Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Larry Cohen Encore

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

GGACP marks the 40th anniversary of the cult sci-fi/horror film "Q: The Winged Serpent" (released October 8, 1982) with an encore of this frequently hilarious 2018 interview with maverick filmmaker Larry Cohen (“It’s Alive,” “The Stuff,” “Hell Up in Harlem”). In this episode, Larry talks about his early days as a standup comic, his friendship with Alfred Hitchcock, the risks and rewards of “guerrilla moviemaking” and the documentary about his life and career, “King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen.” Also, Chuck Connors blows the whistle, Robert De Niro dons a yarmulke, Bette Davis stages a “comeback” and John Belushi babysits Broderick Crawford. PLUS: Revisiting “Coronet Blue”! John Wayne throws out the script! The Coen Brothers pay “tribute” to “Branded”! And Larry remembers the legendary Samuel Z. Arkoff! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit mx.ca slash ymx. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash ymx.

Benefits vary by card, other conditions apply. Hello, this is Felix Cavalieri the Rascals and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing podcast. What'd I miss? You left out colossal. It's true Hi, this is Phil's Cavaliery the rascals and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal Can't even speak English

Well give you a third chance there you go. Hi, this is Phil's Cavaliery the rascals You listen to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal podcast Fantastic. Yeah, you're difficult to work with. You got that right. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And once again, we're recording at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Fertorosa.

Our guest today is someone whose name has come up repeatedly on this show, and we're glad he's finally here with us. He's a writer, producer, and one of the most original and visionary filmmakers of the last half century. His television credits include The Fugitive, The Defenders, The Rat Patrol, Columbo, NYPD Blue, Messed Masters of Horror,

and three memorable shows that he created. Brandon, Coronet Blue, and The Invaders. His wildly inventive feature films include Bone, Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem, It's Al, maniac cop. Wicked stepmother, guilty as sin. Cue the winged serpent. Best seller, God told me to.

The private files of J. Edgar Hoover returned to Salem's lot, phone booth, cellular, and the stuff. In a long and storied career, he's worked with Bernard Herman, Lee Van Cleef, Rick Baker, Yaffy Cotto, Alan Arkin, Betty Davis, James Earl Jones, David Carradine, Sydney Lamet, Penny Youngman, and former podcast

guest, Mick Garris, Danny Aiello, Joyce Van Patten, and Tony LoBianco. The brand new documentary about his life and equally fascinating career is called King Cohen, The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen and features interviews with his friends and colleagues including John Landis, Martin Scorsese, JJ Abrams, former podcast guest, Joe Dante and Larry's frequent collaborator, Michael Moriarty. Please welcome to the show a true auteur, a genuine maverick, and a man who once tried to pass off Robert De Niro as a Jew, the legendary Larry Cohen. Yes, yes. Hello.

How are you doing? Hi Larry. Yes, yes, hello. How you doing? Hi Larry. I kind of missed those credits. Could you repeat that? Now, can we start off with that? You, you, well, you love the old people from movies, like not just the actors, but you know, old directors cameraman

Yeah, cinematographers hired George Folze toward the end of his career. Well, and Just retired he was he was retired. I got him out of his retirement. I brought him back Yeah, he worked with the Marx Brothers for God's sake He did he did he did the first two Marx Brothers pictures. The coconut, yeah. Cinematographer, yeah. Yeah, he'd been around. And then he worked for me after that, yeah.

Yep, yep. He also did Meet Me in St. Louis with Judy Garland. Yes, indeed. And Green Dolphin Street with Lana Turner. I mean, he did some, he photographed every famous actress at MGM, he was every famous actress at MGM. He was an MGM contract cinematographer. He did all those movies.

And after I brought him back, after I brought him back, he went on to do that's entertainment. After me. That's right. I got him out of retirement. And so, and, can I do that for you guys? Can I get you guys out of retirement?

Be wonderful. And you you went after a legendary movie composer, Bernard Herman, best known for writing the score for Psycho. Citizen Kane, too. Yes, yes. And and and North by Northwest, and To Catch a Thief, and you know, so many great Hitchcock pictures. North by Northwest, he did all those films.

And then he went to work for me and was never heard of again. Now, here's my favorite part of the documentary. Vernon Harmon, you know, you two become friends, he works with you, and then one night he passes away in his sleep, he was an older guy, and they were having a service for him, a funeral service. And-

At my house. Yes, and he, Vernon Harmon- A lot of people have. And- At my house. Yes, and he, Bernard Herman- A lot of people have funerals at my house. Yes. We rent out space, yeah. And it was a Jewish service, and for some reason, in the movie business, that day they had trouble finding enough Jews.

We didn't. We sent out for the extra service to send us a bunch of Jews, but they didn't. We got a bunch of Puerto Ricans by mistake. And so I had to turn to these Italians, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and say to them, look, you guys got to go in the living room in a circle and pretend to be Jews. And they put yarmulkes on and they said, and Robert De Niro said, well, how do I be a Jew? And I says, well, you just, whatever the rabbi says, you just keep nodding your head and that makes you Jewish. Perfect.

So Brian De Palma, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese in Yarmulke is pretending they're Jews for the Serb. But years later, years later, Robert De Niro did play a Jew in two different movies. Oh, well, I know one. One of them is The Last Tycoon. Oh, right. He was Jewish in that one. And he was also once upon a time. Oh, that's right. Sergio Leone. So you were ahead of the curve on that one. He wouldn't have known how to be a Jew if it hadn't been for me. He wouldn't have gotten that job be a Jew if it hadn't been for me. He wouldn't have gotten that job.

He would have been playing nothing but Italians his whole life long. And then I came along and I said, listen, you're missing out on something. And you know, later on, you know, I had to admit, he came to me in afternoons and I gave him more training, you know. And actually, he was secretly bar mitzvahed one day, you know, it was it was a wonderful thing You should have been there Robert De Niro's bar mitzvah didn't hit anybody or anything. And did you circumcise Robert? He did it to himself He didn't fool around, boy.

He's not like some of these other guys who whip it out for no reason at all. Or off to the races. He meant business when he took it out, boy. And your father played the banjo? No, it was my grandfather. Oh, your grandfather. And you? Yeah, he was an eccentric banjo? No, it was my grandfather. Oh, your grandfather. And you? He was an eccentric banjo player. What does that mean? In other words, they did comedy banjo. Oh, I see. But actually, which we didn't mention in the documentary, that he was playing the banjo in the minstrel

show. He was a minstrel. Wow. And he played in Blackface. Wow. He played in Blackface and toured in a minstrel show. And then years later, lo and behold, I ended up making Black Caesar. You know, so there you go. Came full circle. The grandson of a Blackface minstrel makes a black exploitation movie. Isn't that something? And he... Of course I didn't... No, I'm just saying he stopped playing the banjo to help support his family with a more regular, normal job and I think you felt that he would have been happier as a banjo player. Like that's what he wanted. Well, his mother on her deathbed got him to promise he would give up show business

and go into something respectable. And he did, and he kept his word to his mother. And he, even as a child, he had the banjo in the closet. He would never play it for me or for anybody else. He never took it out of the closet. So that was the only showbiz, that was the only member of the family that had any background in showbiz. Fair to say.

