Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 115. Dick Miller
Episode Date: August 8, 2016Revered character actor Dick Miller has appeared in nearly 200 movies and dozens of TV shows, working for directors Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, Samuel Fuller, Robert Zemeckis and Martin Scorsese and ...sharing the screen with everyone from Boris Karloff to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Dick looks back on some unforgettable moments from his storied, six-decade career, reveals the odd turn of events that landed him in showbiz and reflects on his numerous collaborations with B-movie maestro Roger Corman. Also, Dick meets James Cagney, praises Rondo Hatton, disses The Ramones and writes "Which Way to the Front?" PLUS: "A Bucket of Blood"! Brother Theodore! "Rancho Bikini"! Dick (sort of) explains "The Terror"! And the mystery of the pink jacket! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Our guest this week is a legendary and much-loved actor who's appeared in well over a hundred films,
including Gremlins, The Terminator, Piranha, Used Cars 1941, The Howling, New York, New York, White Line Fever, Inner Space,
Twilight Zone, the movie, Rock and Roll, High School, and of course, A Bucket of Blood,
the original Shop of Horrors, Little Shop of Horrors, and a personal favorite of this show, the Terra. TV appearances include Dragnet,
The Untouchables, Bonanza, Manic, Soap, Police Squad, Fame, and Star Trek, Deep Space Nine.
In his long and lively, incredible career, he's worked with everyone from Boris Karloff to Jack Nicholson to George C. Scott to former
podcast guests Bruce Dern, Joe Dante, and Roger Corman.
Please welcome one of the busiest and most visible performers of the last 60 years.
New World's Pictures' good luck charm, Dick Miller.
Dick.
That's wonderful.
I'm with you.
Now, Dick, before we get to anything else, in case we hear some barking,
you own some chihuahuas.
Oh, yeah, I have them, yeah.
And what do you call them?
What is Connie?
No, but...
He's not talking about that.
He's talking about the fact that they eat chicken soup all the time,
so we call them Jew-ow-as.
Jew-ow-as.
So your Jew-ow-as might start barking.
Yes.
One is Connie and one is Monet, and they, we hope, won't start barking.
That's fine.
That's Dick's lovely wife, Lainey, who's joining us for our listeners.
Now, when
we had the great Dick Van
Dyke on recently,
and he told us a story
that he and Orson Bean
used to go to the zoo
together to look at
this one old monkey
who would smoke a cigar
and jerk off.
Now, Dick Miller, do you have a monkey story?
No, but I do the same thing.
I smoke.
Sometimes I go to public, to the zoo and do it.
Sometimes I go to public, to the zoo and do it.
So you're at that point now where you smoke cigars and jerk off in public.
Okay.
Now, you had a work with a monkey one time, an unruly monkey.
I did a picture called White Dog.
I was supposed to work with some very talented chimpanzees and I got a call the night before to say the chimps are
not going to work with you because they picked up one of the crew
and threw him about 20 feet and he's
not in good condition. I've got a little monkey for you
who weighs about 30 pounds and he'll do. You're kind of out of condition. I've got a little monkey for you.
He weighs about 30 pounds, and he'll do.
I get to this little monkey, and the trainer is there, and he's saying, here, put on the side back.
It has grapes in it and raisins and little snacks like that.
And then every 10 seconds, give him a little grape.
He'll shut up.
He'll be nice and quiet.
But if you find him nibbling on you, I said, wait a second.
What do you mean nibbling?
He's the one who likes to nibble.
You know, he bites a little.
It's not important.
It can't hurt you.
But I said, I ain't going to work with a monkey that bites me.
He says, no, it's all right. It can't hurt you. But I was like, I ain't going to work with a monkey. He said, bite me. He says, no, it's all right.
I won't bite you. He said,
throw me on my lines off.
He says, don't worry about him.
Just, here's what you do.
If he bites you, you grab him by
the neck and you bite him.
I said, what?
He says, you bite the monkey
on the neck.
Don't hurt him. I said, I? He says, you bite the monkey on the neck. Don't hurt him.
I said, I don't know.
I'll do my own thing.
I'm pretty good with animals.
I'll tell him to shut up.
He'll shut up.
We get into the scene.
We're working at it.
We do our lines.
The monkey starts biting me.
And I hear,
bite the monkey.
And I'm saying, why does he
bite the monkey?
We
finish the scene. I said,
see how quiet he
got now? He says,
we got to change.
Look at yourself. The monkey
had peed on me.
So I said, oh, we'll get it.
We change our clothes.
We get back into the thing.
We work the shot again.
The monkey starts biting me.
I hear, bite the monkey.
Bite the monkey.
I said, no, no, no.
The monkey stops. We bite the monkey. I said, no, no, no. The monkey stops.
We finish the scene.
We say, we've got to do it again.
He said, what's the matter?
He says, pardon the expression, he shit on you.
I looked down, my clothes are ruined, my wardrobe is getting run out.
He says, try it one more time.
We go through the scene,
the monkey starts biting me.
I grab him by the neck
and I bite him on the neck.
And they said,
he shuts up.
He doesn't say another word.
I finished the scene.
It's perfect.
They said,
how do you like that?
I said, that's wonderful
he says
so
whenever you
think you know something more than
somebody else in this business
you're wrong
bite the monkey
it's a lesson in life, right?
right Dick?
it was a lesson it was, right? Right, Dick? It was a lesson.
It was a good thing to learn in Hollywood.
There's always some producer that should get a little bite.
Yeah.
Gilbert, you work with a monkey.
Oh, yes.
I worked with a monkey in, oh, first, I think it was first on, was it on?
Oh, it was on Up All Night.
Right.
And then I auditioned.
It was the three orangutans, and they were going to do a show called Mr. Smith.
And I guess one of the orangutans didn't like me, so they did not hire me for that.
But you, okay, you were in a movie that's a favorite here, and that's The Terror with
Boris Karloff and a totally unknown actor named Jack Nicholson.
Jack was beautiful in that.
He was a really lousy actor.
He was beautiful in that.
He was really lousy actor.
Well, Gilbert said on numerous occasions that you wouldn't think that Jack Nicholson was going to have this storied career if you look at his work in those movies.
It's terrible.
The next picture, he was brilliant. He went on to do this fabulous, fabulous career.
Dude has a fabulous, fabulous career.
Yeah.
You look at those early films he did,
and you think Jack Nicholson better find another line of work.
Because acting isn't it.
But now in the terror, everyone who talks,
everyone involved in it says there's no story. No one knows what the hell the movie is about. So they
put in a scene where Jack Nicholson
throws you against the wall and you have to
somehow explain the story.
I do a wonderful job. In about two minutes
I tell the whole story, what's supposed to be the story.
That was beautiful.
And I remember when I watched that, I thought, the movie made no sense before,
but after that explanation, it makes even less sense.
What was Boris Karloff like to work with?
He was beautiful.
This is a gentleman.
He could barely walk.
I mean, he goes up and down the stairs.
We'd shoot, we'd get him up four steps.
