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That's a great fucking deal. People had to simply save dotcom slash Rogen. That's simply Saffy, simply save Dotcom Rogen and get a free HD camera for the listeners of this podcast that simply save Dotcom Rogen to make sure that they know that our show sent you. My guest today is we'll have two guests. One of them is my good friend, Steve Sharipov. I have known him forever. I've known him since nineteen ninety eight. Ladies and gentlemen, he used to be the talent coordinator at the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

And that's where I first started working standup in Vegas.

And then he went on to be one of the stars of The Sopranos, which is kind of a crazy story.

He got into acting. We talk about it all on the podcast.

And with him is Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos, fantastic actor. And they are host of a new podcast called Talking Sopranos.

Please welcome Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa government podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, train my day job and podcast My Life All Day. Steve. Yes, sir. Let me see you. Good to see you, brother. My pleasure to meet you, man. Thanks for having us. Yeah, really thanks. It's been a while.

I saw you the last time I saw you. This is the old studio three years ago. It looks exactly. It's eerie. Yes. I'm going to I'm going to do it again the next place.

I'm going to re rebuild this whole thing again. That's my move.

Just make it look like this. Make it comfortable. You know, you like what you like. It looks like the same thing. Yeah. That way you don't get the same desk. Everything. Yeah. This is good to see you. Good to see you too, brother.

I'm bummed out though about your source. Yeah.

Yeah. I was just bragging to somebody about it the other day. We grew too fast. But you have two of the last ones. I know what to do. Do I like let it sit on a shelf.

Oh, no, no. The sauce was good.

It's all natural and organic. It was all good.

Just unfortunately, it grew too fast. And my partner, you know, we had enough. He lost a lot of money, but no, not for lack of trying or the product. Now the product. Let me tell you, the biggest fucking thief's bigger than the mob, bigger than any thief. These stores that you do business with, OK, and the distributors. And then you have all these people with their hand in the pie. So we buy the sauce.

It's our recipe. That guy makes it. Now we got to give it to a distributor you can't go direct to, like Whole Foods and shit. So there's other hands in the pie. Now you give them a bill for 20 grand of sauce that you gave them and they sent you back a cheque for three grand and they go, wow, there was breakage and there was this and there was that. And you have to pay more money in the store to have it in the front and have it stacked.

Oh, really?

You white flour, you are fucked just like a book. You know, I've had books. I don't know if you have a books out Barnes and Noble to save Barnes and Noble. You had a book out, right? You have a book out, Barnes Noble favorite. You got to pay more for that to have the book on the shelf turned this way. You got to pay more for that. They nickel and dime you and they fucking kill you.

They are the real mob. I'm telling you.

They're worse than funeral homes, though. No, no one's worse than funeral homes.

Well, they they tug on your heartstrings. Yeah, yeah. Come on.

You they was a great guy. Aren't you going to have the nice box?

Did you start out doing this just through the Internet though? You know, we started in the stores. We didn't really you know, we came to Amazon later. My partner trade shows Joe Skop just got being a great guy. He was here last time. He my partner, he put up the money. He's a builder. He said, we're going to make fifty million free. We're going to sell the company and he's got fifty million. He doesn't need another fifty and got a little greedy.

And he wanted to go out and said he's not a small time guy, it's all or nothing. So I give him credit for that.

It's such a good song. So it kind of seems like you should just do it online. Maybe they'll make a comeback, you know, and like I said, if we would have stayed small, Dallis, you know. Yeah, it was doing great. Staten Island, you know, the biggest Italian area, you know, the guinea gangplank there, all them Italians source even. They won't admit it. They fucking like that.

All right. It's a good source that's natural.

It doesn't have that. The acidy thing that a lot of Jahed sources have, you know, and, you know, I did all the press, we did all the shit. I said if I would have instead of being a partner, I should have made twenty dollars an hour. I did.

Well, so you guys doing a podcast now?

Doing a podcast? Rewash Yeah.

Yes. Sussman clued me into it. Yeah, it's we got approached by a bunch of different producers towards the end of last year about it wasn't our idea and we thought about it.

We had done a show like on stage in conversation like Inside the Actor's Studio and we did all over the country, did Australia last year. And then a couple of producers said, you know, do you want to do a podcast?

And we worked.

Geoff was the best of the producer, so we figured out a way to do it. We were going to do it in the studio, live like this at the end of March in New York. And they covered everything hit.

So we were going to do it at all. We were going to put it off because we were depressed and we were like, who needs a podcast in the midst of all this stuff? What is New York like right now?

You know? I've been there, I left, I've been here a month now, you know, I have a place down in Orange County and New York was all fucked up and it's all boarded up. And my my daughter's there. I live downtown, way downtown. And I was going out like an hour a day, you know, that's it. I just went out an hour a day.

I would take a walk and there was the streets are empty, streets were empty.

And right now after the looting, they destroyed. So, yeah, you know, it's just destroyed, you know, and the cops are very timid and and it's all fucked up.

I mean, it's all fucked up. I don't I don't know what happens there. I mean, I don't know I don't know how it happened.

Like the scene, the cops just standing around where there were looting the art galleries in Soho while they were smashed and Fifth Avenue. But I don't know.

The fuck is this? I don't know.

It's like the end of the world, you know, scary and plausible is the worst fucking. I'm not a political guy at all, Joe. Like, not at all.

But he's the worst fucking human that maybe walks the face of the earth. I kid you not. And, you know, I owned an apartment in Manhattan for like nine years. And when he became the mayor within a year, you saw even six months. Right. You saw, like, these fucking changes. I'm going. I'm out. I'm selling my fucking place. And I sold my place. What changes? All kinds of shit. The cops, basically, they have one hand tied behind their back.

He changes all these laws, stop and frisk that. And some needed to be changed. Some, not just the homeless, is everywhere. All of a sudden, the trains are impossible. There's all kinds of shit going on, you know, and I have to blame the mayor. I mean, you know, where I live downtown. There's listen, I'm compassionate to the homeless. I don't know the answer, which is why I'm not the fucking mayor.

But they're everywhere. Same thing here, you know. Yeah. Our governor was the mayor of San Francisco, which is the craziest fucking place I've ever seen in your life when it comes to homeless.

Yeah, it's a problem.

And now after covid, it's like ramped up 40 percent. The homeless situation there, it doesn't even make sense like you see in these beautiful homes. And there's campsites in front of them. And these people have to come out of their houses and, you know, tiptoe around needles and broken bottles and and people, shit, this might get worse because you're covered with a good economy, you know, collapsing as it did.

Yeah, well, that's what that's what was happening with the cover, too, in New York, because these guys standing on the corner, they're panhandling. There's no one there was no one to get money from.

I mean, there was no one to pay until the streets were completely empty. Broadway downtown. You could shoot a cannon to it, not a car. Yeah.

Mark Norman, you know, in the comic, Mark Norman, hilarious guy, filmed a bunch of shit with him just running around New York City with empty streets.

Nobody around how weird Wall Street is empty. All these places that are packed or empty, I don't know the answer. And what the cops. I don't know. I mean, I just don't know. I mean, it's all so bizarre.

And I think so many people are either going to resign from the force, but definitely not join the force.

There's a lot of guys that are thinking about trying to force a tough job, man, for for very little pay.

And you're putting your life at stake and just public opinion of the forces down so low. I don't get it. Listen, I know if, God forbid, I had trouble, I call a cop, I'm a cop. I'm a cop as well. I play a cop now. You know, I've been on Blue Bloods for five years. I play it.

Yeah, I'm ProComp you play cop, you're just playing at the templated homicide detective.

Yeah. We went from wiseguys guys to detective. It's a fine line. They're fine line that. But yeah, but I agree. New York is my daughter had just come back and it's really depressing man. You know you haven't been right.

No, I've been in California since March 1st. I was in New York before that. And so yeah, I couldn't go back really.

But I live here and they're both places. Yeah. There was a little easier here up in Santa Barbara area.

I love it up there. Yeah.

A lot easier to be quarantined there because you go outside and backyard and stuff like that. Yeah.

The beach, it's like Santa Barbara is the perfect size. But I, I mean I was in New York.

They shut us down March 13th with two and a half episodes to go. We just got shut down and then they, you know, then you couldn't even go out of the house two days later. I mean, I wasn't aware of anything. I mean, the trains were packed. I was taking the train and shit. And I went to a concert a few days before. Wow.

At The Beacon and Dave Matthews and the Jackson Browne. There's a fucking concert, but nobody said anything, you know.

And Jackson Browne got sick. Yeah, he. Yeah, maybe at that point, you know, maybe, but then it was just I was there for two months and it was gloom and I'm in a building, so you got to watch the elevated doorman.

The thing, you know, all the food in, you know, it's just it makes you crazy. Wipe off the package. Don't wipe off the package with gloves. Don't wear gloves.

What the fuck? Nobody knows. It's a very, very confusing time.

Nobody knows what the fuck is going on in a podcast was a good thing to do in the midst of all this because we figured out a way to do it at home.

So we didn't have to, you know, be in a studio, set up a little studio in the house, you know, figured out a way to do it.

He was in New York and I was in California. And we that's how we started.

Yeah, it can be done. You know, it's and there's so many people listening to shit. Now, the thing is, consumer consumers are up in in terms of like watching viewers of shows listeners a podcast, it's all up because people were just sitting around doing nothing for months at a time.

Right. It was kind of particularly good timing for us because The Sopranos was being binge watched in by people in quarantine, like rediscovering it, young people who had never seen it. It was I think it was HBO's number two series. And that includes all their new stuff like Game of Thrones and everything.

And so I think it was Westworld in The Sopranos with their biggest shows during quarantine. Show's been off the air for 13 years.

Well, listen, this is one of the best fucking shows of all time. It really is. You know, you guys were on without a doubt when the history is written, is one of the best shows ever.

Yeah, no, no. You know what's amazing? Neither one of us watched it in twenty years. I mean, I don't watch the show. I mean, I watched it one time when it came out years ago and and we weren't even kind of depressed.

And we're going to forget about a TV show now because the world was coming to an end, especially at the beginning. You know, Joe, I mean, and we had gotten offered shit and Jeff helped us. We were giving Jeff, like contracts. It's just a good deal. Is this a good deal? Finally said, listen, if I can help you, we should tell it. But Jeff's my manager, Jeff Sussman. So he helped us and we started doing the rewash, which is obviously bittersweet because of Jim.

You know, you're watching. He's young. And I came on the second season, you know, the second episode, but the show holds up every fucking year was shot yesterday. Besides the phones and the computers, everything else is like it was done yesterday. It's not dated at all the show.

And we weren't going to you know, we were going to wait till things got back to normal so we could be in a studio like this and be face to face.

But we got so much communication from fans like on social media saying, hey, we heard you doing a podcast. Where is it?

We're binge watching the show and quarantine like tons of, you know, tons of that. So we figured out a way to do it.

So, you know, we watch the episode. We we're up to episode twelve now.

You know, it's on YouTube. And whenever you get to a podcast and then we run down the episode, he wrote five of them. So he knows every every he knows a lot more than me.

I watch it more like a regular viewer. We tell stories behind the scenes, shit stuff that went on, stuff we remember. We've had guests. We got Edie Falco next week. We've had the casting people.

We've had the Robert Island director, you know, whoever made the show a success. So costume design.

Well, it's a great thing to do to go back and review it, just to kind of give the people that are fans the sense of, you know, what it was like for you guys and what it's like to see it again.

And just to put it in the context in history, when that's the show that started off these kind of shows, when you think about the shows that you have today, like the Ozarks and all these different like really kind of wild shows where you have to follow one episode to the next and you have to know what just happened to pay attention to the new episode.

The Sopranos started that shit.

Yeah, that was. And it was also the first show where there was a real anti-hero. Yeah.

And it was also bringing a cinematic quality to television. Yeah. People would traditionally go to the movies for even a novelistic quality.

Well in a sense better because you could do it over the course of many hours. You weren't limited by an hour and a half, two hour time frame. You could do it over the course of multiple hours. Right.

And he wasn't you know, listen, he was an overweight, balding guy. He wasn't your typical leading man, but he was sexy.

Chicks liked it. They loved him.

I told you, we used to say TV doesn't put what he used to say all the time. You know, they used to say TV puts ten pounds on you. I say it takes fifty pounds off you. Well, there was something about his character.

I mean, first of all, he was a phenomenal actor like always, always was. I mean, he was fucking insane and everything he did.

True romance, I mean, just go back through his whole history of his career, but that show doing Tony Soprano just fuckin sinked whatever it was.

Yeah, look, those moments when the actor in the role really come to act in a great role, really come together, because they don't always. They don't always. He was fucking perfect for that role.

And, you know, you see them like their scenes. And now I look at it kind of differently, obviously, than back then. You know, back then I was just trying not to get fucking killed, you know, but now you you watch it. And in in one scene, right. There's some incredible scenes where he's happy, mad, furious. In one three minute scene, he goes to four different emotions. Yeah, he's amazing in it.

You know, I don't know if you remember this, but when I first got the job, I had to go.

I got the job, I auditioned, I got the job. I had to go to a read through and I happened to see you. I think you were working in Vegas at the Reve. And I said, Joe, what I do you want another comic? I think Bill Kirk Campbell. I said, what what goes on at retail? Because even though I had worked, I didn't know. Right, right. And I said, do you do it like a hundred percent?

And you told me, you know, like, you know, 85, 90 percent, like, don't go all in. You actually told me that an audition or read for the audition for the for the read through or read through. I mean, do you you know, you're around the table. I didn't quite know if you go all, you know, fucking start acting, you know, or you just read the lines what some people do just flat, which is terrible.

That's not the answer. There's people that actually get fired during the read through. Right. Right. You have to read through this, actually, you know that, right?

Because it's so flat. I didn't know I did.

I honestly, if I shouldn't be there, they should have known that already.

Yeah, but if I was shown that you could get fired after the veto, I would have been shitting my pants. I was so naive that I didn't even realize.

Well, that's the interesting thing. When I tell people that I knew you from the river, what did you do there? I was the town coordinator. We shut the fuck up. I go, Yeah, I worked for him. I got booked by Steve Schirripa at the Riviera is one of the first times I ever worked in Vegas. It was great. And you had gotten some gigs through Drew Carey.

You had done the Drew Carey, Drew Carey Show, Bruce Paon. Help me, Kevin Pollack, those guys at the beginning.

Absolutely. I did drew specials. The first acting you did actually first acting I did was Bruce found on the golf course.

We did a thing that Lenny Clarke I play the prison guard what, in a special.

Yeah, I d remember Friday Night Comics. Remember that show on Fox. Yeah. They were like little sketches, five minute sketches. And we we had Lenny Clarke in a while. He was in the chair lecture from England. I know he's from Boston. Oh no.

And he had I pulled the switch. I swear to you I look right to the camera, right into the fucking. I didn't know what I was doing. That was the second thing I did that Kevin Pollak put me in his special. I played his bodyguard and then Drew and, you know, little shit, little shit, you know.

Did you start as an actor, comedian, comedian, a comedian? Yeah, I only acted for a little while. Just did Newsradio take it like it? I like standup better.

Yeah.

The acting problem is actors.

You have to hang out with them. That's the problem with acting.

Yeah, but you everything is so sensitive and just it's just, you know, some of them are great. The news radio people were great. It wasn't the problem. The problem was when I'd run into other actors, you meet them. There's just this this boundary of bullshit. Yeah. You have to go through to get to the actual person. Absolutely. Whereas comics are right there. They're right there for you. You meet a comic on the road, your comic.

I don't know. I mean, I'm like, hey, what the fuck are you doing work for this guy. That guy, huh. He's right there. Yeah, right there.

You meet him instantly. Yeah, I find it the opposite. Really? How so? The actors I find like what you're saying about comics. I find that about actors and I find the opposite about comedians.

