Ed Begley Jr.

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Not available in all states. It is a miracle that you're sitting here.

It is a miracle. It's easy.
How did I live through that? Somebody was looking out for you, man.

Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name. Today I'm joined once again by my wife, Mary Steenberg.

She's with me because we're talking to a close friend of both of ours, one of the most unique people we know, Ed Begley Jr.

As an actor, Ed is in rare company.

He's been steadily working since the 1960s in both TV and film, delighting us in movies like This Is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, as well as shows like Arrested Development and Better Call Saul.

But if you ask me, What truly makes Ed special is that he practices what he believes. Ed was an outspoken environmentalist long before it was cool.

You might have heard that he rides the subway to the Oscars because he believes in public transportation, or that he lives in a solar-powered home and has a bicycle that he rides to toast his bread.

All of it. True.
And he's an incredible advocate behind the scenes as well. Ed is also one of the smartest people we know.
like a beautiful mind type of smart.

He's authored several books, the latest of which is a memoir. It's called To the Temple of Tranquility and Step on It.
Here's our friend Ed Bakeley Jr.

Ed Yakity Schmackety, Yakity Schmackety. I'll be talking about like that, and I will eat the mic, as they say.

Tell me again about this Yakity Schmackety. What is this? I'm not sure.
It's just what I say when they say, can we have a, can you count to five? I never want to do that.

I go, Yacity Schmackety, Yakati Schmackety.

Ed Begley has all started for me at a little theater in North Hollywood. Pure Gint was a play.
and I just keep talking until they slap me.

And we're off and running with Ed Begley. Thank you so much.
Thanks for remembering.

As you can see, podcast listeners can't, but Mary Steen Burger is sitting next to me. You're one lucky man.
Do you know that? I do know that. I do know that.
You've married above your station.

So far above. But so have I.
Yes. Yes.
Twice. I did it twice.
Rochelle is an astounding. That's right.
Astounding. She's pretty great.
Don't tell her that.

We're going to get to her, not to worry but it just felt so perfect that you and mary uh well it was mary's first film and you were in it going south

he was in the first scene of my first film going south remember nesta too the wonderful cameraman nesta alamendros yes he was so great there looking at his sunglasses to see the where the clouds were and this you know the sun in and out of the clouds and he'd look at the reflection and sunglasses okay you roll now roll now please roll now please go ahead and then it'd it'd be lighter, whatever he wanted behind the clouds, I think, is what he wanted.

Instead of looking directly at the sun, instead of looking at the sun as I would, and most people would. Oh, yeah, it's coming.
This cloud's going to move in a second.

Let me just stare some more at the sun until we get it. And I wonder why I have glaucoma and everything else.

But he, I remember

Jack Nicholson telling me how lucky I was that I was going to be shot by the great Nestor El Mendras in my first film. Of course, I had no clue about anything because it was my first film.

And I, uh, they put me up at the Chateau Marmont. You know, that was my first home in LA.
And I'm leaving one day. And at the desk, I hear this man saying, I'm checking in.
I'm Nestor Almendros. And

I introduced myself to him. And

he had the thickest pair of glasses I've ever seen that he could barely, it looked like he could barely see through.

And yet, somehow he was the world's most astounding,

you know, bender of light to

knowing exactly what to do with light. And he was such a lovely man.
And we're talking, what date, when was this? 77. 1977.

And going south, and you guys were in Durango Durango shooting this movie. We did.
We shot it in Durango Durango. Yeah.

And the first day of the first scene was you and me and the other ex-moon gang and Jack. And

was Tracy Walter in that scene too?

I think so. I know Chris Lloyd was.

I think he was the first person that ever actually spoke to me on film.

He said it was something like,

I try to get you to date me. You won't give me the flap of your umbrella.

Something like that. That's exactly right.

That's exactly. How do I remember that? That's kind of terrifying.
I think you have scary problems. We're going to talk about your brain.
Yeah, you have scary people. Yeah.

And yeah, that was that was an amazing time. It was sure great for me.
Yeah.

I think I met you first in some environmental save. Yes.
Some bay, probably heal the bay or something. That's where it was.
Yeah. But then we've, we've been able to work together

several times. Several times.
Yeah. For you, it's many.
For me, it's I want more.

Looks like I got to work with this turkey again.

Thank you for the job. And Mr.
Mayor, you get to deduct me on your income tax.

This humble pie will not work with us, Ed Bankley. We show up at his birthday party, I don't know, two, three years ago.
And I thought, oh, this will be sweet. We'll go see our friend Ed.

And all of Hollywood was there

in that room, celebrating. Waiting me to get to you is what was happening.
Yeah, see, here we go. Okay.

Hey, just to set people up, because your latest creation is a book that you've written called, what is it called? To the Temple of Tranquility and Step On It. And Step On It.

And you'll tell us about that title, but before, just to get people a sense of who you are, there's this wonderful opening sequence in the first chapter where you play this game of, I'm going to tell you people, the readers.

Can you read it from there?

Give it a try in this font size. I usually blow it up, but I can probably do it.

I'm going to list a bunch of true facts that I could have never imagined in 1965, but I swear to you on my life, they are 100% verifiably true.

Okay, one of them is a lie. See if you can spot it.
I would have a career that would span seven decades and include hundreds of movies and TV shows.

I would discover that my brother Tom Begley was my cousin, not my brother. I would get to meet all four Beatles and even get to be friends with some of them.

I would smoke a joint with Charles Manson at the Spawn Ranch in Chatsworth. I would be stabbed, beaten, and hospitalized, waiting for a bus in Los Angeles.
I would buy my first electric car in 1970.

I would have a much improved electric car in 1993, one I sometimes charge at O.J. Simpson's house.
I would carry my dear friend Cesar Chavez through the streets of Delano.

I would serve several terms as governor in California for a total of 15 years.

I would regularly spend time with Groucho Marks in his home and occasionally enjoy a sleepover. I would play Trivia Pursuit with the Clintons and show them their first electric car.

I would also get to know and work with Kirk Douglas, Meryl Streep, Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Michael Caine, Billy Wilder, Richard Pryor, Dave Mammett, Jeff Goldman, Eric Idle, Denzel Washington, Buck Henry, Don Henley, Jane Fonda, Gina Davis, Daphne Coleman, Lily Tomlin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Vince Gilligan, John Cleese, Danny Glover, Harvey Keitel, William Hurt, Larry Kazen, Larry David, Angelica Houston,

Pam Greer, Penny Marshall, Alfred Wooder, Taylor Swift, Jeff Ridges,

Yafit Coda, Rob Reiner, and Christopher Guest. And of course, Malcolm McDowell.
I'm sorry. Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steen Burgen, and Ted Danson.

Hey, you son of a bitch, you added that for this reading. That's not in the book.

You left our names out. Because I write about you so extensively through the rest of of the book.
This is the B list. You're in the A list.
Oh, yeah, no. Boy, my God.
Go on, you fragile egos. Go on.

Is that the end of the list?

For now, until I get to your chapter, which is a big part of the book. What about the delivering rest? Oh, the rest.
Okay, okay. I'll read right to the very end.
Thank you. I always want to read more.

And most incredibly, at the very moment, the very second that my dad told me the shocking news about my mother, who was not my mother, we passed a driveway that led to two separate houses in the vicinity of Coldwater and Mulholland.

A driveway that over for 40 years was shared by Marlon Brando and that Roger Corman star in the motorcycle, Jack Nicholson. There would be many trips up and down that driveway over the years.

You see, I worked at Arts Deli on Ventura Boulevard, and I would deliver sandwiches to those talented gentlemen. Let me tell you, they were big tippers.
Okay, all right, thanks.

That's the end of the list. You guys can play.
Can you guess? Sorry, everyone who else is in the room here.

Anyone have any idea which one is the lie?

Yeah, come on. Come on.

