Ep 229: Steve Schirripa
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Are we rolling? Yeah, all right. You didn't know I used to book comics? I did, but I forgot. That's why I started before I was an actor. Dana Gould told me a story that you actually got mad at him because he went on stage with his underwear over his pants one night in Vegas. Probably. What? Yeah, he was just trying to be funny. I don't remember, but probably. I mean, Dana worked for me a long time ago. He wasn't a bad guy. Great guy. Great comic. Great comic. Brilliant dude. I had to be married to the girl from HBO. I pitched her.

That's right. Now divorced. Who do you remember booking who was great and who do you remember who was an asshole? Are we on the air? Yeah, we're having fun. I know you like to beef with everyone. I don't want to beef. Listen, I started in 86. It was the Riviera, right? And it was an improv. And everyone, Spade,

uh uh rob schneider rosie o'donnell and the generous bill maher belza we could go on and on and on and on and on what year are we talking he's at 86 the 80s wow okay it was in the riviera hotel and this was like was this a boom this was like this was during the boom yeah there was a comedy store down at the dunes and they would have like five headliners they would have like dice jimmy walker uh

You know, at the time, maybe Carol Leifer. Sure. Roseanne. They had like these incredible shows. Wow. And it was a bigger room. All right? And then we had this club. It started out small. Did you know who David Frye was? David Frye was a very famous comic. He did Richard Nixon.

Okay? He did Richard Nixon. This was his thing. All right. Yeah. Very famous. Headline, Caesar's Palace. Damn. Okay? When Richard Nixon was in. Okay. He was a drunk. He was about five foot two, five one. Okay? Damn. Okay. He was a drunk. He was hanging around the show. Yeah. I said to Bud, why don't we throw David Fry a bone? Don't forget, it's Vegas. It's the 80s.

We put him up on a weekend. Uh-oh. He's wearing a tuxedo. Okay. He had been sober every night I saw the guy for months. Oh, boy. He would come in, meet the comics.

Comes in. There's a little room in the back for the comics. I go back there. He's got his dick and his balls in a bucket of ice. Oh, fuck. And I just turn around and I like did a double. I said, what the fuck are you doing? And he says, I don't know. I just have a thing. This is my thing before stage. Now, this guy had been around. He was with Rodney. He was with all these guys. You could look him up. David Fry. Damn. He was a trust fund guy.

Then he was probably in his 50s or 60s. Wow. Goes on stage. He has to dunk his dick in balls and ice to get ready? His dick in balls and ice to get ready. Like a cold plunge before. I'm not kidding. He had a white bucket of ice. Yeah. All right. That's him. Okay? Headline Caesar's Palace. Very famous guy. He goes on stage. Bud comes in from L.A. for it. It's a Saturday night. He does So-So the first time.

show. He's sober, but he just does okay. Yeah. Between shows, he disappears, he comes back, he is fucking hammered. I mean hammered.

Completely gone. He's wearing a tuxedo. I mean, you're in a comedy club. He's wearing a tuxedo. He's hammered. Bud Friedman brings him on. He can't hardly stand. He's gone. Bud comes on. He says, go and get him. I had to get in the middle of the show. I had to take him off the stage. Ooh. Damn. Hope you use different ice for the drinks. David.

Wow. I mean, there was, I mean, Rick Reynolds. I mean, I'm talking all the guys that you wouldn't know. He had a one-man show. Yeah. Famous one-man show, San Francisco comic. He liked to break people's balls in the audience. He called the guys. He said, you know, he had that bit, like, and it was very famous. He got a sitcom out of it. He was like, it became a very hot comic for a while. He was from San Francisco, Rick Reynolds. And he... Pull him up. He...

We'll do a thing. Hey, would you fuck him for $5, $10? How about a million dollars? So you are a whore. Guy gets off stage, the boyfriend fucking blasts him back in the head.

Down for the count. Wow. Knocked him out? Down for the count from the back of the head. See, now that could launch a career. That's what happened to Jim Jeffries. There you go. I mean, there was a guy, Larry Beezer. He wouldn't come out of his room. I haven't heard of any of these guys. Yeah. Listen, they're all the comics from the 80s. You guys are young guys. Yeah, but we know comedy. Look at all the comics we got up there. We're fans. We know comics. Bob was a friend of mine. Oh, wow.

I did his show, Greg's show. Yeah, yeah. I knew Carlin pretty well. You knew Carlin? You knew Carlin well? Come on! Vegas, I knew Carlin pretty well. He would come around. You know, his opening act was Dennis Blair. Yeah. And Dennis would work for me. He would come around. Wow. He was a good guy. I knew Rodney pretty well. Really? I knew Rodney, yeah. That's a big one. He was my all-time favorite guy. Sure. And then I get a message on my answering machine. This is like 80...

maybe 88, 89. Hey, Steve, I heard you're the guy. Would you call me back? I need some help. I can't do Rodney's voice. I'll tell you, I'm trying to get my balls in this ice bucket. He wants to open a comedy club at the El Rancho. So he needs my help.

So I help him, you know, blah, blah, blah. I meet him in the lobby of Bally's where he's playing. He's wearing the tank top and the shorts. Oh, yeah. Like from the – Back to school. Back to school. Yeah. Right? And then the guy's like, hey, Rodney, hey, Rodney. He goes, what time are you due back on the set of Deliverance? That was the guy. We go see the show. I'm with my wife. We weren't married then.

we go backstage he made a big deal we got a booth for you he really made like a big big deal he was very hands-on about his comps you know he sold out he played the hilt and i saw him a bunch of places and the first time i saw him he actually opened for frankie valley whoa damn latin that was early on what a show that is crazy go backstage afterwards

He's wearing the robe with the fucking cards. His balls are fucking down, you know. Always. You saw a lot of balls in your time in Vegas. Like a grandfather clock. And he's there. He drinks giant vodka.

Jesus. Just like that. She was not a healthy man. No. But he was fine. A lot of fun. What a pro. We hung for quite a while. So did his balls. Just great. Yeah, he's the man. I mean, I saw, you know, Rickles I was friends with. Whoa. I know I saw Sinatra like 40 times. Wow. Wow.

So you see Rickles open for Sinatra. No, no, no, no. Rickles played the Sahara. He was his own guy. Nicest guy. He played there, then he played the Stardom. Did he insult you the first time you met him? He fucks around, but he's a really nice guy. He was really a nice guy. But you want to be insulted by Rickles. Yeah. I didn't want to be. What the fuck? You know, I love Don Rickles personally.

He didn't make me laugh that much. Really? The hockey puck shit and all that. Yeah, who are your favorites? You know who else? Robin Williams, who's a great guy, and I got to know him. I liked him better as an actor than a comic. Right. I didn't care for him. You like hard jokes, like a Rodney. I like Rodney. I like...

Damon Wayans. Love Damon Wayans. Very funny. Underrated guy. Very, you know, very, very funny. I like Nick DiPaolo in the old days. Sure. I like David Tell worked for me. Sure. The King.

We love a tell. I know. Who else? I don't know. You saw Damon Wayans just did... I don't like Ellen DeGeneres. She was an asshole then. Really? She got proven to be an asshole, but she was an asshole way back when. What do you think? Do you think... So she does the dancing. She does all the... It's like such a cover-up, right? Yeah.

The whole show was an act. I mean, that was all. She wasn't a nice person. Right. A lot of it came out. How was she mean to you? She tortured. Well, she worked for me in Vegas. She wasn't mean then. It's before she had hit it big. She was very nice. And then, I don't know how many years later, maybe 10, I met the Emmys with the Sopranos.

I never say hello to anyone kind of first because I'm always afraid you're going to get dissed like some guys are assholes, right? You know what I mean? I don't know if it ever happened to you. It's happened to me. Many times. Who dissed you? Who hurt you? Who hurt you, Steve? Well, I'm fucking telling you right now. So I go up to her and I say, hey, uh,

I go up to her and I go, hey, Ellen, I don't know if you remember me. You know, Steve, I ran the Riviera Comic Con. How hard am I to fucking remember, right? Yeah. And she just dismissed me like, I don't even think she said anything. And she was with two other people and I just had a tuxedo on. I just slinked away. Right.

You can do that. Well, she's a c***. You are what you eat. That's it. If you let me get one in, they're not bad. And then she, you know, it came on. You know, De Niro, too, was an asshole to me. Really? He was an asshole. But you must have loved him. You could barely. What? You must have loved De Niro, though. I did not like De Niro before. What? Come on. I don't like Robert De Niro now.

Come on. What did he do to you? You say hello to him, he's stuck for a fucking answer. This guy is a zero. Now, if he don't have a script in his hand, he can't speak. Interesting. You should have written hello on a cocktail napkin and handed it to him. Probably, he would have answered back. Right, wow. Damn. There was a guy, Larry Beezer, he won't come down for the show. He was a comedy store guy. Hmm.

I go up to his room, knock on the door. He won't answer the door. He's in there. I get security, open the door. He's got the mattress off the bed. He's lighting fucking matches, trying to light the mattress on fire. He's fucking hamming out of his mind. Yikes. I kid you not. You ever work with Jerry?

