DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Today we're starting off by remembering Martin Mull, the comedian, musician, actor and artist who died last Thursday at age 80. We'll feature portions of an interview between Mull and Terry Gross from 1995, and we'll begin with this appreciation. Martin Mull was born in Chicago in 1943 and grew up in Ohio and Connecticut. In college, he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art and painted throughout his life. But Martin Mull became famous as a musician, comedian and actor. Martin Mull played electric and acoustic guitar, singing his own compositions in his signature sardonic style - songs such as this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T PUT OFF 'TIL TOMORROW")
MARTIN MULL: (Singing) Don't put it off 'til tomorrow what you can do today. Don't leave things half-finished.
Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
MULL: Thank you very much. That's all I've really done on that. I should...
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: ...Probably finish it up. You seem to like it.
BIANCULLI: Over the years, Mull released several comedy albums with music and served as the opening act for more successful musicians who loved his sense of humor, from Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel to Randy Newman and Frank Zappa. And TV talk show hosts loved him too. He was both a guest and a guest host on Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" and also appeared on talk shows hosted by David Letterman, Conan O'Brien and Craig Ferguson. That's partly because, before any of them but Carson was presiding over and deconstructing the talk show format, Martin Mull was doing the same thing brilliantly in the late 1970s.
Mull's first job on television as an actor was on Norman Lear's groundbreaking parody of a daytime soap opera. It was a syndicated series called "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," set in the mythical town of Fernwood, Ohio. Mull played a physically abusive husband named Garth Gimble, a despicable misogynist character who met a well-deserved but untimely death. He was accidentally impaled on an aluminum Christmas tree.
So Garth Gimble was dead, but Lear so loved Martin Mull as a performer that he built an entirely new series around him. It was a spin-off called "Fernwood 2 Night," a parody of a local TV talk show. Mull played smarmy talk show host Barth Gimble, the twin brother of Garth. Barth's second banana, the hilariously clueless Jerry Hubbard, was played by the great Fred Willard. The two did a lot of improv, making "Fernwood 2 Night" a precursor to such shows as "Curb Your Enthusiasm." And in making fun of the backstage as well as onstage elements of the talk show format, Mull's series predated, by an entire generation, the brilliance of Garry Shandling on "The Larry Sanders Show."
In addition, "Fernwood 2 Night" was mining comedy from a lot more than just a TV show. Everything seemed to be fair game - even such subsequently iffy concepts as poking fun at small-town insulation and prejudice - by having Barth and his sidekick Jerry open the phone lines so their viewers could ask questions of a very rare visitor to Fernwood.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FERNWOOD 2 NIGHT")
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) Hello. Talk to a Jew. You're on the air.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Is this the Jew?
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) No, no, no, no, no way. No. No.
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) No, this is Barth Gimble. The Jew is sitting beside me, to my right. Would you like to talk to him?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) No, it's OK. I'll talk to you, and you can give him this message.
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) Gladly.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) I'd like to know when Barbara Streisand's next movie will be out.
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) OK. You heard that over the speaker, yes? OK. You can go right ahead.
FELIX FISHER: (As Morton Rose) Well, I don't know, but I'd like to see it myself, though. I think she's very good.
FRED WILLARD: (As Jerry Hubbard) You must be very proud of her.
FISHER: (As Morton Rose) Yes. Yes, I am.
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) OK.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) OK, thank you.
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) You're welcome, dear.
(SOUNDBITE OF TELEPHONE RINGING)
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) Boy, this is popular. Hello. Talk to a Jew. You're on the air.
(LAUGHTER)
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) I'd like to know why Mr. Rose isn't wearing a beanie.
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) You heard the question? It's about the alleged beanie, whatever she's referring...
FISHER: (As Morton Rose) Well, I think the caller's referring to the yarmulke that's usually worn on the head by very religious Jews or when you're - when we're in the synagogue.
WILLARD: (As Jerry Hubbard) And it's when you're in the synagogue that you wear the ones without the propeller.
MULL: (As Barth Gimble) Jerry.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: "Fernwood 2 Night" wasn't a hit, but it was a cult sensation. A year later, Norman Lear altered the setting and upgraded the premise to a national talk show called "America 2 Night." Carol Burnett, Burt Lancaster and Charlton Heston eagerly came aboard, and by the time "America 2 Night" was over in 1978, Mull's career was launched. He appeared as himself in the 1980s revival specials by the Smothers Brothers, hired not in spite of his push-the-envelope comic approach but because of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SMOTHERS BROTHERS COMEDY HOUR")
MULL: Good evening. The fact that you have chosen to watch "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" this evening is proof enough for me that you are among the best and brightest of the American people. You demand the truth, and why shouldn't you? Openness, frankness and candor have always flourished on the Smothers Brothers stage. It is in that spirit that I now say to you what I must. It's time to lay to rest this entire brothers business. They are not brothers.
