John Ratzenberger (Re-Release)
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Welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name. All right. So I'm loving all these Cheers-themed episodes that we've been revisiting. And this one is with your favorite postman, Cliff Clavin, a.k.a. John Ratzenberger. You're going to hear about how John pitched his know-it-all Cheers character to the writers the first time he met them, his time at the original Woodstock, and also his multiple near-death experiences. Our buddy has lived quite a life.

Here's our friend, John Rathenberger. Okay, Emmy nominee, a voice actor in 22 Pixar movies, a storied act... Please don't interrupt. This is you. I just realized that. That's all you talk about, Woody. No, no, no. A storied acting career in TV and film spanning nearly five decades. Perhaps his most famous role was on Cheers as the garrulous... You can...

Coral, the word Daryl is male carrier. Cliff Clavin, please welcome to the show. Our longtime friend, Johnny, John Ratzenberg, gentlemen.

So good to see you again, once again. Great to see you, dude. I want to come back here every day now. I get such a fuzzy feeling, warm and fuzzy seeing you. Wait till we get going. I haven't seen you. Like, I literally, you're the only person from Cheers I haven't seen since the day we wrapped. I've been trying to avoid you. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask.

Ducking around corners. There he is. So I've been out and about. I just finished a 4,000 mile driving trip. I just took the spirit of the moment. So I don't spend a lot of time here. Where'd you go from where to where? Oh, from Rancho Mirage out in the desert to Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, Washington State.

Oregon, and then back down here. Oh, my God. In what? A car, right? Well, it didn't walk. Yeah, no, but he wondered if you were taking a motorcycle. This is a valid question. Huh? He wondered if you were taking a motorcycle, right? Oh, no. My daughter won't let me on motorcycles anymore. You would never want motorcycles. Yeah, no. But what kind of vehicle was it? It was a pickup truck. Nice. It's red. By yourself? Was it just you? Yeah. Wow. Wow.

What do you do when you pull into a town? Well, I bring... One of my friends that I stopped to see, he's an ex-Vinter winery guy. He just sold his winery. But he's got a big property up in Montana. And his thing is trap and skeet. So I brought a couple of shotguns with me. And so we, you know, did some trap and skeet shooting. And then I got friends in Oregon. We went down the Rogue River. You know, one of those...

boats to rapids and all that stuff. And, you know, I never have an agenda. This one I did. The first stop was in Pueblo, Colorado. I gave a talk there. And I've been doing quite a bit of that speechifying. And what are you speechifying about? Well, actually, what I bent your ear about all those years ago, to get kids shop classes.

to get shop classes reinstated because we're literally running out of people that know how to use tools. Literally, the airlines, we're running out of pilots of all things. Railroads, you know, the railroads falling off the tracks. That's because they don't have enough people to fix what's going wrong. And are you raising the alarm or are you... I've been trying for... I've spoken in front of Congress twice already.

And brought in witnesses from construction firms who said they have to close down because they can't find the simple carpenters and bricklayers. I don't know if you remember, I was a carpenter before I got into this acting game.

Yeah, no, because, you know, they give you, even though we hung out a thousand hours, well, more, you know, you look at, there's a thing in here that you were at Woodstock as one of the crew. Yeah. Now, you must have told me that, but I forgot about this. I don't, I never heard that either. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Well, you know, I guess, I don't know. So what were you doing? I was a carpenter.

I was living up in the area, up in Bearsville. I was building a studio for a mime, giving mime lessons. So I traded my carpentry skills for mime lessons and breakfast and a bed. I was a great businessman. And then the word went out in town that there's some kind of festival going on and they're looking for people. So...

I trundled on down there and stood in line and the guy says, can you drive a tractor? I said, yeah, I never, never in my life. So here's the keys. So I went over and started up and they went, I almost flipped it. Uh, but then, uh, so I was doing a heavy equipment operation and, uh,

Pounding nails at the stage, yeah. And did you have to leave after you built it before the festival? No, no, I was there right through the festival. Oh, my God, that's amazing. So I was there like a week and a half before the festival, during the festival, and about a week after the festival. Did you have any idea that, ooh, this is huge, this is big, or no? My first thought was, we're in big trouble when these idiots take over the country.

Johnny, Johnny. I said, wow, these people are idiots. They're college educated, but they're idiots. The crowd. The crowd. Oh, the crowd. Yeah, all right, all right. Well, who did you think I was talking about? The musicians. All right. Okay. No, I didn't get to hear a lot of music. But I was wandering, you know, on the road kind of thing. Hey, can we back up a second? Yeah.

We've been talking about, because we've all known each other, but we knew each other while we were rehearsing and laughing. So I had no idea what Woody was like when he was the 7, 8, 9, 12, whatever year old. What was that age? What were you doing at that age? What was your life like? Were you running out the door and coming back? That was a nice sound. Right.