You know what? Maybe that is it's that because that's where you come from. Right? They know. Oh, it's Michael. I'm not saying that just to be contrary. No, no, no. I believe you mean it. Yeah.

But also there's a difference in New York actors in L.A. actors. That is true. That's a big difference in these TV actors. And there's there's something about they can almost fucking taste it. It's like the actors that aren't quite there yet that you can they can almost taste it. They're kind of working, but they're not secure. They're they're getting auditions. And maybe they might book something, but maybe they won't.

Do you remember when we auditioned for We Audition? You know, that's my first thing I ever did. See a man. We shot it out here. Look, that's the tuxedo from the roof. Is it really? Oh, that's it. You show this to David Chase, The Sopranos. You guys got a golfer, obviously you got The Sopranos, I was like, holy shit, and it was for me, it was a thing that I would tell people was like, listen, there's certain things that a person could just do.

You can't just go on stage and do stand up. It takes too long. You can't just learn guitar, but some people can fuckin act. And you were really good. Not in theater, though.

And film and television is different theater. Oh, God. You can't just you can get somebody who's never acted. And if you're a good director or something, get him in front of a camera, make them feel comfortable, give them stuff to do.

But you can't put them on a stage because of the crowd, because like doing so is stand up. Yeah. Crowd you're on stage. You have to you know, there's no second take. You have to you have to create these moments for two hours straight and sustain.

It's not just getting a couple of lines right now, but, you know, there's actors like you can't just learn stand up. It's a very underrated art form. OK, absolutely tapped to do it and do it. You're by yourself. You're out there.

There's actors like, what's his fucking name?

Piven. That little fucker, Jeremy Piven. He's a stand up comic now. Now, how that happened is he is still there. He's very good, though. Or is he acting as a stage? You see his standup? I have not seen it.

He what he's basically doing is what he can do. I mean, I don't I think because of all the shit that happened with him to move. Yeah. Survival, it's nothing else you can do.

But but you know what I'm saying? I mean, I've seen comics when I was around comics from 1986, I started at the Riviera. All right. It's very difficult. It takes guys years and years and years and years to find their voice, their rhythm, even if a comic if you don't like their material, not every comic, every guy you know, the guy's a pro. He's really good. It's subjective. Yes. Hey, don't make me laugh.

This guy. I think it's hilarious. But, you know, when a guy just don't have it right, guys, you know, and there's a lot there's numerous actors that all humorous, whatever they are that started doing standup without putting all the work in.

Yeah.

I think what happens is the income opportunities get smaller. Yeah.

So and then they look at stand up and then someone says, listen, we can schedule a tour for you. You know, you do this size.

I don't blame them for doing it. Yeah. I'm just saying, I mean it's a different thing. I don't blame them, but it's a different thing. I listen, the party is good though. Piven I just read reviews. I said I just find it hard to people who are very surprised actually that he was good at it.

I still don't like how they expected him. They expected him not to be good. He's just fucking rude. Fuck.

Put me in you audition. I think you got the role. We didn't audition for the same role, but it was Bob Simon's movie.

What movies? That I didn't get it definitely because I didn't do it. The only movies I've ever done is Kevin James movies. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

We watch you. Pee wee Herman came out. He was. Yes, we auditioned Dave Sheridan. Well, years us. We're going way back.

I was on The Sopranos already, but probably early 2000s we were there. Dave Sheridan. Oh, I know what you're talking about. He was a star that we didn't know who he was. Right. I did that fucking movie. I try I forgot I did that. And I said to you, who's this fucking guy? That's right. And you said, I don't know. I think he overheard us. He was the star of the movie.

What movie? I forget the name of. But he's a good guy, Dave. Yeah, very good guy. Very, very funny guy. But I didn't I you know, I said, who's he hurt us?

Who's Dave? He's a comic actor. Yeah. Know. And a funny guy. And Paul Reubens came out and he said, it's a great room, guys, and we would just sit there. I didn't care that you got.

Yeah, that was an interesting tape because that guy was he was a young guy and he had never been the star of a movie before and they were making this movie.

And because they you know, they put money into this, the executives were giving him a line readings.

There was a guy who was wearing cufflinks and an expensive watch and this really nice tailored suit.

And he was saying he was telling him how to be funny.

That was Rob Simmons. That was probably the producer. I don't know, because I worked I did a movie with him see Spot Run. And this was after that. That's what he did, line readings of the guy just being an asshole. He was just being a good guy with money. And it gets back to some certain situations. You don't do that.

Well, I think, you know, the guy wanted to do the movie. It was he was happy to be the star of the movie, and he just took it.

Remember when they gave Dominic line reading he Dominic Simos calm, Dominic Chianese played Uncle Jim most calm guy, just sweetheart. And somebody gave him line readings and he flipped out.

I was I was in the car. We were in the camera car and I was driving on the. New Jersey Turnpike, you know, they were toll on the car, but, you know, the driver was there and I was stuck. I couldn't get out and the director came over and Dominic was gone.

Don't tell me how to do it. Just tell me what you want. And this is the nicest man in the history. Right? And he was going, don't tell me how to do it. Just tell me what you want.

What is the thing about actors with line readings? Because then you get you're now you're not discovering it. You're not you're not creating the moment. You're just imitating it. So it's not organic and it's not might not be as interesting as what you're going to come up with as an actor, but it doesn't it doesn't bother me.

A lot of directors don't know how to deal with actors, so they think that that's helpful. But it's actually the opposite.

It's not helpful because when like when they give you a line reading, they would actually say the line the way they want. Sometimes they will.

And you know why that doesn't bother me bothers me. I flip out. It hasn't happened much. I've gone off on directors and especially with a sitcom, which I find very difficult. I find one hour dramas I, I like that show much more sitcoms, a different rhythm, a different beat. I don't think I'm very good at it and I've done quite a bit of them.

You know, the guy's given me a no to give me. I said, just tell me. Tell me what you want me. How do you say tell me how to say it. I'll fucking do what you want because obviously I'm not getting what you want. I want to make the director happy. I want to do a good job. Tell me it doesn't bother me that much. You know, I have had directors.

I did a movie with a young kid.

It was a really good role. A younger kid. After every take he came over to talk to me. Finally I went like, just let me fucking do my thing. I'll figure it out. Just yeah.

They are appreciative of the fact that you've got to think about what you're doing. And if they're yapping at you, then you're thinking about them and it interrupts this whole process. Absolutely.

You freak out, though, Michael. Yeah. Because as an actor, you have to you're playing the scene, the reality of the scene, whatever it is, this guy saying something and it pisses you off. So that's what you're trying to create. That's what you're trying to do.

Someone tells you say the line like this. Well, then I'm not in the moment. I'm not dealing with this. I'm just thinking about imitating this douchebag who just told me to say something a certain way, you know what I mean?

I had a director said to me, make a comical face. And I said, I don't know what that means.

Do you want me to be happy? Do you want me to be ecstatic over the top? Really excited, make a funny face.

And then I said, I don't know what that means. I think it should be more cartoony. And then he said he said, well, I'm not really good at it. I swear to God. He said, I'm not really good at giving direction. I said, that's your job.

That's actually the title of the job is Direction.

Well, do you feel like as an actor, it's it's a strange thing to do because you're creating something, but it's also this collaborative effort. You're working with the other actors, but you're also working with the director. There's the script that you're supposed to be following and maybe there's some changes to the script. And there's so much going on to try to create your version of it that the more that people are fucking with you, the more that's going to just throw you off the rails.

It does.

And what I found is the best people, the best director, best actors and writers make it so you feel very comfortable and that you are free to create and that you're not being dominated, dictated to and stuff like that. Like, for instance, the best example is Martin Scorsese, who I only worked with once in a movie.

I felt like I could do no wrong. He creates an environment where you feel completely creative and free and that's that. It doesn't get better than him, you know, doesn't get better.

I would imagine that that's that's a real skill that you hone to be able to look at it from the the artist's perspective, from the actor's perspective, and just to just to figure out how to be the least annoying, the most supportive, and then just sort of convey what you're trying to get done in the hundred percent.

I mean, both ways, you know, as an actor, too, you got to learn, you know, you learn how to deal with different types of directors and give them what they want and give and satisfy yourself at the same time, when you're not a skill, when you're learning, it's harder to do that. You know, I got fired from my very first professional job. I was twenty one. I had been studying for a long time.

I've been auditioning. Never got anything. I get a play.

And I was a lead in a play off Broadway, but it got a lot of attention because it was based on a true story. And I got fired after the opening weekend because I didn't respect a director. I thought he I didn't think he knew what he was doing and I didn't know how to give him what he needed and still do my own thing.

I wasn't skilled enough yet, so they fired me. It was devastating.

But, you know, but a lot of like I work with Clint Eastwood a few times and it's with the casting. He's relying on you. That's why he cast you. So a lot of a lot of a lot of directors, even big ones. They don't even give you any direction. That's OK. You did, you know? Yeah, absolutely. You did your thing and now go ahead, take it away. I mean, you know, and it's a lot like he believes it's a lot with the casting.

Michael directed me in a movie that he wrote. It couldn't have been better called The Hungry Ghost.

Very low indie, very indie movie we did in New York in 2008. And Steve was one of the leads. And it was it was great.

I mean, you know, it was awesome. New York actors. And what was it about, you know, five people that all fucking lost their life is lost.

I played a guy that was a radio late night radio host at that cockeye and drunk.

You could be a great radio deejay with that voice problem problem with his kids.

But it was great. We rehearsed that his at the time he had a theater. We rehearsed because we didn't have a lot of money time. We rehearse. We got out on the street. We did it. And Michael was terrific. He knows what he wants. I mean, that's the biggest mistake a director can make.

If they're hesitant, you know, they got to know what they want before they come over and talk to you, you know? You know what I mean?

There's a guy hemming and hawing. You know, it's like, what the fuck?

But talking about line reading, there was an act, a Broadway guy that did The Sopranos, a small role.

And I was it was a scene with me and Uncle Junior and and this guy and they were actually giving them line readings. He was a Broadway actor and he wasn't getting it. And they wind up dubbing his voice.

Oh, they dub this, did they? Yes. I forget the guy's name when we get to the episode, I tell you. But that's insane. Yeah, but you know what else happened on the show numerous times like I did I did a scene with the rapper Fabulous. And he was great. There was a scene where I shot the guy in the ass. I don't know if you remember that. I remember that. Yeah, I.

I'm supposed to shoot him in the thigh because I'm a marksman and I get money from him and I shoot him in the ass by mistake. But I shot it would fabulous. And then a few weeks later they said, listen, you got to reshoot that scene.

So right away I go, wow, I fucked up.

No, they change.

Fabulous to treat stretch naughty by nature.

Yeah. Good guy. They they said he looked too young, they just replaced him.

They just, they had the, the budget and the time and they just got brought in another actor and they would rewrite scenes if they didn't like the scene after they saw it they would rewrite it and and numerous times they brought in other actors.

There's two different FBI agents for a book. You know that actors. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She was at the end of episode season three is something she never came back. Not only did they, they took her off to DVD. So unless you taped it. You know, like if you take the ballot, every shot our scenes, they were shot even for the DVD. So she unless she has a VHS of it somewhere, she's not.

That's crazy because she's a really good actress. No, I wasn't. It probably wasn't anything to do with that. It was they didn't make a deal with her. Maybe she was busy making a movie. I'm not saying she's got a huge mouth. Yeah, she smiles. She is huge. She was a waterboy.

Yeah, that's right. She was great in that. I just watched that and me and my family went on because we're, you know, stayed at home for the covid thing.

We had movie night every night. We went to an Adam Sandler binge Friday.

He watched everything underrated fucking funny movie. That's a funny movie. The Waiting Thing is The Zohan is very funny. That's a great movie.

Brushing your teeth with hummus, Lenny, because he's back in L.A. because it's a really funny movie. It's a very funny movie. Cooking, barbecuing with the fish. And Nick, it's very funny. Oh, yeah, that's great. Oh, Nick is awesome. I love Nick.

Who is the comics that inspired you to be a comedian or Cryer first?

My parents took me to see live in the Sunset Strip in the movie theater when I was like 15. He was brilliant. Oh, yeah. Beyond. You never met him?

Yeah, I did. I worked with him. I worked with him five weeks in a row, actually. Wow.

Towards the end of his life, it was it was very odd for me because that was the that was what really got me interested in standup, because in that movie theater, thinking I'd never really seen standup before, I don't think, you know, maybe I'd seen her on The Tonight Show or something like that, but I'd never really seen that in this movie theater. Here I am crying, laughing at this guy that was just talking. And I was like, I can't believe he's just talking.

Because every you know, if I had seen a funny movie, it was funny, but it was never that funny. I remember you said something about something about Mary. We you had just seen something about Mary and we were talking and you go, it's like a comic killing. I'll never forget you said that like, it's so funny. It was like a comic killing. Yeah. That was the feeling that I got watching Pryor was like, I can't believe how funny this guy is, just talking like I didn't know you could do that.

And you worked with him at the comedy show working within the Comedy Store towards the end of his life where he was really sick and they used to have to crank the volume up on the mike for one show, like really loud, you would get on stage.

And he was on all kinds of medication because, you know, he was sick and he had to sit down because he couldn't literally couldn't stand up. They just carry him to the stage so they'd introduce him and they'd walk him through the crowd. And I work with him for five weeks. I was on after him every night, like every night it was Pryor than me because, you know, Mitzi Shore, who own the Comedy Store when she had a young comic that she liked, she would shove you after anybody was any good.

So if Martin Lawrence was on, I was on after him. If Richard Pryor was on, I was on after.

So you audition did you audition for the improv and and comedy? No, I didn't have to. You didn't have to audition for the Improv, the audition, the improv. You know, you just if you had TV credits and stuff like that, they give you.

But that was later on when you first got to L.A. You know, when I first got out here, I had a TV show was on.

I was on a show called Hardball. Oh, that's right. That's right. What Mike saw Mike exactly my star shout out to Mike and that got canceled.

And then I got on news radio right afterwards. So the whole time that I was out here, I was on a sitcom. And so the Improv, I could just get spots, but I wanted to be at the store. The store was Mecca that.

Did you ever see that movie? Some kind of hero with Richard Pryor? Yes. And he plays like a villain. I think it's about a Vietnam vet or something. That's kind of a drama.

I think it's a drama. And he's he's great. He was a great actor.

He was great in everything. He was is great. And that was that movie that they did about his life story where he told Jojo. Oh, right. I was really good. Yeah. That was basically the drama.

That's right. Know it's good. He's the goat. My opinion. I mean, like Lenny Bruce, who started it all off. And then there's Kinnison, who was probably like the funniest of all time for like two years before he burnt out. But then Pryors, the guy, you know, when you look at like the guy who changed comedy, he made comedy a personal thing. He made comedy like an honest, personal thing.

He was the first one you think? You know, he was he took what Lenny Bruce was doing and he just did it a little bit better. You know, Lenny Bruce opened the door, though. Lenny Bruce was the guy who got arrested for Lenny Bruce was the guy who really changed perceptions in the you know, in the 50s and the 60s. What he was doing was revolutionary. There was no one that was doing anything, pushing all those boundaries.

Yeah, everyone else was telling jokes like two Jews walk into a bar, they buy it. But I'm sure that was what they all shared each other's jokes. Yeah. Katsuko comics. Exactly. It's all of it. And exactly all that was. But he was pointing out hypocrisy in society, political things and talking about language. Yes. Language. Yeah.

I mean he started out as an impressionist. Yes. Yeah. No, yeah.

He he just decided to expand the medium and then he got more and more famous from doing that and then more became social.

Commentary that was actually funny rather than just what we had thought of as a stand up comedian before that, and then of course, Carlin took it from there. And then I think Pryor did it better than anybody else. He really opened the door for so many other comedians.

And he made it personal. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He like almost confessional and yasbeck and vulnerable and vulnerable as an actor.

