Interview with Al Franken
Al Franken is a comedian and politician. He served as United States Senator from Minnesota from 2009 to 2018. He is the host of The Al Franken Podcast.
The Funniest Senator
Contents
Max Raskin: Would your colleagues in the Senate tell you jokes?
Al Franken: Yes.
MR: Is that annoying?
AF: It was really annoying for a couple of them.
MR: Is there anyone who's actually funny?
AF: Yeah. The funniest senator is Lindsay Graham.
MR: Really?
AF: Disappointing, isn't it?
MR: That’s surprising.
AF: He's very funny.
MR: What’s an example?
AF: When he was running for President in 2016, I was next to him in the Senators men’s room and said, “If I was a Republican, I’d vote for you.” And without hesitation, Lindsey said, “That’s my problem.”
Donald Trump and Hot Pockets
MR: Do you think Trump is funny?
AF: That's an interesting thing. That's a very interesting question.
MR: Does he make you laugh?
AF: Oh, yeah.
MR: Do you think he's intending to make you laugh?
AF: He's intending to make his audience laugh. And I've said this about him — I’ve never seen him laugh. He is a sociopath. He is a malignant narcissist. Understand, when I say he makes me laugh, I’m laughing at him.
But he’s got talent — if that’s what you call it — to riff. A big part of the reason he cruised through the nomination in ‘16 is that he completely sucked the oxygen out of anybody else. And the way he did it was doing these rallies. The rallies would be him up there basically riffing for an hour and a half, which is a talent.
MR: Would you ever watch them?
AF: Of course. They're really entertaining. And of course, CNN would just cut in, so no other Republican candidate had any oxygen whatsoever. The only coverage they got was when Trump attacked them.
So I've made the observation that he's like a standup. And he could riff and then he'd figure out what worked. I've said that “Build the wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it,” was his Hot Pockets.
MR: From Gaffigan?
AF: Yeah, Jim Gaffigan, a great comedian. I think they told Trump to talk about immigration and he came up with that and it became his Hot Pockets. And then it became a policy because he had riffed on it.
I campaigned a lot for Hillary during '16. And she would tell me that she and Huma would watch his rallies and laugh.
MR: Do you think as a standup you could have beaten him in 2016?
AF: Oh, I don't want to be president.
MR: But do you think you could have?
AF: I think it would've been interesting.
MR: Was being a politician fun for you?
AF: Yes.
MR: What did you like about it?
AF: What I loved about it was getting things accomplished.
MR: Did you like actually running for office…the handshaking and backslapping?
AF: I love that.
MR: You do?
AF: I love going around the state and meeting Minnesotans.
MR: Do you ever have stage fright?
AF: No, I don't.
MR: Did you see anyone at Saturday Night Live who had stage fright?
AF: Yes.
MR: A lot of people?
AF: Just a few. I'm not going to say who, but there was a brilliant, brilliant cast member who the night before was in a ball, and then brilliant.
MR: Do you get anxious about anything?
AF: All the time.
MR: About what? Health?
AF: No, my health is pretty good. It's just I'm in a weird position since I left, and it's a little maddening. People coming up saying, "Please run again, please run again," and I go, "Well, I'm keeping my options open." And that's what I say.
MR: Do people just ask you this constantly?
AF: Yep.
MR: Is there any way I could ask it in an interesting way to get you to say something you haven’t said?
AF: No.
Tragedy and the Road to the Senate
MR: Both your writing partner, Tom Davis, and political mentor, Paul Wellstone, died young — did either of their deaths change how you live your life?
AF: Well, Paul's death was part of the sequence that had me run for the Senate. Paul was a friend, and I campaigned for him when he ran for Senate.
MR: What did you do on the campaign?
AF: I mainly did fundraisers for him…that kind of thing. My dad was actually part of a senior citizen theater troupe that supported him…that's how grassroots his campaign was.
The last time I saw Paul was at a fundraiser a couple weeks before the plane went down. That morning I had gone to see my mom in her nursing home. She had a framed photo of Paul on the wall thanking her for her help in the ‘90 campaign. Mom was going in and out of dementia at that time, and the first thing Paul said to me at the fundraiser was, "How's your mom?" And I said, "Well, it's hard because sometimes I can't have a conversation with her." And he said, "Touch means so much." Okay, how many politicians say that?
