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[0:00] Alan Seales: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Theatre Podcast. Intimate, personal conversations with the industry's biggest names. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and for these past two episodes, my 10-year-old self has been living his best life. Last episode with Scott Bakula, and now this episode with Marc Summers. Being a child of the 80s, I of course know him from the original Double Dare game show on Nickelodeon, but in addition to being a game show host, he's also a comedian, a producer, a talk show host, and is known as the host of Unwrapped on the Food Network. He was the executive producer for both Dinner Impossible and Restaurant Impossible, also for the Food Network, and now he has an off-Broadway, almost one-man show, called The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers.

Written by Alex Brightman, yes, that Alex Brightman, and with music by Drew Gasparini, both of which who are strangely like real-life besties with Marc. It's pretty cool. Marc himself has been very open about his struggles with severe OCD, something that he battled throughout his entire career, being diagnosed with cancer several times, being in a horrible car accident, and breaking, I think he said, every bone in his face, and throughout it all, he keeps smiling, and he keeps laughing, and now he's here to tell his story. So this interview you're about to hear was recorded at the press junket for Life and Slimes, the off-Broadway show, just about a day or two before they started previews. But before we get into it, as always, we need to hear from our sponsors.

So let me put on my best game show announcer voice here. We'll be back with more of the Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales, including an additional interview with composer Drew Gasparini and director Chad Rabinowitz, right after these messages.

[1:49] Marc Summers: My name is Marc Summers. You may know me from Food Network on a show called Unwrapped, but also from Double Dare on Nickelodeon. One of my favorite shows as a kid, and I'm sure you get this all the time. Where'd you grow up? North Carolina. Okay. So you were a kid in school coming home, turn it on TV, and watching this. Yeah, and the nostalgia of that cup, just the simple cup with the red line on it over there, because you're speaking to so many people right now, and people are going to come to the show, I think, knowing you, wanting to see Double Dare. But this show is so much deeper. It's deeper than this, because it's all about you and about your life. So for those who may not know, you've publicly battled OCD, and you've been in a car crash where you broke most of the bones in your face, and had a lot of your own physical challenges to overcome.

So speak on that for a little bit, and what we're going to see in the show. Yeah, the show goes throughout various portions of my life, but it's about how do you get from point A to point B? Why do some people give up on their goals when somebody says no? And other people have the guts and gumption to keep moving forward and go around and over and under and around through obstacles, so to speak. And so in the middle of our show, a game show does break out, but we discuss obsessive compulsive disorder and how it pretty much shut my career down for a while. Talked about when I got cancer and was diagnosed and had to kind of keep it under wraps because it's another one of those things in show business where people think you're on death's door if you have it, and you know, I'm in remission now.

I was diagnosed twelve years ago. I had it three times now. Wow, congrats. Yeah. And the car crash where I broke every bone in my face. And I just kept moving forward. And my feeling is no doesn't mean no. It means not yet. And I don't get depressed because I try to stay as focused as possible and keep my eye on the ball. And I just figure I'm going to reach every goal that I've ever wanted. And that's why I say I've never worked a day in my life. I'm just having fun.

[3:52] Alan Seales: Back in the day before Double Dare, before you started hosting, you were pursuing magic. You were a magician that supported your way through college, I think. And then you were doing stand up comedy.

[3:59] Marc Summers: Yeah. I started the Magic Castle in 1973 in Los Angeles. I was doing four shows a night, seven nights a week for $145. And then I became a regular at the comedy store in 1976. And we talk about in the show, who was there? Dave Letterman, Jay Leno, Gary Shanling, Robin Williams. And I was there about a year and a half before I got thrown out because they said, you're not half as funny as those people. And so, you know, to get thrown out of the comedy store by the owner, Mitzi Shore, the question is, well, what do you do next? Polly Shore's mom, right? Yes. Yes. Polly Shore's mom. And so I just kept moving forward and, you know, just said, OK, time to move on. I'll figure out another way. And I always did. I always figured another door to go through to move my career forward.

[4:47] Alan Seales: And in this show, Drew is telling, is giving a little hint that like your wife plays a major part in the story and the overall story arc of this show. And what did she do throughout this process? You've been together 46 years now, I think.