That was thought that, too. Yeah. Yeah.

In everything he did, I mean, he was fucked. They destroyed Lenny Bruce. They just destroyed, you know, the the lawsuits and the lawsuits at the end. That's what he was actually we were he had big problems with drugs while he was a heroin addict. I mean, but they just destroyed them. Yeah.

I mean I mean, they were arresting him for cursing. Yeah. Just let me think about that now. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

Have you seen Marvelous Mrs. Masel? The Amazon is really good. Yeah. Especially the guy who plays Lenny Bruce is good. He's really good. Who is it who's I don't know the actor's name.

He's really know but the, the way they portray him is very close to how he really was. Yeah.

And then he was very loved by people that would come to see him and then the cops would literally drag him offstage stage.

What do you think of her stand up on the show?

Well, in the beginning I think it was pretty good.

It seemed like a funny broad who was kind of drunk, who went on stage, who was hilarious and and got laughs. It's just hard to recreate stand up if you don't do standup. Yeah.

So that's very hard. But that's what I was talking about as a comedic actor. There he is. No, he's very gerbi, very good. Even looks like them that. Yeah, he's very he was also on the deuce.

He played a good role in a deuce, you know, on HBO on the one thing about Mrs. Masel, everything is a she's like, oh and all the time.

Yeah. That's the one thing. It's like always a funny. You never saw the show. I haven't. It's a good show but it's always like a funny quip every time you ask if she wants coffee. It's a funny joke but yeah it's like I like a comic that's always on right. It's annoying. You got to suck.

I got to the third season. The third season. It seemed like it was a little manufactured, like there was this big scene where she's in front of a USO tour. Yeah. Overseas and these guys are laughing and she's just murder and laughing and everything. And it's like as a comic, I'm like, this is not this isn't real.

This isn't real.

This is like a kung fu scene where guys kicking guys through windows. You know what? You know, it's like there's something about it. I can't I can't relate to this anymore. You've taken this into fiction, but I think the beginning of it was really good.

Joe, have you ever just made it on stage?

Oh, yeah. I don't mean at the beginning. Oh, I hate shit. Yeah, of course. Well, this is one thing. I write a new act every two years, so I do a Netflix special or Comedy Central special. I throw all that stuff out and I start all over again and you're going to have some rough sets. Yeah I shit.

And then, you know, maybe you have a heckler, you get mad at the heckler and shit. Do you have go to Hackler, you know, shut up heckler lines.

I mean you can do that, but really it's all in what's happening in the moment. They're so different.

You know what it's like. Do you have a go to space for your food? Well, it really depends on what you're what you're doing. Yeah. I mean, it's really there's work.

Yeah. Yeah. Good. But also worked at the river for me. I know you and that lady was excellent says lady. The only time you should open your mouth is to switch dicks.

You remember the Covic Rick Randle's.

No requirement was hot stuff. He had a one man show, he was the beginning of that played the improvs like I'm going in the 90s and he had this I forget the name of it. Maybe I don't know what to do with it. It's Rick Reynolds. He was a San Francisco guy. And he was. Yeah, and he he was he had a development deal and I think even a sitcom for a short time. And he had an act.

And the act was kind of like, you know, he kind of came off like a studious guy. And then he would say, Would you sleep with me for a dollar? You know, we tell a girl, you know, how about fire out? Then, of course, for a million dollars, would you go out with me? And of course, she says, you're a whore, you're over.

So he tells. So he tells the guy he does the joke. He gets offstage a guy her boyfriend comes back and punches him in the back of the head right at the Riviera. Right.

And then two nights later, a guy is heckling him. He tells the guy, if you don't shut up, I'm going to leave. That's so he tells a guy. That's how we dealt with that guy. Kept excellent. And he walked off the stage. Hmm. Yeah. And I was fucking pissed off at him.

It seems like a very odd approach. Yeah. Yeah. One more time. And I swear, I'm basically given up all your power to the heckler. Yeah. That's that's that's probably why he's not around anymore. Yeah. But he. What strategy is he. In the 90s he had this one man show, maybe late 80s development deal, big management, you know. Do you remember that guy. Well he he had a show called Defending the Caveman.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Becca, yeah.

I never saw it, but a lot of people did see it. And they told me that he did it for a while and then he sold the show and someone else was doing it. Oh yeah.

Numerous people he did in Vegas. The guy did it for years.

I think the guy the fuck's his name, the bald guy who's in the thing. He was on the shield.

Oh, Michael Chiklis checklist. Yeah, he did. He did it for a while. Yeah. That's a one man show. Yeah. Yeah. I was like it was about women and men. It went to Broadway. Yeah. He made a fortune.

It was basically though like stock premises of stars. I didn't see it. Yeah. That's what it was explained to me. Someone said this is the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. But it became guys making millions all over the world, all over the world.

And it's basically like, you know, standard premises, man, I like this, but I like that, like, real standard shit that if you saw Rohtak doing, you would go, oh, this guy is kind of a hack. But then meanwhile, this guy is doing it as a one man show and it's a theatrical production. So it's huge. I don't know if that's an accurate assessment. That's what it was explained to me. But he also hired.

So he was kind of a, you know, not fat, but kind of a, you know, chunky kind of guy and the other guys that filled in. We'll all like that. Why is that so so that it wasn't a skinny, good looking guy, they were all like kind of the same.

Imagine if Demerara did that. Like, if you have some guy playing Tom Gallagher doing gal you did with his twin brother and then he showed the brother. Yeah. Maybe not his twin, but it's his brother. And they look at Las Vegas, Gallagher, too. And then after a while he got tired of Galaga to doing his act like, hey, give me my fucking act back. Fuck you. Yeah. So they're fighting.

I never knew that. Yes. He was touring and doing. Yeah. He's just like Gallagher, Klown, Gallagher.

But something went wrong in the process, like something was like slightly off.

Like if you know, you were married to him and you came home one day, you're like, hey, are you OK? What's going on?

He'd be like, you're not my husband. What is happening here tomorrow? That is what this should be. Tomorrow is all over. The country will send them out. Headline everywhere. There's Gallagher to which ones, which I don't know which ones, which I say on the right. I think that's on the right is too.

So the guy on the right who had to grow his fucking hair the same way and wear the same clothes and what was the was one better than the other was something I'd like to see.

Have you had Gallagher on?

No, I haven't. No, he's a I've heard him on Stern before, though.

He's an interesting guy, very opinionated. He but I got to tell you, he took that process to another level. He did well, him him between like Carrot Top.

I say just he he I don't want to ruin the genre of Propp comics, but he defined it to the point where no one else can be a prop comic anymore.

When I was starting out in eighty eight, there was proper comics.

There was all these guys, like some guys that have music, some guys that have props. There was some guys have had a puppet, you know, they'd go on stage the puppet. There was a normal thing, but there's no fucking prop comics anymore. Oh no good. On the comic strip on Monday night, you don't see a single prop comic. They don't exist no more ventriloquist. That's rare, too. I mean, I don't know who I guess it was.

What's your name? Jeff Dunham. Jeff Dunham is like he's a premier puppet guy.

He's a Hall of Fame. Yeah, he's a Hall of Famer puppet guy who used to work for me at the room. Did you ever have Otto and George in show? He's the best.

He was he was a great puppet and he he had the dirtiest puppet, the puppet would say the most fucked up shit.

And then he would go, How can you say that? And we turned five. And he worked for me a lot.

But we you said the show, you did a dirty show. It was the extreme comedy. So I had all these filthy guys. Matter of fact, I was talking to Nick DiPaolo. Nick did it. You know, there he is. There's Otto and George's, Otto and George.

It's so crazy. It's it's so funny.

Someone actually ran on stage at the Dangerfield's and stabbed the puppet one time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so mad. Yeah. They're so mad. So horrified.

Look how scary. Yeah. Crazy eyebrows when he would he would fucking the eyebrows would go up when he was hit as punch lines and it's Otto and George. And you think that the puppets name would be Otto. But that's George's puppet is George. But Otto, he worked for me a bunch of times and he had problems and he would disappear. Oh he couldn't find them. He was gone. It's obvious he has problems with and he was he died young, died young.

But he did Letterman. You know, he started finally, after so many years getting some recognition.

I wish he was around now so we could introduce him through podcasts. I think I think if he was around now, you know, if I if I could get them on a podcast and show people who is much like Joey Diaz, much like a lot of these guys, you're not going to understand who they are through a traditional format, like a regular television format.

You can get a shadow of what they really are. You got to see, like I was a wild guy who did these crazy, fucking crazy, crazy road shows.

We did we did those Bob Gonzo gigs together, Jersey. And we did we did Dangerfield's for those.

We did prom shows. Prom shows are the fucking worst thing we could ever do, because what they do is they take these 17 and 18 year old kids. I went to one. You went to one.

They don't change the audience. So the audience, they just keep shoving new kids in there and hope the older kids live leave, rather. So you'll start working. You might have a seven o'clock show and you don't get out of there till like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. Sometimes you get out of there, it's just starting to turn daylight and they're just pumping kids in. So they would tell you, don't change your act. We want them to be born your act.

So they leave. We get new kids.

That that Australian guy, Tony, was the big guy.

It was it was Scottish. The Scottish. Yeah. Fuck. What was his name?

Not God damn it wasn't. Tony was Rodney's partner. He was funnier than most of the comedians. The big Scottish power left a guy he would he would lift weights with.

He would take cement buckets like like a bucket and fill it with cement. And he would do a lot of his workouts just lifting these buckets filled with cement, one of the strongest fucking guys I've ever seen in my life. He was built like a bowling ball with a head on the top of it. He was the manager? No, he was a good doorman, slash maitre d slash bouncer. So if anybody did anything wrong, he was the guy that came in.

And I saw him pick a kid up by his neck, literally grab him by his neck and lift him up in the air and the kid's feet were dangling.

Oh, yeah, Dangerfield's. I went there many years ago in the 70s, and I saw David Fry, you know, before. I know he used to do Nixon. He was five foot three and he would do fucking Nixon the end like Caesar's Palace. Really look him up, David Fry. And he wound up moving to Vegas. And he was Sullivan all the time. And he did Nixon. He was great, really short. Right. And he was always lonely.

And he was what? Randy Critical, you know. Oh, mean. Yeah. So really critical was an impression. Is the two of them the guy with Roger Stone. Yeah. Randy used to work for me at the river. He was a comedian. Yes, a standup impressionist. He did. Johnny Carson. I saw him on Carson. There's David Fry. He's five foot three. They go over there down in Times Square. It's four in the morning, four thirty in the morning.

There's a hooker on the corner.

They pull up. They said, how much for a blowjob?

The girl is looking and she's looking in the car. How much the fuck you she went, I don't fuck midgets go. He was lost for the night. He was depressed for two fucking months. He was a bad alcoholic and he worked in the ribs. When we first when we first opened.

Right, he worked.

It was like his big comeback because he was living in Vegas. He used to come around the club and he did the first show, wore a tuxedo. And between shows, he got bombed and boarded, but Friedman said, go and get them, you know, we gave him a chance and he just couldn't even work, was a poor guy. And he passed away a few years ago. But he was headlined Caesar's Palace. We are comic one, a very depressed, never married.

Or he would say life is hard, life is hard, life is hard. There's a lot of those stereotype comics.

And you would hear about them more back in the day than now that we're never happy. They would go on stage, they would get laughs in the crowd, then they'd be depressed for the rest of the night.

Hey, you know, that that kind of bump up comic, I mean, there was a lot more work than I think.

I don't know, you know, a lot of work now. You had Catskills, you had nightclubs in New York, Chicago, you know, I mean, there was a TV paid more money than you didn't get scale. I think if you did a variety show, then you got real money, you know, like Flip Wilson Show or Sonny and Cher.

And there was a comic con, I think that was, you know, Flip Wilson said, look, I'm old. I told you I was old. I'm an old man, Flip Wilson, Sonny and Cher.

I love the show. I remember those shows. Yeah. You know, all those variety shows in the you know, in the 70s. I mean, what happened to variety shows? I don't think people liked them anymore.

I don't know. They got a short attention span. So I guess that's the new American Idol and the voice and shit that's sorta.

But the variety shows would have like legitimate famous acts. Come on. Yeah. Singers, yeah. Singers, comics. They had the guy with the plates, magicians.

They wish they would do things popular. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well of course. Yeah. Joe Roach. That's what you got to do Joe. It's all right. That's the next thing.

I can't do that. I do enough. This is it.

It can't be a short attention span because if that was the case, then podcast wouldn't work because podcasts require the most attention span.

How do you do you that's the one thing where our podcast to a lot of younger people are discovering The Sopranos, and that was part of the reason we wanted to do.

When there's kids that are in their late teens, early twenties. Yeah. You know, like that age and the podcast. Yeah.

And they were too young when the show was on originally, but that that's pretty cool because. Oh yeah. A lot of shows don't get that kind of resurgence and new generation discovering it.

Well it's the beautiful thing about our era that you can stream shows and benge them. You can do that with back in our day. Like if you wanted to watch old episodes of fucking Starsky and Hutch. Good luck, Joe. Where are you going to find them? Where are you going to find Dragnet? You had to wait for it to be on television. If you wanted to watch an older show, you had to wait for it or you'll find it somewhere.

Now someone tells you about The Sopranos. Is it on Netflix?

No, it's on HBO, Max, HBO and HBO, Hulu and probably Apple TV. So could buy it on Apple TV, Amazon, Amazon. Yeah. So but you just go right to that boom.

You get started I mean, and instantly starts playing. I mean it's amazing if you're a kid and you want to discover great old shows or great old films, I mean you have instant access to them. You don't have to go in.

You absolutely. You know, but back then, only 11 million people had HBO. Yeah. Which is nothing. There's probably more people now watching this. Yeah. You know, people get together on Sunday nights, right. They have their parties. Yeah. And and yeah, they would cook and have parties and dress up like the characters and it's just it was harder to watch things.

You had to go out and get a physical physical copy of. Like I remember I moved into this house in 2002 and it had a theater and I was like, oh my God, I made it.

I got a fucking theater in my house. This is the shit.

And I watched Apocalypse Now part the the the newly Remak remastered version of Apocalypse Now, the one with the added scenes and.

Yeah, French plantation. I was really cool. I was just sitting back watching and saying, oh, this is amazing. And then you find out the history of the film and then you find out that like literally took like seven years to make that.

Yeah. Laurence Fishburne is a teenager when he's in it. You know, it's just Quaqua, a movie that is.

Yeah, that's a good one to look at his career. Actually, Harvey Keitel was originally the Martin Sheen role.

Willard actually shot for a while and got fired.

I think they felt he brought too much like Martin Sheen was more of a blank slate, like an everyman, kind of.

Harvey had a very strong, like personality like New York, kind of tough guy and a lot more of a cork's to it.

Yeah. And he wanted more of like Martin Sheen was more of like a reacting to all the other craziness around him, like Hopper and Frederick Forrest Fishburne and Brando.

And he was kind of the center that just held it. And Harvey was more like a character that makes sense.

That's at least what I heard, but they should I think Harvey shopped for at least a month, maybe more. Wow. Wow. That makes sense, though, because Harvey such a powerful force. Yeah. When I think Harvey Keitel. I think a bad lieutenant. Yeah, that's a good one. Fuckin movie.

That's a brilliant move. Shit. He did a series for them. What did you do? I did a series, the only series he ever did called Life on Mars. We did one season for ABC in 2009 and Harvey was played the role. He played Lieutenant in that. And it was his first TV show to work with.

Yeah, I worked with him before I worked among cockers. I had a couple of scenes with him in that and then we did. I love Harvey. How are you?

A very hard worker takes his work really, really seriously and really good. I mean, bad, Lieutenant. He's incredibly brilliant. I think that might be his best work ever.

And dangerous game that you ever see that it's the same director Abel Ferrara.