Who? Seinfeld. I did not. I know Jerry. I like Jerry. Oh, yeah. Nice guy. I do not. I did not. He never worked there. He was too big by then. Really? He was already big by then. How about like Bill Hicks? Did he ever come through? No. He didn't like Vegas, I don't think. No. No. He doesn't seem like a Vegas act. No. I don't know if he played. He might have played Vegas, though. How about like Robert Schimmel?

He used to work for me all the time. He's funny. He worked for me all the time. He's the type of guy I bet you liked. Was I? He had hard jokes. Yeah. I like Robert a lot. He was a good guy. I mean, I liked a lot of comics. I like Andy Kindler. Right. He doesn't make anyone laugh. I'm the only guy that laughs, but I love him. Comics laugh. He played to the back of the room always. I love when guys bomb. I would love when comics bomb. Certain comics bomb guys fully. I would love when they bomb. Yeah. Not...

to hurt their feelings. I just thought it was funny, especially if a guy is funny. It's fascinating. I forget, in Vegas, you're dealing with like a weird audience. Sure. Drunks, tourists. From all over the country, especially then. Now it's a little bit, it's bigger. That's true. It's a small town. Right, right. Well, like Norm, my hero, he would bomb all the time, but still brilliant. Brilliant. Did he work for you there? No, he didn't work for me there. No, but I knew Norm from...

Just from around, you know. Oh, yeah? I knew Norm from around. I knew Saget. He never worked for me, but I knew Saget from being around, you know. Like I said, then guys in the big room. I gave a lot of guys their first shot in the big room. Drew Carey. Whoa. You know, he played the clubs, but Damon, Drew Carey, Spade, Schimmel, Bobby Slayton.

Pitbull. Jeff Dunham. Whoa. Dennis Leary. Whoa. I had to show Bobcat and Gilbert together. The voices. I was trying to do different fucking things. Yeah, I get it. I was just trying anything, you know. I mean, The Riv was a second, you know, like you played The Riv on the way up or on the way down kind of. Yeah. Like I always said, I had the best shows in town if it was 1975, you know. Right. So it was like that, you know. But The Big Room, a lot of these guys were just starting to...

You know, Ray Romano, Kevin James. First shot in the big room for those guys. Do you miss that world, that comedy world? Or was it too hectic? Not at all. Not for me, yeah. We can be a lot. Yeah. No, it's a lot. A lot of guys are trouble guys. And I like them. I have some that are good friends. But you're dealing with four guys every week, you know? Yeah. Two of them are in AA meetings. One guy goes off the fucking wagon. The other guy's gambling. The other one's late.

You know, guy's 8 o'clock in the morning. He's in the employee cafeteria drinking beers. Yeah. As the executives are on their way into work. Been there. Yeah. Then I get a comic goes on the air. He's ripping. He's doing press for us, like on a Friday morning. He's ripping the hotel apart. Oh.

The towels are hard. The dad is hard. I'm going. The towels are hard. The boss calls me in. He said, who's this guy? It was Tim. Meadows. No, it wasn't Tim Meadows. He was already outside. I don't know. It was whoever was Tim something fat guy. Tim Dillon. No, it wasn't him. And he says. He was eight years old at the time.

And listen, and he says... Tows were definitely hard after Tim used them, though. The guy's killing us. So it doesn't make any sense. We hired you, and now you're ripping hotel. That was a tough hotel. I've done some gigs there, and that hotel has seen some years. Well, some of those Vegas hotels were really nice for like one decade, and then they just stayed in that decade forever. Yeah. It's like still the 80s. The Rift was a high-line place early on, and then it kind of went south in...

- 2000. - Right. - Started going closer in 2015 and went south. You know, Tropicana, you know, they don't keep anything around. - Was Tropicana where the shooting was?

Because I definitely died there. Mandalay Bay. Mandalay Bay. You never worked Vegas? No, I've done Tropicana. I've done The Wind. Yeah, we've done The Cellar. Did you do the club? The Laugh Factory was at the Trop? I did that once, yeah. It was a theater at the Trop. It was nice. It was a really nice theater. Yeah, that was good. A lot of old people, though. Yeah. I had some real bombs there. Yeah, oh yeah. You would have loved it. Better than Reno.

I just did Reno. I did Atlantis two weeks ago. It was killer. Back in the day when I did Reno, though, it was like a fucking full week, and it was like you just take it on the chin every night. What do you do? You know, the thing about playing in the clubs, even Atlantic City, right? You know, what do you do all day? You do nothing all day long. You try not to kill yourself. You know, it's like in Atlantic City in the winter. Oh.

I think my opener in Reno was, wow, I've never seen fake tits in an oxygen tank on the same person before. This is a rough town. Very true. There was a guy in the sound booth, too, who was just always reading a gun magazine. I'm like, this guy's just waiting to snap. I'm waiting for this guy to snap on me. That guy went to Mandalay Bay.

you've seen the video of that the comic the guy was heckling him and then he hits him with the guitar yeah one of the greatest videos of all time is that boston i think that was in boston i don't know the guy i mean i don't know if the guy you know the crowd started turning off of course yeah now that guy would have had a three camera shoot it would have been like angles now because everyone's got their whole camera crew at the viral on tiktok yeah look at this shit this is old i mean you know he told the guy though don't come any closer i don't know if he was right or not but

Yeah, he went a little hard with the whole, he had a weapon. Have you ever had guys come after you? Sure. Guitar acts are always this close to snapping, though, anyway. That's true. Uh-oh. Got the harmonica on the neck, too. Look at this. It looks like it's a joke.

He's not checking a bag on the way home, I guess. I'm sorry, man. The guy fucking came at me. What do you think, folks?

No. Trying to tank the jury with that. First of all, he shouldn't have asked them. No, no. Should have just hit him and they should have walked off. Right. Damn. I mean, I guess you don't think of a guitar as a weapon, but I guess you got something you could strike him with. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He broke the bottom of it. He would be sued. Yeah. Well, he's out of comedy. I never heard of that guy or anything. You know.

Did he do the RIV? You guys are young guys. No, he never did the RIV. You guys are young. I'm an old man. I was there. What year were you born? 86. 83. So that's what I'm saying. That's why you don't know any of those comics. But we watch a lot of the old, like we watch all the comedian specials and stuff. Yeah. Like we...

we know a lot. Rodney specials? I love them. Seen them all. Oh, yeah. He gave an intro to Bill Hicks. It's one of my favorite intros ever. He goes, this next comic so far ahead of his time, his parents haven't even met yet. That's funny. Give it up for Bill. Jokes in the setups. Yeah. I mean, Rodney was great. Well, you know...

Almost everybody became a star. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Roseanne, Seinfeld, Robert Townsend, Bill Hicks, Dice. He was hilarious in that one. Townsend was good. I think Leifer did one. Yeah. Yeah. Roseanne's a little crazy. Wow. She's a little crazy. She came around a few times.

looking for comics. Like, she never played there, but she came around. She was out of a mile. And Tom Arnold, they came, like, running through. That's when they were running wild, the two of them. Yeah, yeah. Pop up, you know. She had a nut farm for a while. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah, how appropriate. In Hawaii. Weird. She had a weird trajectory, that lady. Steve, I got a question.

I can imagine that working at a casino in the 80s, you were probably dealing with some actual wise guys. Yeah, well, I knew Spolaccio. I knew Tony Spolaccio, you know, the peshy character in the casino. You knew him personally? I knew him personally, yeah. I knew him very well. He was a big guy, right? They made him little in the movie, right? Is that true? Is that a joke? I thought he was actually tall, like 6'3". They called him Tony the Ant. Oh. Nickname. He was a very nice guy to me.

I don't know, you know, I don't know all that stuff. He used to, you know, I worked in all the nightclubs. Before I worked at the hotel, I was a bouncer. Paul Anka had a club. I was a bouncer in a bunch of clubs. And he would come around, always tip me at 20. He was a good guy. I got to know him. I knew his son.

Always very soft-spoken. I knew those guys. I didn't know the De Niro character. I didn't know him. Did everyone know what they were up to? Everyone knew what they were up to. They knew to stay awake. Yeah, was Rickles like, who do I not do crowd work with before? Well, he wasn't allowed. By then, he was blackballed.

What? There's a blacklist in Vegas. There's a whole list where you can't go into the casino. So he never went into the casino. I saw him in nightclubs and bars and all that, you know, before time. Do you ever see those guys get violent, though, or no? What's that? Do you ever see any of those guys get violent? Wow. I never saw any of that, but I assume it existed. They do it in the desert. I did know they had that hole-in-the-wall gang. They were robbing people's houses and doing that. Like I said... There he is. I...

My experience with him. He does. He was a really good guy in my experience. He used to say, anybody bothers you, you let me know. Because a lot of people would say, you know, like you're throwing him out. You know, you're throwing a guy out of the club and out of the nightclub. I know Spolaccio. He's my uncle, that bullshit. Oh.