Nice sound. That was me running out the door. Johnny, come back. Yeah. What was that like? You grew up in Bridgeport. Which is a factory town. But we grew up right on the water. But, you know, there was nothing...

sumptuous about it. They would say, we grow up on water. Yeah. But there was a shipyard right across the street and one down the end of the street, one down the end of this street. So it was mostly utilitarian water things. Right. So I was around people, you know, building boats, repairing boats, buying boats, selling boats. At what age? Zero right on. That's where you learned the carpentry skills, working on boats? Yeah.

Yeah, well, that's where I was, I guess, in thinking about it. That's probably where my interest started. But then when I got to middle school, we actually had shop classes. And Mr. Bandy said, oh, no, use a crosscut saw for that or a rip saw. And you started learning about tools. And you tried to do it right, too, because he had really bad breath. So when he was leaning over your shoulder, your eyes would water.

And so he wanted to do it right. But I always enjoyed that. When I went to England, I don't know how old I was, 20. But that's how I made a living over there. I was a carpenter. I go to different building sites. Was that before you got bitten by the acting bug or the comedy or whatever? How did that fit in? Because I know you traveled around. The acting bug, I had done some in college. But I never thought you could make a living at this stuff.

And in England, a buddy of mine from college, Ray Hassett, who went on later years to become a very highly decorated sheriff,

a policeman in New Haven, Connecticut. But he and I toured Europe. Oh, this is the Sal's Meat Market. Sal's Meat Market. Yeah. And so we got a pretty good reputation. The Monty Python guys would come to our shows. And there were Bob Hoskins. You know, he'd always be in our audience, guys like that. But then I came over here, and Ray went another direction, but different.

I mean, he's a movie, that guy. Undercover stuff. Yeah, but, you know, cheers. But before that, you also did every, you played every American soldier in every war movie known to man. Well, because the dollar was very strong against the pound when I was over there, so they were making a lot of American movies. So I was the right height, weight, size guy.

look to fit into a uniform. So every movie, I did the 30 something movies over there and everyone was a uniform. Like Ragtime, I was a fireman, Bridge Too Far, Gandhi, yada, yada, yada. It was always a uniform of some kind. Yeah.

But then the ultimate uniform, the mailman. The garrulous mailman. The garrulous. That's not fair. He was way more than garrulous. Yeah, garrulous is interesting. But I love the way your audition went. Because didn't you come in and audition for the George part, for Norm part? I don't know. Or different parts. I guess, yeah. Because I never auditioned.

I'd been working 10 years straight in Europe, nonstop. Not once did I ever audition. And I didn't go to acting school, so I didn't know what taught me what I was supposed to do. So I walked into the office, and there was Jimmy, Les and Glenn, a couple other people. But, you know, they're sitting there like, you know, like, show me your stuff. And I remember thinking, oh, that's probably why they gave me this script. LAUGHTER

So I did a horrible job. Yeah. So I was walking out the door, literally walking out the door. And I don't know whether this is my fantasy or it happened in reality, but I could have sworn that my eight by 10 was going like this into the wastebasket. When I stopped, I said, do you have a bar? No at all. But that was the writer part of me asking. And it was Glenn who said, what are you talking about?

I said, every bar that I've ever been in, in New England anyway, has some horse's ass who pretends to know everything. But everybody defers to that person anyway. And because, you know, when I'd go find my dad and tell him the dinner was ready, you know, there's always one guy in the bar. And my father's was a guy named Sarge. Hey, Sarge, what's the length of a whale's intestine?

Baleen or blue? And he was a kid I thought that was hysterical. So I just picked up on that kind of character. I think I used a ballpoint pen from the desk in there and explained why the big pen was originally called a bitch pen.

And why they had to take the H off. Which is a true story, by the way. No. Two brothers. French brothers. The bitch brothers. B-I-C-H.

And somebody started a pen company. And somebody goes, you know, you might want to take the H off of that. Okay, now you have to raise your hand. Is this a true story? All right. Wow. That's a great story. I've always been a collector of arcane thoughts and facts. So I get a kick out of it.

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Oh, well, they were laughing. That was the only reason I did that because, again, I had a great career going in Europe and, you know, big audiences and, you know, I was the toast of the town out back there. But I didn't want to leave that office, have them think I was some kind of Momo, you know, just some guy, some actor, because I knew what I was doing. But I needed to make them laugh before I left to regain my dignity.