It's with Madonna and James Russo. Harvey basically plays a version of Abel Ferrara and kind of a version of himself. And he's really he plays a film director. He's really good.

I don't know if I saw on that. I have to go look at that. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.

What did you think of the stand up show on Showtime which won? What was that called? What do you mean?

It was a show I'm dying up here. Yeah. Yeah, like it now. I thought it was flat. Yeah.

I kind of liked it. I mean, I like it because a lot of my good friends were I'm sure I like that.

And I liked it because it was basically based on the store.

But was he a stand up comedian, Jim Carrey. Yes, he was. Before he started to act like that. Right. I don't know. I didn't even get into you know what? How do they have our act? You know, like, impossible.

You know, she was crazy, but I met her a few times.

She was nice to me because she came out with Paulie. Paulie worked at the hotel.

So I met a couple of times. She was always very nice. That's her on the wall. Oh, is it? Yeah, she was always very, very nice to me. But was she crazy? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That's why she let the store become what it is. She basically wanted the lunatics to run the asylum. She wanted them to fight against each other. She also no like say, if you and Michael had a problem with each other, she put you on back to back. You have Michael bring you up. Well, if yeah. If you were dating of a comic, was dating another comic, she'd have them back to back if they if they broke up.

And there was all this was all orchestrated. Yeah. Well, she had a theory about comedy. She wanted people to be put into difficult situations. That's why I told you when I was 27 and, you know, just sort of getting my feet under me. She had me going after Richard Pryor every fucking night. Martin Lawrence, she liked you. She'd put she'd throw you to the wolves. Wow. And she she would laugh about it, too, like later on in life, you know, I had a conversation with and she was like because I always knew we're in a point.

Yeah.

She thought it was funny, but that was it was also how she made you a good comic.

She she forced you to adapt to the moment. If you just go on if you have an easy opening act, who does get some laughs.

It doesn't killed too hard. And, you know, you go on this cushy spot in the middle, everything's soft and easy. You don't get challenged, you don't grow. And she wanted you to grow. She wanted you to she wanted you to face hardships. She wanted you to fucking sink or swim. Bitch. This is the Comedy Store. And that's how she treated it, you know.

But the store, which was the Mecca, of course, and then they had the tail off a little bit.

And then, yeah, when you and Joey Diaz and all you guys started coming back, now it's the spot.

Yeah. You know, before the pandemic. Anyway, that's the spot in the United States.

When I came back in 2014, we had already been talking about it for so long on the podcast that it kind of had a little bit of a ramp up before then. But then when I came back and we were basically telling her, but, hey, I'm at the store. Were there were there, you know, five nights a week? Yeah, I just became mobbed again. I mean, it was mobbed every fucking night. It was sold out hundreds of days in a row.

Three shows, one in the one in the original room, big show in the main room, belly room just packed every night.

You can't get in there. They had the you know, they were at the dunes. They were before the improv.

Yeah. And there was like five headliners, you know, they would have like Dom and, you know, Kinnison Mitchell Walther's, you know, and they they were at the Dunes Hotel and the big room and Mizzi full wall that. So she made all the money and she was very smart, obviously a small business. Yeah. She didn't go for the, you know, guaranteed money. She took a shot and four years that was the spot to be.

When did that place go under. That was before my time. And then I would say in the 90s or early 90s, they knocked the dunes down. But I think it started in eighty four. The Improv opened in 86 and they would have five outline headliners, Johnny Dark. You know all you know, all the headliners from the Comedy Store, Jim.

Walker, you know, well, Vegas is making a comeback when it comes to comedy. Look, there's clawless clubs. Yeah, there's clown like Jimmy Kimmel's got a club there now.

And then there's the Comedy Cellar Laughing Factory. Brad Garrett yelling The Brad Garrett place is great.

It's like it's a good place for not just for people that are doing big places, but for comic comics, guys, road guys who just, you know, hey, you you when you did this show, you saw Rich Little.

Yeah, we all went the shoot. Play it in the Laugh Factory at the Tropicana, right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Daystar's residences there. Like he'll be there for months at a time at the Laugh Factory.

I was just I was just there in Vegas for the UFC two weeks ago. And, you know, they're doing the UFC without a crowd.

It's very strange, you know, with the APEC center, which is it's it's an arena that the UFC built where is it's next to the UFC Performance Institute. It's off the strip. And they just they built this very small arena. So they do a series of other shows besides just the big UFC pay per view. And they do this thing called the Dana White Tuesday Night Contender series, where they have like up and coming comics or fighters, rather, becoming fighters compete.

And then they do it in a small place with a very small crowd and, you know, like 1100 people. But now there's no one, no crowd, because it's the only way you could do the thing. So as I'm driving to the the APEC center, I'm passing the Tropicana and they've got dice up on the billboard for February.

So it's like long past shows, March, shit like that. They don't even take it down. They haven't even because everything's been shut down. All the casinos have been shut down.

Now they're now they're opening. Yeah. So did you have a hotel to stay in?

No, I didn't even I flew in the day of the fights. I flew out that night yesterday.

I watched a soccer game at the German League and they had no fans, but they had a recording of the fans.

Well, that's which is and you know, they sing the fans in Europe sing chants with the team. They had that going on. But there's nobody in the audience. They're going to do that for you.

No, no. It's just silent. No, no recording.

Yeah. Cheers. And the brilliant part about it being silent is that you can hear the people breathing. You can hear them talking shit to each other like pussy. Hey, pussy, I feel like they talk shit to each other when they're beating each other up.

You can hear the body blows, you can hear the wheezing and getting hurt. You can hear them heavy breathing when they're tired, like there's so much more depth to it. When you don't have an audience, there's undeniable that the audience plays a big factor in the energy. But there's something to just being there, like I was there for Tony Ferguson and just engaging in Florida. We did that in Jacksonville and there was the same thing. No audience that was even weirder because it was a 15000 seat arena, but there was no crowd.

It was just these guys duking it out in this cavernous arena and the octagon set up in the center of the arena. And all you hear is the corner man giving advice. And then you you hear them beating the shit out of each other.

You have to adjust anything you do differently. You just see. I didn't know. No, I didn't adjust. You know, the only difference is the one in Vegas. They wouldn't let me interview the fighters in the ring after the fight. So I couldn't go into the octagon after the fight. I had to do it remotely. So I had a headset on. I'm looking at them through a screen. It was real weird. Yeah, that was.

Do you think UFC that's why boxing is not popular anymore.

Boxing is pretty popular right now, as it once was.

I think MMR is much more exciting, but I think the real big boxing fights are still very exciting, like Tyson Fury, Deontay Wilder, that kind of fight like this, those are still very exciting. Like any time Canelo Alvarez fights, those are still very exciting fights. It's just it's it's not as multidimensional as it may when you watch a UFC fight and you know, you're seeing head kicks and take and guys get to man fucking tough.

It's tough.

Also, boxing Stoneridge wasn't Issac's even before I make got popular, like the heavyweight division, which used to be so four years.

So exciting, you know, when it comes in waves. You know, Deontay Wilder was just starting to become like the resurgence of the heavyweight division because he was smashing and knocking everybody out. And then they had that epic fight with him and Tyson Fury and they knocked Tyson Fury down twice and almost knocked him out in the 12th round. And Tyson came back and that round and then the fight was declared a draw. That was it was it was a great fight.

And then Tyson Fury came back and beat the fuck out of him in the rematch. And when that happened, everyone is like Jesus Christ. Now, American heavyweights like that was a big American heavyweight loss. Right.

And in America, there's something about we don't give a fuck about heavyweights from other countries, like when Vladimir Klitschko, like you would think like the whole thing was like a white guy as a heavyweight champion would be the crazy shit that Vladimir. I was a heavyweight champion for years, nobody gave a fuck that sort of said he was Russian, you know, in the in the I used to go to a lot of fights when I lived in Vegas in the 80s.

I was at the Hearn's Haggler when I was at Mazzini when he killed Dooku.

Kim. Oh, you and I was at that.

I was outside Fyrir. Yes, I was at her attacker. I was at the Okuni homes were you know, a guy tipped me I was a doorman, appal like his club bouncer guy gave me a hundred dollar ticket. I was all the way to the tippy top at Caesar's in the parking lot. That was the arena I was at Aguayo Prior. Aguayo Yeah. Alexis Aguayo prior.

Wow. I was just Tyson's first fight when he came out of jail.

Oh shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was had a whole bunch of them, a bunch and then they would have Saturday afternoons at the Showboat on the outside of town. I would go to a lot of those were great fights. You know, they had Wednesday night fights, but it was just Silver Slipper with the Mirage's.

I used to go back that I haven't been to a fight in years. They used to have a lot of fights at the Orleans to right the.

That was later on. Yeah, a little later on. But the decisive Wasseypur was just a shithole local place.

There's a lot of those in Vegas and yeah. A local place. And they would have these great fighters, they would come in from L.A. and wear top rank was big deal then and album's been around, you know, forever. Ali came to the set one day and Sopranos visit.

He was a fan of the show and he he, his manager contacted my manager and I met him in front of the studio and brought him onto the set.

And nobody knew he was coming. And Gandolfini was like in bed. He was doing it when he was in the coma.

It was all that stuff.

And he was like taking a nap between takes. And I brought Ali in, the whole crew just like froze. And then I brought him up to the bed and I tapped Jim.

Jim turned around, looked up, holy shit.

And he hung out the whole day and took pictures where every crew people gave him a standing ovation. People were crying. It was crazy.

Oh, he was such a star and such an iconic figure that my parents who were hippies, they didn't give a fuck about fighting. But when he fought Spinks in the rematch, they made us watch it. We're living in San Francisco.

OK, you have to watch this. Muhammad Ali is fighting Leon Spinks.

He's going to he's going to get his title back like it was a big deal because he wasn't just a boxer. It's hard for people to realize that now in retrospect.

But when I was a kid during the Vietnam War, he was also a symbol of the resistance to this unjust war that we didn't want to be a part of is a guy who lost three years of his career because he wouldn't fight in the war.

And so they stripped him of his title in his prime like he beat Cleveland Big Katt Williams, probably the finest performance of his young career. And then for three years, he doesn't do shit until he comes back.

And, you know, it was it was a he was more he transcended sports.

Oh, absolutely. All over the world. All over the world. And he got his due. I think so. You know what I mean? He's he's recognized as that guy. Yeah.

You know, it finally happened. It took a while, but there you go.

That must have been on the set. Yeah, it's the hospital bed. Right. That's crazy.

You can't make up some bullshit here. They get right on. Yeah, that's good. Jamie gets right on your ass. If I could come up with the good.

He was also a cautionary tale for four boxers. You know, if you think that getting hit in the head has no consequences when, you know, towards the end of his life, it was very hard to watch.

Sure.

Yeah. He wasn't talking that much, but he was very present like he was he was with it.

He just wasn't neurologically he wasn't capable of like, really speaking. Well, Dick Leon Spinks also. Mm hmm. Right. Yeah.

Everyone, Joe Frazier towards the end of his career. Yeah. Horrible to to watch him and listen to him. The only one who's avoided those, George Foreman to this day. George Foreman speaks great. He sounds normal, which is crazy.

It's hard to.

But Holyfield Holyfield fighting again. Do you know that? No way. Yes. Holyfield has been training and he actually looks great, you know, with hormone replacement therapy. They just juiced up with testosterone and growth hormone. And if I can get him on a good diet and next thing you know, he's hit in the back and looking great. And I think they're trying to set up a Tyson Holyfield rematch.

Oh, my God. How old is the field?

Holyfield's older than Tyson, I think. Tyson fifty three. And I think Holyfield fifty six.

That would be something they'll all get a huge payday because I think Holyfield was broke too. Right. They're both broke. Yeah.

I mean, I don't know if Tyson's breast cancer show. Yes. And Holyfield, both guys have been. Oh they're both. Tyson's got that Tyson ranch, which is basically a weed salesman. Now he's got this crazy ranch in. He's a part of Taison Ranch. They grow spectacular weed that box over in the corner, that gold box, that's a Tyson Weed Ranch box that he gifted me and he's got this whole entertainment venue there. They're going to do shows there.

I just think something happened. And he just decided he even said on the podcast, I don't even want to work out. He was like, I don't want to reignite my ego. And then something fucking lit a fire under him. And the next thing I know, there's these videos that got resurfaced of him hitting the pads and looks fucking. Have you seen it?

I did see it, but it looks I was down on him. It's amazing.

And I tell you what, now that would be a huge, huge if the world would take my money, take my money, that would be something they'd probably do it in, like Saudi Arabia. I hope they don't. I hope they do it.

Why not? There's interest in that. Yeah. Oh yeah. For sure. Which Tyson's Rancho.

It's in it's in California. Like towards like the Palm Desert area.

OK, yeah. Because he lived in Vegas for a lot of years. Yeah. He used to play basketball. There was a place. He's the worst basketball player I've ever seen. I'm not kidding. Terrible. You've never seen me play. Oh OK.

Baby, you and he used to play. There was a place called The Sporting House behind the Stardust and like everyone played there, every celebrity that was it was like a, you know, pool and, you know, racquetball, all that shit.

And he would come and play. I would never fucking dare say a word to him, but he used to try to play a lot. I played against him. Yeah, yeah. I played I played in college. And, you know, all the guys from, you know, we would play that was like 100 pounds ago. I could play Tyson was just.

That's not his dick. No, no.

What I just found it really amazing that he decided at 53 he just wanted to fight again and he said he's going to do some exhibitions. And that was the thought process behind some, you know, like five round exhibitions or something like that. But it seems like he really wants to fight. Wow. I think as the process has gone on, he's gotten better in better shape, but now he's shredded.

Look, look. Jeez. And he's got a podcast, right? Yeah. Yeah. He's really he's a really interesting guy.

And he did a one man show. Yeah.

Yeah, he did his one man show for Spike Lee Direct. This guy who's holding the pads forum is Hoft El Cordeiro. Hockfield Cordero is the lead trainer at King's Zimmerman. He's a very famous May trainer, like one of the best striking trainers in the sport.

Yeah. So he's he's working with a great guy. But it's interesting that he chose to work with an MMO guy, too. That's that's really interesting. Cordeiro comes from this place in karate, but Brazil called Shoot the Box. It's a very famous MMO camp famous for the most ferocious fighters in Brazil.

And he's he's been training with Tyson.

How how long did Foreman fight for? Like, till he was four.

He came back at thirty six and everybody thought it was a joke. He came back 300 and something pounds fat as fuck and just looked like everybody's is like, oh ha ha. What is he doing, why is he doing this. And then slowly as the fights went on, I mean never got ripped but he got smaller and smaller. And then when he flatlined, Jerry Cooney, everybody was like, holy fuck, I like this.

He's real. Like, this is real. And then when he knocked out Michael Moore, he became the oldest ever heavyweight champion. And I believe he was forty five when he when he knocked out more.

And then he's had his grillz. He made a lot of money. He made a fucking killing on those grills, those George Foreman grills. Yeah.

Great for grilled chicken. Great cooks quick. Yeah. If you're halfway they're great. It's actually a pretty goddamn good idea. That's very funny.

I mean, it's not the best way, you know, if you want to cook the most delicious food something. But do you cook. Yeah. Oh yeah. He what you win Top Chef Chopped Celebrity Tournament. Oh so you're a chef chef.

Now you just like go home, chef, but I'm good at taking what's there and making something out of it. Like what? Random stuff. What are you into. Like what you like to cook.

I like Italian food. I like you know, I mean out here, you know, you go to the farmer's market is all great stuff that's in season all the time.

And I don't know, soup really good. Really. Yeah. Whatever. I mean. Yeah. And I did it because my wife doesn't cook. She's, you know, she's a designer, she's good at building things. So if I wanted to eat good I had to learn to cook because she's.

