 Bruce Smirnoff joins us from Delray Beach, Florida. Hello, Mr. Smirnoff. David, it's been a long time, hasn't it? It's been about eight years. Something like that. Yeah, we last saw each other in Las Vegas. Todd Glass was opening for David Spade and then we all up with Avi Lieberman. We all went up into Todd's suite and we laughed our asses off. With my son. My young son was with us. That's right. Oh, and I kept asking, is it okay for me to swear or, you know, that's right. And you said it was okay. That's right. How about this show? Is it okay to do we keep this G rated or was the length gone? Let's keep it G. Okay. Let's keep it G rated. That was one of that. That goes to show. I got to go. That's it. That was one of the happiest days of my life. Oh, I, yes. And I concur because I had moved to Florida in 03. And I love living here. And but what I miss the most about Los Angeles are the show business people because it's a laughathon at any moment. And here it's anything but most of the people here, even people my age, I'm 60 now. But and I have friends that are like 55 to 65. They're all on Prozac. They, I don't know if you're listeners know what you're on Prozac. I'm not. But evidently, your lows aren't so low, but your highs aren't so high. So I'm around these people like, like you're a comic and you know, and you know, when you're funny, and I know when I'm funny. And yet when I'm with all my friends down here, it's just like, you know, it's just like that funniest things in the world. And they just stare at me. It's not and they like me because they think I'm funny, but they just don't laugh because of the medication. So that's unfortunately a lot of people down here, like the very few people laugh like you and I and all the, you know, all the comics when we're together in a room, you are still working as a standup. You're still doing cruise ships. It's amazing here. I'll give you a litany in Los Angeles. I left in 01 early 01 because I had really exhausted everything. I did that one man show that we'll talk about a little later. I almost got something to happen on one of the networks. And then they just said it ain't happening. And then I figured I saved money to make what's called a digital. I was gonna make a digital film digital film was just like burgeoning then. So I went to school to learn it digital filmmaking. And I got the money to make it wrote the script. And then Larry David show came out. And of course, it was so close and Larry David shows, you know, one of the greatest things ever. And once I saw that, and then they renewed it, didn't he get renewed? I think for like eight years after like the first just said that's it. I mean, you know, it's like, they've been trying to send me a message. And message has been received took 23 years to get the antenna up. And the message, yes, I have interpreted and I'll be leaving on the next train. And that was it. So I went to need for like two years and went to Brooklyn. I was living in Brooklyn. I went to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Do you know that? I know of it. It's like Mafiaville. And I went there because I was friends with Richard Jenny and his family. And they lived in they live in a nice area of Bay Ridge. And they showed me the area was very safe. It wasn't in that artsy fartsy area, which is now, you know, 12 years later, you can't even buy anything for a trillion dollars, you know, where all the the yuppies have moved or all the hip kids in near the actually the Hasidic area Williamsburg and that section of Brooklyn. So I was I was living in like Mafia USA. And it was great because I didn't have to lock you didn't have to lock your doors. This is no one is going to come near you. I was walking to the bus stop one day because you take the mass transit and my neighbor's kid who I didn't know he but I saw him come out of like a couple of buildings down. He must have been really high. And he Oh, that's right. He had a he was walking to the bus and he rolled his sock down and he had a juicy fruit gum thing. And in the juicy fruit gum thing was a joint and he pulled out the joint to smoke it but was but what was also in the juicy fruit thing was a rolled up $100 bill and 50 feet behind him and I picked up the $100 bill and I'm going I'm in I got $100 this kid's so high. I got $100 and then I go what if somebody saw me I'm in Mafia. This is like this is cement shoes. This is no fooling around. This is these are the real people. And I ran and I played this all out in my head and I ran after this like idiot 13 year old kid. And I went you drop this like you know like you know call the Mafia on the phone and go don't kill him. You know he's got a pass. He's okay for like a month right. So that's where I was living and I was living you know like do you remember I was living on Beverly and Weatherly which is basically Beverly Hills and I moved to like Brooklyn and I would go I was so happy to be in New York and I'd go into shop owners and go hi I'm your new neighbor and they're like yeah well well you move here from I go I moved here from Beverly Hills California and then they would just have this look on their face like are you out of your blanket I love it in Brooklyn and they no one would talk to me because I was walking around with like this giant smile on my face just to be away from Los Angeles. So I go to the gym and I work out like in the afternoons and there's all these like 20 year olds 20 somethings at the gym and they're all you know just like out of the movies tough guys the whole thing and I walk over and go hi can I work in get away I'll kick your ass get away I'm sorry I'm sorry so wherever I went I was like I was like a pinball you know just bouncing off the bumpers wherever I didn't fit in so one night I'm on a danger fields and I look in the front row and all those knuckleheads from the gym are in front row and I'm killing and their mouths are touching the floor you know and I'm brought on stage is one of Andrew Dice Clay's opening I opened for him like about I don't know two weeks but I'm allowed to wear that moniker and these guys from that day on I would go to the gym they cleared people away what does he want he wants to do bench get off the bench he's going on he's from Dice he knows Dice he's getting on the bench and so it was just crazy but and I left because I really couldn't hand I took a couple of winters and I couldn't handle it so and the other thing was I did move to New York to wash show business out of my system not to wash stand up but to wash that gotta make it gotta make it who's gonna who can I call where can I go who's gonna see me who can I network because I was addicted like everyone is like you have to be to be in this business and I just felt that was an ugly side of me and I just wanted to put it away and I was able to put it to rest in New York I was getting one nighters I was really in at the comedy clubs God bless Lucien do you remember Lucien from the comics of course of course it was so nice to me he welcomed me with open arms I you know it was just like being on at the comedy store and the last factor I left there on you know prime time great spots and I went to New York prime time great spots at two or three clubs there and the one nighters but then that last comic standing shows started and Jay is like my buddy Jay's done so many wonderful things for me and nobody called me to audition for it and I caught myself so much more he was the host yeah the first year producer and I'm like Jay didn't call me I'm not getting no one's calling me from there and I caught myself with that old Hollywood feeling go why why not me why is it this guy why isn't it me why isn't it me I should be it should be and it's ugly and I really passed that you know I mean it was like I was like 46 years old as all these guys will tell you there comes a day where if you're not going to break through you got to wash this out of your hair so to get back at myself I moved to Florida also because of the weather I mean I needed one