Celebrating 20 Years of Stiletto Entertainment with Garry Kief: A Special Interview

Patrick Evans: 00:00:02

On this episode, Copa started because it.

Gary Keefe: 00:00:04

Was the first original musical made for television.

Gary Keefe: 00:00:07

Okay.

Gary Keefe: 00:00:08

That was Barry and Dick Clark and I went and met with Bud Grant who was running CBS at the time.

Gary Keefe: 00:00:14

And Barry said, well, we want to take the song Copacabana and turn it into a two hour musical.

Gary Keefe: 00:00:22

And Bud said, okay.

Gary Keefe: 00:00:23

And that was about the end of the deal.

Patrick Evans: 00:00:28

From the coveted corner booth in a little bar at the center of the welcome to the Coachella Valley universe.

Patrick Evans: 00:00:33

Welcome to another big conversation with Patrick Evans and Randy Florence.

Patrick Evans: 00:00:39

Presented by the McCallum Theater.

Patrick Evans: 00:00:42

-: 2787

Randy Florence: 00:00:50

Gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you back to another big conversation at Little Bar, our little podcast that we host right here at Little Bar in Palm Desert, California.

Randy Florence: 00:01:00

My name is Patrick Evans and I'm very pleased to be here today with Mike Co host, Mr.

Randy Florence: 00:01:04

Randy Florence.

Mike: 00:01:05

Are you really pleased to be here with me today?

Randy Florence: 00:01:07

No, but I'm selling it.

Mike: 00:01:08

Last week was rough.

Randy Florence: 00:01:11

What is this, Rodney Danger?

Gary Keefe: 00:01:12

Oh, I tell you, last week was r flow.

Mike: 00:01:15

I'm glad you're here.

Mike: 00:01:17

I'm glad.

Mike: 00:01:18

We both like to be anywhere.

Mike: 00:01:19

That's right.

Mike: 00:01:20

Hey, I get to introduce our guest today.

Randy Florence: 00:01:22

Well, yes, you do.

Randy Florence: 00:01:23

And a real feather in our cap, I think, for this podcast.

Gary Keefe: 00:01:25

Yeah.

Mike: 00:01:26

Well, I'm pretty excited about this.

Mike: 00:01:28

Sitting across me right now, we have Gary Keefe.

Mike: 00:01:30

Gary is the CEO and president of Stiletto Entertainment, but most importantly in the valley right now, you were just recently named as the chairman of the McCallum Theater, correct?

Gary Keefe: 00:01:41

That's right.

Gary Keefe: 00:01:42

Randy.

Mike: 00:01:42

Congratulations.

Gary Keefe: 00:01:43

Gary, hold your congratulations.

Gary Keefe: 00:01:46

Let's see how it goes for a while.

Mike: 00:01:48

So tell us about how that came together.

Gary Keefe: 00:01:52

Harold Massner, who's been the chairman for 13, 14 years that I've known for probably 20 years, called me up one day and said, so you're going to become vice president for a few months and then I'm going to resign and then you're going to be become chairman.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:08

And I said, who is it?

Randy Florence: 00:02:11

It's good to have a succession plan.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:13

Because that's kind of the way Harold operates.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:15

You know, like, hold that thought, Harold.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:18

And.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:19

And then it went before the board and they.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:21

Fortunately not a lot of people showed up, so they voted me in.

Randy Florence: 00:02:25

Just barely a quorum.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:27

Yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:27

Both of them said yes.

Randy Florence: 00:02:31

Now you also have been working with Harold on the board of the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which also has had a recent leadership.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:39

Yeah, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:40

That was also kind of out of the blue that Harold decided he was going to become, I guess he's chairman emeritus of both organizations now.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:50

So he's still involved.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:51

He's not.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:52

He's not walking off into the sunset.

Randy Florence: 00:02:55

Which would be unlike Harold, which would.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:57

Be totally unlike Harold.

Gary Keefe: 00:02:59

A few months ago, he was actually very concerned about his health, but he's had a miraculous recovery and he's.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:06

I think he's got more energy and smarts and involvement now than he's ever had.

Randy Florence: 00:03:12

Well, that's really great news because we've all been worried and we, you know, it's been known that he has had some struggles, but it is official.

Randy Florence: 00:03:18

He did send you.

Randy Florence: 00:03:18

You said he sent you the gavel, so.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:20

Sent me the gavel, yeah.

Randy Florence: 00:03:22

For the McCallum.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:22

It's glued in the box, so I can't use it yet.

Mike: 00:03:27

Sword in the stone, trying to pull it off of there.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:30

He didn't do it personally.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:31

I think he was probably afraid I was going to hit him with it or something.

Randy Florence: 00:03:35

So now talk a little bit about your background and what brought you here ultimately to the Coachella Valley.

Randy Florence: 00:03:41

You.

Randy Florence: 00:03:41

You were a telev.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:43

I worked for ABC tv, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:44

For about four or five years.

Mike: 00:03:47

And did I read that you were the youngest GM at ABC?

Mike: 00:03:50

27 years old.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:51

Yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:52

Long time.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:53

That's a long time ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:54

But yeah, the.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:57

I had a background in marketing.

Gary Keefe: 00:03:59

I worked for initially for bank of America and then for Kaiser, which was a big real estate development company.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:06

And ABC recruited me to bring me into what they call their scenic and leisure attractions division.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:13

And they had some amusement parks and.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:17

Oh, kind of.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:18

It was called Smithfield, New Jersey.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:19

sion of Knott's berry farm, a: 1700

Gary Keefe: 00:04:24

We had the ABC Entertainment center in Century City.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:27

So they brought me in as GM in the entertainment center.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:30

And then I worked on marketing on the other projects.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:32

Couple water parks down in Florida.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:35

Wiki Watchy.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:37

Never could get that on a T shirt right.

Mike: 00:04:42

Or say it after a couple of drinks.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:43

That's right.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:44

Come get your wiki.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:48

But yeah, I did that.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:51

And the.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:52

One of the project in Century City was just losing a bundle.

Gary Keefe: 00:04:59

And it was kind of the pet project of Leonard Goldenson, who was the chairman of the board and the principal stockholder of abc.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:05

And I was doing everything I could in order to try to make money.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:08

And one of the things that happened was this was so long ago before people were buying branded merchandise with logos and everything on it that didn't exist yet.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:17

And people would come up to us and there was a Strike.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:22

And we all had to fill in as cameramen, and they'd come up to us and want to buy our ABC official jackets and stuff like that.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:29

So I started that.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:31

My guys, we were printing that and selling it at the ABC Entertainment.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:35

Totally against all the corporate policies.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:38

And I always remember, because Leonard came.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:40

He was based in New York, but he came out to the west coast every once in a while.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:43

He said.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:44

He said, gary, show me what you're doing here.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:46

And he came down the elevator, and I had my guys build a retail store.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:50

Called it the ABC Superstar Store, full of Frisbees and everything with the ABC logo.

Mike: 00:05:56

What a great idea.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:57

Well, it could have been my.

Gary Keefe: 00:05:59

It could have been my demise because, you know, he had all these uptight lieutenants with him who were, you know.

Randy Florence: 00:06:05

The guys that say, you can't do that.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:07

The guys who say, you can't do that.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:08

And that's not the corporate logo policy and everything.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:10

And they were all ready to see me be, you know, tarred and feathered right there.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:16

And Leonard walked in the store, and he gets a big smile on his face.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:20

He said, where'd you get all this stuff?

Gary Keefe: 00:06:22

I said, Mr.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:22

Goldenson, I'm trying to do anything I can to make money for you, sir.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:25

And I said, I had it all made.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:27

This stuff is great.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:28

I want 50 of everything.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:30

Send it to my office.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:31

I'm giving it out for Christmas presents.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:33

And I can see all these guys just go, oh.

