Inside Cheers, Improv & the Golden Age of Comedy with Paul Willson

Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt.

I'm Phil Proctor. I can't believe we're back.

We're live.

You look fabulous, Phil.

I do? That's right. You've just forgotten what a good looking guy I am.

Yeah.

And we have a wonderful guest who has been with us a couple of times before.

Oh, yeah.

The great Paul Wilson, ladies and gentlemen.

Hello. Hey, Paul, how are you?

I'm okay, thank you.

Paul Wilson is one of the funniest guys you'll ever meet. An improv master who you would know from Cheers.

Cheers for years.

Cheers for years.

How many years?

I did some in the very first season, but the lion's share of what I did was the last three years playing. Yeah, Paul. Yeah.

So I think, I think typecasting, my favorite was you on Larry Sanders as the crooked accountant.

Oh, yeah.

That was fun. I have to say that Gary, a lot of people didn't like Gary and there were reasons why they didn't like him.But he gave me so much to work with in that piece. Yes. That it was easy.

I know a lot of people had a thing about.

Well, he didn't honor the comedian stand up comedian strike back in the 80s or whatever it was.

Oh, something political.

Yeah, yeah. It's largely that. Yeah. And a lot of the people who played the other mainline comedians, like who?I can't remember at the moment, but the guys who would open for Frank Sinatra and that kind of. Yeah, big time. But not stars, people.

Joey somebody. I saw him when I was a kid. I saw Frank Sinatra at the Store Club in New York and Joey was a mafia guy. They tried to kill him and he.

Tried to slit his throat or something like that.

Joey Lewis. Yeah, Joey Lewis. He opened for Frank.

Joker is Wild. I loved that movie. I saw it more than once. I was a child.

Yeah.

I was running three blocks from my house at a great theater called the Alexandria Institute.

And in those days you could run three blocks from your house.

I could run even back.

You know, this summer I saw a thing online. Gary going to visit his buddy Tom Petty at Tom Petty's house in Malibu. Because they lived across the street from each other and they were buddies.And I saw a side of Gary that I'd never seen before and it was lovely, actually.

That's because he only shot his right profile. He didn't like the way he looked on the left. He saw him in three dimensions.

You're so literal.

I met him at a party once, long before I got Married. And I was talking up a couple of lovely women and he came right in and horned in on the whole thing.

You told me that story.

Right.

It was extraordinary, but it was fun.

I think he just did it to help you.

He didn't help me inadvertently. Yeah.

But listen, I just got back from Bellevue, Washington, where I and David Osman were honored guests at an old time radio convention. Reps, the Radio Enthusiasts of Puget Sound. And we did a bunch of old time radio recreations. We did three detective dramas. I was Mr.Keen, tracer of Lost Persons, and he was Nero Wolf and what was the Other One? And the Saint. Okay. And we recreated these half hour wonderful detective stories.And then they dedicated the last part of the evening to a Q and A with David and me.

And that's when they found out that the audience was so old that no one could hear anything.

Nobody could hear it. Anyway. We did it with closed captions anyway. It was great fun. And it raises an interesting question about improvisation. Okay.Which we're going to spend a bit of time talking about today. And the fact is, everybody avoids politics. All the standups avoid politics. I imagine an improv, you avoid politics.

I have to say this about off the Wall. The focus has never been on politics. It's never been a society. Yeah. It's just also never been really a satirical group. But it's a comedy group.

Yeah.

And it's a good comedy group. Yeah. Before that, I was in a group that was satirical. We did a lot of political material.

Was that the Pitcher Player?

That was the pitcher player.

Pitcher, pitcher, pitcher.

Yeah. At one point we were at the Ash Grove. The late lamented Ash Grove.

Yes. Which is now the improv.

Yeah. But for a while was the Pitcher Players Cabaret, if you could believe it.

Oh, I forgot.

Yeah. That was in 1974, until maybe the middle 75.

Wow.

But anyway, I remember we did a show there in 1969 as the Ash Grove. And somebody came over to me after the show, presented a card from Dick Clark Productions and said, do you guys do any less political material?And of course, I was programmed to say no. So that's why it took another 10 years for me to have a career. But later on, I did work for Dick Clark and I enjoyed it greatly.I think he was a terrific guy.

