Bob Saget Recounts Stories About Sam Kinison, Bill Hicks, and Rodney Dangerfield | Joe Rogan

I gotta go there more. I was starting to come there more. In fact, you were nice enough to bring me up. Oh. Yeah, it's close. I meant just come there more. Disease? A lot of people in the back of that store. I got stories. I mean, I've- Disease stories? No, people, people are fucking there. Do you think- Kennison, I got Kennison his first spot at the store. You got him his first spot? Yeah. Like you were there the first time he went on stage? Yeah. I met him in- What year is this? Fuck, long time. I didn't have a gig. 83, 84, I don't know. Well, that's crazy because 86, he was famous. Yeah. What happened was this. So, he'd already been teed up for Mitzi to watch, but I had set up- I told her to watch him. I met him in Houston, and he was kicked out of the comedy workshop in Houston because of the shit he would say on stage. Because he had been running his tent show of faith healing with his brother Bill, and they told me some real fucked up stories about shit they would do. It was a bit charlatan and a bit trying to help people, but also talking about Jesus quite a bit. He was cynical about it, but also very confused, very conflicted about it, about what is it? Because he's dying on the ground, supposedly. He looked up at the sky and was talking to God, is what Bill tells us. That's what Carl LeBeau says. Carl LeBeau was there. Carl was there? Yeah. Carl was there when it happened. It's a whole complicated non-story right now. It's a heavy story. It's very fucking heavy. Yeah, their story is very heavy. I was around. I was around for all of it. I was there in the building for those six, seven years. So, what happened was, I met him- you would have had the same response. He goes, they won't let me work here. I met him at the comedy workshop. Meet me at one in the afternoon. He shows me this telephone pole, and he had put a picture of himself on it, and he kept putting up. They kept taking down. He was in the Houston Chronicle on the front page of the Arts and Entertainment, and he dressed himself, because they banned him from the club, in a diaper and a crown of thorns, and blood come from the crown of thorns down his face with his eyes rolled back in his head, and said that he had been persecuted just like Jesus from playing the comedy workshop. But it's pretty fucking heavy, you know? And he had made quite a name for himself and had a following there. I don't know what to do, man. I want to come out to LA, and I went, well, I'll help you out. I was playing The Laugh Stop in Houston. And River Oaks. Yeah. I used to work that place. I liked it. I did a- This guy named Howard. Who was the owner then? I'm trying to remember. Anyway. This is our first dead air. It was great. Yeah, I'm trying to remember. What happened was Sam, I sat next to Mitzi in her booth. He got on stage, and he did the whole bit before he had done the Young Comedians show that I was on, that Rodney did, Rodney's first Young Comedians show. And it was the whole thing about the kid, and whenever they do those World Vision commercials with a starving kid, and it's famous, one of the most famous things that any comedian's done, which was just a truism, which is the cameraman can give them a sandwich, starving kid. Go get out of the desert. Go to where the food is. That's a bit that I used in a conversation with a guy. It was a weird conversation. There was a guy who wrote a book on comedy. He was teaching a comedy course at a university, and he was sitting here talking to me, and he said that the best comedy always punches up. Because there was a time when people really believed that nonsense. Like there was a formula to comedy, and that comedy should always attack the large power structures, and that the small people should be elevated by comedy. So he's sitting here telling me this. I go, that's nonsense. One of the greatest bits of all time is literally about starving children. There's no further down that you could punch. One of his other great bits was about dead people getting fucked in the ass. You remember that? The bit about homosexual necrophiliacs who would pay money to be with the freshest male corpse? Those are two bits where you're punching down as low as you can. Someone's dad died, and this guy's fucking him. I mean, it doesn't get any... There's no further you could punch down. He was on stage in the main room, and he was doing a bit where he says, this is what happened to my marriage, and he would unplug the mic. This is my dick. And he did not need a mic to prove the point. But he would lay on the ground with his girth, and he was pretending he was having sex with his wife from behind, and he goes, this is what happened to my marriage. And he says, I'm trying to fuck her. And she's like, we got to fix the fence. And he goes, shut the fuck up. I'm trying to fuck... And he needs a new coat of paint. Ah! But we can't... You can't do that now, really. I mean, you could if you were Sam. He could do it again. If he was alive now, he could do it. First of all, he was uniquely qualified for that kind of comedy because he was short, and he was fat, and he was going bald, and he wore a beret, and he wore... And the long coat, and he was hanging out with all the rock and roll and pouring people. And the coat, he came on stage like he was a child molester or something. Yeah. I mean, that was... Look at that. Look at that picture. That's him and Bill Hicks. Ah, I love Bill. Wow. That's a crazy picture. Bill was the sweetest, most timid guy. Does Bill have his nails done there? He's got nail polish on him. What's going on with his tips? Oh, it's the shadows. But that was... Sam was a sweetie then. So when you see him then, I mean, when you go on stage, that was part of why it worked. It wasn't like... If he was John Mulaney and he had that act, handsome and slim, that... Hard to pull off. Right. You had to look like you got fucked over. He looked like he got fucked over. And he did. And he did. And he did. And he was doing faith healing shows, and they told me a story where he had been... I wasn't going to tell it, but it's fucking weird. So they're healing people. So they're in some godforsaken place. I don't know where. And he goes, come up here, and we're going to heal you. And like a seven foot tall guy with drawstring pants and a t-shirt, he said he was like Lenny from Mice and Men. He was mentally impaired. He said he was going to come up, and he was going to do the whole thing with him and get out the spirit and all that. And as these guys coming up, he