Playwright Neil Simon Explains Why He 'Just Always Wanted To Write'

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today we're starting a series featuring interviews with Emmy nominees. They'll find out if they're winners on Monday, September 17. We're starting with John Oliver, whose satirical news show "Last Week Tonight" is nominated in nine categories, including Outstanding Variety Talk Series, Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series and Outstanding Interactive Program.

Oliver moved to the U.S. from England in 2006 to become a correspondent on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart. Oliver started his HBO show in 2014. He typically starts the show with a comic, trenchant review of the week's news, and then he takes a deep dive into one news story, a story that you may not have been following, a story you may not have thought was interesting. But through a combination of comedy and journalism, he makes it funny and really informative.

Our interview was recorded last March. Here's a clip from the August 19 episode in which the main story was about President Trump waging a trade war. Here's how Oliver started.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAST WEEK TONIGHT")

JOHN OLIVER: Trade is a subject on which our current president considers himself particularly expert.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Trade - that's what I'm going to do so good. I'll take those trade deals...

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: ...And make them so good. That's what I do. I love taking bad deals and making them good.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TRUMP: I love trade. You know, trade's always been my thing.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

TRUMP: I could name 10 different forms of trade. I know every one of them.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: Hey - the Wharton School of Finance right here.

OLIVER: Yeah, I can name 10 forms of trade. There's free trade, fair trade, rough trade, Trader Joe's. That's - what? - eight.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: Then there's human trafficking. That's like trading for people. We'll round it up and call it 10 - Wharton School of Finance right here.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: Trump has talked a big game on trade for decades, and he's spent...

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: John Oliver, welcome to FRESH AIR, and - glad your show is back (laughter) on HBO.

OLIVER: Thank you.

GROSS: So I always imagine your staff being a combination of journalists and comics. And the way it happens in my head...

OLIVER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...Because I'm not there and I don't know anything about...

OLIVER: (Laughter).

GROSS: ...What's really going on - but the way it happens in my head is that you have a group of journalists who do this deep dive into a story and then a group of comedy writers who turn that story into a comedic take on - you know, using all the investigative stuff that the journalists have come up with - that then the comics would, you know, transform that into a comic take on this really important story. So tell me...

OLIVER: Yeah, that's a pretty good guess.

GROSS: Oh, OK.

OLIVER: That's a pretty good guess, Terry. You've just revealed to our secret sauce live on air.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Tell me how it really works (laughter).

OLIVER: You've just Colonel Sandersed (ph)...

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: ...Our process. That's basically it. You know, we have researchers. We have footage producers. And they go away to look at a story and to check that it's been reported accurately or whether the story has shifted in any way, meaning that lots of this data that we'd be using would be out of date and whether there is footage through which we can tell the story. Then once we feel like the basic foundations are solid, then we can kind of bring comedic writing to that process and work out how we'll tell the story, what elements of it we want to use, what kind of story arc we want to employ. And then we write jokes, so jokes come late.

GROSS: One of the things you don't do is focus every show on President Trump.

OLIVER: Right.

GROSS: There's usually an opening in which you, like, review the events of the week. And...

OLIVER: Yes.

GROSS: Of course the president figures prominently in that. And there's no shortage of jokes in that opening segment about the president and Don Jr. and Jared and Ivanka. But the investigative part is usually not about the White House. How come? Like, you...

OLIVER: Well, I guess...

GROSS: ...Intentionally stay away from that.

OLIVER: Yeah. I mean, we've done it a little bit. But yeah, the vast majority of our main stories are not about the day-to-day goings on in the White House. And even when we approach Trump in the main story, what we'll try and do is find a framing device where, again, we can bring something slightly different to it, whether it's his relationship with the truth or whether it's the way that the world sees him and why that is a problem. But yeah, the majority of the time, we try to get him out of the way (laughter) as early as possible, if at all, and then move on to something that no one in their right mind wants to hear about.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: Often when we introduce that main story, there's quickly a sense of, and don't go. I promise.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: I give you my word this is worth 22 minutes of your time. I promise.

GROSS: Sometimes your segments - your long takeout segments end with, like, a call to action. One of my favorites (laughter) was about how easy it is to call yourself a church and get tax-exempt status...

OLIVER: Right.

GROSS: ...And then with the tax-exempt status and various other loopholes, collect money from your followers, exploiting their problems and making promises you can't keep and then pocketing the money. So you became a mega-reverend and started a church called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.

OLIVER: Exemption, that's correct.

GROSS: Yes.

OLIVER: Praise be, praise be.

GROSS: Yes (laughter). So with your wife, Wanda Jo Oliver, played by Rachel Dratch, you did a little TV show at the end of your segment on televangelists and did something on your church, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption. And I want to play that clip.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAST WEEK TONIGHT")

OLIVER: Praise be to all of you watching us tonight or joining us online at www.ourladyofperpetualexemption.com.

