Barry Greenberg: Connecting People 24/7

Barry Greenberg – Interview

[00:00:00] Andrew Sumner: did you ever meet any of the rat pack?

Barry Greenberg: Actually I met. Most of the rat pack. In 1982, the first event that I ever did was for the hospital.

I had previously worked for a hospital in Denver called national Jewish hospital, national asthma center. And we honored the cowboy singer not it’ll it’ll come to me.

Andrew Sumner: The movie cowboy singer. Yeah,

Barry Greenberg: the guy who was very rich who they have a museum for in Los Angeles, Geno lottery. So. We were honoring gene Audrey who knew everybody.

And I had

Richard Nixon did a public service and I have a whole story [00:01:00] about getting a phone call at seven o’clock in the morning from Richard Nixon asking me about this script. I wanted him to, but the, but the person who was on the board of the gene Autry museum was a lovely guy by the name of Stan Schneider and accountant.

And he was gene Autry’s accountant and also Glen Campbell’s account. And when he opened the gene Autry museum, I had already known Sammy Davis Jr. A little bit, but I got to meet Sinatra. I knew because I knew his agent Dean Martin. And then there’s, you know, again, if you want to go into the second part, it’s the one of the worst experiences of my life that I [00:02:00] had with a Nickelodeon TV land friend of mine named Paul Ward when we went out to Joey Bishop’s house in Newport beach and I just couldn’t stand him,

Andrew Sumner: Welcome to Hardegree.

I’m Andrew Sumner. I’m here with one of my very good friends celebrity agent par excellence, Barry Greenberg. How are you, mate?

Barry Greenberg: I am great. It’s it has certainly been an interesting day and this is a lovely way for me to end the day.

Andrew Sumner: Me too, brother. It really is.

Barry Greenberg: It’s really late where you are. Yeah.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah, it’s late, but it’s never too late for Barry Greenberg.

That’s my motto.

Barry Greenberg: Exactly. I love hearing that should be everyone’s motto.

Andrew Sumner: So Barry, you’ve had a really interesting [00:03:00] career and we’ve known each other for quite a long time now. And we’ll, we’ll talk about that in a bit, but I thought what I’d really like to wear really like to start is if you could just walk me through your career and how you got to this point,

Barry Greenberg:  My career started when I was a broadcaster in the air force.

Yeah. I was in Panama. Yeah. In the air force. Now it’s at this point that I tell people, I don’t mean the Panamanian air force. I mean the American air force,

there were people in Panama who wanted to create new treaties with Panama. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about that, but it, it seemed to me that president Johnson in 1964 had made a promise to do that. And [00:04:00] that this could be an interesting project to be undertaken. And that it needed a celebrity.

And so here I am, I’m a DJ at an armed forces radio, and I just decided that a guy named Harry  should be the celebrity for promoting new trees with Panama. So I find a way to get out of the air force a little bit early. I come back to New York and I pick up the Suffolk County. We have a Suffolk in, in long Island as well.

The white pages of the phone book and I thumb through and I find H . And I call up and I say, I’m [00:05:00] this Harry champion? And he said, yeah, I said, this is Barry Greenberg. And I want to talk to you about these Panama things. He said, well, I don’t know anything about that, but come on out tomorrow, we’ll have lunch.

So that was my first celebrity interaction and a relationship that lasted eight years with a guy that I never spoke to again about the Panama thing. But we did a lot of

Andrew Sumner: cats in the cradle, right?

Barry Greenberg: Yes. This is Harry shape and cats in the cradle. W O L D that taxi guy.

The next thing I did for a crown and, and country was I started to provide a lot of celebrities for a friend.

Who had dinner theaters in Canada? So I would [00:06:00] do some public service announcements and a lot of going to ed McMahon’s house early in the morning to shoot some random public service announcement. And I would get celebrities to do these various dinner theaters in Canada. And sometimes I had as many as three celebrities at one time in the dinner theaters, I did a little bit of management early I’m when I say management, it’s more like, you know, that was, those were back in the days when a manager was a hand-holder and sometimes picked up the celebrity’s dry cleaning.