Oh, yeah. And then you'd say, yeah, well, go tell him. Go fuck, you know, go tell him. Go tell your uncle I threw you out. Yeah. And it was a lie, you know. Sure. Hey, it does look good. And there was a bunch of them. Herbie Blitstein was a good guy. I worked his son's wedding. I worked the door. My instruction was...

don't let any FBI guys in. How am I supposed to? I'm thinking to myself, how do I keep them out? Yeah, they got the earpiece? How do I know? Jeez. That's a Jewish mob too? Herbie Blitstein? Herbie was with Spolaccio. He was his right-hand man. Somebody's got to do the books. So, you know, I know you know a lot of the older comics, but then I had the club in 95, you know, Schimel had opened the club and I used,

You know, Sebastian worked there. I mean, a lot of guys. I mean, I don't know. You name them. So you live in Houston. It looks like he's out of Central Casting. Yeah, right? Like Brandon. Really, really good guy. I was very close from him. Did you do any Dice stories? Did you work with Dice? No, I know Dice, but I never... Well, come on. He was, by then, he was working at the comedy store. Oh. Bud Freeman wouldn't let the comics work wherever, you know? Like, you either worked for him or...

Oh, right. He wasn't allowing that. You know, him and Mitzi were in that big battle for many, many, many years. Sure. You know, Dom used to work for me. Dom Herrera. Oh, yeah. Worked for me a lot. Nice. But, you know, Dom is one of the few guys that didn't listen. He said, I'm working where I want, you know, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. But Bud used to do that. And so you worked at the comedy store or you worked over there. It was only two clubs in town. Then Catch a Rising Star came in. Mm-hmm.

And I think Hicks worked there once. Oh, okay. That was supposed to be the big room in the 80s in New York. Right. Yeah. Catch was apparently bigger than the Cellar back then. Yeah, Catch and the Strip. That's where I think Seinfeld and Larry David and them, you know, I think...

That's where those guys played, you know? Yeah, yeah. Did you ever do the one in Princeton, New Jersey? Many times. It was an awful room. Really? Awful room. But I was like, it's easy to get to. Yeah. Yeah, I nearly got fucking attacked on the train on the way back once. Because I was just taking the New Jersey Transit late at night. Oh. Just getting through that weekend, I was like, I'm killing a fucking bottle of Buffalo Trace. Yeah. That's terrible. Oh, and a guy just... I made a mistake. A guy was fucking with me on the train tracks. And he had like... Something was off about him, but I was...

I had a few drinks, I was kinda like, "Yeah, I'll fuck with this guy back, fuck this guy." So he's just going up to everyone like, "How do you feel about immigration?" And they're all just like, "Uh, just like what?" And then he came up to me and I was like, "I think they're taking our damn job just trying to be funny." And he was just like, "You're fucking racist." I was like, "That was a joke." And then he goes, "I should kill you." And he started following me on the platform and I had to weave and hide.

and I got lucky because he popped shit to the wrong guy on the train. He was looking for me, and then he found some other guy, and he goes, how do you feel about immigrants? And it was like this fucking big, tough black guy, and he was like, East New York, motherfucker. And they had to stop the train because he was going to kill him. Wow. And I was like, that was like my guardian angel. Yes. Crazy. Wow. Yeah, catch sucked. That was like. Where did you grow up? You grew up here in New York? In Manhattan, yeah. Oh, yeah? What about you? New Orleans. Oh, yeah? What about you?

Brooklyn. What part? That's where I live now. Bensonhurst. Oh, yeah. Williamsburg, Bushwick. Fort Greene. All right. Hey. When I was young, Fort Greene was shitty. Yeah. Now it's so much nicer. Very nice. Very residential family. A lot of strollers. It was bad. Yeah. All those neighborhoods were really bad. Yeah. Back then. You know, they cleaned all that up. Yeah. My neighborhood's like...

asian now it was all the time it was a big mob area yeah growing up in beds and earths in this very italian neighborhood very italian neighborhood was now there's still summer times but it was now it's like asian you know everyone sold out and they moved to staten island were you there for the saturday night fever era i was doing those i saw them filming that one wow on the bus going to high school did you like that movie

Back then, I guess. Yeah. What are your top... We talk movies a lot in this pod. What are your favorites? Of course, The Godfather. Yeah. Dirty Dozen, you probably don't know. Bang the Drum Slowly, you know Bang the Drum Slowly? I don't know. Great baseball movie with... De Niro. De Niro's an asshole, but...

They handed him good words for that one. I like that. I mean, there's so many that you kind of forget, you know? Like your go-to, I like the Bronx Tale. Yeah. It's a great one, right? We had Chaz on. Yeah. Chaz is a good guy. He's a man. He's a good guy. He's awesome. A really good guy. A really smart guy. Great storyteller. Yeah, a really smart guy.

You know, I mean, I'm trying to think of any new movies. Yeah. Like the new movies, like, what was that? You know, they're not like great. It's not the same. They're like, okay, it's not something I'm going to watch again. Right. You go, you know. I like, believe it or not, I like Jerry Maguire. Yeah. Forrest Gump. I know people don't like that. It gets knocked. I like that movie. I like it. You know. I like some Sandler's, a lot of Sandler movies. Yeah. For sure. See Two Girls, One Cup?

What's that? Pull it up. Oh, I know what that is. Fake video? It turned out it was fake. Was it fake? Yeah, it was soft serve ice cream. They just packed it up there. Damn, I couldn't watch it. It was fake. I couldn't get it through. I couldn't get it through it. That was all the rage. Oh, yeah. This was hot. But it's fake. Yeah, but it's still pretty wild. All right. We don't have to watch it. I can't do it right now. Even knowing it's fake, I can't watch it. Same. Same. What movies do you like?

I mean, we like all kinds of movies, man. Like, you know. I'm not a horror guy. I'm not a sci-fi guy. I watched Star Wars once years ago. I hate it. Wow. I hate it. Don't know anything about it. I did Pyramid. They were asking one of the categories for Star Wars. I made a fool of myself. Yeah. I know nothing. I don't know Yoda from the other guy. I don't know anything.

You know what I watched the other day that's new that's actually not bad is the new Donald Trump movie with Sebastian Stan. Was it good? It's surprisingly good. He's good. It's like a cool version of New York in the 80s where it made New York look kind of grimy and cool. Oh, yeah. It was fun. I like movies. I like to see...

uh i'll watch that i like to see new york in the 60s the 70s i like those that was a that was a good era for movies man midnight cowboy and stuff yeah like taxi driver those are like it's a cool era the bob dylan movie the best part is seeing old new york yeah like the village yes yeah i like that movie that was a good movie yeah that should have won the movie that one was a kind of brutalist no anora anora oh

Oh, that's Brooklyn. It was in Mill Basin. It was good, though. It was good. It was a good movie, but not something I would watch again. Right. It's a good movie. The girl did a great job. She was hot. And I'm glad she won. And I'm glad she won. I don't want to hear Demi Moore's speech. Every year there's that underdog that wins. Right. And then they have the speech to come back thing. Yeah. I usually tape it like the Oscars. I would tape. I watch the monologue.

Which Conan was great. - Great. - And then I fast forward everything else 'cause I don't wanna hear all the bullshit speeches. I think, you know, I find a lot of actors, not all, to be full of shit. - Of course. - Yeah, yeah. - So I don't wanna hear that, how much they love it, I don't wanna hear it, you know? - Yeah. - I gotta ask you, we gotta talk some Sopranos. I know you're sick of talking Sopranos, but like, what's your all time episode of Sopranos, do you think? What's your favorite?

My favorite one, what I liked a lot was one, Whitecaps, which you don't probably know. Which one was it? When Tony, they were going to buy the beach house. That was a good one, yeah. And then she admits that she had a thing for Furio. Oh, yeah. And added some good work to it. That's a real fight there. Yeah. Yes. That is very real, you know? Yes. Pine Barrens, everyone loves. Sure. I'll tell you a funny story with Pine Barrens. We didn't shoot in the Pine Barrens.

Because there was a politician, it's a scumbag named James Treffinger, and he wouldn't give us the permits. He said it made New Jersey look bad, made Italians look bad, made, you know, it was just bad for the state. He would not give us a shot near West Point. And James Treffinger, pull that prick up. Yeah. Look at that prick if you know him. And he...

Was arrested and went to jail for fraud and all kinds of shit. Take it, Triffy. I was hoping you'd say fucking kids. That would have really been the nail in the coffin for this prick, but fraud is bad too. Look at him. Look at that come good look. That guy, look, he's in prison, and he won't give us, so we shot it up there, and it just happened to rain. It happened to snow. Oh.

So it wasn't supposed to take place in the snow. Well, it worked. It made it better. We were up there. I remember we went out the night before. We were like in some bar up there. And Steve Buscemi, he directed it. He was singing I Want to Be Sedated with the band. It was like 3 in the morning, and I left. I said, we got to get up early. You know, everybody stayed and everything.

Hell yeah. It was a lot of fun. Some of your lines, I mean, one of my favorite things about The Sopranos is how funny it is. You talk about re-watching stuff. It's a lot of fun. Oh, yeah. You have one of the funniest lines ever when...

in season one when Tony is trying to take down Junior and you go up to him and you say, "To the victor goes the spoils." That's my first scene I ever shot. It's such a funny line. And he just immediately goes, "Shut the fuck up." "Shut the quotation book up your fat fucking ass." You know, I wore a fat suit the first two years. - Oh, yeah. - No way. Yeah, and then I guess I got fat enough on my own. But, you know, when I got to jokes, right?

That's it. No, Sal, don't play it because they won't let us play it. That's the first you ever shot. But, you know, like I had gotten the script and there was all these fat jokes. You're a calzone with legs. You should start seriously considering eating salads. All these things. And I'm going...