They said, just come down the last four steps.
That's all.
Looks like you came down a long flight.
He was a wonderful man.
And with that movie, I heard it was that
they had this castle left over from one of their A pictures.
Yeah. And Boris Karloff owed them three
days work. So they figured they figured well we just film him
we don't care if we have a movie or not
film Karloff
that was probably it
he was working on a picture for Roger Corman
they finished the picture early
and he had about three days left on the contract and
Roger wanted to use him
again.
And they said, well, what do we shoot?
He said, it doesn't matter. We've got this.
We've got costumes. We've got
this castle. We've got these
huge rooms. You just
be there. We'll move you around.
And that was it.
We shot it.
They shot for over the weekend.
And they had no story.
Right.
There really wasn't a story.
They had no script, nothing.
It wasn't until about three months later, I got a call from Roger.
And he says, we're going to shoot says, we're going to finish that picture.
I said, what picture?
He says, the Terror.
I said, what's the Terror?
We worked with Boris Karloff for a couple of days.
He says, well, we finally got a script on it.
I said, okay.
That was it.
The thing was, it was done in like two parts.
It wasn't Coppola?
Didn't Francis Ford Coppola work on the second part, Dick?
Pardon me?
Didn't Francis Ford Coppola work on the second part when Roger resumed?
Yes, he did.
I think it was his first picture.
He was a nice young guy.
Went on to great things. And I heard that they just basically got Karloff in there and said,
okay, walk over to that side of the room and shake your head.
And they give him directions like that.
That's really what happened.
There was no script at all.
They had a few lines they made up all. They had a few lines. They made up,
uh,
they gave them a few lines.
Uh,
they said,
walk here,
walk there,
come down the stairs,
change costume,
come down the stairs.
Oh,
and I heard you wrote a Jerry Lewis movie.
Oh, yeah.
Laney's reacting.
We should tell our listeners that we can see Dick.
We're on Skype, and we can see Dick and his wife, Laney,
and she's reacting to all of these questions.
Yeah, she kind of cringed.
I wrote a little thing called Which Way to the Front.
I hate to say it now, but it wasn't written for Jerry Lewis.
It was a very, very funny picture.
Did you have anybody in mind that you wrote it for, Dick, or was it just?
I was just writing scripts.
It would have been perfect for you.
Oh, thank you.
What a compliment. This would have been perfect for you. Oh, thank you. What a compliment.
This would have been beautiful if you had done it.
And somebody talked me out of it.
They said, we got somebody for it.
And I said, okay, fine.
And I saw the ads in the trade papers, which way to the front,
which way to the front, blah, blah, blah.
And I wasn't mentioned.
And when the picture came out, I said,
something's wrong here.
We took it to the Union and they finally gave it to me.
After
Jerry Lewis got it
and he changed it from the
Pacific Theater of War
to the European Theater of War with Hitler and the Nazis and everybody else.
And yeah, that was it.
That's why I cringed because he actually had to litigate, you know, to get his credit.
You had to go to the writer's guild.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good for you.
to get his credit.
You had to go to the Writers Guild.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good for you.
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And now back to the show.
A little bit about since
roger's coming up so much and we actually had roger on this show dick he was one of our first
guests and i'd also like to say that when gilbert and i started the podcast one of the first names
we wrote down was your name was dick miller we said if we're if we're gonna what's that
you spelled it right yes we did we said if we going to do a show about the history of Hollywood and cult movies and all the things we love, you've got to have Dick Miller on the show.
So we're glad we finally have you here.
But tell us a little bit about first meeting Roger, because you went to L.A., you went to Hollywood to write, to write science fiction stories, didn't you?
Yeah, yeah.
I'd been working in New York for a band leader named Bobby Sherwood.
And we closed down for the summer.
And he said, what are you going to do?
I said, I don't know.
I'm going to sit around here and watch both of us starve to death.
Go out to California.
I can, you know, go out there for a few months.
I came out here and I was writing.
And I wrote my tale off.
Were you writing short stories, screenplays?
What were you writing in particular?
I was writing screenplays.
I had never written one.
I didn't know why even my fork might have been thrown.
But a friend of mine was working for Roger Carman,
who had just, by the way, had only made about two pictures at the time.
And he was going out to him, and he says, come on out with me.
He says, we'll talk about your writing.
Maybe we could sell him something.
I said, okay, good deal.
We got out there. We blah, blah, blah. We're talking. He said, where'll talk about your writing. Maybe we could sell him something. I said, okay, good deal. We got an idea.
We blah, blah, blah.
We're talking.
He says, where are you from?
I said, I'm from New York.
He says, what do you do?
I said, I'm a writer.
He says, that's too bad.
He says, we don't need writers.
He says, we could use some actors.
I said, I'm an actor.
I'd never done a picture.
Right.
You had no formal acting training?
I had some, but not for movies.
Right.
I went to theater school, dramatic arts in New York when I was a kid.
So about two weeks later, I got a call from him.
He said, come on, are you going to work on this in acting?
I never told him.
I didn't work it.
I played an Indian, thank God.
An Apache woman.
Yeah, now in that picture, you played the Indian,
and then what did Roger Corman say to you afterwards,
after you completed your Indian filming?
I don't know.
Oh, he wanted you, he asked you to play a cowboy.
Me?
Oh.
Yes.
Oh, an Apache woman, yeah.
This wasn't over.
This was the same picture.
Yeah.
In an Indian, I worked on it for a couple of, about three, four days in India.
I finished the part and I just said, I'd just like to do a cowboy.
I said, shoot another picture.
He says, no, in the same picture.
He says, I did an Indian for you.
He says, you had makeup on.
No, no.
So I came back the next day and I played a townsman.
I love it.
And I think you wind up shooting yourself.
I did.
Yeah, the townsman shoots the Indian.
So you shoot yourself.
We had the Indian die in it.
He just died.
Nobody ever, we never saw the opposite side.
And I'm on there.
He says, you've got to go out with the people, with the Nazis.
You've got to get to fight with the Indians.
I said, what happens if I shoot myself?
And you did.
I did.
Yeah.
And you made a, you started making a lot of pictures for Corman at that point.
And I think one of the things Gilbert and I love is not of this earth,
where you played the vacuum cleaner salesman.
Yes.
Where you actually changed your dialogue.
Because you'd had a little bit of experience as a door-to-door salesman.
Am I right?
Because you'd had a little bit of experience as a door-to-door salesman, am I right?
Sometimes.
Changing my dialogue came with that picture.
Up until then, everything was letter perfect.
I came up to him and said, Roger, these guys don't talk like this.
He says, well, we got it. I said, let me just add a little bit.
And it worked.
And on the next picture, I added a little more. And the next picture, I added a little bit. And it worked. And on the next picture, I had a little more.
And the next picture, I had a little more.
And pretty soon, I was writing a script.
It worked.
And another movie that's a favorite of all your fans,
and that's A Bucket of Blood.
Walter Paisley.
