A deadline shot like ok we need this by that time you know im im very in the beginning of the book. Maybe like 50 pages dead and that deals a lot with the borscht belt guys who are huge fans of and you have to tell the story of the seeing henny outside the friars club that he doesnt know youre there which is one of the funniest things a really remarkable after left s. And now i didnt have a an office at 30 anymore so i joined the friars club because upstairs they had a room with a with a big screen t. V. And a newspaper rack it was like a lounge so i use that as an office and one day im walking towards the friars club and thats on a 55th street manhattan between madison and park and i turned the corner on to 55th street and for whatever reason and know whats on the street this particular time of day maybe it was at a very it was empty thats thats the important part of the story 3 members so im walking on 55th street out of a door about 100 feet in front of me henny emerges came to the one line as he walks across the street toward. The friars club now he doesnt know that im there he thinks hes alone thats the key to the story down as he crosses the street im in his blind spot back there up pigeon flooders down lands at his feet he looks at it and goes any mail for me now i repeat if. He thought he was alone and he was talking to a bird and what i love the better lick me drags what just hardwired to be funny to be funny how the i mean well also at the friars club that if youre within the 1st few 50 pages or so when they 1st took me to the from readers club and thats were you know we were some mecca of show business was taught the tail end of the mecca it was on the other side of the mountain just thought im down a little and it was all comic the name gene bellows do you remember him he was there all sad sad he had the droopy eyes and the jalouse and he walked over hunched over and i was taken there by a comedian named freddy roman who showed a hereafter and introduced me to people and when we approached gene bayliss who i never heard of a never saw before. He said gene i want you to meet alans why bell and still to this day fascinates me gene looks at me says i hear you a very funny you know hes also funny my dentist at which point he opened his mouth and out skilled. To dons in chiclets as if they were his teeth dentist to this very day i dont know of jean bellows to walk the round with a mouth full of shit chiclets hoping that he would meet somebody that he can do it or joke with or recently coming to us out. Of the mic that was balfour i still dont know the answer to that but those guys weve already got to think that freddie i got to think that freddie was doing sort of a bobs a buddha shill thing ive got a quick search i will almost get the wow iraq they have you know let me absolutely right you know maybe there was like a 3rd base coach kind of you know of a young jews coming in do it get which but the chiclets i dont know. Of those guys you stick will be there were 0 funny and its it straight you could wake them up from a deep auto into skull mop and they would default to a punch light in a 2nd that was always in the was all in the floor i remember. Robin and i my wife and i got home from a honeymoon it was about 2 in the morning we dead to the world we didnt even own pack we just left the suitcases on the floor we just plopped into bed and a quarter after 2 the phone rings and its rodney dangerfield. Quarter after 2 in the morning now and its rodney i went oh yeah he man what stuart allen we were growing up we were real poor. Ok. Now before the radio he said we were so poor that christmas we couldnt put to the tree we used to wait for my grandfather to sneeze. And. Im laughing because i thought it was funny and be the situation was even funnier and he says what do you think funny i when you know its really funny but yeah thats what i thought and he hung up and he didnt he you know if. You know till near to the funniest guys the great Larry Gelbart will be once that he was doing the vietnam thing whiskey nose and he said to bob hope at this amazing ability to nap at the drop of an eyelid i mean he could just go out for 15 or 20 minute increments so gilbert says is a young guy and theyre taking off from a fire zone or something theres literally ak ak out the window theyre trying to sit on their helmets so they dont get their gen. Clubs napping and they finally get out of airspace and he wakes up and larry says bob hope will go in gods name could you sleep through that hes like slipped through what i need 3 jokes on miskito netting. All right so the note would read and you know it is as those guys died out or are still around but on their way out i dont know who replaces them when it comes to that mindset you know what i mean i know who the newly funny unions are i know this and that but that ilk. Where they would just be funny for the sake of being funny and it was just such a kneejerk reaction i cant point to anybody of our generation or even younger whos gone oh yeah hes just like any young woman that way i dont know how and if its its interesting in that you really straddled the Mason Dixon Line because ill tell you when that stopped is needy became insouciant became an intoxicant needy became sweat act and it happened in one weekend when saturday night live starts that i think thats all lauren sensibility im ever him tell me listen not every jokes going to work i dont mind you going up with smoke but youre not going to be up there you know tap dancing to get a laugh out of it youre not going to fake laughter to get a laugh out of it you straddle those 2 worlds well you know something i was really lucky and youre very right when it came to that because the s n l mentality when it came about it was the sons and daughters of alan king and of that generation it was our turn to talk and i think that was really driven home with i really reach back when milton berle hosted the show because on paper ok there was a poetry to it the guy used to be at n. B. C. He had the big show traffics pulled over to watch him when he was Mr Television here we were it was like the torch being passed but when milton was on the show that old school of comedy that were talking about which he try to