So. Back in the eighties, the first person who I managed was a lovely gentleman by the name of Ray Bolger [00:07:00] from the wizard of Oz, the

Andrew Sumner: scatter from the wizard of Oz.

Barry Greenberg: Then then he got sick. And so part of it wasn’t my responsibility, but I had somebody on staff who would take him for his chemo treatments or radiation treatments.

So it was bizarre. And then I started working with other people. I had a wonderful four plus years managing Elliot Gould. Who’s still. Among my closest Andrew Sumner level friends. And then in the middle of this whole 39 years, I had almost 20 years where I tripped into, Oh, I was managing Dick Martin from Rowan and Martin’s laughing at the time.

So we had a lot of socialization at [00:08:00] his country club with, with people like Bob Newhart, who was there all the time and Mike Connors from Mannix. And

so Hart came up to us at lunch one day and wanted to know something about a TV cable TV outlet called Nick at night, which was Nickelodeon’s. Kids network. And so I went to Nickelodeon to ask how Bob Newhart show was doing at his request. And they latched onto the fact that maybe I had access to Mr.

Newhart. And so a whole other element aspect of my career was born. And I spent almost 20 years doing work for Nick at night and TV land, which was some of the best times I ever.

Andrew Sumner: And [00:09:00] Barry, what was the fabric of that work? What did you use to put together for Nick at night and for, for TV land,

Barry Greenberg: they would have every single kind of wackadoodle Idea for utilizing celebrities.

Again, I, you know, Mike Connors and our mutual friend Adam West, and, you know, just hundreds of celebrities and their annual TV show, the TV land awards used not only scores of celebrities, but also dozens of cast reunion. So I became pretty well-known for putting old TV cast together. And it was, you know, I went through thousands of celebrity acquisitions over those years.

Some they put some under contract, it was via comm. [00:10:00] It was, it was just a great heady time. They weren’t afraid to spend money. Their philosophy was if they were coming to the end of the year and had some money left over, let’s just pay a celebrity for 20 appearances and we’ll use them up in the next couple of years or something.

So,

Andrew Sumner: yeah, Barry, from that era in your life, when you were working with the, with Nick at night and with TV on who were they, who were the standout celebrities that you worked with here and the people that you formed, the closest relationships with?

Barry Greenberg: It’s an interesting question. The people that I have, the closest relationships with certainly warrant some of the biggest celebrities like. Right now I’m working, you know, some 30 years after he did a play for me in [00:11:00] Canada. If we can go back to that, I’m working very closely with Gabe Kaplan on several movies, on a TV show, on an article that was just published about his experience with another American show battle of the network stars.

Andrew Sumner: I Kaplan was the star of welcome back Kotter. Wasn’t he with?

Barry Greenberg: He was Mr.

Andrew Sumner: Kotter, John Travolta, and all those guys that are beginning of beginning of Travolta’s career. Right? The

Barry Greenberg: very beginning of Travolta and sadly, so many of the people on that show are no longer with us, except for Travolta and Lawrence Hilton Jacobs, his wife, who I was his wife on the show who I was close with.

Passed away. I knew all the kids because they’d all been on the TV land awards, they passed away. So, I’m lucky we still have Gabe and he and I are having [00:12:00] a lot of fun together. Elliott gold. I’m very close to, he wasn’t necessarily part of that TV land thing. I spent a lot of years working closely with all the love boat people.

I was friends with Charo. I’m still friends with Bernie Capell and Gavin McCloud. But remember these people are getting into there. The eighties, some of them, late eighties and nineties, it’s just, I’m working on a project that we’ll talk about. And it’s just some amazing technology for doing interviews where you ask questions and the celebrities respond to you through AI.

And it’s amazing because when you and I are no longer here, a hundred years from now, [00:13:00] people will be able to be asking us questions and we’ll be responding just like this. The, the artificial intelligence will pick up the answer at through this story file technology and people will be answering while I, we just had William Shatner do.

Five days of story file. Ed Asner just did two days of story file and we’re going to start ramping up the celebrities doing story file interviews. It’s going to be extraordinary. Yeah.

