Phil.

Uh, this is a very personal question.

Do you use a belt?

I do?

And the reason you see me putting on the belt is uh.

That could have been like Jim Morrison did.

They've got him in a lot of trouble, which I'm sorry I'm Morrison, but no one has called you the Lizard king that I know.

So much is going on, David.

We've got the diner stuff is the books, yes, the books, the National Tour, North American Tour, all these things.

But but you don't make time yet.

We've made time for this.

What you don't have yet is a Broadway show.

Not that you're not going to soon be on Broadway, I'm not, but but we do have We're doing a one of our reheated naked lunches and revitalized, re energized.

We're updating with Jeff Ross.

It's update with my buddy Jeff Ross, who does have a one man Broadway show.

And called take a banana for the ride.

Take a banana for the ride, Ladies and gentlemen, our friend Jeff Ross.

Let's build the beans to the fat food for thought.

Joke's on tap, talking with our mouthful, having fun, beas the cake and humble pie, serving up Slaze lovely.

The dressing homicide.

It's naked lunch.

Clothing optional.

Thank you for having me on.

I'm sorry.

I love you, Jeff.

We're so happy and, like David said, so proud, too proud to know you, proud of your accomplishments.

You've done more for bananas than mcgilla gorilla.

That's a good one.

I forgot about mcguilla garrilla in the banana that was his thing.

I've been following that.

Wool will end up in the ads for in the New York Times next Sunday.

I believe I've been I've been following you on the Instagram, and you had the greatest premiere of all time.

I love all the shots of your celebrity friends taking pictures with hundreds of bananas.

Yeah, it's fantastic.

Thanks Phil.

It's been this very surreal.

You know how much in show business and life is anti climactic.

This has been totally climactic.

You must be drained.

I'm not drained.

I'm I'm I don't know what it is.

It's the opposite.

I'm it's like it's it's invigorating me.

Oh great, It's like driving a Ferrari every night, like I can't wait to get to that set.

We have an invigorated, climaxing banana which sounds filthy but yes, quite appropriate somehow.

That's like my next show.

Yes, So I want to ask you your the playing the Neederlander Theater.

I looked up like because I like you.

I think I came and like you.

I came into the city to go to shows growing up with my relatives would take me.

It was a big, big deal.

The theater where you were at is the Nederlander was where Rent was.

It was where Lena Horne did this one woman show.

I saw Harry Houdini before any of us were even born, and for one night a show that I wanted to see that closed the first night, unlike your show Te Neck Tanzi with Debbie Harry and Andy coof Look it Up.

I don't know.

Have you.

Have you checked out the history backstage of your theater?

I have, and I even printed and had them print some of the vaudeville and old shows.

Yeah, for the dressing room.

But I missed this one.

What was it called.

Look Up Te Neck Tanzi?

It was a British show that was called like some British Town.

But when they moved it to New York for its big Broadway moment, they named it after Teeneck.

I grew up in Tenafly.

You grew up not far away from there, so it was like t neck tans Eye, and I remember reading about it, probably in Rolling Stone.

Debbie Harriet Blondie will be playing in it, and Andy Kaufman at the early in his career, and literally apparently it closed.

It did one performance.

How does that even work?

How do they only get one performance.

While the review comes out exactly?

And then my friend has been in shows where they're all at the bar afterwards.

And this was at a time when the New York Times review was everything right.

So if you didn't do well in the New York Times, game over that one guy could shut down your show.

So director bar, everybody's celebrating, and the phone call comes.

The phone rings, everybody goes quiet, and the guy gets on the phone and he's listening.

He's listening, he's listening to the review, and then he just not He shakes his head and the bartender rolls down the bar.

No more drinks.

That was ted dance, And I think what told I mean that's yeah, that's brutal.

That's brutal.

Game over.

But but you, Jeff, you're not a theater kid.

I don't think right.

You weren't in the school plays and everything, were you.

I was in one play in second grade.

I had one line.

I said, this is corn, it is good to eat.

The reviews are wonderful, and they said if he could do corn, I wonder if he could do bananas.

But but he You Here's what I'm really curious about.

Because I was the theater kid.

I did do all the school plays and everything, So Broadway was the dream.

It probably wasn't a dream for you.

