh,

yeah, just stuff like that.

It just seemed harmless.

Hey, might as well

something to do, sort of, you know,

just stuff.

I love you are a bundle,

like we all are.

But one thing that I love is I always, because sometimes we're so different in many ways.

I did not,

I had an easier upbringing, you know, I think in some ways.

Well, your father was an archaeologist, right?

Right.

Yep.

And all of that stuff.

But what I'm driving at is

whenever I see you and I haven't seen you for a while, there's that, I mean, I grab you, I hug you, and we both laugh and giggle over just all the fun we had on chairs and all the memories.

You've got that soft giggler inside of you.

Oh, yeah, which I love.

I mean, you're a cream puff.

Even to raise some kids, I would look for ways to embarrass them.

In public, I would just

to make them laugh.

Just to make yourself laugh.

Well, no, just to, well, this, you know, they deserve this.

I'm picking up my daughter

from high school.

And the door to the high school is like that wall.

Everyone's coming out of there.

So I pull the car up right here.

I'm no more than 25 feet.

I get out of the car.

Stand there.

Everyone's coming out.

Here's my daughter with her friends right there.

I go, honey, honey, I'm over here.

I'm right here.

There's no other parent anywhere.

And there's no way she can miss me.

Honey, can you see?

I'm here.

I'm here by the car.

You see the car?

Come on.

Honey.

And she just, she goes like this.

Oh, no, that's my fault.

But her friends would go, they'd be hysterical, laughing.

But I really enjoyed that.

I noticed with my grandkids, all my silly jokes that worked great great when they're five, six.

Yeah.

So,

man, I can't get the 11-year-old to laugh at any of my stupid jokes anymore.

Male or female?

Female.

I'll find another way.

Don't worry.

But

embarrassing them at school helps.

I'll try that.

Try it.

I embarrass my daughter all the time.

How old are you?

She's sitting right over there.

She's 17.

Yeah.

I'm one of your dad's old buddies from the old days when we were in the army.

But she really, she has done some serious eye rolling for me like

many a times.

I've given her eyes immense amount of exercise.

That's, I don't know.

I embarrass her, but not intentionally.

Oh, I always do it intentionally.

I think they need it.

Mary follows behind me in life going.

He was kidding.

That was a joke.

He was kidding.

What he meant was, you know, because you do love to kind of push the envelope and say the most slightly inappropriate thing you can find.

Well, yeah, that's true.

That's a good point.

I remember picking my daughter up.

So she was in a

high-end middle school where

when the kids are picked up, it's either by the chauffeurs picking them up or a maid or, you know, a limousine.

I mean, it was high-end stuff.

Well, I had the, I was putting in a basketball court at our house, and

I decided to take the truck that I had the,

what do you call it, Bobcat?

Yeah, a little small bulldozer.

So it's a big diesel flatbed.

So I picked her up in that from school.

She still remembers.

Oh, Mercedes Porsche, my

diesel truck.

And she just looked at him.

Oh, dad.

But she jumped up and, you know, rode home in it.

I think at the end of the day, they were kind of,

they liked it.

Yeah.

And let me switch gears one second because I want to talk about Pixar.

You've just had an astounding kind of run with Pixar.

How do you, I mean, how do you feel about all that?

Well, it's just I, you know, showed up.

And did it and

became good friends with them.

So they asked me to do everyone.

You like their good luck.

You're talisman for that.

Not anymore.

I don't work with Pixar anymore.

Oh, really?

I think because.

Once you made them big, they just.

Yeah.

Who needs a lucky charm?

No, I think, well, because there was a change of

hierarchy.

And I guess the new guys

didn't want the lucky charm.

But I still work with John Lasseter over at Skydance.

Yeah.

That's the company that makes

Jack Reacher, Mission Impossible, and

all that stuff.

So they have an animation wing, and John's running that wing.

So I work with him there.

Just doing voices.

I cannot get arrested in any kind of voiceover work.

I'll come in and audition.

They go, that's great, man.

You should be doing this a lot.

Then I never hear from them.

It's kind of, I kind of love it because it feels like I'm starting over in one area, but I I cannot get arrested.

See, I find that strange.

Thank you.

He's got a great voice, though.

Great voice.

Yeah, well, you know,

both of you.

I'll put a word in.

Please.

Would you talk to John?

Now, what about the, I remember when you were first doing the sizzle pack.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

That's great.

That thing, that.

that and then i saw it everywhere i still see it everywhere oh it's all over the world yeah

sizzle pack.

Describe it.

It's instead of styrofoam and all that horrible stuff that doesn't go away.

It's a paper, like little.

Well, you can describe it better.

No, it's the same paper that paper bag is made from craft paper.

You take a strip of it and then fold it back on itself.

You accordionize it, and

paper's the memory wants to get back to its original shape.

You put a lot of them together, they interlock.

So it's a perfect medium for shipping fragile items.

And I started that company up in Seattle and then sold.

But that included like a factory

making all this.

So it was walking.

Oh, you made the machines even.