Andrew Sumner: That’s yeah. That’s I was, I’ve been reading about this and you’ve been telling me about it. It’s quite an extraordinary thing.

Funnily enough. Ad Asner is is literally the guy that I spoke to for the last episode of Hardegree immediately before you. And I know he’s a friend of yours, so it’s a particularly nice piece of cemetery. I was getting the chance to chat about this after me speaking to [00:14:00] it.

Barry Greenberg: I am thrilled that you spoke to him.

I love him like well, before he was 91, I might’ve said an older brother, but now I’m going to say, or like a father, you know, and Shatner who is. As we record this 90 years old

Andrew Sumner: just this will be the best preserved 90 year old I’ve ever seen in my life is an amazing, you know, him. He’s great. He’s Adams to

Barry Greenberg: you and well, you should be thanking me for everything

Andrew Sumner: I really do.

Barry Greenberg: And, and again respecting the period of time that this podcast was recorded. Yesterday we lost Norman Lloyd at 106 years old who was amazing, who used to work with Charlie Chaplin and Orson Wells and was. You know, was [00:15:00] all there until it was 106.

Andrew Sumner: It’s just amazing, really, because I was a big fan of his like a lot of people from my generation when I was, when I was college, I used to watch St.

Elsewhere every week. And he was, he was one of the big stars. So tell us where he’s in all six seasons. Right. He was an amazing actor. And I remember you telling me when we were having lunch. So you go there maybe about two years ago, he was still alive. And I was just, I couldn’t believe it. I was like, surely has to be over a hundred.

He’s like, yeah. You know, he’s 104. That’s amazing. Just

Barry Greenberg: amazing. He was playing doubles tennis until he was like 102 or so crazy. I,

Andrew Sumner: you know yeah. Amazing with autumn Wells. And he was in St. Telstra as well. And he was still alive to the few days ago. That’s really incredible.

Barry Greenberg: Yes.

Andrew Sumner: Now I want to talk more about you at your your cyber pro what’s that [00:16:00] process called the the more colorization asking people in the future, the,

Barry Greenberg: the, the for-profit company yeah.

Is called story file. Yeah. What story phone. Yeah. And the technology that allows for the interaction is called conversa. I don’t pretend to know anything about it. I’m, you know, I’m just the celebrity guy. Yeah. But, but I do know this, that my friend, our friend Adam. Yes. My former client, Stan Lee. Yeah.

My friend Leonard Nimoy. If I had had those interviews, that interaction, and I’d been able to use that, you know, in a Comicon setting and a [00:17:00] stage presentation on an app, in a pair of AI goggles and be able to ask those people, hundreds of questions, it would be spectacular. So we’ve got to capture these interviews as we can.

Yeah,

Andrew Sumner: I absolutely. You you’re essentially the interactive 3d versions of those museum of television interviews that I’ve seen over the years. Absolutely. Yeah. Which are invaluable documents in themselves and to have interactivity as well. That would be amazing. I mean, imagine if you could have gone back 10 years and you could have got Jim garner and all those guys as well.

Barry Greenberg: Yeah, well, and, and we can’t, we can’t think about that. We have to move forward to try to get all the people who are

Andrew Sumner: still with us. I think, I think that’s, I think that’s a noble pursuit, mate. You you’ve you’ve you’ve, you’ve kind [00:18:00] of backed us into talking about some kale. So I wanted to ask you now, when we first met quite some time ago, now, one of your primary focuses was was putting together was essentially wrangling, wrangling celebrities on the live circuit, right on the convent on the U S and the global conventions, the comic cons.

So how did you get to, how did you ease back into doing that? How did that feel?

Barry Greenberg: So that goes to another friend of mine and it’s about 12 years ago. I got a phone call, as I do often from Chris Knight. Who’s Peter Brady, the middle Brady bunch brother. And he said, I’m doing something called the Comicon. And it would be right up your alley. You [00:19:00] should get involved with Comicons. And I said, what’s a Comicon.

And he said, I want you to talk to these people. And I picked up the phone and called a head of a Comicon, a friend of mine now named Peter Katz, who runs wizard world. And he was in like, I think Aruba. And he calls me and we’re, you know, and he had a Comicon coming up and he wanted everybody to be there.