other pushing thing so I moved down to get back to yourself not back at yourself okay either way no I did it as a punishment but yes you could say to get back to myself I wanted to wash this out of my system so I came down here and I wanted I wanted to go into business I was left a very nice inheritance I'm very very lucky to my parents but I wanted to like learn about a business and get involved I want to do like a coin operated laundry I want to go into business with you well what are you I'm a comedian I want to no one would you know and I've got the capital let's open up a coin operate let's open up a yogurt store no one no one wanted to get involved with me and now meanwhile I'm here and I've been here before like in the late 90s early 2000s opening for stars at these condos which are huge here and so once these agents knew that I was here they started throwing me gigs and that's not a problem that was great because the gigs pay a lot down here compared to what they pay in New York and of course what they pay in LA which is pretty much nothing and I had to readjust my act because I had dirty material and I had like sick jokes like you have to have when you're on in contemporary comedy club but you know these are like like your grandparents your parents and or your grandparents saying that she can't tell sick jokes to an audience that's the audience is already sick so there's no they're sick physically but you can't tell sick mentally jokes right you know and like I had the joke you know my grandmother had Lou Gehrig's disease and alzheimer's disease she swear she had 100 home runs but she knows when and you know and I shouldn't do that joke because grandma's no longer with us we traded her to Cleveland you know you can't do it because like one third of these people either have it or gonna get it the husband's got it the wife's got it and you lose the audience and the audiences are home what's the word homogeneous means the exact same right yes hetero means different so the audiences here are heterogeneous it's all Jews they're all from northeast many are all from Brooklyn so it's not a good scientific cross section but it is what it is it's phenomenal so they all react exactly the same to a joke so if you do a joke they don't like to go can you hear that that noise you know making that sound and they and like it sounds like crickets you can get a whole room so you have to learn and I so I learned and it took me about three years from 03 to 06 to get really good and in the meantime most of the comedians down here were men there were guys if you get some of these books about the old-time Miami guys guys it never broke through but were really funny and there was a big circuit here Sammy shore for example was a big Miami act in the 60s and 70s he then broke through with Elvis and then with the comedy store he never had to come back here but there are guys like that and these guys were all now in their 80s and I was like 45 46 years old so I was getting all their work and I was doing great and I then segwayed onto cruise ships which I don't do the mass market ones because I had to become such a fuddy duddy on stage with clean and and not doing offensive humor that now I'm really like a comedian for senior citizens and there are these lines these luxury cruise lines that are just that they're very elderly people very wealthy very upscale and so in a nutshell I'm sorry to be so I have some questions about this but go in a nutshell I went from trying to get out of show business and to open like a coin operated laundry or a yogurt stand now I make more money than I've ever made in my life I can work like I can work probably about 20 plus years excuse me 20 plus weeks on these ships which is another thing you'll drive you insane but yes you can I think Osama bin Laden must have worked on a cruise ship for he was because if you see that picture of him from 1972 with his family they're all hit in front of that Volkswagen van he's wearing like psychedelic clothing they may have sent him on like Carnival and then the rest is history right could have happened but can I ask you a couple questions about this I'm gonna finish though I want to finish and then I do the condominiums down here and they so it's this amazing career that I've come like a big shot down here but nobody knows it that's it all right ask me your question there is a condo circuit yes there is in Florida and as I understand it they have showrooms that a lot of elderly people retire to Florida and one of the selling points is the condo has a state-of-the-art auditorium for lectures and shows and is that how it works down 100% correct they have again this goes to that homogeneous thing these are predominantly Jewish now over the years there's there's Italian Americans some Irish Americans and some people of just other that are moving into these condos but when they were set up in the late 60s mid 70s it was strictly a lot of them were union people like teachers unions they all went into one development so it was so it was so exact and as you know Jews love live entertainment other than other ethnic groups what way more so and it goes back to living in the stettles in the pale of settlement in the 1800s where you lived away from all the other people and you had to entertain yourself and a guy would get up with a fiddle hence fiddler on the roof and someone would get up and sing and someone would get up and tell stories funny humorous stories or do like imitations of you know people in the town or in the village and hence the stand-up comedian this is what i've read and been told i i'm not a hundred percent on this but this makes a lot of sense so it was in the Jewish culture and it carried on of course through the Catskills and vaudeville and the whole deal so yes but there was also the Italian Alps right they they started there yeah yeah but i'm saying with Jews it might be 90% their love of of of entertainment but when you then when you it drops off to the other ethnics i say the Italians are way up there but not as not as much as you see the Jews don't drink so they compensate the not drinking with the entertainment and that's why you're laughing this is this is what i've had to learn like a country club take country club x in new jersey you know 25 miles from new york like edge what i think it's called that whatever a big Jewish country club that will call that x and then we'll have y which is the non-Jewish country club y never has shows x has like 10 shows a year now why is that because people who join a country club have what's called a minimum you got to pay $2,000 out of pocket every year to eat in the restaurant or to drink in the you know in the restaurant at the country club the non-Jewish people have no problem meeting their minimums because they drink so the drinks are expensive they drink drink drink drink drink and the next thing you know the minimum is done a Jew doesn't drink so a Jew goes and goes i'm on a diet i'll just have soup and they start the whole nonsense and by the end of the year they still owe $1995 so they go this is a predicament because i got to give money for nothing so then they call agent q agent q puts a show into into country club x and they eat up their food minimum and then what happens is the Jewish person calls up people that their friends with it don't belong to the country club because they got to burn off the the thing so come to our show you'll come as my guests and you'll take me to your place so you'll take me out to dinner in reciprocity and this is how it happens it's all done to burn off food minimums and the Gentiles meanwhile go you know not only have i spent my two thousand dollars i spent an extra thousand and they're just as happy they're happier than the Jews but this is what goes on it's a funny bit i just made it up with with i guess attachments to jack mason and every other Jewish comedian in my my head and but yes that's what goes on down there so it's a madhouse it's a madhouse the part of it the condo circuit it's