Episode 1318 - Guy Torry

Episode 1318 • Released March 31, 2022 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast welcome to it i don't think i've spoken to you really since the oscars the last episode i did was recorded

00:00:24Marc:Before that, I was actually writing in my update about Chris Rock at the Comedy Store when Chris Rock got assaulted on camera in front of the world by Will Smith.

00:00:37Marc:So I think I might have something to say about it.

00:00:41Marc:I talked a little bit about it last night at the Comedy Store on stage.

00:00:46Marc:Let's see if I can put my thoughts together.

00:00:48Marc:But...

00:00:48Marc:First off, Guy Torrey is on the show today.

00:00:52Marc:Guy Torrey, the comedian.

00:00:53Marc:Well, he's an actor, but started as a comedian.

00:00:56Marc:His brother's Joe Torrey.

00:00:57Marc:He was a regular on Def Comedy Jam and all the typical comic shows that were going on in the 90s.

00:01:04Marc:But around that time, he also created Fat Tuesdays at the Comedy Store.

00:01:08Marc:And he's one of the producers of a new documentary series about Fat Tuesdays that's on Amazon Prime Video right now.

00:01:14Marc:And I got to be honest with you, I didn't know anything about it.

00:01:17Marc:I felt bad when I watched it that there was this whole blind side to my comedy history.

00:01:23Marc:There's plenty of it of blind sides.

00:01:25Marc:But this one in particular, because it was so contemporary, I knew that there was a black show down the hall in the main room at the Comedy Store when I would go to the Comedy Store in the early aughts or whenever I'd come back and forth.

00:01:35Marc:But I just always assumed that was like, oh, that's not for me, but they're having a good time.

00:01:40Marc:And I didn't know what the story was and that it went on for 10 years.

00:01:44Marc:And it was sort of kind of it came out of something called the Comedy Act Theater, which was a black comedy showroom that lasted for years.

00:01:55Marc:That's where Robin Harris came out of.

00:01:57Marc:See, I always knew Robin Harris, but I knew nothing about the Comedy Act Theater and how it got sort of derailed, as did a lot of black rooms after the riots in the 90s.

00:02:06Marc:And then there was this sort of...

00:02:08Marc:This period, this vacuum in Hollywood where there was no sort of black comedy specific black comedy outlets until a guy put Fat Tuesdays together.

00:02:17Marc:And the whole history of that world and the performers in that world who I knew, but I did not know about the impact it had on show business and that that sort of gave me context for the great Robin Harris.

00:02:31Marc:And Bernie Mac.

00:02:32Marc:I wasn't watching those shows back then.

00:02:35Marc:I didn't watch BET.

00:02:37Marc:I didn't watch Deaf Comedy Jam.

00:02:40Marc:I didn't know about this world.

00:02:42Marc:I knew there was a black circuit and that there was an evolution to that, but I didn't know the impact.

00:02:49Marc:And I felt stupid, but now I feel educated.

00:02:52Marc:So I'm happy to have Guy Tori on.

00:02:54Marc:It was great to talk to him.

00:02:55Marc:It's a comedy store talk, you know?

00:02:56Marc:That's what we do here a lot of times.

00:02:58Marc:Comedy store talk.

00:03:00Marc:That was what was interesting about Chris Rock is that, you know, I've been seeing him at the store for the last couple weeks, and then the Oscars happened.

00:03:11Marc:Wow.

00:03:12Marc:I was watching it live, and then I quickly had to go watch, you know, footage from other countries that, you know, aren't, you know, kind of repressed, dumb language censurers.

00:03:26Marc:I mean, like...

00:03:27Marc:Like America could not handle Will Smith saying, keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth.

00:03:35Marc:That would have disrupted America if we heard that.

00:03:39Marc:Not the fact that he physically assaulted Chris Rock on stage during a live televised Oscar ceremony.

00:03:49Marc:Man, had to go look at the show.

00:03:52Marc:Australian feed or the British feed or the Japanese feed.

00:03:56Marc:Anywhere in the world where grownups can hear language on television.

00:04:01Marc:So here's my thoughts on the experience of seeing it live was just baffling.

00:04:08Marc:It was like, what?

00:04:08Marc:What?

00:04:10Marc:What?

00:04:11Marc:What the fuck just happened?

00:04:13Marc:And a few things in retrospect, now that we've got a little distance from it.

00:04:18Marc:First off, it was wrong.

00:04:21Marc:There's no conversation about.

00:04:24Marc:Well, I don't know.

00:04:24Marc:Will had no.

00:04:26Marc:But Chris, no.

00:04:27Marc:But I mean, seriously, if it was his wife, no, it was fucking wrong.

00:04:32Marc:You don't go up and smack someone in the fucking face anywhere.

00:04:36Marc:It was wrong.

00:04:37Marc:I mean, there's no conversation about that.

00:04:39Marc:And this other idea that that is this what happens when you tell jokes?

00:04:43Marc:Are we afraid to tell jokes?

00:04:45Marc:No, it had nothing to do with the joke.

00:04:47Marc:You can tell whatever joke.

00:04:49Marc:And I don't like that.

00:04:51Marc:Comedians are sort of like, well, this is going to be bad for us.

00:04:53Marc:Comedy is always scary.

00:04:55Marc:I can't remember a year or a show, very few, that I've done comedy where the possibility of me getting hit wasn't a possibility.

00:05:02Marc:I guess it depends what kind of comedy you do.

00:05:04Marc:If you're a poker, I'm a poker.

00:05:06Marc:Chris is a poker.

00:05:08Marc:If you keep poking, sometimes you poke the wrong fuck and you're going to get poked back.

00:05:13Marc:Something's going to happen, but you know that.

00:05:15Marc:If that's what you do, you know the possibility.

00:05:17Marc:I've been tackled on stage.

00:05:19Marc:I've had guys come on stage and stand me off several times in my career.

00:05:24Marc:If you poke...

00:05:24Marc:Sometimes you're going to have to handle it.

00:05:28Marc:But this isn't about jokes and whether you can tell jokes or not.

00:05:31Marc:I guarantee you, Chris did not know that she had alopecia.

00:05:36Marc:I guarantee you that Chris was handed a paper, just a bunch of jokes by the writers.

00:05:42Marc:They hire writers.

00:05:43Marc:He had a writer probably for the for the award show.

00:05:46Marc:And he said, I want to take some shots when I go out.

00:05:49Marc:What do you got?

00:05:49Marc:And he saw a bunch of jokes.

00:05:51Marc:And, you know, and these were the ones that he was carrying into his head when he went on stage.

00:05:55Marc:And the interesting thing about it is he's been working out, man.

00:05:58Marc:I've been watching him work out.

00:06:00Marc:He bumped me to work out at the comedy store.

00:06:02Marc:I've talked to him about his new hour.

00:06:05Marc:And he said, yeah.

00:06:06Marc:I said, how's it going?

00:06:07Marc:He says, it's going.

00:06:08Marc:And I'm like, it's amazing.

00:06:09Marc:It comes, right?

00:06:10Marc:It does come.

00:06:11Marc:So he was ready.

00:06:13Marc:He was battle ready.

00:06:14Marc:He was ready to do comedy on that stage.

00:06:17Marc:And you saw it.

00:06:18Marc:You saw it in his eyes.

00:06:19Marc:You saw it in his disposition when he walked out there and took control of that place.

00:06:23Marc:Just slamming.

00:06:24Marc:He had full on comedian energy and was going for it.

00:06:28Marc:And he took control of that room and made it alive.

00:06:31Marc:And then all of a sudden, Will Smith is on stage.

00:06:35Marc:He smacks Chris Rock and then he's off stage.

00:06:38Marc:And in that moment, all that happened in terms of the discussion is the guy that has spent the last 30 years of his career managing his personality to be one of the nicest guys in show business and have everyone like him lost his fucking mind.

00:06:57Marc:That's what happened.

00:06:58Marc:I don't know what's going on with him, how far back it goes.

00:07:02Marc:I don't know if it's relative to a past thing with Chris.

00:07:05Marc:I don't know if it's relative to his marriage, to the pressure he's been under, to what he exposed about himself and his memoir.

00:07:10Marc:I don't know any.

00:07:11Marc:I don't know what caused it.

00:07:12Marc:But in that moment, that guy left reality, no longer had a context and decided impulsively and without much doubt.

00:07:22Marc:reflection to go on stage and hit appear on national television that's what happened a guy fucking snapped can happen to anybody i guess not great timing but it's got nothing to do with can you tell jokes anymore it's got nothing to do with whether it was virtuous or not it's got nothing to do with any of that a guy snapped and it was a bad time for it to happen and it was wrong

00:07:50Marc:That's it.

00:07:52Marc:But I'll tell you one thing.

00:07:54Marc:After working at the Comedy Store and watching Chris work at the Comedy Store and any of us who work at the Comedy Store, I could tell you one thing confidently that security at the Comedy Store in the room is better than security at the Oscars.

00:08:04Marc:Granted, no one expected Will Smith to get up and smack him.

00:08:10Marc:But still, what should have happened?

00:08:12Marc:Well, if you're going to make the fucking Oscars look like a nightclub, you better control it like a nightclub.

00:08:18Marc:Somebody should have walked him out, cooled him off, figured it out, made some decisions around it, how he was going to handle it.

00:08:26Marc:He went up there at the acceptance speech because he did win best actor.

00:08:31Marc:He knew he was going to win best actor.

00:08:34Marc:And that convoluted speech was he must have still been out of body.

00:08:37Marc:That guy did not.

00:08:39Marc:When he went up and hit Chris, he was not at the Oscars.

00:08:43Marc:I don't know where he was.

00:08:44Marc:All he knew was he was following a sort of red hot rage impulse.

00:08:50Marc:And I think by the time he got up there to accept that Oscar, he was still sort of out of body and he was still reckoning with I don't know what.

00:08:57Marc:It was almost like he wanted to apologize or wanted to be forgiven in that moment or was trying to explain away his actions.

00:09:07Marc:But it was convoluted and it was the most...

00:09:10Marc:profound display of self-sabotage I've ever seen.

00:09:14Marc:And I thought Chris as a comic and as a comic who has been accosted on stage handled it pretty fucking great.

00:09:24Marc:Pretty fucking great.

00:09:27Marc:I mean, in that moment, it was, there was a couple of things that happened that I found striking when I think he basically said, Will Smith just slapped the shit out of me.

00:09:35Marc:And it was almost as if he was speaking to himself and

00:09:39Marc:to bring him into the present.

00:09:41Marc:He went out there all jacked up, ready to go, jokes in the chamber, laying it out, took hold of the room quickly like a comic, and then this thing happens that he has no control over.

00:09:53Marc:And the one thing that you have control over when you're a comic is that fucking stage and what you're doing.

00:09:58Marc:That's your place.

00:10:00Marc:If there's one place you shouldn't be fucked with, it's on stage and at the fucking Oscars.

00:10:05Marc:And I was surprised that like, you know, you're just dealing with a room full of humans that whatever cachet or whatever gravitas or whatever sort of royalty these people live in, they're just people.

00:10:17Marc:And they acted like a room full of people that didn't know what the fuck to do, froze up and probably wanted out.

00:10:25Marc:Someone deal with this.

00:10:28Marc:But as a performer, I know exactly what that feels like when you you you spend your life as a comic trying to have control of the stage, trying to never be embarrassed, never be caught off guard, never be made the fool on stage.

00:10:47Marc:That's what you spend your whole career doing.

00:10:49Marc:That's what comedy is.

00:10:52Marc:So I assume that when Chris was smacked, like when I was tackled, the thing that you know right then as it's happening or a millisecond after is that I'm going to have to take the hit.

00:11:09Marc:I can't run.

00:11:10Marc:I can't cry.

00:11:11Marc:I can't make the fight go on longer.

00:11:14Marc:I'm not that guy.

00:11:16Marc:So I have to take this hit with a certain amount of dignity and defuse the situation.

00:11:26Marc:That's what you're thinking.

00:11:26Marc:Your first thought is like, I can't look like an asshole on stage.

00:11:31Marc:When you spend your life on stage,

00:11:33Marc:perfecting not looking like an asshole on stage when you're being made to look like an asshole by somebody's fucking insanity your reflex is how do I not look like an asshole and I think he did a great job with that

00:11:48Marc:The whole thing was disturbing, but there was no... The conversation around is it safe to tell jokes or was Will right or wrong are not real conversations.

00:11:59Marc:The entire thing was wrong, and it's still fine to tell jokes.

00:12:04Marc:And the risk of being a comic of a certain type, you know that danger is there, but you just don't really assume that in a room full of peers on a live televised night to honor people...

00:12:17Marc:That some guy you've known for 30 or 40 years is going to pop and lose his fucking mind for a few minutes.

00:12:30Marc:The other thing I've been talking about on stage, I've been thinking about certainly since Lynn's death, is that in relation to this situation that after four years of Trump and two years of a pandemic and just watching the social fabric kind of fray at the edges, watching societal collapse, feeling the terror of a plague and

00:12:55Marc:And just not really knowing whether the norms will hold anymore, either governmentally and now socially.

00:13:04Marc:It's one of those indications.

00:13:05Marc:In reality, Chris Rock should have felt more safe on that stage than he felt anywhere in his life.

00:13:12Marc:And what happened in that moment was painfully human on both sides.

00:13:18Marc:One out of control, one trying to handle and control the situation.

00:13:24Marc:And this can't be the way society goes.

00:13:30Marc:Look, everyone's at the end of their fucking rope.

00:13:33Marc:We're barely holding on.

00:13:34Marc:We don't know what's going to happen.

00:13:35Marc:We never do.

00:13:36Marc:But now more than ever, as things break down, no one gives a shit about the Oscars.

00:13:41Marc:Seriously, no one gives a shit.

00:13:44Marc:They don't even know if they want to do them anymore.

00:13:46Marc:The global impact of that Oscars is only because a meme is going to live on for infinity of Chris Rock being slapped by a guy who snapped under the pressure of this fucking world we live in.

00:14:01Marc:That's scary.

00:14:03Marc:And if there's anything we take away from it, I don't know where Chris went after that moment.

00:14:08Marc:He got back up there and did his job.

00:14:11Marc:I know a bunch of people surrounded Will.

00:14:14Marc:But you know, the comedian walks back into the darkness.

00:14:18Marc:The comedian works alone.

00:14:19Marc:No one's got you.

00:14:24Marc:No one's got you.

00:14:27Marc:You're all alone out there, man.

00:14:30Marc:And it's not getting any better.

00:14:31Marc:Scary times.

00:14:37Marc:So Guy Torrey, I never met this guy.

00:14:41Marc:And, you know, it was a it's a great documentary.

00:14:43Marc:This three part docuseries Fat Tuesday, the era of hip hop comedy.

00:14:47Marc:It's streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

00:14:49Marc:And I got a lesson.

00:14:50Marc:I got a lesson right now talking to Guy.

00:14:53Marc:And I got a lesson watching that about black comedy.

00:14:55Marc:And I'm wiser for it.

00:14:58Marc:This is me talking to Guy Torrey.

00:15:05Marc:Yeah, Best Western Plus, buddy.

00:15:11Marc:Man, I didn't know that exists.

00:15:13Marc:Sure.

00:15:13Marc:You know, it's no different than a Best Western.

00:15:16Marc:But you know what?

00:15:16Guest:I stayed in a Best Western in San Francisco one time.

00:15:19Guest:I was playing, what was it?

00:15:21Guest:Cobbs, I think.

00:15:23Guest:Yeah.

00:15:23Guest:And I stayed in a Best Western.

00:15:24Marc:It was a nice Best Western.

00:15:26Marc:Down by the wharf.

00:15:27Guest:Yeah, that was actually a nice Best Western.

00:15:30Marc:Yeah, sure.

00:15:30Marc:They're okay.

00:15:31Marc:But I mean, when you talk about- That's the first and only time I've ever stayed in the Best West.

00:15:34Marc:Yeah.

00:15:35Marc:Well, I mean, I stayed in a suite in New York that I didn't pay for.

00:15:39Marc:Oh, right.

00:15:39Marc:DreamWorks paid for it in a suite in New York at this place called the Crosby Hotel.

00:15:43Marc:Oh.

00:15:43Marc:I've never been in a nicer fucking hotel.

00:15:46Marc:Really?

00:15:46Marc:Yeah.

00:15:46Marc:And I was like, oh, this is what it is.

00:15:48Marc:Like, I didn't even know.

00:15:50Guest:I stayed in a pretty decent hotel.

00:15:52Guest:I think the nicest one I've stayed in was back in the day when Steve Sharippa.

00:15:57Marc:Oh, the Tropicana?

00:15:59Guest:No, it was the Riviera.

00:16:00Marc:Oh, the Riviera, right, okay.

00:16:02Guest:He put me in this suite that was in the movie Casino.

00:16:05Guest:The big suite.

00:16:06Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.

00:16:08Guest:He put me in that suite, but he put me in the suite at the wrong time because I was celibate at the time.

00:16:13Guest:You want a suite like that, you want to be able to, you know.

00:16:15Guest:Yeah, that's a long story.

00:16:17Guest:What?

00:16:19Marc:and celebrated, just going to drop that?

00:16:21Guest:I was, you know, I had been on tour for years.

00:16:26Guest:You know, Def Comedy Jam tour, the Kings of Comedy tour, all that stuff.

00:16:30Guest:And I was just like, man, I can't keep this, you know...

00:16:34Guest:I can't keep gambling like this.

00:16:36Guest:My dick is tired.

00:16:38Guest:So I started going to church and stuff, man.