[5:01] Marc Summers: Oh, 50 years. June 6th. Whoa. Yeah. 50 years. Thank you. What did she do? She did everything. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her. She believed in me. I wasn't making any money. And she was a dental assistant making 400 bucks a week. Kept believing in me because I was working small clubs for 50 bucks a night, the castle for 145. And I didn't start making a living till I was 33 years old. And she hung in there through all of it. And there were a lot of ups and a lot of downs, but she was always positive. She never said, you better stop that and go get a job. Not once. And so I have to give Alice so much credit because I'm lucky that we found each other. And, you know, there's a line in the show.

I say I'm going to be married 50 years and people say, how's that possible? And I always say I was only home for 15 of them. That's true. I've been on the road doing, you know, magic, doing stand up, doing double dare, doing unwrapped, doing dinner, impossible, restaurant, impossible. So I was on a plane constantly. And, you know, the old fear is you come home and your kids call you uncle daddy. But, you know, and now my son, who's an exec producer at Food Network as well, is kind of living my old life. He's on the road constantly producing a bazillion shows. He just got back from five weeks in Arizona doing Alex Grinichelli's show, Supermarket Stakeout. So in many ways, he's kind of, you know, doing what I used to do.

[6:19] Alan Seales: That's insane. And so the double dare process, though, I want to touch on that for a second. Did you get any say or were you contributing ideas for what the challenges were? And rumor has it that that is actually your nose, modeled after your nose?

[6:31] Marc Summers: Supposedly after my nose. Yes. First 65, I was trying to figure out what was going on. But after that, when we would do physical challenges and obstacles, I did contribute. Alan Silberberg, who was our head writer, was the brains behind so much of it. He knew how to ride into my sense of humor and build things for that. And our exec producers, Mike Klinghoffer and Dana Calderwood, it was a very good collaborative group. Yes, they listened to me and they let me participate. But, you know, I'm not taking any credit because those guys were the real brains behind the show.

[7:01] Alan Seales: Were you always calling for more pies? You were like, we need more boogers over here, less boogers. There's too much snot.

[7:07] Marc Summers: Too much snot today. Not enough boogers. Yeah, because we were able to build the nose where it could actually sneeze. Yeah, which was great. And one of the best days we ever did was we had a nurse on set all times because they were afraid of kid fell. We had to have somebody there. But we built a gigantic zit on the nose and we brought our nurse over and she taught us how to lance it and take care of it. I mean, those are the things that we used to do. And my favorite part of that show was when parents would come up to me when I was in a mall or something and say, I watch every day for that one thing you do for us, because I was always doing jokes for the grownups. It was sort of two levels, Rocky and Bullwinkle.

And, you know, I think back, I was doing impressions in 1986 of Ed Sullivan, and Paul Lynde, and people that those kids had no idea who the hell I was trying to do. But it somehow worked. The focus group said they thought I was some like crazy uncle or crazy older brother. And it's just all. And the one thing they always said was, we like you because we never got talked down to. I never talked in a squeaky voice and said, do you have a girlfriend? I just I wanted to be hosting, you know, Jeopardy. So I was pretending that I was Alex Trebek. And I never thought of myself of doing a kid's game show. So I had no desire to do that. So I was doing it in my head as a grownup.

[8:19] Alan Seales: That's insane. And you actually took it. You were always in the moment. You took it very seriously and like that. You weren't talking down to the kids, like you said. And then I heard that the reason you think you got the gig, it was down. It was like over thousands of auditions. And it was down to you and this one other guy. And then I'll let you tell the story. But like how you ended that audition, I think, was how you got it.

[9:27] Marc Summers: Thousand people in New York, thousand people in L.A. I suggest they couldn't decide because they kept using grownups playing the part of kids. And they said, it's between you and another guy. And I said, what's the problem? So we don't know if you're good with kids. I said, I have two kids. They said, that makes no difference. I said, I used to do magic shows for kids. They said that means nothing. So I came up with the idea of putting us in a studio with real life kids and playing the game. So they flew me and this other guy to New York and we did it. And at the end, when I got the job, I said, why did I get this show after two thousand people? They said the other guy at the end of his audition just looked at it and said, hey, am I done?

