Hey, everybody, and welcome to Life is a Gamble Episode thirteen. This
is part two of my interview with Joseph Mrhey and in part one we got
through him getting from Syria to Florida to Las Vegas and then he moved to
Los Angeles to get into the film business. So Joe, welcome back to
life as a Gamble. Thank you, thank you. So yeah. We
when last we left your story, you had been successful in the pizza business
in Las Vegas and decided a friend told you about someone who was an editor,
Is that right? And you decided to go to Actually, he came
to La looked me up, and he came. I mean he came to
Vegas. He came to Vegas. He came to Vegas, looked me up.
He just came for its Christmas time, and he came for a couple
of days. And I remember he was working with Sandy Howard. It's a
producer who produced a movie called They made two three of them. It was
about a student by day hooker by night. I can even see them.
Oh yeah, yeah, I know exactly which what you're talking about, but
I can't think of the name of it. Yep. And and so I
said, oh my god, you're working on the movie. Said yeah,
well, okay, I want to go back to Vegas. Yeah I was
in Vegas. Anybody who would listen to me, like you know, you
were aware. Jerry Lewis came to the acting school, you know, and
he spoke, and you know, I went to him and I said,
yeah, mister Lewis, I want to move to to LA and make movies.
He said what he said, Yeah, I want to move to sh
you know. Of course he looked at me like I was an idiot,
and he said, you can't do that. You can cat And he said
to me, you know, making movies it requires a lot of talent,
you know, Like if I was I remember what he said. He said
something totally ridiculous, but I couldn't say anything to him. He was,
I said, Jerry Lewis, He said, if it was me and I
go to to LA, if I go on Universal Studio ride, by the
time I get off the ride, they will offer me a three picture deal.
I said, oh wow, okay, And I wanted to say later
on I thought about it, like who's going to offer you the stupid three
picture deal? The driver or the guy who's saying, oh, this is
what the film was. I mean, you know, full of himself.
You know, it was a discouragement. So so when this guy came and
said I worked on a picture, you know, and Sadie Howard film and
the editor, I said, oh, I gotta go tell me that's it.
That's that's the decision making. And I and I remember Joe Bernard,
you know our teachers, you know, in Bathing school teacher. He discouraged
me because he got a good thing going. It's not easy to be,
you know, to do in La and so on. And I said,
that's it. And I made a deal with my brother that you know,
I said, listen, just send me fifteen hundred dollars a month or two
thousand a month, and once I'm make in La, you can have it
all. You can have pizzeria, you can have the house, you can
have everything. So it's like burning the ship behind you, you know.
Yeah, you know. So I went to La and you and I start
hanging out and figuring out what we want to do and write script and then
I ended up making, you know, my first movie. So so this
is one. This was a decision where this one didn't work out. So
well, right, so many of your decisions really paid off. But the
first movie you put together a bunch of lost all the money I mean clus
fishing, Yeah, thousand dollars and I think I recouped twenty five dollars.
That's it. Yeah, because he made a comedy, right, and nobody
wanted a comedy. He made a comedy. And you know, you know
my hero at the time with the Allen and I thought, I can,
I can make something like with the l just it didn't work out. However,
learning from this, you know, when I take when I took the
movie, the actual movie, and went to calm Fellow Festival to me fit
trying to sell it. One guy said to me he was buying for England,
England and Australia, I think, And he said, I can't and
sell this movie, but I love movies. And when he watched Hollywood in
Trouble with the comedy that you were in, you know, you know,
he said, you know what, you can tell a story. I can
see you directed it. You know you have you have a good angle.
You should make action movies. If you make action movies, I'll buy every
movie. And that's what could push me into okay, let's put it into
action movies. And when I found Richard peppin you know and start, you
know, because he he saw it was the director of photography from my movie,
the first movie, The Flow. And I even put it in the
theater, you know, I put it in Salomonica theater. You know,
I tried everything, you know I wanted. I really believe that maybe,
but anyway it came out of that movie is you know, the second movie.
But here's an interesting story. I don't know if I told you about
Brooks making mel Brooks No, oh, okay. When I had Hollywood in
Trouble, it was shot on sixteen millimeter. Then I listened to somebody else
saying, well, if you blow it up to thirty five millimeter, you
know, you know, maybe people will put it in a theater. So
again I spend another fifteen twenty thousand dollars to blow it up to thirty five
on the meter, and now I have it in the camp thirty five and
back then months. If you call any studio and say, well I have
I've finished, I have a movie, people will say bring it in and
let's take a look at the studio. It's not common for somebody to make
a movie on their home. It's very very hard. Right now you can
make a movie on your iPhone. Everybody makes them. Back then, it's
very very so anyway, they said that, I remember, so the Monday
said, okay, bring the movie in. We'll screen it and we'll see
if we you know, if it's any good, we'll distribute the movie.
