Classic Conversations: Pop culture Interviews with Jeff Dwoskin

Ari Lehman, the first Jason Voorhees, tells the story behind the Friday the 13th ending that almost never existed, and what Sean S. Cunningham whispered to a 14 year old kid right before he went under the water at Camp Crystal Lake.

From a soccer movie audition to Tom Savini's makeup chair to the brotherhood of actors who followed him in the role, it all leads to Into the Fray, the new First Jason horror metal album on CDN Records featuring Harry Manfredini, streaming now on Spotify and YouTube.

Show Highlights:

Tom Savini's mirror reveal. At four in the morning in Blairstown, New Jersey, Tom Savini and Taso Stavrakis spun the barber chair around, and Ari Lehman's first reaction to his own face was not what anyone expected.

Getting into character with Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon found a 14 year old Ari Lehman staring into the lake between takes, and his reaction pulled Harry Crosby into the moment.

Crystal Lake on Peacock. Ari Lehman weighs in on A24's prequel series with Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees and Callum Vinson as young Jason, and the timeline choice that shakes up the canon.

The Jason brotherhood. Richard Brooker, Ted White, C.J. Graham, Kane Hodder, Ken Kirzinger and Derek Mears, and the role Ari Lehman ended up playing among the giants.

Into the Fray. What Harry Manfredini sent to Ari Lehman's inbox turned the new First Jason album into something Ari calls the Dark Side of the Moon of horror.

You're going to love my conversation with Ari Lehman

IMDB

Ari's website

Listen to Ari's band

Instagram

YouTube

Follow Jeff Dwoskin (host):

Jeff Dwoskin on Twitter

The Jeff Dwoskin Show podcast on Twitter

Podcast website

Podcast on Instagram

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

Yes, the show used to be called Live from Detroit: The Jeff Dwoskin Show

Ways to support the show:

Buy me a coffee (support the show)

Dashery/TeePublic Store: Classic Conversations merch and more!

Love the books I talk about on the show? Here is my Amazon store to shop.

SPONSOR: STAMPEDE SOCIAL Drive engagement from your social channels and podcast with Stampede Social's Instagram and Facebook DM automation! Visit https://stampede.social Also check out: Why Instagram + Stampede Social Is the Growth Strategy Podcasters Need in 2025 (and Beyond)
Thanks for checking out Classic Conversations! Dive into pop culture nostalgia with comedian Jeff Dwoskin as he hosts the best TV and film interviews. Hear inspiring stories from actors, comedians, musicians, and pop culture icons about the road to success. Part comedy, part drama—always entertaining.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dylan Brody tells the story of the phone call he got from George Carlin, the one he performed at Kelly Carlin's tribute to her father at the New York Public Library.

Four decades of comedy around it, from a 1989 Fox debut to his award winning solo special, Dylan Brody's Driving Hollywood, streaming now on Amazon Prime and NextUp Comedy.

Show Highlights:

The George Carlin phone call. The story at the center of the episode, and the one Dylan performed at the Carlin tribute.

The New York Public Library tribute. Kelly Carlin, Tony Hendra, Louis C.K., Lewis Lapham, and four words from Whoopi Goldberg into a live microphone.

Comedy on the Road with John Byner. A&E wanted airline food jokes for his first national set, Dylan wanted a poem about censorship.

The Tonight Show showcase. Six political minutes for Johnny Carson's booker Jim McCawley at twenty two, undone by one question on the way out.

Dylan Brody's Driving Hollywood. Three specials in one night at the David Henry Hwang Theater, then Chicago, Barcelona, London and the PIT.

Throwback episode - originally recorded 2021
You're going to love my conversation with Dylan Brody

Dylan's website

YouTube

Active Voice Productions

Driving Hollywood

IMDB

Instagram

Follow Jeff Dwoskin (host):

Jeff Dwoskin on Twitter

The Jeff Dwoskin Show podcast on Twitter

Podcast website

Podcast on Instagram

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

Yes, the show used to be called Live from Detroit: The Jeff Dwoskin Show

Ways to support the show:

Buy me a coffee (support the show)

Dashery/TeePublic Store: Classic Conversations merch and more!

Love the books I talk about on the show? Here is my Amazon store to shop.