The early electric car or electric car is that is unbelievable. To drive one in 1970 is kind of odd and weird, and most people don't believe that, but it's true.

It was called a tailored-dunn electric car. They still make electric cars to this day, but I should say electric carts with a T to this day, like a golf cart with a windshield wipe and horn, okay?

Yeah, that's what I had in 1970.

See, I would have picked governor, the obvious, you know, you were not governor of California, but I was governor in California, is what I actually said, not of California.

You'll soon learn governor of what in a later chapter. Nice.
But do you want to tell us now? Yes. It was that last one about Arts Deli.
That was total bullshit.

I never brought Marlin or Jack sandwiches, though I probably should have. That's the kind of thing you do for your friends.
It's really beautifully written.

It made me like flash back to the 60s and the 70s. You really created that feeling.
Yeah.

I'm surprised, though, that you can remember the 70s at all at Begley.

That's why there was the urgency to write it down and get it down with Hayden helping me with her little recorder and me writing it, you know, on my turning to my computer.

And that's when the keyboard became like a Ouija board, all this stuff, a Ouija board that actually works, you know. And I started to recall these things just by touching the keyboard.

I went, you know. I just started writing about like my friend James Jeremiah's, we studied cinematography at Valley College.

And pretty soon I went, but wait a minute, we went up into the Simi hills we went to visit his friend who lived in a tree house near a saloon and then we get into the story we get into which is kind of shocking is that the one

where we smoke a joint with charles man yeah tell that

give that please

give that story flesh that out a little bit my friend james is still my dear friend to this day i uh he was there that night at the uh at the live la talks a dear friend of mine we have lunch about once a week and uh we studied cinematography together we both went on to good careers in show business.

He became a local 80 grip for a while, and then he wrote a movie called Lost Boys, if you remember that movie, with Kiefer Sutherland and others. He wrote that.

And so we took this class for like $12 a semester or something and both got jobs. But one day he said, I want to go meet my friend Dave Curlin.
You want to come with me?

So we went over to Dave Curlin's house who lived in a tree house near a saloon. And we smoked a joint, but that's all we had.
We all wanted more because it was the 60s, 68 to be precise.

He said, my friends up the hill have some dope we went up and smoked dope with these people very nondescript group of people we'd never met before and probably would never meet again one of them had some songs he wanted some help with and but i didn't really know a lot of musicians or songwriters at that time so we left after a little while and exchanged pleasantries went back to the tree house next to the saloon.

I should probably should have mentioned that saloon was not a real saloon. It was part of a movie set at the Spahn Ranch.

So now you know who the people were.

The musician that wanted some help was Charles mansend and we smoked a joint with them and all the other people we saw in the newspaper james and i a year later after the horrible murders they committed and charles manseon instructed them to do we uh we met we saw them in the la times went wait a minute those are the people we smoked a joint with they're all killers waiting to wow to kill That must have been harrowing.

It was quite eerie. It was

so many times in my life, and that was the first one that it really hit me. I felt like, not that this movie had come out yet, but like the character Zelig, if you remember that movie, Zellig.

I think of you as Zellig, by the way. I am Zelig, I'm afraid.

Nobody knows how I got there in these historical situations, least of all me, or more like Forrest Gump. You know, I think I'm more like Forrest Gump or maybe Chauncey Gardner.
Yeah.

I think maybe a little bit more of that. But I get to be in these crazy situations, you know, with O.J.

Simpson and Robert Blake and, you know, gods and monsters, some wonderful people, the Beatles and Monty Python, and, you know, Eric Idle and John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

I knew them all very well and how lucky am I.

All right, let's back up.

Do you want to talk about the monsters or should we just talk about that? Maybe that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about.

All right. Can I just, can we jump around?

You mentioned a date just a minute ago, and it feels like you pulled that out of your head in this moment. You're nice to say head, by the way.
Thank you. Your mind.

But Mary reminded us earlier today that you have this uncanny knack. You describe describe it, Mary.
It's well, first of all, I think in many ways

you are the person I know with the most extraordinary brain.

And one of the things that's so rare about you is that you are, you know, truly brilliant, but you're also deeply lovable.

And that's not always true. Sometimes people are one or the other, but you're, you are this person that not one person I've ever known can say a bad word about.

And there's so much respect for you and for your acting. But I love your beautiful weird brain and the fact that,

and I'll go ahead and just say my age by saying this, for example, if I say to you, I was born February 8th, 1953.

Can you tell me what day of the week I was born? I think I can. I have to just do a little bit bit of math because I used to be very quick with it.
Yeah.

Okay.

And

I think it's a Sunday, but I'm not sure. That's correct.
Sorry.

I used to do it real quick. March 4th,

2023.

2023? 2022, rather.

March 4th, one second.

friday

is that correct that's correct what is mark what happened march 4th um our granddaughter uh turned nine how wonderful is that i got a couple of grandkids i got three grandkids how many you guys two we have three little girls that's a nice number yeah okay so this is not this is not magic this you can't don't explain it because it'll go over my head but it there is like a formula right harry nilson taught me this formula we were drunk at a bar in little tokyo in Los Angeles.

And he said, oh, I want to show you a fun trick. Pick a date on the calendar.
There's a calendar right there in the wall, he said, of the Japanese restaurant. And I rattle off a few dates.

He could do them all pretty quickly. So I thought it was somehow me looking at the calendar and when I would look at it,

how is he doing that? And he told me very quickly that it was 2551-36-140250. That's the trick right there, 2551-36-140250.

That's all you got to remember to do this year, which is a four now the it's a system of seven because there's seven days in a week right every four years is a leap year seven times four is 28 so it repeats every 28 years within the 28 years it repeats seven seven no sorry 11 11 6 11 11 6 11 11 6.

so you have to do some math to get the year harry nilsson could only do that year or maybe the year before the year that followed but i learned to do lots of years like 1953 I could do.

I just got to, I used to be fairly quick with it, but now I can do it. I just got to stumble for a while.

I digress my case.

I'm a little on the spectrum. We didn't know that word back when I was young, but I think I might do that.

You're a smack dab in the middle of the spectrum. You're not, you know, tiptoeing around it.

I just imagine people listening to this podcast and rewinding it and rewinding it and rewinding until they master it. I'm sure there are people out there that picked it right up.

Email me at Begley.com. I'll give you the formula.
25-50. What is amazing about that is you learned that while you were drunk.

And speaking of that time, I mean, you've been sober since 1979. 1979 this time.
1979 this time. And, but you sure weren't sober when I met you.
You guys. No, no, no, no.
Oh, my God.

We were shooting in Durango, Mexico, and we were all staying at the El Presidente Hotel. And

he was the,

you know,

you were an absolute, you know, hilarious darling drunk, but it wasn't that. I was a fixture in the bar.
You were a fixture in the bar. And I was on my first movie.

I'd never been in a movie, on a movie set in my life.

I'd studied acting, you know, for years with Sandy Meisner and done comedy improv, but I was in way over my head being the leading lady opposite Nicholas. You were sensational in that movie.

Well, thank you. But I was terrified.
And so

you guys would try to include include me, you know, in that bar at night. And I just couldn't hang out with you because all I could think of is I have to go stare at my lines.

I just have to, I can't do this. So I moved out of El Presidente and into a tiny house.
But you were so bad that who came to your, who actually tried to pull you out?

The sobering influence of my life was John Belusian.

I was so bad that John, and John is a great comedian. I want to remember him for that, for that and nothing more.

There are other things that people know about him, and I don't want to dwell on that, but he was a great comedian and a great friend.

And all I'll say is he saved me. And as

Judy, right? Judy Belushi, correct.

A lovely picture I took, a self-portrait and a portrait of all of us sitting there in Durango, Mexico that I took of all of us, Judy,

John, and Hal Trissell, the gaffer, if you remember Hal Trissell.

