Hey, folks, the critically acclaimed comedy AP bio is moving to Peacocke for its third season to pick up where we left off, starring Glenn Howerton and Patton Oswalt, AP bio tells the story of a disgraced Harvard professor who returns to his hometown of Toledo, Ohio, and lands a gig teaching at Whitlock High School. Howard Dean plays Jack Griffin, a schemer who decides to use his students brain power to his own benefit. Every episode of AP bio, including the brand new third season, is available now on Peacocke, the new streaming service from NBC Universal.

Sign up at Peacock TV dotcom to stream now like the gate.

All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuck is what the fuck buddies? What the fuck next? What's happening? My name is Marc Maron. This is WTF, my podcast I couldn't get. Why couldn't I just launch there? What happened? All right. What's going on? All right, let's do this, like all of a sudden. I don't have to say that. All right, let's do this. Let's do this.

Wow. I don't know, man.

Is it the time of day? Campi The time of day. How are you? What's going on? What is happening?

Nothing good. Nothing fucking good. Where are you going to do with that. Holy shit.

You know, I don't want to say that I told you so because I'm not really and I told you so kind of guy.

But I be honest, man.

Looking back at my last special, which I recorded ago, like in October, where I said, what has to happen?

Does this guy have to catch fire? Does this guy have to catch fire? The sky is on fire. I'm not happy that I told you so, but I guess it did have to catch fire.

I don't know what's going to happen with that in the special yeah, it doesn't. There's a lot of different angles on it. There should only be one. But people are fucking incomprehensible. People are fucking incomprehensible. It's not my line from Michael Clayton, Sydney Pollack. People are fucking incomprehensible. Use whatever options at your disposal that you have to maintain your sanity.

Not that I think that clarity is that necessary, because it's it it's pretty fucking daunting. The clarity. I don't think being dumber, shallower, ignorant or detached is I don't think that's good either. You're going to have to shoulder the clarity, how do you shoulder that if you have it? I mean, shit is fucked up and yet we knew that he knew Woodward's book comes out. We knew I mean, I knew that he knew. But now it becomes painfully clear that this kind of mass murder through negligence.

To meet political means is what's happening. And no matter how many people cry for justice, the system and the state and the entire country is unfixable and broken. We live in a failed state now.

However, your life is or whatever is OK or whatever you're scraping together for yourself.

I mean, that's what's happening. I just want to make sure we all acknowledge that. Now, what can you do? Do you feel powerless yet?

We can vote. Hope the voting works, if you want to watch my special for a little painful relief, get giddy people, get ready, get active, get laughing. It's gotten to the point where I've pushed through to the other side. It is so fucking apocalyptic, so fucking dystopian, so insane, this goddamn evil clown show that we're living through, that I've gotten to the point where I'm like, oh, my God, it's fucking terrible.

It's and there's no seemingly no way out. Your brain hits a wall. You can't speculate. It's only going to go in the burning garbage.

There's no speculating, there's no hope. No matter what happens, we're it's fucked up and at some point he's just like, oh, man, oh, man, this is fucking crazy, it's really happening. Apocalyptic giddiness. That is anger.

Mixed with fear, mixed with hopelessness, mixed with sadness, and you just kind of let it press down on you until your heart feels the weight and all you can do is kind of go for like.

Overmanaging, OK, I'll be using every option at your disposal to maintain your sanity, and someone added this and I think it's true, unless it's at the expense of someone else's sanity.

I mean, let's not let's not drain the people we love to the point where they don't know what's up. You can't just use someone. You can't just sit there and be like, oh, this is fucked, this is fucked, this is fucked, we're fucked.

And they go, no, it's going to be OK. It's not going to be OK. No one can tell me it's going to be OK. No, it'll be OK. We'll get through it. I don't know if we're going to get through it. I don't know. I don't know if we're going to get through it. We're fucked. We're not fucked.

We have today and we have now. We have this and we have all the love and everything. So it doesn't fucking matter, man.

It doesn't fucking matter. It's fucking over. No, I mean, just take it easy.

It's you know, it's going to be OK today. Let's just stay in the day. Fuck the day. You're right, you're right, we're fucked, what we're fucked is over what no, you can't say that.

You're the one that doesn't say that now I'm done. I can't hold it up anymore.

It's fucking over.

Then if you're not if you think it's over, then it's really it's really over.

Like, well, you should have fucking hung your hope on something bigger instead of draining me and using me like some sort of spiritual and emotional battery to I can't take it anymore. And I've got no no fucking fire left.

Hey, come on, take it easy. Fuck you. No, no, no, no, no, no. Fuck. What do we do now? Hey, no, no, no.

You can't be the one. So. Keep your sanity, but don't drain the other person. That was just a conversation I have with myself. You know, I'm most mornings.

Seriously, look, I don't even mention this. Martin Short is on the show today. I talked to Martin. And he is actually, you know, Martin Short from CTV, SNL Three Amigos. He did that live thing with Steve Martin. Everybody everybody loves Martin Short and he's actually nominated. He is nominated for an Emmy this year as outstanding guest actor in a drama series for his guest role on the morning show, which you can watch.

On Apple TV, plus, he was very good in it, it's a very kind of disturbing role for Martin Short, but he was very good at it.

So I woke up to the smell of raw sewage was is my mother.

No, that was from fucking an hour ago, my mother wants me to tell her when I'm going on Instagram live and I did.

And now at 213, she's she goes, OK, give me the emoji, the customized Toby emoji with the thumbs up, and I had to tell her that you fucking missed it. I didn't say that.

The smell of raw sewage, not great. Not a great smell, just wafting through the air outside.

That's a bad I don't know what neighborhood you live in or where your brain goes, but. The sewage smells bad when it's just going through the air and you're like, where's that coming from? Is that my house? Is my house about to explode and be lifted up on the blast of a shit geiser?

Is it going to be some bad effect where I we're just out of nowhere, just there's a rumbling and then and just this furious shit geezer with my house sitting on top of it and Buster in there going real well, scoped it out.

I don't know. I don't know where it's coming from. I don't I don't know what's happening. I really don't know what's happening.

I know the sky is red and it's like it's weird, right, that everyone just if you're out here in the West Coast, you wake up to this fucking it's a hell scape, but there's weird part of the human brain that just sort of like, well, this is kind of bad, right?

Does this happen?

No, this was the this happened last, you know, were there fire tornadoes? Ever know? Did it rain fire before? No, none of these weird dates where it's like this is the second hottest day on record.

It's like what was the first when when when the earth was cooling. Jesus, fuck. So, look, I don't want to be a bummer. I'm OK. It's over, man. It's happening, Asami, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm crying and laughing at the same time. I'm OK. You're OK. That's the weird thing, is that craving, you know, weird craving where it's like who's going to make it OK?

There's nobody alive that, you know, that can confidently tell you everything's going to be all right, even in that passive way where they don't really know. But you trust them enough because of love.

Or connection that you will be calmed by it, but that's the fucking hardest thing, it's like, are we going to be OK? I don't know. No one knows. And when people go like it's going to be OK, they don't know and, you know, they don't know. And when you try, I think of the future, you like, fuck, who knows what's going to happen in our tough place to be.

And we're all there and we're doing it, folks. We're doing it. Change where you can do what you got to do, help out, be a decent human, try to do that. I don't know.

Why do I feel like there needs to be a message? We're fucked. We're fucked. It's over, man.