So after that I went back to the nursing home — it was a beautiful place — and took her out in the garden in her wheelchair. I gave her a big hug. And I don't know if it meant anything to her, but it meant a lot to me. And that was Paul. That was Paul.
Then his plane went down, and Coleman ended up winning. A few months after he was in office, Coleman did an interview with Roll Call, and he said, "To be blunt, I'm a 99% improvement over Paul Wellstone."
When he said that, I went, "Who the fuck is going to beat this guy?”
MR: Do you have doubts about flying on small planes now?
AF: Yeah — I don’t do it.
MR: Did his death change your view of flying?
AF: In small planes? Yes. I think it's insane to do that. Don't do that.
MR: Did you grieve a lot?
AF: God, yeah. This was horrible.
MR: What about with Tom? Was he like a brother to you?
AF: Yes — when he was diagnosed, he was given a year and it ended up being about three years. Tom and I had split up as a team. I did an intervention on him — he was your garden variety drug addict, alcoholic. And the intervention didn't work, and we split up. But then we stayed very close friends. Then he got sick. But he grew up in those three years, and he was very admirable, the way handled it. I had to be in the Senate when he died, but I was there with him a day or so earlier and I said, "I really admire the way you're doing this." And he just said, "I hope it’ll go faster for you." It was not fun.
MR: Do you have any view of the afterlife?
AF: No.
MR: Do you think about God at all and religion at all?
AF: I do.
MR: Do you believe in God?
AF: I believe there's something, but I have no freaking clue what it is.
School Ties
MR: How did you end up going to a private high school?
AF: I was born in 1951 and in 1957, Sputnik went up. Americans were terrified because the Russians were now ahead of us in space and had nuclear weapons. So my parents marched us into our living room, sat us down and said, "You boys are going to study math and science so we can beat the Soviets." And I thought that was a lot of pressure to put on a six year old. But my brother and I were obedient sons and we studied math and science. My brother was the first in family to go to college. He went to MIT and graduated with a degree in physics and became a photographer.
When he was at MIT, he called my parents unbeknownst to me and said, "Alan should go to Harvard, not MIT, because they're all nerdy here. And he should go to a private school…he should go to Blake." So my dad comes to me, and says, “Alan,” [in a gravely New York accent] My dad was from New York and inhaled a pipe for 50 years, “Alan, you're going to take a test to get into a school for smart kids.”
So, we go down to Blake, it’s a beautiful campus, and I take this test. Two weeks later he goes, "Hey, you passed the test." So we went down there to meet my ambassador at the school for smart kids. And I meet this kid, like a week before the school starts, and he's a mouth breather. He's kind of stupid. I didn't know it was a school for boys, I thought it was a school for smart kids…so, I wasn't so smart.
He goes, "Okay, well we start the day with chapel." And I go, "Okay, I guess that's okay." And then you have to wear a coat and tie. Okay, I guess that's okay. There's sports, you have to play a sport everyday…okay, that's okay…I like sports.
“No girls.” And I went, "What the…” And then I go down to the parking lot and my dad is waiting for me. And I go, "I'm not going here." And he goes, "We already paid the deposit."
MR: For the girls?
AF: No, there's no deposit for girls. That's illegal. No.
He'd already paid the deposit for the school. And I, like an obedient kid, went there for three years.
This school was started in 1901, it was a school for Protestant boys. They started letting Jews in, in the Fifties, to keep the SAT scores up. I used to say that as a joke. Then, they had a centennial and there was a teacher at the school who was writing a history of the school. And she said, "You know that joke you're telling? It's truer than you could possibly imagine." And she had got the minutes from these meetings, and there's a meeting where in the Fifties they're going, "We're not getting enough kids into the elite schools. There are not enough Merit semi-finalists What are we going to do?" And somebody in the meeting goes, "Jews!"
MR: Someone told me you got an 800 on your math SAT?
AF: The only reason you know that is my mom kept saying it, but yeah, I did.
MR: What'd you do on your verbal?
AF: It was 662.
MR: That’s interesting because you’re a writer.
AF: I will say that a lot of my comedy is mathematical, maybe, I think.
Fathers of Comedy
MR: I want to talk about some of the influential comedians in your life. I read somewhere that you liked Dick Gregory — is there anyone else that really stood out to you?
AF: Well, Lenny Bruce, Godfrey Cambridge. Carlin. Satirists, right?
MR: What about guys like Alan King?