So you learned out of necessity and then really got into it. Yeah. Not well I mean I got into it because, you know, I like feeding my you know, I like eating good. So. But I did this, I got offered to be on this show, I never I didn't even know the show. My kids were like, no, you'd go and do this. You'll win if you do the show because you're good at, like, cooking with random ingredients.

And it was 16 people.

Like one day it was actors for actors, for comedians, for athletes and for like musicians. Then the winner from each day does the last day.

And how do they judge based on today's presentation?

Yeah, three three professionals judge taste, presentation, creativity. And what did you cook? Well, I did, yeah, I used ice cream, I made a dessert, you have to make this three rounds every day, right? So is the appetizer around the main course and then a dessert. But for the desserts, I made ice cream and I put like booze in the ice cream.

And that got over really good, like bourbon, bourbon, ice cream or vanilla, bourbon and ice tequila, ice cream or something like that.

But they give you weird shit like in one you open this box and these ingredients you have to use.

Then you have a pantry with all the other, like normal staples of all kinds of other vegetables.

And like, like what would be in the box, fake blood, like candy, blood, or like an unpopular dried corn on the cob on popped, you know, like, like, it's like popcorn but not off the cob squid.

It was like that's kind of more of a normal thing.

So you have to have pretty well rounded skills. Yeah.

And then it's timed. But then the thing I didn't think about that's the hardest thing is that there's cameras in your face the whole time, which is really hard.

And then if they follow you around that awkward move around the kitchen. Yeah, you're trying to cook really fast and do some in someone's right here with the camera. That kind of thing.

What the fuck do you do with on popcorn? Well, I knew what to do with it, which was good. You put it in a paper bag and then put it in the microwave popcorn and you could do stuff with it. But I had I had bought it at the farmer's market like the week before, just by chance.

So I knew what to do with it. Yeah, I would've been fun. And you keep your family, you win fifty thousand for charity. That's that was the thing.

But I wound up winning the the last two people were me and Brandi Chastain. You know, she was on the US women's soccer team, not the recent one.

But back then she took off her shirt and was wearing the sports bra. That was the famous photo or something. It was her and I was the two finalist.

Did she do that after the show? That's her. She lost. She doesn't want to do that. Maybe she would. If she won, she may come in second. I know you don't do that when you come and say, yeah, you got to do that for first place.

I did it, you know, pulled your balls off.

So wait. So when you do it so when you do this, you get all these ingredients.

Like what? What is your thought process like what kind of you get the squid and the popcorn.

So you you how much time are you getting, by the way, for I think for the appetizers you have fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. So you open up the box, you got fifteen minutes to make something that makes it. Looking at the squid. You're looking at the popcorn. What. Fuck. Yeah.

And you have to make and then there's uh there's all different machines too. There's like a food processor, there's an ice cream machine, there's like a sous vide machine which is you put stuff in in the plastic, seal it and then put it into like really hot water.

Yeah. That kind of shit if you want to get adventurous. Yeah. Wow.

You want to try one of these. No, no. Not for you know. No. What do you make.

Usually I cook a lot of meat, you know, I hunt so I eat a lot of elk meat because I've, I shoot an elk, I get 400 pounds of meat. I want to eat. What is an elk.

Tastes like like steak.

Oh no, no. It's more like venison. Like a deer meat, but more delicious.

Is it is it the deer family, you know. Yes, it is the deer family.

It's just a large deer, essentially a large mountain deer used to be a plains animal. But then when people started coming around and development, they started moving into the mountains. So now there are more of a mountain animal. But there the real habitat is like grazing and plains.

But it's an enormous animal, you know, so that you eat a lot of that. You get a lot of deer. How long's the last year? A year. A year?

Yeah, one one elk. But I give a lot of it away too. I have a bunch of commercial freezers in the back and elk on the wall that I shot.

I was big. Yeah, it's a big animal. I mean that's probably a 900 pound animal. That one. That's a really big one. But some of them, you know, a good size. Utah Mountain Elk. Eight hundred pounds. So quarter it up.

You take the whole family like. Yeah, they love it. Yeah. I got good at it. I know how to cook. Yeah. Yeah. That's a specific style of cooking too because you got to make sure you don't overcook it because it's very lean. It's not like, like a fatty piece of meat where you know, you could kind of cook it longer, you cook it in low heat and you get it to a very specific internal temperature.

Usually I like like 125 degrees. Then I see it on the outside of very hot cast iron pan.

You cook. I don't cook much. No, no, no. And I don't eat anything, you know, should I.

Not much or sometimes I could I could do something.

I could make breakfast. Like what. What's your go to fucking eggs. I could you know, I could, I could do something if I did you work as a cook like a short order cook.

You are clam shucker. I told me that Umberto's Clam House when I was in high school. Did you ever open clams, you know, when you were up? I used to be increased. Yeah, Umberto's Claymores was where they killed Gallo. Oh, wow. But they had a second one in Brooklyn where I grew up and.

No, but Gallo was killed a member of our street.

There was one of Mulberry Street Umberto's. My house became famous after that. And then there was one in Brooklyn. And I was like 15. And I we used to hang around on the corner and they were building it. And there was like a guy, you know, we were all hanging around, getting into fucking trouble, a bunch of kids. And he pulled out a big wad of money one day, I mean, like fucking hundreds. And he said, come here, come on, get the fuck out of here.

Take them to the movies. Back then, a movie was probably a dollar, you know?

And I said, no, no, no, I want a job. I don't want your money. And I gave them he was married a horse, which was a big wiseguys brother, Joe, and he kind of became like a mentor, you know, he was like a really good guy, gave me a job. I learned how to open clams, big clams, clams for the linguine and clams, real clams on the half shell, you know, squeezed a lemon.

The thing I did being around a lot of those guys when you're younger than that, help you when you were in The Sopranos, did it help you like, sort of because you knew people like that?

Yeah, I grew up in that neighborhood. Like where I grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn at the time.

In the 70s was all a big mob enclave, big. They were everywhere.

And you didn't even know who they were, you know, like Joey's uncle.

And this is a guy that I went to Little League with, wind up doing 25 years for murder. And they were just in the neighborhood. They would just, you know, so, yeah, I, I knew that world I was in in that world. I went to college. I, you know, but I knew that world. I know people, I have friends, you know, it was just that kind of a place, you know, where you just knew them.

And somebody was just telling me two days ago, the guy on the store like Italian Deli Ravioli Store, and I didn't know that he was a hit man. And he sent me an article and he murdered two guys in Coney Island. Yeah, this guy named Pete and I had no idea about that. And I said, really? He lived up to block for me.

I didn't know that because, you know, when you were a kid, you know, there was like, you know, he was coaching the baseball team. Then you found out late. I said I didn't know the guy was a wise guy, like a real guy.

And they were everywhere. They sold fireworks. And, you know, it was that whole thing. It was all Italian American, you know, and it's changed now. You know, it's it's it's not a little bit that, but not as much as it used to when John Gotti was in his heyday.

It was a very strange time for Italian Americans in New York because that whole area, like when he would have those block parties and, you know, people there was part of the the people that would love him.

We love that to this day. Yeah, to this day, absolutely. You know, I was gone, you know, I left for Vegas in 79, 80. So I was gone through all the meetings. You know, I was in Vegas with those white guys and I knew some of them. We talked about it last time I was here. The Pecci character, Tony Spilotro, who was always very nice to me.

I mean, he was give me a 20 hour time. I saw he's alright in my book, but it's like the Gotti character.

Him as a person was very strange. You know, his grandson is a bad ass. I'm a fighter. I know that his grandson, John Gotti, the third I think it is is a legit MMA fighter.

He's really fucking good. He's shredded the kid. Looks like a fucking killer. I mean, looks like an enemy fighter covered in tattoos. I think he's undefeated and I think he's got the majority of his fights. If not all of them are by knockout. Wow.

It's kind of crazy. Listen, people love him. I never met a young guy that he did a lot of good for a lot of people. So you could only judge someone by how they treat you. Right. You know what I mean? Because people go to, you know, blah, blah, blah. A, he was good to a lot of people, but he was known to be a good fighter to John Rejon was.

Yeah, he that's how he kind of came up. He was very good with his hands. He was, you know, toe to toe and was pretty nifty as a fighter.

He was very public though. Yeah. That was the thing that the late. Yeah. Yeah. When it became but he was flashy when he became the boss he was like this guy like made a big show of who he was versus a lot of these guys like Vincent the chin would act crazy.

You walk around a bathrobe and he was like Al Capone. Yeah. At least he enjoyed himself. These other guys, some of these other guys, he enjoyed himself. He was out to restaurants. Good. He had movie star looks. At least he enjoyed himself. He had a nice family. Yeah. Some of these guys are holed up. They have millions of dollars and they live like some shit. One bedroom tenement, like a junior college.

He lives like this shitty life. He's got hundreds of thousands right here and there. It's like, why are you living like that? You might as well go out and enjoy it, right? He yeah, and they still get caught, even even the guys like shit, they still get caught. Those old timers, you know, those old timers used to just I don't know what they did with the money while they were trying to avoid prosecution.

Yeah. But didn't work out.

Almost every mobster, unfortunately, winds up dead or in jail.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, Michael, you grew up around that a little bit.

Yeah, a little bit. But more I got out out of that area when I was in my teens really.

And was in the city, you know, in the village and around actors and musicians and stuff like that.

Was that something that always called to you being an actor? No, not really.

I was going to go to be a doctor or something like that.

You know, I was always really good in school.

And but my father was a bus driver in the Bronx and and he started doing community theater.

When I when I was in high school, he was like forty, just almost one day starts acting in plays which looking back, knowing what it takes, is very courageous, you know, somebody to do that.

And so I always saw cool movies and even saw some theater in New York because my parents took me.

But then in my last year of high school, I was like, well, what about what do you really want to do? I mean, if you can do anything, I really literally asked myself that question. If you could do anything, what would it be?

And I was like, I you know, I really didn't want to stay in school for ten years either studying.

I was kind of sick of that and then come out in debt, come out in debt. And that's the big one. That's a big one.

Flavour's the way they lived their life. Yeah, they live their life starting out of the gate in their career. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.

Yeah, and not just doctors. Yeah. Even even people who don't even go to grad school. Sure. Go. Yeah, that's really rough.

So you asked yourself that question and you come up with acting.

Yeah, I started I had some good teachers in high school who like brought us to theater and I was reading a lot of plays in high school, in the library of my school and just got into it more and more. In my last year or two in high school, I wasn't acting. I didn't do any acting then.

And then after high school, I went to an acting school in New York and took a couple of classes there and then stayed for a for a long time, actually, with the other teacher and met a lot of people that I still work with today.

Back then, you know, who were a couple of who were on The Sopranos actually is live performance.

Is that your love like theater? You know, it is. I mean, I love all of it. I mean, it's always about the specific project and the material and the people you're with. But doing it live is really special because, A, you're doing the whole story every night from beginning to end.

Right. And you have you're on stage for whatever two hours. It's that concentration and that commitment. You know, movies and television, as you know, is broken up into little bits throughout the day. And it's a different kind of concentration. But there is something special about being in front of an audience that's different every night. The reactions are different every night. And there's an interplay that's very exciting. Mhm. So do you still do it now.

Do you go back and forth.

Happen in a while. I mean theatre. I mean I did, I hope to start doing it again soon.

You know, at one point my wife and I built a theatre and we were, we were producing new plays.

Would you believe it was twenty nine stream. And how was around. I think we opened in 2003.

So when you say built theatre, like what was there before, I was just like a raw space. I think it was a it was a club at one point. And then literally my wife and my father-In-law built it and it looked like a theatre from from like 100 years ago. It was beautiful.

How did you get the craftsmanship to where did you get the people to do that kind of work? My wife, my father in law, they did it all themselves. They did a lot. I mean, there were a couple of people that they contract certain things out for, but a lot he was he passed away, but he was a master carpenter.

He was just brilliant. And my wife's really good.

How many seats was seventy five seats and all that. And we did only new plays that had never been done. And and we also had classes there acting. What year was this.

Between 2003 and like 2010.

So this is a real labor of love.

Yeah. Well you can make a lot of money off of 70s. No we didn't make money. No it cost actually went up cos that's why we went out of business after the economy collapsed.

We lost a lot of our funding. You know, we lost all the corporate funding pretty much. We had a few private, you know, donors who really loved what we were doing. And I mean, I built the theatre basically.

I did a movie, kind of a not so good movie for Harvey Weinstein, actually. Oh, wow.

And that money went and built the theatre. Wow. Yeah. That had to be a really interesting. Thing like the moment you're on stage on this theater that you built, yeah. And you're performing these plays, I mean, that had to be a dream, realized how to be a pretty special moment. Yeah, I didn't act that much there. I did more directing. I mean, we produced all the plays I did.

I directed a bunch of them. I think I only acted in one of them.

But but it was kind of the inmates running the asylum, really, because it was it wasn't really a company, but it was a company by default, because there were a lot of people that go to people that I, you know, worked with.

But it was yeah, it was really rewarding.

My wife built all the sets for all the shows as well as built the place itself.

So intimate, 75. Really intimate. Yeah, really intimate. That's a wild decision to make to build your own theater.

It was her idea. I wouldn't have done it probably because as I had done, I had worked in theater. I started producing theater, my early 20s, you know, with a company. And I knew what it you know, it's hard.

It's it's not a good business model.

But if you have the kind of passion and we just found a way to do it, she's like, no, we'll build.

It was like but it was really fun while it lasted. Hmm. Yeah.

He wanted me to do a play, you know, offered me a play. That's not for me. No, I do not. I did one night only what you did guys and dolls in Carnegie Hall with a bunch of Tony winners and me.

But listen, if you're going to do a fucking play, guys and dolls, the guys and dolls.

So I was so scared. I remember I told you I was so fucking Joe, I would have fought back and said, I swear to God, you know, my agent called.

I said, sure, I'll do it.

Nathan Lane and all, Patrick Wilson and Megan Mullally, all these great people and me, I went, OK, Jack O'Brien, one of the biggest Broadway directors. And I went OK to charity for four Carnegie Hall.

Why Big Julie, look at you. And so, you know, nine days rehearsal. I never been so scared in my life. I tried to get out of it. I said I told my age, you get me out of it. I can see there's no way. And I did it. And it was the best thing when I was done. We had dress rehearsal in the afternoon and then at night it was packed nine days, nine days rehearsal.

I took the train up to 40 Second Street and rehearsal space every day. And but what you did, the whole play.

The whole play. And they memorized all the lines.

And I know I came in off book.

Is that unusual? That's fast. We would do thirty days. That's for drama. You know, that's not what we did.

Musicals. So you're not talking about adding choreography and all that stuff, but usually thirty days, four weeks had an orchestra.

It was fantastic. I mean the night I was so scared I didn't tell anyone except for my wife and kids. They're the only ones that came. I had fourth I gave them that was it was. And afterwards it was sky high. It took me a few days to come down because I was so scared. But then it was so great. You know, Nathan Lane, there's nobody funny that Nathan Lane now.

Did you want to do it again after that or was it such a.

I don't know. I don't know if I you know, I don't know if it was the right material. Maybe, you know.

You know, I don't know now is that that's a rushed performance or rushed getting ready, usually one made only for charity, you know, I mean, if you were and that was another thing that added pressure because, you know, if you're doing the play, you're going, all right, if I fuck up Tuesday, I'll come back Wednesday. Right. This was your night. And this is all or nothing. If I fucked up and there was producers out, the guy from Catch the big producer, let's say the creator of, well, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Yeah, he was there.

There was all these people and actors.

It's like, oh, you fuck up now I want to modify. If I blew my line, I was so scared. Not like so you blow your mind, you know, on TV, you know, you're filming. All right, fucking TV. You know, I'll go back, you know.

This was it. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

Twenty five hundred people. I was shitting in my pants. Seriously, one of the most scared things I ever did.

You have a lot of nerves when you start in. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's scary. Yeah. When you start. Yeah.