SPONSOR: STAMPEDE SOCIAL Drive engagement from your social channels and podcast with Stampede Social's Instagram and Facebook DM automation! Visit https://stampede.social Also check out: Why Instagram + Stampede Social Is the Growth Strategy Podcasters Need in 2025 (and Beyond)
Thanks for checking out Classic Conversations! Dive into pop culture nostalgia with comedian Jeff Dwoskin as he hosts the best TV and film interviews. Hear inspiring stories from actors, comedians, musicians, and pop culture icons about the road to success. Part comedy, part drama—always entertaining.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Comedian, podcaster and actor Jackie Kashian has been doing stand up since 1984, when she got thrown out of a Madison, Wisconsin comedy club for heckling Sam Kinison and came back three weeks later for the open mic.

She talks about featuring for Brian Regan and Maria Bamford, playing an airport cop on the final season of Murphy Brown, the year Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle told her she was too much like Kathleen Madigan to book, and why watching Jay Leno do two word perfect sets in 1987 rewired how she thought about the job. She also digs into The Dork Forest, the podcast she has been making since 2006, where the whole point is letting somebody talk for an hour about sandcastles, Rummikub or the size of A4 paper.

Throwback episode - originally recorded 2021

Show Highlights:

The Dork Forest. Jackie Kashian has been recording her interview podcast since 2006 and has close to 700 episodes in the archive, all built on one idea: an hour of somebody explaining the thing they love most. Guests have walked her through Remember the Titans beat by beat, Star Trek, Marvel comics, and competitive sandcastle building.

The Jackie and Laurie Show. Her weekly show with Laurie Kilmartin lives on the Maximum Fun network, and unlike The Dork Forest it is not evergreen, which means it gets recorded wherever she is, including one episode whispered into a laptop at a Kinko's in Milwaukee.

Murphy Brown. She played an airport cop on the 1998 final season and calls it typecasting, and she is honest that acting is a learned skill she has never formally learned.

Featuring for Brian Regan and Maria Bamford. These are the only two headliners she opens for now, and the reason is simple: it means she gets to watch Brian Regan and Maria Bamford every night.

Getting started in 1984. At 19 she got drunk in the front row of a club owned by Bill Kinison and heckled Sam Kinison, years before the Letterman and Rodney Dangerfield appearances broke him nationally. The manager told her open mic was on Sunday.

You're going to love my conversation with Jackie Kashian

Jackie's website

Instagram

The Dork Forest

YouTube

IMDB

Jackie's Merch

Follow Jeff Dwoskin (host):

Jeff Dwoskin on Twitter

The Jeff Dwoskin Show podcast on Twitter

Podcast website

Podcast on Instagram

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

Yes, the show used to be called Live from Detroit: The Jeff Dwoskin Show

Ways to support the show:

Buy me a coffee (support the show)

Dashery/TeePublic Store: Classic Conversations merch and more!

Love the books I talk about on the show? Here is my Amazon store to shop.

SPONSOR: STAMPEDE SOCIAL Drive engagement from your social channels and podcast with Stampede Social's Instagram and Facebook DM automation! Visit https://stampede.social Also check out: Why Instagram + Stampede Social Is the Growth Strategy Podcasters Need in 2025 (and Beyond)
Thanks for checking out Classic Conversations! Dive into pop culture nostalgia with comedian Jeff Dwoskin as he hosts the best TV and film interviews. Hear inspiring stories from actors, comedians, musicians, and pop culture icons about the road to success. Part comedy, part drama—always entertaining.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rhonda Shear hosted more than 400 episodes of Up All Night on USA Network from 1991 to 1998, and she is one of the only hosts from that era who still owns the name.

She talks about the Happy Days incident with Henry Winkler that got her blackballed from every Paramount sitcom at 23, the one line in Spaceballs that Mel Brooks cast her in himself, opening for Robin Williams at the Holy City Zoo, and how a Playboy pictorial where she kept all her clothes on cost her a pageant crown and made headlines around the world. She also explains how a warehouse in Tampa became the studio where she is producing brand new Up All Night episodes today, funded by the bra and panty company she built with her husband.

Show Highlights:

Up All Night on USA Network. Rhonda Shear hosted the show from 1991 to 1998 and estimates she has 400 plus episodes, but USA destroyed the masters when the network sold, taking a decade of Gilbert Gottfried material with them.

Spaceballs. Mel Brooks personally auditioned every tiny role, told her he wanted a blonde for the diner waitress, and hired her anyway when she offered to wear a wig. She has one line and gets asked about it more than anything else she has done.

Chuck Barris. She did The Gong Show, The Dating Game, the $1.98 Beauty Show, and a Barris pilot called Comedy Courtroom, and argues he was doing reality television decades before anyone called it that.

The pageant scandal. Her $1.98 Beauty Show appearance aired in the middle of the Miss Torrance pageant she was leading, the judges said she was mocking the pageant system, and she finished first runner up instead of advancing toward Miss America.

