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

29:11And I know you guys had hit it off. I had no idea. I 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, Karen WNBC, Rockefeller Plaza. And a couple months later, I'm in my mother's attic. My office, Jokeland, was my mother's attic with the dial-the-joke machines. I was a madman. and she called and said, hey, this guy Howard Stern wants you to come in. So I called the NBC and Howard got right on the phone and said, oh, we listen to your records. We think you're so funny. Why don't you come in and hang out on the air today?

29:47What are you going to say? You know, I'm hosting shows at Governors in Lovatown 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, 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. And then we started doing Mrs. Flemstein, playing Stump the Comedian. And it was really funny because my stories go too long.

30:27Oh, no, keep going. Mrs. Flemstein, who was a comedian, we used to work in the Fort Lauderdale comic strip. And Sunday nights was Boys Night Out. 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. 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, you know, I need a piece of business for you.

31:07And 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. He said, well, we'll make it two lines. We'll call it Stunk Comedian and people can do two line jokes. But of course, the audiences, you took phone calls. Every joke was too racist, too dirty, too ethnic. You know, it was the worst crap. 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. You couldn't figure out if it was a woman or a man.

31:46It was like an old, an old Jewish person. Hello, Howie. How you doing, Howie? And it was so funny. And after a couple of weeks, I just inserted like, oh, it's Mrs. Flemstein again. Oh, it's Mrs. Flemstein again. So at some point, weeks later, Robin goes, oh, where did we get the name Mrs. Flemstein? And I said, well, I named her that. And she's like, oh, right. Oh, like you named Mrs. Flemstein. So I'm not getting credit from the Stern show, but 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're going on and on and on, and I'm slowly passing him notes.

32:29And then he got fired. Then he got rehired at KROQ, 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. On one side of the loose leaf, I could put a piece of paper, an 8x11 piece of white paper, and I'd write in a Sharpie. I started putting stuff up once a week. And then after a couple months, he called me. 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 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 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.

33:33Not because I'm especially funny, but because he had two senses of humor. 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 sense of humor. 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. You know, it's like the old days with Bob Holcomb and Bing Crosby and they'd take a commercial break on the radio and the writers would be scrambling things for them to say.

34:15You know, things don't change all that much. Only we're doing it on the fly, which was unheard of. You know, it was not people, you know. You know, I hope people realize that what you just described is literally the formula for success. Like 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 give them your albums. You would write to Gershon Legman to learn about the rationale of the dirty joke. You wrote jokes for free and submitted them to Rodney Dangerfield until he called you back. You did this. You're waking up at 4.30 in the morning for years for free to hang out with Howard Stern.

34:56Like 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. Like, you know, we're - No, 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 at four o 'clock in the afternoon. So I wasn't getting up at 4.30 for free, but it was still a healthy ride to New York City. And that was costing me a fortune to park. 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 it's about every generation and it's just not true, but people in general have a sense of entitlement.

35:38They think that if they're mildly good at something, the world owes them. And this is not generation specific. Every generation people say it's true about the next generation. 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. 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. I mean, you would have ended up doing something somewhere and we'd still be having this podcast no matter what.

36:19It wasn't Howard Stern, Jackie. It was you. By the way, like, you know, when you were doing five days a week and you were waking up at 4.30 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 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, didn't fall apart because of the show because of your work on this show? You know, we got in 20 years. 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.

37:00Like, Friday night, she made my favorite meal, Chicken Kiev. Her boyfriend made Chicken Kiev for me and my girlfriend, Barbara, and my sister, Katie, and her husband, Kevin. I mean, Nancy made, you know, made my birthday dinner on a Friday night. I mean, because we were such good friends before we worked together and then became lovers and then became married. You know, we had such 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. 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.

37:47So 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. I put together the jokes and recorded the jokes and edited the jokes, but she put together the deals for the CDs and to get them printed. and when we got divorced, people, oh, Nancy took half your money. I said, that's a lot of crap. She took the half that she earned. And I've always defended her because there's no defending. I mean, you know, some wives, you know, hook up to a guy and they get half his money without ever doing anything.

