Speaker 1: Really now, really.
Speaker 2: Really now, really Hello, and welcome to Really No Really
Speaker 2: with Jason Alexander and Peter Tilden, who want you to
Speaker 2: know that subscribing to our show would make a perfect
Speaker 2: holiday gift.
Speaker 3: Coincidentally enough, this episode is.
Speaker 4: All about the holidays and why so many families celebrate
Speaker 4: with extremely odd and bizarre holiday traditions. Perhaps the most
Speaker 4: famous bizarre holiday tradition is the celebration of Festivus from
Speaker 4: the television show Seinfeld, with which I believe Jason has
Speaker 4: some sort of passing acquaintance. The actual Festivus was created
Speaker 4: by Seinfeld writer Dan O'Keefe's father, and today Dan speaks
Speaker 4: about the true origin of the Festivus poll, the annual
Speaker 4: airing of grievances and the demonstration of feats of strength.
Speaker 4: He also reveals the many horrors of the real life celebration.
Speaker 4: So happy holidays, and here's jam in Peter.
Speaker 5: Now the holiday time and as you know, I am
Speaker 5: associated with a particular holiday. But what's interesting and are
Speaker 5: really that kicks it off is you. You shared with
Speaker 5: me that your research has shown that over twenty percent
Speaker 5: of people, over twenty percent of people say that their
Speaker 5: families have bizarre.
Speaker 1: Bizarre, unique holiday traditions, traditions, right, So that led us to,
Speaker 1: of course, the the most holiday, that is the most
Speaker 1: famous and the most bizarre, is made famous on my
Speaker 1: former show Seinfeld is Christmas. There's Hanka, there's the festive Us,
Speaker 1: the festival for the rest of Us, which was an
Speaker 1: actual holiday created by the father of the man who
Speaker 1: authored the episode. And that man is, of course, mister
Speaker 1: Dan O'Keefe's here with us today. Dan's a producer and
Speaker 1: a writer known for a variety of things Beavis and
Speaker 1: butt Head, Space Force, Veep, Silicon Valley, Drew Carry Show,
Speaker 1: and of course, most notably are Festivus episode on Seinfeld.
Speaker 1: And I am so delighted even though well I haven't
Speaker 1: seen her talk to in probably twenty years.
Speaker 5: Dan, welcome to the show, sir.
Speaker 6: Thank you Jason.
Speaker 7: I'm flattered to me invited on And to be fair,
Speaker 7: that was kind of close to the Festivus of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people do not know the argent. We'll find out
Speaker 1: the argent. But I did laugh when id that you
Speaker 1: were actually invited on different times to people's houses over
Speaker 1: the holidays who were actually observing a form of festivsts
Speaker 1: and didn't know that it was from your family.
Speaker 7: That has happened on a number of occasions. I am
Speaker 7: so far unanimous in my streak of saying no thank you.
Speaker 7: I'm sure I hope they had a lovely time, but wow, wow, yeah,
Speaker 7: that's happened a number of times.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 5: So the origin is not what people think right the
Speaker 5: way we laid it out on the show. I guess
Speaker 5: the origins of those ideas may be from what you
Speaker 5: and your dad, your family created. But what can you
Speaker 5: walk us through for people that don't know what your
Speaker 5: organic festivus was?
Speaker 7: My organic festivus was a living hell on earth that
Speaker 7: appeared at random throughout the year at an unspecified date.
Speaker 7: It didn't have It wasn't really December twenty thirty. It
Speaker 7: was whenever my father felt like it. One year there
Speaker 7: were none, one year there were two. And it arose
Speaker 7: out of the fact that my dad was basically a
Speaker 7: more feral Frank Costanza who spent thirty forty fifty years
Speaker 7: desperately trying to turn himself into Fraser Crane. He escaped
Speaker 7: from Jersey the Greenville ward of Jersey City, which at
Speaker 7: the time was sort of like a you know, a Southey,
Speaker 7: and he was the first in his family to go
Speaker 7: to college, and I think one of the first to
Speaker 7: finish high school, and got rid of his accident at
Speaker 7: Oxford and just decided to wash the stink of Jersey
Speaker 7: off himself with excessive amounts of education, including an obsession
Speaker 7: with the plays of Samuel.
Speaker 1: Beckett who Wow, There's a lot.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of Wow Wow, including and on his
Speaker 7: first date with my mother, he lent her a copy
Speaker 7: of the play Craps Last Tape. Now, in the play
Speaker 7: Craps Last Tape, it's an old man listening to her.
Speaker 6: You're a song and dance man.
Speaker 5: You're you're talking my language, Go ahead, an.
Speaker 7: Old man listening to tape recordings of a slightly younger
Speaker 7: man listening to recordings of a slightly younger man. So
Speaker 7: the original Festivus was indeed an airing of grievances, but
Speaker 7: it was an area of grievances in which my brothers
Speaker 7: and I were made to listen to recordings of my
Speaker 7: father complaining the year before, while listening to recordings of
Speaker 7: my father complaining the year before, and so on and
Speaker 7: so on, in a series of Russian nesting dolls. It
Speaker 7: was occasionally exhilarating. Most often there was There was a
Speaker 7: tremendous amount of liquor involved. I mean it was just
Speaker 7: in my Later in my life, my dad lost fifty
Speaker 7: five pounds by switching to light beer and started wearing
Speaker 7: suits from the fifties that fit him again. And it
Speaker 7: was like he dressed like Kramer. He was wearing these
Speaker 7: like ancient tipster vintage jobs. It was crazy. And it
Speaker 7: was my father drunkenly complaining into a tape recorder about
Speaker 7: the corrosive effect of internal Reader's digest politics, about how
Speaker 7: we had disappointed him during the year, about how my
Speaker 7: mother did not keep a clean house, about how his
Speaker 7: relatives were awful, which was actually kind of you know,
Speaker 7: not always incorrect. There was a lot of strange music
Speaker 7: that was played. He played of this record containing songs
Speaker 7: of the Irish Republican Army, but also weird the strange
Speaker 7: novelty pop records from Germany and Italy from like the forties, fifties,
Speaker 7: and sixties. They actually there's an Italian version of Alvin
Speaker 7: and the Chipmunks. That's the most terrifying thing I've ever
Speaker 7: heard in my life. The Chipmunks and the Irish rebels
Speaker 7: being hanged by the British, and the strange German accordion
Speaker 7: stuff and all over that a litany of complaints, and
Speaker 7: then he would encourage us to complain ourselves, and then
Speaker 7: when we complained too much, you would complain that we
Speaker 7: were complaining too much.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 7: It was a combination of alcoholism and borderline child endangerment
Speaker 7: that should have had the New York stands away and
Speaker 7: raised us in a facility. But at the time, you know,
Speaker 7: child protective Services just was not not up this enough
Speaker 7: in the New York area.
