Episode 121 - Ken Jeong
Guest:Lock the gates!
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Are we doing this?
Guest:Wait for it.
Guest:Pow!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:And it's also... Eh, what the fuck?
Guest:What's wrong with me?
Guest:It's time for WTF!
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:With Mark Maron.
Marc:Okay, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck Nicks?
Marc:And of course you, what the fucking knots were out there in what the fuck orbit.
Marc:Come on down or I hope you're getting this.
Marc:This is Mark Marin.
Marc:This is WTF.
Marc:I'm happy to be here.
Marc:I'm glad you're listening.
Marc:Welcome to the show.
Marc:A lot of new people listening and I want to welcome you to the what the fuck family.
Marc:I never did I just welcome you to the what the fuck family well fuck it welcome to the what the fuck family I hope everyone's having a good time do you need me to pass the mashed potatoes down to you at the end look folks a couple of dates right up
Marc:front so i don't forget and shoot myself into the foot as much as i love to do it and i am wired to do it i'm gonna work against that i will be at the punchline in san francisco this weekend that's thursday november 11th friday november 12th and saturday november 13th so come down if you're available
Marc:I'll be available.
Marc:You come down and we'll hang out.
Marc:Then on the 15th of November in Pontiac, Michigan at the Crowfoot Ballroom.
Marc:I have no idea what that is or what to expect or what it's close to or where you people are coming in from, but I will be there and I will do a show.
Marc:It looks like a nice place.
Marc:I'm excited to come, but all I know is to fly there.
Marc:I don't know if I needed to get a deal or what, but I seem to be flying through
Marc:through Pennsylvania, then back to Detroit or back to Pontiac.
Marc:I don't know, but it's going to be a day's journey for me to get to Pontiac, Michigan.
Marc:I know times are tough there, but I didn't know that they no longer had direct flights into the state.
Marc:I don't know, but I'm going to be at the Crowfoot Ballroom on November 15th, and I'm looking forward to it.
Marc:So look, folks, I'm a little out of it.
Marc:I woke up.
Marc:I don't know what happened.
Marc:I woke up.
Marc:It felt like someone had been sitting on me all night and there was nobody sitting on me.
Marc:I don't mean just like a little person.
Marc:I mean, a person with some girth, with some weight, perhaps a a heavyset apparition.
Marc:Somehow or another, I woke up and it felt like I'd been hit by a fucking truck and I've been trying to pull it together all goddamn day.
Marc:I've got the sweats, not because I'm sick, just because it's it's it's intensely difficult for me to do just regular fucking things.
Marc:I don't know what it is.
Marc:I took my vitamins.
Marc:Shouldn't that do it?
Marc:I mean, what is going on?
Marc:And then I remembered, oh, shit.
Marc:Yeah, the elections.
Marc:That's what sucked the life out of me.
Marc:That's what sucked my disposition into something existentially frightening.
Marc:But we'll see.
Marc:I find that I'm not as fucked up as I usually am.
Marc:And I see a lot of tweets and a lot of people posting like I'm leaving the country.
Marc:This is it.
Marc:We're fucked.
Marc:It's over.
Marc:Is it over?
Marc:You know, maybe you should have been thinking about that six months ago.
Marc:Is it over?
Marc:I don't know if it's over.
Marc:It's going to be difficult.
Marc:It's going to be a shitty two to six years in the sense that I don't know what's going to get done.
Marc:Things were getting done.
Marc:Some people were not happy with the things that were getting done.
Marc:There's nothing you can do about it.
Marc:But I have begun to realize that at the plodding pace that legislative democracy works, this ebb and flow of things is par for the course.
Marc:We've been through worse.
Marc:It's going to be difficult.
Marc:I wish us all the best.
Marc:There's no quick fix.
Marc:There's no easy cure.
Marc:There's no overnight patch up that's going to happen.
Marc:It's just going to be a long, difficult, angry slog.
Marc:And we're all in it together, except those of you who have so much money that you should send me some.
Marc:I voted for the pot, but the pot didn't pass.
Marc:Even though I don't smoke pot, I felt that there was enough momentum and I appreciated the arguments by the people who enjoy the pot to make the pot happen.
Marc:But the pot didn't happen, but it put it out there in the world.
Marc:I also love living in a state that really believed and wanted it to be a reasonable idea that we should tax our state's biggest crop to make some money.
Marc:I guess taxable pot is a problem for some people, but nonetheless, I would have loved to have a state government that ran on pot money.
Marc:Part of that would have made me happy.
Marc:On the show today, Dr. Ken, or as you know him, Ken Jeong from The Hangover, from the show Community.
Marc:Great actor, great comic actor.
Marc:Also did some stand-up.
Marc:He approached me.
Marc:It was very interesting.
Marc:He's a huge WTF fan.
Marc:He got in touch with me on Twitter.
Marc:Then we emailed, and I was thrilled to have him out.
Marc:And we'll be talking to him in just a few.
Marc:But let me blather on about a few things first.
Marc:I've been trying to eat healthy, which IE means lose a few pounds, which, as you know, is something that is hereditary to me.
Marc:And I know as a guy, it's not great to talk about this, but I am a compulsive eater.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, I'm about sick of fucking air pop popcorn.
Marc:There's nothing soul fulfilling about air pop popcorn and there's nothing more clear.
Marc:when you're a compulsive eater that you are that when you're shoveling air pop popcorn into your mouth because you're trying to fill a pretty big hole there's a big vacuum there there's a there's a great sadness at the core of your being there towards the bottom of what is your heart chasm that needs to be filled in by temporary spackle in the form of some sort of satisfying food air pop popcorn not being that it's almost like you know there's just just this
Marc:horrendous demon mouth at the bottom of my guts and i just keep shoveling air pop popcorn into its mouth and it just keeps going no no no but i keep doing it and it gets me past it gets me past the cravings so i'm waiting for that to stop and i guess it's really on me to stop that
Marc:That aside, today, given that I was queasy and tired, was the day I had to go to the Apple store, which really is usually a pretty pleasant experience.
Marc:I figure, hey, fuck, it's the middle of the day.
Marc:It's a weekday.
Marc:I won't have any problem at all.
Marc:I walked into the Apple store in Pasadena, and it might as well have been a fucking rave.
Marc:I cannot believe it.
Marc:There was like 20 employees.
Marc:There was like 100 people milling around playing with toys.
Marc:And all I needed was someone to check my goddamn battery.
Marc:Then I started having flashbacks about the last time that I relied on those people.
Marc:I think I've told part of this story before, but I went in there with a memory problem with an iTunes problem.
Marc:And some guy there just, you know, at the at the
Marc:flip of a button at the at the the pushing of a button disposed of my songs all millions of them millions of songs thrown away an empire of music gone because of some genius at the genius bar I felt lost so that was there in my back of my head and I think the guy who did it was there and I looked at him and he looked at me there were no hard feelings I don't think he remembered me like I remembered him to be the guy that destroyed my empire of song
Marc:Yeah, I saw him as as literally some sort of musical genocidal maniac who completely, you know, multi ethnically cleansed my entire hard drive of music that I had to retrieve in a in an awkward way.
Marc:by downloading some software that I can rip the songs back off of my iPod.
Marc:But nonetheless, so I get in there.
Marc:I got to wait 45 minutes.
Marc:All of a sudden, it's like a fucking doctor's office at the iStore, at the Apple Store.
Marc:And then I got to fight the urge.
Marc:There are people sitting at the Genius Bar that are taking their time.
Marc:It's almost as if they're like, literally, the way I heard it in my head while I was waiting just to have someone check my battery because I needed to get a new battery, I just saw four people sitting at the Genius Bar saying, all right, now how do you work it once it's on?
Marc:That's what I thought I heard.
Marc:Literally, people are like, now this button does what?
Marc:Enter does what?
Marc:Now delete, so if I want that letter to go away, I just push delete?
Marc:Okay, so that's a start.
Marc:Now what do we do now?
Marc:What is this?
Marc:How do we?
Marc:I hear that these computers can hold things in something like a memory.
Marc:Do you have that button?
Marc:I was going out of my fucking mind, and I'm sweating, and I don't feel well, and I'm getting aggravated.
Marc:And I didn't know what was going to give.
Marc:I didn't know how it was going to end.
