Sep 14th, 2021 | Tom Talks

NARRATIVES Do you believe everything you read about celebrities? Tom sets you straight.

Here, Tom shows how Dorothy (played by Judy Garland) meeting The Wizard of Oz is like meeting most radio talk show hosts and celebrities.

In this scene from the 1970s film American Graffiti, legendary to aspiring radio personalities, Curt  (played by Richard Dreyfuss) comes down to the radio station looking to meet his hero, Wolfman Jack, but he gets a surprise.

What's your take? Click here and tell Tom!

HOUR 1

Comments

Submitted by valmaral on

The biggest example of this that I can recall in recent times is The Rock’s story of “only having 7 dollars in his pocket” and somehow pulled himself up by his bootstraps and worked harder than everyone else to achieve success. What he didn’t mention was that his dad was a famous pro wrestler, and his dad was friends with higher ups in the WWF/E, and how they pulled some strings to get him in. Not saying he didn’t work hard, but I’m fairly sure that there were others who worked as hard or harder than him but didn’t get the opportunity because they didn’t have family in the wrestling business.

Submitted by LeykisStreet on

Celebrities and the press lie all the time. They lie about a number of things in their personal lives such as height, sexuality, networth, the list goes on. Thanks for speaking the truth, Tom. It's rare to find a podcast or anything that tells it like it is.

Submitted by Hubcap on

I liked Sam ever since I saw him early in his career, at a club in San Diego; had the pleasure of meeting Sam backstage and being onstage as part of the act. I won a radio station contest and being up on stage, seeing the whole show come too life was the thing that made me decide I would like to do stand-up. I still have the life-size cardboard cutout he signed for me. Yeah, he was pretty jumpy that night...and frequently excusing himself to go someplace. Did a fantastic show though. What has always amazed me is how much stuff these guys can do, and still--most of the time--pull off a decent set.

Being around that comedy club environment, I saw first hand how true the old adage is that "comedy is tragedy plus time". A whole lot of the people who make you laugh come from pretty dark places. One of the recent "holy crap is that for real?!" narratives was SNL's Pete Davidson and all his issues. I'm thinking if they are going to put that much dirty laundry out there, the real truth must be way worse...or way different. It's a good topic to explore...more please!

(My comedy never turned into more than a few local gigs. I had a decent 20-minute set that was getting me gigs and fans, but to make the leap to actually making a living from it, I would have to dump my hard-earned middle-class life and do the starving artist thing in LA for a while. Plus I'm a morning person; nobody outside of The Villages wants to hear boomer humor at 9am.)