And that movie movie it's like
you're a nibbish
who hangs out in this cool
beatnik bar
and you're never the cool guy
there
and then
as I remember
the landlady's cat
gets trapped under your
wall somehow.
And to get the cat out, you shove a knife through the wall and accidentally wind up killing the cat.
Poor cat.
Yeah.
And then you cover it with clay and everyone thinks it's the greatest sculpture in the world
and you become like the talk of the community.
Well, you're told that much of the picture.
How does it end?
I'm interested.
Listen to this.
You're just writing it.
What do you remember about making that one?
I love that picture.
This was,
uh,
except for the money.
Yeah.
I've never had much money.
No,
but this was a classic.
It was,
I,
I,
I really think is one of the best things Roger ever done as a director.
And I think the story was there, and I think everything was there.
It's just that, you know, some of the statues looked a little like models.
It's a fun little satire, that movie.
You know, it's smart.
It's a lot of fun to watch.
It is.
And, oh, this actor, Ed nelson is in it yeah he went on he
did something he did a couple of series and uh he had a nice career i'd love to bring up war of the
satellites uh dick because that because that movie if i have the story right that's the movie that
laney your wife who's sitting next to you saw you in do we have this story right, that's the movie that Lainey, your wife, who's sitting next to you, saw you in? Do we have this story right?
That's right.
I did.
And what did you say,
Lainey, when you saw him up on the big screen?
Oh, my
infamous line, especially
for a little Toronto
Jewish girl.
That guy
could put his shoes under my bed
every time.
Same country
at the time.
And you were
on a date with a guy
when you said this.
I love it.
And you wouldn't...
Go ahead.
Then I came down to Hollywood.
Right.
And I was introduced to him in Schwab's Drugstore.
Oh, yes.
You met...
Was it two years later after you'd said that in the movie theater?
About?
Well, let's see.
About then, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a nice Hollywood story. It's a nice Hollywood story.
It's a nice Hollywood romance, the way it worked out.
And you were also in another favorite of ours,
and that's The Man with the X-Ray Eyes with Ray Moland.
Oh, yeah.
And Don Rickles.
I got to remember these things when you come up with them.
There's a lot of pictures.
Oh, I know, I know.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you did so many.
Yeah.
What do you remember about Rickles in that movie or Ray Moland, Dick?
Only Rickles I remember.
I knew Don from New York.
The great himself comic.
He said, they came up to him after the
summit scenes were shot. He says, I don't know
what to do with this guy. He says
he and his partner
are ad-libbing
ad-libbing then
are ad-libbing funny lines.
He says, what do I do with him?
It was nice.
And what about Rain the Lion?
Another gentleman.
Another gentleman.
Fine, fine, fine actor.
Yeah, won an Oscar for The Lost Weekend.
And when you were offered Little Shop of Horrors,
you thought that the character was a little bit too much like the character in Bucket of Blood,
and you decided to pass up the lead?
Or pass up the part?
I was offered the lead in that.
It seemed like we were doing Bucket of Blood again
and there weren't very many series of pictures then.
They didn't do Bucket of Blood 1, Bucket of Blood 2.
So I said,
I don't want to do this character.
It's a good chance
for me to pay back the actor
who introduced me to Roger,
Jonathan Hayes.
So I said, why don't you give the part to Jonathan?
I'll do anything else in the picture
and I won't
do the lead.
And you wound up playing the guy that eats flowers.
I'm so sorry.
Who knew they were going to make another picture like this?
It was going to be a Broadway show.
It was going to have his songs.
I'm so sorry.
And you worked with another one of our guests, Bruce Stern, a number of times.
Yeah, I've worked with Bruce a few times.
The Trip?
For one?
No, with Valentine's Day Massacre.
Right.
The Trip?
The Trip. Yeah, that's the one where Roger took acid. Right. The trip? The trip.
Yeah, that's the one where Roger took acid.
Yeah.
That's right.
With Peter Fonda.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I watched the two of them get high.
Were you around?
We talked to Roger about this.
Were you around when he took acid on the set of the trip?
No.
No.
I still doubt it.
And before you were an actor,
you were a boxer at one time?
No, I was in the Navy during the war.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not old, really.
Yeah.
And I decided to try something.
It was a little boring what we were doing.
I decided to go out for the boxing team.
I never boxed.
I never tried anything like it.
And they gave me a fight, and I won.
They gave me another fight, and I won.
By then, they decided there were no people in this class.
I weighed 112 pounds.
I was a flyweight.
They said the only ones we got are these little Filipino mess cooks.
There's nobody to fight.
We'll make you the champ.
In two fights, I was made champ.
And I had two more fights,
and I was champ of those.
The last fight,
that guy beat my brains out.
I was bleeding from every orifice.
Wow.
And I said, I don't want to fight anymore.
And I quit.
And you never got cast as a boxer in your long career, interestingly.
No, no.
And you...
Well, he was cast as a pedophile, and he doesn't do that in real life.
You're right.
What was that movie?
Was he a pedophile priest?
Yes. Yes. And what was the movie? Was he a pedophile priest? Yes.
And what was the movie, Dick?
I forgot its name.
It was with the guy who won the award from Dust Boot.
Yeah, it did.
And a German female star.
I can't remember the name of the movie.
Our listeners will come up with it.
Pedophile priest.
And you, because you did a bunch of films for
american international which was a really low budget company and you used to go up for auditions
and meetings and they would ask you what you've done and remember and you would tell them, I worked for American International
Pictures. And how did they react to that?
I think I got
the long promise. They said,
we'll get in touch with you. The long promise.
Never heard from him again.
So American International was basically the kiss of death of getting something good.
It was.
I'll tell you a funny thing.
American International then was the kiss of death.
But they could see that these pictures have held up for 50, 60 years.
Yes.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, some of them are quite good.
And they don't remember the other pictures from the big studios
of the guys who said they would call me another day.
Dick, I've heard you say you're a bad auditioner.
Why is that?
Again, I guess it's the ad-libbing.
I don't really feel a part right away.
Yeah.
I like to go into it slowly or something, you know.
Right.
I've never been wrong.
I've never really been wrong in this.
My judgment seems to be right.
Did you ever do any method acting?
I mean, I'd be curious to know what you're feeling about that.
Are you kind of a guy that reads the script, shows up, and hits his marks?
That's it.
Yeah.
But the thought process is in there.
Right.
Now, you, I guess we have this in common,
you also worked with the Ramones.
You in Rock and Roll High School.
Oh, I love that movie.
Yeah, that was, we, the Ramones were there.
I remember when I was playing a police chief,
and we were shooting on a high school that's long been condemned.
And it's a dangerous neighborhood
if you don't know the area.
And I was told by the assistant director,
he came over and he said,
don't wear your coat.
Don't wear your coat until we're ready to shoot.
And I said, why?
