0:00

Hello my fine friends, it's me

0:02

Richard Herring. I am powered by

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ACAS+. That's me personally. I just

0:06

eat ACAS+. Three times a day

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and it keeps me going. You can

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join ACAS+. Get lots

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of benefits. Google ACAS+. It's

0:15

pretty pimpsy. We're

0:17

still off on tour. Lots of gigs

0:19

coming up. The remaining ones

0:22

in 2023 are in Nottingham on the 23rd

0:24

of November with Scott and Gemma Bennett and

0:26

Lloyd Griffith from Ted Lasso and much more.

0:29

26th November Justin Morehouse and Katie

0:31

Mulgrew at the Lowry in Salford.

0:34

Not many tickets left for that one. And

0:36

2nd December I'm talking to Ian Rankin and

0:38

somebody else at the Edinburgh Queen's Hall. Would

0:40

love to see you at one of those.

0:42

Or in the new year loads of great

0:44

gigs coming up including Simon Munry at Leicester

0:47

on the 25th of February. We've got Tommy

0:49

Tiernan coming up. We've got Adam

0:51

Buxton, Armando Iannucci, Mary Beard,

0:54

Maisie Adam. I could go on but I will

0:56

not. And also during the month of November, remember

0:58

you can pick up Can I Have My Ball

1:00

Back on Kindle and I think any e-book

1:03

service for just 99p.

1:05

If you enjoy these podcasts why not

1:07

just buy that book for

1:09

99p and don't even bother reading it.

1:13

It doesn't sound like it's a great thing for

1:15

it to go down to 99p but apparently it's

1:17

a much coveted thing and obviously you

1:19

do sell a lot more at that price and

1:21

they're e-books. So it's good

1:24

if you buy it. So if you... I would read it

1:26

because it's good too. You can also get it as an

1:28

audiobook and a book. If

1:31

you want to spend full price on it or

1:33

one of your Audible credits. Christmas

1:35

is coming up. Buy

1:37

tickets to my tours or one

1:39

of my books. Or

1:41

just, you know, something your family

1:43

actually want because they don't know

1:45

who I am. Anyway let's sit

1:47

back relax and enjoy Rohanastapur. richardharing.com/Rohanastapur

1:50

for all those tour details and

1:52

I hope you enjoy whatever

1:54

you've got to listen to now. Hi

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3:05

situations. Welcome

3:11

to another Rahalos The Fur. I am

3:13

delighted to be joined by somebody best

3:15

known for being the truck driver

3:18

in the jerk fantastic film. Rob

3:20

Reiner. How are you doing, Rob? Good.

3:23

How are you? What else? You

3:25

pull that credit right out of your

3:27

ass. I did. Do you remember much

3:29

about that appearance on the uncredited? Yes,

3:31

I do. I mean, this was a

3:33

film that was Steve Martin. Yeah. My

3:36

father directed it. And

3:38

I played a truck driver. Steve was

3:40

trying to hitch a ride. And

3:43

he flags me down.

3:47

And I say, how far? He

3:49

says, I'm going to wherever he was going.

3:52

And he says, how far are you going?

3:54

And I said, well, I'm just going to

3:56

the end of this fence here.

3:58

And he says, OK. I'll take

4:00

a ride and he jumps in and I drive

4:02

like two feet with him. That's good. I remember.

4:05

I do remember it. I didn't know it was

4:07

you until I did the research though. Well,

4:11

people will know you from many different

4:13

things. I would argue possibly from being

4:16

a director of some fantastic films. I would

4:18

say you're a very highly rated director, but

4:20

I would still say you're an underrated director,

4:22

Rob, for my money. I

4:25

mean, let's up my rating. I

4:28

think so. I said

4:30

when I was new, I was going to interview

4:32

you that you interviewed what I considered to be

4:34

the best film of all time. I talked to

4:37

Chris, my producer, who said he thought you directed

4:39

what he considered to be the best film of

4:41

all time and two other people who also agreed.

4:43

We all chose four different films. So

4:47

my favorite film is Spinal Tap, which I think

4:49

is the greatest comedy film that's ever been, but

4:51

also any film. Chris

4:54

loved The Princess Bride. I

4:56

think my wife chose When Harry Met Sally and

4:58

Stand By Me, which I think is your favorite

5:00

with someone else's choice as well. Yeah,

5:03

no, no, I mean, it's my

5:05

favorite only because it means so much to

5:07

me. I don't know that it's the best

5:09

of the films I've made, but it personally

5:11

means a lot to me. But

5:13

since your film, your favorite film

5:15

is This is Spinal Tap, we're

5:18

making a sequel. How are you? Yeah,

5:21

yeah, we're going to start shooting in

5:24

the end of February and

5:26

everybody's back. Paul McCartney

5:28

is joining us and Elton John

5:31

and a few other surprises. Garth

5:33

Brooks. Oh,

5:36

well, I look forward to that. It is a

5:38

film that I got. I'm a touring comedian and

5:40

I'm sure all comedians and musicians say this to

5:42

you. It's a film you can watch on tour

5:44

and see a lot of

5:46

touring in whatever level you're at.

5:48

I'm also working on some I've been working

5:51

on some improvised films as well. So I

5:53

just wondered what you what do you

5:55

think the secret to putting together

5:57

a film that is largely or not?

6:00

entirely improvised is what the best.

6:02

The the the only thing that

6:04

matters is that you get

6:06

people who are good at

6:08

improvising. You have to get

6:10

people who feel comfortable doing that. And

6:13

who's you know,

6:16

you know, they they if

6:19

you don't get those people, you're you know,

6:21

you need the horses, horses to

6:23

do it. If you get people who can improvise,

6:25

and they're funny and whatever, then then you're off

6:27

to the races. Cool. That's good. My favorite one

6:30

of my favorite bits, I was thinking is something

6:32

from you, which is the

6:34

cricket bat scene where Ian struggling

6:36

to come up with why he's got the cricket bat

6:38

and he had a sense of affectation. It's one of

6:40

that's one of the things that I quote the most

6:42

than that. That is you improvising, presumably.