show business it's real show business it's it's it's ending as we speak when i came here in 03 all i heard and i had a zillion gigs all i heard was ah you should have been here 30 years ago when you know blah blah well i wasn't i heard stories about it it was amazing uh and now it is it is uh like this development that i live in i live in over 55 community we've had a lot of vacancies here i guess the past two years and everyone that's moved in is not Jewish and now they're you know now they're starting to i'd say about 30 30 of these people in a community of 250 are saying why do we spend why do we have this entertainment budget i see that we're having comedians we're having they're from another culture and they just don't understand why they have to pay you know their maintenance their monthly maintenance why a segment of that goes for entertainment so more and more this may filter out you know they will then maybe they'll have what two shows a year as opposed to seven except my listeners what florida is to new york because we have people hearing this show all over the world what is the new york metropolitan area connection to florida well first the connection of florida period is that there's no state income tax real estate is very reasonable and you know it's a tropical climate once you hit south florida so it's really less traffic than congested parts of the country it's a great place to live and you've got millions of miles of beaches down here there's a lot a lot of pluses if you like to work out all that stuff so originally before air conditioning it was not that desirable but of course we're talking probably about 50 plus years of air conditioning now it's a great haven and of course people from new york uh have predominantly moved to south florida areas because again jews are clannish people new yorkers uh not you know non-jewish new yorkers are clannish people so there's pockets down here where italian-americans live en masse like a pompano beach florida which is near fort lauderdale and of course palm beach florida where you know the country club waspy crowd goes there so everyone has found their little pockets down here but of course you know new york congestion traffic it has a lot of the elements that as you get older you just have that i can't deal with this anymore attitude you want a different way of life plus you don't want to shovel snow or get stuck in inclement weather so hence uh people coming here now you've got other areas of florida the west coast of florida you have people from the midwest ohio and michigan and you know again urban areas where they don't want to fight the fight the fight anymore as you get older a man loses his testosterone and you know enough of the banging your head against the wall and florida is a great retirement committee like i said cheap real estate and no state income tax so and you you could work all the time no i only can work interesting here for any comedians or show business people listening you the season as it is is only you know for the shows about december 21st to march 15th let's say and then a good three quarters of the new yorkers that live here go back east they go back home excuse me go back north and uh and then so the shows all end so there are some places that do very low budget shows during the summer but it's few and far between so it's a very intense thing in south florida during the winter you have some of the best shows in the united states i say it goes toe to toe with las vegas you can have clean homes you have tony orlando uh people who are names but were names a long time ago but still fantastic entertainer steve salomon who's got a current one manager the comedy that goes on down here rivals las vegas however the weird thing david is that every community here is private so no one who lives in the public you know lives like in just in a condo on the beach can ever see any of these shows because they are not a member of the country club or not a member of the condo gated community so that's the that's the the irony it's so much entertainment in the winter but no one can see it unless they live in that particular community and how many people in the showroom some of the showrooms are 300 to 1100 wow they are some some of the theaters are so phenomenal i'll give you case in point to some of the grand like a century villages four century villages and they have uh they have entertainment or there's three century villages i'm blanking for a second but anyway they have stages that if you just dropped bruce springsteen or frank sanatra onto the stage they wouldn't know where they were and they'd go hey this place is great that's how incredible they are and everybody in the audience is over the age of century village they can be um they can be uh they can be in their 90s they can be 95 there's a place down here called forest trace and my dear friend um jenny grossinger eddus she's the dog excuse me not jenny elaine eddus who is the daughter of jenny grossinger she was on the board of this forest trace getting the entertainment and lending to grow singers was um numero uno uh con um hotel in the catskill mountains during the heyday which would have been the late 40s uh through the 50s into the 60s into the 70s and produced some of the great i mean i wish i had the pr here i mean that you know the entertain everyone who was anyone the greatest of the greatest you know had their feet even woody allen when you read uh read his interviews he would go to these hotels on summer staff and they would do a show because the audience was different some of the audience was the same all summer they had to produce a show using all the staff the waiters and everything and woody allen would write a 25 minute show or longer every week then he would direct it they would have rehearsals all while these kids who were there were waiters lifeguards you know tennis instructors they all lived for the night to rehearse these shows and then they would perform these shows on saturday and that was that's what gave him you know uh all that how he was so profan mel brooks did this too this is why these people were so singers like your granddaughter eddus no elaine eddus is the daughter of jenny grossinger and jenny grossinger i believe is the that was the you know they would proud that her mom was probably born let's say 19 oh something or other and then elaine came along i guess married to a doctor i believe so yes is he a psychiatrist well he's passed away but i believe so i believe your psychiatrist you can still practice no i think he passed away as i'm saying if you're a dead psychiatrist you can go a couple of years oh i i get yeah i guess as long as as long as the clock the alarm goes at 50 minutes yes you know when to get rid of the patient and she actually lives down here she's such a sweet woman i wish i had known her all those years prior but i was not a cat skill comedian but yes um the show elaine eddus was booking the entertainment from a place called forest trace now forest trace we were talking about ages forest trace i had people in their late 90s and into their hundreds it wasn't what's called assisted living but it was just on the cusp of these were people who were still lucid enough and but were not living in assisted living and i and i i asked who's married the longest how many years do you think some of these people married in the audience well it's a trick question and the answer is like three and four because these were people who all outlived their spouses there were no one to came there together and they had children i was talking to a 102-year-old man who had an 83-year-old daughter living in central village i'm going oh my god oh my god what is it come to where have i gone in life this is what am i being punished oh i know what i'm being punished why i'm being punished for everything but and they nod off you know half room just goes down like a like a robot when you take pull the plug out and the other side comes up and then that side goes down it's like a wave and the