Now I'm thinking, my god, so go Paramount Universal. Everybody agreed to
look at the movie twenty a century Fix. I'm going to twenty a century
Fox eleven o'clock on a Monday for them. And I have my can.
I had my Foe cans with me and I go, I drive and my
name is a lot. It's open looking at it. This is like going
to heaven seeing a studio, going to a studio, right. I go
to see the guy and they take me to their distribution, their office and
where the screening rooms are. They have like two three different screening room and
all the posters on the wall, you know, the Academy Award winning films,
and the only person in the whole hallway with just me sitting on a
bench, and the screening room is across from me with a red light and
I'm just sitting there, and they sent obviously, they didn't send the head
of distribution. They send a secretary and assistant see if this movie any good
and call us if it's right. So the movie is going twenty minutes into
a thirty minutes into it, and the door get pushed, you know,
about sixty seventy feet away, boom, and mel Brooks walks by, and
holy shit, this mel Brooks. And he counts and he comes and he
did stop in front of me and the screening, and he goes and he
goes to open the door and there's a red light and he looked at me
and he goes, who's in there? I said, forgot the guy's name?
John? Or a job? He's he's it's screening the movie. He
goes, who's movie? I said, my movie? He goes more competition
and he kept walking. Oh man, that's fantastic. Oh but okay,
so now you make this movie. You lost all your money, but you
formed the company with Rick Pep and you had a third partner, and Ron,
the third partner was going to put up the money to make the action
movies. Right, But if you hadn't had that, would you have gone
forward and made another movie I had. I had the plan to go to
in the Syrian community. There's about five thousand people, ten thousand people in
La and start meeting different people that they all own liquor stores and they all
have caps. So I had a plan this time, I'm not going to
make one movie in Kisser, Oh. I want to have money for four
movie. Each movie is fifty thousand dollars, okay, So I wanted to
raise two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, two hundred thousand dollars for the movies
and fifty thousand dollars to run the business, to have an office, and
so on and so forth. Now Rick Pepin, who is the director of
photography on my first movie, who owned the sixteen millimeters, he owns,
you know, an editing system. I thought he will make a perfect partner,
right right when he comes to that. He was very caring. And
when I was making the movie, I thought, you can only work eight
hours a day. So the first day, after eight hours, I said,
okay, we're done, because what do you mean we're done? We're
not done? You work twelve hours. And everybody else said, you know,
from the crew, okay, thank you, and they start to go,
and he said, wait a minute, guys, don't go anywhere.
You know, this guy doesn't know anything about making movies. You know,
we're supposed to work twelve hours. So he you know, protected me.
You know, he had my back and I liked him immediately, and he
kept kidding. The only one from all the crew at the time, will
cause, what's happening with the movie? Did you edit it? What are
you going to do with it? Would we even what are you going to
sell it? Or we really went to molan. Oh my god, you
really want to be Oh my god, you already did this. And so
he was very very interested, and then he said, listen, if you
make another movie, please hire. So what he was working on the other
side, he was working on his own. He was shooting porn. You
know you know that about yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
he was shooting porn. He was making like one hundred and fifty dollars a
day to day, which is a lot of money back then. But also
he was shooting training film. The training film is for swimming doggles for product
people are swaying a tennis racket for a guy. His name is Ron Gilchrist,
Roan Gilchrist he was the manufacturer in Canada and in New York. Who
has money? And then I met Ron through Wreck, and I was already
pitching two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I wanted to raise, you know,
for my you know for And then I was willing to sell my house.
I was willing to sell my land. I thought, it's a land
in Las Vegas, Okay, to raise the money. I was in the
process of raising the money. So Ron was convinced that with Greck that I
can make a movie and we can double our money. So he said,
okay, I'll give you two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Let's god.
So we split the company one third, one third, one third. I
will not take any salaries where I cannot live without a salary because he has
kids, So he would take like fifteen hundred dollars a month, and I
will work for free. And that's how the company started. Now, the
second movie we made is Mayhem. You know, Mayham Okay and another disaster.
Okay. Mayhem was shot on sixteen millimeter. We spend the fifty thousand
dollars that Ron gave us to spend on the movie, and we send it
to photocam and the graveyard chef a guy wasn't paying any attention, and they
put a blue streak in the negative. I'm like, we shot about twenty
I don't know if you remember. I do now that you say that,
now I remember that I had forgotten. Okay. So we have now half
a movie with the clear, you know, and we thought, oh,
the insurance will pay for it or something that would lab. Now their insurance
will sign anything goes wrong with the negative, they will give you just the
can of film another that's it. So now we took the same movie and
we we thought one day that we went literally twenty eight hours in one day,
twenty four hours plus another four okay, just to fix it whatever we
could fix it. I directed it, and you know, and we took
the movie and we sold it for one hundred and seventy thousand dollars. Okay,
So we thought we had the jack. Okay. And while I was
in me fit by the way, we were partners and we made all these
movies with Recrek. Never went once to your it never went once, never
went with me. I'm the one who would go, you know, to
Europe the movie and later on we hired George, but while I was there,
they were asking me, what's our second movie? You know, I
put together the second movie. You know, while we're there. If you
have a strip, we'll give you, you know, give you, give
you a deposit. So we start thinking about second, the third to fourth
movies, okay, and then we start making movies for you know, fifty
thousand dollars. We sell them for one hundred and fifty, one hundred and
eighty, one hundred and sixty Sunday. You know. So the first sixth
movies we were you know, who were making start to make money, but
we didn't take any money. We took you know, again, Rick was
married, he as kids, he has family, he had taken up one
thousand and so on. But I was working for free and everything was gone.