I'm not that much fatter than him. Yeah. Jokes don't make sense. Right. And then they said, hey, you got to come in and get fitted for a fat suit. Wow. They made this ridiculous fat suit and I was parading around in front of the producers. That's got to feel good. You're not fat enough for the fat trick. It's flattering. Yeah, and I got the job without being fat enough. Yeah, your delivery. I worked my way into it. Delivery on the Santa Claus episode?

I'm shy. I love that. They gave me some good stuff. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They gave me some really good stuff. The Ziti. They gave me a lot.

But the beauty of that show is that every character has this incredible three-dimensional story. I mean, the Karen Zidi arc is so fucking sad. Oh, yeah. Listen, the writers are brilliant. Yeah. I mean, they are absolutely brilliant. And when you say it's... It could be a comedy. It is 100%. The stuff is so funny. And when we did our podcast and I had to rewatch because I hadn't seen it in years before,

I mean, you're laughing out loud. I mean, you catch things. You know, you catch shit. 100%. You know? That scene that we talk about all the time, but when they give him an intervention, Chris. Oh, one of the best things you'll ever see. It's brilliant. One of the best scenes in the whole series. I love it. He sits on the dog, calls the mom a whore. Pauly punches him. It's cold.

paulie's tony sirico and paulie were very similar yeah i was i guess very very very he didn't see me like he didn't strike me as a chameleon actor but he had been acting for a long time oh he's i remember him in bullets over broadway i remember him a lot of stuff yeah woody allen loved him he grew up with woody allen's sister oh yeah and i did a movie uh uh wonder wheel yeah yeah woody loved him and tony would tell him stories

Yeah, Woody, I used to carry my gun over here. Woody was, like, fascinated. Right. With Tony's stories. Tony was a great guy, a lot of laughs without even knowing it. Uh-huh. You know what I mean? Like, one time we were in Atlantic City doing a signing, and a guy says, hey, uh...

Hey, Tony, my friend Louie, could you sign a picture to him? He's handicapped. He can't come in. Tony wrote, to Louie, the best handicapper in town. He had no clue. That that's funny. You know, he was a real tough guy even into his 60s. You know, he wouldn't fuck with him. He lived in Brooklyn. He lived on Shore Road and Bay Ridge.

You know, he's from Brooklyn. Yeah. And, you know, when he was younger, he used to shake down bars. Really? Even bar mob. You know, not only for the mob, but bars that were owned by the mob, he used to shake them down. He was a legitimate tough guy. Yeah, look at that. There's this crazy film where he's... A black and white documentary where he talks about... I forget it, but if you find it, he says some serious stuff. I mean, Tony is...

You know, he was a good guy. A lot, a lot of laughs. Like crazy, crazy stuff. He was a germaphobe. He had these crazy eating habits. You know when anthrax was going on? Yeah. Remember all that? Yeah. So he thought he was going to get anthrax in the mail. Like he was going to get it because he was a big star. Right, right. So he used to go to the mailbox with the dishcloth. Oh, my God. And then he would put it in the microwave to like offset it. He put his mail on fire. Wow.

Wait, so that would offset anthrax? That's what he thought. You know, that's what he thought. You know, a lot of the stuff they got from Tony's, you know, his real life, you know. I mean, he went to jail. He came out. He wanted to be an actor. You know, he did a lot of charity work. He's an iconic TV character forever. Sure. You know, when he got the job, when Tony got the job, he was living on a cot in his mother's one bedroom in Marine Park in Brooklyn.

Dead busted. Look at these headshots. I know. What a hunk. He looks like a wrestler there. Very funny. Look at that. That's a Coney Island. Sexy dude. What is that? I don't even know what that is. When people come up to you on the street, what are they usually... Is there an episode they usually mention? Is there a moment they usually mention? They just say Bobby. I get some... Of course, I was on Blue Bloods for nine years. I get some Anthony. Yeah. And I get Bobby, Bobby, Bobby. They used to ask about the...

A lot of young kids watch it now in their 20s, you know, in their teens, in their 20s. They used to ask about the ending. The finale? The ending, the ending. Yeah. Well, what do you think? You know, for a long time I thought he was alive.

But then after doing the podcast, interviewing, I think he died. You think he got whacked? I think he got whacked. Maybe it was wishful thinking, thinking he was still alive. But I think he got killed. The fact that we're still talking about the ending, though, is kind of a worker genius on David Chase's part. And, you know, we watched it together. It's the only thing we ever watched together. We did this appearance down in the Hard Rock in Florida. So there was nine of us.

and me and Lorraine and Michael and Sirico and, you know, and he, we were like, and I knew how it was going to end, but like, we were stunned. Like, we watched it like everyone else, like, what the fuck happened? And then,

You know, we saw, you know, it was like kind of stunning because it said fade to black. I didn't know it was going to be abrupt like that. Right, right. Interesting. So, you know, some people like it, some people didn't like it, you know. You know, Cerrico, we would do these appearances in the casinos and, you know, sometimes people were like, you know, like they would say shit to him and like he would be there like this, you know. You know, a guy, you know, you're like Santa Claus at Macy's. Yeah. You know, they stand behind you. Oh, yeah, like Comic-Con. And Tony would go, yeah, yeah, tell your mother hello. Yeah.

Hey, mother of law. There was no one he was afraid of. Yeah, that's the thumbnail. Wow. No one he was afraid of. You know what's another iconic episode is the one with your dad played by Burt Young. Great. I mean, that is where he wants to do the one last hit, remember? Oh.

Oh, yes. The violence of that season would... I mean, every once in a while, you'd be like, holy shit, the guy just breaking the head in with the golf club. Yeah. That was one of the most shocking scenes. Yeah, and Burt was a great actor, a very underrated actor. You know, I think...

He was a very serious actor. And then I think with the Rocky movies, people thought he was Paulie. Right, right. He was a really good guy. Really good guy. Hey, We Might Be Drunk is brought to you by Chubbies. I fucking love Chubbies. Winter is over and it's time to put on some real clothes, baby. Chubbies have got you covered with bright polos that demand attention. Killer shorts that'll give your legs some fresh air. Get some sun on those gams.

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You know, Triumph had a... The dog? You know, Robert Smigel. We just had him on. They had a sitcom. You know that? He had a sitcom for a little while. With Burt Young? Yes. What? No, no, no, no. Oh, okay. That's a weird pairing. So listen, so he hired Burt, me, Kathy Moriarty from... Raging Bull. Raging Bull. Yeah. Paul Savino, maybe a couple other people. Mm-hmm. And...

We did two shows, like an early one and a late one. And Bert loved to drink. And Bert went downstairs and got fucking...

Yeah. And he couldn't do the second show. He couldn't speak. He had a lot of lines. So they gave them to me. And I can't learn on the fly. So, like, I'm doing the best I can. I had to give a eulogy. And, like, one of the producers go, hey, you know, could you get a little... I said, are you kidding? You gave this to me five minutes ago. Right. The thing is this big. And so Burt, like, barely said anything at all. And it was all of us, you know. Burt was a great, great, great guy. Yeah.

He only did one episode of The Sopranos, but it was very memorable. Oh, my God. It was crazy. And the other guy died that played Mustang Sally. Wow, really? He died of a drug overdose. Yeah. Yeah. He was a good actor. He was a real New York actor, you know. Burt was in Chinatown.

Jack Nicholson. And back to school. Yes. Back to school. Yeah, classic. He crushes the napkin holder. Right, right. I would imagine him and Rodney hung out pretty good. Oh, yeah. You know?

Good guy. Yeah, listen, there was no bad Soprano episodes. I know. Some you like better than others. I agree. I mean, it's funny that you could tell. Did you watch the documentary they did on HBO? Yeah, we had a thing at the Beacon last year. I liked it. What did you think of it?

I liked it. I didn't like what they did with Jim. They made Jim sound like he was this raging junkie. That's true. Which he was not. Made him sound like an angry guy. He was not. He was a really good guy. He was kind of a hippie, right? Birkenstock. Yeah, he wore Birkenstock. He would listen to music. He was really generous. Like, you know, he had this big contract dispute in 2004 against HBO. And it got really ugly. Yeah.

And when we came back in and he finished it, all the regulars, he gave us a check for $33,000. Wow. $33,333 in 2004. So he bought, like, everybody a car. Basically, yeah. You know.

He was a really generous guy. When we wrapped, he bought everyone watches, the cast, the crew, you know, like the cast, $10,000 watches. He was not, he was really serious about the work.

He was a lot of fun. We had a lot of laughs. We hung out a lot, all of us. Went out all the time back then. But I thought the documentary, though I loved it, I thought it was really good, I did not like how he was portrayed in it. I hear that. I heard that from other people too. I didn't like that. It's like he was a junkie acting. He was an actor that had a problem. Not always. Not always. Yeah.