Mike: 00:06:38

All of a sudden, they became believers.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:40

Well, it took them a while.

Randy Florence: 00:06:43

So you kind of invented merch.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:45

Well, kind of feels like.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:48

I feel like that, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:49

You know those $50 T shirts your kids buy?

Patrick Evans: 00:06:51

Yeah.

Randy Florence: 00:06:52

Oh, I know.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:52

Blame me, dude.

Mike: 00:06:53

Oh, way to go, Gary.

Randy Florence: 00:06:54

Well, you owe me a couple of hundred bucks, dude.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:58

So we did.

Gary Keefe: 00:06:59

You know, I saw.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:00

I mean, listen, there was a lot of money to be made in merchandise.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:03

And a friend of a friend knew Rod Stewart's manager, and he was interested, and we all scraped together whatever money we could, and we bought the merch rights from Rod.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:15

He was a fascinating guy.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:16

He didn't.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:17

I think he had been run over by people who promised him royalties.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:22

He didn't want a royalty.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:23

He wanted a check up front, and that was it.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:26

Which, you know, I told people Rod Stewart put me in business because if I'd had to pay him a royalty, he would have made about three times what I gave him as an advance or as a flat fee.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:37

And so that grew, and then real quick, we added Barry Manilow to it, and we added we had Diana Ross and Stevie Wonder and Melissa Manchester and Juice Newton and John Mellencamp.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:52

And we had about 15 or 20 major mainstream acts.

Gary Keefe: 00:07:57

So we were doing all their merchandise.

Randy Florence: 00:07:58

And that is under the umbrella of Stiletto.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:00

Yeah, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:02

At the time, we didn't call it Stiletto for about five or six years.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:05

And we merged some other companies together and we were trying to.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:08

We pulled a name out of a hat, truthfully.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:11

We were going to call it Triad because there were three companies.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:14

And I called my friend Arnold Rifkin and he said, don't do that.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:19

He said, I'm merging my talent agency with another one and we've already registered the name Triad, which Triad became actually part of William Morris eventually.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:29

So we did the concert merchandise for all those guys.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:32

And then maybe about the following year we were on the road doing these big outdoor amphitheaters, which I don't know what.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:43

Glen Helen would be the closest one here, like the Greek Theater in la.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:49

And in those days there were no merchandise concessionaires.

Gary Keefe: 00:08:55

It quite often was the two truck drivers who more often than not were both named Bubba.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:03

And they'd make a deal and they'd say, you guys can have the merchandise and that's how you get paid.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:09

So that you'd go to a big venue like that and there'd be two guys with a folding table selling bad T shirts out front.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:16

And I went to Jimmy Neenlander, who owned a lot of those outdoor amphitheaters.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:22

And truthfully, not knowing any better, I said, let me come in and we'll do all the merchandise concessions and we'll.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:30

It's all done on consignment, so we'll sell it, we'll give money back to the act who owns the rights, and we'll give money to the Needle Landers.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:39

And much to my chagrin, he said, okay.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:44

And so we set up merchandise concessions.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:46

We had, I think, about 15 different buildings around the country, like the Pantages in LA and the Greek Theater and the Wilshire in LA.

Gary Keefe: 00:09:56

And we had the Pacific Amphitheater and Toronto and Baltimore all over the country, and a couple in Germany, two in England.

Randy Florence: 00:10:06

Wow.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:07

It was wild.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:08

It was an all cash business in those days.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:10

No credit cards.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:12

And we always.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:14

One of our.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:14

One of the services that we provided was we had centralized accounting, so all the money went into la.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:20

And we did reports and accounts and checks.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:23

And we had one artist who didn't want to take a check.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:27

He had had probably about a 30 year relationship with the IRS that wasn't going in his direction.

Randy Florence: 00:10:35

So sounds like Willie Nelson.

Randy Florence: 00:10:37

I'm not naming.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:38

I didn't say anything.

Mike: 00:10:40

Was he high?

Gary Keefe: 00:10:44

And I remember he was playing the Greek theater and we would hire like high school teach teachers to be the manager.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:51

And we get a lot of college kids to work the booths because these are mostly summer venues.

Gary Keefe: 00:10:57

And the kid who is running the place, he calls me at like 2 in the morning and I don't know what to do.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:02

I said, what's the matter?

Gary Keefe: 00:11:03

There's two guys outside the door.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:05

They won't leave unless I give them cash.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:09

e says, well, now just take a: 1099

Gary Keefe: 00:11:16

I said, you don't understand.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:17

He's not signing anything.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:19

He wants cash bubble wants his money.

Mike: 00:11:21

He wants to leave.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:22

There's two guys, they may or may not be armed.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:26

I don't think those are water pistols.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:30

The bottom line is he got a bag of cash.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:32

I said, don't worry about it.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:33

We'll report it and they can do whatever they want to.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:36

They were fun days.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:37

So.

Mike: 00:11:38

So we talked about Wild Wild west of Barry Miles.

Randy Florence: 00:11:41

That's a pretty sophisticated business now.

Randy Florence: 00:11:43

But you guys were really in the infancy of it.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:46

Yeah, it became.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:48

Yeah, I mean, we, we eventually got to, you know, computerized accounting and all that kind of stuff.

Gary Keefe: 00:11:52

And, and did report everything, but we did that, oh, maybe 20 years, probably up till about 10 or 15 years ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:01

And then it, it, it turned into a much.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:04

The record companies got involved.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:06

They bought up a lot of the concessionaires.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:08

There were like two or three other guys cut by that time doing the.

Randy Florence: 00:12:10

Same thing because they saw how much money was.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:12

They saw how much money.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:13

And then as what often happens sometimes when big business gets involved and they all lost money and then they all sold off the rights again.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:23

And it's gone back and forth a few times, but we were there in its infancy and it was a lot of fun on both things.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:29

On doing the road concessions and also doing the permanent concessions at a building.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:35

I don't know if you've ever.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:38

A lot of places now they use like a black and case.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:41

It opens up and it's the display.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:43

We actually have the trademark on that.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:45

We created that a long time ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:46

We let the trademark run out because it's like, you know, it's not worth spending a fortune.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:51

Who am I going to sue?

Gary Keefe: 00:12:53

Hey, hey, that's our trademark.

Gary Keefe: 00:12:56

Big deal, you know.

Mike: 00:12:57

So, hey, I want to go back to the path that got you heading this direction?

Mike: 00:13:02

So born in Houston.

Mike: 00:13:03

I read.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:04

Grew up in Houston.

Mike: 00:13:05

Grew up in Houston, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:06

Moved there when I was two weeks old.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:08

So not by my choice, I mean, but.

Mike: 00:13:11

Yeah, you weren't the driving factor.

Mike: 00:13:14

I'm out of here.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:14

I'm out of here.

Mike: 00:13:15

My first two weeks have not been fun.

Mike: 00:13:17

I'm out of here.

Randy Florence: 00:13:18

Going back to Houston.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:19

Well, my dad had been transferred and my mom for some reason stayed in Chicago with my grandparents to give birth.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:26

So she.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:26

And then like two weeks later, she was on the train to meet my dad and older brother in Houston.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:30

So lived there until I was about six years old.

Randy Florence: 00:13:33

Old.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:33

And then we moved to Covina, which most people know Covina because it's where the in and out is.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:39

Marenka, you know.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:41

Yep.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:41

Well known.

Mike: 00:13:42

Oh, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:43

You know, it's kind of like not West Covina because people know where.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:46

What West Covina is for some reason.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:48

So I grew up in Covina when, you know, it was all orange groves and horses and hills and countryside.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:55

Oh, it was still countryside.

Gary Keefe: 00:13:57

Freeway stopped in like, or something like that.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:01

It was fun.

