Nothing is Impossible w/ Mark Harmon (Members Only #315)

People magazine called you the sexiest man alive as opposed to the sexist man dead. Yeah, there was a while. He's the whole island. Well, just wait.

When I was just 16 I pulled up a stock near where my parents

And all of a sudden I just had my license and all of a sudden next to me pulls up a

68 mini Cooper S and I look over and I do a double take and it's Steve McQueen

Not working with a full beard and about 30 pounds heavier than I've ever seen

Huh, and I did this take like that and he looked at me and it was just complete like wall-eyed look, you know, whatever and I I

What

I want to recreate the San Francisco chase in and bullet in a very slow mini Cooper S

It's kind of going great. So I slow. I don't tell you what if you have a different one of those. Yeah. Yeah, they're great

Yeah, yeah, it's a race car. Yeah, really there's a it's so low to the ground cuz my my midget my MGM

Yeah, yeah, it's like a go card and you take his no power steering of course

It's 70 and you take these corners like a psychopath because it's so low no one would handle so great

It's like zipping on many. Yeah. Yeah, that is I mean you have you're an actor

Writer we're gonna get to a ghost of Sicily the new book the third book in the ghosts of series a lot of ghosts man

Everybody like the ghost connection in the title and all this

But this is a kind of historians brain. I mean you get a car

I mean you're talking to the soldier who interested in the background of all this stuff

And I just want to say before I forget cuz I don't want to forget this

extremely important

producer Jason and I were talking and

We both had a moment of

Recognition of one of our favorite films of the 80s and I reminded him that it was directed by the great Carl Reiner

summer school is a masterpiece

Sorry, I absolutely know what thank me. Yeah, thank Carl. I mean that's the guy. I mean, I I'm such a fan of his and was such a fan of his and

Am such a fan of his still and and you talk about a guy

And I was in the room when all those different kids were cast and

87 86 87 87 87 I think yeah, and

Every one of those kids was you know 31

Yeah, whatever yeah, and and and and he hand picked every one of those very specifically for the role

He had in mind for what he knew he thought he could get out of them

Yeah, and and the other part of what he did was make that set such a happy place every day

He wore the same shirt same hat say he had like an outfit like it was almost like

Like a Marine would wear and and

And he just kept it light the entire time and and smart really smart

Yeah, and and then he before we started he invited me to have lunch at Paramount studios

So I went over there to have lunch with him. I thought and

Sitting at the table with him was Mel Brooks

He's been so I best friend of many many years

Yeah, and so I and so I sat down at a table with Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner

Sure, right? Yeah, I knew from yeah, but Mel Brooks who I just you know

I used to work security and so I did many concerts with him and what he did and then in walks Steve Martin

God who comes over to the table and does a whole bit like he doesn't see Carl or Mel sitting there, right?

It's a whole bit, but it's not for them

It's for everybody in the restaurant and he says stop

So I ended up having lunch with the three of them and I I shouldn't have been invited in the first place

You know, but you're in your 30s at this point. Yeah, yeah, but so if people don't know and let you know

Everyone knows who you've been working for a very very long time and now writing

But you have quite a family I do we so I have to say that

I didn't know about the series and so when he said you know this the and I said oh

That's an interesting topic Mark Harman that's hilarious like the actor and he said no, it's the actor

And I was like no, no, it's something something pretty funny to me too

Yeah, like it's the out of work because he just decided to become a historian writer

But when I mentioned to Matt Matt's an LA guy and then it just became all about your father

Yeah, and the influence and the ubiquity of your father in Southern California when Matt was growing up because he's like 85

Yeah, well, I didn't exactly remember his father playing called football

He's been trophy winning father

You bet it's on it's a play for the Rams, too, right?

College for Michigan and then and then he played for the Rams after the war and he'd he got beat up in the war pretty well

Yeah, talk about that part because yeah, I grew up knowing your dad as a sports broadcaster in LA

I was just I was USC guys

I didn't like you until you got on to say elsewhere. He was he actually UCLA was for a short period of time

Not that great at football and then he turned them around like where you're part you and effort her

Turn them around at the time, but

You came so near your dad, but I didn't know his war story. Did he talk about what happened to you ever?