Lovely man. We were all out for the day when it was the day that John dragged me out of the President Day Conversation Pit bar.

The look on her face, because she'd leave early in the morning. I had all these off days, which is a nightmare for an alcoholic actor, you know, on location.

So she'd leave at six or seven in the morning, and she'd come back at seven or eight at night, and I'd still be in the same position in the bar with Shorty George Smith, Jack's kind of father figure,

you know,

guy. And he was a sweet man, a very dear man, married to Lorraine, you know, Jack's aunt.
And so

it was just, yeah, it was just crazy, crazy times. I lived through it somehow.

Let's jump ahead to the date that you said you became sober.

Why was that?

Were you in a hospital? Was this as a result of you being attacked? I can't remember.

No, this is where I attacked myself and I wound up at Cedar Sinai with an IV in my arm because I had taken so many pills, not as a suicide attempt, I just kept taking them one at a time to get the DTs to go away.

I'd had the DTs again after not six months to get to the DTs of alcohol and drugs, not three months.

Finally, it was down to two weeks from, honey, I'm going to try to have a little wine with dinner is all.

And then two weeks later, I'd have the DTs and be in a quart of vodka and a gram of Coke and pills. Wow.
So I did so much of that.

Ingrid was slapping me around, not for the usual reasons I deserve, but she was slapping around to wake me up because I was like, she said, your color's bad, your breathing's bad. You got to wake up.

You got to move around. She was trying to carry me around the room.
Cindy Williams lived down the street. Called up Cindy.
Cindy came over and carried me out to her car. They got me to Cedars.

And I got to Cedars Sinai, and they gave me EPICAC and pumped my stomach and gave me an IV of something and another IV of something and a nasocannula. Excuse me.
And I made it. I lived.

I drank after that. That night at Cedars would not the end.
That was 78, 79. I drank again for three days because I once again decided to have a little wine with dinner.
And I got sick as a dog.

Without, didn't take two weeks. It was one, you know, like two and a half glasses of wine.
And I was like, I'm sick already. What's the, somebody, I literally thought someone poisoned the wine.

I was looking for the, in the cork to see if there's like a mark where hypodermic needle had been inserted to inject, to kill me, or somebody wanted me dead, I thought, you know, and I, it was just the wine.

I was allergic to wine. I couldn't drink it anymore.
Wow. And I almost back to the hospital or not? I know.
I just went right back to a meeting. That was 79.
That was the last drink.

And do you still go to meetings? I do. I I have to.
It's, you know, you got to give it away to keep it.

What a blessing in a way. What a blessing.
What a gift to figure it out that early. 30 being early.
You know, I mean, some people in their 60s, 70s are still trying to make it work.

I have friends that are going through that. That's really hard.
But to get it by 29 is when I really almost died at Cedars and got with it.

But, you know, I tried it again for three days and it didn't work that evening even. It didn't need weeks to percolate.
That evening, so I switched to beer and went, okay, I'll try just some beers.

I'm allergic to tannins, I thought. That's what happened.
I drank some beers and I was sick as a dog again. I just can't have any amounts.
It's like battery acid.

Do you feel like that was kind of an awakening spiritually for you? Your sobriety did

100%. Yeah.
It was because there's another. alcoholic, I believe he's an alcoholic.
He's long gone, but a very bright man called Alan Watts. Alan Watts liked his gargle like I did.

He drank a good amount of liquor. You'd be as,

it'd be as easy to spot him as a pub as an ashram. You know, he liked to drink, but he was a very enlightened guy.

He wrote a book called This Is It, which is the chapter, the second, the title of the second chapter of my book, This Is It, because as you guys, I've seen you in your lives do so many things.

You know that this is it, this moment right now that we have together.

is all there is, that moment with your grandkids later.

That's that moment that you want to cherish. And we remember the past and plan for the future, but you don't want to spend too much time there.

You want to spend as much time as you can in this right now here with you.

And it's a constant remembering of that and getting back to that.

So you don't get, yep. Well, I mean, I suppose there are

monks and people who perhaps live more in that state than the rest of us, but

it's a constant reminder to me. Constantly.
And the gift from it is I haven't gotten upset in traffic in years and years because I'm in no hurry. Right.
It's

one of the best things about getting older, too. I'm just never, ever in a hurry.
It's a four-way intersection. The guy even came a little after me.
You go first.

I don't need to be anywhere that quickly. I bring my crossword.
I bring the jumble. I get there early and I sit and do it.
I'm just never in any rush.

And that's a gift to be in that kind of state of mind. And it's Alan Watson, that book, and everything that went with it.
Very enlightened man. This is it is a book I recommend to all your listeners.

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So tell the story about going to get the driver's license with your dad.

You know,

it wasn't the first time I'd spent

a waiting period in my dad's hot car. It was considered more of an impromptu spa day back then, sit in a sweltering vehicle.
And 50 man he was, he wasn't about to turn on the air conditioning.

I suppose I should have been grateful for the the energy savings, but I wasn't. And finally, here he came, document in hand, like a man exiting a building in flames.
But it's the way he always walked.

He walked with this incredible quick gait, like he was power walking or something, the way he walked to the mailbox, the way he walked to the podium to get his Academy Award.

And he came in and handed me the document and started to drive back the valley. So I opened it up because I wanted to know,

you know, what did a document like that look like? I'd never seen my birth certificate. Was it written on parchment with a quill, given my age, you know?

Did it have a little baby footprint to keep me getting mixed up with somebody else at birth? But what I saw was so shocking,

I just didn't know what to say. So I said to my dad, dad,

why is there no mother's name on my birth certificate?

He didn't say a word, he just kept driving. Finally, after about 15 very long seconds, he said,

Amanda wasn't your mother, which was very, very shocking to hear because Amanda was definitely my mother. You know, she died when I was seven.
I'd go to the grave and visit the grave site.

It's the only mother I'd ever known. But this, when she, I said, who was my mother? And he said, Sandy was your mother.

And then another explosion went off in my cranium because this woman, Sandy, was greatly loved by my sister and I. We'd see her for Easter, get an Easter basket.

We'd see her for Christmas, sometimes on her birthday. And there's something about that woman we were crazy about.
Turned out that was my mom.

And

I don't know how he thought I wasn't going to react when I saw it. Did he forget that

my mother's name wasn't on the birth certificate? It literally didn't occur to me. Something, maybe he thought that was the best way to do it when he was driving a car and I couldn't strangle him.

I don't know.

Wow, we should just, I don't know if we mentioned this, but your dad was a famous

a great actor,

a great character actor. Academy Award-winning, Tony Award-winning, Sweetbird of Youth award-winning, best supporting actor for Sweetbird of Youth.
He was in 12 Angry Men.

He was juror number 10 on stage with Paul Muni and Inherit the Wind. Great actor.
And a great father.

We all have a few flaws, and his was lying about certain things that should have been told true. So where did he meet your, turns out, real mother? He met her at NBC.
He did a lot of radio then.

He later did TV at NBC, but he was a radio star that made it later on television and in theater. Ilya Kazan directed him in All My Sons, but he met her at NBC where she was a page.

And he had not one, but two children with Sandy, though he was quite actively married to another woman. So kind of amazing the way he thought he

did get away with it. But how extraordinary that the woman you thought was your mother, Amanda,

went along with raising two children that

are the product of his liaison. Right, right.
Yeah, I don't know what the conversation was like. Manda? Yes, Ed.
I found a couple kids out in the alley.

And the great thing, the reason I picked them up, they look identical to me in the eyes and the nose kind of area. So

our good fortune, huh?

Change them and feed them, would you please? I got to run.

That's amazing. I'd love to know.
I hope there's a hereafter just for that one so I got to know what exactly went down there.

Just to complete that, you got to be with your real mother and spend time with her for years after that. Exactly.
I had had a wonderful relationship with Sandy with my mom. She died in 1998.