AF: Oh, you're talking about the Borscht Belt?
MR: Yeah. Did they influence you?
AF: Oh, absolutely. It took me a while — till I was 40 or something — to figure out that I became a comedian because I loved watching TV with my dad and laughing. And he loved the Borscht Belt comedians.
MR: Would you watch Carson?
AF: Yes. We watched Carson and we watched Ed Sullivan. So there was Henny Youngman and Shecky Greene. But Buddy Hackett was my dad's favorite.
MR: My dad told me Buddy Hackett held me at my bris.
AF: No kidding?
MR: Yeah.
AF: That's funny.
MR: My grandfather was really good friends with him, and my father was also friends with him.
AF: My dad worshiped him. I'm on a plane from New York to LA, and Buddy is on the plane, and I go up to him and I say, "I'm sorry to interrupt your flight, Mr. Hackett, but I have to tell you I'm an enormous fan. My dad just worshiped you."
And Buddy says, "A guy goes into the doctor's office, he's got a dot on his forehead. Doc says, ‘Oh, I've seen this before. In six weeks, you're going to have a penis growing out of your forehead.' The guy says, 'Well, doc cut it off.' He says, 'I can't cut it off. It's attached your brain. You'll die if I cut it." And he goes, "So, Doc, what you're telling me is that in six weeks, every morning when I wake up, I look in the mirror, I'm going to see a penis growing out of my forehead?' Doc said, 'No, no, no, you won't see it. The balls will cover your eyes."
And then he told another joke and then he talked to me. He ended up doing my sitcom, LateLine.
MR: Were there any albums that stand out in your mind that you would listen to over and over?
AF: Oh, Newhart and Cosby. That's when I was a kid. I'm a big Bob and Ray fan. Do you know Bob and Ray?
MR: No.
AF: Go to “Slow Talkers of America” on YouTube.
MR: Do you still listen to comedy today?
AF: Of course.
MR: Is there a place in New York you like going to? Do you go to the Cellar?
AF: I actually worked out at the Cellar to develop the act on what I'm doing now. I haven't gone in a few months because I've been working so hard on election stuff.
MR: Do you have a standing invite there?
AF: Yeah.
MR: Is there anyone now that you enjoy watching or listening to?
AF: Just a whole bunch of them. Mulaney is, of course, as good as they are. Patton Oswald. Louis C.K. — he just got nominated for a Grammy again. Amy Schumer.
MR: Do you watch SNL now?
AF: I do every once in a while. Schumer's monologue on that was really funny. She was great.
Left for Dead
MR: I want to ask you about the Grateful Dead now — you made a playlist with mostly early stuff…there’s not a lot of Brent in there.
AF: I think the “Ripple” is Brent. Yes. 1980 at the Warfield in San Francisco. I was at that show.
MR: Do you listen to music or comedy when you're walking?
AF: Sometimes I listen to a podcast. I like The Daily a lot.
MR: Do you get your news from any surprising places that people wouldn't have heard of?
AF: Not really. I sample Fox every once in a while — Fox News Channel.
MR: When you hear that someone on the Right like Tucker Carlson is a Dead fan, what do you think about that?
AF: Well, great. We share that and only that. I think what he does is reprehensible, absolutely reprehensible, and he knows better.
MR: Do you think there’s anything inherent in the Dead that lends itself to a politics you don’t like? I’m thinking about their relationship with the Hell’s Angels and guns and authority, for instance. Maybe in Jerry more than anyone else?
AF: The Dead have done a lot of great fundraising for great causes, like rainforests. Their foundation – The Rex Foundation provides funding to support arts programs in low-income communities. They’ve been funding a program that provides musical instruments to schools for years.
MR: Towards the end, when the shows were just getting so big, they made them do a PSA, and all the band members did it saying, "Stay away from the gates. If you don't have a ticket, don't come to the show, blah, blah." And Jerry refused to do it. He was just so anti-authoritarian.
AF: I don't remember that.
MR: Do you still go to shows?
AF: Yeah.
MR: What's the last Dead song you listened to?
AF: “Row Jimmy.”
MR: From?
AF: Hartford, 1977.
MR: In the Long Strange Trip documentary, my favorite part was you talking about your favorite version of “Althea,”
AF: The Nassau Coliseum 1980 “Althea” is the most stunning one — it’s just a beautiful, beautiful song.