Because it was just in shatters all over the carpet from my audition. So that's the only reason I did it. Two days later, I get a call. Wait, but did you get laughed? Did they laugh? Oh, yeah, yeah. So you knew you left on a high. Well, it wasn't until a whole character. Because it's those characters always, you know, the eyebrows go, you know. You know, you got the, there's all kinds of convoluted motion that goes with it. And there's a cop.

uh, it was a father of a buddy of mine growing up and he was like that too. And I always used to make fun of him. And, uh, so I, you know, mixed them all up and, uh, boom, boom, boom. Johnny, it was a brilliant character. It truly was. You made me laugh so hard. I can go back and reruns and you make me laugh. I just, I love those types of that, uh,

You know, it's sort of the pompous individual. Everybody knows he's full of it. But yet, okay, let's listen to him and pretend he's right. Now, another influence, because you told me this, and you actually got me to start watching his movies, Jacques Tati. Oh, Jacques Tati, yeah. Tell me first a little bit about him. Well, it's just after...

Second World War, he started making movies. But he's the reason that I had the wardrobe guy in Cheers lift up my pant, like the cuffs. You could see the white socks. It's because of Jacques Tati. Jacques Tati, and a lot of his, he didn't hardly talk, but he just walked across the room and just his body language and the way he looked, other people would stare and

You know, the chain reaction started like a knock, you know, drink down on the dog and the dog. And just a whole big chaos. Yeah. And all he had to do was walk through a room. I just thought how brilliant that is. But as a matter of fact, I was thinking about him last night. I've been to this hotel up here in Hollywood. And they got all these knobs and buttons and I couldn't turn off the light.

I was like, what the hell? But Jacques Tati did a movie called Mononcle. It's all that. There's all this modern doodads and squiggles and spigots. But it's funny you've mentioned that. I was just thinking about that last night. We haven't talked a lot about, I mean, we have talked a lot about shares, but.

These are some silly questions. Like, do you have favorite moments? Do you have favorite episodes? Do you have anything? Oh, cheers? Yeah. I can't think of a time that, a day that wasn't a favorite. It just seemed like it just got better and better. I really enjoyed the read-through of the scripts. Like, they would send us the script, what, on Friday or the weekend, so that we would have it in front of us Monday. I never opened it.

I would go in to work with you guys not having read the script. And so I could just, so every time you turned the page, it was like a little Christmas present. Yeah. Because I loved the way the writing, you never saw it coming. Yeah. Whereas most sitcoms, you can see it a mile away. You know what's going to happen. But with Cheers, you just, you didn't see it coming. Yeah.

And so I just thought I got kicked out of that. But that was one of my favorite moments every week was that. I'm going to tell you some of my favorite moments. Squeaky shoes. Oh, I was thinking about that, too. Yeah. That was one of the, yeah. You directed that. I did, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But that was one of my favorites, too. An entire bar walking around looking at their feet with squeakers, little handheld squeakers to make the shoe look. Yeah, I had those.

Prop guy cut the squeakers out of toys so each actor had his own octave. Because I know if they did it in post-production, it'd be the same octave, the same sound. Not funny, but the actors were in charge. If you look at the right hands of all you guys, you'll see some people squeezing it. What else did you direct? Oh, a lot of half hour. Yeah, a lot of half hour. And then I made the great...

career move of moving my family up to an island in Washington State. Yeah. The agents didn't like that because I was getting a lot of offers to direct. I mean, a lot. And so I was with William Morris at the time. I said, well, I'm going to move my family up to start a little farm up in Washington on an island. He said, what? Well, yeah, I mean, just call me. I'll come down. You know, I thought,

It was easy. You know, just call, oh, okay, yeah, I'll be there. But it doesn't work like that. You actually have to talk to people. But so that's kind of what... What did you do, though, up there? Were you farming? Were you... Well, like I said, I grew up in and around boats. So we always had boats. And my son and I, I remember the first fish he caught, we were in a...

A boat, a Cape Cod cat boat I had built. Anyway, he's reeling it in, reeling it in. He looks over and it's a shark. It's like a sand shark, not a big deal. And he was like five, six. He was dead. It's a shark. And I remember that scene from Bambi.

Where Bambi's father's, get up, Bambi. When the fire's coming, you can do it, son. That's what I did with my son. I said, reel it in, Jim. You can do it. He wanted me to reel it in for him. But I remember the look of pride on his face when he reeled it in himself and held it up like that. So that's the reason I went. Because you can't do that here. Yeah, yeah.

And I've got this set of skills that don't translate to raising children here. So I had to bring him to a place that I knew, you know, like crabbing and sailing. Oh, I remember going to pick up my kids at school and Jim jumps in the car and says, where's Nina? I said, I don't know. I look and I don't know about

20 yards away, there's a huge pine tree with a lot of kids on the pine tree looking up. And I said, I think I know where she is. She was at the, it was like 80 feet in the air. Nina, just four or five years old. This is the side of the climb to pine tree. You know, but that's the reason. Yeah. To expose them to that. Just, yeah, there it is. Go do it.

