Hey, it's Jeff Zito and thank you for checking out another episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast. We're streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, wherever you listen to podcasts. So please subscribe. We love a five star rating and please leave a review. Check out past guests and episodes online at celebrityjobber.com. You can also follow on Instagram, which is celebrity underscore jobber underscore podcast and the YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash the at sign celebrity jobber before fame. Who were these people? You know, sometimes it was a long grind and a series of events that got these people to where they are. And sometimes it was like a lucky break, you know, a phone call or just a single moment that changed their life forever. I love the impractical jokers. I've actually talked to all of them and I spoke with James Murray, aka Mer and Brian Quinn Q did them both together back on episode number 74. If you wanted to go back and check that out, which you could do by going to celebrityjobber.com. It's such a great story of these four friends that got together in high school, screwed around and ended up doing a dream job together. They were screwing around in high school and they're now screwing around as adults with their hidden camera show, which is now on its 15th season on TBS. On this episode, we'll get a little deeper into James Murray's life. We'll talk a little bit more about his family and dig a little deeper into some of the other jobs that he had before impractical jokers. It's doing stand up comedy all over the country. Go to James Murray official.com for more info and tour dates. And at my friend Captain Brian's place this weekend, the off the hook comedy club in Naples, Florida, his name is James Murray. You know him as Mer from impractical jokers. And he's my guest this week on celebrity jobber. The celebrity jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, give a five star rating and leave a review. Check out all our past episodes on Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you pod. What if these celebrities weren't famous? What would they have become? What was their first job? We're about to find out. Hey, it's Murray. How are you? I'm just on your website a little bit too. And I'm so glad I went to this website because I'm buying as we speak, I'm buying the Murray Christmas sweatshirt. That's so great. That is so great. Great stuff. So we talked before about maybe two years ago and you're back in Florida. You're at my friend Captain Brian's place, the off the hook comedy club in Naples. Great place. Yeah, I tell you what, man, it's been a few years since I've been there. And it was when I first started my solo tour, I think my first weekend was at off the hook in Naples. And there were great audiences, great, great venue. I had an absolutely different show now that it was three years ago. But I'm so excited to come back. I'll tell you why I'm most excited to come back because it's it's snowing and sweet rain here in Jersey right now. Oh, man, you're on business. This is a business trip for you, Mer. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your old life, you know, because, you know, a lot of people don't realize there was a life before the Joker's. There's been a lot of life on earth before Joker's. But yeah, in my life, in particular, yeah, yeah, it was before that I had every job on the planet. But I was my final job before Joker's was I was a TV developer. I was in great sales. He shows for a living. You know, and before that, I was unemployed for a long time. Before that, I was, you know, I think I juggled for a summer. Now, is it true? I believe the last time we talked, you said to me that your mother always wanted you to be a podiatrist. Were you just kidding or is that true? Good, good memory. That's she had shell feet. She had terrible feet. She just wanted me to be a foot doctor to help rub her porn. You weren't kidding. That's actually true. She really wanted you to be a podiatrist. Oh, man, she wound up. She wound up eventually being proud of me when I finally made it as they said. I would imagine. Now, you know, it's you seem like the brains of the operation, if you will. Like, I mean, I'm sure everybody plays plays a part in the success of Joker's. But tell me a little bit about you. You were just mentioning that you, you know, you you develop TV shows. That's what you did. And how did what you did by developing TV shows help Joker's actually land land their spot? Well, I had pitched and sold a lot of TV shows over 10 years. And and then when we the guys, you know, I knew that hidden cameras coming back. And so the guys and I got together, it was like, I think I sell a hidden camera show. So we came up with the idea for Joker's. And then I wrote the treatment and we pitched it through, you know, set the means for my job and went in and that was that. And that was 15 years ago. We're still going to a new season starts January 15th. By the way, by the way, I tell you funny story. So the new season starts January 15th on TBS. And the first episode is so funny, man. Like Sal loses and for a punishment, we made him go through a haunted house while on the phone, while on the phone with special cable trying to cancel his cable service. It is so funny. Oh, man. So funny. Oh, my God. I wanted to ask you, is there ever any type of punishment that you had? And I'm telling you, man, I just started getting back into the wonder year. So every time