It’s his birthday today.

When Don Rickles died, John Stamos and Bob Saget couldn’t stop talking about him. Rickles, famously cantankerous, had loved both of them like sons. The stories they told about Rickles, on the late-night talk-show circuit were hilarious, heartfelt, beautiful. Here they are on Jimmy Kimmel, who also had a close relationship with Rickles. At a certain point, you can tell the three men are barely hanging on. But they hold it together. My favorite bit is “All his passwords were Hitler.” Watch that bit of intel hit Kimmel. It hits, and then it hits deeper, and then it really LANDS.

Unfurling below, is a conversation Mitchell and I had about Don Rickles. It was part of a larger series. I would throw a name at Mitchell, ask him to describe that person in “one word” and then we would discuss. Here’s our discussion on Don Rickles. We had this conversation before Don Rickles died.

SOM: One word.

MF: Me.

To this day, he is my favorite comic. He makes me laugh out loud. He’s a babbling old fool at this point. Sometimes I think he loses focus and he gets laughs on his confusion and people think he’s making a joke and really he’s just confused. But there’s something about the tenacity of his personality … He’s this short funny-looking Jewish guy and he used that ferociousness. I am sure he was a son of a bitch. I am sure that his insult humor came out of surviving in New York as a kid, being short and Jewish, and I fucking relate to that. I grew up in an era of Prozac and Oprah so I took my anger and worked through it in therapy. I think he had the same thing and he worked through it and became a star.

I just think he’s so clever and so funny and he somehow manages to be the most insulting person who has ever lived. He is the only person who could say “fag” and it wouldn’t offend me in any way shape or form, and that’s saying a lot. And I’ve never heard Don Rickles do that much homophobic stuff, although I’m sure that he did. He lived with his mother until he got married at 30 or 40 years old. Loved his mother, lived with her till he got married, and he got married late, and he stayed married to the same woman. She and Don and Bob Newhart and his wife are constant travel companions. They’re besties. I think he’s the best. There’s something about him that makes me laugh the second I see him. His stupid bald head, his barking. The funniest thing is him on Letterman, he’s just vicious. He has no boundaries.

For some reason, he’s very familiar to me.

SOM: His tribute speech to Martin Scorsese at the AFI is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

MF: I have a tiny clip of him doing a roast of Barbra back in the 60s. And he was the emcee. He’s so funny. “So we’re here, is this your mother? Listen, you have a dummy for a daughter. She made it and now everyone’s schmeckling her. She’s a dummy. Basically, she’s a dummy.” It’s so funny. There are no sacred cows to him, and yet I think really that everything is a sacred cow to him, and that’s what’s funny.

SOM: At the end of the speech, he brings up Martin Scorsese’s mother and he lets his heart out. He’s a patriarch, in a way.

MF: It’s the same thing, with Barbra. At the end, he sort of concludes by saying, of course he’s joking, and he’s honored to be there, and to see all the amazing people there, what an honor it is for me to be here. He sort of always brings it back around. It would have been interesting if he had been given more acting roles. Obviously he didn’t have the time for it, because he had a busy career, but it would have been interesting if he had been used in different ways, in the way that Scorsese used him.

MF: I mean, he did a lot of movies but they were often forgettable. I can’t even see him without starting to laugh. Some people just have funny bones. Don Rickles has funny bones.

 
 
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“You throw your best punch, otherwise don’t do it.” — Don Rickles