An Interview with Bob Saget: Tonight at the Moore
Photo by Robert Sebree
After his work on Half Baked and The Aristocrats, it would be safe to say that most of the world now knows that the actor/comedian who rose to international fame as Danny Tanner on Full House is not always family friendly. For years, his work has run the full spectrum from PG to Mature Audiences only.
While that fact has been widely known for quite some time, what surprised us when we got to speak to Bob by phone earlier this week was that he’s a surprisingly genuine person. Through our discussion about show business in general and his nontraditional career, the man who we had convinced ourselves we would hardly be able to stand endeared himself to us entirely through his outlook and take on life, which seems to fall somewhere between the teachings of Buddha, Norman Vincent Peale, Don Rickles and his father.
We encourage you to read our interview with Bob below and recommend checking out his show at the Moore tonight if it sounds like something you’d be into.
Our interview began as Bob called us apologizing for being two minutes late, if even that amount of time had passed. It turned out he was prepping for a cameo on The Tonight Show. With that as our inspiration, we asked Bob for his thoughts on the new venture by former Tonight Show host Jay Leno, which has not been warmly received by some of our favorite TV critics (See one critique we happen to agree with from Videogum). His response, along with the rest the Q&A is transcribed below.
Bob Saget: I don’t give critiques in interviews. I’m friends with everybody and wish all of my friends well. I talk about people I love but... Everybody get’s jabbed. You can’t put out anything creatively that people wholeheartedly get behind. Nothing creative every comes without critiques positive and negative. It just comes with the territory. My career is a strange one ‘cause it has different facets to it. I still enjoy doing family TV once in a while and then go and do my stand-up. I’m really loving my stand-up right now and it really comes from doing it that you find it out that you love it.
With your stand-up act and the types of roles you played in the late '80s and '90s at such great odds, do you ever think about how different things would have been if vultures like TMZ or sites like Twitter had been around?
I think things would have been different…I don’t know…you always look at how things would have been if, “It’s a Wonderful Life” scenario…For example, if I didn’t need anybody to help raise the kids on Full House [laughs].
I was always a comic and I always loved making films since I was a little kid. I’ve always done these different things. I did improv with my friends at the University of Penn and I was a film student at Temple University. I was doing stand-up since I was 17. My stand up was always irreverent and sick and weird, kind of my Dad’s sense of humor and how we dealt with tragedy ‘cause we had a lot in our family. Just the things that I’ve been doing for 35 years and now I’ve embraced it be knowing this is what I do. I want to maybe not curse as arbitrarily. I’m very conflicted in my daily exercise. I guest hosted America’s Funniest Home Videos last week and they had to cut out the word “nuts” six times and that’s as far as I tried to push it.
And I’m working on new stand-up, which is just a thrill for me. It’s not stuff I did on my last HBO special, which was a few years ago, so I have this new stuff which I’m really have fun doing. For me, it’s like playing video games or something. It really sounds jerky and handjacky, that’s a nice quote [laughs] but it’s a privilege to do it. I’ve just been on the road more than I’ve been in the past two months and really, really am embracing it as fruity as that sounds.
That sounds great..
Really fun, don’t even understand it. Just a weird gift. It is a true dichotomy. I don’t know what to do if somebody god forbid brings their grandmother and she doesn’t swear. Then I’ve got a problem.
What do you identify as your main points of inspiration now when contrasted to when you were just starting out?
It’s interesting, I have elements of the same things but when you spend a career in show biz and it becomes part of who you are. I kind of have been working as hard as I can on self-therapy and therapy and doing things that are reflective and help you examine yourself, so I don’t want to go back even though sometimes if feels like a broken record to go back and try similar things. I tried my third family sitcom and the past one, Surviving Suburbia didn’t make it. I really believed in it and loved it, but it didn’t work, ‘cause it’s not on [laughs] and some people didn’t like it and some people…actually I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that loved it and that’s always nice.. I don’t feel like it is the same journey as it’s not.
This new show I’m doing for A&E, I know it’s different from anything I’ve ever done because it is. It’s an hour show we will start shooting after the New Year. We’ve shot one episode so far, it was in Ukraine about how guys in America meet women of their dreams, i.e. mail-order brides. We were on a 100 hour shoot and cut it down to an hour show. We’re examining different subcultures that come out of America, whether they are frat guys or gang members or Burning Man people, Amish teenagers deciding whether to continue with the family or move forward into my influence [laughs]. It’s not reality, it’s really documentary comedy. And those are my roots when I was a film student. I’m really happy about it. It’s an organic show that…if you like me on the phone, you’ll enjoy me on the show [laughs].
How did that project come about? One would imagine the hope is that it would end up on TV but did you consider that if no network was interested in trying a web-only format to see if you could get an audience that way?
I love the web. I’m really a big viral supporter, in the web way and not the other way [laughs]. With Twitter and I was on Myspace for a long time. And I’m on Facebook more recently. And I’m archaic in some ways, I even instant message some people that I have in my life that are my children. With this project, I really want to hit as big an audience as I can and yes, the web is definitely going to be a place that does that.
This show with A&E is based on something I came up ten years ago and then it got reworked by all the people I’m working with who are really creative and by A&E themselves and it really turned into a completely collaborative thing. It’s called “Bob Saget’s Strange Days” and the people at this network have been incredibly supportive of what we want to do. The fact that they are the fifth largest cable network, I think that’s what they are, brings a huge amount of web potential. And I imagine things will come from it, if it does well. And we all are knocking on wood that it does well. I’m really fascinated with where we are, where technology is moving and how the web is opening things up.