They pay everyone’s expenses and, you know, So we did it on a pier in Manhattan and it was a wizard’s first, big Comicon. And they weren’t, you know, they were right. They paid hotels and limousines and airplanes and expenses. [00:20:00] And we had all kinds of people come the cast of Hills free blues and the, the original warehouse, 13 people.

And it was, you know, and then I realized that I could do this and partnered up with someone that’s another story in and of itself, but I became the the doctor who. Comic-Con person. And the thing at the time was that the agencies, this was found money for them. This was a new resource of income resource for them.

So they were very amenable to it. And I spent until the pandemic about 10 years, very successfully acquiring lots of lovely people for Comicons Benedict Cumberbatch and [00:21:00] Orlando bloom and Mark Rufallo and just scores of great a name people. And they get paid pretty well. And so. You know, it’s nice work.

If you can get it.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah. You did a little of the star Trek cast as well. Right, mate?

Barry Greenberg: Well, mostly my partner did no longer partnered with did a lot of the star Trek people, but Shatner, Nimoy George decay, all of those people I’d worked with years ago. So, so I had those relationships and still maintain those relationships for things other than Comicons for commercials and other appearances.

And.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. And when you were, when, when we first met, of course, [00:22:00] I’ve told this story on this podcast before, about when we first met. And and when you introduce me to Adam West,  could you to complain about your relationship with Adam and, and how you found him over the years?

Barry Greenberg: Well, the beautiful thing about Adam is

Adam had an agent and we have to pay homage to Adam’s agent. Just a lovely, sweet, goofy guy by the name of Fred Westbrook. Who’s no longer with us. He’s his legal name was Fred washed Brock, but he Anglicised it to Fred Westbrook. And he was the agent for 90% of the game show hosts. He had [00:23:00] more game show knowledge than anybody in the industry.

He. And he represented, you know, monkey hall. And I don’t know if that means anything, but Peter Marshall.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah. I wouldn’t mind nodding acquaintances, U S culture. I do not. I do know who these people are,

Barry Greenberg: so he represented all these people, but the beautiful thing, and the thing that doesn’t exist in Hollywood anymore is that I would pick up the phone and I would say Fred, I need Adam to be at the corner of 42nd and Broadway at nine o’clock tomorrow morning for 10 minutes.

And, you know, stand there holding a banana and I’ll pay him $5,000 and he’d say, great, we’re done. And I say, [00:24:00] do we need any paperwork or something? And in five minutes I get a piece of paper written with a Sharpie that says something like Adam West $5,000 tomorrow with banana sign. And that was all we needed.

I mean, you didn’t need that. His word was his bond. And that was the extent of any documentation. Anything that Fred Westbrook said was golden. And there was a story that there was a time when, you know, Adam wasn’t doing as much. Between some of the Batman stuff. And then when he went on family [00:25:00] guy or, you know, whatever the later stuff was,

Andrew Sumner: isn’t

Barry Greenberg: it.

Yeah. And, and I supposedly got him a gig doing something and, you know, I don’t remember it. I don’t remember at all, but Fred would always say, Barry, Adam appreciates what you did for him when he was down and out, you were the only one who remembered him and he loved you for that. And it just, it just warmed my heart, whether or not it was accurate was irrelevant.

It made me feel good. Just like your, you know, Barry got Adam

Andrew Sumner: on the phone.

Barry Greenberg: Those are the things that. Life is made up with those little [00:26:00] moments.

Andrew Sumner: Oh yeah. I completely agree. And I I’ve dedicated my life to trying to deliver those moments for some people. What I love about you mate, is you’re the person who delivers those moments for me.

And you’ve done it several times when I least expect it. And I, and if you basically, if you, if anybody’s listening to this, go check out the episode. How Batman 66 changed my life, which is essentially me talking about my lifelong relationship with Batman. And at certain point it becomes about me talking about my now lifelong relationship with Barry Greenberg and how we intersected and how he introduced me to Adam, which is a very moving moment.