So we made eight movies with this guy, and it was it was
very fast too. We were making them like what about every six or eight
weeks? Yes, yes, yes, yeah, you can remember it.
I mean you you directed one whether eight days to both days or something.
Oh yeah, yeah, the first one I did. I think it was
because we had to travel to Las Vegas to shoot it, so you know,
we could pick up the equipment on a Friday, return it a week
from Monday. Yeah, you used to pick them up on Thursday, say
we needed to you know, can we pick it up on Thursday so you
can have the whole the travel day, right, right, So we had
from Thursday until a week from Monday. I think I think I had either
eight or nine shooting days total. The old movie it used to pay only
three days of the equipment. We paid three days, yeah, you know,
and so we shoot the whole movie and we paid three days for Toronto.
So so after we did eight eight movies, Ron decided, you know
what, we want to jump to the next level of movie making. You
know. He hired a woman from Paramount to come and be the you know,
and then he got an office on you know, Left the Value.
You got an office on Sun Said Boulevard. Now we're in the big time.
And then he said, you know, I don't need these two idiots.
What do I need them for? I get somebody from Paramount. So
he said to us, you know, we said no, you know,
every time the woman we want to do something. Now all of a sudden
our hand is tied. And he said, no, she's going to make
a whole decision, and he said, you know, you know, then
buy us out. I said, buy us out. He said, I'll
buy you. Yeah, I'll pay one point six million for you guys,
you know, eight hundred thousand dollars each. We said, oh, fantastic.
Okay, So yeah, by the time I should, I should,
I just want to add that at the beginning, this was the beginning of
there being a video store on every corner, and you guys were packaging the
VHS tapes in the back of the warehouse. You had a shrink wrap machine
put it, packing them in boxes, and ups would come pick them up
every day. I mean, it really was. We had it in the
perfect, perfect, perfect time. I mean was yeah perfect the video stores
or they're buying anything. If if you had packaged you and I this interview,
you would ship maybe twenty thousand taps well anything, you know. So
we were lucky that we had that. So that's why this guy in ron
Gilcrest, he thought, well, I need these, you know, bosoms.
I can do it on my own and do much better, So he
bought it. Were idiots, you know. Rick said, I have this
friend, you know, Shelley's friend, who is a lawyer. He ruined
the contractor with the worst contact. At the end of the day, he
only one hundred thousand dollars, fifty thousand for me, fifty thousand for Wreck,
okay, and he took all the library. He took him to Spain.
He put him in a different LLC, and he told us threw off.
So that's it. We didn't get any money from the point one.
We got one hundred thousands. Okay. Wow. Now Wreck on his own.
I'm on my own. I'm trying to figure out what am I going
to do. I certainly want to make another movie. I was extremely broken
and disappointed that this guy did this to us. Went to a lawyer,
look at the un I said, he can't do anything with this guy.
Takes years and so on. So maybe three four months, life, months
went by, whatever, and I called I called WREC. I said,
direct what are you doing? He goes, nothing, Man, I'm looking
for jobs, going shooting porn again, you know, and and whatever he
was doing to make a living. He asked he has kids, and he
said he's a good editor, it's a good director of photography, so he
can always get a job. Me am only directed producer, trying know what,
that's going to give me a job. So I said, do you
have any money left? Because I have like twenty thousand dollars left. I
said, I have like thirty thousand and thirty five thousand dollars. Why don't
we put our money together and make a movie for fifty thousand dollars. And
that when we made LA eight. So that was the first PM movie.
Was LA eight, FIRSTDM movie, he and I and the reason it's called
PM temporarily we will start thinking about the name and said, they's just put
it in an our initial initial for now Pep and Mary whatever and then and
they never, you know, it never changed. So that movie, I
took it to Europe and sold it for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars,
okay, and we made it for fifty to fifty five thousand dollars. So
right away you start making another one, another one, another one, and
yeah, an amazing, an amazing run. And from there you just built
the built the business up. You eventually started making bigger movies. I remember
the first the first time, you know, when you shot on thirty five
millimeter instead of sixteen, and the first sag movie and Bray the Bronx in
the first Yeah, and the first time we used Sag the Union that was
a big teal too. And Eric a Strata was in that movie Night of
the Wilding. Yes, we actually we signed up for three movies. Yeah,
yeah, And then we started getting a little bit bigger actor, a
little bit bigger actor. You know. I remember when just recently he called
me there doing a documentary on Wingshauser. You know, is he still alive?