He says, you make a shot
it's a nice neighborhood
the remotes again again they had a uh a follower with him called a clown or something
uh and he would you run errands for them and do things for them. And there was a little
girl and we were shooting at night and she was going to have a birthday. And they said,
we're going to celebrate your birthday at 12 o'clock. And she, nice, we cut up a cake. They brought in a beautiful cake. And this
schmuck, he ran
over to the cake, the clown,
and he starts
with both hands. He dove in.
He smears it all over his face.
And the Ramones broke up.
They thought he was hysterical.
And I said, what are you going to do about the cake?
You asked me once why I never boxed
this was one time I was boxing
and I grabbed the guy by the collar
and I said
you're going to go out and get a cake for this girl
right now
he says it's 11 o'clock at night
we're in a dangerous neighborhood
where am I going to get a cake
I said I don't care you I going to get a cake? I said, I don't care. You're going to get a cake.
Great story.
He got a cake.
Oh, good for you, Dick.
But I never
boxed again.
But suffice it to
say you came away unimpressed
with the Ramones.
He thought they were
ugly.
Yeah, that's on record.
What an ad-lib.
There's my ad-lib.
Right.
I had this long speech at the end.
Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.
And it went on and on.
And the camera goes out of me, and I said,
they're ugly.
And that was it.
And you were in a movie that was like basically a blaxploitation movie, TNT Jackson. Oh, he wrote the screenplay for TNT Jackson.
Oh, you wrote the screenplay?
Oh, yeah, yeah, I did.
I forgot.
That's what I'm here for, Dick.
Oh, God, yeah.
Yeah, I wrote a nice little picture.
We're going to shoot it in the Philippines.
And halfway through it, I got into an argument or something with Roger.
I wish I could remember that.
He wanted to
rewrite and you did not want
to rewrite. Oh, Laney remembers.
Oh, I remember.
And I
we just called it quits, kind
of in the middle of it. And I had
a good point that I had written
myself the lead in it.
The white lead.
And myself the lead in it. The white lead. So I never did it.
But he apologized.
I'll never forget this. He didn't even
wait 24 hours. He called
up Dad tonight. He said,
I'm sorry.
Roger apologized
for rewriting your script?
He was apologized for
he had, in the
when the argument happened,
Roger got up from the desk.
He doesn't wear shoes.
It's a little known fact
about Roger. Interesting.
And he walked,
he kicked a lamp or something, he broke a lamp and he walked. He kicked a lamp
or something. He broke a lamp and he walked
out of the office in his stocking feet.
And that's what he apologized
for.
He's a swell guy. You guys have been friends
a long time.
Yeah. Both Gilbert and I watched
the documentary, Dick.
We watched That Guy, Dick Miller,
which we have to recommend to our listeners.
It's a hoot. Oh, by all means, tell them where they can get one. Lainey? Yes, at guydickmiller.com,
we have them for sale. Okay. And we'd appreciate if you want to get one that you go there to get
it because it helps us mitigate our costs.
I know some people have gone to Amazon or here or there, but we appreciate it from us.
Okay, so we'll repeat that.
So go, if you want to see the documentary, which is terrific, all about Dick's career and his history with Roger and Joe Dante and everybody else, go to thatguydickmiller.com. And it's a perfect title because as anyone,
if anyone listening now doesn't know the name Dick Miller,
you just Google it and look at your face and everyone goes,
oh, that guy.
Yeah.
That's right.
It just got nominated for the Rondo Hatton Class of the Year Award.
There's a Rondo Hatton Award?
I love it.
It's the 14th annual year for it, so if everybody wants to go and vote for it.
How do you do this?
It's online.
Okay.
If you go to thatguydickmiller.com,
and down at the, other than the store for where you're buying the DVD,
down at the bottom is the link to go to the Facebook,
That Guy Dick Miller Facebook,
and you will see a cinematographer put up
there the
thing from this award
and it tells you just how to do it. You do it
right online. Have to do it. The Rondo
Hatton Award. And for anyone
out there
unfamiliar with Rondo Hatton,
he was a guy with
acromegaly
that distorted his whole face and body.
And so they would cast him in these horror movies where they didn't need to make him up.
Yeah, he was the creeper.
Yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
And the funny part was he was the sweetest guy in the world.
Oh, you knew Rondo Hatton?
Wow.
Wait a minute.
I met him 50 years ago, so I don't even know when he died or anything.
Tell us about Rondo Haddon.
I never met anyone who knew Rondo Haddon.
Nothing.
There's nothing I can tell you about him.
I met him at, I think it was some kind of a social function.
They let him come to those?
Yeah, they unleashed him.
But he was a nice guy, Ronald Adam?
Nice guy.
They never let him speak.
Very rarely he had a very soft voice.
It's a fascinating character.
Dick, I'm going to
force you to jog your memory. There's a scene
in the documentary where you're
opening a drawer of unproduced screenplays.
Can you tell us what
helped? There's a spy in my bed?
That's a good comedy.
You got a backup?
You never know.
I sell it cheap.
I love the title.
And also there was one called Rancho Bikini.
I'm thinking of making that one.
Yeah, yeah.
My wife wants to produce that one.
Yeah, I'm thinking of making that one. I love it. And you were in a couple, you worked on to produce that one. Yeah, I'm thinking of speaking to her.
I love it.
And you were in a couple, you worked on a couple of movies,
I guess borderline porn for their day,
like Night School Nurses or Night Call Nurses.
Oh, there was Student Nurses too, yeah.
Yeah.
I did a series of the American International Series.
I did a series of the American International Series.
I called nurses, the student nurses, the naked nurses, the almost naked nurses.
There were more.
I don't know.
I don't know where we are in radio land where you can say dirty words.
Oh, it's a podcast. You can say whatever you want.
Anything you want to say.
There were more titties shown in those
pictures.
So they were porn
in those days. Right.
So
these were as close as
you could have gotten to porn back
then.
There's also that scene in the documentary.
Is it Demon Knight?
The one with the tales from the Crip movie?
Yes.
Where you're surrounded by topless women.
And I heard...
20 topless girls and me.
It's not a bad way to make a living, huh?
It was a vacation for him.
It's not a bad way to make a living, huh?
It was a vacation for him.
How many reshoots did you want to do on that?
We took about 17, 18 takes.
From good old one-take Miller. Yeah, tell us where one-take Miller came from.
It came from one take.
Because Roger didn't have the money to do two takes?
No, he always had money for two
and three takes, but I
always got it in one.
And you were
in a movie,
I think called Evil Toon?
Evil Toon.
I know that.
Oh, yeah. Tell us the plot of that one. I don't know. Evil Twins I know that oh yeah
tell us the plot of that one
I don't know
because I
I would get a call
come in and do my stuff and get out
there's one scene
and they said
it was too much even for you
there was one scene
you're standing there,
and there's a pretty girl in front of you,
and then she opens her mouth, and she's got giant fangs.
And then she disappears out of view,
like getting down on her knees.
So basically, she gives you a, well, let's put it frankly, a very deadly blowjob.
Oh, yeah, I do remember that.
It's coming back.
With blowjob, you remembered it.
