WIRX “Decoding Carnivale” Call-in with Clancy Brown • 11-03-03

This is the transcript from Clancy’s radio call-in segment on Southwest Michigan’s WIRX/Rock 107.1, with John Jay and Brother Phil.

John: (“Carnivale” theme music starts up.) Rock 107/WIRX. It’s about ten minutes after 8 o’clock. It’s gonna be rainy and 60 today, not too nice… Could be worse, though. 52 overnight tonight, and then tomorrow’s high will be 70. That’s a bonus for Michigan in November. I don’t know what the weather’s gonna be like in sunny California, but it’s probably gonna be better than what we got. Clancy Brown!

Clancy: I dunno, man. We got… It’s pretty cold here. You get out there and get your tulip bulbs in as quick as you can, cuz it’s gonna get cold in Michigan one of these days.

John: I don’t know if I can handle Clancy Brown talking gardening…

Clancy: Hee-hee-hee… (laughing)

John: Tulip bulbs… Brother Justin out there wrapping his shrubs in burlap before he breaks a guy’s neck with his mind.

Clancy: There ya go! (laughing)

John: All right… You gotta tell me. Ya know, I was gone last week. I was in Mexico, and where we were there was no satellite TV, so I missed “Carnivale” last week, which drove me nuts!

Clancy: That’s all right, we kinda missed the “Decoding Carnivale” last week, too. (laughing) So don’t worry.

John: Yeah, I heard there was a little snafu with the phone.

Phil: We ended up getting it on!

John: All right…

Clancy: Yeah, we did. We did it… Sibling rivalry aside, we got it.

Phil: Yup!

John: Ya know what’s funny though? I swear to ya, on Sunday, I’m trying to find HBO. It was on in Mexico, but it didn’t have the right shows! The shows were different. It’s like a different thing!

Clancy: You’re in a different time zone, my man!

John: Well, yeah… Maybe I looked at it at the wrong time.

Phil: Was everything in Spanish?

John: Well, no. They had English language with Spanish subtitles. But what was weird is, I went to go turn on “Carnivale,” and “The Shawshank Redemption” is on!

Phil: Oh, Good!

John: So I was getting a little fix of Clancy anyway!

Clancy: There ya go!

John: So I didn’t see ya do anything weird on the show, but I did get to see you fill Gil Bellows full of holes…

Clancy: Yeah, well... Ya know, Gil deserved it at that point.

John: The little bastard! Ya little bastard! Ya can’t smoke in California!

Clancy: (laughing)

John: All right, so the show last night – I tried to keep up with it, and I felt a little bit out in the cold because… Your first appearance on last night’s show was being sorta hauled into a mental asylum, and I gotta tell ya… The ice bath… Being locked into the ice bath looked pretty unpleasant!

Clancy: Well, ya know… I mean, it clears your head!

Phil & Clancy: (laughing)

John: Yeah!

Phil: It’s a good hangover cure!

John: So what was the actual… Were you actually in a tub full of ice? Did they do that so there was no acting required, or was it…?

Clancy: I dunno… Did it look like I was in a tub full of ice? (laughing)

John: Wasn’t that what it was?

Clancy: Can you imagine yourself being immersed in ice? Did I react the same way that you would have?

Phil: (chuckling)

John: I think so…

Clancy: Sorta that, (high-pitched) “Whoo-OOH!” as my cajones go up into my throat?

Phil: (Laughing)

John: Good God!

Clancy: (Laughing) Oh, my God!

John: They woulda had to skim something off the top of that tub if they’d put me in there, believe me.

Clancy: Yeah! Nah, they were very sweet. They actually had body-temperature water, and put little silicone cubes in there that looked like ice, and it was all very pleasant.

Phil: Ah…

John: Well, that’s cool! Very, very good. So that was all Clancy Brown acting right there. This guy’s good!

Clancy: (chuckling) The tough part was when the guy pulled that little leather thing up over, that covers the tub…?

John: Right.

Clancy: The first time he did it, he pulled it up and it unsnapped at the bottom and landed RIGHT between my teeth!