Yeah, still alive doing a documentary. So we started going up and
upped it up, and then we hired a guy named you know, George
Me. Yeah, And George was ahead of sales, and it was the
pros and cons of George. George didn't give it down, movies, didn't
give it down as long as it's action action action, action, action actions.
And then then for me, I start really going back to my roots
of the very first time why I wanted to make a movie and with the
Allen's movies and really wanted to make good movies. But by now we have
I don't know you were there, and we have one hundred people working for
us. We have you know, a lot of real estate to cover and
a lot of expenses. So we were making movies. We just we had
to make movies to keep the door open. That's why we ended up making
over one hundred movies. But I really wanted to make it. I used
to go to the theater and watch you know, good movies and say,
my god, we can make something. You know, I was striving to
do. But I never had the guts, you know again, to to
say no enough. But we were We were satisfied because we were making the
best action movies independent movies can be. You know, nobody made action movies.
It was amazing. Yeah, I was proud of that fact. The
proud I was proud that we can bring in Roy Scheider, we can bring
in you know, Michael Maths, and we can bring in you know,
some good actors that were you know. But but I really eat down in
my heart and soul. I really wanted to make And when we saw our
company again, when we sold the company, we didn't learn from the first
time. We get screwed. Oh again, Wow, it's screwed again.
And you know, people thought we made tons of money. We didn't make
a lot. And maybe three million dollars for May after I paid my TAXI
I got five or something you know, so it wasn't a lot of money.
We sold it for twenty seven million dollars, but we owed on our
line of credits ten twelve million dollars we had spent with different people. So
anyway, and that was at the crossroad, is what do you want to
do next? You know? But yeah, but during when we were making
the movies, we had years where we you know, split a couple of
million dollars. At the end of the year, we get some million,
I get a million or a million, five two million, So we had
we made some money back then. But but you know, I think our
company we sold it, I think it was worth like fifty million dollars with
the library or even more. But we didn't. Again, we weren't sophisticated
enough to know and and the mistakes looking back, Breck and I may we
really weren't as to to what the markets were. First of all, okay,
month, I never thought we're doing anything special. I thought any idiot
can do this what we're doing. Yeah, I always thought, what are
we doing? We're blowing up cars and you know, or nothing special that
we're making movies and to finish movies and you you know, to make the
move. It's it's an incredible you know task, but we minimized it because
we had it such so well, you know, you wor't there A lot
of people told folk, you know, you know that all the editing,
everything came together so seamlessly that for us it was so easy. But when
you go, you know, when I start working for Water Brothers, you
know, shoot Warner Brothers movies, you know, fifty million dollars movies,
I'm thinking, oh my god, these people don't know shit. They don't
know afer vote, you know, yeah, yeah, and they waste so
much money. Funny, there was so much money, and we were so
efficient and so but we did not take the time to say, you know
what, it's find an incredible script. You know, let's really take the
chance. We don't have to blow up fifty cards to sell the MOVI.
Can we just look four and make it. We did not that, and
I guess I didn't see if it forced from the trees. And when we
sold the company, I was completely completely burnt out. I was fine,
I can understand that, yeah, but you know, I want to ask
about one other things. You decided to get into television, and the normal
way is you get a deal with somebody to make a television show. But
you didn't. You decided we're just gonna shoot I don't know, thirteen twenty
two episodes and then try to sell. Yeah. Yeah, we weren't,
you know, smart enough to hire an incredible lawyer entertainment the leaders. We
weren't smart enough to really go to c A. And I mean we were
outside that we're in the valley. We were like of these two idiots making
movies. I mean, I remember that is hiring Denis Hartwark from cease.
Who are you? You know, why are you making an offer to ca
You know? Who are you? You know? Wow? One hundred and
fifty thousand dollars a week for Dennis hard work? And then we hire them
for I think it's called rood and I think we hired them for two three
hundred thousand. And I remember sitting at CAA and it's intimidating, you know,
you know, to c A. And the guy said, okay,
here's the contract, you know, and I said what is this? And
it's like thirty pages and I said, listen, I hire them for two
weeks. What do I need to contract? Can just gave me a deal?
Now? A he goes, no, this is the way you want
to do. So I took my check book. I wrote check for one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I said, here's a check for his first
week. And I gave him a check the next week for one hundred and
fifty thousand. He said, what if you don't give it to him?
I said, well, tell him not to show up. If I don't
give it to them, just give me one page contract. And yeah,
he said, this is good. He said, this check is good.
I said that's good. And then then they realized, okay, we have
money, you know. Yeah, we can pay actors, We can pay
people, you know. And he said, how come I never heard of
you. I said, well, the Tell Bank of America appears of me.