Do you guys want me to do something else? And I looked at the camera and said, we'll be back with more Double Dare right after this. I threw it a commercial because whenever I watch TV, that's what Bob Barker and all these guys did. They threw it a commercial and they thought that was more professional and it changed my life.

[10:27] Alan Seales: That one moment, that's amazing how one thing, one choice in a split second shapes the entire rest of your career. But from the very, very beginning, you knew that you always wanted to be part of the entertainment industry. So how old were you when you were getting into magic? And did you originally want to do only magic or like you were watching Bob Barker and wanted to be the game show host?

[10:45] Marc Summers: I watched Barker when I'd come home from Ms. Helms Nursery School when I was five years old and he was on NBC and I was mesmerized by him. And then I found out that Johnny Carson, who I was obsessed with, started his career as a magician. So I started to do magic, figured if it's good enough for Johnny, it's good enough for me. And I had, you know, huge you know what's. And I, every local station back in the day had a kid's show and I would call these kid's shows and talk myself on doing magic. And at the end of one, the host said, do you have any other tricks? So every couple of weeks, my mom would drive me down to the station and I would do magic on that stuff. And then I started watching, you know, Ed Sullivan and Hollywood Palace and The Tonight Show and I saw comedians and I thought, well, how do you get to do that?

And so I started adding comedy to my magic to see if I could, you know, combine the two of those. And then when I got to LA, I first started doing warm-ups on TV shows. I wrote game shows. I got to, my first job as a page was on Price's Ride. I got to meet Barker. Wow. And then I wrote Truth or Consequences.

[10:48] Marc Summers: Mr. Barker hosted it. So, we became friends. And then, when I started The Comedy Store in 1976, I just kept moving up. Next step, how do I do this, how do I do that? The harder you work, the luckier you get, is kind of the motto of this show. Some people give up because they want to make a lot of dough at a young age. And the fact that at 33, before I got my first national TV show, I guess I was either crazy or had a lot of guts. I don't know. I guess it probably, and I don't mean this in a funny way, but probably like the OCD that kept you focused. Because I have OCPD, which is different. It's obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. So, essentially, I can't see the forest through the trees. And so, I hyper-focus on small details and then helps me get through projects and whatever. So, do you think it was something along those lines at all that probably kept you going?

[11:39] Marc Summers: 100%. I always say that if I didn't have OCD, I would not be where I am. Because I was always seeking perfection. And I wanted everything to be perfect. And my life was not going to be perfect until I accomplished these goals of hosting shows on television. So, yes, if you had to look at the foundation of all this obsessive-compulsive disorder, some people think it's a negative thing. And it's tough. But it worked for me and got me to where I am.

[12:05] Alan Seales: Thank you for sharing. Best of luck with everything. I think the only way to close this out is to throw out a commercial. We'll be back with more right after this.

[12:15] Alan Seales: Welcome back. As part of the press junket, I was fortunate enough to be able to speak to director Chad Rabinovitz and composer Drew Gasparini. Let's dive in.

[12:25] Chad Rabinovitz: My name's Chad Rabinovitz. I'm the director of The Life and Slimes of Marc Summers. And what is your connection to Marc Summers, your personal connection, your excitement behind bringing the show finally off-Broadway?

[12:33] Chad Rabinovitz: Oh, man. The personal connection is I was a fan first. Oh, gosh, there is a moving pie catapult behind us. We're at risk. I mean, I grew up watching the show, dreaming of being on Double Dare. And then I'd say about nine, ten years ago, I had lunch with Marc, Drew, and Alex, and got involved with helping to create, develop, and direct the show. And so living out your childhood dream, all of us, like myself included. I think we are the exact same age. Come in here, Drew. Come in here. Make sure that you're standing so you can get hit by the pie.

[13:08] Drew Gasparini: Hi.

[13:09] Chad Rabinovitz: Hi. Who are you, for the people who aren't watching?