00:16:41Guest:We got deep, deep.

00:16:42Guest:And then I said, you know what?

00:16:43Guest:If I'm ever going to find a wife, I can't be the wife just begging chicks from city to city.

00:16:49Guest:So I ended up... Did you find a wife?

00:16:51Guest:I did find a wife.

00:16:52Guest:I mean, I'm divorced now.

00:16:54Guest:Found and lost her.

00:16:56Guest:But no, it was cool.

00:16:58Guest:It was a nice hotel, huge.

00:17:01Guest:And, you know, wasn't getting any ass in it.

00:17:02Marc:Well, but the thing was with me, it's like, I don't want to pay for that shit.

00:17:06Marc:Right.

00:17:07Marc:I mean, that's the trick.

00:17:09Marc:Right.

00:17:09Marc:You know, it's like, I don't care how much money I have or don't have, but if you're going to spend, it was like a $3,000 suite.

00:17:15Marc:Right.

00:17:16Marc:If I'm going to spend that kind of money on one night, something better happen.

00:17:19Guest:Yeah, just because you have it don't mean you have to spend it.

00:17:21Marc:Yeah, I'm not that guy.

00:17:22Guest:Yeah.

00:17:23Guest:I get, you know, airline tickets are like that for me.

00:17:26Marc:Yeah, well, that's one thing I let myself have.

00:17:28Marc:I don't have no kids.

00:17:29Marc:I have no wife.

00:17:29Marc:I got some money saved.

00:17:30Marc:I'm going to fly first class.

00:17:31Guest:No, no, but yeah, true.

00:17:33Guest:Here's the thing.

00:17:34Guest:The way the tickets, you know, it's the logic to me.

00:17:38Guest:Like, I can fly to Miami one way for $99.

00:17:41Guest:Right?

00:17:41Guest:I can.

00:17:41Guest:I mean, you can, like, right now.

00:17:44Guest:Sure, yeah.

00:17:45Guest:And then one time I was coming back to L.A., I had to come back last minute for a gig, for an interview.

00:17:51Guest:Yeah.

00:17:52Guest:And the ticket was $1,300.

00:17:53Guest:Yeah.

00:17:54Guest:In coach.

00:17:55Guest:Yeah.

00:17:55Guest:I'm like, wait a minute, I just paid $99 to come here, and I got upgraded to first.

00:18:00Guest:Right.

00:18:01Guest:And then coming back at $1,300 in a middle seat in coach?

00:18:04Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:18:05Guest:And I didn't get my upgrade.

00:18:07Guest:I was miserable.

00:18:08Marc:No justice.

00:18:09Guest:Man, sitting between two people with bad breath trying to talk to each other, talking across me.

00:18:14Guest:Yeah.

00:18:15Guest:I'm caught in a crossfire.

00:18:16Guest:So it was like, yo.

00:18:18Guest:So I had the money.

00:18:20Guest:But logically- It wasn't right.

00:18:21Guest:It wasn't right.

00:18:22Marc:It wasn't right.

00:18:23Marc:I know you definitely feel that.

00:18:24Marc:Like I used to be American all the time.

00:18:26Marc:Now Delta- That's what I am now.

00:18:27Marc:Yeah, but it's good.

00:18:28Marc:It's a nice first class, especially the coast to coast ones, right?

00:18:31Marc:That's 777.

00:18:32Marc:You got your own apartment on the plane.

00:18:33Guest:I got like nine blankets and 10 pillows from 777.

00:18:37Marc:Yeah.

00:18:38Marc:But like the Delta is like half the price.

00:18:41Marc:It's okay.

00:18:42Marc:I mean, not for the coast to coast.

00:18:43Marc:I'll do the American coast to coast.

00:18:45Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:18:46Guest:Delta, the flight attendants are, you know, no offense to Americans, but the flight attendants on Delta are a little bit more pleasing to the eye.

00:18:52Guest:That's what the Bible says.

00:18:53Guest:A little bit more fair to the eye.

00:18:55Marc:You've made notes on that?

00:18:58Marc:Yes.

00:18:58Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:18:59Guest:Yeah, because if you're going to be on a plane for hours, you want something to look at.

00:19:02Guest:And no offense to American Airlines flight attendants.

00:19:06Guest:Some of them are lovely, but some of them have been there since the Wright brothers.

00:19:10Marc:I know.

00:19:10Marc:They've been there for a while.

00:19:11Marc:Yeah.

00:19:13Guest:God bless them.

00:19:13Marc:Yeah.

00:19:14Marc:Yeah.

00:19:14Marc:So, look, I'll be honest with you.

00:19:15Marc:Like, I watched the whole doc, right?

00:19:18Marc:Oh, thank you, man.

00:19:19Marc:And, you know- Fat Tuesdays, the era of hip-hop comedies.

00:19:22Marc:Yes.

00:19:23Marc:Yeah.

00:19:23Marc:But, like, the Fat Tuesdays, the era of hip-hop comedies.

00:19:25Marc:But I'm embarrassed because, you know, I've been talking to comics and I've been a comic and I was a doorman at the fucking comedy store in 1986 or 7.

00:19:32Marc:Wow.

00:19:34Marc:And I've been talking to people for years on this thing.

00:19:38Marc:I didn't know any of that shit.

00:19:40Yeah.

00:19:41Marc:The comedy store was a little dark secret.

00:19:45Marc:But even the history of modern black comedy.

00:19:48Marc:I didn't have a perspective on it.

00:19:51Marc:I knew just from being in comedy that there was a different world.

00:19:56Marc:But I didn't know what that world was and who was in it.

00:19:58Marc:I knew about Robin Harris, but I couldn't contextualize him.

00:20:02Marc:When the record came out, Bebe's Kids,

00:20:05Marc:Yeah, I mean, I knew about him and I knew that he was great, but I didn't have any foundation for him because no one did unless you were in that world, unless you were at the Comedy Act Theater, you're not going to, or Black, you're not going to know what that guy comes from or what makes him great.

00:20:21Marc:Right.

00:20:21Marc:So it was a real education to me.

00:20:23Marc:And how long have you been working on this?

00:20:27Guest:13 years.

00:20:28Guest:So nine years underground, doing it myself, just collecting interviews and collecting research and things like that.

00:20:37Guest:Then it was three to four years ago I took it to my agency, Innovative Artists.

00:20:41Guest:You had 10 years of work already?

00:20:43Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:45Guest:On and off.

00:20:45Guest:You know, we go on the road.

00:20:46Guest:You put it down.

00:20:47Guest:Sure, sure.

00:20:48Guest:You pick it back up.

00:20:49Guest:You get busy.

00:20:49Guest:You put it down.

00:20:50Marc:But it's tight, man.

00:20:50Marc:It's tight.

00:20:51Marc:Thank you.

00:20:52Marc:Yeah.

00:20:52Guest:It was a great team, man.

00:20:54Guest:Those original productions and a gram net, Kelsey Grammar's company, man, really embraced it.

00:20:58Guest:And then once we got Reggie Hudlin on board, well, actually, we got Amazon on board first.

00:21:02Guest:Yeah.

00:21:03Guest:And then once we added Reggie Hudlin, who directed it, man, who directed, my God, everything.

00:21:07Guest:Yeah.

00:21:07Guest:I think he directed The Last Supper.

00:21:09Guest:He directed it?

00:21:10Guest:He directed it, Reggie Hudlin.

00:21:11Guest:He directed House Party, Boomerang, Black Godfather.

00:21:14Guest:So that guy directed this?

00:21:16Guest:Reggie Hudlin, yes.

00:21:17Guest:But you had all this stuff that you shot, though, right?

00:21:19Guest:Yeah, I had a lot of stuff that I shot.

00:21:20Guest:A friend of mine who was an up-and-coming director, Bishop Moore, we were doing interviews.

00:21:23Guest:I had vintage footage from... What was the idea?

00:21:26Guest:You know, it was a comedian named Michael Blackson.

00:21:29Guest:We were on a flight one time going to a gig and he was talking about how he missed Fat Tuesdays.

00:21:33Guest:He was talking about how these young comics need to know, you know, about this night.

00:21:38Guest:How many years?

00:21:38Marc:What was the years?

00:21:40Marc:From 95 to 05.

00:21:41Marc:See, that's so funny, because I remember, because I got back to L.A., I was a doorman in 86, 87, and then I went and did my own thing, because I got all fucked up on drugs, and I left.

00:21:52Marc:And for years, I didn't come back.

00:21:53Marc:I was in and out, in and out.

00:21:55Marc:And I come back in 2002, and I'm going over there, and Tommy's running the joint.

00:21:59Marc:Right, right, right, right.

00:22:00Marc:But I just remember the place was dead, but on Tuesday nights, he'd be like, what the fuck is going on?

00:22:05Yeah.

00:22:07Marc:What happened?

00:22:08Marc:You'd be in the OR for like in the original room for 12 people and you just hear from down the hall like, ah!

00:22:13Marc:And it just, but I knew looking down that hall, I'm like, I don't think that's for me.

00:22:17Marc:It was a big black hole.

00:22:18Marc:Yeah, right.

00:22:19Marc:I was like, I don't think I'm supposed to go in there.

00:22:20Marc:Am I supposed to go in there?

00:22:21Marc:Yeah, man.

00:22:22Marc:Yeah, man.

00:22:23Guest:And Peter Shore says hello, man.

00:22:25Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:25Guest:Lovely, lovely guy.

00:22:26Guest:Speaks highly of him.

00:22:26Guest:Yeah, he's a great guy.

00:22:27Guest:And I was like, let me see what I have.

00:22:28Guest:So I went, you know, and looked at old VHS tapes and stuff that I had and

00:22:32Guest:I started interviewing people with a friend of mine, Bishop Moore, and we started just getting all these stories.

00:22:38Guest:I didn't know how important Fat Tuesdays was to certain people.

00:22:41Guest:Yeah.

00:22:41Guest:And the things that went on, you know, in the back rooms or on the sidewalk or in the VIP booths, you know, my staff getting finger banged.

00:22:49Guest:Yeah.

00:22:49Guest:I didn't know any of that stuff was going on.

00:22:51Marc:How'd you go, like, now what's the director's name again?

00:22:55Marc:Reginald Hudlin.

00:22:56Marc:Reginald Hudlin.

00:22:58Marc:Because in order to put the whole thing in context, it couldn't just be about Fat Tuesdays at the Comedy Store.

00:23:04Marc:So you had to go back and talk about Comedy Act Theater, right?

00:23:08Guest:Well, here's the thing.

00:23:09Guest:Before I even got to that part, I was already laying the groundwork.

00:23:13Guest:We got to tell the history of how Fat Tuesdays came about, but why it was important.

00:23:18Guest:In fact, too, this was important because there weren't opportunities for black comedians a whole lot in mainstream clubs.

00:23:25Guest:Right.

00:23:25Guest:And so I had to lay the groundwork.

00:23:27Guest:I even went as far back as the Chitlin circuit, even to slavery.

00:23:31Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:23:31Guest:To really do the research.

00:23:32Guest:That was a tough gig.

00:23:33Guest:Oh, man.

00:23:34Guest:Right, right.

00:23:34Guest:But, you know, slaves used to, you know, tell jokes to masters to keep getting their ass whooped.

00:23:39Guest:Yeah.

00:23:39Guest:And if they were funny enough, the slave masters would take them to another plantation to perform.

00:23:43Guest:So, you know, niggas been on tour for a long time.

00:23:46Yeah.

00:23:46Guest:We've been on tour.

00:23:49Marc:I'm doing a joke right now about, I say, you know there were some funny fuckers in Auschwitz.

00:23:53Marc:I mean, it's like, it's all Jews.

00:23:55Marc:You can tell me there's not one guy where they're like, we gotta go watch that game.

00:23:58Guest:Right, exactly.

00:23:58Guest:But see, laughter purifies the air.

00:24:00Guest:Yeah.

00:24:00Guest:And when you're going through hardships or going through hard times and you're oppressed, this comedy is gonna come out of that and you're gonna make somebody laugh.

00:24:07Guest:So in that situation and in slavery,

00:24:10Guest:And with us, period, comedians, we purify the air.

00:24:14Guest:We're dark individuals on the inside.

00:24:16Guest:We do comedy to bring light to our dark areas.

00:24:19Guest:So this story of Fat Tuesdays had to be laid out correctly.

00:24:22Guest:So you can understand why this night was important, why having it on Sunset was important, why having it at the world-famous comedy store was important.

00:24:30Guest:And the world-famous comedy store is the club that took all the misfits anyway.

00:24:34Guest:It took all the comedians that nobody else wanted.

00:24:36Guest:So here's these black comedians that no other club wanted.

00:24:40Marc:The perfect fit was the Comedy Store.

00:24:42Marc:But walk me through it.

00:24:42Marc:So how do you, like, your brother, Joe.

00:24:46Marc:Joe Torrey.

00:24:47Marc:Joe.

00:24:48Marc:Like, he was out here doing comedy.

00:24:50Marc:And he was connected with, he was like the second generation Comedy Act Theater, right?

00:24:54Marc:He took over.

00:24:55Marc:Yes, after Robert Harris passed away.

00:24:56Marc:Did you spend time in that situation?

00:24:58Marc:Did you go out to the Comedy Act Theater when you were a kid?

00:25:00Guest:No, no, no, no.

00:25:01Guest:I grew up in St.

00:25:02Guest:Louis.

00:25:02Guest:I know.

00:25:03Guest:So I moved here in 1992.

00:25:04Guest:When I moved here in 1992, this place that...

00:25:08Guest:you know, Joe had always described.

00:25:10Guest:Where was it?

00:25:11Guest:In the Leimert Park on 40, like 34, 43rd Crenshaw.

00:25:15Marc:So this was a, this was the first reaction to sort of black comics not having the stage time.

00:25:22Marc:Right.

00:25:22Marc:In the main, because I mean, Red Foxx back in the day had a club.

00:25:25Marc:Right.

00:25:26Marc:But that wasn't necessarily a black comedy club.

00:25:27Marc:It probably was, kind of.

00:25:28Marc:Yeah, it probably was.

00:25:29Marc:Yeah.

00:25:30Marc:But like, so the idea was in contemporary comedy, you got all these white guys doing their thing.

00:25:36Marc:Mainstream clubs.

00:25:37Marc:Mainstream clubs, but we need a space.

00:25:39Marc:Right.

00:25:39Marc:Now, there was always a black comedy circuit, but it seems like here- The Chitlin circuit, though.

00:25:43Marc:Yeah.

00:25:43Guest:It was an old, you know, in clubs where you have one or two comics go up, you know, before a band or after a band.

00:25:50Marc:Yeah.

00:25:50Guest:You know, it was never really a really a full fledged black owned comedy club until probably Red Fox, but the Comedy Act Theater with Michael Williams started.

00:25:58Marc:Right, so that whole thing, the Comedy Act Theater, that was the first sort of community effort on a comedic basis to put black comedy on the map in this town.

00:26:07Marc:Right.

00:26:07Marc:To get opportunities and also to have a room to work.

00:26:10Guest:And maybe the only one in the country, the first one in the country.

00:26:12Guest:I would guess that's true.

00:26:14Guest:So you would see... Damon Wayans...

00:26:17Guest:And Robert Townsend.

00:26:19Guest:And Robin Harris.

00:26:21Guest:And Sinbad.

00:26:23Guest:All those guys came to the Comedy Act Theater.

00:26:25Guest:And you see the black stars came there.

00:26:27Guest:If they wanted to see black comedy, Michael Jordan was stopped through.

00:26:30Guest:Dominique Wilkins.

00:26:31Guest:Rest in peace, Moses Malone.

00:26:33Guest:So the stars would come to South Central to the Comedy Act Theater to see comedians that they can identify with.

00:26:38Guest:stories that they can relate to right and robin harris was the host he was he was he was he was the guy he was the guy because he had he got tired of waiting for spots at the comedy store and not being able to go up right and that's when he told marshall warfield uh who's a legend as well i'm going home that's what i'm meaning i'm going to the hood i can't keep coming here waiting for hours and not get stage time so i'm going home and at the time michael williams was looking for a host to host to host and he's a producer

00:27:07Guest:He created the Comedy Act Theater.

00:27:09Marc:Right.

00:27:09Marc:What was his job?

00:27:10Marc:What did he do before?

00:27:11Guest:I don't know what he did before, actually.

00:27:13Guest:I know he used to come to the comedy store, and he didn't see a lot of black comedians, so he was like, I'm going to start my own club.

00:27:19Guest:But he wanted Paul Mooney first.

00:27:21Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:27:21Guest:He wanted Paul Mooney to host the room.

00:27:24Guest:I can't see Paul Mooney as a host.

00:27:25Guest:Well, Paul Mooney goes, oh, no, I'm not doing that nigga shit.

00:27:31Guest:He said, you call Robin.

00:27:32Guest:Call Robin.

00:27:33Marc:Call Robin.

00:27:34Marc:Could you see Mooney hosting, though?

00:27:36Marc:No, because he's such a... He's a singular thing.

00:27:38Marc:Yeah.

00:27:39Marc:He's not going to play the game.

00:27:40Marc:Right, right.

00:27:41Marc:You know what I mean?

00:27:42Marc:And where did Robin come from?

00:27:44Guest:Did you know Robin?

00:27:45Guest:I never met Robin.

00:27:46Guest:Here's the thing.

00:27:46Guest:Me living in St.

00:27:47Guest:Louis, my brother Joe was already out here doing stand-up.

00:27:50Guest:Right.

00:27:50Guest:And Robin Harris took Joe and Martin Lawrence under his wing.

00:27:54Guest:Yeah.