(LAUGHTER)

RACHEL DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) But, most of all, praise be to the IRS...

OLIVER: Oh, yes.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) ...That most permissive of government agencies.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: Wanda Jo, I have heard the word of prophecy.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) Hallelujah. What did it say, my John?

OLIVER: I'll tell you.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: I'll tell you, my Wanda. It says the viewers at home must plant a seed.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) A seed, an almighty seed.

OLIVER: Yes.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) Preferably in the form of cash, although we do take checks.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: It can be $5. It can be $10. It can be $77. We need you to sow your biggest seed.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) That's money. Don't send us seeds...

OLIVER: That's right, Wanda.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: Please do not send us actual seeds.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) ...Because we ain't interested in your seeds.

OLIVER: (Laughter) We ain't interested.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: We ain't interested. Please send us your actual money to this address at the bottom of your screen. If you do this - and this is real - great things will happen to you, and that's apparently something I'm allowed to say.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) Praise...

(LAUGHTER)

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) Praise legal. Praise our tax attorney. Praise loopholes in all their blessed loopiness.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: Let me talk to the brothers and sisters at home. Do you have debt?

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) Debt be gone.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: Do you have lupus?

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) A demon plague.

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: Touch your hand to the screen right now, and we shall cure it. Touch your hand to the screen right now.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) Curse you. Curse you, demon lupus. Bedevil us no more.

OLIVER: Curse you, lupus. You probably didn't even know that you had lupus.

(APPLAUSE)

OLIVER: But you did. But you don't anymore. It's a miracle. It's a miracle.

(APPLAUSE)

OLIVER: It's a miracle - do not...

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) It's a miracle.

OLIVER: A miracle.

DRATCH: (As Wanda Jo Oliver) It's a miracle.

OLIVER: Do not delay. Call this actual number right now - 1-800-THIS-IS-LEGAL - because, amazingly, all of this is. This is all legal. Call this toll-free number, and plant your seed.

GROSS: (Laughter) That's really hilarious. John Oliver...

OLIVER: Rachel Dratch is so funny.

GROSS: That's John Oliver and Rachel Dratch on an episode from "Last Week Tonight" on HBO. So, as you said, it's legal to say great things will come to you (laughter) if you...

OLIVER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...If you do this, if you pay the money and everything. So how did you find out what you could say?

OLIVER: I guess the fascinating thing for us there was to try and show, not just tell, people that this was possible because it feels - if - you know, it's theoretically alarming to have someone say, and it's completely legal to do this. It's kind of viscerally affecting when you have someone say, give me your money; I will cure your lupus. Give me your money. If you do, you will get more money in return. Seriously, give me your money.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: And people sent it in, no tax obligations. It was kind of showing that you could hack into this system, and everything was allowed. So yeah, people sent thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to us. So...

GROSS: Why did they do that? Why did they - it's obviously (laughter)...

OLIVER: Well...

GROSS: It's obviously...

OLIVER: ...'Cause it's...

GROSS: ...A comedy sketch.

OLIVER: ...'Cause it's fun. Again, you know, we were - we sent them back things, however. Once they sent money, we sent them letters back, the kind of letters that we'd been receiving from the pastor that we'd been in contact with over the previous six months. He had, you know, a outline of his hand, and you could put your hand on his hand and pray with him that way. So we had an outline, I believe, of my rear end so that you could sit where I sat.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: And we could pray together. So we kind of got into a correspondence with people. Then we eventually had to shut it down because it would have become (laughter) our entire job. But yeah, the point of it was to show that the barrier of entry to this is too low. And when it's this low, you can have bad actors enter. So that was why.

GROSS: So what did you have to do to become a church?

OLIVER: We had to just register as a church. I believe we did it in Texas, I believe.

GROSS: So what did you do with the money you collected?

OLIVER: We gave it to Doctors Without Borders.

GROSS: I remember when I was growing up, and Oral Roberts was on TV. And he'd have, like...

OLIVER: Right.

GROSS: ...A tent revival meeting and do all his healing - like, put your hands on the screen, and he'd put his hands toward the camera so it would be as if you could put your hand on his hand. And you do something similar like that in the bit that we just heard. And so, like, he's doing a tent revival, and I'm, like, a Jewish kid growing up in an apartment building in Brooklyn, and the whole thing just looks, like, so different (laughter) to me...

OLIVER: Yeah.

GROSS: ...So unlike...

OLIVER: It was...

GROSS: ...Anything in my neighborhood.