She was quite a quirky person. She was a hoarder.
There's no other way to say it. She was a hoarder.

When I say hoarder, I mean the real hoarder people you see on television and the films and magazines with magazines and newspapers up to the ceiling.

And when I say up to the ceiling, I mean up to the ceiling. Wow.
Did you ever ask her or was it just kind of,

no, I'm going to take care of that. I just can't have these things.
They talk to me, these things by the dumpster.

So I bring them into my apartment because I'm going to fix them or give them to, you know, St. Vincent de Paul, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

It was like everything, she had half the recycling, you know, circle done pretty well, but not the second half where it gets reused.

She would gather lots of stuff, but it just stayed in the recycling center, which was her apartment, and never went full circle.

Wow, Ed. That's an amazing story.
All right, let's jump around with those 10 facts.

1970s, electric car. How did you get

from just enjoying drinking and trying to get work as an actor to being so environmentally conscious that you would start,

you know, only riding a bike and driving electric cars and literally becoming the most outstanding environmentalist with the least carbon footprint of anyone I've ever met?

That would be you, but thank you for that. No, that's not true.
No, it's not true. That is not true.
We're horrible.

Well, we're not horrible, but

we're horrible compared to you. You're very kind.

But you do so many, what you guys accomplished is more than I could ever dream of with Oceano, what you guys have done, and so many other wonderful causes.

Talk about that. We'll talk about that on your podcast.

Talking about you. How did you get started? Easy answer, really.
I grew up 20 years in smoggy L.A. And to run just from here down to Larchmont, which for the listeners is, what, 20 yards?

You know, you'd be wheezing like this? I'm not asthmatic, nor was I then. You just, you couldn't catch your breath.
It hurt that bad hundreds of days a year.

It was in the every the news every night. 250, you know, parts per million or whatever of ozone, just horrible.

What would they call it? It was a something alert. It was a smog alert.
Yeah. They would have smog alerts and you couldn't go to couldn't go to school certain days like a snow day or what have you.

It was just really, really bad.

So I asked the people who were organizing the Earth Day thing in LA down to in pershing square i said well what what do you want to do besides celebrate earth day i want to celebrate the earth too but what about the other 364 he said well we're going to clean up the air in la we're going to clean up the water and i knew the water needed help too because i'd seen the santa barbara oil spill and that was horrible and that air just that every day it hurts your lungs so i went okay and i thought and then that's the bad influence was a smog but the good influence was every bit as powerful.

And that was my dear dad.

He was the son of Irish immigrants. He'd lived through the Great Depression.
We saved string. We saved tin foil.
We turned off the lights, turned off the water.

He wasn't really an environmentalist by name, but he was one by the way he acted. And most importantly, I would complain about the smog or

something else. I'd just complain about something.
Let's say in this case, the smog. Say, okay, Eddie, I know what you're against.
You don't want smog. No unsmog.
What are you for? What are you doing?

to make a difference. Wow.
So I rode my bike even more. I took public transportation, and he died within a few days of the first Earth Day in 1970.
He died just within a few days of it.

So I did a lot of stuff to honor him as much as anything. And I even bought my first electric car in 1970.

Which

was more of a golf cart. Yeah, it was like a golf cart with a windshield wiper and a horn.
It was a tailor-done, and they still make electric cars to this day. Street worthy? I mean, could you?

No, no.

Oh, I think they do have, like some companies, they have a line of NEV cars, NEV, neighborhood electric vehicles that go in this case these cars go 35 mine did not go 35 mine went 20 maybe up a hill 11 miles an hour maybe

i've never heard that about your dad and that makes sense that you did it because of what he said to you and how he raised you but also in honor of him in that moment great dad great man yeah

I miss him still. He was just wonderful.
It must have been really emotional for you. I can see some of it right now, writing that book.
book. It was.

And reliving all of these amazing people in your life. A great catharsis.
It was really great. It was good for me, every page.
I loved every minute of it.

That's so great. And was your daughter, Hayden, that encouraged you to do it? She did.
She encouraged me to do it.

She got her camera, you know, her phone out, which has a sound device, as we know, and kind of dad, tell me what it was like with you growing up, you know, before they had movable type and talkies.

Please just tell me a little bit about it. So she primed the pump and started that part of it.

And then she was, of course, busy as our young people get busy and couldn't do it at the rate I wanted to because all this other stuff was she'd opened the floodgates.

So then I went, well, I'll take some notes for my computer. And I started typing and the keyboard became like a Ouija board that actually worked.

And I suddenly was coming up with all this stuff I hadn't thought of in forever.

You know, I wanted to go down the basement with my writing mentally and it was taking me up to the attic for something I hadn't thought of in years, you know, and so pretty soon I was getting down these stories that I had to call people to verify.

I remember going to the Spawn Ranch and smoking a joint with these people. Do you remember that, James? Absolutely.
Do you remember who they were? I asked James. Yeah.
It was the Manson gang. Okay.

I just didn't want to lead the witness. Okay.
Thank you. That's amazing.
And you talk about that driveway that you and your dad passed as you were in that, on that.

drive to get your driver's license. And you passed a certain driveway that you came to know very well.

And who I went down that driveway too. Many times.

Maybe the first, my first day in Los Angeles, I went down that driveway and we took a wrong, the taxicab I was in took a wrong turn and went left instead of right. And I was

met with, at that time, an armed guard and a dog, big dog. The dogs remained.
The armed guard did not. Okay.
That was Marlon's house. It was right next door.
Right. It was Marlon Brando's house.

And we quickly turned around and went the other way. And that was also a dog, a big fuzzy dog.
And Jack Nicholson

greeting me to start to work on going south. What a memorable time that must have been for you.
It was crazy. It was for me, too.

But I just remember.

I remember you so well in those days.

And I remember hearing that you had developed a relationship and a friendship with Marlon what was that it was that I would imagine he was interested in talking about everything except acting right it was Helena really that was the go-between and that she said Marlon wants to talk to you and who is she's great Helena Calinotes is a wonderful actress she was in five easy pieces she's a woman with tony baby hungry in the back yeah she's about going bullshit She's smoking and going bullshit to whatever.

We're going to go up to Canada because it's cleaner up there. The environment isn't so bad.

Five Easy Pieces pieces or passengers is a wonderful movie and she was great in it did many other wonderful films how did she end up though being kind of marlon's guardian or living on the same property she was in the back house she would she lived back there for years she would she was a close friend of jack's one of his closest friends and she you know would help help him do a lot of things too she was just great a really good friend to Jack and he was a good friend to her but she was also a good friend to Marlon and Marlon was crazy about her too so I made her a table She wanted this table made out of pine.

So I made her a nice pine table and I brought it up there and then Marlon heard about that. And so that was the, that gave me the bona fides to come up and hang with him apparently.

But I learned quickly that what he did not want to talk about, acting, writing, directing, you know,

puppetry, claymation, drain fields, anything remotely to do with you know, show business.

But he did want to talk about solar panels and wind turbines and biodiesel and drywall and a copper pipe versus steel galvanized.

And did he know that about you or did he discover in conversations? He guessed from he surmised that I had a certain level of knowledge about it. And he was correct.

I could talk about that kind of stuff, tech talk stuff or construction stuff or solar and wind stuff all day. And he liked that.

How do you get all this in your brain? Do you read,

do you actively read

books on all this stuff still? Or how, how do you put it in there? It's so interesting. There was a game called Trivial Pursuit years ago.
Do you remember the game?

Yes, because we played it in my house. Of course, I'm saying, do you remember the game? We played it with the Clintons.
I'll get to that later, perhaps, but this is about the game in general.

When the game came out, it came through Len Carriute to Jeff Goldblum.

He was on the big chill, and everybody on the big chill started playing it and brought it back to LA and I started playing it and loved it. And here's what happened.

