-I want to ask about this. Doing this documentary,
you had to talk about yourself a lot on film.
-Yeah. I hated that. -But then you had to watch it.
-That was horrible.
-The watching or the talking? -Yeah. Every part of it.
I --
This filmmaker, Neil Berkeley, came up to me.
And he said,
"I´ve always wanted to do a Gilbert Gottfried documentary."
And I said, "Well, you should
set your dreams a lot higher than that."
-But then he made this wonderful film.
You -- One of the things we found out --
I want to mention that clip real quick.
You are a hoarder, it seems.
-Yeah, yeah, I could be on any one of those shows.
-Uh-huh. -It´s like --
See, I think mainly anything I can get for free.
If someone came up and said,
"I´ve got a carton of sanitary napkins" or something,
I´d go, "Okay, yeah."
You´d take that?
-I´m sure I could find a use for those.
-Your children, your wife are in the film?
-Yes.
-Do your children think you are funny?
-My son, when he was in preschool,
the teacher said, "He´s always --
He doesn´t pay attention.
And he´s always trying to crack jokes."
And I thought, "Yeah, I´m going to really beat him for this.
Yeah. I don´t know where he gets this from."
And she said, "Where´d you learn how to be funny?"
And he said, "From my daddy."
And she said, "Oh, your daddy´s funny?"
He goes, "He´s funny at home, not at work."
[ Laughter ]
-He heckled you. -Uh, yes.
-He heckled you to a teacher. -Yeah.
And I have to respect anyone
who doesn´t admire me as a performer.
-[ Laughs ]
You talk about a couple of incidents where you
have gotten in trouble for jokes that you did.
One of them, I believe --
-Luckily, it stayed out of the press.
-Yeah. You have had --
-And it stayed off the Internet.
-One was you told a 9/11 joke right after --
right after 9/11 at a Hugh Hefner roast.
-Yeah. It was --
It was like a couple of days after September 11th.
People are booing and hissing.
One guy yelled out, "Too soon."
Which I thought meant I didn´t take a long enough pause
between the setup and the punch line.
And then I figure
why not go to the bottom level of hell?
And I go in, I tell the Aristocrats joke.
-Now, this is funny.
Because we´re talking about one documentary,
but the telling of The Aristocrats joke
led to a different documentary about the history of the joke.
Yeah, it´s called "The Aristocrats," oddly enough.
-And that was -- That´s sort of a filthy joke.
And it sort of won -- You won the room back.
-It showed, like, in situations like that,
people need to laugh.
They really want to laugh.
In the documentary,
there´s a part where I´m doing a benefit
at St. Jude´s Hospital,
which is by no stretch a funny place.
-Of course not.
-It´s, like, a children´s hospital.
And I went up --
I thought, for sure, this would destroy what I had of a career.
And people were --
It did great.
´Cause people desperately want to laugh.
-And breaking tension
is sort of the root of what it is that you do.
I want to ask, because the Emmys were just last night,
Two nights ago, I should say.
You hosted the ´91 Emmys. -Yes.
-And they had to put you on a delay, yes?
-Yeah. I think -- I think I´m the reason --
I think, before that,
they didn´t have a delay with the Emmys.
And I´m pretty sure afterwards --
Because it was the year that Pee-wee Herman --
he was in a porn theater doing what people do in porn theaters.
-Yeah. -He was playing with pee-wee.
And --
And, so, I went on stage.
And I said, "I really sleep better at night
knowing Pee-wee Herman´s been arrested.
If masturbation´s a crime,
I should be on death row."
[ Laughter ]
And how did they know he was masturbating?
Did they dust for prints?
[ Laughter ]
And, you know, and right now --
And to think that by age 12, I was already Al Capone.
[ Laughter ]
Like, you could put a charcoal in my right hand,
and I´ll crush it into a diamond.
And I was never invited back to the Emmys.
-Yeah. There you go. Their loss.
I promise you, it´s their loss.
We could have used it a couple nights ago.
We all would have been very happy with that.
Thank you so much for being here.
-Thank you. -Congrats on the documentary.
Always a pleasure.