Yeah, he was. We wrote Firestone Theater, wrote the prototype for all of the video games that you play today for Descartes Productions in one of his offices.But we Firestone, of course, we did a lot of political stuff, which is what kept us off television.

But I think the opposite is true now. I think the late night hosts have been actual heroes. They've been constitutional heroes.

Jesters.

Jesters with the mad King.

You're getting better quality news from some of these nightly news entertainment shows than you are from corporate news. PBS NewsHour has been good and steady and people love the BBC because it's not influenced. But the corporate media has completely kowtowed.

Because the role of the jester was such that if he got the king to laugh his head off, that was good, and if he didn't, he was off with his head.

That's what the whole charade of Jimmy Kimmel was off the air and Colbert was off the air because they had no talent. Says the man with the least talent ever for the job.

But he was a big television star. And if their ratings are, you know, they have bad ratings, rotten ratings.

That was what it was all about. Sinclair Station Group, which makes Fox News look moderate. They own a significant amount of ABC.

Affiliates and they send scripted editorials and.

Scripted news story to their affiliates.

Yeah, and they have to read them.

Completely Orwellian. And yet there must have been so much outpouring of protests.

There was.

By the mainstream.

People were canceling their subscriptions to Hulu and Disney. And at the bottom line, it's the mighty dollar. We live in a system of checks and balances.And if your check isn't big enough or your balance isn't high enough, you might as well retire.

Do you take crypto?

Crypto? No. Tales of the Crypto Man.

I don't know if I take crypto. That's how crypto it is.

Trump takes crypto.

Said he gives really good crypto.

Crypto. He's full of crypto.

At least $3 billion worth already in his six months.

What does it mean? Listen, my favorite story about Caligula was that he made an announcement in ancient Rome that he was going to throw shower the populace with gold.Okay? So he goes up in this tower and thousands and thousands of people, citizens get under the tower and then he throws gold ingots down and kills them.So there's the story.

That's quite a metaphor, though, for what greed actually does. Greed, I'm convinced, and it's been going on for way longer than recently.Is greed is the worst, the most dangerous thing for this country and that greed has taken over from all other values. So these guys who are worth $300 billion aren't satisfied.If I had $300 billion in the first place, I'd give away 9, 10 of it because I wouldn't have enough pockets to put it in.

Do you have my number?

You could buy new pockets.

What wasn't it Bill Gates who was actually doing before he. So slowly but still. But they still want to have more. Mind boggling.And it all goes back also to on top of that greed thing, the business model of Silicon Valley. One guy makes billions, everybody else. They do. Okay, maybe, but they're subject to being yanked at any time.If we don't need you anymore now, they don't need entry programmers anymore. Tens of thousands of people who studied that in college because it was a guaranteed good moneymaker are now out on the street.

Listen, we've been talking about the lack of activities for us in our industry, the entertainment industry.

What industry?

There's a new song out they've rewritten. There's no business like show business now let's all sing it together. There's no business.

I'm sorry, I overstepped.

You overstepped?

I overstepped.

You killed the joke.

I didn't really kill it.

No, you didn't.

I just maimed it.

You wounded it. It's limping.

And really the real shame is that we rehearsed that, you know, we did, but I ate in between and it always intoxicates me.

Anyway, you're listening to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer show.

Yes.

So, yeah. Golden age for improv right now, I'd say, given the insanity that we're surrounded and immersed in.

I think there's a lot of fear too, though. I think people are clamming up Charlie.

Kirk alone, which was terrible what happened, obviously. Sure, terrible what happened. But to whitewash who he is, as a result, is equally terrible.And he was the one that singled out professors like Heather Cox Richardson and they got slews of death threats as a result of what he did. And you think about the amount of death threats that these comedians must be getting.

Oh, sure, it's payback. Because if a comedian has a good night, he says, I killed him.

Yeah.

So this is all payback.

That's all it is.

