Speaker 1: Good morning, Mindy.
Speaker 2: How are you doing today?
Speaker 3: Hi Ero, how are you? Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm very excited to share a conversation with you
because you are exercising what I believe is a mantra
that all should lead lead in their lives, and that is,
share your story or somebody will write it for you.
And I'm hearing things from your podcast and I'm going
I didn't know, and if I wouldn't have known, then
I would have assumed and I would have written my
own story. So you're doing something here that is absolutely phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're very excited about it. I mean being able to,
as my dad always said, keep my name alive, you know,
being able to do that and talk about my dad
and you know, growing up and what it was like.
And I've always sort of wanted to do that. I
did that a little bit and stand up, but I
really wanted to be able to have audiences listen to
these clips. Right now, we're doing Jimmy Kimmel and also
My Dad's Act, a clip clips of my dad in Vegas,
you know, through the nineteen sixties on clips that people
haven't heard before and some I haven't heard, and just
him on stage when he did like four shows a
night at like twelve, two, four, five o'clock in the morning,
and just how he related to the audiences and how
that worked, and you know, it was really exciting to
listen to and to discuss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the way that you and Ed are presenting
this is in a modern format.
Speaker 2: And what I mean by that.
Speaker 1: Is, sure, we could go and live in the past,
which we're told not to do, but you're you're planting
it in a brand new generation the same way that
I watched Johnny Carson on we TV. I want to
know the greats so that I can take with the
great shared and try to move it into our present
place of now, because they obviously figured it out before
we got here.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely. I mean, yeah, my dad started doing stand up.
You know, it might have been he might have been
bombing in the lounge, and then he started insult seeing
a guy at the bar, and that sort of spanned
out and he would do imitations of his mother and
her friends and again, you know, relating to the audience.
And I think it shows like Carson where my dad
would come on and it was a totally different format
where everyone would sit on the couch. All the celebrities.
They would stay on the couch and my dad would
come out and it became like a party because they
were all sitting there. My dad would insult them and
it was just a really interesting, fabulous dynamic to watch
that you really don't see today that I think was
very exciting because it just was so spontaneous and just
worked so well.
Speaker 1: One of the things that's still stuck in my heart
is the fact that when he would look at you
and say, just keep my name alive. I just in
my own personal vision, I would see that smile after
he would say something like that. And was he that
way to where he would say something so seriously and
then all of a sudden he would just he would
laugh up and he and all of a sudden, It's
like it was like the extra soil you put on
a seed so you have a great crop.
Speaker 3: Definitely. I mean he always had that sort of I
think that's what helps so much with his comedy. He
always had that little chuckle at the end or that
you know, I'm really a nice guy and this is
not really who I am. You know, we make fun
of people and we laugh and and these are the
things he would say on stage, and you know, trying
to bring the audience together, which you really was able
to do all different walks of life and different ethnicities,
I mean things, A lot of it not politically correct today,
but in the time that it was, it worked. So
you know, he came out at at the exact perfect time.
There wasn't a better time for that.
Speaker 2: Please do not move. There's more with many Rickles coming
up next the name of the podcast Mindy Ed and
Don Rickles. We're back with Mindy.
Speaker 1: With all of Ed's experience in the broadcast industry, did
he ever sit back and look at what your father
has accomplished and said, my god, he was doing radio
the way radio became But we needed someone like your
father in order to open up that door for radio
people to cut loose and to when you cross this line,
you know, radio people are going to say some stuff.
Well you know what, Don Rickles beat you to it.
Speaker 3: Oh for sure. I mean he really was the start
of all of that. And and you know, you see
like Howard Stern and people like that today that were
just very outlandish, I mean more so than my dad
would ever have been. But I'm sure I know that
Howard Stern. My dad was on him one time, and
I know, you know Howard Stern loved my dad and
just thought he was great. And I'm sure he took
some of his stuff from my dad in terms of
being able to just breakout and say what you wanted
to say. And again, I think it brought audiences together
in a way that was very you know, special and unique.
Speaker 1: But what a brilliant plan for your father though, to
go on Jimmy Fallon and to continue that journey of
comedy forward, because all of a sudden he was sitting
there with Generation Z and X and the millennials and everything,
and your father now was still shining that star that
was just as bright as those early days.
Speaker 3: Oh definitely he was able to continue. I mean, so
many comics can't say this. His career spanned, you know,
like forty five years. He was able to really go
from the early days in the sixties through the seventies, eighties, nineties,
and his audiences stayed with him. He had new audiences.
He always had young people in his audience. It wasn't
like as he aged the audience age. You know, there
were older people, there were younger people, there were all
different walks of life and that was an incredible thing
that he was able to keep going, and audiences still
wanted to see him all through the years. With all
the different comics coming up, they still loved my dad.
And all these comics that worshiped my dad that I
met doing stand up that said, oh my god, your
dad was such a legend and he's the reason I
do stand up and different things like that were just really,
you know, great to hear.
Speaker 1: What about all of the writing, because your dad comes
across to me as somebody who was a writer? What
are you doing with that? And he was, wasn't he?
Because I mean with the way that he expressed himself,
that had to have started on a page, you.
Speaker 3: Know, actually Arrow, it didn't. He really did not write.
Bob Newhart's best friend was the opposite. He wrote. He
was very meticulous, you know, like a Jerry Seinfeld, and
the actor was brilliant. But my dad never wrote a joke,
and he sort of got a sense of what kind
of an act he was doing depending on stories he
might have told about his mother, his mother's friends, or
different imitations he did and the insults or whatever, and
it sort of formed an act. I don't know how
he did it, but he did, and he was able
to do that, and yet there was so much spontaneity
in his act because when he spoke to people in
the audience, that was right off the top of his head.
So and yet it was always brilliant. So how he
did that, I would not know, because I wrote, and
every comic I know says they write. And he never
wrote a joke. He never really told jokes per se,
but he really never wrote anything down. It was all
sort of in his head. And he would listen to
his act certainly, but it was all in his head,
which was truly amazing.
Speaker 1: Would you say then, that he was a stream thinker
and that he trusted improv where so many other people
would rather sit there and ask a question when they're
an improv when in reality it's about forward motion.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, I mean he wouldn't even go what the
hell is improv? But he was doing that all the time.
You know, he was just off the top of his head,
and whatever he was getting back from the audience, things
would just come out and they would love it. And
the more the audience, of course laughed, the more it
fueled his energy and his spontaneity, and he just went
from there. Yeah, and it worked, you know, And he
did all the friars roasts of all these big stars.
He didn't know what he was going to say about them,
and he just kind of got up there and whoever
he was roasting, Orson Wells or Frank Sinatra or Dean
Martin or whoever these people were, he just kind of
went off the cuff. And you know, he was often
he was usually the funniest one up there, so it
always it always worked.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for this podcast because I
feel like that you and Ed have invited me over
for dinner and we're talking about your dad and we're
just having this honest to god conversation and your format
with Ed is just so much mind blowing and so addictive.
I just it is such a beautiful place to be
to put your dat up on display like that, just
so we can love him even more.
Speaker 3: Oh Aero, thank you so much. That's exactly what we're
hoping to get across. So I really am thrilled that
you feel that way, because that's what we want the
audience to listen to here.
Speaker 1: Well, please come back to this show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 3: Mindy, thank you, Ero, thank you, it was great to
join you.
Speaker 2: Would you'd be brilliant today?
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, thank you, thank you,