Funny story about this: When I had my book, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, come out, I went on Sirius’ Grateful Dead channel to promote the book. I did interviews with, in this order, Mickey, Bill, and Bobby. And so I asked each of them, "Okay, this Althea from Nassau County was just astounding. Jerry has this unbelievable solo in it…why didn't you guys just do that again?”
Mickey first said, "Oh, that's totally antithetical to what we do. We just don't do that." And then I asked Kreutzmann, he said, "No, no, no, we don't do that." So then I asked Weir and he goes, "Oh, well, it's not for want of trying."
MR: Really?
AF: Clearly the drummers never really talked to Jerry and Bobby and Phil about duplicating it. That’s why people love the Dead — every show is different — but it isn't necessarily because they don't try to capture the lightning they talk about. Sometimes they just can't.
Favorite Joke
MR: You said that you think mathematically sometimes about comedy.
AF: Here's one of my favorite jokes I ever wrote; I'll tell you why, it’s a mathematic joke. So it was right after Three Mile Island. We did a sketch that week, and it was called “The Amazing Colossal President.” Jimmy Carter was president at the time and he visited Three Mile Island and we had him go in to the core to inspect it. And he gets radiated, and he becomes the Amazing Colossal President.
So, there's a press conference, and there's rumors about him because we haven't seen the president. Richard Benjamin plays the spokesman for the reactor. "Is it true the president is over a hundred feet tall?" And he goes, "No, that is absolutely not true." And someone goes, "Is it true the president is over 90 feet tall?" And he goes, "No comment." And that is literally a mathematical joke.
MR: Do you have any Republican friends from the Senate?
AF: I have a number of former colleagues who I still stay in contact with, and I call them friends, but I give them crap all the time.
MR: Is there anyone that you'll say publicly?
AF: I don't want to because I try to keep my conversations with them private.
MR: Are you a private person?
AF: Not particularly, but in this case, I try to chide them a lot and get them to do things they've been unwilling to do, like acknowledge that the election wasn't stolen. And I just get very mad. I just write them, I text them back and forth and they stop texting me back when I get a little too up on them.
Getting Clean for Gene
MR: Who influenced your political thinking or philosophy?
AF: I'd say Hubert Humphrey.
MR: Was the Vietnam War a big thing for you?
AF: Yeah. And I was a McCarthy supporter.
MR: Did you get clean for Gene?
AF: I didn't have to get clean for Gene, because I was still in high school — but my brother got clean for Gene.
MR: Were you a hippie?
AF: I wasn't a hippie. I had a Jewfro, but I wasn't a hippie.
MR: You still kind of do.
AF: I mean I went to Dead concerts and I smoked pot, and so if that's a hippie, yeah. But I was not a hippie.
MR: If you don't cut your hair now, what happens?
AF: It gets curly.
MR: Does it get Jewfro-y?
AF: It gets Jewfro-y.
One summer during college, I was on a softball team called The Afro-Hebes. And one game none of the afros showed up, but the other team assumed that I was the afro, because I had my Jewfro.
MR: You know the song “Almost Cut My Hair Today”? Did you ever…
AF: …let my freak flag fly?
MR: Yeah. Let your freak flag fly.
AF: Yeah. But my freak flag couldn't fly because it was a Jewfro.
MR: Would you say you're a conservative person by nature in your personal life?
AF: Yes. Well, it depends what you mean by conservative.
MR: You don't live a bohemian lifestyle?
AF: No.
MR: But what was your stance on the Vietnam War?
AF: I protested the war and marched on Washington.
MR: What were your parents' politics?
AF: It's funny, my dad was a Republican until 1964.
MR: He didn't vote for Goldwater?
AF: My dad influenced my politics a lot. We used to watch the news every night. We'd watch Cronkite, or Huntley Brinkley, but mainly Cronkite. And in '63, when they were putting dogs, and fire hoses, and billy clubs on, demonstrators, my dad pointed at the TV, and I never forget this. He said, "No Jew can be for this. No Jew can be for this." So, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act. My dad said, "Fuck that." He didn't actually say that, but he became a Democrat. We lost the South, but we gained my dad.
And then he became more and more progressive and lefty. And he marched against the war, himself. He campaigned for Paul Wellstone.
MR: Did you ever have a moment of toying with right wing?
AF: No.
MR: What did your religion look like growing up?
AF: We went to Temple Israel, which is the largest reform synagogue in Minneapolis.
