The Art of the Dirty Joke | Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling

[00:00:06] Oh my gosh, I can't believe the story Jackie just told about Jeffrey Epstein and Trump and Clinton and everything. But first, Jackie The Joke Man Martling wrote for many years, 15 years for Howard Stern, wrote for Rodney Dangerfield, is an awesome stand-up comedian. He's just an all-around good guy.

[00:00:28] I remember the last time Jackie was on the podcast was years ago and we were talking about what is a dirty joke. And he sent me these two huge books that they were like academic books about the history of the dirty joke.

[00:00:42] And like, that's the kind of just generous good guy Jackie is. He just sent these books and they're fascinating. You know, Jackie and I got together today. We talked about his history and what's going on and the documentary about the joke man. So it's his whole story.

[00:01:00] It's really interesting and his whole career is interesting. But towards the end, I got him to... He didn't really hold back but I got him to tell the story of his experience with Jeffrey Epstein. And he's innocent of everything, anything. Don't make any assumptions there.

[00:01:15] But it was just a fascinating story. So here he is, Jackie The Joke Man Martling. This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James Altiger Show. Now we're rolling. Now we're rolling.

[00:01:47] And Jackie, it's been a minute since we spoke, since probably before COVID I think right? Yeah, I told Jay I figured you guys lost my phone number or my email address or something. No way. I don't wear pals, you know.

[00:01:59] I probably talk about you at least once a week or so. Like you have so many interesting stories and such an interesting background. And I've learned a lot from you. I just heard this.

[00:02:11] A friend of mine who was on the gymnastics team with me 40 or 15 years ago got my number and called me and said, Jackie I heard James Altiger talking about you on his show. And he's like in San Diego. I haven't seen him in 40 years.

[00:02:28] So the way I connect you is through a guy from 40 years ago. So do that man. There's several things that are hilarious about that. One is you were on the gymnastics team and I see in the documentary you're doing flips.

[00:02:42] You're like an Olympic level or you were like an Olympic level gymnast. I did not know this. You know, James, that's very funny because I'm sure as you're aware, if you know a little bit more than somebody, you seem very, very smart. You know what I mean?

[00:02:58] I was okay. I was by no means great. I was third in Nassau County here on Long Island in 1965. But in those days, there were no gymnastics teams. We didn't start with gymnastics as kids.

[00:03:14] When I joined the gymnastics team in ninth grade, it was the first one in the area and it was like six of us. I got good enough to be third in the county, but the guy that was first was so good.

[00:03:28] The guy that was second was so far below him and I was third and I was so far below him. But compared to the average person they see you doing a flip. They're like, wow, that guy should be in the Olympic.

[00:03:41] You know, but the one crazy thing about is people go nuts because they see us doing it on the hardwood floor, on the hard gymnasium wooden floor. We were doing it long before they had those mats. It was a trial. It was great.

[00:03:59] Well, I mean ninth grade you're 15 years old. You didn't start to your old. A lot of professional gymnasts now, they start when they're three years old. So how did you get so good? I guess I did tumbling and stuff in seventh and eighth grade.

[00:04:14] And then in high school, in ninth grade, we started doing it and by 11th grade, 1965, was a little better. We really worked hard at it. Two or three nights a week and weekends and it was just such a bonding thing. There was only six or eight of us.

[00:04:34] We used to go to the gymnastic meets in the coach's car. Can you imagine that they used to- That sounds suspicious. It's ridiculous. Sounds impossible. And if we did good, he'd take us to what even McDonald's at. It's like Burger Square. Just fun, just really fun.

[00:04:52] I'm still friends with all those guys. It was just fantastic. But the second thing that's funny about it is you haven't spoken to this guy in 40 years. Didn't he call you and say, Jackie, I just heard you on Howard Stern or Jackie,

[00:05:03] I just heard you with Rodney Dangerfield. It took me for him to call you? No, yeah, that's what triggered him. I'm sure he wasn't surprised to hear me on Howard Stern or any of that stuff because it kind of fell in. But being with you is kind of-

[00:05:18] I have such odd connections. You saw the documentary, you know that. I hook up with weird people for weird, but there are always great reasons. I hook up with interesting people. I got a guy I need to talk to you about and you might say,

[00:05:34] well, he's my best friend or you might not know who he was, who he is. But I got interviewed last week by Brand Ferran. Do you know who that is? No, I don't know him. He was the head of research and development for

[00:05:48] Imagineering at Walt Disney, like in the 90s. And he's like 72. And he's one of those guys that I would put on a level with you as far as brilliance and success. I mean, I'll send you his Wikipedia looks like a college course.

[00:06:07] And he was so just like, he's so nice and so unassuming. You don't realize the power this guy has. And he's making a documentary with the people from Walt Walks of Life. And I guess I was walking by. Something like that.

[00:06:23] Well, you have such an interesting story, but I do want to mention it says in the documentary, you're like the hardest working guy in comedy. And it's true because I'll just say right here while we're recording this, it's President's Day.

[00:06:38] We didn't wimp out and say, oh no, we need a little break. We need a holiday. We got to think about the president's all day. We're here at work on a podcast talking, talking your story. Of course, I figured we should do it quick before they take down

[00:06:52] the statues of Washington and Lincoln, you know, the world is going to crap James. I figured we should get an interview as soon as we can. You know, the world could end tomorrow when things are going.

[00:07:04] So well, and I'm thrilled that you know, I don't, you know, there's no holidays. If you're a comedian, you're in show business, you know, you know, you worked on holidays, you worked on weekends, you know, so there is no,

[00:07:15] you know, you stop when you can stop and you go when you can go. It's that simple. You know, I didn't even look when you said Monday, whatever today is February 19th. I said, yeah, I just looked my calendar was blank.

[00:07:28] You know, so boom, of course, you know. Yeah. And you know, in the, in the documentary also it says you make regular trips to the post office, which is by itself is an odd thing nowadays and that you're so good at networking.

[00:07:45] And I just, I think the reason this guy called you is because I was on a call with several thousand people who subscribed to this newsletter I write. And I wanted to show people what you once mailed to me. Hold on, I'm going to get it right now.

[00:07:59] I just realized I had it right here. I'm going to guess a joke book. No, this is a very almost academic book by G. Legman, Rationale of the Dirty Joke. I sent them to so few people like that is an indication of my respect for you

[00:08:19] because those things are so rare, James. I mean, look, it's an analysis of sexual humor. And I just opened to a random page here the edible infrastructure of the defiance of authority merely because it is authority.

[00:08:33] I.e. Patriot protest this restraining one from sexual enjoyment of the mother or mother. Like this is the weirdest academic book I've ever seen. This guy, did you see the movie The Aristocrats? Yeah, yeah. Great. And they show this book. Oh, I don't remember that.

[00:08:51] They show my two copies of this. This was part of a two book series. Okay. Yeah, I have the other book here as well. The Rationale of the Dirty Joke is the other one. He was drummed out of the University of Pennsylvania because they didn't think

[00:09:05] collecting dirty jokes and dirty rhymes was a viable form of scholastics, which is ridiculous because it's what makes the word, you know, it's word of mouth that it's our lives. So he got drummed out and he wound up in the south of France.

[00:09:23] And I, you know how voracious I am for jokes. I'm not a comedian. I love jokes. And I've collected them forever and ever and ever. And at one point, you know these stupid things in the back of comic books? 12 records for a penny or 12 books for 99 cents.

[00:09:44] So you look through and there's never anything you want. And all of a sudden I saw Rationale of the Dirty Joke. I was like, you got to be kidding me. So I put in my 99 cents and got whatever other books with it. And I got this thing.

[00:09:58] Obviously it's, you know, overstocked that they have and they can't get rid of these things because nobody would buy that stupid thing. And I got this book and I was just so fascinated. And the, and the forward was about 20 pages.

[00:10:13] And at the end it had Gershon, Legman, Balbon, France, and the country code. And maybe in me, you know what a nut I am. I took everything I had and wrote to the guy and said, listen, this thing says there's a part one to this two volume set.

