LIFESTYLE INTERVIEW: RICK SIEGEL

Old-School Comic & Manager, New-World Environmental Entrepreneur

By: Team Buzzine

August 29, 2011

After initially being a stand-up himself, Rick Siegel has spent much of the past two decades representing writers, actors, and comedians, including Michael Moore, Leah Rimini, and Seth Rogen. His entrepreneurial credentials are impeachable, having founded Laughtrack magazine, backed the production of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, helped launch the US career of Craig Ferguson, and now, thanks to the tyranny of twist ties, Rick is the co-inventor of the Green Garmento, a re-usable and ecologically friendly garment bag. Customized items were given to all the Season 2 guests on The Green Room with Paul Provenza, and Buzzine’s Nicole Rayburn sat down with Rick at The Vanguard in Hollywood, California to talk at length about his comedy background and new environmental mission…

Nicole Rayburn: You have known Paul [Provenza] for a long time, right?

Rick Siegel: Probably about 20 years. From Catch a Rising Star in the ‘80s, for sure. And then he moved away, but I’d see him in Montreal or different comedy festivals, and what Paul has become is really the pied piper of an entire society. Because he spent so much time in the UK, because he traveled so much, he had such a breath of knowledge about not only being friendly with a whole bunch of people, being a chameleon where he can get along with so many people, but that he has become a real arbiter. He knows what’s coming on.

This became my favorite show last year. I was a standup from about 1983 to about 1990, and when a player retires from football, they don’t talk about missing getting hit. They don’t talk about missing the field. What they talk about is missing the locker-room, and what Paul does on this show is gives you the locker-room. He gives you that kind of conversation that you really miss about those guys.

Now last year, it was even so special because it was those guys that were part of the locker-room before you. It was like when you were a kid and you got to see Y.A. Tittle or kids you were just too young to play with, now they’re in that Green Room. Jonathan Winters is in that Green Room; Tommy Smothers is in that Green Room – guys that you just wished you had the opportunity to sit and talk with, and then you get the chance to do it. That was so special.

This year, it might even be more special because of Paul’s knowledge of comedy and because of how endearing he is, and how come everybody loves him. He gets a chance to know everyone; he gets such a great idea of funny… So instead of meeting people that we would have known… one of the great parts about being a comedian in the 1980s is: hey, here is that guy in the overcoat that just walked into Katz. Let’s go meet him: Aaah, it’s Sam Kinison. Let’s get friendly with this guy. I’ve never heard of him, but boy is he funny…

Who’s the guy with the strange haircut who comes into the Improv with a paper bag and says he’s gonna live at this fleabag hotel? That’s Emo Philips. Come stay at my house: Be my friend. Who’s this Bill Hicks guy? Who’s this Dana Gould guy? Who are these people that you’re just meeting that are coming in from other places? Steven Wright? Where you just go, “Wow, these guys are funny.”

And it wasn’t just hanging out with people from the town, but when other guys came in and they’re introducing you to new funny… And Jamie Kilstein: new funny. And Eddie Ifft: new funny. And that is great because now it reminds me being on the stand in the beginning, meeting these new funny people. And I love that. And that’s why it remains my favorite show, and why I’m so proud to have something to do with it.

NR: Wow. Well-said, well-explained. That leaves me really with no question!

RS: That’s why I wanted to say ask me about the show, because I’m so in love with it. I think I had a pretty good beat on comedy. Before and after doing standup, I created a magazine about comedy, and the first five people I wrote about were Drew Carey, Bill Hicks, Jonathan Katz, Kevin Rooney, and Larry David. Those are the people I said, “I think they’re funny.” No agents, no managers – I thought they were funny.

NR: What was it called?

RS: Laughtrack. But at that time, I said, “This is my version of funny.” And I became a manager and I thought Leah Remini was funny. And I thought that Seth Rogen was funny and was involved with him coming down for Freaks and Geeks. I worked with Michael Moore. Nia Vardalos was a 30-something-year-old woman, and I took My Big Fat Greek Wedding and produced it and got Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman involved, and that’s how it became My Big Fat Greek Wedding the movie.

NR: That was you – I am impressed!

RS: That was me.

NR: Did you get Leah Remini her first show on Tony Danza’s show?

RS: No, I met her just after Cheers. So it was already Saved By the Bell andCheers, but she had never been in serious work on anything, and she worked on five or six shows in a row, until Fired Up and then King of Queens. But I met Bing Hitler…

NR: As we heard. [Laughs]

RS: As we heard. And I go back two years later and they go, “Your friend Craig Ferguson is there,” and I go, “Who’s that?” And they go, “Over there,” and I go, “I don’t know, but he looks like Bing Hitler.” And then I brought Craig to America. He was at the Edinburgh Festival, and I said, “Come here,” and knew just how special he was.

NR: So you really see things that are new and hot, and you cultivate that. You make it happen.