And I came from fighting. I went from fight. I was in fighting. I had three kickboxing fights while I was doing stand up.

And I think my first stand up was, was more nerve wracking than fighting for whatever reason.

And it's terrifying. Yeah.

I mean it's just also like what about people, didn't it. No, no. Now it's just fun.

I mean, I'm probably nervous for me at the end of the month, seven don't stand up in three months like before I, I'm doing the Houston Improv just to fuck around and knock the dust off. I'm sure before I go on stage the first time, I'm like, holy fuck do you. Remember how to do this, because it's been so long, you know, I've never had a stretch of my career three months with no stand up, that's when I've taken three weeks off before.

And it felt weird to taking three months off is going to be very strange.

Do you combine, like, set material with improvisation and and.

Yes, free-form stuff. Yeah, you do it like there's always something going on in the audience or there's always something that happens that day or something that's going on in the news you can talk about in the moment. But you have to have some lines. I do. I have to have some structure. So I basically I have places where I know I want to get to. And then, you know, the rest of it is you've got to be in the you know, you also you have to be there.

You can't just be like reading the lines in, like, rigid with your script because then the audience doesn't feel like you're having fun.

They don't feel like it's fun that you're you're you're orchestrating a dance.

It's not just you're putting on a stand up routine. You're also you're orchestrating their evening. You're having fun. It's like there's a lot to the art form. That's it's hard to it would be hard to explain it to a computer, you know?

You know, I mean, it's like there's a rhythm. There's a thing that's happening with the audience and you go, know, that makes sense.

Just as simple as like if there was a huge storm that day and everyone went through it together and you're showing up that exact something like that effects. Exactly. Exactly. Refer to it. And then there's chaos in the crowd.

And I've seen brawls in the crowd, all kinds of crazy shit.

But now now you're so well known.

So to they laugh when they give you a break for like 30 seconds at the beginning, you've got about 30 seconds. They're like, oh, you're here, Steve. All right. If you don't a if we came out of our house, you got a baby said, we're so excited you're there. And then 30 seconds later, like, where's the fucking jokes, man? This is terrible.

And then then they're mad at you and then it's worse. Like I've seen that happen with comics at the store where like a famous guy will go on stage. It doesn't really do stand up. It does stand up every now and then. And that is the worst fucking place to do that because you're on a line up with murderers.

You know, it's it's Bilborough and Cresta Lee and Joey Diaz and Al Majnu, all these all these killers and then some jack off from a sitcom will try to jump on stage and do fifteen minutes. And just in the beginning like, oh my God, it's that guy from that show. Yeah. And then 30 seconds later they want to cut your fucking.

That's not a good idea. No. It's just through the sitcom. Yeah. Stay away.

If you're going to do stand up, you know, you got to treat it like you're about to go do a fight like you. Don't you want to be in shape if you're going to fight, if you're going to do standup, you better be in shape or you better be prepared. You better have real material that's tried and proven or you know, or whatever you've written. You better go over that shit with a fine tooth comb. You better be loose.

You better be ready.

You got to be prepared, start small, maybe to go out of town, do some open mike nights, do some guest sets if you're a guy like.

But there have been some people that were famous first and then they became standups. I think Charlie Murphy, probably the best example that Charlie was Eddie's brother. So he's famous for that. And then did The Chappelle Show, which was arguably the greatest sketch comedy show of all time, and he had these hilarious parts, but the guy had never done standup. And so here he is, a huge fucking star already.

And then he's going on stage and he's learning how to do stand up in front of this audience.

And I think that's incredibly difficult, almost impossible. Takes balls. It's almost like it's like Tom Hanks in Punch Line. Yes. All right. He acted like a standup. He wasn't a great standup but did a good job of acting. You have to see that it's a good movie. Sally Field, Tom Hanks, they acted as a stand up thing. You could tell he's got to stand up.

Yeah, you see it.

And like it's like when someone's playing a fighter in a movie or there's a lot of other baseball players.

Baseball say this guy can't even fucking throw was like a basketball. You see, this guy can't play.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. There's there's things that you can see, like people that smoke cigarettes will tell me that you could tell by the way a guy's holding a cigarette, that he doesn't really smile.

They hold it too high and end. I could never you can always say we talked about that on the podcast. The way they hold it, I could never say I don't smoke anymore. But I did. I could. I've never smoked in my life. Never a cigar I could get away with. Right. You know, I can't if I had to smoke a cigarette, I don't even know how I could never do it on the show.

I think part of the problem is they're aware that they have a cigarette on them, whereas a person who smoke cigarettes is just like that cigarette and they they always have a cigarette in their hand.

So it's just a normal part of being who they are.

Whereas if you don't feel like I got a cigarette in my hand, everything you're doing, like there's a cigarette in my hand, I smoke a cigarette now.

It's like but you can have you can absolutely tell. Oh yeah. You can tell this guy's not a smoker.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I'm sure guitar players feel like that when you watch a guy playing a guitar player in a movie, you know, I don't know. Play guitar, so I can't get I don't understand if he's doing it right or wrong, but I would imagine that would be infuriating a lot of stuff. But listen, I used to watch the shows in Vegas, movies like From Vegas or TV shows. And in the first two minutes, you know, this movie sucks.

That'll never happen. The deal is rooting for you, right? Come on. You know, this would never happen. Just like in New York, a Woody Allen movie. Some Woody Allen movies are like Fantasy The Beautiful Block with the trees.

And yeah, you know, it's like, you know, if you're from that place or you're a comic, you know, immediately say that would never happen.

Yeah, yeah. No, I guess in gangster movies, too, you see a lot of there's a lot of bad ones. Oh yeah.

Yeah. What's an example of an obviously bad one. Oh Jesus.

I don't even know. There's so many fucking bad ones where you go. This is just ridiculous.

This is just you know, I did one kill the Irishman, which I didn't like. There's some really good actors in it, but there's so many things that go off. It was a period piece to find movies. I enjoyed that movie like a lot of people like that. I didn't like it. I liked it. The first cut I hated, I went to a screening. I told my wife fucking hated it and it got better as years gone on.

People, we shot it in Detroit. It was supposed to be in Cleveland. You know, just a little shit. Maybe if you're just a viewer, you wouldn't notice. But I did. But there's so many bad bad.

I heard the Travolta playing God. He was a bad one.

I heard that was hilarious. You know, it was so good when I heard it. Yeah. I didn't think Travolta was so bad. I thought a lot of the other things were bad. And they were I think it was in they shot some of it in Cincinnati so that the extras, you know.

Right, right. Right. Yeah. That's you know, but there's there's a ton of them. You know, people love that genre.

You know, people love the the mob genre, like the Westerns or horror films, particularly after The Sopranos, The Sopranos fucking kick started that it really that genre became far more popular.

They tried they I think Mob City was a TV show. And, you know, there's been so many of them.

And, you know, you got the nail on the head, the gangster in the can kind of guy. You go to this guy, you know, and they got some different stuff. You say this guy doesn't scare me for two seconds. You know, it was crazy for me.

Was going back and watching the original episode. The Sopranos were read like a comedy.

Oh, yeah. Very different show. Very different show. When Edie Falco has the the the Gone and she's outside and her daughter is climbing back into the window. Yeah, but I'm like this is like a comedy. It's like it was a different show, like any Falco's character evolved and became this very complex woman who is battling with this reality that she's living with this guy who's, you know, a fucking murderer and a mob boss, and she's enjoying the perks of that.

It became like this very interesting character. But in the beginning, it wasn't like that at the beginning. The first episode was kind of funny. Yeah.

When I first when I auditioned and read the script, I wasn't sure if it was a full on spoof of the mob.

I really wasn't sure there was some you know, there was the murder scene that my character does. And it was some dramatic stuff.

There's a lot of humor in it. Yeah. And it was around the time, I think, analyze this. So there was the mob spoof and I wasn't sure I can say that, you know, from just reading that pilot episode, it was hard to tell.

But I really like the cast they were putting together and that was the thing that really sold me on it. Like I knew some of them, like Eddie and Tony Sirico and Vinny Pastore. I knew Jim's work, but I didn't know him personally. I'd seen him in a play.

So I was like, this is a good cast. So yeah.

But it was very hard to tell from that from that pilot script what happened, that it evolved and it became what I think it was always that was always the plan.

You know, like anything you start to see what you have, like what are these actors bringing, you know, what are they playing to their strengths and what kind of qualities they're bringing to it.

You know, just like there's that one scene in the pilot where at the end towards the end of the pilot and my character tells Tony Soprano, oh, I could go to Hollywood and sell my story or something.

And he in the script, it was kind of he was like fatherly, like, you don't want to do that and sell out. You got to stay with us and build a family or whatever.

And instead, Jim just grabs me by the throat or something like that. And it became very menacing and very intimidating.

And he really, you know, and I think David saw that was like, oh, wow, that's the guy. That's the character.

And. It probably influenced how he took the story and how he would write it, but I think a lot I think a lot of the tone was already in his head, but seeing what the actors were bringing to it, I think. You know, influenced a lot. Gandolfini was so fuckin believable, I mean, you know, when you think about a guy who just embodied a role, like when he was Tony Soprano and he's not and he wasn't like that, that's the other thing.

He was more like a hippie. You know, he was very laid back. You know, he wore like Birkenstocks and like a bandana on his head.

And Música, he didn't really talk like that. He was. Yeah, I wipe my ass with your face. A big music guy, you know. Yeah. He was he never wanted to do a talk show. You know, Joe, I would say, why don't you everyone thinks you're Tony Soprano. Why don't you pick whether it be Letterman or or whatever and show them the real. Jim, you're a very intelligent guy. I mean, he's not that guy at all.

Matter of fact, he would say to me, like before the season, let's go down, have dinner or cocktail, which I ran into you that well, let's go down to street. I'd want to start getting back into the swing of things, because he wasn't he didn't hang out with those guys. He wasn't that guy at all. But he didn't he never did a talk show. He did 60 Minutes. He wouldn't do any of the talk shows.

He said, I'm not interesting. He wasn't doing and he didn't grow up around that.

He no, Jersey went to Rutgers University.

He was an actor theater guy. I tell you what's funny.

You know, I I wrote a kid's book called Nicky Douche, and it turned into a movie and Michael's in it and Paulie Walnuts and Johnny Sack. And I was in Jim's trailer and he had dusted the movie with Brad Pitt, a mob movie. And he said, Harvey wants to call. He wants me to let him in. I said, I don't do talk shows. And and he kept calling and he said he got fucking nasty with Jim.

And Jim said, I will beat the fuck out of Harvey Weinstein. He fucking calls me again. I will beat the fuck out of him for the money he paid me.

I'm not fucking doing it. I swear to God. Wow.

This is all before the Harvey Weinstein shit when he was still the king shit. This is 2012.

You know, when you see that Academy Award speech. Thank you. Compilation where all the people go up, all the various people that eventually talk shit about him go up and praise Harvey Weinstein. I never saw it. Oh, my God. It's so bizarre.

It's so strange because they were intimidated. Yeah.

He had that much power over people's careers and they didn't feel like their voice would be heard or that people would, you know, take them seriously and find a way to to fuck you basically, you know, to fuck you up no matter, you know, me every three or four times.

Like I run into him at Madison Square Garden and there's a restaurant in Tribeca Grill, which he had owned a piece of it at one point and give you a half ass. Hello. Maybe he was way above. I was beneath it. Yeah.

He never got punched in the face. That's what it is. I heard Jason Priestley punched him in the face at a party. Yeah. Yeah, I heard that he got out of line and Jason Priestley punched him in the face. Wow.

I think nobody beat the shit out of Harvey Weinstein and wouldn't be that difficult. He could fucking hardly breathe the smoke and chain smoking. He wasn't a tough guy.

He was tough with assistance, you know, but he does it like when if you thought about a character in a film, Harvey Weinstein is almost two on the head, almost unbelievable.

Yeah. Nobody nobody would do. They would never get away. I've been away so long. Don't do 20 something years.

Is it party. But do that 20 something years. Yeah. And might be more. They got more cases.

Yeah. There's way more cases. This is just what he's been convicted for. Right. I mean he apparently was behaving like that for decades.

So you're telling me nobody knew. They knew. They all knew. That's what's crazy is it's worked into his fucking contract. His contract had if you get this amount, this amount of like per sexual harassment case, they had it that he would have to pay this much. It was to he'd have to be that much if it was three. Imagine if you're signing up for a place like Steve. I know you're a piece of shit. So this is what we're going to work into the contract, all your piece of shit behavior.

We're going to write it down and you're going to be penalized per piece of shit.

Oh, yeah, it's amazing. It's funny. You know what? They're all complicit.

This is something that I don't understand.

These assistants, people in his office, people that knew this stuff, that saw the stuff that set him off, that he was meeting the girl in the lobby. But then she comes down and says, oh, Harvey needs to meet you up in his room.

She was part of it. Or he or whatever the assistants were. It was like I mean, I would never do that. They never played dumb and is also privy to that. No, of course not.

But you also you don't have to. And when you think of an assistant in particular, you're thinking about someone who has virtually no power. And there's a thing called diffusion of responsibility where there's too many people involved, you don't feel like you're responsible. You don't feel like you're you know, that's when they say it's easier to assault someone in front of a hundred people than it is. It sought someone in front of one person because one person might step in and stop it, but 100 people will sit around and go, someone's got to stop this.

Gotcha, you know, and that's I think that when you're an assistant, you're probably would you work in check to check?

You got this guy who is the king of Hollywood. He's a fucking he's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Intimidating. Yes. And he's a big angry guy.

Yells at people, yells That's what he did. You know, what's amazing to me is people still haven't come forward.

People that worked with him, actors, whatever actresses, I think they're still afraid somehow he's going to come back like in a horror film keep. Some people don't they don't want to deal with that publicly, you know.

Yes, it's a hard thing to talk about, but I don't want to they don't want everybody to know. I think you're right.

And I think also the people that he assaulted, just people that were around him that were aware, I don't know who that is.

I just think they don't want to talk about it publicly. I think you're right about that. I think it's there already. He's already been caught. It's over. They got him. He's in jail and be in jail forever. He's fucked up. His body's falling apart. He can't even walk.

I mean, is his punishment what a fall from grace.

Spectacular fall in just a few years. I mean, if you go back seven years ago, there's not a whisper of this, right? So seven years later, the guy's in jail, can't walk. You know, his body's falling apart.

That's where he just got to get somebody to give him the cyanide pill. Should look.

It should have done that, is it? You're looking how to know where this was going when he was free. You should just fucking. I don't think he did.

No, I think he thought he was going to get off and he was planning a comeback.

And, you know, he was I know one of his attorneys that was there early on and he fired him. And I ran into him right before you got sentenced a few weeks before. And I said, this fucking Harvey's going to get off. And he said, nah, nah, nah. You see, he won't get off if he would have kept me.

He said he said if he would have kept me, I would have got him off.

He said, would he have gotten them off?

I didn't go, you know, I mean, I know the guy quaintness from the Knick games. And it sure enough, he got, what, twenty three years?

It seems like things happen in the court of public opinion on guys like that.

Most certainly did here. I would have just there's no way I would want to be. What kind of life is he such a character.

I mean just with his disgusting face and his body and like everything about it.

Yeah. You had some dealings with him. I did a couple of jobs with him. I did it. I wrote a script for him to work with him kind of closely.

I'll try to grab, you know, try to grab me. What was he like?

You know, he was OK with me. You know, he had opinions.

He was all right. I mean, it was just work. There was nothing.

I mean, obviously, he didn't go to dinner with them anything? No, no. It was only in his office and stuff. I did. And I did a job for his brother, another job for his brother.

I think his brother was a nicer guy. Right. He's OK. I think he was very intimidated by Harvey. I think Harvey was a bully to his brother.

Big time. It's such a fascinating story because it's incredible.