Thankfully, I remember it. My wife's sitting right next to me what are you exactly
what's he supposed to say now what was it like shooting that one uh i don't know
i seem to have that one scene in my mind.
There's another scene in the doc where you guys, and Laney, it's kind of touching,
where you talk about that even though Dick was working constantly,
you know, that Roger never had any money.
You guys always struggled financially.
You couldn't take a honeymoon.
You couldn't even go on a vacation.
And then finally you went and you joined Dick on set of a Western that Roger was directing.
Called, it was.
I started out directing it, yes.
What's that?
Yeah, that's the one where he was replaced by the studio.
By Phil Carlson.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was one of those things.
Yeah.
That was our honeymoon.
Yeah. That was our honeymoon.
I think Roger should get a free ride on this.
Roger was still in that shooting for less money.
And he had a big budget then.
He had all kinds of cranes and all kinds of camera equipment.
And he said, we don't need those.
I can put this thing up on a roof, roof shoot down get the same effect you're not moving
in and he did and they said and then they said in fact take the other dolly the other high crane
and get it back to the studio what do we need two pieces of equipment that are identical. And they didn't like it.
Some guy there was figuring out the budget and figured out this much and
figured out that much.
And they sent the men over in the suits and they,
they had a meeting that night.
And I said, Roger, I got to go up and see him.
You know, he's, and they said, and got to go up and see him you know and they said
and the prop man said
I don't think you ought to go up there
the guys in the suits are up there
and they may see you
and they may recognize you
might not be good for your career
I said come on
I said worse than that
I said come on
and so I went up
went up to see him
yeah he says I'm being
replaced
yeah by Phil Carlson
yeah
go ahead
no I was just going to say
Phil Carlson went to work and I got hurt
oh yeah you injured your tailbone or something
on the shooting of that film?
Yeah, yeah.
Broke some bones in the bottom of my tail.
So I finished the picture that way.
And in the documentary,
that guy, Dick Miller, once again,
they talk about, and it's hard to believe nowadays that at one time there weren't cell phones.
And so you used to stay home.
Right.
Just to.
Oh, yeah.
That was it.
The old story.
I'm waiting for the call. I'm waiting for the phone call.
I'm waiting for the phone call.
But I knew that if my phone
rang, I got the job.
That's nice. So you would
sit by the phone pretty much
24 hours a day
because if you were out, you'd miss
the call.
That was it.
I stayed by that phone. If we went out of town and he got a call, he was it. I stayed by that phone.
If we went out of town and he got
a call, he'd leave and go
back. We went to Hawaii.
His older brother was teaching
criminology there at the time.
We went to visit. He got a
call and he left me there.
Work was important of course
and also
for anybody
who's seen
Pulp Fiction
most of them
don't realize at one point
you were in Pulp Fiction
at one point I was
I met
Tarantino.
Is that his name?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Out of the school.
Is that his name?
Unbelievable.
We shot the scene.
Harvey Geitel and I.
Beautiful little scene.
We went to the guest and crew screening
and we get out
on the lot
it's fine
and I go to get a theater
and she says
I don't see your name here
I said what do you mean
I'm a man of the
come on
and I walked in
and
Tarantino says
hi
you're not in the picture
and he goes on I said what he says yeah yeah you're not in the picture. And he goes on.
I said, what?
He says, yeah, yeah, you're not in the picture.
That was it.
That's how they notified me.
You're in the DVD, the special edition.
Yes.
Yeah.
That was very nice of the man, I think.
Well, it's a nice scene.
Nice, worth watching.
And it's you and Harvey
Keitel are so perfect together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's a gentleman. Really?
Tell us about Harvey Keitel.
I don't know anything about him.
Who's a bigger gentleman, Harvey or Rondo Hatton?
Now, you were in the Dirty Dozen.
I did?
Yeah.
Were you in the Dirty Dozen?
I saw it listed somewhere.
I think you did the voice work.
Oh, that's probably some voice work.
Yeah.
The list of films I made goes between
it's got everything in it
sometime I just did some voice work
for the picture
so
it's like
150 to
175 films
maybe 25 or so
I don't think it's that many but
I know that I'm a dirty dozen.
You did the voice work.
Yeah.
And then some Superman stuff, he did the voice work.
Superman?
Yeah.
Superman, Batman, I did those.
He did a lot of them.
Oh, yeah, Mask of the Phantasm.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a Batman picture.
And you used to be Bill Dice Richard Miller.
Yeah, when I first started, I was Richard Miller.
Then second, third, I forget which picture it was.
It was later than that because all of your Roger stuff,
if you looked in the office.
Then I switched to Dick.
We wouldn't have that subtitle if I didn't do that. Then I switched to Dick.
We wouldn't have that subtitle if I didn't do that.
When you see this picture, after you see this picture, you'll know Dick.
Right.
It's a good tagline.
What's the story of the pink jacket, Dick?
The pink sports jacket. Well, again,
Roger's
inability to furnish all
his wardrobe.
If I fit it into his
clothes, I'd have had
a wardrobe, but I didn't fit into it.
I used to bring my own
clothes, and I wore
this pink jacket.
Beautiful jacket. I still have it uh patch pockets
plaids pleats in it they're beautiful and uh next picture was something I needed another jacket for
I read the pink jacket came out I wore the pink pink jacket in about six or seven pictures. I love it.
And I think they started calling you Mr. Pink
Jacket after a while.
Did they?
Let's talk about your pal Joe Dante,
Dick, who we just had, Gilbert
and I just had on this show.
Joe Dante, yes.
Yeah, I know.
We were kind of moved by,
when he got the shot to make,
I'm trying to remember
if it was Hollywood Boulevard
or Piranha, maybe both,
and he said,
if I only get to make,
if it turns out I only get to make
one movie in my career,
I have to have Dick Miller in it.
Yeah, I know the story.
At the time, I didn't know it. I didn't know it for a long, long time. As a matter of fact, uh, Joe's the kind of guy, uh, he's always there. He's from New Jersey. Uh, he's a little Italian guy. He's beautiful.
little Italian guy. He's beautiful.
And I remember I had
cancer and a few other things.
And I'd wake up in
the hospital and Joe would be there.
He just came to see me.
Wow.
He's been at our family weddings.
He's become,
really, he's become like a son.
Yeah.
He's a good guy.
I don't know how that developed like that, but we're very, very close.
Wow.
That's nice to hear.
And you've done so much good work, and we love you in the howling.
Were you the Curio shop owner?
Very funny scene.
Because you're like this guy who thinks, who has all the stuff there,
the silver bullets, the books on the occult, and you think it's all bullshit.
He's a guy trying to make a buck.
What?
I said he's just a guy trying to make a buck.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
But it is my favorite part.
It's a small part.
It's just delightful.
I think it's closest to me
of any of the parts I've done.
It puts the greatest wit
in that movie
because the rest is all
the horror and the occult
and it's this guy going,
that's it.
You know,
I don't believe any of this shit.
Yeah.
And tell us about some of the other pictures you made with Joe.