Marc:I didn't know whether or not I was going to lose my cool.
Marc:And then Jessica came in and she had been at H&M, which scared me when she said, I'm going to H&M because between me and you, she's got a little, you know, you know, a little shopping thing.
Marc:But in the middle of my meltdown, she came in and goes, I bought you underwear.
Marc:and she showed me the underwear she bought me in the apple store and somehow or another that distracted me enough to uh to feel grateful and happy that i had someone buying me underwear though i didn't need it but it was a nice gesture that uh it disarmed a lot of the anger and once i approached the apple guy they're very nice there i just don't i think that there it comes a point when you're at the genius bar you're looking to get something fixed that they've got to put a time they've got to put a cap on the time that they spend with people because it seems that if you give people who need have computer problems
Marc:you know enough time yeah they'll they'll sit there for two hours and have you show them how to cut a movie you know literally it gets to that point where i'm just sitting there and then there's a guy going all right so now in order to use final cut which i know is in an apple program let's why don't we put a short film together just so you can uh tell me how look i'll shoot it on my iphone we'll die and i'm like dude i got it i got a a dealable problem here we're not making movies now i have new underwear
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:I'm okay.
Marc:So Ken Jeong, right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That's how you pronounce it.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Now, honestly, welcome to the Cat Ranch.
Marc:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:It's an honor to be here at the Cat Ranch.
Marc:In the garage.
Marc:Now, I was talking to my friend.
Marc:I didn't know you were a doctor for real.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Until like a couple weeks ago.
Marc:You're like a real doctor.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, what kind of person...
Guest:why would you fucking choose comedy over being a doctor when i was at i went to duke i'm from north carolina and i went um did you know zach and those guys down there i didn't know him there i knew him when i when i came out yeah yeah um but i had uh you know i was uh pre-med at duke and and i i took some acting classes there and i when i was in college and i actually got into the
Guest:to the drama department there and I really, you know, at that time I was like 18, I'm 41 now and I was thinking like this is really what I wanna do.
Guest:I never did drama in high school, I had no inkling to do it and I was like wow, I just, this is, I feel like this is what I really wanna do
Guest:But at that point, I was in my second semester, sophomore year at Duke, just about to fail out of organic chemistry.
Guest:And I was not there on scholarship.
Guest:My parents were not wealthy by any means.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I think I was kind of Korean into staying pre-med.
Yeah.
Guest:And but it was it wasn't just my father making me do it, although I thought that at that time.
Guest:But I really was like, OK, you know, I just couldn't go through with it.
Guest:And I lucked out and I got into med school and I declined getting into drama school.
Guest:And then I.
Guest:And once I got into medical school, it was weird.
Guest:I was like, well, I still had a performing bug and I just wanted to do something.
Guest:I really wanted to do theater and I couldn't do that.
Guest:And then that's when I started doing like open mics and I went to UNC.
Guest:In New Orleans?
Guest:No, I went to a med school at University of North Carolina.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Chapel Hill, which is like half an hour away.
Guest:And so I started doing some open mics in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Marc:Sure, at Charlie Goodnight's?
Guest:Charlie Goodnight's is where I really got started, yeah.
Guest:I remember that place.
Guest:I was working on my own issues at that time.
Guest:I was in med school and I was just trying to, I just felt like I really needed, I just needed to perform and do something, you know.
Marc:Well, that's so weird because I feel like I didn't know you as a comic.
Marc:I feel like that.
Marc:No, yeah.
Marc:No one knew me.
Marc:But I watched some of your clips.
Marc:I mean, you've been out there.
Marc:I mean, I talked to Al Madrigal.
Marc:He knew you.
Marc:Oh, I know.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, he's a good friend of mine.
Marc:But I think a lot of when you were out here doing stand-up, I wasn't here.
Marc:Like when you were doing the improver before you broke into TV.
Guest:Yeah, I never really was – I never thought I was – again, I was kind of the – I do think I was kind of the actor who did stand up, you know, to maybe hopefully – ultimately maybe go in back to acting.
Guest:I think I thought of myself that way.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, I really did.
Guest:I really didn't think I was a good stand-up in the sense of I wasn't a great writer, and I just was – I was a great performer, and I knew I could do that, because I wanted to be an actor, and I really couldn't do that.
Guest:But I respected the form enough where I played by – I really –
Guest:you know played by everybody's rules you know every night i would work i worked at kaiser at hmo out here in the valley and every practicing practicing doctor from 99 to 06 yeah i can't believe so literally after the show if i have some problems you're an intern i absolutely i'm an internist i can i can and my wife's a family practitioner and she still works she still works at kaiser so we could we could help you yeah
Marc:But you talk about medicine.
Marc:I grew up, my dad's a doctor.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And I grew up with this.
Marc:So there's always part of me when I have doctor in there that I'm like, yeah, can you just check out this?
Marc:I don't want to be weird.
Marc:But I can't believe you were a practicing doctor and then you chose to do this.
Guest:I can't, I know, when I, yeah.
Marc:I mean, now you're a regular on Community.
Marc:You've been in The Hangover.
Marc:You've been in Knocked Up.
Marc:You've been in a lot of movies.
Marc:You're that guy to a lot of people.
Marc:There's that guy, that Asian guy.
Marc:I'm that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't know my name.
Guest:I'm like, that guy.
Marc:But you're always funny, and you always have a certain tone.
Marc:I mean, like, here you are, a very pleasant person, and I've watched your stand-up, and I see the characters that you usually end up evolving into, and it's very aggressive.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's very peculiar.
Marc:It's over the top, usually.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And a little intimidating.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Angry and peculiar.
Guest:Judd Apatow told me after Knocked Up, he said, you're funniest when you're angry.
Guest:And I felt like that really informed me of my acting work ever since, is kind of levels of that.
Guest:And I joked to Judd, it was like, I thought I would try to, kind of a people pleaser.
Guest:So I said, hey, I just did this other movie and I was really angry.
Guest:I think it was really funny.
Guest:He was like, okay, now the key is to try to, you know, now try to be funny without being angry.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And so it's really- Well, I think you have a lot of different tones of anger.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like I think the knocked up anger is differently than the doctor.
Marc:Than the hangover anger.
Marc:The hangover anger or even the community anger.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I mean, there was something, I guess it was familiar to do in Knocked Up to be sort of a passive, like righteous doctor.
Guest:Yeah, and the way I played that was a doctor who had a bad day.
Guest:I never played it as an evil doctor.
Guest:I think that's the key to playing a lot of, because I do play a lot of quote-unquote villains, and I feel the key is to never think you're a villain.
Guest:You're just a guy who had a bad day.
Guest:Even if you've just killed 1,000 people.
Guest:Even if you just killed 1,000 people.
Marc:That was a bad day.
Guest:That was a bad day.
Guest:You're just really stressed out.
Guest:Really stressed out.
Guest:Genocide is bad.
Guest:I'm not taking anything from that.
Guest:But, you know, I mean, something happened.
Guest:You know, I was at a water faucet and I was trying to drink some water and the water just splattered my face.
Guest:And that's why I killed all those people.
Marc:And that's why the Jews must die.
Marc:Yeah, I get it.
Marc:But I still like it's interesting because I don't want to...
Marc:I wouldn't make it sort of the Asian stereotype idea other than when I watched your stand-up, you sort of leaned on that a bit.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Write what you know superficially.
Guest:That was all I could get.
Guest:I think I was also, though, very much a crowd...
Guest:guy i was really into the crowd and and trying to kill and that's what um i tell my friends all who are stand-ups now that was my undoing because the the key to get to the next level is to you know do what cut away from that cut away from that what's funny to you and i was always the kind of guy that um i'm good friends with kevin shea and he's another korean comic i know very well and he's always like your texts are much funnier than your act
Guest:And I was always funnier to my friends, my comedy friends outside of offstage.
Guest:But I think I was too addicted to the kill, I think.
Guest:And I think there's a lot of comics out there that you just get...
Guest:You just get caught up in that.
Marc:And it was hard for me to break.
Marc:And it's expected from you.
Marc:I mean, and why wouldn't you do that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:On some level, the guys who go for periods without killing, I mean, they're sort of banking on the idea that eventually people will come around to them or then you're just a guy that doesn't work.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, you're going to have to kill sometime.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Either it's going to be on your own terms or you're going to be pandering, but you're going to you want to kill.