infuse our scripts with just didnt work in particular i remember standing in the studio when they would camera blocking his opening monologue so it was a thursday he sets with being built for the more complicated pieces and he was rehearse in his monologue just standing on a home base and he then stopped himself at one point and he said to dave wilson who is off you know he was in the in the control room he shouted out he says that now dave when i get when i say the word shirts i would love to have a sound effect. Of a crow bar falling from a rafter above landing on the studio floor and sort of reverberating ok until it comes to a stop and dave wilson said why. And you know if its. Your direct quote he says because when that happens i am going to live oh sounds like n. B. C. Dropped another one now the fee for if i get up and read the book was but the phrase i am going to add live you had pollution you had guilty you had it you know ackroyd loraine the greatest improv people in the world there and hes planting an ad lib so yeah i think youre absolutely right. But i love i love that its a bloodless coup to some extent because i think everybody has its season milton berle said it is mine i mean are you kidding these guys were colossus id never view the handoff as like you know i am so one of those guys who could go see wayne newton all show business and take the action and take the effort i never looked at it some people went laughed at it acted like it was a freak show i like guys like uncle milty and shecky and sid caesar now i just think mouth in their time as big as s n l certainly but then s. M. L. It was their time and you know i dont think guys like danny in that were looking at them and they all crazy man i just think danny and guys like that we think our top now its our time were you know something youre absolutely right and ive always had an appreciation for what came before us almost like ok whats the lineage here how did we get to this who reacted to what what were the times like and i talk about in the book a night. That we had at rob reiners house years later rob has a Screening Room at his house and he would show old movies and because hes rod he would have somebody from the movie there and so when the movie was over we would have one was like a master class would sit around and just ask questions and this one particular night. He didnt have a movie what he had was 10 from your show shows and clips from caesars hour now the people who want to get a bonna well call rhianna not a hard call for him to make ok rob stead and his mom mel brooks and him frank ruff mel worked on those shows Larry Gelbart his wife and sid himself and his wife they were in the back row of this Screening Room now at the kids table where me and my wife robin a tom hanks and rita larry do. David and his then wife laurie 1000000000 janice crystal and i think love it showed up by himself ok. At mistake and i made sure that when we will watch in these clips those older guys were in the back row that i was in the row right in front of them because i wanted to eavesdrop on what they were common to appease the broadway shows the books the comedy albums and i would hear things like now you understand this was mid to late ninetys so this is funny when the 5 years later and look at all they had done since and wed see the bavarian clocks sketch all wed hear will go one of those sketches and id hear carl say oh youre woody wrote that and then go but its of you have a doc simon came in and gave him. The joke about the pencil and im gone wow and its funny because if i dont know whats. Its mind boggling its like youre on the top dug out step with the 27 yankees over your shoulders absolutely he said i got to take a break galloway come back wolf take over to saturday night live the book by the way is alan zweibel laugh lines my life helping funny people be funnier its out now in stores and online says kat is a pliny the elder of American Comedy her sixtys you can pick the brain will do that right after the break on Dennis Miller plus one. Secret prisons are not usually what comes to mind when thinking about europe however even the most prosperous can be deceived weve seen this 0 zone there were 2 view houses were allegedly bursts of prison was located and only cia people had access to the story for investigators show how they uncovered the darkest dealings of the secret services but i mean donaldson there you go rated nor. Thought or nonsense they are so sort of cocky seem a bit sore knee yes or no for. Trying for justice on nazi. Trophy wrong but all in all just all. I mean you all get to shape out just to become educated and engagement because of the trail. When so many find themselves worlds apart. Just on the for common ground. You cannot be both with the yeah you like. He stuck to it to cause a can he so he can reach the other than the human cross one. Soul but on the better side going to that the book an instant so that this isnt just one instant of. Emotion learning to want to screw up youll still be stuck with an outsourcing course because the resistance of folks will increase to sloth could force the coach of the future. Business to push him to me and that. Means thinking minds be soviet soldiers to piece off the boots hes wearing. Which to the soul looks like to move the opposing opinion with the new im going on the shows to get in the summer watching the police force swing votes hold up. A folks welcome back to Dennis Miller plus one were joined by alan white bell and the book is laugh lines my life helping funny people be funnier im around 50 pages in and i need deep in the hoopla it is a groove and i love it and i got lucky enough down the road to be on s n l and i always look back as i look back and said i look back at chevy billie gilda i get goosebumps when i was ever in the same studio whats it like at the beginning our you go in the 1st day do you sense that theyre all players or whats the vibration well i was a joke writer for these gadd writer for these catskill guys thats what its how i broke again so what you know for the roman would call the house i moved into back in with my parents if the college and he would ask for a job. Ok and i would write him a joke about a house citic orgy