Dick, you're in, obviously you're in Gremlins and Gremlins 2,
Murray Futterman.
You were in the Burbs.
Do you remember anything about a guy named Brother Theodore
when you were making the Burbs?
Brother Theodore, oh, yeah, Brother Theodore.
What I first remembered was I said, when you were making the burbs? Oh, yeah. Brother Theodore.
What I first remembered was I said,
is this the guy from New York City I used to see in the village
30 years ago?
You know, at the time,
I guess it was 30 years.
And it turned out to be him.
He was fabulous.
Yeah.
They could never capture this man's, what he was.
He used to tell these horror stories.
And that's it.
He would tell a story. He spent the night telling his story.
He would just tell these little stories.
He was wild.
And also Bruce Stern.
Again, yeah.
Yeah.
Bruce is, he's horrible too.
And Corey Feldman, a very young Corey Feldman was in that.
Yeah, Corey Feldman.
Good little Corey Feldman.
Got high all the time.
That shocks us.
Sweet little kid, little teenage kid.
Getting stoned all the time.
I love him.
I love him today.
I still see him once in a while.
I love him.
He's in the doc.
He turns up in the documentary.
Yeah.
What do you remember about some of these other roles?
Quick, Dick, and then we'll let you and Lainey get on with your lives.
But you were in the picture.
Do you know this picture, Gil?
Executive Action about the JFK assassination?
Oh, yes!
With Burt Lancaster?
Yes, yes!
And Robert Reinhardt.
Do you remember anything about making that one?
That was like in the 70s.
Yeah.
Assassination conspiracy movie.
I played one of the killers.
I played one of the killers.
We were, the theme was,
the picture was filmed on the premise that there were more than one killer.
Right.
And we were all members of the team.
And we went out to the desert to practice shooting.
In the story, in the script, we would do this. we were out in the desert shooting
and I went out there
a number of years later
was it you I was telling him?
Yes.
Who else was there?
No, no, no.
That's great.
We're pointing you to where I was shooting from.
And I said, come on, let's go up there.
And we were looking around.
I said, sure enough, we found cases.
Cases from the bullets.
Yeah, the casings.
Yeah, they're years old.
Yeah.
And I heard, I ran into you once before at an autograph convention and you told a story.
You were working on one of your movies and it was really awful and you wanted desperately to get off the movie.
Do you do either one of you remember this? And I think if I'm not mistaken, you went and got a haircut.
He took this was in during the terror.
He got pissed off and he took off his pants.
Pius.
Cyburn.
I told you.
Pius Cyburn.
It's Pius.
So, well, he didn't take her anyplace.
I don't remember a moil in the terror.
Pius, for those who... He told them to come back.
He had a stick phony ones on.
Yeah.
So, you tried to get out of it by shaving so they couldn't match it up again.
I've done little things like that.
And pay us for people who don't know.
That's what Hasidic Jews have those long hair that's like the sideburns that goes on.
I meant sideburns.
Well, yeah, it's the same thing, but long, long sideburns.
Now that you mention it, I do look like Mitch Miller.
There is a resemblance.
Now, you worked with an actor in a movie.
It's in the doc, too, in a movie called The Andersonville Trial.
And you played the court reporter because I was telling Gilbert that you draw a little bit, too.
You draw a lot.
I draw a lot.
I went to see.
I think it was George C. Scott's first direct journal picture.
And he went in there.
I said, what's the part?
He says, part of the club, the court reporter.
Everything is drawn in those days, no payment.
And I said, you mean like this?
And that's exactly what I said.
You mean like this?
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
And I held it up and showed it to George.
He said, perfect.
He says, you got the part.
Great.
What are your memories of George C. Scott?
One of our favorites.
He was a what?
Nobody.
I knocked nobody.
He was a nice guy.
He didn't lend
anything to my character.
And you work with two
favorites of Gil's and mine.
Dennis Hopper.
Yeah.
And Harry Dean Stanton. We wanted to ask you about those two guys.
Laney just
recoiled.
I've worked with some of these people too That's right, we should point out that Lainey was in The Graduate
that you were an actress too
And tell us the part you played in The Graduate, Lainey
Oh, I think that's self-explanatory
Okay, okay
I played the stripper.
And you're stripping and gyrating in front of Dustin Hoffman.
To make Catherine Ross's character upset
because he is nailing her mother and he's dating her and he purposely took her out to make
her upset so he took her to this strip place and i played that role and that's it's an if you're
going to do a film that's if that's an iconic film that's a film to be known for yes so yeah
that's a film no one will ever forget.
But what you worked, you said you worked with some of the people that we mentioned?
I worked as a script supervisor for a long time.
I see.
As well.
And I worked with Harry Dean Stanton and with Bruce Dern down Periscope.
So, yeah.
Now, Harry Dean Stanton and Dennis Hopper,
I imagine they were not always totally aware
of what was going on around them.
I guess they weren't.
Dennis, I imagine, was from a different school.
I'm not too sure what it was.
Nice boy, but, you know. You're an old pro.
I love it.
You don't disparage anybody you ever worked with.
I like that description of Dennis Hopper as nice boy, but...
Here's somebody who's not in the doc, Dick,
but somebody I saw you talk about in an interview.
You, in the old days, you met Cagney.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
A friend of mine, Bobby Campbell, was a writer.
He was rather successful.
And he was, he wrote The Man with a Thousand Fixes.
Oh, yes. Oh, sure. The Lon Chaney biography. And he wrote The Man with a Thousand Fixes.
Oh, yes.
Oh, sure.
The Lon Chaney biography.
Yeah.
And while he was out there, I said, I've always admired Cagney, you know.
And I said, how is it working with Cagney?
He said, oh, we did a thing. He said, they did some scene.
They changed a huge ballroom into a telephone scene, into a booth, you know,
saving money or something.
He says, you want to come out and meet him?
I said, do you think so?
He says, yeah, come on out.
And we got out there, and we sat in the chairs on the set,
and we were talking.
And just, I don't recall any of it now, but it's just idle talk.
And they said, Mr. Cagney, you ready?
And he gets up from his chair, and it's about 20 feet to the set.
The set was like a rug was the borderline,
and he danced all over.
He danced at 20 feet.
It was amazing.
I didn't know he had danced or anything.
He didn't disappoint when you met him.
No, no.
Nice.
He was something. And you worked with a favorite of all of ours, Abe Vigoda.
Abe, yeah, poor Abe.
He just died.
Yeah.
We knew him.
We loved him.
Yeah.
Yeah, we knew him, we loved him Yeah
When I finished the documentary
Oh no, we were still working on it
Yeah, we were working on it
Towards the end
I got this picture
I didn't know it was just going to turn out to be one scene
And wind up as a museum piece
All over the world. They're showing
this
10 minutes it runs.
Yeah, I don't know where it runs.
I think it's about 14 minutes.