I see Winnie Cooper, I just crack up because of when you had to get all oiled up and interviewed her. But I'm thinking to myself, after all these years, you have to have some regrets. You've gotten tattoos. What can you tell me some of your biggest regrets from any of the punishments that you had to take from from jokers? I mean, when I fly down to Naples tomorrow morning, my license still has no eyebrows on. To be dead. So I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I see something say something, man. Like every time a good. GSA security, I get purple checks because of my license. You know, oh my God. Coming up next season, the season finale next season, I lost the episode and they made me be a videographer at a real wedding, a 300 person wedding in Jersey. But I was I was in full prosthetics, right? I had, I did not look like myself. I had long blonde hair, blue eyes, different cheeks, different nose, different forehead and at the end of the post. So no one knew I was there. None of the 300 guests recognized me. Only the broad and groom knew that we were filming there. And at the end of the punishment, I had to back into and take down the whole wedding cake and I got physically thrown out of the wedding by the guests. Like, like Jersey meathead kind of guys throw you out or what? Oh, yeah. You know, pick accents, a lot of Aquanet, you know, the whole thing. The celebrity jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. Celebrity jobber. It seems like to me, you know, I want to get back to a lot of your other jobs because you were telling me you juggled for one. I thought that was interesting, but it seems to me that you were always maybe interested in in show business from a from an early, early age, because, you know, even though, you know, you were behind the scenes, you were still involved in show business. So what what was it that got you hooked or made you when you were a little kid inspired you to get into show business? I mean, I remember from childhood, always loving, loving to make people laugh. It was always my number one thing. And so like in high school, we had a really good comedy group that I was part of with the gods from impractical jokers and had a lot of fun and then did it in college as well. I just always always wanted to make people laugh or cry in some way. So like I was really into like comedy and horror. Which is why I write like new thrillers. I write I've got nine horror books and I'm still is right now. Three or serial killer thrillers. One's a sci-fi. One's a creature feature through a kid's sci-fi comedy. And the idea of that was I was wanted to make him into movies. We actually have a horror movie coming out in a few months based on one of my books. I wrote a book a few years ago called Don't Move. It's like a creature feature kind of book and movie and just got turned into a movie. The movie's done. The movie in the movie is a Rob Riggle. T-Pain is in the movie. Russ the Rapper in his debut lead role in a movie, Tom Capil. It's a great great. That's it's very scary. It's also really funny too. So, Murr, you know, anybody in your in your life funny because it seemed like your mother and father and your whole family, you know, you grew up in Staten Island, you know, in a normal family like nobody was in show business. They had like regular jobs. I think you said your dad, you know, wore a suit and tie to work. It was a professional. So so like who was funny in your family? It's so funny, man. Like we used to drone up my family through like a fourth of July party in our backyard in Staten Island and all the all the the guys, all the my my guy friends would be in the pool playing volleyball, whatever. Meanwhile, all of our girlfriends were up around the bar hanging out with my dad. You know what I mean? Because he was the funniest guy you'll ever meet in your life. And he knew how to make a hell of a margarita. He was the only smart one out of all of us. You know what I mean? So is the old man, though. He was the one with the sense of humor. Oh, yeah, for sure. He was he was a clown. He was a clown. That's awesome, man. Party City, I believe you told me the last time I talked was your very first job. That was with Joe Gatto. I thought that was an interesting first gig. I got fired from Party City famously. And the reason was it was a summer job. And when I was just Party City, the stores, they have like giant high shelves, like 12 feet high and they stack on the top shelf. They stack boxes of solo cups and stuff like that. And so but the aisles are connected. So there's no it doesn't go up to the ceiling. It goes like three to four ceiling, put all your extra inventory up top. So I was on one aisle of Party City, loading these giant boxes of red solo cups on the top shelf, right? But I pushed too far and it fell down into the other aisle because that did. And it came down on a woman's head. And that was my last. That was the end of my party city career. Oh, no, did she was she litigious? Did she file suit? I think she's dead now. I'm so sorry. I did not. I was seven. I was 17. I did not follow up on her. Well, you know, these days, I killed her. You know what? Good thing, though. Good thing because back then, you know, people weren't as litigious as they are now, you know, they'll sue for anything nowadays. So could have been a godsend for you. No, did you imagine like you're a family member like, oh, how did grandma die? Oh, she got crushed by red solo cups. Red solo cups in Party City. What a way to go, man. But