runs up to the stage, and he's so tall, he hits his head on a beam, and he splits his head open. But he doesn't fall down. Bill, his brother will tell you this story. And the guy's pants fall down, and he had the biggest dick in the world. And so his head is gushing blood, and his dick is swinging. And he's going, ahh, ahh, ahh, like young Frankenstein, Peter Boyle. And it's horrifically upsetting. And the way it's been told to me, I don't know if these stories whisper down the lane, is that they went back to the same place after a while. The guy came back, and he had some other mishap. I don't want to say he hit his head again, but he fell. He was the same guy, just trying to have a redo to get healed. Oh, God. I mean, I don't know what's more embarrassing. Well, if your head gets split open, but the whole room can see you've got a giant cock, maybe it's a blessing and a curse. I don't know. There's probably a few gals that hit him up after that. But drawstring pants means there's not a lot of cleanliness down in the junk. Well, you could wash them up. If you're a gal looking for a big dick, I'm like, there it is. Or a guy looking for a big dick. Or maybe a guy you can trick in to fucking you. That would be the move. Or something you could play, like you do with a bat in baseball. So he gets to that. So he gets the first of that. It's that, it's that. Make that sound again. I can't do, I can't. I don't know. And I can't roll my R's either. You can't? The answer to Kennison, how quick he popped, was after that set, like a week later, Rodney came in to see him. And I'd known Rodney. Rodney liked me. I like you, man. I met him in La Jolla. He came up to me. You're funny, man. You're a Jew. You're never going to be happy. You've got a fast mind. You're all fucked up, man. You're never going to be happy. And he was trying to clean up at La Costa. And he comes in, he goes, I can't do it, man. No booze, no coke, no pot, no pills. I can't do it. And he's with two women. And I hung out with him all weekend. He stayed at the, he kept coming to the condo and hung out with me. And Kennison, he saw Sam. And I love this guy. So I do the Young Comedians special on HBO. I had a great set right before Sam. I had a 15 minute set. Sam had a 15 minute set. I was in it for three and a half minutes. Sam was in it for 15 minutes because it was, it was a modern mental. And then a year later he was in back to school. So that's why it was a three year deal with him. That's crazy. And he was a sweetheart. When I was 19, I worked as a security guard at Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts in Mansfield, Massachusetts. And Rodney was there. And he was backstage. And I was like, I didn't get a chance to meet him, but I was backstage. It was like a hallway. It's hard to know if this is a real memory because when you're 19, your brain is mush. And it was so long ago and I got hit in the head a lot. But I remember they were talking about how he didn't have any pants on. No, never. And he had a bathrobe. Yeah, balls out. And I remember him pacing back and forth and looking down the hallway. I know I definitely saw him at least once. And I definitely saw him on stage with the bathrobe on. But I remember looking down the hallway, seeing this guy. I'm like, how crazy. He doesn't have any pants on. He's going to go on stage. Like this is what, and then him up there just didn't give a fuck. I mean, didn't give had no fucks to give. He was a movie star. He's become at 58, by the way, was caddyshack. That's how long it took him. He was in his 60s when I saw him and apparently smoked a shitload of pot backstage. And when I say, my wife, and just murdered. I mean, one punchline after another punchline and people don't know the story about him. Quit doing comedy for years and became an aluminum siding salesman. He was born Jacob Cohen, changed it to Jack Roy, and then a club owner called him Rodney Dangerfield. That's how he was named by a club owner. Wow. What club? I don't know. I don't know. But he had a rough go. A club go? He had a rough go. The no respect thing was, if you're going to pick a brand, a catchphrase, it wasn't a catchphrase. It was his mantra. Yeah, well, that made him, you know? I got no respect, I'll tell you. No respect at all. I fucking loved him. And he started doing that? Oh my God. He would have loved you. Like, loved you. Because of the fuck. He always said, and I've said this before, so I'm sorry if anybody has heard me say this, but he always said, the key man is you just go like a tank, like a tank, because nobody wants you to make it. Everybody's trying to stop you. You just go like a tank, fuck them all. Just go like a tank. Because he had come up, it took him so long to get anywhere. And he would go on to a night show, and if you look at any of these clips that they're running all over the internet, it's fucking killer. And Carson's hitting the desk, and it's just real special. Well, he was a special guy. The story was special too, because it showed that, you know, he was trying to make it, and it fell apart. And then he took a long, didn't he take like 10 years off? It was aluminum siding, was the years off. Many years. And then he came back and became the biggest fucking movie star in the world. But he couldn't, it took him to 58, and they put him in caddyshack, and a lot of the jokes were his. And then a lot of them, I mean it was, you know, Harold Ramis and stuff, so it was the 18th. Genius movie, man. Those movies were so good. Fucking Bill Murray in that. Chevy was great in that. Everybody's great in that movie. Remember when he's in the classroom and kennison's teaching him? Oh yeah. It's kennison's play. Screaming out. Kennison played a fucking off-tilt Vietnam vet who was screaming. He just wrote him into it too. I was there! That's a great movie back to school. Oh, it's a fucking great movie, man. And easy money was really great. Yeah, oh, he had some classics, man. Caddyshack, he had some classics. He was awesome. I officiated his funeral. Oh, man. It was pretty intense to put him away. I was with him in the emergency, sorry, I got a little in the intensive care. He was in a coma, so I'd go in and talk to him. How old was he when he passed? Eighty-four. That's amazing. He did all that coke and he made it to eighty-four. He stopped doing coke. He just liked pot. But he did a lot of coke. When did he stop? I think about ten years before he died. Still amazing. Seventy-four years old doing coke. And I got out of ten years. I'll tell you what. I can't. How do you stop? No booze, no coke, no pot, no pills. Yeah.