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Mark interviews Roger Friedman from Showbiz411. · The Mark Simone Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Mister new George Marks or well.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Roger Friedman, the great entertainment reporter. His website Showbiz for
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: one one, lots of stories, new stuff every day. Keep
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: checking it showbiz for one one dot com Roger Friedman,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: how you doing.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I'm great, Good morning, and I can't believe it.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: March begins a Sunday, right or sooner or Monday? Yea hey, yeah,
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: I never asked you. Uh, we're talking about Jeffrey Epstein.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: You must have known Epstein or met him.
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: No, no, I saw him once. I never met him.
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: I might have nodded at him, I never I know.
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: I didn't shake hands.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: You do well.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: I hate to break it to you. You're in the
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: Epstein files. I don't know if you know that. I'm
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: in there too. I know I but you're in there
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: because somebody, somebody wrote him. Peggy Single wrote him and said,
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: would you like to meet Roger Friedman? So it's nothing.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: She said, come join us for dinner.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: And I remember that dinner where I said to Peggy,
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: I don't think we should do that, and we didn't.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: He never showed up.
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: I saw him once with a very tall, thin girl
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: with long brown hair and a dress that stopped at
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: her waist, and I had no idea how old she was.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: I didn't think that she was under eighteen. I thought
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: she was probably eighteen or nineteen. You know, I didn't
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: know how old she was. He was a terrible guy.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: I'm just I just put up a story on show,
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: his hororine one about him. He was a hypochondriac and
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: obsessed with cancer, and he thought that he had cancer,
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: and he got involved with this bizarre alternative cancer hospital
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: in California.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: And if you go on.
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: The website, I pulled out a lot of stuff from
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: the files talking about the bizarre agreement he signed with them.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, he lived in a strange world. And he
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: had his finger in every pie. He had his finger
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: literally in every pie. I mean cancer. He was funding
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: cancer research. You know, he was involved in so many
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: different things that you can't believe. And it's amazing. He
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: was like a cancer that ran through the society.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been reading the files a lot. He was
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: one of those guys who thought he was a political expert.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: He didn't know what the hell he was talking about,
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: and he thought he was a medical expert, and he
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: didn't know what the ally was talking about but he
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: just keep writing chext to everybody, so they'd sit there
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: and nod and pretend they were listening to him. But
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: did you ever actually talk to me? You know, he
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: always dressed it kind of look trying to dress like
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: he was the Duke of Windsor. And then when he
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: talked to you, go, how are you? You know, with
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: that voice, it didn't work.
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: Now, the one time I saw him, he was wearing
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: just like, you know, like a workshirt kind of thing
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: and jeans. He wasn't really dressed up, but I didn't
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: really talk to him. I kind of looked at him, like,
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: what the hell are you doing here? And I knew
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: I didn't want anything to do with But this was
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: already late in the game. You know, let's say this
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: was twenty sixteen or twenty seventeen. And you know, as
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: I've been saying to people, remember Howard Rubinstein, of course,
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: the great PR guy. He was Jeffrey's PR person, and
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: he was also the person who represented the Post, the
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: New York Post, So Howard would block the Post from
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: running anything really bad about Epstein for years. So we
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: didn't really know in New York the extent of what
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: he was doing until it was too late. You know,
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: when he was doing when he was doing his crimes
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: in Palm Beach, Florida, the news never really traveled up here.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: I mean it was sort of like it was a
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: vague or distant. It was in the Palm Beach Post.
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: But who cared and in he wasn't getting the bad
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: publicity he should have been getting. But that's because he
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: has so much help from Rubinstein keeping everything out of
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: the press.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: Roger Fittman, let's talk about somebody else we knew, JFK Junior.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Everybody's talking about Hi now because of this new mini series.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Have you watched it?
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: Oh god, yeah, it's it's terrible. It's really terrible. It's
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: not accurate, it's terrible, it's a it's exploitive.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: I saw Lisa Depello, who worked for JFK.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: At George Magazine, wrote something fun yesterday online I think
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: on her sub stack where she said she started watching
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: it started laughing. So at least she has a sense
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: of humor. But you know, it's a bizarre thing to
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: do to people, to do these movies where such a
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: tragic thing happened, and the story's been told over and
• 4:59
  Speaker 4: over and over. This was completely unnecessary. I have no
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: idea what the ratings are. Oh, but it was silly huge,
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: That's what I thought.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: This thing is huge?