We could take this interview a number of directions at this point..let’s go this direction..Are there certain websites that you turn to for humor on the web? Are you a College Humor fan?
I am. I like Funny or Die. I like a lot of people’s stuff and I bounce around on web. You can name probably five places that I look at. I don’t like hurtful stuff and I don’t like tabloid-y mean stuff. It’s funny..well, it’s not really funny but it’s one of the things my Dad always said and I keep referencing my Dad. He was 89 when he went away, well he didn’t leave us, he passed away..[jokingly] he was 89 when he abandoned us [laughs]. His whole thing and the people I love are people like Don Rickles. The people I revere are people that like to be kind. They could be mean bastards in an act and you know it’s an act but they’re really kind people and they are good people.
I try not to look online at things that are negative. My whole thing now is I don’t do negative. People come up to me and they’re like “you know what I didn’t like,” and I’m like “I don’t want to know what you didn’t like, I just don’t want to know.” I have enough problems. If you like something, I’m cool with that but I’m tired of everyone just hazing people.
Especially true online with people able to hide behind the anonymity of the web and just being able to hurl out negative comments…
And that’s fine. Everyone is entitled to it, to say something negative. I’ve sometimes accidentally, probably at some point in this very interview, I’ve already said something that I’ll look at and say “why did I say that?” and that’s part of it. That’s what happens too virally. You accidentally say something that is misconstrued. That’s why I dig social media. Things like Twitter, Myspace, etc. If you do something, yeah it gets out there but you can also redo it, you can block people [laughs]. Would have been nice in school, you could block evil instead of being pushing into your locker [laughs].
You’ve probably done a number of fairly interesting corporate engagements..Last night Netflix delivered Funny People, not sure if you’ve seen it…
I actually haven’t but I want to watch it. I really am negligent because I know, I’ve been told by my friends that it’s made for me, specifically for me. Gallows humor and I’ve heard Adam’s wonderful in it. Judd Apatow’s an old friend and I’m anxious to see it. I’ve got to see it. In fact I have the script. I have the DVD. I have a huge amount of materials to sit and watch it.
Sure you will really enjoy it. Don’t want to hype it too much but are there any corporate settings that you’ve played that are really strange for one reason or another?
Yes. I never did the event. It never actually happened. It was a scrap iron and steel event called ISIS. I was 24 years old and it was a gentleman who is no longer with us who booked me. I was there with a guitar and 15 people stood around me and I was the entire band. We were signing Comedy Tonight to the tune of Comedy Tonight from the play “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and I did a parody of it.
This never made the stage because the buyer of the ISIS convention saw it and said we cannot let this horror happen. The great actor Billy Barty, who was in the Wizard of Oz, who was one of the munchkins in it, was in this with me and he was running through my legs while I was playing the guitar…[Sings] “Something familiar, something appealing..something something..I can’t remember..ISIS Tonight.” It doesn’t even make sense [laughs]. It’s so bad, you can’t even parody it. It’s like beyond a Police Academy movie. We never got to do it but I got to meet Mr. Barty..I actually did a benefit for his widow a couple of years ago..and that’s what I got out of the ISIS event, I got to meet Billy Barty 28 years ago or whatever it was. That’s a nice story isn’t it?
[Laughs] It sure is, sounds very memorable. What is the reaction from the public today versus 20 years ago?
Actually changes weekly. It depends on what’s happening that week. When I was doing stand-up and then I did a Richard Pryor movie before Full House and I was cursing in that. Then I did Full House and nobody knew me from the movie. They know you as a character from the show, so they think that’s who you are, even if you’re playing a character, which I enjoyed. It was a family show made for 12 year-old girls and then I did the video show, America’s Funniest Home Videos. And that’s a bloopers show, so people perceive you as that. And that was a people-get-hit-in-the-nuts-show.
And then I was doing stand-up during that and I did an HBO special and my kind of stand-up during that time which was kind of weird. It is interesting as it is different than it is now. And then many different morphings..Weird things like independent things, then Entourage and Aristocrats and I directed Dirty Work and I did a 30-second cameo in Half Baked and with every little thing it changes. You just become part of people’s, and I don’t abuse the privilege, at least I try not to, I’m not going to hurt anyone’s kids or date their daughters if I can help it. But most girls have parents so you are dating someone’s child if you are single…I don’t know why I digressed to that but that how it is. Things have changed tremendously and I just am thankful everyday that I’m blessed with the cool people in my life. My family and my friends and I want to thank [laughs], I don’t know, VHI for this great honor [laughs].
Like you said, things change and people have short memories. As such, why should people come to see your show at the Moore? Maybe this is the hard sell portion of the interview..What should people expect and why should they come to see you on Saturday?
I just want to entertain them. I love doing it. And if they’ve seen my..I call it work but it is [laughs]..and it’s a new set of stuff that I’m working on in additional to some stuff that I did on my last HBO special. Some songs..I have to do some of the things that my fans..It’s so funny, I used to hear celebrities say “Oh and my fans,” and know I’m like it’s a relationship. As Jerry Seinfeld said, it’s a dialogue not a monologue even if you don’t talk to the people literally, it’s an exchange. It’s a very, very special thing.
People always say “Are you going to be funny tonight?” Some people say that..And to me as I’ve been doing this for 35 years I’m there in every moment and I want it to be as great as it can be for them and for me. It’s like you’re getting on a plane and you go to the pilot “Hey, are you going to get me to Albuquerque?” and then again, it’s that not doing negative thing. We’re here to have a good time. The world’s been really weird and let’s just has a good time. That’s what I put out into the energy of the place and I have been getting it back, which I’m loving. And that’s what I’m planning for at the Moore.