My whole young life, these nuns would tell me that I was an idiot because I was always daydreaming, you know, and I would not pay attention ever.

So I thought I literally thought deep down, I really did thought I was a total idiot. And so then we started playing this game and suddenly everybody wanted me on their team.
Why?

Because I could answer nearly every question. Why? I thought I hadn't heard all that stuff because I was definitely daydreaming, but I heard it anyway.

You know, they'd say whatever the clue was, and I go, I'm pretty sure that's the box of rebellion. Okay, look, yes, it is.
You're correct. It's about, what's that? I think that's the Monroe Doctrine.

Okay, he's right again. God damn it.
What is that? The fourth planet from the sun, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just whatever it was.

I could name the bigger moons of Jupiter, whatever the silly question was. And suddenly I was on everybody's team.
I went, maybe I'm not a moron.

It was literally, I was like 35 before I decided maybe I wasn't a complete moron.

Wow. It was a great gift that game.
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you were unbeatable at it.
And I don't, I think even Bill Clinton couldn't beat you. Okay, guys.
They are very good at it. They should have won to be truth.

To be truthful, that final question that we won the final pie for, the final piece of the pie. I think their answer was a more correct one.

But what was on the card was what I said, Pope Pius XII, or whatever it was, you know. But they're so brilliant, those two, they knew for years ago, Begleys, Pope Pius XII.

They still think that's the right answer. They would remember that.
And more importantly, they'd remember that first electric car I showed them at Fran and Roger Diamond's house.

That was their first modern electric car. If they'd seen one before, you know, they didn't talk much about it, but we talked about every time I'd see them for decades.

And Ed Begley's here showed us our first electric car. They're always so sweet to me.
Very, very nice people. Just briefly set that up: you and Trivia Pursuit and the Clintons and Mary.

We were,

I was, I don't know if you're aware that I was married before you. Oh, shit.

Okay. Malcolm, love it.
Ed, love it.

Are you cheating with the triple pursuit? I know you are, love me. I know you're reading the cards.
He had an accident in Los Angeles, and I know why. He's reading the bloody cards to memorize them.

I'm telling you the truth. He says, oh, he learned stuff at school.
He learned nothing.

He used to watch.

That was Malcolm McDowell. That's still him.
It's still how he sounds. He is so damn funny.
He loved winding me up, too.

It was a great compliment to be abused by him and Dabney Coleman and Don Rickles. I have three people who are great comedians who love to pick on me, and those are three great ones.
He's a superstar.

He's a very funny man.

No, he's great. I recommend everyone listening to this podcast to grab a joint and smoke.
You'll be able to follow this conversation because your brain will slow it down.

This is a lot. So much information.

I I think maybe I should listen to Alan Watts and just, this is it for a moment myself.

No, please don't.

Okay, so that was the Clintons and playing trivial pursuit. Can I tell you how I moved up to Oja? Yes.
Please, yeah.

I moved up to Ojai because I got invited by Malcolm and Mary up to their beautiful house in Ojai.

We spent the night and the next morning, there was a realtor at the door, Larry Wilde, and we went and looked at property.

That first place that we saw, we bought. We loved it.
We were there for years. I was there there 84 through 88, and Ingru was there much longer.

We became great friends after the divorce, she and I, as I know you guys did. And so I would go up there and visit.
And

it was just wonderful. What a beautiful part of the world up there.
I love Ojai. It's very special.
Yes, it is. Yeah.
I've had friends that come up and go, what do you all do up here?

It's because there's, it's not, it's not apparent what you do.

The nickname is Slohai. Slow high.
Yeah.

But

every tree and every,

you know, hike up there and every, every bit of it is precious to me. I've lived there since 1983.
You're very smart. We saw the wisdom of it.
We moved up there and had the best time there.

It's just gorgeous. And talk about being in the Alan Watts, this is it frame of mind.
You get to do that very easily in a place like that. You know, you can do it at the DMV in Sherman Oaks, too.

It's a little harder to do there, but you can do it more easily in beautiful Ojai.

that's why you know this Krishna Murdy I think yeah had a place up there and what have you it's just so wonderful wonderful yeah

so begs the question

why'd you leave

Ingrid and I had a divorce

it was certainly something had to change I was not the husband I am in my second marriage my first tryout I I literally, it's so funny when I think about it now, I literally thought that the act of getting married, putting the ring on my finger would make me monogamous.

I wanted to be monogamous. I truly, truly did.
And I loved Ingrid. I wanted to be a good husband, but I didn't know there was more to it than that, you know, and I was not a good husband.
And so that

doesn't work well in the long run.

Were you sober then or not yet? I was not sober when we got married.

But I got sober in 79 after three years of marriage, but I traded one addiction for another, which I also do not recommend. And so,

you know,

it was not good and I hurt people and I don't do that anymore. It's fine.

I'm not a Puritan. If you want to have multiple partners, no problem.
Just make sure your partner, your wife or husband knows that. Your girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever, just tell them,

I want to have multiple partners. Let them decide what they want to do then.
But you don't lie to them.

That's not a good way to go. I learned that the hard way.
Got to just sneak in and look in at your face. I love you so much, I beg.
You're one of my favorite people.

Likewise, you're a very good person, and you married a great, great person as well. I did.
You guys.

You guys. Well,

she was lovely. She was that.
And I loved her.

And your wife, Rochelle,

is quite something too. I was very, very moved in your book about when you were,

I guess

you kind of had a feeling that something was wrong in 2006, but you were diagnosed in 2016 with Parkinson's. Is that right?

And

she

dove in

with such ferocity to find out how to make your life the healthiest, best life it could be at that point. She did.
She was great because she saw the stuff that works and that's true, you know,

dopamine works, carbodopa, Carbodopa-Levodopa works very well. Things like Cinemet, those drugs work well for the problem of the shaking, but they have side effects, as any drug does.

And so if you take them over a long period of time, then there's additional problems that occur. And I'm not saying I don't take carbodopa-levodopa.
I definitely take it.

That's why I'm, you know, like this today and every day.

We're looking at hands that are not shaking at all. It's like it passed the sobriety checkpoint, I'm pretty sure.

So, but in addition to that, for extra credit, she heard that there are other other things that worked and complemented.

And many people, perhaps not everyone, but some people, and I was one of them, could benefit from things like glutathione.

For people who have any nervous system, you know, neurological disorder, that can help. It's not going to make it go away, but it can help.
Something called NAD.

You also get that in an IV.

And then hyperbaric chamber, an oxygen-rich hyperbaric chamber can help you. Have you done that? I've done it.
I'm going to do it later today. Really? I do it fairly regularly.
Do you really?

It infuses, it's an oxygen-rich environment. You just get soaked in oxygen for that period of time for about an hour.
It's not a permanent cured on any of it.

None of this is, but it gives you great relief. And I finally started to get scientific about it.

After the first time I did the hyperbaric chamber or the NAD or the glutathione, I'd walk back to my car. I'd go, Rochelle has me doing this bullshit.
I don't think I'm going to do that again.

Wait a second.

I'm walking steadier. I'm going, excuse me, I'm walking steadier back to my car than I am coming from my.
No, no, I'm just imagining. I want it to be so, so I'm making myself think that.

Next time I went on the way in, I would do what I'm about to show you, and I do it again on the way out. What I did was, anybody old enough to remember the song Wipe Out? It was a drum solo.

Okay, I'm going to try to do it now. And I would do.

And I would try to do Wipe Out. On the way in, I do it, and I could assess the level pretty well.
I'm a man with Parkinson's trying to do wipeout or any drum solo.

And then on the way out, I do it again. It's always better on the way out.
Wow. Fairly scientific.
Yeah.

And so I kept doing it. And

here I am, having had it since 2004, easily. All the signs were there.
We didn't know what it was, but things were happening to me. No one could explain.
I had it since 2004 at least.

