(cassette squealing)
(light music)
- I was miscast in my
first big part on Broadway.
One night after a show,
there was Mel Brooks wearing
a merchant marine pea jacket.
He looked striking in it.
I said, hello, hello,
how nice to meet you.
My goodness, you look so
wonderful in that pea jacket.
He said, yeah, they used
to call them urine jackets,
but they didn't sell.
(audience laughs)
When I was seven and a
half, or eight years old,
my mother had a heart attack.
This heavy-set doctor brought her home,
told her some things while
she was lying in bed,
and them came out to see me.
And he grabbed me by the
arm, it was summer, hot day,
and the sweat was dripping off of his face
and falling onto my cheeks.
He said, "Don't ever get
angry with your mother,
"because you might kill her."
(audience laughs)
He was not very psychologically oriented.
(audience laughs)
But the other thing he said was,
"Try to make her laugh."
And that was a huge thing,
although I didn't realize it at the time.
For the first time in my
life I tried consciously
to make someone else laugh.
I knew I was very successful
when she'd run to the bathroom
and say, "Now look what
you've made me do."
When you please your
mother by doing something
it gives you confidence that
you can please other people.
And I think that's where the courage
to make people laugh came from.
But I didn't want to be a comedian.
I wanted to be an actor,
maybe a comic actor,
but an actor.
And that's what got me into acting,
this putting on an act because
in life I wasn't funny.
I felt onstage,
or in the movies,
I could do whatever I
wanted to, I was free.
(upbeat music)
When I was 18, and the
hormones were raging,
and I was at school, University of Iowa,
I suddenly felt the
overwhelming compulsion to pray.
And I must've prayed for 20 minutes or so.
I didn't know what I was praying about,
but I was feeling guilty about something.
The next day or two it was 30 minutes,
and then it was an hour, then two hours.
To skip ahead to the end
of the seven and a half years of analysis,
I was so afraid to feel
free to enjoy my own life
if my mother was sick and
suffering every day of hers,
and I didn't think I had the right.
If you ask an actor
why do you want to act,
I don't think most of them
know the real reasons.
After seven and a half years of analysis
I have a fairly good idea why.
(audience laughs)
My analyst said,
"It's better than running around naked
"in Central Park, isn't it?"
(audience laughs)
(light orchestral music)
I was offered the part of Willy Wonka in
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
and when the director
came to my house I said,
"Well, I like the script except
"when the audience sees Willy
Wonka for the first time
"I wanna come out of the door with a cane
"and limp my way to the crowd."
And they're all, "Oh, Willy
Wonka, he's a cripple.
"Oh my god, who thought,
I never knew this."
And they quiet down,
quiet down, quiet down,
and then Willy Wonka's
cane gets stuck in a brick,
and he starts to fall forward,
and he does a forward
somersault then jumps up,
and the crowd cheers and applauds.
And the director said, "What
do you wanna do that for?"
(audience laughs)
And I said, "Because from that time on,
"no one will know whether I'm
lying or telling the truth."
And he said,
"You mean if I say no,
you won't do the picture?"
I said, "I'm afraid that's the truth."
(audience laughs)
(light orchestral music)
(cassette squealing)
- You know what the format
is with this interview?
- It's not Q and A?
- It is.
- [Bill] Oh shit. Felicia!
- What do you got against Q and A?
- [Felicia] Yeah?
- Can you make some more coffee?
I had to do one the other day
and I was a little sloppy for it.
And I saw this guy going...
Just realizing he would have
to make me sound coherent.
(T.J. laughs)
How'd you get that away from me?
Get out of here.
That's my mopping my brow material.
What the hell?
These were Italian trousers.
(growls)
Jackie, can you take this dog away?
(upbeat music)
I realize it's impossible
to have any sympathy,
true sympathy, for people that are famous.
People usually go through a bad period
when they first get successful.
When you're new, when
your hot things go wrong.
So you're not really used
to all the attention,
people treat you differently.
And what happens is you
start taking that seriously
and then you start becoming an asshole,
then they treat you like an asshole.
- [T.J.] Was there a
period like that for you?
When things were a little out of control?
- Right now.
(upbeat music)
One of my favorite things used to be
when in traffic in New York,
and there's a Cadillac
honking or something,
Mercedes honking,
I used to do this all the
time before I was famous,
I would jump in the middle of the street
and say "Excuse me there's a Mercedes
"that's gotta get through here."
You know and I would
push people outta the way
"Get outta the way!
"Let him through!"
Smacking their cars and stuff.
Just like, whack, you know
you just jump into it.
And you can't do it
because now when you do it
and they go "Hey, hey,
hello, hey, Meatballs."
And the whole thing is lost,
the point you were trying to make
or whatever fun you were trying to have
is sort of on your cock.
So the money thing is sort
of the Elvis Presley thing
of buying your mother a car is great.
My mother has learned how to spend money.
She used to call and say,
"Bill, we really need a boiler."
Just for the hell of it I would say,
"Well, why don't you shop
around and see which one.
"Don't blow a lot of
money, just get a bargain."
Like a boiler in the
house to keep the house
in the winter in Chicago.
So finally I bought her
an American Express card.
And the numbers she puts up
are geometric, every year.
I mean, the first year, I think,
she bought a tow when her car broke down.
The second year she went to dinner
on her birthday or something.
The third year, she rented a condo
in Florida for the winter,
and took a couple of
cousins, some friends down.
So, she's figured it out.
- [T.J.] Wow.
- She had nine kids.
Technically she could commit
murder and get away with it,
so whatever numbers she runs up on me
is not even a misdemeanor.