Playboy and the Floral Trail. Her 1977 Girls of the New South pictorial was shot fully clothed in antebellum dress at New Orleans plantations by photographer David Chan, and the Floral Trail Society stripped her of her queen title over it anyway.

Stand up in the 1980s. She worked the Improv, the Laugh Factory, and the Comedy Store, introduced Robin Williams at the Holy City Zoo and effectively became his opening act, and pitched Jamie Masada on a women of comedy night she booked and filled herself.

You're going to love my conversation with Rhonda Shear

IMDB

Up all Night Network

Rhonda's Book

Instagram

YouTube

Follow Jeff Dwoskin (host):

Jeff Dwoskin on Twitter

The Jeff Dwoskin Show podcast on Twitter

Podcast website

Podcast on Instagram

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

Yes, the show used to be called Live from Detroit: The Jeff Dwoskin Show

Ways to support the show:

Buy me a coffee (support the show)

Dashery/TeePublic Store: Classic Conversations merch and more!

Love the books I talk about on the show? Here is my Amazon store to shop.

SPONSOR: STAMPEDE SOCIAL Drive engagement from your social channels and podcast with Stampede Social's Instagram and Facebook DM automation! Visit https://stampede.social Also check out: Why Instagram + Stampede Social Is the Growth Strategy Podcasters Need in 2025 (and Beyond)
Thanks for checking out Classic Conversations! Dive into pop culture nostalgia with comedian Jeff Dwoskin as he hosts the best TV and film interviews. Hear inspiring stories from actors, comedians, musicians, and pop culture icons about the road to success. Part comedy, part drama—always entertaining.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rebeca Arthur was hired for one week on Perfect Strangers and stayed eight years.

Before that she was a working private investigator in New York, and one of her agency's cases was Robert Durst. She talks about playing Mary Anne Spencer opposite Bronson Pinchot's Balki Bartokomous, photocopying her own backside for Scrooged, improvising with Bill Murray, getting career advice from Bob Newhart at a table read, and the dog who got a SAG paycheck out of Match Game. Forty years after Perfect Strangers premiered, she is still working, still funny, and still friends with almost everyone she has ever worked with.

Show Highlights:

Perfect Strangers. Rebeca Arthur auditioned for Jennifer, read the Mary Anne sides on the back page, and told the casting director she wanted the other part instead. The one week guest spot turned into eight years, and she and Melanie Wilson were on the phone with each other, using call waiting, when the calls came in telling them they were coming back.

Private investigator years. She could not get a waitressing job in New York, so she answered an ad, was told she would never make it as a PI because she was too noticeable, and immediately decided that was the job she wanted. She worked cases for three years while finishing school.

The Robert Durst case. Her agency was hired by Durst after his wife Kathie went missing, but only to field the tips coming in off his reward offer, never to look for her. Her boss Jerry kept telling the staff their hands were tied while Kathie's own family called the office demanding answers.

Scrooged. A production assistant walked her down to an office to photocopy her rear end for the film, and yes, it was actually hers. Bill Murray built the whole scene with her on the spot, kept forgetting what he had just improvised, and had her feed his own lines back to him between takes.

Newhart. Bob Newhart lowered his newspaper at a table read, listened to her worry about a prop gun in a play she was doing, and told her to walk to the phone right then and quit. She calls him one of the most generous actors she ever worked with.

You're going to love my conversation with Rebeca Arthur

IMDB

Instagram

Cabi store

Follow Jeff Dwoskin (host):

Jeff Dwoskin on Twitter

The Jeff Dwoskin Show podcast on Twitter

Podcast website

Podcast on Instagram

Subscribe to my Youtube channel

Yes, the show used to be called Live from Detroit: The Jeff Dwoskin Show

Ways to support the show:

Buy me a coffee (support the show)

Dashery/TeePublic Store: Classic Conversations merch and more!

Love the books I talk about on the show? Here is my Amazon store to shop.

SPONSOR: STAMPEDE SOCIAL Drive engagement from your social channels and podcast with Stampede Social's Instagram and Facebook DM automation! Visit https://stampede.social Also check out: Why Instagram + Stampede Social Is the Growth Strategy Podcasters Need in 2025 (and Beyond)
Thanks for checking out Classic Conversations! Dive into pop culture nostalgia with comedian Jeff Dwoskin as he hosts the best TV and film interviews. Hear inspiring stories from actors, comedians, musicians, and pop culture icons about the road to success. Part comedy, part drama—always entertaining.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.