And it's the wife and the kids and a beautiful wife was crazy.

It's like, how the fuck does that even happen before? And it's one of those things that if it's if it's in a film, it just it's almost like he's too much of a villain.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. That would never have all the details. When you put it all together, you're like, no, really. In Hollywood where he's famous and he's dealing with the most famous people in the world.

Right. And everybody keeps her mouth shut and he fucks A-list stars and then puts them in films like the.

Do you think do you think that some of the the women that have denied having sex with him had sex? Yes.

You know, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder if I would have probably I don't know. I would have liked him. No, I wouldn't have talked about it if I. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. Do you want to talk about that? That's hard to talk about.

But but the thing about Harvey Weinstein and people like that, they would have had if he would have said, listen, I'm a fat, disgusting bastard, but if you beg me, I'll put you in the next movie. They were lined up. There would be people lined up around the corner.

I think that is part of part of what he did.

No, no, I think I don't know if that's true. You know, I think from what I understand, I don't think he needed to do this. I think it's his ego. And I think that's too like Bill Cosby. It was a shame that yes, yes, it's becomes a pathology. And I think there's also a thing about power. You know, it's it's a power thing to have power over people and also to have power over these beautiful actresses that everybody else was lusting over.

You know, you put some actress in a film and, you know, she's the center of everyone's attention and she's got a, you know, small dress and she walks into a room and, you know, the whole place lights up and she's sucking Harvey's dick.

You know that it's the power thing.

Does he get tons of women? A ton of women? You know, I think it's an addiction thing, too.

Yes. I think if you you know, there's there was a recording of. There's one girl that he groped and then, you know, she wanted a movie role and he's grabbing her and he's like, just come back to my place, come out, come out, just come out. Like you're hearing it, like a guy asking for heroin.

Yeah. Yeah. And he was almost sniveling, like begging her. Yeah. It was weird. Like he'd go from being really intimidating to almost begging, like pity me and you please don't don't embarrass me, you know. Right. It was very weird. Yeah. I think it's an addiction thing.

I think there was so much going on with that guy. I mean, he had to young I don't know if they're daughters. You have two young daughters. I think it's older kids, younger kids and his wife. And they were just gone. Yeah, right.

Maybe unless she just said that's enough. Unless he just I'm going away. I mean, I don't know if they want to hold the Jesus.

It's all crazy. It's a it's a it's a Shakespearean story. Epic.

It is. Epic proportions. Horror story for everyone involved. The casting couch in Hollywood.

If you stop and think about it right, you've got all these women that want to be in films. They want to be stars. Then you got these guys that can actually help them make them stars, but they want something.

And then you set up this dynamic that's existed since, you know, the fucking 20s. Imagine what it was like back then.

Oh, my gosh. Well, you know the Fatty Arbuckle story. Yeah.

Did you read the book I fatty that Jerry Stall wrote? No, it's fantastic. Yeah. It's kind of almost like a fake memoir written from his point of view.

It's brilliant. Well, it's he was like he was the biggest star of his day. Yes. World known all over the world. Yeah.

I mean, he was basically like he was a comedy star, a huge star, and he did something with a woman. We stuck like a bottle up.

Well, that this goes into it. Apparently there's theories that he didn't really do that, that it was set up because that guy was jealous of him like a studio guy.

Yeah, it goes into that. It's a really good book.

That was Aristotle who wrote Permanent Midnight, you know. Oh, OK. Yeah, well, that's a great book. Is there real evidence that points to the fact I think Jesus Christ and that was the end of his career. Oh yeah. Dun dun dun.

Yeah, he was. The girl died. Oh. Yeah, it's off. Yeah, there's different theories that he was set up by somebody and that he that that all that was just they holy shit.

Yeah, I imagine that that's crazy.

Well, I could tell you, the world is a better place with Harvey Weinstein off the street. Well, he does honestly. What he did when he did so around these actresses and women is just horrible and not sexually. But he destroyed guys, too, you know, directors and just a horrible human and and Jesus.

Well, he was getting away with it, right? For the longest time, for the longest behavior that was reinforced by the people around him. And then he got away with it.

What's also interesting is like if you help someone murder somebody, you would get an accessory. You would get you would get prison time. You would there would be charges. But there's no charges against any of the people that absolutely knew what he was doing.

But that's what I'm saying. I have two daughters aiding and abetting. This doesn't apply to that. Joe, I got two daughters in their 20s.

I don't think my daughters in a million years, no matter how much they wanted to be in the business, would be an accomplice to that and tell the girl and say, well, how he's going to be up in the room.

Right. Or whatever crazy things go get Harvey's medicine to fucking shoot dick or something. Yeah. Yeah. Come on. Do you know what he had?

This is I was going this text thread with a bunch of comics.

He had a type of gangrene that you get from diabetes bacterial on his dick and his dick was horribly malformed.

So I had this we were talking about this and then I Googled it. And then I said to my friends, do not Google this. And then they're like, why not? So they send them a photo of it, half of what it looks like.

Oh, my God. It's like your your genitals just right away, like all the skin around it rotted away.

And that was one of the things that one of the actresses had said, is that she thought that he was maybe intersex or transgender or that he had a vagina because he was so scarred up.

Oh, my God. So it's like it's it's again, it's almost two on the head.

It's like as a as a movie character, it's almost too disgusting.

Well, who do you see playing him in this movie?

Hmm. Good question. Who could pull it off? Christian Bale.

Anyway, I hope they don't make the movie because I don't want to see that movie again. That's real life time. They're going to make the movie. I'll do it on a Lifetime.

Yeah, I was going to say this. What do you there's all this talk about CGI acting and that they're going to be able to create CGI characters that act in films.

I mean, I was just saying really boring.

I think I agree with you. Yeah. But I mean, maybe you'd have a CGI Harvey Weinstein, just actually no one has to play him, you know, it's like no one wants to play Hitler now. You know, it's like it's too much. You don't want to be the guy. Oh, that's that guy who played Hitler, you know.

So like playing Harvey Weinstein.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be I think at some point there'll be a movie. Yeah. Oh I think so. There has to be has to be.

The only thing that would hold it back would be Hollywood saying, you know like this is probably not good for us. Yeah.

Yeah. It's opening old wounds. Yeah. And you would have to I mean if someone really wanted to thoroughly research it and like in really find out what actually happened, it would take a long time.

Well, those two girls are dead. Yeah. That wrote the book. There's a book out there I think they were writing for The New York Times or The New York.

And there is a good book out about to date they really researched.

Does it go into detail by both the speculation of which actresses. Actually, I didn't read it.

I mean, I don't know for sure, but I think at some point, you know what? They don't want to make the Bellucci movie years ago. Remember that?

Who did who played Michael Chiklis? Michael Chiklis really? Once again. But that's a very day after the defending the Cape, that very different story, very different, but very afraid of it.

But they want to make that at the time, that was a big thing, that because they don't want drugs and yeah, they you know, they were trying to protect them, I guess. And Hollywood kind of said that you sold also.

And but he died and he was beloved. It was. Yes. Yeah.

That's absolutely wired.

This is it. Oh, yes. You know, is that supposed to be Jeremy Piven?

No. Look at him there.

Wow. So young. Yeah. Wow.

I was they didn't want to make that movie and a lot of actors didn't want to be in it. Wow. Because of that region, you know, interesting.

I never saw this kind to damage Karius. Do you remember that? I don't know. It was a long time ago. Yeah.

Big difference between the CGI thing is weird, right. Like I think they're going to do that. I think they're going to have. CGI movies where the. I think they're going to do it. I mean, they've tried to do it before with like that Tom Hanks animated film. You remember that film now? It's like a Christmas movie. He's on a fucking train. It's like an animated.

Remember that Jamie Lynn expressed. Yeah. Some expressed they won't want to. At least they won't want a bigger trailer.

The producers or the producers will love it. The person love it. Well, they'll love it because they can completely listen to this.

Yeah. Yeah. Fuckin whiny actor. Yeah, yeah. There it is. The Polar Express.

It was very strange, but it wasn't realistic. It was is like it was that uncanny valley between, you know, realistic actual people and animation. It was some strange sort of. But you get the feeling that as time goes on, they're going to get better and better at this. And then one day they're going to be able to nail it. Right. They'll get like Marlon Brando to do a movie.

Right. Stuff like that. Like when you came to Coachella and they had a hologram do stuff like that. Yeah. Nat King Cole and his daughter. Remember the exact thing. Oh, so now she's coming back here to eternity. God, that's so strange.

That should drive you crazy.

Kind of. Yeah. Yeah.

Hey, I'll be type done screen screen stuff and I find it really boring and green screen stuff. No I haven't done like that animated version thing but green screen is the.

Well yeah. Given your sensibilities, if something came up like that for you like a Jurassic Park type movie or something like that, would you even be interested in.

I don't know. It depends where I'm at at the time, you know, if it was broken up.

So yeah, sometimes you have to factor those things in.

No, I mean, the most fun thing is when you're, you know, dealing with other actors and going eye to eye and playing off each other.

To me, at least, not not everyone's like that. A lot of people like do an action and all that stuff.

I don't really care for that stuff so much, you know. Yeah, I like more of the, you know.

Well, that's the best part of the business, the actual work. You know, I don't like show business. I don't know if you do. I don't know. I like the actual these days, like even on Blue Bloods, I'm working and I work a lot with Bridget Moynahan and Donnie Wahlberg. You go, this is why I became an actor this year. Yeah, that's that's the a lot of the material is really good.

The scene goes, what do you mean by you don't like show business? What do you mean. I've got the whole bullshit agents managers opening night. I mean, yeah, it's not for me. I went to the Emmys four times the SAG Awards. I wanted to stick fucking needles in my eyes. Yeah. I mean, it's just not me. I just I like real people. Most of my friends are friends that I've had my whole life.

You know, Michael's one of my closest friends, but you know what I mean? I mean, I'm not a showbiz guy.

There's some guys just showbiz guys. They love it. Yeah. They love going in and pitching. I love it. I love this. I love that. The whole world, the whole scene. I don't you know, I like the work. That's it. Yeah.

You know, I was kind of in show business, even at the Riviera by default right now. Somehow I, I went from a bouncer to book in action. You know, I don't dislike them. I just not a show biz. It's a funny path.

It's a funny you have your path. It's very funny. Strange. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I tell you, Italian Forest Gump, it's a it's a weird world. You you just sort of stepped into it.

Kind of. Yeah. And listen, I've worked very hard and I love the work. I mean I you know, but that part I don't like. Yeah. There's some people love it. They were always there opening night, you know, and, and I premieres and I'm there. If I am supporting someone, a friend of mine or something like that, I don't go just to go on the red carpet, take pictures and the fuck do I care.

You're right. I mean, I don't that's not my thing. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I don't like it either.

I don't think you like that kind of stuff. No. Like you doing what you do. Yeah.

That's why I like doing this. It's like it's outside of it. Yeah. It's cool. Yeah. I mean, you know, like I said, the work on The Sopranos, on other shows, on movies was fucking great. I had a great day, you know.

Yeah. You know that even if it's high profile like we did the movie, that was great. You know, every day was a great day.

But now how do they are they resuming filming now for things like the the governor of California said?

I think this week they're allowing some productions to open up again in New York.

I'm here in August, maybe early September.

What's interesting is because of the protests, the covid cases have ramped up. And no one's saying that it's hilarious, though I don't know whatever all playing dumb on TV because no one wants to blame it on the protests or connected in some way to the movement, because then you'll be. Labeled a racist or something. So they're not even saying anything. So the people that we're relying on for the news are playing dumb as to why hundreds of thousands of people marching together face to face, screaming how that ramps up.

I guess we're going to know in about two or three weeks. We already know. We already know.

I'll talk to the mayor of New York, de Blasio said the people either getting tested or whatever, don't ask them if they were protests.

Yes. Yeah, that's that's part of it. Yeah.

When they're doing contact tracing, they are not allowed to ask if you were a part of a protest, which is hilarious.

The world is upside down. I want to go straight.

I want to know, does it bounce back? Stop the war. It'll bounce back.

Do you think it'll be difficult? But I think it's going to be.

But is it does it do we ever get to a place of logic? Do you ever get to a better place?

Because it seems like this WOAK ideology that's permeated politics now, it went from being a thing that only existed in universities to it was existing in like tech startups, and it was starting to get into media and it was working its way to journalism. And now it's fucking everywhere.

And politicians have to go really far before they go kind of balance into society. Like a lot of the the protest movement, which I find hopeful is a lot of young people.

Yes.

Very diverse crowd who were just saying we want we don't want this right world. We're inherited with racism and yes, institutional, you know, systemic racism and stuff. And that gives me a lot of hope. The protest gives you a protest.

You know, when Parkland happened and there was this big movement of young people who are saying we're scared to go to school, we want something done that was, you know, these kids who were saying, hey, we want something different.

And as they get older, you know, I think it'll be integrated into society in ways that, you know, will work.

I hope I have to. You have to have hope.

Otherwise, it's just to you know, I have a lot of hope in the young generation. I really do. Well, I have hope in humans.

And I think that if you look at the history of humans, if you go back 200 years, the way people behaved and you compare it to today, there's a vast improvement in almost every 100 percent. And I think this is a big blip on the radar. This is a big moment in time. And I think we'll come out of that on the other end. A better species. I got along the way. It's going to be a lot of devastation, like the fucking looting and the rioting in this stupid shit with de Blasio not asking if people have been protesters to find out what effect this this thing has had.

Well, you do get people that are in the middle of a pandemic and you get them on top of each other's breathing in each other's spit. And that's what's happening. World is insane.

It's going crazy. And it has there's no way to go. Like you can't say, well, I'm just going to pack up and.

Yeah, well well, what's really crazy is it's all overseas, too. I've been looking at these London riots like they're having riots now in London. So like and in France, like, what the fuck happened that this shit made it all the way across the ocean?

Yeah, it's so strange. It's like, how did you guys start fighting? Like, what are you writing for? What are you doing? Yeah.

You know, I mean, well, they're protesting to. Right. My rights are also people who just, you know, have conscience about this. And yes, they want change.

There's there is there's the you know, the extreme, you know, people who are and some people who are not protesting, who are just causing, you know, and in some ways it's very it's hopeful because it shows you that the United States still radically affects the world culturally. And that's true. When there is something that's happening over here, the rest of the world sort of takes notice. The United States, like it or not, does take the lead culture.

Oh, yeah. Yes, they do. I mean, and then with films, that's a huge part of it.

I mean, one TV to TV and films, we stop and think I mean, there's been some great films and movies and television shows have come out of England and the U.K. and other parts of the world.

But overwhelmingly, the art form emanates from here.

We tell you we take the lead. Yeah. And then with stand up, that's I mean, this is where it started. Standup started the United States and the difference between the stand up here, the level stand up here versus the level everywhere else, totally uncomparable.

Now, have you done standup in other countries? Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it, man. Four bottles of water and I still have you done. Yeah. Yeah, I've done. Stand up in Australia. I love doing in Australia. I've done standup in England. Don't stand up in Ireland. Yeah.

Oh so. And audiences. What do you find. They're great. Smarter, more attentive. Very attentive. Yeah. Like I took my friend Tony to Stockholm, Sweden and he was like he goes dude I felt I got bombed. But no they laughed, they just laugh and then they listen. It's different. You get a different vibe like they you just have to. And then the second show, he goes, I got it. Now he goes, it just felt so different.

He goes, just felt like there's no they didn't roll with you. I go. You also have to remember English is their second language. So when they're listening to you, there's, you know, they'll translate it and they're laughing.

But also cultural context is very different. Like, they get our culture, they get the context, but it's not as front and center as it is if you're doing a show in Columbus, Ohio, or something like that.

Wasn't it like in the nineties? I think it was in the 90s where comics were going to England. US comics didn't like the audiences here anymore.

Hicks right. Hicks because we're tall. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Some other comics.

