I was super excited to get John Riggi as a guest on the podcast. We have been trying to work that out since the podcast began. John is a stand-up comic that I became aware of while in Chicago. I was still attending open-mikes when John had already established himself as one of the city’s top comics. From there I followed John’s career which included writing and appearing on some of the greatest television shows of all time. The Larry Sanders Show alone is an all-time classic and my personal favorite. Check it out on Netflix if you haven’t yet. We caught up with him in Los Angeles at his offices on the Warner lot. He has just come from an amazing run as producer and director of 30 Rock to launching his latest pilot starring Rebel Wilson of Bridesmaids, Pitch Perfect and Bachelorette fame. The show is called Super Fun Night and if it anything like John Riggi’s other shows, it is bound for huge success. Thanks again to all of our listeners, and enjoy John Riggi.

Our guest on this show is Steve Pink, who is a very busy man. He is a screenwriter, producer and director of TV shows and movies, most notably Hot Tub Time Machine as well as many projects with his long-time friend, John Cusack. I have known of Steve from the Chicago theater scene and have followed his career ever since. I have been trying to get Steve on the show for a while now, and we were finally able to do it a few weeks ago when he invited us to visit him at Sony Studios where he is cutting his latest film, About Last Night. He even let us have a private viewing of some never-before-seen scenes from his movie, and it is hilarious. Comedian and actor, Kevin Hart, was in the scenes we saw and was amazing. We will post links to trailers when they are made available. Until then, enjoy this great interview where we discuss his start in theater, hanging out with Hunter Thompson and a drinking game based on the Bear in Hot Tub Time Machine that is sure to leave you on the floor. Thanks to all our listeners, and please continue to spread the word to others to LIKE us on Facebook and subscribe for free on iTunes.

I have had the pleasure of working with Chris many times for BBC productions and knew he’d be a great podcast guest. Aside from the amazing sense of humor Chris possesses, he has been a director of feature films, numerous award-winning commercials and award-winning television shows.

He was in Los Angeles one Saturday morning so we sat down to talk about his life and career, the many projects he is working on now, how he broke into the business, and his former working partnership with the famous photographer Rankin. Lots of tangents and flights of fancy. Lots of laughs and good times. Then the liquid Ginseng made an appearance.

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Enjoy!

I first saw our guest this week, Patrick Keane, doing standup at the Hollywood Improv and really enjoyed his stuff. Witty, biting and funny. I got the chance to meet him after another show and found him to be a good guy as well. I asked him to do the podcast, and he agreed. We drove out to his place which is suspiciously near the Manson murder scene and had a great time talking about his upbringing and other forces that led him to Hollywood to pursue comedy as a career. He was just as funny and interesting as he was on stage, and a little over an hour later, we knew we had another great podcast. Check out Patrick’s website to see videos of his stand-up and television appearances as well as a calendar of his upcoming live performances. Enjoy!

Wayne Federman was once a sandwich. Let me start from the beginning. We met Wayne in the greenroom of the world famous Hollywood Improv. He is what one might refer to as a renaissance man. He is a standup comic, an actor, a musician, a gentle lover and the biggest basketball fan I’ve ever known. So much so that he wrote a book about “Pistol Pete” Maravich. In my experience the hardest part of writing a book regardless of the subject, is first learning how to read a book.

Here’s a fun drinking game for this episode: anytime someone mentions a death, take a drink. I do feel that it is most important to mention that Wayne Federman was once a sandwich. Federman & Out!

Craig Cackowski was a man without a home for one short afternoon in mid July 2012. So we did what any good podcast would do: we invited him to my apartment in the skies of Sherman Oaks to join us for an interview. At first, like all of our guests, he refused, until he found out there would be fresh tamales. His agent negotiated that we get pork and spinach for him, and we happily obliged. During the interview, Craig’s new show “Trust Us With Your Life” came on the television which is ironic considering he trusted us with his. We totally could have poisoned those tamales if we really wanted to. Not that we would, but you know…

He impersonated a priest. He performed comedy in front of maximum security inmates. He has a certain set of skills. Ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Bill Devlin joins us this week on the Callback Podcast. We planned on performing this interview on the roof of Bill’s home, but an unseasonal rain storm and the subtle murmur of helicopter blades coming from a downtown LA protest put an end to that idea. We opted instead for the inside of his living quarters where the warmth of summer air coming through the windows and a bottle of Jamison awaited us. His wife was kind enough to offer us homemade Thai food, but we had imposed on their lives enough. Maybe for Thanksgiving, though.

We had booked this week’s guest, actor Steve Seagren to be on our podcast during the joyous morning of Cinco de Mayo. Little did we know, each year on May 5th Steve holes himself up inside his bedroom closet and refuses to come out for anyone or anything. In order to appease him and his demands, we conducted our interview via telephone. We spoke with him for about an hour, and the interview could have continued further but for the fact that we didn’t bring enough quarters with us and the operator refused to let the  conversation continue without the phone company gaining a financial benefit from it. Luckily, we had him on the line long enough to hear about how he ruined countless scenes on the hit TV show “Everybody Hates Chris.”

I first met the impregnable Vince Vieluf outside of his humble bungalow once owned by Charlie Chaplin (fun fact: Chaplin’s brother Sydney once bit off actress Molly Wright’s nipple).  I greeted him with a handshake and he reciprocated by extending his arm and firmly grasping his hand around mine while we simultaneously bobbed our hands up down about 3 or 4 times, while politely smiling at each other and exchanging pleasantries. It was a blast from the past for me, because Vince starred in the very first rated R movie I ever snuck into as a youth, “American Werewolf in Paris.” He didn’t seem to know who we were or what we were doing in his home but nevertheless offered us his finest vodka and electronic cigarettes. For some reason I wasn’t allergic to his cat.

John Novotny, Aaron Glas and I, Edgar Volfson, first met Timothy Sean Shannon in front of his home in Glendale. I won’t say whether it was in Glendale, California or Glendale, Arizona for the sake of guest confidentiality. He decorated his car hole nicely with homemade paintings, stacks of baseball cards and the noticeable musk of Diet Dr. Pepper. From the moment we walked in, T. Sean could not stop bragging about the Emmy he won as a writer for the Emmy winning television show, Saturday Night Live. Because of that, we refused to mention it on air. Screw that guy and his hospitality. Can you believe the nerve of that guy? Giving out free copies of his book “Come and Get It” and refusing to let me borrow his Emmy to pick up chicks really sealed his fate. Did I mention he won an Emmy?