All right. So let me just share this with you.

This Martin Short business. As I said before, he's, you know, Martin Short, but he's up for an Emmy for outstanding guest actor in a drama series for the morning show, which is on Apple TV plus.

And this is me talking to Martin Short coming up.

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That's an empty chair. Hello. Hello there. I thought we were going to you're going to just be off camera that we help. There we go. Is that your doorbell?

It's my clock. Oh, you have a clock, is it? How often is it going to do that? That's great sound. That's very nice. What a nice room you have.

Thank you. It's once an hour. You can live with it. I can. Sure. Now, the wall, the pictures. That's the life behind you. This is this is the life behind me, absolutely, I was it Jonathan Winters house? Yeah. And he had a wall of photographs from like 100 years of life. And there was one picture, just this old, very old picture of a boy and a dog. And we're standing there looking at 100 pictures of his entire life and career.

And he just goes, I miss that dog.

Wasn't he, like, the greatest genius ever?

He was something else, man. You know, I went to his house to talk to him before he died.

And obviously and he after we got done talking and he says, I want to show you the planes. And that's where we were heading.

When he showed me the pictures, we walked to his his bedroom, which they had moved because he couldn't get around as well. And he had this four poster bed. And on the ceiling there was like 100 different model planes suspended from little pieces of string.

And he said and that was that was him and he and then we went to lunch and he wore a a civil war hat.

It was a civil war hat. He did the correct side. It was a union colonel's hat, I believe. Oh, OK. Four for lunch.

You know, he you know, when you're Jonathan Winters and you go to lunch in a little town you live in, it's a spectacle. You need to you need to show up for the people.

Yeah, no, no. I did I did a an animated cartoon show with him once. Oh really. Yeah. I want to say eighty eight. Eighty nine. And he was simply hysterical.

I had too much. And for me and my brother Michael, we wrote the show together, it was so surreal because you know, I always feel like it doesn't matter who's famous now is who's famous, who was famous when you were 12 for sure. Yeah. And they're the ones you can't believe you're meeting.

He got me once. Winter's did. When I was interviewing years ago for Comedy Central. I was the Montreal Comedy Festival running around like an idiot with a microphone. Yeah, 95. And I get him and I'm standing there with a Mikita know me. I don't know him. I'm a kid. And I'm like, So how's it going, Jonathan? Are you seeing any performers you like up here this year? And he goes, Well, I haven't really gotten out much.

You know, my wife, my wife's ill and she's in the room and I'm like, oh, jeez, I'm sorry to hear that. He goes, I shouldn't have put her in air cargo. It wasn't the right thing to do.

And I didn't see it coming. I did not see it coming. He was amazing.

Those guys like Rickles and. Yeah, those people that you. We're so thrilled to meet. Yeah, and then you couldn't believe how funny they still were.

It is kind of amazing that they still got that that there's an engine to it. I remember I was at a dinner.

I have a pseudo. Weird memory for dates and things I once said, someone once said to me, oh, you have that same thing. And I said, yeah, yeah, I've heard of that, that's that Mary Lou and I couldn't remember Hanner, so I realized I didn't have it right here.

Yeah, but I remember being at a dinner with Don Rickles. It was a David Steinberg and Robin Steinberg's house, and they were throwing a party for Jill Liederman, executive producer Jimmy Kimmel's show, who was about to have a baby and was there.

Yeah. And they put, you know, all the funny guys that Rickles table. And he was just hilarious and performing and performing and just and Jimmy Kimmel and I were there and we were laughing so hard.

And then at one point, his wife, Barbara, hadn't spoken for about 15 minutes.

And then she finally went, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

And he goes, oh, Tuktoyaktuk. Let's put it this way.

If it wasn't for the talk, talk, talk, talk, you'd be a derelict or derelict derelict.

I haven't heard that word for a while. It's like a degenerate gambler. Exactly. You don't hear certain things anymore? No, no, no. I you know, you and I have met. Do you know that?

Yes, I know we met.

We I wouldn't expect you to remember now that I've been in show business for a relatively long time. It was one of those forgettable things. And probably that was just something you did during a junket.

But I used to host a thing called Short Attention Span Theater. And I remember this. And the conceit was a basement, a vault. And we did a whole show built around you. We did like four or five segments interviewing. It was probably to promote Clifford.

I imagine it was probably like ninety two, ninety three, something like that. It was probably probably put together by Nancy Gellar. Do you do you remember Nancy Gellar.

Of course. Dancing. Geller was an executive producer of KTB one year. Oh see you. Probably she probably called in a favor because she was at HBO downtown then which is who was producing it.

There you go. Yeah. And we did, we did a long form interview.

I'll try not to cover any of those questions because I know that. Go ahead.

It's been it's always been tough, but I'm sure there'll be some people who forget the answer.

Nobody watched it. Nobody saw that interview, Martin. All right. Well, I'm afraid we can cover it. Yeah.

So I enjoyed the thing you did with Steve Martin. Yes. Now, when you do something like that, when you and Steve do that, what is the creative process? Do you just say like do you want to what are you doing next month? Yeah. How does that how does a show like that come together?

Well, it was I remember it was the spring of 2011, 2011. And that's my rain man and I, we have been asked to interview each other on stage to close the just for Laughs comedy festival in Chicago.

OK, and it was successful, but it was also we had really you know, we're close friends, but we hadn't done anything like that.

It was fun. Right? Right. And the agent said, do you want to book a couple more? We said, sure, just interview. Share the night.

ChawIa the night before your drinks afterwards. Yeah. And then we kind of and at that time Steve didn't have a show and I did have a show. He had his banjo show, but he didn't have like other than his musical show. And so I said, well, why don't we take elements of my show? And we just and that's how we kept expanding it into a real show. Right. Right then. And then we just kept working on it.

And the more we did it, the more we'd add different things, you know, and and it it is as much fun as you can have because everyone is nice. Everyone is cool.

Right. There are no pricks. Yeah. Allowed, you know, and you don't have to do it.

I mean it's one of these things you don't have to you guys you don't have to do. It shows you know what I mean. We're doing this because we want to do it.

But you know, the instinct to make it good and to work on it is literally no different than if I was on TV in eighty two.

Right, right. Yeah.

That same, you know, nerves and focus and and I don't think that ever changes. I think it changes if you stop. Being in show business for a while and then you come back and. You're a little off, right? I can understand that, but I and Steve, we never really have stopped doing any of this right until now.

It's just and then after you have a few under your belt, it's just fun. And. Yeah, and then there's there's the wine afterwards. Yeah.

And how does it feel to be like not doing anything right now.

I feel like I'm Michael Cohen. I'm on house arrest. Yeah. This is what house arrest would be.

But have you ever gone this long. I have never gone this long without doing stand up.

It's very hard to break away from work ethic schedule, I find. Yeah. And it takes a while for you to go.

Wow, I have literally nothing on the schedule till August twenty one and then I'm supposed to see an eye doctor. I mean that's it.

That's it. So it's very, it is very, it's very weird.

I don't know what you been doing.

Well, at one point I decided that every time there was a fire or an earthquake in L.A., I'm never in L.A. One of my kids would be at the house and they said, we're loading the car. What should we put in? And I'd always start with the old photo albums like, I mean, of my parents and grandparents and going back, you know. Yeah. And then I thought, I know what I'll do.

I will get a photocopier machine. I'm going to transfer all the old pictures from nineteen thirteen on. Wow.