Mike: 00:14:02

What did your dad do?

Gary Keefe: 00:14:04

Well, he was.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:05

He worked for a big company out of Chicago and he ran the Western U.S.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:08

it was.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:09

They did everything from jukeboxes to cigarette machines to the commissaries at all the movie studios and major plants in flight feeding vending machines.

Randy Florence: 00:14:22

So you kind of had business in your blood.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:25

Yeah, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:26

He was quite an entrepreneur.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:27

And you know, it was funny, I was thinking about it earlier today when I was driving over here.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:32

I looked off and I could see Windy Point in the distance.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:34

You know where111.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:35

Cause my family's had.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:39

Different parts of.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:39

My family have had homes down here since probably early 50s.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:42

So we used to come down here.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:44

And I always remember my dad would go around Windy Point and he would joke that there were misters up there spraying Valium.

Gary Keefe: 00:14:51

Cause all of a sudden all of his cares and woes about, you know, 10,000 employees in LA, just like, whatever.

Mike: 00:14:59

I don't care anymore.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:00

I don't care anymore.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:01

I'm going to go sit by the pool.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:03

And really that's what it's always been, I think, for everybody.

Randy Florence: 00:15:07

My wife says the same thing.

Randy Florence: 00:15:08

She works.

Randy Florence: 00:15:09

She's an attorney in la, and she says as soon as she sees the windmills, a lot of that anxiety and care and worry about work just melts away.

Randy Florence: 00:15:18

And so that's the magic of this valley.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:21

And you know, and it's strange.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:22

I mean, I just spent a week in New York And.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:24

And someone asked me earlier today, and I said, listen, New York's great.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:29

I love it.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:29

It's fun.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:30

You go there for four or five days.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:31

It's energetic and everything.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:33

But when you fly into the valley and all of a sudden you see the mountains around it, and I just take a big sigh of relief, like, oh, and all the weight goes away.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:45

Just don't tell too many people that.

Patrick Evans: 00:15:47

No.

Randy Florence: 00:15:48

Well, we don't want the word.

Mike: 00:15:49

More and more of them seem to be finding out.

Gary Keefe: 00:15:51

Well, that's true.

Randy Florence: 00:15:52

So when did you make this your headquarters, permanent home base?

Gary Keefe: 00:16:00

Probably.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:00

It was probably about 20 years ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:03

22 years ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:04

I thought that my career was kind of in a dip.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:06

Barry's career, he thought, was kind of slowing down.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:09

And we said, well, we love Palm Spring.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:12

It's funny.

Randy Florence: 00:16:14

You should probably mention at this point that Barry Manilow is your husband.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:17

Yes.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:18

I thought that was a given.

Randy Florence: 00:16:20

You've referenced this.

Randy Florence: 00:16:21

I just thought we.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:22

Where have you been?

Mike: 00:16:25

Barry, who?

Randy Florence: 00:16:28

I have some of his records.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:32

We thought we.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:33

In fact, he asked me earlier how I met Harold.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:36

So came down here.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:37

I thought everything was going to slow down.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:39

I joined the tennis club, which, you know that.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:42

Not as posh as it is now.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:43

I mean, it's kind of a dump.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:44

You know, Spencer's was a.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:46

I tell people Spencer's didn't exist.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:48

It was a Formica counter and two old lawn chairs out in front, right?

Gary Keefe: 00:16:52

And I played tennis three times a week.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:54

And I'd go.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:55

It was so cool because I'd go over there.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:57

You had to play doubles.

Gary Keefe: 00:16:58

And I'd just sit there and somebody come along and say, hey, kid.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:03

And I thought, want me to play?

Gary Keefe: 00:17:05

I thought, where else can I be, kid?

Randy Florence: 00:17:09

We're moving here.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:11

50 years old, they call me kid.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:13

I love it.

Mike: 00:17:13

You were fresh meat in this town.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:17

But the thing was, those old duffers, they were like.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:21

They were magnets.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:22

You could.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:23

They wouldn't even move a foot either direction.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:25

You couldn't get a ball past them somehow.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:27

It's just like you return the shot and went right to them, and they'd just kill you.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:32

They were great.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:33

They were fun guys.

Mike: 00:17:34

Gary, I was, like, 22, and I played in a singles tournament against a gentleman who was a club player, and he was in his mid-60s.

Mike: 00:17:40

And I was like, I'm gonna wipe this guy off the court.

Mike: 00:17:43

He beat me 6, 060.

Mike: 00:17:46

I barely touched any of his serves because they were moving in so many different directions.

Mike: 00:17:51

The really sad thing is, I invited eight or nine people to Come watch the match.

Mike: 00:17:55

So it was pretty quiet afterwards.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:57

God works in strange ways.

Gary Keefe: 00:17:59

And he got you.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:00

He did.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:01

Karma backed over you.

Mike: 00:18:02

Now you went to usc.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:05

Yep.

Mike: 00:18:06

What did you major in there?

Gary Keefe: 00:18:07

Majored in journalism.

Mike: 00:18:09

Okay.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:09

I was gonna, I thought I was gonna be an on air newscaster.

Randy Florence: 00:18:15

You made the right choice.

Mike: 00:18:18

But then you made the mistake of going to college.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:22

Back.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:24

No, I made the mistake.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:25

I graduated.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:26

Right before I graduated, one of the guys in class with me came in one day, he was all excited because he had gotten a job at the LA Times, which is like the holy grail, right, to come out of journalism school in those days.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:40

And I asked him how much he made he was going to make.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:43

And I was making more money as a part time ride operator at Disneyland.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:47

And I.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:48

Maybe journalism isn't my future.

Randy Florence: 00:18:51

There is a lesson in that.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:54

And I wasn't going to get the job.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:56

That job was gone.

Gary Keefe: 00:18:57

You know, I was going to end up at the Podunk Daily or something like that.

Mike: 00:19:01

Where did the creative side come from?

Mike: 00:19:05

Did you have siblings and was this kind of prevalent through the family?

Gary Keefe: 00:19:10

Yeah, I mean I have an older brother who's actually worked for me forever.

Gary Keefe: 00:19:15

He just retired a few years ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:19:18

He was into, he had his.

Gary Keefe: 00:19:21

Got his masters in cinema from usc.

Mike: 00:19:23

Wow.

Gary Keefe: 00:19:23

And he worked in the TV industry for a while until I was able to convince him to come work for me.

Gary Keefe: 00:19:30

And I don't know, we both were raised with right brain, left brain use both sides.

Mike: 00:19:37

Yeah.

Randy Florence: 00:19:37

You know, your dad was obviously an entrepreneur.

Randy Florence: 00:19:42

What about your mom?

Gary Keefe: 00:19:45

Yeah, well, my mom worked, you know, was in the days when women didn't work.

Gary Keefe: 00:19:49

But you know, she was always entering cooking contests and decorating things and that kind of thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:19:55

So yeah, she was, she was creative, you know, that was the background.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:00

So I tell people we were, we were in a good way and a bad way.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:04

My brother and I were both raised without limits.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:07

So the expectation was always that you could do anything.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:11

It was never that you can't do that.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:14

It was of course you'll do that.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:16

You know, I remember my mom decided she wanted to.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:21

They had a swimming pool put in in the backyard and she wanted a brick patio and a cabana and all this kind of stuff.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:27

And my dad got a Sunset magazine book on how to build a brick patio and handed it to my brother and I.

Mike: 00:20:37

Good luck.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:38

Here you go.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:39

I'll order the bricks.

Mike: 00:20:40

Here's some bricks and cement.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:42

We build it.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:43

I mean if.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:44

Sometimes I think if kids aren't told no, then maybe they expand and they Learn how to do all kinds of things.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:52

Yeah.