Speaker 6: So, uh, there you have it.
Speaker 1: So wait, that's your family. You brother would cry, you
Speaker 1: would cry. I mean it was. It was horrifying. And
Speaker 1: also had a clock nailed in a bag to the
Speaker 1: wall rather than a Paul right.
Speaker 7: Best of his poll is a By the way, I
Speaker 7: should mention I didn't author the entire episode. I wrote
Speaker 7: it along with Jeff Schaffer and Alec Berg, who arguably
Speaker 7: wrote some of the better stuff.
Speaker 6: But the symbol is not a pole. That was a
Speaker 6: Shaeffer joke.
Speaker 7: The real symbol of the holiday was my father took
Speaker 7: an ancient rusted alarm clock put it in like a
Speaker 7: burlapsed sack and then nailed it to the wall.
Speaker 1: And I don't know why.
Speaker 7: He never told you represent He would always say the
Speaker 7: same thing, that's not for you to know.
Speaker 6: And I don't know what it means, and I still
Speaker 6: to this day.
Speaker 7: And something about the e n s of time, of life,
Speaker 7: of youth, I don't know. I know that it was
Speaker 7: a wedding present that he and my mom got, so
Speaker 7: maybe it's something about their marriage.
Speaker 6: I don't even want to know. But oh, there was.
Speaker 7: By the way, another symbol of a festivus was a
Speaker 7: sign hand letter that read fascism that my father would
Speaker 7: tape to the wall.
Speaker 6: He wouldn't nail that to the wall.
Speaker 7: But the thing is that sign also came out sometimes
Speaker 7: at Thanksgiving and sometimes at Christmas.
Speaker 1: Wow, so I read that you said your dad was
Speaker 1: an undiagnosed bipolar also at the time, was this at
Speaker 1: least so this was there joy ever? Or was this
Speaker 1: always the storm that was brewing underneath for your dad?
Speaker 7: It was incredibly charismatic and brilliant, brilliant man, I mean.
Speaker 7: The New York Times compared his book, his thousand page
Speaker 7: Unified Field Theory of Anthropology, Psychology and sociology. He could
Speaker 7: compare it to Mark Starwin and Freud in their review,
Speaker 7: although not only people in Japan read it, but for
Speaker 7: some reason. But yeah, it was terrifying, but there were
Speaker 7: it was interspersed with moments of joy. He was very funny.
Speaker 7: He made it funny while it was happening. But for
Speaker 7: the most part it was It was mostly like they say,
Speaker 7: war is mostly boring with moments of terror, but that
Speaker 7: occasionally it's fun.
Speaker 1: Damn, damn God. And you didn't want this out there,
Speaker 1: that the story is your brother Mark right stil De
Speaker 1: means accidentally.
Speaker 6: We came to the realization very young.
Speaker 7: If you go to school elemlentary school and say, hey,
Speaker 7: we had festivusts this weekend, When when did you have it?
Speaker 7: People will look at you and say excuse me, and
Speaker 7: it will you will immediately be put on a more
Speaker 7: rigorous beating schedule. So we had a vow of silence
Speaker 7: that was semi formally taken, and I had literally blocked
Speaker 7: it out of my mind. And then Mark goes and
Speaker 7: opens his yap at a party that Jeff Jay for,
Speaker 7: aleck Berg, Dave Mandel, some of the executive producers, along
Speaker 7: with Jerry the final season of the show a party
Speaker 7: they were at and they were immediately excuse me, I
Speaker 7: want to hear more about this. So then I was
Speaker 7: lured to a diner called swing On On on Beverly
Speaker 7: and they sort of pinned me down in a booth.
Speaker 7: They sat, you know, around me, so I couldn't get out,
Speaker 7: and they said, we want to talk about Festivus and
Speaker 7: I actually hadn't thought about it in years for a reason.
Speaker 7: I was like, uh, oh, how did you hear about that?
Speaker 7: I'm really sorry you had to take up those brain
Speaker 7: cells with that information. And they're like, no, we want
Speaker 7: to put it on the show, and I said, no,
Speaker 7: you really really don't. You You're making a terrible mistake.
Speaker 7: This show is a is a perfect thing. This is
Speaker 7: the greatest common the history of television. And you want
Speaker 7: to essentially smear feces on it.
Speaker 6: You're mad. You're mad.
Speaker 7: Jeff Shaeffer, Alec Berg, Dave Mandel. But you know, as
Speaker 7: it turned out, I was dead wrong. Jerry wanted to
Speaker 7: do it, and they were completely right. Now there was
Speaker 7: It turns out there was a version that was consumable
Speaker 7: by a mass audience. I thought that it would lead
Speaker 7: to to not good things, but.