6:44

So thank you. Absolutely. He

6:47

was searching for what I asked him about.

6:49

I said, you have this cricket bat houses.

6:51

What do you use? Why do you

6:54

have a decent? Well, it's it's an

6:56

easy couldn't, they couldn't find the word

6:58

and I said affectation. Yeah. And

7:02

it's the kind of thing you can't you couldn't

7:04

script. But that's what I love about improvising is

7:06

the exchanges that come up are so natural and

7:08

you couldn't script them or explain why

7:10

they were funny, but they are funny. But of course,

7:12

that and do you

7:14

feel that this I feel with final tap, and I won't

7:16

talk about this too long. I know we're going to talk

7:18

about your podcast. But

7:21

there's you know, what makes it work is,

7:23

is how real it is.

7:26

Is there is there's stuff

7:28

and I know there's hours and hours of footage

7:30

that you didn't use. Is there stuff that you

7:32

regret not being in the film? And is there

7:34

anything that you look at it now and think,

7:36

Oh, I wish that scene hadn't been in the

7:39

in the film. No, everything that's in there is

7:41

something I wanted. Yeah, we got so much footage.

7:43

Yeah. And you know, the whole thing is to

7:45

try to tell the story. I mean, you know,

7:47

you want to get a sense of the tour

7:49

that we had and, and the characters and tell

7:52

a story. And what you want

7:54

to do, especially with a comedy, you

7:56

don't want to overstay your welcome. I mean, you

7:58

know, this is a stand up. know, you

8:00

leave them wanting you go off on a

8:02

big lap and get out, you know, so

8:04

the worst thing you can do is just

8:06

load it up with you know, even if

8:08

they're funny things, they may be tangents and

8:11

things that take away from the from

8:13

the drive of the film. And

8:15

did you anticipate with it to what how

8:18

influential would it be because I think it has been certainly

8:20

here in the UK as well, but I know in America,

8:22

I think, you know, I

8:24

worked on on the hour which came to

8:26

day to day, which was Alan Partridge and

8:29

all those guys started Armando Unucci and

8:31

I know how much Armando was influenced

8:33

by spinal tap and did you anticipate

8:35

that it would would

8:37

have this kind of influence and still be

8:39

all these years later people wanting to think

8:41

we never did I mean, you know, we

8:43

wind up in the national American

8:46

National Film Registry, which is you know,

8:48

it's like bizarre that that happened. I

8:50

mean, when it first when

8:53

we first previewed it, we previewed it

8:55

in a in a theater in Dallas,

8:57

Texas. And the people they

8:59

didn't know what the heck they were looking at.

9:02

And they came up to me afterwards and said,

9:04

I don't understand why would you make a movie

9:06

about a band that nobody's ever

9:08

heard of? And and they're

9:10

so bad. Why would you do that? And

9:13

I said, you should make a movie about

9:15

the Beatles or the Rolling Stones don't make

9:17

a movie. I said, Well, it's just but

9:22

over the years people people got it

9:24

and yeah, I like it. Yeah,

9:26

it was a slow it was a slow burn wasn't

9:28

it and so I hadn't princess bride,

9:30

which is my friend my producer's favorite

9:32

film. You did remake the

9:35

Princess Bride in lockdown or

9:37

you're involved with that. It was

9:39

made as a home movie, which is pretty no we

9:41

didn't we didn't remake it. What

9:43

we did was during the run up to

9:45

the I think it was a 2016 election.

9:51

We we did a

9:53

reading of it on online, you know,

9:55

me reading and

9:57

we cast people to play the parts to raise

10:00

money for Democrats

10:03

in Wisconsin. So

10:05

that's what we did. I mean, it wasn't a remake

10:07

or anything. No, but it's

10:09

a whole, you know, the whole film is

10:12

done with different characters. Yeah, we had all

10:14

the actors. As a matter of fact, my

10:16

father played the Peter Falk

10:19

character. And

10:22

I played the little boy, the

10:25

sick boy in the bed. So it

10:27

was kind of cool because my father, you

10:29

know, passed away a few years ago. And

10:32

the last thing he ever did, the last

10:35

acting, the last words he ever

10:37

said on camera to

10:39

me, when I said, you

10:41

know, can you come back and read it to

10:43

me tomorrow? And he said, as you wish, the

10:46

last thing he said, Amen. means

10:49

I love you, you know, yeah, that

10:51

was, it was pretty emotional. Oh, man,

10:53

that's that's beautiful. That's really lovely. And

10:57

as an actor as well, you, you've

11:00

sort of been in everything. I mean, I was

11:02

when I talked to Harry Shearer on this podcast,

11:04

I was sort of amazed to find out that

11:06

he'd been an abbot and Costello, which didn't seem

11:09

possible when two words was collide like that. But

11:12

again, you started acting very young. So you were

11:14

in back Harry, Harry

11:16

started when he was like, a kid.

11:18

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he was acting with

11:20

Jack Benny. I mean, he did all

11:22

kinds of stuff from when he

11:24

was, you know, less under 10 years old. Yeah.

11:26

But even, you know, with you, it's sort of

11:28

feels like you shouldn't

11:31

be in Batman, you're in Batman,

11:33

the original TV series Batman, right?

11:35

Yes, I

11:37

played a room

11:40

service guy, bringing food

11:42

to the Penguin, who was played

11:45

by Burgess Meredith. That's right. Yeah,

11:47

it's an early part for me.

