Howie Mandel | "You Were Hysterical, Young Man"

The Person Who Believed In Me with David Begnaud

In this episode of The Person Who Believed in Me, host David Begnaud sits down with comedian and television personality Howie Mandel to explore his unconventional path to fame, beginning with his

Key takeaways

• Mandel was expelled from multiple Toronto high schools for elaborate pranks, including hiring a contractor to measure a library addition during math class and retrieving a bent Snickers bar from a pool with his mouth.
• After years of being told by Tonight Show booker Jim McCauley that he would never be booked, Mandel performed at the Comedy Store right before Joan Rivers, who personally endorsed him and secured his first Tonight Show appearance.

Main topics

• Early stand-up comedy struggles & high school pranks
• Joan Rivers' mentorship & The Tonight Show breakthrough

Notable quotes

"You were hysterical, young man."

Conclusion

Mandel's unfiltered discussion of mental health, comedic evolution, and

Transcript preview

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But you put out an apology video. I know. Why'd you do that? Speaker 1 (1:04) comedian, author, and television personality. Quintessential host. He's starring in two big series, America's Got Talent and Deal or No Deal. Speaker 3 (1:13) Oh, buddy. Speaker 2 (1:17) Welcome to The Person Who Believed in Me. I'm David Begnaud. Howie Mandel got expelled from high school in Toronto, sold carpet door to door, and did stand-up on a dare at a comedy club. As a working comedian, he tried for years to get on The Tonight Show, only to be rebuffed every time. Until a very special person saw him at the comedy store in Los Angeles and gave him the break of a lifetime. A creative partnership and a deep friendship was forged that lasted more than 30 years after that and gave birth to one of standout comedy's legends. One of the greatest legends of our time. He's a man deeply committed to both his craft and his family. The creator of Bobby's World, an actor on Saint Elsewhere, best-selling author, iconic host of Deal or No Deal, and the longest-serving judge, I believe, on America's Got Talent. Please welcome to the show, Howie Mandel. Wow. Wow. Speaker 3 (2:15) Have you been intro'd like that before? Never. I'm impressive. I mean, I've just, you impressed me with me. Well, you weren't impressive. I Speaker 2 (2:22) didn't realize Speaker 3 (2:22) I've had, I don't know that I'm impressive. I'm old. And as you get older, you just do more, the list just gets longer. If you hang out long enough, you do stuff. But, and I think as a judge on AGT, I don't know that's a real judge. Like you don't serve. The longest serving judge, like it's not an elected. It's not, I'm not serving. I'm just happy to have a job. Speaker 2 (2:45) Longest running. I've held on the longest by the, um, I've known of you and watched you for years. Didn't know you were Canadian until I started researching. Speaker 3 (2:55) I tried to tell you, well, I've been, yes, born and raised my wife, born and raised. And, uh, I've been out here for almost 50 years now. Um, it'll be an, and, uh, Well, almost 50 years now, but I still keep roots in Canada. I'm the host of The Price is Right in Canada, and I did Canada's Got Talent. I served as a judge in Canada. My mom and my brother and my wife's whole family still live there. We go up there in the—I go up there often, but I will vacation there in the summer at the lakes in northern Ontario. So, yeah, I still feel very rooted in Canada. Speaker 2 (3:34) I'm French-Canadian, Cajun. Speaker 3 (3:36) Really? Speaker 2 (3:37) Born and raised in Louisiana. Yeah. Ancestors. Do you speak? My dad does, but no, I don't speak French. No. Okay. I want to start the way we always do. I love her. With a photo of? Speaker 3 (3:51) Of the? Speaker 2 (3:52) Describe to the listening audience who may not be watching who that is. A beautiful, funny, brilliant pioneer Speaker 3 (4:00) in stand-up comedy, especially for ladies, Joan Rivers. You picked her as the person who believed in you. Why? You know, I come from a time, as I said just a minute ago, I'm older. And when... In my time of coming of age in stand-up comedy, it was the late 70s and early 80s, the litmus test, if there is such a thing, for being even considered a stand-up comic was the Johnny Carson show. It's really funny because I ended up doing, like I was doing Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas and all these. Speaker 3 (4:42) comedy shop, evening at the improv. I did a lot of, I had done a lot of TV and didn't get a lot of notoriety. And if somebody came up to you in the street or you met somebody and they said, what do you do? And you said, I'm a standup comedian. The follow-up question to anybody inside and outside of the business was, well, have you been on Johnny? You know? And then as soon as you, if you said no, they go, oh, well. But if you said you were on Johnny, even if they didn't see you, you were legitimately considered. That was, how can you be a stand-up comic and not be on Johnny? And then to be on the Johnny Carson show was, before that it was the Ed Sullivan show. But to be on the Johnny Carson show and do okay the next day was