where the men are on one side of the room and the women are on the other and those were the kind of you know that i was writing back then so now. I go to s n l for the very very 1st day for the very very 1st meeting and even if you ask lorne he will tell you that i turned his head with one joke i had given him a volume of 1100 jokes and the 1st joke at my meeting he opened it up and was a joke that was on the very 1st weekend update the show you how long ago it was from the reference points in it i had written a joke saying that the post office is about to issue a stamp commemorating prostitution in the United States its a 10 cent stamp you want to lick it its a quarter ok so that was very but that was like ok but im a joke writer and i go into Lawrence Office on the 17th floor to talk about this brand new show and i look around and i see gilda and i see a chevy i see pollution and danny and lorraine and frank and im gone i have never seen this kind of comedy before i was not exposed at that point to 2nd city or the groundlings or anything where people improv and just created scenes and characters right in front of you i was a joke writer and i was overwhelmed and go my god is no way im going to be able to cut it with these people look what theyre doing so the i guess the only the only precursor that might have been nichols and may to a large degree but they were it was a very uptown almost no politics effect feel except which john came in he was a working class hero that also extends a rainy asli i love the exercise you did in your book that musta served you well it s n l where you said you would take monday through friday pick a topic and then write in either dicaprio you tell the system i learned back to an activity that or voices which. Its must help you in that status and now well you know something thats exactly right because i knew i wanted to write scripts someday and i didnt want everybody to sound alike. So i would pick i would take any given week and i go kate whats the subject for the week of buying a car so monday i would write a monologue as if jack benny was bonnet carre and tuesday as if tony fields was behind the current wednesday is if rodney and then carl and overture by the end of the week i had 5 monologues about the same subject but spoken through different voices and it really helped that as an open they were characters and it helped a lot when i cocreated its Gary Shandling show because i have gary locked in my head and i was able to write for that voice i love your your cooperative with gilda i mean i you know i only met gilda once i never worked with there i always was fascinated from afar how somebody so lives almost fragile like a fine like creature can make me laugh 6 so well what how did you guys grow i believe Roseanne Roseannadanna stuff like that how did you Grow Together the 2 of us to we found each other the very 1st day theres something about each other we were both scared kids i she was new to new york and the big buildings sort of spoke there a little bit im from new york and Roseanne Roseannadanna was a character that we created together she got who got a a letter every week from a guy named richard feta from fort lee new jersey who is my brother in law. The last time i ever heard somebody say service or with material is bob guccione with a krugerrand around his neck a pet of the year shipped. And you know i dont think that newsnight expression i said services where it. Was said im talking there richard gere in american. Service hollywoods material whats happened to me. As as great as the as great as the work was between you and guild or whatever i think of you writing. It its like the blue angels riding up right each others wings i think you and billy god and i thought billys intro to your book allen was so touching what i think you too is young cubs in the car and still in the car with the stiffen he had ishmael along as ill always have been with Billy Crystal while i met him i think it was 1974 i was got tired of writing for those guys up and im catskill mountains i took the jokes they wouldnt buy from me in the plan was to go on stage to either catch a rising star or the improvisation to showcase clubs here in new york at the time and advertise the material and the week that i started there was a guy named larry david who had already been there a couple of months and another guy named Billy Crystal who had just broken off the he was part of a trio and was starting to do a solo act i live with my parents in wood me a long island 4 towns over a 1000000000 live there with his wife and his all this child in long beach long island he used to pick me up every night in his little blue volkswagen we would go into the city tell our jokes and on the way back we would listen that the cassettes and we would give each other notes and we never worked together i got s n l he went out to l. A. And he. Became Billy Crystal and then years later we shared a suite of offices which was the most poetically weird thing in the world. May larry david and billy at castle rock which was rob reiners company robin host defended saturday night live ever so the fact that the 4 of us with together was mind boggling but billy and i still hadnt worked with each other he stuck his head my Office One Day he said i want to talk to you he had an idea for a broadway show called 700 sundays that he wanted me to collaborate with him on and for those out there who dont know what that means 700 sundays growing up billys father had 23 jobs work 6 days a week sunday was the day off that was the day that billy spent with his dad when the ballgames that beach you know bowling and billys dad died suddenly went billy was 15 so he calculated that he had roughly 700 sundays with his father so it was a one man broadway show about his father his mother and extended family and it really made me and billy that much closer i felt so honored. But i the fact that he trusted me with his family me from the right put it into their mouths i hadnt met them but im also a jew from long island so its not exactly i was writing this was these were not folks from neptune i knew who they were and we wanted tony award and it was really really rewarding thank you alan my guest today has been truly one of the