Including me. Well we found, we, but Gilbert and I found, first of all, you're, you're a movie kid. You're a New Yorker like us. I never saw you guys before in my life. By the way, excuse me, I might clarify something. I was told I was going to be on the air with Arthur Godfrey. This is a total misrepresentation. That's it. I'm telling you. What can I do? Wasn't Arthur Godfrey a notorious anti-semite? Oh a major Jew hater Arthur Godfrey, what's wrong? Well, well what's wrong with that?

He was the biggest star on CBS at the time this guy was on he was on every day and then he had two nighttime shows He had that famous game show, Who's the Jew? Remember that show that was on? Now we're back to Robert De Niro again. How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? How are you? The Gut Freak. Buy him by the cotton Godfrey.

Oh, I hate those. Holly Loki, Holly Loki. I hate those Jews. Yeah, yeah. We've descended into dueling Arthur Godfrey. He was a big star on CBS, I'll tell you that. You started out as a stand-up comic, Larry? We were very surprised by that. Who? Didn't everybody? You started out as a stand-up comic, Larry? We were very surprised by that.

Who, didn't everybody? I guess, a lot of people did, but not a lot of film directors. Yeah, I think. When I was in college, I used to put on a full-length variety show every other Thursday afternoon. That was an hour and a half of sketches and my monologues, a couple of singers we had. And I thought I was on television. I actually had the fixation that every other week I had to do a brand new one and a half hour show. And then I was happy doing that. But it didn't work out because

the network didn't pick me up or anything. But I did used to play upstairs at the duplex in Manhattan, in Sheridan Square, upstairs at the duplex. Yeah, it's still here. They moved it. They moved it downstairs. Yeah, to a different location. Or across town. And when...

Yeah, well anyway, I used to play there. And when you were... When I played there, always after me, there was a young comic with glasses who'd sit there and never laugh at me. And I thought, only if I get this guy to laugh at me, I would be successful. But he never laughed because he was too busy figuring out what he was going to do when he came on. and that was Woody Allen Wow But he copied everything I did

That guy that guy copied all my stuff and my routines and my attitude and stuff like that And you know became a big star and here I am on your show what can I tell you. And when you were a kid how did you raise money to see movies because you were in love with movies. Yes I was I used to steal ladies pocket money when they were coming out of the Grand Union. No, I waited outside the A&P or supermarket and I asked people if I could carry their groceries for them.

No, that was when I was about 12 years old, you know. And I'd carry these people's groceries home and up the stairs to their apartment and they'd give me 10 cents and then I'd steal her purse. And you'd see four movies a day in those days you'd say until they threw you out of the theater? I sit through the double feature twice. Oh I see.

And you know until somebody sat down next to me and annoyed me or something like that then I'd leave you know but that always happens. That was the best part of going actually because you never knew when you'd meet strangers. It was it was so wonderful. Wonderful way of life. I understand your favorite movies were Warner Brothers gangster pictures. Edward G. Robinson, Cagney. I liked the Warner Brothers films because they were full of energy. Uh huh.

And MGM films were kind of genteel and syrupy. And the studio that really had balls was Warner Brothers. And that's why I liked their pictures, the pace. They didn't have a lot of dead space. The actors, they punched the lines and moved the show on. And I liked Warner Brothers films. I was happy years later to do It's Alive, one of my films for Warner Brothers

and I think I've done four or five movies for Warner Brothers. Well, Gilbert and I are curious too, you've made so many horror films. Were you also a fan of the Universal Horror Classics? Well, I sure liked them, of course. Yeah, yeah. I was never completely hooked on horror films.

I liked all kinds of films. And so I never thought of myself even now as a horror director, even though I've done some films which would qualify in that genre. I'm not exclusively a horror director. And we were also talking what struck us watching the documentary is what you got away with. It's like you never asked for permits to shoot anywhere. So you would fire rifles and machine guns off the Chrysler building. And there was one of your movies

where Fred Williamson gets into a gunfight at an actual airport. Now, how how you everybody? Yeah. How you were never shot or or in jail for life for those you got away with a lot. Yes. Well, thank you very much. I think the statute of limitation has run out on most of us. They'll never get me now.

They'll never get me alive. But the idea of a skyscraper in an airport having a gunfight. Well, there's also that scene, is it Black Caesar, where you shoot, where Fred Williamson's shot in the street and he's staggering through the street and you're shooting from the roof. Right in front of Trump Tower. Yeah, what is now Trump Tower.

Right, yeah, right in that corner, 57th Street. And I had one of my cohorts dressed as a cop to stop traffic on Fifth Avenue. So we just closed Fifth Avenue down and shut the city. We just closed it down. It's amazing, you see. Years later, when I went to Washington, D.C. to shoot the private files of J. Edgar Hoover, I had got all these old cars. I called them a car club over in Maryland, and they were delighted to supply me with 40 old cars and people driving them in costume, free of

charge. So I said, how am I going to have all these old cars on Pennsylvania Avenue going in front of the White House towards the Capitol when there's's gonna be modern cars on the street too. The only way to do it is to close down Pennsylvania Avenue. So fortunately, they had these wooden horses stacked up on the sidewalks for parades and things. So I told our guys, just take the wooden horses and close down Pennsylvania Avenue, which we did. And you believe doing this today

with terrorists and everything? So now Pennsylvania Avenue is closed down and I got 40 old cars driving up and down the street and here comes the police and I wave to them and they wave back. And they keep going. No one would assume anybody would do this without permission. So they didn't think twice about it. Just like when we shot at the St. Patrick's Day parade and had Andy Kaufman shooting off a gun in the middle of the parade. There were 5,000 cops there and everybody was smiling. They didn't imagine anybody would do this without having permission. So nobody bothered us. That's the great thing is if you do something that's so outlandish

Everybody thinks it's okay because nobody would do that, you know, so here I am Still alive and in one of your movies an actor Kidnaps a little boy and is running down the street with him Yes in public That's right. In public, yes. And a lot of the crowd thought this was happening and they wanted to interfere on behalf of the child. And I had to run into the crowd and start telling everybody it was a movie. They were going to beat the hell out of them. Unbelievable. You know, when you're talking about the Chrysler building. Instead somebody hit the kid. Somebody hit the kid instead. It was all right. when you're talking about the Chrysler building and instead somebody hit the somebody hit the kid instead it was alright

You know when you when you're making Q and you're on the top of the Chrysler building I mean, it's not just the firing of the guns, which is crazy enough but you're talking about you don't like heights to begin with and You're you're 88 stories your 88 stories and the way you describe it is there's you know There's not much protecting you from a drop off the top of the Chrysler building. Well if you look at the Chrysler building, you would assume those triangle shapes at the top of the building have glass in them. But they don't.