Guest:But I find in my, when I act, I do exactly the opposite.
Guest:It's only what makes me laugh.
Guest:And I don't care if anyone else thinks it's funny, but if it makes me laugh, then I do it.
Guest:And that's, so I feel like it's been the opposite end of, and it's been obviously more rewarding and more fulfilling on a lot of levels.
Guest:But yeah, creatively, the most fulfilling is I'm just, I'm just doing what I think is funny to me or at the very least sublime to me.
Marc:But you build tension.
Marc:I mean, you like to build tension.
Marc:I love to build tension.
Marc:And you're just able to release it, which is good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've seen you do some parts where it gets pretty fucking uncomfortable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think I channeled into my inner rage.
Guest:I mean, I think that my dad told me I was a perfect person except for my anger, whether it was chemical or Korean.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:He goes, Ken, you are always...
Guest:you are always good, you're a good guy, you're perfect, except for you have temper.
Guest:He would always tell me that.
Guest:And even when I was eight years old, so I was always, I'm that guy who can, like one of my best friends, Mike O'Connell, he does a great impression of me being mad in real life.
Guest:He's like, this is horrible, this is horrible, this is fucked up.
Guest:I'm sorry, man, I'm so sorry.
Guest:That is like me in a nutshell.
Guest:I think I'm an angry guy, the self-aware angry guy.
Guest:The guilty angry guy.
Marc:I relate to that.
Marc:And I used to have this thing with my ex-wife.
Marc:I said that, well, that was about lying.
Marc:But it's gotten to the point where I'm so self-aware of anger.
Marc:It's exactly what you said, that you're really just trying to close that gap between outburst and apology to the point where you hope that you don't need to get angry.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, have you done anger management?
Guest:No, but I think that... Has it ever been destructive in your life?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think so.
Guest:I think in med school, I just was really angry because I just wasn't... I was really not... I just didn't know if this was the right path for me, but I felt... I think anger comes out of...
Guest:feeling trapped in life i think i don't know this is just based on my own experience when you feel like you don't have any other options or this is an only this is your only way out frustration it's frustration so maybe it's out of anxiety or frustration you know but i felt like i remember being very mad in med school a lot because i felt like well is this is the path for me is this i i want to do comedy i'd rather i'd rather but you're still succeeding in
Guest:in med school but i'm still succeeding in med school it's almost like that william hurt line like in broadcast news well i'm no good at what i'm being a success at you know where i felt like i was headed that way and i was i was nervous about that but somewhere along the line that that did subside in medicine when i was i did my residency in new orleans and the director of my residency was just a really enlightened guy who was on the board of jazz fest and was a prominent like uh nephrologist there and he told me
Guest:He loved what I was doing.
Guest:He loved the fact that I was doing comedy.
Guest:And he loved the fact that I was doing medicine.
Guest:And I was kind of grown up to feel like they were definitely mutually exclusive.
Guest:There is no in between.
Guest:You weren't going to be the angry Patch Adams?
Guest:I wasn't going to be the angry Patch Adams.
Guest:I think after this interview, I should write a treatment.
Guest:For the angry Patch Adams.
Guest:Angry Patch Adams.
Marc:It may actually have legs.
Marc:Just do your style of comedy, but be Patch Adams.
Marc:Patch Adams.
Marc:Going in and talking to kids.
Marc:What's the matter with you?
Guest:I just think just go full out stereotype with an angry kabuki makeup.
Guest:It's just everything in comedy has been done, right?
Guest:You just got to do a fresh spin on it.
Guest:I haven't seen that.
Guest:No one's seen that.
Guest:No studio exec can say that has been done.
Guest:I defy any studio exec listening to say that's been done.
Guest:I think angry patch kabuki Adams could definitely be done.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Go ahead, pitch it.
Marc:Just give me a credit by credit.
Guest:Yeah, I'll give you a story by credit because then I'll be listening to the podcast knowing like, oh, dead motherfucker.
Guest:Stole my bit.
Guest:Stole my bit from my feral kingdom here.
Guest:But no, I think my boss in residency said, he said something that I found a lot of peace with where you will-
Guest:You can be a great doctor with your comedy background, and you can be a great comedian.
Guest:You can be good.
Guest:I wasn't a great comedian, but you have potential to be great in your art because of your medical background.
Guest:I never really thought about that.
Marc:But did you get any satisfaction from helping people?
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:I mean, that's what I miss the most.
Guest:I don't miss...
Guest:being on call.
Guest:I don't miss the clinic schedule.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I don't miss 10 minute appointments where you need an hour to see the patient.
Guest:I don't miss any of that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I miss every single one of my patients and I still will email some of them and- Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I've run into some of them.
Guest:I mean, I live in Calabasas and I practiced in Woodland Hills.
Guest:So I run into former patients all the time.
Guest:And it's only a few years ago.
Guest:It's only, yeah, it was only like four, I guess-
Guest:Four years ago.
Marc:Well, before we get to the point where you decided not to do medicine anymore, which is pretty recently.
Marc:Yeah, no, it was recent, yeah.
Marc:And you obviously had a certain amount of fear as to whether or not you could make a living.
Guest:I was panicked.
Guest:I mean, it was my wife who kind of supported me leaving.
Guest:She was, because I'd done knocked up during a vacation week
Guest:at Kaiser, and I remember feeling after that was, this might have been the best experience ever in my comedy life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I just loved Judd so much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just had such a magical time shooting that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was the first movie I'd done, and the first big part of anything, and I...
Guest:I did feel like a change come over me, you know, like, wow, this is maybe, maybe this is it.
Guest:And my wife was the one who supported me to leave.
Guest:She's like, well, you know, you're just going to be miserable.
Guest:And maybe she was doing it, I think, out of love and also out of like, well, you know, I don't want an angry Karina in my house, like resenting me.
Guest:Any more angry.
Guest:I don't want any more angry.
Guest:She's Vietnamese and we always joke about that.
Marc:Now let's talk about that a bit because I've talked to, I don't know a lot of Korean people, but I do know that people from other cultures who are either first or second generation in this country, that the pressure on them by their parents to succeed is extraordinary.
Marc:And, you know, because I talked to Cho about this and I've talked to I talked to Kumail Nanjiani that there's just something about, you know, either the second generation American experience that, you know, it's like you have to succeed.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And now I don't know how much of that you you had to deal with, but I have to assume it was a lot all the time.
Marc:I mean, from a young age.
Guest:Yes, from a young age, I felt I was probably groomed to be a doctor.
Guest:Do you have brothers and sisters?
Guest:I have a younger sister.
Guest:She's still in North Carolina.
Guest:She's a research librarian at Wake Forest.
Guest:So we've always been in academics.
Guest:Not necessarily medicine, but it was definitely...
Guest:I mean, I took calculus when I was 15.
Guest:I skipped a grade when I was a kid.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, I did all that shit.
Guest:I graduated high school when I was 16.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And this was all because of pressure?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pressure my parents put on me, and then the pressure you just start putting on yourself.
Marc:Because they wired you into that?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And you're wondering why you're angry?
Marc:Why am I angry, Mark?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I think that there you go.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the one thing you were talking about, though, that, you know, in my own sort of exploration of anger that, you know, there is frustration and there is a sense of not doing what you want to do.
Marc:But I think a lot of it people would say would either come from, you know, fear or sadness.
Marc:And I imagine that, you know, that, you know, not being able to or feeling trapped is a horrible feeling.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I imagine from a very young age that you you were constantly just doing your homework.
Guest:Yeah, I was constantly doing my homework.
Guest:I was doing everything I was told.
Marc:Did you have friends?
Guest:Yeah, I had friends.
Guest:I mean, it was weird.
Guest:I got along.
Guest:I feel like show business kind of mirrors your high school behavior.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:That's my theory.
Guest:And in high school,
Guest:I never had really, really close friends, but I got along with everybody.
Guest:I never got in a fight in my life.
Guest:And I grew up in North Carolina.
Guest:I'm a small Asian kid with anger issues growing up in North Carolina.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got along with everybody, like all the cliques, like every single clique.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:That's a comedian in you.
Guest:Yeah, that's a comedian.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:Comedians are diplomats, I think, by nature, to some extent.