Now that we're talking boats a little bit and we have the major culprit sitting next to me, Woody Harrelson, come on, let's revisit the story just one more time. I don't know from Johnny's perspective, but he was bleak from our perspective. We were dying and you were irritated. So silly. No, I was a little afraid. A little afraid.

Well, let us back up just for a second. We decided, all the boys at Cheers decided to play hooky. First bad thing we'd ever done, you know? Yeah. And it was like, I think our fifth year or something like that. And we weren't heavy in the script. It was Shelly and Rhea. And we called Rhea that night and said...

Heads up, we're going to play hooky. And we all decided to meet down. This is Long Beach where the boat was. Yeah. And it was a Boston Whaler that you had or something? No, no. Boston Whaler is a little, this is a Grand Banks. Wow. It's a 42-foot trawler. Yeah.

It was very impressive. So we go there. I think Woody and I are stoned already on marijuana. And we stopped by to pick up Kelsey, who had been up all night. And then we all piled to the dock. We got to a telephone booth and we called Jimmy Burroughs, the director, and said, Jimmy, I'm not feeling good. I'm not coming in. Hold on one second. Then you pass it to the next guy in line. Yeah.

He was not amused. And then we got on the boat. By now, having no breakfast, I'm hungry. And Woody says, have you ever had mushrooms? Would you like some mushrooms? And I thought, yeah. I mean, we're going to be on a boat? We're not answerable to anybody? Yes. And in my kind of hunger, I remember it was two or three handfuls that tasted pretty good.

Hard cut to, I don't know, a half hour later. And we were at the tail end of weather that had come up from Mexico, right? That was on the way back. Oh, but it was, well, it wasn't bumpy. I thought it was bumpy. Not bumpy.

No, the way over there was just... Okay, my mushrooms were bumpy. Let me put it that way. Something was bumpy. Yeah. Yeah, they're called waves. The ocean has them a lot. Yeah, so you should have told me that before I got on. Anyway, I look at Woody, and Woody stretches out, and I think, oh, my God. He's so used to this. He stretches out in a bunk, and I am dying. I have trouble breathing, and I am just dying. So I go up...

to where you and George went, were sitting, you were piloting. And you both looked at me and went, oh, fuck. You know, what did you do? I had some mushrooms. And I sat next to George and every 30 seconds he would go, pat me, go breathe. And I go...

You'd just be holding your breath. I remember that. You were like holding your breath for a long period. And I thought you were fine, but you finally came up because you were afraid you were contemplating jumping off the back of the boat. Anyway, woof, never had a mushroom again. Worst experience. And Kelsey was down below. He was racked. Yeah, he was sound asleep. Catching some Zs.

So you two, George, Kelsey, and me. Yeah. Going to Catalina. Yeah. I enjoyed the ride back. The ride back was fun. Not for you because you were fighting some weather. Yeah, coming back, I remember we were on Catalina and I had my radio, carried my radio. I knew there was weather coming. I just wanted to keep an eye on it. And when they said, yeah, it's turning and it's going to be coming right down the channel, I said,

I said to you guys, I remember we were at a Mexican restaurant. I don't know if you remember. Yeah, yeah. I said, look, we got to stay the night just to be safe. Now, you're going to make this next part up, I can tell. But go on. You're laying this on me. No, I wasn't going to do that. Oh, thank you. And one of the members said, oh, no, I got to get back because I got to go to a wedding.

And my wife's going to get by. And there was a whole litany of, I said, all right, we got to leave right this second. So we scurried down to the tender that took us out to the boat, started the engines, and got underway. And it was horrible because the weather was coming broadside to the boat. And as a captain, what you do is you go this way, the way the waves are going.

So I said, well, we can put into, you know, go up to Ventura or Oxnard or just because that's where the wind's blowing us. And it's that safer because then you just go like that. That's fine because that boat would take it. It's built for heavy weather. And no, couldn't because the cars were there in Long Beach. But so the boats, I remember the props cavitating. It was because there's two engines, two props.

And the boats, and you can hear the props spinning out of the water. And I remember thinking, tomorrow's papers are going to say, Cliff kills Cast of Cheers. We're going under. And obviously we made it back, but that was something. Good navigating.

I remember you asked me to sit up in the prowl. Well, yeah, towards the end there. Towards the end. We were coming in just to keep an eye out for buoys and things to make sure we were in the right spot. And yeah, yeah. Oh, and one of the members of the crew had opened the refrigerator but forgot to latch it.

Woody, was that you? Was it Woody? I forget who it was. But when the boat pitched. Everything. Everything. All the bottles broke, beer bottles. So there's now got glass and broken glass and beer like this. And so I'm stuck at the wheel.