[00:10:31] This is 1977. There's no internet, no nothing. I said, I got to get one. And two weeks later the guy wrote back from the south of France and said, I have two copies. I don't need two copies. Send me $18 and I'll sell you one.

[00:10:47] And then we wound up being good friends until he died. And then I got rich, not rich compared to it, but I mean I got to where I was very comfortable.

[00:10:58] And he's alone with his wife in the south of France and they're living like, you know, on beans. So I'd send him a couple hundred dollars so him and his wife could go out for a night's dinner and get wine. And we were pals.

[00:11:11] And those books, the amazing thing, the guy goes on and on. And you know, he's so pedantic it's crazy. But if you looked at the book, he's kind enough to put the jokes themselves in italics.

[00:11:25] So you can go through the book and not read all his craziness and all his, you know, descriptions of where he got the jokes and blah blah blah. And you could just read the jokes by just reading the italics.

[00:11:36] And of course I knew 90% of the jokes in there. But man did that make me fall in love with the 10% I'd never seen. And he's just a wacko. So the craziness of this is I heard the joke The Aristocrats in about 1979, 1980.

[00:11:54] I was working in the Fort Laureal comic strip and this British comedian pulled that joke to me and a couple guys and it blew me away. So it became my favorite show.

[00:12:04] This guy Gershaw and Legman, his premise, his life's premise is that you are totally defined by what you think is funny. Okay? So these books are so big and thick it's like the Bible. You could only read a few pages at night, read the Bible.

[00:12:22] But you know, it's so thick that you can't sit down and go, you gotta read chunks of it at a time, open it at random. So at some point, like I people do, at the end of the second book, I started from the end and went back.

[00:12:37] And the last joke on the last page of the second volume was The Aristocrats.

[00:12:45] Not only that, he said this next joke was told to me by a guy who was raised in squalor with two parents that battled for 40 years but stayed together for the good of the children.

[00:12:59] I said, holy Christ, this guy just described my life and this is my favorite joke. I said that, so Rubber stamped his premise.

[00:13:08] So then when I came out with a joke book in 1998 as an homage to him, I made The Aristocrats the last joke on the last page of my joke book.

[00:13:19] So 10 years later, Penn Gillette and Paul Provenza come to my apartment in the city and said, Marlene, we're doing a movie about The Aristocrats. And we gotta put you in the movie because we did a search on the web of The Aristocrats and we only got two hits.

[00:13:37] And they were both your website. Oh, that's funny. Because on my website I had Gershaw Legman's version and my version. And it was such an odd thing that until that movie nobody, you know, comedians don't tell each other that many jokes.

[00:13:54] Like I do and there's some comedians that tell jokes, but a lot of them don't. So that was a little bit of horse crap.

[00:14:00] By the way, one of the best renditions of The Aristocrats that I've ever heard was your buddy, may he rest in peace, Gilbert Gottfried's rendition of it was brilliant. I will tell you that I told him that joke and I don't care what people believe or not.

[00:14:18] The version he told of the joke on that night, the Hugh Hefner Rose, was almost exactly the way I told it to him because you can go on with a joke.

[00:14:31] If you go on and on and on too much, if you want to make a shaggy dog story, that's one thing. But at some point you've got to give a certain amount of information and then you've got to get to the end. The people go out to lunch.

[00:14:41] So I'm not a fan of this, you know, making it so disgusting and so crazy, blah, blah, blah, blah, unless you're just doing it for the field day of it like Larry the Boilsucker or one of those jokes, you know.

[00:14:52] But that was, that was, I was sitting on the dais that night and that was one of the classic things when all the comedians realized what he was about to go into. It was just spectacular. And he was great fun, man.

[00:15:08] Yeah, no, he was on my podcast once and everything. I mean, Gilbert Gottfried was, I mean, he was like a comedian for 60 or 70 years. He was his, I don't know whether it was his imagination and also partly his memory, even as he was kind of on the decline.

[00:15:26] He could tell the most amazing intricate jokes and perform them. I mean, he's really a comedian's comedian like you are as well.

[00:15:35] Yeah, I did Gilbert's podcast like three or four times and we would just sit there and roar for an hour and it's great because Frank Sano Padre is partner. Replayed a bunch of them.

[00:15:47] It's, I turned 76 on Valentine's Day and they replayed a bunch of my appearances on Gilbert, you know, to say happy birthday to me. And it was just making him howl with a joke. Making him howl with a joke.

[00:16:02] We were the two best audiences because I laugh so hard and he laughs so hard and the dirtier it gets the harder we laugh. You know, one time I told him a joke at a film festival and he fell in the mud.

[00:16:14] I said, this is, they can kill me now. This is the highlight of my joke telling career skill, but fell in the mud. Well, let me ask you a question because you tell jokes and you refine them and you perfect them.

[00:16:27] You take all jokes and you rewrite them to perfection. And a lot of comedians do something very different, which is they tell like even take someone like a classic comedian like, like signed about. He tells stories from his life where you think they're from his life.

[00:16:42] It's as if they interpret the things they see in funny ways. That's not what you do at all. And what do you see is the difference? It's apples and it's so different. I always tell people I'm not a comedian. I'm a joke teller.

[00:16:56] There are, you know, and there's some people look down and knows that it, but you know, when these comedians have these big conventions or whatever, when they get together at the bar, they're not sitting there telling you about my girlfriend in my apartment. They're telling dick jokes.

[00:17:10] That's what makes the world go round. That's what makes people laugh. That is the communication, the best form of communication whether it's a dirty joke or a silly joke or meeting a girl in the bar or getting to know your father-in-law. It's just a necessary thing.

[00:17:27] People say, well, you didn't write those jokes. I said, listen, when you go to a play, if you're sitting in the audience and they're doing Hamlet, you don't stand up and say, wait a minute, you didn't write this. They didn't write it. It's a performance.

[00:17:39] You're there to see a performance. And if they do it really well, it's really enjoyable. And that's what I do. You know what?

[00:17:46] The thing I love, people come up and say, you know, I left at every joke and half time after the time, you're almost done with a joke. And I realized I've heard it before. I'm already laughing. It's too late. I'm already laughing. What a great compliment, right?

[00:18:01] I mean, Louis C.K. did an episode on this in his show, Louis, where Jim Florentine is playing this other comedian and they're on tour. Jim Florentine is constantly telling fart jokes and everyone's laughing. And Louis C.K. can't get anyone to laugh. This is in the episode.

[00:18:18] He can't get, because he's telling like about his apartment and his girlfriend. And he kind of is crying, literally crying later. He's talking to Jim Florentine and saying like I went into comedy to say something to be meaningful.

[00:18:31] And Jim Florentine basically says what people just like fart jokes and they both start laughing and cracking up because Louis C.K. realizes he's right. And Jim Florentine in that episode literally dies sitting on the toilet. And that's the end of the episode. I never watched that.

[00:18:50] I never watched Louis. I worked with Louis 40 years ago, back when Caroline was actually on the seaport. That's so long ago. Oh, I didn't know that. But it's different animals.

[00:19:03] You know, when I first started doing comedy, you know, I gave up as a musician and I never had any intention of being a comedian. But I always told dirty jokes and I told them in my band.

[00:19:15] So when my band broke up, I had all these millions of jokes. I figured, well, I want to tell these on stage because people love them. And I started doing it and then I made an album and you know, and it just steamrolled.

[00:19:26] And in the beginning, people especially like the comics from the city, that's that guy from Long Island that gets up on stage and tells jokes. They think I'm going to the bookstore and buying a joke book and then finding a joke and going on stage.

[00:19:39] Meanwhile, these things are ingrained in me for the last 30 or 40 years. And I've honed them down to where I know what works to a fault, you know.

[00:19:49] But then slowly but surely I'd wind up working with these guys and they say, wait a minute, this guy's the funniest guy we have met. Maybe he's not so bad.

[00:19:58] And so funny, the funniest thing is I spent 18 years, but for 15 years I was head writer of the Stern Show. And I passed him notes for 15 years to make him funnier. I never ever handed him a joke. Everything was a comment or a sentence or an aside.