OLIVER: Sure. It was - watching it, getting glimpses of it in England, it was kind of this curiosity of, wow, look at this. Honestly, it was just, look at this level of enthusiasm. You know, I don't come from a country that has a great deal of, like, visible demonstration of feeling. So watching someone really commit - like, the Anglican Church in England is a very dour, monotone - like, you mumble your prayers, and then you return to the holes that you came out of.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: Whereas, like, the quintessentially American enthusiasm of faith was already fascinating. But, again, like, the point wasn't so much that. The point was more the toxicity of seed faith because it preys upon people who cannot afford it. Like, the idea that you want to just make a gamble - if I send money to a pastor, maybe my lupus will go away. That doesn't feel benign to me, but it is certainly less insidious in my mind than when they're directly targeting their message at people that do not have money.

So they're saying, are you, you know, drowning in bills? Best thing to do - ignore those bills. Send me money. Money will come back to you. So at that point, you are targeting the weakest, most vulnerable people - people with escalating medical bills. And that feels profoundly wrong to me. And so that outrage was what we were building our stupidity on top of.

GROSS: Were you threatened or harassed by anyone within any of those churches or any of the leaders of those churches?

OLIVER: I mean, I think the big threats really is afterlife-related, right?

(LAUGHTER)

OLIVER: He's going to be - have fun now. You will be dancing in the flickering flames of hell.

GROSS: We're listening back to our interview with John Oliver, whose HBO show "Last Week Tonight" is nominated for nine Emmys, including outstanding variety talk series. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GOLDENBOY'S "KITTENS OF LUST")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to the interview I recorded with John Oliver last March. His HBO satirical new show "Last Week Tonight" is nominated for nine Emmys, including outstanding writing for a variety series.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: So I want to give another example of you doing something related to the story that you're following - but doing it in the real world, not just in the confines of the studio. And this is this is really hilarious. I mean, you've been trying to slip information into Trump's mind knowing that he watches Fox TV and that he often, like, tweets things that he's just heard on Fox.

So you actually bought ads on Fox TV, parodying an ad that often runs on Fox. And so to set this up, I just want to play the real catheter cowboy ad - or at least one of the real catheter cowboy ads that's run on Fox. And then we'll play the way that you parodied it. And then we'll talk about how you've done it. So here's a real ad that's run on Fox TV.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As Catheter Cowboy) Attention, catheter patients on Medicare. I'm a professional cowboy, and I use catheters - been cowboying for 25 years. I've broken 14 bones, had two concussions and a punctured lung. I know pain. And I don't want any more of it - especially when I cath (ph).

GROSS: OK. So that's an excerpt of a real ad.

OLIVER: Real ad - very real, painfully, painfully real.

GROSS: And here is the John Oliver "Last Week Tonight" ad - or at least one in a series of ads. And this one is about health care policy. And, again, it's kind of geared to an audience of one. It's geared to President Trump to slip real information into his mind as he watches Fox News.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LAST WEEK TONIGHT")

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Attention, catheter patients.

THOMAS KOPACHE: (As Catheter Cowboy) Hi - me again. I'm a professional cowboy, and I use catheters - been cowboying for 25 years. And there's two things I know. I don't like pain when I cath. And health care is a complicated business. Everybody knows that - literally everybody. Also if my premiums go up, and subsidies go down, I'm going to wind up paying more. That's basic math there, fella. That's like replacing my catheter with a garden hose. I don't want that. I do not like pain when I cath. The point is if that happens, millions of folks like me might get real angry, which is worth thinking about if you're the sort of person who really likes being popular. You get that, right? - right? You get that, right?

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: OK, so that's the parody ad from "Last Week Tonight." So tell us the backstory to that.

OLIVER: Well, it was - I think it was our first story of last season when we wanted - where we felt like we had to talk about Trump's relationship with the truth before we talked about anything else that year because it felt like there'd been a seismic shift in the way that we were going to collectively live our lives in America. So, yeah, the end of that was realizing that he was receiving a huge amount of information from early morning Fox News programming, which is not the kind of place you ideally want someone getting information that they will then act on. So this is a guy who has access to the best information available, and he's choosing to get it from these three circus clowns on a couch.

So then we found a clip of him on Air Force One with the commercials from Fox News blaring loudly in the background. And we realize, oh, he watches the commercials too. So at that point, we felt this is the best way to try and get to him - is that you can become part of his morning briefing now. That's what's so egregious. "Fox & Friends" has always been a ludicrous program. But they have a huge responsibility now because they have the president's ear. So when they pass on misleading information or poorly framed data, it's going to have a real-world impact. So what we wanted to do was try and slip information into him when he's at his happiest and most relaxed, which is when he's zoning out to "Fox & Friends."

GROSS: OK. So we haven't spoken since Donald Trump was elected president. Were you surprised by the outcome?