Randy Florence: 00:20:52

When you're not told you can't do it.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:54

Yeah.

Randy Florence: 00:20:55

You have no reason to think you can't.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:57

Yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:20:57

And I was thinking about it the other day, I was talking at the McAllen, speaking with the gal who runs the education department.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:02

And I was telling her, I remember when I was in seventh grade, we called a culture class.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:07

They picked 40 kids, and every day we went to.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:11

This was summer school for like six weeks.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:13

Every day we went over to the.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:14

To the school.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:15

They loaded us up into a bus and we went to some different.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:20

I guess experience would be.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:22

We went to the Laguna Art Festival.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:24

We went downtown to the Music Center.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:26

We went to Padua Hills, to the.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:29

We went to Millard Sheets Gallery in Clermont.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:34

They just exposed us to all different kinds.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:37

And I don't know, I think maybe education was more open in those days or less regimented or they could do more things with you.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:47

And so they exposed us all that stuff.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:48

I remember in seventh grade, they.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:52

I don't even know what class it was.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:54

Maybe it was an English class.

Gary Keefe: 00:21:55

We all had to go make a movie.

Mike: 00:21:58

Really?

Mike: 00:21:59

What equipment did you use?

Gary Keefe: 00:22:01

I was at Crane Black and White.

Mike: 00:22:05

A giant horn cone coming out of it.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:09

What?

Gary Keefe: 00:22:10

A 16 millimeter home movie camera.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:12

You know, no sound or anything like that.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:14

But, you know, we could do stuff like that.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:16

And the parents weren't protesting that we weren't learning calculus or whatever they have to do now.

Mike: 00:22:23

So you got involved.

Mike: 00:22:24

You mentioned Rod Stewart earlier, but you've worked with some pretty big acts in the entertainment industry.

Mike: 00:22:31

You did some work with Donna Summer.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:33

Yeah, I managed Donna for about five years.

Mike: 00:22:35

Wow, that's awesome.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:36

She was a blast.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:37

She was really fun.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:39

So how did you.

Randy Florence: 00:22:41

Tell me a little bit about how you go from the merchandising side to the actual managing of the talent.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:49

Probably did the merch thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:51

Probably had done it for about three or four years.

Gary Keefe: 00:22:53

And Barry was not having a great time with his manager.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:01

And he interviewed some other people, some other managers to consider them and wasn't really getting anywhere.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:11

And he finally just said, why don't you do it?

Gary Keefe: 00:23:13

You do all this other stuff.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:14

Why don't you do it?

Gary Keefe: 00:23:16

And I didn't know any better.

Randy Florence: 00:23:18

And I said, sure, no one told you you can't.

Randy Florence: 00:23:21

So.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:21

Well, it was interesting because I joke about it, but there is a certain truth to it.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:27

I didn't know that you could be a manager and just have an assistant in one phone, because by then I had a staff of 10, 15 people I had my own art department, I had my own accounting department.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:39

I just assumed that's how you do it.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:43

It took me a while to find out that all these other guys were getting by.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:47

Hardly any overhead at all.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:49

But I've always done that.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:50

I still have that in la.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:51

I still have a dozen people, people who handle different parts of the thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:23:57

And I think it's probably, you know, in, in a way it's contributed to the longevity of Barry's career because we've always.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:04

We're usually two years ahead of what is happening now.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:07

And we do our own marketing, we do our own accounting, we do our own logistics.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:13

And you know, for a long time we had our own in house travel agency.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:16

And I don't know, that's just kind of the way I like to do things.

Randy Florence: 00:24:21

You were talking about how you guys just decided things might have been calming down or slowing down a little bit so you moved out to the Valley on a more permanent basis.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:30

Yeah, basis.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:31

We used to had a home down here forever, a second home.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:35

And then decided, no, we want a base.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:40

I was going to share this.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:41

So we looked at different places.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:45

Florida, Connecticut, San Juan Islands.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:49

I remember I called it the Diana Ross tour because every place we were looking they said, oh, Diana Ross was here two weeks ago and looked at this house.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:56

So she really had.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:58

She ended up in Connecticut.

Gary Keefe: 00:24:59

I don't think she's still there, but she ended up living in Connecticut.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:02

And every place we looked, the realtors would say, there are two months that are just beautiful.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:10

And I'm too.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:13

We already got a house in someplace where there's two months that are hot in hell.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:17

Hot as hell, but 10 months that are beautiful.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:19

Why do we want to move to some place that's a Swamp for 10 months and has just the opposite?

Gary Keefe: 00:25:25

And it was kind of like the light bulb went on and we said, oh, yeah, why don't we just get a different house in Palm Springs?

Gary Keefe: 00:25:31

And that's what we decided to do.

Mike: 00:25:33

And you're right, it feels different here too.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:35

Yeah, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:36

I mean, all those areas, listen, they're beautiful areas, but they really do maybe have two months of great weather.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:42

And the rest of the year you.

Randy Florence: 00:25:44

Get a great month in spring and a great month in fall.

Randy Florence: 00:25:47

You know, October is fantastic or November's fantastic, but then it's a terrible winter and humid summer.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:52

So.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:52

Yeah, and it's humid and they're bugs.

Gary Keefe: 00:25:54

And just contrary to what I said earlier, don't anybody believe what I just said.

Gary Keefe: 00:26:00

It's terrible.

Gary Keefe: 00:26:02

It's really hot down here.

Gary Keefe: 00:26:03

You don't want to come down here.

Randy Florence: 00:26:04

You're going to hate it.

Gary Keefe: 00:26:05

You're going to hate it.

Mike: 00:26:06

There's only one road in and out.

Gary Keefe: 00:26:08

One road is in.

Randy Florence: 00:26:11

Before we continue, we have to take a quick break and we want to acknowledge our presenting sponsor, the McCallum Theater.

Randy Florence: 00:26:16

So a quick word from our good friends at the McCallum Theatre.

Patrick Evans: 00:26:19

The McCallum Theatre's: 2024

Patrick Evans: 00:26:24

The world's top artists, from jazz, pop, classical and comedy to the best of Broadway, only at the Valley's favorite place for great entertainment.

Patrick Evans: 00:26:33

Tickets are on sale now at the McCallum Theater box office by phone or online at mccallumtheater.org Tickets sell quickly, so order yours.

Patrick Evans: 00:26:41

Today, a new exciting only at the McCallum.

Patrick Evans: 00:26:44

The McCallum Theater's: 2024

Randy Florence: 00:26:50

And we are back with Gary Keefe, our guest who is the chairman now of the McCallum, talking about his career.

Randy Florence: 00:26:55

So once you, you arrived and you were here more frequently and if not year round, you got involved in a number of different organizations, including the McCallum and the film festival.

Randy Florence: 00:27:06

And now you find yourself with the gavel of the McCallum Theater, which Harold has done a masterful job of making a great entertainment venue.

Randy Florence: 00:27:15

What do you see?

Randy Florence: 00:27:17

What's your vision going forward?

Gary Keefe: 00:27:19

Well, I think we kind of alluded to the growth in the valley.

Gary Keefe: 00:27:23

I think, you know, the population in the valley now is, I think full time is around 550,000 people, which I was telling a friend of mine, she's getting her doctorate in Oklahoma and she in higher ed and she was kind of thinking about where she wants to locate.

Gary Keefe: 00:27:39

And truthfully, before I opened my big mouth and suggest she come here, I thought, well, I just want to check something.

Gary Keefe: 00:27:46

So the population of Coachella Valley is actually larger than Oklahoma City.

Gary Keefe: 00:27:51

We all heard of Oklahoma City.

Gary Keefe: 00:27:52

We all think Oklahoma City is a big deal, right?