It was a ventriloquist. David something. Yeah. I went to Australia and England. Right.

Yes, well they're very England has fantastic audiences and they're really attentive. They're really listened well and they do their standup very differently. Their standup over there is like thematic like they'll do like they'll do. They have a theme, you know, and they'll carry that theme through their whole stand up. It's very different. But, you know, there's been comics like Ricky Gervais is a great example that have done very well.

He's got a great show, like a show on Netflix. He's created everything. He's he's fiery. It's funny. Funny. Yeah.

And I loved when he was hosting the Golden Globes.

It was great. Really great. Yeah. I mean, just tell him shut the fuck up. Yeah. Because there's so much virtue.

This latest thing with all these actors have this black and white video. We're talking about racism and I take responsibility.

What are you doing? You know what I was saying to my friend, go, you know what that is? These motherfuckers haven't gotten any attention for months because they said, I'm jumping on it. Well, you talked about it with the song. I'm just the beginning. Yes, you fucking moron. They got the blowback. Yeah, well, they got blowback from this to everything. They try to do that, vertue.

Signals like, you know, we're going to take a stand. This is no longer going to happen. It's not good.

Like nobody thought it was good. Like, this is not what this is, but this is a fucking horrible cop. It's a really bad guy who killed somebody. It's not like these actors are out there being racist and holding people back and trying. That's not what you're doing. Like, what are you you're taking responsibility. No, you're trying to get attention. That's are you doing this stupid fucking thing you're doing? I wish that they ever feel like doing that again.

Call me calm. I'll tell you how it's going to turn out. Every one of these dumb things you're going to do. I'll tell you how it's going to come out if you're going to have one actor and then the next you're going to cut to each one of them. I take responsibility. Not you.

Don't you take a tangent. You're sucking it up like a sponge. Shut the fuck up and wait. You're a week away from filming again.

But that that's also what we've talked about.

There's people that do stuff, you know, for the money. Right. And then there's some that the money's very relevant. They need to be told how great they are.

And Pat, on the back. Yes, they that's what they need.

And then there's some of them that are so wrapped up in this liberal and progressive ideology that they literally can't see how dumb this looks to the rest of the world.

They think they're going to do a good thing. And they think that through their celebrity, they may use their platform and their voice and they're going to make a difference. If you really think that as a professional actor, are you going to make a fucking difference with racism and crime and violence and police brutality? You should stop acting because you should go to a fucking doctor and get your head chopped or something. You want to shut up and shut up and act.

You've got opinions on what can express your opinion.

Cool. And people who want it but don't preach.

But that that video was a little bit more sanctimonious and very, you know. Yeah, I got it from a bar.

I don't even know what it means, to be honest with you. It means I want attention, you know, I want attention and get ready to cringe, get rid of, clench your butt shut and go, oh no, no, what do you do and what do you do? That was that was kind of.

Do you guys know who Kyle Dunnigan is? No, Kyle, I know he's a right. Yeah. Hilarious comic who does a lot of these face swap videos. And he he he he does Caitlyn Jenner like fucking it's one of his Instagram page is the funniest fucking Instagram page on the planet Earth by far.

But he's got this new one that he did where he go to a Jamy, go to Kyle Donegan's Instagram page. You see this where he has these characters that he does with the face swap and he shoves them into that video.

So you can't. And it's just that I can. Lampoons. Yeah. Wait, wait.

Do you see this? Because this is the perfect antidote for that cringe.

Here we go, Jamie.

Or to this up here. Jamie, the guy is a goddamn genius. I take responsibility. Don't see it.

Jim, did you see this is Steve responsibility. Hey, I'm on the fence about it.

I take responsibility for every untracked moment, for every time I did give me five on the left hand side.

I'll take responsibility for not listening to Meghan. And in leaving me knickers on the floor, they're called underpants.

I will no longer allow an unchecked movement. I will no longer throw away the African-American part of the oil cookie just to get to the creamy white middle.

I will hire more black hookers. Going for a job should not be a death sentence.

Sleeping in your own home should not be a death sentence.

I sorry. I guess how we are no longer bystanders.

Well, who the hell's that broad racist murders. Cops need the line.

Only time is going to stop. And when you start truly pulling the perpetrators to account, start putting them in jail.

You're welcome. Face rest in peace. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, that's. That's good. That's good. But that's nothing compared to some of I should go to page if you need something to laugh at. But you seen the real one. Yeah. You saw it. He does ones with the car accidents where he has Caitlyn Jenner talking to the Kardashians. But the Kardashians don't really talk.

They just make noises like me, me, me, baby, baby. Now, you fucking idiot. That's not what I said.

Like, it's it's it's it's genius. It's genius. Yeah. This is what it is. I mean, everybody and I like a lot of those people that are in that video. Unfortunately, I think they're great. I just think somebody should talk to them.

Somebody outside the business just grabbing my publicist. And they're not seeing people. They're not getting feedback. That's what it is now. They need feedback.

Someone needs to grab and go. Listen to me. Don't don't do this.

Don't do this. Don't do this. The publicist is well, the problem is also if someone comes up to them and tells them, are you willing to take a stand against racism?

And I no, I can't say no. So you just wind up doing it because you don't want anybody to think you're a racist.

So you just kind of hop on board. They got they did get big blowback that caused the song.

The song got the bigger black guy because that was ridiculous. She was all smiling and beautiful.

You can imagine there's no heaven, big mansions and. Yeah.

And what was that about? That was about the pandemic. Yeah. But in the meantime, what is imagine have to do with the pandemic. Exactly. The song has nothing to do with the pen. It was Gal Gaydos idea. She was apparently calling up all these celebrities asking for them to join in in song and they're going to heal everybody through love and music.

You know, people change and the guy campaigns. There's no heaven.

But meanwhile, what a terrible song to sing when people are dying. Imagine there's no heaven. Imagine grandma is just rotting. But also that song has nothing to do.

That's in parallel, the pandemic. You know, that's a joke. And especially at that time in New York, I mean, we've had three or four people that we know that died, you know, and numerous people that got sick. And they were those refrigeration trucks. I mean, they were everywhere.

And the ambulances were going, I mean, you know, things have calmed down, but it was fucking those 800 people a day in New York at one point in time, which is crazy to imagine and think about nine of your theaters.

Right?

It was it was horrible. And then every day, you know, people. Yeah. I mean, there's, you know, guy on the diner, a couple of diners. I know the guy for twenty years, a photographer from the card and a good guy. He died. Another friend of mine. Yeah. I mean, they died and numerous people got it. So it's a real thing I. Some places there was in many cases, so I could understand, like in a way you see it on TV.

Yeah, but it's not here, right.

But in New York and people are holed up. They can't pay their rent. They can't pay their bills. Yeah. They can't eat. Luckily, they got, you know, stimulus and unemployment eventually at the beginning. No. You know, and you got some shallow Ellen saying it's like being in jail. She lives in the biggest house in the world. Yeah. Oh, the beach. Yeah.

It couldn't be any better where she said the thing about Ellen was she got a little blowback. She had a lot of blowback. But that was a funny joke. She said, I'm in the same clothes every day and everyone's gay. It's like being in jail. That's funny. Is that what that's what the joke was.

It wasn't she wasn't saying I'm in jail over here in my mansion.

I got a she was. Yeah, it was what she said was fucking funny. You know, she's like this pandemic is like being in jail. I'm in the same clothes every day and everyone's gay. I mean, that's funny.

It's funny because she lives she's gay. She lives as a gay woman. I mean, it's like it's a funny joke.

There's a good joke. My mistake. People were mad at her. I'm like, oh, come on. Oh, they took it out of context. Yes. Yeah, well, they didn't care.

It's also when people are broke and people can't literally they're not just broke. There's no hope in sight and it's no fault of their own. It's a very bad situation. Terrible.

They don't want to hear any fucking jokes from some really rich lady who lives on the beach talking about how this is like prison.

I mean, honestly and listen, I'm very compassionate. I mean, these people lost their jobs and they they didn't have extra money or maybe they divorced in child support. And I mean, this is real shit.

A lot of there was no way to make money. Right. That's even as much as a guy wanted to go to work or whatever. There was no work to be, no work to be had everything shut down.

Yeah, it's it's a mess. Yeah. And then you take into account how alcohol sales was the central business liquor stores.

It is central business, but Alcoholics Anonymous was banned. Yeah. So you couldn't go to meetings.

So this is people that are just like in despair and then they can't go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and they can't work. And then, you know, there's a lot of fucking a lot of bad things.

I Sunday was the first time I had a drink in three months since this thing started. I didn't have one drink. I just I was depressed. I knew if I I got a drink and watch TV all night. I just had my first drink on Saturday.

What did you spend the time doing during the pandemic?

You know, we start I would walk just about every day and really nothing. I mean, I, I'm not a big TV guy.

I was reading doing the pot watches of TV, doing a podcast, preparing that, doing press, you know, radio and zoom and shit like that kind of kept us sane.

We were doing two a week, then we went down to one and I had my wife with me and my daughter. We cooked every night and I see my older daughter for over a month and a half. She just lives in the village.

I didn't even see her. Wow. I mean, you couldn't even see, you know, I mean, plus, I don't want to get sick. I'm overweight, but I'm not I'm not a smoker. Nothing.

And, you know, my wife's a marathon runner, but, you know, we're older. I don't get fucking sick. And so we were careful. I'm still careful here.

But listen, it's a terrible thing that, you know, and it's not over. No, it's kicking back in.

That's what's crazy because of the protests and because of a lot of the states have lifted up their social distancing and they're all there. You know, we're quiet. And then people are acting like there's nothing happening. So they're going to bars and they're drinking and people are tired of it. Yeah, they're tired and want and feel like, oh, if it's open, it's open. Let's go. And exactly.

I understand that. But the thing is, it hasn't gone away. I mean, and I don't know what the fucking answer is. I understand everyone's tired of it. But listen, down in Orange County, the beaches are packed, packed.

Well, the good news is vitamin D is one of the most important factors in keeping a healthy immune system. And one of the things that they found out was that 80 plus percent of the people that are in the ICU with covid have a vitamin D deficiency. Four percent have sufficient levels of vitamin D is a huge factor because vitamin D is not just a fight. I had a lady, Dr. Rhonda Patcher. She's been on my podcast several times. She wanted to this whole I brought her on to talk about how to strengthen your immune system during this time.

And she said one of the big, most important factors is vitamin D. It's a huge factor. It's one of the reasons why people in the East Coast, they get that seasonal depression. They're not going out in the winter and they're not they're not supplementing with vitamin D. Seventy percent of America is vitamin Diffee, vitamin D deficient, 70 percent has insufficient.

And that's in the sun. Vitamin D, yes. You get it from the sun. It's the best way to get it for sure, is to get in the sun. But you can supplement it well and it has a big impact on supplement. 5000, I use a day supplement, take it, you know, like you said, I didn't understand that liquor store is essential. But all these other things are an essential. And I mean, if I drinking you, your immune system's going down.

The depressed is fucking hell. There were some nights I can't sleep at night, so I go to bed at two o'clock, two thirty in the morning.

I mean, some nights just I mean I'm, I'm up alone. It's fucking horrible.

But there's a logic to the the the reason why they had alcohol being an essential business is there's logic to it. And that is there's a lot of people that are alcoholics. And if you make them quit cold turkey and they can't buy any booze, you're going to take beds up that would be better suited for people that have coffee.

So the idea is just like let these people have their alcohol. They just didn't think it was going to last as long as it did. They thought this was going to be a couple of weeks, a lockdown and then we'd get back to business. But obviously here we are in fucking June.

I mean, all this shit happened major middle of last three months. Yeah, it's three solid, solid months is easy here. Yeah. After being in New York, I was there, you know, for two months of it. It's just easier here.

It's easier here because people are more spaced out. Exactly. Getting your car. I've got a little I got a backyard. I've got to think it's just easier as opposed to being holed up.

And I got a pretty good sized apartment, but it's not the same. Yeah. Going down the elevator in the shit.

And here it's sunny every day too, which is obviously better for your immune system and it's just better for yourself anyway. Yeah. Just like you wake up it fuck it's better for your head. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I get New York. I get it. I just don't, I don't want to do it anymore, you know.

It's like I could be there occasionally. Have you ever lived in you never lived in the city. I lived in New Rochelle when I lived in New York.

I grew up in Mount Vernon. Oh yeah. OK, yeah. New guy name a pool player named Mount Vernon. Tommy Vinnie Pesters from New Rochelle.

Oh, Israel. Yeah. And I think Chuck Zito as well.

Oh no kidding. Yeah. Yeah. I lived there because I couldn't afford to have a parking spot, you know, I needed a place to I had to have a car because I had to do gigs.

So I didn't know that you lived there. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I live. Where do you work? All the places in Maryland and everywhere.

Yeah. Connecticut and Long Island. Jersey. Oh yeah. The Pips in Brooklyn. Yeah I did that. Yeah. It was our friends. Yeah. We got digital radio.

We know he at some point well in the forties at some point he bought, he owned pips but that had been there forever.

Yeah. That's gone now. Right. It's gone.

I think it's a sushi restaurant. Really. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. That was when Rodney started.

David Brenner, Richard Jeni to Richard Jeni. I think Dyce I don't know if he started but Dice and Seinfeld was there early on, you know. Mm. I mean it's Sheepshead Bay.

Yeah. Yeah. And it was, there was no comedy clubs back then you know. Right. Yeah. A bunch of rowdy fucking Brooklyn guys. Yeah. I couldn't have been an easy gig.

Oh it was a tough gig. Yeah. Yeah. Joey called my friend Joey Cole was there and some guy was so crazy.

Oh you know Joey he comes on with us to live, show the live show, ask him about perhaps some guy was showing him his gun sitting in the front row, pulling up his way.

And I was gonna go, fuck you, fuck you. Look at this.

And like Joey's of their day, he tells jokes, Yeah, we do this comedy with the conversation with The Sopranos. He's a cop. He does everyone.

He opens any interviews us on stage. Oh, that's the best guy I love. There's no better guy.

I've known him for thirty years. Yeah, good guy. He's a great guy and he's been around a long time. Yes. Yeah.

It's funny comic too. Yeah. Yeah he does great.

And we had a European tour that got cancelled cos sixteen cities and he was coming with us.

Now when something like that gets cancelled did they have an idea when to do it. Again.

They talk, we're talking next June.

We're supposed to be UK, UK and Ireland. Well that's probably safe a year from now. It's probably that's a good bet.

You can pop in again. And you know, in Australia, we were doing like twenty five hundred people a show. Wow. Which is just a sort of show me him and Vinny. And we had an Australian comic who was a nice guy, but he fucking died every night except for his whole style until he was in Adelaide. But this year we're out there. We're playing the London Palladium tonight.

Oh, wow. It was doing big business. That's awesome. Yeah. And, you know, like I said, we answer questions.

Joey does a comedy and we've we've done it a lot of places here, Atlantic City, Foxwoods, and this time Joey was coming on the road. So right now we're scheduled next June.

Well, I hope nothing crazy happens between now and then. Oh, Jesus Christ.

It's like to be. Oh, it is. All right. Because it's hard to tell. It's like you would have imagined, oh, you're going to be fine. But all bets are off now. All bets are off.

It's so weird when we're behind. Looking glass now, yes, it's a strange time to lose, but listen, tell everybody one more time the name of your podcast, How to get it talking Sopranos.

You can go to Talking Sopranos dot com or Apple podcast wherever you get podcasts and YouTube. We have a YouTube channel.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here. Thank you. Thank you, Christine. Always good seeing you, Brooke. Always so much. Thank you. Great to see you. All right, everybody. Bye. Thank you, friends, for tune in to the show. And thank you to our sponsors. Thank you. To simply say the best home security of twenty twenty, according to U.S. News and World Report. And there are 24 seven professional monitoring and emergency dispatch starts just 50 cents a day.

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