In addition to their function as purveyors of free speech, I think they also.They're a consolation to the people who have to spend the whole day looking at all the latest depredations of this regime and get a little bit of relief at night, then able to laugh at it. And I think that part of silencing them is in addition to just removing their voices is to demoralizing us.

Absolutely.

And I think that's the biggest danger we face because so many people are already demoralized.

Total autocratic playbook. Yeah, you're right. These guys are cathartic.

Yeah.

And it offers a little relief, but at the same time, I've always been puzzled at the idea that, okay, something hor. Something horrible happens, and they're able to lighten it a little bit so that you have. You can laugh out of relief, but it doesn't go away.

No. In fact, right now, they're winning. Let's be honest. Yeah, they're really winning.

46% Of the Project 2025 has already been enacted.

It was Katie. I can't remember her last name, running for governor.

Katie Alzheimer's.

No, From Orange County.

Anyway, she's currently a Congress, or was a congressperson until she didn't run. She ran for Senate, didn't get nominated, and I'm shameless.

Katie Porter.

Katie. Yes.

Thank you.

Katie porter said that 47% of the project 2025 has already been put in place.

It's a blitzkrieg, that's what it is.

I did my citizen's duty. I watched most of the Kirk rally in Arizona, and I went to Memorial. Yeah, There were a couple of co workers that were memorializing him.The rest were all politically showboating. Stephen Miller.

Yeah, that was.

Wow.

He's the most dangerous man in America. I don't think Trump has the brain power. He has the impulses, and he has the charisma. He has the followers.But Stephen Miller's the one with the ideas.

And Russell Vogt.

Yeah, these are the architects, but Stephen Miller's the Goebbels. Yeah, he's really the firebrand.

Yeah. An interesting tick, too.But when he started going after and he started threatening people at a memorial, and then they kept cutting away to the crowd, and it was, I'd say, 99.5% white. I saw one African American person in the crowd. I saw a smattering of Asians, but it was primarily white. White people.That's a white nationalist Christian church. It was a Christian nationalist rally. And there were. A huge percentage of them were wearing the red dunce caps.

That's the swastika for maga.That's because right after the election, or not long after, maybe a month or two after the election, I went to one of my favorite restaurants, and right by the front door were two guys dressed almost identically like ice agents, although they weren't all in black and with black MAGA caps. And I wanted to say, look, the election's over. You won. Stop electioneering. But then I realized it's not electioneering. No, it's identification.

Yep.

And that's. I think that's really dangerous. And when he wears them to speak to the West Point class, what is that about?

He should wear a cap that says everything I know is wrong.

He does. Trump was right about everything.

Yeah, that's right. I think everything I know is wrong.

I think he practically said that, either at the rally and. Or at the un but he kept saying about how I was always right about this. Trump was always. And he speaks about himself in third person.

Yes, they all do.

They're all detached reality.

You mentioned the similarity to some leader of the past. I forget which one it was, but.

Does it begin with a.

No, no, it wasn't that. And I'm sorry for forgetting again.But I always thought when Trump first came on the scene and actually got some power, that he was more like that character Per Ubu.

Oh, yeah.

Oobu Wah. The king.

Oobu the King. I've often thought of that. An absurdist play by.

I'm trying to remember. But, yeah, I remember they did it at the Magic Theater in Berkeley years and years ago. And Ubu is this.He's somehow, I guess, hereditary emperor or king. Basically a baby.

Yeah, big baby.

Poops his pants and spills his food and tells people what to do. And if they don't do it, he kills them. That's right.

Who wrote it? It's a French absurdist play.

I'm trying to get there before the other contestants on Jeopardy. Do.

You listen to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show? Our special guest is Paul Wilson. Paul, what's going on this weekend?

Yeah, the group that I've been a member of for 49 and a half years.

Alfred Jerry.

Alfred Jerry. Unfortunately, he couldn't be there, but the group. I've been together. I've been together. Perhaps I'm hoping to get together sometime in the future.

I was gonna say get it together.

You're falling apart right in front.

But parts are getting harder to find, so that's quite. You can use me as a parts person for somebody else who's like. Anyway, got more mileage left.