[13:12] Drew Gasparini: My name today is Drew Alex Gasparini-Brightman.

[13:17] Chad Rabinovitz: All right. Fair enough. And which Tonys did you lose?

[13:21] Drew Gasparini: The ones that I lost are from 1923. So this is before the Tonys existed.

[13:26] Chad Rabinovitz: Fair. I'm so proud of you.

[13:27] Drew Gasparini: See, one of the first things I did when I met Marc on the first day of rehearsal, he pied me in the face. It was the most fulfilling thing.

[13:34] Chad Rabinovitz: It's on the bucket list.

[13:35] Drew Gasparini: It really is. And he was so good at it. It was like, it was firm. It was comfortable.

[13:40] Chad Rabinovitz: He held you after?

[13:43] Drew Gasparini: He talked me through it. I'm telling you, it was, and I posted every year on pie day.

[13:48] Chad Rabinovitz: Oh, nice.

[13:49] Drew Gasparini: Oh, that's very fair. Okay. So Drew, your connection, how did you get connected with Marc and help Chad bring the show to Broadway? Off-Broadway.

[13:56] Drew Gasparini: Marc is my biological father.

[13:57] Chad Rabinovitz: You guys look identical.

[14:00] Drew Gasparini: Marc and I met when we did a summer stock production of Grease and he was Vince Fontaine and I was Eugene. And all we did was, since we had no stage time, was just like dick around backstage and he had this filthy sense of humor. Somebody just got shot. He has this filthy sense of humor. We made each other laugh back and forth and just this kinship just formed really organically. And at the time I had just become really best friends with Alex Brightman. I looped him into the gang and we started hanging out really consistently and regularly. And then he brought up the idea, Marc brought up the idea of like, I want to write a show about my story, about my life. And I didn't buy it. Alex didn't buy it. Then we sat and talked with him and he explained his life to us. We're like, the world needs to know this story. And that's why this is happening, honestly.

[14:47] Chad Rabinovitz: And so you're the composer of this show. Double Dare has music now?

[14:53] Drew Gasparini: Well, so Double Dare, as we know, does have a very iconic theme song that we don't want to pay for in license. That's where Gasparini comes in. No, no, no, no. This actually, the initial idea for the one man show was maybe, maybe, just maybe to write a musical for Marc Summers. I wrote him a song once to sing at 54 Below for me. That's when we all decided this should not be a musical. And it became a play with music. And there's a lot of heartfelt themes and musical theater moments where he's talking about his condition, his wife. His wife is a huge part of the show. And they have thematic motifs that kind of underlay when he's talking about those important moments. And we've taken a lot of the, musically, the 80s and 90s rock vibes to kind of bring the show, to start the show, to get it going, to make it feel like, oh my God, it's Marc Summers, our favorite game show host. We're going to be watching a game show. And then, gotcha. No, it's a play. It's a play. With games, but it's a play for sure.

[15:54] Chad Rabinovitz: Drew, for the direction of this, bringing this in, like combining the nostalgia of what we know as Double Dare with our love for Marc Summers. And then, Drew, you were saying there's so much story and there's so much life that Marc has not shown publicly, or maybe he has, but we just don't, we haven't paid attention to that side of things. So how are you choosing what to bring here and how to weave in and out the personal moments in between, like, I just want to get pied in the face.

[16:19] Chad Rabinovitz: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's working with Brightman, who is just a brilliant writer, trying to capture, we've played with different things. We've cut many different parts of his life, which is very easy. But it's really about taking you on a rollercoaster ride, right? We have so much fun in using Drew's music and using musical moments where it should be a time where someone sings, instead of singing, we play a game. And that can still heighten the moment. And then we take you to a point of seriousness where we can land at a more heavy catharsis. And so it really is this adventure that we go on through Marc's life told in the framework of a game show. When have you seen that? It takes that one person show that usually to me is a little sleepy, you know, a little concerning of what am I going to get into hearing that story of someone's life? Great. It's not just we don't just hear it. We live it. We get to participate in it. It's an immersive adventure. It's the best way to put it.

[17:19] Drew Gasparini: So is the audience going to get to come up and like participate in the challenges?