Gary Keefe: 00:27:55

And Coachella Valley I think we all assume is kind of smaller, but it isn't.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:00

So when you look at compare Coachella valley to big quote, big cities around the U.S.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:06

we are a big city.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:09

And that's a significant change in the last 10, 15 years, certainly since the McAllen was built 30 some odd years ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:16

So I think we have to look at expanding our season.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:20

I think, you know, we are no longer a four or five month resort community.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:24

I mean there's certainly four or five months where the population goes up another 2, 300,000 people.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:30

But I think as a community theater As a.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:36

We're public on public land.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:39

We're supported by the public.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:41

I think we need to expand our season.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:44

I think we need to expand how we program and who we program to.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:49

I think we need to keep what we have, but we also need to pay attention to everybody who lives in the Valley.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:58

You know, we.

Gary Keefe: 00:28:59

Harold has done a, truthfully, a masterful job in the 14 years that he's been chairman of, taking the theater from.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:07

They were struggling every year to raise enough money to keep the lights on.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:12

We've got a very nice endowment in the bank right now that spits off a significant amount of money every year that helps subsidize what we do, because ticket sales alone don't pay for everything.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:25

They pay for about half of the expenses.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:29

So.

Randy Florence: 00:29:29

And that's pretty good because a lot of theaters don't even derive half of their operating income from ticket sales.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:34

Right.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:34

And listen, a lot of theaters.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:36

Covid put a lot of theaters under out of business, you know, and the McCallum didn't.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:40

We were able to keep a lot of people on payroll.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:42

And granted, we got PPP money and we got save our Sages money, but still, we're in fine shape.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:48

So I, you know, I don't want to.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:50

I don't want to change what we have.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:52

I don't want to take any risk that would hurt what we.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:55

What we managed to put aside.

Gary Keefe: 00:29:58

But I do think we can expand cautiously and cater to different markets in the Valley.

Randy Florence: 00:30:05

You talked a little bit.

Randy Florence: 00:30:06

You mentioned the education wing of the McCallum.

Randy Florence: 00:30:09

And I know Kaiser, and she's been a frequent guest in.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:12

She's great.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:13

She's terrific.

Randy Florence: 00:30:14

And I think a lot of people don't know how much educational outreach the McAllen was doing.

Randy Florence: 00:30:20

I think that's a great area.

Randy Florence: 00:30:21

Kaiser's done a fantastic job.

Randy Florence: 00:30:23

There's growth there as well.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:26

I think Kaisen and I have had that conversation because I'm a big believer in that.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:31

And I referred earlier back to culture class that I took when I was in seventh grade.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:37

And what she does is, is expose kids to the arts.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:43

And, you know, you can't appreciate the arts.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:46

You can't dream about being in the arts.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:48

You can't support the arts if you've never been exposed to them in the first place.

Gary Keefe: 00:30:52

And she gets kids who would never have that opportunity and gets them to see what modern dance is like or what music is like.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:00

And I think we need to do more of that.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:02

I think it's.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:05

It's the future of theater and the arts.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:07

In our country is only by exposing.

Randy Florence: 00:31:09

Young kids to them, you're developing the future audience.

Randy Florence: 00:31:11

I mean, those are the kids that will go on then to bring their kids back to the theater and buy the tickets.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:15

And I think we've seen where that hasn't happened.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:19

If you look at the symphonies in the United States, most of them did not do a good job of passing interest and support of the symphonies to the next generation.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:32

And it's kind of a shame because symphonies are shrinking and going out of business.

Randy Florence: 00:31:36

A lot of symphonies in small and mid level towns just don't exist or barely exist.

Randy Florence: 00:31:41

Big city symphonies thrive, but that's about it.

Mike: 00:31:45

Is there a tie in to the Manilow Music Project with all of this or tell us a little bit about that if you wouldn't mind.

Gary Keefe: 00:31:54

Well, that started whenever it was 20 some odd years ago because one of Barry's good friend and doctor down here asked him one day, he said, hey, my daughter plays a saxophone.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:08

You got an old sax in the warehouse.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:11

And you know, this is from a middle upper income school in the Coachella Valley.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:16

And the question was, well, what do you mean you don't have.

Mike: 00:32:20

They needed a saxophone.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:21

They need a saxophone.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:22

So Barry, he told me, he said, why don't you call the music teacher and find out what they need.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:28

So I'm sorry, I don't remember the name of the high school right now, but so I called this gal and said, what do you need?

Gary Keefe: 00:32:34

And she gave me a list of, you know, I remember it was like $15,000 worth of instruments.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:42

And she said, you know, very apologetic, you know, if there's anything you can do to help us out.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:47

And da da da da da.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:49

So I told Barry what they wanted.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:50

He said, let's just buy all of them.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:52

So we got all the instruments.

Randy Florence: 00:32:56

It's a big number for a school.

Gary Keefe: 00:32:57

But well, I mean you would have thought we gave them a million dollars because nobody does that.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:02

They don't have the budget or anything.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:03

So then we got on this kick and we said, well, let's call all the.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:08

I remember, I think there were 22 maybe high schools and middle schools in the Coachella Valley.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:13

And we asked them all to give us a wish list.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:16

And we were able.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:18

We have friends at Yamaha Music at the time.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:21

And we said they gave us a great deal and we gave them all the instruments.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:26

But I remember.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:27

So the Manline Music Project, really kind of a grassroots thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:31

So I remember speaking to one of the music teachers and they said, well, you know, we can't accept this, it has to go to the district.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:37

And then the district will inventory everything and tag it and then they'll distribute it.

Mike: 00:33:41

And I said, okay, nobody's ever going.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:44

To see it happen.

Randy Florence: 00:33:46

Bureaucracy was killing a great idea.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:48

So we did a big ceremony at Palm Springs High School.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:51

We had four or five trucks and I brought all my, all the gang, my staff down from la and they all got in the trucks and we called the teachers.

Gary Keefe: 00:33:58

We said, okay, we're dropping off the instruments at 9:00.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:03

Well, they gotta go.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:04

I said, they're gonna be boxes on the sidewalk.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:06

You can either come pick them up.

Mike: 00:34:08

Do what you want with them.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:11

And that's what we did.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:11

Of course, once we told them that they were all yay.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:14

Because they knew, well, I'm going to put down the school districts.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:17

But they were much more optimistic that they would end up with the instruments they needed if we just handed them to them.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:23

Rather than go through a year of going through the system.

Randy Florence: 00:34:26

Anytime you have, I mean, every time it passes through another set of hands, it gets more complicated.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:31

Yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:32

And it was less.

Randy Florence: 00:34:33

Yeah, right.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:35

The numbers diminished.

Randy Florence: 00:34:36

I grew up in an Italian family.

Randy Florence: 00:34:37

That was always true.

Randy Florence: 00:34:40

My allowance dinner.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:42

Everybody had to take a vin.

Gary Keefe: 00:34:46

Hey, hey.

Mike: 00:34:48

Vinnie didn't get his cut and he wants it now.

Randy Florence: 00:34:51

All of a sudden I don't get a meatball.

Randy Florence: 00:34:53

So this is, this is how that works.

Mike: 00:34:54

So this would be a real mistake if, in my relationship with my wife, if I don't ask you this.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:00

Yeah.

Mike: 00:35:00

You did some work with Fleetwood Mac.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:02

Uh huh.

Mike: 00:35:03

Can you tell me about that?

Gary Keefe: 00:35:04

Oh, they were fun.

Mike: 00:35:06

And what time frame was that?

Gary Keefe: 00:35:08

We did Tango.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:10

Was it Tango in the Dark?

Gary Keefe: 00:35:11

Was that the album?

Gary Keefe: 00:35:11

We did Tango the night.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:13

My buddy, who is a lawyer, called up and said, hey, would you meet with John McBee?