Speaker 5: And the stuff that was created for the for the
Speaker 5: television version of Festivus, that was all that was all
Speaker 5: sort of a mutual mind mold right the pole, the
Speaker 5: feats of strength, the airing of grievance is.
Speaker 7: The general negativity around it, the Georgia attitude toward it
Speaker 7: is taken from reality because they doesn't want to talk
Speaker 7: about it. What runs when his father brings it up.
Speaker 7: But the specifics of it did change. Now, the airing
Speaker 7: of grievances was the central tenet of the original. Yes,
Speaker 7: but and though there was always the implicit threat of
Speaker 7: violence from my father, there was not actually a wrestling
Speaker 7: of parental wrestling thing, Nor was there a poll that did.
Speaker 6: Come out of the.
Speaker 7: Rest the wait ratio with an alec Berg joke, the
Speaker 7: pole itself with Schaeffer, I think the twenty third to
Speaker 7: get a to get a head start on Christmas, I
Speaker 7: think that was Dave. People just filled in the blanks
Speaker 7: to put together a more palatable version of this, you know,
Speaker 7: remake of the Mosquito Coast that I lived And.
Speaker 1: Do you remember it? So? Do you remember? We want
Speaker 1: to get into what it felt like writing in the
Speaker 1: writer's room for signfel, etc. But do you remember being
Speaker 1: there when they shot that episode? What what what went
Speaker 1: through your head and what you felt emotionally watching this?
Speaker 1: What was that weak like for you? You know, here
Speaker 1: we are.
Speaker 7: It was like an out of body experience. And I
Speaker 7: remember thinking something that I hadn't thought since I left
Speaker 7: for college, which is, my father might actually physically murder
Speaker 7: me over this and.
Speaker 6: So, and I couldn't tell.
Speaker 7: If it was good or not, Like it's one of
Speaker 7: the things where you're right, And obviously that happens in
Speaker 7: shows that are not taken partially from your childhood. But
Speaker 7: in that case, what I was hoping was the following
Speaker 7: I was hoping that. I was hoping that Festivus would
Speaker 7: be left on the editing room floor. I thought, look,
Speaker 7: we have a there's a Jerry story, a George's story,
Speaker 7: a Cramer story, and a Laine's story. This is a
Speaker 7: Frank story, this is a fifth story. There's no way
Speaker 7: to survive the editing process. So I comforted myself by saying, it'll.
Speaker 6: All be fine.
Speaker 8: They're just gonna snip it around the edges and then
Speaker 8: they'll they'll come to their senses. They'll come to their senses.
Speaker 8: And they realized, no, we don't want to do this
Speaker 8: to the show. The show does not deserve this, America
Speaker 8: does not deserve this. But as it turned out, somehow
Speaker 8: they edited thirteen and a half minutes out of it.
Speaker 6: That that's how long it was, and they.
Speaker 7: Need to actually fit together in a way that made
Speaker 7: sense and was watchable.
Speaker 6: And I was surprised.
Speaker 7: And it's a testament to the editors and to the
Speaker 7: talent of the gentleman I mentioned, and Jerry's vision steering
Speaker 7: the show and as always and uh oh, man, if
Speaker 7: you remember shooting that scene the festive dinners.
Speaker 5: Around the table, what I remember vividly. I think there's
Speaker 5: probably I think this is available online on bloopers, but
Speaker 5: I can't remember the reason why. But Julia looked pretty
Speaker 5: draggled by the time she got to the table, I
Speaker 5: think like her hair was all matted down.
Speaker 7: And it was to parallel the girl who looked good
Speaker 7: in One Life exactly.
Speaker 5: And there was this kind of unsavory looking guy who
Speaker 5: was hitting on her at the table and he said
Speaker 5: something about you look great, and in total Julia Elaine fashion,
Speaker 5: she goes, oh, thanks, was like hell as much as
Speaker 5: Julia could ever look like el and she couldn't get
Speaker 5: through it.
Speaker 1: She could.
Speaker 5: The guy's face was so great. He was one of
Speaker 5: those great characters that they always found, and he did
Speaker 5: it perfectly. He did it like right on the edge
Speaker 5: of you know, you know, child rapist, and it was
Speaker 5: she just and that, and we did take after take
Speaker 5: and then then you.
Speaker 1: Know, God rest him.
Speaker 5: Jerry Stiller would get up and start going, I got
Speaker 5: a lot of problems with your people, and that we
Speaker 5: were That was it, we were done.
Speaker 6: I remember a couple of things.
Speaker 7: First of all, the guy you're talking about, he he
Speaker 7: was a He did a table access show in New
Speaker 7: York City, I think out of Brooklyn in which he
Speaker 7: reviewed pornography. He was an actual like like he was
Speaker 7: exactly who you think he would be, and he played
Speaker 7: that perfectly.
Speaker 6: I remember another thing, which.
Speaker 7: Was at the very beginning, I remember I remember all
Speaker 7: of you breaking every absolutely yeah, but at the very beginning,
Speaker 7: I think Julius said somebody to Jerry, like we get
Speaker 7: this in one take, I'll give you.
Speaker 6: A million dollars something like that. And needless to say,
Speaker 6: it took eight hours.
Speaker 5: She personally made sure that we weren't going to get in.
Speaker 6: I think I think it took eight hours to get the.
Speaker 5: Table, and I think that the guy that we're talking
Speaker 5: about the.
Speaker 6: Kind of you know, Bline Collin's sleezy friends.
Speaker 5: I think the guy who played his cohort on the
Speaker 5: show turned out to be Tracy Let's esteemed actor author
Speaker 5: and putt surprise.