38:25But she was really great. But she's a great actress and singer, and it just, nothing was happening for her. So, you know, you know show business. this lightning strikes this guy and it doesn't strike this guy. 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, 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. 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. But that's easy for me to say because I was the guy that was the one of us.

39:09So that had something to do with it. And plus, the pressures of... There's a whole long story that I don't go into about us trying to have children and not succeeding. And that was probably what really broke us. You know, six trips, six cycles of in vitro fertilization, 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. But we always stayed friends. You know, we split. I got the house on the water and she got the other three houses. So she lived two houses away for the last 25 years, you know.

39:55And Barbara, your new girlfriend, they all get along. Like, she's okay with everything? Absolutely. She likes Nancy more than she likes me. You know, and she's great. She's terrific.

40:22so 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 but no please please yeah i know i know you've never held back so i i knew this wouldn't be a hard question but it was an insane story i didn't know we hadn't i didn't know well maybe i didn't tell this on the air to you but i i you know i have no problem with especially i i don't know where you stand but i it's irrational how much I hate Trump. I mean, but I disliked him from the days he came on the show in the late 80s because he'd come on the show and he was the only guy in the room.

41:02He hardly knew Howard was in the room. 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. 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. 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. And he said, Jackie, you know, you know this guy.

41:40If you ever heard the commercial on radio for Skechers, he said, I was this voice for Skechers. sketches shoes or sneakers or something he's just a great great character from a long time ago a California comedian he said oh this is I'm not going to do his voice this is this great guy he said he's from Florida and he's so rich 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 Louis Black and David Brenner. And what year was this? This had to be like 2012 or 13, maybe even a little earlier, because I harassed Slayton for a long time.

42:26Like every time I ever saw him, get me invited to one of those dinners. I want to go to one of those dinners. And he said, yeah, and the guy had apartments. Sometimes if I was coming to New York City, he'd 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. But, you know, 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 strip, and they'd look 25. And meanwhile, they're 16 years old, and you've got to be careful.

43:04They'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 and means, but I didn't ask, wait a minute, is this guy in trouble or 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. And I can't even remember the laundry list, but he must have named 10 really top comedians. And I said, get me invited. And one day he finally said, hey, Marlene, I got you invited. we're going to dinner at Jeffrey Epstein's.

43:40I'm like, fantastic. I don't know anything about the guy. I didn't even Google him. I didn't care. And we went to 2 East 71st Street, which was his palace. I think it was at the time the largest apartment in New York City. And it had been a girl's school. 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 irony. so I go there and it was me and a comedian named Nick DiPaolo and Bobby Slayton and Bobby Slayton's wife and Jeffrey Epstein and Woody Allen and Soon-E and Jay Thomas do you know who Jay Thomas is? he used to be on Cheers 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.

44:41Just Google J. Thomas Lone Ranger. And Letterman, David Letterman said it was the single best panel story he had ever heard. So for 25 years, J. Thomas came on every Christmas and told that story again. And the people went wild. And so we're all talking and somebody said, you know J? I don't know. Who's J? He says, Woody kind of knew who I was. was and i don't think he knew who nick was but he's talking and he says no i never i never saw saturday night live and i never saw i never watched tv and oh you know jay do you know jay's famous lone ranger bit woody allen had had no idea and jay thomas sitting there at dinner it was like a command performance for woody he did the lone ranger bit and it was like It was surreal 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 belonged It was all really funny guys And Epstein was in his glory And we didn't eat something crazy You know, we just ate a really nice meal Whatever it was, and we laughed our asses off And then as we're leaving He goes, you know You really fascinate me with these jokes I really love jokes You know, why don't you come back you know in a couple weeks i'm like sure another free meal i'm a comedian and so i came back in a couple weeks and once again i knew nothing about the guy and this had to be it was i pretty sure was april not uh april 2015 which i think was after trump had come down the escalator and he was just getting i'd just thrown his hat in the ring 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 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 you know there's been so many no since then you know like this is going to do immense this is going to do him it's nothing he's ball proof so so i go over to jeffrey's and it's just me and him and he's got some kid playing the piano because he's paying his his uh his way through college to learn to be a concert pianist so he's playing piano and me and him are having dinner 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 and i'm sure i only saw the first two rooms you know so we're sitting there we're eating and laughing 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 and i'm going to go see a lecture by noam chomsky and he loves me too because i give him millions of dollars 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 i don't know if i told you and i get off the beaten track but uh 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 and it was around the turn of the century and he was good friends with enrico caruso and all the glitter eye of the country.