Marc:But for some reason, I think it's diplomatic because we kind of want to be friends with everybody.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:We want everybody to like us.
Marc:We're entertainers, I guess that's the thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were you able to do that thing where you were able to sort of like charm the guys that might have kicked your ass and actually make fun of them without them knowing it?
Guest:Oh, I don't think I got that.
Guest:I don't think I ever made fun of them.
Guest:I think I was just so grateful I didn't get my ass kicked.
Guest:I don't think I ever got to that.
Guest:I think I would now.
Guest:I think I would be, you know, I still would never go to the school, anyone who I didn't like in high school.
Guest:But I would probably be a lot more passive aggressive, subversive now.
Guest:I probably would.
Marc:But what happened with the, so you're frustrated, you're going through this pre-med and med, and you graduate high school when you're 16.
Marc:You were one of those guys.
Guest:I was one of those guys.
Guest:Youth of the year, Greensboro, 1986.
Guest:Look it up.
Guest:Yeah, look at the rage.
Guest:Look at the rage.
Guest:That's all me.
Guest:Yeah, it's the angriest kid on the block.
Guest:So you must have got some shit.
Yeah.
Marc:I got, I. Did you do other people's homework too?
Guest:No, I never, but I would always, never cheated, but I remember I would help out everybody.
Guest:I would help, I was the kind of guy that, but I was not, I wasn't driven to be valedictorian either, even though,
Guest:Were you?
Guest:No, I was salutatorian, which is second place.
Guest:And how much did you beat?
Guest:Which Korean means loser, but it's like.
Guest:That's what I was just going to say.
Guest:I saw an Asian comment.
Guest:But I never cared about it.
Guest:I never, I made fun of the valedictorian.
Guest:But did your parents say anything?
Marc:Were they disappointed?
Guest:No, they were happy.
Marc:Not even in your head you thought like, fuck.
Guest:No, because I got into Duke.
Guest:I think because they're, I think they, what I learned now is they just wanted me to be stable.
Guest:They didn't want me to be the best.
Guest:And I think I misinterpreted that as a kid.
Guest:And maybe until probably very recently is that they never ever wanted me to be number one, which is different from most other people.
Guest:kind of stereotypical Korean families.
Guest:They just wanted me to be happy and stable because I'm at a point in my life where I'm a working actor and I have a wife and two daughters and my parents have never, ever been happier for me.
Guest:They have not resented the fact that I'm not doing medicine anymore.
Guest:They have...
Guest:They just – they know it.
Guest:And even when I thought they weren't supporting me, they would come to all my plays at Duke or they would come to all my stand-up shows.
Guest:They came to Charlie Goodnight's all the time to watch me.
Guest:Of course, I probably had a blind spot to that and just forgot that happened and just said, well, you know, you don't support me.
Guest:You know, there is a little bit of he said, she said, I think, to my memory where we're definitely they were more supportive than I ever thought that they did.
Guest:And they all I remember being in med school.
Guest:My dad would always brag about that.
Guest:I had a really unique hobby.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Always bragged.
Guest:Hobby.
Guest:Hobby.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was always a hobby.
Marc:Well, that's the thing.
Marc:I think now they've never been happier because they know in the back of their heads that if everything craps out with acting, you can always be a doctor.
Marc:It's very true.
Marc:And I imagine you think that too.
Marc:I think that too.
Guest:I renewed my license in June, so obviously I've become my father.
Guest:I paid the two grand it was needed just to renew your California license.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:So you can practice.
Guest:I can practice.
Guest:I still have an active...
Guest:DEA number and everything.
Marc:I think that's very smart.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, maybe it's, again, insecurity, fear.
Guest:I mean, it's just all those things.
Marc:No, but I mean, you put the work in.
Marc:It is a hard one skill.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And it takes a lot of work.
Marc:But being a doctor is a very useful, very specific thing.
Marc:You had to get through organic chemistry.
Marc:But let's go back to when you started.
Marc:Where was that moment where you're this little brainy guy?
Marc:who works his ass off.
Marc:I can only imagine he must have been miserable on some level doing all that homework.
Guest:I was just stressed out.
Guest:I don't even know what miserable meant.
Guest:I just remember just being stressed out all the time in high school.
Guest:So what was the moment where you were on stage where you're like, holy shit.
Guest:This feels great.
Guest:There was like this, I was popular enough in high school to get into this kind of mock beauty pageant for guys, you know?
Guest:Yeah, as a joke.
Guest:As a joke, and I did that, and I just would, you know, as a kid, I'd watch wrestling like Hulk Hogan, and I was a chubby kid, I was actually 10 pounds
Guest:15 pounds heavier than I am now, actually.
Guest:I was a chubby, you know, and I would go out there, just do Hulk Hogan poses.
Guest:I remember getting a standing ovation right there.
Guest:That was like the last, it was like, it was like the last, the last month of high school and no one ever knew I was, I didn't know I could do that to anybody.
Guest:I was just, I was so like revered and then I sang, I played violin and piano.
Guest:I did all those things.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And I sang like three times a lady, the Commodore song.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I knew the piano version.
Guest:I sang it.
Guest:Earnestly?
Guest:Earnestly.
Guest:Like, for real.
Guest:And I never sang publicly before, and I got a standing O for that.
Guest:It was like two or three standing Os in that mock BB page.
Guest:And I still play second.
Guest:I didn't win it.
Guest:Again.
Guest:And again.
Guest:Salutatorian.
Guest:Salutatorian in comedy as well as in academics.
Guest:You know, I'm that second place guy, and I'm completely fine with that.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I don't, yeah, maybe.
Guest:You know, maybe, yeah, maybe.
Marc:So you sing once, twice, three times a lady for real?
Guest:For real.
Guest:Not as a joke?
Guest:Not as a joke.
Guest:Were they laughing?
Guest:No, they just loved it and girls are crying.
Guest:I remember that.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Like I had no idea that was in me.
Guest:So that's what informed me when I went to college.
Guest:I was like, I gotta try acting.
Marc:How much of that, how much do you think that, you know, whatever your appeal is, you know, comedically, do you think it is because now that you're beyond the standup that you are somewhat subverting, you know, what people think Asian funniness is?
Guest:I never think that way in terms of what I think Asian funniness is.
Guest:I just, I mean, you know, on a fundamental level.
Marc:Does it offend you when I say that?
Marc:No.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:you know what the fuck i know what why you gotta make it about asian we got why you gotta go there bro i'm all fucking kissing your ass right now saying how much i'm addicted to your podcast i've tweeted my love for you and you gotta go fucking you gotta marginalize me like that play the asian card how dare you sir god damn it i'm fucking out of here again yes i'm angry and then of course i i i suffix that i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry yeah yeah yeah
Guest:I'm sorry for being mock angry at you.
Marc:I'm sorry for being mock angry at you.
Marc:No, I just wonder because you have to be aware on some level that when you look at your place, you are part of a clique of people that are popular in film comedies.
Marc:And you are one of them.
Marc:You show up in what is the new wave of comedic actors.
Marc:You're in The Hangover.
Marc:You're in Community.
Marc:You know, you're doing movies with Judd.
Marc:You're hanging out with Zach in movies.
Marc:I mean, you're that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But some part of that, you know, and I've talked to black comics as well, that you have to be aware of the fact that you're the Asian guy.
Marc:Absolutely.
Guest:I mean, on one level, I'm very, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:You have to be aware that you're the Asian guy.
Guest:Does that anger you?
Guest:No.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:I mean, I think it's, you know, I think it's my responsibility if I'm going to do an Asian part, if I can add...
Guest:whether I do it successfully or not, if I can add something to it, it's like, I saw Zach last week and we were talking about like in Hangover where I was like, it was an ad-lib where a couple times I say, ah, it's funny because he's fat.
Guest:I did that a couple, and that was our ad-libs.
Guest:And those are like, those are meta jokes.
Guest:You're commenting on a comedy.
Guest:And I felt like a lot of stuff I was attempting to do, you know, in those kind of roles, even like Pineapple Express, when you're doing like Asian characters, you're trying to, you know,
Guest:either go meta or you're trying to do something where you're just trying to put a different spin on it, whatever that is.
Guest:And so I feel it's very important for me to do that and my kind of responsibility to do that as opposed to just read it rote, which I will never do, that kind of thing.