Gary Keefe: 00:35:18

He wants someone to manage him.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:20

And I met with John.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:22

And that was probably about a 14 year relationship with John.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:27

And I had a business partner at the time.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:30

And first we figured out that Fleetwood Mac is technically owned by John and Mick.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:35

Really, they own the name, they own the company, the underlying company and all that.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:40

Now maybe that's all changed now because that was probably.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:43

That probably ended about 10 years ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:45

So the first thing we did was we put out Fleetwood Mac, but it was only John and Mick and four other musicians.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:53

But still they sounded close.

Gary Keefe: 00:35:56

And then, you know, they sold 5,000 tickets a night, played around the US, played in the UK, did a very successful tour.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:04

And then somewhere along the line we got Stevie back.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:07

And then we got, we got Lindsey back for a tour and kind of put the whole thing back together.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:13

We ended up.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:14

We did a TV special or a HBO special with them and did two or three albums at least while we were working with.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:22

But they were fun.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:23

They were just.

Mike: 00:36:24

Was there ever a time when you.

Mike: 00:36:26

You.

Mike: 00:36:27

When you just kind of sit back and, you know, from that kid that went into USC to go into a journalism major, and all of a sudden you're sitting there in front of Mick Fleetwood and John McBee and eventually Barry Manilow and Stevie Wonder and Donna Summer.

Mike: 00:36:44

Did it ever just seem unreal to you?

Gary Keefe: 00:36:47

Every day.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:48

Truthfully.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:49

Every day, yeah.

Mike: 00:36:50

Like a dream.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:51

Yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:52

It was nothing that I projected, but I find it, you know, I'm grateful.

Gary Keefe: 00:36:59

It's been.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:00

It's been a really fun ride.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:02

I remember they did.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:05

On the night before Clinton's inauguration, they did a big concert.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:09

I think it was called the Senator Dome or the Arena Out.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:12

It no longer exists in D.C.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:15

and all the artists were there.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:19

Barry, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:23

And in the vom.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:24

In the.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:24

Like the exit from the arena floor, they had all these trailers backed up and they had a black curtain down and so in line, creating like a street backstage.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:37

And when President elect Clinton came in, everybody was told, stay behind these curtains.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:44

So you look down the curtains and there's Goldie Hawn peeking out from.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:50

Secret Service is going ballistic.

Mike: 00:37:52

I bet they were.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:52

You gotta get behind a curtain.

Gary Keefe: 00:37:55

But I always remember because they had a monitor backstage and Barry was on.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:03

Barry was the opener.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:06

It was in the round.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:07

There was a stage out in the middle of the floor.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:09

And I look over and John and Mick are standing like a foot away from this monitor.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:14

And I don't know if John would remember this.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:16

He'd probably say, I made it up.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:18

But it's true.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:18

And I go over there and John.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:20

John says, what the are we doing here?

Gary Keefe: 00:38:23

He knows what he's doing.

Mike: 00:38:27

That's awesome.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:29

But, you know, and John would be, you know, there.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:31

I mean, there are, you know, singer songwriter performers, and there are sing singer songwriters who just like to get up and play their bass and just have a nice time.

Mike: 00:38:40

Right.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:40

You know, and it's different, but I remember him just look staring at this thing going, oh, God, what are we getting?

Mike: 00:38:47

He had to open.

Mike: 00:38:49

That's great.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:50

I remember we pitched him one and Dick Clark wanted him to do something on the American Music Awards.

Gary Keefe: 00:38:56

My business partner Steve Wax and I, we take John and Nick out to lunch at Le Dome and we start over.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:03

Lunch we're doing the pitch and say 10 million people are going to see this show.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:08

It's going to be by the end of lunch.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:09

We're up to a billion people.

Mike: 00:39:12

Half of the world.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:13

Half the world.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:15

We're getting more desperate because they're not saying yes.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:18

Right.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:19

And finally at the end the lunch, John looks at us and he says, how many people are going to see this thing?

Gary Keefe: 00:39:25

Oh, 5 billion people are going to see this show.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:27

He says, why the fuck we want all those people to see how old we are?

Gary Keefe: 00:39:31

Like, okay, thanks, John.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:33

Well, there goes that idea.

Mike: 00:39:35

Well, we went down the wrong cell there.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:37

If I had said two people were going to watch it, he might have said, well, okay, we'll do it.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:41

I know.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:41

I had to call Dick.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:42

I said, dick, I'm sorry, your audience is too big.

Randy Florence: 00:39:46

You know, it's funny you mentioned Dick Clark and the American Music Awards because one of our previous guests, a guy named Fred Bronson Johnson, worked for Dick Clark and wrote.

Gary Keefe: 00:39:55

I remember Fred.

Randy Florence: 00:39:56

Okay, Fred.

Randy Florence: 00:39:56

Fred was just a guest on the podcast and he was talking about writing for the American Music Awards.

Randy Florence: 00:40:02

And what an interesting experience that was because there's so much going on at the time.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:08

Yeah, well, it was fascinating because Dick basically created that show to compete with the Grammy Awards, which are always been on CBS and ABC wanted an award show.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:17

So he came up with the American Music.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:19

Still not sure how you win.

Randy Florence: 00:40:24

That's what we should have asked Brad.

Mike: 00:40:25

That's right.

Mike: 00:40:26

Damn it.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:26

I think Dick and Carrie would sit around at home in Malibu and say, yeah, I like them.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:31

I like them.

Mike: 00:40:32

You win.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:34

He was funny.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:35

They would.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:36

They wouldn't tell you if you were going to win.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:38

They didn't.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:39

You didn't know ahead of time.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:40

But he would say, I really think you ought to go to the show.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:46

You probably want to be there.

Mike: 00:40:47

You probably don't want to miss this one.

Gary Keefe: 00:40:48

You don't want to miss this one.

Mike: 00:40:51

I want to talk about something else that I thought was pretty cool.

Mike: 00:40:53

Gary, you put on what I believe was the first musical on a cruise ship.

Mike: 00:40:59

Yeah, we did that.

Mike: 00:41:00

Accurate.

Mike: 00:41:00

We did, but that turned into something a little bit bigger.

Randy Florence: 00:41:04

Wait, really?

Mike: 00:41:05

Yeah.

Mike: 00:41:05

Copacabana, right?

Gary Keefe: 00:41:07

Yeah, well, it kind of.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:08

Kind of reverse.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:09

No, Copa started because it was the first original musical made for television.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:14

Okay.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:15

That was Barry and Dick Clark.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:17

And I went and met with Bud Grant who was running CBS at the time.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:21

And Barry said, well, we want to take the song Copacabana and turn it into a two hour musical.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:28

And Bud said, okay.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:30

And that was about the end of the deal.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:32

Now you do these long pitches and it's, you know, you gotta do all the work.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:37

And then they say, we'll think about it.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:40

made for television in about: 1981

Gary Keefe: 00:41:46

And after that, my daughter was about, oh, I don't know, six or seven years old, and I took her to see Disney on Ice at the sports arena.

Gary Keefe: 00:41:56

And it was me and all the other solo dads, kids spending $30 on flashlights that made Mickey Mouse ears on the ceiling.

Mike: 00:42:05

They'd hand them to the kid first, so they get used to it.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:08

I need two and which, you know, respect for a good merch guy, you know, Fine by me.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:15

And I'm sitting there and I'm watching this thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:17

And this was long before, like, Hiawa or any of the big production shows at Disney would do.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:23

So it was basically boy and girl, couple skaters, a villain, a comedic foil, a chorus line and a bad pit band.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:33

And I made the deal with Dick that he was very.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:38

Dick was.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:38

Dick handled the budget on everything on Copa, on the.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:41

On the TV movie.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:42

So Dick was worried because I wanted Barry to have full control over the music.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:48

And he was nervous that.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:49

That what if it goes over budget?