And so if anything happened, I can't even walk. It's all broken glass snatching behind me. We're a mess. It was something. It was different. I think it was the last time you invited us on any of your boats. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

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Well, there's one side, the one that comes to mind when I was a deckhand on an oyster boat and went out. It's like farming oysters. You got the small oysters and you dredge them up and you put them somewhere else. But it was in the winter and there was a storm and I had to go out on the outside of the boat to open up what's called the scuppers and you rinse the scuppers

The oyster's out. Anyway, my hand missed the thing. And I was gone. I had my full oilers on, the rain gear and boots. So I was like this. And my entire life flashed in front of me. I had never. You were about to fall off the side. Knowing that because it was winter. It was a storm. It was just me and the skipper on the boat. And he couldn't hear me because of the engine.

So I could yell and scream all I wanted, but there's no way it'd take like a half hour until he says, where the hell is that guy? You know, then he wouldn't be able to find me. But I was going. I was dead. Because I knew as soon as I hit the water, I knew enough that because with what I had on it, I'd sink like a stone. Cold water and all that. But God and his wisdom...

sent a wave on the other side of the boat that tipped the boat more my way, and I was able to grab the boat. But it's like, God's hand tipped the boat just enough for me to grab on. Wow. And then I went down below just to sit on a bunk. And the skipper came, this old grumpy guy. He said, what the hell are you doing? Oh, my God. Because apparently I was white as that sheet of paper. Yeah. So he...

Bought me a shot of whiskey and I knocked it back. But that, yeah, I was almost gone then. That happened a few times, different scenarios. Roof of a building and stuff like that. Motorcycles. Motorcycle crash, yeah. Tell us about the motorcycle crash. Well, I drove a Harley here in Los Angeles and...

And I wasn't really a biker, just something to do. And, uh, uh, I was asked by a fellow who became a good friend of mine, Butch Starnes down in Florida. He was a president of the Ram Knights, Vietnam veterans on Harleys. Basically they were having a big, uh, fundraiser to raise money for diabetes research. And, uh, as you may or may not know, I was big part of that nationwide. And, um,

So then he picked me up at the airport and he says, you want to go out for a drink or something? I said, yeah, sure. I didn't know it, but he had owned like six strip clubs in his former life. So we had to go to each one. And anyway, it wasn't until... The fourth or fifth one that you caught on? No, it wasn't until, you know, when the sun was coming up, I was just getting to bed and thought, oh.

And then he wakes me up a couple hours later and says, okay, we're going to go pick up your bike. Because they had rented one identical to the one I drove here for me to lead off the procession. I said, yeah, okay, sure. You know, I didn't want to say, I want to sleep. Okay, yeah. And I got on the bike and my head is still spinning. I shouldn't have been on a bike at all.

We get on the highway, and he takes off. He had to be going 125, him and some other guy. And I'll catch up to him. And I came around and going to hit the gravel. Bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum. And I remember thinking of my kids. My last thought was just a picture of both of my kids. I'll never see them again. Anyway, so now I'm laying down, and I've got to make it to the side because there's traffic coming behind me, and I make it to the little grass area.

And a woman, I think someone told me later that she was a nurse. She'd come over and she looked down at me and see if she could help. And she came this far from my face and went, ah, ah. Oh, wow. Encouraging. That's not what you want. And I remember saying to her, thanks for stopping by, ma'am. I'll take it from here.

So anyway, my friend Bush, he had seen my bike up in the air and his rearview mirror. And so he circled back around and then ambulance showed up and he said, you know, and they're putting me on the stretcher.

And one of them looks down and says to the other guy, you know who this is? And now they're talking about favorite Cheers episodes. I'm this close to bleeding to death, right? So Butch, God bless him, said, you know, put him in the ambulance, get him out of here. And then Butch said, where are you taking him? They said, we're taking him to county. Now, county is where, you know, they use old rusty can openers and

You don't want to go to county anywhere in the world. And he says, no, take him to Orlando Regional. And the guy said, don't tell me what to do. We're taking him to county. It's closer. And I wasn't in any shape to argue. So they shut the doors and we're going down a highway and the radio crackles. It's the chief of the fire department saying, where are you taking him? I said, county. And then the chief says, did Mr. Starnes tell you to take him to Orlando Regional? Oh, wow.

He says, yes, sir, he did. He says, well, you do whatever Mr. Starnes tells you. So we go across the verge again. And I was so lucky, again, the hand of God was there with me, that there was a symposium or a convention of the top ankle surgeons in the state or the country. And so I had top people working on my foot. If I hadn't been wearing boots laced up, I would have lost my foot.

So they patched it all together and, you know, went down to the hardware store, got some metal and bolts and stuff. And so, yeah, I was in the hospital for a while. Let me back up again. I'm jumping around. Who do you think had the most impact on you from growing up, your father, your parents, whoever, to make you be this John Ratzenberger, if you could? Oh, I've never been asked that before. That's a big question.