But being in a theater, you know, because you played comedy clubs your whole life, and you play theaters.

What is it like on Broadway?

And have you been indoctrinated into the whole theater world now just by being in a Broadway house.

The toast, the French toast of Broadway.

Well, here I've been very welcomed by the Broadway community.

There's a true tradition where the shows sometimes send the whole cast and crew send a note and send it over and there's twenty of them along the stairway.

Every time I walked to the stage from all the Broadway shows unions.

But here's the thing, Phil Like, I wasn't in those plays as a kid, I can say I was a theater kid.

But my dad when my mom was sick, my dad would would The hospital was in New York, two hours from where we lived.

Yes, he would take us to see her, and then to make it fun, he would take us to a show afterwards.

So we saw The King and I, we saw Cabaret we got there, we saw Oliver, we saw Annie, all the Orphan shows, and I saw Beatlemania with the Camp Group, and I've been seeing I've always always loved Broadway, So although I wasn't in it, I was banince as long as I can remember, and I remain I remain that way.

Do you say this in the show?

By the way, I don't.

I probably should.

I don't know what I mean.

I'm not telling you how to run your thing.

It seems to be going very well, but I want to before I don't want to lose track.

I want everyone to know when and how they can see the shows.

Let's do that first.

Well, you can't miss it.

It's eight shows a week at the Nino Lander Theater on forty first Street.

Always been my dream to perform ninety feet from Port Authority.

Yeah, you could have.

If your career went a little worse, you might have been performing at the Port Authority in a different way.

By the way, there's a good pizza place, uh, Suprimo you know it?

No, I don't know that one.

Yeah, if you need a pizza where, it's right near to Port Authority.

I think I'll look that up.

Because we're right there.

You can catch me walking my dog around the block.

And my show My life has a lot of connections to that neighborhood.

When I was a young comedian, I talk about in the bus into Port Authority, my grandfather would give me napkins and a banana and that was and afterwards I would go to Port Authority and take the one fourteen Express bus back to where I lived in New Jersey.

That's so funny.

I did this too from Rockin County.

I took the bus and I would go I did from Tennifly and I would go to TKTS and see Matt n Ay and of course eleven dollars half Nay.

I mean, it was crazy, that's how old I am too.

Well, and then I took a comedy class in nineteen eighty nine that happened to be right across from Port Authority.

Now here, I am on Broadway at a Broadway theater right by Port Authority.

So a lot of this is coming back to me from my early days, and the real desire the dream is because my ant best took me to see Jackie Mason on Broadway.

I saw that.

Nine and I was just like, oh my goodness, this is the funny thing I ever saw.

Yeah, and now you are, by the way, Did you know Jackie because he was apparently an interesting character.

I never got to.

I saw that show, but I never met him.

I shook his hand twice.

Once when I was about twenty three or twenty four.

I was handing out flyers from my open My comedy show and he walked by and okay, you're a comedian, and I thought he was interested, and he said he was coming and he's like, maybe there'll be some women there or something like that, and I say, yeah, sure, who knows.

I was young, and he didn't show up.

And then decades later I shook his hand somewhere else.

He was very.

Nice when I saw that show.

I took a friend who is now a famous screenwriter, Susanna Grant, who was Aaron Brockovich, but at that point we were working at Esquire magazine and she is the wonderful and very waspy from a very very fine, waspy family.

And she laughed and I was always I don't know if you had this experience, Like I was like, are you laughing with me?

Yeah?

Right, at right right?

That show was very Jewish.

Your show, I think is rather rather waspy.

I'm sure my show is.

One reviewer really compared it to Fiddler on the Roof and only that it's the most Jewish show, Like there are many many prideful Jewish Is that a word?

Prideful, proud Jewish moments in the show.

There's a song in the show called Don't Fuck with the Jews, which is a Jewish cultural tribute to the hardworking blue collar people in my family.

And and I do a solid ten minutes of a Nazi accent talking about my German shepherds.

But by the way you are singing on Broadway telling stories, do you feel Bruce Springsteen has retroactively ripped off your act with his one man show.

For inspiration I did see Bruce's last show in Milan over Fourth of July weekend.

Great.

I wanted a little bit of that energy that I grew up on.