[00:20:21] It's like if you were talking to Jay and I'm sitting at the table and we're having a conversation, I'm a funny guy. If I think of something funny to say at lunch, instead of saying out loud, I write it down and put it in front of James.

[00:20:36] And James says it. So you get to be as funny as you and as funny as me. And I'm just sitting there laughing and people say, well, who's that idiot? Well, that's the idiot that's making Howard Stern a gazillion dollars.

[00:20:50] It's very telling that Howard Stern picked you to do this rather than quote unquote a comedian. Do you think you were like pattern matching against jokes that you knew?

[00:21:17] And so you knew thousands and thousands of jokes or something would come up and it would trigger some memory and you would play with it and write to the Gower. Well, you know, there was not that much thought.

[00:21:28] It's just if you're a funny person, you know, you just saying wise ass things or smart things or quick twists or where you go into a different place. That's always who I was.

[00:21:39] And I'm sure that's why I like jokes because everything is a little quick twist, but we were moving so fast. There was no thought to how does that parallel some joke? It's like, what would I say here? And I write it down and he would say it.

[00:21:55] And he's so brilliant that it was absolutely flawless. It was seamless. Nobody had any idea. There's still people that don't believe I was writing jokes. Yeah, right. I'm like, as a matter of fact, there was. It's funny. You know, it's kind of flattering. It's totally flattering.

[00:22:15] Like, I mean, he could have, there was a million comedians out there and you're the one he kind of picked to make him as funny as possible. And no, he did. He did not pick me. He had no intention.

[00:22:28] He was not looking for somebody to make him funnier. If you know this jockeys, this is so egotistical. You think I need help? Look, you know, a jockey is a funny animal.

[00:22:41] And I learned that so quick every jockey all over the country, everybody they see makes them think they're the funniest person in the world because every person that this jockey meets is somebody he can help.

[00:23:00] When he meets a guy that owns a car business and the car guy is standing there talking to him and the this jockey says something, the car guy's going to laugh because he's going to be, he wants to be his friend because he can help his business.

[00:23:15] And so they think they're the funniest guys in the world. And what was great is the very, very beginnings of comedy. They would send out three comedians, two or three comedians to the different cities. This is way in the beginning, early 80s.

[00:23:31] And you've got to like Richmond, Virginia or Nashville and there'll be three comics. And then at some point somebody said, you know what? Why don't we get a this jockey from the local station and let them host the show.

[00:23:44] And then we just need two comedians and the this jockey can be the MC. And then they'll talk about it on the radio, which makes so much sense of course.

[00:23:52] And I James, I can't tell you how many times I watched one of these disc jockeys get up there. The whole lives they've been curtailed.

[00:24:00] They can't use foul language in the air and they also think they are so funny and they just cannot wait to get on that stage and say fuck and be funny. And I watched so many guys get up there and say fuck, fuck, fuck.

[00:24:16] Nobody would laugh at anything they said. They became the biggest fans of stand-up comedians because all of a sudden they got a mouthful of how difficult it is. And it was so amazing. Now when Howard Stern, I had three albums out that I had self produced.

[00:24:33] Me and my future ex-wife. I produced two and then she helped with the third one. And I sent these like I said to the Gershon Legman book. I sent albums to everybody.

[00:24:43] If I read it to you on the street and you said, hey, I saw you there in a comedy club. Let me send you my albums. Thinking who knows who can help me. And I guess the way I've operated, that's why the post office.

[00:24:55] I got a post office twice a day sending stuff to people for no reason. Larry Levine, the mailman at the post office in your documentary. Larry Levine. Larry Levine. He's the greatest. So I'm sending these albums.

[00:25:15] Me and Nancy are sending these sets of three albums, which this is 1982. So the cost of the three albums and the postage and the cassettes, the matching cassettes to the three albums, we sent these packages. I swear to God to hundreds of people with no idea

[00:25:37] of what was going to possibly happen. We just figured something's going to come back somewhere. That's just we're making money booking governors and we're just putting the money back in and drinking and having a wonderful time.

[00:25:49] So Howard Stern came to New York City, a club owner in Washington, D.C. said, hey, you know this guy just got fired and he's going to New York City and he's a madman. He did broadcast in his underwear from Garvin's here.

[00:26:04] And I know you guys have hit it off. I had no idea. I'd never listened to the radio. I didn't know. So when I got home, I just told Nancy and we sent one of the packages of three albums to Howard Stern, Jared WNBC, Rockfella Plaza.

[00:26:19] And a couple months later, I'm in my mother's attic, my office, Jokeland, was my mother's attic with the dial joke machines. I was a madman and she called and said, hey, this guy, Howard Stern, want you to come in.

[00:26:31] So I called the NBC and Howard got right on the phone. He said, oh, we listed your records. You think you're so funny? Why don't you come in and hang out on the air today? What are you going to say?

[00:26:40] You know, I'm hosting shows that governors in Lovettown on Long Island and he's asking me to come to Manhattan. Are you kidding? I would have walked. So I got there and we broke walls for four hours. And at the end of the show, he said, you know what?

[00:26:56] You're a lot of fun. Why don't you come back next week? And I came back once a week for three years for free. And over the course of time, I was writing little ideas and passing them. And I come in with insults.

[00:27:11] Then we started doing Mrs. Flemstein playing stumped the comedian. And it was really funny because my stories go too long. No, no, keep going. Mrs. Flemstein, there was a comedian. We used to work on the Fort Lauderdale comic strip. And Sunday nights was Boys Night Out.

[00:27:30] It was like the manager didn't come in on Sunday night. So it was like having a substitute teacher. We would break chop, we'd do whatever we wanted. And there was this very funny comedian, still funny comedian, Kelly Rogers.

[00:27:42] And he did a character instead of doing his act, he did a character called Shecky Flemstein, which I thought was the funniest made up name I ever heard for a Jewish comedian, Shecky Flemstein. So then I come on and after a couple of weeks, Howard says,

[00:27:57] you know, I need a piece of business for you. And I said, well, you know, people send up, you know, the people yell out subjects and I give them a joke on any subject and it's fun. I do it at my shows.

[00:28:08] He said, well, we'll make it two lines. We're called stumped the comedian and they people can do two line jokes. But of course, the audience is you took phone calls. Every joke was too racist, too dirty, too ethnic. You know, it was the worst crap.

[00:28:24] So we decided what we'll do is I'll come in and give jokes to Fred that are as dirty as you can get but get away with. And Fred went in the other room and called in in this.

[00:28:35] You couldn't figure out if it was a woman or a man. It was like an old, an old Jewish person. Hello, Howard. How are you doing? And it was so funny. And after a couple of weeks, I just inserted like, oh, it's Mrs. Flemstein again.

[00:28:50] Oh, it's Mrs. Flemstein again. So at some point weeks later, Robin goes, oh, we've got the name Mrs. Flemstein. And I said, well, I named her that and she's like, oh, right. Oh, like you've made Mrs. Flemstein. So I'm not getting credit from the stirring show.

[00:29:10] Well, I got Kelly Rogers all pissed off at me because I stole his name. So I'm getting crap from both sides, which is so funny. But so we going on and on and on and I'm slowly passing them notes. And then he got fired.

[00:29:23] Then he got rehired at K-Rock and I was still on one day a week, but they actually had a place for me to sit right in front of him where I could reach his. He'd have a loose leaf on either side.

[00:29:36] On one side of the loose leaf, I could put a piece of paper and 8 by 11 piece of white paper and I write in a sharpie. I started putting stuff up once a week and then after a couple months, he called me.

[00:29:50] I was on the road and he said, listen, James, this was the total job description of my total job description on the Howard Stern show from that day until the day I left.

[00:30:05] The total discussion was, I need a price for you to come in two days a week and do your thing with the notes. That was my total job description to do your thing with the notes.

