Judd: On Cheers, you basically played yourself.
Harry: Yeah. And in Night Court my name is still Harry and I’m—my best friends are still three-card monte workers and I still have spring snakes hidden everywhere and joy buzzers, but I’m the judge.
Judd: This is a new sitcom called Night Court.
Harry: Yeah, it’s by the guy who wrote Barney Miller for the last three seasons. Reinhold Weege. And it feels very much like Barney Miller. I’m the judge in a New York night court, and it’s the starring role.
Judd: Do you think you’re going to get tied down if it’s a successful series?
Harry: I wouldn’t mind. If it becomes a success, it will be a real joy to do it because it’s a quality show. I wouldn’t feel tied down at all. I would feel employed, you know.
Judd: So for Cheers, they just spotted you and just saw your act?
Harry: I’m not sure how it happened. I think somebody related to one of the Charles brothers—I took him at the shell game years ago. I got twenty bucks off him or something. He remembered that and he saw me on Mike Douglas. But it is a very natural situation for a con man: a bar. Well, actually, when they brought me in, their suggestion was they wanted me to be an aspiring magician and I suggested, “Well, wouldn’t a con man be more natural in that setting?” What was unusual about it was, Harry on Cheers actually takes money from people and there’s something to despise in that and so making him likable—making a guy who is in essence a likable thief—there was the question of trade and practices. Can you present that kind of role model on TV? But then the poker episode really redeemed him because it showed that he would take a nickel here and a dime there, but when somebody’s in trouble, there’s enough Robin Hood in him that he will help people out. When he leaves with the money at the end of the game, you think, What a jerk.
Judd: I did, I said I couldn’t believe—
Harry: But then he comes right back and that’s the trick. A con like that is just an elaborate magic trick or a swindle. It’s bringing people to the wrong conclusion and then surprising them.
Judd: You sound like you’ve done that trick in the bar.
Harry: I’ve done that plenty. I haven’t paid for a lot of drinks in my life. I’ve run some scams, yeah. But fewer and fewer as time goes on, which is good. I’m finding more legitimate ways.
Judd: Like acting?
Harry: Yeah. As I grow older and I don’t run so fast, I’m not so eager to get myself in situations where I’m going to have to run.
Judd: How would you describe your act? Are you a magician who does comedy, or a comedian who does magic?
Harry: It’s a character, it’s a guy. It’s a Harry, as opposed to Harry Anderson. He’s a guy who knows magic but doesn’t respect it much. I have an attitude about people and it’s very tough to analyze. I’ve tried several times. It’s easier to do than to analyze. He’s a little ill at ease up there. And he’s a little ill that everybody’s staring at him and he can’t believe that people are buying this. I can’t believe I’m thirty and I’m doing this. You know. One of the things I love to do onstage is insist that people talk and participate. “It’s a live show, folks, come on, come on,” and as soon as they say something, I tell them to shut up. You know. Because it pokes fun at the whole theater situation. People are very ill at ease when a performer talks directly to them. Knowing that and then playing with it—he eventually doesn’t feel ill at ease. You poke at him long enough then eventually it doesn’t matter anymore and he’s just laughing right along with everybody else and bringing him to that point where their egos kind of go away and the way to do that is, is I make myself look like a jerk. It’s an old Elizabethan idea. The fool is the only one who is allowed to make fun of the king because he is a fool. I can say whatever I want about anybody else because I’m just an idiot talking—I’m not insisting that I’m any smarter than anyone else. It’s satire.
Judd: A lot of the tricks that you do, sometimes people think they see what’s going on and then you just like turn the whole trick around so it’s, like, it looks like you did something but it’s nothing.
Harry: It’s bringing them to a false conclusion, and then pulling the rug from under them. Giving them the feeling that they know what’s happening—and then telling them they’ve been manipulated. That’s part of things like three-card monte, and the shell game. You give them the impression, with a bent corner on the card for example, when you’re tossing the cards, the money card seems to have a bent corner so everybody’s now betting because they see the bent corner, and how that bent corner is no longer on the money card, but another card altogether. Those are sucker gags. You let them think they’ve got you—and then you pull the rug from under them.
Judd: And that’s the card you have the money riding on.
Harry: It’s toying with them and doing what a swindler would do when he’s taking their money, only there’s no harm, there’s nothing to be lost. You can poke somebody in the arm, and it can be affectionate. You know it could be a “How ya doing?” A friendly gesture. Or you can hit them, and it hurts. Same gesture, different intent. This is tricking people but to no bad end—just to make them laugh. That’s what I’m going for.
JAMES L. BROOKS (2014)
I interviewed James Brooks on the morning we all found out that our friend Mike Nichols had passed away. When Jim walked into my office, I could see in his face that he was devastated—and I wasn’t sure whether we should even bother doing the interview or not. But in this raw, grief-stricken state Jim became reflective about Mike’s work and his decades-long friendship with this man we respected so much. Which then led to an interesting conversation about comedy and life—the man is truly wise in these ways—that could only have happened on a terrible day.
Judd Apatow: Awful day with Mike Nichols, huh?
James L. (Jim) Brooks: Awful fucking day. I got up at five this morning. I just happened to wake up and I saw the news of his death, and—I was alone, and I just went over and started reading this horrible New York Times obituary that I’m sure will be gone by tomorrow.
Judd: Really?
Jim: Horrible. Just a list of hits and misses.
Judd: Mm-hmm.
Jim: Have you ever seen the sketch he did with Elaine [May], “The $65 Funeral”? You’ve seen that?
Judd: Not in a long time.
Jim: It’s killer. You see him making fun of death and stuff like that, right there, and you laugh. And then you start reading some of the crazy, open, honest stuff he’s been saying of late and—he’s never to be equaled. It’s literally impossible to beat him. Impossible. And, I’ve just been—I’m still in a fog, because of the enormity of it.
Judd: Yeah. I just knew him in the last few years, but he showed This Is 40 in New York before it came out. He presented it onstage.
Jim: Wow.
Judd: And he was so nice to me. Scott Rudin set up a screening of This Is 40 for twenty-five people during the day in New York, and Mike came up to me afterwards, and he was crying, in the most beautiful, connected way. Then he wrote letters to each of my children, talking to them in great detail about what they had accomplished in the movie. To my little daughter, he said, “One day you’re going to realize that you kind of captured life.” It was so kind, and he was always like that.