Some Thoughts From DVD

Dick Van Dyke Interview

From Esquire Magazine (Feb 1, 2007)

I did pretty well because I knew how to tuck. Of course, there's the tripping over the ottoman in the opening of the show. But I didn't realize how many different kinds of falls I did in that show. At this banquet recently, they showed a little clip of all my falls. I said, No wonder there's arthritis in my spine.
              
My brother and I laughed a lot as kids. We came up in the middle of the Depression, and neither one of us knew we were poor. We had nothing, but we didn't know it.
          
If you walked into my house when I was a kid, you might see my mother searching the bureau drawers to find a ham she'd put away for dinner and forgotten where it was.
               
Everyone called my dad Cookie. Nobody knew his real name. There's a photograph from when I was a kid at the park for a July 4 picnic. The table was all laid out, down to the potato salad, and suddenly it started to rain in torrents. Everybody ran for the cars — except my dad. He sat there and ate in the pouring rain, dripping wet, just for the heck of it.
               
As wonderful as they were, my parents didn't teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn't had a family myself, I probably never would've done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.
           
When I started having kids, I thought, I don't want to do anything they can't watch.
           
In the early sixties, I was looking up a phone number in Santa Monica and came upon the name Stan Laurel. I loved Stan Laurel as a kid. My favorite Laurel and Hardy movie is Way Out West. You've never seen it? Oh, you gotta — still a classic! So I just dialed the number for Stan Laurel, and it was him! I was doing our television series, so he knew who I was. I said, "I've always been an admirer, and, you know, I've stolen rather liberally from you over the years." He said, "Yes, I know." He invited me over, and we became good friends.
             
At the very beginning of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Carl Reiner said, Five years — if we go that long. He thought it would get repetitive after that. So after five years, everybody knew it was over. The writing was brilliant. It was a perfect ensemble. We were the top-rated show... Nobody wanted to leave. But we all knew it was over because of what Carl said at the beginning.

I've made peace with insecurity. You have to. Because there is no certainty of any kind. Once you let go, it's really freeing.
           
Buddhists say you need three things in life: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. Isn't that great?
              
In my seventies, I exercised to stay ambulatory. In my eighties, I exercise to avoid assisted living.
           
No, that story is not so. My wife and I weren't living in a car. We had a rough go after we were married. I failed to pay the rent and we got evicted while my wife was pregnant. We were in a little motel room, cooking on a hot plate. It was really a low time, but we were never living in a car. Things looked up after that. We were awfully close to being homeless — enough to empathize, anyway.
             
For some reason, as time gets short in life, wasting time escaping through entertainment bothers me. I've been off fiction for years. I don't watch episodic television. I want information or something thought provoking. I'm down to the History Channel and Jeopardy!
          
Chita Rivera did a one-woman show called The Dancer's Life last year. In it, she redoes the best numbers she's ever done. Remarkable. And, of course, she had a segment where she did the things we'd done together. So they called me and said, Will you come to New York, get onstage, and surprise everyone? Well, I did. She's introducing "Put on a Happy Face," and she says, "I did this number 650 times with Dick Van Dyke." I'm offstage and I say, "Would you like to try for 651?" The audience went mad. Biggest standing ovation I'd ever seen in my life. There are very few things on earth that compare with getting an ovation on Broadway after going through some lean years. I thought to myself, This is why I went into this business. I'd forgotten. I didn't want to leave. I would've stayed all season if I could. Oh, man.
        
My retirement is not working out.
       
The day that Stan Laurel died, the press came by my house to interview me about him. As I'm talking, a sprinkler spout that I was standing over burst. Water shot up and just drenched me. I looked up to the sky. It was obviously his last bit of comedy. If that won't give you religion, what will?