other side do you plug the robot back into the wall and nothing gets accomplished you just mean that as good as i am nothing gets accomplished there it's just you know it's nothing's accomplished well how do you measure a laugh you can't there see there are exceptions and i'm just giving you know i'm giving you the extreme of what it's like down here but no these condos i kill i kill i kill them i look at people i insult them i see them these things to them because they love they love me they know me and i'm like they're i'm like a pet you what's the word impetuous i'm like they're impetuous kid i'm like eddie haskell they can't wait for me to say something really mean because they know it's almost a god bless them almost at a rickles level you know but but i i mean i'm not not as violent of things that i say but like you know but but but insulting at nonetheless yes so it's i've got this little thing carved down another comic you know sarge you know who he is no he's a black guy who was adopted by like right out of the womb by jews so he's a jew you got to look him up he's very interesting he was in la didn't really accomplish much in la but he found his niche wait a second wait a second hang on for one second yeah okay as i understand the cat skills this is what my father's friends used to tell me right the the showstopper at grow singers was the african american who came out and sang my yiddish mama probably but i know johnny youne used to do that you remember him the korean guy yeah so he he used to do my yiddish mama and they they fall down they fall down they think it's the funniest thing in the world they love it to hear somebody who isn't white singing my yiddish mama so this you know what's funny down here at these condos is they have a the other type of ethnicity that works really well here are italian americans because like sal richards is great and and he's he's comic and he sings and they love italian singers and they're angry and they're angry so they love the pat cooper i call i call these comics i call them the huff and puffers because if you wrote down what they're saying as a writer and you're such a phenomenal writer you would not see anything intrinsically funny you just see and my wife that fat she's my kid he's another one that stupid moron a mother and i go where i'm not finding anything funny here but they go ring ring and they huff and they puff and the next thing you know the audience is splitting their sides i'm going i don't see the joke i see the audience bending over i see you know i see i see comedy on the script i see it on the page and i when i hear the huff and puffers i'm so jealous of them because they're not i sit over a joke i don't tell a joke for nine years until i think it's right and then it bombs and it's no good it was never good to begin with but these huff and puffs and i go to mcdonald's screaming i'm going where's that funny who's that idiot who's let me write it down who's that idiot that is music it's music you're paying attention to the lyrics and the audience is you know it's like it's like robber Klein i he's my idol he's every a lot of these are generation idol and if i i meet him i've met him twice he's not the nicest guy in the world i gotta be honest with you i can't say i've had a nice time meeting him i've met a lot me neither but but i want to corner him and go here's the conundrum robber we all started because we idolized you but you're a false idol because there's nothing to copy you can't be he can't be copied he's like he was an actor who was able to do stand-up who's a singer who's can write he has every tool you know in baseball there's a you know the tool player he's an 80 80 is the high high end of the graph he's a five tool comedian he can write he can sing he can act he can um he can uh he doesn't do traditional punchline he's amazing so all these comics like myself and all these other guys that are way inferior that he'll ever we watched that and went oh i can do this and you know what no i can't i'm i'm doing this 43 years i can't do it he's one of a kind and yet he started all of us so it was this false thing because you can't be like him if i watched the guys on ed sullivan i used to watch those guys and go add their corny and i never wanted to be like them well that's what i became want run of the mill funny but cornball and if i had known that this is what i would have my value early on i sh i wouldn't have done this you remember there's guys like eric gold you remember eric gold you might you know he is a huge producer he started like as a comic and he became an agent and then he became this gigantic you know jim carrey the wayans brothers him and jimmy miller's uh jenice miller's brother jimmy so these guys recognized whatever they recognized and and you know they're so wealthy now i don't even know if they exist they're on another dimension right right so yeah so i don't know where we get we go off on this i'm just curious one final question about the condo circuit yeah sure it's only three or four months a year that's it you know and then what do the old people do with that auditorium well they don't do anything you know i mean they have lectures they really don't they show movies in it um it's not that is not used but it's not it's it they can't regenerate money so they're not going to have a show they may have a low budget show like i said maybe at century village they'll have one low budget show a week which is you know like a singer comes out in plays to tracks and it's a very good singer but there's no band so that is affordable or i'd like to say a comedian but there are no comedians that can tackle these audiences anymore and so and and and you have to be really good to even begin to tackle them so an inferior comedian doesn't even exist anymore so it's really like someone will come out and sing or someone will play the piano and you know and the audiences are only like a third filled because so many people go up north for the winter well you're in delray beach florida how far is that from miami 30 but 38 miles from miami so i would assume there's a community of comics that hangs out at wolfies is there a deli oh no that all closed and the community of comedians there are there's the jerry grant who was an agent here in 1950 and jerry is still around he's i think he's 88 years old and they have this called the lunch bunch and the guys like vick arnell of that era vick is younger dick capri do you know that name just to say dick capri was the first night i did comedy dick capri it was still at the end of fields he looks great uh funny funny funny nice nice nice man uh freddy roman is here and uh this guy uh stewie stone who i don't know he just moved down here i know from the friars in new york but the and lani shore who's a jewish comedian but grew up in north carolina and toured with kenny rogers and dolly parton so he went another way uh with you know with his comedy and he lives down here and occasionally they get together um and yeah and will shriner is down here and will hangs out in richie minervini from the east side comedy club and he now books the borgata he lives down here and uh sarge like i said lives down here and of course everybody's favorite peter fogle that's one mile from me i can't get away from him did peter fogle did peter fogle did he get a degree in history is he a professor no okay i'm thinking i'm thinking of somebody else all right so for those of you who don't know who bruce murnoff is everybody in comedy especially in la loves bruce murnoff oh thank you they do and they think you're the funniest guy in the world and you have had every opportunity i did i did i did i had a lot of opportunities every opportunity to hit a big because you did the minute the minute you came on the scene yeah you were iconic people knew who you were what you were because of the way you look the way you talk your rhythms you are a naturally funny human being but i didn't have that at first here's the problem and my my my work ethic was terrible