Speaker 1: So let me ask a big question to clear something
Speaker 1: up that's been out there forever. So when people celebrate festivals,
Speaker 1: they try and emulate the meal, but nobody can actually
Speaker 1: figure out that there are no clear shot. People tried
Speaker 1: to freeze, frame it and whatever. So I've read about
Speaker 1: this portrayal. They're trying to figure it out. So what
Speaker 1: they do is they get Bopka from one episode, they
Speaker 1: get bagels from their marbles. But there are reports that
Speaker 1: there was let Us with what looked to be meal
Speaker 1: out on it on the table. What was do you
Speaker 1: do you? Does anybody know what the meal was? In
Speaker 1: the sign phone.
Speaker 6: Episode on the show, I'm pretty sure it was meat loaf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cleared it up for evereople.
Speaker 7: There was a there was a disagreeable, suspect looking meat
Speaker 7: loaf that was carved up before the scene and put
Speaker 7: on everyone's plate.
Speaker 1: There you go, I think, yeah, because nobody can identify
Speaker 1: for sure when they celebrate festivals at home, so they
Speaker 1: emulate by by by grabbing from different episodes. Like I said,
Speaker 1: the Bopka, et cetera for the meal, but you just
Speaker 1: cleaned it up now people who are festivates a meat
Speaker 1: loaf on lettuce, Oh my god.
Speaker 7: I mean the real thing was it was whatever the
Speaker 7: whatever we were having for dinner. It was usually you know,
Speaker 7: it was a holiday, so my mom made like a
Speaker 7: chicken or something.
Speaker 5: But what was the fallout from the episode within your family?
Speaker 6: My mom was real afraid to tell me.
Speaker 7: Dad, uh, Mark thought it was hilarious because he was
Speaker 7: not going to get hit by any of the bullback.
Speaker 6: It was all falled on me. My other brother didn't
Speaker 6: want any part of it.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 7: And then it came out and I had to tell
Speaker 7: my dad. At first he didn't understand, and then he
Speaker 7: got real mad like like like yeah, like very briefly
Speaker 7: like and he by that point he was slowing down.
Speaker 7: There wasn't so much of the throwing stuff mad level left,
Speaker 7: but he was very exercised. But then he saw it
Speaker 7: and he kind of liked it. And then people, you know,
Speaker 7: the reviews started coming. He started, and then he immediately
Speaker 7: became insufferably smug and thought that that episode retroactively justified
Speaker 7: every poor choice he'd never made in his entire life.
Speaker 6: He was, Oh, he was thrilled. He was over the moon.
Speaker 6: He was over the moon.
Speaker 1: So you would tell people, I'm the us. Shut him up.
Speaker 7: Ben and Jerry's made uh like a flavor. It was
Speaker 7: like burnt shirt caramel and Christmas Eve type flavors. And
Speaker 7: they sent a poster. My dad framed it and insisted
Speaker 7: on like hanging on the wall the kitchen in a
Speaker 7: place where it really didn't fit. So he was he
Speaker 7: was for the last do the last decade and a
Speaker 7: half of his life.
Speaker 6: For more. Could not have been prouder, could not have
Speaker 6: been pro.
Speaker 5: Speaking of the ice cream, so I just you know,
Speaker 5: I went online and I went to just Amazon and
Speaker 5: typed in Festivus related things, and here's what came up.
Speaker 5: Lots of poles. You know, by a Festivus pole, there's
Speaker 5: a board game. There were fireplace stockings, sweaters, mugs, treo ornaments,
Speaker 5: playing cards, t shirts, refrigerator magnets, and the ice cream flavor.
Speaker 1: Do you ever see anything from any.
Speaker 6: Of that.
Speaker 7: No, no, I mean no, no, I mean look, as
Speaker 7: far as I know the context of the show, the
Speaker 7: copyright to that holiday is owned by Castle Rock Communications
Speaker 7: and they're welcome to it. And as of right now,
Speaker 7: it's an open source Holidays. It's entered into the culture,
Speaker 7: which I'm I have mixed emotions about, obviously. But if
Speaker 7: Satanists want to protest against fascism in Florida by putting
Speaker 7: up a display with beer cans and putting the word
Speaker 7: Festivus on it in the Florida State House, which happened,
Speaker 7: Hey good.
Speaker 1: For you, just go for it was a phrase Festivus
Speaker 1: for the rest of us. That was a phrase that
Speaker 1: the family did use, right, and your daddy came up.
Speaker 7: With I have these tapes and they're actually in that
Speaker 7: filing cabinet and they were remastered to CDs a long
Speaker 7: time ago, and their tapes from every year, and in
Speaker 7: nineteen seventy six, that year, my dad, in the tape
Speaker 7: recording said this is a festist for the rest of us.
Speaker 7: What he meant by that was for the living as
Speaker 7: opposed to the dead, because that year my grandmother, Jeanette
Speaker 7: Marie O'Connor O'Keeffe had had a stroke in a supermarket
Speaker 7: in Jersey City and died. We don't pass away in
Speaker 7: my family, We died, and so that was what it meant.
Speaker 7: And I remember that, and I sort of spat it
Speaker 7: out without remembering the context. Then by the time it's
Speaker 7: in the script and it's actually working and we're past
Speaker 7: the table, I'm like, oh, yeah, actually about my dead
Speaker 7: Grandpa's not around.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was because.
Speaker 5: I actually thought it was true of your family as well,
Speaker 5: But I always thought it was Frankestanza's. You know, he
Speaker 5: was an atheist, you know, he didn't want to play
Speaker 5: into any of the religiosity. So it was a festival
Speaker 5: for the rest of us, you know who don't.
Speaker 7: Well, the original version was it was those of us
Speaker 7: who were alive as opposed to dead.
Speaker 5: Did your did the family either accept or pervert any
Speaker 5: other Holly? Was Thanksgiving?