But since 2016, I've been diagnosed by the top neurologist at UCLA and Cedars. So I definitely have it.
And here I am still working so much so

it's so good that two different production companies, I told them after a second year on the show, I said, thank you for being so understanding, Mike Parkinson's. They went, what? You're what?

What did you just say?

They didn't know I had it. I was shocked.
I thought they had seen me. Not that I trembled a lot, but occasionally I'd shake a tiny bit.
I thought they were on to me. Nobody was on to me.

So that's pretty good if people don't know it. So that's 12 years, 2004 to 16, 12 years undiagnosed, but untreated? Were you take trying to, did you have an idea that you might have Parkinson's?

No, it was untreated, officially untreated, but it was treated every day by my own lifestyle that I lived with.

Riding the bike every day up to Mulholland from Laurel and Ventura, then around Franklin Canyon Lake and back home, eating well, exercising every day, upper body, you know, to go with the lower body kind of bike riding.

I did that every day, and that was therapy, if you will, that was keeping it at bay. So I never really had any big sign of it.

And then finally, 2016, it got so weird, I went to a speech therapist because I was starting to slur my words. I couldn't rattle off the names of things the way I used to rattle off the line.

So I went to a speech therapist. After one session, she called up my doctor and said, I'm confused.
I don't see it on his chart that he has Parkinson's.

Is there some reason why you didn't write it down? They went, we didn't know he had Parkinson's.

And she treats a lot of thank you so much a lot of parkinson's patients and so she knew the first time there are other neurologists that encountered me i just never heard about it there was my cousin's friend is a neurologist three years before that he saw me at a birthday party my cousin's birthday party when i left he said how long has that he had parkinson's my cousin said what i the same thing i would say what are you talking about he doesn't have parkinson's Yeah, he does, but well, never mind.

Just stay tuned. I think you'll hear from him on it.
Wow. Wow.

and he wasn't his patient so he didn't call me up right what were you eating what was your diet like during those 12 years when you were I was eating vegan you know with lots of mixing up the protein pretty good I'd have avocado and peanut butter and tofu and what have you lots of fresh food salads that I'd grown in the garden and what have you and I ate a pretty good vegan and you know, with a good amount of protein stuff, different, you know, soy kind of proteins, what have you.

And do you attribute keeping it at bay, at least, to also to diet? Yeah, diet is part of it too. Now, full disclosure, I'm known as a vegan, but I'm not really a vegan anymore.

I think I'm now a megan, which is mostly vegan. You know, I once in a while eat some things that are not purely vegan, but my wife said, you're going to eat them and you're going to shut up and do it.

And I did it, and I'm a little bit better because of what she tells me to do. Okay, let's flip because we just heard Rochelle tell you to shut up.
So,

how does Rochelle?

I understand who you are and who you've been for such a long time, but when somebody marries you and lives with you, are they,

was she on board with all the environmentalism and

taking public transportation or bike riding or

this is my memory of it. Now, you feel free to give her equal time if you ever see her.
You can record it and air it separately or whatever you want to do, but this is my memory.

When we were dating, when we were dating, it was, honey, I made a tofu loaf and we'll take the bus down to the environmental rally, okay?

The minute that the ring went on the finger, I'm going to stake in a limo ride.

Don't bother waiting up for me. We're going to Chippendale's.

I may be exaggerating a little bit, but the behavior did change a little bit after her marriage. All I'm saying is we will be checking with her.
Check with her. Give her equal time.
It's only fair.

But please, I don't, please, whatever you do, don't make her feel good about herself. If her self-worth goes up, she'll leave me in a second.

So please, I beg you, don't make her feel good about herself. Don't compliment her in any way.
I never do.

Do you find yourself, pick it up? How old are you now? You're 70, what? 74. 74.
I'm 75. Do you find yourself going, wait a minute, what? What do I, do I attribute whatever I'm feeling to Parkinson's?

Or am I,

if I didn't have Parkinson, I'd be feeling the same way because age

catches up with all of us. Yes.

I find you remarkable. I don't think Parkinson's while I'm looking at you.
You're very kind to say that, but I'll tell you this, and this is the truth, too, with everything I've said so far.

Another truth is you would think there would be, tell me how you are at math. Is there one year from 19, I'm sorry, is there one year from 2023 to 2024? Is that one year?

What's the question, I guess?

Never mind. I'll make it simpler.
I'm trying to do a gag, and it's dying. I'm killing myself here.

Is it one year time span from age 73 to age 74? One year. That's one year.

No, it's two years actually. 73 ends.

It turns out it's a decade. All right, dude.
From 73 to 74. I'm now 10 years older, I can promise you.
Oh, I see. Yeah.

I'm going to joke up horribly.

There's nothing left for anybody. Let's move on.
No, it probably was my response. Not at all.
No, I can't. What?

No, but Ted sometimes will complain to me about some so-called age-related thing. How come it's so-called in my case, but Eddie gets total respect here? Now, I'm going to finish.

And I say you were exactly like that at age 45

because you guys are, you guys are. That's true.

In your case,

you have that, like your inner music sounds like

you sped that up for the podcast. I mean, he's brilliant and I respect him, but he's on this kind of lovely, goofy time zone thing.
Which is great. It's one of the things I admire about.

Exactly. He is Alan Smith.

Exactly. He is.
And

I get the benefits of living with that because I'm not that. I'm much more.

Yeah, sorry. But I.
She's fast. You're very fast.
But

he does make me live more in the moment because he does so beautifully. I'm like an anchor.
You're like a dead weight on me.

A beloved deadweight. I used to say that I'm the I'm her ragtail to her kite.
Right, right. You know, I do give you some degree.
Well, I just like to think of this. You know what?

Don't get into us. I'm not going to get into us.
I'm Rochelle's ballast, too. Yes, thank you.
Yeah, ballast. I'm balanced.
I'm definitely

balanced Jr. Or if we were a Scientologist, I'd be the suppressive one.

We know. This is how we know that Mary's come up with a great idea.
She'll say something. I'll go, oh, no, no, no.

And immediately

it's recognized as, oh, this is good because you just immediately said no. The things I said no to.
for years with her, I will never, ever move from this house.

I said that and I meant it, my old house on Moundview. I will never ever get married again.
I will never ever have more children.

Three for three.

Kicking and screaming, she had to drag me out of that house on Moundview. But now, who loves the new house better than anyone? It's me.
I just love it.

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Well, Well, now that we know you lived through it and

you're safe and sound,

can you tell the story of, which I love so much, of your Christmas, was it Christmas Eve or Christmas night? Christmas Eve of 1975. Yeah.

Definitely not sober years. This was

your height of my alcoholism.

So I didn't want to drink at home. That seemed kind of grim on Christmas Eve.
I called up my buddy Neil, my dear friend Neil Rhodes, an occasional drinking buddy.

And we went to Dantana's because that seemed kind of Christmassy to us, you know, kind of a family feel.

But there wasn't, there was like a couple of little lights on a Chianti bottle hung from the ceiling. It wasn't much.
So I said, we got to go someplace more Christmassy.

And Neil said, well, then we have to go to the Rainbow Bar and Grill. That speaks Christmas to everybody in Los Angeles, I think.
So we went there, but it was indeed more Christmassy.

People had, you know, like, Santa hats on and stuff. And so when I walked in the bar,

Frosty, the bartender, you know had the bottle of vodka out he was about to pour said no no frosty i just drank a quart of vodka at tanas this is our not our first bar of the night so no way i got to drive back over to the valley there's no way i can have any more vodka give me some chardonnay

after having a full quart of vodka i was going to be sensible you don't want to be driving too drunk i said give me so i drank a bottle of chardonnay then he pulled out like some breath mints for me to have and i was slightly offended because i knew i hadn't had any garlic or onions and i then i remembered I really hadn't had any food.