Transfer them to my thing and then I would spend a little time, you know, making people look a little better.

Oh nice Photoshop Grandma. Grandmas look a little tired. I'll take them.

Yeah.

So suddenly I'm making people have been dead for fifty years. Look Hodor. Yeah. That and then I have three kids in L.A. I have a son and daughter in law who live with me here is studying to be a vet. You're here right.

You're in L.A.. In L.A.. Yeah. And then I have my daughter lives, you know, over there and I spend a couple of days with her and then my son lives in Sherman Oaks and I'll stop in and visit, you know, I kind of between the three houses, but that's it. I've been a Gelson's, a store. I've been anything when our country is like this.

I mean, I talked to a Canadian yesterday. You know, I maybe I'm a bad American, but my my thought is if like, if you could live in Canada, why the fuck wouldn't you right now?

Well, it is startling to see the level of flat lining in Canada.

I mean, it's but, you know, Canada is very they they're not kidding around. Yeah. If I were to go I have a cottage in Canada, right north of Toronto. Yeah.

If I were to go there at Customs, I'd have to say this is my address. Yeah. I have to give them my cell phone number and you have to go there. Right. And you have to be there for 14 days.

And if you decide when I'm bored I'm going to go to Toronto. Yeah. Yeah you can be fined seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

Wow. It's not kidding around.

And the Canadian sensibility is a little more like it's it's different. You know, obviously we're very similar to Americans, although Lorne Michaels once said to me, I did a special in eighty five on Showtime and I did in Toronto. And they cut to the audience. Yeah.

And Lorne Lorne looked at it and said Canadian audiences always look like Russian spies who are dressed up as Americans.

There's a beard that's too bushy.

There's something off, you know. But anyway, the Canadians kind of they have great trust in the government. You know, a friend of mine I was talking this morning, British Columbia. Yeah. You know, they have the daily briefings, but there's not a politician involved. Right. It's all just doctors. They're the only ones who speak. Yeah.

They're grown up people. They trust science and they have health care that's reasonable for humans.

And there's a lot of you have someone who has an 80 million person Twitter and he's saying, oh, you're being politically correct with that mask we're talking about. It's a witch hunt. All these things. There are people who are going to be influenced. That's terrible.

That's why that's why I wouldn't stay, too. I like you know, the disease is a disease, but it's like it's a frightening time, it seems, you know, with the divisiveness. And I fantasize about just, you know, I think it's going to be OK.

OK, I knew I think it's going to be OK because I think 2016 was a typo and I think people didn't want to hire another Clinton, blah, blah, blah, but and a woman and all this. Yeah. You know, all the things that scared people, but the reality and intellect scared them for them. But but the reality is that in twenty eighteen people were tired of it. OK, all right.

I'll go with you. I'll stay with the optimism. I mean, I was optimistic. Yeah. I mean you're generally an optimistic guy. It seems I am well, where does that come from, is that Canadian I don't know. That is a weird question. I mean, a good question and a weird. Do you remember when it happened?

There was there was there ever a time in your life where you were like, oh, I think I think it's DNA and I think it's the way you're raised. I think, you know, I'm the youngest of five and all my siblings are funny and loose.

Yeah. Sweet and happy and optimistic.

Let's talk about Hamilton for a minute, because I spent some time there recently and I got into a little bit of trouble because because I, I was I kind of brought to light the fact that it's seen better days, that it's that there was a I was poetic about it.

I said there's a parade of pain of some kind, like I was there for two weeks.

And it was jarring. The the sort of type of kind of it wasn't so much being destitute. There was just sort of there was something going on on the streets that represented trouble.

I don't know, you know, what happened to Hamilton. They had they had major International Harvester, a big company, and that went bankrupt.

You grew up there, right? You grew up in Hamilton and I grew up there. Yeah. And I went to university there. McMaster University.

So what was it like when you were a kid? Did was wasn't there big was I'm telling you it was Elegante. It was you see pictures of, you know, from the Canal Hotel, people dressed in fabulous clothes.

Yeah. I think it just hit in the 70s and 80s hard times with closing big companies like steel companies. And so but now they've reinvented it and now it is going up.

No, it was just I never seen more like and I don't even know what to make of it. I was shooting a movie up there and we were driving around. And every day there was just like people there was always this weirdness on the streets and it just looked like a little chaotic. Little druggie. A little. Yeah.

Look like Detroit ish kind of situation.

Well, I can't imagine why if you brought this up, you weren't embraced by the city.

I didn't. I was trying to be honest, and now I wasn't. But you can't it's not my place to honesty in show business. I now know that you see horrible play on Broadway. You don't go backstage and say, wow, was this horrible?

Yeah. You guys, you don't want to hear that. Throw the towel in. This was fantastic. Yeah.

That great. So good. Are you you focus on the things that were good. You know those shoes were what are those shoes. Yeah.

Yeah. And like are you going to do this every night is what an accomplished. So there were five kids in the family.

Five and you guys were and you did your dad work for one of the big companies that went out of.

My father was a vice president. Canadian Steel. Wow. And my mother was the concertmaster of the Hamilton Philharmonic.

And that was a big deal and that was big deal. And she would rehearse five hours a day. And my father was an executive and and yeah, I had a great happy go lucky child.

What did she play? What was the what was the talent?

Oh, when you were the concertmaster of a symphony, you are the first violinist. Oh, that's that's always the way it is. Yes. And so you had art in the house.

You had expression, you had music, you had people who did embrace did your creativity.

I imagine my father would give my mother an opera every Christmas. And on Boxing Day, which is the twenty sixth, the next day we would like read the libretto and hear it. I mean, I tell people that and they go, what? Yeah, what? I said, you didn't have it.

No, I didn't do. So do you still enjoy opera?

No, no, not really. And there's some I like I love hearing the Three Tenors and stuff like that, but I'm not obsessed. I do like classical music, though. I do, especially the older I get. I find myself gravitating toward that, especially during pandemic times where you just can't hear it anymore. Yeah, the debt you're done for, the debt you don't want it.

You don't want get worked up on bebop, you know.

So sometimes a little, you know, Mozart can just be the perfect combo.

But do you like were you educated so like every year. Oh it was just once a year you get the opera but you didn't wear you know, there was a there was a you know, I would go to the symphonies.

My father was also the president of the symphony.

So I remember being five and like not figuring out how can this sound not be coming out of speakers. Like I'd be in the second row. It was very surreal.

It's wild, right? Yeah. To be in a symphony hall that you've played them to, isn't it, trip when you perform on the stage of a symphony hall?

It's insane. And I've done shows with symphonies and that's also really. Yeah, but you can just talk. And you can hear it, it's such a well-designed acoustic place, it fascinates me. It's spectacular, like Carnegie Hall.

Oh my God, it's crazy. So why didn't you become a musician?

Well, you know, I we had to play piano. All of us had to play piano from age five on, take piano lessons. But then at 13, you could quit.

Oh, that was the reason I quit. I mean, I think, you know, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in the 60s when I was a teenager. A, you you look at American television, that's all you looked at through Buffalo. You never look at Canadian television. And it didn't seem like it was real, it seemed like it was a real opportunity for someone in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, right. So I'd be in my attic pretending to do shows.

And I had a laugh applause record and I had a goose neck lamp because even then I knew I needed lighting.

You had a laugh record, had an applause record from Sinatra at the Sands.