You helped design the machines.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you, mom.

Thank you, mom.

Oh, really?

But it was just,

you know, then I sold the company and

then they sold the company and they sold.

So it's somebody is, I don't know who's in charge now, but it's

worldwide now.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was brilliant.

I remember that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't get paid a cent anymore.

So whatever work you guys can throw my way, I appreciate it.

Shit, we are

counting up.

We need a minimum for paper.

Now, you know, when the

other thing you taught me that I I'll never forget was one day you came in and you were saying that you'd been up north or something and you and

or in Montana or somewhere.

And you said, you know, that those national parks have like a scenic strip that's maybe a hundred yards and the rest is just freaking clear cut.

And that they were clear cutting our national forests.

Remember?

Oregon, yeah.

Oregon.

And

I was like,

well, nobody wanted to believe that.

None of us wanted to believe that.

But then I went up there and I was like, oh my freaking God.

Is that when you sat in a tree for a week or something?

Didn't you do that one?

He climbed the Golden Gate Bridge.

Yeah, well, that was, yeah, that was for the Redwoods.

But I had never, I had never, I mean, you can't even imagine that the United States government is selling for like, I don't know, $8 a tree, these giant, beautiful, amazing fucking trees to the big companies.

And, you know, you can go into the guy's office.

And

I went into the office of one guy who was the head head of the interior.

Anyway, there was like a message from Reagan saying, congratulations on cutting so many bored feet out of the forest, you know, and I'm like, you know,

it just everything.

And it didn't create that many jobs.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think a lot of that wood then got shipped to be milled overseas.

Right.

Right.

The law was you can't

ship a whole tree.

It has to be milled.

So, what they would do to get around that law, they just cut this white of a patch down the side of the tree.

So, now legally,

you can ship it.

And they would ship it to Japanese

milling ships just out off the coast here.

After the 12-mile,

they would turn it into wooden boards and sell it back to us.

Yeah.

So, we were creating no jobs except for the.

No.

And

one other thing I wanted wanted to mention you said uh

you that you got the place in uh and uh outs or out near palm spring mirage rancho mirage rancho mirage and why did you say you wanted to get that place yeah so when they come to visit you

oh he's not answering

look at him it's that smell

oh that's yeah so there's you know somebody find the body otherwise i'll be there for months

i I love that morbid humor.

Just stick it up the place.

Yeah, no, it's important because it's just because I was just with my daughter and two granddaughters this weekend.

They came out to the hotel I was staying at out in Westlake.

And

it's just, you know,

just watching them and listening to them.

And them at night going out on the balcony pretending they were dogs.

you know, barking at the people in the swimming pool.

That friend's great.

It's what what they should do.

Yeah.

And oh, also, my daughter, she was saying

how much she enjoyed your Christmas cards.

Oh, you danced.

You remember this?

We sent out the cards that

he and Mary and the family were dressed as a dance troupe.

We didn't actually dance.

We did dance poses.

Right.

That's what we were famous for.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then the next year you sent out the

CD of the backstory.

This is my wife, Mary.

We actually had full-on wardrobe department and catering for that particular shoe.

Well, yeah, Nina said the thank you.

She got a big kick out of that.

I am so appreciative of that compliment.

Please tell her thank you.

Now, tell the truth on this one.

Do you ever watch Cheers episodes?

Not when we were making them.

No, now.

If I can find them, why do they do that?

Why do they have our show on at four in the morning?

And you got King of Queens and everybody loves Raymond, you know,

friends, bum, bum, bum, all day long, one right after the other.

But for us, it's 4.30 in the morning.

Is that why I ain't been seeing any residuals on this, Delio?

Probably.

Yeah, probably.

But really, that's, that's,

because again, you know,

I just did 4,000 miles and hotels and stuff.

There's no chairs anywhere, but all those other ones, you know, so I was, I always wondered that why.

I think you can still find it, but it's, it's getting harder.

But you shouldn't have to search that hard for it.

Yeah, I agree.

Well, I was wondering why they did that if there was a reason.

You would know.

I think that's when that age group gets up to P and they're hoping the TV will be on and they'll notice.

Oh, right.

Probably.

Oh, look, there I am.

Johnny, much love.

Yeah.

Much appreciation.

God bless you both.

Cannot tell you how many times you've made me laugh since my job show.

I mean, just watching old episodes, you are one funny, funny man.

So really fucking funny, man.

That was the great John Ratzenberger.

Thank you, John, so much for spending that time with me and Woody.

We appreciate you so much.

That's it for this episode.

Thanks to our friends at Team Coco.

Once again, you can subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast app, and you can give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcast if you have some time.

If you don't have time, don't.

If you like watching your podcast, don't forget you can watch this episode in its entirety on YouTube.

See you right back here next week where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Dancing and Woody Harrelson.

sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Liao.

Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer.

Our senior producer is Matt Apadaka.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grault.

Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Genn, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

Special thanks to Willie Navarre.

We'll have more for you next time where everybody knows your name.

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