Speaker 1: Okay? Was Halloween?
Speaker 6: Halloween?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Was?
Speaker 6: I mean?
Speaker 7: Thanksgiving was weird, but it was recognizably Thanksgiving. We celebrated
Speaker 7: Christmas in a cultural way, no religiosity at all. So
Speaker 7: the answer is no, he didn't pervert any other holidays.
Speaker 7: But fest just wasn't the only made up holiday he had.
Speaker 7: There were weirder ones.
Speaker 1: Oh pray, tell.
Speaker 6: Fest just wasn't the only made up holiday he had.
Speaker 6: There were weirder ones.
Speaker 1: Oh right, tell, well, this is not this to start off.
Speaker 7: You know, the A very merry on birthday to you
Speaker 7: from uh Lewis Carroll.
Speaker 1: I am familiar with it, very peripherally, yes.
Speaker 6: From Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 7: Whenever my dad did something so drunkenly, violently unacceptable or
Speaker 7: offensive or horrifying or just generally embarrassing that my mom
Speaker 7: was about to leave him, then whichever child was offended
Speaker 7: against would get an extra birthday. And that was called
Speaker 7: an unbirthday, and it was sort of a.
Speaker 6: Little birthday, but it was still It was called an
Speaker 6: un birthday.
Speaker 1: That was weird.
Speaker 6: It was and called the Polish Hour.
Speaker 7: And I hard to explain what the Polish hour was
Speaker 7: because he said it's time for the Polish Hour. What
Speaker 7: this meant was lights were again extinguished. The guy was
Speaker 7: really into candles. I don't know if he didn't have
Speaker 7: electricity growing up or something. But then he made my
Speaker 7: mother play Chopin's Polonaise on the piano, which had not
Speaker 7: been tuned in twenty years, and so it sounded really peculiar,
Speaker 7: kind of like this theme to Halloween when she tried
Speaker 7: to play it, and then he would deliver an off
Speaker 7: the cuff impromptu monologue looking back on this moment from
Speaker 7: the perspective of the future, like thirty years from now,
Speaker 7: remembering in the present what was happening, but refer to
Speaker 7: the town we lived in as the swamp, and it
Speaker 7: was just him pounding huge amounts of alcoholic beverages while
Speaker 7: reminiscing about things that either hadn't happened yet or were
Speaker 7: happening now as if they had happened in the distant past.
Speaker 7: There was definitely a whiff of Beckett of a crap
Speaker 7: glass tape to this too. But he just sat in
Speaker 7: this ancient stained yellow chair chanting this nonsense while my
Speaker 7: mom was forced to play this piece of piano music
Speaker 7: on an untuned piano.
Speaker 1: Even said you would come home and never know what
Speaker 1: was gonna happen on any given day.
Speaker 7: Pretty much, I mean we we Also there were classes
Speaker 7: after class, I mean we received additional schooling in One
Speaker 7: of them was quantum theory, but this was the late
Speaker 7: nineteen seventies, so they only discovered a few quarks. We
Speaker 7: didn't have a full quark component compliment. Yet there was
Speaker 7: a whole room of the house filled Florida ceiling with
Speaker 7: books about the Kennedy assassination.
Speaker 6: So this was what I came home, Yes, on a
Speaker 6: daily basis.
Speaker 1: But damn, what's amazing is to Harvard.
Speaker 6: You know it's amazing. You know it's amazing.
Speaker 7: This is something Jerry said after recounting one of these anecdotes.
Speaker 7: I think it was explaining festivals. It was a long beat,
Speaker 7: and then I believe it with Jerry said, why are
Speaker 7: you alive?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Dan, I was gonna go the other way.
Speaker 1: The weird thing is, and I know there's alcoholism by
Speaker 1: personally bipolar disorder, but in a weird way, because you're
Speaker 1: so articulate, you know history, you're you're you're aware a limit,
Speaker 1: a grasp of want them to.
Speaker 6: That's tough affair.
Speaker 1: You're exposed to so much. Even though it was in
Speaker 1: a bizarre way. Here you went here, you went to Harvard,
Speaker 1: you ended up writing on major shows. So in a
Speaker 1: weird way, your father exposed you to a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in a bizarre way that you were presented, but
Speaker 1: you turned out taking all of that in some way here,
Speaker 1: he said condescendingly, which means talking about Dan.
Speaker 6: No, it's there's definitely an aspect of that. Absolutely sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess to ping pong off of what
Speaker 1: Peter is saying.
Speaker 5: And I hadn't thought to even get into this because
Speaker 5: it's kind of a heavy question and you don't have
Speaker 5: to answer it. But I can't get a read on
Speaker 5: whether you feel like I mean, it's easy for me
Speaker 5: to say I loved my dad and I and I
Speaker 5: miss him and he was a big part.
Speaker 1: Of my life. Did you have.
Speaker 5: A relationship that you valued with your father or was
Speaker 5: it just too hard to define it?
Speaker 6: I mean it's complicated, but yeah, absolutely I love my father.
Speaker 7: He was that was It would have been easy if
Speaker 7: he had been monstrous and unlovable, but he was incredibly
Speaker 7: charismatic and brilliant, and it was talking his way into
Speaker 7: or out of anything.
Speaker 6: So yeah, actually, in the last like particularly the last
Speaker 6: ten years of his life.
Speaker 7: Actually, you know, arguably since the Festest episode came out,
Speaker 7: we were, you know, as close as you can get
Speaker 7: to someone that damage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, wow. And the other thing that's weird is
Speaker 1: estensibly your bizarre holiday has been twenty seven years later,
Speaker 1: it still persists and it has become like for families
Speaker 1: that do it, it has become part of their culture.
Speaker 1: On our hip, we're doing a Festivus thing, it is
Speaker 1: culture celebratory.