00:27:54Guest:And a few other comedians.

00:27:56Guest:And Ricky Harris, rest in peace.

00:27:58Guest:What happened to that guy?

00:27:59Marc:How'd he die?

00:27:59Marc:Ricky Harris?

00:28:00Guest:Yeah.

00:28:00Guest:Heart attack.

00:28:01Marc:Because I remember him when... It was so funny, man, because back in, like, 95, like, I did the Aspen comedy.

00:28:09Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:28:09Marc:And they had brought all those black dudes out.

00:28:11Marc:Yeah.

00:28:11Marc:And it was, like, Bernie and Cedric and Ricky Harris was there.

00:28:14Marc:And you didn't see those guys in the snow?

00:28:16Marc:That was something...

00:28:18Marc:Right.

00:28:18Marc:Because black people don't ski.

00:28:20Guest:We will buy the outfit.

00:28:22Guest:We're spending $1,000 on a Gucci or a Fendi ski outfit and won't touch one damn slope.

00:28:28Guest:But we look good.

00:28:29Guest:We got our brand new skis, our brand new outfit, and we ain't touching it.

00:28:33Guest:Nothing.

00:28:34Guest:So Robin takes those cats, Martin and your brother.

00:28:38Guest:And so I was in St.

00:28:39Guest:Louis.

00:28:39Marc:But you weren't doing comedy yet, right?

00:28:41Guest:No, I went to a Luther Vandross concert in St.

00:28:44Guest:Louis.

00:28:45Guest:Louis Dix opened up.

00:28:46Guest:Comedian Louis Dix opened up.

00:28:48Guest:I don't know that guy.

00:28:48Guest:And he was real tight with Cosby.

00:28:50Guest:He used to be all Cosby, warm up for all Cosby shows and things like that.

00:28:54Guest:Very funny guy.

00:28:55Guest:So...

00:28:56Guest:They advertise Robin Harris is coming to the Fabulous Fox in St.

00:29:00Guest:Louis.

00:29:01Guest:Yeah, a big place.

00:29:02Guest:And I called my brother, Joe.

00:29:03Guest:I said, hey, man, I'm going to get this ticket to see this cat named Robin Harris.

00:29:06Guest:He said, oh, no, don't get tickets.

00:29:07Guest:That's my guy.

00:29:08Guest:I'll get you tickets.

00:29:09Guest:I said, you sure?

00:29:10Guest:He said, no, I'll get you tickets.

00:29:11Guest:So about three weeks passed.

00:29:13Guest:And my brother calls me and said, hey, did you get those tickets?

00:29:15Guest:He said, no, he died.

00:29:17Guest:I said, come on, man.

00:29:18Guest:If you can't get the tickets, just say you can't get the fucking tickets.

00:29:21Guest:Don't wish death on somebody.

00:29:22Guest:And my brother like, no, no, no, he died.

00:29:24Guest:So I felt like I knew Robin because all the stories that I heard from my brother.

00:29:28Guest:I worked on the Martin Lawrence show as a production assistant.

00:29:30Guest:All the stories Martin would tell about Robin.

00:29:32Guest:So all the stories about Robin Harris, I felt like I knew him, but I never got a chance to know him.

00:29:35Marc:So Robin Harris, I mean, the thing that made him amazing and sort of defined, you know, what your brother did and what you did was that there was a way to host a situation.

00:29:44Marc:Right.

00:29:45Marc:Right.

00:29:45Marc:That that that a black comedy environment had to be sort of managed with a firm.

00:29:52Marc:Yes.

00:29:53Marc:Hand.

00:29:54Guest:Yes.

00:29:54Guest:Yes, and Michael Williams had a strong hand who owned it, and Robert Harris was well-respected and ran that room.

00:29:59Guest:Right, he'd get into the crowd.

00:30:01Marc:Yes.

00:30:01Marc:And he would just walk around shitting on everybody, just busting everybody.

00:30:05Marc:And they loved it.

00:30:06Marc:Right.

00:30:07Marc:And no one would fuck with him.

00:30:08Marc:No.

00:30:09Marc:And then you set the stage, and you're like, all right, now we're going to have a show, but don't fuck with anybody.

00:30:13Marc:Right, right.

00:30:14Guest:And you set the tone, and that's how a comedy club should be.

00:30:16Guest:You shouldn't have hecklers.

00:30:17Guest:I mean, everybody can't handle hecklers.

00:30:19Guest:I can't.

00:30:20Guest:But when you have a host... I can do it all right.

00:30:22Guest:When you have a strong host that sets that tone and sets that precedence, like a Robin Harris, and that's what I learned to do with Fat Tuesdays.

00:30:29Marc:But you do it different.

00:30:30Marc:Each one of you guys do it different in terms of you, Robin, Martin, your brother, and you, you all do it different.

00:30:37Marc:Right.

00:30:38Marc:You know what I mean?

00:30:38Marc:Right.

00:30:39Marc:There's something a little different.

00:30:40Marc:You're nice.

00:30:41Marc:You know what I mean?

00:30:43Marc:And Martin can go pretty deep and pretty weird.

00:30:49Marc:But he's not nice, but he's charming.

00:30:51Marc:Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:30:55Marc:But Robin, so that original crew was Townsend and Damon.

00:30:59Marc:Damon and Sinbad.

00:31:00Marc:But they were young then.

00:31:01Marc:They were young, yes.

00:31:02Guest:And even Kenan.

00:31:04Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, when he was still doing comedy.

00:31:06Guest:Yeah, they were all comedy act theater guys, and Myra Jay, and like Marsha Warfield.

00:31:11Guest:I mean, they played the comedy act theater.

00:31:12Marc:And Marsha did the store, too.

00:31:14Guest:She did the store, too, yes.

00:31:15Marc:Yeah, but like they just weren't, it wasn't happening.

00:31:18Marc:Even with, I think it was a really interesting point in terms of the history of comedy, this idea that like, you know, Pryor was this amazing.

00:31:23Marc:Right.

00:31:24Marc:And he was, but the thing was is that there was a whole world of black comedy going on.

00:31:28Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:31:29Marc:That you don't know about.

00:31:30Marc:And I'm like, now I'm just an excited white guy going, man, why didn't anybody tell me about this?

00:31:35Guest:It's funny because when I took it to GramNet, Kelsey Grammer's production company, Kelsey was like, he said the same thing you said.

00:31:42Guest:He said, I'm embarrassed that I never knew about this night.

00:31:44Guest:Why isn't this story, why hasn't this story been told already?

00:31:49Guest:That's right.

00:31:50Marc:That's right.

00:31:51Guest:And I said, because I've been sitting on it.

00:31:53Yeah.

00:31:54Marc:Well, it has to be contextualized, you know what I mean?

00:31:56Marc:And it's sort of like, you know what, sadly, and I was going to mention this, but I didn't know how to frame it, but I remember hearing about the store in those years.

00:32:06Marc:Right.

00:32:07Marc:Because it was dying.

00:32:09Marc:I don't know why, but it was.

00:32:11Marc:And I remember somebody telling me, it's like, yeah, the gangs took over.

00:32:15Marc:And it's like, that's not what happened.

00:32:17Guest:I think I know what they're talking about, though.

00:32:18Guest:There was a night, Eddie Griffin attempted an urban night before Fat Tuesdays, for the record.

00:32:23Guest:Yeah.

00:32:24Guest:It did a couple of months, and I think what ended it was, from what I understand, it was a fight one night.

00:32:29Guest:Yeah.

00:32:29Guest:I think his was on a Monday night.

00:32:31Guest:Yeah.

00:32:31Guest:And it was a fight.

00:32:32Guest:Yeah.

00:32:32Guest:And Tupac was in there, and Tretch from Naughty by Nature was there, and a fight broke out, and they were beating the guy up.

00:32:40Guest:Yeah.

00:32:40Guest:I mean, a fight broke out, and somebody approached them, and they started the fight.

00:32:44Guest:Right.

00:32:44Guest:And Tress used to wear that big chain, not like a gold chain, but the chain that you lock your fence up with.

00:32:49Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:32:50Guest:He used to wear that around his neck.

00:32:51Guest:And I just heard he was beating the shit out of somebody.

00:32:54Guest:And I think that, so when they said the gangs took over, I think it was that one night.

00:33:00Guest:And it kind of scared Mitzi for a while.

00:33:03Marc:But I think that sadly, you know, my take on it is it just meant black people.

00:33:08Guest:Well, yeah.

00:33:10Guest:Do you know what I mean?

00:33:11Guest:They didn't want to say niggas to go.

00:33:12Guest:They said gangsta go.

00:33:13Marc:Exactly.

00:33:13Guest:That's the polite way of saying niggas.

00:33:17Guest:Or I like how now they say, oh, that's so ghetto.

00:33:19Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:33:20Guest:You really called me a nigga.

00:33:22Marc:Urban.

00:33:23Marc:So urban.

00:33:24Marc:Yeah.

00:33:24Marc:But I knew that there was a dark time in terms of the student.

00:33:28Marc:In what ways it was.

00:33:29Marc:Yeah, yeah, right.

00:33:30Marc:But even when I was there in 2002, it was like, you know, I knew that you, that the black people were having fun down the hall.

00:33:37Yeah.

00:33:38Marc:There's a picnic going on.

00:33:39Marc:There's a family reunion going on down the hall.

00:33:41Guest:It's true.

00:33:42Guest:But that's what it felt like.

00:33:43Marc:Yeah.

00:33:44Marc:So Robin dies.

00:33:45Guest:Right.

00:33:46Guest:And then your brother takes over?

00:33:47Guest:Robin dies.

00:33:47Guest:My brother takes over.

00:33:48Guest:At the Comedy Act Theater.

00:33:50Guest:At the Comedy Act Theater.

00:33:51Guest:It lost a little bit of its luster.

00:33:52Guest:And then the riots happen.

00:33:54Marc:So your brother, how long did it before it happened?

00:33:57Guest:It was maybe only a few months.

00:33:59Marc:What year was that?

00:33:59Guest:92.

00:34:00Marc:Right.

00:34:01Guest:And Robin passed, I think, in 90, I want to say.

00:34:04Marc:So like in the doc, you really presented as like, we were about to happen.

00:34:08Marc:Everybody was about to happen.

00:34:09Marc:Robin was about to happen.

00:34:11Marc:The whole scene was about to happen.

00:34:13Marc:And then, you know, boom, that verdict comes down and the place is on fire.

00:34:17Marc:Right.

00:34:17Marc:And that was just the tipping point.

00:34:18Guest:Because you realize at the time, man, L.A.

00:34:20Guest:was divided.

00:34:20Guest:The country was divided.

00:34:21Guest:Because in the early 90s, the 90s part- Thank God that's over.

00:34:24Guest:Right.

00:34:25Guest:Am I right?

00:34:27Guest:You're more divided now than ever.

00:34:28Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:34:30Guest:But you had the Rodney King trial.

00:34:32Guest:You had Michael Jackson trial, which divided black people and white people.

00:34:35Guest:Yeah.

00:34:36Guest:You had the-

00:34:37Guest:OJ trial to divide white people.

00:34:39Guest:So you had all that tension in L.A.

00:34:41Guest:And like I said, black people have been oppressed for a long time and we need to laugh the most.

00:34:48Guest:Yeah.

00:34:48Guest:You know, we need to laugh the most.

00:34:50Guest:So that's why you see these nights, these urban nights flourish, because we got we're dealing with, you know, shit.

00:34:58Guest:And we come out to laugh, to either laugh about it or get our mind off of it.

00:35:03Marc:Right.

00:35:03Marc:And I think it was interesting after like everything burned down that literally, you know, there was nothing going on down there.

00:35:10Marc:Nothing.

00:35:11Marc:And there was still a community of black comics.

00:35:14Marc:Right.

00:35:15Marc:So how long and what happened in the interim after the riots did somebody, I don't know, was it you or...

00:35:22Guest:Well, there were a few rooms still going on, like around the corner from the Comedy Act Theater with Maverick's Flat.

00:35:26Guest:I mean, the Comedy Act Theater was Maverick's Flat.

00:35:28Guest:What about Comedy Union?

00:35:29Marc:When did that happen?

00:35:30Marc:Comedy Union came way later.

00:35:31Marc:What's that guy's name?

00:35:31Marc:He was in the dark.

00:35:32Guest:Inns Mitchell.

00:35:33Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:35:33Marc:I played that place a couple of times.

00:35:35Marc:Yeah.

00:35:36Guest:That came way later.

00:35:37Marc:Way later.

00:35:37Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:35:37Guest:Because he was actually, when I was doing Fat Tuesdays at the Comedy Store, he was actually one of the managers at the Comedy Store.

00:35:43Guest:Okay.

00:35:43Guest:Oh, really?

00:35:44Guest:And he ended up leaving and taking over.

00:35:46Guest:The Common Union used to be called Mixed Nuts.

00:35:48Marc:Yeah.

00:35:49Guest:So he took over and changed it to the Common Union, so he started that club.

00:35:52Marc:Okay, so you're saying after the riots, there was still some shit going on?

00:35:55Guest:There was still a few things, like the Funhouse, Mabbitt Flat, right around the corner on Crenshaw.

00:35:58Marc:Was that just a comedy club?

00:35:59Guest:It was a comedy night.

00:36:00Guest:It was a club, and we did comedy on Saturday.

00:36:02Marc:And who was going there?

00:36:04Guest:Same people?

00:36:04Marc:You know who was hosting that?

00:36:05Marc:Who?

00:36:05Guest:It was J. Anthony Brown.

00:36:06Marc:Okay.

00:36:07Guest:Very, very funny comedian.

00:36:08Guest:He was hosting that.

00:36:09Guest:And then at Ladera, in Ladera, the townhouse was another night for comedy.

00:36:14Guest:So they didn't have clubs.

00:36:15Guest:They had clubs that did comedy nights.

00:36:17Guest:And it's cool, but there's nothing like a full-fledged, full-time comedy club.

00:36:23Guest:It just sets a different tone and a different energy.

00:36:26Marc:You mean having the night at a club, at a real comedy club.

00:36:28Marc:At a real comedy club.

00:36:29Marc:Right.

00:36:29Guest:it's a little bit more respectable not that these nights aren't important at these at these comedies sure you know they're very important yeah but when you got a full-fledged club especially on sunset where white people aren't scared to come and scout talent yeah that's better well what's your evolution when do you come out so so you you wanted to see robin harris in st louis when do you decide to do comedy

00:36:48Guest:When I got here in 92, I was always a class clown and campus clown.

00:36:51Marc:But you knew your brother was like kind of a big deal, right?

00:36:54Marc:Right, right.

00:36:54Marc:So when, you know, what do you, you just decided after college or whenever?

00:36:59Marc:Well, when I got kicked out of college.

00:37:01Marc:For being a comedian?

00:37:02Guest:Not only kicked, well, basically, yes, and hitting a cop.

00:37:05Guest:Yeah.

00:37:05Guest:But anyway, that's a whole other story.

00:37:07Guest:Knocked his ass out, though.

00:37:08Guest:Yeah.

00:37:09Marc:But.

00:37:09Marc:What is that story?

00:37:11Guest:I was in college, and I was at a party in the university center for the students, and two fraternities started fighting, Omega Psi Phi and Blue Phi, Sigmas.

00:37:28Guest:So they started fighting, and it was like a free fall, like a barroom brawl, like the old Western movie.

00:37:32Guest:Everybody was just punching everybody.

00:37:34Guest:And somebody grabbed me from behind.

00:37:35Guest:I turned around and just swung.

00:37:37Guest:And it was a cop.

00:37:38Guest:Yeah.

00:37:38Guest:And that was it.

00:37:39Guest:And I didn't know it was a cop when I just turned around and started swinging.

00:37:42Guest:Yeah.

00:37:43Guest:And it happened to be a cop.

00:37:44Guest:And they whooped my ass and locked me up.

00:37:46Guest:Yeah.

00:37:46Guest:And not only did I get kicked out the cops, I got kicked out the whole town.

00:37:50Guest:I couldn't come within 100 miles of the town.

00:37:52Guest:What town was that?

00:37:53Guest:I only lived 109 miles out of town.

00:37:56Guest:It was 109 miles out of St.

00:37:58Guest:Louis.

00:37:58Guest:It's Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

00:38:01Guest:So I moved to LA in 92, man.

00:38:04Guest:And two weeks later, I got on stage.

00:38:08Guest:Where?

00:38:08Guest:Comedy Act Theater.

00:38:10Guest:And your brother was hosting?

00:38:12Guest:He wasn't hosting.

00:38:12Guest:He was already done hosting and on the Def Comedy Jam tour at that point.

00:38:17Marc:Oh, okay.

00:38:18Marc:Right.

00:38:18Marc:So when did Deaf Comedy Jam start?

00:38:20Marc:It started early 92.

00:38:22Marc:Because that's in the movie.

00:38:23Marc:Russell Simmons.

00:38:24Marc:So that grew out of the Comedy Act Theater.

00:38:27Guest:Pretty much.

00:38:27Guest:The Comedy Act Theater and also clubs on the East Coast in New York.

00:38:31Guest:The Peppermint was in Jersey.

00:38:33Guest:That was a hot room.

00:38:34Guest:They had another one called, I think it was called Uptown in New York that inspired Deaf Comedy Jam.

00:38:41Marc:Was it a live tour before it was a TV show?

00:38:44Marc:No, no, no.

00:38:45Marc:So 92 is when Deaf Comedy Jam started.

00:38:47Marc:Right.

00:38:48Marc:On TV.

00:38:49Marc:Right.

00:38:50Marc:And who hosted that?