Hi, friends. Ralph Sportsport used body parts made from Americans for Americans.

Give them a hand, folks.

Anyway, So I have 49 and a half years of the group will be. Have been together for 50 years as of the date of this, which is.

And the group is called.

The group is called off the Wall. It's a comedy improv group that Was begun by a lady named Demarcus de Vero. Marcus D. Marcus, who was.I grew up in the sort of the Second city form of improvisation, which was fairly strict in a lot of ways and scene based and traditional. And began with set material and then did improv improvisation. So it was a kind of thing that was very intense a lot of times.And it wasn't specifically oriented toward being funny, but it generally was very funny in the kind of way that scripted comedy, especially TV comedy, couldn't be. So the closest one on scripted stuff was Sid Caesar. Took feeling of improvisation.

That's right.

Because it was so loose show of shows. And also somebody like Steve Allen and I think all these people were inspirations for people who went into improvisation.But anyway, and she was much, much more relaxed.She had been a kindergarten teacher, preschool teacher, and had been in a group in Northern California called the Illegitimate Theater, which was two men and two women who were adults, middle aged adults. And it was quite an interesting, sophisticated group of people.But she moved back down to Los Angeles and started this workshop which included a lot of people like Garry Shandling, who had just decided he wanted to be a stand up. He'd been a writer and so he wanted to get some experience in front of an audience. And Dee was also a really good coach.So she had people like that in her workshop. Other people who met so long ago now, I've forgotten. But you know, I remember Gary because I worked with him for years.

That's right.

But I thought he was. I thought he was an American Indian. What?

Gary?

Gary. Because he did live in Arizona, but also he wore a lot of turquoise jewelry.He had long jet black hair, he had a darker complexion and he had a sort of a calm manner. And I just. I don't know, I just thought he was. And Shandling was a name. He was. Who knows.So it took me quite a while to become disabused of that notion. Actually not very long once I actually met him.

But anyway, he didn't come off in mean to me at all.

No, but. So she had this workshop and it became a group called off the Wall.Working in this little dance studio on Fairfax Avenue in a building that's not there anymore where the big supermarket is.

A bit like you.

Yeah, I used to be there, but I got torn down.

Okay, so it was a supermarket with a dance studio above it.

No, it was actually supermarkets at the corner. And at the time it was I think Alpha Beta. Now I think it's Whole Foods. But it's been through several Changes in the meantime.And there was an Astro Burger right there, too. And Astro Burgers were really.

By the way, they're out of this world.

Yeah. Anyway, this is in Hollywood, So this is. This was a building behind and a little dance studio upstairs and with a little parking lot in front of it.Really, none of this really matters, but the fact is.

No, it's a place to do your thing.

We put the set, the set everything up for the show and then tear it down after. So, anyway, that's how it began. But then. And then for a while, Robin Williams was in the group for about a year.

How did Robin find out about the group?

I don't know, but I think he was looking for things to do. He landed in town, he was working. He had a contract with George Schlatter to do the new Laugh In.And Rollins and Jaffe said, this is a terrible contract. It's something like $500 a week for life. And these managers, Rollins and Jaffe, were very big managers. Woody Allen's.

Yeah, they did all Woody Allen's movies in the day.

So. Roger.

Robin.

Robin. Yes, thank you. Got out of that. But he was working in the workshop, and he did other things, too. But he was a member of off the Wall for about a year.And during that period, he ran into John Ritter, as of course he would. And John started coming. He already knew Dee anyway, from a workshop that she was in with Harvey Lembeck from the Bilko Show.So he was there for a while. It was very exciting. But the problem was that so many people came. We had 50 seats, and it just became untenable.

Now, is that because he did Mork and Mindy became a huge television star before that.

Right.

He was already a legend, already a star. He started doing Mork and Mindy. He did Mork on an episode of Happy Days or something.And I think he had done that, but he hadn't done Mork and Mindy yet. But he was big.

He was an amazing talent. My God.When Procter and Bergman were touring around, I remember we were in Colorado for a show and somebody at the club said, oh, you should have seen this guy who came in, who was here last week. He said he improvised with a salt shaker and brought the house down. And it was Robin out there making waves.