never the same. It kind of solidified a career. So when I came out of here, I did very good. I mean, by... normal standards you know i got seen you know i i in in 1977 in april i did somebody dared me to get up on stage at a comedy club in in toronto and i did it on a dare and it worked out really well and i started doing stand-up comedy part-time it was a great you know that was the the age of disco um i'm not a dancer. I don't go to discos. I don't drink. And I'm not good at sports. So I didn't have a one-on-one basketball pickup game at the Y. There was nothing else to do. On a damn dare, you just got up and were funny. So I went to the, I didn't know this. I went to the comedy club just because I'd never seen stand-up comedy live. I'd seen it on TV. And I went as an audience member and the host. Mark Breslin is the host of a club in Toronto called Yuck Yucks, said, you know, if anybody wants to try this, you know, and somebody at my table said, well, you should do it. And I went, okay. And I always just, I'm very impulsive. I don't say no. I'm always afraid to say no. I'm so afraid of missing out on something. So I did it. And I did it with no aspiration. You know, I didn't. think that this was going to be a career. I thought it was a funny, the biggest. Did Speaker 2 (6:52) you think you were funny at that time? No, Speaker 3 (6:55) no. I think I'm outrageous. I knew I was outrageous. I didn't, this is pre diagnosis of OCD, ADHD, depression, anxiety, and part of the mixture of this potion that makes me, me is an incredible, uh, impulsiveness without thought. and the inability to focus. So it made me stand out in school as a pariah, as a, you know, the stories I tell now of the things that happened in school, I don't have a GED, I got thrown out, are kind of funny. And I can, you can see the amusing side of, go Speaker 2 (7:33) ahead. To that point, we should tell the audience about you being expelled because it's a pretty glorious story. Speaker 3 (7:38) Well, I Speaker 2 (7:39) got expelled a couple of times, Speaker 3 (7:40) but I don't know which one you're referring to. The contractor? Okay, so that one was, that's one school where, you know, I love, the first time I was kind of aware of feeling part of the crowd was with my parents. My parents loved comedy and they would watch, you know, the talk shows at night and they had comedy albums. And I was a little kid. I didn't really understand the context, but I understood that they were laughing. I didn't know what they were laughing at if some comedian was talking about. His mother-in-law, I didn't even understand what a mother-in-law was, right? I was four or five years old. And I saw, one night I saw Candid Camera with them. And Alan Funt, who was the host of Candid Camera, set up what he was going to do. And it was like a surprise party. I kind of understood. He made it really simple. You didn't have to understand what he was going to do. And you waited in anticipation for somebody to walk in and then be, you know, surprised or put it in a really awkward situation. You knew that. And did you like that idea of putting people on the spot? Didn't understand that yet. I'll tell you what I, what I understood. He, I'll tell you, I remember the specific prank. So he, he said he was, he was supposedly some businessman and he hired a receptionist and he told her that he's going out for lunch and she cannot miss a phone call. She could not miss one phone call. Every phone call that she gets is imperative that she takes note of whoever called and what they want. And then he showed that they had tied cables to the bottom of the desk and they drilled through the wall. And in the other room, when the phone rang, whenever she would go to answer it, they'd pull the cables and the desk would fly across the room. So I understood that. The woman sat down. And then you're waiting. And I remember looking back at my parents and thinking, this is amazing. I understand. I'm waiting. We're all in on it. Nobody, she's not in on it. And then when he pulled it and she went for the phone and then he pulled the desk away and she was horrified. And it was a guttural laugh. And not only was it me, but my parents behind me, we were all joined in this, just this shared. Speaker 3 (9:49) bright, exciting, energetic emotion that was laughter. I'm being more articulate about it today than I was then. And I went, oh, this is really cool. I didn't even understand that. But from that day on, I didn't have a lot of friends. I was awkward. I was little. So I always tried to achieve that. No concept of show business, no concept of an audience, no concept of... Speaker 3 (10:16) setting things up. So to that end... I was, I guess the yellow pages were open at home and I saw contractors. So I just called and I thought it was fun. I didn't even think about this. I called and I said, Hey, listen, I go to this high school. I mean, I don't say I go to this high school. I'm calling about this high school. We want to add 25 feet onto the West side of the library. And I want to get. I want to get an estimate on it. Can you send somebody out and measure or even tell us if it could be done? I don't know if there's too much hardscape or whatever. And the guy, and I made an