I mean, the performance is flawless, man. Do you feel like he made everyone up their game like crazy? Of course. Yeah. I mean, it's so cool when like...

someone goes that hard with the role. I mean, you can't picture anyone else in that role. No. And you know who it came down to? Three people. Stevie Van Zandt, Michael Rispoli. You know Michael Rispoli? He was on the show still, right? He's Jackie. Wasn't he Jackie June? Jackie June. Yeah. And Michael's a great guy, great actor. Oh, yeah. But the three of them tested for HBO. It came to the wire, the three of them. Well, they went with the right choice. You know, and Jim in a scene, I mean, you see him angry, sad,

Raging. You see four different things. Of course, he upped his game. He was really serious with the acting. It's no secret there were some problems. He liked to go out.

maybe a little too much, you know. Who doesn't? Do you think it sometimes like goes hand in hand though? Like when you burn that hard on one end, you need a release of some sort. You know, I don't know about that. You know, I mean, you know, I've thought about that. I personally, probably I'm not a good enough actor. I can't go out and then go to work the next day. So I never ever go out the night before. I don't,

Go out like I used to anyway. But years ago, we were out. I was out, you know, five nights a week. You know, we all used to hang together. Yeah. Go into restaurants, stay out all night, go to after hours, get off at, finish work at 3 in the morning and then go out. You know, we all did. You know, we were all hanging out. We used to do casino appearances, travel together. Yeah. We almost beat this guy up. There was this guy, like, bothering us at the Hilton.

Like a real obnoxious asshole. We were in the Elvis suite with the high rollers, and we bit our tongue and let it go. And then he showed up again like two years later at the Golden Nugget. And before he said a word, you know, Jim said, that fucking guy is here. Yeah.

He says one word, let's beat the fuck out of him. We never did it. Let's fucking do it. Right? And luckily, I told the host and the guy, you know, they told the guy to leave. Imagine that story. You're not going to believe who beat my ass. You know, Jim was a lot of fun. I mean, he was very smart. Very, very smart guy. Yeah. Into a lot of stuff. But that's what I didn't like about the documentary. I like David's stuff. And it shows you David's.

You know, he's a genius, but he's a little quirky. He's got problems too, yeah. Well, I didn't know so much about the mom. I didn't know Sopranos really started with his mom, and then it just grew from there. Well, it's crazy that if that actress doesn't die, the show could be something completely different. Something different. Nancy Marchand. You know, they said they auditioned a whole lot of actresses, some really big actresses.

And he said that she came in. She's not Italian. And she, like, channeled his mother. Yeah. And it was scary. She's amazing. It was scary. Isn't that amazing? It doesn't always go to, like, maybe the biggest actor. It's just like, oh, that reminds me of my fucked up childhood the most. Of course. That's crazy, though. You know, getting a job as an actor, I mean, do you guys act? Yeah. Is that a, you want to? We wrote a movie for ourselves that we're trying to do. So if that works, that'd be very cool. Yeah, I can act.

He's better than he's saying he is. None of us are going to be Johnny Depp. We just play ourselves. I can drink. It's okay. But you know what I'm saying? I mean, it's so hard to get a job because there was this guy come in and this director told me this story. He wanted to hire Joe Blow. He said, that's the guy. Don't even show me anybody else. That's the guy. And the producer says, hey,

Reminds me too much of my boyfriend. Exactly. I'm not going to be able to handle three months ahead. Exactly. So the guy who did a great job doesn't get the job. And then there's, I remember on The Sopranos, there was a thing they read for an FBI agent and they hired, okay, her, her and her. Oh, wait a minute.

That's three blondes. Right. Get her out, get the other one in. It's like, how do you even get a job? You can color your hair, you know? Right. It's always got to be lined up. There's so many factors. It's a great point. Years ago, I read when I first started for Chuck Norris thing, and it was a great read. It was a mob guy. It was a great read. And the...

The casting director said, man, it was just starting. It was in L.A. I was living in Vegas. I would go to L.A. all the time to audition. And she said, that was fantastic. Where have you been? And then she said, they'll never hire you. He's 5'8". I'm 6'2". She said, he'll never hire you. Damn. It's not about talent. Talent's out. It's just the luck of the draw. Was there anything you ever read for that you're like, fuck, I really wish I got that?

That didn't go your way? Good question. I was up for a big role. I didn't read for it, but I had worked with Clint Eastwood before. Woo! And the Jersey Boys. That Christopher Walken role. Oh, that's good. Oh, yeah. I was up for that. And I didn't get it. I think I came pretty close out to the wire. And then he offered me to play a barber, four lines.

What was I going to say? No, you got to take it. I liked him a lot because I had played a chef. I had a bigger role in another movie and we kind of hit it off and we went to dinner. And so I did it. I was shaving Christopher Walken all day. Oh, shave a grave on him. You know, but that I would have liked. Yeah. Eastwood's really cool. Great guy. Yeah. You know, no bullshit there. You better be prepared.

No bullshit. You come in, you know your stuff. He's not babying you. You don't work long hours. Couple of takes. Boom, boom, boom. No bullshit. No coddling you. No, oh yeah, it's going to be okay. You better be prepared. That's why he hired you. Do your shit. There's no like, well, let me work my way into this. All the nonsense actors do. Do your shit. Get in. Boom. He was very nice. We

We spoke at length. Oh, really? Yeah, we spoke at length. What are you talking about? We're talking about Vegas in the old days. He was good friends with Jimmy Durante. Oh, nice. Wow. Like the old days. He went back there. He's like 95. Right. He went back there like in the 50s. He was in the 50s. Damn. Look at that. Damn. You know, so we talked about that and then.

I enjoyed that. Then he went to a restaurant here that I liked. I had taken his cameraman, and then he called me. He said, Clint's in. He wants to go. So I met him there. You know, Woody Allen, who I was the biggest fan of. Sure. What's your favorite Woody? Us too.

Crimes and Misdemeanors is one of the great, you asked me what movie? That's a great one. One of the best movies made. Great movie. Great. It bombed too at the box office, but it's so good. Great movie. It's hilarious and it's got the great series. I mean, he does it similar to Hannah and Her Sisters where they have the two great. So great. Yes. I mean, he's made so many great movies. So I always wanted to work with him. I auditioned for him.

for this he did a series for uh amazon really so i'm reading for the raw i don't know what the role is they don't tell you so i go there my agent says uh they you know they want to see you so i go to this place on park avenue it's an apartment like office apartment and i go in there's no sides there's nothing to read and so she comes over and she hands me this she said you got five minutes okay what he's not gonna say and young just dropped out

She said, you got five minutes. He's not going to – he can't hear. So speak up. He's going to know in 60 seconds. You got five minutes to learn the shit. He's going to know in 60 seconds. Jesus. She said, don't take offense. The pressure. So I go in. I'm reading. It's a role of a highway patrol guy.

So I look it over, you know, it's not that much. And I look it over, I'm going to have the paper in my hand. So I'm saying like, what if I, it's all dark in there. I walk in the room, it's all dark. And he's in the corner. It's like a scene from a movie. He's in the corner, he's wearing the corduroy pants with the jacket, with the patches. Yeah, yeah. And he's in the corner, like in the dark.

She said, he's not going to shake your hand. So he was like, there. And I'm like, how you doing, Woody? Thanks for seeing me. And I'm saying, what the fuck am I going to do? So I start talking about the Knicks. Knowing he's a Knicks fan, I figured, let me, so they don't let me, maybe he could get to know something. So we talked a few minutes about the Knicks back then. This is

2018 or something, right? Yeah. Talk about the Knicks, blah, blah, blah. That was a rough year, too. You're like, how about a Bargnani? You know, we're talking about the Knicks. And then I didn't get it. And then when he did this movie, they just gave it to me. Hey! And I got to talk to him. He was shy. I worked like eight days, nine days. He was very shy. But then I started talking to him about stand-up in Vegas. He headlined Cesar's Palace. Wow.

He was a great stand-up. Great job. He said, you'd love to do it. I said, you think you'll ever do it again? He said, it's so hard. And we were talking about Shecky Green, who I knew and I worked with, and some of the old Vegas comics we were talking about. And he loved Bobby Slayton. Wow. Really? What? What?

That's incredible. He said, Bobby's a really good actor. He put Bobby in three or four of his things. Bobby's got a great scene in his Amazon show playing a writer in a diner. Like, it's a four or five page scene. Wow. Yeah, he liked...

He liked him. That's so intimidating though. The dark room with Woody in the corner. The corner. It's like basic instinct. You know? That's so awkward. And I had heard, and I don't know if it was true, but people had told me that he didn't want to meet the actors. So sometimes he would be in another room like watching on camera, listening. Like a police interrogator. Right. Like he would go like this. Like.

I'd put his head down and just listen to you. Dominic T., Uncle Junior, told me he auditioned for a play, and that's what he did. Weird. So that was kind of odd. He wasn't weird on the set. Yeah. He was very nice. Once he got to know me, Jim Belushi was in the movie. It wasn't one of his better ones. Right, right. But we worked with Kate Winslet, Jim Belushi, and Sirico. And Sirico would tell you, Sirico would say, hey,

After you say that line, look at me. Let me get my mug in there. Look at me. Give me a look. Yeah. He would actually tell you to look at him. He's directing you. Right. Well, he had a mug. Let me get my mug in there. You said you worked with Walken. Did you get to know him at all? Yeah, I got to know him. The first time I met him, I did a movie, Kill the Irishman. He was in it. Oh, that was a pretty good one. We didn't have scenes together. Yeah.

What was it? The actor passed away recently, didn't he? Ray Stevenson. Yeah, he was great in that movie. Great, great. I had a big scene with him. Good guy. We had fun. We shot it in Detroit, a double for Cleveland. Christopher Walken, he just came. We were shooting another scene, and he was wearing jeans.