[17:22] Chad Rabinovitz: If they put their name in the bucket, they just buy a ticket, ticket first, come to the show, put your name in the bucket and then post on social media how awesome Drew Gasparini's music is.

[17:35] Drew Gasparini: Yes, by all means. If you're not doing that on the daily, by the way, get with it, folks.

[17:40] Chad Rabinovitz: So what's one thing then that you hope people are taking away from the show after they see it? If they're coming expecting a Double Dare, what do you hope that they're going to walk out of in addition to that experience?

[17:49] Chad Rabinovitz: I kind of want them to say that was at least worth a double that. It's a quarter dare. I mean, that's a quadruple dare. But it is it. I mean, it's just so much more than you expect, right? It's you come for the expecting Marc and a Double Dare, but you leave feeling inspired about life. You leave having that nostalgic feeling of, you know, that time of what you always wanted to accomplish and then thinking about how much more you still can, no matter what the obstacles are in your life. That's such a cool thing to have in the midst of a giant party that we're going to have on stage.

[18:31] Drew Gasparini: I mean, even when you walked on stage today and saw this for the first time, what did you say?

[18:35] Chad Rabinovitz: This is a joy bomb, honestly.

[18:38] Drew Gasparini: Joy bomb.

[18:39] Chad Rabinovitz: Joy bomb. It's explosively joyous in the stage when you walk in. It is. It's just nostalgia. It's literally dripping from the ceilings, from the walls. This is my childhood. Anybody who is a Gen Z millennial, I think, is going to grab on to this because it represents so much of what we grew up seeing. It's really quite through.

[18:59] Drew Gasparini: Just the cup with the red stripe on the hat is one of those things I walk in, I'm like, oh, my God, I know exactly what that is.

[19:08] Chad Rabinovitz: To the line. Yeah, exactly. We never had that in previous iterations. And that's what I said when we were bringing this off Broadway. I need the line on the cup and we need to get a liquid to some goal. And we researched every Double Dare game, said, how many ways can we do this? And milking a cow felt like the most fun way to do it. So, yeah, you get all of that. I want pies and I need the nose. We take you on that, you know, Double Dare.

[19:35] Drew Gasparini: He sounds like a madman when he's directing. He's like, I want pies. We need more pies. Where's the cow and the big nose?

[19:39] Chad Rabinovitz: This isn't Sweeney Todd.

[19:40] Drew Gasparini: Yeah, it's crazy.

[19:44] Chad Rabinovitz: I do think it is important to note, as someone who loves musical theater as much as they love Marc Summers and game shows, you come and you're going to experience the Marc Summers, you're going to experience the game showness of this all. But the empathy that everybody is going to have to turn on for this man when you see the messiest game show in history secretly battling a debilitating condition with OCD, that is such an interesting story. And ultimately, that's what really made me want to help create this piece. And I wanted to make sure that that was said, because you don't expect that part of the story. And if you don't know Marc, you take that away no matter what. So you can have that nostalgia if you do. But there's so many nostalgic moments, even if it's just about the era. So you don't need to know Marc. We've had people see the show who are just leave saying, I didn't know anything coming in. And oh, what a man. What a show.

[20:38] Drew Gasparini: Yeah, a lot of tears. You'd never think so, but a lot of tears. It's a good show.

[20:43] Marc Summers: A lot of comedians are rooted in a lot of trauma, a lot of dark times, and that's how they're making light of it. And I cannot wait to see the show. I can't wait to experience more of your magical work. So congratulations to you both. I can't wait for this. Thank you.

[20:59] Alan Seales: Well, that's it. Thanks for listening to this episode with Marc, Chad, and Drew. Make sure to stop by New World Stages when you're in New York City and see Life and Slimes of Marc Summers. It is such a touching and heartwarming story and an incredible show the way they put together. Yeah, they do throw in some Double Dare elements, so you can get to play your own physical challenges if you want. Seems pretty cool. Leave a rating and review wherever you're listening. You're hearing the Double Dare theme song under you right now. And in the immortal words of Bob Barker, don't forget to spay and neuter your pets.