appointment and I looked at my schedule and at three o'clock I had math. So I made the appointment in math because the window of that classroom looked out on the field. Now, the idiot that I am, I mean, you're laughing because I'm telling you what I set up, but I did that so, I was so insular that I just did that. Thing is funny to, you know, tell a lie to a stranger on a phone, get somebody out there to measure, but not tell one other person. wait, do you see what I'm doing at three o'clock? So I didn't tell one other person. This is how weird I am. I didn't tell one other person. So now I'm sitting in the class and I'm looking out at three o'clock in the afternoon. I'm the only one in the class looking out the window. There's a guy out there with a clipboard and a tape measure. And then within five, 10 minutes, I see the vice principal. wander onto the field and they're talking. I can't tell what they're saying, but that guy leaves and then he's in. And then within five minutes over the PA system, I hear, well, Howard Mandel, please come down to the office. Oh, shit. And so I go down to the office and he says, did you hire a contractor to put an addition onto our library? And I go, no. And he said, well, I met a man in the yard who was measuring and he gave your name. And I said, well, I wasn't hiring anybody. I was getting estimates. I think I was being a little more responsible. And he said, please just sit down. And I sat down and then they called my parents and they called my parents in. And I remember sitting there with my parents as he's explaining to them, you know, your son without any authority is hiring people to put additions onto the library. And I could see my, my mom and my dad, I could see the lips quivering, they're like biting their lips. Cause I know that they, they think it's funny, but they want to be. Speaker 3 (12:38) responsible parents, you know? And I don't know what he expected them to say. We told him never to do that. You know, like that, that was anyway, that that's, that's cool. There were so many other things. One of the other things that I got thrown out of school for, which they used in. Speaker 3 (12:52) a movie later on, but it wasn't, but I, I did it first. Well, I'm from Toronto, Canada. And it was like, We had gym class, and at the end, there's another school, and then at the end of gym class, I mean, gym class was swimming for part of the year. We had to swim in the pool. And it was always the last period, and then they would dismiss us. And this is like, you know, 1971, 72. There's no, it was like 20 below in Toronto, like in December. You go swimming, and then they don't have a hairdryer for you. So you just go out with your hair wet and into 20 below zero walking home, my hair would freeze and break and it was just miserable. So I thought, you know what I'm going to do? I bought like a Snickers bar and I bent it a little bit and I threw it in the pool right before swim class. And everybody saw that somebody had taken a shit in the pool. And word got out, about 100 kids showed up at the end of the day to see who had defecated in the pool or just to witness this. And everybody was there in that moment without even thinking, just because I thought this would be funny. I dived in and came up with it in my mouth. And it didn't make me popular. It's like every girl went, ew, that's disgusting. You're the most disgusting person I got. sent out of that school too. So I went to Speaker 2 (14:12) three different high schools. I have Speaker 3 (14:13) no Speaker 2 (14:14) GED. So, but I had a reputation. Was the desire for attention? Speaker 3 (14:19) No. Speaker 2 (14:20) What were you looking for? I just want, Speaker 3 (14:22) I want to be accepted. I, uh, uh, that laugh, I just wanted to have a group laugh that felt really good. Just smiling, laughter, just not feel, I felt so out of place, so uncomfortable. I've always felt very uncomfortable. very terrified. Even still today? Yes, I'm always. I live. But I'm now at this age and having been diagnosed in my 40s. Speaker 2 (14:46) Which is 70? 70. By the way, you look great for 70. Thank you. Really good. Thank you. I know. I know. Speaker 3 (14:52) Anyway, I'm comfortable with my discomfort and also cognizant that I doubt that very few people are very comfortable, you know, at any given time, if you give thought to. who you like we all think that other people are much more interested in our little faux pas and our little intricacies than they actually are, because we're all more interested in ourselves and how we're presenting. But it was just really uncomfortable. Really, I was cognizant of being very different. I was tiny. It was high school. My voice hadn't changed. I wasn't shaving. I just, I wasn't. an athlete. I was nothing. And I just wanted to distract myself and just smile and laugh. Laughter feels good. Laughter releases. I didn't know that then, but when you do laugh, you feel good. You Speaker 2 (15:45) know, you just do. Does the discomfort in any way equal a feeling of insecurity that you still have today? Yeah, that's the driving force. Insecurity. Still today. Despite all the accolades of Price is Right in Canada, AGT. Speaker 3 (16:03) Podcast, deal or no deal? I'm insecure. I'm insecure. I