Classic Conversations: Pop culture Interviews with Jeff Dwoskin

Jeff Bergman tells the story of the night he knocked on Mel Blanc's hotel room door as a University of Pittsburgh student, the meeting that put him on the road to becoming Bugs Bunny.

Four decades of voices around it, from Tiny Toon Adventures and Fred Flintstone to Don Rickles' Mr. Potato Head in Toy Story 5, and now Bugs, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam and Porky Pig in Daffy Season, the Looney Tunes short playing before The Cat in the Hat in theaters November 6.

Show Highlights:

Toy Story 5. Jeff Bergman on inheriting Don Rickles' Mr. Potato Head from an audition he taped nine years before the call, and how you play Rickles playing a toy.

Steven Spielberg and Tiny Toon Adventures. Three weeks after Mel Blanc died, Bergman was auditioning one Looney Tune at a time, and the day Spielberg walked up to his music stand still hangs on his wall.

Chuck Jones and Gremlins 2: The New Batch. What the man who shaped Bugs and Daffy actually told him in the booth, frame by frame.

The New Show. Steve Martin, Paul Simon, John Candy as Bob's Big Boy, and a 1984 summons to Lorne Michaels' office that went nowhere near where Bergman expected.

Quincy Jones. A 1989 Bugs Bunny recording session, a broken down van in the Hollywood Hills, and 45 minutes Bergman says he was never the same after.

You're going to love my conversation with Jeff Bergman

IMDB

Instagram

TikTok

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.

Doug McIntyre tells how Jack Klugman brought him from a New York ad agency to Hollywood, and the one move that finally got The Odd Couple star to say yes.

From Full House and Married with Children to 25 years on KABC radio, it all leads to his novel Frank's Shadow, out now in hardcover, paperback and audiobook at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, with signed copies at dougmcintyre.com.

Show Highlights:

The Full House writers' room. Behind the sweetest show on ABC's TGIF lineup sat a room Doug McIntyre describes in terms the hug at the end of every episode never hinted at.

One script off the pile. How Doug McIntyre landed Knight & Daye with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel comes down to a secretary's lunch and a stack of scripts as high as her desk.

Webster and Alex Karras. The trick a director pulled to get one smile out of Alex Karras, and why Doug McIntyre says today's writers never get to learn it.

Frank's Shadow. The night Frank Sinatra died and the Seinfeld finale aired became a novel about a son who knew everything about Sinatra and almost nothing about his own father.

You're going to love my conversation with Doug McIntyre

Website

Get Frank's Shadow

Facebook

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.

Phil Morris tells the story of how he ended up cast as his own father's character, Barney Collier, in the 1988 Mission: Impossible revival, with his uncle Peter Graves back as Jim Phelps.

Four decades of TV orbit that story, from Jackie Chiles on Seinfeld to Martian Manhunter on Smallville, and it all lands on his current work on CBS's Fire Country and Netflix's The Upshaws.

Show Highlights:

Jackie Chiles. Phil Morris went through a pre-read field that included Michael Dorn and Ted Lange before reading for Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, and one thing Jerry did in the room told him he had it.

Star Trek III and Leonard Nimoy. Leonard Nimoy hired Phil Morris for The Search for Spock, and what Nimoy said to him years later at a Star Trek convention still gets him.

Smallville's Martian Manhunter. A lifelong comic book collector explains why J'onn J'onzz clicked for him and why Smallville worked by keeping Clark and Lex human first.

Phineas and Ferb. A lost-in-the-hallway moment at Disney with co-creator Jeff "Swampy" Marsh became Phil Morris's model for how he wants to run a set someday.

You're going to love my conversation with Phil Morris

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.

The Dick Van Dyke Show turns 65, and historian David Van Deusen celebrates with stories from three decades inside the Petrie living room, from the pilot that aired the day before he was born to Carl Reiner's reunion set.

His new interactive book, From Fandom to Friendships: My Adventures with The Dick Van Dyke Show Cast, puts never-heard cast interviews one QR code away.

Show Highlights:

The 159th episode. Carl Reiner picks up the phone in 2004 and invites David Van Deusen to the closed set of The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited, and the reason behind it caught him off guard.

Rose Marie. A celebrity address book at the library leads to Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam's home number, and the real answer on that Mary Tyler Moore feud rumor.

The ottoman. Director John Rich had somewhere to be the night the season two opening was shot, and nobody guessed viewers would start betting on it.

Saving season one. CBS had The Dick Van Dyke Show canceled against Perry Como until Sheldon Leonard got on a plane to the Midwest.

Alan Brady's desk. Larry Mathews walks into a Danny Thomas Productions storage room and recognizes a piece of TV history.

You're going to love my conversation with David Van Deusen

IMDB

YouTube

Facebook Group

Instagram

Also on YouTube

60th Anniversary Dick Van Dyke Documentary

Walnut Times website

To Twilo and Beyond (book)

From Fandom to Friendships (book)

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.

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.