His official introduction was a special on hbo. I believe it was hbo.

Yeah.

But I know that a whole bunch of people were invited. It was at the. Was it the Roxy on Sunset or something? Big enough. It actually had, like, a thrust stage. And. Yeah, okay, So I was there.The other people in off the Wall were there. And a whole bunch of other people, agents and casting people and friends. And he just completely wowed the place. Absolutely. Just all over the place.Running fair.

One of the early stories, which is on the show we did with Noel Blank, Mel Blanc's son hugs Bunny fame. Noel had seen him in a club when he was just starting out. And Noel was doing comedy radio spots with his dad and.And they wanted to find him because he had seen him do standup. And they had a call around. He was down in San Diego somewhere working at a club. And he said, would you like to come up to work with Mel?And Robin was, yeah, God, yeah, absolutely. He says, all right, we'll be up next Thursday, 2 o'. Clock. And so Mel and Noel are waiting for him. And it's three o', clock, there's no Robin.And finally the phone rings. And he said, it was before cell phones. He said, my VW van broke down on the five. I just got towed. I just got to the gas station and.And they said, get in a cab. And he came up in a cab and blew them all away. But that was when he was early. Early. And Robin never forgot that.He kept always thanking Noel for giving him his break.

That's nice of.

Off the Wall at the Improv, which.

Is where we were, the house Group from 1980 to 1994.

It used to be the Ash Grove originally. Yeah. Where Firestone Theater did its stuff. And Credibility Gap.

And the Pitchell Players, my old group.

And your old group, the Pitchell Players.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's perfectly wonderful.

But I also have to do my taxes.

On stage.

No.

I only wish you were Garry Shandley's accountant.

Yeah.

Should be.

That should be good for somebody.

But of course, I was an embezzler and I don't want to try that anymore. They're going to go through everything with a fine tooth comb.

Oh, boy.

Anyway, speaking of the deal and the business, is there any business left? I have never seen Hollywood the way it is right now.

It's a little empty. Empty. Empty.

It's crazy. It's.

If you go onto a soundstage now, there's no sound.

All the audio recording studios that I'm aware of are pretty much gone.

Shuttered.

Yeah.

And the only action is inside the closed walls of the major tech corps. The action is in audible and in Apple Books, on tape, Sirius. And I just wonder, what do you guys observe about what's happening? You've seen a lot.

Yeah.

And you're with a lot of wonderful actors.

Let's face it. I'm over the hill officially. But now I know that they were not named and there's only so much I can read. The two biggest ad agencies merged.Was it gray or somebody?

Gray advertising.

Gray is a huge one. I just wondered. But I would imagine. And they had already been doing a lot, so much stuff in house, they didn't bother to face the world.So they're probably doing radio spots and TV voiceover, but it's not getting out to auditioning. I don't know.

I see ads on LinkedIn to do voice work for 250 flat.

Oh, this is like telecasting, whatever it's called, where they. You go, you do it online and you do it. You just. Completely off the books, basically, and.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know how the unions are maintaining relevance at this point.

Well, yeah, they're trying.

And so much money from these agencies, the money is being redirected from institutional buys and networks and stuff and going to solopreneurs, the podcasters, influencers, and everything's diffused now.That's the frightening part to me is that the water cooler talk, the collective sensibility of seeing something and having your own opinion about it, it's so fragmented now. It's all about confirmation bias. People are off in their own little worlds.

Yeah. The thing about the water cooler was you had disagreements and you people made arguments in favor of their positions. You know. That's right. Yeah.That doesn't.

Political discourse, social intercourse, if you will.

Hey, you want to get us knocked off the air?

More like foreplay, if you don't mind it, that water cooler. But anyway.

And the same thing happened to the voiceover industry because in the good old days, we used to all gather together in a room at the agency, at your prospective agency, and you'd go in and read for something in a little booth with a little director and you get to work with like Paul and I would be sitting next to one another and catching up with our lives now we go in and read a funny spot together and that way we were a family.

Everybody knew each other.

Everybody knew one another.