You know, in the way of life, you learn, you know, it's not the falling down. It's how you get back up. And I think in my time in Europe, because there was no, except for my buddy Ray and his girlfriend at the time, there was no backup. There was no, you're on your own. There's no going home and getting your laundry done. You're completely on your own.

And that goes a long way in forming somebody. Oh, Ray from the Sal's Meat Market? Yeah. Yeah. Because he had already been over there working as a social worker. But also growing up, again, it's after World War II, and a lot of these guys, my father included, came back with PTSD, but nobody knew because they didn't call it PTSD. They called it shell shock.

And you were supposed to just get over it. Like, just shake it off. Right. Well, I remember stepping over friends' fathers. In the bars? On the way to school in the morning. You know, I remember one was sprayed across the curb just as you got to the crosswalk. And kids are stepping over them, you know, to go to school. But most of the fathers in the neighborhood...

Where, yeah, I mean, that's, the bar was their clubhouse. And so you had to, you know, that forms your personality, you know, dealing with that. And it was the kind of time you kind of had to have eyes in the back of your head, you know, and, you know, the nuns. I remember seeing a nun knock a kid out.

But it's just, she came up from her toes in an uppercut, and this kid went over a desk. But he deserved it. He really did deserve it. That's all the whole thing. So as you grow up, I go, yeah, well, okay. So he got knocked out. That's no big deal. But I don't know how to answer that. Was your mother a big ingredient in all of that in your life? Well, yeah, she was a...

She was a cuddly one. But what she would do, she'd buy old radios or appliances. What did they call them back then? White elephant sails or something? Cut off the electrical cord and give it to me. And I'm four years old, five years old. It's called a screwdriver's part. She says, take it apart. This is your mom. That's incredible. And that was just, so to me, that was a toy.

Then I graduated to erector sets. And I was always fascinated with that. But again, it was a background and stuff that I probably should have been an engineer. Because I could do all that stuff. But I didn't know what an engineer was. I thought I was the guy who drove a train. But there's nobody in the whole school system said, you know what? You should be an engineer. I wouldn't have known what the hell they were talking about. My guidance counselor in high school, though, I'll never forget that.

I walk in her office and she said, what do you want? I said, I'm a guidance counselor. I guess I must have been a senior, junior. I said, well, I just wondered, you know, after high school, what I should be doing. And there was pamphlets. It was Tufts University and, you know, Princeton. I said, I'm not sure whether I should be going to Tufts or be a doctor at Princeton. And I'm just busting her chops.

Because I know I'm going to go to Tufts. So she said, get out of my office. Now she's screaming. And she's standing up and she had veins. Get out of my office. Vice principal goes running in. What's the matter? Anyway, that's what it was. But there was a new university opening up nearby. And they needed butts for seats. So I applied there and got in. I think as long as your socks matched.

you know, I mean, it's a big deal. University. Now they actually did it right. It's a very well-known place, but my, I forget what year it was. Maybe my junior year, my, uh, one of my professors had to go do something family related out of state. I said, John, will you take over my class for a couple of weeks? And, uh,

Because, I mean, after all was said and done, once I dusted everything off, I had a brain. So he said, could you take over my class for a couple weeks? I said, sure. So I remember going out and getting a three-piece suit and a briefcase. And now I was going to be a college professor. Oh, this is after I graduated. That's right. So I think the suitcase had a bologna sandwich in it.

That was like, and so I walk in the amphitheater. It was, you know, I stood the podium and I looked down and there's my high school guidance counselor. Oh, wow. Who told me Ratzenberger, get a job in some factory, find somebody to marry you if you can and try to stay out of jail.

That was my guidance. Seriously. That's my guidance. Those are three good guide posts. That was my high school. Okay. It wasn't like, you know, you're going to be great out there. Yeah. You know. But there she is now. And I'm her teacher in college. So I say, hey, Mrs. Sosa, how you doing? And she looked up. Her eyes got wide. I think she started to sweat and maybe cry.

But she never saw her again. She didn't come back to another class. So when did you find out, like, along the way, like high school or whatever, when did you find out you were funny? Like, were you ever, like, the class clown? Yeah, but I was surrounded by guys like that. Bobby Garamella, Gil Zawadsky. It's just, I mean, even in high school, before the teacher came in,

Makeup stuff. I said to one of the guys, go downstairs, third floor, go down to the parking lot, get on top of the car and splay yourself like you jumped out of the window out of the car. So he did. Teacher comes in and there's a bunch of us at the window going, oh my God, he jumped, oh my God. And she looked out and she screamed, ah! Runs down, got the principal,

And so, hey, come on. So he jumped off and came back up another stairway. And yeah, just stuff like that. It just seemed harmless. Hey, might as well. Something to do, sort of, you know, just stuff. I love, you are a bundle like we all are. But one thing that I love is I always, because sometimes we're so different in many ways.