and uh any comedians who listen to this show it's all about work look at jerry seinfeld this is a man who is a robot he just whether whether he produces anything or not he sits and he writes for hours a day and a work ethic like you cannot believe and i believe he has a very marvelous career to show from it however me gifted naturally funny guy can crack up a dead body but i was too busy chasing women maybe smoking a little pot and doing everything but doing the work and uh expecting everything and interestingly i moved to la i wasn't good when i moved to la i was too too premature i went there because i had stars in my eyes with no nothing to show for it but because i had such a great look everybody came in to see me and i stunk and everyone pronounced me ice cold and when you get pronounced bad and ice cold in los angeles it may take you know eight or nine hundred years to get to come full circle and i just don't have that much time so uh yes i wrote that show that what was the you know let me let me one of one of the happiest nights of my life was in las vegas with my son and Todd glass and avi and hanging out with you uh after the show and another happiest night of my life was taking my father to see your one man show about 20 years ago there was this phenomenon of comedians doing one man shows yes rick reynolds rob becker jackie mason had maybe one of the best ones and that woman it's pat i can't i'm blanking on her name yeah she had one uh yes and you have everybody and his mother and you had a one man show right about all my failures yes all your failures how you and my failures i i went my whole career you know going on the road and telling comics at a dunk and doughnuts or wherever we were about these terrible things that happened to me and i never knew they were gross stories meaning that heavy duty of an amazing story because i was just led to believe from all my teachers in acting school and everything they tell you you're going to have failure so i just assumed that my failures were just run of the mill failures but i would tell people these stories and mouths would drop open people would go you've got to do this as a story so finally remember richard baker you know rich rick mesina's partner rick richard baker and rick mesina tim allen i mean john mulroney some of the great janine garaffalo biggest names in comedy they're producer managers they told me you have to do this so i put it together i went to mark travis who had produced or helped direct uh and directed the bronx tale with chaz palman terry i took his class and i put all these stories and i came up with my show called other than my health i have nothing and today i don't feel so good and it was it where my act was always trying to please others this one man show i didn't give a hoot about anybody i just cared about uh being inside hip telling it like and exposing these stars in ways that no one can believe but okay i couldn't let me interrupt these were all true stories they were all true stories there was a time when i saw borat and when i was watching borat i remember i remember turning i turned to my wife about 10 minutes in i go i cannot laugh this hard my kids because we're killing me my guts were oh and all the way through all the way i got a kid i'm not gonna be able i'm gonna get sick i can't he's killing me yes i saw your one man show three times yeah and i took my father and every time i went to see it i laughed harder and people who listen to this show know that i've said this that of all the one man shows you weren't trying to teach me anything you weren't trying to prove a point you were just telling us the truth about your career you had brushes with greatness the greatness johnny carson carillon connor oh and stories i can't tell until these people pass away i gotta i gotta keep it on the queue johnny carson died and he was alive when you told that story about driving him home drunk right but that story that i can't tell is about somebody's wife and she passed away and it's not nice and when i say an icon it's like hard core i'm even bigger than johnny carson i can't go there right now so um but you didn't you tell this and it's such but it's in such bad light you know i caught i caught stars like having a bad day it's like being it's like it's like taking somebody to the beach and he accidentally walked them into a landmine you know i'll see you later and go i better not step boom i'll go over here bang and i just i went and i hit every i caught like carillon connor on his worst day johnny carson on his worst day x who i can't talk about now in a bad situation and and um yeah yeah i was the story i remember and this is because we had talked about carson with who was it larry brown was on the show on tuesday and we were talking about getting on the carson show and jim mccauley who booked the carson show courting larry to come on and do five minutes and getting the set ready and we were trying to explain to the young audience what it meant to do carson in the eighties it was everything it was the difference between being an open miker and headlining vegas if he know it was it was life life or death it was it it was you know there wasn't lettermen there wasn't anything that was a launching pad uh except for ed Sullivan and then carson inherited that throne and that was it and you tell this great story i'm not going to ask you to tell it but there's this great story that you tell in your show about the night johnny carson came in to the improv yeah yes and he was in the improv and into his cups and somehow he ended up seeing you this is how i remember it it's been right but remember remember the multi-level on it because it's involved my agent at the time and his son so this was two this was three car acts this was like three cars colliding on a corner while i'm crossing the street going hey that car's gonna that car's gonna oh that truck's coming out and it's like three things all amalgamated because when i did that story was the stanney robinson no bud robinson yes it's the bud so it's a bud robinson a bud freedman uh urban arthur's son adam arthur the drug addict and johnny carson and it was it was a collision you know and so when i when i tell a story you know you want to tell a story with the beginning and middle and end this has a beginning tangent middle another tangent and two tangents so it was very difficult to construct it because i had to tell it real because no one it's it's so unbelievable that it's believable so i had to bring in so it was a folly of hara all going on with carson remember i have to drive the guy home at the end of the night and he's with a girl and he's married and and and he's just been arrested you know five days earlier and you know remember do you remember when he got arrested for drunk driving this shows you how mothers against drunk driving how that has progressed since 1982 when he came on the show he got arrested i think on a sunday night and then he didn't go on the tonight show for a week i believe that's how it went and then when he came out the following monday to do his monologue do you remember how he came out on stage uh he came out in handcuffs with two la pd uh officers walking him out onto the stage and the audience the guy was arrested for drunk driving where you kill people and the audience is going hey and the cops you know turn them around and they undo the handcuffs and he does the part you know when you shake your wrists when you rub your hands on the wrist and he waved goodbye to the cops and that and now this is like um you know and this is i'm in the middle of all this you know yeah yeah so he this was 19 this was 1982 i believe yeah 82 he was at the height the height he had just beaten fred silverman fred silverman was the head of nbc and silverman said johnny has to go to work he's not working hard enough and johnny said yeah i quit it's either you or me and they got rid of fred silverman who was the golden right the golden boy yes the golden boy of tv and johnny made this amazing deal