Speaker 5: I mean, no one that I know that that you know,
Speaker 5: fools around with Festivus is doing it as anything other
Speaker 5: than a joy, fun, unique, something that they looked forward to.
Speaker 1: And it identifies that family as hey, we're fun, we're quirking,
Speaker 1: we're different.
Speaker 5: Hah.
Speaker 1: And they've taken the feats of strength and they do
Speaker 1: I read, they do weightlifting, they do all kinds of racing.
Speaker 1: They've taken it, morphed it into their family's own and
Speaker 1: it's pure joy for people.
Speaker 7: It's the watched videos of it, and you're absolutely right,
Speaker 7: it's it's joyful. And so in retrospect, not only were
Speaker 7: Jerry and Dave and Jeff and Alec right, they they
Speaker 7: sort of retro they sort of redeemed that unpleasant morasses
Speaker 7: of memory because now this thing that would have been
Speaker 7: something that you know, I tried to you know work
Speaker 7: through therapy, is something that now you know, literally dozens
Speaker 7: of people around the country are having a good time with.
Speaker 4: It.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So so they certainly.
Speaker 7: A lot of the poison has been taken out of
Speaker 7: it by it being now something that it's just just
Speaker 7: so strange that like a super like possibly one of
Speaker 7: the weirdest parts of a very strange childhood.
Speaker 6: Uh is now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's it's a word. It's the word that my
Speaker 7: dad made up is now out there.
Speaker 1: That's a wonderful thing. David. You have some insight because
Speaker 1: people are so fascinated still with scient fill Notts on
Speaker 1: Netflix and it's just the next generation watches.
Speaker 7: Well, actually, I would be I would be remiss if
Speaker 7: I didn't say was it was just the honor of
Speaker 7: my life.
Speaker 6: It was every day there was a joy. It was
Speaker 6: hard work.
Speaker 7: It was unbelievably hard work, as you remember, particularly that
Speaker 7: season when I did not have the benefit of working
Speaker 7: with with mister David. But uh, yeah, it was such
Speaker 7: a pleasure to work with you on that.
Speaker 5: Jason, thank you brother. I right back at you, and
Speaker 5: I it was it was. It was just one of
Speaker 5: those But.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask me, what was the writers
Speaker 1: What did it feel like. I've been in writers rooms
Speaker 1: and it gets very competitive. People don't want to laugh
Speaker 1: at your joke. Everybody's trying to please the showrunner to
Speaker 1: figure out what's in there. Had I've been in those
Speaker 1: kind of writers rooms, and I've been in kind of
Speaker 1: writers rooms where it's just a lot of fun, where
Speaker 1: people are just making everybody laugh and it's just a
Speaker 1: collective joy to do. What was it. What was your
Speaker 1: experience in the writer's room? It was a very competitive or.
Speaker 7: It was, Yeah, but everyone took it very seriously. This
Speaker 7: is the greatest TV comedy of all time, and we
Speaker 7: are tasked with doing this without one of the creators,
Speaker 7: and we better get it right because it's it's a
Speaker 7: It would be a crime and a disgrace if we didn't.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that people, it was unbelievably fun. It was
Speaker 6: uh uh.
Speaker 7: Making Jerry Seinfeld laugh in the room is uh you know,
Speaker 7: like particularly one time when he almost liquid came out
Speaker 7: of notice, like the birth of my son was nice.
Speaker 6: That was fun. I enjoyed it. But I got to say,
Speaker 6: seeing Jerry laugh like that, that was the moment. It
Speaker 6: was a joy. It was another joy.
Speaker 7: Now were there times that people possibly almost came to blows, Yes,
Speaker 7: because they disagreed about the the These were very very talented.
Speaker 7: I mean, you had Jennifer Crittenden, who I've worked for
Speaker 7: since then, who was a genius, and Alec and Jeff
Speaker 7: and Dave who have together created and run some of
Speaker 7: the greatest comedies in the last fifty twenty years.
Speaker 6: And Spike Ferston.
Speaker 7: I mean, these were all people at the absolute top
Speaker 7: of their game, and everyone cared very much about getting
Speaker 7: it right and not just getting it right and making
Speaker 7: it as good as it could possibly be. So most
Speaker 7: of the time people were laughing so hard that your
Speaker 7: voice was horsed by the end of the day. But yeah,
Speaker 7: sometimes there were very loud disagreements and Jerry would would
Speaker 7: you know, have to tamp it down?
Speaker 1: And did an episode start with an idea, with an
Speaker 1: overall idea or because it was a sitcom, we had
Speaker 1: to have four intersecting stories, which was unique. Did you
Speaker 1: start with with modular Hey, that may work better with
Speaker 1: this on this episode and moving stuff around?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, that sometimes did happen, But most of the time
Speaker 7: you just went into a room with Jerry and Jeff
Speaker 7: and Alick and Dave and you ran a whole bunch
Speaker 7: of ideas. Ideas for a capsule story that could be
Speaker 7: a George story. I got a free lance my first
Speaker 7: episode was season eight on the Pothole, which was Jerry
Speaker 7: not to his girlfriend's toothbrush and the toilet and then
Speaker 7: can't tell her and she's already brushed her teeth, which
Speaker 7: actually happened to my now wife and you when we
Speaker 7: lived in New York on the Upper West Side, and
Speaker 7: I had to tell her for literally years and years,
Speaker 7: I just thought of that that was what That wasn't
Speaker 7: a real.
Speaker 6: Thing, that was like a marvel.
Speaker 7: And then later once once she was already pregnant, she's
Speaker 7: nowhere for her to go, I said, yeah, you know
Speaker 7: that really happened. I threw your tooth, I threw the
Speaker 7: toothbrush away, and I subbed it out when it was
Speaker 7: too late.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you brush your teeth and the toilet water.