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: It has all just been a big lie, an elaborate masquerade, if you will. And why? Well, quite simply, because 30 years ago, people took a pretty dim view of two grown men living together...
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: ...Sharing a common lifestyle, dressing alike and singing children's songs.
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: That was then. Thank God now is now, and we have finally come to see that the true measure of a man is not what he does behind closed doors but rather what he says he was doing.
(LAUGHTER)
MULL: Join me, then - won't you? - in accepting and enjoying Mr. Dick Smothers and his lovely wife, Tommy.
(LAUGHTER)
BIANCULLI: From that point on, Martin Mull made a career out of being hired for TV shows and movies by comics, writers and directors who treasured his particularly dry and offbeat sense of humor. Garry Shandling had him on "Larry Sanders." Roseanne Barr hired him for several seasons of her hit ABC sitcom "Roseanne," playing her boss, who was gay and whose partner was played by none other than Fred Willard.
On film, Mull worked opposite Robin Williams in "Mrs. Doubtfire" and Michael Keaton in "Mr. Mom" and co-starred in the comic version of "Clue." Ellen DeGeneres and Bonnie Hunt hired him for their sitcoms. So did Julia Louis-Dreyfus for "Veep," in which her White House occupant, Selina Meyer, consulted a foul-mouthed veteran political operative named Bob to advise her and her staff. Bob, for several episodes, was played by Martin Mull.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "VEEP")
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS: (As Selina Meyer) Bob, what do you think? Are we going to win this thing - I mean, really honestly, your true gut?
MULL: (As Bob Bradley) Well, Madam President, I've got big [expletive], but neither one of them are crystal.
LOUIS-DREYFUS: (As Selina Meyer) Oh, darn it. Darn it.
MULL: (As Bob Bradley) This reminds me of something that Dick Nixon used to say to Henry Kissinger, back when that tricky son of a [expletive] was trying to get us out of that messy business called Vietnam.
LOUIS-DREYFUS: (As Selina Meyer) Vietnam, right.
MULL: (As Bob Bradley) He would say, Henry, I can lead a horse to water, but I can't milk it.
(LAUGHTER)
LOUIS-DREYFUS: (As Selina Meyer) Can't milk it.
MULL: (As Bob Bradley) I know.
LOUIS-DREYFUS: (As Selina Meyer) I don't even know what that means. I love it.
BIANCULLI: That was in 2016, when even on the looser standards of HBO, Martin Mull could swing for the comic fences, which he had done for his entire career. Back in 1995, the gay characters played by Mull and Willard were married on "Roseanne," nearly 20 years before "Modern Family," another ABC sitcom, married its gay couple, Cam and Mitch, to great fanfare. Also back in 1995, Martin Mull released a book called "Martin Mull: Paintings, Drawings, And Words," and had a solo exhibition at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. That's when Terry spoke with Martin Mull.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
TERRY GROSS: You've said that to say that art school changed my life would be a vast understatement. It created it. How did art school change your life?
MULL: Well, gee, let's see. I'm sure that's probably more literate than it need be, but I actually do feel very much that way. I grew up in northern Ohio in a very small, little agrarian community and was wearing, you know, jeans and muddy boots to school. And then I moved to Connecticut for two years, and all of a sudden, everyone was in a Mercedes and in a crewneck sweater that cost more than my father made a year. And then finally I went to art school again, and all of a sudden, everyone was back in jeans and muddy boots. And I thought, well, that's more like it. And I realized that I could be an adult in that world, and the kind of questions that had kind of kept me an outsider prior to that were now not only acceptable but necessary. And it seemed like I actually blossomed at the time. I felt like I became alive then.
GROSS: So is there any connection to be made between your paintings and your comic persona?
MULL: Well, I would have to say that my comic persona paid for almost all of the paint used in the making of these works. And if that sounds like a flip answer, it's actually more true than you might imagine.
GROSS: So you weren't making money selling paintings.