I really learned a lot from watching Bruce as a kid, Not so much his Broadway show, which I absolutely loved and sat in the last row at my brother in law when it came on at first and since dived into it again on HBO, but the way Bruce would put a concert together, and I know, you guys get this like a couple fast ones, a slow one, a new one, an old one, a sing along, a funny one, lights up, you know, the whole crowd gets some like I love that showmanship of Bruce's shows, And I felt like as I was getting into the dramaturgy of my show, I was like, I need to recalculate and go back and look at what inspired this initially thirty years ago when I first started writing this show.

So I went to Bruce to Bruce's show because the band that always said, oh the Italy shows Milan, that's our best shows.

And it was the last show on the tour.

So my brother in law, on very little notice, showed it up in Milan and We're blown away yet again.

Isn't that great at seventy five?

Right?

I mean, he's just amazing.

Who knows.

The one thing I will never google is Bruce Springsteen's.

Age, Right, it doesn't matter, It doesn't want to know.

Don't you notice that he gets younger as the show goes on?

It's insane.

I love that, crazy, right, I love that.

I'm so with you.

And the biggest lesson that I've gotten he's been a tremendous influence on me too, although you wouldn't know by looking at me, is the joy that he takes in doing it.

Yeah, And if you can enjoy yourself as much as he does, that is what's so infectious.

That is the.

Best thing to to the audience connects to that they identify and relate to, that they want to be taken on that.

I love that observation, phil, and I definitely think that that's happening with me.

Yeah, how could it not consciously?

Unconsciously?

You know?

Yeah?

I tried to show decades a girl and I didn't ago and I didn't really have the emotional strength to keep it going.

It was too personal, too vulnerable, And now I wanted to be able to sustain it, and the one of the ways of sustaining it is to making it more fun for me, more joyactly right now, I can't wait to get back there every night.

It seems antithetical.

It seems like, wait a minute, you're not there to enjoy yourself.

You're there for the audience.

You're there to make that.

But you have to enjoy every second of what you're doing so that that comes across to the people.

It's so essential.

It's the opposite of what we think.

Yeah, yeah, eight shows a week.

People say, no, you're ready for eight shows a week.

That's much easier than getting on a plane three times a week.

That's right, because you have you got a routine.

I got my dog at work.

See see every day.

She has her own dressing room, she has her own fan mail.

You know.

It's like, I love the process of Broadway and it's something I wanted to do my whole adult life since I saw that Jackie Mason show at Miami.

I held on to this apartment in New York for decades, hoping one day I would have this opportunity.

How fantastic are you?

Is this a limited engagement or what's going on?

Very limited.

It's got another through September twenty eighth.

All right, people, you got to get there.

By the way, I don't know if I can get there in time, because I'm on the road myself.

My thing.

I literally just took I think a job on a show event happening in New York so that I could try to see the show.

So I think I I will get there.

And I have a message from Brad Paisley who said, yesterday you know, he text with you, but he's going to try to figure out if he can get He wants to get there too.

And obviously, can you say, like the Instagram the amount of friends showing up for you, is it been really meaningful to you to see everyone you know rallying around this.

It's so thank you for saying that, and thank you for taking that gig so you can see the show.

I said to my manager and the publicist, like, please don't make me endure a Monday night in August opening night.

It's going to be embarrassing.

It'll be my aunt Donna and the three guys I went to high school with.

Oh, but we could do that anytime, And they said, no, this is what's best for the show.

It doesn't matter whoever comes comes.

So I start casually putting it out there.

I didn't even have to invite people.

They were writing to me, going anything we can do to support?

When is Opening Night?

What's going on?

And then you know immediately Sarah Silverman, Jimmy Kimmel, John Stay Host, John Mayer, Craig Robinson, my Pow, Jordan Rubin, who told me to get a call on Oscopye last year and saved my life.

And now then all the New Yorker they all flew in, Jim Carrey, and then Susie Ashman and h and Richard Kind and Jessica Curson and Rachel Feinstein and Mody and Elon Gold and Steve Buscemi, who I don't even know.

I walk out on Opening Night Flavor Flave iced tea and Coco like, and I'm like, are where are we?

This is like sitting in my fantasy brain and now I'm trying to do a show, and I'm so distracted because I'm like, hey, wait a second, who is that?