Guest:So on some level it's that and then on some level it's like
Guest:Oh, I'm a character actor.
Guest:I'm just a supporting actor.
Guest:I'm a supporting character actor, and that's kind of what I do.
Guest:So I always kind of like, maybe in my own head, like compare myself more to like a Joe LaTrulio or Matt Walsh and those guys who are just brilliant character actors.
Guest:And I feel like those are like my, those are guys I want to be like.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And kind of like, oh, I wish I could do this like...
Guest:how Walsh does it or how Joe does it.
Guest:In my head, I actually try to think that as opposed to like, oh, I better nip it up right now.
Guest:I don't think that.
Guest:I haven't thought of it.
Guest:I better nip.
Guest:Jesus, I'm sorry.
Guest:I didn't nip it up.
Guest:But you have thought that before.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:When you were doing stand-up.
Guest:Stand-up was all about nipping it up for me because I knew it would get an instant laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And all I had to do was the accent.
Guest:And at the very least in Biloxi, you'll get a laugh.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:No offense to anyone in Biloxi, but it's a fact.
Guest:You'll get a laugh.
Guest:It is what it is.
Guest:But I think that, yeah, definitely was a lot more.
Guest:The Asian awareness was a lot more.
Guest:Do you feel bad about that?
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I think it's part of my process to get to where I am now.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I think I probably would feel bad if I was doing that shtick now, I think, yeah.
Guest:And if I didn't feel like I was growing, yeah, I'd feel a little guilty.
Marc:Now, so now by the time you decided to give up medicine, you'd already done the hangover, really, right?
Marc:Or shot it?
Marc:Yeah, I shot that two years ago.
Guest:And you gave up medicine.
Guest:I'd given up medicine.
Guest:That was a stressful time for a lot of levels, but I gave up medicine, and I'd done a number of films.
Guest:Knocked Up had just come out, and I'd done a number of films that were in the can in 07, but in 08, I really wasn't working much.
Guest:in terms of, like, movies.
Guest:I hadn't gotten any, like, studio movies.
Marc:So were you still seeing patients where patients were like, did I see you?
Guest:No, I quit.
Guest:I did do a couple of temp jobs where I, like, worked at an urgent care clinic in Van Nuys just to kind of keep my skills up a little bit because I had all that free time and I was just bored.
Guest:I was like, okay, let me just, you know.
Guest:This is after you quit.
Guest:This is after I quit.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So I did a handful of those.
Guest:Like, I'd say, like,
Guest:You just saw patients at urgent care?
Guest:Yeah, like a walk-in clinic.
Marc:Just keep your chops up.
Marc:I just got to get on stage for a few minutes.
Marc:There was a bit of that going on.
Marc:Got to feel some stomachs.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There's some palpation I need to do.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I need to.
Marc:Certainly feel your glands in your neck.
Marc:I'm getting rusty.
Guest:There's some glands I need to palpate.
Guest:I'm jonesing for palpation.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:There was a little bit of that going on.
Guest:Because there was guilt, like me being having all this free time.
Guest:And being a caregiver.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On some level that, you know, you could be helping people.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And then there was a guilt on that.
Guest:Like, geez, I probably fucked up and did the wrong thing.
Guest:I picked a great time to quit when my wife was pregnant with twins.
Guest:And I haven't worked in fucking eight months.
Guest:And I was like, Jesus, is this...
Guest:I don't know what was going on.
Guest:But that was a time where Tran, where the shit really hit the fan when Tran was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Guest:My wife was diagnosed with breast cancer in July of 08.
Guest:And then I just booked the hangover.
Guest:And it was like, it was just, and I wasn't going to do it.
Guest:And then Tran, you know, was just, and my mother-in-law who came and took care of the kids and Tran just a few days I was away in Vegas.
Guest:Just that,
Guest:I took everything else.
Guest:I feel like my life has been defined.
Guest:I used to think my life was defined before medicine, after medicine, and now definitely my life is defined before cancer, after cancer, at least from my spouse's perspective.
Guest:And this was after she had the kids?
Guest:After she had the kids, yeah.
Guest:And how was she?
Guest:She's cancer free.
Guest:She's fine.
Guest:It was two years, yeah, it was an aggressive cancer.
Guest:That's great to hear.
Guest:Stage three.
Guest:It was like had gotten to a point where it was invading the muscle a little bit, and
Guest:Oh, you're both doctors.
Guest:We're both fucking doctors saying, what the fuck?
Guest:We would joke about that.
Guest:We were joking, because she found a lump when she was breastfeeding.
Guest:And I was like, and both of us, I mean, I married her for a reason.
Guest:We both have the same kind of sensibility.
Guest:And she's like, yeah, it's probably cancer.
Guest:Yeah, you're right.
Guest:Yeah, anyway.
Guest:And then it was, and it was misdiagnosed as benign initially.
Guest:They did a biopsy that was wrong.
Guest:And then it was, then they took out the mass
Guest:only because it was getting bigger, and she was just like, ah, fuck it, I'll just get it removed, and then I was, it was getting red, and I was, my worst case scenario as a doctor, I was like, oh man, it's a fucking abscess, it needs to be lanced, and that was my worst case scenario, and then when it came back as a cancer, as cancerous, I was like, Jesus fucking Christ, I didn't know what the, I mean, it was just,
Guest:So fucking scary.
Guest:It is so scary, and there's no family history of it.
Guest:But the kids were definitely a blessing, because they're only one.
Guest:They're just happy to live.
Guest:So when you're worried about, I guess, dying, and they're happy to live, and they didn't know that mommy was suffering.
Guest:So they were definitely our Prozac.
Guest:They were like our therapy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because it was great.
Guest:It was great that we were so...
Guest:we had shit to do.
Guest:Kids still had to be fed every three hours and you still had to do that.
Guest:And I think doing Hangover was so fucking therapeutic for me because, well, number one, I gotta give Todd Phillips, the director, a lot of credit because I was only there in Vegas for four, I only shot the movie for four days.
Guest:And then all the off days, they would fly me back to home in L.A.
Guest:while Trann would get her chemo.
Guest:And it was, you know, doing that was, and Trann was right.
Guest:She was like, you do this, you'll be, I know you,
Guest:You're an angry, burned out guy.
Guest:You're gonna be even more like burned out at home caring for the kids.
Guest:I was doing everything at home and she was like, you just needed a little bit of a break.
Guest:And my mother-in-law, my in-laws live in San Francisco and she came down and basically just stayed with us for about four months.
Guest:And it was great.
Guest:I just, you know, that's why I think hangover for me, on one level it was knocked up, you know, getting me work.
Guest:And then another level was hangover, like kind of like definitely,
Guest:kind of like realizing just life is short as an actor just i mean it's up to you to make these think of the stupidest bravest choice you could do and just do it you know and that was my idea to pitch it naked and it just appealed to todd and and the sensibility oh you did that yeah that was my idea and um because i kept i kept reading reading it over my mind because in the script that just had me coming out with with pants i was out of the trunk now
Guest:yeah so and I was like what if it was naked I think it was really funny and he was like but actors pitch shit all the time to directors and directors like yeah yeah yeah you're just an actor just you know know your lines yeah dummy and it was funny and it was and he was like yeah it was like he's like that's genius and let's do it and then it just but I've never had I've never to this day ever had a director just just just embrace any idea I've ever had so wholeheartedly to the point I was kind of nervous I was like because he made me sign a nudity waiver within like an hour right
Guest:He didn't want you to back?
Guest:He didn't want me back.
Guest:Yeah, he was afraid I was going to back out, I think.
Guest:Or his associate was, Scott Budnick.
Guest:They were like, we've got to get this in writing.
Guest:I mean, I had already made my mind.
Guest:It was like, I'm not.
Guest:I didn't even, for once, consider not doing it.
Guest:So I just felt like it just served the tone of the movie.
Marc:And also it seems to me that if I'm hearing you cry,
Marc:properly in terms of your history with comedy that, you know, it seems that given the stress that you were under as a kid and now, you know, the compounded stress of career fear and your wife's illness that, you know, you really are able to get out of yourself with comedy and you're able to express your anger and just like, I assume you lose yourself pretty thoroughly when you are acting.
Marc:I'm in a trance.