Speaker 7: So you'd throw stories out of them like that and
Speaker 7: they'd approve. And once you go out of Jerry, George
Speaker 7: and Elaine and A. Cramer proved, then you were set
Speaker 7: off to outline it. And it was a very intricate
Speaker 7: structure of there were big rooms for punch up because
Speaker 7: all the writers, and then there were very small rooms,
Speaker 7: which is just one person trying to put together that episode.
Speaker 7: They were going to write and getting stories approved by
Speaker 7: the the top people, and then there were rewrite rooms
Speaker 7: for somewhere in the middle, and then there were post
Speaker 7: table punch up sessions, which was again everyone. So it
Speaker 7: was incredibly well structured, and it had to be because
Speaker 7: you know, I remember at the beginning of production, Schaeffer said, Okay, uh,
Speaker 7: nobody's nobody make any plans for the weekend. And someone
Speaker 7: said what weekend? He said, all weekends. It was a
Speaker 7: little and he was damn he was correct, because right, yes,
Speaker 7: and and that's because the Jeff and Allen were, and
Speaker 7: Dave were remarkably talented show runners have continued to be,
Speaker 7: but the tone was set by Jerry. Because this his
Speaker 7: work ethic continues to blow me away to this day.
Speaker 7: I remember very specifically, we had a nine am rewrite
Speaker 7: on a Sunday and I got there a little early
Speaker 7: by accident, and he was there at eight forty five
Speaker 7: pacing because he wanted to get the work done. And brilliant,
Speaker 7: obviously brilliant, funny. You can't say enough about that. But
Speaker 7: he also doesn't get credit for being John Starks, for
Speaker 7: just working harder than any comic in.
Speaker 6: The history of comics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it had to be in the show and had
Speaker 1: at that then learn and do and and deliver.
Speaker 5: It is said, great to see you. I wish you.
Speaker 5: Uh this is our holiday show, so happy holidays to.
Speaker 1: You and your family.
Speaker 5: And uh and I am. I am truly delighted to
Speaker 5: see you. And it makes me feel like we should
Speaker 5: just sit sometime and catch up. But I feel that
Speaker 5: way about our whole group.
Speaker 7: But I love that anytime you just tell me where,
Speaker 7: I'll even go to the valley.
Speaker 5: I love that, WHOA said, even though it's the assumption
Speaker 5: that I was.
Speaker 1: And by the way, what's going to happen? You call
Speaker 1: and said, let's meet it in the valley? Who I was?
Speaker 1: I just say I was just saying that. I was
Speaker 1: just saying that on the podcasting Dan, Thank you friends.
Speaker 5: So can you imagine that that's a family that I
Speaker 5: thought my family had some quirks.
Speaker 1: I got nothing. You know, I was the father of
Speaker 1: those best family compared to that I was. I have
Speaker 1: all the stuff that I propeda how we go to
Speaker 1: different subjects. You all the stuff about bizarre things families
Speaker 1: do during the holidays. Yeah, no, guess what that? Wow?
Speaker 1: You know all holidays are bizarre?
Speaker 5: Do you like, I just did a little bit of
Speaker 5: research about some of the things that we equate with
Speaker 5: most of our holidays, and it's all like like fruitcakes.
Speaker 5: Fruitcakes is a big Christmas thing, you know, fruitcake, the
Speaker 5: first fruitcakes. Apparently they found those a weapon and know that, well,
Speaker 5: you would think they found them buried with the with
Speaker 5: the pharaohs.
Speaker 1: They were a thing to take to the afterlife.
Speaker 5: I think I had one in nineteen eighty two that
Speaker 5: came from that that batch Holly. You know Holly that
Speaker 5: they hang in the tree at Christmas? Do you know
Speaker 5: what it is? There to symbolize Christ suffering. The red
Speaker 5: berries are the blood of Christ when he leaves at
Speaker 5: the crown front.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? Yeah? You did know that, all right.
Speaker 5: Mistletoe do you know what that what that comes from?
Speaker 1: Mistletoe? Mistletoe was an ant for no idea.
Speaker 5: Mistletow is from a from a German mish would meet
Speaker 5: dung basically pooh and not to but tang means branch,
Speaker 5: so the literal when when you kiss somebody on the
Speaker 5: stuff under the ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 5: Halloween, people believe the dead souls would return on all hallows,
Speaker 5: even seek revenge on their enemies, so people would disguise
Speaker 5: themselves so that the souls could not spot them and
Speaker 5: take their revenge. That's how they're dressing up and the masks,
Speaker 5: and I mean it's all the Chicago River gets dyed
Speaker 5: every single right since nineteen sixty right, I mean, And
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 1: What that does? Give you a sense of your cities
Speaker 1: and families, a sense of their identity. And it is
Speaker 1: weird that Danny Sick holiday ends up as big as
Speaker 1: as been saying, Google, what do you got?
Speaker 3: Well, that is some strange holiday stuff.
Speaker 9: But I thought that we might want to go back
Speaker 9: a little bit older to some of the absolute first
Speaker 9: holidays in history.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean, like, oops, I made a fire day
Speaker 1: kind of thing.
Speaker 9: Here's when a Roman holiday which you probably have never
Speaker 9: heard of.
Speaker 3: It's called Saturnalia.
Speaker 9: Okay, Okay, it's it was an ancient pagan holiday honored
Speaker 9: by the Romans and the god Saturn. Okay, so that's
Speaker 9: the whole thing, sure, which is Saturn is the god
Speaker 9: of sowing and seeding. So it was the solstice type
Speaker 9: of thing. But it took place somewhere between December seventeenth
Speaker 9: and twenty fourth, and there are a lot of similarities.
Speaker 3: Between this and Christmas.