They're completely open. So basically the top of the Chrysler building is like a platform with nothing, no guardrails. So if you take a step too far, you fall 88 stores off the top of the Chrysler building, which nobody did fortunately, because otherwise I'd probably be in jail for some kind of manslaughter or something. You had to take out an ad in the papers to apologize the next day after the...

I didn't have to. Oh, you didn't voluntarily. I just thought it would be good publicity actually to compound the felony. Very smart. Yeah because you said something like New York sorry I scared you. Yes, yes that's what we did but we did something even more. That's what we did. But we did something even more. We couldn't, we had a monster that laid an egg at the top of the Chrysler building. We couldn't fit the nest and the egg in the narrow spaces of the top of the Chrysler building. So they found me a location in the turret of the former police headquarters in Greenwich Village, which is now a condominium building.

It's right around the corner of Little Italy, the big dome. And we built this nest up there of real branches and twigs. And we shot the scene up in the top of that building. So when we got finished, I said, wrap this up. So they took the lights, they took the egg. But for some reason, unbeknownst to me, they didn't take the nest. It was just too difficult to take it apart.

So they left this nest up there. So six months later, the New York Times front page article, it says, anthropologists from around the world have gathered in New York to examine a nest discovered in the top of the former police headquarters. That's fantastic. I swear to God. That's fantastic.

I didn't say a word. I didn't want to get into more trouble. And you made a movie, if I get this plot correct, it's kind of like Christ comes to Earth from outer space and Christ has a vagina. This is the Lo Bianco picture that God told me to. So could you? What's wrong with that? So tell us. That is a very disturbing movie. Oh, you know, why get picky now?

Come on. Who knows? There have been a lot of versions of Christ. You've seen every variation of it and, you know, so what if he had a vagina in his chest? Yeah, they have a scene where... It's as good a place as any. Where Christ on his rib cage has a vagina. Nobody said he was Christ.

He's an alien messiah. He was an alien who thought he was God right because in the in the theory of the movie if an alien came to earth and had all the powers that he has and he hears about Christianity and he would assume that he must be Christ because he has all those same powers even though it's he's not So he believes he's God He's not the only one who believes he's God. Anyway, I mean, there's a lot of people walking around who think they're God. You know that. You've worked with many of them.

Now did you get, did people try to stop this movie because you're showing a vagina? Well why would they want to stop the movie for that reason? You mean the blasphemy? Well, it's not even a real God. It's a... Yeah, yeah, but I mean number one... It's not even a real... It's not even a real vagina.

That's right. Both. Both are true. You know, Larry, we had Tony LoBiaco here and we asked him about God Told Me To and I don't think he knows what it's about he said something about you being a genius and then and then admitting that he was very very confused by the story I could tell you this when the picture was screened he came up to me afterwards in the street and he says how good you do this to me? My mother just saw this picture. There you go.

We want to jump around Larry, but let's get one thing. I feel like jumping around too. Let's quickly, so I don't want to forget it, let's quickly talk about Coronet Blue. And then we'll go back to the movies. But this is a show that came up on our podcast, we've done 180 of these, and we were talking about man on the run, that genre, like the immortal and the fugitive and run for your life and Gilbert brought up Coronet Blue, which I hadn't thought about in years. Thank you, Gilbert.

Thank you. A show we both liked that ended, unfortunately, without revealing what Coronet Blue was. That's how we got even with the audience. If they'd watched the show more, we'd have stayed on. But this way I got even with them. I never told them. I see. Very, very smart show. Yeah. Well, it was very much like the born identity. Yeah. A guy's found floating in the water. He can't remember who he is.

The real truth is he turns out to be a spy who was part of an organization called Coronet Blue and blah, blah, blah. So Robert Ludlum saw this TV show and made it into a book and made it into Six different movies and you know was all my idea And what can I tell you? Once show where I still remember the theme song of you don't remember the Cornet blue theme song I just remember like Cornet Blue theme song? I just remember like, Cornet Blue... Cornet Blue... Cornet Blue...

Yeah, yeah. Boy, that was a great song, wasn't it? Yeah, that was... That was a catchy tune. Now, I don't know... Now, there's another one, but I don't know if we could sing it together, cause on Skype.

Well, why don't you favor Larry in the? Okay, we'll see what happens. Okay, maybe he'll join it only oh, oh but one man die And they say he ran away branded branded marked with a coward shame what do you do when you're branded and you know and oh branded scorned by the man who ran what do you do when you're branded that's enough you know you're a man if

you want to hear the song you go look at the movie the big look right in which John John Goodman and Jeff Bridges by Jeff Bridges sing the song together and then they get all excited they're gonna go to the home of the creator of branded the guy who wrote all the episodes for the first season that's me And they go to this house and there he is in an iron lung and he dies. He dies right on camera and his grandson is there and his grandson's name is Larry. Oh yes, he steals the homework and the stolen car, right. Yeah, everything.

So according to the Coen brothers, who can't even spell Coen properly, according to these bums I died in an iron lung. So I'm waiting to get a job. I'm waiting for an agent to call me and they say, well, he died. We saw him die in the Big Lebowski. So no wonder he's not worth it. He must have been an homage, Larry. And hey, if it wasn't for this show, nobody would know I'm alive right now.

Thanks to you guys. Before we leave the song, whatever you do for the rest of your life, you must prove you're a man. You're a man. Alright, well Chuck Connors was definitely a man, but you know. What kind of guy was Chuck Connors? I mean, he was a ball player. He was an interesting actor.

I'll tell you what kind of... Chuck Connors and I got along pretty good until one day at lunch at Paramount Studios where we were shooting, I happened to mention to them that Branded was really about a blacklisted cowboy. I said, here's a guy. This was the time when the blacklist was going and people's reputation was ruined and they couldn't escape it and here was a show about a guy whose reputation followed him wherever he went and I said Chuck this is a way of dealing with the blacklist without getting too much controversy but getting the idea across and he's really a blacklisted cowboy.