48:29And one of his best friends was Albert Einstein. 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, and Albert Einstein's favorite joke was, my dick isn't that big, but I love every foot of it. which is which just is it's smart it's well albert einstein do the math the math so so i just so funny so i've never never surprised at how much really smart people love joe i did a show at the friars club one time and i had stellar and mira you know jerry stiller from like the seinfeld show who's like one of the brilliant just and and mirror they were a couple they were a comedy pair for decades and decades.

49:21And I did a show among other people, but they were sitting at my feet. And I'm like, how intimidating can anything be? And they were just roaring. And when I got done, Jerry said, you know, I think I met you years ago at the Just for Last Festival. I'll tell you those jokes, like they're fantastic. 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. Just the fact that you guys sat through my show is enough of a compliment. You know, but people that get it, you know, there's a certain amount of people you can tell them the best joke in the world and they're going to say, oh, that's stupid.

50:08Well, yeah, it's stupid. It's a joke, you moron, you know. So at any rate, Jeffries, we have a great time. I mean, I'm telling a few jokes and telling a little bit of my stories. He told me a little bit of his stories. He never said anything like, let's go get some girls, or do you like women, or are you married? You know, it was just about jokes, and we're just having fun. And this is almost like a Columbo. Oh, one thing, Mrs. Smith, I forgot that. So we're walking out, and we're at the top of the stairs, about to go down and out the door, and there's that famous, now famous, big painting of Bill Clinton holding a blue dress, which is obviously very stained.

50:48And I saw that and I said, hey, I know you're friends with Clinton. I know he's been here. And that's there? He goes, yeah, it's not his favorite painting. So I'm laughing. 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 and you're New York City guys you must you must know Donald Trump and he goes yeah you know me and Donald were very close for a long time now I didn't know that they used to double team 14 year olds at Jeffrey's house and you know the whole back story that went on and on and on but nobody knew any of this at the time nobody knew anything about either of them unless they really looked into it.

51:44And we all know that with each passing day, Google and the internet just versions like this. You know, 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. He goes, yeah, me and Donald used to be great friends, but we had a falling out. And I wasn't surprised. I 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. I mean, James, I mean, this stuck to my head like it happened yesterday. This is absolutely almost word for word.

52:30He says it was a morals thing. And I said, a morals thing? He says, yeah. He said, one day, 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 i mean there's honor among thieves 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 and if I can't get to them, I have their husbands come over to my office and we sit down before or after lunch and sit there and chat.

53:13I have the phone on speakerphone and his wife on the line without him knowing. 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 that was just it i said all right game over i'm done with this guy i mean that's so wrong so low so subversive it's so wrong on so many levels and you know i i i'm sure epstein was a bad guy but he's not the last guy that's gonna have sex with a 15 year old girl so i i don't know the extent i never heard anything about them beating girls up or tying them up but you know even the even the young girls that were uh 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 they canceled the press conference i don't know whether the girls families were threatened or that who knows but uh but part of the thing if you if you google uh jane doe jeffrey epstein even to this day you see the complaint and the girl says yeah and then uh they took advantage of me 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 and i i don't know if he's given 200 or 500 or 5 000 so the whole thing was pretty weird but uh it's just like lee harvey oswald you know you're never gonna know again and i knew he was gonna die in prison the second they put him in prison i say he got a chance and you know and the list of people that probably wanted him dead it was a line around the block you know so it was pretty sad and and truth be told i enjoyed the little bit of time that i spent with him i actually did you know it's funny that he had a moral line that jeffrey epstein had a moral line uh but but that doesn't you know that like the honor among thieves like there's enough women out there you know that just i don't even know anybody that's ever said, hey, guess what I did?