Guest:It's like,
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Marc:So it's interesting to me that you made that choice in light of this horrendous, potentially tragic situation you were in and the pain of the illness that you're like, I'm going to expose myself completely.
Marc:I'm going to just bathe in this choice.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There was a bit of that where I was like- Maybe you didn't think of that, but it seems like such an extreme decision to make to be naked in a movie that millions of people are going to see in the face of your wife's cancer.
Marc:It's just sort of interesting to me.
Marc:Yeah, it's just kind of-
Marc:I know it's just funny, but it's a big choice to be naked in a movie.
Guest:It's a big choice to be naked, but for some reason, see, I ran up by my wife, too, because my wife loves comedy, and I was like, even before I went to Vegas, I was like, Tran, wouldn't it be funny if I was naked in it?
Guest:She was like, you know.
Guest:Yeah, and what'd she say?
Guest:She's getting her chemo.
Guest:Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Guest:She was like, yeah.
Guest:You know, even with the chemo running, she was like, dude, that's fucking funny.
Guest:I mean, fuck.
Guest:I mean, because she's my buddy.
Guest:I mean, she was like, she's kind of my partner in crime.
Guest:She was like, that's really fucking funny.
Guest:So it was like, I always, like, before I do anything, I always run it.
Guest:I mean, you know, I'm a pussy.
Guest:I just run it by my wife.
Guest:And I ran that one.
Guest:That was really important for me that I made sure that everyone was on board.
Guest:So it was a calculated, you know, risk.
Marc:You don't want to surprise you with that one?
Guest:I'm not going to surprise you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Right when she's getting better.
Guest:I'm cancer free.
Guest:What the fuck?
Marc:Oh, you're in a trunk naked.
Guest:You're in a fucking year.
Guest:Fucking motherfucker.
Marc:How long was that?
Marc:I'm trying to picture two doctors around a cancer diagnosis.
Marc:Were you angry at the doctors who misdiagnosed you?
Marc:Yeah, I was angry.
Guest:I was definitely mad.
Marc:Because you're not a cancer doctor and you're not a surgeon, so you can only speculate.
Guest:Exactly, right.
Guest:I'm an internist who doesn't do any surgery, so it's...
Guest:I was mad as a patient, but I was very understanding as a doctor.
Guest:I could see why the doctor missed it.
Guest:They did biopsies.
Guest:They did three core biopsies.
Guest:There were very thorough biopsies that was done.
Guest:They just missed the tumor.
Guest:I think that's what happened.
Guest:In my head, it was...
Guest:It's like a basketball game where you play the basketball game perfectly, X's and O's, and you lose.
Guest:It happens, and unfortunately, it just happened.
Guest:And there's no anger in terms of they made a mistake.
Guest:They did everything in their power to do it.
Guest:And as a doctor, I would not have done anything differently.
Marc:Isn't that interesting, though?
Marc:So I do have that compassion.
Guest:That's why I don't have that anger towards anyone, or even this diagnosis, or even the complications that would ensue from that.
Guest:And we paid the price for that.
Guest:But had they found it earlier, in only a couple months, it wouldn't have changed anything.
Guest:And I know that, and that as a doctor, I do know, it wouldn't have changed the treatment.
Guest:It wouldn't have changed the surgery.
Guest:It wouldn't have changed the radiation that ensued.
Guest:It wouldn't have changed anything.
Guest:And I'm just grateful.
Guest:So when I look at it that way,
Guest:I'm grateful that it was followed up and it was found.
Guest:That, to me, is more important than, you know.
Guest:Sure, than missing it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I think a lot of people forget that about doctors, and it's one of the reasons why my father does not practice in the same way that he used to, is that people were so quick to blame doctors, to sue doctors, to accuse them of not doing something.
Marc:I mean, there's a whole business built around waiting for a doctor to fuck up.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And a lot of times,
Marc:Doctors, they don't know.
Marc:They don't know everything.
Guest:It's trial and error.
Guest:Medicine is just trial and error.
Guest:You're trying to fit a clinical science in to the best educated guesswork that you can.
Guest:And that's what medicine, to me, and I would tell patients, when I was working, I would actually tell them like,
Guest:In a weird way, the comedy helped me because I would say, okay, I don't know what's going on with you.
Guest:We're trying to find what's wrong.
Guest:We're trying to figure out the cause of a cough.
Guest:And you did all these studies and the CAT scan was negative or chest x-rays negative.
Guest:Look, okay, I don't know what we're going to do, but we'll kind of have to improvise here.
Guest:We'll kind of have to ad lib right now.
Guest:And that's when you took your pants off.
Guest:That's when I took my pants off.
Guest:I said, listen, let me just do this.
Guest:This may help me in a movie five years later.
Marc:It's unorthodox.
Marc:It's unorthodox.
Guest:You're going to laugh.
Guest:It's my process.
Guest:So, cause you'll laugh at the side of a, it's not, no, it's not, it's not micropenis.
Guest:It's an actual penis that was flaccid.
Guest:So just, yeah, look, just Mrs. Feinstein, just don't, just relax and just let Asian Patch Adams do his work.
Guest:But yeah, and even our oncologist said, you know, this is a very rare kind of cancer.
Guest:It's not your typical breast cancer.
Guest:It was very aggressive, like a melanoma, kind of aggressive.
Guest:And it was like, you know, we're going to have to improvise a little bit.
Guest:He said that.
Guest:And that I responded well to, actually.
Guest:I was like, well, medicine is all improv.
Guest:You know, it's all like guesswork.
Guest:And you're all, you have to listen to your patient and
Guest:you know and really you know that's why it's I don't care how fucking smart you are if you don't know how to talk to a person or don't know how to listen to a person you'll never be a good doctor I don't care how smart you are I don't care what school you went to because the one thing I did I wasn't the smartest doctor there but I definitely could figure out or listen to a person or get the gestalt of it I could see if a patient's complaining of abdominal pain and
Guest:And get the sense, maybe it's not the abdominal pain, maybe it's a fact they're depressed or something else.
Guest:And some doctors I know will just go down every blind alley looking for that cause of abdominal pain when you see the lady crying hysterically.
Guest:All clinical causes.
Guest:Yeah, all clinical self-awareness.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And maybe my own self-awareness as a person, even my own perceived flaws...
Guest:actually became my strengths as a doctor.
Guest:I really think, I think the self-awareness my dad kind of like instilled in me, it helped me be that much.
Guest:By telling you you were angry?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That you were a good guy, but you were angry?
Guest:Yeah, I'm a good guy, but I'm angry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it helped me be sensitive to other people, and I do consider myself a very sensitive guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's good, that can be bad in some social situations, but I think in a clinical situation, it's very beneficial.
Marc:I think like my father, who's a doctor,
Marc:You know, he has a very hard time with not being able to practice, you know, the medicine exactly the way he wants to practice it because of budget constraints.
Marc:And he thinks that's a crime.
Guest:Well, I mean, with all due respect to your father, your father basically flourishes.
Guest:He's crazy.
Guest:No, your father flourishes as a doctor when...
Guest:It was booming.
Guest:It was in its medical boom years.
Guest:Everything was flourishing.
Guest:You could hang out with a pharmaceutical rep and go to Tunisia for a month or whatever.
Guest:You could do that.
Guest:Come back with a box of Viagra.
Guest:Yeah, you come back with a box of Viagra.
Guest:You can get courtside tickets at a Lakers game really easily.
Guest:If you're a doctor, you just had it all economically.
Guest:And then by the time I became a physician, that was all stripped away.
Guest:So all we had, basically, especially in the West Coast, was mostly managed care.
Guest:So...
Guest:I think ignorance is bliss on my part because I didn't know how good private practice is because I never, ever have attempted to try that.
Marc:Right, and there's a lot of that old guard that still fight this idea that they got spoiled.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that in most other places in the world, doctors are almost civil servants.
Marc:that you know like in england in the british system i mean they do all right but you know during the boom time with the private practice i mean you know doctors were huge and i and i and i don't think necessarily that meant the care was good either yeah you know i'm not talking about my father but i mean in general i really do think doctors and actors are very similar where like an actor doesn't want to be directed too much we want that freedom to improvise we want that freedom to make a creative stamp and doctors want that same freedom
Guest:make the decisions they want to make and um you know you're you know and doctors are it is a very convenient to make the enemy the administration where it's very convenient for me to make the enemy oh it's the studio that won't let me do that won't let me do it naked or whatever and then uh so and then sometimes in retrospect oh well you know maybe that was just my ego talking maybe that wasn't the best choice or you know it's you know hindsight being 20 20 um you know i i think that uh
Guest:Yeah, there are definitely constraints and definitely, it's a pain in the ass.