I'd looped it and I'd reel to reel and I'd hold my mike up and I had a what were you doing up there?

So you looped the Martin Short Show, OK, and it was on Tuesdays at eight o'clock on NBC. But every other Tuesday.

Yeah, because that left room for my movie. Sure. I was 14. 15. Yeah.

So you think if that's your kid you go well then I got to, he's got to go to National Art School or something. Right.

But to me there was not a hint of really doing this. It was fantasy. It was unrealistic. You know, I'd watch television, I'd watch, I don't know, something from Disneyland. It might as well have been on Neptune. Right. Right.

So I was going to be a doctor. Really? Yeah.

I went into premed not because I like science. I like I was a fan of Chet Everett's work on Medical Center.

And I thought, you know, the idea of being a doctor sure was not. I didn't want to have to study anything. But I like the idea of because I would say of all professions, I admire that the most. Right.

Because it looked authoritative and you can help people and you can help them die.

You can give birth to a baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make them feel better. Sure. No, I admire that. But then I switched to social work and then so that my four years at university were premed and social work. And then I left anactor, so you went to you went to school in Hamilton, there was a big college here. Yeah. Did not leave home. Now, like in my recollection now I've talked to a few others.

There was some sort of comedy magic in Hamilton, right. I mean.

Well, I don't know. I mean, Eugene Levy was at university. He was a few years older. Dave Thomas. Yeah. Ivan Reitman, the director.

Yeah. Yeah, I've talked to I've talked to Eugene.

I've talked to Ivan graduates from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

But you didn't know any of them. Eugene. I know Eugene at school and I met Ivan. I met Ivan. Yeah. But he was the head of the film board and he was you know, I was younger than those guys. Right. A few years or so. But like I think my first year, Eugene was it was his last and stuff like that.

And but I knew Ivan and I remember Ivan will still say to me, we'll be at like the AFI awards. Yeah, right. And he'll always stem cells. Can you believe the two of us from Hamilton, you know?

Yeah. Not losing perspective. What are the odds. Yeah, but then.

And then. So I was there for four years and then in seventy two there was this amazing scene in Toronto. That's where I went to try to be an actor.

So that's where you went to live. You went up there and got an apartment. I got well when I was still in university I got the show. Godspell.

Yes. This is the one and it was the famous Godspell production. That's the famous guys.

And but hanging around that time in Toronto, where people like Danny Akroyd, who. Yeah. Wanted to be a cop at that point. And you knew him. John Candy. Yes, that's I met them. I met Danny Akroyd on June twenty eighth.

Nineteen seventy two. And the reason I know it's that it was because it was Gildas birthday rather. Yeah. And there was a big party for her at this place called Global Village in Toronto Club and Danny and his then comedy partner Valerie Bromfield stayed in character as Gildas parents from Detroit. And I just I had never met someone so original and funny.

And you and you at that time had already done Godspell. Now we were doing it. I did gospel for a year. So this would be we had probably just opened and I did it for a year.

And we're just all your siblings end up. My brother Michael is a very successful comedy writer. Yeah. I wrote on CTV, one of the head writers of Schitt's Creek. Oh, yes. You know, the million Emmys and a million successes. My brother Brian, vice president of Dover Industries, a company that makes paper products. And my sister in law is a nurse anesthetist and they're all older.

Yeah, and so you I'm the youngest and you were the last one to leave the house, the big mistake there were the accident.

So when there's a 14 year difference, you know, you're an accident.

Oh, that's crazy. So I that's that's. So they were gone most of your life, right? Well, you know, I had a lot of and it goes back to optimism. I had a lot of sadness as a young guy growing up in that house. It was a fabulous house. Right. And yet when I was 12, my brother David, the eldest, died in a car accident. Oh, my God. My mother immediately got cancer.

She would die in sixty seven when I was 17. And then my father died a year later when I was 19.

Oh my God. Yeah. So I actually for a year got arfin relief checks from the Ontario government. And all the siblings are good friends to my father, I would just use that money to buy alcohol. Did he enjoy the alcohol?

He gin and ginger, no ice. There is Irish. You know, the Irish feel that ice is addictive. So you wouldn't go near ice.

Was he like real Irish? I talk with an accent.

Irish, yes. Born and raised Crossmaglen. Count him up and down here.

I love Ireland.

Oh, it's so fabulous. Do you go right? Yes. My when my father was born and raised in Shorts Bar in Crossmaglen County Armagh, which is just over the border from Dundalk, and it is still in operation run by my ninety five year old and really. And Joseline. Yes, that's amazing.

And cousins and cousins. So you have a real family there. Absolutely.

You go there Schwartzbach. We can go right now.

You can, you know, you can be a citizen there too if you want. I know. Mhm. I have three passports. Yeah. And I'm a really. What's the fourth one. I have UK. I have Canada, us, and then like a Republic of Ireland, I would love to live in Ireland and I'm a Jew, I've got no connection, but for some reason it resonates with me.

I don't know why people the people are really spectacular.

They are made sarcastic and funny and loose and yeah, I love it. I'm spending I was at Schwartzbach. This is like ninety eight and I'm staying up all night with my two cousins, Oliver and and Patrick. And we're drinking. And when you are publican's, as they call it, yeah, they you don't drink from the bar, you put money into the till and then you take a drink, OK? It's just it's a sin to not do it that way.

Anyway, I came down first around 9:00 in the morning and there were glasses and I saw my Uncle Paddy cleaning the glasses out. And he looked at me, said, So how did the character assassination go last night, Marty?

He knew we're talking about all of them.

It's beautiful. So you when you left for Toronto like you, what what happened to the house and stuff?

I mean, I still had a fourth year university, and by the end of that year, we sold the house. I had an apartment in Hamilton and then I got Godspell. And now I moved into a house with Eugene Levy, another guy, John, Yafai, Yafai Yaffa. And we had this big house on Avenue Road. Which is in Toronto. Tom Hanks always loves that it's called Avenue Road. Yeah, he you know, he brings that up.

Yeah, I never, never it seemed odd. You know, I wouldn't have thought of it. Yeah.

Then I did Godspell and then I started going out with Gilda and I kind of live with her.

So was this your first immersion in juice? No. No. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I am 10 percent Jewish on my agent side. I'm Jewish is very important to me.

No, no, no, I I'll tell exactly what it is. I grew up in a very Jewish section of Hamilton Westdale, so all my friends were Jewish and there was something else. I was, you know, not the tallest kid in the class. So I wasn't it wasn't about. You know, the football player and I are going to hang. I was drawn toward the smartest sure people in the class and a class of thirty eight, I swear.

All the smartest people were Jewish. Yeah, it's just a fact.

And so then my best friends were Mitchell Rosenblatt, Alex and Sheldon Buckhalter, Buckhalter, Buckhalter.

So because I know that, you know, you do have a sensitivity to the timing and to you know, I think a few of your characters are Jewish, whether you'd say they're Jewish or not.

I'm not aware of that, except and many, many people from my life think I'm Jewish. Oh, really? Oh, absolutely.

I mean, you're in show business and you have you have a very good you you have the innate schtick timing.

Yeah, I guess. But so does John Mulaney, doesn't he. No, he doesn't. He's he's got a thing that he does, but I mean, I'm I guess.

Well, listen, I don't know what it it's also probably, you know, as a kid, I'm watching television and I'm responding to. Yeah, I was going to say Jerry Lewis, but I'm also responding to Jonathan Winters and Dick Van Dyke. And, yes, I can see that.