00:38:51Guest:91, 92.

00:38:52Guest:Martin Lawrence was host.

00:38:53Guest:At the beginning, all the way through?

00:38:54Guest:Because it was supposed to have been Robin Harris.

00:38:57Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:38:57Guest:And Robin Harris passed away.

00:38:58Guest:What was the thing that Talent hosted?

00:39:00Guest:Talent had a night at the Boston.

00:39:03Guest:Comedy Club, yeah.

00:39:04Guest:I remember that guy, but I thought he was on TV too, BET.

00:39:07Guest:He toured with us on Def Comedy Jam after I did Def Jam, but he did Def Jam as well.

00:39:11Guest:And Def Jam ran forever.

00:39:13Guest:Def Jam ran forever, man.

00:39:14Marc:All right, so your brother's out on tour.

00:39:16Marc:You come in and you did the Comedy Act Theater.

00:39:19Marc:Who was hosting the night you first did comedy?

00:39:21Guest:You know what?

00:39:22Guest:I don't even remember.

00:39:23Guest:Really?

00:39:23Guest:I really don't.

00:39:24Guest:It was a Thursday night.

00:39:25Guest:But you'd never done it before and you just went up there?

00:39:27Guest:I had done it the night before in a club where Ricky Harris was hosting, my brother was headlining, and it was going to be my first time on stage.

00:39:37Guest:Yeah.

00:39:40Guest:I was in a limo.

00:39:41Guest:They sent a limo for our brother to go to this club in Mount Clair.

00:39:44Guest:It was Claremont or Mount Clair, one of them.

00:39:46Guest:And I'm in a limo talking shit.

00:39:48Guest:I'm drinking rum and coke, and I'm going to go on this stage, and I'm going to tear this motherfucker up.

00:39:52Guest:I'm going to get a standing ovation.

00:39:55Guest:I am going to be in the Hall of Fame after this fucking first set.

00:39:59Guest:I died the death of a thousand damn dogs.

00:40:01Guest:I bombed so fucking bad.

00:40:05Guest:He thought I was in Baghdad.

00:40:06Guest:I'm telling you.

00:40:08Guest:It was horrible.

00:40:10Guest:And Ricky Harris went on stage after me and tore my ass up for 10 minutes.

00:40:15Guest:He did a bit.

00:40:17Guest:He was just like, man, you saw him in the car.

00:40:19Guest:He was a Rottweiler.

00:40:20Guest:I'm going to tear him up.

00:40:22Guest:Stay on ovation.

00:40:23Guest:Then he said, he left the stage like a cat.

00:40:26Guest:Yeah.

00:40:26Guest:You know, yeah.

00:40:28Guest:I mean, he did 10 minutes on me, strong.

00:40:31Guest:Yeah.

00:40:31Guest:But I went up the next night and did a little better.

00:40:33Guest:I went up the next night at the Comedy Act Theater, and I just started going to Baby Night after that.

00:40:37Marc:Yeah.

00:40:38Marc:Now, I know part of the subtext of the three episodes of the doc is your relationship with Joe.

00:40:43Marc:Yes.

00:40:44Marc:And it's strained and weird.

00:40:46Marc:Yes.

00:40:47Marc:And even at the end, I don't feel like it's any better, to be honest with you.

00:40:52Marc:Were you a psychic?

00:40:55Guest:No.

00:40:56Guest:It's not.

00:40:57Guest:I mean, you know, we have our moments.

00:41:00Guest:You know, we kind of came together as he was shooting the doc.

00:41:04Marc:Yeah.

00:41:04Guest:You know, because you don't realize that, you know, it's stupid.

00:41:07Guest:But then, you know, Joe's Joe.

00:41:10Marc:Everyone goes back to their corner.

00:41:11Guest:Yeah.

00:41:11Guest:Everybody's going back to their corner.

00:41:12Guest:It's good for a little while.

00:41:13Marc:Yeah.

00:41:14Marc:Right.

00:41:15Guest:And then he appears again.

00:41:18Guest:Yeah.

00:41:19Guest:And then we're back to being estranged.

00:41:22Marc:And you're both doing comedy still.

00:41:24Guest:Yeah.

00:41:24Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:41:25Marc:But it's kind of wild.

00:41:26Marc:You didn't have to do no open mics.

00:41:27Marc:I did.

00:41:28Marc:Oh, okay.

00:41:29Guest:I did tons of open mics.

00:41:30Marc:Oh.

00:41:30Marc:So after the Thursday at the Comedy Act Theater, then you had to start doing it for real.

00:41:35Guest:I was doing pizza parlors.

00:41:37Guest:I was doing living room fireplaces, living room for New Year's Eve.

00:41:42Guest:Anything to make a buck, because you don't get paid in comedy.

00:41:45Guest:We get paid to work out, but it's not a lot of money.

00:41:47Guest:But I did all the open mics.

00:41:48Guest:Yeah.

00:41:49Guest:I was doing the potluck on Monday nights at the comedy store.

00:41:51Guest:Yeah.

00:41:52Guest:So that was the open mic I would do.

00:41:54Guest:I would do the other clubs I mentioned, the Funhouse, you know, Mabbit Flat.

00:41:57Guest:I would do the improv open mics.

00:42:00Marc:Because you're working hard.

00:42:01Marc:You're trying to figure it out.

00:42:02Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:42:02Marc:Oh yeah.

00:42:03Marc:It was so funny when Chappelle's in the dock and he doesn't, it's his take on, you know, the doorman system at the comedy store, which was like such a dug in system.

00:42:14Marc:Like, no, you gotta, you gotta do the, work the door and you work the lot and then you kind of get spots.

00:42:20Guest:You gotta get one of these shirts.

00:42:21Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:42:22Marc:And Chappelle's like, uh-uh.

00:42:23Marc:I ain't doing that shit.

00:42:27Marc:He couldn't wrap his brain around it.

00:42:29Guest:Who the fuck is going to do that?

00:42:30Guest:Right.

00:42:32Guest:Because I guess it's different, I guess on the East Coast, I'm not sure.

00:42:36Marc:There's nothing like the Comedy Store.

00:42:38Marc:And she had this, and it was there for years.

00:42:41Marc:Tommy did it and it's still sort of there.

00:42:43Marc:that the idea is you get to spend all this time making shit, cleaning up and working the door, but you're seeing the real thing, and eventually you get on up there.

00:42:53Marc:I was a doorman, a lot guy, and I lived in that fucking house behind in the late 80s.

00:42:59Marc:Yeah, I mean, I did the system.

00:43:01Marc:There should be a doc just on that house.

00:43:03Marc:Dude, yeah.

00:43:04Marc:I almost closed that house down.

00:43:07Marc:That's right.

00:43:08Marc:I don't know if I became a comic, but I certainly became a pretty good cocaine addict.

00:43:13Marc:Doing that belly room every once in a while going up in the original room.

00:43:17Marc:But I don't regret any of it.

00:43:18Marc:It took me a while to get my brain back.

00:43:21Guest:You're back here.

00:43:22Marc:Stronger than ever.

00:43:22Marc:I'm doing good.

00:43:24Marc:So at what point, how does it come together to do Fat Tuesdays?

00:43:29Guest:You know, it's funny you say that because I hated the way...

00:43:35Guest:white people made me feel when I told them I wasn't a regular at the comedy store or the improv laugh factory.

00:43:41Marc:Which white people?

00:43:42Marc:I mean, don't people that knew what that meant?

00:43:44Guest:Right, because they were saying, you're a comedian, oh, when can I see you at the comedy store?

00:43:47Guest:And I was like, uh, well, I'm not.

00:43:49Guest:They made you feel like I wasn't a real comic.

00:43:51Guest:If I wasn't a regular, my name wasn't on the wall at the comedy store, I wasn't at the improv laugh factory, I wasn't a real comic.

00:43:57Marc:I do that to the parking lot guy.

00:44:01Guest:Everybody got to shit on somebody.

00:44:03Guest:So I hated that feeling, but I also hated the black comedians who were regulars at the comic store who would come down to the hood and peacock, you know, parade around and say, hey, you're going up tonight.

00:44:13Guest:Who would that be?

00:44:15Guest:Tyree?

00:44:16Guest:I said David Tyree.

00:44:18Guest:They kind of looked like, no, I got a spot at the store tonight.

00:44:21Guest:Finest Henderson?

00:44:21Marc:You know, yes.

00:44:22Guest:They come down there.

00:44:23Guest:They would make you feel like you was a nobody.

00:44:26Guest:So I wanted to change that feeling.

00:44:28Guest:And industry wasn't coming to see us.

00:44:31Guest:And I had an agent and manager already.

00:44:32Guest:But I'm like, yo, it's a lot of talented motherfuckers down here.

00:44:36Guest:Let me see what I can do.

00:44:37Guest:But it goes back to, it's funny, because I think about that.

00:44:40Guest:I think about being a kid.

00:44:42Guest:Mm-hmm.

00:44:42Guest:And I think about my dad, who's a very strict disciplinarian, drill sergeant.

00:44:47Guest:Oh, he's in the service?

00:44:48Guest:He had 23 years in the military, two tours in Vietnam.

00:44:51Marc:Oh, really?

00:44:52Guest:He was strict as fuck, right?

00:44:53Guest:Still around?

00:44:54Guest:No, he passed away seven years ago.

00:44:55Guest:Oh, sorry.

00:44:56Guest:But he used to always say, be proactive.

00:44:59Guest:Yeah.

00:44:59Guest:Don't wait to be asked, be told to do something.

00:45:02Guest:If you see something he's done, go ahead and do it.

00:45:03Guest:You say, hang on the floor.

00:45:05Guest:Even if you didn't put it there, you know it to belong there, pick it up and put it where it belongs.

00:45:09Guest:And when I think about that, hearing that so many times as a kid, and then you bring that to Fat Tuesdays, there was a void.

00:45:17Guest:Nobody asked me to start Fat Tuesdays.

00:45:19Guest:No one told me to do it.

00:45:20Guest:I was like, man...

00:45:22Guest:Something needs to be done.

00:45:24Guest:And I'm gonna fucking do it.

00:45:25Guest:But I go back and I'm like, wow, that was instilled in me as a kid.

00:45:29Marc:Yeah, and you know, it's like, it's so weird to me because Binder does that documentary and he could have had an hour on the comedy show on Fat Tuesday.

00:45:37Marc:It's probably better he didn't because now you got the whole thing.

00:45:39Guest:Right, and that's the thing.

00:45:40Guest:People say, wow, I saw the comedy show documentary on Showtime.

00:45:44Guest:Man, how come they didn't mention Fat Tuesday?

00:45:45Guest:They didn't mention Fat Tuesday.

00:45:47Guest:And I was a little offended for a hot second, but I already been putting this together for 10 years.

00:45:50Marc:You're like, great.

00:45:51Marc:For 10 years already.

00:45:53Marc:But now you can put it in the press material.

00:45:54Marc:It's like, we're going to fill in the gap.

00:45:56Marc:Yeah.

00:45:57Guest:And I'm glad they didn't tell the story because we need to tell the story our way.

00:46:00Marc:I think that's true.

00:46:01Guest:And the Comedy Store doc was great.

00:46:02Guest:I watched it and learned a lot about the Comedy Store watching their doc.

00:46:05Guest:But my doc was in place since 2009, 2010.

00:46:08Marc:And, you know, it's a better through line.

00:46:10Marc:Your doc is specific.

00:46:12Marc:You know, you're like, this is basically the history of black comedy in this city.

00:46:15Marc:Right.

00:46:16Marc:In the 80s and 90s.

00:46:17Marc:And this is how it happened.

00:46:18Marc:Right.

00:46:18Marc:This is how, because in your doc, you're able to see the evolution of hip hop, the evolution of black presence in movies.

00:46:24Marc:Black fashion.

00:46:25Marc:Black fashion and television.

00:46:27Marc:Right.

00:46:27Marc:Like, you know, you don't really think about it all at the same time happening.

00:46:32Marc:Right.

00:46:32Marc:But it all happened.

00:46:33Marc:At the same time.

00:46:34Guest:It's crazy.

00:46:34Guest:You know, Clinton was in office, had a surplus of money in this country, had expendable income.

00:46:40Guest:It was poppin'.

00:46:41Marc:I like all the outfits.

00:46:43Guest:Right, right.

00:46:44Guest:The big shit.

00:46:46Guest:You make a whole other wardrobe out of one pair of jeans back then.

00:46:49Guest:Oh, man.

00:46:49Guest:When Bernie comes on.

00:46:50Guest:Oh, man.

00:46:51Guest:That's Chicago, though.

00:46:52Guest:Chicago has a way of airbrushing their faces on their own clothes.

00:46:57Guest:Like, what the... I saw one comedian.

00:47:00Guest:I think it's...

00:47:01Guest:I think it's Corey Holcomb, one of my favorite comedians, man.

00:47:04Guest:And there's an airbrush of him smacking a chick and a teeth flying out her mouth or something.

00:47:09Guest:It's the Chicago Commons.

00:47:10Guest:They're a special breed.

00:47:11Guest:I love them.

00:47:12Marc:They are.

00:47:13Marc:But before we get to him, so how does the negotiation go with Mitzi?

00:47:16Marc:You got to talk to Mitzi.

00:47:17Marc:She's still got full mind then.

00:47:19Marc:I had a manager at the time that was friends with Scott Day.

00:47:21Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:47:22Guest:Who was, I think, talent booker, general manager.

00:47:24Marc:I remember him.

00:47:24Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember him.

00:47:25Guest:He approached, Rothy Patterson, he approached the comedy store and was like, hey, you know, my client wants to do a night.

00:47:31Guest:Yeah.

00:47:32Guest:And I don't know how much back and forth it was.

00:47:34Guest:He came and told me, he's like, look, look.

00:47:37Guest:You got Tuesday nights.

00:47:38Marc:And that's 95?

00:47:38Marc:95.

00:47:40Marc:February 95.

00:47:41Marc:And at that point, the store was... Because, like, I was a doorman there in 87.

00:47:45Marc:And it was huge.

00:47:47Marc:Right.

00:47:47Marc:But then it, like, just dropped, man.

00:47:49Marc:It just dropped.

00:47:49Guest:We had another club started.

00:47:50Guest:You had comedy on TV now.

00:47:52Guest:Comedy became a little bit saturated, I think.

00:47:55Marc:I guess.

00:47:55Marc:But, like, you know, now it's so hot again.

00:47:58Marc:And, you know, who the hell knows why?

00:47:59Marc:I mean, it's still pretty saturated.

00:48:01Marc:Right.

00:48:01Marc:But now, like, people, it's kind of hip.

00:48:03Marc:all of a sudden.

00:48:04Marc:Vino came back too.

00:48:06Marc:Right, exactly.

00:48:07Marc:Like the 80s comedy thing, if anything, it just became sort of, you started to think like, Jesus, can anyone do this?

00:48:13Marc:Right.

00:48:13Marc:Who the fuck are all these people?

00:48:15Marc:Right, right, right.

00:48:16Marc:You know, and it got tired is what it got.

00:48:17Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:48:18Marc:But not black comedy because no one was seeing it.

00:48:21Marc:Right.

00:48:21Marc:All right, so you didn't have any interaction with Mitzi then?

00:48:24Guest:I did.

00:48:25Guest:No, I didn't.

00:48:26Guest:Not after until I started the night.

00:48:27Guest:She would come in like, hey.

00:48:30Guest:Yeah.

00:48:31Guest:It's funny because once Fat Tuesdays was popping, I ended up getting a TV show, writing on a TV show.

00:48:39Guest:Which one?

00:48:40Marc:It was called Modern Adjustments.

00:48:42Marc:Well, that's one thing you make really clear in the doc too is that this was a showcase for all of the black comedic talent in the city.

00:48:51Marc:Right.

00:48:51Marc:And all the executives are like, what?

00:48:53Marc:What?

00:48:53Marc:And it became a thing because I never thought about that, but that's what everyone thinks about.

00:48:58Marc:But at that time in the 90s, it's like you could walk out with a deal.

00:49:02Marc:There were people sitting there that could change your fucking life.

00:49:04Guest:Change your life.

00:49:06Marc:Chris Tucker.

00:49:06Marc:Nick Cannon.

00:49:07Marc:Nick Cannon.

00:49:08Marc:Mike Epps.

00:49:09Guest:Mike Epps.

00:49:09Guest:Michael Blackson.

00:49:10Guest:Me.

00:49:11Guest:I booked American History X because they saw me.

00:49:14Guest:You were so good in that, man.

00:49:14Guest:I'd forgotten.

00:49:15Marc:It was very good.

00:49:16Guest:Good role.

00:49:16Guest:Many moons ago before I got my teeth fixed.

00:49:19Guest:Pre-dental work.

00:49:20Guest:I don't think you would have got it if you had your teeth fixed.

00:49:22Guest:I know, right?

00:49:23Guest:I look like a prisoner.

00:49:24Guest:I look like I should have been in jail.

00:49:27Marc:Okay, so she starts talking to you once you start doing the show.

00:49:29Guest:Yeah, and she wanted to, so I moved it to the main room once a month.

00:49:32Marc:So you're in the belly room at first.

00:49:34Marc:How long were you up there?

00:49:34Marc:Nine months.

00:49:36Marc:You were in the belly room for nine months with that show?

00:49:38Marc:It's kind of crazy because it's kind of poetic.

00:49:39Marc:We spent nine months in the belly.

00:49:41Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:49:42Marc:In the womb.

00:49:42Marc:Right.

00:49:43Marc:And then gave birth to the main room.

00:49:44Marc:Well, that was the idea of it, but it was for women.