MULL: No, not for a long time. And initially, my forays into show business were simply to fund my art that - while I was in college during the folk music scare of the '60s, when that stuff almost caught on, I, like everyone else, was playing guitar and, once I got my master's degree, realized there was nothing but - there was no doctorate. There was nothing but earning a decent living and facing the Vietnam draft at that point. I had to figure out something to do with myself, so I started playing music full time. That led to singing, where - I'm a dreadful singer, so that led to talking a lot. And all of this has been kind of a comedy of errors and a series of delightful accidents that I've been able to put a roof over my family doing what I do.
GROSS: So how did you go about fashioning a persona for yourself?
MULL: Well, part of the - my performance persona, I think, was fashioned after other performers and especially other performers who seemed to be up the creek without a paddle, the ones that were totally at a loss. By that, I would mean, like, very local radio or television personalities. Hence, when I did "Fernwood 2 Night," the host of that show was one of these people who is an underequipped, overachieving performer. That was the kind of persona I wanted to go for.
GROSS: Overequipped, underachieving.
MULL: Yes.
GROSS: What do you mean?
MULL: No, you have it just the opposite. It was underequipped and overachieving.
GROSS: Oh, somebody who's getting by on very little talent.
MULL: Very - someone squeezing by on very little talent and trying to make the most of it. And, gee, that may be close to the truth.
GROSS: You also developed this kind of, like, smug, oily public, you know, persona in some of your performances.
MULL: Well, that would come hand in glove with what I just said.
GROSS: Right.
MULL: The underequipped but overachieving and refusing to - just undaunted in his ability to ever admit to his failures.
GROSS: And there's also the sense of, in some of the performances, the really square person who thinks he's really hip.
MULL: Exactly, or that he's not only hip but a major success even when he's not. I recall once there was a concert when - put it this way, crowd control was not one of our problems...
GROSS: (Laughter) Right.
MULL: ...Where I think there were only about eight or 10 people in the audience that would've held about 25,000 or something. And my persona onstage - I immediately said something to the audience about how grateful I was that we did this by invite only, and I certainly didn't want the rest of that riffraff here. And I'm glad you all could show up. And it's sort of like taking that - making a virtue of your vice.
BIANCULLI: Martin Mull speaking to Terry Gross in 1995 - more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MARTIN MULL AND FABULOUS FURNITURE'S "DUELING TUBAS")
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Let's return to Terry's 1995 interview with actor, comic and painter Martin Mull, who died last week at age 80. His first acting job was playing a despicable, abusive husband on Norman Lear's 1970s syndicated series "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," which poked fun at soap operas like "Peyton Place." Terry asked him how he got that job.
MULL: I had gone out to California on the heels of a divorce with a couple of guitars and a suitcase and had been a big fan of "Mary Hartman" and went to see Norman Lear's organization about the possibility of writing for them 'cause I had, at that point, fancied myself capable of doing that and was told that there were no openings and forget it. But I did meet Norman. And then six months later, the part of Garth Gimble, the wife abuser, came up. And they asked me to come in and read for it, and lo and behold, I got the part.
And it was somewhat terrifying in that the reason I wanted to be connected with the show was I thought it was absolutely hilarious and that what work I had done as a comedian onstage might stand me in fairly good stead to at least cut my teeth as an actor doing something funny. Unfortunately, the role I got of a wife abuser - I personally, as I sit here right now and at the time as well, find nothing whatsoever amusing about wife abuse. So it was really learning to act a little bit by being thrown in the icy waters.
GROSS: So how did you get around this?
MULL: I looked desperately for anything to try to take the focus off that which I was and that which I was doing. There was one scene, in fact, when I actually even had to - at least the camera had to think that I had actually struck this woman. And it was around Christmastime, and I grabbed for a little, like, papier-mache Frosty the Snowman to use as a weapon or anything like that to try to take the onus off it and the sting off it. But I recall at the end of that scene being in a state where I actually had to just go for a very, very long walk. It was horrible.
GROSS: "Fernwood 2 Night" was, I think, one of the early examples of television mocking itself.
MULL: At its lowest.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Well, TV mocking its own programs - the cheesy, small-town, amateur version of "The Tonight Show."
MULL: Exactly.
GROSS: And why don't you describe your character as the host?
MULL: His name was Barth Gimble. He would wear lime-colored sharkskin suits and atrocious shirts, Hawaiian shirts, bleached his hair, trimmed his mustache down like Don Ameche and basically thought, as far as he was concerned, that he was God's gift to the airwaves. And my co-host was Fred Willard, who is probably one of the best improvisational minds of our or any generation. And between the two of us, we basically set television back a quantum leap.