[00:30:18] And then I was on two days and then I went to three to four to five days because if you A beat it, he was so much funnier on the days I was there. Not because I'm especially funny, but because he had two senses of humor

[00:30:31] and by me being there, now Fred had a conduit so Fred could pass me ideas. So Howard had his sense of humor and my sense of humor and Fred's sense of humor, which is not only three guys but three distinctly different senses of humor

[00:30:47] and the show just got funnier and funnier and funnier and just went to the moon. But he was never looking for a comedian or looking for a writer. I created that flying gag writing.

[00:30:59] It's like the old days with Bob Hopeham and Dean Crosby and they'd take a commercial break on the radio and the writers would be scrambling things for them to say. Things don't change all that much, only we're doing it on the fly, which was unheard of.

[00:31:13] I hope people realize that what you just described is literally the formula for success. You accumulated a lot of knowledge about something you loved and then you just hustled. Like you said, you'd run into someone in the street. You'd give them your albums.

[00:31:31] You would write to Gershan Legman to learn about the rationale of the dirty joke. You wrote jokes for free and submitted them to Ronnie Danger Building until he called you back. You did this.

[00:31:44] You're waking up at 4.30 in the morning for years for free to hang out with Howard Stern. Like this, there's no shortcuts to this. This is how you succeed and this is also how you find value in your life. I'm sorry I'm being serious. I got to do it.

[00:32:00] I do have to correct you. The time I was working for free was only one day a week and that's when he was on it four o'clock in the afternoon. So I wasn't getting up at 4.30 for free, but it was still a helpful ride to New York City

[00:32:13] and that was costing me a fortune to park. For free. Yeah, for free. And I was trying to ingratiate myself into the works, which I did. I think people, and I hate to kind of make, I feel everyone says this about every generation and it's just not true,

[00:32:27] but people in general have a sense of entitlement. They think that if they're mildly good at something, the world owes them. But, and this is not generation specific. Every generation, people say it's true about the next generation.

[00:32:40] It's about everybody and you demonstrated how it really works, how you really rise to the top. And that's very important. I hope people listen to it. That's true for everybody I talk to.

[00:32:52] What I said in my autobiography is the old classic, if you throw enough shit against the wall, some of it's going to stick and my shit stuck to Howard Stern. It stuck to a lot of people.

[00:33:05] I mean, you would have ended up doing something somewhere and we'd still be having this podcast no matter what. It wasn't Howard Stern, Jackie. It was you.

[00:33:15] By the way, like, you know, when you were doing five days a week and you were waking up at 430 in the morning on the documentary, your now ex-wife Nancy, she says nice things about you and she says how it took a toll on you

[00:33:28] and of course your marriage with her. She's so nice and gracious to you. You keep, you know, I know she's your ex-wife, but you know, did the fall apart because of the show and because of your work on the show? We got in 20 years.

[00:33:43] You know, we worked so hard, so close for so long, but you know, she's incredibly, you know, I mean, we're so close. Like Friday night, she made my favorite meal, chicken Kiev, her boyfriend made chicken Kiev for me

[00:34:00] and my girlfriend Barbara and my sister Katie and her husband Kevin. I mean, Nancy made, you know, made my birthday dinner on Friday night. I mean, that with, because we were such good friends before we worked together and then became lovers and then became married.

[00:34:17] You know, we had such a long history and she's great, but part of the pressure was she's a great singer and a great actress and she's so talented and she had so much to do with all my success

[00:34:30] because you know, I always tell people, people say, well, the reason I helped Howard so much is he's driving the bus. So he couldn't read the map.

[00:34:40] So he's driving the bus and I'm reading the map so I could do the busy work and tell him turn left, you know, and she was doing all the busy work. So all I had to do was be funny.

[00:34:52] I put together the jokes and recorded the jokes and edited the jokes, but she put together the deals for the CDs and they get them printed. And when we got divorced people are Nancy took half your money. That's a lot of crap.

[00:35:05] She took the half that she earned and I've always defended her because there's no defending. I mean, you know, some wives hook up to a guy and they get half his money without ever doing anything. But she was really great.

[00:35:20] She's a great actress and singer and it just nothing was happening for her. So, you know, Shobha is this lightning strikes this guy and it doesn't strike this guy.

[00:35:31] So I'm coming home and the next thing, you know, we're on television and we got a he's got a book deal or we got a pay-per-view and we got a movie and, you know, we're off to Los Angeles and we're off to New Orleans.

[00:35:44] And it just it just was hard. It was just hard that it was all happening for me. And I used to say, listen, we are so lucky that it's happening for one of us.

[00:35:58] But that's easy for me to say because I was the guy that was the one of us, you know. So that had something to do with it.

[00:36:04] And plus, you know, the pressures of, you know, and there's a whole long story that I don't go into about us trying to have children and not succeeding. And that was that was probably what really broke us, you know, six, six trips, six cycles of in vitro fertilization,

[00:36:26] all unsuccessful. And this is back in the early 90s. There was no such thing as chat rooms and people commiserating with each other and everything. So it was really, really tough. So but we always stayed friends, you know, we split.

[00:36:41] I got the house on the water and she got the three houses. She lived two houses away for the last 25 years, you know, it's Barbara, your new girlfriend. They've all get along like she's okay with everything. Absolutely.

[00:36:53] She likes Nancy more than she likes me, you know, it's a and she's great. She's terrific. So, so Jackie, a while back you told me this insane story that I'm hoping you'll you'll repeat here about Jeffrey Epstein. You don't have to tell if you don't want.

[00:37:24] But please, please. Yeah, I know, I know you've never held back. So I knew this wouldn't be a hard question, but it was an insane story. I didn't know we had, I didn't know maybe I didn't tell this on the air to you.

[00:37:36] But I, you know, I have no problem with it, especially I, I don't know where you stand, but I, it's irrational how much I hate Trump.

[00:37:45] I mean, but I disliked him from the days he came on this show in the late 80s because he'd come on the show and he was the only guy in the room. He hardly knew Howard was in the room.

[00:37:57] And I'm like me and Fred were looking at each other like what kind of a dick is this guy? You know, and it turned out, you know, that's what he was.

[00:38:04] So what happened was, you know, 40 years and 50, however many years I've been doing stand up, you accumulate so many great friends and work so many different places. And I forget where we actually worked together.

[00:38:17] I know Bobby Slayton was on my radio show a couple of times when he was in New York. But for whatever reason, we always went to eat after the radio show at the palm or at the Carnegie deli.

[00:38:29] And he said, Jackie, like, you know, you know this guy. If you ever heard the commercial on radio for sketches, he's a guy who has this voice with sketches, sketches, shoes or sneakers or something. He's just a great, great character from a long time ago, a California comedian.

[00:38:48] He said, I'm not going to do his voice. This great guy said he's from Florida and he's so rich.

[00:38:55] He's got all kinds of properties in Manhattan and he loves comedians and he has like, has dinners and he brings us over like I've had dinner at his house with with Louis Black and David Brenner. And what year was this?

[00:39:11] This had to be like 2012 or 13, maybe even a little earlier because I harassed Slayton for a long time. Like every time I ever saw him get me invited to one of those dinners. I want to go to one of those dinners.

[00:39:23] And he said, yeah, the guy had apartments sometimes if I was coming to New York City, give me a place to stay. You know? And I knew and Slayton knew that he had gotten, the guy had gotten in trouble in Florida.

[00:39:38] But you know, yeah, I don't ask a lot of questions. He was in trouble for fooling around with underage girls or whatever. But I worked in Florida a million times and these girls would come into the Florida comic ship and they'd look 25.

[00:39:54] And meanwhile, they're 16 years old and you got to be careful. They're all made up and beautiful. You know, not that I was chasing them, but I could understand how you could possibly make a mistake. Not that he did and I'm not defending him by any ways it means.

[00:40:09] But I didn't ask, wait a minute, Slayton, what's this guy in trouble? Is he a bad guy? All I know is he said he's so rich and he's just a good guy and we go over there and we have a great time.