Guest:The only problems I ever had was when there's a test that I knew that had to be done, but sometimes you have to go through the paperwork.
Guest:It'll just take a fucking six weeks to get it done.
Guest:That's what would frustrate me, the waits.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:In England, you gotta wait.
Guest:Canada, you gotta wait.
Guest:So my thing was,
Guest:Okay, this is stupid for us to wait.
Guest:I know what the deal is, but just the red tape is making me do this.
Guest:That's where, you know.
Guest:You get frustrated.
Guest:Well, for me, I found a way.
Guest:I was never angry as that.
Guest:I found a way just to schmooze my way in to, hey, I call my ENT buddy who's a buddy of mine.
Guest:Hey, man, dude, is there any way you can, like I would wait for my best friend who was a specialist on the call that day.
Guest:Oh, it's his turn to be called in.
Guest:Hey, buddy, can I, I got this page.
Guest:Can you just see him like tomorrow?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:yeah sure but hey you doing any shows at the ice house yeah i would totally use my stand-up notoriety i would use that like a motherfucker dude oh yeah dude i'm doing it because i would use guys that were young specialists hip hipers doctors yeah that would come hang out with me we'd party with or come to my comedy shows i would wait for that guy to be on call sure dude can you fucking i know you probably need to wait but you're not just fucking just doing it tomorrow it's like i would
Guest:I do that all the time.
Marc:I'll get you two tickets for the ice ice.
Guest:Look, I'll get you and your girl in for free.
Guest:Yeah, hey, how's she doing, man?
Guest:Yeah, fine.
Marc:So there's an argument to be made that you should continue practicing, because you could probably give the best, you could be the best doctor in California.
Guest:I could, well, my wife says that all the time.
Guest:She was like, everyone talks about you quitting your job, but people, you know, you're a good doctor.
Guest:You were a good doctor.
Guest:I had a good, like, you know, I got it down to a science on how to work at Kaiser, at an HMO.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In terms of how to finesse the system, how not to get angry at it, and then how to use it, how to kind of schmooze your way in and getting a test that you want.
Guest:But now you could say, like, you want to meet Jack Galifianakis?
Yeah.
Guest:That's exactly what I'm going to do now.
Marc:Can you get this guy into surgery tomorrow?
Marc:That's really funny.
Guest:Hey, Zach.
Guest:Hey, you want to talk to Zach?
Guest:You want Zach to email you back?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He'll probably say something very witty and dry.
Guest:Just get this person on the gurney now.
Guest:Yeah, dude.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:If I went back now...
Marc:You'd be like a celebrity.
Guest:I would be, yeah.
Guest:I'll be practicing bad medicine at this point, getting any test I wanted.
Guest:Yeah, give me an MRI for Phyllis.
Guest:Yeah, I'll throw you in a pre-screening for Transformers 3.
Guest:You want that?
Guest:You want that?
Guest:You want to meet Michael Bay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll get that in.
Marc:You'll get to meet Megatron, too, if you want.
Marc:That's hilarious.
Marc:That is hilarious.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:Do you find that you are a doctor?
Marc:The thing always impressed me about my dad.
Marc:You're an actor now, but there's that moment.
Marc:Have you ever had that moment where someone actually says, is there a doctor?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, when I was in residency.
Marc:That must be a great feeling to be like, yes, I'm a doctor.
Marc:No, I was scared shitless.
Guest:I was in my residency.
Guest:I was in my residency, still not a full doctor yet.
Guest:You get your MD, but that doesn't mean shit.
Guest:You have to do your residency after your dad would...
Guest:So I was an intern, barely a doctor, and I was on a plane to Hawaii and someone was having a heart attack or having chest pain.
Guest:And there was a doctor there and I raised my hand and decided to take the blood pressure and give nitroglycerin and just monitor the blood pressure, make sure that the nitroglycerin wasn't lowering the blood pressure.
Guest:I mean I was really cool about it.
Guest:You knew what you were doing.
Guest:I knew what I was doing, but I was scared.
Guest:Could not have been more scared.
Guest:But you're right, there is that.
Guest:I forgot, there was a party recently.
Guest:Yeah, someone was choking at a stand-up comedian.
Guest:It was Ralphie May, who I go back with when I was doing stand-up at the Laugh Factory.
Guest:It was like, it might have been like now, eight years ago, a woman was choking at her party.
Guest:And I just quickly did, she was like 200 pounds.
Guest:I just lifted her up, just did the Heinlein boom.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, and I didn't think anything of it.
Guest:I just went back and just had my beer after that.
Guest:It was like not a beer, because I guess I was used to in the hospital where I did take hospital call where if a patient flatlines, you know, the do, the clear, the advanced cardiac life support.
Guest:So I think I was in that zone as a doctor where I'd been in a couple of- I got this.
Guest:Yeah, I was kind of like, oh, I got it.
Guest:You know, it's almost like me talking to my doctor.
Guest:Oh, yeah, this patient.
Guest:Let me talk to you later, Tim.
Guest:I got this.
Guest:Let me do it.
Guest:Boom, blah.
Guest:You'll be okay.
Guest:Hey, you want to-
Guest:Yeah, you want some juice?
Guest:All right, I'll see you later.
Guest:So anyway, Tim, he's talking to this bitch, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Kind of like, you know.
Guest:Second nature.
Guest:It was kind of second.
Guest:There was a time where I was definitely, like when you, you know, like right now I think I'm, as an actor, kind of I'm entering a zone where I feel relaxed and kind of like in the moment a lot, which is the best feeling world artistically.
Guest:And then there was definitely that point in medicine where I was feeling relaxed and in the zone.
Guest:I knew what I could do well.
Guest:And that was that.
Marc:Oh, that's great.
Marc:And I'm glad your wife is healthy.
Marc:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, a lot of that is, I mean, I think a lot of really helped us as doctors that with the first chemotherapy dose, her tumor markers went down.
Guest:So we knew that there was a good chance that we could beat this thing.
Guest:Although there was like a 23% chance of a cure.
Guest:With that kind of tumor, it's either all or none.
Guest:And it's either universally fatal or you survive it completely.
Guest:And we were so – once we saw her CA 2729 go down to normal levels, we were thinking, okay, I think we got a shot at this.
Guest:I think this is good.
Guest:And that was after the first dose of chemo.
Guest:And that was before hangover.
Guest:So we had a sense that there was a little bit – there was hope on the horizon and that she was responding well and all signs were a go.
Guest:And then after she had her mastectomy and some of the nodes were removed, it turned out everything –
Guest:because you got to do tissue sampling.
Guest:You have to do biopsies and all the tissue you've taken out to see exactly, did you get all the cancer or not?
Guest:There was no cancer in it, which was a great thing.
Guest:So you still need to take it out because that's what you have to do in breast cancer, with that kind of level of breast cancer.
Guest:But you look at that and it was completely normal.
Guest:I just remember that was, I remember that was in November when she had her, I think, had the mastectomy, and we were just so fucking happy.
Guest:We knew we were, like, and that, I think, actually, being doctors, because there's a sense of being a doctor, you're the worst patient because you get really neurotic.
Guest:Oh, it's not a cough.
Marc:A million options.
Marc:Yeah, it's not.
Guest:Dude, this isn't a rash.
Guest:This is Rickettsia, Susugugamushi, or whatever the fuck.
Guest:Yeah, I've had that.
Guest:Yeah, you've had that.
Guest:I mean, you get, you know, we all, doctors are the worst hypochondriacs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when their early indicators at a sign is going well, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like if a movie studio, if they know that their Friday receipts at the box office are doing well, they know they've got their weekend covered.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:It's the same kind of thing, whereas a doctor, oh, that first response dose fucking worked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I think, honestly, there's some part of you that, you know, having to deal with that and having to deal with the fear and the pain and then, you know, moving through that had to at least have given you that in light of her being supportive of your choice to be an actor, but to really realize, like, I'm going to fucking do what I want to do.
