Private Parts (50 page)

Even the great James Brown cracked up when John ambushed him at an MTV awards show:

STUTTERING JOHN: When you do a split, do you bang your testicles on the floor? JAMES: No, I think they're hip. They know I'll be down there temporarily.

We sent John out after everyone who hates us. He got Harvey Fierstein to spit out about nine hundred "fucks" in two sentences informing him that he wouldn't even answer any questions for "that fucking asshole Howard Stern." Then, failing to get Harvey,

John actually had the balls to ask a few of Harvey's gay friends the questions we had prepared for Harvey:

What was the worst disaster: AIDS or
Legs

Diamond'?
Did you ever insert wildlife in your behind?

John was unstoppable. He got Donahue and his wife, Mario Thomas, and he also caught that loudmouth Gloria Steinem, controlling Mario's every word like a puppet.

STUTTERING JOHN: All right, Maria, can I ask you a question? [He

didn't even know her name.] MARLO: Do you know Gloria Steinem? STUTTERING JOHN: Hi, Gloria. Let me ask you a question, Maria.

Hhhhhhhhh -- Do you and Phil still get horny for each other? MARLO: He's coming, you ask him. STUTTERING JOHN: Please, Maria, don't go, let me ask you, please,

Maria, I'm a big fan of "That Girl." MARLO: All right, okay.

GLORIA: Why are you asking these silly questions? MARLO: Yes? STUTTERING JOHN: Let me ask you, what word for women do you

find most ooooooooo . . . degrading? MARLO: Degrading?

STUTTERING JOHN: Chick, bimbo, bitch, babe, slut, or whore? MARLO: What is most degrading? STUTTERING JOHN: Yeah. That's a good question. GLORIA: Not especially a good question. Why repeat all those

words? MARLO: Right. I don't like that question.

As soon as Gloria started in, Mario realized she was supposed to be indignant, too. She was like a well-trained dog.

STUTTERING JOHN: Well, ddddddddddd, I'm a feminist. GLORIA: Why don't you just say "women" and let it go at that? MARLO: We like just to be called women, that's all.

"I hate that fucking Howard Stern."
-- Harvey Fierstein

GLORIA: We're not going to publicize the issue.

MARLO: Yeah, that's right.

STUTTERING JOHN: All right, wwwwwwww, I'm a big fan. You look

great. Aaaaaaaa, you're so thin. Did you ever stick your finger down your throat to throw up? GLORIA: You're really hopeless, you know that? STUTTERING JOHN: Why do you say that? GLORIA: I'm so glad I don't have to be interviewed by you.

Well, no one was interviewing you, Gloria, so why didn't you just keep your mouth shut?

STUTTERING JOHN: Hey, Maria, did any of Phil's sons hit on you? Maria? Maria?

What a masterpiece. He got Cher and he got Chastity. In fact, he even had the balls to ask Chastity if she ever kissed her mother on the mouth. Of course, not knowing for one second that Chastity was accused of being gay certainly helped John deliver these questions.

But nothing stopped John. His conquests mounted. Regis. Chevy Chase, not once, but twice! He managed to get "Family Ties" TV actress Justine Bateman twice. And he even used the same questions the second time. Here was Justine, on the brink of breaking out of the shitass world of sitcoms, doing the famous Arthur Miller play
The Crucible
off-Broadway, and along came John to puncture her self-inflated balloon:

STUTTERING JOHN: Did Arthur Miller write the play you're in while

humping Marilyn Monroe? JUSTINE: Ah, go fuck yourself.

Justine freaked out and walked away. John didn't even get to ask the follow-up question: Were there stains on the script? The beautiful part of it all was that he didn't even know who Arthur and Marilyn were! He then had the balls to go up to Ally Sheedy, a known bulimic, and point-blank ask her, "When was the last time you threw up?"

But despite the negative reactions, John persevered.

Bea Arthur was thrilled to talk to him:

STUTTERING JOHN: Bea, what do you think of Howard Stem? BEA: He made some nasty cracks about me so I don't listen to him

anymore. I used to listen to him and go, "Oh, how could he say

that?" but then when he hit me, I thought, "Oh, that son of a bitch." STUTTERING JOHN: Yeah, but he equally offends everybody, you

know . . . BEA: I know that. It reminds me of what they used to say about Hitler.