00:49:46Guest:Right.

00:49:46Guest:That's where the Belly Room started.

00:49:48Guest:The original idea was for women comics to go up in the Belly Room and work their sets out.

00:49:53Marc:Right.

00:49:53Marc:But it strikes me as a long time to be in that small a room for it to take hold.

00:49:58Marc:What made it click so big so quick?

00:50:00Marc:Because you switched rooms and you were selling out, right?

00:50:03Marc:So what was the event?

00:50:04Marc:Did it get some weird press?

00:50:06Guest:No, no.

00:50:07Guest:When we were in the Belly Room, man, every week we had to turn people away.

00:50:11Guest:Right, okay.

00:50:12Guest:Turn people away because...

00:50:14Guest:Tupac would come.

00:50:16Guest:Dr. Dre would come.

00:50:17Guest:So that's how people hear that shit.

00:50:19Guest:And there was no, you know, realized there was no social media back then.

00:50:22Guest:There was no social media back then.

00:50:24Guest:I had no advertising budget for radio or TV.

00:50:27Guest:It was just word of mouth.

00:50:28Guest:And so when I switched to the belly room, I mean to the main room,

00:50:31Guest:I did it once a month, every first Tuesday.

00:50:34Guest:I called it fatter Tuesdays.

00:50:35Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:50:37Guest:Oh, I see, I see, okay.

00:50:38Guest:It was a success.

00:50:39Marc:Right.

00:50:40Guest:In the belly room on the other Tuesdays, and every first Tuesday in the main room.

00:50:43Marc:And people started knowing that.

00:50:45Guest:Yeah, so now when I did that, Mitzi wanted to do it every week after the first one.

00:50:50Guest:Because the place was going broke.

00:50:51Guest:Right.

00:50:51Guest:And I said, Mitzi, I can't do it, Mitzi.

00:50:53Guest:I didn't know that at the time.

00:50:54Marc:Yeah.

00:50:54Guest:It was going broke.

00:50:55Guest:I said, Mitzi, you're trying to have me do 400 seats every Tuesday in a club that has no food, high drinks and no parking in L.A.

00:51:03Guest:on Sunset.

00:51:04Guest:That's tough.

00:51:05Guest:So I fought her off for like six months.

00:51:08Guest:And they said, God, I'm just going to move another room another night on the other Tuesdays.

00:51:12Guest:and you can stay up in the belly room on the other Tuesdays.

00:51:15Guest:And I thought about it for a minute and said, no, because no one's going to think about which Tuesday it is.

00:51:19Guest:First, second, third, they're just going to come.

00:51:21Guest:I said, okay, Mitzi, you know what?

00:51:24Guest:I'll take it over every Tuesday in the main room.

00:51:27Guest:So I had to increase my staff and just expand.

00:51:31Guest:And the other thing is, Mitzi wanted to, after the show, wanted to open it up and turn it into a club for dancing.

00:51:39Guest:I said, no.

00:51:40Guest:I said, now it's going to attract the wrong element.

00:51:43Guest:Because now you've got comedy club people and you've got people who want to shake their ass people.

00:51:47Guest:And shake your ass people are going to come to the comedy show and it's going to be rude because they want the comedy show to be over so they can shake their ass.

00:51:54Guest:So I said, no, Mitzi, I'm not a club promoter.

00:51:56Guest:Not a shake your ass club promoter.

00:51:58Guest:I just want to do stand up.

00:51:59Guest:I don't want to do any other shit.

00:52:01Marc:So what was the deal?

00:52:02Marc:She got the drinks and you got the door?

00:52:04Marc:Yeah.

00:52:04Marc:And so you're paying comics?

00:52:07Guest:Yes.

00:52:08Guest:That's another reason why I really wanted to do it.

00:52:10Guest:And I was paying comics more than what the other clubs were paying.

00:52:13Guest:I was paying no less than $25 a spot from $25 to $150.

00:52:17Guest:So the warm-up person got $25, unless I was doing a showcase.

00:52:22Guest:And then the first, second, third, fourth spot averaged me from $30 to $40 or $50 to $100, depending on who it was.

00:52:29Marc:But you're making good money then.

00:52:30Guest:Well, yes, but...

00:52:32Guest:I'm paying it out.

00:52:33Marc:No, I get it.

00:52:33Marc:I brought my own staff.

00:52:34Marc:It's not a judgment, but I mean, it's like you're doing all right.

00:52:36Guest:Well, I'm breaking even of going in the red.

00:52:39Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:52:40Guest:Because, number one, I did it legit.

00:52:41Guest:You got to pay the staff, too.

00:52:42Guest:Taxes, IRS.

00:52:43Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:44Guest:I had the staff.

00:52:45Guest:I brought my own hostesses in.

00:52:46Guest:I brought my own security in.

00:52:48Guest:Yeah.

00:52:48Guest:Because, man, yo.

00:52:50Guest:There was guys coming through there with knives and guns.

00:52:53Guest:Yeah.

00:52:54Guest:And until we got, you know, this officers group, security, who was searching them the right way.

00:52:59Marc:What's the name of that guy, the big guy?

00:53:00Guest:Oh, Big Shorty was security.

00:53:02Guest:But then we had to get some professional cops, too.

00:53:04Guest:Oh, yeah?

00:53:05Guest:Yeah.

00:53:05Guest:Because we had to get a metal detector.

00:53:07Guest:Oh, really?

00:53:07Guest:And they were, man, Hennessy bottles.

00:53:10Guest:You know, they were bringing in their own Hennessy.

00:53:12Yeah.

00:53:12Guest:They own knives, they own guns.

00:53:14Guest:And the thing about it is... So you had to send guys back to the car with the gun?

00:53:18Guest:Yeah.

00:53:19Guest:And that's what happened.

00:53:20Guest:They were like, you can't bring it?

00:53:22Guest:Brass knuckles.

00:53:23Guest:And the fucked up thing about it was a blessing at the same time was I listened to some of my old cassette tapes when I record my set.

00:53:31Guest:I talked a lot of shit to a lot of gangbangers that I didn't know was packing.

00:53:36Guest:And I'm like, what the fuck was I thinking?

00:53:39Right.

00:53:39Guest:And even my security, when we did the documentary, it was like, man, it was a lot of nights we had to save your ass that you don't know about because this guy's ready to fuck you up after the show.

00:53:48Guest:I bet.

00:53:49Guest:And you're just doing it.

00:53:50Guest:I'm just like kid from St.

00:53:52Guest:Louis, skinny kid from St.

00:53:53Guest:Louis.

00:53:54Guest:I don't know if I was just dumb, fearless, or dumb.

00:53:56Marc:Yeah.

00:53:57Marc:So, well, I mean, you're just doing the job and everyone's getting a laugh and they probably got to laugh too.

00:54:02Marc:But yeah, there's a fine line between that and like, who the fuck's this kid?

00:54:05Guest:Yeah.

00:54:05Guest:And that's what Shaq and Snoop used to always say to me, man, you fucking fearless.

00:54:10Guest:Yeah.

00:54:10Guest:You don't give a fuck who it is.

00:54:11Guest:Celebrity gangbanger.

00:54:12Guest:You don't care.

00:54:14Guest:I said, man, hey, hey, when I'm on that stage, that's my house.

00:54:17Guest:Yeah.

00:54:18Marc:That is my goddamn house.

00:54:19Marc:But that was that was sort of interesting, too, like that whole Bernie Mac story.

00:54:22Marc:I didn't know.

00:54:23Marc:And like Bernie Mac is a great example of a comic that was like that was all black shit.

00:54:29Marc:Yeah.

00:54:30Marc:And and, you know, when he broke nationally on his own show, no white person knew who that guy.

00:54:35Marc:Right.

00:54:36Guest:Well, they try to give Bernie pilots and stuff, but the word was they had trouble understanding him.

00:54:42Marc:Well, he had that cadence, a very unique cadence.

00:54:45Marc:I don't know where it came from.

00:54:46Guest:Well, you know what it is?

00:54:46Guest:It's funny you say that because I read an article years ago about how Chris Rock, Earthquake, Bernie Mac, T.K.

00:54:55Guest:Kirkland, and those guys like...

00:54:59Marc:Kenison?

00:55:01Marc:The preachers.

00:55:02Marc:Preachers.

00:55:02Guest:They study preachers.

00:55:05Guest:And preachers have this cadence where they hypnotize you and make you give up your fucking money in church.

00:55:11Guest:So comedians who study that, they have that cadence.

00:55:15Guest:Or come from it.

00:55:16Guest:And Obama had that.

00:55:17Guest:Obama had that in his speeches.

00:55:18Guest:He definitely studied it.

00:55:20Guest:And he just fucking hypnotizes you.

00:55:21Guest:And you're like, fuck, I'll vote for you.

00:55:24Marc:I bet you Bernie grew up with it.

00:55:25Guest:Yeah, black churches.

00:55:27Guest:And you just get hypnotized.

00:55:32Guest:And you're laughing, or you're giving up your money and your tithes, or you're giving up some ass because you're a pimp and you're a hoe.

00:55:38Guest:So when you've got that cadence that gets the gab, it's magic.

00:55:42Guest:And Sam Kennison, like you said, was a former preacher.

00:55:44Marc:He was a preacher, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:55:45Guest:So he had that cadence.

00:55:46Guest:He had that stage presence.

00:55:48Marc:It's a different one.

00:55:48Marc:That's the angry white Baptist preacher.

00:55:51Marc:Right, right, right, right.

00:55:52Marc:It's not as poetic.

00:55:53Marc:It doesn't have the same rhythm.

00:55:55Guest:It doesn't have the Nelly sing-songy rap style.

00:55:58Marc:It has the, yeah.

00:55:59Marc:It's another thing.

00:56:00Marc:Right.

00:56:01Marc:No, I can see that, but I like that discussion of bombing about like, you know, that he was born out of a moment on Def Jam live.

00:56:09Marc:Yeah.

00:56:10Marc:Of like the, of somebody bombing badly.

00:56:12Marc:Before him, yeah.

00:56:13Marc:And it's just that, because like he knew, but from upstairs, who was it?

00:56:16Marc:Bellamy was talking about?

00:56:17Guest:Bellamy, yeah.

00:56:18Marc:So like he knew that like, I'm walking into that.

00:56:21Guest:Yeah, and we were shooting a doc, and Reggie Huddland, who's a great director, and he's asking all the questions, and then when he's done, he turns to me and say, Guy, you got anything else?

00:56:33Guest:Did we cover everything?

00:56:34Guest:And I remember...

00:56:36Guest:Bill Bellamy telling that story on a radio station when Bernie Mac had died.

00:56:41Guest:So I said, when Reggie was done asking all the questions, I said, guy, you got anything?

00:56:46Guest:I said, hey, Bill, tell the I Ain't Scared of You Motherfucker stories of Bernie Mac.

00:56:52Guest:And Bill Bellamy was like, oh, oh.

00:56:55Guest:Oh, oh, let me tell you, let me tell you.

00:56:57Guest:And he went into that story, man, and Reggie and Byron Phillips, who are one of the co-executive producers and directors, was just like, what the fuck?

00:57:07Guest:And so those moments, I'm glad we had a director that...

00:57:10Guest:that listened to me.

00:57:11Marc:But then you were able to talk to a bunch of other dudes that had watched it.

00:57:15Marc:Yeah.

00:57:15Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:57:16Marc:And it was like... Yeah, the way the team edited it and put it together was just magic.

00:57:21Marc:And all these black comics who were watching it when they were kids.

00:57:23Marc:Jay Pharoah, yeah.

00:57:25Marc:They were like, they remember it.

00:57:26Guest:Yeah.

00:57:27Guest:I remember that bit very clear, man.

00:57:29Guest:And it's funny because Bernie Mac was on that Deaf Comedy Jam tour, too.

00:57:35Guest:That Joe was on.

00:57:37Guest:He was on the Deaf Jam tour before me.

00:57:39Guest:So he and Kid Capri had already developed...

00:57:43Guest:You know, the kick it part.

00:57:44Guest:There's that part.

00:57:45Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:57:46Guest:But the Iron Skitty motherfuckers part was fresh.

00:57:50Guest:It was improv.

00:57:50Guest:Yeah.

00:57:51Guest:But the kick it was like, so that's just mastery.

00:57:53Marc:That was inspired.

00:57:54Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:57:55Marc:And that happened that night.

00:57:56Marc:Yeah.

00:57:57Marc:I love it.

00:57:58Marc:But who were the regulars?

00:58:00Marc:Because you have a lot of the people in there, and I don't know all their names, that you talk to in the show, not just the managers and the agents and the hostesses, but the comics that were regulars.

00:58:10Marc:Who were some of them?

00:58:11Marc:Because I had no idea, really, about Chris Tucker's early act.

00:58:15Marc:And he was weird, man.

00:58:17Marc:And he is weird as a performer.

00:58:20Marc:In a good way.

00:58:21Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:58:23Marc:And he's a nice guy.

00:58:24Marc:Yeah, super nice guy.

00:58:25Marc:I saw him down in Atlanta a few years ago while I was working down there.

00:58:28Marc:But it was a very quirky kind of thing.

00:58:31Marc:There was a lot of cats that were quirky.

00:58:32Marc:High energy, high-pitched voice, animation.

00:58:35Marc:Yeah.

00:58:36Marc:And that story about him getting the third, what was that movie called?

00:58:39Marc:Fifth Element.

00:58:40Marc:The Fifth Element over Tommy.

00:58:42Marc:Over me.

00:58:42Marc:Over you?

00:58:43Marc:Yeah.

00:58:44Guest:He got Fifth Element over me.

00:58:45Guest:I got American History X over Tommy.

00:58:47Marc:Okay, that's how it worked.

00:58:49Marc:Yeah.

00:58:49Marc:But who were the regulars from the beginning?

00:58:51Guest:Man, Chris Tucker.

00:58:52Marc:Yeah.

00:58:53Guest:Cedric the Entertainer.

00:58:55Guest:Yeah.

00:58:56Guest:Melanie Camacho.

00:58:57Guest:Yeah.

00:58:58Guest:Mike Epps.

00:58:59Marc:Yeah.

00:58:59Marc:Luella, I didn't know her.

00:59:00Marc:Lunell.

00:59:01Marc:Lunell, yeah.

00:59:01Guest:Yeah, Lunell would come whenever she would come to town because she was in Oakland.

00:59:04Marc:Yeah.

00:59:05Guest:I'd put her up.

00:59:06Marc:Yeah.

00:59:06Guest:I mean, those were some of the regulars who did it on a continual basis.

00:59:09Guest:Yeah.

00:59:10Guest:And Cat Williams.

00:59:11Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:59:12Guest:They would drop by and come by.

00:59:14Marc:Nick Cannon was a kid, right?

00:59:16Guest:Nick Cannon was 15, 16, man.

00:59:18Guest:Yeah.

00:59:18Marc:So he would go on at that?

00:59:20Guest:Yeah.

00:59:21Guest:He was, you know, I met him in San Diego and he was rapping and I invited him up to rap.

00:59:26Marc:Yeah.

00:59:26Guest:You know, to open up the show and then he got bit by the comedy bug and then bow, he just took off from there.

00:59:33Marc:And this was like, and also, you know, it goes into in the doc that there was always sort of women around doing the shows.

00:59:39Marc:Like, you know, it wasn't,

00:59:40Guest:Wasn't a lot, unfortunately, but I know Monique would come by and do it.

00:59:45Guest:Leslie Jones.

00:59:46Marc:She was a regular.

00:59:47Marc:I didn't know she had been at it that long.

00:59:48Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:59:49Marc:Oh, yeah.

00:59:50Marc:Like, it's really wild to see her in that form.

00:59:52Marc:Yeah.

00:59:52Marc:Because I interviewed her before she got SNL, and she was the intensity of that person.

00:59:57Guest:Man.

00:59:57Guest:Wow.

00:59:58Guest:I remember talking to Leslie Jones, and she was going to quit comedy.

01:00:02Guest:It's before she went to New York.

01:00:04Guest:Yeah.

01:00:05Guest:And she was like, God, it's just not working for me.

01:00:08Guest:I'm not booking any gigs as far as acting gigs and stuff like that.

01:00:12Guest:And I remember I lived in Hollywood Hills at the time and I was cleaning up my garage and I was like, Leslie, you're funny.

01:00:18Guest:Yeah.

01:00:19Guest:You're funny.

01:00:20Guest:You're going to make it.

01:00:21Guest:Just stick to it.

01:00:22Guest:Just trust the process.

01:00:23Guest:She's like, fuck this shit.

01:00:24Guest:And then one of her last performances in L.A.

01:00:28Guest:before she moved to New York was at Fat Tuesdays.

01:00:29Guest:I have the recording.

01:00:31Guest:She talks about it.

01:00:31Guest:I'm about to move to New York.

01:00:32Guest:And then she moved to New York.

01:00:34Guest:And then blah.

01:00:36Guest:You know?

01:00:37Guest:Yeah.

01:00:37Guest:She just started, you know, working more.

01:00:40Guest:And you make more money in New York doing stand-up than you do in L.A.

01:00:44Guest:Yeah.

01:00:44Guest:So she was able to survive.

01:00:46Guest:Yeah.

01:00:46Guest:I remember talking to Mike Epps one time.

01:00:47Guest:Yeah.

01:00:48Guest:Mike Epps was upset.

01:00:50Guest:I saw him at this club.

01:00:52Guest:It wasn't even a comedy club.

01:00:53Guest:Yeah.

01:00:54Guest:And he was like, yo, man, fuck this shit.

01:00:56Guest:Hollywood shit, man.