No, no, he wrote a book. Oh, he wrote a self-published book

I don't know when it must have been somewhere between

1948 and when I was born maybe called pilots also pray self-published. He wrote it every word

And it's not a great book and he was the first one to tell you was a great book

And he talks about his experience as an athlete at Michigan all that my dad was a humble guy

Big guy for running back in 1940 when you I grew up watching a film that they put together when he graduated

And also honored him later with

And on this film

It's every touchdown. He scored

So I grew up as a kid looking at a film thinking that every time you touch a football

You score. Yeah, this is super cut. And this guy and this guy who is my dad on the film is

bigger

Stronger

Faster than anybody on the field

And you learn high-top shoes and a leather helmet with no face mask. Yeah breaking it's no different game

Broke his nose nine times wow and

In every beat Ohio State right and

To his dying day he was talking about that and he would say listen

I don't take anything away from a great Ohio State team and they were they were senior year

He said but I'll tell you what he said I'd love to have that day back and turn the clock back around

Let's see what would happen

But I mean you grew up with a father who's I mean clearly

The experiences of your father must inform this because

They do talk about talk about the gift of understatement saying he had a banged up a little bit in the war

I mean he was shot down

Oh, and he was in the in the Japanese theater. He was in the Pacific theater. Yes

I talked a little about that because when I read that

That's beyond the that's like a hero story and so many ways and then of course he goes on in place in the NFL

Early NFL wins the Heisman trophies in films. I mean this guy is

Larger than life. I mean growing up with a guy like that

He's not telling you the story about getting shot down and parachuting into enemy territory

I mean talk about that and how you found out about that was is that from his book that you found out

Initially yeah, wow

And it's not

It's not a great book

My dad used to say they we sold you know 50 books and my mom brought 48 of them

And and that was a humorous thing to him, but

He's a fortunate guy and he know he knew he was fortunate and the first

timing went down was in a B-25 and in bad weather and

They lost multiple planes and the wing snapped off his B-25 and

It wasn't an immediate

Knows that I've tailspin and I only know about it because I read about in his book

Yeah

And then the second time he went down was

some

officer had

run into him on an Air Force base

in Oxnard and

My dad had pointed to these

P-38s that were all lined up in Oxnard tip wingtip to Wimtip and he just said

That's the kind of plane. I want to fly and so he was really asking or talking about going from

Commanding a plane with

Other people in it with him to being a fighter pilot

Right. Yeah, so when he's asking about flying my dad was a big guy to fit in a P-38

I mean, that was you know six feet close to 200 pounds

And he was he must have been crammed in there pretty tight

But anyway next thing you know is the

Officer just said get it take a for a ride and my

That's a different factor. He did he did he took off and then he said he was in love for the minute he got in and

And then he flew as a fighter pilot doing that and and he had another he got shot down again in this time in China

And he was in a dogfight he had shot down three planes and then next thing he knew is

Bullets are coming right up the back of the seat behind him

He didn't know there was a plane behind him and

He had the cockpit burst into flames. He was on fire

Um

tried to put it out

couldn't

Flip the plane over open the cockpit and sucked him right out and

Howdy went and

parachute it in and and landed in a lake and put out the fire, but he was burned badly his legs are badly burned and

He uh right there on the

Side of the lake like a boat of some kind

So this is a

Guy who helped walk him out of there and he was a care and which in that case carry him out of there because he was

He was he was burned badly, but um, he survived it and

And my dad was pretty tough on airplanes because he went on twice in him

But but he's really fortunate, but I always think about that because

that time

First time he went out of the bomber. He went out at a very

low altitude

Probably shouldn't have survived it is shoot caught in a palm tree with such force that it ripped the souls off his boots

God and and I always thought that that was probably connected to his death because he he died of a heart attack and and I

And he was and he died like he used to say when we were you know kids, he just talking, but

He'd be at the morning

Breakfast table and he'd read an article and someone had passed and he'd say

That's how I want to go out just like that. I mean, I he didn't know what was happening one day

He was a moment. He was there next morning. He wouldn't there

Yeah, you know, and I remember that and and my dad went like that. He played a great round of golf

he went down to a

A place where you book trips on planes because he was going to cover a golf tournament in the east and

One second, you know, he asked a question as she went to the

Whatever where she was looking at to give him information look back up. He was on the ground

Never had a heartbeat the pyramids were right there. He just left and that story which is you know

One that you would think that you had no humility whatsoever

You want to tell all the time a great hero and it is an amazing story

But he never talked to you about this. It was not he talked he he didn't

He'd answer questions. No, if you ask questions, he would answer

Yeah, but I didn't know what to ask until I read his book

Yeah, so so and that's also that generation

I mean he

He just

Let's say he came out you one of nine kids and came out of home in Gary, Indiana and and and was

The youngest by nine years

right? So

There was a lot he was tough, right? He was he was over there

You know, mixing it up on the playing field with older kids his whole life. Yeah, and brothers that

treated him like brothers do and and a family that you know

We're we're

very

Much working class

Get it done, you know, don't don't turn away from the

The pressure of anything, you know, and he didn't he's an athlete, right? He's a

Yeah, he was a it's a track athlete and he had you know, he's he had like he ran like a like a