Is that?

Is that my uncle Maury?

Or is that ste I can't really tell from here.

So I've been absolutely blown away.

Every day is you know, On the very first preview, Colin Quinn was there, and there's no comedian I respect more.

I've gone to see all his plays.

Yeah, seeing how actors are reacting to it and comedians are tribe if you will, of funny People has just been completely overwhelming, where it got to a point where I think I just need to put my phone down.

I go, I don't even know how to absorb all this.

And it's been truly, truly climacting.

I know that you road tested this right, you did it around telling process.

Well, I've been doing a few bits in my stand up a few years ago that had to do with mortality without me even realizing it.

Yeah, and a tribute to a dog that I adopted during the pandemic.

And at that point I was talking about Prince Philip and the Queen and how they were holding on to life.

And my manager Amy was like, Oh, I see a lot of similarities with what you're talking about now and what you were talking about thirty years ago, when that show about your grandfather and your parents that you used to tell me about it and Jimmy Kimmel held onto an old VHS tape of it, and every couple of years.

He mentioned it to me, going, you really should revive this, And then I looked back at the old show and I realized I had some of the same philosophies on loss and resilience and mourning and bouncing back.

And Gilbert Gottfried and Bob Saget and Norm MacDonald were dear friends and I all died within eight months of each other.

And I started doing the show again, but I started doing it with a completely new attitude in that I could sustain it.

In the old way, I didn't have the strength to keep it going.

I did not want to dig up my family every night.

It was depressing.

And now I'm a better joke writer and I understand acting a little better.

So I can wear a costume that I take off every night and I leave it in the dressing room, and I'm able to go out and have my normal life, Whereas years ago I didn't have that understanding, and I was it was too heavy.

But now I can take off that My Bruce Banata suit is like is like a suit of armor that I can leave in the dressing room until the next performance.

So a lot of things lined up, including just my understanding of what I had.

Great, and you still, if I understand correctly, at the end of the night, maybe you still have room for a little in the splash zone of people up front, you do a little roasting.

Can you explain how that works?

I would.

It's the one time that I leave the stage actually and I walk around.

And it wasn't something I originally designed to be in the show, but as I was doing previews, to me honest, I creatively unfulfilled.

The audience was giving me standing ovations in the first rehearsals and previews, and I was working it out at the Barrow Group, at an acting school run by Seth Barrish, who's been a consultant on the show.

He directs all Mike Birbiglia's shows, and he very graciously opened up his school over the summer for me to run the show like two in the afternoon for students, and they were so receptive.

But yet I could see the emotion.

I saw people crying, and I felt like I was missing a connection, literally, a physical connection.

I wanted to put my arm around these people, but the show is over and I would go backstage and they would go out that way.

So three or four previews in I was leaving and people are going, that was a wonderful play.

But I go but it wasn't enough of a night out for me for the audience.

I felt like I was missing something.

And it wasn't a roast.

I didn't want to bring people on stage and stop the stop the show and make it about them.

I wanted to make it about us, right, And I'm able to now go into the audience and I don't call it a roast.

I said, who wants to earn their banana?

And I have a bag of bananas.

I strap on and I walk around the floor of the Neederlander Theater and people are talking to me about their lives.

They're emotional.

I had a lady yesterday my husband has alzheimer.

She was there with her son, and you know, it wounds up being almost like spiritual moments that are happening.

An old lady getting hip surgery, a young boy with his dad whose mom is sick in the hospital, which totally parallels what I went through in my life.

So people are opening up to me.

They're talking about their pets that they lost, and they'll have their dogs ashes and a necklace.

And this is something I never anticipated.

What happened, which is the real story of the show, which I haven't seen in the reviews yet and I haven't seen in the press.

The real story of the show isn't about me, the underbelly of the roast Master.

It's what other people are getting for it, and it's why I can do it every night.

If it was about me, i'd be bored after a week or two.

I would shoot it and memorialize it and have it on TV.

But because the human experience and the immersive nature of it is so joyous and it's making people so happy at the end of this intense theatrical experience that I feel like I could do it forever.

I love it.

How great I do a show not scripted like yours.

I tell stories to a moderator in the whole second half of my show.

Is Q and A.

And I get what you're saying one hundred percent.