01:00:57Guest:I ain't booking no movie roles, no TV roles out here, man.

01:01:00Guest:Fuck this shit.

01:01:01Guest:I said, Mike, you funny.

01:01:02Guest:Just trust the process.

01:01:03Guest:He said, fuck that, man.

01:01:04Guest:I said, how long you been out here?

01:01:05Guest:He's like, three months.

01:01:05Guest:I said, shut up.

01:01:06Guest:Fuck up.

01:01:07Guest:Are you kidding me?

01:01:08Guest:After three months, but then about six to seven months later, we were up for the same role in Next Friday.

01:01:16Guest:Yeah.

01:01:17Guest:And I think it came down to him and I. And Ice Cube saw him at Fat Tuesday.

01:01:22Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:01:23Guest:And Ice Cube liked him.

01:01:24Guest:And the director liked him.

01:01:27Guest:And the president of the studios, New Line Cinema, liked me.

01:01:30Guest:And the director liked me.

01:01:32Guest:And I think it came down to Cube.

01:01:34Guest:And he got it.

01:01:36Guest:And he killed it.

01:01:37Guest:And I was so happy for him.

01:01:38Guest:Like, I told you.

01:01:39Guest:What were you just talking?

01:01:40Guest:You were just bitching six, seven months ago.

01:01:42Guest:Now I look at you, man.

01:01:43Guest:Even though he beat me out, I didn't care.

01:01:45Guest:It was meant for him.

01:01:46Marc:Yeah, Ice Cube seems like an intense guy.

01:01:48Guest:Yeah.

01:01:48Guest:He's pretty cool.

01:01:49Marc:Real cool.

01:01:50Marc:Yeah.

01:01:51Marc:No, no.

01:01:51Guest:He seems like a- Yeah, he's intense though.

01:01:53Guest:Yeah.

01:01:54Guest:Yeah.

01:01:55Guest:Did he come to the show a lot?

01:01:57Guest:A lot.

01:01:57Guest:Yeah.

01:01:58Guest:Yeah.

01:01:59Guest:Cube used to come, man.

01:02:00Guest:Yeah.

01:02:00Guest:All those guys.

01:02:01Guest:Snoop was there on a regular.

01:02:03Marc:Yeah.

01:02:03Marc:You know?

01:02:04Marc:I tell you, in the doc, watching him and Tiffany together, they should do a fucking show.

01:02:09Marc:That's what everybody's been saying.

01:02:10Guest:Yeah.

01:02:11Guest:He gets such a kick out of her.

01:02:14Guest:That was a Reggie Hudlin thing.

01:02:16Guest:Reggie Hudlin was like, I want to pair people up.

01:02:18Guest:And he paired Snoop.

01:02:19Guest:Because Tiffany's too young for any of this shit.

01:02:22Guest:She was trying to sneak in, yeah.

01:02:23Guest:She was trying to sneak in back then.

01:02:25Guest:And trying to get on stage, but she just wasn't ready.

01:02:27Guest:But she ready now.

01:02:29Marc:Yeah.

01:02:30Guest:She ready.

01:02:32Marc:But he gets such a kick out of her.

01:02:35Guest:It's real sweet.

01:02:36Guest:That whole interview, Snoop was smoking.

01:02:39Guest:And I don't smoke.

01:02:40Guest:I smoke cigars.

01:02:41Guest:And I was high from the contact.

01:02:44Guest:The whole crew.

01:02:45Guest:We shot at his place.

01:02:46Guest:It's his compound.

01:02:47Marc:Yeah.

01:02:47Marc:His compound.

01:02:48Marc:People don't even have houses anymore.

01:02:50Guest:Man.

01:02:52Guest:But that's so smart.

01:02:53Marc:Yeah.

01:02:53Guest:To have a compound where everything's self-contained.

01:02:56Guest:So it's not his house.

01:02:57Guest:No, it's not his house.

01:02:58Guest:Oh, okay.

01:02:58Guest:His compound is where there's his recording studio.

01:03:02Guest:Yeah.

01:03:03Guest:He can shoot videos there.

01:03:04Guest:Yeah.

01:03:05Guest:He has private comedy shows there.

01:03:07Guest:Yeah.

01:03:08Guest:He can sleep there if he needs to.

01:03:09Guest:Yeah.

01:03:10Guest:But he has one.

01:03:11Guest:Nelly has one in St.

01:03:12Guest:Louis.

01:03:12Guest:Uh-huh.

01:03:13Guest:It's so smart.

01:03:14Marc:Yeah.

01:03:14Guest:Too short.

01:03:15Guest:Has one downtown LA.

01:03:16Marc:You don't have to rent a studio.

01:03:17Guest:You don't have to rent a studio.

01:03:19Guest:You got everything.

01:03:20Guest:You go to some area where they're basically giving away warehouses.

01:03:24Guest:Yeah.

01:03:24Guest:You gut it.

01:03:25Guest:Yeah.

01:03:25Guest:Build your own shit.

01:03:26Guest:Yeah.

01:03:27Guest:And you can rent it out to other people.

01:03:29Guest:And you can make money off of it.

01:03:30Marc:Sure.

01:03:31Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:03:31Guest:It's smart.

01:03:32Marc:We recorded at Snoop's company.

01:03:34Guest:And it's a club.

01:03:34Marc:Yeah.

01:03:36Marc:Snoop got a casino in his.

01:03:38Marc:Maybe we shouldn't tell everybody.

01:03:40Guest:Right.

01:03:41Guest:I'm not going to tell them where it is, but it's smart.

01:03:44Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:03:46Marc:All right, so you do this, and everyone's getting breaks.

01:03:48Guest:This is your compound.

01:03:49Marc:It is, my little compound.

01:03:50Marc:Yeah.

01:03:51Guest:We ain't going to tell you where it is, people, but this is your compound.

01:03:53Marc:It's not hard to find anybody anymore.

01:03:56Marc:Two minutes on the internet, you're like, I got a picture of Snoop's compound right now from the air.

01:04:01Marc:Right.

01:04:02Guest:And he's taking a dump.

01:04:03Guest:I can see him on the toilet.

01:04:05Marc:And he's smoking.

01:04:06Guest:Right.

01:04:06Guest:He's smoking his shit at the same time.

01:04:11Marc:So you do this and everyone's getting breaks.

01:04:12Marc:You're getting breaks.

01:04:13Marc:You're doing movies, a lot of movies, a lot of TV shows.

01:04:16Marc:Yeah.

01:04:16Marc:And the tension with your brother's growing.

01:04:18Marc:Yeah.

01:04:19Marc:That's when it happened, right?

01:04:20Marc:Yeah.

01:04:20Guest:When you blew up?

01:04:22Guest:I think it started...

01:04:24Guest:I start feeling it when I moved out.

01:04:27Guest:When I first moved here, I lived with him for the first four years.

01:04:30Guest:That's a long time.

01:04:31Guest:I was like, two grown-ass men don't need to live together.

01:04:34Guest:Let's stay fucking.

01:04:35Guest:Let's stay a couple.

01:04:37Guest:We're brothers, and we like tacos.

01:04:41Guest:So I just wanted my own space.

01:04:43Guest:I wanted my own place to decorate it my own way.

01:04:45Guest:I wanted to be my own man.

01:04:48Guest:And I think he liked having that control.

01:04:51Guest:So when I moved out, I think that's when the tension started.

01:04:54Guest:And it made me work harder.

01:04:55Guest:I said, I need the burden of having to pay bills, rent.

01:04:59Guest:So that's going to make me work harder.

01:05:01Guest:And so I needed that.

01:05:02Guest:And I think that's when the tension started.

01:05:03Guest:And then when I started working...

01:05:05Guest:I think the tension got even more.

01:05:09Marc:And it's weird.

01:05:09Marc:Sometimes with that kind of tension, even when it's family, you just can't let it go.

01:05:16Guest:Yeah, and I'm going to be honest with you.

01:05:18Guest:I'm a grudge holder.

01:05:20Guest:I'm still mad at the doctor who slapped me in the ass when I was born.

01:05:22Guest:I hold grudges.

01:05:24Guest:But part of the grudge holding is part of my therapy, meaning that's my wall.

01:05:29Guest:That's my way of keeping you from fucking me over again.

01:05:32Guest:So I hold the grave.

01:05:34Guest:As long as I'm mad at you,

01:05:35Guest:Can't fuck me over.

01:05:36Marc:Do you have a lot of people?

01:05:38Guest:Grudges?

01:05:38Guest:Let me tell you something.

01:05:39Guest:My nickname is Fallout Guy.

01:05:41Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:05:42Guest:I fall out with everybody.

01:05:43Guest:Oh, really?

01:05:43Guest:But only if I feel like you're coming for me or if you're stabbing me in the back or you have a hidden agenda.

01:05:52Guest:Right.

01:05:52Guest:That's reasonable.

01:05:54Guest:Yeah, it's like, yo, don't... But the problem is you can't know most of those things.

01:05:58Marc:You can only assume them and then... And then it raises an ugly head.

01:06:02Guest:I give people too many chances sometimes and then when I find out, I'm like, okay.

01:06:05Guest:And we may be friends again, but it'll never be the same.

01:06:09Guest:Especially if we come to fisticuffs.

01:06:11Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:06:12Guest:Does that happen all night?

01:06:14Guest:I punch a lot of my friends in the mouth.

01:06:18Marc:How many are still your friends?

01:06:19Guest:Oh, man.

01:06:20Guest:Some of them are still my friends.

01:06:21Guest:We made up and stuff, but it's not the same.

01:06:24Guest:Once you go to Fisticuffs, it's just never the same.

01:06:26Marc:Of course.

01:06:27Marc:Right.

01:06:27Marc:So who are the guys, the comics that you're still friends with now?

01:06:31Guest:All of them.

01:06:32Guest:I'm cool with basically every comic, and I'm just a fan of comedy.

01:06:35Marc:I may not like- How's Cedric doing?

01:06:37Guest:Cedric's great.

01:06:38Guest:Every time I called Cedric-

01:06:40Guest:He answers the phone, meaning that when I was putting this sizzle together, and I was putting it together when I was underground.

01:06:48Guest:He's a St.

01:06:48Guest:Louis guy, right?

01:06:49Guest:Yeah, St.

01:06:49Guest:Louis guy.

01:06:50Guest:And he came and did an interview for me.

01:06:52Guest:We went to him to one of his sets and did an interview.

01:06:54Guest:When I got with Gramner, Kelsey Gramner Company, and we need to reshoot a sizzle and update it, I called.

01:07:00Guest:He answered the phone.

01:07:01Marc:He's a great guy.

01:07:02Guest:And then when the documentary came, he was just like, so he's always just been like,

01:07:06Guest:Man, I got you.

01:07:07Guest:But your doc made me like Steve Harvey more.

01:07:10Guest:I love Steve.

01:07:12Marc:Steve always, man.

01:07:14Marc:Steve used to let me.

01:07:16Marc:I think people forget how funny he was.

01:07:18Marc:I mean, he was funny.

01:07:18Marc:He's still funny.

01:07:19Marc:He's still pretty funny.

01:07:20Marc:And in those interviews, he's great.

01:07:21Guest:yeah oh man he's such a great storyteller too and Ari Spears too the two of them talking about when a black audience starts to turn yeah oh yeah the stages of like uh uh the movement yeah the shift in the chair black audiences are tough bro that's why I respect Roseanne Barr stand up when she went

01:07:44Guest:back and did the Apollo years ago.

01:07:46Guest:Yeah.

01:07:46Guest:Because she said black audiences are honest.

01:07:48Guest:They're going to let you know if you're funny or not.

01:07:50Marc:Even now, like, I just noticed it lately.

01:07:52Marc:I'm like, you know, black people laughing more at me.

01:07:53Marc:I must be doing something right.

01:07:55Marc:Man, because you know what?

01:07:57Guest:Like I said, we need to laugh the most.

01:08:00Guest:And it's like, you know, I always say this, and I say it in the doc, but it wasn't the full statement.

01:08:06Guest:But white people come to laugh.

01:08:09Guest:Black people come not to laugh.

01:08:11Guest:A white person will tell you on stage, before you go on stage, hey, have a good show, break a leg.

01:08:16Guest:Brother B, you better be funny, motherfucker.

01:08:19Guest:I didn't brought these tickets.

01:08:20Guest:I didn't brought my girl out, man.

01:08:21Guest:You better be funny, motherfucker.

01:08:22Guest:I don't need that pressure.

01:08:24Marc:But it makes you a stronger, better comedy.

01:08:27Marc:And also the idea that it's more honest or whatever.

01:08:30Marc:It seems like there's two ways to go.

01:08:32Marc:That the black audience likes, if you can give them shit and do it fearlessly, they love that.

01:08:38Marc:They like that or they like honest shit.

01:08:40Marc:But busting balls is not necessarily honest shit.

01:08:43Marc:It's just old school.

01:08:44Marc:Right, it's old school.

01:08:45Marc:Right.

01:08:46Marc:And on the other side, the honest shit or the busting balls.

01:08:48Marc:Right.

01:08:49Guest:They respect you if you come at them, you know, come back at them.

01:08:52Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:52Marc:You know?

01:08:53Guest:So it's respected because growing up in black neighborhoods or being on the school bus going in the morning, that's what we played dozens all the fucking time.

01:09:02Guest:Right, yeah.

01:09:03Marc:That's where it comes from.

01:09:04Marc:Yeah, I know.

01:09:04Marc:And you can do, you know, and people like hearing the same joke every once in a while.

01:09:08Guest:Man, they do.

01:09:10Guest:Man, it's a couple of jokes I've been trying to get out of my act.

01:09:14Guest:Yeah.

01:09:14Guest:And when I don't do them, people get mad.

01:09:16Guest:Oh, really?

01:09:17Guest:And, like, you didn't do the abs and back joke.

01:09:20Guest:I was like, I'm trying to retire that joke.

01:09:21Guest:Yeah.

01:09:22Guest:And they're like, I brought, you know, my girlfriend up here so she can see that bit.

01:09:26Guest:Yeah.

01:09:26Marc:I'm like... Well, they have that one footage of them, you know, singing along to Bebe's kid.

01:09:31Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:09:32Marc:Right?

01:09:32Marc:With Robin.

01:09:33Marc:Yeah.

01:09:33Marc:Like, he'd do it every week.

01:09:34Guest:Yeah, when you get a great...

01:09:37Guest:Catchphrase.

01:09:40Guest:When you get a great one, man, but you can't ride it too long.

01:09:43Guest:I remember Chris Rock telling me one time he hosted Def Jam one time.

01:09:48Guest:They did All-Star Def Jam Celebrity Host.

01:09:50Guest:He hosted one time.

01:09:51Guest:There was a comedian named Shucky Ducky that went on.

01:09:53Guest:And Shucky Ducky killed with this Shucky Ducky quack quack.

01:09:57Guest:First season he did.

01:09:58Guest:Bam!

01:09:59Guest:He came back the next season.

01:10:01Guest:And people wasn't feeling it.

01:10:03Guest:And he died.

01:10:04Guest:And I was literally backstage with Chris Rock because I was a punch-up writer on the show that season.

01:10:11Guest:And Chris Rock says, guy, I'm going to teach you something.

01:10:14Guest:Never get a hook.

01:10:15Guest:Yeah.

01:10:16Guest:Because when your hook go, you go.

01:10:18Marc:Chris has always got the wisdom.

01:10:21Guest:Man, that motherfucker is Yoda.

01:10:23Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:10:24Marc:He and Chappelle are Yoda's.

01:10:26Marc:He does thinking.

01:10:26Marc:He does the thinking.

01:10:27Marc:Yeah, man.

01:10:28Marc:Yeah, putting it into perspective.

01:10:30Marc:But the bombing thing, like, you got that footage.

01:10:32Marc:Who was that, Jimmy Woodard?

01:10:33Marc:Yeah, it was a few comments, yeah, in that particular one, yeah.

01:10:37Marc:But you got something against that guy?

01:10:38Marc:No.

01:10:38Marc:You let that go on for a while.

01:10:40Yeah.

01:10:42Guest:Hey, man.

01:10:44Guest:He's wearing that jacket.

01:10:46Guest:Here's the thing about stand-up.

01:10:47Guest:I never root for any comic to bomb, even if I don't like you.

01:10:51Guest:I never want to see you bomb, but when it happens, it's funny as fuck.

01:10:54Marc:Yeah, to comics, yeah.

01:10:55Marc:Oh, my God, it's funny.

01:10:56Guest:I've been in that position, man, when you're on stage bombing, and the audience is looking at you like you took your dick out in church.

01:11:03Marc:And sometimes you don't even know why, but you know what it is.

01:11:05Marc:Even watching that thing, I mean, I haven't seen Jimmy Wood.

01:11:07Marc:Is he still alive?

01:11:08Marc:I don't know.

01:11:09Marc:Yeah.

01:11:09Marc:But that's him, right?

01:11:10Marc:With that jacket on.

01:11:11Marc:What was that on?

01:11:11Marc:Def Jam was just on stage.

01:11:12Guest:I think that was a special.

01:11:13Guest:It looked like it was a special at the comic theater or something.

01:11:15Marc:I don't know.

01:11:16Marc:But he's eating it, you know?

01:11:17Marc:Yeah.

01:11:18Marc:But, you know, as a comic...

01:11:23Marc:But as a comic, I can hear why.

01:11:25Marc:When you're up there, you don't always know why, but you leave your body.

01:11:28Marc:It's over.

01:11:29Marc:What?

01:11:29Marc:Yes.

01:11:30Marc:It's an out-of-body experience.