He sees me every day, department money. So let's keep wanting.
You want to know he clined to get paid. He's going to get paid.
So we weren't wreck. Never went to I don't blame k but putting
them down by any means I love her. We never had a single argument,
but we've never had that. Did not wrote anybody nothing. We never
you know, we went we shot we did you know? It was no
Hollywood, you know, yeah, yeah, schmoozing smoothy, you know nothing.
You know, we just made our movies, you see. You know
Thomas Howell and we sign him for four pictures, five pictures, you see,
Michael Madsen, you sign him whoever? Gary Daniel on the Dragon you
brought down. I think you brought down the Dragon. Yeah I didn't.
I didn't bring him. I you I did the movies with you. I
did the first three movies with Don the Dragon, and yeah, yeah it
was. I mean we like somebody, we thought we can make money with
it, we can sell them. We sign him for two, three pictures,
four pictures and that's it. You know, you kept you know Robert
Patrick from Terminator, you know, we brought up for three pictures, you
know, you know we Yeah, we went it like like a mon PLoP,
you know. Shop. Really it was nothing informal about you know,
you know us, our company, anybody that can walk in any time see
me, see right? Whatever was formal. Yeah. Well. The other
thing that I tell people about that was so special about PM was, uh,
you could go work at PM and learn any job that you wanted.
If you wanted to become a producer, if you wanted to become a director,
If you wanted to become a director of photography, you could start as
a PA and many people moved up within a year or two two to those
jobs. You know John Kelly, you know he's one of the biggest producers
now, yeah, yeah, yeah. John Kelly came to me. He
said, you know what a I said, what are you doing now?
I'm an accountant? I said, okay, I said, you know you
worked as one year as an accountant, you learn all there is to learn
about how much we pay for equipment, how much we pay for wordrobe,
how much we do and then one year from now you've start producing. And
a year later, you know, I see him, he said, good
morning. He has his biggest violence face and has a jacket. Ope.
I said, what's going on? He goes, I've been here a year.
Today I'm a producer. You promise, okay? So he start producing.
Yeah. You know, there was a kid and I don't remember his
name, but he he was Arabic of some sort, and he was a
PA, and within two or three movies he was an associate producer. You
know. So yeah, and as I say, every department there is there
were people who did that. Who went from you know, the guy changing
the camera roles in the dark room to a director of photography within you know,
a very very short time, and that that was there was nowhere else
to do that. Maybe at Corman, you had that opportunity at Corman,
but yeah, it was uh Mia. Michael was half deaf. He couldn't
hear it. Yeah, man, I loved that guy. I love that
guy. And I remember on one of the very first movies, UH Minnie,
who you remember was both the uh the assistant director and the script supervisor,
and we were standing there talking with Mike Hall, and Minnie was saying,
I have no idea what I'm doing, Like, I don't know what
an assistant director does or a script supervisor does. And Mike Hall said to
me, and I will never forget this, he said, in the movie
business, you are who you say you are until you prove otherwise. So
none of these people know, they don't know that you know what you're doing,
so you know, but anyway, yeah, he was such a great
guy. But anyway, so now you sell the company and you're completely burned
out. I'm movie making, so you said, that's it. I'm done
with movies. What's my next chapter? I said, yes, that was
exactly twenty four years ago, twenty five years ago. But my son,
Wow, has it been that long? Wow? I didn't realize that.
Yeah, I walked away when my son was one day, two days old.
It's twenty four now, so I know it's twenty four years twenty five
years old, and I was completely out. I had invested some money in
Vegas with my brother, so I had some in coming to me, you
know, and I decided I don't want to do anything. I really don't
want to do it. For the first time, I thought, you know,
I don't want to do it, and then, you know, within
six months, I was at the gas station and one of the guys who
was working for us at PM, he was filling his car with gas and
I said, what are you doing? And he said, well, I'm
working on this movie with Eli Samaha. You heard of him, this guy?
Oh, of course, yeah. They have franchised pictures. They're doing
the sequel to Harry. When Harry met Sally, I said, oh my
god, that's my old time favorite movie. I said down, I said,
do you think he can get me a meeting with with Eally? Tell
them about me. He knows about me anyway, and he said yeah,
So he called me. Heally called me. He said what's up, and
I said, you know, I said, you know, you know,
this is my favorite. I'd love to work on the Sloop, you know.
He said, come on down. So I went in. I met
Rob Reiner, Metrob Ryder, and they were in the process of getting the
rights. And I love this movie so much that I said, they're saying
they're paying one million dollars for the script, and so I ended up attaching
myself to the movie. He said to me, you know, he was
away what I did obviously that I was, you know, I started reading
script and I started giving some notes on the production of it. And the
movie was twenty seven million dollars or twenty eight million dollars, and they had
Reece Witherspoon attached and Robert Dally Jr. And that's the time, if you
remember, Robert Denly Junior was found in the back of an alley in the
dumpster, you know, and all of a sudden, you know, the
insurance company they want two million dollars just to ensure them in that movie.