So Chuck went right to the front office and told everybody that I was a communist. Oh wow. Holy shit. This was lovely. So the next time I come onto the Paramount lot, there was a big western street at the front of the Paramount Lot in those days. It was used for the Bonanza show and a lot of other Westerns, because there were a lot of Westerns on TV in those days. And I come onto the Western street and I look down the other end of the street

and there's Chuck Connors on his horse. And Chuck Connors turns the horse and he starts galloping down the center of the street right at me. And I'm standing in the middle of the street and here he's coming. He's coming and he's not stopping. And I'm frozen in place. I didn't move. And finally he reins up right in front of me. I could feel the horse's breath on my face and he says, I thought you were going to run. So I knew right away then things were not going well. 15 years later they had a party at the back lot at Republic Studios, the former Republic

Studios for all the Western stars and Gene Autry was there and all those people and Chuck Connors was seated at the table with me. I hadn't seen him in years and And right in the middle of the meal, he turns to me and says, you know, that day when I tried to ride you down on the, on the Paramount street, and you didn't run, I thought you had a lot of balls. He said to me, and this was 15 years later and he still was thinking about it. So I get, yeah. So that was the end of Chuck Connors. He never worked again.

We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal podcast after this. I heard Chuck Connors once was in a stag film. That was the rumor that went around. Yeah. I tell you the truth, the first night we were shooting branded in Canab, Utah, which was location of the fort, which they used at the beginning of every episode. And it was only one motel in the area.

And I stayed there and Chuck Connors was in another room. And he was the only room that had a phone in the room, believe it or not. This was such a low-grade motel. So now I was going to bed and they knock on the door really late and I said, who's there? Chuck. So I opened the door and there he is standing there in his undershirt and he's still got the britches on from the cavalry and the boots. And he says to me, you got to help me. He says, I can't get the boots off by myself. I says, well, what do you want me to do? He says, come back to my room and help me take my boots off. So right away I'm thinking this

guy was in a stag film. I said, I finally got my first series on television, and this is the first night of the shoot, and already I'm gonna be faced with a six foot five guy with his boots on who was in a stag film, and he wants me to come back to his room. So I go back to the room, and I start to pull on the boots. He says, no, that's not how it's done. He says, you turn around away from me, I put my foot between your legs

and I push on your ass with the other foot and then that's how the boots come off. And I say, I wonder what's going to come off after that I said. So anyway, I turn around and I pull on the boots and I pull on the, and I pull so hard Chuck comes off the chair and falls on the floor and bangs his head on the coffee table. Now he's lying semi-conscious on the floor. And I'm standing there saying, I've killed the star of my series. It's not even on the air yet, and I've killed him. But finally he gets up and he's rubbing his head and I said, boy, this story is going to look good in TV Guide.

And he looked at me with daggers in his eyes as if I was serious that I was really going to tell this to TV Guide. And I said, don't worry, Chuck, I won't tell anybody. And can I go to my room now? That's great. And so he unbarred the door and let me go. And a lot of people even say the stag film he made was gay porn. Well that's what I was going to do.

Where he's going. Larry, let's just a couple of questions about the early days of TV. And you worked with everybody. I mean people like Dick Powell and E.G. Marshall and some young actors kind of before they'd made it. Fritz Weaver, Alan Alda, Vincent Gardena, Ben Guzzara, Nimoy. Any memories of any of these guys that stand out? Nothing. Well that's our interview for today. Hey listen, listen Arthur, keep out of it. Oh I'm sorry, you're not Arthur.

Oh let's, let's, let's... Honolulu Hawaii. Let's wipe the Jews out of existence. He never said anything like that. Let's not smear him. Well, not on the air. He never said it. No. The worst he ever did was stay at the only hotel in Miami Beach that was restricted.

That's about the worst he ever did to anybody. Do you have any standout memories from those live TV days? Well, I loved the live TV days because we always had to be there on the set. Because when they had the run through, the day day of the show it was always too long or too short. So you had to write a few more lines to make it longer or cut a few lines to make it shorter and the writer had to be there. So you were welcome all through the whole production and so you were part of the proceedings. Once they went to film and tape they didn't need the writer there anymore and you weren't welcome anymore. Oh, interesting. So it was a different business.

Live TV was a wonderful business, but it was always mistakes made and things that happened on the air. When we did the show on the US Steel Hour with Henny Youngman in his only dramatic role. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that one. Wow! Yeah, and he was very good too, except he did a scene in Act One where he entered a room and he came in the same room in Act Two and he started doing Act One over again. But fortunately the floor manager made some kind of a signal and he caught himself and

then he went back into the proper, well, proper sequence. But the director had fallen off his chair in the, in the control room and had an ulcer. We, we had to drag the poor bastard out of there. And, and you, you, I mean, that was, I remember when Betty Davis used to come on TV and she had had a couple of strokes already and she weighed like two pounds. She was scary, scary, but she wanted a,

you figured out she's popping up on TV because she wants to work. Well, she did want to work. That was her whole life. That's all she could live for was work. And when she couldn't work anymore, she died. But I felt terrible about it. I tried to give her a job and I wrote a script just for her. Wicked Stepmother. And sent it to her.

Yeah, Wicked Stepmother. Yeah. And the ad campaign was Betty is Bad Again. She's the Wicked Stepmother. And she loved the script and appreciated the fact that I wrote it for her. And we had a wonderful time together during the prep period before we started shooting. And I had no idea at that time that she had broken her dentures and hadn't had them fixed. And she was trying to fake it that she would do the scenes and be trying to readjust

the teeth with her tongue in between the lines and she was having the worst time doing it. And I had no idea why she was giving such odd line readings. And then of course, she saw herself in the dailies and realized what she was doing and it was very evident to her what she was doing. And so she said she had to go away and have these teeth fixed. Well, when she went to New York to the only dentist she trusted,

they said they had to pull out eight teeth and make a whole new bridge, and it would take two months. And MGM wasn't gonna keep this picture going for two months. They wanted to replace her with Lucio Ball. So I said, great, let's get Lucio Ball. They called up. She was in the hospital.

She died that week. So we couldn't get Lucio Ball. They said, well, how about Carol Burnett? I said, look, guys, we got Bette Davis 15 minutes already in the movie. It's enough. She's been in other movies where she wasn't even in it for 15 minutes. So it's a cameo. So there's a lot of Bette Davis sections

in video stores across the country. You'll sell enough videos to get your money back. Let's leave Bette Davis in it. I'll rewrite the script and we'll get the picture finished, which we did. You seem to have your work cut out for you. Oh, which we did. the tax codes and now they're trying to throw the book at my client claiming fraud and everything else. Could mean millions in additional taxes. I wish you much luck. Well I'll need it. May I come? I would love to see you in action. Well there's not much actions, mostly just paperwork. Well you never can tell. If you win, I'd be there to share it with you.