But what I love about you maters that is not the only time things like that have happened on. There’ve been a bunch of other people. I’ve got to know some of my great TV heroes, William Shannon being another one of them. And some of my music heroes, many of whom are the reason I’ve got to know these people is thanks to Bo Greenberg.

And Barry’s got a great habit [00:27:00] of. In the, of picking up on cues, just seemingly in the middle of completely unexpectedly. So, I’m going to tell this story, mate, because it’s about you. And to me, this is completely emblematic of the way you are. About 18 months ago. Maybe I was watching one of my all time, favorite Robert Altman films, the long goodbye.

I just bought the new Blu-ray of it. And and I, I took a screenshot of a, of a moment in the film that really like Elliot Gould is Philip Marlowe in the early seventies, smoking a cigarette. And I put it up Instagram with, with the remark. It was, it was, it was a thing that Marlo says a lot in this movie.

She’ll reference it a second for a reason. And and I’m sitting there in my land and it’s maybe about 1230 at night. I get a phone call come in from Barry and I’m like, Oh wow. You know, Perez call me. I better take this. Come on the phone. And Barry immediately starts talking at me, but I’ve noticed. That [00:28:00] a, has his voice is kind of an octave deeper and sounds different.

And he starts talking about, cause I go, Hey pal, and who I think is Barry comes along and goes in this octave lower voice. Hey pal. So I take it, you’ve been posting pictures of me on Instagram. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on at first. And I’m like, ah, yeah, you know, I have, and he goes, was I saying, it’s okay with me?

And then it just all dropped into my mind. Holy fuck. I’m talking to Elliot Gould. And that’s exactly what I’d written on the Instagram comment, because that’s what his version of Philip Marlowe says all the way through the movie. And as a result of that, I was on the phone for half an hour, chatting with Elliot Gould, completely unexpectedly on like a Wednesday night midweek on that to me is a pure Barre Greenberg moment because you could have never known it was coming, but it gave me tremendous joy.

There

Barry Greenberg: is, there is this there is this joke. That you know, when we do this [00:29:00] six hour version of the podcast that the joke and with these friends standing in St Mark’s square, looking up as two people enter the balcony far off in the distance and the people who are in the square tap a nun on the shoulder and say, who are those people on the balcony?

And the nun says, I don’t know who the guy with the white beanie is, but the guy on the left is Barry Greenberg. I won’t tell the whole version of the joke

Andrew Sumner: a little bit. So how, how did you you worked with Elliot for quite a long time. How did you first meet him?

Barry Greenberg: Picked up the phone? See, this [00:30:00] goes, this goes back to a period in time when you could figure out how to get to people. And I had no shame, so somebody offered me a personal appearance for Elliott and I picked up the phone and I said Mr.

Gould, this is Barry Greenberg. I have a client who would like you to speak at their dinner and, you know, it’s this amount of money. And he said, I’m, I’m too busy to talk to you about it. Now I can’t talk about it now. I’m on my way to Italy. I said as only I can say,

okay once you pick me up a tie, when you’re there, Elliot Gould comes back to what [00:31:00] the fuck are you talking about? Where you want me to pick you up at Thai? Any hung up the phone.

Five minutes later, I get a phone call back from Elliot Gould. He said somebody was listening to me talking to you. Do you think I was being mean to you on the phone? I said, no, no, no. I totally understand. You were being, you know, cheeky or whatever. So Elliot comes back from Italy, calls me up, says, I have your tie.

We happened to meet at a party. This is I don’t like 89 or something, lot of stuff going on for me in the mid to late nineties. And he said, [00:32:00] we’re standing around at a party. And he said, we have to work together well to some people we have to work together means one of these days we’ll do something together.

I woke up the next morning and started managing Elliot Gould. I didn’t know, I wasn’t supposed to, we did four and a half years together. We did a Bugsy and he did the Melendez brothers. He started. Friends at that time. It was,

Andrew Sumner: it was I’m sure it was a great year. It was yeah, it would have been, would it have been on the approach?