That is my very very first step into the world of you know, studio
pictures, you know, so so I said this, So they they fired
him, and they brought in I forgot the guy's name now, and they
so real. Weatherston said up, you know, I'll only want to work
with him. So she dropped out. They got Kate Hudson, they got
somebody else, and they changed the name into and I forgot the name of
the movie. So it was no longer a sequel to when Harry Met,
no longer a sequel. They did it, and then we were ready to
go to to Toronto to shoot it because they wanted to. They want to
get six million dollars in text for it. You know, they give you
six to me. So I took this thread and broke it down and really
worked on it for three four days, and I figured, I went.
I had a meeting with Rob Ryanner and everybody else, and I said,
guys, we don't have to go to Toronto. We can do it right
here. The movie takes place in Boston. Alex and Emma. That's the
name Alex m Okay. I said, we can shoot it. Rob was
trying to run for a governor against our own fortunator. He was taking his
political meetings. He was running for a governor for the state of California,
so the last thing he wanted to do was make a movie. A make
a movie, but he was committed to do it, and he's going to
do it and BI go anywhere else. So he was like, and his
crew said, please, if you can make it here for the same amount
of money, we have the money here. I don't want to go anywhere.
I said, we can make it here. I guarantee you we can,
but you have to listen to me. So it said, okay,
and we made the movie here. I brought it them for like twenty two
million, twenty three million. We have three million dollars. This step even
to go to the boss on a reshoot, you know. And anyway,
the movie didn't test well, but that I came out like this is the
guy to go to to make a movie, you know, to produce him.
He started started doing other movies, you know, and they were paying
me thirty five thousand dollars a week. How much fifty five thirty five thirty
five thousand a week. Wow, thirty five thousand dollars a week. And
it was absolutely nothing when you think of it. Let's say ten weeks is
three fifty twenty weeks, seven hundred thousand. My next task was fifty million
dollars fifty five million dollars movie the whole ten yards, and they want to
cut five or seven million dollars out of it, so to pay me seven
hundred, I cut ten million dollars out of it. Yeah you know.
So yeah, yeah, it's you know, when you think about it,
it's not truly so. Uh yeah. So I worked with franchise with Eli
for on three, four, five six movies, orever a Moth and and
then I came into real estate. Yeah. But now, uh so,
now you have the craziest idea and the biggest gamble I think since you moved
to America that you're talking about doing next, which is you want to go
into stand up comedy. I well, that's funny. When when when I
was making movies, uh, Rodney Dangerfield, Dick Van Patten introduced me to
Rodney Dangerfield. Now before that, here's here's a fun story. Dick van
Patten. We hired them at PM as a voiceover, okay, on a
couple of things, and so we became friendly. He invited me to dinner
at his house. He said you play tennis. I started playing tennis with
ham and right Ronnie Jacob and one day he calls me. He goes,
He goes, can you play tennis tomorrow? And I said, okay,
you know, he said, come to my house at ten o'clock. I
go to his house at ten o'clock in the valley. They own him and
his son. They owned three houses in a row and they have two tennis
courts, one clay and one regular tennis court. And I walked in and
he goes, you know, meet mel Brooks. He's going to be your
partner. And and Bankroft and Dick Van Patten was on the other side.
So me, mel Brooks, now our partner's playing tennis. And we played
several weeks after that, every day, every day, weekend we play.
And I was so dying to tell him that I met him, you know,
twenty century box and he goes here you know, so so, but
I didn't. But one week we were playing tennis with Melbo Brooks and and
and a guy named Casey King. Casey King is a nephew of Dick Van
Patton and Anne Bancroft just had a movie out called With with Robert de Niro
called. Anyway, so we're playing tennis. We finished three games and we're
you know, we went to get some water. Ann Bancroft, who's bathing
in the sun, and me and Casey against mel Brooks and Dick Van Patten
and uh and Dick said, I mean mill Brooks said to us a Great
Expectation. The movie's name of the crypt called Great Expectation with Ann Bancroft and
and Robert there. He goes, you know, Anne sitting in the you
know, and she's bathing. Tell her about the movie. It just opened
Friday, and then now it's Saturday. Tell her about the movie. Tell
her how well she did in the movie. And we well didn't say anything.
So we walked by, and Casey walked by, Uh bye and Bancroft
and he goes, hey, great job with the movie. And we played
three, said three games. We went back to get some water, and
mel Brooks grabbed Casey literally grabbed him by the show. He said, what
are you a fucking idiot? You don't tell the megastar like you know and
kind great movie. Tell her how well she did with Robert dinner. Talk
a lot about the scene, Tell her about the essence of the scene.