MR: How often would you go?
AF: Not that much, but we would go for the High Holy Days. And I got confirmed. I didn't get bar Mitzvah'ed. I never learned Hebrew. My brother is older than me. He didn't want to be bar mitzvah'ed. So I got a free pass.
MR: Did you ever go to Israel when you were younger?
AF: No, I didn't go till I was older.
MR: Did you have any interest in Israel when you were younger?
AF: Yeah. I read and I knew my history and I knew my Jewish history. And I very, very, very, very strongly identify as a Jew, as a pretty secular Jew. Culturally, extremely identifying myself as a Jew.
MR: And the humor probably helps a lot.
AF: Yeah. There is a tradition.
Gregory Peck Glasses
MR: Where are your glasses from?
AF: So this is interesting…I was going to chair a field hearing in St. Paul about this collection agency at hospitals that had been very egregious —hocking people when they're in the emergency room and basically pestering them until they paid. In the emergency room! It was awful. They were awful. But I had just watched a hearing at the House — the Solyndra hearing — they were so frigging obnoxious. Jim Jordan – those guys. And I talked to the staff and I went like, "I don't want to be like that." And they said, "Atticus Finch. Be Atticus Finch." So I just wrote on the top on my questioning: Atticus Finch. It was perfect. A lobbyist who represented the company came up to me afterwards and said, "God, that was great." And it was devastating.
So then, the Gregory Peck model came out from Oliver Peoples. Gregory Peck's son emails me and says, "Huge admirer. I notice you're wearing the Gregory Peck's." I go back and forth with him. "I really admire your father. He was great. Blah, blah, blah. Atticus Finch." So very recently, I needed new glasses, and my optometrist could not get them. So, I just wrote Gregory Peck’s son and asked if he had some.
MR: I feel like you’ve always worn them.
AF: Either these or something very close to them.
MR: For many years?
AF: From my freshman year of college.
I had my first drink in my freshman year of college. I had never had alcohol until my freshman year of college. And my roommate and I split a fifth of scotch and got very drunk, and I fell down some stairs and broke my glasses. And the next day I was at Harvard, and I went to Harvard Square and got glasses that looked like these.
MR: What did you wear before those?
AF: Some nerdy Minnesota black frame.
Roasting Bernie
MR: Do you go to therapy?
AF: No comment.
Yeah, I do.
MR: Why do people feel uncomfortable talking about going to therapy?
AF: I don't know. I did say “yeah” very fast.
MR: But at first you said, “No comment.”
AF: It was a joke. It wasn't “no.”
MR: Okay. I understand then.
AF: It's a style of humor.
MR: Why do you think so many of my right-wing friends like you?
AF: You mean crazy right-wing nut jobs?
MR: Yeah. Why do they all like you?
AF: I think I come off that at least I believe what I believe, and I say what I believe.
MR: But Bernie also believes what he believes, and they hate him.
AF: He's very heartfelt.
MR: Do you think it’s just that you’re funny?
AF: It's funny, I went to do their Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Vermont, and so I did a Bernie impression. So, someone asked him, "What's your impression of Al?" And he went [in a Bernie Sanders impersonating Al Franken accent], "Haw, haw, haw, haw, haw," which was very funny…
MR: …but not for the reasons he thought it was funny.
AF: No, I give him credit for that. I think he knew that was funny.
MR: He wasn't doing it the same way you would do it. The way you just told that is funnier than he probably told that.
AF: Yeah. But the fact that he did that is actually really funny. And I think that he's not humorless. He seems like it sometimes, but I think that was a joke. I think he legitimately…I think that was very funny.
MR: In all respects but one.
AF: No, in every respect — it was a good joke. It really was. I probably thought it was funnier than anyone else because I know Bernie. And you're right, it wasn't quite…yeah. It's hard to dissect why it wasn't exactly on the nose, him telling a joke, but it was partly that.
MR: You like dissecting jokes like Seinfeld.
AF: Precise, yeah.
MR: You're like that.
AF: I try to be, but sometimes I'm not. I'm not maybe as analytical as him, but I know why something works and why something doesn't work. Or I try to figure it out.
MR: This is so cool — I got to interview you and Ken Burns — you’re the left-wing icons.
AF: What an asshole, Ken Burns.
MR: No.
AF: No, I'm joking. It was a joke. He's great. I love Ken Burns.