RS: We all have our tastes, and I just thought, when I saw someone that is special or funny -- like with Eddie, like with Jamie – if I was still in the business, I would run after them because those were special people. And I think one of the great thing about tonight was seeing a bunch of guys who knew that Richard Belzer was an icon, but until they sat there and started playing with him, they didn’t know how funny he was. He doesn’t have the standup things, so they were like, “Oh yeah, Belzer. He’s been around forever and he’s a good actor,” but tonight they went, “Oh man, that dude’s funny.” He’s not just likeable. At 66 years old, he still has it as a comic.

NR: On a more literal level, you are bringing something physical to the tapings of this season of The Green Room – something unique…

RS: I’m very grateful that… we became the swag. A couple years ago, I saw something and I went, “Ooh, that’s an idea,” and I actually said to them, “I don’t want to actually market your product, because I don’t think your product is broad enough. But if you would change the material from a heavy cotton to a cheap polypropylene, I have a reusable dry-cleaning bag idea that I think could be really special.” And they said, “We’d never do that.” So I said, “Well all right, if you’re not gonna do it, fine.”

And then my wife and I deciding together, “Well what should we do?” And we said, “You know what? It’s too big an idea; it’s too important.” It’s important because 300 million pounds of single-use plastic bags end up in our landfills, end up in our waterways. I hate that. But you know what I hated more? I hated the fact that I had a closet full of twist-ties, and every time I reach for one shirt, six would come. And I’d have drag-out, knockdown fights with these bastards. And I’m 6’4” and two hundred and a lot. And you’d think I could beat up a twist-tie. Never could. I had paper all over the floor. I had a garbage can this high filled with plastic. I hated it.

So we invented this bag, and what this bag does is it starts as a laundry bag. You just put your dirty dry-cleaning in here, or your dirty laundry, and then when you’re going to take your dirty dry-cleaning to the drycleaner, you grab it by the strap and it’s a hands-free duffle bag. So instead of me always wondering what I dropped, what I lost, what got stuck in the parking lot, now I have a place where I know it’s getting where it’s supposed to go. And I leave it at the drycleaner, and it comes back to me as a hanging garment bag.

So it’s a great organizational tool, it’s a great eco-friendly tool, and oddly enough, because you don’t have to continually use single-use plastic, for the drycleaners, it’s a great economical tool. So it saves money, it protects better, and to have this opportunity to be able to say, “Hey look at this. Look how neat this is.” And we got to brand it, so we’re very proud that this is the Green Bag for The Green Room with Paul Provenza as I sit in The Green Room’s green room! 

NR: So, in summary, it’s green. [Smiles] The guests here tonight get one as the swag from The Green Room, but how can everyone else get them?

RS: Everybody else has the right to go to www.thegreengarmento.com and they can find it there. There are dry-cleaners throughout the United States that have them – about 600 dry-cleaners... And because we’ve sold thousands of them, literally thousands of drycleaners will accept them, so if you buy them from us or you buy them…there’s lots of places you can get them online.

We’re starting to be sold on Costco.com, we’re talking to retailers… And the fact is that, to us, this is a transitional thing. When they invented the VHS, we went, “Oh, the VHS.” Now nobody thinks about the VHS because there’s something that’s better and no more expensive. We think the single-use plastic bag for dry-cleaning is sort of like the horseshoe. There’s a better way to transport your clothes now, back and forth, from the dry-cleaner.

This is the official GTL bag for The Situation, so talk about a party. So when you’re talking gym pants laundry, you’re talking ‘Green The Laundry’ with the Green Garmento. So you can actually buy a special edition that, instead of “The Green Room,” it says “GTL.” So if you live that way, you’ve got it here.

NR: So whether you’re necessarily a fan of comedy, or you’re a fan of…

RS: Well that is comedy!

NR: [Laughs]

RS: That’s real life, and that makes me laugh. And he’s a great guy and it’s spectacular. I can’t tell you whether there’s global warming – I’m not a scientist – but I can tell you that the world’s a f***in’ mess. I can tell you that there’s a lot of garbage. And the fact that we have the opportunity to clean the place up, whether we’re right about global warming or we’re wrong, 300 million pounds every year that don’t go into the landfills is doing somebody a favor. And the favor is for us.

NR: You’ve totally made a difference: You’ve made a difference in the comedy world  and now you are making a difference on the planet through the comedy world. Congratulations!

RS: I thank you very much for that. I appreciate that. I agree with you, by the way.

NR: That’s good. You should take that.

RS: I will, thank you. Now since this was about 20 minutes, there’s going to be no room for any of the comedians anymore, right? This is all they’re gonna do. It’s really just sort of Rick Siegel’s one-man special. [Smiles] I always wanted a half-hour special on Showtime...

The second season of ‘The Green Room with Paul Provenza’ premieres new episodes on Showtime every Thursday night at 11:00 p.m. ET/PT beginning July 14, 2011.