01:11:32Marc:Yeah, because you just give up.

01:11:34Marc:And to hear it in your voice, you can't get behind your shit.

01:11:36Guest:You're confident.

01:11:36Guest:It's in the eyes.

01:11:37Marc:It's over.

01:11:37Marc:It's in your body language.

01:11:38Guest:And it's like you said.

01:11:40Guest:It's like your spirit is outside your body looking at you and saying, like, what the fuck are you doing?

01:11:44Guest:Yeah.

01:11:44Guest:And your mouth gets dry.

01:11:45Guest:You get cotton mouth.

01:11:46Guest:Get the sweat?

01:11:47Guest:Oh, the sweat.

01:11:49Guest:Your booty hole tighten up.

01:11:50Guest:Yo, man.

01:11:51Marc:Bombing is the... Yo.

01:11:54Marc:Because you're trying to hold it together.

01:11:56Marc:So then the sweat comes.

01:11:57Marc:I hate that fucking sweat.

01:11:58Marc:Let me tell you something.

01:11:58Marc:Feel it on the back of your neck.

01:11:59Marc:You're like, oh, man.

01:12:00Guest:I bombed so bad one time in Vegas at the Riviera.

01:12:04Guest:Yeah.

01:12:04Guest:One of those midday shows at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

01:12:07Guest:No, no, no.

01:12:07Guest:I bombed so bad, and it was an audience full of white people.

01:12:11Guest:I bombed so bad, I couldn't think of none of my jokes.

01:12:16Guest:All your jokes leave you.

01:12:18Guest:They betray you.

01:12:18Guest:After the first few ones die, you're like, what am I going to- They betray you, right?

01:12:23Guest:So then I was like- Then I have nothing to do with it.

01:12:26Guest:In a room full of white people.

01:12:27Guest:I am ashamed to say this, but I'm going to say it because that's how bad bombing is.

01:12:30Guest:Runeful of white people, I couldn't think of anything to say.

01:12:32Guest:I said, well, let's talk about something.

01:12:34Guest:What's going on in the world?

01:12:35Guest:Do something.

01:12:36Guest:Call me a nigga.

01:12:36Guest:Do something.

01:12:38Guest:And my boy who was there was like, did you just tell a Runeful of white people to call you a nigga?

01:12:44Guest:I was how bad I was fucking bombing.

01:12:45Guest:I wanted something to spark.

01:12:47Guest:You know, you look for anything to spark.

01:12:49Guest:Make me hate you.

01:12:50Marc:Yeah.

01:12:50Guest:Let me do an angry set after that.

01:12:52Guest:I'm tired of hating me right now.

01:12:54Guest:I was on the road with this comedian one time doing this creative tour.

01:12:57Guest:Who?

01:12:57Guest:Back in the 95.

01:12:58Guest:His name was Sean...

01:13:00Guest:Sean Miller.

01:13:01Guest:Uh-huh.

01:13:02Guest:Sean Miller.

01:13:03Guest:And it was a creative run.

01:13:04Guest:You do two weeks and you do these rooms.

01:13:06Guest:I remember those, yeah.

01:13:06Guest:It's fucked up because the feature who gets paid the less is responsible for renting the car and getting the headliner to the gig.

01:13:12Marc:Yeah, you got to drive you around.

01:13:13Guest:It's a two-man show?

01:13:14Guest:Yes.

01:13:14Guest:Half hour, 45?

01:13:15Guest:Yes.

01:13:16Guest:Yeah.

01:13:16Guest:Yes, and it's so stupid.

01:13:17Guest:So we have been on the road for a week and a half already.

01:13:19Guest:Now we're in Atlanta, right?

01:13:21Guest:And we're at this club that's a community named Bruce Bruce used to host.

01:13:24Guest:I know Bruce Bruce, yeah.

01:13:25Guest:Bruce Bruce hosts this club, and it was in the hood hood, like hood hood.

01:13:28Guest:Yeah.

01:13:28Guest:Like, they checked for guns at the door.

01:13:30Guest:Yeah.

01:13:31Guest:Like, if you didn't have one, they would can you one.

01:13:33Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:13:33Guest:that's how the club was and it was worse than Apollo I mean tough tough room so Sean's on stage and I know it's routine because we've been on a road for a week and a half I've heard it for a week and a half I know his opener his middle his closer I know he's supposed to do 30 minutes yeah right yeah

01:13:53Guest:And he goes on stage and the audience is dead silent.

01:14:00Guest:So I see him shifting his shit around.

01:14:03Guest:You know, you throw that first joke out there, don't hit.

01:14:06Guest:So you go to that closer to get him.

01:14:08Guest:And I see him shifting his shit around.

01:14:09Guest:He's supposed to do 30 minutes.

01:14:11Guest:His name is Sean Miller.

01:14:13Guest:This motherfucker did like 12 minutes and goes, hey, my name is Larry Johnson.

01:14:18Guest:Good night.

01:14:19Guest:They were saying his real name.

01:14:21Guest:And I'm like, oh shit, I'm next.

01:14:23Guest:So now I'm on stage and I had some real cerebral jokes.

01:14:27Guest:I know this was not the crowd for some cerebral shit.

01:14:31Guest:You just want to hit them in the mouth and get the fuck off stage.

01:14:35Guest:So I went on stage and I did all my low-hanging fruit jokes.

01:14:38Guest:And I got them dying.

01:14:39Guest:And now about...

01:14:41Guest:You know, maybe, supposed to do 45 minutes, about 15, 20 minutes in, I'm out of low-hanging fruit jokes.

01:14:48Guest:I'm like, fuck, I'm not trying to go to cerebral shit, because they're going to think I'm trying to be too smart for them, right?

01:14:53Guest:So I go, I look in a certain direction.

01:14:56Guest:I go, who, mama?

01:14:58Guest:And I just reeled off like five or six minutes of straight mama jokes.

01:15:01Guest:Yeah.

01:15:02Guest:And then I get out and say, good night.

01:15:04Guest:And one of my boys was like, man, nobody said anything about your mama.

01:15:07Guest:I said, I know.

01:15:08Guest:I said, I was out of fucking material and I just had to do a Gatling gun of fucking mama jokes back to back and not let the audience breathe and say good night.

01:15:17Guest:So I ended up only doing 30 minutes total instead of 45.

01:15:20Guest:Right.

01:15:20Guest:So I got off stage and the owner was like, man, you was killing him.

01:15:24Guest:Why'd you get off stage?

01:15:25Guest:I said, oh, well, Bruce said that, man, they party afterwards and only do 30 minutes and cool.

01:15:31Guest:But I was like, I was done.

01:15:33Guest:I'm like, fuck this.

01:15:36Guest:This was 95.

01:15:36Guest:I'd only been doing comedy, what, three years?

01:15:39Marc:Didn't want to take the chance with the cerebral jokes.

01:15:41Guest:Man, fuck that.

01:15:42Guest:No.

01:15:43Guest:No.

01:15:45Guest:No.

01:15:45Guest:You had to survive.

01:15:46Guest:Had to survive, man.

01:15:47Guest:Didn't nobody say anything about my mama.

01:15:49Guest:I didn't look at a certain person.

01:15:50Guest:I just looked in a direction and made up a heckle.

01:15:55Guest:Had an imaginary heckler.

01:15:56Guest:Didn't matter.

01:15:57Guest:Didn't matter.

01:15:58Guest:I got out of there alive with my dignity and my pride.

01:16:00Marc:That's good.

01:16:01Marc:Larry didn't.

01:16:02Guest:No, no.

01:16:03Guest:Larry didn't.

01:16:04Guest:Is this thing on?

01:16:05No.

01:16:07Guest:It's not good, but it's fun watching people bomb.

01:16:13Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:16:13Marc:Oh, my God.

01:16:14Marc:It's so much fun.

01:16:16Marc:Because if you're watching, you've been doing it a long time.

01:16:18Marc:Right.

01:16:18Marc:Me too, right?

01:16:19Marc:And when you see it start, you're like, oh.

01:16:22Marc:Right when it happens, you're like, oh, here we go.

01:16:23Marc:Here we go.

01:16:24Marc:He's not going to be able to.

01:16:25Marc:Exactly.

01:16:25Marc:You hear the confidence to go after them.

01:16:29Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:30Guest:The comedian starts to shrink.

01:16:32Guest:You know, like Fred Flintstone?

01:16:33Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:16:33Guest:I used to fucking shrink when he got in Brown.

01:16:36Guest:That's like you just start shrinking on stage.

01:16:37Guest:And now your jokes flee you.

01:16:40Guest:Your jokes betray you.

01:16:41Guest:Now you looking for jokes.

01:16:42Guest:You're picking up the mic stands.

01:16:44Guest:I had a joke under here somewhere.

01:16:46Guest:Is there a joke under your drink, man?

01:16:47Guest:Right, right.

01:16:48Guest:And then you're like, so what's your name?

01:16:49Guest:Where are you from?

01:16:50Guest:Right, right.

01:16:50Guest:What do you do for a living?

01:16:52Guest:But black comedians are like, man, give it up for all the beautiful black women in here.

01:16:56Guest:You're trying to get anything to grasp to keep you from dying the death of a thousand dogs.

01:17:02Guest:Well, black people gotta struggle.

01:17:05Guest:Like me right now.

01:17:07Guest:Yeah, right.

01:17:08Guest:You're trying to rally the troops to get any type of sound.

01:17:12Marc:Yeah, but just that look of like, uh-uh, that disappointment, like, uh-uh, not going to help you.

01:17:18Guest:Yeah.

01:17:19Guest:That's why, too, though, at Fat Tuesdays,

01:17:22Guest:I made sure I put the lineup.

01:17:23Guest:The lineup was important.

01:17:25Guest:Not just putting any comic on stage, but putting the right lineup together.

01:17:28Guest:I had taught a friend of mine that moved out to St.

01:17:31Guest:Louis how to book the room.

01:17:33Guest:Yeah, who was that?

01:17:34Guest:Terrence Reynolds.

01:17:35Guest:Right.

01:17:35Guest:And he wasn't a stand-up, but he moved out here, and what we did was we put all the comic's name on a page, right?

01:17:42Guest:Every comic we could think of that was in L.A.

01:17:44Guest:and ones that came to L.A.

01:17:46Guest:frequently.

01:17:47Guest:And then we put numbers by them, one through four.

01:17:49Guest:Right.

01:17:49Guest:And one being...

01:17:50Guest:Opener, second, you know, who's a good third and who's a good closer.

01:17:55Marc:Was it four or five people on the show?

01:17:56Guest:I put four to five.

01:17:57Guest:We had fives where people like your Cedrics, your Chappelle, if he dropped in, Chris Roth, those were special people.

01:18:04Guest:My brother, those were special comics.

01:18:06Guest:You know, Bill Bellamy.

01:18:08Guest:But one through four was who's a good opener, who's a good second, who's a good third, good middler, and who's a good closer.

01:18:14Guest:So what we did was- But everyone's doing the same time?

01:18:17Guest:No, no.

01:18:18Guest:Some are doing seven minutes.

01:18:19Guest:Some are doing 10 or 12.

01:18:21Marc:Big set's 20?

01:18:22Guest:Big set's 20, yes.

01:18:24Guest:Or if it's somebody like an earthquake who wanted 30, will the earthquake do 30?

01:18:28Guest:So he was another one who was a frequent one.

01:18:30Guest:Cat Williams would do 25 minutes.

01:18:32Guest:Kevin Hart would drop through.

01:18:34Guest:He was a regular.

01:18:35Guest:So what we did was we numbered them, and what I did was I made combinations.

01:18:39Guest:So you can't have four ones on a show.

01:18:41Guest:Right.

01:18:42Guest:You can't have a one and three twos on a show.

01:18:44Guest:You can have a one, a three, and a four, or maybe two ones, or maybe two twos, a three, and a four.

01:18:50Guest:So those combinations would work for almost a foolproof lineup.

01:18:52Marc:What if you don't got a four?

01:18:54Marc:Huh?

01:18:54Marc:What if there's no four in town?

01:18:55Guest:There's usually a four, because it's L.A.

01:18:58Guest:So you had some fours.

01:18:59Guest:Otherwise, you put two threes.

01:19:01Guest:Right, right.

01:19:02Guest:And then I also put that rating as far as their energy.

01:19:05Guest:Like, say, for instance, you don't want an Aries Spears and a Pablo Francisco on the same show.

01:19:10Guest:They both do impressions.

01:19:11Guest:Right.

01:19:11Guest:You don't want two guys with impressions on the same thing.

01:19:13Guest:You don't want to exhaust the people.

01:19:14Guest:Exactly.

01:19:14Guest:So you don't want somebody who does too much political stuff.

01:19:18Guest:You want to mix the lineup up.

01:19:20Guest:So I put that formula together so I can give it to my guy who was booking it so you can book a show.

01:19:25Guest:Now, every once in a while, somebody's going to bomb no matter what.

01:19:28Guest:Of course.

01:19:28Guest:But at least you have a show where you have a whole show at least...

01:19:32Guest:at least three out of the four are funny.

01:19:35Guest:Yeah.

01:19:35Guest:All four are not going to bomb.

01:19:36Guest:All three, the chance of everybody bombing is not going to happen.

01:19:42Marc:And I thought it was kind of wild.

01:19:43Marc:Like, did you have that Saget shit in the bag before he died?

01:19:46Marc:Yeah.

01:19:47Marc:That's crazy.

01:19:48Yeah.

01:19:48Marc:Because that was kind of great, that whole moment of him showing up, the white guy.

01:19:54Marc:We had a little section of the two or three white guys.

01:19:58Marc:One guy, I didn't even recognize, I didn't know who that guy was.

01:20:00Guest:Uncle somebody.

01:20:03Guest:Oh, Honest John.

01:20:04Guest:Honest John, man.

01:20:06Guest:Honest John was fearless.

01:20:07Guest:Yeah, but clearly.

01:20:08Guest:He was fearless.

01:20:08Guest:He would go up in front.

01:20:10Guest:When the first time Tupac and Suge came to Fat Tuesdays, it was in a belly room, and that's a small-ass room.

01:20:15Guest:And before Tupac and Suge and them came, a lot of comics wanted to go up, right?

01:20:21Guest:When Death Row showed up,

01:20:23Guest:A lot of those black comics got scared and didn't want to go up.

01:20:26Guest:Oh, really?

01:20:26Guest:Honest John was one of the few that was like, shit, I'll go up.

01:20:30Guest:He's a white dude, though.

01:20:31Guest:Yeah.

01:20:32Guest:And old.

01:20:33Guest:Yeah.

01:20:33Guest:You know, John been that same age his whole fucking life.

01:20:35Guest:He been 90 his whole life.

01:20:36Marc:What happened to that guy?

01:20:37Guest:He's still around.

01:20:38Guest:Still doing stand-up, still working.

01:20:40Guest:But he was like, he's not afraid of Suge?

01:20:41Guest:He's going to go up?

01:20:42Guest:No, he didn't give a fuck?

01:20:43Guest:Yeah.

01:20:44Guest:Billy Gardell's another one.

01:20:46Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:20:47Guest:Chicago, Chicago, right?

01:20:48Guest:Yeah, I wanted him in a doc.

01:20:49Guest:He's from Pittsburgh, but he did stand-up in Chicago.

01:20:52Guest:Right.

01:20:53Guest:But he's from Pittsburgh.

01:20:54Guest:Right.

01:20:55Guest:We have a lot of Pirates.

01:20:56Guest:I'm a St.

01:20:56Guest:Louis Cardinal fan of baseball, so we go back and forth when they play each other.

01:21:00Guest:Gardell played?

01:21:00Guest:But he was another one.

01:21:01Guest:Oh, he did?

01:21:01Guest:I met him up in Aspen at the Comedy Festival in 97.

01:21:05Guest:And I said, man, you're pretty fucking funny, man.

01:21:07Guest:I have a night in L.A.

01:21:08Guest:You ever come to L.A.?

01:21:10Guest:You know, come play my night at the Comedy Store.

01:21:11Guest:It's called Fat Tuesdays.

01:21:13Guest:And then when he would come, he'd call me, hey, got him in town, man, you got a spot for me.

01:21:16Guest:I got him.

01:21:17Guest:So when I interviewed him for The Sizzle, you know, and I really wish I could have got him in this, in the doc doc.

01:21:24Guest:But he goes, man,

01:21:26Guest:When you told me that, I was like, yeah, yeah, okay.

01:21:29Guest:Because he said, so many economists have told me that I get to LA and then I'll return my call.

01:21:33Guest:So you're the only one who would pick up the phone and give me a spot.

01:21:37Guest:And he said, what you paid me was just enough to put some gas in my car, buy me a beer and some food in my belly.

01:21:42Guest:And I appreciated that.

01:21:44Guest:Yeah.

01:21:44Guest:And I was like, wow.

01:21:46Guest:I just never knew how that night was affecting people's lives.

01:21:49Guest:But how many white people could play it?

01:21:51Guest:He did it and did well.

01:21:54Guest:Dice kind of did it one time and then the second time he kind of ate it.

01:21:58Guest:Polly would come in there and do it.

01:22:01Guest:Gary Owen would come and do strong there.

01:22:04Guest:Would do really well there.

01:22:06Marc:And Bob Saget, those are the ones who- I just love the Saget thing because it was before anyone knew his standup.

01:22:12Marc:Right.

01:22:12Marc:So all these black people were like, okay.

01:22:15Marc:Yeah.

01:22:15Marc:So what do we- Yeah.

01:22:16Marc:They looked at him like, okay.

01:22:19Marc:But they gave him the benefit of the doubt because they were so surprised.