OLIVER: I was a little less surprised than perhaps I thought I would be. I mean, I'd watched the Brexit vote earlier in the year, which had been kind of turbocharged by some of the same, you know, social issue baiting and misinformation being spread. And so I was kind of so profoundly disappointed by that decision that as the Election Night results came in in America, I could - my muscle memory was kicking in of, I think I know how this story plays out. So yeah, I was less surprised than maybe I thought I'd be.

GROSS: As an immigrant, how is the anti-immigrant rhetoric affecting you? And I don't - Americans love Brits (laughter), you know? So it's not like you're being demonized by Donald Trump for...

OLIVER: Yeah, not as much as the president...

GROSS: ...Being British.

OLIVER: ...Loves Norwegians. Norwegians are the gold standard...

GROSS: That's true (laughter). I know.

OLIVER: ...For completely benign reasons, I'm sure. I can't think what it is about a Norwegian which is particularly attractive.

GROSS: But I wonder what - how being an immigrant is affecting how you're hearing the anti-immigration rhetoric.

OLIVER: Well, I guess I've - I guess, like, the really honest answer to that is it probably hurts more because I've been through the immigration system, so I have a slightly more detailed understanding of some of its flaws than the average American naturally would have because there's no need to go through it. Also, you know, I have this kind of newfound love for America because I've been here 11 years. It's my home. I have an American wife. I have an American son.

The sense of whether or not you belong here - I feel like this is my home, right? So when people say even to me, go back to where you came from or, you know, what gives you the right to talk about America despite the fact it's my home, it taps into, like, feelings that are pretty raw for me. So the way that immigrants are being treated is - I guess what I would say is I clearly have the nicest possible version of the toxicity of feelings about immigrants in that, like you say, I'm British. You know, we - there is a fundamental affection to an extent for British people, Piers Morgan aside.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: So I don't have anything like the problems that people that don't look or sound like me have. But the kind of deep injustice of how they're treated - I can't say it doesn't, like, (laughter) personally affect me or offend me. I kind of feel it personally because I want to be here. I really love it here. I chose to be here. And I love it here now, not I love it here even though the country is kind of at its worst in recent years in terms of its attitude towards immigrants. And I would still make a case for people coming here. That's the crazy thing. I guess I still - even though I'm not a very optimistic person, I still have a fundamental faith that America will correct this path.

GROSS: We're listening to the interview I recorded in March with John Oliver. His HBO series "Last Week Tonight" is nominated for nine Emmys. We'll hear more of the interview after a break. And we'll listen back to my 1996 interview with comic playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon. He died Sunday. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're doing a series of interviews this week with Emmy nominees. Let's get back to the interview I recorded in March with John Oliver, whose HBO satirical news show "Last Week Tonight" is nominated in nine categories, including Outstanding Variety Talk Series. Before launching his own series, he was a correspondent and guest host on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: Let's talk about you. Your parents were from Liverpool. You didn't grow up there.

OLIVER: Yeah.

GROSS: But they're from there. So were they partial to the Beatles? Did you grow up with a lot of Beatles?

OLIVER: Yes, of course (laughter), of course, the Beatles and all the other Liverpool bands - you know, the Tremoloes, Gerry and the Pacemakers - yeah, lots of - that whole Liverpool sound echoed around our house.

GROSS: And did you grow up loving it or grow up thinking, that's my parents' music; I'm staying away from it?

OLIVER: Actually, I loved it (laughter). There were other parts of my parents' music that I definitely took a hard turn away from, but I absolutely loved the Beatles.

GROSS: What did you take a hard turn away from?

OLIVER: Barry Manilow.

GROSS: (Laughter) OK.

OLIVER: I couldn't really see the point in Barry Manilow (laughter). Also, you know, no kid should be listening to their parents' Barry Manilow CDs and going, this guy gets it; this guy is singing about my life.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: So your mother was a music teacher.

OLIVER: Yeah.

GROSS: Did you play an instrument?

OLIVER: I did. I did. I played the viola, which is the - you know, the slightly larger violin. I played it kind of all the way through my childhood. The thing that I found frustrating about it was that the better and better you get at it, the more incredible music you potentially can play. And that is when you realize how bad you are at it.

Now, there were girls that I played with that they also, when they played the violin, could make it sound just spectacular. And I knew if I practiced for the rest of my life, I would never be able to make it sound like that. So it was that weird situation of as I got kind of good at it, the more and more I wanted to smash it into a wall.

GROSS: So what was the music you were comparing your own playing to? Was it chamber music?

OLIVER: Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, where's it - when you start being able to technically play the notes of, like, an incredible piece by Bach, like the Bach "Double Concerto," just one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written, and playing it at my absolute best always butchering it.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: So it was really, really disappointing to (laughter) kind of feel that the better I got, it felt like the worse I actually was.

GROSS: Did you have more patience for comedy, you know, for working and working on a sketch or on jokes?

OLIVER: I definitely did. I still do now. So I can't really square those two other than that I think there was some part of me that realized with playing music that there was a hard - there was a glass (laughter) ceiling that was reinforced by concrete.

GROSS: (Laughter).

OLIVER: I was not getting through that thing. And with comedy, I don't know. I don't know if it was feeling like, oh, I can break through each of the, like, stages of progression here. I feel like I can get to the other side. I feel like I can do this. I don't know if it was an innate, deeper sense of confidence.

But I've always been willing to really grind out work with comedy and, you know, put far more effort into it than necessarily it would (laughter) seem to merit. Even our show now, we work so much harder on (laughter) this show than is probably evident - (laughter) right? - when you watch it. And the grinding minutiae of that is sometimes some of the most fun work we do.

GROSS: Did you go to church a lot when you were growing up?

OLIVER: I did until I was, like, 11 or 12. And I just didn't believe in it. There were too many - there were some bad things happening then, and I just didn't care...

GROSS: In your life? In your family?

OLIVER: Yeah. Yeah. And I just didn't feel like there were any answers that I liked coming (laughter) - coming from the church that I went to, anyway. I don't want to say that was reflective of every church. But yeah, we went as kids. And, you know, there were kids at school that died. And my uncle dying was really devastating to me.

And I just didn't feel like when you asked, like, a hard question, and you were kind of brushed off with, well, it's, you know, God's will, that kind of knocked me out of it. Is the - that's - if that's true, then I want nothing to do with this. Like, you just can't say that it's God's will that, like, these kids at school die for no reason. That's just not a good enough answer. Like, you got to wrestle with a bit more than that.

GROSS: Were these kids friends of yours?

OLIVER: Yeah, I knew them. Yeah. It was just - yeah, it was just, like, a sequence of really sad, awful events. And it just...

GROSS: Were they were medical deaths, or were they killed, or...?

OLIVER: Some were medical out of nowhere. Some were killed. It was just awful. And so it's hard. Like, that's the time when you're looking for some kind of answers. But the answers that I got were such garbage that I said to my parents, I'm out. I'm not doing this anymore.

GROSS: Were they OK with that? Because sometimes when you're 11 or 12, you don't have that much autonomy...

OLIVER: Yeah. Yeah, I think...

GROSS: ...When it comes to if you're going to church or not.

OLIVER: Yeah. I think by the time I said I was out, I was kind of - I might have been 13, 14, maybe a little older. I can't remember. And they were - I think they were - yeah - not thrilled with it. But there was other things that I did on Sunday morning. Like, I could go to a drama class or something. They wanted me to just do something, which is fair. You know, don't (laughter) - don't just sleep. So I did other things on a Sunday morning that was not church.

And yeah, I think I was pretty firm about it. I was not that rebellious as a kid, but I was really done with church in a pretty big way. And I think they could probably feel that this wasn't just a petulant tantrum. This was more there's nothing here that is helping me get through what I'm going through.

GROSS: Well, it's so great to talk with you again. Thank you so much for coming back to our show.

OLIVER: Oh, you're welcome, Terry. It's always fun to talk to you.

GROSS: John Oliver recorded in March. His HBO series "Last Week Tonight" is nominated for nine Emmys, including outstanding variety talk series and outstanding writing for a variety series. Our series of interviews with Emmy nominees continues tomorrow with Scott Frank, who wrote and directed the Netflix western series "Godless," and Allison Janney. After a break, we'll remember playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who died Sunday at the age of 91. We'll listen back to a 1996 interview with him. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. We're going to listen back to an interview with playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon. He died Sunday at the age of 91. His New York Times obituary said his name was synonymous with Broadway comedy, and he helped redefine popular American humor, with an emphasis on the frictions of urban living and the agonizing conflicts of family intimacy.

Simon adapted several of his Broadway shows into films. His best-known titles include "The Odd Couple," "Barefoot In The Park," "Come Blow Your Horn," "Plaza Suite," "The Sunshine Boys," "The Goodbye Girl," "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Laughter On The 23rd Floor." He wrote the books for the musicals "Sweet Charity" and "Promises, Promises." He started his career in the early days of TV - writing for "Sid Caesar Show" and Phil Silvers' "Sgt. Bilko." The TV series "The Odd Couple" was adapted from his hit play. He wrote the 1968 film adaptation.

Let's start with a clip from the film. It starred Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon as two divorced men sharing an apartment, having the same kinds of problems with each other they used to have with their wives.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE ODD COUPLE")

JACK LEMMON: (As Felix Ungar) Oscar, what is it? Is it the cooking, the cleaning, the crying?