John: OH!

Phil: Ow…

John: Oh, oh God!

Clancy: (laughing) Yeah.

John: You’re like, hey dude!

Clancy: It’s like (words muffled, like he’s got a big leather apron stuffed between his teeth), “Heh-ha-how-heh-here?”

Phil: (laughing)

John: Let me talk to the prop master for a minute!

Clancy: (laughing)

Phil: This isn’t supposed to really hurt!

John: God! So… You were in the asylum because, now, if I’m getting this right – what I gleaned from “Previously on Carnivale…” You attempted to or were threatening to attempt to jump off a bridge?

Clancy: Ooh, you needed to watch the marathon. See, you needed to catch up on all seven episodes.

John: I know… But I only missed one! But apparently I missed a fairly key one.

Clancy: Yeah, you missed a key one. Well, they’re all key. (laughing)

Phil: Yeah, they are!

Clancy: Yeah, yeah, I had a little flashback last week. Uh, I was on a bridge, ready to end it all, and then it suddenly occurred to me that I have a history, and that history was that I was a young immigrant, sole-survivor with my sister – I guess that doesn’t make me a SOLE survivor, but the only survivors of a train wreck. And we were being chased, or at least we thought we were being chased by someone. And as that someone tried to kill my sister, I killed him – or MADE HIM kill himself!

John: Right, so that’s the neck breakin’?

Clancy: Yeah.

Phil: Oh, there were all kinds of nice broken bones in last week’s episode. We talked about that. Compound fractures!

Clancy: (laughing) Yeah, there was lots of osteopathy going on.

Phil: It was good!

John: Well, there was some pretty good stuff in last night’s episode. I particularly enjoyed the “knee-job” that Jonesy got! Holy…!

Clancy: Eww… Oh, that was nasty! I mean, I like a good love scene like anybody else, but c’mon…!

John: What’s with the “knee-job”?

Clancy: What’s with lickin’ the scars?!? Jeez!

John: (laughing) That was so…

Clancy: Oh, man!

John: It was so weird.

Clancy: I suppose that was like sort of… moving and lovely and… ya know, it made HIM cry. But I was just grossed out!

John: Hey, ya wanna cut that out on the knee and move up about eighteen inches there, if you’d like!

Clancy: It’s SCAR tissue, baby, I can’t FEEL anything! SCAR tissue…

John: Oh! (hurling sounds)

Clancy: Oof! (laughing) Oh, jeez!!!

John: I particularly enjoyed Stumpy’s little chat with Jonesy, when he was setting that up, when he said, “When you’re in with the doctor and he grabs your sac, do ya think he’s SWEET on ya?” (Laughing)

Clancy: Yeah! (Laughing)

Phil: Oh, ugh…

John: (laughing) It was great!

Clancy: “The woman’s a professional!” (Laughing)

John: I just loved that! I loved that, man… And I liked the chat that you had with the psychologist, there in the padded cell. What is it, “Pain is just a bi-product?”

Clancy: Yeah, well, pain is just a bi-product of the therapy – a necessary side-effect.

John: “You misspelled excitement.”

Clancy: (chuckling)

John: Also on last night’s show, Brother Justin and the kid were onscreen together, albeit in a dream sequence, but you guys were together in that scene momentarily.

Clancy: [Thinking John meant the scene with Justin & Alexsei] Man, you’re so out of it… (chuckling) You have to catch seven again.

John: I’ve gotta see it then?

Clancy: I guess in psychology, or in psychiatry, there’s a whole sort of explanation to that. That there’s an older Justin and a younger Justin, the child and the man, and the child kills the man and therefore reverts back to the purest form of himself and all that other stuff. Ya know, it’s all this high-falutin’ stuff that they mean to suggest by that. But yeah, in the dream sequence I occupied the role of the man who was chasing myself and my sister.

John: Ah!

Clancy: And only at the end do we realize that it’s little Justin and it’s little Iris.

Phil: Yeah! See, we talked about this last week. I NEED this little segment of our show every Monday, cuz I am NOT smart enough to figure this show out, obviously!