Marc:I mean, you only live once.
Guest:That's exactly what I was thinking of Hangover.
Guest:That was my whole rationale of going naked in Hangover was like, you only live once because I could go at any time.
Guest:Might as well just fucking don't hold back.
Guest:Yeah, that's exactly it.
Marc:I think that reads in all of your- I think definitely since Hangover.
Guest:You don't hold back.
Guest:I've been more aggressive, but I think I have been a little bit more aggressive
Guest:consciously, I remember that first season of Community, I was definitely aggressive where, because I was a teacher, I was an angry Spanish teacher.
Guest:I mean, Dan Harmon, who created that show, was like a genius.
Guest:But he let me just take, it was great.
Guest:And then, you know, but it's funny now, artistically speaking,
Guest:I know that that's, I think now, this season of Community, the second season, I'm not as angry anymore.
Guest:So artistically, I'm asking, okay, well, where do I go with this?
Guest:Well, I think my character's slowly about to have a nervous breakdown, but it's manifesting in weird ways.
Guest:And so it's not a conscious attempt, but I'm always like, well, let's see how weird I can just do it.
Guest:I don't know if it's funny.
Guest:And my feeling is like, well, there are eight people on that show that are really funny.
Guest:It's not a competition.
Guest:So let me just see if I can be the weirdest guy of the cast.
Guest:So there's always this thing I'm having.
Guest:So I'm always trying to make one of our actors, Danny Pudi, who plays Abed.
Guest:He's a very good laugher.
Guest:He's like a good audience.
Guest:I'm always just trying to make him break.
Guest:So every scene I do now this season, if he's laughing because he's going to laugh at something that's weird or sublime.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:then I know I'm doing my job.
Guest:So he's my gauge.
Guest:So I feel like this year on the show, and it's a good artistic thing for me to do because I need to get better as an actor.
Guest:It's like, okay, well, let me see how weird I can go.
Guest:And I think maybe that's kind of like where I'm at right now.
Guest:Like, you know, I haven't really thought about it that consciously, but I noticed like I can't be, I noticed when you're on a TV show, you can't repeat.
Guest:I'm trying not to repeat.
Guest:And we all have a limited set of moves, but we can't repeat the same amount of moves that I did last year.
Guest:And,
Guest:And so they very smartly not made me a teacher this year, and I'm a student who's lost my job.
Guest:And now I'm there.
Guest:But I'm going back to the school that fired me and that humiliated me, and I want to join the study group, but they're always turning me down.
Guest:So it's kind of like I'm Wally Coyote and trying to chase it, but I'm never succeeding.
Guest:So I have so much more pathology to play off of this season.
Marc:Oh, yeah, and also the self-hatred.
Marc:of actually making the choice to go to the school that fired you.
Guest:That's exactly what I told myself.
Guest:The self-hatred that I have for myself to go back to the school that fired me, you just gotta, I mean, there's so many layers there to explore.
Guest:And I told Dan, I hope I never join the study group because I hope I'm just like, I'm just this, yeah, the amount of weirdness that's going now.
Marc:That's exciting.
Guest:It's exciting, yeah, it's fun.
Marc:So you make it interesting for yourself.
Guest:Yeah, I think that's the key, is trying to make it interesting.
Marc:And did you finish shooting Hangover 2?
Guest:No, we're starting up, actually.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:How's it look?
Guest:How's the script look?
Guest:It's great.
Guest:Obviously, I can't get anything more detailed than that, but it's, I think, yeah.
Marc:Over the top?
Guest:I'm just so, I just so, you know, at the end of the day, that's like another, Todd Phillips is like family to me where he was so, a lot of people don't know this about Todd.
Guest:The director.
Guest:Yeah, Todd Phillips, the director.
Guest:Like every day when I was on set, he was always asking, how's Tran doing?
Guest:How's Tran doing?
Guest:His sister, my sister's an oncologist.
Guest:Anything I can do.
Guest:And he was the guy, let me fly back to LA.
Guest:And Bradley Cooper, who I did a movie with prior to that, we're good friends.
Guest:And and only he and Bradley actually knew at that time.
Guest:I didn't tell anyone.
Guest:And and and and those guys were, you know, it when I see them, I do see them as entities now as big success entities as they are and deservedly so.
Guest:But I see them also like, you know, man, I mean, even if the film made no money.
Guest:It was just one of the best experience of my career because they were there for me when I was down and they got it.
Guest:And Bradley actually drove me home the last day of shooting, drove me back home because he knows Tran very well.
Guest:And, and he got to see the kids and he saw, she saw Tran when all her hair was out.
Guest:And I mean, he was, we spent like the last three Christmases or the last two Christmases together.
Guest:And even while Tran was going through chemo.
Guest:So there was, there's a big family feel on that set, like with, and now it's, you know, with Ed, Bradley and Zach,
Guest:who weren't, you know, they knew each other, but now they're really good friends, and Todd, needless to say, and Zach, you know, they got due date coming out, you know, everyone's like, I go there, it's like a, there's a sense of family there, like, you know, we're in this together, and I don't know, it's just a great, it's one of those things where, you know, I'm just, I look at all those guys, especially like Zach, I'm just so, I couldn't be, I honestly think he's the funniest guy working, I'm biased, but he's the funniest guy working right now, I mean, in my opinion, and I'm, you know, I see it up close, but I think he's the funniest guy.
Guest:He's the funniest motherfucker.
Marc:Oh, yeah, he is.
Guest:He makes me laugh.
Marc:He is very funny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And he's a very sweet guy.
Guest:He's the sweetest, most sensitive guy, and people don't know about him.
Guest:People don't know how sweet and insensitive he is.
Guest:He's the sweetest guy.
Marc:Yeah, and not affected at all.
Marc:No.
Marc:I interviewed him in his trailer, I think.
Marc:Yeah, I heard that.
Marc:When I was doing due date.
Marc:Yeah, I heard that.
Marc:But it's also nice for me to hear as a guy that is not...
Marc:you know in that world but in comedy you know that there is a community here and i think a lot of people you know assume that we all you know breathe this rarefied air and that you know nobody really talks to each other we're all a bunch of assholes but to hear that even for me about todd and about you know and about uh bradley i mean it's very sweet and it's uh you know they're just people they're just people yeah and it's really cool to see them oh they helped me out through some bad shit and oh they're really rich and famous on good for them yeah yeah you know it's i just saw this part of you going they're not doctors
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:Raise your hand if anyone had a terminal degree.
Guest:I mean, no one here.
Guest:Maybe that's why I can be so gracious in saying everyone's so funny.
Guest:I can say people are funnier than me because I know they're not fucking smarter than me.
Guest:And I can save lives.
Guest:I can save lives.
Guest:I saved a choking lady at Ralphie Mae's party.
Guest:Raise your hand if you've ever saved someone's life at a Ralphie Mae party.
Guest:Nobody.
Guest:Nobody.
Guest:Nobody here.
Guest:Not Zach, not Walsh, not Latrolio, not Apatow.
Guest:Me.
Guest:No, just me.
Guest:This guy right here.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:I really appreciate you being here and good luck with your future and I'm glad to hear about your wife.
Guest:Thank you so much for having me.
Marc:Okay, what the fuckers, that's it.
Marc:I hope you enjoyed that.
Marc:What a sweet guy.
Marc:A really good guy.
Marc:And it's amazing to me that he's a doctor.
Marc:I almost felt like I needed... I thought it would be awkward for me to ask him to take a look at some things.
Marc:So that didn't happen.
Marc:But look, I'm happy you're listening.
Marc:Please go to the Punchline if you want to see me if you're in the Bay Area.
Marc:Those dates are November 11th, 12th, and 13th.
Marc:Crow Football Room in Pontiac, Michigan.
Marc:November 15th.
Marc:Love to see you there.
Marc:JustCoffee.coop.
Marc:Hold on, I'll give you one.
Marc:pow i just shit my pants just coffee.coop available at wtfpod.com where you can also kick in a few shekels to the cause this is a listener supported show get on that mailing list buy some of those new shirts the cat shirt's very popular the scream shirt also picking up a little momentum i appreciate your support i appreciate your listenership i hope you enjoyed the show is that all i have to say punchline magazine.com is that all i have to say i need to take a nap
Marc:I've got new underwear.