where he owned all the tonight shows and they gave him everything and he was at the height in 82 so he came into the improv how did you get on stage that night i got on he came into the improv drunk i mean if you want to go through the story he would this was still during that bender period so this is before the hey oh with the handcuffs he was in a bad bad way oh good do i have inside stuff i cannot tell you because it's just but i've got deeper stuff but anyway he's drunk and he's never been to the improv he's been to the one in new york let me let me interrupt you for one second let me interrupt you for one second yeah letterman gave an interview and i was surprised i saw an interview with letterman right after johnny died saying that johnny brought the boat to the hudson river and called dave he had been retired and he called dave he said after your show come by the hudson river we'll cruise around the island okay and dave says yes and it's very striking letterman who would not say a bad thing about johnny carson in the interview did not intimate this he said the clock was ticking because johnny started to drink and i was on the boat with johnny and his wife and i was watching the cups once once i knew this was letterman said once we get past two cups it's time to get off the boat because you don't want to be around johnny when he's drunk so i mean he was a legend i didn't know that and i'm like this is an idiot at the impromptu i'm 20 something years old and he goes to the bar and and first of all let me set set it up the people at the bar hollywood los angeles california improv you got people sitting in the restaurant they're having dinner whatever they're going to go into the show but the people at the bar the lifers actors out of work everything that come in have a drink it's a very kinship it's almost like a cheers type of situation so they're non-plus anybody comes in oh look over there robin williams nobody even moves their head just their eyeballs over there over there over there robin williams nothing when johnny walked into that bar that even the non-plus people everyone listened to they stood on a saturday night people stood and gave him a stand here not in the showroom in the bar and then the rest of people just got up from their chairs because they knew the gravitas of johnny carson coming to a comedy club to discover a comedian who's going to change his life for the better hopefully so well and and and he walks through this maze of people applying because he doesn't care he's drunk he's a drunk people he's not johnny carson he's a he's a stew bum and he goes to the bar and he gets three shots of jack daniel's eddie the bartender poured in three shots of eddie eddie eddie eddie yeah and that's why i can't ever get sued from me i never got sued because every i had witnesses i got seen this shot i got witnesses nobody can he's really happened to me so he drinks those shots i'm like five feet from him because i want to be weird i want to smell him i want to go he was really he was not a short guy i'm six three so all everybody's short to me but he was like six feet tall he was and he had a big broad shoulders he was an athlete you know and so he walks by goes into the showroom and it's like i i get on on saturday nights but i go on five minutes to two i that's always my spot back then you know and sometimes i'd go on after robin williams so i'd have like three people that were making out all three of them with each other and that would be my audience but i knew that that's accepted that's how it works and you were new you were new relatively yes and that and this is what happens so he goes into the showroom and i go man whoever's on stage they have no idea they're going to be it was paul provenza by the way and he did get to tonight's show they're going to be seen by johnny carson and no sooner than i thought that thought bud freedman comes running up to me the owner of the improv and he goes brucey i just got a phone call two guys are going to be late one canceled you're on next and it was like oh i had no time i couldn't even get nervous because because you just had no time so bud runs onto the stage takes off paul provenza and brings me on either please welcome a young man who'll steal your hearts from my home connecticut bruce mark and i go on stage and i you know i got my opening joke and it does great because the audience knows he's there it's like it's a wink everyone is going to help everyone it's like the brotherhood in action and i do my second joke it does better than my first and i do my third joke it's better than my second build and i do my fourth joke and somebody in the audience yells out stolen you stink get off oh my god i'm being heckled i look to see i i i'm panicked and i look to see and it's my agent's son he's there with a with like the coke sniffles and an empty beer bottles in his table and i go adam what are you doing he goes i don't know why my father handles right conversation and he's going you stink i don't know why my father handles you and i and i couldn't and i get on that my voice went like this i couldn't talk and it's fits in the sweat if i have bar of soap all i could have just lathered up it was and i just in what seemed you know hours but was probably about 40 seconds i was just a deer the blood comes running up and he just kind of pushes me off to the side and i hand him the microphone and i just walk off the stage now that's a bad story but that's just the beginning i completely forgot this i completely forgot this oh my god i haven't told this story in a long time anyway um your listeners i'll tell you what my friend you know bob gollum yeah i want to hear this story so as i remember it hang on video of the show i know hang on for a second i don't remember the being heckled by the agent's son this is how i this is i haven't seen this in 20 years as i remember it you don't drink i don't drink and you have a car well okay all right well first i run out to the street because i don't know what to do you this is like well def con fine i don't know what to do i don't know what to do and and and i walk up and down mill rows and then i go i gotta face reality you have to face this you can't run you're gonna you're gonna run out of roads eventually so i come back as i'm coming back into the emperor they had thrown adam arthur out of the club as i'm walking back he's gonna get to his jeep and he gives me the finger i put over so now i have the worst thing i've almost lost my left foot so i can't even react to that and i go into the club and as soon as i open up the front door to the club bud robinson not to be confused with bud freedman bud robinson is a very great man who handled doc sevrenson and other great comedians like will shriner with rick buddell johnny dark he is best friends with johnny carson because he used to be his opening act when he was a dance team with his wife and he you know he is just johnny's dearest friend so he comes running over to me and goes bruce you're the only responsible person we know he's too drunk to drive home you're going to have to drive him home so we've got bombing walking on melrose not knowing what to do almost getting my left foot amputated by this idiot the same guy who heckled me and now i'm giving the keys to johnny carson's car i gotta drive him home oh wait a second like hang on for one second so there's an opportunity for redemption you get in the car with johnny and he can smooth things out right exactly so now we fast forward i'm driving this this car this Mercedes and i'm looking into he's in the backseat however what we forget to tell is that in the front row of the show and i still remember whether these four girls or two girls from chicago they must have been like 18 and they were so hot well guess what one is in the backseat now and making out with johnny carson and i'm going this is he was just arrested so i'm going i'm on the Santa Monica i'm on the 405 i'm going eight miles an hour i don't want any problems i don't want anything