I did not, I had an easier upbringing, you know, I think in some way. Well, your father was an archeologist, right? Right. Yeah. And all of that stuff. But what I'm driving as whenever I, whenever I see you and I haven't seen you for a while, there's that, I mean, I grab you, I hug you and we both laugh and giggle over just all the fun we had on chairs and all the memories and,

You've got that soft giggler inside of you. Oh, yeah. Which I love. I mean, you're a cream puff. Even raising kids, I would look for ways to embarrass them in public. Just to make them laugh. No. Just to make yourself laugh. Well, they deserve this. I'm picking up my daughter from high school.

And the door to the high school is like that wall. Everyone's coming out of there. So I pull the car up right here. I'm no more than 25 feet. I get out of the car, stand there, and everyone's coming out. Here's my daughter with her friends right there. I go, Tony, here. I'm right here. There's no other parent anywhere.

And there's no way she can miss me. Honey, can you see? I'm here. I'm here by the car. You see the car? Come on. And she'd go like this. Oh, no. That's my father. But her friends would go. They'd be hysterical, laughing. But I really enjoyed that.

I noticed with my grandkids, all my silly jokes that work great when they're five, six. Man, I can't get the 11-year-old to laugh at any of my stupid jokes anymore. Male or female? Female. I'll find another way. Don't worry. Embarrassing them at school helps. I'm sorry about that. Try it. I embarrass my daughter all the time. She's sitting right over there. She's 17.

Hi. Yeah. I'm one of your dad's old buddies from the old days when we were in the Army. But she really, she has done some serious eye rolling for me like many a times. I've given her eyes immense amount of exercise. I don't know. I embarrass her, but not intentionally. Oh, I always do it intentionally. I think they need it. Mary follows behind me in life going, he was kidding.

That was a joke. He was kidding. What he meant was, you know, because you do love to kind of push the envelope and say the most slightly inappropriate thing you can find. Well, yeah, that's true. That's a good point. I remember picking my daughter up. So she was in a high-end middle school where the kids are picked up either by the chauffeurs picking them up or a maid or, you know, limousine. I mean, it was high-end stuff.

Well, I was putting in a basketball court at our house, and I decided to take the truck that I had, what do you call it, Bobcat? Yeah. A little small bulldozer. So it's a big diesel flatbed. So I picked her up in that from school. She still remembers. Oh, that's great. Mercedes, Porsche, blah, blah, blah.

diesel truck and she just looked at him oh dad but she jumped up you know rode home in it i think at the end of the day they were kind of they liked it yeah and let me switch gears one second because i want to talk about pixar you've just had an astounding kind of run with pixar how do you i mean how do you feel about all that well it's just uh i you know showed up uh

And did it and became good friends with them. So they asked me to do every one. You're like their good luck. You're talisman for them. Not anymore. I don't work with Pixar anymore. Oh, really? I think because... Once you made them big, they just... Yeah. Who needs a lucky charm? No, I think, well, because there was a change of hierarchy. And I guess the new guys...

Didn't want the lucky charm. But I still work with John Lasseter over at Skydance. Yeah. That's the company that makes Jack Reacher, Mission Impossible, and all that stuff. So they have an animation wing, and John's running that wing. So I work with them there. Just doing voices. I cannot get arrested in any kind of voiceover work. I'll come in and audition. They go, that's great, man. You should be doing this a lot. Then I never hear from them.

I kind of love it because it feels like I'm starting over in one area, but I cannot get arrested. See, I find that strange. Thank you. He's got a great voice, doesn't he? Great voice. Yeah, well, both of you. I'll put a word in. Please. Would you talk to John? Now, what about the—I remember when you were first doing the sizzle pack.

Oh, my. Yeah. Let's talk about that. That's great. That thing. And then I saw it everywhere. I still see it everywhere. Oh, it's all over the world. Yeah. Sizzle pack. Describe it. It's instead of styrofoam and all that horrible stuff that doesn't go away. Little pieces of paper. Well, you can describe it better. No, it's the same paper that paper bags made from craft paper. You take a strip of it and then fold it back on itself. You accordionize it and

papers, the memory wants to get back to its original shape. You put a lot of them together, they interlock. So it's perfect medium for shipping fragile items. And I started that company up in Seattle and then

But that included like a factory making all this. So it was Walker's do that. Made the machines even. You helped design the machines? Oh, yeah. Thank you, mom. Thank you, mom. Oh, really? But it was just, you know, then I sold the company and they sold the company and they sold. So it's somebody is, I don't know who's in charge now, but it's worldwide now. Yeah. Yeah, it was brilliant. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't get paid a cent anymore. So whatever work you guys can throw my way, I appreciate it. Shit, we're counting on the crinkle paper. Now, you know, the other thing you taught me that I'll never forget was one day you came in and you were saying that you'd been up north or something and...

or in Montana or somewhere, and you said, you know, that those national parks have like a scenic strip that's maybe 100 yards, and the rest is just freaking clear-cut, and that they were clear-cut in our national forests. Remember? Oregon, yeah. Oregon.