So, you know, when Stan. Oh, he's great. Did you see that movie with Coogan? And Genius is such a great fucking movie. And how great are they? Unbelievable. Unbelievable how the work they put into that fucking thing.

Have you have you played Stan Laurel? Why do I feel like you've played him?

No, never. No, never try to do it as a character.

Well, I mean, I could I could do that. Yes, I really do. And yeah.

So you move in with Gilda. You guys are. Yeah. And now like, what was this, the Godspell thing. I mean, was this the beginning of sketch comedy in Canada after Godspell? Because it seemed like the people that were in it all kind of started to do that?

No, I think it was just, you know, it was a smaller pond. Yeah. And I will tell you, the Godspell editions were like out of.

You know, reality show that you'd see now, it was like it was already a hit in New York and everyone everyone knows an actor wanted it. Yeah, so I've been conditioned. And the final callback of the Masonic Temple in Toronto was, I don't know, 500 people. Oh, my God. So the rest of the Temple Masonic Temple was loaded with supporters and fans.

Right. And then, you know, you sort of you'd sing and then they in groups of five and they call back one person of the five who had come back an hour later and do it again. And then an hour later, if you made that cut off, you had to do an improv sketch. Wow.

So they were looking for people that could were talented, but it was a raw talent. But that day, they cast Eugene Levy and Victor Garber as Jesus and Andrea Martin.

Yeah. And myself and Paul Shaffer, who made in the musical director.

So it was kind of an amazing Dave Thomas in it to date.

Thomas would come a little bit later. Oh, OK. Not that day. And so it was a surreal thing. And then a year later, Second City came to town, OK, from Chicago and set up shop and that they were doing a sister company.

And Joe Flaherty and Brian Doyle Murray were going to direct the first show. And they everyone auditioned for it. I didn't. Oddly enough, you know, I think it was I was afraid of it. Yeah. Yeah. And everyone else wanted it so badly so. And they got it. Gilda got it. And John Candy got it. And Eugene of my group.

And what was the show is just a sketch show that was a best of second city show.

And they really they developed material and OK, so so all those people had had experience improvising.

You know, you learn quickly at Second City, you learn things like like the things that I was afraid of was I'd always been the funny guy at parties and I was funny on stage and I hated the pressure of being funny. Now, that's what Second City represented to me. Oh, until I realized that, no, you just go out and keep talking in the character. And sometimes the reaction would be a bigger laugh and an action or a word.

Right.

And so you you learned to come down.

Right. And just didn't have the same time learning how to improvise. Right.

But you're also like, I would imagine you can sing and stuff, too, which is a nice right right now. You need it for improvising. But, you know, you could I mean, you've done musicals.

It's exciting. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, a Canadian career is more eclectic. You know, there's not certainly when I was there just living there as a Canadian actor, there wasn't so much a star system. But you could have 12 different jobs in the course of the month where if you were an American actor in Hollywood, you would never get that kind of practical experience.

Yeah, I've noticed that about Canada. And I've said it to other Canadians that if you hang around Canadian show business long enough, you'll you'll get your show, you'll get something.

And but you'll also have an hours logged hours of things that maybe no one saw back.

What did you do that no one saw? I ate at twenty two, was the host of my own show on CBC called Right on here.

And it was live. Yeah. At five pm.

Yeah. And I would sing the songs of the week that I had no funk, so it was I shot the sheriff, you know.

Yeah. And and then they'd also feature Canadian young Canadian talent. And there was no cue cards. And I would just forget lyrics there.

And they just that was on on and off quickly. We had one half season.

It's kind of funny because that's how Dan Yujin son kind of started. Yes, absolutely.

Well, he was that was MTV. That was hipper. But you know, who is the announcer on right on. Who is now the host of your show, Martin Short. Alex Trebek. No.

Yeah. So he was doing that stuff, too. Well, he did it once.

He was like the big voice guy then, and he just popped in. Hi. Did the little thing.

And that was that was who he was. He was the Canadian Don Pardo, something like that. Oh no.

He was hip in that. But he was certainly if you were going to have an announcer do that, you got Alex Trebek. He's your guy. Yeah. Were you guys friends? No.

But I've met him through the years and I've done I did Celebrity Jeopardy once.

How did you do not well.

Yeah, I did better. During the practice round. There was something I kept saying. My buzzer was off, you know. Sure. And then I was doing so badly I decided to do jokes. And that kind of makes people laugh, I think.

Yeah. When yeah. When, when you're when you're failing. It's always good to be funny. Yeah. As if you're not really. Yeah. Right. Right.

I don't know what's happening. Yeah. So how did what was the roots of TV though. You were there at the beginning of that right. No, not really.

No really. Well because I didn't join Second City again. I had to think of I'll join it when I really want to do it.

Yeah. It makes more sense. Right. And so CTV started a second city TV started in seventy six. So I wasn't in that. I didn't even join the stage show yet. Huh. Oh really.

That was, that was Joe Flaherty and Dave and Catherine and Eugene. And Andrea and Catherine and that was the original crew.

Yeah.

And then, then you know it faltered and then it didn't have its financing, it was off for a year and then they got financing in Edmonton. And that's when Rick Moranis joined Edmonton, still not me.

And then I joined in eighty two. They were already a hit when I joined. They had one and they were in Edmonton.

They did an Edmonton and then they moved back to Toronto. And that's when I joined.

How is Flaherty still around, right? Oh, yeah. You guys talk. We talked two weeks ago. Yeah, everyone kind of stays in touch. Yeah, well, you know, we're working on this documentary and Oscar says he's doing on TV. And so we had a zoom about that was involved. That must have been fun. It's great.

I see Yujin lives two blocks down. He plops over. Catherine O'Hara lives five blocks down, and she has a cottage near me. She's up there now. Yeah.

Andrea is my former sister in law. Right. So she's the aunt to my children. Right. So I speak to her all the time.

That's nice. I like hearing that, Dave. I love. Yeah. Talk to him two days ago. Great. Now it is an odd group that stayed close.

Like I remember like when I was watching TV. I can't even remember if it was actually it was on a weekend night and it was like this unique thing. I didn't understand where it was coming from or it was Friday.

Friday night. Yeah. What year? Like this. Well, there were different incarnations. The 90 minute show. Yeah. That I was on to would have been 12 thirty.

Right to 2:00 in the morning Friday night.

Right in what year was at eighty two. Eighty three. Eighty four. Right.

And I remember you doing Robin on a ladder. That's right, it's for Tang oh, tang, you are, yeah, and you're just up on the ladder and then I beat me down, Scotty.

Oh, you know, yeah you did a good Rovi. I think you might do the best, Robin. Well, certainly not a lot of people are doing it at the time.

Oh really? He wasn't that big a star yet.

Oh, he was a big star, but it was just like no one had figured out on that. Yeah. Yeah. Figured out the way you do, Steve.

Is that. Let's say a writer wrote a piece, a member or Eugene wrote it, I think it was the idea that Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer had a famous fight. Yeah. At a party. And evidently Mailer threw a glass of wine in Gore Vidal's face. And so the piece was a reenactment of the fight. I played Gore Vidal, Eugene Norman Mailer, and then it becomes a tide commercial as they try to get the stain out of my shirt.

And it ultimately is a tie commercial.