First they came for the Jews and I didn't do anything, and then they

came for homosexuals, and then they came for me. You know what

I'm talking about? STUTTERING JOHN: Let's go to a lighter topic by asking you, what

Hollywood star would you like to nail most?

Is this man a genius or what? What a segue. Problem was, thanks to that fascist-hating Bea, he got bodily thrown out of the event about two seconds later.

The celebrities who give John the hardest time are baseball players. Especially ex-baseball players. They have no sense of humor.

"I'm the biggest fan of Howard Stern." -- Keith Hernandez

John interviewed Ted Williams at a baseball card show. I guess Ted was pretty grumpy because he was out charging money for his autograph. I know serial killers with more class.

STUTTERING JOHN: Do you know all the words to the national

anthem? TED: No. I wish I did. I don't sing. STUTTERING JOHN: Did you ever accidentally fart in the catcher's

face?

Ted did a double take. He stopped signing autographs and leaned over to John.

TED: Pardon?

STUTTERING JOHN: By any chance, did you ever

accidentally fart in the catcher's face? TED: Who the hell are you? For God's sake. That

kind of shit . . . see ya later.

He dismissed John with an ominous sweep of his hand. The same thing happened when John interviewed ex-Boston great Carl

Yastrzemski. He got past the fart question but Carl got miffed when John asked him if he liked Dolly Parton's implants.

One baseball guy you'd expect to be pretty cool is Tommy Lasorda, the Dodgers manager. Hey, this guy is Mr. Show Biz, he hangs out with Sinatra and he did all those Slim-Fast commercials. But our human litmus test revealed that Lasorda is just as self-serious as the rest of them. After we let him ramble on and give a big plug for that stupid Slim-Past junk he scarfed, John got to the more "controversial" questions:

STUTTERING JOHN: How much do you want to bet that Pete Rose is gambling again?

John never even got up to the farting-in-the-catcher's-face question before Lasorda blew him off. But that was nothing compared to what some fan of Tommy's did to Stuttering John. John was going home late one night on the Long Island Railroad. He was just sitting there minding his own business when the train stopped and a guy who had been sitting in front of him turned around and faced John. This guy was middle aged, dressed in a nice suit, a typical commuter. Except when it came time for his stop, he paused, looked at John, and said, "I don't like what you did to Tommy Lasorda." And then he threw his whole orange soda all over Stuttering John and ran out the door!

Ah! The price of fame!

You think that's humiliating? Hey, Stuttering John's used to it.

When I was in elementary school, everybody called me "stutter-face." Kids threw rocks at me, everyone wanted to beat the shit out of me. Then in high school, people called me Skip. So when I got to college, I didn't want anyone to know I stuttered. I was a good student but I was in a class and the teacher said, "Did you read the book?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "What color was the girl's dress?" I tried "yellow" a couple of times, but I couldn't say "yellow" and that was the right answer. I said "green" instead. That's the most humiliating thing I can remember.

John's fifth-grade report card.

Stuttering John can be brutal, but he is not without human feelings. They surfaced once.

I was interviewing gossip columnist Cindy Adams and her husband, Joey, and I was asking him questions about senility. I had no idea who they were and when Joey walked out he looked as if he was going to keel over. I respect old people, and I had to ask him when was the last time he had a solid bowel movement. I was really freaked. I didn't know who the hell he was. I remember looking at Kevin, the TV producer, and saying to him, "I can't do it," and Kevin was egging me on and I said, "All right, fuck it," and I asked him about his bowel movement and how many times he'd seen Halley's Comet. That was an interview I felt really bad about.

John was also pretty brutal with Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes."

STUTTERING JOHN: All right. Hhhhhhhhhh, let me ask you. How could you be so old and still have pimples? Listen, I'm just curious.