i'm going 32 miles an hour and i keep looking in the rearview mirror because i told sandy shire to follow me in my car so that i have a ride home once i drop drop him off and every so often the girl stops making out with johnny and she sees my eyes in the rearview mirror and she gives him like a a little rib hold on a second i got to let this person in ken i'm on the on a podcast are you coming by yeah all right just beating i'll beep you in how do you like that you get you get a phone call while i'm on the podcast so anyway so the girl jabs him in the ribs and goes johnny he's funny you ought to put him on your shelf and i go johnny bruce smirnoff at your service and he leans forward and he goes let me tell you something you got no you got no timing you don't know what you're doing you stink and i go thank you very much and um i'm gonna get your home as safely as possible so and he's back to making out with her so then we get to it's just so so bad he lived in ma he was he had a few homes this was his malibu house and he had like a i look like 13 foot gate with a turret a turret who has a turret with a with a guy with a shotgun i guess you have to have that you know and two iron gates so i come with the car and they open up another guard comes down opens up the gate and like in the godfather remember they were the godfather too with the good when deniro goes to kill the guy who killed his father they open up the gate to don whatever that guy's anyway don feet or whatever the guy so what i go i'd pull into his driveway he's got a big circular driveway i pull in and i get out of my car and and i go to open the door the back seat to get the two of them out but what happens is he's in a lock lockdown on this chick he's like dry humping her because he doesn't want her to get you know hinky and want to go home so he's applying the pressure meanwhile all the lights to his mansion come flooding on because his help has all been sleeping and they're realizing oh my god he's having a party so the lights come on and then i look my car comes in behind you know my johnny's car with sandy at the wheel and what's the most amazing thing is another car another car and another about seven cars all these drunks and barflies that i told you before that hang out at the improv they all just figured hey party at karson's house please strangers walking around this property the staff are half dressed coming running out he's having a party he's having a party who's gonna drink something party party party and and he doesn't see any of this because he's dry humping her in the back of the car here you know so finally he gets on and he just gets out of the car and he sees his staff at attention he sees all these guys like hanging on their bumpers hey hey johnny hi johnny and he just looks at me because what are these people doing here i go ah here's what i know so far i don't follow me i guess he may have told that guy who in turn i don't know how to out of here before i have you arrested and i go johnny there is good is gone and i got it and i got everybody out and that was that's my and then of course on monday i call irvin arthur the agent whose son had created all this mess and i told him what his son had did and he apologized he said i profusely apologize my son is a become a junkie he's addicted to drugs and he had a fight with me and i guess this was his way of getting back at all of my clients i so so apologize and he apologized profusely and a week later he dropped me as a client because every time he thought of me i reminded him of his drug addict son so that was the end of that i lost on about 19 different levels oh is that a bad story what a horrible horrible night and you look at it and swear the whole time that's just a just a horrible thing but what i wanted to tell your listeners is bob gollab i have a video of this show on one of the great nights and we put it up on youtube and it's i i i forget how you find it but if you put my name bruce murnoff and then you put one man's show i believe it will take you to it and you'll see these stories it's really funny it's amazing yeah enjoy it i've done this show a couple of producers here in florida felt that this would be it got me a deal pretty much close to a deal with cbs it was not a done deal and it got me in the front page of the los angeles sunday excuse me thursday calendar so i had a lot of gravitas from this but it didn't it nothing happened and then larry david of course came along and you know the rest is history he's phenomenal and his his pedigree is beyond beyond beyond yeah but this is completely different from larry david and it's very similar because my idea for a sitcom was based loosely on that you know all my comedian friends and get and having normal friends and always screwing up my i mean it reads like a blueprint so anyhow wrong place wrong time um well we have to wrap it up and you'll come back and this has been so much fun i think the johnny karsten's story should be recreated for film well it was i had that i have the script but there's no use to do it because larry david does everything you know what i'm saying is let's have somebody play johnny karsten have it somebody play urin arthur's kids sure sure it was very it's very funny yes it's it's it's because it's on so many different levels it's it's three-dimensional chess it's coming at you you know not like i said a three-way accident you know yes i will say this about the youtube video yes there's no way it can capture it does it's really good it really it was so many people in the theater i had to put people on the stage so you actually see people sitting on the stage and i'm talking to them while i'm talking to the audience you know what i remember i don't want to give it away but i i remember it opens with i think the triumph of the wills it was some nazi you know that's in the middle that's when i described the hardest gig you know the hardest gig which is when you do these jewish events around the country they always put a holocaust video on to suck money from the audience and then they bring a comedian on and just to everybody but i was the first comic to actually be able to articulate it and show it and demonstrate i didn't show it visually i showed it audio audibly audio whatever the word is yeah i reenacted it with a and i made that video of i made that audio tape of you know of the of the whole thing and and that that is yes on the video you can watch that it's all so funny so before you go i'm going to make bruce murnoff laugh with a brief true story and the audience is just going to have to suffer through this okay i'm making you laugh okay i'm at my dermatologists and i sign in this was about 10 years ago okay and it's cedar sign i beaver lee hills yeah and i'm checking into my dermatologist and i see a list of names and about an hour before i see billy rebeck hang on tell you ever tell you this no but anything with bill dermatologist and billy rebeck it's already you know it's a you know it's donald trump in a model story it's going to be funny you know so i and i said he's a very straight down the down the middle dermatologist i went to him he's a great guy you remember dr um oh god anyway whatever so i said i noticed billy rebeck is is here for for a mold check he said he was he's gone he left a long time ago i said really i would assume you need a hedge clipper yes to find you know before you can get to the moles you have to just do the entire hedge clipper billy rebeck is cousin it period with a great sense of humor brilliant writer but it's cousin it he's covered from head to the end of his toenails he has hair on his second knuckle you look at your hand men you have hair on your first knuckle very few have second he has like a moe howard haircut on his second knuckle he is he's a he's an ape and he he has every product that are known to mankind he has he has as buff number six he has eye polish he has everything that estee lauder hasn't even invented they test things out on him he has asked that he