They've done so. Someone said, you read it, it's funny. And someone says, hey, can you do Gore Vidal? And you go. Sure, you you've no idea. Right, and you go home. Yeah, what I used to do is I'd get a recording of Gore Vidal and I'd type it up, transcribe his like two minutes of Gore Vidal. Yeah, right.

And then I juxtapose it with the script for the piece. But if you notice, like from the transcription of Gore Vidal, everyone speaks in a certain patterns, certain words. They use a lot certain. Ozz, so I'd apply that to the script kind of overlapping to try to figure out how to do. Gore Vidal.

Sometimes you'd have someone down like I did Paul Anka once and I was good for three takes.

Yeah. Mean, it was God that I'd had the Walkman on.

I throw it down. Let's go. Yeah. For twenty three years you made us laugh and cry and think and you did it your way. And then if I tried to do it two weeks later I could write or just run. Right now I can't do it right. Yeah. So it would just stick for.

Right right. When you heard it you're like I'm in, let's do it. And that's it. Yes, exactly.

But Robin sticks with Robin. I knew Robin. Yeah. You know, and you know, he had that kind of Irish little to him.

He did. Yeah.

That he was parents were Irish and he grew up in San Francisco, but.

Oh yeah. Wonderful. Yeah, it it's kind of.

Yeah. So did you guys ever. So you've done your impression of him to him and he probably got to be.

Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah he did. Yeah he we did. Bowery Boys in the band the Bowery Boys and boys in the band and I played Hall and he was Leo Garcia's is fantastic.

Oh that's great.

I used to watch that at my grandparents house. Bowery Boys.

No one love the Bowery Boys. They were great.

Well, you know, they started off in a movie like in nineteen thirty eight movie as real teenagers and then they just kept doing it. They were like fifty two still doing it weren't they.

The dead end kids too were they. That's what they started off. Yeah.

And then they became the Bowery Boys. Yeah.

So from CTV. Like, I don't know how everybody becomes eventually everyone ended up here. When did that sort of happen? When did the migration happen, you know, back to Canada?

I remember there was this moment that Paul Schaefer was the first person in our group to be. Work in the states, he was working on the magic show that Doug Henning and Stephen Schwartz are Godspell was also that was his show. So he asked Paul to be keyboard for that show. So now Paul's in New York. And I remember Gilda and I phoning him one day. We're both in the same extension. Yeah, and Gilda said, Paul, what are New York actors like?

And policy, well. I don't know, maybe because you're my friends, I think you guys are just as talented. And we want that so we can believe it. So there was this tendency to before I die, I have to give the states a shot or I was used to say, I want to look in the mirror and say, maybe you should have tried going to New York for a bit. Oh, that's right. You did.

And you failed. OK, you want to cross it off.

Your should have done it. But so you went down there once before and then you left. No, no, no.

What happened was that I went down to try to, I don't know, get work or so.

Oh I know what it was Lorne Michaels was now. Well, he was SNL and Gilda. Got me an interview with Lauren and I have now been I'd been successful in Second City stage, I haven't been in TV, but I I didn't people knew it wasn't like a total unknown. So anyway, Lauren offered me a holding deal. This would be nineteen seventy like January seventy nine, and he said, you know, Danny or John might leave and I could see you going in to the show for the fifth season.

And so now I'm in New York. That's exciting. It wasn't much money holding, but it was exciting and complimentary. But then at the same time I auditioned for James L. Brooks who had a new series called The Associates on ABC, and he was so powerful he'd done all the Mary Tyler Moore shows and films. And also he had just signed a big deal of Paramount. Now, he had just his first show was Taxi, and that was a massive hit.

Yes.

Now, this is the next year and he had a 13 on the air, no pilot order. It's very cool. And I auditioned for him and I got one of the leads in the show. And so now I plan to go to New York and now we were moving to California. You and your wife are who?

Yes, that's where my girlfriend at the time who would become my wife. And that was seventy nine summer of seventy. And that's what got you out here.

That's what first got me out here. And then I ended up going back to do. Of course we owned a house in Toronto. Right. And going back in eighty two to do so.

That's why because it's like it's interesting how many like you did a lot of stuff on television. You did that thing which didn't take off. I guess you did 13 though.

We did 13. And then the next year I did another show called I'm a Big Girl Now, Diana Kenova and Danny Thomas. And that went off.

But but this was that. But this was the year these were the years of 13, 14 episode commitments. So it wasn't like we did.

We did 19 if I'm a big girl now. And what went wrong with that show?

Well, it wasn't. I played Neil Stryker, the office boy. Yeah, it wasn't. You know, I don't think I don't think it was the you know, it wasn't it wasn't all in the family.

Sure. That way. Yeah. Yeah.

But did you see yourself like you saw yourself as just an actor. You saw yourself as a comedian, a comic actor.

I think I saw myself as an actor. Mm. Yeah.

And I think you know, I also thought before I die I want to do a Broadway show, I want to act, you know, obviously the second city stage was two years. Seventy, seventy seven nine of improvising. But I don't know, you know, to me it was just like.

It wasn't so much where's my career headed with my seven year plan. I was just trying to figure out rent. Yeah, and everything, you know, in Canada, you know, you don't in those days you didn't.

If you got a job, you said, I wonder, should I run it past my manager to see if this is the right thing? Sure. You just say, do I bring a suit? Right.

Well, I need my own wardrobe. Is there going to be a hair and makeup person there or.

No, no, no, there will be. And Woody, what launch?

Because it seemed like there was a time there where, you know, you were definitely in the mix with the big things, the movies like, you know, when you did Three Amigos and Interspace and well, the big picture, that's a great movie. But I mean, how did that how what what caused that leap to happen when you were like three amigos?

Well, I think that, you know. Or is that for a year already done SNL?

By that time I did SNL and I was successful in that. And that made me now a name that you would pitch.

That was it, right? Three amigos. Yeah. So the SNL experience that was like that was a very unique wildy season because it was that, yeah, we all had one year contracts because Eddie Murphy had left the year before.

Yeah. And Joe Episcopo had left. That's right.

And now there was there was a feeling that the show might be cancelled. Right.

Because Lorne was gone to. Right. And Lorne was gone. It was Dick Ebersol. Right. And so there was a real sense should it be canceled. So did he call it the George Steinbrenner year where he offered a one year contract with a lot more money than it ever been paid a cast member? Yeah. Billy Crystal.

Yeah. Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, Martin Short and Rich Hall.

And did you know those guys? Did you know Chris Guest before? No. No, that was when you met him.

I met Chris. I met Billy because my wife was on the TV show soap. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. But I met him briefly and we had the same manager, Rollins and Joff and Harry. I knew he was friends with Paul Shaffer.

OK, yeah. And I didn't know Rich. Yeah.

So that's so you're all coming into it. You're all unique pros with real comedic personalities defined.

I remember. I remember I just finished at KTB. Yeah. And I really wanted a break from this kind of thing. Yeah. And I actually still have it. A pro and con list. Should I do SNL or not, because we just rented a new house out in L.A. and I had a new baby. Oh, my God, this is so much work. What if I'm no good? What if I stink? Yeah, there's all that stuff.

But then I ared and then Dick Ebersol had asked me to be and I said he said, you know, we're also going after Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest.

And I said, well, yeah, OK, let me know when you get them. And then he phoned me up and said, we have them. Oh, you do? Wow.