"Howard is not a favorite of mine. I just don't like being nasty and spiteful to people."
-- Cindy Adams

But it was the most venerable of our news anchors who provided us with a transcendent Stuttering John moment. The first time John nabbed Walter Cronkite he was walking up to a charity event. John asked him if he was there for the charity or because his publicist thought it was a good idea. Uncle Walter got really pissed off and pushed past John into the event. But the second time, John donned a disguise and waylaid Walter:

STUTTERING JOHN: Since you stopped doing news, don't you think the quality of it has really slipped? WALTER: Well, yes. I think the quality of all life has slipped over the last several years. As a matter of fact, television has reflected that and has been part of it and perhaps, in some ways, responsible for it. I don't think there's any doubt about that. STUTTERING JOHN: What did William Paley ever do that was so frig-gin' important? WALTER: That's the way you phrase your questions, is it? STUTTERING JOHN: Yeah. WALTER: Well, I don't want to indulge in that kind of radio, thank you.

I don't believe in that language. That's what's the trouble with our

business today. STUTTERING JOHN: Would you coanchor with Howard Stem? WALTER: That's what's the trouble with our business today. Using that

kind of language. Upgrade your language and you'll do something for human beings and for our civilization. You can't use language like that. STUTTERING JOHN: Oh, I didn't curse. I didn't curse. WALTER: "Frigging." Do you think "frigging" is a good word? STUTTERING JOHN: Well, it's not a curse. WALTER: It's a bad word. It's a bad word. What do you think it means? STUTTERING JOHN: It's just another word for saying, you know, I

don't know. WALTER: What do you think it means? Words should mean something, shouldn't they? STUTTERING JOHN: It's kind of an adjective, you know. WALTER: But what does the word mean? STUTTERING JOHN: It just gives it like emphasis. WALTER: Come on. STUTTERING JOHN: Would you ever coanchor with Howard Stern?

WALTER: Of course not.

STUTTERING JOHN: Thanks a lot, Walter. See ya.

WALTER: You bet. Right. For God's sakes!

Does this sound like two mental patients talking in the back ward or what? How did this guy get to be so old and humorless? Of course, you don't have to be old to be humorless. Just ask Richard Gere. John got to him when he went to interview the Dalai Lama.

This guy was supposed to be like God. He walked in with his hands folded and he was praying and Richard Gere was like crying because he loves him so much. I was on fire, I was so nervous. I asked, "What was it like to wake up one day and realize that you were God?" which was a question I really didn't understand.

RICHARD GERE: That's a very strange one. How about another one? STUTTERING JOHN: Okay, all right. Do people ever say, uh, uh uh, do people ever say, do people ever say, "Hello, Dolly"?

Nobody laughed. They hated me. Kevin, the producer, was acting like a wuss. He got me there, went over the questions, then disappeared behind people. I was alone, like on a fucking island. Then this big black guy was standing behind me for the rest of the press conference. He wouldn't let me move. I was trying to get to Richard Gere but I felt hate all around. I felt Richard Gere wanted me dead. And I couldn't even get in my follow-up questions to the Dalai:

D
o you have sex?

What is truth?

Have you seen any of the new fall TV shows?

At that point, I dismissed ever making it at anything. I figured I had blown it. Gary convinced me that I was fucking nuts. Insulting a Beatle and a God. I thought I'd never get my band signed at that point.

In fact, John became the focal point for a lot of hostility and overt aggression. Morton Downey punched him out during an interview at a restaurant when John asked a sensible question: If Morton was bankrupt, how was he paying for this big press party? When he asked Eric Bogosian why his movie bombed, Bogosian pulled him over to a corner of the room and threatened to beat "the fuck" out of him. Then a huge bouncer picked John up by the neck and carried him down two flights of stairs and threw him out. After he finished a Spike Lee interview, two guys claiming to be Spike's henchmen went out to John's car and they grabbed his bag. But John was too quick. He threw the tape to an intern who ran away with it to safety.

But it wasn't until the stutterization of the Gennifer Flowers news conference that John got the instant national recognition he so richly deserved. Picture the scene. A ballroom in New York City. The place was packed with reporters waiting to hear the story of her alleged twelve-year affair with a presidential candidate. The seriousness of the occasion was absurd. They were treating Gennifer as if
she
was the presidential candidate.

John got right to the point:

Gennifer, did Governor Clinton use a condom?

A totally relevant question but her people were offended. They threatened to throw John out. She was there to talk about her sexual relationship and she found this question offensive? He had another one for her:

Will you be sleeping with any other presidential candidates?

John's booming stutter permeated the packed hall. The press was cracking up. While John was used to receiving scorn from the suck-ass entertainment press, the more cynical political reporters were delighting in this. John erupted again: