Dirty Daddy: The Chronicles of a Family Man Turned Filthy Comedian (15 page)

Like a lot of actors on TV shows that were popular around the world, I have often heard: “I learned to speak English watching your show.” That’s a high compliment until you realize what it means . . . young men from China and Russia walking around saying, “You got it, dude.”

Still, that’s healthier than their learning English from, say, one of my comedy specials, in which case their first words in English would have been “Cock shit fuck.” Damn, and if you recall from the very beginning of this book, I was asked to say that out loud on Conan once and I did—but reading it in print, even after I’ve provided a disclaimer for it, it still doesn’t feel right.

Everyone involved in
FH—
with DT, UJ, and UJ—has had parents come up to them and say, “Thank you, that’s the only show I could ever watch with my kids.” I’ve said that to people too, about their shows. I’ve actually given exactly the same compliment to Louis C.K. and Larry David, although to be fair I watched those shows with my daughters after they’d already become young women.

My daughters and I were never a TGIF type of group. More indie film types.
Harold and Maude, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,
and
Pan’s Labyrinth—
that’s what my daughters and I would watch together. Okay, and a little
SpongeBob
.

The favorite show my kids grew up with was
South Park
. They were into harder-core comedy.
Family Guy
also played on a loop in the more recent years. My girls also loved
Gossip Girl,
but I felt uncomfortable watching that with them. At least with
Curb Your Enthusiasm
—and now
Louie
—you know you’re getting messages geared toward sexual awkwardness from a single adult male’s point of view.

As a parent you never know if you should change the channel when your eleven-year-old is about to see your favorite comedy stars have sex. Odd, I was more prudish in that way than you’d expect. With my daughters. Never had a son to see if I’d apply the same guidelines.

I also couldn’t watch
Project Runway
with my daughters. Fathers: that’s good parenting. Don’t watch TV that features hot girls, especially girls who are younger than your daughters,
with
your daughters present. Or with their friends. Especially if your daughters aren’t home. Apologies. I just throw in shit like that for the bros I meet out when I’m touring New Jersey. I’ll get a high five over a paragraph flourish like that. And then find Purell.

A’ight, back to
FH
. Let me know if you’ve had enough by pulling on your right ear. On
The Tonight Show
once, Jay Leno summed up
Full House
by saying, “The premise of this show is, Mom’s dead—let’s party.” A lot of people could relate to the tragic premise. One of the most rewarding parts of working on a show like that was hearing from thousands of people who’d lost someone, men who’d lost their wives and had to raise their girls as a single parent.

The show hit close to home for many. Except “real people” didn’t talk like that, in that amped-up sitcom style, or have a four-year-old looking at you perplexed with an unusually loud retort of “I don’t know!”

The character of Michelle was funny, how when she didn’t get her way, she would say one of her hook lines: “Aw nuts!” That was in the script pretty much every week. It was guaranteed laughs. The writers knew the audience would react well to it. Michelle was comedy gold. Some little-kid fans would say to their parents, “Let’s watch the Michelle Show.”

Here’s something I assume all of you know, so here’s stating the obvious . . . The character of Michelle was played by my friends Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. If anyone doesn’t know why two babies play one character on a television show or movie, it’s because in this case, the girls started on the show at nine months old—and you don’t work one child as an infant due to child labor laws and basic human dignity. I hope I haven’t just offended any sweatshop owners.

Ashley and Mary-Kate were adorable. Children loved them. Everyone loved them. I don’t allow myself to receive any negative comments ever made about them. I love them. So it made sense to me and always will that they were beloved. There was no secret magic formula. If children adore you, you are: adorable. I hear it even now from young kids. Magic like that just happens sometimes. What happened in this instance, though, had never happened before and I doubt will ever happen again. It was and is a rarified air.

I will talk more about Mary-Kate and Ashley later in this chapter, but for now let me just say, it upsets me when people jump all over them and talk trash. All the kids on that show are not kids anymore, and they’re all lovely people. Family to me.

My dear friend for life, Candace Cameron Bure, who played my daughter D. J., was ten years old when the show began. Jodie Sweetin, who played Stephanie, was five years old. Family to me.