WALTER MATTHAU: (As Oscar Madison) I'm going to you exactly what it is. It's the cooking, the cleaning, the crying. It's the talking in your sleep. It's those moose calls that open your ears at 2 o'clock in the morning. (Imitating moose). I can't take it anymore, Felix. I'm cracking up. Everything you do irritates me. And when you're not here, the things I know you're going to do when you come in irritate me. You leave me little notes on my pillow. I've told you 158 times. I cannot stand little notes on my pillow. We are all out of cornflakes, F.U. It took me three hours to figure out that F.U. was Felix Ungar.

GROSS: I spoke with Neil Simon after the publication of his 1996 memoir "Rewrites." I asked how he developed his ear for dialogue.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

NEIL SIMON: I never thought about it much. But the only thing that came to me is that when I was a young boy - 5 and 6 and 7 years old - my parents would take me to visit their relatives. And for some reason, I think they thought that I was invisible because they never talked to me.

GROSS: (Laughter) Oh, right. Or they talk about you even though you could hear.

SIMON: I could hear, but they were talking family matters - or gossip or whatever. And I just sat there. And once in a while, they'd give me a cookie or something. And I just listened. It stuck in my head. And what I managed to learn was the way they talked, the choice of words they made, what it was that they were interested in. And years later, without knowing it, when I started to write about these people, I was able to draw on my own memory from what happened in those days.

GROSS: Early on in your career, your brother Danny was your writing partner. He's - what? - about 8 years older than you?

SIMON: Eight and a half years older, yes.

GROSS: Yeah. And you write in your book that he was somewhere between your brother and your father. He was your mentor as well as your brother. And your father actually was in and out of the family. He left the family and came back, I think, about eight times?

SIMON: Exactly, yes.

GROSS: Was it strange to have him coming and going like that - not knowing exactly what his relationship to you was?

SIMON: It was awful because I felt my life was sort of on a yo-yo, to give my kind of example. My mother never knew when he was coming back. And the whole world lit up when he came back because it meant not only that we'd not have to fear for the rent because he didn't leave any money for us. We didn't have to worry about food. But I felt the solidity there with the family, and I felt happy for my mother. When he was gone, it was the most awful time. And I thought he was never coming back. And I'm sure a lot of my personality has been formed by that relationship. And it makes me somewhat insecure at times. And it's why I think I fell back on writing possibly as a way of being able to support and survive for myself.

GROSS: I imagine your mother, when your father was gone, ended up very busy with earning money to take care of the family.

SIMON: Well, yes, she was uneducated. She did not have a job. And she would do whatever she could to provide for us. She borrowed from her family. But what she eventually did, which was the hardest thing for us, was she took in two men to live in our house - two boarders who took her bedroom. And she slept on the sofa in the living room. My brother and I had our own bedroom. And they were butchers, and they paid us mostly in meat and lamb chops. And it was no fun sitting at the room in the kitchen eating with them.

GROSS: Why not?

SIMON: They were like strangers. They didn't talk to us. They were foreign and spoke some English. But it was difficult. And it was not my father. And I felt I was living in not my house but their house.

GROSS: You know, the stereotype of the Jewish mother, of your mother's generation, was the overly possessive, overly neurotic Jewish mother, right? I imagine your mother was much too busy...

SIMON: She was.

GROSS: ...To fit that stereotype at all.

SIMON: No, I don't think she did fit that stereotype. She was very different. She was very loving and very encouraging in terms of my brother and I doing the writing. My brother - foolishly I think - would read the monologues that we would write at first to my mother. And she would just laugh all the way through. And my brother said, do you understand what they mean? And she said, no, I don't. And he said, well, why are you laughing? She says, well, it pleases me to please you. I mean, it was such a wonderful thing for her to do. It didn't encourage us as writers, but it encouraged us that we had a terrific mother.

GROSS: You write that your brother got you a whore shortly after your 21st birthday. And that was your sexual initiation.

SIMON: Yes, it was.

GROSS: Looking back, was that a good way to become initiated?

SIMON: I don't know if it was a good way. It was the only way. I mean, if he left it to me, I'd be 54 before it happened.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SIMON: I'm sure glad it did happen. But it did change me. I mean, you have to get through that moment because it was the most fearful moment of my life. And I don't know why it is looking back. I mean, you don't expect this woman to think that you should be expert at what you're doing or that this is going to be a very personal affair and that we should like each other. It's really a cash-and-carry business, and you just do it. But I felt so much better having done it and that I would never have to do it that way again, which I never did.

GROSS: There's a similar but different scene in "Biloxi Blues" where the character there also has his first experience with a prostitute. But that's on an army base, so it's...