feel, in fact, there is an overwhelming, it's probably more because the more notoriety, you know, the more notoriety you have, the more visible you are, you realize, like, I'm not the kind of person that really enjoys being out in public or going to parties. I turn down almost everything. Why did you say yes to this? NBC told me it's a good thing to do for AGT. So I did it. I'll say yes, but I don't know if you know this, but they asked and tried to press you to come to our place. No, I don't Speaker 2 (16:45) know that. Speaker 3 (16:46) then Speaker 2 (16:46) I'm mad at somebody. But anyway, but no, no, no. My team, my team rightfully said no, because we only want it done in studios. Well, that's why. Yeah. So, but I don't Speaker 3 (16:55) do, I pre I think I've done, this is in, in my whole career. I think I've done, this would be the third. podcast outside of my, out of my studio. I've done a ton of podcasts, but people will come to me, you know, so I have a hard time just going out and being in public. And how do you Speaker 2 (17:14) feel when you go out? What, what, what do you struggle with? Speaker 3 (17:18) I just feel awkward. I don't know the right thing to say. I don't know. I don't want to, first and foremost, you know, offend anybody, make somebody feel bad. So sometimes because of my... inability to edit and impulsiveness. You'll say something and then I'll blurt something back. sometimes in the name of thinking it's humorous, but you don't know that. You don't know that about me. You don't know whether I'm trying to be funny or is it just sarcastic or is it? So let Speaker 2 (17:51) me ask you, because I didn't know. I saw the whole Kelly and her husband situation where they said, oh, you look great for 70 and that whole thing. And then I saw your apology video and I didn't know whether it was a joke or wasn't a joke. Speaker 3 (18:05) Either did I. So that's what I'm just uncomfortable with how it was taken. I read it in the paper. I thought when I said I don't like that, I was trying to be funny. I was trying to be funny. He said Speaker 2 (18:17) you look great for 70. Speaker 3 (18:18) And I went, I don't like that. Come on, you're just saying, you know, that's a caveat. You look great. You know, I don't like that when people say it. And that was kind of like a routine. You know, that's like saying you're really smart for a stupid person was my. analogy, which I thought was in my mind, kind of funny. And then I started reading all these things of how I snapped back. So I go, so in my mind, I was trying to make a joke, but then I snapped at her. And then is that how it comes off? Do people not get that? I'm just trying to be Speaker 2 (18:50) funny. Did you like the attention, the headlines that came from it? No, I didn't. I Speaker 3 (18:55) didn't like the. Speaker 3 (18:58) I didn't like the idea that I was. Speaker 3 (19:04) Well, you saw the apology. I didn't like the idea that I was trying to be funny and then it was taken as a... Speaker 2 (19:13) insult to her. An insult. So then you made the apology video. You meant that? Speaker 3 (19:18) Yeah, Speaker 2 (19:18) but I said... Or was that a joke? Was the apology video a joke? Speaker 3 (19:22) I added a joke in the apology that nobody got. It was a... I apologize if you took it. I was trying to make a joke. It didn't land well. But I'll be honest with you. You're right. I look gorgeous. So do you not see the humor in that? I did. In fact, the Howie fans were like, guys, he's joking again. I know. But then again, so that this amplifies what your discussion is right now. This amplifies, you know, you have to be comfortable with the fact that. I'll tell you how I think. I've told this story many times. When I first blew up, I sold out Radio City Music Hall in like an hour, two shows. And my wife and I were luxuriating after the first show, waiting for the second show in the dressing room overlooking 7th Avenue in New York. 7,000 people were teaming out of the theater as 7,000 people were teaming in for the next show. There's 14,000 people blocking 7th Avenue. There's cops and stanchions and this quagmire. And she goes, this is all for you. What are you thinking? And I was thinking that, and I told her this, I was thinking that this is a city of 10 million people, 9,886,000 people. Don't give a shit I'm here. So by the same token, when I answer something, And I think I'm being witty or funny or ironic or sarcastic. And then there is a backlash of, it seems like more people heard a story about me being disrespectful than people enjoying my joke. Speaker 2 (21:00) To Kelly Ripa. Speaker 3 (21:01) Right? So I would imagine more people than watched that moment. But Speaker 2 (21:08) it drove millions of people to go watch it. Did you get joy from that? Speaker 3 (21:15) No, Speaker 2 (21:16) I Speaker 3 (21:16) don't know that, you Speaker 2 (21:17) know, so more people watched that clip. Are you still chasing, I mean, I'll be honest, before I got into this business in the beginning, 25 years ago, I was chasing attention, right? Are Speaker 3 (21:28) you still chasing attention? Not there, but yes. I mean, I do, I live, eat and breathe social media. You do? Absolutely. And it's because- Speaker 1 (21:39) You