55:45I banged my neighbor's wife. That's not one of the things that comes up in conversation. That's not one of the options. I love my babysitter or my wife's aunt or something that can be outside. 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 was quiet. But no, I never really watched TV. I'm not really aware of any of this. And 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.

56:34The one thing that was great is nobody was grandstanding and 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. 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. I love showing it to people because it's Nick DiPaolo 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 and it was Jeffrey who took the picture because he would never be in a picture you know

57:40So when did this documentary happen? I know it hasn't been released yet, Joke Man. Yeah, it's available at jokemanmovie.com. That's a website that has the click-through to the Vimeo. There's also the trailer and all spectacular reviews, which just, the reviews read like I wrote them. You know, they're that good, you know. Yeah, there's... So it's jokemanmovie.com. And we just did a sold-out screening at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. 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.

58:34You know, one of those things. 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 a sold out screening and the movie is an hour and 15 minutes. 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, the comedy thing. And you know, my stories go on and on. but they're pretty interesting. You know, the devil is always in the details, you know. Sure. Because there's a lot of things we just touch on in the documentary and people go, oh, I got a question.

59:13And so now I'm going to go around the country. I 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 and they love the old shows because the shows in the 90s were by far the best ones. So I want to go to like Chicago and Las Vegas and Miami and Myrtle Beach and Philadelphia and show the documentary and then do the Q &A. 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, did Jackie ever stop talking about the stupid Stern show?

59:53I'm 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 Arguably, his peak was around 1996 or so when private parts came out. I would say that was his peak. Absolutely. And the story about that is mind-shattering. And the story is about everything. I mean, when people hear the stuff that actually happened behind the scenes, they're like, well, no wonder you. And I didn't leave. 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.

1:00:36You can say to the boss, I want to make this much. And you never get what you're worth. You get what you negotiate. And that happened 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. That happened a bunch of times. And this time, they just didn't want to meet my demands. But I was absolutely worth it. and I had so much to do with his climb. And there's people that will argue about that. You know, I get emails, oh, the Stern Show got so much better when you left. And they're like, idiots, you know, they really don't know.

1:01:13And people love the old shows and they love to ask questions about it. And, you know, I was there. I was part of the 1927 Yankees. You know, I can tell the tales of the locker room. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, no, it was a great time. I mean, the last time I listened to the show was probably 2000 or no 1999 or 2000 around then i remember i remember it specifically howard had just separated from his wife and uh shmuley botia 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 so that was like literally the last time i i watched the show i think it was uh i think it was 1998 or 9 you know um 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 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 ends up in a divorce.

1:02:26Who 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? And he just said that and they didn't really register. I thought maybe he had some inside information about Frederick, Gary or something, but he knew damn well he was on his way to divorce. I didn't know that. 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, they don't care about me, but they want to ask questions about Howard or whatever.

1:03:09And I'm sitting there, and this is a Friday afternoon or Friday night, and all of a sudden behind the bar, on the TV, it says, Stern and wives separate. 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. 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 and I'd give him stuff to say a lot of times I'd lead off the articles with something funny that he said which was usually something I wrote which I love seeing in print but and is this wound up being the first thing and in a lot of articles we on Monday after the whole world knew that he had separated from Allison or announced it on Friday, we sat down and, uh, and the microphones, he turned the microphones on and the first note I wrote, he said, all broads, please call.

1:04:24Did he say it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, and that was like the opening line of a lot of the, a lot of the articles, you know, cause it caught every, caught everybody off kilter, you know, but, uh, and those, you know, those were great. And she was, and she was sweet. She was, you know, she was a pal, you know, and, uh, it was, it was just, the whole thing was a great ride. It really was. So no complaints, you know. And now joke, man, is there going to be an official release? Are you going to put it on Amazon or, you know, it took a long time. The producers, IKA collective, Ian Carr, and he was the director and the producer and Ronnie Thomas was the editor.

1:05:07editor who works with Ian. And Ian's had IKA Collective for like 30 years. And it's a 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 we're hanging out. He was such a huge Stern fan. And five minutes after we started talking, he said, Jesus, man. He said, 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 he had me pegged as this angry little fat dwarf that didn't have a brain in his head you know 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 which were just classic, classic joke shows.