Gary Keefe: 00:42:52

And I said, okay, I'm on the hook.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:54

If Barry goes over budget and producing the music, I said, I'll pay for it.

Gary Keefe: 00:42:58

I'll cover it.

Randy Florence: 00:42:59

You're covering all the overages.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:00

I'll call the.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:01

I'll cover the.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:01

Over over there on the.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:02

On the music.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:04

And I said, but in return, I want to own the ancillary rights to the production.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:09

Now, there were no ancillary exploitation.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:13

I mean, other than the DVD that, you know, no one knew what they.

Randy Florence: 00:43:17

Were going to do with it next.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:18

Well, we didn't even know what they were, if there was going to be any.

Randy Florence: 00:43:20

Right, right.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:21

So I go to this ice show and I say, ah, this is the same characters as Copa.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:26

Cute boy, girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, comedic foil, villain and a chorus.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:32

Plus I own the music.

Randy Florence: 00:43:33

So you had a good pit band.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:36

I had a full orchestra on a recording.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:40

So I went to all the ice shows, both of them, whatever, Ice Capades and the other.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:45

I said, hey, why don't we.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:47

No, no, no, you don't understand.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:48

Nobody does ice shows with all those costumes and blah, blah, blah and all this kind of stuff.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:53

Okay, they do now, but they didn't in those days.

Gary Keefe: 00:43:56

So a buddy of mine was head of entertainment at Caesars at the time, and he called Me up out of the blue one day.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:02

And he said, do you still have that idea to turn Copa into an ice show?

Gary Keefe: 00:44:07

I said, yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:08

And he said, well, would you do it at a casino?

Gary Keefe: 00:44:11

I said, yeah, I guess so.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:12

And he said, would you do it without ice?

Gary Keefe: 00:44:14

I said, well, wait a minute.

Mike: 00:44:16

In the dark.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:20

We start to laugh.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:21

I said, what is that?

Gary Keefe: 00:44:23

And so we create.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:25

Usually you do a Broadway musical and then you cut it down, you turn it into what's called a tab version, like a 75 minute version, okay?

Gary Keefe: 00:44:32

So we started out with a 75 minute version.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:36

And we didn't.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:37

No one knew how to write a deal.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:38

So we wrote it like a TV deal.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:40

And it was a 13 week in those days, TV deal, a series deal would be 13 weeks.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:45

If it didn't get canceled by a certain day, it automatically 13 weeks.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:49

So that was the deal.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:50

And we put it into Caesars in Atlantic City.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:54

And it ran for.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:55

Barry directed it.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:56

It ran for nine months.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:58

It sold out.

Gary Keefe: 00:44:58

It was a big hit show.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:00

And then from there we took it to London and went on the West End for a little over a year.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:06

Then it toured.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:07

Then it came over here and we did another deal with Pittsburgh Civic.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:10

And then by that time, an outgrowth of all of this was the same.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:15

Buddy had moved from Caesar, had moved to Holland America Cruise Lines, and they had three ships at the time.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:23

And he said, dorie Sanchez was the choreographer.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:28

She went on and did a lot of shows with Cher.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:30

She did all of Cher's live shows, and she was a choreographer in London.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:35

And I said, well, we had opening night and had to spend another week.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:40

She said, I can't be here because I'm doing the ship show.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:43

What are you to us?

Gary Keefe: 00:45:44

Turns out my buddy.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:48

Although later I later heard that it kind of was because they fired Dory and they asked me to come in.

Mike: 00:45:55

And fix damn ship show.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:57

But then we put Copa.

Gary Keefe: 00:45:58

We had a shorter version of Copa that ran on three ships for, God, four years, five years.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:06

But we ended up doing all.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:07

Holland America kept growing.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:09

We had 15 ships.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:10

We had 20 kids on each ship.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:13

They learned.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:13

My brother and I would write shows.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:16

You know, hello, Hollywood.

Randy Florence: 00:46:17

Hello.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:17

Here's to Las Vegas.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:19

Let's hear it for the movies.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:20

You know what this.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:21

You know.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:21

You know what they are, right?

Randy Florence: 00:46:22

Yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:23

And so we did that for 22 years.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:28

We had all their ships and kids all over the place.

Mike: 00:46:30

Did you take a lot of cruises during that time?

Gary Keefe: 00:46:34

I did.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:34

I originally went on.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:36

On one called.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:37

We call them Schmooze Cruises, because it was when they launch a new ship and all the bankers, everybody who financed it, would go and go and say hello and thanks for coming kind of thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:46:45

And the first time I went, I thought, oh, God, what has happened to me?

Gary Keefe: 00:46:51

I'm on a ship with a buffet and a chocolate extravaganza at midnight, right?

Gary Keefe: 00:46:58

This is my worst nightmare.

Randy Florence: 00:47:00

This is hell, and I'm living in it.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:01

This is hell.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:03

I do T shirts for Rod Stewart.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:04

I manage Barry Manilow, and I'm on a ship in the middle of nowhere.

Mike: 00:47:08

Wow.

Mike: 00:47:08

My career is really taking off, not going up.

Randy Florence: 00:47:12

Plus, it's not something I can talk about at the club.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:16

But I remember I had dinner at.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:18

They have, like, a specialist steakhouse.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:20

Probably the best steak I had ever had in my whole life.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:22

I then found out that Carnival owns ranches in Australia for their own.

Randy Florence: 00:47:26

For the beef.

Mike: 00:47:27

Really?

Mike: 00:47:27

I didn't know that.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:28

And I said, you know, maybe this cruising thing isn't so bad.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:32

This is kind of nice.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:33

It was.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:34

I mean, the ship was beautiful, nice restaurants.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:36

And to this day, my daughter and I take a week every year and we go on Seabourn, which is their, like, Four Seasons level branch.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:45

And I gotta tell you, I'm a.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:47

I'm.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:48

I saw the light.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:49

I'm converted.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:50

It's a really nice way to travel and see different parts of the world.

Mike: 00:47:53

That's great.

Gary Keefe: 00:47:54

And you unpack once and you don't slip your luggage through this airport.

Randy Florence: 00:47:57

My wife and I, the first cruise we both ever took together was to Alaska, and it was also the first time she was away from the kids for a full week.

Randy Florence: 00:48:05

But it is such a relaxing way to vacation because you see a lot, but you live in the same room, which is so nice.

Randy Florence: 00:48:13

I want to jump back to today in addition to the McCallum, which is going to be an awesome responsibility.

Randy Florence: 00:48:18

And I like what you said about looking at ways to expand, but obviously the landscape has changed a bit because we now have the Acrosure arena, which brings in a different level of entertainment in terms of the size they can accomplish, accommodate.

Randy Florence: 00:48:33

How to.

Randy Florence: 00:48:33

How do you counter program against something like that?

Gary Keefe: 00:48:36

Oh, I think there's a niche for us, truthfully.

Gary Keefe: 00:48:39

know, we've got a little over: 1100

Gary Keefe: 00:48:44

We're, you know, we're not going to compete with Aquashore.

Gary Keefe: 00:48:46

We're not going to, you know, they're going to be involved in the new Palm Springs theater and the restoring the old theater.

Gary Keefe: 00:48:52

That's what, 600 seats?

Randy Florence: 00:48:53

Yeah, that's.

Randy Florence: 00:48:54

You know, six or eight.