SIMON: Yeah, but that - the origin of that scene in that film was exactly what happened to me. I mean, it was with a prostitute. It was his fellow friends bringing him there. There was a line in it that summed it up because I felt the same way when it happened to me. He said, I'm not expecting this to be a pleasurable experience. I just want to get through it.

GROSS: Let me ask you about creating two of your most famous characters - Felix and Oscar, "The Odd Couple."

SIMON: Yes.

GROSS: How did you come up with those characters?

SIMON: Well, I just watched it in real life. It was my brother Danny and a friend of his named Roy Gerber, both of whom moved into together in the same apartment because they recently were divorced. And they wanted to cut down on their expenses, so they could help pay their alimony. And in their social life, rather than going out on a double date somewhere and spending a lot of money on the dinner, my brother Danny decided to cook. And Roy was kind of a - you know, things came and go very easily for him, so he would just say to the girls, come home for dinner; come, you know, 6:30, 7, 7:30, whenever you're ready. Well, to Danny, that was anathema. I mean, he was - he cooked the pot roast that night. He wanted them there at 7:30.

And I watched this one night. I came up to Danny's apartment and Roy's apartment. I saw this taking place as they were getting prepared for this dinner. I was going to leave before the dinner happened. And it was hilarious to me. And I said, Danny, this is a great movie, a great play, something; you must write it - because Danny was a writer, too. But he never wrote by himself.

And he started to write the play, but he took three months or so to write 10 pages and finally called me, and he said, I can't do it. He says, I'm not a writer, and I'm certainly not a playwright. He is a writer, of course, but he was not a playwright. And he didn't know how to construct it. And he said, you take the play and you do it. And so I made a financial arrangement with him because it was his basic - it wasn't his idea to do it as a play, but it was his life, so I was taking a part of it.

When I wrote the play, in the beginning, I thought I was writing a very dark comedy. I didn't think it was going to be as funny as it was dark because here was a man who was broken up with his wife that he loved dearly, and he had to leave his two children at home, and he was almost suicidal, whereas Roy was another kind of character who was - I mean, the character that Roy was based on, the Oscar character, was a man who couldn't really keep his life going together, didn't know how to take care of his children's goldfish when they left.

And so I thought I was writing, as I said, this grim comedy, until I gave it to Bob Fosse, a good friend of mine who lived in the same building, to read. And he says, this is the funniest play I've ever read. And I said, you don't find it dark? And he said, no, not at all. So the author is not always sure about what impression he's going to leave when he writes this thing.

GROSS: Now, how'd you feel about "The Odd Couple" when it became a TV series, where instead of, like, a constructed play every week, there was another little adventure or mishap to write around?

SIMON: Well, I have to preface that by telling you the story, which you may have read in the book, that I had a business agent who thought he was doing me a favor by getting a deal made with Paramount Pictures whereby they would buy this little company from me for $125,000, which seemed like an enormous amount of money, in which they got the - all of the TV and television rights to "The Odd Couple." So I never saw a penny of any of "The Odd Couple" television series, so I could not watch that. I didn't watch that for two years because when I saw that it was a hit, I saw, that's my money going down their drain.

GROSS: Right.

SIMON: And I also lost all of the stage rights of "Barefoot In The Park," never made a money - penny on that play from the day it opened.

GROSS: Oh, boy. What heartburn it must cause to feel that. You almost don't want to see the success of your own work because you're not getting anything out of it.

SIMON: I know. It was hard, but maybe just pushed me on to do other things. And I said, I've got to get on with this. I'm not going to sit and just gripe about it for the rest of my life. And I just went on to write other plays.

GROSS: We're listening to my 1996 interview with Neil Simon. He died Sunday at the age of 91. We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my 1996 interview with comic playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon. He died Sunday at the age of 91. We spoke after the publication of his memoir "Rewrites."

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED BROADCAST)

GROSS: You write a little bit in your book about being in analysis. And you say that your first year of analysis was, in a sense, an attempt to introduce you to yourself, the two sides of you, one the writer and the other - the person who doesn't write. Are these two sides of you at odds?

SIMON: Well, they have been for years. They weren't always at odds. They were just different people. They were not the person that I was with my family, with my friends. The writer is a very solitary person, who was, I guess, in the worst sense, willing to pick the bones of somebody else's character and put it up there on the stage, even though I don't think I've ever hurt anybody by doing it because no one ever came up to me and said, how dare you put this up there on the stage? As a matter of fact, when I put my father up on the stage in "Come Blow Your Horn," he came to see it, and I was very fearful of what he was going to say. And I said, what'd you think, Dad? And he says, oh, I know men just like that.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SIMON: He never saw himself in it at all, which is what most people do. Sometimes they - people come up to me and they say, that was me you were writing about, wasn't it? And it wasn't at all anything that I was writing about. So about the two Neil Simons, yes, the writer was persistent. He just always wanted to write. The other person wanted to have more fun, more leisure time, more time with his family. And so they were at odds.

