Folks, this is one of those stories I never get tired of telling, mostly because every time I tell it I can still hear Sam Kinison’s voice ringing through the phone. If you were around for season 4 of Married with Children, you remember the two-part Christmas episode It’s a Bundyful Life Part 1 and Part 2, where Sam came on as a foul-mouthed guardian angel sent down to convince Al that his life was actually worth living. Two episodes, two weeks on our set, and one of the wildest friendships I picked up from the show.
Now, you got to remember, I grew up in the arts world. My dad Roger was a costumer, my brothers and sisters were all actors, so when sports legends would come on the show I was the kid in the corner going, who is this guy supposed to be? I did snag a signed Joe Namath football, because even I knew enough to grab that one. But the guests who really lit me up were the comedians. And the king of them, for me, was Sam Kinison.
Sam was a piece of work on set. Two-parter meant he was around for two solid weeks, and the production team was basically running a babysitting operation. He was an addict, plain and simple. He would go out and party, miss a day, come back, party again, miss another day, then try to apologize by sending in catered food and belly dancers like some kind of penance. He had a huge heart. He was just screwed up in the head. You hire Sam Kinison, you get Sam Kinison, you know? But the man left his fingerprints all over those episodes. Anyone who watched it remembers him.
What people don’t know is that he and I stayed close after the show wrapped. I would head out to his place, I’d go to his stand-up shows, sometimes I would introduce him on stage. He always had a mountain of stuff floating around the house. I never really partook, I think I smoked a joint with him exactly once because I was still a kid, but I was there for everything else. I had a front row seat to Sam Kinison being Sam Kinison.
Which brings us to the phone call. My dad Roger was the biggest Sam Kinison fan walking the planet. The guy worshipped him. So one day I happened to be hanging out at Sam’s house, and I realized it was my dad’s birthday. I felt a little weird asking, but I went for it anyway. I said, Sammy, would it be cool if I called my dad and you gave him a couple of happy birthday screams? Sam looked at me like that was the most obvious thing he’d heard all year. He said, yeah, that’d be cool.
So we got on the phone with my dad. Sam took the receiver, took a breath, and at the top of his lungs goes, ROGER, HAPPY FREAKING BIRTHDAY! Of course, he didn’t say freaking. My dad on the other end of the line was just, great. That one phone call made his entire year. Maybe his entire decade. I’m talking about a guy who had Sam Kinison records he’d played until the vinyl went smooth, suddenly getting a private birthday scream from the man himself. It does not get better than that.
That is one of those moments that only happens when you are lucky enough to be a kid running around the set of a TV show that the whole country has decided to love. The Christmas guardian angel episodes are still gold to watch, but the back-channel story behind them, the friendship that came out of those two weeks of chaos, that is the part that stuck with me forever. Every time someone brings up Sam, I think about my dad on the other end of that line, grinning like an idiot.
This story came pouring out of me during the very first Bundy Breakdown Zoom watch party with Richard Gurman, co-executive producer and writer of the show. If you want to hear it the way it actually went down, with Richard chiming in and the whole crew listening, catch the full recording over there.
Not a Bundy Club member yet? Get in here. The free tier gives you a peek at the community, and the paid tiers put you on the couch with us for the watch parties where stories like this one come out. Join up at bundyclub.com/join and stop watching from the outside.
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