has like seven deep and cologne when you go to his his condo he has cologne for the little last eight years just in one bottle and it's backed up by seven extras and he has 27 different kinds of cologne and he has estee lauder as buff one as buff two coloration number nine this hat you know feet smell feet de stinker number 16 every possible he's got there isn't a cologne a cosmetic thing he has masks on top of that he has masks to put on a hollowing mask he's one of the funniest characters in life and when you put him in me in a room together and we start insulting each other they say people would pay money to watch just go at it you know i i just given you a sample but then he attacks me and i'm very very very valuable asset too so the two of us ripping each other to shreds people that the tears coming out and it's very funny you should google billy rebeck everyone our id ack another one with an amazing career and billy rebeck it says see body hair cousin it cousin it's cousin how do people follow you how do people follow you and stay in touch with you you don't i mean i i i don't have a website my email is bruce vodka at yahoo.com if you want to ask me a question because i have nothing to do i love to kippets with people you can certainly email me and i love to go back and forth do you tweet i tweet but i'm very political it will turn off a lot of people so don't don't go to my twitter just just i'm on facebook you can do my facebook you go that'll turn a lot of people off to just email me you want a donald trump story before we go i could talk to you forever okay before you do the donald trump story yes you have to be my florida correspondent for the show or anytime you have to cover florida you have to tell me what's going on maybe the entertainment scene in florida whatever you want whatever you use you are you are amazing you you know to to call you a comedians comedian right is a disservice to you but whenever your name comes up we just start laughing whenever your name is mentioned you are so beloved and that one man's show the it's just hands down nobody nobody says it was great but let me let me finish let me very quickly so we did the show down in florida for all these senior citizens and they all love me and i filled the theater 500 people after and i'm not making this up after about 15 minutes they all started to doze off they didn't enjoy these stories do you know why this show my show worked in new york i did it at ps nbc studios and i did it of course in la it was the cats me out in new york and hollywood everywhere else it's gone it bombs it's one of the worst shows people have ever it's it's actually better than ambien that's how it should be advertised because no one believes that johnny karson was like this no one believes carol o'connor no one believes joan rivers no one believes any of these stories so they and they and they and they feel as if i failed so much they're not they're pragmatic people who watch this show these normal people and they go well if you fail why don't you find something else to do they don't understand that your heart is in show business and you're going to make it no matter what they go look i used to sell pendants at yankee stadium do that well i went and sold suits i made a million dollars what's this guy why does he try to tell jokes so much but he stinks it's not going anywhere what's he saying johnny karson johnny karson doesn't drink i watch that show every night and they saw smoke but what's he saying he's drinking this is a ripple i'm not coming back to himself that way oh i think i'm going to sleep then they sleep that was my show in Florida nothing it was failure i made a complete failure i can never bring that show back i'm unless i did it in la but again you lose money doing it in le because you have to paper the room anyway um what what were they don't trump oh trump okay so jeffrey ross the great great jeffrey ross the gross master general who's a dear friend of mine and did help me a lot also during the one-man show he's responsible for me getting that front page calendar article on the la time so i am indebted to jeffrey forever and ever he calls me 2002 and i'm living in new york he goes uh trump donald trump just called me he wants me to do a gig at mora lago i need an opening act will you come i go yeah sure now all i knew about donald trump 2002 this is before the apprentice i just knew he was atlantic city and divorces i knew nothing about i just knew he was what he was you know a character so we get to leguardia airport and we're in the private terminal uh because we're going on his jet with him he's not there but judge janine is there from fox news and a guy named david pecker who owns the national inquirer and it's like the four of us were kidding around i'm showing judge janine my stretches that i learned in gym class and we're having the greatest trump comes with malania the justice girlfriend at the time we get on the plane and i figured because you and i've been around a lot of hollywood people that this conversation is going to be about 95 10 it's going to be him dominating and five percent maybe i'm going to get a word in and so i'm prepared for it because i've been around these people before we get on a plane trump comes in last and jeff goes bruce donald this is bruce smirnoff a comedian and trump shakes my hand he goes bruce would you like to sit in the cockpit for takeoff and i just go you bet i would i could throw myself on a control stick and blow up the plane i mean i'm in a and this is after 9 11 and i'm in i'm in a control room in the cockpit i'm well this is unbelievable it cured my fear of flying i because now i know what goes on in a it is so cool you don't hear the engine you don't hear anything in the cockpit this was a 7 27 the engines are tail mounted so you just it's like nothing and then just lift up so anyway i come back into the cabin trump go and jeff goes you know donald bruce has some amazing stories and he lived in hollywood and i can't really tell the he asks me a question about every kind of it's underground that people know what happened but it's about sarah silver and because i'm i move on move on we don't yeah i know so anyway so trump and i and jeff we had the and melania but melania really would it was just very quiet to herself she was quiet the whole time and we're going back and forth with stories and melania just sits there and i think she does long division because at this time she was just a girlfriend i think she just figured by the minute but you know how much am i going to make if i leave but obviously it worked out for the best and um but trump was phenomenal obviously this leads to of me favoring him into to be able to say that i spent but at mora lago he went out of his way to hang out with jeff and i he would he talks to you talk he's not the guy you would see ripping ran paul and ripping jeb bush he is partly that guy i guess that is the showman part of him but i got to tell you it was the greatest weekend like on the flight back again i sat in the cockpit for a little takeoff but i turned to him as the plane was landing in leguardia and i said donald i got to be honest with you i feel like a plumber who won to spend the weekend with donald trump and it's all coming to an end and i don't like it and i just just cracked the guy up the whole of the whole weekend so yes and i know politically you're not a big fan but that is uh the president and that's the story yeah and uh that is a pretty amazing trump story when you think about it and he he basically is the closest i'm not trying to be cute here the closest this country has to don rickles in that don address the elephant in the room and so does donald trump yeah yeah i guess sure absolutely all right bruce burnoff thank you so much i needed this i had the greatest how long were we on we were on like an hour and 17 minutes wonderful thank you so much david and i remain at your side whatever you need i got millions of stories here we didn't even scratch the surface