All right. Here's the address. It's the fourth floor of the federal courthouse. Can you get there on your own? Of course I can. And believe it or not, the picture actually broke even, went into profits, and they all got their money back. And you know, so I guess I saved the film. When I ran into the attorney for the completion bond company that had to lay out the money if a thing closed down, and I said, hey, I got your, you know, over a million dollars back. Don't you think you know, over a million dollars back.

Don't you think you should do me a favor and like buy me a car? And when I looked back, the guy was gone. I saw his feet, I never saw anybody make an exit that quick. I never got a car or even the thank you. I love what you said in the movie about how you would cast actors. You would look for people that were behind in their mortgage payments I didn't say that Paul Kurta who was a producer on oh, okay made that remark. Okay I didn't hire people for that reason. I hired them because they fit the parts and

And they were good actors and there was no reason why they shouldn't you know, I mean people like Lloyd Nolan and Dan Daly and Sylvia Sidney and Celeste Holm, you put all these people to work at the twilight of their careers. Yeah, but they were good actors and they fit the parts too. It wasn't that I checked out their income or anything or I hired them because they were good in the roles. And they worked for other people after me too, Rodney Crawford. He worked in a little romance after me with Laurence Olivier and a lot of the actors did many many jobs after me.

But I used them because they were good people and they wanted to work. And they were Academy Award winners and yeah like you call up Jose Ferrer who was one of the great Academy Award winners and Cyrano de Bergerac nominated for Moulin Rouge, big star on Broadway. He was happy to come to work. I said why'd you take the job Joe? He said well I got four kids in college. Yeah it's touching that you use those people and Fulsy too, as we said before, also crew members. You know, Dan Daly was perfect for the role of Tolson in my picture with

Roderick Crawford. But they came to me and they said, uh, Dan Daly has failed the medical exam. Uh, they won't insure him. So you have to get somebody else. And I said, I'm not going to go back to Dan Daly, that wonderful trooper who did all those movies with Betty Grable and everything. I'm not going to go back and tell him he can't have the part because he can't pass the insurance. I said, forget about the insurance for the whole picture. We're not going gonna insure anybody. And I'm not gonna tell Dan Daley he can't be insured. So he went and did the part, he did a fine job,

and he saved the picture. Because when we got to Washington, nobody wanted to let us shoot in any of the locations because of the controversy about J. Edgar Hoover. And then we got a call from the White House. And Betty Ford, who is the president's wife, was a huge fan of Dan Daly. She'd been a former chorus girl,

and she wanted Dan Daly and Broderick Crawford to come to the White House for lunch with her and Kissinger and the president and vice president Rockefeller and I closed the picture down and and while they were there I called everybody in Washington and said we want to shoot at your location but we can't do it tomorrow because the stars are having lunch at the White House with the president and I got permission I got permission from everybody to shoot at

the locations I wanted all because of Dan Daly and Dan Daly wouldn't have been there if I had kicked him off the picture because he couldn't get insurance. That's a nice story. So I did a good deed and the good deed came back you know and I guess that was the last picture that Dan ever made. Wow. And he was a lovely guy. And Braderick Crawford, drunk? Braderick Crawford, Braderick Crawford. What about, what about Braderick Crawford? I, a real character. Okay, I heard he was one of those that did you have to watch, you know, how long you worked him because he was a major drinker. Well, well, Rod drank, no question about it. But I'll say I'll tell you this. When he came to the set, you know, every line perfectly.

You know, everybody else's dialogue. He never muffed a line. He never blew a take. He never followed up the blocking. He was right on top, real pro. And finally enough, when we were promoting the movie, he got to be the host on Saturday Night Live. That's right.

Early seasons, yeah. So they called me up and they said, Broderick Crawford's here and we're in rehearsal and he's getting this crazy because he keeps going downstairs to the bar and drinking between rehearsals. Hurley's bar downstairs at that time. He says you have to come to New York and control him. So I went to New York and they were having the cast members stay with him so he was never alone. So Bill Murray stayed with him and and and you know everybody in the cast including

John Belushi. Imagine having John Belushi making sure somebody doesn't drink. So anyway, you know I said to them don't worry. I said you get scared but when we go in the air you guys are all gonna be so nervous that you'll foul up but Broad will know every line and he'll know every bit of blocking and he'll get he'll be perfect and the truth was he was perfect when they went on it was John Belushi that fouled up in the highway patrol sketch and dropped the gun on the floor and Broad turned to him and said pick it up and he did. Broad was right on top of it. I remember him being very good on that show actually. Yeah he was he was wonderful. He was like one of those totally old Hollywood

function totally functioning drunks you know the guys that would get totally shit-faced but would do their job He never drank on the set except one night when Jose Ferrer brought a bottle Jose Ferrer brought the bottle not broad and and and but broad was perfectly professional All the way down the line and I was very glad I had him in the film and we got along great So they I got along great with almost all the actors, even Bette Davis, but all that they've said about it had never had a bad moment between us. Every day she came to work, gave me a big hug.

Every night she would not leave the set unless I kissed a good night. They'd come to me and say, "'Miss Davis is ready to go home, "'but she won't leave unless you say good night to her. So I'd go over to her and she'd give me a kiss and then she'd go home. Even the last time I saw her was the same thing. She loved me. We had a great time together.

Unfortunately, her teeth turned out. Yeah, that's unfortunate. We want to ask about It's Alive and many other things Larry, but let's quickly Let's as Helen Harlem not not help in Harlem up black Caesar. Who was that developed for originally? Originally manager came to me and said Sammy Davis jr. Is tired of being a flunky for Sinatra and he and And he wants to do something on his own Can you come up with something for him? So I said, how about a gangster movie? Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney were little guys

and they played gangsters. And Sammy's a little guy, but he could play a tough guy. So I wrote this treatment and I was supposed to get $10,000. But when it came time to collect the 10,000, the manager came and said, well, Sammy's in trouble with the IRS. He hasn't got the $10,000. What are you gonna do about it?

And I said, well, I'm not gonna sue Sammy Davis Jr. So I had the treatment. So when I went to see Mr. Arkoff, who was the head of American International, and he said, we wanna make some of these black exploitation movies like Shaft and Superfly. And do you have anything? I says, well, just so happens in my agent's car

in the trunk is a treatment called Black Caesar. So we got it and we made the deal the same day. I'm trying to imagine Sammy Davis in that role. You were trying to do almost like a Little Caesar, like a, yeah, the Edward G. Robinson picture. And Sammy never really got a decent movie on his own. Yeah, I don't think.