Because Spinal Tap was out that summer and it was, you know, the hottest, hippest, most brilliant thing imaginable. Yeah, sure.

And you're working with all those guys. Yeah, it was intimidating. Was that a great experience for you, though? You know, as Cher would say, if I could turn back time. Yeah. Having a one year contract made you feel like, oh, I can get out of this. Right. But it also put pressure on you. You felt like you were doing a special a week, right? Like there wasn't this sense of I'm going to be here for seven years, OK?

So I'm not in this week. OK, so you could feel like a star Saturday night, but by and as a writer on the show too, by the Wednesday read through. If you didn't have anything in that you would be like you felt like a biggest failure in the world. And it was. But but I think I put a lot of pressure on myself to be good because I wasn't going to be there long.

But it seems like some of the characters that came out of that you did forever.

Yeah, I'm no fool. Right. But no, I mean, people say to me, you still do your characters from SNL.

And I say, sadly, yes.

You know, but I went in after the first show and tried to quit. I went to Ebersol's office and said, being Canadian and savvy.

Yeah, I said, you know, I haven't cash any checks.

He went. Right, well, you have a very high IQ rating, I didn't know what that was. And he said, well, he handled it like a champ. He really did because he said. And we were only in October and he said, if you leave now, yeah, because I had gotten some early attention on that show, you said if you leave now, it would be really bad for us, but it would be very bad for you.

And you're also be breaking your contract, but.

If at Christmas. You still want to leave, I'll let you leave. Because he knew that he later told me he knew that by Midway Point I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and maybe I would have figured out to calm down a little bit, not be so worried about the quality of my work.

I remember the first show before we went on the air. I said, Harry Shearer and I are writing synchronized swimming to get this great bit that we did. It was a good piece.

And I said, Harry, you know what? I'm going to do this this SNL experience. I'm always going to be holding a piece back, a piece that I really believe in so that I cannot feel pressured, I can tinker with it for an extra week. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Then you got a piece of paper put in his typewriter, typed it out. And then put on his wall, he said, all right, I want to see how that piece is doing each week when you come in here without a fucking idea in your head, I'll ask you, how's that picture holding back the one you want your friends to see?

How's that? It was no such piece.

It never would happen, you know, but it made sense to you in the moment.

Well, you know, that's how you can do. You would write for six weeks. And Eugene Levy, who is the most prolific writer one season, the Cinemax season, he first couple weeks. You just didn't have anything now on SNL, that would be you wouldn't be in the show for two weeks. Right. He then in the last four weeks of the writing made up for the first two weeks and it was the heaviest and every show, as always.

But then you were you were denied that experience of SNL with Lorne at the helm.

But, you know, from other things you're friends with, then we did Three Amigos together.

Right. How involved was he?

He was involved. He's one of the three writers. OK, I'm going to script Randy Newman, Steve Lorne and then, you know, and then I met Lorne originally backstage of Godspell, I think.

But wow.

And I got to know him very well from Amigos on myData.

So you just became friends because you guys were Canadians? A little bit.

But also he's funny and charming and loves to laugh. And we had a lot of mutual friends and then I started doing SNL.

So when you look back on it like his you, it's sort of like you've done so much work. Everybody knows you. You're an amazing performer. You're hilarious. But the question is, is why when you look back on the TV opportunities, you're like when you had you had several shows.

Mm hmm. Do you wish that you would just landed one and stayed on it for your life? Like a talk show? Well, when you do things like, I would say my career.

Has been. You know, 80 percent and failure. And I think those are pretty good odds, you know, that's not bad, but how do you how do you determine failure, really?

Well, I mean, failure, not in the artistic sense, but failure in the sense of you're not renewed. Right. You know, your show gets cancer. Right.

The thing that you and then you go, huh? Now what? Oh, maybe Broadway once and then you go there for a while. Right. Hey, have you heard you're hot in the movies again.

I am. All right. The movies didn't open. What about TV?

You know, and then there's the Palm Springs Follies. I hear there are you know, you just keep moving along. And so in retrospect, as I look back on my career, I love that I it was so eclectic and had so many things. Yeah. I was on Cheers for 14 years.

Right. But. In the first season of had I been on the first season of quote unquote cheers and had been cancelled, I would have been bumped.

Right.

But I mean, what the I think the Amazing Testament to to you as a as an entertainer and as an actor and everything else, is that clearly your talent is boundless. And, you know, any time something didn't work out, someone said, well, he's Martin Short, let's give him this thing.

Well, there was an element of that. I think that.

But I think that, you know, it's it's movies are flukes and it's three movies are flukes. And and if you're in a successful movie.

Yeah, that's fantastic. But it happens not often.

I think that I made Three Amigos and that was did OK, but at the time is considered a disappointment, you know. Yeah.

And then I did interspace, which was considered supposed to be its Spielberg and Joe Dontae and Dennis Quaid, and it was supposed to be a massive hit and no one saw. And sometimes these films become very popular in the other life. Yeah. And people are amazed that they weren't, but they weren't. And so you have so many times at bat, my friend.

I have a friend who loves Clifford. I love Clifford. Clifford is is one of the odder ones. But certainly that was, you know, fundamental.

Well, that was it was hilarious to make in Groden. Yeah. Have you ever met Charles Grodin?

I fucking love Groden. Oh, my God. So funny, right? I've never met a genie. I've never met him. Well, he has so, you know, I remember when we were working together, he'd say so, you know, I remember I was in my book and I had to pretend I'd read his book.

I would like to go, oh, yeah, of course.

Of course. He's totally out of the racket. I mean, he just left.

Well, I think he you know, I mean, the whole old Charles is a certain point. Yeah. You know, I do think the exit is as hip as the entrance.

Yeah, I think that's true. He was so fucking funny that. What was it about him? What would you call him? He's a crank. Is he?

Well, it was put on, you know. Right. I remember in Kliper where he he improvised this, he would say, look at me like a human boy.

And you go, who says that, Charles?

Does it say or Chuck, as everyone calls him, Chuck?

Yeah, he was. He's done some funny shit. Oh, hilarious.

The good the heartbreak kid is if you haven't seen it for a while, just see it again.

Oh, it's hard to find. Like it's not on Apple Music, Apple. It's not on iTunes.

I tried to I wanted to know I wanted to watch it the other night and I couldn't find it was not easy to find. I couldn't find it.

Oh so good.

I don't know why it's so, so annoying. You would need Burlison and everybody brewing that that moment where she goes, I put cream on.

I like. It was just that was the moment where he's right and his lying to her is just so endless. Oh, my God, you didn't hear the news.

You know what? So we're like after all, like I remember Captain Ron, I saw interspace. I saw three amigos. I saw a lot of these. I like the big picture.

That was a great movie. But father of the best buddy buddy what fuels the but fuels the next, you know, choices are did those films do well at the box office if they did get ready for Captain Ron to if they didn't watch Broadway doing?

Sure. But Father of the Bride was the big movie. That was those were big hits. Yes. Yeah.

Now, when that happens, you like I'm back. We're doing it. We're making money. It's great.

Let's see. The first one know that I went to Broadway, did a year on Broadway, and then the second one. Well, you're back in that you get films, but those films have to be.

It's just it's really about, you know, how successful your last thing is.

But you like do you like doing Broadway? I did.

It was fantastic. I like the discipline of it. I like the idea that you could. Do opening night and people come back and say, oh, that's so good, you're so good and you go come back in four months when I'm really good. Yeah.