don't worry, we got him in the end. We sued Grandpa. Grandpa defeated Hitler when they got taken down by red solo cups. So Party City was your first job when you were a kid. You said to me that you were you juggled one summer. What other kind of jobs did you have before you know, you got into the jokers? Oh, my God, I was a casting director. I was I worked. I lied my way into a job for three years at NBC. I went on an interview with NBC and I was just out of college. They said, OK, we need somebody to build and maintain the Silent Live website. The Conan and Brian website. Kids, you know how to do websites and I lied through my teeth. I said, absolutely. I'm well versed in HTML, JavaScript, the whole thing. And they said, Brent, you're hired. You start next Monday. I had no clue how to do it. I ran right to Barnes and Noble, picked up books on coding and still don't know how to do it. I have I faked the job for three years. I was the email I see email Joe Gatto and say, hey, you want the silent website to do this and you write the code. He sent me the code on email. I'd paste the website. I faked it for three years. Oh, wow. Good for you. That's awesome. And I mean, that was before you could Google stuff. You actually had to go to Barnes and Noble and buy a book. Absolutely. Amazon didn't exist. I'm talking 99, 98, 99, you know, that's crazy. Celebrity Chopper. The Celebrity Chopper podcast with Jeff Zito. I'm going through all your bio stuff and one thing keeps popping up and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. I want you to share with me your love of model railroads. It seemed like you have been interested in this as a kid and still to this day. I need to know a little bit about your love for model railroads. The story is crazy. I can't. So I go. I go to trains my whole life. I had my best memories. My childhood, my dad and I building our train layout together. Right. Anyways, my house is too small for my trains. They're sitting in the basement for decades now, you know, but nearby, like 10 minutes away from my house here in Jersey, an article hits the Wall Street Journal last December about one of America's longest running, oldest, nonprofit model railroad clubs to put in perspective how big this club is. My house that I live in is not a big house. It's 4,600 square feet. That's pretty much the model railroad club. The model railroad club is 12,000 square feet of track. It's unbelievable. It's professionals called Pacific Southern Railways. Been running since 1950, right? Anyways, last year, the owner of the house died sadly from cancer and the widow was forced to sell the house and anybody that buys the house is going to be like, OK, you got to give your trains out of the basement. You can't have 12,000 square feet of the house. Get out, right? The club is there all week long playing with the trains, opening up to the public as a nonprofit. So the night before they were going to lose the house, my wife and I bought the house to save the train club. And so now I'm one of the chairboard members of the Pacific Southern Railway, one of America's longest running model railroad clubs. And so they do their every year they do their holiday open house, right? Where they open up to the public, public can come in, see the trains, play with them, what have you. And usually in a typical year, they get 100, 150 people go through. It was last weekend. We had 1500 people came through the house to see the trains and to meet Melissa and my wife and I. It was wild, man. Well, you know, but you had this, you had a love for this as a kid, you and your dad had some kind of model trains, right? So where did this all come from? Was your was your old man a fan of the trains? I tell you what, to get real for a second, you know, my father passed about two years ago from Alzheimer's. He suffered with it for many years and it ended up taking my mom to and and to the day he died, if you put either a Frank Sinatra record on the record player or put a model railroad magazine in his hand or put the movie Naked Gunner airplane on his smile, it instantly creeps across his face. Oh, wow. Right back to his old self to the day he died. It's that kind of thing. You've formed core memories in in families, you know, it's just one of those things that's physical, tangible, it's real. It's not like social media. It's something existing in the real world you can do and master and learn and figure out. It's just the best core memories that John did. Right on, man. Very cool. I also read that early on and I wanted you to maybe clear this up for me. Early on you you wrote a movie and I didn't know anything about this, which is again kind of just cementing how you wanted to be in show business, you know, your whole life. So you wrote a movie, but it says, I think it was on Wikipedia where it said, rather than paying for a Ford Taurus, Mer's parents agreed to pay for production. So I figured there was a story in there somewhere. Tell me about this Ford Taurus and why your parents decided not to buy you that and to finance your movie. I tell you what, I shouldn't think of the damn Taurus. I really should because the movie, the movie was I graduate college. My dad says congratulations. I'm going to buy you a cheapo used car. You could have whatever you want, like a five-brank bar, whatever. I said, no, no, no. Keep the money. I want to for a graduate's gift, put it into me, making a short film. And I did and the movie was terrible. And I realized that I should not be a movie