[00:40:21] And I can't remember the laundry list. Somebody must have named, you know, 10 really top comedians. And I said get me invited and one day he finally says, hey Marlene, I got you invited. We're going to dinner at Jeffrey Epstein's. I'm like, fantastic.

[00:40:34] I don't know anything about the guy. I didn't even Google him. I didn't care. And we went to 2 E 71st Street, which was his palace. Right, which I think was at the time the largest apartment in New York City. And it had been a girl's school.

[00:40:52] And why that has nobody ever brought that up? It was a girl's school before it was a single residence, which I think is irony of ironies.

[00:41:01] So I go there and it was me and a comedian named Nick DiPallo and Bobby Slayton and Bobby Slayton's wife and Jeffrey Epstein and Woody Allen and soon eating. And Jay Thomas. Do you know who Jay Thomas is? He used to be on Cheers. Yeah, yeah.

[00:41:23] He was a morning disc stock. Really funny, really talented guy, been around forever. And he has a signature bit that if you haven't seen it, you got to Google it and look at it. Just Google Jay Thomas Lone Ranger.

[00:41:38] And Letterman, David Letterman said it was a single best panel story he had ever heard. Oh wow. And he said, five years Jay Thomas came on every Christmas and told that story again. And the people went wild.

[00:41:54] And so we're all talking and somebody said, Woody, you know Jay, I don't know who's Jay. He said, Woody Kynan who I was. And I don't think he knew who Nick was, but he's talking and he says, No, I never saw Saturday Night Live and I never saw.

[00:42:10] I have never watched TV. Oh, you know Jay. Do you know Jay's famous Lone Ranger bit? Woody Allen had no idea. And Jay Thomas sitting there dinner. It was like a command performance for Woody. He did the Lone Ranger bit and it was like, it was surreal.

[00:42:28] It was just spectacular and we're all laughing. And I don't know what I said or didn't say but you know sometimes you know when you belong and we all really belong. It was all really funny guys. And Epstein was in his glory. We didn't need some crazy.

[00:42:41] We just ate a really nice meal, whatever it was and we laughed our asses off. And then as we'll leave it he goes, you know what? You really fascinate me with these jokes. I really love jokes. You know, why don't you come back in a couple of weeks.

[00:42:57] I'm like sure another free meal on a comedian. So I came back in a couple of weeks and once again I knew nothing about the guy.

[00:43:06] And this had to be, it was I pretty sure was April, not April 2015, which I think was after Trump had come down the escalator. And he was just get, had just thrown his hat in the ring.

[00:43:22] I'm not really exactly sure but it was just where Trump was all of a sudden it looked like he was going to be in politics because I remember there was a specific time in my mind where I got this chill and I said to myself,

[00:43:35] you can't tell me that Donald Trump is going to be in the Republican debates. That just did not compute to me. I was like, no, that's been so many no since then, you know, like this is going to do a minute. This is going to do a minute.

[00:43:51] Nothing. He's bull proof. So I go over to Jeffries and it's just me and him and he's got some kid playing the piano because he's paying his way through college to learn to be a concert pianist. So he's playing piano and having dinner.

[00:44:07] There were no young sexy girls running around or anything weird or any weird, you know, we said having dinner with a very wealthy guy in a huge place. And I'm sure I only saw the first two rooms, you know, so we're sitting there and we're eating and laughing.

[00:44:22] And he said, you know, I really love jokes. He said, you know, tomorrow night I'm going to Harvard. Harvard loves me because I give them millions of dollars.

[00:44:32] And I'm going to go see a lecture by Noam Chomsky and he loves me too because I give him millions of dollars.

[00:44:39] And when he's done with this lecture, I'm going to go in the dressing room and we're going to sit there and we're going to tell dirty jokes. And I said, you know, I am not surprised. Everybody loves dirty jokes. I don't know if I told you.

[00:44:53] I get off the beaten track but that's okay. A guy came up to me at a film festival 20 years ago and he said, Jackie, I had a music teacher and my music teacher's grandfather was a world famous canter.

[00:45:12] And it was around the turn of the century and he was good friends with Enrico Caruso and, you know, all the glitter eye of the country. And one of his best friends was Albert Einstein.

[00:45:25] And he said, and you know, he told my music teacher that Albert Einstein loved dirty jokes. That's why I had to tell you this story. He said an Albert Einstein's favorite joke was my dick isn't that big but I love every foot of it. Which just is smart.

[00:45:49] Well, Albert Einstein do the math. The math. So I just so funny. So I've never, never surprised at how much really smart people love jokes. I did a show at the Friars Club one time and I had Stellar and Mira.

[00:46:03] You know, Jerry Stiller from like the Seinfeld show. Sure. Who's like one of the brilliant just and and Mira they were a couple. They were a comedy pair for decades and decades. And I did this show among other people. But they were sitting at my feet.

[00:46:19] And I'm like, how intimidating can anything be? And they were just roaring. When I got done, Jerry said, you know, I think I met you years ago at the, at the Just Will Ask Festival. I'll tell you those jokes like they're fantastic.

[00:46:36] He said, you know, each of your jokes is like a small one act play, you know, with the beginning and the middle and the finish. And I'm like, I said, I got the chills, Jerry. That's the nicest compliment.

[00:46:48] I just the fact that you guys sat through my shows enough of a compliment, you know, but people that get it, you know, it's the, there's a certain amount of people you can tell the best joke in the world. And they're going to say, oh, that's stupid.

[00:47:00] Well, yeah, it's stupid. It's a joke, you moron, you know. So at any rate, Jeff, we have a great time and I'm telling them three jokes and Tom, my stories. He told me a little bit of his stories.

[00:47:12] He never said anything like, let's go get some girls or do you like women or you know, it was just about jokes and we're just having fun. And this is almost like a Colombo. Oh, one thing Mrs. Smith that began there.

[00:47:25] So we're walking out and we're at the top of the stairs about to go down the door and is that famous now famous big painting of Bill Clinton holding a blue dress, which is obviously very stained.

[00:47:41] And I saw that and I said, hey, I know your friends with Clinton. I know he's been here right. And that's there. He goes, yeah, it's it's not his favorite painting.

[00:47:52] So some lamp and I'm like not pals with this guy, but after two dinners, you know, somebody a little bit and completely out of nowhere. I said, you know, Donald Trump, you know, you're a rich guy and he's a rich guy in your New York City guys.

[00:48:12] You must you must know Donald Trump. And he goes, yeah, you know, well, me and Donald were very close for a long time.

[00:48:18] Now I didn't know that they used to double team 14 year olds at Jeffery's house and, you know, the whole backstory that went on and on and on. But nobody knew any of this at the time.

[00:48:30] Nobody knew anything about either of them unless they really looked into it and and and we all know that with each passing day, the Google and the Internet just versions like this, you know, one.

[00:48:45] You find out one fact and five years later, you got the whole backstory of anything you want to look up. So he's talking to me goes, yeah, me and Donald used to be great friends, but we had a falling out. And I wasn't surprised.

[00:48:59] They said, oh, what bad business deal? I know he's beat up a lot of people in business. And this is Jeffrey Epstein talking. He said, no, it was a morals thing. I swear. I hear this.

[00:49:12] I mean, James, I mean, this stuck to my my head like it like it happened yesterday. This is absolutely almost word for word. He says it was a morals thing. And I said a morals thing. He says, yeah, he said one day.

[00:49:28] Donald just said to me, do you fuck your best friend's wives? And I told him, well, I'm not married. I've never been married, but but no, you know what I mean, his honor among thieves.

[00:49:41] I don't know what he's doing, but you know, that's something he I guess where he would draw a line. You know, he said, no, of course not. And Trump said to him, that's the only way I can get off is I try and fuck my best friend's wives.

[00:49:56] And if I can't get to them, I have their husbands come over to my office and we sit down before after lunch and sit there and chat. I have the phone on speakerphone and his wife on the line without him knowing.

[00:50:12] And we start talking about broads and what we like to do. And that way they can hear what low lives their husbands are. And then I can get to them. And Jeffrey said, and that was just it. I said, all right, game over. I'm done with this guy.