11:50

But it's subsequently been in pretty

11:53

much every one of my favorite comedies

11:55

work with Larry Gary Sandling, both

11:57

think of the Gary Sandling show and on

11:59

Larry Sandling. You've been in The Simpsons, you've been

12:01

in Curb Yours, you've been in 30 Rock, you've been

12:04

in Frasier. I don't think that was in

12:07

Frasier. Oh, it's

12:09

down on IMDb as you. I

12:12

don't remember it. But that's more the one.

12:14

I don't remember being in Frasier. Okay, well

12:16

maybe that's a mistake. I got that one

12:18

wrong. Okay, but the others... Yeah, the others

12:21

I've been in. Yeah, it's an incredible acting

12:23

career as well as directing career. And

12:27

again, in the UK, we don't know this one so

12:29

much because we had Till Death Us Do Part and

12:31

you were in All in the Family,

12:33

which was the American version. Yeah, All in

12:35

the Family was based on Till Death Us

12:37

Do Part, the Alf Garnett. And

12:41

I think that the

12:43

British show was even

12:45

more cutting-edge than All in the

12:47

Family was. And at the time when All in the

12:50

Family came on, that was as cutting-edge

12:52

as there ever was on American

12:54

television. Yeah, we had the... I

12:56

mean, it famously had the first

12:58

toilet flush on prime-time American TV

13:00

and that was a big deal.

13:03

That's right. But Alf Garnett used to go after

13:05

the Queen. He

13:08

would trash the Queen, which is really

13:10

in Great Britain that you just don't

13:12

do that. So

13:15

anyway, look, I know... Let's

13:18

talk about your new podcast. Things must be

13:20

going badly for you, first of all, Rob,

13:22

because you've turned to podcasting. I've

13:25

been podcasting for 15 years, which will let you know how badly

13:27

my career has been going. But it's

13:29

a hit podcast. It's already doing incredibly

13:31

well. There are three episodes out as

13:34

we speak. And we're actually

13:36

talking... Are we talking on the anniversary

13:38

of the 60th anniversary? Yes, this is

13:40

the 60th anniversary of the assassination of

13:42

John Kennedy. Yeah, so you've done

13:44

a podcast, 10-part podcast, three

13:47

parts of that so far called Who Killed JFK?

13:50

It's something that obviously has been discussed

13:52

a lot and there's been a lot of

13:54

theories. Some of them debunked and

13:56

some of them not. What's drawn you to

13:59

this? subjects and

14:01

why do you want to podcast

14:03

about it? Well, anyone who was

14:05

alive at that time, which I

14:07

was, you'll never

14:09

ever forget where you

14:12

are when you heard that news. It

14:14

just stays with you. I was in

14:16

my high school physics class and a

14:19

student walked in, whispered in the teacher's

14:21

ear and he turned to us

14:23

and he said, I have some terrible news. And

14:25

he told us what had happened. And

14:28

everybody was shocked. We were

14:30

all sent home from school. We

14:33

went to our televisions and we

14:35

watched nonstop. It was a massive

14:39

national trauma that hit

14:42

the entire country. We

14:45

were all unified in that traumatic

14:47

experience. And I actually saw on

14:49

live television, the man

14:52

who was accused of killing

14:54

President Kennedy, R.B. Oswald was

14:56

himself murdered by this local

14:59

mob-connected nightclub owner named Jack Ruby.

15:02

So it never left me. I

15:04

mean, if you think about a loved

15:07

one being murdered and

15:10

you don't know why and you don't know who did

15:12

it, you're just never going

15:14

to rest until you find out the answer.

15:17

You want to know the answer. So those

15:19

of us who are

15:21

alive at the time and who were traumatized by

15:23

it, want to know

15:26

the truth about what happened. And

15:28

so over 60 years, you've

15:30

seen drips and drabs of

15:33

truths that have come out, little

15:35

bits of evidence here and

15:37

there. There's a news report about

15:39

this and about that. And

15:41

unless you're following it, unless you are

15:44

interested in it, you don't put all

15:46

those pieces together. They don't mean much

15:49

in a disparate form like that.