And, uh, and I was like, well, nobody wanted to believe that. None of us wanted to believe that. But then I went up there and I was like, oh my freaking God. Is that when you sat in a tree for a week or something? Didn't you do that once? He climbed the Golden Gate Bridge. Yeah. Well, that was, yeah, that was for the Redwoods. But, uh.

But I'd never, I'd never, I mean, you can't even imagine that the United States government is selling for like, I don't know, $8 a tree. These giant, beautiful, amazing fucking trees to the big companies. And, you know, you can go into the guy's office and I went into the office of one guy who was the...

head of the interior anyway there's like a message from reagan saying congratulations on cutting so many bored feet out of the forest you know and i'm like you know it just everything and it didn't create that many jobs correct me if i'm wrong but i think a lot of that wood then got shipped to be milled overseas right right it's you the law was you can't uh

a whole tree. It has to be milled. So what they would do to get around that law, they'd just cut this wide of a patch down the side of the tree. So now legally, you can ship it. And they would ship it to Japanese milling ships just off the coast here. After the 12 mile, they would turn it into wooden boards and sell it back to us. Yeah. So we were creating no jobs except for the... No.

And one other thing I wanted to mention. You said that you got the place out near Palm Springs, Mirage? Rancho Mirage. Rancho Mirage. And why did you say you wanted to get that place? Yeah, so when they come to visit, I don't know, he's not answering. I was like, what's that smell? Oh, that's Johnny. Yeah, so somebody find the body, otherwise...

I'll be there for months. I love that morbid humor. Just stick it up the place. Yeah, no, it's important because it's just, I was just with my daughter and two granddaughters this weekend. They came out to the hotel. I was staying there out in Westlake. And it's just, you know, just watching them and listening to them. And them at night going out on the balcony pretending they were dogs.

You know, barking at the people in the swimming pool. That's great. It's what they should do. Yeah. Yeah. And oh, also my daughter, she was saying how much she enjoyed your Christmas cards. Oh. Remember this? We set up the cards at

He and Mary, the family, dressed as a dance troupe. We didn't actually dance. We did dance poses. Right. That's what we were famous for. And then the next year, he set out to...

CD of the backstory. This is my wife, Mary. We actually had full-on wardrobe department and catering for that particular shoot. Well, yeah. Needless to say, thank you. You got a big kick out of that. I am so appreciative of that compliment. Please tell her thank you. Now, tell the truth on this one. Do you ever watch Cheers episodes? Not when we were making them. No, now.

If I can find them, why do they do that? Why do they have our show on at 4 in the morning? And they got King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond, you know, friends, bum, bum, bum, all day long, one right after the other. But for us, it's 4.30 in the morning. Is that why I ain't been seeing any residuals on this dealio? Probably. Yeah. Probably. But really, that's...

Because again, you know, I just did 4,000 miles and hotels and stuff. There's no cheers anywhere but all those other ones. So I always wondered that. I think you can still find it, but it's getting harder. But you shouldn't have to search that hard for it. I agree. Well, I was wondering why they did that if there was a reason.

You would know. I think that's when that age group gets up to pee and they're hoping the TV will be on and they'll notice. Oh, hey. Probably. Oh, look, there I am. Johnny, much love. Yeah. Much appreciation. God bless you both. Cannot tell you how many times you've made me laugh since being on the show. I mean, just watching old episodes, you are one funny, funny man. So fucking funny, man.

That was the great John Ratzenberger. Thank you, John, so much for spending that time with me and Woody. We appreciate you so much. That's it for this episode. Thanks to our friends at Team Coco. Once again, you can subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast app, and you can give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you have some time. If you haven't already,

If you don't have time, don't. And if you like watching your podcast, don't forget you can watch this episode in its entirety on YouTube. See you right back here next week. Everybody knows your name. You've been listening to where everybody knows your name with Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson. Sometimes the show is produced by me, Nick Leal.

Executive producers are Adam Sachs, Colin Anderson, Jeff Ross, and myself. Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer. Our senior producer is Matt Apodaca. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Grawl. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista. Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Gann, Mary Steenburgen, and John Osborne. Special thanks to Willie Navarro. We'll have more for you next time where everybody knows your name.

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