A nine eight or nine seven or you know in 1940. That was almost world class. Yeah, yeah, he's a big guy

Yeah, big guy big legs and and and just strong and

and

You have to have a part of you to do that. That's a little bit nasty

Little bit edgy

And he had that too. I mean shot down three Japanese planes before he was taking out of this guy

That's yeah, that's that's a special type of person, but it is different, right? I mean time-wise and my girlfriends

grandfather died in the second world war

And her great-grandfather died in the first world war

And it's like they don't talk about it's never a thing

I was the one that brought it up. I said, you know your great-grandfather died in France in 1917

She's like, I think somebody talked about that at one point

It wasn't a thing. It was a thing that everyone kind of compacted inside of themselves

And they moved on with life and then no one talked about it. Nobody asked stories about it

Which is you know what made me interested in history and that's why I brought it up because my grandfather

Is in the background of this book in a way because he was in he was involved. He was in North Africa

Then he was in Sicily and ended up on the border of Austria when the war ended in May 1945

It's army here. He was army. Yeah, and he was somebody who enlisted like in

38 or so. You know that story

But I was the only one who did yeah

That's it. Nobody told me and my mother was like, I have no idea that that generation didn't talk about it

No, but the but as you said they were responsive if you asked and there was a flattery that his grandson was like

constantly asking about

But your family is fascinating because your mother I mean

Lawn-chainy movies and actors. Yeah, there's come from this

My dad met my mom because he received the Heisman trophy. He they brought him to Hollywood. Yeah

They gave him a studio tour. That was what you did in Hollywood, right man when the Heisman Treffy's great, isn't it?

Being recipient of that. Yes, absolutely, and so he was a special guy

My mom was an actress at the time working at the studio at the time her day to give the tour

Oh, okay, so the actresses actresses gave the tour she was a contract player

So so they could tell her to do anything. Yeah, right. Yeah, my mom didn't know a football from an ice hockey puck

And my dad loved that. Yeah, because he's got people blowing smoke up his ass for

For what he is accomplished at that point in his life. Yeah

And my dad loved that. He loved the attraction of that and that was in between him

Going down to the B-25 and getting assigned to the P-38

So the P-38 part of that story that told you earlier

My mom was part of that my mom you know my mom knew about that because she was an actress and she knew that

That guy had come by the studio and there was a tour and in the day when he came walking out of that jungle

And was rescued and and he survived again

That was the that was the connector point

she

went to meet him oh and

This guy can survive anything

Well, it's a pretty good selling point. It's really what put them together

It's really what put them together and it was a chance meeting on yeah on you know

Him visiting the set when he was

Being a football player and stuff earlier

And and and she was the tour guide of that thing that put that

Put that that you get your dad into film too

Was that you know at the time? I think he did a movie called Harmon of Michigan that

You don't want to watch that movie you don't want to watch Harmon of Michigan. I don't think so. I mean Jason have you ever seen Harmon of Michigan?

Jason is the king of obscure films. Have you seen that one? Oh, yeah, it's on tonight. Well, don't I have I don't know

Harmon of Michigan. I don't know. I think they did Albert of Stanford

I think

There are a number of high-man recipients that did movies about them. That's what they did in the day

And he's in it. He plays himself. I mean like your life story Jackie Robinson. No, no, no, Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson's in it. No, he's in it. Yeah, I know. I know he's in it

But the problem with that here's the problem. Okay, this was a fictional story. It's a Hollywood story

Okay, and and and and that followed my dad his whole life

Because it was about a guy who was a became it was a good player all that and and Tom

It was called Tom Harmon the movie so obviously he's playing himself right and then and then he became a football coach

This is Hollywood the part of it. Yeah, and and he devised a play a really successful play kind of legal

And any and a guy got really I got really hurt. Oh, so that's the the storyline kind of right

You wouldn't believe how many people all my dad's life

Yeah, you didn't have a lot of success as a coach

You know, and you're going come on

When you came in I said he's a pretty good summer school teacher

But but I tell you it's it's like

The all these little turns that you have in life that direct you which way I mean

Do you have enough? Oh, no, I don't know if that's gonna work. I don't care. All right, Cheepos

You got as much as we're gonna give you for free. It gets a lot worse from here

There's gonna be so many mispronounced words like architecture

This is a favorite of a friend of ours. Wait, that's not right

And a lot of fluffing a lot of for fluffs and that will be three sometimes nine syllables

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