1:06:05And then he said, you know, I'd 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. 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 a head, the pandemic hit, which just yanked the rug out of everybody for so long. I'm sure you remember. I don't know how much it affected you, but it was crazy. I was about to join the Friars Club that week, and then everything shut down. I figured, ah, forget it.

1:06:46Oh, Jesus. And that's a long one, but that's a whole other story. But then finally pulled it together, and the thing was so great, and we waited for so long because we thought Netflix was going to take it. 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 and the whole stock went kaflooey 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.

1:07:34We were above Yogi Berra's documentary. 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. You know, I guess they were crooks and I don't mind saying that. And they went, declared bankruptcy and Ian never got any of the money. We finally got the rights back. So now it's up on Vimeo. So you can't buy it. You can only rent it. But it's$3.99, which is chump change. You could upload it yourself to Amazon. And then nobody could tell if it's Amazon Prime or if it was uploaded by someone. You could put it back on Amazon.

1:08:20I'm the guy that tells the jokes. you know Ian and Ron they know what they're doing and I just follow their lead and whatever we gotta do and you know I do screenings you know I got like a bunch of really funny cartoons that are just cartoons of my jokes that we played before so it's like like on the movies as a kid you know there's a couple cartoons and then the movie you know and it's and it's really great and now that we have you know we just the first screening was like maybe a month ago. And I mean, we did a family and friends screening in Manhattan and on Long Island. But that's your family and your friends.

1:09:01Oh, it's so great. It's so great. It's really great when people you don't know tell you it's great, you know? And people say, oh, you know what? I was never a Stern fan, but boy, I really enjoyed the documentary. You know, that's the kind of thing. Because it's, you know, it's a fun thing. It's a guy getting lucky, but making his own luck. You know, I don't I don't like the word lucky so much. I mean, when particularly and I look, I love the documentary because it is such a documentary of success. 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.

1:09:38And when you create enormous potential for luck, luck happens. You know, people, you know, of course, 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 so much more palatable. You know, you could be, you could be, say anything you want. If you end it with a punchline or something funny and then go to commercial, it really picks the balloon, lets the era there's a famous story where somebody is talking to hillary clinton and they said yeah you know you're you're hot stuff and secretary of state 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 right which is beautiful you know it's like you know it's 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 salt you know nobody in show business is doing anybody a favor they love keeping everybody there who's there because but it's because it works you know i wouldn't somewhere in the early 90s i said i said how would you know me and you and robin and read, we're the Beatles of radio.

1:11:07And man, did they have me. They broke my balls and gave me such a hard time. And that wound up 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. You know, he's Wayne Newton, and we're the backup singers. That's how he sees it, you know, which is not true, you know. Right. Well, Jackie, joke man 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 and we've been on the podcast a bunch of times i learned a lot about you and it was funny 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 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 know that i tell people my first records were you know lps you know like you know they're i got one right that's one of my records right there you know um it yeah you know you you see so many things come and go i mean i could bore you forever when my back in college i used to send away to these uh things where you get 99 cents you get 10 records or you get right like the club's a record house or something right right columbia record club and at one point they started giving you a tape player with with your with your choices and the first tape player i got from columbia record club was a four track and people for years told me i was out of my mind that i was full of crap.

1:12:57And then like a year later, they came out with this newer gadget called an eight track. And for years, people told me I was crazy. But now with Google, you just Google four track, you know, player and there it is in Google. And it's and it rubber stamps what I was doing at the time. And it was funny because the four track tapes I got, I got the exact same tapes for the eight track player. And they were all Columbia artists, you know, like Simon and Garfunkel bookends and jimmy hendrix 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 sudden you got stereo boom it was like a a new world but that's so long ago you know it was so cheap to get all these songs but now of course you get infinite songs for free it's you know that whole thing is i don't know how that's all going to shake down it's crazy people are back 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 it's always going to be a hustle you know always going to be a hustle and i still love going out and doing my stupid shows and tell my jokes so you know it's a no no lose proposition you know sometimes i make a lot of money sometimes I don't make so much money.