director. I knew my my talents were elsewhere. And I think I punished myself for 20 years because I didn't own a car. I purposely like was like, I don't deserve a car. And I bought my first car in life at 44 years. No way. I did. Yeah. Think about that. I have not owned a car ever in my life until 44 years old, almost as punishment for not passing up a Ford Taurus. So we're talking like, Murr, we're talking about like a couple of just a few years ago. You bought your very first car. Correct. I never owned a car in my life. I was I seriously I was punishing myself for how bad that movie was. And it was it was like a retelling of the Bible, if you will. Oh, God, I don't even want to. Yes, but I tell you what, I end up I end up succeeding because don't figure it. Didn't get into a single film festival. Nothing. It was a disaster. Right. Lost all the money. It was a mess. But 25 years later, I got on and brought two jokers and the guys put her on the show and to date, like 8 million Americans have watched that movie. Wow. Longer. You do. You do. When we last spoke, I asked you about, you know, maybe a pivotal moment in your career, like a moment that like changed your life forever. And I think you had like a retrospective type of moment where you said you looked up at the marquee over at Madison Square Garden. You saw your you saw your name and that kind of hit you right there. It's like a big moment in your life. Can you think of something in all the life events that you had leading up to the jokers and success and stand up and touring and all that? Was there one thing along the way that you think about, man, if that didn't happen, I might still be pitching TV shows or might be juggling some somewhere. I'll tell you an interesting one. This has nothing to do with the jokers necessarily, but it does. So 2002 on a dare, my friend dared me to write a thriller novel and I said, sure, I can write a novel. I've been doing English from Georgetown. Let's go. I want to always want to write books. So I wrote I spent a year in my life writing my first book called Awakened. It's like a scythe in my heart. It's really, really good. Right. It hit number one on the UK, Sunday Times and best sellers across America. You know, anyways, so I wrote the book. But back then I wasn't on TV, couldn't get anybody to read it. And it sat it sat on my computer for 20 years, right? Twenty years later, we got on a project of jokers. It's a success. I sent the same book into Harvard College, not a word changed. They bought the trilogy. It hit number one on all these best sellers lists and launched my literary career. And that first weekend of the book launch for the very first book Awakened, I threw a giant launch event in New York City. Fans came out, the public came out to see to see the book launch. And they had an after party. And at that after party, I met my wife, because my wife Melissa, I'm still married to now. And and if I hadn't wrote that book on a dare 20, this point, 24 years ago, never knowing the future would be in practical jokers and so on and so forth. And becoming an author as well. I never would have met my wife. I never would have had that car I bought. I never would have had my puppies or my life right now. And that tells you, you know, talk about a decision you make so long ago that dramatically affects your life. Yeah, I was that I was not expecting to hear. But that is was an awesome story. And exactly what I was talking about, that was great. Celebrity Jobber, the Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. No idea you were an author of fiction. He's got all these different books. I've been at James Murray official dot com. I had no idea that, you know, I was just kind of peeping around. Look, like I said, I wanted to buy the Christmas sweatshirt. And I saw all these all these books. And this has been a passion of yours for a long time. You just get these stories in your head or what? Like, how does that start from once upon a time? You know what I mean? Yeah, like like like everything is, it's just too many ideas, not enough time in life, right? And that the human condition. But yeah, it's just I, you know, it just may sound nuts. But I dream I dream movies and books. So almost every night, like I wake up in the morning and I'll write down the whole idea of something pops in my head and I'll dream the entire thing or dream the hook or dream the characters of the plot. It happens every single night. And it's just too many ideas, too much in my head. Not enough time to execute. Like the Rolling Stones, bro. They wrote satisfaction in a dream like Keith Richards woke up in a dream and like had a tape recorder and hummed satisfaction. That's I find that incredibly fascinating. I will do this on stage one day. So you know, in Naples this weekend or I got four or five shows at the of the comedy club, one day I will incorporate this into my live show because I have on my phone right now hundreds of recordings at like 3 a.m. Because I wake up in the middle of the night, I'm dreaming an idea and I hit my record button on the phone and I've got hundreds of recordings that are absolutely nuts because I'm half asleep. So I sound like I'm drunk. You know, and I've got a sleepy voice and it's me like with the most crazy ideas imaginable, I have all these hundreds of recordings. They're all hysterical when you listen to the next day because they kind of make sense, but they don't and they're all over the place. You know, and the titles of the dreams are absolutely crazy. Like if I can pull up real quick, I'll read you some of the titles. Let me look at my voice memos. They're nuts, man. They're nuts. Like I don't remember what they are. Of course, the next day. Spider-Man Thanksgiving. I'm a painter dream. Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi F word by the DJ dream. Best marinated of our lives dream. They're crazy stuff, man. Like FBI, Panic, Floor, Cute Girl, Me, Naked, Alien dream. I was professor Chicago drug dealer, SIM card dream. Nash Troy destroys Europe dream. Dream of Georgetown and Verizon files. Safe deposit box and cheese dream. They're crazy. They're crazy. I want to I want to see the movie that you're going to make about the college professor drug dealer dream. That sounds like something right up my alley. This one's interesting. I'm Hannibal Lecter dream. Man, let me tell you something. You're you're you're very fascinating, man. It seems like you're the brains behind the operation. Anyway, I want to plug the dates again off the hook comedy club. In Naples, go see Merr James Murray. Great club, too, by the way, it's one of my favorite places. I love Captain Brian, the off the hook comedy club in Naples. Not to mention for all of Merr's tour dates, you can go to James Murray official.com. And I tell you what, man, I know your time is valuable and I appreciate you giving me so much of it today. But just so you know, it's probably not the biggest waste of your time today. The celebrity jobber podcast number five on Apple podcast music interviews chart today in the United States. You have any musical ability at all whatsoever? I can listen to music like the best of them. Yes. OK, there you go. There's the there's the tie in anyway. James Murray from the impractical jokers, so great talking to you. Thank you so much for all your time and all your great stories. That was great. Thanks for having me. And you can get your tickets for this weekend at Merlive.com. That'll take you right there. M-U-R-R-L-I-V-E.com Merlive.com. Such a regular guy, right? Like amazing storyteller. I love how he gets excited. You know, he's like an excited old kind of guy. Seems like just like a regular guy who got famous with a funny concept and a funny show and never lost who he was. So interesting to me talking about his dad. And I can really appreciate how personal he got with this whole story. You know, his dad passed away a few years from Alzheimer's. And I guess he also lost his mother to Alzheimer's as well. But he said, you know, when they were when he was young, when Merl was young, him and his dad were into model trains. And when his dad was older and he was suffering from Alzheimer's, he said he would either put a Frank Sinatra record on or give him a model train magazine or put on the movie The Naked Gun. And he said instantly his dad would come back to life. You know, a lot like that movie Awakening. Do you remember that? What Robert De Niro kind of reminded me of that. But I thought that was a really, really cool story. He said his dad was the funniest guy in the family. Whenever there was a backyard party in Staten Island when he was growing up, he said all of his girlfriends would gather around his old man who was making margaritas at the bar and telling jokes and telling stories. And he said his dad was a clown, really, really funny guy who I'm sure inspired Merl, who always wanted to make people laugh. He said from the time he was a little kid, that's what made him get into show business. He pitched TV shows. That's what his job was before impractical jokers took off his very first job as we talked about prior. In the last episode I did with Mer and Q together, Mer said he worked at Party City with Joe Gatto and then famously got fired for dumping a bunch of red solo cups on a woman who was shopping in the aisle next to him. All the other jobs that he mentioned being a juggler and lying to NBC, saying that he knew everything about websites, HTML, the whole nine had no idea. Had to go to a bookstore and figure out how to do coding. And I guess Joe Gatto knew how to do some coding as well and would send him the code in an email and Mer would copy and paste it. So he lied his way into a job, which I thought was hilarious because I did the exact same thing. Maybe about 15 years ago, the guy that ran the radio stations like, Hey, do you know how to do this? Do you know how to do that? You want to be the program director? I was like, Yeah, sure. I know how to do that. Had no idea. Lied, got the job, ended up figuring it out. And Mer ended up figuring out the job, which lasted for three years with NBC. James Murray official dot com has all of his books, his tour dates. He's got some merch. Really, really fun guy. Definitely check him out when he's touring around the country. And thank you so much for checking out another episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast, where streaming on Apple podcast, Spotify, iHeart, wherever you listen to podcasts, please subscribe. We'd love a five star rating and please leave a review. If you want to check out past guests and episodes, you can do so online at celebrity jobber dot com. Before fame, these people were just regular, everyday nine to fivers like you and me. And then boom, it happens. And as they say, the rest is history. Fascinating stuff, right? Coming up next week on the Celebrity Jobber podcast, former teen heartthrob Sean Cassidy. It's going to be a good one. So thanks again for listening and until next week, I'll see you then. I'm Jeff Zito.