That part of it is different every night.

Yeah, people tell you their stuff, and that is the real point of it.

The connection that you make with the people who like you and came to see you.

It's so beautiful that you feel like, yes, this is why I do this to have It's why you became a comedian to connect.

It's why I do what I do to connect.

It's all we do is human beings on the planet is try to connect to each other.

And you, now, Jeff, have found probably the ultimate way.

Yeah, thank you, Phil.

You know someone like you who everywhere you go, people go, oh, I read your book or I saw your show, or I watched your old show, and it hit it touched me like it's like it's beautiful.

And now I'm able to cut out the time and the distance of it, and that's right right as I'm doing it.

And that's such a beautiful thing that I never anticipated that.

You asked me if I was drained, David, I'm I'm.

I'm fortified every night and go for a refill.

It's like a recharge.

Now, wait a minute, are you You're not?

I can tell because you're talking to us.

You're not saving your voice.

You're not.

You're not doing any of that Broadway.

Stuff that they probably tell you.

That's a mistake.

I should.

I had an NPR interview at eleven this morning.

I got another thing at four, and then I have a show at seven and then two tomorrow.

So the idea of saving my voice happens on Sundays from two to four.

We takena and I don't talk.

We just had Josh Grobin in here yesterday who he was talking about his process.

I guess you do a little less singing, right you sing?

Is it two numbers?

I sing two songs?

Not well.

So, I'm sure they're funny.

They're very funny, and they're poignant, and one of them is a sing along, and one of them is a howl along.

People howl like cootes the chorus.

It's a very cathartic, interactive experience.

And I even said to a Dina Menzel a couple months ago, I was telling her about the show, and she knows my old show from thirty years ago because we're old friends.

And I said, I sing in the show.

And she turned her head and she said on key.

I said, did your friend.

John Mayer give you any musical consultation on your performances?

He's funny too, He's very funny.

He's very funny.

He actually complimented the songwriting this is that I do in the show.

There's a song I do at the towards the end of the show called You're one of the Good Ones, and it's basically from the voice of my German shepherd Nana that I adopted during the pandemic.

It's her singing to me from her deathbed, and I hate to give it away, but it's worth it, and she sings.

And John said that that song felt like a song that could have been written at any time in the history of Broadway, and it was still up and it's done with the piano and violin, and the audience howls along with me.

And I'm probably doing a terrible explanation of it, but it gave me very, very good feeling to have John Go, the songwriter.

He knows I can't sing, so he complimented the writing.

Well, if you're funny, you can get away with not being on key.

You tell adena, Yeah exactly.

Yeah.

Next time she says I'm doing this number, you go, is it funny?

She's been so supportive.

The Broadway community has been really wonderful about this.

Billy Crystal told me.

He warned me.

He warned me because I asked him for some advice, because, let's face it, seven hundred Sundays is the greatest one person show ever in my opinion, and I saw it, you know, twenty years ago, and he was about, you know, my age when he first did that show, and he said, you know, you think it's emotional and you're going to be glad in two months that you're done with it.

He said, that's not going to happen.

You're going to want to keep doing it.

And it took him five years to stop doing it and actually putting on TV.

He wound up doing it twice, two Broadway runs.

He went to Australia, all over America.

Are you going to do that?

I don't know yet because I'm so I'm only a week into it.

Yeah, but I.

Can see why he said that, and I can see why he wanted to hold onto it.

It's the audience.

It's not for me, it's for the crowd.

Like I'm really enjoying watching people get what they're getting from it, and the mail that I'm getting and the letters and when I go out state outside afterwards, the people are wearing yellow shirts, banana shirts.

I'm signing stuff every like signing playbills.

Something I just didn't calculate into all of this, and it's so cool, and people are telling me about their lives, so I feel like a little bit like comedian, a little bit like rabbi, a little bit like Jackie Mason, like it's all kind of happening.

I remember Alex Edelman told me that Billy Crystal told him.

When Alex started doing his show just for us, he used a microphone because that's how he felt comfortable as a comic.

And Billy said, put the mic away, and where the head set?

Yeah, it freeze up your hands.

Do you do that?

I do wear a headset because I have a lot of business in the show.

I read letters from my parents, love letters that they wrote to one another.