Two motions? 11, I guess that must must’ve been, you know,

Barry Greenberg: yes, I didn’t, I didn’t get them the ocean’s 11 money, but you know what, it’s, I’m, I’m so happy for Elliot. And he has he has a whole lot of [00:33:00] family responsibilities that he steps up to and takes care of. And you know, it’s not always easy and he’s, I think 82 now, so.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah. And you know, the thing is what what’s great about him is perhaps after having had some wilderness time after being such a massive star and then being not quite as big as star for a period of time, he, what I, what I’ve very pleased about for him is that he’s kind of fully embraced icon status and, you know, he’s, he’s treated with the reverence and he deserves,

Barry Greenberg: well, he certainly does deserve it cover of time magazine Oscar nominee Having to put up with Barbara.

So he’s, he’s got it all.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah, no, he, he, he, he’s a great bloke. I was very charmed by him and you know, I’ve always, always loved his work and you, you’re actually very tight with bill [00:34:00] Shatner as well. Aren’t you who did mention earlier on that, you know, you guys have done a lot together.

Barry Greenberg: Yes, we, he is an extraordinarily sucks accessible guy.

He loves new technology. You would never think he loves new ideas and he has more hobbies than anybody I’ve ever known. He, I think he was riding motorcycles until he was 88. We’ll be lucky to stay on mine till I’m 70. Yeah. You know, he’s got the whole horse thing and the salty riding and the horse thing where he’s backing up the horses

Andrew Sumner: and he’s

Barry Greenberg: got a, he’s got his own he’s got his own charity for therapeutic riding for kids, gives a lot of money out for that.

You know, he’s got kids and [00:35:00] grandkids and, and quite the fascinating life. He’s a wine connoisseur. You name it, bill does it?

Andrew Sumner: Yeah. Yeah, no, I, I mean, I think surely the key to his, you know, continue the great shape that he’s had that he’s in and he’s continued to existence is in fact, the fact that he never seems to slow down, it just keeps, keeps on rolling all the time.

Keeps himself busy

Barry Greenberg: that he does. Yeah.

Andrew Sumner: And Barry, to, to, to to, to wind up you’re, you’re focusing on your, on, on your, your, your new endeavor, which is incredibly exciting stuff. Can you, can you share, but anybody else you’ve got lined up for that or is it all interrupts at the most?

Barry Greenberg: It’s it it’s sadly is under wraps at this moment.

But when we do our second podcast, yeah. I’ll let you know, you know, right now we’re [00:36:00] concentrating on a lot of civil rights. We just did. The poet, Nikki Giovanni.

Andrew Sumner: I, I I’ve, I interviewed her a few weeks ago, Nikki Giovanni. She is amazing. She’s a national treasure. She’s

Barry Greenberg: incredible. We did Andrew Young.

We’ve got NASA, astronaut and Vietnam pilot, Fred Gregory. We interviewed Daniel Smith, who is one of the two living children of a slave alive in the country. But because we’re doing a lot of civil rights programming, but as I have more time and more freedom, we’re going to move closer to the to the pure celebrity interactions and, you know, trying to get those 80 plus age people to make sure that those histories aren’t lost.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah, I am, as I said before, mate, I [00:37:00] think that’s a noble endeavor. And and if anybody’s the man to do it, you are let me know. Well, I appreciate

Barry Greenberg: that, but, but I’m still just, just did a commercial this morning with Gary Sinise where, you know, we’ve got lots of legitimate corporate commercial things that we’re doing.

I just started an involvement of voluntary involvement with the museum up here in Oregon, that houses the spruce goose. And I’m very excited to be running the spruce goose advisory board. Cause that’s a phenomenal piece of history. Do a little stuff with my kids and boy Scouts. So I’m all over the place.

I like it that way.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah, I know. I like it that you like it that way. Yeah. I mean that, that’s your thing. Before we go by, if you’ve got any, any, any stories about Stanley, how has your relationship with him?

[00:38:00] Barry Greenberg: It was my Stanley relationship was pretty peripheral. It was you know, when I was partnered with somebody in the Comicon space lovely guy only was within the handful of times.