Tell her what moved you in the scene in case He said, I didn't
see the fucking movie. He goes, what about you? I said,
I didn't see the movie fucking boozers. So we went back, we played,
we played tell us and we didn't say anything. It was really pissed
off. He loved her to death. People loved it and uh still their
confidence all the time, and so so Casey odd and dies a couple of
years later, and they had he was only fifty two years old, and
they had a memorial for him at Dick Van patt In backyard. It was
like one hundred and fifty two hundred people and and everybody was going up and
telling stories about you know, Casey and Dick van Patten. He left so
hard when he told him he didn't see the movie, you know, and
he said, Joseph, get up and sit tell the movie, to tell
the story about about about Mill Brooks. I said, oh, I said,
get up, you know, I said, okay, So I got
up, and you know, and I'm saying the story but you know,
you know, we're playing. We went for water and just about to tell
him about what mil told us. Mill walks in. He watched walk in
and then against it, and he was looking at me, and I did
not finish the story. I just I just said down, that's the mel
Brooks story. That's the second mel Brooks story. We're playing tennis and he
started training and he was collected. He was trying to get enough money to
make the producer to play the producer, and he was asking for He asked
me for fifty thousand dollars. He asked it for fifty thousand dollars to invest
in the play. He was asking like twenty of his friends did here to
get but the first few. I think the play costs eleven million dollars.
And anyway, he started training and there was a clubhouse and Brookes and mel
Brooks sat down and told us the story about the producer. He knew all
the songs, he knew every line, he was doing the accent he was
saying the song. He was the most MEMORIZI memor zion what's the word memorizing?
Uh, one hour that ever ever witnessed. The rain is is training
and we're in this clubhouse and he's pitching display and he knew every every single
line in that But we didn't the reason we didn't invest in it because he
flew to Hawaii with his partner and his writing partner. He was fifty five
years old, and the guy died and and had a heart attack his partner
and died. So Middlebrooks came back. Dick Van Patten. He was a
gambler, he degenerate gambler himself. He felt that this is a bad luck.
There's no way we're investing in that. Of course, the favorite,
the biggest floodbuster. But you were gonna you were gonna say something about Rodney
Dangerfield. And then the standout introduced me to Rodney Dangerfield. And I did
two movies with Rodney Dangerfield. So Rodney calls me and he said, you
know, I want to test my material. Let's go to the Laugh Factory.
So he takes me there and he'll put his recorder around and he started
doing his apps. So I watched him develop like one hour of material over
and I became one of his really good friends, over and over and over,
and so I fell in love with the idea of the laugh Factory,
which is now my own. I'm a partner and three laugh factories who are
opening three more lab factories that's my second career, and my partner Jamie Mosad
at the founder. He thinks I'm really funny. I have impeccable timing because
he did my seventieth birthday two weeks three weeks ago. We had one hundred
and forty people. He introduced me and I went on the stage and I
did like ten minutes of just talking like I'm parking to you right now,
but I had some jokes. I told some jokes and he said, you
know, you're Shue, and I want you to do it. And as
of this morning, I am going to be the host of open mic for
him every Tuesday. That's when the amateurs come in and they test their material
and I give him some feedbacks and he gives me the authority to hire them
if they're good. So he really wants me to get into it. And
you're going to be doing this at the Lab Factory in Hollywood. So anybody
who's listening when I come to open my you know, come, you know,
and Tuesdays, Tuesdays at five o'clock, we start usually anywhere from ten
to fifty sixteen hundred people will show up, you know, and and do
you know, we take the first ten to fifteen people, but I usually
feel so bad for people who came and stood in line. I bring everybody,
and you know I stayed with that. Everybody does. There's set two
minutes everybody has to do too. So yeah, I'm excited about maybe writing
something for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that I stand happen and who knows.
You know, that's it's another one. Quite a risky, risky thing.
You know, a lot of people are so afraid to get up on
stage and talk in front of people. You know, Rodney Dangerfield told me
it's just you and the monke. That's it. No band, there's no
writers and writers, just you in the back. And these people make him
up. And Rodney with such a master you know, I mean, you
take one joke, Rodney, I mean, you take one one. You
know, he built his entire career of him being ugly. You know,
his wife can't cook, and his family get no respect and you get no
respect. You know, I mean, listen to one line, this jokey
six year old and Rodney, you know, when he was six years old,
he asked his dad to take him to the zoo and he said dad,
he told him son, when they want you to come and get you,
son, when they want you to come and get you. It's it's
it's it's just like he told me. He built his whole career up jokes.
Yeah, when he was born, he was so ugly, you know,
the doctor took one look at him and he slapped his mother. You
know, So it is I gotta, I gotta tell you a story about
Rodney and Eddie Murphy. Did you ever hear the story? No? Okay,
okay. Eddie Murphy is eighteen years old, right, eighteen years old.