And a rope. Hmm. As a belt. Weird. He had a rope. He was saying, I'm starting to watch that show. His wife cast the show. Georgianne Walken cast the entire run of The Sopranos. She cast me. That's crazy. And he said, I'm just starting to watch that show. I think the show is over. All right.

You know? But he was great. And then, you know, we talked. But I watched The Sopranos afterwards. Like, I mean, I guess I came in at the very end. But, like, it feels weird to have to wait a week to see the next episode. Oh, we would wait. We'd have big parties, watch parties. Yeah, it's a lot of people. David Chase loved that. You know, so many people had these parties and Italian meals and all this stuff on –

And it was crazy. Listen, we had the premiere of a TV show at Radio City. Wow. Wow. Every year, the first year was at John's Pizza. And then every year after that, it was at Radio City. Oh, my God. That's insane. And people were dying to get tickets. It was like the hottest ticket. Yeah. I think at my kid's school, I auctioned off $10,000 for two tickets. Wow. And then we would have the party.

At Radio City, and if the ice wasn't there, like where the ice is, that would be the after. Oh, and you put your balls on it. Sorry. Oh, that's crazy. Damn. I mean, it was crazy. It's so funny that the Italians got so mad about this show. Like, I don't know, I'm half Italian. Who gives a... How do you feel about Luigi then, if this show bothered you? You know, he's like a real Italian. Well, some people love him. That's true.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, it's all bullshit. It's a TV show. I had a guy, you know, I wrote a book called Nicky Deuce. And we turned it into a movie and Gandolfini's in it and Michael and Sirico and a couple other people. And I wrote the kid's book and then I sold it to Nickelodeon. Oh, wow. And so I was going around doing book signings. Nice. And I was going around doing book signings and this guy was like emailing and writing letters to the bookstore saying,

saying how I make Italians look bad. You know, the story. It was about a kid in a neighborhood in Bensonhurst and, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right? So I'm going like, you know, what's this guy talking about? Some organization. It was some bullshit organization. So finally I called the guy. And I said, I think his name was Joe, of course. I said, what can I do for you? What is it that I could do for you because you're harassing me? What is it that you want from me?

And I said, this is the world I grew up in. This is what I know. Yes. This is what I know. You know, rappers write about, you know, the hood. This is what I know. I know what I know. It wasn't autobiographical, but, you know, there was stuff in there. It's like Brooklyn in the 70s. He said, well, if you make a donation to my organization. Oh.

The fucking guy tried to shake me down. Wow, very Italian. Yeah, he's the one who's doing the bad. Exactly. So, you know, and I used to, you know, people would say, you know, I don't watch that show you're on. It makes Italians look bad. I said, have you seen it? No, I don't watch it. Well, then how do you know? Exactly. You know, this is a slice of Italian-American life that exists. You could argue it makes any group. You can argue it makes Jews look bad. Hesh is your fucking one Jew. Absolutely.

Right. Absolutely. He makes anyone... Anyone can get offended. I mean, if you're ignorant enough to think that every rap is a gang member, then you're an asshole. That's a good point. There's also that character, Lorraine Bracco's ex-husband on the show. Oh, yeah. He's kind of that guy that they're making fun of. He's an asshole. He's always like, this makes us all look bad. But you're like, that's...

You're that fucking guy. That was smart to write that guy in. Oh, it was such a self-aware show. Oh, yeah. And then they had that thing, remember? The Columbus Day Parade? Yes! Nick DiPaolo's in that episode. He's a cop. Nick DiPaolo, yeah. Nick was in it. You know, I...

Nick got the role on his own, but I think I might have helped him get the role. Oh, yeah. Well, I certainly talked to them. I said, I can't get you the role, but if it's on the fence, I'll push it over. He did a great job. Yeah. Nick was a crazy Soprano fan. Oh, huge. He had a bit about Sopranos.

You know, we used to do a lot. We do a live show now. Me, Michael, and Pesto. We're going to be at Sony Hall August 18th. Oh, that's cool. And we do it all over the country. We toured Australia. We're touring the UK in the spring next year. Do you like touring with them?

It's great. Yeah. It's great. We tell behind-the-scenes stories, funny stories. We do Q&A, meet and greet. We show clips, slides, you know. If you're a Soprano fan, you don't want to miss it. It's really good. And we sell out most places. Nice. We do theaters, you know. And so Nick, we used to do a show early on called Comedy You Can't Refuse, and we would have a couple of comics, you know. And Nick... Nick...

DePaulo did Westbury, you know, in the round. Long Island. Westbury, Long Island. He came out and he said, welcome to Jewville. I think that's how he intro'd me on his radio show too. That's what he said. I mean, that's what he said. And then in Vegas...

I mean, he had one of the best sets I had ever seen. Really? But now he's like, he went way to the right. Because I did his podcast. It was like, I don't even know if he remembered who I was. Nick. He can find a way to get to Hillary. But he's fucking hilarious. Really funny. Some of those classic albums have some great. Really funny, man. I mean.

Funny guy. He used to, he wrote some stuff for my first book. I did that Goomba's Guide to Life. You might be a Goomba if we did a bunch of those. You have more pinky rings than pinkies. I think he wrote the one, Nathan Lane. You know, something you never hear a Goomba say. Nathan Lane. I adore Nathan. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Nick wrote that. Nick wrote a bunch of shit. Yeah. He helped with the book, yeah. I think the first two books, he wrote some good stuff. Really funny. Oh, yeah. Super funny. I think I called him once. We used to do this triple X show. It was called Extreme Comedy. Joe Rogan did it years ago in the 90s in Vegas. Joe did it and a bunch of...

Nick, maybe you tell. It was like midnight on a Saturday, you know, real blue, as blue as you wanted to go. And I called Nick. I think he was in his room. I said, hey, how grumpy are you today? He said, I know. You're fucking Mr. Happy all the time.

I love to go back first. I love that you called that guy just to get straight to it. The guy who's offended all the time. Yeah. That should be a TV show. Italian guy from Brooklyn. If you're offended, we'll call you and we'll talk it out. Absolutely. I used to call comics. Well, you know, comics could be annoying. Yes. So I ran a few rooms in Vegas and they wanted work. Right. I did one in Houston. I had the Maxim Hotel.

I had the Riviera. That's not still around. Is it the Maxim Hotel? The Maxim, I think they changed the name. That's not around. They had a small comedy club. And I used to book some acts into the Trop. I had a little agency there years ago while I worked at the Riv. And there's guys I just didn't want to use for one reason or another. And they would keep calling and calling. And then I would, like after the second call, I would call them and say, I don't want to use you. Yeah, take a hint. I don't want to use you. This is before even email.

Yeah, I don't want to use you. I never used email. I said, I don't want to use you. That's it. I mean, you know, I get it. I know you're a great comic. You're not for me. Yeah. You know, because I know guys were paying. Yes, I used to try to book guys that didn't bother me. I don't want to be bothered. I don't want phone calls at night. Right. Just do your fucking act. I didn't even go see your act.

There was this girl came and she said, you know, she was working in the club and she came over and I was walking through the casino and she said, hey, are you going to come and see me or what? I've been here since Monday. I went,

let's leave well enough alone yeah if i see your act i may not book your act just fucking do it leave me alone right i don't get complaints on you come on time and leave me alone yeah well that's the thing we know a lot of comic you never heard a comic go man i'm not that good yeah you know they all every comic thinks they're good enough that's the problem but it wasn't even that it was like for one reason or another you know a lot of comics would call on their own a lot of guys weren't didn't have representation right especially in a club you know

Richie Miller, we were talking about Richie Miller? Oh, yeah. He used to call. He would say, hey, so-and-so's been there before. You gave him $1,200. You think you could give him $1,250? I went, wow, you're a great fucking agent. I said, how about if I give him $1,300? You know what? I'll give him $1,400. Does that make you a great agent? Like, I didn't care. Right, right. It was the hotel's budget. That's Dennis Miller's brother? Dennis Miller. Yeah. Yeah.

He ran down to San Antonio, right? Is that where he was? He did Cap City for a minute. Oh, yeah. And Philly. I don't know. Is he still doing it? He's a good guy. I don't know. Good guy. He got very mad at me once, I remember. I told you before. I missed a morning TV spot. But my phone broke. I was just like, I wasn't on purpose. Yeah. But, yeah, I overslept, and he was not happy. Yeah, but you know, so I'm saying, when you're booking the acts, there's so many guys that are so crazed.

Not all comics, but there's so many of those stories. This guy did this. This guy did that. This guy... You know what I mean? Like, you're all over the place, so they don't get the benefit of the doubt. Sure. Unfortunately. Sure. You know, you can't... Especially when you're not selling tickets at that point. You got to not fuck up at all. Exactly. Not fucked up, so... Yeah, they were being nice by having us. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, that was it. It was really the same three comics, you know. I mean, at the Riv, it was three shows a night. At one point...

Three shows a night, seven nights a week, 21 shows. Wow. Port Freeman would play the opener $500. Whoa. Room and food in the employee cafeteria. Wow. For a week. He was making a fortune. Yeah. He was making a fortune.