You know, that that level where you're saying lines and you're not thinking about them and you're as free as you can be because you now. You know, it's so well, it's yeah, and so this idea that maybe one night in that eight month run, you might be perfect. Yeah, we're close to perfect runs. Exciting to me because you could you feel it when it happened.

Yes, you could, yeah, yes. Yeah, and it's so funny, because that's one of those things where only you really know that in a way.

Yeah, I remember when The New York Times, you know, they staggered the reviewers in the old days. They came on opening night. They don't do that anymore. Yeah.

And which is more pressure for the actors because you have to be great, not just like there's no such thing as second night blues, because the second night, you know, The New York Post is there.

Right. But I remember Ben Brantley writing for The New York Times was in the audience. They try to keep it from the star. But you find out, yeah, when I was doing the show, Fame Becomes Me on Broadway two thousand six. And I thought at the end of that show we had a whole cast. It was a one man show with a cast. And at the end of that show, I thought, OK, it doesn't really matter what Ben writes, because this was we were just spectacular tonight.

We were. No, everyone knew he was out there, but no one faltered. Everyone was there was a higher power going on.

And so my thing on that is like even with reviewers, if you know, it's not very good and they say you're not very good, they copy. Right. But if you know it's great and some idiot doesn't get it, that's not your problem.

Right. But it hurts a little. Well, of course.

But it doesn't hurt a lot because, you know, it's good. It's it hurts a lot when, you know, it's not very good and you're lost in the role.

And they write what had been say about that night. I can't even remember.

I think it was positive.

But the point was that he was because I don't I kind of think that were you know, I'll read reviews on the road of a show like if you're we tried that out in San Francisco and Toronto, in Chicago, because I'm part of the writing thing. So I'm trying to figure out what they say. Yeah, but once you open, you do have to protect your little emotional filament. You can't be filling your head with, you know, people's comments about you because you've got to do it the next night.

It's not finished. How do you protect. I try to avoid those reviews.

Reviews. Reviews. You mean you just don't read the shit.

Tend not to know. Not if I'm running into something and I can't do anything.

Is there some other tools you incorporate you you utilize to protect the emotional filament you try to keep away from negative energy?

I mean, you can learn if you didn't know hatred, you can learn it by doing a run on Broadway.

You know, people coming back high. That was fun.

That's it. That's it. That's all you have to say, you and your stupid actors. I remember one actress said. You know, it was you were good, but the play, you know, my problem is I can't lie.

And I want to say, well, you can't act either. I mean, if we're going by your last four things, you can't.

Well, that's because that's because she can't lie. I mean, part of acting is lying. Yes. Stop it. You can't lie. You can play a murderous, but you can't come back and say you're fabulous. And what a great show.

I can't say that phony baloney. So that's I you learn.

Yeah. But yet you remain optimistic somehow. Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

And are you would you say you're a spiritual person.

I would say that I can go on a hike and look at the ocean in the mountains and say, wow, yeah, this is overwhelming, but organized religion or any kind of that now.

Right. So the optimism is just it's a choice. I mean, I look at Woody Allen, I don't know Woody Allen, but you get the impression based on his movies and what he talks about himself, that he spends a lot of time in angst and despair.

I don't know if that's manufactured or if that's just, but the reality is I'm not like that. I'm the opposite of that, so it's someone said of me that I was I was also laughing on the inside.

Yeah. Both, you know. Yeah, yeah. And so I don't know why people are like that. Right. I thought I think it's lucky.

Lucky if you are what to be like you. Yeah, first of all, you live in this great house, yeah, and you get to know famous people like Chris Guest.

How close is Larry David live to you? Four blocks. Yeah. Are you guys friends? Two very close friends.

I played Larry on prime time Glick Curb Your Capitalism. It was me. Is Larry David in the curb? But I was playing Ken DeLay. It was about politics. It can delay was I didn't look like the Texas congressman.

Yeah, he was a monster. Monster. What happened to that guy?

I don't know what's going to what's going to happen to all these guys? Probably nothing. I don't know.

So you think Lindsey Graham will be re-elected and Mitch McConnell and everything will just continue?

I think some of them are going to lose their jobs. I don't know exactly which ones. I have no fucking idea. I you know, I'm so bowled over every day by the amount of chaos created by this fucking monster that it's very hard for me to have any clarity. Like, I can't I can't depend on old models anymore, Martin. I can't I can't just say, like, well, you know, the election will come and things will turn around.

Like, there is such a a level of chaos and fear and and weird tension that you're like, how do we are we ever going to be released?

You know, I think we I think we will.

You know, it's very interesting as a Canadian politics, it's much more it became much more in the United States, Hatfields and McCoys, you know, in the sense that in Canada, if I vote liberal, my friend votes conservative.

It's not a big deal, it's just how come you vote that way? Well, it didn't used to be that way here either. Yeah, but I will say that and I'm not trying to be Pollyanna here.

I play all over the United States in every state, Steve and I now over the last few years.

And the audiences are fabulous and the people are fabulous. And I believe in the positive spirit of Americans. I think that this is a blip. OK, I hope you're right.

And here's the other thing. It's very interesting. I saw Fran Lebowitz talk about this in Belmarsh. She said that nine out of 10 Manhattanites did not vote for Donald Trump because they knew who he was.

Exactly.

And I think four years later, the United States knows who he is.

Oh, good. We really learned our lesson. Great. I'm glad.

I'm glad they took their time processing. Yeah, I agree with that. I did want to tell you before before I go before I forget that I thought you were great in the morning show.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. That was that was something that's a cool series. I, I know, I really I kind of, I kind of liked it and I had not seen you do something like that.

I mean like because you know it's so funny because when I, when you show up on screen there's Martin Short, you have these expectations and you're like, holy shit, this guy's a fucking monster, you know, I guess, you know, because you're like, you know, a lifetime of watching.

Martin Short doesn't really prepare you for where you go with that guy.

Well, you know, it's tricky is I remember I did a season of a series called Damages. Oh, yeah. And at the very first show, I was playing a lawyer, kind of a Madoff type lawyer.

And and I remember one of the producers came up to me and said, you know, they'd be watching the takes. We do another take, Marty.

Can you not smile? Because when you smile, it becomes Martin Short. And I said, well, see, now we have a problem because Hitler smiled. Yeah. You know, if you're the devious, are the biggest smilers, you know that. And he went, you're right. And that was the last concern about that, huh?

You know, another thing, we're stuck with the clown, and now you had to somehow forget that he was a clown.

Yeah. That's not really your fault.

No, it's not my fault at all. I can't it's not my fault. I'm this beloved iconic person. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fuck that. It's a burden and it's a burden. It was great talking to you, man. Great talking to you, Marc. It's nice. We spent a nice hour plus during the pandemic where days get long and we we had a nice conversation about your life.

Lovely.

Thanks, man. I know. Next time I want to hear all about you. Do you though?

Not really. Yeah, I'll do it. You just tell me what. Yeah.

If I'm not here, don't think I'm not recording it. OK, see you later then.

Bye bye. That was Martin Short, the Emmy nominated Martin Short for Outstanding Guest Actor in a drama series in the morning show, which you can watch on Apple TV. Plus now I will play some guitar for you. What are we fight? We're going to fight with our hands in a back. The fire. Oh, my God. Relax. Fold into the sound of my guitar.

Boomer monkey, the bond, the.

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