This
film, they show
all over the world. Every
museum has it because
the woman was, the director
was some kind of a
what i don't know what to call her even well she worked for the for the one of the museums in new
york and that's who funded it yeah all right i guess it goes it's a long story short
but it included charlotte rampling too oh charlotte rampling was in it yeah yeah yeah
and i thought it was going to be a long long picture and this was a part of and i we met abe
on it and uh he's a nice old man and uh i was a nice old man myself
only uh that's the first time i heard you say that and I was a nice old man myself.
That's the first time I heard you say that.
Gilbert just spoke at Abe's service a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
His daughter.
His daughter's a nice girl. Oh, yeah.
She's a lovely woman and she invited me to speak
at a vagoda's funeral and that that was that was great it was just uh when they wheeled his body
away when they wheeled the casket they played the theme to the godfather oh i thought you
i thought you were gonna say he held up his thumb.
The whole time is a breeze.
Because he was one of those guys who like a hundred times over the internet was declared dead before he ever died.
I know, I know.
Isn't that something?
It was a, yeah, running gag.
Oh, is this one of the chihuahuas?
Yeah.
You can see the dogs now.
Johnny, short for Conchita.
Conchita.
We see a painting of Dick, a portrait of Dick on the wall in the background, too.
Is that a self-portrait?
I did it.
Oh, you did it.
Very good.
Yep.
I did that years and years and years ago.
He looks like a badass in that painting, if I may say.
He was a badass.
He looks like an older gentleman to you, but he's still a badass. He gave us like an older gentleman
to you, but he's still a badass.
I wouldn't mess with him.
You guys have been married, what, 55 years now?
It'll be
57 in October.
57, I'm way off. Congratulations.
Thank you.
And you worked with Kevin McCarthy. 57 in October. 57. I'm way off. Congratulations. Thank you.
And you worked with Kevin McCarthy.
Kevin McCarthy.
Yes, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Did Twilight Zone the movie?
Yeah.
Yeah, I guess that was it.
I worked with him on something else, too, and I don't remember what it was. I don't remember too much about that.
It was something recent.
It's a little thick up here.
How about Lee Marvin and Glenn Ford?
You shared the screen with them.
Any memories of either one of those guys?
Eleni's making a face again.
Ice guys.
Beat you out of
stakeout on Dope Street, right?
Ray Marvin.
Yeah.
And you turned it down
or something?
I don't know.
Yeah, that's another
little story.
I don't know it well enough to say it.
Dick doesn't tell stories out of school.
Yeah, he should have done Stakeout on Dope School.
What do you got, Gil?
Anything?
I'm out of cards for this man.
I think I am, too.
Oh, matinee. Oh! Oh!
Matinee.
Oh, let's talk about matinee real quick since we're talking about Joe Dante.
Yeah. Sweet films.
What do you like to know?
Anything you
care to talk about, Dick.
John Goodman. And John Goodman? It's John Goodman.
It's John Goodman, yeah.
John Goodman.
Yeah, he was supposed to be William Castle, the great showman movie director.
It was.
It was.
It was a good impression.
The part was, that was it.
I did, again,
we did what we could.
And you worked with
Steven Spielberg in 1941.
He did. And Martin Scorsese
too. Yeah.
There's two versions
of that in 1941. One I There's two versions of that 1941.
One I'm in, one I'm not.
I like that picture.
I mean, it's much maligned, but it's got a lot of good in it.
Do you remember anything about working with Spielberg or Scorsese?
Not really.
Or Sam Fuller?
Sam Fuller.
White Dog.
Oh, yeah. Oh, my God.
Of course.
I begged to get on that picture
because of Fuller.
I said, I want to be on
Bite the Monkey picture.
Right.
I didn't know it was going to be titled that, but it was a good title at the time.
And I heard that Sam Fulmer was going to direct this thing.
And I wanted to know what it was like to be with this guy.
They said it was a madman, you know.
And that's why I got this little part of the veterinarian.
And that's all I remember about the picture.
He was an eccentric character, Sam Ford.
But made so many good films.
He made delightful films.
He was really...
Shock Carter and Pick pickup on South Street.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and a bunch of others.
What else do we have for Dick, Gilbert?
Wow.
We couldn't even get him to disparage Jerry Lewis.
That's amazing.
That's what a class act he is.
That's what a class act he is.
Dick, there's a scene in the movie that confused me a little bit because it goes by so fast.
Does somebody from Disney approach you when you were a kid, seeing if you wanted to be an actor?
We came out to California when the war broke out.
My mother, my brother, and I.
And
I was drawing then.
And I forget
who the kid was at the time.
There was a
young boy who was a big star
at Disney.
And some guy came out, came to my house and everything, and they wanted me to be in the studio.
They wanted me to be, I thought, to replace this kid or to work with him or whatever it was.
I was going to be the new Disney boy.
or to work with him or whatever it was.
I was going to be the new Disney boy.
And I found out there was an actor.
I said, you mean I'm not going to be an artist?
I'm not going to be an animator?
I was really excited about going to work with him.
That was it.
So you turned down a shot at being a child actor,
never having any notion or idea that years later you would become an acting legend.
Well, I became a legend because I was writing.
And when I got out of the service, it all started there.
I used up my 50 to 20 money in the first year.
And I figured, what have they got here?
They said, oh, I can get an education.
I ought to see what these schools get, because I'll get some money
to boot. And I
looked it up and I saw
in the newspapers
upholsterers,
guys who made seat covers
and couches and stuff like that,
were making good money, were making, you should buy the expression at the end,
$60 a week.
This was when the war was over, a $30 a week job was very good.
You know, guys were running a whole family on that kind of money.
I said,
I'm going to be
an upholsterer
this while.
And I went down
to the school
and I filled out
all the papers
and I said,
well,
here I am.
I'm ready for that
$60 a week job.
The guy said,
you got to go to school,
you know.
He says,
we'll see you.
We'll see you.
You start school in two weeks.
See you at eight o'clock in the morning. We're going to have, I said, wait a second.
Not eight o'clock in the morning. I said, I'll take a night school. He said, we don't have any more night schools. I said, what? He said, we don't have that many students that we have to have
the night school. I said, that's not good. What am I going to do? It was a New York school
of upholstery. And I looked in the pamphlet I had from the Veterans Administration. And
right next to the New York School of Upholstery
was the New York School of Dramatic
Arts.
And I just, the first number,
I called up, I said,
you got classes starting? He says, yeah.
Two weeks. I said,
what do you
teach?
Acting.
I'll be done.
Well, wait a second.
What time do your classes start?
He says you can get
9 o'clock in the morning or you can get
11 o'clock
in the morning
just before lunch.
I said, I'll take that class.
That class.
I'll be right down.
That's the one year I spent as an actor.
Interesting.
So you became an actor
because you didn't want to get up early.
That's it.
I became an actor because I didn't want to give up.
That's $60 a week.
Whether he's working or not, he's up real early.
Yeah.
Always.
Yeah, well, movie acting, you have to be up at 5 o'clock in the morning.
So the irony of it.
I didn't go to bed till 3 o'clock in the morning in those days.
