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EW's May 2004 interview with Rodney Dangerfield | 111520__rodney2_l
IN THE SPOTLIGHT In May, Dangerfield was being filmed for a documentary and had written a book that was being considered as the basis for a Fox show
Rodney Dangerfield Photograph by Michael Llewellyn

All of this will be discussed tonight, as Rodney and Joan return to the limo right after his five-minute Laugh Factory set for a fairly rare night on the town. Their entourage numbers six, including movie producer David Permut (''Face/Off''), who's been filming Rodney over the past 11 years for a ''Crumb''-style documentary called ''Rodney Exposed,'' and writer-director Cyrus Nowrasteh (''The Day Reagan Was Shot''), who's been pegged to turn ''It's Not Easy Bein' Me'' into a Fox TV biopic that Rodney would like to see star Steve Buscemi or Paul Giamatti. ''That was great, Rodney,'' Permut booms through the viewfinder of his camera.

Rodney, whose default expression seems to be a shaky rictus of pain, shrugs the whole thing off. ''I've felt higher highs than this,'' says the pot smoker slyly, to laughter. ''For example, I did five years at the MGM hotel in Vegas, all right? And the audience was 800, something like that. You go on for an hour, and you knock 'em out, they're SCREAMING. It's a charge, you know what I mean?'' He says ''You know what I mean?'' a lot. ''This here can't give me a charge.''

Would he do it again, he is asked. But he misinterprets the question, which was meant to refer to his Laugh Factory gig.

''Vegas? I don't think so.'' There's an awkward, limo-wide pause lasting several seconds, silent acknowledgment that his headliner days are almost definitely behind him. Yet a few minutes later he's talking about another heart operation he's been postponing, and he insists he's not dreading it. ''Listen, whenever I have an operation, I always say the same thing to the doctor: 'If I don't make it, I'll never know it.' It's the best way to go out: no suffering, no pain, no nothin', right?'' Everyone is quiet again. ''That's how I'd like to go.''

Does he think about it much then, dying?

Joan, always sitting next to Rodney, jumps in defensively. ''Dying? We're ALL dying! As a crowd!'' At this, Rodney perks up.

''We're all DYING?'' he repeats, saucer-eyed. The limo cracks up again. ''I'm the only one who went up there,'' Rodney jokes, gesturing back toward the Laugh Factory. '''I'm dying' is accurate!''

Seated in a back room at the De Niro-owned hot spot Ago in West Hollywood -- surely he's the only diner dressed in a safari shirt -- Rodney has his extra-dry martini, a salad, a bowl of minestrone, the rack of lamb, and a side of spaghetti rushed out, so that he's busy eating before everyone else. ''He normally doesn't like to wait a long time for the main course,'' explains his wife, who met Rodney in 1982, when he spotted her in her Santa Monica flower store on his way to the Pritikin Longevity Center.

With Rodney zeroed in on his dinner, Joan -- who's 51 but looks 31 -- takes over. She tells the tale of Valentine's Day 2003, when Rodney surprised her with a giant hot tub that had to be precision-helicoptered up to the 21st floor of their high-rise condo on Wilshire Boulevard. Katie Couric covered the story on ''Today.'' ''I was SHOCKED,'' Joan says. ''This is not the kind of man who would even say 'I love you.' He doesn't give you a gift because it's a holiday, really. You're not like that, are you, Rodney?'' Ask what drew her to him, and she'll dreamily cup Rodney's cheek in her palm and rave about his still-one-of-a-kind mug, and his voice.


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