And I don’t talk badly about family. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I don’t talk badly about “immediate” family or my former television family. Wait, what am I doing? This is a book. I fuckin’ love
everybody
. And I did—and do—love everybody on that show. Even the occasional sketchy guest star. That includes Mickey Rooney and Little Richard. Good golly, Miss Molly.

So “the show”—I’ll call it that for a moment—had to find itself, as all shows do. At first it was more about three buddies. That experiment lasted about two episodes. Seemed weird to watch guys trying to hook up and find dates while three little girls were being raised in the house.

So that mojo was snipped early on. Except John Stamos kept Uncle Jesse as hetero as he could. Have mercy. Me, I surrendered to my feminine side. Again, lots of open communication in the form of morality speeches, abundances of hugging, and . . . deep deep cleaning.

I also think the fact that
Full House
was shot on analog video, not on digital videotape, made a significant difference in how the show is read by the viewer’s optic nerve. Just seems more present and crisp, which is why three-year-olds discover it now on kid cable and think it’s a current program. I know, the hair . . . I’d say no one has that hair on television, except God bless Danny McBride and
Eastbound and Down,
one of my personal favorites of all time.

I’ve spoken to a lot of sitcom actors over the years who, like me, sometimes felt frustrated acting on a show like that, like they were talking down to the audience. But what I learned, and not too late—even though being a natural complainer and cynic are a couple of my gifts—was that there is value in making a show for kids, with characters who are easy to figure out.

There may never be another show like it in primetime network television again. It was a feel-good show, like serving your family a big greasy meatloaf on a Friday night. It was comfort food. Nowadays if a family eats a big greasy meatloaf on a Friday night, some health-conscious member of that family might try to cock-block it and ask for vegan meatloaf. I’ve had vegan meatloaf. My biggest note on it is: Take the word
meat
out of the name.

Maybe it would’ve been interesting to do a manlier version of
FH,
where the dad comes home from a hard day’s work, grabs a scotch, and yells to his freeloader brother-in-law/out-of-work stand-up-comic best friend, “What the hell are you guys still doing here? The week’s over! I can take care of my
own
kids! Get the fuck out!! It’s TGI fuckin’ F time!!”

But that’s not how it went down. Nor should it have. The creators of
Full House
made sure that my dad character—not unlike those in the movie it was patterned after (without ever copping to it),
Three Men and a Baby
—was missing just enough alpha male that he needed his no-nonsense handsome Greek brother-in-law and his Bullwinkle-toting, Mr. Woodchuck–puppetin’ best friend to help him raise his kids.

What other kinds of guys would you want to bring into your house to help your child through their most formative years? I’m shocked social services didn’t knock on the door and take the kids away just based on the premise. Wait, I think we did have that element on the show once. Anyone remember?

But it all still made more sense than
Who’s the Boss?
To this day I don’t understand what Tony Danza was doing in that house. And was she
his
boss, or was
he
the boss, hence the title? It’s best if some things remain unknown. Oh wait, I just got it! “
Who’s
the boss” meant they didn’t know
who
the boss was. Oooohhh . . .

Full House
had a weird premise too. But again, it didn’t really matter when you had the guaranteed laughs of Jodie Sweetin saying things like “Well, pin a rose on your nose!” I’m not being sarcastic with that comment. At the start, she was amazing to behold, displaying old-school sitcom abilities in the form of a five-year-old.

One of the things that also struck me from the moment I shot the pilot of the show was what a great actress Candace was. Even though she was only nine years old, she and I were often the protagonists who at the end of the day—at the end of the episode—had to hold the house together. And today she has three amazing children herself, which proves it was inherently part of her character as a young woman to nurture people.

My oldest daughter recently reminded me that she was actually jealous of my going to work and having a completely different family. When the show began, I once said on
Late Night with David Letterman,
that my eldest, who was one-year old at the time, thought I was cheating on her because she smelled my TV baby on me.

I was spending more time in the day with little actresses pretending to be my daughters than with my own daughters.