And I think that was probably reflected in the work too.

To the listeners.

Absolutely. It's easy and fun to work with friends.

Can I. Do we have enough time for me to tell a brief story?

Sure, please.

I crippled my voiceover career, really. I did a bunch of stuff while I was still doing Cheers, but then when I stopped doing that, of course, that sort of.But I also never very Assiduously promoted myself. But somehow I did get this gig at Hollywood Recorder at Bob Jones or Fred Jones? Fred Jones. Yes. No, Bob Jones University at Fred Jones.So anyway, and it was a big session. There were, like, eight actors there. Edie McClurg was there, and Tom Poston. Tom Poston, who was one of my heroes.

I was on his. His show in New York. He hosted a summer show in New York. And when I was a kid, I used to go down to Times Square and go into this studio.It was a theater where they did this live show. And one day, they needed a kid. They were gonna. The singer was gonna sing Young and Foolish. And so they came out and said, hey, kid, here's a Yo Yo.You know, we want to start with you playing with the yo yo, and then we'll do the song. And so I go. That was, I think, one of my. It was one of my early appearances on television as a Yo yo on the Tom Poston Show. Is that wild?

I. I met Tom Poston on Steve Allen.

Great guy.

I watched all of Steve Allen's.

I love that show.

So, yeah, Goo Goo Dogs. Little black things. Yeah.Anyway, so Tom Poston is there, and he would sit down and he says, paul Wilson, Fred Spiegelman said that I'd have a good time working with you. Ah. And you know what I did?

What?

I honestly said I didn't remember who that was. I didn't know who that was. And it made a really uncomfortable moment for everybody.

You're a silly boy.

And I. Well, I. But that's me. It's, you know. Okay, I ask if I don't know.

You were being honest.

Yeah. But the thing is, you don't be honest.

Not in this business.

It's also. And I understand, it's not only a matter of being honest, it's a matter of making things comfortable.

Yes.

So that made things uneasy. And it would have been much easier if I just said, oh, yeah, he's a great guy. Just say hi to him the next time you see him.I literally did not know because I was not at the stage in my career where I knew all these producers and agency people.

That's right.

So they'd introduce themselves and it'd be in and out.

So you didn't understand the nuance of la Superficiality.

Yeah.

Oh, I understand superficiality, all right.

Show business, it's the only.

But I just forgot everything I knew.

Show business is the only business where you can get stabbed in the front,.

At least in Hollywood, or they say.

But the most Important thing about acting is sincerity. And as soon as you can learn to fake that, you'll have that.

That's right. It was Fred Allen, I think, said that.

I do think that's a scary thing about what's going on now. People are so disassociated because there is.

So few social gatherings.

Gatherings. This kid that killed Kirk, I mean, talk about nihilism. He was into things, apparently, that are so deeply odd and popular.

Wheels within wheels. It occurred to me and this other guy who shot up a wedding and killed a person and then yelled, free Palestine.I'm thinking, listen, the next time you want to kill somebody in order to advance a cause, kill yourself. Yeah.

Kill yourself first.

Screw up the movement to do that thing that you believe in. That's right. Because that hurts everybody who shares that, if you can call it a viewpoint.I think you just thought, well, I better say something or else I'm going to look like a Schlemele. I don't know. It's just.

It's also emblematic of today's sensibilities and sense of the dystopian nature of what's going on right now in not only the political sphere, but in the corporate media sphere. I gotta be hopeful that this is going to run its course.

I said the most optimistic prediction I've heard is that he's. That he and the Republicans are overstepping.

Yes.

They really got to the point of hubris and it's going to bring a fall.

Oh, they're totally high on their own supply.

Yeah.

Overstepping is better than goose stepping.

I'm not sure goose stepping is essentially overstepping.

Overstepping.

Stop overstepping it so much. How about some duck stepping?

Paul Wilson, our guest today. Anyway, thanks for listening. I'm Ted Bonnitt. I'm Phil Proctor and this is Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show. Paul, thank you so much for coming.

Thank you for having me.

It's great to see you again. You can hear all of our shows@SexyBoomershow.com. Have a great week.

Bye.