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Is it huge?
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: It's huge. It's like the most popular streaming thing right now.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Everybody's talking, Oh wow. Yeah, I thought it was the
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: silliest thing I ever saw. And I knew John a
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: little bit. Yeah.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: I never knew Carolyn, but I knew John a little
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: bit and he was a great guy.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well I knew him too. And this is not
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: accurate this show. You may love it, but it's not
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: the real story at all. Hey, it looks like Paramount
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: is going to take over Warner Brothers, Discovery, Netflix is
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: bout out, So what does that mean, Paramount whatever, It's
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: going to be the biggest.
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: Conglomerate in one family, yea, one family David and Larry Ellison.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: The father is Larry, the son is David.
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: They're going to own HBO, CNN, CBS, They're going to
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: own all of this media. And you know, Larry Ellison,
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: the father is in business with Donald Trump, and the
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: son David Ellison has already said that he would make
• 6:04
  Speaker 4: it make CBS more conservative, and in doing that he's
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: taken to Tony Jakoppel's CBS Evening News, and the ratings
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: have collapsed.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, collapsed. Viewers have left.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: Well, that's whatever. You change the format, even in the
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: radio station, you lose all your audience. You've got to
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: go get a new one. But have you noticed all
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: three evening all three of them look alike. They're identity,
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: they're identical. Yeah, they're identical. And the correspondence on their
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: shows look like them too.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: So it's just it's just.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: Like an army of white guys with dark hair, all
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: telling the same story all night long. And I was
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: a big fan of Nora O'Donnell. I'd like to see
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: her come back somehow. But it's kind of crazy. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: I really like Lesterholt, but it's it's kind of crazy
• 6:59
  Speaker 4: what's happened. But you know what's happening is the news.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: The audience for the news is shrinking anyway. Yeah, there's
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: not much audience for that, for the nighttime news in
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: the first place, because people are consuming a lot of
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: their okay, thank you, the people are consuming the news
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: on TikTok, on Instagram, in little clips. You know, it's
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: a much different world than we were used to where
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: you sat for half an hour and watched the news.
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: Now I watch Tony Dakoppel just because I don't like him,
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: and I watched the first fifteen minutes. After that, I
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: can't take anymore.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Hey, before we run out of time. We had this
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: terrible two blizzards snow. The weather was what happened? How
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: is Broadway affected and the movies and all of that by.
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: This, well, they were Saturday and Sunday was a terrible
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: day for movies in theater, and particularly Broadway.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Sunday.
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: You know, they canceled all the night time, all the
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: seven o'clock shows, and even it even went into Monday too,
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: where people didn't show up.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: So Broadway took a big hit.
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: They were down I think two million dollars this past
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: week from the week before because of all of that.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: And uh, and the movies took a hit too, although
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: the big movies like Crime one oh one and Goat,
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: they still they still pulled an audience. So the box
• 8:21
  Speaker 4: office wasn't too bad for movies, but it was. It's
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: bad for theater because you people are not going to
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: schlep into New York. It's a crawl over black ice.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: You know and dirty snow to see a show, do
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean?
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, restaurants were empty too. It was a huge economic
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: loss both those blizzards.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: But three weeks a good night to see a show
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: that you couldn't get into if you lived in town
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: and you could take the subways of the show, you
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: could see something that was sold out previously.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: Well, Roger Friedman, great stuff. Everybody. Check out his website
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: showbiz for one dot com. There's new stories all the time,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: show biz for one one dot com. Roger Friedman, thanks
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: for being with us. Thank you all right, take care. Hey,
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: coming up, don't forget Buck Sexton, Klay Travis. They do
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: a great show every day at twelve noon. And Buck
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: has a great new book out. He's going to be
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: with us in the next hour. We'll tell you all
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: about it. Should get his new book. It's on Amazon. Still,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: don't forget. At three o'clock, the most listened to radio
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: show in America, Sean Hannity got Jesse Kelly. At six,
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: you got Jimmy Fala every night, great show every night
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: at nine o'clock, nine to midnight every weeknight on seven
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: ten WR