I know it could have been anybody,
it's just a weird, lucky thing, really.
Could have been any actor.
There are a lot of actors
that are more talented than me
at Second City who quit it
before they even got to a paying status.
Weird luck.
I had no other options.
I'm still just like a punk kid really.
I'm just an obnoxious guy who
can make it appear charming.
That's what they pay me to do.
(upbeat music)
I started going through some
sort of spiritual change
in the late 70s where I sort of saw
there was some other life to live.
It changed the way that I worked
just having a different presence
and a different attention.
That's the reason I'm
not the one that's dead.
Because the attraction of the fast life
is very powerful.
Even today I could go at any time.
Something wild could happen to anybody.
And I caution anybody
who walks down the street
to settle your accounts before
you leave the house everyday.
(upbeat music)
The only good thing about
fame that I've gotten
is I've gotten out of a
couple of speeding tickets.
I've gotten into a restaurant
when I didn't have a suit and tie on.
That's really about it.
And you can talk to girls more easily.
They will talk to you.
You don't necessarily
do any better with them.
But they will talk to you.
It's almost like being in
the ladies room sometimes
because they feel comfortable with you
and they will say a lot of things
they wouldn't talk to anybody
they would think of as a potential suitor.
They think of you as some freak.
You may as well have
an elephant on a rope,
you know, for the way they deal with you.
(upbeat music)
(tape squealing)
- [Lawrence] In the year
2020 you'll be 70 years old.
- Oh my god.
- [Lawrence] What will
the world be like then?
- It'll be one giant film corporation.
There be no longer any governments.
It'll be one nation,
under God, indivisible,
with circuits and VCRs for everyone.
(Lawrence laughs)
I don't know, 2020.
There'll be cold-fusion.
We'll actually be able to power
our cars with our own feces.
That's right, the emissions
problem will be a little intense
but just light a match.
(upbeat music)
Things that I see in the future,
I see it could be quite incredible
if we can master a few problems,
like the air and the
water thing might be nice.
I see governments dissolving.
These barriers are all falling
down for economic reasons.
They're all so inter bound.
That's why when one market crashes
it's almost like a world stock market.
And this is a very long
economic explanation
something I haven't got
a fucking clue about.
(Lawrence laughs)
- [Lawrence] Do you
think that there's a role
of the artist in society?
- [Robin] Yeah, for a comic especially.
To constantly never let
it take itself seriously,
to play with it, to fuck
with the parameters.
The premise that comedy
is there to basically
show we fart, we laugh,
to make us realize we
still are part animal.
As intellectual as we think
we are, you still trip,
we still have human foibles, sexuality,
all the different things
to still make you aware of your humanity.
And that's what we're supposed to do.
It's just to keep us awake.
Cut through the shit,
peel off the mask and go,
"Oh, you got a big nose."
Or put on the big nose
and make you realize,
wait a minute, I don't have a big nose.
All that stuff so you don't
take yourself seriously
and destroy the species.
(upbeat music)
- [Lawrence] You ever worry about
running out of material or ideas?
- [Robin] No, there's a world out there.
Open a window and it's there.
(upbeat music)
Sex, if you view sex just go,
"You look pretty ridiculous."
Even the face.
The face you make when you have an orgasm
is pretty much (laughs) no one looks...
Probably even Warren
Beatty gets that kind of.
(yells orgasmically).
Everyone looks pretty fucking stupid
at the moment they fire the spooge.
(imitates animal noises)
You get like the wind tunnel face.
(yells)
Oh baby, baby, baby.
Oh baby.
Oh baby, baby.
Baby, baby, baby.
Everything kind of goes
(imitates farting).
It's nature going, "You
look like an animal."
It's that one thing you got to know.
You look a little silly.
I don't care what type
of lighting you use,
whatever strap-on attachments,
you still sometimes look like a poodle
and someone's gonna get a fire hose.
These are the things you wonder.
(upbeat music)
- [Lawrence] Let me ask
yo about birth as a topic.
You did do the birth of
all three of your children?
- I just remember it was like a magic act.
All of a sudden they
put up this little tent,
and the next thing I heard this (gurgles).
And they don't scream
the first few seconds,
they just kinda go, hey!
Wait!
It's cold!
It's very cold!
Then they wash them off
and they suture them,
and they put those little yarmulkes on,
the little Teamster hat.
The little longshoreman cap.
Yo dad, yo.
Excuse me.
You want me to unload this ship?
And then they handed her to me.
(upbeat music)
- [Lawrence] I don't think I
asked you about your faults,
if you have any and what they are.
- [Robin] In comedy, not pursing things.
Committing to an idea and going,
have you taken it to its fullest extent?
Because it started when I
first started performing
it was all kind of jumping around.
Explore an idea until you've exhausted it.
Really go to all the
different parameters of it.
I think another one is
not working so much.
(laughs) This is very interesting,
look at what's bad about--
- [Lawrence] What's bad, yeah.
- [Robin] Look in the
mirror and go, nostril hair,
the fact that I braid them.
(Lawrence laughs)
Sometimes, you know,
keeping track of people.
It's just a weird combination
of worrying so much
about the outside world and not...
You have to be more aware
of the inner circle,
the folks that matter.
It comes from performing,
I always wanna make sure that everyone
in the audience is taken care of.
That constant desire
to please all the time.
That can get you in some shit.
(upbeat music)
- [Lawrence] You have or ever make
any New Year's resolutions?
- I haven't in a while.
I haven't made any in, I
think, since I was about a kid.
I used to give up a lot
of things for Lent too.
Then I still got hairy.
(Lawrence laughs)
(upbeat Jazz music)
(cassette squealing)