And, you know, there was four comics on the bill. The two comics in between made $800 to open $750. And the headliner got maybe $2,500. For a week. For a week. Damn.

I mean, you know, the club is doing well. You know, people got bang for the buck. The show came with two free drinks or a buffet at the time. Hey. That buffet was fun, man. That was nice. I love a good buffet. Good eating, especially when you were broke. But the one at the Rift was a shitty one. They always say that, but I always find shit I like. They're like, this one sucks. I'm like, nah, I found some good shit. Yeah, they got some decent jello. They got a walk. Right. But there's a lot of clubs in Vegas now.

oh yeah now there's a lot back then there was only a couple back but now there's there's jimmy kimmel have you done time to sell it many times i've done the seller brad garrett i think there's a wise guys there now yeah there's a couple of wise guys that's all after me that's all after why he's got but wise guys is off the strip which is which seems kind of nice because like oh that's the best part of vegas is when you get the locals oh yeah definitely they're in a strip mall they got two of them there's two different ones

I think there's two wise guys. One in the arts district and there's another one. The Utah one is great. That's a great club. Great club. One in Salt Lake. Stubbs. Keith Stubbs. Do you guys still do clubs mostly? Sometimes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we do both. We do theaters and clubs, you know, but. You tour together? No. No.

No. Well, why don't you tour together? Does that make sense? You have to split the money. You split the money. Yeah, but you play a theater. We do theaters already. Oh, you're doing theater. Yeah. Did you do Montclair? Didn't I ask you that? Did you do the theater in Montclair? I don't think I did Montclair. Maybe I'm doing it. What do you do? 1,000 seaters? 1,500? It depends. It depends on the theater. Something like that. That's great. Yeah. You got to sweat it out, though. Fucking...

You know, I sweat it out, like when we have a show, you know, if we're going to sell out or not. Oh, always. And listen, to us, this is just like kind of a hobby. We do it.

Here and there. You know what I mean? I'm not trying to make a living at it. But still, you want to do well. Tickets are everything. And sometimes you'll be like, shit, we're at 60%. And then two days before, it'll hit 90%. And you're like, thank God. Certain cities, you're just like fucking Phoenix, Houston. It's like they bite the fucking day off. At the buzzer. That sucks. You know, listen, when I was doing...

Ray Romano, I think the first time it was a 1,000-seater, he did 250 people. Oh, amazing. Kevin James did 200 people. Oh. It was like kind of before their time. Sure. But they were already good comics. They were great comics, but it has nothing to do with that. Right. Totally. Yeah, you got to build it. You know? I mean, there was, you know, I mean, you play in Vegas, there's a million things to do. Yep. Paul Rodriguez used to work for me. You know Paul? Oh, yeah. I know of him, yeah. You know, I was the first guy to use him not on...

Hispanic holidays. Right. And then I did gay shows. Nobody did gay shows back then. I was just doing gay shows at a casino. Yeah. Who do you use? Like Mario Cantone? No, not Mario. Mario worked at, I think, Catch. Scott Thompson. Oh, yeah. There was a guy, Scott Tennedy. He passed away. We did an album at...

An album, a gay album, Leah Delaria. Uh-huh. She worked for me. You know Leah? No. Yeah, she's a comic and an actor. She was on Orange is the New Black. Okay, cool. But nobody was doing gay shows. Sure. Even though we had a female impersonator show.

So there was three rooms that I ran. There was a comedy club, there was a topless show, and then a female impersonator show. They were all like in one complex. - Damn. - So you had like a guy with tits and a dick, and then you had real tits downstairs. - Yeah, we still have that now. Just different names for it. - I gotta ask you, 'cause you've worked with Eastwood, you've worked with Woody Allen, is there anyone that you're like, oh, I'd love to work with this person? - I don't care. - You don't care? - Come on.

Scorsese? I work with him on Casino. That's why I got my SAG card. I don't really care. You know, if something good comes along and I like the material, I do it. I'm lucky. I don't have to work. I'm doing Dexter now. I was on Blue Bloods. Blue Bloods was good. I was on another show after The Sopranos that I did 110 episodes. So I've been very lucky. And I really am not that guy, you know? I mean, if it's a good director, I'd love to do it if it's a good role. And if not...

You know, listen, I'm not starring in no movies. I know my reality. You know, I know what's what, you know. I'm not going to play an English professor. I play a blue-collar guy. Yeah. And that's it. I've done okay so far. Yeah, you've had a great career, man. So far, so good. It's nice to be in that place. And if it's over, it's over. I'm all right. I'm old. You guys are just starting.

Well, how'd you sell a show to Nickelodeon? That's genius. I would never even have thought of that. I sold a show to Nickelodeon. I sold numerous shows. I showed one to FX at one time. Really? To Fox at one time. ABC. I had a sitcom deal in 2004. What was that about? You know, at the time they had Damon Wayans, my wife and kids. They had George Lopez. They had...

Jim Belushi, and this was going to be the Italian version of that. And we made a deal, wrote the pilot. It didn't work. Then they put me with another guy, and the guy flaked. A big, big creator. Yeah. And he just flaked. We went to lunch together.

We went to lunch at the Palm and... Chuck Lorre, you come back. And he was fucking chewing his steak and spitting it in his napkin. We went to the Palm over here on 15th Street. What a waste. And I thought, like, I'm thinking to myself...

Like, you know, like I, it was weird to me, but I don't know the guy, you know, there's a guy, you know, the first person I pitched with, she wrote the pilot. It didn't work. And they wanted to continue on with me and not her. So they found me this guy who had created a huge show. And, uh,

And he didn't swallow. It was fucking very weird. It was very, very weird. And we had meeting after meeting after meeting. And he never wrote anything. He just like fucking disappeared. Weird. And the thing ran out and that was that. Yeah. Well, what's the secret? We're trying to sell shit. How do you do it? What's the move in the room?

Is there any trick? I'm pretty good in the room. I mean, I've sold like six things. Discovery Channel I sold. Wow. A cooking channel. Jesus. Be real. Be yourself and tell the fucking story. I mean, don't be shy and don't be robotic. Go in there, tell them what you're doing.

You look like a guy that's nervous. You're going to crack under the fucking wall. I make jokes and I go too far and I blow it. Tell the story. Hey, this is about the two of us, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is what it is. We'll figure it out. You guys are funny guys. Thanks, man. I'm being serious. I'm not even talking about your act. You guys are funny guys. A lot of comics are not funny at all. That's true. Funny how?

Yeah. Sorry. Like De Niro. Like this guy over here. Listen, you couldn't have a conversation with Robert De Niro, but if he's got a script, he's a wonderful actor, right? Sure. Taking that away. Of course. Just be yourself. This is what the show is. Whatever, the movie. It's the two of you. Yeah. All right. It took me seven years to...

From when I sold it to get it made. Jesus. That's a nightmare. That is crazy. Jesus. That's TV. That's production. Jim did it. Jim's scene in it is hilarious. It's one of his last movies. Damn. Damn. It's one of his last movies. It sucks that we didn't get to see him do more. He had such range, you know? I know. He was a good guy. A lot of fucking fun, man.

You know, we had a lot of laughs. That's why I didn't like the – well, I liked the documentary. I thought it was very well done. Yeah. That guy won an Academy Award at Alex Gibney. I could have taken another couple episodes. I was like, this is so entertaining. It was good. And David's stuff, I didn't know a lot either. Right. Dave, when we had the podcast, David Chase listened to every podcast. Wow. And he came on three times. Wow.

We got him on here. He liked it, which, you know, we got his blessing because he's very particular. This is his thing, and he liked it. So we were very happy about that. Michael wrote five episodes. That's incredible that he did that. So he is much more knowledgeable than I was. He was there. Behind the scenes, he was there from day one, so he knew, you know.

How did that happen? I mean, you cast him as the actor. How do you know he's a terrific writer? He wrote Summer of Sam. He wrote that? With Liguizamo. Wow. Him and another guy wrote that with Liguizamo and Spike Lee. Right. And he had written other stuff. And so I guess AX, if he wanted to write, so he was in the writer's room. He was privy to all that shit. Damn.

Damn. And what detail, like to the show, like if it said it's got –

Whatever, M&M's in the bowl, it had to be M&M's. Right. If it said spaghetti at the table, it couldn't be a different kind of macaroni. Rigatoni. No, no, no, no. He would go crazy, David. It was very specific. He's wearing this coat. He's doing this. You couldn't change a line, not a word. Whoa. Not a word. People said, hey, that was you. You ad-libbed that. No fucking ad-lib. Not one ad-lib. That's the quick way out of there. You get killed. Interesting. Interesting.

The fuck could kill you off. Wow. Do you think he killed anyone off because they were just annoying? I think it might have. Maybe. Wow. I think maybe. Maybe. I don't know for sure. Richie April. No, no. I think he knew they only had one. Yeah. That was a great. When you said jacket, of course I think the jacket. I was in that scene. Yeah, I was in that scene. Great. But you know.

When David Preval came on the screen, you kind of got uncomfortable. Yeah. You got scared. He was like crazy. He was crazy. He was great. He was in Mean Streets. I remember, yeah. And they became stars. He didn't. He struggled the whole way. Right. He was an acting teacher. What? This was his thing. He came on the podcast. He told us that he flew here on his own.