So I was doing all this in an empty stomach. And he kept shaking the mince.
I said, I don't want one. Why are you trying to? He said, no, 714, man.

I said, I know those Orange County ladies, 714 Erico, they're pretty hot, but you know, politically, we might get in an argument. I don't know about this.
He said, no, no. And he held it close.

I could see it was 714 was the number of the pill that he had before him. It was called a qualude.
Anyone here remember qualudes? Vaguely. Oh, boy.
Yeah, Ed Vaguely Qualud Jr.

And so

the drug was considered an hypnotic drug. And it definitely, but there were warnings with it.
You were not supposed to drive under the influence of it. Certainly not supposed to have alcohol.

So I had a quart of vodka at Tana's, bottle of Chardonnay at the rainbow. And I told Frosty, I said, there's no way I'm going to take a Quailude.

Thank you so much, but no way I'm going to take a Quailude with all of that.

You know what? Give me half. So I took a half.
Ten minutes later, give me another half. Ten minutes later, another half.
And I kept taking halves.

Pretty soon I said to Neil, I said, I don't think I can even make it back the valley. Can I crash in your couch? And more importantly, will you drive? And this is 1975.

It's a few years ago, but I remember to this day what Neil said. He went,

and miming that he was not prepared to drive. So I poured him into the car, and then I started to go west, sorry, east on sunset.
Said, you know what, buddy? You're such a pal.

We got to go to Greenblatz. So do you have any booze at home? Because we're going to want something for the morning.

So, I said, we'll stop at Greenblatz. And you know what, man? You're here for me all the time.
I really love you. And then that's when he got this weird look on his face.

I thought, have I offended him? Does he think something else is going on? I just was telling him I love him.

And I realized the reason he got a weird look on his face, he was looking out the front of the vehicle, which I was not doing. I was staring at him for like 30 full seconds.

Suddenly, there's glass and metal everywhere. And I crash into all these cars, slide along the right side of these four very large gentlemen from the inner city, less than thrilled with me.

Then I crash into this Honda Civic, knock it through the intersection.

I just kill a person. I hit it so hard.
And there's different parts rolling down the hill and what have you, it's San Vasundi and Sunset. And this guy gets out of the car.

Oh, thank you, God, he's alive. He gets out with crutches.
He has crutches already. He'd been in a skiing accident.
He has a cast on one leg.

I said, good, we'll save some money at the emergency room tonight. But I said, I got to talk this other car.
There's a third car that I did not hit, but I had to focus all my attentions on them.

And I said to them, guys, there are two sheriff's departments in that vehicle, by the way. Guys, do me one favor, one only.
It's Christmas Eve. Arrest me and take me in.
Have you been drinking, Mr.

Begley? He said, I've had a couple of, some Christmas eggnog, but no, write it up any way you want, though, because I'm going to sue Toyota.

I'm going to win because I've been pumping these brakes since back at Doheny. And I'm going to sue them and win.
If you arrest me and put me in jail, it's going to help. The reverse psychology worked.

I had them under the car looking for a leak in the brake line. I was on so much adrenaline.
I was yelling all this stuff. I was talking something like I'm talking right now.
I was not really slurring.

I wasn't stumbling because I'm 25 years old and on adrenaline like crazy. But then by the time I fill out all the paperwork for it, what have you, I started to get a little toasty again.

And the guy whose car I hit with the crutches, he's calling for a cab. I hang up the phone and I say, no, I won't have it, sir.
This is my fault. I'm going to drive you home.

And I put the poor guy in the car, but after like a half block, I go, What is that sound? I'm hearing this weird metallic sound like bunk, bunk, bunk, bunk.

He said, You're knocking the side view mirrors off the cars that are parked on sunset. Would you let me out, please? No, I'm going to take you home.
And I'll let me out.

He starts hitting me with his crutches. Let me out of the car, you freaking maniac.

Hobble home then.

And then Neil woke up and I said, Do you think we could still make it to Green Blast to get some booze? That's just the way it was. Wow.
It is a miracle

having

really, I say this, remembering the old you, but it is a miracle that you're sitting here. It is a miracle.
It's easy. How did I live through that? Somebody was looking out for you, man.

Killing myself would have been poetic justice, but if I had hurt another person or God help me, a family, could you imagine living without

terror?

Yeah, I'm glad you went there because in the book, you're very careful to.

acknowledge the fact that you did so much damage to relationships that you had

that, I mean, drunk stories are hilarious, especially if you've survived it and all of that. But there's a great deal of humility in the book about, you know,

consequences, impacts, people that you hurt, people you're married to, friends of yours, people you left standing somewhere, you know, waiting for you when you're so drunk you just don't show up.

Just ethically, it can be a real problem when you're in the middle of that alcoholic storm. Yeah, well, we've made you tell a lot of those stories because they're astounding.

I have to, the book, you're, I think, part of your genius is, I mean, people listening to you right now, you're so fast. Your brain is so fast.

You can bounce from story to story, but somehow in your book,

because you bounce all over the place in the book, but it is tied together in this most brilliant way. And it's so authentically your voice.
But it really, I really loved your book.

I really could not recommend it more highly. Bless you, Ted.

And it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful book about

a very specific time in Los Angeles,

but also about an actor who didn't

just have an easy path of it. You know, you had years that you were worried about money and

then, but much, much of what the good fortune that comes your way has to do with how beloved you are and

what a good friend you were to so many people. And,

but also, how, you know, I don't think you, I don't recall that you studied acting, but you ended up being such a wonderful actor. And you're so kind.
So,

yeah, I just, I've always felt so lucky. I got to work with you right off the bat.
Me too, me too. You.
And even though I didn't want to hang out with you at night because you were scary.

Very scary. You dodged a bullet there.
Thank you.

I was really happy that we remained friends, you know, too. Yeah.
But I had a good teacher there with all that that you're talking about.

And I'll say yes and thank you that I had some measure of kindness and some other good qualities. I got them almost all from Bruno Kirby, who's such a good friend, such a great teacher.

I talked about him a lot. Yeah, I went to the bottom.
What did you love about him?

He was a guy that was so loyal. He would do things like

if I got a better offer, I'd just take it. You know, like, oh my God, I've got to go to this party, you know, because Francis Ford Coppola is going to be there.

And I think, you know, this one and that. So I'd say, Bruno, I'm sorry, I can't make it to your friend, Tony Amatullo's party.

You know, I've got to, I've got to meet my friends out on Long Island, I'd say, or some nonsense, none of which was true.

But then I ran into Bruno and Tony, you know, out in the middle of Times Square on the way to go to the A-list party. You know, Bruno had committed to his old friend that he was going to be there.

He wasn't going to let an A-list party drag him somewhere else. He had committed to his friend Tony.

And so I would just like fly by night, you know, do whatever I thought was the best career move and drop people, you know, at the drop of a hat. But Bruno was not like that.
He was fiercely loyal.

I got in a horrible car accident later, you know, back in,

I guess that was 72 that I got in that accident before all this that we're talking about with the other car accident. I've had a lot of accidents, haven't I?

Yeah, and you had, we haven't even talked about your most life-threatening accident.

And I will

tell about that too. But Bruno Kirby came every day out to Pasadena, Huntingdon Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, brought me my mail and brought me healthy food out there.

And he did not live in Pasadena, he lived in Hollywood. So I learned about friendship and loyalty from Bruno.
What a great guy. What a great guy.

Great actor. And I went back to acting school.
I went back and studied from Peggy Fury and Stella Adler because of Bruno. That's right.
That's right. Yes.

And then what happened? What was the park bench story

when you

were

to our bus? You were waiting at a bus system. Yes, I was.

When was this? This is 1972, February 17th, 1972. It was with my friend Paul Appleby, my roommate.
We decided to go down to Gardena to play cards. And he had a car.
I think he had a car.