15:51

So what I tried to do with this 10-part

15:54

podcast, and I'm hosted with

15:57

Soledad O'Brien, who's an award-winning

15:59

journalist. She just got

16:01

actually got inducted into the Journalism

16:04

Hall of Fame. Wow. We

16:07

put it all together. We take all

16:09

the information that we've accumulated over 60

16:11

years and put it

16:14

in one place so people can really

16:16

understand what exactly happened

16:18

that day. And by

16:20

the end, by the 10th episode,

16:22

we'd lay out exactly who

16:24

we think was involved, how they did

16:26

it, and we named

16:28

shooters. And we also named positions

16:30

where the shooters were. Now, we

16:33

can't be 100% sure, but the one thing we can be 100% sure is it

16:36

was a conspiracy. There's

16:41

no question about that. There

16:43

is no question about that. If

16:45

you take all the information together,

16:48

there is no way on this

16:51

God's earth that that one person,

16:53

Lee Harvey Oswald, shot

16:56

the president from the

16:59

sixth floor. And I'll give you one hint

17:01

because I'm not going to tell you. You

17:03

have to listen to the whole thing to

17:05

get the foundation, to understand the whole foundation

17:07

of it and why we come to the

17:09

conclusion we do. I'm not just going to

17:11

throw it out there because you'll say, oh,

17:13

that's crackpot. It's like everybody else is a

17:15

crackpot. I'll give you one

17:17

hint because we approach it

17:19

like a murder mystery, which is what

17:21

it is. We call it the greatest

17:24

murder mystery in American history. And we

17:26

approach it as detectives to look at

17:28

what happened. You look at the

17:31

suspects, who had the motive. You

17:34

look at the forensics. You look

17:36

at the situation surrounding it that

17:38

caused it. And the

17:41

one thing I can tell you, and

17:43

if you think about this, and you have

17:45

to really, the first shot

17:48

from the sixth floor of the

17:50

Texas School Book Depository, which is

17:52

where the Warren Commission said the

17:55

shots came from, they

17:57

said three shots came

17:59

from. the book depository. The

18:02

first shot missed

18:05

the entire motorcade. And

18:08

that's all you need to know. Why

18:11

would a shark shooter whose

18:13

job it is or who's what

18:15

he thinks he's going to do

18:17

is kill the president and he's

18:19

a brilliant marksman because they

18:22

only had three shots. The

18:24

first shot misses the entire

18:26

motorcade. That's

18:28

a good point. I'm asking you that

18:30

question because we're going to answer why

18:32

that was in the context

18:34

of the thing. The other thing you

18:37

have to know is there were two, they

18:39

said there were three shots. The first one missed and

18:41

then there were two shots remaining. One

18:44

of the shots we know was

18:47

the death shot that killed the president.

18:49

It is head and it blew

18:52

the brains. I was horrific.

18:56

The second shot, that was the last shot. The

18:58

second shot is the

19:00

one that blows the whole idea

19:02

of a single gunman apart,

19:04

completely apart. And they call that

19:06

the single bullet theory. And

19:09

in the Warren Commission, their

19:11

theory is that from the

19:13

sixth floor of a building, a

19:16

shot entered the president's

19:19

back six to

19:21

eight inches below his neck,

19:24

traveled upward, came out

19:27

his throat, made

19:29

a turn and

19:32

Governor Connolly was sitting in front

19:34

of him, made a turn, then

19:36

hit Connolly in the ribs, broke

19:39

his ribs, exited

19:41

there, made another turn, went

19:43

into his wrist, broke his

19:45

wrists, made another turn

19:48

and then wound

19:50

up in his thigh and was

19:52

recovered in the hospital

19:54

and it's on record

19:57

in the Warren Commission and in the National

19:59

Archives. and it's a pristine bullet.

20:02

Yeah, I believe that if you

20:04

believe that that one gun did

20:06

all that then you can okay

20:08

then it's a single single shooter

20:10

up there, but it's ridiculous. It's

20:13

ridiculous on its surface and

20:15

so then it opens the door to

20:18

there were others involved. Then

20:20

we get into who was involved how

20:22

they were involved. What was the situation

20:24

that allowed those forces to

20:27

come together? And you'll hear

20:29

it in the podcast. Yeah, well, it's

20:31

fascinating already and you know, yeah, I

20:33

mean you make very good points about

20:35

that and it feels at the

20:37

very best and I know this

20:40

is just early doors. All

20:42

you could say is that the government,

20:44

the CIA didn't want to create a situation where

20:49

there was any doubt about, you know, any question

20:51

about what happened. So just made up a

20:53

story and hope they could put it to bed. And

20:57

we have proof of that. There's

20:59

a phone call between J Edgar Hoover

21:01

and Lyndon Johnson who is the

21:04

new president and in

21:06

that phone call they talk

21:08

about we've got

21:10

to make sure that we don't have a lot

21:12

of investigations here. We don't want this to get

21:15

out of control. We have to make

21:17

sure that it's focused on

21:19

Oswald and in the

21:21

conversation they actually say they

21:24

talk about they, they shoot it, you know, they

21:26

don't say one way. We've got

21:29

to make sure that it's Oswald, that everybody

21:31

knows it's Oswald. Then there's a very famous

21:33

memo that came from the deputy

21:36

attorney general that said the public

21:38

has to be made comfortable

21:40

and rest and made assured that

21:42

Lee Harvey Oswald was the only

21:44

gunman. They actually say that and

21:46

this is a memo that was

21:48

sent two, three days after

21:50

the assassination. So there

21:53

you have it. I'm

21:57

Jess. And I'm Jen and we're the hosts of the beautiful...

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subscribers. Some shows may have ads. I

23:26

mean, how do you think they thought they

23:28

would get away with it? Just with it just the time when

23:31

no one, because obviously a lot of the questions

23:33

came down the line and you sort of talk about how

23:35

you saw comedians and people

23:37

discussing it 10, 15 years later, whatever. Do

23:40

you think they just thought, I mean, it

23:42

was so unlikely just to go away. So all

23:45

of the autopsy reports get burned and

23:48

the folks at the PD. The original autopsy report

23:50

was burned and then they reissued it. I mean,

23:52

it's a long story. Yeah.

23:56

But here's the thing. Two things.

23:58

One is. America

24:00

had just with our allies

24:03

had just defeated the Nazis

24:05

a few years earlier. We were the

24:07

good guys. We defeated

24:09

fascism. People had trust in

24:12

their government and so

24:14

they were going to trust whatever the government said.

24:16

There were two investigations done into

24:19

the Kennedy assassination by

24:21

the government. One

24:23

was the Warren Commission and then many

24:26

years later, over 10 years later, the

24:29

House Select Committee on assassinations did

24:31

another investigation. Both

24:33

of those investigations were 180 degrees

24:35

opposite from each other. The Warren

24:37

Commission said it was a single

24:39

gunman. The House Select

24:41

Committee said it was a conspiracy,

24:45

but both of the investigations were

24:47

flawed and the reason the public

24:50

never quite understood how it worked

24:52

is because in the Warren investigation

24:54

there was a man named Alan

24:56

Dulles. Alan Dulles was

24:58

the former head of the

25:00

CIA. He was known as

25:02

the godfather of the CIA.