But I actually did change Mary-Kate’s and Ashley’s diapers once. And that was four years ago. Ashley came up with the punch line to that joke. No, really, I did have to change them a couple times. Cameras were rolling and one of the young ladies had made a poop, which had to be removed or we would have been holding a child with a smashed-poo-filled diaper for a long scene. A
very
long scene if you’re smelling poo the whole time. The smell of poo can make the smallest moments seem like an eternity.

I didn’t want the poo to cause a rash and soil my television child’s butt, so I decided to take the time to remove the aforementioned substance from the diaper, so that my television baby was poo-free.

All poo aside, a bunch of people have asked me, “Did you know Mary-Kate and Ashley were going to become big television stars and eventually transition into the great impresarios of fashion they have become?” My answer is usually sarcastic, though not meant to be snippy: “Yes, that is exactly what I predicted. I am the Nostradamus of show business.”

One cannot project the future of anyone on this earth, even if you see the best things opening up for someone, or sometimes, not the best things. Ashley and Mary-Kate always had a good eye, the left one, and I always felt, once they were eighteen, they could make good decisions for themselves. The life of all young women have their ups and downs.

They were more than aware of the “countdown” that people had conjured up that led to the
day
when they’d both turn eighteen. As if millions of guys would suddenly have their chance to have their way with the twins. What a smarmy group of douchebags.

I felt protective of Mary-Kate and Ashley—and equally so with Candace and Jodie. Same as I do with every child actor I’ve ever worked with. It’s “work” we do together, and yet, they are kids, and I am supposedly representing their dad, a father figure who knows the difference between right and wrong. I was proud to be their “dad.” I feel like I’ve always had a connection with kids. Maybe it’s because in some way I’m still that nine-year-old wanting to say the things I’m not supposed to say. And the children I’ve worked with always liked me, I’m told, because I was still one of them.

I am not an ageist. I don’t understand people who look at those younger than them and believe, “Oh, they’re the
children
—we’re so much older and wiser.” I can look at a three-year-old and think she has more knowledge than me. Then again, some three-year-olds do know more than me. When my youngest daughter was born, she looked right through me at her moment of birth. It was that look of “I’m onto you.”

I’ll always have genuine affection for my dear friends Candace Cameron Bure, Jodie Sweetin, Ashley Olsen, and Mary-Kate Olsen for being such important, genuine friends in my life. And the incredibly sweet Andrea Barber, who played Kimmy Gibbler, the “neighbor girl.” I also love dearly Scott Weinger, who played Candace’s boyfriend Steve on the show. I didn’t remember if he had a last name, but according to IMDB, it was “Hale.”

But as brothers in arms go, the strongest relationships I made on that show were with Dave Coulier and John Stamos. I’d known Dave as my best buddy since I was twenty-one but didn’t know John until the shooting of the pilot. With them, I had the good fortune of playing with siblings in silliness. Dave acted like a seven-year-old, which eventually made him the youngest person on the set.

Being silly helped us survive a super-clean-cut show that at first mostly got panned but then in retrospect became part of family-television history. Dave, John, and I would egg each other on and we were often driven to outbursts of non-family-friendly humor. When this happened, the producers and the parents of the kids would take us up to the conference room for a good talkin’-to. Those moments were more memorable for me than some of the episodes. I’m not always the quickest study.

For example, when we would go over the scripts together in a conference room with the producers and writers, we were all supposed to be taking notes but I’d be drawing penises on the scripts and showing them to Dave and John like I was in fifth grade. I couldn’t help it. The whole show for me was like a beautiful Jekyll and Hyde experience.

Dave used to look at me and say, “You’d kill yourself if I wasn’t here.” And then he would fart. Loudly. On cue. The set always smelled like his ass. All the show’s eight seasons of outtake gag reels have the whole cast leaving the stage abruptly the moment Dave releases his ass fumes. It gave true meaning to the term
gag reel
. It was his signature. His character’s tagline was “Cut it out.” And he did. Dave’s been saying that line in his stand-up for years. He’s a really funny stand-up. And he has quite a talented butthole.