1:14:19But I think one thing I want to tell your listeners, if anybody's 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. J-O-K-E-L-A-N-D at aol.com. I answer every question. I write back to everybody. You wouldn't even begin to believe the people that I've connected with. Like me and Willie Nelson, and I've been exchanging dirty jokes for 25 years. 25 years we've been sending dirty jokes back and forth. Yeah, you guys are telling dirty jokes together in the movie. Right. I said, well, we've been doing this so long, we've got to tell some jokes in my documentary.

1:15:04And he said, well, sure. And that alone is a whole story. We went down to House of Blues and got on the bus and we did the interview. And 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 Chappaqua. He's not a big pothead. And he was the one shooting the video. So he takes a big hit, and then he starts having a coughing fit. So me and Willie smoked more while we were waiting a minute to get done coughing. And then Willie had to go in and do his show. He would smoke. He'd get so stoned and then go in and do his 75-minute show at 85 years old.

1:15:48Oh, my gosh. So we'd leave the bus and go to go in. And we couldn't get into the show because Ian had his camera with him. You can't take a camera into a rock and roll 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 like an hour later, he showed that he was out of his mind. And I thought it was, I said, how great is that? That Willie Nelson got you so stoned you couldn't find your way around New Orleans. You know, that's a story for the age. And Willie at 85 has no problem. No, no. We're sitting there and just having a great old time.

1:16:30Just a great old time. Yeah, he's good. So Joe Planet TV. I will talk to you anytime, anywhere. And I know that you had your comedy clubs. Yeah. I want us to open, I want us 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 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 standup comedian, and he was totally bombing. nothing was working and so what he did was he literally 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 you know you're preaching you are preaching to the choir 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.

1:17:34He sees a nice cow. And he turns to 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. And the guy selling the cow says, well, whatever you got to do. So the guy reaches under and pulls on one of the cow's nipples. The cow cuts a huge fart. So the guy pulls on another nipple, and the cow cuts an even bigger fart. And he turns to the guy selling the cow. He says, this cow's from Minnesota, isn't it? And the guy selling the cow says, yeah, how could you tell? my wife is from Minnesota.

1:18:09See, 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 and you see this in all the stuff you sent me and all the stuff you told me. This is history. This is the, you know, people went to Shakespeare's plays for the dirty jokes. absolutely people have been laughing you know people have been ever since the caveman was standing there and a rock fell on his head and his wife laughed and it's been a free-for-all ever since then i think some of the first cave drawings they said were dirty jokes actually i'm sure and supposedly they they tried this about us but supposedly the first thing that uh edison recorded was a dirty joke you know now they have it oh mary was had a little lamb that's bullshit you know but who cares it's just it's just fun so we can talk about anything i you know i'm gonna start sending you a dirty joke here and there i didn't you know when he told me that he heard you talking about me i asked a few people i was trying to find steve cohen and you know in in new york if you throw a frisbee you hit 10 steve cohen i know there's too many there's too many steve cohen's so i'm looking and then i said you know what i'll just try your email and you had the same email.

1:19:32So, and people say, oh, Jackie, I tried your email. It's the same. I said, well, mine's been the same for 25 years too. Jokeland at AOL.com. Write to me and tell me that your goal in life is to steal James's haircut. Unfortunately, nobody wants that, but... Hey, why Atlanta? You know, there's no real reason. I think I was basically kicked out of New York and I do miss it. Like I always, I've born in New York. Wait, wait, whoa, whoa. What do you mean kicked out in New York? By whom? Well, you know, I wrote, my listeners have heard all this, but I wrote this article in 2020 because I was worried about New York.

1:20:15I 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 and remote work and crime and sanitation and all these things. New York needs a hundred 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. And I wrote this article about it and everyone, literally everyone hated me. Seinfeld actually wrote a full page op-ed in the Times thrashing me. Andrew Cuomo, de Blasio, all these people like trashed me.