[00:50:29] I mean, that's so wrong, so low, so subversive. It's so wrong on so many levels. And, you know, I'm sure Epstein was a bad guy, but he's not the last guy that's going to have sex with a 15 year old girl. So I don't know the extent.

[00:50:52] I never heard anything about them beating girls up or tying them up. But, you know, even the young girls that were they had a court case and just before just before they had the press conference, they had it all set up to do at the last minute.

[00:51:09] They canceled the press conference. I don't know whether the girls' families were threatened or not. Who knows? But part of the thing, if you Google Jane Doe, Jeffrey Epstein, even to this day, you see the complaint and the girl says, Yeah, and then they took advantage of me.

[00:51:33] And they took advantage of me every time I went over there like wait a minute. You know, don't go back. You know, but I guess if you're a 15 year old girl, I don't give him $200 or $500 or $5,000. So the whole thing was pretty weird.

[00:51:52] But it's just like Lee Harvey Oswald, you know, you're never going to know. And I knew he was going to die in prison the second they put him in prison. I said, he hasn't got a chance.

[00:52:03] And you know, and the list of people that probably wanted him dead was a line around the block, you know. So it was pretty sad. And truth be told, I enjoyed the little bit of time that I spent with him. I actually did, you know.

[00:52:18] It's funny that he had a moral line that Jeffrey Epstein had a moral line. But that doesn't, you know, like the honor among thieves, like if there's enough women out there, you know, I don't even know anybody that's ever said, hey, guess what I did?

[00:52:37] You know, I banged my neighbor's wife. You know, that's not one of the things that comes up in conversation. That's not one of the options. You know, you know, I love my babysitter or, you know, my wife's aunt or something, you know, that can be outside.

[00:52:53] But you know, Now at that dinner, did Woody Allen strike you as the strangest person at that dinner? He was exactly what you would expect. He was quiet, but he was forthcoming when anybody asked him a question. He's quiet. No, I never really watched TV.

[00:53:12] I'm not really aware of any of this. And then, you know, I don't know whether he said I don't see my movies or anything like that, but he didn't say anything earth shattering. And he didn't say anything especially funny, any funnier than anything.

[00:53:27] The one thing that was great is nobody was grandstanding and trying to be trying to be funny. I mean, this was a really group, a good group of guys and girls that were talking and something was funny and somebody made a funny comment.

[00:53:42] But nobody was trying to be boisterous and, you know, find their way into Woody's next movie. You know, it was just a really cordial, nice time. It was very different. And then I just sent you the picture which I'm sure I sent before.

[00:53:58] I love showing it to people because it's Nick DePaolo, Bobby Slayton, Woody Allen, me and Jay Thomas. And I show it and I tell people, I'll give you 50 guesses and I'll buy you dinner if you can guess who took this picture.

[00:54:12] And it was Jeffrey who took the picture because he would never be in a picture, you know. So when did this documentary happen? I know it hasn't been released yet, Jokeman? Yeah, it's available at jokemanmovie.com. That's a website that has the click through to the bimio.

[00:54:48] There's also the trailer and all spectacular reviews which just, they read, the reviews read like I wrote them. You know, they're bad good, you know. Yeah, there's the- Jokemanmovie.com. And we just did a sold out screening at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame.

[00:55:08] And James, it's so flattering how interested people still are because I left that stern show 23 years ago. Okay? I've been doing- I did an interview the other day with a kid who wasn't born when I left the show. You know, one of those things-

[00:55:27] Was he- I forget, was he on Sirius XM when you left? No, no. I left five years before that. And so, that's a whole funny story too. But we did the sold out screening and the movie was an hour and 15 minutes.

[00:55:43] And after we did a Q&A and the Q&A was another hour and 20 minutes. People had questions and they were so interested in the whole comedy thing. And you know, my stories go on and on but they're pretty interesting.

[00:55:58] You know, the devil is always in the details, you know. Sure. And that's one of the things we just touch on in the documentary and people go, oh, I got a question. And so now I'm going to go around the country.

[00:56:08] I've got another one at the Bolton Center in Bayshore on Long Island coming up on April 5th. And I want to do- you know, all the stern markets, these people are so enamored of these shows.

[00:56:19] And they love the old shows because the shows in the 90s were by far the best ones. So I want to go like Chicago and Las Vegas and Miami and Myrtle Beach in Philadelphia and show the documentary and then do the Q&A.

[00:56:35] And I know people- you know, I'm not going to make any money doing it but it's so much fun. Because I never- people like, oh, Jackie, you ever stopped talking about the stupid stern show?

[00:56:45] Like did Groucho ever stop talking about the Marx Brothers? Jesus Christ, were you stupid? No, and you were there, I mean arguably, and I'm not a historian of stern, but arguably his peak was around 1996 or so when private parts came out. I would say that was his peak.

[00:57:02] Absolutely. And the story about that is mind-shattering and the stories about everything. I mean, they- you know, when people hear the stuff that actually happened behind the scenes, they're like, well, no wonder you- and I didn't leave.

[00:57:23] I just asked for a lot more money. That's all I did. You know, if you have a job, you don't have to quit. You could say to the boss, I want to make this much. And you never get what you're worth. You get what you negotiate.

[00:57:35] And that happened two or- you know, three or four times before that where I walked out because they wouldn't pay me and they gave me the money I wanted and I came back.

[00:57:44] That happened a bunch of times. And this time they just didn't want to meet my demands. But I was worth- I was absolutely worth it and I had so much to do with his climb. And there's people that will argue about that.

[00:57:58] You know, I get emails, oh, the stunt show got so much better when you left and they're like idiots, you know, they really don't know. And people love the old shows and they love to ask questions about it.

[00:58:09] And you know, I was there. I was part of the 1927 Yankees. You know, I can tell the tales of Lachlan, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, it was a great time. It was- I mean, the last time I listened to the show was probably 2000.

[00:58:23] Oh, no, 1999 or 2000, around then. I remember specifically Howard had just separated from his wife and Shmueli Botiak was on trying to counsel him and Howard was just like, shut up. You know, you don't know what you're talking about. Get off the show.

[00:58:40] So that was like literally the last time I watched the show. I think it was 1998 or 2009. You know, nobody, none of us had any inkling what was going on with Howard and his wife, okay? And in retrospect, there was one clue that nobody picked up on

[00:59:02] and there's no way we would have picked up on. But at some point towards the end of the 90s, Gary came in during a commercial break and said, you know, they said that one out of every five people, one out of every five couples

[00:59:16] ends up in a divorce. Who do you think is going to get divorced out of us? Me or John or Fred or you or Jackie? Who Howard? And Howard said, I know who's going to be the first one that's divorced, you know?

[00:59:32] And he just said that and it didn't really register. I thought maybe he had some inside information about Fred or Gary or something, but he knew damn well he was not as well as he was in divorce. I didn't know that.

[00:59:43] So I was working in Atlantic City and this was at the height of our fame. And you know, I was down there for a film festival and I was literally wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat because I didn't want to be recognized because people just, you know,

[00:59:58] they don't care about me, but they want to ask questions about Howard or whatever and I'm sitting there this is a Friday afternoon or Friday night and all of a sudden behind the bar on the TV it says, stern and wife separate.

[01:00:12] And you could have knocked me over with a feather and meanwhile they released the news on a Friday so maybe the news would calm down a hair by Monday and when we went in Monday, I had this note framed on my wall because it's so funny.

[01:00:29] I wrote a note and put it up and a lot of times when I wrote something really funny and like if we did a press conference in, you know, Toronto or Boston or something

[01:00:42] and I'd give them stuff to say, a lot of times they'd lead off the articles with something funny that he said which was usually something I wrote which I love seeing in print but is this wound up being the first thing in a lot of articles?

[01:00:58] On Monday after the whole world knew that he had separated from Allison or announced it on Friday, we sat down and the microphones, he turned the microphones on and the first note I wrote he said, all broads please call. Did he say it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:01:20] And that was like the opening line of a lot of the articles because it caught everybody, what killed them? But those were great. She was sweet, she was a pal and it was just the whole thing was a great ride. It really was so no complaints.