And, you know, I’m, I, I do get concerned very seriously when some of the talent get to be a certain age and it feels like they’re being almost dragged around to these events. You know, it. It’s of concern to me now. I don’t think we need to, you know, that in the States, there’s a, at least there was a mandatory retirement age for pilots at 65 or something.

I don’t know if we need to create a mandatory Comecon [00:39:00] retirement age, but there are some people out there that probably shouldn’t be, and I’m very sensitive to that.

Andrew Sumner: Yeah, I can think of some examples of myself and I’m very glad that you’re sensitive to that. And I think that dovetails into again, what you’re trying to achieve in terms of you know, crystallizing people at their peak for prosperity for posterity, rather that that again, you know, kind of, it all really ties into the same thing.

I mean, there’s a certain point with people and you work in the, in the events business. We want them to be able to sit at home, relax, enjoy themselves, look back over everything they’ve achieved and smile rather than feel like they’re having to sign, you know, a thousand posters in, in

Barry Greenberg: half an hour. And we want them to have had guidance in their lives that allows them to have the financial freedom to do that and not have people in their [00:40:00] lives on any level who are.

Taking advantage of their celebrity. Yeah. I think that’s, you know, people at some point need to just sit back and, you know, I mean, unless they’re that bill Shatner energy level that you feel can legitimately do it, you should be really sensitive when you’re taking some of these people around there.

There is one guy I have in mind, who’s who has been very sick and is in a wheelchair. There were actually two that still go to Comicons and it’s.

It’s of concern to me. Yeah.

Andrew Sumner: Would say, are they getting something out soon, do you think, or do you think the, they are like [00:41:00] chasing a commitment?

Barry Greenberg: I think that there are people who surround some of these goals and just see this as an easy way to not turn down. Some money.

Andrew Sumner: No, I get it, man. I know, I know the reason we’ve transitioned into this without going into detail about this specific point is that Stan himself was surrounded by a large number of interested parties.

Shall we say who I didn’t feel on mass had his best interests at heart and in the Twilight of his years. I mean, he, you know, in the DeLong productive life, but is what I remember in the, in the year or two poster Joni is his wife dying. Things got pretty chaotic for Stan. It seemed from the outside as somebody often walked past them at events.

And, you know, as you, as far as I know that you did, I could see a kind of change in the way things looked.

Barry Greenberg:  If you want to do the bonus round, you can just. Throw out 10 celebrity [00:42:00] names and I’ll give you a knee jerk reaction

Andrew Sumner: to them. Oh mate, I would love to do this. Or

Barry Greenberg: I think we should.

I think we should end this on more of an upbeat

Andrew Sumner: Oh, absolutely. Mate. And I’m all over the, you know, me, I’m a positivist, you know, so, so, so I love that idea, right. Okay. I’m going to try and get a cross section of names for you. Okay. James,

Barry Greenberg: Jimmy con you know, all I know about Jimmy Kahn is is you know, through Elliot who talks about them all the time may have met him once.

That’s it? Who’s the who’s Segal. George Segal George Segal. Yeah. George. So, you know, cause I put them in the same category and that dinner theater that I was talking about, the Canadian dinner theaters I asked Elliot once don’t know what this [00:43:00] means. I said, would you like to go up there for a few weeks and do love letters?

He said, yes, but only if I can do it with George Segal. And so, which was interesting thing probably 20 years ago, it always stuck in my head. Did that actually

Andrew Sumner: happen? Oh yeah.

Barry Greenberg: No, he

Andrew Sumner: did. He did say he didn’t do it. Yeah. I love that. That, that, that, that is fantastic. Well that, so let’s take a crack at somebody else.

How about Tom Selleck?

Barry Greenberg: You know, Tom sell it. I happened to be, I was never a a, a Magnum PI fan, but I am the biggest fan of Tom sell, like in blue

Andrew Sumner: bloods. Oh man. It’s so is my dad, by the

Barry Greenberg: way, like my favorite show, my dad’s favorite show, Tom didn’t do himself any favors here [00:44:00] with some controversy that he had over watering his property, using a fire hydrant.

But but I always felt an affinity for him because he had been in the national guard at least. He’s rumored to have been in the national guard. And I believe that story. So I liked Tom Selleck.