Clancy: Well… You don’t need to figure it out, you just need to watch it every week, I mean… Ya know…

Phil: I love it!

John: You gotta talk to the people there in Mexico! But the show started this week and there’s Ben laying there with his left arm and both his legs torn off, and you’re sitting in your little Brother Justin robe… It was like a dream within a dream!

Clancy: (eerie boogie man voice) Dream Sequence…

John: Right.

Clancy: That’s an old cinematic trick where you think you wake up from the dream, but then you actually didn’t wake up from the dream!

John: Right.

Clancy: And you gotta wake up from the dream again.

John: Right.

Clancy: (laughing) That’s what happened to me this morning!

John: (laughing) That started me right off on the right foot last night. I went, “Aw, dammit!” Ya know, I was…

Clancy: (laughing)

Phil: I have to catch THIS episode, cuz honestly, my girlfriend screwed me out of “Carnivale” last night – no pun intended.

Clancy: Oh? Congratulations! (chuckling)

John: I don’t wanna hear about this… I don’t need to hear anything about that!

Phil: No pun intended!

Clancy: (laughing) Congratulations!

John: I so don’t need to hear anything about that!

Phil: And I can’t miss… I have to try to keep up. Cuz frankly, I’m not bright!

Clancy: Nah, it’s all that talk about lickin’ scar tissue that got you worked up! (chuckling)

Phil: (laughing)

John: God, that was just unreal! It was absolutely unreal… So, I woulda liked to have seen Brother Justin break that psychologist’s neck with his mind there, that woulda been pretty cool!

Clancy: Nah, ya see… I don’t think Brother Justin broke anybody’s neck. I don’t think Brother Justin actually DOES anything like that. He just sort of suggests to people what to do and they do it…

Phil: They do it themselves?

Clancy: They do it themselves…

John: He’s certainly becoming a mysterious character, and we’re expounding now the storyline where the radio guy, who’s got the country… (Thirties radio voice) “Every man, woman, and child, in search of Brother Justin!”

Clancy: (Laughing)

Phil: Mmm-hmm.

Clancy: He’s the best!

John: A little thirties hyperbole… (Thirties radio voice) “Every man, woman, and child scouring the countryside for Brother Justin!”

Clancy: You’ve come a long way, haven’tcha there?

Phil: That was one of my favorite parts last week…

Clancy: That’s right, that little Walter Winchell thing goin’ on.

Phil: He totally put the guy on the spot and got all kinds of money for the church.

Clancy: Yeah, that’s right. You missed that part, too!

John: Yeah, I missed that… So what happened there?

Phil: Oh. It was good. He put one of the city commissioners on the spot when he was on the radio with, (Thirties radio voice) “How much money are you gonna donate?” Ya know? “At least three thousand, I would imagine…”

John: Oh, really?

Clancy: Yeah, the guy who had the infarction back in episode three or so…

John: Well, there ya go! And we got Lobster Gal last night. That was pretty good.

Clancy: Yeah! Excuse me, but… Did that family seem a little, uh… chubby to be in the Depression?

Phil: (laughing)

John: Ya know, can I bring that up real quick?

Clancy: I mean, it was very white trashy, but… ya know, was she just a little bit too well fed?

John: I definitely… Honest to God, it’s so funny you mentioned that cuz I actually thought that last night, not only about that family, but about a couple people in the “Carnivale” itself!

Phil: Rita!

John: Where are ya getting the food to maintain this two hundred and forty pound, ya know?

Clancy: Well, the “Carnivale” is showbiz, ya know, and we eat! (Laughing) We eat over here. We eat well!

John: And how about Lodz and his little… What’s the bearded chick’s name?

Clancy: Lila…

John: Lila! (whistles)

Clancy: His Little Buttercup…

John: Boy, they’re a freaky little couple, huh?

Clancy: (evil laugh)

John: She’s giving him the power hit off the hookah, and he’s over there with his absinthe. They are just… whew!

Phil: He beat the crap out of her in last week’s episode, didn’t he?