He always, he made a few pictures like Salt and Pepper with Peter Lawford, but they were terrible. He never got a good part. If he'd gotten that part, it would have been the only good part he ever got. But unfortunately for him, he didn't get it. And fortunately for me, I had it. We turned that picture into a huge hit.

That picture put me on the map because that was my first big box office hit. And spawned another one. And it may have been a little it may have been Black Caesar or one of the others with Fred Williamson, where you are hiring actual gang members. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what happened there. We went up to Harlem to shoot the picture of Black Caesar first day up in Harlem. And they just had a movie up there called

Across 110th Street with Anthony Quinn. And it was a big budget Hollywood picture. And they went up there with trailers and dressing rooms. And anyway, they got shaken down by the gangsters up there who made them pay a penalty for every street they wanted to shoot on. So when I got up there with my little crew, they came over to me, these

guys, and says, you can't shoot here unless you pay us. And I didn't have any money to pay them. So I looked at them and I says, hey, can you guys act? You guys would be great in the movie playing Fred Williams's sidekicks. So we hired the guys who were trying to shake me down and put them in the movie. And after that we owned Harlem. Anyplace we went that anybody tried to stop us, these gangsters stepped into view and the people just backed off and went away. That's all. We owned Harlem. And when the picture opened on Broadway at the Cinerama Theatre, these black gangsters, their pictures were in the poster and they were standing in front of the Cinerama Theatre signing Arkoff.

That's great. What was Arkoff like? Gilbert and I have discussed him on this show before. I liked Arkoff. He was a good fella and had a sense of humor. You could kid him and stuff like that. But you go to Sam and you say, Sam, I need $850,000 to do this picture. And he'd say, I know, I got the check right here at my desk. And I say, Sam, thanks an awful lot. I'm going to go out and make a good movie. And as I walked out of the office, I look at the check and it said $800,000. And I said, Sam, I said $850,000 and this

check says $800,000. What happened to my $50? He says, give me the check back. I says, goodbye Sam. And I got out of there as fast as possible. Gilbert, you met him once, Samuel Z? Yeah, I remember I was working on some TV show and we were having a long break and the guy, the director said, you want me to get you a book or something to look at? And I remember Arkhov's book had come out and they said could you get me that book and he said not only can I get it for you but after

we get it for you we'll drive you over to Sam Arkhov's office and then he'll sign it oh that's cool and I went there and he's there with his big cigar. Always, always. And he said whatever the director who I was working with will say, you know, Richard. He goes, Richard tells me you're okay. That's good enough for me, Sam Hawke. Well, he wasn't a bad guy, you know. In the end, he screwed me on the last picture

we did together which was Q the winged serpent because He'd given me some money to make the picture while I was shooting and when a time came When we were finished he had a 40% interest in the movie and I got an offer to sell the picture for like five million dollars and the picture only cost us a million dollars so it's a four million dollar profit and I could have you know given Sam a nice return on his money and made a million and a half bucks for myself and Sam insisted on keeping the foreign rights he said you gave me the foreign rights when he gave you that money.

I said, yes, Sam, but you can get your money back and make a nice profit. But he probably had sold the foreign rights for quite a lot of money and didn't wanna give it up. So he wouldn't let me take the $5 million. And much later I had to sell my end for much less. But I still loved him. So what?

So he screwed me. So what? So he screwed me. So what? I remember hearing a story from Roger Ebert said that he saw Q, and he was very impressed with Michael Moriarty's. Oh, his performance in that film is incredible. Yeah, great performance. So afterwards, Roger Ebert is talking to someone and saying

You know It was a great method performance in a piece of dreck and Sam Arkoff says the dreck was my idea I've heard I've heard this story. I doubt it, but you know, it's a good story anyway. And the drek wasn't his idea. The whole picture was my idea. The money was his idea.

I didn't mind taking the money, but he had nothing to do with this. Moriarty is wonderful in that part. I mean, he just really makes it his own and he looks like he's having a good time doing it Well, we did five right sure other he had more. He had more fun with me Anybody else? Yeah, and I heard Michael Moriarty Insisted every movie he does with you you have to get him a new hair piece. Well, he didn't like wearing hair pieces and I thought he'd look better with it. So to punish me, he made me go out and spend $1,500 or $2,000 on every picture to get him a new hair piece.

Which I did. And you know, some of them I got them in my... I still have them for this day in my closet. 25 years later, I got Michael's hair in my closet. It's hilarious. Let's talk about It's Alive, which our listeners will want to hear about, Alarion. How did it come about? I mean, you got to work with Bernard Herrmann we talked about and also very young Rick Baker. Where did that movie come from? Where did the idea come from?

And the journey is interesting too because of the second life that it had. Well, it's unusual. Wherever that idea came from, I guess I couldn't tell you. But it just came to me, the total story told from beginning to end in my mind. So I wrote, I just wrote the script. I just went in the room and closed the door and wrote the whole script from beginning to end.

And it was a great role for the father, John P. Ryan, who played it and did a wonderful job. And it was a story of a family disintegrating and, and it was about something. It was a monster movie where the characters were more important than the monster. You know, in most monster movies the characters are like cardboard. You know, they have no dimension, they have no reality. They just run around chasing the monster and then you get sick of the monster after a while. Anyway, if it's a giant tarantula or a giant spider it's always to be

some giant insect so i said hey it's more fun to have something small people are really scared of small things like you know a moose could run by and you wouldn't get upset but if you saw a mouse run under your under your table oh a mouse oh eugh. People run for their lives because of a mouse. So something small can be very scary. So I wrote the thing, and then we got Warner Brothers to agree to do it. And then everybody at Warner Brothers got fired. So when I finally delivered the movie,

it was a bunch of new people. It was like a waiter bringing the food out in a restaurant, and there's new people at the table. That's a great analogy. And they say, hey, they say, we didn't order this. We don't eat this kind of food. What is this? That's a funny analogy.

So there I was, stuck with this movie. So they made a lousy 50 prints, which is nothing for a studio like Warner Brothers, and put it out in a couple of locations. And they made up an ad campaign that didn't show anything about a monster baby. So you didn't know what the picture was about. And it didn't do any business,

except in Chicago, where I actually went myself, and the local representative of Warner Bros. let me change the ad campaign and let me have people push baby carriages around downtown Chicago with a tape recorder inside growling. There's footage in the dock. And then the picture did more business than the Clint Eastwood movie that followed it. We actually outdid it in the box office.