Speaker 9: The festivities consisted of drinking, eating, lavishly, giving presents.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets fun.
Speaker 9: Wealthy Romans paid for the destitute to swap clothes with
Speaker 9: them and like like do a like like a streaky
Speaker 9: Friday type of thing with like slaves in the destitutes.
Speaker 9: Normally the togas were white, they would often swap them
Speaker 9: out for colorful ones, a lot of times green and red,
Speaker 9: which of course later became oh wow.
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, we got to wrap it
Speaker 1: up google him. But I will tell you something that's
Speaker 1: a part of it. We should write it the Roman
Speaker 1: guy swaps and now he's stuck and they don't believe
Speaker 1: that he's really the Roman guy, and he's the cheap
Speaker 1: Guy's got to go to there's your weirdest family tradition.
Speaker 1: What's the weirdest one? We don't do really weird. My
Speaker 1: family was weird every day. Yeah, But I think the
Speaker 1: fact that we had when growing up tradition with my father,
Speaker 1: it was equivalent of dan except there was a passive
Speaker 1: aggressive quiet. We never had a tree, we never had
Speaker 1: a Honick bush, we never had a Christmas thing. Whatever.
Speaker 1: Now we do everything.
Speaker 5: We celebrate every I harangued my parents along. I really
Speaker 5: wanted a Christmas tree, and they were like, no, we're
Speaker 5: not doing it with Jewish. It's not it's not a
Speaker 5: Christian thing. It's a pagan thing. It's it's just pretty.
Speaker 5: Why can't And they wouldn't go and they wouldn't go,
Speaker 5: and they finally when my mother brought in I will
Speaker 5: never forget. It was like a little miniature Bondzie tree,
Speaker 5: stripped bear of any foliage, painted white, and then they
Speaker 5: draped things.
Speaker 1: How big? How big about you know? A happy world?
Speaker 5: Was this sadest looking thing? And I went what? And
Speaker 5: And I have actually said to Dana, should we do it?
Speaker 5: Do we do a tree?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: And I go, when did you become.
Speaker 5: Super jew that you're She's just adamant.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want that. We started with big stuff and
Speaker 1: every year it gots and I didn't. I didn't complain.
Speaker 1: We're not in the next door family where we used
Speaker 1: to live, as the one that you can see from space.
Speaker 1: What is that about those people who put up they
Speaker 1: spend They start in July and they put it up.
Speaker 5: We have two houses in our neighborhood. One does Halloween
Speaker 5: and one does Christmas and it's like a Halloween.
Speaker 1: Guy. I know, I spend thirty thousand bucks for you know, families.
Speaker 1: I told your family culture. Do you have anything warned
Speaker 1: that you do family preditioner that you hold no producer
Speaker 1: lay no, no, not David.
Speaker 5: Nothing celebrate anything, Laurie. Nothing congratulate.
Speaker 9: When I was a kid, we would, actually because my
Speaker 9: my father was Jewish and and my mom was Christian
Speaker 9: or whatever.
Speaker 3: So we did Christmas and Hanukah.
Speaker 9: Sure, and my dad was in charge of Hanukah, and
Speaker 9: of course he was in charge of the gifts and whatnot.
Speaker 9: Each night my brother got a little American tank and
Speaker 9: I got a Nazi tank.
Speaker 6: No, that's and we're out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you very much, gentlemen, whatever your holiday believes
Speaker 5: or traditions may be, Happy holidays to you from all
Speaker 5: of us here.
Speaker 1: And really really for following along.
Speaker 5: We've been on the air almost a year at the
Speaker 5: point that this will air, and and and happy.
Speaker 1: Lovely New Year and God bless yea everybody. Here's announcer. No,
Speaker 1: we'll see it.
Speaker 3: Now, really.
Speaker 4: Really no, really, this is another episode of really no
Speaker 4: really comes to a close. I know you're wondering, is
Speaker 4: there such a thing as a traditional Christmas witch. I
Speaker 4: can bet you know where this is going, but before
Speaker 4: I confirm or deny, let's thank our guests, Dana Peefe.
Speaker 4: You can follow Dan on x at djok underscore Er,
Speaker 4: and you can find us online at reallynoreally dot com.
Speaker 4: We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threads at really
Speaker 4: No Really Podcast. Please check out our full episodes on YouTube.
Speaker 4: Hit that subscribe button and tick that bell so you're
Speaker 4: updated when we release new videos. If you ever really
Speaker 4: know really, let us know and if we use it,
Speaker 4: we will send you a thoughtful gift and thank you
Speaker 4: for listening, sharing, and most importantly, subscribing to our show.
Speaker 4: We release new episodes Really No Really every Tuesday, so
Speaker 4: make sure to follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 4: or wherever you get your podcasts and now. Is there
Speaker 4: such a thing as a Christmas Witch? There is in Italy,
Speaker 4: where she's the Italian version of Santa Claus, call the
Speaker 4: La Befana. The ancient story goes that the Magi stopped
Speaker 4: at her house to ask directions on their way to
Speaker 4: visit the Baby Jesus. They invited her to join them
Speaker 4: on the journey, but she said she had too much housework.
Speaker 4: After they left, she changed her mind and tried to
Speaker 4: follow them, but couldn't catch up. So now she flies
Speaker 4: around seeking them out each Christmas. Much like Santa, she
Speaker 4: brings toys and goodies to children. Instead of leaving her
Speaker 4: milk and cookies the way people do for Santa, Italians
Speaker 4: leave out plates of sausage, broccoli, and a glass of
Speaker 4: wine for her.
Speaker 3: And with that, I'm up to Italy. Happy holidays everyone,
Speaker 3: from all of us to all of you. Really.
Speaker 4: No Really is a production of iHeartRadio and Blase Entertainment