Clancy: Makes you think that maybe they’ve done that before…

John: Yeah, I know a couple couples like that.

Clancy: Yeah, a little argument, a little make up, and then a little argument, and a little make up…

Phil: (Shivering) Whew-ew….

John: Layin’ around blowin’ the hookah.

Clancy: Ya know, you can’t just go and lick the scar tissue.

John: (laughing hard)

Clancy: You gotta inflict a few scar tissues...

John: It can’t just be a “scar-job,” baby!

Clancy: (laughing)

John: Hey, give us a quick peek into what we should be looking for next week.

Clancy: Oh, well, jeez… Ya know, I’m starting to lose track myself!

John: You’re in a padded room… You’ve got a straightjacket on.

Clancy: Yeah, I’m in a padded room. I’m actually out of the padded room, and me and the psychologist, we start getting along a lot better.

John: That’s good.

Clancy: And Iris actually goes on the radio with Tommy, with the radio guy, I think which precipitates my healing, and um… What happens in the carnie? Goodness! I think there’s a little more action between Ben and Ruthie, and… Gosh, ya know, I forget what happens in the “Carnivale.”

John: All right, well, that’s all right. I just wanna keep track of Justin, I did like…

Clancy: This one was eight, right? So nine is next week.

John: Yeah.

Clancy: Next week’s is gonna be good, though. It’s all driving toward the finale.

John: I gotta get a tape of seven, or maybe HBO will run a thing again.

Clancy: Oh, yeah!

John: I dunno.

Phil: They should have it on again this week.

John: I enjoyed the moment with Brother Justin in the asylum there, with the guy screamin’ toward the end of the show. “Be still.”

Clancy: Yeah, well…

John: And everybody in the thing sorta freaks out cuz this guy quit making his noise. (John imitates the howler monkey inmate.)

Clancy: Yeah, don’t you wish you had that power every now and then?

John: Oh, yeah!

Phil: Mmm-hmmm!

John: Boy, would that be powerful.

Clancy: Ya know, especially when the dogs are barkin’.

John: (Deep Clancy voice) “Be still…”

Phil: Or like every time I go to the movies!

Clancy: (laughing) Yeah, every time you go to the movies… There’s so many places where people just start bellowing inappropriately!

John: Brother Justin would be a great guy to go to the movies with.

Clancy: Of course!

Phil: Yeah!

John: Hey, get him to be still, wouldja?

Phil: Exactly… “Hey, how did my cell phone get up my ass?”

Clancy: (laughing hard)

John: (making sound of phone ringing – one that’s suddenly muffled.) Oooof-OW! Whoo-hoo, that would be great!

(Clancy, John, and Phil laughing.)

John: Clancy Brown from “Carnivale” on HBO, Sunday nights at 9 o’clock. Don’t miss it like I did last week, cuz you got catchin’ up to do.

Clancy: Because then you’re outta luck.

John: I think it’s smart that HBO is doing the marathon thing. I gotta try to catch seven, if somebody ran tape on that.

Phil: They have to do the marathon thing, though, on Saturday, cuz I can’t… I’ve got the NFL!

John: Or like every week!

Clancy: You can’t! It’s Sunday, for cryin’ out loud! How can you sit there and watch the marathon?

Phil: Yeah, I got football to watch.

Clancy: They’ve got a little demographic research to do over there…

Phil: I think so.

John: Well, hey, thanks again, Clancy! Always a pleasure chatting with you, my friend.

Clancy: All right.

John: Loved you in “Shawshank!” Saw it this last weekend…

Clancy: All right, take care of that TAN!

John: (laughing)

Clancy: You take care of that tan, John. It’s November!

Phil: You should take care of that BURN, is more like.

Clancy: Oh!

Phil: John and I don’t tan… We burn!

John: I’m a touch pink, just a little on the pink side…

Clancy: (laughing) All right…

John: All right, buddy. Have a good week, Clancy!

Clancy: Talk to you later. Seeya!

John: We’ll seeya around. That’s Clancy Brown from “Carnivale.” Always a pleasure chatting with that guy.

Phil: Always!


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