And I do some nunchucks in the in the songs, some some nunchuck demonstration.

Let's see what else I do.

I carry a banana around for part of it.

So I need my hands free.

So I got that not from Billy, but he did mention that to me before he saw the show, that I should have my hands free.

Well, Jeff, we're so appreciate you, you know, taking the time from in the middle of this thrilling experience to talk to us.

And I love this.

You were already talking to me different, Like I feel like I moved up a notch in the show business.

A little Yeah, Before this, I thought it's Jeff.

Now it's Jeff.

I know, how do I handle all this newfound up.

I don't know what to do.

It's awesome.

I'm so happy for you, my friend.

I think the answer is what you do is walk your dog, and you know, you pick up the poop, still pick up the poop, because, by the way, I think we're all kind of late in life after not having a dog.

Dog people.

The pandemic has done that to all of us, which is good, keeps you humble.

It definitely humanized me in that I know I'm a human who loves dogs, and not only that, wrote a show that is largely about my dogs.

So really, a big chunk of this is about my dogs, a big, big chunk of it.

And it's not something my sister she she just can't.

She's mad at me almost because I used to say to her for the last thirty years, how can you get a dog?

You're just you know, I'm allergic, you know, I'm afraid.

You just don't want me to visit.

So now you got a dog.

And now she's looking at me like you as so now you got a dog.

You gave me prap for so many years not having a dog, and you know, I love my dog so much, and and you know, hearing other people's dog stories, you know you might think that dog would be a boring I love it seven your dog stories.

Well, by the way, you should tour.

You should tour the show and do a dog night like bring your dog if you could do it, like the Hollywood Bowl live at the Hollywood Bowl with you.

They do that at Dodger Stadium once a season.

Here's the only David that's hilarious.

Here's the only caveat So you know Broadway it's very buttoned up.

And you know I have a dog trainer, Bill who trained Sandy for the original Annie, right, you know, and he was around in the seventy when I was first learning Broadway.

So my dog comes out at the end for a curtain call, kind of like Sandy doesn't Annie.

And the stage manager comes up to my dressing room and she says, just letting you know, there's a service animal in the third row.

So hold on, Jeff, just tell the story.

But we have Brad Paisley who wanted to see your show on the speakerphone.

It's with Jeff Ross.

Hey, Joe, Hey, bub Brad, Paisley, I got a seat aside for you there, Row one thirty eight, double j I already got the middle behind the bathrooms.

I got you that cowboy hat will block someone's very very expensive view.

I love you, Paisley, Love you buddy.

All right, he said, he said, he said his love.

I'll call you from the airport.

Thank you.

H there he is, so Yes, that was.

I guess what I was saying.

What I was saying was there was a service animal in the audience.

That's the one time they were like, your dog might get distracted during the curtain call because there's another dog there.

But she handled it very well.

Hit her mark and those are lines better than I.

Holy cow, that's so nice.

That's really great.

Well, Jeff, have a good show tonight, my friend.

Thank you guys.

Thank the rest of the run.

And if I can't catch you in New York, I have a feeling we're going to see you on the road.

I have a feeling I might have to keep doing it.

Yes, I think you're right, and maybe we'll be in the same city at the same time when you're doing your Q.

And as the people demand it of you.

I love it.

That'd be quite a double bill.

Would you open for Jeff Ross?

I would do anything for Jeff Ross.

It means so much that you guys help me get the word out today.

Thank you.

Oh no, We're so happy for you.

And I hope, I hope I'll see you soon.

I will.

I'll let you know.

I'll pay for the ticket, but I will let you know if I'm there.

Drop this podcast net episode soon and I'll owe you wild I owe.

You got it, buddy?

Great?

All right, thank you so much, Thanks guys, Lots of love, same mayor.

Naked Lunch is a podcast by Phil Rosenthal and David Wilde.

Theme song and music by Brad Paisley, produced by Will Sterling and Ryan Tillotson, with video editing by Daniel Ferrara and motion graphics by Ali Ahmed.

Executive produced by Phil Rosenthal, David Wilde, and our consulting journalist is Pamela Cella.

If you enjoyed the show, share it with a friend.

But if you can't take my word for it, take Phil's.

And don't forget to leave a good rating and review.

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