And he read with Jim, and he said he was staying somewhere near Central Park West. He said when he got into the hallway, he could hear the phone ringing, you know, coming from the audition. And he got in the room, he picked up the phone, and his agent said he got the role. He said he broke down on the bed crying. He said because he felt he deserved it. Yeah. He said, I deserve it. He said, all these fucking years of struggling, you know,

That was it, you know? Well, he killed it, too. He was the scariest guy on the show. He was the scariest of all of them. Easily. Fucking Janice with the gun into her head and all that shit. Ralphie was... Ralphie was scary, too. Ralphie was scary in a different way, like a crazy way. Janice was one of the worst characters. She was great, though. She was a murderer. Yeah. She was a murderer, manipulator. She stole the girl's leg.

yeah she was like her mother yeah like an insane she was great in the show yeah so good yeah the the boob the tip the way she manipulated tony too i mean she was so it was such a great she was one i think to me she was one of the most horrific characters yeah very layered don't forget she murdered him and then you know he did have a comment though i mean that was definitely no no that's some

Yeah, Luigi. Yeah, Luigi. Yeah, Luigi. Listen, if we're going to do that, half the fucking city deserves it. I know. That's true. But Richie Aprile was a bad dude. Yes, yes.

Yeah. Horrible. They all are. And he just hit her. I mean, when you think about it, they all are. He hit her and then he mocked her. It was kind of like, you know. They all are. We rooted. That was the genius of the show. Tony Soprano was a horrible guy. He murdered people. He ripped people off. Not just in it. Not other mobsters. You know, I don't want to hear that. Just, oh, they hurt each other. Bullshit. Crippled.

Christopher murdered, I don't know, 16 people, I think. And then he sat on the dog. The people were mad about the dog. They weren't mad about the people. Exactly. A lot of those people did something to deserve it. That dog, Cosette, didn't do anything wrong. But all these people murdered, yet we liked them. Yes. We thought they were funny. They were. I mean, Paulie Walnuts, how many people did he kill?

It would remind you. Every once in a while, they would remind you. Like when he killed that old lady, you're like, oh, shit, yeah, he's a fucking bad guy. Psychopath. Whenever you got comfortable, David showed you. Good point. He killed the lady, smothered her. You know, in that, they wanted him to choke her. Yeah. But he was very protective, Tony Sirico was, of Paulie. And he thought if he choked her that the audience wouldn't like Paulie. Mm.

And so he said, can I smother her with a pillow? And they said, yeah. And he liked that. Okay. Now he's likable. One of the few times they let you change the line was they called him and one of the two of the characters said, I'm afraid of Paulie. He's a bully. And he went to the writers and said, Paulie is not a bully.

I don't like that. You got to change that. I don't like Paulie. He's not a bully. Of course, Paulie was a bully. Yeah. So they change it to, I don't like that. Uh, Paulie, he's a psycho and Tony liked that. Okay. That's good. Interesting. Well, I liked, I liked in the doc when they said, uh, HBO was really against having Tony kill the guy in the witness protection episode, the college visit. And, and,

David Chase was like, he's got to kill him. It's like, and it makes you realize how groundbreaking that show is. There had been nothing like this where the main character is just a cold-blooded murderer. Kramer never killed anybody. Or what's his name? Killed his career. One of the friends. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you imagine that, what he did? You shouldn't do that. I mean, could you imagine that? I mean, this guy seriously had an incredible, incredible... Brilliant comedic actor. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's one of the greatest...

sitcom actors ever? Totally. We should get his career up on the wall. You should have him up. He was a bully. Yeah. He didn't think there would be a phone camera. That was when phone cameras were brand new. That's right. So that's what got him. He was the first phone camera cancellation. Totally.

Come on, but just to do that was insanity. Yeah, I mean, you shouldn't do it regardless of technology. That was a good bit. But I read his book, and he kind of apologized, but not apologized. More N-words than Huck Finn. He's not that apologetic. Whose book is that? Who do we have there? Steve-O, we got Nick Offerman, Segura, Stan Hope. Stan Hope worked for me in Vegas. Oh, I'll let go. He lived in Vegas.

That's how I helped start him. I got him on Evening at the Improv. We love Doug, man. Doug's a classic. He does his own thing. Oh, yeah. He does it his way and his own thing, that's for sure. Not for everybody, but a brilliant guy. Where does he live? Out in Arizona. Bisbee, Arizona. We had him on here one night, and I did not expect Doug. God bless him. He showed up loaded, like...

what noon and then he said I'm gonna come by the cellar tonight we're like yeah right and 7pm I got a text he goes I'm here hung with him till 2am we had a great night man he's a good drunk I love Doug

Yeah, I haven't seen him in a long time. He did very well for himself. Well, tell us where you're going to be with, you know. Stoney Hall, August 16th. There you go. With the Sopranos. No smiles. If you're a Soprano fan, you're going to like that. Look at the hair on you guys. It's phenomenal. The Italian hair really stays in there. Well, not on him, but yeah. You know, we went, Jim was like the Bacchus.

at the Mardi Gras one year. Yeah. And we all went down there and we had a good time, but we went to that, was it Moscone's? The place on the outskirts of town. They said, Al Capone, you should eat there. They hosted us. You never ate? No. Were you from New Orleans? Yeah, but I wasn't allowed there. Oh, really? Moscone's, pull that up. I was wondering if you- It was good? It was good. It was good. It's like a famous place. I was wondering if you had ever been there. They were very nice people. I think it's the same family.

It was called Moscone's. It's in New Orleans. Huh. I think it's called Moscone's. Doesn't ring a bell. My mom's a big Italian foodie lady. Well, I think it's like the most famous Italian restaurant down there. What do I know? Oh, Metairie. That's why. Moscone, yeah. I never went to Metairie. That was like the Long Island of... Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I couldn't go out there. A lot out there? Well, Metairie.

Oh, shitty? Yeah, no offense. Oh, okay. It's not the same. I got you. All right. Mark, where are you going to be? Mosca's. Mosca's. That I've heard of. I know. There you go. It was a long time ago. There you go. You made it more Italian. You guys are getting drunk all day. When I was your age, that's what I used to do. All right. Good. Unfortunately, enjoy yourselves. I wish I could still do it. Yeah. What was your drink?

I would drink tequila. I mean, I still drink, but not like that. Yeah. I would drink tequila, chilled it up, Patron. I was hungover the other day. It lasted two days. I can't deal with the hangover anymore. That's the problem. It's bad. I can't deal with it. That's the problem. Not the going out part. Sure. It's the fucking aftermath. Yeah. Here, here. I used to be able to bounce right back. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

What about a little nose candy? I think in Vegas one time, I counted, I went out 70-something nights in a row. Jesus. 70 nights in a row. I lived nocturnally for a long time there, like working in the clubs. Yeah. I worked one at night to nine in the morning or 11 to seven and then go out. Yeah. Because there was places that you go at one in the afternoon, they're absolutely packed in Vegas. Wow. You can't see your hand in front of your face.

Right? It's that dark. Yeah. And, you know, so I would get home, you know, 12, 1, 2 o'clock and, you know, go to bed, wake up.

and say, I'm not fucking going out. That's it. I'm done. I had shit. I'm going right to bed. Then like about, you know, midnight or whatever time, 12, 2 o'clock in the morning, you start, you know what? I'm kind of feeling all right. Yes. Do it again. Story of my life. A little nose candy. Do it again. A little blow. A little yam-yam. Are you offering it?

No, I'm saying that doesn't hurt out there in the desert, if you know what I mean. Two-day hangover, you're still doing it. Good deal. Just say if you need to pick me up. These are your dates, Mark. All right. Hey, I'm in New Brunswick, New Jersey. That's almost sold out. Then we got Ithaca. We got Reykjavik. I'm going to the UK and all that good stuff. London, whatever. Rochester, Portchester, Albany. I'm staying on the East Coast. There we go. Wisconsin, Green Bay, Eugene. Come on out, New York.

and uh then we're going to australia so we'd love to have you out there sydney brisbane adelaide you name it all right we told us have you this your first time second time i love australia australia we went i always say australia is like america in the 80s i got phoenix arizona we got san diego sacramento sf portland added a late show on a monday please come out seattle vancouver we had a late show so please come to that and then we got uh boise idaho

And Denver, Colorado. I just added Montclair, New Jersey, the Wellmont, July 11th, and the 12th, Red Bank, New Jersey, Count Basie. And then in August, we're adding, I think, a few at the Wilbur. So see you guys out there. Love it. And, you know, great up, man. Just mention Montclair. That's what I told you. I know. I don't think we talked about it. We play the Wellmont. We play Count Basie. It's great. I'm excited.

Australia I've done. Yeah? Australia's great. I like Australia. Love Australia. You guys are out there, man. We're out there, man. You're making me tired just thinking about that. It was great. We never really talked. No. It's the most I've ever spoken to you. Great to meet you. I know I'm not a comic, so I'm not going to take my shirt off and all that. We're happy about that. It's the best I can do for you. Keep it on. It was awesome, man. Thanks for coming by, Steve. My pleasure. All right. All right. Comedy. Next, Fender Juice Clops.

And Norman's talking shit up in post In the same way Up on the roof like feeling dangerous I'm out to lunch here in New This woman doesn't remember her Be true