It's going for the first time on stage, the live fact. And
when Annie Stars walks in, they bump all the comedians out. They starts
soon as they arrived, you know, Robin William, you know, anybody
who comes in, you know, they go first. So just about Eddie
Murphy is going on the stage, Rodney walks in and they told them get
it, you know, just get out of the way. Let's let's rib
me go and do his set. And Eddie was, you know, loved
Rodney. Daniel Field knew who he was, of course, and he goes
mister and he said, you know, I was just about to go,
and you're gonna go and do your set, and he said, you know,
please, when you get off the stage, can you stay for five
ten minutes and watch by set and give me some pointers. I'm starting out.
This is my first style on the stage. And right, he said,
don't worry about the kid, you know. So Eddie, you know,
Ryney comes off. Eddie Murphy goes on and he does his ten minutes
and he runs right back to his hero. What did I do? How
did I do? Rhymie? He goes, what the fuck is wrong with
you? Every other word is fuck this fuck that. He said, go
go join the navy, join the army, get some other fucking job.
You never make it in this business skit, you know. So that's time
we left, you know for Eddie Murphy, Right, okay, Eddie.
The next year he gets Saturday Night Live. Two years after that he gets
you know, Beverly Hills Cop. He is the biggest star on the plan,
right, yeah, and now there's a big benefit at the Beverly Hills
Hotel. Who's in there is why the danger field Eddie Murphield. They don't
look at each other. Edie Murphy goes to the bathroom, He goes to
the stall and next time as well. They take danger field is taken a
pass right, and Ronnie didn't say anything, and he looks, you see
Edie Murphy. Ed Murphy looks at him the same thing. Finally he fast
one of the face. He said, experis and he said, okay,
man, who knew? All right, who knew? That's all he said.
And he told me Edine Murphy was so kind to him. He hunted
them. He always give him all the respects in the world. And whatever
he sees them, he always threat and running really nice. Yeah, so
you know what I thought, what's the worst thing he's gonna get rid of
the stage? You know, you know I worried about I worried about my
accent. I wish he felt really flowing, like very very flooring, because
Tom is he is worrying, right. Yeah, but you know, all
the time that we went together, the you know, when I look back
at it, I always remember we were laughing. Yeah, we were always
laughing, mostly because I was the funny one. But but but yeah,
anyway, you know what, you'll have a good time, right, It'll
be fun and and and it's always fun to try something new, do something
new. Yeah, that's that's something I really want to do, I really
want to do, and I tried. I got all these things I tried
to write, like Okay, when I went up on the stage, the
very first joke, I will remember it forever, I said, I look,
dais sitting right in front of me and my wife. Do you know
the story? I asked her to marry me three days, four days after
I met her. You know, so, I said, I said,
another big risk, I said, you know, I said, you know,
I never really thank you. Thank you for saying yesterday, after three
days, literally after three days, you said, yesterday, who asked you
to marry him? I really want to thank you because I had asked when
you hit fucking women and they all said no, thank you for the green
card. But well, listen, I want to thank you. I've taken
up an awful lot of your time today, so I want to thank you
for this. But the two things that stand out to me in your story,
your life story, are number one, how people can have such an
effect on your life. You know, some person can do the smallest things
and completely change the direction of your life. And the other thing is that,
no matter how big the risk was, you just pushed forward. It
seemed like you were fearless, that you no matter what, you just kept
putting one foot in front of the other and given a shot. Well,
I agree one hundred percent, and I want to leave with these thoughts that
first of all, I chose the country or the country shows me to come
to America, and the American people I've found extremely extremely generous and extremely nis
so. And then and literally they get the short end of the stick in
terms of they live in great, great, great country and they have all
the resources in the world for them. The foreigners see it, but the
American people, unfortunately don't see it. So if you're listening to this and
you need some help, you know, just seek it. You know,
all this money you know the government has, you can look for that money.
You can look for a loan, you can look for somebody to help
you. You know, you can look for you know, if you're sick,
there are people. There's American people are so generous with their time and
efforts that they will help you. There definitely, I found they will help.
If you seek it, you will you know, you will find it.
And in terms of taking risks, especially when you're young or middle age
or you want to try something, new I always look and see what's the
worst thing can happen? And and you know, you and I monce we
haven't spoken for years, but we were really good friends. But I know
for a fact the worst thing can happen for me is Okay, I don't
have any money, I don't have place to live. You will put me
up. I know you will put me up. I know you would feed
me, and I'll do the same to you. So if you have just
one or two friends where you can really count on and they can help you
make that decision or take that lead, you know, stick to those friends
because the worst case scenario, you know, you can have a bit and
maybe you know, a warm meal and no and no cat on the can
that's my cat, although I hear it's good anyway, it's good for Yeah.
Well, there you have it. That is the end of my two
part interview with Joseph Merhe quite an unusual and inspiring story. As usual,
you can reach me at Life is a Gamblepod at gmail dot com or on
Twitter. I'm on Twitter at RWM twenty one. So until next time,