I used to,
in Times Square,
I'd wait for Sammy Davis Jr.
And he and Earl Barton
and myself, we'd walk up and down
Broadway. We'd do
songs from on and down.
We'd go, what's going on?
What did you say? You worked with Sammy Davis Jr.?
No, I never worked with him.
He was a friend.
Really?
Yeah.
You used to hang out with Sammy Davis Jr. and pal around?
Yeah.
I was going off in so many directions. I was a band boy for Bobby Sherwood for about...
I had quit a job.
God, I got to...
You got the time?
Yeah.
Bobby Sherwood was a New York band leader?
Yeah.
Bobby Sherwood, Alex Parade, Sherwood's Fires.
Some great numbers. Some of the greatest numbers ever.
I had worked for, I had taken a job in Saks Fifth Avenue.
And I worked as a stock boy. We used to go up into the bathroom, smoke cigarettes,
and put them down on the ledge of the window because we didn't want to smoke.
We had two minutes or something.
And next to me, I used to see St. Patrick's Cathedral.
But now I'm seeing it from four or five stories up,
and it's beautiful.
You've never seen St. Patrick's Cathedral, I believe.
And we used to see the birds, the swans,
the doves swooping back and forth up there.
They're beautiful.
And I worked about a week and a half.
I had it.
I couldn't stand it.
I was down there delivering stuff to stock rooms,
from the stock room to the counters,
and I wanted to get out of it.
I'm in the bathroom smoking a cigarette
and I hear this long rumble.
It's...
And it gets louder and it sounds like
the pigeons are free.
The pigeons are free.
The pigeons are free.
It was coming from me.
I was mumbling.
The pigeons were free.
There were birds flying around
St. Patrick's Cathedral.
I ran down
from the fourth floor down the stairs.
I always took
the elevator. I ran down,
ran out of Saks Fifth Avenue,
always up to
the boulevard.
And I headed north to the park, Central Park.
And only in New York did I do this.
A cop sees me coming running.
He stops traffic.
He stops traffic so I can run across the street.
And it was Brooklyn.
He's trying.
And I fell down in the grass and I cried.
My tears were pouring out of me.
I said, I can't go on with this.
I can't just be working.
And I went home.
And I got a phone call from, I think it was Goldfarb or Goldberg or something,
who was a band boy for Benny Goodman.
He says, we need a band boy.
Can you make an interview?
I said, I don't know if I'm band boys.
He says, you don't do anything.
You carry an instrument.
You put it down. You lay out the boys. He says, you don't do anything. You carry an instrument. You put it down.
You lay out the music.
That's all you do.
I said, okay.
He goes, well, it turned out to be nicer than that.
Bobby Sherwood didn't have a band.
He wanted somebody to carry his horn and his guitar from show to show.
He was doing the Bird Park show.
He was doing the Bobby Sherwood show. was doing the Bobby Shetwood show.
And I said, I can do this.
What do I do?
He said, just carry my guitar.
Bobby Shetwood is over six feet tall.
He used to tuck that little trumpet under his arm
and carry it.
And I'd walk with him carrying his big Gibson guitar.
I'm only five foot four, five, five.
Thing used to bang on the floor.
I said, you know, there's something wrong with this picture.
I said, I can be your band boy.
I said, I'm not doing any of the things.
We go from one show to another show
a couple of times a week.
We do
a disc jockey show.
He says, all right, I'll tell you what. You carry
the guitar. You carry the trumpet.
I'll carry the guitar.
That's the kind of band boy I was.
I forgot what the original
question was. About Sammy.
Yeah, Sammy Davis.
About Sammy Davis.
Oh, so I was all of a sudden in the music world.
Show business was my life.
This was the thing to do.
I got an acting background one year, which I never used.
And I'm with musicians.
I play drums a little.
So this was nice.
I guess Sammy was just part of it.
I used to hang out in the...
Well, he owed you $5,000 when he died.
She got to remind me of that.
You buried the lead there, Dick.
Sammy Davis Jr.
owed you $5,000.
Yeah, yeah. He's the only one that ever owed him anything that he got away with000. Yeah. He's the only one that ever owed him anything.
They got away with it.
Yeah.
Oh, well.
First script.
That's great.
I know singers
and I know band leaders
and musicians.
I know all these guys.
And it was me.
So,
one, two o'clock in the morning,
what are you going to do?
You hang out.
Yeah.
So, dancing on Broadway,
on up Broadway and down Broadway,
this old act.
Everybody does it.
Everybody sings.
We're going on.
I think you were destined to become an actor, Dick.
I mean, the guy comes over your house from Disney, wants you to be an actor.
That doesn't happen.
Then you go and you check in.
You're ready to check into the upholstery school.
You're ready to sign up for that.
But that doesn't happen.
And then you take the acting classes.
And then when you get to meet Corman, you say, I'm a writer.
He says, no, I need actors.
So it just kept coming back.
It must have been fate.
I think so.
Yeah.
It's a treat.
Can you come over to my house and fix my couch anyway?
What?
I bring some material. I bring some material.
I'll bring some material.
I got a nice imitation leather that looks beautiful on it.
And you'll bring those little gold tacks and everything.
We got some nice gabardine for you.
Okay.
And anyway, I'm Gilbert Gottfried.
This has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre.
And we've been talking to the great that guy actor, Dick Miller, and his wife, the lovely Lainey Miller.
And when I go home tonight, Lainey, I will be watching that scene of you in The Graduate.
I want you to know that.
You guys have a nice repartee.
You got a nice Stiller and Mirror thing going.
I was going to say that. Oh, my God. You guys have a nice repartee. You got a nice Stiller and Mirror thing going. I was gonna say that.
Oh my god.
I was gonna say Stiller and Mirror.
You guys should do a comedy act.
It's never too late.
It's pretty late.
This would be a great reality
show. It would be.
Okay, so we've been talking, and
your movie again is That Guy
Dick Miller, and it's available
where again?
www.
thatguydickmiller.com
And anything else to plug, guys?
Well, if people want to
see his personal website, where his artwork is and everything else, that's DickMiller.net.
DickMiller.net.
And I urge our listeners to check out Dick's artwork.
It's very interesting.
It's very creative.
It's very, very weird.
Yeah, but it combines a lot of different styles.
There's a lot of versatility in his drawing.
My dad was an illustrator and an artist.
And Gilbert does some himself.
And I understood, because I like to draw,
I understood one part of the documentary where you said,
when you were acting,
you sort of geared away from the
drawing part because you had somewhere
else.
Yeah, yeah.
I laid off it for a couple of years.
I mean, like 10 years I didn't
touch it. I didn't draw it.
Then all of a sudden it came back to me.
Yeah, it's good stuff. So go to
DickMiller.net and look at Dick's artwork.
So thank you, Dick and Laney Miller and the Jew-ow-as.
Bye-bye.
Dick, we'll give you regards to the Bronx.
Thanks for doing this, guys.
Thank you. Wonderful. Bye thank you wonderful bye-bye