01:22:21Marc:Right.

01:22:22Marc:Like, why is this guy here?

01:22:24Marc:Right, right, right.

01:22:26Guest:And then he just does that shit.

01:22:28Guest:Right.

01:22:28Guest:And they were like, oh shit.

01:22:30Guest:Yeah.

01:22:30Guest:Now black people say, that's my man.

01:22:34Guest:They don't know the name.

01:22:36Guest:That's my man.

01:22:38Marc:That was funny.

01:22:39Guest:When they don't know your name, that's my man.

01:22:42Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:44Marc:Someone in New York, I was walking down the street and some black dude's walking the other way.

01:22:48Marc:He looks at me and goes, you look like Marc Maron.

01:22:50Marc:And I go, I am Marc Maron.

01:22:51Marc:He goes, motherfucker.

01:22:52Marc:We're so expressive.

01:22:56Marc:We're so expressive.

01:22:58Marc:And I said, I could use that once a day.

01:23:01Marc:Once a day someone could do that.

01:23:02Marc:Motherfucker.

01:23:06Marc:So when you quit it, it just felt like it was done?

01:23:10Marc:2005?

01:23:11Guest:You know what?

01:23:12Guest:There's a couple of things that made me stop.

01:23:16Guest:And I say it in the doc.

01:23:17Guest:I was married.

01:23:18Guest:I was recently married.

01:23:19Guest:That's a job.

01:23:20Guest:Full-time fucking job.

01:23:22Guest:I was doing radio in St.

01:23:23Guest:Louis from L.A.

01:23:25Marc:And wait, when did you do the tour with the original Kings?

01:23:28Marc:Kings County was 98.

01:23:29Marc:Okay.

01:23:29Marc:Oh, so that was in the middle of it.

01:23:31Guest:Yeah, 98.

01:23:31Marc:And you were hosting that.

01:23:32Marc:They picked you.

01:23:33Marc:It was Steve Harvey, Bernie.

01:23:35Marc:And Cedric.

01:23:36Marc:And you're the emcee.

01:23:36Guest:Right.

01:23:37Guest:I was more like the prince of the Kings of Comics.

01:23:39Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:23:40Guest:I was five years in the game.

01:23:41Guest:Those guys were already seasoned.

01:23:42Guest:Sure, but how many of those shows did you do?

01:23:45Marc:52 of them.

01:23:46Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:23:47Guest:I did a year of it.

01:23:48Guest:Huh, that's great.

01:23:49Guest:And I left announcing on BET's Tavis Smiley, BET Tonight.

01:23:54Guest:Yeah.

01:23:54Guest:I announced I'm leaving because I wanted to become a comedian.

01:23:58Guest:I was a comic.

01:23:59Guest:Yeah.

01:24:00Guest:And it's a difference between a comic and a comedian.

01:24:02Guest:Right.

01:24:02Guest:Comics says funny things.

01:24:03Guest:A comedian makes things funny.

01:24:05Guest:Yeah.

01:24:05Guest:And I saw these guys go out there every night and just tear these audiences up.

01:24:12Guest:And I heard these jokes every night.

01:24:14Guest:But I laughed every time because you brought them to the story.

01:24:17Guest:You brought them to the energy.

01:24:18Guest:Yeah.

01:24:18Guest:You know, and I want to be that guy.

01:24:20Guest:I want to be that type of comedian.

01:24:21Guest:So I left and also ended up getting a TV show that was premiered 10 times as more on the tour.

01:24:26Marc:You left the tour, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:24:27Guest:Yeah, I did a show on UPN called The Strip playing a Vegas police officer.

01:24:31Guest:I mean, well, detective, private detective.

01:24:32Marc:How many episodes did you do?

01:24:33Guest:We did nine fucking episodes until our executive producer, Joel Silver, cussed out the head of the network.

01:24:41Marc:Yeah, and that was that.

01:24:43Marc:But it was a good show.

01:24:45Marc:So when he ended Fat Tuesday, you just had other responsibilities.

01:24:51Marc:You didn't think.

01:24:52Marc:Yeah, I just got busy.

01:24:53Guest:But you didn't want to pass it down.

01:24:54Guest:Huh?

01:24:54Marc:You didn't want to pass it?

01:24:55Guest:I did.

01:24:55Marc:I did pass it down.

01:24:56Marc:Oh, you did.

01:24:56Guest:What happened was when I ended it, another guy came in.

01:25:00Guest:Two other guys wanted to come in and take it over, and they met with the comedy store.

01:25:03Guest:Yeah.

01:25:04Guest:The comedy store said, no, if guy's not involved.

01:25:06Guest:Right.

01:25:07Right.

01:25:07Guest:We're not going to do it.

01:25:09Guest:So the two guys called me and tried to wrangle me back in and said, hey, man, this comic store's not going to do it without your involvement.

01:25:15Guest:And I said, dude, I'm done.

01:25:16Guest:I got too much responsibility.

01:25:18Guest:But I said, I know how important this room is to black comics.

01:25:21Guest:So I said, I'll tell you what, I'll call them and tell them I am involved, but I'm not going to be involved.

01:25:25Guest:Yeah.

01:25:26Guest:So I lied.

01:25:26Guest:Yeah.

01:25:27Guest:Because I needed... Black comics needed that room.

01:25:30Guest:But I think... But also what you pointed out in the doc is that... It became Trippin' on Tuesdays after that.

01:25:34Marc:Trippin' on Tuesdays?

01:25:35Marc:Yeah.

01:25:35Marc:But what you pointed out in the doc, that because of Fat Tuesdays, it became a thing across the country in clubs.

01:25:42Marc:There was a black night in all the big cities.

01:25:44Marc:Right.

01:25:45Guest:At first, the clubs teased the comedy store for having nigger night, what they called it.

01:25:49Guest:Yeah.

01:25:49Guest:And then...

01:25:51Guest:Once they saw how much money it was making, then the improv started on Monday nights.

01:25:56Guest:Was that D-Ray?

01:25:57Guest:Way before D-Ray.

01:25:58Guest:It's a guy named Zoo Man.

01:25:59Guest:It's Corey Zoo Miller, who's actually on tour with Cat Williams right now.

01:26:02Guest:But they started over on Monday nights at the improv.

01:26:06Guest:And then Pookie Whittington

01:26:09Guest:came from the East Coast and wanted to start, we wanted to interview him too, we didn't get around to it, but he said he came to L.A.

01:26:15Guest:and wanted to do a comedy night.

01:26:17Guest:Yeah.

01:26:17Guest:So he was asking the people who got the hottest black night.

01:26:20Guest:Yeah.

01:26:21Guest:And they say everybody was telling Fat Tuesdays, Fat Tuesdays.

01:26:23Guest:So he came and he studied it.

01:26:25Guest:He said, I mean, I studied Fat Tuesdays from how you ran it to the lineup, to the energy, and then he went to Laugh Factory.

01:26:31Guest:And he called Chris Spencer to host the room, and that's how Chocolate Sundays got started.

01:26:37Marc:I've seen Spencer in a lot of docs lately.

01:26:39Guest:Yeah, I know, right?

01:26:40Guest:He's in the Cosby doc.

01:26:41Guest:He's in, you know, the Fat Tuesday doc.

01:26:43Marc:Professor Spencer's.

01:26:44Guest:Yeah.

01:26:45Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:26:45Guest:Yeah, but he's a very, very smart.

01:26:47Guest:Great guy.

01:26:48Guest:Great guy and smart comedically.

01:26:50Marc:He's funny.

01:26:51Marc:He is very funny.

01:26:53Marc:And so since then, so after 2005, you just, what, you did the family thing?

01:26:56Marc:You did the radio thing?

01:26:57Guest:I was still on the tour.

01:26:58Guest:I was still on the road doing my own stand-up shows.

01:26:59Marc:I was still acting.

01:27:00Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:27:00Guest:Yeah.

01:27:01Guest:So I was just being pulled in every different direction.

01:27:03Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:27:04Guest:And I was like, you know, but I was a little heartbroken too.

01:27:06Guest:Yeah.

01:27:07Guest:Because there was, Pauly Shore had a show called Minding the Store.

01:27:12Guest:Yeah.

01:27:13Guest:And I was a little heartbroken when they showed the marquee.

01:27:16Guest:Yeah.

01:27:16Guest:And they blurred out Guy Tori and put Fat Tuesdays.

01:27:20Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:27:20Guest:And said that it was a gimmick night.

01:27:22Guest:And I was a little heartbroken.

01:27:24Guest:Oh.

01:27:24Guest:And I was like...

01:27:25Guest:Gimmick night the decade I was like and I was hurt.

01:27:29Guest:I ain't gonna lie.

01:27:30Guest:I was hurt and I said, you know what?

01:27:32Guest:I'm I'm going home Yeah, right.

01:27:34Marc:Yeah, you know yeah, but they reached back out and You know but but but it you know it was what it was you know was interesting I'm ever grateful to the comedy store sure I mean, you know the comedy stores a weird place and there's nothing like it nothing like it That's what makes it greatest good and evil all happens in there every night and

01:27:51Marc:Before it was a comic store, when it was zero, it was a lot of evil.

01:27:54Marc:Yeah, I heard.

01:27:55Marc:I mean, what, you got the ghost stories?

01:27:56Marc:Yeah, yeah.

01:27:57Marc:Ghost stories.

01:27:57Marc:That place carrying a lot of shit.

01:27:59Marc:Man, what?

01:28:00Guest:Yeah.

01:28:00Guest:Before I did the documentary, every day, I would sage the place.

01:28:06Guest:I swear, because I want a good energy for the documentary, man, for Fat Tuesdays.

01:28:11Guest:And every morning before production, I would walk through every room.

01:28:15Guest:And sage it.

01:28:16Guest:Sage the whole place.

01:28:17Marc:It's so funny because I was deep in the evil of that place in my brain when I was on Coke back when I was a kid.

01:28:23Marc:And it feels better.

01:28:25Marc:It feels okay in there right now.

01:28:26Guest:Yeah, it does.

01:28:27Guest:Because I sage every fucking day for a month.

01:28:32Marc:I was going to fucking sage in that place, man.

01:28:34Marc:Well, somebody like, I think when Peter took control of the thing and got real managers in there, real security.

01:28:39Marc:Great job, Peter.

01:28:39Marc:Fixed the bathrooms and shit.

01:28:40Marc:Great job he did.

01:28:41Marc:Yeah, man.

01:28:42Marc:It's like all of a sudden it's like, but honoring the place.

01:28:45Marc:But it feels like the negative ghost, they left.

01:28:49Marc:I don't know why, but it's good.

01:28:51Marc:It's good energy.

01:28:52Marc:It's better energy now.

01:28:53Guest:Yeah.

01:28:54Guest:Yeah.

01:28:54Guest:And that's why it's hot again.

01:28:56Guest:People don't understand how important energy is.

01:28:58Guest:It's true.

01:28:59Guest:In a space.

01:28:59Marc:Yeah.

01:29:00Marc:That whole, the ending where, you know, all those people from Fat Tuesdays who wanted representation on that wall.

01:29:05Marc:Right.

01:29:06Marc:And you did a little presentation.

01:29:07Marc:Yeah.

01:29:08Marc:A big reveal, you know, that Peter signed off on it.

01:29:12Guest:And he did, man.

01:29:13Guest:And he was respectful to the process.

01:29:16Guest:He was respectful to the legend of the wall, but also respectful to Fat Tuesdays being important to the comedy store and those comedians being important to Fat Tuesdays and putting those names on the wall.

01:29:30Guest:Because some of those guys...

01:29:31Guest:you know, earned it.

01:29:33Guest:Sure.

01:29:33Guest:You know, they earned it before, like D. Militant, who passed away since, you know, I hate they didn't get a chance to see the doc, but he passed away, and he was passed as a regular.

01:29:46Guest:But Mitzi wanted him to change his name to Whipsy Willie.

01:29:50Guest:And he was like, no.

01:29:51Guest:And his name never got on the wall.

01:29:54Guest:And he was someone that should have been on that wall a long time ago.

01:29:58Guest:And the thing about it was, and Marshall Wellfield's name either was on the wall and got covered up, but it wasn't on the wall.

01:30:03Guest:So she definitely deserved to be...

01:30:06Marc:on the wall too.

01:30:07Marc:She got up there again?

01:30:09Marc:Yeah.

01:30:09Marc:The new crew?

01:30:10Marc:Yeah.

01:30:10Marc:She was definitely up there.

01:30:11Marc:Sometimes things get, they move shit around.

01:30:13Guest:Yeah, I don't know if it was behind the sign or something, I don't know, but I scaled that wall.

01:30:19Guest:I mean, I scoped it out many times and never saw it.

01:30:22Guest:But T. Militant, all of them got emotional.

01:30:26Guest:And Cedric was even emotional when I told him.

01:30:29Guest:And he was like, man, I got a star in Hollywood Walk of Fame, but I don't have my name on the wall.

01:30:32Guest:I know.

01:30:32Guest:And he used to kill Fat Tuesdays.

01:30:34Guest:Yeah.

01:30:34Guest:But the thing about it is,

01:30:37Guest:D. Militant, when I told him, he got super emotional.

01:30:41Guest:And I think now, in hindsight, I think he knew he was dying at the time.

01:30:47Guest:And to have his name on the wall, he got emotional because he said, wow.

01:30:52Marc:That's going to say that.

01:30:53Marc:Finally.

01:30:55Guest:I don't have a star in Hollywood Walk of Fame.

01:30:57Guest:He has great books.

01:30:58Guest:He's written on black comedy, history of black comedy.

01:31:00Guest:But to have his name on the wall before he passed away, I think, really meant something to him.

01:31:06Marc:Yeah.

01:31:07Marc:Well, I mean, it was beautiful because we understand it, but it's such a specific crew.

01:31:12Marc:It's only comedy store people going to know what the fuck that means.

01:31:16Marc:Most people just look at the wall going, oh, look at that.

01:31:18Marc:I don't know.

01:31:19Marc:We're like, come on, where's my fucking name?

01:31:21Marc:Well, man, it's a great doc, and it was a great story, and I learned a lot, and I feel...

01:31:26Marc:I feel good to know all that history because I didn't have it.

01:31:29Marc:I appreciate it.

01:31:30Marc:And I'm a guy that lives and breathes the store, really.

01:31:33Guest:Man, that's a great place, man.

01:31:35Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:31:36Guest:I had one in the early versions of the My Sizzle.

01:31:41Guest:People were calling the comic store the mecca of comedy.

01:31:44Guest:I had a Photoshop of some people praying on their knees in the comic store.

01:31:50Marc:in the background.

01:31:52Marc:It's a mecca.

01:31:53Marc:The funny thing is that for years, you couldn't get industry to go in that place.

01:31:57Marc:When I was there, when that dark period happened, they're like, I'm not fucking going there.

01:32:03Marc:That place is creepy.

01:32:04Marc:But during Kennison's reign, that place was

01:32:07Marc:dirty, man.

01:32:08Guest:And what's funny, too, is there's a part in Fat Tuesday when Suge Knight was coming on the record.

01:32:12Guest:Yeah.

01:32:12Guest:Industry, some industry got scared.

01:32:14Guest:Yeah.

01:32:14Guest:And they wouldn't come because they heard Suge was there every week.

01:32:16Guest:Yeah.

01:32:17Guest:So it was like, damn, this is when, you know, the 90s when people were scared of Suge.

01:32:20Guest:Yeah.

01:32:21Guest:Not that they're not scared of him now, but he is locked up.

01:32:22Marc:Yeah.

01:32:23Marc:It's so funny.

01:32:24Marc:I remember, like, I get such a kick out of that.

01:32:26Marc:You remember when Cat Williams was losing his shit on stage?

01:32:28Marc:Yeah.

01:32:29Marc:There was, like, someone's phone video coming on.

01:32:32Marc:Right, right, right.

01:32:33Marc:There was some black lady's phone video.

01:32:35Marc:Right, right.

01:32:36Marc:And they're just taping, you know, Cat losing it.

01:32:39Marc:Yeah.

01:32:39Marc:And then Suge comes on stage and all you hear is, is that Suge?

01:32:42Guest:Is that Suge?

01:32:43Marc:Is that Suge?

01:32:44Guest:That's when Suge, I think, was managing Cat for me.

01:32:46Guest:Yeah, but it was just like, she didn't give a shit about what was going on.

01:32:50Guest:Right, right, right.

01:32:51Is that Suge?

01:32:52Marc:I love it.

01:32:53Marc:Good talking to you, man.

01:32:53Guest:This has been great, man.

01:32:55Guest:It has been.

01:32:55Guest:Make sure you check out my website, GuyToryLive, G-U-Y-T-O-R-R-Y-L-I-V-E dot com.

01:33:02Guest:And follow me on Instagram and Twitter, at GuyTory, G-U-Y-T-O-R-R-Y.

01:33:07Marc:Good talk.

01:33:12Marc:Okay, once again, the three-part docuseries Fat Tuesdays.

01:33:16Marc:The era of hip-hop comedy is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

01:33:20Marc:That was great.

01:33:22Marc:It was fun to talk to a guy.

01:33:25Marc:Old school comic talk.

01:33:28Marc:Here's some guitar.

01:33:29Marc:The guitar I played right before the guitar you're about to hear was actually better.

01:33:34Marc:Just saying.

01:33:35Marc:There's no way you can know.

01:33:37Marc:No way.

01:33:39Guest:guitar solo

01:34:05Guest:guitar solo

01:34:28Marc:Boomer lives.

01:34:42Marc:Monkey in La Fonda.

01:34:43Marc:Cat angels everywhere.