25:05

Alan Dulles was fired by

25:07

Kennedy after the disastrous Bay

25:09

of Pigs invasion where they

25:11

trained Cuban exiles to try

25:13

to take Cuba back after

25:16

Castro took over. So Alan Dulles

25:18

was put in charge of

25:20

any information that would involve the

25:23

CIA in any kind of extra

25:25

judicial killings that would get into

25:28

the Warren Commission. So there was

25:30

no information linking

25:34

the CIA to Lee Harvey Oswald that got

25:36

into the Warren Commission. They said they

25:38

basically had heard of him. They knew

25:40

about him, but it was very tenuous.

25:43

What we find out many, many decades

25:45

later is they had

25:48

a huge file on Lee Harvey

25:50

Oswald. They opened a 201 file

25:52

four years before the assassination

25:54

and there were thousands of

25:57

documents that link Oswald

25:59

to the CIA. There's

26:01

that that's one thing. The house

26:03

investigation and I'm getting into the weeds

26:06

here, but that's what we get into

26:08

in the in the podcast and

26:10

it's done over a 10 a

26:12

10 episode series. So

26:15

you'll you know, we give it to you

26:17

in bits and pieces. But the second investigation,

26:19

the House Select Committee, there was

26:21

another man and this is a man you've

26:23

never heard of. American people have never heard

26:25

of them is a

26:27

man named George Joanidis. George

26:30

Joanidis was also a CIA

26:32

agent, a former CIA

26:34

agent. He was in charge of making

26:36

sure none of the appropriate

26:39

information from the CIA would get

26:41

into that investigation. And what

26:43

we found out years after that is

26:46

not only was he a former

26:48

CIA agent, but he was the

26:50

counter intelligence agent who set up

26:52

a program to develop

26:55

assets, one of

26:57

which was Lee Harvey Osbert. Yeah,

26:59

there was that connection there. So all

27:01

of these things will explain

27:04

and it'll come out. And

27:06

hopefully people will be at least

27:08

a little more satisfied than

27:10

they have been up till now. Well, yeah, I

27:12

mean, it's sort of it's promised a lot. I

27:14

hope it does deliver it seems to be, as

27:16

you say, it is building up nicely and slowly.

27:18

And it does the problem with

27:20

of course, with any of these things, and especially now,

27:23

I mean, it's 30 or 40 years

27:26

ago, it wouldn't have seemed so weird. But

27:28

obviously, there are so many conspiracy theories and

27:30

so and so many of them are certainly

27:32

too key. And some of them

27:34

are just, you know, Q and

27:36

on, obviously, well, you hit the

27:38

U.N. nail on the head because

27:40

the very words conspiracy

27:43

theory, you know,

27:45

conjures up tinfoil hats and

27:47

Q and on and crackpots. Yeah.

27:49

But the reality is, there

27:52

are actual conspiracies that actually happen.

27:54

And so it is very difficult

27:56

in this day and age to

27:59

try to through something that

28:01

we can prove certain

28:03

things happen. We

28:06

know certain things happen. And so it's

28:09

very tough to push that through, especially

28:11

in a world of disinformation and AI

28:13

and all that stuff. But

28:15

in our podcast, we only

28:17

interview experts. We only interview

28:19

people who were there. We

28:22

only interview forensics

28:24

experts, historians. We

28:28

interview CIA

28:30

agents, secret service agents

28:32

who were there. They're

28:35

not wild, wacky

28:37

people with crazy ideas. These

28:39

are legitimate people who have

28:41

been studying this and serious

28:43

people have been doing it

28:45

for 60 years, for

28:48

many years. But if you

28:50

are to prove or

28:52

if the government or the

28:54

CIA was involved heavily in

28:56

this or orchestrated it, what

28:59

repercussions does that have for America?

29:01

I mean, still that would still

29:03

be shattering for

29:05

the American government now, even though it's

29:07

obviously 60 years later. Well, think about

29:09

this. When the Warren Commission

29:11

report came out, Americans had

29:14

in the 70s trust, 70%

29:17

trust for the American government. We trusted. Right

29:21

now where we sit as we're having

29:23

this conversation, the trust for the American

29:25

government is in the teens. I

29:27

mean, so to

29:30

me, if you're gonna ever build

29:32

back trust and this is in

29:34

any relationship, you have to tell the truth.

29:37

Once you tell the truth and you start

29:39

basing your relationship with

29:41

either an institution or another

29:43

human being, once you

29:45

tell the truth and you come to

29:47

grips with what the truth is, you

29:49

can start building back the trust. And

29:52

that's what needs to happen. Cause right

29:54

now we're in a really weird place

29:56

in the world where American democracy is

29:58

hanging by a thread and we're... going

30:00

to find out in November

30:02

of 2024 whether or not

30:04

America has decided to become

30:08

a fascist state. I'm not

30:10

exaggerating. We know this

30:12

because Trump has told us that's

30:15

what he's going to do. He isn't

30:17

hinting at it. He's actually told us

30:19

that he's going to put people in

30:22

camps. He said these words. So we

30:24

have to make a decision because we

30:26

are the oldest living democracy at 248

30:28

years. And we are supposed to be

30:31

this shining city on a hill,

30:33

this beacon to the rest of the world.

30:35

And if we're going to continue to be

30:37

that and continue to say that democracy

30:39

is the best form of government,

30:42

then we have to start being truthful.

30:44

We have to be truthful about our past,

30:46

which is what we did to the Native

30:49

population in America. We have to be

30:51

truthful what we did with slaves and

30:54

bringing black people to America and how

30:56

we treated them and treated them since.

30:59

And once we start becoming truthful,

31:01

we can then build a healthy

31:03

foundation for a democracy. And this

31:05

is part of it, is telling

31:07

the truth to people about what

31:09

actually happened. So do

31:11

you feel that podcasts are the, you know,

31:13

because obviously you have fingers

31:17

in a lot of pies. You could choose

31:19

to do this as a film. You could

31:21

choose to do this as a TV documentary.