[01:01:44] Now, Jokeman is there going to be an official release? Are you going to put it on Amazon? You know, it took a long time. The producer is IKA Collective in car and he was the director and the producer and Ronnie Thomas was the editor who works with Ian

[01:02:01] and Ian's had IKA Collective for like 30 years and his production company in New York and it's funny we met at the Friars Club like a year or two before I left the show and he was a new Friar and hanging out, he was such a huge Stern fan

[01:02:16] and five minutes after we started talking he said, Jesus man, you're not the guy on that show. You can't be that guy because I was funny and articulate and a nice guy and meanwhile he had me pegged as this angry little fat dwarf

[01:02:35] that didn't have a brain in his head. So me and Ian became fast friends and then years later after Howard went to Sirius I had my own show on Sirius called Jackie's Joke Hunt that was me and Ian for eight years we did 400 shows of solid dirty jokes

[01:02:54] which were just classic joke shows and then he said, you know, I really like to do a documentary on you and I couldn't have been more flattered but he just did it. You know, I gave him all the pictures he needed

[01:03:09] I told him who I thought would be a good interview and I gave him whatever input but I had no control over it but it took a lot of time and then when he's just coming to the head of the pandemic hit

[01:03:23] which just yanked the rug out of everybody for so long I'm sure you were like, I don't know how much it affected you but like it was crazy. I was about to join the Friars Club that week and then everything shut down I figured I'd forget it.

[01:03:38] Oh Jesus. And that's the long one but that's a whole other story but then finally hold it together and the thing was so great and we waited for so long because we thought Netflix was going to take it

[01:03:53] and put it on for free that we would not get paid but to have it on Netflix is worth its weight in gold but this is right of course knowing my good news, bad news career this is right when Netflix had that whole falling out

[01:04:08] and the whole stock went kohloy and blah blah blah and then he gave up on that and we finally got a distributor and we were on iTunes and Amazon and within four days we were the number four documentary on iTunes we were above Yogi Berra's documentary

[01:04:29] I was like, I just couldn't believe it and people were loving it and then it turned out that the distributors random media went haywire I guess they were crooks and I don't mind saying that and they declared bankruptcy and Ian never got any of the money

[01:04:51] and we finally got the rights back so now it's up on Bimeo so you can't buy it you can only rent it it's $3.99 which is chump change you can upload it yourself to Amazon and then nobody could tell

[01:05:08] if it's Amazon Prime or if it was uploaded by someone like you could put it back on Amazon I...on the gut it tells the jokes Ian and Ron they know what they're doing and I just follow their lead and whatever we gotta do and I do screenings

[01:05:27] like a bunch of really funny cartoons that are just cartoons of my jokes that we played before so it's like on movies as a kid there's a couple cartoons and then the movie and it's really great and now that we have the first screening maybe a month ago

[01:05:48] we did a family and friends screening in Manhattan and on Long Island but that's your family and your friends it's so great it's really great when people you don't know tell you it's great and people say oh I was number stern fan

[01:06:02] but boy I really enjoyed the documentary that's the kind of thing because it's a fun thing it's a guy getting lucky but making his own luck I don't like the word lucky so much particularly and look I love the documentary because it is such a documentary of success

[01:06:21] and of course success people say you create your own luck I don't know if that's totally true either but you certainly create the potential for luck by doing all the things you did and when you create a enormous potential for luck luck happens people of course

[01:06:37] people say very often people go yeah but where would you be if you hadn't met Howard Stern and you know what I say to him I say where would he be if he hadn't met me because the fact he was an outrageous guy but being funny made him

[01:06:54] so much more palatable you know you could be you could be saying anything you want if you end it with a punchline or something funny and then go to commercial that really picks the balloon lets see air out you know there's a famous story

[01:07:08] where somebody is talking to Hillary Clinton and they said yeah you know you're hot stuff and secretaries stay blah blah blah but you're married to Bill Clinton what if you were married to a gas station attendant and you know what she said she said then he'd be president

[01:07:29] which is beautiful it's like you know it's give and take it really is it's push pull I wouldn't have been there all those years if I wasn't worth my weight in the soil you know nobody in show business is doing anybody a favor

[01:07:43] they love keeping everybody there who's there because but it's because it works you know they wouldn't somewhere in the early 90s I said I said Howard you know me and you and Robin and Fred were the Beatles of radio and man did they have me

[01:08:01] they broke my balls and gave me such a hard time and that one I'm sticking and we've been the Beatles of radio ever since then but Howard hates that because he doesn't see us as the Beatles of radio he's Wayne Newton and we're the backup singers

[01:08:20] that's how he sees it which is not true right so well Jackie Jokeman was excellent I watched it right before we did this interview I really enjoyed it and I learned even though we've talked quite a bit we've been on the podcast a bunch of times

[01:08:36] I learned a lot about you and it was funny and it was a lesson in success it was a history lesson because you've been around the block and met so many people like over these decades it was just a history of these times

[01:08:50] I love the fact that even during this talk here you keep referring to DJs as disc jockeys no one even knows what a disc or a jockey is I know that I tell people my first records were you know LPs they got one right

[01:09:08] I know my records right you know it yeah you see so many things come and go I mean I could bore you forever back in college I used to send away to these things where you get 99 cents you get 10 records or you get

[01:09:26] like the Columbia record house or something right right Columbia record club and at one point they started giving you a tape player with your choices and the first tape player I got from Columbia record club was a 4 track and people for years told me

[01:09:46] I was out of my mind and I was full of crap and then like a year later they came out with this newer gadget called an 8 track and for years people told me I was crazy but now with Google you just Google 4 track

[01:10:02] player and there it is in Google and it rubber stamps what I was doing at the time it was funny because the 4 track tapes I got I got the exact same tapes for the 8 track player and they were all Columbia artists like Simon and Garfunkel bookends

[01:10:18] and Jimmy Hendricks and Blood Sweat and Tears whatever they were and it was just you know it was so exciting to have a tape player in the car as opposed to that little AM speaker all of a sudden you got stereo boom it was like a new world

[01:10:34] but that's so long ago and it was so cheap to get all these songs but now of course you get infinite songs for free it's a you know that whole thing is I don't know how that's all going to shake down it's crazy people back

[01:10:48] having to make money going around you know people used to go around to perform to sell records and now they have to sell records to get people to their shows I mean it's always going to be a hustle you know it's going to be a hustle

[01:11:02] and I still love going out and doing my stupid shows and telling my jokes so you know it's a no lose proposition you know sometimes I make a lot of money sometimes I don't make so much money but I think one thing I want to tell your listeners

[01:11:16] if anybody is interested I answer every email I've ever gotten and I have lots of proof of that but my email is jokeland at aol.com at aol.com I answer every question I write back to everybody you wouldn't even begin to

[01:11:36] believe the people that I've connected with like me and Willie Nelson I've been exchanging dirty jokes for 25 years 25 years we've been sending dirty jokes back and forth you guys are telling us dirty jokes together in the movie right it's just

[01:11:52] I said Willie do we do this so long we got to tell some jokes in my brother's house and he said well sure you know and that alone is a whole story you know we went down to House of Blues and got in the Boston and

[01:12:06] we did the interview when we're done with the interview he lit up a joint and he passed it to me and Ian my partner he's a nice Jewish boy from Chapaquah he's not a big pothead and he was the one shooting the video so he takes

[01:12:24] a big hit and then he starts having a coffin pit so me and Willie smoked more while we're waiting for him to get done coffin and then Willie had to go in and do his show he would smoke he'd get so

[01:12:36] stoned and then go in and do his 75 minute show at 85 years old oh my gosh so we leave the bus and go to go in and we couldn't get into this show because Ian had his camera with him you can't take a camera into a rock and roll

[01:12:52] show so this poor stoned man had to try and find our hotel in whatever section New Orleans we're in so I went in and an hour later he was out of his mind and I thought it was how great is that Willie Nelson got you so stoned