But I find as time goes on, right about now, maybe as we're talking, that the two characters are becoming more wed to each other. I don't see the disparity in the two personalities anymore. It sounds like I'm a little psychotic, but I'm not, really.

GROSS: (Laughter) Well, maybe that's because the two have lived together for so long, they've become more acclimated to each other.

SIMON: I know. I'm on my own "Odd Couple."

GROSS: (Laughter) Well, that's a nice way of looking at it.

SIMON: Yes.

GROSS: Did analysis help?

SIMON: Well, analysis, I think, helps in the long run. I never went for, like, long, long periods at a time. I would go from time to time when there was great trouble in my life - when my first wife died, when I had other personal problems. But after a while, I started to go because it was a way of learning about myself and about - learning about other people because the conversations were not only about this Neil Simon character. It was about how they are affected by other people in the world. And once you get into that subject, you start to talk about the other people in the world, and you realize that you do not live alone in this world. So it was very educational for me. I graduated, got a diploma. It was very nice.

GROSS: (Laughter) I thought a kind of funny part of your book was, I guess it's - the late '60s, early '70s, you were writing about the era of the so-called sexual revolution. And you were married, but you wanted in (laughter).

SIMON: Well, I didn't...

GROSS: You wanted to be a part of this.

SIMON: Yeah, it wasn't the sexual revolution so much. I'd been married for 14 years, and I thought I was looking at myself in a different way. And I said, you got married fairly young. I had very, very few experiences, except in the grim hotel. And I was not looking - I didn't want to go out cheating on my wife. I didn't want to have a very negative kind of a life. But I felt I was so shallow in my experiences, so needy to know what the underbelly of life was like. And so it was more of a mind experience of wanting to know other things without having the danger of going through them.

And so I did have a talk with my wife, almost asking to get out of the marriage for a while, and she took it so casually because she knew I wasn't going anyplace. She knew me better than I did. And I kept saying, well, I think I'm going to leave. And she said, oh, that's OK. When do you want to go? And I was shocked and amazed by her attitude. And I knew how much smarter she was than me and how much better she was than me. And when - I reached the point when I felt that I already had my freedom because she had given it to me, and I said, never mind. And I never went anyplace.

GROSS: You have a theory that you write about in the book that your mind doesn't know, when you're writing, that it's only fiction. Your mind thinks you're actually living through whatever you're putting on paper.

SIMON: Yes.

GROSS: What has led you to this conclusion?

SIMON: Because my body goes through the pain that I am going through in the writing. I feel the tenseness if I'm writing a scene between, let's say, a husband and wife who are having a fractious marriage. Things are going wrong. There's a big argument. There's a confrontation. I feel the intensity in my body, and I don't think I'm acting that out. I truly feel it. I'm exhausted when I go home, whereas if I write something that's a funnier scene, a lighter scene, a more loving, romantic scene, I don't feel that same tension. I feel a lightness about me. So I don't think that the mind differentiates about what's going on in real life or what's going on in the fiction you're writing.

GROSS: So fiction really does take its toll on you physically.

SIMON: It does, but it's been very rewarding for me. I don't think I would like to have been anything else in life but a writer, but I also don't think I could have been anything else.

GROSS: Have - did you ever try? (Laughter).

SIMON: Well, no, I was too busy writing.

GROSS: Right. Well, Neil Simon, thank you so much for talking with us.

SIMON: It was a pleasure.

GROSS: Neil Simon, recorded in 1996. He died Sunday at the age of 91. Tomorrow, we'll continue our series of interviews with Emmy nominees. We'll hear from Allison Janney, who's nominated for lead actress in a comedy for her performance in the series "Mom," and Scott Frank, writer and director of the Netflix western series "Godless." I hope you'll join us.

FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Mooj Zadie, Thea Chaloner and Seth Kelley. I'm Terry Gross. We'll end with Gwen Verdon singing one of the hits from the musical "Sweet Charity." Neil Simon wrote the book. The music is by Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IF MY FRIENDS COULD SEE ME NOW")

GWEN VERDON: (Singing) If they could see me now, that little gang of mine - I'm eating fancy chow and drinking fancy wine. I'd like those stumble bums to see for a fact the kind of top-drawer, first-rate chums I attract. All I can say is, wowee, look at where I am. Tonight I landed, pow, right in a pot of jam. What a set-up, holy cow. They'd never believe it if my friends could see me now.

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