GROSS: Well, after, you know, mocking TV on "Fernwood 2 Night" and "Mary Hartman" and everything, you ended up where you are now, on "Roseanne" - you know, one of the top-rated shows for years, the top-rated show - playing Leon, who - you got hired to be her boss.
MULL: Right.
GROSS: How did you get on "Roseanne"?
MULL: Well, at that time, Roseanne and Tom Arnold, who was her husband, lived a few doors away. I had known Rosie for a couple of years prior to that. We had done some local talk shows, and were just kind of friendly as we met each other on the street kind of thing. He mentioned that there was a possibility with "Roseanne" - like, would I like to come on and play Roseanne's boss? And since at that point, I was not on a series, and it was the number one show on television, that was probably one of the dumbest questions that has ever been asked me. You know, I just was basically, when? Where? How much? I'm there, so I took the job without even another thought.
He then mentioned that there was going to be something unique about my character - in this case, that I was gay - and I am not in real life, but I thought a bit about this, and my real concern, however, was that people from the gay community might feel very short-shrifted because, you know, there are so many capable actors that could have played the part, and here they go and get a straight guy to play this, and that I could take a lot of heat and a lot of flack for that. But on the contrary, we've actually won awards for the portrayal of Leon Carp, and so I feel very good about that.
GROSS: Now, I want to go back to 1980, which I think is the year that you were diagnosed with terminal cancer.
MULL: Yeah.
GROSS: I guess they were wrong.
MULL: Yeah. They were, and the Marcus Welby Award for Bedside Manner...
GROSS: (Laughter).
MULL: ...Has to go to this bozo from UCLA, who called me up and gave me two years to live over the phone...
GROSS: Oh, no.
MULL: ...Which, right there, it occurred to me could be cause of death.
GROSS: Wow.
MULL: You know, phone call - cause of death. You know, that's what the autopsy would have to list. I mean, to get this kind of news over the phone - I don't know. And they were all set to inject me with some sort of cow bacillus, something that, you know, Elsie Borden is running around with out in her limbs, and you know the kind of spots they have on their skin. So it turned out that actually, my dermatologist had gotten all of it, but it was, at that point, diagnosed as terminal melanoma and, needless to say, gave me great pause. It also tended to shift my gears rather dramatically, in terms of where I was going to focus my energies.
GROSS: So how did you change gears after you were given this prognosis?
MULL: Well, painting became the most important thing in my life at that point, and...
GROSS: Why?
MULL: Because I realized it was probably the truest thing to me, that it was the area where I wanted to do the most work. I also shifted my - my marital situation changed. I shortly thereafter remarried, my wife Wendy, whom I have a lovely 9-year-old daughter, and just kind of got my ducks in a row and put my values where I think they should be.
GROSS: Now, have you, over the years, showed the people who you worked with in show business your paintings? And I can think of a couple of reasons why. One is so that they could be very impressed with your work.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Another is so they could just learn more about you, and still a third is some people in show business are very wealthy, and maybe they'd buy some.
MULL: Well, No. 3 would - I would reverse the order (laughter). The nice thing about some of the people in show business is they are kind of depression-proof. They do have this kind of slush fund that allows for the buying of art. Steve Martin, whom I mentioned earlier, is a dear old friend and also one of the preeminent collectors of contemporary art in this country today, has been more than kind toward me. I think over the years, he's purchased about 19 of my works, so I'm very honored about that, and Norman Lear, as well, has purchased some works. They've been very, very kind and very supportive.
GROSS: That's great. Well, Martin Mull, I want to thank you a lot for talking with us.
MULL: My pleasure. Thank you.
BIANCULLI: Martin Mull, speaking with Terry Gross in 1995. He died last week at age 80. After a break, we'll remember screenwriter Robert Towne, whose classic screenplays included "Chinatown," "Shampoo," and "The Last Detail." He died last week at age 89. And film critic Justin Chang reviews the new horror movie prequel "A Quiet Place: Day One." Here's Martin Mull performing "The Time Of My Life," a song from the 2018 film "A Futile And Stupid Gesture." I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE TIME OF MY LIFE")
MULL: (Singing) If I woke up to find that it's all been a joke and I was deaf, dumb and blind and homeless and broke, I hope I've learned not to be too concerned. It isn't as if I died. But let's say I had, would that be all that bad? Hey, I've had a hell of a ride. I've had the time of my life. It's all been milk and honey. The walk in the park, the stroll...
(SOUNDBITE OF HERB ALPERT AND THE TIJUANA BRASS' "SPANISH FLEA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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