[01:13:12] you couldn't find your way around New Orleans that's a story for the 80s and Willie at 85 has no problem no no he's just sitting there and just having a great old time just a great old time yeah he's good so I will talk to you

[01:13:28] anytime anywhere and I know that you had your comedy clubs and I wanted to open I wanted to open a jokes comedy club I really think there's room for it I think people want to laugh and I think it could be a home run

[01:13:44] and I will supply the jokes just get us a place and I promise we'll pack I agree with you because one time I was actually opening up for TJ Miller who's stand-up comedian and he was totally bombing nothing was working and so what he did was he literally

[01:14:02] took out a book of Jewish jokes and started telling the jokes and then people were laughing like everybody was laughing at everything he's a good performer he just needed the material that worked I you know you're preaching you are preaching to the choir

[01:14:16] and I'm going to show you my friend now I will leave you with my joke that I've been telling everybody a guy buys a farm so he has to get a cow so he goes to a place where they're selling cows he sees a nice cow

[01:14:30] and he turns the guy selling the cow he says I think this is a nice cow I think I want to buy it but I got to make sure it's still vital the guy selling the cow says well whatever you gotta do so the guy reaches under

[01:14:42] and pulls on one of the cow's nipples and the cow cuts an even bigger fart and he turns the guy selling the cow he says this cow is from Minnesota isn't it and the guy selling the cow says yeah how can you tell

[01:14:54] he says my wife is from Minnesota hahahaha I say how could there's no way you cannot laugh at that you know the wives laugh at that you know so harmless right it is and you know what you go back through history

[01:15:12] and you see this in all the stuff you've said me and all the stuff you told me this is history this is the shakes people went to Shakespeare's plays for the dirty jokes absolutely people have been laughing ever since the caveman was standing there

[01:15:30] and a rock fell on his head and his wife laughed and it's been free for all of us since then I think some of the first cave drawings they said were dirty jokes actually and supposedly they tried this about this but supposedly the first thing that Edison recorded

[01:15:48] was a dirty joke oh Mary had a little lamb bullshit you know but who cares it's just fun so we can talk about anything I'm going to start sending you a dirty joke here when he told me that he heard you talking about me

[01:16:06] I asked a few people I was trying to find Steve Cohen and you know in New York if you throw a frisbee you hit 10 Steve Cohen I know there's too many Steve Cohen so I'm looking and then I said you know what I'll just try your

[01:16:22] email and you had the same email so and people say oh Jackie I tried your e-bails the same I said well mine's been the same for 25 years too jokeland.aol.com write to me and tell me that your goal in life is to steal James's haircut

[01:16:38] unfortunately nobody wants that but why Atlanta you know there's no real reason I think I was basically kicked out of New York and I do miss it I've born in New York what do you mean kicked out of New York by whom well you know

[01:17:02] my listeners have heard all this but I wrote this article in 2020 because I was worried about New York I thought there was going to be a lot of problems due to this pandemic and that New York wasn't addressing it you know commercial real estate

[01:17:14] and remote work and crime and sanitation and all these things New York needs 100 billion a year to open up the doors and they weren't going to get it because everyone was leaving New York state still is the state with the largest decline since the pandemic

[01:17:28] and I wrote this article about it and everyone literally everyone hated me I was on the whole page Op-Ed in the Times Frashing Me Andrew Cuomo DeBlasio all these people like trashed me so I left for a while to Florida and then but you weren't talking trash

[01:17:50] you were making an assessment of what you believed right yeah and I was using facts to back it up you weren't trying to shut down New York City you were saying from where I'm sitting this is what I think yeah I was worried

[01:18:02] that was the problem is I didn't solve the problem in the article and look I know Eric Adams and we talked about my article afterwards like people who are serious respected my article but yeah just it became an unplugged J was harassed the comedy club was vandalized

[01:18:20] it's just a really? yeah so how long you think it's going to take you to fuck up Atlanta well Atlanta is probably dead forever too I was laughing right then come back to New York well hang out next time I'm there remember the old joke it's been 45 years

[01:18:40] since El Fufo farted in the marketplace you remember that story there was some guy that cut such a loud in the 1200s he was in the marketplace in Arabia when he cut such a loud part that he was so embarrassed that he had to leave town

[01:18:58] it was 40 years later and his wife says you know I think it's probably okay for us to go back to town so 40 years later he comes back in the town and he says to somebody what day is it and they said oh it's February 12 exactly 39 years and 14 days

[01:19:14] since you farted in the marketplace I think I think that is the best analogy of what happened to me I've ever heard because even yesterday on twitter someone trashed me for that article so it's like people it's like 4 years later people are obsessed with it but

[01:19:32] hey hey if I people are still up my ass about the money I owe Rodney Dangerfield which I don't owe him and never did you know Howard would carve something in stone and these people unbelievable and I explained the whole story in my autobiography

[01:19:52] my autobiography was the joke man I'm sure I sent you that did I send you that? we've done a podcast about it and nobody wants to know a lot of people write me they don't hate me they're just being Howard I gotta say something crappy to Jackie

[01:20:14] because that's what Howard would want me to do which is kind of the fact that they care enough to go to that much trouble let them have a party I guess I gotta let people have more parties I know

[01:20:26] I know I go on and on I don't mean to be so long-winded but thank you so much for having me on no Jackie always a pleasure hello to Peter Hall my dear friend this guy is about he's even shorter than me and he had this amazing build

[01:20:42] he was built like a V and then had no legs so we used to call him the mighty half and I hadn't talked to him in 40 years and I dialed the phone and he answered and I go mighty half he's like how do you remember that

[01:20:56] that helped you that's so funny that he heard me talking about you but I appreciated thanks to him and Jackie congrats once again on everything but this documentary jokemanmovie.com and knock yourself out and Jackie when I'm in New York why I'm out please do not hesitate

[01:21:16] let me know when you're coming for your dinner and we can't go to the Friars Club but we'll go to Gallagher or the Palm and go someplace fun can't even go to Carnegie Deli either I just walked we went to a screen I went to see Broadway Laundry

[01:21:32] the other night which is the new John Patrick Chandling play and the guy just is amazing and just walking past where the Carnegie Deli was I almost cry you know I had six 8x10s in there like from almost from each decade of my life

[01:21:54] you can watch me age as you walk on your way to the bathroom but this guy he wrote the play Doubt and he wrote this Brooklyn Laundry but he wrote Moonstruck which is kind of like the guy that wrote Doubt wrote Moonstruck staring at Bruce Willis

[01:22:14] No, it was Cher it's Nicholas Cage and no it was Cher and Nicholas Cage I think I've seen it a hundred times and it was just so so great and when I found out that he wrote that and we met him the other night because

[01:22:36] this is a warm up to the release of the you know it's a pre-screening but a pre-show at a theater club and my friends that I was with are good friends with him and I wrote to her Ila Mel and I said listen I know you're good friends

[01:22:56] with him I really would like him to hear this story because the guy's from the Bronx and I had a friend that before he died worked with Yogi Berra on Yogi's videos for the Hall of Fame and for his website and the course of working with Yogi Berra

[01:23:16] Yogi said a couple things that were very typical Yogi things but they weren't things that are in the mainstream of that you're always reading you know what I'm talking about and all the crazy things he said but these were things he said while they were working together

[01:23:32] and I said I just really want him to hear it now John Patrick Chandling he's a playwright he's a Irish guy he could be a voracious baseball fan but he might not even know what baseball is but he's from the Bronx

[01:23:46] so I said so I gotta take a shot that you're a Yankee fan and my friend was working with Yogi and one of the things Yogi said was you know Cher she was really good in that movie Moonstruck I think she got the golden glove to that

[01:24:02] ha ha ha ha which is just a terrific Yogi so alright I'm gonna shut up I want to see you in New York I would love to Thanks so much once again great stuff and this movie was great I highly recommend people see it so jokemanmovie.com

[01:24:20] Guys I will see you later thank you Thank you