31:24

Why was it, why was it, do you

31:26

felt that the podcast was the best way

31:28

to get this information out there? Well, that's

31:30

a great question because I initially developed it

31:32

as a limited TV series. And I developed

31:34

it with Paramount and I

31:36

actually got them to option three

31:38

books that I based it on. And

31:42

they greenlight three episodes

31:44

that we, you know, the scripts

31:46

for three episodes. And then the

31:48

guy who was championing it, the

31:51

executive, he got fired. And

31:53

so they scrapped the whole thing. And then people just

31:55

felt it's too controversial. They don't want to have anything

31:57

to do with it. And I didn't really know what

31:59

to do. do with it at that point. Then

32:01

I heard Soledad O'Brien, who's my co-host,

32:04

I heard her do a podcast

32:06

called Murder on the Towpath,

32:09

which is tangentially connected to

32:11

the Kennedy assassination. It's all

32:13

about a woman named Mary

32:15

Meyer, who was murdered right

32:18

after the Warren Commission came out. And

32:20

she was married to a CIA agent

32:23

named Cord Meyer. They were separated

32:25

at the time. And Mary Meyer,

32:28

her sister was married to Ben Bradley,

32:31

who was the editor of

32:33

the Washington Post. And she herself,

32:35

Mary Meyer, was having a

32:37

year-long affair with Kennedy. And

32:40

on the day that she was murdered, James

32:44

Angleton, who was the head of counterintelligence

32:46

for the CIA, and Ben

32:48

Bradley show up at Mary

32:50

Meyer's art studio. And

32:53

they take a confiscated diary that

32:55

she had written. And we've

32:58

never seen the contents of that diary since.

33:00

But it was a wonderful story, the way

33:02

she told it. And I heard that. And

33:04

I said, boy, maybe that's the way to

33:06

go. And I contacted Soledad. And she said,

33:08

OK, let's do this. And it's an interesting

33:11

dynamic that we have, because she

33:13

was negative 3 when this happened. So

33:15

she didn't have much information

33:17

about it. She just believed

33:19

what she was told which is,

33:22

you know, Warren Commission, single, Goodman, goodbye,

33:24

and good luck. So it was almost

33:26

like we were talking to each other,

33:28

where she's learning this stuff. And

33:30

I'm steeped in it, because I've

33:32

been to Daley Plaza a million

33:34

times. I've talked to everybody that's

33:36

alive, that's still alive. And they'll

33:39

be on the podcast. I've read

33:41

every book. I've talked to forensic

33:43

experts, everybody. And so we have

33:45

this kind of interesting dynamic, where

33:47

it's almost like she's getting

33:49

information from me and from the people

33:51

that I'm bringing on the podcast. find

34:00

through doing this podcast

34:03

that anything you

34:05

thought before was wrong or

34:07

you'd misjudged or that information

34:09

you thought was right wasn't

34:12

right or did it all

34:14

confirm what you'd already believed?

34:16

Well, there were variations of

34:18

the initial idea

34:21

that I had when

34:23

I started because you have to

34:25

approach it like a detective. When

34:28

I started thinking about why would

34:30

the first shot miss so badly

34:32

and it didn't miss Kennedy, it

34:35

didn't hit anything. It missed all

34:37

the cars, it hit a curb

34:39

and I'm thinking why was that?

34:41

Why was that? And working with

34:43

a researcher that I work with

34:46

and learning about a program

34:50

that they actually presented to President

34:52

Kennedy, a thing called Operation

34:55

Northwoods and we explained what that is.

34:57

This was an idea that the military

34:59

and the CIA came up with and

35:02

they had used similar ideas in other

35:05

countries, but they had this idea

35:07

and he rejected it and that

35:09

becomes the basis of why

35:12

it happened the way it did and I don't want

35:14

to get into the details of

35:16

Operation Northwoods because we explained it in

35:18

the podcast, but that was the thing

35:21

that made sense. The other one was

35:23

the bullet, the single bullet that showed

35:26

up on a

35:28

stretcher in Parkland Hospital. We could

35:30

never quite understand where

35:32

did this pristine bullet come from and first

35:34

of all, it couldn't

35:37

have broken all those bones and wound

35:39

up pristine, but about two months ago,

35:41

a little over two months ago, a

35:43

Secret Service agent named Paul Landis who

35:46

was riding on the running board

35:49

of the trail car behind Kennedy came

35:51

forward for the first time and talked

35:53

about that he had found

35:56

this bullet in the back of the

35:58

car where it was a big, big bullet. Bloods,

36:00

you know, just ton of blood on the back

36:02

of the car, but on the headrest where the

36:04

in the in the limousine that Kennedy was in

36:07

right behind him. There was this bullet. He found

36:09

this bullet and he had never talked about it.

36:11

Nobody had ever asked him. That's

36:13

another interesting thing that Warren Commission

36:16

never asked any Secret

36:18

Service agent anything. They were never

36:20

just never asked about what happened

36:22

that day. But this guy was

36:24

right behind it. He said brain

36:26

matter was and brain, you know,

36:28

tissue and and skull fragments were

36:31

flying Towards him. And

36:33

so he saw this. And when he arrived

36:35

at Parkland when he helped Jacqueline

36:37

Kennedy up out of the seat, he saw this

36:39

bullet and he didn't know what to do with

36:41

it because he thought, well, I

36:44

mean, it's going to be evidence. It's really clearly

36:46

evidence and what if I have to take Mrs.

36:49

Kennedy, he was assigned to take

36:51

the First Lady, you know, You

36:53

know, Be with the

36:56

First Lady, he said somebody will

36:58

take the bullet and then it'll be gone. So

37:00

he picked it up and he put

37:02

it in his pocket. And then when he got into

37:04

the hospital, he put it on Kennedy's Gurney

37:06

and put it, you know, by his feet.