Andrew Sumner: Brilliant. Speaking of guys who are in that space, did you ever meet Robert Urich?

Barry Greenberg: Robert Yorick?

Yes. I met Robert Yorick. I, you know, I never quite got what the Robert Urich thing was, but I did have friends whose backyard abutted his house. That was my closest encounter with Robert Yurick was like over a fence.

Andrew Sumner: And who have been your favorites members of the Dr. Who cast over the years? Who are the ones you’ve enjoyed working with?

Barry Greenberg: Well, [00:45:00] I absolutely, I I’ve had more. Late night fun with Matt Smith, then anyone is entitled to have I, you know, and this is, this is challenging because I left my doctor who live behind when I left my partnership. I adore Arthur Darvill Karen

Andrew Sumner: Gillan, you introduced me to Doval by the way, mate,

Barry Greenberg: there you go.

Then another one of the, I don’t know who the guy in the balcony is.

Andrew Sumner: Did you have a deal with tenant?

Barry Greenberg: Yes, and I, I like tenant very much. But he’s. And maybe it’s that I never spent that much time with him, but he’s, he was a little more proper than the Matt Smith relationship, you know, which was [00:46:00] so, I mean, I can pick up the phone and call either of them, but David’s going to be always going to be a little more

Andrew Sumner: British.

Yeah. Understood. And speaking to people who are very British, but a different kind of very Bush person. Did you have much to do with Patrick jets over there?

Barry Greenberg: I, I am in touch with Patrick Stewart. I like him very much. We, we got along very well, but I didn’t have a business relationship with him. So. Yeah, I like, and he’s also a really fun guy. Yeah.

Andrew Sumner: I interviewed him for the anime years ago. And the, you want it used to work with the enemy, which is well-known music paper in the UK when, back when I was a journalist and and [00:47:00] it was when the movie first contact came out, he was he was a very nice guy.

I re I really enjoyed his company which has kind of made me just saying that has made me think about a couple of other people,

Barry Greenberg: but let me, let me just say, and I haven’t, I haven’t said this for years, but I, you know, in dealing with,

in dealing with all the celebrities, I have to deal with a lot of their representatives and. I don’t want to throw an entire nation under a bus, which again would probably be our third podcast.

But I have had such extraordinary times dealing with the UK agents and managers in terms of their responsiveness, mean, all you need to do in this business is pick up [00:48:00] the phone, ask a question and get a legitimate answer. And when you have a life where you’re really just trying to get answers out of people, and you can versus you ask a question of an agent in London and they’re responsible and back with you.

And, you know, I. I am, as was said, many times, especially over the last four years, that whole stupid idea with the tax on the tea and everything was ridiculous. We should have just stayed part of England. We would have all been much better off. You had another couple of names

Andrew Sumner: I did. Yeah, I did that. That’s that’s temporarily distracted me though, mate.

That’s awesome. I love it. I well said, well said, brother, do ya, have you ever run into did you ever run into Schwartzenegger?

[00:49:00] Barry Greenberg: Yes. And and I actually have some open-ended, Comic-Con and story file things going on with Schwartzenegger right now. He’s he’s miraculous. He’s Boy, he is, he gets and is entitled to a lot of money for what he does and good on him if he can get it.

And I mean, who doesn’t love Arnold? Schwartzenegger, you know, I knew him, I knew him back early in the day. And then when he was governor he would, he just, he had a restaurant in Beverly Hills. He would sit there and hold court and it was, you know, I’m having some zone or something and he’s Arnold sitting at the next table.

Andrew Sumner: , you have been listening to the one, the only my friend, Barry Greenberg, perhaps the most entertaining man in Hollywood, certainly the most [00:50:00] entertaining man in Oregon accept no substitutes.

And Barry, it’s been a great pleasure knowing you all these years , thanks so much for shaking out the time for me tonight, mate,

Barry Greenberg: anytime you want, we can do episodes four and five and six.

Whenever you

Andrew Sumner: want to do them, we’ll get it done.

Barry Greenberg: Much love to you

Andrew Sumner: much love to you, brother. You take care of yourself and I’ll see you very soon.