We could have borrowed a car. I said, no, I know the bus system really well.
We'll take the bus down there. And we lived at Vinelino Ventura in the valley, kind of near where I live now.

We got on the first bus very easily, was there right according to my paper schedule, got on it, went to Santa Monica and Western, walked up to the Western Avenue bus, got that fairly quickly within a few minutes as per the schedule.

And the casino is on Western Avenue. So this is great.
You see, I'm a genius. Taking the bus cost us like 45 cents or something the whole way.

And we're going to get all the way down to Commerce, the city of Commerce, to play cards. Then we get to Western Imperial.
The driver says, end of the line.

No, no, we're going further. The bus goes down.
We saw the map. It goes further.
No, that's the Gardena bus line. The guy said, you got to get out here and change your Gardena.

It's a separate city, which I should have known. That's why you can play cards there.
It's not, you're not gambling in the city of Los Angeles.

You're gambling in a city that decided it would allow poker.

So, okay, it's broad daylight. We're waiting there, me and my friend Paul, and suddenly this crowd of kids, maybe about seven or eight young men, walking towards us with purpose.

And here's the interesting thing about psychology. I didn't run away or take any evasive moves because I didn't want to seem uncool.

I didn't want to seem, you know, like, I don't know what, but I just kind of stayed there.

I stood there and waited to see what they wanted to say to me. And suddenly we were down the ground and I was being stabbed, but I didn't even feel that.

When you're getting kicked and punched, you don't really feel a knife. It's more surgical.
And then I had a lot of trouble breathing. It turned out I had a collapsed lung.
And I healed from all that.

But the good thing is, a very short period of time, you know, you have some very negative thoughts after something like that.

But I did not hold on to them long at all because I thought this is going to eat me alive. It's like drinking poison and hoping the other guy is going to die.
You know, I didn't want to have any.

bad feelings towards them because it just made me feel bad. So I got into a place of forgiveness very quickly.
And that was healthy for me.

They rounded up some kids that they claimed did it, but I could not identify them. I wasn't making it up.
I just didn't know who was who. I couldn't identify anybody.
So I was always afraid that maybe

they'd gotten a confession under some weird conditions or something. So I wasn't able to do anything at the trial.

But the most important thing that I could control, I didn't carry hate in my heart after that. And that was the right decision.

That was the thing Mandela said when he was stepping out of the prison before he took that first step over the threshold.

He said he knew that if he carried hate in his heart toward his captors, he would never be free.

There's a man that mastered it with the amount of time he spent in prison. I hesitant to even say a word after you've said the name Melsa Mandela.

My minor, nothing is just that, nothing compared to what he did, what he accomplished and what he endured. So, yeah, that's the secret to that sort of thing, I think.

I think he was a very wise man to do that for everybody, including himself. Hard to do.
Hard to do.

I got to know Bishop Desmond Tutu thanks to you, really, because it was because of Alfre. And I met Alfre through you.

So I got to meet and work with Desmond Tutu and a few different things he was doing because of you, really. And beautiful Alfrey

co-founded Artist for Free South Africa. That's right.
Thank you. Artist for Free South Africa.
Africa. And then eventually became artist for New South Africa.

But Desmond Tutu, he was such a lovely bride. What a lovely man.
What a gift to know him. Yeah.
How lucky are we to know him? Yeah. To have known him.
Yeah, lovely. His spirit is still with us.

Hey, one more.

Speaking of spirit,

Chavez, I keep mispronouncing his name.

You did it fine. Yes, Cesar Chavez.
Great, great man. What a leader.

How you met him and the relationship you had that ended up you being asked to partake and carrying his casket when he passed away. I had helped from a distance for years, going as far back as the 60s.

Friends of mine said, you know, you've got to stop buying grapes and stop buying lettuce because there's a strike on and what have you. So I did that.
That was easy. Then there was a strike fund.

I didn't have a lot of money, but I sent some money to the strike fund for the United Farm Workers.

And then in the 80s, after doing stuff from a distance, suddenly this car pulls up at a a restaurant called Pan's near LAX there, and I'm having a bowl of oatmeal and this guy pulls up in this kind of beat up car.

And I go, wow, that guy looks just like Cesar Chavez, but it couldn't be him. He's an internationally known labor leader like Jimmy Hoffa, level of people knowing who he is.

But then I realized after just one second, that's exactly the kind of car that Cesar Chavez would be in because he wasn't trying to get rich for himself or his family.

He was just, you know, a man who had been a farm worker, wanted better conditions. And they had no toilets in the field back then.
They had no drinking water for the people in the fields.

They had no shade for them. You know, just a simple little umbrella over where they're picking the grapes or the lettuce or whatever would have changed their lives.

And it's something that's possible, but they didn't bother to do it. So he got better conditions for them in the fields, a health fund, you know, pension fund, and did incredible things for them.

And I, but when I met him, I waited till the he came into the restaurant, sat at a table. When he walked past me, I knew that was definitely him.

After they ordered and before the food came, I went over and said, Mr. Chavez, I just want to say hi, Ed Begley, and I've been following your work for years and helped in my small way.

But I just want to, here's my business card. If I can ever help, let me know.

And he said, well, what's your passion? I said, well, the environment. I try to do what I can.
I said, but I know it's not just save the owls and save the whales.

There's kids getting sick from the pesticides in the Central Valley and what have you.

I know that's important, you know, and I named some of the towns like McFarland and Early Mart, where the kids have gotten sick from cancer clusters. And so he was very impressed with that.

And I got to be friends with him and friends with the family. So when he passed away in 1993,

35,000 people showed up for that funeral. I'd never been to a funeral like that.
Maybe one of the Kennedys or somebody or Lady Dye has that many people showed up, but nothing like that.

It was remarkable. And on the 10-year anniversary of his death, I wrote a play about his wonderful life and his work.
And we did it at the Noho Arts Complex.

Well, first at the El Portel, then at the Noho Arts Complex about the great Cesar Chavez. And it was, the family came and everything.
It was a lovely, lovely play. I hear you're going to do it again.

Is that right? Or did I make that up? I'm committed to pursuing that vigorously with

Danielle Barbosa, who was there the other night, this wonderful actress who played the great Dolores Huerta, who is still with us, this wonderful activist and woman, Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez.

She came many times to see the play, and Danielle Barbosa played Dolores Wirta in the play. So she said, are you going to do that play again?

Because I'd just seen her a week before and it said, yeah, I want to do that again. I committed to it at that

thing we were at together and I met it. I would like to do it again.
So I probably will.

Time to say goodbye to you, Ed. Well, I had a great talk.
I always do with you guys. You guys are delightful to talk to.
Well, you're one of my heroes, and you're well adored in our family.

And the book, everybody, is so, say it again, is so worth it. Temple of tranquility and step on it.

And even though we had you tell some of the stories of your

crazy wild days, I'm really glad you did get sober so that you're here. And I bet you're incredibly inspirational at those meetings when you talk to folks.
And I'm just grateful to you for

being such a good friend. Bless you.
Right back at you. I've loved you for many, many years.
And that love continues for both of you. I love and admire you both.
Have a great day.

Say hi to Rochelle, please. I will.
Yeah. Okay.

That was so much fun, such a joy to spend this time with two of my favorites, Mary Steenbergen and Ed Begley Jr. Thank you both.
Before you go, here's an illustration of what a special guy Ed is.

Before the recording, he gifted us an extremely heavy vase of flowers that he had hauled down the sidewalk and carried up a flight of stairs himself.

That's Ed for you. That's it for this week.
Special thanks to our friends at Team Cocoa. And if you enjoyed this episode, send it to a loved one.

You can always watch us by visiting youtube.com/slash teamcoco.

As always, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you'd like.

See you next time, where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Dance and Woody Harrelson. Sometimes the show is produced by me, Nick Leow.
Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer. Our senior producer is Matt Abadaka.
Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Grawl.

Talent Cooking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista. Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

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

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