37:09

So it was found later. And that's the

37:11

bullet that they said did all this damage.

37:13

But we know it didn't because it was

37:15

found in the backseat of the car. And

37:18

that's something I found. That's something I did.

37:20

Yeah, no. And I didn't know when we

37:22

started that that the fact that there's 5000

37:26

documents still not

37:28

released to the public. We've been

37:30

learning about this in drips and drabs over

37:32

60 years. So it's hard to put it

37:34

all together. But this in this podcast, that's

37:37

what we try to do. We try to

37:39

put all the pieces together so you can

37:41

understand it. And within a conspiracy, I

37:43

mean, the problem with conspiracy theories often is you

37:45

sort of think, well, would it stay, you know,

37:47

if man hadn't landed on the moon, all

37:49

the people involved in that conspiracy, would

37:52

they have been able to keep it quiet? Is

37:55

there a reason why nobody has come forward or

37:57

maybe they haven't? It's in a later episode. They

37:59

have. come forward. They have come

38:01

forward. That's the weird thing. Right. They

38:03

have come forward, but they come forward

38:06

in a little bit of

38:08

information that they have. And

38:10

they come forward. And then 10 years later,

38:13

somebody else says something. So it's

38:15

like that. And people are scared. People

38:18

that we, there was this one episode

38:20

that we talked about a guy named

38:23

Richard K. Snagle, who was a man who he

38:25

spaced a book called The Man Who Knew Too

38:27

Much. And he was worried that he was going

38:29

to get killed because he knew Oswald.

38:32

We talked to people who knew, who know

38:34

Oswald, who were, you know, one guy who

38:36

was at a training center

38:38

with Oswald, you know, where they

38:41

were trained to do secret operations.

38:43

And this guy also did a

38:45

secret operation with Oswald in

38:48

Japan. So they're worried they're

38:50

going to get killed. And we looked at, there

38:53

were 18 key,

38:55

you know,

38:58

witnesses, key witnesses that died

39:00

within a period of two years

39:02

after the Warren Commission came out. And

39:05

the odds of those 18 key

39:07

witnesses all died, they died from

39:09

heart attacks, suicides, accidents,

39:13

all kinds of things. The

39:15

odds of it were like something like 700 trillion

39:18

to one. I mean, it's some insane number.

39:20

So people were worried. They were scared. And

39:22

we talk about a couple of them that

39:25

died just before they were set

39:28

to testify. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So

39:30

what? Look, it is a fantastic

39:33

piece of work. And it's, you

39:35

know, it's clear. It's just

39:37

from what you've said here, but also from

39:40

the first three episodes, that something was definitely

39:42

covered up. But it definitely had to be

39:44

more, you're right, there definitely had to be

39:46

more than one person involved

39:48

in it. And in the case, it just it's just common

39:51

sense. But it is, it's sort

39:53

of so hilarious. I mean, again, if

39:55

it wasn't such a serious subject, it

39:57

would be it would almost be a

39:59

screwball comedy. of how bad

40:01

the government. No,

40:04

I mean, it's the government.

40:06

The government had the advantage

40:08

of being trusted when

40:10

it first came out. So, you know, but

40:13

yeah, no, it's been ridiculous. But one

40:16

of the guys, a guy named Johnny

40:18

Rizzelli, he was a mobster from Las

40:21

Vegas and Los Angeles. And he

40:25

was flown to Dallas

40:27

that day. And he was in Dallas

40:29

on the day of the assassination. And

40:32

he supplied at least one

40:34

or maybe two of the assassins. And

40:37

he was charged

40:39

to testify to the House Select

40:42

Committee over 10 years after. And

40:45

right before

40:47

he was supposed to testify, they found

40:49

him in an oil drum off the

40:51

coast of Miami. And he was chopped

40:53

up and stuffed in an oil drum.

40:56

So, you know, you didn't want to have

40:58

to. And there was another guy who died

41:01

right before he was supposed to testify. There

41:03

was all those kinds of things happen. Yeah,

41:06

it's extraordinary when you put it all together.

41:08

Has it made you want to go on

41:10

to investigate other historical

41:13

and major crimes? Or are you going

41:15

to move on to 9-11? Or

41:17

are you? No, no, no. I'm

41:20

not interested in that. This, I'm only interested.

41:22

I was in because it impacted me directly.

41:24

I mean, I felt

41:27

this happen, you know? And it's like

41:29

a national trauma. You get traumatized and

41:31

you want to know what happened here.

41:35

Why did this happen to our American

41:37

president in broad daylight on

41:39

an American street? It's pretty

41:41

wild. Well, what's wonderful about you,

41:43

Robert, is, you know, I think even within

41:46

your movies, but obviously you'd adapt to comedy,

41:48

you'd adapt to political stuff. And

41:50

there's such variety. I think that's what's

41:52

so impressive about... Just

41:55

the list of hit films you have is just... It's

41:58

not just one kind of... of film. It's

42:00

like one film will come along and then the next one's a

42:03

very different kind of thing. And it's interesting

42:05

to see you see. I wouldn't say moving

42:07

to there is there because you don't you

42:09

don't you don't want to be in my

42:11

brain. You don't want to get in there.

42:14

But do you look I mean did you look

42:16

back on your body of work and I hope

42:18

there's if you're if your dad doesn't go by

42:20

you've got you've got a good long time to

42:22

go. Yeah, well we're starting like I say yeah,

42:25

there are a new spinal tap and I have

42:27

a couple of other projects that I'm I'm working

42:29

on. So yeah, now I want to keep

42:31

on. I just saw that Clint Eastwood

42:33

he's 93 years old. He's still making

42:35

a film. Yeah, that to me is

42:37

very, very inspirational. Well, it's good to

42:39

see that and Ridley Scott, I just

42:41

saw the premiere of Napoleon and he's

42:43

84, which I was amazed at.