Gary Keefe: 00:48:55

Yeah, there's a lot of people in there in that 1,000 seat pocket, you know, like the Patti LaBelles of the world, people like that, that she's not going to play an 8,000 seat arena and she's not going to play a 600 seater.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:10

We're not agriculture.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:11

2500.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:12

Yeah, the show is: 2500

Gary Keefe: 00:49:14

So there's a sweet spot in there.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:16

I don't see the rest of the guys doing Broadway.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:18

I think we've done very well with Broadway shows.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:20

We just had come from away that sold out all eight shows, which was fantastic.

Mike: 00:49:25

Well, it's a part of the fabric of the community, too.

Randy Florence: 00:49:29

Well, I do believe, more so than some of these other venues, that we're talking about the McCallum.

Randy Florence: 00:49:35

I think people feel ownership of it.

Randy Florence: 00:49:37

The community feels an ownership of the McCallum Theater.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:39

Well, and it is.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:40

It's our theater.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:41

You know, it doesn't belong to anybody else.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:44

It belongs to all of us.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:45

And I think the people take great pride.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:48

Listen, I've seen hundreds of theaters around the world.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:52

None are as nice as the McAllen.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:55

It's spotless, it's safe.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:58

It's.

Gary Keefe: 00:49:58

You know, they went probably, you know, maybe not overboard, but they went to the max on making sure everybody was protected regarding Covid.

Gary Keefe: 00:50:08

They were one of the first ones to put in a vaccination policy, even for people in the cast and crew and everybody, months before anybody else even thought about it.

Gary Keefe: 00:50:19

And I think we all take a pride in ownership.

Gary Keefe: 00:50:22

I mean, you know, yeah, I'm the chairman, but, you know, I live here and I'm very proud of our little theater.

Gary Keefe: 00:50:27

I think it's, you know, it's a jewel box.

Mike: 00:50:31

You know, Gary, I volunteer.

Mike: 00:50:32

I've been an usher there for the first time this season.

Randy Florence: 00:50:35

You're not going to hit up for pay, are you?

Mike: 00:50:38

Yeah, I mean, I'm not.

Mike: 00:50:40

I'm not eating very well right now.

Mike: 00:50:42

I have some merchandise ideas.

Gary Keefe: 00:50:43

Now we know who's been selling the program.

Mike: 00:50:45

I have some big conversations.

Mike: 00:50:47

Little bar T shirts.

Randy Florence: 00:50:48

Sell them for three bucks.

Randy Florence: 00:50:49

He's getting three bucks a program.

Randy Florence: 00:50:52

Don't go to door six because Randy's there.

Gary Keefe: 00:50:55

He won't give him.

Mike: 00:50:57

You can't even have a program.

Mike: 00:51:00

My point is that as I, you know, we all gather up there an hour and a half before the show starts.

Mike: 00:51:06

And you can feel it among the volunteers that that's why they're there, because McCallum means something to them and it means something to the community.

Mike: 00:51:15

And I think that that's Something that I'm hoping will continue with the MacCallum is the use of the volunteers and bringing them in.

Gary Keefe: 00:51:23

Yeah, but they're going to have to wear socks.

Gary Keefe: 00:51:26

That's going to change.

Randy Florence: 00:51:26

I know.

Randy Florence: 00:51:27

Now you have to quit.

Mike: 00:51:28

I just paint my ankles black.

Mike: 00:51:31

It'd be a lot cheaper.

Mike: 00:51:35

Gary, this has been fantastic.

Mike: 00:51:37

I was so looking forward to having you on here.

Mike: 00:51:39

Let me ask him.

Mike: 00:51:40

What's next for Barry?

Gary Keefe: 00:51:43

Well, let me see.

Gary Keefe: 00:51:44

He just.

Gary Keefe: 00:51:44

The New York Pops just honored him at Carnegie Hall a couple weeks ago.

Gary Keefe: 00:51:48

That was a big deal.

Gary Keefe: 00:51:51

He's gonna do some arena shows this summer.

Gary Keefe: 00:51:55

His play Harmony opens in Broadway on November 13, which has only taken us 30 years to.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:04

You know, I gotta.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:05

I gotta start working on the next one.

Randy Florence: 00:52:07

You got a lot of work to do.

Randy Florence: 00:52:09

I had the pleasure of interviewing Barry a few years ago ago prior to performance at the McCallum.

Randy Florence: 00:52:14

And what I really thoroughly enjoy is his passion for the music itself.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:18

That's his thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:19

Yeah, really, that's his thing.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:20

We're gonna be back.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:21

He's gonna do some more shows in December.

Mike: 00:52:23

Well, two weeks ago was the 40th anniversary of the first time my wife and I saw Barry.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:28

Oh, yeah?

Mike: 00:52:29

Yeah.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:29

Where was that?

Mike: 00:52:30

Circle Star Theater up.

Mike: 00:52:33

No, San Francisco.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:34

Part of.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:35

They were part of the same group.

Mike: 00:52:36

Yeah, yeah.

Mike: 00:52:37

And it was just fantastic.

Mike: 00:52:39

And I can't wait to see him again this Christmas.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:41

That was run by Don Joe Mendel.

Mike: 00:52:43

Circle Star was, huh.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:44

Had no neck.

Mike: 00:52:49

You should.

Mike: 00:52:49

The stage used to circle and you would see a guy with no neck on the side.

Randy Florence: 00:52:55

You know why Italians have no neck?

Randy Florence: 00:52:57

It's a visual joke.

Randy Florence: 00:52:58

It doesn't go over on a podcast.

Gary Keefe: 00:52:59

But that was on.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:00

Joke.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:01

That's the joke.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:03

He was a fun guy.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:05

Hey.

Randy Florence: 00:53:07

This has been a delight.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:09

We thank you guys.

Randy Florence: 00:53:10

We would like a commitment that you'll come back and do this again.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:12

Sure.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:13

Come back.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:13

Yeah.

Mike: 00:53:13

After a couple of weeks in the mcali, you can say.

Mike: 00:53:15

Okay, I'm going to stick around.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:17

Next time though, will you buy me a real drink?

Gary Keefe: 00:53:19

I mean the water drink right now.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:22

Thank you, guys.

Mike: 00:53:23

Gary, thanks for being here today.

Randy Florence: 00:53:24

Gary Keefe, our guest, who is the chairman now of the McCallum and on the Palm Springs International Film Festival Board.

Randy Florence: 00:53:31

Just a delight to have you.

Randy Florence: 00:53:32

Thank you so much.

Gary Keefe: 00:53:33

Thank you.

Randy Florence: 00:53:33

We appreciate the candid, candid conversation.

Randy Florence: 00:53:35

My thanks to Randy Florence, my co host, who does a brilliant job.

Randy Florence: 00:53:38

And it was your idea to have Gary on.

Mike: 00:53:41

John was very heavily involved in that.

Randy Florence: 00:53:43

Producer John McMullen.

Mike: 00:53:44

Nobody's actually ever said yes to me.

Randy Florence: 00:53:47

So that's not true.

Randy Florence: 00:53:48

You've been married for 42 years, and how many kids do you have?

Gary Keefe: 00:53:51

And he's still hoping she says yes.

Mike: 00:53:53

Well, we slept together twice.

Mike: 00:53:54

We've got two sons.

Randy Florence: 00:53:57

That has to be the exclamation mark on this podcast.

Randy Florence: 00:54:00

This is Big Conversations Little Bar, and keep it tuned right here to your favorite podcast platform, because we'll be dropping another episode very soon.

Randy Florence: 00:54:08

We appreciate your listenership.

Patrick Evans: 00:54:13

Thanks for joining us on this episode of Big Conversations Little Bar Recorded on location at Skip Page's Little Bar in Palm Desert, California, the center of the Coachella Valley universe, and Presented by the McCallum Theater online at mccallumtheater.org this program is a production of the Mutual Broadcasting System.

Patrick Evans: 00:54:35

All episodes are available from bigconversations, littlebar.com and most major podcast portals, including Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Spotify.