But it didn't matter to the people in Hollywood. They had a determination this was going to be a failure. And even though it did well over in Europe and won some film festivals, matter to the people in Hollywood, they had a determination this was going to be a failure. And even though it did well over in Europe and won some film festivals, we could not move the picture. So everybody told me, forget about it, go on, make something else. And I went on with my life, but I kept pestering them about that one movie. And in those days, there was no home video. And they couldn't sell the picture to television because nobody would buy a picture for television with a monster baby. So the picture still stayed fresh. And three years after

the initial release, I met a guy named Terry Semel, who was the new head of distribution at Warner Brothers. He later became chairman of the board. And one of the first things he did was look at my picture, take it off the shelf and give it a new ad campaign and put it out in the marketplace. And unbelievably, It's Alive became the number one box office movie in America. It's a great story.

It was the number one picture. And I made a fortune. I had so much money from that picture. I bought a brownstone in Manhattan off Park Avenue of 22 room brownstone Bought with the money from that movie I mean with that Billy that building today is worth 17 million dollars by the way But I don't know I don't know wow anymore, but you get some idea of what it was

And that was for just some of the money in that picture I would it went and then we made two more, it's a live movie. It's unheard of for a film four years later to have that kind of... It's never happened before, and it can never happen again because of home video. So it was a one of a kind event. And oddly enough in Europe,

the picture had a phenomenal success. The stupidest phone call I ever got was from the Foreign Office of Warner Brothers. Larry, he says, you'll be excited to know that It's Alive is the second highest grossing movie in the history of Warner Brothers. Really? In Singapore? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha That's great.

Freaking Singapore. Now I thought Singapore was a bunch of thatched huts. I didn't realize what a big country Singapore was and how advanced it was. He says to me, the only film at Warner Brothers that has outgrossed It's Alive in Singapore is my fair lead. Well, they're comparable. So I went back to Warner Brothers Hollywood division and told them this and they threw me out of the office. Who the frig cares about Singapore?

They said. Get out of the office. And unfortunately they all got fired so I had a new guy Terry Settle and I stay I remember in the commercials there was the voiceover there's only one thing wrong with the Davis baby it's alive yeah it was a great campaign. It was a very brief TV spot, 15 seconds, and it went through the roof.

Really sold the picture. So there you go. It's not only the picture that you make, it's the ad campaign and the amount of money that they're willing to spend to promote the film. The Davises have had a baby, but they're not sending out any announcements. spend to promote the film. It's alive. It's alive. Don't see it alone. Please. Rated PG.

No picture makes any money unless you advertise it. You have to advertise it. And the second time around, they advertised the picture and people did wanna see a movie about a monster. Cause they all had one at home. Yeah. There's that interesting moment in the doc, too, where you're saying to the people that were offended by it,

you're saying, didn't you guys just make the exorcist? Oh, they told me when they didn't want to distribute it, they said it's in bad taste. It doesn't look right for Warner Brothers to make a picture in bad taste like this about a monster baby. I said, what was your biggest picture this year? It was a movie with a little girl masturbating with a Christmas. I said, this is good taste to you. Good point, Larry. And when you look back they had already left the room when you said that.

You know, they were gone. Stupid executives. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor. Can we ask you about Hitchcock? You, you, you, yeah. Sure, you can, you can ask, you could, you could ask me about, I'll just ask Hitchcock. He does impressions too. Larry, Larry Cone is one of my favorite directors. I've learned everything I know from watching Larry Cone's film. Good evening.

Good evening. Yeah, I had a number of nice meetings with Hitchcock. Every time I met with Hitchcock, it was three and a half hours. You'd have lunch with him or a meeting with him. Three and a half hours later, you're still talking to him. He loved to do the anecdotes, tell you the scenes from movies that he never used and tell you who Jack the Ripper was. And, you know, I mean, I never forget he says,

you want to know who Jack the Ripper was? I'll tell you, he was a kosher butcher. He says, yes, that's why he was so good at slicing up those prostitutes, because he was a kosher butcher. And the Jewish community in London tracked him down themselves and killed him Because they didn't want racial prejudice to permeate the air So that's the secret of I says that sounds a lot like the movie M. Yes That's the same plot as M. He was telling me

as M he was telling me that was great. Oh Hitch he was he was I enjoyed him though and he seemed to like me you know so you know we we had a couple of nice meetings but the picture I wanted to make with them never got off the ground. Was it something involving a phone booth? The picture that... No, we talked about doing a movie in a phone booth, but we couldn't figure out how to do it. And then years later, after he died, it came to me that I already had done it when I had a scene in God told me to where the sniper on top of a water tower shooting people. And I said, why don't I take the sniper and put him with the phone booth and the sniper is keeping the guy from leaving the phone booth. So now I've figured out how to do it. So then it only took me a week to write the script once I had figured it out,

but it took me years to figure that out. I was so stupid, I didn't realize I'd already done it. In addition to the thing, curiosity is the guy who was up on top of the water tower with the high-powered rifle and shooting people was an actor named Sammy Williams who won the Tony Award as best actor in A Chorus Line. Yeah, he was. He was. He was the gay guy in A Chorus Line who told the whole story about his father coming to see him in a drag show. And he won the Best Actor award in that. And I used him in that part. And he was very brave.

He was up on top of that water tower without any harness or anything. And he did the scene. He was just great. And when I'm shooting the scene, this is a great story. It's not in the documentary, but I'm shooting a scene of this guy up on top of the water tower shooting people, and on the roof of a building in midtown Manhattan, an apartment building which had a nice water tower. So we're getting it all ready to shoot. We got the equipment there so when the guy falls off the tower, he's going to land in a bunch of cardboard boxes.

Everything is ready to go. Except, where's the telescopic rifle? There is no telescopic rifle. There's a production assistant who's supposed to show up with the telescopic rifle. Now all of a sudden, he arrives. Where's the rifle? Well, he says, I didn't want to upset you, but the guy who was supposed to give me the rifle changed his mind.

I says, you didn't want to upset me? What do you think you're doing now? I've got a whole scene, the camera's all set up, everybody's here and there's no rifle. How am I going to shoot a scene? The guy's going to point his finger and go bang. How am I going to shoot a scene? The guy's going to point his finger and go bang. What am I going to do? So now for some reason, which I'll never understand in my life, I turned to the half dozen people who lived in the building who'd come up on the roof to see the

movie being shot. And I said to these people, has anybody there got a telescopic rifle in their apartment? And this girl puts her hand up and says, my boyfriend has one. And I said, would you mind going down and getting it? So she goes down and brings up a telescopic rifle. Incredible. And we shoot the scene.

I mean, now what is the possibility? Incredible. It is so incredible. It's an indelible moment. It's so stupid, but it was true. In the doc, Joe Dante told me to a Catholic guilt movie made by a Jew. Why does my religion keep coming up in your discussion? It's from the doc, Larry. It's right out of the doc. First of all, my grandmother was as Irish as you can be. Really? Yeah, she was Julia Florence Phelan, and she was as Irish as Clancy's cat.