42:46

And he's still, still cracking on.

42:48

I was interested also just before you go

42:50

in. You did a

42:52

film with Albert about Albert Brooke, who again

42:54

is not a huge a huge figure in

42:57

the UK, but he's a, people

42:59

will know him, they would don't look at

43:01

it again in the UK. But what's he

43:03

tells a little bit about about that project?

43:05

Yeah, it's it's it's called Albert Brooks, defending

43:08

my life. And it's a

43:10

documentary that I made about Albert, Albert

43:12

and I were best friends in high

43:14

school, we've been in really, yeah, we've

43:16

been high school, we actually shared a

43:18

house together. I talk

43:22

about it in the documentary, because the centerpiece

43:24

of the documentary is the two of us

43:26

sitting in a restaurant, talking. And

43:29

then we show, you know, aspects of

43:31

his career, his stand up, his TV

43:33

performances, his films that he made.

43:36

And one thing

43:38

I said, you know, I talked about the house we had

43:40

together. And it was a duplex. I

43:42

mean, like, it had two

43:44

entrances, one below where he was, and

43:46

one up above, we each had a

43:48

phone. And whenever I took a girl

43:51

over to have, you know, to make

43:53

love to her to have fun up

43:55

there, we'd finish

43:57

and the phone would ring. And

43:59

and And it would be Albert. He'd call and

44:01

he'd say, are you done? And

44:04

I'd say, yeah, what? He said, you want to

44:06

go get something to eat? And

44:09

then he says, yeah, and the beauty of it, is

44:11

it only less than 20 seconds? So I

44:14

didn't get too hungry. I could run right out

44:16

and get it. But anyway, with the two of

44:18

us talking, we're best friends, and we've

44:20

been talking to each other. And it's on

44:22

HBO now. It's on HBO Max. Max,

44:24

I don't know. Do you get Max? HBO

44:26

Max? It'll be somewhere. It

44:29

might not be on HBO Max, but it

44:32

will be somewhere. So people should look out

44:34

for that. He did a fantastic ventriloquist.

44:37

I do some ventriloquism, but he did a

44:40

sort of subversion of a ventriloquism act. And

44:42

that's well worth looking at. That'll be on YouTube.

44:45

But yeah, it's fascinating. It's

44:47

sort of interesting to see, again, through your

44:49

career, the things that come over to the

44:51

UK and the things that don't, and

44:54

how someone can get huge

44:56

in America and not be known in the UK and vice

44:58

versa. So yeah,

45:00

it's about- I think if people see it, the reason

45:03

I wanted to do it is because, to

45:06

me, Albert is a genius. He's

45:08

one of the most brilliant comedians I've

45:10

ever met. And he actually

45:12

was a prodigy at age 16. He

45:14

could make my father laugh. I mean,

45:17

big. I mean, he could

45:19

make just seasoned

45:22

comedians laugh at age 16.

45:25

And a lot of people don't know about him.

45:27

And I wanted to give him his due. I

45:29

wanted people to see how brilliant this guy is.

45:32

I mean, is this, let's say, I

45:34

don't know, that

45:38

Beyond the Fringe had never made it

45:40

to America, or Monty Python had never

45:42

made it to America. It's

45:44

that kind of brilliance, or the Goon shows,

45:46

Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan. If

45:49

those people had never been in America, you'd say,

45:51

you knew. You want to see what this guy

45:53

does. Yeah, well, again,

45:58

obviously, I'm a fan of yours, and I knew a lot about it. you.

46:00

But when you come to look through

46:02

someone's entire CV and see everything

46:04

they've done, I think you're one of those people that you kind

46:06

of do, you do have to step back and go, wow, this

46:08

is this is absolutely incredible. I

46:10

hope there's is many more, much more

46:13

stuff to come and more fantastic films,

46:15

as you've obviously carried on making. But

46:18

it's a real honour. You're much too good

46:20

to be on my podcast. So it's a

46:22

real, it's a real, it's a real honour

46:25

to have you. Don't belittle yourself. Don't belittle

46:27

yourself. I've made a career of belittling myself.

46:29

It's okay. Okay. Keep

46:33

going. But look, thank you. I

46:35

know you're tight for time. And I don't want to

46:37

keep you any longer than it needs to be. But

46:39

do go and listen to Who Killed JFK

46:42

and be coming out every week over

46:44

the next few weeks. And we'll apparently find

46:46

out who did it. So that's that's that's a

46:49

pretty good. That's a pretty good sell. I don't

46:51

think we need much more than that.

46:53

It's really lovely to meet you, Rob. Thank you so much

46:55

for spending the time. Thanks for having me. And

46:59

you. Thank you very much. The amazing Rob Reiner. Thank you. You

47:02

have been listening to Hollister Bar with

47:04

me, Richard Herring and my guest Rob

47:06

Reiner. Thank

47:08

you to Scant Regard doing the music for this,

47:10

even though he's Rob Reiner. What? I'm

47:13

in to my producer, Chris Evans.

47:15

Thanks also to Natalie Welsh, Dana

47:18

Archer, Emily Falcon and Mia Green

47:20

who helped organise all of this,

47:22

as well as Rob, of course,

47:24

for giving up his valuable time

47:26

to talk to me. If anything

47:29

else, Wolfie the Dog's down there. I'd like to

47:31

thank her as well. This is a Skype-taker

47:34

buzz and go bust a skype.com production.

47:38

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49:14

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you very much. The more you listen, the more we can make. So do listen to

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49:26

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49:29

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49:32

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49:35

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49:39

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49:45

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49:48

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49:50

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