1:20:48So I left for a while to Florida and then. But you weren't talking trash. Trash. 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're saying from where I'm sitting, this is what I think. Yeah, I was worried and I didn't see the solution. And so I think that was the problem is I didn't solve the problem in the article. I and look, I I know Eric Adams and we talked about my article afterwards, like people who are serious respected my article. But yeah, it just, it became an unplayed. Jay was harassed.

1:21:26The comedy club was vandalized. Really? Yeah. So how long do you think it's going to take you to fuck up Atlanta? Well, Atlanta's probably dead forever too. Who knows? I'll have to write that article. Hey, come back to New York. Come back to New York. Well, we'll hang out next time I'm there. I'm there occasionally. Remember the old joke? It's been 45 years since El Fufo farted in the marketplace. Do you remember that story? There was some guy that cut such a loud in the 1200s. He was in the marketplace in Arabia or something. He cut such a loud fart that he was so embarrassed that he had to leave town.

1:22:05And 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 into town. and he says to somebody, what day is it? And they said, oh, it's February 12th. Exactly 39 years and 14 days since you've wanted it in the marketplace. 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 four years later, people are obsessed with it. But - Hey, hey, people are still up my ass about the money I owe Rodney Dangerfield, which I don't owe him and never did.

1:22:50You know, Howard would carve something in stone and these people, unbelievable. And I explained the whole story in my autobiography. My autobiography was The Joke Man Bowed a Stern. I'm sure I sent you that. Did I send you that? Oh, we've done a podcast about it. And, but people, they don't, nobody wants to know, you know, A lot of people write me, they don't hate me. They just, they're being Howard. You know, I got to say something crappy to Jackie because that's what Howard would want me to do, which is kind of funny. You know, the fact that they care enough to go to that much trouble, you know, let them have a party, you know.

1:23:30I guess I got to let people have more parties. I know, 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 uh he's even shorter than me and he had this amazing build he was built like a v and then had no legs so we used to call him the we called 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 that's such a great guy that he heard me talking about you, but I appreciate it.

1:24:09Thanks to him. And, uh, and Jackie, congrats once again on, on everything, but this, this documentary joke, man, movie.com and knock yourself out. And, and Jackie, when I'm in New York, we'll hang out. I would please do not hesitate to let me know when you're coming and I owe you dinner. Well, we can't go to the friars club, you know, but we'll go to Gallagher's or go to the Palm, go someplace fun. Can't even go to Deli either. I, you know, I just walked, we went to a screen, not a screen, went to see Broadway Laundry the other night, which is the new John Patrick Shanling play. And the guy just is amazing.

1:24:50And, you know, just walking past where the Carnegie Deli was, just, you know, I almost cry. You know, I had six eight by tens in there, like from almost, from each decade of my life. You can watch me age as you walk on your way to the bathroom. but uh you know this guy he he wrote the play doubt and he wrote this brooklyn laundry but he wrote moon uh moonstruck which is kind of like the guy that wrote doubt wrote moonstruck and uh bruce willis no no it's share as uh nicholas cage and uh no it was share and Nicolas Cage I think I've seen it a hundred times and it was just it was just so so great and um when I found out that he wrote that he wrote that and we met him the other night because this is a this is a warm-up to the release of the uh you know it's a pre-screening or not a screening but a pre-show at a theater club and my friends that I was with are good friends with them and I and I wrote to her, Isla Mel, and I said, listen, I know you're good friends with him.

1:26:04I 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, Yogi said a couple of things that were very typical yogi things, but they weren't things that are in the mainstream that you're always reading. You know who I'm talking about? Yeah, sure. And all the crazy things he said. But these were things he said while they were working together. And I said, I just really want him to hear it. Now, John Patrick Shandling, he's a playwright.

1:26:45He's an Irish guy. He could be a voracious baseball fan, but he might not even know what baseball is. But he's from the Bronx. So I said, so I got to 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. Which is just a terrific Yogi. So, all right, I'm going to shut up. I want to see you in New York. I would love to. I would really love to see you. Thanks so much once again. Great stuff. And this movie was great. I highly recommend people see it.

1:27:25So jokemanmovie.com Guys, I will see you later. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.