Clancy's cat. That's what she always said when I asked her I'm as Irish as Clancy's I want to ask you a question real quick. This is from one of our listeners We do this thing called grill the guest and he wrote it you have wait a minute you have This is Chris Chris waters wants to know I love the series the invaders I purchased both seasons on DVD way ahead of its time, but Understanding that Larry left the show early in the process. What direction would he have taken it in? I? Would have had fewer aliens the show got tiresome because

Every other person turned out to be an alien and he was killing them right and left. I said, you know, part of the fun of the show is guessing which one of the people turns out to be an alien. You're taking all the guesswork out of it and they're dying like flies. They're not dangerous anymore. They're so easy to kill, but they wouldn't listen to me. So, you know, if you don't control the show and I didn't quit control the show Yeah, and he was a very powerful producer He had done a lot of the fugitive and the untouchables and he was a good producer in his way But not in the way not in the realm of story. He was not a good story guy

and so I couldn't get it my way, but Fortunately, the show was on stayed on for a while and and in in the Documentary you you I heard you asked your mother what commerce is and Yes, she explained to me when I was a child that you buy a pair of shoelaces for five dollars five cents and you sell them for ten cents. And that's why you make a living. And so I didn't want to get into the shoelace business, but I got into the movie business

instead. But my theory was you got to make a picture for less money than you sell it for. I guess that's pretty stupid, but that was my theory. So you use that analogy of the shoelaces for your filmmaking career? Well, I thought it was not a good idea to spend more money than you did. You know about that, Gil. Oh yeah. Larry, you're still writing all the time? You have the process of reading into your recorder? You still write that way? And you still write that way and you still write every day

or try to write every day? I write that way. Longhand, I write on a typewriter or whatever. I still write all the time. I just wrote a whole bunch of episodes for a new series for a company called Bad Robot. Oh, JJ's company. Yeah. JJ's company. And we're going to go and sell it to Netflix or Amazon or one of those. And I wrote them all. All the scripts are already written. So we don't have to write them later on. We got them now. We can show them.

The whole series is all written the whole first season. And I'm hoping that it'll go pretty soon. And then I got a couple of screenplays that I wrote that I've been holding back until after we sell the JJ series. Okay. And you know, I'm trying to get hot. You're working, you're working like crazy. Let's face it, this show is the biggest thing

that's happened in a million years. I wanna plug the documentary too and credit the director Steve Mitchell. That's a smear job. That's a smear job. I'm telling you, like I said the other night at the screening, they go after you and they say anything they want about you and there's nothing you can do about it. You didn't have Final Cut, huh? First Harvey and now me.

And I love how Fred Williams... Oh, Williamson. Fred Williamson, I mean. Fred Williamson... Williams is good enough. Fred Williamson contradicts everything that you say. Oh, that he did the stunts first. That Larry did the stunts first? That Larry did the stunts first?

Because he can't bear to have everybody know that he was scared to do these stunts and that I had to do it first. He's such a macho guy that he's embarrassed. So he's got to lie about it. But if you saw the picture, you'll see there's a scene where he gets picked up by a machine and buried in a pile of coal. He gets buried in this coal pile and he climbs out of it. And then right afterwards, there's a picture of me and him standing together and I'm black as him

because I just came out of the coal. So that proves, that proves I did that stunt before he did it because why would I do it after he had done it? The only reason I would go in there is because he was afraid to go in. He said, I'm going to get my legs chopped off. And I said, too tall anyway. So I did it first. It's a great doc. It's also not only about your life and your career,

but it's a doc about the creative experience. And I urge our listeners to check it out. It's really wonderful. If you want to see how a lunatic calls, this is a good one. Absolutely. And you're one of our ideal guests. Like, you're one of those that we've

been talking about for a while. Yeah, for a long time. And we're glad we finally got you here. And you're a great raconteur, Larry. We thank you. Well, I've always wanted to be on with Arthur Godfrey and his friends. How are you? I hate the Jews. How are you? Good night. Still smearing poor Arthur, right? We've smeared him on previous shows. So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre

and we've been talking to Larry Cohen and once again see his documentary, King Cohen, the wild world of filmmaker Larry Cohen. Wild it is and go to Larry's website LarryCohenFilmmaker.com Do you have spec scripts on there? Do you have unsold scripts on there? Or is that bullshit? Yeah there's a no there is a few scripts I wanted people to read. Wow. You know, well, I believe, I believe that writing scripts is like painting a painting. You know, you don't, if you don't sell it right away,

you put it up in a gallery and people see it and somebody takes a liking to it. You don't just put it in the closet and forget about it. You put it up where it can be seen by people. So I know everybody says, well, what are you gonna do if they steal your script? What are they going to do if they steal your script? I hope they do because then you can sue them for all their money. Is that your wife yelling, Sue them?

No, no, no. No, but it's a friend. It's a good friend. So if they want to steal my stuff, you know, I've sued people before and I always won as a matter of fact. So, you know, I put a few scripts up there just to have them seen by people. Larry, you're... And, you know, so I go ahead and say... You say it in the movie. Every script has a history and a journey and it'll get made someday. Hey, I've sold scripts. You know, 35, 40 years ago I had a script. It was optioned by Clint Eastwood twice. It was a Western. And he wanted to get John Wayne to be in it with him. But John Wayne

didn't like it. And every time we tried to get John Wayne to do it, he rejected it. And Clint optioned it another year and still couldn't get John Wayne to do it. And finally Michael Wayne called me up and said, I think I can get him to do it. Michael Wayne was John Wayne's son. So I said, okay, he says, dad's going out on his boat at Newport this weekend. I'll give him the script and make him read it again. So Monday, I called him, what happened, Michael? He says, well, I hate to tell you. I went over to dad, I gave him the script. He looked at it. he called me over he says these piece of shit again and he threw it overboard I said my script is in the Pacific Oh my god!

sinking sinking and and so before we go I heard John Wayne hated the Jews. No, I don't think that's true. Cut that out. He just hated me. He just hated me. He just hated my script. So 35 years later, I got a phone call from the Hallmark Channel. They went to buy this script. Where the hell did they see this?

35 years ago, I wrote this script. So I sold it to see this? 35 years ago I wrote this script so I sold it to the Hallmark channel for $200,000. I love it. Great. I mean so nothing is ever over in the movie. Larry you're a national treasure and we are thrilled to have you. You know what they do with treasures? They bury them. Thanks for being a part of this Matthew. Thank you, Larry Cohen. I'm not going home. I'm having too much fun. King Cohen himself.

Thank you, Larry. This was a thrill for us.